Jedi Temple, (11 Hours Later)
The Temple's Jedi Academy was located in the great structure's furthest northwestern quadrant, but deep in thought as I was, my progress in that direction was minimal.
When I'd followed the Grandmaster from the Council chamber the previous night, I'd been anticipating a lengthy discussion concerning the assassin and whatever related circumstances were prompting the members of the Council to behave with such reticence.
During his increasingly rarer visits to the Temple, Master Yoda often wished to plumb the depths of my knowledge with penetrating questions which seldom made a great deal of sense to me, but which I assumed occasionally provided context for something he'd foreseen.
The previous night had very much broken that pattern, because for once, the nearly nine hundred year old had begun to seem just as tired and worn as his age suggested.
I'd tried to get him to open up concerning whatever was weighing on him so heavily, but he'd merely handed me a data-pad as soon as we'd reached his quarters, then bid me have a restful night before he retired.
It had been a worryingly cryptic encounter, but there had been nothing for it but to read what I've been given, and see if the data-pad's contents could make any sense of all this for me. Retreating to my own modest quarters a few minutes later, I'd done just that.
The data-pad's initial entry was the summary of an investigation concluded more than three years ago.
The Chief Archivist had discovered signs of one or more individuals having broken into the restricted portion of the Archives First Hall, and reported the break-in to the Temple Security Forces. Who had, in turn, handed the matter off to the Sentinels.
They were the ones who ultimately determined the identity of the thieves. Seeing that Knight Vos had played an instrumental role in the success of the investigation momentarily occupied my complete attention, but it was the results which left me frowning in consternation.
"Three Jedi Knights conspired to steal a stack of ancient documents? What could they possibly have been after?" That was the question I'd found myself preoccupied by, after my initial dismay had passed. Jedi didn't go bad often. When they did, it was generally a singular occurrence.
The closest thing to a defection of this scale I could think of was Qui-Gon's second (failed) apprentice Xanatos suborning an Initiate as part of his vendetta against his former Master.
Making my way through the entry, I'd found the data-pad requesting thumb-print identification from a Knight or higher before it would open the sub-entry detailing the subject of the theft. Even more interested now, I'd quickly complied, then pored over the resulting information.
"Out of all the things they might have stolen, they make off with the journals of a guilt wracked Sith lunatic who thought melding Dark Sider philosophy with Jedi practices was the way to go? Why?" Again, I hadn't been able understand where this Anzat I finally had a name for, Nikkos Tyris, a Rodian named Ganodil Llyeen, and a Bothan Knight named Feyar Dun'la had initially come by the idea to break into the restricted documents.
Let alone comprehend their choice to throw away everything they'd worked so hard for to make off with some propaganda written by a Sith apologist from the time of Exar Kun.
It didn't make any sense, but there wasn't anything else. Just the notation that Knight Vos's psychometry had proven invaluable in uncovering the identities of the thieves.
There was another page and a half of follow-up reports by the Sentinels who'd been charged with learning everything they could concerning the theft.
These made it clear their efforts to determine the thieves present whereabouts had failed, and that all other avenues of inquiry had been exhausted. I'd noted this final notation was itself more than two years old, then moved deeper into the contents of the data-pad.
The next entry was a summation of a report forwarded from the Corellian Enclave to the High Council. It was a little more than fourteen months old, which was only two months prior to the assassination of Senator Greyshade.
The biometric profile of a human male (whose identity had been ruthlessly redacted from the summation) had been detected aboard a commercial space-station in orbit around Selonia.
Obeying a security system prerogative, an automated message had been dispatched to the Corellian Enclave before the computer notified station security.
Learning this mystery man's mere presence necessitated informing the nearest Jedi in such a way that organic personnel couldn't by accident or intention prevent said warning? No amount of redacted information was going to make that sound like anything except a known Dark Side adept on some kind of watch-list.
"Unfortunately, the what is a great deal easier to make out than the who. I don't see where the Greens or the High Council could have gotten Maul's biometric profile, but it's obviously not the Ex-Chancellor or the present Executive Officer of the C.I.S. This all happened months before the Ghost Prison breakout, so..." I'd mentally trailed off.
No possibilities concerning Mr. X's identity coming to mind even with the aid of Force-assisted recall. Once again, I'd been left scrolling to the next entry with more questions raised than meaningful information conveyed.
The subsequent entry had proven the least creatively edited so far. It had described the Greens response, their missing the target individual's departure from the Selonian station by less than an hour, and their subsequent effort to determine where he'd gone.
I'd been struck by how quickly they'd turned up the itinerary of the YT-1300 Mr. X had left aboard, and even more impressed by their organizing a mission to get ahead of the suspected smuggler who owned the vessel to reacquire their target.
Reading on, I'd been shocked to see their guess that the smuggler who owned the freighter meant the Mon Gazza shadowport when his itinerary had listed the Herdessa System had actually paid off.
One of the six Corellian Jedi (Four Masters and two Knights) had not only located the YT-1300 within the busiest and most infamous shadowport anywhere in the galactic southeast, they'd managed to attach a magnetic-clamp FTL beacon to the hull of the vessel with no one apparently the wiser.
It would have been easy to miss the most significant detail mixed in with this incredibly improbable account of a successful fugitive pursuit, but to me it stuck out like a Wookie at a gathering of the Order of the Canted Circle.
A half-dozen Jedi, for a single man. In another time, Mace Windu had believed three Jedi Masters sufficient backup to beard a Sith Lord in his den.
This one tidbit in a pile of piecemeal fragments prompted me to remove Maul from my thinking as a possibility. Six was too few to guarantee his apprehension with zero casualties, yet too many not to get in each other's way, if his elimination was the desired outcome.
The next entry was a straightforward rundown of the Jedi team's surreptitious pursuit of their quarry. It had brought me to the next baffling factoid in what I'd read.
The Suarbi System in the Quence Sector was very nearly as far as it was possible to travel through the galactic southeast before you reached Wild Space. Having followed the unnamed fugitive all the way to Susevfi, the only inhabited planet in the system, it had struck me just how flagrantly the Greens were exceeding their mandate.
It was all so maddeningly mysterious, because without knowing who it was they were chasing, and therefore why the Greens were chasing him, I really hadn't been able to conclude how reasonable any of this was.
Which, once again, had left me scrolling onward in the fading hope there were actual answers somewhere in this hodgepodge of suggestively mismatched puzzle-pieces.
I'd very nearly hurled the data-pad at the wall of my room when I realized the final entry was so edited for content, it was difficult to make any meaningful determination whatsoever concerning the events touched on.
Nothing except the casualty report listing two dead Greens, a Coruscanti Jedi Shadow who'd lost both legs in whatever fight had occurred on Susevfi (No mention of how or when they'd met up with the Corellians), and "numerous fatalities and serious injuries among the cultists."
That was it, and the only reason I'd had any idea "cultists" equaled Tyris and his cronies was the context from my conversation with Master Yoda. I was, once again, being treated like a mushroom by my superiors, and it was an understatement of mythic proportions to say I was less than best-pleased by this development.
Finally, after considering what I already knew in light of these new bits of information, I'd tentatively come to the conclusion there had been a veritable bloodbath on the planet.
I'd thought it likely the Corellians, plus whatever reinforcements the Order had provided, had planned the apprehension of the mystery fugitive. Only to somehow blunder in among Tyris, Ganodil, Feyar, and what could be inferred to be a large, well-armed body of their supporters.
"Yoda said Tyris wants revenge against the Order and the Republic. That sounds like a personal grudge in action, and this encounter seems to be the only contact which his group had with the Jedi since their defection.
Non-Sith Force-Sensitives who fall generally possess core drives centered upon one or more negative emotions they find it impossible to control.
Meaning Tyris lost something, or was denied something, by the Jedi he encountered." I'd thought my reasoning sound even after meditating upon it, and that was when I'd made the critical connection.
"Numerous fatalities and serious injuries among the cultists" I'd murmured to myself. Remembering Tyris had been enjoying his first year free of all the rules and regimentation he'd lived under his entire life. It was tragic, the idea of a Dark Sider falling in love, when nothing had awaited their partner but pain and eventual death anyways.
It was a working theory, anyways, but the fact I'd had to piece it together from fragments and my own conjectures had certainly done nothing for my temper. This was just one more example of my superiors electing not to trust me.
Even Master Yoda, who was generally supportive and nonjudgmental, didn't think I should be entrusted with the entire picture. He'd given me just enough I could use my own talents to work out approximately what sort of threat Tyris posed to my Senatorial charge, then sent me packing.
Frustrated more than I'd been able to put into words, I finally stopped my woolgathering, and picked up my pace in the direction of the Jedi Academy.
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