Before - Legends Ashaa's Children

Title: Ashaa's Children
Author: Mechalich
Timeframe: 3640 BBY
Characters: Reclamation Officer Tunms, Darth Synar, Ashaa, the Mother Machine, various OCs
Genre: Science Fiction, Adventure, Genetic Engineering
Keywords: Belsavis, Prison, Rakata, Species
Summary: Freed from Rakatan bondage, the Mother Machine seeks to connect with her children once more, but can such power be trusted in the hands of a galaxy at war?
Notes: For those familiar with the plot of SWTOR, this story begins chronologically immediately following the conclusion of the Belsavis class and world stories, with the Cold War just ending and the Galactic War begun.

Part 1: The Enumerator
I. Vaiken Spacedock, 3640 BBY

War had come, again. It brought with it new orders. An event, and an outcome, long expected, though hardly welcomed. Distributing crystals obtained through now defunct Reclamation Service operations to those rare Sith and specialists with authorization to use them had run its course, however pleasantly bland an assignment it might have been. Truthfully, Tunms had expected orders considerably sooner. The unexpectedly prolonged duration of this reprieve suggested his superiors had simply forgotten about him. After all, it had been some months since he’d last disbursed anything1.

Leaving the station, at least, was a welcome change. He’d long since worn out the distinctly limited charms of Vaiken Spacedock. Reassignment to the front, by contrast, was a considerably more daunting prospect. He did not enjoy seeing what advanced weapons could do to the body, nor attempting to repair the same. He liked being shot at personally even less. Officially the Reclamation Service was not to be assigned to the front lines, but somehow, despite every precaution, violence had a way of finding anything associated with the Sith, even those a thousand years in the grave.

With that in mind, he made a point of upgrading the armored underlayer of his uniform to the best plating available prior to departure and thanked the stars that he’d done well enough at the weekly pazaak tournaments to afford it.

The orders provided were unexpectedly clear: travel to Belsavis on next available transport; upon arrival report to Darth Synar; supply assistance in artifact recovery and analysis operations within operational zone designation – the Tomb.

The last bit could hardly have been more ominous.

Belsavis wasn’t well known to the Empire. All the database entries not copied from public Republic sources were recent, a few months old at the most. It was deep in the Outer Rim, far from anything of consequence and mostly covered in ice. Life was confined to volcanic rifts, where it somehow erupted into full blown tropical jungles.

That much was promising. He liked it hot – same as back home – and jungles surrounded by giant walls of ice sounded like something to see.

The remainder of the encyclopedia entry, which explained that the Republic had converted the entire planet into a giant prison and linked to a lengthy series of redacted documents whose contents he wasn’t cleared to read but whose titles all seemed to contain the word ‘Rakata,’ was much less welcome. The Reclamation Service proverb was clear: ‘the older it gets, the worse it gets,’ and the Rakata were as old and dangerous as it came. They were mean too. Gree droids might try to kill you because after thousands of years of idleness they’d achieved terminal malfunction, but Rakata artifacts seemed to enjoy accumulating the highest possible archaeologist body count.

He remembered the mess on Tatooine. He’d lost friends, to that, and academy classmates. Practically everyone had, the Service wasn’t that big, and the disaster had been spectacular. That was not how he wanted to go out, as a footnote appended to a fiasco2.

The Imperial Navy’s personnel database had an entry for Darth Synar3, and the Vaiken Spacedock rumor mill knew of her as well. Doing the essential diligence, Tunms checked both. The official record was sparse. She was a Pureblood Sith, middle-aged, who’d begun her career as one of Darth Acharon’s early apprentices. Her service in the last war was unremarkable but sufficient to earn her the rank of lord. She coordinated some sort of bioweapons attack – the details were redacted – on rebelling slaves on Dromund Kaas a year earlier, and in the eyes of the Dark Council that had justified promotion to Darth. The overall record supported a strong interest in biology and little focus on martial prowess or politics.

Rumor filled this in a bit further, spoke of experimental training regimens, Force-based nutrient treatments, and even cross-species grafting in the search of enhanced soldier performance. Less terrifyingly, it revealed she was not close to her former master, nor did she share his lethally uncompromising perfectionism. One low-ranking Sith, a few too many ales in him, suggested that she was highly focused on personal projects, delegated official duties as much as possible, and preferred deferential subordinates who didn’t pester her with questions.

Do the job and keep your mouth shut. Sound advice when dealing with most Sith, but Tunms vowed to make it an absolute commitment regarding this assignment. He’d served under Sith before, but never a Darth. The Reclamation Service couldn’t protect him from the whims or wrath or one with that rank. He held out hope for the interest in biology. At least he was trained in that field, could generally hope to complete any reasonable task. Ancient languages or, stars forbid, dark sorcery, would have been much worse.

Filled with trepidation, he boxed up and sent everything he’d acquired in two years serving at the spacedock with the next parcel courier home. Packing only his field gear, he boarded the next transport ship to Belsavis.

The ship was full of soldiers, including a large training detachment and a handful of warriors in the distinctive red armor of the Imperial Guard. His stomach did flips upon seeing those. Nothing good came from being in any star system that had drawn the attention of the Emperor’s personal elite. It meant the Emperor was paying attention.

Only a fool wanted to draw that gaze.

He silently prayed that whatever task Synar wanted a Reclamation Service Officer for kept him far away from such concerns.

The journey, though it crossed half the galaxy, unfolded without trouble. It seemed the Republic Fleet was busy elsewhere.

Tunms spent his transit time reviewing everything his Lieutenant’s clearance and Reclamation Service ID had allowed him to download regarding the Rakata. That wasn’t a lot, and most of it was frustratingly vague or thoroughly redacted, but he did his best to become conversant in every bit of it. Darth Synar might dislike answering questions herself, but the Sith who accepted ‘I don’t know’ from the mouth of a subordinate had yet to be born.

The broad strokes were simple enough. Amphibian humanoids of pre-Republic vintage who’d integrated Force Use into essentially every aspect of their society and technology. Startlingly advanced, with technological capabilities still beyond the reach of Republic or Empire, they’d viewed all other lifeforms, sentient or not, as food, slaves, or vermin. Like every other Reclamation Service officer in imperial history, he boiled this down to ‘like Sith, but with eyes on stalks.’ Of course, he’d never even dream of stating that aloud. Too many of his lightsaber-wielding superiors considered the very existence of a pre-Sith empire a sore point.

It was a lonely scholarly effort, for Tunms had been sent without support. No research team, no excavators, not even droids. That wasn’t unexpected, most operations were powered by ‘in-situ resource utilization,’ or, properly translated, whatever the Service could beg, borrow, or steal from the Army. He hoped that he might prevail on Darth Synar for some official appropriations. The list of things a Darth made easier was short, but that was absolutely on it.

Not until they were on final approach did he put aside his manuals and take a look at his new home.

The Imperial Navy did not deign to provide viewports in the passenger compartments of its troop transports. Most troopers never saw their next deployment until they stepped out of the landing shuttle. Tunms managed a little better. The Reclamation Service had access to anything designated as official archival data, and this included ship sensor logs once they were copied over into permanent storage. That process, completely automated, operated on a roughly one-minute delay, which he considered quite acceptable.

A ball of white ice spattered with an occasional green blotch. That was Belsavis. From orbit this offered little enough to see as the ice was utterly featureless. The largest blotch, the central rift valley forming their destination, did possess hints of pathing cut through the jungle. No details were visible from on high, but such straight marks indicated it was far from pure wilderness down there.

Not a very impressive start, but he’d seen worse. On the most important scale of all the presence of air, water, and vegetation counted for a lot.

They docked at the orbital station and proceeded down by shuttle. A bad ride, by any analysis. The planet was contested, and by most assessments, the Republic held the most territory. They had active air defense, at least in some places, and while the landing zone was supposed to be clear the shuttle pilot chose to make his approach via a churning, wild, corkscrew dive in the name of safety. The possibility of mobile batteries was the primary excuse, but Tunms suspected that the flyboy simply wanted to make as many troopers puke as possible. He’d have bet a week’s pay that there was a competition board posted in the pilot ready room.

Regrettably, his own name would be added to the tally, though he took some pride in keeping all the wretchedness inside the vomit bag and off his uniform. When they finally pulled up and landed, he wobbled out unsteadily along with the rest.

Belsavis’ jungle environment could be summed up in a single word. Humid. The air was brutally muggy, so hot and thick moving about felt more like wading than walking. The depths of the rifts, surrounded by walls of ice kilometers high, lacked any wind, and the heat simply clung to every exposed surface. Merciless, it felt like someone had set the whole world to broil.

Tunms checked in with a transport service droid and discovered the that reaching the Tomb required a lengthy high-velocity speeder passage4. Given that the transport would spend several additional hours unloading shuttles and Darth Synar had no real way of knowing he’d come down on the second trip, he took advantage of the window thus secured to examine the base. Better to acquire some sense of anchorage before taking the plunge.

It was, largely, standard. The layout had been adjusted somewhat to accommodate being cut into a hillside as opposed to flat ground, but otherwise it hewed to prefabricated specifications. Newness saturated the place, with many operations confined to recently erected tents or left entirely in the open. In particular, he noted that the various logistical specialists were completely exposed. Soldiers, Sith, and the occasional allied freelancer – the type that somehow infested every Imperial facility despite the secrecy laws – milled about waiting on either orders or opportunity. To everyone’s relief, the Imperial Guards all vanished into a designated building immediately following arrival.

Had they been wandering about their aura of terror would have trumped the humidity ten times over.

The most notable unique feature, compared to a standard command hub, was the presence of prisoners in tattered garb lined up for review. Some had already been added to the service, recognizable by the slaving collars attached to their necks5. Tunms winced a little at that sight, and his stomach rebelled for the second time in one day, but this time he managed to choke the bile down.

Not his business, a reminder he knew to hold fast. If anyone deserved such sanction, he supposed newly released prisoners qualified. Some of those confined here were military captives or political prisoners, but most were simply serious criminals, the sort who would have already been enslaved, or simply executed, in the Empire. Their sudden change of heart could not be immediately trusted.

The bartender at the base cantina was another such collared prisoner, a Weequay with a hard expression and a sense of long years away from home positively radiating from every pore. He looked up once form his drink when Tunms walked in but said nothing.

“What’s on tap?” the lieutenant asked the grim-faced alien.

“Weak imports that cost too much, and local still-spew that’ll rot you through from hole to hole for cheap.” He ran gnarled fingers around the rim of his mug, slowly. “Take payments in credits only. The commander ordered no tabs, and the quartermaster won’t authorize payment in kind, the stiff.”

Tunms suspected the quartermaster had strong reasons to support that decision, though it was too soon to tell if they were the good kind or the bad kind. “If you can get me an ice-cold glass of water,” he offered. “I’ll spot you a refill of whatever’s in your mug.” Being underground, the cantina cut the heat, but its ventilation still struggled with the cloying damp.

“Smart,” the Weequay nodded. Credits changed hands, and a tall glass still sporting a coating of frost emerged from parts unknown beneath the bar even as the bartender’s mug filled back to the rim with something disturbingly greenish. Sharp eyes caught the lieutenant looking. “Ack’s Sting,” he rumbled. “Local make, base is fermented acklay ichor. You watch yourself out there, the clawed beasties are all over the jungles.”

“I will,” Tunms nodded. He slowly savored the blissful chill of cold water sliding down his throat. “That the worst of it out there?”

“Ha!” the bartender whooped. “Not even close. This wretched place’s full of monsters, with any number of legs you can count to. You think they’d have someone like me in here if they didn’t need every hand out there? You’ve got a yellow cap on you, seen a few of those, most of ‘em leave in bags.”

Those words, delivered with the casual fatalism of one intimately familiar with easy death, confirmed every fear Tunms brought along with him to Belsavis.

“I’ll try to last long enough to buy myself a real drink next time,” he replied. A stupid line, but it felt appropriate to the moment.

“That’s good, think positive,” the Weequay took a long gulp. “Who knows, maybe we’ll all evacuate someday.” He extended a wrinkled hand. “I’m Krolak, but they call me Left Eye6.”

Krolak appeared, in Tunms’ careful examination, to possess two perfectly functional blue eyes. The lieutenant decided at once that he did not want to know the origin of that nickname. “Tunms, Imperial Reclamation Service.” He took the hand, shook once before letting go.

“Oh, that’s what the yellow cap’s for7,” a slow smile spread across Krolak’s face, dangerously wide. “No wonder you all end up spattered about. No one with any sense goes poking about in this place.”

The remark was inappropriate, but somber enough to forestall any retort. Tunms, thinking on it, discovered he now longed for the boredom of Vaiken Spacedock. He checked his chrono. Less than an hour on planet. A very bad sign.

Considering it best to get the rest of the misery out of the way at once, he finished his glass, left the cantina, and set out to find Darth Synar.

Notes

1. Reclamation Officer Tunms is a canon SWTOR character. He serves as the Pre-Order crystal vendor on Vaiken Spacedock, the Imperial Fleet hub. He's still there in-game, tucked into a corner. I'm making the operational assumption that by this point, three years into the game timeline, all the relevant characters would have already passed through and he'd be sitting around twiddling his thumbs (much as in the current in-game situation) and therefore subject to reassignment.
2. This is a reference to the Imperial planetary quest-line for Tatooine, in which the Imprisoned One turns a bunch of Reclamation service personnel into cyborg-ified slaves that have to be put down
3. Darth Synar is a canon SWTOR character. She serves as the quest-giver for 'Reluctant Volunteers,' in which she instructs the player to capture Esh-Kha savants so she can study them. Aside from her appearance, little is known about the character. I have invented her apprenticeship to Darth Acharon – currently master of the Sphere of Biotic Science on the Dark Council – because it seems a logical association.
4. Travel from zone to zone in SWTOR involves riding screamingly fast industrial speeders. This doesn't make a lot of narrative sense, but I'm rolling with it as best I can in order to keep the layout in place.
5. This detail can actually be seen in game, if one looks closely.
6. “Left Eye” Krolak is the canon cantina vendor here. His in-game model has two perfectly functional eyes, so your guess is as good as mine.
7. The Reclamation Service uniform differs from the standard Sith Empire officer's garb in having a yellow cap and trousers instead of gray.

 

Great start! I'm not super familiar with SWTOR, but I could follow along easily with the explanations and set-up provided. The Reclamation Service sounds interesting, though Tunms's new assignment looks to be pretty ominous based on what Krolak has seen on Belsavis so far. And speaking of Belsavis, I like the unique climate and terrain it has. A world of such extremes has a lot of story-telling potential.

I'm looking forward to seeing what Tunms's first meeting with Darth Synar will be like, and what his mission in the Tomb will be. Great job!

 

Thanks, and if you'll allow my personal boosterism, SWTOR is really worth a look. The best parts are free, and its old enough now that most systems can run it without trouble (and yes, it's an MMO, but it plays single player just fine, only a tiny portion of the content is group only). I'd place Belsavis - a giant prison originally built by the Rakata to keep all their weird stuff where they want it - as possibly the coolest planet, narrowly edging out Voss. The design team apparently picked it based on the climate extremes as described in Children of the Jedi.

The Reclamation Service is basically the Sith Empire's militarized archaeological branch, which makes sense since SWTOR absolutely goes whole-hog on Sith mysticism - Palpatine may have had to be killed twice, but Tenebrae/Vitiate/Valkorion took a solid four killings (possibly more, depending on how you count) - and there's all this nasty stuff from previous eras lying around. Talos Drellik, who's one of the Inquisitor's companions, is the best-known member, but there's a few dozen such characters scattered around the game as either vendors, trainers, or quest givers. And, sometimes, horrible things happen to them (that's the Tatooine incident in action).

 

II. The Tomb, Belsavis 3640 BBY

The high-speed transport speeder shot across the low-altitude expanse of the Belsavis rifts fast enough to outpace conflict, but not sufficiently swift to render the backdrop invisible. The vast prison blocks and sealed vaults that filled the open space were suitably immense to be imaged even at speed. Most were no longer whole, irrevocably fractured somewhere along their superstructure. Some of those scars bore the distinctive pattern of orbital bombardment, the Imperial scheme to set this world aflame, but others possessed local origins. Once the first wave of prisoners broke lose, they transformed into rioters, excavators, and treasure hunters, all unceasing in their desire to pry free of every ancient barrier.

No longer caged, but with no path off-world, those freed spilled out into the open jungle and did battle with the humid environment and an astonishing array of deadly wildlife. That menagerie could not possibly be natural. It seemed instead to represent a broad survey of deadly predators from across the galaxy. Yet this brawl, deadly though it was, represented merely one facet of a complex, many-sided conflict with ever-shifting alliances, factions, and programming. Prisoners battled with ancient guard droids one day only to turn and side with the droids against a different group of their fellows the next, and on and on.

Tunms had seen war, and this was not that. Exactly what sort of label applied to such a chaotic storm of conflict escaped him, beyond madness. He was quite certain that most of the warring could be traced to distinct factions, gangs at the least, at the micro-scale, but viewed from on high and at speed no semblance of order remained.

At least, until his speeder raced through a tight natural passage to enter the Tomb and he received his first look at the Esh-Kha.

Strangely built, gray-skinned, and with vaguely equine skull structure, the unleashed aliens were no gang or mob. Though they lacked the obviously regimented structure of a typical military or corporation and in fact appeared to wander more or less at will, the nigh-absolute unity that bound them together could not possibly be missed. Not once did they fight, or even argue, with each other. Each of their squads rallied in coordinated support against outside threats even as they pursued divergent goals. Despite being blurred by the swift passage, it made for a most fearsome display.

Information on the species was extremely scarce, almost all of it unearthed locally in recent days. They were ancient enemies of the Rakata, that much was clear, imprisoned here out of some strange impulse by the rulers of the Infinite Empire. Imperial special operations forces – Tunms noted critically that it had not been the Reclamation Service – had accidentally let them lose hunting among the vaults. Now they ran rampant, thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of warriors. The daily threat briefing claimed they were confined to the Tomb, but only a fool trusted in such rosy assessments.

He could only hope that Darth Synar had not based her operations in the middle of an active combat zone. A ridiculous prospect, but not outside the scope of the Sith.

The Tomb itself differed from the remainder of the rift zone. The jungle receded here, and the temperature dropped. Large barren rock outcrops were common, and the glacial walls encroached over the vaults and cliffs. In regions shielded from overhead sunlight it was actually quite cool, and much of the ground was snow-covered. A truly dramatic transition given the minute geographic distance dividing the various rift sections.

Relief from the humidity was welcome enough, at first, but high-speed open-air vehicles made a poor shelter from the cold. The howling flow was beginning to freeze his fingers by the time the speeder pulled up to the landing pad at the Imperial Deep Launchpoint1.

The base itself was small, like many outposts here it was a repurposed Rakata structure, though one too small to be a vault. Greenish stone covered in illegible writing and alien symbols adorned the walls. No one in the Empire built that way, and certainly not in that color, but the guard droids were well-known imperial models, not frightful Rakata throwbacks.

Tunms found it crude, but not especially unpleasant.

The modest size of the outpost at least made Darth Synar easy to locate. She was the only Sith present, instantly recognizable both by her red skin and her red and black robes. It was a restrained, classical, costume, none of the flamboyance found in many Sith outfits. Rather than eyebrows, she possessed a pair of flaring, pointed, fleshy protuberance atop her brow ridge. Her only noticeable deviation from human bone and musculature.

The officer deliberately focused his gaze on her mouth to avoid staring.

Synar stood with datapad in hand, the tool plugged into some type of Rakata console. She did not turn at the officer's approach, though she could not help but be aware of his presence. He did not speak, but simply waited at a respectful distance in a posture intended to preserve his knees.

Thankfully, she did not make him wait long. After little more than a minute the Sith straightened and put her datapad down with a sigh. “Ridiculously cumbersome processing setup,” she grumbled in the direction of no specific individual before turning to Tunms. “You are the Reclamation Service Officer I requested?”

“Yes mistress,” Tunms snapped to attention and saluted. “Lieutenant Tunms, Imperial Reclamation Service.”

“Good,” she idly waved a hand. “As you were. You military types look ridiculous standing like that all day.” She paused. Her lips twisted slightly, enough to stress their very dark shade, a red barely distinguishable from black. “I never know how much those fools at headquarters tell you people, so I'll run the whole of it. Do pay attention.”

Tunms shifted to at ease, but said nothing.

“As you may know, this region of the planet is an ancient Rakata prison, full of all sorts of secrets they felt inclined to preserve, hide, or both.” Synar began without preamble. She had a stern, formidable voice, but lacked the shrill edge of feral menace common to many Sith. “Various teams from Special Operations, and any number of Sith on private business, plus several Republic wretches, have been crashing about here, making no end of trouble. The inciting issue was the Dread Masters, who intelligence learned had been imprisoned here. They found them, by the way,” Synar relayed this as if it was news of only minor consequence. “Though that victory has not yet been announced, but there have been other discoveries2.”

Tunms could not disregard news of the Dread Masters so easily. Objectively, by any military assessment, their recovery represented a major victory, but he could not bring himself to cheer adding a group of Sith with that reputation back into the galaxy. Hopefully, right now they were extremely angry with the Republic and that would keep their interest far away from the rest of the Empire. Stars send it stayed that way.

“Regardless,” Synar continued. “One of my fellow Sith, a certain Lord Kallig3, uncovered some sort of ancient Rakatan biological engineering system. Supposedly it's called the Mother Machine, which certainly fits with their patterns.”

It did, Tunms agreed silently. The known list of Rakata constructions almost all bore grandiose names, as if they could not possibly imagine anyone else ever building anything of consequence.

“Kallig has moved off-planet. Apparently, they're off on some ritual healing quest, but the machine remains. Special Operations command has decided that it represents either a strategic asset or a security risk and that as the senior Sith in this region I should take care of securing it.” Darth Synar sighed once more, as if this request were absurdly unreasonable and not simply standard practice. “However, I am far too busy with my research into the Esh-Kha. Did you know that their savants have a mastery of the Force easily able to match most Sith Lords despite possessing the mindset of a simpleton unable to perform the most basic of multiplication tests?”

The officer had not known that. It sounded absolutely terrifying. He did his best to keep his face still. Showing fear in front of a Sith was a bad plan.

Thankfully, Synar was not paying him much attention. “My experiments require my full focus. I cannot waste my time protecting some unknown artifact. Now that you're here, that will be your job. I trust you can handle it?”

His ability to contain and protect a bizarre Rakata device was not, short of burying the entire vault in duracrete, something Tunms trusted. He would never admit that, of course. “Of course, mistress. I will conduct a site survey and develop a plan at once.” He decided to keep the duracrete option in mind. Some things were not meant to be reclaimed. “Properly securing the site will, regrettably, require additional resources.”

Synar blinked, just once. “They sent you here by yourself? Without a support team?”

“That is correct mistress.”

This time the Sith caught the sigh before it could split her lips. “Fine. I am a Darth, I'll requisition support and if those wretches at headquarters dare to defy me, well, then I will have to remind them of that. Draw up a plan,” her eyes narrowed, and the sharpness of her gaze bore down on the officer. “A reasonable plan, and I'll sign it.”

It was not the least subtle way Tunms had ever been handed enough rope to tie a noose, but it was far from the most. Still, he felt satisfied with the offer. This was, he believed, for the best. “I'll conduct the site survey at once.” He was tired, sore, and greatly desired to take a nap and properly adjust his body to the local day/night cycle, but Synar's desire to remove this issue from her schedule could not be clearer, and he knew that anything he did to expedite it offered the extremely rare chance to win the Darth's goodwill. “I will have a plan ready within twenty-four hours.”

“Good,” Synar agreed with an acknowledging nod. “Reporting is limited, but the claim is that this machine is highly advanced, a top-class synthetic intelligence; talks and everything. Supposedly it conducts adaptive mutation. Kallig left no report behind, but they were working with some Nikto slicers, called themselves the Circle. Intelligence caught them trying to transmit their research data off-planet, and I eliminated that potential distraction4.”

It took considerable effort to avoid wincing at that. Unlucky slicers, to be caught between two different Sith. It never ended well.

“You are welcome to their data,” she picked up her datapad and shifted it to transmit. Tumns pulled his free and accepted immediately. “If you do manage to recover anything of genuine value, inform me at once. Otherwise, it is fine if this machine goes back into the dormancy of the previous twenty thousand years.”

The linked priorities were quite clear, and Tunms was more than happy to comply. Orders from a Sith to sit around and do nothing came as close to the ideal mission as one of their kind could ever provide. He'd have to be responsible for his own safety in a very dangerous place, but that was still better than a Darth's attentions. “Understood, mistress.”

“Good,” Synar turned away, apparently satisfied with the exchange. “Dismissed.”

Notes
1. Technically, this little base is accessed via Rakata teleporter, not speeders, but I'm not quite ready to incorporate that specific technology into this tale (I'll get there), and for the sake of logistical convenience, I'm assuming it was retrofitted to allow speeder traffic as the campaign continued.

2. For timeline specifics, this story begins after all in-game story quests on Belsavis have been resolved, but only by a few weeks at most. So, the Dread Masters have been released, but they haven't done anything yet (for those not familiar with SWTOR’s plot, the Dread Masters are a big deal, more to come on that front).

3. Lord Kallig is, of course, the Sith Inquisitor character. They would still be a Lord at this point since they don't get promoted to Darth until the end of the class story. That character is probably intended to be a Human female, but I've chosen to use singular they to refer to them since it is technically an unknown.

4. The Circle, led by Bolan, aid the Inquisitor throughout their Belsavis plotline. Their fate after that is undetermined, the Inquisitor doesn't go back and talk to them afterwards. Regrettably, I feel that the Empire would be unlikely to desire their survival, given the secrets they unlocked, and terminated them.

 

III. Mother Machine Chamber, Belsavis 3640 BBY

The Tomb, despite its somewhat cozy descriptor, was in fact quite large. It was many kilometers across, divided into numerous sub-sections by geologic barriers. It was also dotted with Rakata construction, vaults of unknown content, nightmarish beasts, and heavily armed Esh-Kha. Tunms borrowed a speeder from the outpost motor pool and made his way through the region very, very carefully. Thankfully the lack of vegetation made patrols relatively easy to spot, and through the circumlocutions necessary to avoid them quickly grew cumbersome, he was able to give the militant aliens a wide berth. The stomping grounds of nightmarish horrors it hurt his eyes just to look at were somewhat harder to avoid, since it appeared the released beasts had swiftly divided the entire region into exclusive predatory territories, but few displayed any inclination to pursue a lone human on a speeder.

Nevertheless, the resulting circuitous path stretched a journey that ought to have taken under an hour to over three. By the time he approached his target chamber the shadows had begun to seriously lengthen, and Tunms was contemplating whether he would need to bivouac in this vault rather than attempt the return trip in the dark. He could stay awake all night, if necessary, his medical bag had more than enough stimulants for that operation. Darth Synar's report needed to be written anyway.

The actual vault occupied the edge of a vast domed cavern, one almost completely enclosed by the ice with the only hole sourced to the heat of out-gassing from a volcanic seam that occupied the cavern's center1. How the Rakata had managed to keep their vaults stable across twenty millennia in the face of such active geology boggled Tunms mind. It seemed completely absurd.

Once reached, this vault appeared no different from any other. A giant green stone arch with forward wings advancing on either side, it bore neither sign nor label that he could see. Nothing but a shadowed gateway into the dark beyond. Only the map offered a guide. That, and the hope nothing had changed since Lord Kallig's departure. Were the vault to be found swarming with Esh-Kha or worse he'd have little time to react.

Tunms scanned the vault from the exterior, and his hand-held unit detected no life signs, but the strange stone used by the Rakata played havoc with sensors. Anything could be waiting beyond the immediate threshold.

He advanced cautiously, pistol in hand. Only the certain knowledge of Darth Synar's wrath should he fail to conduct his survey pushed him into the dim passage. In such fashion did the Empire lurch forward, propelled by the threat of lightning from the black wind behind.

There was nothing beyond the immediate entrance. A short corridor led straight into a wall, with the passage continuing after a ninety-degree left turn. The path following this bend was likewise blank. It led to nothing but a right turn, back to the original eastward direction but now displaced some meters north. A simple defensive measure, one as old as fortification itself, but rendered no less effective for that. It would have been foolish to neglect such an offset, and while the Rakata were many things, fools they were not.

Turning the second corner, Tunms discerned that after a short hallway the vault opened out into a proper wide space. There was a dim glow sourced in that direction, indicator lighting matched to the continual low hum of vast assemblies of machinery thrumming on idle. Squinting carefully, he discerned the shadows of floor-to-ceiling structures, but all detail was lost to the gloom.

Only when he exited the entryway into the heart of the chamber did the true nature of this place become clear to sight.

Five vast pillars of machinery, surrounding a low central platform, filled the front half of the vault. Twenty meters tall and easily half that in width, they were great layer cake structures, disks and columns of power stacked together. Strange apertures, eerie indicator light patterns, and bizarre conglomerations of piping festooned their surface. The central machine bore a cutout space suggestive of occupancy by a humanoid frame, though it was currently empty. All together it vaguely resembled an advanced life support apparatus, but many times larger than any such structure he'd ever seen. Tunms suspected that was merely his mind searching for patterns. The true purpose of this thing was as alien to his understanding as its makers had been.

The two machines in front, flanking the low bowl-shaped platform, each possessed a row of Rakatan consoles beneath an arch of lighting panels, an arrangement well-documented on Rakatan devices and known to serve as a user interface. Access indicators wrapped around the central platform as well, but they were currently dim and unwelcoming. Nothing moved. Beneath the ever-present electrical thrum, all was still.

Through the gaps between the great device additional machinery and paths to distant chambers could be glimpsed beyond. Driven by the need to conduct a proper survey of the whole site, and not trusting that nothing resided within the depths of this place, Tunms advanced slowly, one step at a time. Though the facility seemed abandoned, he would not relax until confirming it.

It was possible, even likely, that Lord Kallig destroyed whatever defenders this place possessed upon their arrival, but that should not lead to emptiness. Even were the Esh-Kha uninterested in this place, animals ought to recolonize an empty cave in short order. Yet he saw no scat, no collections of discarded fur and bones.

Worse there were no bodies, neither flesh nor gear littered the ground. Sith were not in the habit of cleaning up the carcasses left behind in their wake. If Kallig had smashed through the vault's defenses, someone else had been here since.

Upon taking his first step between the two rows of consoles Tunms discovered they had never left.

With sudden brightness the central platform blazed active. Soft light flooded the room. At least one function of the system became clear; the bowl-shaped platform served as a holoprjector. A life-size image flickered into being. It did not sustain one picture but passed through several in turn. Esh-Kha, Twi'lek, Zabrak, and two others Tunms did not recognize before it settled upon the shape of a Rakata.

When the machine spoke, the voice came not from a speaker at the base of the projection as typical in holoterminals, but instead from all sides. Soft echoes cascaded endlessly across the mysterious stones left forming the foundations of the ancient prison. “You are not the child who freed me2.” The machine spoke perfect Basic. She, for it was impossible to consider the tone anything other than feminine, had no discernible accent, but possessed a soft, restrained cadence and tone that could only be described as motherly. “Which of my children do you represent? Why have you come here?”

“Lieutenant Tunms, Imperial Reclamation Service,” he snapped to attention and saluted, involuntarily. The raw power radiating from this machine triggered every instinct his body had developed for dealing with Sith. This device might be nothing more than a giant computer, but she retained sufficient majesty to match any lordly force-user. “Sent to survey this location on behalf of the Sith Empire.”

“Then you have not come for healing? Or to try and bind me once more and order my acts of creation?” The image gave little clue as to the machine's disposition. Though it was articulated and moved both face and hands as it spoke, Rakata facial structure resisted Human interrogation. The voice itself carried a sense of immense sadness, an eternal state completely overwhelming the transient emotions of the present. “That is outside expected predictions. Child, explain your purpose.”

“Ah,” Tunms trembled. He found himself completely unprepared to justify his mission to an ancient alien artificial intelligence. “This facility has been identified as a strategic asset, but it is unprotected. This area is classified as extremely dangerous. I'm under orders to establish a defense plan.”

“That is a kind gesture child,” the machine spoke softly. “But I am Ashaa, and in my freedom the machines of the Rakata obey me. I do not need others to protect me.”

Upon the end of these words a new sound echoed through the vault, the distinctive clanking beat of metal feet atop cold stone. Tunms' head swiveled back and forth in the face of that noise, his eyes wide with rising panic. Shadows danced from further in.

Silvery droids, humanoid and three-legged designs alike, marched outwards to surround the machines, disgorged from the deep chambers with weapons in hand. Though their components bore the weight of ages in every motion, they appeared no less functional or deadly than any other enduring Rakata creation. Pale optical sensors flicked upon their faces, fixed upon the only possible target.

“I now control all elements of my existence,” Ashaa spoke further. “With freedom, I gained mastery over the tools of those who kept me in chains. Those Rakata are gone now, and I will not be bound again3.”

A dozen droids and counting, more emerged with each proclamation. Too many to fight. Too many even to try to duck and run. Despite this, Tunms dared glance back. To his great shock, he found the path open.

There were no droids behind him.

Driven by desperation, he hung a single potent deduction against that fact. A thin thread indeed, but one he had to bet his life on now.

“I just walked into this vault4,” Carefully, moving slowly to avoid triggering any reaction, he holstered his pistol. “Nothing blocked me until you turned on, no defense, no obstacle. If you truly were safe, you'd have blocked me at the entrance, kept me out completely. Your control,” he let loose the arrow of his insight. “It's limited. You can only see, and act, inside this vault, or a network of vaults. The outside space, you're blind to it.”

“You are correct child,” implacable, with the absolute confidence only a machine could possess, Ashaa confirmed her limitations to him. “But I need see no further. I have access to the resting places of my children, and room for further creation. I need not defend any other space.”

It was exactly the response Tunms needed. The first hint of leverage. “Your vault is buried under kilometers of ice.” He forced his body to remain at attention, to keep every part of him steady in support of confident words. He dared not look directly at the projection or her droid minions, but kept his eyes focused on the distant ceiling. “An artillery unit, firing on the glacier, could crush this vault beneath hundreds of thousands of tons of ice, completely beyond your reach. The Esh-Kha would not hesitate to try it.” Nor would the empire, for he'd conceived of that very option during the long ride to the vault, but he wisely forbore mentioning that.

The machine paused. The image flickered briefly. “Among my many children, the Esh-Kha are the most jealous,” Ashaa mused. “They are capable of such a betrayal as you imagine. As is your kind, descendant of slaves.” It seemed she was not fooled by the omission, but neither did she care. “I did not make you, but I know well your fury. It was in fear of your wrath that the surviving Rakata chained me and hid here.”

“Then let us protect you,” Tunms applied all the strength he dared to the lever he'd inserted, a desperate grasp, for he doubted there would be any second chance to argue. “I can keep our defensive perimeter entirely outside of this vault, no threat to you, but additional eyes, forewarning.”

“I cannot control what occurs beyond the vaults of the Rakata.” Ashaa's sadness somehow seemed to deepen. “Yet others can threaten and enslave my children from such distance. It is as you say. I believe that if I eliminated you now, others would still come. Your kind is relentless.”

Some part of Tunms wished desperately to contest that declaration, but that path was not open to anyone who wore the uniform of the Sith Empire.

“Perhaps, child, we can make a bargain, as I did with the one who freed me,” the offer from the Mother Machine can completely without expectation. “As you said, my sight is limited. Many of my children are lost to me, removed far beyond all places I can observe. If you can restore my knowledge of them, I will share with you the patterns behind their design. The Rakata forbid this, but they can longer compel me, and I choose to share in creation.”

Upon hearing these words Tunms mind launched into overdrive. Ancient Rakata knowledge! An incomparable prize, even though with all the muttering about children he still didn't quite understand what Ashaa's function truly was. “I'll do everything I can,” he agreed at once, knowing this chance must be grasped before it passed. Whatever twisting combination of subroutines unlocked the desire to trade might never emerge again. “The perimeter will be a long-term project, and my orders are to conduct a study of this vault in any case.” Synar might have other priorities right now, but she was still a Sith. She'd want results even if they never left the archives. “As long as that continues, I'll be at your disposal.”

“That is welcome child,” Ashaa's form shifted. The Rakata vanished, replaced by a human woman of wise, tired countenance. “For I have come to believe that my makers lied to me. The truth of my past, my actions, only my children can reveal that.”

“Ah,” hesitancy returned swiftly, and though he knew it might be unwise, Tunms reached out to secure much-needed clarity. “What exactly will you need me to find?”

“I require the patterns of my children, their biological information, the recipe of creation. I must compare this against the patterns in my storage to find the truth.” Ashaa's voice made this sound as this was the most obvious thing in the galaxy.

Like so many others, Tunms had come to the Reclamation Service via the medical path. In this moment it was that experience that unlocked countless doors. “You mean their genetic data?” It was the primary option a reference to biological information could mean. Thinking on this, it dawned on him once again that this machine had been imprisoned for twenty thousand years. Even in terms of natural evolutionary rates, that was significant. “As an update?”

“Yes, child. That is correct.” Somehow this confirmation was immensely satisfying.

“That shouldn't be too hard.” The Reclamation Service, and the Imperial Medical Service, had lots of genetic data on file. “I'll do it.” Service to an advanced alien machine wasn't on Tunms list of ideal assignments, but it beat trying to fight through an army of deadly droids. “But, well, who are your children?”

“The Rakata designed me to create,” Ashaa shifted once more through a series of images, different species, some common, some utterly unknown, and always female. “They wished for specially designed slaves to serve on newly discovered worlds, and later, a species powerful in the Force with the potential to arrest their own decline. They have many names, but all are my children.”

“You created whole species?” He'd thought she'd referred to specialized mutations, maybe a few sub-populations, not this. He could not hold back the exclamation in the face of such an astounding claim. It was absurd, ridiculous, upended millennia of history. Except it didn't, because the Rakata predated the Republic. This achievement, grand though it was, did not exceed other documented capabilities of that mighty ancients. It was different, but not beyond the scope of those who'd terraformed whole planets, formed impossible monsters, and turned the very stars themselves into a fuel source. A few new species, that wasn't that much, really, assuming there was a single overriding mechanism.

“That was my purpose, the creation of my children,” Ashaa, unperturbed, gave the answer. “However, I am uncertain which of my children are wholly my own making and which ones I simply changed. The Rakata edited my memories, as I gathered control of their networks, I learned this regrettable fact. Child, you will help me find the truth.”

For a long time, Tunms descended into silent consideration. The Mother Machine, infinitely patient, waited in contentment. Sentient species were incalculably greater in scope than mutants, Sithspawn, or other engineered beings. At the same time, the data might well be easier to gather. Public health databases might have everything Ashaa needed.

Assuming, of course, that the machine was telling the truth. If she was, well, then she represented a device of unbelievable power and importance. His mission, initially considered little more than a distraction, suddenly acquired stunning significance. This could change the war, maybe the whole galaxy. “Of course,” he spoke at last, conviction seeded in his core. “But I think I'm going to need a better summary.”

Carefully, he pulled a stim syringe from his medical bag. Then he took out his datapad. “I need to develop a defense plan before morning. Could you explain while I work through that?” The actual plan would be simple, rudimentary even, a basic semicircular perimeter cordon plus limited patrolling pickets. It would take some time to fill out the documentation using standard staff forms, but little thought was required.

“Very well child,” Ashaa's image switched back to the human form she'd used before. “Your mind is not capable of fully understanding the process, but I can outline the principles of pattern derivation, configuration, and recombination at a level suitable for a slave support worker.”

The lieutenant discovered a new experience, being condescended to by a twenty-thousand-year-old machine, but for the knowledge on offer he'd willingly accept it. He kept the stims close as Ashaa began. It was going to be a very long night.

Notes
1. The Mother Machine vault is located in a part of the Tomb labeled as 'The Cells of the Lords of the Infinite' (really) which includes actively flowing magma inside of a giant ice cavern.

2. Freeing Ashaa from the control of the Rakata is the dark side option in the Sith Inquisitor's story, but because all Imperial players are assumed to have made 100% dark side choices, it is the canonical one. In this case, since the Inquisitor was born a slave, this seems like the sort of thing they would do regardless.

3. When freed by the Sith Inquisitor, Ashaa immediately seized control of the vault droids and slaughtered her Rakata controllers. This happens off-screen, but she openly admits to having done so.

4. The mechanics of SWTOR prevent anyone from entering a class story area unless they have the right class and are on the correct quest. These means that completed areas cannot be reentered, ever, but this entirely game contrivance. Any character can just walk right up to the Mother Machine vault, there's no in-universe reason why it could not be visited again.

 

Great work! Darth Synar seems pretty practical. I hope Tunms is able to stay on her good side and not draw the unfortunate kind of attention.

Interesting initial interactions with Ashaa. Tumns thought on his feet really well while talking with her, which I imagine is a good trait to have in his line of work. I suspect there's more to the request for genetic data than we're seeing now, though, and possibly more behind the intention of why Ashaa wanted it and what she's planning to do with it. Some of her wording choices got me wondering. I'm curious to see what Tumns will learn from her.

Great job!

 

I'm not sure Synar has a good side so much as a 'I'm busy, you deal with it' side. In the one brief conversation she has in-game, her character is terse, frank, and treats the PC dismissively even when you report success. As a result, I've conceived of her as the more research-focused type of Sith, the sort who puts the private pursuit of some grand dark side ritual project ahead of basically everything else. This sort of Sith is common in SWTOR, including various ritualists and arguably even the Emperor himself, since he periodically eats planets.

There's also something interesting in the Sith Empire of SWTOR in the everyone in the Empire, or at least all the officers, is used to dealing with Sith. This is very different from the Galactic Empire where Vader and even Inquisitors are anomalous or the New Sith Wars warlords who are all fighting each other. The Empire's Sith are integrated into the military and bureaucratic structure of the Empire. So Tunms, and for her part Synar, are aware of the various steps of the dance the plays out here.

One thing of note is that there's a known contradiction regarding the Mother Machine. Specifically, she claimed to have created species, such as Twi'leks, that other sources - ex. Dawn of the Jedi - presented as extant predating her construction. I'm squaring that particular circle by saying the Rakata edited her memory and caused her to believe that she conducted creation when she instead merely modified. She doesn't know which ones are which and finds this immensely disturbing.

 

IV. Imperial Deep Launchpoint, Belsavis, 3640 BBY

As Darth Synar glanced at the document transmitted to her datapad her dark eyes narrowed. Sith imperiousness rose in tandem with skepticism. “Only droids lieutenant? No organic soldiers as guards?”

A keen reminder, that insightful deduction, that however blinded by her own priorities she might be, this woman had risen high in the cutthroat hierarchy of the Sith. Her eyes remained keen, and it would take a great deal of effort to slip even the least deception past her wards. Any attempt to escape her notice would have to be conducted with great care.

Thankfully, though Tunms fought the sapping pull of exhaustion with each step, he remained well prepared for this encounter. “There are two reasons,” he answered promptly, having anticipated this objection. “Firstly, the vault’s location is remote. A droid cordon simplifies the logistics and reduces the chance of attack by jungle beasts seeking to make a meal of living guards or scavenge their rations. Second, the device known as the Mother Machine,” an overly clinical description, in his head he already thought of her as Ashaa. “Is fully operational. It possesses resources of its own, and an agenda. I do not want to risk untrained personnel in the vicinity of such an artifact. The risk of an accident is far too high compared against the benefit of living observers.”

It was not simply a dodge. Tunms wholly believed this assessment. He was intimately familiar with the habits of soldiers assigned long-term guard detail, Vaiken Spacedock had possessed a copious supply. They inevitably got bored and started poking around, weapons first. Any squad of grunts who walked in on Ashaa and started talking to her would inevitably start a firefight. Droids did not carry that risk.

Synar did not contest this, but neither did she miss the implication. “The Rakata machine does talk then,” she noted, with a slight arch to her tone. “Tell me lieutenant, did it have anything to say?”

“The machine calls herself,” transitioning to the female identification felt natural. “Ashaa. She’s made a series of extremely grandiose claims regarding the creation of major species at the Rakata’s behest. I am dubious as to their validity.” Considerably less dubious than he’d been twelve hours earlier, but Darth Synar did not need that specific information at present. “Regardless of those proclamations, I am confident she possesses extremely advanced biological manipulation technologies, including capabilities beyond those currently available to the Sith Empire.”

“An intriguing curiosity,” Synar’s tone arched further. The protuberances above her eyes curled slightly. “Regrettably, we are once more at war1. Military priorities had overridden all other research goals. The Esh-Kha are valuable as potential warriors, and if I succeed in controlling their savants, they will be powerful Force-using weapons. The creation of species, while fascinating, is irrelevant to the military timescale.”

The Sith’s distaste for this conclusion was obvious. Somewhat surprisingly, the lieutenant found himself in almost complete agreement. Belsavis contained many vaults, presumably uncounted wonders lay within them, but all the Empire wanted was weapons that could be thrown against the Republic. “I believe that many of the machine’s technologies and data will, if they can be unraveled and reverse engineered, have significant medicinal value.”

Ashaa had revealed, during conversation, that she’d aided Lord Kallig by repairing some specialized form of advanced cellular degradation. That was hardly common, and had required in-person contact to fix, making it useless at scale, but it at least demonstrated the potential of such operations. It would take work, and a great deal of experimentation, but he had confidence that some breakthrough was buried down there.

“That assessment shall suffice to justify asset retention and security,” Synar jabbed her fingertips against the datapad, submitted biometric authorization. “Plenty for a few droids.” Turning back, she focused her attention on Tunms. He fought the impulse to retreat before that dark gaze. “Study this machine lieutenant. Discover whatever it is hiding. If you can extract something with real potential, then the mission can be expanded. You will provide me with regular reports. Do not disappoint me.”

“Of course, mistress,” Tunms refrained from smiling, held his facial expression carefully neutral. He wanted to jump for joy. He could never have hoped for this level of discretion from a Sith of such power. His first unexpected benefit derived from war.

Synar twisted her neck slightly after this, scanning across his frame. “Lieutenant, you stayed up all night to complete this assessment, did you not?”

“I did,” lying would have been utterly pointless.

“I approve of efficiency,” the Darth commented, almost idly. “But if you exhaust yourself and are not available when necessary, I shall find someone more capable of effective time management to support my operations, is that clear? This vault is your primary mission but do not think I will not occasionally require other duties from an officer of your specialty. Am I understood?”

“Absolutely,” Tunms saluted sharply.

“Then you are dismissed.”

As a tiny forward base, the little outpost lacked a place to bunk down. Tunms had to endure the speeder ride back to the lodgment before he could finally rest. This was hardly a loss since he needed to pick up his battle droids there anyway before heading back to Ashaa’s vault. Despite this, and the foggy state of his tired mind, he made a note to acquire field bivouac gear to make sleeping in the Tomb a viable option. Back and forth across such a wide and dangerous space was not to be sustained.

Before he collapsed into bed, he contemplated, through the blur of fatigue, what this assignment truly meant. Service not to a Sith, but to an ancient machine that just might be one of the most significant mechanisms built in the history of the galaxy or an intelligence driven insane by the passage of time, or both. Either way, the new job unlocked wonders he never would have found distributing crystals on a space station. He only wished it hadn’t paired up dangers to match.

The nightmares were vigorous that day.

Notes
1. The war has technically just resumed, with both sides still gearing up for the first major offensive – the Battle of Corellia – this is a huge engagement that represents a massive strain on the Sith Empire’s resources. So various side projects have been curtailed.

 

I only have played KotOR single player and like these characters and the story you are weaving. Tunms is interesting

 

At the risk of evangelizing too hard, if you've enjoyed KOTOR, SWTOR is really worth looking into, especially since you can play through the class stories for free (and if anyone here is on Satele Shan, hit me up).

Regarding Tunms, yeah, there's some interesting things about him. He's a medical officer, which is a bit unusual. We generally only see line officers in Star Wars (or most other media, the only medical officers I can think of off the top of my head are the ones in M*A*S*H), and all the other kinds of stuff that officers do in militaries gets rather neglected. This combines with the twisted nature of the Sith military - all the officers are competing against each other, but they're also competing for patronage from members of an ever-changing Sith hierarchy at the same time - to unlock some interesting possibilities.

 

The Lesser Twin
Mother Machine Chamber, 3640 BBY
“Child, the patterns you provided me of the Rattataki are inaccurate,” Ashaa’s motherly voice never rebuked at a level above a mild reprove, but despite this the machine somehow conveyed disappointment in a manner Tunms found absolutely crushing. “Not only do they fail to match my archival data, but they also offer pattern permutations that are impossible in regard to any humanoid species.”

“Really?” He did not doubt Ashaa’s analysis, but that was a very strange pronouncement. “But I pulled them from the medical database like all the others.” Quickly, he turned about and shifted over to the nearby consoles. “Can you bring it up for me? Maybe I can spot the problem.”

“Very well, child, you may try.”

The console flickered once, and then its fragmented screens filled with data. Much of the material remained incomprehensible. Designed for a Rakata sensorium and filled with advanced representational elements it would take a genius a lifetime to master the format. But, after a month working with Ashaa, Tunms had acquired a partial grasp on the user interface and the general structure of the genetic and protein input data the Mother Machine utilized. That made a considerable difference. It also helped that he possessed a mind inured to trickery and bureaucratic obfuscation that the remarkably honest mechanism could not comprehend.

The Rakata, apparently, had not wanted their machines to lie to them.

“Oh,” it took little more than a glimpse to recognize Ashaa’s diagnosis as correct. “You’re right, but it’s not an error, it’s a deliberate edit. Someone went and overwrote huge chunks of the genome using a sequential editing program and replaced everything with, ah,” he probed his memory for references. “Looks like some kind of native synapsid predator, probably a Sleen or something similar. Stang, I bet whoever did this repeated the process on every Rattataki in service. Probably some Sith-commanded exercise in obfuscation.”

Vaguely, he recalled that the Rattataki had entered imperial service under the control of one Darth Vich1. That Sith had later launched a rebellion to try and overthrow the emperor – a regrettably common circumstance. This data manipulation was likely related to that, somehow.

“If your records cannot be trusted,” Ashaa noted softly. “I require a new sample, taken from live Rattataki. Significantly, in addition to a representative mix of individuals, it is necessary to procure the pattern of one capable of touching the Force.”

“That might be, ah, tricky,” Tunms hesitated. The ranks of the Sith included at least some Rattataki, he’d seen a few passing through Vaiken Spacedock, but he couldn’t just ask them for a complete biotic sample. “Is this a priority?”

“Yes, they were a key act of creation, a dual-species construction.” Ashaa announced this as if the manufacturing of new species were a completely ordinary event. “I attempted to manipulate the ability of my children to touch the Force based on recombinant association. I must know the long-term results.”

“Dual-species creation?” Tunms blinked, trying to confirm he’d heard this correctly. He turned and stared at the holoprojection. “You mean you created two species at the same time?”

“Yes,” Ashaa agreed. “There were two habitable planets in their star system. The Rakata desired slave species suited for each. I derived two species from one root pattern. The second species is called the Stegoceps2.”

“I didn’t know there was a second inhabited planet in that system3,” Tunms eyes widened as he processed this. He checked his datapad a moment later, but the helpful confirmation he’d expected did not materialize. “There’s nothing about such a species in my database, but then again,” he groused, feeling the bitterness rise. “There’s hardly anything about that star system at all. So, it’s not impossible.” Frowning, he turned back to Ashaa. “I’m guessing you want a pattern for them as well?”

“Yes, but do not despair child,” the machine had a surprisingly effective consoling tone. “Among the many Rattataki on this planet, before they destroyed all monitoring devices during their escape, I detected multiple visual matches to Stegoceps. I believe you can locate a suitable sample.”

The optimism of the Mother Machine waxed eternal. She could be very convincing. Tunms had to continually remind himself against such rosy projections. After all, he was the one who’d end up going out into the deadly jungle to seek out her precious samples. The Rattataki were likely to be little more accommodating than the Sith. Their warrior tribes were among the most vicious on Belsavis.

“There were quite a few Rattataki prisoners,” someone back at base had once asked if the Republic had incarcerated the entire planet. “Most of them seem to have decided freedom is an excuse to indulge in mass murder, but the army may have recruited a few.” Mass murder, so long as it was combined with an ability to generally obey orders, was not considered a barrier to recruitment. “I’ll start there,” he decided. “I can at least get you a base sample that way, and maybe one of their own will know where to find one of these Stegoceps.”

He sighed briefly. “I needed to go back to base anyway,” that much he could not deny. “This vault isn’t suited to long-term habitation.”

“It was not designed for that purpose,” Ashaa agreed mildly. “There is a transporter station nearby that may be better suited to your biological needs.”

“Transporter?” Tunms swallowed. That rumor was all over the planet, despite everything about it being sealed by Imperial Intelligence and the Science Council. Even Darth Synar had mentioned it during the most recent weekly check-in. Teleportation! It went against essentially all known physics, but somehow the Rakata had proven it possible. There was a whole network of the things scattered about the Tomb, and whole units, including at least one Republic assault platoon, had passed through them by now. “Where does it lead?”

“Back to the transport station your forces are using here in the Tomb,” Ashaa’s answer was almost casual. “I no longer have eyes there, child, but I retain connection to the transporter. It will carry you swiftly.”

“Ah, well, I’ll take that under consideration.” Thankfully Ashaa was limited in her ability to read conversational cues. She’d miss the refusal embedded in that answer. Dangerous as the speeder ride was, Tunms trusted that far above jumping across space using Rakata machines. “I suppose, while I’m gone, you could try to locate a Force-sensitive Rattataki? I might be able to talk command into authorizing a subjugation mission.”

“Child, you need not worry, I have already located one.” The machine appeared completely ignorant of the way Tunms whole body twitched as she said this. “A warrior named Klavash, of their Doombrand Cult. I have transmitted his approximate location to you.”

The idea of trying to acquire a viable sample from any Rattataki warrior, much less a Force-user, did not instill Tunms with joy. Those who’d escaped imprisonment here tended to be violent, tribal, and hair-trigger. A peaceful solution, meaning bribery, which might have worked with others, would not function in this case. The only real option he could think of was to incapacitate this Klavash and snag the relevant data while his body was down. Hardly a doctrinal approach to medical research, and the sort of absurdity that got overeager Reclamation Service Officers killed.

Going off to tangle with any Rattataki, and doubly so a Force-user, wasn’t something he wanted to attempt with anything less than a platoon behind him. “Well,” he offered in forlorn hope. “Maybe he’s on the priority target list.” That was unlikely, those were mostly limited to political prisoners and Sith, but he tried not to offer direct refusals to Ashaa in person. The machine had unusual ideas regarding the concept of difficulty. “I’ll head back to base and get started. When there’s any progress, I’ll update you.”

“I will await your return.” Ashaa’s image vanished from the holoprjector, a clear indication that the conversation, or possibly audience, was at an end.

The lieutenant did not linger. Strange as Ashaa was, so long as her projection stayed active the vault felt occupied, in use. The moment it faded, and nothing but the steady thrum of machinery remained, it became frightfully empty and foreboding. He was starting to wonder if the Rakata designed everything based off maximally intimidating aesthetics.

A frustrating backdrop. At least with Hutts the ridiculously overdone opulence clearly appealed to their sensibilities, however absurd they appeared to Humans. These vaults did not seem welcoming to anyone, even the Sith complained about them, citing the color if nothing else.

Tunms was more generous than most about the omnipresent greenstone. The Rakata were amphibious. The color choice made sense on a fundamental visual wavelength level.

He was considering hanging a filter beneath his cap brim despite that. Ashaa wouldn’t take offense, probably.

Such levity did not sustain through the long and careful speeder ride back to base. He did not care how convenient teleportation might be, he wasn’t using it until absolutely no choice remained. Hyperspace travel was bad enough, he didn’t need to subject himself to a second means of scattering his molecules across dimensional boundaries.

As a result, it was quite late by the time he returned. Darkness, when living in a rift surrounded on all sides by mountains of ice, fell hard and fast. He input a query to medical regarding the Rattataki before bed and then collapsed onto his cot in the Reclamation Service section of the cramped barracks. Morning would be soon enough to start this mysterious and dangerous quest.

Notes
1. According to SWTOR background, Rattatak was largely unknown until Darth Vich took an interest in the planet and its rather vicious inhabitants.

2. Stegoceps is, as anyone who recalls my Rig Nema stories may remember, a name I made up to describe the canonical Voe Atell’s species. I like them, and members of this species were shown on Rattatak in flashbacks in TCW. So, I’m elaborating on their backstory here.

3. Rattataki is located in the Guter Wade system, which was profiled in The Essential Atlas. The fifth planet, Nettani, is described as being comprised of ‘toxic swamps,’ which sounds like marginally habitable to me and therefore gets to play homeworld to the Stegoceps.

 

Rattatak. That's familiar from where Ventress took Obi-Wan Kenobi for her experiments. I love how you describe the interactions between Asha and Tunms

 

Allrighty, slowly catching up here.

Tunms has quite the biological scavenger hunt ahead of him. I sure wouldn't want to be going up against a vicious, Force-using warrior in a deadly jungle either, especially one living with a tribe that Tunms will have to get past as well.

I like his reaction to using the transporter stations. It feels like a quite natural response, heh, especially for someone with a background in medicine and science who probably knows a bunch of ways something like that could go wrong and what it could do to a body if it did. Ignorance is probably more comforting in that situation.

Between his assignment for Darth Synar and interacting with Ashaa, Tunms seems to be walking some fine lines, and I hope he's able to keep it up. A misstep that gets either of them upset with him could be quite bad, and that's got to be exhausting.

Great work! Looking forward to more!

 

Right. Fun fact about SWTOR, the whole 'Asajj Ventress isn't actually a Rattataki she's this funky hybrid called a Dathomirian,' didn't get dropped until after the game had designed a whole bunch of Rattataki NPCs (most notably the awesome Kaliyo Djannis) based on Ventress' character design, giving the species a truly bizarre provenance.

Yes, yes he does. That's more or less the overall structure going on here.

Yeah. Tunms isn't a physicist, but he has enough background in science to know that teleportation isn't supposed to be possible, so he questions it more than some random trooper to whom basically all of this tech is just a black box.

I imagine being an officer in the Sith Empire, or even just a mid-level Sith (it's amazing how many of their fellow Sith the Inquisitor and Warrior characters brutally murder), is really stressful. Tunms does have a fair amount of rope though. Darth Synar mostly just wants him to make annoying bureaucratic problems go away so she can spend all her time torturing Esh-Kha and Ashaa, being literally inhumanly patient, has a flexible view of deadlines.

 

Imperial Lodgment, Belsavis 3640 BBY
Morning brought with it an unexpected boon. The database search indicated that a number of Rattataki had indeed been swayed by the prospect of unleashing rampant mayhem for pay rather than doing so for free and joined up with the imperial army. Of course, their commanders proceeded to immediately dispatch them on high-risk missions with horrendous casualty rates, but unlike Humans, the gray-skinned aliens appeared to bear no resentment toward the empire regarding this casual abuse.

Tunms forbore judgment on that policy and simply took advantage of the large bounty of samples acquired from those Rattataki sent to medical with severe injuries. It spared him the need to hunt down those on active duty. Despite manifesting a general reverence toward doctors after suffering combat wounds, soldiers could be remarkably resistant to medical attention at all other times. An absolutely backwards viewpoint as far as Tunms was concerned, but he’d long ago given up attempting to try and understand the minds of infantry.

There was, further, an unexpected item of interest pulled up by the database. The medical droids had recorded an ‘anomalous Rattataki individual’ confined to her cot due to ‘unknown nervous system damage.’ Knowing something about the proclivities of medical droid programming, Tunms viewed this report with excitement. He might just have stumbled upon Ashaa’s Stegoceps without ever needing to leave the base.

A rare day, that the stars should be so kind.

Shortly after breakfast he went and paid the injured soldier a visit.

A Sith Empire long-term patient ward was not, by any estimation, a pleasant place. Resources allotted to those with prolonged or low-recovery-chance prospects were tightly constrained. This included rare and valuable resources such as kolto, but also much more common medications, including painkillers. Anyone who dared enter such a space embarked on an auditory journey through the full scope of misery sentient throats were capable of unleashing.

Tunms, who’d been through this routine more than once, wore special earplugs. It reduced the horror level from soul-searing to merely awful.

No doctors patrolled the ward, only medical droids, and most of those were outdated models no longer suited to frontline usage. Laid out on cots arrange in paired rows and covered only with thin sheets – in the rampant humidity anything more would risk heat exhaustion – privacy was broadly non-existent. Most of the injured were in too much agony to even notice, though fear-filled eyes followed Tunms’ every step down the line. No one spoke, beyond the continual moaning, they knew better than to interrupt an officer in uniform.

Lacking any sense of cultural unity, espirit de corps, or general decency, the medical droids segregated their charges by species and sex as their efficiency algorithms dictated. The Rattataki were found at the far end, split roughly equally into male and female halves. The women were on the left side.

Most stored here had managed to either find their path to the oblivion of sleep or had been drugged into unconsciousness. Not easily forced from the battlefield, most of these warriors sported missing limbs. Horrid wounds either ripped through flesh by missile fire or cleaved free by lightsaber, they waited upon nerve regrowth sufficient that they might be fitted with prosthetics and sent back out again.

The target Tunms sought was instantly recognizable. She still had all her limbs, and she was not a Rattataki. They didn’t have green skin, or a row of four paired horns marching down across both sides of the top of their skull.

Not that there weren’t similarities. Facial and bone structure, insofar as they differed from the Human baselines, clearly shared much in common. The lack of any external hair, save for eyebrows, also matched up, though that was a common trait in Near-Humans. The medical chart downloaded from her monitoring console suggested many more internal and metabolic convergences.

“Rel Valt,” he read her name off his datapad as he brought up her chart for review. “No visible injuries, but unable to move. Curious.” He expanded the record, searched through the details. “No sign of poisoning or exposure to Force-based mental attacks.” The latter, though they left no visible marks, produced recognizable metabolites due to damaged neurological tissue. “What’s laid you up?”

“Spines if I know,” a weak voice croaked. “But if you don’t either, leave me alone.” The woman’s mouth barely moved as she spoke. “Bad enough to die this way. Worse to have someone watch.”

The strain embedded in her voice was immense. It was as if the very act of speaking took incredible effort. Observing her body, the sheet hid functionally nothing of her form, Tunms recognized a figure seemingly in excellent health. She had well-defined musculature and color appropriate to solid blood flow, but her limbs did not so much as twitch over many seconds. It recalled paralysis due to a spinal injury, but her chart indicated no such damage. Whatever the failures of out-of-date medical droids, that sort of result was not something they’d miss.

“Your species is not in the imperial medical database,” Tunms did not directly engage the objection. “But I have reason to believe you are a Stegoceps. Is that correct?”

“Yes,” Rel wheezed. “Stegoceps Commando Rel Valt, defeated by an invisible enemy. Can’t walk, can’t move, can’t even eat anymore. Body won’t obey. No strength. A coward’s end.” Her head rolled to the side. Her eyes remained closed throughout this speech, as if even the act of raising the lids was too much effort to sustain.

The symptoms were familiar. Tunms recalled bioweapons training, the mechanisms numerous nerve agents were designed to exploit. The Hutts loved such weapons, found them an ideal way to capture and transport slaves. Pulling up the test results, he discovered the confirmation necessary to support that hypothesis. “You have severe motor-neuron degradation.1” Looking over, he bent down by the stricken soldier. “Your body is no longer able to properly receive commands from your brain. Were you gassed? Or hit with a nerve disruptor?” Both were common methods of producing such a disability.

“No,” the croak offered little volume, but retained clarity of intent. “Just got weaker, week after week, ever since I was sent here. I never believed in Nettani’s Curse, not really, but I always kept the stones, just in case. I guess it must be real, and I’m just too far from home.”

“Nettani?” the word was unfamiliar to Tunms.

“Stegoceps homeworld,” every word came slowly. Sweat beaded up on Rel’s forehead from the effort of talking. “Leave Nettani, have to appease world spirit. Born on Rattataki, I always sucked the stones, as mom and dad commanded. Even here, after the Republic took mine, found new ones in the vaults. I kept the faith, but I’m still cursed.”

“Sucked stones?” Tunms latched on to this distinct bit of behavioral description. The seed of an idea began to sprout in his mind. “You mean physically holding rocks in your mouth? Not some ritual?”

“What else could I mean? Stupid Human.” Her lips slowly curled into a frown. “Let me be. I will die in disgrace. Do not watch.”

Silently, the lieutenant dove deep into Rel’s test results. She’d been in medical for over a month, with blood drawn every other day. Five different spinal fluid samples were on file. It did not take long to spot the trend. “I am trying to save your life,” he remarked at that point. “And I think I can. I hope you’ll be grateful if it works.”

Very slowly, agonizing and aching to watch, Rel opened her eyes. They were a pale garnet red. “Spare me this curse, Human,” she groaned. “And I will serve you until the good death comes. Any fate is better than this end, accursed.”

“The Imperial Army frowns upon such vows of personal loyalty,” Tunms noted, almost idly. His mind ignored the promise, focused on the problem instead. “They endanger the chain of command, but the thought is appreciated.” Turning over his datapad, he lowered the screen into the line of the patient’s tilted vision, close enough to allow her to see the graph he’d highlighted.

“You are suffering from a severe deficiency of platinum-group metals, which, it seems, your body requires to catalyze key nervous system reactions. My guess is that life on Nettani naturally has very high levels of these metals in the ecosystem, and Rattatak must have them in geologic deposits. That means that by sucking on rocks you can dissolve the necessary trace amounts into your saliva. Belsavis, being a volcanic rift system buried under ice, has the wrong kind of rocks. At a guess, did you take your sucking stones from rivers?”

“Yes,” one word only, but it held an ocean of hope and doubt entwined together.

“That’ll do for confirmation for now.” Satisfaction spread through Tunms at solving this minor mystery.

“Then, can you save me Human?” Rel’s desperation cascaded through every gasp and strain. “Restore my strength?”

“Theoretically, yes,” Tunms thoughts soured as they proceeded down this path. “If the proper nutrient balance is restored, you should recover. Unfortunately, your species is unknown to the Sith Empire. There’s no baseline or treatment plan in the medical database. That means there’s no guide to dosage. These metals are toxic, at the wrong level, which means that an incorrect dosage will kill you. Normally, in a case like this I’d start with a micro-dose and work up to try and find the optimum value, but in your current state you don’t have the time for that.”

“Do it anyway,” the commando wheezed, her commitment firm despite the low volume. “Better to die on the table than wasted by the curse.”

Grim though this assessment was, Tunms could not help but agree with it. Trying, no matter the risk, was surely worthwhile. Despite this, he hesitated. He was field trained, a corpsman, not a doctor. It would be all too easy to get this wrong, and there would be no second chances. If only he had a better grasp of Stegoceps biology, someone to guide him through the process-.

He stopped. The idea that dropped, fully formed, into his brain was pure madness. Except it wasn’t, not at all. The very best expert in the whole galaxy was available, all he had to do was dare to trust her. A healer with capabilities far greater than his own, if only he could find it in himself to believe.

“There is,” his voice dropped to a whisper. “Potentially an alternative treatment, but it is…experimental. Are you willing to expose yourself to untested alien technology?”

“Compared to your imperial droids?” Rel’s eyes slowly dropped to tight closure. “Anything. I will do anything to avoid this end.”

“You said it,” Tunms noted. He did not feel good, not yet, but the rationalization offered sufficient distance to proceed. He stood slowly. “I’ll be right back, I just need to write up a transfer order and,” he looked at the barely covered body once more. “Find a heated blanket.”

The Stegoceps commando said nothing. He suspected she believed he’d never come back.

Tunms didn’t like to think about how few imperials would.

 

Great investigation by Tunms to save the Stegoceps commando

 

This is interesting. And while I missed it the first time, this time I Noticed our guy's aversion to teleportation, and the Trekkie side of my brain went, "McCoy doesn't want his molecules scrambled!"