Mara easily recognized the numerous transparisteel cylindrical vats, inside which human individuals were clearly visible from her position.
Male and female.
Fully matured.
She counted ten narrow (compared to Wayland's) technological "pillars," around which vertical rows of internally lit autoclaves were arranged.
On each "pillar"—six rows of cloning cylinders mounted vertically.
And, if she calculated correctly—each row held thirty clone incubators.
In total, on each "pillar"—one hundred eighty machines for producing human "duplicates."
Multiplying by the number of pillars—eighteen hundred cloning cylinders.
And all these structures were connected by technical walkways, surrounded by ramps needed so that clones after extraction wouldn't fall straight to the cave floor lost in the darkness below.
Straining her vision, she could make out cages with ysalamiri secured under the fenced ramps around each row of clones.
The cages—clearly not Dominion design.
And the lizards, unlike those Mara had seen on the Chimaera, looked somehow exhausted, barely alive.
Well, of course—they weren't petted by Grand Admiral hands.
Mara pulled a portable holocam with an infrared anti-glare visor from another pocket on her belt—so she wouldn't be detected visually or by technical means.
The girl began filming the room.
Thanks to night vision mode, she could clearly see that the cave housing the cloning installations was three times larger than its counterpart in Mount Tantiss.
Which didn't negate the fact that there were clearly more "pillars" here than she had discerned.
As far as the camera's visor range allowed, she counted another thirty such "pillars."
All adorned with Spaarti cloning cylinders.
But only these ten were lit and thus operational.
The reason?
Any could be invented—from lack of energy or nutrient medium on the facility to the absence of clones in them due to the evacuation of the entire object by its leadership.
Guessing was pointless.
Cloning laboratory on the Black Sun base on the planet Smarck.
Well.
At minimum, she had completed the first part of her mission—there were indeed cloning laboratories on Smarck.
No matter what condition they were in—even those clearly working would be enough to enhance such capacities in the Dominion.
Currently, Grand Admiral Thrawn had twenty thousand Spaarti cloning installations at his disposal.
Every fifteen days, they produced twenty thousand clones.
In a month—two full cloning cycles provided a full unmodified Imperial-class Star Destroyer crew, as well as several smaller ships not requiring large crews.
In three months, the existing Dominion installations could create one hundred forty thousand clones—that's almost four Star Destroyer crews.
Even adding just the eighteen hundred cloning cylinders (without questioning the operability of the other installations discovered by Mara), it turned out that in the same three months, more than twelve and a half thousand new clones could be obtained.
And that's quite a lot, considering the personnel shortage!
And if one considered not ten but all forty "pillars" functional, the number of new incubators would be over seven thousand!
Seven thousand two hundred, to be precise.
In seven full cycles, such a number of new cylinders could produce over fifty thousand additional clones!
That is, in the best case, the Dominion could put under arms nearly twenty thousand experienced specialists in three months!
And what if there wasn't just one such cave in the complex?!
What if there were at least ten?!
Mara mentally slapped herself.
Enough.
She was getting carried away with daydreams.
No matter how many cloning cylinders there were here—the Dominion would need every one.
But what should interest her most now was something entirely different.
Practicing math could go on for a long time—as long as imagination held out.
And for interest's sake, she could curb her alarmism with a simple calculation: if the Zann Consortium had had all these cloning cylinders for, say, the last ten years, at least those she saw in the cave, and all had been working all that time, then Tyber Zann had under arms alone over two million clones.
And if there were ten such caves here?
It looked very sour.
And to make it even worse, one could think about how many Imperial and Republican officials he had managed to replace over all that time—like Moff Gronn or Baroness D'Asta.
Pulling herself together and pushing optimism aside, Mara continued studying the room.
She hadn't noticed any guards or surveillance means here.
Only control droids gliding on repulsors along the "pillars," monitoring the equipment's operation.
Simple models—mere observers, without a hint of any artificial personality.
In other words—flying versions of "mouse droids."
Such a one, even if it bumped into you, wouldn't raise an alarm.
Time to act.
So, calmly removing the internal latch on the ventilation grate, the saboteur swung it aside, first securing it to a dark holder matching the gloomy cave.
And like a nimble rock-climbing fish, she descended to the level of one of the nearest "pillars."
Pushing off the wall, she let the cable slide through her hand and jumped to the ramp.
It took only a little skill to hide the cable end so it wouldn't catch the eye.
Glancing back, the girl looked through the transparisteel with a slight condensate coating on the surface.
In the semi-transparent jelly rested the figure of an unfamiliar young dark-haired woman.
An ordinary clone, unremarkable.
Except that all the others in the row were exact copies of her.
So, either Tyber Zann was producing several clones of the same kidnapped sentient, or here they were copying far from just the "nobility" missing for a few weeks.
As she had assumed, these were fighters.
That could be understood from the developed musculature, absence of excess fat.
Over a thousand (or perhaps more) female soldiers.
Ready soon to leave their cradle and go to war.
She traveled around the laboratory for some time, confirming one thing—these ten illuminated "pillars" held exclusively female clones.
Of one build, with one face.
So, who needed nearly two thousand female soldiers?
She was about to sneak to the terminal located in the center of the entire installation structure when she saw part of the wall slide apart, and a strip of light stretch from the discovered entrance to the very workstation she intended to reach.
"Ladies, don't grumble, but right now you'll be my scary girlfriends," Mara whispered, squeezing between two autoclaves with sleeping female soldiers.
The joke about getting lost in the company of scary girlfriends even for a beauty queen found real embodiment.
Her and the coveted pedestal were separated by two or three meters, but the agent couldn't see in advance who exactly was heading here: the autoclave obstructed the view.
But if the number of shadows matched the number of visitors, there were only two.
And one was clearly taller than the other.
"You promised this batch of Harpies would be ready by this morning!" a voice reached her, clearly belonging to a corpulent male of the human species.
Intonations and timbres of voices in a galaxy with hundreds of thousands of species living just in the Core Worlds were remembered quickly in a job like Mara's current one.
"And it would be, if you hadn't started the evacuation, Mr. Kaynif," a leisurely, insinuating alien voice.
Which was hard to forget if you'd ever heard a Kaminoan speak.
"Command isn't responding," the first grumbled. "We're cut off from Etti for some reason. I have clear instructions on that, Orun Wa!"
"I have them too," finally, both appeared in the field of view of the hidden Mara.
It wasn't hard to identify the Kaminoan called Orun Wa.
Tall, with a tiny head on a long neck.
A typical representative of his species.
Which, though not shining with a desire to visit the galaxy, didn't seclude itself so much that its appearance was shrouded in mystery, like the ancestors of Mandalorians—the Taung—or Tof pirates in their time.
Dressed in something like a jumpsuit and medical uniform combined.
However, recalling that this race had direct relation to cloning, gene manipulation, and other subtle medical interventions, it wasn't surprising.
Mara, due to the specifics of her profession, also rarely emerged from her jumpsuit—it was good clothing and protected the body.
Kaminoan Orun Wa.
And the second one...
The one Orun Wa called "Mr. Kaynif"...
Well, she could admit to herself that her hearing had hardly failed her.
Yes, this seemed to be the very Makus Kaynif about whom Grand Admiral Thrawn had warned her.
She had correctly identified human speech.
Only Makus wasn't human.
And to understand that fact, one glance at his face was enough.
No need to be a credentialed xenobiologist.
Makus Kaynif.
In the Galactic Empire, ones like him were called "near-humans."
"Near-human" was a general term for any of the many species or subspecies in the galaxy that were very closely biologically related to baseline humans. Other humanoid species, by contrast, had only superficial resemblance to humans and no biological connection.
However, the closely related term "humanoid" was sometimes used too loosely to describe near-human species.
Most near-humans had close physical resemblance to humans, usually with minor differences in skin and eye color or bone structure. Biologically, many near-humans were capable of interbreeding with baseline humans. Some were close enough to the human baseline to be considered a human race or ethnic group rather than a separate species. Likewise, some groups biologically classified as humans, though almost entirely distinct from the main body of humanity in their culture, were considered so different that they were sometimes called near-humans.
Her second mission objective.
Very convenient that he also led her to the third (and in priority list—the first) objective of the entire assignment.
So.
Her labors were rewarded.
She had found the cloning cylinders.
She had found a cloning specialist: not some hermit Arkania, but a Kaminoan! And finally, she had found the local Zann Consortium commander! And from the overheard phrases, she understood that she was currently hiding behind the carcasses of cloned Harpies—elite agents and operatives of the Zann Consortium.
Well...
Now she was beginning to understand how exactly Tyber Zann had achieved such obedience and willingness to sacrifice from his saboteur-Harpies.
They didn't "brainwash" them.
They created them that way.
Surely in the imprint machines adorning every cylinder here, the necessary program of obedience and self-sacrifice in case of threat to the entire organization from capture was recorded.
Now it was clear why after the Zann Consortium's defeat, it hadn't been possible to take the Harpies found on planets alive—they simply blew themselves up in battle, vaporizing with super-powerful baradium charges they also used for mining objects and equipment.
Yeah...
It seemed to her, or since Thrawn started sticking his hands into the galaxy's dirty laundry, more and more "surprises" kept surfacing?
"Why haven't you sent these clones to the molecular furnaces?" Kaynif demanded, pointing at the glowing cylinders. "If they're not ready for evacuation, they should be destroyed! Because of these installations' operation, I can't reallocate power distribution to start dismantling the cloning cylinders. Or do you want them destroyed when the self-destruct system is activated?!"
"The equipment doesn't concern me," Orun Wa's emotionlessness reminded Mara of her first meeting with Thrawn.
The same impenetrable rationalist.
"So clear the cylinders!"
"If I do that, the improved Harpies will be destroyed," the Kaminoan objected. "I've been working on these improvements since the creation of the elite Null-class Advanced Recon Commandos. My team and I have approval from Black Sun leadership itself for this activity! Your power shutdowns and base preparation for demolition are just adding to my work!"
So that's how it is...
So Orun Wa wasn't the only cloning expert on the facility.
Moreover—he was involved in creating the clones of elite Null-class Advanced Recon Commandos.
The very ones that surpassed their original in all parameters, yielding only in one—obedience to orders.
While the clone commandos after the formation of the Galactic Empire became the first storm commandos, and then, like all clones due to aging, transitioned from the "fighters" category to "instructors," the Nulls simply vanished, erasing all information after themselves and leaving no traces of their modified genome on Kamino.
Mara had only read about them in Clone Wars historical chronicles.
However, as she suspected, no one in the Empire would have dared repeat such an experiment.
Who needed dozens of uncontrollable professional commandos who didn't obey orders and thought independently?
"Then think about this," Makus Kaynif literally hissed. "The early warning system reported that Star Destroyers are approaching us. Whether it's the Empire or the Dominion—doesn't matter. Black Sun would never send our destroyers here. The entire facility is threatened with exposure or capture. What do you think our organization's enemies will do with your new generation Harpy clones?"
"Destroy them," the Kaminoan said calmly. "But why wasn't I told earlier about the approaching destroyers?"
"And the laboratory along with them, if we don't evacuate it from here!" the fat man shouted. "This is a blow to the organization's cause!"
"Why wasn't I told about the destroyers?" the Kaminoan repeated his question, continuing to look down on the near-human.
But instead of an answer, the blaster barrel pressed into his body, which the fat man virtuously drew.
"Because you're just a worker, Orun Wa," he said. "We saved you and your group from Kamino for a reason. You either work for us, or we don't need you. Your developments are already on chips. Either you obey now and neutralize all these rejects so the workers can disconnect the equipment chain and finally evacuate the laboratory, or I'll do it right before your eyes. While you lie at my feet with a gut shot. Decide—giving you three seconds! One!"
Mara reached for the blaster she had tucked into the holster on her left shoulder while crawling through the ventilation.
"Two!"
"I need just half an hour for the data upload to their brains to happen properly! Starting over is months of painstaking work!" for the first time, a hint of emotion appeared in the Kaminoan's voice.
But his opponent was deaf to pleas, continuing to glare furiously into Orun Wa's eyes from below.
The portable blaster fit comfortably in Jade's hand.
Taking advantage of being hidden behind the cloning cylinder, the girl aimed.
The cave's silence was broken by the comlink sound.
"Kaynif here!" the fat man barked, distracted from his task, turning his back to the Kaminoan but keeping the ready-to-fire blaster in hand. And Mara understood it was her time to act. "Hutt's burp! Scramble the fighters! Pull the transport ships out of the system! Immediate... " She had a chance not to lose what she'd achieved in the mission. "Interdictors!? Then pull the Star Galleons to the other side of the planet and let them escape the system as best they can!" Like a snake, she slipped from behind the cloning cylinder, ending up next to the railing.
The Kaminoan turned his head toward her.
"We can't catch them all! See to it that every ship has a Harpy!" Mara disapprovingly shook her head and pointed at her priority target when he opened his mouth to break his silence. Orun Wa wisely shut up. "No surrenders! Blow transport ships if capture attempted! Donors must not fall to the Dominion!...
Makus Kaynif pocketed the comm device at the very moment Jade completed her leap.
Rolling to absorb the momentum, she kicked the blaster from Kaynif's hand.
Spinning on one foot, she saw the horror in her opponent's eyes as he looked at her.
Opening his mouth wider, sticking out his tongue to the edge of his teeth...
With the firm intention of clenching his teeth and biting the poison ampule or biting off his own tongue.
Or one or the other—now it didn't matter.
Her hand automatically reached for the lightsaber.
Without the Force, there was no point in hoping for a surgically precise strike.
And she didn't need it.
With a sharp strike, Mara vaporized Makus Kaynif's upper jaw and tongue, severing the remnants of the lower jaw as well.
Kaynif's crazed gaze was worth her heart skipping a beat during that lunge.
Not giving the opponent time to recover, she spun in place and struck his head with her boot.
The unconscious Makus collapsed to the floor.
Mara turned to the Kaminoan.
The lightsaber blade pressed right against the center of his chest.
"You have a choice," she said. "Either you now make your clones harmless, and they don't resist Dominion forces, and you and your team work for us, or I execute you right here."
The Kaminoan looked at her with unblinking black eyes like the heart of a black hole.
Then his eyelids finally met.
"I have a better proposal," he said in an emotionless tone, touching a panel on his suit. "I'll demonstrate them in action to all of you."
After these words, Mara heard the sound of running water and the pitiful cries of ysalamiri drowning in the nutrient medium.
Hundreds of cloning cylinders opened synchronously, from which hundreds of young muscled women clad only in short undergarments emerged, flexing their limbs, with the gazes of killers.
Mara cried out as if scalded by boiling water.
On the edge of perception of the returning Force, she felt the echoes of deaths around her.
Disoriented, she stepped back, exerting all her efforts to shield herself from the vision.
"To battle," Orun Wa commanded, turning his back to Mara and slowly striding toward the exit.
And fighters of the same gender as Jade began jumping onto the pedestal.
The red-haired beast gripped her weapon to the point of pain in her arms, preparing for the fight.
This was definitely nothing like the raid on the Imperial Palace on Coruscant, where she, with lightsaber and Force, had lost to Winter.
Here, no one needed to be taken prisoner.