Chapter 8
Finally, Rend's comlink went off again.
"Hey. I've finished my analysis. It looks like Pike hasn't been there in a while. His last recorded access to the buildings was logged the same day you and Lord Andora brought down the Dread Hunters. The place is still worth a look though, in my opinion. Who knows what secrets he could be hiding here?"
She continued. "I've also downloaded blueprints of the warehousing layout for you. There's an access shaft near your position. It'll lead into an underground chamber not recorded on the building's blueprints. Energy readings are high down there. Whatever Vandal Pike doesn't want us to find, I'll bet that's where you'll find it."
"And the tibanna gas?" Rend asked again, as he began searching for the access panel.
"The cargo manifests don't list carbonite … then again, they didn't list the gas either. There's nothing from what I have available that would indicate its usage, I'm afraid."
"Guess we'll find out," he replied with a grunt as he moved aside a few crates to reveal a hidden hatch. "I've found the access point. Heading in."
He proceeded down a series of ladders. Curiously, lights activated themselves as he neared, providing him ample sight for the path.
"I'm slicing internal security now." Rend could hear the sound of Hallie's fingers flying over the console controls as she entered what must have been a dozen commands in mere seconds. "Whatever's in there, Pike does not want anyone to see it. There's about fifty layers of defenses here, everything from raise shields to old-fashioned spike traps and military-grade droid guards."
Rend's throat suddenly felt very dry. "Good thing you're here, right?"
"Can I list you as a reference on my resume?" Hallie chuckled. "And … there. All done. Internal security has been disabled. You should be free to move about as you please now."
"Thanks Hallie," he said. The last thing he needed to deal with was being compacted by sliding walls or impaled by a spike trap.
"Keep the comlink connection open in case you run into trouble. And you're welcome, Toes."
Even though Rend fully trusted Hallie's diagnosis that the internal defenses had all been disabled, he could not help but to make slow and cautious progress. The path itself was surprisingly straightforward and amply spaced - a long, wide corridor that stretched out far enough that the self-activating lights around him did not reveal the path's destination. Rend could tell it was straight though; he never had to make a single turn.
After walking for about fifteen minutes, he began to notice the signs of disabled security. Tripwires, false flooring, and unmoving cameras began to reveal themselves as he moved forward. He breathed a quiet 'thank you' to Hallie as he ducked under the legs of two disabled Juggernaut class HXI-54 battle droids; there was relief in the knowledge he would not have to face those monstrosities.
Finally, he reached the end of the tunnel: a set of double doors barred his path, but true to her word, Hallie had disabled the security locks. Rend easily pushed them open with both arms and entered the hidden chamber.
Here, everything was completely dark save for the blinking red lights of what must have been a dozen computer consoles. He heard the sound of something flowing, or maybe pumping. "Hallie, lighting would be nice if you can manage it…"
"On it, Toes. One second … there."
The chamber erupted in brilliant white light, blinding Rend for just a moment. Then, everything came back into focus.
He stood in a large, semi-circular chamber; the walls were made of a creamy-white plasteel. A large opaque glass wall that stretched to the ceiling separated his side of the chamber from the rest. Two large pipes descended from above - no doubt from the warehouses - and connected into the divider: the source of the pumping sounds he had heard.
There were no computer consoles in sight. Instead, a dozen droids unfurled eight legs from within cube-like thoraxes, razor sharp feet clacking against the ground, as their glowing red eyes locked onto Rend.
"Of course … it always has to be spiders."
They leaped into the air, bladed appendages poised to strike.
Hallie's voice rang out in his ear, frantic. "What's going on down there? I'm showing energy signatures swarming your position!"
Rend just barely dodged out of the way; the spider droids collided against each other, legs scrambling to find purchase but their crash course only gave him a moment's reprieve; within seconds, they were up and charging at him again. Rend barely had time to counterattack; he unleashed a torrent of lightning but the droids seemed to feed on the surge of electricity rather than suffer any harm.
"I thought you said you disabled all the security - I've got a horde of spider droids trying to tear me apart!"
"8L3-G5s? There's nothing h– They must be routed through a different network! Hold on, I'll see what I can do to help!"
Rend pulled out his crimson lightsaber, swinging his arm even as he activated the blade. The brilliant red energy connected with a droid's outstretched legs, but instead of slicing through them, his blade stopped cold. Cortosis-weave.Vandal Pike had outfitted his droids with light-saber resistant alloys. This wasn't going to be easy.
The Force saved him from being skewered by a second droid who had caught up to him; he slammed it backwards with as much power as he could muster, but the droid extended its appendages up to the pipes and used it and Rend's own attack as leverage to swing itself up to a higher vantage point. Meanwhile, two more spider droids reached his position as he desperately parried the first one's attacks.
Just as four more bladed legs came swinging at him, he once more reached in within himself and threw his arms outward, flinging back all his attackers in one swift motion; it didn't disable any of the droids, but it freed him to launch himself into the air and pull himself onto a pipe where he could get a better read of the battlefield.
Without warning, two explosions rocked the room, knocking all the droids off their feet and almost causing Rend to fall from his pipe. "What now?"
"Reinforcements!" came the cry over the comlink.
The Juggernaut class battle-droid! The mechanical monster had managed to destroy two of the spiders with its cannons in the surprise attack. Somehow Hallie had managed to co-opt it for her own use. Rend could already tell it wouldn't be enough, however. The spider droids instantly redirected their target to the Juggernaut, skitting the ground with angry taps of metallic feat against metal flooring. The Juggernaut was too slow, too lumbering to prevail against its impossibly nimble cousins.
"I think my reinforcements are going to need reinforcements! Got any other ideas?"
"Working, hold on!"
Another cannon blast took out another spider, but the remaining nine had successfully crawled onto the Juggernaut unimpeded, legs whirring, sensors ticking, electricity discharging on critical points of the HXI-54, Within seconds, Pike's robotic arachnids disassembled the Juggernaut into scrap metal.
But those seconds were the difference between life and death. Thinking fast, Rend cut a circular hole into the glass wall dividing him from the other side of the chamber. Immediately, the overwhelming smell of carbonite and Tibanna glass assailed his nostrils, but the sith bore it down and then pushed himself through the opening he had made, into the hidden chamber. He landed as quietly as he could manage, forcing himself to take a quick second to survey his surroundings.
Directly in front of him, a gushing stream of liquid carbonite pooled into a large heated vat that came up to his shoulder. Canisters of the same tibanna gas he had found in the warehouses lined the walls; these were still full. A spark of an idea formed in Rend's mind. He grabbed one of the full tanks off the wall and loosened the release valve.
From outside the chamber, he could already hear the piercing whine of the spider droids' feet trying to climb up the barrier to reach the opening he had cut through the opaque glass.
With his right hand brandishing his lightsaber, Rend carved a second hole - this time on the side of the carbonite receptacle. Liquid metal poured out of the vat like lava overflowing from a volcano. Above, the spider droids made their way through the opening in the wall, some leaping through like hawks ready to dive upon their prey, others scaling the barrier with their metallic feet and grappling hooks ejected from their midsections.
Rend needed to time his attack perfectly.
Lifting his right hand while still clutching his activated saber, he reached into the Force. He mustered all his strength and slammed his palms downwards. Instantly, all the hostile droids collapsed from their positions and fell to the floor, submerged in liquid carbonite.
Simultaneously, he used his left hand to hurl the gas canister into the air. Just as the tank of tibanna gas reached the point straight over the droids still trying to extricate themselves from the metallic molasses, Rend discharged a surge of pure violet lightning into the canister. It exploded with a turbulent shriek, dissipating its contents over the ensnared droids.
In seconds, the gas did its work, flash-freezing the liquid carbonite and permanently trapping all of Pike's spider droids. The ones that Rend had completely submerged in carbonite were now no more than rough statues of the 8L3-G5s. Those that had managed to keep their bodies above the carbonite nevertheless had their feet bound to an immovable slab of metal; they struggled to free themselves to no avail. Unable to defend themselves with their cortosis-lined appendages, they became easy prey for Rend. He started destroying them one by one with swift strikes of his lightsaber blade to their central processing units.
It didn't hurt to be cautious, after all. Not when Pike was involved.
He had reached the third droid when suddenly all the remaining droids shut down of their own accord.
"Tosin, you still there?" came Hallie's urgent call over the comlink. "I worked my way into the secondary systems, the droids should be shutting down any second now!"
Panting from his exertions, Rend still managed to reply. "Thanks, but things are under control."
He heard an audible sigh of relief come over the line.
"So what did Pike go through all this trouble to defend? What do you see?" asked Hallie. "Internal networks don't even register a chamber, so I'm relying on you to be our eyes and ears."
Rend scanned the room closely now for the first time. The vat of liquid carbonite was connected through a nest of tubes into what had to be dozens of elevated platforms. Upon each platform rested a carbonite-frozen victim. "Some kind of trophy room? There must be almost a hundred carbonite-captured bounties here."
"That's strange. Wouldn't he have delivered these things to whoever put out the bounties?"
"That's what I thought" Rend responded. "And it's excessively many to be for an active job. I'm going to get a closer look."
Rend's earlier assessment had been on the mark. Almost a hundred captured bounties had been arranged into neat rows and columns, easily filling the expansive chamber. He walked through row after row, marveling at Pike's tenacity for having captured so many bounties. Several of the podiums were empty, however - they looked odd without anything laid upon them, like they were somehow incomplete.
He bent down to check one of the carbonite block's medical data but was surprised to discover there were no life signs at all. The victim had died.
"Curious. This one's dead."
"That's not surprising," said Hallie. "Death from improper carbonite-freezing isn't unusual, especially if the calibrations aren't set correctly, or if the bounty has a weak constitution."
Rend checked another block. "This one's dead too. And another … and this one." A chill ran down his spine as he danced around the chamber examining each of the carbonite bounties. "Hallie. They're all dead."
He had discovered a graveyard.
The long pause that followed made him suspect Hallie was having a similar reaction. " … Is this some twisted collection of memorabilia? Why would he want to keep corpses?"
Another unsettling thought ran through Rend's head. He activated the defrosting sequence on five of the blocks randomly. He felt his heart pounding as he waited for the carbonite to melt away, to reveal the corpse of the victim - if he even was that. When the process finally completed, he approached each to examine their faces and bodies, careful to take note of any distinguishing features.
The first body he examined was that of a brown-haired man, who apart from being dead was in peak physical condition. A crescent-shaped birthmark could easily be discerned on the right side of his neck.
The second was the same man. Exactly. Same face, same body, same birthmark. So was the third. And the fourth and fifth.
The corpses were all of the same man.
Rend couldn't help but feel he had seen that face before. But he could no longer tell if it was because he recognized him from before, or because he had just unveiled the same face five times in a row.
"Tosin? What's happening?" said Hallie, the sudden sound of her voice causing Rend's stomach to leap into his throat.
He did his best to hide the embarrassment. "They're all the same person, Hallie. Every one of them."
" … I don't understand. You mean they're –"
"Clones. Duplicates. Dead, but they're identical in ways beyond what twins or triplets would be. That, and there's about a hundred of them here."
"Cloning?" asked Hallian skeptically. "Humanoid cloning? Is that even possible? I haven't come across anything like that even during my years at Imperial Intelligence. A few came close, some success had been found with animals, buthumans?"
Rend activated the thawing process for three more corpses just to be sure. They too held brown-haired men with crescent birthmarks on their necks.
"They are all dead," he replied. "Some sort of failed experiment, or … " Rend did his best to collect his thoughts into a coherent narrative. " … I think this is how he managed to fake his death. How he's been faking his death all this time."
"That doesn't make any sense!"
"Except it does, in a twisted way. I'll bet anything that the man behind the helmet that we've been fighting has the same face as these bodies. Whenever he thinks he can pull it off, whenever he's failed a job or needs a second attempt, he drags out one of these corpses and arranges it such that we think he's died."
Hallie let out a long breath. "… that's why he needed so much tibanna gas and carbonite … he needed a secure way to keep the bodies from decomposing, to maintain the illusion that he had died recently. You think he's … he's purposefully staging his own death on these botched jobs so he can lower his targets' guard?"
"What better way to get someone to relax their guard than to make them believe they've won?" said Rend. "And it ensures he's got the element of surprise. No one's going to suspect they're about to be attacked by a man who's turned up dead."
"That has to be how he took down Cerber and Andora so easily. They never saw him coming. None of us did."
Rend spat. "Knowing Andora, it's almost unbelievable he managed to survive when even Cerber was slain."
"Andora's not an idiot you know," contested Hallie. "He's got –"
He interjected. "–what matters is how Pike has done this, created these dead copies of himself. And how we can use this information to our advantage."
"I'm pulling up files from the secondary systems … Tosin. It says here Vandal Pike - the original Vandal Pike - used to go by the name Vestral."
The name sparked memory. "Wasn't that the name of –"
"A Lord in Darth Siphon's service. Vestral was cast down when he attempted - and failed - to usurp Siphon's position. Siphon … severed Vestral from the Force …"
Rend remembered now; that was why he felt the ache of recognition earlier. He and Vestral had crossed paths briefly while Rend was still only an apprentice. Vestral had been cast out when Rend himself had only just attained the title of Lord.
"You didn't recognize his face when you matched his genetics?" Rend asked, only half-accusingly. He hadn't recognized the face either, after all.
Hallie grumbled. "No, I told you, remember? The corpse's head was crushed beyond recognition. And no wonder, he didn't want us to know. I only ran the verification against data stored under Vandal Pike's name at the time … I hope you didn't expect me to somehow know to run it against an exiled Sith, because there was literally no reason for me to do that. Precognition is really your department."
"Yeah … you're right." Rend considered. Vestral was a master of the lightsaber forms, his duel with Siphon had been exhilarating to watch. It explained how Vandal Pike had been able to hold off Andora in their first encounter. Apparently being severed from the Force hadn't impacted his skill with the lightsaber, at least, not significantly. Still, the loss of one's connection to the Force was no superficial matter; Rend couldn't imagine life without being connected to it.
" … so his motivations lie beyond simple greed. He's come back to try and take down Siphon again, or get revenge for what she did to him."
"There's more." Hallie paused for a moment over the holocom, as Rend waited with bated breath. "Vestral went into hiding after his exile … but it seems he made contact with one Doctor Magaro - a renowned genetic researcher and scientist. Tosin, from the records here, it looks like they experimented with cloning in an effort to reconnect Vestral - Pike - to the Force."
Rend glanced around at the dead bodies. "Whatever they did, I don't think it worked. Pike hasn't shown any Force abilities in our battles. And these clones … they're pretty dead."
"Thank the stars for small miracles. I don't need any more Vandal Pikes running around this galaxy."
Rend paced restlessly in a circle. "The mission wasn't a total waste then. We have Pike - Vestral's - history. But we still have to track him down somehow too … it's obvious he's not here."
A self satisfied hum sounded out over the comlink. "Burn the place down."
" … what?"
"Burn it down. Eliminate his advantage … and hey, I'm betting that Pike will come running if he realizes his precious cargo is about to be obliterated. That, and I'll trigger every last one of his security warnings. I only wish I was there to get a look at that bastard's face in person once he realizes what we've done."
Rend considered the plan for a moment. It wasn't the most elegant of stratagems; there was no telling how long it would take Pike to get to the warehouse, and no guarantee that Rend would be able to best him in single combat. Then again, there weren't many other options. They had no leads on where Vandal Pike might currently be, and no reason to suspect that question could be answered by anything in these warehouses. And while Pike had multiple elements of surprise the last few times they had fought, this time it would be Rend - Rend and Hallie - who had the advantage, who would have the time to lie in wait and ensnare their prey.
"Agreed. Trigger the alarms. I'll start on making this place Vandal Pike's funeral pyre."
"It's about time we got some payback. Do me a favor though? Collect what data you can on the corpses. Even if the clones were a failure, what Doctor Magaro achieved … that knowledge might come in handy to us one day."
"Always the curious one, aren't you?" he asked.
"How does that Jedi saying go? There is no ignorance, there is …"
"Really? You're going to quote the Jedi Code to a Sith?" asked Rend with a humorous tone of disbelief.
Hallie chuckled. "Alright, I see your point. But Toes … you're sure you can take Pike on alone?"
"He won't get away again."