Chapter 120: Updating the Armory

Chapter 120: Updating the Armory

– Nelvaan Shipyard Complex – 23.8 BBY –

A month after Ossus, Izuku was very much feeling the absence of Aayla, who hadn’t been away from him for longer than a few weeks in years. Yet, he had to admit that the distraction he’d been presented with at the moment was certainly spectacular. While he had had stepped back as much as possible from the remaining, grinding, war effort against the Hutts, the same was very much not the case when it came to new developments from their Research and Development teams. He, more than anyone else, was still the one deciding which projects to prioritize. The logical result of both being involved from the start…and being in the unique position of having used his telepathy to absorb a massive number of skillsets over the years.

He, unlike the vast majority of both the politicians and military minds involved in organizing both the Fleet and Army, actually understood most of the tech involved.

He wouldn’t have been able to create it. There was a vast gulf of difference between simple understanding and the sort of creative talent needed to make even something as seemingly small as a new starfighter project work. Let alone more massive undertakings like a new battleship class, or finding ways to utilize esoteric new energies like those involved in Mei’s Jump Gates or the null torpedoes. Even Mei was, in truth, a nearly horrifying anomaly in just how far she could get almost entirely on her own. Normally, something like her Jump Gates would have taken a dedicated team of anywhere from dozens to hundreds to make happen. Most of his other researchers and engineers were more than a little intimidated by her, truth be told. Nor had Zavra popping up and being nearly as bad, if thankfully in far more limited fields, done their egos any good.

Still, the truth remained that Izuku himself was the right mixture of able to understand the tech, while also having the tactical and strategic skills required to assess what was needed and set suitable development goals. Which is why he’d been spending the last several days reviewing their various projects and prototypes, making decisions related to them. A few had barely needed more than a rubber stamp. The Hero and Sidekick MK IIs, for example, had been specifically designed to address issues discovered when the original iterations had hit the front lines. While the extended range of the plasma railguns was a fantastic addition, the energy torpedoes had proven to be a bit of a dud. Unlike proton torpedoes and concussion missiles, energy torpedoes couldn’t track targets and, as a result, were a poor fit for fighter-to-fighter engagements. The plasma railguns also performed poorly in atmosphere, but that part at least, they’d known about going in.

A new iteration of both the fighter and its drone wingman counterpart had been rapidly worked up as a result of pilot and commander feedback. The Mark IIs retained the two plasma railguns, but dropped the energy torpedo generator for a single proton torpedo launcher and a pair of more traditional laser canons. The single launcher was firing a new generation of proton torpedoes, with better tracking heads and longer ranges, which made them a great fit for the interceptor role the Hero/Sidekick combo was intended to fill. Meanwhile, removing the energy torpedo had left more than enough power budget for a rapid-firing set of linked laser canons that could swivel in a 35-degree forward arc. That swivel ability made them deadly when ranges closed to traditional dogfighting distances, and gave them a solid in-atmosphere dogfighting option as well. It cost a bit of their total punch, making them no longer as well-suited for runs against capital ships, but that was fine.

After all, the H-7 bombers existed, and were a much better fit for that role, with the Heroes and Sidekicks acting as a screen for them against enemy starfighters. Better yet, they’d recently managed to cut a deal with Sienar Fleet Systems for the GAT-12 Skipray Blastboat design. A new team was busily shrinking that design down into a new gunboat/heavy fighter concept that looked promising. If it worked out, it would farther fill the role of a high-mobility threat to capital ships. Specializing the Hero/Sidekick designs as closer to a pure interceptor was perfectly reasonable, in light of that.

Not that the starfighters he’d practically rubber-stamped were what he was looking at now.

No, what Shil Tervo and his aide, a Rodian who seemed quite competent if a bit on the young side, were presenting now? It was the first serious mockup of the new Miruko-class. Having only been under development for around eight months at this point, it was nowhere near a final, polished design. Details like crew quarters or proper mapping of hangar space were barely sketched in. Yet the core of the ship, its frame, engines, shields, weapons systems, energy runs, and other critical pieces? Those were laid out in the mockup with enough detail to stand up to serious inspection.

“I take it the narrower profile is in the hope that Mei manages to expand the Jump Gates to a size that can handle such ships eventually?”

While the 5.2km monster he was looking at wasn’t particularly narrow of profile, it was proportionally more so than the Paladin or Volition classes were. It was still just a touch wider than the aforementioned battlecruiser class, the sheer scale making that inevitable, but it was a lot closer than it would have been, sticking to their previous design paradigms.

“A bit of possible future-proofing, yes. Even if Miss Hatsume has currently hit a wall with upscaling the Gates, that might not be the case forever. Thankfully, with the rather brilliant idea of the ring, we were able to slim down the profile without losing anything. In fact, building it this way will allow a much better firing arc for the Silencer battery. It’s certainly non-traditional, but someone got the idea after digging deep and turning up the Hapan Battle Dragon design.”

Izuku nodded, even if he wasn’t familiar with that ship. The unusually circular rear of the Miruko-class was a little odd looking for a warship. Yet, he’d already grasped what was going on. The clever designer who’d come up with the idea had realized that the actual barrel of the Silencer wasn’t all that demanding, length-wise. So they’d put all the actual power generation and complex plasma interactions in the center of the ring, where it would be better armored and protected anyway, then created a number of emitters that could rotate around the central section. While the rotation wasn’t fast enough to track rapidly-moving ships, it was fast enough to track on other capital ships, or to allow the gunners to shift which angle their fire was coming from in order to keep the emitters under the healthiest section of shields.

The same trick wouldn’t work with their particle beam emitters, since those did require a pretty massive emitter and much longer barrel. Yet the sheer size of the ship meant there was still space for four particle beam emitters along the forward ‘tines’ of the vessel. Between those four particle beams and the rotating battery of Silencer emitters, the Miruko-class was exactly what it was supposed to be, a battleship killer. It had been designed from the start as an answer to other ships in the same class as it, with Izuku under no delusion that something like a Mandator would go down the same way those refit Lucrehulks had over Toydaria. Perhaps, had the rest of the galaxy not looked to be busily arming itself to the teeth, they wouldn’t have committed to such a heavy weight design.

As it was, making sure they had something that could and would devour even other Battleships was only common sense. After all, they would never be able to match the sheer numbers someone like the Republic could pump out, once the sleeping giant got its industrial capacity spun up for a serious war effort.

“Very well. The design looks good to me, Shill. I’m authorizing you to get a basic hull under production as a testbed, as soon as you’re satisfied that you’ve got the fundamentals of the frame down. You’ll used the new Blacksite Gamma for the prototyping.”

Tervo straightened, looking warily at his aide, and was very careful when he responded.

“The Blacksites are ready for construction?”

Izuku’s smirk had teeth as he nodded in confirmation.

“Alpha and Gamma are, at least. Beta hit a bit of a snag, but will be online in another two months.”

Tervo looked ecstatic, even as Greenscale looked confused. Not that he could blame either of them. Shill Tervo was one of the very, very few people cleared to know about the Infinite Engine Seeds, while his aide most certainly wasn’t. He was also, as it happened, one of the even fewer that knew ten percent of the output from the previous IESs had, for over a year, been dedicated to producing a new set of the IES cores.

Such cores were almost ruinously energy intensive to create, with the amount of raw energy going into one of them enough to wipe out a significant chunk of a moon. Worse, there was a lot of Force energy involved, and you had to be incredibly careful and methodical in how that was gathered, lest you end up with something reeking of the Dark Side like the Star Forge had. That was, in fact, what had temporarily halted Beta. All three new IES cores had been created by siphoning Force from worlds with a Force Nexus. The one Beta had been moved over had proven not to be as neutral as they’d thought, and the handful of people working with them, almost all of them Iron Knights, had needed to do some careful work to stabilize that seed.

Now, however, they had three new IES cores. Smaller than the original set, but more than capable of expanding themselves, as well as serving as the core of a new set of shipyards. Specifically, a trio of new ‘Blacksite’ hidden shipyards, which were being constructed around the seeds. Though the shipyard that would go with Beta was lagging behind a few months at the moment. Each of the new shipyards were currently much smaller than the sprawling pair that were connected to two of the original Infinite Engine Seeds. One of which was providing for the experimental designs yard right here in Nelvaan, which produced all of their Toru IIs, among other things. The new yards would expand rapidly now that they were online at all, however, and Gamma had been intended from the start to house initial production of the Miruko class. Right now, the yard only had space to lay down a single massive hull, and just barely at that. Yet that was all Tervo needed to get a prototype under production.

“I’ll get with the Gamma team immediately. There are a lot of custom hardware designs we’ll need to transfer from the…special core…here on Nelvaan. But I’m pleased to hear that they’ll be available. We might just see some of the new class coming online within a year, possibly a year and a half, with one of the Blacksite yards to work with.”

Izuku nodded, pleased to hear it. He could feel it in his bones that they were going to need as many of them as they could get. Which, given just how scary the design was, was not a comforting thought. Sadly, he was fairly certain the feeling was coming from the Force, which meant smooth sailing wasn’t yet ahead of them, even after they slogged through the remainer of their Crusade against the Hutts…

… … …

“Okay girls, what have you got for me?”

Izuku had handled all the new decisions regarding the Fleet and Army over the last few days, but Mei and Zavra had requested a block of his time as well. Frankly, since it was a legitimate reason to get away from the more political aspects of his role, he’d been happy enough to give them a sizable time slot in his official schedule. He hadn’t been particularly surprised when he’d ended up on Mei’s private space station, though he actually hadn’t known that Zavra had been given space here. He’d been aware she and Mei had put their heads together on a few projects, but not that Mei had carved out some of her jealously-guarded private workshop space for the Sith woman.

Said space was an odd mix, half armory and half medical lab.

“Me first!”

Mei, excited as always when it came to new ‘babies,’ pulled back an oil-stained sheet from…a thick belt?

“This is my Personal Energy Shield Baby! Zavra knew the basic designs for the old Mandalorian versions, and I was able to use portal technology to update them to eliminate the fleshy organics problem!”

Izuku blinked, running that through both his Mei Translation Matrix and his own knowledge of personal energy shield tech. He had, of course, looked into it. Aside from the Gungan-made hand-held shields, though, the smallest thing they’d been able to get a personal shield to work safely on was certain mech designs. The problem with them, if he remembered right…

“You found a way to vent the radiation they create through a portal?”

Mei’s head nodded fast enough to resemble a bobblehead doll, and she immediately launched into an explanation.

“Yes! While I still can’t find a way to transfer power via the portals without them collapsing, I realized that most spectrums of radiation didn’t have the same problem! You’ve seen from my first prototype that it only takes a modestly sized battery to keep a small quantum tunnel open for extended periods. So, by creating a system that actively collects and channels the radiation that fries fleshy humans when you use a full-cover shield powerful enough to matter, I eliminated the major issue! Now, you can wear an active Shield Belt Baby for days without getting enough rads to induce medical issues!”

Izuku stared at the belt Mei was now holding up and shaking appreciatively. One of the major tenants of the League’s armed forces from the start had been to keep their soldiers alive and accruing experience. The ratio of droids to organics, as well as good armor and other tactics, had paid dividends in producing a lot of combat veterans for them. A solider who survived a dozen battles became far more deadly than a raw recruit with only bloodless training and enthusiasm. Since they’d known their armed forces were always going to be outnumbered, they’d designed their combat loadouts and doctrine to emphasize preserving experienced fighters. Something that had worked out well for them so far.

Another way to improve the odds that accrued experience would survive each battlefield would be amazing.

“How much damage can the shield take, how long does it last on battery power, and how expensive will they be to mass manufacture?”

Mei bounced in place a bit as she continued to present the shield belt, turning it this way and that. The movement did fun things to her chest, since she’d clearly not bothered with a bra, and Izuku had to tear his eyes away in order to properly focus on her explanation.

“A lot of that depends on how its mounted, of course! This belt can only stop maybe three or four shots from your average blaster pistol, two from a carbine, and just one from a sniper. Which is still enough to let you react! But it gets better with more space for capacitors and emitters. I’ve already reworked the Jedi Bunny armor design with one about twice that strong, and your own hardsuit can easily power a shield three times what the belt can provide, with minimal weight addition!”

Lips twitching at Mei’s name for the girls’ armor, Izuku nevertheless managed to give Mei an impressed look. Mostly because he was impressed.

“Fantastic work, Mei! And the duration and cost?”

Mei rolled her eyes as he focused on the details she didn’t really care about, even if she knew they were sort of important.

“Duration depends on usage. If nothing actually hits the shields? Then the belt can power them for up to twelve hours before there’s a fall off in how much they’ll block, and they can be recharged quickly from most vehicle or combat mech power plants. The Bunny armor is about the same, as there isn’t room for a proper power plant in them. Your hardsuit has its own micro powerplant, not just capacitors. It can power the shield indefinitely at standby, even recharge it slowly, assuming you aren’t sucking up the power with some of its other high-energy functions.”

Izuku made an appreciative noise at that. There were reasons he’d stuck to his hardsuit, despite having needed at least a little reworking of his original combat style for it. Mei, given the higher tech base to work from, had taken the already-impressive equipment she’d made for him as a Hero and turned the dial until it broke right off. If not for most of it being produced by one of the IES cores, the current iteration would legitimately cost enough to buy a light cruiser.

Sure, most of that was because of the Phrik used in it, but not all of it. Mei had, for example, gotten her hands on some of the rare nanotech from a Core World and designed in a medical suite that could do a remarkable amount to keep him alive if something overcame the armor plating. Nor had she skimped on finding a miniature reactor for the suit. It wasn’t quite small enough to squeeze into the ‘Jedi Bunny’ armor, which was lighter and more agility-focused. But his hardsuit had just enough space for it, which was also part of why it had a multi-day vacuum rating.

“Excellent work, Mei. Though I note you still haven’t covered the cost.”

Mei sighed, looking cross. It was actually Zavra that answered.

“Unfortunately, the portal tech requires incredibly high precision parts. That drives costs up, to the point that even the shield belt is easily 15,000 credits per unit. On the plus side, the cost is all in the miniaturization. So scaling it up for use by at least our Power Suit troops is completely reasonable. The Power Suits easily cost in the 35,000 credit range already, so adding something that will increase their survivability will be a net positive despite the extra cost. Same for the Strikers, and the larger mechs already have shield systems that cost just as much. This will just be an improvement on those.”

Izuku winced, doing his best to hide the disappointment. It wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t cheap enough to justify every flesh and blood soldier getting one. They already spent far more than any normal army did on loadout for their troops, in order to push the quality over quantity aspect with their actual sentient soldiers. Still, it would be a justifiable extra expense for at least their commandos and other elite troopers, and they might eventually find ways to bring the cost down.

Mei never focused on that part of things, only on making the best designs possible. As a result, focused research teams that took up her projects and adjusted them for mass manufacturing often managed to find cheaper ways to make her designs work. Though he firmly insisted any such design changes still met spec. Cutting corners was not the way to preserve your fighting strength, and virtually always cost you more in the end than what you saved.

“Anyway, my turn!”

Brain whiplashing as he went from thinking logistics back to Zavra. As the Sith woman’s energy started to match Mei’s when she had a neat ‘baby’ to show off, Izuku let himself be dragged off toward the medical part of the workshop. There, Zavra pulled another, far cleaner and fancier looking, sheet off an entire workbench. The results of the reveal made Izuku blink, then have an ‘ah-ha’ moment as he computed what he was looking at.

Cybernetics.

Not all of it was obvious cybernetics, a fair few things he had no idea what they were. Particularly a set of horrifyingly large injectors he personally wanted nowhere near him. Still, the fact that there were cyberarms, legs, a spine, and several other bits, made it clear what the theme was. Zavra was looking just as proud as Mei always did as she started talking them up.

“Combat cybernetics! It’s taken me some serious time to update the designs I was familiar with…as well as updating the horrible mockery of the many augments that barely exist in this time period! Seriously, a lot of the modern stuff is so much worse than what I was used to working with! Still, there were certainly some material science and processing power improvements that let me take a lot of these designs to new heights. As well as, admittedly, some better medical tech that prevented them from being horrible war crimes to install in people!”

Izuku cringed at that reminder, having fully read the details about how chancy some of the Sith designed cybernetics had been. Not Zavra’s. As the Empress’s Hand she’d gotten the best of the best. Though even hers had frequently involved a great deal of pain when they were installed, with someone often needing to be awake during the procedure to help map nerve graft reactions. Thankfully, from what he knew of modern prosthetics, that part, at least, was no longer needed.

“Synthetic bone grafts, hormone regulators, biomonitors, muscle and bone lace, skin weaves, subdermal armor, reflex enhancers! Then there’s the more serious packages that also include cyber-eyes, spinal replacement to handle nervous system acceleration, and arm and leg replacements that add anything ranging from strength to hidden weapons! I’m not done yet, I think I can make a lot of these better still, but what we have already offers the chance to turn some of our elite units into true super soldiers!”

Izuku was…torn. On the one hand, this might be crossing some ethical lines. On the other, if they used only volunteers and the project was safe, they could genuinely create a terrifying special forces group using augmented cyborgs. It was something he was going to have to get expert advice on. Both from the military and the League’s ethical operations department. At least the renderings of the complete installations that were showing on the screen above the bench full of cybernetics showed that serious thought had been put into the cybernetics being aesthetically pleasing.

These weren’t ugly, misshaped limbs, but hardware that could pass visually as normal. Which honestly put them above what a lot of existing replacements that were available outside the Core Worlds were like. At the very least, civilian versions of Zavra’s designs would be a massive boon to the League’s medical community. Slaves missing random body parts, often the result of either horrible working conditions or being ‘punished’ by their masters, weren’t exactly rare in now-former Hutt Space. If they could set up mass manufacture of civilian versions, they could even become an export that many worlds in the Republic would be interested in.

- Lime Starts Here! -

Of course, just as Izuku was mulling that over, Zavra piped up again with a huge smile on her face.

“Oh! And I had the chance to reproduce some of my fun implants, too! Watch!”

Zavra produced a controller from her cleavage and pointed it at Mei…who immediately moaned and grabbed at her groin. Not that the action would do much, of course. Unlike even Aayla, who considered her collection of chastity belts a fun ‘sometimes adventure,’ Mei had retained her portal chastity belt. With more forgiving settings, yes, but she’d insisted on continuing to wear it, declaring it ‘much more efficient’ than other methods. Personally, Izuku suspected a huge chunk of her reasoning was the very Mei-like desire to ignore certain hygiene and personal needs.

The box for his end of the portal device she’d connected her long-distance chastity belt to kept her intimate bits clean with regular sonic blasts. Not to mention that it dealt with waste by vanishing it into the reverse-side of the portal, which effectively banished it out of reality in a similar way to how null torpedoes worked. Mei, predictably, loved the ability to skip bathroom breaks and keep inventing. Not to mention that the belt was still set up with a ‘reward’ system that helped her focus on her inventing tasks. That she was also the most frequently separated from the rest of them and it let them have ‘fun’ at long distance certainly didn’t hurt, either.

Of course, the medical droids now had an override code.

Which was presumably how they’d put whatever implant was currently making Mei moan in place without Izuku getting involved.

“Mei was super interested in my fun bits implants! She volunteered to test the modern versions we made for human use, though now that you’re here I’ll have to switch them from the remote control to your Force signature like mine are! It will be more secure that way.”

Half ignoring Mei, who now had her hands under her tank top and was mauling her own tits, Zavra turned to bring up a nude image of Mei. With a few commands, the image was overlain with details of multiple implants that had been installed. The first thing he noted, to his own considerable relief, was what was absent. They pair had not, in fact, jumped straight to the specialized nervous system graft/neural blocker that acted as a control on Zavra’s ability to cum. That particular implant was incredibly finely tuned to Zavra’s biology and connected directly into her brain. Duplicating it for any other race would mean starting from nearly first principles and working forward, and the thought of them recklessly installing a prototype of such a thing in Mei was stressful enough that he’d looked for it first.

Thankfully, it wasn’t present, and he focused on what actually was after he confirmed as much.

The answer, as it happened, was that most of Zavra’s piercings and their related implants had been duplicated. Nipple and clit piercings, connected to implants that, combined, could induce temperature changes, vibrations, and a wide range of direct nerve stimulations, were the most obvious. Somewhat more extensive were a series of nerve signal boosters and dampeners that could modify skin sensitivity. That was actually quite a bit more extensive of an implant, but a relatively safe one, since there was plenty of modern medical data on nerve signals. You couldn’t really make a functional prosthetic with a working touch sense without that particular bit of knowledge, after all. The application here was simply far more widespread for the general fully-body skin sensitivity controller that Mei now had. More interesting, from a medical perspective at least, was that they’d clearly dipped into medical nanotech to beef up some of the nerve trunks in Mei’s body so they wouldn’t risk overload.

That was definitely something he’d have preferred they tested a lot more before using it on Mei. Probably. Technically, he didn’t know if they had tested it on others first. Mei likely wouldn’t have hesitated to test it herself, but from what little he knew, Zavra took after her former Mistress. Specifically, with a tendency to test on others first. Whether or not they’d managed to get the importance of doing so ethically across to her or not was a bit more up in the air. It was something he made a mental note to check on…later. Right now, Mei had lost all of her clothes but her chastity belt and Zavra was cheerfully handing him the remote control for the implants they’d installed.

Letting himself give into the inevitable, he accepted the controller…and reached out with the Force to turn some of Zavra’s implants on as well. She stumbled in getting her pants off as her clit piercing went ice cold and her nipples abruptly felt like they were submerged in dripping-wax hot, with both pulsing vibration patterns in opposite time to each other. Grinning as he watched Zavra start moaning along with Mei, stumbling over to pull the pinkette into a deep kiss, Izuku quickly went to work on his own clothes.

Sexy fun now. Figure out how much to yell at these two idiots for being reckless later, once he figured out just how reckless they’d actually been…

- Lime Ends Here! -

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ..

A/N 1: Some tech updates! I actually designed the Hero/Sidekick to be flawed in the first place, specifically so I could show a 'natural progression' of refining the design. As for the Skipray Blastboats, I've always felt those were a pretty nice design that never really gets properly utilized. Though the League's version will, of course, not be the same ship by the time they get done reworking it.

A/N 2: Infinite Engine Seeds. I don't want to make these TOO broken, which is why I made it time consuming and difficult for them to make more of them. Yet, they are still pretty much the only way that the League is going to have enough industrial capacity to keep up when the Clone Wars happen. Hence the expansion happening now, so that those additional shipyards will be online by then.

A/N 3: I actually intended this chapter to have a full lemon, instead of a lime, but it turned out to just not quite segue smoothly. Hence the fade to black version. The next release has a proper date and lemon featuring Zavra, since she's gotten the least overall attention so far.