Coral on the Brain

Ree gets back to investigating the ARC trooper they captured during the Festival.

The technicians who've been interrogating and studying him say that he seems to be a droid. They don't know where he came from or who was running him. It was set to wipe its instructions if it was captured, and is extraordinarily well-programmed. Ree asks Oola to take a look, but she's unable to discover much more. The droid's construction is a very strange mix of mechanical and organic. In fact, she tells Ree, it strikes her as "Dalt's sort of weird." She's right; Dalt finds it intriguing, and agrees to look into it further.

While he works on that, the crew heads back out to Eidolon Base with a New Republic team, but when they get there, they find the whole place wrecked. There were 2000 inhabitants: they're all dead. Lightsabers and toxic gas killed them. Oola's able to retrieve some more information from their computer, and they gather some personal effects and diaries to get an idea of what happened, but their best first guess seems to be the right one. Thrawn sent someone out to do 'clean-up.'

Dalt doesn't even wait for them to reach Coruscant, calling them in transit on the way back to tell them that it's the weirdest android ever. "It's insane technology," he tells them, and he means it quite literally. This thing is not a cyborg; it's a person who was made into a robot. An organic lifeform modified to work with technology. "A brain scan might work better on it than a computer scan," he says. He theorizes that it was programmed to watch them extensively, and it got so bored that it made a game of the task in its own mind. Hence the games with Ree and so on. He has more to tell them when they arrive, but he doesn't think he should share it over a commlink. Something about his descriptions leaves Kedrihm'Val feeling uneasy. Ree doesn't notice; she's feeling too sick over all the death they've encountered recently. Z and Onna are concerned about her.

They drop in on Dalt as soon as they get back. "Whoever did this didn't have a firm grip on science," he tells them, showing them the...remains. Its organs are carved with sigils. A piece of coral is embedded in its brain. Kedrihm'Val recognizes it all immediately as Abindosani.

The strange being has Dalt wondering what happens to Abindosani when they die, and just how they're connected to that coral. The tainted coral begins influencing Abindosani who stay near it for too long, Kedrihm tells him, having felt such an effect himself. How far that twisting could go, he doesn't know and isn't keen to find out. But he remembers that Dalt wasn't the only Force user interested in such subjects; Maul experimented extensively on Kedrihm's people too. Hunting through all the artifacts and documents they retrieved from the underwater base that made its way to Dathomir, he finds Maul's lab records from those experiments.

Maul tortured Abindosani Force users before killing them. At first, he wanted to see if their spirits would be drawn back to the reefs when they died. Then, figuring that since torturing good people could just as easily bring out their best qualities--courage, hope--as their worst ones, Maul posited using that to herd and concentrate whatever taint lurked in the reefs. He theorized that a Dark Sider native to the planet would grow more powerful as the reefs grow darker, and that by carrying a piece of coral, an Abindosani Force user could remain linked to his planet no matter where he went.

He looked for Abindosani Dark Siders to help him with his project. There are some, as Kedrihm'Val explains to the others, but most of them are simply hostile and anti-social, which was no use to Maul. He wanted someone who delved into the Dark Side because they were awful, not because they couldn't control themselves. He found only one promising candidate: Tazorin'Ken, a man with an unhealthy fascination with technology.

Kedrihm'Val knows the name, but it's hard for him to believe. The figure of Tazorin'Ken is almost legendary. He lived over a hundred years ago; parents use tales of him to frighten their children into behaving. Of course, Kedrihm'Val has seen stranger things, at this point, and on the other hand, it could simply be a different person using the same name. In any case, Tazorin'Ken agreed to work with Maul, performing experiments like this...bio-droid on Imperial soldiers. On the tapes, Maul muses that he never understood why the Abindosani were so anti-tech. Tazorin'Ken seems to have taken the idea of breaking that taboo and run with it; he sees technology as being more perfect than nature. The cyborg fishmen the crew ran into on Abindosan before were Tazorin's. Maul simply used the tools he found at hand, though he thought he could achieve better results, given more time, and found Tazorin's work rather unaesthetic, but promising.

This casts an even grimmer light on the damage to Abindosan, and makes healing Kedrihm'Val's planet a priority. Kedrihm'Val gets Dalt and Cilghal together to see if they can come up with any ideas. Dalt has several, but they're all in conceptual stages at the moment. Still, they're pretty certain this can be done without destroying whatever personality or mind is at work in the coral.

Before leaving for Abindosan, Kedrihm stops to talk to Zan, who helped heal the Vodne before. He says that Force Light does help, but the taint is more like a disease. He tells Ree that the Council will send someone to keep an eye on Kessel and hunt up what they can learn about that poison that killed Zay. Then he asks Kedrihm'Val what he expects to find on Abindosan. "Hopefully nothing," Kedrihm tells him. "I expect to find a man pretending to be a bogeyman who has drafted a few Dark Siders to his ends. I fear I'll find a bogeyman who has cyborged himself and organized people toward his goals using knowledge Darth Maul gave him."


Dalt comes along for this trip. He brings the coral-scanner he created in CorpSec so they can search for a heap of coral that isn't in the oceans where it belongs. SARR recommends not wandering blithely into a place that someone might have held for hundreds of years. Kedrihm agrees. He plans to talk to people first and see if word of mouth can give them any idea of what to expect.

Ree talks to people too. They may be primitive, but there's a limit to their superstitions. Tazarin'Ken is a child's story, but they're willing enough to tell her the stories. Kedrihm'Val explains to the elders that it may be someone using his name, which they can believe more readily and are somewhat concerned about.

Oola detects a concentration of coral about four days into the forests out of the remnants of the Imperial base. She also picks up three lifeforms and an odd electrical signal coming from that location. There's a village about two days out in that direction. They leave SARR and INON with the ship while they scope things out from the village.

When they camp the first night, Kedrihm'Val gets a strange staticky feeling in his head. Ree and Lydia sense it too, though not as keenly. It's almost like telepathic feedback. Ree tries to get a clearer sense of it, but she can only tell that it leads toward the ocean. When she suggests that Kedrihm'Val try it, he passes out as he successfully taps into the signal.

"It's a computer," declares Dalt after listening for a bit. "They're hacking the planet like a computer." Lydia is able to wake Kedrihm, who tells them the information is being drained from the reef. It's heading toward dawn by that point, so they decide to pack up and head toward the village. Kedrihm'Val notices that none of the animals that should be out and about at night are anywhere to be seen or heard.

They reach the village at dawn. Everyone there is unconscious, locked into the signal. It's being sent through them like a radar dish. There are tracks all around, all belonging to the same person over several days. Whoever they are, they were moving faster than a normal human, and with a limp, as Tazarin'Ken was said to have. He apparently comes down sometimes to check on people, especially the more Force-sensitive ones, as though he were fine-tuning a remote receptor.

Dalt asks Kedrihm'Val what information is being taken from the reefs. Kedrihm tries again to tap into the signal, more delicately this time, and finds himself muttering aloud in the Architect language. Dalt says it's "science stuff," then goes on a bit about sentient Architect reefs and Kedrihm'Val's people as coral-droids, sentient feelers evolved and sent out by the reefs to go out and pick up experiences and new information. Kedrihm'Val asks if it's the same with the Mon Calamari. Dalt says perhaps, and it could be a similar thing with Ithor as well, maybe even Dathomir or Kessel. But what kedrihm'Val got out of that data stream wasn't the core information; Dalt thinks it sounded more like a firewall. He might still be trying to break in.

That night--the signal obviously travels better at night--Kedrihm accidentally taps into the signal again, better this time. Tazarin'Ken is obviously reading the reef's mind. Enormous amounts of information are being transmitted.

The next day, they head up toward what seems to be the man's installation. Four hours out from it, Kedrihm'Val spots a dart trap. Z disables it, then has Dalt take a look. The thorn is wired with tiny thrusters as a heat-seeker. Meanwhile, checking her sensors, Oola sees signs of a broadcasting signal. He must be transmitting the information he gets from the reefs somewhere else. Off-planet. It's heading out toward the Outer Rim. Dalt says there's something else bad going on here; "Something...unappealing."

Kedrihm'Val and Z dismantle a pit trap and then a 'shoot an angry animal at someone's face' trap. It looks like a sort of cyberized badger. As they get closer to the installation, Kedrihm snags some hair the man left on his trail so they can check it later. Z climbs a tree for a better look, and spots a big satellite dish, a couple of huts, and large cables running between them. A n old-looking man wearing skins and extensive cybernetic adaptations is puttering about with two patched-together destroyer droids in tow and a new-model assassin droid. Either the assassin droid or the old man is giving orders.

They contact SARR to have him try to track the signal before they blow up the dish. SARR doesn't find any dish registering on the ship's sensors, but the signal is easy to track outside the atmosphere. He says he can reverse the signal and overload the dish.

The crew skulks closer to the installation. Kedrihm warns them to keep an eye out for modified plants, and sure enough, they're all over the place. Z suggests taking an ion blaster to the whole thing, but Ree wants to bring the old man out. The plan: cut the cables leading to the dish, use the Force to float two grenades over to the destroyer droids so they get inside their shields, and take on the man and the assassin droid themselves. But upon reconning the place a bit more, they find that the cables lead into two people who are hooked into the system somehow. Cutting those cables might kill them. After Kedrihm'Val reminds Oola of her little droids, she sends them to investigate the people. One is apparently a relay; the other is a power source, drawing power out of the reef.

Z arranges blazing electronic death, daisy-chaining a series of ion grenades together. He fires his rocket pack to fly right into the installation, Kedrihm'Val and Ree leaping in behind him. The assassin droid turns on a double-bladed lightsaber and attacks Ree, who cuts it in half. Tazarin'Ken makes a run for the forest, but Z brings him down first, ramming him into the ground. Knowing Z's about to get lightning-bolted by an angry Dark Sider, he chases after, kicking the guy in the head.

Instead, Tazarin lets out some weird howl, summoning a bearlike animal that's been modified to about twice its normal size and had two extra arms cybernetically attached. It's 22 feet high! Ree calls helpfully, "It's not as big as the Krayt Dragon!" Kedrihm'Val retorts, "I can't reach its sinuses." Oola hits the bear-thing with a knife-droid. After Tazarin nearly gets loose a second time, Z unloads his flechette launcher into Tazarin'Ken's head at point-blank range, leaving him and Kedrihm soaked in gore.

Kedrihm'Val: *spit* "Thank you, Z." Z: "You're welcome. Or are you being facetious?" Kedrihm'Val: "Mostly." Z: "Are you proud of me for knowing that word?"

Ree attacks the bear, smoothly removing its left arm and head.

The poor souls Tazarin'Ken hooked into his machines are nothing but burnt-out husks. Oola is able to track the signal's coordinates into CorpSec after following it through a couple of relay stations. Dalt reminds them that Maul had a base there. Ree reminds Dalt that he did, too, but Dalt doesn't recall doing such a thing. He laments the devastation of the Dark Sider, wondering what they might've learned from him if he'd stayed in one piece.

Oola checks the assassin droid's brain. It's a tough crack, but she makes it in. Maul sent it to advise Tazarin. He was after this information because these reefs hold DNA coding for every lifeform in the galaxy. That seems like a far-fetched claim, but Dalt thinks it might be the DNA for their final evolutionary forms. Why is it there, though? Another component of the Blueprint? Maybe the Blueprint holds the record of worlds, and Abindosan's reefs hold the records of lifeforms?

They'd placed the villagers on nutrient support. Kedrihm'Val reminds them they should disconnect that before anyone wakes up. When he comments on clearing out the abominated flora that Tazarin'Ken left behind, Dalt suggests that SARR use the ship to do a controlled burn. This pleases SARR.

They return the two burnt-out captives to Kedrihm'Val's people who, as Kedrihm warned they would, pretty much offer the opinion that they're dead in the ways that matter. Let them go and give them a funeral pyre.

Ree checks on the reef before they leave. The parts that were the most damaged in the previous go-round seem to be find now. She leaves some Force crystals with the Abindosani, who say they'll try to get them to the Vodne, who can probably do a better job with them. After setting Dalt and Oola to look over the recordings they've taken, she calls Luke, who tells her she'll be expected at a Council meeting.

On the way back to Coruscant, the Alderaanian groups are in the news again. "Eventually someone will have to talk to Senator Sent," Ree muses. "I'll go," offers Dalt with a laugh. Commenting on the Sent family resemblance, Z: "Can't wipe away ugly."
Dalt: *silence*
Kedrihm'Val: *moves to sit next to Z.*
Ree: "Z, that was uncalled for."
*pause*
Dalt: "I tried with your mother."
Kedrihm'Val grabs Z.

SARR asks about the reef data. It wasn't copied, but actually removed. It needs to go back in, but how do they do that? They might have to hook up some coral to the computer to, er, translate. But...Maul just wanted the reef emptied? What did he want to put in instead?

When they reach Coruscant, Ree learns that Han, Chewie, and Kyp went to Kessel. She frets over how Kyp will handle that.

Dalt and Oola talk. "If you were Maul and had a planet-sized computer to put stuff in, what would you put in it?" he asks her. He'd go about making a Force Star, he tells her. He also wonders what effect this might have on the planet. If 85% of the information has been drained from the reefs, then that's more room for the reefs to be changed...or to change themselves. Dalt advocates killing E'Val, to which Kedrihm'Val agrees. But there are guards, so they'll have to convince the Council to agree to it.

Back to getting the information back into the reefs: Tazarin'Ken channeled it out through an Abindosani, so channeling it back in through one would be an idea. But... "People are made to collect information for the planet," Dalt says, "but that much information will kill people." "Well, if all else fails," Kedrihm tells him, "I am here to do whatever I need to save my planet." Dalt agrees, but thinks that's an extreme solution. A radio signal through water, or a giant computer with coral built in, patterned on an Abindosani brain pattern, might work.

This somehow morphs to a long, involved talk about stealing brains. Dalt wants to lurk about till somebody dies, says he can remove a brain and put the skull back on in 2.5 minutes. Oola and Kedrihm find this alarming information indeed. Feeling morbid, Oola decides to call SARR and see if he has an extra brain lying about. He doesn't (thankfully), and wants to know why they ask. "Dalt wants it," Kedrihm tells him. SARR responds, "Aren't you supposed to be weaning him away from that?"

Luke is worried about sending them to CorpSec. That sector of the galaxy is under its own governance; Jedi and the New Republic have no authority there. This'll be a sensitive operation. He talks to Leia.