If you want to read more 25+ chapters ahead from here you can visit my Patre-on.
[P] [A] [T] [R] [E] [O] [N]
https://patreon.com/kelly_over
____________
The setup wasn't very high tech, but Komari though that it was somewhat ingenious in how well it was hidden. From the compartment she pulled out not one, but three little data chips.
The one on top of the small pile had a single K written out on it. the next was unlabeled, but Komari could tell it was a specially prepared security chip, one which could not only slag itself but any system it was connected to if the individual who tried to use it didn't input the correct code. The last was a simple chip like the first, though it too was unlabeled.
So, the order in which I view these is laid out for me. Very well, Master, though I find it most droll that you are trying to control things like this from beyond the grave, Komari thought whimsically. Still sitting at her former master's desk, she inserted the disk with the K on it into the desk's reader.
Instantly a full body hologram of Master Dooku, his face set into grave lines, one hand resting on his lightsaber hilt as he stared into the pickup. "I, Master Dooku, being of sound mind and body, do prepare this last will and testament, to be enacted upon the moment of my death for my estate and all items therein. This should be read by my last padawan."
The image's lips quirked. "Well, my last full time padawan, at any rate, if not my last student: Knight Komari Vosa. If Knight Vosa is reading this, please prove your identity by entering in a code now. A single word that can describe our first mission together. You have two minutes to do so before this disk erases itself."
Komari sighed, but nodded. No one but she among those now living knew that the first mission she and Master Dooku had done together actually hadn't been one that had been put on the books of the Order. It'd been a simple enough mission, simply finding a thief that had begun to target elderly men and women on the second level of Coruscant. Dooku had turned it into a training exercise for her: how to find and winnow through the minds of multiple types of sentients in order to find someone who was feeling guilty, and connecting that guilt to the crime that they were investigating.
Thinking of a single word that could be used to describe the mission threw her for a brief moment, but then she remembered the name of the culprit. Typing it in quickly, she watched as the tiny timer disappeared from the screen and her master's image returned.
When he spoke, however, the air of whimsy was gone, and he had quickly gotten down to business. "Komari, I have made many mistakes in my lifetime. Mistakes with you, mistakes with Qui-Gon, mistakes in my own life and my own training. Yet despite everything, I have to say that perhaps my worst mistake was not involved in the training of you or Master Qui-Gon, but that in my own thirst for knowledge I looked to dark places. As you well know after the Mandalore debacle I had become thoroughly fed up and disappointed by the lack of growth in the Order,. The corruption within the Senate, and how closely we were tied to them also repulsed me."
The image seemed to sigh. "What you do not know is that after your disappearance and before we learned you were still alive, I went even further. I thought if perhaps the Sith, or some small variant of them, came back, they would push the Order to grow again, to break the cycle of stagnation that the Order has been in since the end of the New Sith Wars."
Dooku's image laughed now, a wry, self-deprecating tone that jarred sharply with everything Komari had seen of the man in life. "I was wrong about that, and I should have trusted the Force. The Force, the Light Side, brought us Lily and Harry and the changes their presence has created in the Order. You now of what I speak."
Komari barely had a moment to nod agreement with that, her mind somewhat reeling from the idea that her Master had looked for the Sith so long ago and the way he had admitted to his faults like this. He had apologized and admitted to making mistakes with her and Qui-Gon, but that was a far cry from this.
But then the message continued. "I was unsuccessful in finding the Sith, obviously, and yet, and yet when I heard from Master Giiett that the Order felt the Dark Side user which killed Qui-Gon could be a Sith, I felt somehow that the Force was telling me something, that the Force was telling me that this threat was someone I knew. I began to meditate on it, searching my memory for clues using the organizational method Lily has been teaching us here on my estates. I found it. I found the individual who had tried to steer me towards some Sith practices, and then I began to research them. The head of the Banking Clan, Hego Damask. With that knowledge, I decided to go after him on my own.
"If you're reading this, I hope that at least I have taken him with me. But if not, I urge the Order to investigate the Banking Clan very, very closely. On the disk below this one you will find everything I was able to discover through both the Force and certain illegal means. There is nothing which would hold up in a court of law, but some of it is worrisome enough to follow up on."
For a moment Dooku sighed, looking every inch his age, where before he had been projecting an aura of weathered strength. "I hope I succeed. But if I do not, I wish to leave the universe a better place than it was before my death. I want you, Komari, to keep the training center going. This is my earnest request to you as your former master. My House's resources will answer to you for now. But the training center is my most important request of you."
_____________
If you want to read more 25+ chapters ahead from here you can visit my Patre-on.
[P] [A] [T] [R] [E] [O] [N]
https://patreon.com/kelly_over