The Liser Cuyir

Description:
The Liser Cuyir is a very unusual conglomeration of starship, home, manufacturing plant, shipyard, and warehouse. Every single one of the seven thousand five hundred refugee quarters have been converted to storage for a veritable army of droids of all kinds, a large nanotech assembler and disassembler, and storage for the immense variety of materials for use in the assembler. The remaining sixteen crew quarters, which are still configured with minimal accommodations for four, are now his only means of carrying passengers, though he only carries passengers out of extreme desperation. The other four crew quarters, and some of the former passenger quarters below them, have been converted into holding Miran and facilitating her ability to direct the droid crew. The six passenger quarters nearest to Miran's location house the droid maintenance and recharging facilities, with the first five rooms each housing fifty recharging plugs of varying types and the last providing a combination nano/macro tech maintenance bay. Unlike most droid maintenance facilities, these ones lack the ability to perform memory wipes or other software adjustments. This feature is considered redundant, since every droid on the Cuyir is networked into a collective intelligence, of which Miran is the undisputed master; Miran is responsible, therefore, for the software maintenance as she sees fit.

The shields are fairly average for a ship of the Cuyir's size, roughly equating what you might find on an Imperial Corvette. Armor, however, is one thing the Cuyir has in droves. Between the relatively slow acceleration, the need for large amounts of power recharging droids and addressing Miran's needs, and the availability of large amounts of duraplast, Darren has literally layered most of the outer hull in two and a half meters of duraplast armor. While concentrated turbolaser fire will certainly manage to penetrate the armor, the use of duraplast makes it surprisingly resistant to the laser cannons found on lighter vessels. Should such a vessel manage to penetrate the shields (a very distinct possibility with massed fire) the armor can take several dozen direct hits from such weapons before risking failure. In such a conflict, plates of duraplast nearly as thick as the standard armor (two meters) cover the eight centimeter thick transparisteel windows that are found extensively on the Cuyir.

For offensive potential, the Cuyir is limited to relatively small weaponry. While six rotary laser cannons might seem like an extensive, perhaps even impressive, armament, the sheer size of the vessel barely allows reasonable coverage with those weapons. Without Miran's targeting capabilities, the Cuyir's weaponry could easily be overwhelmed by nearly any military grade vessel designed for engaging corvettes or capital ships. As it is, Miran tends to prefer firing in short bursts and using the weapons in a point-defense capacity, more than an offensive one, and only fires offensively if one of the weapons facing the appropriate arc happens to be free of missiles or torpedoes to shoot down. To help further the impression of an unarmed and uninteresting ship, however, the Cuyir's armaments are hidden behind panels of neuranium [Link]. This material prevents every known form of sensor from detecting the undeployed weapons systems, but they might detect the power draw the laser cannons have on the reactor when activated. In addition, crystal gravity field traps, an extremely expensive form of sensor that nearly equates an entire star destroyer in production cost, will most-likely detect the additional mass concentrations at close range.

The berthing area is similar to that used in most shipyards, and features six arms that telescope out from the Cuyir to provide easy-to-access tethers and umbilicals while working on a berthed ship. These arms are spaced fifty meters apart and arranged in two rows of three; the largest ship these arms a can handle, therefore, must be "shorter" than fifty meters, but thankfully the design provides few limitations on length or width. A specially designed mesh made of durasteel cables can be extended fill the gaps between the arms, preventing most debris from escaping if accidentally provided momentum. At full extension, the half-meter holes in the grid make it difficult for most debris to escape, which helps keep the volume of salvaged materials, and therefore profit margins, high. The entirety of the armature and gridwork, including the cap piece at the far end, can be extended or retracted in five minutes thanks to a series of motorized pulleys and hydraulics. While deployed, however, this facility limits both sublight and hyperspace travel. Sublight maneuvering can be handled, limitedly, by activating the tractor beams and securing the ship as best as possible, but this risks damage to the durasteel mesh. Hyperspace is acceptable, but due to the exposed nature of the gridwork arms, the electronic components will need replacement.

While significant portions of the Cuyir have been rebuilt, redesigned, and torn apart, curiously Darren has left the massively over-sized life-support system not only intact, but he has expanded the original capacity to include a full-range recycling and filtering system. In theory, as far as air, food, and water go, the Cuyir can support thirty thousand people indefinitely. Realistically, perhaps a tenth of that can actually fit in the Cuyir if they're filling every available nook and cranny. As part of this expanded life-support system, Darren has converted two of the former passenger quarters into a small hydroponics bay. None of the plants provide food, but all are exceedingly efficient at converting co2 into oxygen. Amusingly, this has the effect that Darren must occasionally vent oxygen to avoid o2 poisoning, but whatever twisted reason he has for this is currently undiscovered.

The last thing of note about the Liser Cuyir is that despite the size of the remaining living area, Darren feels no apparent loneliness or concern for it. The escape pods (all sixteen of them that remain) are still berthed openly, the halls echo with the scrabbling of droid feet, the air humms with the sound of repulsor lifts, and despite the odds against it, Darren's life continues. The two lounge areas are still mostly un-tampered with, and the galley's alterations only make it easier to house and feed a large number of people. But the space remains empty, and nothing but the chattering of droids fill the area.