"Something like that. I just don't know which ones they are paired with." I look around. "I'm pretty sure there is one near here that SHOULD bring us in the direction we are going."

"Well, you know what they say; Fortune favors the bold."

I lead the way through the ruined camp towards where I remember the transport room to be. As we go, I notice how quiet everything has become since last I was here. Before, there was of course the sounds of a n active base, but also the distant sounds of activity. Blaster fire from prisoners shooting it out with guards. Animals, both local and alien, roaming about and fighting for dominance. But now, all was quiet. The Dread Guard most have wiped out a significant portion of the prisoner population all those years ago.

Finally, we come to a stone archway in the side of a cliff, and beyond that is a carved out hall leading to a buzzing pillar of ancient design, surrounded by crackling yellow energy. "This is it. The teleporter."

I appraise the platform in front of us and whistle. "Rakatan tech was built to last, I tell ya what." Walking around it a moment, I sigh before glancing back. "See ya on the other side." And with that, I step into it.

The teleporter zaps Jerus away in the blink of an eye, and a moment later, he is hurled into a dark room. Gavity shifts from below his feet to right in front of him, and he is slammed into the metal floor. A second or two later, the machine crackles again and I flop out on top of Jerus. "Ouch! What the hell? This isn't right."

"My gut and chest agree..." Once Vette had climbed off of me, I rolled away from the immediate area and stand while looking around. "I have no clue if we're deeper in..."

"This doesn't feel like part of the prison. More like..." I stomp a few times on the metal floor. "We're on a ship."



The teleporter zaps again and I flop out onto the deck. "Ah! What...!?"



"I know. This isn't were we expected. I think we're on one of the transport shuttles we saw coming in. It doesn't feel like we've taken off yet though." I hold up a hand and whisper. "Lets keep our voices down. If I'm right, there might be bad guys nearby."

Dropping my rangefinder, I swap to it's magnetic view and look around us, but don't see anyone with a blaster. I still speak quietly though. "We seem to be in the clear at the moment. What do we do though? Take the teleporter back?"

"Lets find out where we are first." I wave for the other two to follow me as I creep towards the far end of the cargo hold, hoping to find a door control. After a minute of feeling in the dark, I find a panel and manage to get the door to slip partly open. "Not locked. Seems they weren't expecting their cargo to try and escape." Distantly, I can hear voices talking, and I hold a finger to my lips to signal silence.



"Is that everything?"



"Just about. We can bring this load up to the Resurrection soon. Hopefully this'll be our last trip and we can leave."



"What about the doctor?"



"Huh, which one? There are two of them now, remember? As far as I know, she's still inside. I'm not going in after her, if that's what your thinking."



"I just don't want to get in trouble if she gets herself killed. You know there are a lot of dangerous things down here."



"Well, like I said, there are two of them now. Maybe more. If she dies, they have spares. Now, hurry up and load that last crate. The sooner we get back to the ship, the better. This planet freaks me out."

My eyebrow raises behind my helmet. "That sounds like information we should extract from them."

“Agreed.” I push open the doors all the way and jump out, immediately grabbing the two men with the Force and pinning them to the side of the ship. “You have information we require. Tell us or these vaults will be your tomb!”



“Woah woah! Please don’t hurt us! We’re just scrappers! We were hired to excavating this area, and returning anything of interest to that ship in orbit, the Resurrection! We’re almost done here and we really just want to leave! We didn’t mean any harm! We didn’t know any of this stuff was already claimed!”

"And who hired you to do the salvage runs?"

"We never met the guy in person. We only ever spoke to 'associates' he sent. One of them was this lady doctor. An Echani woman. She and her sister have been doing most of the overseeing of this job."



"You didn't think something was amiss when your client refused to show himself to you?" I push them harder against the wall.



"Ahh! They promised a lot of credits! We didn't want to ask too many questions, just in case they decided to pull out and hire a different team! We just thought the guy was some big collector of alien tech!"

"Typical salvagers. Let 'em go, Sal, they're not worth the effort." I walk back into the room we'd come out of and pull out a tracking beacon before finding something that would open up. "There we go." Putting the beacon inside, I come back out and look the pair over. "I'll keep it simple. You forget we-Wait, what am I doing." I wave my hand before them. "We were never here and never spoke."

The pair echo me from their perspective. "You were never here and we never spoke."

I walk out and cross my arms. “I never really liked mind tricks, but if he lying if I said they weren’t effective.” I look at Jerus. “So, what’s the plan here? Let these guys fly away and track where their ship goes?”



“Personally, I’m interested to know who this doctor is they keep mentioning. If what they say is true, she’s somewhere in the deep prison.” I look around. “I imagine we aren’t far from there ourselves.”

"We can track that ship when it leaves with the cargo they're bringing it. I'm with Salazar on this one, we need to find this Doctor of theirs."

"Right. Let us begin." I step off of the shuttle and begin looking around. The ship is landed right outside one of the massive stone structures, statues of Rakata on either side of the entrance. "I'm willing to bet she's in here somewhere."

I appraise the structure in front of us. "Big mysterious and imposing building with huge, judgmental statues outside staring down at you? Screams mad doctor in here if you ask me." I head towards the entrance. "Let's get this done."

Vette and I follow Jerus into the Rakata building. It is, like most of the ruins on this planet, dark and gloomy, with extremely foreboding. As we go, I try to reach out with with the Force to sense if anyone or anything is alive further inside, but I can't sense anything. "Hmm... Not even the vague energy of droids. This place feels dead." Then, as if to prove me wrong, a faint female voice can he heard further down the hall.



"I am almost finished, Doctor." The voice is light and friendly, almost calming. "I want this iteration to be perfect. I cannot stand to see my creations wither and die so quickly."

Frowning, I hold up a hand to slow down before shimmering into invisibility. I move in the direction of the voice until I can see who it is.