Myrmidons in the Moonlight

[Laira Darkhold]

The shipyard above Iego was one of the first facilities ArmaTech had ever built, and was the oldest existing one we had put together. Being the oldest one we had relied on the local abandoned and shipwrecked populace of tribesmen to act as the workforce and while it wasn't required for them to do so, we had to make it desirable at the time and had built the first of several Corporate Cities here. Within the boundaries of the city ArmaTech owned or operated everything, event he grocery stores, police force, and housing. If you did not work, you did not live in the city. After a time, once we had grown we increased the size of the city and built this small atmospheric shipyard. Small by comparison to the ones around Mon Calamari, Kuat, or Bilbringi, but still large enough to produce the ships we had in the design phase.

Chiasa had loaned me one of her scientists, as the current issue we were dealing with was the lack of a sufficient hyperdrive. The Silver Jedi Order, now the Silver Sanctum Coalition had requested fast, sleek, patrol ships be built for them, and so, the Myrmidon had been designed. On paper the design was exactly what I had envisioned. In reality we were running into the issues that the advanced Hyperdrive I had demanded was having issues. First the engineers were having trouble making it fit, second overall, we were having production issues with the system. That was why I had chosen Iego, re-purposing a section of the city to prepare to produce the hyperdrives for the Myrmidon-class.

[member="Chiasa Kritivaas"]
[member="Gilbert Skolnick"]

 

[Laira Darkhold]

The planet of one thousand moons provided excellent shipyards. Raw materials were exceptionally easy to come by, labor was relatively cheap, and the Silver Sanctum provided a great deal of protection to the facility, since at its heart it was a relief effort offering employment, medicine, and shelter for those that sought it, and despite being tribesmen and fairly primitive after having been shipwrecked on the planet many wished to leave or return to a more modern style of living rather than living in makeshift homes and such. Despite that, I had not personally traveled to Iego to oversee an improvement in their standard of living. If anything that was something for someone lower on the corporate ladder to look into if there were complaints and disruption of the work force. No, I was here to oversee an adjustment in design and production of the Myrmidon-class Frigate.

A foreman walked up to me aboard the small space station that hung in the atmosphere. "Sir, most of the engineers have arrived, but there hasn't been any word from the Red Ravens yet. I would assume they are stealing something on the way here." He said with a soft chuckle. It was quite possible. Chiasa was always up to something mischievious even if she was an angel at heart. "That's fine, have them start the meeting. I will be down shortly once I finish crossing my t's and dotting my i's." I told the man turning my attention back to the small amount of paperwork I had to finish in order to re-purpose a sector of the city for this project.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

The hassle of paperwork was boring and time consuming and was next to useless. The only benefit of documenting this stuff was it made it easy to keep track of what of ArmaTech's resources I had diverted to what projects, what resources I had floating, and what resources I couldn't mess with. Zreame always had a portion of the company siphoned off to do something or another and kept a Research and Development team well budgeted, even by my standards doing I don't know what. But even that could be easily looked into and discovered, I just didn't see millions going missing so I didn't bother. Finishing up the requisition order for the Iego Corporate City Sector Reassignment took some time, maybe ten minutes to read through and sign on the appropriate lines, and even then I could foresee expanding the number of facilities following rolling the line out into production.

Once finished I stood up and walked down the hallway towards the conference room. It would take a few days to reassign all the equipment and assets in the city sector to the manufacturing of hyperdrives and the slightly faster hyperdrives weren't incredibly rare and the designs weren't incredibly difficult to obtain, they just needed to be tweaked to be the appropriate size and power consumption in order to properly utilize them. Shortly after I arrived at the conference room and a secretary opened the door as I approached. Inside there were five or six department heads, all engineers of different types preparing to explain the situation or problem to me and expect me to say something helpful or useful in having the issues fixed, when in reality I would just tell them to fix it. "Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. Make yourselves comfortable and get started when ever you feel like." I said taking a seat at the head of the table.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

The first department head went on about how the advanced hyperdrives took up more space than a standard rated 1.0 hyperdrive but that by his calculation the power consumption wouldn't be a problem for a ship the size of the Myrmidon with the dual Solar Ionization Reactors removing that inherent weakness of the idea. The second man had a similar observation but hadn't come up with a plan of action to solve the problem. The third department head offered a solution, the removal of the citadel structure and reducing the interior armor. He had a decent layout of the remodeled design, but fending off boarding actions and providing security to the vital systems had been one of the key implementations and I would prefer reducing the Hyperdrive rating to cutting out that whole feature of the design. "No, we won't be slashing something as vital as the Citadel, however I am open to other suggestions. Perhaps streamlining hyperdrive is more reasonable." I said, trying to direct them in the direction I wanted.

They seemed to get the idea and began brainstorming how to reduce the size or the space consumed by the hyperdrive system that the Myrmidon was intended to carry. Still no word from the Red Ravens, which made me a little sad. I had sent for Chiasa because this project would take some time and most of it would be down time, and she had claimed to have a decent scientist of engineer on her staff that she had thought could help. Perhaps they would arrive on Iego soon, despite the tardiness, I couldn't be mad with her even if I wanted to.

 

[Chiasa Kritivaas]

For once, for once Draco had actually come to her for assistance instead of the other way around. And it was actually in a field that she had resources and experience in! Ship building. Hyperdrives in particular. Chiasa had spent months and millions on a hyperdrive to fit her own designs and purposes, and while that one wasn't quite ready to be rolled out yet, a truly ungodly amount of progress had been made in the field. Faster, smaller, more efficient and above all hardier. It wasn't what she needed yet, but it might be what Draco needed.

So when he'd called she'd informed Gilbert he was going on a consultation field trip, swung by to pick him up and headed for Draco. The trip was a decent length, made longer by Gilberts unfortunate tendency to illness in space, the man was truly pathetic, and the territory was.. Not unfriendly, but not exactly friendly either, so she'd taken an Exceeder and stayed cloaked. Still, in due time they arrived at Iego. a bit later than expected, but not significantly given all the things that could go wrong during interstellar travel.

Obviously Draco had told his staff to expect her, since immediately after comming in her arrival, docking permission was granted. Even as she steered the craft in she reached out through the force to find and touch Draco.

Partially to let him know she'd arrived, partially to find precisely where in the facility he was, and largely because she liked being connected to him, found it soothing and comforting. Here was her husband. Her Viyi'ee. Her Drahr. Here was the one man in the galaxy she could absolutely depend upon.

 

[Gilbert Skolnick]

"Uuuh.."

Gilbert groaned, still looking rather pale and sweaty, clutching his datapads against his chest. When he flew Billy he was generally doped to the gills and made sure he took the easiest, smoothest routes possibly. That woman flew like a maniac. He was pretty sure he'd seen some dinners he'd eaten last year make an appearance in the 'fresher.

She shot him a look over her shoulder as they disembarked, her heels clicking away as she moved off, all business, leaving him to catch up. Normally he might have enjoyed the view as he followed her, but between the terror he held the Crime Lord in and how miserable he was feeling he barely noticed anything as he followed after her.

He raised his eyes from the floor, the blessedly solid, unweaving, unvibrating floor as they entered some sort of conference room or something? There were a bunch of people he identified as probable colleagues and some massive mountain of a man, it felt like a meeting they'd just intruded upon anyway.

[member="Draco Vereen"]

 

[Laira Darkhold]

I felt the familiar presence of Chiasa aboard the ship as she reached out through the Force and returned a feeling of gladness and joy at her presence here. Part of me wanted to drop everything about this and run off with her into space. But, unfortunately, if I was going to provide anything for her I needed to have a hand in ArmaTech's major projects, and ensuring that our first ship was sent into production without a hitch was the first thing that needed to be handled. Then perhaps I could run off with her later tonight after the engineers and scientists were given their duties and told what they needed to do. I could feel another presence with her, and assumed that was her scientist or whatever he was for her. I couldn't care less who or what he was, so long as he didn't touch my Starbird. Before they entered I motioned to the other men and women in the room to be quiet and waited for her and the being with her to enter.

When she did I let the Force flow with my happiness at seeing her and stood up, smiling to greet her. A quick hug and kiss on her cheek was enough for right now, in front of these others. "Its good to see you again, Chiasa." I said, fixated on her shinning yellow eyes for a moment before registering the man behind her before returning my attention to her. "I guess he is your science officer?" I asked rather rhetorically seeing as I couldn't see why she would have brought someone else. "If you can tell, we are having trouble reducing the size and power consumption of the hyperdrive unit, and keeping the unit cheap enough to be mass produced. Any suggestions would be most appreciated." I lead Chiasa to the chair beside mine and took a seat, keeping my hand attached to hers. Her presence and touch was calming and I felt as though I needed it right now.

[member="Gilbert Skolnick"] [member="Chiasa Kritivaas"]

 

[Chiasa Kritivaas]

"And you."

The words were simple enough, the quick hug and returned kiss on the cheek chaste enough that they could have been no more than business associates. The dancing yellow eyes and the joy and love being poured through the Force told another story. She followed where he lead willingly enough, more than happy to keep her hand in his as they sat. As he did when he was on her home turf, so she followed his cues here for what was appropriate and allowable.

"This,"

She nodded once at Gilbert.

"is Gilbert Skolnick. Contractor for the most part. He's been working on a rather.. involved project for me involving hyperdrive.. advancement. While that project is not yet finished, many of the unintentional or superfluous discoveries and technologies could likely be of use in your project."

"The short answer to this particular problem however, is Isotope-5."

 

[Gilbert Skolnick]

"Of uh, of course for most shipyards, using any Isotope-5 would keep it from being cheap in any sense of the word."

Gilbert laughed nervously at those in attendance, running a hand through his hair, dishevelling it further.

"But since uh, since price is decided by supply and demand, and ArmaTech is the only company with permission from the Ravens to mine and process Isotope-5, you can uh, you can actually make the units for a very reasonable price. And then charge whatever you like for them."

He pushed his glasses back up his nose.

"As an example gentlemen, a single microgram can power a datapad for a century. I'm going to let that sink in. Now obviously a hyperdrive takes significantly more energy than a datapad, but still, imagine how little is actually needed. This makes it possible using the resources you've already gathered, plus this fact along significantly reduces the size necessary for a hyperdrive. When you need so little to power it, your sizing can be scaled down accordingly."

He grinned self self-effacing.

"Now uh, now as much as I've hypothesized that it's possible to make a hyperdrive so small you could actually have one as a person unit, powering ships not much bigger than an advanced EVA, we're not quite there yet, but to reduce the sizing enough for what you gentlemen seem to have in mind? Childs play."

He jerked suddenly, before adding hurriedly.

"No offense meant of course. If you worked for any other company in the galaxy this wouldn't be an option, so of course it's not surprising you hadn't thought of it yourself."

[member="Draco Vereen"]

 

[Laira Darkhold]

[member="Gilbert Skolnick"] [member="Chiasa Kritivaas"]

Part of me was shy about showing too much affection for Chiasa in public. Not because I was ashamed, but because I wasn't excited about everyone knowing my personal relationship with her, and I knew she had thus far been relatively discrete about our relationship, and so I had decided to be discrete as well. I let Gilbert speak, mainly because he was the expert and that was the whole reason she had brought me too him. "We have been strip mining half a continent for the substance for a while, and we have begun producing Isotope-5 in a laboratory after sharing research with the Silver Jedi Order, so yes, we have a great access to the substance." I said calmly adjusting my fingers to interlock them with Chiasa's.

I paused for a moment thinking about everything else that was going on with ArmaTech right now. "But the amount would need to be very small, and it couldn't be the only fusion generator in the hyperdrive or we would have to divert resources from the Firestorm project. That said it is an excellent idea, and one we can implement." The other engineers in the room began jotting notes down making comments among themselves as I spoke. "Make the thing a dual reactor drive using a pair of miniature reactors. One standard Hypermatter fusion generator, the other a very small Isotope-5 reactor and make the other alterations to the drive unit we discussed earlier. Once the design is ready, send it to the production facitlity on the ground. I have already ordered a sector of the city reassigned to producing the hyperdrives for the Myrmidon."

I waited for a moment while the other engineers left the conference room before directing my attention to Chiasa. "Would you like to the Myrmidon, my love? They have one in the dry docks waiting."

 

[Gilbert Skolnick]

Gilbert was mildly miffed. These were scientific advancements the likes of which most people could only dream of attaching their name to a paper on as a fact checker or editor. He was basically one of the foremost experts in this field. There should be cheering, tears should be shed, maybe confetti could descend.

Instead it became pretty clear by the way the engineers who worked here scurried off and the roid-mountains use of the term 'my Love', that meeting and science time was done and that was that.

It wasn't like anyone had even thought to supply him with a blueprint of the ship in question, all he had were his own notes which were for an entirely different project. Firestorm blahblah whatever. How was he supposed to know and make allowances for these things? If he'd been given the proper resources he probably could have roughed something up on the ride over, even with his head in the 'fresher most of the ride.

These people did not understand genius.

With a sniff he rose, he might as well follow the ArmaTech scientists and engineers, they could fill him in and he could get more specific and technical with his recommends, as well as sharing some of the specific technical details of the work he'd already completed.

 

[Chiasa Kritivaas]

When even Gilbert had cleared off, she made a slight mental note to collect him before she left, or at least arrange for one of Dracos lot to ferry him home, her full attention switched to Draco.

"I would love to. You know how I like new toys."

She responded with a grin. She'd helped him test some stealth fighters recently, and between the speed and responsiveness, not to mention what had been waiting at the landing site, she was more than happy to see what he'd made now. He had a talent for combing old standards in new ways, or adding a feature that hadn't been thought of and suddenly the entire game was changed.

She rose, fingers still laced with his.

"Show me what you've made Viyi'ee."

[member="Draco Vereen"]

 

[Laira Darkhold]

I smiled at the striped orange Twi'lek beside me. I enjoyed showing these things off to her, even if there wasn't anything special about them in the long run. Other than being capable of Atmospheric and Aquatic combat they weren't anything special compared to any other Frigate that had been produced by any other company. The Myrmidon was just what it was supposed to be. A simple ship with a lot of utility allowing its buyers to use it as a support ship in any number of environment or roles. The only role it failed miserably at was that of a carrier seeing as so much of its space was devoted to armor plating and generator systems. Despite all this, the Myrmidon was an advancement in technology to a small degree. The faster, more powerful hyperdrive allowed the ship to be an excellent patrol ship for the Techno Union or the Silver Sanctum Coalition. It could cover more ground and patrol a greater number of systems faster than its competition.

Furthermore ArmaTech had spent a great deal of time developing the hull of the ship, and had basically diverted the whole of the design staff to finalizing a working multi-layer hull that we could use aboard other ships that offered a great deal of protection. In fact the hull of the ship was arguably the greatest achievement we had made, including a number of layers including a chainmail like mesh and several different metals to make the hull one of the most resilient of its class. This was the main reason we had simply modified the armor and added to it when designing the much larger, much more powerful Bes'Drahr. Overall, the Myrmidon was only slightly more advanced than most other frigates, but it was true to ArmaTech's philosophy of longevity and utility above all else.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

I stood to lead Chiasa off the atmospheric station on Iego, taking her a different way than the engineers had taken in order to gain a modicum of privacy on the way out. It was a leisurely stroll to the small shuttle that would take us down to the dry docks that existed planet-side at the edge of the city sized series of factories ArmaTech maintained on Iego. Besides the Silver Jedi, ArmaTech was probably the only other organization with any claim to the planet, and arguably ArmaTech controlled more of the planet's populace than they did through employment in a corporate city. "Of course Mesh'ika. I know you like seeing new things, and I know you take an interest in my company."

Once aboard the shuttle and gifted with relative privacy I kissed her more passionately than before. I wasn't hiding my relationship, but I preferred that only she saw the passion, the true Draco Vereen, so that it remained something special, something only she had, that everyone else could only guess at. "I missed you. I am glad you could come and inspect the ship with me, even if it is mostly business." I said, looking out the view port at the approaching ground. The northern edge of the city was devoted to the production of ships now, a more recent addition to the complex, and several dry docks sat with hulls of various levels of completion within them, small lights flickering as workers and labor droids crawled over them.

[member="Chiasa Kritivaas"]

 

[Chiasa Kritivaas]

"I am interested in all of the things you do."

Was her reply with a small one shouldered shrug as they moved through the facility to the shuttle that would be their transportation to see the Myrmidon. It was true too. As a general rule her own life kept her more than busy enough, but she wanted to be involved in what he was doing, to show an interest, to help, to care, because she loved him. Since a large slice of his time and life was dedicated to his company, she took an interest in his company.

When they'd boarded the shuttle and he pulled her close and kissed her more in the manner to which she'd become accustomed, she'd melted against him, as she always did, kissing him back with a fire that rivalled his own. Of course there wasn't time for more, and this was an actual business trip for once, as opposed to an outing with slight business flavour, but the trick to happiness was likely to steal these small moments whenever you could.

"I missed you too, and of course I came, you called. Business with you is still pleasure Viyi'ee."

For her, that was the long and short of it. When he needed her, even if it was only because he wanted time, she would be there. She'd decided that while she could not give him as much of her time and dedication as she would like, her small family would always be her top priority.

[member="Draco Vereen"]