29 – Small Additions
So yeah, I'm still really angry that I got busted down to thirty unit slots. But even that can't take away my enthusiasm for quantum crystalline armor. This shit is bananas. The explanation is simple but also pretty darn cool. By stacking a few layers of atoms as densely as the laws of physics could permit, and then laminating them above another thin film that was as strong, but phase shifted…you basically created one of the toughest armors in the entire galaxy. Capable of taking a hit from the prototype of the Death Star
and getting dumped into a gas giant for a good long while without suffering any real problems. Hell in the story Han Solo took the thing and used it as a battering
knife to blow his way through one of the Maw Fleet's star destroyers from one end to the other and it came out without a single scratch.
Was that better or worse than my weird beskar-progenitor alloy armor that basically all of my custom units possessed at this point? I think it might be a little better with the whole 'not even a scratch' thing. Even beskar and my own stuff could get scuffed.
Not this stuff. Nope.
The
moment I got this into my databanks and wiped it from the Maw computer which it had been stored in I got to work. By this point the Mega Yard was more than big enough for what I intended. Another pulse of thought and the
Cry of Gimli was moving herself inside.
Much more comfortable fit this time around.
Then?
I activated the improved Mega Yard to basically reconstitute and rebuild the entire thing from the ground up, building upon the ship mass that was already present just like I had when initially building her. Only this time I added brand new gravity well generators – with requisite progenitor upgrades to their internal systems – and then used the wonder of smashing technologies together until something better came out the other end to make the entire things armor out….well. Kind of a big name at this point. Quantum beskar-progenitor alloy armor is a mouthful. QBPA armor? Eh, that works…I guess. In any case with a helpful squeezing of my own original technologies I actually end up squishing the new quantum alloy's atom layers
just a bit more than the Imperials had managed.
Slapping physics in the face was a Commander's past time after all.
Even so that would take a bit, watching the glorious nebula of nanites would have been fun to just stare at but I have work to do now.
So with one hand I'm starting the Death Star prototype up and checking it over – yeah, yeah the superlaser is pretty damn powerful even on the prototype – and with the other I'm marching the Reddingtons throughout the Maw Installation. Crawling through vents, slitting throats while in dormitories, punching skulls hard enough to go through them, the works. All the while Daala slept, having finished her weird little paranoid revisions to the patrol schedules a little while ago. Not that there would
be anymore patrolling by the Maw Fleet but she didn't know that at the time.
Time to be looking for those scientists and the wookies.
And done. Apparently all of the superweapon data was a lot more important to Daala to be kept secure than the people who actually made them and maintained her stupid hidden space station. Considering her character as a human being and what she would go on to do without my interference I'm not actually that surprised when I think about it. But I am here, and she's not going to go on to be elected to Chief of State by one of the stupidest populaces that I've ever seen in my admittedly not that many years. Put together with the amount of physical time – minus the years of mental acceleration – to the time I was alive before becoming this…I'm not even halfway through my twenties.
Sheesh.
….back to murdering and rescuing people.
The scientists are a bit more heavily guarded, to the point that there's more than thirteen guards and they have visuals on one another so there's no way I can just stealth my way through. Luckily I won't have to by that point considering that there are fewer and fewer spots in the station that I haven't cleared yet. Right now it's the last barracks, the scientists, Daala…and the wookies.
The wookie quarters were barbaric. Zero open spaces for them, none of the ability to really stretch out like their species demanded, and there were less than zero comforts. The bedrolls present were pathetic and more horrifyingly they had birthing crèches set up for them in a medical bay. This was a population whose intent was to be a constant slave labor group. To the point that they were meant to be bred here and die here. Both Tarkin and Daala had apparently thought it would be a wonderful thing to have a technically endless supply of slaves the
monsters.
On the 'bright side' of this obsidian colored coin wookies live for far longer than humans do. So…they were kept from being able to have procreation-based sex. Gender separated work crews and quarters, and if a male and female got too close to one another the troops on the station were allowed to use stun blasts to put them down.
Jesus.
I knew this place was bad but holy shit. They don't talk about this in the books and the comics.
I mean it makes a dark, utterly racist and monstrous sense, like say if you were Tarkin or something, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. These two wanted a group of slaves that would stay fit and capable for years and years and years, yet they only planned on giving them the barest of minimums to survive. These wookies have been here since the Maw Installation was
built. God damn that is some fucked up shit, I should have come to this place sooner.
Well…whatever. I split into two teams of six while the thirteenth is ready to kill anyone who comes by and start cutting through the doors. The wookies are up and freaking out almost instantly…which is fine because I took the cameras watching them sleep and eat and live 24/7 out of commission as well. There's hooting and grunting and if I hadn't downloaded an entire protocol droid's galactic lexicon encyclopedia I wouldn't know that they are actually telling each other to get back from the doors. The biggest and oldest ones are pushing their younger brethren back, while those who I guess had some outside experience besides living in the station are barking that 'they' are finally here.
I don't know who 'they' are…but I'm certainly here.
In synch the doors are fully cut open and the first of my HK-Reddingtons step inside to a crowd of totally silent wookies on both sides. They don't actually have any lights on them but I turn the lights on in their quarters on regardless. I…don't know if that helped, given that the sudden reveal of six pitch black droids with a veritable armory on each of their bodies might not be the most reassuring thing to see. Luckily, I speaka da wookie…a.
That's not racist, Italians don't exist here.
Oh.
I've always wanted to say this.
"Come with me if you want to live," comes the classic line from the Governator in tandem from each one of the droids. The wookies
had been forcibly learned in 'human' speak, right?
I hope so at least.
Next? The scientists and Daala.
