Chapter 44
Paste
"Using the protocols recovered from the armor, ZT-47 and I have discovered the nightly rotation for the desk clerk at the library where the artifacts are being stored."
"Good. What do you have so far?" Ahsoka asked the Verpine.
Xho clicked his mandibles together and replied, "Lieutenant Nade Klothir, age 29, Human. On a deeper search, we discovered that he has a profile on a popular Coruscant dating service, screenname OfficerXnXGentleman43. Hacking into the database, we discovered that he has only responded to Human women over 1.7 meters tall with yellow fur."
"What do you mean, yellow fur?" asked Jyssa.
"I think he means hair," Ahsoka responded, while looking Jyssa up and down. "How tall are you again?"
"1.78 me... hey, wait a minute. You're not thinking..."
"Hey, we gotta distract him. The sound of a stun bolt will bring the guards running. We need Arc to relieve the patrol inside the building, so he won't be able to run interference for us and keep the guards outside from peeking in."
"I'm not that kind of Captain!"
Ylenic interjected, "I believe I can help with that problem. If you can distract him long enough for him to turn his back, I know of a Force technique that can render him unconscious."
"You'll have to teach me that one sometime," said Ahsoka.
"I'm not dying my hair," Jyssa said.
Xho clicked his mandibles together, "I'm afraid dye would not be sufficient. None of the Human females that OfficerXnXGentleman43 responded to had fur that was less than 15 centimeters in length."
"All right, so we buy a wig. Cash, so it's untraceable. And we'll want to look at the women he messaged so we can do your makeup right."
"Wait... I have to wear makeup now? I am a karking starship captain. I worked my rear end off to have the kind of life where I don't need to put on a skimpy outfit, slather on a layer of paint, and then go pick up morons at a club so loud that you can't hear what people are saying. This is where I draw the line!"
Arc marched down the stairs to the basement level of the library. He came faceplate to faceplate with another clone at the bottom. "CT-323, reporting for duty."
"RV-428, happy to be relieved. You don't know where the 'fresher is upstairs, do you?"
"Sorry, I'm a last minute replacement for CR-925. Haven't had a chance to go over the layout yet."
"All right. Well, it's your shift now. Enjoy the monotony, and I hope you didn't have caf before your shift like I did."
The other trooper walked up the stairs, and Arc could see that he had been on his feet for a long time. The changes in his gait were subtle, but a fellow clone learned to notice these things.
Bryn Arc, formerly TG-427, felt very out of place wearing another clone's armor, and doing another clone's patrol. And betraying his fellow clones by stealing what they were supposed to be guarding.
But he would have felt even more out of place following orders and attacking his friend and shipmate. Whatever was going on in the government, there was one fact that was clear no matter what.
The Jedi who were with him cared whether he lived or died. And that was more than he could say about the Republic, or this new Empire.
So he marched in as if he belonged there. He checked in with the desk clerk, and the man matched the picture he'd been shown of Lieutenant Nade Klothir. That meant that the plan was on schedule.
Arc started his slow patrol.
A few minutes later, a tall, leggy blonde walked down the stairs.
"Hey, you can't be down here," the desk clerk said.
"Sorry," the woman said sheepishly. "I just... look, it's hard to explain."
"Hard to explain or not, I can't have you down here. I'm sorry, I'm going to have to ask you to leave."
The woman walked over to the desk and leaned against it, "Look, I really need to be out of sight right now. My boss... well, he made a pass at me today, and I just saw his wife here at the library leading a tour group and... I just need to hide for a couple minutes. Can I just stay here?"
She blinked her dark blue eyelids at him, and then she turned her head to show that her blonde hair was pulled back into a very long ponytail.
"Well, I..." he blinked at her, "I suppose I can let you stay here within my sight for a few minutes. What could it hurt?"
She ran her fingernails across the desk, making a rasping sound against the wood. "Thank you so much. It's just so... weird and awkward, you know?"
"I joined the Navy to protect the common citizen. What good would I be if I didn't help you out?" He said. Then he slumped over in his chair, with Ylenic's furry hand firmly grasping the back of his neck.
"It took you long enough to get inside!" Jyssa hissed at him. "And you made noise opening that window. I had to run my nails across the desk to cover it up!"
"My apologies," Ylenic said to her, "I had to wait for Xho to deactivate the security system on that window."
Ahsoka crawled in behind Ylenic, with a heavy satchel slung over her shoulder. It looked like the kind of bag a student would carry books in. "How long is he going to be out?"
"I put him into a trance. He will awaken, quite refreshed, shortly before his shift is up. He will wonder where the trooper patrol is, but that is all. And thankfully, the large amounts of makeup Jyssa is wearing will render it difficult to give a description of her to anyone once he wakes up."
Jyssa made a noise halfway between a growl and a grumble. "I can't believe you talked me into this."
"Come on," Ahsoka said, "we need to get into that locked storage room and see what they've got."
They met up with Arc, who was patrolling the hallways that led around the basement. He quickly reported what he'd learned on his patrol. "It looks like they've got artifacts in three rooms, and they moved the entire history department's main server into another room. The techs are only going through it during the two day shifts, so we're clear for the next six hours or so until the morning crew comes in."
"Good. Emergency exits wide enough to get the server out?"
"In pieces, yes."
"That's all I need to know."
They reached the first door full of artifacts, and Ahsoka pulled a portable fusioncutter out of her satchel and started to cut the door open. Ylenic retrieved a second from her bag, and started to work on the next door.
Two minutes into the work, Ahsoka grumbled, "This would be a whole lot faster with lightsabers."
Eventually they opened the doors, and Ahsoka went into hers. The room was full of all manner of artifacts, some only barely tangentially related to the Jedi. Coins from earlier time periods were in display boxes, an ancient early Jedi lightsaber, complete with a backpack power source hung on the wall.
But there were no holocrons, no books, nothing with the kind of information that would be useful to the enemies of the Jedi... or the Jedi themselves.
She moved on to the next room where Ylenic had just finished rendering the door moot. It appeared to be more of the same.
Ylenic ran his fingers across an ancient breastplate from some war long in the past. "I wonder what the Empire will do to these artifacts?"
"I don't know," Ahsoka said. "But if they really want to wipe out the Jedi... well, we've got a long history. Can they really wipe that out too?"
"They can try."
"Master Yoda always told me... there is no try."
"Do or do not." The older Jedi said. "And right now, as much as I would like to save every single one of these artifacts, I suspect that anything of true informational value would have been claimed by the Jedi Temple long ago."
Between the two of them, it took barely more than a minute to cut open the lock on the door that held the server room. But while Jyssa, Arc, and Ahsoka worked to disassemble the server, Master It'kla took one of the fusioncutters and opened the other two doors.
After loading up an old-fashioned wheeled library cart with computer parts, the kind made to carry heavy retro paper books, Ahsoka felt a tremor in the Force. "You two take these to the emergency exit. I'll check up on Master It'kla.
She found Ylenic kneeling in front of a display case in the last room. There were a selection of what looked like ancient coins in the case, but when she looked closer, she saw that they all had a loop on the top to allow it to be worn as a charm or medallion.
"What is it?" she asked. "I felt you in the Force. Is there something wrong?"
"No," he replied. His voice sounded choked, and a little hoarse. He opened the display and took one of the coins.
"Are you all right?"
Master It'kla closed his eyes, then drew in a deep breath. "I was just a bit... surprised. We Caamasi have unique memories. When a momentous even happens, for good or for ill, it... embeds itself in our mind."
He opened up his hand and showed the coin to Ahsoka. The coin had the profile image of a bearded man on it. Across the top of the coin was a date, more than three hundred years ago. The bottom was a name.
"Keiran Halcyon?"
Master It'kla nodded, and pulled a necklace out from under his tunic. Ahsoka hadn't seen it before. Dangling on the necklace was a nearly identical coin. "A Corellian Jedi tradition. When a Corellian Jedi reaches the rank of Master, a set of these are forged and given to close friends. My friend... the Jedi who fell on Susevfi... was Neeja Halcyon."
The Caamasi Jedi untied the necklace and slipped the second medallion on it. "I know a Jedi should not have attachments... but I cannot bear to see the ancestor of a dear friend be forgotten in some Imperial landfill."
"You're right. A Jedi should not have attachments. But a Jedi should not forget those who have died either." Ahsoka reached out with the Force, and pulled the rest of the medallions out of the case. "We take anything with a name on it. Even if it slows us down."
As she walked out of the room and headed back to the first one to search it again, she could have sworn she heard a faint sniffle from Master It'kla. But Jedi Masters have their emotions under control, so she must have been imagining things.
Author's note: Now that we're done dealing with ancient Sith Lords, I'm happy to have this four-chapter episode be a little lighter in tone than the previous few. :) Also, if anyone here is a fan of the X-Wing series of books, you probably recognized little Ton "I wasn't asked to turn over my bandages, bacta treatments, disinfectant sprays, or tranquilizers either, but I can kill a man with any one of them, under the right circumstances." Phanan, one of my favorite EU characters.