Marks and Trails: Of all the Possiblities...

[Morgan Evanar]

M'haeli, Darr Sector, East Quadrant.
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A large, well hidden database nestled deep inside an Imperial garrision quietly hummed away. I didn't really do much, for the most part, but had become far more active since Cardia had gone the way of Alderraan many years before.

Another hidden database, also large but very well hidden, hummed away in what almost everyone else thought were power regulators. Two of the Technicians were actually project managers for Palpatine's special projects division, a group that acted completely independant of the rest of the Empire. They were partly responsible for the DeathStar, mostly the aquistion of the personell needed to get the project working.

One of the projects that had been sidelined, not due to lack of results, but more due to the Empire's downturn after Thrawn fell, had inadvertently produced Morgan Evanar.

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Morgan himself had just cleared the five meter wall that surrounded the installation, and hit the ground at a dead run. He wanted to spend as little time in the open as he could, despite the fact that he was currently invisible to most specturms light. Slipping behind the guard post, Morgan examined his surroundings. The garrision itself was composed of thick ferrocrete walls, the two stories of it that were above-ground, and the doors were thick alloy. The only way in would be to manage to slip in with... something.

[Zorin Hexes]

"Admiral... I assure you, the base is in top condition." A younger male looked up at Zorin. The man was obviously brought in during Thrawn's time... his youth was a clear symbol of that. Zorin, too, was a result of Thrawn's efforts to bring the Empire to the border worlds.

"Then you have nothing to concern yourself with, Captain." Admiral Hexes ran his hands back through his hair, the blonde strands falling back in a cascade. His deep blue eyes were focused upon a number of open control panels to the left-most area of the room. "What is that?"

"Repairs. We recently experienced a technical malfunction during a storm here, causing part of the security grid in Section 3C to flicker..."

[Morgan Evanar]

Most of the time, doors didn't abrupbtly open themselves, and then slam back shut.

The guard reached for his comlink. "Control, Gate C seems to be having some kind of malfunction. Confirm, over?"

"This is Control, post, we're aware of the malfunction. The techs are fixing the damage from the electrical storm yesterday. Should be cleared up in a few minutes."

"Roger Control."

Morgan waited another minute, and the door began to open again. He immediately dashed through, and it slammed itself shut just as he soundlessly slipped in.

In a most casual manner, he noiselessly worked his way through the installation. It took a little while, but he finally found a datajack in a nice quiet place, and promptly ripped the building's layout from the central computer. Morgan freed the cable from the jack, and promptly set his feet twoards the computers.

Despite the delay of working his way through that passage that was crawling with technicians who seemed to be repairing the results of a massive electrical overload, getting to the central computer was fairly uneventful.

Plugging into the central computer was also uneventful. Nothing happend when he searched it, except for
"No results found. Try new search parameters?" He could have screamed. No. It wasn't the right database. Morgan flicked through his mind, the layout, for other computers that could have done the job. None. Then they were hidden. But even hidden things draw power.

He pulled up the power status, overlaying it over the building map. It was a nice, steady loop, and everything was following the expected drain patterns, except for two power regulators, which were taking entirely too much juice.

This could mean one of two things.

A: A pair of regulators were malfuctioning to loose exactly the range of power used to keep a high-captacity database purring.

B: Was, in fact, a high-capacity database, draining the power it needed to keep purring.

Morgan promptly snuck his way into the secondary generator room, and plugged his pad into the diagnostic jack. He was in, quickly found the correct project directory and decripted it. It was huge. Scrambling he reached into his coat, and attached a high speed mass storage device to the pad.

"Hurry up..." he muttered.

Download complete.

[Morgan Evanar]

Elsewhere in the building, two "Technicians First Class" were in a state of panic. Whatever had pulled the data had done it far to fast to be remote, and blocking all communication to and from the machine had done no good.

"Local. It has to be local." One muttered

"How?" The other asked, absolutely exasperated, and waved at the screens in front of them, set to display the cameras in the room.

"I don't know, dammit!" He spat, and slammed his hand down on the alarm button. Klaxons echoed high pitched screeches throughout the installation. Stormtroopers scrambled into emergency positions, especially near all the entrances and exits.

Morgan swore, spying the white armor barricade before him. He silently walked up to the one on the far left, and ripped the blaster from his hands, slammed him against the wall, knocking him out, and took five very quick steps back. Suddenly alarmed, all of the troopers went into assault postions.

"We have contact in Section 3, but no visua..." He didn't get to finish as Morgan leved the blaster he had just grabbed and shot the squad leader square between the eyes. Blaster fire erupted around him as he dove for the floor, again invisible. Reaching inside his coat, he pulled his lightsaber free, and turned it on, dispelling his shroud. Morgan lept forward, catching two troops squarely off guard. His feet touched the ground and his saber touched white armor, cutting through two sets like a barracuda through a small fish. The two others nearest to the Knight fell next, meeting a similar fate. Three others pressed themselves against the metal wall, shooting. Morgan neatly deflected two blasts back into the shooters, but the third scored his shoulder. Roaring like a wounded lion, he lept forward and pulled the rifle from the unfortunate stormtroopers hands dropped it to the floor, and suddenly ducked and dove as the other two had finally recovered from the bodies being thrown out of the way. Their blasts scored their comrade's legs. Evanar simply grabbed the man around his neck as he fell, and flung him square into his fellows. Turning, he neatly dispached the remaing ones with the blaster he just dropped.

Wasting no time, Morgan plunged the greenish energy blade into the door, cutting himself a way out. Unfortunately, about fifteen seconds later, blasts of red energy began to dissapate against the nearby floor and walls. He turned, and while still cutting through the door with one hand, began to return fire, sending the troopers diving for cover. It was becoming obvious that slicing the door clean wasn't really an option, so he settled for weaking the structure. After another ten seconds, he took a step back, turned off his saber, and kicked a decent hole out of the door, and dove through. Morgan turned the landing into a handplant, flipping himself to his feet just as an AT-ST came around the corner. The AT-ST gunner scratched his beard when the target he had in his scopes dissapeared completely.

[Morgan Evanar]

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Morgan slowly woke, and pulled himself to a sitting position.

He felt like absolute shi.t, his arm felt like a pin cussion, and the metal operating table he was on was not helping. Morgan pulled his feet around, and stood, feeling very woozy. Must be the fuzz from the general antistetic.

"Doctor? Doctor Oppenhiemer?"

He looked around a bit, seeing no sign of the highly eccentric Imperial biologist/biochemist/xenobiologist, who had headed the team responsible for the program that had created Morgan's mother through genetic manipulation.

The tall Force user walked down the hall toward Oppenhiemer's office, taking each step with unusual caution. His stomach churned with each step, nearly bringing bile up. About half way, Morgan felt something dripping from his nose. He lifted his finger, touching the area just below, and stared at the red liquid on his finger tip.

Not good.

He continued down the hall, keying the code the Doctor had provided with him with into the pad. The door hissed its way open, and Morgan walked to the man laying down on his desk.

"Doctor?"

He remained still, long gray hair covering the keyboard. Evanar sniffed, drawing blood into his throat, and coughed, spewing it on the floor next to the desk.

"Frell!"

Tenatively, he placed his hand on the ancient man's neck. Dead. And judging from the temperature of the mans skin, for about an hour. Morgan lifted his head, seeing the wide open eyes and the smiling face. Gently, he replaced the body to its original position and closed his eyes.

He coughed again, leaving red flecks on the floor. Not good at all.

Morgan made his way free of the installation, and into the White Rhino Tea.

"You are looking poor, Morgan."

"Thanks CAD. I always apreciate the observ..." Morgan went into a severe coughing fit, leaving his hand bloody.



"Are you okay?" CAD asked as he finished making his way to the Tea's pilot seat.

He weezed in response, "Do I look like...", his lungs grasping for air, and another coughing fit began, and more blood began to gather on his hand. Morgan fell from his seat, coughing continuiously into unconciousness.

After thirty minutes of uninterupted coughing and a lack of response of any sort from Morgan, CAD grew concerned, especially with the ever increasing pool of blood near the one person who had ever helped him.


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Continued here:

pub56.ezboard.com/fgjofrm...1086.topic (http://pub56.ezboard.com/fgjofrm2.showMessage?topicID=1086.topic)

[Zorin Hexes]

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"Now tell me, Captain, the base is in top condition, yes?" The Imperial Vice-Admiral circled around the young man, watching him carefully. "And I had your assurance that the security breach would be taken care of. I now see that it is not merely a technical malfunction responsible for yesterday's disaster."

The young man took a sharp breath and kept his hands to his side, the cuffs of his uniform touching to the hem of his kneetly pressed pants. "Yes, sir."

"I now see that there was in error in judgement on my part." The Admiral reached to his blaster, pulling it loose and holding it to the Captain's chest. "But that can be corrected." A blast echoed through the reaches of the control center as all present stopped to cast their eyes towards the ground. "You all know the chain of succession. Follow it." The Admiral gritted his teeth and holstered his blaster, then walked hastily out of the room, anger boiling in his viens.
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