Chapter 70: A Nesting Doll Solution

Disclaimer: Star Wars and all of it's Intellectual Properties is owned by George Lucas and Walt Disney, This fictional work and all of it's original characters are however mine.

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Jake's P.O.V. :

With the immediate problems squared away—at least the ones we knew about—the next step was figuring out how to contain the corrupted Kyber crystal’s aura. If we were gonna stop this thing from turning us into mind-warped lunatics, we needed something that could block whatever energy it was leaking.

So, time for a search.

I pulled up the station’s inventory logs, cross-referencing anything that looked like it could function as a containment unit. The good news? There were options. The bad news? They were big and far apart.

There was one smaller container in the Equipment Storage—compact, portable, and fitted with ray shielding of some kind. Then there was a massive one in the Materials Storage Complex, built for something way bigger but featuring the same ray shield system.

“Double containment,” I muttered, rubbing my chin.

The plan clicked together in my head.

We’d use the smaller container as the first layer of protection, then place that inside the larger one for an extra buffer. A nesting-doll setup—one layer wasn’t enough, but two? That might give us the best shot at keeping the corruption contained.

The others gathered around as I laid it out.

“We’ll need to split up,” I said. “Mira, Rina—you two take Nick-02 and Skew-02 and grab the smaller containment unit from Equipment Storage.”

Rina smirked. “Let me guess—you want us on the quick grab because it’s the closest and we’ll be back before you even get past security?”

I grinned. “You know me too well.”

She gave a mock sigh. “Unbelievable.”

Mira folded her arms. “And you three?”

“Kado, Davik, and I will head to the Materials Storage Complex for the bigger container,” I said, motioning to the other two. “We’ll have to slice the security locks, but once we’re in, we should be able to load it up fast.”

Kado gave a small nod. Davik just cracked his knuckles.

“One problem,” Mira said. “The longer we take, the more we risk the crystal’s influence getting worse.”

“True,” I admitted. “But good news—the crystal’s still behind a sealed chamber. As long as we don’t open it, its influence should stay contained.”

Rina arched a brow. “And if we don’t go through with this?”

I shrugged. “Then we leave it sealed and never touch the giant droid. And no investigating the giant machine or dibs on this fully functional ownerless space station”

Silence.

Everyone gave me flat, unimpressed looks.

I sighed. “Yeah, okay, obviously we’re not doing that.”

Rina rolled her eyes. “That’s what I thought.”

“If we want this station as our hidden base,” I continued, “we need to neutralize the crystal. If we just leave it, we’re one unlucky accident away from someone else waking it up and wrecking everything.”

No one argued. We all knew what was at stake.

“Alright,” I said, clapping my hands. “You all know your jobs. Let’s get this done before our brains start melting.”

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Kado, Davik, and I moved fast. The Materials Storage Complex was deeper in the station, and unlike some of the more accessible areas, this place was locked down.

Big surprise.

A heavy security door blocked the entrance, its control panel blinking in standby mode. No easy access, no automatic override.

Davik crossed his arms. “Let me guess—this thing doesn’t recognize us as staff?”

“We gave ourselves clearance, not identification keys,” I said, already pulling out my modded data spike. “The system knows we should be allowed in, but it still wants an ID we don’t have.”

Kado gestured at the panel. “How long to slice it?”

“Give me a minute.”

Davik sighed. “Better than blasting it.”

I plugged in the data spike and got to work. The system was stubborn, layers of old security protocols stacked on top of one another. But this wasn’t my first time dealing with finicky tech.

Slicing wasn’t just about brute-forcing access—it was about convincing the system that it wanted to cooperate. Little adjustments here, bypass there, reroute that authorization sequence, and—

Click.

The door hissed open.

“See?” I grinned. “Easy.”

Davik smirked. “You’re lucky I didn’t put credits on you taking longer.”

Kado chuckled. “Would’ve been an easy payday.”

I ignored them and stepped inside.

The Big Find

The Materials Storage Complex was a beast of a room. High ceilings, industrial shelving, and rows of storage crates stacked in neat, towering formations. Some were standard containers—durasteel, secured with mag-locks—but others? Others were reinforced with specialized shielding.

And that’s where we found it.

A massive containment unit, at least three meters tall and two meters wide. Thick plating, heavy-duty latches, and the telltale hum of an active ray shield generator embedded in its casing.

“Yep,” I said, hands on my hips. “That’s the one.”

Kado eyed it. “How do we move it?”

“Repulsorlift loader.” I pointed to a nearby grav-loader tucked between supply racks. “Someone had the good sense to store this thing with a mover. Lucky us.”

Davik walked over, running a hand along the loader’s controls. “Still operational. This’ll make things easy.”

I grinned. “See? Sometimes the galaxy actually doesn’t try to kill us.”

Kado smirked but tried bonking me in the head. “Don’t jinx it.”

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With the loader engaged, the heavy containment unit lifted smoothly off the ground. No back-breaking labor, no exhausting haul. Just a steady, controlled float as we navigated it toward the exit.

As we worked, my mind ran through the next steps.

Once we rendezvoused with Mira and Rina, we’d have both containers. The plan was simple:

• Put the corrupted Kyber crystal into the smaller containment unit.

• Place that inside the larger unit.

• Seal everything up.

Double-layered protection. If this worked, it might just keep the corruption from leaking out long enough for us to figure out a permanent solution.

And if it didn’t work?

Well…

I didn’t really want to think about that yet.

Davik steered the repulsorlift through the doorway, Kado and I watching the sides to make sure we didn’t clip anything.

As we cleared the entrance, I tapped my comm.

“Mira, Rina—we got the big box. How’s your side?”

A beat of silence, then Mira’s voice came through.

“We have the small container,” she confirmed. “On our way back now.”

I exhaled. Good.

Now we just had to get back to the others, put everything together, and hope our plan actually worked.

Because if it didn’t?

Say bye-bye space station.

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The rendezvous at the security office went smoother than I expected—too smooth. Both teams made it back without a scratch, without running into anything hostile. No rogue battle droids, no automated defense turrets springing to life, no creeping sense of doom. Just… silence.

And that? That was weird.

I wasn’t the only one who thought so.

“This is starting to feel wrong,” Rina muttered, crossing her arms as she leaned against a console. “I mean, we planned for trouble. Expected it. But nothing?”

Davik, of all people, actually nodded in agreement. “Yeah. Feels like a setup.”

Kado snorted. “Or maybe we’re just too used to everything trying to kill us.”

He had a point. The way things usually went, the second we got too comfortable, something would try to blast us into space dust. That hadn't happened yet, and I wasn’t sure if that was lucky or ominous.

Still, we had a job to do.

Kado, ever the practical one, clapped his hands once and said, “Alright, we’ve got our gear. Now let’s go over the plan again, step by step.”

That was my cue. I leaned against the table, rubbing the back of my neck. “So the basic idea is still the same. Double containment. First, we put the corrupted kyber crystal in the smaller ray-shielded container. Then, that goes inside the bigger one. Nice and secure.”

I gestured to the Nick and Skew droids. “My usual go-to is letting the droids handle dangerous stuff, and since the recordings show they weren’t affected by the crystal’s aura, they’ll be doing most of the work.”

Davik frowned. “You sure they’re immune? Just because they didn’t go crazy before doesn’t mean they won’t now.”

I glanced at the two Nick droids standing nearby, their photoreceptors glowing a steady blue as they waited for orders. “Pretty sure,” I said. “Besides, if something does go wrong, they’re easier to shut down than us.”

That was enough for everyone to agree. But it didn’t solve the real problem.

Because we still had no idea how to actually get rid of the crystal.

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Technically, we did know how to destroy it. Just… not safely.

Kyber crystals were tough, but not unbreakable. Smashing it with force—not the Jedi kind, the actual physics kind—would work. Problem was, that method tended to be explosive, and none of us were keen on turning the station into shrapnel.

So, we started brainstorming.

“The easiest way,” I said, “is tossing it out the airlock and lighting it up with the Stellar Envoy’s turrets.”

Kado tilted his head. “Think that’ll work?”

Davik shrugged. “Dunno, but the Envoy’s guns are meant for starfighters, not tiny objects. We might miss.”

They weren’t wrong, but they didn’t dismiss the idea either.

“Alright, what else?” I asked.

Rina tapped her fingers against the table. “What about not shooting it? Just load the container onto a junk hauler and send it straight into a sun?”

I sighed. “Good plan, except we’d have to find a sun first. That means leaving this system, spending who-knows-how-long in hyperspace with a literal insanity crystal on board, and hoping nothing goes wrong while in transit.”

That shut that idea down fast.

“Okay,” Mira said, shifting gears. “What if we put it inside a derelict ship and blow that up?”

Davik snorted. “You really think an explosion is gonna be enough? We don’t even know how durable this thing is.”

Mira crossed her arms. “I don’t hear you coming up with anything better.”

That was how the next hour went. Idea after idea, argument after argument. Everything we thought of either took too long, was too dangerous, or had a high chance of failure.

And then?

Then I had an epiphany.

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I’d turned my head slightly, just idly scanning the room as the debate kept going. That’s when my gaze landed on Nick-01, standing by the door like an ever-vigilant sentry, its back turned to us, with it's newly attached prototype jetpack. It wasn’t reacting to the discussion. Wasn’t twitching, wasn’t pacing. Just standing there, completely unaffected.

And that was when it hit me.

“Hold up.”

Everyone stopped talking and looked at me.

I turned fully to face them. “We’ve been overcomplicating this. Go back to my original plan—chuck it out the airlock, then blast it. But instead of using the Stellar Envoy’s turrets, we let the Nick droids handle it.”

Silence.

Mira blinked. “What?”

“They’re immune to the crystal’s influence,” I explained, pointing at the droids. “That means they can confirm the shot. They take the crystal outside, toss it, and then they shoot it themselves. If it doesn’t break, they try again. Simple.”

Mira groaned and rubbed her face. “Are you kidding me?! We wasted an hour arguing when the solution was this straightforward?”

Davik snorted. “Gotta say, kinda embarrassing we didn’t think of that sooner.”

Rina just smirked. “That’s what happens when we get too fancy with our plans.”

Kado, ever the calm one, just gave me an approving nod. “That’s probably the best option we’ve got.”

And just like that, we had a plan.

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Now that we actually knew what we were doing, things moved fast.

• Step one: Secure the crystal in the double-containment setup. The droids would handle this part, making sure it was locked down tight.

• Step two: Take it to the nearest airlock.

• Step three: Nick-01 and Skew-01 would take the package outside, release it into open space, then fire on it until it was nothing but space dust.

No complicated hyperspace trips. No risk of stray debris surviving an explosion. Just good, old-fashioned problem-solving with a blaster.

As we prepped everything, I couldn’t help but feel relieved. Sure, there were still a lot of unanswered questions—like why we hadn’t faced any resistance so far—but for now, at least, we had one problem under control.

And hopefully?

We could finally move on to inspecting that dumbly named machine whose acronyms are S. H. I. T.