Chapter 52: Open for Business

With the massive jumps in capability accomplished, I got down to designing magical counter-parts to mundane capabilities. Environmental management, sensors, controls, engines, teleportation drive, weapons and the like were all achieved. Somewhere along the way I even figured out short-ranged direct mana taps, so the ships could access their underlying mana capacity rather than just what was available ambiently.

Some of the magical ship systems were so much better than the mundane version that they were definitely used. Like long-range nearly lag-free sensors based on direction and teleportation of EM signals combined with scrying spells. Some were cheap enough, often due to permanent enchantments, like precognitive targeting packages or Valyrian treatment to the outer hull and some structural struts. Some, like molecular environmental filters, were only worth it when the dragon-bone mana-capacitors were full, or it was an emergency; they were good backups, but definitely back-ups.

But others were more problematic. Teleportation jump drives were far faster than hyperdrive, and without being limited to hyper-lanes. But they were technologically limited to blind jumps, jumps to known magical beacons, or jumps within safe sensors range as sensor-drift could be problematic at long range; blind jumps were always dangerous and to be avoided under risk of telefragging. The jumps also drained crazy amounts of mana; a ship generally needed at least twenty times as much mana to jump as it was capable of generating, more typically about twenty-five times as much mana.

The problem was that any ship would then arrive with massively depleted mana stores on the other end, making it highly vulnerable. Furthermore, the ship would need to have gigantic mana capacitors, taking up about sixty percent of the ship’s volume just for the jump drive. Generally speaking, my ships used between thirty and thirty-five percent of the volume for structural elements, ships systems, reactors, engines, weaponry, spare parts storage and the like. Basically, the space not dedicated to essential systems would be cut down by a factor of six to twelve, and that very same space reduction would reduce mana generation to the same fraction, making jumps take a long time to charge.

As a result we came up with a structure and two new ships. The structure was a beacon, a massive mana-capacitor capable of teleporting a ship to some location; they were often included as part of my larger star-base designs. Heighliners, named after the transport ships used in Dune, were T-jump capable ships that were basically mobile beacons; they could also act as giant carriers for smaller ships for longer journeys or explorations. Finally Explorers were independently T-jump capable ships, optimized to operate with small crews, and redesigned to be less armored and armed, freeing up space for living/mana generation.

One important discovery we made was that the benefit gained from lands I had claimed with respect to mana cycling rates were only for lands I had claimed. I was down to about four seconds per cycle. But unclaimed ship-spaces depended on the ship’s total mana, and generally cycled at one-third as fast as I would have with the same mana supply.

Thus a patrol boat took about an hour per mana charge cycle, and a frigate about five minutes, but Explorer versions of both varieties needed roughly seventy-five charges to jump. That was roughly seventy five hours and five hours, respectively. For jumps relying on sensors, a ship needed to jump once every fifteen minutes to match a 2.0 hyperdrive on a known hyper-route. In other words, Explorers and Heighliners pretty much had to be claimed to function better than hyperdrive, and military ships would have their magic recharge up to nine hundred times faster. That was a big difference. Fast jumps from a beacon for a limited number of quick-reaction ships was still a very viable capability though.

Three years after freeing Naboo, the designs for equipment for both the magical and general parts of the PMC were ready. Well, everything up to Frigate-weight at least, even if the options for infantry were a bit less than I would have liked. But I was claiming what I had considered a fairly respectable nine hundred and change mana a day. For claiming ships, it just wasn’t enough. At that rate, a single frigate would take over two days to claim, and I was planning on having thousands of the things.

Even without the mana recharge improvements, my magical ships were significantly better armed, armored and shielded than my less magical ships, which were themselves significantly superior to even the best of my competition.

The magical shields and weapons were of course amazing; teleporting anti-matter bombs onto enemy ships was practically cheating, after all (which was why I reserved it’s use - didn’t want to give Jedi/Sith any ideas), and while my ships had mana my projectile shields made them practically invulnerable. But even when the active magical defenses were exhausted, the underlying enchanted conventional weaponry, shields, armor and other systems were far better than what anyone else had. It was just that with high mana availability my ships were monsters.

But I wasn’t able to claim lands faster than I already was, not safely, and so I had to let it be, and construct most of my navy with hyperdrives.

Honestly, it was just my perfectionism that caused me to complain. My “conventional” (-ish) ships that used some magically enhanced materials and stable enchantments - but not much more than that – were still significantly superior. Honestly, galactic ship-building was just fucking wasteful. Anyone who’d been on a civilian ship back on Earth would consider the galactic-norm spaces over-generous, let alone someone used to something really packed like a submarine. Wide hallways, fairly large rooms, and don’t even get me started on those ridiculously oversized hangars. Not to mention the galactic pre-occupation with exposed, transparent command bridges.

None of that shit on my ships – I kept my crews safely behind thick armor plating, thank you very much. If they needed to see outside, well, that’s why people invented cameras. While my Liveships weren’t subject to quite the same level of spatial optimization, given up to nine thousand square feet of livable space per person (though that included hallways, common and work spaces), my military ships were much more efficient. Carefully planned personnel quarters with folding furniture and other clever solutions kept it reasonably comfortable but massively reduced the amount of space needed per person.

I loved innovations like that, and like using tractor-beams to launch and retrieve fighters and bombers from densely packed racks. It meant that my ships could have a full crew, a marine detachment (with integrated vehicles), and a fighter complement. Hell, just one of my three-hundred-meter long frigates carried a full three fighter wings for a total of one hundred ninety two attack-craft, plus two marine battalions with their attached vehicles. And that wasn’t even a dedicated carrier variant, just the normal attached complement.

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With the ship designs done and prototypes tested, at least for the patrol-boats, corvettes and frigates, it was time to kick things up a notch. My (you-can’t-tell-it’s-not!) conventional patrol boats outmatched a typical corvette, while my magical ones could match up against a frigate. Similarly, my conventional corvettes matched frigates, and my frigates cruisers.

So I could finally start recruitment and mass construction, eventually hiring my ships out for anti-piracy operations in a year or two as crews and vessels were ready. It was a long ways to go to get to that point, and I was pretty ecstatic I’d reached it.

I planned on being a mostly space-borne force. Generally speaking I wasn’t particularly interested in extended ground operations. Now, this was when most ships would, with full complements, have more marines than navy personnel. To be clear, I wasn’t against attacking pirate bases, orbital drop assaults, raiding specific targets and even short-term invasions. Essentially, for me if it “extended” past an orbital assault with power-armored marines and limited special operations, getting into the kind of ground campaign that required actual permanent bases, then someone else could do it.

Basically, think of the Iraq war; I willing to do the push to Baghdad, so long as my people didn’t have to deal with what came after. That shit was just fucking horrible, so screw that. Plus it meant a lot of logistics and wider-scale organization; at least for a while my forces were limited to my marines and those were purposefully lean. My force was built to kick ass, and kick it fast. Not long-term boots on the ground occupation, counter-insurgency or year-plus guerilla wars.

Of course, clients liked to be able to “one-stop-shop.” They didn’t want to hear “we don’t do that”.

Luckily, I’d built up a pretty good relationship with the Nova Guard. Admittedly, mostly by kicking the shit out of their unit champions in sparring. But while they had a navy, a pretty damned good one actually, their ideological militarism lent itself more towards “elite infantry” than “aloof navy” archetypes.

The Ailons had been in the system, helping maintain Naboo’s sovereignty over the past few years, so they were aware of the fairly ludicrous amounts of money I’d spent getting the latest manufactories, production rights for advanced weapons and systems, and R&D facilities and researchers to improve the same. They were willing to at least listen when I offered a partnership for them to fulfill any extended ground operations that my future contracts required.

At first, the Guard officers weren’t overly impressed with my prototypes. Generally speaking, dagger-shaped ships were preferred for dedicated combat craft. It reduced the ship’s profile from the side and front, reducing enemy hits at long range because of the smaller target zone. Further, it allowed the ships to concentrate their shields and armor on smaller areas, reducing damage. It also allowed the majority of turrets to fire in a chase configuration, while maintaining close to fifty-percent of the total guns for broadside fire.

But my ships depended a lot on the interior spaces to generate mana. So, instead of a dagger shape, they were optimized more along square-cube considerations. The square was the area that needed to be protected, so called because the surface area increased in proportion to the square of the length. The cube was the volume generating that protective power, increasing in proportion to the cube of the length. For square-cube ships, a sphere is the “optimal” geometry.

However, spheres have fucking terrible firing arcs. Instead, my ships were fairly cuboid, with length-width-height proportions roughly equivalent to the golden ratio. The ship tapered slightly from back to front, and was actually faintly twisted by about fifteen degrees along the central axis; that improved the hull strut stability versus damage, and allowed the main weapon turrets along the top and bottom centerlines (which stretched from the middle of top/bottom-lines rear of the ship to front) to fire directly forward, as well as to either side. As such, the throw weight in either chase or broadside configurations was optimized, with only a few point-defense systems unable to bear.

But my vessels didn’t have the sharp lines favored by top-of-the-line warships, or the spherical/conical construction favored by efficient-and-affordable warships, and so my mercenary friends were skeptical.

But then I demonstrated my ships in a live test.

First I showed off their crazy acceleration, up to four thousand gravities for the patrol-boat (PB), similar to a state of the art fighter, thirty-five hundred g’s for the corvette, and three thousand for the frigate. They were stunned. That kind of speed meant my ships could pretty much always pick when a fight occurred and how long it lasted. It also meant my ships would have a much higher dodging volume, making them harder to hit in long distance combat. Of course, my less conventional ships could each manage a thousand more g’s; I was just keeping that restricted from use, as it was too unbelievable and I didn’t want industrial spies crawling out of the woodwork.

After that we moved on test-firing. My ships were designed to be heavily armed for their class just with regards to size and number of weapon emplacements; once the benefits to firing rate and damage due to enchantments and magically processed materials were included in the calculation, they were monsters. The PB’s and corvettes were armed with a mix of lasers, missiles, and torpedos, while the frigate was not only practically bristling with the former weapons, but also boasted several heavy beam turrets and heavier missiles designed to damage larger ships. All classes included ion cannons to disable ships and allow boarding.

My guests were impressed, but what really sold them viscerally was the demonstration where their ships tested the shields. When the shields were finally depleted, they tested the armor and when that finally failed found out how good the damage control systems were. The biggest thing for ground troops is always whether the ship will keep them alive. Going into a naval fight where you’re essentially sitting inside a metal can getting shot at, worried that you’ll die in fucking space without even having a chance to fight back sucks. When that’s your experience of ships, you end up subconsciously valuing ones with high survivability.

Lt. General Ademi, head of the Nova Guard detached to defend Naboo turned to me. “I can offer you a very good price for the technology that allowed that.”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry, General, but it relies on some exotic materials from a polity in wild space. I’m personally acquainted with them, but they’re fairly isolationist.” I loved that the Star Wars galaxy was schizophrenic enough for that to be a legitimate argument. The Force occasionally did weird things to materials.

He sighed in disappointment. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to act as an intermediary?”

I smiled. “I’m already buying all available supplies, and am hardly interested in bidding against myself.”

“Damn,” he muttered. “Nonetheless, you should think about producing or at least licensing out the underlying design. Even with more commonly available systems performance, you’re still packing far more ship into the same space.”

“I’ll have to think about that,” I said, but there was no fucking way I was giving up any of my advantages. As it was, the interior of my ships was classified, and every one of my ships had sprites who were pretty damned good at info-war to catch any spies and destroy any recording devices.

“I’m already employing two hundred thousand people in the shipyards,” I continued, “and that’s with the most advanced automation and droid labor available too. We’ve got three hundred twenty frigates, twelve hundred eighty corvettes, and five thousand one hundred and twenty patrol boats under construction or in the que in this system. And that’s just a start; in five years I hope to have ten times that coming off the shipyards every year.”

Not that I’d have the people to fully staff them; on Naboo close to six million had volunteered to join GSD (Gangari Security Directorate). Roughly half had passed the entry requirements, and I was expecting up to a third to fail the training. That left about two million new personnel, or not quite enough to fully crew the currently building ships, let alone next year’s allotment, or the year after that. I was already planning on filling in the gaps with the final generation of summoned troops.

Apart from the Paragons based on Ser Barristan’s pattern, I’d added Aces, patterned off of expert pilots, Sailors, and Marines. I had ten to hundreds of thousands of them as needed to serve as training cadre. As the ships were ready, I’d summon up the latest generation of specialists to staff my magical fleet, equal in size to the mundane one, which I was forming in secret.

One issue with using these various summoned specialists was that they had skills but not experiences. In other words, the summons didn’t, couldn’t have the actual memories of the original. I wasn’t copying identities, but patterns. Otherwise the summoning would fail; if I was lucky it would fizzle. Unlucky, and it could destructively resonate with the original, which was just as messy as one might fear. Another issue was that I’d never be able to find even better versions if I stuck with the people that I found in the beginning. And finally it was just sort of weird; although they weren’t complete copies, they were often sort of like identical twins. Their thought patterns were far too similar, which was I supposed a strategic weakness as well.

“Just, keep the offer in mind,” General Ademi said, still not done trying to get his hands on my ships. Honestly, I didn’t even have a use for more money. All my purchases had come in just under a trillion credits.

In that same time, I had developed the first fully functional neural interface through applied magical sprite assistance. While the top-quality ones were reserved for GSD’s usage, I had a factory complex that made a billion interfaces a year. That might sound like a lot, but the galaxy had over a hundred trillion people. And a whole lot of them wanted to buy my interfaces.

I didn’t sell them, I auctioned them with the billion highest bidders getting one for the price of whoever bid one spot too low. Last year, the price was at an astounding nineteen thousand credits each, of which I made a profit of about fifteen thousand after tax and expenses. Times a billion, and that was fifteen trillion credits. Our long-term projections once the price stabilized ranged from one to ten trillion credits a year of profit. That was without introducing premium models that demanded a higher price, or increasing production.

Apart from the neural interface, I could enchant droids to be precognitive so of course I did so. There was a simple equation: high frequency trading + precognitive droids = shitloads of money. I’d parked a few trillion in the accounts to automatically trade back when we looted the Trade Federation. Every time I checked, Gangari Holdings (or rather its shell companies, straw-men and the like) were worth more.

I was rapidly closing in on owning an appreciable fraction of the liquidly traded galactic financial instruments. Oh, I was still at the fraction of a percentage level, and that was only a small fraction of the total galactic wealth, but it was still pretty fucking crazy. As that fraction grew, I would come to exert a degree of control over the entire galactic stock market, able to manipulate stock prices to damage my enemies.

General Ademi seemed to sense my disinterest in money and changed tack. “And if you aren’t interested in money, we may be able to work out some other deal. An exchange of military technology, perhaps.”

Actually, that was interesting. I was willing to bet that over the millennia as operators of one of the largest active militaries and mercenary armies in the galaxy, Ailon had collected a number of useful archeotech relics from precursor civilizations which were beyond anything people could do in the current age. Relics might be ultra-rare objects for others, but for me they were just templates waiting to be copied by magic.

“I’ll definitely consider it,” I allowed. “Especially if you have particularly interesting archeotech or relics.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Ademi answered with a smile. “Well, assuming your men are up to standard, and from our evaluation of your training programs I have no doubt they will be, I can say we’d definitely be interested in collaborating on contracts that require a permanent ground presence. In the future I’d also like to talk about hiring your ships as fleet auxiliaries. You don’t have the cruiser weight ships that we prefer for planetary missions and fleet battles, but your ships are perfect for protecting supply convoys, interdicting commerce, and counter-piracy operations.”

No shit, I thought, that’s what they’re designed for.

“That’s great!” I exclaimed. And it was; even the fact that we could advertise a partnership with the Ailon Nova Guard meant that customers would feel more confident hiring us. “So how do you want to do this? I see pretty much three ways; I could contact your office as needed, and get individual quotes, but that might slow down any bids I give out. You could give me a pricing calculator, maybe a droid that you’ve trained to do so, and I could give the bids directly, then contact you if I get the job. Or, if you prefer, I’m happy to host a unit of the Guard in Naboo; they can cross-train with my troops, and I can pass RFQ’s to their CO.”

“For as long as our current contract lasts we’ll go with the third option since we’re here anyways,” he replied. “After that we may keep doing that, or change it as needed.”

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A year later and my first wave of ships were completed and crewed with fresh graduates from my training programs. I suddenly had eighty conventional frigate detachments (and as many magical in reserve), each consisting of four frigates, sixteen corvettes and sixty four patrol boats. Between the ships, the thousand-strong space fighter regiment, and a full division of sixteen thousand drop-capable power-armored marines with integrated armor and air support, each detachment was designed to operate independently against anything short of the most massive targets.

It took a few years, but we got there. GSD was open for taking contracts and giving bids for contracted services.