A Dark Blade

[J3C0]

Another few weeks passed by and more work was done on the ships.

Skeletons were gradually covered with durasteel plates, slowly filled out with halls and corridors of all different types. Mierin watched it happen. Almost everyday she would sit upon her little spot and gaze with yellow eyes as her starship came into fruition. The pleasure of watching her task being completed was almost indescribable, and the joy she felt with each new piece was immeasurable.

It was an odd sensation.

Not one of true pleasure, but one of fulfillment. It was as if with every piece of the Dreadnoughts going into place Mierin felt more and more whole. She could not quite understand it. She had almost no hand in the construction of the ships or even in the design of them. Yet watching them come together, was satisfying in a way that she found indescribable.

She shared these feelings with several of her kin.

Speaking to members of the One Sith about the coming fleet. They smiled and congratulated her, but they did not understand. They saw the ships as a means to an end, while Mierin saw the ships as part of the Dark Lords will.

Yes.

They were more than starships, more than simple ways of destroying and conquering. They were avatars of the Dark Lord within the galaxy. It was through these ships that the Dark Lord would exert his strength, and it would be through these ships that they would gain victory.

 

[J3C0]

Another few months passed, and now Mierin stood within one of her oh so coveted ships.

She walked alongside one of the builders of the ships as she showed Mierin the vessel. There was a skip in her step and she was notably quite young for a women that worked on star vessels. The Pureblood would have mentioned this, but she thought it rude and did not want to bring it up. As they rounded another corner, the two women found themselves facing the entrance to the bridge of the vessel.

“The bridge as i'm sure you know was designed to lay at the center of the ship.”

Mierin nodded along as the peppy girl began to explain the functions of the Black Blade Dreadnoughts. The Pureblood knew them all of course, but she was in a fine mood, and the girl seemed to be rather excited about the prospect of giving a Sith Lord a proper tour. There was no harm in listening to her while she observed after all.

The two of them stepped onto the bridge, a mess of wires, screens, and a hundred different open panels.

 

[J3C0]

“This central location of the bridge ensures that it cannot be targeted so easily.”

Mierin again nodded to the woman. This was of course one of the genius implications of the designs of the Dreadnought. It allowed for the ship to maintain a sort of complex control even at the height of battle. With Star Destroyers the bridge was easily targeted and destroyed, the same held true for many vessels existing within the galaxy today.

“Though it has the drawback of making the bridge crew rely on sensor and camera arrays that are placed in thousands of positions on the ships. Many argue that this will decrease efficiency of the vessel, though others, myself included would say it will increase it...after a time.”

Mierin nodded again.

She agreed with the girl. The set up would no doubt take some getting used to, but after awhile efficiency and safety would both be increased. The risk of succumbing to blindness within the battlefield was also minimal.

Finding all the cameras and censor arrays aboard the vessel was nearly impossible unless one had the schematics, and she highly doubted that would ever occur.

 

[J3C0]

For a time Mierin and the girl watched the men on the bridge work. They crossed wires, cut together screens, and placed together a large array of functioning terminals that would be used by the bridge crew. It was an interesting task, but not one that Mierin envied.

“As you can see. This is one section of the ship that is still much under construction. Shall we move on?”

The peppy little girl didn't wait for Mierin to answer, and instead turned around on a 180 degree axis and left the room.

Mierin stared at one of the men laying beneath a console for a moment more, then followed her. The bridge would be a tight place. Not as large and expansive as those of a Star Destroyer. Then again the same thing could be said for the entirety of the ship. While a Star Destroyers halls could fit four stormtroopers abreast of one another, the Dark Blades could barely fit two.

The ships halls were tiny in comparison.

 

[J3C0]

The two women were able to move along without much of an issue. One of them gliding and the other stepping in big heavy boots. One with an impassive face and the other with a big smile that seemed to stretch her lips at all times.

Mierin wondered to herself what the origin of this girl was. Where she was born and why she was so happy to be building capital ships. Though a part of her also wondered how old the girl was, and why exactly her parents allowed her to work in such a setting when she could not have been more than twenty. This line of work wasn't exactly fitting for women. Well, perhaps fitting was not the correct word.

Though Mierin believed in equality, she thought such menial labor to be beneath women.

Slowly the pair drifted down the hall, entering one of the main gun sites that dotted the ship to the extreme. The girl walked in and looked around, ensuring that no one was working. The gun sites were far too small for too many people to occupy.

The Pureblood stepped inside and waited for her next lecture.

 

[J3C0]

“This is one of the gun bays.”

Mierin nodded along with the girl.

“From here the gunners control a section of the batteries attached to the ship.”

Now she was just spouting the obvious.

“Personally the guns never really interested me all that much. If were honest I far prefer the engines and reactors of the ship. They're far more complex and difficult to build as well as to maintain. There's something of a mystery about them that I truly enjoy.”

Mierin smiled at that comment. She did not know enough about any of this to really respond, but the girls enthusiasm was getting to her, and the smile the girl wore was practically infectious. She felt her lips curl up in a similar smile, though obviously not as wide, and as the two of them left the tiny room Miern couldn't help but feel slightly attached to the young woman.

She would have to ensure she stayed safe.

 

[J3C0]

“And what of the main weapon?” Mierin inquired as they reached another cross section within the hall, causing the girl to grind to a sudden halt. Her smile split into a grin, nearly bisecting her face entirely as if she had just been asked to tell her favorite story to a batch of eagerly listening youths. Perhaps she had been waiting this whole time for the Pureblood to ask her.

“Well Ma'am.”

She paused for dramatic effect.

“The Main gun is still undergoing some construction. It runs the length of the ship of course, so the barrel is finished. But creating a shipboard hypervelocity canon is no easy task and were finding it somewhat of a...challenge to actually make it function without causing all the other systems to go dark for too long.”

The Pureblood prickled at that. Jason should have taken care of those ratios in his first designs. Perhaps though it was more difficult that Mierin had thought.

“No worries though, just something to do with the second generator.”

She breathed a sigh of relief. Nothing wrong with the design of the ship then, it was simply a fault of the builders.

 

[J3C0]

“Would you like to see it?”

The girl asked her with a light smile. Mierin thought for a moment, and then nodded.

Of course they couldn't see the entire thing. That would take walking the whole length of the ship and she was in no real mood to do any such thing. Instead they would likely only see a portion of it. Perhaps the place where the shots were fed into the Hypervelocity gun, or someplace itself. It did not matter to Mierin really what piece of the weapon see saw, merely that she witnessed it.

Slowly they wandered, each time they passed something interesting the girl would point something out and begin to explain about it.

She never shut up.

 

[J3C0]

Eventually they reached the base of the weapon. Where the barrel of the gun began and the weapon started out. Mierin walked up to the very edge of it, touching the massive roll of durasteel with a single flat palm. She smiled slightly, yellow eyes lighting up as she imagined the power of the thing beneath her hand.

A flash of the visions she had received tore through her mind.

She saw the Hypervelocity gun fire. She saw a ship torn apart, a planet with death rained upon it. Corpses floating in space, and ruin and rubble taking up the places of satellites and orbiting moons. A rush of dread flowed through her, and she felt empowered as all of a sudden strength flowed through her like never before.

Mierin let out a heavy breathy sigh of satisfaction, lifting her hand away from the weapon.

The girl looked at the Pureblood strangely, her eyes narrowing slightly and a look of...curiosity covering her face. Mierin simply looked at her with a smile, opening her eyes and revealing the glow of her stark yellow eyes.

“What else can you show me?” The question held eagerness.

 

[J3C0]

The girl lit up like never before. She instantly became excited and very nearly grabbed for Mierins hand. There was clearly something that she wanted Mierin to see, though what it was the older woman had absolutely no idea.

“There is Ma'am!”

Mierin nodded, and then quickly followed behind the woman.

The rest of the tour was much to be expected. More gun pods. More weapon placements. The Engines, the reactors. It was all very exciting, and it was all well and good. Yet it was not the excitement of the tour that got to Mierin. It was not the completion of the ships that roused her.

It was what would come after.

What was to come after the ships were completed and sent out into space to fight the wars of the One Sith. The Battles, the massacres, the slaughters that the Dark Blades would commit in the name of the Dark Lord. It was this that excited her. It was this that drove her to divination. It was this that she craved.

 

[J3C0]

The day had come.

The first of the Dark Blades was complete and ready to be commissioned. A hundred people consisting of officers, workers, researchers, and of course Sith had gathered within the viewport of the massive shipyards, the viewport directly ahead of them darkened to cut off the display of the first of the completed Dark Blade Vessels.

Mierin stood at the head of the room, directly before the viewport.

There was a feeling of utter anticipation that rushed through her. She wanted this. She had wanted it for the longest time that she could remember. Ever since she had picked Jason off that tiny world, saved him from the misery of his own existence. She had craved the revelation of these ships.

She had craved the reveal of the Dark Lords will.

Now she would see it. In a short few moments the ship would be revealed to her, and Mierin would be allowed to lay eyes upon her completed prize for the first time.

 

[J3C0]

Her heart pounded quickly, and as Jason Kolyat wandered over to her she smiled at him. It was of course not him who set her heart a thunder, no, that would be ludicrous. It was simply the anticipation of the ships being revealed. The sight of them.

“Lady Mierin.”

Kolyat spoke in his loud nasally tone. She couldn't wait not to hear it for the next few months.

It was not that Jason Kolyat had annoyed her for the last few months. He had simply infuriated and danced on her last nerve one too many times. More than thrice she had nearly killed him, and more than four times she had seriously considered maiming him in order to silence his incessant nagging and protesting about one thing or another.

Somehow however, she had managed to survive it.

Now she was within inches of the finish line, and the anticipation was growing to be quite grand. She smiled slightly, her eyes dashing towards the viewport before settling back on Kolyat.

“Jason.” She finally replied.

 

[J3C0]

“I want to thank you.”

Oh here we go.

“Without you none of this would have been possible.”

Well, that statement was far more pleasant than she had expected. Jason Kolyat as of late had been growing quite an ego, and she had expected a much more self centered interpretation of the events that had unfolded. She was pleasantly surprised by this little development and her smiled stretched her lips only slightly.

“Really, if you hadn't convinced me to come off that world. I would still be stuck in that miserable bunker trying to hide myself away from the Sith. Instead you allowed me to build my dream ship, and now here we are, its design at the ready to be mass produced.”

Mierin smiled at the man, letting the wine in her glass slosh about slightly as he mused on and on.

 

[J3C0]

It was not long ago that Jason had come to Mierin crying about his inevitable death at the hands of her and the other members of the One Sith. Now he stood here toasting her to their good fortune. Funny how that all worked out in the end. It almost made her want to laugh, if it didn't leave a feeling of bitterness in her mouth.

Call them a snake one day, then a rabbit the next.

Jason Kolyat played with fire.

“You have no one to thank but yourself Jason.” Still she had to be nice. They were not yet finished with him. “It is your design after all.”

He seemed to light up at those words. As if knowing they were completely true and nothing else could change that.

“Yes. Well I suppose once genius is unleashed it is difficult to contain it.”

His laugh was horrible.

 

[J3C0]

Mierin only rolled her eyes in response to him, and them simply moved away.

She had had enough of Jason Kolyat to last her a lifetime, and for now she wanted to be as far away from him as she possibly could be. There was no want or need to hang around him any longer as long as he didn't kill anyone.

There was somebody else here tonight who would make for much better company. Someone she had ensured would be here, and be dressed properly.

Before long Mierin spotted the person she wanted, who happened to be standing not far from where she had originally placed herself before the viewport. She smiled, and wandered over to the young woman dressed in a fine silk gown of black and red, clearly designed by Sith Purebloods as told by the small metal plates that lined the bodice. Mierin smiled at the sight of the dress.

“Mari.” She said closing in on the woman.

 

[J3C0]

“Mierin!”

The Sith Pureblood smiled at the warm greeting, and planted a peck on the girls cheek. The young woman smiled, and then did the same to her. Albeit it was far more difficult with the protrusions of bone coming from the side of the Sith Lords face. The effort exerted a giggle from Mari, who thought of Mierin like a stepmother now.

Mari had been the girl that had given Mierin the tour of the first Black Blade. After the Tour Mierin had practically interrogated Mari about her home situation, and as it had turned out. Mari and her father had lost their mother many years ago, and Mari's father had raised her practically on her own since the age of 12. It was a commendable act, but as a result Mari had turned out less than...ladylike. In fact due to the fathers occupation as a shipwright, she went into much the same line of work.

Due to her peppyness however, and the cheer in her heart, Mierin had taken a liking to the girl, and as such had taken her under her wing.

This was why she was here now, Mierin had ensured that both she and her father had been invited to the unveiling of the ship.

 

[J3C0]

“It won't be long now, just a few minutes.” Mierin said as she turned the girl towards the blackened viewport. “Have you ever done this before?”

It was a genuine question. She realized the girl likely hadn't been in this position for a ship unveiling, but she would probably have been somewhere else on the yard. Or her father would have been anyway. Usually when Shipyard workers worked on a ship, they were present for its christening as a sort of good luck charm.

Mari however shook her head.

“No. These shipyards are so new, nothing this big has ever been built over Coruscant.”

Ah yes. Mierin had forgotten that little detail. The Shipyards over Coruscant were barely a year old, and the Dark Blades were the first Capital class craft that were to be built here. She smiled thinly, looking at the young woman. “Then it will be an event for the both of us.”

 

[J3C0]

“I Suppose it will.”

Mari said attempting to contain at least some of the excitement within her voice.

Mierin however could tell the girl was practically bursting at the seems. She was about to see the unveiling of a Star Ship that she had not only helped build, but actually toured on. The occasion was momentous, and she was practically giddy.

Poor thing had no idea the ruin the ship would bring to countless worlds.

Mierin did.

 

[J3C0]

A chime sounded within the viewing hall, and suddenly all conversation stopped.

The same happened within a dozen other viewing halls just like this, and the lights began to dim as silence fell over the room. Every single head turned towards the blacked out viewport. Several people downed wine glasses, others took out small datapads on which to take pictures with. Still others took out small notebooks to record what was about to happened.

Mierin and Mari simply turned to face the black transparisteel, and waited.

Both women were excited to see what was about to happen.

Mierin especially seemed to be impatient. Her eyes drifting to and fro from the edges of the glass as slowly the blackness began to fade away. The outer edges of space began to show, and many people rose to their toes in order to get a better view.

Mierin and Mari standing at the front of the room, did not budge.

 

[J3C0]