The Force Wills - Chapter 151

If there was one place in the Jedi Temple that I could lose hours and hours in, then it was the Jedi Archives.

Seemingly endless racks of softly blue glowing data slates arranged on multiple levels, with each rack having its own historic artifact display encased in transparisteel or a bust of some famous Jedi of the past. It somehow managed to encapsulate the feeling of an ancient library, a temple of knowledge, yet there wasn’t anything old about the technology in use. The only sound you heard was the soft footsteps of Jedi coming and going on soft carpet, the rustling of their robes, and the hum of cooling systems in each holo rack.

This wing of the archives had two open floors on either side of a central walkway with a line of work desks in the center.  The ribbed arched ceiling towered over me at one of these desks as I went through the somewhat tedious process of uploading and editing everything my proxy had recorded on Raydonia in regard to the phrik loving, Force sensitive civilization that had built the temple in the Undergrove there. Not to mention typing in my own conclusions in a report attached to the footage.

I kept my senses perked outward, keeping track of every Jedi that had a clear sightline on me, of which there were five, and acutely aware of no less than six security sensors that were in this archive hall.

Satisfied, I returned to my work and mildly despaired at the sheer mind numbing tedium of obeying the archive’s entry format in my report.

Wikipedia or the old APA style of academic writing I remembered from my previous life was rather simple in comparison to the practically arcane style required for the Jedi Archives. Not surprising when you were dealing with a style developed and refined over more than eight millennia and could probably trace its foundational roots to the Je’daii era.

As I was still a padawan, I could expect my entry of knowledge in the archives to face double the amount of scrutiny from the archivists and Master Jocasta Nu. Peer review had nothing on a Jedi style peer review.

My fingers blurred over the touchpad keys - I was used to it by now after fifteen years, but I would dearly love having a mechanical keyboard again.

For four hours I hunched over the workstation, doing a first draft, second, editing, referencing the style guide, going back, fixing mistakes and by the end of it I was nursing a mild headache.  

I let a final spell check go through the embedded droid intelligence in the workstation.

When that was done, I read through it three times. 

Frak it, I slapped the submit key and stretched my arms and legs out.

A quick look at the chrono on my wrist.

I saved a copy to a data chit before pulling it out and pocketing it in my belt.

With more time to kill, I began randomly browsing, letting a search for Jedi Sentinels carry me down a path.

It led me to investigative techniques, forensics and eventually criminal psychology, most of which were transcribed into the archives within the last millennium, with updates being done practically every month for the last century as technology walked hand in hand with criminality. Law enforcement was almost always playing catch-up as the initiative and creativity of the galaxy’s crime syndicates truly knew no bounds.

My comlink chirping for attention was a surprise, as I was keeping my attention away from the probability lines, making triply sure my reactions in the next hour would be as genuine as possible.

I quickly activated a localized sonic privacy field built into the desk, which would allow me to have a normal conversation.

Above my arm the half-body holo appeared of an older human Jedi; balding, gray-white hair, goatee on his face and intense, scrutinizing brown eyes. He wore a classic Jedi beige tunic, with brown synleather flowing over his shoulders, directly into a belt that was festooned with pockets, gadgets and tools, most of which I recognized at once.

I could perceive immediately that my interlocutor was somewhere in the guest quarters wing of the Temple - where Jedi who needed temporary accommodation were housed.

His face was maddeningly familiar as well, but courtesy didn’t give me the time to mull on it.

“Master?”

“Padawan Tano, a pleasure to meet you. My name is Master Eno Cordova.”

I was sincerely tempted to smash my head against the work desk repeatedly.

Eno Cordova, the Jedi Explorer and master, who would play such a huge role in the future of Kal Cestis, contacting me not half an hour after I had submitted my Raydonia report.

Oh, for frak’s sake… of course the ‘phrik aliens’ were Zeffo! The conclusions and realization fell on me like a ton of bricks. The fact that he was back on Coruscant from his work in the field… 

I could chart so many futures and nuances with prescience, yet the Force loved finding ways of making me look like a blind mole sniffing my way through the kaleidoscope of time and space.

“Master Cordova,” I bowed my head in custom, “To what do I owe the honor?”

“I suspect you know, you did after all submit an article of knowledge into the archives just half an hour ago. I have a number of keyword and pattern alerts in the system.”

“I’m surprised that it went through immediately, usually Master Nu and four other archivists need to sign off before it enters general circulation.”

His mouth quirked in a brief smile, “Master Nu and I have an understanding. I receive certain articles before it can find its way into the system. I’d rather read the words of the author without any filtering or before any bias can be applied. As it so happens, my current field of study is exactly the aliens whose temple you discovered in Raydonia.”

“That’s amazing, do you have a name for them?” I asked with an excited outward mask.

“In Basic, we have adopted the name Zeffonian. I have already set foot on their ancient homeworld, Zeffo, a few years ago and traced them to a few other planets, including Kashyyyk. I’ve returned only recently and been spending the last week delivering my preliminary findings into the archives.”

“Oh, so was the entire race Force Sensitive?”

“The majority of them were, whilst a minority was ‘blind to the Life Wind’ as they would say.”  

“I see. So you have further questions for me? I tried to be as thorough as possible in the article,” I said, feeling somewhat anxious at having Cordova himself reading my work.

“It was an acceptable article, Padawan. The holorecordings are superb work and I’m already applying my own translation programs to decipher the writing on the reliefs. The ‘map’ of Zeffonian exploration is especially helpful in refining other maps I have found on Zeffo. Whilst not precise, it will help. Yet, I would please like to meet you in person to discuss this further and gather direct eyewitness impressions from you.”

“Certainly, when would you want to meet?”

“Whilst I am on Coruscant now, my schedule is entirely flexible, padawan. I am not due to leave for another week, whilst my starship is going through an extensive maintenance cycle.”

A quick check of the probability lines… it could work.

“Well, I’m in the Dondann Hall of the Archives right now, Master,” I said leadingly.

He tilted his head in thought, smiling, “No time like the present then. I’ll be there soon.”

“Master,” I bowed.

The holo rippled out of existence.

Since Cordova had no reason to rush, it took him nine minutes of unhurried walking and turbolifts to enter into the Archives and another two minutes to reach the doors to the Dondann Hall.

They hissed open and he gave me a friendly smile as he approached my desk.

I stood and we exchanged formal proper bows.

“May I?” he asked politely, gesturing to the open seat next to mine.  

“Of course, master.”

“All right, now tell me everything, from the moment you became aware that the temple was significant, every detail. How you felt as you walked those ancient halls, what impressions you got from the reliefs through the Force, the very walls and floors. Leave nothing out, no matter how insignificant you think. I want no bias in the telling. Don’t filter yourself.”

I could do that, falling back into memory technique with the Force and began talking softly.

Barely a few minutes in, he paused me, “Could it be possible you may have missed something because you were only there via this… proxy droid?”

“They are rated for full sensory immersion, Master. I don’t just rely on the physical hyperspace comlink for data into my brain, the Force itself carries the experience as well.”

He thoughtfully scratched his beard, “Fascinating. Perhaps I should enquire into gaining such a system for myself. It would certainly make exploration more efficient. Imagine, I send the droid to a target planet in a ship, whilst I remain on Zeffo and continue the research there.”

“Getting mostly rid of travel time and dealing with hazardous exploration is why the proxy droids were developed.” I reached into a pocket to hand him a data chit. “Contact details for MandalMotors. I’ll be sure that they give you and the Explorer Corps a discount.”

He chuckled and accepted it, “You just happen to walk around with business chits?”

“I’m an owner, have a seat on the board and have a duty to the company, a little marketing never hurt anyone.”

“Normally, I’d chide any Jedi for such behavior, but since you’re the Mandalorian Jedi, I’ll make an exception-”  

The stillness of the archives were shattered.

Through the floor, I felt it rattle as if someone had used it as a giant drum.

Instinctively, I held a Silence Sphere around my head, to blunt the deafening rattle as the shockwaves permeated throughout the temple’s greater superstructure.

Cordova’s form blurred as he ducked underneath the workstation and I followed a moment later.

The shockwaves were just as quickly ameliorated and hopefully that indicated that the dampeners had held. After the last bombing of the temple, the Jedi Council had commissioned the installation of starship grade inertial dampeners and internal shielding throughout.

Small red lights popped out the ceiling hall and began flashing.

“Code 2 emergency,” echoed a droid’s voice throughout the Temple over the PA. “Hangar Bay 1 and 2 and adjacent levels under category 1 lockdown. All non-essential personnel are to evacuate adjacent hangar areas and temple wings. Jedi security response teams four through nine, report to Hangar Bay 1, establish security cordon. Medical Response Teams report to the main hangar bay level. Jedi Temple Complex is under Category One Lockdown. Temple Shields are raised and airspace is closed.

“All Jedi and non-Jedi personnel are to remain in place. Jedi Temple Guard and Clone security forces, initiate a level three sweep.”

A flash of blue light and energy drew my attention to the main entrance to the hall as a shield rippled into existence.

“Internal blast doors and shields engaged.”

I met Master Cordova’s grim eyes and saw in them a shared understanding.

This was going to be a long day.

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There were 14 other Jedi in Dondann Hall when the lockdown occurred.

Cordova was the highest ranked and oldest among us, so he gathered us together around the central workstations for mutual safety and protection.

There was nothing to do but wait until the security sweeps were finished and lockdown lifted, so everyone found something to occupy the time on the workstation computers.

Cordova resumed the interview on Raydonia with me and it wasn’t long until both he and I were elbow deep in the archives, using analysis programs on the footage. He even shared his own research on Zeffo, showing me snippets of his own articles and reports. I drank it all in with eagerness.

“So you think the binog was extremely important to the Zeffo?”

I stared at the projected holo of the relatively giant amphi-mammalian creature, just snoozing in the distance from where Cordova had recorded the image.

“Undoubtedly,” he tapped a key, showing a full slideshow of zeffonian sculpture and art, depicting the binog in various contexts, but they were all universally positive.

“Have you determined why?”

“Only theories at this point,” he sighed with frustration. “The binog is seemingly native to Bogano, but is found on many Outer Rim worlds. I believe their widespread seeding is entirely due to the Zeffo. As far as why they are revered, well, the binog may have played a vital role in early zeffo civilization, perhaps defending the zeffo tribes from predators. Then as the zeffo grew in strength and power, they came to adopt their former protectors. Not as pets, but a more mutual symbiosis. Binog live for several thousand years, but they only breed once in that lifetime. Yet, given the population that exists in the Outer Rim, it’s clear they had help to maintain their numbers.

“Also interesting is that in every world that features binog, the local cultures have a strong aversion to hunting them. It’s either considered very bad luck to do so or it's even inscribed in local law to be illegal. Any offworlder attempt to hunt a binog is also fiercely resisted, believing that to do so would bring disaster upon the land.”

“Well, they’re a formidable creature to hunt,” I gestured to the holo. “You’d almost need an AT-TE’s main gun to have any hope of denting the hide or doing significant damage.”

“I’ve met many hunters in my travels, padawan. They’d see any creature the size of a binog as a challenge to overcome. Yet, when I asked them why they don’t hunt binog, the answer is always, ‘Not worth it.’”

“That’s weird, the webbed ivory spines running the length of the backs and the massive pelts alone would be worth a fortune on the hunting markets.”

“Precisely,” Cordova smiled with a light of eagerness in his eyes. “I believe the zeffo gifted their former protectors with more than just interstellar transport and assisting their stunted reproduction. I think they used their understanding of the Life Wind to actually imbue something akin to the Jedi Mind Persuasion.”

“Did you sense anything like that when you were close enough?”

“No, but I was no threat to the bogan and had no intent to harm it. Even in experimentation, when I summoned that intent and lit my lightsaber, the creature was unimpressed, merely opening a lazy eye towards me and resumed its nap. It had a clear supernatural ability to see through my false intent.”

I couldn’t help a giggle at the mental image that conjured.

Further conversation was interrupted when the shield covering the door shimmered out of existence, before it was slammed open, admitting several masked and traditionally white robed Temple Guards with their lightsaber pikes in hand. Following them was a twelve man clone security squad, the lieutenant holding a scanning wand.

“All Jedi, single line to the right!” barked the lead Temple Guardsman.

We dutifully obeyed.

The clone began marching down the line, waving the scanner up and down each Jedi and verifying IDs.

He passed over Cordova without issue.

The scanner was waved over me next but the lieutenant paused when he got to my identity.

“Commander Tano, we were instructed to tell you to contact Master Yoda as soon as possible. Your comlink has been reenabled and will work through the lockdown.”

“Who gave that order?”

“Master Windu.”

I nodded, “Understood.”

The scanning continued without further incident and every Jedi in the hall was seemingly cleared of suspicious contraband or was not using a holo disguise. I’d also surreptitiously been looking at their biology, just in case we had another clawdite changeling among us.

“Jedi, you are cleared to proceed directly to your quarters. Remain in place there, until the general lockdown is lifted,” ordered the Guardsman, his voice distorted hollowly by his facemask.

Everyone bowed in acceptance.

The security teams organized themselves and marched out of the hall.

“Well, it was a pleasure to work with you, Padawan Tano,” Cordova smiled, bowing his head slightly to me.

“And you, Master.”

“Should you ever find yourself called away from this war. Please don’t hesitate to contact me. The Explorer Corps is always looking for those like you.”

“I will, Master,”

He nodded and left for the hall’s exit after securing his research on the workstation.

A quick tap on my comlink began the call to Yoda.

The Grandmaster answered immediately.

“Padawan, to Meditation Room 14, you must go. Your passage, cleared it has been, with the Temple Guard.”

“Understood, Master. On my way.”

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Room 14 was on one of the upper levels of the main temple ziggurat and commanded a nice view of the northern side, which housed the main public entrance and towering Jedi statues that guarded the wide expansive walkway.

Yoda was seated on one of the cushions, his gnarled green visage clearly showing his troubled state of mind. Anakin stood near the window with folded arms, glaring out into the distance.

The grandmaster made a flick of a clawed finger and the door closed behind me. At the same moment, I felt three different devices activate, which would scramble a wide variety of possible listening devices and sensors. In addition, I felt something that… crystallized?... the Force around me. My eyes were immediately drawn to a cube device on Yoda’s lap that looked like a holocron, but it was definitely something else.

“Master, what is that?”

“Hmmm, ancient device. Taken from the secret Archives, I did.”

“Secret Archives?” I asked with clear interest.

“Only accessed by the grandmaster of the Order. Not on Coruscant, it is. After you described the Shroud and the great access it gives our enemy to this temple, searched I did, for a solution. Device built during the last war against the Sith. Allowed Jedi commanders to hold meetings in the field, no fear of the enemy observing through the Force.”

“If it will work against him, that we’re not too sure about,” Anakin said, gesturing with hand to shutter the window blinds, plunging the room briefly into darkness before a low light came on from the walls.

I nodded and plunged forward into prescience, which wasn’t affected by the device. It was only when I tried using farsight or any other perception that I felt my gaze penned into the boundaries of the Force crystallization.

“Prescience unaffected, everything else is limited to this room.”

Yoda gave a grumbling sigh, “Much it was to hope for then. My search I will resume. Ancients must’ve had a way to defeat Sith foresight.”

“It could be that the enemy’s talent is singular in this aspect, Master. That it has never been encountered or fought against before.”

“Perhaps. Speak through Bonds we will.”

I nodded and stepped forward, placing my hands on the shoulders of both. The Force crystallization made things slippery and difficult, but I eventually managed.

“Ahsoka, did you know?” was Anakin’s first immediate question.

I folded my arms and raised a brow, “Of course I knew.”

“We have fifteen dead, twenty wounded, three in critical. Seven Jedi died!”

“Are we going to argue about how my prescience is best used? I seem to recall us hashing this out multiple times on Mortis.”

“Yes, but you also agreed to tell us in these cases-”

“Unless, you knowing would affect the outcomes negatively,” I glared pointedly. “We are in the heart of the enemy! Right now, his gaze is fixed on the temple. Studying how we respond to this calamity. We need to keep him interested here and deliver a flawless performance of what he expects.”

Anakin studied me with a shrewd stare, “You’re doing something.”

I nodded, “As we speak, HK-47 is infiltrating his secret holding in The Works.”

“Hmmm, dangerous this is, Padawan Tano. Should HK-47 fail, the enemy will know his most secret stronghold on this planet, compromised it is.”

“Yes, but there is no better time than now on the probability lines, as far as I can see.”

Anakin wearily rubbed his face, “So, what is HK’s primary goal?”

“Finding any and all computer systems, copying any data without detection and leaving.”

The murderous droid was doing a few other things, but they didn’t need to know, such as leaving a hidden data harvester program, which would randomly send out microbursts to the Holonet. The data packets would then take such a dizzying route throughout the Core Worlds that it would completely obscure and frustrate tracing.

“Done it is then,” Yoda sighed. “When data received, brief us you will?”

“Yes, master.”

“Turn now to matters at hand,” he spoke aloud. “Assigning I am, the investigation of the bombing to Master Damsin. Master Sinube, unavailable unfortunately.”

“What about Master Vos?”

Yoda shook his head, “Undercover assignment he has been given. Requested Master Damsin has, that you join her, as part of your training, you must.”

“Understood, master.”

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The internal lockdown on the Temple was lifted three hours later, allowing general operations to resume. The external lockdown would remain until the investigation had at least finished interviewing all the personnel and witnesses.

I met Taria outside the thoroughly wrecked Hangar Bay 1.

“Ahsoka,” she nodded and tossed me a handheld flashlight and portable scanner in a pad form factor with its own screen. I easily caught both and looked down into the scanner with interest as it sprang to life. “That’s a specialized forensic scanner, something no Sentinel should be without. It also has some personal modifications I made. The company that made these is good, but they’re too slow to listen to investigators that use them in the field. Come along, and walk directly behind me.”

We emerged through the open heavy bulkhead, which had done an admirable job of containing the worst of the explosion.

Hovering lights had been brought in, which cast the wreckage and damaged ships lining the entire bay into an eerie scene. LAAT gunships, various makes and models of undercover civilian spacecraft converted to Jedi use and Delta 7 Aethersprite fighters in various states of damage was evident.

Taria brought out her forensic pad, tapped a few buttons and from behind us a dozen tennis ball sized droids flew into the hangar, which began radiating visible blue scanning beams in a methodic pattern.

We paused in the middle of the destruction. “Tell me Ahsoka, look at everything as a whole, what do you see?”

I made a point of using every sense I had, even using farsight to peer to every corner of the massive bay. “It was a cascading explosion.”

“Good, if slightly obvious, with all the fuel and ordnance in here, it wouldn’t take much to create this level of destruction.” We waited until the scanning droids finished a single pass of the entire volume. “Collating data from security scanners and…”

More droids flew into the bay, beachball sized spheres with glistening white bodies and they settled themselves into a grid pattern above our heads. Light emerged from their bellies, until they resolved into holographic projections that overlaid onto the hangar bay all around us.

Wrecked gunships gained blue hues as they were visually restored to what they once were, other ships became almost pristine again, and the holographic ghosts of the various personnel who had been working there appeared around us, just going about their day.

“That’s impressive,” I had to admit.

“What you’re seeing is just a few seconds before the blast,” Taria tapped her datapad and the entire collated holoimage began moving.

The moment of the blast caused a brief white out that left me flash blinded briefly, the image data was resolved in the immediate aftermath of the blast, showing the surging explosion and debris slowly moving outward as Taria slowed the playback. 

“First explosion came from this gunship,” she pointed to a LAAT on the left side of the bay.

We walked closer to the ship in question which was now just a mangled ruin with barely any clue that it had once been a vessel. It looked like a giant had crumpled and torn it apart.

She rewound the playback and I closed my eyes briefly to avoid the flash this time.

Now we were staring at a fully intact holographic gunship, with a single technician standing beside it, with his arms inside a maintenance panel and ratcheting something inside with a tool.

Taria played the holo forward in time… explosion.

She rewound and played it again, this time with a spectrum filter that spared our eyes from the flash blinding.

This time it was clear.

“A suicide bomber?”

One moment the tech was there, the next an explosion clearly centered on his chest. Most of him was vaporized instantly, but his extremities were ripped off, both arms buried in the gunship’s guts, at least until the ship itself exploded. The debris sailed across the hangar, beginning the chain reaction of secondary explosions.

Taria rewound everything again, and walked closer until she could look directly into the face of the tech.

“Tell me Ahsoka, does that look like someone trying to blow himself up?”

The tech was an abyssin, a species known for their prominently large single eye and regenerative abilities with a minimum 300 year lifespan. This one had green skin, and stood well over two meters tall. Their faces were humanoid enough that I could infer facial expressions with no real problem.

“No, he’s frustrated, the repair he’s making is giving him issues.”

“I agree. Security scanners would’ve caught him walking in with any conventional explosives on his person or even if it was swallowed or surgically implanted. We are clearly dealing with something exotic. No, he was merely the vessel for whatever device was used and at least based on his general demeanor, he had no idea he would die when he came to work this morning.”

“Who is he?”

She ran a few reference scanning programs, but an answer was quickly forthcoming as there were only a few abyssins employed by the Maintenance Corps.

“Dilen Rhorn.”

His employee profile projected as a holoscreen appeared in front of us. We paid particular attention as his psych test results scrolled past.

“He passed every test to work in the Temple with flying colors.”

Technicians and civilians, even in peacetime, went through numerous screenings to pass muster as employees of the Order. It was a necessity due to the Jedi’s policing role against criminals. That was only increased during wartime and even the older employees had gone through repeated screenings.

Rhorn had passed them all. He was a model employee in every respect. There was even an annotation that working for the Order had been a lifelong dream since childhood - clearly stemming from disappointment that he hadn’t been found as a Force Sensitive.

“Yet somehow he became a bomb that killed dozens,” Taria’s lips were pursed, her jaw muscles subtly bulging in repressed anger.

A chirping alarm from one of the scanner droids drew our attention.

We both stared into our forensic datapads as the results came through.

“NM-K nanodroid residue on the gunship debris leading directly from our position. Well, that begins to explain things,” I said dryly.

Taria raised an eyebrow at me, “Do explain, padawan.”

Another test.

“NM-K reconstitutor nanodroids are mostly used in industrial electronic applications. At only 1.5 nanometers in length, they aren’t detectable except by dedicated scanners at close range. If you reprogram them, you can tell them to do all manner of interesting things. Such as using the carbon and other exotic metals inside an abyssin to become a volatile explosive. Most likely generated inside the fat layers and isolated so that it won’t poison the victim before the bomb can do its job. The nanodroids could also be programmed to only trigger the explosive at a certain time, when Rhorn is known to be working here. Therefore no transmission detonator is needed at all.”

“Good and what conclusion do you draw further from that?”

“Unless he was brainwashed recently, it means that he was not aware of being infected with the nanodroids. It implies that our bomber knows Rhorn’s schedule very well. Perhaps an acquaintance, friend, lover or a co-worker.”

She nodded, “Which is our next task. I’m going to procure us some transportation and organise permission through the lockdown for us to investigate Rhorn’s place of residence. In the meantime, I want you to interview any cognisant survivors who were working here. Ask them about Rhorn or anything strange they may have noticed about his behavior in recent weeks.”

“Yes, mas- Taria.”

She gave me a smile in response to my lapse and patted me on the shoulder.  

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My feet carried me to the Halls of Healing, and I was thankfully only stopped on the way once, by a random joint Clone and Guardian patrol.

The subsequent interviews with the survivors were rather frustrating.

Rhorn was not exactly a popular sentient amongst the Maintenance Corps and was also the definition of a loner.

However, my next interview bore a some fruit when I spotted the big, hairy form of a familiar lasat lying on biobed, practically covered in bacta bandages grumbling at healers that he was perfectly fine.

“Chief Nus,” I smiled.

“Ah, Padawan Tano,” he grinned widely, revealing very intimidating teeth, “Please tell me you can convince this bunch that I can get off my back. It’ll take more than a mild explosion to knock this lasat into the afterlife!”

I chucked merrily at his attitude. “I’m afraid I can’t tell your healers to do anything when it comes to your continued medical care.”

“Bah, was worth a shot. Seems like they’ve got you investigating this. How can I help?”

“What can you tell me about the late Maintenance Technician Dilen Rhorn, beyond the obvious fact that he is a fuel line and droid specialist?”

“Well, liked to keep to himself. Didn’t bother folk. He came and went as his schedule dictated. Never once late. Very punctual and detail oriented. Not surprising for someone working with fuel day in and day out. One mistake and it's all over, not just for him but all of us. Please tell me he didn’t cause this.”

“I’m afraid I can’t say, Chief. Did you notice anything in his behavior over the last few weeks that was odd or out of character?”

“He was looking a bit sick last week, but he isn’t the type to just let that get in the way of his work. He was one of the old hands in the Maintenance Corps, everybody looked up to him and he was consistently high in the performance reviews, but never let it get to his head.”

“Think back further, let’s say six months or even a year. Did you notice any sudden changes in him that stuck in your mind?”

Nus hummed thoughtfully, his eyes looking upward, then I sensed him becoming rather uncomfortable and awkward. “Uh, not sure I should say, but you know we lasat have a very good sense of smell, relative to most sentients?”

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“Well, we do. Anyway, it was maybe four… or was it five months ago. Rhorn arrived with a lightness to his step and smelling of… you know…” Nus winced, his eyes pleading with me to understand a word that he clearly didn’t want to say.

“This is a formal interview, Chief, which is being transcribed,” I patted the forensic datapad. “I can’t put words in your mouth.”

Nus looked left and right, confirming the nearby occupants of the neighboring biobeds weren’t listening too closely, “He smelled of… sex.”

“How did that stand out to you? Intercourse is a natural thing to happen in someone’s life.”

“Yes, I get that, but for someone like Rhorn - he’s always perfectly clean. Didn’t come to work a day without smelling like the cleaning products he uses, in all the time I’ve known him. Yet on this day his clothes were rumpled, he smelled of intercourse and with a human woman at that.”

“So he got a girlfriend, again, it happens, Chief.”

“Yes, but it’s known among the Maintenance Corps that Rhorn considered his service in the Jedi Temple as something… sacred. That he even followed the Jedi Code in his own way, even though he wasn’t an actual Jedi.”

I quickly referenced Rhorn’s psych eval again. This was the big problem with the formalized nature of these things. Usually, it was a single Jedi or even a group of them who had to conduct a biannual evaluation of hundreds of people and even the most studious or attentive would let such a detail slip through. It could’ve also just been a coincidence that Rhorn got his new girlfriend just a few weeks after the last evaluation… or it was enemy action.

“That’s admirable,” I said carefully. “Anything else, Chief?”

He thought about it for a few moments, “Sorry, Padawan. That’s all I can say about him really. As I said, he was a loner. Barely exchanged words with him that weren't about work, when we were on the same shifts.”

“Thanks anyway, Chief. I wish you a speedy recovery. Force be with you.”

He gave me a casual salute and grinned viciously, “Good luck, Padawan Tano. I hope you find who did this and shove your lightsaber in their gut.”

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I met with Taria in a much smaller hangar bay in the northern face of the Temple, dedicated to small craft and speeders.

She was already seated in what I recognized was a SoruSuub XP-18 sport airspeeder, an ancestor of what a future Luke Skywalker would use on the desert sands of Tatooine. This one only had two outboard nacelles for the repulsorlift engines, was more blocky in appearance and had a fully enclosed canopy over the driver and two passenger seats.

“Jump in and you can tell me what you discovered on the way.”

I hopped onto the seat and closed the bubble canopy over us as the engines whined in higher pitch before Taria put her foot down.

We blasted out of the hangar and into the sky around the Temple, immediately angling to join one of the outbound sky lanes heading west.

I noted as we turned that there was a crowd of a few hundred people gathered at the base of the steps to the public approach to the Jedi Temple, and they weren’t tourists.

“Family and friends of the wounded and dead, waiting for word, which the anti-clone war crowd saw as prime chance to come out and protest,” Taria commented wryly.

I quickly got my personal pad out and sent off a text message to Yoda and Hermione via Fulcrum, before telling Taria what I had discovered about Rhorn.

“A seduction,” she concluded immediately. “But we need evidence at his home to confirm it.”

She turned the speeder into a city trench and we began descending through Coruscant’s levels. 

We eventually emerged into the sixth sublevel and ignored the sky lanes to fly a direct course straight to a tall apartment building just a few minutes flight from the titanic support struts that also acted as direct access from the surface.

She brought us in to land on the apartment roof.

“Not exactly a conventional parking spot.”

“Too much chance it gets stolen down here in proper landing areas,” she explained, powering down the engines.

We emerged onto a wide expanse of the roof, covered in air conditioning machinery. The air was hot and humid, the din of the undercity level rumbling over us. She led the way straight towards a roof-access turbolift, using a small lock override device to open it within a few seconds.

“Nice,” I grinned.

“Built it myself. You’ll find that on occasion it is wiser to leave conventional signs of your passing, instead of supernatural means. That way anyone coming after will not see a Jedi forcing entry, but instead merely someone skilled in slicing and locks.” She hit the button for the 27th level.

A few seconds of rapid descent later, we emerged onto a floor that while clean, was not in the best of repair. The paint was old, the floor under our feet pitted with cracks in the tiling and a number of the apartment doors we passed were not even mounted - leading to empty dark abodes with no furniture inside.

Taria stopped in front of a closed door with the number 152 emblazoned on it, which had a code lock keypad mounted next to it and a slot for a keycard.

She used the same slicing device, tapping on the integrated keys briefly to run a new program, before pulling out an interface probe, which she smoothly inserted into the keycard slot.

Mere seconds later the keypad flashed green and the door slid open smoothly on its runners.

The apartment beyond was… pristinely ordered.

There was no dirty clothes laying about, furniture arranged to compliment the available space, which I estimated was roughly seventy square meters in total. The walls were mostly bare, with the exception of a few large e-frames that were displaying various nature scenes from a variety of planets, one of which was distinctly from Kashyyyk and showed a beautiful long shot of wroshyr trees surrounding a lake with the distinctive arched mountains in the distance, partially obscured by mist and low clouds.

“Ahsoka, take this.” She handed me a scanning wand with a connected display pad. “Sweep for nanodroids. Touch nothing.”

I bowed in acknowledgement and began in the main living room, whilst she pulled out her forensic scanner and headed into the bedroom.

There were no traces here, so I moved to the kitchen.

It wasn’t particularly large, with only a single heater stove. The pantry cupboards were partially stocked with food, as if he was halfway through his monthly grocery cycle. Dishes were clean and neatly stacked.

I ran the scanner over the plates - nothing.

Nanodroids really didn’t like the cold, so I ignored the freezer and waved the scanner over the pantry boxes - nothing.

Okay, next logical place, the garbage disposal inside the cabinet.

Bingo!

The food remnants had numerous small colonies of the exact nanodroid used in the bombing. These ones were rather futilely trying to follow their programming to make a bomb from the carbon in the food, only managing a basic ammonium nitrate, which would eventually be enough to wreck the disposal, but not much beyond that.

I made sure to record the evidence before moving on.

In the bedroom, I found Taria thoughtfully staring into her scanner, standing in front of a small e-frame standing on a bedside table.

The bed itself was a smaller double size and the sheets were perfectly folded.

“Found anything, Ahsoka?” she asked idly.

“Nanodroids in the food disposal.”

“So either he was fed the droids unknowingly or he ingested them on purpose.”

“I’m leaning towards the former.”

“It certainly seems that way, doesn’t it,” she said and tapped the e-frame to cycle through a number of pictures of what looked like family members.

“Where were those taken?”

“Byss and he looks very happy in them, with three brothers, two sisters, a great big extended family. Yet, according to scans, a picture was deleted from this e-frame just this morning. The bed sheets are fresh, factory new. I detect no skin cell residue from either Rhorne or any human girlfriend he may have had. The dresser,” she walked over and opened the cabinet, “shows clear gaps in it. Rhorne’s clothes are there, but someone removed their own from it. There are small amounts of human skin cell traces there.”

“So the girlfriend cleaned up, but wasn’t thorough enough. Do you have a proper sample?”

“Yes, I have her gene coding, but we will have to narrow the database search for a match to be found within any practical timeframe for this investigation.”

It was estimated that Coruscant had a population that fluctuated around the two trillion mark. The human population, 70% of that. Assuming a fifty, fifty split between male and female, there were roughly 700 billion human females, spread across the 5127 levels of the planet. 

Taria gave me an expectant smile, “So how would you solve this conundrum, Ahsoka?”

“I would give the e-frame to my master’s astromech, R2 would have the deleted picture reconstructed within the hour. Assuming the picture is of the woman we’re looking for, we’d also have a facial profile, which would allow any citizen database computer to make a match rather quickly.”

“Entirely reasonable, yet…” she trailed off meaningfully.

I couldn’t help but slump my shoulders slightly, “That assumes she’s a Coruscanti citizen, registered in the system and not walking around under a new identity already. She could be Alderani or not even a Core Worlder. There’s just too many possibilities.”

She gave me a pat on the shoulder, “Precisely, my student. Well reasoned. However, as a Sentinel you’ll find that the path forward in any investigation, is sometimes laid years or even decades before you actually walk it. Coruscant’s underworld is my community, whom I walk alongside and blend in with. I have my own network of informants and favors strung across the many levels. Not all of them, but where it truly matters.

“Do you think you can just ask anyone off the streets to perfectly pretend to fall in love with someone? Someone as detail orientated as Rhorn was? Then maintain that ruse successfully for months, whilst maintaining intimate relations. Long enough also that he would trust this woman to prepare him food.”

I nodded understanding, “It would have to be a professional spy. The work of CIS Intel perhaps.”

“Possibly, but consider this. The blast destroyed a single hangar. You would think the CIS would want to cause a bit more damage to the Temple than just that. Unless their goal was simple terror. No, my student. This is different. There is a message being sent here by the bomber and it can be read by anyone with enough experience. Now let’s get back to the roof. I need to go see a contact of mine.”

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When we returned to the speeder, Taria started undressing.

Jedi robe, tunic, pants, boots were tossed into the small cargo trunk, revealing that she had been wearing an entirely different outfit underneath. Dark form fitting pants clung tightly to her toned legs and a dark purple sleeveless top, which was quickly complemented by a bright neon yellow jacket that she threw on. As a final touch, she put contact lenses in her eyes that changed her eyes to a more normal green and donned a wig of long black hair. Her entire attitude, demeanour and subtle body language changed before my eyes. She now looked like an exotic young club girl who would spend the night dancing away with friends getting drunk.

I knew how to change my looks, change my outward mask and present an entirely different persona to people. What I now witnessed showed there were much deeper depths in the art of disguise that I had yet to reach. Taria became someone else so thoroughly, not just on a surface level, but with depth and conviction. This went beyond my multi-masking technique and it almost felt like she had bloody given herself a split-personality or mental partition on command.

“We’re going to a place where we cannot be recognized as Jedi, Ahsoka. Your Hapan outfit is good enough, but you’ll need to drop your belt, lightsabers and exchange those combat boots for these.”

She tossed me a pair of highly impractical stiletto heels in black that seemed a little big for my feet. “Those are adaptive, they’ll adjust to your size. Oh and here,” she threw me a very familiar small bag that was my own togruta makeup/tattoo kit. “Adjust just your lekku patterns and the angled blade pattern on your cheeks, that’ll be good enough. Also adopt any name and personality you feel appropriate to visit a high-end moderately seedy establishment.”

I nodded and got busy with my own wardrobe and couldn’t help but feel quite naked afterward without my belt or any lightsabers. The facial pattern change took a few extra minutes to make presentable, but did enough to act as a relatively effective disguise.

Taria looked me over carefully and pronounced, “Good, who are you?”

My mask came to the fore and I giggled, grabbing both her hands eagerly and a big smile on my face, “Don’t you know? I’m Yashah Karbii, your friend who came all the way from the Bindai District for a night out on the town!” I made sure to inflect my Basic in the way that the rich surface level snobs from that part of Coruscant tended to.

“And how could you forget that I’m Arli Cetorr, from Galactic City’s Wellness District, who just had to meet my friend after a grueling day tending to the infuriating customers in the saunas.”

“Oh, I’m so forgetful,” I sighed with sincere regret.

Arli nodded, her golden eyes twinkling with mirth and excitement, “Now Yashah, get in the speeder, we’ve got a few hours of flight ahead of us to reach our destination and we can’t be late.”

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A/N: Apologies for the slight delay in this chapter. Power company was doing already once delayed maintenance. Its nice to do a bit of detective writing. Hope you enjoyed and have a great weekend. Stay awesome!