Episode I: Part 2

Clang lifted the last of the small blue plastic crates from the repulsorlift sled and set it down on the deck of engineering command and control. Ten meters away on the other side of the room, Echo removed his helmet and set it beside him on top of the main reactor console with a confused frown.

"That doesn't make any sense."

"What doesn't?"

"Reactor shows to be online and in the green. It's just powering the bare minimum of station systems right now."

Clang removed his own helmet and scratched his short cut, dark hair. "What about the backup batteries? Shuttle scans said they were keeping the lights on."

Echo, one of the only two technicians in the squad, sat down in one of the chairs in front of the console. He tapped an icon in the upper right corner of the screen. The previous screen vanished, and was replaced with the station emergency battery status. "Batteries are undamaged but offline at the moment." The tech shook his head. "Doesn't make any sense. I've got this huge urge to tear down the shuttles' scanners. Check them over for anything misaligned."

Clang ignored his clone-brother's instinctive need to tinker with anything electronic and cast a look around the engineering room. "Well, is anything at all damaged in here? Looks perfectly fine to me."

The brief sound of tapping came from the console and the technician. "Status shows green on all counts. I'd better run a diagnostic to be certain, though."

"How long?"

"Standard hour. This used to be an old Naval supply and repair depot that was converted to an Observation station. Lots of subsystems to grind through."

Clang grunted in reply, then set his helmet on a nearby unused console. Lifting the crate closest to him, he walked over to a parts closet. In the back of his mind, something bothered the clone, he just could not place what. He opened the storage bin and made a wry face at the lack of supplies inside.

"Been awhile since the supply shuttle."

He opened the crate and unloaded the contents. First was a large coil of fiber optic cables, this he dropped onto the appropriately marked shelf. Then it struck him, droids. Where were all the station's droids?

"Hey, Echo, got any droid signatures? Maybe some plugged in to recharge?"

"Huh? Let me look." Echo tapped a few icons on the screen, the view changed and the tech shook his head. "Negative on that. Station doesn't know of any. Doesn't mean there couldn't be some around here powered down."

"Yeah, true." Clang replied, unconvinced. Once he emptied the crate, he took it to a recycling disposal and tossed it in to be automatically broken down and recycled into raw material for the station. "Gonna do a visual inspection. Let me know if you need anything."

Totally absorbed in the diagnostic's readout, Echo waved a hand without looking up. "Don't break anything."

Engineering control itself was not a small bay. It was designed to accommodate a team of five adult, human-sized beings comfortably. While it was not the cleanest room in the station, it was one of the most well organized ones for its space. It no time, Clang found the droid recharge bays, but it was empty of droids. Curious, the trooper knelt and examined the sockets. They were covered in a light layer of dust. These had not been used in quite some time. The only evidence of droids was a joint coupling that lay at the bottom of the recharge station.

Clang had once been assigned to guard duty in another station's engineering bay not long back. If there was one thing an engineering team used, it was droids. Especially something like a power droid, they were always around in a place like this.

"So, if they aren't here, where are they?" Clang stood and grabbed his helmet. "Hey, Echo, you got this covered?"

The tech turned from the diagnostic screens with a lopsided grin. "This 'no droids' thing is really eating at you, isn't it buddy?"

"I just don't like it. First, the shuttle says the station is on backup battery cause the reactor is off-line. We get down here to find the reactor is just fine but the batteries are down. On top of that, not even a maintenance droid running underfoot. Sithspawn, Echo, we're in engineering, damn droids ought to be all over the place."

"Ok, ok. Look, I have to bring the station's systems online one at a time. Like I said, that takes an hour when you run a diagnostic on each system. You have a look, meet up with me and we'll report in. It's not like it takes two of us to hit the restart button."

Clang made a sour look then donned his helmet. "Not what Seevo says."

"The LT says a lot of things. You're not gonna be useful until you check. Makes sense to find the engineering droids anyway. See you in an hour, troop." Once Clang left with a resigned shrug, Echo turned back to the console with a small smile. He did enjoy his work, especially when he could concentrate.

Ten decks above, the door slid open to show the station's Command and Control room shrouded in shadow and darkness. Gerri waved a hand over the motion sensor for the overhead lights, but the room remained dark.

Behind her, Sergeant Jammer had already pulled open a maintenance panel. "Don’t bother, emergency lighting's out too. The power circuits for the room are overloaded."

"Hmpf, fantastic." Gerri pulled a glowrod from her belt and activated it. She swept the white beam of light around the room and stepped inside. Ghost and Jammer followed after, their helmet lenses already tuned to low light amplification.

At the nearest console, Jammer lifted a collection of exposed and torn wires that previously comprised part of the traffic control system. The panel that used to cover them was on the floor in a twisted lump. Across the room, Ghost examined a similar amount of damage to the targeting system computers.

Gerri ignored all of that. Perhaps it was the regularity of the power surges, but a moment of great pain and emotion had spurred a tremor in the Force that still lingered even now. The feeling had come from here in command and control, but the Force was no more specific than that. Reaching out with her mind, she 'felt' around the room. The sensation persisted, tinged with sadness and perhaps some fervent passion. When she could glean nothing new, the Sith Adept let slip her control to survey the room in a more conventional manner.

That was when she walked directly into a dead body suspended from the ceiling supports near the outer edge of CNC.

"Drek!" She snarled. Instinctively, she dropped the glowrod and yanked out her lightsaber in a blur from the clip at her belt. She thumbed the switch, the red energy blade ignited with a deadly hum while she stepped back into a defensive posture, the blade raised upright near her right side. The view of the mangled corpse was made even more garish from the blade's red light.

At the recognized sound of Gerri's blade and her subsequent snarl, both biker scouts turned and yanked holdout pistols from their boot holsters. They partially relaxed their stance in shock when they saw what startled Gerri so badly. Around the room, hung from the ceiling supports against the wall at regular intervals was an arrangement of dead bodies. Without a word, Ghost walked toward one of the ghastly wall decorations.

"Chief Aikon. Station Chief of Security."

Jammer approached another body on the other side of the room. "Chief Paulis."

With a deep breath to calm her rattled nerves, Gerri held her lightsaber up a bit higher, the red light from the energy blade spilled further through the room. She peered at the body she bumped against. "Commander Lao Chronis. Station CO." She looked around at the macabre collection. "They're all station crew." Her voice was low and angry.

"Command staff." Ghost corrected her while he took aim to sever the cable with a shot from his blaster. He caught the body then gently set it on the deck plating. Ghost's normally deadpan or matter-of-fact voice was edged with softness. "Tortured using the room's power cables; I recognize this type of burn scars. The torturer finished the job when the victims either told what they know, or refused to say anything. Primitive, gruesome and crude, but terribly effective."

"If this is the station command staff, where is the rest of the crew?" Jammer asked while he severed a cable and carefully lowered another of the dead victims to the deck. Silence descended between the room's three living occupants as an answer.

When Ghost walked over to the body of the station's commander, Gerri cut the body down with a turn of her blade. The scout trooper caught the corpse and laid it out on the deck at their feet. The young Sith plucked a comlink from her belt and jabbed the call-key switch.

"Kells here."

"CNC, now. Bring Seevo. We've found ... something." Gerri growled.

Lieutenant Dison Kells did not immediately reply. He'd heard that level of rage in Gerri's voice before. He could also hear the hum of her lightsaber in the background. Together, that meant nothing good.

"On our way. Kells out."