Terminus system, Galactic south
14 BBY
Planet Terminus is becoming an even bigger trade nexus, and with the Centerpoint in the system,
building up the infrastructure, it will soon rival Commenor or Columex.
The system is placed at the intersection of two major hyperlanes, and has enough traffic to overwhelm most traffic controllers.
Thousands of ships unregistered anywhere, hailing from wild space, the unknown regions and even from farther away, from the dwarf galaxy just past the hyperspace barrier. It's not an actual barrier of course, just an artificially induced area of hyperspace instability, forcing the ships daring to cross to use sublight engines and solar sails and dozens other drives, many too weird to understand without more disassembly.
Which I'm doing of course, since every single of these ships is trove of information, and ingenious engineering. Not especially advanced, in fact about 3 or 4 generations behind the current tech considered modern in the Empire, but with billions of clever fixes for scarcity of resources.
Not that I would enjoy flying a ship glued together with actual glue, and using hollowed animal horns for power conduits.
Actually I would, just to be able to say I flew such a thing. Just not in hyperspace. That would be really unsafe.
What am I doing is confiscating the majority of these ships, for 'safety reasons', repaying the owners with diamonds and spice or credits, then offering to sell them second generation freighters with three times the cargo capacity and speed of their old ships, and at half the price they received from me.
Since the Empire was standardizing their commercial fleets with new and more efficient designs, there were thousands of cheap freighters that I bought at almost scrap price, then repaired them while fixing the most obvious ten design flaws, while also converting them into spyships, collecting data and information about the routes and systems they visited.
One such freighter would cost me 100 thousand credits, but when it returns to an Empire controlled system, such as Terminus, it will disgorge the new data acquired, giving me dozens of new routes and inhabited worlds.
The naval base here was made by teleporting most of the iron Vergesso Asteroids further from the sun, along with two more gas giants, and then creating a 50 kilometer sided iron cube, with 10 kilometer thick walls, covered with shields and guns and missiles. Inside there are shipyards, and refueling stations and a thousand separate bunkers for ordinance, as well as Intelligence Headquarters and droids and starfighters.
This will be the South Theater Base, anchoring and directing major campaigns once our southern neighbors start invading.
Same as Sernpidal in the North and Formos in the East. In the Center there are already Corellia and Coruscant, but Commenor will need a major navy base as well, once it becomes the capital.
Moving the actual galactic capital from the Core to the Colonies' area will
reduce the political power of the Core worlds a little, while boosting the Colonies and the Inner Rim, while placing it smack in the middle of the inhabited part of the galaxy.
More balancing acts, to keep the galaxy safe. Plus Coruscant is slowly being emptied, and will remain a largish industrial world,
with some 50 billion people, leaving in much comfort in the upper levels, while the lower parts are used for diverse commercial enterprises, from factories to hydroponic farms and troop barracks.
This also happens on other large ecumenopolises, but it's with ads and commercials for a better life, and not mandatory evacuation and re-settlement like on Coruscant. The bioweapon scare would work again, most likely, but better not cry wolf yet.
There will be wolves coming, soon enough.
I also brought a few terrestrial planets here at Terminus system, like D'Qar , and Skann and one more, trying to keep to a pattern of three extra agriworlds and one mining planet, in this case Nkllon .
The Grey Paladins will also have a base here, a thousand miraluka and a thousand shards, along with a million droid paladins.
Mostly doing remote scanning of the trade coming through, searching for dangerous things. Both races, are remarkably similar now, using their force senses to see without eyes, and controlling their armor and ships with cyberimplants or technopathy.
I will import a few thousands cerean women for administrative and logistic work, and hopefully the cool and collected cereans will grow to like the miraluka paladins and make me lots of smart, force-sensitive and bright-eyed new paladins.
Because the cereans don't have two hearts and two brains just for giggles. They are really smart and balanced.
They just need the Force, to adjust their own birthrate problems with gene alter. I can do it for those few who work directly for me, if I spend 10 minutes focusing my powers to work with my feeble Living Force powers. Not really feasible for a billion cereans and miraluka.
The Avatar's kids with his cerean wives are all males for example, and the kids with his miraluka wives do have working eyes, but he spent many hours exploring the bodies of those women, and he's a damn Living Force superpower.
I mean, I am, but not. Sigh. Bilocation is complicated. Ever since we got disconnected on Jedha, the Avatar is often doing things I would do, but not under my direction. Well, he is me, but...
More existential problems, always confusing me when I am doing the work of a trillion people at once, uplifting and upgrading an entire star system at once.
One more week here, and then I can go to Yag'Dhul and their math geniuses Givin .
Finally, someone smart enough to discuss the new sciences that Core keeps re-discovering. I mean, Core is way smarter, but he just can't explain how things work that way or another.
I need a more organic interface to translate the new scientific fields.
And the Gree are too colorful, while the Sharu , no idea.
They keep to themselves and feel scared and oppressed. Because they can't go out to establish their own empire, since everywhere else is Pef Empire.
Even though we're roughly on par technologically, or at least Core is, they still feel superior and look down on their Centrality neighbors. I hope they will adapt, soon enough.
I woke them from their long dream to help, and share their knowledge, not to keep themselves apart.
The Avatar and Solana are still on Rafa, gently stealing knowledge from their advanced cities and minds, while they keep trying to open an avenue for cooperation and mutual defense.
In the west, were still finding new planets and races, from Quethold to Pashvi and Teptixii in the north-west, then Snevu and Giaca.
Other planets like Durace don't have mynocks or lugubbra but instead have carnivorous plants and huge Avka birds, which can tear gunships apart. Ah, the wonders of the galaxy.
But at least the planet has large diamond and gems deposits, and a
Forest of Broken Glass
, which is made of highly energy absorbing silicates, perfect for lining the armor of tanks and power armor with extra layers.
In the end, the armor we use for the mechanized units begins to resemble Chobham armor from back home, with sandwiched layers of various composites, each contributing to defend the precious interior.
And most important, I started the internet, using planetary relays and superconductive cables and orbital space stations. Not the very expensive and hi quality holonet, which has to remain under government control, but for economic and cultural growth at planetary scale, where FTL communications are not necessary.
Add to this the new Palmpads, which connect locally to the internet grid for free, and cost 20 credits to make and 50 credits to buy if you're interested, and an era of ubiquitous connectivity and scientific progress is starting.
The universities from each sector receive a subspace network of relays, connecting their servers with wide traffic bands, and each sector will receive a hypernet relay to the Core once the AI creates and deploys his new hyperband capable server and deploys it on Zeltros.
The party atmosphere on Zeltros will make a great place for computer and math geniuses to explore new sciences, while relaxing their bodies in company of the very friendly zeltrons, which are for some reason very skilled at holograms.
The first university campus, hosting thousands of scholarship worthy students, and thousands of local zeltrons was resounding success, although using tactile holograms for date simulators and other erotic games was not the intended purpose, the games they produced sold really well, making a trillion credits galaxy wide.
Which is enough credits to build 10 thousands Nebula destroyers for example. Or a million Dakka corvettes.
Which is what I'm doing, building a million Dakka III corvettes every year, from most of the small shipyards in the Empire. They have only a 2 meter quadranium steel hull, plated with 10 centimeters of durasteel and one centimeter of diamondoid armor.
But that is the new resource efficiency philosophy on the Empire, building large amounts of cheap ships, to patrol and protect the inner worlds, while the heavy ships go to fight the more dangerous enemies on the borders.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
The somewhat larger shipyards, like Gyndine or Sluis Van or Jaemus are being prepared to build the new destroyers and cruisers.
Meanwwhile the former CIS shipbuilders like Fondor or Foerost , which had their capital shipyards destroyed during the Clone Wars will begin building the wedge frigates, similar to Ardent-class fast frigate although only 300 meters long, and without such an exposed bridge or pointless spike nose, the frontal pyramid absent, to allow better fields of fire and shield coverage. Because long spikes do not get shielded very well. Spherical or oval shapes are much more efficient to shield.
The weapons I designed them to have, are on the same line with other of my other ships, a large capital class battery on top, with 4 long range turbolasers, 50 medium masers and 50 missile launchers and Gatling lasers. Then a tractor beam and a hangar for a dropship and a few starfighters. They'll have a crew of 200 and 2000 droids to back them up, or 2000 combat droids to be sent on new planets for liberation.
Corellia is doing its own thing, sometimes listening to my proposals, other times not, but at least their corvettes and frigates now leaving the rebuild look more like warships and not as mining tugs, with weapons welded on them.
I mean is not so complicated to think a little and cover the engines and blind spots created by big holes in their superstructure?
Plus some fast firing point defense guns and missiles. They still look ugly and not really space worthy, but at least the worst flaws have been fixed.
Maybe the Corellians will learn more, as they have to send their own expeditionary fleets toward the final push on the Ssi-ruu. The dinosaurs have begun enteching their client species en masse, creating millions of droid starfighters powered by life energy. If we don't put an end to them soon, there will be billions of such droids, and pose quite a problem.
The Manta dreadnought can take care of a few million by itself, since it now has 10 thousand heavy guns and 20 thousand medium masers each turret with a missile launcher attached, and 10 million missiles in storage.
But why not show our reluctant allies why we fight? Or what awaits them if we fail. And also give them some experience in long range deployments and coordinating with the Empire Navy.
North-west of Bakura is the domain of the Rhand sorcerers and a dozen other death-cults, and the Green Paladins will benefit from experiencing true horrors, and learning how to end them efficiently from the Grey Paladins.
And...done. Terminus system upgraded, 15 thousands ships of colorful design confiscated and replaced, including a Nagai ship,
which was no doubt exploring the new rich and bountiful lands of the main galaxy.
I'm not yet in a position to counter-attack preemptively, since I lack actual information about the dwarf galaxies around, but that will be solved in a decade, or so.
It's always better to fight a war on the enemies lands after all.
Iol system, Pef Empire
West Naval Anchor
14 BBY
Planet Iol and this whole system is being transformed into the main operating base for the Navy, again with extra planets and a huge iron cube for a naval base, while the Iol will provide valuable minerals for ship construction and refits.
The Acclamator III ships can land on any planet and debark a mechanized division, or 10 droids division, which ever is needed, though in general they'll deploy in groups on three, debarking two infantry and one mechanized groups, since that worked best on most terrestrial planets.
From here onwards, it will be the same distance westwards to Crakull , the Croke homeworld as it is to Coruscant and Empress Teta in the opposite direction. The stars to the west are known as the Croke Reach, although the Croke themselves are quite rare, instead we find planets like Explume Minor , infested with lugubrra and deserted cities, either because the Croke fled, or they became desert for the worms.
They eat the mynocks and most of the useful minerals in the asteroids, so they have to go. Sad, eh?
Still, both of the mynocks and the lugubrra can be melted to form a sort of useful silica-crete, not as strong as duracrete, but good enough for construction, especially if reinforced by steel bars. Just need to get rid of their stomach first or the whole building might collapse.
Our combat droids now target their necks, trying to keep their stomachs from spilling, since acids are also quite useful in many industrial processes, although diluted a hundred times.
Or they can be used in conjunction with compression to serve as ammo for acid guns, firing pellets of acid that can dissolve even starship armor. Once the threat is eliminated, we might keep a few farms of lugubrra to supply our assassins with fresh ammunition. Their teeth make great industrial grade tips for precision engineering, being able to etch any metal with barely any erosion.
We have stores of quadrillions of such teeth, from both mynocks and lugubrra, so our factories will get in increase in productivity, since a 1 credit tooth can do the job of 3 boron tipped etching heads, each worth 100 credits, before it wears out.
Ever since the news spread of these profitable vermin being sold for about 100 credits per body, thousands of adventurers started their own operations in the west, some even catching and then releasing lugubrra after they defenaged them, in the hope they'll grow new teeth...
Not really sure how that logic would work, since the toothless lugubrra will just starve, unable to chew rocks or whatever.
Admiral Natasi Greyshade has begun the siege of Lwhekk after destroying about 50 thousands Ssi-ruu ships and 50 million droid starfighters, her 10 Pef Navy fleets supported by one Imperial Navy fleet, and one from Atrisia and Corellia each .
It wasn't much of a battle, since we had 20 times more ships than the dinosaurs, so about 1 million capital ships, most of them corvettes, and 50 million Biplane and other types of starfighters.
After the last fighters and orbital defenses are reduced, there will be a major ground invasion, comparable to what Admiral Thrawn is executing right now, at Qoribu and Yoggoy
the last being the new homeworld of the Killiks, with trillions of those insects living deep underground, like humans do on Coruscant.
They emigrated here after leaving Alderaan a long time ago, and have really gone overboard with overpopulation.
Sadly, I had to approve limited orbital strikes, to create landing sites and access wells for our troops. There simply wasn't any place to land, only cocoons and termite like hives hosting The Colony .
The Killiks also had semi-organic ships called dartships, and capital ships the size of a Hammer. They just didn't have enough of them. Even if they did, Thrawn was used to their tactics and weaknesses, and with a million ships of his own he would have won anyway. Now he had to be content with not losing a single ship to the killiks.
Man, the guy is really perfectionist. However, exterminating the main killik hives will take a year.
They are losing less of their members than they actually reproduce, which says something about the stupid rates they could expand and overwhelm the galaxy with pure numbers. My Titans have reached a million kills each, in the first day after landing, and will possibly reach a billion by the time the D-day ends. Next year.
Other worlds in the vicinity of this conflict are also being garrisoned, like Tusken's Eye and
Sarm.
My Voice Wialu is now on Veroleem , promising them an abundance of immigrants and better living conditions, and dealing with their murderous cult, while Asajj is on Kro Var , beating the snot out of the firebenders and earthbenders and airbenders and waterbenders force-users who lead that planet and call themselves Shapers.
It will take her a year to beat everyone of them in single combat. But she likes it, and that's what it takes for that planet to submit willingly. 30 thousands single combat fights, in a year. That's around 100 per day, so not shabby at all.
She can cut loose, breaking bones, and laughing off elemental alter, and teach those wanna be sorcerers how to be polite to a lady. When they have enough, I'll visit them and bring them into the fold, but for now it's a festival, all the clans gathered in a Colosseum, watching the fights and commenting on techniques and whatever, while my droids serve them free food and drinks,
and confiscate their slaves, once another magician falls.
Asajj is benefiting immensely from this as well, both in force connection and confidence and self-control.
And everything is recorded and dramatized by a media corporation, then packaged as a documentary and sold to the various channels on internet. My Voice will become quite popular by the time the festival ends.
It's like fight club, only with spectacular magic. What's not to like?
Especially since Asajj manner of dressing makes any sentient mouth water...myself being the first. A bit like Wonder Woman, only with a mean streak. She likes the platinum blonde hair the Avatar gave her, and one time some rude Shaper burned a few strands...she stomped the guy into the ground, pulping his legs and arms, and cracking the stone floor and the durasteel armor underneath the arena.
She's getting really strong, possibly 70% of how Fay was, when we first met.
By the time this contest, is over she will be twice as strong, and likely rival Grandmaster Fay, and even Wialu.
No wonder Darth Sidious wanted her 'eliminated' in another future.
She is a wonder. My wonder.