3.05

Cargo ships share certain fundamental characteristics regardless of era, culture, or even technology level. Their enormous size compared to all other ships of a given navy, for they must carry the entire agricultural and industrial production of their civilization. The small number of cavernous spaces in their interior that speed up loading and unloading of their cargo. Their flimsy hulls that are often several times lighter than their cargo, cutting down on the mass their engines must carry. Their relatively small engines and questionable maneuverability optimized for low-expense transportation at slow speeds. Their minuscule crews, cut down to those absolutely necessary to pilot them with the least wages or maintenance expended. Form follows function is a very old truism for a reason... and in fact, trade is the second area it was applied to in human history, right after the war.

Walking through the Doughnut's chaotic interior, I realized how much the ship I'd come to see as my new home was changing, leaving the cargo ship paradigm behind. The most obvious change was the droids. In the Star Wars galaxy, droids stood in the nebulous area between artificial intelligence and automated appliances, and while some were manufactured with humanoid frames, the vast majority were shaped according to their job. Most people, for example, might know that a Trade Federation Core Ship had three thousand man-droids as crew led by sixty organic supervisors, but they hardly ever noticed the two hundred thousand cleaning, maintenance, repair, and utility droids in its standard complement that might look like mechanical mouses or walking power generators. The Doughnut used to have a bit under a million total droids of various shapes and sizes. With the floating, many-limbed spheres working at frenetic paces in every room and corridor and making its interior feel downright crowded... it probably had five times as many.

Despite appearances, there was a method to the chaos. Ships of the Doughnut's size required the kind of docking slips one could find at Kuat, Fondor, or Correlia for any extensive modifications if one went about building ships in the traditional manner. But what if one had literally millions of workers at hand, workers with three times the limbs and multitasking ability of any organic, a dozen times the strength, immunity to fatigue or environmental conditions, an ability to float around in defiance of gravity, and an ability to work together that exceeded organic hive-mind species? Then brute-forcing the interior reconstruction of a ship with the ship's own hull serving as the building slip was theoretically possible.

Over half of the Doughnut's interior was effectively gutted, rooms, corridors, storage areas, and maintenance shafts in various degrees of disassembly. Secondary holds, storage rooms, repair centers, several entire secondary decks were being taken out piece by piece, to be replaced by heavy-duty power lines as thick as trains, cooling pipes of diamondoid and liquid helium that looked like sewers of a major city, hardpoints that could support plug-and-play exterior systems the size of small skyscrapers, artificial gravity generators and inertia compensators, and layer after layer of durasteel and diamondoid plating. All in all, the Doughnut's outer ring was being rebuilt from right under the exterior hull to a depth of two hundred plus feet. Considering that the Doughnut had a surface area of a dozen square miles, it was the equivalent of rebuilding Manhattan down to its foundations. The whole project bordered on the absurd, but there was one oddity that struck me as really out of place; beyond some major reinforcement and dozens of access ports leading to the newly constructed power lines the main cargo holds in the outer ring, those filled with raw materials in a trader or up to fifty cruiser-sized transports in a fully equipped Trade Federation droid carrier, remained unchanged.

That the Doughnut was being converted into a proper battleship - if via improper means - ought to have reassured me given the Clone Wars looming in the Galaxy's future. So why was my awareness of the Force heavy with an ominous sense of dread, doubt, and unease?

xxxx xxxx xxxx

​

"It is well to finally see you fully recovered, Daughter."

As was a family tradition, important meetings, business arrangements, and clan matters were being discussed over an extravagant, seven-course dinner of Kuati delicacies. The dishes tended toward seafood, both elaborately prepared and garnished raw fish, and various crustaceans fried in thin, lightly-scented oils. That and the odd salads reminded me of the Japanese cuisine from my previous life. The ritualistic formality, a dress code that favored kimonos and other dresses in vaguely eastern themes, the far Eastern features of the Kuati, and the too-pale complexion of the Arkanians... I felt like the token Western actor in a modern Japanese movie, and I really hoped things wouldn't go as in The Last Samurai.

"I am happy to see you as well, Father. It has been some time since we last saw each other." Now let's get over this crazily expensive dinner and get down to the important parts - not a thought to express at the moment, but one felt all the same. Don't get me wrong, the fancy stuff was kinda great. But things like 'how much of a mess did the Galaxy become in the past fourteen months' and 'how much did the upgrades on the Doughnut cost' took priority.

"Indeed." Father paused to set his glass of pricier-than-Aurodium Corellian brandy aside, and gesture towards the floating droid-waiter, another of the six-limbed multipurpose variety. The floating ball-and-limbs picked up two new glasses with commendable dexterity then produced what looked like a charcoal black brick. It beeped once, twice, then with a hissing sound, the black brick sublimated and was vacuumed away, leaving an aluminum bottle full of crystal-clear liquid behind. The droid poured it into the two glasses, then served first me then Father. We drank in silence, the impossibly refreshing yet tasteless liquid gulped down quickly, and then everything in the room took on the painfully sharp clarity of objects seen in a vacuum, beyond atmospheric interference. I could count Father's pure white hair one by one, hear both our heartbeats and the normally inaudible whine of machinery all around, see in my mind every imperfection in my blue silk dress from touch alone.

"A curious sensation," Father commented conversationally. "For the expense of its timely transportation even in carbonite, it never proved more than a health tonic and a strong stimulant for me. Your mother's experience on the other hand... let's just say I am happy it accelerated your recovery."

"Thank you for the... medicine, Father." I knew asking for the liquid's origins would not get anywhere. Perhaps its minimal results on him contributed to Father's natural reticence, or maybe the reminder of Mother's absence and past in my daily medication was not something he could deal with despite his stoic facade. Whatever the case, my suspicions would have to be confirmed in person... after I was fully recovered and had taken every conceivable countermeasure against bio-weapons and hostile flora and fauna.

"You're welcome, Daughter. Now... to business." A wave of his hand activated the holographic projector the droid had been carrying in its last two limbs, projecting an image of the Galaxy and its many trade routes and economic hubs. Even with the hologram taking up a ten-yard span, the chaotic, gleaming mass of stars was difficult to read. Considering that a star system out to its Oort cloud was no larger than the head of a pin in that scale, that should not be surprising; at least there was an economic and military color code that helped show the current situation. "As you should be able to tell, the economy has been steadily shifting on a galactic scale over the past two decades. An influx of resources and agricultural products from the Outer and Inner Rim has been flowing towards the Core in increasing rates while exports and investments have been reduced in a stunning display of mercantilistic idiocy. What was a minor problem only half a century ago is a major factor in the growing schism between the Core and the rest of the Galaxy."

"How far have the problems progressed?" The exploitation of less developed star systems by the Core worlds was nothing new, but if I was reading things right it had nearly doubled in the past five years alone. "And can you isolate the flows of zersium, neutronium, hypermatter, tibanna, and graviton knots?" If the timeline had kept to its canon progression...

"Very perceptive," Father said as Dac, Pammant, Kuat, Raxus, Corellia, and Fondor started glowing like miniature light-bulbs. A dozen dimmer lights such as Sullust and Eriadu also appeared though they could not compare to the initial six. From them, a tree-like complex of import routes linked to hundreds of other systems all over the Galaxy, the implications obvious. "Over the past three years, starship material imports have increased by thirty-five percent, with no signs of slowing down. A few politicians might pay attention to sedition attempts from a few minor planets and rumors of general unrest in the Rim, but the economic situation is far more alarming."

"Too bad nobody is paying attention." My gaze fixed on Kuat and I grimaced. There was no way I could avoid suspicion if I took the next step, but it had to be done. We had lost too much time already - a year and a half, gone. "How does the production of civilian and military vessels back home correspond to the raw material imports?" Because of fuck Sidious and his plots and their hundred billion casualties.

"Your sister did mention that secret message of yours," Father said, his expression inscrutable. Another shift in the image and a chart of imports vs expenditures appeared. Ships were fuckhuge and starship technology basics were pretty much basic knowledge all over the Galaxy; concealing the production of a known shipyard was effectively impossible. There was, however, another option. "There is a three-point-one percent yearly discrepancy between import and production for the Kuat shipyards, and it's rising. It is not apparent if you check the data - some very clever editing work has been done across the entire database - but if you know what you're looking for and extrapolate from existing production... did you foresee this? Were the assassins sent because you saw something and someone else noticed?"

"Perhaps." Though I very much hoped otherwise. I haven't done much to attract either Sith or Jedi attention yet... I hoped. "Does the rest of House Andrim have any clues as to where the materials are going? And if, hypothetically speaking, the missing materials were made into Dreadnought Cruisers, what numbers would we be talking about?"

"We have no idea about the former," Father said sharply, fists clenching in anger even as his golden skin paled further. "But at least some of the conspiracy junkies in Intelligence have had similar thoughts." He shook his head, long white hair dancing wildly and yet elegantly. "Though I suppose I must stop referring to them as 'conspiracy junkies' now that the galaxy is quietly arming up, and Kuat of Kuat has effectively betrayed us on the order of three and a half thousand Dreadnoughts."

Yes, everything was still going according to Star Wars canon. Wasn't that wonderful?