Malagarr System, Pef Empire
Core Diamond
15 BBY
'And to think we had an Abominor droid to examine, this close.' I mused with a sad tone.
'Exactly Emperor. This Great Heep you found on Coruscant is really special. Don't be so disappointed.
I still can't understand 5% of its energy components, or the way it is supposed to transform into various shapes. It is utterly alien and bizarre. Parts of it are simplistic, and a few parts so advanced to confound even my superior intellect' Core replied with a serious emote, to show he didn't like his intellect being baffled.
'Well, keep in mind that form follows the intended function, which for this droid model was possibly to combat Silentium droids and build an advance base for other combat droids. I call this type of droids Commanders. They are supposed to be a little special' I explained with a virtual shrug.
'Ah, makes sense then Emperor. Draining other droids of energy, and using whatever tools it could find to continue its primary mission. And very cheap to mass produce, and seed billion of planets with similar models. A marcosale nano-bot. In fact, if miniaturized a dozen magnitudes, it could serve as prototype...you're not happy with this idea' Core realized as my fist clenched.
'Absolutely not, Honored Hand. Using Abominor designs for anything would bring us in conflict with the Silentium. Also, very possibly expose our galaxy to another plague, difficult to contain.
They did manage to ruin at least one other galaxy, these Abominors. What I want is their tech deciphered, the science behind it understood, and counter-measures created. At least five separate types of counters, from cyberwarfare, ionization bafflers, nano-deconstructors and whatever transmutations you're hiding on PXS/00088877771, which I will call Coreforge to keep it simple.' I said with a hint of amusement.
Let him know his secret projects weren't actually so secret. My Third Hand was too good at his job.
'Kriff, I was certain I kept that star system completely compartmentalized. I can't have any privacy, can I?' Core complained, a bit too late.
'You can try. Now, the Lugubbra. Any working ideas?' I asked curious.
'I have several, to test on lifeless systems, lifeless beside the worms. There is a certain alkaline salt that will prevent the Lugubrra from digesting anything, by neutralizing their stomach acids. Still needs more work, as well as a means to disperse a cloud or a nebula of particulates over an entire star system, including the cometary cloud. For a smaller volume, like an asteroid belt, I believe particle shields pulsing from a Lucrehulk or other large transport vessel should suffice.'
'Hmmm, starving the voracious eaters. I like it. We'll be able to collect their skin and teeth intact and reuse them as tank ablative armor and threads. We could upgrade a thousand tank divisions, just by farming an infested asteroid belt...' I mused, mentally rubbing my hands.
'Yes, we could, and have our droids looks positively scary, by wearing the scalps of our enemies. This seems a bit cruel Pef' Dora whispered in the bond, confirming my previous declaration about lack of privacy.
'Do you want to negotiate with the tank-eating Lugubrra?' I asked curious. They did eat our first 30 tank divisions, before we adapted our tactics. Keep moving and firing, tank threads are harder to bite if they move. Live and learn.
'Errr. Actually, I do have some documents to file and records to keep. Sanctuary doesn't rule itself you know?' Dora replied with a 180 degree change in attitude.
Huh, even knowing she'll be reborn, and still lacking the courage to go pet a Lugubbra on its cute head?
Although, to be fair, some very old Lugubrra did gain a type of sentience, and were commanding the younger worms with some attempts at tactics, not just zerg rush.
There were even rumours of Lugubrra using weapons and ships...but that just made them even scarier. It meant they could spread to other worlds, if even one in a trillion of the worms got smart enough to push a random hyperjump button while eating the crew of some ship.
However, in asteroid fields they were easier to exterminate, simply by melting the asteroids. Took time, but as long as the ships kept a safe distance, the worms were too slow to reach the ship.
And the other curse, the Mnggal-Mnggal was much worse still, able to infect creatures and disguise itself, capturing ships and crew, and then playing with them in cruel and sadistic ways.
Luckily, the force detectors worked fine to sense the change in alignment, always black.
We'll have to sweep all the former Galactic Navy ships and crews and root out force-sensitives, or dark jedi or those infected by this parasite.
It will take time, and expanding the crystal mining on Mimban, but so will imprinting the crews with the new laws and regulations as well as a high school education.
In effect, all navy crew will become two star Imperial Servants, while the captains and higher ranks will be three stars.
They used considerable amounts of firepower in their jobs, and I wasn't going to let them become warlords or corrupt.
I should also implement a two star program for all ship crew on civilian ships. Call it, mandatory re-qualification.
At least all the ships' crew flying through the galaxy will be forced to know the basic laws and get a free education. Which will mean at least a thousand such Imperial Navigation and Customs Training Centers, on all the large trade worlds.
And also capturing many pirates and criminals hiding between them, and detecting more force-sensitives.
Yep, should work. We'll start on the outskirts of the galaxy, and figure out what problems appear. Possibly learning basic should be the first lesson in the curriculum.
But hey, at least the galaxy will get the same culture, at least for those travelling the stars.
Hmmm, and the same two stars for the new World Senators, when they get elected. They will be public officials, so they should have an education and know the laws. Their delegations as well, should at least understand what the Emperor is saying.
While the Sector Senators...yep, they will wield powerful weapons too. Three stars for those.
Extra courses for economy and diplomacy. No more incompetent Senators, easily swayed to corruption or voting for populist measures, like loans with 25% interest.
This will all take time, and cost money, and be resented a little. But that's civilization.
'Kriff. You mean to have all of us take the three star imprints' Asajj realized with a sudden fright.
'Of course, dear Voice. What university did you finish, to yield enough power to smash planets or conduct diplomatic negotiations?' I asked rhetorically.
As it happened, only I had finished a university from all those leading the Empire. And I kept learning billions of manuals on every possible subject. I kinda had to, to be able to understand what was going on in my Empire.
'Just don't fry my brain, or shave my head. As cute as Dora and Lira are, if you shave my head I'll divorce you' Wialu said with a joking tone. She wasn't really joking then.
Aur system, Galactic Pef Empire
High Orbit.
15 BBY
Seems other races had similar tech to our own, as Aur IX and Aur X planets are actually made of diamond. The eleventh planet was a diamond as well, but something smashed it, resulting in a huge asteroid belt, made of diamonds of course.
Don't litter the galaxy with diamonds, whoever did this! Just the cloud is worth 100 times the entire reserve of the Galactic Bank, if not more.
Well, at least I know what I'll use to construct the new galactic capital at Commenor.
Gates and chairs, skylights and windows, protocol droids chassis, stairs and balustrades, pots for plants...Bena won't be able to ever say I was cheap eh?
And the small bits, the ones finger sized or less, will be used to absorb all the credits from the black economy.
Hutts love gems after all. And bounty hunters and other criminals, worried that credits can be traced.
I'll bury the Hutts in diamonds, then reveal how worthless they are...they'll lose their empire in a year, and revert to their core worlds, some 30 planets around Varl.
The Bothan and their spy network as well, I'll buy them out, using space rocks.
Hmmm, with a bit of precision shaping, I can upgrade all our Meteor's shells and the capital ship's missiles with diamond tips. Should increase armor penetration by 112%, so really worth it.
Perhaps, even the new Exitus rifle used by Officio Assassinorum. For regular targets, diamond tipped bullets fired from silent magnetically powered rifles should work. And for force-users, I already made Lignan crystal tipped cortosis covered bullets. As soon as the bullet touched the sensory net of its target, the lignan pierced mental defenses, while the cortosis shortcutted force-protections and gave the projectile sufficient mass to pulverize the brain.
Not even one of the latest recipients of divine justice had survived. Because proton torpedoes were a bit high colateral, especially in places with many civilians like shaman yurtas or various temples. The Exitus bullets were really effective.
Just, kinda 100 times more expensive than a 1000 credits proton torpedo.
Cortosis was rare, and lingan even more. Still, 76 of the 78 bullets used so far were recovered. We did have Findsmen after all, and the Vindicare assassins had their own escorts to keep them safe and on a leash.
Okay Centerpoint, start teleporting all the small diamonds into the cargo bins.
A trillion credits worth of diamonds, per each large cargo bin, and I only have a million of these bins...
Kriff, I don't have enough do I?
Nevermind, I'll bring the rest to Solanus and Core, they can use diamonds for whatever projects they work on.
'Don't forget to pamper your wives with a box full of diamonds. Damn rich droid...' Asajj muttered, somehow upset.
Right! Diamonds for the girls!
Ah, the Avatar will be swimming in love for a month. Bitches love diamonds!
'I love Peffy anyway. But yeah, get me a box of diamonds and you get another baby' Dora said with an adoring tone.
'And don't forget about Aurra and Na-Jia. They need love and diamonds too, not just stealing for a living' Lira advised me wisely.
Huh? Those two were trillionaires already, 'liberating' credits from every single corrupt or criminal...whatever.
If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
A gift will be liked anyway, and Peffy will enjoy more love. Not that he wasn't right now, with Bena trying to get pregnant, 6 hours every day. Could have told her it worked on the first try, but she did her best, so why not enjoy it?
It was called a honeymoon, after all.
'We can upgrade the Paladin's armor with trauma plates made of diamond. Especially the helmets and the thighs, since those are the most targeted spots when dealing with resistance or terrorists' Solana said after a minute.
Hmmm, someone was also learning from statistical analysis. But no, diamonds would shatter on kinetic or shockwave weapons, only serving as shrapnel.
'We'll test on the droid thighs. But it won't work very well, I can tell even now. We'll use graphene layers and diamondoid hexa-plates for the helmets. And when Core is ready, we'll switch to quantum-locked plasteel. In a few years. For now, a single armor suit would cost a trillion credits, as every single atom has to be bound in a entropy lock field, individually.' I explained with a simulated shrug.
New technology is expensive, untill you learn enough to mass produce it. Nothing new.
Even Peffy's armor only had a micron-thin mesh of quantum-locked plasteel inserts, and another layer of hexa-plates made of molecular-bonded phrik. And it cost a few billions to make and a whole year of experiments.
What? I took care of my Avatar! I wasn't gonna let some primitives stab him with their spears or nail him...
So, diamond collection finished, for now. Let's grab a thousand or so larger diamond asteroids, and jump.
Planet Sol XIII, Pef Empire
Tranquility sea
'Hey buddy, any luck with those hyperdrives?' I asked Solanus, a little curious.
'Yes, Immortal Pef. I can reproduce them now, for 0.5 speeds. And I made this ship for your Avatar, using the original drives, repaired and refurbished, with the latest materials. It should work at 0.35 speeds.'
Ouch, I forgot how loud he talks in person.
But new ship! And faster hyperdrives! Excellent.
A strange ship popped out from the sea, perhaps 70 meters long, the prow being a single transparent pyramid, then a cube, then two smaller pyramids on the side, possibly hosting the engines.
Like a stubby dart, made of holocrons. Huge holocrons.
And all blue with gold scripts printed over the hull, and gently illuminating the hull.
And it vanished, then reappeared next to me. Oh, a force-powered ship!
'Nice, so local teleport in a gravity well, and hyperdrives for longer rides?'
'And a hundred imbued abilities, like auto-pilot and crew extraction. Healing, mental healing, barriers and energy absorption, cloaking, mnemonic cloaking, illusions, self-repair...' Solanus boomed in my soul.
'You drained the Ship?' I wondered, trying to figure out where did he get blueprints for something like this.
'Of course, tolerated Emperor. That Ship was trying to re-create the Sith Empire, and corrupt our citizens.
The Sith Ship was searching for a way to elude the blockade on Kessel. My Dart will be loyal, I built the pilot myself' Solanus declared with a bit of anger.
Oh. Sneaky little bastard Ship, you said you were in. Going behind my back to awake Abeloth...
'Ooops?' I said meekly.
'Yes. Now leave that silly armor and dive in, I want to learn what you found out lately...' the ocean demanded rudely.
Sure thing, scary father-in-law. Just violate my mind as you please. Then again, he gave me his own daughter...
'Right away, mighty Ocean. Here, take all my crystals too, and learn everything. I feel a storm is coming, and you're our only hope' I whispered, disgorging every crystal I had into his waves.
'The wills are five. You're playing with half of the first, and think yourself strong. The inner crystal memory is still locked. Something has sealed your original partition. And I can't figure out how to unlock it. Worries me'
Right, it must be the first...something about my original planet. How I got here.
'Don't bother Solanus. We are in deep time now. We'll reach the answer the slow way, traveling forward in time, second by second. What's a billion years eh?' I said jokingly.
Roon system, Galactic Pef Empire
15 BBY, next month
Planet Roon is very special, mostly for its crystals called Roonstone which are all inscribed with poems and stories and were possibly an ancient form of a library.
The inept governor Koong, who planned to destroy all the roonstones was swiftly demoted to janitor while the skies of the system are full with 35 navy fleets , 500 Meteors, 3000 Hammers and 3 million smaller ships. And why?
Because, every year all the mynocks in the galaxy migrate here. Not really of course, since they aren't hyperdrive capable.
But all the mynocks in the outer comets and asteroids, fly towards Roon, darkening the skies.
Just like Ord Mynock , this world will serve as a relatively safe training ground for the new Pef Navy and its remotely piloted starfighters.
No missiles were allowed for this event, to mimic a desperate battle where such consumables were already spent.
Just various types of beams, competing teams trying to score as much as possible.
And there they are, the sky literally become darkened from swarms of these creatures. They tended to protect territory in which they resided and would attack in larger numbers if they felt threatened. It is possible that they communicated using pheromones, telepathy, or even through a hive mind.
We'll see if they are a hive mind, right now...more like schools of fish, they instantly changed vectors to attack our incoming starfighters, while the huge and thicker swarms were fired upon by larger weapons.
Capital ship masers simply evaporate entire clouds of mynocks, and the new infrared lasers aren't much worse, erupting thousands of mynocks into flames with a single sweep. Whatever stomach acids they have, they must be quite flammable.
The continuous laser turrets, as well as the chaingun lasers point defence turrets seem to work very well, keeping the mynocks swarm away through superior firepower. Trillions of laser and maser beams color the sky.
Just, the pilots and their teleoperated fighter drones are a disappointment, missing 90% of their shots, while the star destroyers fire randomly with their turbolasers, often glancing shots from my ships and only hitting anything because it was very hard to miss anything.
There are trillions of mynocks, and they move widely, up and down or side to side, and bouncing off the planetary shields if they descend too low. At those moments, a secondary planetary shield comes up, pulsing and shield bashing the mynocks into low orbit again.
It's a target rich environment, and those scoring over 50% hit rates will be kept as gunners, retrained and sent to the western front. The others, well. The army can use grunts anyway. And if they get munched on badly, I can use cyborgs...
Waste not. At least they are all volunteers.
Sure, the army will need to receive tanks and gunships and combat droids too, Since a billion soldiers with comically looking war machines will not cut it, on the western fronts.
Whoever designed their vehicles never fought in a war, that's certain. Just going by the rule of cool, and when they placed the weapons, they simply went with 'towards the front' , like it was for stationary target practice.
The clone troopers of the clone wars did have turrets on their tanks and gunships, but this Imperial Army only kept those for a single tank variant. A heavy tank, floating slowly on repulsorlifts, and costing half the price of a corvette.
In fact, every single piece of equipment the Army uses is worth 5 to 20 times more, than the role it was supposed to fill.
Poor aiming skills, coupled with poor tactics and and a supply chain needed for tibanna gas and other consumables...no surprise they were overran wherever they didn't have numerical superiority.
I guess we can manufacture flamethrowers and those meltaguns for these poor soldiers. At least they have eyes, so that's a good start for a soldier. Holoimages for flash imprints don't work so well on the miraluka, even after they receive cyborg eyes.
The visual centers in their brains are atrophied, and will take a decade to fully condition the miraluka Paladins.
Yea, for now all the army troopers will be just gunners on their mechanized vehicles, like tanks and troops carriers.
Safer to keep the vehicles moving anyway.
14 minutes later, the mynocks are all obliterated, and the fleets begin to depart towards their bases.
Good enough. Now we just need to do the same for a few billion star systems in west.
No biggie.
Planet Gand, Pef Empire
Zero Garden
"So, every one of you will have to finish a university, if going in person, or two universities if you pick the neural training. Should take you about one year, either way" I explained to all the girls in the garden, after gifting them each a coffer full of diamonds.
"I have a little kid, can't just leave and go to school!' Jeannie, a Makashi woman who stayed after we fought for five minutes, declared a bit upset.
A few other women nodded in agreement.
"I can have a training center built at 10 minutes walk from here. You will go, learn for 4 hours, then come back." I explained gently, having already picked a place for a small campus.
"That's...more reasonable, I guess. But why a university course? Is there something you're not telling us Avatar?" Ahsoka said with a curious look in her wide blue eyes.
"It should be obvious. I will have to lead the Empire, most of the times from the capital. Most of you are my wives, esteemed Jedi Masters excluded. You will be ambassadors, generals and corporate leaders,
or perhaps scientists or medics. You are the dynasty who leads the galaxy. Or do you want me to trust the Moffs?" I asked rhetorically.
"So, I'm basically an Empress too, huh?" Zero whispered, looking at me intently.
"In effect yes. In practice, only the outer regions are ours alone. Integrating the Core will take time.
But that means entire sectors anyway, to be guided away from the worst dangers. Generally, by prevention instead of reaction. We will not wait for a civil war to conclude, then rescue the refugees.
Talk it over, and we'll meet soon." I said politely, then vanished aboard the Dart.
"Hey Peffy, so...why do you have a huge bedroom?" Celeste asked from the bridge, where she was looking around curious.
Really? I have to explain in detail?
"Come here my dear. You have to see for yourself!" I yelled, as I emerged from my armor and sat on the huge bed.
"Wait, is that bed for...?" the prude Jedi asked with some surprise. Really naive then.
"Closer...closer. Got you!" I yelled capturing my prey in a hug, then a sweet kiss.
"Mmmmm. There! You got your kiss, now what?" Celeste asked with some bafflement. Possibly fake.
"Let me show you the other room, with the jacuzzi..." I said softly.