Chapter 1 - Level 5127

"Every civilization has shadows cast by its greatness; the higher it climbs, the larger that shadow looms."

Sava Falla Roice of the University of Bar'leth, 6792 CRC

The sky is a rare sight for most of those who call Coruscant home, those trillions of life forms which work and toil under the gleaming shafts of durasteel and permacrete most across the galaxy conjure in their minds at mention of the grand city-planet. It's a world of possibility to most of the galaxy, promises of a better life and unlimited potential awaiting any willing to take the chance to come and brave the super-urban landscape; lies, as most of those who call the planet home know well. The upper levels are paradise made manifest, hedonistic pleasures and fine living of the galaxy's upper echelons built upon the bodies of ancient structures and the work of squalid commoners. Today, despite whatever misfortunes they may have, they are at least spared the horror of an image which has not graced the galactic capital in over a thousand years; hostile ships of a Separatist invasion orbit the planet in battle with the forces of the Republic Navy, mere pinpricks like stars flashing in the dusk light which seem to trade arcing miasma of color between them. If one looks long and hard enough, they would spot the occasional flare of these lights, brilliant displays of wonder far removed from the death and destruction they signal; each flare like a supernova so many light years away are the death knells of thousands just miles above the planet.

Those on the ground are little better off, forced to watch as the fate of the Republic itself hangs in the balance while armies of battle droids march through the streets which have not seen such open fighting in millenia. It is a conflict which none ever thought would come here, not to the Core; the Clone Wars for most of the population are something to be watched on the holoscreens, a shade of reality that is accepted but never truly felt until it is too late. As Coruscant burns, the War is all too real now. It cannot be escaped, but only survived. So few have, the damage of the planet wide invasion already strong enough to shake the very levels themselves and wreak havoc upon all. The blaster bolts of Separatists care not for the distinction between rich and poor, between Human, Duros, Twi'Lek, or any of the other countless species which call this place home; all will bend before their metallic might, or they will be destroyed. The battle rages, the War marches on, and hope is nearly snuffed out once word of Chancellor Palpatine's abduction circulates across the burning world. It's a rumor that spreads across the planet like wildfire, carried on the lips of sentients and soon the Separatists themselves when they broadcast a holofeed of the Chancellor being held captive by the cyborg General Grievous; for a brief moment, it's as though Coruscant itself holds its breath, the death of a Republic which stretches back as far as recorded history almost certain now.

For one being, a Zabrak Republic Judicial by the name of Bol Drund, the battle for the Republic itself is an affair which offers surprising opportunity and unimaginable danger; the call to fight is strong, but there is another duty which urges him on for now despite the tugging at his soul to pick up a blaster and rally to the defense of his homeworld. It had started that morning, when a boon of unimaginable luck appeared in the form of a discreet and encoded message sent straight to Judicial HQ via messenger droid; a letter from a Pyke of all people, a member of the syndicate which had lately been nearly legitimized by treaties with the Republic made in the name of war time stability. The agent tries hard not to let anger overtake him at the thought of the unfortunate political reality, instead focusing on the moment at hand. The particular Pyke, known by the single name of Kazeer, is a rather high level member of the syndicate's planetary presence. The organization is known to deal Spice to nearly every other criminal group on the ecumenopolis, providing a lucrative revenue stream that's nearly impossible to stamp out. Kazeer had reached out to the Judicials that morning in a panic, offering up everything he knows in return for immunity from the law and special protection against his former allies. Skeptical at first, it was only after running a quick search that the grey skinned Zabrak discovered the reason for such a change in attitude; it seems the high ranking criminal has a rather hefty bounty on him now, put in place by the Pykes themselves. Bol had been entrusted with the assignment to find and retrieve the target from the lower levels of Coruscant's Underworld so that he could be brought in for questioning. No sooner had he stepped out of the headquarters building than the planet wide alert was sounded, signalling the arrival of an invasion fleet numbering in the hundreds, thousands, of ships.

'I think the Force is laughing at me right now.' It's a thought which flashes through the detective's mind as he swerves his speeder through the skylanes of Coruscant's uppermost level; traffic has been shut down for all except emergency and military vehicles, leaving the battle itself as the largest obstacle in his path to deal with. The War is here in force, the Seps having managed to make it to the surface by disabling the paltry orbital defenses of a home fleet staffed with under-trained crew and poorly equipped vessels; after all, few on Coruscant actually believed the Separatists would be brazen enough to attack the galactic capital when the Outer Rim sieges have seen them bogged down for months. Bol's trying to make it to the portal near the edge of the Federal District now, close to where the Seps first landed in a spearhead strike designed to take the Senate; the fighting is heaviest here, blaster bolts and artillery illuminating the gleaming spires with rays of colorful energy which nearly vaporize Bol and his speeder more times than he cares to count. Short black hair whips in the wind between his horns, while deep golden eyes focus on the viewport as a body of a Clone falls from a vantage point on one of the buildings above; picked off by a sniper, the white plasteel clad soldier slams onto the hood of the speeder, leaving a massive dent and throwing off the balance so that Bol has to fight with the control yoke to avoid careening into a landing port. The Judicial has seen his fair share of bodies, but the visceral impact shakes him harder than the car; it's only the adrenaline pumping through his veins that keeps him from losing his breakfast, but he has no doubt the sound of cracking plasteel and encased flesh crashing against metal will stay with him far longer than he'd like.

Through the flames and the smoke which choke the skyline of the uppermost level, Bol can finally see his destination; a giant hole in the ground, the portals spread across Coruscant which give access to deeper levels, to a certain point. When the body finally slides off of the hood, he can correct course towards it just as the same sniper who picked off the Clone starts taking pot shots at the speeder. Bol ducks his head, trying to make himself a smaller target even as the frame of his vehicle is warped by the impact of heavy blaster bolts; the scent of ozone is strong, making his eyes water even as he manages to get cover by circling around one of the cloudscrapers to the side of the speeder lanes. Still not out of danger yet, Bol yanks hard on his control yoke to keep the speeder from going into a nosedive when the repulsor engine gives out from the damage. It's the best he can do to angle it towards the portal, at least using his momentum to carry him just a bit closer to the relative safety of the Underworld and his target deep within the planet. With more than a little bit of luck, the Judicial actually manages to make it to one of the landing platforms for transports close to the edge of the portal, but the landing is less than comfortable as the speeder skids against the floor; the edge is coming up much too quickly, leaving Bol with no other option than to leap from his seat moments before he would otherwise go over the side. He rolls with his own landing, a mere couple of meters from falling off of the landing area. Hearts hammering in his throat, he has a view to watch the speeder fall and fall into the depths of the portal until it finally disappears from sight into darkness after a few hundred levels. With a deep breath to try and calm his frayed nerves, the Zabrak rolls onto his back and takes a brief moment to regain his senses. "Force-damned battle droids."

His reprieve from danger doesn't seem fated to last, the whirring whine of strong repulsor engines echoing up from the portal below; drawing his DE-10 sidearm, Bol readies himself for a fight. There's no cover on the barren platform save for a single parked speeder bus, meaning the armed Judicial is more or less out of luck if it ends up being a Sep ship. Thankfully for him, the source of the noise is an LAAT, probably rising up from the Clone barracks on a deeper level; Bol can't help but give a sigh of relief, then actually waves to the gunship with a small grin. He's known a few of the genetically bred soldiers over the last few years, most of them assigned in the elite Coruscant Guard unit, and holds more respect for them than most in the Republic. Even (or especially) the native Coruscanti seem to tolerate the soldiers at best, likely because in their efforts to keep the planet safe, they also exercise more and ore powers seemingly every day thanks to the Chancellor's emergency powers allowing greater authority for law enforcement in the name of the war effort. They're all that's keeping the planet from the clankers at this point, and if he didn't have a mission on hand, the Judicial would be joining them. "Go get 'em, boys!"

With the portal now clear, Bol has to find a way down to the edge proper; the bus nearby may have been abandoned in a hurry, but it seems the driver still had the sense to take his keys. Cursing his luck, the Zabrak exits the vehicle and starts looking for some way to improvise and find a way off of the floating island. His best bet is uncertain, the monolith of an office building which towers over the platform but is close enough that he might be able to swing across using his blaster's grapnel attachment in his belt. He'll have to figure out which floor his arching swing will take him to so he can shoot out the glass beforehand; he'd rather not smack into the side of the building and fall to his death because he was a few meters off in his estimation. Of course, then he realizes he may as well just shoot out all of the windows around the spot he thinks he'll end up at, just in case; it's not like the building won't need repairs anyway. With his way clear, Bol takes his time to line up the shot of his grapnel, adding a bit of prayer to the Force itself to guide his hand. The line shoots out with a squeeze of the trigger, snagging on the side of the building right where he wanted and providing him a good chance to make the jump. 'Moment of truth…'

The hesitation to step from the platform is shattered by the streaking of yet another blaster bolt close enough to his head that Bol can feel some of the hairs on his short, scruffy beard singe from the heat; he's out of time and options now, that same sniper from before tracking him and trying to finish the job. It's not a prayer but a yell now when he finally jumps from the landing platform and free falls for a handful of seconds. The grip on his blaster is like a vice, even as the cable goes taut and brings him into an arcing dive that ends with the lawman flying into a lower level of the cloudscraper a few dozen floors below his would-be killer. With legs and arms like jelly, adrenaline pounding in his ears as twin hearts beat like heavy blaster fire in his chest, Bol picks himself up off the floor and disconnects the grapnel from his blaster; that was far too close, but even now the danger is not over as he can hear the clanking of battle droids marching down the stairwell not far from his position. The sniper had called in the breach, and now the Judicial is going to have to deal with a squad of the damned tinnies. At least he can take cover and has a few moments to plot his plan of attack; they may have numbers, but the droids are easily fooled if one knows how. A memory crosses Bol's mind, a story one of his Clone acquaintances had shared of a time when he managed to take out a squad with just him and one other trooper using traps. Of course, he has none prepared, meaning that the hunted Judicial will have to think on his feet.

Three droids finally burst through the door of the stairwell, heads swivelling as they look for the organic intruder; the B1s are stupid, and that works in Bol's favor for now as they sweep the chaotic office space with cold precision. He grips his DE-10 until his grey knuckles turn a shade of black, but loosens his grip after taking silent breaths and giving yet another small prayer to the Force.

'All is as the Force wills, so I really hope you're willing me on this time.'

With the answer to his prayer unanswered in any clear way, Bol's only option is to try and survive regardless. He can't afford to stay in cover like this, not when the clankers are close enough for him to hear the whine of their servo motors, so he goes for the risky move of tossing a stapler at the other end of the floor in order to misdirect the B1s. Their photoreceptors don't find him behind the support column he's using for cover, so they switch to infrared as they shift focus to search for the perceived source of the noise which draws their attention; he's lucky they didn't lead with that, and he'll silently thank the designer who gave them such bad programming later. E-5 blasters up and ready as they fan out, one of them turns around just in time to catch a searing bolt right into the cranial unit; the remaining two respond immediately, facing the direction of the shot and laying down suppressive fire when Bol ducks behind an overturned office desk. At this range, their poor programming doesn't really matter as they don't let up on their triggers and fill the floor with flashes of red death. The Judicial blind fires from cover, not trying to hit them so much as force the clankers to take cover themselves; it actually works long enough for him to roll a few meters from his current cover into the stairwell they came from. This fight isn't his priority, and the more time he wastes here, the less likely that he'll find Kazeer alive.

Booking it down the stairs like a man possessed, eventually the Zabrak makes it to the "ground" floor at the very bottom of Level 5217; an employee parking garage, it's the perfect opportunity for him to book a speeder bike and tear out of the building with a whoop and an obscene gesture to the sniper that he doubts the droid will understand. Still, he's not out of the woods yet as he has to race across an empty plaza which sits at one end of the massive portal to the Underworld. His destination looms so close and yet so far, the massive hole seeming to stretch across for nearly a kilometer; yet, for all of its size, the shadow cast by the cloudscraper engulfs the plaza and the portal itself, only for the darkness to be illuminated for brief moments by the weapon's fire streaming down from the top floors that tries to cut off the Judicial's escape. Seems the sniper is determined to get him now more than ever, taking shot after shot to try and kill Bol or disable his bike; the droid gets closer than the Zabrak would like, but his skills in a speeder come in handy as he manages to dodge most of the attacks. He has to serpentine erratically to avoid damage to the speeder, but a few glancing blows melt the paint and warp the metal enough to nearly set Bol's right pant leg aflame from the sheer heat; still, he refuses to slow down for even a moment as he approaches the edge at a breakneck pace. He actually guns the engine and goes for a straight shot over the side for the last dozen meters, before the feeling of his stomach rising into his chest hits the rider as he starts to fall. The bike can handle the descent, but he's just thankful to be out of the sniper's line of fire.

Bol pulls up on the handles, leveling out and controlling his fall so that he doesn't end up gaining too much speed. It's the most time he's had to himself all day, that long ride to the bottom level of the portal, but it's spent with eyes peeled and ears tuned to the slightest hint of a possible Separatist attack. Still, at least he can finally rest those frayed nerves and let the hammering of his hearts die down; more importantly, he can check his mini datapad to get an update on the situation topside. Republic military and government channels are going crazy with reports and updates, creating a nearly incomprehensible fog of war that makes it difficult for the lawman to figure out what's going on. One thing is clear though: a lot of people are dying. Casualty reports of lost fighters and ships in space, along with whole units of Clones and hastily organized militia on the ground, come in fast and frequent, giving grim tidings that are only briefly briefly halted by the announcement of reinforcements arriving. Jedi Master Kenobi and Knight Skywalker have arrived with the 212th and 501st respectively, and are currently making their way to the enemy ship thought to hold the captive Chancellor. It's good news, however small it may be for now; Bol has hope, but that's rarely enough when action is needed too. For now, all he can do is play his part to protect the Republic and find the Pyke hiding in the depths of the city. Of course, if the War ends here today, as is a true possibility, there may not be a Republic to serve. As the darkness of the Underworld swallows Bol, he tries very hard not to seriously consider that possibility.