As strange as it might sound, credit where it's due to the late Ennix Devian — the bastard knew good tech. And the enormous pile of money sunk into the ship she'd stolen from the Imperial Palace had paid for itself completely.
The Flame easily bypassed the orbital group of Black Sun starships.
Though it would be more accurate to call the five Keldabe II-class battleships, supported by a dozen Crusader II-class corvettes, that were patrolling over Smarck, the Zann Consortium fleet. Which is what they essentially were.
There was no doubt that the fat Star Galleons lifting off from the surface and clearly preparing to depart also belonged to the Dominion's enemy's puppets.
And it didn't matter what emblems were painted on their hulls — the late Xizor's favorite toy or Tyber Zann's creation.
They were all enemies. Having camouflaged her ship among the trees and shut down electronics to hide her transport from visual detection from above, Mara Jade, the Hand of Thrawn, moved toward her target. It took several hours to bypass the detection systems and patrols, but she reached her objective. Wandering alone through the mountains, surrounded by enemies — hardly a pleasure. But it kept her in shape. Which, in turn, would ensure the successful completion of the mission the Grand Admiral had entrusted to her. And proper execution of the task was what she needed right now. Not only to correct the dismal statistic of her successes and failures, but also to prove to herself that she truly deserved to be an agent standing above the rest. Above the simple special agents of Dominion Intelligence, Bravo class.
Above ordinary Jensaarai.
Above the deeply embedded Shadow Guards.
She simply had to be the best at the task she'd taken on at the behest of her...
Hm.
Well, yes, in the current reality it would be stupid to call Thrawn 'master,' 'lord,' or use any other such synonyms. And calling him 'her Grand Admiral' was somehow awkward... Even the thought of such phrasing reeked of the pomposity Mara had always disliked.
Alright, stupid thoughts aside. Today she wasn't playing the 'ditzy adjutant' role.
Today she was without masks entirely. Today she was simply the Hand of Thrawn.
And she had completed the first part of her operation — she'd reached the Black Sun base, in whose depths the Spaarti cloning cylinders were most likely located.
The question 'Where did the criminals get them in the first place?' remained open — let other intelligence services work on that.
For her part, Mara could only say what she'd already reported to Thrawn before receiving the assignment.
She had never heard from Palpatine about a base on Smarck or a second set of Spaarti cloning cylinders, besides the ones she'd seen on Wayland during trips there with Palpatine. Still, what she saw through her monocular finally dispelled her doubts about Palpatine's involvement in creating this base in the form the Black Sun currently controlled it.
"This is definitely not 'Wayland 2.0,'" the red-haired agent muttered, tucking the observation device into her belt pouch.
The Black Sun base on the planet Smarck.
This was, by the Emperor's black bones, not even remotely similar to Palpatine's treasure vault on the planet Wayland!
There, the mountain remained a mountain, and only the technical equipment at the main entrance revealed that Mount Tantiss contained something not created by nature. But the base on Smarck... This was a full military complex!
The structures hadn't even been hidden within the rock! There was no talk of 'natural camouflage' whatsoever. The massive main entrance building, the tower-like structures protruding from and rising above the cliff, clearly military in purpose — barracks or military centers, numerous speeders and cargo ships...
Whoever ran this place clearly wasn't worried that the developed and intensively used summit of the largest rock on Smarck would attract the attention of the local population or orbital observers.
The bet was placed on the planet being virtually unknown to the galaxy — the locals were farmers, had no spaceport of their own (she wondered if they'd had one before Black Sun arrived, or if it had disappeared afterward?), lay far from busy regional hyperspace lanes...
All the owners of this base under the mountain had bothered with were the surveillance sensors laid in several layers around the perimeter of the territory surrounding the cliff, yes.
Yeah...
Mara hadn't noticed any anti-space defenses here, nor any base of planet-based fighters.
Either the criminals were too confident that no one would drop by unannounced, or there was an entire fleet hidden nearby, ready to arrive at the first call.
Hutt, there weren't even defensive stations!
Then again, maybe they were just camouflaged — in the past, the Zann Consortium had often demonstrated its knowledge of using cloaking technology stolen from the Empire.
That was most likely the case — otherwise, such a careless attitude toward the security of a facility of this type would be an unforgivable tactical mistake.
A miscalculation that didn't fit the image of Tyber Zann as a genius, deftly leading the entire galaxy by the nose, including those who had contributed to the fall of his own regime in the past: the Empire and the New Republic.
If she could find out exactly what was happening here and what defense systems the planet had, she would give Thrawn a certain advantage.
Only the small stuff remained — get inside the facility and figure out what was what.
And what objective reasons were dictating the facility's evacuation.
That it was happening needed no guesswork — the cargo ships in orbit said so almost outright.
It took her ten minutes to figure out how she could infiltrate the facility.
Yes, the enemy hadn't even tried to camouflage their base. They hadn't planted wooded areas to cover the shafts venting warm air from the mountain, or the air intakes that kept those inside the rock from suffocating.
There were also no animals here, which the Empire, in its heyday, would have settled near its bases and secret lairs.
Such creatures reacted to the operation of anti-gravs, repulsors, and other drive systems, alerting the garrison to the appearance of machinery where it shouldn't be by definition.
None of that here.
Even the windows and dormers on the buildings weren't made secure against possible entry.
And as for sentries and surveillance systems — there were so many that you could even sneak an AT-AT inside and still have a good chance of keeping it secret.
But she wasn't going to tempt fate.
She had to act with certainty.
Mara slipped behind the protruding part of the cliff she'd been hiding behind from visual detection, and closed her eyes for a moment.
The Force flowed around her, expanding the boundaries of her perception.
Jade exhaled deeply and opened her eyes, showing her green irises to the world again.
Yes, her assumption was correct — the sentry she'd been worried about was distracted by something else and wasn't watching his assigned sector.
But she had no way of knowing what awaited her inside the complex.
Because in the Force, the mountain and its contents were a solid black void, hiding the living beings from her.
Exactly the same as it had been on Wayland, when she'd investigated Colonel Selid's activities there.
Ysalamiri — Thrawn had warned her about their possible presence at the Black Sun base.
Well, this severely limited her arsenal of tools, but business was business.
Even without the Force, she was still the Hand of Thrawn.
If she relied solely on the Force, as many Jedi did, she'd be worth a deci-credit.
Maybe even less.
It took her some time to sneak into the ysalamiri's field of effect, weave through crevices, double back a bit to exit the range of the hutts' lizards, and reach the mountain slope she was interested in, beneath which an observation post was nestled.
If there had been any detectors in her path, they clearly weren't working now.
Otherwise, Mara would already be in trouble.
One way or another, she reached the overhang sheltering the observation post from rainfall and the midday heat without any incidents.
And Smarck's sun was something else — the girl could already feel she was sweating in her coverall.
The strong air currents would certainly have ruffled the Hand of Thrawn's wild mane of red hair if she hadn't braided it and tucked it under her headgear beforehand.
A standard field helmet, like the ones the Rebel squadrons on Endor loved so much.
But the moment she examined the window spaces up close, she immediately dismissed thoughts of the stupidity of those who'd designed the security and surveillance system for this facility.
One look through her optical probe was enough to study the protective grid covering the open window openings.
From a distance, she hadn't seen it — the 'bars' were too thin.
Which turned out to be nothing less than molecular monofilament strands.
Such things were often used by some mercenaries for beheading their victims — a single press was enough to inflict a deep wound.
And the only chance to get inside was to rappel down and squeeze through the opening.
Where you'd either be cut to pieces, or, from the pain of wounds across your entire front torso, you'd recoil from the narrow ledge and plunge into the abyss.
Screaming your death throes across the local mountains.
As far as the eye could see, the monofilament fibers ran deep into the walls and window slopes.
An impressive obstacle — but not for a lightsaber.
The girl listened to the Force again.
There was only one guard inside the observation post.
And he was clearly more interested in something else than his duties.
It seemed he was still engrossed in playing on his personal deck, as she'd managed to see through her optical probe.
Well, then...
She just needed him to come to the window.
Mara felt a small pebble beside her and threw it precisely onto the ledge, attracting the sentry's attention.
The Black Sun operative didn't react to the first noise, but after the second pebble, he deigned to get up and approach.
Straight to the opening above which Mara was positioned.
Gripping her lightsaber, she thrust it downward, hitting the activation button quickly and using the Force to guide the violet blade through the enemy's head.
Vaporizing part of the strands, which hung in the opening as useless bits of metal.
The sound of a body hitting the balcony floor came.
Mara froze for a time, waiting for an alarm.
But nothing happened.
So the strand tension wasn't wired to the alarm.
But it would be better to wait a little longer.
You never know.
After half an hour, no one had come to the post.
So there was no security system here either.
Confirming the safety of her maneuver, Mara slipped inside.
It took her another minute to check, using the Force, that her move had gone unnoticed by anyone outside.
After that, she tossed the remains of the Weequay — with its skull and dura-steel helmet neatly sliced through — over the balcony railing.
Again, nothing.
Not the slightest flicker of interest.
Well, it seemed the facility's evacuation was a higher priority for the local command than maintaining vigilance.
The girl looked at the dark corridor opening leading deeper into the rock, then stepped into the ysalamiri's field of effect, swapping her lightsaber for a small blaster.
Modified by Dominion weapons specialists to produce minimal sound and flash on firing — like the blasters for assault commandos — she began her march into the enemy base.
* * *
"Grand Admiral," Captain Tschel approached me. "The Thunder reports that their recon drones have detected activity from automated tracking stations on the route we just crossed."
"Expected," I nodded. "Early warning system."
"Should I relay any additional orders to the commanders of our Star Destroyers?" the Chimaera's commander inquired.
"No," I declined. "Our task force operates under the previous instructions. Make sure the commanders of the Sentinel and the Link have started warming up their mass shadow generators. I want them activated the moment we enter the Smarck system."
"It will be done, sir." Tschel turned to return to the pits.
"Wait, Captain," I said, still peering into the haze of hyperspace. "I have additional instructions."
"Sir?" Tschel raised his eyebrows questioningly. "But you just said there were no orders for our Star Destroyers."
I turned to size up the young Star Destroyer commander from head to toe.
"Who said anything about the ships in our task force, Captain?" I inquired.
* * *
Mara had once prided herself on her spatial orientation within facilities like this, but over time she'd been forced to admit that whoever built this base had nothing in common with the concept of humanity.
The Black Sun base on Smarck most resembled a huge Geonosian hive city, where a map was something out of science fiction.
She walked through empty corridors, repeatedly stumbling upon enormous artificial caverns.
And from the marks on the dusty floor, she realized the operatives had clearly already emptied the contents of these rooms.
If she figured it out, the base was starting to resemble a huge warehouse containing smaller warehouses within it.
She was probably seeing rooms organized by the generic division of the items inside them.
In several places, she managed to come across something resembling a wall map.
Guided by it, she changed direction three times before she got out of the part of the base where the passages and rooms were simply carved into the rock by construction equipment.
No one there had even thought to decorate the interior.
But the closer she got to the heart of the base, the more often she began to encounter Black Sun soldiers, repulsor carts hauling thousands upon thousands of containers of all shapes and sizes out of the endless depths of the base.
The gangsters were emptying their warehouses.
Now she had no doubt that the base was being evacuated.
Along with all its contents.
Maybe she was even too late.
But not so late that she'd lose heart and give up.
She kept the layout of Wayland's communications in her head, and couldn't help but note that the central part of the mountain — where the corridors were adorned with wall signs and the floor was poured with duracrete — the base on Smarck clearly had a lot in common with Palpatine's treasury.
Which was v-e-r-y strange, considering the fact that Palpatine's vault was supposed to be secret.
And its architect had been dead for a long time, and there was simply nowhere to get the treasury plans.
Unless you asked Palpatine himself.
But, knowing the old bastard's character firsthand, Mara reasonably doubted he would have given such documents to anyone.
It was entirely possible the plans were stolen after Palpatine's death.
One only had to remember that Tyber Zann and his operatives had managed to gain access to the Eclipse at the Kuat Drive Yards.
And also that, according to Thrawn, Zann had captured the Imperial Palace in CorpSec.
And who knows what else from the vast legacy of Palpatine's secrets and personal mysteries.
Given that the Anaxesian was the one commanding this rabble, perhaps he'd found those plans somewhere.
Anyway, it didn't matter anymore.
The main thing was that Mara knew where she needed to go.
Playing hide-and-seek with patrols and loaders, she spent several hours finding a suitable air duct (and again — thanks to her own ingenuity, which had made her thoroughly explore Mount Tantiss, not just rely on plans alone). The red-haired woman, whose tactical suit was already coated with dust that irritated her, seeping under her clothes and into her nostrils.
Seems like crawling through the ventilation on a base behind enemy lines was becoming a habit.
Just remembering her raid on Yaga Minor...
Brrr...
After this assignment, she'd ask for a week off and soak in a jacuzzi in her modest apartment, bought under a front name on the trading planet Ketaris in the Oplovis sector.
Where, actually, Thrawn's summons had found her a few days ago.
The housing wasn't what you'd call luxurious compared to the Imperial Palace on Coruscant, where she'd spent her whole life, but at least the apartment on Ketaris she'd bought with her own savings.
Well, almost her own...
Thrawn had simply returned those millions — the value of the goods on Myrkr.
The same ones she'd given the Grand Admiral as her contribution when she'd entered his service.
She had no doubt that the Grand Admiral would eventually find out about her "hiding place," but by then she planned to acquire a couple more little apartments where she could, if necessary, disappear.
But all that was unnecessary sentiment.
Mara kept the level map in her head, orienting herself by it as she crept forward.
Cursing silently, feeling uncomfortable without the Force, she still made it to the mine shaft she needed.
Sliding forward, braking against the side panels with her shoulders and legs, she reached a large ventilation grate silently. Judging by the smell of dampness, it led into a large cave.
On Wayland, the cloning laboratory had been perfectly ventilated, but here everything was somehow...
Fine, let that be on the builders' conscience.
If, of course, they had one.
Pressing herself to the gap in the ventilation screen, Jade began examining the place she'd ended up in.
Well then...
"This is definitely not Mount Tantiss," she said so quietly she barely heard her own words.
Unlike the cave with the cloning equipment, where Spaarti cylinders stuck up around a single structure that supplied the autoclaves with energy from the reactor room, the builders of this stronghold had chosen the path of decentralization.
Yes, this was without a doubt a cloning hall.
Mara easily recognized the many transparisteel cylindrical tanks, inside which were human specimens clearly visible from her position.
Male and female.
Fully matured.
She counted ten narrow (compared to Wayland's) technological "pillars," around which were arranged vertical rows of autoclaves, lit from within.
On each "pillar" six rows of cloning cylinders, installed vertically.
And, if she'd counted correctly — each row contained thirty incubators for clones.
Total, on each "pillar" one hundred and eighty machines for producing human "duplicates."
Multiply by the number of pillars — that came to eighteen hundred cloning cylinders.
All these structures were connected by technological walkways and encircled by ramps, necessary so that the clones, after extraction, wouldn't fall straight onto the cave floor that disappeared into the darkness.
Straining her eyes, she could make out cages with ysalamiri, which were secured under the fenced ramps around each row of clones.
The cages were clearly not of Dominion design.
And the lizards themselves, unlike the ones Mara had seen on the Chimaera, looked somehow tormented, barely alive.
Well, of course — they weren't being petted by Grand Admiral's hands.
Mara pulled a portable holocamera with an infrared anti-glare visor from another pocket on her belt — this way she wouldn't be detected either visually or by technical means.
The girl began recording the room.
Thanks to the night-vision mode, she could clearly make out that the cave containing the cloning installations was about three times larger than its counterpart in the depths of Mount Tantiss.
Which, in itself, didn't change the fact that there were clearly more "pillars" here than she'd distinguished.
As far as the camera's visor range allowed, she managed to count another three dozen of these same "pillars."
And every single one — hung with Spaarti cloning cylinders.
But only these ten were lit, and therefore — operational.
The reason?
One could imagine anything — from a lack of energy or nutrient medium at the facility, to the absence of clones due to the evacuation of the entire facility by its leadership.
Pointless to guess.
Cloning laboratory at the "Black Sun" base on the planet Smarck.
Well then.
At least the first part of her assignment was complete — there really were cloning laboratories on Smarck.
It didn't matter what condition they were all in — even the ones clearly functioning would be enough to augment those capacities for the Dominion.
At present, Grand Admiral Thrawn had at his disposal twenty thousand Spaarti cloning units.
Every fifteen days, they produced twenty thousand clones.
In a month — two full cloning cycles provided a full crew for an unmodified Imperial-class Star Destroyer, as well as several ships of lower classes that didn't require such large crews.
In three months, the Dominion's existing units could create one hundred and forty thousand clones — that was almost four crews for Star Destroyers.
Even if you added just one thousand eight hundred cloning cylinders to that number (not even addressing the question of the other installations Mara had discovered being functional), that meant over the same three months you could get more than twelve and a half thousand new clones.
And that was a lot, given the personnel shortage!
And if you considered that not ten "pillars" were functional, but all forty, then the number of new incubators would be over seven thousand!
Seven thousand two hundred, to be precise.
Over seven full cycles, that many new cylinders could produce more than half a hundred thousand additional clones!
That meant, in the best-case scenario, the Dominion could put nearly twenty thousand experienced specialists under arms in three months!
And what if there wasn't just one such cave in the complex?!
What if there were at least ten?
Mara mentally slapped herself.
Enough.
She was getting carried away.
No matter how many cloning cylinders were here — the Dominion would need every single one.
But right now, something entirely different should be her main concern.
One could practice math for a long time — as long as imagination allowed.
But for the sake of interest, one could temper her alarmism with a simple calculation: if the "Zann Consortium" had had all these cloning cylinders for the last few years, say ten years, at least the ones she'd seen in the cave, and they'd all been working all that time, then Tyber Zann had something like two million clones alone under arms.
And if there were ten such caves here?
That turned out very, very grim.
And to make it even worse, one could think about how many Imperial and Republic officials he'd managed to replace in all that time, like Moff Gronn or Baroness D'Asta?
Bringing herself back to her senses and pushing optimism aside, Mara continued studying the room.
She noticed no guards or surveillance equipment here.
Only control droids, gliding on repulsors along the "pillars," monitoring the equipment's operation.
Their models were simple — mere observers, with no hint of any artificial personality.
In other words — a flying version of a "mouse droid."
Even if one flew into you, it wouldn't raise an alarm.
Time to act.
So, calmly, she released the inner latch on the ventilation grate, swung it open on its hinges, having first secured a dark tether — the color of the gloomy cave — to the holder.
And with the agility of a climber, she descended to the level of one of the nearest "pillars."
Pushing off from the wall, letting the cable stream through her hand, she leaped onto a ramp.
It took just a bit of skill to tuck the end of the cable away so it wouldn't be noticeable.
Turning around, she looked through the transparisteel, which had a slight film of condensation on its surface.
In the semi-transparent gel rested the figure of an unfamiliar young dark-haired woman.
An ordinary clone, nothing remarkable.
Except that all the others in the row were her exact copies.
So either Tyber Zann was producing multiple clones of the same kidnapped individual, or they were copying far more than just the "nobility" that had gone missing for a few weeks.
These were, as she'd suspected, soldiers.
You could tell by the developed musculature, the lack of excess fat.
More than a thousand (and maybe more) women-soldiers.
Ready to soon leave their cradles and go to war.
She traveled through the lab for some time, confirming one thing — on these ten lit "pillars" were exclusively female clones.
Same build, same face.
So who needed nearly two thousand women-soldiers?
She'd already intended to make her way to the terminal located in the center of the entire structure when she saw one section of the wall slide apart, and a strip of light fell from the revealed entrance all the way to that workstation she'd been planning to reach.
"Ladies, don't complain, but right now you're going to be my scary girlfriends," Mara whispered, squeezing between two autoclaves with sleeping women-soldiers.
The joke about how even a beauty queen could get lost in a company of scary girlfriends had found its real embodiment.
Her and the coveted pedestal were separated by about two or three meters, but she couldn't see in advance who exactly was coming this way — the autoclave blocked her view.
But, if the number of shadows matched the number of visitors, there were only two of them.
And one was clearly taller than the other.
"You promised this batch of 'Vultures' would be ready by this morning!" came a voice that clearly belonged to a heavyset human male.
Intonations and voice timbres in a galaxy with hundreds of thousands of species living just in the Core Worlds, in the kind of work that was and still was Mara's, got remembered quickly.
"And it would have been, if you hadn't started the evacuation, Mr. Kaynif," a slow, insinuating alien voice replied.
One that was hard to forget if you'd ever heard a Kaminoan speak.
"Command isn't responding," the first one grumbled. "We're cut off from Etti for some reason. I have clear instructions on this, Orun Va!"
"I have them too," finally, both appeared in the field of view of the hidden Mara.
The Kaminoan, who'd been called Orun Va, was easy to identify.
Tall, with a tiny head on a long neck.
A typical representative of his species.
Which, even if it didn't shine with a desire to visit the galaxy, still had an appearance not shrouded in mystery, as had once been the case with the ancestors of the Mandalorians — the Taungs, or the Tof pirates.
Dressed in a hybrid of a jumpsuit and medical uniform all in one.
Though, if you remembered that this race was directly involved in cloning, gene manipulation, and other delicate medical interventions, it was no surprise.
Mara, given the specifics of her profession, also never left her jumpsuit — both good clothing and protection for the body.
The Kaminoan Orun Va.
But the second one...
The one Orun Va had called "Mr. Kaynif."..
Well, she could admit to herself that her hearing had hardly failed her.
Yes, this was apparently the very Makus Kaynif that Grand Admiral Thrawn had warned her about.
She'd correctly identified the human speech.
Except Makus wasn't human.
And one look at his face was enough to understand that fact.
You didn't need a degree in xenobiology.
Makus Kaynif.
Those like him in the Galactic Empire were called "near-humans."
"Near-human" was a general term for any of the many species or subspecies in the galaxy that were very closely related biologically to baseline humans. In contrast, other humanoid species only shared a general external similarity with humans and had no biological connection.
However, the closely related term "humanoid" was sometimes used too loosely to describe near-human species.
Most near-humans had a close external resemblance to humans, usually with minor differences in skin and eye color or bone structure. Biologically, many near-humans were capable of interbreeding with ordinary humans. Some of them were close enough to the human baseline to be considered a race or ethnic group of humans, rather than a separate species. Similarly, some groups biologically classified as humans, though almost entirely different from the main body of humans in their culture, were considered so distinct that they were sometimes called near-humans.
The second objective of her mission.
Very convenient that he'd also led her to the third (and in the priority list — the first) objective of the entire assignment.
So.
Her efforts were rewarded.
She'd found the cloning cylinders.
She'd found the cloning specialist — and not just some Arkanian recluse, but a Kaminoan! And finally, she'd found the local commander of the "Zann Consortium"! And from the overheard phrases, she also understood that she was currently hiding behind the bodies of cloned "Vultures" the elite agents and operatives of the "Zann Consortium."
Well then...
Now she was beginning to understand how Tyber Zann had achieved such obedience and readiness for self-sacrifice from his saboteur-"Vultures."
They weren't "brainwashed."
They were created that way.
Surely, in the imprint machines that adorned every cylinder here, the necessary program of obedience and self-sacrifice in case of threat or capture was recorded.
Now it was clear why, after the defeat of the "Zann Consortium," they'd never managed to take the "Vultures" found on planets alive — in battle, they simply blew themselves up, vaporizing themselves with super-powerful baradium munitions, which they also used to mine facilities and equipment.
Yeah...
Was it just her, or since Thrawn had started sticking his hands into the galaxy's dirty laundry, more and more new "surprises" kept surfacing?
"Why haven't you sent these clones to the molecular furnaces?" Kaynif demanded, pointing a hand at the glowing cylinders. "Since they're not ready for evacuation, they should be destroyed! Because of these installations running, I can't redirect the power distribution to begin dismantling the cloning cylinders. Or do you want them destroyed when the self-destruct system activates!"
"The equipment doesn't concern me," Orun Va's lack of emotion reminded Mara of her first meeting with Thrawn.
The same kind of impenetrable rationalist.
"Then empty the cylinders!"
"If I do that, the upgraded 'Vultures' will be destroyed," the Kaminoan objected. "I've been working on these improvements since the very creation of the Null-class Advanced Recon Commandos. I and my team have approval from the highest leadership of 'Black Sun' for this activity! Your power shutdowns and preparations for detonating the base only add to my work!"
Is that so...
So Orun Va wasn't the only cloning expert at the facility.
Moreover — he was involved in the creation of clones — the Null-class Advanced Recon Commandos.
The very ones that surpassed their original in every parameter, yielding only in one thing — the ability to obey orders.
While the commando clones, after the establishment of the Galactic Empire, became the first Assault Commandos, and then, like all clones due to aging, moved from the "fighter" category to the "instructor" category, the "Nulls" simply disappeared, erasing all information about themselves and leaving no traces of their altered genetic code on Kamino.
Mara had only read about them in historical chronicles of the Clone Wars.
Though, as she suspected, no one in the Empire would have dared to repeat such an experiment.
Who needed dozens of uncontrollable, professional commandos who didn't follow orders and could think for themselves?
"Then think about this," Makus Kaynif practically hissed. "The early warning system has reported that Star Destroyers are approaching us. Whether it's the Empire or the Dominion doesn't matter. 'Black Sun' would never send our destroyers here. The entire facility is threatened with exposure or capture. What do you think your new generation clone-'Vultures' will have done to them by our organization's enemies?"
"They'll be destroyed," the Kaminoan said calmly. "But why wasn't I told about the approaching destroyers earlier?"
"And along with them — the lab, if we don't get it out of here!" the fat man shouted. "This is a blow to the organization's cause!"
"Why wasn't I told about the destroyers?" the Kaminoan repeated his question, continuing to look down at the near-human.
But instead of an answer, the barrel of a blaster, which the fat man had drawn with virtuosic skill, pressed into his body.
"Because you're just an employee, Orun Va," the man said. "We didn't save you and your group from Kamino for nothing. Either you work for us, or we don't need you. Your developments are already on chips. Either you obey now and destroy all these rejects so the workers can disconnect the equipment chain and finally evacuate the lab, or I'll do it right before your eyes. While you lie at my feet with a hole in your belly. Decide — I'll give you three seconds! One!"
Mara reached for the blaster she'd holstered on her left shoulder while crawling through the ventilation.
"Two!"
"I need just half an hour for the data upload into the brain to happen properly! Starting all over would be months of painstaking work!" for the first time, a hint of emotion appeared in the Kaminoan's voice.
But his opponent was deaf to the pleas, continuing to stare furiously into Orun Va's eyes from below.
The portable blaster settled comfortably into Jade's hand.
Using the fact that she was hidden by the cloning cylinder, the girl took aim.
The silence of the cave was broken by the sound of a comlink.
"Kaynif here!" the fat man barked, distracted from his task, turning his back to the Kaminoan but still holding the blaster ready to fire. And Mara realized that the time had come for her to act. "Hutt's belch! Launch the fighters! Pull the transport ships out of the system! Immedia—" She had a chance not to lose what she'd gained during the mission. "'Interdictors'!? Then pull the 'Star Galleons' to the other side of the planet and have them get out of the system by whatever means possible!" Like a snake, she slipped out from behind the cloning cylinder and ended up next to the railing.
The Kaminoan turned his head toward her.
"They can't catch them all! Make sure there's a 'Vulture' on every ship!" Mara shook her head disapprovingly and pointed at her priority target when he opened his mouth to break his silence. Orun Va wisely shut up. "No surrenders! Blow the transport ships if they try to capture them! The donors must not fall to the Dominion!"
Makus Kaynif shoved the communication device into his pocket at the very moment Jade finished her jump.
Rolling to absorb her inertia, she kicked the blaster out of Kaynif's hands.
Spinning on one leg, she saw the horror with which the enemy was looking at her.
His mouth widening, tongue extended to the edge of his teeth...
With the firm intention of clenching his teeth and crushing the poison ampule and biting off his own tongue.
Or one of the two — at this point it didn't matter.
Her hand reached for the lightsaber on its own.
Without the Force, there wasn't even any point in hoping for a surgically precise strike.
And she didn't even need one.
With a sharp swing, Mara vaporized Makus Kaynif's upper jaw and tongue, severing the remains of his lower jaw in the process.
Kaynif's crazed gaze was worth her heart skipping a beat during that lunge.
Not letting the enemy recover, she spun in place and kicked him in the head with her boot.
The unconscious Makus collapsed to the floor.
Mara turned to the Kaminoan.
The lightsaber blade pressed directly against the center of his chest.
"You have a choice," she said. "Either you make your clones harmless right now, so they don't resist the Dominion's forces, and you and your team work for us, or I execute you right now."
The Kaminoan looked at her with an unblinking gaze from eyes black as the heart of a black hole.
Then his eyelids finally met each other.
"I have a better proposal," he said in an emotionless tone, touching a panel on his suit. "I'll demonstrate them in action for all of you."
After these words, Mara heard the sound of rushing water and the pathetic cries of the ysalamiri drowning in the nutrient medium.
Hundreds of cloning cylinders opened in unison, and from them, stretching their body parts, stepped out hundreds of young, muscular women with killers' eyes, clad only in short undergarments.
Mara cried out as if scalded with boiling water.
On the edge of her perception, with the returned Force, she felt the echoes of deaths around her.
Disoriented, she took a step back, straining with all her might to shield herself from the delusion.
"Into battle," Orun Va commanded, turning his back to Mara and slowly walking toward the exit.
And girls of the same gender as Jade began jumping onto the platform.
The red-haired beast gripped her weapon until her hands ached, preparing for a fight.
This definitely no longer resembled the raid on the Imperial Palace on Coruscant, where, having a lightsaber and the Force, she'd lost to Winter.
Here, no one needed to be taken prisoner.