Stryfe’s Hidden Base...
Not Long Ago...
The Mad Mandalorian entered an elevator, canary yellow lights shown down on his crimson mantle which starkly contrasted the rusted surroundings of a once empty station. As he descended down, an Imperial shocktrooper accompanied him and remained silent as an officer addressed the issue at hand.
“My Lord, the hostages have been productive, although it has taken some...convincing. We believe however there has been some insurgency amongst them and at this stage we cannot recover from a well-executed sabotage for many weeks. If it is my Lord’s wish to begin the warpath, I suggest a personal touch to this matter.”
Sargon said nothing.
He was devoid of speech but raw emotion seemed to spill from his being like an unstable reactor. The elevator began to vibrate unnaturally, even in its age it was still quite stable, but now had befallen into an induced turbulence which made the officer quite alarmed. The shocktrooper turned his head to look upon his master for but a second, and then kept his head forward, counting the floors as they rode deep underground.
The officer likewise remained quiet, clutching a travel sized holomap projector close to her chest, only to stare at the wall as it rattled madly all the way down.
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Everything in him, down to his very soul made Sargon want to explode from the elevator as it opened its industrial sized gate and bring wanton death to hostages by the dozens, but he knew better. A massacre may reinforce the insurgency and he would drive the proverbial knife into his own chest with such animalistic actions. Making martyrs was not on the agenda either. He needed a display of power.
He needed to instill hope. Or fear...
As the Red Raider approached a large chamber, were durasteel was welded and arcs flew down from above like a rain of micro-stars, a number of guards rounded up the hostages who toiled away and were lined up in a seemingly endless single concave lines awaiting the man they knew as Darth Stryfe.
“Bow before your master!” Proclaimed the Officer, her voice echoed through the chamber and the hostages began to kneel.
But Sargon lifted his gauntlet into the air and gestured them to cease without a word.
His voice boomed incorporeally from beyond the void of his hood. “Stand.”
There was a silence that overtook the area, only the whirl of distant machines and service droids was but a backdrop to Sargon’s soliloquy.
“You come from many worlds. Some from the Republic. Some Rebels. All ripped away in violence and subjected to the cruelty of my victory. You however where taken for a reason: you are shipwrights, engineers, ordnance and various construction careers. What you are building here, alongside my Engineering Corps, are starcraft and weapons used not against the Republic. Against the Rebels. Or even the Federation. These will be used to slay my enemies from within...your enemies. Members of the fractured Empire.”
There was a look of confusion on the thousands of hostages in a makeshift auditorium for the theatre of Sargon Stryfe. His posture was welcoming yet somewhat sarcastic as he displayed his arms as a slight embrace and he continued.
“You will not leave here until my war is complete, so sabotaging my equipment may simply leave you here to rot on a lifeless desert planet...in the farthest edge of Sith Space...far, far away from everything you love. Or worse, I live. I live and seek revenge with all of you waiting down here for me...and then I will personally travel to each of your homeworlds and steal ten thousand more, for each and every one of you and make them build me another armada. Then kill them too. If you were wise, you will heed this warning and give me what I want. Then go home.”
Stryfe made a motion simply by clenching his fist, summon several troopers out from behind him to capture and carry away several individuals, those believed to be the three most radical of the lot and spoke to the crowd a final time before summoning them back to work.
“These fools will not go home...do not follow their lead.”
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Outside the Base...
Approximately Midday...
Not Long After...
Looking towards the East, Sargon saw splintered shadows begin to take shape, far away yet roosted atop towers, other buildings and stationary were the beginnings of a series of groundside turbolasers of an assortment of sizes, and the makings of his planetary defenses against invasion should the time come. Further, test flights had begun on starfighters, taking to the sky after a millennium but forged with newer technology.
But worst of all, as it shall be known, were the legions of manned modified Swoop Bikes that soon exited the various warehouses at a startling speed. A single thruster propelling them out and then up into the air for low altitude reconnaissance war-games. Blood-red, nearly black in shade, they were adorned with Sith emblems and featured compartments for blasters. Skirmishers and vandals they would be called. Hellions.
The infernal howl of his cannibalized ‘Nightbringers’ had begun.
His army was growing, but so too was his impatience for bloodshed.
Sargon turned to see a group of hostages now forced to their knees with electrified torment via troopers who listened intently on Stryfe’s words.
“We Sith wield lightsabers to mock and best the Jedi and the Force is far stronger than any machine of our creation.” Sargon lifts his arm and forms his hand into a draconic claw and summons a grounded and idle blaster from the ground telekinetically into his grasp. Pointing it skyward with a vertically bent arm, he observed the lines of the weapon for a moment. “And yet...” The Red Raider extends his arm outward and points the blaster at the center and restrained hostage. “...there is something incredibly fulfilling about this.” Instantly Sargon pulled the trigger of the blaster and fired a single bolt into the skull of the captive.
Before doing the same to the hostage’s compatriots with hollow cruelty.
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