Chapter 39: Interception

Summary: Seeking to round out their order of battle a bit more, this time in the direction of bigger ships...

Warning! Chapters 37-39 were all released back-to-back! Make sure to catch them all!

Chapter 39: Interception

"Should be any minute now, if the ship is on-schedule."

Izuku nodded, silently acknowledging Aayla's comment even as he kept a close eye on the sensors. After a successful trip to Nubia, they were both glad to be back in action. Even if that action wouldn't be an anti-slaver raid. They had managed to make a deal both for the H-6 production rights and to get a spaceframe design started by the Nubia Star Drives for Mei's construction ships. But both of them were once again sick of dealing with all the business side of things, even if it was important. Instead, they were following up on the idea of acquiring a capital ship, which Tholme had gotten them for little more than a bribe. Sort of, at least.

A verdict about the Trade Federation had come down from the Senate, finally, several months ago. That judgement had, among other things, demanded that the Trade Federation disarm. In the case of its Lucrehulks, the Trade Federation was slowly and begrudgingly stripping them of most of their heavy weapons. Not their fighters, sadly, which was honestly the real danger of the things. But that was irrelevant for the moment. Other ships, ones that had made up a significant amount of the Trade Defense Force that patrolled the Outer Rim as a paramilitary force, were up for different fates. Of particular interest was the Kuat-built Munifex-class light cruiser.

The Munifex was, in a way, actually a bigger bone of contention than the Lucrehulks had been. The Trade Defense Force had a lot of the 300-meter cruisers, and they were heavily armed enough that they absolutely did not comply properly with Russan Reformation rules about legal armaments. Only a few loopholes and even more bribes had allowed the things to be put to use, and quite a few of the Core Worlds had been very unhappy about the Trade Defense Fleet having them. As they were, without question, proper military ships, many of them were also simply slated to go to the breakers and be salvaged for a fraction of their value.

Oh, the Trade Federation was selling as many of them as they could to local defense forces. The laws for which were part of the loopholes that had let them commission them from Kuat Drive Yards in the first place. But there were only so many defense forces that could both afford them and were willing to deal with the Trade Federation. Which, of course, was where that bribe had come in. Tholme has simply bribed the Trade Federation with more money than they'd get from salvage of the ship, to let it 'vanish' unreported enroute to the breakers.

Of course, the Trade Federation couldn't be complicit, so they still had to 'capture' the ship. Which was, any minute now, going to drop out of hyper and be snapped by 'pirates.' Also known as Izuku, Aayla, and a couple teams of Shattered Shackles commandos.

"Emergence! Locus is…exactly as expected. Vector 25 by 119. Get us moving!"

Aayla had responded instantly, even before Izuku spoke. But the words weren't for her. Two gunships full of commandos were with them, and Izuku's comm message got them moving in the Wandering Fate's wake. Even as they did, Izuku saw the power systems on their target ship 'fail' temporarily. They wouldn't have to fight their way in…though they would have to fight the entirely-droid crew. Hence why they brought mostly commandos. With roughly 200 droids aboard, they'd need to work fast to take the ship before its power was 'restored,' but it was manageable.

"Hangar is open, as promised. I already see droids milling about, but it's just B-1s. Should be a cakewalk."

A small amount of blaster fire began to assail the Wandering Fate as it bulled its way into the hangar…but Izuku responded with the hidden belly-gun that Mei had added to the ship. The handful of B-1s went down easily, even as he tried to limit the damage to the hangar. They touched down, and the exit ramp of the ship dropped with far more force than originally designed. A squad of plasma-shield armed HI-Mk3s quick-marched out, followed by two squads of commandos. Thankfully, given that the hangar was powered down and had no atmosphere, their armor was rated for about forty-five minutes of vacuum work by default.

Aayla and Izuku stood quickly, leaving the ship running in low-power mode under the control of a pilot droid rather than shutting it down entirely. Both of them hurried to follow the commandos, Aayla finally in her own attractively-purple version of their combat armor design. Given the need for Vacuum work, Aayla hadn't been able to fight it, and Izuku had hopes that he could get her to use it more going forward, now that she had it. The armor was so custom-fitted that no one else could use it, after all.

The pair exited into the hangar just as the droid security forces managed to respond to the commandos…but they quickly realized they were completely unneeded. These droids were stupid and were taken apart by the commandos and HI-Mk3s quickly. Shrugging, they split up, one of them going with each team as those teams split to head for the Bridge and Engineering. The gunships came in for a landing in the bay just as they all left the hangar and started running into the minimal resistance these droids could put up enroute to those locations.

Izuku, headed to the bridge, felt mostly useless as the B-1s were gunned down before he could even get involved himself. And he could sense a sort of spoiled-fun feeling coming from his lover, as she suffered the same. Had these droids been degraded? Or were they always this useless? Whichever was the case, Izuku ended up needing to use his telekinesis exactly once on the way to the bridge. And that had been less a 'need' and more of a 'why not' when a side door had opened to reveal a confused B-1 that didn't even have its blaster up. Looking around the bridge, he shook his head and moved to the command chair. He inserted the datastick he'd been given and reached out through the bond to Aayla.

"We've got the bridge. Ready yet?"

There was a brief sense of 'wait' that lasted only a bare handful of seconds.

"Yep. I'm ready. Initiating when you do."

He triggered the files on the datastick even as he sent the indication for Aayla to do the same. The dual command codes, issued to the main and backup systems at the same time, took only seconds to override the computers. Moments later, the ship began to come back online. Keying the comm frequency for all the commandos, Izuku spoke even as he ordered the ship to start moving at a quarter sublight, away from its entry point.

"Alright, everyone! We have control. But no assuming there aren't any nasty surprises. Sweep the ship. Nail any remaining droids and check for obvious sabotage. As soon as we're clear, we'll jump to the rendezvous point and give it a more through going over. Op Actual Out."

Even if he was sort of disappointed how easy this had been, Izuku nodded in satisfaction as everyone leapt to their assigned tasks. They'd do a quick pass over the ship here for sabotage. Then a more thorough check of the systems after a short jump, to check for trackers or software backdoors. That would take a day or two, but would make sure they got away clean with their little act of 'piracy…'

... ...

"I'm honestly amazed no one freaked out more about the Trade Federation having these. Twenty-eight turbolasers and 12 ion canons? This thing is a warship not a patrol ship. Izuku, how did they have this thing?"

Izuku snorted at Aayla incredulous tone, even if he did know how, he sort of agreed with her. Still, might as well enlighten her.

"Because the turbolasers are light. The original Kuat Drive Yards specs have them as low powered enough that they only count as point defense. Which is completely legal. Likewise, ion canons are given a lot of leeway for System Defense Forces, since they are legitimately the best way to disable and capture instead of kill. Since these ships were all bought by Trade Federation worlds and technically belong to System Defense Forces…"

Aayla's face twitched and she sighed, finishing his leading thought.

"They became technically legal. I'm betting there is a catch, though?"

Izuku grinned and leaned over her shoulder, tapping the display where she was reading about the ship while the techs looked it over. A few taps brought up the specs for the turbolasers and he pointed to something specific.

"Yep. KDY, in a zealous streak and knowing how the Trade Federation loves robust designs, fitted the turbolasers with robust enough overdesign that they could technically be fired with twice their officially rated capacity. I'm sure a few bribes changed hands that make the official capacity stick. But the end result is that the actual practical stats for the weapons are only slightly under what you'd expect for a capital ship turbolaser installation."

Aayla shook her head. Not in disbelief. Just in disgruntlement.

"I suppose we shouldn't complain, given that it means we have a decent ship to work with. Though, somehow, I don't think Mei will settle for 'only slightly underpowered.'"

Izuku laughed, placing a quick kiss on the crown of Aayla head before pulling back and confirming just that.

"Of course not. She's already busy disparaging half the design and swearing to upgrade everything, starting with the weapons and the power systems that support them. It's a good, solid ship. But the original design is a little over two centuries old. This ship is only a couple of decades old and has been updated twice since original manufacture. But Mei can still do a lot better with a decent refit. Then better still if she uses the design as a basis. Though I'm not sure if she'll do that. I think she's chomping at the bit to design something entirely new. We should probably look into getting her a proper design team."

Aayla nodded, shutting down the display and spinning to face him.

"I've been thinking about that, actually. We've got plenty of talent coming out of the various academies now. Even some junior designers from the Brighter Futures academy on Allanteen VI. But we need someone with serious experience on such a team. Mei, good as she is for new ideas, is still technically playing catchup."

Izuku nodded slowly. As much as he believed in Mei, there were so horrifically many parts to a capital ship that he wasn't sure she could handle building one from scratch. The Defender II had been a major modification to an old design. But the majority of the work had still already been pre-existing in the original design. There was a good reason Mei hadn't tried to make her own spaceframe for the constructor ships. She just couldn't do everything, and that was a major undertaking all on its own.

"You have someone in mind? Or is this just an observation."

Aayla grinned and floated a secure dataslate, out of the pile of such that were being used to check systems, over to her with the Force. A few taps linked it to the Wandering Fate's systems and she pulled up a file she'd been perusing.

"I actually do have someone in mind. I came across a name when I was first learning about the Wandering Fate and didn't think much of it at the time. Only, I ran across it again when we were looking into starfighter designs. Then again when we were researching possible capital ships. Shil Tervo was the original project lead for the GX1 model…and apparently is a favored consultant of Walex Blissex. The later of whom is one of KDY's star designers."

Izuku's eyebrows rose as Aayla presented him with the dataslate, listing the number of projects Tervo had consulted for. It was a seriously impressive range of KDY's more military focused projects. Still…

"Aayla, love…we can't outbid Kuat Drive Yards. Not a chance."

Aayla's grin turned shark-like as she flowed up out of the chair, leaned on his shoulder, and directed him to a spot in the file. Specifically, where it listed Tervo's current employer. It wasn't KDY at all.

"The Lantillain Shipwrights? Wait, why is KDY consulting with another shipyard?"

"They aren't. I did a little digging while we were on Nubia and Tervo is apparently a personal friend of Blissex. Since he's one of Kuat's most important designers, they don't fight him when he wants a personal consultation contract with a designer he trusts."

Izuku was starting to get the picture Aayla was painting.

"Which means that we don't need to outbid Kuat. So long as we don't care if he still consults for Blissex, we only have to outbid his current employers. Assuming he'll even be interested."

Aayla shrugged at that bit, as Izuku finished the brief amount of information she'd managed to turn up on the man.

"We can't be sure on that point. But he doesn't seem to have had a chance to lead anything but civilian projects himself. If we give him a shot as project lead for a military ship, one we have Mei rough out and include some of her own interesting ideas on, he might just bite. We can supply him plenty of junior staff with talent. Plus let him bring in anyone else that he wants to, so long as we can vet them first."

Izuku hummed, thinking for a minute, then nodded slowly.

"It's worth a shot. It will take at least a couple years to run out a full design for a proper capital ship. Mei likes jumping from project to project too much to run an entire team for it, too. If we let her rough out the design, we can then let her jump around to other things, like a visible shipyard that can build them. Plus maybe updating the Munifex to fill more of a heavy frigate role."

Yes. Yes, this had potential. Assuming the man was interested…

... ...

Izuku was having another moment of almost detached disbelief as he stared down at the world of Tyche below him. A world that he, through the relatively newly formed Yuei Conglomerate, now owned. He owned a planet. It was a completely ridiculous idea for an Earth-raised human that had just wanted to help people by becoming a Pro Hero. How, exactly, had that resulted in this? He was grateful for the anchoring touch of Aayla's arm around his waist. Even if he was considerably less grateful for the amusement she was feeling over his reactions. She didn't have to deal with the sudden reality of owning a planet. That last bit must have leaked through their bond, as Aayla giggled and responded verbally too it.

"No, I don't, Izu. That doesn't mean I don't understand how surreal it is. Just remember, the population is under two million and Master Fay already got the locals to sit down and put a functional government in place. You might own the world, but you won't really have to do anything about running it, day-to-day."

That was true. Master Fay had waltzed in out of nowhere (again) and brought the bemused locals together to hold proper elections and negotiate their working contracts and conditions. Those locals, who had been rather poorly treated by LiMerge Power, had been ridiculously surprised to suddenly have a boss that wanted them to govern themselves. Not to mention one who intended to actually pay fairly for their skills. There had been a bit of a leadership imbalance as LiMerge had pulled their more talented people out. But Izuku's other businesses had more than enough people to feed in to take their places. Indeed, it actually relieved some strain on the various businesses, which were starting to overflow with slaves freed by Shattered Shackle.

The end result was some sort of unholy amalgamation of a corporate state, where the corporation had what amounted to a treaty with its workers and others living on the planet. It was unusual, but was looking like it would be effective at both running the planet itself, and managing the industrial plants that were already getting rolling updates. The fact that Izuku had brought in several dozen massive terraforming droids and already set them to work repairing the ecosystem, then gone on to enshrine his continued repair of said ecosystem into the treaty, had only baffled the remaining locals more. Though in a good way, so far.

"Well, at least Master T'ra Saa believes we were in time to reverse the damage to the ecology."

Again broadcasting her amusement at how Izuku's mind was sliding away from the idea of owning the planet by focusing on the specifics, Aayla nevertheless helped him change the subject.

"Yes. And the new IES-Alpha site is already almost up and running. Once it is, we can begin full conversion of the industrial base here and start turning out visible product. The fleet is coming along well, too. Though Mei is annoyed we didn't give her time to fully revamp the Munifex before making more of them."

Izuku shrugged, even as his eyes drifted away from the planet and to the other ships in orbit. A pair of newly-produced Munifexs, joined by four Defender IIs. Add in fighter squadrons from both the Munifexs and the planet below, and no pirate was going to want to poke the planet without a very good reason. It wouldn't be enough in the long run, as the way they'd been hitting the various slaver guilds was eventually going to make them enemies that could field enough ships to overpower the small defense fleet. But for now, no one was likely to connect Tythe to the Shattered Shackle. Hopefully, by the time they did, they would have gotten more of the planned defenses for the planet put in place…

... ...

"You…want me to do what?"

Owing to the fact that Shil Tervo had apparently been just finishing a major design project when they first contacted him, it had taken a several months to get a meeting with the man. That was honestly fine. Aayla and Izuku had gotten the chance to participate in several more mid-to-large scale anti-slaver raids, freeing thousands of additional slaves as more and more commandos graduated from the Shattered Shackle training facilities and their operations scaled up. Not to mention, of course, that they'd been pulled back to Tythe several times to deal with growing pains with their efforts on their new home system.

By the time the designer had gotten in contact with them, they were in a better position to interest him anyway. They'd originally presented themselves through their fifty percent ownership of Evolution Shipyards. Now, however, they'd been able to reveal to the man that Evolution Shipyards was only one part of the Yuei Conglomerate…and that an entirely new set of shipyards was in early construction over the planet of Tythe, which Yuei wholly owned. The combination had been enough to get them a meeting with the man, but he clearly hadn't expected what they'd had in mind.

"We want you to lead a design team working on an entirely new System Defense ship. A heavy cruiser suitable for defense of worlds in the Mid or Outer Rim."

Celeste cooly repeated her words, staring with perfect hauteur at the designer. Despite originally being Aayla's idea, it was Celeste, not Aayla that was present for this meeting. Their need to be taken seriously meant that Izuku's age was working against them and Aayla wasn't any better. Nor did they want the Jedi connected to this. As such, Celeste had slipped back into the guise of a businesswoman, while Aayla was off doing an actual Jedi Council-assigned mission with Master Tholme for once.

"Why exactly are you talking to me about this? I'm a civilian designer."

Izuku snorted and leaned in, taking over for Celeste in his role as the 'project expert.' While he was no designer and likely never would be, by this point Izuku had managed to use his telepathy to absorb a broad base of business knowledge. Not to mention enough starship design fundamentals to at least talk the talk.

"You've also been credited with minor to moderate consulting roles for everything from the latest KDY starfighters to their latest-generation capital ship designs. You've never led those teams, but you're familiar with military design and you have led numerous projects here at Lantillain Shipyards. That makes you a perfect choice to assemble a team to work on a new class. Someone who knows what is currently out there, but isn't locked into that formula."

Tervo's expression had turned to a frown as Izuku mentioned his work for Kuat Drive Yards, but it smoothed into confusion and interest at the last bit.

"Not locked into that formula?"

Izuku grinned and pulled a holoprojector out of his pocket. He set it on the edge of Tervo's desk and flicked it on, the outlines of a ship being displayed with its basic dimensions.

"We happened to have a young genius working for us. Not me, I assure you. Miss Hatsume simply isn't much for people skills, hence why I'm here instead. She's roughed out a new class of ship with several unusual features. But she lacks the attention span to actually bring a ship from theory to full design. I'm sure you know just how many tens of thousands of moving parts a ship of this size requires. Which is where you come in. We have a solid set of engineers and designers, but no one to lead them. You'd be given an extremely generous budget to put together a team with them and yourself as a core. Then allowed to run wild building the ship up around the handful of new systems."

Tervo's eyes drank in the details as the holoprojector cycled through more images, showing some of those systems. His expression grew more interested as the basics of those systems were shown. Though obviously without the detail needed to make them work. His eyes tore away from the display to flicker back and forth between Izuku and Celeste. Finally, he decided to address his next question to the air between them.

"The project is certainly interesting looking. But it's clearly a warship. One that certainly wouldn't be allowed as anything other than a sublight system defense ship."

As it wasn't a technical question, Izuku let Celeste field their response, playing the role of technical interpreter for her business mogul persona.

"If times were different, you might be correct. Indeed, technically, you are still correct as things stand. But I'm sure you're aware of the growing tensions in the galaxy as a whole. The invasion of Naboo a few years ago was a spark, and there have been a number of ugly incidents since then. That, on top of the Stark Hyperspace War and the Yinchori Uprising. The galaxy is growing restless and the Naboo issue in particular was something of a wakeup call for the Mid Rim. Quite a few of worlds that can afford it are trying to buy up the ships that the Trade Federation is being forced to give up."

Tervo's expression hardened. Both members of his audience were fully aware that his focus wasn't on them anymore, however. No, without even needing a nudge toward thinking that way, his thoughts were turning to the idea of violence upcoming. That was…actually a little concerning, given his access to Blissex. Possibly concerning enough to be something they needed to look into.

"You think that the violence is going to spread. That there's going to be a need for full-blown military ships within the next few years."

Izuku felt Celeste reaching out to the Force, seeking guidance for her answer. The moment she did, he could tell she was about to go off their original script…but he could also feel that fact was needed.

"Partially, that is the reason, yes. We believe there is going to be a market for heavier System Defense ships in the Mid-Rim in the next ten years or so. However, we would be lying to say that was the only place we expected to see violence."

Tervo blinked, eyes narrowing as he made a 'go on' gesture.

"The Outer Rim has been growing increasingly discontent with the rampant piracy and slave raids. For all they weren't a great option, the Trade Defense Force actually has suppressed some of the worst of that for nearly 200 years. It's already bad…but the Republic doesn't have the fleets to replace them. So it's going to get much worse. Particularly near Hutt Space where there are a lot of unaligned systems."

Celeste paused, letting him process that. Both she and Izuku realized that they might have underestimated the man as he seemed to be anticipating what she was saying.

"We won't lie to you. There's at least one mercenary company in the area that's taken an exception and practically declared war on the slaver guilds. We don't expect them to be the last, and those systems aren't beholden to the Russan reforms as they aren't actually part of the Republic. We won't sell to slavers. You can find out why with even the most cursory look at our businesses. But we certainly will sell to…"

Tervo raised a hand to stop her.

"You mean that many of these ships may find their way into the hands of the Shattered Shackle."

Celeste and Izuku looked at each other. The man didn't feel at all shocked. In fact, his emotions had sharpened with something nearly like glee. Cautiously, Izuku went with a bit more truth.

"To be blunt? Yes. The Yuei Conglomerate are the primary backers for that group. At least when it comes to ships."

Trevo smiled, with quite a lot of teeth.

"Yes. I ran an extensive background on you and managed to make that connection myself. The fact that you want ships this powerful means you intend to seriously go after the slaver groups. Possibly even the Hutts. Everything else is secondary. That is the only reason I would agree to work on this project. I've denied Blissex trying to bring me into KDY repeatedly, specifically because I'm normally not comfortable with my designs being used for violence. But being used for this. That's something else entirely. Show me what you have and I'll tell you if I'm interested…"

Silently, the Force urging him on, Izuku more fully unlocked the details of Mei's rough draft for Shil Trevo to peruse…

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

A/N: Oddly, the Munifex-class exists, was apparently heavily used by the Trade Defense Fleet...but doesn't show up in the Clone Wars really at all. Even more oddly, it DOES pop back up during the Imperial Era. The conclusion I came to was that part of the Senate's order to disarm must have included the ships, and the TF didn't see them as worth trying to save. Then KDY must have revamped the design and started building them again during the Imperial Era? Regardless, they seem to be a pretty nice little light-cruiser. More of a frigate really. Which was a solid step up for them.

A/N 2: Shil Tervo exists in the EU, but we barely know anything about him other than that he was a friend of Blissex the elder, consulted for him, and originally designed the GX1. I took all of that and added to it to give us a not-entirely-OC designer to work on their first true capital ship design. Which won't actually be seen for at least a couple of updates...

A/N 3: I only mention this once per release, but my stories have a  page where some early access content is available. In example, I just released chapters 40-43 of Displaced Hero there, giving it just over another 15,000 more words which will remain in early access until next month. Similarly, there are at least a few Early Access chapters there for ALL of my stories, though NONE of them are ever permanently paywalled. All fanfiction content I make ends up here eventually, as new content for each story is released.