Chapter 6:
It was dark inside there as well. Metal cargo crates of medical supplies were stacked all around the room. The contents in the crates were the same as what we had found on the transport. Another door was set on the opposite side of the room, and identical to the previous one. I approached the door and impulsively put my hand upon it. The shock that came with the touch made my head split with a headache, like someone was screaming in my ear. I thought for a moment that the door was electrified. I stepped away from the door fearing what was on the other side, everyone else noticed my shocked reaction and did the same. The soldiers switched on their lights attached to the underside of their rifles and readied themselves for what lie behind.
The R2 unit then went to the second door and unlocked it as well with the same prideful flourish. The door slid open same as the first, and the first thing we saw were several empty stretchers, giant, glass bacta tubes, and literally tons of computers and even more medical equipment. The room itself was huge, and obviously made up the majority of the station.
We passed through a hallway and the room opened up into a lab of some sort, and the moment we saw what was inside I could feel the tenseness, the horror, and revulsion that filled every one of us. Everyone look on in wide-eyed horror. I though I was going to be sick. It was like the feelings I had just begun to experience, and was still learning about had turned necrotic, blackened, and evil. They hurt.
After a few moments the pain subsided, but still the aftereffects gnawed at my mind like waking from a nightmare. I squinted my eyes in spite of the pain and looked on. More bacta tubes filled the room, but inside were prisoners, rows and rows of them like crops. Burmar's mouth was agape, and his inability to utter a word confirmed several of the victim's identities. Strapped to tables and stretchers were more prisoners, several were split open as if in mid-surgery.
There were Humans, Wookiee's, Twi-Lek, and peoples of many other races. Some were attached to machines that monitored their vital signs while pumping vital oxygen and sustenance into their disfigured bodies. Others lingered in the bacta tanks dead. Their blank stares called out to us in agony. It was difficult figuring out who yet lived and who was dead. The disfiguration of many of the prisoners made it seem impossible for them to live on, but some did. More bore the scars of surgery, some old and some new. Some were freshly stitched up no more than a day before. Some of the prisoners had robotic, droid-like machinery grafted to their naked bodies. Some had arms, legs, and one even had a robotic head. Another had a complete robotic torso.
It was a sadistic mingling patchwork of flesh and machinery. We couldn't believe what we were seeing. The room was dead silent, save for the random beep of a machine, or sequence of a computer. As we walked through the gallery of twisted flesh, we looked upon each one that passed our eyes and in awe of the evil that committed such acts. One of the squad members puked on the floor, others barely held it back. I kept wandering, enthralled, long after the others had stopped. I walked through the entire room. The dark, coldness of space seemed like a day on the beaches of Naboo compared to how that laboratory made me feel. I thought I knew the evils of the Empire while on Kashyyyk. It made part of me wish I had never left.
Then I came upon them. As if the force, dark or light, led me there. Burmar caught up with me. He couldn't even speak. The saliva choked in his throat. Their dead bodies called out to me demanding I find them. I stopped at the tanks, and slowly turned my head. I allowed my eyes to focus on them. There they were in separate tanks, hanging in the green, yellowish, putrid color of bacta gone vile. They were stitched up in several places, and furless. Their bodies housed some of the robotics we had seen already, and their faces were contorted in a way I thought impossible for a Wookiee. They were facing each other. Burmar spoke their names as if to confirm in his mind who they were, like he didn't recognize them.
Elyya and Obechukk.
Burmar turned away, his head in his hands. I remained, and stared at them, transfixed by their fate. Suspended in that glass shell. My vision blurred, the ache in my mind turned into a brain-searing fire. I looked around at the horrors filling the place and stopped to look again at my Mother and Father. I pulled the Ryyk Blade from my waste and turned to Burmar.
"Find out what this place is," I said.
Burmar went back the soldiers in the first room. I stood there for what seemed like forever, staring at my parents, clenching my fist and the Blade. It was some kind of freak show. I couldn't believe what was happening around me. I had found their hell, it was out there waiting for us to find it, and we were far too late.
I raised the Ryyk Blade and swung in a wide arch in front of me breaking both bacta tanks. The putrid bacta out onto the ground, the smell filled the place, and my Mother and Father spilled out with it. Their limbs nearly fell out of their sockets, and their flesh was the color of soured meat and malleable as clay. I kneeled to them, doing my best to straighten them out without tearing their bodies apart. The foul bacta poured through the grate in the floor to some well hidden underneath. I knelt there staring at the bodies of my parents trying to remember how they looked the brief time I had known them before they left Kashyyyk to take up the fight against the then Chancellor Palpatine.
Burmar returned moments later, his hand over his mouth, talking low, and solemn as I knelt there locked in the dead stare of my Mother and Father's tortured faces. I kept thinking of that little girl on Kashyyyk, her skin burnt, brittle, and crumbling, my parent's skin, waterlogged, stitched together, and falling apart. Everything the Empire touched turned out like that Wookiee child, or like my Mother and Father. Burnt, ruined, decayed, decrepit and corrupt.
Burmar gently put his hand on my shoulder as if to sooth a wild animal.
"L7 has tapped into the computer logs. There's a ton of data to sift through, but we haven't found an official name for this facility yet." I stood and looked at Burmar. I wanted to go into a rage, or cry or something, but I could do neither. It was as if nothing was happening, it was surreal, like it was happening to someone else and I was only watching. Even to this day, I feel guilty for not doing something, anything, reacting in some way. I felt disconnected somehow, and now looking back I felt I had dishonored them.
How I wish I could have told them I was sorry for not saving them, and for what they had endured that ultimately lead to their deaths. Burmar spoke again after a few moments.
"We will gather the data, load it into the Starscream and sweep this place. There may be more survivors."
"I'll start collecting the bodies," I said emotionlessly. Burmar nodded.
"I'll get Alpha to help you get them onto the freighter. We will identify them all and give them all a proper burial." I only nodded back. Burmar turned from me and spoke some words into the radio. Some members of Alpha started breaking open bacta tanks and releasing the dead from gurneys. I found a stretcher with wheels, and as carefully as I could, I set my Mother and Father's frail bodies upon it, and wheeled them towards the Starscream. I grabbed some sheeting on the way out and covered them. As I was wheeling them to the back of the cargo bay of the Starscream among the crates of supplies someone from Alpha yelled out over the radio.
"We have life signs! I need some help back here!" I didn't think twice, I turned away from my parents and ran back towards the laboratory. Everyone was standing around a similar door that was hidden by stacks of crates, and equipment. The R2 unit was busy trying to slice the lock on the door when I ran up to Burmar.
"The R2 has found some life signs behind this door. He says there are about thirty."
I pulled my Ryyk Blade from its sheath on my hip, and my blaster from the other side.
"Be ready, there may be Imperials on the other side," I said.
Actions on blasters cocked, and energy magazines clicked into place in a chorus of anticipation for a gunfight as everyone readied their weapons. We all crouched slightly as if ready to rush the line of an oncoming cavalry. Every one of us was ready to drop some Imps. The thirst for redemption between Human and Wookiee alike was unstoppable. The R2 unit beeped encouragingly as it sliced the coded lock and opened the door. We all quickly poured in and took positions behind more supply crates that filled the room. After scanning the area, and panning back and forth with our blasters in search for any hint of a gray uniform, or white suit of armor, we found neither.
In rapid succession each person shouted, "Clear!"
We lowered our weapons to hip level and began looking for survivors. There was even more computer equipment, and all kinds of unexplainable surgical tools, monitors and other gadgets filling the area and making the entire station look like some kind of deep-space, swap-meet for mad scientists. We rounded a corner and casually took cover positions. There were no Imperials, but there were survivors, thirty of them just as the R2 discovered. They were in a single holding cell, like a common room. We could see some of them mulling about back and forth past the small, turret-like window in the door. I peeked into the tiny glass window slit in the door. Some of them were crouching, some were lying down, and none of them noticed me. They had dark circles around their eyes and their hair was unkempt. Once regal and professional clothing was torn, soiled and encrusted with filth. They looked already dead.
Burmar ordered the R2 to unlock the door, which it quickly did.
The people inside, of all kinds of different races, reacted when they heard the noise of the computer being sliced. They looked up to the slit in the door and backed away towards the opposite wall, those that could move anyway. L7 broke the code and the door whirred open. Burmar walked in first and I followed right behind. The rest of the two squads filed in behind me in a slow, trance-like walk. We kept our weapons pointing to the floor. Immediately, the prisoner's faces lit up with joy, and at the same time a cloud of desperation and sadness came over them. The dreaded silence of impending doom was replaced with stuttering happy voices on the edge of crying, solemn wails of elation mingled with heartbreak. Sorrow and joy culminated, and transcended specie lines. The few that were still standing approached us and pawed at us as if to confirm that we were real. Several of them grasped at the bird-like symbol of the Alliance. We all sheathed and holstered our weapons and started helping to prop up those that were able to stand, and gather up those that could not.
"You are safe now." Burmar announced as formerly as he could. I could hear the strain in his voice as he looked upon familiar faces that did not recognize him. I went to the far corner of the cell and gathered up a weakened person from the ground. She lolled her head back and forth in a delirious haze. She was a Twi-lek, her blue skin had gone quite pale like a hazy morning on Kashyyyk, and she had dark rings under her eyes, her Leku looked withered and unhealthy. I carried her out of the laboratory and towards the Starscream. She was barely conscious, rocking her head about and moaning some unintelligible words not even aware she was being carried away to freedom.
The rest of the Alliance soldiers followed shortly after me with the other survivors, carrying them on gurneys, or in their arms. Survivors propped up other survivors in desperation to be free from that hell. I heard yells of horror and screams of terror echo throughout the base as those that were aware made their way past the laboratory. We took the survivors and made them as comfortable as possible in the Starscream's sleeping quarters for those in the worst condition and the rest in the lounge and cargo bay and wherever we could. The dead we put into the refrigeration units. Burmar spoke with me on the platform of the Starscream as we crossed paths.
"Go ahead and get them back, Echobe. Brief Desco and ask him to send reinforcements so we can destroy this place. We'll remain here. You don't need to see anymore. Help those people, Echobe," Burmar said, putting a hand on my arm. I was more than eager to agree and I got back onto the Starscream and went to the cockpit. I didn't think I could handle seeing anymore at that time.
Two squad members, one from each team and the R2 accompanied me. I powered up the Starscream as my crew of three attended to the survivors in the cargo bays and engaged the takeoff thrusters. I backed the ship slowly so not to jostle the survivors, did a half-turn, and made the jump to hyperspace as the nav-computer brought up the calculations.