Killing Time
The Ebon Hawk was nearly soundless as it moved along the hyperspace channel. Vibrant oscillating shades of blue and white were all that was visible through the cockpit's viewport but hyperspace's brilliance was lost on Atton and Mira. Atton attempted to occupy himself by picking at controls every so often and pretending to look over system statuses. Mira was leaning back in the copilot's seat with her feet resting on the control console, absentmindedly biting at her nails.
"Do you know how to play Pazaak?" Atton asked after what had seemed an interminable silence. Mira simply looked at Atton with an expression that communicated perfectly her complete lack of interest before going back to biting at her nails. "I guess not," Atton murmured.
It was a long time before Atton tried again, "Do you know if this ship has any holovids?"
Mira looked at Atton quizzically, "I think Evrain had a little bit too much on his mind to worry about holovids."
Atton shrugged, "It was worth a try."
There was another, long, uncomfortable silence. This time it was Mira who spoke, "The last people to own this ship might have though."
"Now there's a thought. This is a pretty old ship and it looks like a lot of owners just left stuff behind." Atton stood from his chair and began his search. After scouring every drawer, shelf, nook and cranny he could find, Atton eventually came across a stack of holovids in a locked container in the cargo room. "I found some!" Atton shouted.
"What did you find?" Mira shouted back, and Atton heard her soft footsteps approaching.
Atton looked at each of the holovids, they were all unlabeled, "I'm not sure." Atton responded.
Mira had made it back to the cargo hold by then. "Weird," she commented, "let's plug one of 'em into the holo terminal and see what happens."
"Alright," Atton said, following Mira back to the main hold. Atton looked around the room and noted the lack of any seats. "We need to get a couch and maybe some chairs in here," he commented.
"Just plug the thing in," Mira said.
Atton took the top holovid and inserted it into the terminal. A few seconds later the two were assaulted by slow and repetitive music.
"Is it just audio?" Mira asked.
"It shouldn't be . . . . No, it looks like something's coming on now. I think it's a . . . twi'lek girl and a quarren . . . I think it's a male." A few seconds later, "Yes it's definitely a male."
"That looks . . . is that even possible? I didn't know they could do that with their tentacles."
"Their lekku? You'd be surprised what they can do with them."
"Oh, you would know wouldn't you?" Mira asked as she ejected the holovid from the terminal and didn't bother to catch it, letting the disk clatter to the floor.
"Do you want to try the next one?"
"You're sick," Mira said as she walked back to the cockpit.
Atton sighed and dropped the holovids onto the floor beside the one that had already fallen.
"Let's go to Ralltiir," Mira said as Atton sat down at the pilot's seat.
"What? I thought you wanted to go to Kuat?"
"Hey, it's my prerogative to change my mind. There's supposed to be a lot of heavy construction going on at Kuat and wherever there's heavy construction there's tight security."
"If they've tightened up security at Kuat I like the idea of avoiding it. I tend to get detained at places with really good security."
"I've heard about that," Mira chuckled.
"Well we could just go to Nar Shadda. It's only a day or two longer of a trip and there's practically no security there."
Mira dropped her smile like a mask, "No, let's go to Ralltiir. I'm," Mira hesitated, "I'm not ready to go back to Nar Shadda yet. I feel a little tired, I think I'm going to get some sleep."
Atton watched as Mira stood and shakily left the cockpit, "Hey, are you alright?" he asked.
"Yeah," Mira replied haltingly, "just tired, that's all."
"Okay," Atton said, not sounding convinced at all, "sleep well."
Mira just nodded.
Evrain was always talking about taking me back to Nar Shadda. He said there was something there I had to see, something that would open my eyes to a larger world, whatever that meant. But I had to be too afraid. Too afraid even to just let him show me what he wanted me to see. Dammit Evrain, why couldn't you have given me more time?
But Mira already knew the answer to that, even if she wasn't ready to admit it. Whatever Evrain had gone to face, it wasn't going to wait.
Jens was a junior grade security guard covering the 'night shift' at the asteroid compound which housed some kind of laboratory, Jens was not entitled to even the most trivial of details. All he knew was that he was supposed to verify the codes of all incoming ships from his station that overlooked the landing bay.
Jens cursed under his breath when the perimeter alert went off, that stupid obnoxious beeping that made him want to smash the console every time it went off. Jens sat up in his chair and turned the alert off then looked at the sensor report. The ship that had triggered the alert was one of the long range shuttles that frequently did supply runs. Jens engaged the code verifier and was hardly suprised when the shuttle was verified. Jens didn't know what he would do when a ship finally didn't verify, he had forgotten the procedure after his first week.
The shuttle opened a channel as it neared, "Kilo 2 to Cytech Labs, requesting landing permissions for bay one."
"Cytech Labs Kilo 2, permission granted," Jens replied in monotone, knowing this was would probably be the most excitement he'd get all evening. Jens reached for the schedule to mark off Kilo 2. But when Jens looked at the schedule he saw that Kilo 2 wasn't on the list, which was unusual because the lab staff was extremely anal concerning shuttle arrivals and departure times.
Jens began to reach for the intercom panel to contact his superior but it was too far away from his chair to reach and he didn't feel like standing up. The boss would probably be pretty ticked if I woke him up over something that's probably just a managerial oversight, Jens thought as the shuttle glided into the hanger bay.
The shuttle contacted Jens' station nearly a minute after it had landed, "Kilo 2 Cytech Labs, I have some heavy gear on this load and am going to need some help offloading it."
"Cytech Labs Kilo 2, I'll come down and give you a hand." There's probably a regulation against this somewhere in the manual. Jens stood up and made his way down the short ramp of his tower and crossed to the shuttle. The ramp, placed under the belly of the shuttle, was already down.
"Come on in," a voice called from within the shuttle, "I'm only gonna need help with two crates, the rest I can take care of myself."
"Alright," Jens replied, ascending the ramp.
Then Jens heard something heavy fall behind him. Jens started to turn but only saw a flash of red before something gripped his neck like a vice and threw him to the ground. Coughing, Jens looked up to see a red plated droid staring down at him.
Jens thought he could feel its glowing orange eyes, if they could be called that, boring into him. That was the thing that bothered Jens the most about droids, those unblinking eyes. Almost instinctively, Jens began to crawl his way up the ramp.
"Observation: I would not advise attempting to escape from me. You will find any such attempts to be completely futile. If you cooperate, your chance to survive this encounter will be much greater."
Jens stopped, "What do you want?"
"Statement: I want you to tell me everything you know about this facility and I want your security access codes."
Jens spilled his guts. Unfortunately, there was only so much he knew and he quickly started giving the droid useless information, such as the mess hall's menu and hours.
"Query," HK-47 interrupted, "How can I get inside the laboratories?"
Jens choked, "I don't have the key card. You'll have to find my boss or a scientist for that." Jens winced as the red plated droid pointed an arm at him and some kind of module emerged from the arm. A blue beam shot from the arm and struck Jens in the chest, who began to feel numb before losing consciousness.
HK-47 retracted the stun module back into his arm before kicking the security guard's body off of the ramp and locking down the shuttle. Using the security guard's access codes, HK-47 was able to obtain an incomplete map of the asteroid facility. There were only two landing bays, the other one housed shuttles intended for station personnel. From his approach, HK-47 had seen that the facility was very small. Whatever was here would not be difficult to find. When HK-47 left the landing bay the corridor was disappointingly empty.
Agitated Statement: I had hoped to encounter more resistance. So far, the task of hunting down the generation of imposter droids built in my image has proven far too easy.
Walking down the corridor, HK-47 encountered a door clearly labeled 'Labs'.
Addendum: Insultingly easy in fact. The door was locked. HK-47 examined the structure of the door and determined that it could easily be breached with a mine. Knowing a detonation would inevitably draw security guards and other concerned meatbags, HK-47 concealed other mines around the bends of the corridor. Thinking further, HK-47 also rigged the doors leading to the dormitories to explode whenever someone was foolish enough to open them.
The mine detonated perfectly and a sizeable gap was blown in what had been a door. It was not much later when HK-47 heard meatbags yelling and hurried footsteps. Then there were more explosions accompanied by the much more satisfying sounds of meatbags being reduced to meat. Soon after there followed cries of horror and panic from the remaining meatbags. The assassin droid took a moment to happily reflect over the past few moments and inwardly sighed with pleasure.
HK-47 passed through the blasted door and into a corridor with several doors and large windows placed between those doors. Through the windows on one side HK-47 could see a row of the abominable HK-50 droids lined up and his hatred began to well. On the other side were labs that HK-47 determined were for programming and engineering purposes. It all had to go. A few well placed grenades later the labs were in shambles and the HK-50 droids had been reduced to their base components.
HK-47 noticed another door at the end of corridor and made his way toward it. On the other side was what appeared to be an office. HK-47 heard more explosions but resisted the urge to look and see what feats his handiwork had accomplished. Instead he moved forward into the office and absorbed all of the information he could from the datapads, records, and the computer. HK-47 began sorting through the information.
It was obvious that this laboratory, Cytech Labs, was a developer of combat droids. That being the case, HK-47 was surprised the labs were not better defended–if a handful of inept security guards could be called a defense at all. The laboratory was of fairly recent construction and, so far as HK-47 could tell, the only products sold by the lab were the HK-50 droids, which were sold at extremely high prices, roughly a quarter of a million credits per droid. Only twenty-five transactions had been made and ten of those purchases had been made by Goto.
Extrapolation: Evrain stated that he had destroyed four HK-50 droids and that T-3 had destroyed three. Therefore, Goto still controls three of my inferior brethren. They and the fat one will have to be dealt with.
The other fifteen transactionscited Soren Raghnall as the buyer. The name sounded dimly familiar but HK-47 failed to tie any significance to it and wished his memory banks would cooperate for once. Fortunately, there were a few details regarding the transaction with Soren Raghnall. Records indicated that Soren's order had been picked up by five different shuttles. There were no records or mentions as to where Soren Raghnall could be contacted nor where he or any of his organization might be located.
Analysis: There is a possibility that Goto may know where to find Soren Raghnall, and more importantly, the abominations in his service. I must find Goto, or at least his records. There is probably an exchange outpost on a nearby world. But first I must finish cleaning up here.
