Troopers - Book 2

The Spider

The rest of the research team stifled a laugh as they watched him slowly pick himself up from the floor and get back to looking at the data. The spider was strange. The strand it fired must have been some for of feeding. But why would it let out such an energy release to create sustenance? Sam looked at the data in front of him again, he felt his eyelids get heavy again. He'd not been sleeping well, ever since coming back he had been plagued with nightmares about the spiders attacking. Sometimes he survived long enough to get to the top of the mine but there was always one waiting for him. Waiting... In the dark... Waiting to strike. His eyelids closed and he suddenly jolted awake again. Sam decide to himself that if there was anymore adventures into dark caves, he'll let Luk do it on his own.

***

"In conclusion, the gateway project is moving forwards and the new fuel avenue with the spice spiders does show a method to create the required energy outputs, but as yet we still have to find a mechanism to channel the energy and find out exactly how the spice conducts the energy output so that there is a method for cheaper duplication in multiple locations." Saina spoke to the head of operations. Her project was far behind the Death Star team whose prototype was completed and the primary station was about to become operational, the sunkiller project was almost completed, there were other projects that had not progressed as far as hers had and no longer existed, and she was lagging behind.

"You have a week. To get a functional gate working or your teams project will be terminated." He didn't even look up from the report she had handed him. "Dismissed".

Saina, didn't reply. She turned and left. As much as she could blame the team for destroying their first gate. Finding out the solution for the power jump gap had helped. But a week. It would take longer than that to just rebuild the original gate. Let alone make the modifications required to start any form of new testing.

***

"Lets go over this one more time" Luk spoke to Sam. They were in the dining hall eating on a table on their own. The rest of the team avoided them. They were in charge of creating the new power source and method of it delivery. The rest were working frantically to rebuild a gate. A large one now as well, big enough for a speeder was the request. 

"The crystal we call spice is used as a method to capture prey. It seems to be both traps and a spike to kill." Sam hesitated over the last word.

"Thats right. But, what if the traps are just left over feeding spikes. What are they hunting?" Luk asked.

"People." Sam replied with a shiver.

"Not people. Think about it. Those spiders have evolved their. People, aliens, hominid's whatever are recent, technology allowing them to breath recent. What else is there for them?" Luk asked.

"I have no idea." Sam replied.

"Me neither. You know what that means?" Luk asked.

"I don't want to know."

"I have to go back." 

"That's insane. You nearly died last time." Sam said.

"No, you nearly died I was doing fine. And if those stormtroopers had brought the rifles I had said we have been doing better. I think I can make it further down and find out what's really happening there." Luk said thoughtfully.

"You're crazy." Sam replied.

"If you'd have seen what I used to deal with. You would understand how I don't see your spiders as much of a threat."

"You'll have to get it past Saina." Sam smiled. He liked Saina  not just because of her looks but because she was friendly to him. Like Luk, it was a weird sort of parental care she offered to him while the other researchers found him a bit of a joke.

"I'll get down there again." Luk said with a smile.

***

"What do you mean when Tatooine freezes over?" Luk exclaimed back to Saina.

"Simply put never. Not only do I say no to a member of my team going down there once more to risk there life. No matter how capable they are. But, Grand Moff Tarkin has already stated not again. you can have as much glitterstem as you want from the surface but you are not investigating those tunnels unless you can prove a reason for it, aside from curiosity." Saina was furious that he had even suggested going back down there after everything that had happened. She understood he was a soldier and that there were acceptable risks but this was madness.

"Fine. If those are the orders."  Luk said indignantly.

"Luk..." Saina spoke softly, she moved around her desk to speak with him. "I say this not as an officer or as a boss but as a friend. You don't need to go down there. We have as much as we need for testing. Please. Just work the problem and delivery system. One step at a time. Lets get the bosses first request completed." She stepped closer looking up at him and he looked down. 

"I understand. Our heads will literally roll if we don't get this done." Luk smiled. He had the urge of kissing her but knew full well that would be highly inpatriate. 

"More like a blaster bolt but yeah." She replied.

Luk nodded and turned and left. When the door closed Saina let out a sigh, she had a huge urge to kiss him just then and was finding hit hard to resist. She was glad he had decided to leave in that moment. 

***

They day of the test was there. The new gate had been completed. It wasn't big enough for the original Lamda shuttle request or even the downgrade request of a speeder to fit through but a compromise of a speeder bike had been arranged. Luk looked at the mess of metal with cables and tubing feeding in to it. It wasn't elegant, it didn't even seem to be that well designed but he had looked over the schematic and in theory it worked in a similar way to the gate that had brought him here. 

Luk looked over at Sam who was making the final adjustments to the spice's delivery system. They had managed to created a method of grinding it into a find powder and suspending it into a solution that only removed five percent of the effective power from the spice. Luk thought it would be enough. The liquid would be sprayed from multiple jets at the same time as the light was flashed causing the power increase to surge back into the machine. Then the gate would form from the various additives sent back along the jest of liquid spice as the power was rediverted back. reaching the center and collapsing space time to create a wormhole to the next gate. Luk wondered for a moment why they had not yet devised a name for the energy that was being created, why they just called it power. He shrugged his shoulders and thought it was most likely down to them not having time to think up such frivolities.

"Let the test commence." A voice came over the loud speaker.

The room went pitch black, everyone was wearing night vision goggles that were helping them see the control panels with their dully illuminated keys. 

The machine began to whirl. The jets began and a single pulse of bright light shone at the center of the device. The energy crackled and sparked in the center to and fro multiple times building up.

"Now." Saina called.

There was a sudden flash of light and then there was a purple glow in the room. They all looked over at the center of the machine. The was a swirl of purple and mauve spiraling together into a pin prick void.

"Bring in the test subject." The loud speaker boomed again.

A door opened to one side of the room and the soft hum of a repulsor engine could be heard as a stormtrooper pushed in a speeder bike. Luk thought for a moment that he saw the swirl change slightly as the speeder entered the room but he wasn't sure. Trooper got onto the bike, he looked up at the observation window and loosed the engine. He flew at high speed to the gateway and disappeared within. There was no sound as he entered only the instant disappearance of him and the sound of the bike.

"I take it he's not coming back here," Luk said.

"He should have arrived at the receiving gate." Sam said. The rest of the researchers were at the other side. Any variations or changes here would have repeated on the other side. A minute passed in silence. Then two.

"He's arrived. But, unconscious." The speaker boomed. There were cheers all around. Luk smiled. He was a single step closer to being home. He needed to let Thorne know.