Disclaimer: In which LMSharp says don't pay her money or copyright for this purely fan-made fiction.
III.
Not All Droids are Good
"It took Teethree a while to get to the fuel depot and activate the emergency hatch, and meanwhile, I was stuck up in the administration level with Atton Rand in my underwear. The man was making me uncomfortable, Aithne. I'd been prepared for one or two comments, obviously. But then I'd expected Atton to get a grip on the situation, and either in gratitude, or at least in a more prioritized desire to get off the rock, shut his mouth and get on with helping with the escape. Atton had not shut his mouth.
Nor had he had the decency to keep his eyes modestly averted from my state of undress. He just sat there against the window, waiting for T3-M4 to open a door. Not that I could blame him for that. I didn't have a better plan, either. But Atton kept talking, Aithne. I hadn't been with another person for any length of time for ten years, and he kept talking. About stupid, irrelevant things like different rule sets for Pazaak and…and me. What I was doing on Peragus, like I knew. What my favorite color was. And he kept staring, Aithne. At my face, and much lower, with a stupid little half smile on his face. Stop laughing! It was annoying!
After about ten minutes, I was halfway wishing I'd left him in that cell, and then he came out with yet another question. Lying back against the observation window with his hands behind his head he asked, "So…uh, how long have you been a Jedi? Must be tough, you know…no family, no husband."
I lost my temper. I smiled a bright, fake smile. "Actually, the toughest thing about is dealing with clumsy come-ons disguised as false sympathy from idiots. And I'm not a Jedi, Atton. I told you. Not anymore. So just stop, okay? I haven't pried into how you ended up here or what you were doing before Peragus. So stick to what's relevant please. And keep your eyes to yourself!" I turned away, wrapping my arms around my torso.
Atton grinned and held his hands up. "Hey, I wasn't trying to…" That was when the console beeped, and at once he stood up. "Hey, what do you know? That little cargo cylinder came through."
I was so infuriatingly grateful just to be able to do something. I stood up, too, and went to the console. Atton moved out of the way with exaggerated motions, and I glared at him. Looking the maps over, the emergency hatch had opened, but the comm was dead. I activated it, signaling the fuel depot, but there was no response. "Yeah—he came through. But what's happened to him? Why didn't he contact us on the comm?"
Atton didn't appear too concerned about the droid. "If he got the turbolifts working then we should have a clear run to the hangar."
I turned to face him. "Yeah, well, it couldn't be that easy, could it?"
Atton stopped moving toward the still non-functional turbolift.
"T3-M4 told me when I first got in touch that fixing the turbolifts would be a no-go. They're locked down manually. I had him open the emergency hatch," I explained.
Atton didn't like this. "Wait, wait- don't tell me you're taking that hatch down into the mining tunnels. Are you? That explosion I heard came from below. There's probably nothing down there except superheated rock and collapsed blast tunnels. You'd be an idiot to go down there."
"Might be fun," I cracked. When his expression didn't change, I sighed. "Look. Atton. There's always, always, always another way out of a trap. But no one said it's always easy. It's time for some idiocy, okay?"
Atton still looked like arguing, but I cut him off.
"You want out, don't you? If we go down there, we can find an alternate route into the fuel depot, or maybe even into the hangar. Then we can do lots of things. Here? We're just stuck. But if you like, you can stay up here."
I considered this briefly, liking the idea more now. I wouldn't mind a little peace and privacy, actually, even bought at the expense of facing superheated tunnels. I couldn't say that, though, so instead I said, "Actually, it's probably better that way. If I go down there and you stay up here, if something happens to me, you've still got a chance to get out."
Atton looked hard at me, and I could swear he knew the real reason I didn't want him coming with me, but for all that, he still seemed impressed. "You're either really brave or really crazy—or both," he said finally. "All right—I'll try to monitor things from up here. Be careful—the only thing moving down there is likely to be mining droids, so don't be playing hero too hard." He paused a moment, and that's when I saw the very, very tips of his ears turn pink. "Uh…not that I care what happens to you or anything. I just don't want to be trying to get off this rock by myself."
A denial like that is actually counterproductive to the type of teamwork that would help someone in escaping a sabotaged mining facility, so I couldn't understand why Atton had made it, especially as judging from the ears and the very faint echo of insincerity I could feel from the Force, it wasn't even true. So I regarded him for a moment, uncertain. After a moment I realized I was staring, so I said awkwardly, "Your concern is noted. I'll go now." For some reason, I wasn't quite as annoyed with the man as I had been to minutes ago. I grabbed my stuff and started out.
"Hey!" Atton called after me. I turned, just in time to see him peel something of his wrist and throw it at me. I caught it easily. He'd tossed me his personal com-link, and he jerked his head at the command console. "I'll keep the com-link open," he promised. "I may be able to guide you through the tunnels from up here. Don't know if the signal will hold if you get too deep, though."
Nodding, I left, strapping the com-link to my own, much smaller wrist. I decided that maybe I was glad I got him out of jail, after all. At any rate, Kreia hadn't said a thing to me since I'd found Atton, and I was glad I wouldn't be walking through this place entirely alone.
The emergency hatch that had been locked before was open now, and activating it was easy. The emergency lift me down. My ears popped from the pressure, and I started to sweat with the sudden hike in the temperature.
The lift stopped, and I stepped out. The tunnels were lit with sparsely placed lamps down here, but I guess due to conservation of energy and resources, they hadn't wanted to expend too much on lighting, and the place was still dark. The lamps shone bleakly against the dark asteroid rock, like sick fireflies. The tunnels sounded every bit as empty as the halls above, but they were hotter, darker, and there were no windows. But just before I got really depressed, the com-link Atton had given me buzzed.
I pressed the tiny display screen, and Atton's face came up. But it was fuzzy, and so was his voice. "Can you read me?" he asked.
"Only just. There's a lot of static."
"There's a lot of interference down there," Atton explained. "Probably caused by that explosion. Still, you were right. It looks like there is a route down to the Peragus fuel depot, if the passages haven't collapsed. That explosion knocked out most of the sensors. There should be an emergency crate in the next room. Watch yourself. There's a lot of droid broadcasts in the area, but I can't pin them down."
Making sure to hold the com close enough that the only picture Atton would be getting was one of my face, I answered. "I handled the droids on the administration level just fine. Don't worry. I'll be careful. I'll keep the line open; if you pick up anything else, let me know."
"Will do."
The line went dead, and I headed the way Atton had recommended. There was a barrel of emergency supplies here—like there had been in the med bay terminal room. Atton had probably found that it would be here in some mining regulations file in the administration terminal. While the med bay terminal barrel had contained tech supplies in case anything went wrong with the machines in that wing, however, this barrel contained supplies in case a miner ever needed to do a little more manual labor than usual. That meant a uniform. I grinned.
Fortunately, the uniforms had been made jumpsuit-style, designed to stretch, and cut much smaller than the miners it had been made to fit.
The com buzzed again. "Find the emergency supplies?" Atton wanted to know.
"Yeah—and some clothes not previously worn by a rotting corpse."
"Dammit!" Atton cursed. Then he seemed to remember I was still online. "Uh…I mean, good. Good to hear it. No sense in you running around half-naked. It's—it's distracting…I mean, for the droids."
I took a breath to keep myself from snapping at him. Unlike the other comments he had made, this one had at least seemed unintentional, like he was trying to stay focused. So coolly, I said, "I'll just give you a moment to get your foot out of your mouth."
The awkward pause afterward seemed to indicate Atton doing just that, but then he said, "Look, there may be some survey gear and a safety harness inside the crate, too. The miners wear them when staking claims on the asteroids. The survey gear is designed to spot and protect you against sonic mines…and the safety harness can be helpful if you try to disarm them."
Beneath the clothes, I saw the items he mentioned. I started to pull the uniform on, but kept talking to Atton. "That'll be useful. Thanks for the tip. Anything else?"
It must've looked weird as the camera on the com-link went all different angles when I dressed. Atton waited until I'd finished to speak again. The uniform wasn't hugely flattering. Though cut smaller than the men it was designed to fit, the uniform was still larger than me, and when I'd zipped it up material still sagged in awkward places, and pant the legs dragged around my bare feet, and the sleeves hung over my hands. Still, there was nothing for it. I rolled the pant legs and sleeves up, then raised the com-link to my face again.
Atton spoke. "Just one more thing—I've narrowed down some of those ID signals, and if the numbers are right, you're sharing those tunnels with a battalion of mining droids." His expression was dead serious, and I knew what he was getting at. If all the droids were rogue like the ones on the administration level, it could present quite a problem.
"A battalion," I mused, turning the dilemma over in my head, calculating how I could approach this. "Hmm. Okay."
Atton winced and hastily added, "It's not as bad as all that, okay? Those droids rely on thermal sensors, primarily to detect fuel deposits. The explosion there kicked up so much heat and steam it may blind them a little."
During my exile, though, I'd had to make some living, and I'd earned it in droid and ship repair. Gauging the heat by my thirst and perspiration, Atton was right, but so right that I could entirely relax. "A little, but not much," I told him. "Thanks for the encouragement, anyway."
Atton grimaced. "Look for the central controller down there. See if you can find a terminal by the main access shaft: that'd be governing intelligence."
That idea was of more substantial value. "And I can shut 'em down or reprogram them there. Got it. Will do," I told him.
Atton paused. "Darden—be careful."
He shut off the com-link before I could reply. I shrugged, and looked in the barrel. There were some flex-boots with a hard, protected sole that might come in handy. I pulled them on. They were big enough on me that they would blister, but not so big that I didn't know wearing them would be better than risking it in further passages that might be hotter than this one. There was a mining shield, too, that might help. I put on the survey glasses and safety harness, then peered into the bottom of the barrel. There were three or four more ration bars in the very bottom. I'd need those in a few hours, whether we were still here or not. I took them and thrust them in the pack.
As my hand went into the pack, it brushed a stealth field generator that the security officer had locked up upstairs, before I'd retrieved it. I considered a moment, then removed the safety harness and replaced it with the stealth field generator. I know you never did any sneaking around or munitions work, Aithne—whenever you went into the field at all, you just tended to crush all opposition. But, especially toward the beginning of the Mandalorian Wars, before you started giving me higher command assignments, I'd done a lot of field work, and accumulated some skill in both munitions and stealth. I was pretty confident I could disable routine mining explosives even without the harness, and I was more worried about the droids.
Equipped now for the challenge, I set off through the tunnels.
It was slow going at first. Atton hadn't been wrong about the state of things down here. It was hot and stuffy, and a couple of the tunnels had collapsed. There were a lot of sonic mines, too. Atton radioed in at one point and said in his search of the files upstairs, he'd found that one of the functions of the droids was to set charges to help mine the fuel. Since the sabotage of the droids, though, he suspected the charges were meant for organics. The mines were pretty low-grade, though. Whoever had changed the droids' programming hadn't equipped them with any deadlier weapons than they'd had to begin with, and disabling a bunch of economy class sonic mines was no big thing. I even kept a few, in case I met a stubborn door or blocked passage later on. As I progressed, I found I could sense the energy signatures of the mines, faintly.
Atton kept in frequent touch, but I didn't hear anything from Kreia. Once or twice, I prodded at the place in the back of my head where Kreia had come through before. I could feel that there was a link there, like a pinch at the back of my skull, but either I was still too unused to the activity, or Kreia had her guard up, because there was silence across the bond. I could vaguely sense Kreia was watching me, but I couldn't talk to her. She was as silent as when I'd thought she was dead.
The tunnels got hotter as I went along. The mining uniform had a cooling system in place, and it helped, but it still gets pretty uncomfortable when sweat starts plastering down your hair and dripping in your eyes. Uncomfortable or not, though, the heat kept the droids from noticing me. They still had auditory sensors, so even stealthed out I had to move slowly and quietly, but if I did, they didn't know I was there. Once, two droids came at me from both sides and just stopped. I think I stood there a whole minute with their heavy arms centimeters from my legs before they finally decided there wasn't anyone there and trundled off someplace else, and I could breathe again.
About twenty minutes along the tunnels, there was this big cavern just full of droids. They were just milling around like giant, metallic insects, setting mines, or just sitting there. It was rather strange, because now that all the organics in the area were dead, the droids hadn't reverted to their primary programming. They just waited. It was like they were purposeless, like someone had replaced their prime directive.
I picked my way across that cavern, and as I did, it got hotter and hotter. When I finally exited the cavern to a narrower tunnel, I knew my primary difficulty wasn't droids anymore. The rock up ahead was almost liquid, Aithne. Gaseous fumes in yellow and purple curled up off it. The com-link buzzed, and Atton, who had been faithfully tracking my progress down here, came in.
"Hey, that explosion has superheated the tunnels ahead."
I laughed. "Yeah—no kidding," I said, quietly, just in case the droids behind me heard. I flashed my wrist up ahead to give him a visual.
"That steam'll cook the skin off your bones," Atton warned me. "If you have a mining energy shield—switch it on—it should protect you against the heat if you move quickly enough."
"I grabbed a shield in the supply bin back there," I told him, "And I can move when I have to. Thanks for the heads up."
"Good luck. Over and out."
The mining shield was already attached to my uniform, but when I activated it, I immediately wondered why I hadn't done so before. The relief was bliss, Aithne, just bliss. Like I'd just jumped into a lake, or someone was blowing cool air all over my skin. I honestly might have stayed there and just reveled in it, but Atton had said it wouldn't last, so I ran.
When I hit the tunnel, I could feel it. The rock beneath my feet seared even through the specialized boots, which made it easier to run. I felt the energy in my shield straining as the steam curled around me in beautifully seductive swirls that I knew were just desperate to kill me. The steam made it hard to see, hard to breathe, and as I ran, I began to cough. The tunnel smelled metallic, angry, and I couldn't see the end of it. Sometimes, though, you just have to keep running.
When the shield began to fail, I reached out desperately with the Force, and felt the air clear just a few meters in front of me. My lungs were crying out for breathable air. My eyes were watering. But just as the shield failed, I broke free of the tunnel into a wider area. I began sweating again immediately, worse than before. I was a veritable fountain of stink and salt. But I could breathe, so I kept moving.
I knew this time that Atton would come in when he did, and I had the com-link raised to answer him. "Hey, you're getting close to something big," he told me. "I think it's the main ventilation shaft. The central droid controller should be somewhere nearby. Keep an eye out for it. I'm picking up a lot of droids."
The shaft ahead of me had opened up again, and I could see the controller Atton mentioned in the center of a walkway over a pit like a giant maw, where the fuel vented up from the center of the world. If I could get to the controller, I knew I could shut down the droids, find out what had happened to them, and quite possibly find a way out. But Atton was right, too. There were a lot of droids. Maintenance drones, too. I'd seen a couple of the little spheres in the smaller cavern earlier, but there were many more here. Maintenance drones are a nuisance, when droids are hostile, Aithne. They exist to repair droids that break. So if I couldn't sneak by these droids and got into a fight, the droids had a medic-on-call, whereas I was completely alone.
"I can handle the droids," I told Atton, albeit with a little bravado. As I walked further ahead, the air was becoming much better. I didn't even know if the droid thermal sensors would malfunction at all. My brave face failed. "…and the maintenance drones." I winced, and inwardly cursed as Atton frowned.
"Maintenance drones? Gun them down first, or the little pests will repair the droids. It's odd, though, that they're still active after the explosion. They don't have the same shielding as the mining droids."
I looked at one of the small spheres, hovering around just as happy as a gizka, looking none the worse for wear for the detonations down here. "I think they've been adapted," I said. "Someone's been using the droids to sabotage the facility. Before they sent the droids to kill everyone on-base, they wanted to make sure the droids stayed operational."
Atton's eyes narrowed on the display, and his mouth tightened. "I don't like this. Be careful."
I stared at the display. For someone that claimed not to care what happened to me, Atton was being extremely helpful, and worrying an awful lot. He actually reminded me a little of the soldiers under my command in the Mandalorian Wars, desperate to prove themselves strong and brave, yet absolutely terrified for all that, reliant on my strength as their commander. I didn't like the parallel. I hadn't been responsible for anyone else's courage or hope in years, and the last time I had been, I had accomplished my objective, but let thousands of them down. I shut off the com-link, disturbed.
But I knew that I couldn't worry about the histories, stories, and motivations of my allies until after I'd finished clearing a path to a ship. So I shrugged off the disquiet, and reactivated my stealth field.
Moving even more slowly than I had in the cavern, I crept up to the central droid controller, keeping my finger on the trigger of my mining laser and pausing every time a droid so much as creaked. It took me almost five minutes, but at last I reached the console and relaxed. I stood up straight, and looked around.
Around the rim of this great wide shaft were four power generators. These, I knew, provided the energy both for the mining operations down here in the tunnels, and for the droids. All four power generators were hemmed in with containment fields. The only way out was the way I had come.
So I accessed to console to see if I couldn't make another way out. I called up the droid functions. I'd been right: the droids had been issued with a new prime directive, but the source of the order had been removed from the system's history. Also, I couldn't see what the directive had been, but given my history with droids, I could guess. A saboteur can change the primary directive, see, but unless he has a lot of time and some serious skill, he can't change the primary programming. The programming is diverted, not replaced. So on a hunch, I entered a new sequence into the programming computer. All the droids in the room went still for a moment, then resumed their insectoid meandering, but this time, I thought they might just be harmless.
Returning to the main computer menu, I accessed the level plan. According to the maps, there were two other ways out of the main shaft other than the way I had come in. One had caved in, but that wasn't too much of a hardship seeing as it led right back to the administration emergency turbolift for maximum escape efficacy. But the other route was wide open, past the containment field. It lead to the fuel depot turbolift. I checked the stats on the lift, and grinned. It was active. It hadn't been fun, but it had been worth it, coming down here.
I shut down the containment fields, shut off the stealth field, and crossed the bridge over the pit to the other side. I went up to a droid to check my work. "Hey—hey droid!" I yelled at it, waving my arms around. The droid levered itself up on its front legs to regard me dimly with its visual sensor. But it did not attack. So I shoved my mining laser in my waistband, bent over, and flipped the maintenance switch. If I couldn't see the orders on the intelligence computer, I thought I just might be able to see them on the droid's personal hard drive. The droid went passively into maintenance mode, and on the interface below the droid's central computer, I called up its recent history. My guess had been right on target. My recent order was displayed: 'cancel mining functions on organics', but before that, two days ago, the droid's primary directive had been changed. Instead of fuel, it had been set to mine organics. The orders traced back to the maintenance officer.
I shut the interface down and stepped back. It made sense, of course, for the droids to have been sabotaged in maintenance, but the discovery clashed with the records upstairs. The security officer had interrogated the maintenance officer on the station breakdown. The maintenance officer—a scrawny, red-headed man in his mid-twenties—had seemed entirely clueless. But then, I recalled, the administration officer had mentioned that one of the droids found with me and Kreia on the Ebon Hawk had gone to work in maintenance. Not T3-M4, a protocol unit. Right after that assignment, the trouble had started. I didn't like where that train of thought led, though. If the protocol droid was the saboteur, or working for the saboteur, he would have had to forge the maintenance officer's digital signature, somehow. And if the protocol droid was the saboteur, what kind of programming would it have to have to enable this kind of destructive behavior? Or if it was working for the saboteur, who was its partner?
The com-link buzzed, interrupting my speculation. "Hey—I'm picking up some strange readings—what are you doing down there."
Looking at the chronometer on the display of the com-link, I realized I had been standing musing for about ten minutes together. I started moving toward the exit. "I'm trying to find a way out," I said. "What kind of readings are you picking up?"
"The containment fields in the mining tunnels are shutting down," Atton said. I could see him frantically pressing buttons on the administration console. "You need to get out of there before they vent fuel to the surface of the asteroid through the tunnels."
"Yeah, I'd wondered why you were standing around. Containment fields exist for a reason," Aithne pointed out laconically. She'd put aside Darden's components, and instead retrieved a few more bright colored tunics from beneath her pillow, and started sewing curtains to match the rug.
"Okay, everything was weird on Peragus," Darden said defensively. "It just didn't occur to me that the containment fields were a perfectly normal system response to the detonations and the heat in the tunnels."
Aithne clicked her tongue. "Sloppy," she said. "Always take complete stock of your surroundings; never assume anything. Otherwise, you miss things."
"Thanks, Commander," Darden said sarcastically. "I'll keep that in mind."
"Hey, I'm here to help," Aithne replied lightly. "So, go on. The containment fields had been holding in a lot of the worst of the heat—you shut them down and then stupidly stood around thinking for ten minutes when you needed to be making your exit. Atton called to tell you that you were about to be cooked, and—"
I hadn't realized how much hotter it'd gotten while I'd been thinking. I brought up a hand, and realized my hair was entirely plastered down from sweat, and the metallic smell was starting to fill the caverns again.
"Right. Er…how much time do I have?" I asked Atton, trying very hard to sound off-hand and not at all like this was entirely my fault.
Atton's fingers danced over the administration console. He didn't even look at the display. "I may be able to keep it contained until you get the turbolift to the fuel depot," he told me, "But not for much longer. I'm locking that emergency lift to the administration section now to keep the blast from spreading—you're too far from it now to get back there, anyway. If you've got anything left to do down there, make it quick, because where you are is going to get real hot, real soon."
"Got it," I said, switching off the com-link. I ran.
The heat emanated from the main shaft, so it basically chased me down the tunnels. The air was just starting to become unbreathable again when I finally made it to the turbolift, just in time.
I imagined that Atton had had a time of it holding the explosion off that long, because the turbolift fairly shot up as the explosion went off underneath it. The doors opened on the fuel depot and I rolled out, like a fish jumping out of a net. The doors closed behind me, and a buzzer sounded, letting me know the turbolift had been damaged. I wouldn't be going back that way. The detonations I'd set off had damaged the tunnels far beyond what any saboteur had done. No one would be working down there for a long time.
I lay on the floor of the fuel depot, gasping. It was cool here, blessedly, amazingly cool. The facility had great insulation. After a while, my heart slowed down enough for me to sit up, and when I did, I saw a water fixture on the wall across from me. I stood, and my legs shook like a gelatin dessert. But I made my way over to it, and drank deeply.
I hadn't found any water since that the fresher in the med bay when I first woke up, and I had probably sweat out two liters of the stuff down in the tunnels. My tongue was like sandpaper in my mouth, and my throat had been scratched raw by the steam down below. The water cooled and soothed as I drank, filling me up and rejuvenating me. I kept pumping it long after I was no longer thirsty, using it to wash my face, hands, and head. Yes, okay, so it wasn't extremely sanitary, Aithne. Sanitation is for people in comfortable apartments with regular jobs and living neighbors. Sanitation is for people without bounties on their heads in possession of their short-term memory. And you will not believe how much better I felt after I was somewhat cleaner and better smelling.
I shook the wet, but no longer sweaty, hair out of my eyes and ran my fingers through it. Then I rolled my shoulders, ready to proceed, and looked around.
The sabotage had been a facility wide catastrophe. Even here, there were corpses in the corner and blood on the floor, and everything was far too silent. There were four other doors in the hall I was in, besides the now defunct one to the turbolift. Two led to a largish room on the right, one led straight ahead, and one open one led off to the left. I looked in there, and saw a workbench.
It rather surprised me that here, in what was apparently the maintenance wing of the facility where all the trouble had started, the droids had still run riot.
I tried to access the com-link, to ask Atton if he could access anything about maintenance on the command console, but the other end of the link had gone down. The display was fuzzy, and all I could hear was white noise. I guessed that the explosion had probably knocked out communications with Atton Rand, at least for a while. I tried the mental link with Kreia again, but still nothing from her. I was alone, and it was every bit as creepy as it had been before I'd found the others. I reflected it would probably stay that way until I worked a way out of the fuel depot.
I went into the room with the workbench. There weren't many clues there, no console. Just random droid parts lying all around. But there was a plasteel cylinder beside the bench, and in it there was a sonic sensor and a datapad. The datapad indicated that the maintenance officer—a Reddic Carlisle—had been telling the truth to the security officer. He hadn't had any idea what was going on with the droids he was supposed to be in charge of. He'd recognized it had to be sabotage, though, and he'd been working against it. He'd been working on a new voice-lock security system for the droids, and for a few other things. The protocol droid—an HK-50—had been helping him with it.
Aithne spit out the mouthful of water she'd just taken. "Galloping gizka!" she gasped. "HK-50? Darden—who got ahold of the HK template after the pirates stole the Ebon Hawk?"
Darden looked at Aithne for a moment, then chuckled. "Galloping gizka? Seriously?"
"Oh, because 'Sithspit' and 'dammit' are so much more creative," Aithne snapped impatiently. "And if you'd had a gizka plague during your tenure as captain of the Ebon Hawk, you wouldn't deny 'galloping gizka's' validity as the filthiest of swears. Darden—the HK-droid. I built this assassin droid—after you left, but before I abandoned the Sith. HK-47. I still had him when I left a couple years after the war, and when those pirates stole the Ebon Hawk. He had this memory glitch function, where I could short-circuit his memory and his access to his complete functionality, but I didn't have time to trip it before—you know. Darden, HK-47 is genuinely dangerous. He's wiped out entire companies before. If those pirates found out about him, or he fell into the wrong hands-"
"Neither, we think. As far as we can tell, you commissioned the HK-50 line and put it into production in a hidden factory shortly after the destruction of Telos. However, the template got corrupted, you discontinued production, and everyone forgot about it until about a year before the story, when…a sort of droid fanatic found the factory, and started up production again. But don't worry," Darden said. "The HK-droid thing was a problem, but it isn't now, okay? A very good friend of mine made sure it won't be ever again. And the original's with me. He was blown apart when the pirates stole the ship, but Teethree helped me fix him."
So I grabbed the sensor and crossed the hallway, and almost stepped on the body of Reddic Carlisle. His leg was broken, and he had bled from multiple laser and trauma wounds. His face was twisted in agony and fear, but still recognizable. So even he hadn't gotten away.
Something moved then, in the corner. A droid. But this droid didn't attack me. It was a protocol model, gunmetal gray with strange yellow eyes. "Greeting: It is a pleasure to see you alive again, Master, provided my receptors are not off-focus. How may I be of assistance?"
I blinked, uncertain how to respond. The droid's welcome was the most cheerful I'd had on Peragus yet, in a more tonally varied voice than I'd ever heard a droid use. And though the droid called me 'master', I'd never seen it before in my life. "What are you talking about?" I asked finally. "I'm not your Master."
"Answer: I am a survivor of the Harbinger, just as you were, Master," the droid answered. "With the unexpected termination of my previous master, you are the only organic which I may now serve."
Now I was even more confused. This droid had to be HK-50, the protocol droid found with me, Kreia, and T3-M4 on the Ebon Hawk, and the possible saboteur or partner to the saboteur of this facility. But if it had come from the Harbinger, too, perhaps it could tell me how I'd ended up on the Ebon Hawk, instead, and what had happened since. "Who was your previous master?" I asked it.
"Answer: the captain of the Harbinger, master. I was in transit to Telos to facilitate communications and terminate hostilities…however, we did not arrive at our intended destination."
Looking around, I had to admit that we certainly had not. "I don't suppose you know what did happen?" I asked HK-50.
The droid's head swiveled, and for a second its yellow eyes glowed brighter. "Irritated Answer: Oh, Master, it is such a long, dull story," it said. "And not terribly relevant to our current situation."
I don't really like insubordinate droids. I glared at the model. "Indulge me."
The HK-50's gears clicked. "Hesitant Explanation:" it began finally, "That has been the subject of considerable discussion since our arrival here, Master. Many have tried to claim you and this unit as salvage. I was crudely interrogated concerning our brief history together on board the Harbinger…before its communications, weapons, and engines suffered the cascade failure that disabled the ship."
Contrary to the droid's statement, a cascade failure of communications, weapons, and engines on the Harbinger sounded similar enough to what had happened here at the mining station that I believed the story would definitely prove relevant. But I had no memory of this failure. "How is it that I don't remember any of this?"
The droid's head moved from side to side before it answered tentatively. "Speculation: It is possible you were incapacitated and locked in the well-shielded cargo compartment as the Harbinger was being systematically crippled, Master."
I shifted so that my hand was closer to my blaster. I'd reported to the med bay for a physical. It wouldn't have been too hard for someone to drug me to incapacitation by a shot that hadn't been the routine Telos disease prevention booster. "Right," I said. "And I got from the cargo compartment to here…how?"
"Recitation:" the droid said in a bored-sounding voice, rolling his 'r'. "Following the unusual set of coincidences that led to the cascade failure in the Harbinger's systems, we were boarded by a small freighter with unknown ID codes. It appeared that this freighter had been attacked, and the captain wanted to study it. This freighter appeared to still be spaceworthy." All of a sudden, the droid's tone changed, taking on a more angry sound as its visual receptors flared. "Your cargo compartment was breached. You were taken aboard the freighter shortly before the Harbinger's systems began to go critical. I, too, managed to board the freighter before the Harbinger's destruction. We were most fortunate to have survived, Master."
So the way it looked, if my gut was anything to go by, is that I had been drugged and incapacitated in the med bay of the Harbinger by this droid or some other party, that had gone on to seal me in a cargo hold and sabotage the Republic ship. Kreia must have been the one that got me off the Harbinger and to the Ebon Hawk, but several questions remained unanswered. What had Kreia been doing on the Ebon Hawk in the first place? What trouble had she been in, that the captain of the Harbinger had wanted to board to investigate and assist? How in the galaxy had she known to come and rescue me, when it sounded like Kreia's ship had been the one in the original distress, sabotage aside?
I looked up at HK-50. "Tell me about the freighter. What had happened to it?"
"Evaluation: Master, I do not know," the droid confessed. "Judging by the damage, it had been attacked by a much larger vessel. And when it attempted to escape the Harbinger with you on board, it was fired on again."
And again, that didn't make sense. HK-50 had said the weapons systems on the Harbinger had been failing. So how had it been able to fire on the Ebon Hawk? And why had it done so? The Ebon Hawk was a Republic ship, wasn't it? The logs upstairs had indicated as much. The Republic had wanted to get me to Telos, not kill me. Someone—or somedroid—had gone out of their way to make sure the Republic couldn't get me to Telos, but hadn't counted on Kreia. Still, it could indicate a third party.
Throughout all my musing, HK-50 had still been talking. "Addendum:" it finished. "It does seem odd that such a small vessel has a high probability of attracting the attention of much larger vessels. Not a welcome trait in a freighter, to be sure."
"Why did the Ebon Hawk take me on board?"
"Speculation: I do not know, Master," the droid admitted. "Perhaps it was always its intention to play dead, then kidnap you off the Harbinger and rob me of my bounty."
The phraseology was interesting, and served as proof that my suspicions regarding the droid were correct. "Bounty?" I repeated.
HK-50's circuits whirred just a second too long. "Clarification: By 'bounty', I refer to your life, Master," it said awkwardly. "It would pain me to see you damaged in any way. That is why the arrival of this Ebon Hawk caused me considerable distress."
I still didn't really know what had gone on with the Harbinger and the Ebon Hawk, but what had happened here on Peragus, at least, was becoming clearer by the second. The Exchange had a bounty on Jedi. I had a feeling Coorta and his friends had tried to lay claim to what an assassin droid already thought of as his own.
With assassins, though—when they're not attacking you directly, that is—it's always best to pretend you don't notice them until you have a chance to get away. Especially when they're pretending to be friendlies. So instead of challenging the droid on his misrepresentation, I asked HK-50 why the Ebon Hawk had come to Peragus.
"Apology:" the droid apologized. "My memory cannot provide a clear answer on that point, Master. Suffice it to say that once we arrived on this floating rock our situation became much clearer."
I briefly considered leaving it at that, but then persevered. If anyone asked me what had happened here once I left, I might need to bear witness. "How so?"
"Explanation:" the droid explained. "Despite my market value, Master, the miners were far more interested in you. It did not take me long to ascertain the reason for this. While an HK protocol droid is a valuable piece of property, Jedi are worth much more in certain…exclusive markets across the galaxy.
"Painful Admission:" it added, "I must confess to feelings of inferiority at the speculated difference between my value and the price for your capture. I was forced to remind myself it was not due to a failing of my model or function, but because you were a Jedi."
That of course reminded me that the galaxy at large shouldn't know that I had been a Jedi. "I'm not a Jedi," I told the HK-50 unit. "Why did the miners think I was?"
"Surprised Answer:" said the droid, sounding completely unsurprised. "Why, I told them, Master. You are a Jedi that served with Revan in the Mandalorian Wars, are you not? I hope all that has happened has not been the result of miscommunication. If so, then the problem lies with the coreward databases, which are notoriously spotty."
Had he got that information from the coreward databases, then? It shouldn't have been there, I thought. I had requested the Republic remove that information from the databases and lock their own files. I had seen an admiral comply with my request. The only place the information on my history should have been accessible was the Jedi Archives, and only by a Jedi Master. So if the information should have been inaccessible, but suddenly everyone knew, there was a leak. And if there was a leak, half the galaxy would be after me. I informed the droid of these facts.
He caught the implied accusation this time, though on the whole HK-50 was demonstrating himself to be very bad at deception and even worse at subtlety. "Indignant Exclamation: Master, I am only a protocol droid!" he insisted. "But it is part of my function to know such information and relay it to any interested parties, in the interests of terminating any potential hostiles."
With droids, the programming always shows. But considering that the droid's programming was showing now, when it was trying to remain incognito, I was forced to reevaluate my decision to keep my suspicions quiet. I knew it might start trying to kill me any minute. "Terminating potential hostiles? As in, killing them?" I asked pointedly.
The blunt question seemed to shock the droid back into its disguise. I heard a clunk in its processor. "Quick Clarification: Apparently my vocabulator has suffered some damage, Master," it tried to explain. "I mean terminating any potential hostilities."
Maybe it wouldn't break out the blaster rifle just yet, but the droid was scaring me more and more. "I see," I said uncomfortably. "So what has been happening with the miners?"
"Answer: All that has happened has been because they believe you to be a Jedi, Master," the droid informed me. "They debated what to do with you as you lay unconscious in the medical bay. One group seemed intent on selling you as property. The other group opposed this."
"Yeah, the records upstairs tell me that much," I said, a little impatient. "But what happened? Exactly?"
Droids don't have facial expressions, except the ones made by really perverted people. But HK-50 gave off an undeniable air of satisfaction as he replied. "Answer: Three standard hours after the division between the miners became apparent, accidents began to occur throughout the facility. A result of improper maintenance, I believe. These accidents coincided with the degradation of the mining droid behavioral cores…crude models are prone to such failures, resulting in murderous rampages. The mortality rate of organics in the facility rose quickly."
"I see," I said, struggling to swallow my disquiet. "But what happened to the ones that weren't killed?"
"Answer:" answered HK-50. "Many miners began to join you in the medical bay as a cascade of flawlessly time detonations occurred in isolated gas pockets in the lower levels of the facility. The explosions herded the miners into emergency sections of the station, quickly and efficiently cutting them off from communications and facility control…but sadly enough, not the ventilation systems."
I almost lost the two ration bars I'd eaten in the last three days. "How do you mean?" I all but squeaked.
"Explanation:" the droid trilled gleefully. "You see, the explosions had damaged specific sections of this facility's ventilation systems, causing a slow, lethal build-up of toxic fumes in the dormitory level."
My finger clenched on the trigger, and I swear I nearly shot that droid, Aithne. But I didn't, because I still needed information from it. So instead, I turned aside, and breathed long and deeply until I could control myself. "Do you think there are any left alive?" I managed at last.
"Answer: I do not know, Master," HK-50 said happily. "Ironically enough, any miner that fled to the dormitory level to protect themselves from the droids and the explosions would find themselves in a gas-filled deathtrap."
I just stared for a moment. Never before had I met a droid capable of assassination on such a massive scale, and for so little reason. "What are you?"
"Proud answer: I am an HK series protocol droid—"
"—Just…stop," Aithne said, cradling her head in her hands again. She shook. "Darden—Force, it's all my fault."
Darden paused in her story. Then she moved from her position against the wall to face her old commander. She waited until Aithne lifted her head, and her hair fell away from her face again. She met her gaze. "Aithne. Listen to me. You have to understand this right now, because it's the only way people like you and me can survive. There is a difference between causality and responsibility. We both have more than our share of responsibility—terrible things we have intentionally done or ordered done. No matter how far we run or what we try, we can't get away from that guilt, and I don't think we'll ever be able to. But we are not responsible for all the things that are done by other people in our name but without our consent, or things influenced by, but not ordered by us, or done merely because we happened to show up someplace."
Aithne raised her head a little further. Her face was chalk white. "I made HK-47, and because he was stolen, that droid got made, Darden," she argued.
"Because the Exchange had a bounty on me and I ran into him, HK-50 slaughtered the entire Peragus facility," Darden replied. "So who's to blame? You for losing a droid you never intended to lose, or me for stepping aboard the Harbinger? Or the entity that restarted the production of the corrupted HK models? Aithne—you and I share causality for what happened on Peragus, but we aren't responsible for it, and we don't have to bear that guilt."
"He's like a parody of HK-47," Aithne muttered. "But instead of being funny, it's just horrible." She swallowed. Tucked her hair behind her ears.
"So HK-50 sabotaged the Peragian mining facility and slaughtered all the workers there," Aithne summed up. "What else did you find out from him?"
Darden glanced at Aithne, and she bit her lip. "There was a little more conversation about his capabilities—it wasn't pleasant and I won't subject you to it. And I eventually guessed that if he was trying to contain me, he had probably disabled Teethree before he could do anything else to help. But I finally got around to asking him just how to get out…"
"So, about that service you can do me," I said. "I'm trying to get to the hangar."
HK-50 suddenly came to attention, which had the effect of making me feel very short, indeed. Why did you make the model so tall, anyway? So it could look Alek in the face? "Pitying Answer:" HK-50 said slowly. "Oh, that is unfortunate, Master. The hangar is sealed behind a containment field. It would be impossible to open it."
I was getting damn tired of the hurdles. "Not if I shut down the containment field," I managed through gritted teeth. "There has to be an override code, right?"
"Answer: Only the Peragus administration officer would have such codes, Master," HK-50 said. "If he hasn't already been murdered in an unfortunate accident, then he is trapped in the dormitory section, which has been effectively cut off from the facility be explosives."
Aithne, it was starting to get to the point where I felt it was going to take me the rest of my life to get off that blame asteroid. I left HK-50 and paced the room a couple times just to keep from exploding, repeating under my breath what I had told Atton: There is always, always, always another way out. When I finally felt that I wasn't going to explode in a facility that had had a few too many detonations already, I returned to HK-50. "What's the alternate route to the dormitories?"
Fortunately, the HK-50 programming is at least nominally conditioned to aid organics, and the droid responded. "Theory: You could walk across the surface of the asteroid to the dormitory airlock," it said, taking care to sound very uncertain. It hastened to add, "But such a route would be extremely hazardous, and I do not wish to see you damaged."
I couldn't resist muttering, "I'll just bet you don't." More loudly, I said, "But if there's any chance that some of the miners might be still alive, I've got to help them. And I need those codes."
HK-50's visual receptors glowed, and in a stronger tone than any he had used thus far, he said, "Warning: Master, continued exploration of this facility may place you in unnecessary danger. I encourage you to return to the medical bay and wait for retrieval from a vessel that is no doubt on the way even as we continue this pointless conversation."
Of course, I knew if I did that, I would end as an Exchange slave or a dead bounty. So I stepped right up to HK-50, hand on my mining laser. "You call me Master, so I'll decide the plan of action," I told the droid. "And I've decided to get to the dormitories and see if there's any miners left to rescue. So help me."
"Weary Resignation: Very well, Master," HK-50 said at last. "But there is very little I can do. You see, the airlock is restricted by a code."
"Of course it is," I couldn't help snapping. "Dammit! Who's got that code?"
HK-50 gave off that insufferable smug impression again. "Correction: Oh, I already possess the code, Master, but I am afraid that it will do you no good."
"It won't? Why not?" I demanded, ready for a fight.
"Condescending Explanation," HK-50 explained condescendingly, "Master, the console controlling the droid maintenance area…and the airlock…is voice-printed. Musing: In the last days of his life, the maintenance officer was quite careful about voice protocols, bordering on paranoid obsession. Conjecture: I suspect once he realized something was wrong in the facility, he voice-locked the droid-bay functions. A prudent measure, but in the end he met the same fate as the rest of the organics."
And suddenly the sonic sensor made sense. If I could find enough voice samples—and HK-50 knew the code…"That's him, there?" I asked the droid, gesturing at Reddic Carlisle.
"Confirmation: That is all that remains of the maintenance officer, Master. At the end, he was quite incoherent from the pain, and attempts to facilitate communication with him proved useless. I heard his dying screams as the droids he tended turned on him, mining him like a piece of asteroid rock."
It was incomprehensibly horrible to imagine HK-50 just standing there as the mining droids had killed Carlisle. "You heard him screaming?" I heard myself say, faintly.
"Recitation: Oh, yes, Master. The record of his last moments were…"
"—I'm never going to forget that the rest of my life, but I'm certainly not going to tell you about it," Darden told Aithne, who was sitting pensive and still against the wall. "I didn't even want to know. The important thing is that I discovered that the HK-series droids can mimic voices very well."
I closed my eyes, and swallowed the sick taste in my mouth. "Thank you," I told HK-50. "That was very interesting and informative. Now. You do know the code the maintenance officer used to lock the dormitory airlock?"
Condescending Explanation: Oh, yes, Master. The code is 'Maintenance Control: Voiceprint ID: R1-B5'," he said in his normal droid tones. "But unless the Maintenance Officer speaks the code, it is useless.
I glared at him. "I don't see how that's a problem. You can mimic voices. You can speak the code for me."
"Objection:" HK-50 objected in faux-angered tones. "Master! To commit such an act would be a violation of the ethics programming most droids are believed to possess. I am afraid there is nothing that can be done."
Obviously, this droid did not possess the ethics programming to which he pled, but it was equally obvious he was refusing to just give me a way out of an area in which he could control me. The droid had revealed some pride in his functionality, however, so fingering the sonic sensor in my pocket, I decided to try something different. Faking a cruelly disappointed expression, I said, "Look, don't worry about it, HK-50. I understand if your limited functionality prevents you from mimicking the maintenance officer's voice accurately."
"Irritated Objection: Master, there is nothing wrong with my communications functionality," HK-50 declared, aggrieved. "I will prove it. Recitation:…"
I activated the sonic sensor. "Maintenance Control: Voiceprint ID: R1-B5," HK-50 said in Reddic Carlisle's voice. I stopped the recording. "Query: Was that sufficient, Master?" HK-50 wanted to know.
"Perfectly sufficient," I told him. "I'm sorry I ever doubted your capabilities. I'll just…er…be going now." I gave the assassin droid a little wave and walked out of the room and to the end of the hall I had yet to explore. I guessed the turbolifts were this direction and hoped that HK-50 would think I was going back to the medical bay to wait for his Exchange ship. At any rate, he didn't follow me.
Considering what I knew about HK-50, the objective was to get some weapon better than a mining laser, take care of the droid, and get away before he 'terminated' the 'hostilities' of the other two organics I knew still lived on Peragus and drugged me again.
The last door in the hall led to the fuel depot proper. Silver cases of Peragian fuel were stacked against metal and glass walls that surrounded various shafts of lifts from the tunnels below, where I guessed the fuel was cased to be transported and held here until shipping. Unfortunately, I didn't have much time to admire the design of the station because it became immediately apparent that the droid reprogramming I'd done down in the tunnels hadn't bridged levels, or that the heat in the tunnels had kept the signal from reaching. Four droids which had been standing around before I came out the door, attacked me once I had done so. I dodged, rolled, and ducked behind the door for cover. Ripping open my pack, I tore out the mines and grenades I'd been able to scavenge from the other levels. Laser scored the wall behind me. I could hear the metallic scrabble of metallic legs on the metallic floor as the droids moved nearer. I darted out, threw a grenade, and ducked. I heard clangs as two droid chassis' hit the floor. I rolled, and came up shooting with my mining laser at the other two. The droids didn't track well, didn't turn well. I took them out, too.
I stood, a little winded, and looked around. I could see the blue containment fields HK-50 had mentioned. They cut off the left side of the fuel depot, the side that connected to the hangar. I could only go right, and so that was what I did.
There was a series of rooms to the right, as well as a few more droids. These were a different model. Not insectoid like the mining droids down below. These droids had been used to pick up fuel cases. They were bigger, and bipedal, with more sophisticated lasers. It took me a little longer to disable them, and when the fight was over, I glared at my little mining laser. It had served me well, but at the end of the day, a mining laser only goes so far.
The maintenance terminal was in a room on the right of a hallway similar to the one on the other side of the depot. With the voice-code I'd recorded on the sonic sensor, full access to the terminal was a piece of cake. I checked the logs and cameras out of habit—but I'd pretty much learned everything Reddic Carlisle had known the past few days already. It wasn't until I pulled up the camera feed of the fuel line that I saw something different.
There was stuff in the fuel line, Aithne. I could clearly see a mine, a metal case, and a droid. The droid was a utility model, and I frowned. I had finally located our little astromech friend. I called up stats on the fuel line, because if I could figure out a way to get him out, I wanted to do so. T3-M4 had been a huge help. But when I actually looked at the stats on the fuel line, I blinked. Turned out, Aithne, that the fuel line was pretty much the only part of the facility that never shut down. It ran straight from storage in the hangar area to whatever ship happened to be picking up fuel from Peragus at the time. It went under the depot, past security…the long and short of it was that if a ship docked at Peragus, I could climb straight past the containment field. Of course, I'd have to avoid the heat. And the fumes. And I didn't even know if I could get in there, with no ship docked at Peragus right now. But somehow, HK-50 had gotten in to dump T3-M4 and whatever that case was. I knew, however, he wouldn't be telling me how.
After a brief reflection, I decided that the override codes for the containment fields were still my best option, even if it meant I wouldn't be able to get to T3-M4. I logged out of the camera menu and into the map. I'd been right about the direction of the turbolift. Turned out, the turbolift to the administration level was working down here, and if I took it, I could break lockdown up there. So if I could get the override codes from the dormitory, I would have a working turbolift to go get Kreia and Atton Rand and come back to the hangar. Then, provided the Ebon Hawk was spaceworthy, it'd be goodbye Peragus.
I hesitated before leaving the terminal. There might be more droids, or something else in the dormitories, and I considered that it might be more prudent to go upstairs before crossing the surface of the asteroid, to see if Atton, at least, cared to help me out. Kreia had seemed too weak to move, the last time we'd talked, and she hadn't thought anything at me for hours. After due deliberation, however, I decided that Atton wouldn't be much stronger than Kreia after days of prison and two or three days of no food and water. Better to let him stay up on administration, where it was safe. He could use the fresher, drink some water, and recover himself. He might even come up with a better plan than I had, seeing as I basically had no plan. It was still better that Atton stay up on administration, so that if anything happened to me, he still had a chance. I reflected that the Exchange wasn't after Atton. I believed that HK-50 had sent for an Exchange contact, and when they arrived, they might take Atton and Kreia on board. Atton seemed like a capable enough person, and would probably be just fine if I didn't make it. I didn't know about Kreia, though.
She'd be fine if I found the codes, though. They'd all be fine if I found the codes. I used the sonic sensor again to remote-unlock the dormitory airlock, adjusted my grip on my mining laser, and left the room.
There was a spacesuit in the airlock locker. Of course, it was even bigger on me than the mining uniform. I felt like a kid playing dress-up, like I was floating in it even before I left the facility's gravitational field. My hands felt more like paddles than actual tools by the time I air-sealed the suit and activated its oxygen tank, but somehow I managed to close the airlock and open the door to the asteroid surface.
There was a metal walkway leading out across the surface of the asteroid, up a ramp, down another and over to the dormitory level. I was grateful for the direction, because it meant I wouldn't have to guess where the dorm was and bet my oxygen trying to find it. I started walking.
The silence of space is markedly different than the silence of a dead mining facility. It's still a cold, impersonal silence, but there's a beauty to it, too, and not nearly as much menace. I hadn't been aware of the great extent to which the silence in the facility had unnerved me until that spacewalk. Looking out over the walkway, I saw the Peragus star, and the stars of so many other systems. I suppose you get a similar feeling when you look at the galaxy, Aithne. You and I, we've been all over, and destroyed more than our fair share of space. But when you see the sheer number of them, you know that for all the impact we've had, there's so much we still haven't even touched. So much life. Before, during my exile, I'd felt completely isolated from it all. Looking at the stars was the loneliest thing I could do. But just then, with the faint background of the Force once again ringing in my ears, I fancied I could hear the stars singing again. I could feel the vibrations that were the rotations of the Peragian system. And I didn't feel lonely at all.
Just then, I heard a hiss. A great jet of yellow and purple steam turned on right in front of me. Even in the cold of space, I could feel the sudden heat. It was the fuel vents. I considered rapidly. Even in the spacesuit, the heat of the fuel stream could hurt me quite badly. But if I jumped, if I ran, the cold of space might protect me just long enough to get through the vent.
I pumped my legs and leaped, bouncing off the walkway. There was a millisecond of searing pain, but then I was through, and unharmed. I bounced once, twice more, carried on by the momentum of my movement. But then I fanned my arms, crouched, and managed to stop. I looked to the left, breathing a sigh of relief that I hadn't bounced off the walkway and into empty space. I looked right, then.
I mentioned that the walkway ramped up, Aithne. It plateaued right beside the observation window on the administration level. I could see the terminal. I could see Atton Rand hunched over it, feverishly pressing buttons. He saw something on his display then, and gave a great laugh.
Inside my spacesuit, the com-link buzzed, and I grinned, incredulous, realizing that Atton must have been trying to reach me this entire time. I was grateful for the overlarge spacesuit, then. I was able, if only just, to slip the com-link off my wrist and come in. I could hear Atton clearly.
"It's about time. I lost your signal after you left the mining tunnels," he said. "Now you're coming in clear…except I'm picking you up on the exterior of the facility, on the asteroid's surface. That can't be right."
I laughed. Speaking up in the hope Atton would hear me through the suit, I answered. "Look up and smile, Atton."
Incredibly, he did hear me. He looked up, and inexplicably happy, I waved my arms around in the spacesuit. Atton saw me. For a moment, he gaped like a fish.
"Huh? What are you doing out there?"
I started to shrug, but then reflected that I might bounce off the walkway if I tried it. "The hangar's cut off from the fuel depot by a containment field," I explained. "I need the administration officer's override codes, and he, or his body, is in the dormitory. But the regular door's been destroyed, so I'm taking a spacewalk."
Atton regarded me with a strange expression through the observation window. "You're crazy," he said flatly. "Even for a Jedi. Look, you need to get out of there…quick."
"What do you mean?"
"What little is left of the facility's venting systems have gone active," he told me. "Most likely from the explosions in the mining tunnels. They're venting Peragus fuel deposits into space through the exterior vents—right in your path."
I looked behind me, confused. I thought I'd gotten through the vent. But when I looked up ahead, as the ramp sloped down again toward the dormitory, I realized there was another. "Yeah—can you shut those down?" I asked him.
"I can't," Atton said apologetically. "I'm locked out of the main systems here." He hit the top of the terminal. "I couldn't shut it down if I tried. The vents look like they've been purposely rerouted to vent the gases to the exterior, and only in the last few minutes. It's almost as if…"
"The facility saboteur knows I'm out here and wants to kill me especially?" I finished for him. Atton, behind the observation window, went very still.
"What happened?" he asked.
"Dammit," I muttered. "Mining laser or not, I should've tried to take him out in maintenance. There's a droid, Atton," I tried to explain. "I'm not following his plan of—"A shadow eclipsed the Peragian sun then, and I broke off. "What's that?"
At the back of my mind and across the silent link with her, I suddenly felt Kreia tense, and a great menace overshadowed my own feelings.
"Oh, what now?!" Atton burst out. "I don't believe this—there's a ship coming in, sending a docking code."
"Not just any ship," I said, as the ship came around and the Peragus exterior lighting illuminated a Republic cruiser. "That's the Harbinger. I was on that ship before I woke up and found I'd arrived at Peragus on the Ebon Hawk. But the droid said it had died…"
"I have a bad feeling about this," Atton said quietly.
There was a beep, and I looked down at the oxygen gauge on my suit. Forty-two percent, and falling. "Me, too," I replied to Atton. "And meanwhile, my oxygen's running out." I squeezed the com-link in my hand, gave Atton a wave, and moved. The fuel line above extended from Peragus to the Harbinger as I jumped through the final jet of fuel and headed for the dormitories, toward an escape that somehow, now seemed much more urgent.
"So a third party," Aithne said flatly. "Or a fourth, if you count the Republic. That HK-50 droid crippled the Harbinger's systems and drugged you to the gills, but Kreia rescued you. But someone that wasn't Republic got on board the Harbinger and rebooted everything, or it wouldn't have and couldn't have fired on the Ebon Hawk and followed you to Peragus. Is that about the size of it?"
"Just about."
"This is where the Sith come in, isn't it?" Aithne asked.
"Yeah. This is where the Sith come in. Not that I knew that at the time. I just knew I wouldn't like whoever had taken over the Harbinger. So I went into the dormitory, looking for survivors, and the administrator's containment field deactivation codes…"
A/N: Thanks for reading the chapter. Take a moment to review and tell me what you thought, hey? I will be awesomely grateful.
Coming 4/24: Darden tells Aithne about her encounter with the Sith on the Harbinger, and Aithne Morrigan expresses particular interest in the Republic records Darden found onboard.
May the Force be with you,
LMSharp
