38 Chapter

The hangar is large and dark, the metal floor covered with a thin layer of dust. My armored claws scrape against the metal beneath me as I look around.

The place is big enough to hold even the Clear Skies actually, even if it would be a rather tight squeeze.

I hold back for a moment, keeping my weapon ready, expecting killer robots to come out of the shadows at any moment. But the Jedi proceed further into the hangar, lighting their lightsabers and holding them up for light.

Frowning slightly I shake my head at their tactic, before slowly following them towards the open doorway at the inner end of the hangar, down a small ramp. Have these people never heard about flashlights?

I switch my suit off from low-light mode, to prevent the sabers from disrupting my vision as I move a bit faster to catch up.

The hatch is open, revealing a path leading at an incline down into the ground. It's more than big enough for me, Hell, I would even be able to turn around with a bit of work.

The Jedi stop. Yoda frowns slightly, and says "Bad feeling, I have. Jedi ruins, this are not" while shaking his head as I come up behind them.

"How can you tell?" I ask him, and he looks up at me before answering.

"The door controls, you see? Nothing like the Jedi ever used, they are. Symbols...Sith they are."

I swallow and keep my weapon trained down the pathway while putting a small transmitter on the wall next to the way out. I had Padme Honor put together a few hundred of the small things...they are basically just a magnet and a transmitter, but they can be dropped in each crossing of the path and will show the way back.

I glance down at them and shake my head. "Are you sure we should continue if that's the case? We should blow the place from orbit, its the only way to be sure."

Jedi Knight Trok, a short female human with brown, graying hair shakes her head and answers for the group. "Just because the base was Sith, it doesn't mean that it doesn't contain Jedi artifacts. Besides, this base is so deep in the rock, we would never be sure we got it all without glassing the entire site. And if Sith artifacts where found by civilians, the Sith could rise again." Yoda nods in confirmation.

"Right she is, Atreus. Increased the danger has, but four Jedi, we are. Helpless, you are not either."

I shrug my wings. "Very well. Let's get going then" and follow the Jedi deeper into the Sith base. We soon reach another chamber, this one only slightly smaller than the landing bay. The path down here is declined by only a few degrees, but it is also quite long so we are quite a bit underground.

The insides of the larger chamber is full of ancient freight containers and other materials...along with four droids. They currently look inactive. The droids are spheres, standing on a pair of legs mounted on the side of the sphere, maybe two meters tall in total. Mounted beneath the sphere is a blaster of some sort.

The Jedi stop in the doorway and I come to a halt behind them. "I can drop them from here before they activate..." I say quietly, and Yoda shakes his head before answering me.

"Need for it, might not be. Inactive, they are...If get close, keep them that way, we could. Salvaged memory cores, much we could learn from."

As the Jedi start to slowly sneak forward I do the same, but stay just a little behind. I move to the side to be in partial cover behind a shipping container, as the Jedi slowly approach the four ancient droids.

When Trok gets in touching distance to the closest one, their sensors light up and they twitch in the direction of the Jedi. Trok reacts instantly and cuts the closest sphere in half before lunging for the next one. The other three Jedi are doing the same, but shields flash up around the droids deflecting the sabers!

The Jedi instantly flip away as they notice their weapons are ineffective. They start to quickly back away while deflecting the blaster fire back at the droids, for zero effect due to the shields.

I move fully into cover and access my wrist control panel, activating my own shield. This is a severe drain on power while grounded. At full flight power, shield activated and all, my suit has enough power for just over 12 hours. No shield and no flight, and with just servos active the suit can be powered for days. Having the shield active while on the ground, however, will drain the power cell in less than three hours. The shield is a downsized version of those found on starfighters, so it forms a bubble around me. When it hits the ground it shorts out against it...meaning it's an enormous drain of power to keep it up.

The shield flashes up around me in an almost completely see-through sphere as I step out into the open and take aim. The droids detect me as a bigger threat and bigger target, so they switch their fire to me.

My shield easily takes the weight of blaster fire, and I aim mine at the closest one before pressing the firing stud.

My laser cannon snarls, and the bolt blasts the droid into scrap metal, passing through the shield meant to reflect normal blaster level fire like it wasn't even there.

Quickly shifting my aim, I take the other two ones down as well before immediately lowering my shield again so it doesn't waste power.

I shake my head and walk up to the Jedi. "Master Yoda, may I suggest just shooting them in the future?" I ask, and he looks at me for a second before chuckling.

"Right, you might be Atreus. Come. Continue, we should."

The Jedi all nod and start to follow him deeper into the base, as I drop another radio marker on the wreck of a droid before following them deeper into the dark.