Saga - PT Dr. Nema and the Lurkers Below

Title: Dr. Nema and the Lurkers Below
Author: Mechalich
Timeframe: 22 BBY, 301 Days after the Battle of Geonosis
Characters: Rig Nema, Ditwar Logas, Isoxya (OC), Esk (OC)
Genre: Science Fiction Adventure
Keywords: Jedi, Doctor, Clone Wars, Coruscant Underworld, Bioweapon
Summary: Mysterious clandestine agent Ditwar Logas calls on Nema to join an expedition to the depths that may hint at the true nature of the growing threat to Coruscant's Underworld
Notes: This story is connected to my Dear Diary Challenge 2020, being an extension of Dr. Nema's overall tale. It takes place between entries 46 & 47 of that work. It is the fifth narrative tale in this vein, following Dr. Nema and the Lost Laboratory. Readers who haven't read those stories should be able to understand this piece, but some context will be missing.


Dr. Nema and the Lurkers Below


Doctor Nema's little clinic did not close at a set time. It generally attempted to cease operations around 1800 local time, but there was considerable variability involved due to the nature of the criteria assigned to ending the day. Nema, for her part, simply kept treating patients until her queue stood empty, she had not the heart to turn anyone away. Instead she left it to Tesso, her salvaged administrator droid, to cut off the flow of applicants using his own judgment. The machine's ability to measure pace and time usage was excellent, but he made for a terrible medical diagnostician. Consequently if someone near the end of the list happened to possess a complex condition Nema's day stretched late.

This tended to happen rather regularly; the Jedi Doctor had a reputation for solving problems no one else could. The droid had been forced to adjust his calculations accordingly.

On one particular evening the final patient stretched the evening to great length due to a complex case of cross-species lung parasitism that required an extremely lengthy series of steps to identity, isolate, eliminate, and extract. In a testament to Nema’s medical composure she comfortably consumed her evening meal only minutes after watching an Ongree cough up portions of dismembered flatworm. She reserved a measure of gratitude for the absence of noodles.

Nema ate seated next to Tesso, cramped next to the droid in front of the secondary terminal due to the tiny size of her office space. She spent her mealtime reading through the daily news reports, though when she struck some particularly tragic node she switched over to medical journals. The daily reports from the front lines of the Clone Wars were rarely present. This day, like so many others, included Jedi casualties. A pair, knight and padawan, both Zabraks; the usual circumstances, killed when their Star Destroyer took one too many turbolasers to the bridge. No amount of valor or strength in the Force could prevent that end.

She did not know either of the fallen, nor did she recognize the name of their distant battlefield. She had to access the archives to find their faces. This act, the mechanical referencing mandated by the sprawling scope of the conflict, only sharpened the sense of loss.

The clinic was generally quiet at night once all patients were gone. Neither Tesso nor her medical droid Dee-Dee were given to idle conversation. It was not silent, of course, this was the Underworld and the steady clatter of activity and hum of machinery never faded past the background. Nema had learned to block out this ambient thrum. Her clinic, designed as a safe-house, avoided proximity to any particularly loud sources. A luxury she knew many did not possess.

She anticipated a quiet evening, one where she could utilize precious hours to focus on her research. Her friends would not interrupt her at this point. If they had intended to pull her away from work for an evening they would have sent messages earlier.

Consequently she viewed the chime of her door at 2100 with a mixture of surprise and suspicion.

It would not be an emergency. Any of the various institutions that might contact her in such an event – and it was a distressingly long list – had the ability to comm her directly. At the same time, it could not be a completely unknown personage. Though she was not supposed to know it, Nema was fully aware that her clinic was under twenty-four hour police surveillance due to prior attempts on her life. A suspicious new arrival would never make it to the door without being stopped, and Tesso would announce any such alley altercation.

“Tesso?” Nema did her research in the tiny lab space she'd built out of her improvised exam room, itself little more than a diagnostic and surgical station. She found interruptions that took her mind off fungal genetics and immune-system compatibility matching truly aggravating. “Who in the Force is it?”

The answer, delivered in flavorless mechanical deadpan, did absolutely nothing to ameliorate that frustration. Quite the opposite, in fact. “The subject identifies as one Mister Ditwar Logas1, of the Republic Census Bureau.”

“Let him in then,” Nema called back, and she bit back a sigh. Carefully, she closed down her terminal and placed all active experiments back into storage. A quick instruction to Dee-Dee insured everything would be locked down. Only after the scientific demands were complete did she stop to wash her face and briefly adjust her headdress before she took the few necessary steps down the hall.

It was not that she had any desire to impress Ditwar Logas, the man, but rather she felt a deep unwillingness to appear disheveled in front of all he represented. Visits from one of the Supreme Chancellor's clandestine agents were not to be taken lightly.

The person Nema inevitably thought of as Mr. Logas, for every aspect of his being seemed precisely designed to emulate a particular bureaucratic ideal, waited in the small receiving space outside the office. The doctor's internal image of a mid-level functionary positively shattered when she turned the corner and took in his appearance.

She had known the man was a spy, but never in her expectations did he shout it out loud.

A dark gray duster hung from the coat bar by the door, the nondescript and utterly unremarkable piece now discarded along with all concealment it provided. The man beneath wore a midnight blue tactical jumpsuit, precisely fitted, discretely armored, and complemented by bandoleers and magazine pouches filled with any number of devices that Nema's police liaison had taught her to recognize as extraordinarily illegal espionage and infiltration tools. The long black rifle slung across his back was doubly thus, and the shimmering vibrobayonet fitted to the barrel represented prohibited military gear throughout the Core Worlds.

Such an arsenal was not, in and of itself, shocking. Bounty hunters, mercenaries, syndicate enforcers, and others who lived by blade and blaster all strode through the Bucket each day with decades worth of weapons charges strapped to their sides. The police habitually ignored them. That was the underworld.

Seeing Logas decked out in high end paramilitary kit, by contrast, cut to the bone.

The man's status as an operative was a known secret, of course. His Census Bureau posting an obvious database fiction, but she'd thought the man a network jockey, an implant-aided slicer. Not once had she considered the possibility that he was some kind of independent commando. Nor could she understand why he would ever chose to show up at her door dressed for the part.

“Doctor Nema,” Logas inclined his head very slightly in recognition. “Apologies for the late night disturbance, but something rather urgent has arisen.” His voice was bland, boring even, but his speech patterns cleaved to the precision diction and formal phraseology of Galactic City. Once that might have made him seem cultured, superior. After the better part of a year in the Bucket Nema found it only redoubled her suspicions. “I find it necessary to ask for your cooperation and I hope you'll oblige me.”

“Oblige you with what?” Nema discovered, to her own considerable surprise, that all impulses to be deferential and polite had simply evaporated. Possibly it was the absurdity of a man speaking with senatorial formality while dressed for assassination. It seemed the absolute height of pretentiousness to pretend flowery words could mask crude actions. “Planning to slice Black Sun again?” Logas had exploded into the life of the underworld through a high-profile incident of that nature. No one had any evidence of his involvement, of course, but everyone knew anyway.

“No,” Logas shook his head, a single sharp motion that did not so much as touch the rest of his elongate, lanky, frame. Nema suspected such restraint was not entirely natural. The man contained at least a full ten kilos worth of mass greater than any human of his volume ought to possess. Her sense of him in the Force positively reeked with the sharp scent of metal and sparkling tinge of electronic activity. There was enough cybernetic augmentation beneath his skin that if you pulled it all out you could build a full-sized mouse droid, maybe two. She rather suspected the contents of his body cost more than the average starfighter.

The answer Logas ultimately provided was at once shocking and standard. “I've located a possible lead into the YH-life incidents. You are the only expert available. Your support would be invaluable.” He briefly reached back and tapped the stock of his rifle. Gloved fingers smacked gently against hardened composite. “However, for various reasons this needs to be an off-the-books venture. That is my excuse for approaching you in person, rather than through Lieutenant Morne. It would be better for all concerned if he were not involved in this, but I'd be only too happy if you could convince that rolling spider-eating friend of yours to accompany us.”

This last comment, Nema recognized, represented a fairly significant concession. She had absolutely no illusions regarding Isoxya's frightful willingness to rip the head off just about anyone who aggravated her, and the Stoneweb Runner had enveloped Nema within that particular set of violently protective instincts. Bringing her along offered a level of security that, while it did not make Mr. Logas any less suspicions, considerably reduced the likelihood that he would attempt anything drastic.

“I'll do that,” Nema decided. She smiled, just a bit wickedly. “Where should I tell her to meet up with us?”

“A network access junction on level Thirteen-Eleven,” Logas supplied coordinates with perfect accuracy, doubtless a feature of his implants. “It offers a suitable path down below.”

The implication behind that suggestion was clear as it was ominous. “I'll get my bag,” Nema told the operative. “But this had better pan out. I don't have time to spare for ghost hunts.”

“Neither do I,” he offered a thin smile beneath tightly cropped dark hair, one that failed to reach his eyes. “But I think our quarry is far more dangerous than any phantom.”

Nema was tempted to append 'older too' to this remark, but she swallowed the words before they could escape her throat. She did not know exactly what Logas had learned regarding YH-life and for the moment considered it best to avoid filling in any gaps he might possess.

Such withholding left her feeling slightly nauseous. Nema could recognize, a deep feeling in her core, that she wanted no part of games of politics and spying. Above all she did not feel right casting suspicion upon her nominal allies. As weak, cowardly even, as it might be, she looked forward to passing that particular duty off to Isoxya.

The journey itself presented he doctor with a new experience. Nema did not drive through the underworld herself. She either took the public trams or, when on official business, was driven through priority airspeeder lanes by Officer Morne. Logas, though by any sort of reasonable calculation far higher in rank than a police lieutenant, did not have access to the airborne passages reserved for emergency vehicles. In fact, he did not even have airspeeder rights at all, but instead drove a ground-hugging landspeeder. Confined in this fashion to the labyrinthine network of alleys, channels, ramps, and curves that directed traffic through the chaotic and unplanned layout of the underworld they made rather poor time. Nema suspected that, due to the constant delays caused by traffic and obstructions, they barely outpaced public transit. This was particularly true given that Logas did not share Morne's penchant for extremely aggressive piloting.

Despite this, the speeder was essential, for they eventually left the settled sectors of Thirteen-Eleven and traveled into a vast expanse of industrial infrastructure. Complex mechanical constructs loomed sharp-edged in a three-dimensional lattice on all sides. These wrapped about them, blocked all overhead access and lighting to leave visitors trapped in the gloom of local illumination alone. The massive roof-panel systems faded into shadow until only gray-green remained. The otherwise ubiquitous yellowish tint of the Bucket faded into the distance.

Huge mainframes, giant data cables, power transformers, monitoring sequences, transmission towers, and countless unrecognizable devices surrounded them. All were massive, scaled up to a size that left them barely recognizable, a composite computer so vast it rendered itself city-scape. Such sectors, whole blocks given over to electronics alone, were absolutely necessary to sustain the distributed machinery and networking that allowed the underworld to function. Life and droids could not exist without them. At the same time, entry into this realm carried with it perpetual hostility, discomfort filtered through the skin and down to the bone.

Radiation. Nema identified the reason intrinsically. Outside the windows of Logas' speeder there were very few living people. Those who could be glimpsed were unusual, a dramatic departure from the typical underworld community. Only particular species with innate protection against that invisible scourge could survive here for long.

In the absence of living flesh droids proliferated. Their density spiked, and blocky tri-legged industrial models clogged the streets. Hulking piles of diagnostic and maintenance they shuffled slowly from one point to the next, endlessly sorted through vast mountains of equally unseen data.

The existence of this risk, of this lost zone segregated by gamma rays, ought not to exist. It was unnecessary. Properly shielded these machines were no more dangerous than any other industry, but of course they were not so protected. Even on those examples where the relevant barriers had been imposed gaps flickered past. Plates of life-saving absorption torn away, lost to the needs of squatter housing or the endless hunger of spice habits, or some other desperate need. It made little difference the precise cause, uncompromising needs would seek any available means to be fed. So suffering diffused throughout the great spacecraft of the underworld.

Narrow roads used more by load lifters than people or vehicles yielded up a passageway for Logas' speeder. These routes lacked welcome, lost in the shadow of failing emergency lights and marked by signs last painted before any visitor to them was born. Their cleanliness would have startled an outsider, for they could not reconcile diligent grooming with the endless action of scavengers. Decay did not carry dirt here, not in the open spaces. The grime and ooze hid away behind doors and portals; there to fester.

The access junction was a wide platform matched to a cylindrical tube that offered passage up and down. Or it would have, if not blocked by massive bulkheads that sealed away all progress at ten meter intervals. Only the snake-shaped cables along the walls, thick around as Nema's waist, bypassed these seals.

Isoxya, as expected, was already present. The armored warrior mounted on spiked wheels could treat wall and ceiling as road and viewed slicing through traffic as amateur practice. No mere landspeeder would outpace her. Instead she spun circles about the access, rumble and vibrant with every motion. Clad in orange scale and yellow plate, red lights flashed in accent, she was the loudest visual in the whole sector; instantly recognizable.

“Yellow, orange, and red,” Logas whispered, just at the edge of audibility. “The colors that warn of deadly poison, and common colors for spider wasps. I do wonder which one she is intended to represent.”

This musing actually caused a smile to spread across Nema's face for a moment. She had not expected such insights from the man beside her. “Neither,” she corrected quickly as they pulled to a stop. “It's emergency beacon colors. The web-spinning hunters of the Atsev home system react to active scans but do not see color. The Runners dress brightly so their comrades can recover their bodies using visual scanning.”

This rather morbid summation drew no additional comment from the operative.

“Nema!” Isoxya called as they stepped out. The warrior's voice was modulated by her helmet com, but nevertheless managed to transmit her vigorous enthusiasm. “And Logas. How unexpected.” Her wheels circled through a single revolution, enough to bring her armored form within arm's reach. “Do you want me to kill him? No cameras here, and no one will ever find what's left.”

The Jedi blanched. This was no jest, she could feel the reality of the offer; willingness hung cold in the still air. The Atsev warrior, experience unquestionable, recognized this curious spy as a threat, and her approach held fast to its typical directness.

“I don't think that's necessary,” she found her voice after a moment, but not the strength for a proper denial. The words tasted sour in her mouth, and her composure recovered unevenly. The realization that she'd felt no corresponding spike of fear from Logas wormed across her awareness, eerie and untraceable. “Mr. Logas claims he has an important lead, so we are here to investigate, that's all.”

“A lot of hardware for a census investigation,” the black-helmeted head briefly tilted in the direction of the elongated blaster rifle.

“Considering our destination, I judge this level of preparation to be an obligatory minimum,” the agent's answer emerged wholly unperturbed.

“And where are we going exactly?” Nema was grateful Isoxya asked. She did not enjoy word games.

Logas tapped his right foot once. “Level Twelve Ninety-Nine.” Without further comment he turned and walked to one side of the great partitioned tube they occupied. There he briefly put his left palm to the wall and, without making any visible motion, triggered the unfolding of a hidden door from the sidewall.

It emerged with the soft hiss of displaced air and a slight fog of condensation. Only darkness waited behind. “This maintenance access will take us there. My contact awaits us at the terminus.”

Nema walked up beside him and pushed her head into the aperture. Beyond the door was a narrow tube, just sufficient to allow access by one humanoid at a time. It ran straight up and down, perfectly smooth save on the far side, where rungs had been cut into the wall. Math ran through her head quickly. “Not an inconsequential climb,” she noted.

“True,” Logas did not disagree. “But I should consider the members of our party are sufficient to such a modest task.”

This drew a laugh from Isoxya. “Sure, but you're going first, census man.”

“As you say.” Without hesitation the agent ducked within, positioned his body in line with the recessed rungs, and began to drop down the vertical steps.

Noting that he had not bothered with a glow rod, the doctor quietly refrained from activating her own. Instead she followed into the gloom. It lacked any illumination save for intermittent emergency indicator strips. Her eyes adjusted swiftly to near-blackness, though there was no real need for visual input. The rungs were droid cut, spaced perfectly evenly. She could feel her companions above and below, track their motions without sight.

Ditwar Logas managed the climb easily. He moved with athletic potency, dropped from rung to rung without overlap, the whole of his weight suspended on one limb at a time, again and again. He did not flag or weaken as they progressed many tens of meters either, as if immune to fatigue. It had to be the work of implants, at least partially. This was perfectly in line with the doctor's expectations. His body contained far too much hardware to encompass access and cognition upgrades alone.

Isoxya, of course, had no trouble at all. She did not even bother with the rungs. One wheel gripped along each side of the tunnel and she simply rolled her way down under perfect friction-mediated control. Such were the capabilities of one joined fully to powered armor. Essential abilities indeed, for the elderly woman inside that casing could never have managed this feat unaided.

Placed in the middle, the doctor refused to be the weak link. Thankfully the risk was only a matter of fatigue, and that was easily controlled. She let her thoughts wander into the depths and the Force draw through as they delved through barrier and bastion. Tension left muscle, bone, and tendon. She eased through the passage, fresh at the last as at the first. To one who could conduct surgery for three days straight exertion such as this measured no strain at all. In a great many fields Nema could not match her fellow Jedi, but endurance was not among them.

She had not expected the passage to end at the bottom. Emergency routes such as this could run for dozens or even hundreds of levels before they encountered a broad structural break. And the shaft itself did indeed continue further into the light-less abyss below, but Logas let go the rungs to step onto a sturdy and narrow aperture grating some enterprising person had welded into place.

The work binding that metal barrier to the walls was far younger than the structure itself, but it bore the patina of centuries spent in darkness all the same. An emblematic representation of the underworld in just a few seams of metal.

Nema wondered who or what it was intended to keep out, and whether they still existed.

She expected another nearly invisible door, but it happened that the latching mechanism was quite obvious from the inside. Logas turned the knob and they squeezed out into another cylindrical space without difficulty. Silent hinges turned on well-oiled bearings.

Once against someone else had arrived first.

Isoxya had strutted confidently in the open; this presence squatted silently in the shadows. Nema felt him long before she managed to follow the turn of a helmeted head and spot the watcher. He lay well camouflaged, hidden among the snaking cables. This access point, unlike the one above, possessed only pale green panels of emergency lighting.

As the door closed behind them this observer dropped down from his perch to the plating. A smooth and nearly silent roll followed the landing. “Welcome,” his voice emerged in a strange echo-whisper, as if he spoke from a faraway place. Nema suspected some modification of the vocal chords. “Ditwar Logas and companions, to the fallen spaces. Esk of the Dead Wardens offers service as your guide.” He pointed to the opposite side of the chamber, a hand covered in chalk white skin peaked out from beneath voluminous sleeves. “That which you seek lies this way. Not overly far.”

Nema watched this unfamiliar presence carefully as she followed Logas. Her mind turned through the puzzle of his identity. Had he offered a letter in some sort of deliberate code? Or was it actually his name? The latter was far from impossible, there were only so many one-syllable sounds a humanoid throat could produce.2

He was solidly humanoid, though short. He barely passed the doctor's chin. He wore a maroon robe, a vast single piece tightly fitted through the torso and waist but with an expansive hem and vast sleeves. Telltale protrusions under fabric suggested weapons hung along the left arm and right leg, though she could only speculate as to what kind they might be. His skin was colorless white, lacking any indication of vessels immediately beneath, but his rounded and flattened face was painted spruce green over every last millimeter. His mouth was small and his nose compressed and nearly imperceptible. By contrast the eyes were immense. Easily twice the size of comparable human's, perhaps as much as triple. They utterly lacked any visible iris structure, colored white and black alone.

The characteristic resonance of shared origins reverberated back from him when Nema touched the edge of his presence in the Force, confirmation of largely human genetic ancestry, but beyond that she did not recognize his particular assembly of traits. His species was unknown to her, though such discoveries had long since become commonplace among the populace of the underworld.

The only real question was why he was here, on a level not maintained for habitation.

She could not hold back from asking. “Do your people live here Esk?”

He turned his head about briefly, just long enough for those massive black orbs to slide across the surface of her vision, one end to the other. Then they were gone and focus returned forward. “We are Dead Wardens, in our tongue, Norcha. What you call life, we have no part of it. Ours is merely a vigil, kept between turns.” Those distant whispers were impossible to parse, to gauge offense. “But if you mean physical location, then yes, the center of our watch is nearby, among the fallen monuments.”

Esk said nothing more as he removed an access panel and squeezed past. With a gesture he indicated the others should follow.

As they advanced Logas briefly stepped beside the Jedi. “They have a small community, only about one thousand,” he explained softly. “They are camped among the ruins of a series of Pre-Republic bunkers on this level. They carry everything they need in and out. I confess they are not especially talkative, but I gather the entire surface of their homeworld is covered in tombs left behind by some truly ancient civilization.”

Whatever other traits he might possess, Esk's hearing was quite keen. “We are Dead Wardens. This should not be a hard thing to know. You have been permitted here for one reason; to explain the source of pollution that threatens our mission, not else. Follow now,” he instructed, whispers suddenly whipcord sharp. “And move with such quiet as your lumbering forms can manage. This is an abandoned section. There is great danger in such places.”

Beyond the panel the four travelers passed out onto a grated catwalk, one suspended in a narrow gap between two immense conduit tubes the size of trams. From there they traversed a hanging stairwell, several narrow doorways, and a series of truly claustrophobic ramps. Esk moved through the confined industrial maze with exquisite confidence, unerring in every decision and totally silent. He gave directions using hand signals alone, never speaking. He moved with soft-swiftness, steady, and expected others to keep pace.

Isoxya, of course, did so without trouble. Suspended on shock-mounting and powered by precision-engineered motors she was equally soundless. Neither Logas nor Nema could match such stealth. They managed to avoid any loud metal on metal contact, but no matter their efforts footfalls clattered through the confines of the long-neglected pathways.

The air within the back passes was thin and stale. Pockets of carbon dioxide and other toxic gases clustered in gaps and corners. The oxygen concentration skipped and jumped all over the gauge, from hyperventilation to hypoxia in the space of mere meters. Jedi breathing techniques safeguarded Nema. Isoxya sheltered behind her helmet. Logas' jumpsuit uncoiled at the neck and wrapped about his skull, snugly fitted by smart-polymer. His face vanished. Only pale red optical ports remained. The Norcha, alone among them, faced the dangerous failing atmosphere unguarded, but he seemed perfectly trained to breathe only in good air and passed through the ill unharmed. Though the process progressed in complete invisibility, it was truly impressive.

It was also not unique to this unusual humanoid. Life held a rather impressive foothold in these cramped tunnels amidst machine accretion. Strange things clung to peculiar metabolisms here, unfazed by darkness, drought, or toxic atmosphere. Most presences were simple; dark-colored slicks on any number of surfaces marked out biofilms formed by chemosynthetic bacteria. Slightly more textured patches of discoloration signified slime molds, fungi, and even the occasional colony of metal-abrading polyps. Less often the trace of larger creatures might be glimpsed. Industrially adapted lifeforms such as conduit worms and stone mites most often, but also small insectoid grazers with wide scraping mouthparts capable of harvesting the clinging sludge and serpentine predators hooked in place by clawed ventral scales that preyed upon them in turn. All together it presented a fascinatingly unbalanced ecosystem, one of constant transition, for Nema was certain even largely abandoned areas like this suffered periodic cleansing by maintenance droids.

For a solid hour they journeyed through this strange and deadly three-dimensional maze of recolonized wreckage. Finally Esk pulled aside a plastoid barrier marked by faded high voltage warnings. He beckoned them into a modestly sized square space, where everything above their heads was filled with a twisting morass of braided cables. They wrapped around each other in every direction, a rippling, contorted ball of metal shivering with mismatched charges. Every millimeter of exposed skin tinged and rippled. The Dead Warden's hair rose straight up, coruscated blue by electrostatic gradients.

Salt, Nema realized as she watched the ascent of those stringy chalk-shaded strands. The keratin core of each hair was coated in chemical salt crystals, likely some sort of unique osmoregulatory excretion keyed to the chemistry of the Norcha homeworld. A curious thing to fixate upon in the moment, but some intuitive sense attached great importance to this even as her attention slowly gravitated upwards.

The twisted formation of conduits above, as great bag of squid mashed together, knotted and wound, offered up a far more troubling premonition. At the very moment her senses reached out across the tiny gap past her reach she realized they were alive.

It made no sense, there was no reason, no possibility, of life in those coiled tubules, but she could feel it all the same. A great cloud of energy no mere mass of charged metal could ever convey. Worse, far worse, was the specific sensation, the strange shrouded perturbation in the Force attached to this luminosity. A shift in spectrum she had learned through immersive intimacy and agony to recognize. This particular essence marked out without the slightest doubt YH-life, a resonance that shared the essential nature of all life through the Force, but was at the same time separated. Both sand, but born of different stones.

“They're in there,” Nema spoke quietly. Step by step the pieces locked together in her mind. In the low light careful examination revealed the telltales. Bits of buckling and bulging along the sides of various conduits; thin threads of some sort of mucus-analog stretched through narrow spatial gaps; all the little indicators that a trained search image could pick out of the backdrop as evidence of life in an unexpected place. “They're growing in the conduits, thin tendrils, fungal hyphae.” In sudden desperation she rounded upon their guide. “What passes through these? Where do they go?”

The answer, surprisingly, came from Logas. “Liquid metals, salts, and alkali solutions, under high pressure and inside electrical field constraint.” His voice was deadly calm. “I read your threat summary with careful diligence, and while I am no biologist I can only surmise that they are somehow feeding on these flows. These passages extend for many kilometers. They reach into the heart of the lowest levels, provide essential material components for heavy industry in regions completely uninhabitable. Normally they are buried deep in the superstructure where living eyes cannot see. Interchanges like this inspection station are quite rare, most go unnoticed save by droids. We were lucky Esk stumbled into this one.”

“I did not stumble,” the Dead Warden crouched down, knees bent, against the far wall. “I was hunting cthons.” His white hand moved along the wall slowly, fingertips brushed across a set of nearly invisible marks in the surface. “Their sign is here now. We cannot stay long.”

“Cthon?” the word rang familiar in Nema's ears, but it did not immediately trigger recognition.

“You're serious?” Logas shifted his masked face toward the green-painted one. “Those things are real?”

Huge eyes somehow scowled without any mouth motion. Apparently answering this lay beneath the dignity of the Dead Warden.

“They're real,” Isoxya spoke for the first time since the descent, her voice tightly controlled, battle serious. “Wretched things. Eat each other while still alive. A few are no threat, but we'd best be gone before a pack gathers.”

Time limits were not conductive to either effective medicine or quality science, but Nema did not mention this. The warrior's description was sufficiently evocative to pull together shards of gossip and rumor told to her by patients regarding this particular monstrous troglodyte lifeform. She had no desire to encounter any such creatures, certainly not in narrow tunnels. “I need a sample, at least, and a chance to image them in their native environment.” She moved to a point where the wrapped cables descended far enough to be touched without anything worse than stretching and began to extract implements from her bag. “A few minutes.”

Acquisition of a sample was in fact all too easy. The surfaces of the conduits were positively saturated with elongate, wire-like forms coated in mucous secretions the consistency of gun oil. They enervated the structure entire and extended from one end of room to the other. “Vessels,” Nema realized at once when she slid a filamentous piece beneath her microscope. “It's a vascular system, like in plants, only it uses charge pressure rather than vapor pressure to conduct flow.”

“Transport?” Logas looked over her shoulder. His was the only other interested party. The hunters were engaged in a search for more immediate menaces. “What for? What purpose can it serve to move a quantity of bulk metals about? These conduits only transport industrial precursors, nothing refined or valuable.”

“Arsenic.” Something cold burrowed deep into the Jedi's chest alongside that single word. A feeling of dread, premonition terrible, took hold there and would not let go. Unknowable possibilities spun through her imagination, hideous nightmares unformed cascaded now, ballooned and supercharged by the deep-lying seed of darkness. “YH-life is arsenic limited,” she spoke the words without hearing them. “Its ability to expand through any environment in which CC-life, in which us, can survive is restricted by the lack of arsenic. But this,” her hand brushed the edge of the afflicted conduits. “This is a mighty supply, enough to empower a vast act of creation, the brewing of a hidden army in the depths.”

For all his cultured mannerisms and educated veneer there was a core part of Ditwar Logas that was literally hard as durasteel. This brutal practicality shot a lifeline through the shadows of shapeless tendrils haunting the Jedi then. “If it's a fuel store, then we'd better burn it,” he declared without the slightest hint of hesitation. “Any ideas?”

“The YH components are deeply integrated, any control measure would have to be capable of propagation through countless kilometers of conduit,” Nema could not begin to think of any means to trigger a suitable chain reaction.

“What about an electrical discharge?” Logas suggested immediately. “According to reports they are vulnerable to such pulses.”

Truly unnerved, Nema completely ignored the revelation that this man had read the highly classified reports to the Republic Bio-terrorism Countermeasures Division and Republic High Command she'd composed. “It won't work,” she shook her head slightly. “These are charged conduits. They're shielded. A blast sufficient to destroy them would melt half of Coruscant.”

“Point,” agreement came swiftly, but the operative remained undaunted. “Well, what about some other kind of blast? Gamma rays, or infrared, or-”

“Microwaves,” Nema interrupted as the answer jumped from thought to tongue. “YH-life is still water-mediated. A microwave pulse could kill them through internal boiling and cause the growths to simply slough off.”

This drew tentative support from Logas, but also called attention to a highly technical obstacle. “That could work, but you'll need to target the radiation with extreme precision. In order for a pulse to propagate through all this metal you cannot vary the frequency whatsoever, only amplitude modulation is possible.”

“Find the frequency,” Nema pulled up her diagnostic scanner and extracted an active sensor chord. Tapping through the menus rapidly she induced a brief microwave pulse from the end of the projector. Finally she switched on variable frequency generation and keyed it to a single isolated dial. “The Force will guide me.”

With a single swift motion she extended her hand and touched the barest tips of her fingers to the infected cable.

One breath filled her lungs. Eyes closed. Sound abandoned her ears.

Nema descended into the world of the alien hyphae.

It expanded around her, wheel and filament, gear and plane, all constructed into the form of microbial capillaries. They pulsed together in time, cargo pushed along high efficiency molecular channels by waves of electromagnetism. A stream of infinite braids carried metallic feedstock across vast distances one molecule at a time.

There, in that space within, a place hidden behind scale and scope, her intuition swam in dissolved metallic slurry. Impressions collected along the edge of elemental crystals, beautiful highlights of atomic structure and molecular bonding. Pulses matched to energy flow keyed from one lattice to the next, felt, grasped, and reckoned without the use of senses.

Somewhere far away a dial turned. A sweeping tide rose up and washed over the geology of atoms.

Filaments quivered, gears spun, and the channeled solution bubbled and shook. Nema, utterly unaware while enmeshed in absolute clarity, followed the path of those micron-span cavitations. They guided her through the molecular currents and revealed the path to the roiling boil.

Time passed. How much could not be known. All typical sensation, all the familiar guidelines of biology, vanished. Only the steady radioactive pulsations and the quivering, shaking, response existed in these scalar depths. The tide rose, fell, and at last blasted forth with tsunami strength. A single burst of power struck that sleeted matrix and set it alright from all sides as one. Heat blasted across every pore. Light flared. Sound broke through ahead of hurricane winds.

Nema fell back into darkness, face red. Sweat poured out across her skin. Blood strained at the walls of every capillary till the skin pulsed and teeth ached.

Only her hands remained still. “Got it,” she held up the screen that Logas might see. She barely noticed that he had moved to kneel beside the far wall.

“You are certain?” he questioned. “It is only that I suspect we will get but one chance at this. Whoever receives this input on the other end is likely to react.

“This is the correct frequency,” Nema replied confidently. She knew it with absolute certainty. Some things passed beyond all doubt.

“In that case, I suppose there is no time to waste.” The agent's masked skull turned and the doctor saw that his left hand was not simply held against the wall panel, but that it was actually plugged in to a node jack using a droid interlock extended from the center of his palm. “I took the liberty of slicing into the maintenance systems while you were working. Remarkably basic for something so critical, really, though all of the more catastrophic options do demand specialized hardware. Regardless, I can send a microwave pulse from here that will blast the whole network.” He shrugged lightly. “It will take just a few seconds.”

He did not wait for confirmation or permission. The device attached to his arm cycled through a one-quarter turn. A brief spark flashed across the plug. The emergency lights flickered for a fraction of a second.

As simple as that it was done. Moments later a rain of fine gray ash began to drift down from above.

Ditwar Logas's prediction regarding those on the other end was entirely correct. There was indeed a reaction. It simply was not one he could detect.

From below, from within, it struck; a furious raging explosion of essential emotion. Light-less anger of utterly primal source forged into a single spear of wrath.

This bolt of repulsion impacted point first upon the heart of Nema's awareness.

It dealt the Jedi a physical blow. A black pointed cone cored into her vertebrae and tore free in one motion. She crumpled as if boneless, dropped to the floor in a heap. All knowledge of the world without burned free of her consciousness.

Entwined tendrils of yellow, black, and colors without a name radiated across her mind. Spike-sharp twitches lashed against her self, not in flesh, but in the luminous frame of the Force. They burrowed there, hungry for retribution; sought to tear her apart.

“Ia! Ia! Ia!” Wordless cried echoed across her mind and formidable shades unshaped stalked her through the Force. She could feel words buried beneath their fury, a brutal combination of meaning and intent, but their nature rested far beyond on some alien shore. Only their most primordial desire could be translated; the will to harm.

Had this been her first encounter with this strange, shrouded expression of the Force the Jedi might well have succumbed. Absent recognition resistance was impossible. Those tunneling whips would ravage her until naught remained.

But she knew them by now.

The strange deflected energy was familiar. Instinct, now recognition buried in a level far below consciousness, recognized it. Some intrinsic cellular portion of her being understood the attack for what it was and exercised all the potential of her natural immune system. Even as her body struck the floor her basic limbic system had already begun to filter her being. All that she was passed through a sieve of the self. The alien enemy blocked behind, sealed away past membranes through which it could not follow, until she was whole once more.

At the same moment as the padding of her headdress compressed against the plating beneath and spared her skull a concussion Nema's eyes snapped open. Awareness restored in full. She reveled in the ordinary pain of the fall.

But she did not regain control in time to prevent the butt of her lightsaber from striking the deck. The impact resounded with a single clear clang.

This sound echoed against the walls, along the metal strands, and across countless holes and channels to places far and near. A moment later, even as Isoxya helped the Jedi to her feet, a roar rumbled back down in answer.

“Cthon,” Esk's whispered voice filled the silence that followed. “Many. We run.”

They scrambled out and back down the access stair, but made it no further than the first junction before they found the path blocked. A full pack of cthons rumbled down the tunnel access, their bodies barred the return route.

Nema had seen many strange creatures in her travels across the galaxy and service on Coruscant. She generally considered herself open-minded with regard to the variable appearance of life-forms. Despite this, even she could find no means to describe these horrors of the underworld as anything but hideous.

Top-heavy, with wide shoulders and arms that extended all the way down to their heels, they varied in size from the height of an astromech to that of a Wookiee. Tight skin bulged with prominent veins across their muscled but emaciated forms. Worst of all were the heads. Wide, nearly circular, mouths filled with mismatched fanged incisors and reinforced by massive bite muscles dominated the face. Above that bones receded to the point that the unseeing skin-covered pale vestiges that served the creatures as eyes protruded on stalks. The skull itself was massively atrophied. All bone not needed to support the jaws sacrificed. The brain protruded free of protection behind the face, encased only in a transparent membrane that gave it a horrid violet cast; a mind filled with entrails.

Oversized clawed hands bloated from the ends of their arms. Those spikes were powerful, able to tear marks in metal and find purchase on all sides of the passage. Headless of danger, absent restraint, they charged forward from every angle.

Any effort to retrace steps led into the heart of this ravening swarm.

With a cacophonous mixture of roars and chatters, bats and lions mashed together, the cthons charged.

Seeing this massed advance, and the way the monsters tumbled over each other cutting and slashing in the press, Nema made a sudden choice. “Isoxya!” she shouted to the Stoneweb Runner. “Breakthrough! Draw them off. We'll find another way out.”

“Perfect!” Powered by whirling wheels, the armored warrior launched herself over the heads of her allies and into a brutal counter-charge. Her right fist made contact with the lead cthon. It smashed through his teeth, pierced his jaw, and emerged through the back of his brain.

The creature dropped as surely as if decapitated.

Wheel spikes dug into plating below. Isoxya spun in place. Elbows and wrists smashed through opposition; hurled olive-skinned brutes into walls and ceilings. As momentum equalized and blood dripped down every surface she spun up her motors and blasted forward through the heart of the pack.

Driven by the scent of death, other cthons followed. Many chewed as they ran, pieces of their shattered fellows stuffed into slavering maws.

Three human-sized predators chose to tack the opposite direction and assault those who remained.

The first fell to a snap-shot from Logas. The operative fired with his rifle held in the right arm alone, not waiting to brace or level. The resulting burst nevertheless retained sufficient accuracy to drop the beast.

The next collapsed much closer in, perforated by a speckled pattern of blaster burns across the chest. Out of the corner of her eye Nema saw a stubby, wide-barreled weapon of curious deign crouched in Esk's left hand. Freed from his sleeve, it proved remarkably capable in close quarters.

She ignited the green blade of her lightsaber and stood ready to face the swinging claws of the final cthon as it threw itself forward. The weapon shivered in her grip as she reached desperately for proper timing in the Force.

Instead, something unexpected intervened.

As Nema raised the glowing blade the creature flinched. Only for a moment, but she caught the hesitation as it rippled across the gaunt musculature. It shifted its angle of attack away from the glowing blade, lunged toward Esk instead.

Unprepared for this move, the lightsaber sliced only air.

Deviation cost the cthon a critical second, one exploited by the Dead Warden ruthlessly. He kicked out his right leg. A long, narrow rod, shaped much like a sword but bearing glowing panels rather than a sharp edge, shot free. With a smooth twist Esk grasped and thrust. The blow pierced his foe's guard and struck the tip against the pelvis. There was a sharp discharge and the scent of ionized gas filled the passage.

“Techblade,” Esk answered the unspoken question. “A technology dead to your kind; suited to us.”3 He did not look away from the tunnel, but searched the space vacated by Isoxya. The sounds of distant battle cascaded back from afar. “More will come. We cannot stay here.”

Tapping one finger above his right eye, Logas supplied an option. “There's an emergency stairwell five hundred meters west. Maps indicate it has a sealed airlock at the top. If we can pass through there we should be clear of pursuit.” When questioning faces turned to him thereafter he smoothly amended. “That is, assuming the maps I downloaded remain accurate. Unfortunately there are no guarantees in this region.”

The option was enough for Esk. He scrambled forward down the narrow side passage, leaving the others to follow. It was not an easy path. They were forced to crouch down due to low ceilings and in several places snake forward on their bellies through minimal gaps. The Dead Warden's costume revealed its utility in such moments, for the copious sleeves and hems bunched up about elbows and knees as natural pads. Her own dress, light and spare, lacked such protections, and the Jedi acquired several severe scrapes from the edges of hard metal gratings.

All the while the sound of hunting cthons swelled and surged about them, echoes of places just beyond sight hidden in the infrastructure.

Logas shot a single small one that attempted to follow directly, but otherwise Esk guided the group to the base of the stair without incident at a breath-stealing crawling run. Jedi breathing techniques were not sufficient, nor were cybernetic enhancements apparently, as both other those following the Dead Warden were left gasping for air as they stole glances upward toward escape. The Norcha, by contrast, seemed immune to such needs.

Metal grating comprised the stairwell, inscribed in a tight spiral form wrapped about a central column. Air whistled through the passage from below. A slow, regular pulsation through the floor marked out heavy fans lodged in some deep abyss below.

With no time to consider further, they rested long enough to fill their lungs and began the ascent.

Aligned into tight circles, the narrow wedges of the stair made for a harrowing charge. Knees rose and fell as hearts hammered within chests and the gratings swayed from the pressure of footfalls. Howls of hunger added to this soon enough. A reunited cthon pack stumbled out of the tunnels below and began upward pursuit.

Logas paused in stride to fire downwards in the hope of dissuading these, but his blasts ricocheted madly in the confined zone and dealt no damage. Esk's scatterblaster fared better. It filled the narrow space with many red darts, but the weapon jammed and bucked after six shots and the cthons surged into the gap. Thereafter they abandoned battle for the race.

Cthons were poor stair climbers, and the narrow confines of the column kept them from clamoring up the walls. The gap widened, slightly, before Esk reached the top.

A whirling fan, blades sweeping through thousands of revolutions every minute, blocked any further ascent, but a side path opened at this juncture. A blocky landing with a ladder against the far wall and a secured iris-panel hatch at the second story awaited them. A potential egress at last.

But sealed.

“I can cut the door,” Nema offered. Her lightsaber snapped to life.

“They would simply follow us through,” Logas objected. He shouldered his blaster and vaulted up the rungs. “There's an access port here. I'll slice it, just give me a moment.”

“The fallen only know if enough moments remain,” Esk whispered as he stood at the edge of the steps. The techblade pulsed softly in his right hand, outstretched in a smooth martial stance. Salt crystals in his hair twinkled in the overlapping strode of emergency panels and lightsaber glows. Not the slightest hesitation afflicted his movements.

As Nema stepped forward to join this desperate stand despite her utter inability to share the Norcha's conviction, her footsteps crossed such that the emission from her lightsaber caught those crystals and flashed back against her eyes.

Something bright blossomed there, chill and soft illumination, low but long-burning.

Driven by an impulse unnamed and a recollection of hesitation she extended her hand abruptly. With a flick of her fingers, she grasped and pulled. A strand of salt-encrusted hair came free between the digits.

Esk turned in shock and sudden spite at the same moment a hulking Herglic-sized cthon breached the last stair.

Without wavering Nema raised her lightsaber high. Using the pull of the Force, not her flesh, she pulled the nearly weightless strand along the edge of the blade with exquisite care. It lined up just so, perfectly parallel as it fell through the edge of the plasma stream. In the clarity of the Force the crystalline lattice aligned with the pulsation of the crystal emanation, joined beyond sight.

The cthon reared to strike.

Nema wrapped the Force around saber and salt. Together as one, she pushed them into fusion.

Many salts, when added to a flame, will change its color. In that moment Nema's green blade flared yellow, but it was not the visual radiance that mattered. Cthon eyes did not see. Sightless beasts, they navigated without light, sensitive to other forms of radiation. Including the fluctuations of the Force.

Dead Wardens have no fear of the end. They face the predators of the deep in the complete absence of hesitation. Only in strength of numbers will the monsters dare the bounds of this implacable enemy, overcome their fear. Nema took that relationship, gathered it through the Force, and with the aid of the crystal at the heart of her lightsaber cast it forth ten thousand fold.

The degenerate hunters of the underworld depths cowered and whimpered before the blade.

Jedi hands the same color as her weapon held the burning brand aloft before the stairs and waited. The moment stretched out through one endless pause.

Until the door opened behind her.

Esk was gone before she turned. Nimble and swift the Norcha shot across the platform and jumped up to the aperture four rungs at a time. He slipped inside past Logas before the Jedi finished her first step.

When her foot came down again Nema watched the strange golden brilliance fade from her saber in an instant.

She turned and sprinted. Two steps, and the cthons' breath rasped hot across her back. To dare a third stride would be the end.

Instead, she bent both knees, grasped desperately to the Force, and sprang.

As she arced through the air above outstretched claws, Nema recognized in one glance that she would fall short. Just barely, far enough to grab the top rung, but not enough to close the gap. The monsters would grab her and pull her down.

She stretched out all the same. Surrender before the disgusting creatures beneath rejected.

Impact drove the breath from her lungs. She barely managed to maintain hold with her left hand. Her lightsaber dangled loose in the other, point down, useless for defense in numb fingers. From below the hulking cthon reached upward to tear her legs apart.

A gloved hand closed atop Nema's left wrist. Guided by the Force, she let go the rung.

With deliberate, impossible strength Logas lifted her whole weight upon one arm and pulled her up and through the portal into the tube beyond.

The iris clanged shut behind her instantly. Claws scraped helplessly against solid durasteel.

Speechless, the doctor stared blankly ahead, eyes lost among the smooth metal sides.

She watched as Logas pulled back from the inner access port and stood back up. As she stared at him, this dangerous combination of man and machine, she realized this little adventure had not clarified her feelings, only sowed confusion. Questions queued up behind her tongue, unspoken.

Cold optical panels followed her as she slowly rose to knees and feet. A mirrored impulse projected across the gulf between them.

“I can chart a safe path from here,” the quiet and somehow perfectly calm voice of Esk penetrated the confused interlude. “Let us go.”

Lacing any practical reason to object, they followed.

It took over two hours of crawling, climbing, and creeping to return to the network access. Nema was not surprised in the slightest to find Isoxya had returned long since. The Stoneweb Runner's presence was marked out by a wide pool of grimy water tainted by a gruesome medley of colors mixed from cthon blood and ichor. She'd drained an entire emergency fire suppression cistern washing off her armor. Scrapes and pits marked several shining scales, but she stood unharmed.

“Nasty things,” she remarked idly as the trio flopped down by Logas' speeder. “Sticky.”

“Your touching concern is noted,” the operative mocked.

This drew no more than a shrug from the Stoneweb Runner. Nema had to stifle the urge to giggle. Any such impulse vanished as Esk pressed up close beside her. Huge dark eyes seemed to swallow the world amid his face. “You have struck a blow against this strange hostile rising. It is appreciated, but this will hinder it modestly at most. Our vigil endures, but this realm is vaster than any sentinels can see. Prepare well, you will needs face it again.”

With these words, and no more, he vanished down the path they had come.

“Cryptic are they not?” Logas noted when the Norcha left easy hearing. “Yet they have a wealth of intelligence regarding spaces otherwise known only to droids and scavengers. We managed to put a stop to the harvest, at least.”

“We did,” Nema nodded lightly. It was a victory, if only a temporary one. She could not help but speculate as to what that horrible presence in the back of her skull sought to build, and what it might take to stop it when fully unleashed. “Let's go,” she announced. “We all need refresher time, and have reports to write.”

Isoxya accepted this easily. “This was a fine run, call me along next time too.” She rolled off with a wave, seeming quite satisfied.

“That woman is terrifyingly casual about all this,” Logas commented as he eased into his speeder.

“She spent fifty years with hundreds or thousands of lives depending on the outcome of every mission,” Nema replied cautiously. “Now there is only us. I can see how it would feel liberating.” The option, the tantalizing possibility, of putting aside her lightsaber for private research, held a similar siren song of freedom.

Not now, of course, too many people needed help, but she was not strong enough to think the appeal would not grow as the decades passed.

Rather than address this, the agent chose a different subject as he turned the vehicle about for the return journey. “How did you halt the cthon? There was light, but they have no eyes. That should not have mattered.”

“The light was simply a by-product,” Nema answered cautiously. Not only was she unsure of this man still, even after he had reached down to save her, but she struggled to find the words to describe what she had done. “The true flare was invisible, not electromagnetic at all, but projected in the Force. They may not fear light, but there are still things they fear.”

He remained silent for a long time after this. It would not be until he pulled to a stop in front of her clinic that he ventured another inquiry. “What do you think YH-life wants? Officially its some sort of Separatist bio-weapon, but it must be more than that. The Norcha talk about it like it’s some kind of ancient demon or something equally ridiculous.”

“I don't know,” admitting this scared her more than anything else. Nema desperately desired to comprehend the goals of that horrible shapeless thing blasted across the back of her mind. “I think it's simply exploiting the war, acting while we're distracted, vulnerable.” She did not want to admit just how well-chosen the moment was. No team of Jedi Knights hunted this phantom of the depths. Only her, one doctor, teamed with a gathering of strangers. “Perhaps it intends to claim the heart of the galaxy for itself.”

“Hmm...” After a brief pause Logas offered one final line. “Well then, Doctor Nema, as far as this matter is concerned, our interests are wholly aligned.”

“Thank you” She replied when she stepped out, and surprised herself by meaning it. A curious mixture of sensation afflicted her. “Hopefully it will extend further in time.”

He did not respond to that before leaving.

It left Nema to wonder just how far the interests of the Jedi and the Chancellor might diverge elsewhere, and what might come of such differences. Surely nothing that could not be resolved. They were all one people after all, not like the ancient thing below.



Notes

1. Ditwar Logas is technically a canonical character, in that he was named by another character, Obo Rin, as a sentientologist to bolster his credentials. How it is this particular Ditwar Logas gains a reputation as a renowned sentientologist is a bit convoluted, but shall eventually be revealed.

2. Esk is one of the letters in the Aurebesh alphabet, which is why Nema wonders about the Norcha’s peculiar name.

3. Techblades are a common weapon in SWTOR, but seem to no longer be in use in the PT Era.

 

As always I enjoy the fascinating adventures of Doctor Nema.