A look at the Galaxy with brand new eyes...

[Laira Darkhold]

I had a rough time out on the Outer Rim, wind and thermal radiation scrambled my sensors. I couldn’t see further than a hundred meters as some points, and the view came back fuzzy. The advanced scanners Benji had put in the helmet hadn’t been worth crap as they couldn’t show me folks behind a good thick blast door. He kept saying he would need time and money to get something going on it, so I got him some money and as much time as he needed. Still he was sitting in his workshop messing with it, getting nowhere.

“Hey Benji, what do you think, man. Is there anything you can do about this or what? Do we gotta outsource it?” I grumble from my comfortable chair. The static had given me blind spots and I got lit up because of them, bruises and welts still aching days later, so I was probably a little harsher than I should have been.

“It’s not as easy as ask and you shall receive. I have to miniaturize several things in order to fit them into the helmet. If they don’t make it in, the problems you are having may not be solved like you want them to be.” He said without looking up from his data pad. I had been in a bad mood since I got back, and made him pause on his ideas to fix this problem, so he wasn’t in the best of moods either.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

“I need to fit in an X-ray scanner, Radar system, Sonar system, and Infrared scanner in order to properly mitigate the issues with the penetrating sensors as you will have four different scanners in place to overlap and provide data, however with each one there is an inherent weakness. X-Ray can’t penetrate lead, Sonar bounces off properly sound-proofed walls, and Infrared starts off blurred, imagine its issues after two or three insulated walls. Then Radar only really gives data based on external structure, so it isn’t perfect either. Last I checked you didn’t know how to shrink all this crap into a helmet either, so quiet or help, got it?” He managed to look at me this time. His old red eyes tired from working on the project for twelve hours straight.

“Alright old timer, alright, but I think it’s time you got some sleep so you can work this problem out in the morning. No reason for us both to sit here tired and bruised plugging away at it tonight.” I said as I stood up to grab something to drink. “You want something before bed?”

“No, just leave me to it for a few more minutes so I can brainstorm some ideas before I go to sleep,” he said with a smile. Good thing he was kindly for the most part.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

By the time I got up, it had been a good eleven hours. I was still groggy when he walked into the kitchen, all smiles and good cheer. I can’t be that happy without my morning caf. “What are you so perky about Benji?”

He turned towards me, pouring himself a cup of caf while his wife made breakfast and the elderly duros winked “I had some ideas for that helmet, and I thought we’d renovate my warehouse to manufacture out of it. I could produce a number of them for PMC’s and Paramilitary Groups and you could use a more advanced prototype, or we could just replace the Duranium with Phrik for yours. I’d just need more Phrik.” He motioned for me to follow him into his workshop. “My warehouse has small production facilities, I just need some muscle to do the moving and a little help around the shop you know. We could interview a programmer, since I ain’t so good at that, and maybe get a clerk, cause you know neither of us or actually going to do office work.”

“But did you think of anything to fix the helmet?” Benji had a problem with rambling sometimes, and it was good to keep him on track.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

“Back to the point I see. Yeah, I just need to move the sensors around to one on either side, and two above the eyes, like the Infrared and X-ray scanners can go there. Minimalize the space taken for internal systems, and place the filtration system further out, like so.” He gestured towards a Holo Diagram of the waiting product.

It was three layers, the outer red layer, a middle yellow, and green inner layer. The outer layer was the armoring for the helmet, consisting of a ninety-ten Duranium-Neutronium alloy to assist in dispersing energy across the helmet. The middle layer contained a magnetic seal to maintain integrity and its hermetic seal even after minor cuts and dents. The Inner layer contained a plastoid layer separating the internal systems from the padding against the users head.

“See with this configuration there is space for everything without so much hassle. Not quite the look you wanted but it’s got the functionality. Atleast test it before you say whatever it is your planning on saying, cause I hate it when you pass on my stuff without working with me, hombre. It makes me wanna install a bomb in your armor. Got it?” He must have noticed my face at the helmets appearance because he just went off on me for turning stuff down.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

“Alright we’ll test, but I don’t like the look of it.” I said as he started working on producing molds for the helmet to fabricate the design. “I can’t imagine this being the standard aesthetics you set for yourself,” I muttered jokingly.

“I heard that, you overgrown womp rat. If you think I forgot about all those favors you had me do a while back because you were ‘low on income’ you’ve got another thing coming. I remember everything.” He said with a chuckle, while still working fervently on a datapad. “Back to my hiring some folks idea, what do you think?”

“I guess we need a clerk and a programmer if we are gonna do what we discussed with ArmaTech. I could use some extra muscle on the job as well. Last few times I have been out, I have found myself shorthanded.” I said between sips from my caf, “Besides, I’m no help at all with this stuff. I just test and hope for the best.”

“Good. I’ll post an add somewhere and we can get started soon, but for now check this out.” He tossed my a completed helmet. All he had to do was cover it in armor plating anyway. Its internal overlay was helpful and the HUD seemed good enough. “Might take a while to get used to the combat sensor and the Multi-Spectral Target Assessor. You might want to spend some time with it on around town before we test it just to get used to the way it works,” I heard him say.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

“Alright, give me a little while with it then.” I said, securing it in place of my normal helm. I could see flashes of data all over the screen, which far outsized the view-plate. That must be that Internal Holo-screen Overlay he was going on about. The HUD functioned as most do, with a combination of eye movements, blinks, and vocal commands, but for the most part the only data constantly on the screen is the Digital Life Support Monitor, telling me I have swelling in my arms and chest with a green line surrounding a green box. I guess that means I’m good to go. I looked down at my feet and could see targeting crosshairs near on the ground where my weapons were pointed. When I brought up my arms a pair of crosshairs came up to eye level. Well, ain’t that cool. I quickly switched to the flamethrower’s control system and a green cone came over the view screen.

I stopped at a place overlooking a crowded market square, starring into the crowd. I picked out a few targets and followed them with my eyes. The Targeting matrix tracked them through the crowd pretty well, only losing them if their faces were concealed for more than a few seconds, but in a crowd like this they would have to drop to the ground to manage that. It could also track them for a hundred meters, far more than the range of my weapons.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

I decided to leave the city and test out how well the system could handle the weapon systems and the flight systems, and since drawing attention to yourself on a Sith controlled world wasn’t normally the best Idea, and I didn’t have all my gear with me, I took a taxi out to the suburbs, away from Bin Prime. The flight systems worked fine, they were made to control a jetpack and repulsorlift coils, since that was the best way to hover, though of course my Jetpack ran out of fuel real quick. Gotta look into that later. I tried out the Rangefinder, and it was pretty good. I could find ranges out for about a kilometer, not bad, pretty standard.

The active scanners were rough though, they required activation and didn’t turn off on their own. It was good in that it gave thermal, sonar, radar, and x-ray data into the display all at once, so it was fairly good at getting around countermeasures, but having all that data out here in the hot sun, blurred and distorted the thermal images. I guess it was good that the armor and helmet were temperature controlled, keeping me comfortable despite the heat out in the savannah of Balmorra.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

I figured I would have to test out all the fancy scanners and targeters Benji put in the helmet so I headed out to the arena he owned outside of the city. It didn’t take long to get a droid activated and up and running. Targeting him was easy, just a quick double blink staring straight at him, but then all the data that surrounded him was impossible to get a good look at as he leaped forward. I think I remember it saying he was two meters tall, travelling at thirty kilometers per hour straight towards me, but I only got a glimpse of it all. After I got him down and out, I was able to take a better look at the data it was telling me. It told be his range, approximate range after a projectile’s travel to him, based on the weapons I had active at the time, how tall he was, how fast he was moving, in what direction he was moving, and stacked him as the primary threat. If I targeted other deactivate droids it stacked the threat based on range, from closest to furthest. When I activated a pair of droids the threat assessment changed to the armed droid as primary, bringing up his data and having my HUD outlined in a faint red glow if I changed primary target to the other one. It wasn’t perfect, but it was helpful.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

It could let me know if someone was about to blow the crap out of me with some kind of cannon that I couldn’t see. The down fall was all of the sensor’s ranges were one hundred meters, meaning long range weaponry couldn’t be detected by the device. Also I figure in battle it won’t be able to handle, thirty or forty guys trying to kill me. Benji told me it could only individual target eight people at a time with those sensors, but the passive targeter and target assists would work fine no matter how many people were around and labeled as hostile.

I headed back to the workshop where Benji was waiting for me. He was working hard on his next project, some kind of armor he wanted to produce, that I had made him put away until my project was finished. “Well, did it work out for you?” He asked with a smile on his face. He seemed pretty confident I would approve. And to be fair it did everything I asked for. It just didn’t look right.

“Yeah I liked the interior layout, and it worked just like I wanted. Now if it only looked like I wanted. It needs to look more intimidating to the random fringer or spacer I encounter. Not look like I am about to waltz into a irradiated zone.” I said pulling it off. It took some adjusting to, that’s for sure. “What do you think you could do about that, huh?”

 

[Laira Darkhold]

“Make it look like I wanted it to,” he said in a mocking tone. “It does everything I asked, but it doesn’t look right. I ain’t no fashion designer, I am a weapons designer, boy.” He started grumbling to himself going back to the hologram of the design and changing the internal layout a little before altering the external appearance. “I want it to look like a skull Benji, figure that out. What I’m gonna figure out is my foot up your rear.” He kept grumbling. Good, a disgruntled designer like Benji worked best when they were trying to show up their competition or their boss.

After six or seven hours, I came back into the workshop and there he was working away on something small. “Do you even realize how hard it is to miniaturize a sonar scanning system and a radar system? Much less the long range shotgun mircophones and the all the targeting sensors this thing has in it. Sometimes I hate you Draco. But I got to admit, it looks like I do dang good work. Dang good work.” He said again admiring his work on the small pair of lenses. He clicked them into place just above the eyes. “There, the pineal eye system and infrared sensors are in place. I think she’s done kiddo.” He handed me the finished product and said “Try it out for me, would ya?”