Within a second, the air was so thick with blaster fire and shrieks that the three Jedi operatives were forced to fall completely into the force. Wordlessly, they fell into a three point formation with Wade in the fore and Keyan and Nisotsa behind. Reinhardt and one of his operatives picked targets and fired as best as they could. The remainder of the operatives watched their backs and laid booby traps on the approach to the command center, knowing that the upheaval would draw more of the undead occupants of the station to them.

Wade closed his eyes to slits, swatting aside blaster bolts and shambling creatures so quickly, the operatives simply saw a sweeping bar of bronze light. Nisotsa's and Keyan's eyes were completely shut as they picked blasters and directed them by feeling in the force into the heads of the creatures as they came. Minutes into the fight, the dispatched dead things became an inhibition to their fellows, causing the charge to slow. "This is taking forever;" called Keyan over the din, his voice enhanced with the force. "We don't have time to clear this room like this."

"We're all open to ideas, Key;" replied Nisotsa as she used the force to repulse a wall of the creatures.

"Hit them with lightning again;" said the Jedi pilot. "We need to eliminate as many of these monsters as quickly as possible."

He shifted up next to Wade to handle the situation as much as possible. Nisotsa took a deep breath and cleared her mind. She eliminated the fear, anger and loathing for the creatures and drew on a determination to protect her companions and to stop the abominable plague in the station. Stretching out her hand, she called on the force. Nothing happened. Taking another deep breath, she reached deeper into the force. Again, nothing happened. Gritting her teeth and removing every vestige of doubt and hesitation, digging deeply into her motivation, she tried again. White lightning flashed out too bright for the intelligence operatives to look at. A dozen of the creatures were struck and fell to the ground. Their bodies didn't smoke or char as they had before but even so, the virus with was destroyed and the creatures lay still. Stretching out again, she struck another knot of the creatures, laying them low. Suddenly, from outside the door, blaster fire began to sound. "We have more coming this way; not a lot at the moment, just in groups of three or four but that's not going to remain to be the case;" called one of the operatives.

It was only a few more minutes before only a small handful of the creatures remained moving inside. The Jedi and operatives systematically moved in and cut them down with blade and blaster until they were able to shut the doors leading out from the command center. "What a kriffing mess;" muttered Keyan. The bodies were piled all over but mostly near the entrance. There were still enough to make accessing the console difficult. Using the force, Keyan cleared a path through the re-dead corpses and activated the console. "Your up, kid; the thing's asking for an access code."

Wade picked his way over and began pulling things from his tool bag: two datapads, a datacard and a computer security spike. He quickly and deftly hooked into the console and began working. "We have some of those things outside. They're trying to get through the doors. I'm not sure how long it will hold;" said Reinhardt.

"Does this room have security blast doors?" asked Keyan.

"Yup; stand back, agents. I'm shutting them now;" said Wade. True to his word, the security blast doors, made to secure the command center from invading, tactically efficient intruders, closed. "That should hold them for as long as we need. They can only be opened from in here now. We have all the time in the world - which is good because the system is fighting me hard. There are security processes upon security processes here."

"But you can do it, right?" asked Keyan anxiously.

Wade just looked at him, cocking a bushy eyebrow and smirking ever so slightly. "Okay, okay;" said Keyan, "forget that I asked."

He turned to Nisotsa, who was examining the air vents and maintenance access panels. "What are you up to, Nis?"

"Looking for alternate ways these things may be able to get in;" she replied. "The last thing we want is for Wade to be interrupted while he's doing his thing."

Keyan nodded before asking in a low voice, "That was really impressive, Nis; you figured out Master Marek's secret, then?"

"He's told me about it before but cautioned me not to use it. It's all too easy to just call on my base emotions and use Sith lightning. I'm more familiar with it and I have a lot more respect for Master Galen. He uses it so easily but he was even deeper into the dark side than I was."

Keyan nodded. "How did you do it?"

"I shut down my darker emotions completely, focused on my determination to protect others and to eliminate this plague and eliminated my doubt and insecurity. Even so, it took me some time to do. It's not something that I think just anyone can do."

"Alright, I'm in!" called Wade, "I can now access everything - the scrambling and jamming, the tractor beams and the grav well generators."

"Great! Shut them down, kiddo;" called Keyan.

After just a moment, Wade cursed. "I can access them but it's not letting me shut down the tractor beams or grav well generators."

"What? Why not?" demanded Nisotsa as she hustled over to him.

"The controls for those seem to have been isolated to the access terminal in the station's main computer core. Somehow, nothing I'm doing can bring it back here. All I can do is get status reports and diagnostics from them. Let me try some things real quick."

Agent Reinhardt came over as Wade tapped away at the terminal. "Before we leave, let's see if we can figure out where this plague came from and how the Imperial bio-weapons division developed or came by it."

Wade nodded slightly but suddenly scowled and smacked the terminal casing. "Blast! I tried to trick the system into thinking there was some kind of failure in the grav well and tractor beams systems so that they'd shut themselves down. It didn't work. We're going to have to go the the computer core of this station to shut down both grav well generators."

"At least we won't have to go to both stations;" said Keyan before frowning and looking at Wade. "We don't have to go to both, do we?"

"No; this station's command center is the primary and the other's station is a secondary command center; now give me a moment. I'm going to look into the logs and archives and see what I can learn about this Blackwing virus."

Suddenly, there was a clang in one of the air vent ducts. "Kriff;" muttered Keyan and pulled his blaster rifle. "They're in the vents; you're gonna need to hurry it up Wade." With a sound of rending metal, four of the shambling corpses fell through the ceiling. They were eliminated before they could even get to their feet but as the last one fell, two more came through.

"So what I have here is that the Vector was on the way to this system from a location only referred to as Location Genesis. There are no maps, no coordinates, no nothing. If we are going to find the origins of this virus, it won't be here. I downloaded a map of the facility including all air ducts and maintenance corridors. Let's get the hell outta here;" said Wade as he unhooked his equipment and stuffed it all into his bag.

"Wait! Use the comms station! Contact Admiral Viedas and update him on the situation. I'll use my comlink to get in touch with our friends in the hanger;" said Keyan.

Nisotsa activated the comms station and broadcasted on all mid-range channels. "Admiral, this is Captain Nisotsa, do you read?"

Only a minute later, the Rodian admiral appeared in holographic form. "We read you, Master Jedi. What's the situation?"

"As you can see, we shut down the jamming and scrambling but there's still work to do. We can't shut down the grav generator or the tractor beams from here and are heading to the station's main computer core to do so. What are the sensors telling you?"

"That the stations and the Star Destroyer are all buzzing with life. Most of them are heading towards the Star Destroyer but a big chunk are heading after you. How do you plan on advancing?"

"That is a great question;" said Nisotsa, glancing at her comrades. "We'll figure it out and do our best to stay in contact. Captain Nisotsa out;" quickly, she turned to her companions, all of whom were now at the door. "How are the Freemakers?"

"Fine;" said Keyan. "They haven't seen or heard anything from the infected locals for some time now. Apparently the kid, Rowen or whatever his name is, was able to grab a hover-cart and load up on supplies from the surrounding ships. I don't know whether he's brave or just plain stupid. The marines and four intel operatives still have the dropship secured. As you can imagine, they all want to get out of here. I barely had the heart to tell them that we're still stuck here for the time being."

"Speaking of stuck here;" said Wade, "how do we get out of this command center? I'm guessing there's a crowd of monsters right outside this door."

"I've been considering that;" said Nisotsa. "Everyone back up behind the consoles. Take up positions and get ready. When we're all in position, we open the door and let them come in. The entrance will be bottlenecked and they will have cross all the corpses that are already here. It won't be easy for them. That reminds me, how are we on munitions?"

"Just fine;" said Reinhardt. "We use standard issue Imperial weapons for a reason because there are blaster pistol, carbine and rifle powerpacks everywhere and we loaded up as soon as those doors were shut. We also picked up some extra grenades."

"Great!" said Wade, "Get a few of them ready since we aren't going to need the consoles anymore. Get in position; I'm about to open the blast and security doors."

They all took positions and Reinhardt frowned. "Don't you need to hook up to a console?"

Wade grinned and raised a hand. "Nope;" he replied and twitched his fingers. Immediately, the doors began to open and the shambling corpses began to stagger in with growls and shrieks. Blaster fire cut down the first dozen front runners before they could even return fire. The New Republic operatives hunkered down for a long onslaught but were surprised when only a couple dozen tried to come through. "That's odd;" murmured Reinhardt as he did an automatic ammo check. "I was expecting more of them than that."

"The admiral did say that they were all heading towards the destroyer;" mentioned Nisotsa, "I wonder what that's all about."

Wade suddenly blanched. "They're going to try to leave!"

They all turned to him. "What?"

"They are going to try to leave this installation on the Vector! I remember from that marine's datapad from the research wing. The virus duplicates itself in one host before spreading. The more it spreads, the more quickly is transmits to more hosts and spreads. Once it's saturated enough of a being, it attacks, kills and reanimates the host. I think it's going to do the same thing with the Vector. It's infected the entire crews of two stations, a star destroyer and dozens upon dozens of ships."

"But why did they wait until now?" asked Reinhardt, "why not earlier?"

"I have no idea;" said Wade, "I'm not a virologist. I'm just going off what I read. All I can say for sure - that destroyer cannot be allowed to go anywhere or it will spread to other worlds."

That stopped them all short and a stunned silence fell. "I don't even want to thing of these things infesting a planet like Coruscant;" said Reinhardt. "What's the plan then?"

"We'll need to split up;" said Nisotsa. "Some of us stay here and hold this station while Wade and some others go and deactivate the grav well generators and send control of the tractor beams back here to the command center. Then, we shut down all beams accept for those we can use to hold the destroyer in place."

"When we do that;" said Keyan, "every one of those monsters are going to divert back here to regain control. Whoever is here is going to have to find a way to lock the systems and get out in a hurry."

"I've got it covered;" said Wade as he crouched down and placed his pack on the ground. "Give me a minute. I'm going to program one of my computer spikes to lock the systems down hard as soon as it's inserted into any terminal. Unless they have a slicer of the highest caliber somewhere in their hive mind, they aren't going to be able to do a thing about it. Even if they do, it will be more than enough time to get out and for our fleet to shell this whole installation into chaos."

"You can program a spike that fast?" asked Reinhardt skeptically.

Nisotsa chuckled, "Mat, this kid has a force born affinity with technology of every kind. If he says he can do it in minutes, it's most likely going to only be a few moments. He's also absurdly humble for one so skilled."

Wade was pretending to ignore her as she ruffled his hair affectionately but he was blushing deeply. However, her assertion proved to be true. He straightened, holding the data spike. "Alright, who's staying here and who's coming with me."

"I'll stay here;" said Keyan. "We'll rig the surround area with as many traps and alarms as possible. Reinhardt, can you get one of your men on a console to try and lock down as many of the approaches as possible to this center? It will bottle neck those things and hopefully slow them down."

One of the intel operatives were already on it. Reinhardt stepped up beside Wade. "Myself and three of my men will go with the Tech Sergeant here."

"Me too;" said Nisotsa. "Use comlinks and the console to let us know the movements of the locals. You can help us avoid larger groups and get to the core more quickly. Is everyone ready?"

After a series of nods and verbal acknowledgements, she cracked her knuckles and unclipped her lightsaber. "Right; let's get moving."