Coruscant, Senate District
Day Nine, middle of the night
It was an hour after midnight. The huge, old-fashioned bell tower somewhere in the depths of the Uscru District let out a single chime. During the day, the bell would have been inaudible with all the traffic, and even now it could only just be heard over the sounds of speeders and airbuses.
In the Senate District, most of the lights had been turned off. It was as dark now as the upper levels of Coruscant ever got. The lights in Senator Elin's penthouse had finally gone off half an hour ago.
Vythia Archane walked silently to the back of the penthouse. There were two guards at the front, but no one guarded the cargo door. They likely had no need to; short of using explosives, no one was getting in through the heavy metal door.
Once at the edge of the railed walkway, Vythia fired her cable into the roof and jumped off, letting herself hang over the empty drop into the city as she swung at an angle towards the wall. As her movement slowed, she grabbed at one edge of a duracrete slab with her right hand, keeping the other hand on her cable, and climbed up until she reached a narrow ledge on the fifth story.
Standing upright, she put her back to the wall, retrieved her cable, and fired a grappling hook into the duracrete at her feet. The only window to the senator's bedroom was directly below her, now, and Vythia could also keep an eye on the area near the front entrance, even though she could not see the actual door.
The Nautolan woman wound the slack of her grappling cord around one wrist, leaned back, and stood motionless on the ledge in the cold wind. The security patrols would be coming through within an hour, locating and evicting or arresting everyone who did not belong here – including Vythia herself, if she was not cautious. And then, an hour after that, the daily supply deliveries would begin. Vythia was certain that, should there be a murder attempt tonight, it would have to take place soon.
Her task of locating a likely target for this gang of killers had been surprisingly easy. Hilt had not been a discreet person in the least; and Senator Elin, who was young, inexperienced and unfortunately in love, was little better. After only a glance at the number of calls the two had exchanged in the month preceding Hilt's death, Vythia had realized that the young woman was the most likely target of all.
She had warned Commander Fox, of course, and he had tipped off Divo, as well as Senator Elin's personal security detail. But Vythia was not confident that this would be enough. So far, the gang had avoided all efforts to locate them. They had outmaneuvered the planetary security forces and the clones. . . and, somewhat more annoyingly, they'd outmaneuvered Vythia herself. But they would not tonight, not if she could possibly help it.
The chilly, damp breeze blew again, stirring her head-tentacles and bringing her hints of emotion from the deeper levels of the planet. There were so many emotions just touched upon, and more than anything else she sensed the constant fight for survival that was life on Coruscant among the poorer classes.
Vythia leaned back against the cold duracrete and glanced around. She idly wondered what Elin could possibly have seen in Hilt. From what Vythia could find, Hilt had possessed no inner conviction, no definitive morals, and no true ambition – beyond being ambitious enough to, apparently, have his predecessor murdered. But he hadn't used his potentially ill-gained position as senator to further any cause, or even to gather more power. No, all Senator Hilt had been interested in was wealth.
Vythia raised an eyebrow. Perhaps Senator Elin had not actually seen anything in Hilt after all, but had merely been flattered by his attention. It was a weakness many young women shared.
Still, Vythia was not as scornful of Elin as she once would have been. Only a few months ago, emotions such as love were not only foreign to Vythia, they were to be scorned and avoided at all costs. She had been convinced that emotions, overall, caused weakness, inconsistency, miscalculations. . .
In fact, to some extent, she was still convinced of that. After all, it had been her own feelings of admiration and curiosity involving the ancient culture of the Sith that had led to her studying them. Her pride, and her feelings of superiority towards those who could not see the value and strength in the Sith culture, had led more and more to her studying the Sith leaders, their philosophies and lies.
And yet, Vythia had been so confident in her strength of will that she had not felt fear when she began thinking about Sith alchemy. She had hesitated only once, when she discovered the Crystal of Aantonaii and sensed the overwhelming power contained inside it. Fool that she was, she had taken it from Malachor . . .
Some distance away, a speeder backfired, then roared into the traffic pattern, headed away from the Senate District.
Vythia could feel her muscles stiffening from the tense position she had to maintain on the ledge. She checked for any observers, then carefully paced the length of the ledge and back.
The Crystal of Aantonaii. . . She had been awestruck and inspired when she first discovered it, along with the ritual which, she thought at the time, would give her the power of Darth Zenaya. But it hadn't. Her arrogance had been her undoing, and the crystal haunted her now, as well it should. Since performing the ritual on Malachor, Vythia had not gone a single night without Zenaya, and the massive red crystal, appearing in her dreams.
Zenaya . . . Force knew where she was. She had hidden, shielding herself from Vythia's thoughts – though every so often she would make sure that Vythia knew she was still watching, still waiting for the right moment to strike from the shadows. Vythia knew that there would be another confrontation between herself and the Sith woman someday, and some part of her looked forward to it.
The Crystal of Aantonaii itself was somewhere on Coruscant – or so Vythia hoped, because if it was than Zenaya did not have it.
After recovering from her injuries, Vythia had spent some time tracing Cad Bane's ship from Nar Shaddaa. The bounty hunter had gone directly to Coruscant. But what had happened after that, and where the crystal had been sent, and who had purchased it from the bounty hunter, Vythia could not discover.
Perhaps Zenaya had already gotten it back.
Vythia frowned and paced the ledge again. Her goal for weeks had been to find that crystal and destroy it – somehow. The Force-bond in her soul, which had left her connected in some way to both Darth Zenaya and Quinlan Vos, told her that the Crystal of Aantonaii was still important to Zenaya. Not only that, but Quinlan's original mission had been to locate the person buying the artifacts, in the hopes of discovering who the secret Sith was.
If Darth Sidious had not been the one to purchase the crystal, finding and destroying it would still do one of two things: it would anger Zenaya and perhaps draw her out of hiding so the Jedi could deal with her once and for all; or, at the very least, destroying it would inconvenience her. And Vythia very much wanted to inconvenience the Sith woman who had tricked and lied to her, stolen her body, tormented Vythia's entire team, and was now – somehow – focused on rebuilding the Sith Empire.
Yes, inconveniencing the Sith woman was the very least that Vythia would do to her. Ideally, of course, she would kill Zenaya. She must. It was Vythia who had released her on the galaxy, and she was never able to forget it.
Something stirred in her mind – a tinge of cool, calm amusement and a sense of dismissal, followed by a strikingly clear image: Vythia and Quinlan in Trayus Academy, with haunted eyes, their faces and arms covered in whip-marks as they stumbled through a dark labyrinth from which there was no escape.
Vythia brushed the image aside and murmured, "You wish that would happen, but it will not. I have not even spoken to Quinlan since we returned from Malachor, and neither of us has any intention of returning."
Zenaya's replying laughter was almost audible, and her words sounded in Vythia's thoughts. How does that matter? I see the future. You do not.
"Is that where you are?" Vythia asked.
Again the laugh, and a sense of denial. Zenaya was not on Malachor. She was just meditating, idly – almost playfully – reaching through the bond into Vythia's mind and sending her image after image of pain and death.
After seeing herself uncharacteristically sobbing, kneeling with her hands over her face while Quinlan lay there, bleeding out from multiple claw injuries, Vythia became irritated at the Sith woman; she therefore proceeded to ignore her. Clearing her throat, she glanced around at the Coruscant night, checked that all was quiet, and then attempted to close off her end of the Force-bond again.
Zenaya managed to send a final sharp image – Quinlan, with golden eyes and black robes, lifting Vythia off the ground with one hand and choking her against a wall while she struggled weakly and pleaded with him.
Vythia raised an eyebrow, allowing her skepticism to reach Zenaya. She did not and would not plead . . . and she would certainly not kneel there and cry while someone needed immediate medical attention.
Dismissing the vision again, Vythia finally succeeded in closing her end of the bond. Any of those images Zenaya had shown her might be the future, and they might not; regardless, none of them was currently relevant. And it was not as if Vythia trusted the Sith woman to show her an accurate future.
One of Zenaya's recurring attempts since Malachor had been to drive a wedge of fear between Vythia and the Kiffar Jedi – for what reason, Vythia did not know.
Of course, the Sith woman's attempts were not working. Vythia knew Quinlan better than anyone else in the galaxy, and he knew her just as well. . . certainly, each knew the other far better than either had wanted to know anyone, perhaps even better than they knew themselves.
It was unfortunate, but unavoidable. Vythia's way of dealing with it, so far, had been not to contact the Kiffar for anything, and to keep her side of the bond as tightly shut as possible.
He had done the same. Only twice had Vythia felt brief flashes of emotion and thoughts that were not her own or Zenaya's, and they had – thankfully – vanished within moments. One of those had occurred only a couple of days ago; it had been a sense of sharp, nervous anticipation followed by relief and disappointment, and Vythia knew that the Jedi had expected to find a hint of Zenaya's whereabouts, but failed.
Hoping she could find something where he could not, she had almost reached out; but then her common sense reasserted itself, and Vythia had realized that if Quinlan could find nothing, there was nothing to find. She would simply have to approach the problem of locating Zenaya from another angle. And thus, the crystal. It always came back to that Force-forsaken crystal.
But that was not her current mission.
Dismissing the Jedi from her thoughts, Vythia paced along the ledge again, back to her former position above Senator Elin's window.
She was vaguely considering her syndicate contacts, and wondering why they had been unable to find nothing about a massive, red kyber crystal of all things, when there was the faintest sound of a footstep.
A dark figure appeared, abruptly, on a walkway some thirty meters across from her, and Vythia watched him through narrowed eyes, all her focus in the present as she closed her fingers around her pistol.
The person, whoever it was, walked to a position opposite the senator's window and paused. Vythia tightened her grip on the gun, ready to lift it the instant the need arose.
But it wasn't that figure who burst suddenly out of the darkness on the level below her, so fast that Vythia hardly had time to react. As the figure scrambled for the senator's window, a thin pipe raised overhead, Vythia leaped down.
She swung on her cable and released it, landing on the ledge outside the senator's window just as it shattered. Ducking aside to avoid the falling glass, she jerked her gun-arm up into the attacker's face.
As she pulled the trigger, leathery fingers closed hard around her own and yanked her arm aside with ease, making her shot miss completely. Then he wrenched the gun from her hand and threw it. Vythia, a bit surprised at the strength in those fingers, drew her knife in her free hand. This was no human or Twi'lek she faced.
Even as she slashed at him, the would-be assassin shoved past her, nearly knocking her off the ledge, and jerked the pipe up to his mouth.
Vythia kicked him hard in the back of the knee and grabbed his throat with one arm, using him to keep herself on the ledge. The assassin slammed her against the wall, stabbed ineffectively at her, and ran for freedom.
Inside the room, there were shouts from the guards and high-pitched screams of alarm from several females – probably the maids – but Vythia ignored them all. Twisting the grappling hook's cord free of her wrist, she darted after the escaping criminal, who had run onto a covered walkway and was now shielded from her view.
"Got a pursuer!" he was saying, probably into a comm. "I think I lost her for the moment, wait –"
He stopped running, and Vythia also stopped short, tilting her head so that she could hear better.
"Hold on," the voice mumbled. "I don't hear her anymore."
Creeping forward, Vythia tilted her head against the wall of the walkway and peered inside. The figure on the walkway was nowhere to be seen. He must have hidden in one of the alcoves.
After a moment's consideration, Vythia stepped onto the railing and climbed soundlessly up. Lying flat on the roof, she held her breath and listened. Somewhere on the walkway itself, her quarry moved, walked a short distance, and paused again.
Heavy footsteps sounded on the other end of the long corridor, approaching rapidly before they, too, stopped.
"That you, Asher?" the assassin asked. Now that he was speaking louder, Vythia could hear the distinctive rasp of a Weequay's voice.
"Yeah, it's me," said a second voice. "What happened?"
"Someone was waiting above Elin's room," answered the assassin. "I barely got my shot off."
"Kark it!" snapped the other man. "Do we have to go back and check?"
"Nah, I got her for sure. But whoever attacked . . ."
"You don't know where she is?"
"No. I think she stopped following, though. Maybe she was a guard or something."
"Huh, maybe. You know anything about her for sure?"
"Yeah. She was a Nautolan."
Asher swore again.
Coming to a decision, Vythia pushed herself slowly to her hands and one knee. If these men were right, Senator Elin was dead and Vythia's primary objective had failed . . . but she could still attempt to get the murder weapon. Ideally, she would capture both men as well, but that was not a realistic goal to set. If she had the chance, though –
The men were walking away now, talking in voices that would have been too low for a human to make out. But Vythia had no trouble discerning their words as she walked silently along the edge of the walkway roof, a little behind their position.
"Maybe she was a Jedi," the assassin said. "She moved awful fast."
"You moron!" Asher retorted. "Jedi have lightsabers."
"But I stabbed her and she didn't react."
Asher groaned. "I've stabbed a Jedi before, they bleed and feel just like the rest of us humanoids. You ever hear of armor?"
"It wasn't armor," insisted the Weequay. "Felt like cloth."
Cortosis did feel rather like cloth in some ways, so Vythia forgave him that particular oversight.
"Whatever," said Asher after a pause. "Look. . . Jedi or not, I don't like this. The boss didn't want any witnesses."
"It's not like she can identify me or anything," mumbled the assassin.
"No, but if you think she's not following us –"
"How could she? It's completely dark."
"Don't be a fool, Vresh," snapped Asher, in a low voice. "You should know how freakishly good Nautolans are at seeing in the dark."
"Why should I know that?" grumbled Vresh, and from the sound of his voice he'd turned to check over his shoulder. "I haven't worked with the boss like you have."
Vythia smiled to herself and looked ahead to the end of the long walkway. She judged the men would emerge from their cover in less than fifteen seconds. Even if she failed, somehow, they had just given her invaluable information in telling her that the leader of the gang was a Nautolan.
She would thank them momentarily by taking the incriminating murder weapon from their hands.
Increasing her pace, she hurried to the last bit of the walkway and crouched, one hand on the hilt of her electrowhip as she waited for the two men to reach her.
"Still don't hear anything," Vresh said. "She might have lost us."
"Yeah." Asher sounded dubious. "But we'll take a different route, all the same."
They were directly beneath her, now, and Vresh was on her left. Vythia stood upright on the edge of the walkway and gazed down, waiting for the two men to move a few paces out of the shelter of the walkway.
The instant they appeared, she gathered herself and leaped. Before even landing, she'd ignited her electrowhip and lashed out. The coil of electricity wrapped around Vresh's chest, and Vythia jerked her arm, sending him sprawling. Asher had his gun out, but Vythia ignored him, because he wasn't aiming at her head. She was more interested in the blowpipe she'd just caught sight of, hanging from Vresh's belt.
Asher fired twice, and the lasers were easily absorbed by her cortosis vest.
"What?!" Asher exclaimed.
Knowing he would not make that mistake a second time, Vythia swung her whip overhead and lashed at his hand. Asher jumped back, dropping his gun, and she whirled, hitting him again before rounding on Vresh.
As the Weequay staggered to his feet, she kicked his legs out from under him and deactivated her whip.
In the sudden darkness, Vythia had an instant to act, unhindered, while the other two collected their wits. She ripped the blowpipe from Vresh's belt, leaped from a metal windowsill to the top of the walkway, and dropped flat again. Now that she had the murder weapon, she had some leisure to observe the two men – and, possibly, a chance to follow them to their hideout.
Asher was on his feet by now, swearing at the top of his lungs. Clearly, he was either too angry to keep his wits about him, or he had no fear of attracting the guards' notice, despite the blazing lights that now surrounded the penthouse where Senator Elin had lived.
"Quiet!" the Weequay hissed at him. "We need to get out of here – no. Kark! We have to go after her!"
"Why?"
"That filthy little water-witch got my blowpipe."
There was a moment of stunned silence from Asher. "That does it," he said darkly. "We're not going back to headquarters tonight. Let's get to a secure location and inform the boss."
"But if she follows us –"
"We can lose her in the undercity," Asher muttered. "And if she manages to follow us down there, we'll kill her. Now come on, let's move."
Vythia decided that she had no intention of following them into the undercity, especially if they had no intention of leading her to their base.
So, instead, she waited until the men had vanished into the darkness, then got to her feet and walked back along the roof towards the penthouse and the semi-controlled chaos of a murder scene. The lights of the CSF air speeders were flashing, painting the whole scene in blue and red flickers. Officers had surrounded the building, some conferring with the members of the CG who had shown up to assist. Two clones were shouting orders, directing the civilians who inevitably showed up at this kind of scene to get back, and Inspector Divo's voice sounded from inside the penthouse as he tried to contain the situation and calm the panicked members of Senator Elin's household.
When Vythia reached the darkest shadows cast by the searchlights, she climbed down off the walkway roof and glanced over the activity. The Coruscant Security Force men were now inside the building, while the clone troopers stood on guard outside. That was ideal; she had no wish to waste time trying to explain her presence to an officer, since Fox had never told the CSF about her existence.
Stepping to the edge of the shadows, Vythia waited for one of the clones to notice her. It only took an instant, which said something for the alertness of the men on-duty as three troopers spun on her, lifting their guns.
"Stay where you are!" snapped a voice she recognized instantly.
Vythia raised her hands as rapid footsteps approached from her right, and two ARC troopers halted in front of her.
Casting a brief look at the red-and-grey kamas they wore, she said, "Detain me if you wish, Kilo and Steele, but I must speak to Commander Fox immediately."
Steele lowered his gun without a word.
Meanwhile, Kilo let out a hefty sigh. "Agent Archane," he said, sounding tired and resigned. "Why didn't you announce yourself beforehand?"
"I did not wish to explain my existence to Lieutenant Divo's men," she said. "And it was a good test of your men's alertness."
"They might have shot you," Steele pointed out, not sounding worried about it. If anything, he sounded concerned by the potential inconvenience of it all, and Vythia smiled a little.
"All right, men, stand down," said Kilo to the other troopers. "It's just our informant. Steele and I will take her to the commander."