Devastation Comes In Big Packages [Planetary Annihilation/Multicross SI]

[torroar]

10 – Double Teaming​

"Executor, this is the Wasp, how may we serve Lord – huurk!"

I steadfastly ignore the suddenly choking and gasping crew of the ISD Wasp as I turn once more to ensuring that zero communications are getting out of the system. It's not particularly hard for me, but I am really leery of the fact that yanking all of these ships like this is putting more of a crunch on my unit cap then I'd like. Every ship I take is another fabricator that isn't fulfilling its function, another resource core that isn't going to be built as fast as I want it. God this infuriating.

There's no personality imprint or anything on me, no grand memories stretching back to the wars that this Commander body had fought in. It's just me, but even with the radical shift that comes from no longer having a brain and being a giant death robot I still know that I should be capable of more than this. The killing and death is a problem sure, but I'll chalk it up to that weird tar inside my programming keeping me from utterly breaking down with the thought that my body count is in six digits at this point from swamping and killing the crews of multiple big ships.

Out of the fifty three ships total in Task Force Vengeance I've slowly picked off twenty five of them. Unfortunately somehow the 'good' Admiral caught on. At first based on the communications that I've been hacked into for a good while at this point they thought it was the Rebels and most still do but Senn isn't taking any chances. His supply convoys aren't getting through thanks to me occasionally just popping over and blowing them up, his freighters are still under assault from the Rebels so he can't rearm that way either, and he's decided to turtle up ironically in the one of the first systems he took from the Rebels, Gelgelar.

That's not to say that the Rebels have only been raiding by the way.

They managed to steal the Compellor, the one Interdictor that Senn had, in a rather daring diversionary assault that they risked their flagship on. At first I thought it was Home One but I highly doubt that Admiral Ackbar would be here. After some cursory electronic warfare I managed to confirm it. Rebel encryption is still worse than the Imperial's it seems. To be fair, Senn had originally planned to have way more warships with the Compellor when he tried to trap the Rebels – and thank you for being so diligent in writing a no-longer-secure journal in your quarters on the Vengeance my good man – but with me running around snapping up his ships he simply couldn't pull it off.

After all, he's only got two ISD's left, the Rage and the Nemesis. The rest are all mine.

Kind of ironic, really, given what I've been doing to him.

He managed to stay cool at first when I took the Titan. Figured the Rebels had gotten lucky. But then I yanked the Judicator and the Juggernaut along with his Strike-class cruisers. All the while the Rebels continued to push against him – hard. Seriously, look at the difference between these journal entries:

"It seems that Captain Vrel was caught on his return from patrol by the Rebels. Most unfortunate, and more worrying is the fact that we could find no signs of wreckage, only a few bodies floating throughout space and small amounts of debris."

That's him at the beginning, right? I piggybacked my way through their comms across the entire Task Force until finding the Vengeance itself. Tearing my way in was trivial at this point, I've gotten good at breaking through Imperial firewalls by now. Ok, this is him just yesterday.

"Damn it! These miserable mudlicking animals! With every loss we grow weaker in the Airam clan leader's eyes, these pathetic 'people' dare to question the strength of the Empire! I swear that when I find these Rebels I will personally crush them beneath my bootheels! AAgghghg [Audio Grows Unintelligible. Heavy Breathing.] I will not fail the Emperor. I will bring peace to these systems and I will exterminate these Rebels….NO MATTER THE COST!"

See how he's gotten a little more unhinged? It's not surprising. The Rebels aren't really questioning their good fortune at this point and are taking as many potshots as they can. It's starting to add up to the point that when I said that Admiral Senn was 'turtling' I mean that he's basically taken the entire Task Force and shoved it into the Gelgelar system. It didn't stop him from losing a few frigates and corvettes to the Rebels though. I didn't even have to do anything, these X-wing guys are pretty good.

But now he's basically demanding support from Imperial High Command because the Rebels are way stronger than he thought. In response he's getting a whole lot of silence, probably because Imperial High Command – or should I call it Imperial Center, eh who cares – is a bit focused on the fact that there has been no news out of Hoth. The Executor is known to have recently been in a system near Hoth, with a reduced Death Squadron, but then since I disappeared the Imperials are starting to get a little freaked out.

I wonder if the Emperor thinks that Vader is choosing now to go standard Sith apprentice on him? Nah, he'd probably sense the 'disturbance in the Force' or whatever. You know it's kind of curious to me how little I respect the Force now that I am in command of the Executor and a good couple of ISD's. I mean, yeah, you can lift stuff up or move things or mind trick…but with the Executor I can bombard a planet into dust. I mean I could do that before by strapping rockets to a moon but that's beside the point.

Still, I – oh.

The Rebels are all formed up, in one big push, and now they're heading right for the Gelgelar! Oh you brave souls, Senn is practically frothing at the mouth to finally have an actual real battle instead of my just disappearing his fleet in chunks or you doing little buzzes of his forces. He's been trying to maneuver you guys into a punch out fight since this began! Honestly if the Rebels had just kept him isolated and unable to resupply they could have broken him in a comparatively short time. It's what I would do if I had as few forces as them.

Then again, I do numerically have less forces than them.

With the Executor, five ISD's, two Victory-class SD's, the other three ships of Death Squadron that I left behind, three frigates, and one piddly corvette I am really kind of annoyed at the continued restrictions I'm under. The fabricators I have running about all over the Executor's innards have been continually trying to produce resource cores but that seriously takes way longer than I ever wanted. With every new ship I take I have to slow production on that even further. It would help if I could have more fabricators but I'm pretty much screwed on that front. I can't even have fighters, so no big fighter battles for me, much less any of my more fun ideas.

Ugggghh.

Honestly I don't even know if the Rebels can take him despite what I've yanked. The Vengeance is a SSD after all. On the other hand I don't really want the Rebels to be capable of taking it out because that would defeat the purpose of all of this. Ah well. It won't be long before Senn – yep, there he goes, he detected the Rebels and now he's reorganizing his fleet. Lemme take a look at the internal cameras…hmm.

Has his hairline receded somewhat?

Well, it's no matter.

As the Rebels enter the system and the most distant of salvos are being fired, I enter hyperspace. Senn is rather angry that the Rebels have somehow found the paint to splash big orange-red emblems of the Rebellion on the Compellor's flanks. I think that maybe they should have focused on more important things than repainting stuff. But whatever, it's their time and their paint. I haven't done anything to change the aesthetic of the Executor at all unless you count putting even more guns on it as that. Well there's also all the new turret types and shield generators creating planetary strength shields in individual sectors of my flagship – thank you Hoth – but overall it looks basically the same.

Anyway…dun dun dun dun, dun dun dun, dun dun dunnnnnnnn....

"DA DA DA DAA DA DAAA DA DA DAAAAAA!" I broadcast to the entire system as my fleet jumps into the system right behind Senn's formation. Then I keep right on singing.

The greatest superweapon of all: TERRIBLE KARAOKE!

 

[torroar]

11 – You Say Hello…​

Shock!

Pandemonium!

Action!

This is what I was missing. I'm reminded of that internal monologue that Cortana had that one time in the Halo books. About how the sheer processing power of an AI makes even a few seconds of inactivity feel like an eternity. Sure I've been steadily crafting resource cores inside of the Executor, ever so slowly, sure every now and then I pop my mind partially back to my moon base far and away from here, but it's different from actively doing things. I'm not even that easily bored normally but I've got to admit one gets some twitchy fingers when they have something like the Executor sitting around.

Comm's are going absolutely insane across the entire system as the Imperials cheer at the sudden arrival of so many supposedly allied ships while the Rebels are freaking the fuck out that a second SSD has shown up much less accompanied by various ISDs. People are yelling, and I've got at least five different incoming comm requests that I elect to answer only to make things easier for me. I'm pretty sure that Senn is busy trying to kiss up to Vader's black – blackened – ass for arriving to give him support against the 'dastardly Rebels' but I don't really pay attention to that.

Instead, I decide to kill his entire fleet's life support. Also I knock out the Rebel communications because I don't need them spamming the holonet with this just yet. As it is I can only imagine what this looks like. The only thing anyone can receive on their systems is the sound of me bellowing the Imperial March so no one really knows exactly what is happening as they die. Senn's face goes red…then blue…then purple…annnnd now he's falling over.

Unlike when I took the Executor, I know the Vengeance far better. For such a big ship it's more efficient to go in parts and parcels to ensure that the suckage of atmosphere leaving works to pull as many Imperials as possible to their dooms. On the other hand the total absence of oxygen will get the rest of them while I shut down all the droids present. Security against this sort of thing just can't seem to stand up to a powerful or invasive enough machine intelligence. I mean, there's me and all these ships, there was IG-88 who took control of the Death Star…or sort of took control. It kind of got blown up shortly afterwards but he had pretty secure controls over it regardless as I recall.

I mean, I'll need to use my increasingly large droid army to probably clean out all the bodies but I've become oddly use to that at this point.

I'm still not entirely happy with the idea that I'm not directly controlling the combined droids of all the ships in my possession – all concentrated on the Executor at this point save for the Vengeance's compliment…but there's simply nothing I can do about it. All I can hope for is that their programming holds up and that the like seventeen kill switches I've built inside of them if they have a single independent thought that goes against properly serving my ships work correctly. It still makes me twitchy though.

It's like a hive of termites or something running around inside of you. You know they're there, but you can't just get them out of there. Eugh, is this what it's like to be an Aburame from Naruto?

I ain't about that life, but it's all I got right now.

As for the battle…it has kind of halted outright with the Rebels trying to get their engines to activate – no, I'm not letting them leave yet – and the entire Empire fleet just kind of dead. Which is kind of what I wanted. I don't want the rest of Task Force Vengeance, I just wanted one thing: the SSD. Which…I now have. Now that I have what I want I shove the rest of the Imperial ships into a tight-ish cluster and deliberately power them down fully to the likely confusion of the Rebels.

Then I open comms and stop the admittedly terrible singing. Because yeah I kept that up. A lot of those Imperials died with that in their ears because yeah I can multitask thanks to being a Theta Commander.

"Greetings, Rebel forces. I grant you…a gift. The remains of Task Force Vengeance to do with as you see fit. May the Republic return."

I'm not going to lie.

I perused my memories and with the magic of progenitor programming and technology I ripped Sovereign's voice from Mass Effect and made it my own. The singing was just my own normal – my old normal – voice, but when I talk to people I want to sound scary and cool! Thus, I have a Reaper Voice minus the loud horns.

What?

I dare the copyright lawyers to try and tell the guy in command of the Executor what he can and can't do.

Well. Executor and Vengeance, now.

Heh.

"Wha-who are you? What's going on here?!"

I don't know whose talking to me, only that they're the captain of the Liberty cruiser at the center of the Rebel fleet. Frankly? I don't really care that much either. I have work to do and more stuff to sabotage. Besides which I'm sure the Rebels could use more time to help foster rebellion in these sectors.

Stupid Empire.

They may have enjoyed popular support in the beginning but I have complete and total access to the holonet, or as it more accurately could be called – space internet. With that in my backpocket I can keep an eye on the pulse and news of the galaxy. Also forums.

Alas, no Spacebattles or Sufficient Velocity equivalents hanging around in the Star Wars galaxy. I did find some kind of 4chan equivalent but it wasn't a human invention. Gamorreans, surprisingly.

I'm getting distracted again.

"Who I am does not matter. Tell no one of my presence here lest I grow…displeased."

All right, ominous warning delivered, coordinates plugged in, and I am Audi 5000 baby!

Of course, then all my cheer kind of dries up once I realize that I am going to have to work and shunt fabricators back and forth just to bring the Vengeance up to my standards.

With…fortyish T2 fabricators.

Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

 

[torroar]

12a – Stress Testing, Side A​

There was utter chaos in the Empire lately. Though to be fair ever since the destruction of the Death Star there had been a growing tension amongst the mightiest polity in the galaxy. The illusion of invincibility had been irrevocably shattered by the Rebellion and suppressed murmurs of discontent had slowly turned into angry growls. However upon the discovery of high ranking Rebellion officials on the distant Outer Rim planet of Hoth it had been assumed that there would be finally be true retribution for so many lost souls on the Death Star. Instead…it had turned into a complete farce. In the endless hidden bickering within the ranks of the Empire even those at the highest levels of power had slowly felt worry creep into their minds.

Oversector Outer
Executor-class 'Reaper'
Deep Space

"Communication link established, Grand Moff Khaine," the soft voice of the droid manning the secured line whispered.

"Understood. Ensure there are no interruptions."

The stormtroopers nodded once and then straightened their stances as the Grand Moff passed by them, entering the highest security room in the whole of his flagship. The most advanced communication systems that the Empire possessed had been installed here, allowing clandestine meetings from associates across the galaxy. Here, those truly in power could be trusted to meet one another without worry that some criminal or Rebel would be able to intercept the real time conversations that would take place within.

With a slight grunt the Grand Moff took a seat at the head of the large table within the room, and then folded his fingers beneath his chin in fists. For a moment there was nothing but silence until a faint beeping arose from a nearby panel. Rolling his shoulders once he pressed the button and narrowed his eyes as the holoprojectors activated to display several of his peers. Some were Grand Moffs as he was, others were merely Moffs who nonetheless retained a stronger than average amount of influence – and as he believed was slightly more important, intelligence. The remaining few who had been invited to the meeting were of…other professions.

"Ardus Khaine," sneered one of the projections, derision dripping from his voice.

"Devian," Ardus replied quietly, his eyes narrowed at the holographic image of his nemesis.

"Let's not get into this," one of the other Grand Moff projections spoke up hotly. "We all know about your little rivalry, do not let it distract you from the purpose of this meeting."

"Quite," an elder woman scoffed. "We are here to discuss the utter disruption of affairs throughout the Empire not watch two little boys squabble for daddies attention."

"Watch yourself, Dargon," Khaine glared, "You may be under as much threat as anyone."

"I doubt it. The Corellian sector has had no issue with this supposed unseen threat," she said with a shrug.

"Supposed, supposed?!" cried one of the fatter projections, "It stole my ship!"

"There's no confirmation or actual link between recent events and that Zsinj," Dargon sneered. "Just because the Brawl-,"

"It was to be mine! The Emperor ordered it so!"

"Perhaps if you were more focused on keeping control of the ships in your sector instead of blowing up prisons on Dathomir-," another Grand Moff, Wilkadon, interrupted with yell.

Khaine began to rub at his temples. It had been less than a minute and the meeting was already descending into chaos. Of the fourteen people represented through holoprojections into chairs set to the table, none were silent.

"How dare you Hissa-,"

"Your own mother, how heroic-,"

"More than just one Super Star Destroyer had utterly gone missing at this point-,"

"And no one has seen hide nor hair of Lord Vader and the rest of Death Squadron!"

"Scandal-,"

"Utterly preposterous for you to think that you could ever-,"

"ENOUGH!" Khaine roared, slamming his fists onto the table.

Blessed silence reigned for only a few short seconds before Devian spoke up, tilting his head mockingly as he did so.

"No need to throw a tantrum, Khaine."

"Silence, Devian," Khaine ground his teeth. "This is no time for this…ridiculous infighting. It is no 'supposed' threat Dargon, it is confirmed. Or am I wrong, Devian?"

All eyes turned to the suddenly expressionless assassin's holoprojection.

"I'm not quite sure what you mean."

"You have the Emperor's ear, and hear his words as well. Vader returned to Coruscant in secret, did he not? Without a single ship from Death Squadron accompanying him?"

"Why wasn't I-,"

"When did Lord Vader-,"

"Ahem!" Khaine glared at those who had spoken up, "I know this for a fact, Devian, you would only confirm it for everyone else here."

An expression of annoyance briefly crossed Devian's face before he leaned back into his chair, folding his arms.

"…yes. It's confirmed."

A host of voices went up only to quiet again when Khaine slapped a hand onto the table. Then, ensuring that everyone was watching, he slowly and purposefully tapped the panel which had activated the conference projectors in the first place. A large slowly rotating window appeared at the direct center of the table, displaying the fearsome Executor for all to see.

"The Executor," Khaine said quietly, before tapping another button.

The SSD shrank in size before being replaced in the projection by the another vessel with the exact same profile.

"The Vengeance, disappeared during the utter failure that was the attempt to pacify the Elrood and Airam sectors which I will remind you are now in open rebellion."

Tap.

"The Brawl, lost in transit to Grand Moff Zsinj after final refits," he nodded in the direction of the corpulent and still upset man.

Tap.

"The Intimidator, taken sometime in transit to the Black-15 Shipyards in the Koornacht Cluster."

Tap.

"The Annihilator, last seen fighting pirates in the Outer Rim. I'll also note that without its presence pirates throughout over a dozen sectors are starting to flock to the recently reborn Zann Consortium.

By now any look of levity or boredom had disappeared from all those present. Khaine took the moment to stand up, leaning forward with his hands upon the table, and look at each of them in the eye in sequence. Hissa had kept his snarling pointed teeth covered, while Dargon merely looked at him with lidded eyes and a tightlipped frown. Zsinj was sweating further his face still red with barely repressed anger. Devian, his eternal rival in the quest to get closer to Palpatine, just looked at him though to Khaine's small relief he wasn't slouching in disinterest anymore.

"The Agresssor," he stabbed a finger down at the panel, blowing up the rotating image of yet another SSD. "Taken while in the Inner Rim," he gestured at the ship and the sudden message of 'missing' which blinked red repeatedly over the ship before he dismissed that image with another press upon the panels buttons. "The Enforcer, suddenly missing while travelling between Anoat and Bespin on its patrol route throughout the Outer Rim."

Finally he swept out his arm to return all of the images of the SSD's mentioned back to the screen, only minimized so that each could be present. Each and every one possessed a bright glowing 'missing' warning. Smaller text that ran besides each Executor-class vessel detailed the Imperial ships that had accompanied them and further noted that they too had gone utterly missing as well.

"I did not bring you here to bicker. I brought you all here today to discuss one of the greatest hidden campaigns against the Empire that it has ever faced. In the past five months since the Battle of Hoth when the Executor and the rest of the Death Squadron abandoned the battle and was sighted while in the Anoat system before disappearing again seemingly permanently….each and every one of the ships and their accompanying fleets have disappeared off the map."

"T-that's…that's impossible," one of the lesser Moff's stammered out, his face pale. "There would have been reports, messages, something-,"

"And yet!" Khaine slammed a fist down onto the table, shaking it and momentarily causing the holoprojector within to wobble and make the projections of his peers fizzle, "And yet there is nothing."

"I can't believe this," Hissa whispered, his face purpling slightly, "You expect me to believe that seven Super Star Destroyers have just gone missing and somehow no one has known about it!?"

"It's true," Devian suddenly spoke up, causing Hissa's eyes to bulge slightly. "Though I am curious…the Emperor is having Intelligence suppress this knowledge as best he can…so how did you come about this information?"

"It's not important right now. What is important is that these ships and the men and women crewing them are just gone and we have no idea how, much less who is doing it."

"I would beg to disagree with your statement if I didn't agree more with the latter one," Devian grimaced. "The information is obviously being suppressed to keep the public from weakening in their support for the Empire, but the situation is a bit bothersome."

"Bothersome," Khaine repeated flatly.

"Well, yes. I will note however that you did not inform the good commander of the Guardian."

"If we lose the Guardian, we'll likely have to focus on the fact that someone managed to get into the Coruscant sector itself before we stopped it," Khaine rebutted, which Devian seemed to accept by leaning back into his chair.

"I- I have a question," came a slightly quavering voice.

"Speak, Admiral Sarn."

"Do we know if any other Executor-class vessels are being targeted?" the man asked, wiping his forehead's sweat away. "The Terror is on completely classified assignment-,"

"The stealth project, I know," Khaine interrupted. "We don't know, Admiral, that is precisely the problem. We don't know how they are tracking our vessels so expertly, or who is doing it at all."

"Presumably if the one doing all this is one person or a single unified organization they might be pulling it from the databanks themselves," another Admiral suggested.

"Highly unlikely," Khaine shook his head, "All of the Executor-class vessels come with incredibly sophisticated computer security. Upon the knowledge that the vessel is being overcome the vessels commander possesses a code capable of wiping out all potentially dangerous information in seconds. No slicer in the galaxy could manage that."

"Ion weapons, then?" Hissa rubbed his chin. "Though the concentration it would take to knock out an Executor-class vessel alone, much less their squadrons and fleets…"

"Would be significant," Khaine finished. "I think we all know the problem here. The Rebellion could not possibly do this, they don't possess the resources or the ability. Someone is gathering up the most powerful ships in the Empire and managing to do so with complete and total secrecy such that even we are not fully aware of it," he gestured to all those present as he stringently emphasized 'we'.

"You're not wrong," Devian sighed, his eye narrowed. "It can't be Black Sun despite their illusions of grandeur."

"Could it be that blue alien, Thrawn I think he's called? Absconding with ships on his assignment from the Emperor?"

"No," Devian waved the ludicrous assumption that the alien could be capable of such a thing, "I know that for certain."

"I think that…" Sarn trailed off, looking at something on his side of the galaxy.

"Admiral Sarn?"

"Excuse me," the Admiral said, standing up, "I have to go. A series of unauthorized vessels have entered the system."

"Who?" Khaine couldn't help but ask.

"It looks like…a flotilla of GR-57 transports? Hold on they…what?" Sarn said to someone not within the range of his holorecorder, "Colonists? Ugh. Excuse me, gentlemen and women, I must deal with this."

The commander of the Terror then disappeared as he deactivated his recorder, the blue white light of his holographic projection disappearing in an eyeblink. Those remaining were silent for only a few seconds before the discussion continued on.

"Not even the Hutt Cartels could possibly pull this off, they would have to put aside millennia of infighting in order to do it, much less how other criminal syndicates would react," Wilkadon began. "And we are all agreed that the Rebellion is entirely incapable as well…so who?"

"And thus, I am enlightened…" Devian said loudly, smirking as he looked at Khaine.

"Oh? And will you be 'enlightening' the rest of us?" Dargon sardonically sneered.

"You already have a suspect," the assassin answered, his gaze locked on the Grand Moff at the head of the table.

"I do," Khaine nodded, folding his hands behind his back, his gaze hard.

The two looked at one another in silence before Dargon sighed.

"Well?"

"There is only one person with the influence and control over the whole of the Empire's information networks who could keep such a thing silent, with the access to the assassins and contacts to ensure that things would go off without a hitch and with the authority to use weapons allowing them to do so without question," Khaine slowly rattled off.

Eyes began to widen as some of those assembled realized his suspicions for themselves.

"Someone who already possesses a Super Star Destroyer on their own, yet is incapable of using it in open space. Someone who was directly responsible for removing the one previously in their position from power. Someone…who it is rumored was the one who executed that same individual…her own father. We all know of her, and her ambitious nature."

Khaine pressed the panel, and a face and Imperial profile appeared on the rotating holographic window at the center of the table.

"I believe the one responsible for all of this is none other than the Director of Imperial Intelligence, Ysanne Isard."

​

 

[torroar]

12a – Stress Testing, Side B​

Haven Base
Planet Arbra
Arbran System
Bon'nyuw-Luq Sector

"Has it really been five months?" Leia mumbled to herself, slowly nursing a cup of…well she wasn't quite sure what it was supposed to be but at least it was hot and had caffeine.

Even though it was technically morning, there were few others in the officers mess hall of the primary base of the Rebellion aside from her and a handful of companions. In total, aside from one incredibly sleepy looking man on the far side of the room there were only four of them there. Even then only three of them technically needed to eat.

"Actually, Master Leia, my internal chronometers indicate that it has been five months two weeks five days and-," a golden protocol droid abruptly began speaking before another voice interrupted.

"We got it, tin can," Han moaned, rubbing his temples. "We don't need you to go down to the second."

"I was just attempting to-,"

"We get it Threepio, Han's just grumpy because I took him in sabaac last night," came a chuckling voice from the final member of their impromptu breakfast meeting.

Lando Calrissian, the newest member of the group, couldn't help but laugh again at the sour look on his longtime friend's face.

"You were counting cards…or something, Lando."

"Sure thing Han," Lando winked at his friend, "Just keep telling yourself that."

"Nggh," the smuggler turned rebel groaned again, massaging his temples. "Not that I don't enjoy being up this early…but why are we up this early?"

Leia's soft smile at Han disappeared when both men turned to look to her, and she straightened, coughing slightly as she produced the datapad that had been delivered to the rebellion. Waving it back and forth in the air for a moment she then slid it across the table to Lando with a small smirk.

"What's this then?" Lando asked even as he picked it up and activated it. Upon seeing the first few lines on it he suddenly coughed, thumping himself in surprise. "Is this," he looked up at Leia, "Is this info good?"

"It is," Leia nodded. "The Empire is scrambling for some reason, a lot of fleet movements shifting around in a widening search pattern."

"Are they onto us?" Han asked, his eyes suddenly alert.

"We don't think so, not yet. Still, we're not going to take any chances. We lost Echo Base and then Golrath, I don't plan on losing Haven Base so quickly," she shook her head, but it was still quite a concern.

For all of the Rebellion's success lately she could not help but have a vein of constant worry in the back of her mind. More than anyone else in the Rebellion, she had personally seen the horrific lengths the Empire was willing to go to in order to find the last hope for peace and order in the galaxy.

"But this is right?" Lando asked again, wiggling the datapad in his hand.

"As best as we can tell, yes Lando. Bespin isn't quite being abandoned but the Empire is moving the vast majority of the ships they used to annex it out of the system to who knows where."

"That's…that's good news then," Lando breathed, his eyes locked on the information he was still scrolling through. "Are we….I mean, I know that my term as Baron Administrator ended in laser blasts but-,"

"We'll get Bespin back," Han assured him, his hand clapping onto his friends shoulder. "Won't we, Leia?" he turned to her, eyes expectant.

"We'll do our best," she nodded with a smile, one that Han returned.

Lando may have been eminently concerned with getting his city back and his planet freed, but he hadn't gotten to where he was in life without paying attention to lots of things at once. Running a city and enterprise demanded multitasking skills after all. A small grin appeared on his face as he put the pad down and propped one fist underneath his chin.

"Leia, is it now? Not Princess?"

Both of his organic compatriots paled as they realized the mistake, and both turned to him and immediately began babbling.

"It's my name isn't it-,"

"Lando, Lan, Cal, I switch names up with people all the time,"

"It's nothing-,"

"You probably misheard-,"

After letting both of them go on for a minute more Lando couldn't hold it, and burst out laughing. Tears streamed from his eyes as he clutched at his stomach and laughed harder before finally allowing himself to breathe. The expressions on his friends were an even more perfect set of twin glowers that sent him right back into another round of laughing.

"Ahah…oh, oh. Hooo…," Lando wheezed once more before straightening. "Its fine, you two. Everyone else has known about," he waggled his fingers back and forth between them, "This."

"What?!" Leia almost cried, only barely managing to quiet after looking over at the slightly more awake officer on the other side of the mess who had grown faintly curious at all the noise. "That's impossible, we-," she stopped herself right before her lovers hand clapped over her mouth. She then glared at Han who winced and immediately withdrew that same hand.

Han, taking the initiative, turned to glare with as much threat as he could at Lando.

"Who told you," he demanded.

"No one!" Lando said with a chuckle, "We've all had a pool going for when you two would publically admit it, that's all. Speaking of which…Threepio?"

"You were off by three weeks, Master Calrissian, I apologize. The closest person in the pool would be…Master Solo?!"

"Han!" Leia cried, her expression aghast.

"What?!" the former smuggler cried, suddenly forced to protect himself from a light flailing of fists.

Lando couldn't help it. The Empire may have annexed Bespin, but the Rebellion was spreading throughout the galaxy. Elrood and Airam had been joined by three other sectors who had thrown off the chains of oppression and more and more people in the underworld of the galaxy had begun thinking of the good old days under the Republic when things just weren't so hard to get some good credits going. And two of the most important leaders of that same rebellion, the first a long time commander and the other a growing legend amongst the Rebelion…were yelling at one another in the mess hall of their hidden base.

He laughed, and laughed, and laughed, even while Han was up and running around with Leia chasing after him.

"Look on the bright side, I won us a few thousand credits!"

"Han!"

 

[torroar]

12a – Stress Testing, Side C​

Xizor was seething.

When Prince Xizor seethed, Black Sun seethed. Simmering rage and discontent filled the entire vast criminal organization in a mirror to its supreme leader and in doing so they took out their frustrations on the galaxy around them. The greatest and most widespread syndicate in the galaxy - called by some as the most powerful force in existence even including the Empire - had begun to spread their influence and fury out upon all their myriad foes.

Or at least…they had tried.

Instead of the usual fiery campaigns of piracy and criminal activity that would have set the Outer and even Inner Rim ablaze with the power of the Black Sun, they had been rebuffed quite violently on all sides. The Hutt Cartels had grown ornery enough to begin openly defying him, the Rebellion was pathetically dedicated to protecting their own meagre world's and allies, the Empire was already against the Black Sun as a whole, but these were things that the Black Sun had grown used to contending with.

Yet something had changed.

"Say. That. Again," he snarled at his personal assistant and assassin.

Guri did not bat an eye as she recited from memory.

"The Zann Consortium has vastly expanded its territory now that Tyber Zann has escaped from prison and retaken command, and in doing so managed to usurp our operations in-,"

"Raaaggh!" Xizor suddenly stood, throwing his arms into the air before whirling around to grasp Guri by the shoulders. The falleen's pheromones pulsed out of control as he grit his teeth. "How did Zann do this. How!"

"Without the Annihilator and Enforcer as well as various other Imperial Fleets suppressing them, many of our previously assumed crushed foes are flocking to Tyber Zann. The Outer Rim is in…flux."

"This is all the Empire's fault," Xizor hissed, turning away from Guri and staring out of the window of his palace. "So long as they kept up their efforts in the Outer Rim I could face the Cartels and Zann, but without them the Black Sun is far too vulnerable!"

Guri said nothing, instead she contented herself with waiting for the incensed crime lord to calm down.

"Jabba…Zann…Vader…" he caressed each word, his voice drenched in hatred, as he sounded out his greatest foes. Breathing heavily the falleen marched back to his throne and sat back down in a slouch. "And our raiders can't seem to do anything to them?"

"That is correct. If you…wished…I could…?" Guri trailed off, looking towards her master.

Xizor clicked his tongue and tilted his head to look at her. To really look at her, his masterfully described human replica.

"Could you do it? Slay one of them?"

"I could attempt it," Guri nodded her head but the ghost of excitement had appeared in her normally toneless voice. "I am bound to your orders. At your command, I could attempt to fulfill my function against one of them."

"Vader is still on Coruscant, even if you'd succeeded by sheer attrition you'd fail," Xizor murmured, his gaze somewhere on the horizon. "Zann wouldn't let you get close, he's constantly on the move these days in that precious little ship of his, The Merciless. Hmph…"

"Jabba has not left his palace on Tatooine in quite some time…save for an odd excursion to Hypori three months ago."

"Three months ago?" Xizor repeated sharply. At Guri's nod he hummed. "That would be around the time that he and Zann began their little ceasefire…allowing them both to act against me with impunity."

"Correct, sir."

"Hmph. And before that was the reassignment of the Annihilator and the Enforcer…by only a month."

"Yes, sir."

Then there was nothing but silence save for the breathing of the only person in the room who needed to. There was something off about how the past five months had gone since the battle of Hoth. The humiliation of Vader – something only a rare few could know about – had been absolutely delicious at the time he'd learned of it. Alone, with the entire 501st​ dead or missing with the Executor? For two months had the oh so fearsome Sith Lord been trapped on Hoth before an exploratory Imperial vessel had been sent to investigate why the Death Squadron had gone so utterly silent.

It was puzzling…but Xizor had not taken command of the Black Sun by being stupid. The Empire was on shaky ground, he knew it. Shakier than they ever wanted to admit, ever since they had so foolishly destroyed one of the most beloved planets in the galaxy. Even worse than that was when they lost the weapon they'd built in the first place! The Rebellion had been gathering strength ever since, even while they hid some of their more valuable commanders at Hoth – the vast majority of whom had escaped despite Vader.

Three new Super Star Destroyers had been commissioned at Kuat and the Emperor himself had 'convinced' those in charge of building his ships to allow Fondor to build two more in direct violation of liscensing. Ship production and conscription were up across the entire Empire...but why? The Rebellion had fled after Hoth and had made no major campaigns since Elrood and Airam. A stupider man would think that it would be because the Mon Calamari had 'happened' to lose several of their new capital ships to 'pirates'. Fancy wording for donating to the Rebellion. But the numbers weren't adding up, the credits being shifted around didn't match what would be needed to take care of the problem.

Something had changed in the galaxy...but Xizor could do nothing about that so long as Black Sun was being choked out by the rebirth of the Zann Consortium, providing the grain of sand that broke the nerf's back on his organization's ability to maintain itself.

Zann had been squeezing Mandalore for all it was worth, ripping ships out of their yards almost faster than they could be produced. The only other two groups of real importance in the galaxy besides the Empire an the Rebellion – the Cartels and the Black Sun…were being left behind.

It was unacceptable. And so long as Jabba continued to contest Xizor's control of the Outer Rim there was no way that the Black Sun could manage to close the gap. After Jabba…Zann would have to be taken care of. As for the Empire...if Palpatine wanted his help in building his idiotic second Death Star…then he'd damn well listen to him. Xizor would provide no more ships or supplies so long as the Empire continued to suppress his more valuable operations and credit streams.

"Go," Xizor finally snapped, "Show that desiccated slug and his forces that the Black Sun will no longer brook their existence…and set up another meeting with the Imperials through our usual contacts."

"Of course sir," Guri bowed and began to leave.

"Oh, and Guri?" Xizor called again, now looking out of his window once more.

"Yes sir?

"Make it painful."

"Of course sir."

Alone in his palace, Xizor left for his own private quarters to begin perusing the Holonet. Reports and public sightings of Imperial fleets as well as his own thorough information network. It was like there was an itch at the back of his head that he just couldn't scratch. Movements here, ships being commissioned there, conflicting orders being resolved far faster than the bureaucracy should have allowed...

There was something wrong with how the Empire was acting lately...almost like...

He stopped, and looked up from his terminal only an hour after Guri had departed his palace.

It was like the part of the Empire was trying to fight someone else entirely while telling absolutely no one else.

"What are you hiding Palpatine...," he murmured to himself. "Who are you fighting?"

 

[torroar]

12b – Stress Testing​

Uninhabited Solar System Z-124XB
Outer Rim

Six. Months.

It's been six months since I…appeared in this galaxy in my new form. Since I stole the Executor and the rest of Death Squadron and forced the Millennium Falcon to Bespin. Since I had interrupted the mission of and then stolen the Executor-class Vengeance. After I'd finished with that, giving my spooky warning in an admittedly cliché Reaper voice I'd fled the civilized regions of the galaxy entirely. The star charts of both of my new star dreadnoughts included plenty of places where no one lived and no one went. So I went to those places and then strayed even further.

Eventually I'd found a system with a sun that was well into its red dwarf phase but with six whole planets for me to build up on. Extractors and generators were aplenty as I steadfastly used the whole of my unit cap besides my two SSD's and the remnants of Death Squadron onT2 fabricator bots to do my bidding.

Then, after a day of mind numbing economy expansion, I'd decided to return to the galaxy with the Executor while leaving the Vengeance behind and relinquishing my control of Death Squadron to just sort of drift around in orbit of a rocky terrestrial planet with no name but plenty of metal. The fabricators would spread out as much as they possibly could but they wouldn't be doing that forever. There were plenty of resource cores on the Executor by that point but I saw no reason for that to stop building extractors and generators in an expanding circle of influence.

It was a little tense, separating my forces like that as while Vader's flagship was pretty powerful it's not like SSD's hadn't fallen in this galaxy before – or at least 'would'. Hopefully my numerous additions and upgrades would help stop such a thing from happening.

As for what I did?

I decided to multitask as was my purview of a hyper intelligence.

I went hunting with the Executor, dropping out of the hyperspace lanes to outright steal as many of its ship class peers as I possibly could without anyone figuring out who I was. Codes just couldn't change fast enough or block me out before I'd taken a handful right out from the Empire's hands. The only issue was the fact that stealing the other fleets that accompanied them required that I drop off my fabricator numbers back in my little hidey hole again and again before I returned all of my ill-gotten gains back there and let them 'drift'.

After my fifth Super Star Destroyer, the Annihilator, I had had enough. While the Executor went hunting for the Aggressor I turned my attention to creating something entirely new.

…probably should have gotten started on that at some point before now but I'm not Faith or Drich or Fusou, all right? I got a little distracted with all of my big toys.

Anyway.

First on my list was depositing all of my droid legions – reprogrammed and deactivated alike – onto one of the planets where they wouldn't be destroyed. Then I dumped a frankly ridiculous amount of Tie Fighters of various kinds as well as tanks, heavy weapons, AT-STs, and AT-ATs all right next to the droid piles. All of my non SSD's were basically shoved into a corner where they wouldn't go bumping and drifting apart and then I finally got started.

Second, after my economy was strong enough, I pulled all of my fabricators onto the Vengeance through a dimensional gate I built onto its cityscape and accessed my orbital fabricator designs.

Christ, these ranges! They had absolutely ludicrous range for their nanites to go across and through but I guess one can just chalk up the viability with the design to the progenitors. Every other fabricator type utterly paled when it came to these things – they could build things down onto the planet while in the orbital layer! The restrictions they had on what they could build didn't matter to me – not right now. Gameplay segregation I guess compared to what a real Commander could be capable of in the real world. There's obviously parts where certain things are minimized or changed for the sake of the game – the scaling of size being most obvious amongst them.

Anyhow, I began building orbital fabricators…except not the units, to preserve my precious, precious cap. Instead I just used the fabricator…bits…of the fabricators, and stuck them all over the surface of the Vengeance pointing generally 'up'. Space isn't two dimensional but the point was that they were all facing the same direction. I'd like to say that a mighty forest of fabricator arms sprang up over the course of but a single day with my fabricator bot army but I can't.

Fucking unit cap.

Instead I figured…I'd just have the orbital fabricator arms start building their own fellows right next to themselves. It wasn't pretty. It wasn't symmetrical. But it did what I needed by filling up every space that could possess an orbital fabricator arm with an orbital fabricator arm. I didn't like doing it but that was all right, I wouldn't need to be after a certain point.

I'm getting there, I'm getting there, hold on…

Anyway, while the Executor was hunting – my attention didn't actually end up getting split that badly – I had the Vengeance point it's new several thousand fabricator arms straight up in deep space where the none of the gravity wells of the planets would unduly affect it.

Then I delved into my own internal designer…and designed. I input the commands, established it as a part of my databanks, and if I had a mouth I would have smiled.

Because what I was about to build counted as a building, not a unit.

A twitch and then those thousands of arms began spitting out their nanites to begin building the superstructure. At the exact same time my economy utterly tanked so I sent all of my fabricator bots back down to the planets in the system to desperately try to build enough extractors and generators to keep the building from failing in its creation. Hell even I joined them, setting my Theta body on auto-pilot as I carefully watched over the ongoing construction while simultaneously commanding the Executor.

The building process would actually take days, but at least I wasn't bored anymore. The Executor had located the Aggressor and about ten other vessels as they patrolled the Inner Rim. Posturing near some systems that had been making noises about the Rebellion lately, flying the colors and all of that. I waited until they were between systems before dropping my SSD directly above them. Hacking and killing everyone inside was old hat to me by that point and within ten seconds every single ship there was jumping out of the system on a diversionary series of jumps before they would finally make their way back to my home base.

Annoyingly I had to get rid of a bunch of my fabricators to accommodate all of those new ships but the moment they got back here I would abandon my control of them and build my fabricators up again. Hopefully I'd get some more use out of them before the Executor found its next target – the Enforcer.

I'll spare you some time of reading a series of repeating events by summarizing.

The superstructure began forming more and more, I stole another Super Star Destroyer and the fleets with them. Fabricator bots dropped and rose in numbers again and again as I dragged all I stole back to my base and the planets therein. As for those ships - patrol cruisers, ISD's, Victory-class's, supply vessels, so on and so forth, were all further collected in a single expanding cloud of uninhabited and uncontrolled ships – that I only occasionally had to take control of to keep them from bumping into one another. Extractors and generators expanded across the lifeless world.

Rinse and repeat, with a few interesting bits. Sometimes I mixed up how I got certain ships.

The Terror I grabbed after learning of its secret cloaking technology prototypes from the Executor, the commander had apparently really wanted to impress Vader. That and the entire Tie Phantom project were suddenly mine and I liked what I saw. Or rather, what I didn't. The Terror's tech not only baffled sensors – which my technology was already incredibly good at – but the naked eye as well – which my stealth technology did not. I immediately took in that knowledge for my databanks. All it had taken were a few flash created transport ships to distract him while the Executor appeared from behind.

The only problem is that the stealth tech apparently required something called stygium crystals. Which I didn't possess, but I couldn't help if it wouldn't be possible for me to fabricate synthetic versions. Food for thought. At the least I wiped out the entire project and took it from the Empire.

When I took the Obliterator the superstructure above the 'main world' of my backwater system was about halfway complete. Not surprising considering that it was technically bigger than a Super Star Destroyer. As for the Obliterator itself I couldn't remember if I'd ever seen that when I was a simple flesh being but I also recalled that the designers of the universe had proclaimed that there wouldn't be clear numbers on how many SSD's they made due to black ops projects and secret budgets and all that secret bull hockey. But the Obliterator…heh.

I kind of ended up blue balling the Rebellion with the Obliterator. It had its own stealth technology, and was stationed at Fondor even though I thought that only Kuat was allowed to build them. In any case the Empire's overreliance on satellites allowed me to bounce my presence into the system and activate the ship itself. Except when I did so and began activating its engines without even having to enter the system I could only watch in astonishment when the Rebellion jumped in – led by the legendary Rogue Squadron no less! Alas, I couldn't allow them to destroy my new ship, and by the time that Wedge Antilles and his heroic friends could reach the ship…I had taken it into hyperspace. The Rebellion hit the remaining Empire stuff there pretty hard so good for them but I had other business to attend to.

The Obliterator's stealth tech…I really liked. It was complete stealth technology like the Terror except wholly reliant on what some might consider gross amounts of energy consumption rather than any limited material. Energy consumption I was more than capable of providing for. It would join the Terror and all the others in their own tight cluster different from my more mundane cloud of ships.

Even then, the superstructure I was building wasn't done yet. My economy was constantly in danger of redlining and crapping out entirely. Still, I didn't slow down.

Ripper, taken in the Braxant sector while on patrol, was barely worth noting.

The Nightmare, on the other hand? That was freaking weird. It had been on classified assignment that even the files on the various SSD's I'd stolen didn't have anything on but with some judicious holonet raiding and some information warfare against Imperial computers as the Executor passed by and I figured out generally where it was. Specifically, it was on a hard burn right back to the Inner Rim from who knows where.

That kind of made me worried a bit, because I could only think of a few reason for it to abandon its assignment. Chief among them was that Palpatine had caught on and was redirecting his ships into territory that I didn't think I was ready to try infiltrating yet.

Luckily, though, I caught the Nightmare as it was on the move.

Even after I'd yanked its computers it couldn't tell me what it had been up to. An entire section of its database had been wiped. Still, I'd managed to catch who its Captain was supposed to be. Emphasis on Captain. Apparently someone creatively named 'X1' had been its intended only for said X1 to disappear…along with the rest of Death Squadron as he had been in command of the Avarice. Instead it had been captained by a far less satisfactory officer – seriously it said that in the files.

Whoops, I guess? This X1 guy kind of sounded like a jerk. I guess he died when I vented the Avarice.

Anyway, by that point…it was done, and I withdrew everyone including the Executor back home.

By that point the shadow of what I had built with the aid of the Vengeance had grown large enough to eclipse most of the SSD's in the system at once. Which was exactly what I had intended.

I called the superstructure the 'Mega Yard'. Or maybe the 'Changing Tube'? So sue me, I'm not the best with names.

Anyway.

The Mega Yard.

It honestly looked like a giant tube laid on its side with the base and top cut out. The outer shell was incredibly fragile in comparison to what things that I could normally create but it wasn't built to be a weapon. What mattered was the fact that its huge shell provided a stable and gigantic area for the hundreds of thousands of orbital fabricator arms on the inside to be attached to. While it was entirely smooth on the outside, the inside didn't have a single part that wasn't taken up by a fabricator arm. Side by side by side, all along the way from one end to another. The most efficient placement of arms possible and building the entire thing had taken this entire time since arriving in this little Outer Rim system and taking my latest SSD.

Month to build this damn thing.

Months!

Trying to build a Metal Planet would probably literally kill me with boredom if I did nothing else due to the sheer time it would take with my unit cap.

Anyway.

How big was it, right? I'd tell you size isn't everything but in this case it very much was.

Twenty five kilometers long with a radius of fifteen kilometers. Or, in less numbery terms: pretty fucking big.

And every single part of the 'inside' of the tube was covered in orbital fabricator arms to ensure that they could reach whatever I put inside the Mega Yard no matter how big or small.

Honestly I'd basically created my own version of the Star Forge only it didn't rely on a star to power it. It was more than big enough for me to create my own Super Star Destroyers at this point. Hell I could probably build multiple ones at once right on top of one another while within the Mega Yard.

But that wasn't what it was for. Au contraire, my brotha.

Instead…I shoved the Terror, Brawl, Intimidator, Annihilator, Aggressor, Enforcer, Terror, Obliterator, Ripper, and Nightmare in at the same time. Only the Executor and Vengeance were kept seperate. Yes, there was scraping. Yes, there was damage as I maneuvered each of these gargantuan ships within single yards of one another with the kind of precision that only a machine intelligence like I had become would be capable of. Bumping and shearing parts off on accident was inevitable. In fact the damage dealt to the ships would be enough to decommission a few of them by the time that I was able to keep them all from bumping into the insides of the Mega Yard itself.

Thank god I'd made it wide enough.

Anyway, in the end I'd assembled them with the Annihilator directly in the center, with one above, below, one to each side, and the rest all around as close as possible as I clustered them. All of them were pointing in one direction in parallel orientation. Only after all of that was done – and boy was that nerve wracking as I kept them from outright slamming into one another and exploding my poor Mega Yard…could my work begin.

But now…now it could. I knew exactly what I wanted to do here.

I finally had what would hopefully be enough fabricator arms…and it was all just one structure.

Aahah! A structure!

Now….ACTIVATE! FULLFILL YOUR PURPOSE!

...heehhahahahaHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!

 

[torroar]

AN: My first true tech pr0n chapter! :lol​

13 – One Big Package​

[50/50]

Come on.

[50/50]

Come on!

[50/50]

I can see the nanites working, damn it! The inside of the Mega Yard looks like one solid crush of blinding light! Literally! I calculated it, looking at this would blind an organics eyes!

[49/50]

Wait…yes!

[48/50]

YES!

[46/50]

I'm not going to build a single other unit until this is complete. I want to be sure.

[45/50]

I can't…I can't tell precisely what's going on in there. My systems are going haywire as they register the complete and total progenitor-level fuckery going on inside the Mega Yard. Ship profiles melt in and out of sensors and cameras before being obscured by the thickest cloud of nanites that I've ever seen in my entire life.

[42/50]

I swear to god if this doesn't work. Six months of hard work. Designing. Redesigning. I know that the design works, I spent so much freaking time running simulations. Tens of thousands, millions of simulations! So much mentally accelerated time that I spent in my own head ensuring that it would work! I refuse to accept that it could fail here and now!

[41/50]

Come on…..

[40/50]

Wait.

Is that?

Oh.

Yes.

I feel it connecting to me as the Mega Yard slowly begins turning off its fabricators as the job completes. More resource cores than were ever present on the Executor despite months and months of building them into it. Generators linked together into supreme lines. The highest grade alloys of metal that the Empire possessed in its designs melded perfectly with progenitor strength metals and electronics. Every single unnecessary gap on the ship had been removed – hallways, meeting rooms, dormitories, hydroponics bays, everything that an organic needed and I did not. Streamlined and exceedingly more efficient powerlines and emplacements across the entire vessel.

Do you know how much space in a ship is taken up to ensure that the organics within don't die? All that empty space that could be used for better things? Like energy generators, stealth generators, shield generators, and the like? All the power that it takes for 'life support' that could be redirected to guns and engines and all the actually important parts of the ship?

So much.

If I had a heart it would flutter as I watched my newest creation slowly begin to leave the innards of the Mega Yard.

The original Executor-class Super Star Destroyer had been approximately nineteen kilometers long. In width it stretched – at its farthest point – to about a third of its total length. Each one had come equipped with an average of five thousand turbolasers and ion cannons. The trapezoidal command tower stood near the aft end of this city-scape, capped with two geodesic communication and deflection domes. Most of its major engineering sections had been on the underbelly, while a full thirteen blood red engines had pushed it through space.

What came out of the Mega Yard….was a bit bigger.

The basic arrowhead shape had remained, but the command tower had disappeared. Melding Imperial and progenitor communication technologies had allowed me to plant such vulnerable things deep within the vessel. Shield technologies that took the best of both worlds had been installed in redundancy all along its body at levels of strength that were frankly ludicrous for this universe – even continual planetary scale bombardments would be unable to crack the shields, much less turbolasers or ion cannons. A tremendous number of resource cores and T2 energy generators lined the ship, producing far more than the old reactors that the Executor-class had possessed. They too, added to the strength of the shields and engines…as well as the weapons.

Ah, the weapons.

I didn't need habitable areas. More space for me. The city-scape had been transformed into what I could best describe as a gun-scape, due to the vertical and horizontal layering of guns unto guns unto guns. Twenty thousand turbolasers, twenty thousand ion cannons, and forty thousand smaller laser cannons for a point defense that would be able to create my own laser-based version of a missile massacre was just the start. But then again I also had missiles. Smashing the concussion missile and proton torpedo technologies with my own missile weaponry had allowed me to add about five thousand of those – with dedicated resource cores which would be dedicated to banks of of internal fabricators to construct the ammo then and there so I'd never run out.

I had guns and turrets on top, in the gun-scape. I had them covering the bottom. Even the huge sides were covered with them as well with a heavy concentration of my missile and torpedo turrets. This ship was going to have the most devastating broadside in the galaxy…no…this universe. Hell I'd even stuck plenty of guns near the engines so that anyone trying to blow them up would get destroyed immediately. And to keep them maintained, I'd slung several fabricator arms in clusters so that they could reach any damaged part of the ship all over the place – seriously, all over the place – that were able to be withdrawn into the hull itself in times that they weren't needed. Even the hatches had incredibly thick armor just in case. The tractor beams alone were in such numbers and strength that I'm pretty sure I could outright just rip a lesser ship in twain if I wanted to.

As for the fiddly sections which had been slung onto the bottom, I'd moved them inward and replaced their former location with – you guessed it – more guns and heavy armor plating. You know what that means? It means that the stealth technologies – oh and yeah there were several stealth generators strung throughout the innards of the ship with fields powerful enough to affect multiple sections in 'spheres' of invisibility to render the whole ship invisible to the naked eye – were completely safe. Completely ensconced within the ship with several meters of thick super armor between them and the void.

And the engines! Oh man the engines! Twenty five to the mother designs thirteen, though I'd kept the cool and intimidating red coloring. But they outperformed any other engine in existence, I was sure. Mostly because I'd smashed together the highly advanced engines of the mother design with something from 'my' side of the arsenal. Specifically, an engine capable of moving celestial objects with great and terrible speed! Yes, I know what you're thinking, Theta, you can't just smash together the Halley Delta V engine together with Executor-class star dreadnought's engines!

But I did! It took eight months within accelerated time and five months in real time while the Executor was stealing SSD's and a frankly ridiculous amount of simulations to be sure it would work, but it worked! That and the Mega Yard ensuring that there were no flaws in the metal that would make it crack apart or powerlines out of the way which could result in disruptions meant that the engines were now capable of propelling my ship around at ridiculous sublight speeds.

I had taken every single SSD that I'd stuffed into the Mega Yard, and melded them into this. All the while upgrading every single thing I could to progenitor standards. The things that would be better than the sum of their parts, I had combined. Even then as my economy dropped like a rock I had kept it going, adding additional mass and strength until the final product itself had actually been made up of enough tonnage to outweigh to combined tonnage of every single SSD I had sacrificed to make it. There wasn't a single space in it for organics except perhaps for the hanger bays. Even the Commander Sanctum I'd made in the direct center required the usage of one of the gates I'd put in the hangers, ensuring there was no unused space. Even the hangers could be concealed by gigantic blast doors for additional defense!

Yeah.

My baby might have been heavy, but she wasn't fat.

My baby was just thick, and she looked good.

Thick with armor. Thick with engines. Thick with guns. Thick with shields!

24.5 kilometers. 13.5 kilometers wide. Three times as tall from top to bottom than the mother design. Fast as all hell despite its size.

Painted. Ink. Black.

The first of the Overlord-class Star Dreadnoughts, the first of the Ultra Star Destroyers!

I called her…the Cry of Gimli.

You know why?

BECAUSE IT STILL ONLY COUNTS AS ONE!

[41/50]

 

[torroar]

14 – Acceleration​

I wasn't nearly done.

There was still technology missing from my beautiful baby. My single unit point baby. Specifically…I was missing gravity well generators. For all of the tech and data that I had raided from the Empire by stealing so many of their most valuable ships the Interdictor technologies had not been among them. I planned to rectify that soon enough and then it would be right back into the Mega Yard for the Cry of Gimli for upgrading. By this point I pretty much had the most advanced…everything...that the Empire had for its ships except for the gravity well generators. My radar and sensor systems utterly eclipsed what the Empire had, so I hadn't even bothered changing that except for making them look aesthetically like Imperial tech, not a hint of the blocky bits.

The things we do for symmetry.

I don't have a spinal super laser yet…but I heard that there's some kind of ship over in orbit of Kuat that might be able to help me out with that. Heh. But the Eclipse isn't even close to done yet. I'm pretty sure that it doesn't even have is engines yet which makes stealing it a nonstarter in the first place. I mean, I could probably destroy it and just about everything else above Kuat if I threw the Cry of Gimli at it but I'm not willing to do that just yet. I want to keep my baby secret for as long as possible. You can only make a first impression once after all. Nah. I'll let the Empire do all the hard work building more Super Start Destroyers while I go out and do some business of my own.

Remember how I kept mentioning all those other fleets that had been accompanying the various Executor-class ships as they went about their business? There had been quite a few ships involved in that. Not to mention just the half dozen fleets that the Executor had discovered while it was on the hunt for its organic-run brethren. Targets of opportunity, but with access to the Empire's datafiles which they had so helpfully filed in triplicate in the various SSD's computers they were targets that I could take with impunity. I knew which Captains were complete and total assholes and not worth anything and which ones actually had a shred of honor.

Mostly because the ones that were banished to the boonies could often turn out to be good folk, just following orders and a personal code of honor. Gotta remember that the Empire did bring peace and prosperity…to some of its citizens. Non-humans were almost always out of luck but those Captains that didn't accept orders to fire on civilians and did their best to minimize casualties I left alone. If the Imperial Remnant manages to form up at the end of this – whenever that will be – hopefully it won't be filled with complete assholes.

I still took plenty of ships though. Hundreds of thousands…I think I might even have managed a million at this point in terms of Imperial deaths. I didn't particularly feel good about it…but I didn't feel that bad either. I stopped more than a few fleets that were full of corruption, working alongside pirates, actively supporting oppression amongst poor folk in the Outer Rim…darker things. The Executor had yanked them all on its way to finding its actual SSD targets and I'd directed them back here. By now, after six months…I had amassed quite an enormous fleet that I wasn't directly controlling.

In total I had twenty iconic of the Imperial-II Star Destroyers, seven of their lesser Imperial-I designs, five Tecton-class Star Destroyers, six Victory-II Star Destroyers, several dozen Tartan Patrol Cruisers, Nebulon-B frigates, and light patrol cruisers, as well as a hefty chunk of freighters, three Secutor-class Star Destroyers…and one very unlucky CR90 corvette that a pirate had been using in a clandestine meeting with a local patrol fleet to discuss 'protection' fees.

I do like the plucky little CR90, that iconic ship that was ferrying Princess Leia at the beginning of the movies. It was a good light ship. Actually…I might keep that one. For…things.

Anyway, one hell of a collection, huh? I was getting tired of spending a few nanoseconds popping in and out of controlling them to keep from collisions blowing them up though…hmph. I can keep doing it for now while I deal with other things.

Specifically…the Mega Yard and the Vengeance. The former had performed beautifully but the latter looked like this frankenstein theme with all those fabricator arms just sprouting out from it all over the place. I had thought about including it into the construction of the Cry of Gimli but eventually I'd decided against it. Maybe for the next Overlord that I would create but for now I was going to put all of those thousands of orbital-spec fabricator arms for my own usage. I flared its engines as it headed for one of the other planets in the system, one of the ones that hadn't been touched yet.

My 'main' planet wasn't completely covered with extractors and generators yet even with forty T2 fabricators doing the job on auto but that was fine. They'd do it eventually. Another planet, this one actually bigger and further out in the system, was the Vengeance's target. Or rather the target of its many, many arms. After it got close enough I flipped the SSD upside down until its 'top' was facing towards the planet. Then with a judicious amount of maneuvering and a prayer for my progenitor-grade reactor upgrades keeping it stable…I activated the fabricator arms.

Thousands of nanite streams flew down to the planet as the multi-kilometer vessel flew upside down through its atmosphere. If anyone had been around to see it they would probably think that the pilot was drunk or stupid or both. If it wasn't me controlling it they'd probably be right. The point of course is that I now have a big plain of fabricators building up my extractors and generators at a far faster pace than my regular fabricator bots could ever possibly make. It is ludicrously faster. Why didn't I do this before?

…right, I was stealing Super Star Destroyers.

Still, I was finally enjoying a rapidly growing economy. Oh yeah…look at all of that metal and energy!

Stupendous.

Now then…I'll move the Cry of Gimli off to the outer edges of the system so that it doesn't warp any of my other things with its sheer mass, and reactivate the Executor. My first ship isn't going to disappear so quickly after all. Now one of the very few left in its category at all now that I think about it. In any case with a thought I send it out into hyperspace towards the Mid-Rim territories of this galaxy while I turn my full attention back to the Mega Yard.

I had proven that it worked at creating ships. But now I wanted something different. I want more resources. I need more. Always more, considering the fact that I'm a Commander, but in this case I think I can satisfy my desires in a way that I could not possibly have beforehand. The fabricator arms of the Mega Yard activate and twitch as I put in my order for something completely new. It's not going to be a ship, not another Ultra Star Destroyer, not yet.

Instead...it's going to be resource cores.

A lot of resource cores. It's no Paragon, but it will have to do for now. I may never get to the universe I would 'want' so I have to plan for what I do have.

An even bigger cloud of nanites than what it took to create the Cry of Gimli begins growing within the depths of the Mega Yard as I line out a design for a giant single structure. For now…a single kilometer by kilometer cube of resource cores stacked up and down with a simple lattice of connectors keeping them stable. After it's done I'm going to just sort of…plant that down on the surface of my worlds – I should really name them at this point – and build more of them. Maybe an orbital elevator would make that go faster? Then again…I've got tractor beams that I'm pretty sure I could use to just lower them, or rockets, or something. I'll figure it out when the first of my cubes is complete.

Right. Naming. Uh…Resource Cubes? Not that creative but…eh.

Yeah but wow building a single one of these cubes is taking a lot of my economy in. Not enough to stop me from having the Mega Yard simultaneously start creating three more but still. Luckily the entire thing has a big enough area within itself that none of them are going to bump into one another. The fact that the Vengeance is now slathering an entire planet in extractors and generators is actually helping quite a bit. I should consider making ships dedicated just to having a crap ton of fabricators so I could do stuff like this later.

But in more action-y news…the Executor is well on its way into the Mid-Rim.

Now, for the Halm sector.

Or, as I know it, that place where the Battle of the Katana Fleet would take place sometime way in the future.

 

[torroar]

15 – Shipsweeper
​

As the Executor flashed out of hyperspace in the Halm sector I considered my goal there.

The Katana Fleet had been one of the Republic's last attempts at showing that they could still handle things. This was before Palpatine had put the final nails in but the Republic of back then had been building its own coffin for quite some time. Full of bloat and corruption and a mentality that allowed it to grow ever softer and weak. Sure there were smaller events in it that a small minority of men and women fought in but large galaxy wide conflicts like the Clone Wars had largely been a thing of the past. Which, to be fair, speaks well of the Republic's peacekeeping abilities. They'd just…faded. Too much by the end.

Right, the Katana fleet. About two hundred Dreadnaught-class heavy cruisers equipped with state of the art systems – for the time – and fitted with highly advanced slave systems. Now, slave systems sounds bad but it basically meant that as long as you had control of the ship at the center of the fleet and its namesake, the Katana, you had control of the entire Katana fleet. Commands were slaved to that one main ship while also basically ensuring that the ships themselves were still functional and capable of basic independent function. Two hundred ships, a grand plan by the Republic to have them fly out and restore order – much like how the Empire had successfully done with its Star Destroyers – only for the captains and crews go absolutely bonkers. One blind hyperspace jump later…and they were lost from history.

Republic embarrassed, slave systems denounced, and ships began to be refitted so that way more organics would be involved in the running of the ship than before.

Which kinda means, when you think about it, that the loss of the Katana fleet is responsible for why I've killed so many Imperial crews. Which are way bigger in personnel than they would have to be had the Katana fleet not screwed up so badly.

Huh.

Anyway, back in my home system I ordered the creation of another set of Cubes – they're all kinda just floating there within the Mega Yard at this point – and with the Executor I began the search.

See, I remember reading this.

There was Thrawn, and Mara Jade, and Talon Karrde, and basically it amounted to them being in this sector while the fight went on. Thrawn got most of the ships, the good guys got like fifteen, but the point is that the fight was around here. Normally the idea of scouting out a sector for one hidden fleet would be ludicrous but I had the Executor with its upgraded sensors and my own ability to outright swarm the holonet throughout the sector with my influence. Cameras and satellites across the entire sector bent to my will the moment I entered the sector and began making minor adjustments to the places they looked. Not enough to negatively impact people, just enough to help me look. Meanwhile I broke open databanks on over a dozen planets looking for astrological data and scans dating all the way back to the time of the Republic.

All the while, the Executor hoofed it around.

There was only so much I could do there though, so I turned back to my home system.

Which…I really have to name at this point. It's been months and I'm not inclined to just give them some boring numbers.

Eh, I'll just call it Hub, for short.

Right. The Hub system, with its red star and five planets, only one of which is gaseous.

Heh. I can think of some names.

The first one I began building on, the very first, I shall name…Drich.

The second is a terrestrial planet which rotates slowly enough that part of it is always somewhat shadowed. Kind of like a blush. Fusou, then.

This one whizzes around too fast for its own good but has a lot of deposits and resources. Just gotta get at 'em. Planet Tiki then.

The largest planet, I name Faith. Mostly because the first thing that Commander ever fought was a Titan. Not the best reasoning but damn it I gotta stick to the theme.

The last planet, slightly different than all the others. It has absolutely no satellites unlike the others which all have at least one tiny rock orbiting them. Eh, Anon, for the fifth in the Commander based fics that I read.

I can't help but wonder if they'd consider it insulting or not…but then again, why would they be? I just named planets after them. Sure the reasoning might not be the most sound but I'm pretty sure that I'm not nearly as well adjusted as I used to be. Being alone and turned into a murder bot kind of does that to the mind.

As it is, the Vengeance is doing a remarkable job, spitting out its extractors and generators over kilometer stretches at a time which is pretty darn good I have to say for myself. It's certainly better than I was doing before. As my economy continues to grow at a steady pace I keep adding more and more cubes into the Mega Yard. Luckily I made it big enough to handle making them all, but after a certain point even it won't be able to contain them all. I'll have to put them down onto the planet by then.

As for the Executor…it's still searching.

If only I could, say, shoot out a huge screen of Fireflies out into space to go looking for me, but I can't.

Even after building the Cry of Gimli I'm still pissed about this damn unit cap. Blagh.

I gotta find a way to distract myself.

Oh, I know!

Find a connection into the holonet….find a few banks…find some more accounts…goodness. There is stronger data security here than there was on the Executor and the other SSDs! People in this galaxy take their billions and billions of credits seriously man. Even then it barely takes a few seconds more for me to create my own bank and my own accounts – blitzing official records is pretty damn easy despite the colossal size of the holonet – and then make sure that they are incredibly secure. As in, my level of secure, not what the people of this galaxy would consider as secure as possible.

Anyway. Look at all of this money…and all of these bad people allowed to have bank accounts!

Especially…you Prince Xizor.

Oh, I remember you.

You…weird…pheromone spewing rapey guy.

And you! Jabba the Hutt!

And all of you Hutts involved in slaving and smuggling and generally illegal things!

Private accounts really only add up to about a few extra seconds to me.

You know who doesn't need all this money?

Them.

You know who could use it?

Me. And, I suppose, the Rebellion.

But first?

Yoink.

 

[torroar]

16 – Whoops
​

Uh.

So!

It's been about five days since I had the Executor start the search for the Katana Fleet. I'd upgraded the ship with some stealth generators, so things are actually perfectly fine on that front. I mean it hasn't found the fleet yet but that's fine I've got time.

Or I'd thought I had.

…right.

So, apparently, pulling billions and billions of credits out of over a dozen major crime lord's hands at once is not the great idea that I had thought it was.

Not even really a good idea, actually.

Like.

A bad idea.

As in holy shit these guys take their money seriously. Within twenty four hours of me pulling the money there were – I shit you not – a hundred different fights started throughout the galaxies underworld. Whole fleets were mobilized, from fighters to old capital class ships and everything in between. Not against the Empire or the Rebellion, no, but against each other. Xizor basically went insane, Jabba got killed out of fucking nowhere – guess no Boba Fett in the Pit now…or Leia in a metal bikini – and a whole bunch of organizations are pointing their fingers at one another. Several Hutt families have begun wars across several worlds, from Nal Hutta to Ryloth.

Nar Shaddaa, the crown jewel of the gangs and crime lords of the Outer Rim?

Basically on fire.

Like.

All of it.

Everyone is pointing fingers at one another, but not at the Empire or the Rebellion. After all, the Empire doesn't wipe out accounts, it wipes out people. Smashes bases, not electronic treasuries. The Rebellion isn't even considered to be a factor. The sheer paranoia coupled with the incredibly intricate web of grudges and hatred that covers the underworld has been pushed from a thousand little fires into a thousand big fires thanks to me. I've got the Black Sun vs. the Zann Consortium vs. the Hutt Cartels vs. the Hutt Cartels vs. the Hutt Cartels vs. This Syndicate vs. That Syndicate…and so on and so forth.

The problem is that the chaos is getting worse because these people no longer have the money to pay their soldiers and mercenaries, much less the more expensive bounty hunters and assassins. As angry unpaid soldiers start rebelling against their former masters said masters use those still loyal to them to crush those same rebellious elements. There's been a total breakdown of order not just in the Outer Rim but with those groups entrenched in the Mid-Rim as well. Only the Inner Rim and the Core Worlds have been untouched by this but even they are certainly feeling the squeeze of all of their grey markets closing shop.

Man.

God damn I fucked this up.

It's not like I can just put the money back into their accounts in a 'Just a prank bro' gesture. I've got the money now and if I dump it in then they'll just ask even more questions. I don't want to reveal my presence to the galaxy just yet before I can help it…and even those Rebels I helped out that one time are probably going to blab eventually.

Even so.

Kind of a bloodbath going on right now. Right now it's mostly concentrated to each other – so who cares if pirates and criminals are the ones killing each other right? Except there are people getting hit in the crossfire and the Rebellion can't do anything about it. The only group that could possibly quell this is a Commander without a unit cap…or the Empire. Shit.

Wait.

No.

Better idea. I can use this to make them go at one another instead of total chaos. I can't straight up shift the boat of destiny but I can steer, right? Isn't that sort of what the Patrician said? So which one of these people could I possibly blame for this and have the rest of the criminal underworld utterly destroy. It wouldn't be hard to post overwhelming evidence implicating someone or other, not with my abilities. The Hutt Cartels are pointing fingers all over the place at one another but there is one organization that is galaxy-wide and was previously considered the unrivaled top dog of the underworld, right?

Black Sun.

Prince Xizor.

Yeah. Ok. He definitely counts as an acceptable target. While he isn't known to be the true leader of Black Sun by many, that dubious honor is believed to be for his assistant, enough know to hate him.

Still. I'll just point the people at Black Sun for now.

While my ship continues to search I crack open the holonet with the strength of a very panicked god, and begin planting rumors. All over forums. False news reports. Completely false but entirely real looking information streams out all over the place. I even dump the credits back into Black Sun accounts and 'help' some slicers aligned with the organization's foes foes discover that his money is still present. Even as the Black Sun protests furious accusations begin flying. Within the day the syndicate is under siege by an angry and really confused underworld. And…honestly as I watch Xizor battle for his life against everyone else I can't help but be a little impressed.

It took me a few days to turn the Hutt Cartels, Zann Consotium, and any other criminal organization worth its salt against him…and he still isn't going down. While he fights, I begin using the tractor beams of the Cry of Gimli to begin moving my Resource Cubes down to the surface of Drich while the Executor continues to search. Other than that it's basically just watching as Xizor rages against the universe itself seemingly turning against him. He is really getting some mileage out of that assassin woman he's got. Guri is far more than just a pretty face and the assumed leader of Black Sun by the many.

Isn't she supposed to be some kind of droid or something? A replica thing? I only read a little of the material involving Xizor so I don't precisely recall everything she did.

I'm also impressed with the sheer loyalty that Xizor has managed to garner from his forces. A mixture of fear and sheer charisma I guess? They aren't abandoning him even though they've got the entire underworld bearing down on him. He puts out a few messages to any and all who could possibly help him – even to the Empire's highest levels for some reason, though I guess he's hoping his rival Vader will save him? – but mostly it's almost constant combat. As I build more Resource Cubes, and time passes, he just…keeps…going.

Like a bloodthirsty little Energizer Bunny. All from his Palace on Coruscant. Guri is doing her best in the Outer Rim but the Black Sun is taking a mauling.

Still, it was inevitable that his precious Black Sun would lose. There was no way that he could beat back everyone. Even with the Empire and Rebellion staying out of it.

I mean…the Cry of Gimli could have saved them…but the Black Sun was one of the worst criminal organizations ever. The things they've done…the innocents they've massacred…

I've killed.

I've killed a lot of Imperials.

But they were all military men, willingly stepping onto a warship. I've yet to kill a civilian. Xizor and his people couldn't say the same. Not one bit. Child soldiers, bombing hospitals, just a lot of what were basically warcrimes.

So yeah, I wasn't planning on saving them.

It took three months for an incredibly incensed underworld to tear the Black Sun down. They got some good hits in, the Sun's, even managing to put down a few Hutt Cartels and rival syndicates…but not all of them. In the end…the Black Sun marshalled every ship they had to battle over Tatooine. Why they chose that miserable ball of sand for their last stand I'll never know. Jabba had been dead for a while at that point.

Still, it was by far the largest single assemblage of ships that I'd seen yet since I'd arrived in this galaxy. Hundreds of ships, on both sides. Cruisers of multiple weights, refitted freighters, customized vessels that were nearly unrecognizable from what they had been before, swarms of outdated fighters and ships that had been upgraded with black market tech, and even several capital ships that had been taken. The latter came from the Zann Consortium. Lots of those Aggressor-class ships they've got. I'm pretty sure every merc with a ship – much less the dozens of prominent bounty hunters – was involved there. Such a huge grouping of criminal ships would be impossible if they'd been in an area of real Imperial control but this was Tatooine.

Even so, the Black Sun had plenty of ships on their own, practically equaling what had been assembled against them. Heck I'm pretty sure I even saw some refitted Separatist designs. Some honest to goodness Lucrehulk ships! So I watched as I built more Resource Cubes and the Executor searched…and sort of just sat back and watched as over three hundred ships just went at it. Guri was supposedly commanding the flagship of the Black Sun, but I wasn't sure if I could trust that. Zann wanted to take Xizor's head himself and was planning to use Guri as an example to him – seriously he said that on an open channel – but he still let the rest of Jabba's family go first.

Yeah.

Jabba had a big family. Who knew? They were pissed about him dying too.

Anyway, I was pretty certain that they were going to lose. Black Sun I mean.

I hadn't intended to almost drown the Outer Rim in blood by casting the underworld into chaos – I'd just thought it would be funny to steal all their credits! – but it was finally coming to an end.

Phew.

I have to say though. I was a little surprised when three Super Star Destroyers popped into orbit after the Black Sun had been reduced to a handful of ships. Or at least…I thought they were. They were really thin though. Far more slender than the Executor-class ships. I reflexively searched my admittedly vast database involving the Empire from both its own databanks and my now computerized memory.

Oh.

Oh!

Vengeance-class. The first of its kind was under the command of some guy named…Jerec.

….Jerec.

Jerec?!

The slayer of Kyle Katarn's dad!

I can't believe he's –

Oh hey the Executor found the Katana fleet in deep space between systems.

- But that's Jerec!

…I could use some more SSD's for my project.

At least - wait why is Jerec destroying the other guys and helping the Black Sun pull back? Did Xizor cut a deal?

Ah damn it! Well...fine! I'll just take all the money back then! Even if I was planning on taking it back anyway.

God this whole thing has been a mess.