Knights of the Old Republic 38: Faithful Execution
What is it ? : Zayne is sitting with Elbee, and Rohlan tells him the droid hasn't spoken in weeks, and Zayne says that he knows, but he thought that knowing that the master who once hurt it is now dead might help.
He spots out of a porthole that they have found the Chancellor Fillorean, a luxury yacht which has been reported missing with 30 passengers aboard. They dock and board it, finding it powered down but still with atmosphere but no gravity. They find the passengers apparently dead of asphyxiation, but Zayne is attacked by a droid, Kayo, but it is just defending its owner a diminutive Bimm survivor called Toki Tollivar.
He tells them that people began turning up dead during the journey, so the crew told him to remain in his quarters, but when he eventually emerged, everyone was dead.
Zayne informs the Republic, who dispatches a patrol boat to come and recover the Yacht, and discovers Elbee helping to tidy up the bodies, and Kayo tells him that the two droids were built in the same facility, so they got talking and Elbee agreed to help, which makes Zayne happy.
Rohlan has examined some of the bodies, and they all were strangled, their throats crushed, when they are alerted to trouble in the galley. They discover Slyssk choking, his throat crushed, so Rohlan performs emergency surgery to get him breathing again by performing a cricothyroidotomy.
Zayne goes to interrogate Toki, who tells him he sent Kayo to get some food, and Zayne realising that the diminuitive Bimm doesn't have the strength to choke a Trandoshan, assumes it's the droids programming to defend it's owner causing problems as it did when it attacked him earlier.
He finds it with Elbee, and uses his lightsaber to slash it's hands off so it cannot choke anyone else, but Elbee attacks him protecting the other droid from abuse by an organic. Kayo tells him that he doesn't harm anyone, he just tries to protect his owner, as people around him keep ending up strangled.
Meanwhile Jarael is floating in the air choking, as Toki force chokes her, revealing that he is a Sith Adept, no one ever suspects him due to his small size. Zayne rushes in shoots at Toki who engages his lightsaber to kill Zayne, saying that it's been a long time since he killed a Jedi. But Kayo enters, and realising what Toki has been doing all along, moves to protect him from himself, by electrocuting him with energy from the severed stumps of his arms.
Rohlan blasts the pair, killing them both, which Zayne tells him wasn't needed, but Rohlan tells him that if he cannot protect Jarael he is useless to him, and to pray that he never finds out what that means.
Later, Zayne is sat with Elbee once again, telling him that Slyssk is on the mend, but the confidence he'd built up during his time with them is all gone. That Rohlan seems like a different person than he was on Flashpoint, obsessing over protecting Jarael. And Jarael herself now has the force, something which offended Toki, and that he himself is keeping secrets from Gryph about what he did on his holiday. He tells Elbee that he needs a friend to talk to, and although he should have talked to Elbee before, he will do so now.
Elbee responds that he never talks, but Zayne tells him that maybe that'll change . . .
High Points : For a one issue story, this one holds together very well, with Elbee being core to the story, his history of being mistreated by Lucien comes back as he bonds and protects Kayo. But it does make me wonder if this will ever come back, as Rohlan did gun down Kayo pointlessly.
And the misdirection is done well, with Kayo being the obvious murderer, with a shown nature of attacking people it thinks is a threat to it's owner, and Toki being far too small to do the killings until his Sith training is revealed.
Low Points : The shortness of the story does mean that Gryph is totally absent from this story, but everyone else gets their place, and Zayne begins sharing with Elbee that everyone aboard has their secrets, so the trust between them all is a very fragile thing. Which I'm sure will become an issue as the story continues.
So what do you really think ? : A nice little aside, while not having a lot to do with the main storyline, we get a bit of a mystery, which develops a number of the main characters as we move beyond the covenant plot and towards wrapping up these subplots.
Final Words : For some reason this issue feels to me like a lot of the old Marvel comics, a quick story that the main characters wander into, resolve and go on their way. And it's not a bad thing, as I really liked those comics.
Score : 9/10
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