Chapter 1
The young man lay on the lab table, shivering and terrified. He was obviously malnourished and was covered in old wounds and burn scars. A sloppily dressed old man in a lab coat lectured into a holo-camera floating in the air in front of him.
“Using the research pioneered by the kaminoans for the Fett clones coupled with the strand-casting techniques and my own personal research I have created a much more cost-effective option than clone troops.”
“This boy,” He gestured down at the table, “was picked up from the outer rim. A scavenger and a thief, he served no purpose in imperial society. Further he is clearly non-human,” pointing at the small horns on the boys head.
“Observe.” He took a large needle full of swirling fluid and injected all the fluid slowly into the boys arm. After a few seconds he removed the empty syringe and stepped back from the table as the boy began to thrash and change.
“The fluid in the needle,” the doctor continued, unbothered by the moaning and thrashing of the boy, “is primarily a nutrient soup of my own design that aids in providing the raw material for the remainder of the fluid, which consists of what I call a gene editor.”
As the changes began to slow in the body on the table the Doctor addressed the camera again. “As you can see,” he calmly stated, “The nutrients are used up quickly and the process slows, but, with every dose the process kicks back up to it’s accelerated pace. Using this technique the changes can be performed in less than an hour on a healthy host.”
As he spoke, his assistant, a beat up medical droid, stepped forward and injected several more needles worth of the soup into the now man sized figure. After a long period of thrashing and screaming and the seventh dose being given the changes began to slow and eventually seemed to stop.
What lay on the table now was a stocky, tall, silver skinned man with almond eyes and black hair.
“There you have it,” He smiled into the camera, “ an aesthetically pleasing yet clearly non-human individual of a visually distinctive, complete unknown race. He has no memory since the DNA of his brain has been completely re-written and does not resemble his original appearance in any way. In short, no one will ever connect this individual to the boy he once was.”
“In a related breakthrough my associates,” and he held up an oddly shape metal device, “have been conducting research on the control chips placed in the Fett clones and have managed similar upgrades. This latest version provides control via several code phrases but also contains the equivalent of a full basic military training. Not only will our subject here be almost instantly physically ready for the field he will also be trained in the approximately 72 hours it takes for his brain to store the relevant information off the chip.”
Behind his back his “assistant” could not resist a feeling of satisfaction, that particular chip contained quite a bit more than basic soldiers training.
Once the doctor ended his holo-recording he packaged it to send off to Imperial remnant sector headquarters and then moved back over to his station to begin working on another batch of his serum.
“We are out of DNA again A4! How many times do I need to instruct you to keep the supplies stocked! I have to do everything myself!”
He stomped across the room and entered a code into a wall panel, a segment of the wall slid back and revealed a tiny, beautiful woman in a cylindrical tube. The doctor inserted a probe through a tiny doorway he opened in the side of the tube and extracted another DNA sample.
Behind him a quicksilver tentacle retracted from the back of his neck. The cybernetic may have to allow this scum to live until he completed gathering the info he needed but he would be damned before he allowed his friend to come to harm… again.
Inside the brain of the now grown man on the table the metal “chip” liquified and spread throughout the brain, restoring the memories that had been lost along with adding the needed training, and a whole lot more.
Omni found himself staggered. Budding early was always draining and he had been forced to hold a lot in other him’s memory until the transfer was complete. He needed to rest. He looked around the lab and saw the Doctor over at his station working on his next batch of that horrible serum.
Even in the galaxy he and Kitten came from Omni was a unique being, he was both a construct and a living being and was capable of interfacing with both organic minds and computer systems at a basic level. He had been discovered and delivered to Kittens creator/father many many years before.
Right now he needed to digest some metal and rest to restore his energy before he could start the next phase of his plan. Other him would finish integrating with Sparrow’s mind and at the same time complete the process of separating from his. They would maintain a link as long as they were in the same system but they would no longer share thoughts.
Sparrow woke up back in his cage. He could feel that Omni had done as he had promised and restored his memory as well as giving him as much information to work with as he could.
“Not Omni any more.” A voice in his head said drily.
“Who are you then?”
“Omni budded, created new being for interface with low IQ human thing. New name not created yet.”
“Hey! Low IQ!”
He sensed the creatures amusement. “Are you messing with me right now?”
“Bored, new, need experiences and data.”
“Something tells me we will get plenty of both before we get out of here. Any word from Omni?”
“Omni must rest, budding is hard.”
“Resting sounds good, going through a complete metamorphosis is exhausting.”
“I know what you mean.” Said the being.
Omni came back online a few hours later. He wouldn’t tell Sparrow, but he secretly found beskar to be delicious.
He checked the status of the ship and found that the scientists were still performing non-invasive studies. He would have to intervene before they began disassembly, but he would prefer to have developed a full plan before he acted.
They needed to make a clean getaway, destroy any knowledge or actual tech left behind, and, preferably kill the Doctor. Even without the DNA from Kitten, which was infinitely more advanced than any he was likely to get ahold of here the man was dangerous beyond reason. If his editor got out into the population it would literally destroy galactic civilization.
Omni had been sabotaging his serums where possible and corrupting all the data stored on the base, but he feared it wouldn’t be enough, as long as the doctor lived the risk was too great.
After reviewing the data and running some projections Omni decided it was time to wake his friend.