Hello everyone! I'm back in college again, and this time having in-person classes - yay I actually leave the house now! - but hopefully that won't impact the story too much, I'm hoping to finish everything before the end of the year and, if I can keep my biweekly schedule going, it should actually end in a month or two. Anyway...
Secrets of The Outer Rim.
Act III.
The Hunters and The Hunted.
Chapter XXXVI.
The Bounty Hunters.
"There, we're live." Phanza announced as the video screen in front of us displayed the visor footage of one the leader of the team of bounty hunters we sent to Raxus Prime. This was Phanza's plan to rescue the scientists without incriminating us. It seemed like a good plan, but I can't deny I would rather be there myself, with their lives in my hands rather than having to trust a bunch of Nar Shaddaa mercenaries anonymously contacted via Phanza's agents at the Star Cluster casino and the corresponding cult to Darth Imperius. Four bounty hunters gathered at the entrance to the watchtower, two on the left, one on the right, and the leader standing in front of the door, armed with a blaster pistol, ready to cover the door once the charge his allies set up detonated, blowing their way into tower to rescue the hostage and, with any luck, take out the hunters as well. Perhaps that was too much of an ask though, considering I wasn't sure of our own ability to fight the hunters, and we have the Force, what do these bounty hunters have?
Well, they did seem pretty professional. The leader was a Mandalorian of sorts, wearing dark blue and gray armor, black visor topped with a protective cap protruding from his helmet. This man also had a jetpack with missile on his back and was using two blaster pistols as his weapons. The second-in-command of this ragtag group - it was a strike force of bounty hunters that Phanza assembled, not a pre-existing clan or anything - was a female Rodian, the blue-scaled creature wearing an elegant longcoat and having a long-barreled blaster to match, the trigger guard going all the way down to cover her hand and the whole weapon topped with a long range sight. It looked like she could also equip the weapon with a shoulder stock to use it as a rifle, if she felt the need to. She doesn't seem to need to on this mission, because, behind her, a Weequay pirate armed with a long range blaster rifle seemed to have the range angle covered. The final bounty hunter, covering the right side of the door all on her own, was a Cerean female wearing a headdress, covering both her face and then curving up to cover her two-brained head, leaving just her eyes exposed. The Cerean woman wore a skin-tight black outfit in addition to the brown headdress, and also a black bandolier across her chest. The bounty hunter's appearance was completed by the pair of automatic blaster pistols she held, one in each hand.
"We're breaching now." the bounty hunter leader reported, his mechanically distorted voice coming through the signal he was streaming over to us. Phanza, Schweva, and I watched as they detonated the breaching charge, knocking over the door, and the leader marched in, finding the circular first story to be empty. The Mandalorian leader walked through the door and then stuck his hands out in either direction, pointing blasters both ways, seeking to cover either side of the curved hallway, should it prove necessary, but, like I said, it wasn't necessary. The bounty hunter gave a hand signal to the rest of his team and they followed him in. The Rodian and the Weequay covered the right side and the Cerean covered the left side, meanwhile, the Mandalorian headed inside, going towards the central chamber. For a team of people who have never worked together before, they seem to be functioning rather well as a tactical unit, something which will only help them in what is looking like more and more of a trap. The Mandalorian reported in once more before opening the door to the central chamber "Moving in."
It was curt and businesslike, much like his own tactical approach as he opened the door with one hand and covered himself off with the other hand, aiming the blaster into the now open room. Once again though, there was no sign of the hunters. Three of the scientists were hanging from the ceiling, on chains, but on the far side of the room, faced away from us, and partly in shadow. The Mandalorian approached slowly, but steadily, turning around as he reached the middle of the central chamber to check the balcony of the second story, making sure that he wasn't about to be sniped from behind, though, yet again, there was no sign of the hunters. The Mandalorian leader put one of his blasters away and then headed over to the scientists, still being careful, like perhaps he was expecting a thermal detonator or some sort of explosive to be on their bodies, but no...the truth was much worse than that.
I physically recoiled when I saw the Mandalorian leader turn the scientist around to reveal a dead body, the human male hanging there with a slit throat, already looking pale and drained, the archetypal corpse. The Mandalorian turned the other two around to find them in the same state as his team filed into the room, having determined that the whole facility is clear. So, the scientists are dead and Palpatine's hunters are long gone, meaning that we blew the opportunity to rescue them and paid these bounty hunters for nothing. I had an opportunity to save these people, but here I am, seeing them dead, and not even having the common courtesy to be there remotely. I can't even say I tried to save them because, here I am, watching all of this from Dromund Kaas, having down nothing to save them.
"The hunters must have realized we weren't coming and killed them...it's all my fault." I voiced my displeasure.
"Unlikely. These bodies have been dead for awhile. I can't tell for sure quite yet, but preliminary analysis shows that they were dead before we landed. Whoever killed them is long gone too, thermal scans show a lack of recent activity, beyond our own." the hunter replied, analyzing the corpses, and even providing a thermal vision scan of the compound. So...what was their game then? The hunters clearly intended to use the scientists as bait, but, with the hunters gone, bait for what? What was the trap they had wanted to spring? Well, the Rodian and the Weequay hunters headed up to the second floor while the Cerean and the Mandalorian continued investigating the ground level, trying to figure out what was going on here. After a few moments, the Rodian came back with a report.
"There's some activity in the distance, might just be trash crews working on - " the Rodian was cut off by the sound of a massive machine turning on somewhere below, then, suddenly, it seemed like the enter world started shaking. At first, I thought it was an earthquake, but then, things started dropping, and awful crushing sounds broke out deep below the ground, and then, I realized this wasn't anything natural. The Imperial trap turned out to be a massive subterranean garbage crusher, dragging all the metal, rubble, and garbage in and crushing it below. The Imperials then detonated some underground explosives, blowing the watchtower off its base, and leaving it floating on a sea of sand getting sucked into the crusher like a whirlpool of death, metal, and destruction. The bounty hunters were scrambling now, every man for himself, as they tried to climb out of the tower and get back to the ship before both of them were consumed by the evil machine below.
The Weequay sniper tried climbing up to the second floor through this central atrium to escape via the control room windows, but the Rodian woman shot him dead, gunning down her own teammate - well, teammate for this mission anyway, though they seemed to work together better than the rest of the tea - in cold blood, even trying to use his body as a springboard as she climbed to the second floor, trying to use his method. The Cerean woman, meanwhile, ran for the main entrance, using her two brains to decide that the best course of action is to get out of the watchtower before she joins her Weequay teammate in being dead on the ground. The Mandalorian leader wasn't so leaderly after all, because he immediately abandoned his team, taking off with his jetpack and beating the Rodian up to the second floor, even kicking her in the face as he did so, sending her back to the ground and erasing her progress. He was going to be the first one to the ship. The three of us watched through the visor cam as he shattered through the control room window and headed for the ship, keeping in the arm because the swirling mountain of trash getting pulled into the crusher below provided little in the way of solid ground.
In a fortunate twist of fate, their ship turned out to be just outside the radius of the crusher machine, but, in an unfortunate twist of fate, I mean just. The rubble ground just beneath the front landing gear of the ship was being pulled into the death spiral, and it seemed like, if nothing was done soon, the whole ship would get pulled into the chaos. Just as the Mandalorian reached the ship and landed on a solid patch of ground next to the side entrance hatch of the ship, a grappling hook followed him, narrowly whizzing past the visor to hit the hull of the ship. The Mandalorian turned around in record time to reveal the Cerean woman, using a grappling hook to sail over the wreckage and shooting at the Mandalorian with her blaster pistol. The first shot missed, hitting the hull of the ship, the second shot, meanwhile, went high, revealing just how difficult it was to line up a shot one handed while getting pulled along in the other hand by a super fast hydraulic cable. I can't tell where the third shot would have gone, because she never got it off. The leader of this impromptu troop of bounty hunters only needed one shot to put a blaster bolt through the Cerean's lower brain, a headshot being more than enough to killer her. Her body fell to the circle of garbage getting pulled into the crusher and any chance of salvation was ripped away when the Mandalorian severed the cable of her grappling hook, eliminating her last connection to solid ground.
The bounty hunter leader boarded the ship, and it seemed like, for a moment, he might actually get away. I'm not sure if it's a deserved getaway, considering he hindered one of his teammates in the process and outright killed another, all while doing nothing to save the final one, but at least somebody would survive this cursed mission and Phanza and I wouldn't have to live with the knowledge that we sent a group of bounty hunters into a trap and not one of them survived. That being said, w weren't so fortunate, because, the first - and, well, the last - thing that the Mandalorian saw when he sat down in the cockpit was the now detached watchtower swinging towards the ship, laying on its side, right about to collide with the cockpit and about half of the ship along with it. The Mandalorian leader didn't try to flee, he didn't scramble to the back of the ship in an attempt to save himself, no, instead, he seemed to just sigh and resign himself to his fate. The feed cut off the moment the watchtower struck into the cockpit of the ship, none of us about to question why. We knew the answer.
The scientists were dead, the hunters were long gone, and every single member of the bounty hunter team we sent to Raxus Prime was dead. The only possible consolation we can get out of this mission, and I'm not even sure how much of a consolation this is, is that it was those bounty hunters instead of the three of us dying over this mission. Perhaps Phanza and Schweva was right, perhaps it was foolish of me to think that I could actually rescue them, perhaps it was foolish of me to think that the Empire would actually leave these scientists alive for long enough for anyone to save them, and perhaps it was especially foolish of me to think that these scientists had any real value to the Empire. Fundamentally, the only person that really matters to Palpatine is Palpatine himself, everyone else is expendable, and everyone else can be replaced, no matter how indispensable they may seem. That defines the central tragedy to this whole conflict: we are up against an enemy with infinite resources, no regard for human life, and no consideration for the costs of his war. Palpatine would gladly bankrupt countless worlds in pursuit of destroying us because he doesn't care about the common people of his Empire.
In an attempt to gain somewhat of an advantage, and to work on some flexibility in regards to whether or not we truly need the Swarm device, Phanza has been trying to rebuild her spy network in the former Republic and the former Confederacy of Independent Systems. The thinking is that, with countless attacks across the galaxy to investigate, courtesy of our shock and awe strategy, the Empire and it's executioner Darth Vader have bigger things to worry about than tracking down my remaining spies. Well, so far I haven't paid much attention to that particular venture of Phanza's, it didn't seem very important in the grand scheme of things, especially with us fleeing to Dromund Kaas and all that, but, suddenly, it was becoming very, very important.
"Schweva! Zaliza! Get down here right away!" Phanza called out, summoning the both of us to the large, first story chamber of Darth Imperius' apartment, a large room overlooking the rest of Kaas City, and the room which Phanza set up as a living room, a holocommunicator sitting in the center of a set of couches. Right now though, Phanza stood in her robes at the open end of the U-shape created by the furniture, and the shimmering blue hologram of one of her spies. This one was a human male in a suit, speaking with a Coruscant accent, perhaps marking him as a minor bureaucrat of Senate aide with a grudge against the Empire. Someone insignificant enough that the Empire wasn't monitoring him closely, but someone still in a position where he can access privileged information, the exact kind of privileged information that we could use in a war like this. I can see why Phanza would want one of her spies on Coruscant to be a mole like this, and I'm glad that she found one. That being said, the information he had to give was far from good news. Phanza stopped us on the far side of the room so that the spy couldn't actually see us, then reactivated the audio on the call, letting us listen in on what he had to say, even if he didn't know who exactly he was telling all of this to. I understand why Phanza didn't want to expose everything, especially with fears that this agent on Coruscant could be caught at any moment, but I had to imagine it was stressful for him as well. For all this man knew, it was Vader and Palpatine standing across the room from Lady Attam.
"Like I said, the rumor started this week that the Empire has frozen all contracts with Kamino and that the clones were going to be phased out. I guess the existing stock would remain but an army of conscripts, meant to police the entire galaxy, was going to replace them. Some more vocal senators are saying that it's because we don't need a war army anymore, we need an army of oppressors." the man repeated himself, giving information to us that he already gave to Phanza, but the he continued at her behest, giving the rest of the information he had "Then the Senator from Kamino disappeared, and all her staff got reassigned to other offices. Now they're saying that the Empire bombarded Kamino, destroyed any evidence of what they did there. It's just whispers for now, far away from where anyone can see, but I think something is going on. They're also saying that Palpatine is going to give a big address soon. Some of the aides think that he's going to announce everything that we're already suspecting. I don't know how much is actually true, but everyone in the Senate building is talking about this in hushed doors and in private offices. I thought that you should know, Lady Tamat."
"Thank you, Torshule, your information is invaluable." Phanza, or should I say Zapnha Tamat, replied before ending the call there and turning over to us. Once again, her secret identity was being used and, once again, it showed Phanza's relationship with all these spies and agents and cultists she had around the galaxy: she depended on them and their connections, but she did not trust any single one of them. No one knew the full story, most of them probably didn't even know about the existence of other spies and agents, and they weren't allowed to know. I knew that security and subterfuge plays a role in all this, but security only goes so far. At some point, it becomes a matter of Phanza putting all the risk on her agents for nothing in return. Anyway, Lady Attam spoke to us "It seems like it's true, all my spies are reporting something similar. It seems that the Empire has destroyed Kamino and declared the clones obsolete. A few spies even proposed that our activities, along with the activities of some other groups the Empire is tracking, has caused them to look towards increasing their number of troops. The Moths believe the best way to do this is to build up an army of volunteers and conscripts, paired with a backbone of hardened clones, and transitioning to a fully volunteer army over time. The idea is to make it so any rebels have to kill Imperial soldiers from their own societies, their own families even, and to make it possible to have an Imperial military presence everywhere in the galaxy. I don't think I need to tell you that this is bad news for us."
"What are we going to do?" Schweva asked, the apprentice jumping to the practical side of things immediately, trying to find a solution. I, however, was still reeling from the emotional shock of the information. I can't believe how quickly things are changing: Palpatine transformed the Galactic Republic which has stood for tens of thousands of years into a Galactic Empire with a single speech. Palpatine had the Jedi eliminated with a single order, severing a bond between Jedi and Republic almost as old as the Republic itself. Now, Palpatine was replacing the clone army: the men that fought with us, the men that betrayed us, the men that killed Ullara, were being replaced by conscripts and volunteers alike all across the galaxy. I can't imagine how the rest of the galaxy is coping with paradigm shift after paradigm shift, the whole galaxy being transformed, and this is only a few years after the massive transformations that led to the Clone Wars to begin with. These people have seen the Republic hit by a secession crisis, put into a galactic war for the first time in a thousand years, overthrown by Palpatine, and turned into an Empire in less than five years. This is the most eventful age in the history of the galaxy, but not in a good way.
"I'm not exactly sure what we can do." I responded to Schweva's question, even if it wasn't directed at me. There isn't exactly much we can do to the Empire's internal methods of troop production, I suppose the only thing that changes is the kind of troops we're going to be facing. I can suspect more of them, considering that it's probably cheaper to hire and train an ordinary civilian than it is to take ten years producing a bespoke clone killing machine, but, on the other hand, I would also expect the quality of the troops to decrease over time. That, again, goes back to their purpose: the purpose of the Clone Army was to fight the droid armies in a galactic wide war, that war is now over. The purpose of these new conscripts, meanwhile, is going to be to protect the Empire and its interests, to secure its borders, and to crack down on any and all rebellion. In that respect, this change makes military change, but destroying Kamino entirely? That is just harsh. I obviously don't know the whole story, and maybe Palpatine had greater reasons than simply for the sake of evil - that's not justifying his actions, merely stating that there was probably an element of cold logic behind it - but the point remains, destroying Kamino does not make military sense. Even if Palpatine is not going to order a clone army, he could always use the cloning world as a source of elite specialized troops. Though, considering that Palpatine's hunters don't seem to be clones, perhaps Palpatine already has another source of elite troops. Perhaps Kamino itself was rendered obsolete, now Palpatine wanted to make sure his enemies will never get their hands on that technology: that we'll never get our hands on this technology.
"We continue as normal. If anything else, the conscription centers will provide another potential target for our attacks. We cannot let this stop us from attacking the Empire as hard and as fast as we can as often as we deem necessary, in fact, we can use this as an opportunity to exploit any weaknesses and difficulties that spring up as a result of this change. In fact, I'm going to see what my spies can do in terms of drumming up tension between clones and conscripts. Perhaps we'll be able to do some real damage that way." Phanza replied, seemingly coming up with the plan as she spoke, coming up with a brutally efficient strategy, even if I didn't necessarily agree with all of it. Attacking conscription centers seems very morally dubious, especially given that they'll likely be in settled areas where there is a population to draw from, and especially because the would-be conscripts present there are still technically civilians. Civilians in the process of becoming soldiers, yes, but civilians nonetheless. That being said, I didn't particularly feel like arguing, not after everything that happened surrounding the scientists and the Raxus Prime situation, and also because I knew I didn't have any better answers.
I felt bad for Phanza in this regard, her position as our master means that she's the leader of this group, she's the one that has to make the big decisions. I feel almost stunted myself, having lost Master Ullara while I was apparently within touching distance of graduating from being a Padawan, the whole Jedi Order being eradicated at the same time, so I'm not really in a position where I want to be making decisions. Perhaps then, I'm not really justified when I constantly complain and moralize, so perhaps Schweva has a point, but Schweva is hardly better herself. The Chiss woman may talk a big game and she may see herself as more of a Sith than I am, but, at the end of the day, time and time again she has shown herself to be a deer in the headlights looking to Phanza for guidance. The one time Schweva made a decision herself was the time on Manaan when she kissed me to cover us off from Clone troopers, and that hardly seems like a good decision. It was a panicked attempt to try and evade detection, one that worked, but that doesn't mean that I liked it. The point is that neither of us are natural leaders, we're both followers in our own ways, the stunted Padawan and the Sith apprentice, just a few months separating her from when she was an acolyte on Exavellos, and that puts more pressure on Phanza. Lady Attam seems to function rather well under pressure, all things considered.
Phanza lost her homeworld to the Empire, losing her master in the very same attack, and now she has to try and lead what remains of Taaszon's civilization here on Dromund Kaas, all while continuing everything that she's been doing in both the Grand Duchy and in the known galaxy. Phanza has diluted some of her powers over to the Dark Council here in Kaas City, but she still remains powerful and therefore under significant pressure. Phanza is still the de facto Grand Duchess of Taaszon and that that means she is saddled with the biggest decisions with the biggest consequences. I don't envy her position in the slightest.
The announcement came a few days later. Palpatine officially announced the creation of the Stormtrooper Corps, the new infantry arm of the Imperial Army, with the existing active clones to be converted into the first Stormtrooper battalions, to be joined first by volunteers - professional soldiers - and later on by conscripts. All in the interests of the security and well-being of the galaxy. Security and well-being. Palpatine actually said that, in front of the Galactic Senate on Coruscant, and he received thunderous applause in response. It was concerning how quickly the democratic galaxy gave up their rights and surrendered to the all-encompassing embrace of tyranny, but that's not the matter for right now. What matters right now is that we're doing out best to fight the Empire and its tyranny. To that end, Schweva, Phanza, Admiral Wurrathu, HK-107, Yevenna, and I were onboard a separatist troop carrier. The idea was that we were going to attack one of a number of low-use Imperial facilities with gear from the Confederacy of Independent Systems as a continuation of our shock and awe strategy.
Why low use facilities? Well, ever since the incident on Raxus Prime, Phanza has been working to identify some potential places that the hunters could be operating out of, places with few departures and returns, ones that really only fir the time window of our interactions with these hunters, the thought process being that, if we hit enough of these places, we'll eventually come across them. I think the reason for that is very clear: Phanza doesn't like the fact that the hunters outsmarted her: she doesn't like the fact that she maneuvered a way out of their trap only to find the prize had been taken away from her and having to witness the pathetic deaths of her own bounty hunter team, and she wants to correct that as soon as possible. That's not to say this is purely emotional, there is a very practical element to all this: the hunters were deliberately designed to hunt us down and they represented a recurring threat, a recurring threat that we could deal with here. Now, I've already voiced my fear that dealing with the hunters could just result in Palpatine finding something worse to sic on us, but that doesn't seem to have changed Phanza's mind. Lady Attam wants a reckoning against these hunters, and, as we entered the atmosphere of Cato Neimoidia, she was going to get it.
"Alright, we're almost there. You know what to do HK." Phanza announced as she walked out of the cockpit, Wurrathu still sat in the pilot's seat. She turned the the ship around and opened the rear hatch, hovering just above a former separatist control tower rising up from one of the bridge cities of the Neimodian world. There were once a lot of control towers like this, a relic from a very certain period of time when the Trade Federation was experimenting with alternate methods of controlling battle droids before settling with giving each of them an independent processor. The idea was to have local planetary control even when orbital control spheres were inoperable or even destroyed. These towers were already obsolete by the time of the Clone Wars, but the massive rate of attrition in that war meant that some of these towers were used regardless. Still, it was quite a rarity to see one of these still standing after the end of the wars, especially one with an active Imperial presence. That suspicion is what drew us here, and we were going to take the former separatist nature of this facility to our advantage.
First of all, using CIS equipment made it seem like our goal was to loot the tower for gear - we were going to blow it up when we were done here, so as to disguise our movements - searching a former separatist site for separatist equipment just made sense. Second of all, we were going to have HK-107 lead the attack, the assassin droid could pass for some sort of experimental commando droid thing from a distance, and, besides, it was deliciously ironic to begin this assault with a droid warrior, especially given how the separatist alliance and everything it stood for, or at least, ideally stood for, was being erased under Palpatine. The Confederacy of Independent Systems was never supposed to be about Count Dooku or the Banking Clan or the Trade Federation, it was supposed to be about the secessionist planets and their grievances with the Republic, many of which were legitimate grievances, but, the average person will remember them for hordes of battle droids and senseless violence all across the galaxy. It wasn't fair to the separatist cause and it wasn't fair to all the Jedi who died fighting against them. In any case, HK-107 was planting an explosive on the door to the base. The assassin droid activated it before backing away from the door, grabbing his heavy machine gun and getting ready for whatever was on the other side as the charge detonated.
"Proclamation: The door is open, mistress. Educated Assumption: The enemy meatbags must be deeper inside." HK-107 reported before immediately turning back around and heading into the tower. Schweva, Yevenna, Phanza, and I got off of the ship while Wurrathu flew off, keeping the ship running for us and doing her best to stay out of the line of fire. I was dressed in a black overcoat, a belt around my waist, black tights, and black boots while holding a separatist blaster rifle: the idea was to appear like a random dissident group or separatist splinter faction using and looking for separatist equipment. The idea was not too dissimilar to what the Loukhamii separatists were actually doing, and, therefore, we were taking great care to not try and appear like Senator Cenetta's resistance. That was all for the planning stage though, there was no time to think about that now.
"Schweva, Yevenna, you and HK-107 head up and begin arming the explosives. Zaliza, we're heading down. It seems this tower compound extends into the city below." Phanza ordered as we saw the room we entered only contained a few separatist computers and two flights of stairs - the computers were usual, a relic of the tower's old function, as were the stairs going up, but the stairs going down? That was out of place - that warranted investigation. Schweva nodded and headed up the steps, HK-107 following her without skipping a beat, and Yevenna bringing up the rear, likely intent on being the one standing watch while the other two place the explosives. So then, that left the Nautolan and I, two red-skinned aliens, of different species, about to walk down a flight of stairs into the unknown. Phanza led the way, heading down the stairs and to the landing halfway down as the stairs curved back to the ground, but I followed closely, and I put my blaster over to railing to shoot anyone that tried to get the jump on Phanza, though, fortunately, no one was there. Maybe I should say unfortunately though, because that means we don't know when the trap is coming, only the uncertain feeling that it is going to come.
The anticipation, the anxiousness as the door at the base of the stairs slides opening, the twin blaster barrels raised as Phanza and I have no idea what is going to be on the other side of that door, and the sinking feeling when it's revealed to be nothing but a long, dark hallway leading to something unknown. The sinking feeling as the adrenaline drops ever so slightly because that wasn't the trap, that wasn't the near death experience, but also because of the disappointment, because again, that means we have to keep waiting for whatever's coming. I would almost rather the trap be sprung now, just so we know what we're up against, just so we don't have to feel like those now-dead bounty hunters wandering into the central atrium of the watchtower on Raxus Prime with no idea of the deadly machine a few hundred feet below them, capable of sucking in a sea of trash like a black hole and crushing it all into a cube that could fit on a standard speeder trailer. In any case, Phanza and I took our first steps into the hallway, blasters at the ready, and were immediately alarmed when the lights came on. The lights activated one by one all the way down the hallway, bathing us in white light, and removing some of the horror, but doing nothing to ease the feeling that we were about to walk into a trap.
"So, you've shown yourselves after all." the voice of the leader of the hunters rang out over the intercom as we continued walking down the hallway, the Imperial elite taunting us as we made our way down the hall "I have to admit I was disappointed with what I saw on Raxus Prime, common bounty hunters. To think that we put all that effort into setting a trap for you and you didn't even have the decency to show up in person. Still, I suppose it's better late than never. In separatist gear too, I take it that means you have a supplier? Supplier on Loukhamii perhaps, the sight of the space station explosion. The explosion which just so happened to take out three ships meant for the attack on the Grand Duchy of Taaszon. That's also when the association with the Third Sister started, isn't it? Lord Vader had his suspicions already, that's why he kept the detonator on his person on Taaszon, you know, the detonator that blew her dead clean off. Poof. You already know that. Just like I already know that it was you that's been attacking the Empire. It's always been you, and we'll get all the proof we need off your dead bodies."
"As if your Empire needs any proof." Phanza muttered to herself before shouting out to the intercom, knowing full well that the leader of the hunters was no doubt listening to us "Bold talk from someone with no knowledge of the Force. You're weak and ordinary, breakable, and overconfident too by the looks of it. What makes you possibly think you could beat two Force users, especially if we're responsible for all the feats you're accusing us of?"
"Continue down the hall and you'll find out." the leader of the hunters replied, still cold, still cocky, and still mocking us. Phanza let down her guard slightly and started walking faster, realizing by now that nothing was going to harm us in this hallway, whatever trap they have is at the end of that hallway. We'll be cautious when we get down there, there's no reason to be cautious all the way up here.
We reached the end of the hallway and rounded a corner, revealing what almost seemed to be a trophy room. There was a ton of things in here, mostly weapons and odd mementos, but a few things stood out in particular. I spotted the assault cannon that the lead hunter used on Nar Shaddaa, some sort of massive harpoon gun that I could only guess the purpose of, and the skull of some sort of horned beast, displayed as a trophy. Perhaps the harpoon killed the beast, perhaps they're relics from unrelated adventures, I'm not sure, and I don't really know which is worse. The worst surprise was yet to come though, because, while most of the lights activated when we entered, the far side of the room was still in shadow. The lead hunter wanted us to go there. Phanza and I weren't going to keep him waiting, so, we crossed the trophy room and prepared for the last set of lights to come on.
The lights activated and revealed something I never expected to see again. The green and black armored suit of Exiim Abarghe, the bounty hunter we pursued while the Battle of Coruscant was going on. Phanza seemed surprised too, she told me that Palpatine had Exiim killed and that seemed to be everything her data was telling her, so, why is this suit here? Well, we didn't have to look far for an answer, because the lights also revealed a window on the opposite side of this little alcove sticking out from the rest of the trophy room. Phanza and I looked through the window to reveal the lead hunter, standing there in his armor, but not wearing his helmet. The hunter was a human male, that much is clear, but he's far from a usual human male. His skin was an eerie, pale white, scarred in many areas, with his head and neck surrounded by cybernetics, almost looking like fingers rising up from beneath his armor to cover his head. These mechanical fingers occasionally pulsed a neon green and, as the bald man turned to face us, his eyes were revealed to be all black, except for a pair of circular pupils in the center that pulsed green at the same time as the fingers running up his neck. This was a human, emphasis on was.
"Ah yes, the armor. You remember that, don't you Padawan Zaliza Vyvan, apprentice of Master Ullara Avdune and survivor of the Battle of Ypherro. My last assignment. My work with the separatists are done and Emperor Palpatine needed a way to extract me. I got my return flight to Coruscant and Palpatine found a way to get another four Jedi off-world in time for Grievous' attack. Two birds with one stone." the hunter revealed, smirking as he revealed himself to be one and the same with Exiim Abarghe, yet, simultaneously revealing Exiim to be nothing but an agent of Palpatine. So, this was never about ending the war, Palpatine didn't just happen to intervene when we were delivering Exiim to the Jedi, it was all a coordinated effort to put everyone in place in time for Order 66. That only leaves one question though: Phanza was sure that Exiim Abarghe died and I had every reason to believe her...how did that happen.
"But...you died!" I complained, knowing I sounded quite pathetic and childish with that, but not knowing how else to react to this. The lead hunter was Exiim Abarghe all along, now he's taunting off from the other side of a reinforced window, and we still don't know what his big trap is. I'm assuming this is all about getting us shocked and off-guard, but shocked and off-guard for what?
"Look at me girl, do you really think I haven't died before? I'm alive when the Emperor wishes me to be alive, and I am dead when he has no need of me." Exiim Abarghe replied, rather cryptically. I could only assume that this has to do with whatever is going on with his eyes and his cybernetics, both of which are presumably controlled by Palpatine. So then, perhaps this is Palpatine's way of creating a truly loyal soldier, one that he can kill with the press of a button if they ever step out of line, and one that he can build and rebuild to whatever purpose required of him.
"And what is that compared to the power of the Force?" Phanza asked, raising a hand against Exiim, trying to end this, but she never got the chance, because, as soon as she raised the hand, the floor opened up beneath us, sending us falling.
Almost a literal cliffhanger.
Ciao!
