3.07

"Lady Andrim, this is insane!"

Laughter echoed across the gleaming ice of the Arkanian glacier as Aurra Sing and I ignored Ratty and continued running towards the horizon. My well-meaning nanny droid persevered though, floating after us and keeping up her endless tirade about our non-existent common sense, the lethal dangers we would certainly face, the stupidity of leaving civilization - such as it was on an ice world populated almost solely by mad scientists - far behind us. Hour after hour of pleading for us to turn back, occasionally interrupted by angry tantrums about the dubious intelligence of organics... Ratty was nothing if not persistent and with access to thousands of psychology and memetic studies she could adjust her speech patterns for the maximum emotional impact.

What would have driven any teenager - and most adults - around the bend had absolutely no impact on me, of course. One of the few perks of teaching for a decade and a half, and having seen anything from absolutely stupid stunts during painfully amateurish flirting to brats setting desks on fire during a lecture because why the hell not? Ratty's teenage manipulation programming was just totally inadequate for a thirty-seven-year-old who'd frequently lamented her old country's brief fascist period had been before her time. At least during the era of everyone-wears-the-same-uniform and the-teacher-has-a-rod-and-is-happy-to-use-it, there hadn't been daily vandalism reports. Smiling fondly at the memories, I drew upon that tiny fire within my soul and fed it my exhaustion, the biting cold creeping up my limbs, the doubt I would finish this race today.

"It's barely three hundred kilometers from the relay we departed from, Ratty," I shouted to be heard over the arctic wind. Out here, beyond the domed towns, labs, and crystal mines there was true wilderness, vast expanses of Arkanian tundra, and glacier that saw visitors once per generation at best. Once upon a time, this had been an even more isolated spot, but the civil war two decades before had seen many small enclaves built in this remote region by the rebels. "It's not that great a distance. Why there are normal people that can run it in a day." One of them had been from a village next to dad's in my old life, even. No Force, no genetic augmentation, no training with daily rejuvenation treatments and the guy had still won six-day races in his fifties. Compared to him Darth Bane was an emo pansy who had shaved his head to hide pattern baldness.

"It's still crazy - and dumb! My repulsors are overheating!" Ratty shot back, somehow giving me an angry glare despite her photoreceptors being incapable of conveying expressions. Maybe it's her six limbs making strangling motions in my direction? "Who spends an entire planetary rotation running when there are perfectly serviceable hovercars available - ones with internal heating!"

"I needed this walk, Ratty. You know I did. If I'd stayed one more hour on the ship I'd have burst." There was something wrong with the Doughnut. It still felt like home despite the changes, a place of safety, and calm whatever my experiences with mutiny upon it. Yet now I felt as if the walls had eyes, eyes looking at me accusingly. Something hated the Doughnut, Father, me, and everyone else on it, something that felt both very close and very distant. Something... or someone. It was a problem I hadn't found a solution for, hence my impromptu break.

The decision to go out made, it was high time I checked out one of the places my recent visions had shown.

xxxx xxxx xxxx

​

Twenty-two hours. That's how long it had taken Aurra Sing and I to reach our destination even with the Force enhancing our speed and endurance. And while the older, alabaster-skinned woman could have certainly done it faster, we'd found out she was not as able to remove fatigue or endure the harsh environmental conditions. Arkanian genetics being tailored for this environment probably made a difference, or perhaps it was a matter of scale. We'd have been the same height had I been back in my old body, but fourteen-year-old Astra... was actually a bit taller. I'd grow taller still with the years, the mad scientists had assured me, and I had the limbs to match. If I ever found out who'd decided to play extreme makeover with my growth I'd have a guinea pig for Sith Alchemy. Turnabout was far play, right?

But that was a question for the future. In the present, both the former bounty-hunter and I slowed down to a complete stop about a hundred yards from our destination, slowly rotating to take in as much of our surroundings as we could. The permafrost seemed as empty of inhabitants and unthreatening as ever... but the niggling sense of alarm grew in the back of our minds with each passing moment.

"What's this? The great explorers have finally run out of fuel?" Ratty snarked waspishly. "I could have sworn you were fusion-powered." Sounding less and less like a droid and more like an annoyed older sibling, she hovered above us and waited for an explanation. It had been what, ten years since Father bought her and gave her to the original Astra? Perhaps Ratty was due for a check-up and some programming fixes since I wasn't willing to go through with a mindwipe - I'd leave those to the Jedi.

"Be silent, droid!" Aurra hissed as we both armed ourselves. "There are more important things going on than your infantile worrying."

"Infantile?!" A very indignant Ratty floated higher, multiple limbs flailing as if trying to tear the target of her ire apart. "I'll give you infantile, you genetically-regressed, albino monkey -"

Naturally, that was precisely when the glacier exploded beneath our feet. Drawing hard upon the Force, I'd already leaped aside before the geyser of incredibly sharp, iron-hard ice crystals could even form, my bodyguard only a split second behind. That delay cost her though, several jagged shards slamming into her legs and shattering upon impact. Fortunately, the fleximetal underlay of her skin-tight suit deflected the worst of it and she landed with only a stumble instead of shredded legs. Which was a very good thing considering what crawled out of the ice behind that sudden explosion.

At least forty-five feet from the tip of its nose to the base of its tail, fifteen feet tall at the shoulder, sinuous muscles flexing under an armored layer of segmented scales the color of a diamond, the monster resembled nothing so much as a dinosaur, a hunter of the primordial world from Earth's late Jurassic period. Far from being intimidated, her high-power pistol rising in under a twentieth of a second, Aurra sent several shots at the monster's head with unerring accuracy. Of course, Star Wars being Star Wars, the shots glanced off the beast's glittering scales with only a bit of carbon scoring to show for it. Reacting with shocking speed for something so large the monster pounced, claws carving foot-deep furrows into the permafrost.

Copying my bodyguard, I snapped several Force-aimed shots at the beast's head as it tried to snap her up in his jaws, having correctly deduced she couldn't dodge in mid-air while still leaping away from its previous attack. For my troubles, I got an armored tail thick and long as an oak's trunk snapping at my face, which I narrowly avoided by the simple expedient of leaping back after the beast had committed to the attack but before it actually swung. The third pair of vestigial limbs flapping in annoyance at its back, our monstrous foe growled and turned towards me - which was when Aurra shot it behind all four knees in a fraction of a second.

The monster didn't growl again. It just snapped its head around, opened its jaws wide, and spat. The unlikely projectile ignited in mid-air with a loud whoosh and the smell of cleaning products that shouldn't be mixed, then splashed against the frozen ground as my bodyguard rolled frantically aside. At which point the ice caught fire like so much oil-soaked kindling. I gaped for a split second, then looked at the beast's last pair of malformed limbs to confirm. Not limbs - wings. And not malformed either; simply not fully grown. It was a freaking honest-to-the-Force dragon if only a baby one.

"ENOUGH!" Ratty's booming voice rattled the ice and hurt our eardrums, voice modulator turned as far up as it would go. "Pirates! Mercenaries! Assassins! Mad Scientists! Politicians! And now a supposedly extinct Arkanian dragon also decides to attack for no reason whatsoever!" Hovering above the dragon's reach, all five of Ratty's limbs started firing the modified WESTAR-34 blasters included in Father's latest upgrade for her. Made for sustained, rapid-fire, close-range combat, one such blaster could allow a bounty hunter like Jango Fett to fire as fast as he could pull the trigger. Ratty had six of them built into her limbs and connected to her power generator and cooling system, sending over thirty shots at the dragon n under a second. The beast roared and shot more incendiaries at her, but it simply didn't have the range. Roaring in impotent fury as the carbon scoring on its hide multiplied, it ultimately ran rather than endure the enraged nanny droid's barrage.

"I hope this expedition is everything you hoped it would be, mistress," Ratty said as she approached, her voice smug. "But I reserve the right to tell you 'I told you so' when you stumble into an even bigger monster."

"Oh, it will be, Ratty." Closing my eyes and centering myself, I sent my developing Force Sight downwards, seeing through the ice to the buried building beneath. A two-story manor with a small tower, its rooms empty for millennia except for a few ancient droids, computers that actually used glass viewing screens instead of holoprojectors, the various odds and ends needed for long-term lodging for about two dozen people. And on the top floor of that tower, in what looked like an ancient library, a single object that would fit the palm of my hand. No way to tell what it looked like with my limited sight... for it shone in the Force as it must have for however many centuries this whole place had been buried.

"It will definitely be worth it..."