Chapter 9 - Insurance

After a few hours of correcting them in their 'sward' play everyone, except Diederick, were on the ground and unable to move. Smirking at this scene, he turned and left the area whilst taking out his data pad and flicking through the pages on it. After a while he reached out to the force to see if there were any indigenous people to this planet; only to be surprised and discover that the planet surface was littered with humanoids with mechanical implants. "This is a development..." He thought out loud and decided to get closer.

Upon closer inspection he found that they were more like a colony of ants. The Sith decided to walk up to one of them, the drone seemed to take no notice of Diederick as he approached. It only tried to act when it saw Diederick's irises turn a mixture of bloody orange and red raising his hand to it. Unfortunately, it was too late and as soon as its eyes had locked with the Sith's it couldn't move anymore. Diederick placed his palm onto the frozen drone, they stayed like this for a few minutes before Diederick started to chuckle and then laugh as the drone slowly turned to dust and blew away on the wind. "Yes, this will do" He laughed and walked further into the nest. Their main structure seemed to be in underground caverns that went hundreds of metres deep, they didn't seem effected by the temperature/ humidity the deeper they went. The walls were reinforced with emerald and black columns that pulsated a luminescent green light. The colony seemed to be arranged around a main column, Diederick walked towards it; this didn't go unnoticed by the drones and started to get more in the Sith's way but as soon as the drones started to look at his eyes they turned to dust. Soon there was a path for him to walk to the main column. When he reached it, he held his palm to it and closed his eyes. These drones are part of a species called the Borg, they assimilate species they deem a threat and force them to become part of the collective by stripping assimilated individuals of their individuality and sharing their knowledge and experience with the rest of the drones. Diederick was impressed at the efficiency, the admiral's in the empire could only dream of this level of efficiency when commanding. When he used the force to search the first drone, he found that they all had a shared conscious that then gave them instructions on what to do and how to do it, almost as if they were droids. To Diederick, this was a gold mine that he'd accidently stumbled on. His eyes turned a deeper shade of red and pushed harder on the panel and after a few minutes all the drones stopped and looked towards the Sith.

He made a command through the force, his hand still pressed on the console. His orders came to them as if the queen had given them instruction with a blueprint of what to do. He then removed his hand and the drones started to get to work. He started to slowly walk back to his apprentice and security.

"Where were you master?" Petra asked sleepily when Diederick got back to the ship. "Just taking out an insurance policy" He smiled back and replied cryptically. Petra raised her eyebrows in suspicion which got a chuckle from the Sith "Time to play fetch again it seems" He said as he lifted another giant boulder and threw it up into the air again. Petra was instantly wide awake, jumped to her feet and held out her hands and stopped the giant rock in good time this time and passed it back to Diederick "You're definitely improving Petra" He said as he caught the rock and threw it back "I'm going to throw a couple more, I want you to hold them for as long as you can. If you can do it for more than five hours then I'll be assured that you're not going to kill yourself unknowingly and we can focus on combat skills" He instructed and threw a couple more boulders at her, neither smaller than ten meters in diameter. Petra groaned but her eyes gave away the hints that she was beginning of controlling her powers. She was naive but powerful; maybe it was because the force was easier or more natural for her to access because she was from this galaxy. She didn't seem to be limited in her ability to command it to her will unlike Diederick that needed to concentrate to use his abilities in this galaxy. Diederick mused over this thought as he observed Petra struggle to keep all the boulders in place. Meanwhile Cross and Sharp approached Diederick "Darth, we've just been in touch with Voyager." Cross reported "They've had another run in with the Kazon and are getting repairs at a nearby Talaxian trading station. They've had some strange reports in this area of space with robotic humanoid abducting people so will be in the solar system in the next few days after their repairs are complete." Sharp finished. Diederick's eyebrows raised in surprise "OK, thanks for the update" they must have been referring to the Borg that's on this planet. He remembered that Starfleet had a couple of running with the Borg in the past and these are the race that keep most Captains and Admirals awake at night when travelling amongst the stars. Voyager hopefully won't find them before his plan was complete. It would be very inconvenient if he had to have a confrontation with them.

The next few days were repetition of him throwing boulders at Petra and forcing Sharp and Cross to hit each other with large sticks. By the end of the week Petra could hold three boulders above her head for three hours before her concentration would waver and they would come crashing down. Cross and Sharp's sparing had some finesse to their flailing and Diederick had finished reading whatever it was on the data pad. On this day after the training sessions Diederick had noticed that the Borg drones were being a little more active than usual "Seems they're going to be moving on soon" Diederick thought as he looked over the cliff edge towards the horizon.

"SHIT SHIT" The two Starfleet officers screamed in unison. Diederick then heard phaser fire coming from the campsite so walked back to find Cross and Sharp firing on one of the Borg Drones that was walking towards the camp. The drone had adapted to the phasers already, so it ignored them and continued its way as if they weren't there. When it saw Diederick walking back into the camp and walked over to him and held out its hand that held a black card. Receiving the card Diederick then put his hand on the drone and after a few moments the Drone abruptly turned and walked away. Petra walked over to him and started questioning "What was that about master?"

"My insurance policy just came through" Diederick smiled whilst examining the black card "Good to see you're not as skittish around this sort of thing , go back to training" Petra knew she wasn't going to get anything else out of the man so rolled her eyes and went back to her rocks. The two Starfleet officers walked over and asked the same "You know that was one of the deadliest races that we know of! What's your relationship with them?" Sharp asked accusedly.

"Relationship?" Diederick asked back mockingly "None, they're droids that have ideas greater than their station. It's none of your business what I used them for." They looked at each other for a while but as time passed Sharp got paler and paler "I'd stop looking at my eyes if I were you Sharp" The Sith mocked as the officer fell, face first, to the ground. Cross ran over to pick Sharp up and took him away to the Wave runner to rest. Diederick smirked and then walked away from camp again.

After a couple of hours walking, he found himself at the foot of the mountain that they were camped at. Looking up he could see Petra's oversized rocks floating at the top. Chuckling to himself he proceeded through the valley to a clearing where he pulled out the black card and pressed the middle of it. After waiting for a few moments, the ground started to rumble as an ink black ship landed in front of him. It was large and hawk shaped vessel with two large impulse engines at the rear. What looked like red plasma that outlined the engines and the top half of the ship only stopping at the end of the cannons that were at the tips of the wings giving it a distinctive aggressive and stealthy look. A landing ramp extended to the ground that stopped at Diederick's feet, he marvelled as the efficiency of the borg as he didn't expect them to finish this design in such a short time. He walked up the ramp and stepped into the airlock, the door closed behind him and the air pressurised and then the other side of the airlock then turned green and the door opened. He was then greeted by a drone, but unlike the usual borg drones this one didn't look like a humanoid mass of electronics, this one looked like a Sith imperial officer, but the cybernetic eyes and pale skin colour gave it away. "Hello my lord. I am one of one, physical representation of this starship. Please state the name of this ship." One stated and bowed to the Sith. "This ship will be called the Phantom." Diederick replied then commanded "Give me a tour"

"Certainly" One replied and turned and entered the ship proper. The ship was very spacious, once out of the airlock they were in a hallway where one way led to the engineering bay and cargo areas whilst the other direction led to the main living and operations areas. At the back of the ship in the main engineering bay he could see that there was a warp core that was housed under a reinforced glass floor laid length ways so in the event of a warp malfunction the core could be ejected via the stern of the ship. One explained that thanks to the borg engineering expertise and the blueprint from the Sith, the ship can achieve a comfortable cruising speed of warp 7 and could exceed warp altogether and enter quantum slipstream and maintain this for a maximum of two hours before needing new hull plates. The next room along is where the armoury was, loaded out all different weapons, some resembled blaster pistols others resembled Voyager's Phaser rifles and there were a mixture of the two styles but the main items on show were the Sith Battle armour and hung on each side of the armour were two lightsabres. When Diederick gave the blueprints, he made sure that the designs for this last part was purged soon after. This was Petra's gift if she chose to stay with him when she graduated from time bomb to his apprentice, he never really thought that he'd see the day that he would have an apprentice of his own. Looking back to his time on Korriban and when he was an apprentice, he was excited to see how far Petra could go, would she try to kill him in the future? With her connection to the force he'd have to be on his toes if it came to it.

Smiling to One he gestured for it to continue. Walking into the cargo bay the Sith saw that the room was big enough to supply them with food and other essentials for at least six months at a time, Diederick did consider installing food replicators but couldn't work out how they made food from normal matter so decided to go with what he knew best and he was a decent enough cook anyway. Moving towards the front of the ship they entered a large living area, a large entertainment table was at the centre of the room with a bar and kitchen that lined one side of the ship. At the other side were rooms that led to a meeting room, sick bay with bacta tank, crew quarters and astronomical observations laboratory. Walking forward to another hallway there were three doors, labels on the doors were Bridge, Captain and Executive Officer. Looking in his room Diederick saw a large bed, computer terminal, large walk-in wardrobe and a en suite, the XO's room was similarly set out with panoramic views outside. Finally, at the front of ship was the bridge, the view out was between the upper armaments and the dorsal sides of the ship, protecting it from fire from other ships on most sides. Screens plastered the walls which had various ship information the room itself was divided into quadrants, front left had helm and tactical controls. Front right had failover helm controls and operations, rear left and right controls had science stations and operations exclusively. "It's a fine ship One" Diederick evaluated "I think this will work out well for the mission going forward. What are the weapons like?" He asked.

"On the wings there are two anti-proton cannons with an arc of one hundred and eighty degrees, they can operate independent of each other. At the stern of the ship there is two tetryon torpedo silos. The bow has one." One reported

"Excellent" Diederick replied with a malicious smile on his face "I'll be going back to the base camp, Voyager is going to be in the system shortly. Take off and keep hidden until I call again. I've got a few things left to do on Voyager before I can leave. There's a good chance it will be during a fire fight so come in hot and destroy all enemy ships in the area before coming to get me." He ordered the drone. One nodded his head and Diederick then left the ship to start walking back to camp. He turned back to see this ship take off and almost silently leave the planet. Diederick chuckled darkly and made his way back to camp.