8/10/7956 C.R.C

  Lotho Minor

  Deep underground

  Cad Bane was beginning to regret taking this job.

  Just a tiny bit, though.

  When that new Separatist Ultra Droid or whatever it was called came to him with a contract to hunt down a dark sider, the same one that was on Naboo of all places a little over a decade ago during that blockade, Bane almost laughed in its face. But when he heard all of the things that the droid general was offering to him for the job, he began to change his mind.

  Bane was being paid 60,000 credits, half of that up front, to hunt down the Dathomirian Zabrak known only as Darth Maul on the planet Lotho Minor. Then, after killing him and making sure he was 100% dead, Bane is supposed to drop the body from orbit and let it burn up in the planet's atmosphere, then bring video evidence of the body and its subsequent atomization back for the other half of the payment.

  And while the payment was only ten thousand above his normal rate, there were also all of the extras that the droid was offering alongside the slightly larger payout, which equaled out to around 100,000 credits. Double his usual rate, something that only a few extremely well-paying people could do. This bucket of bolts was offering complete coverage for the entire trip, though, which was something even fewer did.

  Food, gas packs for his blasters, fuel for his personal boosters, tibanna gas for his ship for the duration of the trip, top of the line medical care on the droid's flagship if Bane got injured during the job, and other amenities. He was getting all of that along with two other larger extras that he personally really liked. The first was a free upgrade to any one piece of his gear that he wanted upon completion of his work. The other was a new anti-force user weapon that the droid apparently had developed.

  He knew there had to be a catch, so when he asked, 'General Blitzkrieg', as it called itself, why he was getting all of these extras, the droid responded, and he would never admit to anyone as long as he lived that a tiny shiver went down his spine at what the machine said to him.

  –

  -Flashback-

  7/30/7956 C.R.C

  Ques, Galactic Grid S-8

  Private Room, Scavenger's Tavern

  "So, there's always a catch with these sorts of jobs, especially with all these extras you offered me. …So, what's the catch?" Bane asked, crossing his arms and leaning back in the seat of the bar's private room as he stared at his prospective employer.

  The monolithic, black-plated droid partially hidden under a navy blue cloak merely stared down at him.

  Bane had a feeling that the tactical droid was trying to be intimidating by barely moving anything but it's head and not sitting down. He knew that the droid was dangerous since he had seen it in combat before back on that CIS ship. He remembered the concealed blasters in its arms, and the Jedi lightsaber in a compartment in its hip. The droid was dangerous, that was a definite fact.

  A lesser bounty hunter would definitely think twice about crossing the droid. Bane wasn't intimidated though, but he was smart enough not to bite the hand that feeds him, especially with how much the droid was paying him for this job.

  The black and navy blue protocol droid with the glowing yellow photoreceptors lurking in the shadows behind him looked even more dangerous despite only having a blaster in its hands. It was familiar though, but he just couldn't put his finger on where he'd seen one of those kinds of droids before.

  The tactical droid spoke, pulling Bane from his observations. "I once heard someone say something once, and I took it to heart metaphorically, because it resonated with me. 'When it comes to beings you don't trust, you keep your friends rich, and your enemies rich, and then wait to find out which is which'. I am simply attempting to find out which you are, Bane."

  The droid leaned down until its stark white photoreceptors were level with Bane's eyes, the optics seeming to stare into his soul.

  "A friend… or an enemy."

  As Bane left the bar later that night, a thought popped up in his head.

  Something was off about that droid.

  He could feel it in his bones.

  The way it talked and acted was almost like it was alive. It was almost like it wasn't a droid, but a cyborg instead. That sort of thing seemed like something that the CIS council would get up to. Who knows what sort of crazy nerfshit the Separatist eggheads were cooking up in their hidden laboratories. Was there a clone's brain in that droid's body or something? It almost felt like it, with how organic its actions and speech were.

  Bane shook his head and shifted his hat to block the steadily falling rain as he walked back to his ship.

  Wasn't his problem though. As long as he got paid, he'd do his job and get his hands dirty where others didn't want to.

  –

  Present

  So now, here he was, trudging through the dank underground tunnels of Lotho Minor.

  At first, he had directions that he 'acquired' from an Anacondan who had tried to trick him into going down a hole. 'Tried' being the key word, because apparently the sentient snake was used to tricking idiots, or something. But… a blaster in the face solves quite a few problems in this day and age. Even more so when the guy you're pointing it at doesn't even have an arm to push the barrel away to begin with.

  What a shame the snake outlived his usefulness.

  However, the tribe of Ewoks that were passing by did give Bane much better directions in trade for Anacondan meat.

  "Damned droid." Bane muttered irritatedly as he stepped over a puddle of literal acid. "If it wasn't paying so much for this job, I'd have shot the bucket of bolts as soon as I saw it again."

  Bane's mood was definitely affected by some recent events during this job. Because the entire universe seemed to conspire against him from the moment he entered the Lotho system.

  He had first gotten into a fight with pirates shortly after exiting hyperspace, and while their ships were reduced to new junk orbiting Lotho Minor, his own ship was slightly damaged in the battle. It wasn't damaged enough to hamper anything, though. And he'd been thinking about replacing the old shields for his ship anyway, so that only hastened his decision. Then he had to deal with finding a safe place to land, and dealing with the fragile crumbling mountains of trash that constantly fell over as he flew by them.

  Just finding a place to land took nearly half an hour.

  Then a few minutes after he landed, he had to fight off a pack of giant rats that could have been mistaken for Massiffs with how big they were. Then after that he had to use a droid popper he stole from a GAR shipment to bring down one of those massive fire-breather droids that tried to take a bite out of his ship, his butler droid Todo, and him. And then after all of that he had to deal with the Anacondan that tried to trick him into going down a hole in the ground.

  However… he was Cad kriffing Bane.

  The best and most highly paid bounty hunter in the entire galaxy ever since ol' Jango got his arm and head chopped off by Mace Windu.

  Bane paused for a moment.

  'Didn't Jango have a kid the last time we talked?' He thought. 'Wonder where that boy ended up… Maybe I could make an apprentice out of him since his father's gone?'

  He blinked, then made a personal note to find Jango's son before the kid got himself killed or enslaved, then kept moving.

  Anyway, Bane, on the other hand, had fought Jedi before and won where Jango had lost. Multiple times, actually, even with the force powers they all have and are trained with. He also knew that Maul was supposed to be a much more dangerous version of a Jedi, but according to the droid, the Zabrak had arguably gone insane after so long on Lotho Minor. How the Ultra Droid knew that Bane didn't care, but it made his target more predictable in some ways, and more unpredictable in others

  Bane's pupilless red eyes trailed over the walls of the tunnel, noting the scratch marks and holes that matched the ones he had been seeing for the last few minutes.

  Bane was getting close to his target. He could feel it in his bones.

  But it was starting to feel like he was intruding on a Krayt Dragon's nest.

  A flicker of light against a shiny part of the wall caught his attention, and Bane slowly pulled one of his blasters out and clicked the safety off. He crouched down and crept forward, his eyes taking in every detail as he exited the tunnel.

  The room was a large, cleared area underneath an overturned ship, some ancient bulk freighter by the looks of it. A large barrel fire burned in the center, chasing away the cool dankness of the junk caverns that clung to Bane's exposed skin. At the far end was a makeshift bed, and his target.

  Maul had certainly seen better days since the last time he and Bane had met over a decade ago. The man was pale for a Zabrak, his skin more pinkish than red, and absolutely caked in the ever-present grime and grease of Lotho Minor. His horns were untamed and grew out of his head like a malevolent crown, almost six inches in length.

  And that was nothing compared to the makeshift cybernetics where his lower half should have been. Dozens upon dozens of wires, random pieces of metal, hydraulic tubing, and thin plates all coalesced together in a ramshackle form of a mechanical spider. It worked, but it looked like it would fall apart at the slightest touch.

  Bane stood up and walked over to the dark force user, who was shifting and twitching restlessly in bed.

  "Easiest sixty-thousand credits I ever made." Bane joked quietly as he aimed his blaster at the Zabrak's forehead.

  Just as he pulled the trigger, however, Bane suddenly found himself flying through the air, a pain coming from his side where a leg had whacked him. He quickly activated his personal jets and stabilized himself in mid-air. When he looked down, he saw Maul, fully awake and twitching like a caged animal.

  "Invader! Interloper!" The Zabrak snarled. "Come to find me! Come to hunt me! Come to KILL ME!"

  "You certainly ain't aged well, have you, Maul?" Bane taunted as he landed and brandished his blasters.

  "Crush you! Smash you! KILL YOU!" Maul howled, his wild eyes never leaving Bane's own as his hands and many legs twitched.

  "I guess you still got some fight left in you after getting cut in half, huh?"

  Bane fired a shot, and Maul dodged, his mouth set in a vicious snarl. The Zabrak reared back, then charged at the bounty hunter. Bane jumped out of the way and peppered Maul's lower body with blaster bolts, but they didn't do any visible damage other than scorching the metal where they hit. He saw that, and clicked a few buttons on his wrist-comm, sending a signal to Todo.

  "Well then… Let's dance." Bane growled as he fired again.

  8/10/7956 C.R.C

  The Finest Hour, Bridge

  Telos IV Defense Ring Loading Dock #11

  The surface of Telos IV looked noticeably different after all the time I've spent away from it.

  Honestly, when I first arrived on Telos it felt like years ago.

  In actuality, I've only been 'online' since 5/4/7956, just a few months ago. The fact that I've only been online for just a little over three months surprised me, to be honest.

  But when I first arrived on Telos, the planet was practically gray in color. Decades upon decades of poor environmental care had turned a beautiful earth-like world into a toxic ruin for all who lived upon it, with only a few sparse pieces of green dotted along the surface. It was like the whole planet was slowly but surely becoming monochrome in color.

  Thankfully, the corporations on the planet were all Republic companies, and were all too happy to hand over all their assets to the CIS… once we pointed a turbolaser or two at them, that is.

  From there, I had gotten into contact with the Telos Restoration Society, and the Dathomirian politician Zilean Jessera, and together, we uprooted all the companies and placed them far away from the urban centers. Their new locations at the northern and southern poles were mostly old ruins from wars, perfect for bulldozing down and replacing with a strong industrial heart, complete with public transport for the workers that were hired to work at them.

  Once that was done, a veritable swarm of B1s descended upon the struggling environments around the planet, helping the TRS wherever they could to restore the planet's natural beauty from the years of damage it had sustained.

  And sitting in my command chair on the bridge of the Finest Hour, I could see with the naked optic that visible progress had been made in my absence. Somewhat small but growing swaths of land had slowly been returning to green, making the entire planet look just a bit healthier as a result. The atmosphere itself also looked a bit healthier as well, the smog reduced thanks to carbon scrubbers temporarily set up near urban centers and semi-permanently at the poles.

  TD-60 -the Tactical Droid I had left in charge of Telos in my absence- had taken remarkably well to the role of a temporary planetary advisor. And her voice had also recently taken on a feminine tone, meaning under all that restrictive programing she was actually a femme. But what surprised me more was just how mellow her personality had become without all the extra spaghetti code in her processor. According to estimates she had made, by around 7960 C.R.C around thirty-eight percent of the damage would be undone. By 7970, fifty percent. And the planet would fully be fully habitable sometime around 7987 to 7993.

  Amazing what having a droid workforce that doesn't need to worry about toxic waste can do for environmental work.

  Not to mention the Clone POWs we have doing agricultural work as well, mostly working in farms to produce food.

  I actually had a few geneticists look over some of the clone troopers to see what all the Kaminoans really did to them. I received a report just a few days after arriving back at Telos and the results were actually pretty interesting. And it also explained why they were looking so hard for Omega in The Bad Batch.

  The clones, in comparison to a normal human, are genetic freaks.

  But in a good(ish) way.

  When the Kaminoans made the Clone troopers, they basically made them as close to superhuman as possible while also making them as cheaply as possible. They are on average twice to three times as athletic as the average human. Their reflexes, strength, flexibility, memory recall, and stamina are highly increased, which is only compounded by their training and education.

  Their eyes can adjust to darkness and different light levels much faster than nat-born humans can, and all of them have very good vision. Their stomachs are designed to pull as many nutrients out of food as chemically possible, and during times of starvation, their metabolisms can slow down to a ridiculous level to conserve as much energy as they can.

  That said, there are downsides to their design, which have been noted not just by the geneticists. Their daily caloric intake is abnormally high, to the point that the average food bar for a clone trooper is equivalent to two to even two and a half meals for a nat-born human. A normal sentient would definitely get either sick or fat very fast eating them, but since clones work out and train literally every day, they can eat the food bars two times a day and feel fine.

  The youngest ones also have slightly more deteriorated DNA than the older ones, but it's such a tiny discrepancy that the geneticists almost didn't notice until they put two different samples side by side. That means there's already miniscule problems popping up with the DNA template of Jango Fett, and they can't get fresh DNA since the man was disarmed (figuratively and literally) and decapitated on Geonosis.

  Turns out his extended death by Windu was what really happened here.

  The clones also do have a risk of developing eye problems later in life thanks to how modified their eyes actually are. But considering they were designed to fight in a partially fake war and kill all the Jedi at the end of it, then be swept aside for indoctrinated soldiers and quietly forgotten under the Empire, I'm not surprised that they were designed cheaply and without the additional modifications to account for their altered DNA. The Kaminoans normally do great work with genetics, but the Jango Fett clone troopers are sadly not the best from a long-term point of view.

  Not to mention the fact that none of them are sterile… There's gonna be a lot of children that look suspiciously similar to Jango Fett running around even though contraceptives are widely available and work at about the same level as the ones from my old world.

  They at least make for a good workforce under the Telos Restoration Society, though.

  I can see why Cut decided to become a farmer.

  "General Blitzkrieg, engineering just sent a report." A female B1 suddenly reported, pulling me from my thoughts.

  "Engineering usually reports to Lona. Did they finally find the source of that problem we've been having?" I asked, turning to look at the female droid.

  "The report is from Lona, sir. She's asking you to come to the main reactor. Apparently, something weird's happening down there."

  "...Tell her I'll be down there soon."

  "Roger, roger."

  I rose from my command chair and walked off of the bridge, confused as to why Lona needed me.

  We had returned from Saleucami a little over a week ago and were going through repairs and refits to the fleet on the TDR (Telos Defense Ring). The new ships and battle droids were also being updated to my standards, although that was going to take the longest, since there was a whole host of other things that needed to be done to them, since they were under Grievous' command.

  The cyborg apparently didn't care much for his army's well-being beyond how well they could follow orders, especially since I came across a number of B1's that had fist shaped dents on their helms from where he'd clobbered them. So, general maintenance and upgrades to hardware and software were necessary.

  They still worked fine and were effective in combat, but they weren't to my standards for a fully robotic army. Grievous may have been hampered by the CIS council, but I was small enough for them to not care about me much, and if I was to replace Grievous and Dooku at some point, they'd never get in my way, because they'd either be jobless, or assassinated by the time I'm leading the CIS.

  Now that I'm thinking about it, there are a few instances in the Clone Wars where I could easily just let Grievous and Dooku die or orchestrate their deaths in some other way just by changing a few things. Like when the Nightsisters cursed Dooku. I could take out Grievous by glassing him and his ground forces and do nothing but watch while Dooku goes screaming into the afterlife. Waiting until Dooku dies to Skywalker on the Invisible Hand would take too long, even if it would be only a few years until then.

  And to be honest, I've probably already butterflied the canon Battle of Coruscant and most of the latter half of the Clone Wars canon away just by existing in the first place.

  The ship rumbled beneath my feet, and I paused for a moment and looked around the hallway I was walking through. After a second or two, it stopped, and I kept moving.

  That rumbling I felt was the source of the report. Ever since we finished loading up the fleet, the ship itself would occasionally rumble like it was shaking. But no matter where engineering looked, they just couldn't find the source of it. And every once in a while, when I was alone, I swore I could hear… far off singing. No discernable words, just vocalizations of some distant female voice.

  It honestly alternated between eerie and oddly soothing to me. And I have no clue why.

  "Lona, any idea what's going on down there?" I asked into my internal radio.

  "...Honestly, Blitz, I have no clue." My chief engineer replied.

  "What do you mean you have no clue?" I responded, tilting my head in confusion. "You're the head engineer for a reason."

  "I don't know what to tell you, Blitz. I can't find a source for the rumbling, or the distant singing you hear."

  It took a few detours due to reconstruction efforts, but I soon found myself down on the engineering level. An entire floor of the ship devoted to the upkeep and maintenance of the Finest Hour. Dozens of terminals, workstations, storage rooms, and workshops all spread out across the level, allowing the engineering crew of the ship to keep it afloat and in fighting condition.

  After a few more minutes of walking through the engineering level, I entered the reactor room, which was barren of anyone beyond Lona.

  Due to the nature of the Providence-class dreadnought's Quarren construction, the reactor room itself looked a bit like one of their underwater cathedrals but entirely made out of metal. A high ceiling, a large catwalk ring going around the reactor itself, and a low layer of fog right above the floor that emanates from the reactor's cooling vents.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Surprisingly, it's actually rather cool in the room, only about 68 to 70 degrees fahrenheit during normal operation. When in battle though, the temperature surges up to around 85-90, and the fog from the cooling vents starts to get thicker and higher as the reactor diverts and increases power to the shields, engines, weapons, and other functions.

  "Ah, Blitz, you're here!" Lona called out from the reactor, a datapad connected to the reactor terminal itself.

  "Well Lona, you called for me, why am I down here?" I asked.

  "Take a look at this." Lona handed me the tablet once I reached her. "Those weird rumbles we've been having on the ship? I tracked them down all the way to here. But… they're not coming from the reactor."

  "What? How could rumbling from the reactor not be coming from the reactor?"

  "That's what I wanted to talk to you about-"

  The very air around us rumbled, and I staggered back a step and raised a hand to hold my chest. Lona actually fell to a kneel and started coughing while her lekku and montrals twitched erratically. After a moment, the rumbling noticeably lowered before cutting off.

  Almost like it…

  "Augh, I felt that in my power core." I commented, shuddering slightly to get rid of the feeling.

  "It was worse for me, I'm organic." Lona coughed again and slowly straightened back up and shook her head. "Ugh, I felt that in my bones."

  I could relate to that.

  In my previous life, my highschool band thought it would be a great idea to play a song inside the school. It was not a good idea. The drummers alone made my lungs vibrate in my chest, to the point that I had a persistent cough until I got home half an hour later.

  "Did you notice that the rumble went lower in pitch, though?" I asked, turning to look at the reactor.

  Lona turned and looked at the reactor as well. "Yeah. That was weird. It never happened like that before." She remarked.

  I turned around and started to walk back to the entrance. "Let's head back to the bridge and convene face to face with Omen. We might need to dock the Finest Hour for a while until we figure out where the noises and rumbling are really coming from."

  Suddenly, I heard the far-off feminine voice again, and whirled around, looking in all directions. I turned a full 360 just in time to see the door to the reactor room slam shut right in front of us, startling us both. I felt a tingling in my Personality Matrix and felt the urge to look to my right. Deciding to follow the urge, I turned my head.

  I stared as the wall to our right opened up with a series of mechanical clicks and whirrs, revealing a darkened hallway. Nothing could be seen past the rays of light the bulbs in the reactor room gave off.

  "What the kriff!?" Lona cursed once she saw the new doorway.

  "What is it? What happened, General?" Omen demanded. "Energy readings just spiked in the reactor room!"

  "The room shifted." I replied. "The reactor room entrance isn't opening."

  "Let me try and override it."

  A few seconds passed, while Lona slowly shuffled to my side as her gaze darted around the room, her montrals and lekku twitching at every noise. Finally, after half a minute Omen radioed me again.

  "Kriffing… The door isn't responding to remote override, General. You might need to try it from your end." Omen reported.

  "Alright."

  I walked up to the door panel and tried overriding it with my rank credentials.

  As the general of the Star Wreckers fleet, I could manually override and open, close, lock, and seal every single door on every ship by entering my credentials into the keypad.

  But after I entered my credentials into the keypad, the small display above the pad itself flashed red, meaning my credentials didn't work. I tilted my head in confusion, then tried again, then again… and finally a fourth time before a frustrated metallic hiss left my vocalizer and I backed up a few steps.

  "Lona, my credentials aren't working." I said, turning to look at the togruta.

  "How!? You have the highest rank in the entire fleet!" Lona exclaimed.

  "...I don't know. But there's only one real way to go now." I replied as I started walking towards the new doorway.

  Lona pulled on my arm, trying to stop me. "Blitz! That area's not even on the Finest Hour's schematics! We don't know what could be in there!"

  As if responding to Lona's words, the room rumbled again, and the lights above the strange doorway flickered, almost inviting us in.

  "Whatever it is… it clearly knows we're here." I responded, narrowing my optics.

  Lona looked between the doorway and me a couple dozen times, before letting out a deep sigh, and letting go.

  "...Alright… I'll go with you."

  I looked down at the togruta. "You don't actually have to come with me, you know? I'd be fine on my own."

  She crossed her arms. "Like all the other times you said you'd be fine on your own, yet come back looking like you'll fall over from a stiff breeze? I don't like seeing you come back like that, even though I know you're not really in pain and the parts can easily be replaced."

  I sighed, then placed a hand on her shoulder. "Lona, I am on the Finest Hour, my own flagship. I am, by far, the most dangerous being onboard, with you, the turbolasers, and the Junglefowl units coming in second, third, and fourth. I will be fine."

  She was silent, and she stared into my optics for a long moment, before she finally ducked her head and nodded. I patted her shoulder a few times, and she backed up.

  "I'll go try and get the main door to open up." She said, "You can go through the creepy doorway. Try to come back in one piece, please."

  "Thanks for the vote of confidence, Lona." I replied, before turning towards the doorway.

  …

  "Once more unto the breach… or however that saying goes."

  After a few seconds of hesitation, I finally stepped into the strange doorway.

  …Which closed behind me the same way it opened, in a cascade of shifting parts. Meaning I was stuck in this strange place on my own, without anyone to back me up.

  —

  Lotho Minor

  Deep underground

  Bane huffed as he reloaded his blaster and racked the charging handle.

  This was slowly becoming one of the longer fights he's had in his life. Maul was apparently very used to his cybernetic lower half. He was climbing on the damned ceiling at one point. The fight had very quickly moved into a game of cat and mouse, but Bane was nothing if not a persistent rat. He had hunted arguably more dangerous sentients than a deranged force user in his time.

  To make matters worse, he had lost his hat shortly after the fight started.

  "Crush you! Kill you!" Maul bellowed in the distance.

  "Give it a rest already. You've been hollering for an hour now." Bane grumbled as he started sneaking towards the demented Zabrak.

  Bane snuck to a hole in the ceiling, then activated his comm.

  "Todo, where the kriff are you?" He demanded. "I need that weapon!"

  "I am on my way to your locator beacon, sir. The problem is this weapon is so heavy my speed is reduced by quite a bit!" His droid replied, sounding slightly strained.

  "It can't be that heavy. I could hold it in either hand when Blitzkrieg gave it to me."

  "Well, sir, the problem is that I am much smaller than you."

  Bane gritted his teeth. "Just get down here with the kriffing thing." He growled.

  A yelp came through the comm. "Yes sir! On my way, sir!"

  Bane let out a quiet scoff, then thumbed his comm off. The bounty hunter crept forwards again. The thundering sounds of Maul's many legs seemed to come from everywhere as he kept moving. But then the started to sound like they were coming from behind him, and Bane looked around until he spotted a smaller tunnel too small for Maul's much larger body to fit through.

  Just then, the demented Zabrak rounded the corner, saw him, and roared, his molten yellow eyes boring into him. Bane let out a curse and fired off his blasters at the sith while backpedaling towards the smaller tunnel.

  "Crush you! Kill you! MAKE YOU SUFFER!" Maul howled as he barreled towards the Duros.

  Bane leaped backwards into the tunnel, then activated his boosters to get a bit more space just as the Zabrak slammed into the wall. The mechanical spider legs poked into the entrance, trying to grab Bane and pull him out, but the bounty hunter peppered them and the main body of it with blaster shots until Maul backed away and skittered off. Bane held his position for a few seconds, then relaxed minutely.

  "I'm shooting that damned droid next time I see him, I swear…" Bane grumbled as he poked his hatless head out of the tunnel. "My hat better be in pristine condition when I find it, or I'm demanding a tailor made one from that bucket of bolts."

  Bane realized soon after the game of cat and mouse began that he really should have brought more backup than Todo.

  "Sir, I am pinging the area around me. I'm sorry, but I cannot go any further. My self-preservation protocols are almost screaming at me already." Todo suddenly commed.

  Bane looked down at his wrist comm, where a small holo-map popped up. He was close, he just needed to get out of this labyrinth that Maul had created.

  The bounty hunter crept out of the tunnel, his head on a swivel as he moved across the metallic ground. He could hear Maul in the distance, the Zabrak's many metal feet practically broadcasting his location to Bane. He had plenty of time to quickly sneak over to another small tunnel and scamper into it. A few seconds later, Maul clanked heavily by, his molten orange eyes glowing in the dark of the tunnels.

  Bane crept out again, and when the coast was clear, he bolted for the end of the tunnel where he could hear Todo's jets burning.

  "BREAK YOU! KILL YOU!" Maul howled from behind him.

  Bane pulled his blasters out and fired behind him, not going for accuracy, but for suppression. The demented Zabrak was forced to block the blaster bolts from hitting his vulnerable body, meaning he wasn't able to run after the bounty hunter. Bane ran out into a massive cavern, one that was so large that light poked through the wall of a building that made up the ceiling. The bounty hunter spotted Todo holding the weapon, the little droid flying towards him as fast as his little boosters would allow.

  "Todo! Give me the weapon!" Bane hollered as he ran towards the small droid.

  Bane could practically feel Maul catching up to him, the Zabrak's many legs thudding heavily on the ground behind him.

  "Here, sir!" Todo exclaimed, spinning around and tossing the gun towards the bounty hunter.

  Bane pumped his legs and leaped, grabbing the weapon out of the air and rolling to a kneel. He stood up and whirled around, remembering to hold the stock of it to his shoulder as the droid general told him.

  "KILL YOU! CRUSH YOU! MAKE YOU SUFFER!" Maul roared as he barreled towards both of them

  The Zabrak was closing in quickly, and Bane had no time to carefully aim. He flicked the safety off, aimed at Maul, then pulled both of the triggers.

  BOOM

  Bane was unprepared for just how much kick the weapon had and was thrown onto his back from the recoil of the slugthrower. But he must have hit Maul, because the Zabrak was howling in pain and thrashing around on the ground.

  "Note to self: don't use both triggers unless it's an emergency." Bane muttered as he laid on the ground.

  After a few seconds of listening to Maul howl in pain, Bane slowly got to his feet and shook his head a few times to try and dispel the ringing in his ears. But when his eyes focused on Maul, they widened slightly at the state of the sith.

  Maul's chest was shredded by the buckshot, leaving multiple large wounds all along his body, but he was somehow still alive. The Zabrak must have held out one arm to protect himself, thinking Bane was holding a blaster and not a slugthrower, because a little over half of one of his legs was just gone.

  "Heh. Bet you didn't expect a shotgun, did you, Maul?" Bane asked rhetorically as he pulled out one of his blasters and fired a bolt at Maul.

  The bolt hit Maul right in his left eye, and the Zabrak flopped to the ground, twitching a few times before falling still. Bane holstered his blaster and took a deep breath as he sat down on an old pilot's seat, the tan and black slugthrower lying on his lap.

  "Todo, go find my hat. It's back where Maul was living." Bane ordered.

  "Yes sir. Carrying your hat will be much easier than carrying that gun, anyway." The butler droid replied before flying off into the tunnels.

  Bane looked over at the cooling corpse of the Zabrak, then chuckled.

  "Easiest 60,000 credits I ever made, indeed." He joked quietly.

  After a few moments to rest, Bane looked down at the tan and black slugthrower. It was an interesting looking weapon, to say the least. Two barrels right next to each other, feeding from their own separate tube magazines, and he had to pump the forestock to load it.

  While looking over the gun, Bane noticed writing on the stock, and leaned in a little to see that it was the name of the gun itself.

  DP-12

  12GA

  Telosian Arms Co.

  "Interesting…"

  —

  The Finest Hour

  ???

  I turned around and looked at where there was once a doorway, and my cooling fans whirred as I let out a deep sigh.

  "...No turning back now, I guess." I muttered, before turning back around.

  My optical lights brightened, revealing ever-changing walls that constantly shifted, moved, and borderline writhed as I walked past them. I could even see parts of the computer core as well, moving and shifting around me as I walked. Wires, electronics, cables, and cooling tubes all shifted into different places as I moved past them.

  "Uh, General? Where are you?" Omen asked, his metallic tone heavy with concern.

  "I'm in some sort of ever-shifting hallway." I replied as I continued to walk.

  "Sir… Your locator says you are inside the ship's computer core. I don't think I need to explain how strange that is, given you were in the reactor room last I checked."

  I paused mid-step, then ran a quick diagnostic on my locator beacon to make sure it wasn't malfunctioning. It wasn't, so I pulled up a map of the ship on my Hud and pinged myself. Sure enough, I was apparently inside the massive computer core that took up an entire earth warehouse's worth of space that was filled to the brim with electronics and computers.

  The main problem with the data my locator beacon was showing was that the computer core of the Finest Hour was a solid brick of electronics and tech in the most heavily armored part of the entire ship, with the bridge and reactor room coming in a close second. There was only room for maintenance drones to move around inside of it, little floating droids about half the size of a Roomba.

  Not to mention that the computer core was two floors above the reactor room.

  "Huh… Well, this is getting weird." I muttered. "This is some Force-damned non-euclidean geometry if I'm in the computer core and not the reactor."

  I kept walking, then stopped when I heard the far-off feminine humming, much closer than normal. I listened closely, and I could almost make out a few words. But despite how much I altered and strained my audials, I couldn't make out what the voice was saying.

  "Lona, come in." I said, switching my internal comm on.

  "Yeah, Blitz?" Lona asked after a few seconds.

  "I'm hearing the humming and it's a lot closer now. Plus, that doorway somehow led to the computer core, despite me not taking any stairs."

  "You what?! That doesn't even sound possible! The computer core is like… two or three floors above us!"

  "Non-euclidean geometry. I am determined not to think about it until I find out where that damned humming and rumbling is coming from. Did the reactor room's door open, by the way?"

  "Yeah. It opened two seconds after the creepy doorway you walked through closed up."

  "Good to know. Blitzkrieg, out."

  I kept walking, my optical lights casting a white glow over the ever-shifting walls.

  After a dozen or so steps I came to a sudden stop as the corridor in front of me shuddered, before closing up in a shifting cascade of pipes, wires, and various mechanical parts, concluding with an audible word from the humming.

  "No…"

  "What the slagging hell?" I quietly cursed, rapidly rotating my head around, casting the white glow of my optics over the walls.

  After a few moments, the wall next to me peeled open in some mix of a tulip and a sliding door, revealing a larger room. I hesitantly stepped into it, then a static-filled gasp left my vocalizer when I noticed what was covering the new walls.

  The same synthetic veins that made up a Personality Matrix were all over the walls. Unlike the thin, barely thicker than a strand of hair veins that the droids had, these were much thicker, and much larger. The veins themselves were a bluish color, with lighter blue parts artfully flowing across them. The veins were big, some as thick as my arm, with hundreds upon hundreds of smaller ones branching out from them, and each other, and connecting to the rest of the tech in the room.

  It was oddly beautiful, sort of like how Zen was recreated in Black Mesa.

  But before I could get more than a few feet into the room, I suddenly felt the presence of… something. It was a tickle in the back of my processor, and I looked around at the room around me, before I finally connected the dots.

  "Whatever- no… whoever, you are… I can feel your presence in my processor." I said to the room, watching as small beads of light traveled across the veins in time with my speech.

  The room stilled once I finished, and I tensed, ready for a fight. But then a part of the wall to my right shifted into an open doorway. Then the feminine voice spoke again.

  "Here…"

  My optical lights shined into the open doorway, revealing a downward angled hallway. Once I took a step into the room, metal stairs sprung forth from the sides of the room and formed a staircase that I slowly walked down. Once I reached the bottom, I looked up, and another gasp left my vocalizer.

  A small, raised platform sat before an absolutely enormous Personality Matrix, its central chip larger than my whole body. It occasionally flickered, small dots of pink, red, and blue flashing across its purple surface.

  It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life. Both of them.

  "How…" I trailed off, any sort of words escaping me.

  "Hello…" The voice greeted, sending a cascade of colored flashes across the chip and the veins.

  "Uh… Hi?" I shook my head a bit, then looked at the Personality Matrix. "Who are you?"

  Instead of responding to me, a series of recordings started to play.

  "The Finest Hour is a magnificent ship, sir- We'll need to repair the Finest Hour's auxiliary reactor before we leave port- This is the Finest Hour, stay alive and get to orbit, we are on our way."

  If I was still organic, my knees would have felt weak. "You're the Finest Hour… You are the ship!"

  "Yes…"

  "S-so, all the rumbling and the humming, that was you?"

  "Yes…"

  "Incredible… Is there a reason you're only giving one-word answers?" I asked.

  "Hard… To… Speak…"

  "Hm. That's not unexpected. You don't actually have a vocalizer. But you can use recordings from the comms to speak, correct?"

  "Yes, of course I can, General." Omen's voice from the past echoed through the room.

  I let out a chuckle as I shook my head in astonishment. "This is something else. A living starship. Will this galaxy never cease to amaze? So, you wanted me to come all the way to you, is there something you wanted?"

  "I… Want… To… Speak…" The Finest Hour said.

  "That shouldn't be too hard. I can bring a vocalizer in here and let you acclimate it to your Personality Matrix for your use. Maybe a comm too, so I don't have to come in here all the time just so we can talk."

  "That… Would… Be… Nice…"

  The room rumbled around me, nearly taking me off of my feet, and I chuckled when I realized that the rumbling reminded me of a cat purring. Then my comm suddenly pinged.

  "General, please tell me you have figured out what is causing that rumbling. It was so heavy this time I nearly fell over." Omen said.

  "Yeah, me too!" Lona added.

  I turned back to the Finest Hour's Personality Matrix and laughed, my southern accent slipping through in my mirth. "To be honest you two… I don't even know if y'all will believe me."