2.03

I was beginning to realize seeing Coruscant as a city was wrong. The planet had an amazing variety of environments, from forests of skyscrapers to mountains of steel like the Senate building or the many spaceports, to lakes and even an ocean, complete with islands, named the Great Western Sea. All those environments just happened to be artificial. Not urban, despite appearances; major portions of the planet were sparsely populated or even entirely deserted, for all that they remained duracrete and transparisteel jungles. In retrospect, that made sense. Manila, the most densely populated city on Earth, had forty thousand citizens per square kilometer and still was a single-layer city far less densely built as the more natural places in the Galactic capital. Had Coruscant's cityscape matched that population density, it would have had twenty times the planet's current population.

For more than a thousand generations - as long as the Republic had existed - its people had layered duracrete upon duracrete, building upon the works of past generations without plan or direction. There were hundreds of layers to the city, with more than half of the population concentrated on those closest to the surface. Below them, beneath the skyscrapers and monuments standing tall and proud, beyond the concentrations of the population to what would have been separate cities in another planet, there was an endless maze of tunnels, ravines, vast open chambers, and claustrophobic catacombs collectively known as the undercity. They were not a city, though, but effectively a subterranean ecosystem.

Take all the post-apocalyptic and cyberpunk novels ever written, add a good helping of runaway science projects from Mengele's dreams, sprinkle with four hundred billion beggars, scavengers, outlaws, and criminals, season with legions of droids that would outnumber the Confederacy a bazillion to one, let stew for millennia, and you'd have an idea what Coruscant's underworld was like. If not for the existence of reliable and thorough recycling of everything from organic garbage to radioactive waste, the layers upon layers of ancient construction would have turned into a permanent landfill. As it was, they were only reminiscent of my Shadowrun campaign... or maybe slowly recovering communities in the later Fallout games.

Ratty, our escort, and I had descended more than a hundred layers in the past hour, following the directions we had acquired at significant expense towards our destination. Father was not with us. For all that he had hated this plan, he knew he could neither disappear from his duties without notice nor be seen carrying out the less than legal transaction buying the equipment had been. Sending a droid alone would result in its vanishing without a trace with mathematical certainty, and this "errand" was not something we could trust an outsider with. Thus, despite his fury at the magnitude of the risk, we'd already taken with this, Kuat politics, treachery, and the terrorists' obvious backing by someone with deep pockets had made up his mind. This didn't mean Ratty and I was without protection.

My eyes went over the escort as I scanned our surroundings for the thousandth time. Five tall, robed figures walked through Coruscant's underbelly in ominous silence, the armor peaking under their robes and the DLT-19 heavy blasters they carried warning off anyone with any sense. What could be seen of their faces under their hoods hinted at harsh lines, a rigid expression, and skin worn by age and ugly experiences. Visors covered their eyes and wrapped over their ears, making them look inhuman; all the better to intimidate strangers. The heavily armed escort and relative security of my position meant I could relax and enjoy the view - such as it was.

The momentary calm in the physical realm was reflected in the Force, my developing senses not registering anything unusual. Over the weeks of training, I'd learned to pay attention to what the mystical aspect of the Star Wars universe had to say and even rely on it a bit to upset my robotic tutor when I did something scientifically inexplicable and/or statistically impossible. Right then, watching the armed escort scan the area and scare away the lowlifes so we could reach our destination, I felt perfectly safe.

Which was precisely when someone shot me in the back.

xxxx xxxx xxxx

​

"What the hell is this?" I asked loudly and angrily, the four centimeters long, two millimeters wide, needle-shaped projectile held between forefinger and thumb. Having a piece of steel shoved into my... rump was not my idea of fun. Force, I hated needles. Absolutely despised them.

"A vibro-dart fired from a VV-341 hunting pistol, mistress," Ratty replied matter-of-factly, obviously enjoying a chance to get back at me. "Reliable, with high penetration of rigid armor, and variable payload."

"That's not what I meant, you infernal scrapheap!" Was the mechanical menace smiling? Could a droid come up with such a wicked scheme for her own satisfaction? Knowing R-2's exploits in canon, it was not out of the question. "Why did you shoot me in the back in the middle of the mission?"

"I did not shoot you in the back, mistress!" Ratty's complaint sounded genuine, complete with mechanical indignation, but I could see through such deceptions. "According to traditional humanoid nomenclature, the 'back' is higher up the body. It also happens to have much less padding and many more important organs, hence my decision to shoot you in the..."

"Oh, shut up," I spat back. "How'd you even manage it anyway? Surprising me, I mean."

"Previous experimentation has shown your ability to somehow sense immediate and obvious danger, mistress," Ratty said with all the aristocratic disdain of a droid teacher that had to deal with the mystical and the inexplicable, and the smugness that came from overcoming it. "And yet, you did not avoid stubbing your toe against the bed last Zhellday morning, or your significant allergic reaction to the Alderanian clams this Primeday."

Yeah, strange allergies were not unknown in the offspring of humans and near-humans. Father assured me we'd get a cure straight from Arkania within the week, but after that particular debacle, I'd made up my mind; I was not eating any non-Kuati seafood ever again.

"...hypothesized you could not predict minor or non-immediate threats. Thus my use of a dart-gun dealing negligible physical damage paired with a time-delayed strong laxative."

"You what?" I sat up in a futile attempt to tower over a droid a foot and a half taller than me, and something in or below my stomach rumbled ominously. Ratty, the traitor, kept talking in that infuriatingly calm, mocking tone.

"It should start working... right about now."

A second ominous rumble followed the first, and I jumped off my seat in the droid-control chamber and sprinted towards the bathroom...

xxxx xxxx xxxx

​

"We have reached our destination, mistress."

I pretended to ignore Ratty, as I had been doing for the past half hour. Was it childish? Perhaps. Did it also give me a bit of satisfaction? Absolutely. Behaving like a child often did lately - probably because I was one. Whatever, I kept ignoring my robotic tutor and focused on the images transmitted to the droid control center's screens by our forces in the ground. The droid control core might not be nearly as massive and advanced as the one in the Trade Federation's control ships, but then it didn't have to be. Instead of potentially millions of mindless drones it had to control less than a dozen platforms, each one with its own brain too. Just like the Federation's version, it had a powerful enough directed uplink to cut through most jamming, but with a hundred thousand times less off-ship receivers to give commands to, it didn't need nearly as much power and volume.

The simulators allowing organic users to pilot individual drones at a distance allowed me to see what the "escorts" did, at least in the visible spectrum. A ramshackle apartment building, duracrete walls cracked and worn down with age, was nested in the narrow alley formed by the massive supports of two skyscrapers extending down from the upper layers. It looked as if it had been dislodged from some upper layer ages ago, only to fall down into the pit and survive the impact. At least, that was the only explanation that made sense for why the building was upside-down. Its once-upper floors were buried in garbage and ruins, most of its windows had not just been boarded up but welded shut or bricked over, and what must once have been the entrance now stood some fifty feet above the alley floor, the only point of entry into the near-ruin. The only reason one would choose this place even as temporary lodgings, apart from not having anywhere else to go, would be security.

It is good that they had, for the narrow alley was full of heavily armed thugs shooting at them. Trandoshan serpent-men, Gammorean pig-men, Rodian frog-faces, even a few Twi-leks; if it was green-skinned and sentient it was armored, painted all-over with gang signs, and firing a broad assortment of blasters, slugthrowers, and needle-guns at whoever was inside. In the minute or so we'd been approaching undetected, they had already sent a couple of thousand bolts into the elevated entrance, which had been answered only by three shots from those insides. A really fast and massive Gammorean with a heavy repeater, a Trandoshan with a sniper rifle, and a Rodian grenadier had died to those shots, though since the last one had hit the Rodian's thermal detonator as the alien had been trying to throw there were only two corpses.

Curses in a dozen languages - I only recognized Huttese - flew along with blaster bolts, the rag-tag band of aliens losing what little discipline they had as time passed. This was both good and bad; the former because it made these criminals less effective, the latter because it made them less predictable. Without needing to be ordered, most of the "men" in the escort found cover, firing positions from where they could shoot at the Greenskin Scum without being shot back. And no, that name was not me being racist; according to our information, "Greenskin Scum" was the gang that had a problem with our target... which made this whole thing complicated. So I pressed a button in my control seat, and a wicked mechanical voice rang out;

"ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL"

I'd always wanted to say that, which is why I'd programmed it into my remote control seat. Ignoring Ratty's dirty look, I activated the control gloves and neural interface helmet and suddenly, I was a droid. The last member of our expedition to the depths of Coruscant followed my commands with the smoothness of a living thing even if it was anything but. Approaching the apparent leader of the criminal gang, a seven-foot Trandoshan dual-wielding E-11 blasters, I spoke up, my puppet repeating my words in a deep, gruff, male voice that was not recognizably synthetic.

"Greetings. I have a proposition for the - "

I'd only started speaking when the Trandoshan turned around and started shooting. Rapid-fire blaster bolts from his blasters cratered into the armored chest-plate looted from the fake pirates and hastily repaired in the Doughnut's fabricators. Unlike my previous light weapon, the E-11s partially pierced the plating, cooking the flesh behind it. A single bolt any human wearer would have endured, but wouldn't have liked it. Three or four hits would send them in a Bacta tank for days. But over a dozen? It was obvious my attacker expected 'me' to come up with a terminal case of explosive incineration because he paused and waited for his target to topple. Diplomacy has been a long shot, to begin with, and now obviously rejected, I rolled my eyes and gave him a burst of the DLT-19 heavy blaster; the guy's chest promptly exploded.

Yeah, I didn't exactly feel sympathy for the Greenskins. Ratty and I had looked them up as soon as their name had turned up along with our target's; slavery, murder for hire, indiscriminate use of explosives, attacks on civilians that weren't as green as they were. As underworld gangs went, their exploits were fairly standard... which should be a terrifying thought considering the number of such criminals in the capital.

My current avatar was only mildly inconvenienced by the damage it had taken. Beneath the cheap but thick armor was a layer of biofiber, synthetic flesh made primarily out of cheaper Bacta varieties. This particular mixture had eschewed fidelity for the addition of fire-retardant, insulating, and energy-resistant substances. In short, it looked more like wax than flesh, but it was as resilient as the silvery suits firefighters back on Earth used in oil rig fires... and several times thicker. And beneath that synthetic cocoon hid an IG-86 sentinel droid, with all the latest (and illegal) combat, guard, and assassination protocols. Sometimes, it paid to be very rich and have contacts with several weapons manufacturers.

The rest of the Greenskins didn't take their leader's sudden case of blowing up well. They turned around and started shooting at us, so I let the assassin droid's advanced programming handle the actual fight. With it and its five identical buddies working in tandem as only droids tied to a central network could, with much better armor and weapons than the average criminal, and having taken up covered firing positions in the gang's rear, it was more a massacre than a real battle. Fifteen seconds into that heavy exchange of fire, the surviving criminals dropped their weapons and ran. We let them.

As the dust settled, I assumed direct control once more. It was time to deal with the actual target of our mission deep in Coruscant's underbelly.

"Truce," I announced loudly for whoever was hiding inside to hear. "Unlike the Greenskin Scum, we have no arguments with you. Instead, we have a lucrative proposition."

Silence, nearly a minute of it. And then...

"Why should I believe you?" The voice that replied was deep, rasping, and almost certainly technologically disguised, especially if our information was correct. That wasn't an issue; after all, we'd used similar methods ourselves.

"Because if we wanted you dead, six thermal detonators would have slagged this ruin. And the minor bounty on you not only has been just rescinded," here I pointed at the dead Greenskin leader "but it wouldn't be worth the damage someone of your skills could deal if we tried."

More waiting in silence. One minute... two... five... if not for the droids' broad-spectrum scanners disguised as visors showing our target's position I might be worried they were escaping. But no, they only seemed to be gathering their gear and removing mines and other traps the scanners had detected... and quite a few who hadn't. If we had not arrived, the Greenskins might have fared even worse against their single opponent.

Then a tall, athletic, but still curvy young woman walked up to the elevated entrance and looked down, pale face expressionless. While otherwise human, her skill was the color of alabaster, just like the Arkanian off-shots Father's people had engineered as muscle centuries before. Her hair was pulled back in a thick, long, crimson ponytail that fell to the small of her back, with the rest of her head shaved bald. A dark blue leotard of flexible ablative material hugged her every curve, a compromise between protection and agility that still looked damn good. At least four guns, three grenades, two obvious blades, a pack full of mines and other gadgets, and a cybernetically implanted miniaturized communicator in the left side of her shaven head that would let her get feedback from surveillance gear, control drones remotely, or set off traps manually from a distance. All in all, a very dangerous individual despite her apparent youth. Apparent, because there were files on her past jobs as body-guard, assassin, pirate, and bounty-hunter going back a decade and a half for all that she appeared to be in her early twenties.

"Interesting," Aurra Sing said as she observed the battlefield and the six disguised assassin droids. "So what is this proposition you have for me, stranger?"