Queen Ahsoka (Book 4, Yuuzhan Vong War)

500 Republica

In the 500 Republica

Despite her bad gut feel, getting access to the 500 Republica was not that difficult. The giant moles had reached the top of the building in only 1 day. They had dug a hole 10m deep, and about 50-70m in diameter. A big enough portion of the roof of the 500 Republica was exposed. With the hole not being that deep and the soil here containing less rocks, it went considerably faster. With the light sabers, they forced entry into a door on the exposed rooftop. The building itself was completely buried in earth and gravel (except the roof now), but looked like it was largely intact, not even twisted to the side. Right after entering, the dark side came over Ahsoka: "Ahsoka, my love, my cute Queen."

"At your service, your eternal and divine holiness, master of all evil and my evil guide. You have new instructions for me?"

"Indeed, you need to properly excavate a number of the air-condition inlets. The cellar is deep down and your team needs fresh air down there."

Ahsoka scolded: "Great, that you are telling me now. The air-con won't work without power and we did not bring power generators with us."

The dark side smirked: "I guess you will have to wing it then."

Irritated she replied: "Currently I'm only winging things, you know."

"Easy my Queen. The 500 Republica was one of the most pristine buildings on Coruscant and it has its own self-sustaining power source. Go find the room with the generators, get them started and the air-con will be working."

"Any idea, where the power generators are? The building is big if you remember?"

"If I'm not mistaken, they are down in the cellar."

"Argh."

The dark side smirked: "Not argh, gratitude is what you should express, for me thinking and reminding you about such important details."

Ahsoka was agitated: "You better give me proper directions to that room or I terminate that mission."

"Calm down, my love, I will give you the instructions right in time."

With this new info, Ahsoka provided Pami instructions to excavate air-con inlets and she herself grabbed Baba, a senior engineer, and tried to find a way into the cellar.

Navigating the inside of the building was a nightmare however. Strangely, the green emergency signs were still working after all that time, making the use of flashlights unnecessary. The emergency signs turned on in sections, where it detected people, that's probably how that system could conserve energy. It made things a bit easier, but they had no plan of the building and as there was no sun on the outside, there was no reference point for navigation. The only thing she knew was that they had to get down. There were signs pointing to apartment numbers and elevators and other things, but no staircase. The emergency signs also led them to skydocks with neatly packed emergency glider suits, but as the building was completely buried, they were of no use. Finally, after 3 hours of walking from one skydock to the next one she found staircase signs and eventually a stairwell. In one of the skydocks they even found an air-speeder which still looked intact, but underground it was of no use. They had to use that stairwell for better or worse and she could only hope, that they would find their way up again. For another 3 hours, they were going down. The stairwell had never been intended to be traversed on foot. It was a set of criss-crossing escalators. Over 800m downward, something like 200 stories and over 4000 stairs took some time. Obviously there was no more power and the escalators were not working. When they finally reached the cellar, the air was really bad. Ahsoka could use the force to help her get her upstairs again, but the engineer would not be that lucky. They had to get the generators to work and hope that the air-con would resume its work right away. As promised, the dark side guided Ahsoka to the hall with the generators at level -3. The generators were in essence fuel cells. Solar panels on the outside of the building provided electricity, which turned water into hydrogen and oxygen and stored that in tanks. Then, the fuel cells turned the hydrogen and oxygen into electricity again. The system was designed, to power the building indefinitely unless a fault in the system prevented it, in which case energy cells could provide power for a few hours. As the solar panels did not work (no sunlight underground), they could just hope, that the tanks held enough hydrogen and oxygen to supply the building with electricity for some time. Scrutinizing the system, Baba the engineer figured, that someone had purposefully turned off the fuel cells. Why, was a mystery at that point in time? In any case, after flipping the main switches of the fuel cells, some of the lights turned on, but they waited in vain to hear the fans of the air-con.