Modifying the Darkstar: part 1

Sovern was tuning up his hawk bat once again; it felt like time between when he initiated a maneuver and when the fighter would actually perform it was lagging some what. Pulling the main circuit board from its panel underneath the control yoke a quick inspection revealed that despite being an advanced Tie model is suffered from the same flaw as all the other Tie models. It was manufactured with low grade easy to produce parts. This was His personal fighter and he wanted it to be in peek performance.

Dropping that circuit board Sovern pulled ever circuit access panel in his fighter, once every panel was pulled he carefully pulled every circuit board from his fighter. Placing the pile of circuit boards in a bin and took them to the requisitions officer and entered a bit of conversation.

“How’s it going?”

“Oh not to bad, how may I help you?”

“Well I was wondering if you had any grade ten circuit boards to replace these grade fours.”

“Is this for personal or Fleet use?”

“Personal”

“Ok yes I have grade ten components but you’re going to have to pay out of pocket for them and it will cost a total of ten-thousand IC’s”

“Not a problem” Sovern replied and gave the requisitions officer the credits. The requisitions officer than guided him to the storage room and showed him where his circuit boards were. A half an hour later Sovern was walking out of the storage room with high quality circuit boards and wire harnesses replacements for his fighter. An hour or two later Sovern had reinstalled the circuits and wiring harness and was checking the new power outputs and performance ratings. The lag Sovern had detected had gone away and the power out consumption dropped by 45%. Putting all that extra power in the engines would burn them out quickly and may even cause them to blow up so instead he routed a half of that power to the engines, and the other half to shields and weapons. Replacing the manifolds, inductors, diffusers and other components with high end after market parts he had special ordered from Kuat Systems Enterprises, he squeezed some more power from the engines.  The final thing that Sovern did that day was pull the missile racks off and discarded them the unbalanced his fighter when he fired them in odd numbers.

Putting up his tools both borrowed and personally owned away he did a preflight check. Getting in to his fighter he switched systems on one by one, he felt the fighter power up with stronger hums and brighter displays. That was only a slight indicator pf what was to come as he requested flight clearance. Receiving clearance Sovern set his accelerator and was sucked in to the seat. His fighter definitely had more power both in acceleration and speed. This brought a smile Sovern’s face reminding him of his days as a test pilot and engineer passing through the permeable shield he felt another jolt of speed surge through his fighter. Maintaining control he performed various rolls and loops testing out his fighter’s performance. Reaching one end of the Artus he banked around it and leveled out and accelerated. As he accelerated he called to the control tower “Kaph 10 to tower request a speed check”

“Tower to Kaph 10 your top speed is 147 150 MGLT if you put more power to the engines I’m sure you could break the fleet record”

“Kaph 10 to tower that’s a bad idea any more power to the engines will turn me to space dust”

“Tower to Kaph 10 roger that”

Sovern soon reentered the Artus hanger and landed. As soon as he landed he started retuning the new components. Looking over to the discarded missile racks he made a mental note he would have to replace the missile racks with some thing else some thing that wouldn’t unbalance his fighter. But that would have to wait till next liberty.

OOC:

666 words good enough for two kills i figure good enough to coax out 9% more power from the engines

Upgrades

Sabian had just finished making his newest ship a KSE Firespey he had dubbed “The Rust Bucket” a bit more space worthy making its navigational shields more reliable and fixing its primary flight controls. It was still sluggish at best but it went from point A to point B with out Sabian worrying about multiple hull breaches from micro meteorites like paint chips, little rocks, dust; ship parts nuts, bolts, washers, cotter pins etc etc etc.

Sabian's droid, partner, mechanic and kind of side kick P1K was in the engine room trying to maintain the sputtering spitting clunking and rattling engines as best he could when a small malfunction caused by his hodgepodge body killed his repulsorlift generator sending him crashing to the ground. At the same time P1K malfunctioned Sabian engaged the hyperspace generator but instead of making the jump to light speed the ships hyperspace generator control panel nearly exploded in a shower of sparks as fuses and breakers blew through out the ship as the generator its self seized up. Moments later P1K's communication link chimed with Sabian on the other end “Pea-won what the heck happened with the hyperspace generators?” P1K buzzed and grumbled before replying “I don't know I cant see it?” a moment later the comm link chimed in again “What the hell do you mean you cant see fly your nickel plated ass up there and look!” P1K putting some frustration in his western voice replied “I can't ya bastard! My repulorlift generator fried I'm on the ground now if you want to know what the heck is wrong with you engines come down and look your own self.”

“Wow” Sabian thought as he climbed out of the pilots seat to see what was the matter “P1K has certainly developed his personality.” Sabian than chuckled as he entered the engine room and saw his friends predicament looking over the hyperspace engines he nodded “Yup seized up, gona take a bit of work to get them going again..i think were lucky we made it back to Bespin with out needing a towing.” P1K tugged on Sabians shirt with one of its arms “Hey boss could you maybe help me up or better yet fix me?” Sabian's mind had a quick flash run through his mind “You know that aint a bad idea Pea-won.” Feeling a bit concerned  P1K asked “Whats a good idea?” Hefting his droid on to a rolly-cart to the cargo bay Sabian explained “I'm good with ships and speeders but I aint that good with droids. P1K sarcastically replied “Obviously” Sabian continued “So im going to take you to some place that will be able to work you over maybe upgrade you what ya think?” This brought happiness to the hodgepodge droid “Sounds good boss” was the droids reply. Sabian than chuckled “But its coming out of your allowance.” The droid replied in jest “That doesn't sound as good boss.”

As soon as P1K was in the cargo bay Sabian landed The Rust bucket on his personal landing pad and transferred P-1 to his Tie Hawkbat storage bin. Shortly after that Sabian had packed some equipment and stuff for a short trip. Once packed, pre-tripped and ready to go Sabian launched his craft and set coordinates to an Industrial Automation incorporated droid repair, upgrading and customization facility. It took several hours to make it to Arstonas prime but once there he brought his droid in to get it customized.

A pretty Togruta female with gray blue stripes on her tentacles was the receptionist of the shop looking up from her desk she spoke softly “Greeting and welcome how may we assist you to day?” Sabian smiled and greeted her in return “Hello I was wondering if I could get my droid refurbished and customized?” The receptionist politely replied “Yes if you could please give us a description of what you would like done to it its name and any thing else of importance.” Sabian nodded took the data pad and began his description as follows. “I would like my droid to have the programing, tools and attributes of an astromech R7 droid and a LE series repair droid, and C-3 series protocol droid but keep its voice box and personality circuits the way it is. Also add in the heavier try blasters armor and shield generator of the destroyer model combat droids. All this is to be placed in a streamlined chassis based on a mix of the Viper and Prowler 1000 probe bots. And the Droids name is P1K”

The receptionist took the description looked it over and nodded “We should be able to handle this order in about two weeks and it'll cost sixty thousand credits plus parts and labor. Sabian agreed to the price and brought P1K to customization shop when the droid engineer looked at it and asked “Who built this a Jawa.” The both chuckled and soon after Sabian departed.

Sabian spent the next two week fixing the hyperspace generator on the Rust Bucket getting it to work semi-reliably. Once able to return to  Arstonas in The Rusty Bucket he did with money in hand to reclaim his newly rebuilt and refurbished friend. Money traded hands and soon after P1K cam hovering out in his new shell and Sabian asked “Well how do you feel Pea-Won?” P1K spun around and in a less gravely but still western voice he spoke “A lot better boss.” Sabian smiled and replied “Well good now get to work.”