Armored and Dangerous

[Kamon Vondiranach]

Harrin was a busy world. Even without the presence of the Ignus Industries facility there, considering it's location on the Hydian Way, it was incredibly busy. The proximity of other major hyperlanes only made this even greater. That was, of course, part of the reason why it had been chosen as the second location for Ignus Industries. So as the Eidolon descended down towards the planet, it had numerous starships zipping around it to avoid it. Most of them probably laft at the ancientness of the vessel, but Leos didn't care. He loved the ship, and he wasn't about to get rid of it.

The Ignus Industries starport was busy as well. Most of the ships that were coming in were laden with materials destined to be used in the manufacture of one of the companies products. Very few were ships being flown with clients on board. That was alright. That was the nature of things in the industrial world. The ship still landed at one of the platforms, and he left it in peace.

"Mr. Palle, welcome to Harrin Station," a Bothan said as he approached. "What brings you for a visit today?"

"I've heard there's a new project in the works," Leos said. "New ship armor, to be exact. I've come to see it."

"Ahh, well, that's not something I know anything about. You'll want to speak with Lazarro and Vox. That's their department. I'll take you to them."

"Thank you. What was your name?"

"Oh, Borsk Kre'Fey, sir. We haven't met before."

Leos nodded. Congenial being. With people like this working for him, it was no wonder that people liked coming to Ignus Industries for products. Good public relations were key. He motioned for the Bothan to lead the way, and then proceeded to follow him inside of Harrin Station itself. He didn't know where they'd have to meet this Lazarro and Vox. He didn't know who they were. But that was alright. Meeting new people was always interesting, especially given what they were working on. He was eager to learn more about this armor.

 

[Kamon Vondiranach]

Lazarro and Vox turned out to be a Zabrak and a Sullustan. Both were scientists employed by Ignus Industries in their ship construction division. They were the same duo that had developed the RAL and were in the process of developing a new starfighter and a few other ships. But those had gone on the backburner. Half-completed models were littered across their office as he entered. At least one of them still had wet clay so they were still working on the designs for the ships, probably as a breather while working on this new project. Considering how fast Vox was chattering away at Lazarro, they both probably needed a break now and then.

"Vox, Lazarro, this is Mr. Palle. He's come to speak with you."

The Sullustan stopped chattering and turned with his mouth agape when Leos was announced. Lazarro had considerably more poise and stepped across the space between them to extend his hand, a smile adorning his features.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Palle. Always nice when the boss stops by," he said, and seemed to genuinely mean it even though Leos had never stopped by before. "I am Lazarro. My talkative Sullustan friend is Vox."

"I'm not talkative, I don't know what you're talking about. Just because we have a lot to do and I'm trying to stress to you that we don't have time for you to play dejarik at lunch doesn't mean I'm talkative."

Leos could lifted a brow and waved his hands at the two individuals, attempting to get them to cease fire. This was going to degenerate into a war of words if he didn't intercede on behalf of keeping his own sanity, let alone theirs. Besides, he hadn't come to listen to them bicker. He glanced back at the Bothan for help, but was surprised to see that he'd already shown himself the door. No matter, really, as Leos could certainly handle himself. He turned back to the two and cleared his throat.

"I've come about the new armor you're working on," he said, looking between them. "I'd like to know more about it and the timetable for implementation."

The two scientists looked at each other and then Lazarro crooked a finger to beckon for Leos to follow him. They left the office and moved through the halls of the facility, descending deeper inside of it. One floor. Two floors. Three. He lost track after a while and wondered just how deep underground the facility went. He figured it must be far if they were going to be doing things like weapons testing. Eventually he stopped counting the floors as they went down. It just wasn't worth it and he'd end up not remembering anyway. All he needed to know was the floor they'd come from, and the floor they stopped at. The rest didn't really matter.

As long as they didn't get lost.

 

[Kamon Vondiranach]

Eventually they entered a large lab space. At the opposite end of the room, within a large separate chamber, was what appeared to be a giant slab of metal. From what he could tell, it looked like a normal sheet of some form of starship grade armor. To be honest, from his perspective it didn't look all that interesting. If he hadn't known better, he would have dismissed this lab as being not in use since the majority of what was in it was recording equipment, a few instrumentation panels that he didn't quite know the purpose of, the blast chamber, and the big slab of metal. Quite frankly it seemed a poor use of space to him, but he wasn't a scientist. He was better suited to decorating large spaces than filling them with equipment.

The duo led him over to the blast chamber and along the transparisteel based sides of it. As they came along the side of the metal slab, he could see that it was not a homogenous piece of material, but rather what one might call a sandwich. On the exterior side, the side facing the entry to the chamber, was a thick sheet of metal. On the back side, a thinner sheet of metal of a different variety. Between the sheets were three other thick layers. One of them looked to be made of some kind of ribbing system, while the central layer appeared to be made of yet another layer of metal.

"What you see here is what we're calling Cellulitic Dispersion Armor, or CDA," Lazarro said as Vox bounced up and down eagerly. "On the exterior side, a thick slab of Alusteel infused with Neutronium. A few thin layers of elastic polymer fuses it with a layer of ceramisteel plates in a v pattern. A layer of high quality aluminum, to provide strength without a large increase in mass, is at the center of the structure, followed by another layer of ceramisteel, but this time in a honeycomb of voids. The final layer is another layer of aluminum, this in a brushed finish as it will be the interior surface that crew will see."

Leos listened intently, identifying each piece of the sandwich as it was mentioned.

"Sounds expensive and heavy."

"Technically yes to the expensive part. It's not cheap, but we believe the benefits outweigh the cost," Lazarro said, glancing to Vox.

"Yes, and with the matter of weight, it is rather dense, but it's about 1.5 times the weight of most standard metal sheet armors employed throughout the galaxy," Vox said. "The airpockets and the use of high quality aluminum on the inside lessen what would otherwise be an extremely heavy armor system."

Expensive and heavier. So far that was two strikes against.

"Both of those are negatives. I'm assuming it must perform extremely well. That said, HOW does it perform?"

Lazarro grinned.

"I'm glad you asked."

 

[Kamon Vondiranach]

"We'll start with a test against turbolaser blasts. You'll have to bear with us as we get things setup between tests. We'll have to swap out sheets and weapons systems."

Lazarro looked apologetic, but Leos just waved him on. Waiting was fine. He was here to learn all he could about this new product they were developing. If it performed well, it could be what they ended up using on the ships for The Protectorate, making their fighting force substantially more powerful against the enemy combative forces that they were sure to face in the long run. They would need every advantage they could get when dealing with the governments of the galaxy. They'd all be coming at them in droves, after all. It was highly unlikely that many of the galactic governments would simply choose to merge with them. He expected none would.

As he waited, Lazarro and Vox pushed a heavy, stripped down turbolaser cannon in with the help of several droids. They lined it up with the mouth of the blast chamber, which form fit around the large machine, and formed a suctioned seal as they activated the vacuum within the chamber. Space itself was a near perfect vacuum, so to simulate the effects of the armor accurately it made sense that they would utilize vacuum technology.

"You might want to stand back, Mr. Palle. Just in case. The blast chamber is rated to withstand anything short of a nuclear warhead, but why take extra risks, right?"

Leos was certain he'd be fine, but he backed away a bit just in case.

"Firing in 3... 2... 1."

A bright flash of light and the roar of a discharging turbolaser resounded. He didn't actually see it hit the sheet of metal, but he heard it screech against metal. His hands rubbed at his ears as they rang for a few moments and he waited for the blurred light to ease from his eyes, and then he walked over to examine the damage. At close range, the weapon had punched through the armor, but it left a clean hole rather than blasting the sheet of armor apart. Normal armor would have been an absolute wreck.

"Well, that's better than expected," he said, but then looked at the scientists. "How does it fair against torpedoes and missiles?"

 

[Kamon Vondiranach]

Again it took them a little while to wheel in the firing mechanics of the concussion missile system. It was less of the mechanics necessary for the firing of a turbolaser because it didn't require the storage of gas, and its condensing to fire. All it really needed was the mechanics necessary to arm the missile and send it shooting down a short tube. Considering the fact that it didn't have to go far, the mechanics weren't as large. They did have to replace the previously fired upon sheet of armor however. That took them longer because they had to use a crane system built into the ceiling to move the previous piece out and the new one in.

Eventually they had everything set up. By this point, Leos had gone and gotten himself a chair to sit in since he was going to be there long enough that standing and waiting around was just going to wear him out. He sat in the chair as the two scientists moved back to the firing mechanism and prepared for the second test.

"Firing in 3... 2... " Leos plugged his ears with his fingers this time. "1."

At first there was nothing as it took a second for the system to relay the firing command, and then a burst of quick motion and the missile shot out of the tube and slammed into the sheet of CDA, setting off a cacophony of roaring as it exploded, and small bits of shrapnel sprayed across the interior of the blast chamber. He had to admit it was rather the sight to see. When it was all settled down, he stood, walked over, and examined the damage.

"Looks like it went through to the fourth layer, but didn't itself penetrate the final layer," he said. "There's some minor cracking damage on the interior face, but no massive rupture. Interesting."

"We can review the results of why this is after we're done with the tests."

"What else is there to test?"

"Solid mass weapons! We're going to fire a rail gun at it now. This should be fun!"

 

[Kamon Vondiranach]

Of course he would forget about those. They weren't really conventionally used anymore. Or, rather, they hadn't been until a recent resurgence. People had realized that as good as particle shields were, if a solid round smacked into it, it was going to seriously damage the integrity of the shield, and perhaps even penetrate straight through it depending on the strength of the shield. That said, he knew that his people were in the process of developing their own version of the gauss gun for use on starships, not to mention the personal carry version of a gauss rifle they were developing for mass consumption. He really should have figured they'd test that.

Sure enough, they wheeled in a long gauss gun. In fact, it barely fit into the room at all. Long barrels were necessary to achieve velocity necessary. They did manage to get it into the room and set up, though. Now that he'd seen all of the tests in progress, he understood why the large more or less empty room was necessary for this kind of testing. In fact, he somewhat felt like they needed a larger space for this, so they didn't have to wheel the weapons systems in and out all the time.

"All set. Firing in 3... 2..." Fingers in ears. "1."

The sound of electricity running through the coils reached his ears and then a large piece of metal flew forward and slammed into the metal. Even before he walked over, he could see that it had pierce all the way through, but he could also see that it had gotten lodged in the hole rather than continuing through to cause further damage. If had been filled with explosive it would have done more damage, but it wouldn't have penetrated through to the critical inner systems of the ship at least. So, yeah, he was more or less impressed with this sandwiched armor that they had come up with. The weight and cost increase appeared to be worth it.

"Well, I like what I see. So now one of you needs to explain to me how it works so well."

"With pleasure, sir!"

 

[Kamon Vondiranach]

"Most armor, as you well know, is made up of plates of metal," Lazaroo said as he wrapped his knuckles against the outer material of the CDA. "Usually something like Duranium or one of its derivatives. Often it is impregnated with Neutronium to help disperse blasts of focused energy from lasers and ion cannons. Normally this is sufficient when coupled with an effective ray and particle shield setup."

Vox nodded vigorously. "Yes, but it's not overly effective at stopping those systems when it's actually hit. Even if its thick it is still often easily penetrated! Bam! Dead crewmen floating everywhere."

He wiggled his hands in the air like something was disbursing. Lazarro just shook his head.

"With the CDA, though, as you saw, you don't have that. You get smaller areas of destruction which can be quickly and effectively shored up by the people that would otherwise be floating dead in space!"

"This I understand. I can see the ramifications of what this would mean for a ship's crew and the effectiveness of a starship in combat situation," Leos said, shaking his head at the excitable Sullustan before turning his attention to Lazarro. "But HOW does it work? What do the individual layers of the armor sandwich do?"

Lazarro motioned towards one of the holo displays on the opposite side of the room.

"Come with me and I'll show you."

 

[Kamon Vondiranach]

Lazarro pulled up the holoprojector, which displayed a cross section of the armor sandwich. He made it spin so that Leos was looking into the layers rather than just at the front of it. Not that he hadn't already seen it when he was looking at the physically created sections that had already been displayed. So far the two scientists were doing a rather lousy job of actually telling him how the system worked. That was disappointing. To be honest, sometimes scientists were rather bad at actually interacting with people. Ok, more than sometimes. They were almost always bad at it in his experience. He had to be patient with them.

"What you see is the sandwich. The outer layer is pure metal. As I said before it's alusteel impregnated with neutronium. Standard exterior hull armor, and nothing special. What makes the system special are the second and fourth layers. The second layer is ceramisteel, but instead of just being a flat layer like the exterior, it's made of numerous plates in a v or herringbone pattern. That makes it stronger, and the numerous plates absorb kinetic energy through abrasion.

"The third layer is starship grade aluminum. It's as strong as steel, but it's thinner than the exterior plate for weight reasons. The fourth layer is ceramisteel again, but cast in a honeycomb pattern. You couldn't see this in the slabs before, but the honeycomb is filled with thermal gel. This helps to disperse the heat of impact, and the kinetic energy of said impact causes the gel to harden, which is why you saw the solid mass projectile get stuck in the armor rather than just pass through it. The hell also disperses the force of the missile explosions, which results in less overall damage."

Now that made more sense. Leos understood it now.

"The last layer is aluminum again, same thickness as the middle layer. All in all, it's pretty tough armor. Better than the standard application of metal plates."

 

[Kamon Vondiranach]

"Well, now I understand how it works," Leos said as he walked away from the display.

He walked over to the plates that had been tested earlier, examining the damaged areas, noting that the energy of impact had hardened the thermal gel. While it certainly would cost more to utilize the armor on a ship, especially larger ones, he could understand how the benefits outweighed the cost. Not having to replace the crew of a ship every time it went into battle and took damage would not only save them lives, which he really didn't care that much about, it would save them the cost of having to train someone else for the position. In addition to that, the armor would keep the ship from getting destroyed as easily, which meant they wouldn't have to replace ships as often.

Yes, that was looking purely at the cost benefits, really, but considering what they were up to, cost was going to be important. They were going to take a lot of heat from a lot of governments in the galaxy when they made themselves public. Having ships that could take as much of a beating as they could dish out would be integral not only to their survival, but to actually beating the forces that their enemies would throw at them.

"I want this fast tracked. Shelve all of your other projects for the time being until you have this fine tuned and ready for production. We've got some projects coming up in a short time frame that I want this on. Understood?"

Both Vox and Lazarro looked a little perplexed but nodded their heads.

"Good. Get it done and don't disappoint me."

And with that, he walked out of the room.

 

[Kamon Vondiranach]

As he made his way back to the lift, he pulled out his datapad. Fingers tapped furiously as he wrote out a message that he was intending to send to Kaela back on Telos. She was the one that had told him about his particular project, and he wanted her to know the results of what he'd seen. Plus he had some things that he wanted her to do for him in regards to it. From here he wouldn't be going back to the office, so he wouldn't have a chance to tell her in person. A message would have to do. Sent through encrypted channels it would be safe enough for her to get and read without anyone else prying into their affairs.

The message was relatively simple. He relayed that he found the armor to be viable and that he'd told the scientists to fast track its final development so that it could be implemented in the near term. In addition, he instructed Kaela to ensure that its development was kept under wraps. Only the two scientists and their team were to know about its final development. He was leaving it in her hands to ensure that anyone else who knew didn't run their mouths.

Additionally he was ordering that she have a larger section of Harrin Station be made available for weapons testing so that they didn't have to wheel weapons systems in and out all the time. It was a waste of time and terribly inefficient. This would allow them to build a larger, safer, blast chamber as well. Yes, it would largely end up as a waste of space most of the time, but the times it was in use would prove to make up for the times when it wasn't. Plus they wouldn't have to tax their scientists and bring corruptible droids into the equation. He hadn't liked that they might have recorded something for someone else to see. That was a security risk if he'd ever seen one.

When he was done, he sent the message off, entered the lift, returned to the departure level, and headed back to the Eidolon. He needed to make a stop at Crakull, so it was off to the unknowns for him. Business as usual.