The Long Game

[Shayde]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Kovarri’s Grand Carnival, 835 ABY[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]The show was long over, and silence had descended on the circus. Simulated night reigned on this mid-level of Coruscant, and the neon lights that remained lit cast technicolor shadows over the tents. They had set up in a cavernous warehouse, once bustling but empty since Coruscant’s recent recolonization, and where massive shipping crates had once stood they had anchored stages and bleachers. A few hours earlier hundreds of beings, exhausted from the work of trying to restore this broken world, had laughed and cheered and shouted. Now everything was empty.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]The Freak moved through the shadows like a creature born to them, which, to be fair, he was. Born to the darkness of a durasteel cage, to the proking and prodding of jeering crowds. But all that would be put right that very night. After thirty years of waiting, thirty long years of enslavement and abuse, he would have his revenge. His eight crimson eyes glowed with anticipation, and he could hardly keep his six hands from shaking. But he forced himself to keep his breathing steady and his mind focused. There was still much that could go wrong; he would have to be cautious.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Two dozen repulsorlift wagons housed the Grand Carnival as it slept, all painted in garish colors and, beneath the simulated joy, all in poor repair. The Freak slipped between them without a sound, a blur of spidery limbs. Kovarri had taught him how to move unseen so that he could pick pockets and deliver the earnings to his owner; those same skills were being used toward a very different goal now. Forward he crept, eyes alert, as the largest of the repulsorlift wagons loomed up before him. “RINGMASTER” was painted on the side. The Freak smiled.[/SIZE]

 

[Shayde]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Among The Freak’s duties had been repairing the wagons when they broke down, and once he could fix something he knew a dozen ways to make it break. He crawled beneath the wagon, to where he knew the power couplings were. Skittering along the durasteel floor was simple for him, propelled by his eight limbs, but every movement pulled at his old scars - the cuts and burns he had earned every time he had made a mistake. Yet the pain only strengthened his resolve. His three-fingered hands found the power couplings, searching over the metal for the perfect one.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]With a vicious tug he pulled one free, and a soft humming ceased. It had been a risky proposition; pulling the wrong coupling could have disengaged the repulsorlifts, dropping the whole wagon on him with bone-crushing force. But The Freak knew these machines well, better than any of his tormentors. The one he had pulled routed power to the electronic door locks and nothing more. Moving his many arms once again, he pulled himself out from beneath the wagon and moved to the main doors. He could feel fire in his blood, thrumming hotter as the moment came closer.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]He had long debated what weapon to use. There would be a certain beautiful irony in using one of the shockwhips that the Ringmaster used on the carnival’s malnourished Akk Dogs. The thieves he had met while fencing goods stolen from the audience had offered to sell him poisons that would leave Kovarri writhing in agony for hours, spitting up his own intestines. But in the end he had settled on something far more personal. The Freak felt it in his pocket and smiled; no blaster would be such fitting justice, or bring him such satisfaction. Silently, he crept up to the doorframe.[/SIZE]

 

[Shayde]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Cutting the power to the door locks had also cut the power to the doors themselves, leaving the durasteel panels stuck in place. For an ordinary being, that would pose a significant problem, and The Freak briefly fantasized about simply leaving the Ringmaster trapped inside his own wagon to starve. But he would surely be rescued before then, and the fat fool likely had plenty of food stashed away beside his bed, where none of his near-starving “employees” could get at it. No, this would require a more immediate death… and a more personal means of killing. Both would occur.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Grabbing the doorframe with three hands and the door with his other three, The Freak calmly heaved, slowly easing the door back into its slot. He had greased it the previous night under the guise of making general repairs, and it made no sound as it slid out of his way. He smiled, his mandibles spreading and his eyes growing brighter; everything was going exactly as he had planned. A few seconds more and the opening was wide enough for him to squeeze through. Despite his considerable height and musculature, he was good at slipping into tight spaces.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]The room beyond was dark, but The Freak could see better in shadows than in daylight. Sure enough, it was littered with the remains of the Ringmaster’s last feast: fresh fruit, prime cuts of Roba steak, and several bottles of expensive liquor. It was a dinner sized for a party but eaten by one, and even the corpulent Kovarri could not possibly have eaten it all. Nearly half of it had been carelessly left to waste; it would rot, unwanted by the Ringmaster but considered too good for the rest of the carnival. The Freak felt his stomach growl, but he was hungrier for blood than for food.[/SIZE]

 

[Shayde]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Rounding the corner, The Freak got his first sight of Kovarri. The fat man wore a shimmersilk nightgown; it was easily worth as much as three of the wagons, perhaps more. His dark, cruel little eyes, presently shut, were nearly swallowed by the folds of fat that surrounded them; when open, they stared out from their sunken hollows in his face as if from the pits of hell. His triple chins shuddered as he snored, his nose struggling to draw enough breath to make his overgrown belly rise and fall. Asleep, unaware, helpless… it was the first time The Freak had seen him thus.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]It would be terribly easy to end him then and there. The fusion cutter that The Freak had pocketed during his maintenance duties could easily burn through that fat, sizzling his throat like a heated vibroblade. The Freak imagined the smell it would make, something like nerf meat on the grill, and smiled. But any assassin could cut a throat in the night. It lacked the poetic justice he sought, and he knew exactly how he would get it. But first, he had to consider his escape. Though he scarcely dared believe it, that very night he would be free. But freedom was unkind to the unprepared.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]The shimmersilk nightgown was valuable, but The Freak had no intention of touching it after the Ringmaster had worn it. He kept his quick, quiet search to small and easily portable items of value. There were a few credit sticks, and a number of small aurodium statuettes, and several doses of neutron pixie - no wonder the Ringmaster was so manic during each show. They would be easy to pawn, funding The Freak’s escape. He had rehearsed this a thousand times; he knew where he would go. All that remained was to do the deed. He smiled. He was more than ready.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Turning briefly back the way he had come, he slid the door back into place.[/SIZE]

 

[Shayde]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Kovarri awoke with a horrified gasp as The Freak hauled him bodily into the air. It took all six arms to lift the fat man from his feet, but adrenaline lent strength to each limb. In the darkness, The Freak’s mandibles twitched. Some part of him wanted to rip out the Ringmaster’s throat with his arachnoid fangs then and there, leave him bleeding and gurgling to die on the floor of the wagon, but he restrained himself. Everything had been rehearsed, and his revenge would not be truly complete unless he followed the plan. And so he stared, his crimson eyes boring holes in Kovarri.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“F… Freak?” The Ringmaster’s tiny eyes struggled to focus in the darkness; all they could see for certain was the eight burning orbs that hovered in front of them. “Yes,” The Freak hissed, “that’s what you called me. For thirty years, that’s what you called me.” He hauled the Ringmaster higher off the ground, two hands grabbing his shoulders, two his ribs, and two his hips. A measure of command returned to Kovarri’s voice. “What do you think you’re doing? Take your filthy hands off me, or it’s back to half gruel for the next month!” It was a tone that The Freak was all too used to.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]But this time the Harch smiled. “We’re not in the ring this time, Ringmaster. This time you’re all alone. All except for me.” The realization that came with the words crept slowly over Kovarri’s fat face, and he began to shake and thrash in The Freak’s grip. “Help!” He screamed. “Someone help me!” He hung there a while longer, calling out with desperate eyes and a raw throat, before finally slumping in defeat. “No one can hear you,” The Freak murmured. “You soundproofed the walls so that no one would know what you did to the dancing girls. Now no one will know what I do to you.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Not,” he continued, “that anyone would care. You’ve made enemies of us all, fat man.”[/SIZE]

 

[Shayde]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“What do you want?” Kovarri asked, trying to suppress his shudders and salvage some dignity.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]The Freak dropped him unceremoniously to the floor, where he landed in a tangle of blubbery limbs. “Nothing that you are able to give me,” the Harch replied. “You can’t return the thirty years you stole or restore the childhood you transformed into a horror show. But I’ll settle for your credits. All of them, on a credit stick. You have sixty seconds.” Kovarri looked up at him, gauging how serious he was, looking for any uncertainty he might exploit. “You can’t possibly get away with this,” he wheezed, still trying to catch his breath. “I made you. I brought you here.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]The Freak brought his spidery leg down on the Ringmaster’s corpulent one. Bone snapped under the terrible force of the blow, and Kovarri howled in agonized surprise. “Yes,” The Freak replied, “you made me what I am. And clearly you should be very, very proud. The credits. Now.” Still whimpering, Kovarri crawled to the credit stick and keyed in his bank frequency. “The police will find you,” he hissed through gritted teeth and pudgy lips. “They’ll terminate you for this. I was right when I named you, you little beast, you freak. And you’ll be nothing without me. Just see.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]The Freak snatched the credit stick from the Ringmaster’s sausage-like fingers, checked the balance, and tucked it away. “Nothing without you? We’ll see. But for now I’ll return some of the kindness you’ve shown me.” He bent down and pulled from his pocket a solid durasteel sphere, its surface covered with scratches and wear. It was an object that had been burned into his memory since he was six years old, his lifeline and the object of his loathing, something inseparable from his existence as a carnival slave. “Now,” he said, a long-ago echo, “time for you to learn to juggle.”[/SIZE]

 

[Shayde]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Kovarri stared at him, eyes uncomprehending. The Freak slapped him across the face, throwing him to the ground with a whimper. There was a cut beneath his right eye when he turned his face upright again. “I said juggle,” the Harch told the Ringmaster, his words the perfect parallel of a time long ago when their roles had been reversed. Hesitantly Kovarri tossed the ball from one hand to another, but his eyes were on The Freak, and he missed the catch. The ball rolled away across the floor. Kovarri’s eyes got wide, and he dragged himself frantically after it.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]As he reached it, The Freak loomed over him, a red-hot brand suddenly in his hand. He struck Kovarri on the shoulder, drawing a howl of pain and the hiss of seared flesh. It was the same punishment the Harch had felt whenever he had dropped a ball. “Again,” The Freak commanded, and the Ringmaster, crying quietly now, tossed the ball from one hand to the other. “Faster,” The Freak ordered, and soon Kovarri was frantically tossing the ball between his sweaty palms, as if it was too hot to touch. The Freak produced a second ball and tossed it down on the floor.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Kovarri’s face grew paler. “Now two,” The Freak demanded. The Ringmaster looked up at him in panic. “I can’t! I don’t know how!” The Freak smiled; he remembered helplessly voicing the same objections. “Then learn,” he said, his voice cold and without pity. Kovarri took up the two balls and tried to toss them past each other, but they struck each other in midair and rolled to opposite corners of the room. Again he frantically pursued them, but The Freak was behind him as he crawled, laying into his legs and back with the burning brand. There was no escape to be had.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]If this wasn’t justice, it was at least a fitting revenge.[/SIZE]

 

[Shayde]

[SIZE=14.6667px]By the time Kovarri had managed to throw and catch both balls, he bled from two dozen cuts and burns. He was covered in sweat, his fat sides heaving, and the hope was gone from his eyes. When he finally caught both balls he laughed, a high, nasal sound that was half joy and half panic at what might come next. The Freak remembered that feeling. It had never led to anything good, as Kovarri would discover. “Good enough for today,” he said, again parroting the Ringmaster’s old words, the way they had stolen any hope or triumph with the bitter promise of the following morning.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]He pulled out a third ball, rolling the metal sphere between this three fingers. “Now,” he said, “you get to eat.” Two hands grabbed Kovarri by the neck; two more wrenched his mouth open. And into that abyss of gluttony The Freak shoved that final ball, the force of the blow shattering teeth as the steel hit the back of the Ringmaster’s throat and lodged there. The man struggled, gurgled, but The Freak held him there, cold durasteel blocking his windpipe as a tangle of limbs thrashed, until finally the thrashing subsided and all was still. Through his mandibles, The Freak spat.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]He wondered what the Coruscani police would think when they found Kovarri, splayed on the floor of his bedroom with a juggling ball forced so far down his throat it had crushed his windpipe. But in truth he didn’t care. He felt a burden lift from his shoulders as doors of infinite possibility opened before him. He was free. And there was one thing that the Ringmaster had taught him that he still cherished: ruthlessness. He had the coldness, the drive, and the lack of scruples to ensure that he would always be free, from that day forward. No one would take from him again.[/SIZE]

 

[Shayde]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Setting the electrical fire was a simple business of misaligning a few wires in several of the generators; The Freak had seen enough beings do it by accident that it was easy to manage intentionally. He did not hate the rest of the carnival quite as much as he had hated Kovarri, but he could not forget that they had been complicit. They had left him in that little cage, had used his abuse by crowds of visitors to pick attendees’ pockets, had turned a blind eye to what had been done to each of their fellows in order to preserve their own skins. For that, they would suffer.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]The blaze flared up rapidly. Where it hit fuel tanks and alcohol storage it ate up wagons in great bursts of flame; elsewhere it licked forward slowly and inexorably, moving at the speed of creeping dread. Some other captives of the carnival might yet escape. If they did, The Freak did not care; they had shown the initiative necessary to earn their survival. Perhaps it would be the fortune teller, or the dancing girls, or the strongman. Whoever it was would only help to spread his legend when the Coruscani police realized who was neither in their custody nor burned in the wreckage.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Kovarri’s wagon he left untouched, removed from the blaze that leapt between the others. The flickering flames were reflected in the shiny paint of the head wagon; the letters RINGMASTER slowly peeled from the heat as everything their owner had worked for burned to ash. The Freak stayed only a little while to watch. He intended to bury his sentiment after this moment. He was reborn, and he did not need to think of his old life ever again. All he would recall was that he had been born of vengeance, his own successful, bloody vengeance. He would continue on in kind.[/SIZE]

 

[Shayde]

[SIZE=14.6667px]The Freak found his underworld contact exactly where the man had said he would be. The Devaronian lounged casually against the wall of an alley, one hand on a heavy blaster pistol. In the distance, sirens blared as fire suppression vehicles flocked to the site where the carnival burned. The Freak hardly noticed; already it was all behind him. He approached the Devaronian, looming over him. Any double-cross, his hulking presence assured, would end badly for the weaselly little fence. Tugging open his jacket, the Harch produced the things he had stolen.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Not a bad haul,” the Devaronian acknowledged. “It should cover the supplies we agreed on. They’re in a trash receptacle at the end of the alley. Though what you want all that repair gear for, I can’t even guess.” The Freak did not answer or even acknowledge the implied question. After an awkward pause, the Devaronian continued. “Right. Look, we’ve done good business so far, you and me. So I’m thinking that I can give you a good price on anything else you find for me.” He hefted one of the injectors of neutron pixie. “Especially good stuff like this. I’ll get a good resale.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]The Freak waited, still silent. “So I’m thinking that we need to set up some kind of system, y’know? A way for you to contact me, or me to contact you, so we can make a deal. What should I call you?” It was the question the Harch had been waiting for his whole life. For the first time, he was choosing his own name, and with it his own fate. He remembered what Zofi, the Ryn fortune teller, had said, the stories she had told late at night about the shades that lurked in the dark spaceways, waiting to steal the souls of the unwary. He, too, would become a thing in the night.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Shayde,” he told the Devaronian. “You can call me Shayde.”[/SIZE]

 

[Shayde]

[SIZE=14.6667px]The Works, 838 ABY[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Every descent into the Works was full of danger. For Shayde, it was also filled with purpose.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]He still vividly remembered his final night as The Freak, when he had fled into the sublevels of Coruscant ahead of the Republic peacekeepers. Much had changed for the city-planet since then as the galaxy fell into chaos and war, but his own quest was much the same. For three years he had crept down into these depths, surrounding by thrumming machines and sparking wiring, and he expected to be doing it for many years more before he was done. But it was all worthwhile. It was the beginning of his rise to power, and it would all begin with sanctuary. His own sanctuary.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]All eight limbs were stretched to the breaking point as he clambered carefully across rusted maintenance catwalks and swung between wires, blazing a trail that few beings had both the mind and body necessary to follow. The vest and bandoleer he wore were stuffed with tools, and scanner lenses covered his eight eyes. Looking through the durasteel with the aid of those lenses, he followed a single wire all the way back to the place where it was broken, bleeding sparks into the surrounding plates. He hung there by two of his arms, a drop of a thousand feet below him.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]A third arm produced a fusion cutter, the same one he had stolen from Kovarri all those years ago, and a fourth arm stabilized the panel as he cut it free in a shower of sparks. A nest of conduit worms crawled beneath the durasteel, feeding from the broken wires, and he tore them loose, feeling them writhe in his hand before he dropped them into the depths below. Swinging his feet up to steady himself, he set to work on the delicate task of resetting and diverting the delicate wire. Soon it would power his stronghold-to-be, one of a million in his scavenged infrastructure.[/SIZE]

 

[Shayde]

[SIZE=14.6667px]It wasn’t just power, either. With the wires back in place, Shayde swung his way down to a lower catwalk and carefully cut open the wall. Foetid water bubbled up from where he had removed the covering, and duracrete slugs slithered uneasily as they were exposed to light. The Harch produced a small hold-out blaster and, with unerring aim at this close range, blew the translucent worms apart, spattering the cramped compartment in half-cooked guts. He reached past them, heedless of the goo that dripped on his hairy arms, and found the shattered remains of the pipe.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]It was beyond repair, but a steady career as a pickpocket had given Shayde enough credits to buy replacements. He supposed he should thank Kovarri for teaching him that skill, but in truth he had been a natural at it, requiring little instruction - and the corpulent ringmaster, who had never moved unseen for a full minute of his life, was hardly a capable teacher. Shaking away the old thoughts, Shayde produced a length of replacement pipe. Taking a measurement through his sensor lenses, he leaned down and used his fusion cutter to shape the metal down to size.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]As he welded, his arms covered in worm goo and filthy water, he kept his goal fresh in his mind. The One Sith occupation had put the question of restoring the underlevels to safe habitability to rest - it would never happen under their brutal rule, simply because they didn’t care what happened to the people who dwelled below. And so there was a shortage of safety, and of the supplies needed to live, in the many ruined districts of Coruscant. The slumlords who had emerged could provide some safety, but could not fulfill the demand for infrastructure.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Shayde aimed to become the first of them who could.[/SIZE]

 

[Shayde]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Every tiny piece of infrastructure added up, but the real problem was that Thermodraft was dying.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Shayde had first encountered the massive machine on one of his earliest ventures down into the Works, and he had known immediately that he needed to harness it. Every one of Kovarri’s wagons could have fit snugly in the reactor’s central chamber, and that was only a small part of the great generator’s inner workings. From what he could discover, it was part of the original Gree infrastructure of Coruscant, countless millennia old but designed with such advanced technology that it could power dozens of city blocks that extended both up and down for literal kilometers.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Other scavengers and salvagers, along with the crazed machine cults that somehow managed to survive in the Works, spoke of Thermodraft with great reverence. That was partly genuine respect and partly out of fear of the machine’s supposed anger. An overload in its reactor could level enough of Galactic City that the dot of damage would be visible from space. So everyone pitched in to keep Thermodraft in good repair, but now it was damaged beyond their ability to fix, and the rumors of leaking radiation kept even the boldest of Works-dwellers back from its central chamber.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Every step along the catwalk, however, took Shayde closer. He had spent years by now building up what would become his kingdom, and he would brook no threat to the fruits of his labors. As his array of sensors began to ping warnings, he flicked on the radiation shield he had bought, watching the orange shimmer cross his body. He did not know if it would be strong enough or how long it would hold under the barrage of unstable particles. But failure here was as good as death, so he might as well take the chance. Steeling himself with the same inner strength he’d harnessed before stepping onto the circus stage to be mocked and jeered at, he readied his tools to work.[/SIZE]

 

[Shayde]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Shayde had kept his hold-out blaster ready, and that turned out to have been a good decision.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]The first corridor ghoul leapt at him as soon as he cleared the doorway, its elongated jaws opened wide as it lunged from where it had been crawling along the wall. Reflex took over. The Harch twisted to the left as one of his right hands brought the gun up, firing a pair of shots right down the creature’s throat. Its rubbery corpse, still driven by the force of its leap, bounced off of him, driving him a step back. Saliva spattered him as its flecked jaws narrowly missed. He whirled to keep his blaster trained on the creature, ready to fire again, but it had been dead before it hit the ground.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]The same could not be said for the rest of its pack. Five of them crawled forward along walls, ceiling, and floor, drooling as they advanced. They were vaguely canine, with four clawed feet, long tails, and pronounced, pointed ears, but that was where the similarities ended. Hairless, eyeless, and pale, they were well-adapted to the lightless depths several thousand levels below the surface. Shayde had once heard that they hunted by echolocation, screaming in voices beyond the range of his hearing and finding prey based on where the sound waves bounced.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Whatever the truth, they certainly knew that he was there. They accelerated, preparing to pounce in a mass of fangs and claws. The Harch checked the charge on his hold-out; it was totally spent. Tossing the useless weapon aside, he drew a set of vibroblades from within his leatheris duster coat, one knife for each of his six hands. Then he did the last thing the predators had expected from this lone, outnumbered outsider: he charged. Holding two blades high in gutting position, two in a low guard, and two at a mid level ready to intercept, he prepared himself for brutal combat.[/SIZE]

 

[Shayde]

[SIZE=14.6667px]The advantage of coming toward the corridor ghouls was that they got in each other’s way.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Two of the canine creatures leapt at Shayde at once, but he was ready for both. He hurled himself between them, striking with a pair of knives at each, and when he came through the middle he found all four weapons bloody. They had torn long furrows into unprotected flanks as had he had passed, carving off chunks of meat and severing musculature, and the two who had attacked him lay whimpering on the ground in bleeding heaps of pallid flesh, struggling to regain their clawed feet. They would have to be cannier than that to get a piece of him. But perhaps they could be.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Twisting around to meet the other ghouls, Shayde fended off two of them with a twisting shield of blades, but a third one dropped from the ceiling and landed on his back. Had he been a smaller or weaker being, the impact might have driven him to the floor, where he would have been ripped apart in seconds. But he was strong, and managed to keep his feet. Serrated jaws closed on his shoulder, digging into the thick leatheris of his jacket. The pressure pushed painfully on the exoskeleton beneath, threatening to crack and split his flesh. He would have to act quickly.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Tucking his legs beneath him, he rolled over his shoulder as he struck backwards with one of his knives. The corridor ghoul was scraped off with a surprised whine as the blade met its throat and the floor met its snout. Shade came to his feet in a low crouch, his six weapons held before him, all dripping with the blue-black blood of the mutants. A moment passed. Then the two remaining ghouls turned and fled, slipping and skittering over the blood-slick floor. It was clear who the apex predator was on this particular level of Coruscant, and it moved with eight limbs, not four.[/SIZE]

 

[Shayde]

[SIZE=14.6667px]The wound to his shoulder was superficial - the creature’s teeth had not penetrated his jacket, and the pressure of its jaws had not done any lasting harm, though he could expect soreness and a somewhat restricted range of motion for a while. On a mission this dangerous, however, even a seemingly minor inconvenience could begin the spiral that led to failure and death. Shayde knew that he would have to be careful. He crept down the corridor, weapons still at the ready, and this time he recalibrated his sensor lenses to pick up life forms. He already knew where he was going.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]The Harch could feel the heat of Thermodraft’s central chamber even from this distance. The reactor vented its excess thermal output along the side tunnels, making them nearly as sweltering as the reactor core room itself. Even in such a hostile environment, Shayde’s sensor equipment picked up life forms everywhere, mostly mynocks and other parasites. Droid attendants had once kept this pest population under control, keeping them from interfering with the reactor’s function, but it had been a long, long time since Coruscant’s lower infrastructure had run as intended.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Radiation levels were steadily rising, as indicated by the ominously faster beeping of the radiation shield, and Shayde frowned, his mandibles twitching in irritation. It would be difficult to find and seal the leak, and that would not be enough; he would need to determine what had caused it and prevent it from happening again. But he was the being best-equipped for the task. It had taken years of searching to track down the original schematics to these generators, but he had done it, and he had studied them in excruciating detail. Time would tell whether that would be enough.[/SIZE]

 

[Shayde]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Shayde encountered a more significant obstacle at the end of the corridor; detecting the level of radiation, the blast door around the reactor room had automatically sealed. Normally it would also send an alert to the nearest maintenance team, but it had been a long time since anyone had been listening. Without the override code, the Harch was stuck on the far side of the door from Thermodraft, and these were doors meant to help contain an explosion in the event of an overload. No amount of brute strength or weaponry that he could muster would force them open.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Tucking his knives away, Shayde reached for his slicing tools. The door panel was rusted shut, but a good tug got it open. Corrosion and water damage had clearly taken their toll on its inner workings, however - the readouts were half dead and half scrambled, and many of the buttons were frozen in place by mineral buildup. Shayde tore the outer panel free, exposing the wires, and grimaced. Another mess of conduit worms had nested within the door’s circuits. Even the override code could not have opened the door now, overgrown as it was by the urban filth of the Below.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Shayde let the panel drop; there would be no getting through this way. But perhaps there was another route inside. He glanced up, toward the ducts, and frowned. Trying to crawl in through the heat vents would cook him alive. But some of the old cooling tunnels, meant to bring in cold air and ease the heat of the reactor, no longer worked, and they might provide an entry point. Switching his sensors back to structural mode, he traced his eight eyes along the outside of the reactor chamber, looking for his opportunity to bypass the outer locks before everything exploded.[/SIZE]

 

[Shayde]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Shayde crawled through the cooling tunnel, keeping his head low. His mandibles scraped uncomfortably along the bottom of the duct, but he made steady progress - his eight limbs enabled him to scuttle forward through enclosed spaces with far more speed and agility than any near-human could have achieved. Ahead, he could see the orange glow of Thermodraft’s chamber, where fires leapt through gratings in a desperate attempt to vent the heat of so much barely-contained power. It was beautiful, in a way, that power. It was also incredibly deadly.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Reaching the end of the tunnel, Shayde found his face pressed against a durasteel gridwork. With a bit of maneuvering he managed to free two of his arms. He’d had the foresight to keep his fusion cutter in one of his upper hands, and he moved it up to the grate, closing his eyes against the shower of sparks that fell around his face. Finally the metal gave way, and the Harch shoved it out into the chamber beyond. He waited a few moments while the jagged edges cooled enough to be safe, then pulled himself free of the cramped tunnel and into the vast chamber just beyond.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Finally he stood in the middle of Thermodraft. A hundred of him stacked on top of each other would not have reached the chamber’s roof, and a hundred of him side by side could not have reached halfway to the far wall. The heat was oppressive, nearly unbearable, and the beeping of his radiation shield was frantic now. He would not have long to determine what the problem was, fix it, and get out. Raising his scanner-clad eyes along the length of the chamber, Shayde began to examine every line of the massive machine, looking for any flaw he might be able to repair.[/SIZE]

 

[Shayde]

[SIZE=14.6667px]The radiation leak was high on one of the holding tanks, a raw, jagged wound likely caused by a minor explosion. Or perhaps by falling debris, or a groundquake, or any of a dozen other small disasters. What mattered was that Thermodraft was bleeding through it, and that the lost efficiency might well cause the entire generator to erupt in a fireball that would rival an orbital bombardment for destructive capacity. But climbing up to it and putting one’s face right in the area of the leak would be a very effective means of immediate suicide. Shayde needed an alternative.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Fortunately, he had considered this possibility. Reaching into his jacket, he produced a small spherical droid. Flicking it on, he released it in the direction of the leak. The little droid, driven by powerful repulsorlifts, drifted up along Thermodraft’s body. It was hot enough there to cook virtually any organic being, but not quite hot enough to melt metal. Drifting up to the rent durasteel, the droid deployed a welding torch and a pair of graspers, moving the ragged edges of the holding tank back into place and then welding them together. That was one problem dealt with.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]It would be some time before radiation levels in the reactor chamber decreased enough to be anywhere near safe, but at least immediate disaster had been averted. The small droid, its battery spent and its circuits scarred by the intense radiation, dropped from the air and shattered on the grating below. Shayde paid it no heed; it has served its purpose. Now he would need to ensure that Thermodraft continued to serve his personal purposes. Reaching for a new set of tools, he moved toward the massive machine’s dizzying array of control panels, schematics on his mind.[/SIZE]

 

[Shayde]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Diverting even a small portion of Thermodraft’s considerable power through the specific conduits that Shayde had spent years repairing and rerouting was not a job for the faint of heart or the simple of mind. Fortunately, the Harch was neither. All six of his three-fingered hands flew over the controls, adjusting the flow of energy across a dozen of Galactic City’s square blocks. It was the greatest influence he had ever personally achieved, and for a moment he felt almost like a god, deciding where plenty would fall and where the people would be left lacking.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]But this was power that no one would ever recognize, so it was not the kind of power Shayde would be content with. So he finished his calculations and stepped away, imagining that he could see the new flow of energy to the Old Galactic Market. It was there, he had decided, that he would establish his domain. It was defensible but accessible, hidden but not lost, the perfect center for a kingdom of thieves and smugglers. And now it would have infrastructure, power and water, working climate control and lockable doors. None of the current slumlords could boast that.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]What remained was to clear his kingdom of threats, of the sort of beasts that had attacked him on the way to Thermodraft’s chamber, and to attract followers. But he was confident that word of the safety and relative comfort he could provide would spread. He turned back to the cooling tunnel and began to scale the wall, his spidery limbs carrying him up and away from the machine’s vast, irradiated innards. The first phase of his plan to rule was complete. The next time that something in the Works needed to be fixed, he planned to have a not-so-small army to do it for him.[/SIZE]