Star Wars: From the Clone Wars to Starfaring Heroes

Chapter 45 45-Words
When the car arrived at the entrance to Perimeter Bay 33, the sight before her eyes surprised Paris.

Inside the massive arched hatch, a bustling scene of activity unfolded.

The three spaceships, of different types, were completely enveloped by a shimmering atmospheric shielding ray.

The rays traverse the entire region facing space, isolating it from the external vacuum.

B1 combat robots are shuttling back and forth between the deck and the pier, busily doing something.

Barris saw the thick industrial hoses coiled like pythons around the ceiling supports and ground anchors, connecting the spaceship's fuel inlet and resupply outlet.

The massive Tibana gas tanks were secured to heavy-duty platforms with wheels, and pulled by anti-gravity tractors, emitting a low hum, as they were precisely transported along planned routes to different spacecraft for loading.

The Renown was almost completely encased in metal scaffolding, like a giant beast trapped in a spiderweb of steel.

The welding torch emitted a blinding blue-white arc of light, accompanied by hissing sounds and the smell of molten metal.

The sharp clicking sound of pneumatic wrenches rose and fell.

The crew is working on the frigate.

The highly distinctive, cacophonous voice of the B1 robot was incessant, eventually merging into a cacophony that was difficult to distinguish.

"What are you doing here?!"

Vinok's tenor voice stood out particularly well amidst the noise.

Paris held up the heavy briefcase and raised her voice: "Pazzak! I won half a million credits!"

The fallen Jedi suddenly turned his head, his eyes widening instantly. He then muttered a few barely audible words and shook his head vigorously.

“Okay… give me the bag, I’ll take it to your safe in your compartment. Since you’re here,” Vinok pointed to the edge of the isolation field, “why don’t you go help Zinis? They’re short-handed over there, consider it… contributing to the team.”

For a moment, Paris hesitated, wondering if it was safe to hand over the credits she had worked so hard to earn to him.

But then he immediately berated himself for being so attached to these material possessions.

This money is key to the escape plan.

She reminded herself.

However, she couldn't help but stare longingly as Vinok's strong hand grasped the briefcase's handle and its heavy weight disappeared from his grasp.

"...Who is Zinis?"

Paris suddenly realized what was happening, and turned her gaze from the departing briefcase to the direction Vinok was pointing.

“He was the second captain of the ‘Reputation’.” A slight hum of servo motors emanated from Hal’s body: “The original ‘Zinnis’ was destroyed, and this is the backup memory drive.”

Hal staggered toward the warship, his tracks scraping against the cold metal floor of the hangar.

Paris followed behind, the sound of her boots hitting the ground particularly clear in the empty hangar.

She involuntarily tilted her head back, her gaze moving upwards along the towering gray drab steel walls of the "Reputation" until she squinted from the blinding light of the ceiling.

When viewed from the high-spanning bridge of the Conqueror-class heavy cruiser, these frigates did indeed appear small and insignificant.

Standing in its shadow, the massive main turret gave her a heavy sense of physical oppression.

A group of combat robots surrounded a tablet computer. Their gray-white metal bodies were painted with bright yellow stripes, and their joints were covered with reflective silver tape.

As Paris approached, she glimpsed a blurry image of explosions and ruins flashing rapidly across the tablet screen, and a faint but sharp female voice came from a robot's built-in speaker:

"...As we entered the second month of the Battle of Atlaken, we saw the Republic displaying increasing atrocities and depravity towards the local Atlaken people."

"New footage is coming in... Oh my god, look at this..."

"Neutral observers estimate that, due to the Republic's unrestrained bombing campaign... if the reports are true, nearly a quarter of the planet's surface has become uninhabitable after being bombed with atomic bombs."

"Unsurprisingly, the predicament Atlake is facing has not yet, and may never, be reported by government-led media."

"But don't get me wrong, good citizens of the galaxy, 'Shadow Broadcast' will tear off the Republic's veil of denial and reveal the truth!"

"It is estimated that the number of civilian deaths in Atlaken has reached millions!"

"I think we should all realize that this situation cannot continue any longer, and the Republic must be held accountable for their heinous war crimes!"

Then came a low, anxious electronic murmur emanating from inside the robot.

Paris clenched her lips tightly, pressing her teeth against her lower lip, and a cold, nauseating feeling welled up inside her.

She turned around abruptly, her gaze sweeping over the smooth, cold metal floor beneath her feet, no longer looking at the group of robots.

Zinis was easy to find.

His dome-shaped head, painted with a smooth, bright blue paint, stood out starkly against the gray mechanic's uniform and the bustling supply robots.

He stood before the huge, open rectangular hatch of the "Reputation," the exposed hydraulic rods along the edge of the hatch flashing a faint red warning light.

As Paris walked toward him, she could feel the muscles on the inside of her arm tighten slightly.

The two massive barrels of the main gun hung above her head, emitting a metallic smell of engine oil and coolant.

“Lieutenant,” the optical sensor array on Zines’s head turned toward her, a red dot flashing, “what do you want?”

“Venok said I should come and help.” Barris unconsciously moved her shoulders.

If robots could express anger, Barris imagined that emotion on the captain's metal mask at that moment.

“We’re loading fuel,” Zines said, pointing a slender robotic arm to a distant interface connecting to a thick, flexible pipeline. “Do you know the process?”

"……have no idea!"

Paris's voice sounded somewhat thin in the vast space of the hangar. For some reason, the way those lifeless optical lenses focused on her face reminded her of the eyes of the master Luminara.

The master would give her that look whenever she said something careless.

“…Go to the scaffolding on the port side and find the craftsman.” Zinis’s voice transmitter mimicked a soft, synthesized harmonica-like sigh. “He’ll get you some work to do.”

She discovered that the craftsman was a colorful B1 combat robot.

Its metal frame and shell were covered with thick, multi-colored paint, making it look bulkier than its counterparts which only had simple yellow stripes, due to the amount of paint on its body compared to other robots.

Dozens of robots were hidden inside the metal scaffolding frame erected right next to the hull of the "Reputation".

Their slender robotic arms gripped rough wooden-handled brushes, dipping them into viscous liquid from half-full paint buckets.

They are not painting uniform patterns or logos, but writing...

The entire surface of the huge gray ship was covered with paragraphs written in more than a hundred different languages.

The paint colors varied, from dazzling bright red to serene deep blue, and the condition of the paint varied, with some areas showing signs of peeling.

Baris squinted, trying to make out: Oribesh, Hert, Mandalorian, Corellian… and countless other languages ​​she didn’t recognize, composed of complex straight lines, dense dots, or strange patterns.

Each paragraph is the perfect size for a human to read while standing close to the text.

Looking up at the warship's massive exterior, covered in fine scratches and traces of energy burning, Barris thought that if there were enough space, these robots could be inscribed with all the major languages ​​of the galaxy.

The air was filled with the pungent smell of paint solvents and metallic dust.

“Oh, that’s clever.” Hal’s sensors scanned several paragraphs of text on the nearby hull.

"Hmm?" Paris looked down at him.

“Every language says the same thing: a copy of an interstellar spacecraft engineering manual.” The processor inside the little robot made a soft calculation sound. “Look, here is the basic reactor maintenance procedure, over there is the hyperspace engine preheating sequence… You only need to understand one of the languages ​​to understand everything.”

"But why?"

But why?

This sentence has been swirling in Paris's mind lately.

Every time she thought she had a vague understanding of the logic behind the robots and their eccentric leader, Raine, she would immediately stumble upon a huge and bizarre mystery.

What disturbed her even more was that when she tried to sense these metallic lifeforms through the Force, the feedback was vague, as if there was a layer of cold, impenetrable fog between them.

The robot was unfathomable to her, and the human being, Raine, was even more so.

“Nobody knows.” Hal shoved a square data panel with black oil stains on the edges into her hand. “It’s been like this since he was as tall as me… Good luck.”

With a turn of its tracks, the Hal gear immediately emitted a whirring sound as it hurriedly ran back, disappearing behind the crisscrossing metal supports of the scaffolding.

Just as the robot known as the Craftsman locked onto her with its optical lens, which was smeared with dried blue paint, it said, "Can you write Miriel? Our dictionary database doesn't have the writing rules for that language."

“Most of us learn Oribesh from childhood…” Baris began to explain, but was interrupted by the robot.

“I’ve been working for twelve hours straight. The heatsink is covered in paint, and the processor is almost overloaded,” the craftsman said bluntly. “Do you even know how to write Miriel?”

A robotic arm, covered in paint of various colors, pointed impatiently to a pile of paint buckets at its feet.

"..." Paris paused for a moment, then gritted her teeth and said, "I will."

Before she could finish speaking, a paintbrush covered in paint and a bucket half-full of thick, dark green paint were pushed to her feet, with a few tiny specks of dust floating on the paint surface.

“There’s a blank space over there.” The craftsman pointed with another mechanical arm to a relatively clean metal area on the hull with only old scratches. “Just copy the contents of the Oribesh script into the Miriel script.”

"Wait, I'm supposed to do this myself?" Paris stared wide-eyed at the rough brush handle and the heavy paint bucket.

"Look over there." The craftsman abruptly turned his head to a spot higher up on the hull. "He's about to write it down."

Paris looked in the direction he pointed.

On a higher level of scaffolding, a long passage of text was clearly visible.

It was written in advanced galactic language, but it was written in extremely messy handwriting, with crooked and distorted letters, so messy that she could hardly recognize it.

There was also a strange, square-shaped script, with strong and vigorous characters, but this script was one she had never seen before.

Only thanks to Luminara's rigorous calligraphy training was it possible to barely recognize that the content written in Galactic Language was indeed part of the manual.

However, it turns out that Ryan Bontri, the man from Ondron, can also write Higher Galactic?

Moreover, his unrestrained and almost impatient handwriting shows that he has an almost instinctive familiarity with this language, despite its lack of any rules.

The Painter Combat Robot gently nudged her shoulder with its metal arm.

Ok!

Paris had no choice but to compromise.

She bent down to pick up the heavy wooden-handled brush, and the cold touch made her fingers recoil.

She dipped her brush into the thick, almost stringy dark green paint and brought it close to the data panel.

She began translating word for word the detailed guide, which was essentially a manual on how to build a starship from scratch, into the winding Miriel script, and then applied it to the cold metal of the hull.

As she wrote, she was astonished to discover something.

The manual is surprisingly simple and direct in its wording, with clear step-by-step breakdowns that make the purpose of each step understandable even to a complete novice in engineering.

This in itself is strange.

(End of this chapter)