Leri had positioned herself to easily overhear the Padawans who were speaking.  The Younglings were too exhausted to talk, and the serene looking Jedi simply kept quiet while the adolescents indulged in trying to maintain a sense of control over their fates.<br/><br/><em>-"...it has to be.  Master Qel-Bertuk and many Masters of the Almas Academy were never caught nor even stationed with any clones.  If a core of the Academy survives, then we have to get to them..."<br/><br/>--"But it's such a long way to the Cularin System, and don't you think the Empire is already on their way there to destroy the Academy and Temple there, as well as Tython?  If they survived, they already fled the system to somewhere else.  We need to dig deep and lay low, endure, let the chaos pass over us, before we go searching for some resistance."<br/><br/>-"No.  Master Quomo here says she met with them, and I trust her.  She even had dispatches from other Jedi Generals as well, saying they were going to rendezvous.  The Order has to come together, that means they will need us, the core of a new generation of Jedi.  And we have a responsibility to the Younglings to keep them safe and mentored.  That can't just be us alone.  We need the surviving Masters."<br/><br/>---"It's almost too much to hope for though.  Master Kenobi alive?  Master Yoda?  Master Qel-Bertuk AND Master For'deschel?  It's like a dream of hope amidst this nightmare for the most powerful Masters to all be gathering.  But Master Quomo is the best and only lead to other survivors we've had so far.  I want to take the chance, but...  it's a LOT to stake."</em><br/><br/>Elesei was able to also get close enough to overhear parts of the conversation.  However when she reached out through the Force to try telepathy, she found no open or listening minds receptive.  The serene Jedi woman's mind was closed like a fortress.<br/><br/>Teslo got a strange noise of disapproval from the droid behind the bar, but it grudgingly secured his carbonated beverage.  As he looked over at the Jedi, he sense another presence approaching from his blind side, though obviously enough to not reaise alarms.<br/><br/><em>"It's sad...  tragic really.  I calculate their odds of survival at only seventy thousand and thirty-five to one.  But they're not long for this world.  None of the Jedi are.  But the children most of all.  They'll die easiest...  with confusion and disbelief on those cherubic faces, the older ones with failure and disappointment in their gazes, as they watch their charges' life leave their eyes.  It's why I don't take bounties on underage targets.  They don't even understand why they're dying.  Pity really."</em><br/><br/>The speaker was a lean and angular looking man.  He had wide bushy eyebrows and thin-set lips, stained a deep hue of cranberries.  His features were catlike, predatory but not malicious.  Here was a man who could hunt and kill with the best of them, but not take it as personal, merely discretionary...  perhaps even just a pasttime.  But the hint of a killer nonetheless, and one who sometimes played with his prey.