Chapter 14: Delving Deeping
Summary: Having taken care of their personal business on the Smuggler's Moon, Aayla and Izuku delve into the depths of the city to find out just why the Force wanted them here...
Chapter 14: Delving Deeping
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Izuku grimaced into the slathering jaws of the the…thing, he had telekinetically grabbed mid-leap, on its way to his face. Having already learned that whatever the creatures were, they couldn't simply be deterred and were cursedly well armored, he carefully placed a blaster bolt upward into the roof of its mouth as it bit at the air. Turning as he sensed another slip past Aayla, he grabbed it before it could leap and sent three of the hovering shards of metal around his shoulders whizzing at its face. Despite it's flinch, one of the three found an eye-equivalent and penetrated deep enough to kill it. He left that piece of bloody metal be, even as he mentally retrieved the other two and bent them back into the crude shape of spears. His eyes flicked up as he finished, watching Aayla and the whirling dervish of her lightsaber just as she slashed the last of the five she'd been facing. That golden blade carved right through the creature's armor, beheading the ugly thing. Even so, his companion frowned as she pushed its body away with her own telekinesis.
"Blade still giving you trouble?"
As a conversation starter, it wasn't subtle. But they'd been crawling deeper and deeper into this deserted section of city for half a day at this point, and Izuku was all out of subtle. Thankfully, Aayla seemed to feel the weight of the slogging campaign downward even more than he did, despite being in even better physical shape than he was. She readily took the chance to break the silence that seemed to settle into your very bones down here, in the lower levels where the sun never reached.
"Yes, though it's not really the blade. It's the way it changes my use of the Force. It somehow streamlines my use of the Force for physical enhancement of any kind. I think it's doing that by sort of refining any force I turn inward, but I've never run into anything like it before. It's throwing off my reflexes, since I'm a little faster and a little stronger than I should be. Still, nothing that training with it won't fix."
Izuku nodded, refraining from pointing out that fighting their way through lower levels of Nar Shadda, in a section of the city-planet that had been abandoned well over 1,500 years ago by their best estimate, wasn't an ideal time to be experimenting. Aayla hadn't known about the difference before they'd left, so she could hardly be blamed for it. And neither of them had possessed any idea just how far below the 'surface' levels they were going to end up, following the pull of the Force. The swoop gangs that had ruled the upper levels here had been easily dealt with…but the farther down they got, the less recognizable the threats. Aayla had no idea what these latest beasts were, and neither did Izuku's HUD.
He was extremely pleased that they'd finally managed to get said HUD, originally part of his hero costume, to interface with the tech of this galaxy. It had been an ongoing project mostly handled by their astromech droids, after Izuku had done his best to translate key points about the programming language for them. In truth, he'd almost forgotten about giving his combat gear to the droids after Esseles, and the triumphant little buggers rolling up to him with its processors massively improved and patched to interface with this universe's tech had been a nice surprise. One that was even nicer now, since he'd seen more combat in the last half day than at any point since the war with the MLA.
While there were a number of features built into the thing, the primary purpose of the holographic visor Mei had made for him was to help ease Izuku's multitasking burden. Izuku's Quirk, thankfully, had wired his brain differently enough from standard that he could naturally track a lot of things going on at once. But even he had limits, and a combat environment strained those limits badly. By mapping everything from his eye movements to specific neural impulses, Mei had somehow come up with a way to highlight all of the objects he was controlling. That alone would have been useful, but Mei was Mei and she'd gone about eleven steps farther by adding dozens of other features. His controlled objects changed color based on their velocity, a mini-map displayed the location of anything that he mentally 'pinged' in his regular sweeps with his telepathy, and the sensors feeding the thing gave him surprisingly good breakdowns of what his held objects and general surrounds were made of. The surprising part of that last bit was mostly because, after being updated by the astromechs with more materials and creatures, it was still working. His HUD had displayed hidden blasters on the gang members, weak points in materials he knew Earth didn't even have, and had identified a half dozen of the different creatures they'd encountered so far.
Honestly, Izuku was impressed all over again with Hatsume's work. It was just a pity that he'd only been able to salvage a fraction of her hardware into an outfit that didn't look out of place. It would have been nice to have his familiar hero costume, especially its armor plates and mobility-boosting hover soles, for this little adventure. Sadly, on Nar Shadda, wearing the skintight suit would probably have made people think he was some sort of male sex worker, not a superhero. Alas for all his childhood fantasies of saving damsels in distress in manly spandex that outlines his hard-earn abs. The only damsel present was probably more dangerous than he was, and the locals would have laughed their ass off, or worse, at the sight of the spandex.
Well, at least his spacer leathers were more comfortable. Also, he should probably get his head back in the game. The fact that his mind had wandered so far was not a good sign for his energy levels. Something which he brought up with his partner a moment later as she worked on carefully cutting them a new access way toward wherever they were going.
"Aayla, I hate to say this, but if we don't turn back soon, we might not make it back to the surface intact. I'm starting to get a bit ragged from all the ambushes."
Aayla powered down her lightsaber and lifted the duracrete plug she'd cut from the floor aside. They both waited as she threw a chemical lightstick down the hole…and let out a relieved sigh as, this time at least, nothing came back out to try and bite their faces off. With that out of the way, she sighed and responded.
"I know, Izu. I had the same thought two fights ago. But, as strong as the pull is, we have to be getting close."
Izuku frowned but nodded.
"Fine. Only one more level, though. If we don't find it in…call it half an hour, we head back up. We can always try again now that we have a better idea just how deep we need to go. We've seen some shafts heading up that could take a vehicle for most of the way."
Aayla nodded at that. They had been mapping as they went, and one thing was clear…the area they were in had once been much more open than it was now. Earlyish on they'd actually passed an open space and set of side spaces that looked like it had been a prosperous entertainment plaza. Now, lower and somewhere a few kilometers to one side, they were in what was clearly a former industrial area. According to the maps Izuku's gear had been slowly making, there were much more direct routes than they'd taken, if they were forced to do this trip more than once.
It was as they descended down to the next floor, however, that all thoughts of turning back vanished. There weren't just close. They were here. Wherever here was. Frowning uneasily at the large space they'd descended into, Izuku connected to the floodlight drones that they'd 'liberated' from one of the swoop gangs that had confronted them early on. It increased the power of its lights in response to his commands, pointing them out into the open space. What he saw there made him blink.
"What the fuck? Why is the architecture here completely different? I mean, I know Nar Shadda isn't exactly homogenous, but still…"
Aayla nodded, even as she too looked over the drastically different surfaces. Instead of the duracrete and durasteel they'd seen almost everywhere else, there was a much darker metal making up the surfaces here. Metal that felt, somehow, as if it had more metaphysical weight to it. Izuku thought that was probably just his mind playing tricks on him, right up until Aayla spoke.
"The metal…it's infused with the Force? Not a lot of it, but even so…what the kriffing hells is this place?"
Frowning, Izuku tentatively lowered his mental shields. He still didn't understand the idea of 'reaching out' to the Force. The flood of information was always just there when he lowered his guard. Here…it actually wasn't as bad as it was on any of the other planets he'd been to. And he could tell immediately why that was. That dark metal was infused with the Force. That fact was acting to sort of muffle anything beyond the room. Add in that there seemed to be nothing alive nearby, and the area was perhaps the quietist he'd encountered, short of their trips through hyperspace. Yet, that very quietness made something clear to him that Aayla apparently hadn't noticed yet. The Force here was moving. Almost like a current, in fact. It was going somewhere.
"There's some sort of Force…current, here. It's like the Force is being naturally drawn somewhere. I'd guess whatever it is must be why we're here?"
Aayla looked confused, then reached out her free hand toward him. Instinctively knowing what she wanted, he grabbed her hand in one of his. Despite their gloves, it was close enough to physical contact for their bond to deepen and he felt her draw on his own, odd according to her, perception of the Force. A moment after she did, her eyes blinked open and her jaw dropped.
"What the fark is that?"
Izuku shrugged. She was the Jedi, not him.
"Heck if I now, why don't we find out?"
Aayla looked a little leery about that, but nodded all the same…
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'That,' it turned out, was a giant cube. One that barely even fit the high ceilings of the room it was in. Of course, 'giant' was relative. It was roughly 5 meters to a side. Which made it massive relative to Aayla and Izuku, but not so large that it wouldn't have fit in their ship's cargo hold. It would push the height of said hold to the limit, but it would only fill the hold to perhaps half its actual volume. Of course, there were also at least two of them. Possibly more beyond the limits of their lights. There was also, as it happened, a terminal in front of them. A terminal that looked like it was actually functional. Not new and covered in a hell of a lot of dust, but its telltales were still glowing with power.
Tentatively, the two of them approached. Somehow, they were only half surprised when, on coming close enough, the terminal powered up and a holoprojector sputtered to life. The alien image it projected was…very alien to Izuku's mind. Its eyes were on stalks to either side of its head, with its mouth very disconcertingly on what amounted to its forehead. That bit only got more disconcerting when it started speaking. With his shielding still mostly down, he understood it via the Force, and quickly connected to Aayla so she could get the translation as well.
"My name is Aablu-Nug. I am, so far as I know, the last of my kind. I suppose others of my race may exist, outside this place, but I am the last descendant of the Ongree brought to this place by the being called The Revan. Who The Revan actually was, I know not. Much has been lost in the three thousand years since it brought our ancestors here. I know only that it was The Revan who brought us, along with a small fragment of what we now call the Infinite Engine. There are some very odd, very old tales that it was itself once part of something greater. But what that might have been, I have no idea. All I know is that, for as long as we have been a people, we have worshiped the device and The Revan that brought it."
There was a moment of pause as the being coughed, flecks of blood appearing on its fist. Having gotten past this Aablu-Nug's general appearance, Izuku could now see signs that likely pointed to it being quite aged. Something that was farther in evidence in the rasping quality of its voice as it spoke again.
"The Engine was all. Our children, dedicated to it at birth. All those materials we could gather from the long-abandoned city beyond our walls, given to it. Even our own bodies, in death, were just more fuel for the Engine. Such has always been our way…and such it will be with me, once I finish recording this message. I am the last, and I am dying. I will give myself to the machine as is proper…but first I wanted to leave a message. To tell anyone that might eventually find their way here who we were, to tell about the Engine itself. And…and to tell what I have done. I don't know if it was the right choice. But with no more Ongree to feed it, I felt it was the only thing to do…"
The being lost focus for a long moment, staring at nothing, before shaking itself and picking up where it had left off.
"The Infinite Engine…its nature had been debated by countless scholars. If you want their words, their thoughts on its purpose and ours through it, you need only look at the files on this terminal. As for me…I am living in the final days of our kind. I have given up on the idea that the Engine was some sort of sleeping god or great charge. Instead, I will focus only on the practical. The Engine creates. Air, water, weapons or droids, it doesn't care. It works best when it has mass to work with, metal to turn into other metal, organic material to turn into food. It can, however, technically create such things with nothing more than the energy is seems to draw from the very air. Or perhaps from our thoughts? I know not on that matter, only that it can do so in some fashion."
Another fit of coughing, this one longer than the last, broke up the being's speech long enough for Aayla and Izuku to look at each other, each with expressions of confused awe. This was…not what they had been expecting. Though, Izuku supposed neither of them had really known what to expect. The Ongree began speaking again and they returned their attention back to it.
"My time is short, so I must keep this brief. I have done something many might call heretical. In the long decline of our species, a very many reasons for that decline were put forward. But for myself, I believe that those heretics that said The Revan made a mistake were right. Not, perhaps, in that The Revan made a mistake…but that it didn't think far enough ahead. That our species collapsed because we were too few, with too little diversity. That, eventually, our genes simply couldn't be stretched any farther, even with the help of the Engine. With that thought in mind, I've ordered the Engine to do something which, so far as I know, was never considered. I ordered it to split. With only the trickle of energy from the air coming in, I know not how successful the change will be. But, aside from ordering it to keep this terminal going, I have dedicated all its incoming energy to this task. If it succeeds…perhaps whoever finds it will take it to very different places, so that it might have a better chance of diversity. Whoever you are…I wish you luck."
With that, the hologram flickered off, and they were left standing in a heavy silence.
"Well. That was…a thing?"
Aayla snorted at his attempt to break the ice. She hesitated, then shook her head.
"I have no idea how capable this thing is. Or what the heck the Force thinks we need the level of manufacturing capacity that it probably represents for. That's a little worrying, actually. Still, I think we have a bigger issue…"
Izuku cocked his head.
"What's that?"
"…How the fark are we supposed to get this thing to the surface, Izu? Particularly if there are more than one of them."
That, Izuku thought, was a very good question. Somehow, he suspected they wouldn't be leaving Nar Shadda as quickly as he'd originally thought…
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A/N: Well, well, well...just what is the Force up to? For those of you who never played Star Wars: The Old Republic, the Infinite Engine is from there. It features as a major mission for one of the Imperial origins, where you visit Nar Shadda a few hundred years after the events of Knights of the Old Republic and discover this little side project of Revan's. I will say right now that, while the Infinite Engine was created from a fragment of the Star Forge, it is NOT as powerful. They'll need specific conditions to make the most use of it, and a fair bit of time as well...