Recordings from the Holocron of Kira Keldav – Session 41

   Session 41 was the thanksgiving weekend session – and thereby was short several players and turned out to be a bit short. This will happen…

   With the number of people stuffed into stasis having grown to rather large proportions what with the phony plagues, the resistance was asking for direction on what to do with them all. There was only two real options that I saw: underground or in a warehouse. There were plenty of caves to hide people in, and it would have provided excellent shielding against scanners picking up the stasis fields. Problem got to be that it was going to be really awkward trying to explain why so many shipments of crates were going to caves.

   Using warehouses made it easier to explain why crates were being shipped to them, but had the problem of being rather public and difficult to conceal. Those stasis systems show up rather distinctively on scanners – and I am told that a warehouse in and of itself wasn’t going to do much to shield that. Shipwreck pointed out that the fact that a warehouse was in the middle of an industrial district would hide the signature to some extent, and some low-level screens would help a bit without showing up as anything much more than commercial precautions – but it wouldn’t match a few hundred feet of rock.

   Sigh, there was no real good option here. Zandaras almost certainly knew of stasis technology and might well know what to look for. But moving lots of crates into the middle of nowhere was surely going to attract a lot of attention we definitely did not need. The best option I could see was use a warehouse, post some guards, and hope that the Sith have a hard time picking one warehouse out of an entire planet full of distractions. Fortunately people in stasis didn’t take up a lot of space – and perhaps Zandraas wouldn’t give whatever information he had about stasis to his minions.

   Next came yet another debate about what to do with the minefield and planetary shields. Using the large-scale stasis systems, we could capture the shield generators fairly readily. That wouldn’t allow us to activate the shields without a lot of work and time though. And the clock would immediately start running once we captured the shields. We couldn’t possibly get the shields operational before the mines could begin bombarding the planet.

   We couldn’t build new shield generators in the timeframe I believe we have to work with – and the Republic didn’t have spares laying around that we could borrow either. Ben’s suggestion of stealing them from a Sith occupied world using hypertunnels required more equipment than we had and would destroy the systems from silting. Stealing from an alternate dimension had massive targeting issues as well. My suggestion of moving the planet to the Codifier galaxy got a lot of horrified looks – starting with Alys – on the grounds that the rest of the galaxy would see it as a planet-destroying superweapon attack, and go berserk.

   Sigh

   Ben gets to make suggestions regarding building weapons of mass destruction or death, yet when I suggest moving a planet people get upset. Is it just because they think that I might actually get it done?

   Tests regarding how shield systems perform within a Second Stage Stasis field weren’t encouraging either. Looked like the field strength was reduced in proportion to the time rate of the generator. We also determined that using the stasis effect on crystals in an attempt to rig a smaller system to mimic the planetary system was a convoluted way to may crystals explode instantly.

   Hmm, didn’t Shipwreck have the coordinates for several derelict fleets? Turns out the answer was yes, and that two were relatively nearby to us. According to him (I don’t know where he got this level of detail), the first fleet was a massive fleet dating from the Infinite Empire. It was lost when the fleet ran some sort of arcane hyperspace experiment to move the fleet as a formation or some such and somehow instantly aged the entire fleet by a couple of centuries. It was now sorely needing maintenance after 15,000 years of none. The other fleet was significantly smaller but in better condition. Apparently they’d jumped into a battle situation and picked up a massive radiation pulse while the shields were down that killed the crew – and in the chaos of a Sith war the location wound up lost.

   Well those were worth salvaging, but we would need crews and parts to make that work. The Gruenn system could supply both crews and parts, but was currently occupied. The occupation could be broken with the fleets, but the fleets couldn’t be made operational without support from Gruenn. Damn it, we have all the parts we need to make this work and liberate the planet, but can’t seem to manage to get it all assembled together.

   I put a pin in that problem to think about it later. Currently the best plan we have is to fire a large number of concussion missiles at the mines in orbit, while simultaneously putting the rest of Zandaras’s agents and the shield systems into stasis. The asteroids would then enter the area and engage any orbital assets that were left. Then began the race against time to get the shields up before Zandaras’s response could arrive. Until we could get any better modifications to that plan going, we had to proceed with what we had.

   Ben was busily building Second Stage Stasis systems with the help of the technicians that could remember the task at hand. The Galactic Censor was getting incredibly annoying at times as we couldn’t give directions to use the stasis systems to anyone too easily affected by the Censor. That had drastically reduced the amount of manpower available for the task of faking the plague. Well at least that was winding down as we mimicked the signs of the government gaining control of the situation.

   I helped where I could in assembling pieces together according to instructions, but it was still slow work. Eventually my robe was getting torn enough from the work and the damage incurred from the ambush earlier to warrant finding a tailor. Speaking with members of the resistance got me pointed in the direction of a little blue alien by the name of Qwuam. It was a bit of a ride getting to his shop, but my speeder was needing some time out of the warehouse.

   The ride was pleasant save for all the people that turned to stare as I went by. I ended up tapping into the Codex a bit to keep from overhearing too many thoughts about what they were thinking of me. None of them were true in the slightest, but it still made me ill sensing them directing those thoughts towards me.

   Lazlo had also decided to go shopping; being knocked out by a mere soldier in a barroom brawl had made him aware of just how heavily he’d been relying on the force to resist major attacks – and that perhaps a bit of armor, and maybe even a weapon, would be a good idea.

   Sadly, he soon found out that weapons and armor were kind of hard to find in an occupied territory when the locals believed that you were with the invaders. He’d just have to have the base run some up for him if he couldn’t find anything locally.

   I arrived at the tailor’s some time later. Stepping into the shop, I saw it was devoid of people save a little blue-green alien with several arms. I think I recognized the species as Everadddiii or something similar. Qwuam took one look at me and immediately began lamblasting my clothing in intricate detail. I found myself stammering apologies despite myself and the role I was taking. Thankfully no other shoppers were in the shop to overhear this. I was especially unnerved when he pointed out the hidden weapons and the fact that the stasis belt and anti-stasis suit would not work together in the current configuration.

   Alright, how did he see those and immediately deduce that they wouldn’t work together?

   All attempts at questioning him on the matter were brushed aside as he began taking measurements and told me to hold still and be quiet. When asked if I had specifications for the base designs, I handed over a data chip I had been keeping in case I needed to rebuild the clothing again. Qwuam snatched the chip out of my hands and then asked what was the base color I wanted to the clothing.

   I wasn’t sure how to answer that. Black would work better since I was trying to impersonate a Sith, but white was becoming my symbolic color for displaying that I wasn’t a Sith. It didn’t help matters that I thought the Force placed some weight on symbolism. Oh well, splitting the difference and going with a gray should work well enough.

   I was then asked how many sets did I want to order. It was apparently going to be 12,000 credits for the first one and 4,000 credits each for the next three if I got them as a set. Well I had over a third of a million credits in my name and not much I’ve been spending it on, so this sounded like a worthwhile investment. I elected to order all four and was swiftly rushed out of the shop so that Qwuam could begin his work. He told me to be back in four days when he expected to be finished.

   Once I was back at the warehouse that Ben was using to build the stasis units, several members of the resistance approached me and asked if Lazlo’s stories about the other members of the party were true. Unfortunately, Lazlo’s stories were not as exaggerated as the resistance wanted to believe. Ben was an insane superweapons obsessed engineer, Xiang thought she was a Holo character, Jarik fell to the Dark Side of medicine, Shipwreck is way too trigger happy with torpedoes, Khadim was an energy being with little understanding of galactic civilization, 10CH is an assassin droid turned pacifist, Lazlo is a genetically engineered body guard, and Jacob…. is a suit of armor painted to look like a tree.

   Myself, I am a punk from Alderaan, that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nearly got killed by the Sith, developed powers, got captured by the Sith, escaped from the Sith, and now I’ve been running from the Sith and disrupting their plans almost nonstop ever since. My next door neighbor is continually on the news blaming me for all sorts of nonsense. The children in our group make cartoons of me going on a crusade of Dark Side fueled galactic conquest. And Telera stands there smugly giving me Jedi koans.

   All prospects of me having a normal life anymore are pretty much nonexistent.

   Meanwhile. Lazlo – having heard much of the rant before – headed out to go and drink with the Sith troopers. He was almost getting the hang of this independent socializing thing!

   Unfortunately, he accidently admitted that he had money – and so wound up stuck buying drinks for everyone. He also wound up having to find excuses not to enlist – and was drunk enough to claim that he’d already joined once, as a Sith trainee, and to try to demonstrate his powers.

   Perhaps fortunately, he was also drunk enough to simply knock himself out with a misdirected attempt to exert a little telekinesis – with the result that none of them took any of his claims seriously. Later on, when he was sober, this would begin to seem like a good thing. It still led to a discussion of what made most soldiers human, where most of the recruits for the Sith came from, and various other personal details – in which Lazlo revealed rather too much about himself.

   Even more fortunately, the Sith troops were too drunk to remember anything too.

   I saw looks of sympathy from the resistance members around me and was about to ask their stories when a loudspeaker announced it’s presence. It sounded like the police had arrived and wanted us to surrender immediately to be stunned. Oh bloody hell, I really didn’t want to have to deal with this right now. Making sure the robes were set to black I strode forth to met security surrounding the building and demanded to know what they wanted.

   Security were not happy to see me and weren’t buying the story that I was here to capture Kira Keldav. The security chief was damnably perceptive at determining that while I was telling the truth, I was being very misleading in how I said it. Trying to distract him didn’t go over well as I heard Jacob announce that no one was going to take him alive. The security then began to bombard the warehouse with missiles. Before the missiles could hit though, the warehouse twisted, shifted, and then vanished as it left a crater in the ground.

   I would have said that was the hypertunnel effect, but something seemed…. off about it. Lazlo started sliding down the crater to the center as a lot of firepower was aimed at me by the security forces. My odds of escaping this were pretty good, but making a run for it would blow whatever cover I had left at this point. I was then promptly blamed for bringing an Artificer to this world. While correct, I didn’t feel that the accusation was an adequate summary of the issue here. Demanding explanations of me for what just happened to the warehouse didn’t go over well as I don’t have a clue what insane experiment Ben just cooked up in there.

L   azlo – hearing about the emergency – arrived shortly after the incident, tried to investigate the crater – and found that the inside was incredibly smooth. Virtually frictionless..

Lazlo’s sliding around the apparently frictionless crater was something to watch, and I suspected it was a vital clue as to what happened, but I wasn’t a hyperspace expert able to reason through this. The security hauled us off to the local station for questioning on the incident as their people scanned the crater for clues. The security chief reminded me a lot of Officer Larson back on Alderaan as I simply could not distract him from the story that I was a Sith hunting Kira Keldav.

Eventually Security Chief Olson delivered an ultimatum: either I tell the truth about me being Kira Keldav, or he would make my life very difficult while I was on the planet. Well damn it, so much for this whole scheme. I can fool mighty Sith Lords, Bounty Hunters, the Republic, and the party, but I can’t seem to con my way past the humble security forces. Maybe at heart I am still that stupid punk from Alderaan after all.

Finally relenting, I proceeded to explain who we were, why we were here, what we’ve accomplished thus far, and what we hoped to achieve. Olson didn’t really seem happy with the whole idea of us being here, and he was adamant about seeing proof that we didn’t kill all those people. Lazlo was brought in to confirm what we told them and we demonstrated the stasis belts for Olson as a show that would could dispose of people temporarily without killing them.

It took a great deal of convincing from both myself and Lazlo in order to get Olson to “cooperate” with us. Even if said cooperation mostly entailed neglecting to notice our presence in the area or confirming it as needed. We were given a copy of the scans his people had performed on the crater, but neither Lazlo or I could make heads or tails of it. All the people that could have are now missing. Along with our warehouse we were manufacturing the stasis systems.

The information they’d gotten was basically that a hyperspace transition had been recorded, but that no exit transition had occurred – and that the signals from inside had redshifted out of existence when whatever had happened had happened.

The planetary security forces were not happy with Kira’s explanation – but they weren’t happy with the Sith either, it was their duty to resist the occupation – and the Sith would turn the place into a disaster eventually no matter what. There wasn’t all that much choice except to turn a blind eye to Kira’s activities.

Drat, well no way I can help the others get out of whatever mess they’ve gotten themselves into. I am going to have to send a message to the asteroids telling them to build more stasis units to hypertunnel here in the worst case scenario, in the meantime I going to have to get the resistance to see if they can duplicate Ben’s design to make more. Hmm, I better include in that message to the asteroids a note to go hunting for mercenaries, techs, and volunteers to work on getting those fleets operational again. Maybe with the asteroids building parts and droids, some of those ships could be made operational in time to make a difference.

I also need to make preparations to track down those showing Codex abilities that Ben found so that they can properly evaluated and trained once the occupation ends. Sigh, yet another mess to clean up.

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