An Ascension

[Siobhan Kerrigan]

[member="Taeli Raaf"]


Siobhan, having participated in many boarding actions back in the day, nodded. "That makes sense. Agrinium could help protect against radiation. Speaking as someone who's collapsed more than a few bridge towers of battleships, I'd also make sure the command bridge has a low profile and is not too exposed. A CIC-style bridge located inside the vessel strikes me as a safer bet than the traditional tower of Imperial Star Destroyers."


She had fond memories of crushing the bridge of a Sith warship at the Battle of the Silken Asteroids. Siobhan, being more than a little arrogant, liked to think she was the only telekinesis master able to do that. But apparently the Super Star Destroyer Executor had been mucked up by a Rebel starfighter crashing into the bridge after the shields gave up the ghost.


"Ray shields and automated turrets can help deter boarders on the ship. Same applies to having the ability to seal off sections of the ship, vent them and flood them with whatever gas is appropriate." Vaporized Ixetal Cilona was useful against Force-users. At least unless they wore helmets or used Breath Control. Boforr Tree Pollen helped against Vong. Siobhan was kind of racist against those xenos.

 

[Taeli Raaf]

[member="Siobhan Kerrigan"]

"Yes, we don't want to give people the idea they can ram a fighter into the bridge to take down the ship," Taeli replied with a wry smile. She would add in the note and layout of a command bridge that was heavily reinforced and deep within the actual bulk of the ship, not unlike how the old Resurgent-class did it. The command tower was deceptive in that regard as the bulk of the bridge was embedded within the ship itself. Certainly would make it harder to take, but then the trade off was relying only on sensors and other scanners to put together an image of the battle instead of eyes.

"For the automated defense turrets, I'm inclined to make something new instead of those tiny little blaster cannons people use nowadays," Taeli continued. "We have an electromagnetic plasma cannon capital grade weapon we use, so I'm thinking an anti-infantry defense turret of the same would be quite useful. Very hard to block something when it disintegrates organics. That sounded harsher than I meant it to. As for sealing off individual areas and either venting them to space or gassing them, that's just a given. Call me cautious, but I don't like people taking my toys."

 

[Siobhan Kerrigan]

[member="Taeli Raaf"]


"Oh, I really like that cannon of yours. I'll have to buy it," Siobhan's eyes lit up like a Life Day tree and there was a smile on her a face. It looked just a bit like a child who'd found a new toy she fancied. The Countess probably enjoyed destructive weapons more than was healthy. The talk about disintegrating hostile organics obviously did not disturb her. Clearly there was sinister intent behind this ostensibly innocent business meeting. It was official: Taeli Raaf was still a Sith Lord and only pretending to be redeemed and light side. Likewise, Siobhan's 'I'm not evil, really! I just like to wear black and shoot lightning' thing was just an act.


"You and I should partner on building weapons some time. Sure we can make some very nice ones. I can make shattergun rotary cannons available. They can be mounted in turrets and are essentially what happens when a minigun and a shattergun have a baby. It's terribly hard to block or dodge when a minigun is firing hypervelocity pellets with enough punch to penetrate heavy armour at 6,600 rounds a minute. Likewise we've got mobile barricades. Class nine durasteel, can be quickly moved through repulsorlifts and serve as mounts for heavy weapons."

 

[Taeli Raaf]

[member="Siobhan Kerrigan"]

"I'm sure together that we could come up with some designs that are truly unique and... advantageous to their users," Taeli answered diplomatically, smiling slightly. The Countess certainly seemed to like the idea of the electromagnetic plasma cannon security turrets, and just to showcase the technology in case she hadn't seen it before, the overhead display would switch to show footage of the technology in action briefly. It proceeded to switch back to the display of the Ascension, with a jotted note for the interior defenses to be rather... excessive.

"Our facility on Saleucami would be a lovely spot for you I'm sure. We have simulated biomes for most locations for testing weapons and droids, and rather extensive research and design facilities. However, that seems to me to be a discussion for another time however," Taeli continued. "For now, we should focus on just how much firepower we should give our friend here and what form these weapons should take."

 

[Siobhan Kerrigan]

[member="Taeli Raaf"]


"I look forward to visiting them," Siobhan said in response. Her scarlet lips curled into a smile. She dimly recalled that Firemane had rid Saleucami of a Sith cult during the Silver Sanctum's takeover. That was a long time ago, back when the Silvers still had her support. These days, they seemed to be experiencing a ton of difficulties. Far as she was concerned, they deserved all the trouble they were getting.


"Anyway, back to the present, as you say. In terms of internal defences, I believe our turret-mounted shattercannons would be a good addition. Between them, electromagnetic plasma cannons and ray shields, would-be boarders should have their work cut out for them if they make it onto the ship. We already discussed the Vortex Cannon. What other plans do you have for the external weapons arsenal?" Presumably there'd be turbolasers, point defences cannons and so on, but she knew Aurora had some special shipborne weapons of its own. The Mjolnir was rather shiny.

 

[Taeli Raaf]

[member="Siobhan Kerrigan"]

"Beyond the normal stuff of turbolasers, mass drivers, ion cannons, point defense lasers, and flak guns?" Taeli asked, rattling off the list. "Normally I would say we're just going to use what we have developed for our other ships... but that just doesn't give that special feel to these ships in my opinion. My teams are going to be hard at work developing new technologies and weapons to go into the ship. New turbolasers, new ion cannons, the whole kit and kaboodle."

All the current weapons Aurora had made, while good, were just going to be baseline models for what she envisioned for this ship... and for what they might also sell to other companies to develop stronger ships of their own.

"I have to ask, Siobhan, what sort of big ship weapon system have you always wished would exist?" Taeli asked. "Knowing you, you probably had a wishlist and hoped one day that technology and research would eventually make them a reality."

 

[Siobhan Kerrigan]

[member="Taeli Raaf"]


"Well, I thought about building a new version of the Silencer, but my researchers quibbled a lot," Siobhan said with a completely straight face. Personally, this one was quite partial to the World Devastators because they had phenomenal recycling capabilities.


Beneth her casual expression, she looked thoughtful. You're no Jedi. Not really. You're too much like me, she thought to herself. "On a more simpler level, I'm a groundpounder, not a fleeter, but I've had some ideas. For instance, massive seismic charge launchers to fire into clusters of enemy fighter craft and tear them apart, or at least throw them into chaos so that your own attack craft can overwhelm them."

 

[Taeli Raaf]

[member="Siobhan Kerrigan"]

"Yes, that is understandable," Taeli said, giving an amused raise of her eyebrow. "A great deal of people get squeamish about superweapons and any descendants of said weapons. I tend to askew away from wanting to develop such things. Can spend time and resources pursuing just as... interesting technologies."

Taeli had never understood why people went into the whole wipe out an entire fleet or planet way of thinking, even when she was a member of the One Sith. It just didn't serve a strategic purpose beyond either fear or steeling an enemy's fortitude to keep fighting. Plus, they always ended up being a complete waste of resources whenever they got inevitably destroyed, such as the Omega weapon in the recent conflict over Castameer. Her other idea had some merit though. Seismic charges were rather devastating weapons in both space and on the ground.

"An anti-fighter seismic charge launcher," she pondered aloud. "The idea certainly bears thinking about. You might run into the problem of accidentally damaging allied ships though... if you adapted something like point defense laser, made it conical so the blast was directed towards a particular vector... internalize the process so the shockwave travels out from it and envelops a limited area above the ship in a focused way... I'm rambling a bit, my apologies."

 

[Siobhan Kerrigan]

[member="Taeli Raaf"]


"Yes, that's true. As nice as having bragging rights about owning a fleet killer or a moon-sized status symbol is, the life expectancy and efficacy is entirely disproportionate to the costs and invested resources. It gets embarrassing when they're blown up due to a conveniently overlooked weak spot. Especially if you give them an awfully melodramatic name like Undying, Omega, Galaxy Destroyer and so on," Siobhan said in a more serious tone. Not at all breaking the 4th wall. Has this writer mentioned that they thought the Sith Inquisitor storyline was lame?


If Palpatine and Tarkin wanted the power to exterminate an entire planet, they could've just used Star Destroyers, instead of building a moon-sized status symbol. Besides, leaving aside the fact that committing planetary genocide was morally reprehensible in most cases - unless it was a planet populated by Vong! - usually the effects were counterproductive because it tended to galvanise opposition against you.


She listened as Taeli spoke, then her lips curled into a smile. "Oh, I don't mind you rambling, do continue. It's nice to bounce off ideas with another woman of talent. Your points about the seismic charge launcher have merit. It could possibly be mounted on a missile fired from a ship warhead launcher. It would deploy a flared warhead when fired, which directs a seismic's charge energy about 180 degrees forward, instead of spreading in all directions. It would be a similar approach as with Firemane's APE bolter rounds, just on a larger scale. It could be launched as enemy attack craft approach."

 

[Taeli Raaf]

[member="Siobhan Kerrigan"]

"That could certainly work," Taeli said, tapping her digipen against her thigh in thought. "It is refreshing dealing with someone who has vision, I must admit. This would definitely be an unexpected and very effective counter to enemy fighter attacks. I also had an idea of sorts for a large area of effect anti-fighter weapon, although it was on different lines than this."

She took a sip of her water before continuing.

"My company has begun working in the Cularin system, as I mentioned when we were discussing the Adegan cloaking device we're developing. One of our operations there is developing the tibanna gas present in the gas giant Genarius in that system, and we've had to deal with some unexpected obstacles to that. Besides the rather... volatility of the atmosphere caused by an ancient war there, we've had to deal with periodic ion storms. Now, that got me thinking. What if there was a way to develop a similar sort of ion storm effect as a ship emplacement? Working off the ion cannon, we started basic designs for an ion storm cannon that would send a blanket ion cloud, for lack of a better word, into an area and disable anything within it."

Even larger ships didn't like ion storms, played absolute havoc with a ship's systems and could knock out shields. Quite useful if it were able to get off the ground and became a working prototype.

 

[Siobhan Kerrigan]

[member="Taeli Raaf"]


Siobhan had many good qualities, but she was quite susceptible to flattery. "Thank you. The Galaxy could use more women of vision who understood how the real world works. And less delusional cultists who can't think outside their narrow codes full of purple poetry."


Being a rather jaded, practical woman, she disliked extremes and pseudo-religious dogmatism on both sides of the spectrum. Ironically, a fully dark side Lady Kerrigan would probably be quite close to the ancient Jen'ari. She'd probably enjoy being worshipped as a god-queen way too much.


"I like your design idea a lot. A targeted ion storm would wreak havoc. My question is, how would it be delivered and what's the projected range and radius? We wouldn't want it going off to close to our own ships, after all."

 

[Taeli Raaf]

[member="Siobhan Kerrigan"]

Taeli didn't immediately reply to what Siobhan said, but not because she disagreed. She had never been one for zealotry, either for the light or the dark. Did she think one was superior? Sure, most everyone thought one side or the other was. No, she just found zealotry boring... and that had even included her sister for the longest time. She had loved Corvus, but she had been so stubborn to clinging to the dogmatic view of the Jedi, it had likely ultimately been her undoing. She had encountered plenty of Jedi and Sith like that, sadly.

"First time I've ever heard them called purple poetry," Taeli quietly chuckled. "But yes, zealotry can be rather boring to deal with."

For the ion storm design, Taeli could give a frustrated look.

"And right there is why we don't have a working prototype for consideration for our ship here," Taeli sighed. "We're still trying to figure out a delivery method and how to trigger the storm itself outside of a lab. So far, no luck. It might require something like a rocket or mine be deployed and then detonated, but we're trying to see if we can trigger just from the energy blast."

 

[Siobhan Kerrigan]

[member="Taeli Raaf"]


Siobhan was a somewhat odd cross between a rigid woman who stuck to her ironclad views and a cynical pragmatist with little patience for extremes from either side. Sith, Jedi peaceniks and Jedi jihadists were all suspect to her. She believed in what she could touch, see and grasp, not in a code that someone had penned while meditating in an ivory tower. Or the brainless slaughter so many other darksiders induldged in.


"Ok. I see. If you can't trigger it from the energy blast alone, I believe a mine could be a good way to achieve the effect. The same applies to a heavy warhead system. I've wanted to do more things with mines for a while, such as magnetic mines which sense enemy IFFs after being deployed by minelayers."

 

[Taeli Raaf]

[member="Siobhan Kerrigan"]

"As an aside, I can understand the fascination with mines," Taeli said. "We had started to develop a micro-mine for deployment in a sort of shower that would slip through a ship's shields, attach themselves to the hull, and then... well you get the idea of course. Perhaps we can combine the two ideas, make micro sonic mines so you don't just get one shockwave, but a cacophony of smaller but still as potent waves. I could theorize that multiple smaller hits would do more damage than one big one. Food for thought, we could even make them ion mines to work with my previous idea."

It certainly was, and it would fit in with her idea of an ion storm defense system. The only problem would be developing smaller mines with the same punch, but miniaturizing technology was why she had hired Anomids and their expertise in all things technology. An Anomid was the reason that Aurora had developed liquid metals for infiltration droids, and the infiltration droid itself was a marvel of electrical engineering.

 

[Siobhan Kerrigan]

[member="Taeli Raaf"]


Siobhan had long been fond of mines, both in space and on the ground. The Silver Jedi had quibbled a lot after Firemane laid a mine field as part of the fortifications to protect Ossus. Far as Siobhan was concerned, that should teach their Padawans to read a map.


Why build a big fortress to protect a planet that had nothing but sentimental, religious value to a group of not particularly monastic, elitist space monks? Good question, but Firemane had been paid to build it.


"That would be rather nice. The problem is that shields stop solid objects, which would make it hard for the mines to attach themselves to the hull. Do you have a workaround in mind? I believe that an ion mine based on your ion storm concept would be highly effective though," Siobhan responded thoughtfully. "I must say, you aren't like the Jedi I've met before. I say that as a compliment," she said as an aside.

 

[Taeli Raaf]

[member="Siobhan Kerrigan"]

"Actually yes," Taeli said, pulling up an image that would temporarily obscure the ship blueprints. A small cluster of mines would appear, zoomed in at first before zooming out to show their actual size in comparison. "When I was part of... less reputable associations, I made sure to download some of the older archives they maintained. They neglected them, but I recognized the value in knowledge my former colleagues didn't. What you see here are micromines, an old invention of the first Galactic Empire. They were designed to be able to pass through a ship's particle and meteor shields, using some sort of technology known as magnafield casing. It's a launching point at least for research, as the original blueprints were wiped away. Only this footage remains from an exercise they ran in the Shiva system."

Siobhan would probably be able to read between the lines about who her former colleagues were if she had access to old Imperial files. She was smart, and had probably been analyzing Taeli throughout the meeting so far. There had been subtle clues, after all, but it said something that the woman was still sitting here.

 

[Siobhan Kerrigan]

[member="Taeli Raaf"]


Siobhan was commonly labelled as a rash, aggressive woman who was governed by her passions. Or, to put it less diplomatically, an oversexed sledgehammer. This was far from true, but only one side of the coin. When it seemed useful to her, she played up that attitude. It was surprisingly effective at the Eldorai Court. Being a retired military dictator who now ran a megacorporation forced you to expand your horizons.


She had been analysing her host, to a degree, at least and drawn her own conclusions. There were a few players who would've gotten their hands on old Galactic Empire files. One was extremely dispuretable.
"Not the old Atrisian Empire. They kept their Force-users on a very tight leash and I know their...former operatives well." No need to elaborate more. Suffice to say she didn't refer to the Sith Kingdom of the Atrisian Systems that was governed by a bunch of lunatics.


"The half a dozen Imperial Remnants aren't worth mentioning. The One Sith then. Why'd you leave the apparently not so omnipotent Dark Lord and his horde of Vong savages?" The Galactic League for Yuuzhan Vong Rights had complained about Siobhan's use of racist slurs and refusal to employe their brethren. The Countess quite deliberately did not ask something along the lines of 'what made you convert to the light and embrace truth, justice and the Corellian way', which probably said a lot about her outlook.

 

[Taeli Raaf]

[member="Siobhan Kerrigan"]

"Because I really can't stand those noseless fanatics, and the Sith I was working with disappointed me," Taeli answered easily, giving a flippant wave of her hand. "I grew up on Lorrd and the planet has a long, bitter history with Vong. When I joined the Sith, I tended to avoid power hungry fools and sadistic killers because they were so... stereotypical and, I suppose, boring. How many times do you have to see Lord Such and Such has committed another murder before you just get numb to it?"

There was the other reason of course, but she wasn't about to reveal any of that to Siobhan on their first meeting.

"When the Wrath decided to have the One Sith fully embrace the Vong, him being an anointed Warmaster of them, I realized something rather important about the Sith I had joined. They were not what I pictured or read about. Call me nostalgic, but my favorite model of Sith were those like Bane and his Order, beings who played the game from the shadows. Cunning and patience, a desire to uncover knowledge or influence. Not swinging a lightsaber and massacring faceless hordes of enemies for personal glory."

Taeli didn't give the old tried and true explanation she usually gave about leaving the Sith, that being she had left to be with her younger sister. If that was truly the case, she would have been trading one sister for another as Melori had been Sith and Corvus a Jedi. No, Taeli recognized that the Countess appreciated candor and bluntness, not something that made people think of sweet sentiments and nobleness and the bonds of family.

 

[Siobhan Kerrigan]

[member="Taeli Raaf"]


How convenient, Siobhan thought to herself, you got out just before it all collapsed and went to hell. Admiring Sith was generally not what Jedi did, which made Taeli's conversion a little more suspicious than it might have been already. Taeli's aura was that of a light sider, but in Sio's estimation colour schemes said very little about the person. The Countess was an inherently cynical person except when it came to her family.


"Indeed. I've seen the One Sith's attempt at 'empire-building' first-hand. Stereotypical slaughter. Destruction for the sake of it. Not surprising with butchers like Kaine Zambrano, the Wrath and his Vong." There was a note of disdain in her tone when she referred to them. There was history there, particularly with the self-proclaimed God-Emperor of Panatha.


"But Bane and Zannah aren't people I'd admire. More long term vision than the One Sith? Sure. Their cult succeeded in fooling the galaxy into believing they didn't exist and got the Jedi to march to their own extermination. They were also also an amoral sociopaths and their cult's long game of lies and deception led to the deaths of millions. It was hardly beneficial to galactic stability, as much as the old Republic and Yoda's order deserved to collapse for gross incompetence." Her tone was not belligerent, but serious. Outwardly her expression changed little.

 

[Taeli Raaf]

[member="Siobhan Kerrigan"]

"Oh I quite agree," Taeli replied, giving an amused smile. "Although you would be surprised that some Jedi do admire Bane and Zannah, such as my sister Corvus. She never agreed with his goals or philosophy, but she did respect him and his training methods. He was nothing if not thorough in training his apprentice. Did millions die because of them? Yes. Millions and billions die every time the Jedi and Sith go to war with one another, always the same cycle of destruction. But in some ways, they also tried to avoid unnecessary deaths until we get to Palpatine, who was a true amoral sociopath."

Taeli had studied much about Bane's Order of the Sith Lords, and it certainly didn't hurt that she had Zannah's holocron in that regard. Their end goal had resulted in Palpatine and countless deaths in the Clone Wars, but to an observer, there had to be some respect for how they had undermined their enemies over close to a thousand years.

"I am curious, Countess Kerrigan, who do you admire?" she asked, their discussion having drifted slightly. It was more probing in a sense, trying to get a feel for the other in a way. Just as informative and interesting as designing the ship, but possibly it might be more so. Taeli was always interested in learning more about powerful individuals in the galaxy, and the Countess was certainly one of those.