As strange as it may sound, credit must be given where it's due to the late Ennix Devian—the bastard knew a thing or two about good technology. And the huge fortune invested in the ship she hijacked from the Imperial Palace had fully paid off.
The Flame easily bypassed the orbital fleet of Black Sun starships.
Though it would be more accurate to call the five Keldabe-II-class battleships patrolling over Smarck, supported by a dozen Crusader II-class corvettes, the Zann Consortium fleet. Which is essentially what they were.
There was no doubt that the pot-bellied Star Galleons lifting off from the surface and clearly preparing to depart also belonged to the Dominion's enemy's puppets.
It didn't matter what emblems were painted on their hulls—the favorite toy of the late Xizor or the brainchild of Tyber Zann.
They were all enemies. Having camouflaged the ship among the trees and powered down the electronics to hide her transport from visual detection from above, Mara Jade, Thrawn's Hand, advanced toward her target. It took several hours to bypass the detection systems and patrols, but she reached her objective. Wandering through the mountains alone, surrounded by enemies, was no small pleasure. But it kept her in shape. Which in turn would ensure the proper completion of the mission entrusted to her by the Grand Admiral. And the proper execution of the task was what she needed now. Not only to correct the sad statistics of her successes and failures, but also to prove to herself that she was indeed worthy of being an agent above the rest. Above the simple Bravo-class special agents of Dominion Intelligence.
Above the rank-and-file Jensaraai.
Above the deeply covert Shadow Guard.
She simply had to be the best at the task she had undertaken on behalf of her...
Hm.
Well, in the current realities, it was somehow foolish to call Thrawn "master," "lord," or use other such synonyms. And calling him "her Grand Admiral" felt somehow awkward... Even the thought of such a phrase carried a hint of arrogance, which Mara had always viewed negatively.
Enough with the silly thoughts. Today, she wasn't playing the role of the "ditzy adjutant."
Today, she was without masks. Today, she was simply Thrawn's Hand.
And she had completed the first part of her operation—reaching the Black Sun base, within the depths of which, most likely, were the Spaarti cloning cylinders.
The question "Where did they even come from for the criminals?" remained open; let the other intelligence services work on that.
From herself, Mara could only say what she had 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 those she had seen on Wayland during trips there with Palpatine. However, what she saw through the monocular finally dispelled her doubts about Palpatine's involvement in creating this base in the form currently controlled by Black Sun.
This, by the Emperor's black bones, didn't even remotely resemble Palpatine's vault on Wayland!
If there a mountain remained a mountain, and only the technical equipment of the main entrance betrayed the presence of something inside Mount Tantiss not created by nature, then the base on Smarck... This was an entire military complex!
The structures weren't even trying to hide within the rock face! There was no talk of any "natural camouflage." The massive main entrance building, tower-like structures protruding from the rock and rising above it clearly for military purposes—barracks or command centers, numerous speeders and cargo ships...
Whoever was in charge of this place clearly wasn't worried that the developed and intensively used summit of Smarck's largest rock would attract the attention of the local population or orbital observers.
The bet was on the planet being practically unknown to the galaxy—the locals engaged in farming, had no spaceport of their own (interesting, did they not have one even before Black Sun arrived, or did it disappear after?), located far from busy regional hyperspace routes...
All the base's owners under the mountain had bothered with were surveillance sensors placed in several layers around the perimeter of the territory surrounding the rock, and that's it.
Yeee...
Mara hadn't noticed any anti-spacecraft defenses or starfighter bases here.
Either the criminals were too confident that no one would drop in unannounced, or an entire fleet was hidden nearby, ready to arrive at the first call.
Hutt, there weren't even defensive stations!
However, it could be that they were simply camouflaged—the Zann Consortium had often demonstrated its knowledge of using cloaking technology stolen from the Empire in the past.
Most likely, that's how it was—otherwise, such a careless attitude toward the security of an object of this type would be an unforgivable tactical mistake.
A blunder that in no way fit the image of Tyber Zann as a genius who so deftly fooled the entire galaxy, 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 what exactly was happening here and what planetary defense systems were in place, she would give Thrawn some advantage.
All that remained were mere trifles—sneak into the facility and figure out what was what.
And what objective reasons dictated the evacuation of the facility.
And an evacuation was indeed happening—no need to guess; the cargo ships in orbit spoke plainly enough.
It took Mara ten minutes to figure out how exactly she could infiltrate the facility.
Yes, the enemy hadn't even thought to camouflage their base. They hadn't planted forested areas to cover the vents exhausting warm air from the mountain or the air intakes that kept the sentients inside the mountain rock from suffocating.
There were no animals here either, the kind the Empire had housed near bases and secret lairs in its heyday.
Such creatures reacted to the operation of antigravs, repulsors, and other propulsion systems, alerting the garrison to the appearance of machinery where it shouldn't be by definition.
None of that was here.
Even the windows and dormers on the buildings weren't made secure against possible intrusion.
And there were so many guards and surveillance systems that she could probably sneak inside on an AT-AT and have a good chance of keeping it secret.
But she wasn't going to test her luck.
She needed to act for sure.
Mara slipped behind a protruding part of the rock where she had been hiding from visual detection and closed her eyes for a moment.
The Force flowed around her, expanding the boundaries of her perception.
Jade, exhaling deeply, opened her eyelids, revealing her green eyes to the world once more.
Yes, her assumption was correct: the guard she had feared was distracted by something else and wasn't watching his assigned sector.
But she had no way to learn what awaited her inside the complex.
Because in the Force, the mountain and its contents appeared as a solid blackness, hiding living beings from her.
Exactly the same as on Wayland when she had investigated Colonel Selid's activities there.
Ysalamiri, whose possible presence on the Black Sun base Thrawn had warned her about.
Well, that greatly limited her arsenal of means she could employ, but a job was a job.
Even without the aid of the Force, she was still Thrawn's Hand.
If she relied solely on the Force, as many Jedi did, she was worth a decicredit.
Or even less.
It took some time to reach the ysalamiri's area of effect, to weave through the crevices, backtrack a bit out of the Hutt lizards' zone, and reach the mountain slope she was interested in, under which an observation post was comfortably situated.
If there were any detectors in her path, they clearly weren't working now.
Otherwise, Mara would already have problems.
In any case, she reached the overhang sheltering the observation post from precipitation and midday heat without incident.
And Smarck's sun was no joke—the girl already felt herself sweating in her jumpsuit.
Strong air currents would surely have tousled Thrawn's Hand's wild mane of red hair if she hadn't beforehand braided it into a plait and tucked it under her headgear.
An ordinary hiking helmet, like those favored by the Rebel squads on Endor.
But as soon as she examined the window space more closely, she immediately dismissed thoughts of the stupidity of those who had planned the security and surveillance system for this facility.
It took Mara just one look through the optical probe needed 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 other than molecular stuns.
Such things were often favored by some mercenaries for decapitating their victims—one press was enough to inflict a deep wound.
And the only chance to get inside was to descend by cable and crawl through the opening.
Where you'd either be cut to pieces, or from the pain of wounds across the entire front of your body, you'd recoil from the narrow ledge and plummet into the abyss.
Echoing the local mountains with your dying screams.
As far as the eye could see, the stun fibers extended deep into the walls and window jambs.
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 interested in something other than performing his duties.
It seemed he was still engrossed in his game on a personal deck, as she had glimpsed with the optical probe.
Well then...
She just needed him to approach the window.
Mara felt a small pebble nearby and tossed it precisely onto the ledge, attracting the guard's attention.
The Black Sun thug didn't react to the first noise, but after the second pebble, he deigned to get up and approach.
Straight to the opening over which Mara was positioned.
Gripping her lightsaber, she thrust it downward, quickly pressing the activation switch and using the Force to control the violet blade to pierce the opponent's head... Evaporating part of the stuns in the process, which sagged in the opening as useless pieces of metal.
The sound of a body falling to the balcony floor was heard.
Mara froze for a while, waiting for an alarm.
But nothing happened.
So, the stun tension wasn't wired to an alarm.
But it was better to wait a bit longer.
Just in case.
In half an hour, no one showed up at the post.
So, there was no security system here either.
Convinced of the safety of her maneuver, Mara slipped inside.
Another minute was needed to check with the Force that her action had gone unnoticed by anyone outside.
After that, she tossed the remains of the Weequay with the pierced skull and durasteel helmet over the balcony railing.
Again, nothing.
Not the slightest ripple of interest.
Well, it seemed that the facility's evacuation was a higher priority for the local leadership than maintaining vigilance.
The girl looked at the dark corridor opening leading deep into the rock, then stepped into the ysalamiri zone, switching her lightsaber for a small blaster in her hands.
Modified by Dominion weapons specialists to produce minimal sound and flash on firing, like the blasters for storm commandos, she began her journey into the heart of the enemy base.
***
"Grand Admiral," Captain Tschel approached me. "From Thunderflare, they report that their scout drones have detected activity from automated surveillance stations in the section of space we just crossed."
"Expected," I nodded. "Early warning system."
"Should I relay any additional orders to the commanders of our destroyers?" the Chimaera's commander inquired.
"No," I refused. "Our task force follows the previous instructions. Ensure that the commanders of Sentinel and Constrainer have begun warming up their gravity shadow generators. I want them activated as soon as we enter the Smarck system."
"It will be done, sir," Tschel turned to return to the pits.
"Wait, Captain," I said, continuing to stare into the hyperspace haze. "I have additional instructions."
"Sir?" Tschel raised an eyebrow questioningly. "But you just said there are no orders for our destroyers."
I turned to size up the young Star Destroyer commander from head to toe with my gaze.
"And who said anything about ships in our task force, Captain?" I inquired.
***
Mara had once prided herself on her spatial orientation skills inside such facilities, but over time, she had to admit that whoever built this base clearly had nothing to do with the concept of humanity.
The Black Sun base on Smarck most resembled a huge Geonosian city-hive where a map was something out of science fiction.
She wandered through empty corridors, repeatedly stumbling upon vast artificial caves.
And from the marks on the dusty floor, she understood that the contents of these rooms had clearly been emptied by the thugs already.
If she figured it out, the base was starting to resemble a huge warehouse inside which smaller warehouses were located.
Likely, she was seeing rooms divided by the type of items they contained.
In a few places, she managed to find something resembling a wall plan.
Guided by it, the agent changed direction three times before emerging from that part of the base where passages and rooms were simply carved into the rock with construction equipment.
There, no one had even thought to beautify the interior.
But the closer she got to the base's heart, the more often she began encountering Black Sun military personnel, repulsor carts hauling thousands upon thousands of containers of various shapes and sizes out of the base's endless depths.
The bandits were emptying their warehouses.
Now she had no doubt that the base was being evacuated.
With all its contents.
Possibly, she was even too late.
But not enough to lose heart and give up.
In her head, Jade held the Wayland communications plan and couldn't help noting that the central part of the mountain, where corridors were adorned with wall signs and the floor was poured with duracrete, clearly had much in common with Palpatine's vault.
Which was v-e-r-y strange, considering that Palpatine's storage was supposed to be secret.
And its architect had long been dead, with no way to obtain the vault plans.
Unless asking Palpatine himself.
But, knowing the old scoundrel's character all too well, Mara reasonably doubted he would give such documents to anyone.
It's quite possible the plans were stolen after Palpatine's death.
Just recall that Tyber Zann and his thugs managed to access the Eclipse at Kuat Drive Yards.
And also, that according to Thrawn, Zann had captured the Imperial Palace on Coruscant.
And who knows what else from the vast legacy of Palpatine secrets and personal mysteries.
Considering that the Anaxsi was the one commanding this rabble, perhaps he had found these plans somewhere.
Anyway, it no longer mattered.
The main thing was that Mara understood where she should head.
Playing hide-and-seek with patrols and loaders, she spent several hours finding a suitable air duct (and again—thanks to her own ingenuity, thanks to which she had thoroughly explored Mount Tantiss rather than relying solely on plans). The red-haired woman, whose tactical suit was already covered in dust irritating her by seeping under her clothes and into her nostrils, decided that crawling through ventilation in the enemy's rear base was becoming a habit for her.
Just recall her raid on Yag'uul...
B-r-r-r...
After this assignment, she would request a week off herself and soak in the jacuzzi in her modest apartment bought under a false name on the trade planet Ketaris in the Oplovis sector.
Where Thrawn's summons had caught her a few days ago, actually.
The housing wasn't particularly luxurious compared to the Imperial Palace on Coruscant where she had spent her entire life, but at least the apartment on Ketaris she had bought with her own savings.
Well, almost her own...
Thrawn had simply returned to her the millions that made up the cost of goods on Myrkr.
The very ones she had given the Grand Admiral as her contribution upon joining the service.
Thrawn's Hand had no doubt that the Grand Admiral would sooner or later learn of her "lair," but by then she planned to acquire a couple more apartments where she could hide if necessary.
But this was all unnecessary lyricism.
Mara kept the level map in her head, orienting herself by it in her crawling.
Mentally cursing and feeling uneasy without the Force, she still reached the shaft she needed.
Sliding forward while braking against the side panels with her shoulders and feet, she silently reached a large ventilation grate leading, judging by the smell of dampness, into a large cave.
On Wayland, the cloning lab was excellently ventilated, but here everything was somehow...
Enough, let that remain on the builders' conscience.
If they had one.
Pressing to the slot in the ventilation shield, Jade began examining the place she had entered.
Well...
"This is definitely not Mount Tantiss," she whispered so quietly she barely heard her own words.
Unlike the cave with cloning equipment, where Spaarti cylinders protruded around the single structure powering the autoclaves from the reactor room, the builders of this stronghold had decided to go the way of decentralization.
Yes, this was undoubtedly a cloning hall.
Mara easily recognized the numerous transparisteel cylindrical vats, inside which human individuals were clearly visible from her position.
Male and female.
Fully matured.
She counted ten narrow (compared to Wayland's) technological "pillars," around which vertical rows of internally lit autoclaves were arranged.
On each "pillar"—six rows of cloning cylinders mounted vertically.
And, if she calculated correctly—each row held thirty clone incubators.
In total, on each "pillar"—one hundred eighty machines for producing human "duplicates."
Multiplying by the number of pillars—eighteen hundred cloning cylinders.
And all these structures were connected by technical walkways, surrounded by ramps needed so that clones after extraction wouldn't fall straight to the cave floor lost in the darkness below.
Straining her vision, she could make out cages with ysalamiri secured under the fenced ramps around each row of clones.
The cages—clearly not Dominion design.
And the lizards, unlike those Mara had seen on the Chimaera, looked somehow exhausted, barely alive.
Well, of course—they weren't petted by Grand Admiral hands.
Mara pulled a portable holocam with an infrared anti-glare visor from another pocket on her belt—so she wouldn't be detected visually or by technical means.
The girl began filming the room.
Thanks to night vision mode, she could clearly see that the cave housing the cloning installations was three times larger than its counterpart in Mount Tantiss.
Which didn't negate the fact that there were clearly more "pillars" here than she had discerned.
As far as the camera's visor range allowed, she counted another thirty such "pillars."
All adorned with Spaarti cloning cylinders.
But only these ten were lit and thus operational.
The reason?
Any could be invented—from lack of energy or nutrient medium on the facility to the absence of clones in them due to the evacuation of the entire object by its leadership.
Guessing was pointless.
Cloning laboratory on the Black Sun base on the planet Smarck.
Well.
At minimum, she had completed the first part of her mission—there were indeed cloning laboratories on Smarck.
No matter what condition they were in—even those clearly working would be enough to enhance such capacities in the Dominion.
Currently, Grand Admiral Thrawn had twenty thousand Spaarti cloning installations at his disposal.
Every fifteen days, they produced twenty thousand clones.
In a month—two full cloning cycles provided a full unmodified Imperial-class Star Destroyer crew, as well as several smaller ships not requiring large crews.
In three months, the existing Dominion installations could create one hundred forty thousand clones—that's almost four Star Destroyer crews.
Even adding just the eighteen hundred cloning cylinders (without questioning the operability of the other installations discovered by Mara), it turned out that in the same three months, more than twelve and a half thousand new clones could be obtained.
And that's quite a lot, considering the personnel shortage!
And if one considered not ten but all forty "pillars" functional, the number of new incubators would be over seven thousand!
Seven thousand two hundred, to be precise.
In seven full cycles, such a number of new cylinders could produce over fifty thousand additional clones!
That is, in the best case, the Dominion could put under arms nearly twenty thousand experienced specialists 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 with daydreams.
No matter how many cloning cylinders there were here—the Dominion would need every one.
But what should interest her most now was something entirely different.
Practicing math could go on for a long time—as long as imagination held out.
And for interest's sake, she could curb her alarmism with a simple calculation: if the Zann Consortium had had all these cloning cylinders for, say, the last ten years, at least those she saw in the cave, and all had been working all that time, then Tyber Zann had under arms alone over two million clones.
And if there were ten such caves here?
It looked very sour.
And to make it even worse, one could think about how many Imperial and Republican officials he had managed to replace over all that time—like Moff Gronn or Baroness D'Asta.
Pulling herself together and pushing optimism aside, Mara continued studying the room.
She hadn't noticed any guards or surveillance means here.
Only control droids gliding on repulsors along the "pillars," monitoring the equipment's operation.
Simple models—mere observers, without a hint of any artificial personality.
In other words—flying versions of "mouse droids."
Such a one, even if it bumped into you, wouldn't raise an alarm.
Time to act.
So, calmly removing the internal latch on the ventilation grate, the saboteur swung it aside, first securing it to a dark holder matching the gloomy cave.
And like a nimble rock-climbing fish, she descended to the level of one of the nearest "pillars."
Pushing off the wall, she let the cable slide through her hand and jumped to the ramp.
It took only a little skill to hide the cable end so it wouldn't catch the eye.
Glancing back, the girl looked through the transparisteel with a slight condensate coating on the surface.
In the semi-transparent jelly rested the figure of an unfamiliar young dark-haired woman.
An ordinary clone, unremarkable.
Except that all the others in the row were exact copies of her.
So, either Tyber Zann was producing several clones of the same kidnapped sentient, or here they were copying far from just the "nobility" missing for a few weeks.
As she had assumed, these were fighters.
That could be understood from the developed musculature, absence of excess fat.
Over a thousand (or perhaps more) female soldiers.
Ready soon to leave their cradle and go to war.
She traveled around the laboratory for some time, confirming one thing—these ten illuminated "pillars" held exclusively female clones.
Of one build, with one face.
So, who needed nearly two thousand female soldiers?
She was about to sneak to the terminal located in the center of the entire installation structure when she saw part of the wall slide apart, and a strip of light stretch from the discovered entrance to the very workstation she intended to reach.
"Ladies, don't grumble, but right now you'll be my scary girlfriends," Mara whispered, squeezing between two autoclaves with sleeping female soldiers.
The joke about getting lost in the company of scary girlfriends even for a beauty queen found real embodiment.
Her and the coveted pedestal were separated by two or three meters, but the agent couldn't see in advance who exactly was heading here: the autoclave obstructed the view.
But if the number of shadows matched the number of visitors, there were only two.
And one was clearly taller than the other.
"You promised this batch of Harpies would be ready by this morning!" a voice reached her, clearly belonging to a corpulent male of the human species.
Intonations and timbres of voices in a galaxy with hundreds of thousands of species living just in the Core Worlds were remembered quickly in a job like Mara's current one.
"And it would be, if you hadn't started the evacuation, Mr. Kaynif," a leisurely, insinuating alien voice.
Which was hard to forget if you'd ever heard a Kaminoan speak.
"Command isn't responding," the first grumbled. "We're cut off from Etti for some reason. I have clear instructions on that, Orun Wa!"
"I have them too," finally, both appeared in the field of view of the hidden Mara.
It wasn't hard to identify the Kaminoan called Orun Wa.
Tall, with a tiny head on a long neck.
A typical representative of his species.
Which, though not shining with a desire to visit the galaxy, didn't seclude itself so much that its appearance was shrouded in mystery, like the ancestors of Mandalorians—the Taung—or Tof pirates in their time.
Dressed in something like a jumpsuit and medical uniform combined.
However, recalling that this race had direct relation to cloning, gene manipulation, and other subtle medical interventions, it wasn't surprising.
Mara, due to the specifics of her profession, also rarely emerged from her jumpsuit—it was good clothing and protected the body.
Kaminoan Orun Wa.
And the second one...
The one Orun Wa called "Mr. Kaynif"...
Well, she could admit to herself that her hearing had hardly failed her.
Yes, this seemed to be the very Makus Kaynif about whom Grand Admiral Thrawn had warned her.
She had correctly identified human speech.
Only Makus wasn't human.
And to understand that fact, one glance at his face was enough.
No need to be a credentialed xenobiologist.
Makus Kaynif.
In the Galactic Empire, ones like him 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 biologically related to baseline humans. Other humanoid species, by contrast, had only superficial resemblance to humans and no biological connection.
However, the closely related term "humanoid" was sometimes used too loosely to describe near-human species.
Most near-humans had close physical resemblance to humans, usually with minor differences in skin and eye color or bone structure. Biologically, many near-humans were capable of interbreeding with baseline humans. Some were close enough to the human baseline to be considered a human race or ethnic group rather than a separate species. Likewise, some groups biologically classified as humans, though almost entirely distinct from the main body of humanity in their culture, were considered so different that they were sometimes called near-humans.
Her second mission objective.
Very convenient that he also led her to the third (and in priority list—the first) objective of the entire assignment.
So.
Her labors were rewarded.
She had found the cloning cylinders.
She had found a cloning specialist: not some hermit Arkania, but a Kaminoan! And finally, she had found the local Zann Consortium commander! And from the overheard phrases, she understood that she was currently hiding behind the carcasses of cloned Harpies—elite agents and operatives of the Zann Consortium.
Well...
Now she was beginning to understand how exactly Tyber Zann had achieved such obedience and willingness to sacrifice from his saboteur-Harpies.
They didn't "brainwash" them.
They created them that way.
Surely in the imprint machines adorning every cylinder here, the necessary program of obedience and self-sacrifice in case of threat to the entire organization from capture was recorded.
Now it was clear why after the Zann Consortium's defeat, it hadn't been possible to take the Harpies found on planets alive—they simply blew themselves up in battle, vaporizing with super-powerful baradium charges they also used for mining objects and equipment.
Yeah...
It seemed to her, or since Thrawn started sticking his hands into the galaxy's dirty laundry, more and more "surprises" kept surfacing?
"Why haven't you sent these clones to the molecular furnaces?" Kaynif demanded, pointing at the glowing cylinders. "If they're not ready for evacuation, they should be destroyed! Because of these installations' operation, I can't reallocate power distribution to start dismantling the cloning cylinders. Or do you want them destroyed when the self-destruct system is activated?!"
"The equipment doesn't concern me," Orun Wa's emotionlessness reminded Mara of her first meeting with Thrawn.
The same impenetrable rationalist.
"So clear the cylinders!"
"If I do that, the improved Harpies will be destroyed," the Kaminoan objected. "I've been working on these improvements since the creation of the elite Null-class Advanced Recon Commandos. My team and I have approval from Black Sun leadership itself for this activity! Your power shutdowns and base preparation for demolition are just adding to my work!"
So that's how it is...
So Orun Wa wasn't the only cloning expert on the facility.
Moreover—he was involved in creating the clones of elite Null-class Advanced Recon Commandos.
The very ones that surpassed their original in all parameters, yielding only in one—obedience to orders.
While the clone commandos after the formation of the Galactic Empire became the first storm commandos, and then, like all clones due to aging, transitioned from the "fighters" category to "instructors," the Nulls simply vanished, erasing all information after themselves and leaving no traces of their modified genome on Kamino.
Mara had only read about them in Clone Wars historical chronicles.
However, as she suspected, no one in the Empire would have dared repeat such an experiment.
Who needed dozens of uncontrollable professional commandos who didn't obey orders and thought independently?
"Then think about this," Makus Kaynif literally hissed. "The early warning system 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 our organization's enemies will do with your new generation Harpy clones?"
"Destroy them," the Kaminoan said calmly. "But why wasn't I told earlier about the approaching destroyers?"
"And the laboratory along with them, if we don't evacuate it from 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 on the near-human.
But instead of an answer, the blaster barrel pressed into his body, which the fat man virtuously drew.
"Because you're just a worker, Orun Wa," he said. "We saved you and your group from Kamino for a reason. You either work for us, or we don't need you. Your developments are already on chips. Either you obey now and neutralize all these rejects so the workers can disconnect the equipment chain and finally evacuate the laboratory, or I'll do it right before your eyes. While you lie at my feet with a gut shot. Decide—giving you three seconds! One!"
Mara reached for the blaster she had tucked into the holster on her left shoulder while crawling through the ventilation.
"Two!"
"I need just half an hour for the data upload to their brains to happen properly! Starting over is months of painstaking work!" for the first time, a hint of emotion appeared in the Kaminoan's voice.
But his opponent was deaf to pleas, continuing to glare furiously into Orun Wa's eyes from below.
The portable blaster fit comfortably in Jade's hand.
Taking advantage of being hidden behind the cloning cylinder, the girl aimed.
The cave's silence was broken by the comlink sound.
"Kaynif here!" the fat man barked, distracted from his task, turning his back to the Kaminoan but keeping the ready-to-fire blaster in hand. And Mara understood it was her time to act. "Hutt's burp! Scramble the fighters! Pull the transport ships out of the system! Immediate... " She had a chance not to lose what she'd achieved in the mission. "Interdictors!? Then pull the Star Galleons to the other side of the planet and let them escape the system as best they can!" Like a snake, she slipped from behind the cloning cylinder, ending up next to the railing.
The Kaminoan turned his head toward her.
"We can't catch them all! See to it that every ship has a Harpy!" Mara disapprovingly shook her head and pointed at her priority target when he opened his mouth to break his silence. Orun Wa wisely shut up. "No surrenders! Blow transport ships if capture attempted! Donors must not fall to the Dominion!...
Makus Kaynif pocketed the comm device at the very moment Jade completed her leap.
Rolling to absorb the momentum, she kicked the blaster from Kaynif's hand.
Spinning on one foot, she saw the horror in her opponent's eyes as he looked at her.
Opening his mouth wider, sticking out his tongue to the edge of his teeth...
With the firm intention of clenching his teeth and biting the poison ampule or biting off his own tongue.
Or one or the other—now it didn't matter.
Her hand automatically reached for the lightsaber.
Without the Force, there was no point in hoping for a surgically precise strike.
And she didn't need it.
With a sharp strike, Mara vaporized Makus Kaynif's upper jaw and tongue, severing the remnants of the lower jaw as well.
Kaynif's crazed gaze was worth her heart skipping a beat during that lunge.
Not giving the opponent time to recover, she spun in place and struck his head with her boot.
The unconscious Makus collapsed to the floor.
Mara turned to the Kaminoan.
The lightsaber blade pressed right against the center of his chest.
"You have a choice," she said. "Either you now make your clones harmless, and they don't resist Dominion forces, and you and your team work for us, or I execute you right here."
The Kaminoan looked at her with unblinking black eyes like the heart of a black hole.
Then his eyelids finally met.
"I have a better proposal," he said in an emotionless tone, touching a panel on his suit. "I'll demonstrate them in action to all of you."
After these words, Mara heard the sound of running water and the pitiful cries of ysalamiri drowning in the nutrient medium.
Hundreds of cloning cylinders opened synchronously, from which hundreds of young muscled women clad only in short undergarments emerged, flexing their limbs, with the gazes of killers.
Mara cried out as if scalded by boiling water.
On the edge of perception of the returning Force, she felt the echoes of deaths around her.
Disoriented, she stepped back, exerting all her efforts to shield herself from the vision.
"To battle," Orun Wa commanded, turning his back to Mara and slowly striding toward the exit.
And fighters of the same gender as Jade began jumping onto the pedestal.
The red-haired beast gripped her weapon to the point of pain in her arms, preparing for the fight.
This was definitely nothing like the raid on the Imperial Palace on Coruscant, where she, with lightsaber and Force, had lost to Winter.
Here, no one needed to be taken prisoner.