Prelude
The Darktrooper Project
From a Grand Moff that oversaw the Dark Trooper Project with Rom Mohc

    It seemed so simple, instead of cloning a soldier, engineer it. This was the birth of the Dark Trooper project.

It all started with Phase Zero, basically, Imperial Veterans getting cybernetic upgrades, becoming stronger, faster, smarter, better. It was a mild success, Imperial ranks now had armored support, in the form of cyborg commanders.

It wasn't good enough, so we expanded it by removing the soldier, and replacing it with a droid. These brought back memories of the clone wars, and the failure of the Droid Legions of the CIS. We soon discovered that Phase One were more adept at sentinel or guard duties on installations. Other than that, they were a huge failure.

The Emperor became skeptical in the reliability of this project, and cut funds to Rom Mohc. He was furious.

We created the plans for Phase Two, the first exoskeleton project. Phase Two was basically a super-suit, no effort was required to operate it, but the controller needed to know how to aim a gun. We had to design a new weapon, a modified E-Web, the standard E-11 was way to puny for Phase Two. We also added repulsorlift jetpacks. This gave Imperial Legions the ability to easily outmanuveur their enemies by flanking them or jumping behind them via Phase Two.

The only problem...The expense. With such limited funding, we were only able to produce 100 working models, not enough to act as an entire army, as Rom Mohc envisioned. Although powerful, 100 were not powerful enough. We had to create the Phase Three.

Perhaps Rom Mohc's ultimate goal was to finish construction of the Arc Hammer, his star destroyer-shaped lab and station. This would allow him to devote all of his available rescources to Dark Trooper construction. Funding had improved since then, but not enough to offset the cost of the Arc Hammer.

The Emperor wanted to cancel the entire project. Rom Mohc refused to surrender all of his work. I was on his side. We had worked to hard to just let the Emperor cancel it. It took some doing, but we were finally able to convince Lord Vader to help us. I have this feeling he hates the Emperor, but I have no idea why he would.

The Emperor gave us a goal, if we didn't meet it, he would cancel the project. We had to agree. We had to build a model that, in number of 15 or less, could destroy an entire Imperial installation. Abandoned, of course, but we had to create a walking tank, shaped mildly human-like, that could blast through and destroy over 1800 cubic feet of reinforced durasteel, nanosteel, and transparasteel.

Rom was brilliant. He discovered how we could do it. Take the power cell of an AT-ST, miniaturize it, and stick it on the back of a huge exoskeleton. The power output was extremely impressive, and scaled down turbolasers were placed on the wrists of this new trooper. It was huge, and we just kept making it bigger...and bigger... We added a plasma jetpack, not efficent, but we had power to spare and this suit needed the extra thrust to just hover.

We were both speechless at the result. The Phase Three dwarfed the already big Phase Two, and the reactor outperformed our expectations. We could afford adding concusion missile launchers. We maximized the weapons, sensors, everything on this exoskeleton. Now for the test.

We had 5 working models. We weren't sure if we could pull this off. It was alot of base to flatten, and we didnt have an entire rotation of the planet to get it done. We jumped the Arc Hammer into the system, and we tested Rom's new deployment method, hybervelocity drop pods. This allowed the Arc Hammer to deply a small legion from a great distance, and since the drop pods were for single troopers, they were small and extremely hard to detect by even the best sensors and scanners. Rom boasted that they weren't detectable even by an Imperial Interdicter cruiser.

We activated the pods navigation systems, and sent them on their way. We then took a shuttle to the planet to observe the work. When we landed, a quarter of the base was already in flames, and the Troopers were tearing the base apart with laser, missile, and grenade fire. One of the troopers even started to rip the base apart with his exohands. We enjoyed watching our work destroy the base and outpreform their expectations in every way. The Emperor was amused by our success. He doubled our funding.

Rom Mohc couldnt wait, he insisted that we immediately start working on Phase Four Dark Troopers. I had an idea for them, why dont we try what we tried in Phase Zero? Cyborgs. I proposed that we remove the nonvitals of a human, the arms and legs, and half of the torso, keep the lungs, heart, and brain. We couldnt decide on how else to support the human brain without oxygen and blood delivering nutriants. But he had a better idea, why not just remove the human all together, and return to the concept of a droid.

Thus Phase Four was finalized. I was placed in charge of creating an artificial intellegence, and with more funding, I could create one that was far superior to the original Phase Ones, and with more weapons, far more deadlier.

Our final result was a droid roughly the same size as a Phase Three, but with an entire sensor array, basic astromech droid appendeges for communication to computer systems, smaller, but more numerous laser systems to provide more effective barrage firings, and finally, a supercharged plasma jetpack. A droid brain is extremely heavy. To overcome the ridiculous power usage, we installed 2 of the scaled down AT-ST reactors.

The Phase Four was an overwhelming success. The 2 reactors gave it's laser's immense power, and enough power to create a constant, concentrated beam. This beam could not be focused like a lightsaber, but it was strong enough to burn through any material we tested it on, giving Phase Four's the ability to enter any installation, and be the ultimate Storm Troopers.

   
               Then...The unthinkable happened. The blasted Rebellion scum launched a daring attack upon the Arc Hammer. We were in orbit above an uninhabited planet to collect resources, so the majority of the garrison in the ship was on the surface. The Arc Hammer was by no means a combat worthy vessel, it was for scientific means only!

We were quickly overrun and surrounded. We retreated into the bridge with all the Troopers we could activate in time. Rom keeps 5 upgraded Phase One troopers on the bridge at all times, so we had some backup.

We made a mistake. We made the Dark Troopers to powerful.... We could not use them to defend us on the ship...Their guns would rip apart the hull! Our only hope was the Phase Ones. Their armor resisted blaster fire for a time, but they were melee fighters.

We had to act...and fast. Rom Mohc sent out a distress call to the nearest Star Destroyer, Imperial, Victory, or otherwise. He sent the dirstress call under code Delta Echo Alpha. The code to call any and all ships within the nearby systems to immediately jump to the callers system. You can get into major trouble for that, but we couldnt risk losing all of our work.

Usually the time it takes for any combat ship to respond to that is mere seconds, and you see some kind of ship jump to your area. We saw no friendly ships. They were jamming our communications. But how? Rebels did not possess jamming technology strong enough to block a full power emergency transmission. I quickly did a full scan of the surrounding ships, one was Kyle Katarn's. He raided an Imperial scientific installation....and stole the jamming array of the newest Interdicter prototype.

The Rebels blew the door to the bridge. Rom's troops charged at the rebels, but we ejected the Phase Two, Three, and Fours out of a disposal hatch. We couldnt just let the rebels have them. 15 Rebels were kills, and we lost 2 Phase Ones in the first 5 minutes.

Rom became frantic, he would not accept defeat. The battle raged, and he suggested that we use....it.... We had secretly developed a machine that can transfer the conscious mind of a human into a quantum computer array nearly anywhere in the galaxy. We didn't know if it would work. But it would transfer without fail, since no means of jamming it has been developed.

We agreed to do it, and we set out destination to 2 quantum arrays on Rom Mohc's newest factory ship he hid from the empire, the Quantum Hive. The Quantum Hive was the size of an Imperial Star Destroyer, and held over 2000 Dark Troopers of assorted Phases. It was a more battle-ready craft, and even had Nova Troopers for boarding enemy ships.

As the battle neared the bridge, we entered the transfer pods. Something went wrong with Rom's transferral. His mind was shattered and twisted. He vowed for revenge as soon as the transfer was complete, and began to produce humanoid driods to transfer his concious mind to. He hated being in a quantum ccomputer array.

His broke his own rule, when using a mind transferal device, you must be calm, or else whatever your emotions are set to may become your general nature. I simply projected a hologram of my former self to communicate with the living soldiers we had on board. I had explained why we were no longer "alive" and if there has been any contact to the Arc Hammer by any Imperial forces. There was no such luck. I watched all the sensor readings as the Arc Hammer disappeared. Kyle Katarn had destroyed it, and taken credit for the "death" of Rom Mohc and myself.

I tried to calm Moc, but I could not. He tried to convince me that we could not contact the Empire just yet, since we were "dead" and the Emperor did not know of our secret project, the Dark Trooper program would officially be canceled. He knew we had to design a new Dark Trooper before all deposited funds were eliminated.

And so it began.
The rise of the Phase Five Dark Troopers.

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