Chapter 100: Meanwhile…
Summary: An interlude for some other perspectives...
Chapter 100: Meanwhile…
At first, Ensign Aleste Greenscale hadn’t been pleased to be pulled off working on the Inexpugnable-class his team had been examining. He’d done well enough as part of the Cadet class from the Naval Engineering course, during the early work on the ship, that he’d been immediately recruited after graduation into one of the teams studying it. As well as the various other ships stolen from Hutt mothball fleets, of course. He’d gotten right back to working on the Resplendent Guardian, this time with more clearance and more people willing to listen to his ideas, after officially graduating. He was, in fact, rapidly coming to be considered one of the best available at analyzing old systems and figuring out how they had worked when they were no longer functional.
It was something he took pride in, and deeply enjoyed, so being pulled off of studying some of the more critical systems of the Resplendent Guardian had initially displeased him. Particularly when they’d sent him and his team to one of a half dozen Harrower-class ships that had been recovered. Yes, the Harrower had been an excellent battlecruiser for its day, though now it would be rated a heavy cruiser at best, even if updated to modern standards. But they’d already pulled one of them apart, practically down to the last nut and bolt, so he hadn’t seen how there was much more to learn from the design.
Not until they’d revealed what had gotten the best and brightest all quietly pulled from their other work.
Now, as he studied the details of the ‘Silencer’ megalaser that had replaced the hangars on this particular Harrower, he understood completely. Where the kriffing hells the Hutts had found this particular Harrower, other than ‘as a floating wreck in Wild Space,’ he hadn’t a clue. There was no question however that the bloody thing was some sort of superweapon. Not a functional one, given the amount of damage to it. Which likely explained why the Hutts hadn’t done anything with it. But with the League’s resources it was very possible they could figure out just how the thing had worked and make a new version. Possibly even an updated and improved version.
Which, given the thing had a similar theoretically power output to the Particle Beam system on the Paladin-class but a much faster fire rate, would be a very desirable outcome. It wasn’t quite what Aleste would truly call a superweapon any longer. The Charged Particle Beam Cannon had a similar output and greater range, and still needed multiple hits against truly heavy modern shields. Anything bigger than a heavy cruiser could realistically tank a few hits from either a Paladin’s PBC or this ‘Silencer.’ Yet, this thing could fire rapidly enough that it would be a very promising addition to the League weapons development program. Doubly so since they could obviously squeeze it onto a Volition-class, whereas the PBCs required a bigger vessel like the Paladin-class to be feasible.
Yes, Aleste could see now why they’d pulled him from his other work, and he no longer minded one bit. Besides, there was a very attractive fellow Rodian with impressive mammary glands working with him now, and she seemed to be interested! Yes, things were looking up, as far as he was concerned…
… … …
Mei hummed as she did final safety checks on her newest baby. She’d enjoyed the little expedition to that Mystery Station. Doubly so since it got her some in-person Izu-dick and Blue-tits! She hadn’t gotten to satisfy her curiosity about the implants and differing anatomy of her Izu’s newest girl, but she was sure there would be more time for that sooner or later. Besides, she did have the files on those fascinating implants and had already spun up a few of her assistant-bots to assess how hard they’d be to replicate. She’d wanted to spend more direct time working on studying them, but she’d had several brain waves while away from her lab and was intent on making her newest Portal Baby work!
Previous versions had run into scaling issues. The small portal that allowed Izuku to play with her fun bits at range wasn’t that power intensive, but the power requirements to scale the portal had proven to be somewhat exponential instead of linear. Previously, even using nearly all the power her Space Station Baby had available, the best she’d been able to make was a man-sized portal. Still very useful, though less than one might think since running too much power through the portal seemed to destabilize it. One of her first ideas, the thought to allow a portal to connect a ship to a planetside power plant, was currently non-viable as the power transmission through the portal destabilized it.
She was intent on solving that problem eventually, somehow, but that wasn’t what she’d had brainwaves about while away!
Instead, those had focused on her other goal. The ability to reproduce the ability to move ships instantly from one ‘Gate’ to another like the original Infinity Gate technology had. The energy source the Infinity Gates had used was…not ideal, as far as Mei was concerned. It hadn’t taken long to realize that there was a reason they transported you between what amounted to pocket dimensions. The type of energy they produced was hilariously lethal to anything organic, and the pocket dimensions had been used to insulate the transiting ship from that energy.
Mei really wanted to get her hands on a Gree hypergate to compare it with, to see if that version of the same idea had a better solution. Yet the few of those that were known to be left were viciously guarded by the Gree themselves, even if the idiots had long since forgotten how to even make them function, let alone actually understand how they worked. Also, there were apparently stories of some Sith using one to unleash some sort of tentacle horrors from ‘Beyond,’ which didn’t sound great.
So Mei was stuck trying to figure out how to reasonably power her Portal Baby so that it was more useful. Either making it small enough to make it a good way to move troops, or making it big enough to allow capital ships to instantly move between what she was tentatively calling Jump Gate Babies. Studying the tech on the Mystery Station, as well as talking with Sithy and getting plenty of refreshing Izu-protein-injections, had sparked ideas for both directions.
Thankfully, her thoughts that the super-useful Isotope-5 stuff could probably be replicated by the Infinite Engine Seeds had proven correct. Better yet, the IES had been able to give her an incredibly detailed breakdown of the stuff, and she was nearly certain she could build a facility to manufacture it artificially. Which was awesome, since it meant she had fairly easily solved the issue with power for a troop-delivery portal. One which she was putting the finishing touches on the generator for right now.
“Bubbles! It’s ready! Cut the power from the station.”
Her most useful minion acknowledged her, depowering their previous person-sized portal. Well, person-in-power-armor sized, at least. She’d designed it to be able to handle at least people in power suits, though you’d never get a Striker through the current version safely. Once she was certain the portal was isolated, she flipped the right switches to get her new and improved Isotype-5 Generator Baby online. Still the size of at least three Meis, it wasn’t exactly small, but both it and the portal could easily fit into something like an armored landing craft. So, if…
“Yes! We’re over the power threshold! Pull the lever, Bubbles!”
The unnecessarily large lever, because presentation is important, was quickly pulled by her chief minion and the portal briefly swirled with unstable light. The lightshow was harmless, even if Mei hadn’t a fucking clue what caused it, and was quickly replaced by a view of the hangar where they’d placed the other portal.
“Yes! Break out the test-dummy body, Bubbles! Momma needs to make sure this is safe! If it is, we can make more people than ever rue the day they heard of Mei Hatsume! The inquisition will continue on schedule!”
For some reason, Bubbles shook her head in exasperation as she got out one of their special test-dummies that included some basic cloned cells to make sure organic shit didn’t go weird when you put it through…
… … …
Esa Rotsino let her normally perfect posture vanish as she slumped into the admittedly sinfully comfortable self-adjusting chair of her office. Seriously, she considered the chair one of the best perks of her current job, one that was almost worth the massive series of headaches said job involved. Depending on the day, the good she was doing sometimes covered the rest of the ‘is it worth it’ question or not. Thankfully, the answer was more often ‘yes’ than ‘no,’ but she still frequently wished she had realized just how deep the water she was diving into was when she’d first been approached for this job.
Oh, what had come out of that original opportunity had given Esa a far greater weight in galactic events than she could have ever imagined. Heck, it was arguable at this point that she may well have eclipsed the influence of her cousin, who represented their home Sector in the Republic Senate. It was a height that she’d never really dreamed of reaching and was now standing astride. Unfortunately, it was a little bit like standing astride a half-tame rancor that had been taught to dual-wield repeating blasters, trying to keep it pointed in a useful direction. All while a bunch of other jealous alpha rancors wanted to steal its toys and learn the secrets of effective opposable thumb use for weapon wielding.
Esa snorted tiredly as she realized how badly that analogy had run away on her.
It wasn’t inaccurate, mind you, so much as a bit too convoluted.
The truth was that, despite recruiting as heavily as she could without tipping their hand before the Crusade started, she really barely had a skeleton of what should be the League’s Diplomatic Corps. Not to mention that she’d had to also handle building up the Media and PR departments, cross linking them with the Diplomatic Corps that she was now officially the head of. She was, very arguably, the single most influential person within the League of Free Stars after Sovereign Midoriya himself.
Which was, to be entirely blunt, an absolutely terrifying state of affairs.
She was very thankful that the Sovereign had somehow managed to win over the ridiculously capable senator from Naboo. Amidala was dramatically easing the strain of trying to field all the diplomatic connections with and demands from the Republic. Yet, despite that, she and her teams were still being run ragged. Less by the Republic, which they’d originally anticipated as being their biggest problem, and more by the state of the various worlds they’d ‘liberated.’
It had been an unpleasant surprise to realize just how badly they’d underestimated the lack of proper government within Hutt Space would be. Intellectually, they’d known that many of the worlds they were ‘liberating’ were basically ‘Hutt sock puppets,’ as Sovereign Midoriya had colorfully put it. What they hadn’t really realized was just how deeply connected any sort of local government control system was to the Hutts. Half the worlds didn’t even have a functioning basic government. No city planning, official police force, barely even any land ownership records that didn’t just list a Hutt clan!
Even the ones that did have more-or-less functional systems were so deeply connected to the Hutts that there was basically zero chance they could leave them in place. All of these worlds were eventually expected to have voting rights within the Liberty Council, or whatever governing structure followed it. Which meant they couldn’t leave gangsters or warlords in control of the local governments, or they’d just end up with ‘Hutt Space MK II, now with a wider variety of scumbags!’
Which didn’t even get into the fact that multiple unaligned or Republic worlds were already tentatively petitioning for membership. The unaligned worlds like Tatooine, Riileb, and Unagin weren’t too much of an issue. Though Tatooine’s location inside of a Republic Sector was slightly troublesome. Bigger problems were border worlds like Daalang and Bimissari that were making inquiries. Both were technically members of the Republic, but well within the 'soft border’ that allowed them to shift between Hutt and Republic control somewhat freely. Something that had been leaning toward the Hutts for decades, with the locals very much feeling abandoned by the Republic as a result.
Sighing, Esa forced herself to sit upright again as a chime sounded, signaling another in-person meeting with representatives from Ilos. At least this meeting was with one of the few bright spots that they’d found governance wise. Ilos and its colony had almost functional governments! Which, unfortunately, meant she needed to spend extra effort on them to whip them into shape. The sooner they could introduce new worlds to the League’s legislative body, the sooner they could stop looking quite so much like conquering dictators…
… … …
Newly promoted Jedi Master Shaak Ti found herself surprisingly pleased to be entering into Hutt Space. Well, former Hutt Space. It wasn’t something that she’d previously have imagined being a pleasant experience. As it was, despite the heaviness of recent revelations, she had to admit she found herself looking forward with a certain eagerness to returning to the Knight Errant.
She had offered to return to the Order, given everything that had been revealed by her actions.
Thankfully, given that she didn’t really feel the Force pulling her that way, Master Gallia had immediately turned her down. As far as she was concerned, the fact that her access to Izuku Midoriya and the League of Free Stars had turned up critical information in the first place was strong confirmation by the Force that it was exactly where Shaak needed to be. The fact that said declaration had come with a surprise promotion, one that had been pre-approved by the High Council and which she’d apparently been on track to receive before she’d left, had come as an additional shock.
Honestly, she wasn’t entirely sure she felt she was ready. Not after having learned firsthand just how much she didn’t know about the Force while working with the other Force groups within the League. Yet, when she’d voiced that very fact, Master Gallia had calmly pointed out that such was only an additional proof she was ready. According to her, every good Jedi Master knew that they didn’t know everything, and that the study of the Force was a never-ending journey.
Shaak didn’t know if she believed that all the Jedi Masters she knew thought like that, but it had been encouraging to hear a member of the High Council put it that way. More, to be able to feel that the other woman had meant it. So she’d accepted her promotion, one which Adi had also pointed out would benefit her new Padawan by giving her firmer credentials to wave at the more traditional Jedi. Honestly, the fact that the Council was moving at all, and taking so many measures, as well as some of them openly saying such things, gave Shaak hope for the overall Jedi Order.
Still, whatever happened with the Jedi Order as a whole, she felt the pull of the Force agreeing with her own desire to return to Izuku and Aayla’s side. Somehow, those two were important to both her personal future and the future of the galaxy as a whole. The fact that she found both of them exhilarating to be around was a nice bonus…even if it was giving her a few idle thoughts about what the ‘personal future’ part the Force was hinting at could be. She certainly hadn’t missed Aayla’s wandering eyes, and Izuku appeared similarly appreciative.
That was a matter for another time, though, if anything ever came from it all. For now, she needed to figure out just where they were returning to. Nal Hutta would be a good first stop. The Ephemeral Dream was still transporting them, but their higher-level clearance codes had expired while detouring to Alaris Prime. They could check in and refresh those at Nal Hutta, and either part from the ship if it was assigned elsewhere, or else continue on with them if they were willing to take them all the way back to wherever their Sovereign was…
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A/N 1: The Silencer was a Sith super weapon in SWTOR. Even within the game's war, it eventually becomes less effective as the Republic develops counters. So it's no longer really a SUPERweapon at this point, but it's still a powerful weapon option.
A/N 2: Mei makes progress with the portals! No, I didn't intend them only to be for kink use. Seriously, way too many people thought I was ignoring the potential there -_-. It's just being developed as a LONG term advantage, not a short term thing to be used in the Hutt Crusade.
A/N 3: Esa is a new viewpoint, but one I think will be helpful in the future to keep some of the politics from overrunning the story.