Author's Note: Yup, it's me again. I wasn't planning on writing any new fan fics for a while, but I got this idea in my head for a MLAATR fic and it just won't leave me alone until I got it down on paper.
Anyway, This fic is not related to my other MLAATR fan fic and has a slight crossover with Star Wars, though no main SW characters are gonna be featured and the Clone Wars-era SW universe itself will only make an appearance in the prologue. I won't give away any more of the plot and you'll have to read it yourself to find out.
Disclaimer: I neither own MLAATR nor Star Wars.
Story Title: Metal Army
Chapter Title: Prologue
Classified location, a galaxy far, far awayA shuttle rose silently from the surface of the planet. Its thrusters glowing a bright red as it sped toward the lone Trade Federation vessel in orbit. On board were two Neimoidians. One, clearly the pilot, wore a bored, almost discontent look, on his bony face as he wheeled the shuttle toward the orbiting transport ship. The other was a passenger who wore an unremarkably drab gray tunic and nervously darted his eyes back to the rear of the shuttle every few seconds. The pilot saw this and chuckled.
"Relax," he said almost cheerfully. "We'll have you and your cargo on that ship in a moment."
The passenger said nothing and merely nodded jerkily. The pilot rolled his eyes. These scientists are always so vaping nervous. Even seeing a mynock will probably scare 'em half to death.
In short order, the shuttle reached the orbiting transport ship. A hangar door opened on the Trade Federation starship and the shuttle pilot turned toward it. He settled the shuttle down gently on the hangar and locked the landing gear. He turned to face the passenger but was surprised to see the he was gone. The instant the shuttle landed the passenger had literally jumped out of the chair and disembarked from the shuttle.
The shuttle pilot blinked. "I didn't think anyone could move that fast."
Outside the shuttle, the scientist watched nervously as a cargo-handling droid off loaded the shuttle's cargo. As the cargo-handling droid emerged from the back of the shuttle it was seen carrying a sort of large crate that was large enough for six people to fit inside. The scientist followed it anxiously, jabbering something to the droid about being careful. The droid merely moved on as if it hadn't hear the scientist and put down the crate a bit to roughly.
Sure enough, the scientist gave the droid a verbal lashing. But the droid was designed with limited interface capabilities and didn't respond to the scientist. It merely moved back to its designated storage area and went to standby mode. This fact, however, did not stop the scientist from lecturing the now motionless robot on how important the cargo was and how it should've been more careful.
As the Neimoidian scientist scolded the cargo-handling droid, two spindly battle droids walked up to him. They stopped and seemed to exchange a confused glance on seeing the scientist cursing at the cargo-handling droid which was on standby. They shrugged and turned toward the scientist. The one with red command markings spoke up.
"Excuse me, Puule Gaarko," the battle droid said, startling the scientist. "Your presence is requested on the bridge at once."
The Neimoidian merely gave the two battle droids a contemptuous sneer before making his way toward the bridge, muttering something about annoying droids. But as he walked by and saw the several battle droids on the ship he had to admit to himself that it did give him a feeling of pride. After all, it was he and his team of fellow scientists in the Baktoid Armor Workshop who had developed the latest upgrades and droids that would make the Trade Federation's droid army a force to be reckoned with in the Confederacy of Independent Systems.
It had been only months ago that the Battle of Geonosis had proven the worth of the super battle droids and the upgrades that allowed the droids to operate without the need for a signal from a control ship. And soon his latest battle droid designs, locked away in the crate that had come with him on the shuttle, would make even the super battle droid pale in comparison. Not even the Jedi Knights would be able to stand up to it.
Finally, he reached the bridge of the ship and was greeted by its Neimoidian captain. "Greetings Puule Gaarko, I trust your trip up here was a pleasant one."
The scientist's lips curled in irritation as a few chuckles were heard throughout the bridge, more than a few of his fellow Neimoidians knew of his aversion to flying. "It was fine."
"Good for you," the captain said. "Now if I am allowed to know, what's so important about these battle droid schematics you're bringing along with you that you couldn't just transmit them via long-range communications?"
"Well," Puule Gaarko said. "Since they'll probably be out in the frontlines soon, I guess I can show you."
The scientist pulled out a small holoprojector from his pocket and activated it. The device projected a small image of what looked like a super battle droid at first. But on closer inspection differences in the design became apparent. The body was slightly thinner and the arms and legs were longer and ended in sharp, blade-like claws.
"I give you the ultra battle droid." Puule Gaarko said proudly. "With this droid we will destroy the Jedi and consequently, the Republic!'
The captain looked at the holographic schematic, unimpressed. "Seen one battle droid, you've seen 'em all. Besides, I doubt you can design any droid that can beat a Jedi by itself."
Puule just smiled. "But this droid has a few things most battle druids don't have. You see, many of this droid's parts were first tested on the droid body of General Grievous."
The captain's eyes bulged. He knew of the droid-bodies General's exploits, and of the lightsabers of the Jedi he had felled which he wore around his waist like trophies. And if this new droid was built with parts based on the designs used on General Grievous then the Jedi would probably stop at nothing to keep them from production if they ever found out. That certainly explained why the plans had to be hand delivered and not transmitted over the comm channels.
"Hm," the captains said, looking on the schematics with a new found respect. "From the sound of it this battle droid would be quite formidable indeed."
"Yes," Puule said. "In fact, we already tested them. I've loaded the four droids which we built for testing on this ship in case the Viceroy would like a demonstration. Though I think it wouldn't be necessary."
The captain merely nodded. He turned to the bridge crew, gave them hyperspace coordinates, and ordered a hyperspace jump. "If that is so, then we'd better get these plans to the droid factories as fast as possible."
The stars faded into lines as the ship went into hyperspace. The scientist found a place to sit down and peered out the view ports at the strange, almost psychedelic background that was hyperspace. While he was afraid of flying from the surface of the planet to space, he did like hyperspace travel. The strange play of light and purple hues characteristic of a hyperjump actually had a sort of calming effect on him.
Suddenly, the seeming calm of hyperspace was shattered when the ship was suddenly yanked from hyperspace. The scientist, the captain, and most of the bridge crew struggled for balanced and yelped in surprised confusion.
"What's going on?" demanded Puule in alarm.
"Something yanked us out of hyperspace!" replied the captain. "I don't know what, there should not have been any natural gravity wells that could have done so in the course I set."
"Is this a Republic ambush?!" the scientist croaked, his voice rising in alarm.
"But I am not detecting any other ships—" the captain started to say. The captain fell silent and his eyes bulged in amazement and horror at what he saw outside the view ports. Following the captain's gaze, Puule Gaarko looked out as well. He felt his insides turn cold at the sight that greeted him. It was a swirling vortex that bore a striking resemblance to a black hole. And before anyone could react, it sucked the ship in…
The ship rumbled violently and sounds of bulkheads being ripped apart resonated through out the vessels. Puule Gaarko cringed on the floor, dreading his imminent death. He should've entered the black hole now. In fact, he could've sworn that he felt the gravity tearing him apart by the molecules. He heard a whimper beside him and— Wait! His mind screamed, If I'm in a black hole then how come I can hear sounds? How come I can even think?!
He looked up and, to his relief, he found that the vortex had been replaced by a blue planet with swirling white clouds. To his side the captain, whom he had heard whimpering earlier, slowly stood up with a confused look on his face. "Wha-? What happened? I thought nothing could survive a black hole. For that matter, where is the black hole?"
"Apparently, captain, that was no black hole." Puule Gaarko. "There are theories that there are large naturally occurring wormholes that could lead to other points in the galaxy, that was probably one of those. It might have thrown us off course, but it would simply be a problem of finding out where we are and correcting the coordinates. A setback, to be sure, but at least we are not dead."
"Don't be so sure," the captain said, less than ecstatic. "Wherever we are that 'wormhole' of yours threw us too close to the planet and damaged our thrusters. I don't know if we can pull out of its gravity!"
The relieved expression quickly disappeared from the Neimoidian scientist's face as the transport ship fell toward the blue planet, gaining speed as the planet's gravity became stronger and stronger. The ship's crew fought to get the ship out of it's fatal fall, but with the damaged thrusters it was futile. But the crew did manage to keep the ship with upright, hoping that they would be able to survive if they managed to crash land the vessel in such a way that it would skid along on it's belly.
Puule managed to catch a look outside the view port. His mind barely had time to register the snowy environment he saw outside before the ship slammed violently into the ground. The shock threw him face-first into a control panel and everything went dark…
Year 2074, Antarctica, planet Earth(About 1000 years later)
From his warm, comfortable command center, a foreman lazily tucked his feet up on the control panels and settled a mug of hot chocolate on his armrest's cup holder. He leaned forward slightly and clicked a button on the control panel. He was immediately greeted by the droning, synthesized voice of an industrial drilling robot.
"DR–4098 reporting." The robot greeted monotonously.
"Take your drilling team and drill down about 500 meters on these coordinates." The foreman said idly as he transported the coordinates to the industrial drilling robots.
"At once, sir." DR-4098 answered automatically. Immediately it an four other DR-type robots immediately went to work, drilling into the Antarctic ice with powerful focus-lasers.
Back at the command center, the foreman leaned back on his chair and picked up a Johnny Zoom comic book. He chuckled slightly as he muttered to himself: "And my dad wanted me to go to this line of work so that I'd learn the value of hard work. Heh heh, yeah, this is really arduous work."
He continued to read his comic book and sip his warm chocolate as the drilling robots slowly mode their way down the Antarctic snow. A few hours later, the foreman fell asleep, his face covered with the comic book as he snored loudly. Suddenly, a loud beeping sounded from his console. The foreman jerked awake and threw the comic book off his face. He muttered grumpily as he looked at the console, it was an incoming call alert.
"Yeah, what is it?" he growled crankily.
"We have encountered an obstruction an obstruction and cannot proceed." Droned DR-4098.
"What do you mean you can't proceed?" the foreman demanded. "You have focus-laser drills and they can drill through anything. Now continue drilling and wake me up when you're done."
"Our focus-lasers cannot penetrate the obstruction, I would not have woken you up had it been otherwise." The robot's maddeningly calm voice answered.
"Stupid robot…" the foreman muttered under his breath. "Can you give me a visual of the obstruction?"
"Affirmative." The robot sent a live feed via the uplink as the foreman rubbed the circles under his eyes. He took a look at the screen and immediately frowned. On the screen was an image of a smooth, dull gray object. Upon closer inspection, it was clearly too regular to be a natural mineral deposit. Though, from the fact that the robot stated that it could not drill into it with focus lasers should've given that away.
The foreman's frown deepened as he clicked the comm button. "Dr-4097? Can you do a composition scan of the obstruction?"
"Sir, my designation is DR-4098." The industrial robot pointed out.
"I don't care!" the foreman yelled testily. "Just give me a composition scan, now!"
"Affirmative." The robot replied, proceeding with the scan as the foreman muttered something about stupid robots. After a few moments, the robot was finished. "Sir, the composition of this obstruction is unknown."
The foreman swallowed a lump from his throat. Either he just discovered a new metal, or something else. And from all the horror and sci-fi movies he read, he knew that a person who discovered something unknown always got whacked by some sort of creature or alien… He shook his head, knowing that he was being silly.
"4098, can you and your fellow robots do further scans. Try and figure out how much of this stuff there is, maybe?"
"Yes, sir"
"And could you put up a real time output feedback via the uplink?"
"Affirmative."
The foreman leaned intently toward the displays as the robots proceeded with their scans. His eyes nearly popped out of their sockets as second by second the numbers on the mass volume counter increased to exponential proportions. He shot a look at the digital image the robots were trying to produce from their scans and saw that it was starting to take shape.
Minutes later, the robots completed their scans. The foreman's jaw dropped as he saw the shape of the digital image before him. It seemed to be a donut-like shape with a sphere in the middle. And he could almost make out things that looked like rocket boosters on one end, clearly this was no mineral deposit. He gulped, his throat had suddenly gone very, very dry. His hands trembled as he reached toward the satellite phone.
"H-hello? C-could you connect me t-to the United Nations Extraterrestrial Response Unit?"
Author's Note: Well, that's it for the prologue. I know it's not that clear yet but I promise to make it clearer as the fic proceeds. If you're wondering where I got the year from in the second half of the chapter in was from Coyoteloon's fic, Whack to the Future.
Anyway, please tell me what you think and please review. I'll try to get the next chapter up soon.