Ashin Varanin
Professional Enabler
[member="Death's Hand"]
The holocomm beeped, and she knew. What started as a premonition blossomed into a full-scale awareness of the reason she felt unsettled: a precognitive hint of how she would feel in a few seconds or minutes.
She took the call anyway, because paradox wasn't something she played around with, not since Rave Merrill erased herself from this timeline. It was Kalaaa, the Ishi Tib second officer of the Chimaera. She'd served with Kalaa since the Sith Empire days and before: the Ishi Tib had been with Engel since the beginning, originally as engineering chief.
The details poured in and she took them like a stone, searching for the cold of the void. Freezing out her grief, crystallizing a cold rage.
Shore leave on Dasid Anya, trade hub of lampreyish Lugubraa and insectoid Killiks, was about as safe as you could get. Engel, bless his old bones, had tried one of the legendary three-dimensional mazes, the ones where gravity changed direction at random. And something had found him in the maze.
Something with a lightsabre.
Dasid Anya was a world of something like eighty billion. Granted, most of them were nonhumanoid, but the planet was a nexus of commerce and transport in the most known of the Unknown Regions. It was perilously easy for an assassin to get lost in the crowd. Tracking efforts had turned up nothing.
Kalaaa, now acting captain of the Chimaera, voiced a warning: that Engel's death had been a signal to Ashin, bait most likely. She was, of course, going anyway.
The holocomm beeped, and she knew. What started as a premonition blossomed into a full-scale awareness of the reason she felt unsettled: a precognitive hint of how she would feel in a few seconds or minutes.
She took the call anyway, because paradox wasn't something she played around with, not since Rave Merrill erased herself from this timeline. It was Kalaaa, the Ishi Tib second officer of the Chimaera. She'd served with Kalaa since the Sith Empire days and before: the Ishi Tib had been with Engel since the beginning, originally as engineering chief.
The details poured in and she took them like a stone, searching for the cold of the void. Freezing out her grief, crystallizing a cold rage.
Shore leave on Dasid Anya, trade hub of lampreyish Lugubraa and insectoid Killiks, was about as safe as you could get. Engel, bless his old bones, had tried one of the legendary three-dimensional mazes, the ones where gravity changed direction at random. And something had found him in the maze.
Something with a lightsabre.
Dasid Anya was a world of something like eighty billion. Granted, most of them were nonhumanoid, but the planet was a nexus of commerce and transport in the most known of the Unknown Regions. It was perilously easy for an assassin to get lost in the crowd. Tracking efforts had turned up nothing.
Kalaaa, now acting captain of the Chimaera, voiced a warning: that Engel's death had been a signal to Ashin, bait most likely. She was, of course, going anyway.