Don't Hit Me

[Laira Darkhold]

Benji had a plan to build something fancy for his new project, something he had assured me I would fall in love with once it was completed. In the mean-time he sent me on an errand run to retrieve to ancient tech from Borelias. The planet was aptly named as I was already bored to death just arriving in the system. It was a Republic held world so I wasn’t in any real danger, though it was at the Sith Border and no doubt in the future would fall under attack. That’s why it was important I strike now, and take what we needed quickly and leave this dust ball behind me as quickly as I could.

I received permission to land on the surface without any trouble; I was after all a member of the Galactic Republic Military and in good standing with the forces there. Hell, I had helped spearhead the forces on Terminus and had engaged the Hand of the Dark Lord before. I quietly told the air traffic controller that I required to land out near the abandoned New Alderaan facility on the coast. It would provide me the best chance at finding what I was here looking for. He didn’t need to know what I was after, just in case he decided to tell people about what I was up to out here in the first place.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Heck, I didn’t much know what I was looking for, but sure enough when I walked through the hangar there was the remnants of a long lost X-wing. Once the most beloved and feared Starfighter in the galaxy, the one that destroyed both Death Stars, and dominated the stars for almost a hundred years with only minor improvements and technological advancements. Even now there were X-wings running rampant in the galaxy. A tried and true ship of elegance and precision, and I was here to cannibalize it for parts for an ugly beast of a vehicle that would bring a new age of war to the galaxy. But here I was, on Borelias standing in a facility that hadn’t been used in eight hundred years, not the time to get sentimental over a snubfighter.

Time to get to work. It was relatively difficult to find all the components Benji had wanted me to strip from the vehicle, mainly the shield generator system and the cryogenic power cell so that he could analyze them and miniaturize them to fight a significantly smaller tank, but I wasn’t exactly sure what all was what, even with the assistance of a hologram telling me what to remove and what to detach from the main system.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Three hours of pulling this ancient X-wing apart finally resulted in the prize I was after. I struggled to pull the large Chempat “Defender” shield generator from the hull, even with the assistance from a single person pulley lift; I was struggling to heft the heavy unit from the Starfighter. I was forced to use assistance of my electromagnetic boot soles in order to maintain purchase on the ground to lift the thing out, and swing it across to place it gently down on the ground. “Whew, I’ll get a loader droid to help me get it on the ship, but for now I got more work to do.” I said to myself, confident and pleased with my progress.

Another hour yielded the sensor system, as corroded as it was, and the targeting computer in relatively decent shape. These bad boys dominated space warfare so much that this tech might be able to easily give vehicles on the ground an edge. Even though this was important I couldn’t help but think that I needed so many other things for me to better combat the Sith I would encounter on the ground. I guess that’s a mission for another day though.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

I went and retrieved a loader droid to carry the heavy shield generator module while I carried the relatively small sensor array and targeting computer back to the ship. Not a bad haul for a mercenary with a small company. Wasn’t especially hard to find, just had to search some of the places where lots of battles took place and not a lot of clean up, like Coruscant or Bilbringi and these things were everywhere. After a few more minutes of nostalgia I climbed aboard and prepared to leave this planet behind. I commed into air traffic control and said I would be leaving the system as soon as I could get airborne, it didn’t take but a few seconds for them to clear me to leave. I wasn’t famous, but I was known by small circles in the military for not dealing with bureaucrats and giving soldiers the kit they needed, so most grunt officers knew of me and liked what they heard about me. A few minutes later I was up, leaving the atmosphere in my old YT-2400 light freighter, and a few minutes longer and I was out past the gravity well. I figured I could call Benji and let him know I was on my way back, but I was feeling lazy and figured I could just let him know I was back when I got back.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Several days of space travel, through Hyperspace for the vast majority of it and some small bits through real space, I arrived back at Jabiim, far from orbit. Now’s as good a time as any to let Benji know I’m back with his junkyard gold, but first better get cleared to land. “This is YT-2400807 requesting permission to land at ArmaTech Facility ground control, over.” I said into the comm. A few seconds later a reply came with a short burst of static.

“All clear for landing vessel YT-2400807, come in at your leisure.” The ground control tech said to me. Cool I had easy access to my own air space. I would have to talk to them about getting standing clearances to come and go in the near future.

Alright time to let Benji know I made it back in one piece with his equipment. I flicked the comm-channel to the buildings primary channel. “Hey Benji, I made it back with your Junk, just thought you would want to know.” I heard several bursts of static, mostly likely him just being to flustered to properly use the thing.

“Oh, you have finally returned to your bread winner with my requested technological mechanisms, have you? Well good, it’s about time you started pulling your own weight.” He said laughing as he did.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

My ship touched down on the landing platform only a few minutes later, rain drizziling lazily over the hull and making a soft soothing patter against the metal. It seemed to have lightened up today, that’s good. These full on lightning storms aren’t very nice, but good soft rainfall was always relaxing for me. I had the lifter droid carry the heavy shield generator and threw a small tarp over it to protect it from the rain, just in case, while I carried the other equipment in a sealed case down the ramp of my ship. A short few paces through the rain put us into the reception area. I guess having a woman around cleaned it up a bit, as most of the clutter had been removed and there were two blue couches to sit in the room now. “Kira set all this up?” I asked walking into the building as Benji met me at the door.

“Not surprisingly, yes she did. As this is where most of our potential clients will come to meet with us, she felt it necessary to look presentable.” He told me as we walked into the workshop adjoining the reception room. The workshop had the benefit of being sound-proofed, but it was just as cluttered and grimy as before. I guess Kira couldn’t exactly work miracles.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Benji got to work straight away analyzing the shield generator and the power core. He had some kind of plan going on. “Well it certainly has its limitations, and won’t be highly effective when trying to power a primary weapon like Magnetic Accelerators or extreme power laser cannons and the shield projectors,” he muttered to himself. He was planning on strapping this thing to a tank and unleashing it on someone in battle, much as had been the theme for the past several weeks of development. He often mused to himself as he worked and it was good for me to understand all this information in order to properly sell the technology to potential clients so I tried to work closely with him. “I guess I can strip out all these braces and rework it to be cylindrical rather than spherical to properly sit in a vehicle chassis without much wiggle room, even still somethings got to go here.” He continued, working on a hologram projector. Or I could put in a small dedicated power generator in front of the projector and stifle more energy to it when necessary. Yes, that’ll work. It won’t be powerful while only using the dedicated energy cells, but it will be enough to stop the likes of blaster cannons for a few rounds. Once powered to maximum it could survive direct hits from other anti-tank rounds as well.” He started grabbing at pieces on the actually device now.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

I decided I could interject at this part of his artistic process, before he got going too far. “What do you mean it won’t stand up to anti-tank weapons normally?” it was a big issue and required and explanation in my opinion. If it couldn’t protect the tank what was the point.

His head turned and he looked at me stopping working on the module. “Draco, power for all vehicles is limited. Four laser cannons, a drive system, and a shield generator in space and the pilots still had to pick between defense and offense sometimes. So no, at normal running power this won’t protect against an enemy vehicles primary anti-tank weapon well, but it will either bleed power from the round or absorb energy from the blast before failing. But it will stop Blaster Cannons and some laser cannons. It will protect against Starfighters strafing the vehicle fairly well, and will protect ground troops in close proximity. You can’t have it all. That is the limitations of technology, there isn’t small enough or powerful enough generators to do it all.” He said, pretty seriously and pretty certain of himself. It was hard to argue with experience and knowledge without looking like a complete idiot.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

I decided my concerns were properly evaluated and figured it was best to let him continue as he will. “Please, continue then old man. I just have to ask when stuff like that gets brought up. Knowing it will help the vehicle last longer is good enough for me.” I nodded and took a seat nearby, so I could watch the process and be there if he needed help with anything. He went straight back to work, removing brackets, braces, and anything else not vital to the operation of the shield projector.

He started mumbling to himself after a few minutes, “hmm, that’s how they got it to utilize both particle shields and ray shields at the same time. Interesting. I won’t be able to use this device, but I can fabricate all the components in the layout I want, based off this.” His mouth hung partially open as he continued to inspect the device. “If I use twisted power couplings to form the cylindrical body, I can reinforce the dual shields and allow for one to be overpowered in exchange for dropping the other. Yep, that’ll work nicely.” He put down his tools and went back to working on the hologram projection, altering it to fit the image he had in his head.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

He continued working on the hologram projector for most of the day, then turned in for the night with several of the machines running to produce the parts for the shield generator while he slept. That morning surprisingly I awoke before him and had breakfast with Kira, telling her about the massive project in the works. She was interested for sure, but she wasn’t specialized in this kind of work, however she was able to work on something else for me, a sensor suite and communications array to go in a separate package for vehicles. That was work she could easily handle and wasn’t half bad at. I guess that’s my purpose around here, get rare stuff, come up with ideas, negotiate contracts, and give out assignments. Not bad for a mercenary who spent times behind bars.

When Benji did awake he was in good spirits. “Just assembly today buddy,” he said with a smile as he walked into the kitchen. “We can give it a good testing later, but for now, just putting the whole thing together and turning it on should be good.” Shortly after he finished his breakfast and he and I were hard at work putting the large array together. After about three hours of hard work, Benji flipped the controls and powered on the shielding array. “There, we are standing in a shield that can stop a turbolaser given the chance, he laughed.” I didn’t exactly want to test that theory with my life on the line though. “It can’t utilize Particle shields though. That was just too much of a power drain ya know.” He finished, happy with what he had wrought.