Moisture farmer militia.
That phrase had brought a lot of memories back.
We weren't what they expected when we started to arrive on Coruscant to join Revan. The first two hundred came from all over within hours because we were the Jedi assigned to the Coruscant Temple. Padawans both learner and teacher, sometimes in pairs, sometimes being dropped off as their partner returned to their temple. Within two weeks all 1500 had arrived. But the Republic had a... perception problem.
If you had watched holo-dramas you have seen the Jedi, and along with all of the adjectives you come up with, brave, strong, wise, the one we forget is what they expected. Old. In all those holo dramas, the Jedi is almost invariably in his or her late forties or early fifties.
We were almost evenly split between padawan learners and padawan teachers. 1200 Guardians, about half of our number in the order, with a few less than 200 Sentinels and fifteen Consulars. We actually had two masters among us, but Master Cooran was a Kreelan, so having him walk in looking like a 12 year old boy (He was seventy) and announce himself was a serious problem. Lazasar, the other, was a Consular, and while he could fight and defend himself, he had joined us more to help smooth over the problems he foresaw. But at fifty he was more what they anticipated.
In age, almost all of us were between 17 and 28. I was on the high end, 25, with Kavar, who had actually come as an observer for the Council at 28. The oldest of us after Cooran was Mach, and those who tried to talk to him immediately changed their minds. Mach used words as if they were something issued by the day. I think in the months we had been together right after my return from Manda'lor, he'd said maybe thirty words a day. So when the Senators talked, they ended up talking to Lazasar, and they always said the same thing:
"It's nice you brought the students, but what about the more experienced Jedi?"
We spent three months on what Revan originally called the Cocktail and Canape circuit, but by the end she agreed with what I had called it from the start. The Kanthis Bird Drill. Being seen as window dressing for Senators.
A wild Kanthis is highly intelligent, and a lot of fun to hunt. I had hunted one as an apprentice just to touch it, and it had been fun. A domestic one however was so stupid that you had to shoo them in out of the rain, because they would feel the drops, look up and stare upward trying to understand until they drowned.
We had been turned into sound bites.
I was staying at an apartment Mach and I had paid on to get away from the temple occasionally. I looked up as the door buzzer rang, then Revan walked in. She looked as calm and serene as always. But anyone who had really known her even briefly as I had, could see she was about to go ballistic. Of all of us she was the most ignored because quite honestly, she looked like a young model, not a Jedi.
I walked to the bar, and poured her some Mando'a hard bloodwine. I for one was sad because until the war was over, it was the last. She nodded thanks, and shot it down just like a Mando'a. Then she cursed for a full half an hour.
"Why won't they listen?" She ended, half plaintive, half furious. "They begged and begged for our assistance, and all we're doing is being background for Senators I wouldn't trust to walk a dog!" She looked at me sadly. "They keep asking where Revan is, and when I tell them that I am Revan, they look at me as if I'm insane."
"Stop being so damn cute, then." I poured out the last of the Verdyc. She took the glass and sipped this time. She looked up, and pointed at the wall. "what are those things?"
"Like 'em? When we left Manda'lor for the last time, some friends gave them to me. They're Hoka Masks." I saw her confusion, "It's a form of silent theater. All of their legends are acted out with masks to represent the Gods. The one on the left is Torgal the One Eyed. The king of their gods. The other is Mor-Dru, the Dark lady of Judgment." I walked over, reaching up to touch them. "From what I learned of their legends, you'd rather have Torgal after you. He'd only kill your soul. She was the stuff of nightmares.
She started to smile. "I have an idea."
Three days later, a ship one of our Guardians had taken from an Exchange Boss arrived, and a woman in armor came down the ramp. She was cloaked, and all you could see was the mask of Mor-Dru she wore. Signaling imperiously to Malak and Lazasar, she strode into the Chancellor's office. "I am Revan. We came to fight a war. This waste of our time will end now."
The first briefing was almost the last. The 'Mandalorian Specialist' brought up the galaxy map, and highlighted a star. "We believe this is their next target." I started laughing, and finally had a droid come over and put a name for the star he had marked. It was Buir, Father in Mando'a. Their home system.
When we finally started getting briefed on the situation, we found out just how badly the Republic Military is run, all humor had fled. First, there is no central organized military. Every planet had it's own navy and army, standardization was a joke, and the command structure was so hopelessly overloaded with idiots punching their tickets for a high command slot or later political career that nothing can be done without force. Not the Force, I mean like using a hammer to pound it into some kind of shape.
A third of the fleet was sitting in various bases doing nothing because they were short on crews, or officers. Not that we didn't have enough trained men, it was just say brand new Kuati ships sat there because there weren't enough Kuati to man them. That kind of thing. Of course Kuat was glad to sell the export version...
On the navy side training was even worse. Missiles are expensive, so maybe one missile was fired per ship per exercise. If they all worked right, it wasn't a problem. But in one of the first battles a frigate shot off fifty missiles, achieved three hits, and two of them were duds. The missile crews hadn't had enough training in their fuzing options.
Naval battles are almost always fought at one remove, so it should have been easy to simulate. The ships are what you are targeting, and a lot of times, they are just symbols on your tactical sensor board. A dot goes out, and you ignore the fact that hundreds of men have just died. When your own ship gets hit, suddenly you see what it really is. When 'simulation' met reality, people panicked, the wrong orders were given, and unsupported ships ended up being caught alone and destroyed.
Back right after the war of Exar Kun, the Corellian Navy had designed naval combat simulators that simulated everything. When your ship fired you felt the missiles going out. When your ship got hit, there was real damage that you saw. If the bridge got hit you had explosive decompression effects, people getting sucked out of the hole, the whole nine yards. A great way to learn exactly what you face.
After public protests about 'government brutality' to the naval ratings, they stopped using them. Too frightening.
Go figure.
We'd started the war outnumbering the Mando'a five to one in warships, but the Republic's navies had gone to Frigates instead of Corvettes, so the firepower difference was almost ten to one. But it is actually deceiving. First, while a corvette needed a crew of just under a hundred, a Frigate needed as many as a three hundred. They were also more expensive, so over half of that fleet was in mothballs to save money. Of the rest, a third were in for refitting or repair, so while we had almost two thousand ships at the start, only about 600 were operational. They had more blast boats than we did, and with those added, the Mando'a could field over a thousand. They had also done the one thing that should have warned us; they had pulled in every ship for repair and refit at the same time.
When they came out, it was one thousand to 600, and their forces weren't spread in penny packets to make people feel safer, so along all three of their attack vectors, they outnumbered the Republic. The new Attack corvettes the Mando'a fielded were faster, more maneuverable, and were under one cohesive command unlike the Republic. They also tended to close and if possible board our ships if they could. Our naval crews weren't trained to fight that way, so they took a lot of those ships in the first year from the inside.
So after four years of war, thanks to mismanagement, the ratio of hulls was only three to one and slipping rapidly, because every ship they captured was added to their fleet as soon as they could man them. I know they only had six planets with a population of only 30 odd million, but they did it anyway, and were still beating every fleet the Republic risked.
Me, I'm a ground pounder at heart. I feel more comfortable facing an enemy at blade length than I do with blowing up some anonymous shape half a million kilometers away. Revan Malak and the others descended on the Naval high command like the wrath of the gods while I led the ones good at fighting up close and looked at the Marine and Army situation.
It was as bad if not worse. Everyone wanted to fight in cohesive units of one planet, and one planet alone, and a lot of them didn't have enough trained troops as yet. Before the war when they worked in units larger than a regiment, they were attached to the planets that had originally colonized them, so you had Corellian, Coruscanti, Kuati and Twi-Lek divisions, each with regiments from half dozen colonies.
Only seven star nations had enough men under arms to field their own divisions at the start, and there was now screaming that all of those smaller planets wanted their own divisions(And officers), rather than say the Echani and other colonies dying under someone else's banner. Considering how many had died do to incompetents from those planets, I wasn't surprised.
But none of those Colonial powers had anticipated that, and the high command was so glutted with senior officers on the Core worlds that had originally begun the fight, that it wasn't funny. Until we could get more men out of the training pipeline into the field, we had too many Generals and not enough soldiers.
The replacement situation was totally fouled up. When a unit was rotated out of combat it was supposed to be brought back up to strength, and given time to reorganize, before being sent back out. However if there was a kink in the pipeline, such as the personnel officer being an idiot, or some man with a General's stars deciding he needed a unit and he remembered say the 101st Kuati Legion, he'd grab it and throw it back into battle. Never mind that the Regiment he wanted was now an under-strength Battalion with a third of it's remaining personnel in hospital, led by a junior lieutenant who was in charge because he had been lucky and still alive. That meant the idiot would sent in 400 men to do a job that you needed 1500 for.
The fault here was too many of the 'generals' had never fought a real battle since they were lieutenants. But unless you died or were retired, seniority went on. They had practiced in the simulators and sand tanle exercises, where the 'men' are electronic figments that fight and die at your command like a chessboard, or small pieces you order moved. But it's unreal, and after a time, you no longer see what you're working with as people
Do you cry when your pawn get slaughtered? When they went into battle, they were moving pieces. Not real men getting killed, never hearing the screams of the dying and the moans of the wounded. The piece is destroyed; you throw it in the box and move another one.
Never mind that 1500 real men with real families, ideal and hopes had just been obliterated. The piece is gone, forget about it.
An ancient sage back when men still fought close enough to touch said it best. 'You must love your army. But for it to fulfill it's purpose, you must be willing to watch it bleed, die, and be destroyed'.
When we finally got a chance to do something about this I jumped in with both feet and began reorganizing the ground forces. I missed the battle of Telos because I was busy fighting my own battles.
I was fighting three wars without even counting the Mandalorians. I had to fight with personnel. Sergeant X didn't have all the brownie points he needs to make 1st sergeant. The fact that he was presently commanding the equivalent of a company, which should have had a Captain in charge was incidental to their equation. I fought officers who saw their rank and remember the privileges, and ignoring the responsibilities. And 'We (Choose the planet) fight together'. I had to fight with the different military formations who didn't get along.
For example men from the Coruscanti 1st Regiment, which was at that time barely a battalion could not be folded into the Corellian third Regiment which desperately needed that battalion to fill out their Table of Organization because the Corellians and the Coruscanti did things differently, and it would cause 'problems'.
Heaven forbid that I would do what had to be done next, which is putting members of other races in the mix too! We finally took all of the odds and sods of other races, and formed Foreign Legions based on the Kuati army formation, which is a regimental formation. We hoped eventually, to have enough of every different race to form their own, but that hadn't happened.
But I refused to countenance any argument about units of the same race being from only one planet until there were enough for something larger than a division. I didn't accept the argument that Zabrak from the fifty odd worlds where they lived had to have separate units, so why do it for humans? I beat on heads, screamed into view screens, and got my way by throwing a tantrum too large for the galaxy to hold. We were going on the offensive if I had to tie every man and woman in army uniform together with sticky tape and flex glue.
We spent the first months doing just that.
I found that some of the problems were real, but just because a problem exists, doesn't mean you ignore it. The Aqualish had supplied the better part of a battalion of troops initially, but their training was... substandard, so we needed to put them in a unit with more technically adept races until they were up to speed. Having been a race that thought a pointed stick was a good idea as a weapon when they had been contacted, a little elan was expected, but they assumed that the only order they needed was 'charge!'.
I dealt with this in my own way...
Fifty Aqualish, half of the company were approaching where I hid in ambush with the other fifty. I shouted, and the 'men' with me opened fire. We were using training weapons, so while there was would be the noise of a lot of blasters cycling, the flashes of weak laser light simulating the blaster fire would set off sensors in uniforms below rather than kill anyone. If they hit, the uniform would stiffen, and the man would drop to the ground. What you are supposed to do is dive for cover, assess the situation, then attack, rolling up the enemy using fire and maneuver.
As I said, that is what you are supposed to do.
There are three types in a first battle like this. The ones that dive for cover before they are hit, the ones that freeze for a fatal second or two, and the ones that charge screaming at the enemy.
I gave it five seconds. Then I tapped the siren, and everyone froze.
Droids rolled down. At each place where a man was, they placed a targeting sensor.
All one hundred of them now took positions up on that ridgeline. "One magazine, lock and load!" I ordered. I won't even tell you how long it took to teach them that simple command! Each man readied his Telosian designed blaster. I signaled the droids, and suddenly we could see the men, not just a fifty, but a hundred advancing.
"Fire!"
A hundred men poured fire into the battlefield. Down below, the targeting sensors modified the scene.
But what the men shooting saw was different depending on what the man had done. If he dived for cover, and it was something that would soak up blaster fire the target was just something the size of their head. If it was down, but not behind some hard cover, it was head and shoulders. If it was one of the frozen ones (And the droids had recorded who had frozen if only for a second) it was a man sized target. The charging idiots got targets half again normal size.
Once the last round had gone downrange, the holograms froze. Every hit had been indexed by a red splotch. I stood up, and motioned for them to follow me. I pointed at a figure crouched behind a rock face. "Cover is important in battle. Notice that this man is not injured, even with almost five thousand rounds fired." I walked to another. This one had ducked behind a bush. The first bolt had blown the bush into splinters. Half a dozen more showed as red marks on the chest and head. "If it doesn't stop enemy fire, it isn't cover."
I walked over to a figure that was normal sized. A rash of hits would have ripped off both legs, an arm and the head. "If you want to be a target, fine, you'll get your chance. But targets stay on the battlefield for graves registration to pick up and cart home. Your families get a nice letter that doesn't end with a phrase I would use if I were truthful, 'you were too damn stupid to duck'."
I had saved one of the berserkers for last. The system had automatically stopped them after the first hit, and this guy had gotten maybe three paces before he died. But a bigger target means more fire gets aimed at you. I looked at the shredded target, it had been hit about thirty times; for a long moment then turned to the Aqualish. They were acting like a bunch of naughty children. I almost expected toes digging in the dirt. "If you want to be a hero, be one. But do it in someone else's unit.
"You are not the 1st Aqualish 'Death Dealers' any more. You're third company, second battalion, 2nd Regiment, 3rd Foreign Legion. You will fight the way I tell you to or so help me by all the gods I'll have you assigned to moisture farmer militia that needs target practice. As targets! Is that clear?"
There were no further serious problems.
The mine
Marai
I opened the door to the mine itself. As it was above, the tunnels had been shored up. I knew that any equipment they needed to install, they would have just bored out bigger holes for.
"I'm picking up a lot of sonic mines laid ahead."
"Why so many?"
"A lot of miners are lazy. Some of the regular droids have probably been reassigned as excavators. That means they put a larger carrying rack on them, and program them to place charges. Not supposed to be done, but there you go. What probably happened was whoever programmed them to go rogue had them mining access tunnels to trap people."
I slipped past the droids where I could, fought them if I had to. I finally reach a section of tunnel that glowed red hot. "Atton, read the tunnel at-." I looked up at the markings painted on the rock. "-section Sigma Green Three Oh."
"Don't have a reading from that specific area. But the sensors on both ends read very high. Probably the explosion superheated the rock. The sensors are... fifty meter apart."
"Any ideas?"
"That mining armor. If you run like hell, it should last long enough to get you through."
"From your mouth to the gods' ears." I said. "Talk to you again in a moment." I sprinted forward. A few seconds later just as it started to feel really hot I found myself in another tunnel complex. The air almost felt icy after the last run.
"I'm through." Ahead of me was a large room with huge pumps surging. Peragian fuel was being sucked up from the tunnels inside electromagnetic fields. In the center was a control console, and I ran to it.
Yes. This controlled those safety fields. I check the listing, and found that it was an all or nothing option, I dropped them all, or none. I checked the map, and would have to run forward around one of the pump assemblies. I could drop it and have it up in about fifteen seconds.
I started to give the command, when I noticed that there was a security camera log for mining claim 12-74. I checked. That was a section that was at present disused. I tapped it.
On the screen, I could see three miners. Two of them I recognized. They had been killed in that hallway right outside of the medical section, the first two bodies I had found. In the middle of all of that confusion, they must have hoped they had a chance to capture me for the bounty.
"What is it Coorta?" One of the men asked wearily. "We're supposed to be sinking fuel siphons into 32-18 right this minute."
Coorta looked like a brawler. Not too bright a one too from my estimation. "Forget the siphons, boys, we've hit pay dirt. Did you hear about the survivor they took off that freighter?" They looked at him blankly. "Kallio on Shift 2 said he recognized her from Berekor."
The third man shrugged. "Big deal. If she was at Berekor she was a survivor. Maybe Mandalorian. So what?"
"No you morons. Kallio was with the 2nd Corellian Marines before they court martialed him. He said she was the General who commanded the 2nd." He glared at their uncomprehending faces. "A Jedi."
The first guy looked panicked. "A Jedi! We can't let her walk around here! She'll spot our operations and then we're out of here with nothing to show for it!"
"Wait!" The second guy was thinking a little better. "I thought the Jedi blew themselves away during the Jedi Civil War! There aren't any Jedi anymore."
"Guess someone knew when to duck." Coorta snarled. "But it isn't all bad me lads. I contacted Nar Shaddaa. The bounty is still open. All we need to do is contact the Exchange."
"The Exchange? You want to sell her to the Exchange? Have you been chewing the spice you were supposed to be selling?" Asked the panicked one.
"That Jedi is our ticket off this rock and into a life of leisure." Coorta pressed. "That bounty will set us all up for life."
"Brenner won't let it happen." The calm one said. "They'll put her in protective custody if necessary."
"So we have to improvise-"
The recording ended. Odd, there was mention of which camera had recorded the conversation. I tapped the control dropping the safety field.
I ducked, and the laser that would have cut my spine slashed into the console. It fried as I turned, drawing the mining laser I had picked up. One shot blew the weapons mount off the droid, the next two shattered the carapace as the motivator I hit exploded. Alarms went off.
"Marai, what did you do?" Atton screamed.
"What now?" I screamed back.
"The safety fields went down, and if they're not up in thirty seconds, it's going to blow down there!"
"I can't put it back up. The control console took a hit."
"All right, all right. Run like hell to the fuel depot door. It's only about fifty, a hundred meters ahead. I'm locking down the emergency access tunnel and the direct turbo lift to admin. That should keep this area safe. Now run!"
I ran. Behind me I could hear metal sheering, alarms wailing. Ahead of me I found the lift, leaped in and slammed the control. It shot upward and deep below me I could hear a rumbling that went on and on. The door opened, and I leaped out. The door slammed closed an instant later bowed as if a giant had slammed it with a hammer. Smoke puffed out through the joints.
I lay there, gasping. Then I looked up. Ahead of me about five meters was a horribly burned body of a man
"Atton." I called. No reply. I called again, just static. Maybe the comlink was damaged, or blocked by this last explosion. Maybe... No. I would not assume he was dead.
I stood, brushing myself off. Why do people do that? You just went through hell, your clothes are probably rags or filthy, but you brush them with your hands as if that makes it all better.
I felt a presence, and turned, the sword coming up. I could feel the constellation of a droid's system on the other side of that wall. It moved forward, turning its red photoreceptors toward me.
"Greeting: It is a pleasure to see you alive, Master. Assuming that it is you and my photoreceptors are not out of alignment again. How may I be of assistance?"
Fuel Depot
Marai
"Master? How do you know me?"
The droid stepped forward. I recognized it as an HK series 50. Systech had made a lot of them, and we'd used the protypes of the old HK 1 to 46 in combat because they were so easy to modify. By beefing up the armor and installing targeting hardware with larger power buses they were dangerous opponents.
But the HK50s were a new design, barely three years old. Not made for combat. Systech had sold them as protocol droids. I for one remember seeing them rampage in battle. If one came up behind me, I didn't expect him to be carrying canapes.
"Answer: I am a survivor of the Harbinger as are you, Master. With the unexpected termination of my previous master and his crew, you are the only life form that I can call master until I am reassigned."
"Who was your master?"
"Why anyone in the Harbinger crew of course, Master. I was supposed to obey the Captain above all. However like yourself I was merely a passenger enroute to Telos. When we arrived I was supposed to be assigned to the Telosian Security Forces and turn my efforts to terminating hostilities."
Terminating hostilities. The way the older HKs dealt with that was terminating the hostile people. "What happened aboard the Harbinger?"
"Irritated answer: Oh master it is a long and rather dull story. Not terribly relevant to our present circumstance. I am sure you do not wish a drawn out repetition of which droids I had to communicate with or what officer wanted what food served."
Alarms were going off in my head. A standard protocol droid is a motor mouth. It isn't getting them to talk that is the problem; it's getting them to shut up. This one was so laconic I could see it not speaking for hours, even days. That with the fact that it was an HK model did not make me feel any happier.
"Stay here. I am going to check out this section."
"Amazement: Master, I must protest. I am the droid, and my life is not worth yours. Why not rest after your harrowing trials, and I will investigate."
"No. Stay here. That's an order."
"Weary resignation: I will comply."
I walked out of the room, and once I was out of sight, I shivered. The last thing I remembered aboard Harbinger had been glowing red eyes and being carried. A human-formed droid can carry a person easily. Maybe I was jumping at shadows, but the idea that this thing had been aboard Harbinger sent chills up and down my spine.
The next room was a workshop, and I saw that the droid maintenance officer had been meticulous and almost anal retentive in his care for his tools and charges. One thing I found that was odd was a sonic imprint sensor. If he had not been a maintenance tech or a locksmith, I would have thought that maybe he was a thief.
A sonic imprint sensor can record, splice, and replay voices. It's great for breaking voice printed locks because if the person makes the standard newbie mistake and uses something common, it can be captured and the person with the sensor can bypass the lock. There was a data pad, and I read it. He had been intending to upgrade the droids to act on voice commands. A good idea, because from what I saw, they really needed it. No more droid control keypads, just tell it, and it does it. And if something goes wrong, the droid can tell you what went wrong.
I went to the door into the complex, and opened it. I heard the rattle of advancing droids, and destroyed them. There was a force field between the main fuel section and the droid maintenance section. I had no clue where it had been activated from, so I couldn't bypass it. At the other end was a door, and as I approached I saw some other droids. These were newer, human-form droids. Still they still didn't have the systems for combat. The direct paths that led down to the fuel center and docks were blocked by emergency force fields, and while I checked every console I passed, none of them had access. They were controlled from the other side.
I found the maintenance office and logged in. The one thing I immediately noticed was that it was this console that had sent that murderous medical order. So the man that had tried to kill me was dead.
No wait. It didn't have to be a man. A console can be accessed by a droid. Either with an access arm, or by using the keyboard or a voice command like a human might. All I knew for sure was they had used this console. I found a series of logs.
A hologram flashed into view, and I recognized the dead man from the next room. He was younger than I had thought. If he was twenty I would eat the console without salt.
"What did Wansir do when he was in charge? These droids were ten years out of date when they were sent here. They need upgrades so badly it's almost less expensive to buy new ones! I did push that through at least. The first humanoid Mark 7 arrived a week after I did.
"Finished the sonic imprint sensor prototype for the mining droids. That will allow me to adjust their programming every time the mining specifications changed without having to call the lot of them in and doing it manually. I know it's just sticking in a code spike, but try doing it two hundred times a day, then having to do it again a week later.
"Haven't installed or built more yet. I wanted to try recording and playing back simple voice commands first."
There was a log labeled Ebon Hawk Droids. I hit it.
"Finished my examination of the droids from the Ebon Hawk. One was an F3 model, but it's so badly damaged all they can do it rip it apart for spares. Since we don't have any F3s here, we'll have to send it to Telos.
"The T3 seems to have shut itself down in a recursive loop. I think it might have voice recognitions software or something. Nothing we say will get it activate, and if you simply switch it on it looks around, then shuts itself off again. It will end up as scrap on Telos as well.
"That damn protocol droid has made up for both of them, though. It spent over an hour asking me about the station, personnel, systems. Everything it would have to know to do its job efficiently. I finally just plugged it into the mainframe, and five minutes later it had it all.
"But you know how some protocol droids are. If they don't feel useful the damn things sulk. I found out it could speak the languages of our droids, especially their behavioral cores, and I have been using it here to assist in repairs. It has a delicate touch too. I may be out of a job if Admin finds out.
"Having some problems with the droids. Mainly it looks like someone might have eased the safety restriction yet again. I think if we all die because some idiot wanted to cut corners with safety they'd still say it was my fault."
Another log.
"I have been speaking to the protocol droid about the survivor. He tells me she's a Jedi... But I thought all the Jedi got killed during the Jedi Civil War. He told me that she is the only Jedi he has verified in years, and was a veteran of the Mandalorian Wars.
"That brings back memories of mom telling me to be good or the Mandalorians would get me." He chuckled. "But if she is a veteran of the Mandalorian wars, maybe she know where Revan went to?"
Another log.
"Too busy to make regular log entries as much as Admin wants to gripe about it. Between the Jedi arriving, Coorta and his men pushing to sell her off to the Exchange and accidents that have suddenly started to happen, I've been wishing mom had twins.
"Coorta tried to get me on board. Seems the Exchange has offered the largest bounty ever offer in the Galaxy for a live Jedi. All you have to do is get them to Nar Shaddaa alive.
"The man is an idiot. First, we're under contract to the Republic for the Telos Reclamation project. I for one do not want to spend the next two decades in jail because I violated the Anti slavery laws! Besides. I think of that face when she was brought out of the ship. She may be almost old enough to be my mother, but that doesn't mean she isn't attractive. To think of that face under some mob boss' thumb." He shivered.
"The protocol droid overhead the conversation and expressed concern. I told him not to worry. Between the officers and Security, Coorta will find himself sucking vacuum if he pushes it."
Another log.
"I don't know who was more surprised than I was. The maintenance droids in the hanger bay had begun repairing the ship. In fact they were almost done before anyone really noticed. After all, how often do you watch a droid to make sure it's doing what it is supposed to?
"But the dock officer came up screaming because the repairs are coming from his stores and budget, and he wanted to know who authorized the repairs. We checked, but there is no record that anyone gave the orders.
"I installed a voiceprint ID on the droid control console, and notified Admin and security as required. If anyone tries to give the droids orders without going through this console, we'll know immediately. Security has set a tap that will automatically record the voice of whoever does, and Brenner is thinking about building a clearsteel box and suspending them outside for the duration of the sentence."
Another log.
"This is the third maintenance check I have done in two days and I still can't find the problem. Security was up my rear demanding that I do something, but the problem has me stumped.
"These are not combat units, they're miners. Sure they can use a laser on a man instead of a gas pocket, but they don't have the targeting software a combat unit would have. Even if they did they can't hit the broad side of a barn except at close range.
"I wonder... Maybe someone staged the first problems with them just to have them brought into maintenance to be checked? Sure they could have put a virus in the diagnostic software, made the droids consider us a pocket of mobile gas to mine. But I went through the diagnostic software line by line, and didn't find anything. Besides, if someone had done that without upgrading their targeting software it should have frozen them in their tracks.
"The more I say it can't be, maybe Security is right. We might have a saboteur on the station."
I looked at the screen for a long time. Everything bad that had happened had begun when I arrived. It was all linked to me, and for the life of me I didn't know why. I tried to access the com system, but the console had been surgically altered as had the one in admin. I checked the cameras, and found a turbolift access for admin, the fueling outflow tube, with what looked like a droid sitting forlorn... and an airlock! I called up the schematics of the station, and there was no direct access way from where I was to the dormitories. If anyone was still alive, they were trapped there.
I went to the airlock, but it refused to open. I cursed, and I saw a light come on the keypad. VOICE PRINT ID IN USE. ACCESS DENIED.
Crap. The one that had made that voiceprint was in the other room dead. I couldn't very well...
I pulled out the voice print sensor. As I had mentioned, they are a common tool among the smarter thieves, because if the person made a mistake and used common phrases, or recorded it somewhere else...
I walked back into the room where the HK still stood. "I saw a droid in the fuel outflow line-"
"Query: How is it possible that a droid would be dumped down there? It is possible that it ran afoul of one of the malfunctioning droids on the station and was rendered inoperable. It is too bad there is no way to reach it from here, Master. If there were, you could determine what had occurred."
I sighed. "I am trying to reach the hanger bay."
"Pitying answer: That is too bad, Master. The hanger bays are sealed with containment fields, and the only three people that might know the access codes are the Administration officer, the Docking bay officer, and the Security chief. According to what I have been able to ascertain, they are all either in the dormitory, or are known dead."
"I tried to contact the dormitory from the Administration center, but there was no reply."
"Tragic Apology: Perhaps that is for the best, master. After all, if there had been further accidents in that section of the station I would have had the satisfaction to record their last moments of fear and terror."
I looked at it calmly. "Is there another way to reach the dormitory from inside the station?"
"Thoughtful consideration: The entry way from the turbo lift from the primary base itself has been sealed, and cannot be opened from here. Theory: However if someone were to open the airlock and transit across the asteroid surface, they could reach the outer airlock. But that route is dangerous, and I would not wish to see you injured. However the point is moot. The Maintenance officer sealed the airlock in the belief that the miners might attempt to attack him here. He did so with a voice print ID."
"Where can I find the code he used?"
"Informative answer: Oh I have the code, but it would be of little use to you, Master. In the last few days the Maintenance officer became almost paranoid. He voice printed the airlock and droid control panel. However he suffered the same fate as the others.
"Informative answer: If you wish you may try the code yourself, master. It is 'Maintenance control: Voiceprint access: R1B5'. However without his own voice to operate it, the code is, as I have already informed you, useless."
"Maybe he is still alive." I knew very well where he was, but acting stupid can be very useful. Already I had the words that needed to be said.
"Answer: The corporeal remains of the maintenance officer lies on the floor to your left, master. I was present when he was attacked, and he was far too incoherent from pain to have any meaningful communications. I recorded his dying screams in the event that I could deliver them to any next of kin."
"You recorded his last screams?"
"Recitation: Of course I did. When operating as a host at a meeting, my systems automatically record all information recorded for later recovery. His last words were-" Sudden I heard the man, talking frantically. "Locking down systems. Wait. Five droids, burning through the outer door...forcing their way into the bay...please someone! They...Oh no, they're through! Aiee! My leg! They've burned through my leg! Stop please stop-"
"End recitation." I snapped.
"Apology: Sorry Master. The record goes on for one minute twenty seconds as the droids seared every exposed bit of flesh. It varied in harmonics and decibel levels from frenzied screams to gibbering, inarticulate attempts begging to spare his life, and references to his parents, whom he hoped might render assistance-"
"Stop." I stepped closer. "You can duplicate his voice. Why can't you speak the access code?"
"Strenuous objection: Master to commit such an act would be a violation of the ethical codes all droids are believed to have hardwired into them. I am sorry to state that I am unable to violate my own programming."
"Then stick with your programming. I am going up and see if I can find another way."
"Satisfaction: Keeping you safe is my primary objective."
I turned, walking back to the maintenance control console. I pulled out the sonic sensor unit, and checked it. I had some of the words.
I knew where I could get the rest. The turbolift had been lock at maintenance, all the proof I needed. I set it to manual with my own voice.
Atton started to stand, but I waved him back to his seat. I went first to the security office. I captured some of the words there as well, but not all of them. I gained the rest by checking the maintenance logs that the Administrator kept in his office. I saw what the dead man had meant. Every day, a report. Not twice a day, not once every other day. Report on desk of the Administrator on time or Admin called down and gave him hell.
I informed Atton of what had occurred. He looked as if he wanted to make me stay there, but I was the one those men had died for, and I had to find out what else had gone on. If one of them was still alive it's my soul that would bear the burden.
I went back to the maintenance airlock, and tried the spliced tape. The door hissed open, and I ran in. There was a space suit in a locker, and I pulled it on.
"Query:" Came through the speaker in the airlock. "What are you doing master?"
"Just going for a walk." I hit the cycle button as I spoke. Once the air was sucked out of the airlock nothing smaller than a ship would open it from the inside. The outer door opened, and I stepped out onto the catwalk.
Dormitory
Marai
I always liked EVAs. Flitting through space like a sentient planet, sliding along the flank of a ship- I ducked a piece a rock the size of my head that ricocheted off the decking behind me, off the force fields that kept people from falling off, then back into space. Maybe I should concentrate on what I was doing. I started a long slow lope along the ramp, up to the main catwalk.
"Marai? I just picked up your com link again. The entire maintenance section is blank. Maybe the explosion. But... This can't be right. It reads like you're outside!"
I was at the view panels of the admin deck, and I could see him at the com console.
"That's because I am, you twit." I waved at him. "I had to check the dormitories and this is the only clear path."
"Mother of-" He began working at the console. "Strange. All of the emergency vents have opened. There's hot Peragian fuel being vented in your path."
I knew why. But I didn't tell him. "Can you shut it down?"
"Remember, nothing but communications? I can't stop it." There was a long pause. "It's like someone is trying to stop you."
"Someone is. I'll be back with you in a few-"
"What now?" He interrupted.
"Atton..."
"We just got hailed by a ship approaching us. I've got a bad feeling about this..."
I turned. You usually don't see a ship up close from the outside, unless you work in a shipyard or an EVA boartding. It was like watching a shark slowly swim by, wondering if you're edible or not.
It stretched back... back... 500 meters of the most modern Frigate the Republic possessed. My heart leaped for joy, then the joy turned to ashes. In letters three meters tall along her flank was her name.
Harbinger.
Part of me hoped I was being rescued. But the Jedi senses I thought I had lost were telling me to run like hell while I had the chance. It might be a Republic ship. But those in control were no friends of mine.
I ran forward. I passed through a gas flume, and the suit alarm wailed. The suit had been holed. I only had seconds!
I dived into the airlock at the dormitory, slamming the door and hitting the cycle. A good thing someone paranoid hadn't jammed the inner door open. Some paranoid fool had done just that to the outer door back at maintenance.
Oh wait, that was me wasn't it? But you're not paranoid if they're out to get you.
The inner door opened, and I stripped out of the suit and jammed the door open with it. Hopefully there was a way back into the base from here. I didn't have the half an hour I would need to find the leak and fix the suit.
Nothing but dead bodies and more droids. I found the mess hall, and there was a turbo lift there. But I hadn't checked the dormitories yet.
I ended the lock down, and opened the main door. But something told me to check the internal monitor camera first. The dorms were full of a smoky gas I knew was probably toxic. I vented it into space then sealed the ventilation system, filling the rooms from emergency stores. Then I walked back into horror.
They were dead. They were all dead. I found logs. The Admin officer, the medical officer, the docking officer. They had been trying to survive right up until the very end. Coorta had not been in the dormitories according to the one security officer that had lived to reach this point.
They had been discussing trying to contact me when suddenly the vents began to spray poison into the rooms. The med tech had commented that the ventilation system had been compromised. Here was proof.
I stormed off the dormitory section, and to the turbo lift. When the damn thing wouldn't open, I rewired the console. The computer read it as an emergency, and the turbo lift automatically opened.
Kreia was standing outside the door when I stepped out.
