Chapter 8
The dropship flew over the lush surface of Felucia. The surface of the planet was covered with strange plants and large fungi. The planet was full of life. Nobody would have thought the droids would put a weapons base on planet teeming with life, most of which were dangerous creatures, and have it remain hidden so well that the Republic would dismisses it as rumor and if there was such a thing they would know about it. Captain Emotion had an act for hiding droid bases on planets that nobody would think a droid base would be.
The Captain was taking some notes on his holopad stopping every once and a while to tap the pen against his head in thought.
"We'll be arriving at the base in three standard hours, sir," The pilot said.
The captain nodded and continued to take notes.
The captain sat in the cockpit with the pilots as the drop ship came upon the base. The base was in some sort of canyon or valley and was pentagon shaped with a tower coming out of the middle. There were four building come out from the sides of the base. One was close to the ground while the other three were more rose up. On was a landing pad, while the other two were small hangers and storage bunkers. The dropship moved and hovered over the landing pad as captain Emotion hoped out of the ship.
"Take the parts and the organics to the other hanger and unload them there." Emotion ordered Number 1 and 2
Number 1 and 2 nodded before relaying the order to the pilot, the drop ship then moved toward the other hanger. The captain turned and began to head to the elevator at the bottom of the base where he was greeted by a dwarf spider droid.
"Hello, Sniffles, sorry about putting you in charge of the weapons base here, I forgot about your "allergies"," Emotion greeted the dwarf spider droid.
"It's alright captain there not that bad actually," Sniffles said.
Captain Emotion nodded. When Sniffles was created there was glitch in its central blaster cannon. The glitch causes Sniffles to accidently fire the cannon. When the cannon is accidently fired it makes a sound that sounds like someone sneezing, hence his name. The glitch also seemed to be affected by the environment Sniffles' was in. With cold weather the glitch causes Sniffles to "sneeze" uncontrollably. In hot, humid weather the glitch would often "plug up his cannon" resulting in Sniffles not being able to fire his cannon.
"So Captain was is this weapon your creating?" Sniffles asked, sounding like someone with a stuffed up nose.
"Well I've recently discovered a strange creature, so I've been given permission to turn it into a 2.0 unit." Emotion told him, walking toward the door with Sniffles.
"Very good sir, what kind of creature is it captain?" Sniffles asked as Emotion looked out at the "tree line" of plants. "Umm captain is there something moving out there?"
'What oh, no I was just thinking. Is there a clearing nearby that I could use as an environmental test field?"
"I don't think so sir but there's a nice big one about a mile from the research base,"
"Very good, now then how do you plan on transporting the eggs and the creature over to the building?" The Captain asked Sniffles as they entered a hallway.
"By the underground transportation tunnel, the elevator should be big enough to fit the cages in. The only problem is the tunnel is that it's a mile long." Sniffles answered as they turned a corner. "The tunnel only connects to research building. As you requested so the 2.0 parts will have to be stored in the Weapons storage and droid warehouse by transport ship,"
The captain nodded as they walked through a door into a room. The room was shaped as a smaller pentagon to fit into the rest of the base as a room for the droids to rest. In the center of the room was a large elevator.
Number 1, Number 2, 999, a grappler droid and the creature were waiting at the elevator.
"Everything is ready, sir. The eggs have already been transported to the research building. We figured you'd like to accompany us when we transported the creature," 999 said as the door to the elevator opened.
"Excellent, Sniffles, return to your patrol. I have everything under control here," Emotion told the dwarf spider droid.
The elevator had enough room for everything and was only slightly crowded. The elevator came to a stop and opened up to reactor room.
"Remind me again why I put the reactor next to the transport tunnel?" Emotion asked Number 1 as they stepped out of the elevator.
"Well if I can remember correctly this was the only logical place to put the reactor if it was to give power to both buildings." Number 1 answered helping the grappler droid with the cage.
The captain nodded and led the way to a huge door behind the reactor. The door opened reviling a poorly lit tunnel way.
"And the lighting if these things ever escape we'll have an extremely hard time finding them here. I mean it's like they sent me a letter and said "Dear Captain Emotion, when creating your weapons base, in which you'll cure us of our terrible organic flesh and purify us by turning us into the true rulers of the galaxy, the droids, please make the transport tunnel extremely dark and leave us on planet full of life so we can flourish. Yours truly, the Xenomorphs. What was I thinking? It's a good thing they'll never find a way out of this base," Emotion said to himself.
The team moved on down the tunnel, Number 1 and 2 leading the way, captain Emotion and 999 on both sides of the cage and the grappler droid behind. The Xenomorph was rather calm through the journey. Occasionally pacing in its cage or watching 999. Number 1 and 2 called a halt and the group stopped.
"Thank you for calling us to stop. I've needed to take a blood sample for quite some time," Emotion said as he pulled out a syringe.
"Be careful captain it still has some fight it." The grappler droids warned the captain.
The captain nodded as a small hole opened up next to one of the creature's legs. Emotion inserted the needle a little ways in before stabbing the tip into the leg. The Xenomorph let out a screech of pain as the needle was shoved into its leg. The captain quickly pulled the needle out and gasped to see the tip being dissolved by some sort of acidic substance. Some of the acidic substance dripped to the floor of the cage and ate a small a hole in the cage floor before eating a similar hole in the tunnel floor.
"You never cease to amaze do you?" the captain asked the xenomorph, as it threatening hissed at him.
"Quiet a defense mechanism," 999 said, sharing the captain fascination.
"Umm captain what happened?" Number 1 asked as he and his brother moved to see what happen.
"The xenomorph seems to have some sort of acidic blood or a layer of an acidic substance underneath the exoskeleton before skin and muscle tissue. This would prevent any form of predator from eating the xenomorph. Extraordinaire, for a creature to have this sort of defensive ability and be parasitic at the same is just plain extraordinaire. Whatever planet the xenomorph's must inhabit it's undoubtedly the top predator." Emotion explained, the fascination could be heard in his voice.
"I agree, but what kind of predator could be so dangerous to a species that it would need a defense like this?" 999 asked the captain.
"I don't know, but we'll find out soon enough won't we X-1." Emotion asked the xenomorph, now deciding to call it X-1.
X-1 hissed at the captain and bearded its teeth.
Capitan Emotion laughed before continuing to walk down the tunnel.
The tunnel ended with another huge door that the captain opened. The door opened up to a bright room with ramps acting as a sort of stairway.
"Right then, take X-1 up to the first floor and put it in one of the holding cells." Emotion ordered Number 1
Number 1 nodded as Number 2 and the grappler droid took X-1 up the ramp.
"Now what captain" 999 asked Emotion
"Well were going to have to run some test, see how X-1 will react to the environment and then we're going to go and kidnap all the clones at the clone base and use them to breed the xenomorphs. Probably dissect one, the rest we'll turn into 2.0 and see if there's any other way to control them. That reminds me I need to perfect the new retriever droid designs, should probably do that after I dissect one hmm," Emotion answered checking his to do list on his holopad.
"Very good I'll just go help the boys with X-1 then,"
999 walked of and left captain Emotion there to think.