Darksaber (superweapon)

"Maybe we don't need to sabotage the weapon after all. This whole thing is a disaster waiting to happen."

- Crix Madine, on the Darksaber

The Darksaber was a superweapon built by the Hutts, primarily Durga Besadii Tai, while the New Republic was in power. Durga dreamed of constructing a weapon powerful enough to allow him, and through him, the Hutts, to rule the galaxy.

Description
The Darksaber was essentially a stripped-down version of the Death Star battlestation and consisted of a cylindrical spaceframe built around a superlaser. Based on a set of blueprints that Durga stole from the former Imperial Palace on Coruscant, the new design dispensed with the hangar facilities, living quarters, turbolaser emplacements, and other features which had occupied the spherical portion of the Death Stars. Durga was only interested in the main weapon, although the cylindrical body still had space to house several hundred Hutts.

Viewing a hologram of the finished weapon with the superlaser firing, General Sulamar remarked that it looked like a Jedi lightsaber. The weapon's name was conceived as a pun.

Conception
"With such a weapon we will be invincible. We can collect protection money, taxes, whatever. We can hold entire systems hostage. No one will be able to stand against us." "We can become the overlords of the galaxy!"

- Sulamar and Durga

The Darksaber was the brainchild of the Hutt crime lord Durga Besadii Tai of the Besadii kajidic. In the wake of the deaths of two of the most influential figures of the underworld, Jabba Desilijic Tiure and Prince Xizor, Durga managed to secure control over the rest of the Hutt clans for the Besadii kajidic, and he achieved a position of leadership in the Black Sun criminal syndicate. Having become intoxicated with the power he had managed to obtain, Durga wanted to spread his influence even further, eclipsing the memory of the legendary Hutt conqueror Kossak Inijic Ar'durv. To this end, he wanted to construct a planet-destroying superweapon with which he would be able to ransom entire planets and destroy his enemies. Through Bothan Spynet, Durga managed to locate the designer of both original Death Stars, as well as other superweapons, Bevel Lemelisk, and recruited him for the project.

At some point in his life, Durga had also discovered the hive-minded Taurill species, which was controlled by the collective consciousness called Overmind. The Overmind was interested in spreading individual Taurills throughout the galaxy, as this would allow itself to grow. Durga promised the Overmind to do so, and in exchange was assigned thousands of Taurills, whom he trained as his pets and intended to use in the construction of the superweapon. Durga then put together Orko SkyMine, a sham corporation whose official purpose was the exploitation of the Hoth asteroid field's natural resources, while in fact, all the corporation's funds went on the construction of the weapon. Lemelisk developed the Automated Mineral Exploiters, machines created to harvest minerals from the asteroids and convert them to construction supplies. Four such vessels were constructed, although two of them&mdash;Exploiters Alpha and Beta&mdash;accidentally destroyed each other. Durga also entered an alliance with the so-called Imperial "General" Sulamar&mdash;in reality, a low ranking technician&mdash;who bragged about his nonexistent heroic exploits and promised to provide the Hutt with computer cores for the project.

However, in order to begin construction, Lemelisk needed the most important thing, the plans for the original Death Star, which were stored by the New Republic in the former Imperial Information Center on Coruscant. Durga knew that the late Jabba had the passwords to the Center's secret databanks stored in his palace on Tatooine, so he organized expeditions to Jabba's palace, retrieving those passwords. Under the guise of negotiating with the New Republic Chief of State Leia Organa Solo, Durga then made the journey to Coruscant to obtain the plans. While the Hutt distracted Organa Solo, the Taurills accessed the files in the Information Center and copied the Death Star's schematics to a data cylinder, and the Hutt safely handed them to Lemelisk. Analyzing the plans, Lemelisk made the necessary adjustments to accommodate the Hutt's needs. Since Durga needed only the main weapon, Lemelisk left out all the turbolasers, crew quarters, docking ports, and hangars from the original project. The resulting cylinder-shaped project closely resembled the weapon of the Jedi Knights, the lightsaber, so Lemelisk christened the new weapon accordingly, the Darksaber.

Construction and destruction
The Darksaber was an ambitious project, but it was doomed to fail from the start. The Taurill were clever and hard-working, but often distracted, and each member was unable to see beyond the particular part they were working on. This resulted in shoddy construction, with parts of the weapon being built in the wrong place, or the wrong way, or left out altogether, and had to be rebuilt. Moreover, the metal plating for the Darksaber hull had been bought from low bid contractors, and it had millions of micro-holes in it. Even worse, Sulamar's computer cores were outdated and malfunctioning, forcing Lemelisk to constantly reprogram and back-up them. As Lemelisk witnessed these flaws, he began to lose faith that his creation would ever work. Somehow, though, the project began nearing its completion. Eventually, the New Republic heard rumors of the Darksaber creation, and General Crix Madine was assigned to investigate. While Durga met with Organa Solo on the planet Nal Hutta, Madine planted a tracking device onto the Hutt's yacht. When Durga returned from the meeting to the Darksaber, Madine and a two-men commando team followed him to the Hoth asteroid belt.

Though one commando, Korenn, died when his ship collided into one of the aseroids, Madine and another member of the team, Trandia reached the Darksaber. They clang to the weapon's exterior in their survival suits, and after peeling off a loose plate, infiltrated the Darksaber. In an effort to sabotage the weapon, the two reached its engine section, but before they could proceed with their plan, several guards appeared. The two hid, but Trandia suddenly revealed herself and detonated her explosives, hoping to destroy the engine and buy Madine time to escape. She failed, as the engine was protected by a thick containment wall, and it protected the engine. Madine tried to escape, but was captured and brought before Durga on the Darksaber bridge.

Madine was captured and executed by Durga himself. When a New Republic task force arrived, the Darksaber was chased into the Hoth asteroid field. Even without a test-firing, Durga was completely confident that the weapon would function as planned. Drawing close to a pair of moon-sized asteroids, Durga gave the order to fire. Predictably, the superlaser malfunctioned and died with a fizzle. The Darksaber was crushed between the two asteroids, ending the lives of Durga, Sulamar, and those few others on board. Lemelisk was the only survivor, and was captured shortly afterward.

Despite the Darksaber's destruction, rumors later spread that Booster Terrik had bought the superweapon from the Hutts and installed it on his Star Destroyer Errant Venture.

Behind the scenes
"Achilles Heel: It's all heel. The darn thing doesn't work."

- Pablo Hidalgo

The Darksaber first appeared in Kevin J. Anderson's 1995 eponymous novel.

Appearances

 * Darksaber
 * Jedi Academy: Leviathan 1
 * Dark Tide II: Ruin
 * Agents of Chaos II: Jedi Eclipse

Notes and references
Darksaber Tuhonmiekka