Chapter Text
You walk into the woods behind a house
there in that country
you find a temple
built eighteen hundred years ago
you enter without knowing
what it is you enterso it is with us
no one knows what will happen
though the books tell everythingburn the texts said Artaud
— Adrienne Rich, “The Burning of Paper Instead of Children”
After, Kallus will wonder if they knew about him and his changed allegiances. He’ll wonder if it had been a test he was set up to fail. Why him, if not? Why would Thrawn send him to the facility, allow him to see this tiny, strange glimpse into the Emperor’s plans if not to see how he would break? He’ll wonder if they thought he’d be unmoved when they brought the children before him for their final test, or if they’d anticipated that he would take some sort of action when there was just the one left, her small face burnt and bloody, her hands in shaking fists at her sides as she was led away. They couldn’t’ve known, Kallus will think later, just how far he would go. After all, until he was lifting that blaster, he’d no idea what he’d be capable of.
The course on the shuttle had been programmed by Thrawn himself, Kallus’s pilot told him immediately as he sat down on the little craft. The lieutenant, Olaffson, was so proud of the fact that he’d been picked to come along as escort on the mission, even if it was just to ensure the landings and take-offs went smoothly. It brought the first stirrings of unease to Kallus’s gut, however: he was perfectly adept at piloting a simple shuttle himself so why was he not making this journey on his own?
He wondered if he’d be able to get a glimpse of the coordinates at some point on the twelve hour journey, if it’d even be worth the trouble. He’d no idea what was on the little backwater facility Thrawn ordered him to inspect, just that he’d been given his marching orders to head out immediately after the first briefing of the day.
Kallus reviewed files on his personal datapad during the trip and avoided small talk with Olaffson, who eventually left him to his silence, tipping his cap over his eyes and promptly falling asleep. His breath whistled through his nose in a manner that ensured Kallus himself would be getting no rest.
After an hour of this, he paused his reading and switched his code cylinder out for Olaffson’s to review the flight log, committing the coordinates to memory in case it did, indeed, prove an important facility, hidden as it was on the edges of the Unknown Regions. He switched their code cylinders back and returned to his datapad, preparing a new burst to send his handler at the Rebellion with whatever he found at this facility.
Daily datawork and espionage complete, there were six hours left on the journey so Kallus took a stim from his pack and settled in to watch the stars pass along the hyperspace route, mind drifting. He thought of the Spectres, briefly, and wondered if Wren had passed on his message at the Academy to Garazeb, however facetious though it was. It had been a life for a life saved on that moon, but there was so much more to it than that. They would never be even, Garazeb Orrelios and he, not until Kallus was watching the last embers of the Empire burn to nothingness — and even then he knew it wouldn’t be enough.
Kallus dug the thumb of his left hand into the palm of his right, the leather of his gloves creaking under the pressure. What he’d done, in the name of order and the Empire and something he thought was greater than himself, would never be wiped from the ledgers of the galaxy. It was too much, too horrible, to balance. But he could work to shift the balance for others, even if he was too far gone, and he could work to earn Garazeb’s respect, perhaps even his —
He snorted quietly. He said, lowly, “I almost thought friendship, Olaffson, how idiotic is that?”
Olaffson’s breath whistled.
“Yes, quite,” he said.
Kallus stared at the stars. Friendship, happiness, love — those were words for other people, he thought. They always had been, since he was a boy in the orphanage and missing the warmth of his mothers’ arms. When he’d been shunted to the Republic, and shortly thereafter Imperial, Academy based on his test scores, he’d long learned to harden his heart and focus only on himself. Leave it to Garazeb Orrelios to unlock that unused core of him as well.
His mothers would’ve loved Garazeb, he thought. These days, he could no longer recall their faces or their voices, but he knew that with absolute certainty.
He sighed quietly to himself, crossed his arms across his chest, and continued to watch the stars, allowing his mind to carefully go blank for the rest of the journey.
The planet, when they landed, was just beginning its day cycle, though it was dark and exceedingly rainy, shaking the vessel like a kite in the wind as they broke atmo. On their approach, Kallus had observed the land below carefully — land being somewhat of a misnomer. It was a water planet, dotted with tiny structures that reminded him of deep sea mining facilities.
They were brought in to land on the biggest of the structures that Kallus could see — which was still quite small — one with a long strip of landing platform that led to what looked to be a compact compound. He thought it must go below the water, and wondered how far down it reached.
As they received their landing instructions, the voice on the comms also informed them that Olaffson was to stay with the shuttle while Kallus went for a tour of the facility, alone. He exchanged a look with Olaffson, who shrugged, and said, “Not unexpected for me, Agent Kallus — anyway, I’ll stay dry this way, eh?”
“Yes,” said Kallus. He smiled tightly and went to the back of the shuttle, adjusting his bo-rifle on his shoulders and his sidearm at his hip while he waited for Olaffson to engage the landing struts and drop the rear hatch for him to exit.
When it opened into the downpour, which was worse than their landing had suggested, he was greeted at the end of the ramp by a slip of a woman, her dark, pleasant face shadowed by the umbrella she carried. Beside her was a sallow, craggy-faced older man in a poncho who nodded once and then turned on his heel to march ahead of them as the woman took Kallus under the shelter of her umbrella.
As they walked from the landing pad to the facility, the woman apologized for the inclement weather — it was usually raining, she noted, but not quite so hard as this — and introduced herself as Doctor Alle Sangrur, the head researcher or the program, and the man with them as Captain Josef Bronte, their head trainer.
“We’re very honored to have you here, ISB-021,” she said. “Welcome to the Farm.”
“Please, Doctor Sangrur,” he said, “call me Agent Kallus.”
“Agent Kallus,” she corrected, smiling. “Again, we’re honored to have you here, and today of all days! Grand Admiral Thrawn said he was unhappy that he himself could not make it, but that you would be pleased to do an assessment in his stead — and to give you access to whatever you need to do so!”
He smiled at her, and Bronte, who did not smile back, despite the fact that Kallus’s ambient suspicion was ratcheting up, and beginning to mingle freely with his earlier unease.
Trap, said a voice in the back of his mind.
“Yes,” he found himself saying as they entered the compound, “yes I am — only, the Grand Admiral, in his haste to get me here, neglected to tell me what I’d be assessing, and just what you do here at your fine facility — you called it the Farm?”
“Oh!” said Sangrur. She glanced at Bronte, who flipped his hood back and was smirking slightly.
“Then you're in for a real treat,” the man said. His voice was as rough as his face and he spoke with no irony, despite the smile. Whatever it was Kallus was about to watch, the people who worked the facility genuinely enjoyed it.
“We’re a weapons facility, of a sort,” Sangur said, stepping forward to take the lead. “This first level is just communications and various admin offices — the real interest is below! And, well, the Farm is a bit of a play on our project header. You’ll see!”
She walked them towards a turbolift, using a code cylinder to call it to them. She was saying as they piled in and began their descent towards the bottom of the Farm, “There are ten levels total. The top three are research labs, the two below are medical facilities, and then the next few are quarters for the on-site staff, which is broken into two types: research and training. Captain Bronte’s staff is often in flux, because it’s dependent on training needs. Right now, we have just two additional handlers and trainers in residence, and a support staff of twelve guards. I have a team of ten scientists and researchers. Below the staff quarters are the final three levels, which are the testing facilities, where we are headed.”
“Forgive me,” said Kallus. “That seems a small number of staff to have on-site, from what I recall of other weapons facilities I’ve observed.”
“Well, the Farm is not your typical facility!” said Sangrur with a lively smile. “And we don’t have your typical weapon! We of course started out with more scientists — the Kaminoans actually pioneered most of our research, previously, but we progressed past the need for them. And we’ve narrowed down the prototypes significantly from then, as well.”
“Oh?” Kallus’s unease became a stone in the pit of his stomach. The Kaminoans had —
“We’d begun the project, oh, fifteen years ago?” she was saying, leading them now out of the turbolift and into a narrow, nondescript hallway. “After today, we’ll be bringing back more staff to begin phase two of the project. All right, here we are!”
Sangrur stopped in front of a door and used her code cylinder to enter the room, waving Kallus and Bronte in before her. It was an observation deck, looking out to a large, empty training area below. There were several humans arrayed in the observation room already, two men and two women. The men were introduced as part of Sangrur’s research team and the women as handlers under Bronte.
“Are they here yet?” the man asked.
“Not yet,” said the taller of the two women. She pulled a comm unit out of her uniform pocket and pressed a button before replacing it.
Below, a door slid open. Sangrur waved Kallus forward to join her at the glass.
“These are our prototypes,” she said, grinning.
Kallus stared.
Arrayed before them, at parade rest, were five children, dressed in identical black body gloves. They were of varying ages: standing in a cluster together were three, tall sandy haired teenlings, perhaps thirteen or fourteen, with terrible frowns and dark eyes, two boys and one girl; the boys were completely identical, down to their haircuts. Near them, but not with them, was a slightly older girl, willowy and shrewd-eyed with jet black hair in a sharp crop and a severe set to her jaw. The youngest was just by this girl’s elbow, a full head shorter than the rest, a tiny, dishwater blonde with her hair in two thick plaits that nearly went to the small of her back; she could be no older than ten, he thought. And they all had two — little gods, little gods, karabast — lightsabers, the blonde youngling spinning one of hers absently in her palm.
“Those are the last three of S Batch,” Sangrur was saying, pointing to the dark-eyed triplets, “CPTS units 006, 009, and 014. That’s the last of D Batch, CPTD-005, and the little one is the last of K Batch, CPTK-021.”
“Like you, eh?” called Bronte.
Kallus continued to stare at the children — the weapons Thrawn had apparently sent him to review — as they stood in silence below him.
Sangrur was still talking. “Our glorious Emperor has tasked us here with a division of Project Harvester— hence the Farm, you see? — called Project Rebirth. Before the Jedi traitors fell, we were able to get several DNA samples. These prototypes are the beginning of a new generation of clone soldiers for our Emperor, a new breed of Inquisitor, if you will. Only these ones, all Force sensitive of course, trained by the Inquisitors themselves and by former clone soldiers before they were all decommissioned, will have none of that pesky Jedi training that sometimes befouls the Inquisitors.”
“All loyal,” said Bronte, joining them at the observation window now, “to our Empire and our Empire alone. The perfect weapon.”
“I see,” said Kallus. He was staring carefully above the heads of the children, concentrating on his breathing. His hands felt numb at his sides.
Clones , he thought. Clones of dead Jedi. Oh, gods.
“Would you like to?” asked Bronte.
“What?”
“See,” he said. He pressed a control next to the window — an intercom — and said, “CPTS-009, tell Agent Kallus what we are about to begin.”
“Game Day,” said the female sandy-haired triplet— no, clone . She had a vague accent, dropped rhotics and flat vowels — she sounded not unlike Garazeb, he thought. The teenling raised her chin and smirked, tossing her messy hair over her shoulder, as she added, “To determine who is strongest.”
“So,” said Bronte, “would you like to see it?”
“Of course,” said Kallus evenly.
“Come sit by us,” said one of the handlers and he went, mechanically, to sit between the two women in the front row of seats. The two researchers settled in the row behind them, and Sangrur and Bronte flanked the handlers.
Below, three of the children filed out of the room at a gesture from Bronte, leaving behind the D Batch girl and one of the S Batch boys. They stood across from each other, perhaps six feet between them, and lit up their ‘sabers, casting their faces in a dull, red glow. They inclined their heads and then, without warning, the S Batch boy, 014, he thought, flew at CPTD-005.
Kallus had only vague memories of the Jedi, before the fall of the Republic, had only seen them in action against the droids of the Sepratist forces, and he’d seen footage of Kanan Jarrus in action against the Grand Inquisitor. What he watched now was nothing like that, he thought, and he fought to keep his face impassive as, with growing horror, he watched the children viciously attack one another. They weren’t pulling their blows, lightsabers bright and crackling with power, thrumming as they crashed again and again, sizzling when they glanced off fabric and skin, drawing welts and burns: they were fighting with intent.
Over the sounds of grunting and growling, over the sounds of children attacking one another, the researchers and the handlers in the room were calmly telling Kallus about the training regime the children before him had been enduring for the last fifteen years.
They’d started with many more units, about thirty per batch. As Sangrur said, they’d had genetic samples from many of the Jedi, collected before the rise of the Empire, though these three batches represented those favored by the Emperor himself. The ranks had been whittled down over the years — culling out weaker units through a combination of observation, training, and of course these Game Days, until there were only the strongest left.
“We actually used the model from ISB training,” Bronte commented. “I never had the pleasure, myself, but I’m told it was very successful.”
Kallus, who vividly remembered being twenty and getting handed a live weapon to begin Team Day with his fellow trainees, the instructors not quite discouraging a body count to end the day, barely suppressed a flinch.
“Of course,” said the handler on Kallus’s left, “we had to modify it a little.”
Below, the D Batch girl let out a wild yell and thrust her ‘saber through the chest of the S Batch Boy.
“Interesting,” said the handler on Kallus’s right. She reached over him to drop a few credits into the waiting palm of the other woman, and Kallus watched, biting down on the inside of his mouth until he tasted blood, as the boy’s body was borne away.
“Too bad Eighth couldn’t make it,” said the other handler, counting her credits. “She said D005 would surprise us.”
“D005 was favored to go out first,” said one of the researchers impassively, leaning forward to speak into Kallus’s ear. “S Batch are the favorites from this group of trainers. They’ve always been stronger, faster, angrier, though that in turn makes them harder to control, of course.”
“You’ve rigged it?”” asked Kallus.
“Only as much as we ever do,” said the handler on his left. From the corner of his eye, he could see her sharp-edged smile.
Below, the door opened again and the little K Batch girl was brought in. Her braids had been pinned, now, into a crown around her head.
“Oh,” said one of the researchers, “this was the Commander’s favorite out of the whole batch, before he’d been decommissioned.”
CPTD-005 didn’t wait this time, launching herself forward at CPTK-021. The bigger girl was obviously tired but she was strong, he’d seen that before, and she obviously had the size advantage in this particular match up. But, as Kallus watched and listened to the researchers and handlers comment on the action, he learned that CPTK-021 was extremely adept at fighting and disabling opponents much larger than herself, using her innate speed and maneuverability to her benefit. She was also, one handler said as an aside, the best at this particular form of lightsaber combat, the dual wielding called jar’kai, even though she favored something called the reverse grip, no matter how hard the Inquisitors tried to train it out of her.
It was her, Kallus found himself thinking as he watched that deadly, vicious little child spin circles around CPTD-005. It was CPTK-021 and one of the other S Batch children who they wanted at the end.
The battle between the two children raged on as Kallus watched. He couldn’t look away. He owed it to these children to bear witness to what was happening. Kallus would remember these children, every one of them, no matter what happened, and when the last one was standing —
What then? he found himself thinking. What would he do? Could he allow this building, this project, to continue to grow? Could he send a communique to the Rebels and turn back to matters of the ISB, hoping for the best? Who would the Rebellion even send to take on a facility such as this, that housed deadly children and had Inquisitors regularly walking the halls? Jarrus and Bridger, and the rest of the Spectres?
He didn’t know if he could stomach the thought of Jarrus coming face first with the terrible, twisted remnant of his people, of Garazeb raising his bo-rifle against one of these children. But he would have to — he would have to. After all, wasn’t the intelligence he could provide from within the Empire more beneficial than the life of a murderous little clone?
Twenty minutes after this second match up had begun, CPTD-005, clearly growing more and more tired, swung wildly at CPTK-021. The smaller child moved gracefully out of the way of her ‘saber but the erratic swing pulled 005’s other ‘saber hand around. CPTK-021 had moved, but she hadn’t moved far enough, and it put her in exactly the wrong spot.
A horrible shriek, like a lothcat getting its tail stomped on, rose from the training area.
Kallus gripped the edge of his seat. He was surprised no one could hear the leather of his gloves creak beneath the pressure. To his left, the handler there stood, shocked, and to his right the other said again, “Interesting.”
Below, CTPD-005 was frozen, staring wide-eyed at the little CPTK-021, who had dropped into a crouch, face ducked down and towards the floor, hidden in shadow. Her lightsabers jutted out behind her, hovering just a few inches above the ground, unwavering in her still steady hands.
“I’m,” started CTPD-005. “I’m so—”
CTPK-021 looked up. A nasty burn crossed the girl’s small face. It seemed huge even from the distance the observation deck provided, bisecting her face from ear to ear, just below her eyes. It was a miracle it hadn’t taken the girl’s nose clear off.
With a wordless growl, CPTK-021 launched herself out of the crouch and towards CTPD-005, moving through the air at an unnatural speed. CTPD-005 only had time to make a belated stumble back, unable to even lift her ‘sabers, before she was taken to the ground with a heavy thump and the sick crunch of bone breaking.
Little CPTK-021 stood. She held out both hands and the ‘sabers she had dropped as she had thrown herself at the other girl snapped back into her waiting hands, igniting into their fresh, bloody red as soon as they hit her palms. CPTD-005 lay on the ground at her feet, neck broken.
CPTK-021 stared down at the body, a strange, indecipherable look on her small face.
The door slid open once again and CPTK-021 dropped back into a crouch, lightsabers glinting, the girl hissing like a wild animal as two guards entered the room. They had to edge carefully around her to get to the other girl’s body, and CPTK-021 twitched like she wanted to lash out at them too, like she wanted to protect the body from further harm. Her eyes flashed as she watched them take her away, a feral, high-pitched growl rumbling from her little throat.
Sangrur pulled a datapad from her jacket and made a few notes while the handlers once again exchanged credits and horrible smiles over Kallus.
When this is all over , Kallus thought, watching as the doors opened and CPTS-009 came flying out, yelling. He felt as if his mind had gone very far away from his body. He thought, When this is all over, I will burn this place to the ground.
And perhaps he could get away with it. Perhaps they would take him on that tour of the facility, and he could find his way to where they kept all their research and he could sabotage it, somehow. He could corrupt the DNA samples and destroy years of research and plant incendiary devices on timers and destroy it all from within, and no one would be the wiser. Perhaps he could get away with the destruction, and continue on as Fulcrum still.
CPTK-021 was a little wounded animal, vicious and cornered, lashing out with her ‘sabers and her mind, using the Force with a little flick of her wrist to shove CTPS-009 into the wall. The other girl didn’t even have a chance.
Kallus wouldn’t have a chance. Who was he trying to kid? What was he trying to prove?
Honor , he thought with that same distant numbness, and he pictured Garazeb’s face in his mind, the way he looked at the bo-rifle Kallus wore on his back even now. He thought of their hands, reaching towards each other.
He would destroy the facility. He would go down with it himself if he must. He couldn’t —
These children —
Below, CPTK-021 was spinning like a top, her lightsabers striking the chest of CPTS-009 again and again and again until the girl fell and did not get up.
He couldn't —
CPTK-021 was still standing, little chest heaving as she gasped wordlessly for air. The burn on her face seemed to glow red, and her little body glove had been split open in several places on her legs and arms, contact burns shiny and angry through the cut fabric, but she was standing, ready. Is she crying? he wondered, watching her little girl shoulders strained tight, her throat working.
He wanted to say, She doesn’t want this. She doesn’t want to do this.
None of them wanted it. How could no one see it? CPTD-005 had been horrified when she realized what she’d done to CPTK-021 — she’d tried to apologize . CPTK-021 had stared with confused grief at her body, having reacted on instinct to the hurt. She hadn’t wanted to kill the other girl, but she had to. They all had to.
Below, the last S Batch child was brought in, the other boy, 006, and they were just children, Kallus wanted to scream, they were just little kids —
CPTS-006 launched himself at the little K Batch girl with a roar, working to overpower her, knowing that she’d faced two opponents already, that he was fresh and ready, undamaged, unhurt. He had a smile on his face that had yet to falter. He managed to land several glancing blows, drawing more of those feral little shrieks and growls from CPTK-021; but the girl was quick, brutal despite her size, giving as good as she got. She was trembling under the strain of the fight but there was no give up in the girl.
They fought viciously for what felt like hours but was truly just a handful of minutes and Kallus’s mouth was filled with blood, biting the insides of his cheeks until they were raw as he watched, helpless to stop the horror of what continued to unfold before him. His throat hurt.
Suddenly, the boy’s dark red ‘sabers moving like a blur, CPTS-006 sunk his blade into the left shoulder of CPTK-021, just below the girl’s collarbone, forcing her to drop one of her ‘saber’s as she grabbed at his wrist to still the blade from ripping up through her shoulder. He reeled the smaller child in close, her toes barely touching the ground as she hung in his grip. He held the shorter of his two ‘sabers up to her face, tracing the line of the burn from CPTD-005 with it. They stared at each other. CPTS-006’s grin, which hadn’t yet faltered, widened now. He bent his head in to press their foreheads together.
CPTK-021 reared back right after and slammed her face into CPTS-006’s. The boy’s grip loosened just slightly, in shock and in pain, and CPTK-021 put her own remaining ‘saber into his chest as she stared into his eyes.
The pair of them stood there, locked together by their blades, looking at one another. CPTS-006 stared down at little CPTK-021. He shut the ‘saber that was embedded in the girl’s shoulder off, letting go of the ‘saber to instead hold onto the fabric of her body glove, and he let go of his second ‘saber as well. He raised one hand, shakily, up to her face. He touched her cheek, just below the burn, and said something so quietly that the microphones in the training area couldn’t pick it up. CPTK-021 tipped her head towards his once more, gently this time, pressing them together for a moment, two, and then pulled her ‘saber from his chest. He hit the ground and did not move again.
CPTK-021 stumbled a little, with CPTS-006 no longer there keeping her aloft, but she stayed standing. Once again, she put one hand out and called the ‘saber she dropped back up to her palm, shut her other blade off, and turned to stare, expressionlessly, up into the observation deck.
Kallus stared down at her and finally allowed his eyes to meet the girl’s. They were a startling blue above her wound, like the skies above Lothal during the summer harvest season, and, for just a moment, they were so impossibly sad.
Bronte stood and went to the intercom. He pressed it and said, “Good girl. But that move with CPTD-005 was sloppy, and you lost hold of your ‘sabers twice.”
She nodded.
“Report to the cold room for punishment,” he said.
Head held high, CPTK-021 limped from the room. Her hands were in fists around her lightsabers, knuckles white.
“Have the medics meet her,” Bronte said, turning back to address the handlers in the room. “Tell them to clean and bandage everything but her face. That, she keeps.”
The handler on Kallus’s left nodded, pulling out her comm unit and typing away.
“What’s the cold room?” he asked.
“Solitary confinement,” said the other handler. “Single cell, no bed, no blankets, kept there until we’ve deemed them properly disciplined. The Inquisitors implemented that one, from their own training.”
“I see,” he said. “How long do you typically keep them there?”
“Several days, depending on the unit,” she said. “K021’s always been quick on the uptake though, so probably no longer than two. Just before infection sets in, if she’s lucky.”
“And then what?” Kallus asked.
“We’ll begin the process of harvesting her DNA,” said Sangrur, making notes once again on her datapad. “It’s actually the part of the process we’ve been most excited about. We’re going to create new batches based on her DNA profile, and enmesh it with other DNA we have on file. We’ll be using the aging process the Kaminoans used for the clone soldiers, this time around, as well, so the Empire will have its new soldiers faster, though it’ll be at least two years before they’re in field — the Emperor believes the cultivation of their anger and hate is key to their success, and who are we to disagree?”
“And her,” he said. “CPTK-021. What will happen to her?”
Sangrur glanced at Bronte, who said, “Be utilized to train the new batches as well, I imagine, and she’ll be sent into the field alongside men like yourself, Agent Kallus, to bring order to the galaxy and help hunt down traitors and root out sedition. But she’s just a prototype, in the end, and the newer models will be made more for longevity in mind.”
“And that’s all allowing her survival of the harvesting process,” commented one of the researchers.
“I’ll take that bet. K021’s godsdamn hardy,” said a handler.
“Sure,” said the researcher. “Two hundred cred?”
“You’re on.”
“Ah,” said Kallus. “Well. Thank you all. This has been very illuminating.”
He pulled his sidearm and neatly shot everyone between the eyes, starting with Bronte and the handlers, only one of whom managed to get her hand on her blaster before she hit the ground, and ending with the researchers.
Doctor Sangrur, however, he left alive when he at last turned his blaster on her. She hadn’t even risen from her chair, too in shock, her datapad still on her knees, fingers loosely around it. She was staring at Bronte, collapsed against the observation window, and the blood splatter two feet above him on the transparisteel.
“Get up,” he said. Her eyes, huge, cut to the blaster he held on her and filled with water as she fought back tears. Of terror, he thought, and then, Good. She should be scared. How many children had she raised from infancy and then ordered to their ends? How many had fought to the death below them while she watched on and took notes? How many of them were scared? How many died, terrified and alone, at the hands of those who were practically their siblings?
Kallus said, “You’ll take me to where you keep the genetic samples of the Jedi, and the children. And you’ll take me to where you keep all of the hard copies of your research.”
“It’s the same place,” she said, voice thready with fear. “The main research lab. Level Dorn.”
“Excellent,” he said. “Get up. I won’t tell you again.”
Sangrur stood, datapad clattering to the ground. She nodded jerkily, eyes shiny, and Kallus grabbed hold of the collar of her jacket, pressing his blaster into the small of her back.
“Go,” he said.
Together, they walked out of the observation room and back towards the turbolift. They rode several floors up and went silently through the blank, featureless halls of the Farm. There was no one about but them as they walked into a room filled with databanks and cold storage tubes for tissue samples.
“Copy all of your research onto this,” he said, handing her the compact external drive he’d taken to carrying on missions since he’d become Fulcrum, and Sangrur nodded, moving to sit at one what looked to be the main terminal, directly in the center of the room. “If you move, I will shoot you. If you attempt to alert anyone, I will shoot you. If you do anything I do not like, I will shoot you. Understood?”
“Yes,” she said.
Kallus took up a position behind her, his blaster trained at the back of her head. He kept his eyes on the screen, watching as she began the data transfer. Occasionally, he glanced over at the cold storage tubes, assessing. He’d need to find the armory — it’d be back below, of course, where they trained their weapons — and get explosives and incendiary devices. All of this would need to be destroyed, absolutely. He didn’t even want to make the copies but he knew he’d have to: he’d need to go through every data file from this place, determine what they had done, what they had been planning to do, and if they were capable of beginning again.
Destroying the entire facility would be a good first step to ending that before it began, he hoped.
It took very little time for the data to copy, perhaps just half of an hour, and Kallus was thankful. He was on the clock now. The cold, methodical parts of him had taken over, running the show and keeping the frightful, awful sick terror he felt at bay, but there was still so much that could go wrong — especially given how unprepared he was when he kicked this chain of events into motion.
He hadn’t thought before he took those first shots. He’d barely been thinking at all. He’d just kept picturing the girl’s eyes, and the freckles he thought he could see on either side of the burn. And if he’d had a thought, it had been, perhaps, just: what would Garazeb do?
Any minute now, the bodies in the observation room could be discovered. No alarms had yet been sounded, which was a good sign. He was in the clear until that happened, or Sangrur grew a set and tried to alert the guards of the Farm. He watched her shaking hands type, and reckoned he would be okay there as well. She didn’t have it in her. When push came to shove, in the Empire, it was save your own skin first and last, and to hell with whatever else happened.
He glanced again at the cold storage tubes and the back to the data terminal. A bar indicated that it was sixty-two percent downloaded.
“Does this facility have a self-destruct?” he asked.
In the reflection of the terminal screen, Kallus watched the tears in Sangrur’s shiny eyes finally spill over. She whispered, “Yes.”
“Do you know how to set it?” he asked. “Don’t lie to me. I’ll know that too.”
“Why are you doing this?” she said instead, her mouth twisting into a grimace. “You’re betraying your Empire!”
“I betrayed myself first, by not stopping you before you began,” he said. “The self-destruct.”
Sangrur turned in her chair. “They’re just clones!”
“The self-destruct,” he said again.
“You need two code cylinders. Mine, and Captain Bronte’s.” Her voice broke on his name. “You set it from the main terminal in the admin offices.”
“Thank you,” he said. “Give it to me.”
The terminal flashed: download complete.
Sangrur said, “You won’t be able to. It’s too well guarded.”
“Give it to me anyway,” he said, “and the drive.”
She did.
“Are there back-ups for the data elsewhere?”
Sangrur shook her head. “Just these files, and reports. We’re on a closed system, to protect the experiment.”
“Delete the originals,” he ordered.
“The self-destruct,” she insisted again even as she typed and began the deletion process, “you won’t make it.”
“Then take me to the armory first,” Kallus said. “It won’t hurt to have a Plan B.”
Sangrur stared at him with her wide, wet eyes. He twitched his blaster upwards and she went.
They left the room, heading back into the corridor. If he couldn’t get to the self-destruct — and it seemed like he might not, he wasn’t sure if he could risk heading back to the observation room to get Bronte’s code cylinder without getting caught; it felt like he was working on twice-borrowed time now — he would get as many explosives as he could carry and rig everything he could in the research lab to blow, and then whatever else in the facility he could to boot. A good charge in the armory, he thought, would begin things nicely. He should comm Olaffson, too, and get him to prepare the shuttle for launch.
“The cold room?” he found himself asking suddenly as they approached the turbolift again.
“What?” said Sangrur.
“The room where you sent the girl,” he said. “Where is it?”
“She’s just a clone,” repeated Sangrur.
“And I’d like to know where she is,” Kallus said.
“We’ll pass it,” she said, “on the way.”
He nodded. “Good. Keep walking.”
They went down a level in the turbolift and continued to walk through more of the Farm’s featureless halls before Sangrur stopped them at another door. Kallus used the code cylinder he took from her before to open the room up, moving to keep Sangrur in his eyeline as he did so.
The alarms finally began to blare as the door opened. Time was up.
Inside the dark of the room, as cold as the name had implied, little CPTK-021 was huddled in one corner. She had bandages and compresses wrapped around her shoulder and her arms and legs where she’d been tagged by the other children’s lightsabers; the burn on her face was open to the cold damp of the room. She looked up at the noise of the door sliding open and stared at Kallus, backlit as he was by the hall and the strobing lights of the hall. Her eyes traced over him, then the blaster in his hand, pointed at Sangrur’s temple, then Sangrur’s wan, tear-stained face. Her lip curled, almost imperceptibly, with what Kallus thought was contempt, and hatred.
“Cadet,” he said. Her head cocked. “Do you know where the armory is?”
A split second of hesitation, the girl’s eyes flickering once again between him, his blaster, and Sangrur, and then she nodded.
“Wait,” said Sangrur.
Kallus shot her without looking and she dropped to the floor. He stepped over her body and into the room.
“My name is Agent Kallus,” he said. “I’m going to get you out of here.”
“Mission, agent?” she asked.
He stared at her, jaw working. She had a small, shy voice, quiet in a way that suggested disuse, but even in those two words she sounded so like Garazeb, even more so than the other girl had — or like the old clone soldiers, he thought. Perhaps that comparison was more accurate, more apt.
“Yes. I’m taking you on a mission,” he told her. “Our first target is this facility itself. Would you like to help me?”
Her blue, blue eyes looked down at Sangrur’s dead body. There was no expression on her face now, even a tiny, barely hid one. She asked, more haltingly than before, “Mission, agent? Handlers?”
“No more handlers,” he said. “Dead, like her.”
“You?” she said.
It felt like a galaxy’s worth of questions, all truncated into a single word, but there could only be one answer. “Yes.”
“Okay.” The little girl stood, wobbling once. She grit her teeth and did not flinch.
“Cadet,” he began. He couldn't think of anything else. He wouldn’t call her what they called her. She was a person, a child . He wouldn’t call her by the number they shared. They were both people. He said again, “Cadet, you’re injured, and we have to move. We no longer have the element of surprise.”
“I move fast,” she said. It wasn’t a protest, just a simple statement of fact.
“I know,” he said. “I know you do. But not now, cadet. I’m going to carry you. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
She stared at him for half a heartbeat and then nodded. Kallus crossed the rest of the way into the room and, with one arm, scooped her up onto his right hip. She was so light, a feather, and over warm for how cold the room was; and anger, now, suddenly, burned through the numb fog he’d been operating under since he lifted his blaster in the observation room.
He turned back to the door and returned to the hall, stepping casually over Sangrur. Blaster in his left hand, he pointed it to the ground and rested his finger on the trigger.
“The armory?” he asked.
The girl pointed to their right.
“Two lefts,” she told him, “then right.”
He nodded and set off. The girl was looking over his shoulder as they went, he realized, watching his back. He’d have to get her a weapon of her own when they reached the armory.
Sangrur’s code cylinder let them in without a problem, and Kallus wondered if they knew what was happening yet. Had they discovered the bodies and not yet determined who the shooter was? Were they waiting for him to emerge from the turbolift on the top level, clustered together and whispering, unable to contemplate why he’d done what he’d done? They obviously had no idea he’d gone for the girl, or they would’ve made their way onto this floor long before they’d reached the armory, perhaps even when he was gaining her strange allegiance in that cold room.
Once inside, Kallus set the girl down on the ground, making sure she was steady on her legs before he took his hand from her slim shoulders. He paused, thinking, and then he handed her his blaster, asking, “Do you know how to use this?”
She nodded and Kallus said, “Good. Now, keep an eye on the door, and shoot anything that moves,” then turned to start grabbing supplies.
There was a plain sack that he immediately began to fill with explosives and whatever incendiary devices he could. He grabbed, too, anything that looked like it could be useful. He didn’t have a plan beyond this, beyond blowing up the facility, but he had the girl now. He would need to think further ahead.
The shuttle, he thought. They would set as many charges they could, in as many places as he could get to, and then they would get to the shuttle. After that —
After would come when they were on the shuttle, he thought as he bundled a group of explosives together and set a timer for fifteen minutes. That would be enough time, he reckoned, for the two of them to get back to the data room, lay charges there, and begin to make their way up to the surface of the planet and whatever waited for them there.
He pulled out his comm to contact Olaffson, who answered with blatant confusion. “I hear alarms, sir,” he said. “Is the facility under attack?”
“Yes,” Kallus told him, eyeing his bundle of explosives. It was not a lie, merely an incomplete truth, though covering his tracks was now far, far beyond him. It no longer mattered how he handled men like Olaffson: from the moment he sat down in the observation room, even if he hadn’t quite known it, Agent Kallus was no more. “You must ready the shuttle, so we can leave as soon as I am aboard with the weapon prototype.”
“Of course, sir,” he said, and then, “Prototype? Sir —”
Kallus shut the comm off before anything else could be said.
With the bag of explosives and supplies on his left shoulder and the girl settled again on his right hip, blaster in her hands, they returned the way they came and went into the turbolift.
He doubled them back to the main research lab, setting the girl down again so he could lay charges all around the terminals and the cold storage tubes where the DNA samples waited for their terrible futures. He synced them to the timer he’d set down in the armory, scooped the girl up again, and began to lead them out. He dropped charges here and there as he went, the girl pointing out an area for him every so often while she studiously watched his six.
No one crossed their path as they went, and the trepidation that lay at the base of Kallus’s spine finally made itself known as they began their final ascent in the turbolift to the surface. Everything in him had been uneasy and charged, dangerous, like a live wire, since he’d set foot on this planet, and now it was at last coming to a head. They would be waiting for him — for them — on the landing pad, fish in a barrel. They would only have the element of surprise, that they were working together.
Twelve guards, he thought. He’d taken down the two handlers Sangrur had said were in residence back in the observation room. He doubted they would have thought to arm the scientists, probably opting to keep them somewhere safe until the threat was neutralized, calling for support even now perhaps. Twelve, and the two of them.
Kallus had had worse odds.
As they approached the final exit of the facility, he sank to the ground, depositing the girl before him.
“Cadet,” he said. “There are twelve guards waiting for us outside, and they don’t want us to complete our mission. Who want to keep you here.”
The girl looked down at the blaster she held. It looked so large in her small hands. She glanced back up at Kallus and told him, “I’m better with my ‘sabers.”
“I imagine,” he said, “but they hadn’t been with everything else in the armory, and I’m afraid we don’t have time to go looking for them. We have to act.”
She nodded.
“Do you see my bo-rifle?” he asked, pulling the weapon off his shoulders. “I am very, very good with it, but I’ll need both of my hands to fire. I want you to climb up on my back, because we can move faster together than we will apart, and I want you to hold on, tight as you can.”
She nodded again, and scaled him with a nimbleness that belied the injuries he knew her small body was riddled with. She settled herself high on his back, her knees locked into his sides just beneath his armpits, with enough force that it would’ve been painful if Kallus hadn’t had such a high tolerance for it. She rested her left arm across his chest, hand fisted in the restrictive collar of his uniform, and kept her other arm free to hold the blaster at the ready.
When he felt her steady on his back, he settled his bo-rifle more comfortably in his arms and stood.
Twelve it was waiting for them in the pouring rain, arrayed in clusters on the way to the shuttle. Kallus, perversely, almost wished he would be able to give his report to Thrawn, after: he’d have much to say about the security for this particular facility. He’d allow, of course, that they weren’t prepared to be overtaken by an ISB agent and one of their own small, deadly weapons, but it was, still, honestly a bit embarrassing. Hadn’t Thrawn warned them that Kallus was coming and that they were to set this trap better for him?
Only one of the twelve guards got a hit on Kallus, a glancing blast high on his thigh, but training and sheer bloody-mindedness kept Kallus going. He ducked and weaved along the open, slick terrain of the landing platform, sprinting them towards the shuttle.
On his shoulders, the girl was a steady, sure shot, as cold and methodical as any agent or trooper Kallus would’ve trained — as good as Kallus himself, if not better with her Force enhanced reflexes. She got off two to three shots for every one of the guards and it was almost too easy to break through these forces and get to the waiting craft.
Kallus only stumbled as they arrived onto the shuttle, slipping just a little on the slick surface, and Olaffson was there, face pale, eyes wide.
“Agent Kallus?” he began, raising his own blaster hesitantly. “What —?”
The girl shot Olaffson before Kallus could. One clean shot to the hand, and then one to the shoulder. Disarm and then disable, he thought. She wasn’t sure if they would need him alive for their mission but had identified the lieutenant as a potential threat to it nonetheless. The part of him that was still removed from the proceedings, watching through his eyes like a passenger to himself and assessing calmly, was pleased to see that she could make non-lethal calls, because until this moment, he hadn’t seen her take one.
You’re just a baby, he thought, gods, karabast, dear one, what had they done to you?
“Cadet,” said Kallus. “Restrain Lieutenant Olaffson while I get the ship into orbit. We’ve taken out the guard, but they will no doubt have requested reinforcements, and we must leave while we are still able.”
She slid off his shoulders and dropped soundlessly to the floor, nodding at him as she approached Olaffson, crumbled as he was on the floor.
He watched her for a moment as she patted Olaffson down, the man groaning, before coming up with the binders he’d had on his belt. Confident that she had it handled — she was, after all, without a shadow of a doubt the most dangerous being on the shuttle — he headed into the cockpit and sat down before the controls.
Olaffson had believed him, clearly, at least enough to get the ship prepared for launch. He guided the ship up and out of the atmosphere, just as small explosions began to rock the little compound below them. Kallus watched as the shuttle rose, satisfaction curling in his chest, but he knew it was no time to rest on his laurels.
Once safely out of the planet’s orbit, he punched in a random set of coordinates and the white streaked black of hyperspace filled the space around them. His hands were shaking against the steering console, he saw, trembling uncontrollably as the adrenaline of battle began to leave his body.
A new adrenaline, of course, was simply usrupping it however. He’d typed in the first random coordinates he could think of, some planet a sector over that he’d had in the back of his mind since his trip in — gods, had that only been a few hours before? It felt like he’d been awake for days, but it had barely even been a full cycle for him since he’d woke aboard the Chimera and been given his marching orders.
And now, suddenly, he was a fugitive from the Empire, completely and totally. He’d thought, maybe, he’d see this day come — but it had felt so far away whenever he imagined it, and just that: imaginary. It had been so much more realistic to think of himself as dead, and perhaps for quite some time, when the Empire finally fell to the Rebels.
Yet here he was: fleeing a water-logged planet where he’d killed six people without hesitation, and then however many guards had been in his way. Had his explosives in the facility killed the rest of the researchers and scientists? Had the large charge in the armory breached the walls, water filling the halls? And he had a child with him! Not just any child, of course, no, he had a Jedi cloned child who’d been raised since infancy to be an unquestioning, terrifying weapon.
He had no idea where the Rebellion was, and even if he did, he knew he couldn’t turn to them. He was completely and utterly burned, and no one in their right mind within the Rebellion would believe Agent Alexsandr Kallus of the ISB had been acting as Fulcrum if he’d turned up on their doorstep. Could Garazeb have begun to suspect, perhaps, after the message from Wren? Karabast, he hadn’t even known his own handler’s name , out of safety, and the Empire would be hunting him, the bloodhounds already snapping at his heels, his and his little stolen child. He’d be putting Garazeb, the Spectres, everyone , at risk if he tried to find them.
Kallus thought of the small file of data he’d been preparing the last time he was on this shuttle. It would be useless now, the facility hopefully either completely destroyed or simply rendered useless. He had the research, but he still needed to go through it and — then what?
His rig back in Bridger’s old tower had a failsafe. He’d programmed a message and a series of data-bursts to deploy after two ten-days of inactivity from him. It had, in the past, worked perfectly: he’d always been able to swing by the tower in that time frame, or send one of his reprogrammed MSE droids to reset the countdown if he’d gone too far afield to make it back in time.
But there’d be no return for him now. He was never going to be able to set foot on Lothal or any of her neighbors without being recognized; as it was, he’d be hard-pressed to get himself and the girl to somewhere even halfway safe. His last message as Fulcrum would send in less than a ten-day now, pinging off several relays until it found itself with his old handler, that lieutenant he’d never physically met, whose voice he’d never heard unaltered.
“This is Fulcrum,” his message began. “If you are receiving this message, I have been compromised in some way: found or captured, most likely dead. What follows will be several packets of data, information I have been slowly obtaining from the Imperial databanks. I had hoped to sift through this information myself, in time, to bring you intelligence of utility; obviously, that is no longer an option and your teams will have to parse the data yourselves. I am also including several unfinished personal reports and analysis on several Imperial officers, a packet on Imperial strategy, and a list of codes currently in circulation. I only wish I could have given you more. May the Force be with you, and the Rebellion. Fulcrum out.”
As far as last messages went, he’d thought it pretty good. He wished now to have added something more, something of himself. He wondered how he’d be remembered by the Rebels. Would they think him captured? Would they try to rescue him? Or would they write him off, assume that he was dead and gone, whoever he had been, mourn the loss of intelligence and move on to the next?
It was what he would do.
It was what he had done.
He wondered if Garazeb would notice when Agent Kallus stopped coming ‘round, disrupting their missions. He wondered if he would question it. He wondered if he would miss him.
The girl slipped into the cockpit silently, the gentle shift of recycled air and Kallus’s own knife-edged hypervigilance the only things alerting him to her presence, and climbed gingerly into the cockpit chair. She was favoring her shoulder, of course, and her right leg.
She was barefoot, he realized suddenly when his quick assessment of her physical state made its way from the top of her head down to her dangling feet, too short to touch the ground. How had he missed that?
The big toe of her right foot was missing its nail, he saw as he stared, and several others were crooked, as if they’d been broken and healed poorly. She was missing two toes entirely on her left foot, the smallest ones, clean neat scarring in their place. Amputated.
Kallus sucked in a sharp breath and knew, with perfect, sudden clarity, that he had made the right decision. There was more he could’ve done as ISB-021 for the Rebellion, but that would have been true no matter when he stopped or had been stopped. But for this girl, with her burnt face and sad eyes and vicious, mean anger — he had done the right thing.
There was more to be done for her, too. He could find someone for her, somewhere out in the galaxy. There would be someone like Kanan Jarrus out there, waiting for the opportunity to take in some Force sensitive child and protect and raise them. He would find someone like that, or even maybe someday bring her to Jarrus himself, and he would see that she was safe from harm. He would protect her.
But first, he thought, they would need to ditch the shuttle, tend to their wounds, and get the girl some shoes.