Authors Notes (Long, feel free to skip): So, after a much extended hiatus/odyssey I am back, temporarily. I had thought to just give this up and concentrate on my own writing and the translating. But Jonnie says he's fond of this story (which I am certain has nothing to do with his raging egomania, really). So, for him, and for my own sense of closure, I'm going to finish this bad boy off.
Sadly, I think this may be it for me on the fanfiction front for the foreseeable future (alliteration, hurray!) I think we're settled down at last, and have working internet fully 70% of the time now. But there's a lot to adjust to down here in ZA and I am still very much adrift (But at least J's family is all the way on the other side of the country so he's kind of lost in the big city too). Also for my people keeping tabs, we are now fully three weeks married (yes, I know, after almost a decade on and off again) and no knock down fights have yet occurred. Suck on that naysayers, marriage is having a mellowing effect so far.
Anyway, as you can see, I'm slammed and the nomadic lifestyle may resume by the end of the year if the j-o-b with the mining concern drives the old man too crazy. But such is life. Thanks for reading, sorry I took so long to get back to it!
Murkhana was supposed to be beautiful. Gregor had read all of the briefings and background documents Prudii had scrounged up pre-mission. The word that kept cropping up over and over was graceful. The cities, especially Primaye Murkha, were constantly described as possessing a dark, alien grace. Gregor thought he must still be too young to understand what that meant because Murkhana didn't look a bit beautiful or graceful to him.
It was dark; that was for damn sure. Prudii had told him that the star it orbited gave off light mainly in the ultraviolet spectrum. They'd had to ionize their armor and visors accordingly to deal with it. The cities were illuminated mainly by weak, fluorescent strips attached to the ceilings of dwellings. The native population, who had been living there for a dozen or so generations, had all adapted to the low light and now couldn't stand real illuminations.
That was the cities, which did have a number of tall spires made of some reflective material that seemed to glitter blue in places from the fluorescents. Those might, he allowed during the fly-by, be seen as beautiful by the lonely or the desperate. Gregor and Prudii, however, weren't in a city. They weren't even in one of the bleak little towns along the ice choked rivers at the edges of the industrial zones. They were right in the heart of the North-Central-Mountain Manufacturing Zone and if Gregor had ever seen a less lovely place he can not think of it now.
The heavy industrial pollution of the various factories had long since made this central block uninhabitable by most humanoid species. Only droids worked here now, occasionally inspected by a foreman in heavy protective gear. The clouds belched out by the smokestacks were captured by vast synthsheet-traps and sluiced into chutes to be reprocessed or dumped below the planetary mantle. Prudii was impressed by the efficiency of the system and the way the Murkhanans managed to keep their atmosphere relatively clean of particulates. Gregor supposed he was right. Prudii was one of the cleverest people he could remember meeting, but he still found it hard to be impressed.
"Three-Nine, Three-Nine copy?"
"Copy Five. Hawkbat seven, over."
"Hawkbat seven?" The voice on the com squawked impatiently."Temporal on Hawkbat eight?Over."
"Six. Three-Nine out."
He's running on time. He's got another eight seconds before he needs to be positioned on the far northeast ledge on the top catwalk, Hawkbat eight as he and Prudii have named it. He's displaced from Hawkbat seven, the half-way point between it and his insertion area, and is running for his next point. Prudii's suddenly impatient to get this mission over with and it's starting to annoy Gregor. He likes to be thorough, careful, make sure everything's done properly and completely. Of all the Nulls Prudii seems to be the one most like him in that respect, or at least he did until 0450 this morning.
Gregor had been on the coms then, letting his counterpart get some sleep, when the message came through. It was coded 0-0; Null to Null only. Gregor, being the type of man who respected the privacy of others so that they'd remember to do the same to him, had sent it straight on to Prudii without another thought. Five minutes later the Null was on the bridge in full armor demanding they move the mission timeline up by two hours. Gregor was unhappy but did as he was told; reworking the careful plans three times rapidly until he was satisfied it could be done. Prudii had given it a cursory review and a nod and away they'd gone.
Now Gregor wishes he's at least checked out where that message had come from, or which Null had sent it, even if he would never have read it. Whatever was in it had done a great deal of damage to Prudii's usual methodical demeanor. With an inaudible sigh Gregor makes himself focus on the task at hand. Given the changes he's got to pay twice as much attention now; be sure Prudii's sudden impatience doesn't make him reckless. Whatever was in the message will have to wait.
He crouches on the catwalk at position HB-8 taking care to magnetize the soles of his boots. The catwalk is designed for droids and narrower across than his armored shoulders. He un-slings the new-lightweight sniper carbine Prudii had lent him for this mission and slid it out. The low railing is his stabilizer. He has to wait four seconds instead of two for the fore-droid to zip into his range finder. But his aim is unaffected by the adjusted mission profile. He hits the droid with the minute disruptor slug directly over its rear reactor. The fore-droid stutters and halts, limbs loose and dangling like a cut-string marionette. Gregor slings the rifle and coms Prudii.
"Five, come in Five."
"Five. Status."
"46 down. Proceed."
"About time. Five out."
Gregor rolls his eyes behind his newly polarized helmet visor. He's actually one and one half seconds ahead of schedule. But Prudii's gone off and now it's up to Gregor to make sure they don't miss anything. He blinks the magnets off his boot-soles and runs cat-like and silent to the low door at the end of the walk-way. He doesn't go through, the conduit's too narrow for him to move at speed. Instead he jumps over the railing, catching the walls with his re-magnetized boots and gauntlets to down climb to the floor level.
He can't see Prudii but that's to be expected; the Null is working from the south end of the facility. Gregor sprints to the consol, shouldering the deactivated fore-droid aside. Pulling his data-probe from a thigh pouch he plugs in and starts the override procedure for plant quality control. It's finicky, usually Prudii does this himself, but today he wanted Gregor to try his hand. After more than three months of sabotage work Gregor's reasonably confident he can manage this.
It's taking longer than expected. This facility makes the new model commando droids. It's the first of its kind they've managed to find and Prudii was very, very eager to 'even the odds' as he put it for the rest of the boys in white. Gregor's happy to face the challenge too but the process for assembling the advanced droids is, predictably, more complicated than standard models.
He bypasses three layers of quality control specs, altering them slightly as he goes and swears as he finds an unexpected fourth and fifth level of inspection protocol. He can probably crack the fourth one, it's pretty similar to the third but it's going to take time, more than they have. Worse, the fifth set of inspections is encrypted with something he can't even begin to make out. So much for being able to work solo. Gregor sighs and blinks up his com to contact Prudii.
The crump-thunk of igniting plastoid interrupts him. Suddenly the entire south-west corner of the facility goes white with heat-wash as something explodes. His visor tries to compensate as he drops behind the consol, leaving him momentarily blind. There's a tinkling crash as the first set of catwalks comes away from the walls and falls into the leaping flames. Gregor claws his way out from under the desk, yelling down the coms for Prudii. It's a gut-clenching four seconds before the Null answers. He's breathless and sounds like he's running.
"Three-Nine copy, stop shouting would you? I've already got a headache from that little mishap."
"Mishap? What in haran did you do? I thought we were supposed to be doing this undetected."
"What, you pissed that you didn't get to blow this one up?"
"Ashaye was a mistake."
"What about Trilon?"
"That was Jaing!"
"Regardless Gregor, ner vod, you do seem to have a tendency of leaving a burning trail of debris in your wake."
"Where are you Prudii?"
There's a soft thud behind him that has Gregor spinning, pistol drawn. Prudii straightens up and slaps the gun down in a single movement. The blast has taken the stripes off his armor from the thighs down. His boot soles are all but ruined, ridges melted smooth by the heat.
"You're going to get hurt waving that around." Prudii snarls before grabbing him by the elbow.
"C'mon junior the coating's off my armor, at least partially. We have to get out of here while we can."
Gregor digs in his heels, pulling Prudii off balance with his unexpected resistance.
"What the shebs? We are going Gregor. I will stun you and drag you out if I have to."
"We can't leave yet."
Prudii un-holsters his blaster and thumbs it to 'stun.' Gregor swallows and keeps going, turning away from the Null and hoping he doesn't get shot for his trouble.
"This has to look like an accident or they're going to tighten security."
"Gregor we don't have time for this, the place is going to go critical in about fifteen minutes. We need to be in the air before that."
"It needs to look accidental." Gregor insists, scrolling through the protocols on the consul as fast as he can.
"I couldn't break the fifth level encryption on the primary assembly array. I got caught by security, why d'you think I had to light them up?"Prudii growls.
Gregor swallows, a little scared that Prudii, of all clones was foiled by Sep security. But he doesn't give up.
"Okay, okay. What about the fore-droid?" He all but shouts.
"What?" Prudii demands, starting to raise his gun.
Gregor dives for the still inactive fore-droid, yanking the data probe out of the consol and jamming it into the droid's main data-port as he does. The chest plate pops open and Gregor starts frantically testing and pulling at circuits. He needs five seconds, three if he's lucky. He keeps working, always expecting the searing cold-heat of a stun blast on his back. But Prudii lets him go.
"There." Gregor shouts, elated.
"What'd you do?" Prudii demands, shouldering him over to look into the chest cavity of the fore-droid.
"Stripped out the main motor control, surge-locked it into the motivator coils and the repetition centers. It'll look like a malfunction, like the fore-droid cracked under radiation decay and disabled the safety feature on the production line."
"Doesn't the production line need to be sped up?" Prudii grouses.
Gregor pulls the data-probe free, rippes off the demotivator slug, and hits a button on the consol. The hum of the conveyors crank up to a scream, then a reverberating moan that has the walls shaking in sympathetic harmony. Prudii nods once.
"Now can we go?" He asks.
Gregor nods back and runs after him through the raining debris shaken from the catwalks by the soundwaves.
The ship's barely in the air when the entire southern face of the factory explodes outward. Inside it looks like a framed view of one of the Corellian hells, the hot one. Gregor's been worriying that his plan to frame the fore-droid might fall apart if an investigator works out that the fire had started before the droid had short-circuited, or if enough of the wiring inside it survived for someone to find the solder joins. It doesn't look like there was going to be a problem though. Nothing's going to survive that blaze. Gregor leans back in his seat and pops his helmet off.
"Huh, I guess all my fiddling was for nothing." He says, trying to calm his still jagged heartbeat.
Prudii's muttering to himself as he powers up the drives and works out their nearest hyperspace egress point. He stops and looks at Gregor for a long, silent minute.
"No that was good thinking. There was no guarantee that the place was going to burn like that until you overloaded the belts."
Gregor shrugs, secretly pleased by the compliment. He's ready to sit in silence for the rest of the outbound trip. Prudii's the quietest Null Gregor's met so far but today N-5 has more to say. He keeps his eyes fixed on the panel in front of him, punching in coordinates as he talks.
"I wasn't all in on this one. I know you noticed so don't say you didn't. It could have gone really badly down there and you kept our losses to a minimum. That's good work. I...I wasn't really sure you had it in you. I mean you're different now, I hear. Better at thinking on your feet, have less of a rod up your shebs but you're still so damned wedded to protocol sometimes.
He takes a deep breath. Gregor waits, trying not to let his pulse rate start racking back up as he notices how distracted Prudii still is.
Anyway, I'm babbling. You did good ner vode. Look I've got to com Mereel back. Can you watch the autopilot until we drop in hyperspace?"
Gregor nods, not quite sure what to say to Prudii's outburst.
"Good man. Yell if something changes."
With that he was gone, out of his seat and weaving his way back to the medbay, the only room with a door on the little ship. They hadn't even broken atmosphere yet. Whatever that call was it must be damned important for Prudii to risk a transmission within range of the planetary communications grid. Gregor wants to know very badly what's got the Null so edgy but he's going to have to wait. He's gotten good at that over the past seven months. He settles back in the seat, watching the green lights blink steadily on the panel display.
Five hours later, two hours after they've dropped into hyperspace, the door to the medbay finally slides open. Prudii's taken off his bucket and has obviously been running his hands through his hair. It's standing up in strange looking ridges. Gregor doesn't have enough guts to point it out to him, especially given that Prudii's usual stoic expression is downright stormy at the moment. He seems almost surprised to see Gregor sitting on the bunk in the main bay cleaning his armor meticulously. Prudii actually stops and stares at the other clone for several seconds. Gregor kept his head down, carefully cleaning the scorch marks off his helmet. Finally the Null stalks to his own bunk opposite Gregor's and sits.
"Hey, lay that down for a second we need to talk." Prudii snaps.
Gregor does as he's told, too interested in what's coming to be annoyed at the tone of the request. He doesn't ask Prudii any questions, letting him order his information himself. It takes a minute but Prudii eventually sighs, runs his fingers through his hair again, making it stand up even more, and speaks.
"Look I meant what I said before about...about everything. You, this mission, you know?"
Gregor lets a little of his impatience out when he answers.
"What, that I'm hidebound?"
"Yeah, also that you made a shabla good call back there and saved my shebs."
"What's that got to do with you talking to Mereel. Have I even met Mereel?"
"I don't think so, you'd remember if you did. Even if you got yourself mir'shupur. That's beside the point. What I'm trying to say is that it's time you struck out on your own. I was one of the holdout votes on whether or not you were ready but I can see you are now."
"What are you going to have me doing? I haven't got transport even."
"Don't worry about that, we can take care of whatever you need. Right now what you've got to do is head in the Corporate Sector, Kir System, planet called Kirvella. Here's a brief Mereel pulled together."
Prudii passes him his pad. Gregor finds the file and downloads it to his own.
"This is the home planet for Mer-Son Industries." He says after reading a moment, voice slightly amazed. " What exactly am I doing?"
"You're going to infiltrate Mer-Son. There's something strange going on in there. Seps seem to be able to counter their prototypes almost as soon as we get them. And yet they're suddenly a lot more competitive with BlasTech. They're even supposed to be about to get the new contract for armor upgrades for the GAR." The Null answers.
"This doesn't sound like a military intelligence gig." Gregor says in slight disgust "Since when do we do corporate espionage?"
"Since corporations started colluding with the enemy to kill our people mir'sheb." Prudii snaps.
Gregor sits back.
"Okay, undesii, sorry. How am I supposed to be infiltrating? What am I looking for? Am I trying to stop this contract with the GAR? Find a Sep agent? What?"
"No, leave the GAR contract. Mer-Son makes some good kit. Our boys'll be lucky to have it. So long as it's not suddenly able to be overridden by insectoids and clankers. Your job is to find the leak. You're looking for any transmission of information that seems under-handed. If someone's trying to hide communication of any kind we need you to tell us. Don't worry about who or what just tell us. We'll sort it out. As far as infiltration goes it doesn't matter how you get in, just that you get as close to the top brass as possible."
"You think this goes all the way to the leadership?"
"Yeah, possibly. Just keep an eye on them, and on the research department, and the production lines for prototypes too."
"What just me?"
Prudii rolls his eyes.
"Come on Gregor I know Jaing and Kom'rk taught you about basic sent-intel processes."
" How long term is this supposed to be?"
"As long as it takes."
Gregor's stunned. He's been chafing a little working with Prudii, the man's prickly and seems to have missed out on the charm that Jaing or Kom'rk display. Gregor's begun to feel comfortable with basic surveillance and sabotage. He's ready to get out on his own. But to be handed what sounds like an important piece of very tricky, long-term intelligence work right off the line is not what he's been anticipating.
"Are you sure about this? I mean shouldn't one of you be doing this?" He stammers.
"We're all busy. This war's ramping up again, if you haven't noticed. There's no one else to put on this. You've got experience living outside the GAR too, you'll work it out."
"I couldn't remember the GAR. I don't think that counts."
"Doesn't matter. You're what we've got and you're on deck. I'll re-route us when we drop out of the first jump. Kirvella isn't that far out of my way. Think about an identity while we're flying. A good one, it's got to last. We've got four days to Kirvella.