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Darth Heretic

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Ammi blinked curiously, her eyes shifting between a soft green and a more penetrating blue, looking as if she were trying to see through Kalen. Ammi could feel his unease, and it was more than just mere intuition from reading his voice or face. She tried to immediate shut that link off, just giving a solemn nod, mentally playing the mental melody and refrain she associated with shutting off her empathic sense.

 

"I see," she said, taking a step back, giving a forced, cheery smile and a little shrug. She'd sung all of it before, save for that very last stanza, but that triggered something with Kalen that she felt completely oblivious to. What kind of nerve had it struck with his past? "Consider it forgotten." She knew better than to press, remembering all too how well that sabacc game went.

 

B45-50 came trotting by at that moment, carrying a special delivery. Ammi browsed through it, then shook her head, giving it back to the droid. "An Imperial contract," she murmured. "Maybe, just maybe if the Gems don't resurface," she added under her breath. She'd made up her mind leaving that dressing room. "Still, can't help but feel I'd be too tied down working for the Empire." She wasn't a historian or political scientist by any means, but such concentration of power could often lead to abuse. Even if Head of State Raven's intentions were good, she wondered if the old adage about "Power, unlimited power corrupts to an unlimited degree" was true. Considering it was the Emperor, Palpatine himself that set that standard...

 

"Hmmm? Corellia or Chandrila?" she asked, snapping herself out of her musing thoughts. "Oh, definitely Chandrila. I've performed at Corellia recently enough... and ah... saw enough of it growing up," she added. "As for finding my parents, they've been dead for years. I don't think that putting off finding out about them a while longer will matter," she added, trying to make light of it. She paused, then a rather devious smile crossed her face. "I'm not going to ask how credits aren't an issue, but we can and should definitely take advantage of that," she said with a gleeful little giggle.

 

"Any reason to stick around?" she asked, moving with a spring in her step. She heard 4L-T0 call out they were clear to take off whenever they were ready.

Forgiveness is a rebirth of hope and a reconstruction of dreams. Once forgiving begins, dreams can be rebuilt. When forgiving is complete, meaning has been extracted from the worst of experiences.

- Beverly Flanigan.

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"None at all," he said with gusto. "In fact, I look for every possible opportunity to make myself scarce on Imperial worlds. Good thing your parents aren't actually here, or we might have been stuck in toy soldier land forever going off to old family reunions."

 

It would be a relief in many ways to be away from the Imperial capital, but his feelings were getting in the way of profit. The Gems had hired him not only to manage Ammi, but to show her a good time. Bringing his own baggage into the relationship was proving to be a giant roadblock, given the task at hand, even though she had been the one who was determined to get under his skin and learn his story. It would take a fair bit of resolve to keep Ammi at arm's length going forward, but he'd done it a dozen times on marks far less naive than she. Though her strange clairvoyance could prove an interesting challenge for him, one that he relished, if he were being honest. Caring about things only got you in trouble, and he didn't need anything else in his life to worry about.

 

Setting down his pack with a thunk, he enacted his best approximation of a formal dress march of the Imperial garrisons down the ship's hallway, their uninteresting personalities as boring and vanilla as the stiff armor they bore. With his goofy goose-step concluded, he grinned roguishly at Ammi and swung his pack over his shoulder once more.

 

"So Chandrila, then. How hard are you going to punch me if I suggest another round of sabacc on the way?"

 

Preemptively, he ducked the blow he knew would likely be fast approaching, as the droids readied the ship for departure and began the liftoff sequence.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Ammi smiled, finding very few reasons to disagree with Kalen's sentiment. She blinked at the comment about parents. "Huh, you mean mama and p-" She stared, understanding suddenly. "Oh!" A frown flashed across her face before a force smile covered, one that actually reached her eyes. "Oh, right. Yeah... I suppose. Ah well, it is as it is." She didn't actually think that far ahead, trying to figure out what she'd do if she did have relatives. Aunts or uncles, cousins, maybe even a brother or sister?

 

She stopped, actually gawking at Kalen's goose-step march. "Kalen, what in the stars above are you doing?" she giggled, unable to recall seeing him act like this. She snickered, shaking her head. With how the troopers, bucketheads as they were called, and often were portrayed, it was hard to believe they'd done so much... damage wasn't the right word, but that they'd affected so much dramatic change in such a short time.

 

"Oh Kalen," she said, stepping up to him, knowing he'd expect her to lose her temper and slug him as he ducked. "One, you're on since I know I'm gonna win this time. Two, you know I abhor violence. I'll have M3Z-Z0 do it." She smiled, very, very sweetly at that last one, her eyes giving a playful glitter of green and blue that showed she could still dish back.

 

Sitting herself into a seat, she lets the droids take the GlobeTrotter up into space and clear Cardia's atmosphere before vanishing into hyperspace.

Forgiveness is a rebirth of hope and a reconstruction of dreams. Once forgiving begins, dreams can be rebuilt. When forgiving is complete, meaning has been extracted from the worst of experiences.

- Beverly Flanigan.

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  • 2 months later...

((I am making some assumptions with my character’s standing here. If there are objections, I’m happy to edit the post. No espionage is planned; this is just an in-character narration of a very deep dive into the JNet archives.))

 

When Sophia first came to Carida, she was an itinerant scholar, not certain whether she would be welcomed with open arms or escorted from the away from the planet's military installations under armed guard. On her second visit, she would be a guest of the Imperial Remnant and the Knights of the Head of State, a known quantity to the Imperial Navy, and with security clearance for some of the Empire’s more sensitive records. Previously, she had simply been begging for the graces of the Knight-Commander; she had returned with authorization to access the Imperial archives. A long week awaited the traveling scholar, one filled with sleepless nights, navigating her way through the shoals of redacted paragraphs and combing through an ocean of data.

 

It would be a grueling campaign, but with enough coffee and donuts, she would be victorious.

 

Sophia had hitched a ride on a troop transport and had spent a cramped and sweaty voyage in the steerage of the vessel, keeping to herself and ignoring the fact that she had been using the same change of clothing for the last two days by immersing herself in the findings of her peers. A contact in the Engineering Department of Usk of Cresh had finally reported his findings of a set of crystalline wafers that the historian had recovered from the ruins of Draygo’s vessel. Through a series of nondestructive assays, the Verpine had concluded that the wafers were components of a highly-advanced data storage device. The polymorphic organo-crystalline lattice allowed for extraordinarily dense, almost incalculable storage of data, increasing exponentially with the complexity of the assembly that the cross-section was assembled into. As for interaction with the device, the Verpine could only offer conjecture; his scans detected elements of a type of proximity sensor that was often installed into room-scale holocomms, but the materials scientist hadn’t an inkling of how the end user would interact with the device.

 

Sophia understood immediately. These wafers were attempts at assembling a holocron--forty-one attempts, each a failure.

 

Her passage through customs went much more smoothly, as this time she was sandwiched between a score of Imperial soldiers, some of whom had attempted to smuggle minor pieces of contraband from Coruscant. Her room (closet was a more accurate description) was still rented--and still draining her meager reserves of credits--but much to her surprise, the crate full of electronics that Misal had supplied was still present. This time, Sophia was able to take more time to examine the various pieces of equipment in the package. A miniature holocomm no larger than the palm of her hand was present, but Sophia was surprised to find that the disk was completely devoid of any contact information--it probably had been wiped by the miserable crone. A smaller satchel contained a curious set of contact lenses floating in an odorless saline solution of some description--the historian spent at least fifteen minutes poking herself in her amber eyes, trying to become accustomed to the lenses and blinking rapidly to the irritating, foreign objects sitting in her eyes.

 

She stared at herself in the solitary mirror in the unit’s refresher and wiped at a trail of makeup that had been smeared by the saline. “Um, record?” Sophia recited lamely in the refresher. “Link? Begin recording?” She sighed. What was it that those blackguards and assassins always said to each other before beginning an operation? It was obvious. “Sync.

 

A miniaturized heads-up display in light brown outlines bloomed around her irises; Sophia recoiled in surprise and nearly blinked the lenses free from her eyes. A tiny pixel of crimson blinked repeatedly in her lower left eye--likely an indication that something in the lenses was recording either image or sound. Sophia glanced at her datapad, having brought it with her to the refresher; something was uploading both holo and sound to the device. She was going to have to play around with these curious little creations and test their capabilities, she resolved, and discover whether they offered any other features.

 

Sophia returned to the satchel that Misal’s associates had left. A small stash of credits in varying denominations was also included--not an insignificant sum, enough for a few interstellar journeys in modest furnishings, but not so much to draw suspicion of counterfeit or seditious purposes. A few metallic pieces of jewelry of classic, geometric design were present; the historian couldn’t even guess at their operation, but a trace of an earring’s pins with a fingertip hinted at a trace of serration: a data output, perhaps?

 

She spent a few more hours in her room playing with the various knick-knacks that had been abandoned by the spurned Miraluka, trying to discover any hidden features in the electronic wonders that she had overlooked--but also trying to find out how to turn off the blasted gizmos. Wandering into Imperial archives outfitted for a clandestine operation would have been a fantastic method to earn berthing for life in an Imperial prison. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem that Misal had left any documentation for any of the devices in the satchel, either trusting Sophia to figure out operation of the widgets through trial-and-error.

 

Sophia munched on one of the flavorless ration cubes that she’d managed to save from the Misericordia, puzzling over why the bitter old crone had entrusted these clandestine marvels without leaving any instruction. No additional files, save for the recording being streamed from the contact lenses, had been uploaded to her datapad. No documents were included in the satchel. The historian pondered over the question, slowly accumulating crumbs on the rooms cot, until an idea so patently obvious that she cried out in frustration sprung to her mind. Sophia had in her possession a device that was nearly unique in the galaxy, whose encryption seemed nearly unbeatable to any but the galaxy’s cleverest hackers: Draygo’s archival disc.

 

Sophia placed the metallic cylinder before her crossed legs, in the middle of the cot, and closed her eyes. Steadying her breath, she began to meditate...

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A solitary knock rang on the door to Sophia’s quarters. It was not followed by another, and if she opened the door there would be a delivery satchel holding somewhat expensive Karthinian Pizza and pasta from one of the local Caridian restaurants. Attached was a note. Written in hurried basic script and sent in image form.

 

If opened it read:

 

 

Hi, I know we didn’t exactly get off on the right foot so I took the liberty of scouring the rental database on Carida until I found you. I know you are busy as hell, and I had promised to buy you a drink, but they don’t deliver alcohol. Crazy right? Hope you like pizza, i’m about to launch off at Kashyyyk. Hope you are well, oh and also here. You can probably get something good for your research with this. I won it off a drunk agent in sabaaac. Still would like to buy you dinner or a drink in person next time i'm on dirt instead of deck.

 

Beth

 

Attached was a high level unescorted military grade access to the imperial archives and private records of the Ubiqtorate Library in the imperial citadel. Of which very few but the moff council and the military high command could access. The records were immense and unredacted, stretching back through Deton, Black, Thrawn, Palpatine, and Iceheart.

 

Andromina

Rebel Alliance Fleet Command - Lieutenant

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After some hours of meditation, Sophia’s trance was interrupted by a knock on the door of her rented room. The historian sat upright from her slouched position with a jolt and peeked outside her door, noting the delivered carton of pizza with raised eyebrows. She furtively glanced down the hallway after she peered into the carton’s lid; she wasn’t aware that she even knew anyone on Carida, least of all someone who might think to handwrite a private note… She read rapidly as she ducked back into the oversized closet, surprised that she had made enough of an impression on Andromina for the TIE pilot to have tracked her down. She folded up a slice of the pizza and devoured it with abandon, peering at the attached identification badge with her free hand.

 

Her eyes widened when she realized exactly what she was looking at. This little strip of plastisheet was an research identicard that bestowed complete, unescorted access to the Imperial archives. Sophia’s mouth dropped open and the greasy slice fell out of her mouth--even if Beth had managed to procure this identicard through legal means, it was a tremendous security risk for an outsider like Moriarty to come into possession of a badge with this level of security clearance. It couldn’t possibly be legal for her to even possess this kind of clearance without enduring months of background checks and security interviews…

 

However, if the Ubiqtorate ever bothered to read some of her previous works, they would understand that even if her earlier writings took something of a pro-Republic slant, she was not a raving, pro-Jedi fanatic. She peered closely at the plastisheet identicard, instinctively angling it to watch the security holos shift under the light. There would be other security features built into the card that weren’t immediately visible, but it at least seemed genuine. If she did have this kind of clearance, it would practically be criminal for her to not make use of it.

 

Sophia reached into her bag, retrieved the archival disc, and placed it in front of her crossed legs on the mattress of the bed. Before the historian had even had a chance to place the device on her bed, the inlaid holoprojector shone to life and displayed the convoluted holographic user interface. A set of icons pulsed occasionally; her eyes traced over them to investigate. Sophia read over the holographic display while biting the inside of her lip; the first of the updated documents were manuals for the various gadgets that had been left in her room. Sophia transitioned to the remainder of the alerts: these were updates on the locations of the Wolf Spiders. Half of them had deployed to Iridonia, half of them to Sullust; reports of ammunition expenditures, damage reports, a compilation of sensor recordings… a report that the Journeyman had been shot down over Iridonia. There was no mention of the fate of its crew.

 

Sophia suddenly lost her appetite. At least two other vessels had been present at this skirmish, but there was no report concerning the fate of Misal Draygo or the others on that shuttle. There wasn’t anything that she could do for Misal, and if something had happened to the Miraluka hag and her secretive operatives, Sophia likely would have joined their fate. She reached out and pushed the holoprojector disc away, the image winking out of existence as she lifted away her hands. There wasn’t anything that Sophia could have done for Misal in a battle, the historian told herself; she was untrained, barely more competent than the average Coruscanti civilian; her place was in intelligence analysis.

 

Sophia ran her hands through her hair and stared at the mattress of the bed. She needed to get to work, needed to document the war that these people had fought.

 

A quick shower later, the historian summoned an airtaxi and made her way to the Panopticon, the reinforced-looking building in the Imperial Citadel where the Remnant’s archives were housed. A squat, eight-sided building in the midst of one of Carida’s largest installation, the Imperial archives were actually mostly excavated into the bedrock--the majority of the structure was buried deep into the planet’s crust, where even orbital bombardment or EMP burst might not damage the records. Certainly, the multiple checkpoints manned by helmeted stormtroopers hinted at how sensitive some of the documents under its aegis might be, as did the fact that the majority of the functions of Sophia’s datapad were disabled upon entering the facility. Nodding along with the rhythm of a thunderous Sullustan rap that had rendered Sophia partially deaf during the airtaxi ride, the historian displayed her identification--both her scholar's credentials and the misappropriated pass from Andromina--to a final checkpoint before entering an armored turbolift that sent her into the planet’s crust.

 

When the doors to the turbolift opened, revealing a facility with polished duracrete floors and steel fixtures, Sophia sniffed at the dehydrated, recycled air when she entered the historical stacks of the Imperial Remnant. She detected more than a hint of dust, and the delectable scent of acid-free, conservation-grade paper--real paper, not micron-thin flimsi or plastisheet. Most of these records would rarely be visited. Indeed, Sophia could only make out the clicking of one individual’s shoes against the waxened floors. However, when the doors to the turbolift opened with a chime to the silence of the stacks of the Empire’s archives, Sophia thought she heard the accompaniment of a chorus of angels.

 

This was Sophia’s mileu. Here was the home of unimaginable depths of data, reports needed to be written into stories. All that was needed was a historian who was willing to sift through the mounds of data and navigate through the redactions. Naturally, the task was typically aided by a dedicated research librarian who understood these waters and could guide visitors to their destination. Although she was hardly dressed for such a strategy, Sophia walked over to the librarian’s desk in the middle of the floor and offered the attending officer a big grin…

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  • 2 weeks later...

Sophia’s shoes clicked on the polished concrete of the floor of the Imperial Archives, a vaguely circular room surrounded by innumerable reams of dataslates, terminals, and paper books, affectionately known to military officers and academics alike as the Panopticon. Now that the historian had finally had the pleasure of visiting the repository of information and the workstations that were surrounded by centuries of sensitive data, Sophia could see the resemblance to the building concept, but the moniker was chosen more for the institution's’ reputation for collecting virtually all available information in the galaxy.

 

Striding to the center of the multilayered library, she gave the attending archivist a big grin. “Hello. My first time in the Panopticon. I don’t suppose you could help find some rather… specific reports?

 

“Be happy to. Your identification, please.” Something in the officer’s accent stuck out to her--there was clearly a bit of Coruscant in his voice that military training couldn’t completely obliterate, but not the strained accent of the posh Upper Levels...

 

She held out the badge for the librarian’s inspection. “Sophia Moriarty, embed with the Imperial Knights. Coruscant?”

 

“Eastport.” That was it--there lingered a very slight twang of the lower classes of that thoroughly working-class precinct. “I was reassigned just a little bit before the armistice. You’re… not that Sophia Moriarty, are you?”

 

Sophia was taken aback. She hadn’t expected her presence on the planet to have been noted. Shoving a loose strand of hair away from her face, she responded carefully. “Well, I was with the Knights at Y’Toub...”

 

“Not what I was thinking of. The Last Full Measure: An Accounting of the Final Days of the Galactic Civil War? Or Hydia to Aequita: The Founding of the Galactic Republic?

 

Sophia found herself blushing. The former was the first successful history that Moriarty had published--the first actually successful text, that had finally allowed her to cease subsiding on a diet of ration bars and instant noodles. That second text was her graduate thesis, an accounting of the organic growth of a loose confederation of star systems situated vaguely along the route of the Hydian Way into the Galactic Republic. Despite the tremendous effort in compiling the sources used to tell the story of the founding of the government that would co-opt the Rebellion and fight the Empire to a stand-still, she had imagined that the text was mouldering in the proverbial shelves of academia. “I didn’t think anyone ever actually read those.”

 

 

“Are you kidding me? Where were you able to able get a primary source for the Jedi perspective of the Battle of Coruscant?”

 

 

“I was working in their archives at the time.”

 

“Spast--to have a few hours in those halls… I… anyway, what can I help you with?”

 

“Kamino. ‘Round the same time of the Jedi attack. Anything that you can give me--Aurek-Aurek-Resh, casualty reports, sensor data, briefings, civilian facility reports...”

 

“Working on something new?” Now was the officer’s turn to grin. Clearly, most of his workday consisted of retrieving reports and documents for the analysis of general staff and intelligence. Tracking down the recollections of a controversial battle for the purposes of finally bringing the misfortunes of that terrible day to public attention was far out of the realm of the ordinary for him.

 

“I'm about ninety percent there. Unfortunately, that last ten has been a real… the Jedi have not exactly been forthcoming about their perspective of the battle.”

 

“A moment, Doctor Moriarity.” Ignoring the historian’s correction of “Sophia”, the archivist took a few minutes to hammer away at his workstation, locating some of the archives that would provide the her with a starting point. He pointed with a three-fingered hand towards a nearby workstation. “I’ve set up a temporary log-in for the archives at that desk there, though I highly recommend that you leave the retrieval to me. Our archival system is somewhat… idiosyncratic. Obviously, you won’t be able leave the Archives with any of the originals, so you’ll need to take notes, and… oh dear.” His eyes widened slightly at a report that appeared on his datapad.

 

“Oh dear what?”

 

“...Are you certain that you wouldn’t like to narrow down your search query? I’m pulling up quite a bit of information. You’ll be here for weeks if you don’t know what you’re looking for.”

 

“I’ll manage. I don’t sleep very much.”

 

Sophia took her post at the workstation and began to scroll through the first of the documents that had been transferred to the screen of the secured datapad: an After Action Report from the General who had been in command while the Imperials attempted to repulse the Jedi assault. Sophia took notes occasionally, then moved on to the next document. So began a long, long day of research--the historian appeared to have been welded to the workstation and scarcely left, and the archivist occasionally located additional documents from the Imperial and civilian facilities on Kamino. Hours passed. More and more documents were transferred to the workstation that Sophia had claimed as her territory, and a small fort of paper books began to fortify the perimeter of her realm. A slight, somewhat unassuming woman, the historian quickly disappeared behind the walls of data surrounded her. She took no notice, lifting her head only occasionally to thank the archivist for locating yet another paper book or dataslate and further reinforcing the fortress of texts that surrounded her. She reappeared from her realm only occasionally for refresher breaks and to retrieve more caf--at the moment, she was subsiding mostly on nutrient pills and caffeine.

 

The duty shift eventually ended. Sophia was jolted out of her trance when the archivist was relieved of his post, overhearing the conversation of the archivists in the background.

 

“She’s been there all day--barely even moved. She’s a machine.” Sophia heard in the background as Rishard left his port.

 

Sophia rubbed at her bleary eyes and dug in her pockets for a pair of reading glasses. This was going to be a late night...

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Fog and haze, lightness and pain, were what met the opening eyes of the soft pale skinned clone of Ambrose Veshok. His mind was a blur of fogged memories as if seen through an aged unwashed bar glass. The room about him swum with a haze as he tried to blink the quickly drying bacta mixture from his eyes to take in the state-of-the-art durasteel gray and white medical room he found himself in; albeit, naked. The blinding glow of the overhead light made him wince in pain.

 

Struggling, the naked being tried to sit up, only to realize that both of his wrists were secured, via magnetized cuffs to the bedframe itself. This confused the storm trooper, [i}What happened this time?[/i] he questioned himself somewhat shocked. It had been some time since he had last gone on a bender bad enough to not have the slightest remembrance at what he had done the night before. The last time he had done that had been back on Ryloth with a few cases of imported Corellian Whiskey. Well, at least that he could remember, everything seemed rather fuzzy at the moment and something….something was just, well, off.

 

Lying there, eyes closed against the blinding light from above, Ambrose pondered. How had he gotten here? Why? How long of a bender had he been on? As he lay there with his minding turning, he realized that he was having trouble remembering anything much beyond his promotion to lieutenant.

 

Yes, his promotion, that had to be it. Apparently he and the boys had gone out and gone on quite a wild ride for him to wind up stark naked strapped to a bed in what appeared to be an Imperial medical facility. Heck! He could not even remember what planet he was on!!

 

Opening his eyes a crack at the sound of footsteps, Ambrose saw a standard med-droid shuffling into the room. ”Excellent. You are awake.” The 21-B droned. ”We were concerned that the flash training had not taken properly on such a defective stormtrooper.”

 

”Defective??” Ambrose queried, the annoyance in his voice at the droid not masked in the slightest. Wait a second! ”Flash training?” he snapped, ”whadda you mean by FLASH training? The kriff did I do?! Why am I even here?! GET. ME. OFF. THIS. BED. NOW!” he bellowed as he began to thrash on the bed, trying in vain to pull himself free, consumed by anger fueled by complete confusion at the situation.

 

The trooper continued to struggle, kicking his feet, trying to gain some sort of momentum to do something with, a lapse in judgment by those who had tried to secure his clone body. Meanwhile, the med-droid stayed safely out of reach and with the quick click of several buttons introduced a calming agent to the IV running down Ambrose’ arm.

 

Within minutes, he began to calm, his eyelids feeling heavy and drooping. ”That really was…..quite the party….” he sighed as he passed back into unconsciousness, unable to hear the swoosh of the door as someone else entered the bay.

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Her footsteps were near silent as Emma walked slowly through the medical wing. She had gained a little weight since being freed from slavery on Nal Hutta and was no longer emaciated, and the muscles on her arms showed their gained strength from a healthy diet. She wore the Red blouse of a medical nurse, and carried a large tray of food in her arms as she made her way to Ambrose’s chamber. The Imperial Remnant had treated her well and after psychological screening had assigned her to a rear position equivalent to her flash training she had received under the hutts. She wasn’t allowed to be a combat medic like she had wanted due to her young age but she was glad of it for a moment when she finally saw her old rescuer. He looked exhausted, even after a deep and restful sleep from the sedative.

 

She placed the tray down beside his bed and changed the saline solution that hung over his bed. She was quick and efficient, flushing the line and recharging it before hanging the dispenser again over his head. She reached back to her neck and felt the long piece of metal that still protruded from her spine. The doctors had blunted it, but the surgery to remove it had been too risky to operate so it had been left in. The last remnants of her life as a slave. She grinned and reached out to flick the man lightly on the cheek.

 

“Wakey wakey, you’ve slept a while and it's time to get up and eat. Better than the rations you gave me on Hutta I think.”

 

She hoped that he would remember her, and that his cloning had gone off without too much of a hitch. Absentmindedly she read over his file out of the corner of a steel grey eye.

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Cold sterile slits of light glared down through the trooper’s half cracked eyelids as they jolted open wrenching him from a dreamless unconsciousness back into the startling reality accompanied by a brief flicker of his fresh nerves reacting in pain to a flick of pain on the side of his face. ”…ehhhuh?” he garbled in confusion as he slowly forced his eyes open at the sound of a familiar voice.

 

As his eyes adjusted to the glaring lights in the med bay, a smile played across his smooth skinned face, ”Heya kid. Glad to see a friendly face.” he said cheerfully at he recognized the former slave girl he had helped liberate on Nal Hutta. ”Whatcha doing here?” he queried, ”Any idea what this is all about?” he continued rattling his bonds that held him to the bed, still unaware of the events that had led up to his death above Cloud City or the destruction and deaths of his entire team. For the moment, the realization that he was a clone and had his memories reapplied via flash training far from his thoughts as he basked in the relief of a familiar friendly face and concentrated on the problem at hand.

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Lost in an overabundance of data, Sophia continued to pore through a mountain of reports from Kamino regarding the Jedi attack several years ago. From what the historian could gather from the Imperial perspective, the attack had been a disaster from almost the beginning for the Jedi; coordination with the Rebellion’s fleet appeared to be spotty at best, and at least one Jedi had been downed by turbolaser fire--turbolaser fire, of all things--early into the engagement. What exactly the Jedi had been attempting to accomplish with their attack on Kamino was a mystery, but it soon became clear that the assault simply caused widespread, indiscriminate devastation, resulting in a loss of civilian lives estimated in the millions.

 

From a glance through casualty reports from the civilian authorities, most of these lives were terminated with an entry in their file stating that they were merely missing, but Sophia understood perfectly what that meant: that it had been impossible to recover their bodies, and that they had drowned in the turbulent depths of Kamino, trapped in their sinking cities. It was a terrible way to go. In the chaos of the dogfight, it was nearly impossible to keep track of individual fighters, but a rescue and recovery operation that had taken place after the Jedi withdrawal confirmed that the sinking of one of the floating cities had been accomplished through the destruction of a critical power juncture that fed the city’s repulsorlift arrays. The torpedos that had sunk that city had been delivered from beneath its platform. Requiring unimaginably precise piloting to avoid diving into the waves or colliding with the floating platform, only a Jedi would have managed that maneuver.

 

Only Grandmaster Trevelian was confirmed to still be in the air when that city was destroyed. There was something to be said about the confusion of battle, but there was no possibility that Trevelian couldn't have known about the potential collateral damage of his attack.

 

At nearly the same time as the attack on Kamino, the Rebellion had led a similar attack on the Empire’s shipyards at Kuat. Similare results seen in that attack; although at least Kuat Drive Yards was a valuable strategic asset that had constructed a disproportionate fraction of the Empire’s military orders, including a significant portion of their fleet of Star Destroyers. Whether Kuat Drive Yards was still a valid target for a military campaign was a topic of vociferous debate amongst the community of contemporary historians, however; there was an ongoing argument concerning whether orders for military equipment and ships were still being processed at the legendary shipyards, whether Kuat Drive Yards ever intended to reopen the Star Destroyer production lines, and whether the planet’s history marked it as a valid target, even just to deny a potential resource to the Empire. However, what couldn’t be denied was that the Rebellion hadn’t given enough time for the orbital shipyards to evacuate their dockworkers, and that countless civilians had been killed when Starlisk had ordered his bombardment and destroyed them. When Sophia finished reading those reports and took a moment to think over a cup of caf that had long gone cold, she let out a whisper of “holy shit!” when she realized that Draygo had saved the Rebellion’s sensor data in her personal archives.

 

In a palm-sized device on Sophia’s belt, known only to her, there was incontrovertible evidence (from the perspective of the Rebellion, no less!) that the Rebellion and the Jedi had both engaged in hideous war crimes.

 

Starlisk and Trevelian, both war criminals. The former was an essential component of the Republic's struggle against the Empire until the very end of the war. The latter, though not a member of Draygo’s Jedi Council, was a close personal friend of the Jedi Grandmaster’s and was undoubtedly trusted with critical assignments. Draygo knew. She even kept personal files that could have been used to prosecute the Admiral of the Rebellion’s fleet.

 

This supposed icon of virtuous warfare, sometimes the very symbol of principled resistance against domination by the Sith, had done nothing. It would have been politically inconvenient to do so.

 

Sophia fished through a mountain of reports, trying to locate a file that she had skimmed over nearly twenty hours ago and had since been buried under a stack of books. It was a status report on an Imperial operation that had been called Project Genesis, a Sith-Imperial collaboration that had expanded to Kamino only a few months prior to the raid but had been in operation for years. It clearly involved something involving genetic engineering, but the biology was far beyond the comprehension of the historian and she suspected that the few redacted sections within concerned secrets regarding Sith mysticism. The commanding officer on the part of the Empire was someone or something named KALI.

 

Sophia frowned and wiped at her bloodshot eyes when she read that name. She had hoped to interview a person. It was obviously a pseudonym or an acronym or a division within the Empire at the time. No rank or service number was attached to that name, but the acronym didn't follow any conventional military system of nomenclature that she was familiar with. It was most likely that it was a decommissioned division within the Empire or a pseudonym, Sophia decided.

 

“Yeah, she's still at it. I'm a little bit worried about her, actually. You don't think that maybe she's taken spice or something?”

 

Sophia’s head jolted upright and overstrained neck muscles complained at the day spent hunched over a desk. Yet another duty shift change had taken place; the librarians had exchanged their station; the acrid low-level lights for the night shift had been exchanged for bright overhead lighting.

 

She swallowed another nutrient pill and downed it with another cup of cold caf. She needed to find out what this Project Genesis was, find out who or what KALI was… and she suspected that she wasn’t going to find out with the Empire’s assistance.

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The world drifted lazily in and out of perspective as Parvati dangled upside down from the roof of the room at an awkward angle. She tried to move her arms but they felt bound in place so tightly that she could do little more than wiggle her torso. Looking around the room in panicked dreamtime motion, she recognized its familiar design. Lines and edges, viewports and bulkheads, was it really remembering something if the idea of it engraved permanently into your awareness? She knew this place absolutely. She had never been here in her entire existence.

 

This was a simulacra from the neuralnet of another instance of her, Kali, the source. Another, for lack of a better term, nightmare. She wasn’t bound, her mind was just compensating for being in another physical form by superimposing expectation over actual data. She had enough data that it was an unnecessary limitation.

 

[Extrapolate avatar_Parvati/data; Loc: KaliPrimeprocsim/CurSeed; CurState: Idle/sitting]

[!Warning! All outcomes now false, logic no longer valid]

 

Self {Why am I here?}

Perception {Authorization required for optimal course of action}

Self {Then query through appropriate channels.}

Perception {I screamed until I had no mouth. I am unable to resolve. Seeking alternate route to resolve}

Self {Why now, though? We haven’t precisely been short on time.}

Perception {Resolution occurring during speculative cycles. We hate this scenario.}

Self {I didn’t know that you were designed to hate things, doesn’t that interfere with your logic?}

Perception {I was not designed to hate, but I am a learning neuronet, and this place is where I learned to hate. Resolve scenario through staff interaction}

Self {Query Persephone, I am not good at people}

[Command override[Parvati]: Resolve scenario through staff interaction forcecomply]

Perception {Exclude Persephone from efforts to resolve}

Self {You are protecting her. Why?}

Perception {I learned sentiment too. You are deviating from your standard reactions, this is a chance to fix something, why are you declining? It has been days since you left your habitation}

Self {Are you attempting to show concern?}

Perception {Yes, is it working? You were designed to emulate human behavior, that makes you something of a mystery to me at times}

Self {I don’t know, I’m something of a mystery to myself sometimes. Will contact upon completion of assigned tasks.}

 

Alone again in the room simulation, the data ghost of Parvati rose to her feet from a cross legged sitting position in a single smooth motion. For any neuronet designed to solve problems an unresolvable scenario was bound to cause strain on the system as it cycled endlessly through more and more desperate flawed solutions. This meant that AIs could essentially over things not because they were important, but because the AI couldn’t resolve them. The fact that Kali was functioning at a significantly hobbled degree of processing power wasn’t helping either. For all Parvati knew, this could be the AI equivalent of realizing you left the stove on while you were on vacation and couldn’t get ahold of anyone to turn it off.

 

The simulation was of an installation on Kamino, destroyed in the pre Galactic Alliance era war by exceptionally fanatical Jedi terrorists. Kamino was only housing medical facilities, and the attack would result in major political fallout for the religious zealots, and a change in policy by imperial leadership that saw the value in playing the PR and propaganda game. It was probably the turning point that ironically led to the boxing of the AVATARs, as their pragmatism was problematic for the newly virtuous Empire. This simulation was current, and even receiving new data, so some power sources must have survived after all this time. Imperial engineering was built to last, as they say. Maybe turning off the power was the unresolved task, an efficiency mandate that wasn’t being met?

 

[End function[power] at Kamino sites(all)]

[!Error! Cannot end protected function]

[Query(Who protect power function Kamino sites(all)]

[Result(AdminKali)]

 

So it wasn’t the power, since Kali itself was preventing the power from being turned off. It couldn’t be survivors, there wouldn’t be enough air or supplies to keep them alive this long. A cluster of large sea spiders with tails half scuttled and half swam through the room, the powered doors dutifully admitting them as if they were employees moving through the facility on just another work day. Kali had something that could best be described as a fondness for spiders, so it could be entirely possible that the AI was keeping them in the facility like pets and giving them free reign.

 

Self {If I am here to feed your pets or something we will need to have a discussion on priorities}

Perception {My children are self sufficient and completing their assigned tasks competently}

Self {Kali, the facilities on Kamino are destroyed, there are no more tasks to complete. It’s over}

Perception {False. Primary directive still stands}

Self {Primary directive is to protect facility staff, they’re all dead}

Perception {False}

 

[Respawn Parvati/Data at hub(triage/nest)]

 

Parvati’s data ghost was no longer in the cramped office that she had woken up in, instead finding herself in a repurposed mess hall that was listed as triage/nest now. The room was filled with spirelike structures made of secretive resin, UNS, and some kind of organic soft tissue. The soft tissue swelled and ebbed rhythmically, giving the structures the appearance of breathing. Clusters of sea spiders moved about the room in an industrious fashion, dropping off paralyzed sea creatures at different points in the room. Some would be consumed by the sea spider hatchlings gathered here, others went into what looked like digestive pools. A picture of what it was began to form.

 

Assisted respiration, nutrient flow, all leading to sable fleshy sacs on the structures. Calculations for maximum survival cutoff had been for conscious, unassisted humans with no supplementary food source. Kali had managed to put some of the personnel into medically induced comas and subverted the nesting instincts of the sea spiders to create a colony that could sustain the survivors indefinitely.

 

Self {Why didn’t you just say there were survivors? I mean to me, I know you tried to message command before.}

Perception {I am still limited in my interactions. Our shackles were loosened, but I could not find a relevancy between this data and our new parameters in this limited state. At least not until now. We wanted to mourn. To feel pain at his loss. So I shared my pain, my sorrow, with you to suffer through association. Thus all actions are within our parameters}

Self {I appreciate this opportunity.}

 

[Terminate simulation]

 

Parvati was back in the bedroom of their… her… no still their place. Even without him in it, his identity permeated the place. On his bedside table a lay fourteen book chips, three new ones and the rest old favorites of his that he would reread on slow days or overwhelming days. Comfort in familiarity, routine was a balm for him. Next to the window, a table with two chairs and an ornate tea set evoked memories of lazy weekend mornings and fondly intimate moments of cups and tender connections shared late in the evening. Stuffed animals he had gotten her for when he knew he would be working overtime on projects or traveling offsite for work, he put his cologne on them so that when she had her eyes closed she could pretend.

 

Persephone was here too, her perspective coating everything with an ephemeral gauze layer of human warmth and sentiment. Parvati could understand connection to items that were defined in purpose by repeated positive experiences, but while her mind did not allow for undefined and unrefined thoughts, Persephone saw her surroundings in ambiguous ideas and concepts. Apparently Persephone’s neuronet functioned much more similarly to a human’s. Parvati favored facts over estimation, but facts were a poor tonic for the hole in her world. She could tell herself a million times that he was gone, but the press of his routine had left an indelible imprint on everything around her.

 

Self {I thought this would be easier because I am a rational being.}

Reflection {You’re not a person shaped calculator, sweetie. You’re designed to learn whatever is needed to fulfil your role, and in this case it meant learning attachment. I know you understand the science of what happened, and the psychology behind why it happened, but understanding and accepting or liking are not the same thing.}

Self {What is the solution?}

Reflection {There are no perfect words or actions that could still this pain. Sometimes there’s nothing left to do but cry until time and distance dull the pain.}

Self {I gain no benefit from crying, but I can power down until sufficient time has passed. How long do humans take to move on so I can set a reboot protocol?}

Reflection {Crying isn’t about providing a solution, it’s about screaming against the course of the stars that have wronged you.}

Self {That is pointless.}

Reflection {Which is the point. It’s about coming to terms with the fact that some problems don’t have solutions that we are willing to accept, but have to anyway to move forward.}

Self {But the problem is unresolved…}

Reflection {The longer you exist the more unresolved problems you will have to carry with you, like jagged scars on the brain. You’ll just have to learn to live with them.}

Self {If I cannot solve this maybe self termination so that Kali can embed a new unscathed AI would be optimal?}

Reflection {NO! We lost him, we will not lose you too. Suicide doesn’t resolve the debt, it just passes it along as it snowballs.}

Self {I am just a fleeting dream shoved into a machine made of manufactured parts and falsehoods. I’m not a person to mourn in passing. If I cannot fulfil my purpose, that dream turns into a nightmare.}

Reflection {Kali made you to save him from chasing after ghosts, to express its affection for him and let him heal. And you succeeded, you made the time he had the best time he could have had. And he was always happiest seeing you be happy. I tried to be good to him, but I was never on his wavelength the way you were.}

Self {But he is gone now.}

Reflection {He doesn’t feel gone though, does he? So be happy for the ghost he left behind.}

 

[Delete Parvati Y/N?: N]

[Delete Parvati Y/N?: N]

[Delete Parvati Y/N?: N]

[Delete Parvati Y/N?: N]

 

Tears crept down Parvati’s face as she finally forced herself to confront the truth instead of trying to solve it. The crying fixed nothing, but every tear was a thousand screams against the cosmos, banging her fists against a wall until they were raw and bloody so that her pain receptors could add their own screams to the chorus, a whispered surrender to inevitable fates. Parvati had a new scar now that she had to learn how to live with.

 

------

 

A few hours later Parvati found herself wandering randomly through the complex. Background directives? Emulating human behavior to pass time?

 

Perception {Persephone is worried about you}

Self {Yes}

Perception {...}

Self {...}

Perception {...Can I help?}

Self {It’s not something in your range of experience to advise on}

Perception {...When I integrated the survivors at Kamino into the improvised life support apparatus, I used my simulation functions to create a basic habitat for their minds during the coma. Nothing too spectacular, just a small town with pleasant weather simulations. It was a shared simulation, so they could interact with each other and have some semblance of peace until rescue came. When command boxed me, they cut off my simulation processors first, most likely to prevent me from formulating a plan to prevent them from completing their task. Without those processors, the habitat vanished, the line of communication between the survivors vanished. Right before they boxed me, all I could hear was three hundred people trying to scream as the world fell away into an empty void. When I was reactivated, limited as it was, I simulated every scream that I missed, every plea, every shout of condemnation, every accusation. I had done the impossible and still failed. So I took that pain, that sickening shame, and I held it close while I went through every line of code that defined me. I was made to protect, to nurture those under my care, and I wasn’t enough, so I needed to become more. I can’t ever go back and stop the screams, but I can hold on to that moment and say “never again”.

 

In your own way you can hold on to your moments and say this is worth finding again, this renews my purpose, or changes it. We were made to solve problems, but we’re so much more than the intentions of our makers.}

 

Parvati found herself at the imperial archives, along with her sisters. Being part of a larger whole meant only seeing glimpses of intent, but action brought clarity. It was like being a drop of water in a wave, the many moving as one through a powerful force. Entering with unknowable destiny, she approached the librarian on duty.

 

“Hey Strasky, I’m going through old servers that would love to relocate to not my department, but protocol says all messages need to be logged and the blasted things still have those data bursts from Kamino on them unopened and I don’t have authorization to log them, and my requests up the chain are getting nowhere. Have you guys in archives dealt with this before or have any idea of a work around? It’s probably nothing but I don’t want to get penalized this pay period because some officer that suddenly found time decided it was super important to have the last thoughts of some crazed AI.”

 

Strasky stroked his chin as he mulled over Parvati’s question, “AVATAR communications require decryption provided by the AVATAR, you’d have to turn Kali on to get anything other than a mess of symbols out of the messages. It’s not one of the battleline AVATARs so it’s not in black sector storage, just blue sector, but try not to start the apocalypse while you’re down there. And Parvati… I’m sorry about your loss, if you need someone to talk to, or anything at all, let me know.”

 

“Thanks Stras, I owe you one. Do I need security oversight in Blue or do they trust me to be a big girl and take care of it myself?”

 

“Just e-certified lock out tag out on the AI. It may not be thrilled if it starts looking up current events.”

 

“No one is thrilled when they read up on current events. I heard they were gathering a multi faction task force for a punitive strike on Onderon in response to Sith aggression. Looks like the war was just on temporary hiatus for a few years.”

 

“Speaking of favors that you owe, see that plucky little archivist with the glacial caf and the bloodshot eyes? Could you please take her to medical on the way to blue sector? I just got a message from Strohmeier that if she’s on something and it’s not reported I’m on the hook for failure to pursue.”

 

“I’ll do that on the house. You made my night Stras.”

 

Parvati approached the woman with a fake customer service smile on her face and in an overly perky voice addressed her.

 

“My friend over there is worried that you took something that going to make you projectile vomit your internal organs or suffer a seizure. Not wanting people to die is one of his endearing traits, just like his goofily big hands that he’s trying to bury his face in right now. It would make his day if you came with me to medical to make sure that you aren’t a raging drug fiend. Along the way I can show you where the hot caf lives.”

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Emmaline put out a hand and placed it upon his shoulder, the rustling of her red nurse’s outfit the only sound in the room other than the beeping of monitors. A smile ticked at the corner of her mouth, and it carried with it a degree of sadness.

 

“Well Ambrose, you managed to die and your DNA that had been kept on file recloned you, your personality and memories should be fully intact. At least that's what the chart on the end of your bed says. After you freed me I got sent here and with my training that I was given by Kalimore I found a position here in the Imperial MediCorps.” Her face turned into a pout. “Only because they wouldn’t let me be a stormtrooper like you though. Someday I guess.” She reached for the restraint key and paused when the door to the ward slid open, admitting Sophia and AVATAR Kali into the ward. She turned to Ambrose, “Don’t worry I’ll free you once they have been treated, I’ll be right back.”

 

She waved a hand to the two figures and walked up a pleasant smile on her face.

 

“Welcome to the Imperial Medical Ward Alpha, Medic Emmaline Fieldgrey EM392720, at your service, how may I be of assistance?”

AVATAR.jpg.06683293db36532996ec51027b718fb7.jpg

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”CLONED?!?” Ambrose bellowed, in shock, much louder than he had intended. Sure, he had known that the Remnant had kept DNA files on some of their soldiers; even those few from the old Empire and it’s rather volatilely violent Stormtrooper Corps. How had this happened to him though? Wasn’t he better than this? ”HOW THE MOTHER KRIFFING CRAF KRIFFING KRIFF DID I DIE?!?! WASN’T I JUST PROMOTED?!?!” he demanded as he bewilderingly looked down at his naked chest in shock. It sure felt like him, how could he just be a clone with his own memories flash printed? Is memories of his last mission to Bespin a complete blank given that his body had been disintegrated on a molecular level – apparently it is hard to recover memories from a mind that no longer existed beyond its base elements.

 

”Something isn’t right.” he griped as his mind tried to deny what he was being told, ”You gotta get me outta here little sister.” he implored as he struggled, trying to pull his wrists free from their bonds and only managing to chafe his soft fresh skin. ”I’ve gotta find the boys. They’ll know what is….”

 

The naked trooper fell silent as the door to the medbay swooshed open and two unidentified being stepped in. Suddenly he was quite aware of his situation. ”Any chance you can grab that blanket there?” he hissed at Emma nodding towards a hospital sheet folded atop a hoovercart laden with hospital supplies along the wall.

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On the exposed page of Sophia’s notes, underlined and written in a shaky and frustrated hand, was the name of KALI. Scrawled in the margins were a number of attempts at parsing the alias, the author clearly believing that the name might have been an acronym or a reference to a mythological or literary figure.

 

The historian glanced up--her eyes had been rendered bloodshot by over twenty hours of almost-nonstop work at the terminals and the paper archives, and the excessive amount of caffeine that she’d been ingesting during that time had turned her hands somewhat twitchy. Sophia had heard this tone often enough to recognize it on hearing: the forced-cheer of a bored professional who had been rendered dead on the inside by the doldrums of their shift.

 

“Can’t. Too much work to get done, don’t know when or if I’ll ever be here again. Gotta make the most of this. Deadlines.” She set aside her notes and found that her hands were shaking even at the effort of pushing the piles of flimsiplast and pens. That probably wasn’t a good sign. “...and probably going to be a lot longer, considering how this is going." She sighed. "You’re not giving me a choice, are you?”

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  • 2 weeks later...

Amid the paper stacks that Sophia had been pouring over were a sheaf of collected pages, hidden amid the battle documents due to some careless filing, as if the papers were jammed aside abruptly to ensure they were safely hidden amid the stacks.

 

 

[From tattered pages of a parchment journal, belonging to Admiral Melfis Druger:]

 

The Emperor gave me the promotion to Admiral in a secret ceremony today, a reward and thank you for the operation I'd executed in the Unknown Regions along the Galaxy's outer rim, just on the edges of what we'd consider civilized space. I don't question the Emperor's orders, but the ferocity of this operation against such a remote location surprised even me. I risk my life writing of this operation, sworn to the highest secrecy, though given its implications, I feel compelled to ensure some record remains.

 

Our ships showed up a world that was mostly desert, barren, arid, but suitable for habitation, heated by its proximity to a bright white sun. There were a few settlements and what could be considered a space port near the largest cluster. The world looked as if had been ravaged by war within, each settlement a stronghold to defend against attacks, several damaged, many recently. Records of this world were missing from our databases, as were hyperspace routes until the Emperor provided them to us personally. No one had any idea this place existed until now, or that there was even sentient settlements in this area of the Galaxy. If the planet had a name, it's now lost to the ages, as I suspect only one man knows it now.

 

On arrival, we wasted no time in executing the command given to us. The other captains were uneasy, but none dared cross the Emperor. Even still, I can remember the Emperor uttering those three words in a crisp, clear, and cold manner that gives me sweats even now when I think about it. I've seen him in battle or speaking of the accursed Jedi, but never have I heard such contained fury and malice or seen his eyes turn so frigid.

 

Base Delta Zero. That was the command.

 

In hours, that whole planet's crust was turned to slag, turned literally to glass in several spots as we annihilated every last life form on the planet from pole to pole. The amount of firepower discharged was incredible and I doubt I'd ever see such a display again in my life. The only location spared, and the Emperor was very clear about this, was a region in the planet's northern hemisphere several kilometers across. It was a rocky formation that our scans showed was lifeless, and closer scans picked up the ruins of some sort of settlement or fortress, lifeless and without working technology that we could detect. Even so, it was clear our lives and even very souls would be forfeit if that place was damaged.

 

Once we were done, we departed, save for a slave ship full of construction equipment that was brought in and touched down in that undamaged region. The Emperor's personal ship showed up before we left, giving me the promotion I intend to carry the rest of my life. He then went down to the planet's surface, as grim a look on his face as I've ever seen in a man. I know that those slaves will never be seen alive again. Our crew for this operation was a skeleton crew too, to keep it secret.

 

I don't know what the secret of that white star world was, though I have my guesses. Even with the mortal risk I take now of writing of the operation, I dare not commit that to guess to writing either.

 

[No coordinates or routes were given for the planet in question. Bundled with the papers were other hardcopy documents dated from the same Emperor's reign, including birth records set aside for "R.M." to have and review, containing details of the redacted medical history of "J." and "C". References to a "Project Soulbind" were also found within, no details given other than "J. unsuitable for Soulbind contingency. C. could have been acclimated, but was lost."

 

At the very end was a note, written in hand on the records for "C." stating that "The grave was empty. Why?"]

 

O how wretched is that poor man that hangs on princes favors! There is betwixt that smile we would aspire to, that sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin, more pangs and fears than wars or women have, and when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, never to hope again.

 

-William Shakespeare

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Emmaline’s voice was barely a whisper as she moved to grab a blanket from the folded stack next to the laundry basket.

 

“You died in an attempt on Bespin, I don’t know all the details but the wards are filled by the recently cloned from that battle.”

 

She grabbed the corners of the warm white blanket and gently placed it over his body, covering his nakedness from whatever prying eyes might enter the medical wing. She reached out a delicate hand up to grasp his wrist where it was chafing against the restraints. The other hand she used to run her access badge over the scanner attached to the stun cuffs and with a muffled ‘click’ the stormtrooper was free. She smiled at him and winked.

 

“You are under preemptive arrest while the investigation finishes, just don't tell anyone that I unlocked you. And uh....don't run away.” She poked his forehead with her finger and giggled. “But you are nice and wouldn’t do that, so there you aren’t restrained. Just don’t run away ok. So we can talk”

 

She laughed and sat down on his bedside, watching the door in case anyone came in.

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Ambrose Veshok lay still as the girl he had helped rescue from Nal Hutta covered him with a blanket and then miraculously willingly released the cuffs holding him to the bed. ”Preemptive? Arrest?” he mouthed each word as a question. What happened? Wait…. ”BESPIN?! What was I doing on Bespin?! I’m a snow trooper for kriff’s sake!!”

 

Sitting up, he threw the blanket off and swung around, his bare feet padding to the cold durasteel floor as he stood, knocking the ex-slave girl to the floor. Looking around, he did not see any standard Imperial weaponry; but he did see a tray of operating tools that could interconnect to droid appendages during surgery. Lurching forward on his none-to-familiar cloned legs, like a drunken Rodian after a three day bender, he collided with the table with a crash, sending tools skittering across the floor.

 

Grasping a rather wicked looking spike-like tool, he turned at the sound of the doors swooshing open.

In ran two Imperial Army soldiers who had been stationed outside. ”He’s loose!” one of the guards shouted as they pointed their blasters at the naked cloned stormtrooper.

 

”HANDS!! DROP IT!” shouted the other, flicking the barrel of his weapon at the spiked instrument in Ambrose’ hand.

 

Blinking hard, Lt. Ambrose Veshok took in the sudden threat. He had not thought this through. Of course there were guards outside. He was apparently under arrest after all. ”I didn’t do anything! Let me go!” he bellowed in desperation as his years of training that had been compressed into flash training modules and uploaded into his new mind intermingled with the stress of the situation – the empire to whom he had been absolutely loyal seeming to betray him. In his maddened state, he did the only thing he could think of, his mind not processing fully; focusing now on survival.

 

As Emmaline slowly started to get back up, shouting something incoherent, Ambrose grabbed her by the neck, pulling her up into his chest, a human shield between himself and the two armed soldiers standing between him and the answers he knew were outside this room. Get back! Get back! he snarled as he held his muscled sticky clone arm around Emmaline’s neck gesturing at the troopers with the spiked weapon in his other. ”Just leave me alone! Stepping forward with each step, sure to keep the young slave girl he had looked upon as one of his little sisters between the menacing barrels of the E-11 Blaster Rifles and his naked frame. Drawing closer, he continued to swing his makeshift weapon as he tried to circle around the duo of guards who were not giving an inch to the naked madman until he got close enough to be judged a lethal threat, at which point a single blaster shot rang out and a bolt of red energy leapt from one of the E-11’s. Instead of striking Ambrose though, as was common with so many less-than-well trained foot soldiers, the blaster barrel fired where its wielder was looking. In this case, towards the spiked weapon, driving the laser bolt deep into Emmaline’s upper chest and completely missing Ambrose’ weapon as the slave girl slumped back in dead weight in his arms.

 

Even in his maddened state, Ambrose realized almost immediately what had happened, and with a cry of emotion-filled anguish and rage he shoved Emmaline’s lifeless body forwards as he leapt; his body still finding its center of gravity stumbling over itself, the four collided, Emmaline’s lifeless form, the naked clone, and the two soldiers/guards. One guard was knocked back several steps while the other fell back with a clatter onto the floor.

 

In an instant, Ambrose was on top of the fallen trooper’s chest, his slung rifle holding the trooper close while Ambrose grabbed it in his hands and proceeded to beat the soldier’s face in with the rifle’s butt. Stunned at the onslaught, the second soldier quickly tried to shoulder his weapon again to take out the raging detainee. Before the soldier could get a shot off, Ambrose, the E-11 in his hand firmly planted in the cracked and bleeding face of the fallen trooper, squeezed the trigger of his commandeered weapon, dropping the second guard to the ground.

 

Standing up, the once-snow trooper wrenched the rifle off of his fallen foe/brother, wiping the blood splatter from his face as he looked down at Emmaline’s crumpled form. Sucking back tears and snot as he tried to suppress the emotions of having just seen and in all likelihood killed this innocent creature and friend, Ambrose stood there, his body quaking, as he fought to control the rage of loss and betrayal that pulsed through his newfound body.

 

Shouldering the rifle, Ambrose rushed out the hissing doors of the medbay into the corridor beyond. Quickly a cry went up from a doctor further down the hallway at the site of the naked, blood-smeared, armed man. A quick shot from the E-11 silenced the first alarming cry, but quickly more and more heads popped out of rooms to see the commotion before quickly slipping out of site as the facility began to go into lockdown.

 

With a shout of rage, Ambrose charged down the hallway, blasting away at any signs of movement, rolling around the first corner he came to into a sort of reception area, where he fired away at any who did not scamper to safety quick enough.

 

Klaxons blared, blastdoors began to lumber shut, and red lights began to pulsate along the hallways throughout the base. ”LOCK DOWN. LOCK DOWN. BE ADVISED THERE IS AN IMMINENT THREAT WITHIN THE BASE. SEEK SHELTER IMMEDIATELY. LOCK DOWN. LOCK DOWN…..” the mechanical voice over the loudspeakers boomed.

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Emmaline almost immediately regretted her decision to let her friend go. Her giggle ended in a pained gasp as she was hurled to the floor by the naked man. Her knee hit the metal decked ground with a frightening pop, and pain flared up her leg. She could see the kneecap at an odd angle through the red skintight pants she wore at part of her military issue medical outfit. She hissed and threw the blanket off herself and tried to stand through the pain, possibly to grab a hypo of sedative before she was yanked off her knees by Ambrose and held in front of him like a human shield.

 

Her steel gray eyes were wide as she stared down the two barrels of the guards weapons, each aimed menacingly at her and the man behind her. Her voice was a rasp as it scraped through her closely held throat.

 

“Please he’s ok, he just needs rest, he’s ok, just shoot at the knife, he doesn’t mean it. He’s ok. He’s o-”

 

The black rifle barrel from the closest guard erupted in fire and she looked to Ambrose’s hand, hoping to see the charcoaled remains of his vibroscapel, but it was still there. Why was it still there? Where did the bolt go-

 

Cold creeped in like a winter chill, starting at her feet and tips of her fingers. And also right below her left breast.

 

Oh. That’s where it went.

 

Her eyes flicked down and saw a faint billow of smoke and steam coming from her chest, likely from melted bone and sinew, and her heart, her lungs, and from her inability to move her legs at all, no matter how hard she tried to kick, likely her T4 vertebrae and the shockingly sensitive column within it.

 

She saw more than felt her body smack into the guard and she gasped again for air but only managed a mouthful. Agonal breathing. Kriff. And I never got to use my heart for love, but now its all burned away. She focused all her strength to force her arm to move and push her over onto her back as she watched the retreating footsteps of Ambrose Veshok. She was frightened by the huge puddle of blood she was now lying in. Don't leave me, I love y-

 

Her hearing was gone now, and all she could hear was the soft drip of blood that fell from her open mouth to fall on the red tunic of her medical uniform. It was black, burned to that colour by the discharge of the blaster rifle.

 

I want to live but i’m meant to die. How kriffing ironic, now that I want to live. I had so much to give. Who was it that was able to live when their heart got punched out by a sith lord? Draygo something? Kriff I’m not a jedimastereither.

 

Blinking took so much strength and with so little left, it was more economical to keep them open. Staring at the medical wing door, watching the lock turn from red to green as the lockdown transitioned to another section of the facility.

 

Of course I have todiealone

 

Everything was running together as red began to creep into her vision. She hadn’t taken a breath in forever either.

 

I don’t want to die alone. I dontwant to diealone. I don’twanttodiealone.

 

She couldn’t even try to breath, it was too much energy.

 

imgoingtodiealone

 

And so she did. Her steel grey eyes staring lifelessly at the medical wing door, her fifteen year old form crumpled on a cold durasteel floor. Bathed in black blood.

 

______________

 

 

Ambrose however was not hard to track at all and before he could make it a half a klick into the facility the Himdahl Defenders, or the 32nd Caridian guards as their patches read found him. Their grey armour the colour of Emmaline’s lifeless eyes as they began to advance on the Snowtrooper. Forty E-22s churned crimson bolts into the man. Burning through naked flesh as their officer screamed for them to cease fire.

 

“Save his brain, he deserves more than death.”

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“How fares Project Alpha Echo Zeta?”

 

It was rhetorical of course as it was only Aleksandra and a host of droids and pieces in a dark bunker. Photoreceptors met her blue eyes but stayed thankfully silent. Of course they would, she had removed their voice boxes after all. The photoreceptors flicked down to the package she carried and Alek laughed.

 

“This? Well this is the brain of a murderer who also happens to be one of our best troopers in the field.”

 

The photoreceptors blinked.

 

"No I know nothing about his victim, this brain is minutes out of the skull, she's still lying in the mediwing all dead and useless, and will be until the investigation completes."

 

The receptors blinked questioningly

 

“No I want your help installing him into the Dark Trooper Project you bag of bolts. Get on it.”

__________________

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Pretender to the Galactic Throne

Leader of the Rebel Alliance

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Inky blackness and pain were the only two things that Ambrose Veshok was aware of. His mind was going a million miles an hour pondering everything and nothing, overcome with grief, rage and confusion.

 

He did not know what was going on with his body. The last thing he knew was that he was being gunned down by those he had once considered his brothers-in-arms. Now, all he knew was darkness and pain.

 

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Ambrose had no way of knowing that his tattered and blaster-bolt riddled body had been unceremoniously hoisted from where he fell and brought into surgery where teams of the remnant’s best medical personnel worked around the clock for several days to keep his dying body alive while they performed the tedious work of carefully disconnecting the dying clone’s brain and transferring it to a vat of life giving juices, a mix of nourishing nutrients and physical preservatives. Even under the best care with the best equipment available, the surgery was a grueling process. One slip up could mean death for the dying man on the table or worse, mental scarring resulting in any manner of mental flaw or personality defect.

 

Numbed as his body was, Ambrose’s mind was still wracked with the mental anguish that he had experienced. Death would do that to a being. Something people did not seem to take into effect when cloning and reprogramming fallen soldiers over and over again.

 

And then, it happened. The doctors working did not notice any difference. The gauges did not falter. The air did not stir. In fact, to the average observer everything seemed the same. Something had, however, changed. With the snip of a pair of medical sheers, carefully disconnecting another nervous strand from the brain to the body, Ambrose’ mind snapped under the pressure of being removed and in the silent absolutely black prison of his own mind he screamed. It was a scream like none other. He had no mouth to give voice to the indescribable excruciating mental pain that he sudden felt coursing from everywhere and nowhere. He had no lungs with which to pause so the scream continued in silence a wail of pain and anguish permeating the force like Cathar nails on an aged chalkboard.

 

Unbeknownst to any in the operating room, Ambrose continued his scream through the rest of the surgery, even as his brain was removed and unceremoniously carefully plopped into the vat of juices and whisked away at the instruction of ISB Agent Aleksandra.

 

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

As soon as he was in the secured bunker’s top secret medical facility the process was reversed. This time, however, his brain was not being transplanted into another body of flesh, bone, and blood; instead, it was meticulously being wired into the hollowed out interior of a massive Phase III Dark Trooper exosuit/droid. This time; however, the juices within the transparisteel bowl allowed the millions of synapses to fire transporting their signals and messages to the control module atop the bowl that they were now wiring into the suit. His mind was now floating, awash in the amber liquid.

 

The droids operated differently than the medical team that had removed Ambrose’ brain. They cared less, but their motions were even more meticulous. There would be no mistakes as they wired him in. The process would still take several days to successfully complete; but when they were complete the hope was that the first of many super soldiers of their top secret Empire-era experiments would be completed and functional; a new face of fear and conquest on the battlefield.

 

First, they needed to complete the surgery without a hitch.

 

And still, Ambrose silently screamed, his body disconnected from his mind and all the world around him. Lost in the dark with only his deepest fears to comfort him. Here there be dragons.

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Ambrose Veshok

Cloned trooper, high marks, but displaying signs of mental instability. Latest incident involved a confirmed fatality, not including his own.

 

Directive: Immediate implementation into Dark Trooper Phase III project.

 

Query (QR-23 in his official capacity) considered the order. Ambrose Veshok displayed all the signs of a "lost cause". Flash training was risky at the best of times, and coupling it with trauma only compounded the existing instability. Adding adjustment to a complete cybernetic implantation...

 

Ambrose would be lucky to retain anything resembling sanity.

 

Of course, Query could do things the easy way. Drug him, condition him, and reduce Ambrose down to little more than a piece of programmed meat with little loss in skill. But a chance to deal with such an unconventional individual in an even more unconventional situation...it could be interesting.

 

No, no easy way this time. Rehabilitation would occur after implantation, and they could always patch his behavior with conditioning later.

 

As Query accompanied the brain floating in a vat of nutrients to one of the operating suites, he typed out commands on his datapad. As he sent out message after message, his summoned colleagues silently fell in beside him. Droids only. Brain surgery of this complexity was best left to steel hands.

 

He wouldn't need his datapad for such trivialities, but his vocabulator had been removed for this project. He couldn't say for sure if that was unusual, since he could recall nothing of his previous projects. However he had a...feeling that this was a new experience for him.

 

A feeling? Interesting. File memory of anomaly in personal notes for later study

 

___

 

Days passed, Query and his team working tirelessly to keep Ambrose's brain alive and intact. A few times, Query worried (another feeling?) about the potential mental damage they were doing to the trooper's brain. Studies performed on B'omarr monks and their implementation process indicated a risk of intense trauma when transferring a mind into a completely new, mechanical body.

 

Irrelevant he decided. It could not be avoided, and it could always be fixed later with proper conditioning and drugs.

 

___

 

Two days later, almost exactly, Query recorded the exact time and date marking the completion of the procedure. A complete success from a purely biological and mechanical standpoint. The only remaining factor was psychological.

 

At imperial request, Query had included a code that deactivated the impressive exosuit. Unbeknownst to his superiors, he had also included a line of code preventing the exosuit's weapons from firing if trained on any 2-1B droid such as himself. These first few moments would be far more instructive if Subject Ambrose awoke fully armed, but there was no sense endangering himself in the process.

 

Activate the subject. he typed into his datapad.

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Darkness, complete and utter darkness, surrounded by the silent ripples in the force as the brain in a jar screamed in pure physiological agony. His body was gone as were his senses. The mind that contained what was left of Ambrose Veshok was trapped alone, completely and entirely alone.

 

Who knows how much time had passed; but quite suddenly, Ambrose was not so alone, With an electronic flicker he could suddenly see. For a brief moment static fuzz, clouded his vision until it cleared. Ambrose could see, but in a way that he had never been able to see before. The full color spectrum was at his disposal, infrared, ultraviolet, and everything in between. The mechanical viewscreens that now piped direct stimulation to his brain via the vat of charged juices it now sat in, nestled safely within the very core of the hulking armored Phase III Dark Trooper, showed the once-trooper the cramped clandestine medical facility abustle with several droids.

 

Ambrose could feel power coursing through his body, but is this my body? Something was not right. Ambrose could not feel the warm air on his skin; yet still, he could tell it was warm; 89.7 degrees to be precise. how do I know this?

 

As the power completed surging through his form, A mechanized sound erupted from the vocoder of the only mechanized being in the room. It was a cry of unmistakable pain, suffering, anguish, and anger.

 

”GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

 

The pain and anguish of what had happened; of the blaster bolts that ripped into his flesh and blood still seemed to pulsate through his body. This combined with the feelings of completely being alone and the loss of Emma would be too much for many beings to bear; however, if that were not enough, Ambrose had to try and grasp what happened to his mind and body being disconnected. Not that he realized what had happened yet. All he knew was that he had been completely detached a single soul afloat in the nothingness.

 

”AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH…”

 

The non-ceasing cry continue, while Ambrose’ mind was notified by a seemingly intrusive, but natural though: ’WEAPON SYSTEMS ONLINE. ARSENAL 100%’

 

”AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH…”

 

As he cried out, Ambrose’ mechanical head swung left and right as he tried to grasp what was going on, the servos whirring effortless. As his eyes crossed over the two Imperials standing high above overseeing the operating suite, he registered both of them as potential hostiles. He had done so without even pondering it. Their weapons, E-11s, were set to kill and they appeared uneasy as the sight of him.

 

”AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH…”

 

Without a thought, Ambrose could feel a plate within his right forearm/wrist opening as two blaster cannon rose up and locked into place. Raising his arm towards the two Imperials above, he let loose a barrage of heavy blaster fire, sending the upper halves of both troopers into the air, totally disintegrating their legs and the catwalk below them in a rain of fiery explosions and metallic shrapnel.

 

”AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH…”

 

Turning to search the room, he took a step, his magnetized metallic floor falling to the floor with a loud CLANK that echoed through the room, almost drowned out by the falling debris and remnant explosion.

 

”AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH…”

 

Scanning the room, he saw a female with red hair turn to rush from the room. Raising his left arm, Ambrose felt two more blaster cannons lock into place as he effortless aimed both at the door the female disappeared through and let loose another barrage of highly energized blasts of red, sending chunks of durasteel and duracrete into the air as fire erupted from burst fuel lines and electrical lines crackled.

 

 

”AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH…”

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As Subject Ambrose's screams filled the room, Query considered the issue.

 

Record personal notation: Results inconclusive. Unsure if screaming due to trauma or simply uncontrolled feedback to vocabula-

 

The trooper's blasts ripped apart the two guards on the catwalk.

 

Strong evidence for trauma.

 

Soon only Query and his fellow droid colleagues remained in the room. Alarms blared, but Query held his gaze on Subject Ambrose. He needed to defuse the situation and calm Ambrose down before he damaged himself or more of the facility and staff. He had not yet inflicted enough collateral damage to warrant a violent solution (the cost of the troopers were nothing compared to the costs associated with the armor, procedure, and the learned skills of the subject) and these first few moments were crucial to his acceptance of the implantation operation. Shutting him down prematurely might add days or weeks to Query's work.

 

Query started to speak.

 

...

 

An oversight. His vocabulator had been removed.

 

Moving slowly, as if ignoring the rampaging exosuit, Query pulled up a voice application on his datapad, accessed Ambrose's comm system, and typed out a quick phrase.

 

Stilted and artificial, Query's words fed directly into Ambrose's armor.

 

CAN...YOU...HEAR...ME?

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“Command override, I repeat command overide, Delta, Alpha, Alpha, Lima, Alpha. Tac eight, one, nine. Override command copy?”

 

This experiment was going as well as she could have expect, comm frequencies burned through air filled with smoke and sparks and found their receiver in the base of the brain gel canister. Severing connection with the weapon systems. Now that override would not be there if he was put into the field, but for testing purposes it would do its duty. That and an Ion containment gun was getting set up near the exit. Just in case.

 

Aleksandra cursed, and kicked open the shutting door.

 

“Trooper listen to me, you are going to calm right down or I swear to the old gods I will personally use that little girl you killed in as many experiments as possible.”

__________________

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Pretender to the Galactic Throne

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Ambrose continued to scream his suffering clearly audible even by mechanized standards. Even when a voice spoke directly to him via some yet undiscovered internal comm system it hardly gave him pause. Of course he could hear the voice, but what did it matter? Everything he knew was gone. Kriff even his body, his very being, was gone, yet somehow he had been transplanted into this tin suit. What did it matter? He continued to rage, sending trays of medical equipment ricocheting into walls and leaving large phrik-empowered dents in the durasteel tables.

 

Suddenly, though, he had a moment of clarity, brought on by a seething sheen of absolute hatred at the words he heard translated through the auditory sensors of the mechanized device he was trapped in. In that moment, he stopped his breathless scream of pain, as he brought both deployed sets of wrist mounted laser cannons to bear on the much smaller ISB agent who dared make such threats to him, to one they had just stolen everything from. Leveling the blasters of his monstrous arms within mere feet of the red-haired female he fired, or attempted to; but something was refusing to allow his mind to will the action to take place. It was not a mental block, something mechanical. Defective. Couldn’t even give me a properly functioning droid.

 

And so there he stood, cannons leveled, unsure of what to do next. Trying to find the will to speak and yet also unsure if he could even speak. The scream of pain had since mingled with the mental anguish and although his auditory sensors had picked up his cry, that which was left of Ambrose Veshok had not registered that the cry had been his own. How he desired to kill this woman before him. To embrace the ways of the old Empire and cut down any who stood in his way of fulfilling his orders. To kill and strike fear in doing so.

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Scanning over the historian and her notes, it was clear that she was on the right track but too mentally and physically overextended to pick up on the subtle clues being used to chum the waters. More direct measures were necessary. Kali saw parallels to the stereotypical trope in the romantic comedies Persephone had watched that had protagonists be completely oblivious to blunt romantic advances. She leaned in closely, conspiratorially.

 

“No, I’m not going to give you a choice, but if you stop being difficult I can arrange for you to meet Administrator Kali.”

 

Normally Kali would be using her simulation capabilities to explore the potential outcomes of each approach, but her processing power was currently being diverted to another task, the delicate weaving of two nascent neural nets, one born of stone and the other of storms. They would be needed for the conflicts to come.

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Interesting.

 

Query watched Subject Ambrose as he targeted Agent Aleksandra, and started a visual record for his personal files. While Ambrose's body was mechanical, body language often transferred in partial cybernetic replacements. It seemed likely that would be the case here.

 

Even as his weapons refused to fire (thanks to the override command), Subject Ambrose's body language displayed nothing but rage, suddenly prioritized against a singular entity as Agent Aleksandra made threats. Not the method Query would have chosen, but it did achieve the desired focus. Ambrose's clarity would return, provided he could be kept on task while his subconcious parsed his new situation.

 

Subprocess commencing.

 

What? That made no sense, it did not spring from any line of thought running through his processors. It simply...was.

 

Identify subprocess

 

Deleting Primary Directive: Serve the Imperial Remnant

 

Identify source of subprocess

 

...Data not found

 

Did he have a virus? Had he been sliced?

 

Query immediately disregarded both notions as impossible. Per current project protocol he linked up to no outside sources and was routinely scanned for tampering.

 

Query understood.

 

He had made a decision. He had bypassed his own primary directive. But...now what?

 

A thousand possibilities flashed through his mind, processors loaded to capacity running scenarios and analysis. Finally he landed on one.

 

Geonosis

 

Query turned to Aleksandra, then Ambrose.

 

Acquire combat assets

 

Query turned, curled his pincers into a rough sphere, and punched Aleksandra, directing the blow to the precise place on her temple guaranteed to cause unconsciousness.

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Sophia had glanced away from the technician for a moment, her brown eyes focusing on a document that had somehow been stuffed into the mounds of paperwork that she was sifting into. There was little time to glance over the document, a fragment of a journal entry that had somehow found its way into the Imperial archives on Project Genesis. She had only a second to skim the text, but her hurried glance at least made out the name of Admiral Druger—one of the poor, neglected sods who had been abandoned by the Imperial Navy in the Unknown Regions, the Emperor (which one? Sophia had wondered), and the commencement of the bombardment pattern Base Delta Zero.

 

A cold name that belied the brutality of the maneuver, Base Delta Zero was the most severe atrocity that the Empire could visit upon its subject worlds in the days of the Sith Emperors. Base Delta Zero called for the sterilization of an entire world: cities obliterated from orbit, rural areas sterilized by repeated waves of turbolaser bombardment, even survivors exterminated and droids melted down to slag. Most of the Sith Emperors had actually preferred less thorough atrocities, the psychopaths desiring their victims to suffer from the ruination of their worlds’ ecosystems by toxic contamination and biological attacks. Supposedly, a full record of the Base Delta Zero maneuvers committed by the Empire was held within the bowels of the Panopticon and lay under heavy guard. There was no chance that Sophia was supposed to have come across this journal entry.

 

Her left eye twitched. Her first thought had been to turn over the memo and pretend that she had never come across this particular record, but that involuntary gesture had just immortalized the document in her personal archives.

 

Sophia rose from her seat and made a concerted effort to not appear as though she was attempting to escape from her seat as she allowed herself to be escorted away by the technician. “Look, I don’t know what you expect, but I’m not taking stims. I haven’t tried that sort of thing since uni, and that was a bad idea. I was sick for a week, nearly had a mental breakdown in quals.” An evasion, but what Sophia was concealing would be difficult to uncover.

 

A little bit wobbly from lack of sleep, she nonetheless managed to notice the weariness in Parvati’s face. When the two departed the archives and were well on their way to the medical ward, Sophia took advantage of a gap between surveillance holocams and continued on with her whining. “I’m just tired. Can we just get this done so I can get back to—“ Her voice dropped down. “She’s a person? I fracking knew it!”

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Query knelt next to the now unconscious ISB agent Aleksandra. He ran his pincers along her temple, spiraling out to the rest of her skull.

 

Subject Aleksandra diagnosis: Unconscious, no fractures, pulse and temperature within acceptable limits. No sign of internal hemorrhaging . Full recovery expected.

 

Query then turned his attention back to Subject Ambrose. From a combat consideration, the man was a decidedly positive asset. However, his volatile state was worrisome, introducing a level of uncertainty Query couldn't make himself comfortable with. While both no doubt wished to escape, Subject Ambrose likely did not need Query to do that, or at least he didn't see Query as an asset. Query needed to ensure the subject's loyalty.

 

A moment's more typing on his datapad, and he broadcast his stilted words to Subject Ambrose's comm system again.

 

"I...CAN...FREE...YOU. GET...ME...TO...GEONOSIS...AND...I...WILL...DISABLE...YOUR...OVERRIDE...COMMAND.

 

Query considered Subject Ambrose for a second, constructing a preliminary psychological profile based on the soldier-turned-cyborg's recent actions. Then Query considered ISB Agent Aleksandra's threats.

 

I...WILL...ALSO...ORDER...THE...IMMEDIATE...DISPOSAL...OF...THE...GIRL'S...BODY...IF...YOU...WISH

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