3.03

Arkania is a world of contradictions. Unable to support intelligent life beyond artificial environments, yet the greatest gathering of experts in the life sciences in the Galaxy. A colony world with no native sapients, yet one of the oldest inhabited worlds keeping with its traditions. A world with few native resources, yet one of the richest, most economically developed states. One of the coldest inhabited planets in the galaxy, and yet the pale white light of distant Olin will cause nastier sunburns than Tatooine's twin suns due to high ultraviolet percentage. A slow life in the twilight under protective domes and within ice caverns, yet a shorter year and day than many planets as Arkania dances through space at unusual speeds. A regime of chaotic, lawless pursuit of science fighting against rebels that want to see the rule of law coming at last.

As domed towns go, the one sprawled around the medical facility is quite small. Housing for less than five thousand people takes the form of giant steel tubes crisscrossing in a rough spiderweb as they span a deep chasm into the permafrost that goes down many miles. Clusters of larger buildings bulge out of the web here and there, even as elevator shafts delve deeper into the chasm and beyond sight. The tower of the medical facility itself is both the tallest and largest structure, also housing the main power core and shield generator. It is less a town and more a large research outpost, which is fairly standard for this planet, I was told. It is the first time I could be out and about, and an hour to take in the sights was the first thing I did.

My recovery still had a couple of months to go according to overly exact doctors and too protective nanny droids but with the growth phase complete, my regenerated limbs had to be used for me to become accustomed to the changes. They felt awkward, thicker and longer than I remembered yet responding faster and far more powerfully. Still pale with its newness, the new skin retained Father's golden hue but was entirely hairless and unblemished, as if every girl's make-over dreams were made real at once, and overly sensitive for it. Far from having atrophied, the new muscles were as well developed for a nearly fourteen year old girl as Arkanian science could make them, not obvious at first glance but hard and dense. Everything feels strange, out of balance, responding well while my mind grasps blindly for the imperfection it remembered. Thus I was allowed to wander, even directed towards physical training, acclimation that the skinsuit shocking my limbs into growing right could not provide.

It took only asking a helpful older security guard, getting smiled fondly at, and a ride down the elevator to find the live-fire training ground. Because of course there was a live-fire training ground; after assembling several different species and machines into a murderous combat cyborg, the typical Arkanian scientist would have to test its combat effectiveness, no? Gorm the Dissolver didn't get to duel two jedi at once and survive, one of them being Mace Windu, without practical experience. I'd naturally asked and no, this facility hadn't built the deadly cyborg; their neighbours a couple of icy chasms to the East had. Of course, in this facility's scientists' opinions, cybernetic beings were just second rate projects in the end; the future lay with full organics if only they were designed right. Yeah, I had slowly retreated from that particular conversation as unobtrusively as possible to avoid drawing the mad scientists' attention...

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"You're late," the occupant of training room 005 said as she blocked the shock-stick of one assassin droid with her own, dodged under the lunge of the second, and kicked the third off-balance with a meaty thud of flesh on metal that made me wince. A split second later she'd somehow disengaged from the melee, drawn a hidden sidearm faster than most people could blink, and casually shot all three assassin droids with crackling blue ion bolts.

"A Force-Sensitive is never late." A flare of alarm as the last two active droids reacted to my approach. "Nor is she early." Fumbling with my own shock-stick, the too-quick draw sent it flying end over end until it accidentally hit one droid between the eyes. "She arrives precisely when she means - GAAH!" The second droid charging, hand-blades extended, my clumsy dodge making me face-plant a split second before it swung. Already off-balance, it stumbled into my prone body and toppled, tried to catch itself but the hand-blades didn't help and it somehow managed to hit its own off switch on the ground as it tumbled.

"Pathetic," the older, paler, red-headed woman sneered. A flick of her wrist vanished the stun-gun to wherever it had come from, her form-fitting orange suit lacking any pockets for it. It might have gone into the thick utility belt swinging low on her hips, but I doubted it; I'd have seen her doing it if that was the case... probably. Maybe. OK, possibly. She was a master assassin and bounty hunter and I was just a little girl after all.

"Hey, I meant to do that," I complained from my prone position, convincing no-one. "And ow! Is the ground hard or what? No training mats?"

"Fourteen months of rest have made you brattier," my chief bodyguard noted dryly before chugging down an entire bottle of the foul concoctions made by Arkanian madmen without missing a bit. "Still not grown up?"

"I was regrowing four limbs and eleven organs, you nag!" I fixed her with my all-new eyes as I got up. The regeneration treatments had turned my eyes pupiless white like other Arkanians' and now I could glare with the best of them. "No 'I'm glad you're recovered, Astra', 'I'm sorry for failing to protect you, Astra' ?" I growled. "Hell, I'd do with just a 'how are you doing, Astra', or even a friendly welcome-back spar in a pitch."

"Honey, the rest of us do with some cheap prosthetics or an unmarked grave when we're injured, not million credit custom treatments." She looked me up and down, then rinsed her mouth with a bit of water and spat it out. Hah, even great and mighty bounty hunters could not abide the aftertaste of what passed for protein drinks around here. "As for protecting you, you're stupidly rich. Planetary governments got whole armies to protect their stuff, so if you have as much stuff as they do, where's your army?" She powered down her shock stick, set it down on the nearest of two dozen weapon racks taking up a whole side of the otherwise empty training room, then pressed a button that opened a hole in the far wall, with floating service droids coming out of it. They removed the disabled assassin droids probably to take them to some nearby maintenance station, leaving me alone with Aurra Sing. Strangely enough, being in the same room with one of the deadliest assassins in the Galaxy calmed me down despite her bitchy disposition. Or at least it did so until a thrown wooden stick hit me in the face.

"Ow!" I yelled eloquently, unfamiliar limbs fumbling with the unfamiliar weapon. Aurra had picked up an identical stick and was swinging it around, testing its balance. And showing off, since it was all but a blur in her hands.

"I wouldn't say no to that spar," she said conversationally as if talking about the weather. "If you're up for it, brat."

"Oh you're so on," I shot back, gripping the fake wood training weapon so hard it creaked. Then we launched ourselves at each other.

Naturally, I lost horribly in ten seconds flat. Teenage girl in unfamiliar body versus hardened bounty hunter who'd spent the past fourteen months spending her pay in the Arkanians' combat enhancement programs? There was not even a contest, except for how many seconds I could drag out my humiliation. The hundred fights that followed that day were the same, except for the six seconds I'd managed to add to their duration after many hours. Most of the time I spent getting brief Bacta immersions between sessions, proving Aurra's comments about mine and Father's wealth true.

She was right; getting an army was a priority. We had the means, and a hell of a lot in the way of motivation given the Galaxy's imminent future...