Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: Vima's Saga/Chapter Two

Chapter Two Previous chapter
 * With his internal chronometer, T3-M4 was immediately able to tell just how long he had been rendered inoperative. Seventy-seven hours, twenty-three minutes, and forty-one seconds had passed since he had last been online, and while that might have been a scary thought for an organic, it was just business as usual for a droid.
 * T3 also knew what had activated him&mdash;the voice pattern of a certain person he had been assigned to retrieve, but by whom he had been sent he neither knew nor cared. All that mattered now was his next command.
 * “Hello, can you read me?” came the voice of Vima Sunrider, still distinct through the waves of static.
 * The droid responded with a low-pitched warble and several beeps.
 * “Are you operational?”
 * There was another electronic reply.
 * “We’re trapped up on the administration level,” the disembodied voice informed the droid. “Can you unlock the turbolifts from there?”
 * In his own unique way, T3 replied in the negative.
 * “Is there any other way down there?”
 * There was, of course. However, the droid, concerned for his master, advised against it&mdash;rather strongly for a droid.
 * “I’d rather risk it then be trapped up here,” Vima’s voice replied.
 * With a mechanical sigh, the utility droid headed off to flip the appropriate switches. Getting to the right console was one thing; however, using that console would prove to be something different. The good news was that the nearby hanger contained the Ebon Hawk, but the bad news was that the console that would allow access had been sabotaged. With a flurry of warbles, clicks, and chirps that approximated an organic cursing in its native tongue, T3 rolled back the way he had come to try to find something to repair that blasted console with. That, too, would be easier contemplated then done...
 * After rifling through several containers and a broken mining droid in the storage area, T3-M4 was no closer to finding the necessary parts. With nowhere else to look, and the security hold impenetrable to all but the best explosives available, the utility robot had little choice but to slice through the security door that led down to the fuel depot. However, several pairs of mining droids were still roaming the corridor.
 * Now, normally that would be a cause for concern, but T3-M4 was not your average utility droid. He was also considerably older then one might think, and packed quite a punch when he needed to. The first mining ‘bot to make a leap at him was blasted to slag right between its photoreceptors, and the second fell to T3’s shock arm, which rendered it a sizzling heap of useless parts. This continued as the droid made his way to the fuel depot, where after defeating another pair of berserk metal miners, he managed to scrounge the parts he needed. As a bonus, T3 also found a clutch of powerful sonic mines on the body of one of the organics running this place. This whole mess was leaving his circuits on edge.
 * It wasn’t over, however. As the droid made his way back to the console to repair it, another duo of mining units descended upon him with lasers blazing. The battle was a little tougher this time, however, and when it was over, T3 had been dinged quite a bit; his front left leg was sparking and bent off-axis.
 * “Dwooooo…” he lowed softly to himself as he administered repairs before continuing on. The console repair job was a breeze, but to the droid’s frustration, it seemed that the thing was still sabotaged; like the console on the administration level, its commands had been rerouted elsewhere and it had been cut from the main hub, and on top of that, the conduit that controlled the magnetically sealed door to the hanger had been removed. However, within moments T3 had done all he could here: he had downloaded the hanger map and the contents of the dock officer’s logs, and opened the sealed door that led to the fuel depot, where the turbolift access commands had been routed to.
 * T3 muttered to himself as he rolled towards the lift to enter the fuel depot for the second time. Yet more droids tried to challenge his progress, but they were dealt with swiftly, and finally, the way to the lift and then the console was clear. What he found was yet more unanswered questions and suspicious activity; someone had sliced into the containment system and implanted a phantom fuel leak to seal off the hanger. All the droid could do was what he was ordered to do, so he unlocked the emergency hatchway to the mining tunnels.
 * But as soon as he logged out, the rattle of metallic footsteps on the catwalk reached T3’s auditory sensors. The rattling came closer, a shape emerged from around the corner, and suddenly, a beam of ion energy slammed into the utility droid and he thought no more…


 * “So, how long have you been a Jedi?” Atton asked after an hour had passed with still no word from T3-M4. “Must be tough, you know…no family, no husband...”
 * “No more difficult than enduring your false sympathies while you’re staring at my chest,” Vima shot back.
 * “Hey!” Atton protested. “I’m not trying to&mdash;oh, nevermind. That droid of yours going to come through or not?”
 * “Well, he’s not actually my droid,” Vima replied after a moment’s reflection. “But I have a hunch about who does own him. Let’s give him more time…”
 * “Yeah, well, I’m beginning to think that I would have been safer back in my c&mdash;“ Atton was interrupted by a series of beeps from the nearby console. “Hey, what do you know, that little cargo cylinder came through…”
 * “It looks like it,” Vima agreed. “But I wonder why he didn’t contact me. I don’t think we’re out of this just yet, though.”
 * “It doesn’t matter. If he got the turbolifts working, then we should have a clear run to the hanger.”
 * “The turbolifts are locked down manually,” Vima replied. “I had him open the emergency hatch instead. Maybe I can find a way through to the hanger if I go down there…” At this, Atton’s eyes went wide and he seemed a bit surprised.
 * “Whoa, wait,” he began incredulously, “you’re not thinking of taking the emergency hatch into the mining tunnels, are you? That explosion I heard came from below, so all you’ll likely find is superheated rock and collapsed blast tunnels. You’d be an idiot to go down there…”
 * “A Jedi’s life is sacrifice,” Vima replied earnestly. “And besides, someone’s got to save our skins.”
 * “You’re either really brave, or really crazy,” Atton sighed in awe, “or both. Anyway, the only thing moving down there is likely to be mining droids&mdash;the berserk kind&mdash;so don’t you be trying to ‘play the hero’ too hard, got it? Um...not that I care what happens to you or anything, I just don’t want to be trying to get out of here by myself...”
 * “Got it,” Vima replied. “See you soon, or not at all.”
 * “Wait a second,” Atton said as he held out a small device. “Take this comlink. I’ll stay up here and keep the channel open so I can guide you through the tunnels. I don’t know if the signal will hold if you go too deep, though.”
 * “Thanks, I’ll be careful,” Vima said as she walked back the way she had come.
 * “We’ll just see about that,” Atton muttered to himself as he watched the ex-Jedi walk away.


 * The corridor that led to the mining tunnels was as drab and stale as the rest of the deserted facility. The air circulating throughout was heavy with fumes, which fortunately seemed to be at least tolerable for organic life. Seeing that there was nowhere else to go but forward, Vima started walking, but before she had gone five paces, the comlink that Atton had given her buzzed.
 * “Can you read me?” came the static-filled voice of the newly-freed scoundrel.
 * “Yes,” Vima replied. “For a moment there, I thought you and Kreia were telepathic.”
 * “What was that?” Atton asked, his voice still audible through the background hissing. “Your transmission was crammed with static, the interference was probably caused by the explosion. Still, there should be a route through to the fuel depot, if the passages haven’t caved in. The explosion knocked out a lot of sensors, so I can’t give you a clear picture. There should be a crate of emergency supplies ahead, but watch out, because I’m reading a lot of droid broadcasts down there. The interference is preventing me from pinning them down.”
 * “Will do,” Vima replied. “Alert me if you detect anything.”
 * “Right,” Atton replied. Vima deactivated the comlink and continued on her way. Beyond the next door, she found the crate just as described; inside, there was a miner’s uniform, along with a belt, some kind of headgear, and an energy shield. Before she had a chance to don the uniform, though, the device buzzed yet again.
 * “Did you find the supplies?” Atton asked through the crackling static.
 * “Yes,” Vima replied. “There’s a miner’s uniform in here, along with what I assume is more mining gear and a shield.”
 * “Damnit!” Atton muttered, “Uh, I mean, good,” he stammered, trying to recover his poise. “That whole half-naked thing was distracting...for the droids…”
 * “Whatever,” Vima scowled. “Anything else?”
 * “Yeah, give me a second…” The comlink went dead as Atton paused. When he came back, his voice was low with concern. “I’ve been doing some narrowing down of the signals, and if what I’m seeing is right, then you’re sharing that tunnel with a battalion of mining droids, droids that also like to plant sonic charges. I hope you know what you’re doing down there…”
 * “Thanks for the information,” Vima replied, smirking to herself at her erstwhile friend’s concern. “I found an energy shield that should help me out if they start charging me down. Keep monitoring me while you can.”
 * “Right. Through the tunnels ahead by the main access shaft, there should be a central control station. If you can access the governing intelligence there, you should be able to shut the droids down and clear the way for yourself.”
 * “Got it, out.” Vima put the comlink away, put on the miner uniform, cinched up the belt, slapped on the shield and headed onward and into the tunnels ahead. It had been a long time since she had dealt with explosives and mines, but the exile was sure she could handle the charges that Atton had mentioned. The mines, it turned out, were the least of her worries.
 * The first shafts were mercifully clear of rogue metal monstrosities, and as luck would have it, a deactivated, yet salvageable droid had been left in a corridor just before the tunnel itself. Vima was able to scavenge enough parts from another busted droid to get this one working, so she sent it out ahead. The repaired machine began to encounter stiff resistance within moments. This proved to be quite helpful for Vima; while the hostile ‘bots were kept busy waging their mechanical war, she was able to lob grenades and the Force with enough frequency to drive a clear path through the mine.
 * But as she dispatched the last droid and this section was cleared out, Vima began to feel something strange coming from within her. It was something that was difficult to explain, even to herself, but she felt that this feeling, whatever it was, was something to be embraced. It was as though she was continuing to awaken, but in a sense she was already awake. As she walked forward, a sense of strength regained overtook her, but this reverie was soon dashed as the comlink buzzed once more. With a blink, she extracted the unit and listened to Atton’s message.
 * “Watch your step,” the bodiless voice warned. “I’m picking up a pocket of superheated gas ahead. If you’ve still got that mining shield you mentioned, you should equip it, because otherwise that gas will cook the flesh off of your bones. I don’t know if I’ll be able to contact you once you pass through it, though.”
 * “Don’t worry about me,” Vima replied, trying to ease the tension. “If I don’t call back in five minutes, assume I got deep-fried.”
 * “Great,” Atton sighed through the static. “That’s just what I needed to hear.”
 * The comlink went dead.
 * As Vima looked up, she could feel as well as see the heat that was rolling around in the tunnel ahead. Doing as she was advised, she activated the mining shield she had found, and ran through the gas. As she did so, she could feel the Force flowing through her body as her legs sped up, and she zipped through the pockets of gas unharmed.
 * “She wasn’t kidding,” Vima said to herself once she had stopped, thinking of Kreia's missives on the Force. There was no time to relax, however, because another five droids were descending upon her. A well-placed ion grenade reduced the number of aggressors to three as she darted to the right and out of the hail of laserfire. Drawing out a mining laser that she had found earlier, Vima sent her own barrage of return fire, which turned out to be much more accurate then what was being sent her way. These droids, whatever they had been initially designed for, shot like a moisture farmer militia, and Vima used that to her advantage.
 * Unfortunately for her, however, the droids that remained were not going down. After diving behind some cover, Vima pulled out her comlink and paged Atton.
 * “Do you read me?” she asked, maintaining her cool.
 * “Yeah,” Atton replied, along with something that could be mistaken for a sigh of relief if it weren’t for the static. “I’m reading a lot of droids down there...”
 * “I’ve taken care of some of them,” Vima said after a pause. “Another just went down&mdash;sithspawn, its back up! Some kind of training drones..."
 * "Training drones?” Atton asked, perplexed. “Those must be maintenance droids. Those little buggers will try to repair the mining droids if you don’t gun them down first!”
 * “Thanks for that...Vima out!”
 * Working quickly, Vima shoved the device back into her pocket, pulled out her laser, took careful aim, and dropped the two hovering balls with a single bolt apiece. The remaining excavator and mining droids, however, didn’t take kindly to this, and began to charge en masse upon the Jedi’s position. With her laser pistol in one hand, and vibroblade in the other, Vima leaped out from behind her cover and wreaked havoc on the hostile ‘bots. Two went defunct almost immediately, having been lanced by both weapons in a matter of moments, but the third whacked Vima across the back hard enough to knock her off of her feet. With a shoulder roll, she got back on her knees, and sent a staccato of laser blasts into its electronic brain.
 * “Damn droids,” Vima hissed to herself as she injected a medpack into her leg. Getting back onto her feet, she proceeded onward and pulled her comlink back out.
 * “Vima here, I’m clear and heading towards the access shaft. All major droid resistance has been neutralized...for now.”
 * “That’s a relief,” came the reply. “Once you access the GI console, you should be able to shut down the rest of the droids on that level.”
 * “Affirmative, Vima out.”
 * The access shaft was aptly named. As she entered the chamber, Vima’s attention was immediately drawn to the four large energy barriers, which glowed with the light of a violet lightsaber blade. The center of the chamber was filled with a seemingly bottomless shaft that was about twenty meters across easily. Spanning this was a small bridge, and in the center was what could only be the droid control console that Atton had mentioned. Two more droids were stationed on either side of the room, but Vima was not interested in combat this time. Instead, she activated the stealth generator she had found and made her way quietly to the computer terminal.
 * “Where’s the exit?” Vima asked no one in particular as she began to browse through the information contained within the console. The camera controls provided the answer: there was an exit that led to the fuel depot beyond one of the containment fields, so she had to shut them down. As she was doing that, Vima noticed that the logs contained an undocumented holorecording. Her interest piqued, she called up the record and watched it. What she heard confirmed what she had found out earlier, that a miner named Coorta had planned to sell her to the Exchange. But what was strange was that someone else had taken great care to keep the record of this conversation, and placing of this camera, secret.
 * Once Vima had shut down the containment fields, she looked up to where the exit was, and noticed that still more droids had been hiding behind them. A quick glance at the schematics for them revealed that if she raised the ambient temperature of the chamber, their thermal sensors would be blind and that she could easily sneak by them. But there was a sealed door in the way as well, so with a few deft keystrokes and a computer spike from the nearby plasteel storage cylinder, she programmed the droids to “mine” the doors.
 * Having done all she could at this terminal, Vima shut it down and proceeded towards the turbolift to the fuel depot. The droids, now blinded to her presence, kept to their patrol routine.
 * Her comlink buzzed once again as Vima worked her way through a barrage of sonic charges.
 * “What’s going on?” came Atton’s concerned voice. “I’m getting some strange readings up here.”
 * “Its my fault, Atton, I had to shut down the containment fields to get to the turbolift!”
 * “Well that’s just great. Look, you’ve got to get out of there before fuel from the mining tunnels is vented through and to the surface!”
 * “I’m nearly there now,” Vima replied. “I’ve just got to get rid of these mines...”
 * “Make it quick, whatever you’re doing. I can try to keep it contained for a while, but where you are is going to get real hot, real soon. I’m locking down the turbolift up to the administration level to keep the blast from spreading.”
 * “Right, I’m on my way,” Vima said as she deactivated the unit. The turbolift was in sight, and with the aid of the Force, she jumped over the last clutch of mines and barreled her way through to the door, sealing it shut and slamming down the “up” button. Almost immediately, the car gave a huge lurch, vibrating and shimmying all the way as it took Vima up to the fuel depot. Finally, the lift came to a stop, and as she sprinted out of it, everything started to fall apart and the blast door slammed shut just before a torrent of fuel came spewing upwards.
 * “Well, I’m not going back that way,” the exile breathed as she recovered her poise. “Now to find...what the?”
 * As she walked on, something caught Vima’s eye. In one of the storage bays, the body of a miner lay, and nearby, a bipedal droid that looked oddly familiar to her stood in contemplative silence. As she walked closer, it was clear to her that this droid was different, and more importantly, it was not hostile.
 * “Greeting: It is a pleasure to see you alive, Master!” the droid exclaimed in mock electronic relief. “Provided, of course, that my photoreceptors aren’t off-focus. How may I be of assistance?”
 * “Um, okay then,” Vima replied slowly, buying herself some time to think over the presence of this droid. “What exactly is your function?”
 * “Proud Answer: I am an HK-series protocol droid, Master...” As the droid launched into a detailed and monotonous explanation of its function, the wheels in Vima’s brain were clicking madly. Both the medical officer and the mine administrator had mentioned that a protocol droid had arrived with her...
 * “So tell me,” she asked when the droid had finally shut up, “what is a protocol droid doing on Peragus?”
 * “That question has been looping through my query module for quite some time, master,” the droid retorted irritably. “So I have instead focused my efforts on finding a way to leave this drifting disaster area permanently...”
 * “And what have you determined?” Vima asked.
 * “That it is inevitable that a ship or a freighter will dock with the Peragus mining facility. When that occurs, we will depart this place...forever.”
 * “You can wait if you want to,” Vima replied. “But I’m not as patient as a droid. I’m going to find a way out of here.”
 * “I believe you will do your best,” the droid replied, with a distinct tone of condescension. “This facility would have to be nailed down with droid-level precision to prevent your escape.”
 * “And what are you suggesting with that comment?” Vima asked, just as irritated as the droid had been.
 * The droid only shook its head.
 * Through another barrage of questioning, Vima was able to determine that this 'protocol droid' (she was beginning to wonder just who had programmed the thing) had also been on board the Harbinger. It seemed that, owing to a mysterious set of well-timed circumstances and “accidents”, the Republic warship had been lost. Someone, supposedly Kreia, had removed both the unconscious Vima Sunrider and the HK unit to the Ebon Hawk before the Harbinger’s destruction, and they had all wound up on Peragus. It wasn’t exactly clear to her, after the HK unit explained all of this, just when the Ebon Hawk had been damaged.
 * After yet more poking and prodding of the protocol droid, Vima also began to strongly suspect that it had at least a partial hand in the wave of misfortune that had befallen the facility. It seemed convenient to her that the maintenance officer, who was the only one in possession of the voice-printed code needed to proceed any further, was dead, and that the HK droid just happened to have a recording of the dead man’s last words. And while the droid seemed to know an awful lot about the facility, it was stubbornly uncooperative when it came to actually helping, which made Vima think that she was not its true “master”. The droid, to its credit, also seemed to suspect that the exile was starting to catch onto it, and began to issue increasingly irritated declarations of the wisdom of shutting down and staying put. Finally, Vima threw up her hands in rhetorical surrender and began to explore the fuel depot for herself.
 * Another area of the maintenance bay held a workbench, surrounded by a bevy of busted ‘bots. Inside another storage cylinder, Vima found an interesting little device, and a datapad that explained what it did. This gave Vima an idea.
 * “So tell me,” she asked the droid, while surreptitiously hiding her newly-discovered sonic imprint sensor, “Do you know the code itself?”
 * The droid’s response was predictable in its attitude.
 * “Oh yes, master, I do...” And he repeated the code. “But it will do you no good, I’m afraid, because as you can see, the officer is dead.”
 * “Is there a way to bypass the voiceprint?” Vima resisted the urge to smile as she asked this; while this “protocol droid” was able to interpret languages and communicate with organic beings, it was still no match for an organic who was skilled at masking her emotions and intentions. In other words, while the droid was smart, it was not wise.
 * “No, master, there is not,” the droid babbled importantly, finishing with yet another urging to stay put. Vima would have none of this, however.
 * “But you can mimic voices, can’t you?” Vima asked.
 * “Surely not, master!” the droid objected. “That would be a violation of the ethics codes most droids are believed to possess! Sadly, it seems that you are doomed to wait here…”
 * “Don’t worry,” Vima replied, patting the droid’s shoulders in a gesture that might be mistaken for pity if used on a living being. “I’ll understand if your limited functionality prevents you from mimicking the officer’s voice accurately…”
 * Inwardly, Vima was smiling at herself.
 * “Master, there is nothing wrong with my communications functionality!” the HK unit replied in an indignant shriek. “I will now prove it!”
 * And he did just that, reciting the voice code flawlessly. Meanwhile, Vima had activated her device, and it picked up every syllable.
 * “Thanks, that’s all I’ll need,” Vima replied with a smile, trotting off to leave the droid turning its head in confusion.

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