Star Wars: The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance (33 page)

He
picked up the sliver of metal. It was cool and sharp-edged to the
touch. If he put it in his right fist and squeezed, it would surely
draw blood.

He
engulfed it in his fist and squeezed.

The
bottom dropped out of the hold and he was suddenly falling.

His
first thought was to grab hold of something and hang on, both
mentally and physically. This was utterly unlike any psychometric
information he had ever received before. But what he was reading this
time was unlike anything he'd tried touching before, so fighting the
vision could be self-defeating. Perhaps being plunged in the deep end
was exactly what he needed. He braced himself against the rush of
vertigo and tried to take from the experience what he could.

Falling.
At first there seemed to be nothing more to it than that. Then he
noticed details highly reminiscent of the strange blue geometry of
hyperspace. Was that what he was glimpsing? The nest's last journey,
or its first?

There
was a blinding flash of light, and he stopped with a jerk. All was
dark again. Voices came and went, too indistinct to make out words.
They were raised, though, as if in an argument. He could make out no
faces, no locations, no coordinates. Just a feeling: that the thing
the sliver had belonged to was determined to survive.

The
Cinzia, he thought. He was spooling back through the droid factory's
history, in reverse. It clearly possessed a rudimentary self-
awareness, which shouldn't have come as a surprise since it had
single- handedly organized the surreptitious creation of four
advanced combat droids without being detected. Even if most of its
internal algorithms were automated, it had taken a certain degree of
cunning to know when to lay low and when to become active.

The
flash was probably the explosion that had almost killed it.

Shigar
wanted to get moving again. The next jump would be the one that would
take him home, to where the droid factory had originated. But his
eagerness only caused the vision to fray about the edges-and suddenly
he was dumped back onto the hard floor of the hold with nothing to
show for the experience.

He
sat, breathing heavily and cursing his impatience.

When
he opened his right hand, the sliver rested on his palm in a growing
pool of blood.

What
had he done this time, compared with all the other times before, that
had worked?

He
could guess the answer, and it was dismayingly simple. He hadn't done
anything special. He'd just done it. The Force had moved through him
in exactly the right way, and the knowledge he'd been looking for had
come to him. It hadn't taken any particular degree of concentration,
or any fancy mental footwork. He had done it because he could do it.
There was a fair chance he hadn't always been able to do it; he was
sure that all those years of training hadn't been for nothing. But at
some point, as Larin had said, all the extra thinking he did on the
subject had been wasted. It had, in fact, been counterproductive.

The
next question was: could he do it again?

He
didn't need to ask. He didn't want to ask it. The time for questions
was over.

He
transferred the sliver to his left hand and squeezed again.

A
second vision of hyperspace enfolded him. Falling faster this time.
The blue tunnel was twisted, warped. He felt dizzy. Mysterious forces
tugged at him, shook him violently at times. He felt like he was
running down a steep mountain and that at any moment he might trip
and tumble headlong all the way to the bottom. As the droid factory's
journey unspooled backward in time, it took him into a deep, dark
place.

Shigar
didn't question the vision. He let it unfold at its own pace. The
shuddering grew worse as he neared the Cinzia's origin, until he felt
that he might be torn apart.

When
it ceased, all was quiet. He felt a sense of homecoming, even though
that was surely illusory. The factory was a machine, and it had been
leaving its homeworld, not arriving there. But the feeling was
persuasive. He felt that he belonged here, and that here-wherever
here was-was important and precious. Unique. Shigar understood that
feeling, even though he'd never felt it for Kiffu, his birthplace.
Shigar had been a citizen of the galaxy for too long to feel close
ties anywhere.

Again
he thought of Larin and her changed circumstances. She, too, had
taken great strides across the Republic and beyond. But now she was
stuck on Coruscant-or had been until his arrival. She had never
expressed any unhappiness about her relative confinement, but he
could only imagine how it must feel.

The
droid factory felt as though it belonged. Wherever it came from, that
was where it had wanted to be. And Larin had killed it.

Perhaps,
he thought, that had been a mercy.

More
voices, this time with blurry faces. Human men and women; Shigar
didn't recognize any of them. He made out some words, though,
including the hexes' furious catch-cry. It was being chanted by a
group of people, including a woman of middle years, with short ash-
blond hair and intelligent eyes. Her hand was raised above her head.
She was shaking her fist at the sky-but it wasn't a sky at all. It
was a roof. She was in a large space with a tubular tank at its
center, filled with red.

Shigar
didn't fight the vision. He just told it: I want to be inside her
head.

And
he was. He was enfolded by a turbulent flow of thoughts and sensory
impressions. He tumbled, slightly in awe of how easy it had been.
Nothing like this had ever happened before. Perhaps there was
something special about her, this Lema Xandret.

For
it was indeed her. He was buffeted by her rage. He found strength in
her determination to live unfettered. He grew weary at the
understanding that all things must eventually be compromised, or die.
He felt satisfaction at all her achievements. He wept at the mingled
love and loss of a child.

Shigar
looked through her eyes at the world she had adopted for her own, and
felt pride tinged with worry, and an intense desire for revenge.

We
do not recognize your authority!

And
there it was, at last. Everything he had been looking for: the dense,
metallic world, rich with change and vigor, where no one would have
looked for it in a million years.

His
eyes snapped open. He didn't feel the pain of the cuts to his palms.
He had forgotten the various aches and pains of his body, earned the
hard way on Hutta. He felt only a degree of gratitude that he had
never experienced before, blended with a powerful sense of
achievement.

Climbing
to his feet, he hurried to the crew quarters. Larin was already fast
asleep. He thought about waking her to tell her the news but reined
in the impulse. She deserved her rest. He could thank her later.

Ula
and Jet were in the cockpit. He clambered up the ladder and burst
into their conversation.

"I
know where it is!"

"The
world?" asked Ula, looking up in surprise.

"Yes.
I found it!"

"Good
for you, mate, " said Jet. "Got some coordinates for me?"

"Not
exactly, " Shigar said, "but I can describe it to you. I
think it'll be fairly easy to pin down. "

"Well,
great. I'm very tired of the view here. Take a seat and we'll get
started. "

Shigar
felt his sense of triumph ebb slightly at the thought of what lay
ahead of them.

"What?"
asked Ula, staring at his face. "Is there a problem?"

"You
could say that. "

Their
faces fell in unison as he told them.

Finding
the planet was one thing.

Getting
there would be another entirely.

CHAPTER
26

Specialist
Pedisic looked up as Ax walked into the quarantine bay. The space had
been transformed. Large pieces of equipment hovered over the
dissection table, connected by thick cables to the bulk cruiser's
main processor arrays. The remains of the hex had been splayed out
like a delicate tapestry, revealing intricate details of its
structure and function. The cell walls that made it robust as well as
lightweight were threaded with shining metal, suggesting that they
performed key functions as well as providing internal support. She
saw several fist-sized globes like round, silver eggs nestling
against more familiar components. The legs had been removed entirely
from complex-looking joints and stacked like metal antlers in a
transparisteel jar.

"I
have much to report, sir, " the specialist said. She had rolled
her sleeves up, and her arms were smeared with brown-black goo up to
her elbows.

"Then
do so. " Ax stood with her hands on her hips at one end of the
table. She had been generous. The specialist had had more than an
hour. If Darth Chratis had not been so conversational in his
discipline, Ax would have come back much sooner.

"Well,
the first thing I can tell you is that this thing, whatever it is,
isn't finished. " Pedisic selected a slender-tipped tool from
the many surrounding her work space and pointed as she talked. "See
here: its neuro-web was interrupted before the completion of a full
suite of reflex analogues. And here: there's a full array of senses
about to come online down this dorsal region, but it's totally
unconnected to the central computer. The reporting system has only
grown to here and has yet to join the two. "

"You
mean it was released too early, before it was ready?"

"There's
evidence to suggest that it was continuing to develop after it left
the factory that built it. I suggest this thing would have finished
itself, given time. "

Ax
remembered how ferociously the thing had fought. And it hadn't even
been complete! "What would the final form have been like?"

"It's
impossible to say. The main data bank doesn't contain a single
template. Instead there are many, with lots of transitional forms.
And there's a biological component, too, that I find very puzzling.
This brown stuff must perform some function, otherwise it wouldn't be
present in such quantities. Perhaps it acts as a randomizing agent,
encouraging it to adapt more fluidly. It's hard to analyze, though,
because it's been so severely cooked. "

She
looked at Ax reproachfully, as though blaming her for the condition
of the sample. In this case, Ax was completely innocent. Either the
Jedi or the Mandalorian had done that job for her.

And
either way, it was irrelevant.

"So
you've accessed the brain, then. "

"Yes.
Just this minute. "

"How
smart was it? Could it fly a ship, for instance?"

"Not
likely, my lord, but if it needed to, it could change itself so it
could. Like birds grow new parts of their brains in spring to learn
new songs. It's just a matter of..."

Ax
waved her silent. "Is the data encoded?"

"Naturally,
but the cipher is based on an Imperial system that went out of use
fifteen years ago. "

When
Lema Xandret fled the Empire, Ax remembered.

"I'll
crack it soon. Don't worry, my lord. The fact that the thing was
incomplete actually made getting in easier. All I have to do is map
the architecture and find my way around... "

Ax
didn't pay attention to the specifics. And she hadn't been aware that
she'd looked worried. If this specialist couldn't do the job, she'd
just get another.

"All
I want to know is where this thing came from, " she said. "And
I want to know now. "

Specialist
Pedisic nodded. "Yes, my lord. With your permission, I'll resume
my examination. "

Ax
indicated with a flick of one index finger that the specialist should
return to work.

While
Ax waited, she paced the crowded space, reading raw data and coming
to her own conclusions. Nothing she saw contradicted the specialist's
opinions, and there was much more to be absorbed than could have been
crammed into that short conversation. The globes contained the hex's
primary processors, where sensory data converged, was exchanged, and
provoked various environmental responses. The weapons on each hand
were little different in principle from standard blaster technology,
but remarkably miniaturized and integrated into a limb capable of
gripping and supporting weight as well. This hex had no camouflage
system to analyze, and unfortunately the electromirror defense was
too badly damaged to reverse- engineer. Whole sections of its body
had been fried to ash.