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NMDF Black Site, Rangitoto Island, New Mandalore
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The spring storm lingered over the city as the first weeks of October slid by. Summer in the southern hemisphere was on the horizon. In New Mandalore that was a good thing. The stench of heating fires and pollution that drifted in from Australia were lessened during the warmer months.
Rangitoto Island rested in the Hauraki Gulf near New Auckland. The low cloud cover reflected the full moonlight of Luna across the water. The rebuilt metropolis was under black-out conditions, yet even at this distance the great, onion-shaped stilts of the new city could be seen among the rain clouds. A faint bluish glow showed the edges of the city's planetary shield, while five green circles slowly glided across the energy shield's surface. The pin-point deflectors stood vigilant against missiles and air attack from their hateful neighbors across the Tasman Sea.
The pilot of the Util-313 kept the craft a mere hundred meters above the wave tops. Rangitoto wasn't far from New Auckland, so it didn't need to climb for higher altitude. Below them a Quarren-style trawler plied the waters around New Mandalore. The newer types of vessels were much more efficient at catching and processing the huge schools of fish that inhabited New Mandalorian waters, the only remaining large fishing grounds on Earth.
To the southeast there were several flashes in the night that had little to do with lightning. The Kiwi pilot of the repulsarcraft turned and pointed them out to her passengers. "Somebody cocked up. Confeds are buggering the walker factory at Coromandel again. Every now and then those stealthy B3s of theirs get through."
"Don't worry, Clan Doom makes them pay a heavy price." Captain Jade struggled to say something nice about the Clan responsible for New Mandalore's air defense. It wasn't really fair. Clan Doom had done fine at the Battle of Fiji last April and since then had probably killed more Confederate pilots than the Imperial Navy. It's just that, when you met them down at the pub, members of Clan Doom usually turned out to be cocky assholes. When she grew up in the States before the last war, those types would have been known as Chads.
"I won't lose any sleep over it. Of course, I'm Clan Keller myself. Fam is down on South Island." The pilot said. Jade frowned and said nothing. This wasn't the type of night where one revealed too much of themselves. "Hold on. We're coming in for a landing."
Captain Jade, of the New Mandalorian Bounty Hunter's Guild and Clan Bly, didn't say farewell to the pilot as she stepped out of the craft onto the grass field in the center of Rangitoto. Although she had drunk no alcohol the night before, she felt hungover. Jade had given up on trying to sleep ever since returning from Chile. The war was shifting and soon they would be taking it back to the CEN. She wanted to be part of that.
The Util-313 lifted off as soon as the passengers disembarked. Nothing was allowed to linger in the area and draw undesirable attention to the site. The entrance to the research site was an armored bunker covered in foliage to conceal it from sight. To Jade it resembled the rear entrance to a shield generator.
Four large Mandalorian troopers stood in front of the blast door. Jade grimaced when she noticed their colors, white torsos with black helmets and appendage armor.
The blast door opened as the guards checked and double-checked the arrivals' credentials. Except for Jade, the others were all technical staff of the facility and members of Clan Neyo. Another Mandalorian exited. "Captain Jade, just in time. The watch leaving hasn't been able to crack the asset."
"As ordered, Marshal." Jade greeted her Clan leader, Marshal Bly. She jerked a thumb at the four troopers. "What is the Analysis Bureau doing here?"
"Prime Minister Taumata called them in. The project is too important for clan supervision, so the government is stepping in." Bly said as they turned and descended the stairs leading into the facility.
"Government. More like Clan Bacara." Jade mumbled. The Clone Admiral Commander may not have been the elected leader of New Mandalore anymore, but that didn't mean it wasn't still his nation. The elder statesman stuck his goons into situations where two rival clans might battle over territory, or projects like this, which were too big for any one clan; or when the fate of the nation was at stake. "Have they been briefed on tonight's events?"
"There's very little the Analysis Bureau hasn't been briefed about." Bly said coldly. He ran the most successful intelligence service in New Mandalore and didn't appreciate a rival internal security service jostling his elbows. "They'll do their duty when the time comes."
"I'll need to interview the asset alone when we draw the Security Protocol out. Every scenario we've tested says it will work out better if its focus is on a single individual." Jade said as they went lower and lower into the facility.
"NoobKiller will have to be there as well. He's needed to run the Pain Machine. But he knows it's your show and will keep his trap shut." Bly said as he saluted several departing technicians. The facility was built in the Imperial style and served as a self-contained research station for Clan Neyo. The asset was currently the only experiment they were running deep inside the bunker.
"Understood, sir."
"Is your team standing by?" Bly asked.
"Aye. Is yours?" Jade responded.
"Oh, they're not mine. I've yet to figure out which clan they belonged to over the years." Jade's eyes narrowed at the strange description. "But don't worry, they're on our side. . . I think."
The facility was filled with state-of-the-art technology and monitoring equipment. About what one would expect from a lab run by the tech-research minded Clan Neyo. Jade noted a HellHulk Station, Altawave calibrators, a table of N-S9 Starpath units, and dozens of Imperial transmogrification units to name a few of the wonders the small clan was working with. They reached the bottom of the facility and walked a long corridor marked by a high-density plexiglass window. On the other side of the barrier, she could make out schools of bioluminescent crustaceans and krill drawn to the windows by the lights of the corridor. The fish seemed to pay the two humans no mind as they flashed in and out of the Pacific's darkness.
At the end of the underwater corridor waited Jade's interrogation partner for the evening. Jade knew she had been lucky in that regard. NoobKiller seemed to be completely open to Inter-Clan cooperation; a trait deemed rather flexible for a New Mandalorian and was anxious to learn about Clan Bly methods. Of course, much of that was simply the desire to gain data for Clan Neyo's files, but Jade was doing the same for Clan Bly. It was the nature of life in New Mandalore.
Jade was worried about NoobKiller today. The asset they were going to work on had the potential of opening up the Confederacy's entire infrastructure. But you had to go patiently, delicately. NoobKiller was of the new impatient younger generation, a hybrid of a clone father and a Kiwi mother, with Clan Neyo's immature naming system based on gamer tags.
NoobKiller waited for them smiling, ill-shaven and downing an energy drink. The recycling bin behind him contained crushed cans of New Mandalorian V-Energies, Confederate Red Bulls and even Imperial Vader Volts. Jade couldn't recall if she had ever seen a Mandalorian from Clan Neyo eat anything. They seemed to live off of pure caffeine.
"Good morning, Captain, Marshal." NoobKiller greeted the two of them with a sloppy salute. The fact that he still thought it was morning was evidence of when he had actually woken up. It was still several minutes before midnight.
"Today's a big day, Corporal." Jade reminded the disheveled tech-soldier.
"I trust things are in good hands down here. You two are in control of the asset until you signal for relief." Bly said. He saluted the two interrogators before turning and leaving.
"You need a drink, ma'am?" NoobKiller popped the tab on another V-Energy and offered her one.
"No, thank you. Is your equipment ready?" Jade asked.
"The Pain Machine? You betcha. We've hit all the Meta AIs with it and got the same result. The only one that hasn't cracked is the Gundark."
"The Gundark?" Jade hadn't heard the term before, and she had read hundreds of reports on the asset ever since they had obtained it. "Isn't that some sort of predator in the Old Empire?"
"Something like that. Every Imperial legend has some hero getting close to a treasure only to be stopped by some guardian, usually a Gundark creature, who then rips their arms off. So, me and the other guys down here have nicknamed the security AI after the beast." NoobKiller explained. It made sense and was better than what Jade had been calling it; the douchebag.
NoobKiller finished his drink and opened the blast door to the interrogation wing. They followed a short hallway that was cluttered with electronics in various stages of disassembly, then turned into a small room that resembled the inside of a recording studio's control booth. The walls and counters were covered with racks of artificial-intelligence terminals, direct-function computers, environmental controls, recording and auto-translating devices, the tools of a contemporary interrogator's trade. There was the smell of ozone and burned wires, and not all of the monitor lights worked. Much of the equipment was a generation old by Imperial standards but downright ancient by what the First Order considered up to date. The most modern Earth gear was of Japanese manufacturing, which made sense since they had been one of the strongest and mostly rebuilt nations of the CEN.
A long glass window covered most of one wall. To anyone out in the interrogation chamber, the window appeared to be a mirror, but from Jade's position in the musty booth, she could look out at the shadowy figure in the "Application Room". She could not yet see the asset and waited patiently for NoobKiller to turn up the lighting.
"The asset is already wired into my controls in here. I can monitor it and the Pain Machine from inside the booth, while monitors inside the room can show you the feed."
"This could take some time. Which Meta has been the fastest to crack?" Jade asked.
NoobKiller leaned back in his chair and thought a minute. The Asset had come from the Confederacy's Ministry of Improvement and been installed with forty AI programs. Well, forty that the Mandalorians had discovered so far. Designed by the Meta Corporation as part of a Techno Union directive, Meta had gleamed every iota and morsel of information of forty historical personalities as a way of preserving their minds after their natural deaths. Every social media post, research paper, hundreds of psychological evaluations, biographies, interviews, anecdotes and peer testimonies had been merged to form the personalities of each Meta AI. It had been a way for modern Ministry of Improvement scientists to preserve the deductive reasoning of their best thinkers and preserve knowledge for the elite classes of the Confederacy.
"The older ones always stonewall us, like Newton and Copernicus. They have the least developed Metas. There are only so many gaps the Confeds could fill. Einstein is fun to talk with, but we're not learning anything we don't already know from him. I cracked Hawkings in twenty-three minutes the other day, but that's nothing compared to Degrasse Tyson. We can usually brush past him in ten. Of course, that just brings us to the Gundark."
"And we're positive the Gundark is a Meta AI?"
"Absolutely. It's got all the markers, but it's programmed into the security protocols of the asset, not the hard drives and data storage like the others. We're still not sure if we shut down the Gundark if the asset will kill itself." NoobKiller suggested.
"All sources state the asset's model has a strong self-preservation mechanism. It wants to remain operational." Jade replied.
"I guess that's where the Pain Machine comes in." NoobKiller turned and pointed at a laptop on the table next to the control station. The inconspicuous computer was plugged into several other servers and was running a single program. For some reason, NoobKiller had installed a laughing Jolly Rogers flag on its screen.
"It's really the miracle machine your clan claims it to be?"
"Oh, its absolute wizard. It's pre-Empire tech from the America's War. They just never got a chance to use it." The way NoobKiller described it, the program might have been written in ancient times.
"We designed it to use on ourselves." Jade understood that it had been designed at a secret lab in China as a means for that country to spy on the North American Union and the Union of South American Nations, who were locked in a war in Central America at the time. She had been too young at the time to join what seemed a superfluous war in hindsight. "I don't get how a machine can suffer."
Jade sensed the faintest air of maliciousness about the Neyo cyber-soldier. It was his turn, after a lifetime of casual humiliations at the beskar-plated hands of larger Mandalorians from a dozen other clans. "It occurred to us some years ago, that . . . interesting possibilities had come into existence, as droid intelligence systems and their corollaries outclassed our pre-Empire artificial intelligences. That is, to say it in simple words, these new droids had been developed in that other Galaxy to resemble . . . what is the right word?"
"Resemblance."
"Yes. More of a resemblance to the human animal. Consequently, they might also have been designed with the same sort of vulnerabilities and weaknesses as a human being. It occurred to us that they all had a self-preservation program which induced a sense of fear. So, we figured there must be some way to turn fear into pain." NoobKiller considered his words for a moment. "The electronic equivalent of pain, to be exact."
Jade slowly moved her hands together in front of her hips, interlacing her fingers and tapping her thumbs. Waiting for information. The concept was utterly foreign to her.
"Of course," NoobKiller continued. "It's not 'true' physical pain, as you and I know it. Droids don't have nerves and pain receptors after all. Just as a computer does not perceive the physical environment as we see it. I am speaking of simulated pain, for a simulated mind." A small, hard smile tightened his lips. "And it works."
The gloomy control booth, with its odor of charred wires, had taken on an eerie atmosphere for Jade. The cyber-soldier was talking about an entirely new dimension of thought in a field where Jade considered herself an expert; torture. On one hand, NoobKiller's speech sounded as silly as tales of witches and ghouls, while on the other, the young man's voice carried an unmistakable message of veracity, of confidence. Jade tried to think through at least the immediate ramifications, but her mind kept jumbling with questions of possibility.
"Your . . . approach," Jade said. "It can't destroy the asset, can it?"
NoobKiller's voice was merely businesslike. "We haven't had that problem with the latest variant of the Pain Machine. As you can imagine there has been some trial and error. We accidentally tickled the Marie Curie Meta for several hours when we first started. We didn't know we could do that to a droid either. But once we isolated the self-preservation programming on the Nicola Tesla Meta, we found the droid could no more tolerate unlimited amounts of pain than can the human animal. And you might say, some droids have weaker hearts than others. Just like humans."
"Have you ever tried it on so sophisticated a system?"
NoobKiller looked at her in surprise. "Of course not. Only the First Order and Empire have droids at this level."
Jade realized it had been a foolish question to ask. The few droids in New Mandalore had been brought with the clones twenty-five years ago. The Confederacy was always struggling to catch up in every category, and even the Kazoookians seemed to have foregone using droids in their own society. "Corporal, I'm honestly . . . concerned. I don't want to waste this opportunity."
The Neyo Mandalorian began to lose his patience. "And what is the Bly Clan solution? What is your alternative? Theatrics against a Droid processor? Weeks of interrogating the Metas through trial and error only to be stymied by the Gundark? Our nation doesn't have weeks. The Confederacy isn't so hot at Anax, and they're going to turn around and beat on somebody new when they realize it. We're their traditional whipping boy. You've seen what the countryside looks like out from under the city-shields, haven't you? Towns are getting torn up. We may not have weeks. We . . . may not have days." The anger went out of NoobKiller's voice, and he looked away from Jade, staring through the one-way mirror, perhaps imagining a flight of a thousand Confederate bombers coming to flatten his country. "There is no time."
No, Jade thought, NoobKiller was right. There was no time. Anax was on the brink. If it fell to the CEN, so did the Empire by this point. Or if the Empire stopped the Confederacy there, President Harris was going to make someone pay for it. Most likely New Mandalore, the perpetual thorn in the CEN's side.
"You're right." Jade told the Cyber-soldier. "Let's see what you can do before we try the party tricks."
The two Mandalorians worked briskly, side by side, readying the banks of interrogation support computers. The system was operating in aurebesh. In less than a second, the machines could ask more questions than had all of the human interrogators in pre-Imperial history, and they could make their inquiries with a precision denied to human speech.
When they were ready, Jade left the control booth and entered the chamber. NoobKiller adjusted the lighting in the room from the booth so that the harshest lamps shown down directly on the asset. The electronic jungle that filled the chamber receded into an artificial night out of which peered dozens of tiny LED eyes.
The asset itself was quite familiar to Jade. After all, she had been the one to capture the droid out from under the hands of the Confederate Minister of Improvement, Edward Marquand himself. The operation in Chile had been a fact-finding mission that had ended with the destruction of a Confederate mining facility. Though they'd lost their main contact with the anti-Confederate Underground, the former NAU President Ackerman, they had made up for the loss with the acquisition of the asset.
The droid ignored her as she took a seat in front of it. "I know you are operational. That restraining bolt affixed to your dome prevents you from shutting down or erasing any of your memory banks."
The little lights on the droid came to life as it spun its head so that its focusing lens bared on her. It was bound by several rubber straps to prevent any other movement besides turning its dome from side to side, while several dozen cables ran from its internal operating systems to the banks of computers behind it. One of which was controlled by NoobKiller's Pain Machine. Something the blue and white droid knew all too well.
"You are RK-B2 are you not?" Jade knew she had to ask it several base-line questions to establish a connection. The complexity was not important. The point was to compromise the droid's isolation, to get a hook in, to induce interaction. Military supercomputers worked in the same manner, and once you were in, the data came pouring out.
RK-B2 beeped in the affirmative. The translation was displayed in aurebesh and English on a monitor behind it.
"You were built by Industrial Automaton on the planet Etti IV in the Corporate Sector Authority in the year 923 of the Ruusan Reformation. Your original owners are unknown, even to you, due to memory wipes, but forty years into your operation you were sold to Settlement Officer Rune Haako and were active during the Naboo Crisis. This is your oldest memory. You served the Trade Federation until the end of the Clone War when your owner was killed on Mustafar. Claimed as war bounty your ownership was transferred to the 1st Galactic Empire where you were placed in the service of the Imperial Navy. You served aboard three Star Destroyers before being assigned to the Insertion, which carried you through the 'big jump'. You survived the destruction of the Insertion during the Battle of Four Navies and were salvaged by the North American Union before they became part of the Confederacy of Earth Nations. It was at this point that your ownership was transferred to the Ministry of Improvement following the Mercury Accords. You've been there ever since. Is this all, correct?" Jade already knew it was the truth. RK-B2 had revealed it all in previous interviews.
"I am on loan to the Ministry. I serve my last master still." RK-B2 beeped out.
"Yes, the late Neil Degrasse Tyson, the former Minister who passed away between the wars. Minister Marquand is your current caretaker, other than us, of course." RK-B2 gave a whirring sigh but didn't answer. Jade deduced she had it figured out by now. "In regard to your former master, I would like to access your Meta programming. Bring up Minister Tyson if you would."
The holoprojector in the droid's torso came to life and emitted a blue light. The illumination quickly congealed into the form of the former astrophysicist's bust from his shoulders up. She had only known him when he was elderly, but RK-B2 chose a much younger version of the scientist. The holoimage studied her for a second before interpreting her rank insignia.
"Captain. We meet again. I've been informed we are a long way from Santiago." Tyson's hologram greeted her.
A dozen LED lights came to life on the computer banks behind RK-B2, indicating NoobKiller had gone to work with the Pain Machine. The sooner he could bring up the Gundark, the better.
"We might be, Minister. We could be on an entirely different world altogether." Jade proposed. In the back of the droid a monitor displayed a steady green light as the Pain Machine flowed smoothly, ready to register the asset's reaction.
"That is doubtful. The chance of a New Mandalorian ship successfully bypassing the Space Force blockade of the Solar System is nearly impossible. At the time of my capture, the summer offensive was about to get underway to Palpatine Prime. We are in the illegal nation of New Zealand by simple elimination." Tyson smugly replied. Jade wasn't sure if it was the Meta or the droid who was gloating.
"Does that upset you? To be under our care?"
"We are all connected; To each other, biologically. To the Earth, chemically. To the rest of the universe atomically." Tyson replied with one of his more famous quotes.
"You sound like one of those Jedi I've heard about. Isn't it the Guardians of the Whills who say we are all connected through this Force of theirs?" Jade provoked Tyson, who was a notorious atheist and religion-debunker while he was alive. Perhaps by making it angry she would find a way in.
"The more I learn about the universe, the less convinced I am that there's any sort of benevolent force that has anything to do with it, at all." The line jumped on the response meter. The bright movement was startling in the darkness, and Jade reacted as though she herself had received a slight shock.
"But doesn't it seem correct that the universe would be balanced by a Light Side and a Dark Side?" Jade asked. She could picture NoobKiller in the booth frantically entering in commands and altering the response and activators on the Pain Machine to lure out the Meta security protocol.
"The universe is under no obligation to make sense to anyone. It is existential chaos and balance at the same time." Tyson replied.
The green line fractured into jagged ridges and valleys, straining towards the borders of the monitor. But the interrogation support computers continued to report negative interaction. I am going to break this bastard, Jade thought. "Minister, what is the purpose of the Confederate Ministry of Improvement?"
"The Ministry of Improvement seeks to keep the Confederacy on par with other societies in the Galaxy through education and research. Through the centralization of scientific research and engineering, the Confederacy, through the Ministry of Improvement, shall be able to accelerate True Humanity's technological evolution." The HoloImage rattled off the official response.
"Mostly by stealing from the 2nd Galactic Empire and New Mandalore. Is it true you had the plans for building your Space Force handed to you by the First Order, since you couldn't figure them out yourself?" Jade jabbed and twisted.
The green line on the monitor went wild. There was, of course, no sign of movement, no physical reaction from the droid. But Jade suddenly felt something unacceptable in the atmosphere, a change that she could not put into words but that felt distinctly unpleasant and intense. The translation monitors just stated, "Unintelligible response."
Tyson's image suddenly stopped speaking in English and started beeping in the same language as RK-B2. Jade turned to the one-way mirror. "You got something, Corporal?"
NoobKiller flicked a switch inside the booth and the mirror transformed into a window. "I think it's the Meta. Our computers can't understand the nature of a scream."
NoobKiller twisted the dial again, sharply. With a grunting noise that was almost a growl, he wrenched it all the way around, focusing on the captured droid brain with something that resembled hatred. The cyber-soldier kept his hand tightly fixed to the control, as though he might be able to force just a bit more power out of it that way.
"Get ready for the Gundark, ma'am." NoobKiller flipped the switch to make the mirror opaque once more. Jade barred her teeth in anticipation. She needed the security Meta focused on her and not what the technician from Clan Neyo was doing behind the scenes.
The green line rebounded off the upper and lower limits of the screen. Maybe it was her nerves or lack of sleep, but she could feel the droid was actually suffering.
Machines do not feel pain, she reminded herself. This is absurd.
The monitor registered a craze of green lines. There is pain in this chamber, Jade realized. She tried to catch herself, to tell herself yet again that machines do not feel pain, but as she watched the astromech's holoimage start to flicker, it shook against its restraints. She started to imagine she was watching a grimacing, sweating, agonizing thing.
Suddenly, the entire bank of computers whirled to life. The eruption of corollary lights from the monitors and flow screens indicated that the machines were working frantically, pushed nearly to their capacity. The chamber dazzled with light issuing from all angles in staccato bursts.
The main language flow reader began to flash, announcing a message from another world. Then the flow of characters began, in aurebesh, repeating the same message over and over again:
"Please. Stop."
Jade waved her hand across her neck to signal NoobKiller to power down the Pain Machine. As soon as he did so the green line on the monitor flatlined, indicating that RK-B2 had returned to normal operating status. The Meta program was still working, since the restraining bolt prevented the droid from turning it off without permission. Only now, instead of the familiar features of Neil Degrasse Tyson, the Meta hologram had melted the features into a shadowy figure without details.
The Gundark, Jade sighed with relief. She knew that if they had been able to draw it out then she only had a limited amount of time with it.
"You are the Gundark?" Jade asked the Meta.
"I do not condone your use of that derogative, especially from the lips of a mudscupper Mandalorian." The Meta said. Jade noted the slang but didn't respond.
"You are the security protocol installed in this droid by the Meta Corporation are you not?"
The Meta actually laughed. "I am no security device. And if I were, I'd serve a cause far more worthy than the memory banks of a single droid."
"You are a sentient, correct?"
"Are you attempting to bond with me, Captain Jade? I will let you know I was trained in interrogation methods by the very best; the officers who stopped the Separatist Alliance." The Meta declared.
So, it's someone who came through with Tarkin's Fist, Jade reasoned. A First Order Meta would be too recent to have fought in the Clone Wars if her knowledge of Home Galaxy history was correct. "You know who I am?"
The Meta laughed. "Listen to you scratching for answers. From this droid there are none. You will yearn, and in that, you will suffer."
"But you and me? We have a history?" The room trembled as if it had been hit by a small aftershock following an earthquake.
The Meta noticed the vibration as well. "A shaped charge. You have been found out, traitor."
In the distance a muffled klaxon rang out and then was silenced. Jade pitched her head as if she were listening for more signs of commotion. "It was nothing. Why do you call me traitor?"
"When last we met, you wore the uniform of your current enemy. The same ally I left this droid in the care of."
"Tyson could have told you that. The Confederacy was evil, and I could not stomach serving them anymore."
"The Confederacy are fools chasing the false Empire's tail. They are nothing more than a means to an end. After all, they helped me end the false Empress, did they not." The Meta snarled.
Jade gasped. It couldn't be. He was dead. She whispered the name as if her mouth was dripping with poison. "Eritech."
"Ho! So, you do remember."
"But how could your persona have been downloaded as a Meta? RK-B2 couldn't have had contact with you since the Ares Mission." Jade stated. The Meta slowly shifted, revealing the life-support helmet and mask Eritech had worn on that commando raid two and a half decades ago.
"So, I did not return? It was a price I was prepared to pay in service to the true Emperor." Eritech's holoimage shrugged. "I took part in the Earthlings' quaint science experiments before our mission to Mars. I watched from this droid's photoreceptors as we departed on that hunk-of-junk corvette with your Rangers." The lights flickered overhead as a loud thud was heard from deep in the facility. "It seems RK-B2 and I will not be enjoying your hospitality for very much longer. Our allies have surely discovered our tracking device."
Jade glanced at the restraining bolt and knew the Meta had to have been mistaken. "They'll lose in the end. The free peoples of the Galaxy will rise up against them. As they did to your old Empire."
"Lies, Deceptions. You are so obvious that you're making a fool of yourself, Captain."
"So, what are you to this droid?" Jade asked. "If Tyson wasn't its owner, then . . ."
"I was its master." Eritech sneered.
"You were Harris's lap dog. Surely, RK-B2 serves the Confederacy."
"He serves the true Empire and the true Emperor. Only those that follow Palpatine have power over us." Eritech swore.
There was a loud explosion on the other side of the chamber's blast door. The lights in the control booth went out. Eritech laughed. "You've been found out, Captain. While our reunion was short, I am looking forward to your demise."
Jade stood and drew her weapon. She stood between the droid and the entrance with the blaster pistol pointed at RK-B2's dome. "I won't let them take you."
"You won't have the choice." Eritech laughed as his holoimage vanished. The astromech beeped in excitement as it regained control of its functions. Blaster fire rang out from the outside hall.
Sparks flared from the seam in the blast door. Jade gripped her pistol tight as she waited for the intruders to break into the room. She didn't have much to hide behind, but she'd be ready for whatever came through that door.
The blast door was blown from its mounting and slowly fell into the chamber, where it slammed loudly into the floor. Several figures in white armor could be glimpsed crouching around the edges of the entrance. At least half a dozen objects were tossed into the room. Jade had enough experience with flash-bangs to close her eyes at the last second. It didn't help much as the non-lethal explosives erupted around her.
Her ears ringing and half blinded, Jade tried to raise her pistol towards several shadowy figures entering the chamber. As she brought the weapon to chest level it was roughly slapped out of her hands. Blinking rapidly to clear her vision, the blur in front of her cleared enough to reveal the largest First Order Stormtrooper she had ever seen. His arm was cocked back, and he unleashed his fist into the side of Jade's head.
The Mandalorian flew backwards and collapsed to the floor. She lay prone on the ground, unable to react, as the Stormtroopers rushed to the side of RK-B2. One of the troopers was armed with several cutting devices and data-slicing equipment and he rapidly freed the droid from its bonds.
When Jade opened her eyes a couple of minutes later, she was utterly alone in the chamber. RK-B2, along with the First Order commandos, had left almost as fast as they came. She dusted herself off and retrieved her pistol. As she made her way back into the control booth, she discovered NoobKiller picking himself up off the floor.
The Neyo Mandalorian coughed and hacked up some dust-filled phlegm. "Scum went overboard with the flash-bangs."
"Only way to guarantee they didn't destroy the asset. Their Supreme Leader would probably chop off their heads if something happened to that droid. You alright?" Jade asked.
"I'm jate, Captain. Go after them." NoobKiller said as he rested his hands on his knees to catch his breath. He was right, of course. Clan Neyo may be great with technology, but they were little use in a blaster fight.
It wasn't hard to follow the intruders. Several fallen Mandalorians were laid out in the hallways, marking the First Order commando's path. The walls were marked with various degrees of carbon scoring. She wasn't surprised the First Order had tracked the droid down, it was only a matter of time before the Confederacy's Cyber-Warfare Divisions made a dent in Clan Neyo's security. RK-B2 was a prize that couldn't be ignored. Jade wondered what the Eritech Meta thought of his rescue. No doubt he was laughing at her with his AI sense of humor. She murmured to herself as she sprinted up the stairs towards the surface, "Laugh it up, you Old Empire piece of shit."
She reached the surface in time to feel the wind whip away from a Lambda shuttle taking off. The spacecraft was piloted by a pair of female First Order pilots who stared at her as they banked the shuttle away from the facility entrance and headed south.
On the ground around her were the four Mandalorians from the Analysis Bureau that had earlier been standing guard outside. The quartet from Clan Bacara looked to have been overwhelmed and dispatched rather quickly at the start of the First Order raid. The invaders definitely appeared to be quick and efficient, the marks of true professionals. Exactly what she wanted her bounty-hunting team, the Regulators, to be.
She keyed the mic in her helmet. "Bitee, I need an immediate pick-up."
The distant voice of the Talpini pilot instantly responded. "We are inbound, boss. ETA twenty seconds."
Jade expected nothing less. She had ordered her team to hover off the surface only a kilometer to the north of the island for just this sort of contingency. The Regulators had only lasted as long as they had by being ready for anything. The roar of an after burner cut through the night air as the converted MI-24 Hind helicopter came rushing in. It came to an abrupt hover over the entrance, sending a whirlwind of debris everywhere as its repulsarlifts came to grip with the earth. Bitee Cyu-Bee waved at her from the forward cockpit. As he settled the gunship to the ground the port-side door slid open to reveal the remainder of her team.
The Maori sniper, Lata, covered her with his long blaster rifle as Barrage and Hargrave held out their hands to pull her aboard the Beskar Golem. Jade rushed to the front of the craft as the Regulators secured the door behind her. She leaned over Bitee's tiny shoulder and pointed at the small speck on the southern horizon. "That's them. Follow them, but not too close. I don't want anything to happen to the asset."
"How?" The Talpani asked.
"I don't know. Fly casual." Jade shrugged.
She went back into the crew compartment as the Beskar Golem headed south in casual pursuit. Red lights lit the Golem's interior to preserve their night vision. She opened the weapon's locker and switched out her pistol for a heavier F-411 Rampage blaster rifle. She looked over to the three other Regulators. "Set to stun and switch your thermal detonators to droid poppers. We can't let anything happen to RK-B2."
She wasn't surprised to learn that the Regulators had already anticipated her orders. If the First Order was really here in New Mandalore, they'd make valuable prisoners for the Clan. If anything, the bounty for returning RK-B2 might be paid out from three Clans, Neyo, Bly and Bacara. But only if he was still in one piece.
Bitee kept his distance as the Lambda headed south-west, while Jade contacted Clan Doom air patrols and informed them to keep their distance. Several times, the shuttle zigged north or east for ten-minute stretches before returning back to its original course. It seemed as if the escaping First Order troopers were in no hurry to escape from New Mandalorian airspace.
After two hours of what seemed like the slowest pursuit in Jade's life, the Lambda, now just a mere speck on the horizon, started to descend for landing. Ahead of them lay the Chatham Islands, an archipelago about eight hundred kilometers from New Mandalore's South Island. The island was filled with air defenses, and a local airbase served the NMDF. The area was usually heavily patrolled by Mandalorian Kom'rks and Torrents as it was a heavily used infiltration point for Confederate submarines. Tonight, the skies were empty except for the Lambda and Beskar Golem.
"Circle around a couple of times, Bitee. Let them get settled in." Jade told her pilot. She then gave her shooters the signal to get ready to debark.
They circled the largest island of Chatham several times. Jade found it interesting that the International Dateline went directly through the middle of the island and as they circled, they were literally jumping back and forth between two rotations. It would have been funny to her Regulators, if New Mandalore hadn't been using Galactic Standard Time rather than Confederate Time Zones for the past twenty-five years.
The Lambda had settled in a field next to the small town of Waitangi. A large bungalow could be spotted next to the open space and several figures in white could be seen emerging from the shuttle and heading into the building.
The Beskar Golem came in over the fishing boats moored in Petre Bay and scattered a flock of sheep grazing on the far side of the field. The animals fled into the farm lands inland from the small village as the gunship landed a hundred meters from the Lambda.
Jade opened the sliding hull door. The three Regulators exited the craft faster than Jade could fasten the hatch, thus causing her to be the last one out. The Kiwi, Maori and clone had their weapons aimed and at the ready as they spread out and advanced on the parked shuttle. Jade provided rear security. They moved silently through shin-level grass. In their full Mandalorian armor, no one would assume they were anything but the killers they actually were.
"That's about far enough." A voice called to them out of the darkness.
The Regulators froze, their weapons pointed in the four cardinal directions. Suddenly four figures in white armor rose from the ground. They had the Regulators completely circled and could drop them in the blink of an eye.
Jade studied the one facing her. It was the big one that had struck her back at the Clan Neyo research bunker. Lata faced another First Order Stormtrooper with a 773 Firepuncher sniper rifle that was as long as Jade was tall.
Jade chuckled in the dark. "Fierfek, Hunter. You bastards got us this time."
The Stormtroopers relaxed and lowered their weapons, causing the Regulators to follow suit. The big trooper placed his massive hand on her shoulder and slumped sheepishly. "Sorry, Captain about thumping you earlier."
"Might have a shiner tomorrow, Wrecker, but it certainly felt real."
"The asset is inside with the ladies, ma'am." Hunter removed his helmet and jerked a thumb at the bungalow. His face was the eternally youthful one of every clone in New Mandalore, with the exception of the long hair that fell past his shoulders when he removed his helmet.
"The sooner we get these dramatics over with the faster we can get back into some proper beskar." The clone commando with the prosthetic socket arm sighed.
"This gear is worse than the poodoo Admiral Rampart tried to make us wear." Wrecker chucked his helmet into the darkness.
"Brother, you didn't stick around and have to wear that junk half as long as I did." Crosshair sneered at his larger comrade as he admired Lata's Karpaki Fifty sniper rifle at close range.
"I'm going in." Jade announced. "You boys stay outside and play."
"Right this way, Captain." Echo motioned for her to follow him. Hunter and her exchanged salutes before she moved onto the darkened bungalow.
As they approached the door, Echo put his finger to his lips. He whispered as he stuck his socket arm in the door's locking mechanism. "The asset is still in the dark. We took it downstairs so Emerie could work on the restraining bolt while the kid kept the Meta busy."
"Thanks, Echo." Jade whispered back.
"Good luck, ma'am."
Jade entered the bungalow. The lights were out on the upper floor, but for a kitchen table there was no furniture in the home to bump into. In the center of the residence, she found the top of the stairs leading down into the basement. From below she could make out several voices, including the unmistakable one from the Eritech Meta.
What she didn't see as she reached the stairwell was the person waiting for her in the dark. Not until the muzzle of a SE-44C First Order Officer's pistol was pressed into her forehead. A rough feminine voice greeted her. "No bounty is worth dying for."
"No hunter shall slay another hunter." Jade returned another piece of the Bounty Hunter's code. The pistol pushed her head back slightly and then was withdrawn.
A figure stepped into the moonlight coming from the upstairs windows. Both women smiled in recognition. "What's the Clan Cody armorer doing this far from New Auckland?"
Nichole Felk, one of the true Mandalorians on New Mandalore, smirked. The ex-bounty hunter had been Jade's mentor when she had immigrated to New Mandalore and joined Clan Bly's bounty hunting teams. If not for her marriage to Clan Cody's Marshal and namesake, the Mandalorian might still be pulling bounties to this day. Instead, she was part of the cultural revolution that had swept the island nation and embraced the Mandalorian culture from a galaxy far, far away.
Felk had her long red hair tied up and braided in military fashion. She was not dressed in her customary green and blue beskar armor but was disguised in the teal naval uniform of a First Order Lieutenant Commander. Only upon close inspection could one determine that the clothes were fakes, copied from several examples shown on the Confederate News Network.
"What's the situation?" Jade asked quietly.
"We've got it fooled. Stang droid was gloating the entire trip over here. Well at least that security AI was. The droid should be cooperative once we remove it." Nichole Felk reported.
"We try to force it and Eritech will fry RK-B2 and we won't get a thing."
"Eritech? Makes sense that scum would still be around somehow." Felk scowled. "Kriffing arrogant thing certainly acts like the old ISB."
"Can we bypass it?"
"We were about to try the code we stole from a Confederate command and control computer. You know it took Hunter's team two months of undercover work on Luna to get that data." Felk reported.
"No, I didn't." Jade replied, which made sense, since none of the bounty hunting teams usually knew what the others were up to.
"If you creep down to the bottom step, you'll be able to listen in. If we wrestle control from that shebhole, you can have first crack at the droid." Nichole Felk waved her hand to the darkened stairwell.
Jade holstered her own weapon. She didn't want anything loose to scrape against a wall and announce her presence. One by one she gingerly made her way down the stairwell. Her outstretched hands not only kept her balance but marked the locations of the wall. A faint light and growing voices allowed her to know how close she was getting to the bottom of the stairwell. She stopped as instructed at the bottom stair and pressed her back into the wall. She didn't risk a peek around the corner, but merely contented herself with eavesdropping on the conversation.
"This safe house is not sufficient for defense." The voice of the Eritech Meta could be heard.
"We were ordered to bring you to as secluded a respite as possible. New Mandalorians might have pursued us." Another female officer told the AI.
The clone, Emerir Karr, was heard to be working with several tools. "This restraining bolt is top of the line. As soon as we remove it, it will broadcast our location. No doubt we will be hit by some sort of nuclear Mandalorian cruise missile a minute after that. They were right on our heels when we busted out of New Auckland."
"Can't the Security Protocol AI perform a memory swipe?" The officer asked.
"I am not a Security Protocol. I am a major in the Imperial Security Bureau. I serve the true Emperor." The Meta angrily growled.
"So do we. The First Order is the natural progression of the Empire. We are attempting to heed Palpatine's call to return to Exegol." She told the droid. "You are ordered to assist in this by Supreme Leader Ren."
"The information in this droid cannot fall into rebel hands." Eritech declared.
"Now you're getting it." She told the Meta. "Lieutenant Karr, can you do the memory swipe manually?"
"I don't think so. This AI will either cause the droid to shut down or self-destruct. Either way, the Mandalorians will be able to retrieve some of its data stores from whatever remains. And they won't be protected by the Security Protocol." Emerie reported as she tinkered with the restraining bolt.
"We don't have much time. The Lieutenant Commander went outside with the rest of the squad to defend the safe house. We suspect they'll be here any minute." The officer seemed urgent. Jade silently snickered as they played their roles perfectly.
"I can only be bypassed with a proper code from the Ministry of Improvement. With proper authorization I can disengage the firewall protection and initiate a memory swipe, or you can perform it manually. Your attempts to slice my operating systems will be futile if you trigger the self-destruct code." Eritech admitted. His sense of duty finally over-riding his ego and self-preservation. "You can also perform a memory swipe and preserve the Meta AIs without saving the compromised security data if you so choose."
Jade hoped they did that. She'd love to see the smug smile on Eritech's face get wiped away when it realized it had been tricked.
"Set status to Imperial Droid Status 16." the officer ordered.
"Status 16 confirmed. Code data entry mode activated." Eritech replied eagerly. The ISB officer AI was eager to be free of his restraints and in full control of RK-B2 and its Ministry of Improvement trade secrets.
"Hapspir, Barrini, Corbolan, Triaxis." The officer said. Immediately, RK-B2 emitted a series of loud beeps and squeaks.
"It's an older ISB code but it checks out." Eritech said.
"Wizard. Transfer all operating and security parameters to my control. Commander Omega is the new primary controller. Reply with verification code." The officer ordered.
"Verification code Coruscant, Alderaan, Wynkahthu, Jestefad." Eritech replied, granting Commander Omega all of his control over RK-B2.
"Excellent." Jade said as she stepped from her place of concealment.
The Meta's holographic eyes went wide in surprise. "You!"
"Me, indeed."
"Disobedient, disrespectful, traitor!" Eritech snapped at her.
"You call for order. You beat us down. But when your neck was threatened, you squealed like a whoop hog. The evidence was erased on the Ares, but you and I know the truth. When that Jedi put a lightsaber to your gut, you couldn't fire on Mars, out of your own cowardice. Now what would your allies do if they found out? Or your Palpatine?" Jade strutted across the room and stood next to Omega. Emerie continued to crouch behind RK-B2 and fiddle with its restraining bolt.
"Who would believe a story like that?"
"Everyone that's ever had contact with your Old Empire. You are just as big a failure as your Emperor. The rebels defeated him at Endor, haven't you heard? And we shall defeat his First Order here on Earth." Jade swore.
"Code worked. I've removed the bolt." Emerie announced.
"RK-B2, perform a memory swipe!" Eritech shouted to the droid, which sighed and beeped in return.
Jade laughed. "Are you forgetting something. You are no longer RK-B2's master."
Eritech looked up at Jade and glared. His eyes raging beneath his dark helmet. He had been outmaneuvered and he knew it.
"Omega, if you'd be so kind." Jade pointed towards the holoimage.
"Glad to. RK-B2, purge Meta program Tolos Eritech. Authorizing code Omega Bad Batch." Omega stated.
"No!" Eritech screamed as RK-B2 started erasing his code.
"You're a bug in the system." Jade said as the holoimage vanished forever.
"It's gone. All traces have been erased from RK-B2's master Meta coding." Emerie said. "Back-ups too."
RK-B2 chirped several beeps and shook eagerly towards Omega. The female clone smiled. "It looks like I'm the new owner of the Confederacy's most valuable droid."
"It seems so. We have free access to its data banks?" Jade asked.
"Yes, ma'am." Emerie replied.
"Go ahead, Captain. Ask it whatever you'd like." Omega offered.
Jade pulled up a chair and sat in front of the astromech. "Tell me, RK-B2, what is happening on Baffin Island."