Strategy Centre

KR-04 froze on the spot. It maintained its grip on Adelle, but the program that controlled the droid's chassis was being rewritten byte by byte. Underneath the false eyes, bright blue lights pulsated, signifying the forced software update. Mission paramters were rewritten. Memory data was uploaded. Blacklists were struck clean. In the space of only a moment, the oracle had done what even the famed Jedi Master Dav Man'sell had failed to do; completely and successfully reprogram a KR-series assassin droid.

There was a mission to complete.

Without a word and without effort, KR-04's grip on Adelle's shoulder tightened, and it flung the woman to the side, marching towards a door that it knew would open.

The door had slid open and KR-04 had been about to leave when it was ripped from its feet and launched backwards, crashing through no less than two strategic viewing screens before smashing into the far stone wall. KR-04 wasted no time in getting to its feet - a task that would have been a serious tactical disadvantage in its old chassis - and regarding Adelle Bastiel with a new level of priority. The calculations were thorough, double-checked, and confirmed in a microsecond; Vidalu Na'an could not be terminated if Adelle Bastiel was not dealt with.

KR-04 had been deprived of both its heavy repeater and its durasteel combat knife. A thermal detonator would terminate everything in the room - Bastiel, KR-04, and the Praxeum AI - and force mission failure. It left the assassin droid a single option.

Reaching behind its back, the machine pulled its scattergun from its holster and leveled it at Bastiel, firing as soon as it drew a bead on her.

KR-04's scattergun had been modified to create a tighter spread in the bolts that erupted from the barrel. Ordinarily it allowed the weapon to punch through most civilian grade armor and even low-tier military plating at a close enough distance. But against a Jedi, it rendered any scattergun's main feature - a spread of blaster bolts wide enough that no Jedi could hope to block them all - useless. This did not extend towards the bolts caught by Bastiel's blue energy blade; upon contact, the collection of bolts scattered on their way back to the droid, raining hell upon the strategy center. Screens were shattered and data terminals exploded as the bolts flew across the room, and the bolts that hit KR-04 scoured away its synthetic tissue covering, revealing more and more of the metal monstrosity within. When the rounds finally stopped flying, the strategy center looked to be beyond repair.

There was no clicking of a hammer as the droid expended the last shell; KR-04 knew exactly how many shots had been fired, and that it was time to discard the weapon. While useful, the scattergun had a magazine tube instead of a traditional inserted magazine, and reloading in combat was tactically unsound. And with Bastiel standing between it and its primary target once again, KR-04 knew exactly what to do with its now-useless weapon.

KR-04 lobbed the empty scattergun at Bastiel. At the same time, the droid charged forward towards the Jedi, following the gun as it flew through the air.

Even in the relatively short distance granted by the strategy center, KR-04 had accelerated rapidly, closing the distance between itself and Bastiel in less than a second. Had it connected, the droid would have driven the Human female clear into the stone wall in the corridor just beyond, where mass and inertia would reduce her to a red paste. But just as it reached its enemy's position, Basitel darted to the side, not distracted in the slightest by the shotgun racing past her head. KR-04 had planted its lead foot - leaving a solid crack in the stone floor - and had been about to reengage with the Jedi when it was thrown from its feet once more, the Force and its own inertia cartwheeling the ultrachrome machine through the air and embedding it into the far wall with a loud crumble.

KR-04's CPU immediately ran a damage checklist, its electronic mind running through its systems and reporting back in full detail in the time it took an organic neuron to fire.

The attempted pivot had torqued KR-04's left knee mechanism slightly, reducing its operational capability by eight percent.

Impact with the strong stone walls of the Praxeum at approximately eighty kilometers per hour had forced broken stone between its mechanical spine and its right shoulder blade, prying it slightly loose towards the bottom.

The most recent map of the Praxeum indicated that Bastiel had launched KR-04 into a wall that blocked off one of the building's turbolift shafts. Its mass, speed, and force of impact had only just avoided sending the droid through altogether. KR-04 and Bastiel were on the Praxeum's third level. The turbolift was on the seventh.

The damage had been assessed when Bastiel came around again, bringing the blue energy blade down on the droid's neck. With speed almost matching hers - fast enough, in fact, to rip its synthetic tricep clean from the ultrachrome piston beneath it - KR-04's arm intercepted the lightsaber and clamped down on it, holding it in place as it broke the rest of its chassis free from the Praxeum wall, standing to its full height.. The droid's left hand burst into flame as the synthetic skin ignited, slowly rolling off of the metal endoskeleton in flaming blobs. KR-04 held the blade for a moment, letting Bastiel's natural psychological processes give it an advantage. And when the projected optimal processing time had been reached, the droid began to push forward, aiming to cleave Bastiel's head in half with her own blade.

Bastiel had both of her hands on the lightsaber; one on the hilt, and one on the blade, fighting in vain to keep the blue energy blade from advancing towards her head. KR-04 continued to press the attack, biding its time for maximum effect. But it had to act fast, and it knew it; ultrachrome's famed energy-resistant properties came from its ability to disperse energy across its entire mass as opposed to the focal point of energy contact. This made it especially good as starship armor, where plates could be as long as dozens of meters across. Its hand, however, was composed of several small parts working in perfect concert. Soon - 5.21 seconds and counting - its hand would begin to lose form and fuse together, becoming functionally useless. Further damage to its form was deemed unacceptable.

KR-04 shot its free hand forward, seizing the Jedi woman by her collar. It took a step forward - gaining a short bit of distance - before swinging around and beginning to launch Bastiel into the cracked wall.

In the brief second between flight and impact, the cultist that KR-04 intended the Jedi to slam into was no longer where he had been. In that second, a massive droid had rounded a corner and swung an arm shaped like a cannon at the Arkanian's head. The side of the cannon slammed into the soldier's skull like a cudgel, and the blasterfire stopped suddenly as the Arkanian smashed into the near wall, then went limp against it.
The Barabel was next. Without a beat wasted, the droid reversed the arm, impacting the cultist in the side and sending him flying back into the corridor. The droid took the cleared hallway with a single overlong stride, aiming past the Jedi and at the droid farther down the corridor. The droid's domed head flickered to life, revealing the face of a pretty woman--with a face twisted in sudden anger.
"Switching to live fire," she said in a hard voice, more for the benefit of the man in her arms than for the enemy ahead. "Cover your ears."
She notched and locked her arm; there was the brief whine of a rapidly-charging laser, and then an explosion of rapid fire.

Adelle remembered a loud crunch and shouting. She opened her eyes and saw nothing. Adelle blinked and opened one eye—the other burned. She could smell burning flesh. Hers? Something tickled her nose, running down the slope. She tried to wipe it but her hand wouldn't move: it was pressed into the ground under something heavy. Bits of cloth worried her eyelashes and a hole had burned into the skin beneath. She could smell carbon now, although everything still sounded like she was underwater. She coughed. Red splattered the body on top of her. Kriff. Her head ached. She had blacked out. Head trauma. Name: Adelle Bastiel. Location: Yavin Four, Jedi Temple. Hallways outside the strategy center. Who was she with: Na'an, Leigh, Zabrak captain, Tsar something or other. Why: Rutil had summoned Na'an. Adelle tagged along. She'd gone off to find Aherk and come here to the strategy center. That's when she had run into KR.

The fight. The last punch. Adelle winced.

The metal chassis on top of her moved suddenly, pushed off of her and onto its side. Leigh, still cradling Aherk, stood over her. Her hologram was shut off but Adelle could practically feel the lecture coming. She took a rattling breath and stared at the dying man in the droid's arms.

"Medcenter," she said breathlessly. "Now."