Corise gravely nodded.

“From the estimated cost that I have received thus far, yes. I mentioned in the pre-limary message the possibility of land as part of the payment. We have several locations in mind which you should be able to review on your datapad. Are you interested in it?”

A waiter droid brought out the drinks. Of which one was a glass of Fallix Water for the Commodore. He usually had the Cambrian Wine in a small glass, but drinking alcohol of any amount during a business meeting would distract him from the proceedings. Then again, he was considering giving up on alcohol altogether...

Rob looked over his data pad and read over the lands that the Commodore was offering. It seemed that these area's would were rich in resources and could help to build the defenses much faster than would otherwise happen. He smiled slowly and nodded.

"Yes, of course we are. The land you offer will also help with the construction effort. We could get some factories up and running on the surface."

Rob pulled up another page on the data pad and pushed it towards the Commodore gently. "This is contract I had drawn up. If you approve we will both sign it and get all this started right away."

He turned towards the droid after that, "I'll have a water as well, thank you."

Corise nodded as he took the stylus and signed it as the droid waiter brought back the water to Mr. Stellar.

Selling land on Genon was more or less a win-win situation. It lowered costs for the Coalition as well as for Stellar Enterprises. It gave something that was of little use to the Coalition and made it useful for the new corporation for years to come. He handed back the datapad to Mr. Stellar.

"I believe it would probably be a good idea to arrange security precautions right now as well..."

Rob watched the man sign the contract and smiled as he sat leaned back in his seat. He saw the droid moving towards him and half turned in seat. Smiling, Rob took the water and thanked the droid before taking a sip.

He moved up in his chair and took the stylus from the Commodore after he signed. Turning the pad to himself he leaned down and made his mark on the digi-contract, finishing their deal. As he was signing, Rob heard Lucerne talk about security and nodded.

"That is important, but let me inform my freighter to begin delivery at once."

He pulled out a comm link and turned it on. "Galactic Hauler, this is Rob Stellar, you have recieved clearance to transport the cargo to the surface. Ask the Kashan authorities to provide landing coordinates. I want the engineers to get started right away."

After the crew acknowledged him, he turned towards the Commodore again. "I would assume that your men will take responsiblity for security? I will have some of my security personel and droid dispatched here as well to help out your men."

As they talked, the super Freighter in space began moving slowly closer to the planet. From its massive belly two large drop ships disengaged and fell towards the planet's surface. They flew towards the points given to them by the Kashan ground controllers.

In the last war with the Empire, several Coalition planets had been completely razed to the ground by orbital bombardment. What had taken years and generations of people to build had been destroyed in seconds. That would not happen at Genon; at least not as easily.

The two Stellar Enterprises vessels with their S9 escorts diverged to opposite ends of the planet before plunging down into the atmosphere towards the planet itself. Kashan Defence Industries had already worked in clearing the sites, and thus, it was not hard for the ships and their cargo to land. Each ship was landed exactly opposite of the other so that the shield generators would be able to effectively cover both hemispheres and with the edges of the shields overlapping each other so that they could from an impenetrable shield around the planet, preventing the ravages of bombardment from the planet and invasions by enemy troops.

As such, with a key role in the planet’s defenses, their security was vital as well. To meet that end, each location was isolated by hundreds of kilometers from all planned traffic and population centers. All the vegatation, rocks, and other terrain features had been removed in a 300 meter radius of both generators, leaving barren, flat ground with no room to hide. KDI had then implanted ground sensors meters within the earth itself in an overlapping sensor net that detected movements both above and below the ground. The net would be connected to the generator’s control station alerting them of any movements for security. Other precautions would be taking place, but those were the first finished.

As soon as the drops ships settled at their respective landing sites, large cargo doors retracted up and into the top hull sections. A ramp moving out from the lower hull and slowly lowered to the ground. After these preliminary actions a large hover sled slowly moved from out of the drop ship. On the sled was a covered projector dish, which was followed by another right after it.

These projector dishes would later be fitted to a base control and shield generator station. Before this installation would be assembled there would have to be an underground room constructed to help keep the shield projectors and power generators protected. To assist in these actions four massive contructions droids emerged from the cargo holds and went right to work.

Engineers were also onboard the drop ship and would be the ones instructing all the building and assembly to make sure it all went smoothly. They set up a makeshift camp and started to put together prefabricated housing after meeting with the Kashan ground troops and thanking them for their security assistance.

As the ground teams unloaded the drop ships Rob Stellar was still in the lounge discussing the nature of the contract. He took a drink of his water and started accessing files on the data pad before him. Soon, above the table an image of a hexagonal stucture appeared. As it rotated one could see it had a flattened top and buttom, but sloping sides joing to a straight section. It all appeared to look like a hexagonal box with all eight sides sloping towards the edge.

Above and below this center hexagonal central box structures extended a square platform. It rotated slowly to reveal itself fully to the Commodore and anyone else in the room. At the top of the projection words appeared, "Gladiator Modular Defense Station" they stated. This was Stellar Enterprises first attempt at a fully modular station that could serve a variaty of different purposes for different missions. Instead of a fixed design, most system within the station could be swaped out for different ones. All weapons and sensors could be replaced with modules contained other systems or other weapons types.

These modular sections were fully prepared containers. Each one contained the necessary systems and operating stations for quick installation or removal. Once moved into the hull, the sections are connected to the stations computers and power relay stations making them quickly operational. They were designed to be primerally plug-n-play type units.

If a customer ordered a fighter defense platform, the heavy weapons modules could be removed and more antifighter modules could be put in their place. The same was true for the stations fighter compliments. With some weapons modules removed, the station would be host to eighteen fighter/bomber squadrons.

The one floating over the table, however, was an example of a well balanced defense station. It had weapons for every sort of engagement. As it rotated slowly, small boxed popped out and listed system descriptions while small projections pointed them out. This station before them had a massive single hypervelocity slug cannon installed into the top square platform. This gun was covered with massive armor clamshell blast doors. These would retract in battle and allow the cannon to emerge from the hull to engaged targets further than any turbolaser or missile system.

The magnetically accelerated rounds were only limited by accuracy at longer ranges as well as the power it consumed. Its power demands were massive on any scale. While the gun fired, other weapons systems could not. It was a fair trade off, however, since the cannon could quickly destroy or disable larger ships from great distances and if ones made it closer, the cannon could be powered down and the power tranferred to the other weapons systems.

As more boxes appeared, they revealed that besides the hypervelocity cannon the station contrained 85 Heavy Turbolaser Batteries, 80 Dual turreted Turbolaser Cannons, 16 Heavy Ion Cannon Batteries and 50 Ion Cannon Batteries. For antifighter and missile defense duties the Gladiator was armed with 90 Heavy Repeater Laser Cannons. These new weapons systems could lay down massive volumes of laser fire yet required somewhat longer cool down times. Because of these the onboard computers usually fired only half the lasers at one time, while the other half fired when the others were in cool down.

45 Rotating Warhead Launchers and 20 Turreted Tractor Beam Projectors were also added to the stations arsenal. These specially designed launchers could quickly send out a wave of torpedoes and fire almost every 2 seconds. As one warhead was fired, another one was autoloaded into another tube. Once fired the expanded tube would rotate out of the way and the just loaded one would take its place. While the other fired, the just expended one would be reloaded, and so on. Each tube was launched using magnetic accelerators and pushed out the warheads as high speeds without the need for them to use their own propulsion. This increased their ranged and also desguised their launching, giving no clues except visual and when the warhead actually ignited its own engines and seeker head.

Rob smiled as he looked at the Commodore. "What do you think Commodore Lucerne? Is this defense station suitable to your needs?"

"What do you think Commodore Lucerne? Is this defense station suitable to your needs?"

Corise viewed the massive station more carefully. The Hexagon was very strong structural shape because of the triangles built into the design. It seemed to be fine; however, the Commodore pursed his lips in contemplation. There was a single change that would benefit the logistics of the fleet and on the battlefield.

"KDF almost exclusively uses a single type of missile launcher. Would it be possible to replace some of the warhead launchers with that weapon? We will have our own engineers install it..."

Rob looked at the holo image before them and thought for a little bit at the Commodore's question. He finally turned to the man and shruged with a smile. "I don't really say why not Commodore Lucerne. It you want we could even have both our engineer teams work on a full module with your missile in mind. That way you wouldn't have to refabricate anything on the station. It would make service easier as well I would imagine. It is all upto you, however, you are the person ordering the station."

He smiled as he finished his glass of water and slowly set it down, running his finger tip around the edge. As he did, Rob looked back towrds the rotating hologram. He was proud of his engineering team.

"Of course the repair yards you requested will also be included. We'll have them attached to the stations belly."

"Of course the repair yards you requested will also be included. We'll have them attached to the stations belly."

The Commodore solemnly nodded.

"Excellent. If you do not mind, our engineers will take care of it. It's not the cost, but more or less it is military regulation that KDF and KDI can only handle installing and running sensitive equipment like that. If you could just have your engineers install those modules without the warhead launchers, I think we'll be fine. I-"

His comlink blipped.

"Yes? Oh right, send him in."

Several seconds later, the lounge doors hissed open to reveal Vice-Commodore Lance Shipwright of the Gestalt Colonies.

"Mr. Stellar, this is Vice-Commodore Shipwright of the Gestalt Colonies. Lance, this is Mr. Stellar of Stellar Enterprises. He has been working up on the defences here at Genon," stated the Kashan man, gesturing to the holograph of the Gladiator Station.

"Can I get you drink?"

Lance Shipwright, Vice Commodore of the Colonial Defense Fleet, Colonial Technologies head-man and representative of the Gestalt Colonies, unfurled himself from a seated position where-upon Commodore Corise Lucerne entered the room bearing greetings on the part of Stellar Enterprises Executive, Rob Stellar.

As was typical of the man Lance had clad himself in the usual proto-military naval uniform that seemed to identify his station, his position and was capped with a brilliant red beret bearing the five pointed star of the Colonies. He had in accompaniment a Delta-unit android/human replicant; a synthetic life form so cleverly designed that outwardly he mimicked a human male in every way and the tag on his chest identified him as Rubik Rubkicon. The Vice Commodore was a man in his mid-twenties and possessed of a confident air, not arrogance, based in the awareness of his own accomplishments. His blue and black outfit featured embossed Colonial flags on his epaulettes while Rubik’s bright orange flight suit stood on stark contrast to the Vice Commodore.

“Salutations,” offered the Vice Commodore, extending an outstretched palm and proffering a handshake. “And well met indeed.”

His attention shifted deftly towards Corise. Lance smiled at his good friend.

“The Colonies would like to offer our assistance with the continued Kashan efforts here on Genon. And to that end,” he gestured towards the tall observation windows while simultaneously keying his wireless communicator. “If you will just look…”

Lurking beyond the Seraph, and dwarfing it by hundreds of meters, was a starship. “Behold first and only Dauntless-class cargo hauler. We have jokingly dubbed the monster a Super Star Freighter, but I doubt the Imperials would laugh. Regardless, what better place to see her initial service carried out then in supplement to the Kashan presence on Genon? I cannot think of any.”

“She is loaded with supplies. I had my people confer with your consulate on Gestalt I and I believe these goods will fill any gaps in your current manifest quite accurately. It’s just wonderful what you are doing here, Corise and I, on the part of the Colonies, would be only to happy to assist you here. If you’ll have us…”