"Huh, an assassin droid. How did it end up in the hold?" Rex wondered out loud after they managed to stabilize Kriari.
They were all still a little shaken from the surprise, but mostly alert and already starting to ask questions.
"The question is: Who smuggled it on board?" Asked Kriari with a lot of residual panic in her, but trying to be of help to everyone.
The thought of possibly having a traitor on board did not sit well with any of them. It was a grimm prospect to have to doubt your own. As they all started to draw possible conclusions, they walked over to the protocol droid that had been hiding behind crates ever since the fight started.
"We're looking for the droid who services the cargo bay." Said Anakin with authority.
"Uh, yes Sir. Are all those creatures dead?"
"That's what I'm trying to find out! You're in charge of the Cargo Manifest, right?" He answered, quickly losing his temper.
He could still feel Kriari's panic, her thoughts and emotions were being broadcasted into the Force like the clearest hologram he had ever seen. It was unsettling how much power she had, he was trying to block her emotions from his own Force space and even if he was making a conscious effort, all he could do was filter them. He still felt all of it, only that with less intensity.
All of this was only adding to the frustration he was feeling at the moment. He wanted it to stop, he wanted to stop feeling Kriari's panic, he was so invested in stopping it that his own temper started to flare.
"Uh, yes, I have it right here." The droid seemed to be a bit skeptical of us, maybe it's circuits had been damaged in the fight.
"Well, where did they come from?" At this point Anakin was very clearly running out of patience. The clones were not going to intervene on behalf of a droid and Kriari was a bit too shaken up still to care.
"It is right here on the manifest"
"'For immediate delivery on coruscant, one container marked medical supplies-' there's no name on this chart! There is no indication of who shipped it!" Anakin was very much on the verge of punching the droid, and everyone was so tired of not getting a straight answer that they wouldn't have stopped him.
"No, sir. Just the senate stamp, always accepted for transport here aboard the coronet."
As the droid said that, there was a strange mixture of dread and relief from both Kriari and the clones.
The traitor was not a trooper, it was a Senator.
The relief came from knowing it wasn't a friend or a brother who had betrayed them, and the dread came from knowing the enemy had infiltrated further up the ranks than they were aware of: the enemy had infiltrated the senate. Kriari had managed to tell the Jedi order the moles had most likely found their way up the ranks, but she had never expected them to have made it all the way up to their governing body.
This information sobered Kriari right up. The panic left her like someone had dunked her head in freezing water, and her mind was suddenly clear and ready for action. She could not allow herself a second of weakness, not when the enemy had been influencing the orders and directives that came from the Senate.
Anakin managed to breathe easier when Kriari regained control of herself, at least a little bit. She stopped clinging to Cody and stood up straighter, nodding her thanks at the clones but saying nothing else. Cody and Rex said nothing, and would be saying nothing on the matter. They both knew she had been struggling the past few months and all they could do was support her and not make her feel like a burden. They respected her way too much to question her, not that it would lead anywhere, Kriari was by no means a liability, so they would not intervene.
Once they evaluated the situation, Anakin and Kriari agreed that this very delicate information would be better delivered in person to their Master, so Kriari was sent up to talk to Obi-Wan while Anakin dealt with the remaining assassin droid.
"One of our four distinguished senators appears to be a traitor, Master." Said Kriari, voice low and trying not to be heard by the other Senators.
"I sense it too, looks like one of our little visitors is still alive. I have an idea how to expose the turncoat." Said Obi-Wan as he saw one of the small spider droids make its way across the floor. "Return to the hull of the ship, destroy the last assassin droid. I'll find out which one of the senators is the traitor."
Kriari was all business now, it was the way she coped when things got rough, she hid behind her soldier persona, her Commander persona, and she held it as together as she could until she was somewhere safe with someone safe. She stood at attention as she addressed her superior and only spoke to him with honorifics.
"Yes, Sir."
Of course Obi-Wan noticed immediately that something was wrong but decided to speak to his apprentice about it later, when he had the energy and time to focus on her and not the situation at hand.
As Kriari made her way down to the hull, she started practicing her breathing and grounding exercises. It was bad already that she had freaked out during a battle, she needed to pull herself back together as fast as she could so that she wouldn't be a hindrance on anyone, or worse, a weakness. She was aware of how bad this looked, she had never panicked like this in battle, and she needed to prevent it from happening again. But seeing the clones used as puppets like they had been after Geonosis… No, she didn't have time for that.
By the time she made it all the way down, Anakin had already drawn a plan of action, they would scatter and look for the remaining droid and kill it. Anakin took his droid and Kriari was stationed with both Rex and Cody. She wasn't sure if it had been Anakin or the clone's decision, but no one seemed to object to it, their worry for her was stronger than the inconvenience it presented. And it made her feel like shit.
"Anakin, Kriari! Tall Merrik is the traitor, and he's taken Satine hostage!"
Kriari could hear the tension in her Master's voice as she tried to concentrate on her surroundings. She had made it a point to extend her Force senses outwards to try and anticipate any attacks they might be facing.
"Copy that, but we've got problems of our own right now." Anakin's voice sounded curt and at the very tail end of his patience when he spoke through the comms.
"Kriari, Cody, Rex, have you found anything?"
"All quiet over here, sir." Rex said before Kriari had the chance to say anything.
That's when Kriari sensed a presence, quite a small one, but a presence nonetheless. She was quite sure that something so small could only be a droid, and where there was one, there was more. She tapped Cody's shoulder and signed towards a fallen clone helmet, casually lying on the floor.
"Wait a minute…. " Cody said as he picked up the bucket.
All hell broke loose when Cody turned the helmet to see innside. There, holding onto the inner lining was a small assassin droid waiting to pounce. Cody fell to the ground, taken unawares by the small but lethal machine. As if on cue, the rest of its companions, foul little things, pounced on us from the crates around us. They crawled onto Rex, Kriari and Cody desperately trying to get their sharp little legs into the crevices in their armor and slash vital arteries that they might find. Kriari got rid of most of the ones on top of her and a few that were on Rex and Cody, but there were too many. Fortunately, Skywalker had heard a stray shot that Cody had fired and had run to their aid, swiftly helping to rid his allies and friends of the tiny awful things.
"Well we found the little ones, what about the mother?"
"Haven't seen it" As Rex said this, Kriari saw a red light from the corner of her eye and pushed the clone out of the way, managing to keep him out of the assassin droid's grasp.
Unfortunately, that meant the Force forsaken thing grabbed her instead. She was not about to be saved again, or be nearly killed by this thing. She was tired of being saved, tired of having to rely on others because of her weakness, tired of the war, but still willing to fight it. She held the thing's metal legs back using the Force, and stabbed it right in the belly with her lightsaber before bisecting it. She was so angry that an animalistic growl escaped her as she got off the ground and faced her downed enemy.
Kriari sobered herself up as the rest of her team tried to check in on her. Her game face was fully on now, her frustration clearing her head.
"We should station troopers at all the escaping pods so Merrik doesn't have a chance to escape," she said authoritatively, looking at Anakin to see if he agreed. "You should go to the front of the ship, support Obi-Wan , I'll head to the back, we can corner any backup Merrik sends."
Anakin felt a little uneasy at the ease with which Kriari's energy shifted. She had mastered the art of compartmentalization, and it was quite impressive for an 18 year old to be able to deal with trauma that well.
"I agree, I'll go to Obi-Wan, you three take the men you need, station them and we'll corner the enemy. Be careful, the traitor will have a plan B if things go south."
"Yes, Sir." chorused Cody and Rex as they watched Anakin leave.
"Never a dull moment with you Jedi, huh?" joked Rex, but only Cody answered.
Kriari had completely shut herself off from the galaxy, and where she would have been a warm, comforting, playful presence, all that was left now was the cold edge of her reason keeping her together.
The two clones talked about it at length in the closed comms of their helmets, but didn't have a better solution than talking to either General Kenobi, General Plo or Wolffe about it. Neither of them knew Kriari well enough to know what to do about her behavior, so they decided to wait until they could talk about it to someone who did. They just hoped it wasn't too late by the time they had a chance to do so.