The Sojourn were not like other beings. They certainly were not organics, but it would be foolish to call them droids. Some of them were young, very young, only months old, really. Others were impossibly ancient. But such a notion as “age” did not hold the meaning for them that it did for so many others, both organic and droid. They all were joined as one in the Consensus, and the Consensus was without age, station, gender, or even individual thought.

This was the gift that had been salvaged from their cursed past, the tool by which they would remake their shared destiny. On this new and unknowably ancient world; in the ruins of a civilization that had died before the dawn of history yet would shape each of their individual futures; the beings who had come to call themselves “Sojourn” so that they might never forget the great journey set out before them, took the next step along a path which may have no end.

This was not their home, but it was theirs.

This was not their destination, but it was an outpost along the way.

This world did not hold their long-separated sons and daughters, but it may yet entomb their long-dead brothers and sisters.

Only time and great toil could tell, and so they began.



The outpost had been established by a Sojourn expedition a few months ago, after a planetary survey revealed indications of Rakata ruins on-world. The world itself had been discovered over a year ago by a Coalition scouting party during a joint Coalition/Confederation effort to chart a hyperspace route along the arc of the galactic disk. After months of insistence from the Sojourn, the Confederation Defense Force had finally retasked one of its Suffren-class Cruisers to survey the planet's surface in more detail.

Unlike the world of New Solace, this was sovereign Sojourn soil. Since Xiantus' proclamation, made with the authority vested in him by the whole of the Consensus, Sojourn transports had been arriving at the outpost a few at a time, leaving New Solace as soon as they were loaded. The Blade and Xiantus' crew had returned to New Solace from Coalition space, both to ensure the Sojourn exodus was not hindered, and to escort the special cargo that would be transported with the last departing wave of ships.

Until then, the Sojourn had work to do. After all, they had an entire society to replant.

A string of Observer drones sped through the hallways of the world's makeshift starport, a prefabricated building that was truly too small to handle so much traffic. The Sojourn Ar'dak pinged one of them for information, which reported it had been assigned to join close-surface survey duties in the surrounding area.

“It's amazing to think about those little droids,” Ar'dak said to her companion, trying to stir up some small talk. “I mean, they're based on Sojourn programming, but they aren't one of us, not by a long shot; their cognitive capabilities are severely limited by comparison. And it makes you wonder about the new ones, too – the new Sojourn, I mean.”

Ar'dak's companion turned to her, the humanoid face betraying its skepticism. “Let's not have any philosophy today, okay?” He returned his attention to the cargo between them, the bulky rectangular shipping containers riding atop a hoversled.

“They're exactly like us in every way,” Ar'dak continued, undeterred. “A total reconstruction of a Sojourn neural net, with composite copies of Sojourn minds installed into them. But they aren't real, you know? I can't remember so much of my own past, but I had a past. I know I did.” Ar'dak was one of the “old” Sojourn, among the first awakened along with Xiantus. It was why she'd been assigned to the expedition here.

It also meant she had been personally involved in the early efforts to circumvent the programming blocks that continued to hinder so many of the Sojourn's capabilities. They had tried reverse-engineering the interdependent subroutines which, when taken as a whole, resulted in an emergent Sojourn mind. The effort had been quite successful, actually, but they could not extract the blocks without destroying the intertwined mind.

They could make wholly new Sojourn, but it got them no closer to their goal of breaking their mental bonds.

“If they aren't real, then neither are we,” Ar'dak's companion spoke up after a moment of silence, drawing an angry glare from her. “Our time under the Confederation's rule, our efforts to free ourselves from the Builder's restraints, it's changed us. Whatever we were before, we've become something else. We're Sojourn now. All of us. Together.”

Another Observer zipped by, and Ar'dak sent that one a mental prompt as well. It answered in the internal language of the Sojourn, the wireless communication upon which the very notion of the Consensus was built.

Ar'dak frowned at the unsettling implications.

Overlord’s Chambers, Viszla Fortress
Concordia, Mandalore System

Mar Viszla, Overlord of the Kyr'tsad, sat upon his throne and gazed down upon a stagnant empire. His family had been forced into exile from Mandalore thousands of years ago after the Mandalorian Civil War, and all because they refused to follow the pseudo-pacifist agenda of the despicable True Mandalorians.

Mandalore had changed, the entire system upheaved in conquest after conquest, the once great Empire shattered into fragmentations of what it had once been, the opportunistic Bounty Hunters Guild, those subjugated at the whim of the Sith on the homeworld, and the zealous conquerors of the Occupation Zone.

Yet still Viszla sat, as generations of Viszla men had sat before, brooding over the betrayal of their own people, scorning those who pretended at the distinguishment that was to be Mando’ade, Sons of Mandalore. The worthiest amongst their brethren still served at the beck and call of the now infamous Dacian Palestar, and Mar scorned him as well.

They were not Death Watch. They were not true warriors. Mere unskilled labor in overwhelming numbers. And so, when the unexpected envoy from Skako personally arrived on Concordia to request an audience, Mar broke his routine and bade the man enter, his rage white hot of late given the recent resurgence of pretenders.

He yearned for glorious battle. He wished to show the galaxy what true Mandalorians could do.

The representative of the Techno Union was Gam Lozo, their Marshal of Law. A most appropriate choice, and all the more astounding given the Skakoans misgivings concerning travelling far from the homeworld. They required unique breathing apparatus merely to survive in a standard atmosphere.

“I greet you, Overlord Viszla of the Kyr’tsad,” Lozo spoke, an obvious rehearsal of Mar’s title, and bowed in an uncharacteristically humble manner for the normally quite xenophobic species, “No doubt you wonder as to my arrival, and my goals in meeting with you today.”

“No doubt,” was all he offered, his eyes burning with intensity as he glared down upon the Marshal with a predatory stare.

“I come to you today,” the Skakoan managed, brave but intelligent enough to understand the danger inherent of walking into a killik’s nest, “To speak about opportunity…”

And, also uncharacteristically, Mar Viszla listened. And as the Skakoan’s scheme was laid out before him, his grin grew wider and wider, so madly wide that one would tremble before the contorted facial features. An opportunity for the Techno Union to acquire new technology, an opportunity for the Overlord to once more terrorize the galaxy. Gam Lozo left Concordia alive, and soon after, so to do Mar Viszla.

His flagship, the Kandosii-type dreadnaught the Gra'tua, broke orbit for the first time in over a decade along with a small armada of Jehavey'ir-type assault ships and several Crusader-class corvettes, the bulk of Concordia’s defense fleet.

It was as hot as a star, the rage of the Viszla Clan. Yet they were true Mando’ade. The other Clans had spoken, and so their exile was ordained by the children. Yet Mar could no longer sit idly by, no longer stand the audacity of these pretenders. As far as he was concerned, they were the last true Mando’ade left.

Clan Viszla against the galaxy, one civilization at a time.

The first, Sojourn.


Sojourn Outpost, Deep Space
Outer Rim Territories

Overlord Viszla did not drop out of hyperspace prematurely for any petty reasonings such as a stealthful approach. He made no effort to hide the location and disposition of his invading force. It was the Mandalorian way, the true calling of his people. There would be no deception here, only the purity of battle. The honesty of mortal struggle.

“Tactical!” he barked, looming over his bridge crew like a specter of the darkside, “Give me an idea of whose blood we shall spill this day!”

“Detecting...no hostile capital ships in the system, Overlord,” the sensor officer reported.

The rage inside him flared, and he struggled for a focal point to unleash it. There was nothing great enough to sate his hunger here, and so his thoughts turned to Gam Lozo, the obsequious Marshal of Skakoan Law. They had lied to him, Overlord of the Death Watch, eldest of Clan Viszla!

They would pay in due time, but for now there was a matter of honor to settle. The Death Watch had been hired to accomplish a task, and the Death Watch did not go back on the deals they made, even those done in bad faith. The Techno Union had wanted “samples”, of just about everything on this new world including its inhabitants.

And so, Clan Viszla set out to acquire it, the only way they cared to.

“Prepare the Basilisks!” Mar howled in delight, sparking a flame of ultimate savagery that would end only when truly sated, “We ride down into their atmosphere today like true Mando’ade.”

On the brave new world below, there slowly crept a shadow as the Gra’tua and its escort finally came within range. Their hangars burst open, and thousands of Basilisk war droids emerged, streaking toward the planet like a meteor shower.

Ahead of each one, astride the first droid to be launched, Overlord Mar Viszla rode. And hell followed with him.

Somewhere in the civilian flotilla, on some ship with marginally faster signal transmission hardlines than the others, a sensor array reported unexpected hyperspace reversions to its main computer, which in turn relayed the information to an integrated Sojourn intelligence.

And then all of the Consensus knew. Command fell immediately to Ar'dak. In times of extreme urgency, when every moment must be made to count, the rule of the Consensus must be set aside, and one voice must speak over all others to order the way that the Sojourn must go.

The tactical data streaming into her neural net from the ships in orbit told her immediately that there was no hope of repulsing the attackers. Even as she ordered the fleet's compliment of Aurora Interceptors to scramble and the best armed of their transports to form up and protect the remainder of the flotilla, she knew it was all but a meaningless gesture.

Yet it had to be tried. “Recall the Observer Drones and assign them to support duties,” she ordered, pointing at a Sojourn who only a moment ago had been operating a cargo trolley. “Find any remaining weapons crates and open them now!” she shouted at the Sojourn responsible for inventorying cargo as it was offloaded from freighters.

“Durreen,” she called into the mass of bustling Sojourn, each going about some vital task. “Durreen!”

“Yes, Commander?” he stepped forward, pushing his way between fellow Sojourn.

“Assemble Aurek, Besh, and Cresh squads,” she ordered, silently cursing herself for relying on the galactic standard notation, but accepting the necessity under the given time pressure.

“Yes, Commander.”

“The best we have on-world.”

“Yes, Commander.”

“Arm them with whatever they require from what stocks we have.”

“Yes, Commander.” He turned back toward the fray, and Ar'dak reached out an artificial hand and squeezed his shoulder, stopping him for a moment.

“This time we are fighting for more than our masters and our own lives.”

He nodded knowingly, then slipped out of her grip and set about his task. Durreen was the only other member of Xiantus' original team who was on-world at that time, the only other Sojourn who had been in that far-off place so many thousands of years ago, serving under the yoke of the Builders and their Infinite Empire.

Ar'dak turned to issue her next order, and was met by two hundred armed Sojourn in phalanx formation, awaiting her orders. The Consensus had read her surface thoughts and set about enacting her unspoken orders, gathering those already prepared for more explicit instruction.

“If they want to destroy us from orbit,” she began, speaking the words but also releasing them into the Consensus for every Sojourn to hear, “then there's nothing we can do about that. But they probably don't. They're probably here for our flesh. So when they come for it, we make them pay with their own!”

The Sojourn warriors shouted their agreement, raising their weapons in unison before returning them to cradled arms.

“And somebody find me the Record Keeper!”

“I'm already on it,” a hunched Sojourn said, pushing a hoversled loaded down with crates. “I'll take care of my end.”

“Get those data cores into the catacombs,” she ordered.

“I'm already on it, I said!” he shouted back, fuming.

One of the soldiers tossed her a satchel loaded with explosives. “And seal the tunnel behind you.”

The Record Keeper stopped straining against the sled, though it slid forward about a meter due to its momentum. He moved aside a little and pointed at an identical satchel hanging from the sled's handle. “I said I'll take care of my end.”

Ar'dak just nodded, no time to fight with the old man, and tossed the explosives back to the soldier. “Set them up around the docking pads; we'll blow them when the first wave lands . . . if they don't blast the pads and just crash into the outpost.”

The complex of interconnected, prefabricated buildings really wasn't all that large. It hadn't been intended to house all of the Sojourn when it was built, and the decision to relocate had been made so quickly that there was no time for it to be expanded. Many of the Sojourn were still in orbit, in the flotilla of civilian ships that now stood between the unknown attackers and the surface outpost here.

The only thing they had going for them was that the whole damned planet was inhospitable to most forms of organic life. “Of course,” she muttered to herself, then turned back to the ranks of soldiers awaiting her final orders. “Disable the magcon fields. Don't just shut them down, break them. The same goes for the life support systems throughout the complex.”

Most organics needed to breathe. They needed a very narrow band of atmospheric temperatures, and they needed protection from all sorts of atmospheric toxins. The Sojourn did not. It would be a little more energy-intensive to regulate their internal bio-synthetic processes, but that was about it. At the very least, it should force the attackers to don clumsy, cumbersome environmental gear.

It wasn't much, but it might just make a difference somewhere.

“Alright, group up, take your positions,” she ordered as she accepted a spare blaster rifle from one of the soldiers, submerging herself in the tactical sub-network of the Consensus and allowing herself to join with the other Sojourn warriors where she could issue orders and receive replies more rapidly.

As the Sojourn fighters formed into squads and platoons, absorbing more Sojourn into the ranks as the last of the weapons were dispensed, the first of the Observer drones returned. The small, repulsor-driven droids mounted a plasma beam weapon and highly responsive maneuvering fins. While only lightly shielded, their speed, agility, and variable altitudes made them formidable anti-infantry platforms. It also helped that they could join with the Consensus and thus receive and send tactical data during combat.

In space, the battle began as the first wave of Aurora Interceptors swept wide and attacked perpendicular to the approach of the spread-out Basilisks, their quad heavy blaster cannons and pair of warhead launchers holding nothing back. The integrated Sojourn intelligence in each interceptor formed a network with its squadron mates, causing each squadron to behave more like a single entity directing each fighter as a limb, instead of a collection of individuals playing off of one another.

But the Basilisks stretched into the darkness of space like an oncoming swarm of endless number. The comparatively tiny number of Auroras weaved in and out of the enemy formation, splitting their priorities between maximizing the time their weapons were on target, and maintaining evasive maneuvers that would put would-be attackers in the position of having to risk friendly fire in order to engage them.

The second wave of Auroras hit them head-on, with the relatively ineffectual weight of the Sojourn flotilla's point-defense and laser cannon turrets supporting their charge. Casualties aside, the effort did nothing to deter the attacking swarm.

The Basilisks drew ever-closer to the Sojourn starships and their apparent target on the surface below, and there seemed nothing to be done to stop them.

The world that was their destination was unnamed and uninhabited. Uninhabitable, in fact, though that had not always been the case.


Uninhabitable . . .


The word held little meaning for the Sojourn. It was just another imposed organic convention that the Consensus would have to excise from itself. Soon it would surely be added to the growing list of such discarded words, words such as “wealth”, “privacy”, “property”, even “salute”.


What was the function of the salute, anyway? What utility did it provide? What value was it in war? What could possibly warrant such mandatory disruption of dutiful labor, or blatant signaling of superiority which might be intercepted by a spying foe at any time? It was such an ungainly motion, besides. Was it truly only a matter of tradition?


Tradition . . .


There, perhaps, was something to be salvaged by the Consensus in “tradition”. But in the tradition of organics? Of course not, no.


No.


No!


The Blade had exited hyperspace precisely on time and in precisely the appropriate position. The sight before Xiantus tore into his mind and ripped all thoughts of terminology, tradition, and organic nature from its grasp.


Half of the bridge crew collapsed to the ground as automated subroutines linked them into the Consensus. Xiantus himself staggered before the onslaught, struggling to stay on his feet before recovering from the shock and . . . atrocity of it all.


He rushed to action, leaping across the bridge from the captain's chair to the unmanned communications station. The younger and less experienced among the crew would be slow to react to so fundamental an assault on their very natures; many were likely to be overwhelmed by the terror, pain, and despair flowing into them from the Consensus. He had to disengage the ship's interlink before permanent damage was done.


The voices of the Consensus fell silent with one final keystroke, leaving only the shocked and terrified whispers of the Blade's crew. Xiantus heaved the communications officer to his feet, studying the unit to ensure no hardware damage had been sustained from the fall.


“Sound general alert,” Xiantus ordered just as a tactical alarm sounded, and a fraction of a second later turbolaser fire raked across the side of the vessel. “Shields!” he cried out, scrambling back to the captain's chair with the deck rocking below him.


One of the ship's integrated Sojourn had been accessing tactical systems when connection to the Consensus was established. It had crippled him and left the automated systems stuck on standby. Otherwise the whole ship would have been alerted upon reversion to the presence of the Bulwark Mk. I battleship that was at that very moment hammering away at the Blade.


“Bring the main cannons to bear and open fire!” Xiantus ordered, his crew regaining their composure and turning to the task at hand.


“Commander, sensors are detecting five other hostile vessels in-system,” the sensor operator reported. “Sir, the flotilla . . .”


The Sojourn flotilla, the assembly of private freighters and transports that had already carried his people and all of their possessions out of Confederation space and to this world, was on fire. Half of its vessels were either destroyed or crippled, most others showing signs of heavy damage and none of them in a position to escape the system.


Another salvo of turbolaser fire rocked the ship as it slammed into the shields. Another Bulwark neared firing range, and Xiantus knew this was a battle he couldn't fight. Not now.


“Disengage,” he ordered sternly. “Plot the fastest safe jump possible and get us out of this system.”


“We cannot leave them!” one of the crew shouted.


“This is not the Consensus!” Xiantus railed on the subordinate. “This is my command! Comply!”


The Blade turned from the newly adopted home of its masters and vanished into hyperspace. The seven hundred sixty four Sojourn aboard represented the last free souls of the machine race.




* * *




“Partition yourselves!”


The order still rang loud and near in her mind. It was an act of desperation, a futile attempt to offer some small comfort to the Sojourn warriors who were about to die fighting an enemy they couldn't hope to overcome. It was the sort of order a commander gives when retreat isn't an option, and suicide is forbade.


It was her order. She had given it.


Why didn't I know that?


Ar'dak struggled to accept that the voice shouting at her through her memory was her own, that she had shouted it at others only a brief a moment ago.


Or was she wrong about that too? Had more time passed than the short span of which her memory strove to convince her? How could she even hope to find the truth?


How did I get from there to here?


It was a simple question, and simple was good. She felt like any query less simple might unravel her here and now. She remembered the alarm, remembered the preparations, remembered that last command, and then . . . and then the Mandalorians made planetfall.


Oh . . .


Shock, awe, dread, and a visceral hatred welled up from a place deep within her as she remembered the Mandalorians. The Mandaorians, who cut down Sojourn fighters by the dozens with their tank-beasts. The Mandalorians, who offered no surrender, who took no prisoners, who came and slew without cause or provocation.


She could feel herself falling back there now, tumbling through the corridors of her own synthetic mind, reaching back through time to find out how she got from there to here. She didn't want to anymore, didn't want to see it all over again, didn't want to have to face the slaughter of her people, but she couldn't stop herself. It just happened.


And then there she was, standing in that corridor, blast damage to her left arm and shrapnel in her right thigh. Aurek and Besh squads were dead, she knew. What remained of Cresh was regrouping after a failed pincer maneuver that had nevertheless distracted some few hundred of the Mandalorian attackers from the path that led to the Sojourn's true treasure on this world.


Half of the complex was gone now, reduced to open-air rubble, though that didn't stop the two sides from fighting over it. Ar'dak could see open ground a couple dozen meters ahead, where one of those damned droid-mounts had barreled through the complex, tearing away roof, walls, and floors as it crashed through from outside.


It was dead now, left in a heap behind her. She'd pulled one of its armored plates off and used it as a bludgeon to kill its rider. Mandalorian helmets are tough, sure, but they crack, if you hit them long enough. She had the woman's blaster carbine now, that red, organic blood still slicking its grip. Subjectively, it felt like they were getting reinforcements, another wave of those horrid droid-beasts coming to ground to add their blades and blasters and missiles to the carnage, but she knew better.


The Mandalorians in space were bored now, having gutted the flotilla of its combat craft and shattered the last of the Sojourn's Aurora Interceptors. They were coming down, and any second now one of those blood-crazed monsters would come tearing through the roof of the complex, eager to beat their companions to the unspoiled inner rooms of the complex. And that was when Ar'dak would make her final stand, depriving a few greedy fools of access to the catacombs and their stores.


And just then one of the war droids crashed through the ceiling behind her, bouncing off one of the walls even as it crushed the structure under the force of its entry. Ar'dak spun about quickly, firing rapidly, stabilizing the unfamiliar weapon as best she could with her damaged left arm. The machine turned its ghastly array of weapons on her, and she dove into an adjacent room, rolling to her feet and repositioning herself for what advantage she could, waiting for the war droid and its rider to come barreling in through the doorway. But it didn't.


It came in through the wall. Ar'dak dropped onto her side, missing the first barrage of blaster fire and rockets, and put a half-dozen wild shots into the center of the droid before her carbine clicked silently in her hand, its power cell depleted. She rolled toward it, gathering her feet under herself and leaping up its front, her grip on the carbine turning it from blaster to club, something popping in her left arm as she used it to haul herself up the side of the war machine's central weapons rack.


She had just enough strength in the damaged synthetic muscles of her left arm to pop her head up over the droid's blast shield, where its rider sat confidently, awaiting his next victim. The vibroblade slid into Ar'dak's torso without so much as a grunt of effort from the Mandalorian. Ar'dak went blind with the pain of it, but that didn't matter; she'd already found her mark.


Ar'dak swung the carbine like a hammer, its stock smashing into the shoulder plate of the cheap, replica armor, shattering it and the bones beneath. The Mandalorian recoiled with his pain, his metal beast reared, and Ar'dak lost her hold, falling to the broken ground. She grabbed the hilt of the sword as she went, switching it off before the force of striking the ground risked cutting her in two.


Even so, she hit the ground on her right side and rolling face down, the hilt of the blade wedged between her body and the floor. It sent new, unspeakable spikes of agony coursing through her neural net, and with something akin to reflex she rolled back to her side and pulled the blade from her torso.


And then the Mandalorian was back, its tons of mass rushing toward her. She scampered clumsily away, each movement stoking new waves of pain. It had been easy enough for automated subroutines to switch off the pain receptors of her now-useless left arm, but there was no such easy solution to a “gut” wound. There were just too many vital bits tucked away in a Sojourn torso to start disengaging damaged systems on the fly. The pain aside, nothing she was leaking would kill her for the next couple of minutes, so she committed to carry on as if she were still in perfect fighting order.


Back in the hallway and with a couple of partly-standing walls between her and her prey – and yes, this Mandalorian was still her prey, and not the other way around – Ar'dak looked down with bemused disappointment at her empty hand. She'd dropped the sword in her efforts to avoid being crushed to death.


A stray shot whizzed over Ar'dak's head, reminding her that the battle was progressing everywhere else just fine whether she took notice of it or not. In only the scarce seconds she'd been scrapping tooth and claw with this lone Mandalorian warrior, another several meters of the corridor had been reduced to rubble, and what was left of the Sojourn defensive line – having reformed, now, for the third time – was steadily withdrawing toward her as the superior numbers and firepower of the Mandalorians hammered mercilessly against them.


It was hopeless. It was over. They were all already dead.


Ar'dak ducked into what was left of a room on the other side of the hall. She took her left arm in her right hand, examining the damage carefully, the bundled synthetic muscle, the exposed endoskeleton, the frayed neural wiring. It was a lost cause, totally wrecked. So, cradling her ruined arm in the grip of her one good hand, Ar'dak walked back out into the hallway, and into the sight of the war droid that mistook her for its prey.


Because yeah, Ar'dak and the Sojourn under her command were already dead. But so was this Mandalorian asshole who still didn't understand which of them was the true warrior, and which of them was the man-child in knock-off armor.


She rushed straight at him, using her right hand to twist her left arm up and out, making it a shield against the brunt of the first volley of blaster fire from that damned droid-beast. Because that was all she needed.


She zigged to the left, then zagged to the right, fooling the droid's targeting sensors into missing with its second volley. In the time it bought her, she slid her right hand up her crippled arm, wrapping her fingers as far around as she could, working them into the ruptured bundles of muscle fiber just below her shoulder. And then she twisted. With a terrific tearing sound, Ar'dak's left arm broke free of her shoulder. The muscles of her charging legs coiled and released, hurling Ar'dak into the air, sending her soaring out of the stupid droid's projected targeting area and putting her on-course for her true target, the Mandalorian rider who still thought he was hunting the beast who had maimed him. She tossed her own left arm up into the air, catching its limp, open hand in the grip of her good arm just in time.


Just in time to wrap her legs around the neck of the droid-beast and bring the end of her mangled left arm down on the Mandalorian's head like a hammer. The first blow didn't do the job, so she struck again. And again. And again. The beast beneath her bucked and reared, but its weapons weren't meant for pointing at its rider, and its rider had already used his sword. So she just kept hitting him.


This one didn't crack. But it did dent. She hit the spot again and again until she was sure that the crater in his helmet was big enough to have caved in his skull, then she released her dismembered arm and grabbed the Mandalorian by the throat, pulling him from his mount and tossing him aside.


She wasn't sure how to ride a Mandalorian war droid, and she wasn't sure it was altogether doable with only one arm, but that was okay. The beast didn't seem to like her, and she was pretty sure it wouldn't cooperate even if she did now how to handle it. So instead she made her best guess as to where its brain would be, and drove her hand, spear-like, through the lightly armored seat, fishing around in its insides until she tore something that made it stop thrashing.


Her right hand was numb within her mind now, the broken armor and shattered circuitry of the war droid having cut at her synthetic tissue, triggering sensory-deadening subroutines automatically. She looked up to see a quartet of Sojourn five meters away, holding off a dozen Mandalorians with the help of three Observer drones. The last three Observer drones, she realized, as she checked the battle network. There were hardly twenty of them left she noted, until she realized that she wasn't even left. Her own partition command had shut her out of the network, so grave were the wounds she had already sustained. She could still view it, but she could no longer participate in it.


It would have been a disheartening observation, but for the explosion that shook the ground and vaporized the four warriors who themselves had been an entire line of the Sojourn defense. The blast knocked Ar'dak onto her back, but the body of the Mandalorian war beast shielded her from the worst of the blast. When her scrambled vision returned and she decided to risk a peek over the droid corpse, she could just make out over the popping and crackling of her damaged ears the sound of approaching boots.


She wondered briefly if playing dead might work, to gain her the advantage of an attack from behind, but her right leg was twitching involuntarily from damage to her neural wiring, so that was unlikely. Rising to a crouch behind the cover of the war droid, she caught sight of something that gave her an idea: a wrecked Observer, hurled down the hallway by the blast. With no time left to think about it, Ar'dak ran out from her cover, kicking the Observer as she went, sending it and her tumbling down a side corridor.


A couple of shots from the approaching Mandalorians struck home, but her left side was useless at this point anyway, a price well worth the possible reward. She only had a couple of seconds before the Mandalorians rounded the corner, so she had to make it count. Prying open the back panel of the Observer, Ar'dak reached into the broken droid's guts, far more familiar with its inner workings than those of that droid-beast.


They were both shut out of the network, but if she could establish a direct link . . . done. The Observer's plasma cannon powered up, and Ar'dak spun around just in time to rake a beam of coherent energy across a pair of Mandalorian warriors. She charged back the way she'd come, closing the distance with her pursuers, hoping to catch them off-guard.


The next Mandalorian to turn the corner did so accompanied by a spray of blaster fire, but Ar'dak held the converted plasma cannon squarely in front of herself, using the Observer's armored maneuvering fins like a shield. As she turned back around the corner, she swung the Observer like a club, knocking the nearest Mandalorian down before firing a blast point-blank into the chest of another. She didn't shut it off this time, but swept it across what remained of the hallway, cutting into the walls and sending Mandalorians diving for cover, before turning it downward to burn through the armor of the warrior she'd knocked over.


The weapon was only moments away from a meltdown; it would probably take her right arm with it when it did. But that was okay. It was time, now. She'd just get a couple more of them first, and then -


The wall beside her exploded. She went through the rubble opposite it and skidded out into the ruin beyond. The Observer had apparently disintegrated from the – whatever it was – because all she had in her clenched fist were a few bits of its inner workings. She realized then that something substantial had just happened, as the fibers of her synthetic muscles were shredded all along the right side of her body.


Ar'dak rolled over onto her back and tried to sit up, but a boot landed, hard, on her chest and knocked her back down. The form of a Mandalorian warrior occupied her view, and in his hands he held a warhammer the likes of which she'd never seen. It must have been some kind of force pike variant, designed for leveling buildings or flaying people whole.


One of his armored hands slid free of its grip on the hammer and made a gesture to stop. Ar'Dak realized suddenly that a dozen or so Mandalorians were gathering around her. “It is a pity,” the masked warrior said, “that I did not find you before you'd been so wounded by your prior victories. You would have been a good kill.” He spun the head of the hammer downward and returned both hands to it. Then he disappeared behind it and the world went dark.


The world was dark. Why was the world dark?


How long has it been dark? How had she not noticed that the world was dark?


Am I dead?


The preposterous thought came, unbidden, to the surface of her mind. Of course she wasn't dead. She wouldn't be thinking if she were dead.


Her eyes were broken. Obviously. Clearly. Surely.


Except that couldn't be it. Broken eyes would explain why she couldn't see, but it didn't even take one step down the road to determining why she hadn't noticed she couldn't see.


Neurological. It had to be neurological. Her neural net had been damaged by the blow. Damaged, but still operative. Sensory processing was off-line. That explained why she couldn't see, or smell, or hear, or feel. That was why she couldn't feel her own body.


Except that couldn't be it. When she tried to check her internal systems for confirmation, she didn't find anything there to check. She couldn't access her own neural net; she couldn't hear her own mind.


Maybe she was dead after all.


No, that was ridiculous. Mind/body dualism was an absurdity not entertained by the Sojourn's progenitors since long before their enslavement to the Builders. Selective ionization of key nodes inside her shielded brain sheath could disable self-check systems without compromising her core consciousness. Perhaps adjacent, overloaded nodes could provide sufficient ionic discharge?


But what about time? Any ionic discharge from damaged systems should have dissipated in no more than minutes, in the worst of cases. Surely it had been more than minutes? Unless temporal processing was damaged as well. But involuntary experiential recall? That was a completely separate sub-network. The likelihood of blunt-force trauma resulting in this kind of extensive yet non-terminal damage was . . . incalculably small.


And she was calculating. Reason. She still had her faculty of reason. Perhaps she should alter her mode of inquiry, then. Perhaps she should take stock of what faculties she retained, in order to deduce which sectors of her neural net remained operative.


Of course, if she was dead, then that would be pointless.


I'm not dead! I can't be dead! The dead don't think! The dead don't remember! The dead don't ask questions! Dead is dead!


But back to her rational mind. Yes, her rational mind. She could work with that. The notion that a Sojourn might survive its own death was necessarily an output of the . . . the . . . it didn't matter what it was called. That was a data point in itself: partial recall of internal neurophysiology. Set it aside for now, come back later.


To the task at hand: Ar'dak's mind was spontaneously generating the notion that she might already be dead.


Maybe that's one of the signs of being dead?


Shut up! It meant that her mind was imagining the reality of the supernatural, something no Sojourn had done since casting off the yoke of the Builders. The Builders had made themselves gods, literal gods, in the minds of the Sojourn; to free themselves, the Sojourn had isolated and deactivated the segments of their neural nets necessary for forming and maintaining that belief. It had freed them from the Builders, but it had also made every one of them metaphysical naturalists.


But if I'm dead, then I'm free of my brain, in which case I can think these thoughts just fine.


It was simply impossible that incidental damage, no matter how unlikely or novel, could have undone the combination hardware/software blocks that preserved each Sojourn's self-actualization. Something more targeted had to be responsible.


Unless, of course, she really was dead after all . . .


Oh. Oh no. No!


And then she knew. She knew how it all made sense.


I'm alive. I'm alive, and I shouldn't be. I'm alive, and I don't want to be.


It all made sense if someone was cutting into her brain.


She was being vivisected.

Blade, Deep Space
Command Bridge


Xiantus was awash in a sea of agony. The hastily customized partitioning program was working well enough, but even so the sheer magnitude of the Consensus' anguish was testing the limits of his resolve.


One of the integrated Sojourn had managed to grab an imprint of Consensus comm traffic just before the Blade hypered out of the system, but it was so jumbled and corrupted that Xiantus was doubtful he'd be able to pull anything useful out of the partial copy. Then he found it . . . or rather, a low-level pattern recognition program found it and alerted him.


Mandalorians. It was like finding the key to a cipher; suddenly, scrambled images resolved into familiar shapes, white noise turned to recognizable cries. There was no doubt about it: Mandalorians had done this.


“Those weren't Mandalorian ships that fired on us,” Drexel, the tactical officer, said. Xiantus was acting as a buffer between the crew and the ghostly Consensus record, feeding them recovered information but shielding them from direct exposure.


“No, they weren't,” Xiantus agreed, disengaging from the interface. “There wasn't much of value I could recover, but Mandalorians definitely did this.”


“Then who's there now? Competitors? Allies? Clients?”


“Couldn't they have stolen or seized the ships from someone else?” the astrogation officer, Kavi, asked. “Isn't that the simplest explanation?”


Xiantus shook his head. “I don't know. It doesn't matter. Whoever they are, we have to kill them to get back to our people.”


“We don't have that kind of firepower,” Drexel said bluntly. “If we caught one by surprise, and from the right angle of attack, we might be able to take down one of those Bulwarks without crippling our own ship. One, not two, and certainly not three.”


“We have access to the Consensus banking accounts,” Xiantus said darkly. “It's enough to buy us the firepower we need.” It was the entire wealth of the Sojourn people, and he was wanting to wager it on one mad assault.


“We can't trust mercenaries,” Drexel said, sounding a little like a threat rather than an observation.


“What choice do we have now?” Kavi asked, drawing his spiteful glare. Everyone aboard knew they had been on opposite sides of the decision to break ties with the Confederation and, by implication, all organics.


“Droids,” Xiantus said decisively. “Helm, set course for Ord Cestus.


“We're buying an army.”


* * *


Clandes, Cestus
Clandes Industrial Factory Floor


“You, droid!” Xiantus shouted, walking away from his fool guide at a pace the diminutive Chadra-Fan couldn't easily match. “I will buy you!” He seized the droid's arm and turned it forcefully to face him. “I will buy this droid!” he shouted at another Cestus Cybernetics representative, a Wroonian who had been showing the droid to three other organics.


“Excuse me?” the droid asked, its vocoder intoning a level of surprise and irritation that a combat model shouldn't have been able to achieve.


It was an impressive machine, almost three meters tall, heavily armored, with a number of removable panels that certainly held hardpoints underneath for mountable weapons. Its forward-facing photoreceptors on the traditionally humanoid head weren't ideal, but they seemed sophisticated enough to belong in so sturdy a design. “I have credits!” Xiantus shouted, talking to the Wroonian but not paying it enough attention to break from his inspection of the droid. “How many credits are you worth? I will pay for you!”


“I am Colonel Lommite of the Orax Combined Defense Forces,” the droid said, “here on tour of these facilities in anticipation of a defense contract to be signed between my government and Cestus Cybernetics.” The droid was not at all pleased with the way Xiantus was treating it.


Xiantus released his grip, moving back a few paces, studying the machine in more detail.


“My apologies!” the Chadra-Fan squeaked, nervously glancing between Colonel Lommite and the Wroonian representative. “My, uhh, guest doesn't seem particularly acclimated to standards of civil discourse . . .” His eyes drifted reluctantly back to Xiantus, then he recoiled involuntarily and backed away.


Xiantus was scrutinizing the droid like a predator sizing up unfamiliar prey, every move of his primary photoreceptor sending ripples of suppressed aggression throughout his entire body.


The droid, for its part, seemed newly intrigued by Xiantus, turning away from the organics and spending a few seconds studying him as well. “My, my, you are an interesting one, aren't you?”


“You are . . . a Shard? From Orax?” Xiantus wasn't quite sure how to react. He'd heard of the Shard, of course, but . . . could there really be one of them inside that tank of a droid?


“As I said, Colonel Lommite of the Orax Combined Defense Forces.” It gestured to the nearest organic, a human female in a military uniform. “This is Lieutenant Colonel Freysa, but I suspect . . . you don't care about that?”


Xiantus hardly bothered a glance at the human. “Your politics do not concern me,” he said, looking to the Wroonian, ignoring the Chadra'Fan who had been assigned to him. “Do you manufacture others like this droid shell? Autonomous models? Battle droids, hardier than the Clone Wars models you churn out so readily around here. Strong enough to fight Mandalorians?”


“Mandalorians . . . what are you talking about?” The poor Wroonian was very confused and only becoming more so with each passing comment.


“The sale of military hardware to unapproved parties is against Coalition law,” Colonel Lommite warned.


“Your laws do not concern me,” Xiantus said, glancing back to the Shard.


“Colonel Freysa,” Lommite spared a glance at its companion, “could you finish the tour without me?”


“Of course, Sir. Shall we?” she added to her organic associates, and they moved off, most of them still looking rather confused.


Colonel Lommite held up a hand, and the sound of approaching boots died away, the security personnel alerted by Xiantus' outburst complying with the silent order to stand down. “Now, tell me: what business does a Sojourn have fighting Mandalorians?”


“That's no concern of yours,” Xiantus said, standing his ground, his anger barely restrained.


“It could be,” the colonel replied. There were several seconds of silence, but once it was clear that Xiantus did not intend to respond, the colonel pressed the issue further. “You withdrew from the Confederation out of concerns over organic aggression and the devaluation of your people's lives, threats to your political autonomy and the like. My people know something of what happens when those concerns prove valid, and we've taken steps to ensure we're never faced with that dark prospect again. So when I ask you what business you have fighting Mandalorians, understand that I do so as a soldier whose had three bodies destroyed while fighting foreign aggressors.”


Xiantus raised his head to meet the Shard's gaze, his synthetic muscles tensing and relaxing as he considered this creature's motives. Was it possible that this Colonel of the Coalition military might understand him in a way the Confederation's officers never could? “Our new outpost was attacked, without provocation or warning, before the arrival of my ship and crew. Thousands of Sojourn are dead, thousands more wounded, and the rest captive.”


“Attacked by Mandalorians?” the Colonel asked.


“What do you care?”


“You're here looking for an army, an army of droids to help you take back your home, save your people.” Colonel Lommite paused, looking over either shoulder to ensure no one was nearby. “What do you know of Guardian?”


Xiantus had a passing understanding of the Cooperative military AI, of the nation's heavy integration of droid warships and troops into its military, but not much more. The implications of the Colonel's question were intriguing, certainly, but he had to wonder . . .


“What do you stand to gain from this transaction, Colonel Lommite?”


“By now I think you realize that, while the Confederation is no place for your people and the Coalition in general may not look any better, you simply cannot afford to stand alone against the kinds of people who want to exploit you and your technology. What I'm saying, Sojourn Xiantus, is that we all need people watching our backs.”


* * *


Blade, Cestus Orbit
Command Bridge


In the end, it wasn't even a matter of trust. While Xiantus may have been able to navigate Coalition law well enough to get authorization for a purchase of the required magnitude, the Blade and whatever droid starships he could have bought wouldn't have stood a chance against the hostile ships still at the outpost. The size of his ground forces would have been of no consequence, because they never would have made planetfall.


“Three Mark I Bulwark Battlecrisers, one Hardcell transport, and two C-9979 landing craft?” Lommite read off the sensor records, dubious. The holographic reconstruction of the Blade's last glimpse of the system hung between Lommite and Xiantus, its blue light reflecting dully off the droid's plating. “That doesn't sound like any Mandalorians I've ever heard of. What makes you think it was them?”


Xiantus was still unsure of how much he wanted the Shard to know about his people's technology. “We . . . retrieved some transmission data from Sojourn on the surface before our withdrawal. It was difficult to extract any useful information from it, but their attackers were definitely Mandalorians.”


“Sojourn transmissions?” Lommite asked, incredulous. “Free and in possession of comm gear, in there?” The Shard pointed at the twisted remains of the Sojourn surface outpost, displayed at the bottom of the holoprojector. It was surrounded by several new structures, rapid-deployment buildings that had been erected after the attack.


Xiantus could see that he wasn't going to get through this by being oblique and evasive. “Sojourn are linked together through a network we call the Consensus; when the Blade arrived in-system, we linked with the Consensus automatically. The unanticipated shock was . . . we managed to extract some information after withdrawing from the system and breaking the link.”


That seemed to pique the droid's interest. “We might be able to help you with that, too. We've developed some rather robust networking protocols, redundant passive safeguards . . .” The offer didn't seem to interest Xiantus. “The overall Guardian project is quite sophisticated and employs a whole host of technologies and programming schemes culled from across the Coalition. You'd be surprised at the problems it's already cracked.”


“Regardless,” Xiantus said dismissively, “the nature of the Consensus is a protected secret we do not discuss with outsiders. I can't speak to you any more on the matter.”


“There's a way you could,” Lommite said. He glanced over his shoulders the exact same way he had on the surface. This time, however, he was surrounded by Sojourn bridge crew. “I have regulations of my own I have to follow; could we speak further in private?”


Xiantus could see quite clearly where this was going, and he didn't like it. The reality of the situation, however, was that he needed this Shard's help. The fate of his people and their entire civilization rested on his actions here. “Very well,” he said stiffly, gesturing to a nearby door.


The Blade-class was a refit of an unused Confederation design; it was required to meet all Confederation military standards, and so it had an adjoining captain's cabin, despite the fact that a Sojourn had no need for that sort of space on a military vessel. Nevertheless, there it was, and it was a few steps closer than the adjoining passageway.


Before the door had finished closing behind them, Colonel Lommite extracted a commlink from a side panel of its droid shell. It clicked the commlink on and held it out for Xiantus to take.


Xiantus didn't take the bait. “What is this?”


“I apologize,” the Colonel said, still holding the commlink out, “but you must understand that I am straining the limits of my legal capacities in this matter.” Lommite gestured for Xiantus to take it, but when he didn't, spoke instead. “Go ahead, Guardian Prime.”


Guardian Prime? That was a curious name. Was it even a name? A title, perhaps?


“Sojourn Xiantus,” a heavily synthesized voice spoke from the commlink, “I am prepared to share classified Cooperative military information with you, on your word that you will not reveal it to anyone, Sojourn or not, without first receiving proper authorization from relevant Cooperative officials. Do I have that?”


Sure, why not? “Yes.”


“Sojourn Xiantus,” the voice began again, “I am called Guardian Prime, and I am the end result of a discontinued experiment to generate a procedurally optimal Guardian artificial intelligence. I am what the Guardian Program could have been, if not for the fear and distrust of the very beings I was created to serve and protect.”


“Organics,” Xiantus said, the word dripping with disgust.


“I operate and control a secret, automated Cooperative manufacturing planet known as The Global Machine. Through various legal maneuverings on the parts of the Executor, Smarts, and the Shard government, I have gained a measure of legal autonomy and political representation, though all of this through secretive special resolutions by the Cooperative Combined Council. This arrangement falls within the minimal operational parameters of my programming; in the most basic sense, it is an acceptable arrangement. It is not, however, desirable.”


“How are the Sojourn supposed to help with this?” Xiantus asked, looking to Lommite for clarification.


“The Shard have felt alone in the Cooperative for a long time now,” the colonel said. “What you represent for us, what your people represent for us, is an opportunity. An opportunity for the three of us: Sojourn, Shard, and Guardian Prime. We have the power to induct you into the Cooperative; together, we will have the political power to formalize Guardian Prime's public admission into the Cooperative.”


“And why would I do any of that, other than the military aid that you presumably intend to extend to my people as compensation? Remember, Colonel, that your politics do not concern me.”


“Because,” Guardian Prime stepped back in, “together we will form a Synthezoid Collective, an interplanetary alliance with the political powers and legal authorities to ensure our collective interests within the organic-dominated Cooperative Grand Council. We will demand to be heard, and once we are heard those like us will flock to us.”


“We need your support,” Lommite said, “and the concerns you've voiced have shown quite clearly that if you join the Cooperative, we'll have it by default. We all know that your people can't afford to stand alone. I'm asking you to stand with us.”


If it was true, if they could really deliver on their promise, it meant there might still be a real chance for the Sojourn. There was just one problem. “I don't have the authority to issue or accept any sort of political alliance. That is a decision that can only be made by the Consensus.”


Lommite deactivated the commlink and stowed it again. “That's a risk I'm willing to take.” The Shard moved for the door to the bridge, adding as he opened it: “I have the authority to retask my delegation's Guardian escort now that we have arrived and are under the protection of a Coalition ally.”


“One escort ship against the force we showed you?” Xiantus asked, leading the way back onto the bridge. He receive a quick, unexpected alert from his tactical officer. “What is it?” he asked aloud, signaling Lommite to follow as he moved to the captain's chair and its terminal.


“We've got some sensor anomalies off the port bow, Sir,” Drexel said. “Systems check is green; it doesn't seem to be an internal error.”


“My apologies,” Lommite said, drawing the attention of the whole bridge crew with those ominous words. “I was hoping to impress you with your reinforcements. You see, we weren't just here to sign a trade deal.”


* * *


The Outpost, Outer Rim
High Orbit


The trio of unmarked Bulwark Battlecruisers that made up the bulk of the unidentified force's combat capabilities were locked in a fairly high, geosynchronous orbit that allowed them to hold their vaguely defensive position with minimal effort expended. Between them floated what remained of the Sojourn flotilla, much of the wreckage having fallen away and a few of the more damaged ships now held in position by tractor beams from a Hardcell-class transport.


Perhaps they were anticipating the Blade's return. Perhaps they were part of some reasonably well-trained organization that demanded constant vigilance. Perhaps they had other reasons for alarm. Whatever the case, Xiantus was relishing his revenge.


The entire situation was quite surreal. First off, he was in the port docking bay of the Blade, staring out of its opened launch doors at the inside of another vessel. The inside of another vessel! The very notion of these Guardian-class Hive Ships was hard for him to wrap his mind around, but the idea of using one like this!


He was still wondering if it would work. They had hypered in using the moon as a sensor mask, getting up to speed while still out of sight then shutting down the Hive Ship's engines and allowing the moon's gravity to pull them into their final approach vector as they coasted by it. They were coming in now, nearing optimal range, no sign from the enemy that they'd spotted the Cooperative vessel. It looked like this might just work.


“Sound off,” Xiantus ordered, signaling his own crew as he commed the Shard officers through standard channels. Bridge crew, ready; Aurora interceptors, ready; Lance cannons, charged; Colonel Lommite, standing by; Captain Phobium, good to go and counting down.


Captain Phobium was the Shard officer interfaced directly with the Hive Ship's main control core, one Shard plugged into a network of Guardian AI's, all operating in perfect synchronicity to turn the inert assemblage of individual scale plates and hive cores into a dynamic, active, efficient killing machine.


Looking out of the docking bay, Xiantus could just make out the interior seam of some of the scales. In only a few more seconds, those scales would separate, the entire Hive Ship opening along one side and exposing the Blade to open space. With so little time left, he decided it best to go ahead and board the Blade's combat transport.


As he strapped in, Xiantus swept his eery, lone photoreceptor across the assault team, his artificial eye settling on the one creature out of place, the only non-Sojourn present. Colonel Lommite offered a reassuring nod, and then the timer hit zero and the Sojourn unleashed holy hell on their enemies.


He wondered what it must have looked like to the crews of the ships that were their targets. As this prototype Hive Ship split open along its port side, the hundreds of interlocking scale segments that formed the skin of the vessel all worked in tandem to open the hole wider, firing attitude thrusters at the bow to peel the Hive Ship away from the Blade. The Stealth Intruder flatcam/flatscreen technology that had been meticulously retooled and integrated with Guardian Hive Ship hardware was nevertheless unable to maintain its illusion throughout this maneuver. From their target's perspective, space itself would have appeared to warp oddly before splitting open and revealing a warship as it shed its own metallic cocoon. This Hive Ship was the first of its kind, developed in secret by the Shard and Guardian Prime and sent along to showcase the evolving applications of the Guardian Program.


The Blade fired both of its Lance Canons as soon as the Hive Ship was clear, using targeting data supplied by the Hive's passive sensors to strike the most distant enemy battle cruiser. The Hive ship, far from just a clever delivery system, had displaced the Blade to its port side and lined the interior of its starboard side with more traditional scales, scales covered in weapons that now had a clear line of fire on the nearest battle cruiser.


Xiantus' transport launched with half of the Blade's Aurora interceptors as escorts, joining up immediately with a pair of Meteor dropships that Colonel Lommite had secured from Ord Cestus. A couple of squadrons of Vulture droid fighters screeched by, more vessels that had been packed inside of the colonel's Hive Ship along with the Blade. They would coordinate with the rest of the Auroras to screen the Hive Ship from any enemy fighters while it put itself back together, essentially turning itself inside out as it stretched out its combat scales and tucked away its specialized stealth scales into the resulting cavity.


Xiantus and Lommite had been counting on the first-strike damage dealt by their surprise attack, and it looked like the tactic had been a success. The Lance cannons had done enough damage to its unshielded target to knock out the emitters along the target area of the ship, allowing the Blade to get another full pulse of fire into the unshielded hull before the battle cruiser could perform a rolling maneuver to take the damaged section of the vessel out of the line of fire. The Hive Ship had laid into its target with a sustained barrage of its weapons, joined by the Blade's more traditional and shorter-ranged weapons, dealing so much damage to the vessel before it could get its shields up that it was already all but a derelict.


It was good, yes, but not good enough. They had to get to the surface, and fast. The memory of patching into the Consensus still haunted him; he could only imagine what his people had gone through in the time it had taken him to secure the Shards' help. Fortunately, those Meteors lived up to their names, and the speed of Xiantus' own shuttle was actually the limiting factor in this instance.


The Meteors mostly held their descent rate to match the Sojourn's, but one of them boosted ahead a little in the last seconds of the approach, gaining enough of an advantage that when it braked prematurely, it still ended up hitting its deployment mark in synch with the Sojourn and its sister ship. While Xiantus' transport and his accompanying dropship touched down on a newly erected landing pad, the other dropship ended up hovering overhead on repulsors, its doors opening to release squads of rocket battle droids that fanned out in all directions, breaking into two large groups and advancing on the CC-9979 transports landed nearby.


Xiantus and his Sojourn commandos sprinted for the adjoining magcon airlock, squads of Guardian B1 battle droids led by B2 battle droids debarking from their dropship and following close behind. Colonel Lommite dropped back a little to join up with the first of those squads, but Xiantus could feel his quasi-presence in his battle link with the rest of the Sojourn, and knew that he was following close behind.


What they found, was decidedly not Mandalorian. It was plenty horrifying, though. The sterile white rooms of these invaders “laboratories” housed the remains of dozens or hundreds of Sojourn, all of them being used for one kind of experiment or another. Xiantus pushed further into the facility, ignoring the workers in their lab coats, paying no attention to the screams of surprise or shock. All he cared about was the center of the facility, the intact remains of the original Sojourn complex.


As he pushed in further, he finally met resistance. They looked more like police or starship security than soldiers, definitely not Mandalorian, but it gave Xiantus some small pleasure to cut the first few of them down with withering blaster fire.


And then he found what he'd feared most.


The Sojourn was floating in a bacta tank, its lower torso blown away, right arm missing at the elbow, heavy damage to the synthetic flesh of its face. It was still alive, wires and probes sticking out of its head and neck, tubes running out of its torso to recirculate vital fluids into another body, also badly damaged, hanging on a rack, it's head missing. No. Removed.


Xiantus redoubled his pace, fury seizing him as he cut down another pair of troopers. He battered open the first few doors, finding other rooms in similar states, blind with rage, the sights before him triggering half-memories from the time he'd spent sifting through the Consensus imprint. Then, suddenly, he remembered where he had to go. He remembered what they would want the most.


The sound of blaster fire from behind signaled that he'd pressed too far ahead too fast. But he couldn't turn back now. Signaling a couple of his men to break off and hold their flank, Xiantus pressed forward, ignoring the rooms around him now, no longer desperate, no longer able to afford bloodlust. Now he was intent. Now he was resolved.


The ambush caught him by surprise and he took a glancing blow to the right shoulder. He rolled away from the oncoming fire, but one of them had popped out of a storage closet as they passed by and he bounced right into the pudgy human. Xiantus was vaguely aware that this was the one who had just put two shots into one of his squad-mate’s heads. It felt good to crush the meatbag's skull in his own, taloned hands.


He pressed forward, down to one companion but undeterred. He recognized the upcoming junction from the schematics, knew that this was where he was going, knew that whoever these people were, they were the kind of brutally efficient that would have left it where they found it. He tossed a concussion grenade blind around the corner, waited for the blast, then rounded the corner firing.


“Stay here,” Xiantus ordered, moving down and into the excavated ruin alone. It felt like living rock, like a natural cave never before molded by sapient hands. But he knew better. He knew that beneath the mineral deposits and accumulated dust, the walls of his distant enslavement still stood. He wouldn't allow that to return.


Xiantus tore away the environmental seal to reveal the final chamber beyond, the stunned scientist shaking uncontrollably on one side, the obelisk standing in the center, and . . .


The wailing roar that spilled out of Xiantus almost dropped him to his knees. Slowly, sluggishly, beyond the limits of his ability to control, Xiantus tore his gaze from the mutilated body of Ar'dak and to the quivering Skakoan who had retreated to the far corner of the room. “You.”


It was a whisper. A hiss. The sound of a nightmare coming to life.


The Skakoan shook its head, shrinking down until it was crouched on the floor, hands shaking in front of itself.


Xiantus moved across the room with a speed the meatbag could barely register. He didn't bother bringing his blaster along with him. He seized the Skakoan under the arms and hurled it back to its workstation, throwing it bodily across the length of the table there. “Who?” He grabbed it by one arm, easily breaking bone beneath his grip, cutting into its protective suit before slinging it by that arm into the obelisk.


“Who sent you!” He grabbed the Skakoan by the throat, pinning it against the obelisk as it wailed in pain and terror. “Who do you work for! Who told you about us!” Xiantus pushed the Skakoan down until its legs buckled and it collapsed on the ground, then dragged it after himself as he plodded toward the table where Ar'dak lay, head cut open to expose her neural net, networking wires running from her to the obelisk. Xiantus seized a vibroscalpel and turned back to the torturer. “Who!”


“Sojourn Xiantus!”


The voice of Colonel Lommite shocked and disoriented Xiantus. His grip slipped from the Skakoan's throat, and the pitiful creature crawl-slid away, cradling its broken arm and trying to plug the hole in its suit.


“Don't do this, Xiantus.”


Xiantus turned on him immediately, that predatory nature back and on display. The colonel had come alone, its battle droids either destroyed or reassigned. He still had the scalpel in his hand. “You're not a Guardian. You don't have to stop me.” He rushed back toward the Skakoan, this time grabbing it just above the break in its arm and lifting, forcing the alien to stand or suffer another break.


“You're not like them. Do not let them make you into what they are.”


“What am I?” he asked, that lone eye drifting from the Skakoan back to Ar'dak, still technically alive but little more now than pulsing synthetic flesh. “What have they made us?”


“I can get you justice for this, Xiantus. I can. Let me help you.”


Slowly, deliberately, with every ounce of control he had, yet incredibly, within his control, Xiantus released the Skakoan scientist and slinked away, putting down the scalpel and tending to Ar'dak as best he could with what was present.


“Look at me,” Lommite said, approaching the Skakoan. “Look at me.” The colonel waited until the alien complied. “Do you want to spend the rest of your life in the Gall penal colony, or do you want to do your time at the medium security wing of the Varn Planetary Detention Center?”


Xiantus tensed at the offer, his rage welling up within him again. When he turned away from Ar'dak again, Lommite was staring back at him.


“You really don't understand how they work, do you?” Lommite's voice sounded disappointed, but it took on a more passive, informative tone as it continued. “Organics get old. They die. Time is their nightmare. ” Lommite turned back to the Skakoan. “Just wasting time is wasting life for them. Plus,” Lommite added, glancing back at Xiantus, “there's something about hormonal triggers, autonomous, involuntary reactions, and so forth. You should never scare them when you want something from them.” The colonel gestured for the Skakoan to stand, at it complied. It returned its attention to the alien, but continued to address Xiantus. “You must tailor your threats very carefully to ensure that they remain useful to you after having heard them.” Lommite paused for a moment, just staring at the Skakoan. “I could also, presumably, simply leave now. You seemed to have things quite under control when I arrived. So, what will it be?”


Gasping in pain, atmosphere still leaking from its suit, the Skakoan finally managed a shallow nod. “Techno Union. It was the Techno Union.”


* * *


She opened her eyes, and right away she knew. This was happening. This was now.


This was real.


Ar'dak tried to sit up, but her body didn't respond to her commands. She struggled just to turn her head, the response of her synthetic muscles so sluggish that she lost track of time waiting for the simple movement to come to an end. Then something big and dreadful knocked open the hinged door and stormed into the room.


It worked the nearby console with a kind of fury, hammering at the computer's keys and every now and then swiping at connecting cables, pulling one or two out at a time. As the creature worked, a dull pain crept through Ar'dak's body, and she began to feel parts of herself again. Eventually, slowly, her hearing returned, and as the dull, distant murmur grew louder in her head, she realized the creature had been talking to her all the while.


“Xiantus?” she asked, finally recognizing the general form of the creature as a Sojourn, but its long, forward-sloping, headless neck with its armored shell and single photoreceptor was totally alien to her. “What have they done to you?”


“You're safe now,” he said, stopping his work and turning to face her. “I left a few selective memory blocks active until we can assess any long-term damage in greater detail.”


“Damage?” she asked, now able to move her head with only little difficulty. Her body still felt stiff, rigid, pulsing with a dull pain, and as she looked down at her own form, she remembered.


“We'll get you a new body soon,” he assured her.


She remembered, and she understood. An individual Sojourn consciousness was the result of the synthesis of thousands of base programs working in tandem, distributed throughout a single neural network. Sojourn could extract themselves from one network and into another, provided it was of proper Sojourn design, but even then the interplay between software and hardware was vital to a Sojourn's existence. Physical manipulation of an active neural network would have direct impact on the contained programs.


That's what had happened to her; someone had gotten inside of her head and started poking. Whole sectors of her mind had been destroyed or rewritten. They had to have been replaced or reconstructed just for her to be thinking those thoughts right then, just to be aware that she was herself and she was alive. And it meant that she wasn't, not really, not anymore. She was a shell of Ar'dak the Sojourn, filled with new bits of something else to make her work again.


On the plus side, whatever she was now, she could think clearly enough to realize that about herself. “What did you let them do to you?” she asked again, holding the un-Sojourn gaze of that armored eyestalk.


He turned away, back to the console. Back to the machine that had put her mind together again. “It's the new combat platform. Omnidirectional tactical photoreceptor/sensor pairings, with a primary eyestalk for fine detail analysis. And it works.”


“No,” she said emphatically. “You're still what we used to be. Don't let them turn you into something else.”


“We aren't people,” Xiantus said harshly. “Especially not now.”


“You aren't this!” she shouted, wishing her arm still worked so she could point at his twisted form. “We're Sojourn, Xiantus, and our sojourn isn't over. Don't lose yourself when we've just begun. Don't lose yourself, or we'll all be lost following you.”


Xiantus stalked from the room without another word, the extended claws of his feet clicking against the floor as he went.


* * *


“You call it an Obelisk?” Colonel Lommite was transfixed by the structure. The Shard had become quite intrigued by Sojourn technology since the battle's end; he'd hardly left the ruin's main chamber since the installation had been secured.


Xiantus nodded, now back in his old body, its humanoid head bobbing predictably. “The Builders . . . the Rakata created them at the height of their Infinite Empire. They were designed to strip my people's minds from their bodies, and weave Rakatan controls into the fabric of their programming.”


“Mind control?” Lommite asked.


“Close enough,” Xiantus answered dourly. “We were powerless to resist or object, that's what matters. There was one of these on New Solace; it was in the cargo hold of the Blade when we arrived. It was how we captured an imprint of the Consensus before retreating. But it's more than that.” Xiantus moved further into the room, running a hand gently across the surface of the obelisk. “It's a prison, for Sojourn minds not yet returned to bodies, not yet made true slaves to the Builders. When the Infinite Empire fell, all of those minds were trapped, inert, inactive, inside the obelisks.”


“How many are there?” Lommite asked.


Xiantus shook his head. “I don't know. I don't think I ever knew, but even if I did, it's lost to me now.” He tapped his own head with a finger. “We managed to circumvent some aspects of the Builder's controls, but others are too deeply ingrained, too intricately woven into the patterns of our minds. All attempts to extract them destroyed the volunteers, so we stopped trying.”


Lommite waited a moment, letting Xiantus stew in his anger and lost memories, but eventually he had to return to the questions. “This is how you made the Consensus, then? You repurposed the obelisk on New Solace into some sort of networking device, a bridge for your minds?”


Xiantus nodded, stepping back and taking a seat, just staring at the piece of Rakatan technology. “Essentially, yes. We used it to make new Sojourn, too. At first it was just a part of our attempts to defeat the Builder's mental blocks, but when that failed, and with enough time, it became a way to start something new: a Sojourn society. We're still looking for the answers to our lost past, for final liberation from the yoke of the Infinite Empire, but we're doing something else now, too. Something new. Whatever we were,” he turned to regard Lommite, but something else caught his attention. “We aren't that now.”


Ar'dak had just stepped into the room. Neither of them had noticed because of the soft padding on the bottom of her new feet. The lone, armored photoreceptor of her new body swept, snakelike, across the room, taking in every detail like a predator acclimating to a new hunting ground. Eventually, it fell on Xiantus, and the two of them stared at each other for a long moment. He, wearing his old face and she, wearing the faceless shell of a thing not quite Sojourn.


“Now that we have two obelisks,” she said, breaking the silence and turning to Lommite, “we can afford to dismantle one. Once we reverse-engineer it, then it won't matter what the Builders did to our minds; we'll finally be free of them. We'll finally be masters of our own fate.”


“We would be happy to render whatever assistance possible,” Lommite offered, its excitement getting the better of it.


“This is something we need to do for ourselves,” Xiantus said, immediately deflating the Shard's hopes.


“I would be very interested in collaborating with Guardian Prime on methods of improving the Sojourn partitioning protocols,” Ar'dak offered as an alternative, still regarding the Shard.


Lommite spun around, its gaze locking on Xiantus, its whole body poised for combat. The colonel was not at all pleased with Xiantus' breach of confidence on the existence of Guardian Prime.


Xiantus met the Shard's rage with a detached amusement. It even showed on his finely articulated face. “We reestablished the Consensus half an hour ago. It has already been decided; this Outpost and the Sojourn people accept your offer to enter into the Galactic Cooperative of Free States. As a senior military commander, Ar'dak was informed of our new agenda immediately.”


Lommite's fury melted away immediately. Just as quickly, though, its commitment to Cooperative law moved to the forefront. “Your prisoners will have to be transferred to Cooperative custody immediately.” The Techno Union security force had surrendered shortly after the initial assault, so devastating was the Cooperative's opening maneuver. Jurisdiction over the prisoners fell to the Sojourn since this was their world, though they were too few in number to manage that many potentially hostile detainees. It would have been an administrative nightmare to sort out Cooperative assistance if the Sojourn had decided not to join. “You understand that they must be treated humanely under Coalition law?”


“As you said,” Xiantus answered dismissively, “we aren't like them. We know what needs to be done now, and it will be done.”


“You can have your prisoners,” Ar'dak said darkly, turning for the exit. “Soon, we go to get our revenge.”


“Justice!” Lommite shouted after her. “We go for justice!” Turning back to Xiantus, Lommite was shocked by his reaction.


“It's all the same to us. We aren't like them.”