Deeper than the Ocean...

[Gir Quee]

Leviathan Submersible Carrier Wavecrest, South Voss seas

Gir walked down the rows of stacked crates and prefabricated modules in the Wavecrest's massive cargo hold. Many of the crates held manufacturing equipment, such as robotic lathes, milling machines, and fusion cutters, that would be common in most machine shops and factories across the galaxy. But among these sundry goods were more esoteric technologies, such as hydrostatic field generators and hundreds of ceramasteel framing. Gir stopped in front of one of the gray crates to read the almost miniscule Aurebesh scrip on its top. He squinted his eyes: Turbolift Door Servomotors. He blinked. Well, that isn't terribly interesting...though I suppose it will be good if our factory does have working turbolift doors...

"Ah, there you are sir."

Gir turned his eyes to a silver-plated 3PO unit walking towards him. While Gir was interested in many pieces of technology, including many droids, most 3PO units were not among the objects of his fancy. Yet this unit had already earned an unusual amount of respect from Gir, because it seemed particularly keen to avoid him except when it necessary. And even then, it didn't tend to prattle as many of the droids did.

"Sir, I have found [member="D’in Ss’ikoo"] and Ames Pierre, the chief civil engineer, as you have requested. Shall I take you to one of them?"

 

[Gir Quee]

Gir considered the droid's offer carefully. The verpine engineer had proven to be enigmatic so far, yet he had displayed ample talent to convince him to establish a partnership. Yet Gir had to consider that as interesting as D'in was, he first had to establish place of business for them both. As capable as the Hephaestus Factory ships were, Gir doubted that the vessels would fully be able to replace a completely dedicated planetary facility. Yet as Gir had read the Holo-news, he was increasingly wary of having stationary assets. While Pierre had been able to convince him that the benefits outweighed the potential risk, he still had questions and reservations about the project, even as it was about to begin. Gir turned his eyes to gaze into the yellow photo-receptors of the droid.

"Please take me to Pierre," said Gir, stepping forward to stand next to the bipedal droid, "where is he?"

"In the forward observation bubble, overlooking the construction site," said the droid.

"I see."

The protocol droid began to lead Gir through the corridors of the submarine. In many ways, it felt like he was on the deck of a particularly old starship. Despite that feeling of familiarity, Gir knew that at a intellectual level that space and the deep sea were vastly different environments. He would be ill-equipped to make the sort of decisions he would normally make in space. That meant that he would almost exclusively have to rely on Pierre and a handful of other's. And that thought made him uncomfortable.

 

[Gir Quee]

That intellectual discomfort slowly faded into the back of his mind as they continued forward. Gir encountered more crewmembers and droids getting ready to start work on the factory. His eyes briefly lingered on a dull, gray metallic labor droid model that Gir hadn't seen before. Its bipedal frame seemed to closely mimic the lines of the familiar ASP-series that was so commonplace around the galaxy, but Gir could see enough subtle differences in its aesthetics to know that it wasn't one. Perhaps more unusually, the droid appeared to be wearing what at first glance appeared to be jetpack. Closer inspection showed Gir that it was so some of underwater propulsion device. Working and delving in the deep...better us than something living...He shook those thoughts away as they entered the observation chamber.

Even though Gir had at best a passing familiarity with the vessel type, he could tell from the welding lines on the structure supports, as well as its exposed framing, that it hadn't been an original part of the design. Yet as ugly as the framing was, he found the ceraglass between the supports, or rather what was behind that glass, was breathtaking. Majestic canyons and mountains occupied most of the viewport, though as he walked closer to the viewport, he could see that they were actually above a short but broad plateau that rose out among a nest of canyons. Gir's eyes wandered the murky depths of the new site, and for a moment, Gir thought that he caught a flash of something moving in the deep. But as he began to guess what he had just seen, a cultured, almost core world, voice called out to him from the far side of the room.

"Ah, there you are, mister president."

 

[Gir Quee]

Pierre seemed to almost skate towards Gir before the other man walked past him to lean up against the railing near the observation bubble. Gir waited for several moments, expecting the man to start some discourse on oceanographic engineering or the perils of underwater construction, but the other man said nothing. Gir spared a glance at the construction site before turning his gaze onto the architect.

"Things are proceeding well?"

"One of the survey droids just discovered a potential geothermal vent," replied the man, "I'm having another droid go out and check it."

"Is that a bad thing?"

Pierre tilted his head from side to side, "I don't know. If it's indicative of active geological activity, I will have to recommend finding a new site. But if its structurally sound, and the venting process appears to be stable, we may have additional power source to use...though that will require some redesign, of course."

"How much of a redesign?"

"Current estimates of the vent say that it is eight meters in diameter, so really, it's quite small in the grand scheme of things. But if we are to use it to our advantage, that will require some redesign of the areas around it, so potentially, we could be looking at alteration of up to 100 square meters, which again, is small in the grand scheme of things, but quite noticeable at the same time..."

 

[Gir Quee]

"Will that affect our timetable then?" questioned Gir.

Pierre silently considered the question for a few moments, "I do not think that it will affect the initial tooling factory. By the time the tooling factory is manufacturing addition droids and equipment, I believe that I will have been able to have adjusted the tertiary design of the complex as a whole to compensate for its presence."

Large columns of harsh bright light fell down onto the underwater plateau. So it's begun...Gir neared the edge of the viewport before turning his gaze upwards to see the guidance beacons dropped by the Lucerne Endeavor above descending along weighted moor lines, which in turn were precisely placed by the aquatic labor droids. As the orbs came to his normal eye level, they came to halt as their anchors made contact with the sea floor. Minutes passed before he began to the dark shadows of the prefabricated tooling and production compounds as they descended to their permanent home. Made by a Hephaestus-class Factory Ship that currently orbited Voss, the sealed facilities would be anchored to the sea floor, where they would churn out more droids and infrastructure needed to make Plant Besh a reality. Pierre came to stand next to as the first cluster of prefabricated factories came to rest on the sea floor. Gir turned to Pierre.

"Their running lights are still dark," noted Gir, "is there some sort of power problem?"

 

[Gir Quee]

"No," explained Pierre, "They are simply not hooked up to the power source yet."

"Won't it take some time for them to access the geothermal vents?"

"Those won't be ready yet," agreed the engineer quietly as the first structure made contact with the sea floor, "no, they'll be set into the secondary power supply, which isn't down here yet."

Gir gave him a long look, which prompted Pierre to continue.

"...hydropower is the secondary power. Water is all around us, moving in currents strong enough in the valleys here that I seriously considered using them as the main power source for the whole facility."

"But you didn't," said Gir, watching the tooling factory set down on the plateau, "I assume that there's a reason for that."

"It's not as consistent as geothermal power," explained the other man, "it's possible that there'd be no difference in comparison to geothermal power, but the currents could be shaped by outside natural phenomena such as weather or gravity patterns that we would not know existed unless we observed this location for at least a year."

"That's too long."

"Precisely," said the engineer, "not when the factory is needed right now. Geothermal power has fewer external factors that could effect its performance in the long run. Moreover, the power source would be fully contained within the complex itself, rather than relying on power cables that could be damaged by the weather or some attackers..."

 

[Gir Quee]

"And what is the timetable for establishing that?" asked Gir.

Pierre hesitated, "Hard to say. Rough estimate...about three weeks. The main factory structures will need to be in place to accommodate the turbines that will harvest the heat rising up from the core."

Gir turned his eyes to the seeds of the future factory complex. The quartet of pre-fabricated domes on the ocean floor seemed diminutive compared to the concept art drawn up Pierre and the other architects. Yet even now, if he looked closer, he could see small details on the floor which reminded him of the eventual endgame. But building things is long and tedious. And I don't have five weeks to sit around here to watch the progress. That prompted another question to his mind.

"I want to be here when the first droid rolls off the assembly line," said the blonde man, "tell me, when should I roughly expect that to take place."

"About five weeks," said the other man, "power is the bottleneck here, especially if we are able to import more prefabricated sections from the orbiting factory ships to the Wavecrest down here. The tooling factories's workloads could be cut by a fourth if we are able to optimize the transport of materials down here, which means at the earliest, that the first droid would be rolling off in the latter half of the week."

"I would like you to designate someone, either yourself or another member on your team, to keep me apprised of the progress," said Gir, "so that I can plan my schedule to be here for that event."

"I see...I will do it myself."

"Excellent."

 

[Gir Quee]

Three months later...

Utility Sub Voss Current, nearing Lucerne Lab droid factory

The Voss Current slipped downwards through the sea towards a towards a distant ring of glowing lights. Gir let out a sigh as he tilted the sub's yoke hard to right, sending the Current in a gentle arc around a school of brightly colored Coral Gnash fish. Past today's schedule...and arriving after the first droids have been built...but at least I can see the factory at work. He turned his eyes up towards the cloud of fish before they darted away into the murky depths. Shrugging, the man from Hast turned his attention back towards his company's facility.

The quartet of tooling factories that he had seen during his last visit to the site now sat on top a mountain of gleaming lights. As the Current edged closer and closer to the complex, he could discern where the droids and quarren laborers had carved into and out of the rocky sides of the plateau to allow parts of the factory to protrude into the deep. Among of those tumorous outcroppings, Gir spotted an array of six green lights arrayed in a hexagonal pattern. He tilted the yoke again to orient the sub to the docking hatch and pushed down hard on the pedal, sending the Current in surge towards the docking bay. The sub plowed through the water and finally drifted through the hydrostatic field and into the factory itself. The Current rose up to break through the surface of the factory's moon pool. As seawater rolled down from the canopy, Gir's eyes scanned the other mooring points, noting a half dozen of similiar utility subs as well as several larger cargo submarines and a quartet of torpedo attack carriers. Pierre's been busy. He tapped a button on the sub's control panel, causing the Current's bubble canopy to pop open. He stood to step onto the factory's dock, where a pair of brown-plated IX6 droids awaited him.

 

[Gir Quee]

Gir glanced at one of the droid's insectiod heads, gazing into the compound photoreceptor. If you had asked me four months ago that we'd be manufacturing Verpine droid designs, I wouldn't have believed it. Yet here we are now...doing just that. And hopefully that'll just be the tip of the iceberg. Gir shook his head, as if to banish the thoughts from his head.

"I am here to see Ames Pierre," said Gir plainly.

A new voice boomed out from behind the pair of battle droids, "Ah, yes sir. I will take you to see him myself."

Gir turned his attention to the speaker, an almost skeletal looking droid. At first, Gir thought he was looking at a droid that wasn't covered in any sort of protective plating. He could easily see the coils of wires, the blinking lights of processors, raw servomotors at the joints, and even a handful cooling fans at its midriff. But looking closer, he could see the droid was actually covered in a transparent glass-like material that he guessed was transparisteel. He blinked. A demonstration model?

"And you are?"

"I am LL-X5, experimental droid chassis and your guide today."

Gir looked the droid up and down, "Did Ss'ikoo create you?"

"No mister president, I am the creation of the Cresh Design team here at Plant Two. I am a modular testbed for new droid technology that they create and experiment with."

"I see."

 

[Gir Quee]

"Well, why don't you show me around then, X5."

Gir slipped past the two hulking IX-6 Combat and Security Droids towards LL-X5. But as he did so, the two security droids turned towards each other to fall in behind the man. He briefly winced at their loud footsteps plodding in his wake. I guess it could be worse...they could not be walking in unison. LL-X5 stared into Gir's eyes with blue-tinged photo-receptors before leading him pass an airlock into the facility itself. The quartet filtered into the complex, and Gir was immediately struck by the great width and height of the ceilings. While he could recall some of the rough dimensions of the complex from the schematics, it was an entirely different matter to experience the environment for one's self. Large enough to allow several of the IX-6's to move together abreast...His mind briefly wondered to another design that was in its conceptual stage. Or even one or two Mark Eights...His mind turned to LL-X5, which began to drone.

"Mister Pierre wanted me to take you on a tour of the facility before you saw him."

"Why you, and not him?"

"Well Mister President, because I can converse more fluently and encyclopediacally on droids and their matter of production. Mister Pierre was adamant that I remind you that he is an architect, not a droid specialist."

"I see."

The hallway morphed into a skeletal silver walkway suspended transparisteel tube. Gir immediately guessed it was some sort of observation feature. His guess was immediately confirmed with a cursory glance of a vast array of machinery below him, to either side of him, and even above him. He could see bipedal chassis's that mostly appeared to be the hulking frames of IX-6s, along with smaller chassis not unlike LL-X5, which Gir guessed was the labor droid design used to help build the rest of the complex. LL-X5 pivoted to face the blonde man.

"And here sir, we see the fitting out stage, where the droid chassis are complete and independent units, but they do not have all of their necessary components," said the droid, "if you look to your right, you can see that those IX-6s hanging on the racks are not yet equipped with their weapons. Those arms will actually be attached by those automated hands right there, which will bring out the blaster modules as pre-fabricated sections..."