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After a week or so of intense research on available facilities, the boys and I finally narrowed our selections down to a currently out-of-use manufacturing facility belonging to Czerka corp on an uninhabitable (without significant assistance) ice planet. We decided we should pay the orbital station on one of the moons a visit since the facility was last in use about 6 years ago, which isn't a long time. Our plan? to secure our holding of the facility by, essentially, removing it from Czerka's database.
We arrived and disembarked near the facility. I had the droid fly the ship to the other side of the moon from where the base was located, and then to broadcast a garbled distress signal. And then we waited. And waited, and waited. Eventually someone came out, but dang they weren't in much of a hurry.
After their speeder headed off away from the facility, we snuck inside their hangar bay. Savn got tangled up with a security droid while I waltzed in and began hacking away at their local network. Turret was with me and remained alert. I got the droid to back off and looked up info about the facility.
I went through their computer systems and deleted all records of the facility. I jumped into their uplink to the main network and cleaned the facility out of their main databases too. The thought passed through my head that this wouldn't erase memories from the organics working here, if one of them were to remember the facility. I briefly considered sending Turret to clean house, but decided against it.
As Savn came walking up to us, an interior door opened and a Trandoshan stepped in. He said something to me in Trandoshan, to which I replied that the main office sent us to make some repairs. He obviously wasn't buying it, and carefully re-entered the door through which he came, and then ran off. Turret ran to intercept him, but the dude had activated their heavy security droid. Which was a bit outdated and decrepit. Kinda like pretty much everything in this facility.
I quickly tried to access the thing from the network but apparently it wasn't connected. I shrugged and leaned back against the console to watch the boys chop it and blast it to bits. Then I turned back to the console and yelled some stupid stuff through the facility loudspeaker. When no one came running, I put into the Czerka database to transfer each of these people to other facilities out on the outer rim, and to get some new people in here. I also ordered us 3 construction droids on Czerka's dime.
After this we headed out, boarded the ship, and headed down to the planet surface. Turret worked out a precision shot from the ship's turbo lasers to give us access into the facility. We parked the ship directly on top of the hole Turret made, and then repelled down the hole. It was ass-rippingly cold out, but we managed to make it into a slightly warmer, cut-off section that didn't have any wind to make it even colder. It was only a short hike to the facility.
Once there we did an inspection, made some lists, and began scavenging parts from the nearby area and the ship to get some generators online and some life-support/air conditioning online. The boys and I worked on making some repairs, cleaning the place up, and stocking up with the things we'd already brought with us to get going with our plan. Then we returned to the ship and had to decide who to pursue for the position of chief engineer on the project.
Our first lead was a chick on Coruscant who had defected from the empire. She turned up to be insufferable and totally full of herself. Pretty much someone who would be impossible to work with, even if she did have the knowledge required to get the job done. We took far too long talking to her before finally telling her forget it.
After that dead-end, we went after a Rhodian named Ulino who was hiding out on a neutral planet in Hutt space. He had the smarts we needed, but, well, he was a Rhodian. Not particularly known for their trustworthiness. And also, he was known to be a little unscrupulous, which was why he was having to hide out.
After landing, we walked into a bar, and… well, we spied three Rhodians. We talked to the bar tender a bit and gave some free shots out, and I nabbed the Rhodian nearest to me and began interrogating him and trying to get him drunk. This had the convenient side-effect of flushing out the one we were after. Savn headed out after him. A bit later, the Rhodian I had been pestering was passed out on the floor below me, and Savn returned with our friend Ulino to have a chat. I sent over the com link for the gay droid to come join us since none of us speak Rhodian, and from there we made our first recruitment to our “cause”.
Ulino asked for droid assistance, no organics. I got him 3 more construction droids in addition to the three we'd “acquired” from Czerka. I also got another protocol droid to assist with our communication dysfunction, and a few security droids to ostensibly keep an eye on the facility but also to keep an eye on the Rhodian. We decided that we could never let Ulino have access to the whole shebang at once or he may be tempted to sell-out on us.
So that said, we all discussed a profit-sharing strategy. We made an agreement that each of us (including Ulino) would take a 10% share of the profits and a company would be formed that would take the remaining 60%. Ulino said this was fine.
So, after dropping him off at the facility, he began reprogramming the droids and getting things set up how he wanted them. A week later, he came back to us with three possible plans. 1) Speeding up current drives, 2) targeting ships in hyperspace, 3) and something else I don't remember. We decided to go with a staged release schedule that would encompass each of these things. First things first, the first thing was to make the current drives faster with just mundane materials. Ulino would modify our ship's hyperdrive to enable us to get to and from the Infinite Empire ships much faster. Given how widely spread they were… this would be a tremendous help.
So while he made the modifications, we planned which Infinite Empire ship we would raid first for materials.
Loot to spend (xLy == x level y cost items):