HK was walking like he owned the place, and the moment we left the malfunctioning cooling station behind and slipped deeper into the facility, his whole posture had changed a little, and if I didn't know he was a droid... I would say he was very much enjoying being the group's leader. Well... Probably I was right on the money with that guess anyway.
It only took about two minutes of trekking when the corridor we walked through narrowed, and the stone, which had been laid bare before, began to give way to layered durasteel ribs bolted directly into the rock more and more, with missing platings. I could see that within the rock, power conduits ran along the walls, being exposed, their light too weak to properly illuminate the space, which helped us remain undetected. What was more noticeable, though, was that every few meters, ancient Sith glyphs were carved into the metal, for whatever reason. Maybe they had a function once, or were simply signs to tell what was what, but whatever their role was once, they just made the Dark Side press on us pretty hard through them in here.
Holding it at bay with our own powers, we passed into the first warehouse without realizing it was one at first. I was simply happy that no Sith were present, because I was sure that with how the Dark Side felt in here, if they were still present, they would have felt our presence before we even got near the facility.
While thinking about it, the whole room simply opened up before us. At the same time, HK kept leading us forward, ignoring how the ceiling kept rising until it vanished into the darkness, the floor expanding into a vast, uneven space filled with debris, slowing us down considerably. Wherever I looked, broken crates were lying scattered in dozens of collapsed rows, some utterly split open, others fused shut by most likely some kind of old heat damage. Explosion? Maybe... Watching it, how the metal shelving units leaned at unstable angles, warped and twisted, it looked more and more plausible that something had exploded in the middle of this warehouse, something that was way more powerful than just a thermal detonator.
Just then, my boot struck something hollow, making me curse for causing such a noise.
[Annoyed Statement: Don't screw our stealth up, meatbag Kael.]
"Sorry..." I grunted as I looked down on what it was... and... It was a helmet.
It was not a droid casing, but looked like something a soldier would wear. The design was archaic, its visor cracked clean through the center, the metal rim melted inward. I crouched down, brushing away the centuries of dust on the faded, orange and black piece, and felt a flicker in the Force coming through it. It was faint, brittle like the helmet itself, but it was an echo of a death scream that was trapped here by the Dark Side.
There were more after I found the first... Now I could sense and see them... Dozens of skeletons were slumped against crates and the walls, their forms sprawled across the floor where they had fallen, some still clutching weapons, ancient blasters, some even had vibroblades, and as I spread out my Force-powers, I noticed a shattered lightsaber hilt snapped clean in half. This had to be troops led by a Jedi, who assaulted this facility... So there were not only the three I had seen in my vision!
"They died fighting," Jalo murmured, stepping beside me, also noticing the corpses. "Look at the patterns... They were in defensive formations… but whatever they were fighting had gone out with a bang."
"If it were a droid," Vila moved past us, her lekku twitching as she nudged a rusted droid carcass with her boot, "Then we have to take into consideration that they can self-destruct..."
"Sith bastards," Iowi said, groaning.
[Statement: Keep moving, meatbags. We are not here to catalogue the dead.]
"For once, you are right." Vila shrugged, glancing at me with a nod as we kept moving, following him.
The warehouse extended deeper, branching into sub-sections filled with more wreckage, including rows of droids torn apart by lightsaber strikes, blast scorched, their shape melted into the walls, and impact craters where heavy weapons had been deployed. Some droids had been smashed so thoroughly that it was impossible to tell what model they once were, but they were not like the ones we fought.
"So they have different variants..." Jalo muttered, gulping once.
"These look weaker," Iowi added, "I see no glyphs on them, so... maybe they were fodder?"
"Probably," I agreed, "I bet that making the lightsaber-wielding ones is more expensive, and they had to prototype them a lot, so it is not surprising to manufacture others who would be used as expandable troops."
HK paused at the edge of the chamber while we were talking.
[Statement: This facility has been assaulted from three sides, according to my scans. Addendum: The three major incursions have the probability of Jedi involvement: ninety-four percent. We must go in the direction from which they did not attack this part of the facility.]
"True," I nodded, "Let's find the part that was the least damaged, because that's where the droids are currently trying to reconstruct themselves," I whispered, stepping up to HK.
[Clarification: I am extrapolating based on structural damage, droid generation overlap, and organic casualty decomposition. I think I know the route to take and which conduits to follow. This way.]
We didn't linger, and when HK moved again, he was leading us through a side hatch partially buried beneath stone that we had to move with the Force first. The hatch was still tight, even when he forced it open, but luckily, no alarms had gone off after we had pried it wholly open. Taking the route, it became way more narrow for us... Sometimes, we even had to crouch-walk as we were taking maintenance corridors meant for droids, not for people. The pipes that were running overhead, some of them were cracked and leaking steam, making it a pain to get through... Quite literally. Damn you, HK, is it really this way?! But I guess he was right, because the air was warmer here, the pipes were running hotter, meaning we were getting to the active part of the facility.
We slowly passed by half a dozen repair alcoves embedded into the walls, most of them inactive. Still, some contained deactivated, very much ancient droids, probably precursors to what an astromech was, their frames suspended by magnetic clamps, their tools frozen, hanging out from their guts, telling us they were for sure beyond saving or reactivation. They were probably fried... which was good. I don't need a Sith-made mechanic; it's enough to handle HK.
"Someone came this way," Iowi whispered, and I soon understood why, because one station held a droid whose torso had been split open, burn marks covering it, telling me that it was caused by a lightsaber, slashing at it, its trajectory angled upward.
"They fought their way through here, too," Vila said quietly. "Or someone was having the same idea, coming to sabotage them."
"Yeah," I agreed. "They tried to end it for sure."
But apparently... they still failed. In the end, HK stopped at an intersection where three corridors branched outward.
[Assessment: Central assembly hub is active, I can pick up its noise. The probability of detection increases with our proximity. Recommendation: Maintain absolute silence, minimize meatbag fluctuations.]
He didn't wait for confirmation and began moving, completely in the zone, acting as a commando droid on a mission. The route we ended up on then started ascending gradually, taking ramps that replaced the corridors and spiraling upward around a massive central shaft. I could feel them too by then, the vibrations under our boots, caused by machines working, hammering, doing, well, whatever machines were doing in a Sith manufacturing plant... Which could only be bad. Finally, HK raised one hand, and we stopped, following his lead, watching as he moved forward alone, peering around the final bend. After a moment, he gestured sharply, signaling us to approach but to do it very, very quietly.
What we had before us, stretching into the dark, was a long catwalk, most of whose railing was long gone, looking precarious. It was narrow, barely reinforced, and as we stepped onto it, I felt my breath catch, not because it was about to crumble and cause us to fall down... but from what I saw below us.
There it was... the working assembly line.
It took up the entire cavern floor like a tiny city, with its roads all but conveyor belts, automated arms and repair cradles picking and choosing pieces as they rolled along. Wherever we looked, there were sparks flaring intermittently as the automated tools welded the pieces together, cut apart droid torsos that were thrown onto them, and reinforced damaged components on salvagable variants. I saw heavy lifters crawl along tracks embedded in the stone, hauling scrapped droid parts toward central processing units.
Well... These variants, the ones that they were rebuilding, were finally familiar-looking, DR-0N units, all of them. The same, tall, angular frames their armor plates scarred and mismatched as they were being worked on, some replaced with crude patches of salvaged pieces from their destroyed brethren, waiting for a proper refit. Luckily, most of them were dormant, hanging in their repair frames, their limbs detached, or their computer cores exposed as other machines worked tirelessly to rebuild them.
"Well... Fuck..." Vila whispered, barely audible, and I couldn't help but nod.
"There..." Iowi pointed it out, and I began counting... Three... Five... Eight... Ten... Twelve.
Twelve active units patrolled the perimeter of the hub, as their optics glowed faintly as they scanned the area, occasionally pausing as if listening to something, but luckily, they never looked up. Phew... a design flaw, thank you very much!
"This is the main hub, for sure," Jalo said as he sucked in a breath. "No doubt. Repair, reactivation, redistribution, all is coming from here, and luckily, they're not producing new units and only restoring what they can. Still, we must stop it before they build up a small army."
"They are close to it," I said after I had counted again, now including those that were not yet active but being rebuilt, "There are around fifty of them in total."
"They're harvesting the facility itself," Iowi murmured to himself, pointing to an arriving cart filled with junk, pieces of wall coverings, and whatever they collected. "They are stripping old sections bare to melt down for raw resources and rebuild the rest."
[Confirmation: Correct. Addendum: Resource efficiency indicates long-term operational planning.]
"Jalo," Vila's smile was thin as she scanned the room below us, "So if we break this…"
"They can't wake the others," He nodded, "And with how much disrepair we had seen, with them actively causing more structural damage to the whole base while gathering alloys," he continued, getting excited, "it means if we set off a chain reaction from here, it will bring down everything."
The catwalk trembled as something massive moved below while he was explaining. It was a crane repositioning a damaged DR-0N unit, lowering it into a repair cradle where the automated tools immediately descended, cutting and welding with terrifying speed, getting very close to completing another one and raising the active variant numbers to thirteen.
[Assessment: Central control nodes detected. Secondary guardians present but inactive... Warning: Engagement will trigger facility-wide response, and there is a high chance that the so-far unrepaired variants will also power on.]
"We need to position ourselves in a way to have a great shot at them. We must mow down their numbers, preventing them from overwhelming us and boxing us in." I said, tightening my grip on my pistols.
"Sounds good," Iowi whispered, nodding at me, "Let us see if we can spread out up here and take aim... We will rain molten slugs down on them, and after that, we blow this place!"