Whoever designed this base was a true fan of their thankless task.
That much Meilis could say without lying.
Because she had already lost count of the time it had taken her to get from one part of the complex to another.
First, three tunnels converging into a spacious room — that was nothing more than an airlock that could be sealed at any moment, cutting off the lower levels from the surface.
Meilis had to work hard with the Force and her opponent's lightsabers to carve herself a path, finding a distribution panel in the wall and de-powering it.
She could have used her own lightsaber, of course, but that posed several problems.
First — to reach the wiring, she would have had to cut through the bunker's walls.
The energy blade of a lightsaber is a closed-loop energy circuit that, at rest, can sustain itself with minimal energy loss for quite a long time.
But if you're going to cut, hack, open, or otherwise amuse yourself by damaging things, the blade's power cell drains proportionally to the density of the material you're trying to ruin.
From the example of the gates and walls above ground, she had learned that the energy drain in the power cell, even for minor damage to this structure, would be enormous.
Like most knights of the Old Order, Meilis had a diatium power cell built into her lightsaber's hilt as its "battery," providing a long-lasting internal energy reserve.
Discharging it is quite difficult — you really have to try, say, cutting a couple of armored walkers in half lengthwise, but skilled people exist.
It depends on how large the diatium power cell is — Meilis had chosen the largest one that would fit in the hilt.
Ordinary Jedi had... smaller ones.
But they could also recharge their weapons whenever convenient, unlike a Jedi Shadow, who is always far from home, sometimes not seeing their own ship for months.
Or the characteristic charging unit that could give away a Jedi just as easily as a lightsaber.
So you always have to keep your weapon in full combat readiness.
Some people don't pay attention to such things, but who else but a Jedi Shadow knows that such oversights increase the death toll of lightsaber owners exponentially?
That's why she used her defeated enemy's blades, fully draining them and leaving them at the site of her tampering with the base's structure.
Besides, there was a second, equally important reason for getting rid of the enemy's weapons.
The Jedi Shadow had slightly underestimated how deeply the Dark Side of the Force had permeated the crystals and mechanisms of the weapons, to the point of causing discomfort.
Because, as is well known, when creating a lightsaber, you have to infuse and control each component with your own Force — then the weapon becomes an extension of your own hand.
But all that is just detail, important only to Jedi.
Now the laboratory complex...
That was far more interesting — for everyone.
And, it had to be admitted, everything here was in exemplary order.
The numerous laboratories and technical buildings weren't scattered haphazardly.
Which is what you might expect from a facility built in the middle of nowhere and obviously later repurposed.
Originally, as Thrawn had suspected, it was a prison — the character of the rooms, the security grates, the stun beams, and much else on the levels demonstrated exactly that purpose.
But, intriguingly, the complex was later refitted into a laboratory and testing center for cyber-prosthetics.
She had figured that out through her own observation, not from studied documents.
The enemy destroyed information and physical data storage devices, clearly not out of sheer spite.
That was the order.
And if so, then the central computer feared that the data could be used by the attackers.
Why did it think that?
Simple.
There could be only one answer: whoever had mothballed this facility hadn't wanted, or hadn't been able, to remove the equipment and technical documentation related to that technogenic perversion that had taken place beneath the surface of Egon-IX.
Having assessed the size of the army on and under the surface, Meilis had already concluded that the information Alpha-66 had obtained was nothing more than bait.
Which she and Alpha-66 had swallowed, fired up by the idea of pulling the clone commandos out of here.
Who might not even be here.
Or... maybe the bio-droids and terror soldiers were exactly those clone commandos they were looking for.
But then it turned out that either they had been sitting here all this time, slowly aging, or they really had been cryo-frozen from operation to operation, so as not to waste the already limited lifespan of the organism.
It was precisely this that she intended to figure out, making her way further through the technical corridors and ventilation ducts into the depths of the enemy base's central section.
And here the real interesting part began.
Below the airlock, the base split into three sections, resembling hives, but built by a perfectionist obsessed with geometry.
She took the same path the hybrid of Zabrak and human had taken, passing through a spacious corridor after the airlock, littered with corpses.
They became her breadcrumbs, guiding her choice at the three-way fork — she took the far-left path.
And, as it seemed to her, she hadn't been wrong.
The hybrid had partially cleared the left hive of those trying to destroy the data and prototypes.
They had partially succeeded. And, it had to be admitted, they had done a thorough job — Meilis could only conclude that the left hive had been exclusively for experiments in creating cybernetic biological organisms.
Judging by the destroyed medical and dissection tables — they had clearly been experimenting on humanoids here.
Most likely — on clones, conducting memory scanning, augmentation, and prosthetics work on them.
A large amount of destroyed equipment from the category used by neurosurgeons.
No, Meilis wasn't as strong in medicine as she was in sabotage, but she was still fairly good at recognizing equipment markings.
And she hadn't noticed any debris from large droids or droid parts among the wreckage, which led her to her conclusions.
She too had to work with her lightsaber, but soon realized she wouldn't reach her goal that way.
Not only had she gotten involved in this operation directly to earn Thrawn's loyalty and gain a legitimate reason for the Grand Admiral not to back out of his promises about the Sumitra Sector.
But also, the whole situation — where she had suggested attacking a base that didn't seem like much of a problem — now looked like she had lured the Dominion into a trap.
Yes, intelligent people would understand that everything had happened only because of an intelligence deficit.
And she herself admitted she didn't know the details — only what Alpha-66 had told her.
Who had himself gotten the information from an Imperial clone commando and so on.
But rumors could start that she wasn't so loyal after all.
And then various assignments and tests would begin to prove her devotion to the common cause...
She didn't really want her name associated with words like "traitor," "lured into a trap," "she used us," and other unflattering synonyms.
It was quite possible that the Imperial clone commando himself hadn't known how well-defended this base was.
Meilis also allowed for the possibility that Alpha-66 had been deliberately disinformed to fall into a trap.
Or, perhaps, to lead her and her people into one.
Anything was possible — the answers could only be found in the base's central computer.
And to be sure those answers would be there, Meilis had stopped clearing the levels of the left hive.
And through the ventilation and technical conduits, she made her way to the central part of the base.
Why there?
Simple.
The base could be destroyed either by detonating an absolutely enormous amount of explosives planted everywhere possible and impossible — but then Aurelia would have already found it.
The second and most obvious option was to blow up the base's power plant.
And given the large number of centralized planetary defense and anti-aircraft cannons on the surface, it was clearly not an ancient thermal power station running on expendable fuel.
It was probably some very, very advanced and powerful reactor capable of powering hypervelocity cannons.
Such a reactor could be detonated, incinerating not only the base but also part of the surface, destroying all traces of what had happened inside this secret complex at once.
Simple and effective.
And, logically, the base's explosion could be prevented by cutting off the power source from the detonator.
Or, even simpler — shut it down by, after stopping and cooling the reactor core, cutting all the control bus lines, denying the central computer access to that resource.
That artificial brain was pretty cunning, cutting power to sections where Dominion units had entered.
Saving power, blast it.
To find the secret base's power plant, under normal circumstances, you'd just access any service terminal and look up the necessary information.
The problem was that the terror soldiers had destroyed those too, and they'd probably require access codes anyway.
But here's the interesting part.
There are different ways to build multi-section bases, separated from each other.
You can give each part of the base its own power source, or you can connect them with power cables in series or parallel, according to the laws of physics.
And if so, then there must be large-section superconducting bus bars capable of transmitting a huge amount of energy from the generator to the consumers — the laboratories.
And it was along these that Aurelia was now moving towards the power source in the central part of the base.
Why did she think the reactor was there?
Simple — all the main power cables feeding the left hive came from there.
Reaching the room she needed in the central section, Aurelia, from the complex's plan drawn on the walls, realized she had arrived at the mid-level of the central hive.
And there were laboratories here too...
But these, judging by the size of the rooms and the patient restraint devices, were clearly not intended for average-sized sentients.
The bio-droids she encountered, on the other hand, were a different matter.
In this part of the complex, apparently, they had worked less on flesh and more on cybernetics.
And that suggested each part of the base handled its own front of work.
It wouldn't be surprising if the right hive contained workshops for spider droids and terror walkers — that is, the purely mechanical part of the Imperial Terror Soldier program.
And yes, she had miscalculated.
The power supply superconducting bus bars didn't go from here to the other parts of the complex — they entered here from the right hive as well.
In the power substation, there wasn't a single device indicating that output power control, or its distribution, happened here.
No, the central hive merely received energy, while some wires ran further, to the left hive.
It took Meilis a considerable amount of time to kill fifty Terror Troopers and figure out why a much larger number of power cables came from the right hive to the central part of the base.
Much more than necessary to power the central hive and transmit energy to the left one.
In the depths of this part of the complex, there was something that consumed most of the energy.
And there were also common control buses that provided control over the electronics.
It became much more interesting.
Because such control cables were installed on central computers of ships.
From which one could conclude that the triplicity of the incoming power was due to the fact that the base's brain center was currently right under her feet.
And that meant she didn't have to waste effort on another journey through dark technical tunnels to disable the power source.
She could capture the central computer itself.
And then she would have a very, very strong trump card in the upcoming negotiations with Thrawn.
She would acquire the base's main source of information for him — that would offset any possible losses suffered by the 501st Guard Assault Legion and the crew of the Guardian.
Perhaps what was destroyed by the Terror Troopers in the hives was just there.
And if so...
Meilis let the Force flow through her, saturating her entire being — from her toenails to the tips of her hair.
With every second, streams of the Force ran through her body faster and faster, and around the Jedi Shadow, the dim emergency light began to distort.
An ability that not even all Jedi Shadows knew and could use, because it required a huge expenditure of power and the Force.
Not to mention that, despite her close connection to the Force, mastering the Force Cloak had taken Meilis years of training, and even after a medium-length use of that "trick," she was left practically without strength or the Force.
And even increasing her own body's endurance didn't really help her.
This ability was unique in that it allowed bending rays and particles of light, as well as affecting sounds, so as to hide the Force user from most existing methods of tracking a sentient.
Including the Force.
But only when used by someone who knew it much better than a half-blood.
Aurelia felt her body tense from using such a powerful technique.
Unlike a few known in the history of the Jedi Order who were born with this gift, the half-blood had learned to use it on her own over a long life.
But even now, her cloaking was not perfect.
For example, no matter how hard she tried, she could not hide her presence in the Force — and that was exactly what she had spent years honing this technique for, a technique inaccessible to most Jedi.
Also, she could not move quickly under the Cloak, because she would lose concentration either on bending light or on dampening sounds, and thus the usefulness of this technique was in great doubt.
But in one thing Aurelia was certain — the scanners that the base's central computer used to track its enemies would not detect her.
She just had to move slowly...
Betting that since there were no Dominion soldiers in the vicinity, and the Terror Troopers had not detected her, and the real lighting had not gone out but was replaced by emergency lighting, Aurelia moved slowly, at a leisurely pace, through the corridors and level transitions, descending lower and lower...
If the enemy does not see the enemy approaching, then it won't hasten its plans to blow up the base, right?
All that remained was to hope that the other groups of Dominion assault forces operating here would not be so persistent in achieving their goals and would not ruin her entire game.
The half-blood felt the emanations of the Dark Side of the Force, which burned with bright flame on the upper level of the central hive and on the middle level of the right hive.
Darth Maul and Starkiller were rushing toward their goals.
Aurelia was closer to perhaps the most important of them than the rest of her comrades, and desperately prayed to the Force.
Seeing how more and more squads of Terror Troopers rushed to counter Darth Maul and his droids, the former Jedi Shadow literally begged the energy that permeated all life in the galaxy that her comrades would not be struck by momentary luck.
That would be so inconvenient...
* * *
"From the Raider, they report that a backup transmitter of the enemy has been discovered in the southern hemisphere."
"That's bad."
"The number of transmissions sent from the base is increasing," Captain Pellaeon reported an even less joyful news.
"At what frequency?"
"Exponentially," the commander of the Guardian looked frustrated. "The deeper we penetrate into the complex, the more often the base tries to communicate something to its masters."
"And it's using a backup antenna in the other hemisphere of Egon IX?" I clarified.
Logical from the artificial intelligence that had lost access to the main communication line — we had disabled the primary antenna at the start of the ground campaign.
Not knowing what backup technical capabilities this base had, we couldn't take risks.
And the chance that the enemy could pick up the decryption key and break through the long-range communication jamming projected by the Dominator remained always.
We had already encountered that our enemies were working on this tactical maneuver.
After all, jamming communication systems was a standard tactical maneuver of the Dominion.
Both in attack and defense.
"Exactly, sir. The Raider managed to triangulate the signal and calculate the location of the backup transmitter."
"Did the signals get through the jamming?"
"No, sir. But the encryption key is close to being recognized. Thirty percent left..."
Which meant we were about to have problems.
Again.
"Send a landing group with air support," I ordered. "The installation transmitting the signals must be captured and studied by our technicians immediately."
"Yes, sir."
No matter how hard we tried to recognize where exactly the enemy was sending distress signals, we never found the final recipient.
The base did not communicate with its master directly, but used a very convoluted, constantly changing algorithm for transmitting information to break through our jamming blockade.
When the base had almost deciphered our method of suppressing the enemy's communications, we struck and cut off the antenna.
Yes, we acquired several signal samples and now the decoders are racking their brains to figure out what's what.
The most we've advanced is understanding that the signal is not intended for direct transmission to its master.
And it's not at all because we disrupted the HoloNet network — the signal is coded that way by default.
It is generated to go to one relay — in the Ashen Worlds, and then...
Coded long-range communication always differs from that used for communication within a sector.
Frequencies, signal lengths, encoding, other indicators that allow the automation to correctly identify the signal for redirection to the end consumer.
And also, importantly, the encoding contains the address of the final recipient of the information.
And in the case of the base's distress signals, it's the encoding of the Ashen Worlds relay.
In other words, specifically these signals transmitted by the base serve only to alert a single relay.
It would be naive to think that the base's current master is on duty near the sector communication installation.
The most obvious thing is that the signal, once it reaches the relay, will be recoded, or will serve as a trigger for another chain of signals that will either go to their destination, or to another relay in the vast galaxy.
And this process could continue indefinitely, because signals are transmitted at speeds faster than light, and certainly faster than the fastest ship in the galaxy.
But to dissect and detect a new signal in the Ashen Worlds relay requires a huge amount of time.
Which, in fact, is already being done by specialized experts.
This process could be endless.
Not out of whimsy or spite did Imperial Intelligence send its reports over multiple communication channels, then compare the original and the final version received in each case.
And they have never suffered from the time costs of such transmissions — because data transfer speeds are such that even in hyperspace, modern technologies allow real-time communication almost in a conference-call style.
But since a second transmitter has appeared, we have the opportunity to acquire the equipment and use it to simulate the signal in the future.
Because I doubt that such a complex uses standard communication equipment.
To keep the base secret and also secure its transmissions from copying, a unique or specifically recognizable low-production device is necessary.
Thus, if we try to simulate the base's signal using standard means, the final recipient will know it's a fake — the digital signature of the source device will be different.
But if we get at least a backup transmitter (not to mention the communication system itself or the whole base), we will get much more interesting ways to find out who is behind everything that is happening.
If the capture of the clone commandos was the work of Pestage, then he also kept communication with the base exclusively from a secret place or a ship that only he had access to.
We didn't find any special means of communication on him; in the captured destroyers, there was also nothing special observed...
So where and to whom are these pathetic calls for help going?
Surely not to Darth Vader in the Force?
Right?
* * *
When she was first mastering the Force Cloak, the Council of First Knowledge warned Aurelia that it would not end well.
But, interestingly, they did not stop her from learning the ancient and not fully understood knowledge.
The Sephi, feeling her body ready to slide out of her armor from the sweat covering her skin from head to toe, held on to her Cloak with her last strength.
Having hid in the darkest corner of the lower level, making sure that it was in the very minimal possible sector of the "blind spot" of the surveillance cameras and the guards standing watch at the massive gates leading to the central computer, she very carefully loosened her control over the visual cloaking.
She was outside the direct line of sight of her enemies, so she didn't need optical camouflage.
But sound...
Even though she knew that the drumming beat in her temples was just an illusion born of her overstressed body and mind, the former Jedi Shadow could not bring herself to drop the Cloak completely.
Her breathing was deep, ragged, and so disrupted from prolonged use of the ability that even Jedi breathing techniques didn't help much in regaining control over her body.
One careless deep inhale or noisy exhale, which she needed to direct more oxygen to her overstressed and frankly suffocating body — and she would be discovered.
Who knows at what stage the central computer's plan is, and whether her detection would force it to immediately proceed to blowing up the base?
During the hour that she had crept through enemy-controlled territory, the half-blood had seen how the Terror Troopers turned laboratories and workshops into a battlefield, destroying invaluable equipment, smashing information and work terminals, chips and data crystals, while setting up traps and ambushes for the advancing forces.
It immediately came to mind and was striking that the Terror Troopers acted exactly like the clone commandos had worked.
With the same efficiency, pedantry, using the same tactical patterns and maneuvers.
There were no doubts left that she had when close to the disguised soldiers.
It's not a joke of the Force.
They are clones.
Moreover, while they looked like adult beings, in the Force they felt like teenagers.
A clear dissonance — the movements of an experienced soldier, differing from its "childish" aura, if one could say so.
For a moment, it seemed to her that she had met some of them before, more than thirty years ago, on joint missions.
This finally confirmed her suspicion.
There are no more clone commandos here.
Only Terror Troopers, into which they had been converted.
The mission, so to speak, was a failure.
Because the former Jedi Shadow doubted that among the enemy soldiers there were any who, by some unknown means, did not obey their commanders' orders or would rebel as soon as they were told the Empire had fallen, their tormentor was dead, and all that...
No one, even the most shell-shocked Imperial to the marrow, would create an army of super-soldiers whose loyalty they were not certain of.
There could be several options here.
The most obvious one is that the clones, converted into Terror Troopers, are deprived of free will.
Probably the cybernetic prosthetics were not limited to weapon augmentation and artificial body parts.
Something was inserted into their heads.
Not to say it's particularly extraordinary — cyborgs with a half-artificial mind, loyal to their masters to the point of idiocy, are not at all rare in the galaxy.
Once she flew to Bespin and there was a baron-administrator named... Calrissian?
And he had a cyborg assistant, Lobot.
And he had once been a human, but survived the surgery, and there was no one in all of Cloud City who was more loyal to Calrissian than this undemanding cyborg.
The second option, for example, implied the use of Kaminoan memory wiping technology.
It was used on some defective or particularly freedom-loving clones who, with their qualities, defects, or behavior, interfered with the work of other units.
Their brains were run through a meat grinder, so to speak, completely destroying the old, defective personality and replacing it with a new, more docile one.
Aurelia didn't know the details — she had read about it in a report from Master Shaak Ti, who had overseen the training and formation of clone units after the start of the Clone Wars.
One way or another, Darth Vader and his minions put effort into making those who were against them switch sides.
Unpleasant.
The main goal of the entire operation was already virtually a failure.
Hundreds, maybe thousands of clone commandos could have been a fine addition to the Dominion.
And the fact that she had been the one to lead them into Thrawn's hands could have greatly helped her in increasing her own importance.
Unfortunately, it seemed there were no options left.
Now the base was needed whole.
Aurelia felt that her breathing was slowing, and the Force was returning to her body drop by drop, putting it in order.
A short break before she moved to the final stage of resolving this situation.
With great hope in her heart that once she shut down the central computer, it would disorient the enemy forces long enough for Starkiller's group, which she sensed on the lower level of the right hive, to achieve their successes.
As she understood from listening in on enemy conversations, she had not been mistaken in her reasoning.
Under the central hive was the central computer itself, and under the right one — the power plant.
Under the left hive, which she hadn't reached, there were levels with stasis pods of the base's fighters, Terror Troopers, who, as she had heard, were completely thawed and deployed against the invasion forces.
Sad, but it proved that since the enemy did not allow any mention of any other frozen beings, then there were none.
There are no clone commandos.
They are all enemies now.
Painful.
Hurtful.
But it gives resolve.
Aurelia purposefully pressured herself with negative thoughts to turn them into a fire of the Dark Side that flooded her body.
Now she needed to act head-on.
At the limit of her strength.
Jedi techniques were good, of course, but here and now she had no time for elegant parries of enemy attacks.
Only rage.
Only momentum.
Only...
Aurelia smiled, feeling a supernova of rage flare up inside her, overwhelming her body.
Excellent.
The Force Cloak dissipated completely, and the Jedi Shadow dashed toward her target.
The ten meters separating the pillar she had been hiding behind and the enemy post, she covered in the blink of an eye.
With a light leap, she dove onto her enemy.
The first Terror Trooper didn't even have a chance as the merciless flaming blade pierced his chest clean through.
Using his falling body as a pivot point, the half-Sephi turned and slammed a side kick with her right foot straight into the head of the second enemy soldier.
He flew back to the wall, but immediately pushed off from it, transitioning into a counterattack, but Aurelia was faster.
The Force caught the soldier and pulled him to the girl with a Pull.
The lightsaber entered under his jaw and exited through the back of his head, and the black-and-red armor received dubious decorations in the form of deep, almost through, torn gouges from the enemy's vibroclaws.
But she had neither the time nor the desire to dwell on what happened, as a siren shrieked overhead and the main lighting went out.
Every second counted.
The Force concentrated in her right fist, and the former Jedi Shadow struck the armored doors with a full swing.
The metal, though standard for this place, still did not have the density of ceiling panels and wall layers.
And the rage she had whipped up in herself also played a role.
The doors separating her from the enemy central computer caved inward into the room a second before the locking mode activated.
The deformed bulkheads opened enough free space into which the slender Sephi slipped.
"Attention!" an artificial voice sounded overhead. "Enemy intrusion into the base's central computer chamber. Protocol Alpha-Seven-Three activated..."
The words reached her as if in slow-motion playback of a holo-film, because Aurelia was not standing still.
Force Speed carried her through the room, and the lightsaber, the only weapon capable of providing a Force-user with excellent results, flickered like the flashes of emergency lights.
When you surpass ordinary sentients and foresee the development of events, your weapon must work with minimal delays.
A blaster was only a burden here, although among Jedi there were some who used that weapon.
But not Jedi Shadows.
Aurelia's lightsaber, like a frozen flame, decapitated two Terror Troopers who intended to block her path.
The room was not large — about a hundred square meters.
In the center were massive vertical servers of the central computer, surrounding a cylindrical structure standing on an elevation, covered by armor for some purposes.
Along the perimeter of the room were numerous computer terminals, in which one could recognize the control panels of the secondary node.
They were responsible for transmitting signals from the central computer to the periphery of the base.
However, they were auxiliary, so they could do nothing but receive, process, and transmit orders from the base's "main artificial brain."
And they also stored information and logs of previously given orders and commands.
Analysis of this information could answer many questions, as well as shed light on what had been happening here.
If they were disconnected from the central computer in time and not allowed to format the data so that they could not be recovered.
Therefore, the half-blood's target was by no means the data storage devices and, presumably, the processor they surrounded.
The signal transmission cables that spread out from the central structure — that was what needed to be destroyed first.
To cut the base off from control.
Presumably, the "jammers" that prevented the use of Dominion comlinks would also stop working.
The lightsaber cut through the first bundle of cables, causing a spray of coolant from the terminal.
The girl sidestepped a burst from a rapid-fire gun that emerged from the ceiling, then, darting to another side, threw her lightsaber and destroyed the problem.
The weapon returned to her hand just as she cut through the second bundle of control cables.
Only two left.
"...three-pee..."
The next enemy — a Terror Trooper — she swept aside without even noticing, turning the cyborg into a bloody mechanical smear on the wall.
The girl didn't even stop, destroying several more guards and laser turrets on the ceiling in her path.
It took her less than five seconds to turn the defenders of the central computer into a pile of scrap metal and bleeding flesh.
At the same time, she cut all the bundles of wires and cables leading from the central computer to the periphery.
Meilis stopped only when she had cut everything that could transmit signals from the central computer.
And it had the desired effect.
The comlink came to life instantly.
"We're pushing through to the lower level of the central section," came the voice of Darth Maul on the command channel. "The enemy has reduced defensive capabilities, pulling some of its forces to the rear. A report has come in about the activation of the self-destruct system..."
"This is Meilis," the former Jedi Shadow introduced herself. "I have severed the central computer from the periphery. The base" she glanced at the auxiliary terminals, where she had discovered numerous indications of the impossibility of remote control of the base's equipment. All equipment. "The base is cut off from the central computer. Combat units will be executing the last order given."
Which meant...
"Starkiller speaking," came the voice of the Clone of Galen Marek. "Delta Squad and I are beginning the assault on the generator room."
The sound of an activating lightsaber rang out, immediately replaced by the sounds of battle.
"The base reactor is booby-trapped!" Starkiller warned. "Scorch, THX-0333 — disarm it! Boss, Fixer — get to Tano!"
"The Togruta is alive," the half-Sephi thought, noticing that one of the peripheral terminals was different from the others.
She approached closer.
Yes, it was the life support system terminal responsible for cryogenic freezing at the base.
And if it was to be believed, then in the left hive there were still capsules that had not yet been thawed.
Interesting, and what was there?
Unfortunately, no such data is available on the external device.
"Hmm, maybe it's not all that bad," Meilis thought, deforming the entrance doors with a Force push so that they crushed two Terror Troopers who had tried to get inside the same way.
All she did was take a step back for that.
And she noticed a quiet splash under her feet.
Looking down, the former Jedi shadow frowned, seeing that the floor was covered with a rapidly spreading liquid that smelled distinctly of cold — the frost on the equipment around her was proof of that.
A very weak cryogenic agent.
That was usually used to freeze wounded soldiers to stabilize their bodies while keeping them conscious.
Freeze — the Empire had stopped using such technology long ago.
About twenty-five years ago.
An emergency symbol appeared on the life-support system screen.
"Attention! Stasis-chamber control breached in the left section," a different voice sounded above her head.
A female voice, interestingly.
"Emergency thaw of special contingent initiated on the lower levels of the left section. Security forces prepare. Activation of emergency lockdown protocol impossible due to loss of connection with the central computer. Attention! Security personnel are authorized to fire to kill if there is a threat of the special contingent escaping the freeze zone. Attention! Damage to the preservation system of the central conservation chamber registered. Life support system damaged. Object 01 undergoing natural thaw. Danger of biological death of Object 01! Repair crews immediately restore integrity of Object 01 stabilization system."
"What?!" the Jedi was genuinely stunned.
What Object 01 was that?!
Where was it located?!
What the Hutta was going on here?
Suddenly the young woman felt it.
The Force gave her a warning — a faint spark of life flared up behind her.
Oh, there were only processors behind her!
Activating her weapon, Meilis turned around.
Right before her eyes, the armored casing around the central part of the room retracted downward, and the cryogenic agent streaming from under it splashed to the sides, draining through small drainage holes in the floor.
Instead of a processor, as she had assumed, a cylindrical capsule opened before her, very similar to a cloning autoclave.
Only it was a low-power stasis capsule.
Inside lay a disfigured human male, covered from head to toe in military cybernetics.
He seemed to be asleep, but then his eyes opened, staring at Meilis with a hateful gaze.
"I knew he would be a coward, to put a cross on my fate," the cyborg twitched, and some of the pipes connected to his body tore off with a hiss or popped out of their sockets. "As before, he has no honor to see things through without any Jedi tricks."
Meilis felt the hatred emanating from the massive cyborg, so great and pure that it was comparable to that supernova that had allowed the Jedi shadow to get in here.
Aurelia stepped back a pace, assuming a stance and raising her lightsaber in front of her, blade toward the unexpected enemy.
"I'll have only two questions," she admitted. "Who the black bones of the Emperor are you talking about, and who the hell are you anyway?!"
The cyborg did not satisfy her curiosity, lunging forward with a cry of rage emitted through the vocoder built into his throat.