Naturally, not alot of people knew about these places.
One other purpose of those caches was to make sure that interesting and potentially useful technologies not get lost. So many spies and factions played so many games with official records and databases that no technology nor record of any kind was safe in there. He'd set it up that way himself, to make sure no rivals could possibly survive a bid for his throne. But naturally he didn't want to succumb to the same snares.
Another purpose of these secret storehouses was that of endless self-congratulation. The Emperor didn't boast too much in public for fear of letting out secrets, but he was a very boastful fellow and he had to vent the steam at least in private. So he'd created endless museums of how great he was, monuments to his glorious conquests and idols to praise his intellect in a cackling display of Narcissism. But since most of what he did was secret, the mementos to that had to be secret as well.
That was as much a driving force behind those concealed storehouses as any other.
Ranma's plan given to Amelia crossed a certain budget threshold, and while the Emperor's secret projects didn't get a whole lot of review, there was one who could. The Emperor's Chancellor was obscenely loyal, no one could ever figure out to explain quite why. But he had oversight of more things than men dreamed possible and controlled who had access to the Emperor's time.
And Ranma's plan, outlined by Amelia and forwarded on under Naga's name was just a bit too good a match for one of those ultra-secret storehouses. The Jedi had chosen an airless cave world that had neither native population nor resources worth bothering for, out on the fringes of the galaxy's settled slice. He'd directed not war machines but industrial machinery to create them to be cached in the caves of that planet, along with certain technologies.
One more provision that really should not have been included was a plan, albeit more like an outline, for a possibility to outfit some of the largest caves with repulsor fields to hold large starships suspended underground, with a note that these could be used as storage or repair (as excuses to outfit them with construction/repair machinery).
Now, Tantis and the other personal storehouses did not share the vast scale of machinery that industrial production on the Star Wars scale demanded. The Emperor had vast stores of completed products in them, and records that boggled the mind. Yet prototyping of the plans could vastly extend the reach of a storehouse's usefulness in a case of countering a usurper to the Emperor's throne.
But Tantis and the others were well underway already and could not be expanded to the scale of the facilities desired.
This place easily could.
The Chancellor saw this when the project was brought to his attention, judged the merits, and concluded that mass stockpiling of machines and technologies in a secret, out of the way system was exactly what the Emperor did himself on occasion. And the Sith to get this idea was now dead, so she couldn't go sharing the secret of its location.
He approved.
The Chancellor gave the required orders, passed them under the Empire's seal, brought the project to his master's attention for his personal approval, and the Emperor himself did a substantial amount to expand on Ranma's planned supply dump. That could have been fine except he also saw fit to add certain lethal security measures that would bring the new hidden base in line with others of the very same sort. A cloned Jedi converted to the Dark Side was one such out of many.
A survey team of the most loyal, fanatical sort approached the planet, made their estimates as to best locations, and ultra-loyal construction crews went in with disposable sections of slaves and droids to do heavy labor, both of which could easily be destroyed to maintain the utter privacy and secrecy of this storehouse.
Entire gargantuan caves were sealed off from the rest of the networks, shielded against any form of scanning, and installation of subterrainian work bays capable of mass prototyping and secret research areas for the completing and refining of raw designs became a fevered pitch alongside of actual construction of a more normal concealed storehouse connected to them by other caves now isolated from the rest of the planet's tunnel systems.
The ability of the cream of Imperial Engineers to duplicate normal-seeming tunnel walls over scan-defeating materials and blastproof armor plating was scarcely to be found duplicated anywhere, and an entire city complex as large as most planetary capitals, with more caves attached holding massive factory complexes, were hidden in such a way as to be invisible even to those searching for it with a general idea of where it lay.
Puckered volcano mouths, exactly resembling those dating back from the formation of this as a cave world, when vast amount of ice interleaved and molded to native stone had at last boiled away with the atmosphere, leaving behind only the caves, were built with capacity to sphincter open and closed so massive starship construction bays under ground could release their products to the skies.
It took the greater part of a year to complete it. Then it was stocked with a vast amount of material and data, guardians composed of stormtrooper battalions led by Crimson Royal Guards under a cloned Dark Jedi took residence, the slaves were eliminated and droids had memory modules erased and removed, then traffic ceased except for stealthy transports coming by on unpublished hyperroutes to add updates periodically to the collection.
The Emperor had one more hidey-hole.
What he didn't count on was the Jedi already knew it was there. Ashka Boda had been waiting in secrecy greater than the Empire's for the expected delivery of materials. He'd noted the arrival of scoutships and stayed quiet, listening and expecting trouble as he assumed they'd been after him, seeing through the plan. When they left he stayed hidden, knowing full well the treachery of his enemies would enable them to try and lure him out of hiding by pretending the way was clear to escape.
Then the engineers, slave construction crews and droids arrived. This also was of prime concern. At first he'd assumed they were going to dig for him, but it soon became clear they had no awareness of him at all, that their building was a massive scale construction project, not a Jedi search.
Taking place of an Imperial technician, Ashka Boda found the extent and details of their plans as he walked the budding halls disguised as one of them, mapping every detail, every coordinate known, with copies of many of the construction droid's memory modules to add details to the picture.
He departed, having smuggled his personal transport to the other side of the planet before taking off, just shortly before the guards arrived, his secret notes and construction plans filling a good half of his cargo hold.
He'd take the plans to Cologne. Then they stood a chance to gain all it had. Or they could be exposed trying. But one thing was certain, they could not raid the storehouse without the Emperor knowing. Sooner or later he'd learn what they did from transports carrying updates. Either they would not return, or they'd carry back word of the loss. Codes for these facilities were unique and impossible to counterfeit, they couldn't simply deceive the shuttles and other security precautions.
Taking the hideout would give Palpatine an open declaration of war, and a direction in which to find his foes. They didn't want to give him either until they were good and ready. Which meant, sadly, they'd have to wait on taking that location.
Now what? Elementary, my dear Watson,
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(Posted Fri, 07 May 2004 02:30)
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