Landing bay #429 of the Coronet Center Spaceport becomes a hive of activity during the week following the Venerable's arrival in the Corellia system. Within hours of its arrival negotiations are underway with both legitimate and illicit merchants for the buying and selling of cargo and new equipment. In less than a day the spaceport's personnel have been contracted to unload and transport the outgoing bacta tanks to their buyers while in-turn delivering purchased materials and equipment from suppliers and rented storage bays. The bulk of these materials disappear into vessel's interior, moved aboard on the cargo racks of a team of treaded medical droids.
All the while, a small matte-black droid covertly flits in and out of the facility as it personally delivers small contraband items; explosives, drugs and military hardware to its companions aboard the Venerable. The following day sees the arrival of two newly purchased droids: an Industrial Automaton R4 astromech and a Veril Line Systems EG-6 Power droid. Both are soon put to work on the vessel itself; beginning with removing hull panels to prep the ship for the addition of a full weapon's suite.
A few days later, after the delivery of a newly purchased hyperdrive and a pair of quad laser turrets, a request goes out for contracted spaceport technicians to perform the necessary retrofitting to the transport's exterior. During late-night hours, long after the technicians have ended their shifts and gone home, the astromech, along with a pair of tiny hovering repair remote droids continue the retrofitting process with the addition of shielded weapon compartments at the vessel's fore. All evidence of their work remains concealed during daytime hours when the technicians return to complete their contracted work by applying a fresh coat of ash grey paint along with dark red highlights to the vessel's exterior.
All the while, the ship's droid pool along with its single organic occupant are likewise hard at work deep inside the transport. As soon as some of the bacta tanks are cleared from the cargo bay a pair of medical droids busy themselves by permanently installing and powering up a pair of tanks. Over the next few days a fully-stocked bio-lab begins to take shape in the corner of the cargo bay as the droids install newly arrived medical equipment. Even as they and their nemoidian mistress begin to make use of the lab, a quartet of retasked battledroids busily begin installing new bulkheads, environmental and lighting systems around them. The battledroids then continue their work, under the close supervision of a dark-skinned human replica droid, as they begin installing sensor-dampening plating on the opposite side of the new bulkhead. Once ready they then raise an identically shielded bulkhead parralel to the first while leaving a narrow half-meter gap between the two walls. The battledroids then begin assembling a fully-equipped machine shop in another walled off section of the cargo bay.
When not dealing with buyers or sellers or directly overseeing the efforts of their fellow droids, the spherical black probe droid along with its dark-skinned humanoid counterpart spend much of their time performing the most delicate and important retrofitting and computer reprogramming work themselves.
[sblock=OOC]Phew. These shopping trips are so involved. I hope you don't mind my narrating the shipboard activities as I imagine they unrolled; I figured it might save you time while being an interesting read.
The droids will proceed with the purchases as you've described. A x1 hyperdrive sounds good. I'd like the droids to try tweaking it to x.75 later if they can manage the modifications themselves. They'll try to recoup some of the cost of the new engine by selling the old hyperdrive; that is unless the Venerable doesn't yet have a backup hyperdrive, in which case I suppose they'll keep the old one as a spare.
How much might a Hypertranceiver cost? I imagine having it aboard won't be a security risk when it isn't powered up. Since we're pimping the ship, I figure it'd be good to have aboard if we ever need it.
The compartment shielding sounds expensive to me, but I'll defer to your better judgement on the issue. I'm not certain where the new bulkheads will fall in relationship to the layout of the vessel's interior so I don't know whereabouts would be the best spot to place the compartment's access point. Suffice it to say that it will be as well concealed as they can make it. The plan is to have the secret hatch only openable via a transmitted key-code; easily managed with a comlink I'd imagine. In that sense it might also be able to double as a secure safe-room of sorts. Lastly, I'd like the compartment to have a few simple additions. The first is a computer access port so that the droids can continue to communicate with the Venerable's computer core and thereby monitor and direct activity on the ship from within the compartment should it ever become neccesary. The second is the addition of a small secret storage compartment within the secret room itself. It only has to be large enough to hide a few small items; perhaps a cubic foot or two in size. The droids don't intend to tell Dofina about the latter secret space. They'll be using it to hide the various detonators, the collection of lightsaber crystals and Dofina's supply of rhyll spice. They'll also use the larger space to stash the ship's arsenal of weapons and armors.
Speaking of storage... the R4 is listed as having 8 kg of internal storage space. I was thinking of having it store the three tactical and two repair remotes. If fitted with a signaler it could deploy and direct the repair remotes as necessary to assist it in its repair work. Likewise, it could deploy the tactical remotes if needed; granting it an indirect ability to help defend the ship. Remotes don't have a listed weight but I figure that, being the size of floating softballs, they can't weigh all that much. Also, might as well put some of those spare tool mounts to use by outfitting the droid with a fire-extinguisher (50 credits) and welding laser (300 credits) as well as with magnetic wheels (80 credits) for work on the ship's exterior. While I'm at it I'd like to add locked accesses to the four B1s along with a rust inhibitor treatment for the four along with the R4 and EG-6 droids (all 4º droids shouldn't have convenient off switches IMHO). I believe in all that'd cost just short of a 1,000 credits.
Lessee... New expenses.
• Droid upgrades & paint jobs = 1,000 credits
• Docking fees = 2,500 credits
• Paint job for the Venerable = 1,000 credits
• Rhyll spice = 2,000 credits
• Retractable blaster cannon: 2,000 credits
• Retractable scan-shielded ion cannon = 4,000 credits
• Hidden compartment shielding: 20,000 credits
• 5 permacrete & 5 thermal detonators = 25,000 credits
• Hyperdrive upgrade 30,000 credits
• 2 Corellidyne CQ-3.9x Holographic Image Disguisers = 75,000 credits
So, subtracting those from the running total while adding in the extra credits both Derek and DRK-1X previously had on their credit chips, I believe we're left with 1,708,610 credits. Pending the cost of a hypertranceiver, the droids will follow Dofina's suggestion and divide up the money as follows:
Dofina's personal account: 900,000
Dofina's Imperial public account: 200,000
Derek's Imperial Public Account: 100,000
Dofina's credit chip: 100,000
Derek Onyx's credit chip: 100,000
DRK-1X's credit chip account: 100,000
Crates of Precious Metals: 208,610 (10 tons worth)
1X's credit chip amount is largely made up of the credits the two droids had previously shared.
BTW, when the droids first finish up installing their new translator units the first thing they'll do is try to translate that mysterious script enscribed behind one of the ship's panels.
So, does Dofina have a better idea of where she'd like to head to next?[/sblock]