Dxun welcomed us with about as much hostility as possible. Acidic droplets struck my armored pauldrons with dry clicks, leaving smoking bluish streaks across the metal, while a dense fog saturated with the vapors of decomposing organic matter filled the gorge and reduced visibility to barely five paces.
"If anything happens, use signal flares. The electromagnetic interference in the lower atmospheric lay—"
Elara's voice finally vanished beneath a burst of static before she could explain what exactly was wrong with the atmosphere.
I switched off my comlink. There was no point keeping it active when we had already lost contact with the ship in orbit. Behind me, the others descended from the shuttle, trudging through the thick mud. Maul moved almost silently with his hood pulled low over his eyes, Khem gave a deep growl as he tore aside a vine hanging directly at head height, and Varg kept slightly apart from the rest of us. I could understand why.
Grievous had remained behind to maintain order and receive the R.G.A. agents who were already making their way toward the former Shard.
I stopped at the edge of a drop overlooking the channel of some narrow river. Water churned below us, rushing over rocky ledges toward the base of a waterfall. I tried using the Force to get a better sense of the area, but achieved very little. Everything here radiated the Dark Side so strongly that separating one presence from another was difficult. Still, I managed to distinguish a few things.
The local flora and fauna reminded me most of Catachan from Warhammer, albeit a slightly less suicidal version of it. Even so, the number of creatures eager to kill and eat you was extraordinarily high. Whether that was the result of the Dark Side or simply Dxun being Dxun, I had no idea.
We soon encountered our first particularly memorable representative of the local food chain: maaalraas, predators capable of using the Force to camouflage themselves. As an additional complication, their hides were so durable that not every blaster could penetrate them.
Fortunately, the rain actually helped us for once. I could barely make out their outlines because the tiny droplets struck their invisible bodies and traced their shapes through the mist.
I gestured for everyone to get out of the water and decided to try resolving the situation "peacefully" by blasting the area where the creatures were hiding with Force Lightning. The attack knocked them out of their camouflage. Six hunched, scaled bodies with snarling jaws suddenly appeared through the rain, convulsing violently in the shallows.
Technically speaking, we did manage to part ways peacefully, and there was even no blood spilled on our side. Unfortunately for the maaalraas, Maul and Khem displayed a suspicious degree of agreement for once and charged straight at the disoriented creatures.
Their hides really were absurdly tough. Even direct lightsaber strikes did not always penetrate them, but my companions were remarkably persistent. Eventually Khem stopped trying to pierce one creature's skin entirely and simply broke its neck with his bare hands. He laughed so happily while doing it that I had to resist the urge to tell him he was supposed to shout something like, Skulls for the Skull Throne! instead of whatever incomprehensible noise he was making.
The remaining creatures apparently realized that they had attacked a group of complete lunatics and tried to flee, but they were already too late. Maul managed to cut the legs out from under each of them, ensuring that none escaped. Well, what could I really say? As long as they were not choking our allies like Vader, I might as well let them enjoy themselves. The beasts certainly would have eaten us with just as much enthusiasm.
Thirty seconds later, the only remaining sound was the roar of falling water as the last creature finally stopped moving.
I looked around for our actual destination. According to the information we had, the entrance should have been somewhere around...
Ah.
Of course.
What kind of gamer was I if I could not recognize the most obvious answer?
The entrance was behind the waterfall.
Sure enough, if I focused carefully through the dense curtain of falling water, I could make out the dark square opening of a cave beyond it. An ancient armored pressure door blocked the passage. The metal was covered with calcium deposits and rust, while the upper hinge had partially sagged beneath centuries of pressure from the surrounding rock.
I rolled my shoulders, gathered the Force, and struck the door with everything I had. The stubborn piece of metal merely rocked backward instead of flying off its hinges as I had expected.
Fine.
I concentrated harder and increased the pressure until the sound of bending metal rang through the gorge. The upper mounting finally failed with a sharp crack, and the multi-ton steel slab twisted sideways before collapsing inward into the dark corridor with a deafening crash, throwing up a cloud of dry dust.
Silence settled inside the airlock. Air hissed outward from deeper within the complex as the pressure began to equalize, carrying with it an unmistakable stench of something rotten and foul.
I entered first, using my lightsaber as a makeshift flashlight. Its glow revealed walls of dark concrete and bundles of cable conduits running along the ceiling. Dried remains lay scattered across the floor and against the walls. The dry air inside the laboratory had naturally mummified the bodies over the centuries.
Fragments of layered armor still clung to the bones, marked by distinctive angular plates and helmets with recognizable T-shaped visors.
"Mandalorians," Khem said, prodding a shattered helmet with one claw. "They came to steal from the dead, just like us. Weaklings."
"If the door was sealed, how did they get inside?" I asked rhetorically as we continued deeper into the complex.
Ten meters farther in, we encountered a second set of pressure doors. Unlike the first, these were invitingly open.
The moment I crossed the threshold, a dry mechanical click echoed overhead.
Two paired turret assemblies extended from ceiling panels with a grinding sound. At the same time, dense greenish gas began pouring from ventilation grilles along the walls.
"Back!" Varg shouted, apparently deciding to play Captain Obvious for the day as she retreated toward the entrance. "It's poison!"
I did not move. I raised my left hand and immediately expanded a Force Barrier around the group. It was nowhere near as strong as something Kenobi could probably produce, but for this situation it was more than enough.
A transparent hemisphere surrounded us, shielding everyone from the unknown toxin. The gas hissed as it flowed around the visible boundary of the barrier without penetrating it.
Above us, the turrets began rotating their paired barrels in our direction as their targeting systems locked on.
Maul started forward to cut them apart with his lightsaber, but I stopped him with a sharp command.
"Stay where you are. There's a coolant-gas supply line running directly above them, and the turrets are too close to it. It would be awkward if you sliced through that too, wouldn't it?"
This time I had actually prepared properly and had even read the documentation for standard facilities from this period.
I also decided it was time to show off a little. Lately I had begun to feel like I was being pushed into the background. Of course, it was good that my subordinates were handling most threats, and as their commander I should have been pleased about that.
But it was also incredibly boring.
So I stepped forward, raised both hands, and focused carefully on controlling my Force Lightning, even activating my focusing device. If centuries of abandonment and a group of Mandalorians had failed to destroy these things, then I would make sure the job was finally finished.
Two narrow but extraordinarily powerful bolts erupted from my fingers. They struck directly into the cameras mounted on the turrets' sensor assemblies. Smoke immediately poured from the damaged optics, and both weapons stopped tracking before lowering their barrels uselessly toward the floor.
I maintained the barrier for another minute while the facility's emergency ventilation finally activated and sucked most of the toxin back into the ventilation shafts. Once the green mist had dispersed, I lowered the shield and approached a third door visible farther down the corridor.
This one looked considerably more imposing.
Three runes had been carved into the armored panel, each filled with a dark substance that resembled dried blood. As far as I understood the Sith inscriptions, they translated to Fear, Service, and Supremacy.
Varg stepped closer and studied the markings, an unhealthy gleam appearing in her eyes.
"I know these symbols," the Dathomirian whispered, pointing toward the second rune. "This is an ancient Sith ritual of submission. The Dashade served Sith Lords for centuries. We need to spill your servant's blood across the rune of Service. That will activate the master-recognition protocol."
Khem gave a deep growl and clenched his fists as he looked toward me.
I ignored the witch's suggestion and silently examined the panel instead. Leaning closer, I studied the copper conductors disappearing from the symbols into the wall.
"You are a poor historian, Varg," I said dryly. "From what I have managed to learn, Lord Varak, the Sith alchemist buried here, was hiding on Dxun from purges conducted by his own Order. Someone that paranoid would never entrust the protection of his research to such a simple ritual. Sith philosophy is built around strength. I would not be surprised if choosing Service activates a self-destruct system instead of opening the passage."
I glanced toward the sealed door.
"And simply breaking it open is not much better. We have no idea which sensors are still operational."
I straightened and nudged a fragment of Mandalorian cuirass lying beside the wall with the toe of my boot. The heavy, tarnished piece of beskar landed near my feet with a quiet metallic clang.
"There is only one correct choice here: Supremacy. But if you actually use your brain and look through the Force, you can see that Varak installed a feedback system as well. Anyone who channels Force energy directly into this lock receives a high-powered discharge in return. Probably enough to burn out the nervous system."
I picked up the piece of beskar and placed the dense metal between my palm and the central rune marked Supremacy, using it as an improvised shield.
Gathering my will, I sent a focused pulse of the Dark Side through the metal plate and directly into the center of the rune.
The symbol flared with crimson light.
A violet arc of energy exploded from the lock in response, but when it struck the beskar plate, it failed to penetrate and instead discharged into the stone floor in a shower of sparks.
Something inside the door activated with a loud mechanical clang. The ancient lock clicked, and the heavy panel slowly retracted into the wall, revealing the inner sanctum of Lord Varak's laboratory.
Rows of cylindrical data-storage units lined the walls. In the middle of the room, a large central control console stood atop a low platform.
I did not waste time exploring the user interface. After spending so much time around Elara, I had learned that software, even ancient software, could contain traps, hidden commands, or access restrictions.
Instead, I removed a portable datapad and a set of physical adapters from one of my equipment pouches. Ideally, I would have brought Ice Pick down here personally, but to be honest, I was worried something in this place might literally fry her brain.
Dropping to one knee beside the base of the central terminal, I tore away the protective cover from the main cable connection and plugged directly into the system to begin transferring data.
A dry metallic crack sounded behind me.
Maul was standing watch near the entrance, watching the corridor, while Varg had apparently taken what she probably thought were two subtle steps toward the nearest structural pillar. A thin bone needle slipped from her sleeve, and the witch quickly pressed its edge against the concrete.
With all communications completely blocked, her attempt to carve Dathomirian symbols into the wall looked about as suspicious as possible. She was clearly trying to leave some kind of marker or signal.
She completed only the first cut before Khem Val's heavy three-fingered hand closed around her wrist.
The bones in her hand cracked under the Dashade's grip. Her fingers opened involuntarily, and the needle fell to the steel floor with a sharp ring.
"Rat," Khem growled as he twisted her arm into an unnatural angle.
Varg merely curled her lips into a dry smile and managed to utter a single word in the Dathomirian language.
The talisman hanging from her belt suddenly glowed with dark green light before instantly crumbling into gray ash.
At that exact moment, something beneath the archive floor struck with a heavy thud. A noticeable vibration ran through the walls, and crimson emergency lights flared overhead. Speakers mounted in the ceiling began producing a broken metallic alarm.
A warning appeared on my datapad beside the progress bar for the file transfer.
Warning. Reactor stabilization circuit compromised. Cooling system failure. Forced acid-waste purge in: 04:59.
At the same time, at the far side of the chamber, hydraulic locks hissed behind a translucent wall of thick reinforced plastic.
Dark preservation fluid began rapidly draining out of a three-meter incubation capsule.
"If my heart stops beating, or if my connection to the magic is severed, the emergency protocol will immediately destroy every memory crystal," Varg hissed as she struggled against Khem's grip, though her face had gone pale from the pain of her broken wrist. "You will not have enough time to copy even half of it."
I did not even turn toward her. My attention remained fixed on the transfer progress.
Fourteen percent.
Killing the witch immediately would mean losing the rare DNA stabilization formulas and trapping ourselves inside a sealed complex with an unstable reactor. Releasing her and allowing her to complete whatever ritual she had begun would hand Talzin the coordinates of the facility and potentially give Dathomir access to the technology.
Neither option was acceptable.
"Khem, do not break her neck. Just keep her restrained," I ordered calmly while watching the dark fluid drain from the incubation chamber. "Maul, move toward the center. It seems we are going to have to... dispose of the local security system."
The plastic wall of the incubator suddenly exploded outward.
A heavy impact shattered the central section, and a massive creature labeled Specimen Zero spilled onto the steel floor along with a flood of chemical gel.
It was a hybrid.
The Sith alchemist Varak had apparently used a zakkeg, one of Dxun's most durable predators, as the foundation before heavily modifying both its genome and anatomy. The six-meter reptilian body had been reinforced with metal plates fused directly into the skeletal structure. One eye had been replaced with an optical sensor assembly, while hydraulic actuators protruded along its spine to amplify the power of its forelimbs.
The creature roared loudly enough to make the glass containers on the storage racks vibrate.
Then it immediately charged the nearest target: Darth Maul.
The Zabrak reacted without hesitation, rolling to the right while activating his lightsaber. The blade struck the mutant's side with its characteristic crackle, but the Sith-alchemy-treated scales produced only a shower of bright sparks.
The plasma left a deep black burn across the creature's flank but failed to penetrate the thick hide and bone armor.
The zakkeg turned with surprising speed for something of its size, whipping its enormous tail across the room. Maul jumped over the strike, but the tail smashed into one of the server supports instead, bringing chunks of concrete and cable housings crashing to the floor.
"Maul, stop trying to penetrate the front armor!" I shouted while checking the transfer progress.
Forty-two percent.
"Cut the tendons in the rear legs and take away its mobility. Khem, lock its jaws shut!"
Varg attempted to take advantage of Khem's brief distraction as the monster approached. Rotating her injured wrist, she reached with her left hand toward her collar, where some kind of mummified object resembling a long finger was hidden.
Khem growled, jerked her toward him, and ignored the sparks scorching the skin of his forearm. He simply threw the witch onto the floor beside the console and pinned her chest down with one massive foot.
The zakkeg charged again, opening its jaws. Drops of concentrated acid were already gathering inside its mouth, ready to spray across the group.
Maul moved around its flank. Using a quick Force-assisted push from the wall, he launched himself over the creature's back and drove his lightsaber twice into the exposed joint connections of its rear right leg, where biological tissue met the metal components of its cybernetic implants.
The creature roared in pain, and its hindquarters visibly sagged.
At the same moment, Khem stepped forward and caught both the upper and lower jaws of the mutant in his hands.
A dry cracking sound filled the chamber as the Dashade brought his abnormal physical strength fully to bear, forcing the zakkeg's mouth closed and preventing it from spraying the acidic aerosol.
The creature thrashed violently, whipping its huge head back and forth and dragging Khem across the slick floor, but the Dashade's grip held like a steel clamp.
I looked at the display.
Eighty-nine percent.
The reactor countdown showed one minute and twenty seconds.
I quickly evaluated the situation. The creature's incredibly tough scales dispersed direct Force impacts by absorbing and spreading kinetic energy, while the armored plates protected most of its vital organs.
However, the entire control room was now covered in a thick layer of fluid from the broken incubation capsule mixed with technical coolant leaking from ruptured pipes.
The mixture contained a high concentration of salts and metals.
In other words, it was an excellent electrical conductor.
I widened my stance for balance and aimed my hands not at the creature itself, but at the liquid pooled beneath its belly.
A torrent of Force Lightning erupted from my palms.
A flash of blue-white light blinded everyone in the chamber for a fraction of a second.
The enormous electrical discharge spread instantly through the liquid covering the floor, flowing around the insulating scales and seeking the only vulnerable points available: exposed technical connectors and the mutant's unprotected underside.
High-voltage current entered through the cybernetic hydraulic systems connected directly to its internal Sith implants.
A rapid series of muffled explosions erupted inside the zakkeg's body.
Internal capacitors and power units failed under the sudden voltage spike and detonated inside the creature's soft tissues. Black smoke poured from the optical sensor replacing its eye.
The mutant's body arched violently before collapsing onto the wet concrete with a heavy crash and finally going limp.
Varg, still pinned beneath Khem's foot, realized that her little act of sabotage had failed. Fighting through the pain, she pulled out the dried phalanx and raised her hand to smash it against the floor, apparently intending to activate whatever final trick she had prepared.
I was faster.
A Force Push tore the "toy" from her fingers and slammed it into the opposite wall, where the artifact shattered into fragments.
Before she could make another attempt, I immediately redirected my attention and struck her with a precise mental attack: Force Stun.
Normally, the technique was not particularly effective against other Force-users, but this was an unusual situation. She was already weakened, while I was standing on a world practically saturated with the Dark Side, amplifying my abilities enormously.
Varg jerked once. Her eyes rolled backward, and she collapsed unconscious against the steel floor.
At that exact moment, my portable datapad emitted a short tone.
The transfer bar filled completely.
Scan complete. 100% of data arrays successfully saved.
"We take her with us and leave now," I said as I disconnected the adapter from the data bus and secured the datapad inside a protective case on my belt. "We have forty seconds before the lower level floods with acid."
Khem grabbed Varg around the waist and effortlessly threw her unconscious body over one shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
Several mechanisms above us began making loud grinding noises as the door ahead slowly started returning to its original position, sealing the exits from the central chamber.
Cloudy, boiling liquid suddenly poured from cracked pipes around the incubation unit, carrying the sharp smell of sulfuric acid and organic solvent.
The metal floor hissed beneath our feet as gray bubbles formed across its surface and corrosive vapor rose into the air.
"Move!" I ordered.
Maul went first, making a smooth leap over the debris while using two precise lightsaber strikes to cut away part of the sagging pressure door and widen the opening.
Khem lowered his head and forced his way through immediately afterward, still carrying Varg.
I brought up the rear and caught one final glimpse of the chamber behind us as emergency bulkheads slammed shut with a deafening metallic crash, completely sealing the control room.
The storm above the gorge had shown no sign of weakening. Acid rain continued hammering against our armor as we emerged from behind the waterfall onto the open ground.
Somewhere deep beneath us, a muffled detonation rolled through the earth. The reactor's emergency purge had activated, flooding the lower sections of the complex with industrial acid.
Once we were aboard the landing shuttle, the first thing I did was order Khem to place Varg in restraints. Whether ordinary binders would actually stop any of her tricks was another question entirely, but it was better than nothing.
The shuttle lifted away from the muddy landing zone with its maneuvering thrusters operating at full power. As we climbed out of Dxun's dense atmospheric layers, the constant electromagnetic interference gradually weakened.
A stable communications indicator finally appeared on the pilot's display.
My comlink chirped, and Elara's hologram appeared inside the cockpit.
"Oh, you're already finished? I can see you coming out of the storm front," she said quickly. "The cruiser's scanners detected a spike in seismic activity around the gorge. Is everything all right?"
"What, were you worried about us?" I asked, deciding to tease her a little.
Ice Pick merely rolled her eyes.
Forty minutes later, once the shuttle had entered the cruiser's docking bay, I immediately withdrew to my temporary office. I placed the secured datapad onto the central terminal's reading panel and began decrypting the recovered files.
The initial file structure turned out to contain exactly what we had organized the expedition to find.
Inside a restricted directory labeled Project: Insulator were detailed formulas for biochemical catalysts and genome-shift maps.
The Sith alchemist Varak had managed to solve the problem of regenerative tissue collapse. His stabilizers allowed complex Dashade DNA to be integrated into cloned biological material without triggering uncontrolled cancerous cell growth.
That potentially gave the Steel Vanguard exactly what we needed: reliable genetic stability combined with a high degree of resistance to external influences.
Well then.
It seemed we might soon have our first proto-Astartes.
Heh.
There was still a long road ahead before we could build a proper military structure for our new...
No, I nearly said Empire again.
That did not sound right anymore.
Our new Revolutionary Galactic Alliance.
And one day the entire galaxy would tremble when we liberated it from the oppression of those who lived comfortably upon the deaths of others.
Interlude
Coruscant. Sublevel 1412. Main Communications Service Node, Senate Sector.
Drops of industrial condensation fell rhythmically onto the rusted housing of a high-voltage cable.
Inside a narrow service corridor running between the massive support structures of the residential blocks stood a man dressed in the uniform of a municipal maintenance worker, apparently doing nothing more than his job.
In reality, he was an R.G.A. operative registered within Coruscant Municipal Services under the identity of engineering technician Kaelen Gor.
His datapad, connected to the fiber-optic mainline through a portable adapter, counted down the seconds while streams of intercepted traffic appeared and disappeared rapidly across its matte display.
His assignment was simple in concept and extraordinarily difficult in practice: monitor any abnormalities in encrypted communications originating from Supreme Chancellor Palpatine's private office.
Not ordinary Senate bureaucratic correspondence, and not even publicly accessible military reports, but hidden burst transmissions routed through reserve channels that were never entered into official Old Republic logs.
For nearly a month, "Kaelen" had worked for a maintenance office responsible for street utility panels. During that time, he had gradually installed listening devices throughout communications junctions without ever risking a direct query against the network.
At the moment, he appeared to be an entirely bald man of average height with a black snake tattoo beneath one eye. In reality, it was merely a carefully designed and memorable disguise, chosen specifically so that he could discard it easily if he were ever identified.
Ten minutes earlier, the Chancellor's secure terminal had finally transmitted something.
"Got you..." Kaelen whispered, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his work glove.
Lines of code began scrolling across the datapad.
It was an R.G.A. decryption algorithm developed using the Sith Empire archives that had been supplied to the organization. Slowly but steadily, it began breaking apart the structure of the intercepted packet.
The transmission, as it turned out, was being sent through a narrow encrypted beam toward an unregistered relay somewhere in the Lianna sector.
The percentage indicator climbed gradually across the screen.
Kaelen quickly read through the fragments of text appearing beneath it.
...abnormal increase in worker loyalty within the designated sectors toward the organization "R.G.A."... seizure of administrative control... identity of leader: Taales... danger of disrupting the balance of power...
Cold sweat spread across Kaelen's back.
The file contained information about adding sectors influenced by the R.G.A. to priority target lists for future "precision purges," along with an order instructing Count Dooku to prepare a Confederate flotilla for a preemptive attack against their primary station.
Damn that traitor Palpatine. So all those rumors were true? He really is behind this war?
The thought flashed through Kaelen's mind as even more information appeared, including short instructions concerning the redistribution of clone divisions to isolate several outer systems.
Only a few percent remained before the download would be complete when the datapad suddenly flickered.
The lines of code froze.
Everything stopped at once.
Kaelen knew exactly what it meant.
A hidden tracking algorithm embedded within the transmission, a top-tier tracing system, had detected the unauthorized access.
A warning appeared across the top of the screen.
Access denied. Signal source localized. Protocol Shadow-7 activated.
"Damn it."
Kaelen immediately tore the adapter out of the mainline, but it was already too late.
Somewhere deeper inside the service tunnel, behind a heavy steel barrier, magnetic locks disengaged with a dry click.
The collector's cooling fans stopped at the same time.
The narrow corridor fell into absolute, ringing silence.
Kaelen ripped a portable one-use quantum transmitter from his belt.
He had only seconds left.
He pulled the crystal storage card from his datapad, shoved it into the transmitter's slot, and entered the coordinates of the organization's primary relay.
The device began humming as it accumulated enough energy to fire a narrow transmission pulse through the massive layers of Coruscant's concrete infrastructure.
The temperature inside the tunnel suddenly dropped.
A thin layer of frost appeared across the metal pipes before his eyes.
The air became heavy and dense, filled with an invisible pressure that made Kaelen's ears ache and sent a sharp, throbbing pain through the back of his skull.
At the far end of the tunnel, a massive door tore free from its hinges with a deafening shriek.
The half-centner slab of metal flew into the service passage and slammed into the opposite wall with a tremendous crash.
Two figures stepped through the opening.
They wore neither standard clone armor nor the uniforms of Senate Security.
Dark crimson robes covered their bodies completely, and heavy force pikes rested in their hands.
Palpatine's personal guards.
Judging by how quickly they had arrived, they had probably been watching him for at least ten minutes already.
The newcomers moved in complete silence as they blocked the only exit from the tunnel.
"Target located," a voice distorted through a vocoder announced from the darkness.
"I... have been exposed," Kaelen rasped into the transmitter.
An invisible but incredibly powerful grip closed around his throat and lifted him above the broken concrete.
His legs kicked uselessly in the air while his fingers clawed desperately at his collar.
One of the crimson guards stepped forward and raised his force pike.
Fighting through the unbearable pain of vertebrae beginning to crack in his neck, Kaelen forced himself to extend his right hand, still clutching the transmitter, and drove his thumb down onto the emergency override.
The device flashed brilliantly in his hand.
Its casing became instantly red-hot, burning out its internal circuitry as every remaining unit of power was redirected into a single, massively amplified transmission pulse.
For the briefest fraction of a second, green text appeared on the display.
Packet transmitted. Receipt confirmed.
At that exact moment, the tip of the force pike punched through the operative's chest with a dull crack.
End of Chapter