A Bridge Too Far

[Ashin Varanin]

She'd avoided Rave Merrill when possible, largely out of the suspicion that she wouldn't like her. Oh, Merrill had served well enough as a subordinate, and Ashin had no complaints about her management of the Confederation as a High Councilor. If Ashin's own experience with governance was any indication, though, you never wanted to see how laws and sausages were made, and Rave Merrill had no compunctions about mess.

"I'm no more an Arbiter now than you're still a Councillor, Master Merrill." She gestured at the holomap, the highlighted dots, a blizzard of colour that spread from the Tion Cluster and the Corporate Sector. "Unless I'm to take this facility and this network as an indication that you still work for the Fringe at the highest levels."

Was that disappointment she felt, resentment at having been left out at the loop? Or was it pleasure that the Fringe Confederation was doing something? She honestly couldn't tell.

 

[Velok the Younger]

"Not at all. I have my own circles now; Fringe is one of them. I keep relationships, but I'm no longer a power player." She smiled, and wasn't sure how much she meant it. "Like you, I found Fringe's trademark transience bled into my term as a leader. I found it a relief to leave, much as I love the Fringe. You can't keep the bow strung all the time."

After a moment, she shrugged. "And my ambitions led elsewhere. I've had success in the private sector, informal influence in the galaxy's economic heart. Territorial flexibility, freedom to invest in widespread markets. I have no reason to detain you, Arbiter. I assume you're here in your role as a Jedi, an investigator. I contract with Jedi, with the Republic, with the Sith -- with everyone. I do business without prejudice. If you want to tour the facility, that's acceptable. If you want to bring an accountant droid in to look at my books, as you tried on Gromas -- yes, I still have eyes there -- I'm amenable to that so long as the droid is wiped after it gives you its conclusions. It's not in my interests to leave you with unanswered questions. You'll find a business you may find unsavory, but one that's largely employee-owned, one with beneficial galactic effects, one with modest ambitions and valid functions."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

"Don't spin me, Master Merrill," said Ashin, though her gaze never left the map. That dot was probably Colluctari, that one might be Gromas -- no, its placement was off, relative to the Perlemian. Near Gromas, though, and she couldn't think of what it might be. Other dots had an AEL-blue aura in the Corporate Sector and Levantine space; one would be this one. At least the blue looked like AEL. Circe Savan, who technically signed her cheques on occasion, would have paid serious money for this map, a map Ashin intended on transcribing with short-term memory enhancement -- not because she meant to sell it or give it away, but because it would be a challenge.

She could attach meaning to most of those dots, generally innocuous meaning. The exceptions approached monstrosity. Epitomized it, even.

"You run terentatek farms. What's your target?" She managed a smile. "Nobody farms terentateks without considering the combat possibilities, Master Merrill. If circumstances drove you to sacrifice your company for violence, what would you hit, and how easily?"

 

[Velok the Younger]

"I've kept my options open. I contract with everyone, I do business with everyone. I have reasons to hold my peace, bide my time."

Something ugly boiled up in her, and she didn't feel like holding its leash.

"But rest assured, I have targets. The women who stole from me, kidnapped me -- Alicia Drey, Darth Ayra, and her master Circe Savan. Their associates, their partners. And more than that. Far more.

"I loved a man, once. He never reciprocated; he was twice my age or more, a good man, honorable. But I loved him.

"His name was Gilamar Skirata. He died on Koros Major two days ago, at the hands of the Dark Lord of the One Sith."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

"Gil Skirata's dead?"

Feth.

She ignored the Dark Master's rage, though the holomap warped above them. That left precious few candidates for Mand'alor -- Azrael, Strider Garon, Preliat Mantis, Larraq, Rekali even. Ordo would have been heir apparent if he hadn't gone dar'manda. And with Mia Monroe, or her clone or twin, on Ordo's side too...

"Feth."

Her fist hit the bulkhead; sheetmetal rattled in its fixings. Not all of that holowarping was from Rave.

"If this facility is for what I think it's for, do what you will. I'll not get in your way."

 

[Velok the Younger]

"Come see what I'm doing before you give me the pass. Come tell me whether I'm on the right track."

She contained her fury and stalked from the map room. The subterranean facility had four stories, each L-shaped, with various large side chambers that matched all of the four layers for height.

"Terentateks, tuk'ata -- long-lived creatures with long reproductive cycles. We've had some success with accelerated breeding on our farms. This facility is for taking the next steps. Combination, improvement, faster acceleration." They looked down over a room filled with leviathan egg clusters. "Accelerated maturition, working from the cloning technology I took at Soledad -- working from project SLATE, too, which you set up."

The next chamber was triple-sealed; with each open door, noise grew. Brutal, hunched, top-heavy shapes hurled themselves against walls. "Juvenile terentateks. Normally it takes years for them to get this large. We're doing it in weeks. Leather, meat, certainly -- but weapons, too."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

"And then you, what, ship them to your free-range farms? Kyrikal Seventeen, Aargonar, where else?"

"Aargonar is too close to everything," Merrill said, shaking her head. "Aargonar is a decoy -- we have no operations there. We run maturition off Kyrikal Seventeen, Serpena, Aza'zoth, and a place called Tash-Taral -- a place even more remote and hidden than this. Think Korriban, but secret. Looted by old regimes. Korriban crossed with Tatooine, you could say."

"Desert is good for terentateks," Ashin agreed. "What about tuk'ata? They're sentient -- are you accelerating their breeding too? I have issues with that."

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Ashin Varanin"]

"I am, though I don't see it as especially different from the Republic or the Fringe raising clone soldiers to physical and sexual maturity in a short timeframe. Not all tuk'ata are fully sentient, though, and I prefer to work with the less intelligent variants, at least for this. I do some work with the sentient ones, though." She gestured, leading Ashin through the facility. "And that, I think you'll like. Come see."

The operating rooms were numerous; alchemy had chemical and magical and genetic aspects, but surgical aspects also. She chose one door at random; it led onto a surgical suite's observation gallery. Medical droids attended a monstrous, sedated tuk'ata, an old dog fresh from a thousand-year slumber, a tomb guardian laden with scars.

"You could call it vivisection," said Rave offhand. "The process is a little more benevolent than that. Alchemical reagents are involved, to encourage skin grafts from young terentateks. Don't tell me this turns your stomach, you of all people."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Ashin grimaced but made no response. She enhanced her vision with the Force, examining the details of the operation -- no, operations. Apart from the grafts, which had apparently taken place earlier, there were two separate surgeries underway. One involved the hips; the other, the front paws. She focused in on the latter. One paw had been altered, was surrounded in a bacta cast; she couldn't get much detail from it, but the shape of the cast rubbed her wrong until-

A surgeon droid shifted position, and she got a good solid look at the other paw. The other hand.

"Feth. You're giving sentient tuk'ata opposable thumbs -- and making them able to stand on their hind legs." Emotions and possibilities roiled within her. "Sort of an unconscionable form of uplift, if the characteristics aren't heritable. Unless you have a shortcut between acquired and heritable traits -- but I was always told that was impossible."

 

[Velok the Younger]

"I've been at this for a while. I'm not solely a destroyer, Arbiter. Come see."

From the surgical wing -- well, this wing of this floor -- they descended to the lowest level. Sibilant, guttural Ancient Sith phrases drifted in the air as they made their way through silent halls with windowless doors. They came at last to an entrance to yet another chamber.

"I made them to fight the Charon, and to keep terentateks under control -- terentateks like tuk'ata, for the most part. And I made them because they deserved it. Thousands of years of servitude. Sentience but no ability to manipulate their surroundings. Was that intentional? Were they created that way, did they once have opposable thumbs, were they sentenced to this, subjugated? I wouldn't put it past my predecessors."

The chamber opened up to reveal a jungle gym. Crosshatched bars and small interstitial platforms filled it. Ancient Sith language, in a growling susurrus, filled the chamber entirely. And tuk'ata with thumbs swung hand-over-hand between the bars, or walked on their hind legs on the floor, the platforms.

"But yes. I can make acquired characteristics heritable. This is the second generation, and my work breeds true. Perhaps you'll forgive me my accelerated maturition program now."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Rave Merrill"]

"This is so far out of the realm of normal that I can't untangle what's good, bad, unwise and justified. But who am I to judge. I do believe that hubris has its place -- hubris accomplishes things.

"This will be abused. They'll be used, or that'll be the attempt. Likely even by your associates.

"You have a plan, I presume. A long-term plan for protection, for natural growth, for a safe habitat. And will these traits breed true when interbred with the unaltered tuk'ata? Are these dominant traits, Master Merrill? How thoroughly have you tested that?"

 

[Velok the Younger]

"Here? Not extensively." Rave gestured at the four-story-high crosshatch of beams and platforms. "But this is only a quarter of the successfully uplifted, and I flatter myself that I've done enough of this to have a humanely high success rate. The rest are on Tash-Taral, living in the wild. There's a handful of resource points, not unlike what I use on Kyrikal for farming. Geographical anchors, toolsheds, water purifiers, shelters -- all the accoutrements of a hardscrabble colony. They prefer the deserts, the tombs. They're tuk'ata; that's their life, their intrinsic need. I could never cut that out of them, nor would I want to. They are what they are; I've changed nothing. Just given them options."

She smiled faintly. "And when their children spread across Tash-Taral, however long that takes -- not just Tash-Taral, but Korriban even, maybe -- then the galaxy will see something new. The Sith have fallen again and again, forgotten what they were over and over. The tuk'ata have read and listened and slept and waited. And nobody has interrupted that. The tuk'ata are old. Not the ones I've made -- but they can be taught, they pass on memories, there've been experiments with Kaminoan flash-learning. We looked at accelerated maturition from all angles.

"Like I said. It's their turn."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

"How did you do it? How did you make acquired characteristics heritable?"

Rave said nothing.

"Oh, it's in front of my face, is it? Something I should have noticed, something I should already know?" She felt her eyes go wide as one of her wilder theories about the mysterious transports clicked. Call it intuition.

"You're not. Oh feth. You are. You've colonized Otherspace. You're using Silk drives to get Charon biotech, using it to blend species -- they can do that, blend themselves with species they find. Genetic chelation. The potential...dear gods, Rave, what have you done."

 

[Velok the Younger]

For just a moment, she was certain that her eyes betrayed her, or the sloping lines of her shoulders.

"Arbiter...you don't want to know."