Design, Fabricate, Conquer, Repeat

[Laira Darkhold]

(Developing Custom Armor)

After leaving Seltos long behind, I need to hit Balmorra to see an old buddy. Benji used to work for Balmorran Arms desgining and building all sorts of weapons and armor, and those are things I need. Besides I need better gear so that I can track down that worthless kark who told me that mine was abandoned and left out the part about it being dangerously unstable.

“Vessel YT24002031283 Requesting permission to land at Sobrik.” I spoke clearly over the comms. Deep into Sith Territory for this run. Even though I don’t intend on causing any trouble and all, its still the Sith, and they didn’t get their reputation because of poor public relations.

“Vessel YT24002031283, Permission granted. Continue of Indicated course.” Took a minute but they cleared me without a hiccup. Good last thing I need to have an angry Sith breathing down my neck.

I turn the Dragon in towards planet and follow the indicated path down to the surface without any issues. Once on the planet, the bustling city wasn’t hard to navigate the city to get to Benji’s workshop. He liked to keep tools and facilities on hand despite being retired, but I don’t really blame him. When you great at something you don’t stop doing it because nobody will pay you anymore.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

I walk up to the door and knock pretty loudly. I know he’s expecting me, but Benji has a knack at loosing track of time. After a few seconds I knock again, harder. I can hear him bustling around in the house and then the door slides open.

“Well look at what we have here. All beat up and nowhere to be huh buddy?” Benji was an old duros with wrinkly pale blue skin and solid red eyes, but despite his appearance he somehow managed to look gentle and kind.

“Yeah, I cut loose you know, thought you might be able to help me out with a few ideas I had bouncing around in my head.” He motioned for me to enter so I stepped into the house. Upstairs I could hear his wife Yara moving around. “I mined some Phrik ore on Seltos and thought maybe you could fabricate it into something fancy for me.”

“I haven’t worked with Phrik in a while now, but I still got the forge that can do it, but why would a man like you want Phrik? Left the Cartel behind? Nero must be crying he lost one of his big bad enforcers.” He smiled as he closed the door and led me into his workshop, which was basically the entire garage for his relatively large habitat block.

“Yeah, left it behind, thought I would start hunting and fighting for more important folks. They seem to pay better than that old slug ya’know” I was joking around, fumbling through rough sketches I had drawn on the way here.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

I hand Benji the drawings and he starts looking through them jotting notes on them and making notes on a pad next to him. Every now and again he muses to himself, but he hasn’t said a word to me, almost like he blocked me out completely. Like he is in some other world, thinking to himself.

After a few minutes I get a little annoyed he hasn’t told me anything yet. I guess I will break the silence. “Well, what do you think?” I said, a little excited a little impatient. I know Benji is smart like a whip and understands all this engineering crap on a whole nother level I can’t even begin to contemplate, but I feel like I should be included in the process.

“Well, you still can’t draw, and ‘bells and whistles’ isn’t a real thing, you know that right? There is a big difference between them and sophisticated sensor equipment connected to a high frame rate holoscreen mounted into a helmet.” He smiled as he looked up from his work. “But yeah I get where you are coming from. You want armor. And you want it to be like walking around in a tank.”

 

[Laira Darkhold]

“Yep, pretty much. But I need to be able to move and hustle around if I am gonna be chasing people through the concrete jungle.” I find that when I talk with my hands he understands better or he just doesn’t keep me in suspense.

“Well for the armor I think we should start at the bottom and work our way up. And by that I mean design what will be worn underneath the plates and such. I’ve got some ideas. How about a Molytex-kevlar jumpsuit? It will be blast resistant and shrapnel resistant, which would protect the exposed areas like upper arms and thighs as well as the joints fairly well.” He started pulling stuff out of a box and began drawing a much better picture than mine.

“I guess. How resilient is that stuff cause, while I don’t plan on getting shot a lot, I would like to be prepared for it.” I could see him continuing to draw, then he colored in the areas that would be exposed and the upper chest and back areas and then labeled them.

“Eighty-Twenty Duranium-neutronuim alloy fiber threading on high priority areas to provide additional protection and energy dispersal for those areas. Sound good to you?”

 

[Laira Darkhold]

“Uh, yeah. I’m not sure how all that stuff works but I guess that’s what I want.” I shrugged. I had tried to keep up with Benji, but now he was starting to go into metal compositions and I had been lost.

“Neutronium has ulta-dispersive characteristics which in theory would disperse the energy and heat from a blaster shot across the entire armor causing little to no effect. But that’s theory and in practice it will help, but don’t bet your skin on it.” He started adjusting stuff on the paper and began writing a list of things beside a notation.

I shifted around, finding a seat. I guess this was the reason I came to Benji. Man is a dang genius when it comes to this stuff, he’s here drawing and the pest I could do was a little better than a stick man.

“I want to include a Power armor liner to the jumpsuit. The liner has a micro energy field projector that disperses physical and blast impacts to keep shock waves from killing you. It’s almost a must these days with all the high explosives being used on the battlefield.” He pulled a small set of tools and began drawing a different picture with separate plates across them. He drew both front and back sets then jotted notes next to each piece, labeling them from what I can tell.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

After about an hour of drawing stuff on to pieces of flimsi he scaned the drawings into a computer and brought up a hologram with the different layers having different colors. The jumpsuit was yellow while the plates to be worn were red, and the person was green on the inside. There was no helmet yet, but Benji knew what he was doing.

“The plates will fit together nicely providing superior protection to your torso and lower extremities, without sacrificing mobility as highly as I had originally thought. Using duranium and phrik we can keep the weight down so you don’t die trying to walk this thing around. But it will take some getting used to. It will be overall heavier than that old clone wars commando armor you are used to walking around in.”

He paused and began plugging data into the computer terminal with little lines of information appearing around the hologram of the armor. “We will do a 90-10 Duranium-Neutronium alloy plate coated in micronized Phrik with a double layer on the exterior and reinforcing ribs of carbon-nanotubes on the interior to assist in meshing with the jumpsuit. That will provide Lightsaber resistance and maintain a strong projectile and energy based protection.”

 

[Laira Darkhold]

At this point I just sit here nodding. I was hoping to be more involved, but so far I haven’t hardly done anything other than give ideas Benji probably already had. He bustled around every which way grabbing things and then adding data to the holoprojector. “Is there anything I can do Benji? I hate sitting here like a third wheel.” At this point I’m just bored, grateful, but bored.

“You can go and get all the materials I will need. I will print you a list of a number of things. Next comes testing with a cheaper material version to test the measurements of the plates and jumpsuit. Stuff like this normally takes a few tries to get it right and Phrik isn’t easy enough to come by to justify using it for testing.” He spoke calmly and printed me out a long list of materials to retrieve from the market area.

I left, leaving him to his difficult work. The list he gave me was enough to make six or seven sets of armor. I mean he did say he would be producing test models, but I didn’t realize he meant for that phase to be so intense. Well, I guess that’s why he’s the expert and I’m the muscle.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

By the time I got back to him with all of the materials on his list, and my Phrik ore he had requested, a trek that had taken me the better part of a week to get all the micro-chips and sensor systems Benji had finalized the prototype, dubbed the Mark One, and prepared all of his fabrication equipment to begin smelting the low grade durasteel for the first real size set, a set that would be scrapped for parts down the line. Seems like a waste if you ask me.

“Now Draco, the first set won’t need any of the bells and whistles as you call them. It’s just so you can test moving around in the plates so we can adjust how they fit to you and how they move when you do. Remember the stages of creation are Design, Fabricate, Test, Repeat, and this is the first step of Fabricate.” Benji began fitting molds around me as he spoke, adjusting them slightly by hand and eye-balling most of the measurements.

“Won’t you need to be specific on those measurements to make sure they fit right?”

“I will use a micrometer once we have the rough set finalized. This is the one I will be using as a basis for the next set.” Benji seemed extraordinarily happy for a retired weapons designer. Most designers are haunted by their creations, or they are violent sociopaths happy they built a giant superlaser.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

With the first set completed he took me out to test arena. The arena was lined in thick permacrete walls reinforced with durasteel rods, I guess to reduce the chance of damage leaking out into civilized areas, but I can only imagine the war machines that could breach these five meter thick walls.

Benji activated a battle droid and began leaving the arena. “Benji, this suit doesn’t have any weapons or anything like that.”

“I know. This is just testing how it moves… and how it takes hits. Best of luck buddy.” Benji smiled and retreated out of the small arena. As soon as he was clear an alarm went off and the droid leaped into action. It dived, rolled, and sprung up like a rabbit aiming to come down right where I was standing. I dove out of the way and rolled to my feet, the plates cutting into me as I did, and came up dodging a blow meant for my sparsely protected head. The droid’s left arm contacted my ribcage hard, causing the armor to rise up and cut into my armpits a little. I grabbed the droid by the head with both hands and spun it to the ground, where I could wrestle with it better. It responded by catching my hands in its vice like grips and squeezing. Surprisingly that didn’t hurt like I thought it should have, but I was forced to stomp on the droid until it released me. I must of smashed its primary processor because it went limp when my foot connected with its cylindrical head.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

“Well that’s why we test isn’t it Draco.” Benji spoke softly but I didn’t care, my sides hurt and my ribs were bruised pretty badly. I was milking it though. My ribs hurt but they weren’t going to explode anytime soon.

“I don’t think it can take a punch good Benji” I said raspy as Yara handed me some blue milk. I gave her a weak smile and a wink to let her know I wasn’t seriously injured.

“Well then we will pad it better and make it fit snugger so it doesn’t move around as much. See this isn’t so bad. Better we know that than you find out with all your Phrik wasted. No lets talk about support systems. What kind of stuff do you want included in this armor?”

“Everything man. Shields, jetpack, internal power generator, powered gauntlets, the lot.” I said with a smile. I envisioned something that could withstand the force of a hurricane and keep walking.

“Well, its not going to be light. Even with a miniaturized Internal Generator, its going to get heavy. That extra weight is going to effect the jetpack negatively. Don’t expect to be flying around all the time, you’ll be lucky to get fifteen good bursts.” Benji began grumbling to himself about attempting to reduce the weight.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Once again back at the testing arena Benji activated that blasted droid. This time moving in the armor didn’t hurt as much, though he was right about it being heavy, and this set hadn’t added weapons, Jetpack, or generator.

“Seems alright to me Benji.”

“Try out that dual shield generator now.” He yelled down at me. I flipped the switch on my hip on and saw the shield expand to cover me in an oval shape. Then it burst out and the projector went up in flames. It actually spontaneously combusted from overheating. I threw off me before it could do any real damage, though there was blackening up my side now.

“Well you aren’t going to be able to activate both shields at the same time,” Benji explained as he inspected the remnants of the shield projector. “They just can’t handle the energy output these days. They don’t make ‘em like they used to.”

He led me back towards our speeder to return to the shop. He kept grumbling about how things used to be. When we made it back to the shop he started working on incorporating the shields and the generator into the armor, deciding to somehow make the jetpack and generator pack into one integrated system. He added repulsorlift coils to the boots providing a form of stabilization during flight, even though the jetpack had a gyrostabilizer. “Those coils will assist in counter balancing the weight making the jetpack feasible in the first place and allow you to actually use the thing to hover if you wanted to.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

It seemed like over the past week we had tested a dozen sets of armor, but Benji kept assuring me this was the last test and it was only test six. We had spent three days arguing over what weapons were ‘reasonable’ and what how I needed to control them. I won, but only barely and only because I was bankrolling the whole project. We were testing out all the systems this time, all the bells and whistles, all in one go.

“Start with the Jetpack Draco, we need to know it can handle all that weight on top of it.” I started activated systems through my HUD. I needed to get used to the blinking to control certain items. Benji had set it to be controlled by eye movements and voice activation, and it even had a control panel built into the left forearm, because I needed versatility.

I started off with getting airborne. The Jetpack could withstand about one minute of flight or fifteen separate four second bursts through the aid of the respulsorlift coils in my boots. Its top speed was lower, in the 120’s instead of upper 140’s, but I could manage. Finally I turned on the weapons systems and dove to the ground activating the flamethrower and rocket launcher simultaneously. I spun to my feet and upper cutted the air extending the Phrik blades hidden within the knuckle plate with each strike. Then I used the dart launchers in each wrist, these darts were dummies but in combat they could be explosive, poisoned, or corrosive. Finally I took off again and tried to activate the shields in air. Still couldn’t handle the powerflow, so it was one or the other until somebody could miniaturize a better generator and we could redesign the thing.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

One whole month gone, and a lot of resources down the drain we set the forge and began to smelt the Phrik. It was easy enough to work with cause Benji knows what he’s doing at the end of the day. It was hard work, even with his fabricator droids doing most of it. Heck just watching them was tiring. The harness I made to go with it was simply leather nothing fancy, and the kama and gorget were molytex to provide some added protection for my legs and throat, but mainly it was just because I thought they looked good. The plates were coated in Micronized Phrik with the outer side given a double layer for added protection. I felt confident in this armor, not like the other hunks of junk I have worn. It felt like a tank shielding me and protecting me from the dangers of the galaxy, and with the myriad of weapons and support systems I was one of those dangers. Plain and simple.