The air inside the port-side cargo room was now stinking from the smell of discharged plasma as HK crouched beside the droid's severed body, disassembling completely. Some tools we found were now tossed aside as he finished dismantling most of the droid's parts, recovering those internal units he found interesting or important, before we put the rest into one of the containers and pulled it out to the hatchway. As for HK, he went to the same desk where Jalo was probably working on something and began operating on the droid's head to dig into its mind.
When we came up, he had a cable running from his own head, connected to a jack in the now-opened, metallic skull.
[Statement: Beginning core extraction. I expect no proper resistance. This technology is archaic, unreadable, and inferior.]
"Be careful with it," I warned him, but he was already doing it.
[Addendum: Because of its age, extraction may take a significant amount of time.]
"You do sound super excited, though," Vila leaned against a crate, rubbing her neck with a tired grunt.
[Declaration: I am not excited. I am professionally insulted that this malfunctioning trash heap dared to exist in my vicinity and mimic my own function to such a laughable degree.]
"This thing is probably older than you, so who mimics who?" She muttered, but HK ignored her comment.
As for me, I knelt beside them while I was examining some of the platings we took off from the droid's torso, watching the faint red glow of the Sith-made runes and glyphs. The Dark Side's presence and its oppressive feeling were still strong in every part that had a rune etched onto it, so I didn't dare to probe it too hard, but... Still... I was expecting another vision or something. Yet, until now, nothing. Shaking my head, I stood back up, watching as its central processor cluster was exposed in the head, layers of diamond-hard alloy shielding designed to prevent tampering... Not that it meant anything by now. When HK apparently broke through some firewall or something, the entire head twitched once, making me grab towards my lightsaber, watching it rattle before going still once again.
"Careful," I murmured. "The last thing we want is for the bastard to upload its consciousness into you."
[Dismissive Confidence: If it reactivates, it will discover that my reaction time is superior by several orders of magnitude. Sarcastic explanation: It's just a head by now.]
True... but still. As he kept working, the air was suddenly filled with a frantic series of internal clicks, whirs, and mechanical spasms as HK forced his way past whatever corruptive datastream the Sith had programmed or injected into the machine's core, causing its movable parts to react.
[Commentary: This encryption is not merely outdated. It is deranged. Who designs memory cycles based on recursive emotional subroutines? These algorithms are high on rage.]
"Emotional subroutines? For a droid?" Vila muttered, looking at me, "Why? Are they even a thing?"
"I don't know or think so," I shrugged, "I never heard of them at all."
[Correction: When I say, emotional, they are data-flows designed to evoke a probable reaction from their Sith-plating.] Before either of us could respond or ask a question, HK stiffened and announced, [Breakthrough: I have access.]
We both stepped closer, watching if the droid was about to wake up or something... but no. Instead, HK's photoreceptors brightened as he projected a small red holo above the droid's skull. What appeared in them were fragments, corrupted files, broken logs stitched into a rough, barely readable file. He was cycling through them, but most of them were fizzy, unreadable, or outright jibberish.
"Is that all?" Vila frowned.
[Affirmation: This droid's memory was intentionally purged at the moment of death. What remains is fragmented, incomplete, and insulting to any machine with standards. However… I recovered three significant data clusters.]
"Show us," I said, watching as HK rotated the holo.
What came up first was apparently a flight map, as it displayed a star system, or rather, what once had been one because it had more than half of it erased. And even that... Zooming out only greeted us with more missing chunks and unrecognizable graphs. When HK tried to find anything similar in our charts, it came up as an unknown, uncharted system with a probable location, approximated from those key points that HK could identify.
"That's it," I whispered. "That's where our Sith warrior died."
"Are you sure?" Vila asked, looking at me.
"I feel it." I nodded, my head still looking at it without blinking. "We just need to find where it is actually... But that shouldn't be hard, not with the Force."
"Then it could be that is where the droid came from," Vila added quietly, crossing her arms, "And maybe where Jalo and Iowi went."
[Statement: Let me continue.] HK said, cycling over to something that sounded like mission protocols within the droid's mind.
INITIATE MAXIMUM DISORDER
TARGET SOCIETAL INFRASTRUCTURE
CAUSE CASUALTY SPIRALS
ATTRACT JEDI RESPONSE
"Ugh..." Vila's expression twisted into a grimace, "I guess we now know where the lightsaber came from... And why it was here, being offered for sale to the highest bidder. If it caused the locals to go nuts, who says more, such dangerous Sith artifacts weren't sold, and then people brought them away to... wherever? How many of those were already thrown into the world? How many others are getting their minds corrupted? We need to find them all!"
"Yeah, that is not a good prospect…" I said, rubbing my jaw. "This thing was meant to seed panic... Like bait. And then to spread it all across the Galaxy."
[Statement: And you meatbags took the bite. Congratulations.]
"You took it too!" I grunted, rolling my eyes, watching as he shifted the image again, showing another set of directives recorded in the droid's core.
PRIMARY ACQUISITION GOAL:
SECURE JEDI OPERATIVES
DELIVER TO COORDINATES: [DATA CORRUPTED]
"So this one wasn't trying to kill us," I muttered, trying to make sense of it. "He wanted us alive."
"For who?" Vila asked, looking at the droid's head, then at me. "Or what?"
"Beats me..." I answered, shaking my head. "But we may find out if we go and check where it came from."
[Sardonic Hypothesis: Someone who appreciates kidnapping Jedi. It is more complicated than it sounds. Statistically, that narrows the suspect list to insane Force-users, ancient Sith remnants, or Jedi Council gift shops.]
"Not helping," Vila sighed, trying not to laugh, "We don't have gift shops!"
[Firm Statement: That is a monetary oversight.]
"Enough!" I exhaled slowly, pinching the ridge of my nose, "If they got Jalo and Iowi, we need to make a move. And do it fast. There has to be more to this if they managed to capture two Jedi... Or managed to lure them to somewhere."
"Kael," Vila nudged me, "This also feels like a lure."
"Yes, it does." I agreed, "But we cannot afford to not bite this time."
As I was speaking, HK finished compiling the fragments and stored them internally, and copied them to a simple data stick before sealing back the droid's skull.
[Statement: I will preserve the extracted memory core for Master Katarn. He will likely poke it, stare at it, and then ask me to explain everything anyway.]
"Good," I said. "We need his assessment..." That's when I turned my attention to the fallen Sith saber again. "Let me take a look at this."
As I finished speaking, I was already switching places with HK and began examining the droid's weapon, now out from its locked socket in the reinforced arm. Unlike the double-bladed hilt, this had no feeling to it, not at all. Which probably meant one thing: It wasn't used by anyone proficient in the Force, like, ever. It was not even touched by either a Sith or a Jedi, and when I probed it, I couldn't feel any Kyber crystal within it. It was as silent towards the Force as any droid should be... Which was all fine and all... But no lightsaber should be like this. Even Sith weapons, having a Kyber within them, should resonate with the Force. Otherwise... What was powering it?
Thinking about it, I lifted it with the Force, letting it wrap around it in a firm, bright coil to suppress the darkness inside... but it had none. Not even a tinge of aggression was within it. The hilt was cold to the touch and to the Force... It was just... a tool. A machine. Dismantling it via the Force, the main covering panel opened with a careful, slowed motion, expecting a trap or anything... but once again, nothing. I wanted to see the Kyber inside it... And I couldn't help but let out a long breath through my nose when I finally saw it. And I knew what I was seeing immediately.
"That's not possible."
"What?" Vila leaned in.
I angled the hilt so the ship's overhead lights illuminated the crystal chamber for her to see. Where a natural crystal should have been, connecting the weapon to the Force and to its user, there was instead a smooth, blood-red... well... crystal. But it wasn't Kyber. At all! It was perfect in shape, looking like an octagonal gem, slightly see-through and way too... uniform. There was no resonance of the Force within it, nothing... It was...
"That's synthetic," I whispered, glancing at Vila, "That's a man-made crystal. Artificial Kyber..."
"Never heard of it," Vila frowned, sensing it, but she could tell, I was right, "But synthetic crystals are not really possible, no? Wasn't this the whole reason behind planets like Illum completely strip-mined and utterly destroyed by the Empire?! For their Death Star?"
"I haven't read much about that topic," I murmured, "But I do remember reading it somewhere that the Sith once used synthetics, but... That was all. It sounded like just another throwaway comment by some old Jedi, making sure everyone understood how evil the Sith were. There was no proof of it ever actually existing... I mean, synthetics."
"Well, here is the proof." Vila snorted, picking it out from the hilt, examining it before putting it down on the table, shivering and almost jumping when our comms beeped.
"Yes?" I raised it to my mouth, almost chuckling at our reaction. We got spooked... Heh.
"Kael? Vila?" Lando's voice came through it after a momentary static, "If you are not done yet, you better hurry and finish whatever you are doing. Your Master just arrived."
"Ah?" Vila shot upright. "Master Katarn?"
"Yeah," Lando answered, "He came in hot but quiet, and he looks like he's trying not to attract any unnecessary attention. I'm sending you the landing pad coordinates to go and meet with him; his comms are offline, but he sent an encrypted message through my private line."
"Understood, we will go there," I shut the saber's casing with a click. "Time to move," I said, glancing at the others.
"I agree," Vila nodded. "The quicker he knows about this all, the better!"