Dark Lord: Bride of Vader

Chapter 17: Recalibrations - Part 1

I do not own any Star Wars and DC characters and ideas represented in this work.

"What if dreams came true, and you could be who you wanted to be, and you could do what you wanted to do, and you could help who you wanted to help. What if dreams came true? And the world opened up, and YOU were never ever afraid. What if dreams came true? But dreams do come true. Don't they?" - Anakin Skywalker

​Within the depths of Vader's castle, or Thusla's Doom called by the Almeracians who know of it, Darth Vader observed the body of the barely living Pathavim Seth-Ottarak bob up and down in thick medical gel. In one of the dungeon cells of the castle, was a glass tube that contained the would-be intergalactic guardian with monitoring equipment hooked to the tube on either side.

Outside of the sloshing, bubbling glow of the tube, Vader commented, "I will consider you as a gift from your Oan masters and will gladly pay them back in kind..."

During the onslaught on Garnet, Vader and Maxima performed onto the Green Lantern, with his telekinesis throwing him around like a ragdoll and Maxima's strength pounding him to a pulp. Green Lantern Ottarak had received critical wounds that put him on the edge of leaving this mortal world.

To test how far they've come, Vader wanted to keep the lantern alive as a mock trial to see if his body, in a rough shape, could be repaired if given the circumstances. The Lantern was rushed to the surgical chamber deep within Vader's fortress. There, under the glow of sterile light, 11-4E, Gunther, and a cadre of medical droids began an emergency procedure. The operation stretched on for three relentless days and nights, a grueling orchestration of machines, scalpels, and precision.

Gunther, for his part, gave silent thanks to the legacy of his people's genetic self-modifications—removing the burden of sleep from their kind. Without it, Vader would have surely driven the Dominator to remain awake by sheer will of command alone.

Before the surgeons began their work, Vader sought his own test. He would see whether his will could compel the Lantern's midichlorians to mend flesh—not the Lantern's, but his own broken form.

Once, such an effort had yielded nothing. In the earliest meditations, even when practiced on lesser subjects, he could grasp at nothing. But now, progress had come. He could feel them. Within the Lantern's body, the midichlorians stirred, subtle and innumerable. The sensation was strange—like submerging a hand into a vessel of water, grains of sand drifting and swirling all around. He could touch them, feel their ceaseless movement.

Command, however, remained beyond him. They did not yet bend. Still, this was no failure—it was proof of ascent. For the first time, the Sith Lord knew he stood at the threshold of mastery. It was a beginning.

After that first attempt, Vader, with Darth Angelicus as his trainee, performed esoteric Sith sorcery techniques and spells designed to keep the Lantern from crossing worlds. It was successful, if not faintly. Then, the true work began.

Vader, from time to time, watched as 11-4E and Gunther did surgery on the Lantern. The results were presently floating in the tank before Vader.

The majority of his organs in his torso were damaged; they were all replaced or were added on by cybernetics. The front end of the spindly rib cage was taken out to accommodate clearance for the surgery and the implants being put in. His two-chambered heart was kept intact, though it had a heartbeat regulator to help its function. His intestines were lined by modules dedicated to breaking down the nutrients and recycling waste coming in and out of his body.

The arm that was ripped off was kept in a stasis field just by the corner, and the shoulder that held it was sewn shut. The gills on the sides of his face had to be removed, and in their place were artificial gills that were grilled-looking devices that opened and closed for air intake. Like Vader's own life support control box fixed to his chest, Pathavim had one installed, for the same purpose, on his upper chest. A large tube for nutrient intake was hosed down into Pathavim's open jaw.

Because of the near-death ordeal and the brutal shock his body had endured, Pathavim now lingered in a coma—one that could be treated, if Vader willed it. But he did not. The alien's eyes had rolled back beneath their lids, his slack features twisted into a mask of silent torment, as though even unconsciousness could not spare him from agony.

Vader found it almost amusing—poetic, even—that an aquatic being such as Pathavim Seth-Ottarak was now confined to an aquarium-like existence for the foreseeable future. Though stripped of any ability to interact with the outside world, his suffering was not suspended; that didn't mean his torment, by Vader's hands, was to be put on hold.

Clinging to the Lantern's scaled back like a parasite, one of Vader's Red Mercies had fastened itself to Pathavim, condemning him to an endless, inescapable slumber of nightmares and terror-dreams. Its red, serpentine arms coiled tight across his body, locking him in a prison that was insurmountable. Through the telepathic tether he alone shared with the creature, Vader could sense every fractured image, every wave of anguish, every cruelty the Red Mercy inflicted upon Pathavim Seth-Ottarak.

In one dream, Pathavim's oceanic homeworld writhed in agony as a fleet of Star Destroyers boiled its seas to steam. In another, he was forced to watch helplessly as his family fell beneath the sweep of Vader's blood-red blade, their cries drowned in silence as the Dark Lord butchered them to pieces.

Vader himself took no joy in such torment—not in the way Sidious had reveled in the suffering of others. But there was a grim satisfaction to be found here. The Green Lantern was broken, humbled, and in Vader's mind, he would remain that way forever. Perhaps he could deliver death to the Green Lantern, but having the intergalactic peacekeeper to stay alive served another purpose to Vader's plans.

Torture through fabricated nightmares was not the Red Mercy's only purpose. Bound to Vader through a telepathic link, the Sith-altered parasite siphoned memories as effortlessly as a sponge drew in water. Every secret Pathavim Seth-Ottarak had ever known bled into Vader's mind, delivered without filter or mercy. Through Pathavim, the well-kept secrets of the Oans were now Vader's.

The precise location of Oa, the sciencells and their most dangerous prisoners, the mechanics of the power rings, and the emotional spectrum that fueled them. Codes of high-level security areas, training regimens, and combat doctrines with and without the ring. The location of the Central Power Battery itself. Even the names and identities of the Corps' most venerated champions—Kilowog, Katma Tui, John Stewart, Tomar Re, Kyle Rayner, Laira Omoto. All of this, Vader absorbed—savoring the Lantern's memories as though they were a dark delicacy laid before him.

But above all, Vader discovered their greatest weakness. A revelation so startling in its absurdity that, for a fleeting moment, even he felt disbelief. It has convinced Vader that the notion that the Power Rings were "The most powerful weapons in the known universe" was nothing but a propagated deceit made by the Oans so that any race would have second thoughts of direct engagement with them.

If the Force could not unmake the Corps, then their own inherent weakness surely would.

It was the pivot point of a war not yet declared: the Sith Lord's coming campaign against the Green Lantern Corps and their Oan masters. His mastery of the Force, married to their stolen secrets, would seal their fate.

The Red Mercy had presented him this bounty as effortlessly as a domesticated beast laying a kill at its master's feet. And Vader, with cold acceptance, prepared to use the gift.

It was a gift that Darth Vader will surely appreciate and utilize to the fullest.

The Dark Lord of the Sith moved out of the dungeon cell and into the dark corridor. Pathavim's cell was located within the lowest reaches of Vader's castle. Pathavim himself wasn't the only prisoner or test subject that had the misfortune of being Vader's experiments.

In the long hallway, the dungeon had multiple doors on either side, parallel to each other. One, closed cell contained the wingless Thanagarian criminal, Byth Rok. The other contains the Krenon Prince, De'Cine. Both have endured torturous visions from the Red Mercies on them, and Vader has no intention to undo so, especially with De'Cine.

Son of the rotund and gluttonous matriarch of the Krenon Empire, Queen Tech'tra, Crown Prince De'Cine was the unsavory and arrogant child often produced by decadent aristocracy that ruled worlds.

Before Maxima's marriage to Vader, De'Cine was one of the suitors who attempted to court Maxima by tests of strength and failed. Unknown to Maxima, Sazu was stupid enough to be manipulated by De'Cine in a sort of coup. Stopped by Maxima and, at the time, her potential mate, who was a Kryptonian, De'Cine, was thrown in prison with Sazu, mostly forgiven

If it weren't for Sazu's usefulness in many forms of governmental management, she herself would be in De'Cine's position now. Regardless, the imprisonment of their crown prince had led Queen Tech'tra and the Krenon Empire to become belligerent toward the former Almeracian government. But with Almerac being a much larger state, no open conflict was introduced.

Some years later, when Vader had proclaimed his Empire at this corner of the Galaxy and after multiple pirate worlds were captured like Rimbor, the Krenon Empire was the first interstellar nation that was conquered by Imperial forces that wasn't a criminal or slaver entity. It was more or less a 'test run' to see how effective Vader's forces can deal with a competent and uniformed force.

As for the fate of Tech'tra, Vader was mercifully lenient at first. But the fat monarch believed her cybernetics, that Krenons ever so hold dear in their culture, could be her saving grace and kill Vader on the spot. It didn't, and Vader ended her life with the very same cybernetics she thought would save her. She fell into an agonizing death with her inner artificial organs and limbs killing her.

Vader walked through the dark hallways that were the bottom levels of his jungle castle. Servants and Stormtroopers dared not enter these shadowy halls of the basement. Due to his orders and how they viewed that part of the castle being 'haunted', and rightfully so, Vader had security droids patrol and maintain the lower levels of the fortress, more so than they already had.

The personal Stormtrooper unit, commanded by Marshal Commander Radek, had grown considerably due to the upcoming security needs of the future. It had been upsized from a battalion to a full regiment.

Unlike Maxima's Imperial Guard and the Imperial Shocktroopers that mainly guard her and Sazu, Vader's Stormtroopers, the 'Emperor's Fist' as they call themselves now, do not inherit from noble and aristocratic families. Almeracians don't even take up all of its rosters.

From Almeracians in all corners of their homeworlds, to ex-slaves Korugarans and Talokites who have chosen to repay their freedom from slavery in the form of service. Rannian immigrants who have left their home system due to their race's infertile crisis and other races that have passed the Stormtrooper's corps humanoid requirements, as well as the Regiment's high-demand physical conditions well above the Corps' standards.

The Emperor's Fist was a sort of microcosm of the New Order Vader had envisioned. It was not a lone race that bears responsibility, but rather multiple races. And instead of the so-called 'enlightened' elite of the noble classes, it was common folk that decided to put destiny into their own hands and establish order in a chaotic galaxy. Led by Vader, of course.

A turbo-lift had taken Vader to an upper level of the castle where he regularly resided, excluding his personal chambers. The floors above were where most of the staff, Maxima's servant girls, Vader's military liaisons, and Stormtrooper guards were stationed. It was seldom that any of them came to this floor unless for a certain purpose or cause through Vader or Radek.

The lift shuddered to a halt, its doors parting to reveal a corridor far broader than the dungeon passageways below. Vader stepped out, his stride measured and spectral, like a phantom stalking the silent halls of a forsaken fortress. He paused midway, turning his masked gaze left, then right. Twin doors faced him on either side—yet he knew one chamber beyond them carried a weight of far greater consequence than the other.

Turning left, Vader approached the security sensor. It recognized his signature instantly, and the heavy doors slid aside to reveal a vast laboratory and workshop—the chamber he frequented most. Some might call it a sanctuary, a refuge where he could lose himself in the discipline of machinery. Perhaps, in a way, it was. An echo of what Anakin Skywalker once found in the comfort of engines and circuits.

Here, there was calm. The act of repairing or creating machines gave him a semblance of peace. Unlike the volatile nature of organics, droids never schemed or betrayed, never conspired or lied. So long as they were maintained and their programming upheld, they were loyal. They obeyed without question, without hesitation—never burdening him with doubts or opinions unless their processors were built to.

In short, droids and machines can be easily repaired and are otherwise content with their standing. Unlike living beings that meddle and sabotage the affairs of their rulers, who know what's best for them.

The doors closed behind him. In the middle of the workshop was a holo-projector table where many designs from his own galaxy, Imperial or not, were created and modified. Next to it was a workbench with neatly arranged tools, cutters, wielders, soldering kits, and other equipment needed to work on droid brains and mechanical devices.

Another section of the workshop had separate tables of droids, half, partially, or fully made. One was a reconstructed Super Battle Droid used by the Confederacy of Independent Systems.

Next to the SBD was a three-meter-tall Class-4 Purge Trooper Battle droid. It stood in attention, waiting for its eventual activation. The Trooper droid was a monster of a machine; if the sheer size didn't strike fear into its foes, then its arsenal would included the rocket launcher on its right shoulder, an energy blade on its left hand, and blaster cannons.