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Knights of the Old Republic 44: The Reaping, Part 2

What is it ? : In the past, a young Jarael, under her original name of Edessa, is fleeing from slaving drones, but a man approaches her, telling her they are just searching for her, and now he's found her.
And in the present, the same man is captaining the Crucible cruiser, Gladiator, and Jarael comments that he has found her. The captain, Dace Golliard, orders the drones to gather the slaves including Jarael, and Zayne tries to protect her, but it requires Rohlan to come to her rescue with his jetpack, and he blames Zayne for putting her in danger.
Everyone retreats aboard the Hot Prospect, but it is easily outgunned by the Gladiator, but Zayne has an idea and they turn their mining equipment on the cruiser, ripping it's hull open. They then turn acid they use for removing rock from minerals onto the drones, destroying many of them.
As the Gladiator scrambles to react, finally the Hot Prospect grapples itself to the much larger vessel, using hooks it would normally use to grapple onto asteroids and begins spinning, damaging the Gladiator and allowing them to escape.
Later, they unload the rescued slaves onto a freighter, and Gryph berates Zayne and Jarael for lying to him about the scheme and about Jaraels past. The crew votes on continuing to fight against the Crucible. as Gryph complains that democracy is going to destroy capitalism. Warning them that enemies of the Crucible just tend to disappear.
Meanwhile, elsewhere, Dace Golliard is being tortured by the Zeltron female who is hunting Jarael. She wants to kill Goliard, but the leader of the Crucible wants him alive, as Jarael being aligned with a Jedi is a problem they'll need their best to defeat, but the Zeltron declares war on Jarael and her allies.
On Coruscant in a hospital a figure in Mandalorian armor begins to stir, and the hospital staff send a message to the Republic defence ministry, that Demagol is alive and awake. . . .

High Points : While it's a bit silly to have a mining vessel defeat a cruiser (if the mining equipment was so good against other vessels, then military vessels would just use that equipment in combat), it's fun to see the heroes little mining ship, drill holes in the hull of the much larger vessel, use it's chemicals to burn away the drones, and cause all sorts of problems with ordinary equipment. The entire scene is something I could definitely imagine watching on the big screen, a little plucky vessel fighting back against a tyrannical combat ship.

Low Points : If my description of how the Hot Prospect defeats the Gladiator above is a little unclear, that's because it's unclear in the story. They grapple onto the cruiser, and begin spinning, and then they're unloading the slaves having escaped.
Did they tear chunks out of the cruiser as their grapple hooks twisted? Did they just spin it out of control giving them time to escape? It's not really clear, and just jumps to when they've escaped, abruptly ending the scene.

So what do you really think ? : One great scene doesn't a great comic make, and while it does raise the overall quality of the issue, the rest still seems to be setting up later story lines. We've got Demagol awakening, a past relationship between Golliard and Jarael, and we discover that the Zeltron is a rogue element within the Crucible allowed a lot of freedom to act, even if we don't discover who she is yet.

Final Words : The series does seem to be building towards a climax, as they're heaping on adversaries and bringing back elements which haven't had proper closure, but all of this work building the situation isn't actually giving us much proper storytelling. We're being told a lot of things, without our heroes being involved and acting, which is kind of missing the point of wrapping up their storyline.

Score : 8.5/10

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