A/N: Ugh, sorry, I really meant for this to be posted no later than Sunday, but everything happens so much recently.
24: Hear What The Silence Screams
Carth signed off with Admiral Kaylak and strolled back into the Foundry. The inspection had lasted far longer than usual, but he'd taken the fleet through a few defensive measures before returning, just in case. Mertz met him at the entrance, prepared for the official hand-off.
"Sorry I'm late, Captain."
"It's no problem, Admiral." He saluted, they shook hands, and the informal hand off was complete. "How's the Foundry?"
"According to Revan, still running at peak, sir. No breaches of the exterior or known issues. How's the fleet?"
"About the same."
"Do you have orders for the night crew?"
"Make sure everyone knows their positions if we're attacked." Carth frowned. Revan had gotten jumpier in the past few weeks, and he didn't like it. "Just to be on the safe side. Run a drill or two with the nighters and go over everything, just in case."
"I'll even run a surprise one."
"Good." Carth signed out of the entrance log and Mertz signed in as the commanding officer. Right on cue, the station's notification system chimed.
Admiral Onasi has signed out. Captain Mertz has the deck.
"Where's Revan? I assume she's in her quarters already?"
"Actually, she isn't." Carth glanced over and raised an eyebrow. "She's in the mess."
Oh. "Doing… what?"
"Not blowing up your station."
Well, that was positive, at least. "I'd better go make sure that stays the case."
"Don't let me stop you, sir."
Carth headed deeper into the station and stopped in the mess' doorway, studying the Wookiee and human woman standing at the counter with their backs to him. A few soldiers sat around one table playing cards and barely taking any notice of his arrival.
"No, no, don't, you'll smudge it." They were whispering enough to strain his hearing. "We have to hurry, he'll come by here any second now. I'm not doing that badly." Khemmaa growled something. "Oh, don't start. I'm a qualified and successful military leader, not a cook." Another response. "It's not my fault the Jedi don't teach it. It was an elective at the same time as Advanced Weapons Training. Which one would you have taken?" Khemmaa shook her head. "That's what I thought. Oh! Kriffing hell, I need to stop drinking so much caf. If I don't stop—"
"Do I even want to know?" Carth interrupted. The card players looked up, then went back to their game when they realized he wasn't talking to them. Revan and Khemmaa froze and quickly spun, blocking whatever they were working on. "Didn't we talk about this?"
Revan held up her fingers. "It's not cooking if it goes through the synthesizer, is it?" He tilted his head and gave her a look. "We didn't even set off the alarms, right, Khemmaa?" Khemmaa nodded. "See?"
"I don't believe it."
"You can even ask Mertz! Look, just, um…" Revan looked at him, then the off-duties, and finally reached back onto the counter. She produced a round, brown cake — or, at least, he thought it was a cake. The form itself was normal and round, but the icing was laughably uneven. On top, in orange icing, she'd managed to eek out "Happy Birth" in shaky handwriting, and had been running out of room before he'd interrupted her. Khemmaa helped by nodding eagerly. "Happy birthday?"
It was, decidedly, one of the most beautiful cakes he'd ever seen.
"Did you two make this? Should I ask for an ingredients list?"
Revan sighed. "No, no, the synthesizer made it. We tried, though. Uh, don't ask Mertz what happened." Khemmaa nodded and echoed the sentiment. "I'm not good at this, but I wanted to try. I'm just maddeningly useless."
Carth took the cake from her, set it back down on the counter, and pulled her into his arms.
"No, you aren't," he murmured, kissing her forehead. "Thanks, gorgeous. You too, K."
Khemmaa bundled them both into a hug, and Revan chuckled. "Well, let's grab a plate or two and have some could-have-been-homemade cake."
They stayed in the mess for a few hours. The cake didn't last very long — Khemmaa polished off about half of it with her usual Wookiee appetite, Carth and Revan managed to snag a piece before that happened, and Revan bought Mertz's silence with the last slice when Carth tried to ask about preceding events. Finally Khemmaa headed back to her room and Revan picked up Mora from the table where he'd been eying the empty plate.
"Anything else I should know?" Carth asked as he dumped the plates.
"Just this." Revan wiggled the tub of icing at him. "Think we can find a use for this?"
Carth scratched the back of his neck where it was starting to heat up under his collar. "I'm, uh, sure we can." She responded with a sly grin and looped her arm into his.
"Shall we, then?"
As they left the mess, Carth wrapped his arm around her waist. "You don't have to… I don't know, make things up to me, if that's what this is. I love you because you're you."
"Mm."
"Though, being more cooperative might be nice."
"You'd get bored."
"Probably."
Carth pushed open the door. As Revan lowered Mora to the floor and he scampered into a small bed under the desk, Carth looked around suspiciously.
"What?"
"What are you up to?"
"Nothing!" Revan protested. "I couldn't do too much, you're meticulous with our account. You would have noticed."
"I'm just worried about what you might have planned." Carth set his hands on her waist and drew her in. "After all, you're inventive, smart, and gorgeous — which is the most dangerous combination. I never know with you."
She grinned up at him. "Only this half-finished tub of icing, a relaxing evening off, and bad holovids."
"Mm. That'll do nicely."
#
"You ready?" Revan pressed her back against one of the shipping containers and glanced across the other at Khemmaa as she dialed her lightsaber back again. The Wookiee nodded. "All right, TS, roll it."
::Copy. Running simulation in 3… 2…::
The doors at the other end of the training floor opened, allowing a large tank droid to stomp in with an escort of smaller battle droids. Revan glanced at Khemmaa again, then at the droids currently behind her — laughably outmatched, but that was the point.
"On my signal," she muttered into her comm. Khemmaa nodded again.
The whirring of the tank droid grew closer and Revan drew a deep breath. As the first leg entered her vision and the droid began to stomp by, she swung out with her lightsabers and rolled under the droid's chassis. At half power, it did little more than leave a burn. A large bolt of energy zipped over her head as Khemmaa and their droids opened fire.
She'd gotten a report from Rans the day before that the Foundry droids were prioritizing combat to an unhealthy degree in the field, often refusing to disengage when ordered and resulting in several forced destructions when they'd become borderline hostile during retreats. Revan had spent all day pouring over the coding, with Khemmaa's help, but had found nothing. That meant they had to switch to combat testing.
After about a minute of messing with the tank droid's targeting systems, Revan rolled back out from under the droid and ran for the second exit.
"Time to fall back everyone, let's go."
Outside the testing ground as they regrouped, Revan tapped her chin as she studied the droids that had followed them out — just like the last five times.
"Well, this makes sense," she muttered.
::Suggestion: Live fire is more efficient than—::
"Noted, HK. TS, K, Carth, any ideas?"
::I don't know. Everything up here says they're performing as intended.::
::I agree. All indications show optimal performance and responsiveness.::
::We recreated at least four of Rans' reported circumstances. Without shuttling in some Sith, I don't know what else we could try.::
Mm. She could go for a good lightsaber fight right about now, though. Revan tapped her chin harder. "You. What's your operating number?"
The tank droid's optics locked on her, which would be unsettling if it wasn't her droid. "RS-221, ma'am."
"When I give you an order to retreat you do it, yes?"
"Of course, ma'am."
"If someone else were to order a retreat, would you obey it?"
"Of course, ma'am."
She squinted at him. "You're sure."
"Yes, ma'am?"
Revan opened her datapad and skimmed her coding again. "It's probably a conflicting line in here somewhere," she mused. "A conditional that's not getting filled in the field, perhaps."
"Like what?"
"I don't - unless there's a residual command for…" She paused. Unless there was a residual command for prioritizing orders given by one person over another… "RS-221, you're programmed to recognize all spoken languages and most nonverbals, yes?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Including Shyriiwook?"
"Yes, ma'am."
She turned to Khemmaa. "All right, K, we'll run it again. This time, you're in charge. RS, your commander is now Khemmaa."
"Ah, all right." Revan patted her arm.
"Understood, ma'am."
TS reset the training floor, and Khemmaa directed the droids back to their original spots. Revan took Khemmaa's original flanking spot as the Wookiee took point.
"On your signal, ma'am." Khemmaa looked over, and Revan winked at her. Khemmaa responded with a low, growling chuckle.
"Go ahead, TS."
::Running simulation.::
The opposing droids, decked out in Imperial colors, trotted in from the other side. As they passed, Khemmaa once again gave the order to attack.
After about a minute of engagement, she followed it with an order to retreat, and both she and Revan turned for the doors. Revan slid to a stop as they arrived, studying the continuing battle behind them. They looked at one another, and she shrugged. Khemmaa repeated the order with no response.
"Hm," Revan mused. "RS-221, your commander said to retreat!"
Immediately the droids broke off, scrabbling away from the fight. Revan nodded and raised her comm.
"End simulation, TS, I think we found the problem."
"What is it?"
"I think I may have over-programmed the IFF. As in, they're prioritizing my, uh, perhaps over-enthusiastic Imperial targeting."
::You didn't put in that—::
"No, no, I deleted that code." She had — it wasn't a lie. Well, she 'had.' T3 had a copy, if only for posterity's sake. She didn't like deleting ancient coding without a major reason. "It's easy enough to fix, and I'll send Rans a patch. Good job, RS-221."
"Thank you, ma'am."
"And you." She turned back to Khemmaa. "Thanks for the help. I would've never been able to find that glitch on my own."
"No problem. I can see how that would have been hard alone. How'd you miss it?"
"I probably missed a decimal somewhere. Rakata code is a clusterfuck. There's about three hundred coding languages, and the Foundry is mixture of about fifty of them. The fact that I could figure out enough the first day to get the lines up is probably a miracle."
"They have that many?"
"It's a nightmare and a half. I keep giving you the easy ones."
"I'd be willing to try some of the hard ones."
Revan raised an eyebrow. "You're sure about that?" Khemmaa nodded. "All right. It's your headache."
#
"According to the latest readouts, the Foundry is producing at approximately one hundred and twenty percent." Rans nodded from the hologram, and Carth looked back down at his datapad. "So far, in four months of operation, we've produced approximately 37.3 million droids of various makes. Approximately three-quarters of that have been combat models, with a quarter support. At halfway through the fifth month we are on schedule to produce the 10.5 million we have over the past two months, with about 5.25 million produced already."
Above the hologram platform, Rans shook his head.
::It's hard to believe a single factory could produce this much hardware.::
"Yeah," Carth agreed. "Looking at these numbers, it's no wonder the Star Forge was so powerful." It was no wonder she'd almost managed to take down the Republic.
::I would normally ask if we could boost it but… I don't think it needs it. Revan's models have been performing with more efficiency than any of us expected — I almost feel obligated to ask for her programming. We've had no more problems since the last patch, either.:: He paused. ::Has she found any evidence of the other factories?::
"The closest one was destroyed by a supernova just after the end of the Infinite Empire. The rest are further out into the Unknown Regions."
::Understood. How are your personnel?::
"Good. Morale is still high. Revan helps more than I expected, I think — they seem to feel invincible with her around."
Rans chuckled. ::I imagine so. When is our next pick-up?::
"End of this week. I believe the vessel is…" Carth frowned and looked back down at his datapad, flipping through several screens until he reached the correct one. "The Horinth, bringing supplies and taking the first half of this month's droids. Then the Dorin's Sky at the start of next week for the next crew rotation."
::That sounds correct. I—::
The door zipped open next to him, and both he and Rans' heads snapped up. Revan stormed into his office, hair tousled out of its usual braid, sans tabard, and with one hand holding her robe closed over her undershirt. There was an odd, almost wild look to her, and Carth stared. He'd seen her look like this only a few times before.
She was afraid.
"Anna?"
"Rans. Good." She drew to a stop and ran her hand over her hair. "We need a larger fleet."
::What?::
Her brows furrowed deep over her eyes. "We need reinforcements!" she snapped.
"Anna—" Carth interrupted. Hopefully he could cut her off before she got any more upset.
"I had a vision, Carth." He closed his mouth and looked between her and the Supreme Commander again. "The Empire is close to finding this place. If we want to keep the Foundry, we need more forces."
Carth glanced up at the hologram and back. "How certain are—"
"Completely. I'd say sometime in the next month. Rans, you need to boost our defenses or we will lose the Foundry, and all our personnel."
Rans shook his head. ::The fleets are stretched too thin. I doubt we have anything to spare.::
"Find some."
::You will have to make do. We can't afford to allot more resources—::
Revan threw up her free hand. "I gave you a giant factory that produces ten million droids a month, and you don't think you've got the resources to protect it?"
::I understand your frustration, Revan. But if you're half as good as both you and history claim, you should have no problem protecting the Foundry yourself.:: Revan's mouth hung the slightest bit open as she stared at the hologram, and Rans turned back to Carth. ::I will stay in touch, Admiral.::
Carth glanced at Revan before nodding. "Foundry signing off."
"That eshtaub-mishhhak—" He supposed he should be thankful that the swearing started after the holoprojector turned off.
"Anna—"
Revan ruined the rest of her braid by running her hand through her hair with a groan. "What?"
"What was it?"
"The vision?" Carth nodded. She sighed, turned on her heel, and started out of his office. "I'll be in the testing area. I really need to fight something."
Carth caught her arm, and she stopped without much more than a huff. "What was it?"
"I don't want to talk—"
"If it could help, I should know."
Revan sighed, and her arm went limp in his hand. He let go. "We were boarded, I'm not sure by who. Probably Malgus, I think it was his fleet. They cut through ours like it was nothing." She shook out her hair. "I didn't see much more, unfortunately."
Carth narrowed his eyes. Revan was an accomplished liar — one of the best he'd ever seen, if he were honest. He didn't know if she used the Force to convince people she was being honest, or if she was just naturally that convincing, but he knew some of her tells. This time, a slight crinkle at the end of her nose told him enough.
"You're lying."
"I am not."
"You are."
She grimaced. "It was you."
"What was?"
"I saw you. I don't know how — how bad it was, but I don't want anything…" Revan drew a deep breath and stepped into him, burying her face in his chest. "I don't want anything to happen to you. I won't let it."
Carth sighed and folded her into his arms. "We'll take a look at the formation and see where we can reinforce it ourselves. I'll keep asking Rans if he's sure they can't spare any more forces, but the Empire's been pressing us hard." He kissed the top of her head. "Did you, uh, did you see yourself?"
She shook her head. "But I'd either be dead or, you know, Malgus' personal guest on a one-way, all-expenses-paid trip back to Dromund Kaas. Those are the only two options."
"You could have escaped."
Revan paused, for a little longer than was necessary. "I wouldn't leave you. Not willingly."
"Anna." Carth pulled away and gripped her shoulders. "We both know that's not a guarantee. We knew that in the Jedi Civil War. It hasn't changed now."
"I know." She looked down at her feet. "And I fear that more than the Emperor."
Carth sighed and turned away, back to the holoprojector, and opened a readout of the Foundry and its protective fleet. "Then let's do what you're good at." He motioned to it, and Revan curled her arm around his waist.
"First of all, that flank's a bit weak."
#
Normally, the droid transfer was an easy thing. Most business on the Foundry stopped for several hours to watch the sight of over two million droids transferring onto whichever ship the Republic had scared up that was large enough for it. Carth was typically on board, seeing to that side of things, which left Revan over by herself.
She leaned on one of the prefab's walls, arms crossed over her chest, watching as the droids marched onto the Horinth. Mora chirped and burrowed deeper into the cradle of her arms, ignoring the deep frown on her mistress' face.
Earlier that morning, she'd dialed Rans in Carth's office and requested keeping a third of the shipment on the Foundry. "I discussed your concerns with Command and we are all agreed that you are overreacting" had been his reply.
Normally she gave the lines a break on shipment days. Not today. Not when she knew with certainty that a Sith fleet would drop out of hyperspace at any moment.
She didn't like being vulnerable. Vulnerable was dangerous. Vulnerable got her locked in stasis for three hundred years with a direct link to the Emperor. Vulnerability got Malak to fire on her bridge, Karath to find them on Korriban, the entire Mandalorian and Jedi Civil—
"You look like a kinrath stole your lunch." Revan glanced across the hall at Khemmaa and scratched behind Mora's nubs.
"There's going to be an attack on the station, and Rans is doing nothing," she muttered. The Wookiee nodded. "I'm probably just being paranoid. But I know it's coming, and Command — as usual — won't do anything about it. 'If you're as good as you say, you can handle it.'" She scoffed. "Load of bantha crap."
"Typical for the Republic, I've learned." Revan replied with a short bark of a laugh. "What's your plan?"
"Hm? Oh. I don't have one." This time, it was Khemmaa's turn to look incredulous.
"You? Don't have a plan?"
"This is impossible to predict. There's an attack coming, we're in a sector that is anything but defensible, and the Republic doesn't want to send us the forces we need." She nodded to some of the soldiers up closer to the docking tube. "I haven't had the heart to tell them we're on our own."
"Maybe we aren't."
"We are." That was the only thing she was confident about these days.
Khemmaa replied with a Wookiee grin. "Maybe it's the old stories my father tells, but I'd trust you to win a battle with a hydrospanner and a crate of synthetic food."
"Well, yeah. Even synthetic flour explodes if you apply enough heat."
The Wookiee laughed. "That's what I mean."
Revan sighed and adjusted her position on the wall. She badly wished she shared Khemmaa's confidence. "Let's hope we won't be relying on my more questionable talents soon."
Finally the last droid tromped onto the ship, and they waited as Carth and the presiding captain stepped off the ship in deep conversation. The man saluted, Carth nodded, and the captain retreated back to his ship. Carth spotted them as the crew dispersed and headed over.
"Everything's good on the transfer." Outside, the Horinth's engines revved to pull-away speed.
"Good. I've got the lines running on full. Hopefully that'll compensate."
Carth's eyes narrowed as he studied her. "You never do that."
"Well, when the Supreme Commander decides you can pull miracles out of your ass at will—" A few nearby personnel glanced their way and she lowered her voice. She was trying to keep them from finding out, damn it. "I've still got that feeling."
"Still? So you're pushing—"
"It won't do us any good against the fleet, but if anything, I trust that the Emperor wants this facility. With enough droids we might hold out for reinforcements. I don't know. I don't know an awful lot, Carth."
Carth sighed. "Well, hopefully, the Sith have the decency to wait until after the premiere."
Khemmaa chuckled, and Revan squinted at him. "Did I get you hooked on that stupid holo?"
"What can I say?" He grinned. "I enjoy the speculation."
"What? You're barely in it! An—and the lead isn't even Bastila's type! I don't know how anyone could shell out credits for that trash."
"You weren't fake-laughing last time." She pursed her lips. "I'm joking, gorgeous. We only watch it because it's terrible."
She figured that earned him a small smile. "It's definitely terrible. Ugh, I need something to do. Khemmaa, are you busy?"
"No."
"Have you been working on your Rakata coding?"
"Trying. You're right, it's a nightmare."
"We'll be in the Foundry, love." Revan bounced onto her toes and quickly kissed Carth. "You know where to find us."
Carth nodded and watched as the two retreated toward the large, ominous door blocking the facility beyond, already deep in discussion of droid coding. Mertz joined him.
"Sir? Should I be aware of something?"
The admiral shook his head. "She's got a bad feeling. That's it."
"Oh? …oh."
"Just make sure the defenses are primed." Carth frowned. "This is going to be a long week."
- 16 -