Wreckage of Obsidian Station
Northern Polar Region, Tarthos, Orian System
Day 54, 30 ABY

It had been just under two klekkets since the Dlarit Navy turncoat Ran Arnet had procured the access codes Bur’lorr had needed to the wreckage the infidels called Obsidian Station. From the outside the crash site still looked no different, just a mess of mangled metal half buried by the winter’s snow. Some of the Sseeth had come snooping a few weeks back, but like the Jeedai they were too blind to see what was right before their eyes.

Inside was a different matter.

The biots from the Baanu Amnan had quickly got to work, worldshaping the wreckage into a more sacrosanct place befitting of the Hunter. Most of the lifeless durasteel corridors had been reshaped by new growths of yorik coral, along with the usual glow-lichens and hatch sphincters. It had been necessary to leave certain rooms alone to retain the connections to the planetary defence grid, but apart from those Obsidian was now ‘home’.

However right then none of that interested Bur’lorr. His mind was glued on the monstrosity shackled to the Embrace of Pain directly before him.

He lashed out with his amphistaff again.

‘What is your place of origin!’

The silver droid bound up by the Embrace’s organic tentacles shrieked as they sent electrostatic charges through its body. It had been tied up for nearly two months but had yet to reveal anything, not even a name or identifier. Its cyclopean red photoreceptor simply stared back, unblinking, devoid of life or emotion. Even its cries felt artificial and empty of true pain.

He stiffened his amphistaff and slammed it into the seemingly invulnerable contraption.

‘Where did you come from? What is your purpose here?’ He paused a second. ‘Are you . . . one of them?’

No response.

The Hunter snarled and hurled the amphistaff at the droid; the black serpent promptly coiled up around the machine’s ‘neck’, its teeth closing over the glowing red eye. He doubled checked the Embrace’s restraints, then stormed out of the interrogation chamber, barely giving the sphincter time to dilate before he was gone.

The other Yuuzhan Vong averted their eyes as he passed; the few Peace Brigade men stationed with them scuttered out of his way into random side rooms he knew were empty. Good. It was right for them to be scared. His patience was nearing its limits. Their mission here was to infiltrate the Dlarit Corporation and position operatives throughout the military. That part was going well.

However the sudden appearance of the droid last winter had not been in the plans. They were lucky that worm Arnet had got them the defence system’s codes in time. It had only taken hacking into the local city’s grid during the infidels’ recent battle over the nearby ice world, and then diverting the city’s defence turrets to shoot the abomination down.

But shooting it down had only been the start.

It had proven impervious to harm. Coufees, amphistaffs, razor bugs; nothing could cut through the armour. Firejelly, plasma cannons, magma pebbles, thud bugs; they didn’t work. Even the heretical monstrosities the infidels had shaped to look like the Chosen Race did not have the invulnerable skin that the droid possessed. He had even commanded some of the Peace Brigade soldiers to use their heretical weapons on it; still nothing. Even Khalee Muyel, the Jeedai assigned to them, had tried with his blasphemous plasma-based amphistaff.

There was only one thing Bur’lorr could think of; one thing from the distant past; from the ancient days when the Children of Yun-Yuuzhan still walked the evergreen surface of the original Yuuzhan’tar; before the Cremlevian War all those tens of thousands of years ago.

But it was impossible. The machines had been destroyed.

The gods had silenced the Abominor.

Bur’lorr listened to the shrills behind him as the next warrior resumed the unending interrogation. It sent a cold chill up his back, as the machine awakened some long forgotten, primordial fear they had discarded aeons ago. He rubbed his hand on a nodule on the wall beside the entrance to his quarters and the hatch sphincter dilated to allow him inside.

Without another thought, he climbed up onto the rack of his room’s own Embrace and allowed the pain to take him, granting him a minor release, free from unwelcome thoughts of the abomination. Pain . . . at least from his pain he could remember he was still alive.

When he was done cleansing his mind, it would be time to get back to work.

There was still much to be done.