Justicar
Samara finally figured it out. And when she did, she felt her legs go weak, sat down hard at the kitchen table and held onto the edge, lest she fall over.
Ardat-Yakshi. Heaven help them all.
The four recent deaths had been no simple murders. But she'd thought they were, at first, had still thought so when she'd discovered that one of her own daughters was responsible. And she'd called the police, determined to put an end to her spree of serial-killing, determined that justice would be served and she would be held to answer for these senseless acts of violence.
But this... she'd never imagined that Morinth was not just a killer, but one of the worst menaces ever to haunt the galaxy.
Her own daughter.
Ardat-Yakshi.
She picked up the data pad again, the latest report sent in from C-Sec. The nature of the deaths. The forensic investigation.
The irrefutable conclusion.
Ardat-Yakshi were insatiable, cunning, all the harder to find because their victims went with them willingly. They killed through seduction, not force.
Samara sat at the table, head in her hands, for a long time. Played over her life in her head again and again, her maiden years, her desire for children, for a family, her daughters' early years, teenage years... and then the first inklings that something was amiss.
And what of her other two daughters? Were they also affected? Would she have to kill her whole family?
She was just a mother, a civilian, not even a commando. She had no skills to deal with such a menace.
But she had been the one to unleash it on the galaxy. What in the world was she supposed to do?
The sun was setting on Thessia when Samara finally reached a decision. She stood up and looked around the little house she lived in, feeling the cool weight of her decision settle around her. She would never come back here, to her house with the hand-embroidered cushions and the cups her mother had given her and the collage on the wall that Morinth had made for her when she was just 13. Excellent artwork, even for one so young.
There was only one solution, only one way forward that would assuage the guilt gnawing at her, that would teach her the skills to stop an Ardat-Yakshi, the strength to look her own daughter in the eye and pull the trigger, knowing there was no possible way to save her.
She packed a bag with the bare essentials, sent a message to her employer resigning from her job, and forced herself not to look back as she strode out the door for the last time.
An Ardat-Yakshi was loose in the galaxy. And she would become the Justicar that would end its reign of terror.