'Agreed,' Karrde said dryly. 'But the problem wasn't in the slave circuitry itself. The records are a little vague-suppressed by those in charge at the time, no doubt-but it appears that one or more of the fleet's crewers picked up a hive virus at one of the ports of call on their maiden voyage. It was spread throughout all two hundred ships while in dormant state, which meant that when it suddenly flared up it took down nearly everybody at once.' Mara shivered. She'd heard of hive viruses leveling whole planetary populations in pre-Clone Wars days, before the medical science of the Old Republic and later the Empire had finally figured out how to deal with the things. 'So it killed the crews before they could get to help.'
'Apparently in a matter of hours, though that's just an educated guess,' Karrde said. 'What turned the whole thing from a disaster into a debacle was the fact that this particular hive virus had the charming trait of driving its victims insane just before it killed them. The dying crewers lasted just long enough to slave their ships together ... which meant that when the Katana command crew also went crazy and took off the entire fleet went with them.'
'I remember now,' Mara nodded slowly. 'That was supposedly what started the big movement toward decentralization in automated ship functions. Away from big, all-powerful computers into hundreds of droids.'
'The movement was already on its way, but the Katana fiasco pretty well sealed the outcome,' Karrde said. 'Anyway, the fleet disappeared somewhere into the depths of interstellar space and was never heard from again. It was a big news item for a while, with some of the less reverent members of the media making snide wordplays on the 'Dark Force' name, and for a few years it was considered a hot prospect by salvage teams who had more enthusiasm than good sense. Once it finally dawned on them just how much empty space was available in the galaxy to lose a couple hundred ships in, the flurry of interest ended. At any rate, the Old Republic soon had bigger problems on its hands. Aside from the occasional con artist who'll try to sell you a map of its location, you never hear about the fleet anymore.'
'Right.' It was, of course, obvious now where Karrde was going with this. 'So how did you happen to find it?'
'Purely by accident, I assure you. In fact, it wasn't until several days afterward that I realized what exactly I'd found. I suspect none of the rest of the crew ever knew at all.'
Karrde's gaze defocused, his eyes flattening with the memory. 'It was just over fifteen years ago,' he said, his voice distant, the thumbs of his intertwined hands rubbing slowly against each other. 'I was working as navigator/sensor specialist for a small, independent smuggling group. We'd rather botched a pickup and had had to shoot our way past a pair of Carrack cruisers on our way out. We made it all right, but since I hadn't had the time to do a complete lightspeed calculation, we dropped back to realspace a half light-year out to recalculate.' His lip twitched. 'Imagine our surprise when we discovered a pair of Dreadnaughts waiting directly in our path.'
'Lying dead in space.
Karrde shook his head. 'Actually, they weren't, which was what threw me for those first few days. From all appearances, the ships seemed to be fully functional, with both interior and running lights showing and even a standby sensor scan in operation. Naturally, we assumed it was part of the group we'd just tangled with, and the captain made an emergency jump to lightspeed to get us out of there.'
'Not a good idea,' Mara murmured.
'It seemed the lesser of two evils at the time,' Karrde said grimly.
'As it turned out, we came close to being fatally wrong on that account. The ship hit the mass shadow of a large comet on the way out, blowing the main hyperdrive and nearly wrecking the rest of the ship on the spot. Five of our crew were killed in the collision, and another three died of injuries before we could limp back to civilization on the backup hyperdrive.' There was a moment of silence. 'How many of you were left?' Mara asked at last.
Karrde focused on her, his usual sardonic smile back on his face. 'Or in other words, who else might know about the fleet?'
'If you want to put it that way.
'There were six of us left. As I said, though, I don't think any of the others realized what it was we'd found. It was only when I went back to the sensor records and discovered that there were considerably more than just the two Dreadnaughts in the area that I began to have my own suspicions.'
'And the records themselves?'
'I erased them. After memorizing the coordinates, of course.' Mara nodded. 'You said this was fifteen years ago?'
'That's right,' Karrde nodded back. 'I've thought about going back and doing something with the ships, but I never had the time to do it properly. Unloading two hundred Dreadnaughts on the open market isn't something you rush into without a good deal of prior preparation. Even if you have markets for all of them, which has always been problematic.'
'Until now.'
He cocked an eyebrow. 'Are you suggesting I sell them to the Empire?'
