Planet Gand, Pef Empire

Celestial Throne

24 BBY Tenth month

A state of cold war exists now between the CIS and my Empire, with us buying every available ship on the market, and pushing into the Tion Cluster and the Ash worlds, expanding rapidly and establishing outpost and supply bases.

The CIS doesn't have the navy or the money to compete with us yet, since they don't even have parity with planet numbers or army numbers. Better exploit this while I can, before I turtle up.

My army has reached 50 million soldiers and 2 billion war droids, and we have amassed almost 50 Mon Calamari star cruisers and even one Kuat made Procurator-class Star Battlecruiser which I'm now dismantling and reverse-engineering. I never knew these type of ships even existed.

Seems I have much to learn about constructing vessels of war. It's not just shields and weapons. Consumables for years of deployment and flight simulators and re-supply and space sensors.

Millions of new inventions to add to my inventory of technology.

Kuat isn't the lead warship builder in the galaxy for nothing.

Sure the ships they make have certain limits imposed by the Ruusan Reformation, especially in regard to weapons, but those we have started to mass produce anyway, since I'll need millions of capital class guns for the Meteors and the Mountains.

Sadly, Kuat won't sell me a Mandator-class Star Dreadnaught even at ten times the build cost.

Also Angie, my angel maid is returning to my Empire, over concerns of possible assassination plots. Vette has been recalled too, despite not having achieved her goal of obtaining more power gems.

Our victory at Dellalt and the national Ascension Day, with news reports carefully crafted to unite our people against the treacherous CIS, are working well to create a foundation mythos for the Empire. Seems Voice Lira was well liked by our people, especially on the planets she negotiated with and brought into the Empire.

She has died and become a martyr, with billions of sentients crying and mourning her holovised pyre. I tried to downplay it a little, promising my subjects she will be reborn, but that possibly seems far fetched for most sentients in the galaxy. Little do they know.

Pirate attacks along the trade routes have also doubled, giving our escorts ships and crews a lot more experience, while causing some delays and minor disturbances in war equipment production. The Banking Guilds will pay for this, just not yet.

We're still not fully independent of external suppliers, especially for rare minerals and substances needed for complex machines like hypermatter annihilator reactors or holonet emitters.

Maid Vera has also been contacted and recalled from Yanibar, with promises of sanctuary for her people. The contact Lucrehulk she stole took is now returning with thousands of sick and frail Zeison Sha, who were not expected to survive next winter.

Luxum has decided to stay on her homeplanet and accelerate their technologization, building space stations and shipyards and droid factories.

Maid Ray has sent her first tangible findings about the Vong, biomass. No live prisoners though, only a hundred dead ones, and a couple other of their warforms and enslaved races.

But a few of Yorik-et bioships, even dead, will make threat analysis much easier. One will be sent to Solanus, along with a hypergem that Solana bought, and other various samples, while another bioship will be sent to Blueforge to begin testing for bioweapons and antidotes. My ocean friend has a few ideas how to duplicate vong tech.

We will also try conventional tactics, like analysis and biolab works, but only teleoperated droids will be allowed direct contact with the samples, until we have a clear understand of the threat.

And finally, the Meteor pushed towards Caluula, along with half the North fleet, securing access to a hyperway node, and chasing away the CIS ships without a shot.

In the West, we took planets Diado then Metalorn and finally Trasemene and began fortifyfing the latter system as our primary naval base. Golan defense platforms and minefields, as well as resupply and repair spacestations.

This system was well in range of Sy Myrth and fell easily, without the protection of the Republic Senate and their fleets, since they just separated and tried to become a founding member of CIS. They just had bad luck.

I'll have to visit planet Metalorn and do something about the place, since it was a mess of industrialization and pollution. But having conquered a large number of shipyards and factories will help, and the population will grow to love us, once the air becomes breathable again, and their salaries tripled.

For now, my Black ops and their advance units on the ground are slicing and rooting around for CIS saboteurs and infiltrators.

On Diado, my War Maid Ventress, has found an advanced factory, gearing up to produce the CIS-Advanced starfighter, which will come quite handy. I never knew of these fighters in my memories, but maybe the CIS thought them too expensive?

And the fighter also has hyperdrives! The first modern hyperdrives that have been miniaturized enough for small starfighters use. Only shuttles and gunships had hyperdrives so far. A new era is starting.

Ventress has also captured a talented thief lady, who almost managed to steal her lightsaber. Maybe. I think she did steal it, then Ventress captured her. Her name is Na-Jia and looks absolutely fabulous, with her violet hair and lythe athletic body. I might keep her.

Oh well, I don't have a thief maid anyway, might as well get one. And if she can read holocrons, she'll become the greatest thief in history.

Now, since the hyperroutes have been secured, I can also send a few Findsmen towards Ossus.

As soon as...okay crisis averted. A saboteur or infiltrator of sort tried to slip down on Gand, bypassing the first planetary shield, and smashing into the second one underneath.

The cold war isn't as cold as I'd like.

But Miss Aurra received my transmission, finally, and has agreed to work for me for a billion credits, on a super secret task. She'll be here in a week or two, she said.

And using gene samples from two of the best bounty hunters in the galaxy, for my Astartes project will be nice as well. Maybe.

Planet Metalorn, Pef Empire

23 BBY, First month.

Gah, this planet is a mess. The shallow seas and jungles have almost been destroyed completely while the shipyards in orbit were producing crappy Munificent frigates and a few destroyers called Recusant-class warship .

The droid factories were also already mass producing B1 droids, with only a handful of B2 and even less of C-B3 cortosis battle droid and BX-series droid commando . They do not have weapons though. I'll have to fix that, somehow.

My corvettes are bringing some ice comets from the Oort cloud to help me repair the biosphere, while the droid factories were repurposed towards the nicer models of droids.

The B11 battledroid, featuring 20% extra chest armor, an armored helmet and a shorter neck. They really do not need giraffe necks. I can't create miracles yet, but I feel my B11 droids are already 30% more effective than the old B1 version.

Also I liberated millions of human slaves, and took charge of a billion of Skakoan , both were suffocating in the unbearable and polluted atmosphere.

Kriff. This is a parody of civilization, not my Dream. Not anyone's dream.

And the Unreal City prison doesn't help either. You can see the prison from orbit! It's gigantic.

As a bonus, just mining and recycling metals from The Wasteland would be enough to produce a billion new droids. And a few tank divisions. Lots of metal there.

I delved deep into the Force, while my Pef Navy ships blasted the ice comets apart, then tractored fragments closer, and gave me resources to repair the environment.

My new Mid Rim Imperial Academy is being organized by another crystal partition, using the Unreal City as a basis, with indoctrination and neural modules being produced by nearest factories.

We can't have slavery in my Empire, only happy Imperial Servants. Curious, how former slaves would fight to the death to keep their new privileges. Not that I mind...

A million subverted droids are explaining to the skakoan amphibian people the changes that will take place, as the submerged cities and gravity plates that will allow them to live and work without pressure suits. They seem happy too, most of them. The ones protesting the new rule will be convinced later, or vanished.

Sadly, Ventress did a number on Termin, the planetary capital, during the initial occupation, since the Baktoid Combat Automata offcials were not eager to surrender and accept the new leadership. Now they are dead and their guards and droids too, but doesn't help with repairing the planet at all. Some people are also unhappy, as they lost relatives and friends when the city was taken. Sucks. War is harsh.

Not that I would trust the old officials, to remain in their posts, but using both heavy tanks and orbital ion strikes was a little too much, dear maid. Almost no tech is working there, the tallest buildings have crashed, and I'll have to rebuild the entire city, if more spread out and with better transportation and parks and all. Took me a few hours.

Massive rain clouds begin gathering and pouring over the planet, once I lower the ice comets into the more dense layers of atmosphere. Pollution and dust is being compacted and deposited as bricks for recycling.

I also could collect lots of plastic debris. Megatons of plastic debris from local cities and polluted swamps.

Is this why those Sharu in the Centrality built such huge plastic pyramids? To cover up millennia of pollution? Maybe.

Then, I look around the ruined Monitor Control room, with their advanced command and control modules and take note of how to use Jaybo and Peffy in the future. Seems I won't need to be personally present everywhere. The Techo Union had advanced C4 systems, enough to run an entire planet from a single location.

I did download all the codes and data salvage I can, and a thousand similar centers will be produced for our flagships and industrial centers, on a thousand planets. Industrial revolution, here we come.

Sadly, these codes are a mess, billions of programmers over thousands of years have just added more and more command codes, making the poor droids ditzy and inefficient. Sometimes more is not better. Just like with laws. Too much is generaly as bad as too little.

No wonder the poor droids can barely distinguish between voice orders and binary subroutines.

Guess I'll be here 2 weeks as well, plenty work to be done, starting with the air, then water, then everything underground, like magma pits and rivers of lava, and then working my way up, to cities and finally, better starships and orbital defenses.

Hey! A Trade Federation transport Lucrehulk just dropped out of hyperspace, loaded with tons of free weapons and droids! And the jump window brought it close enough for my technopathy? Lucky!

Slice and assume control, capture the token organic crew, and send them planetside for interrogation. Guess they didn't get the memo? This is the Pef Empire!

Huh, and the ship is already upgraded with battleship class shields, just not weapons. Only a number of Vultures or Variable Geometry Self-Propelled Battle Droid, Mark I , which are kinda crappy. Thanks CIS! I really wanted one of these droids. You shouldn't have sent me a thousand.

Still, the design would be useful as ground support units, both as mecha and gunship roles.

They just need shields and a laser chaingun to be effective. Just, not as starfighters.

Perhaps a bit of armor over the droid core too, since they will engage various races. Maybe a proton torpedo launcher? Yea, buzz droid missiles are amusing, but not really effective. It's like shooting someone with ants, then wait for the ants to eat your target. It might work, but bullets would work better.

This Battleship donut will serve me well as a secondary spacestation in orbit around the planet, beside the contact Lucrehulk already in orbit. Now let's examine the cargo...

Hmmm, 10 millions hand blasters, originally meant for the B1 'Roger, Roger droids' , and 10 millions backpacks, with spare batteries and grenades. Good for the brand-new armies. Telescoped rifles, rocket launchers, mines, thermal detonators. Almost everything I need to equip a thousand divisions of B11 droids.

Now, let's send the Vulture droids down, to begin upgrading with the new specs, since my marines may be suicidally brave, but not as effective as 10 squadrons of mecha.

What else?

The former slaves are demanding to be allowed as naval officers and crews to defend their liberated planet? Sure, as soon as you undergo rapid neural training. Doesn't hurt one bit. A million volunteers raise their hands instantly.

See? Why would anyone keep slaves? They would just join the enemy, at first opportunity.

Let's select a hundred former slaves, with a smidge of force sensitivity, for navigation courses. They will become Explorers, since I can't be seen as favoritising a race over the other for the honor of blind jumps between stars. Humans are special anyway, in this galaxy. Pretty much everywhere, from the Core to wild space.

Give them the Force and they become quite dangerous too. And if they start exploring...well. Most will die.

Then again, with doses of bota plants and holocron training, they may even survive. Who knows what the Force wants.

Not everyone wants to die for their freedom, of course. The larger part of the liberated slave population wants just to live, in freedom. I can offer them Imperial Servant positions, good pay, free apartments and neural training, promotions scale up to system governor or ship captain. Or a ticket to Corellia, with a ration baton and a clean pair of shorts.

I can't subsidize vagabonds too much, after all.

Only one in two hundred choose the freedom to starve. Huh, that's even better than regular slaves.

Another Munificent frigate jumps in the system as well, but it's too far to grab, while engaged in terraforming and a million conversations at once, via my droids. A few of my Dakka corvettes bless the frigate as she jumps away, with their long range capital lasers. Some sparks are visible before the hyperspace window closes.

Kriff. The one who got away. Oh well, there's 30 more frigates being almost finished in the shipyards.

I'll have to go over their designs and rebuild them to my liking. Possibly as pocket star destroyers, since they are almost as long as a Venator. Why build such a large ship, and only arm it with two capital class turbolasers? That's 2, what comes after 1. Well, and some light guns.

The ship with one large gun is the Recusant class, which is even longer than a Venator-class Star Destroyer. Gah. I have a corvette 10 times smaller with similar firepower.

Well, not exactly as a Recusant, since that ship has 10 more badly placed turbolasers on its hull. But since just one of those destroyers costs over 60 million credits, and my corvettes only 1 million, credit per credit I still spend 6 times less for the same firepower.

And I haven't managed to spend 2 trillion credits yet.

Who invented these ships? Why?

Oh well. Building spaceships is fun.

Planet Gand, Pef Empire

Celestial Throne

23 BBY Second month.

An Anzat assassin has tried attacking Voice Solana while she was visiting their planet, resulting in killing one of the Fallanassi VSS officers from her escort. Sad, but now we have a reason to annex the planet, and find out where half the Anzat Masters have gone. I assume Dooku bought them, but who knows?

The campaign to capture more planets in the area is proceeding well, with Ventress capturing Viidaav and Loken III, along with their shipyards and droid factories.

A hundred Explorers made the final sacrifice past month, failing to return with new hyper routes, despite ever increasing bota doses and holocron training. I guess human Explorers are just as prone to die as other species.

But, one Sith Explorer did indeed reach Ossus, and confessed that the Force guided him all the way. That's quite the irony, considering it was a Sith mage that blew up 10 stars and obliterated most planets in the area with a supernova class explosion.

My guy returned immediately though, since my orders quite explicitly stated no interference with the Adega system, once a hyperroute was found. There will be time enough to loot everything, once the wars begin.

Avatar is enjoying the attention of all the maids, being kissed and pampered like a divine being.

Peffy is now riding a R2 astromech chassis, using it as his personal wheelchair, and every single sentence I utter through him is rewarded with another hug or kiss. It's kinda fun, and very pleasant.

By then end of the year the Avatar will pass Jaybo in height and biological age. I changed his hair color to blonde though, to remove doubts and other problems that a clone might encounter. Also made him wear a custom tiny light armor, with parts from the Old Jedi armors I recovered on Garm.

Even my newest maids, Aurra and Na-jia adore him, a little. They are a bit confused how to deal with him, for now. He's gonna break all their hearts once he's taller than them.

With love, not with fists. I'm not a savage. Love conquers all, after all.

Still, going through the slowest velocities with my organic self is quite painful. But Miss Zero says it's normal, just weakness leaving the body, being replaced by a stronger will.

And if you wonder how I made Aurra made up with Zero...it's simple. I didn't, not personally. I wouldn't try to smooth over two decades of hate and resentment, not without full mind alter.

Called my buddy, the Bendu, to fix it with his wisdom and magic and a few head slaps.

Took him less than a week, and only had to heal their bones twice. Much more patient than I would have been. The billion credits I paid in advance to both of them possibly helped. Not that Zero would admit liking money, or a personal Calamari cruiser.

Aurra didn't have a problem and even hugged me tightly when she read the credit chip, and so, I caressed her tight, muscled bottom for a whole minute. Cad Bane must be smiling in hell now.

Now, half my maids live planetside to keep my Avatar company, and massage his hurt muscles after every training. Poor baby...

Seems living between plants and staying all day in the sun helps forming a connection with the Living force. So Jedi Zero says, and I won't argue on this. She's quite good with the Living Force.

Cause, of course I had to transplant the entire flower garden from Zero's old planet to Gand, to make her happy and less homicidal. She can punch straight through battle droids. Yeah, just like my own chassis. And she can also teleport.

And now, I prepare to journey again, this time to Kalkovak, and secure their allegiance by turning a desert world into one with large oceans. Kriff, more ice comets and rain. At least there's no ammonia or pollution. I kinda hate bricks after trillions of brick pyramids on a dozen planets.

But making friends with the Quarren is important, since most of my cruisers are made by Mon Cala shipyards.

I decided to keep the Recusants I obtained as fleet carriers, simply adding large hangar bays to their hulls.

The Munificents I upgraded instead, since their engines were twice as fast, added more reactors and some armor, more shield emitters and maser guns, along with 50 point defense laser chainguns and 100 missile launchers. Spent another billion credits, to fix a problem that shouldn't have existed.

But now, each Muni destroyer can take on a Venator star destroyer, and win. How?

It's that simple, superfiring turrets. Instead of just 2 guns, I placed 10 ion cannons and 20 heavy masers, each able to fire above the turret in front of it, while the top and bottom batteries can rotate 360 degrees and fire even backwards if needed. Sure, the ship upgrades cost a bit. But so what?

Two more Meteors have finished their complete build, with 100 MACs launchers each, and the rest of the weapons, and have begun trials, one around the Trasemene system, the other around Caluula.

For now, they are shooting at barren planets that we equipped with planetary shields, for testing purposes. Ten salvos are sufficient to crash a full planetary shield. Thats 10 Meteors, shooting once.

And also, a Toong Explorer has reached an Orion system to the North, which simply by virtue of the name I must have, and add Master of Orion to my titles. The planet Orion IV isn't much, except of a violet sky, and is quite polluted.

I'll have to visit it next month, and fix it up. My maid with violet hair should go and oversee that, establishing the minimal necessities for the poor people there, along with starports and holonet emitters and everything my empire stands for.

Civilization or bust.

"Had enough rambling, oh Master of Orion?" Wialu asked me, perhaps sarcastically.

"I'm good now. How goes little Lira?" I asked concerned, since the tiny clone was not really responding in the bond.

"You just had to add genes from Fay to her, hadn't you? No wonder she's in pain and can't connect properly to your bond..." my Voice admonished me.

"But if it works, she'll survive a blaster to the head, next time!" I explained, as politely as I could.

"Don't plan for her next death, damn idiot !" Wialu yelled through the bond, possibly upset for some reason.

Huh, how could I not? She will die again, it was inevitable. But dying from a blaster as my Voice was shameful...

I checked the other partitions, going over the thousand ongoing ops, the Sanctuary newest prodigies, Solanus reports on the Vong and his work to perfect a force based teleport based on the hypergem. Feeble steps, yet.

We needed more data, perhaps a hyperspace capable vongship, or tech samples of the artificial hyperlanes, like those crossing into the Deep Core. Or both.

Ray's last report came from Birgis, and she seemed a little scared, having seen a Worldship from the distance.

I hope she's okay. The Vong have telepaths too, and the Shaper caste and entechment and who knows what else. Still, the Vong shouldn't have many ships in the galaxy yet.