By the time Adrian circled back and dropped low enough to pick us up, the storm above us had only grown stronger, turning the already dark landscape into a pitch-black one that only got lit up by the lightning strikes. They unpredictably crawled across the sky as we left the wreck behind us, and we didn't speak much as we climbed back aboard. The ramp sealed with a hiss, cutting off the sound of rain, and for a moment, I could finally feel relaxed before refocusing all my attention on our next step. Just then, Adrian's voice came through the comms, as if reacting to my thoughts.
"I've got something from the sample HK had sent up."
"Already?" Vila asked, wiping rain from her face, while we began walking towards the bridge.
"I told you, my ship is not just pretty to look at," Adrian said smugly, "HK's data was surprisingly detailed, so it didn't take long to isolate every background noise and look for something similar and locate it."
[Statement: You're welcome.]
"Yes, yes, you're a genius," Adrian added, "Now let me talk. I cross-referenced the signal patterns with what we're still picking up from the planet, and there's a definitive match."
"Where?" I asked, stepping onto the bridge.
"Not far," he said, turning towards us. "Actually… suspiciously close to where we were." He smiled, "So it's best to turn back now, because soon, I can open the hatch and you can go down again. It's only a few kilometers away now, and I scanned it already." He showed us on the projection, "It is a pretty big, secluded structure, like a summer villa or something. Although, I guess summer here means there is less rain? Anyway, I found no active defenses, no visible patrols, but…" he hesitated for a moment, "The energy readings are still wrong. There is something buried underground, so I would start looking there."
"Underground," Sareh crossed her arms, already thinking ahead, "A hidden facility?"
"Probably," Adrian shrugged. "It does look like one. It's… shielded, though, so I couldn't penetrate too far below the earth. What I gathered are architectural patterns that suggest that it is an extension of the residence above it. Or, well, one of what used to be one."
"What about the battle?" Vila asked, making Adrian shrug.
"Still ongoing, but should end soon. Dad had switched tactics. The bellator has been disabled, and they are trying to capture it. Knowing him, he wants to bring it back home as a prize or something."
"I can guess that the Republic forces aren't happy about it," Sareh snorted, making Adrian shake his head.
"They got saved by us, so... they will have to shut up about it."
"Any sign of our Masters?" I asked, but he shook his head again.
"Nothing yet."
"Keep looking, I won't believe that the Republic and the Remnants got the message, but our side did not."
As for our flight, it was indeed short, because by the time we walked back to the hatch, we had already cut through the storm again, the Vindicator stopping above a massive courtyard that not only had gardens, separate buildings of all kinds, but an elevated villa on a hillside, overlooking it all. Looking at it from above, the stone that made up the walls and buildings was just as dark as the night, almost invisible until a lightning strike illuminated them.
"Landing is pretty easy compared to the forest," Adrian's voice came through the comms. "I'll set you down near the perimeter of the main structure. I am putting down the landing gear, so be ready!"
"Just do it," Vila answered as we waited.
Moments later, the ramp opened again, and we stepped back into the storm, but this time around, we didn't need to jump. We just walked down into an overgrown, unkept garden that was now our landing spot. Where I could see what remained of the decorative hedges, mazes, and gardens thanks to the ship's lights, they got completely dominated by wild weeds and grass. I couldn't help but click my tongue. It had to be majestic in the past...
"Charming place," Vila yelled over the thunder and wind, as we began hurrying towards the main building that Adrian marked for us.
"No signs of recent activity," Sareh added, though her voice was cautious. "I can't see any disturbed foliage, so I don't like it!"
"Neither do I," I said, "But we go in, find where we can go down underground, and blow up whatever we find!"
[Statement: Signal detected. Weak, but consistent. I can get you there, follow me, meatbags.]
"Lead on!" I slapped his back, and we moved after him.
The entrance doors at the top of a fifty-step, engraved stairway to the villa were massive, carved from dark stone and reinforced with metal that had long since corroded away in the constant rain. They didn't resist when HK pushed them open, groaning loudly as they gave way, and we stepped in, igniting our sabers for a source of light.
Inside, the air was very still, stinking of rain getting in, rotting the materials that covered the walls or the floor, creating a foul odor. The sound of rain and thunder also faded behind us as we walked further in, quickly replaced by the creaks and cracks of the floorboards under our combined weight. It was super eerie. However, the deeper we got, the more the interior changed and looked much more preserved. I wouldn't say it stayed intact, but it didn't get ruined by the elements either. Following HK, we walked downwards through a set of stairs, arriving in somewhere that looked like a lounge or something. In there, the furniture remained bolted to the ground, coated in massive layers of dust. We walked past empty tables, shelves, instruments of some kind… Workstations? I stopped at one, blowing the dust away, recognizing some of the tools that were similar to what we found previously, inside the Sith ship.
"This seems like the right residence," Sareh said quietly, stepping closer to a long workbench, doing the same.
"Yeah," I agreed, "I guess somewhere here was another laboratory."
"Then let's find it," Vila said as we looked at each other, and then we moved deeper.
Room by room, the pattern became clearer that we were heading in the right direction. We came past assembly lines, or at least what looked like one, where the original Sith probably made their testing. There were multiple variants of disassembled limbs, different frames of droids in various stages of completion, some little more than skeletal outlines, others nearly finished.
"This guy was seriously into tinkering with his clankers," Vila muttered, then looked at HK with a wry smile, "Sorry."
[Statement: I did not hear that.]
"This is not at the same scale as the factory you found," Sareh countered, examining one of the frames from up close. "I read it all, and... These are, if I'm not mistaken, the original prototypes."
"Or custom builds," I added.
[Observation: Design inconsistencies are detectable. From the start of the room to the end, I can spot multiple iterations. The subject was refining the concept. There is an 81% chance these are indeed the prototypes.]
After we headed on, we found a record in what must have been a study once. It was a datapad, long dead, but the terminal beside it still had minimal power, probably sustained by some ancient system still running beneath the villa. Or by what they restarted after returning home. Naturally, it wasn't listening to us, but Adrian patched in remotely before HK could fully hack it. Was this a competition to prove his ship's computer was superior?
"Let me see if I can, oh yeah… I've got something."
Then the screen flickered to life, showing hundreds of old logs, very much fragmented, but some were still readable. Well, readable, because by then HK had also hacked into it and begun translating Sith speech into basic. Didn't know he knew Sith... huh.
"Got a name…" I pointed at it, the translation scrolling forward, "Tal Naas, or something." I read, trying to find more, "Can't tell much else... The records are way too incomplete, and we only got words or half-sentences."
"I've heard that name before." Sareh's expression tightened at once.
"Where?" Vila asked impatiently.
"Read it in some old Sith Empire records we procured," she continued, "As far as I know, he wasn't a front-line figure, so there was not much recorded of him. There were no glorious or dark feats he partook in... He was a more obscure member of the Dark Council, more of a researcher."
"That fits with everything else we had seen," Adrian muttered.
"There is more here," I said suddenly, finding parts that were more than just garbled words, "Let's see... Assigned directive: develop autonomous combat constructs capable of countering Eternal Empire forces."
"Eternal Empire…" Vila repeated, "Sooo... They are not with those lot, then?"
"Seems like it," Sareh said, trying to also read it, "But that places him during that era, which fits with what I know," She added.
I shifted the logs just then, and to our surprise, more complete data were unearthed, seemingly from some kind of personal musings. Heh, HK didn't want to lose to Adrian's computer, hm?
"The Force is inefficient in its current application, as I get limited by my own biological constraints. All of this existence is... Wasteful." I frowned as I read it aloud.
"That's not how a Sith talks." Vila xhaled, looking between Sareh and me, "Am I wrong?"
"No," Sareh agreed. "That's akin to saying that 'I am weak, kill me' or something. Recording a thought like this is akin to immediate forced suicide."
"There's more," I said as I kept going. "Through proper application of sigils and runic channels, the Force can be harnessed in two ways. One, I can harness it as a stable energy source that no longer requires living conduits. Second, I can harness it to my new frame, like a dress, tied to it via alchemically etched runes. My experiments are proving successful; soon, I can create a new body, capable of using the Dark Side as well as my current body. It just needs an initial..." I shrugged, shaking my head, "Well, that's where it cuts off. But now I get why I feel the Dark Side around them the way I do. The bastard managed to create a system to store and harness it, didn't he?"
"He reduced the Force to a battery...?" Vila asked, feeling disgusted.
"Or tried to," I added, "Doesn't seem like it worked well, doesn't it? The droids can't use Force powers, even if they are unaffected by it. So it's... a half-and-half situation. They are infused with it, but it is only good for protection against others' Force powers. Let's see... There is one more line that's readable: My current limitation is my own mortality. My flesh is decaying, and soon my mind will follow. The solution is obvious: I must transfer myself into a new body. It is ahead of schedule but... I can't waste more time. If I die, my expereiments die with me."
"How does this help their fight against the Eternal Empire?" Sareh asked, rubbing her face.
"I don't think he cared about that," Adrian joined the conversation again, "My computer is analyzing the data, and it came up with a possible answer. There is a high probability that he was using his task to further his own interests. He was outwardly working to understand their droids and their workings, while in reality, he was conducting his own little experiment, wanting to become immortal. And I think he failed."
"Why do you say that?" I asked, stepping away from the terminal.
"Because from the recovered data, I can see different matrices, or fragments of such. Kael, I'm pretty sure this isn't a transferred Sith but an AI born from experimenting with transference. He had to have copied countless test subjects' brain patterns, thoughts, whatever you want to call them. All that data did only one thing: it built an AI... Right before 'transferring' himself over. That transfer, as he called it, was nothing but imprinting his own memories onto the new matrix, and that's why it thinks he is the same Sith from all those years ago. I don't know if it was a miscalculation on his part or a desperate move, but..."
"You sound pretty sure about this," I said, furrowing my brows.
"Yeah, because this is how I would have done it. The data fragments are just the proof of my idea."
"Is your computer an AI, too?" I asked suddenly.
"No," He answered firmly, "But I was toying with the idea when designing it. I didn't do it because I won't give control over my ship... not even to my own ship."
"Heh," I shrugged, shaking my head, unable to answer it with anything.
"What difference does this make for us?" Sareh asked, rubbing his temple, finding it all nothing but confusing.
"Not a damn thing." Vila snorted, "We will end it just the same. Find the core, blow it up. Simple."
I couldn't help but agree, so, hurrying forward, we followed HK deeper, going level after level down, finding more and more workshops and dismantled droids, probably from the Eternal Empire itself. Then, after who knows how many floors below the earth, the architecture shifted and became functional, just like on that damned moon where Iowi died. All the walls became reinforced with metal, with thick cables running openly along the surfaces. I was getting a strong feeling of Deja Vu, and I did not like it.
"How deep are we?" I asked Adrian, but... communications were off. "Great..."
"Well, we are too deep, then." Vila joked, but her lekku was twitching like crazy.
"This is where it started," Sareh said quietly, looking around the moment we passed a chamber that was filled with what used to be… people... Or what remained of them. Mummified bodies were laid out in rows, mostly human and Sith species, preserved unnaturally. I didn't need the Force to feel what had happened here... it was horrible!
"They were the experiments," Vila groaned, grimacing, "Adrian nailed it, huh?"
"These were probably the failures." I agreed, shivering, just as HK stopped at a reinforced door.
[Statement: The signal is strongest beyond this point.]
"Then, what are we waiting for?" I asked, inhaling, "Open it!"
And when it did, what we saw on the other end made me frown... Because I did not expect it to be so simple. It was just a room, with a throne in the middle, tubes connecting it to the ground and ceiling, the walls covered with ancient machinery, computers most likely, more tubes, and thousands of Sith runes. But no droid, nothing... else.
"Welcome," a mechanical voice said, which made me feel like it was trying to mimic emotions as it addressed us. "I should have expected that after so much time, the shielding that I enacted around my lair would fail. Congratulations, you found my core... But that does not mean you found me."
"Well," I stepped in, scanning the room, trying to decide what to do, where to strike first, "Droids can't lie... but," I smiled, "You are not a droid, so I don't believe you."