Unearthing

[Eldaah Aderyn]

"What do you have for me?" she said, tapping the top of one of her probe droids gently as it settled onto her shoulder.

The droid twittered and sent images of a ruined facility on an island, and behind her visor, she smiled to herself. She had hoped the place might still be standing after all this time, and thankfully, it had been missed by both the Ord Mantell government and all the other nations that had controlled this more famous word that bore the prefix Ord.

While she had been around during the recent coup and restructuring of the One Sith, she had gone off on her own to work on a pet project, one that only the one she served knew she was working on. She had left the academy behind, she had gotten all the information she needed about the upcoming generation of Sith. Some were good, others were poor excuses would need to be weeded out eventually. Luckily, she had just the test in mind. But she was getting ahead of herself.

Engaging the rented swoop bike, she took off in the direction her probe droid had indicated the island lay, its secrets buried and hoped to be long forgotten, but she had found the old reports. She had the sample from Taris, but she wanted far more information first.

 

[Eldaah Aderyn]

"Volcanic, inhabited by monsters, native species, or experiments," she said, watching the feed from her other probe droids as they zeroed in on the fast approaching island. The volcanic activity from the island seemed to be dormant beyond lava flows and possibly when the facility there had tapped into the geothermal energy produced by the volcano. The wildlife on the island would deter the casual explorer or civilian from delving into the laboratory.

That, and the cordon of security sensors around the island that seemed designed to alert the local Mantellian security forces. Well, that just wouldn't do at all. Sparks sizzled from her fingers as she came up short next to one on her swoop, pressing her hand against the delicate machinery and unleashing a few jolts of electricity. The sensor started to spark and smoke, the sensor net faltering and failing in this patch. The local forces would still come to investigate why their security node had gone offline, but it would be chalked up to system failures.

Continuing on, she stopped her swoop on the beach and dismounted.

"Go on," she ordered and her probe droids floated away to give her feedback on what awaited on the island beyond.

 

[Eldaah Aderyn]

"Interesting," she said, starting her way towards the lab. Her probe droids were picking odd anomalies in the creatures on the island, cross-referencing bio-signs from the shaclaw and other species they were encountering, she wanted firsthand data on what had caused the anomalies on the scans.

Leaping from rock to rock, she landed lightly on an outcrop of volcanic rock. Below her was a shaclaw, but it had odd spiky protrusions growing out of it. The skin was paler on the specimen below her, not completely white but definitely paler. The claws seemed sharper too, but she wanted more data and information than what a glance at the creature's appearance gave her. Taking her lightsaber off her belt, she ignited both blades and the spinning function and threw it at the creature beneath her. It never knew what killed it, but as she caught her returning lightsaber, it keeled over onto its side, small wisps of smoke rising from the lightsaber wound.

Jumping down to the canyon below, she recalled on of her probe droids and had it take tissue and blood samples. Images flickered across her visor's screen as the data was uploaded and was checked against the standard genetic makeup of a shaclaw. There were definite mutations within the creature she had felled, and a quick check of the blood gave her the evidence she needed. What she had come searching for still existed on this island, albeit in a different form than she had expected.

Logging the data away for her continued study at a later date, she continued her progress towards the lab structure, stopping every so often to kill another creature along her path to analyze their genetics. Everything was pointing her to a hypothesis that when the lab had been raided, the native creatures on the island had not been able to fight their natural urges and had consumed any corpses left behind, infecting themselves with the virus and causing the mutations. It had been said Lorrick had broken the species barrier with his strain, this just confirmed it to her.

 

[Eldaah Aderyn]

Reaching the lab, she could see seismic quakes, the wildlife, and just time had done a number on the place. Her probe droids were whizzing through the place, sending her images of several creatures in her way that looked distinctly more like what she expected to find, the mutagenic virus had done its work on those subjects ... including some humanoids.

One probe droid was showing several humanoid monsters ambling around, searching for food or victims. Some lost security patrol that had fallen victim to the wildlife? Hapless explorers who did not heed the warning that the security net broadcasted to anyone with common sense? Or perhaps, they were subjects to more recent experiments.

"You sure,Two?" she asked into her communicator with her droids. She received an affirmation text across her visor's display, along with a small reading that the droid had obtained from one of the power stations that miraculously, or not so it would seem, worked. Someone else was on the island, working in secret on the virus. Oh good, she certainly wouldn't mind co-opting someone else's work. Still, she would need to go through the old power station and species containment facility to reach the lab itself.

"Observe only," she ordered, igniting her lightsaber again and starting her way into the lab. Circuits and rusted out pieces of droids and turrets littered the area, evidence of the raid from so long ago. Cracks had formed in the wall and floor, showing an orangish-red glow. A growl from above barely registered to her as she reacted out of instinct, striking down the jumping monster before it reached her.

"One, gather samples as I go," she further ordered.

 

[Eldaah Aderyn]

"Who are you?" a guttural voice said in the air as she walked through the halls of the old lab. "Why are you killing my pets? Answer me!"

She stayed silent, enjoying the feeling of frustration she was causing whoever was on the other end of the lab's old intercom system. Apparently, he didn't find her silence amusing as he barked out a command for the creatures to attack her on sight, that she was not to reach the main part of the compound. It was interesting that he had control over the monsters as she was forced to deal with more and more mutated monsters as she progressed.

"Interesting," she murmured, stopping to observe one beast she had just struck down. The man who was experimenting here had been able to cross the species barrier in sentients. The monster she had just struck down had telltale markings of a Mirialian on its face, the pigment more pronounced against the whiteish-gray skin, so still a humanoid but not a human itself. That was good news to her.

"You will not reach my sanctum!" the voice spoke again. "No, He will see to that! Oh yes! One of my greatest creations!"

A roar echoed towards her as a white skinned and covered in black spikes rancor emerged from the gloom, one of its massive claws mutated and dragging on the ground from the sheer size and weight of the appendage.

"Very interesting," she said, locking her lightsaber into its spinning mode and throwing it.

 

[Eldaah Aderyn]

The mutated rancor gave another roar, but it ended in a pained gasp of air as the lightsaber cleaved through its neck. The unmutated claw grasped towards the wound for a moment, and then the beast fell to the ground, spraying a small cloud of dust into the air. The lightsaber came back to her hand, and Probe One made sure to gather samples from the monster.

"No! No! No!" the voice screamed into the intercom. "You will pay for that!"

"I somehow doubt it," she replied to herself, moving past the corpse to the power array station in the crater of the volcano. Most of it had fallen into the lava long ago, but she did note that while plenty of the monsters were lurking in the darkness beyond in the containment area, none were in this section. Analyzing some of the data retrieved from the various creatures she had slain, she isolated a specific gene sequence that seemed to have evolved into this particular strain. The strands suggested fire was extremely effective against them. Odd that such a mutation would occur on a volcanic island, but it was something more to ponder.

Leaping from rock to rock, she made her way to the containment center. Clearly whoever was here had been busy as much of the equipment here was still functional. Bacta tanks, Force cages, suspended animation cells. It would almost be worth it to use this place as her own research facility, but she already had that set up.

 

[Eldaah Aderyn]

"What are you?" the voice asked over the intercom. "Why won't you just die already?! Why won't you leave my pets alone?! Can't you see their beauty?"

"I am Sith," she replied simply, "and your pets will serve a higher purpose."

Not deigning to respond to anymore words from the voice, she started to make quick work of the remaining monsters in between her and her goal. The voice kept screaming orders to his creations, trying to hinder her progress in any way. All he was succeeding in doing was giving her probes more samples to draw upon for the virus, and giving her some extra lightsaber practice.

She started to ponder what would happen if one combined the strain from here with the one she had her droids recovered from Taris? She would need to experiment with that when she returned to her own testing area. The voice had sealed himself in the lab section, judging by the blast door in her way. A pitiful barrier to stop her, really. Her lightsaber drove itself into the door, slowly but surely burning its way through. That research would be hers.

 

[Eldaah Aderyn]

Flaming flakes of metal fell away from the blast door, the voice screaming over the intercom for his monsters to come to his rescue. Unfortunately for the man beyond the quickly disintegrating door, she had slaughtered everything she had encountered and her probes were keeping her informed of any movement that she might need to address.

Nothing was coming, the monsters knew that to come near the strange woman invited death and her dark side aura was shifting around her. At last, the door gave a final burst of molten metal before the lock disengaged and they slid open. Smiling behind her visor, she finally confronted the man who had been researching the virus she had such an interest in. A portly human male, style of dress suggested a Tionese. How interesting. Perhaps a descendant of Lorrick?

"Stand back!" the man yelled, holding up a syringe. "This is loaded with the virus and I'm not afraid to use it!"

"Really?" she said, her hand rising lazily and the syringe flew from the man's hand to hers. "I will be sure to put that to good use, along with your research." And then she started to stride forward, the Force racing from her hand to wrap around the man's throat and lift him into the air.

 

[Eldaah Aderyn]

"No ... please .... have mercy..." the man gasped, struggling to speak through the Force Choke she was imposing on him. Not paying him much attention currently, she directed one of her probe droids to start downloading all pertinent data on the virus to its memory banks. He didn't have time to wipe the data before she broke through it seemed.

"Tell me," she said, not looking at the man, "why the interest in the virus? Most people would want to exterminate this particular creation wherever they encounter it. But here I find you, working away diligently in studying the virus and furthering its propagation. I admit I'm curious."

"Revenge ... against the Sith ... they killed ... my family ... years ago," the man gasped.

"Ah, under the Sith Empire," she said, nodding sagely as her droid chirped it had all data downloaded. "What better way to gain revenge than using something the ancient Sith had created, but you made a mistake. The Sith always reclaim what is ours, the rakghoul virus is no different. I expected to not have much to work off in my experiments, but you have done much of the leg work for me in your research. With what I obtained on Taris, combined with your data ... well I think you can guess what I will be able to do very soon. Thank you."

With a twist of her hand, the man's neck snapped and he fell into a limp heap on the ground.

 

[Eldaah Aderyn]

Losing all interest in the corpse she had just created, she diligently began going about the rest of the man's lab ... and sabotaging every she found. her droids had the data, but she certainly didn't want anyone else coming along to this facility and restarting the project. Sending a few commands from the deceased's computer, she ordered the power core to overload.

Leaving briskly, she made it back to her swoop in time to hear the rumble of seismic activity start to break out. The lava flows were accelerating, which could only mean ... and then the eruption occurred. Mounting the swoop, she took off with her droids while the island behind her burned and eliminated all traces of what was left.

She would trigger the sensor net as she left, but she would be long gone by the time the government or security forces even had time to react. She had experiments to begin once she returned to her own lab.