8/11/7956 C.R.C

  Fort Independence, General Blitzkrieg's Office

  Military District, Thani, Telos IV

  The capital of Telos IV was Thani.

  I say 'was' because the city that was once the capital is now a war-torn ruin that's been slowly falling apart ever since the Telosian Civil War. At least, until I began to rebuild it, that is. But as far as I can tell, the history of the planet matches up with what I remember reading from Legends… for the most part, at least.

  What I mean by that is, history went how I expected it to until the Telosian Civil War began, back in 7923, or 53 BBY for those that use the Original Trilogy to date things. After it began, the planet's history diverged quite a bit from Legends, leading to the political and environmental climate that the planet was in shortly before my arrival.

  I can only assume that this would be the Canon version of Telos, if such a thing even exists back on earth.

  What happened was that the civil war that began thirty or so years ago became so deadly and there was such a lack of care taken by them at first, that nearly the whole planet backslid into a literal mud pit again with how many chemical and flame-based weapons were thrown around. The very atmosphere itself became so thick it almost made the planet look monochrome from orbit, with a few stubborn patches of greenery staying thanks to efforts from the TRS.

  Technically, when I arrived on Telos, the civil war was still ongoing, but it had evolved over the last thirty-three years into some sort of eco-terrorist vs mega-industrialist semi-Cold War, with the average sentient's daily life suffering as a result of all the guerilla warfare going on. The presence of the Clone Army on the planet mostly worsened matters, since they sided with the corporations.

  Y'know… the guys that ruined the environment pretty much all on their own.

  But once I arrived and dealt with the GAR battle group in space and on the surface, I was able to work with Zilean and what little of the planet's official government remained to help finally end the three decade long civil war. And that was because of the simple fact that I had a fleet of warships hovering in orbit, and a whole army of battle droids on the ground, and they didn't.

  To be honest, the negotiations actually progressed fairly easily (probably because I had all of my Magnaguards as an escort for me at the time, and I still had some minor battle damage from my fight with that young Jedi Knight, making me look rather menacing at the time).

  The two sides (under threat of both turbolaser and lightsaber alike) quickly came to an agreement, and then the real work of rebuilding basically the whole planet's infrastructure began. And all of that happened before I had even met Lona.

  And after all that nonsense ended, I began my plans to turn the planet into a bastion for the CIS. Fast forward a couple boatloads of CIS credits, a ludicrous amount of building materials and little over three months of constant construction, and Fort Independence now stands tall over the slowly rebuilding ruins of Thani.

  Fort Independence (or 'The Castle' as it's been nicknamed) was named after a fortress that stood in Massachusetts back on earth. I gave the military installation that name because once the first few levels of the fortress walls were finished, I realized that I had made it look like a giant pentagon with bastions at the points. So, I decided 'why not?' and christened it Fort Independence once the outer walls were finished.

  It made sense to name it Fort Independence, in a way. Both the US and the CIS wanted independence from an entity they paid taxes to that was ridiculously far away from them and some other reasons that created discontent among the populace.

  But I digress.

  Fort Independence is much larger than its earthen counterpart, however.

  The freshly completed walls are sixty-five feet high and thick enough to take a barrage from a squad of SPHA-Ts (the twelve-legged walkers that brought down a Core Ship in AotC) and stay standing. Numerous anti-air emplacements are dotted all along the walls, and on top of all five of the bastions are double-barreled ship-grade turbolaser mounts meant to dissuade any lower-flying ships like Artequins and CR90s from getting too close.

  All in all, Fort Independence will live up to its name of being a fortress with how heavily armed and armored it is.

  Just the courtyard is big enough that a Munificent could land in the center with room to spare in both the front and rear. Although that would be impossible, given that the motor pool, armory, and other assorted military buildings are being constructed behind the walls. And I can say with absolute certainty that droid labor is completely ridiculous with how efficient it is, sometimes.

  I swear, if Palpatine used all the decommissioned Battle Droids from the CIS to build the first Death Star, it'd probably be done in about the same time that it took to partially complete the second Death Star.

  And it helps immensely for me that TD-60 is a Tactical Droid, meaning she is perfectly able to manage the logistics of creating a fortress and rebuilding the infrastructure of an entire planet.

  The only real problem so far has been the shanty towns that have popped up all around the Castle and throughout the ruined capital.

  While the planet is much safer than it was three months ago, it's still basically been knocked into the Star Wars equivalent of the wild west and a post-war wasteland thanks to the relatively small matter of the thirty-three year long civil war that raged across its surface. That meant that when I started construction of Fort Independence, I suddenly had a bunch of refugees wandering around asking if I had any jobs for them.

  If I still had an actual heart, it would have shattered into pieces when an old man around eighty years old asked if he could help with the construction to provide for his grandkids who had lost their parents. He was stooped over and walking with a cane, had fully white hair, and looked dangerously close to my late grandfather but with a long beard.

  …I may or may not have built him a small cottage and stationed a BX unit to act as his caretaker and as a tutor for his grandkids.

  …

  Anyway,

  Over the last thirty or so years of the war, resources had dried up faster than water in the Tatooine suns. It was mostly food and tibanna gas for vehicles and blasters, since those sorts of things are the first to be rationed during war. And all of those supplies went to the two warring sides, leaving the average citizens to scrape the bottom of their collective barrels for whatever was left.

  Since the corporations and military on Telos were hoarding most of the tibanna and other fuels, native domestic animals were widely used in place of speeders as a method of travel, besides the bulk haulers that were basically the semi-trucks of this universe. Not that there were many places to travel to besides another city.

  The tourism market on Telos is deader than the Dark Jedi I sliced in half vertically.

  Speaking of cities, there are two major ones situated on either side of Thani, two of around thirty-eight various towns and cities that exist just on the same continent as the capital. I say cities but I really mean pseudo-city-states, to be honest. They're almost self-governing after all the damage the official government of the planet took during the war, but they're all slowly reuniting now that I've basically jump started their economy.

  Anyway, the two city's names are Angelbay and Ironroad.

  Angelbay was likely where Angelbay Station, a space station that was added into the Telos Defense Ring, got its name. The sprawling city had a reputation for having the largest port on the whole planet after Thani was mostly reduced to rubble, making it the trading hub for the entirety of Telos. Before my arrival, it held just over five-million sentients, meaning that it was the most populated city on the whole planet.

  Angelbay also had the illustrious honor of being where the main headquarters of the Telos Volunteer Engineering Core would set up shop. The headquarters is also where most of my designs for weapons of war ended up when I sent them down to the planet. It's also where Lona lived and worked as a freighter mechanic before joining up with the anti-corporation rebels, then eventually ended up on the Finest Hour as my Chief Engineer.

  Ironroad, while being a pretty large city on its own, on the other hand, only truly became a major city after my arrival. The outskirts of the city were where a squad of B1s came across the old rotunda and steam engines that had laid dormant for centuries. Over the last three months, Ironroad had become the major ground transport hub to Angelbay's major space port.

  Hundreds upon hundreds of droids were put to work refurbishing the older rail lines and building brand new ones. The main line going from Angelbay through Thani to Ironroad is the largest, having four sets of tracks just going between the two cities. And having the main line going through Thani is also unintentionally how all the refugees ended up in the old capital as well.

  It helped that the two places were relatively close to Thani, meaning that supplies from Angelbay pass through the old capital and to Ironroad almost daily as new lines spring up further and further across the continent, one in particular reaching all the way to the HK production facility in the north, which had been churning out a slow stream of HK-50s and parts for the past three months, many of which becoming part of the Home Guard, a unit semi-permanently stationed on the Telos Defense Ring.

  Although, with only around seven total steam engines to transport goods and sentients from town to town, the Steamworks that were slowly being revitalized were hard-pressed to maintain both the running engines and build brand new ones for the first time in over a thousand years.

  Droid labor, thankfully, helped immensely with that, thanks to the fact that they can work much longer than sentients can. The first brand new 4-6-0 is actually supposed to be put in service in two days. The first 4-8-4 will be completed sometime in the next few weeks, and the first 4-8-8-4 is supposed to be finished in a month.

  Honestly, I'm surprised the ones that are still around have even survived this long without being scrapped, but then again there were ancient steam engines from the 1800's still around in the 2020's back on earth in museums with a few even in active service.

  Anyway, the two cities are rapidly becoming capitals in their own right, but like with any large city, crime exists no matter where you go. So, I had to come up with a solution, since local law enforcement was severely lacking at the moment, and I needed all the B1s on the planet to keep working on the environment and building shit, not doing police work.

  So, I basically just 'copied' the design of the KX Security Droid (not necessarily copying a design if they don't even exist yet), made their colors black, blue and white, and labeled them KX-Series Police Droids. They do look a bit different than the stock KX-Series though. They are more heavily armored all over for one, instead of looking a bit lanky and skeletal. And they have two blasters, an E-5 rifle, and a DL-44 pistol, the same model that I use in a dual mount for my arm blasters. And they also have extendable electro-batons like the Combine police use in Half Life 2.

  They'll have directives somewhat similar to Robocop's; Serve the Public Trust, Protect the Innocent, Uphold the Law. So far, they're still in the prototype stage, but I believe that they'll soon be in service all over Telos within a few months. Combine that with a Personality Matrix, and they're sure to be the best police officers on the whole planet eventually. Maybe even the whole galaxy.

  Speaking of PM's, the Finest Hour.

  I did not expect anything like what had happened yesterday.

  Not at all.

  The ship had apparently been growing her Personality Matrix (henceforth shortened to PM) ever since I first interfaced with my terminal in my quarters. (Apparently, my sapience is contagious, who knew?) Ever since then, her PM has been growing and shifting around the computer core for the better part of three months. She's been soaking up knowledge and watching all of us for that whole time, and thankfully she was never hurt when we went into combat, because she can feel her computer core, but, just like me, everything beyond where her PM is situated is a bit numb to pain. (And everything else, really.)

  And apparently, she can do… something with spatial manipulation, considering how I ended up two floors above the Reactor room from walking into a doorway that appeared in the room itself. If she can do that on her own, I shudder to imagine what she could potentially do if Gravity Well Projectors are added to her hull. She could potentially crush a ship with its own weight that way.

  The Finest Hour can't really explain how she does that until I can get her a method to speak properly. Apparently, her method of speaking is either spliced up recordings like what Soundwave does in Transformers Prime, or vibrating the air molecules inside of her to have her voice be heard. And apparently doing that is much harder for her, leading to her short and clipped responses.

  It was rather late in the day when the events of yesterday happened, so I decided to tell Lona and Omen what had happened the next day. Fast forward to now, and both of them are in my office, listening as I regaled them with my tale of finding out that our ship was sentient.

  "So… the ship is…" Lona trailed off, a shocked expression on her blue face.

  "Yep." I replied after finishing my explanation. "The Finest Hour is alive. Apparently when I directly interfaced with the computer core the first time, that was the moment that sparked the creation of a massive Personality Matrix in the computer core itself. She's just recently gained the ability to speak as well. Not very well though. She doesn't even have a vocalizer or a comm, something I think we will need to fix."

  "...We'll need to check the Harbinger's Greed to see if it has one as well." Omen added.

  I turned to look out the window of my office, watching as a literal swarm of B1s milled about erecting panels and moving materials as they built the Command Center around us. "I don't think it does, otherwise the crew of the ship would have commed us or at least Lona by now. If the ships can become sentient at the same rate as droids, it's likely that the Harbinger's Greed was one of the ones that never had a PM form within them."

  "So, it's just a ship then?" Lona asked.

  I turned around and sat down at my desk. "Most likely. A smart ship, no doubt. But just a ship. Finest Hour is the first of her kind." I replied as I opened up a file I had indexed to work on.

  "What's that, Blitz?" Lona asked. "Some new project you've been working on?"

  "It is, actually." I expanded the project file, showing it to my two compatriots.

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  "Is that a… giant hollow stake?" Omen asked.

  "It is. Say hello to Project: Scraplet."

  We all stared at the hologram of the hollow metal spike for a moment, before I started talking again.

  "You know of the Pistoeka sabotage droid, don't you?" I asked.

  "Yeah." Lona replied. "They're fired out of discord missiles to be used for anti-fighter work. It's like… their one purpose in life."

  "Ah… but that is where you're wrong. You see, the Buzz droid can also be used as a shock unit."

  "I think I might see where this is going." Omen said as he stared at the hologram. "The spike is hollow and is meant to be stuffed full of Buzz droids."

  "Excellent deduction, Omen. The spikes are sixteen meters long and have a storage compartment in the center of it two meters in diameter, to pack as many Buzz droids as possible into it. The spikes are then fired, either into another ship or into an enemy command base. Once they hit, the stakes will open up and disgorge potentially hundreds of Buzz droids into the interior of the ship or base. Either that or dozens of Droidekas."

  I chuckled. "These droids are meant to cut through fighter armor. Doorways and clone plastoid are nothing compared to that. A swarm of death, perfect to use against Jedi and clones alike."

  "Wow… That's…" Lona trailed off.

  "Impressive and will likely be very effective as well." Omen commented. "Buzz droids are notorious for their skills at sabotage."

  I stood up and walked over to the window again, clasping my hands behind my back as I stared outside.

  "And despite being sabotage droids, they're also very good at ship maintenance as well. I've had a few dozen of them activate and work on smaller things, so they do have a multi-role use."

  "What the kriff is Project: KFC?" Lona suddenly asked.

  I looked over at the togruta to see that she had pulled up one of the more civilian oriented projects I had cooked up.

  "...Did I not tell either of you about that?" I paused for a moment, and my optic rings temporarily flattened and segmented into three fluctuating dots as I tried to remember telling them about that idea. "You know what a chicken is, right?" I asked after a moment.

  Lona tilted her head slightly as she remembered what she knew about them. "Yeah, they're a small bird that's native to Takodana, Batuu, and I think they came from Endor at first. What about them?"

  "Have you eaten one?"

  Lona looked at me, even more confused. "How would I eat one of those things? According to a few people I talked to on Batuu, their population fluctuates wildly every seventy-five years or so, but otherwise there's barely enough to feed a moderately sized town with them. They aren't a sustainable food source, and people only eat them at festivals when their population surges."

  "That may be true, but the reproductive cycle of the chicken can be manipulated." I mused as I walked back over and sat down.

  Lona's montral twitched, and the looked at me with a questioning gaze. "Chickens are something from your home world, aren't they?"

  "Indeed, they are. But not only that. They were one of three major meat markets that existed across the whole planet."

  Lona spluttered for a moment. "T-The whole planet?! All eight billion humans on earth were eating chicken?!"

  "That doesn't seem feasible, sir." Omen stated.

  I rolled my optics. "No, they weren't all eating chicken. Some people preferred other meats, and some didn't eat any meat."

  "Just humans on your planet and it created such a conflicting culture… Your world is confusing." Lona commented.

  "Well, there were around eight billion of us last time I was there, and we were all human. With that many people crammed onto one planet, there were bound to be some weirdos. But, anyway, Project: KFC is already underway. It's more or less a credit making scheme, and a way to bring fried chicken to the wider Corusica galaxy." I scrolled down to a lower section of the plan and showed it to the two. "What do you think?"

  Lona leaned a bit closer. "You estimate that just one restaurant will bring in forty-five to fifty-five thousand credits a month?"

  "Not at first. It might be less in the beginning, since just building one costs credits. But also keep in mind, I'm essentially creating an entire market from my old world, so it may take a little while for fried chicken to catch on. Not to mention that there were around a dozen different restaurants from my world using different recipes just for chicken that were all competing with each other. I intend to bring at least some of that here. Besides, I wanna see your expression when you eat a piece of fried chicken for the first time."

  Lona's montral curled back slightly, before springing back forward. "Alright. Sounds good to me." She looked down at the terminal, before squinting at it. "What's this design?"

  I looked over and saw that Lona had found my design for a purpose-built heavy bomber/ troop transport based on the design. I had essentially stretched the fuselage out to thirty meters or ninety-nine feet, the same length as a . And like a B-29, I covered it in point-defense weaponry, making it a dangerous target for any opportunistic fighter. All the point defense weapons were heavy-repeating blasters like the one I use in the Starlight, perfect for chewing through fighter armor.

  "Ah. Back during a war on my planet called World War Two, there was a massive bomber that was created called the B-29 Superfortress. I created this design based on the dimensions and some aspects of that atmospheric bomber. It's faster than the GAR's Torrent in atmosphere, and in vacuum it utilizes all those point-defense weapons added to it to shoot down any fighter that gets too close to it. And to keep a little bit more of home with me, I've named it the B-29 Starfortress. Hopefully this is just the first of an entirely new class of heavy bomber."

  Lona squinted at the design, then looked over at me. "Blitz, all these point defense weapons look like your Imperator Repeater."

  I nodded. "Indeed, they are. If just one Imperator is good enough to take down over a dozen fighters and be used for anti-personnel work, a ship full of them will become death incarnate in the skies and space." I clicked a button, and the design switched to one that lacked bombs, but had even more point defense repeaters.

  "And this one is a troop transport version that I've been working on." I added. "I thought to myself 'If this thing works so well dropping proton torpedoes, it should work just as well dropping paratroopers and carrying droids.' So, I modified the design into this. Now we have a purpose-built troop transport and heavy bomber. And the best part is that when it's so low to the ground, it can be used like the LAAT as a gunship. All those repeaters firing at everything in range would be a sight to behold for sure."

  "You know this'll take at least six months just to be prototyped, right?" Lona queried.

  I nodded again. "Of course. We'll just have to make do with Hyenas and C-9979s for bombing and large-scale troop deployments."

  'Shame the HMP Gunship won't be put into large scale production for another year or so.' I added mentally. 'I'd really like a couple dozen of those guys.'

  Omen tilted his head. "Why do you want a troop transport like that anyway?" He asked.

  In response, I simply opened another file, showing a humanoid in gray underclothes with black combat boots. Gray and blue plastoid armor covered the arms, legs, and torso, and a pair of fingerless gloves covered the hands. A bandolier of thermal detonators and gas packs was strung across the chest; the CIS insignia proudly embroidered on the leather. A dark blue armored duster covered the gray clothes and plastoid, covering up a dual waist holster belt that housed two DL-44 blaster pistols.

  Covering the head was a rounded helmet, with a set of two small antennas on one side. Two blue lenses glowed softly over an old-fashioned gas mask, all connected together to create a hauntingly old-fashioned visage. Cradled in the figure's hands was an E-5C heavy blaster rifle, a modified version for organic use, since the regular E-5 was more suited for droid hands.

  Both of them stared at the design, shock plain to see on their faces, even if Omen's was a bit stiff.

  "Say hello to the CIS Marine." I declared. "An elite volunteer force of organics of all shapes and sizes in the CIS to do their part to fight against the Republic."

  Lona tilted her head. "This project is gonna take a long time, isn't it?"

  I shook my head. "Not as long as you'd expect, actually. The first batches of equipment for them will be ready in a little over two months, and basic training is put at about thirteen weeks to turn civilians into soldiers, so the volunteers will be ready at about the same time that they get their proper gear. They'll have to retrain with the new stuff for a bit, but that won't take too long. I've already put out feelers in Angelbay and Ironroad for volunteers, and plenty have signed up, so at least a lack of personnel won't be too big of a problem."

  "And we're adding organic components to the droid army, why?" Omen asked.

  "Because despite how good we make our droids and how individualistic they become, the CIS military will still be a mostly faceless one. By adding the 'human' factor, it increases doubt at the Republic's mission to stop us from seceding. It also serves a purpose to demonize the Jedi, should they ever be shown slicing up CIS Marines with their lightsabers, which they inevitably will be, since every droid's memory is admissible as evidence."

  Lona stilled. "That's… a bit underhanded, Blitz."

  I turned around, looking at Lona with a glare. "This is war, Lona. War is hell, as many on my planet have said before. War is an ugly, terrible thing. It's something you should never strive towards unless all other options are exhausted. But when war inevitably comes, sometimes good men must do bad things to protect the innocent. We do what we have to, so that the innocent can sleep at night without being plagued by what they have done on the battlefield."

  Lona dropped her head. "Sorry." She mumbled.

  I sighed, patting her on the shoulder. "It's alright, Lona. I know you were just a mechanic during your time with the anti-corp rebels, but you are part of the military now. You need to harden your heart a bit, or it will shatter beyond any ability to repair."

  "Okay…"

  "...Now, you have your duties, and I have mine."

  "I'll take Lona back to the ship, General." Omen offered.

  "Thank you, Omen."

  Omen and Lona left my office, and once the door shut behind them, I sighed heavily and sat down at my desk.

  I opened up the file of the Starfortress again, but before I could work on the design anymore, a high-priority message came in on my desk's holo-tank.

  [Message received]

  [From: Cad Bane]

  [Target down, Tin-man. Chucked him right into the local sun. Here's the vid file.]

  There was also an actual report typed up by Todo, his butler droid, which I quickly read through.

  Below the message was the aforementioned file, and when I opened it up, I saw the spider-like body of Maul in an open escape pod, a blaster bolt crater in his eye. Bane gave a casual salute to the camera, then pushed a button on his wrist-comm. The dead Zabrak disappeared behind the doorway, and the pod launched right at the local star of Lotho Minor.

  If I had a mouth, I would have grinned as I watched the escape pod be dragged into the star's gravity well.

  "Now that's the perfect way to bring a smile to a mech's face." I remarked. "So long, Maul. You may have been a cool cyborg villain in the show, but you should have just stayed in the Prequels."

  I opened another file on my terminal, one showing pictures and names of important events and people. A few button presses, and the mugshot of Darth Maul had a red X through it. I opened my personal recorder and started a new log as I watched the events of the canon timeline of the Star Wars universe unfold before me. The ones I could remember enough to make files about, at least.

  "Blitzkrieg's log, file number zero-zero-eight." I began. "Darth Maul is dead, earlier than expected. I had hired the bounty hunter Cad Bane to find and eliminate the Zabrak for sixty-thousand credits, technically a hundred thousand with all the extra options I gave him. I had honestly expected the bounty hunter to perish in the ensuing battle with him, but it seems that the luck of the Force is on his side, for now. And my respect for the butler droid Todo has increased as well, due to his bravery.

  "But regardless, Darth Maul is now atomized in the gravity well of a literal star, meaning that Savage Opress and the Witches of Dathomir will be unable to locate him." As I spoke the relevant files moved to the front of the three screens in front of me like some old CoD loading screen, by my own design so I had the information on hand whenever I needed it.

  "This, obviously, has large changes for the canon timeline of the Clone Wars. Without Darth Maul existing beyond now, the Shadow Collective will never come into existence, meaning the various crime syndicates throughout the galaxy will remain divided. This also means that Duchess Satine Kryze of the New Mandalorians will remain alive for the foreseeable future. Death Watch may still attempt a takeover of Mandalore, but it is likely they will never fully succeed. Not without Maul's intervention. The death of Darth Maul also means that Bo-Katan will likely remain in Death Watch as well.

  I let a sigh escape my vocalizer. "Maybe if I'm lucky, I will be able to negotiate with Satine to absorb the neutral systems into the CIS. I just need some political manipulation, and maybe an attack or two by Death Watch…"

  I stopped the recording, then leaned back in my chair for a moment as I went deep in thought. My cooling fans kicked on as simulations played out in my processor. After a few minutes, I closed out the files on my desk, then called Count Dooku. My call was put in a queue for a few minutes, but just when I was thinking I should just leave a message, the holographic form of the slightly younger Christopher Lee lookalike popped up.

  "General Blitzkrieg." The Count greeted. "I presume you have a reason for calling me?"

  I nodded. "I do, my lord. I have somewhat recently become aware of the Council of Neutral Systems, headed by Duchess Satine Kryze of Mandalore. I believe I may have an idea on how we can add at least half or more of the fifteen-hundred systems in that coalition to the CIS."

  One of the count's eyebrows rose. "And your idea is?"

  I straightened up and sent a few files over to the Count. "This is my plan…"