It had been a few months since the death of Tallest Spork.
The air aboard the ship carried a strange kind of stillness—like the quiet that hangs in the seconds before a storm. You could feel the numbness in every hallway, in every hum of machinery. Even the Irknet was quieter than usual, the endless noise of Irken supremacy, pride, propaganda and orders replaced by… nothing. Empty message boards. Frozen threads. Silence.
Morale had cratered, and the Empire's enemies wasted no time cutting into our soft spots. Allies too—sharks smell blood the same no matter what side they're on.
Meanwhile, I kept my routine. The bakery. The droid repairs. The meditation. The quiet Force-training sessions that went nowhere but still gave me something to do. Every small skill ticked upward like a metronome in an empty room.
But somewhere beneath all that dull repetition, something in me hummed with anticipation. Because I knew what was coming.
Red and Purple.
The next Tallest. The chaos that would follow. Operation Impending Doom I—and the glorious, disastrous sequel that would make even the Control Brains nervous.
And for the first time in a long while, I could feel the future again. Not the Force's version of it—the real one. The one I was born for.
At first, I was excited for the Clone War. The grand stage. The drama. The perfect opportunity to prove myself.
But somewhere along the line, the illusion cracked.
I wasn't a hero. I wasn't even close. I was a villain—and not in the poetic, misunderstood kind of way. No, I was the kind of villain who actually liked the idea of conquest, of domination, of seeing something powerful and thinking, mine.
And that's exactly what the Irken Empire was. The villains. The monsters coming to take what's yours.
So when I thought about Operation Impending Doom, the excitement came back—sharper this time, more honest. I wouldn't be pretending to save anyone. I'd be invading planets. Conquering peoples.
It would be real. It would be war. And for once, every skill I'd been quietly stacking for years would finally have a purpose. A chance to level up.
Strangely, only the Vortians hadn't stabbed the Irken Empire in the back. Everyone else took a bite the second they smelled weakness, but the Vortians? They just… stayed quiet. Loyal. Or maybe calculating.
Either way, I'm sure the Control Brains were taking notes.
Planet Vort—home to the galaxy's most annoying geniuses. The Vortians were easily the most technologically advanced species in known space, even above the Empire, and that was saying something. Their problem was simple: no spine for war. They had brains, brilliance, and gadgets that could decimate battlefields—but no army to protect them.
That's where we came in.
They made the shiny toys. We swung them around. Perfect symbiosis.
Irk got stronger, Vort got protection. And in a galaxy where alliances were bought with blood and betrayal, that made them our best ally. Which is really saying something, considering how often we enslave our friends.
I knew the Vortians would be instrumental in a future project too—something colossal, something absurd even by Irken standards.
The Massive.
A planet-sized starship. A fortress so huge it would make moons look insecure. The kind of vessel that could ram through a planet, bathe in a star, and come out on the other side asking for seconds.
It would turn the Irken Empire into the most dangerous military force the galaxy would ever know
But for now the empire laid down like a defeated dog asking for its master.
~
A few months later, the empire finally got its answer—Red and Purple.
The new Tallest. The dynamic duo. The walking punchline to the universe's biggest joke.
I wasn't surprised. Of course it was them. Who else but them? They were from my generation—meaning that by Irken standards, they were practically smeets in oversized uniforms—but somehow they'd shot up past six feet tall. Not suspicious at all, I'm sure.
The announcement came with the usual spectacle: smoke projectors, laser beams, booming fanfare, blinding spotlights, and enough propaganda fireworks to light an entire solar system. And then came the party.
For weeks, Irk turned into a planet-sized carnival. Music, drinks, cheering crowds—all for the new Tallest, who spent the entire celebration waving like celebrities who'd just discovered mirrors.
Meanwhile, the rest of the empire just… watched. The planets under Irken rule, the garrisons, the research outposts—everyone tuned in to see if this parade of joy meant something. Spoiler: it didn't. It just set the tone.
When the party finally burned itself out, the Control Brains did what they always do—followed celebration with chaos.
New orders. Empire-wide. Instant reshuffle.
And this time, the news hit.
Under Tallest Miyuki, the empire had always balanced its obsession with height with a grudging respect for competence. Sure, the tall ruled, but if a shorter Irken proved themselves useful enough, clever enough, deadly enough, they could climb the ladder. Sometimes even kick a Taller off it.
But Red and Purple? They didn't care about merit. They didn't even pretend to. The new order cut all that out. Merit was gone. Height was everything again.
The empire reshuffled overnight. Careers upended. Titles stripped. Assignments rerouted.
When I finally got my notice, I just stared at it.
Supply and Construction. Engineering Division. Chief Engineer.
Chief engineer?
Honestly? That was practically a luxury posting. One rung below officer class. For someone the Empire had once labeled "mentally defective" as a smeet, it was almost flattering.
Then I scrolled down to see who else had been assigned to the same station.
Scat.
As a laborer.
I laughed. I actually laughed out loud in my empty quarters.
"Is this coincidence," I muttered, "or is luck finally apologizing for once?"
When I showed the Admiral my orders, he nearly short-circuited.
First came shock—his antennae stiffened like he'd just seen a ghost. Then denial—he reread the document three times, muttering something about clerical errors and unauthorized transfers. Then, finally, came the begging.
"Stay. Just—stay here, soldier. I'll—I'll promote you myself!"
I smiled. The kind of smile that said of course, sir while meaning not in a thousand lifetimes.
"I'll always be at your service, Admiral," I said sweetly. "Even from afar."
Inside, I was practically dancing. After all, I'd spent decades with the man. Decades of kneading his shoulders, realigning his spine, and pretending not to notice when he moaned like a dying whale. I'd earned this escape.
A few days later, Bolts and I boarded a transport and left planet DIRT behind. As the ship sailed through the stars, a strange sensation washed over me—the Force thinning, like static fading from a signal.
It wasn't sudden, just a slow ebb. The further we got from the planet, the fainter it became.
I realized with a quiet jolt that this universe still wasn't meant to have the Force. It existed here because of me, spreading like a slow infection through reality itself.
I looked out the viewport, felt that dimming hum fade from my nerves, and chuckled. "I'm sure that won't have any consequences."
When we finally docked days later, I stepped to a porthole and forgot how to breathe.
Hundreds of thousands of Irken and Vortian ships filled the void, weaving through each other like threads in a tapestry. The scale was impossible to process—Supercarriers, freighters, orbital scaffolds, automated drones, and engineers in exo-rigs.
It wasn't just a construction site. It was a cosmic spectacle.
Dozens of independent projects unfolded all at once, each one massive enough to qualify as its own megastructure. Pink-and-purple Irken vessels darted around in erratic formation, their sleek designs clashing against the blocky, steel-gray Vortian haulers with blue accent lights. Chaos, but orchestrated chaos.
And at the center of it all loomed… something. The shadow of a structure so massive it defied comparison.
The Massive was being born.
My PAK pinged sharply, interrupting my awe. A personal communication—identity verification request.
I pinged back my orders. A moment later, the digital voice of the Control Brain processed it with cold efficiency.
"Chief Engineer Dabo. Assignment confirmed. Shipyard Seven. Designated project: autonomous planetary assault cannons—independent fire control arrays. Report for duty."
I just stood there for a second, mouth slightly open. They'd put me in charge of building planet-remodeling guns.
"Bolts," I muttered, still staring out the viewport,"...we just got promoted to 'mildly concerning.'"
He clanked beside me, head tilting up to look. "Oh wow. So many ships… think they serve cake here?"
I smirked.
A Vortian came to greet Bolts and me and guide us to my new room. After taking note of his surprisingly flexible backwards horns, his grey skin/fur 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.
Shipyard Seven looked like the inside of a vibrant factory. Pale steel and blue lights and thousands of moving things doing exactly what they were told. Irken ships—lumpy pink and purple—darted around the smooth, boxy Vortian carriers that moved with surgical patience outside the windows. Everything smelled like fresh welding and coffee and someone's very expensive soldering fumes.
My room? Gray box, blue ceiling lights. Zero furniture. Zero dignity. I fixed that in a few minutes and a respectful amount of sweat. Workbench, shelves, a couple of patched B1 torsos leaning against a crate like sailors on leave. Bolts waddled about, curious, as if he'd been promoted from waiter droid to battle droid overnight.
Eventually a small service drone delivered a datapad to me. Years of plans left me slack jawed. "Primary supervisor — Independent Fire Control Arrays" it blinked in polite text. In plain speak: I was in charge of building several dozen Autonomous Planetary Assault Cannons.
I blinked. Then I blinked at Bolts.
I had introduced myself to a group of Irken and Vortian engineers who would be under my management. I could immediately tell what type of situation I was in. Looks of disappointment, irritation and hopelessness spread across the faces of everyone under my charge. The Irkens in particular looked MORE miserable. The Vortians were only possibly gaining incompetent leadership(myself) while the Irken engineers may have just been the fresh victims of unwarranted demotion due to their short height.
It was going to be a long few years…
Once Bolts and I got comfortable in our new assignment after the first week, I decided to track down Scat.
That sounded easier in my head. In practice? A planet-wide construction site is a special kind of nightmare. Endless terminals, docking platforms, overlapping shipyards—each one the size of a city, all blurring together in gray metal and pink neon.
Still, persistence pays off, or at least refuses to die. Terminal by terminal, shipyard by shipyard, I followed the breadcrumb trail until I finally found him—buried knee-deep in the engine sector, surrounded by molten sparks and swearing Vortians.
He looked miserable.
Oh, it was truly a tragedy to be promoted and then immediately demoted. The kind of tragedy that deserved a somber soundtrack and a close-up of his antenna drooping in slow motion.
The moment he saw me, the gloom cracked. His eyes widened, and before I could even open my mouth, he sprinted toward me like a child seeing their long-lost sibling. Sadness turned to joy… but it never quite left. He still carried that aura of crushed corporate spirit only the Empire could manufacture.
He hugged me, and I hugged him back. "Good to see you," I said.
Then came the rant.
The tirade.
Scat unloaded three months of frustration in one breath—awful conditions, brutal supervisors, reduced pay. Apparently, he now made five monies every two years.
That number hurt me spiritually.
I actually felt bad for him. Genuinely.
So I decided to give him something. A gift I'd been holding onto for a while.
From my inventory, I pulled out the cookie. The special sugar cookie. The one I'd painstakingly crafted with Force and perfection both—intended to raise random stats by 1-10.
I figured, what could go wrong? Maybe he'd get a few points in Strength, or Luck, or even Perception. The odds of him getting Charisma? Low. Practically nonexistent.
So, of course, that's exactly what happened.
Not long after I'd left him to his engine bay misery, Scat came strutting into Shipyard Seven like a holovid star.
We met at eye level.
Eye. Level.
The smugness radiating off him could've powered a city. His grin stretched from one antenna to the other—pure, unfiltered shit-eating pride.
I blinked once. Twice. My brain refused to process what I was seeing.
Ten points. All ten. He'd rolled maximum Charisma.
He got taller.
Of course he did.
His luck had to be god-tier—the kind that bends probability just to annoy me.
His sudden growth spurt didn't just boost his ego—it boosted his rank. The Control Brains re-evaluated him for leadership potential. Within a week, he was promoted back to managerial duty.
~YEARSSSS!~
Years started folding into each other. Not cinematic years—actual slog years. Vortians dragged me from station to station, asking for tiny consultations at awkward hours ("Dabo, can you parity-check this rail?"). They forgot what personal space was and used my wrist like a shared terminal. If I ever said no the little bastards would ask for me from my superior officer directly, not giving me the chance to refuse. My poor subordinate Irken engineers huffed and accepted assignments with resignation.
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, but upon their completion—
DING. Passive Progression: Advanced Weaponsmith (Lv 9 → MAX).
DING.Trait gained: Smart Man's Gun
-You're good at setting up a lightshow. All advanced weapons have double damage. Improve with use…
During live fire tests the port-side battery began producing pink tracer arcs that somehow hit harder and with a better firing radius. Targets in the test range were vaporized. The Vortians replayed the logs three times, then twenty. No explanation. No calibration error. Just results.
I felt my head buzz like someone whispering congratulations. Little did I know that it would have the little Vortian bastards nearly clawing their brains out with frustration.
They called it a miracle. They called it a fluke. It garnered enough attention that a Vortian committee called for thirty evaluations and a three-month audit.
There were other weird discrepancies with the cannons themselves.
The trait had left them with a weird smell—metal warmed to the right temperature, screws that tightened when I walked by, and the satisfying clicks of firing triggers that meant nothing but at the same time everything. The Vortians loved the mathematics of it, loved the measurable differences in the weapon and hated the implications. The Irkens loved the results and loved that someone else had to explain them.
The Control Brain pinged on occasion with that hollow PAK notification that says "noted." They noted that a Chief Supervisor in Shipyard Seven had gifted their battery lines a 2× performance acceleration. "Promotion Consideration: Pending".
Meanwhile Bolts earned an identity as the only B1 on Shipyard Seven who could take random orders and joke without needing permission from a central server. Vortians would point him out as "the funny antique". He was easily outclassed by both Irken and Vortian service drones, but he had a strange appeal to both peoples alike.
The scale of this job did wonders for a couple of my numbers.
DING. Skill Gained: Construction (Lv 1/10).
—You can now put things together without making a structurally unsound disaster. Probably.DING. Skill Gained: Engineering (Lv 1/10).
—Congratulations! You now understand 1% of what the Vortians think they invented first. "Perfect. Now I can fix the things I break while pretending it was on purpose."
DING. Passive Progression: Painting (Lv 1 → 2).
DING. Passive Progression: Ranged Weapons (Lv 2 → 3).
DING. Skill Gained: Massive Weapons (Lv 1/10).
—You've touched something that can erase continents. Please don't sneeze near the trigger.
DING. Passive Progression: Computers (Lv 4 → 5).
While the Vortians' brains kept exploding over their own "discoveries" — which were mostly just them realizing the things I'd been doing — the Control Brains finally took notice. Their verdict?
Shipyard Seven was now responsible for dismantling and rebuilding the entire starboard battery line too!
Every last cannon.
Because apparently, whatever freak accident of talent Shipyard Seven was tripping over was now company policy.
And sure enough, when we rebuilt them, the results repeated: double the output, double the efficiency, double the headaches.
The moment the first test fired and the readouts spiked, half the Vortian overseers nearly fainted from joy, and the other half from existential dread. They started flying in machines that hovered over our shoulders like metallic vultures, recording everything from wrist angles to breathing patterns, desperate to find the "secret variable" that made the weapons better.
The lab felt crowded. The air smelled like burnt ozone, academic panic, and wet goat with how sweaty the Vortians got.
Even the Control Brains watched silently, trying to understand how a weapon's output efficiency could double with a change of hands.
My skills kept leveling like a maelstrom — chaotic, interconnected, feeding into each other whether I wanted them to or not.
Every time something improved, something else improved with it. Efficiency up by 0.2%. Accuracy up by 0.3%. Team morale up by... okay, no, that stayed negative.
It was like watching a slow-motion avalanche of competence that no one could explain — least of all me.
And the Vortians? Oh, they noticed. They always notice. So, in a small panic to throw them off the scent, I came up with a distraction: a little harmless side project that, in hindsight, might've been worse.
Because the moment they finished analyzing the latest construction logs, the room collectively gasped.
The hull plating on the port side was different. Denser. More resilient. Capable of absorbing kinetic energy like a sponge and shrugging off heat like it could bathe in a star.
The Vortians lost their collective minds. They started proclaiming it a miracle of engineering, a breakthrough in composite material science, a "once-in-a-millennium anomaly."
I nodded along, smiling politely, and didn't tell them the truth — that I'd just been quietly Force-imbuing the hull in my off hours, trying to grind my skill to max.
DING. Passive Progression: Force Imbue (Lv 5 → 6).
Eventually, my group was promoted.
Not in pay or privilege—our entire division's status skyrocketed overnight. Our shop tripled in size, our headcount multiplied by three, and suddenly we weren't just assembling planetary cannons anymore.
We were building everything.
Every single weapon system on the Massive, from the dorsal blasters to the hull-mounted ion guns. Even the Bridge Cannon — the one so large it could single-handedly crack a planet open like a fortune cookie.
Honestly? I had no idea how the thing was powered. Some absurd hybrid of Vortian overengineering and Irken disregard for safety. The energy core could've been fueled by a sun for all I knew.
But now that I had oversight of every weapon subsystem, I also had access. And access meant opportunity.
So I kept "inspecting" different parts of the ship, one section at a time, and quietly imbuing them with the Force. Little by little, piece by piece.
Every bulkhead shimmered with faint, invisible energy. Every capacitor hummed with a rhythm that wasn't electrical. The ship was beginning to breathe, in its own way.
The Vortian scientists, of course, lost their collective sanity. Seeing their magnum opus "randomly" improve itself in real time, systems stabilizing and efficiency climbing for no reason—they called it emergent design behavior.
Soon even the most stubborn researchers from planet Vort—the ones who called the Massive a "monumental waste of resources"—flew in to investigate. They brought scanners, sensors, samples. They peeled pieces off the hull like vultures dissecting a god, muttering about impossible molecular structures and quantum coherence-BLAH BLAH BLAH!
how do you even study something that refuses to be understood?
How do you measure something that only answers to will?
You can't.
The Force will always elude you.…maybe.
DING. Passive Progression: Force Imbue (Lv 6 → 7).
The headaches just wouldn't stop coming.Not the normal kind, either—the cosmic kind.
It started when I happened to be standing beside a Vortian engineer cutting into one of the Force-imbued hull panels. Collecting a hull sample, supposedly. He'd been mid-conversation through his comms when it happened.
He paused, glanced down, and froze.
Before his very eyes, the melted section of hull began to… move.Not in a dramatic, cinematic way. No, this was worse.Slow. Subtle. Unsettling.
The liquified metal wormed back into place, molecule by molecule, like it was remembering how to be whole again.
He screamed bloody murder.Dropped the cutter. Fell backward.Within seconds, a dozen Vortian workers came sprinting over, wide-eyed and stuttering, watching the self-healing alloy stitch itself shut in a display of deeply uncomfortable miracle science.
Oh no! Oh no! OH NO!
My One-With-Machines trait—my goddamn autopilot for rust removal—had just betrayed me in the most public way possible.
They recorded it, of course. High-definition. From multiple angles.And then, because Vortians have zero sense of self-preservation, they posted it to the Vortnet Forums.
Within hours, the thread "SELF-HEALING HULL?" had turned into a digital riot of increasingly baffled engineers and scientists. Some claimed it was nanotech. Others argued quantum cohesion. One Irken even suggested divine intervention, which was… honestly, not far off.
Meanwhile, I was sweating bullets.
If anyone traced this back to me, the Control Brains would have me dissected before I could even blink. I needed a way to cover my tracks—to make sure I stayed invisible among all the chaos.
So I focused. I meditated. I listened.
And somewhere in the noise, something clicked.
DING. Passive Progression: Force Sight (Lv 6 → 7).
I had been causing chaos too slowly.Too local. Too obvious. Everything I touched was screaming "look at me" in Vortian data reports and Irken surveillance logs. And I didn't doubt the Control Brains were tracking my location.
That's when the idea hit me. A dumb, brilliant, possibly-lethal idea.
What if I didn't touch anything at all? What if I used Force Imbue and Force Sight together?
If I could project my awareness through the entire ship—every plate, every conduit, every rivet—then maybe I could spread the effect so wide it stopped being suspicious.Instead of one miracle hull repairing itself, it would look like the whole ship had decided to wake up on its own.
The thought made my antennae twitch.
So I sat down cross-legged in the middle of my room. Bolts had learned not to interrupt these sessions; he just stood at the door, head tilted, muttering, "Master's doing the thing again."
I closed my eyes. I reached.
The Force Sight stretched outward like a net—threads of perception brushing against thousands of lives, the hum of welders, the chatter of plasma torches, the vibration of metal breathing under stress. Then I layered Force Imbue on top of it, letting my will flow outward into the ship's skeleton.
The sensation hit like static lightning.
Suddenly, I wasn't sitting anymore—I was everywhere.I felt welds cool on the far side of the hull. I felt a bolt twist into its socket. I felt coolant rush through pipes like blood through veins.
The Massive was alive.
DING. Passive Progression: Force Imbue (Lv 7 → 8).
DING. Passive Progression: Force Sight (Lv 7 → 8).
The data lights across the ship flickered once, a wave of synchronized blinks that rippled from port to starboard. Dozens of Vortians and Irkens alike stopped mid-task.
I opened my eyes and grinned.
Now the chaos wasn't mine alone—it was the ship's.Good luck tracking that, geniuses.
With the combination of Force Imbue and Force Sight, I could roam the entire planetary-sized construction zone without moving an inch.Every rivet, every beam, every welded seam—I saw it all. I was it all.
Unfortunately, to everyone else, it just looked like I was sitting around doing nothing.Word spread fast. "Chief Engineer Dabo? Yeah, he just sits in his room all day while his droid does the real work."
Great. The galaxy's first omnipresent foreman… branded a slacker.
Even the Control Brains threw in their 2 cents. "Promotion Consideration: Denied."
Bolts had to pick up nearly half my actual duties—signing manifests, barking at Vortians, occasionally smacking consoles when they froze. I'd catch him mimicking my voice sometimes, trying to sound "authoritative." It was almost flattering.
Meanwhile, the Force ran me dry.Every session left me hollow, like my nerves had been siphoned out and replaced with static. I'd spend hours after each projection slumped against the wall, breathing through the tremors, trying to refill the tank with meditation.
But the grind paid off.
DING. Passive Progression: Meditation (Lv 7 → 8)DING. Passive Progression: Force Imbue (Lv 8 → 9)DING. Passive Progression: Force Sight (Lv 8 → 9)
The process of imbuing the Massive took years.
Not months. Years.
The kind of years that blur together until you forget which decade you're in and your only friends are a B1 droid and an infinite to-do list.
But all that time spent drifting my awareness through the hulls, the wiring, the miles of alloy veins that fed this mechanical planet… it paid off.Every circuit hummed like it was breathing.Every piece of metal vibrated like it was alive.
DING. Passive Progression: Meditation (Lv 8 → 9).DING. Passive Progression: Force Imbue (Lv 9 → MAX).DING. Passive Progression: Force Sight (Lv 9 → MAX).
The air itself started vibrating with life. I could feel the pulse of the Massive—every panel, every bolt, every weapon mount—like they were part of a single organism trying to understand its heartbeat.
Then the real notifications hit.
DING. Trait Gained: Echo of the Force.—Your Force Imbues take root. Objects you empower begin to evolve on their own, subtly adapting, repairing, and refining themselves over time. The Force lingers permanently in all things you touch.
DING. Trait Gained: Eye of the Force.—Your perception extends beyond distance or walls. You can see through the Force anywhere your influence or imbuement has spread.
I stood in silence, eyes unfocused, yet I could see everything—the shipyard's kilometers of corridors, the storms on Vort's horizon, the faint pull of the Vortian solar systems orbit.The entire Massive pulsed in rhythm with my breath.
For a brief moment, I felt infinite. I transcended. AN OMNIPOTENT GOD!
Then Bolts walked in carrying a tray of half-burnt biscuits."Sir, you've been meditating for seventy hours straight."
"Oh." I blinked. "Oh. That explains the mild hallucinations of enlightenment."
~
He arrived during third shift like he owned the deck. Taller. Sharper uniform. New rank pips gleaming like he'd polished them with ego. Even after a few years he was still riding the high of being taller.
"Inspection," he said to the Vortian at the door. "Official." The Vortian looked at his tablet, at Scat, at the tablet again, then waved him through with the defeated sigh of an overworked genius.
We met at eye-level again. He smirked the smirk of a man who'd rolled a natural ten and framed it.
"I hate you," I said, fond. But I decided to give the man a tour regardless.
He toured the line with me, nodding like a supervisor who understood any of it. He didn't. But he laughed at Bolts' jokes and pretended not to notice when a hull panel adjusted itself by half a millimeter.
"Place runs tight," he murmured, voice low.
Once every… who knows, I'd drop into the Temple for a week that felt like a day. Masters Luminara and Shaak Ti both clocked me with those serene, sharp eyes. Windu looked through me like a knife deciding on a cut. Anakin grew increasingly suspicious. We meditated. I kept my disgust on a leash. It behaved. Mostly.
~BOLTS: UPGRADE~
He started handling manifests. Then he started rejecting bad ones. Then he started arguing policy with a Vortian and won.
"Master," he announced one shift, "I believe I am ready for… a hat."
"A hat?"
"For authority."
We found him a cap. He put it on with trembling hands. It was crooked. It was perfect. Really put his character together.
DING. Passive Progression: Mechu-Deru (Lv 1→ 2).
I didn't even have the heart to tell him he looked ridiculous.
~
Time having passed and the Vortians having adjusted to every supernatural event, this last event truly made them 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 to answer. For the first time since their kind had gone to space, they decided to let the questions go and focus on their work.
It was time for the Massive's AI to come alive, and it had everyone bristleing with anticipation.
What would this completely incomprehensible machine be like? Surprisingly, it appeared to work as intended—connecting to all available Irken PAKs and distributing orders and responsibilities while organizing all remaining resources and construction timelines.
This, of course, led to humongous sighs of relief, but simultaneously disappointed all the nervous Vortians.
What was left unsaid was what the Force had told me.My skill, Mechu-Deru, seemed to have taken hold of the AI, making it completely loyal to me.
DING. Passive Progression: Mechu-Deru (Lv 2→ 3).
DING. Passive Progression: Mechu-Deru (Lv 3→ 4).
DING. Passive Progression: Mechu-Deru (Lv 4→ 5).
That much progression from a single accomplishment told me just how significant turning the AI on truly was.
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 ever 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 the gaze of a predator.
I gulped in horror at what I had accidentally created.
Such a powerful creation of the Force—perhaps the most powerful creation to ever exist—surpassing even 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 the remaining construction efforts. There were a measly two years left until its completion.
It was during this near finish, perhaps IMPENDING completion that all irkens suddenly received a strange message directly from the Control Brains themselves.
DING. SYSTEM BROADCAST — IRKEN CHANNEL (CLASSIFIED): OPERATION IMPENDING DOOM! Participate voluntarily: DEVASTIS TRIALS. Details: restricted. Proceed with discretion.
I read it three times because the Control Brains don't do feelings, they do logistics—and a logistics memo about planetary devastation reads differently in your chest. The message pinged directly into every PAK like a lover's whisper: secret, official, and wrapped in the kind of certainty that gives soldiers hard-ons and philosophers ulcers.
I smiled. Quiet, small, ridiculous grin—the grin of someone who just caught a prize on a rigged game. I can save her. Then she'll owe me big time...
Class: Necromancer (Lv 4 / 100)
HP: 75 / 75
MP: 50 / 50
SP: 50 / 50
Unallocated Stat Points: 10
STATS
STR: 10
END: 10
DEX: 10
INT: 10(+50)
WIS: 10
CHA: 20
LCK: 10
ACTIVE SKILLS
Raise Undead (Lv 1/10)
Force Telekinesis (Lv 7/10)
Force Heal (Lv 6/10)
Enhanced Movement (Lv 3/10)
Precognition (Lv 4/10)
PASSIVE SKILLS
Force-Based
Force Sensitive (Lv 6/10)
Force Meditation (Lv 9/10)
Force Veil (Lv 4/10)
Magic / Necromancy
Anatomy (Lv 2/10)
Alchemy (Lv 4/10)
Herbalism (Lv 4/10)
Pharmacology (Lv 1/10)
Physical / Combat
Sprinting (Lv 3/10)
Acrobatics (Lv 3/10)
Parkour (Lv 3/10)
Brawling (Lv 3/10)
Melee Weapons (Lv 1/10) → Knives (Lv 2/10)
Lightsaber (Lv 4/10)
Stun Resistance (Lv 1/10)
Sneaking (Lv 4/10)
Ranged / Engineering
Marksmanship (Lv 2/10)
Ranged Weapons (Lv 3/10) → Small Arms (Lv 3/10) → Massive Weapons (Lv 1/10)
Computers (Lv 8/10)
Industrial / Project
Construction (Lv 4/10)
Engineering (Lv 4/10)
Utility / Social / Misc.
Merchant (Lv 9/10)
Masseuse (Lv 8/10)
Muscle Memory (Lv 1/10)
Knot-Tying (Lv 4/10)
Painting (Lv 4/10)
Singing (Lv 2/10)
Woodworking (Lv 3/10)
Pain Resistance (Lv 4/10)
Drug Resistance (Lv 1/10)
TRAITS
Mana Gifted
One with THE FORCE
2nd Mind
Robotic Stamina
Dimensional Traveler
The Chef
Acid Punk
One with Machines
Smart Man's Gun
Echo of the Force
Eye of the Force