Episode I: Part 6

The rain and wind subsided as the tug settled into the clearing next to the Imperial shuttlecraft. With a soft click, the back hatch opened once the landing struts settled into the dark, wet grass. Clang walked out of the tug and over to the Imperial shuttle. Doc emerged a moment later. The hatch on the tug closed automatically behind them both.

"Shuttle's locked down, but there should be a trooper or two to secure the shuttle. Doc, your sensors picking up anything?"

The droid was silent for a moment. "Regular transmission bursts to the southwest on a five minute window."

"What kind of transmissions?"

"Telemetry. Imperial encoded."

Clang considered that a moment. "Unless somebody cannibalized something together, a standard com would send an emergency code, not just telemetry data. These coordinates, are they planetary based?"

"Negative, it appears to be hyperspace coordinates."

"A ground relay. They're only used in emergencies. Probably cut on when the observatory registered offline. In any case, it'll have the power to raise anyone on the comm in sector if need be."

"Roger roger"

Black thunderclouds loomed overhead while Clang and Doc cleared an overgrown game trail through grayish alien trees and other jungle flora. An hour later, the storm caught up to them. A torrent of hard rain fell, backlit by occasional flashes of purple lightning. When the wind and the rain fell hard enough that even the vision amplification system in the trooper's helmet could not easily discern the trail ahead, Clang put a hand on Doc's metallic shoulder. "I'm scanning some caves ten meters to our right. I don't know about you, but my visibility is shot. Lets wait out the storm."

At the cave, Doc stood inside the entrance, methodically scanning the jungle. Behind him, Clang opened a belt pouch and pulled out a small piece of grayish detonite putty. He balled this up and stuck it to a short leafy branch. This he dumped on a small pile of twigs and leaves. A quick blaster shot ignited the leaves and more importantly the detonite putty. When ignited by anything but a jolt of electricity, detonite burned slow and hot instead of exploding. Clang removed his helmet and sat to the left of the fire, facing the cave entrance.

Suddenly Doc turned. "The fire is ill-advised."

Clang looked up at the battle droid from where he sat near the fire. "Why? Between the rain and the runoff over the cave entrance, we won't show up on any thermal scans." He shrugged, "Just wanted to dry out my armor a bit, maybe heat a rations cube."

"I concur, thermal scans will not find us. But thermal scans are not my concern at the moment." Doc pointed behind the trooper.

Clang looked in the direction the droid indicated but saw only the shadows at the back of the cave where a small collection of tunnels opened. He started to say as much when the firelight glinted off two, wet glassy objects in the darkness. He swallowed, carefully slipped his helmet on and slid his carbine from its holster.

"Doc?" He asked. "What is that?"

Before the droid could answer, a three-toed paw, as wide as the troop's armored chest, stepped into view.

"Large," Doc said flatly.

Clang eased to his feet and slowly backed towards the cave entrance. "Well, thanks. That puts everything into perspective."

From the back of the cave, the rest of the shape pulled into view. Two meters tall at the shoulder, the bulk of the beast was covered in fur patterns of tans, browns and black. It walked on four legs like a mountain feline, claws slightly extended from its paws, corded shoulder muscles knotted in tension. A pair of bright yellow eyes and a narrow, triangular snout was under its shaggy mane of wool. Methodically its tail twitched back and forth while it eyed the stormtrooper and the droid.

"Doc?" Clang asked, slowly raising his carbine to his shoulder.

"Yes?"

"Run!" The troop fired three shots at the creature and fled into the driving rain. Doc was two steps behind. An ear-splitting yowl of rage tore through the air behind them before the creature gave chase.

"We won't be able to outrun it." Doc called out.

"I know! We'll have to out maneuver it." Clang skidded to a stop on the wet grass. Behind them, the beast crashed through small trees, branches and shrubs, heading in their direction. The trooper looked around at the ground, the vine covered blast door, the jungle canopy, and the trees. He did a double take and ran for the metal door.

"A blast door! Has to be a keypad here somewhere."

Doc found it first and pointed it out to Clang. The stormtrooper nodded and looked behind him.

"Worry about opening the door, I will watch for the animal." Doc said. Not that he needed to, both could easily hear the enraged beast heading through the jungle in their direction.

Clang knelt down and tapped at the keypad. Nothing happened. "No power. Explains why it wasn't picked up on any sensor scans. We need power, at least to the door." The trooper looked around the doorframe. "No access hatch."

"Trooper, we are about to have a very large problem."

The stormtrooper looked back, the beast was twenty meters away in the jungle, a look of predatory anger in its eyes. A smile crept across Clang's face. "I've got an idea. It may not work so get ready to run for it."

"What's your idea?"

"It's a great big idea."

"To quote a phrase from my memory bank, 'size matters not'. I would prefer a functional idea."

Ten to fifteen meters away, the creature slowed, shook its head to clear the rain from its eyes then resumed its charge with a roar from a muzzle of serrated teeth. Ten meters, five, then three before Clang shoved Doc away from himself and the blast door. The clone tossed himself in the opposite direction, narrowly avoiding a severed limb. The creature, unable to stop on the wet grass, collided against the blast door with a hard metallic impact. The beast staggered back four steps. With a moan, it slumped down, stunned.

"Ha! It worked!" Clang shouted as he got to his feet and ran around the vine covered building. Doc was already on the other side.

"That will not stop it for long."

"I know, but it will buy us some time." Clang checked the back of the overgrown building. No back door. The droid tapped him on the shoulder plate.

"What about there?"

He looked where the droid pointed. Through the trees and vines he made out two more buildings. "Worth a try."

This keypad had some life left to it, but would not accept Clang's Imperial access code. Frustrated, Clang pried the housing open and rewired the controls. The door slid open obediently while the stormtrooper shut the keypad.

Doc waved his hands over each interior side of the doorframe until he located the motion sensor for the overhead lights. Once the door shut behind them, the pair walked through the room, looking at the mildewed chairs and dust-covered consoles.

"It appears quite old." The droid commented.

Clang lifted a technical manual bearing the Imperial cog, beneath that was another document with a Republic seal on it. "Not that old. I'd say end of the war against the Separatists. So several years at most. Though, I'm surprised all of this is so overgrown. It looks like its been abandoned for longer than just the war." The stormtrooper set the manuals down and tapped on a keyboard. The screen glowed slightly using what power it could to function. The first screen showed a spectrographic analysis of sap from something called a 'stickyvine'.

"It's an old research station."

Doc glanced at the trooper's screen then tapped a few keys on another keyboard. That console displayed a rough exobiological survey of the planet. "Planetary survey. Logically, they were interrupted, otherwise we wouldn't find analysis results left running in memory."

"I'd not thought of that. That's true. No blaster marks, no remains, just like on the station." Clang looked around. "You said the Master had issues with organics and was up to no good on the station. Think he did this too?"

"Perhaps, though this was before my refitting. I've no conscious memory of this place."

Clang walked around the room again and stopped at an inner door that opened at his approach. He looked into the dimly lit hallway beyond. "More research cubicles and a refresher station. Maybe a mess hall down there too."

"Clang, I think you need to see this."

"What?" The stormtrooper walked over to the console Doc indicated.

On the screen, two technician droids were measuring the electrolytic fluid levels in a cylindrical vat. The vat itself was a large chamber much like the kind used for cloning.

"What would they be cloning here for?" Clang asked. Doc waved him quiet.

"If they actually cloned anything here, it was not in large numbers for mass production. I believe that is a modified bacta tank."

"Modified for what?"

Doc pointed at the screen when the two technicians opened the top and activated the lift wench to pull the occupant from the frosted blue water. To one side stood a medical droid directing the process. Technical specifications scrolled into view on the right of the recording. Clang stepped back from the holorecording involuntarily.

"Sithspawn … they reanimated a corpse with droid parts … is that a cyborg? Can you call a dead body with cybernetic implants a cyborg?" Clang asked with a sickened whisper.

Doc shrugged as best as his droid body would allow. "Technically yes, that is a cyborg. Though the subject was not a dead body."

"The guy looks dead to me. His skin's so pale it can't have any blood in it."

The battle droid tapped a few keys to bring up the records on the subject. "According to this, Professor Olam Garl was attempting to reverse engineer the specific cloning techniques used by the Kaminans. His goal was to clone limbs and organs, fully acceptable to the patient's body. No rejection."

"Alright, but how does that lead to this?" He pointed at the cyborg on the screen. Doc quickly navigated through the research station's records until he found what he wanted.

"Separatist attack on the station. Professor Garl was the only one who survived the initial assault but was dying from his wounds. Secured in a bacta tank, he left himself in the care of the one medical research droid he had. Having been primarily designed for research, it had little experience with actual medical care." Doc paused for a moment to let the implication dawn on the stormtrooper.

"It tried to use the Professor's own technique."

"With varying results. What it couldn't clone, it replaced with cybernetic parts. Overall the technique worked but it wasn't refined. From these notes, Professor Garl's body was altered, mutated at a genetic level, his mind fractured. It looks like his work continued on other live subjects, namely the crew from the observation station in orbit."

"Sithspawn … my squad."

"Would be next on the list as experiment subjects."

Clang scanned the files Doc had on the screen. "How did you know that last part? Those documents and recordings were taken years ago. The date on there puts it well before the station was converted to an observatory. You said you knew nothing about this place."

Doc pointed at the holorecording. "Because, that is the Master I told you about."

"Professor Garl?"

"No, the medical research droid, GH-9. That is the Master."