Chapter 66: Three Flavors of Nope

Disclaimer: Star Wars and all of it's Intellectual Properties is owned by George Lucas and Walt Disney, This fictional work and all of it's original characters are however mine.

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Jake's P.O.V. :

So here we were.

Hunting for what was, without a doubt, the dumbest-named machine in the galaxy.

Skew-01 and Nick-01 took point as we moved through the station’s corridors, even though we’d already been added to the system as staff members. No security turrets would be gunning for us.

But Davik?

“Can’t hurt to be careful,” he muttered, checking his blaster carbine for the fourth time.

Kado nodded. “With our track record, being cautious isn’t a bad move.”

Which was fair.

What wasn’t fair was the way he kept glancing at me while saying it.

Like, sure, I had a tiny history of triggering dangerous things by accident. And maybe I had a slight tendency to push buttons first and ask questions later. But that was hardly my fault! Sometimes, buttons just needed pushing!

Still. No time for slander.

We kept moving.

The hallways gave way to something much bigger.

And when I say big, I don’t mean ‘oh wow, this is a spacious hangar.’

I mean, you could probably park a starship in here.

Scratch that—you could probably park several.

I tilted my head back, eyes scanning up, up, up.

There it was.

A massive machine, humming with active power, lit up by blinking status lights.

At first glance, it looked like it was fixed in place. But as I examined the structure, I spotted something crucial—armatures connecting it to the ceiling and walls. Meaning?

It was detachable.

And since there weren’t any visible maintenance walkways leading up to it, that meant it had to come down to ground level for servicing.

I pointed it out to the others. “That thing’s meant to be moved.”

Kado followed my gaze. “So we find the control mechanism and get it down.”

“Exactly.”

We spread out, searching for a terminal or control panel—anything that could release the clamps and lower the machine.

“Is this even the one we’re looking for?” Kado asked as we searched.

I glanced at him. “You mean the cause of the hyperspace anomaly or the stupidly named machine?”

“Both,” Davik cut in before Kado could answer. “Could be the same thing.”

I snorted. “Doubt it. If it was causing the anomaly, there’d be more—”

I stopped mid-sentence.

Because something very rude had just occurred to me.

Davik must’ve seen the look on my face, because he smirked. “What?”

I turned to face him. “Did you just say that unique machines always get named?”

“Yep.”

“And you’re saying I do that?”

“Well.” Davik gestured vaguely. “Yeah.”

I opened my mouth to argue.

Then promptly shut it.

Because my brain had very unhelpfully reminded me that almost all of my machines had names.

I cleared my throat. “That’s… not the point.”

Kado raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t it?”

I huffed and refocused on the search.

No point proving their karking point by arguing myself into a hole.

But as much as I wanted to examine the machine right now, we had a problem—there was no control mechanism in this room.

After another five minutes of searching, all three of us came to the same conclusion.

The controls had to be elsewhere.

Kriff.

Which meant if we wanted to get a closer look, we’d have to go hunting for whatever other room controlled this thing’s movement.

I crossed my arms. “Fine. We’ll come back to it.”

Kado nodded. “Agreed.”

Davik smirked. “You actually willing to wait? Or should we tie you to a console so you don’t try to climb it?”

I scoffed. “Oh, ha ha. Let’s just go.”

With one last glance at the humming, monstrous machine hanging above us, we turned and headed out.

Wherever its controls were, I'm going to - I mean we’d find them.

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We were still hunting for the armature controls when my comlink crackled to life.

“Mira to Jake—got an update for you.”

I tapped my wrist unit. “Let’s hear it.”

Her voice came through, calm but laced with that sharp edge she got when something big came up. “So, aside from retrieving a bunch of historical logs from the station head’s office, we also got our hands on the station head’s personal journal.”

I perked up at that. “That’s gotta have something good.”

“Oh, it does,” Mira confirmed. “For starters? Our guess was right—this place was a mining station originally. Just a structure clamped onto an asteroid, nothing fancy.”

Kriff. That meant at some point, somebody looked at this place and said, Let’s make it bigger. And let’s make it dangerous.

And sure enough—

“When the Republic got hit by the Sith Empire and war broke out,” Mira continued, “this place got turned into a hub base and supply point. And not just that—this became one of the facilities where they built experimental weaponry.”

I groaned. “Of course it did.”

Because why stop at turning a mining station into a base when you could also make Sith-killing superweapons at the same time?

“Yeah, you’re gonna love this part,” Mira said dryly. “Turns out they had help. A Jedi Lord—no name given—oversaw the whole thing and ordered the scientists here to create a weapon designed to hunt Sith.”

I frowned. “Jedi ordering up Sith-killers? That’s not standard policy.”

“No kidding,” Mira said. “The scientists used different methods to make that happen, but eventually, they settled on using a Force-charged object as a core.”

Kark. I really didn’t like where this was going.

“And let me guess,” I said slowly, “that object was a kyber crystal.”

“Bingo.”

I sighed. “Well, that explains a lot.”

It also made things way more complicated. Because kyber crystals weren’t just any power source—you didn’t just slap one into a droid and call it a day.

“These scientists started using droids as testbeds,” Mira continued, “and when they finally settled on a proper design, they built them as supplements for regular troops. But the Jedi Lord? He had different ideas.”

“Oh, this guy sounds great,” I muttered.

“He ordered the droids to be built as independent Sith-hunters,” Mira confirmed. “And since the scientists couldn’t exactly tell him no, they designed them to be immune to Force abilities. Also, resistant—if not outright immune—to lightsabers.”

Kado let out a low whistle. “Kriff. The Jedi were supposed to fight droid armies, not make their own.”

“Guess this one didn’t get the memo,” I said.

And that’s when Mira dropped the real bombshell.

“There were three variants.”

I rubbed my temples. “Of course there were.”

Mira kept going. “First variant? Massive. Twice the size of a tall Wookiee. Hulking, slow, but armed with an overpowered—and thankfully slow-charging—arm cannon and aptly name the Force-Null Sentinel Droid or Sith-Hunter variant Breaker.”

My stomach sank. “Mira.”

“Yeah?”

“Didn't we fight one of those on Malachor V.”

There was a pause.

Then, a frustrated groan with false cheer. “Yup - glad you're paying attention”

“Dead serious. And if that’s only the first variant, I really don’t wanna know what the others look like.”

“Well, too bad, because I’m telling you anyway.”

Kriff.

“Second variant?” Mira said. “Mostly the same structurally, but built for siege warfare. Repeater blasters on its head, artillery cannons on its back, ion blaster on its left forearm, and the same overpowered blaster as the first variant for its right arm weapon. Oh, and a twin rotary blaster cannon, because apparently it wasn’t already terrifying enough - and is called Sith-Hunter variant Besieger.”

Davik let out a low chuckle. “So it was built to storm a base and wipe out anything inside.”

“Pretty much,” Mira confirmed.

“And the third?” I asked.

“This one’s interesting,” she said. “Same size as a regular sentinel droid—so about as tall or slightly taller than the B1 battle droids we know today. Still had the Force immunity, still resistant to lightsabers and blaster fire, but it wasn’t built with integrated weaponry - and called Sith-Hunter variant Stalker.”

I frowned. “So it just used whatever it picked up?”

“Yep,” Mira said. “Oh, and it had experimental camo tech.”

I groaned. “Great. An invisible Sith-hunting assassin droid. That’s exactly what the galaxy needed.”

Davik smirked. “I bet you’d try to build one if you got the chance.”

I scoffed. “Yeah, no thanks. I prefer my droids not built by war criminals.”

Mira wasn’t done. “There’s one last thing.”

“Oh, what now?”

“Later on, a machine was deployed here from another station like this one,” she said. “Something that can disrupt a starship’s hyperspace capabilities.”

That got my full attention.

I straightened. “That’s it. That’s gotta be what’s causing the hyperspace anomaly.”

Mira hummed in agreement. “We’ll talk more when we meet up. There’s some other stuff Rina and I wanna go over in person.”

“Understood,” I said. “We’re still hunting for the armature controls to get a closer look at that kriffing machine, but once we’re done, we’ll regroup.”

“Copy that. Mira out.”

The comlink went silent.

For a moment, none of us said anything.

Then Davik exhaled. “So. We’re dealing with a station that made Sith-hunting droids, experimental superweapons, and hyperspace-disrupting tech.”

Kado crossed his arms. “And we’re standing inside it.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Why doesn’t the galaxy have a normal, functioning facility that isn’t hiding some horrifying military secret?”

Davik clapped a hand on my shoulder. “C’mon, you love this stuff.”

I muttered something rude under my breath.

Because—yeah, fine.

Maybe I did love cracking open ancient tech.

Maybe I did want to see just how cursed this whole situation could get.

But for once?

I kinda wished we’d stumbled into a boring station.

Just once.

Would that have been so much to ask?

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I let out a low whistle. “That was a lot of info to drop on us.”

“No kidding,” Davik muttered, arms crossed.

Kado gave a slow nod. “Answers some of our earlier questions, though.”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “But now I have more questions, and I know I won’t get the answers immediately. And that’s gonna annoy me.”

Davik smirked. “Annoy you? No way.”

Kado chuckled. “Well, at least we probably won’t run into those Sith-Hunter droids.”

Davik and I immediately groaned.

Loudly.

Kado blinked. “What?”

We groaned again, this time louder and more exaggerated.

Kado frowned. “Seriously, what?”

I gave him a flat look. “You just said it, Kado.”

“Yeah? And?”

Davik threw up his hands. “You jinxed us, you backrocket moof-milker! Now, for sure, we’re gonna run into them.”

Kado scoffed. “You don’t know that.”

I gestured wildly. “Kado. Every single time someone in a holodrama says, ‘At least it can’t get worse,’ the next scene is always an explosion.”

“Or an ambush,” Davik added.

“Or some tall, hulking droid monstrosity walking in to ruin our day.”

Kado sighed. “Fine, fine—if we do run into one, I’ll buy you both drinks next time we hit a cantina.”

I grinned. “Now that’s a deal.”

With that, we got back to searching for the karking armature controls.

I figured it had to be somewhere with visibility—either a room overlooking the machine, or a control center that monitored multiple sections at once. Turns out, my hunch was spot on.

The room we found screamed important.

Large monitors. Rows of terminal units. An elevated platform with a chair way too nice to be just another workstation. This was the control center, no doubt about it.

Before getting started, I pulled up my wrist comm and sent a quick message to Mira and Rina. “Jake to Mira, Rina—we found the control room for the machine. Gonna check the systems now, see if we can get it to move. Will keep you posted. Out.”

After that, I cracked my knuckles and got to work.

I walked in, cracking my knuckles. “Alright, let’s bring this machine down to ground level.”

I sat myself at one of the terminals, fingers flying over the controls. The system was old, but it wasn’t broken—just a bit of coaxing, a few command inputs, and I had the interface purring like a well-maintained speeder.

The moment I started the sequence, I heard the deep whir of machinery spinning to life. Gears groaned, metal creaked, and somewhere beyond the control room, something massive shifted.

Unbeknownst to me, at that exact moment, Davik’s comlink chirped.

He answered. “Yeah?”

Rina’s voice came through, tight and urgent. “Stop what you’re doing!”

Davik frowned. “What? Why—”

A sound cut through the transmission.

A deep, metallic groaning.

And then—

Boom.

Something heavy.

Something big.

The distinct thud-thud-thud of massive, weighty footsteps.

Then—silence.

The transmission cut out.

Davik stared at his comlink. “…Well. That’s not good.”

I was still focused on the controls. “What’s not good?”

Davik’s voice was unusually serious. “Jake? Maybe stop the sequence.”

I turned, finally seeing his expression.

And that’s when I knew—

Kado’s karking jinx just came true.