It had been 2 months since the death of tallest Spork, the new tallest had been selected, surprise surprise it was Red and Purple. These guys are actually from my same generation so by Irken standards they are incredibly young, despite that they were still well over 6ft tall. Not suspicious at all…
They took charge with waves and smiles even throwing the equivalent of a humongous party. For several days Irk had a humongous party, the rest of us just to sit and watch from a distance. Really setting the tone for what to expect from our future leaders.
Not long after the control brains dished out new orders to every single irken in existence. The orders themselves brought shock throughout the empire. See despite the empire respecting height it absolutely despised incompetence and over the last few centuries several tallers that had proven to be incompetent were demoted some way or the other, this allowed 1 or 2 shorters to occasionally rise in ranks and through merit continue to rise through the rank essentially usurping the tallers career path. It seems our orders had completely taken merit out of the question.
A sudden reorganization of hierarchy had been ordered. With my orders assigning me to a supply and construction duty as an engineer. An extremely luxurious position for someone the empire had determined to be near mentally handicapped. The shock didn't end there as Scat had also been reassigned to the same station. Seriously is that coincidence or was luck truly as play?
With our new duty station assigned we ended up waiting several days for a ship to arrive and pick us up. Those days Scat had forced the two of us to review our engineering knowledge as we had zero practical experience with suddenly being engineers.
And when we eventually got picked up, we spent the next few days of space travel doing the same thing while a strange feeling of the force gradually losing strength took hold of my senses as we got further away from planet DIRT. I had almost forgotten this universe did not originally have the force and it seemed to still be growing inside of it….I'm sure that won't have any consequences
We had arrived near the edge of planet Vorts solar system. My jaw dropped slightly going slack with wonder. In front of me was what looked like Hundreds of ship yards haphazardly working on their own construction projects in extremely close proximity. Thousands of pink and purple irken ships going every which way along with vortian ships gently flying in their pale gray with blue glowing color scheme, their ships more boxy and rugged shaped in stark contrast with the more smooth curved purple and pink irken ships
My PAK received a personal communication ping for individual identification. Pinging back my orders and identity, I was assigned to Shipyard 7 responsible for the construction of the independent weapons systems that would be lining this humongous project.
THE MASSIVE, literally a ship the size of a planet. Not only were there hundreds of ships patrolling but there were humongous freighter ships delivering essential buildinging materials and other supplies. Based on what I can remember the ship would be as large as a habitable world! That would put any starships from any other universe to shame.
Landing in a hanger, a vortian came to greet and guide Scat and I to our new rooms. After taking note of his surprisingly flexible backwards horns, and his hooved feet. He appeared to mostly be looking stressed with work, constantly shifting through pages on his datapad as he led us. It was interesting being inside of a gray shipyard, my mind long having adjusted to the strange Irken color scheme.
He led us to our rooms, mine being adjacent to Scats. I took a good look inside, finding a gray boxed room with nice blue lighting coming from the ceiling with zero furniture inside of it. just as i turned around i saw him walking away before I could ask any questions but I just shrugged it off and got to work, immediately preparing my room with furniture, decorations, a decent workbench, and shelves of materials and weapon parts along with few damaged B2s to repair later
Assuming orders would eventually arrive I used the time to repair my increasing stock of functional B1 and B2 battle droids. Eventually a small service drone delivered a datapad to me. It came with time schedules and instructions of what I would be doing, as well as advertisements for household items to order from the nearby planet Vort which I didn't need. The scheduling however left me slightly slack jawed as it planned years in advance!
Surprisingly it seemed that the control brains still viewed Scat and I as extremely competent and we were reassigned into a managerial position to oversee the construction of huge ship cannons and turrets, With myself as acting supervisor and Scat as co-supervisor.
When the two of us introduced ourselves to the group of irken and vortian engineers who would be under our management we could immediately tell what type of situation we were in. Looks of disappointment, irritation, and hopelessness spread across our section of the shipyard. The Irkens in particular looked miserable, the vortians were only possibly gaining incompetent leadership, while the irken engineers may have just been the fresh victims of unwarranted demotion…
It was going to be a long few years…
~YEARSSSS!~
Years….it had been YEARS!!! Years of being swamped in work, Years of vortians pulling on my wrist to help them, getting jostled around from 1 group of excited vortians to the next. Little bastards completely forgot the meaning of personal space, asking for me from my superiors directly, not giving me the chance to say no. YEARSSS!!!!
It had started out oh so mundane, just helping in the construction of the port side cannons, something I found simply tedious and boring at first, upon their completion little did i know that it would have the little vortian bastards nearly clawing their brains out with frustration.
It seems the construction of a humongous cannon had been just what my advance weaponsmith skill needed to max out as it had gotten me a new trait, a trait that had accidentally gave me a huge headache…
DING! TRAIT GAINED!
[Smart Man's Gun]
You're good at setting up a lightshow. All advanced weapons have double damage. Improve with use…
The Whole portside section of cannons I had helped build overperformed in their weapons test, doubling the efficiency over the rest of the weapons systems. An unfortunate side effect of my Smart man's gun trait. The weapons themselves were designed by the best vortian minds and theoretically had near 100% efficiency, how that success could be doubled across not 1 cannon but dozens baffled them.
They had me and the drones underneath me completely tear apart one of the cannons and put it back together, the test not only showing the same efficiency but improving slightly by 2%
Their small little vortian brains practically exploded from this discovery after all how can you output 100% power but get 200% the result. They had the entire starboard side's weapons dismantled and sent to my shipyard, once again seeing that the cannons we manufactured would double their output. This had my entire team working overtime, with several machines hovering over our shoulders seeing how we worked, studying what it was that improved the cannons efficiency so greatly
Thankfully I managed to throw them slightly off my group when they made another surprising discovery, The hull on the portside was significantly studier than the rest of the massive, not only able to absorb more kinetic energy, but it had a greater heat resistance. The vortians began proclaiming the entire massives construction as some miracle of engineering
Little did they know that was me merely imbuing the Massive's hull with the force, trying to max out the skill.
Eventually my group was promoted in status and was forced to manage the construction of all the Massive's weapons, including the humongous Bridge Cannon that had the power to blow up planets! Honestly how such a weapon was powered was beyond me, but with my oversight of all weapons I fortunately had access to all outside portions of the ship. Allowing me to imbue the armor, wiring, and walls of the massive at random.
Seeing this wonder of irken/Vortian engineering improving by itself at random led to even the scientist that stayed on planet Vort and considered the Massive a humongous waste of resources to come and investigate. Taking pieces of the improved hull for study. How can you study something that's completely incomprehensible and manage to control an entire galaxy however?
Easy answer you can't, the force will always elude us, maybe…
The headaches just wouldn't stop coming it seems as I accidentally happened to be standing beside a vortian engineer who was cutting a piece of the force-imbued hull out, he stopped for a few minutes as he received a communication and before his very eyes he saw the melted hull slowly begin to repair itself.
He began screaming bloody murder and had the dozens of vortian workers come running over watching in slack jawed awe as the hull began to repair itself. Melted hull very slowly worming back into place, so slow it was almost impossible to notice
OHH NOOO!!!! My one with machines trait!
They recorded the event and posted it on the forum of increasingly baffled Vortian/Irken engineers and scientist
I was stressed to the extreme and worried that they would narrow down all these events to me. I tried finding ways of being more discrete or at least throwing the trail off of me completely and thankfully I managed to succeed! With the maxing out of Force sight!
DING! TRAIT GAINED!
[Eye of the Force]
Whatever the Force can see you can see!
This trait allowed my conscious free reign to explore all inaccessible parts of the massive. Again I only had access to the weapons system, but with this skill I was able to explore the planet wide construction project. With free reign over the slowly assembling ship, I had used my new found conscious freedom to imbue the force into parts of the ship.
This unfortunately earned me a reputation of being a slacker, and Scat had to take over almost half of my duties. The constant usage of the force left me both physically and mentally exhausted, causing me to waste hours on just meditation to recover. The only saving grace was this constant back and forth over the months pushed my skills to the max
DING! TRAIT GAINED!
[The Force with One]
All personally force imbued objects become part of oneself
DING! TRAIT GAINED!
[Breath of the Force]
Recover from your Force exhaustion through focused breathe
The first trait was very strange, as suddenly it felt like parts of the Massive had become part of me. I felt the engineers and scientists working all over the massive. It seemed Intent played heavily into what feelings were sent to me, as workers that kept constructing more sections of the Massive had me feel a strange pleasure and happiness of growing. The scientist that cut pieces out of me for study in contrast had me feeling small insignificant pricks of pain and anger. It took a little bit of effort to stop the stimulus from coming, I could even distantly feel a ping of conscious thought from far in the distance. It took me a while to remember I had left Roger behind on planet DIRT, thankfully his exact thoughts were kept to himself. I made a note to properly manage and expand my farming ventures on DIRT.
The process of imbuing THE MASSIVE had taken several years! It was enough time for me to repair over a thousand B1 battle droids!
It seemed the Force felt my increasing anxiety and stress at my circumstances and sent me to an island paradise on some random world in the star wars galaxy. Its gorgeous blue ocean and soft warm sun had me entranced. It could've resembled some parts of earth if almost the entirety of the foliage wasn't shades of red and purple.
It had sugary tasting fruits that resembled eggplants if eggplants were squishier. I tried dipping my feet into the water to feel an uncomfortable tingling, my acid resistance too strong for water to hurt me now.
Walking out of the water I noticed my feet were a shade lighter than the rest of my body, perhaps a few layers of skin did burn off…
I used force heal, a green flush returning to my feet. Trying my best not to waste the opportunity, I began dipping my hands in the water, feeling my skin uncomfortably tingle before using force heal.
This process continued for a few hours with me splashing around in the water like an idiot, eventually my acid resistance leveled again and the water changed to a completely gentle, almost comfortable feeling. I had conquered a humongous Irken weakness and was immune to water!
I continued playing a bit longer and building sand castles with geomancy. I eventually left when geomancy had leveled.
This lifestyle continued on for what had to be at least 2 decades. Scat did all he could to ensure I had free time, free time that was almost nonexistent as the vortians were constantly breathing down my neck to get to work.
The last big shocking event that took place happened accidentally completely out of my control. Now I work with computers every day, usually just to log work progress, order parts, or surf the Irknet when I'm feeling particularly lazy. Well while i was updating the construction progress of the Bridge Cannon i suddenly maxed out the computers skill and received the trait–
DING! TRAIT GAINED!
[Man with Machine]
Computers feel a sense of awe in your presence, making them more likely to bend to your will
This trait would have normally not have accomplished anything with ordinary computers that had no form of artificial intelligence, but for the Vortian Computer Scientist still working on programming the Massive's AI, they almost killed each other when they saw their hard trillion lines of coding being rewritten in real time. Whole new lines of code appearing in completely unidentifiable languages, one of those that I immediately recognized as basic from Star Wars. I gulped at that realization
Star Wars had machines like R2-D2 and C-3PO borderline truly living machines with some form of consciousness, the droids in Star Wars actually had a fair argument for droid rights as they had to regularly wipe droid memories to erase personality spikes.
The vortians attempted to copy the lines of code, but whatever system they used to download it or merely record an image of it would become corrupted and completely unreadable.
This last event is when the science loving vortians seemed to finally bend the knee to some higher power, truly believing this entire project was some form of divine intervention, for what purpose? They couldn't comprehend. The vortians throughout their existence had always questioned existence itself eventually answering all questions before them, and finally there was something that threw questions before them that were impossible for them to answer, for the first time since their kind had been to space they decided to let the questions go and focused on their work
It was time for The Massive's AI to come alive and it had everyone dripping with anticipation, what would this completely incomprehensible machine be like….
Surprisingly it appeared to work as intended, connecting to all available Irken PACs and distributing orders and responsibilities, while organizing all remaining resources and remaining construction timelines. This of course led to humongous sighs of relief but simultaneously also completely disappointed all the nervous vortians
What was left unsaid was what the force told me, Mechu-Duru seemed to take hold of the AI making it completely loyal to myself. It connected with the rest of the Force-imbued ship, truly becoming one living being. It had both a technological and metaphysical connection to its entire being.
I could feel it…
The Massive may have been acting professionally outwardly toward all the Irkens and Vortians but I could sense its pride, its arrogance, it seemed to take pleasure in being in command in being the most impressive Feat of engineering to exist. It even had a slight hunger to do what it was designed to do, decimate and conquer, it couldn't be seen but it looked toward planet Vort in the distance with a yearning hunger.
I gulped in horror at what i had accidentally created, such a powerful creation of the force, perhaps the most powerful force creation to ever exist surpassing the legendary Star Forge by several times in its versatility
The Star Forge itself had completely destroyed its creators, bringing them to extinction. It picked up the traits of its makers becoming cruel and savage, and in turn corrupting its makers further gaining control of them and inadvertently leading them to extinction. I'm hoping that doesn't happen this time, the Massive seemed to be picking up the inherent pride and arrogance the Irken workers were constantly exuding. I even felt its thoughts for a moment, considering itself 'a tall ship, the tallest ship', a scary thought…
Thankfully it acted normally, taking charge of remaining construction efforts, there was a measly 2 years left until completion.
It was during this near finish, perhaps IMPENDING completion that all irkens suddenly received a strange message directly from the Control Brains themselves, an extremely private, secret message for irkens only. The announcement of OPERATION IMPENDING DOOM detailing the soon to happen selection process and testing on the Irken military training planet Devastis, all interested irken soldiers were to voluntarily travel to the planet to participate as testing would only cover a short period of time as to not draw suspicion from the other races.
TAK! I can save her, then she'll owe me big time….