Commenor system, on board the Celestial Throne spacestation

Pef Navy Block, R&D Labs.

9BBY

Now I felt like living in the future, as the best and brightest ship engineers in my Navy are going over the latest plans for the Orion M. Holo-schematics are being tested in virtual and no so virtual chambers, since our military grade holoprojections are tactile now.

Nano-missiles are used instead of molten lava projectiles, to test the shields and armor against known Vong weapons.

The plans for the new corvette show a much enlarged vessel, about 30 percent wider and 10 percent thicker. This allows for the new Ardanium II solar ionization reactors to be housed in a pair, and support the larger energy needs.

The older heavy laser main battery had been replaced with a twin-linked megamaser, which by itself will increase the effectiveness of our ship by an order of magnitude against the Vong gravity based shields.

The old light missiles launchers have also been replaced, as they were proven pretty much useless even against the coralskipper fighters. We have instead installed 6 medium missile launchers with diamond-boron warheads, each with a 4 missile autoloader. In tests, they will allow our escorts to destroy 20 fighters at longer range, before they come into their own weapons envelope.

Also, the point defense Gatling lasers have been removed, since they barely annoy any Vong vessel. Instead, we are testing a new tri-barrel medium maser as close defense weapon system, as well as the more classic twin-linked medium maser batteries.

The new tri-barrel guns look extremely cool, but I am doubtful they will become our next generation defense system. Too many design problems, as well as overheating errors which lead to early lenses decolimation. New technology is finicky that way.

We'll most likely use 10 twin-linked medium masers for our close-in weapons and call it a day.

'The tri-barrel masers will ensure a fighter kill in a single shot' my Core AI sent with a certain tone.

Possibly. But no. Logistics are more important. New factories and training our workers to produce millions of untested weapons is not a feasible choice, for now.

With an unneeded gesture, I finish compiling the holo for the new corvette and send it into the testing holo-arena to engage virtual Vong vessels.

While the simulation runs a million times, I turn my attention to the Nebula destroyers designs in the next lab. They worked very well against the Praetorite Vong, so there's not much to change, except replacing the light missile launchers as well.

The Ardent frigates are yet untested in real combat, except in the west. Also, they still use turbolasers. Oh well, it's not like they aren't useful, just not so much against the Vong. Still, an Ardent M variant should plug some of the fleet screen gaps.

I begin working on the new design, upgrading the weapons to the latest Pef Empire standards. And the armor too, now that I can.

One by one, I cycle through all of our inventory, repairing flaws and upgrading ships where needed.

Months pass in glorious upgrade frenzy, until the last schematic of the Mountain III blinks and winks off.

I'm done! And it feels amazing.

Commenor system, on board the Celestial Throne spacestation

Pef Navy Block, R&D Labs.

8 BBY

'Glad to know you're happy, my love.' Wialu whispers in the Voice bond, from somewhere in... Zonama Sekot?

'Huh, I didn't know you went to visit Sekot...' I mutter with some embarrassment.

'You were quite focused on your toy machines, Pef. We decided to let you have some fun, since there weren't any urgent crises that we couldn't solve by ourselves.' Solana sent with an amused tone.

A quick scan of the intelligence reports. Yep, nothing huge has happened past 6 months. Quite amazing, right?

Peffy is enjoying family life with our maids and the kids. Lucky kids, having Avatar for a father, never being sick or cold or hungry.

Zero's daughter is now walking by herself. Somehow, that seems to be the hype of the family news.

Meanwhile, Core has printed 100 billion of his new Centurion droids, and they can walk, talk and shoot too. And nobody is singing him praises. Damn organics.

'Right? I work so hard, and barely anyone acknowledges my efforts. Except you, my friend.' Core sent me instantly. Well, perhaps it's not your efforts they ignore, but your entire person, which creeps out most sentients, including droids.

The shipyards at Orion Belt have begun refitting the Navy corvettes to the new Orion M standards, and hundreds of vessels already running trials and exercises. So far they seem to work as designed.

Of course, only combat will tell for real, but I have a feeling they will do just fine.

Bena has a son. Which means the succession of the Empire is secured.

Padme's twins show signs they are force sensitive. Not that surprising, considering they are called Luke and Leia. However, they are being raised by a single mother, even with the support of Satine and Kenobi.

Satine has another child, a girl they called Allana.

Bo named her daughter Alise, in honor of our lost maid. Let's hope she'll have a better fate then.

In other news KDY and Kuat in general have retooled and reached maximum productivity, churning out millions of starfighters, and thousands of larger vessels. Vera is doing a good job there.

'Thanks!' she sends amused. Right, she is a Voice as well.

'Anything of notice with Kuat?' I asked curious.

'Some resentment for introducing maser tech, and demanding upgrades every decade...' she whispered back.

Ah, I did give them the tri-barrel maser design and asked them to build a new TIE fighter around it.

Well, that's life. They will adapt or suffer.

The Land Warrior team have finished designing the new tank and gunship, and are hopeful to reduce projected ground loses against Vong from 98 percent to about 80 percent. So there. Progress!

The new tanks are called Land Raiders, and will have 4 centimeters of duranium armor all round, and 8 centimeters of armor frontally. They have also upgraded the weapons, using the new enhanced proton beam and a medium maser as a secondary.

This has increased their tonnage and reduced their speed by 50 percent, but hopefully the increase in firepower and survivability will compensate. Their cost has tripled as well, which isn't that good.

Eh, I kinda expected that, to be fair. Better weapons cost more money, right?

Sigh. For now, we'll phase out the repulsorlift light tanks and the wheeled medium tanks, as they cost way too much(15 times as much as a Gauntlet!) and die too easy. We'll use Gauntlets in light tanks roles, and make the Raiders our new MBTs.

The new gunships borrow a lot from the CSI gunship platform, each integrating a droid brain and are armed with a twin-medium maser turret and proton torpedoes for anti-armor roles. Another variant has only the masers, but can insert 30 battle droids behind enemy lines.

A third gunship variant is being tested, for inserting tanks or artillery as well, but projected loses are too high, since the gunships do not have starship grade armor or shields. Plus, we do have Gozanti dropships for that role. Sending orders to cancel that last project.

What else?

The Navy is still hard at work in the west of the galaxy, although 50 belligerent species have been pacified and made to submit. There are bound to be thousands more, since the Unknown Regions consist of some 100 to 200 billion stars, and we have barely explored and conquered a few million new systems.

Lots to do, I know.

There's been rumours (and Black Ops footage) of a huge pirate gang made only of Force users. Blazing Chain or so. They'll be interesting to fight and perhaps integrate with my Paladins. They seem to use many of the same tactics, guiding blasters or projectiles with the Force.

The stillsails are migrating towards the galactic south, and eating any ships they encounter, ours or not. Sometimes asteroids or planets too. Damn things are 100 thousands kilometers wide! Beams and missiles don't even register as pain...

The Mngall-Mngall is rumored (no footage yet!) to have eaten and subsumed yet another alien slaver empire. However, lack of subspace transmissions of slave gladiator fights for the past 4 months is a telling clue. Those guys never had stopped the Grand Arena broadcasts before.

'We lost contact with the stealth platforms in that sector, and the Oort satellite relays as well.' my Third Hand replied when I asked.

Well then. Another thousand star systems being marked on the holomap as Gamma threat and quarantined. Such is life in the Star Wars universe.