Not long ago, Padawan Bell Zettifar would have been excited by the sight that stretched out beneath him. He was standing on an observation platform in the largest hangar he had ever experienced, just part of the vast shipyards that orbited Cyclor, a relatively small green-and-brown planet in the Mid Rim. Below, gleaming bright in the hangar’s floodlights, was the vision in polished durasteel known as the Innovator. The starship, now hours from launch, was a technological marvel. Over 300 meters long and bristling with the latest scientific and medical equipment, the Innovator was quite simply the most sophisticated research vessel ever built, a fact its designer—the famed Aqualish engineer Vam Targes—had told Bell himself when he had arrived at the shipyards.

“It runs on a network of no fewer than forty-two intellex-grade droid processors, don’t you know?” Targes had informed him as they strode through the ship’s vast operations center on a whirlwind tour, the engineer’s vocoder whirring excitedly as it translated Vam’s native Aqualish to Basic.

“That’s very … impressive,” Bell had offered, only to be told in no uncertain terms that it was considerably more than that. It was outstanding!

“The entire network is supported by a multi-motion framework of my own design, one that rivals the Jedi Archives on Coruscant, if I do say so myself.”

Bell didn’t know if that was true, but he hadn’t wanted to contradict the engineer. This was Vam’s moment, after all, or rather it would be when the Innovator arrived on Valo in a couple of days. The ship was to be a showpiece at the upcoming Republic Fair, the latest of Chancellor Lina Soh’s Great Works. Soon millions of festival-goers would be marveling at Targes’s achievement, and if they were anything like Bell, they would be dazzled. The Innovator boasted state-of-the-art cybernetic workshops alongside multiple bioengineering labs, analysis stations, research facilities, and a medical library second only to the Docha Institute on Dunnak.