Immediately following the events of ...Today a War:
The hours since his departure from the Roche system had passed slowly, even slower than when he had escaped the Sith invasion. At that time, he was stricken with despair and disbelief at what had occurred, but at least then his grief had found purpose. Shortly after he had arrived safely back into Galactic Alliance space, he had called in all of the favors he could to have a face-to-face meeting with the Chief of State, Inri Tansir. Fortunately, Buggie's close relationship with Eryk Aiden had caught Tansir's attention, and through that connection, she found time in her busy agenda to not only give him an audience, but to call in an influential Senator and the Chief of Military Operations to meet with him as well. While the eventual outcome of that discussion was not in his favor, Buggie was familiar enough with the system of how the Galactic Alliance worked to have come up with a plan in the first place.
Here, as he led more than five squadrons of B-Wings from Roche, Buggie found himself consistently redirected at every turn. In his time with the Blue Star Pirates, Buggie had exclusively operated out of the facilities on Tatooine. Before he could even make an approach vector toward the planet, though, he was refused access. Several squadrons worth of Galactic Alliance assets were deemed too conspicuous for the Tatooine center of operations, and he was directed to a set of coordinates elsewhere.
Those coordinates led to deep space trailing galactic west of the Kwenn system on the fringe of Hutt Space. Nothing but empty space and the dim light of the Kwenn system's primary several light-years away greeted Buggie on his arrival. When he was about to turn back, his sensors picked up on a beacon transmitting every few minutes. After picking up on the signal, Buggie found that the transmission was another set of coordinates, which Buggie followed, hopeful to find some sort of facility at his next stop.
As it turned out, Buggie discovered that he was being led almost all the way back to Roche. The next stop was the same; deep space and one transmitting beacon. At this point, Buggie was running low on fuel, and if he were forced to repeat the process again, he would be forced to make way for the nearest fueling station. With no way to pay for several squadrons worth of fuel and neck-deep in Galactic Alliance space, Buggie didn't foresee that option as having a positive outcome.
Finally, upon reverting to realspace one final time, he was greeted with the sight of a Quasar Fire-class cruiser-carrier waiting in deep space somewhere a few light-years to the galactic south of Boz Pity. The carrier hailed him, querying his fighter for credentials. After Buggie had transmitted his newly minted Blue Star Pirate identification, he was granted landing access aboard the vessel. Two medium tractor beams guided most of the starfighters into the carrier's hangar bay, while others were secured to a peculiar modification along the underside of the ship's main hull brace. The modification appeared to be some sort of track leading from the hull brace to the hangar bay, where Buggie assumed the fighters could be rotated into and out of the hangar bay via the moorings that ran along the track.
Buggie's B-Wing was granted access to the deck-level of the empty hangar bay, so he avoided having to be moored to the rotational track and traverse the catwalks down to the deck-level on his own. The carrier, from what Buggie saw thus far, was lightly manned. The usual complement of hangar equipment and staff were instead replaced with unfamiliar scanning machinery and sentient beings in blue jumpsuits similar to what Buggie saw in the underworld of Coruscant.
Once he was safely docked within the confines of the magnetic containment field, Buggie popped the seal on his fighter's cockpit and hopped down to deck-level, as no egress ladder had been presented to him. After he had straightened himself out from the long trip, a slender Chev with a communication device attached to his ear strode up to him.
"The captain will see you on the bridge," the pale man notified him in a voice as slick as oil.
And so, having been summoned, Buggie boarded the nearest turbolift to meet with the captain of this mysterious vessel.
New Acquisitions
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Master Buggie
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Re: New Acquisitions
The door to the turbolift slid to the side and Buggie stepped off onto the bridge. The very first thing that met his multifaceted eyes was the rather plump torso of the ship's captain. The captain had pointy ears and his head looked to be swallowed by the fattest neck he had ever seen, which featured a complex array of stretch marks and other blemishes. While Buggie wasn't quite sure what the captain's species was, he suspected that he was a Jablogian. The rotund captain was suited in an overlarge blue tunic, with gold stripes down each sleeve and what looked to be a partially inflated life preserver around the collar. The raised collar of the tunic amplified the size of the suspected Jablogian's neck, as it hoisted the soft, fat, and pockmarked flesh up into the captain's seemingly nonexistent chin. A pair of black trousers and blue boots completed the outfit, which stood out in stark contrast to the captain's red flesh.
With his fingers steepled in anticipation, the captain greeted Buggie in a somewhat sloshed voice, which was almost certainly the result of his fat and moist mouth, "Ahhh, yesh, I've been antishipating your arrival."
To that, Buggie gave a courteous nod and introduced himself. The captain gestured over to a bank of viewscreens where a team of pirates were scouring the B-Wing fighters that had been brought into the hangar bay.
"A mosht worthy acquishhition, I musht say," the captain remarked, "And shtolen from the Shhith, I undershtand?"
"Yes," Buggie confirmed, looking about the bridge for a moment before asking, "What is this place?"
The captain was only too pleased to indulge his curiosity. With an occasional spray of spittle, the Jablogian captain explained that this Quasar Fire-class cruiser-carrier was actually a cleaning station for a larger, more secure base that some of the B-Wings were destined for. The technical crew below was specially trained to detect and clear any tracking devices or surveillance equipment that had potentially been installed on any of the starfighters that Buggie had secured.
What Buggie had gleaned from the captain's explanation was that all of the B-Wings would not be going to the same location. When pressed, the captain explained that there were enough complete squadrons that some of the B-Wings could be used in active service to the Blue Star Pirate fleet, while any additional fighters would have their navigational computers modified such that they would fly directly to the base that the cleaning station served for a special project. The Jablogian captain claimed to not know any more than that, but Buggie suspected that the captain may have just been unwilling to share anything further with him.
So far in his experience in working with the Blue Star Pirates, Buggie had seen and heard enough to realize just how secretive of an operation the pirate group ran. This was his first taste of the inner workings of the Blue Star Pirates, though, and Buggie was beginning to realize just how much he had been kept on the outside to this point. Running shipments of supplies to the Tatooine sites and negotiating with small-time crime lords and informants had been little more than busy work, he suspected. Now that he had proven himself, Buggie was finding that information was more open to him, though it was still closely guarded if he happened to ask too many questions. Buggie wasn't used to being kept on the outside of things, but he knew he would have to deal with it until he could bring more to the table.
In the meantime, the captain informed Buggie that the fighters destined for the secure base would be cleared within a matter of hours. Recognizing that he had some free time on his hands and since he was physically and mentally exhausted from what he had seen and experienced on Roche, Buggie decided to borrow a bunk and rest in the free time he had been granted.
With his fingers steepled in anticipation, the captain greeted Buggie in a somewhat sloshed voice, which was almost certainly the result of his fat and moist mouth, "Ahhh, yesh, I've been antishipating your arrival."
To that, Buggie gave a courteous nod and introduced himself. The captain gestured over to a bank of viewscreens where a team of pirates were scouring the B-Wing fighters that had been brought into the hangar bay.
"A mosht worthy acquishhition, I musht say," the captain remarked, "And shtolen from the Shhith, I undershtand?"
"Yes," Buggie confirmed, looking about the bridge for a moment before asking, "What is this place?"
The captain was only too pleased to indulge his curiosity. With an occasional spray of spittle, the Jablogian captain explained that this Quasar Fire-class cruiser-carrier was actually a cleaning station for a larger, more secure base that some of the B-Wings were destined for. The technical crew below was specially trained to detect and clear any tracking devices or surveillance equipment that had potentially been installed on any of the starfighters that Buggie had secured.
What Buggie had gleaned from the captain's explanation was that all of the B-Wings would not be going to the same location. When pressed, the captain explained that there were enough complete squadrons that some of the B-Wings could be used in active service to the Blue Star Pirate fleet, while any additional fighters would have their navigational computers modified such that they would fly directly to the base that the cleaning station served for a special project. The Jablogian captain claimed to not know any more than that, but Buggie suspected that the captain may have just been unwilling to share anything further with him.
So far in his experience in working with the Blue Star Pirates, Buggie had seen and heard enough to realize just how secretive of an operation the pirate group ran. This was his first taste of the inner workings of the Blue Star Pirates, though, and Buggie was beginning to realize just how much he had been kept on the outside to this point. Running shipments of supplies to the Tatooine sites and negotiating with small-time crime lords and informants had been little more than busy work, he suspected. Now that he had proven himself, Buggie was finding that information was more open to him, though it was still closely guarded if he happened to ask too many questions. Buggie wasn't used to being kept on the outside of things, but he knew he would have to deal with it until he could bring more to the table.
In the meantime, the captain informed Buggie that the fighters destined for the secure base would be cleared within a matter of hours. Recognizing that he had some free time on his hands and since he was physically and mentally exhausted from what he had seen and experienced on Roche, Buggie decided to borrow a bunk and rest in the free time he had been granted.
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Master Buggie
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Re: New Acquisitions
As promised, Buggie woke hours later to the news that the handful of B-Wing starfighters destined for a more secure facility had been prepared and that, as expected, Buggie would be the one piloting them to their destination. The fighters totaled less than a full squadron's worth and all of them that Buggie would be ferrying to the next secure facility now rested atop the hangar bay's deck plating. After throwing his belongings into the starfighter's meager storage space, Buggie hopped into the cockpit of the lead fighter and prepared to launch. It didn't take long for him to realize the modifications--some subtle, some not so subtle-- that the Pirate technicians had made on the B-Wing. For one, the navigational computer had pre-calculated the destination, which only displayed as a vague code phrase on the shipboard monitor. Additionally, Buggie could tell that the faces of the control panels had been lifted off at some point, likely before the technicians scoured the circuitry for any tracking devices or other monitoring equipment. Buggie's pre-flight check confirmed that all systems were in the green, so he had little to worry about in regards to the functionality of the starfighter. With nothing else holding him back, Buggie signaled hangar control that he was ready to depart. A manner of minutes later, he found himself in hyperspace.
The long journey made Buggie wish that he hadn't bothered to rest aboard the cleaning station, but he found solace in meditation until the ship dropped him out of hyperspace in an unknown system. There, orbiting a small ice-covered moon with carmine fractures crisscrossing its surface, was the base he was assigned to deliver the B-Wing starfighters to. The station was an odd saucer-like shape, and Buggie wasn't sure what its origins were until he grew closer and the truth became apparent. This secure base was no station, it was an Ithorian Herdship.
As Buggie vectored in toward the secure facility, he recalled that the Ithorian homeworld, Ithor, was destroyed just over a decade ago. The only societies that the Ithor maintained since that point were colonies on other worlds and Herdships, such as the one Buggie was looking upon now. He had many questions as to why the Herdship was considered a secure facility, but he supposed he would find the answer to all of his questions if he remained patient until he had been granted landing clearance.
The Herdship's control tower had pinged his ship's computer, enabling an automated response that identified his ship as being cleared by the cleaning station. A moment later, the Herdship's powerful tractor beams locked onto Buggie's starfighter and the other B-Wings that were trailing him. After Buggie had powered down the non-essential systems on his ship in preparation of landing, he was guided into the hangar bay, where he set down into a mostly empty hangar bay. Another set of technicians and their supporting cast of droids and equipment waited in the wings for the B-Wings to complete their landing process before moving in. For his part, Buggie popped the hatch on his cockpit and, finding no ladder being presented to him, jumped down to the deck plating.
If the technicians had noticed him, none of them acknowledged his presence. The starfighters were the sole focus of everyone-- droid and sentient alike-- in the hangar bay.
"I suppose I'll go find whoever is in charge here," Buggie decided as he wandered away from the starfighters and toward the wide-set service doors of the hangar bay.
The long journey made Buggie wish that he hadn't bothered to rest aboard the cleaning station, but he found solace in meditation until the ship dropped him out of hyperspace in an unknown system. There, orbiting a small ice-covered moon with carmine fractures crisscrossing its surface, was the base he was assigned to deliver the B-Wing starfighters to. The station was an odd saucer-like shape, and Buggie wasn't sure what its origins were until he grew closer and the truth became apparent. This secure base was no station, it was an Ithorian Herdship.
As Buggie vectored in toward the secure facility, he recalled that the Ithorian homeworld, Ithor, was destroyed just over a decade ago. The only societies that the Ithor maintained since that point were colonies on other worlds and Herdships, such as the one Buggie was looking upon now. He had many questions as to why the Herdship was considered a secure facility, but he supposed he would find the answer to all of his questions if he remained patient until he had been granted landing clearance.
The Herdship's control tower had pinged his ship's computer, enabling an automated response that identified his ship as being cleared by the cleaning station. A moment later, the Herdship's powerful tractor beams locked onto Buggie's starfighter and the other B-Wings that were trailing him. After Buggie had powered down the non-essential systems on his ship in preparation of landing, he was guided into the hangar bay, where he set down into a mostly empty hangar bay. Another set of technicians and their supporting cast of droids and equipment waited in the wings for the B-Wings to complete their landing process before moving in. For his part, Buggie popped the hatch on his cockpit and, finding no ladder being presented to him, jumped down to the deck plating.
If the technicians had noticed him, none of them acknowledged his presence. The starfighters were the sole focus of everyone-- droid and sentient alike-- in the hangar bay.
"I suppose I'll go find whoever is in charge here," Buggie decided as he wandered away from the starfighters and toward the wide-set service doors of the hangar bay.
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Master Buggie
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Re: New Acquisitions
Original post by Xerxes Nova...
Xerxes trawled through the labyrinthine maintenance corridors, he'd been searching for this fault for the best part of a week now and every time he thought he'd located the short a few times now but, every time he tested the circuits another dead end became apparent in the system. It was like trying to hunt down a ghost return on the scanners, sure you knew something was out there but, exactly what and where you couldn't tell apart from the cubic kilometres of space you now had to search hoping it was still there only to get a new return some distance from where you were initially looking. The reason for this little hunt made it all the more annoying but, he knew it had to be fixed and he was the only one likely to do it. Tapping an earpiece he spoke to his two companions. "Right I've spliced some new wires in here, Tex can you send a pulse and Scrap take a read of the line." He got an affirmative from both and he felt the crackle of energy wash over him as electricity started to pulse down the line once more. He checked his pad and blinked, he'd found it, finally. Why the maintenance crews had let something like this get so bad he didn't know but finally he had hunted down the culprit. "Converge of point Osk won sex ate T zero one, Vev ate niner, Trill zero zero." He once again received the affirmatives and felt/heard the rumble of track units and metallic footsteps. Stooping down he packed up his equipment and started to jog along the line. He'd been working his way from Xesh won zero zero and to find it so damn close to the opposite end of this specific line of interconnected conduits and circuits made him quest his choice to work backwards, then again he would have needed to do all the patch repairs he had done eventually, his main purpose would just have been completed sooner.
He came to the section and knew instantly which one he needed to check, the cover was blacked from many fuses and sparks, the smell of ozone was rich in the air along with the bitter tang of melted plastics and corroding wires. He pulled on some insulated gloves and gingerly tried to pry the cover from the wall. It wouldn't budge. He checked the edges, not only had the rubber sealing obviously melted at some point it had congealed and fused into a hard mess essentially sealing the hatch in place. A treble of binaric sound told him that Scrap had arrived. He stepped back and let the modified droid in the R1 chassis take his place. A scanning light and a few exited woops later and the droid had a cutting torch out and was slowly melting away the resin trying not to damage the hatch itself. "Seems there's a hella offa a mess made 'ere Kid, any idea what caused it?" The piratical tones of Tex accompanied the second droids arrival. Xerxes looked at it for a moment and then said "Without seeing the circuits I can't say but, I'd guess a catastrophic failure of the mother circuits power equilibration allowing continuous full power surging through the system leading to excessive heat generation beyond the tolerances of the insulators resulting in the continual melting of the nearby rubber sealant and mixture with the molten insulators leading to the resin like seal. The resulting pulses would be handled by the high energy wiring here but the continual miss fires along the auxiliary lines caused the breaks and fuses in the lower energy conduits along the route creating the multiple breaks and dead ends we found. My guess is the final failure of this over taxed lines where it couldn't distribute the pulses effectively anymore probably caused the core to overheat and fuse or we're going to be lucky and we got the area shut off before such..." The panel was eased away as he spoke and the blackened charred mess of corroded wires, melted and solidified wire insulator and the deformity in the surrounding metal where the heat had caused it to bow slight as it expanded put pay to the idea it was going to be a quick fix. Xerxes sighed and got stuck in setting about replacing the conduit juncture.
Pulling back he sighed and tapped the ear piece as Scrap placed the new maintenance cover over the repaired section. "Engineering this is Novitiate Xesh Nern zero tree fower, the conduit is repaired, requesting test restart." He got a beep in reply and then as he stood there a hum of energy, unlike the pulses he and his team had used to trace back to the fault, started to resonate through the teen. He could feel the build up and finally he heard "Power and functionality returned to tertiary water treatment secondary redundancy, good job Novitiate." Xerxes sighed and wiped his forehead, managing to add more blackened grease to it that he removed sweat. The secondary redundancies malfunction had been noted months ago but with the main unit and primary redundancies working it had been deemed a low priority, that was until a power surge had left the tertiary water treatment facility non-functional for a little over an hour a week before resulting in emergency removal of non-essential uses, I.E not one on the lower decks had been able to get a shower for three days while the automated system ran a check to ensure the water supply generated was safe and fit for purpose. Having seen the mess made of this conduit he had to wonder what the state of the others were like. He decided to check them out later after he had relaxed a bit. He turned and walked to the end of the maintenance corridor and opened it out into the main thoroughfare from the hanger bays on this level. He stopped as he felt a surge in the Force, reflexively trying not to react as it buffered his masked presence and a slight hint of blue for a split second as it slipped caused him to turn his eyes to the person coming through the doors from the hanger bay a few meters to his left. An insectoid sentient he didn't recognised, not that hat was too surprising, he felt instantly exposed. The top of the blue coveralls he wore was bunched around his waist showing a black smeared white vest, his arms streaked in grime had the tell tale fern like scars left by electrocution running over them and his pale white skin was smeared in grime and grease from his excursions through the arteries of the ship. His sinewy form looked even more diminutive as he was joined by the forms of Scrap and Tex both of which were heavily modified droids standing taller than their master. Xerxes reflexively bowed his head to the verpine unsure of his rank and simply stated "Good Day Brother."
Xerxes trawled through the labyrinthine maintenance corridors, he'd been searching for this fault for the best part of a week now and every time he thought he'd located the short a few times now but, every time he tested the circuits another dead end became apparent in the system. It was like trying to hunt down a ghost return on the scanners, sure you knew something was out there but, exactly what and where you couldn't tell apart from the cubic kilometres of space you now had to search hoping it was still there only to get a new return some distance from where you were initially looking. The reason for this little hunt made it all the more annoying but, he knew it had to be fixed and he was the only one likely to do it. Tapping an earpiece he spoke to his two companions. "Right I've spliced some new wires in here, Tex can you send a pulse and Scrap take a read of the line." He got an affirmative from both and he felt the crackle of energy wash over him as electricity started to pulse down the line once more. He checked his pad and blinked, he'd found it, finally. Why the maintenance crews had let something like this get so bad he didn't know but finally he had hunted down the culprit. "Converge of point Osk won sex ate T zero one, Vev ate niner, Trill zero zero." He once again received the affirmatives and felt/heard the rumble of track units and metallic footsteps. Stooping down he packed up his equipment and started to jog along the line. He'd been working his way from Xesh won zero zero and to find it so damn close to the opposite end of this specific line of interconnected conduits and circuits made him quest his choice to work backwards, then again he would have needed to do all the patch repairs he had done eventually, his main purpose would just have been completed sooner.
He came to the section and knew instantly which one he needed to check, the cover was blacked from many fuses and sparks, the smell of ozone was rich in the air along with the bitter tang of melted plastics and corroding wires. He pulled on some insulated gloves and gingerly tried to pry the cover from the wall. It wouldn't budge. He checked the edges, not only had the rubber sealing obviously melted at some point it had congealed and fused into a hard mess essentially sealing the hatch in place. A treble of binaric sound told him that Scrap had arrived. He stepped back and let the modified droid in the R1 chassis take his place. A scanning light and a few exited woops later and the droid had a cutting torch out and was slowly melting away the resin trying not to damage the hatch itself. "Seems there's a hella offa a mess made 'ere Kid, any idea what caused it?" The piratical tones of Tex accompanied the second droids arrival. Xerxes looked at it for a moment and then said "Without seeing the circuits I can't say but, I'd guess a catastrophic failure of the mother circuits power equilibration allowing continuous full power surging through the system leading to excessive heat generation beyond the tolerances of the insulators resulting in the continual melting of the nearby rubber sealant and mixture with the molten insulators leading to the resin like seal. The resulting pulses would be handled by the high energy wiring here but the continual miss fires along the auxiliary lines caused the breaks and fuses in the lower energy conduits along the route creating the multiple breaks and dead ends we found. My guess is the final failure of this over taxed lines where it couldn't distribute the pulses effectively anymore probably caused the core to overheat and fuse or we're going to be lucky and we got the area shut off before such..." The panel was eased away as he spoke and the blackened charred mess of corroded wires, melted and solidified wire insulator and the deformity in the surrounding metal where the heat had caused it to bow slight as it expanded put pay to the idea it was going to be a quick fix. Xerxes sighed and got stuck in setting about replacing the conduit juncture.
Pulling back he sighed and tapped the ear piece as Scrap placed the new maintenance cover over the repaired section. "Engineering this is Novitiate Xesh Nern zero tree fower, the conduit is repaired, requesting test restart." He got a beep in reply and then as he stood there a hum of energy, unlike the pulses he and his team had used to trace back to the fault, started to resonate through the teen. He could feel the build up and finally he heard "Power and functionality returned to tertiary water treatment secondary redundancy, good job Novitiate." Xerxes sighed and wiped his forehead, managing to add more blackened grease to it that he removed sweat. The secondary redundancies malfunction had been noted months ago but with the main unit and primary redundancies working it had been deemed a low priority, that was until a power surge had left the tertiary water treatment facility non-functional for a little over an hour a week before resulting in emergency removal of non-essential uses, I.E not one on the lower decks had been able to get a shower for three days while the automated system ran a check to ensure the water supply generated was safe and fit for purpose. Having seen the mess made of this conduit he had to wonder what the state of the others were like. He decided to check them out later after he had relaxed a bit. He turned and walked to the end of the maintenance corridor and opened it out into the main thoroughfare from the hanger bays on this level. He stopped as he felt a surge in the Force, reflexively trying not to react as it buffered his masked presence and a slight hint of blue for a split second as it slipped caused him to turn his eyes to the person coming through the doors from the hanger bay a few meters to his left. An insectoid sentient he didn't recognised, not that hat was too surprising, he felt instantly exposed. The top of the blue coveralls he wore was bunched around his waist showing a black smeared white vest, his arms streaked in grime had the tell tale fern like scars left by electrocution running over them and his pale white skin was smeared in grime and grease from his excursions through the arteries of the ship. His sinewy form looked even more diminutive as he was joined by the forms of Scrap and Tex both of which were heavily modified droids standing taller than their master. Xerxes reflexively bowed his head to the verpine unsure of his rank and simply stated "Good Day Brother."