Ahsoka Tano; Mightiest Force Wielder (Book 1: The Rise)

Alone in Coruscant 2

With the renovation finished and nothing more to do in regards, the following evenings, he got bored. He ended up taking a light saber, practicing. He did not turn it on though, because he Ahsoka's warning was still in his ear. Doing some research he got guides for sword fighting and one dealing with light saber practices in particular. In that guide, they showed novices practicing with wooden bars, rather than the real sabers. Next time, when he was in a DIY store, he as well took a suitable wooden bar. That activity filled his evenings, until he remembered that he wanted to develop a light saber proof armor. He bought many materials from shops, from junk yards and partly even ordering them. Various types of steel, including stainless steel and adamantis steel, then various stones and ceramics. Then he destroyed them with the light saber. The empty homeless shelter was perfect for that task. The result was, that stainless steel and granite were the strongest and put reasonable resistance against the blade. Much to his surprise, the adamantis steel was not bad, but stood third in line against the stainless steel and granite. Most of the ceramics and stones ruptured. Using steel or granite would make any armor heavy and inflexible, however. It was not an option for him. All other materials were not even worthy wearing, cause the saber beam got through them, or they burnt within a second at best. With that knowledge, he ordered thin granite plates and glued them onto a stainless steel plate. The material easily sustained a number of strokes against it. Drilling the saber beam into it however, was a matter of max. 10seconds only until it went through. Doing research about historic armor crafting he figured, he found a material called Mithril being mentioned as impenetrable. It had been mined and crafted by the dwarfs of Midleearth; how and where remained a mystery though. How it would stand against a light saber was another question. The research on historic armor crafting lead him to the basic structure of the armor, which was making thin plates for most body parts and thicker plates for the heavily targeted areas like shoulders, arms, breast, head and thighs. He estimated an armor with 30kg – 35kg could be created. If he adhered the old knowledge and merged it with new technology, it would be possible to make the armor reasonably flexible, but the weight would remain. 30kg+ extra for a 59kg woman like Ahsoka was quite some burden. Thus Mike did not start with the crafting, he had the feeling he would find a better material.

At work, the engineers there were all research people. They regarded their job as done, because they had working prototypes. Sienar wanted to go into mass production with the thought control system: They wanted to equip a 1000 Tie fighters with it. In contrary to his colleagues, Mike did not regard the system being ready for mass production yet. He had seen glitches. When one was focused on flying, everything was working fine, but if there was distraction for the pilot, the plane would move incorrectly at least in the simulation. He found out, that Ahsoka was pretty much the only one who had really flown, flown with a real space ship. They had a speeder where they had implemented the system, OK, but no one was regularly flying with it. They had not made any environmental tests yet, like humidity and temperature and shock. What he found out, made Mike worry. Could Ahsoka really use the system? More so, could she rely on it? Would it not fail on her during battle, when stress was at its peak and its proper function was needed the most?

As his scooter remained with Ahsoka, Mike had no means of his own transport. One day, he mustered the guts and inquired with the professor if he could use the speeder with thought control for commute and without hesitation, the professor agreed. It was a white two engine airspeeder equipped with thought control. To use thought control a cap had to be worn. After work that day, he picked up the speeder and flew home with it. It was cool, the speeder followed where his thoughts commanded it to go. After two or three minutes of flying, he saw an add of a new com link generation on a big display and in the instant, the speeder steered towards the display, nearly crashing into another vessel. Luckily, the other pilot was paying attention and avoided a collision with a quick maneuver. With his hands on the controls, he tried a couple of more times and discovered, that every time his attention diverted from the cruise to something else, the speeder would follow his attention. That was not much good for everyday usage. Similar for Tie-fighter pilots who might be constantly scanning their environment. To fly the speeder well, one had to be fully focused on flying, but looking at the navigation system or whatever else was ill fated. He was surprised, how well Ahsoka did when she was flying, well maybe the chip implant with a connection to the motorial center had less side inputs than the cap he was using.