Dragons of Iron

[Laira Darkhold]

When ArmaTech moved to Mandalorian space we had built a city sized manufacturing plant and built living spaces, markets, schools, and hospitals within the city. Corporate cities were so much better for efficiency than building manufacturing plants around inhabited areas. Construction was costly, but as it provided employment and forced the production of labor droids, everything that was used could be used in the manufacturing of goods later on. It also allowed ArmaTech to control everything. Only families with an employed adult were allowed to live in the city, only goods authorized by ArmaTech could be sold. Its police force compromised entirely of ArmaTech Security, and housing was supplied by the company. Everything was supplied by the company, and everyone in the city was employed by the company.

This city sat on the coast, cliffs to its northern section containing dry docks for ship production and had a fourth of the city dedicated to producing weapon systems, support systems, and other machinery for starships. Being bound by the gravity of the world forced the drydocks themselves to contain repulsors in order to keep the ships’ hulls off the ground and stable. Currently the numerous docking stations were filled with long arrow shaped hulls in varying stages of completion and the massive factories attached to the docks fumed with smoke and smog as they worked tirelessly to complete the first set of ships.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

I walked through the dry docks, followed by numerous members of ArmaTech Security, Design, and Engineering, each man behind me carrying a datapad and making notes of what was being said by the others and they explained the objects I was looking at, whether I needed explanation or not.

“Sir, those are the sensor jammers bought from Mandal Hypernautics that are being mounted on the side wings of the ship. They are intended to assist the Bes’Drahr in drawing attention, as suggested by the think tank.” One man said as a massive sensor dish was swung over head by a crane. Well, seeing as Mandal Hypernautics had partaken in just about every step of the design process it was only logical that they would supply one of the support systems for the ship.

Another man stepped up to point at the barrels being lifted into place, “Sir, those would be ArmaTech’s own ACS-802 Turbolaser Systems. They are being featured prominently in the design as some of the primary weapon systems.” He said as I continued through the docks at a steady pace.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

More needless information passed from one person to the next, each member trying to add pertinent data about the design of the ship. The think tank that had been convened to design the ship had featured former or current members from numerous ship developers. Mandal Hypernautics had at one point taken a strong role in the design, but eventually left the project up to me and my workers. Designers from Mon Calamari, Yag’Dhul, Yaga Minor, Kuat, and Corellia had been hired to finalize the designs proposed by ArmaTech Combat Systems. Once they had built and designed the class of ships around the Fire-Storm Isotope-5 Reactor produced by the company, they had set to work designing the weapons systems to maximize the ship’s abilities as a heavy hitter, something intended to punch above its weight class and take more punishment than it could dish out, something taken from old Mon Calamari designs. Really the ship was meant as a flying tank, to move in and punch an enemy vessel as hard as it could to draw attention of large ships away from the rest of the fleet. Not a bad concept and as it was being explained to me, it appeared as though the Think Tank had worked out fairly well.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

“In my absence from the project, what changes have been made to the design. And why.” I asked as we walked into a building and looked out at the dock containing a relatively complete ship through a transparasteel window. The dark metallic color of the ship shone in the afternoon sun, the distinct dark color of beskar unmistakable to someone currently wearing armor made of the mineral. Though the entire ship was plated in Beskar, I knew that to be a fairly large production of ships, that the majority of the hull was not compromised of the substance.

One of the engineers, the replacement for Benji Idiro who had gone missing several days ago when I relocated him, but no one outside a small select few was aware of that. “Well, the hull was refitted from its original design. We included Neutronium-agrinium chainmail in between the two layers of the hull, providing the sections of the hull with some flexibility and helping resist, piercing, Ion, and energy based weaponry, granted to a minor degree, but every bit counts was the philosophy. Compared to just hull plating it’s a slight increase in durability.” His voice was trying to hide his nervousness.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Not long ago I had been driven relatively insane due to the loss of my family and became emotionally unstable. Several high ranking members of ArmaTech Security had been critically injured or killed, and several more simply disappeared in that time. It had been a dark time in my life, a dark time that was thankfully over. I had found my family once again and been reinvigorated by their return. I had seen to their safety and now I was seeing to their future. This project was meant to secure our position in the ship building world much like the Dark Blade had put Titan Industries on the map. “Minor increases matter, so long as the end result is considerable. How thick are the beskar plates?”

The same man spoke again. “We used five centimeter thick beskar plates, but layered them on the outer hull and inner hulls. The outer layer is ten centimeters, the inner is five centimeters. We layered the outer most vertically along the grain, the second horizontally along the grain to maximize their resistance to penetrating weapons.” His voice and presence in the Force was regaining confidence.

“Good job. And there was enough beskar from our mines on Concordia and the expedition on Mandalore?”

“For this initial wave yes. I would suggest expanding the mining operations on Concordia if you want to produce anything besides these ships sir.”

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Certainly not the worst idea anyone had told me recently. Yes, I had anticipated that building a fairly large ship from Beskar would deplete my reserves and force my mining operations to halt any other projects if we wanted to produce so many of them. “That has been anticipated already. ArmaTech hasn’t made anything with Beskar besides custom orders as of yet and will probably not be doing anything else with mines besides custom orders.” I paused for a moment. “Tell me how the Firestorms have performed in testing.”

“Yes sir.” A young woman stepped up this time, standing next to the other man, the project leader for the ship. “The reactors seem to be working on par with a class larger reactor. Redirecting this power to additional weapons works and the stability of the reactor is viable, but actual meltdowns that may occur will be more… total than a safer reactor.” She said, pulling up sensor data and test data on her datapad and showing it to me. A classification larger worth of power to draw from. Not bad. Not what I had hoped from the reactors. Perhaps limited models could be fitted with additional ones or something to boost them, but that was another project.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

“Not bad. It will provide it with the punch it needs to be used the way I had it designed for. That is not to say that buyers won’t use it differently.” I said nodding. There were more questions I could ask the engineers but few that needed real insight that I couldn’t gain through reading their reports. I just didn’t like reading reports. Who did anyway? “And the designs most immediate flaws?”

The project leader spoke up again, “The most immediate flaws of the ship are its blind spot and its low speed and maneuverability compared to other ships of similar size. Its rear arc is almost completely blind and its ventral rear has little more than defensive weapons covering it. Because of its size they can be used in tandem, but they need support from other craft if they are being out maneuvered.” He paused taking a breath before continuing. “Due to the heavy hull plating it is featured with and the numerous weapons, its engines aren’t as powerful as most ships its size. It is fairly slow and doesn’t turn well. We have been comparing it to the victory II, which by comparison was one point five times as large and wasn’t considered very swift for its size either.”

 

[Laira Darkhold]

I frowned, nodding in understanding. “Those are understandable, but regrettable. I suppose no ship can be the pinnacle of everything, but I had hoped the Bes’Drahr would be close. I am satisfied that it will be one of the most durable ships in existence however. In testing how did its hull stand up to opposition?” Alright, so I felt I needed to know one last thing before I was satisfied.

The woman nodded and flicked through her datapad a moment before she began speaking. “We tested the hull layout against that of the Wyyrlock, the Imperial II, and the MC80B. When tested against those it was considered stronger, but suffered from internal spalling from turbolaser strikes more so than them. To counter the spalling we filled the middle layer of the armor with Thermal Gel and Reactive Sealant Foam to absorb additional heat and disperse it evenly across a wider area of the hull and impregnated the duranium sheets used on the outer layer of the hull with Neutronium mesh. From the latest tests it stands up to Star Destroyer armor very well.”

“Excellent work. Have the Foreman of this Dock report to me at the end of the shift for a comprehensive debriefing. I want to know what happened while I was away from the worker’s perspective.”

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Work in the Dry Docks was laborious, but hardly mind numbing. It didn’t require a lot of thought from the low level workers, it required effort and a strong arm, but not thought. Most of the parts were shipped to the dry docks with numbers on them, expressing the order they were attached to the frame and the big wigs up top handled the vast majority of ensuring the ship was laid down in the proper sequence.

First frames were constructed, of thick reinforced Duranium-beskar alloys then the bronzium layered around that to provide definition to the ship and allow the internal systems to have something to build on. That had been three months ago. Since then Clark Dermen had been working with the crews adding in the internal layout with the monstrous weapons ArmaTech had designed for the ship. A cup of cold caf sat on his desk as he studied the installation guide for the reactor that was being brought in, currently sitting under a roof in an integrity field behind the ship. Of course the reactor had to be more powerful than some town’s power grids. That seemed to be how things worked. One of the boys walked in, “Ey, boss. Stage ninety two is done, need your stamp then we can start bringing in the reactor.”

 

[Laira Darkhold]

“Aight, let me take a look over the primary power uplinks then.” Clark said as he stood up, taking the instructions with him. One hundred stages of building was intense, but it had been laid out like that to make it easy for him. Some stages took a lot longer than others, some were day projects, some were two days, and the armoring stages had been broken up into a couple while the entirety of the internal wiring had been one stage. Who comes up with this crap?

By the time Clark arrived at the ship it was lunch time. Guess I’ll be eating lunch after I check what all they have done. Electricians’ seals were on every one of the outlets with the data readings written on the exterior just like they were supposed to be, and the readings were all in the green area. The two that had been faulty or spazzy this morning had the repair records on them and were now green lighted. Everything looked good, even though it took an hour to record everything from the uplinks. Once the reactor chamber got brought over and installed these would feed power from it to the rest of the ship, minus the engines, which came next.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

“Well, everything looks good to me. Get started bringing the reactor in, maybe we can have it installed for the night crew. Boss is on site and has ordered extended shifts, so we have four hours overtime today. It will be a good weekend if we can get this finished and get the completion bonus that is rumored to be in the works boys.” Clark said, looking over the manual he carried with him.

Workers went back to their jobs, operating heavy machinery and a swarm of droids crawled throughout the ship. When in war ship building was an exponential process, but in long term wars like this one had been it was steady. A steady stream of ships with bursts of rapid developments on either side. “Why couldn’t we go back to the old days.” Clark mused to himself, directing traffic as the immense reactor was being brought into place by a fairly large repulsortrack and cranes. This one fit snuggly into the slot provided for it and then would be sealed within by a beskar plated armored citadel, with small openings for secondary reactors and auxiliaries connected to drive units.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

The reactor fitted into the ships internal structure fine, flush, which meant that so far, so good for building the darn thing, but the welding and riveting into place was taking time. As the crew still had eight hours of work left by the time they got started when they started to go on their meal break the night crew began arriving and filling in their positions. “Yeah, we should have the installation done in the morning with extended shifts doubling the amount of man hours we have going into the thing. I am pretty sure the boss wants the ship done, and done now.” Clark said as he told the night shift foreman what was going on.

As supervising foreman it was his job to keep the rest of them in line and on track, so far they had fallen a few days behind and it appeared that the reappearance of the CEO and Chairman had whipped the upper management back into shape who were now leaning upon the workers to get finished on schedule. So far there hadn’t been threats issued, but with most deadlines, some level of finish on time or your fired was implied.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

As the workers and droids flooded the area, spot welding, riveting, and arc welding the reactor housing in place a messenger droid floated up to Clark. “Supervising Foreman Clark Dermen?” It asked waiting to see Clark’s ID and have him confirm his identity before playing the message. Exasperated the man produced the data cylinder and it revealed the message from the higher ups. “This is Minerva Dorain, CEO Draco Vereen has requested you report to him at the end of your shift. Enclosed is the one use only data cylinder with access to the upper office levels.”

That wasn’t normally a good thing. Normally when the CEO asked to speak with you personally there was something you did so wrong that you needed a personal butt-kicking before being escorted off the premises. “Alright.” A few of the workers within ear shot acted like they hadn’t heard anything but the way they kept their eyes forward meant they suspected the same thing.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Clark finished up his work, which he felt had been fairly productive. They had installed the reactor housing fine and the night crew was attaching power feeds and prepping the citadel to be completed around the massive generator. Clark worked on paperwork and filing the reports properly, but he didn’t dally around. He had packed his personal belongings into a box left on his desk and was out the door within five minutes of the shift ending.

He took a repulsor craft to the main building for the sector and took the turbolift up. When the doors opened for the security point he was staring at twenty black armored Mandalorian warriors behind blastproof transparasteel windows and several auto-turrets turned to lock on to him. “Step forward and be scanned.” One of the warriors said into a transmitter. The scan was molecular and took a good five minutes. That either meant that the CEO was paranoid, or there had been attempts on his life recently. Clark really hoped for the latter of the two. Finally he was allowed into the back area and directed towards a door.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Inside, I stood facing the window with Netra, the massive cat like war droid lying behind the desk, but still easily visible. “Good evening mister Dermen. Don’t worry about your job.” I could read his mind easily. It wasn’t that he was overly weak willed, it was that he wasn’t trained in guarding his thoughts from a Master. “I asked you here to hear your thoughts on this project, how it is going and what resources you may need to expedite production.”

The man sighed heavily. “Oh thank the Force.” The man took a seat on the other side of the desk and I turned to face him. “Well, really what we need down there to keep up with production is better manuals. The ones the blokes in the logistic crew made are sectioned out into one hundred stages and not all the stages make sense to be separated out like that.”

“Alright, I will have new ones made to be issued with the next wave of ships. Anything else?”

“Yeah, we can’t do extendeds very often. Takes a lot out of us when we have two or three in a row.”

“Very well, optional one extended shift per week. How does that sound?”

“Sounds good to me.”

 

[Laira Darkhold]

“Seeing as this ship is our premier vessel and is intended to remain in service for such a long time, I wanted to streamline its production as much as possible. I have the ‘blokes’ as you say working on that process and I asked for your opinion in order to aid the workers on the ground with that idea. It is important that the streamlining makes it easier for them, not more complicated.” I said. “Have a good weekend mister Dermen. You are dismissed.”

Soon, with Druckenwell coming under the fold and with Concord Dawn, Iego, and Concordia all working on producing ships for the Silver Sanctum Coalition and the Mandalorians, as well as ArmaTech’s own fleet, the Bes’Drahr would join their fleets and hopefully be an powerful weapon against the enemies we all faced.

A beskar plated capital ship was far-fetched and given its impressive armament and powerful reactor it was hoped that the Bes’Drahr would draw attention from our enemies and strike some degree of fear in their hearts.