Chapter 8
Kitten and Alpha piloted the interceptor in towards the planet while Kitten scanned for life signs and tech. It was a pretty world, but seemed barren. She was picking up a couple of crashed ships and some sort of small facility.
They decided to visit the facility first, since it was giving off a power reading.
"So, Alpha, now that we are here do you have any idea why this planet has interested you so? At first glance it certainly doesn't seem to be worth it."
"No, I don't, and I find that very vexing. I have run diagnostics numerous times and can find no errors however."
"We'll see what happens when we land."
"Everybody alright back there?" She called.
Her medic, Terla, and her two troopers, Rocker and Jazzy sang out they were fine.
"Were heading to some kind of structure on the surface. We are reading power at the location so hopefully we just drop in and say hello."
The interceptor came swooping in above the facility. They did a basic scan and found nothing worrying so they set the ship down.
Kitten was in a bit of a hurry so she went ahead and let down the rear ramp. She jumped out of her chair and the cockpit door opened so she could head back
through the crew area and towards the open ramp.
Just as she reached it she realized that there were three figures running at her from inside the facility wildly gesturing with their arms.
"No! Close the hatch! Contamination!"
"Aww Crap!" Kitten said to herself.
Alpha hit the emergency close on the hatch door, since she was closest. As the hatch began to close Kitten collapsed. Alpha looked and saw the other three were also unconscious.
Since there was no longer a reason to try and seal the ship she re-lowered the ramp and allowed the new people to board.
"I am Alpha, what can you tell me about this contamination?"
"Are you a droid?" Gavin asked her. "I have never seen anything like you."
As he pulled off his helmet she stared right back, "I have never seen anything like you either."
"Oops, I forgot about that, this is the contamination. Somehow the man who previously worked here let loose some sort of airborne contaminant that did this to us."
"I am a droid, consider me a prototype of an advanced self aware unit. I will contact our home base and let them know what has occurred."
"Please see if you can post some sort of warning as well. We really don't want a whole lot of other people to be infected."
"Will do. In the meantime please assist me in rendering what aid we can to the crew."
As they got the women up they placed them in the med bay. The twi'lek was already green, so it was a bit hard to track the progress of her change. Her lekku were visibly smaller than usual however.
The other woman was an absolute stunner in Gavin's opinion. She had onyx skin and red hair and was well put together, to say the least. Her skin tight ship suit covered all but her hands and up to her neck. He scanned the exposed skin but saw no sign that she had begun changing colors or was undergoing any body changes.
He was considering how to go about exposing more skin without appearing to be a lech when he heard Tinker behind him tending to one of the two men.
"Gavin! We have a serious issue here!"
"What is it?" As he turned to check his brothers patient.
The problem was obvious, somehow the clone was aged way more than he should have been.
"Is it a side effect on him? Did that happen to me?" Tinker asked.
"I was out during your change too Brother, I have no idea."
Alpha was standing right next to them by now.
"What is the problem?" she asked.
"Look at how old he is, something must be aging him!" Tinker accused.
"No, his appearance is consistent with the way he has always appeared."
"But I thought we only aged twice as fast as normal?"
"We? You are a clone?"
"Yes, I was spirited away by my brother here before the war ever started."
"The aging was at approximately twice normal once adulthood was reached but this group of clones found a cure for that years ago."
"Wait, what? How old are these clones?"
"I believe the earlier batches would be in their early to mid forties by now."
"What the hell! What year is it?"
"11ABY." The droid responded.
"What is that in galactic standard?" Gavin asked.
"That is galactic standard."
"By pre-existing calenders the current year would be 46 years after the resynchronization."
"We lost 31 years!" Both men were reeling from this latest revelation.
"Omni! It has to have been Omni!" Gavin cursed.
"Wait! Omni?, how did you meet Omni?"
Gavin shared the tale of their mysterious arrival on the planet and the crazy message in the hull of their shuttle. Alpha realized it had to have been Omni who had somehow influenced her to come here.
Altogether it was quite the puzzle, and they all thought on it while they tended the four fallen biologicals. The three crewmembers were moving more or less as expected through the change but somehow the Captain, no other than the Kitten that had been referenced in the message, appeared unchanged at all.
Alpha wasn't surprised and informed the Mando that this was actually Kitten's third exposure to a virus that changed the host. She shared that the eldrie seemed immune to further tampering.
Alpha also contacted Nathea and got word to them about what had happened. Miley got together a portable lab and some droid assistants and boarded Darby's yacht for a ride out. She figured she was most likely safe from the virus but didn't know who else would be.
Darby and his crew arrived just about 10 hours after the call went out. He brought the yacht down near the interceptor and actually deposited the lab facility he brought right next to the portable one they had been working in.
By the time they arrived Kitten was already fully recovered. They theorized, and it was later proven, that it was her bodies defenses that had caused her to pass out when the virus attacked her. Once her system had recovered control she woke up.
She had already had a talk with Gavin about the info he had shared with Alpha. They agreed to go to the crash site when time permitted so she could see if there was any more to the message that would reveal itself.
She was just as boggled by the time travel as the two men were. None of them had any reference for how to handle the revelation. For now the men just used the ships database to update themselves on what they missed.
Inside the newly landed lab Miley kept herself isolated from the planets atmosphere. She couldn't afford to spend hours unconscious at the moment. She grabbed some air samples and began looking for the problem.
Isolating what was causing the mutations was rather easy. Understanding it, and thereafter developing a counter for it, could prove to be considerably harder.
It seemed the virus in question didn't have a set DNA strand, instead it basically contained a pile of pieces of strands. It looked to basically be a matter of random chance what made it in. This made a targeted attack against the virus itself a difficult proposition. Looking for inspiration she requested samples from the three victims and from the animals that had apparently been healed.
Gavin and the others happily had samples taken and sent to the Doc, they certainly hoped she could do something about this catastrophe.
Reading up on the history they had missed had certainly been revealing. Having the jedi labeled as traitors and wiped out by their own troops was quite the blow. The knowledge of the control chips somewhat explained what had caused Tinkers creators to want him terminated as well. Obviously the chip had somehow malfunctioned in him.
The fate of Mandalore was even more crushing. They were encouraged by the fact that their people were apparently working on resettling the world but the massive loss of life... it was maddening.
Gavin had always thought better while moving. As he pondered all this new information he was practicing Teras Kasi.
It was one of the rarest martial arts his buir had arranged to teach him and experts had been rare and hard to find. It had supposedly been developed to allow practitioners to deal one on one with force users, although Gavin questioned how effective he could be in such a fight.
Gavins teacher had been a wizened little man who had taken great pleasure in throwing around the youth, twisting his body into various shapes and knots in the process.
He had attempted to locate the man again to train Tinker when the time had come but the fellow had disappeared completely. Gavin had done his best to pass the art down to his brother, and had taught him every kata he knew.
What Gavin was doing now, as he ran over and over the movements, was training his new body. He had obviously noticed that he now had massive strength, but some of that had come with a price in flexibility. His muscles weren't naturally inclined to the way he was forcing himself to move but as he continued he could feel the motions becoming more and more natural.
That was probably the result of the rate at which they healed. The three had done some experiments and found they healed in a matter of minutes what could take hours or possibly even days before. It was an incredible advantage but came with the drawback of needing to eat several times as much food as before. They also hadn't had much luck substituting other foods for meat. It seemed their new species was decidedly carnivorous.
Kitten stood in the shadow of the building watching Gavin do his drills. The huge green man was in just a pair of shorts, having removed his armor to do some more work on properly sizing it.
She certainly had a good idea why that meddling Omni had saved the brothers and left the message. The spark she felt with Tony had been replaced with a bonfire for this man. The only things holding her back were her desire to get to know him first and her worry over his condition.
Gavin was exaggerating his movements. He had sensed his observer as soon as she stepped out of the building. His senses were heightened, he felt like he had a whole new level of awareness.
He didn't know why she was watching him but he certainly knew he enjoyed her being there. Something about the dark woman had touched him like no other ever had. He was waiting to be cured or to find out he couldn't before he made up his mind whether to pursue a relationship or not. If he remained a monster he didn't know if it would be fair to subject her to that.
Tinker and Kazumi were taking a walk around the area. They still hadn't acknowledged their feelings for each other but were slowly moving forward with their relationship anyway. At every step Tinker ensured that she knew he was taking his cues from her.
Their comms all activated.
"I need you all at the lab, we have a development."