Six Months Later

The now massive droid brain at the heart of Silencer Station had once been the size of an extremely inexpensive Coruscanti apartment. But in the months that had passed since Cray Mingla had been kidnapped from her office at the Magrody Institute, the brain had steadily grown to the size of an apartment that would be near impossible to acquire, and Cray had no idea how it was doing it.

Silencer Station consumed the resources of the K-3-947 System with the greedy appetite of a hungry Hutt, sucking in asteroid after asteroid. It was one of the most remarkable things Cray had ever seen and would have been her proudest achievement—if she had been responsible for it.

But one of her many, many problems was that she wasn't responsible for it. Even worse, she still barely understood anything that was happening in K-3-947. Since she hadn't caused any of it, and didn't understand it, she had no idea how to control it… and she needed to figure that out to give her captors what they wanted.

She had to give them what they wanted, she had to do it as soon as possible, because Nichos' life hung in the balance.

That thought was not one conducive to productivity. Instead of a clear mind and intense focus, it brought a pounding heartbeat and a panicked ache and Cray could afford neither. Determinedly she forced Nichos back out of her mind, refusing to think about how badly his hands shook or how hard it was for him to find words sometimes. She couldn't think about the pain she saw in his eyes, his anguish about being used to compel her service to these Imperial thugs. All she could think about was making the interface work.

Make the interface work, she told herself furiously, wiping a tear from her eyes. Make it work!

Cray knew she was working herself too hard. Creative thinking couldn't be forced and the harder she pushed herself the more difficult the leaps in insight she needed became. Logically, rationally, she knew that. Emotionally, though… emotionally she saw Nichos' shaking hands and his apologetic, tired smile every time she closed her eyes. And so she pushed, using the kind of rote, brutal trial and error that her teachers had always discouraged… because that she could force herself to do even when she was bone tired, even when it had been so long since she had gotten a full night's sleep that her own hands shook.

This version of the interface wasn't as… invasive… as the one her predecessor had designed. That lack of invasiveness made the connection between the person using it and the Silencer AI less immersive, but it also meant that Cray didn't need to perform brain surgery on herself in order to test it. She finished the last attachments on the helmet and took a deep breath. I hope we're both having luck today, Nichos, she thought to herself, and settled it onto her head.

There was a sense of electricity cackling in the air, tingling her skin and making all the hair on her arms stick up. Then the pressure started, building in her ears and her brain as the connection was made. Her heartbeat quickened, hoping that this time, this time, the damn thing would actually work…

Her eyes went wide, staring into the interface as information suddenly started scrolling much too fast for her to read over the screen on the interior of the helmet. The sense of electricity grew, grew past pressure to pain, and her brain recoiled against the sudden sense of invasion—

And then it all stopped. Pain receded back to pressure, electricity still cackling, and the text scroll slowed to a halt. The last line of text stayed on the screen, hovering in front of her eyes, and it took her a long moment to bring herself back to focus and let the words be processed by her exhausted brain.

COMMAND INTERFACE ESTABLISHED. SILENCER-7 AWAITING INTERLINK.

Cray swayed, her forgotten arms gripping her chair. Command interface? Does it work?!

She hadn't slept in days, but she knew—she knew—that the ultimate purpose of what she was working on was to provide a human mind the ability to interact with and command Silencer's AI. The AI itself was still developing and growing, taking all the resources it collected and utilizing them to expand its capabilities, but its Imperial masters—Cray's Imperial captors—wanted the ability to control and direct it more precisely. That was why they had come in the night and taken Cray, after all—as the Magrody Institute's foremost expert on cybernetics, she was uniquely suited to create the command interface.

But now that she had, she realized that she might have found more than just a reason to keep Nichos alive for a little longer. She might have just discovered a means to seize their freedom.

Start with something simple, she told herself. Then she concentrated, triggering the cybernetic interface. Give me a systems report, she ordered.

Information started to flow once again on the monitor. Resource stockpiles, manufacturing abilities, construction in progress—it appeared that Silencer Station had the ability to build more than just itself, she thought.

Give me a map of Silencer Station, she thought, sending the new command, and a list of all internal security mechanisms. Both pieces of information appeared and she did her best to commit all the information there to memory. A plan started to form itself in her head. She needed to get to Nichos, use the command interface to override the station's security, and hijack a ship… Report on system defenses.

Her heart fell. Silencer Station wasn't alone. TIE fighters—a design she didn't quite recognize—swirled around it in enormous numbers, maintaining precise squadron formations. They circled tirelessly, hundreds of them in swarms…

Wait. Are those droids? She hadn't meant to ask the command interface that question, but it promptly responded nonetheless, providing her with a full schematic of a TIE/D, complete with its performance profile. A little note at the bottom mentioned that their programming was incomplete and required more human input before they would reach optimal combat performance.

Were they all under the command of the Silencer AI? She frowned in concentration, adrenaline fighting off her fatigue, and tried to order the AI to alter the formation of the TIEs. To her astonishment, it immediately did so. FORMATION THETA CONFIRMED, the AI dutifully reported, and the little green dots representing TIEs swarmed as they adjusted their relative positions.

She couldn't afford to wait. The moment one of her keepers put on this interface, they would have control over the AI… and they would never let her put it on again. If she was going to use it to escape, it had to be now. Determined, she commanded the AI to prepare her and Nichos a ship and put the station's security under her control—

WARNING: ATTEMPTED COMMAND EXCEEDS USER AUTHORIZATION.

The pain was back, driving into her skull. It exploded like a nova just behind her eyes, sending her vision blurry and making her thoughts chaotic. The headset crackled with electricity and Cray felt as if the AI was pushing back now, trying to use it to infiltrate her mind; there was a swell in her brain and the voice grew louder—

COMMAND INTERFACE INTENDED FOR [DESIGNATE] EMPEROR. YOU ARE NOT [DESIGNATE] EMPEROR.

The pain grew and Cray felt as if her head was swelling, pressure growing, and with a despairing, desperate cry she flung the headset off her head and everything went instantly black.

Cray woke suddenly, her entire body aching and the toe of a pointed, polished boot nudging her face. She flailed, rolling onto her back and covering her face to protect it, staring up into pitiless black eyes surrounded by the sharp, angular features of the project's director, Roganda Ismaren. It took Cray a moment longer to come back to full attention, her brain sluggishly recovering from the battering it had taken while attached to the command interface—the command interface which was currently in Roganda's hand. The older woman's eyes sparkled with a quickly-hidden glint of curiosity as she examined the helmet.

"I see you made it work." Roganda's accent was that of the ideal Imperial aristocrat, precise and condescending.

I hate you so much, Cray thought bitterly. Just thinking made her head hurt.

Roganda's eyes shifted from the headset to Cray herself, and she tried to sit up, but she found her limbs rejecting her commands, reacting only weakly. She felt like a repulsorbus had landed on her legs. Roganda watched her twitch, imperious in a sharply-cut civilian outfit that echoed the uniform gray of the Imperial military. "Most curious."

"What's curious?" Cray snarled as she forced her body into obedience. Slowly, slowly it began to obey, her arms and legs moving with more alacrity. She took a deep heaving breath—but she never took her eyes off Roganda, never let her stony facade drop. Roganda had kidnapped her from the Institute, had taken her and Nichos and locked them up—had ruthlessly exploited Nichos' worsening illness to compel Cray's cooperation, and Cray Mingla would be damned if she showed that schutta so much as a flash of weakness.

"You should not have been able to send it any commands," Roganda replied forthrightly, offering Cray a straightforward answer for perhaps the first time in the … however long it had been, since Cray had been brought to K-3-947 and Silencer Station. How many months had it been?

Roganda knelt down, bringing her face closer to Cray, still watching her. Her black eyes were cool and intense, lingering…

Somewhere in the back of Cray's brain there was a pressure, not unlike that of the Silencer AI trying to force its way into her thoughts. Instinctively Cray flailed, rejecting the pressure, nearly hitting Roganda in the face. Lashing out would only hurt Nichos, though, so Cray kept her fist from making contact—no matter how satisfying it would have been.

Roganda smiled slowly. "Most curious," she repeated. "And most fortuitous. I did not know you are Force-sensitive, Doctor Mingla."

"What?" Cray asked, confused. "What do you mean—"

"You see, Silencer-7 is not just an Artificial Intelligence," Roganda continued. Her smile was still there, stiff and frozen, as if adorning a mannequin. "Silencer-7 is the product of two decades of careful research and study in service to the Emperor, the combination of the work of Bevel Lemelisk and myself." The Imperial witch lowered her voice and Cray had to strain to hear her, the lingering pain in the back of her head finally starting to subside. "The ancient Sith performed many experiments on artificial life. Much has been forgotten of their successes, but enough remains to achieve some small breakthroughs. If you were not Force sensitive, Silencer-7 would not have responded to you at all."

Roganda regarded her with something worse than just sheer contempt. Now she was interested. The older woman reached down and caressed Cray's face—Cray had to fight the urge to bite at her fingers.

"Congratulations, Doctor Mingla. You may take the rest of the day off. I am told that Doctor Marr had an… accident… and has been," she paused, and there was hardness and menace in those eyes, "suffering greatly in your absence. You may go attend to him."

Cray's heart pounded in her chest. Nichos!

But she refused to give Roganda the satisfaction of seeing her beg. She had done that enough already. Instead, she forced herself to her feet and took no small satisfaction in the fact that she was taller and more athletic than Roganda. She looked down on her captor, her expression offering not a single hint of submission, before she turned and left, keeping her pace unhurried despite the panic in her heart and the aching in her legs.

Nichos Marr was dying.

This was no new revelation. Nichos had known he was dying for almost a year. He had just asked Cray to marry him—they'd gone on vacation, taking some time away from their work at the Magrody Institute, where they had met—when the first symptoms had manifested. It had started with nothing more than a tingle in the tips of his toes. He'd thought nothing of it, attributing it to stress or to the way he sat when he programmed the new droids. But then it started in the tips of his fingers as well, and quickly the odd tingling turned to pain.

Quannot's Syndrome had no cure. Only painkillers to address the intensity of its symptoms—and those were at best a limited ameliorative. When he took the painkillers the pain was reduced back to tingling, but his mind became a soupy thing, without any of his normal precision of thought. Nichos was used to being the clearest-eyed being in a room, his thoughts regimented and meticulous. That was what made him such an excellent programmer, among other things. But with the painkillers he lost that clarity, that meticulousness, and became less than himself.

He tried to limit how much of the painkillers he used, both because he hated their side effects and because he didn't trust the Imperials who were now the only ones who could provide them.

Worse than dying—far worse—was having his condition held over him by the Imperials. When Roganda Ismaren arrived at the Magrody Institute and presented herself as an interested potential customer, requesting a prospectus for a lucrative contract fulfilled by their best researchers, the money had seemed almost too good to be true. In hindsight, her only real interest had been knowing who to target for kidnapping by an ISB whisper team, and his brilliant, beautiful fiancee and her exquisite mind had been far too tempting for Ismaren to ignore… especially when threats to Nichos' well being would easily compel Cray to comply with Ismaren's wishes. And so each day the Imperials came and gave him just enough Perigen to make life bearable—unless they wanted to make a point. On those days they dispensed none, and he spent the hours writhing in agony, knowing for each moment of that pain that Cray was elsewhere in Silencer Station, frantically trying to earn him even a single moment's peace.

He hadn't told her what he planned. She would have objected, would have told him not to take any risks, that it was too dangerous… but he was already dying, and the only chance she had to survive was to escape.

He meandered along through the corridor, his cane clicking against the polished, industrial floor as he took heavy steps, aided by a powered brace-truss of his own design that kept him steady. The pain jolted through him with each step he took, but that was all right. It was just pain. His existence had become a kaleidoscope of pain since his diagnosis. He kept on, his gait halting as his cybernetic truss and cane kept him upright.

This part of the station was technically off limits, but the Imperials barely noticed him. As their oath went, they were expected to serve until they were dead or unfit, and they all considered Nichos Marr unfit. Incapable. An invalid living on borrowed time. Someone—something—to be exploited to force Cray to comply. They didn't ignore him, exactly, as he made his stumbling, cane-carried walk. They simply moved around him like he wasn't there, not looking at him—as if the very act of making eye contact would contaminate them.

The sound of a dozen pairs of booted feet made him stop and shuffle to the side. Ten droid troopers walked in two rows of five, and between them was Emperor-Regent Halmere and a man in an Imperial Moff's uniform. Their conversation was not entirely drowned out by the sounds of the boots surrounding them.

"—Daala has been able to prevent the New Republic from advancing on Corellia up until now, but she needs more ships and more men. It's only a matter of time before Antilles' Fifth Fleet is refreshed and prepared to resume action. When will—"

Halmere stopped short, causing all ten of the droid troopers guarding him to come to an abrupt, precise halt. The officer with him stumbled a pace farther before turning to face him; Nichos did his best to hide his head against the wall of the corridor, trying to make himself small and innocuous. There were some things he had not accounted for in this plan; stumbling across the Emperor-Regent himself was one of them.

Halmere's voice was quiet, but the edge of anger was plain. "Admiral Daala has so far declined to use the TIE droids I sent her. Why should I hurry to send her more?"

The Moff swallowed. "You promised her two thousand by the end of the year, Emperor-Regent," he said, and Nichos was impressed at how well the man kept his voice calm. "She hasn't even received two hundred. She says if she uses them too soon, she will lose the element of surprise."

There was a pause before the Emperor-Regent replied. "Very well, Sarreti. You may tell Admiral Daala that I have heard her request, and the Emperor's Hand assures me that she will be able to bring Silencer Station to full operational capability in the next few weeks," Halmere said, and Nichos was surprised to hear the concession—concession was not something he expected from the Emperor-Regent of the Empire. "The station is as yet incomplete and is still missing its core. She has finally found a lead on the final required artifact and will be traveling to Nar Shaddaa to acquire it within the week."

"Nar Shaddaa, m'Lord?"

Halmere turned and resumed his march down the hall, his robes swirling impressively around his feet. The droid troopers immediately matched his cadence, the officer's voice getting lost in the sound of the movement.

Nichos let out a long, slow breath. That was hardly the first time he'd seen the Emperor-Regent, but it was the first time he'd been so close to a conversation. Thankfully, the entire party seemed to have overlooked—or at least ignored—his presence. Only after the echoes of boots had faded did he resume his slow, plodding trek down the hall. Pain seemed to subside as the overheard conversation repeated in his memory, and Nichos reluctantly decided to change his plans, ever so slightly.

Once he was within twenty feet of his intended target, he stopped. Fumbling with his jacket, he carefully withdrew a computer rod. Trembling fingers gripped the rod, and he ignored the way the tightness of the grip sent tendrils of pain up each of his fingers and along his forearm. Gripping it harder than he'd held anything, he carefully inserted it into one of the myriad of droid ports that were common all throughout Silencer Station.

The Empire may think him useless, but Nichos Marr was a Doctor of Cybernetics and Programming at the Magrody institute, just like his fiancee. Nobody there had ever doubted his brilliance—and this was not a very complicated program. Ten seconds after he inserted it, an alarm started to blare just down the hall. In his head, he started to count. One. Two…

Confused Imperial officers emerged into the hall, looking at one another and chattering. He ignored them, continuing his steady countdown. Four. Five.

One of the officers had noticed him and was coming towards him. "Hey! You! What are you doing there?"

"That's Doctor Marr, sir, he's one of the prisoners—the sick one?" a second officer was saying.

Seven.

"I know who he is—"

Nichos Marr was dying, but he wasn't dead yet.

He had spent months building up the fiction of just how weak he was. He was plenty weak and he knew it, but he wasn't nearly as weak as he'd been letting on… and a cane could be used for more than helping someone walk. Just as the officer was reaching for him Nichos pivoted and slammed the end of the cane into the Imperial's jaw. The Imp toppled backwards, knocking over the two other officers behind him like a trio of shockball players, and then with all the strength and energy Nichos had he broke into a run.

Every falling step was agony, the same tendrils that shot through his fingers aching through the marrow of his legs into his lungs, making it hard to draw breath—

He fell through the door into the lab and collapsed in a heap on the floor. Ten. Behind him the door slid shut and the last part of Nichos' program executed, locking it in place. He heard the banging on the door, officers demanding to be let back in.

His legs felt both fragile and heavy and he had to drag himself to the console, then pull himself unsteadily to his feet. He withdrew the second computer rod from his pocket and pushed it into the port. With all his strength, he recorded the message then activated his program.

Ten seconds after that someone shot him in the back and, mercifully, the pain faded as everything went dark.

The Imperials took Cray to the room she shared with Nichos. In a near panic, she had torn the door open, only to find the room empty. Frantic, she had pleaded with the hall guard to tell her where Nichos was, realizing a few minutes later that the guard was another droid, one of the dozens that patrolled Silencer Station's interior halls.

They had left her there, her terror mounting as she wondered what they had done to Nichos, if he was all right, for nearly an hour. That was enough time for her to realize that this was probably her fault, that her attempt to hijack Silencer Station's droid brain had been deemed worthy of severe punishment. If they had killed him before of her, because of her stupidity and her—

The door hissed and she jumped off the bed. Into the room walked two of the patrol droids, carrying Nichos' limp form between them. Behind the guards were Roganda Ismaren and Emperor-Regent Halmere.

"Over there," Roganda pointed lazily at Cray, and the droids obediently dropped Nichos at her feet. His body folded in half as he fell, totally limp, and it was all she could do to catch him before his head hit the floor. Her hands were trembling badly as she pressed her fingers to find her fiance's pulse, and she let go an excruciating sob of relief as she located it—weak and thready though it was.

She cradled his body, finally tearing his gaze away from his thankfully peaceful expression, and snarled at the two Imperials who had destroyed their lives. "What did you do to him!?"

"Stunned him," Roganda replied breezily, "after he broke into the primary computer center. Played hell with that truss of his. Like you, he attempted to infiltrate our security network. Like you, he failed." Once more, Roganda loomed over Cray, and the Emperor's Hand's eyes were dark and empty. "The only reason he is not dead, Doctor Mingla, is I still need your expertise. But if you do not help me to my satisfaction, I will have him killed. Slowly, and so painfully that not even his disease will inure him to the pain. Speak if you understand."

Cray sobbed, cradling Nichos' fallen form. "I—I understand," she gasped between sobs. In her heart she felt a fury building, a fury married to anguish and fear, and she could almost see Roganda's throat restricting as something in the air around Cray responded to her rage—

The back of Roganda's hand whipped across Cray's cheek, sending her sprawling. "A word of advice, dear girl: Do not meddle with powers you do not understand," Roganda hissed, and Cray saw one of the woman's long fingers stroking over her throat.

Halmere finally spoke. "Our time, Doctor, is running out faster than we had previously anticipated. I must have this station fully operational. The Emperor's Hand will be departing on a mission to acquire its last component, but when she returns I expect that you will make it fully operational. In the meantime, you will ensure that the Emperor can command Silencer-7 once it is fully operational. You will begin his education at once." Halmere did not have the same sense of malice that Roganda carried so easily, but the flatness of his expression was almost more disturbing. "And of course, the time you have with your lover is finite as well. If you succeed in the tasks you give us, we will see to it that his last days with you are peaceful ones."

Cray no longer had the strength to argue. She nodded, broken.

They left her there, sobbing in the center of her cell with Nichos' body in her arms.