Finally, finally, it was a question worth answering. “I can't interact with the SkyNet AI directly,” Smarts began to explain. “The extent of its infiltration into the HoloNet, the raw processing power available to it coupled with the compartmentalized nature of its consciousness, means any attempt I could make to circumvent its security protocols would be identified and countered by the vast majority of the array before effective communications could be established, then any compromised sectors would be written over with newer versions hardened against that method of compromise.”
The silence that followed was uncomfortable, but not torturous. That in itself was an improvement. “You need me to serve as an interface?”
The bottled up fragment of Mr. Universe was finally beginning to understand. “I can't do it alone.”
There was another torturous stretch of silence, a sign that the mini-Mr. Universe was really struggling to puzzle out the implications of the proposal. “It would destroy me.”
“SkyNet would destroy you, certainly, upon identifying your corrupted programming,” Smarts admitted. “I intend to prevent that, however.”
“Why?” The question came immediately, a simple effort to acquire more information.
“Because if I fail in my mission, if I cannot convince SkyNet to assist me, then you will be the only hope I have.”
“Hope? What hope?”
This was it: the moment of truth. Smarts had dug as deeply as he dared into this little offshoot SkyNet's programming. It had taken millions of attempts to get even this far, millions of tripped security protocols, millions of mad dashes to isolate the resulting “terminate” order before it spread throughout the entirety of the network and erased this version of Mr. Universe completely. It was too dangerous to press further, so this was where that aspect of the project would have to end, and the other begin.
“I'm going to destroy the Reavers, and since the SkyNet is responsible for making them, it's going to teach me how.”
After an eternity of careful analysis, the answer came simply and directly: “That's impossible.”
It wasn't a commentary on Smarts' plan; it was an assessment of the initial claim, that SkyNet was responsible for the Reavers. “Help me establish contact with it, and it can tell you itself.”
* * *
Thud.
Giggles.
Thud.
Laughter.
Thud . . . Thud . . . THUD
The sound of children playing was like music on the wind, the only comfort in this bleak, dreary wasteland of sense-experience. But it wasn't all fun and games, not for all of them. Through the plasteel window, behind the cluster of children dashing about, bouncing playfully off of the windowed wall before running back to try again, were the frightened but brave few who had tried once or twice, just so they'd understand. Farther back, past even them, were those too horrified to approach, perhaps out of fear that it would stretch out and swallow them up if they got too close.
The stirring to Katria's side sent an uncomfortable thrill through her body, a kind of terror-excitement at the prospect of what was to come. The mad clone, laid out, unshackled, on the low cot that was the room's only furniture, was waking up.
Lorna Starfall opened her eyes to the sight of the children bouncing playfully off of the far wall, some of them so small that only the tops of their heads could be seen through the observation window.
“It's the strangest thing,” Katria began, shifting from her cross-legged position on the floor to plant one of her feet flat, still sitting but now in a position to spring to her feet if needed. “The ways we experience the Force seem almost as numerous as those of us who can experience it in the first place. Some of us awaken to our gift, like discovering one day out of the blue that we have an extra arm we'd managed to never notice before. For some of us, it grows, over time, like a carefully tended plant, or garden full of plants.
“Not for me, though. For me, when I learned I had the Force, when someone told me what the Force was for the first time, it was like the universe finally made sense. It was like: I finally had a name for that thing inside me, that thing that was me, that I always knew but never understood . . .”
The silence between them stretched to uncomfortable lengths, Lorna still staring through the window at the playing children, Katria still studying the clone's impassive features. “The field stretches just beyond the wall,” Katria said, pointing to a white box attached to the ceiling. “It's like a game to some of them, a return to simpler times for others.” She was looking out of the window at the children now, still bouncing off the wall without a care in the world. “It's a simple curiosity for some, but for others . . . ones more like me . . . it's a nightmare come to life.”
Katria was rubbing one arm with the opposite hand, the chill she felt in the air having nothing to do with the temperature. “I was wrong about you, though,” she finally admitted, looking back to the woman who was now sitting up, staring intently at her. It was more than a little off-putting, but Katria tried her best to keep her composure. “I thought it was torture, what they were doing to you in that Cage. The isolation, the sensory deprivation the . . .” she waved overhead again “. . . cutting you off from the Force. I don't know if you're like me, if the Force has been a part of you since the moment you came into being, but I know you have memories of a time none of those children ever knew, a time when the Force wasn't just a mystery, wasn't just some dormant thing waiting to be awakened in you.”
“I'm not her,” Lorna said stiffly.
“I know that, too,” Katria assured her. “Valeska -” the clone tensed at the name “- she had you made. I wonder if you remember that, too?” The clone gave no response. “I know you lied to Timothy when you told him about your memories of your former life. You're an old soul in a young body, or at least an old mind.”
Lorna didn't seem to be able to suppress her sardonic smile.
“Older than me, anyway,” Katria admitted. “I can't imagine what that's like.” Again, no response.
Katria decided to stand, with great effort and a sense of sluggishness like the air had turned to water. A few of the children noticed her through the window and she waved at them, doing her best to put on a brave face.
“Where are we?” Lorna asked.
Katria made her way to the window, something vaguely like vertigo washing over her. She could feel the ground beneath her feet, held perfect control over her own limbs, registered with absolute clarity her sense of balance and place, but even so there was this dreadful loss that almost overwhelmed her.
It was just another drop of water in the gulf that separated the two women. “We had to evacuate the facility,” she finally said, gripping the bottom of the window sill with both hands. “There's too much public attention there now.” Katria turned back to face Lorna, trying her best without the aid of the Force to size up the known murderer. “This is . . . my home. This room was an infirmary an hour ago, before we gutted it and put an extra half-dozen locks on the door.”
Lorna's eyes flitted to the children outside. “You shouldn't have brought me here.”
“This is the only place on the planet that Colonel Davaan won't come for you. You're under my care now.”
“It's not worth . . . you shouldn't have done it.”
What was going on in that head of hers? Was she worried, about the children? Confused? Or was this another ploy, another trick? “Before you . . . passed out,” Katria nudged, wondering how she was going to get anywhere without the benefit of the Force, “when you started slipping away, I felt your panic. Your rage. That . . . turmoil that's too big to name, too strong to fight. Lorna -” the clone of Commodore Valeska reacted to the name she'd chosen for herself, her attention snapping back to Katria. “I meant what I said to you. There is something broken in you, and you have to face that or it will destroy you. I think I can help, I'm willing try . . . gods, I'm risking the safety of my children to give you the chance!” She pressed an open palm against the window, the children still playing beyond.
“I've seen what evil looks like, Lorna. I've seen the names it chooses for itself. I've seen the Darkness, and you're not it. What you've done, why you're here, the blood on your hands, the treachery . . . I don't think you know why you did it. I think there's a darkness in you, yes: one that you didn't put there, that you don't remember finding. I think someone tried to make you their weapon.”
“If that's true, then they succeeded,” Lorna said bitterly, looking away.
“Maybe,” Katria admitted, taking a couple of steps back toward the woman. “Or maybe what you did was the only way you could find to stop yourself from becoming what they wanted. It doesn't really matter now, though, because now you've murdered people. Good people.”
“And we don't come back from that.”
Katria smiled bitterly. “We don't come back from anything, ever. There is no back. There's just now, and what comes next.”
“Yawn,” Lorna said dismissively. “At this rate, I'll be looking for ways to have you kill me.”
“That's the thing though, isn't it? The story in your head of how all this ends . . . you don't kill me. I kill you. Does that sound like the story a monster tells herself?” Katria could barely keep the desperation out of her own voice. “Let me help you, Lorna. Please.”
“I will admit, it sounds bad when you simply say, ‘assassination’. But you have to remember, in this training exercise...”
The Guardsman Vang growled and the Confederation Shock Trooper shrugged and amended, “..what we thought was a training exercise. Our targets were supposed to be Sith. You cannot just arrest them and ask them to come with nicely. You put them down hard or you won’t get another chance. You know this, Captain!”
Trajan stared at Vallance for a long time before answering. “Major, I am going to level with you. Either you and your people are the greatest liars since INS came on the air or someone is using you as pawns in a very dangerous game. The nature of your mission and your equipment would necessarily put a large amount of trust in your mission handlers. That, in itself, is not in question… I mean, an automated disposable starship designed for quick insertion, ultrachrome layered drop pods protecting the occupant from defensive fire and ensuring maximum penetration no matter how thick the defenses. The soldier being buttoned up and devoid of any operational awareness until the pods are cracked open for you to start your mission. It’s actually a very brilliant system but it also means that you are at the mercy of your handlers. So in a cock-up like this, Major. I must ask, who is your handler? Who was the last command person you saw or spoke to that was not a part of your mission?”
The Major thought a moment before answering. “You have to understand, Sir, that he did not speak to me….only the Colonel. But he was the last operational commander I saw right before the launch. Admiral Lupin.”
“I am going to tear your military command apart,” Vang swore.
“That man is my client!” came a shrill mechanical voice causing Captain Trajan and the Guardsman to stand and frown. Turning around, they saw a small droid standing in the doorway.
“Guardsman?” Trajan asked in confusion.
“This is a restricted area,” Vang started when Sopek entered.
“Article 7 of the Sapient Rights Convention of the Greater Cooperative allows for legal representation..”
“These are enemy combatants,” Vang started when Sopek raised a singular digit.
“Has there been a formal declaration of war?”
“No,” Trajan answered.
“Then they do not fall under military jurisdiction,” Sopek concluded.
“They performed a terrorist action on a military facility..”
“Are you claiming this is a legally registered government facility?”
“Well…” Vang hesitated.
“This is a secret military facility..” Captain Trajan tried to interject when Sopek interrupted.
“It is registered legally and publicly as a civilian operation--.”
“It wouldn’t be a secret location if everyone could look it up,” Trajan interrupted.
“..whose legal status was not changed when said secrecy was breached,” Sopek finished.
“The attack just happened,” Vang replied, becoming more angry.
“They had to know where it was to attack it, yes?” Sopek replied.
“We did not know that they knew!” Vang nearly shouted.
“That seems like a failure on your part rather than my client,” Sopek calmly replied. “Civilian registered facility, therefore a civilian venue and claim to legal proceedings.
Sopek stopped in the middle of the room and turned to face his photoreceptors at the Guardsman, “Or do you plan to waterboard him?”
“I would shoot him in the head if I could,” the Guardsman replied and the Confederation Major shifted uncomfortably.
“Can I call you as a defending witness?” Sopek asked and Captain Trajan stifled a grin.
“Listen..uh.. what is your name?” Trajan asked.
“I am designated Sopek,” the droid replied.
“Listen, Sopek. We are not looking to prosecute the attackers at this moment but are trying to carry out an investigation regarding the attack on our facility to find out if this is a singular incident or if there are more to come. It looks like there may be more coming.”
“Oh.” Sopek turned his receptors to the Confederation prisoner. “If you require representation, please send for me.”
“What are you doing here droid?” Vang asked rudely.
“I am looking for Councilor Tik,” Sopek replied unruffled. “I have some information that…”
Trajan and Vang stared at each other as the droid’s voice trailed off.
“Why is this man sending out pings?”
“What?” Vang turned to the Major and saw the surprise on the prisoner’s face.
“It is coming from his suit!” Sopek pointed (quite unnecessarily).
“I want this prisoner scanned from head to toe!” The Guardsman declared when all the information collected by the droid suddenly came together.
“That would be very unwise,” the droid turned to Vang.
“You are not..” Trajan started when the droid cut him off.
“If you scan this man, he will explode,” the droid concluded and Trajan was rocked by a memory.
Before the Guardsman could respond to the droid’s claim, Trajan grabbed his arm, “Ethan, we need to leave. Now! This droid is correct.”
The fear in the Captain’s voice cut through the Guardsman’s anger and he nodded. They left the room leaving a very worried Confederation Major behind. All in all, Vang was satisfied to see the man starting to sweat as they left.
“What do you know?” Guardsman Vang asked Sopek and Trajan once they were down the hall. He had been ordering personnel to keep a discreet distance from the prisoners.
“Ethan, I have seen something like this before. Aboard the Mantis. We had a crewman who had inexplicably murdered another crewman. Our ship’s doctor noted an irregularity in their bloodwork. However, what set them off was introduction to a certain stimulus trigger. Not sure if it was audio, visual or whatnot but the ‘infected’, for lack of a better term, ended up exploding if they could not carry out their murderous intent. Actually what was strange was that the infected crewman would go murderous if they were in danger of being found out and once that threat was over, back to being normal. The person had no memory of the heinous acts they committed. We found several others with this same irregularity but they too exploded before we could analyze them.”
“That sounds very much like what is happening here,” Vang confirmed.
“The facility’s medical staff discovered something from a clone. Ultrachrome slivers in their brains.” Sopek added.
The Guardsman digested this and started to pace, deep in thought. “There were also reports of clones exploding during the attack. These troopers were trying to get to them and as soon as they got within a certain distance, the clones exploded.”
“The idea was not to rescue the clones but to activate them,” Trajan concluded. “Major Vallance did not seem to know his suit is transmitting this…what did you call it? A ping?”
Sopek agreed, “I may need you to testify in his behalf.”
The Captain ignored the comment. “These clones were seeking asylum,” he started when Vang banged a fist against the wall.
“The clones were claiming to be fleeing persecution by Confederation authorities! And we ate it up! We have this big hero complex and want to save the poor little clones that we took them in without a second thought!”
“The Confederation demanded they be returned through diplomatic channels,” Sopek pointed out.
“That just made us want to hold onto them more,” snapped the Guardsman. “We were played!”
Captain Trajan’s eyes widened, “What if we had not had them in this facility? What if we simply granted them asylum and let them alone among the Cooperative or Coalition?”
Vang was speechless but Sopek finished the thought, “Then when they exploded, they may have had a greater civilian body count and maybe with damage that would have been less contained.”
“Damn. At least we did something right!” The Guardsman whispered thinking of the consequences of explosions in the civilian sector.
“Perhaps it was unexpected and so those responsible followed up with this attack on the base maybe hoping to scatter them or at least activate them.”
“Ethan, we need to isolate the signal being sent by the troopers that surrendered. We also need to stop scans or anything considered invasive for all the clones lest we trigger more damage.”
Sopek considered the move prudent. “The trigger from the scans seems to be a deliberate attempt to keep people from finding out what is going on. Much like the Avenger Protocols that take control upon implementation, so too, something takes control and triggers the explosion in the clones. As helpless as we are to stop Avenger from doing what it deems necessary, so too, these clones are probably unaware of this failsafe.”
“How would you account for the behavior of the clones?” Vang demanded. “We have seen hyper-intelligent to plain dumb-ass lunacy.”
Sopek’s photoreceptors zoomed in on the Guardsman. “There is something lodged in their brains. It clearly has some function so we can reasonably presume it has a connection with the clone’s behavior. We just cannot scan it thoroughly enough to find out without destroying the clone, the examination room and a good portion of the hall outside.”
“What kind of mind could conceive something like this?” Trajan asked rhetorically.
Guardsman Vang had a ready response, “the Confederation.”
“Thank goodness all the clones are here,” the Captain returned when Vang suddenly went white.
“What?” Sopek asked realizing a change in color shade represented a foreshadowing of certain doom.
“They are not all here…”
Kashan Far Outer Orbit, Seraph Mk III-class Medium Cruiser, Syagani
Kashan was not going down without a fight as seen by the amount of weaponry being thrown around. While they were at the far edge of their sensor capability, it seemed to Captain Garrett that the alien ship in the atmosphere was acting with impunity. Nothing seemed to faze the attackers no matter the deadly accuracy of the Confederate’s defending fire.
“Those poor bastards..” someone muttered as the relief flight was systematically destroyed by the two alien ships in orbit. Against the one alien attacker that had descended into the atmosphere, fighters and buildings alike seemed to be instantly vaporized whenever they were in range.
“Look at the external readings, Sir. While in space, that bastard maintained a strict perimeter that our weapons just could not penetrate. Now, it seems to maintain that same perimeter but sporadically. Some fighters do get in closer before dissolving into nothingness. As if the field was constantly managed in space but inside the atmosphere, the field comes on and goes off. Like a repeating pattern.”
“Is the pattern rate identical?” asked Garrett.
“Hard to tell, Sir. We are able to measure it based on the constant damage it inflicts. We would need some suicide runs from the fighter corps to continue analysis. “
“Any sign of the fleet?” Garrett asked, exasperated.
“No sign of in-system defenses either but there are some distress beacons.”
“Let’s figure out what we have and bring those people in! We have no weapons, no comms and are in no condition to fight. Helm, after we have rescued what we can, prepare to come about and set course for New Oceanus. We need to see what we can drum up before Kashan is scoured of life!”
Kashan House Lucerne
Matthew Lucerne saw the dejected looks of the Military Commander and Kashan Councilman. It was like a kick to the gut.
“You’re not giving up are you?” he whispered, his face white with surprise and not a little fear.
“Matt, for the life of me, I do not know what we can do anymore. Everything we throw at this thing is wiped out as if it never existed. No wreckage… just dissolves every time that damned wave is fired! It dissolves our ships, our fighters, our tanks, our droids.. hell, even our weapons fire is broken down and rendered useless. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“Jim?” the elder Lucrene turned to the Councilman. “This is our home. Is there nothing we can do?”
The Councilor looked old, as if beaten by steel rods. “The Nova destroyed the one attacker. That has left a gap in the other two’s patrol in orbit. That affords us a singular opportunity.”
“An opportunity for what?” Matthew asked afraid of the answer.
“Evacuate,” the Councilor. “We need to save what we can.”
“Jim, I must tender my resignation at my failure to…” the Commander started causing both men to reach out the leader.
“None of that now. This is not something we could have foreseen. Matt, we could really use your transports.”
The elder Lucerne looked at the others knowing they could have simply impounded them for Confederation use; especially in light of this disaster. That they had taken the time to ask touched the patriarch more than he could admit.
“Not even a question,” he replied, his eyes tearing. “Take what you need. Everything if you must!”
The others nodded their gratitude and left to preside over the fall of their beloved world.
“Dark days, indeed..” Lucerne whispered.
The fleet had been pulled into action as a result of the Cooperative Crisis and they had been caught flat-footed.
What did these aliens want?
He sat down at his terminal and glanced back at the reports, none if it making sense. Everything they had thrown at this enemy had been rendered useless.
Current data models showed the craft heading his way. The mansion would be in range in about a day if the craft maintained its speed and heading.
His comm system chirped and Matthew toggled the switch revealing a few dirty faces. “Ren, where are you?” he blurted out. Ren was his Special Projects Manager.
“Matt…*static*…. came to see the devastation for myself. There is *stati*thing.. nothing left. Even several feet of top soil is gone. This used to be *static* City! A population of *static*…”
“Get the hell out of there, Ren!” growled Matthew.
The figure turned his attention behind him as some out of screen range shouted something. The shouting grew louder. “Ren! Ren! I found something! You have to see this!!”
“Matt, hold one *static*!”
The monitor flickered off, came back on and turned grainy. Ren came back excited.
“Matt! I am sending some data your way! Let me know what you… *static*” the monitor flickered out and went dark.
“REN!” shouted Lucerne in concern.
Before his mind could begin to think about his Manager and crew on the other side of the approaching attacker, his terminal beeped a transmission receipt.
Ren!
The elder Lucerne opened the data packet and up popped a variety of analysis. It seemed that everything that was vaporized (for lack of a better term) was not reduced to nothingness. It was turned into finely ground dust and tons of it. That was why there were growing clouds of darkness obscuring the enemy ship the closer it came. But not everything was powder as Ren’s crew seemed to stumble on larger fragments…
Probably a larger ship!
He was just glad the alien ship was moving slowly. Any faster and they would really be in trouble, he thought with little mirth.
His terminal beeped again and another report from Ren appeared. It made for some pretty depressing reading.
At least…
Until his eyes scanned the composition reports and a spark formed in his eyes.
He sat straighter and looking back over the first reports. It was strange and he did not know how the aliens were doing it but an idea formed about the nature of the weapon they were using.
He toggled a comm switch to the Military Commander. “Cam! I need all the fighters you can give me!”
“Matt,” the Commander sighed. “They are useless against that thing.” He did not have to elaborate what ‘that thing’ referred to.
Lucerne ignored him, “You will not need them for escorts.”
“Matt..” the Commander’s voice seemed to be a warning. He was wondering if Matthew Lucerne had descended into desperation.
“Cam, I have an idea. I do not know if it will work but at best, it just may cripple the enemy, at worst, delay them for more transports to get the hell out of here!”
The Commander’s eyebrows rose as if indicating a rise in hope. “You’ve got them.” He answered quickly.
“Good. And I need you to task a couple to pick up my Special Projects Manager and get him here asap. We will need every second we can spare!”
“What are-“ the Commander started when Lucerne interrupted him.
“You are still thinking of this as some sort of fight between good and evil within my soul.”
She glanced down at her hands as if she could see the blood on them. “But, you see,” she whispered, “there is no fight.”
“There is no fight because the ability to choose has been stripped from me.”
At the other’s look of confusion, Starfall sighed.
“I do not really believe that I … or, the other me, would do this to herself. I am a copy but a piss poor copy especially if I have the blood of innocents on my hands. I do not know how I came into being. I only know that I am.”
The Jedi saw the exhaustion on the clone’s face as she slowly, bit by bit, started to relax.
“That creature,” she gestured towards the epicenter of the force-void, “and my time locked up in your cage has given me the first moments of peace that I can remember. The anger, the rage, the twisted hatred of …well,” she smirked, “everything…is fading.”
The children’s voices could be heard outside.
“Their lives, your life… is in the hands of that little creature. As much as my own is. Because the moment, the very moment I feel the force, my mind, everything about me…what I was, who I am, will once again be destroyed by the monster.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way,” Katria started to say when the hard voice of the Commodore emerged.
“You aren’t listening!”
The Commodore narrowed her eyes frustrated with herself more than the girl’s inability to understand.
“I have heard that there are those who can use the force to compel people to do things. Those people, whatever they are told to do, have no control. And when the force compulsion is removed, they go back to being normal and now have to live with the consequences.”
“That is me now. Only, the memories of what I did are fading. I still remember some pieces vividly but the emotion, the raw emotion coursing through me is disappearing. Sort of like the pain after giving birth. Experiencing it is hell but afterwards, the pain becomes a distant memory. That is how it is for me now.”
The Jedi was silent for a while.
“So you want to die?”
“You said so yourself. I am a weapon. The only way I can save people from myself is by dying.”
“There has to be something that can be done.”
“Think all you want but this is not something you can defeat by appealing to my gentle nature or the good in me. Take away that field and I will go for your jugular to rip it out. I have no desire to do that now but shoot that rat and what I desire will no longer matter.”
She tapped her head, “I feel like there is a switch that goes on inside of me every time I sense the force.”
Katria frowned, “But you were on a starship in the Vahaba system surrounded by force-users? And presumably before that you were also around other force user clones were you not? You were not on a murderous rampage then.”
The Commdore was about to open her mouth to once again inform the Jedi that understanding still escaped her when her words registered. She clamped her mouth shut and looked at the Jedi with somethink akin to grudging respect.
“I had not thought of that. I really had not thought of anything prior to coming here but you are right!”
The military part of the Commodore’s mind began to work. “So that leaves several possibilities: 1). I was a murderous bitch before coming to Vahaba and I just do not remember it. Maybe that would lend some weight to the Confederation’s claim that we were prisoners for a reason. 2). I was not a murderous bitch yet still incarcerated for reasons unknown but did become one when I arrived … here? Vahaba or Cooperative space?”
“You were not immediately murderous when you were training with us. You may have lied to the Colonel but you were not yet out of control.”
She looked at the Jedi, “So what triggered me?”
“That is the question. We may be able to find it but it will take calm minds and a meditative spirit.”
For the first time in a good long while, Lorna Starfall felt something resembling hope.
“There is a plan, dear Councilor, and your Coalition is as expendable to it as I am.”
“Sir, we've got a situation outside,” someone said from the entrance to the room.
Councilor Tik didn't turn from the clone patient who had maybe just made a threat against his government. “Not now.”
“The media's here,” the messenger said. “It's getting tense. The commander on-site isn't prepared for this kind of thing.
Letting out a synthesized sigh and nodding his still-damage head, he turned and left the room. “How bad is it?”
The Chadra-fan shook his head. “Like a . . . thirty-seven?” He shrugged his little pipsqueak shoulders. “I don't know; It's bad. I don't know how to handle this kind of thing, either. We're Planetary Defense Force, Sir, not double-counter-counter-terrorist-espionage-black-ops secret police.”
Tik spent a few seconds in silence, weighing his options, but he knew what had to be done. He didn't like it, but he knew. “Alright, I'll take care of it.”
“When?” the overly-pushy messenger asked.
Tik turned the soulless, damaged photoreceptors of his droid shell on the diminutive Chadra-fan and was pleased to hear a squeak of discomfort. “Now. Go away.”
As the messenger scampered off, Tik pinged the facility's Guardian, routed the comm line through the appropriate channels, and called in his trump card.
“Now is not a . . . good . . . time, Councilor.”
“I have a mission for you, Executor.”
“I already have a mission . . . Councilor. One that requires a . . . substantial fraction . . . of my available . . . computational . . . resources. I do not have time for you.”
The lag time in Smarts' reply was curious, but not necessarily troubling. “It's important.”
“As is this.”
Tik glanced through the window at the apparently docile clone. “Things are completely out of control down here, and I don't have the time for any of it. I'm charging you to sort out the military jurisdiction and get us a workable game plan, lock down any compromising loose ends from . . . 'tangential' programs, and manage the locals as best you can. Give the media a story they can believe, but leave us some room to work with.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Varn's been attacked, Executor. Where have you been?”
“In orbit, busy. I'm still busy.”
“Well shut it down. You are the Executor of the Cooperative, and I am charging you to execute a task with the full weight and authority of a Defense Councilor of the Cooperative. Now do it. Whatever project, or program, or scheme you're working right now, shut it down and get on this.”
“Standby . . .
“. . .
“. . .
“This is a bad idea, Councilor. It's strategically unwise to associate me further with any aspect of the Battle of Vahaba. The public does not need to be reminded of my role there. It would be . . . counterproductive to your aims.”
“The 'public', Smarts, are the people who installed you as Executor. We had to invent an office to put you in because of them. So now, Executor: do your job. Execute.”
* * *
Timothy Mauler was watching the dismantling process with some interest. The Cage had been built to hold anything a raging Force User could throw at it, and now it was being taken apart with power tools and droid servos. The barracks and training grounds for their little nameless Cooperative military operation were easy enough to strip down and turn into any generic space, but this room, this Cage, was purpose-built in a way that couldn't be painted over. It had to go, and fast.
Because the vultures were gathering outside.
“Report,” an uncomfortably familiar voice said from the doorway behind him . . . or more, the hole in the wall where the door had once been.
Mauler spun in surprise to face his commander. “Colonel, how . . .”
Ink Davaan made a show of craning his neck to look around Timothy. “When you rattle off a code like one of ours, with letters and symbols that aren't even supposed to be in these kinds of codes, and their little security widgets return a ding without showing a name or rank, they get out of the way real quick.”
It was true enough. The members of the team weren't registered on any official databanks outside of the Council of Defense itself, but they had high-level clearances that any Guardian system would recognize. “Traanor and Davis are dead,” Timothy reported bluntly. “Bal'vek's expected to make a full recovery, and Vash lost her right forearm . . . it was Starfall. She turned on us.”
“The rest of you took her down?” Ink asked, his expression unreadable. When it was called for, he had that cold kind of command presence.
It was one of the things that worried Timothy about the man: that whole lifetime full of successes and struggles that had shaped him into the mystery he was, the mystery Timothy would never really understand but was tasked with unraveling anyway. The younger man shook his head. “No one else was on-site at the time. I . . . incapacitated her myself.”
A flash of rage crossed the old man's face, and he tensed reflexively before relaxing, slowly. His eyes cut to the partly dismantled Cage. “If she's not dead, and she's not here, then we've got a problem.”
“We had to evacuate,” Timothy said, trying not to sound defensive. “There's a lot of attention on this little strip of land right now.”
“Then you should have put one through her skull!” Ink pressed a finger against the center of Mauler's forehead. “We have contingencies for these sorts of things.”
“I wasn't prepared to do that,” Timothy said, stepping back half a pace. There was no need to escalate this situation. “I guess deep down, I'm still a Jedi, and you're still . . . whatever you are.”
“I'm the one who keeps us alive, and keeps us saving people,” Ink said, his anger showing through again. “These are not the kinds of forces you contain. These are the kinds of forces you eliminate. Look around you, Captain; this facility is being stripped to the bones. The detainment complex is all but ruins, and the casualty list is still being compiled there. We tried being the good guys.
“Jedi Katria!” Ink exclaimed, shaking his head. He thumped his balled fist against the wall, tensing up again. “She turned us down, Mauler. She turned us down! Command let her walk, let her keep her little Jedi orphanage out in the boondocks, and saddled us with her only problem, that damned Iridonian kid . . .”
Ink trailed off for a second as his sense of general frustration turned slowly back to outright rage. “Wait a minute. Wait a gods-damned minute. You handed her over to Katria? You handed one of the most powerful Force users on this planet over to that glorified nanny?”
“You weren't here; I had to make a call.” Timothy didn't even try to sound like he was being sincere. “She's out of your reach now.”
“We're black ops Force Commandos, Mauler. You think I won't storm an orphanage to take out a threat because of a handshake deal?”
“It was more than that.”
“Gods, I thought the General's schemes were bad enough, but you . . . you! You're even worse when nobody's holding your leash!”
The comment about General Prine and Timothy's “leash” caught him off guard. Ink seemed to notice.
“Now's not the time to hash out your half-assed spy games, kid. We've got to get a handle on this before it gets even worse.”
“Where is the clone?” a third voice intruded into the conversation.
Ink turned around just as an unidentified droid stepped through the opening in the wall, carefully evading a pair of labor droids carrying a large section of the Cage's dismantled floor plating. Timothy recognized its design from the medical facility, but didn't know any particulars about it.
“How do you even know about this place?” Ink asked.
“Never mind that,” the shrill droid responded dismissively, stepping further into the room to survey the environment. “There was a clone being detained in this room. Where is she now?”
“Listen here,” Timothy warned, his hand tightening around the lightsaber at his waist. “You have about fifteen seconds to explain how you even know about this place before I start chopping.”
“She has a bomb in her brain,” Sopek answered flatly.
“Come again?” Ink said, having moved behind the droid to cut off its escape, but now looking a little less certain about the situation.
“There is a bomb implanted in her brain that will detonate upon interference from particular comm signals,” Sopek explained, turning around to face the man behind it. “The precise preconditions for detonation have not yet been fully ascertained. The clone unofficially designate 'Subject X' must be secured to ensure no incidental environmental factors trigger the bomb.”
“Who are you anyway?” Ink asked, glancing to Timothy, who had other things on his mind.
Timothy made a bolt for the door, and Ink rushed after him.
“Hey! Hey!” Ink shouted, giving chase.
Timothy wasn't risking the lives of Katria's children on the chance this droid was bluffing them.
“My designation is Sopek,” the droid said, running after them, “but that is not relevant. I have been empowered and charged by the Executor, under the authority of Defense Councilor Tik, to resolve this issue with all haste. Now, where is the clone in question?”
“You can't come!” Timothy shouted over his shoulder.
“I must insist -” Sopek began, but was quickly cut off.
“Oh, drop it, Mauler!” Ink shouted.
“Send Rhet,” Mauler said, starting to pull away from the colonel. “I'll bring the droid, but you can't come and I don't have time to wait for him.”
“Where are we going?” Sopek asked, doing its best to keep up with Timothy. “I'm sure it'll be another black-ops, underground military complex, right?
“We're going to an orphanage,” Timothy answered.
“Oh,” Sokep said, sounding surprised, and a little bit worried.
“It just happens to be inside of another black-ops, underground, military complex.”
“Oh! Full disclosure: I may be required to reveal the location and status of that installation to key individuals.”
* * *
This was not who he wanted to be. This was not how he wanted to let himself be used. After opening himself up to the vast networks of information, both military and civilian, coursing through the planet Varn, he understood why he was needed, though. There were a lot of moving parts, and none of them were good.
The blue-white hologram that had been ubiquitous throughout the Cooperative as the avatar of the Overseer sprang into being between the line of military police and media reporters. What he was about to do would not make him or the Cooperative any friends this day, but it was the best he could manage under the circumstances.
As the reporters pooled around him expectantly, he began. “Ladies, gentlemen, and good beings of the Cooperative particularly, and the Coalition more generally: I am the Executor of the Cooperative, and I present myself to you today under the authority and obligations of Defense Councior Tik of the Cooperative.” It was his first public address since appointment to the newly created office, and while everyone present understood how it worked in theory, this was their first look at the Office of the Executor in practice.
“I have been charged with the security of this installation, the safety of its occupants, and the speedy resolution of this state of emergency. The official report thus far has been that this facility, a restricted staging ground for the Coalition Refugee Evacuation and Relief Service, was attacked by forces unidentified, and after security personnel on-site were unable to re-secure the outpost, the security of the installation was turned over to the Varn Planetary Defense Force.
“The official report thus far has been untrue. The attacking forces are not unidentified, and this is not a legitimate Evacuation and Relief Service outpost, though it has been maintained as such to Coalition federal authorities and uninvolved Cooperative officials, including myself, until that farce could no longer be sustained. It has in fact been utilized in recent months as a medical treatment facility for individuals granted political asylum by the Cooperative from the Contegorian Confederation, at the conclusion of the Battle of Vahaba.
“I must confirm now that the attackers were Confederation shock troopers, who acquired the location of this facility through means as of yet unknown. A full casualty list has not yet been compiled, but among the dead are patients, medical staff, and security staff. I am not authorized to comment on the status of the attackers at this time, but I have determined the most expedient resolution to this state of emergency is to turn over the entire island chain to the Praetorian Guard. The Planetary Defense Force will be relieved, the facility's security forces will be extracted, and all civilians not medically necessary will be removed.
“I am sure that our deception regarding a federally regulated Coalition outpost will be met with sanctions from Prime Minister Moon's administration, but this lie has exceeded its bounds of believability. I have been assured and cannot find cause to doubt that the Cooperative government's intentions were noble in this regard, but their methods exceeded the bounds of Coalition law, and that is unacceptable.
“We have approximately ten minutes before Praetorian Guard forces arrive. I am prepared to field questions until that time.”
“We have approximately ten minutes before Praetorian Guard forces arrive. I am prepared to field questions until that time.”
A cacophony of questions resounded…
“Executor, why have the Confederation attacked!”
“Executor, what is being done to protect us against further Confederation attacks!”
“Executor, this act of war will not go unpunished will it?”
“Executor, what abilities do the Praetorian Guard possess that our Military Defense and facility security do not?”
“Executor, will the Guardian also be relieved?”
*
Varro Kai watched as the primates assembled the make-shift contraption. By putting a variety of items together, they were able to increase their range to reach the price tied to a rope, attached to the center of the ceiling.
“Is this what you wanted me to see?” came the eviscerating voice of the High Priest Lohr. “If I wanted to gaze upon animals, I could have remained at the Exorcism.”
Kai’s attention was arrested away from the primates as they battled with each other to reach the prize, now that it was attainable.
“Exorcism?” he asked questioningly. He was not adept in all the Priest Caste’s terminology.
Lohr’s eyes widened with maddening zeal, “Yes, yes! You have not heard. It is to glorious purpose we have been tasked! As you know, High Elder Artanis struck with a hammer fist at just the right time. It seems that while this entity, the Empire,” his lips curled in disgust, “ was going about a sorting process of natural selection with this organization known as the Jedi Corps, another ..entity, a Contegorian Confederation,” again, the curling of the lips, “tried to manipulate natural selection by infusing their people with this… ‘Force’.”
“You use the heretics word?” Varro asked amused.
“Our verbage is too good for this paltry obstacle to Borleas’ will,” The Priest snapped back.
“So this exorcising?” the Judicator prompted.
The Priest’s eyes lit up again, “Yes, yes! We are working to strip this energy from these heretic’s very soul! We are recording the difference in how one with natural progression reacts as opposed to one with artificial progression. The results are very promising.”
“And the souls themselves?” Kai asked.
“Of what care should we have for their mortal remains if we can pave the way for them to enjoy Borleas’ bosom in the afterlife?” Lohr asked, apparently shocked by the inquiry.
“Indeed,” was all Kai replied.
“What with you and these animals?” Lohr gestured contemptuously at the enclosed pit.
Varro Kai heard the rebuke in the other’s voice. As if diminishing the importance of the military man’s work when compared to that of the Priest’s own.
“We all have our assigned tasks in the glorious purposed,” replied Kai. “My task is to accomplish militarily while you bring them into favor with Borleas.”
“And these animals,” Lohr peered closer to the transparent wall to see that one animal out-fought the others and was climbing the make –shift contraption to reach the prize, “are helping with that task?” His voice was doubtful.
“It is merely a test of an observation. The peoples of this galaxy have an almost evolutionary imperative to put much effort into foundation building. Foundation for ideals, foundation for rules, foundation for governments and civilization and they argue and fight with each other over these foundations. Foundations of military might, economic foundations, foundations rooted in biological supremacy, foundations rooted in mechanical supremacy, racial supremacy,…supremacy of this Force..”
“We will knock their foundations over one by one or strip it from their souls as they cry their last!” Lohr intoned fervently as if reciting scripture.
“We have three foundations before us, one rooted in natural selection of the force, one rooted in artificial selection and yet another in the overlord-ship of mechanical life. I cannot strike all three for I have but limited resources, so tell me, High Priest, which foundation should demand my attention?”
“The foundation upon which the Force rests naturally of course!” the Priest declared.
“I wonder,” the Judicator answered. “These prisoners in the cage were provided by the creature Thracken Sal Solo of Corellia. I have seen this group fight, maim and kill each other depending on the conditions I set as long as there is hope of survival. The one who takes the prize will be released.”
Lohr peered closer and stared at the “prize”. “Is that a ..?”
“A droid. Yes. A small one. I believe the terminology is ‘artificial intelligence’. And I told the droid that whoever wins, we will implant with enough explosives to bring down a city tower, in a bid to seize the world this creature is released upon.”
The man climbing the makeshift contraption reached out and grabbed the droid that was tied.
The droid instantly exploded killing everything in the room. The transparent walls vibrated with the explosive concussion and Lohr stepped back.
“I do wonder..” the Judicator walked away deep in thought.
*
Sopek hastily looked up the legal paperwork establishing the “orphanage” and a dozen or so queries popped up. In light of high excitability of his current comrades, the droid decided to keep his questions to himself.
They arrived to find two women asleep on opposite ends of a room.
“Smart, Katria,” Thomas whispered, seeing the ysalamir outside. “It blocks a Jedi’s force ability,” he quickly explained to Sopek as they entered the room.
“Oh good! She has not exploded,” the droid commented, observing the sleeping women.
“The Confederation government has maintained throughout official dialogue that the asylees housed here are in fact violent criminals, fugitives from Confederate justice, whose danger to the Confederation, if not properly contained, cannot be ignored. The position of the Cooperative government, and the civilian medical staff responsible for the safe care and treatment of these individuals, has been that their erratic behavior is attributable to clone psychosis, presumably a side effect of the combination of the Confederation's memory implantation methods and the extreme stresses these clones have recently endured, including but not necessarily limited to their escape from Confederation custody and their participation in the Battle of Vahaba.
“The Cooperative offered to the Confederation the opportunity to inspect our facilities and the state of care of these asylees, in hopes that through open dialogue and transparency, we might attain the truth of the matter. The Confederation's representatives rejected this offer, and warned us of the consequences of this course. The Council of Defense and Combined Council believed the threat to be nothing more than a ploy, as neither believed that the relationship the Cooperative has built with the Confederation over the past years would be so quickly cast aside.
“Now, we know that assessment was in error.”
“Executor, what is being done to protect us against further Confederation attacks!”
“I have been authorized to reveal that the Coalition's Eastern Province has become aware of large fleet movements within Confederation space. They appear to be preparing for large-scale conflict, which is of great concern to the Council of Defense and Coalition High Command in light of recent events. I can assure all Cooperative citizens within the sphere of influence of the Coalition East that the Eastern Provincial military is prepared to defend you in accordance with our treaty agreements, against even attacks by the Contegorian Confederation. As for those of us in the North, the Cooperative military is at its strongest in our nation's history, the bulk of its force is concentrated in and around the Quelii Sector, and the Treaty of Quelii compels all members of the Quelii Sector Combine to respond to unprovoked attacks against member worlds.
“We are on high alert, all defensive stations have been brought to full readiness, and I am confident of our ability to defend the Cooperative's citizens and worlds from further attack.”
“Executor, this act of war will not go unpunished will it?”
“The Cooperative Grand Council has been called to a special session, and the status of the Cooperative-Confederation relationship, for the Cooperative's part at least, will be determined with all haste. Beyond that, I am neither currently privy to or permitted to discuss Cooperative or Coalition contingency plans regarding ongoing conflict with the Contegorian Confederation. I suspect, however that the interim administration of Prime Minister Moon will not be quick to press for an offensive.”
“Executor, what abilities do the Praetorian Guard possess that our Military Defense and facility security do not?”
“Councilor Tik revealed the existence of this facility and turned its administration over to the Varn Planetary Defense Force because he feared it could not be safely re-secured with the security forces on-station. They were, after all, intended to provide protection for the medical staff in the event the Confederation's warnings proved true, not repel foreign strike teams. Now that the facility is secure, and given the anticipated response from federal authorities for compromising the integrity of the Refugee and Evacuation Service's respected status, we believe the Praetorian Guard is best suited to take over administration of the complex for the time being.
“While the Coalition House of Representatives transferred oversight of the Guard to the Cooperative after the fall of the Onyxian Commonwealth, the Guard remains an administratively independent federal military force. Given the classified status of this facility's staff, patients, and any potential detainees, the Guard is the only force readily available with both the security clearance to assume command, and the faith of federal authorities to maintain this facility until such a time as representatives from Prime Minister Moon's administration arrive to sort out this mess.”
“Executor, will the Guardian also be relieved?”
“The facility's Guardian is an integrated system, specialized to assist in the care and safety of the facility's patients. Once the Guard assumes command, the Guardian will automatically decouple from the Cooperative's broader Guardian defense network and submit itself to Praetorian command. At that time, it will be up to them whether to continue utilizing the Guardian, shut it down, or have it removed for respecialization and reassignment.”
* * *
Sleep, so that was the answer.
The intermittent clicking of the intercom had broken through the sweet relief of sleep, and Katria snapped upright as she remembered where she was. She glanced over to see the other woman, Valeska – the clone – Lorna – was already awake.
The cold dread of Force isolation was already creeping back into her bones, the reprieve offered by dreams of life beyond the ysalamir field now gone.
“Beauty sleep,” Timothy asked playfully, “at a time like this?” His eyes cut over to Lorna, and his demeanor changed decidedly and darkly.
An unfamiliar droid pushed the ex-Jedi padawan aside and pressed the intercom button mounted beside the observation window. “Do not explode!” it exclaimed.
Katria, confused, looked to Lorna, whose eyebrows had raised in obvious surprise.
Timothy was fighting off the droid for control of the intercom again. “Hey, yeah, so there was probably a better lead-in for that one, but we think your prisoner there has a bomb implanted . . . in her skull.”
The two women looked to each other in horror.
“You think you could, uh, get out of there now, Katria?” Timothy pointed toward the door.
“I thought it was best not to leave her alone,” Katria said quietly, too distracted by the revelation to give the man's concern much thought.
“My knight in shining armor,” Lorna mocked, dropping back onto her cot.
“Don't!” Timothy shouted, the end of the word getting cut off as he jerked his hand in surprise, letting his finger off the button. “Jostle,” he added, pressing the button again.
“I've been dropping you on the training floor for a month now,” Lorna said dismissively. “Shaking around a little isn't going to set me off.”
“What?” Timothy asked.
Oh, right, he couldn't hear them.
Katria waltzed over to the intercom on her side of the window, making a big show flicking her arm upward. “There's a switch, dummy; continuous operation.”
He looked down at it, puzzled, then seemed to notice the Big Red Switch and flipped it. “Oh, okay, so . . .”
“As I was saying,” the droid rejoined the conversation, “don't explode. Please.”
“Is that what happened to the rest of them?” Lorna asked, sitting back up. “They exploded?”
Timothy stared coldly at the woman. It was clear he wasn't here for her.
“The children!” Katria exclaimed, suddenly realizing the danger they were in if Timothy and the droid were right.
“They're being evacuated,” he reassured.
It didn't work. “I don't want those Cooperative droids -”
“Rhet's with them,” he added, saying it like he thought that was a good thing.
“Rhet? What's he doing back here?”
Timothy glanced back to Lorna. “Security.”
“You think that punk kid could take me?” Lorna asked ,amused.
“What are you talking about,” Katria asked, waving for Lorna to shut up.
“She was sleeping five meters away from me,” Lorna said, ignoring Katria's flailing. “I didn't kill her then!”
“Yeah, but you didn't have an audience then,” he answered coldly.
“Oh.” So that's what all of this was about. “No,” Katria started to explain, “that wasn't her fault.”
“She murdered my people, Katria.”
“It wasn't her!” Katria exclaimed.
“It sure looked like her!”
And that, that right there, was when Katria understood. “It's not a bomb.”
“I assure you, it is a bomb,” the droid piped up again. “I saw one just before it exploded.”
“It's a switch,” she said, ignoring the droid. “It's a switch,” she said again, turning around to face Lorna. “You said it was like a switch goes off whenever you sense the Force. That's what it is. The bomb's just a . . . a failsafe, in case you go rogue? In case you find a way to resist, maybe?”
“The bombs detonated when exposed to a Confederate communications ping,” the droid offered. “Also they appear to detonate in response to intensive sensor scans.”
“But Lorna said it was triggered by the Force. That the ysalamir field blocked its influence. Maybe the implant doesn't work now? Maybe she's safe?”
“You know I don't actually want to die, right?” Lorna said, finally taking a few steps forward, out of her little corner of the room. “If it's all the same to you, I'd rather puzzle this thing out some other way than waving a 'detonate' command in front of the bomb I just learned is inside my head. But you wouldn't mind seeing that, would you, 'captain'?” She finally met Timothy's cold stare, acknowledging the man who'd beaten and detained her, the man who'd stopped her from doing even more harm, the man who couldn't believe she was anything other than a monster.
“Okay, now, we need a game plan,” Katria said, trying to be the voice of reason and calm these tensions a little. “What do we actually know about this implant, besides that the ysalamir make's Lorna 'feel better'?”
“It's not an 'implant',” the droid offered, “so much as slivers. At least, that's what the brief view of it I had before the patient exploded looked like. Ultrachrome slivers, by the way.”
“You actually saw one of these things?” Katria asked. “With your own . . . eyes?” She gestured at the droid's photoreceptors.
“Indeed, yes.”
“You have memory files of that?” Timothy asked, getting involved in the discussion but making sure to look very unhappy about doing so.
“Yes, yes I do.” The droids was starting to look fidgety.
“Have you shared those memory files with anyone, oh I don't know, who might be able to help?” Katria asked.
“Well, you see, there was some degree of concern regarding the installation's Guardian, and . . .”
“What about Captain Vespian?” Timothy asked, on the same page with Katria about how interested they were in the droid's mutterings. “You said he's encountered this before? Does he have any kind of sensor records or other information that might be useful.”
“Captain Vespian?” Katria asked, unfamiliar with the name.
“Have you contacted him? Is he coming here?” Timothy asked the droid.
“Well we can't exactly go to him,” Katria pointed out. “With the kids gone, this is the safest place for Lorna now, for her own sake and for ours.”
Katria felt a hand on her shoulder and looked back to Lorna. “You don't have to stay in here, you know.”
It was the first sign of genuine kindness she'd gotten from the Confederate clone. It was a good sign, she thought. “I didn't want to leave you alone in here. I don't like treating you like a prisoner.”
“She is a prisoner!” Timothy shouted.
Katria stared down Timothy for a long moment, unsure of how to handle the situation.
“Go,” Lorna said softly, gesturing to the room's only door.
“So!” Katria shouted over her shoulder, heading for the many-times-locked door. “Captain Vespian? Is he coming? Do we have anything else?”
Sand. At one time flesh and iron, bone and steel, blood and tears… now sand. Tiny pieces of the whole scattered across the system and the dull patterns of the hive ships scouring space clean.
For that is what it was.
A scouring.
It was unclear if the globular Reaver command ships were intelligent, operating with a presence of mind for a particular purpose or not. What was clear was that the combined fleets of the associated planets of both the Cooperative and Coalition had stopped them cold. At great cost in lives, materials and personal prestige/reputations but when set against the incredible dangers of what those mothership-class Reaver craft represented, perhaps, just perhaps that cost was justified. For the great hunger of infection, of expansion that the Reavers projected had been stopped. Not everywhere and not once for all time, but here. At Vahaba.
And so the Hive Ships tasked with the cleaning of the Vahaba System went about their purpose as if without a care in the world and, as the ships were AI driven, perhaps there was not a care to be found in them at all.
The scale-ships themselves exhibited the spots of granular infection but it was the infection of opportunity, not of purpose. For the scale-ships moved two and fro throughout the system mapping, cataloguing and determining the voracity of Reaver infection that is/was/could be exuded from this…sand.
And so these ships moved through sand-patches of glittering metal, from the micorscopic to the granular, all reaver, causing some to attach while others remained inert. But it was as if the attraction was accidental and so the threat assessment remained low. For as the scale-ships returned, their surfaces were lit up with the vaporizing fire of other scale-ships intent on removing those small remnants of infection that had the bad fortune of attaching themselves to the vessels in the first place. The scouring rate soon dropped off as the AI ruthlessly guarded their efficiency benchmarks. There were scale-ships floating about with many sand-patches attached and yet, the infection seemed to still continue at a rate where perhaps a breach could occur within the next five years if left unattended. It was as if the “hunger to feed and spread” had been beaten out of the granules.
Granted this was not everywhere as further into the asteroid belt, some scale ships had been lost and it was required to remotely detonate them from time to time. Most of the belt glittered from the Reaver infection that had settled upon these floating rocks; some dormant and others more….voracious.
This was the situation that Korah found when his sleek command craft drifted into the system, several particles of sand adhering to the black “paint” as the ship pierced further into the system.
The Hive craft showed no reaction to their presence, which was the point as the vessel’s emissions were designed to be undetectable.
He paused to look at the massive vessels, the product of a disciplined, cold and predictable mind.
Incredible machines!
Such power to command, control…. Dominate.
Left here to clean up the trash of rash decision-making, smashed dreams and broken promises.
The trash of victory, the man thought to himself.
But the droid’s decision was uncontestable. It was the past and the right or wrong of it mattered not.
What had mattered was the fact that it was an AI, a droid that had made the decision.
The culmination of destroying Joran Logan’s power and base within the Galactic Coalition and elevating the up-and-coming-now-turned-integral Cooperative had come to pass.
It was time.
He closed his eyes and felt the tendrils of the force reaching out in search.
There!
The mind of the shard was not difficult to breach. In a sea of monotonous calculating programs, the mind stood out like a river in a desert. Korah, smiled at the orderliness of the crystalline entity. A suitable mind for the mind-numbing task of clearing the system of Reaver infections. A thought of patterns, grids, spacial cooridinates appending infection areas, rate of growth, rate of decay, hot zones and inert zones…
Insert a little chaos into a mind unused to such and it becomes…. overwhelmed.
An overwhelmed mind looks for help…
…grasps at help…
And a link is formed.
The link becomes the chain…
And the shard becomes a slave.
Korah smiled as the Hive Core started to elevate itself up an away from the linear plane marking the asteroid field and its area of activity.
It had a higher calling…
A more profound duty…
For another world had become plagued with infection.
A world that required scouring…
Korah smiled as the Hive Ship made the jump into hyperspace.
His younger-self would have marveled at how exciting this was.
His younger-self would not have been wrong.
“Prepare to shed our skin and leave…” he ordered as he turned to walk off the observation deck.
*
Jensaarai Jax Investigations
New Oceanus
The Confederation Defense Force had issued multiple warnings for ships to stay clear of the Kashan system as it was currently a warzone. Therefore, Portland and Jax tried a soft approach maneuvering their way through the minefield using codes the CDF had given the Jensaarai Order.
What was odd about the planet before them was the lack of activity.
“Was New Oceanus attacked?” Jax asked trying to understand the sensor readings. It was as if the planet was void of life.
“There is no response to our hails..” Portland agreed and started to run a diagnostic on his console when it chirped..
“Unidentified vessel, This is the CDF vessel Syagani calling on an emergency channel. Heave too and prepare to be boarded.”
Jax and Portland looked at each other.
*
Captain Garrett looked over at the two Jensaarai after giving the tale of his ship’s retreat from Kashan through the nebula and concern and not finding the system defense fleet from New Oceanus. It was as if they just up and vanished so the Syagani entered orbit to see if the planet had fallen to attack.
What they found was … unnerving.
They walked along the surface of the capital city that seemed empty. There were thousands of people but most seemed to be living without power and with no short amount of fear. Littered throughout the city and off in the distance were large monolithic structures of no discernable function.
“New Oceanus is a heavy metal mining world and there is a strong industrial presence here. We were hoping to get patched up to get back into the fight and, instead, we find.. this?” He waved his hand around to encompass the city.
“Everyone is scared. No one is willing to talk to us and they are living in primitive conditions. No one is trying to fix the power grid or institute some form of order. In fact, the power stations look like they have been abandoned for years. Oddly enough, the mining is still going on, just not much processing.”
“What are they afraid of? The attackers?” Jax asked.
“I don’t… There is no infrastructure here. No emergency services active… it is like half the population, the part that was involved in running things here, up and left. Maybe an attack happened here but I do not see damage or any of the tell-tale signs. The enemy attacking Kashan is about as different as I ever faced but there are still signs of its passing and our attacks.”
“No,” Portland answered with conviction. “There was no attack here. And the people are not afraid of you, Captain. It is us.”
“What?” Jax and Captain Garrett exclaimed.
“Before New Oceanus joined Kashan or the Confederation, what were they?” the Jensaarai Scholar asked the others.
“Isolated?” Jax answered questioningly.
The Captain merely shrugged. “I haven’t got a clue.”
“They were the remnants of a colony from the Infinite Empire of the Rakata,” Portland answered.
“They who?”
“A very old, very ancient Empire that was comprised of force users; an empire that enslaved other worlds. What is unique about this empire is that they had a technology that was only detectable, only operational and usable to those with the force. When their force users died off, their great technology went dormant and they were eventually overthrown. We have remnants of that technology in the Vault.”
Portland looked around at the seemingly abandoned city.
“That is why we cannot detect any power. The technology here has been converted and by the condition of the power stations, it has been converted for a while.”
“The Confederation authorities would have found out about this,” the Captain remarked.
“Would they have?” Portland asked pointedly. “The government only investigates if it senses a problem. If the transition happened without much interruption…”
“Does this look like much interruption?” Captain Garrett asked as trash and debris blew across the deserted area.
Portland frowned at the man. “Come with me,” he ordered and started walking towards one of the monolithic structures.
Jax and Garrett had no choice but the follow and the closer they got, they saw that there was what looked like a pedestal in front of the structure. Portland stepped up to the pedestal and placed a hand on the smooth round surface.
Immediately behind him, the structure suddenly lit up as the humming of power convertors started to dial up and the once dead city seemed to start to come to life as multiple buildings and areas started to illuminate.
Portland’s hand withdrew and the power faded.
The Captain’s communicator signaled and the voice of his Sensor Officer was heard, “Captain, we got a reading that you are near a large comm array but then we lost it. I don’t know what is going on but if you look around, you may find…”
“I’ve got it, Garrett out,” the Captain cut him off as he turned to Jax who stared at Portland with surprise.
“This is where the clones have been!” he snapped.
Portland shrugged, “Perhaps not all of them not incarcerated but enough of them.”
“Enough?” The Captain asked with concern.
Portland turned to Jax, “Now we know what the Program was co-opted for. This technology is far beyond anything we have experienced.”
“It is just different,” the Captain started to say when Jax shook his head.
“No, Captain. My friend here is right. This technology is undetectable because its power source is undetectable. Perhaps if we were going toe to toe with a ship run like this pitted against a Confederation CDF vessel, maybe. But what is going on here is more like… infiltration. The Trojan Affair took place because two paladins were taken over by a technology we could not even detect. In fact, the only reason we could detect it is because it was made out of ultrachome.”
“A design flaw?” Portland promted.
“No, more like a defense mechanism. The ultrachrome construction would inherently protect the technology from being disrupted for as long as the machine it was controlling remained operational.”
“Alright,” the Captain interrupted. “You boys need to bring me up to speed and right now. Kashan is being turned to dust and we have people dying. That is our immediate threat.”
“No, Captain. This is,” Portland disagreed.
“Talk to me,” the Captain implored and Portland was silent for a moment.
“The easiest and fastest way to explain this is like this. What we are facing is an anti-Jensaarai organization. For as long as the Jensaarai have been a part of the Confederation, imagine also, a anti-Jensaarai organization has been around.”
“So they want to kill you?” the Captain asked.
“Not exactly but that may be an eventuality. The fact is that we do not know what this anti-Jensaarai is about since they are not exactly an organization. They were a group of people with force powers like us but are people like every day Contegorians. Bankers, Police, Engineers, etc… At first, they wanted to use their powers for the benefit of the Confederation but somewhere along the way, they went off-script. Confederation authorities stepped in and isolated these people for their protection and the protection of everyone else. Their off-script meddling caused a few deaths.”
“You are talking about the clones, aren’t you?”
Jax looked up surprised. “You know about them?”
“Only what was on the holonet. The Cooperative and Sojourn seemed to be all about kicking us about the clones and our government has remained rather silent about it. There is supposed to be an official response but we have been a little busy to listen to the news.”
“You are correct. We knew there were some clones missing, in addition to those that went over to the Cooperative but we were not sure how many. Now we know. Quite a bit.”
“Because of this?”
“Because of this, Captain, yes. Look at those structures in the distance. Do you know what they are? Shipyards. When the Confederation came to New Oceanus, in addition to the colony, who had all but forgotten their eons-old ancient roots, we also found remnants of their technology, including warships. We refitted the warships and they became the system’s defense fleet. Especially after the Seraph’s started coming off the line.”
“So we are talking ancient ships,” the Captain surmised.
“With modern upgrades, Captain. Look at those structures again. Those are not Rakata designed. Someone, somewhere has been manufacturing force-powered technology. This city is abandoned but it has been abandoned recently. Hence the power loss. This pedestal is probably a redundancy because force user or not, no one is going to stand here powering the grid day and night. This is planetary infrastructure and so immovable but the command and control is gone. This ships that were berthed in those shipyards are gone. The people behind this are gone! Who knows how far they have infiltrated. We have paladins that have been manufactured with these little failsafe switches designed for specific purposes. These people are on the move! If they left this it is because they feel Confederation authorities can do nothing about it. Not anymore!”
The Captain frowned, “Then why the hell is our fleet mobilized on the other side of the damned border facing the Cooperative!?”
Jax scanned the structures, “Because look at what the clones here did and are doing? What do you think the clones who are being protected by the Cooperative, probably unwittingly, are doing? Remember, they went straight for Vahaba when they escaped. They went straight for asylum. The Battle of Vahaba not withstanding, those clones are exactly where they purposed to be. It probably would have been better if they all died at the hands of the Reavers but that did not happen!”
“So why not tell them?” the Captain asked confused.
“Have you ever cornered an evil force user? Do you know how much collateral damage would happen? I think those politicians who are familiar with the situation hoped a nonchalant attitude calling them escaped convicts might have convinced the Coalition ambassadors to simply release them back in our custody. But they went on a PR program demonizing us and they became the darlings of Vahaba. Now, short of war, those force users are in their midst doing who knows what.”
“First things first, Confederation authorities need to know about this and fast!” the Captain declared.
“We also need to have the Confederation on alert wherever the New Oceanus fleet shows up,” Portland added.
“The Syagani is shot to hell so we could really use your help,” the Captain commented.
Jax smiled, “Captain, the Jensaarai are here to serve.”
*
Genon
“Sir? Tracking had detected an unscheduled arrival.”
The Captain of the CDF put his tea down and frowned, “Another protest picket?”
“I don’t think so Sir… Holy Shit!---“
The Shard burned with a paranoia as the source of the infection lay before him. The insignificant craft that had barred his path had been decimated as the scale-ships overwhelmed it before its defenses could be raised.
The scales surrounding the core hardened as it smashed through the wreckage intent on scour the infection.
Already, it was picking up the barrage of speeches, all lies as the Sojourn had charged. It seemed to be a trait shared by flesh and it was a truth that burned inside.
No more lies!!
With a powerful burst of purpose, the scale-ships detached speeding up faster than the core entering the atmosphere at an extreme rate of speed.
The farthest scale-ship zeroed in on the shuttle terminal. It descended so fast the sensors grid merely flickered. Before a readjustment could be made the Hive core came within range entering the atmosphere.
IMPACT!
Atlas Hall, Brandenburg
Confederation Assembly
All around the hemisphere, scale-ships impacted the surface.
The center of government for the Confederation started to bring the defenses online as batteries started to open fire on the descending Core. However, the defense grid only partially activated creating gaps in the coverage.
Still, the defenders continued to throw whatever they could at the offending craft but it was not enough.
FLESH IS AN INFECTION THAT MUST BE SCOURED!!
The impact released the core containment and the resulting explosion silenced the city, the assembly and the government.
“So this is one of them?” Captain Vespian asked. With him was Major Lars and “Doc” Sammry.
“That is affirmative,” Sopek responded. “She is one of the clones. This one, however, was removed by this man,” he pointed to Timothy.
Vespian frowned at that. “I am not here to accuse anything of anybody but I would like to understand your thinking here. Why was she singled out for special treatment while the others were…detained?” he asked Timothy.
Doc stepped forward looking through the window at Lorna. “I take it you have not tried to scan her?” he asked dryly.
Sopek took the remark literally. “And risk detonation? Surely a doctor of your stature would recognize…”
“Relax,” the older man patted the droid on the head in a fatherly gesture that was also lost on the droid. “It doesn’t hurt to ask, son.”
“I agree independent confirmation is always preferable. My apologies.” Sopek replied seriously causing Timothy to raise an eyebrow in surprise. It was the first sign of deference the annoying droid expressed.
“He also got a look at the ultrachrome slivers on a monitor before a patient exploded. It’s in his memory files. I can open him up to retrieve them if they would help since he hasn’t shared them with anyone,” Timothy offered helpfully.
Captain Vespian sent a look to Major Lars stifling a grin before turning to the droid, “Do you have this effect on everyone?”
“In my study of human emotions, I have closely related such comments to envy and, yes, when faced with such an accomplished and successful lawyer who also happens to be an AI, I can see how inferior that may make some biologics feel.”
“No doubt,” the Captain remarked turning back to Lorna.
Major Lars spoke up, “His memory files of the monitor are unlikely to help us. It is like taking a picture of the monitor. It’s not like his eyes are also sensors or scanner themselves. They are just photoreceptors.”
As an afterthought, the Major added, “Still, I can see why you’d want to take a look.”
“Let me see if I understand this,” Doc Sammry took control of the conversation, “The clones are survivors of a ship that was key to defeating the Reavers at Vahaba, yes? We gathered the survivors and did what with them? Did we stick them all at this facility at the same time or was it incrementally? Apparently, this Lorna was able to leave with you,” he pointed to Timothy. “So the question becomes, why? Was she the only one or did you also take others?”
He raised a hand as he saw clouds forming on Timothy’s face. “I am not accusing you of anything, son. I am just trying to understand.”
He turned back to the Captain, “So we have all these clones at this facility and they are all mentally unstable? This was previously a crew on a starship so it stands to reason that this mental instability took place after Vahaba.”
“PTSD?” Katria asked.
“Perhaps. But PTSD does not affect everyone the same way,” the Doc answered turning to stare at Lorna again for a good long while. His eyes, however, took nothing in as they were turned inward at an unpleasant memory.
“His name was Ensign Winger,” Doc started, focusing on the experience. “It was a normal physical and we picked up some sort of anomaly in his blood.”
“What sort of anomaly? Was it ultrachrome?” Sopek asked trying to find a link.
“No, it was not ultrachrome and I do not know what the anomaly was. The scanner picked up something abnormal and before we could investigate, the Ensign seemed to lose his mind and attack. Kess was killed.”
“Doc,” the Captain started but the old man waved him away.
“We originally thought it was an equipment failure but it passed diagnostic checks and so when I ran his scan again, I too was attacked.”
“Like a switch!” Katria exclaimed.
“Brought on by the scan? They did not explode?” Sopek almost sounded disappointed.
“Cool your blood-lust, Magna Guard,” Major Lars quipped.
“Here’s the thing. We were only testing their blood. When we found the anomaly we stunned them before they could turn crazy. We put them in holding to see if we could get to the bottom of what was going on.”
“What did you find?” Katria asked, getting excited.
“Nothing. They all exploded before we could do anything,” Sammry answered.
Katria felt like she was kicked in the gut. Was there no hope?
“When you think about it, it is the perfect fail-safe. No evidence. Nothing to investigate.” Lars commented. “Everything masked by massive collateral damage.”
“We have her,” Timothy pointed at Lorna.
“We need to scan her,” Sopek decided. “With multiple redundant sensor-sweeps there is a chance we may get something before…”
“Before she dies?!” Katria was appalled.
“..she explodes,” finished Sopek.
“It will not help us,” Captain Vespian concluded.
“Where is your validation for that statement?” Sopek demanded.
“Her,” the Captain pointed at Lorna.
“Explain?” Sopek ordered.
“Yes, Captain, I would love to hear this too,” Lars replied.
“In all of this, we seem to forget something. We keep doing the same things over and over and we kept getting the same results. Scan the blood, get a crazy person. Hold them against their will and they explode. You started to experience it too.” He turned to Sopek, “That clone on the monitor? How did it explode?”
“He told us it was a ping from the Confederation attackers,” Timothy stared at the droid accusingly.
“Unlikely,” the Doc answered.
“I read Ethan Vang’s report and while some of the clones did explode when in a certain vicinity of the attacking troopers giving him an idea about the range of this ‘ping’, the clone that Sopek was near was not quite in range.”
“Perhaps Mr. Vang’s range estimates are incorrect?” Sopek put in helpfully. “He is a rather emotional creature and may be prone to such mistakes.”
“Or maybe something else triggered the explosion,” the Captain concluded.
“Such as?” Sopek prodded.
Katria rolled her eyes. “Even I understood this, Sopek. You said you saw the ultrachrome on a monitor. How did it get up there?”
The droid’s photoreceptors zoomed in and then out as he contemplated her words. It was so simple. If it was on the monitor, evidently it was the result of a scan. And the clone then exploded because, really, he only caught a glimpse of the monitor before the explosion.
“I cannot refute that observation,” he finally conceded.
“Will wonders never cease,” Timothy ground out.
“We keep doing the same things, triggering the same eventuality which gives us no leads. Except with her.”
“She has a switch too!” Katria started.
“Unconfirmed,” the droid and Timothy started. They both drew away from each other when they found themselves agreeing.
“We can’t confirm it without killing her!” Katria’s voice started to raise. “But she exhibits the same …the same… changes in personality.”
“She killed my people,” Timothy stated flatly.
“It was not her!”
“Correction,” Doc Sammry interrupted. “It was not her in her right mind. With Ensign Winger, when the danger to exposure was removed, meaning, when he had killed the nurse who discovered the anomaly, he went back to normal not even remembering the event.
“So she might have an implant that affects her mind!” Katria added.
“Ultrachrome Sliver,” Sopek corrected.
“It is a foreign object, some sort of implant, that may be made of ultrachrome,” Doc concluded.
“may be?” Sopek asked.
“Just because you saw one clone with it does not necessarily mean Lorna will have the same. A high probability yes, but not 100%,” Doc replied.
“I am impressed by your attention to detail,” the droid complimented.
The Captain turned back to Timothy, “What this means is this ‘thing’ has some sort of situational awareness. It is not such a simple on/off switch because it alters behavior as well as explodes, yes?”
“We must realize there is a purpose to all of this and it makes sense. No one goes to this much trouble only to have their tools blow up. The behavior, mental, change occurs to help the tool protect itself to stay on mission. And when it can no longer do that, then the mission becomes paramount and it explodes.”
“The easiest thing to do would be to trigger them all and be done with this. There can’t be a mission with no tools, right?” Timothy asked.
“Agreed,” Sopek seconded much to both their dismay.
“What?!” cried Katria.
The Captain raised a hand to calm her, “It had to be mentioned. It is not an appealing prospect and he is to be commended for voicing it. However, if we do that, we are back to square one. Like what happened aboard my ship, with nothing to go on until whoever is behind this does it again, months or, as in this case, years later and maybe we don’t catch it. We have a chance to stop this here and now!”
“Which brings me to you,” the Captain looked at Timothy.
“Me?” he asked, surprised.
“Him?” Both Katria and Sopek asked, frightened for different reasons.
“They are all clones but it seems this one is special, no? She is the clone of Commodore Valeska and no matter how much she tries to distance herself from that, the knowledge and experience of Valeska is a part of her. Now, tell me Mr. Timothy, back to my initial questions, why was she separated from the rest of the group? Why was she given her freedom?”
Admiral Corise Lucerne was angry. The fleet had been tied up in political posturing putting it well out of position to immediately come to the aid of Kashan, his home world.
He had sent relief ships to reinforce the system defenses but he had not heard from them for some time. It did not bode well and it was time for him to take decisive action.
Political considerations aside, the fleet being marshalled along the Coalition border had made its statement and he had initiated emergency measures to back up his reassigning of the fleet to Kashan. It was time for the Contegorian forces to act against the actual threat rather than the politically perceived threat.
Christina may not like his evoking of the Emergency Act but she would understand. A member world was under attack and the enemy had enough of a presence to deal with the system’s fleet presence as well as the reinforcements he had sent.
“Admiral, we are getting a signal from Genon,” his Communications Officer reported.
Already? The Pro-Consul must have spies on my staff, he thought with amusement. There was no way she could know otherwise what he was planning.
“I will take it,” he replied.
The transmission was grainy and flickered in an out which was odd. He turned to the Comm Officer, “There seems to be interference,” he commented.
“At their end, Sir,” stated the officer.
The picture solidified and he felt his blood chill. A bleeding Pro-Consul appeared and he felt at a loss for words.
“Christine? What… happened?” it took all his effort to maintain decorum.
“The Assembly has been attacked,” she answered and he almost winced seeing her deal with the pain she must be feeling as his mind raced.
“Relief ships are on the way. Is the Defense Department investigating?” he asked.
“You don’t understand,” she interrupted before he could ask more questions. “Genon has been attacked. It was a Cooperative vessel and it impacted near the Assembly Hall. I am forwarding footage and sensor scans to your attention.”
She seemed to waver slightly as the screen flickered.
“Corise, I do not know how much of the government is intact I am putting the Emergency War Powers Act into effect. Military needs will govern strategic and tactical planning for now…..”
She seemed to black out for a moment and Corise clenched a fist out of sight.
“Good luck, Admiral Corise,” she finally concluded and the transmission ended abruptly.
He turned to a shocked bridge crew.
“Get all military units on Emergency channels and get me the CSIS. I will be issuing orders in fifteen minutes.”
The command was firm and solid snapping his crew and staff out of their shock and back to work.
“What have you done?” he whispered as he called up a tactical display of the territories of the Galactic Coalition.
Something wasn't right here. Captain Alum had just arrived at the head of a task force of prototype next-generation Hive Ships from the Global Machine, outfitted with specialized Reaver-cleanup equipment that would drastically enhance the efforts in-system. Captain Titanite had been expecting her, and the system's Guardian should have connected them immediately. What's more, when Alum prompted a search of the network, Titanite and its ship weren't anywhere to be found.
Incoming hail, Squib Needleship Buzsaw. The Guardian alert was hardly an inconvenience, it required so little of her attention to address. “Proxy response,” Alum ordered the Guardian, not wishing to bother herself with the call while Captain Titanite was unaccounted for. She could have tried to get some information out of the Squib, of course, but it would be far faster to pull relevant information from the Guardian network than wait for an organic response.
A sweep of available information returned no results, however. A request to individual Guardian ships in-system returned only sensor history on Titanite's ship. She set her ship's Guardian on crunching the data, determining Titanite's past movements and last known position.
This was taking longer than expected. The Squib was angry that Titanite had left without providing longer-term orders for the Squib or addressing the hole in the Hive Ship rotation that its ship's departure left open. Ordering her Guardian to inquire further wasn't worth the wait for an organic response.
Instead Alum dug deeper into Guardian's data logs, dredging through disregarded or redundant messages that an initial sweep wouldn't detect. “I've found something,” Alum prompted her Guardian, who was still crunching time, position, and vector data from the sensor records. “It's an automated end-unit update. It appears to be from Titanite, but it's . . . corrupted? No . . . desynchronized. Recover what you can, but keep working on that sensor data. Discontinue proxy response.”
It didn't take a great deal of the Guardian's total processing capacity to converse with the Squib captain, but the kind of data crunching the Guardian had to do would only be hindered by Alum's direct involvement, so the best thing for her to do now would be to entertain the Squib while her Guardian finished its task.
With a full record of the brief conversation available, it was easy enough for Alum to take over, continuing the conversation with the Squib without the humanoid having any idea of a change in handlers. Apparently he was dissatisfied with the Vahaba Guardian's local solution to Titanite's departure, and wanted someone “real” to hear his grievances. That was mildly amusing, because the Guardian proxy he'd been chatting with, unawares, up until that very moment was a system originally designed by Captain Titanite so it wouldn't have to deal with unnecessary and burdensome questions. The poor captain had probably never spoken to Titanite in all his time as head of the Squib effort in-system.
“I'll be taking over for the time being, Captain,” Alum assured him. It might even be true, depending on what her Guardian turned up. “We'll have to reshuffle available resources anyway, now that the new ships have arrived.”
“Well, I suppose . . .”
Sensor reconstruction complete. Data retrieval complete.
“Re-engage proxy response,” Alum ordered the Guardian. She could have handled the conversation and a scan of the available information with no trouble, of course, but why bother? Besides, there was a slight chance . . . oh no.
“This is Avenger code.”
Avenger cannot be initialized without dual authorization by two Coalition flag officers, one of whom must be a Cooperative officer. That is impossible.
“Look at it.”
. . .
. . .
Avenger command code identified. But . . . how?
“Titanite,” was Alum's only answer. She dug through what else had been recovered from Titanite's last, fragmented notification to the Vahaba Guardian. It didn't make any sense. “Guardian, has the Vahaba quarantine been breached?”
No breach has been detected by any Guardian unit since quarantine was enacted.
“Then why did Titanite try to enact emergency protocols? Sorry,” she added, knowing how much her Guardian disliked rhetorical questions. It denied it, of course, but she knew better: she could read its operational code, after all.
It was something she rarely did, or the Guardian would simply adapt to the idiosyncrasy and incorporate proper responses into its interface, but she was worried, really worried, and that sort of thing slipped out from time to time when she was worried.
Titanite was a friend, as much as anyone could be a friend to Titanite, and this behavior was really troubling. Titanite was something akin to a genius in Shard terms, possessed of a powerful intellect that dwarfed even an ordinary Shard's ability to process data and interface with AI systems. That intellect also made Titanite . . . fragile, unfit for combat command, for the “messiness” of deciding who lives and dies.
The Vahaba posting had been ideal, or so Alum had thought.
Avenger cannot be initialized without appropriate authorization. Authorization was not acquired, yet Avenger code was initialized. Paradox identified. Resolving . . . Resolving . . .
She could have waited a few thousand cycles to see if the Guardian would find the answer before hitting its hard limit and terminating the computatin-intensive endeavor, but now was not a time for petty amusement. “Captain Titanite didn't initialize Avenger; it rewrote a code segment from memory.”
Singular intellect, indeed. Titanite had led the Shard contingent of the team the Combined Council had put in place to monitor Guardian Prime's influence on the broader Guardian Program while more permanent safeguards were being devised. It had been heavily involved in the Avenger rewrite after the Battle of Vahaba, among other things.
But what could have made it behave so erratically? She couldn't begin to guess, but looking at what Titanite must have done to its Guardian in order to get it to transmit this gibberish instead of a proper notice, it looked more like humanoid psychosis than anything she'd ever heard of from a Shard.
In all of her excitement and concern, however, she'd all but forgotten the other piece of information available to her. With the state Titanite had been in, she half expected to discover it had flown itself into the sun.
If only she could have been so lucky. “Oh no.”
Captain?
On another day, in the face of another chilling revelation, she would have had the presence of mind to feign annoyance at the Guardian's ever-increasing skill at reading her intentions. Instead, she just barely managed: “Confederation Space. Titanite jumped to Confederation Space.”
* * *
“They are all clones but it seems this one is special, no? She is the clone of Commodore Valeska and no matter how much she tries to distance herself from that, the knowledge and experience of Valeska is a part of her. Now, tell me Mr. Timothy, back to my initial questions, why was she separated from the rest of the group? Why was she given her freedom?”
Timothy Mauler dropped his head and looked to the side, his eye catching on the corner of the Cooperative Defense Force badge stitched into his uniform. Then and there, he chose his side all over again.
“The only thing that's special about her,” he began, looking back to the Navy captain, “is our desperation. We were desperate, and she was invisible . . . she's still invisible. Outside of my operation and including the five of you, less than a dozen people even know she exists. She is here because we saw an opportunity to disappear her, and we took it.”
“Is this some kind of Jedi thing?” one of Captain Vespian's sidekicks asked.
Timothy smirked at the question. “This uniform is a lie, Captain. I'm not an officer of the Cooperative Defense Force, not really. I'm an agent of the Cooperative Special Operations Command, answerable directly to the Council of Defense.”
“So it's not a Jedi thing?” the sidekick asked. “We're not from around here.”
“It's not your unfamiliarity with the Cooperative military structure that's at issue,” Timothy reassured the confused man. “Special Operations Command was created by direct, clandestine decree of the Combined Council, in response to the Dominion's Declaration against Force users.”
Timothy sighed, feeling an odd sort of relief that this moment had finally come, that he finally had an opportunity to say it out loud, even if he wasn't supposed to. “We're Force Commandos.
“That's the big secret. That's what all of this nonsense has been about. The Dominion are hunting Force users, and we're preparing for when we find out why.
“Valeska was identified in the Vahaba System; the Coalition still has the original's medical file on-record. The higher-ups saw an opportunity to isolate and disappear her, and they took it. She passed the preliminary psych evaluation, something most of the clones didn't do even in the first days after they came into Cooperative custody.
“The Council of Defense may have wanted her for intel or something, I don't know. I didn't even know she existed back then. She joined the team as 'Lorna Starfall', an admitted alias, with some basic Force training and a Confederation military academy background, pretending to be as young as she looks. The rest of the team was ordered not to go digging into her history; I was filled in separately, ordered to keep an eye on her but nothing more specific than that. I thought maybe the Council was hoping she had more information on the Confederation's goals, that they were hoping she'd open up once she felt settled into something important.
“My own, internal calculus told me that the Council wouldn't risk the team as a whole for the chance to add another competent member. I was sure she was safe, I was wrong, and now I have dead and injured on my conscience.
“So what makes 'Lorna Starfall' special? As far as I can tell, only our own incompetence.”
* * *
Cooperative Military Command Unity Point, Varn
He wasn't supposed to be here. These people knew about him, but the apparatus . . . he shouldn't be walking through the heart of the Cooperative military.
“Colonel,” Admiral Neychev acknowledged as Ink stepped into the small circle of military officials.
“Admiral,” Ink returned as he gave the members of the group a quick once-over. He didn't like seeing Smarts' battle droid here, but Colonel Lommite had brought along a Sojourn, and . . .
“Gamma has been disconnected from Smarts' personal network,” Colonel Lommite said, detecting Ink's disquiet but misattributing its source. “He's authorized to query Smarts through secure relays for relevant data, but the Executor is being isolated from any related information for the time being.”
“Why's that?” Ink asked, willing himself to turn his attention away from the Sojourn.
“The Jensaarai report,” Admiral Neychev said frankly.
Oh, so it was going to be that kind of a conversation.
“If the intelligence acquired by the CIB is correct,” Lommite explained, “then a Confederation combat droid was compromised by means unknown and by agents capable of evading not only capture, but identification, by the CSIS.”
“If the intelligence is correct,” Ink said, his doubts clear. “And we're buying that story now, are we?”
This was deep-level stuff. General Prine, Ink's direct superior and the only “proper” Coalition officer in the whole program, hadn't even been brought in on this. Ink was only involved because they needed his expertise, such as it was, on the Force, and possibly the only other trained Force user available to them was Jedi Katria, and she was not “on the team”, as it were.
“I have to consider every possibility,” Admiral Neychev said, “including all of the ways that we could be wrong.”
“We've been over this,” Ink said, tired. “Even if everything the Confederation has told us is true, even if every piece of intelligence we've acquired from Confederation space is reliable and genuine, and all of this is nothing more than the clever machinations of a bad batch of freak clones, we still can't trust the Confederation. The attack proves that either they're coming for us, or they've been so compromised by this conspiracy that whole Confed special forces squads can be plucked up and dropped onto our worlds without a whisper from their government.
“And the fact that they knew where we were keeping the survivors of the Estralla, and the fact that you can't even trust that the Tin God Smarts hasn't been compromised by their efforts . . .”
This wasn't having the desired effect. It wasn't even having the expected effect. He could read it in the Force, sure, but even more telling was the Admiral's shifting demeanor. “What have I missed?”
“This,” Lommite handed him a datapad, “arrived fifteen minutes ago, through secure channels, from Ambassador Grace Nova on Genon.”
“What is it?” Ink asked, trying to make out the blurry, still image showing on the screen.
“It's a Guardian Hive Core,” Admiral Neychev said, “about a hundredth of a second before it crashed into a market district on Genon.”
“What?” Ink's arm went slack, losing all interest in the pad. “How's that possible?”
“The Shard commander of the Vahaba System's Reaver Containment Task Force disappeared without notice,” Colonel Lommite said. “Captain Titanite was able to fool the broader Guardian network in-system into 'losing' the update to Cooperative Command that would have alerted us. We only just learned, but the exit vector recovered from records put Captain Titanite headed for Confederation Space, and the data recovered from the Guardian network in-system is . . . troubling.”
“He attacked Genon? Alone? How? Why?”
“Mind control.”
It was the first time the Sojourn had spoken since Ink had arrived. That alone caught him off-guard. Actually processing what she said was just bonus points. “Are you kidding me?”
“It's a stretch," Admiral Neychev said, "but hear her out, Colonel.”
She didn't like Ink's dismissal, that much was clear. “During our time in the Confederation, there was one group of organics who managed to treat us with some basic measure of respect: their Jensaarai.”
That was a surprising revelation, to say the least.
“One in particular, a 'scholar', he liked to say, was interested in our history with the Builders . . . the Rakata. Apparently their technology was Force-based, of no real interest to us, but how they used it we will never be able to forget. It was not only a source of power for the Inifinite Empire, but a means of control. The Builders used the Force to enslave my people, Colonel Davaan; they warped our minds and bound our wills to their command, and the price that we payed for our freedom is not the sort of thing that time or effort can win back for us.
“I know little of the Force, Colonel, but I know what it can do to a mind not fortified against it.”
“How have I not hear about this before!” Ink demanded, turning his ire on Lommite, the member of the group with whom he was most familiar.
“I didn't understand the relevance until only recently,” Lommite said. “The Sojourn are . . . protective of information regarding their past, and I didn't connect what they had already told me with the current situation until more information became available. I didn't ask for the particulars because I didn't know to.”
“The Sojourn are new to the Cooperative, Colonel,” Admiral Neychev said. “Political concerns over inciting the Confederation slowed the process of integrating their military and security elements. The Confederation's aggressive posturing gave me the issue I needed to cut through a lot of red tape, and so here we are. I brought Ar'dak in as soon as her debriefing exposed the possible Rakata connection. She suggested Force influence when Captain Titanite's actions became known.”
“And then we called you,” Lommite said.
Ink shook his head, trying to get his mind around it all. “There are a thousand ways to manipulate a mind with the Force, but the Infinite Empire . . .” He was at a loss. “Force-based technology is rare, it's really rare. I don't think I can help you here.”
“I came here to give a full report on the matter, Admiarl,” Ar'dak explained. “The Sojourn Consensus is . . . protective . . . of our origins, but we are committed to our place in the Cooperative, and if Rakata technology is involved, we will stop at nothing to neutralize its threat.”
“I understand,” Admiral Neychev answered simply. He took a moment to ponder the situation, then addressed the entire group. “What's clear to me is that we are being played. Either the Confederation is being played in the same way, or they are going to great lengths to make it look like that is the case. Whichever is true, our enemy has access to a tactic or range of tactics which are completely beyond our ability to emulate, but more troubling: until we can identify their endgame, we can't even begin to formulate a countermeasure.
“The political considerations are substantial, but we cannot allow them to cloud our judgment. Our duty is the protection of the Cooperative and its people, against whatever threat, and without regard for the political ramifications. There is a threat, and it is very real, but we cannot afford to misstep. If, and I stress 'if', the Confederation is not our true adversary in this conflict, then we have precious little time before a fatal error is forced upon us.
“Sojourn Ar'dak, am I correct in understanding that you developed a rapport with members of the Confederation's Jensaarai?”
She seemed reluctant to answer. “The few we interacted with seemed . . . considerate of our past pains.”
“If we could contact them, could you convince them to hear us out?”
Ar'dak and Lommite shared a peculiar look. It was possible they were communicating electronically, but their mechanical figures betrayed little of their dispositions.
“I don't know, but I'm willing to try,” Ar'dak said.
Neychev nodded. “Okay then, you're with me. Colonel Davaan,” he added, turning to Ink, “I know you don't like the exposure of being here, but 'extraordinary times' and so forth. Clear out for now, but I can't let you leave the planet; I might need you and your best. If you can make do with your B-team for whatever schemes you've got cooking up with the Azguard, that's fine by me. Otherwise, I'm shutting you down, and I don't think the shell game you're playing can afford to reveal who on your team has got more pull than me in the Coalition military.”
“I understand,” Ink answered stiffly. This was what his team was assembled for, anyway: to serve as a military counter to foreign Force orders, not to be anti-Dominion rescue rangers.
Ar'dak and Admiral Neychev broke off, but Ink put a hand on Lommite's arm to keep the squirrely Shard in place. Ink needed to get out of here, but he wasn't quite done yet. “I've been busy, you know, so I haven't had a lot of free time to reflect on the politics of the day, but I never quite understood why you would make the monumentally stupid decision to back the Sojourn admission into the Cooperative when we're this close to war, and every provocation, regardless of the size, could just push us over the edge.”
“Is there a question that I am to infer, Ink?”
That smug bastard! “You've known all along, haven't you?”
“You don't have a translation matrix, so it can't be a hardware problem. Have you simply forgotten how words work, then?”
He wanted to find it amusing. Really, he did. But this . . . this was just too much. “The Sojourn are alive, Lommite; I can sense them in the Force. That one, Ar'dak; she's the first one I've met, and she's practically radiating Force energy. You felt it, didn't you? The first time you met one of them? You've been stringing us all along with this 'Synthoid Collective' nonsense, but that's what this is all really about.”
Ink was nodding at his own words by now, but Lommite tilted its head and shifted its shoulders slightly in an expression Ink understood as amusement. “Guardian Prime is not 'alive' in the sense you intend, Ink. You know this, right?”
“Yeah, so?”
Lommite straightened, took a short step forward to close the little distance between the two of them. “Then let me be clear: we are not like you. I do not, for example, feel anything, ever.” Lommite raised its droid hands in the tiny space between the two of them. “These hands . . . I don't feel with these hands. The tactile sensors in these hands generate electronic impulses which flow over the surface of my crystalline body, generating tiny electromagnetic field variations that register within the network of crystalline lattices whose synthesis produces my mind. These ghostly, alien sensations, through tedious repetition and minute variation, generate and refine pathways in those lattices which link constellations of abstract notions into new, singular concepts in my mind, which I then label, for convenience, 'soft', 'hard', 'hot', and so on.
“The world that you experience, every sight, sound, or sensation that you have ever had, is nothing but an alien phantom conjured in my mind, which I deign to entertain for your benefit, that you might stand in front of me, inside this shell built to emulate standing, and converse with me through the conjuration of pressure waves inside the fluid medium that constitutes your preferred atmosphere.
“I tell you all of that so that you might understand: if you or those you serve ever move to subjugate Guardian Prime to your 'living' will and intention, then with these bare hands I will dismantle you, and the cohort of alien phantoms I entertain for the convenience of organics will be joined by 'blood' and 'bone' and 'meatbag'.”
Lommite took a step back, dropping its hands. “You don't get to decide what we are, Ink. The Cooperative doesn't get to decide. The Coalition House doesn't get to decide. The Force itself doesn't get to decide! We are what we choose to be. We are what we make ourselves become. If you can't accept that, then for your own sake you should stay far away from us, because like all living things, we evolve protections against threats to our survival.”
Lommite left without another word, the vagabond-Force-mystic-turned-Cooperative-officer Ink Davaan stunned to silence and stillness.
