The Accidental Discovery

Jaina and Jacen were in the Conference Chamber of the Super Star Destroyer 'Guardian', attending a meeting regarding the disappearance of several Jedi, most notably Kyp Durron. He had been missing for three months, and some people had presumed him dead. He had gone off on a mission to check out some strange ship disappearances in the Mid Rim, specifically the Nal Hutta system. More than twenty ships had mysteriously disappeared, and recently occurring, random hyperspace disturbances had made it extremely hard to enter the Nal Hutta system. Kyp had been assigned to check it out, but hadn't returned in three months. Communications from the Yuuzhan Vong-terraformed world and its machinery encased moon Nar Shadaa had stopped of late, with unintelligible bursts of static coming through from the system.

At the round meeting table, Cal Omas, Grand Admiral Pellaeon, Admiral Traest Kre'fey, Princess Leia, Han Solo, Luke and Mara Jade Skywalker, and Jacen and Jaina were heatedly discussing Kre'fey's proposal to send a small flotilla of battleships to Nal Hutta. Heatedly here meaning that several people at the table were already staring at each other venomously. Han Solo was currently making his opinion known, very loudly.

"I tell you, there's something wrong there! There never has been a communications blackout in Hutt Space! Yeah, Kyp might have stopped off at Kessel to visit Lando or something, but the least we should do is check out Hutt Space," he said, pounding his fist on the table.

Cal Omas stood up, saying, "You expect me to authorize this gundark-brained scheme that will probably end up as a wild bantha chase! It's a waste of firepower, that's what it is! I personally think that the blackout of communications from Hutt Space is negligible, and for the better! Hutts were and still are foul, vile creatures, anyway!"

Luke then raised his hand, and calmly stood up, just as Han was about to shout at Omas. He turned to stare at all the people in the conference room, "I say this; we should check out the unusual happenings in Hutt Space. Remember this; Hutts are no longer in control of the system. Unknown forces are at work here. I propose that a team of Jedi be sent there, to scout out the system."

Luke took in a deep breath. Turning to Jacen and Jaina, he asked, "Would you two be willing to investigate Hutt Space? You could take along Kirana Ti, Dorsk 82, and the Chaa triplets."

Jacen and Jaina looked at each other, and shrugged, "We're in."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Doctor Carlz, the richly dressed man who had just witnessed Kyp Durron's death by being eaten by one of his genetically engineered beasts, turned to the communication screen on the wall. Pressing several buttons rapidly, he spoke into a voice receiver on the wall, saying, "Buter, Laboratory 18."

After a few seconds, an image of a white-haired, thin man wearing large, tinted goggles appeared on screen. Carlz spoke, "Is it ready?"

The man on-screen replied irritably, "She's ready, all right. I was just fine-tuning the last nucleotide sequences for her deoxyribonucleic acid material when you interrupted me! Now I'll have to re-code the gaps in the deoxyribonucleic acid strand."

Carlz sniggered, "Buter, my dear friend, when will you ever start to refer to deoxyribonucleic acid as DNA? It's much simpler than the whole kriffing word. And the Mucous Water Python works beautifully. I just fed it."

Buter, the xenobiologist cum xenogeneticist on the other end of the line, snarled at him from the screen, removing the goggles to reveal large, reptilian-looking, constantly rotating eyes, "DNA, huh? I just can't recall the acronym for deoxyribonucleic acid! Damn it, you bantha-brain! You called me up and interrupted my work to tell me that you fed a Mucous Water Python! Those things aren't entertaining enough, I tell you! If it had been a Bafforr Hunter, Diffusion Beast, or even a Shroud Creature, then…"

Carlz wagged a finger at Buter's image, smiling, "Yeah, the Bafforr Hunters are fascinating to watch, though I must say that their feeding habits are somewhat gory for me to be interested in. Diffusion beasts, they kill too slowly, but with amazing results. As for the Shroud Creature, it would have been like watching one of those holodramas where the victim of a murder is wrapped up in a blanket and suffocates. BUT, the person I fed to the python was particularly suited for the testing of our organisms' hardiness."

Buter snorted with relish, "I hope you finally killed that hopeless security guard, Kenth."

Carlz lent towards the screen, "Ah, my friend, it wasn't Kenth-another day, maybe-but a Jedi."

Buter's eyes grew wide, "A Jedi! My, my, we've done it!"

xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Jacen, Jaina, Dorsk 82, Kirana Ti, and the Chaa triplets waited in the New Republic's Coruscant-based Military hangar for their transport- a YT-1300 freighter like Han's, but modified to have extra firepower. As they, stood in the hangar, smelling the lube and grease odor in the air, and watching dozens of mechanics do their daily work of fixing, repairing, and maintaining the ships, Jaina turned to Jacen, hoping to strike up conversation while they waited, "What do you think has happened?"

"I have no idea, but I can bet it's nothing good. Who ever heard of Hutt Space being silent?" replied Jacen.

"Thatsssss like sssssaying that Barabelsssss and Chaa don't like meat sssstuffsssss," hissed one of the Chaa triplets, while the other two sassed with laughter.

"It's here!" said Dorsk 82 excitedly, as their scout ship/ freighter was piloted into the hangar from one of Coruscant's orbiting starship repair stations. The ship was battered-looking and had more than the usual number of hastily welded on metal plates and pipes. It also had curiously blackened, damaged-looking sublight drives, but the mechanics had assured them that the drives were rather extensively modified MoDoggs that were very capable of bringing them to high accelerations. The head mechanic in charge of refitting the YT-1300, a burly Givin named Polygon-Givin often named themselves with mathematical terms- had jokingly said that, "These MoDoggs will give your old man a run for his money!"

They silently boarded the ship, quickly going to their assigned stations. Dorsk 82 and Kirana Ti were stationed at the dorsal and ventral quad-lasers, the Chaa triplets were stationed at the navicomputer, sensor, and shield controls, and Jacen and Jaina were piloting the ship. The ship lifted off, and slowly moved out of the hangar. As soon as it had cleared the 1 kilometer radius of the hangar's no-stopping safety zone, the ship turned on its symmetrical axis, pointing its bow towards the Nal Hutta system, as per pre-programmed instructions. Jacen turned to the others, grinning, "Next stop, Nal Hutta!"

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

In Buter's laboratory, high-terawatt voltage coursed through titanic coils of cortosis-coated copper cables, illuminating the darkened room with neon green light. Shadows danced around as the light was reflected off the curved surfaces of clone tanks, reflected off racks of vials containing strange fluids, refracted through the liquid in several cloning tanks, casting the shadows of semi-developed organisms within the tanks onto the walls.

Large, blue tanks emblazoned with the words, 'Hormone Medium' and some others, 'Embryo Culture Medium' stood tall against two of the laboratory's walls, monolithic and imposing. In the middle of the room were the clone tanks, glowing yellow from the liquid medium inside them. Various things floated inside the tanks, some fully developed, some merely resembling twisted fetuses. Most were empty.

Buter himself stood hunched over a complicated computer keyboard, looking like some demented Bith musician over his Omnii. Buter tapped several keys, causing the screen in front of him, which was portraying a double helix shape-a DNA strand- to rotate the image, and change the colors of various nucleotides of the DNA strand. Buter clapped his hands together happily, as a picture of a tentacled cephalopod appeared on screen. He rushed over to the adjacent wall from the computer console, turning several dials marked with strange symbols, and pulled a lever marked with the words, 'HIGH VOLTAGE: 8 TERAWATTS CAPACITOR'.

One of the empty clone tanks, labeled as, 'CT 001', began to vibrate slightly, the yellow fluid inside beginning to bubble and swirl. Several thread-thin wires slowly lowered into the fluid, dangling down from the half-submerged machinery on the top of the tank. From the bottom of the tank, a greenish mass of cells floated up into the yellow cloning medium from the bottom of the tank. The wires then touched the tissue, unseen nano-pipettes inserting the modified DNA into the enucleated cells. The cells , which hadn't yet differentiated, were fitted with the modified DNA, enabling the organism cloned from them to grow to gigantic proportions, attain maturity in less than eight standard years, develop armored scales as well as caustic blood and bodily fluids, and have savage aggression, as well as a colossal appetite. Electric currents ran through the cells, joining the cells with the new genetic material. Buter, observing the process eagerly, began to sweat. He had only ever cloned one of this kind of animal before. And it was amazingly hostile, yet reclusive. The new genes he had inserted into the DNA should have removed all reclusiveness, replacing it with bloodlust and easily sparked off anger. The other fifteen attempts at cloning the Kraken-once a mythical beast, but now for real-had failed, even though it was a bunch of simple genetic modifications to the DNA of the Great Arctic Skra'akan of Mon Calamari. The cephalopod beast was naturally hostile, even without the genetic modifications. Buter's modifications had made the first Kraken fast-growing, grow larger, and made it fiercer. But it only attacked when provoked…. And where was the use in that! Who wanted a fierce but shy 'beast'!

Buter turned his attention back to the mass of cells, which, to his genetically-altered eyes (which could see microscopic objects-they were a modified version of the Yuuzhan Vong's maa'it organisms) could be seen slowly undergoing the prophase of cellular mitosis, the nuclear membranes disintegrating to reveal shortened, thickened chromosomes. He watched the chromosomes slowly lined up at the cell's equatorial plates, and were slowly being pulled apart by the centrioles at the poles of the cell. Buter smiled, as the cells finally entered the telophase stage of mitosis, the cleavage furrow forming down the middle of the cell. The cell slowly narrowed down the middle, forming two daughter cells, the once small mass of cells in the cloning tank now forming specialized and differentiated cells. Buter looked at his chronometer; one and a half hours had passed, and the cells were dividing extremely well. He smiled, walking towards the doorway of the laboratory to report this to Carlz, his friend and business associate.

Carlz was watching the people they had kidnapped from ships bound for Nal Hutta doing slave manual labor, via holocam, as they mined ores, precious metals, and gems from the gullet of one of Buter's more creative works-a beast which resembled a network of tunnels, and which produced gems, ores, and precious metals as metabolic by-products of its digestion. The slaves slowly picked out the valued items from the creases in the beast's gullet, from the pools of digestive enzymes, from the piles of mulched food, fetid, decaying masses of unidentifiable origin, and even from the bodies of prey that had been stuck in the beast's gullet for Force-knows-how-long. Outside the beast's body, some slaves were rooting through the massive spoors of the beast, picking out the gems and metals-the ores stayed inside the beast for some reason. The slaves had produced approximately 2 billion credits worth of the beast's metabolic by-products. Buter burst into his control room, his unnerving eyes rolling around in excitement.

"The second Kraken is on the way!" he proudly shouted, making Carlz jump.

"Excellent. I have just received news that the New Republic is sending several Jedi to investigate the ship disappearances in this system. Is the first Kraken still easily provoked by low frequency wavelengths?" said Carlz.

"Let's have a look," replied Buter, moving over to a computer console, tapping several keys, and bringing up a map of the planet. A section of the map self-magnified, and a red dot appeared against the blue of the ocean. The Kraken was still in the reef cluster where it had made its nest. Buter keyed in another command, bringing the picture of a small group of slaves in a cell. The cell then was raised over the reef cluster by a small repulsorlift equipped-droid, and the slaves tipped out. They hit the water, and treaded the water, as a low frequency sound was made through the droid's externally-mounted speakers.

The panicked slaves began to group together, as the water around them bubbled. Shouts and wails of panic were heard. But suddenly, some of the slaves were pulled under the surface, causing the remaining three to cling to each other in fear. As the Kraken-provoking noise intensified, the remaining three were lifted out of the water by long, sucker-covered tentacles. They were then bodily tossed through the air, landing on the jagged coral reefs, crushed to death by constriction, and were pulled underwater where a large shadow was moving around jerkily. The sea returned to its normal, calm, state in mere minutes after that. Buter turned to Carlz, saying, "Does that answer your question?"

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The bright colors of hyperspace swirled around the Jedi scout-ship. Fesa, one of the Chaa triplets, glanced at the navicomputer, and announced, "Leaving hypersssssspaccccce in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…. NOW!"

The Scout-they had named the YT-1300 that- dropped out of hyper space within two light years of the Nal Hutta system. The Jedi tensed; they were going to use the Bakuran's Hyperspace Inertia and Momentum Preservers (HIMS) to 'bounce' into the Nal Hutta system, much like a pebble being skimmed across the surface of a pond. Jumping in-and-out of hyperspace that rapidly was dangerous, and as they powered up the hyperdrive, the all thought as an accord, 'May the Force be with us.'