Chapter 4

Grand Admiral Quasar had the last drink of his life. He didn't know it then of course, as the fiery shot of Juma juice slid down his throat. He always had a small glass of the alcohol before he began his day. Quasar was already dressed in his splendid orange and gold admiralty finery and swept back his greying hair to put on his military cap. His ship, the Resurrection was the largest vessel in the Republic Navy, not to mention the most heavily armed dreadnought in the galaxy so it was with forgivable confidence that he walked the Resurrection's corridors to the bridge. Normally the Grand Admiral was a careful man - some men became great through rash acts, others plotted and planned carefully, Quasar being the latter – but today he was allowing his guard to slip. It was the end of a six month tour of duty and his mostly human crew were finally returning to Coruscant. The mood on board was jubilant and it was catching - which was a real shame for Quasar because today he should have been on high alert. He entered his private office, adjacent to the bridge and sat down at his desk. He briefly checked on screen navigation charts – all was well – and contacted his Captain with orders to progress to Coruscant with maximum speed. That done, he relaxed in his chair and imagined greeting his wife at the star port, smiling at the thought. He was just about to contact his Captain again when he suddenly found he couldn't breathe. He felt intense pressure on his chest and clawed at his uniform. He gasped and reared his head back in agony, stepping away from his desk and knocking over his chair. He fell to the ground and tried to crawl to the door but didn't get halfway. A burning sensation was spreading rapidly across his back until it was roasting him alive – just in the corner of his eye he was surprised to see a knife plunged into his back. Just behind his desk a woman with baby blue skin appeared with eyes white as milk, as if drawing away a cloak which hid her from the world. The Grand Admiral briefly had time to recognise this as a stealth generator before the agonising pain forced him to close his eyes, never to open again. The Grand Admiral was dead.

The Harrow was an assassin. In fact, the Harrow considered herself the best assassin in the galaxy and her most recent hit would continue to prove that without doubt. She walked over to the prone Admiral and checked his pulse. Nothing. He'd gone. The Harrow attempted a smile but couldn't pull it off. It's very difficult to smile if you've never really experienced genuine happiness. The Harrow was an Arkanian offshoot species, sharing the milky white eyes of pure blooded Arkanians yet bearing light blue skin which made her appear somewhat less threatening. This was of course a misnomer. The Harrow had never had a proper name, never lived a proper life. She had no hair, no past, no personality and no mercy. Her only apparent purpose in life was to amass vast amounts of credits to buy high end weapon technology, more often than not from the Arkanians themselves and had financed this little habit by killing people. She looked like a young woman in her early twenties but if reports of her operating even before the Mandalorian wars were true than she was obviously much older. Business was good. There was plenty of work for all bounty hunters with the Hutts taking such prevalence in current politics and the Harrow was Vogga the Hutt's number one assassin. And now she had finally completed an assignment given to her some 7 months ago. It had been extremely hard to get to Quasar. But now the task was done and Vogga the Hutt owed the Harrow 50,000 credits and the crime lord knew better than to hold out on her. The Harrow finished her attempted smile and re-activated her stealth generator, heading towards her escape route.

The Harrow left the ship in an escape pod 20 minutes before the Grand Admirals body was even found. By the time the Republic Military located the crashed pod on the planet's surface, the Harrow was already halfway to Hutt space in her own ship. Her on board communicator flashed. She answered it. The Harrow had not bothered to install hologram technology – she preferred transactions in which not even her employer ever saw her face – so it was only Mossa the Twilek's voiced which filled the cockpit of her ship.

"Greetings Harrow, the great Vogga the Hutt sends his regards." Mossa said, grovelling as only a Twilek Major Domo can.

"I'd rather he send his credits" The Harrow replied brusquely, ice creeping into her voice, "because my contract is complete and I expect to be paid very soon." Mossa gasped.

"Admiral Quasar is dead? That's fantastic news! Vogga will truly be pleased. When will you collect your credits?" The Harrow never took any form of payment other than cash and relied on a trusted courier to bring her the money from one of Vogga's minions. As with a large number of shady deals, this arrangement always took place on the smugglers moon: Nar Shaddaa.

"As soon as possible Twilek – I have bills to pay. I am on my way to the usual rendezvous as we speak."

"And your money will be there… unless you'd like more?"

"Don't toy with me worm. What are you getting at?" The Harrow never had time for the odious Mossa's games.

"Well, Vogga has just stated his intention that he wants 6 new targets wiped out. The price is 20,000 per head." The Harrow raised an eyebrow at the colossal price.

"What's the catch?" the Harrow asked, knowing full well that Vogga wouldn't part with well over a hundred thousand credits unless he was really serious about the targets.

"Well that's a touch… delicate. The fact is all the targets are… Jedi." The Harrow's face showed nothing. After a pause, she spoke again.

"What are the details?" On the other end of the line, Mossa smiled.

"I'll send you their names and faces" he said.

Grandmaster Vallo was slumped in his chair behind a dull grey desk. He wasn't asleep, just resting his tired eyes: next year he would be 70 years old. He had lived an eventful life, learning, fighting and teaching all the way and it had not been easy. When he was 8 years old he became an apprentice, when he still had no master at the age of 18 he left the order. At the age of 27 he met a woman who would change his life. He knew her for only a few short months, but he still thought of her in his twilight, now that he was old and his blonde hair had turned white through the decades. She was, of course, the exile, the Jedi General who fought at Malachor V and was stripped of the force only to return stronger than ever, cleansing the last of the Sith from the galaxy. And before she left to follow an old friend, the exile had asked Mical to reform the order, with Atton and Mira and the others. Mical had obeyed, was still obeying – a Jedi's work never ends. There was of course something of a leadership battle between Atton and Mira, both of whom felt that they should be named Grand Master. Mical had suggested that they abolish the title altogether and truly rule as a council of equals– a suggestion which made it abundantly clear that if there had to be a Grandmaster, Mical was the obvious choice.

"He will eventually sit on the council, reluctantly as all good men do"

Mical did not like to make comparisons with his own order and the one Revan, Malak and the others destroyed. He felt that the collapse of the order was not one man or woman's fault, so why cast blame? He knew his order was… different at least. More forgiving certainly. Love was not encouraged but not squashed either. This was a point of contention for some because it clashed with the very first rule in the Jedi code: there is no emotion, there is peace, but Mical and the council knew the weakness of that creed from the outset – without love, companionship and, at times, anger they would never have been brought together by the Exile – who was always a passionate woman. So, while children were frowned upon, relationships were not. How could they be, when the two most volatile council members, Master Atton Rand and Master Mira Ordo, were in an odd relationship of their own? So he had led as best he could and he had raised his fair share of padawans. He'd fought against the dark side in his journeys with the exile and he had dealt with it again in his new Order. Padawans had turned. Untrained force users had caused panic. Good friends had died. And just like that the venerable old master was thinking of Master Kae again, killed on a space shuttle. "She shouldn't have gone that way" he thought to himself and he was right. Kae had been an Echani – they lived for combat. Brianna should have died defending others from harm, not in the same explosion that killed hundreds. The Grandmaster raised a hand to his head and massaged his temple. He felt deep within and found the only comfort a Jedi requires – the warm glow of the force. He felt it rise within him and cast it all around, climbing higher, out of the room to the academy around him, interacting with other glows of the force held within the Knights stationed here and the padawans who trained diligently. The warmth spread further, up and up, now sensing Pikar itself, the quiet, mundane minds of the farmers in the fields, the frantic chatter of the merchants in the town, the rolling green plains covered in cows and sheep, the dense forests filled with spiders and snakes, Iriaz and Kinrath, all living their ordinary lives on a quiet afternoon. Still the warmth spread further, away from Pikar now, gliding through the silence of space faster than any ship, more systems coming into view, more planets, more stars, more life than a mind could possibly even comprehend, all streaming to Mical's heart. And finally the whole galaxy came into view, it's enormity, it's incomprehensible scale, it's trillions upon trillions of denizens. Here, away from the trivial matters of money and order, away from the hum of living and dying, here away from everything known… a man could be at peace.

But not for long.

"Master! Master!" a shrill voice rang out, and Mical Vallo was back on Pikar, with all his endless responsibilities and concerns. A tiny Twilek padawan in loose tan robes toddled into the Grandmasters office. Clearly he had been given a task and its importance was enormous to him. Vallo smiled to himself. If it had been anyone else who had interrupted his meditation he would have resented them for it, but not a youngling. He raised his head and gave the Twilek a piercing stare.

"What is it Obbno?" he asked in a too-sombre voice. Obbno did a fleeting bow and spoke very quickly.

"!" the Twilek said in one breath, made worse by the fact that he was already exhausted from running all the way to Vallo's office.

"Thank you young Jedi", Vallo said with a serious expression on his face, "you've been of great service to the order. You're dismissed to get some dinner." The little Twilek grinned manically and bowed so low he almost cracked his head on the marble floor. Without another word he rushed out again, just as frantically as he came in. Vallo chuckled to himself. The younglings always brought a smile to his face and reminded him why he should never lose faith. He stood up and walked out of his office into the central courtyard of the Pikar academy. Like the council chamber, the academy was a light, spacious affair covered in cool colours of greys, whites and light blues. The complex was nowhere near as big as the temple on Coruscant but the Jedi still hadn't returned to the capital even forty years after the civil war. As Grandmaster Vallo himself put it, some wounds require more than one lifetime to heal. So Coruscant was left alone and the headquarters of the Jedi was moved to Pikar in top secrecy, construction taking five years to complete. Pikar was chosen because it was calm, out of the way and largely unknown to the galaxy. Even now, only a select few in power actually knew where the Jedi called home and Mical Vallo liked that just fine.

Gyr Prisht was sitting beneath a crooked white tree, enjoying watching an entire horde of padawans armed with training batons attempt to subdue the un-armed Master Shenzon, a Nazzar Jedi trained by sword master Mira herself. The agile Shenzon took only a few moments to disarm and neutralise the padawan team, slapping his hands together when he was finished, surrounded by fallen padawans clutching aching hands, feet or joints.

"Now class," he said with a grin, "what went wrong with that attack?"

"You're too fast!" squeaked one indignant padawan who climbed to her feet. "We can't get near you!"

"No, that's not correct youngling," Shenzon said, "If you had worked together you could have overwhelmed me." Obviously this was not true. The tall, horse like Jedi was renowned as a powerful warrior – one of the finest in the new order. "Does anyone want to try again? He asked with a smile. Unsurprisingly, there were no takers for this suggestion so Shenzon cut the lesson short. Gyr Prisht smiled again from her spot under the tree. Shortly, Grandmaster Vallo joined her, taking a seat next to his small, birdlike friend.

"Gyr, a padawan said you wanted to see me?"

"Oh yes, I did Mical. We need to talk. About Master Osti." Mical nodded.

"We sent Mira to go look for him this morning – what about him?"

"Do you remember the meeting, several months ago where the council decided to appoint him as a Master?"

"Of course – if I remember correctly, only you and Master Marr were against the promotion."

"We were. Did you ever wonder why?" Gyr fixed Vallo with a gaze so piercing only a bird species could pull it off.

"Visas told me it was something to do with a vision she had – but she wasn't convinced and had no real reason not to make young Osti a Master. Why do you bring it up?" Gyr frowned and leant in close to the grandmaster.

"I remember teaching Osti myself in language studies – he was bright, gifted, kind and charismatic – everything we look for in a Jedi. It wasn't his abilities that worried me or even his attitude – it was the force around him which got us all excited. And now he's disappeared."

"We don't know that. Mira will find him soon."

"She won't Mical. I know it, Visas knows it and you know it too. Something has happened to Osti, I can feel it through the force." Grandmaster Vallo sighed. He too had sensed that something was wrong with Osti's disappearance.

"Alright Gyr, what if you're right? What's our next step? If Mira finds any trace of…" A scream ripped through the courtyard, silencing the venerable Master. It was not just the scream which disturbed the two masters, sat beneath the tree – along with the scream had come a disturbance in the force. Shenzon rushed over to Prisht and Vallo from inside the academy, a look of worry on his face. All around them the once busy courtyard had come to a standstill – all Jedi present had felt the ripple in the force.

"What is it Shenzon?" Vallo asked frantically.

"It's Master Visas Marr Grandmaster – she's collapsed and won't wake up."

An hour later and Visas Marr still had not been revived. The members of the council still present on Pikar now gathered around her bedside: Chodo Habat, Mical Vallo, Atton Rand, Gyr Prisht and Master Vodnick. Master Habat placed a hand on Visas' prone forehead as she lay in bed, worry creasing his alien face.

"She's weak." He said simply, "she's had a shock and it's hurt her badly. She always was the most sensitive of us." Mical Vallo nodded.

"Will she recover any time soon?" Habat looked at Vallo and sadly shook his head.

"She's comatose and unresponsive right now. We have a Selkath doctor on call who's eager to give her a cocktail of drugs in an effort to wake her up but I just don't think that's a good idea. She went down while meditating – using drugs to interfere with matters of the force should not be encouraged."

"Should we be worried about this?" Master Atton Rand asked. "She obviously saw something through the force and if it was scary enough to put her in a coma…" Mical cleared his throat.

"Calm yourself Atton. Visas has always been our seer – she has to cope with things that we do not. The force is not always kind to her people, you know this."

"I know what her happened to most of her people on Katarr if that's what you mean Mical. These people are not easily disturbed." Mical turned on Atton now.

"Atton please be quiet! I do not want this issue to get around the academy. We need to do some damage reduction here."

"I'm inclined to agree with Atton here – we need to know what we saw. Maybe the drugs might be a viable option?" Gyr Prisht interjected. Chodo Habat looked uncomfortable.

"Look Mical, surely you can see something is wrong here?" Atton spoke again, more frantic this time. "First we lose Brianna less than six months ago. Now Xander Osti is out of contact on a politically unstable system and then this happens. We both know there is no coincidence – there is only the force. We are being attacked. Someone is attacking the Jedi."

"Alright, I admit the possibility, but I don't want Visas woken up until we are certain she won't naturally sometime soon. We have to find out what she saw that rendered her catatonic but we don't need to know that badly." Chodo Habat nodded approvingly. Suddenly a low beeping noise began to echo from the vicinity of Master Vodnick. The Rodian Jedi Master sheepishly pulled out his communicator.

"Sorry everyone, I thought I'd turned it off." He looked at the guilty device briefly and did a double take. "Atton may be right," he said "one of our informers has just got wind… that someone has put a bounty on Jedi." There was silence in the room.

Admiral Nova was at the com station in his office when one of his underlings walked into the spacious room. The young soldier stood to attention and saluted the Admiral.

"At ease soldier" Nova said, barely looking up from his screen. An issue down in the engine room had caught his attention but it wasn't a particularly interesting problem. Apparently a surplus of fuel cells had been used prematurely by the engine crew – just one of the thousands of cretinous mistakes the Admiral had to suffer every day on board such a large ship commanding such a large crew – and now he was determined to punish whoever was responsible.

"Permission to speak sir!" the young Corporal in front of him barked.

"Granted" Nova muttered.

"Sir, urgent news from the Admiralty board. According to reports, Grand Admiral Quasar has been assassinated." This definitely grabbed Nova's attention.

"Are you sure soldier? Quasar is dead?" The soldier nodded the affirmative.

"Well then, we'd better make for Coruscant hadn't we?" Nova said simply. "Dismissed Corporal". The soldier saluted again and left the room. Nova was reeling – the treacherous Hutt had finally done it! He'd come through on his promise to remove Quasar from the equation, paving the way forward for Nova's ascension to Grand Admiral. Now all that needed to be done was to assure (or bribe, whichever was easier) the Admiralty board that he was the right man for the top job. And when they did he could finally gain vengeance on those who had wronged him. And yet… Vogga would expect him to uphold his end of the bargain now that Quasar was dead, and if he didn't, the Hutt could reveal the information that he and a crime lord were in league. Nova's brow furrowed at the thought of being under the Hutt's thumb. He'd have to do something about that: killing Vogga was obviously not an option – the Hutt was notoriously paranoid and picky about who came to see him – but maybe something more subtle was called for. Vogga maintained the lion's share of Hutt power by continually playing his rivals against one another, a game he played well, but if they all worked against him he'd be finished in a heartbeat. Just as Vogga had information of Nova, Nova needed information on Vogga to ensure everybody stayed chummy. Nova rested back in his chair, the earlier irritation about the misused energy cells gone. He needed to do some digging.

Aron Vima and Mordred Veshnar awoke early to a breakfast of canned something from a street vendor. During the night a storm had rolled into Dengkow and now the streets were being continually battered with a torrent of rain. While just the day before had been bright and sunny, today the sky was so dark the sun might not have risen at all. Veshnar had apparently decided to ignore the tension from last night and dive right back into the investigation, first contacting Oodar to see if he had any other leads. Unsurprisingly the frazzled Captain had been up all night chasing his "natural wings" theory and found absolutely nothing. After their impromptu breakfast the two Knights rushed through the rain back to Kyborg Tower, now practically fortified by police as rumours had spread that that was where the murder had occurred. However the residents of Dengkow weren't quite angry enough just yet to go outside in the storm conditions so Vima and Veshnar were the only two non-military personnel near the tower at all. Sopping wet, the Master and Apprentice rode to the top of the tower in the elevator and entered the deserted private suite. The body of Bilik had been extensively photographed and taken from the room in preparation for the funeral. Other than that the room was exactly the same as it had been before, not counting a large Perspex sheet at the window to stop the hurricane winds trashing the crime scene.

"So now what Master?" Aron Vima said casually, eager to know how and when he would be getting off this wretched planet.

"We will continue the investigation as best we can" Veshnar replied, "but bear in mind that once Master Osti gets into contact with the council again he will probably want to take over from us."

"I thought the council wanted this investigation concluded quickly? Chopping and changing who's doing the investigation will surely only waste time won't it?" Vima asked plaintively. Veshnar was unmoved, and the tension from the previous night was showing.

"We will obey the will of the council" he muttered and began once again examining the room in detail. Aron kneaded his forehead. Deep down he knew that he should really try harder at this – he'd been with Mordred for a long time and knew what to expect. But did the man have to be so infuriating? Every function, meeting and mission was treated with such intensity it was no wonder he felt stifled by the retentive Chiss. Vima wanted to really travel, not just hop from one planet to another resolving minor trade disputes between governments. Even dealing with the Red Moon group in the Mirgoshir system had been done every step of the way "by the book". Somehow, Mordred Veshnar could suck all the excitement out of any battle, even if it was for their very lives.

"I'm stumped on this one Master – what do you think… in your professional opinion?" Aron knew the best way of buttering up his Master was appealing to his sense of self. The Chiss Jedi scratched his chin ruefully.

"Well young padawan, the shattered window is what's putting me off at this point. I cannot fathom why a professional assassin would use such a crude and brutal method of entry when using such a delicate and dignified method of execution. "

"Could be two assassins I suppose." Vima suggested, frowning as much as his master.

"I highly doubt it. Something tells me this was a single person, but for an assassin I'm sensing an unusual amount of fear. Why break in? Why break in if the target was asleep and you did not need to wake him to kill him?" Aron Vima felt a prickling sensation at the back of his skull. Veshnar would claim it was the force but shear intuition and dumb luck were probably more prevalent in the realisation.

"Wait a minute Master… do you remember our trip to Hrall a few days before we got the last of the slavers in the Mirgoshir system?"

"Of course, what of it?"

"Well, whilst you were looking for information about the slaver's vessel, I hung out at that old junkyard round the back of the bar. I got talking to an elderly Ugnaught who started trying to sell me all sorts of customisation jobs for the Winged Katarn."

"I can't see the connection…" Veshnar said.

"One of the items he tried to sell me was a vacuum sheet, one of those old fashioned devices for plugging up a breach in a hull when your ship is too old or out-dated to use force fields. They create vacuums when opened and placed on a flat surface to prevent the vacuum of space sucking everything out." Veshnar finally got what his padawan was getting.

"So if one of these vacuum sheets were activated against this window from the inside…"

"The glass would break and be sucked into the room. The Assassin wanted us to think he broke his way in!" Both master and apprentice were ecstatic and for a brief moment the Chiss Jedi Knight lost his composure and gave his young Iridonian padawan a hearty clap on the back.

"Well done Aron! Fantastic detective work!" Master and Padawan shared a brief moment. But all too soon Veshnar snapped back into his traditional straitlaced behaviour. "Alright then, so now we know that the killer merely wanted us to think that this assassination was is some way violent, but it's safe to assume that Bilik was killed in his sleep instead. The needle was a specialist weapon requiring very little strength but almost surgical delicacy and administered whilst the target slept. That's a very specific MO disguised by the broken glass. What should we do next young Padawan?"

Aron was surprised and pleased to be consulted.

"Well, I suppose the next step is finding out how the killer did get in here – if not through the window." Veshnar nodded approvingly.

"I've already thought about that Padawan and the answer is very simple. The vents. This tower has a massive air conditioning system, it's the perfect way of moving around undetected. It's also the only way anyone could have got into this room – the door was guarded." Veshnar pointed to the far corner of the room and sure enough, high up near the ceiling was a very small ventilation grate. Both Jedi walked over and Vima ripped the metal grate away from the wall. The tunnel inside was tiny.

"He must be a very small assassin Master" Vima said with a smile – even the skinny Iridonian could only get a single shoulder in the vent.

"Indeed" Veshnar said and pulled out his personal communicator. He quickly requested a download of the buildings blueprints and brought up the ventilation ducts on the small screen.

"Alright young Padawan – the vents end down in the air conditioning unit in the basement. It's time we found our killer."