Barkeep
The office was small, a desk and a chair with a large bay window overlooking both. It was all he needed, all he required to fulfil the needs of his new position. The desk was thankfully large, although it was hard to tell under the myriad of flimsiplast sheets, data slates and other miscellaneous paperwork that he found himself fighting against.
It had been so long since the freshly appointed Lord Commander had dealt with anything usually relegated to a secretary or minion that he wondered just how he had retained his vision working in the Corporate Sector Authority.
The text was beginning to blur, his head throbbing from the massive influx of information and a small part of him wished that he was back in his stasis pod, blissfully unaware that there was a veritable mountain of paper work waiting his attention.
"Bah." He spat, tossing a requisition form for new equipment to the side. It hit a smaller pile, being only a hundred or so deep, and it spilled off the synthwood desk across the floor. Curses and fell oaths coloured the air as he turned in his seat to retrieve them.
His hands snatched up the offending sheets and slates, he didn't even bother to arrange them into some semblance of order before he slammed them onto the tabletop. It was then that he spied it, sitting atop the missmash of information.
PRIORITY MESSAGE:
To: Lord Commander Norongachi.
From: Druckenwell Shipwrights.
Imperial Class-I Star Destroyer, Designation "Hand of Fate". Repairs complete, as specified and on schedule. As per your instruction, the ship will arrive at Roon...
The rest of the message he didn't bother reading. It was the best news he'd had in longer than he could recall and he'd toppled governments and crushed armies under his heel. It gave him pause though, after the initial feeling of jubilation, that he attached such feelings to a ship beyond its ability to lay waste to his enemies.
"Maybe I'm not as black hearted as I thought." He thought with a smile and then returned his eyes to the message, most notably the time and date the ship was expected to arrive in orbit. Having memorized his fateful reunion with the ships prickly A.I he returned his attention back to his work, a groan barely suppressed.
Three Days Later
The shuttle lifted off from the landing pad, set beside the Roon Temple. Inside he was alone, sitting in the pilots seat barely able to keep his feet off the throttle as he coasted upwards toward the inky black of space.
It never occurred to him that he could actually feel giddy, that he would ever in his notably long lifetime ever not be able to describe a feeling with any other word than giddy. A bizarre experience that was only eclipsed by what he saw as the small ship broke through the atmosphere.
It sat emblazoned against the sun, the darkness of its gleaming hull catching the light as he approached. He set the shuttle to ride along side its 1,600 meter length, noting the new gunports that Isley had suggested they install to bring the old girl up to standard with the rest of the fleet. It was hard to imagine that months ago she had been a husk. A broken thing just as he had been when Verd had pulled him from his long sleep.
"CIS Shuttle Dancer, to Hand of Fate. Requesting permission to dock." He sent the message and almost immediately he received a response.
"Oh its you." It began, the voice female but with a slight distortion. "I've been here for three hours." She spat with obvious impatience and then. "Permission granted. Dancer...what a stupid name for a ship." He heard her tut before the line went dead and he guided the ship toward the port hanger bay.
The interior was as he remembered it, cavernous easily able to hold a wing of fighters. He set the ship down and even before the boarding ramp fully descended she appeared, the holographic representation of 3M4H, or Emah.
She was a BTR Super Computer, older than even Norongachi and for all intensive purposes she was the Hand of Fate. A projector set into the celling cast its blue light that gave form to the expression of utter annoyance that adorned her face as she stood, arms folded waiting for him to step down the ramp.
"Those Druckenwell grease monkeys violated me." She hissed without so much as hello. The projector in the ceiling moving along upon a rail to simulate foot steps that kept pace with him as he headed for the hanger exit. "If I hadn't been keeping what little power I had left at minimal to stop total shut down I would have flushed them all out of airlocks, I swear th-" Salem stopped then and gave her a cool green eyed stare.
"Is this what the other one put up with?" He said referring to the ships former owner, his "son", in whose body he now resided. "Status report. Are you combat ready?"
If she could have fired turbolasers at him, and she could if he were still outside in his shuttle, she would have but she was programmed to follow his commands.
"I'm networked into every system." She responded as he entered the turbolift, whereby her hologram faded and she became a voice through a speaker set inside the lift.
"What of the starboard hanger, has it been restored for my training purposes?" The lift came to a stop and as he stepped out she flickered and appeared again.
"Every nut, bolt and automated turret." They stepped onto the bridge then and he looked out at the raised dais on which his command chair sat looking out at the view the bridge windows provided. Below the dais, the usual arrays of terminals remained. It had been easier to patch her into the existing systems than rip them out completely.
"Good." Norongachi said with a smile, sitting himself into the high backed chair of command for the first time in nearly a millennia. A dataslate appeared in his hand then, extracted from a jacket pocket and he slipped it inside the armrest mounted terminal to the right side of his chair.
"What do you make of this." He asked the A.I, seven faces appeared and then each one individually with a short run down of useful combat information that he had managed to glean from the copious workload.
"Duellists, one and all. Although they seem to favour more archaic weaponry than the traditional light weapons Force practitioners normally use. Novel idea." She said, peering at the screen although she had no need to.
"I thought so, then...as I thought more on it. It occurred to me, why can't it work? Better yet, what if they were trained in the Lightsaber forms? There would have to be adjustments of course, to counteract the physical presence of the blade..." His eyes seemed to gloss over as he thought about it. "Imagine, Seven Swordsmen, each in command of the Force but more than that Masters of the blade."
"Have you gone mad again?" She said, eyeing him suspiciously. "It took you more than a decade to Master the forms and that time was only shortened by your origins."
This threw a spanner in the works, she was right and he mentally cursed her for it. Then again... "Why would they need to Master every form? One a piece, Seven master swordsmen standing at the vanguard of the Crusaders." If he were the type of villain to cackle maniacally he would have but instead he set his plan in motion.
"I want a communique sent to each of them, inform them I want them on the next shuttle to the Hand of Fate." Maybe he was mad but then again, it could be brilliant.
@[member="Sophia Walsh"]
@[member="Xander Carrick"]
@[member="Ahani Najwa"]
@Sieghart Verd
@[member="Amarant deWinter"]
@[member="Tycho Shorn"]
It had been so long since the freshly appointed Lord Commander had dealt with anything usually relegated to a secretary or minion that he wondered just how he had retained his vision working in the Corporate Sector Authority.
The text was beginning to blur, his head throbbing from the massive influx of information and a small part of him wished that he was back in his stasis pod, blissfully unaware that there was a veritable mountain of paper work waiting his attention.
"Bah." He spat, tossing a requisition form for new equipment to the side. It hit a smaller pile, being only a hundred or so deep, and it spilled off the synthwood desk across the floor. Curses and fell oaths coloured the air as he turned in his seat to retrieve them.
His hands snatched up the offending sheets and slates, he didn't even bother to arrange them into some semblance of order before he slammed them onto the tabletop. It was then that he spied it, sitting atop the missmash of information.
PRIORITY MESSAGE:
To: Lord Commander Norongachi.
From: Druckenwell Shipwrights.
Imperial Class-I Star Destroyer, Designation "Hand of Fate". Repairs complete, as specified and on schedule. As per your instruction, the ship will arrive at Roon...
The rest of the message he didn't bother reading. It was the best news he'd had in longer than he could recall and he'd toppled governments and crushed armies under his heel. It gave him pause though, after the initial feeling of jubilation, that he attached such feelings to a ship beyond its ability to lay waste to his enemies.
"Maybe I'm not as black hearted as I thought." He thought with a smile and then returned his eyes to the message, most notably the time and date the ship was expected to arrive in orbit. Having memorized his fateful reunion with the ships prickly A.I he returned his attention back to his work, a groan barely suppressed.
Three Days Later
The shuttle lifted off from the landing pad, set beside the Roon Temple. Inside he was alone, sitting in the pilots seat barely able to keep his feet off the throttle as he coasted upwards toward the inky black of space.
It never occurred to him that he could actually feel giddy, that he would ever in his notably long lifetime ever not be able to describe a feeling with any other word than giddy. A bizarre experience that was only eclipsed by what he saw as the small ship broke through the atmosphere.
It sat emblazoned against the sun, the darkness of its gleaming hull catching the light as he approached. He set the shuttle to ride along side its 1,600 meter length, noting the new gunports that Isley had suggested they install to bring the old girl up to standard with the rest of the fleet. It was hard to imagine that months ago she had been a husk. A broken thing just as he had been when Verd had pulled him from his long sleep.
"CIS Shuttle Dancer, to Hand of Fate. Requesting permission to dock." He sent the message and almost immediately he received a response.
"Oh its you." It began, the voice female but with a slight distortion. "I've been here for three hours." She spat with obvious impatience and then. "Permission granted. Dancer...what a stupid name for a ship." He heard her tut before the line went dead and he guided the ship toward the port hanger bay.
The interior was as he remembered it, cavernous easily able to hold a wing of fighters. He set the ship down and even before the boarding ramp fully descended she appeared, the holographic representation of 3M4H, or Emah.
She was a BTR Super Computer, older than even Norongachi and for all intensive purposes she was the Hand of Fate. A projector set into the celling cast its blue light that gave form to the expression of utter annoyance that adorned her face as she stood, arms folded waiting for him to step down the ramp.
"Those Druckenwell grease monkeys violated me." She hissed without so much as hello. The projector in the ceiling moving along upon a rail to simulate foot steps that kept pace with him as he headed for the hanger exit. "If I hadn't been keeping what little power I had left at minimal to stop total shut down I would have flushed them all out of airlocks, I swear th-" Salem stopped then and gave her a cool green eyed stare.
"Is this what the other one put up with?" He said referring to the ships former owner, his "son", in whose body he now resided. "Status report. Are you combat ready?"
If she could have fired turbolasers at him, and she could if he were still outside in his shuttle, she would have but she was programmed to follow his commands.
"I'm networked into every system." She responded as he entered the turbolift, whereby her hologram faded and she became a voice through a speaker set inside the lift.
"What of the starboard hanger, has it been restored for my training purposes?" The lift came to a stop and as he stepped out she flickered and appeared again.
"Every nut, bolt and automated turret." They stepped onto the bridge then and he looked out at the raised dais on which his command chair sat looking out at the view the bridge windows provided. Below the dais, the usual arrays of terminals remained. It had been easier to patch her into the existing systems than rip them out completely.
"Good." Norongachi said with a smile, sitting himself into the high backed chair of command for the first time in nearly a millennia. A dataslate appeared in his hand then, extracted from a jacket pocket and he slipped it inside the armrest mounted terminal to the right side of his chair.
"What do you make of this." He asked the A.I, seven faces appeared and then each one individually with a short run down of useful combat information that he had managed to glean from the copious workload.
"Duellists, one and all. Although they seem to favour more archaic weaponry than the traditional light weapons Force practitioners normally use. Novel idea." She said, peering at the screen although she had no need to.
"I thought so, then...as I thought more on it. It occurred to me, why can't it work? Better yet, what if they were trained in the Lightsaber forms? There would have to be adjustments of course, to counteract the physical presence of the blade..." His eyes seemed to gloss over as he thought about it. "Imagine, Seven Swordsmen, each in command of the Force but more than that Masters of the blade."
"Have you gone mad again?" She said, eyeing him suspiciously. "It took you more than a decade to Master the forms and that time was only shortened by your origins."
This threw a spanner in the works, she was right and he mentally cursed her for it. Then again... "Why would they need to Master every form? One a piece, Seven master swordsmen standing at the vanguard of the Crusaders." If he were the type of villain to cackle maniacally he would have but instead he set his plan in motion.
"I want a communique sent to each of them, inform them I want them on the next shuttle to the Hand of Fate." Maybe he was mad but then again, it could be brilliant.
@[member="Sophia Walsh"]
@[member="Xander Carrick"]
@[member="Ahani Najwa"]
@Sieghart Verd
@[member="Amarant deWinter"]
@[member="Tycho Shorn"]
