Chapter Text
Chapter 1
Endar Spire
My first sensation is weight.
Not the honest weight of armor, though my plates carry plenty of that. This is different. A suffocating pressure that comes from durasteel groaning under stress, from a ship's spine bending while something outside it tries to tear it open.
Then sound arrives like a fist.
Metal screaming. Bulkheads buckling. A concussive boom that runs through the deck and up my legs. Alarms layered over each other until they stop being warnings and become a language.
The Endar Spire is dying.
Emergency lights stutter to life, bathing the barracks in red. I'm already upright before my mind catches up, boots on deck, shoulders rolling as my body checks itself like it expects missing limbs.
My helmet is on the rack beside my bunk. I don't remember putting it there.
I reach anyway.
The seal bites around my neck. The world narrows into a visor frame and a HUD that blooms in deep crimson. Mandalorian runes flicker across my vision in quick succession: oxygen reserves, power core output, temperature warnings, impact stress along the left shoulder plate.
Everything hums with reliability.
My armor, painted in the unmistakable red-and-white of a Neo-Crusader Rally Master, feels like a second skin I never asked for. War clings to it. Smoke clings to it. A life clings to it that I can't fully access, like a hand on the other side of a locked door.
Venaku Farr.
The name my clan gave me. The name I wear. The name that fits about as well as a vibroblade through soft armor.
Memory is a dark room with no doors.
Another blast hits. The bunks rattle. A ceiling conduit spits sparks and a ribbon of flame. Something slams hard against the far wall and stays there, hissing.
The barracks door hisses open before I can reach it.
A Republic crewman stumbles in, helmet under one arm, face slick with sweat and fear. His uniform is a warm orange-and-black with hardened panels, the kind naval crew wear when they don't expect boarding actions and still get them anyway.
His eyes land on my armor and widen further.
"V-Venaku!" he blurts. "Sith troops have stormed multiple decks. Deck three's gone. Deck four's flooding with—by the stars, you're—"
"Armed," I cut in, my voice filtered into a flat mechanical edge through the vocoder. I grab my assault rifle from the magnetic wall clamp and slap the power pack in. The familiar weight settles into my hands like truth. "Unlike you."
He gulps like he swallowed a hydrospanner.
He looks past me, as if searching for an officer in a clean uniform, someone who looks like reassurance.
Instead he gets me.
I do a quick inventory without thinking, hands moving with the kind of certainty my mind can't explain.
Twin blaster pistols. Customized. Heat-sinks and power regulators tuned for sustained fire. A vibrosword at my hip with a faint hum that's more promise than sound. The armor heavy enough to survive orbital stupidity. The visor sealed enough to breathe through smoke and blood and panic.
The crewman's throat works. "You're… you're coming with us?"
"I'm coming," I say. "You're coming because I said so."
He blinks. Then nods fast. Good. He can walk without fainting.
I shoulder the rifle and step into the corridor.
Hallway of Fire
The Endar Spire's corridors were built for clean, disciplined movement. Wide enough for squads. Corners meant for cover. Bulkheads reinforced against vacuum.
None of that matters when the air is full of smoke and blaster bolts.
The moment the door opens, heat rolls over us. The corridor beyond is a furnace of flashing red lights and drifting ash. The scent is coolant, burning insulation, and that sharp metallic tang that comes when a ship starts bleeding through its veins.
Three Sith troopers push forward in formation.
Too clean. Too polished. Their armor is black and glossy like they're trying to intimidate the universe into surrendering. They move like recruits who think formation makes them invincible.
I introduce them to reality.
My pistols clear their holsters before their brains clear confusion.
Two shots. The lead Sith folds backward like his bones forgot how to hold him up. A burst from my rifle chews through the second's chest plate and throws him into the wall. The third stumbles, half-raising his weapon, and I'm already moving.
The vibrosword hums into life.
Not elegant. Not ceremonial.
Practical.
I step inside his aim line and drive the blade in under the rib plating. The trooper's breath catches. His mouth opens like he wants to say something brave. All that comes out is a wet mechanical rattle.
I pull the blade free and he drops.
The Republic crewman behind me makes a sound that might be prayer.
"M-mandalorians fight like that?" he whispers.
I glance back at him. "No."
He swallows.
"The skilled ones fight better," I finish, and keep moving.
We round a bend and the corridor widens into an access stretch where the ship's crew quarters meet a storage junction. Smoke pools low. Emergency lighting flickers, giving everything a stuttering heartbeat.
A second Sith fireteam appears, five troopers, rifles raised.
They don't hesitate.
They recognize.
One of them barks, "Mandalorian!" like it's a curse he learned when he was still wearing Republic colors. The word comes with hate that's older than Malak's new empire.
So they were Republic once.
I can hear it in the cadence. I can see it in their posture. Trained discipline warped into Sith cruelty, but the bones of their old drills are still there.
They open fire in controlled volleys.
I don't run. I don't flinch. I move the way my armor expects.
I plant, angle, and give hand signals without thinking.
Two fingers down. Spread. Anchor.
The crewmen behind me obey before they realize they're obeying.
They drop into cover, spread left and right, muzzle discipline tight. Not because they suddenly became brave.
Because someone gave them structure.
Because someone made fear useful.
I step out into the lane, let their first volley flash past my shoulder plate, then answer with a burst that walks across their line.
A trooper's knee buckles. Another's weapon explodes in his hands. A third jerks back, hit in the chest, armor blackening around the impact.
The remaining two try to advance like they did in the old Republic manuals.
I close the distance, too fast for their sightline to adjust, and cut one down with the vibrosword in a single hard motion. The last one tries to retreat, calls for backup, voice cracking through comm static.
My pistol takes him in the back of the helmet.
Silence rushes in behind the ringing in my ears.
The crewman who found me stares at the bodies.
"You… you've done this before," he says.
I keep walking. "Keep up."
We pass a collapsed section where a Republic officer is pinned beneath a fallen beam of durasteel. He's pale, eyes wild, one hand scrabbling uselessly at metal that doesn't care.
"H-help," he gasps. "My leg—"
I holster a pistol, wedge my shoulder under the beam, and lift.
The metal screeches. It doesn't want to move. I make it anyway. My knee locks. My armor servos whine. The beam rises just enough.
"Move," I order.
He drags himself free, shaking, then stares up at me like he's seeing a myth in red armor.
"You… saved me?"
I grunt, already hauling him upright. "If the Sith kill you, I'm charging hazard pay."
His expression wavers between disbelief and relief.
Good. Confusion keeps him quiet.
Two more crewmen join us, then another pair. They're shaken, armed with whatever they could grab, eyes darting everywhere like the ship itself might bite them next.
They fall in behind me because I'm the only thing in this corridor moving like I belong here.
By the time we reach a starboard junction, my little collection has become a half-squad of rattled but breathing Republic personnel.
They look at me like I'm leading them into hell.
I am.
But I'm also leading them out.
"Stay tight," I tell them. "Don't break formation. If I stop, you stop. If I shoot, you shoot. If I tell you to run—"
"We run," one of them finishes, voice thin but determined.
"Good."
Ahead, a fire suppressant system ruptures and floods the corridor with white vapor. It rolls out like fog from a battlefield, swallowing light and sound and making every shadow look like a threat.
Sith silhouettes move inside it.
I stride in without hesitation.
My squad follows.
They live.
The Sith don't.
We meet Trask Ulgo at a junction where the lighting has failed completely and the only illumination comes from sparking panels and blaster muzzle flashes.
He's a Republic officer in a battered vest, hair damp with sweat, a scorch mark across one shoulder. He's holding his blaster like he means it and yelling orders like he refuses to die until he's finished being angry about the attempt.
The moment he sees me, he actually grins.
"Venaku!" he barks. "About damn time. I should've known you'd cheat death again."
"Death cheats me," I reply. "Not the other way around."
His laugh is short, strained. He looks past me at the people I've dragged out of fire and turns serious again.
"We need Bastila," he says. "Sith are cutting through decks like they own the ship. They're heading for her quarters."
"They want her," I say. "Alive or dead."
"Alive," Trask answers grimly. "If they can. Bastila Shan is why the Republic can still breathe with the Sith Fleet on its throat."
A blast rocks the deck. Grav plating flickers. Everyone stumbles. Someone behind us screams when a nearby panel pops and sprays hot vapor.
Trask doesn't flinch. He's past flinching.
He takes in my armor again, quick. Neo-Crusader plates. Rally Master markings. The kind of gear that used to mean enemy to men like him.
And yet here I am.
"You gather a platoon while half the ship burns?" he says, like he can't decide whether to admire it or curse it.
"They were dying too slowly," I mutter.
One of the crewmen behind me lets out a hysterical laugh that dies fast when he realizes nobody else is laughing.
Trask's eyes flick to him. Then back to me. "Carth's forward," he says. "He's trying to push survivors toward the pods. We're supposed to link up and move together."
I nod once. "Lead."
We move.
This time we move like a unit.
Not a crowd.
Trask calls corners. I mark lanes. I point, they shift. I tap a shoulder, they swap. I snap a hand signal, they understand. I don't remember teaching any of this.
But my hands remember.
My voice remembers.
Rally Master habits rise up like muscle memory from a war I can't access.
"Two left, one high," I order at a junction.
A crewman obeys, climbs to a maintenance platform, covers the choke point.
"Don't bunch," I snap as panic tries to compress them into a single target. "Spread. Breathe. Aim."
They do.
The ship groans. Panels burst. Smoke thickens until it tastes like pennies through my respirator. Emergency bulkheads slam shut behind us, sealing off corridors that were open seconds ago.
And the Sith keep coming.
Troopers in black armor. Boarding parties moving in waves. Their discipline is sharp, their confidence sharper, like they've boarded a hundred ships and never lost one.
They didn't board a ship with me on it often enough.
We break them in short, brutal bursts. I don't waste shots. I don't waste movement. I don't waste breath.
At one point we pass an auxiliary security alcove with a dormant Republic battle droid slumped against the wall, half-covered in foam insulation from the suppression system. Its chassis is scorched. Its power light is dead.
One of the crewmen points. "It's fried."
I'm already at the panel.
The hatch pops. I yank open a maintenance bay, rip a spare power cell out of an emergency kit, and jam it into the droid's auxiliary slot like I've done it a hundred times.
The droid's optics flare blue.
It rises in a stiff, jerky motion, then steadies.
"Republic security unit online. Identify threat."
"Threat is anything black-armored with a bad attitude," I say.
The droid rotates its blaster arm and emits a clipped tone that might be agreement or confusion.
It follows anyway.
We push deeper, and the droid becomes a moving wall behind us, laying down suppressing fire in clean mechanical bursts. Not brilliant. Not heroic. But useful.
Useful keeps people alive.
Something in my head tries to surface during the fights. A flicker. A pattern. A feeling that I've done this before on a hundred decks, in a hundred wars, under a hundred different names.
I force it down.
Not now.
Survive now.
Remember later.
Trask keeps pace beside me, bless his misguided courage.
"We're close," he says. "But Bastila's last report was near the bridge access."
"Then they're already there," I answer.
He grimaces. "Probably."
We hit a cross-corridor and the air suddenly turns electric.
Not temperature. Not pressure.
Something else.
A scream. A sharp crack. A flash of light that isn't blaster fire.
A lightsaber.
We round the corner and see her.
A Jedi Knight in travel-worn robes, stance low, blade ignited in a steady blue line. She's fighting two Sith troopers and a dark-robed figure moving like a predator behind them, not rushing in, just watching, waiting for the opening.
The Jedi's footwork is clean. Controlled. Guardian style. She's protecting a pair of injured crewmen behind a collapsed panel, her saber catching bolts and returning them in deflective angles that make troopers drop without realizing the shot was theirs.
She's good.
And she's about to die.
A ceiling conduit above her snaps under pressure from another distant explosion. A heavy section of plating breaks loose, tumbling down with the slow certainty of gravity's cruelty.
I move before I think.
I shoulder through the smoke, slam my weight into her, and drive us both under a slanted piece of cover as the plating crashes down exactly where she stood.
The impact shakes the deck. Sparks rain. The corridor fills with choking dust.
For a breath, there is only sound and heat and the taste of metal.
Then the Jedi's eyes lock on me.
She's breathing hard. Face streaked with soot. Determination welded into place.
"You're—" she starts, seeing my armor.
"Mandalorian," I finish.
Her gaze flicks to the crewmen behind her. Then to the Sith troopers trying to reposition. Then back to me.
She makes a decision.
"Jedi Knight Darius Thane," she says quickly, as if naming herself is a weapon. "Are you here to help or complicate?"
The name sticks in my head in a strange way.
Not recognition.
Not memory.
Just the feeling that it matters.
"I'm here to get out," I say. "Helping is incidental."
Darius's mouth twitches. Not quite a smile. More like she appreciates honesty even when it's ugly.
Trask arrives behind me, sees her, and swears in relief. "Kriffing stars, finally. We've been trying to reach you."
Darius's blade whips up and deflects a bolt that would have taken Trask's head off.
"Then stop standing in the open," she snaps.
I step forward and fire two bursts that force the Sith troopers back. The dark-robed figure in the rear doesn't flinch. Doesn't rush. Just tilts his head slightly, watching.
Like he's measuring.
Like he recognizes the shape of a fight and wants to own it.
Darius feels it too. Her stance tightens.
"That one," she says, voice low, "is not a trooper."
Trask's jaw clenches. "We don't have time."
We press.
The corridor turns into a running battle. Darius fights like a living shield, saber turning blaster fire into redirected chaos. My squad fires in controlled arcs the way I trained them to, covering lanes, shifting on command.
The battle droid lumbers up behind us, adds its mechanical fire, and gets immediately targeted because it's the obvious weak link.
It takes a grenade square in the torso.
The blast lifts it, tears plating away, and it crashes down smoking. Its optics flicker. It tries to rise. Its voice stutters.
"Unit… compromised… continuing—"
Then it dies.
It bought seconds.
Seconds are currency in war.
Darius's gaze flicks to it, quick and sad, then back to the living threats. She doesn't mourn. Not now.
The dark-robed figure advances one step.
The air feels heavier again. Not because of smoke.
Presence.
Darius lifts her saber, eyes narrowing.
"I'll hold him," she says. "You get the others to the pods."
Trask grabs her arm.
"No," he says, immediate, fierce. "Not you."
Darius tries to pull free. "Trask—"
He shakes his head once. "You're a Jedi. You're the mission. You're the reason this ship mattered."
Darius's voice drops, anger and pain braided together. "You'll die."
Trask's grin is grim, and for a heartbeat he looks like the kind of man who always knew this was how he'd end.
"Better me than you," he says.
It echoes what he said earlier, like the universe is repeating itself until it sticks.
He looks at me.
Just a glance.
A soldier's acknowledgment.
Not friendship.
Respect.
I nod once, slow.
Trask releases Darius's arm, steps forward, and shouts over his shoulder, "MOVE!"
I slap the door controls for the next junction, and the bulkhead seals behind us as Trask charges the dark-robed figure.
The last thing I see through the narrowing seam is blue light clashing against something red and hungry.
Then the door seals.
Darius stands frozen for half a heartbeat, fist clenched so hard her knuckles go white.
Then she inhales and forces herself to move.
Honor isn't always staying to die.
Sometimes it's living because someone else decided you had to.
Footsteps ahead. Controlled. Crisp. Purposeful.
A voice calls out, strained but steady.
"Anyone alive in this section? Respond!"
A figure rounds the corner, blaster drawn, stance set like he expects to have to kill whatever he sees.
Brown jacket. Navy harness. Eyes hard. Jaw tight with battle tension.
Carth Onasi.
He takes one look at my armor and his muzzle doesn't drop.
"Mandalorian," he says coolly. "Explain."
"My contract with your Navy includes defending this ship," I reply. "Your Sith friends are making that difficult."
His eyes narrow. He glances at the survivors behind me. Sees their faces. Sees their fear. Sees that they're alive.
"You saved them," he says. Not a question.
"Yes," I answer. "They slowed me down, but not enough to be fatal."
Carth's gaze shifts to Darius.
A Jedi.
Alive.
Standing with a Mandalorian.
The universe is clearly broken.
Darius steps forward before Carth can decide this is a nightmare and shoot me to wake up.
"He pulled crewmen out of fire," she says, voice sharp with command. "He kept them moving. He saved me."
Carth's jaw tightens. "Mandalorians don't save Jedi."
Darius's eyes flash. "They do today."
Carth looks at the squad again, sees their eyes. They're not terrified of me.
They're following me.
That tells him something his instincts don't want to accept.
Finally, he lowers his blaster a fraction. Not holstered. Not friendly.
"Escape pods are close," he says. "Bastila may have already launched hers."
I nod once. "Lead."
Carth's mouth twitches like he almost smiles, then thinks better. Doesn't.
"They follow you," he says.
"They follow armor," I correct.
Carth snorts. "Same thing, sometimes."
We move.
The final corridor is chaos incarnate.
Sith troopers flood it. Blaster fire becomes weather. Sparks spray like shrapnel. Power conduits rupture and spit arcs of electricity that snap across the deck like angry whips.
Carth takes position without thinking, firing controlled shots that drop Sith troopers mid-stride. He shoots like a man who's had to keep people alive under fire before.
I push forward, carving an opening with brute certainty. My rifle barks. My pistols spit. The vibrosword comes out when distance collapses into wrestling range.
A trooper lunges at one of my survivors.
I put him down and don't look back.
One of the crewmen gets clipped in the shoulder. He yelps and stumbles. Another hooks an arm under him and drags him forward, teeth clenched.
"Keep moving!" I snap, and they do.
Darius stays close, saber up, catching bolts that would have turned the corridor into a slaughterhouse. Each deflection is precise. Each movement wastes nothing.
She fights like she's paying a debt.
We reach the pods.
Only two remain.
Carth shouts over the din. "Get them in!"
My survivors pile into the first pod. Hands shove. Someone sobs. Someone prays. Someone tries to go back for Trask and is physically hauled forward by three others.
I slam the hatch. The pod launches, streaking toward Taris like a burning meteor.
Carth gestures hard. "You, me, and the Jedi. Now!"
The second pod hisses open.
I take one last look down the corridor.
For a second, I can almost see Trask through the walls. Not literally. Not clairvoyant.
Just… the shape of sacrifice. The familiar pattern of someone spending his life like ammunition so others can leave.
Something old stirs in my chest. A truth without context.
War. Loss. Falling.
And underneath it all, a whisper I can't place:
You've done this before.
Darius pauses at the pod threshold, eyes closed for a fraction of a second, as if she's listening to something through the hull.
Then she steps in.
I follow.
Carth slams the release.
The Endar Spire becomes a flaming husk behind us, breaking apart under Sith fire and its own failing bones.
The pod rattles violently as we plunge into Taris' atmosphere. Heat blooms across the viewport. Fire streaks past like angry rain.
Carth grips the restraints with both hands. His knuckles are white.
Darius's jaw is set. Her eyes are open, but distant, like she's forcing herself not to feel every death she can't stop.
I don't grip anything.
Not because I'm brave.
Because the fall feels familiar.
"Hope you're ready," Carth mutters, voice tight. "This is gonna be rough."
Through my visor, I watch flames lick the viewport. I watch the city lights below smear into a bleeding grid.
"Rough is relative," I say calmly. "I've had worse landings."
Carth shoots me a look like he believes me.
He should.
Because even with amnesia gnawing at my skull, even with a name that fits like a lie and a past erased like a crime scene…
Fire feels familiar.
The fall feels familiar.
War feels familiar.
And somewhere deep inside me, the whisper returns, colder now, like a hand on the back of my neck:
You've fallen before.
But never this far.
The pod slams into darkness.
And the galaxy, as always, keeps burning.
I wake to my own ragged breath echoing inside my helmet.
For a second I don't know where I am, only that the air tastes wrong through the filters. Stale. Recycled too many times. The kind of air you get in cheap housing blocks and dying ships, where the power grid coughs and pretends it's still alive.
The bunk beneath me is hard, metal barely softened by a wafer-thin cushion that feels like it was issued as a joke. The ceiling is low. Too close. The room is boxed-in tight, the walls patched in places where something broke and nobody bothered to make it pretty after.
Not a warship.
An apartment.
My HUD flickers and stabilizes as I blink it fully online. Armor status: green. Shield emitter: stable. Respirator filters: clogged-but-functional. Weapon readouts scroll automatically, like my body refuses to trust sleep.
Rifle: functional.
Pistols: charged.
Vibrosword: stable.
My head feels like somebody set off a sonic grenade inside my skull and left it there to echo.
"About time you woke up," a voice says.
I turn.
Carth Onasi is sitting in a battered metal chair near the door, one knee up, elbow resting on it, blaster within easy reach. His brown flight jacket is half unzipped, hair slightly disheveled, eyes ringed with fatigue and suspicion. He looks like he hasn't slept, and if he did, he did it with one eye open and his hand already on the trigger.
But he isn't the only one in the room.
In the far corner, half in shadow, a robed figure sits cross-legged on the floor with her back straight and her hands resting lightly on her knees. The hood is down. Her hair is tied back. There's a bandage wrapped high on one arm, and dried scorch marks on the hem of her travel cloak like she'd crawled through fire to earn it.
Darius Thane doesn't look at me the way Carth does.
Carth looks at me like a possible mistake.
Darius looks at me like a fact.
Her eyes open as I shift, calm and sharp.
"You were drifting," she says quietly. Not accusing. Observing. "Your breathing changed."
"Sounded like nightmares," Carth adds, nodding toward me. "You were thrashing."
I push myself upright, joints in my armor complaining softly. "Just old battles," I mutter. "Nothing new."
Darius's gaze lingers on my helmet for a moment like she can hear the shape of what's behind it. "Old battles don't always stay old," she says.
Carth snorts, like he's allergic to Jedi wisdom. Then he exhales and straightens a fraction. "We're not on the Endar Spire anymore. In case you missed that part."
"I noticed the lack of bulkheads and screaming," I say. "Where are we?"
"Taris." His mouth twists like the word is grit. "We came down hard in the escape pod. I dragged you out before the locals or scavengers found us. Holed up in this abandoned apartment block in the Upper City South. The Sith have the planet under quarantine and there's a blockade in orbit. We're stuck."
Outside the thin wall, something distant hums and pops. A power relay struggling. Somewhere below, a speeder screams past, the sound dopplering like a knife. Taris never shuts up. It just changes what kind of noise it makes.
"And Bastila?" I ask.
Darius's jaw tightens slightly at the name, controlled but real. Carth answers first.
"We don't know." His voice goes hard. "I was separated from her during the crash. Sensors were fried. The pod nearly cooked us. You're lucky your armor held together."
"Beskar doesn't do 'luck,'" I say. "It does survival."
Darius shifts, rising smoothly without a sound. There's a faint stiffness in the injured arm she's been pretending doesn't exist.
"She's alive," Darius says. Not confidently. Not magically. Just with the stubborn certainty of someone who refuses to imagine the alternative. "I can't feel her clearly, but… the Force didn't go quiet."
Carth's eyes narrow. "That's not exactly a map."
"No," Darius agrees. "It's hope."
Carth doesn't like hope. He likes plans.
He points at the narrow, dirty viewport. "Point is, we're stranded in hostile territory with Sith landing troops sweeping for survivors, and a Jedi with battle meditation somewhere planetside. If they find her first, the war goes from 'desperate' to 'funeral dirge.'"
I swing my legs off the bunk. Boots hit the floor with a heavy thunk that makes the whole frame vibrate.
"So we find her first," I say.
"That's the plan," Carth answers. "We blend in as best we can, gather information, maybe find anyone from the crew who made it down, track Bastila before the Sith clamp down harder."
My visor angles toward him. "You think a red-armored Mandalorian in full plate is going to 'blend in' on a Republic world under Sith occupation."
Carth grimaces. "Nobody's going to mistake you for a Sith soldier. And your armor probably scares both sides equally."
"So I'm a walking deterrent."
"Something like that," he mutters.
Darius's mouth twitches, the faintest trace of amusement she immediately buries. "Intimidation can be a useful disguise," she says.
Carth shoots her a look. "You're not helping."
The room's single viewport is narrow and dirty, a strip of transparisteel with old soot baked into the seams. Through it, Taris is a vertical wound: towers stacked on towers, traffic lanes crossing like veins, holo-billboards stuttering out propaganda between power dips.
And there, draped over a government spire, is a black banner marked with a crimson emblem.
Sith authority, hung like a collar.
Carth follows my gaze and his face hardens. "They're everywhere up here now. Patrols, checkpoints, random inspections. If you hear boots in the hall, you don't breathe until they pass."
Darius looks past the banner, beyond the obvious. "And the fear is thick," she murmurs. "It clings to the whole district."
I say nothing.
The apartment feels smaller.
Carth hesitates, then crosses his arms.
"There's something I need to ask," he says. "Before we start trusting each other with our lives."
"Then ask."
"Where were you," he says slowly, "in the Mandalorian Wars?"
The air thickens.
Not physically. Something else. Like the question itself pulls on a scar I can't see.
My HUD flickers once, a tiny glitch like the system doesn't like the topic.
My mind does what it's been doing since the Spire.
It gives me flashes.
A dropship ramp lowered into smoke.
Mandalorian troops in red and yellow armor, helmets turned toward me like I'm the only fixed point in a moving war.
Basilisk engines thrumming beneath the roar of artillery.
A street on some world I can't name, paved with broken durasteel and bodies.
A Jedi screaming as a shot hits them and their defenses fail like glass.
I feel my voice answer before I decide to speak.
"On the front lines," I say. "We hit Republic positions from Dxun to the Outer Rim. Siege work. Urban fighting. Orbital insertions." The words come out clipped and exact, like an after-action report. "Took orders from command, relayed them down the chain. Rally Master. Red plate did the talking."
Darius watches me closely, like she's listening for the spaces between the words.
Carth's jaw flexes.
"I fought in those wars," he says quietly. "For the Republic. I was there when your people shelled Serroco into glass." His eyes sharpen. "I was there when the whole galaxy watched Revan and Malak come back from the war and decide the Republic wasn't worth saving."
His voice goes colder. "So you'll forgive me if seeing Mandalorian armor standing in the same room as me sets my teeth on edge."
I meet his stare.
Helmet to human.
War to war.
"Yet you pulled me out of that pod," I say.
He looks away for a moment, like he hates that fact. "You fought like someone who still knows which direction 'forward' is. The Republic needs bodies like that alive." He glances back at me. "And you're not acting like a raider."
Darius steps in, voice calm but edged with steel. "He saved people on the Spire who would have died without him."
Carth glances at her. "That doesn't erase history."
"No," she agrees. "But it's still a fact."
I don't thank her. I just nod once, barely.
"Flashes," I admit. "Street fighting. Sieges. Jedi against Basilisks. Mandalorians dying in piles and getting up anyway." I pause, and the next images ride up like a tide I can't stop. "A robed woman with a golden saber. A Jedi with a metal jaw. A world that screamed as it cracked apart."
Darius's expression stills at the mention of the jaw. Not fear. Recognition, muted and wary.
Carth's eyes narrow, sharp and wary.
I shake my head slowly. "It all feels like mine," I say. "Like I was there. But the details slip when I try to hold them."
"Trauma does that," Carth says. "So does willful forgetting."
Darius speaks softer. "Or suppression."
Carth's attention snaps to her. "You think someone did this to him."
"I think it's strange," she says simply, "how the galaxy keeps placing him at the center of things he shouldn't be surviving."
Carth doesn't like that answer either.
Silence settles. Heavy, shared.
Two veterans of the same conflict, and one Jedi who has seen too many survivors and not enough explanations.
"You trust me?" I ask.
Carth doesn't answer immediately. He looks at my armor again. At the rifle. At the fact I'm still here, still alive, still not pointing a weapon at him.
"I trust you to hate the Sith," he says. "And I trust you to fight well. That's enough for now."
Darius adds, quietly, "And I trust you because you didn't leave anyone behind when you could have."
That lands harder than it should.
"Good," I say. "Because I don't intend to die on Taris."
A sharp pounding rattles the apartment door.
"Open up in there!" a harsh voice barks. "By order of the Sith occupation authority, all residents are subject to inspection!"
Carth's eyes widened. He's already moving, snatching up his blaster, shifting his chair back with a soft scrape that somehow sounds too loud.
"They're sweeping the complex faster than I thought," he murmurs.
Darius's posture changes instantly. Not panic. Readiness. The kind that comes from surviving enough ambushes to know the sound of one.
I rise, slow and controlled. The room is cramped but my armor makes me feel like I own the space anyway. That's the problem. Armor announces itself.
"Time to test your trust," I say.
Carth's jaw tightens. "Play it careful. Last thing we need is every patrol in the sector converging on this building."
Darius lifts her injured arm slightly, then stops herself. Her eyes flick toward my visor. Don't start a war in a hallway, that look says.
"Careful is relative," I reply anyway.
I move to the door. The panel beside it is old, its lights dim. I can hear movement outside: boots on metal, the servo-whine of droids, the hard impatience of someone who expects obedience because they wear the right colors now.
I palm the control.
The door slides open.
The hallway outside is narrow and ugly, lit by sickly overhead strips. An Imperial-style cleanliness has been forced onto a building that was never meant to be clean.
A Sith officer stands in front of our door in dark grey armor, cape hanging like he thinks he's the main character. Two combat droids flank him, photoreceptors glowing, joint servos clicking with precise, unnatural patience.
Behind him, our neighbors are pressed back against their doorway: a Duros male trying to make himself smaller than his species allows, and a human woman whose hands shake like she's holding her own heart in place.
The officer's eyes land on my armor and his lip curls instantly.
"What in the Emperor's name are you supposed to be?" he sneers. "This complex is housing refugees and crash survivors, not war relics."
Carth steps up, hands spread, voice smoother than I'd expect from a man who hates lying. "We're survivors from the Endar Spire. I pulled him from the wreckage. He's a contracted mercenary, working with the Republic Navy. We were only—"
"Mercenary or not," the officer snaps, "Mandalorian armor isn't welcome under Sith authority. Identify yourselves, present travel permits, and surrender any heavy weaponry for inspection."
His eyes flick to my rifle.
"By which I mean confiscation," he adds, like he enjoys saying it.
Behind Carth, Darius shifts just enough that her presence becomes visible. Not the robes. The stillness. The way she doesn't flinch from an armed man in a corridor.
The officer's eyes flick to her. He doesn't recognize her as Jedi, not yet, but he registers her as wrong in the way predators register other predators.
I let silence sit between us, heavy enough to make the human woman behind him whimper.
"You want my weapon," I say calmly, "come take it."
The Duros makes a strangled sound.
Carth mutters under his breath, "Venaku…"
The officer's face hardens. He raises his chin toward the droids.
"Search them," he orders. "If they resist, stun them and drag them to holding cells. If they draw on you—"
The nearest droid's arm lifts.
The moment its blaster aperture rotates into alignment, I see the line it will take.
It won't just hit me.
It will cut through this hallway, through these civilians, through anything that happens to exist between its muzzle and its target.
Authority plus cowardice.
Darius's eyes narrow. Her fingers twitch once, subtle as breath.
I shoot first
My rifle barks once.
The shot slams into the first droid's photoreceptor cluster. Glass and metal explode outward. The droid jerks, its head unit spasming, servos locking and unlocking in rapid confusion.
The second droid swings its arm toward me, charging.
Carth is already moving, diving sideways into the doorframe for cover. His shot is clean, deliberate.
He hits the second droid's shoulder joint and blows it out. The arm spins away and clatters onto the floor like a severed limb.
"Kill them!" the officer screams.
He draws his pistol.
Darius moves before the shot can land.
Not with a lightsaber. Not with a dramatic flourish. Just a sharp, invisible shove that snaps the officer's wrist off-line at the exact moment he fires.
The bolt scorches the wall instead of Carth's spine.
Carth doesn't even look back. He just keeps firing like he's learned not to question miracles in a firefight.
I don't give the officer room to correct his aim.
I step forward, using the half-falling first droid as moving cover. Its damaged chassis lurches into my lane like a collapsing wall. Blaster fire cracks past, scorching plaster and leaving smoking pits in the ceiling.
Carth fires again, keeping the officer pinned, forcing his shots wide.
I close the distance in three strides.
At this range, the rifle is overkill.
I drop it to a sling, draw the vibrosword.
It hums to life with a steady, eager vibration that feels too comfortable in my hand.
The officer gets one wild shot off.
It splashes against my chestplate. My shield flares for a breath, a thin shimmer like heat haze.
I don't slow down.
I bring the vibrosword down in a single hard arc, cutting through his weapon arm and breastplate in one smooth motion.
He crumples, eyes wide, mouth open.
There isn't even time for him to understand that he's already dead.
Behind me, the second droid tries to recalibrate, rotating its torso in awkward jerks, searching for a weapon that isn't attached anymore.
Darius extends two fingers, and the droid's remaining arm jerks up and locks, pinned in place like it hit an invisible wall.
Carth ends it with two precise shots into the exposed actuator housing.
The droid locks, sparks, then collapses.
The hallway falls silent except for the faint hiss of my blade cooling.
Smoke curls upward. The human woman covers her mouth, eyes huge. The Duros' skin goes a paler shade, as if his body is trying to flee without his consent.
Carth straightens, scanning left and right with pure veteran instinct. "We need to move. Sith patrols will check in when this squad doesn't report back."
Darius is already watching the far end of the hall, listening to things the rest of us can't. "They're coming," she says softly. "Not here yet. But soon."
I flick blood from the vibrosword and sheath it. "You wanted careful. I saved you ammunition."
Carth stares at me like he can't decide whether to strangle me or thank me.
"Force help me," he mutters, "you're going to give me an ulcer."
Darius gives him a look. "You already have one."
Carth's expression tightens. "Thanks."
He kneels beside the officer's corpse and yanks a comlink from the belt with a practiced motion.
"Disable it," he snaps.
I crush it in my gauntlet. The casing pops, the internal crystal cracking with a sharp, satisfying snap.
Carth exhales once. "Good."
Then he looks at the bodies.
We all understand the problem.
Two dead droids and a dead officer in a hallway that's about to become busy.
"We can't leave them here," Carth says.
I don't argue. I just move.
We drag the officer first, armor scraping softly against the floor, his cape catching on every imperfection like it's trying to cling to dignity. The droids are heavier, awkward, dead weight.
Darius helps without announcing it. Not by grabbing metal. By making it lighter, just enough that the dead weight stops fighting us. Subtle. Controlled. The kind of Force use meant to go unnoticed.
We haul everything into the empty apartment across the hall, the one with a busted lock and a smell like mold and old spice.
Carth wipes his hand across his face, smearing soot and sweat together. "Quietly. Quietly," he mutters like a prayer he doesn't believe in.
Darius's voice is a whisper. "They'll feel the disturbance if we linger."
"I thought you said you couldn't feel Bastila clearly," Carth snaps.
"I can't," Darius replies, unbothered. "But I can feel this."
I close the door behind us, leaving the hallway "clean" enough that a patrol might not notice at a glance.
Might.
Carth looks at me. "We leave. Now."
Darius nods once. "Agreed."
I nod.
The Duros steps forward hesitantly, big red eyes moving from the blood smear on my chestplate to my visor, then to Darius. His gaze catches on her calm and he stiffens like he recognizes danger he doesn't understand.
"I… I thought we were finished," he says, accent thick and shaken. "The Sith have no patience for questions unanswered."
"You answered fine," I say. "They just didn't like your existence."
His throat works. "You… are Mandalorian."
"Yes."
"And yet you stopped them. Why?"
"Because they were in my way." I pause, then add, because it's true, "and because they were cowards with authority. I hate that combination."
The Duros exhales in a shudder that might be a laugh if fear wasn't strangling it.
"Whatever the reason… I owe you," he says. "If the Sith ask, I saw nothing. You are just… another crashed soldier. Hiding like everyone else." His eyes flick to Carth. Then to Darius again, uneasy. "I'll tell the other tenants to keep quiet."
Carth gives a tight nod. "Do that."
The human woman nods rapidly. "We won't say a word. The Sith are scary, but so are you," she adds, looking at my armor. Then, quieter, to Darius, "And… you."
Darius dips her head slightly. Not reassurance. Acknowledgment.
"Be careful," the Duros says. "Taris remembers Mandalorians. And the Sith do not forgive."
"I've never needed their forgiveness," I say.
Darius adds softly, almost to herself, "And they don't deserve it."
Carth shifts his blaster back into a ready position and angles his body toward the stairwell. "We're going. If they sweep again, act normal."
The Duros gives a thin, miserable smile. "Normal died the day the Sith arrived."
He isn't wrong.
We slip down the corridor and toward the service stairs, moving fast but controlled, the way you move when you know the next mistake might be your last.
Darius pauses at the stairwell landing for half a heartbeat, eyes unfocusing.
"What?" Carth whispers.
"They're close," she whispers back. "Two floors up. Moving down."
I don't ask how she knows. I just move.
We take the service stairs two at a time. Boots on metal. Quiet enough to be missed. Fast enough to matter. Above us, faint voices echo, distorted by the building's hollow spine.
"…reporting in…"
"…sweep pattern…"
"…no response from Unit Seven…"
Carth's jaw tightens.
Darius lifts her hand once, palm outward.
The lights on the landing flicker. Not a blackout. Not dramatic. Just enough of a stutter and a buzz to make the stairwell feel abandoned and broken, like nothing worth checking.
A small thing.
A necessary thing.
We slip out onto a lower corridor that reeks of damp and old spice, then through a maintenance hatch that opens into a service catwalk overlooking an alley of the Upper City.
Taris air hits me like a dirty cloth.
Traffic roars above. Sirens wail far off. Somewhere, a speaker blares Sith "security advisories" in a tone that's meant to sound calm and ends up sounding like a threat.
Behind us, the apartment block hums and flickers like a sick animal.
And somewhere out in the city, boots start moving toward the silence we just made.
The apartment's exit door hisses open, and Taris hits me in a rush of sound and light.
Not wind. Not fresh air. Just noise, heat, and movement layered on top of movement until the city feels less like a place and more like a machine that never stops chewing.
Wide durasteel walkways run along the faces of towering superstructures. Suspended traffic lanes carve glowing lines through the haze, speeders whining past in packs like insects that learned how to hate. Massive towers rise into perpetual smog, their upper levels swallowed by artificial skyglow and pollution that never quite clears. Sith banners hang from high platforms, crimson insignias stamped onto black cloth like a wound someone refuses to let heal.
Down below, distant lights mark deeper layers of city. Farther down than sane minds want to imagine. And above, I know, is only more of the same.
Taris is a vertical labyrinth built on arrogance and credits, stacked so high it convinced itself gravity was optional.
Carth steps up beside me, scanning the skyline, instinctive and sharp. "Upper City. Richer than most of the galaxy… and still terrified of its own shadow with a Sith fleet in orbit."
Darius Thane appears on my other side, quiet as a thought. Her hood is up now, not for drama. For anonymity. Jedi robes draw eyes the same way my armor does, just with different consequences.
"The fear is everywhere," she murmurs. "It's… constant."
Civilians move along the walkway, trying to act like the Sith occupation is just a change of management and not a collar tightening. Humans. Twi'leks. Duros. A few species I don't bother naming. Their eyes slide past Carth without interest.
Then they see me.
And they stop pretending not to stare.
Conversations falter. A mother pulls her child closer. Two dock workers mutter something and take a longer route around us. Someone spits near the edge of the walkway, not at me, but close enough to be a message.
"Popular," I remark.
Carth's mouth quirks despite himself. "Taris was hit hard during the Mandalorian siege. Lot of people lost friends, homes… entire districts. Seeing that armor is like forcing them to relive it."
Darius's gaze flicks across the crowd, her expression tightening at the reflexive fear. "They don't see you," she says softly. "They see what you represent."
I stare out over the skyline.
"I was here," I say quietly. "Back then."
Carth doesn't look surprised. Just resigned, like the galaxy keeps handing him the same joke in different packaging. "What do you remember?"
"Streets full of barricades," I answer. The words come too clean, too quick, like they've been waiting. "Mandalorian patrols dragging Resistance cells out of basements. Basilisks screaming between towers. Republic bombing runs going wide and hitting civilian blocks. Your ships cutting off supplies from orbit. Smoke so thick you could taste metal through a sealed helm."
I pause, and the pause feels like a blade resting on a table.
"We held this level against three counterattacks," I add. "And I remember thinking the city would never forget us."
Carth's hands curl into fists, then relax again. "I fought over Taris too," he says. "From orbit. We tried to punch through your blockade. Lost good pilots. We didn't do half enough to help the people down here."
He looks sidelong at me. "Now we're walking the same streets for the same cause. Life's funny."
"That's one word for it," I answer.
Darius exhales, slow. "We need supplies," she says, practical. "And information. Bastila could be anywhere."
I'm already mapping sightlines and patrol routes without meaning to. The Upper City's walkways aren't streets. They're corridors with views. Chokepoints. Kill-zones if someone has enough authority and too little conscience.
Carth notices my scanning. "You planning tactical assault routes for a shopping trip?"
"Yes."
He mutters, "Perfect. Wonderful. A Mandalorian who plans for everything except subtlety."
Darius's mouth twitches. "Be grateful," she says. "Sooner or later, we'll need his instincts."
Carth shoots her a look. "And my patience."
"You're doing fine," Darius replies, dry as sand.
We start moving.
We stick to the main route. Not because it's safe. Because it's predictable. Sith patrols like predictable. So do civilians. And if you're going to walk through a city under occupation wearing armor that carries a war's worth of ghosts, you don't do it in back alleys unless you want the ghosts to get company.
A holo-sign flickers near an intersection: a rotating crate logo and the words Equipment Emporium, flashing in tired blue.
Carth nods toward it. "That shop. Could use medpacs, grenades. Maybe armor upgrades, if they've got anything that doesn't offend your Mandalorian sensibilities."
"I doubt it," I say. "But credits aren't for hoarding."
Darius looks from the sign to the flow of people. "A public store means public ears," she says. "That can be useful."
We step through the sliding door.
The storefront is bright enough to pretend the world outside isn't collapsing. Racks of armor. Weapon mounts. Crates stacked in neat rows. Holoscreens flickering item data that tries to make survival look like a purchase decision.
Behind a counter reinforced with plating sits a dark-skinned human woman with sharp blue eyes and black hair pulled back. She studies us immediately, gaze lingering on my armor with a mix of wariness and business calculation.
"New faces," she says, voice warm but practiced. "Let me guess. Crashed off one of those ships the Sith shot down. You don't look like locals."
"Sharp," I say.
She gives a quick half-smile. "Name's Kebla Yurt. This is my Equipment Emporium. Biggest selection in Upper Taris… or at least it used to be, before the Sith started 'confiscating' anything that scared them."
"They took your heavy weapons," Carth guesses.
"And impounded any ship that wasn't nailed down," she confirms. "Still. I've got armor, ranged weapons, grenades, medpacs, slicing gear. If you've got credits, I've got ways to make your lives slightly less short."
Her eyes slide to Darius's hooded figure. Not suspicious. Curious. Like she can sense the discipline under the cloth.
Then her gaze returns to my plates and stays there a fraction too long.
"You're either brave," she says, "or you've got no sense of self-preservation."
"I have plenty," I answer. "It's just… armored."
Kebla snorts. "That I don't doubt. Take a look around."
We browse.
Her stock is solid for a planet under occupation. Light and medium armors, decent condition. Pistols and rifles, not Mandalorian-grade, but maintained like someone cared. Vibroblades, stun batons, grenades, energy shields, and more medpacs than I'd expect in a shop that claims to be "legal."
Carth picks up medpacs and checks seals with a soldier's eye.
I test a cooling assembly for rifle upgrades, feeling the weight in my hand, the fit of the parts. The motion sparks something in my body, a memory of training recruits: strip, clean, reassemble, repeat until it's muscle, not thought.
Darius drifts through the shelves with quiet purpose, fingers brushing a compact shield unit. "If Sith patrols are sweeping," she says, "we'll need ways to survive concentrated fire without drawing attention."
"Shield generators," Carth agrees. "And grenades. Crowd control."
I pick up a vibroblade with Echani markings, test its balance.
"Too light," I say. "Echani fight like they're dancing. I fight like I want the other man to stay dead."
"You and the Echani would get along great at parties," Carth mutters.
Kebla leans on her counter. "You two are either going to save this planet," she says, "or blow it up arguing. Either way, the Sith will be less bored."
Carth's eyes flick up, sharp. "We're looking to gear up quietly. Crashed in the Upper City. Don't want Sith patrols sniffing too close."
Kebla's expression tightens. "You and everyone else. Sith are jumpy after that Republic cruiser went down."
Darius tilts her head slightly. "Have there been many survivors?"
Kebla's gaze flicks between us. She lowers her voice. "More pods came down than the Sith want people to believe. Quarantine's as much about control as 'security.' I've heard rumors. Some survivors got dragged off within minutes. Some disappeared into the Undercity. Some got bribed out of trouble by having the right friends."
Carth's jaw tightens. "Any mention of a Jedi?"
Kebla's eyes narrow. Not fear. Calculation. "I've heard whispers about a woman in robes," she says. "Sith patrols have been asking questions like they already know the answer. That means she's important."
Darius stays still. Too still. Like she's making sure her breath doesn't betray her.
"And Bastila Shan?" Carth presses.
Kebla's expression shifts. The name means something even here. "That name's been floating," she admits. "Mostly in the mouths of people who want it to stop floating. If you're hunting her, I'd do it fast."
Carth nods once, tight.
Kebla's eyes return to me. This time, not just my armor. Something else. Recognition in the way her gaze measures the shape of my plates, the old Neo-Crusader lines.
"You're not the only Mandalorian I've seen in this cantina district," she says.
Carth goes rigid. "What."
Kebla jerks her chin toward the street outside, like she doesn't want to say it too loud in a store full of listening shelves. "There's another one. Hangs around Javyar's Cantina. Doesn't bother anyone unless they get stupid."
My helmet feels heavier.
Darius's voice is careful. "Name?"
Kebla watches my reaction before she answers. "Bendak Starkiller."
The name hits like a low-frequency shockwave through my chestplate.
Carth blinks. "That's… a real person?"
"That's a real problem," Kebla corrects.
Darius's eyes shift subtly, as if she's testing how the name echoes in the Force. "You know him."
It isn't a question.
I keep my voice level. "Every Mando'ade knows the name Bendak Starkiller."
Carth's brow furrows. "Give me the short version."
"Neo-Crusader," I say. "Champion fighter. War hero to some. Butcher to others. He didn't retire. He relocated his violence somewhere it could be applauded."
Kebla's mouth twists. "He's the dueling ring's crown jewel. Ajuur the Hutt loves him. Makes credits like a printer. Bendak doesn't care about credits. He cares about winning."
Darius's gaze stays steady. "And you?"
My hands tighten on the rifle part without thinking. Then relax.
"I care about surviving," I say. "And information."
Carth exhales. "And now we've got a Mandalorian champion sitting in the same cantina we're about to use as an intel hub. That's… fantastic."
Kebla finishes our transaction fast. Credits vanish. Supplies change hands. She bags medpacs, grenades, a compact energy shield for Carth, and my upgrade kit.
"Word of advice," she says as we turn to leave. "The Sith are jumpy around anyone they can't easily bully. Troops, mercs, Jedi, doesn't matter. You see them, walk like you belong, but don't give them a reason to notice your names."
Her eyes flick to my armor again. "Especially you. Taris has long memories."
"I'm discovering that," I reply.
Kebla nods toward Darius. "And you," she adds softly, "keep that hood up. People have been disappearing for less."
Darius inclines her head. "Thank you."
Kebla's expression hardens into business again. "Try not to die. Dead customers are bad for business."
Outside, the city hums on like nothing can touch it. Sith patrols move in pairs and fours, their armor too clean, their posture too eager. Civilians pretend not to see them. Nobody ever looks like they're "doing something wrong" until they're already in cuffs.
Carth gestures toward a corridor lined with holo-posters and flickering lights. "Upper City cantina is that way. Good place to overhear rumors. Maybe someone saw pods come down. Maybe someone heard about a Jedi being dragged through the streets."
"Or we find half the swoop gangs of Taris packed into one room," I say. "Either way, I won't be bored."
Darius keeps her gaze forward. "We keep it quiet," she says. "We don't draw more attention than we already have."
Carth throws her a look. "Tell that to the walking war crime in red armor."
I don't respond. The truth is simple.
I don't need to draw attention.
The armor does it for me.
We approach the cantina entrance. Music leaks out between the doors, forced cheer pushed through cheap speakers. A Sith trooper stands guard, rifle held a little too tightly, visor turning toward us and pausing on my armor like it personally offended him.
"Halt," he says. "State your business in this district."
Carth steps in smoothly. "We arrived a little before that space battle above, we're not here for trouble. Cantina seemed as good a place as any to pick up news."
The trooper's visor shifts to Darius's hood. Lingers. Then back to me.
"The cantina is under surveillance," he replies. "Any trouble inside, and you'll answer for it. Especially you, Mandalorian."
His tone on that word could strip paint.
I tilt my head slightly. "I'm here to drink and listen. If someone starts trouble, I'll help you end it."
He doesn't like that. But he doesn't have grounds to refuse us.
"Don't test us," he snaps. "The Sith have long memories too."
Darius's voice is calm, almost gentle. "Then it should be easy for you to remember we haven't done anything yet."
Carth winces internally. I can hear it in his silence.
The trooper steps aside anyway.
Carth leans in just enough for me to hear. "Try not to pick a fight before we even get inside."
"I don't start wars," I murmur. "I just finished them."
Darius exhales once, quiet. "Let's begin," she says.
The cantina doors hiss open.
And Taris's rot spills out to greet us.
The cantina is a wound in the side of Taris.
You step inside and the noise hits like a concussive blast: music from a Bith band forcing cheer into a room that doesn't deserve it, the clatter of glasses, the low hiss of whispered deals, the sharp edge of laughter that never quite reaches anyone's eyes.
Dim lights reflect off cheap metal. Holo-signs flicker with dancing silhouettes. Twi'lek dancers move on raised platforms, painted smiles hiding boredom. The air is thick with sweat, smoke, and the tang of spilled ale soaked into the floor for years.
And in the center, ringed with glowing energy barriers, is the dueling ring.
Even from the doorway, you can tell: this is what the room really orbits.
Carth falls in beside me, scanning instinctively for exits, chokepoints, threats. Darius does the same, but with a different kind of awareness. She watches people's faces. Their tension. The way fear spikes when certain names are spoken.
I watch the ring.
A referee droid hovers near the edge, monotone voice droning out rules no one listens to. Spectators press against the railings, screaming for blood like it's the only honest thing left to buy here.
Inside the ring, two men circle each other.
The older one, Marl, moves like someone who's learned the difference between surviving and winning. Compact stance. Guard high. Wastes nothing.
The younger one, Gerlon Two-Fingers, moves like someone who thinks fighting is still a tavern scrap. Punches wild. Feet heavy. Ego louder than his skill.
Gerlon lunges with a sloppy haymaker.
Marl slips it clean, drives a short strike into Gerlon's ribs, then clips him behind the ear with an elbow. Gerlon stumbles, over-rotates, hits the mat face-first.
The crowd explodes.
Some cheer out of habit. Some jeers. A few laugh like they just watched a holo-comedy instead of a man losing a week of cognition.
Marl raises one hand, accepting applause with tired resignation. When he turns toward the rail, his eyes catch me.
His expression shifts.
Not fear.
Assessment.
He knows a predator when he sees one.
Carth murmurs beside me, "We're drawing looks."
Darius answers softly, "We were always going to."
My visor sweeps the room.
Near the dueling sign-up table, a cluster of fighters loiter around cheap drinks and cheap bravado:
Deadeye Duncan, armored in loud mouth and weak posture, telling an unimpressed patron how he "almost had" his last opponent.
Ice, standing apart, arms folded, weight balanced like she could move in any direction without warning. Her stare is flat, evaluating.
Twitch, a Rodian with nervous energy, bouncing on the balls of his feet, fingers tapping an imaginary rhythm.
Gerlon, rubbing his jaw, pretending the loss didn't happen.
And then, in a corner nearer the bar, sits someone the crowd is careful not to bump.
Bendak Starkiller.
Even seated, he looks like a threat carved into shape. Golden Neo-Crusader armor catches the cantina light, plates scarred and scorched like they've been introduced to too many wars and never apologized. His helmet crest is high and severe, the silhouette of an era the galaxy pretends is over.
His visor locks onto me the moment he sees me.
Two Mandalorians in one room.
The cantina doesn't go quiet.
But it tightens.
Carth whispers, "Well. That's not ominous at all."
Darius's eyes linger on Bendak. "He's… loud," she murmurs, meaning in the Force. "Like a blade left out in the sun."
I don't look away. "He wants to be seen."
Bendak stands.
That alone makes several patrons flinch.
He doesn't approach yet. He just watches, and the watching feels like a challenge laid flat on the table.
Carth shifts his stance slightly, angling his body between me and Darius without thinking. Protective instinct. Old soldier habit.
Darius notices and doesn't comment.
I turn away first.
Not because I'm intimidated.
Because Bendak isn't our mission.
Not yet.
We move toward the duelist table, blending into the cantina's chaos as best as three obvious problems can.
Ajuur the Hutt sits behind the sign-up table, enormous and pleased with himself, flanked by a referee droid and a couple of hired muscles who pretend they're not looking for excuses to hurt people.
He sees me and practically glows.
"HO HO HO!" Ajuur booms, voice rattling glasses. "Big armor! Big fighter! New blood in my ring! Taris love this! Ajuur love credits!"
Carth mutters, "This feels like a mistake."
Darius, low and dry, "It's a profitable mistake. That's the local religion."
Deadeye Duncan turns as we approach, mid-story, and his face drains of color when he registers my armor.
"Oh kriff me," he whispers, like he's just been told the floor is optional.
Ice's eyes narrow, not afraid, just curious.
Twitch leans forward, fascinated. "That's… actual Mandalorian armor."
Gerlon snorts. "Bucket-head's lost."
I stop at the edge of the table. Don't sit. Don't lean. I let the armor do what it does: make space.
Ajuur slaps a datapad down. "Name for records!"
I pause.
Ajuur's mouth curls. "You give name, or Hutt give name."
Carth leans in, urgent. "You don't want a Hutt naming you."
Darius adds quietly, "Trust him on that."
Ajuur rubs his hands together like he's already tasted the credits. "Hmmm… I name you… ANGRY MURDER SUIT! Or RED METAL MAN! HO HO HO!"
The room laughs. Nervous laughs. The kind that are half-entertainment, half-please-don't-kill-me.
I speak before Ajuur can get creative.
"Venaku Farr."
Ajuur blinks. Then looks offended. "BORING! Hutt audience want mystery! Drama! Hutt call you…"
He points a thick finger like he's pronouncing a blessing.
"…Mysterious Stranger!"
Carth closes his eyes for a moment like he's silently begging the universe for patience.
Darius's shoulders rise in the smallest suppressed laugh.
I don't argue.
If a nickname buys us credits and access, I can wear it like any other lie.
Ajuur taps the datapad. "Entry fee. The winner gets paid. Losers get carried!"
Deadeye Duncan makes a choking noise. "Uh, Ajuur… maybe I should fight someone else first? Like… anyone else?"
Ajuur's eyes gleamed. "Duncan fight first! Always fight first! The crowd loves Duncan getting hit!"
The crowd around the ring starts chanting already. They've smelled entertainment.
Duncan tries to salvage pride, puffing his chest. "Fine. Fine. I'm not scared. I've fought Mandalorians before."
Carth murmurs, "No you haven't."
Duncan's eyes darted to me. "I mean… not, like, a serious one…"
Darius steps closer to Carth and whispers, "He's lying."
Carth whispers back, deadpan, "Welcome to the cantina."
Ajuur waves at the arena doors. "GO! GO! FIGHT!"
The arena doors open and the crowd's roar becomes physical.
Duncan goes out first, throwing his arms up, soaking in attention like it's medicine.
"I'M THE CHAMPION OF UPPER TARIS!" he shouts.
Someone boos.
Someone throws something that might be food if Taris standards weren't so low.
Duncan spins on it and nearly slips before balancing himself, offended. "I MEANT TO DO THAT!"
Then I step through the opposite entrance.
Helmeted.
Armored.
A walking reminder of a war people only like when it's over.
The room shifts again.
This time it isn't "air changes when a blade is drawn."
Its gravity changes when something heavy enters.
Duncan sees me fully and his bravado collapses like wet paper.
"Hey," he says, voice cracking. "Listen, Mister Stranger, right? We can do this nice and… uh… professional. Like a sport."
The buzzer sounds.
I move.
Fast.
Not Force-fast.
Mandalorian-trained fast, the kind that comes from drilling recruits until hesitation gets beaten out of them.
Duncan throws a punch. It's telegraphed, wide, hopeful.
I step inside it and slam a palm strike into his chest.
The impact isn't flashy.
It's efficient.
Duncan goes flying backward and hits the mat hard enough to make the energy barrier flicker.
The crowd erupts.
Carth winces. "Kriff…"
Darius watches with a tight expression, not approving, not horrified. Just aware. "He's not trying to kill him," she says.
Carth stares. "That's your standard for 'reassuring'?"
Duncan wheezes, trying to sit up. "Okay! Okay! That one counted! I'm warmed up now!"
He staggers to his feet, hands raised, trying to look like a fighter and not a man about to be corrected.
I close the distance and hook his arm.
He yelps. "HEY!"
I twist.
There's a crack, dull and ugly.
Duncan screams loud enough to cut through the band's music.
"My ARM! MY ARM!"
The crowd cheers like they've been starving.
Carth's jaw clenches. He doesn't look away.
Darius's eyes narrow. She can feel the moment Duncan's pain spikes, and she flinches anyway, just a fraction.
"Venaku," Carth mutters under his breath, "we need him alive."
I don't respond.
I shove Duncan backward. He stumbles, tries to swing with his good arm.
I catch his wrist, step through, and drive a knee into his ribs.
Another crack.
Duncan folds, gagging, half-sobbing, half-shouting.
"STARS ABOVE! I'M DONE! I'M DONE!"
He tries to backpedal.
I don't chase.
I just walk him down.
Slow.
Certain.
The crowd is louder now, hungry and thrilled, because this isn't a duel.
This is a demonstration.
Duncan makes one last attempt at bravery, spitting words through tears. "I-I can still fight! I'm… I'm Deadeye Duncan!"
I hit him once.
A clean punch to the jaw.
No flourish.
Just the kind of strike that ends arguments.
Duncan drops like a puppet whose strings were cut.
The buzzer sounds.
The referee droid announces, flat and uncaring: "Winner: Mysterious Stranger."
The cantina explodes into noise.
Carth exhales like he's been holding his breath the whole fight. "That was…"
Darius finishes for him, quietly: "Effective."
Carth shoots her a look. "You say that like it's a compliment."
"It is," Darius replies. Then, softer, "And it's also… frightening."
I stand in the ring for a moment, looking down at Duncan's unconscious form. He's alive. Breathing. Broken in the places that heal.
The crowd doesn't care about that distinction.
Above the ring, Bendak Starkiller watches from his corner.
He doesn't clap.
He doesn't cheer.
He simply nods, slow and deliberate, like a predator acknowledging another predator has teeth.
Duncan gets hauled out on a stretcher, still half-conscious, still trying to talk his way back into dignity.
"I HAD HIM!" he slurs. "I ALMOST WON! THIS WAS A TECHNICAL LOSS! MY LEG ISN'T SUPPOSED TO BEND THAT WAY!"
A medic mutters, "Shut up."
Duncan points weakly toward me. "YOU! YOU MANIAC! I'LL FIGHT YOU AGAIN!"
The medic mutters, louder, "No you won't."
I leave the ring without acknowledging the crowd, because feeding them makes them hungrier.
Ajuur waddles forward, delighted, and slaps my backplate hard enough to ring my armor.
"HO HO HO! Mysterious Stranger VERY POPULAR NOW! Hutt loves this! Next fight soon! More credits! More pain!"
Carth steps closer, voice low. "We got what we came for?"
"Not yet," I say.
Darius's gaze sweeps the cantina again, searching faces, listening to murmurs. "Now people will talk to us," she says. "Or about us."
Carth sighs. "Fantastic. We're famous."
And then, from the corner of my visor, I see Bendak move.
He rises from his table and starts walking toward us, golden armor catching cantina light like a warning.
Carth tenses.
Darius goes still.
And I feel something old in my chest, something that remembers what it means when a name like Starkiller decides you're worth approaching.
Taris doesn't forget.
Neither do Mandalorians.
Not the ones who survive.
I step out of the ring to a wave of noise that hits like heat.
Some people clap. Some shout my new name like it belongs to them now. Some stare like they're trying to decide if cheering is safer than running. A few just keep their eyes down and drink faster, the way people do when the universe has started making new rules without explaining them.
Deadeye Duncan limps out a little later, half-carried, half-stubborn. His face is pale and sweaty, one arm cradled like it's an expensive heirloom he's afraid I'll repossess. He spots me and straightens too fast, pain flashing across him like a bad holo.
He tries to smile anyway.
"I, uh… I was just taking it easy on you, you know," he says, voice cracking. "Didn't want to embarrass you in your first match. If I'd been serious…"
Carth appears at my shoulder, arms folded, expression trapped between amusement and the slow, creeping dread of realizing this is now his life.
Darius stands on my other side, hood up again, calm face doing that Jedi thing where she looks like she's watching a storm from behind a window. There's a faint scorch mark still visible at the edge of her sleeve, where Endar Spire fire tried to claim her and failed.
"If you'd been serious," I say, "you'd have hit the mat faster. You made me work for that punch."
Duncan blinks, confused by the tone, like he can't tell whether I'm mocking him or complimenting him.
"I'll… I'll be back," he mutters. "You'll see. One day they'll be chanting my name."
I nod once. "Survive long enough and anything is possible."
That throws him off more than the punch did. He hesitates, as if sincerity is a weapon he never trained against, then limps away muttering something about needing a medpac and a drink strong enough to burn his memories out.
Carth watches him go. "That was… brutal."
"I pulled the hit," I reply.
Carth exhales like he just bit into a power cable. "I don't want to know what it looks like when you don't."
Ajuur's assistant waddles up and slips a credit chip into my palm like it's payment for a performance instead of a warning label for what I am. The chip is warm from the crowd's attention.
Carth nods toward it. "Well. At least you're making us money."
Darius's eyes flick over the room, already tracking the shift in attention, the way people's whispers spread. "And making us visible," she adds quietly. "Useful… and dangerous."
"Everything useful is dangerous," I say.
That's when I feel it again.
That pressure.
Not physical.
A presence cutting through the cantina noise like a blade through cloth.
I turn my visor toward the corner.
Bendak Starkiller sits like a statue made of old war and newer violence, gold armor catching cantina light in sharp edges. He hasn't moved. He hasn't cheered. He hasn't blinked, as far as I can tell.
He just watches.
Like he's deciding whether I'm worth remembering.
Or worth killing.
Carth follows my line of sight and goes still. "Tell me that's not him."
"It's him," I answered.
Darius looks, and I feel her reaction before she speaks. Not fear. Not exactly. More like recognition of a dangerous knot in the Force that refuses to loosen.
"He's… loud," she murmurs. "In the wrong way."
Carth rubs his forehead. "Fantastic. We show up for rumors and supplies and you immediately attract the deadliest Mandalorian on the planet like you're broadcasting on some… some violence frequency."
"I'm wearing a beacon," I say flatly, and tap my chestplate.
Carth groans. "Of course you are."
Ajuur leans forward in his booth, tongue flicking across his lip in greedy anticipation.
"STRANGER!" he booms. "The audience likes you. They want more! More fight! More credits! Next match, yes? Against… GERLON."
He says it like "Gerlon" is optional.
The announcer droid hovers, projecting a holo of Ajuur's grin. "Next bout: Gerlon Two-Fingers versus the Mysterious Stranger. Bets are open."
A ripple goes through the duelist crowd.
Gerlon Two-Fingers stands up near the wall where the fighters gather, rolling his shoulders like he's trying to roll the last of his pride back into place. Leaner than Duncan, sharper eyes. He holds himself like someone who once mattered in this ring, before something went wrong and the ring turned him into a punchline.
His right hand twitches slightly when he flexes it. Two fingers don't move properly. Old damage. Nerves half-broken. The kind of injury that never heals, it just becomes part of you.
He looks at me and smirks.
"Supposed to be impressed by the armor," he says. "But if you wear all that, you must be afraid of getting hit."
Carth mutters under his breath, "Please tell me you're not going to take the bait."
"I don't take bait," I reply calmly. "I take openings."
Darius's eyes narrow slightly. "Venaku…"
"I'm aware," I tell her. "No killing. No throat. No eyes."
Carth mutters, "Comforting."
Gerlon nods toward my holsters. "Are you going to shoot me? Or do you know how to fight without hiding behind metal?"
I step closer, just enough to let my shadow fall on him. "Watch closely. You'll see how afraid I am."
The crowd swells louder as we move toward the ring. They've tasted the first match. Now they want to know if it was a fluke.
The energy barrier rises with a crackle.
The referee droid's voice drones. "Standard rules. No killing. Bout ends on yield or incapacitation. Begin on signal."
Gerlon's jaw tightens. He's not smiling now.
The signal flare pops overhead.
Gerlon doesn't rush. He circles. Interesting. He's trying to read my movement, waiting for me to commit, waiting for the moment armor makes me lazy.
He throws a low kick toward my knee, fast and sharp.
I shift my weight and let it glance off reinforced plating. He follows with two jabs, testing distance, then a quick cross aimed at the narrow gap between chestplate and collar.
He's not stupid.
He's just used to opponents who panic.
I don't.
He feints left, then snaps a hook up toward my jawline.
I step inside it.
My elbow slams into his ribs.
He grunts, breath catching.
Before he can reset, I drive a short punch into his sternum, then hook behind his ankle and sweep.
He hits the mat hard, breath bursting out of him.
The crowd roars.
Gerlon rolls, instinct taking over, pushes himself up again.
Good. He doesn't quit immediately.
He comes in again, faster now, anger feeding speed but fraying technique. His punches get wider, his footwork less careful.
I bat one aside, catch his wrist, twist.
A sharp crack.
His expression flashes from determination to pure pain.
He tries to pull back.
I don't let him.
I pull him into a knee that lands clean in the body, not the head. Ribs complain. He folds.
He drops to one knee, gasping.
The crowd is screaming now, half-ecstatic, half-horrified. This isn't elegant. This is clinical.
"Yield," I say quietly.
Gerlon glares up at me, sweat and pain in his eyes. "Not… done…"
He staggers upright again, swaying, and throws one desperate swing aimed at my helmet.
I duck it, plant my palm on his chest, and shove.
He goes down.
This time he stays down.
The droid hovers in. "Gerlon Two-Fingers is incapacitated. Winner: The Mysterious Stranger."
The cantina explodes.
Carth closes his eyes like he's praying to any deity willing to take him back to a normal mission. "You just couldn't take it easy," he mutters as I step out.
"It's supposed to be a show," I reminded him. "That's how we get paid."
"We're not here to become local celebrities," he snaps. "We're here to find Bastila."
Darius steps closer, voice low. "He's right. The Sith will hear about this."
"They'll hear," I agree. "That's part of it."
Carth looks like he wants to throw something. "Part of what?"
I haven't answered yet.
Because I feel Bendak moves.
As we pass the staging area, Duncan is on a cot near the wall, wrapped in bandages like someone tried to gift-wrap his pride.
He sees me and makes a pained noise that might be a laugh, or might be his ribs filing a complaint.
"By the stars," he groans. "You don't spar, you detonate. My dueling career flashes before my eyes every time I breathe. Twice. I think you cracked reality and my spine in half."
"You're still talking," I say. "So I held back enough."
Carth snorts.
Duncan tries to scowl, but one eye won't open properly. "You think this is funny? I am a professional athlete. A rising star!"
"A rising star who just got knocked out of orbit," Carth says dryly.
Duncan points feebly at Carth with his good hand. "You are a toxic influence."
Then he swings the finger toward me and immediately winces like he just discovered motion is optional. "And you. You are a raging maniac in Mandalorian armor. Next time take it easy! This face is my livelihood!"
"Your face is at a strategic disadvantage," I reply. "I did you a favor."
Duncan opens his mouth, closes it, then flops back with an exaggerated groan. "I'm telling everyone I let you win because I felt sorry for you."
"Good," I say. "Maybe then somebody else will challenge you and keep your medical bills steady."
Darius, leaning slightly against the wall, hides a smile behind her hand. It's brief, but real.
"You don't… like him," she observes.
"I don't like cowards," I say. "But Duncan walks into the ring knowing he's going to lose and does it anyway."
Duncan's one good eye widens. "Wait. Is that a compliment?"
"Don't get used to it," I tell him, and move on.
Behind us, Duncan calls after me, voice cracking with indignation. "I'M STILL THE PEOPLE'S CHAMPION! THIS WAS A TACTICAL RETREAT!"
Carth mutters, "I hate that I almost like him."
Darius replies softly, "He survives by turning humiliation into noise."
Carth looks at her. "And Venaku survives by turning noise into humiliation."
I don't deny it.
The Duelist Lounge
The duelist lounge sits behind the stands, cramped and hot, walls lined with crooked banners from old matches. The air tastes of sweat, kolto spray, and machine oil.
Marl is there, leaning back with a vibroblade across his knees, watching me with a veteran's eye. Ice stands nearby, arms folded, expression unreadable. Twitch bounces on the balls of his feet, too energetic for a place like this, like he's trying to convince himself nervousness is excitement.
And Bendak Starkiller stands apart from all of them near a durasteel support pillar, golden Neo-Crusader armor catching the overhead glow in sharp lines.
He doesn't speak.
He just watches.
Predators evaluate the new one.
Marl nods once. "Not bad. You handled Gerlon cleaner than most. A little flashy, but the crowd eats that up."
"Flashy gets people killed," I say. "But fear keeps them from drawing on you in the first place."
Ice snorts. "Spoken like someone who thinks armor makes them invincible."
I tilt my helmet slightly, visor catching her reflection. "I've seen Basilisk rounds punch through beskar," I say quietly. "I don't think anything is invincible."
That shuts her up.
Carth clears his throat, clearly trying to steer the conversation back toward "mission" and away from "Mandalorian ego death spiral."
"So," he says, "any of you overhear anything about escape pods? About survivors? Or maybe a Jedi being dragged around by Sith patrols?"
Twitch's head snaps up. "I heard something," he blurts, then immediately looks like he regrets having a mouth. "My cousin works security near the elevator. Said Sith squads have been thick all day. Like they're hunting one specific person."
Marl nods. "There's talk. Fire streaks during the attack. Some swear pods hit Lower City slabs and bounced deeper. Sith patrols near the elevators all day."
"And the Undercity?" Darius asks, voice calm but tight.
Marl grimaces. "Rakghouls are restless. More than usual. People say the Sith sent patrols down there after the bombardment. Those patrols didn't come back."
Darius's jaw tightens.
Carth swears softly under his breath.
I file it away. Quarantine above. Plague below. Sith in the middle, squeezing the city like a fist.
Ajuur's booming laughter echoes faintly through the walls. Betting. Promises. The sound of a Hutt turning fear into profit.
Then Bendak finally shifts.
He steps away from the pillar and approaches.
The room's temperature seems to drop.
His voice is a cold vibration through the helmet grill. "You fight like Neo-Crusader shock infantry. Efficient. Ruthless. No hesitation."
I met his visor. "You expected less?"
Bendak tilts his head. "I expected… many things. But not another Mandalorian with skill worth witnessing."
He pauses, then switches to Mando'a, the language hitting the room like a private blade.
"If you live long enough," he says, "I may challenge you."
I answer without flinching. "Then I will live."
Darius leans toward Carth, whispering, "Are they always like this?"
Carth whispers back, exhausted, "Every time two Mandalorians meet it's either a duel or a weird family reunion."
Bendak's helmet turns slightly, acknowledging he heard, then dismissing it like it doesn't matter.
"You wear Rally Master colors," he says, back in Basic. "Command plate."
My chest tightens at the word. Command. Training. Recruits lined up. Helmets turned toward me, waiting for orders I can't remember giving.
"Old work," I say.
"Old work doesn't sit that naturally," Bendak replies. "Your stance is doctrine. Your timing is war. Those aren't things you learn in a pit."
Carth's hand shifts subtly toward his blaster. Not threatening. Protective. He knows what it looks like when a conversation becomes a fight.
Darius stays still, but her focus sharpens. If Bendak draws, she'll move. She's trying not to.
Bendak's voice lowers. "You take contracts from the Republic now."
"I protect who I choose," I answer.
His helmet tilts, almost amused. "And you chose aruetiise."
I switch tongues, not because I'm trying to impress him, but because some truths land cleaner in our own language.
"Mhi aliit ori'shya tal'din," I say. We are family, more than blood.
Bendak stills. A flicker of surprise. Then a low chuckle.
"Copaani gana dinuirir aruetiise?" he asks. You take payment to spare foreigners?
"Copaani gana kyr'amur aruetiise par jate jate'shya dar'manda?" I counter. You take payment to kill them for a worse kind of empty?
The word dar'manda hangs between us like a thrown knife.
Bendak's posture tightens. "Par kote," he says. "For glory. For our name. For Manda'yaim's memory."
"There's no glory in beating men like Duncan," I reply. "Only noise."
Bendak glances toward the door, toward the roar of the cantina. "Noise keeps you fed. Noise reminds them who we were. What we still are."
He steps closer, and even in a crowded lounge, it feels like the room clears around him.
"You're good," he admits. "Your control. Your angles. That's command training. Rally work."
Something stirs in my chest at the word again. A memory without images. A weight I've carried before.
"But you bend your strength," Bendak continues, switching back to Mando'a. "Gar atiniir ti aruetiise. Gar bat norac aruetiise's kote."
You endure with outsiders. You fight for outsiders' glory.
I hold his visor. "Gar bat norac heturam cho?"
You fight for nothing but sport?
His voice turns colder. "Ni bat norac ni'kote."
I fight for my own glory.
He pauses, then adds softer, like it's a confession he hates making.
"Iba kote cuyir kot."
Because glory is all that's left.
Darius's expression shifts. No pity. Not approval. Understanding, maybe, and that's worse.
Carth mutters, barely audible, "This is going to end with bodies, isn't it."
Bendak looks past me briefly, taking in Carth and Darius like they're oddities. "You travel with a Republic soldier and a Jedi. Strange company for a Mandalorian." The declaration made Carth and Darius tense as they stared hard at Bendak, who only chuckled. "Relax, if I had wanted to inform the Sith, I would've done so. You two stick out like sore thumbs who would know where to spot it."
"Strange times," I answer.
He studies me for a long moment, then steps back half a pace.
"The Hutt will offer you bigger matches," Bendak says. "One day he'll whisper my name like it's forbidden."
Carth groans out loud this time. "No."
Bendak's helmet turns slightly toward him. "Yes."
His visor returns to me. "When that day comes… I won't be waiting for the show. Not for first blood. For real."
"You want a fight to the death," I say.
"You think that armor deserves less?" he counters.
The lounge is quiet now. Even Twitch stopped bouncing.
Carth's jaw tightens. Darius's hand shifts under her robe, close to where her lightsaber would sit if she were foolish enough to show it.
"Not today," I say.
Bendak's head tilts. "Coward?"
I almost smile behind my visor. "There's no honor in killing you with half of Taris cheering for the sound, not the truth. When we fight, it won't be because a Hutt told us to."
Bendak watches me like he's weighing the lie against the intent.
Then he chuckles. "Good," he says softly. "Very good. You're not just muscle in a painted shell."
He turns to leave, then looks back over his shoulder.
"Don't die to something small before you matter," he says. "The galaxy keeps taking Mandalorians from me. I'd hate to lose you to a Sith patrol or a street punk."
He walks out, golden armor disappearing back into the cantina's shadows like a threat returning to its perch.
The lounge exhales.
Carth steps closer, rubbing his face. "I understood exactly none of that."
Darius answers before I do, quiet. "He sees Venaku as a mirror. And mirrors make people angry."
"He wants to kill me," I say. "Properly."
Carth sighs. "Of course he does. Why wouldn't he. Can't have one Mandalorian on this planet who isn't actively trying to turn it into a crater."
I don't correct him.
Because part of me understands Bendak's hunger too well.
And that scares me more than the promise of a duel.
Back to the Cantina Floor
We return to the main room, and it hits us again: bright lights, layered noise, the cantina pretending the blockade isn't there.
Carth scans the room automatically. "We're not blending."
"We were never going to blend," Darius replies.
I catch snatches of conversation as we move:
"…pods burned up before they hit…"
"…my cousin in the Lower City saw fire streaks near the elevator…"
"…Sith are searching for a Jedi, I swear it…"
I store each voice, each detail. Information is ammo.
That's when Sarna catches my eye.
She sits near the music stage, still in civilian clothes but carrying herself like a soldier who could snap into formation in her sleep. Red hair, sharp eyes, casual smile with a hardness under it. She laughs at something a trooper says, then rolls her eyes in a way that says she has a brain and no patience.
A Sith soldier off duty.
A door in uniform form.
Darius feels my attention shift. "That one," she says quietly. "Sith."
Carth's expression tightens. "No."
I ignore the "no" and start moving.
Carth mutters, "You're going to flirt with a Sith now, aren't you."
"Need a uniform," I say. "Need access. She looks bored."
Carth pinches the bridge of his nose. "One of these days your plan is not going to revolve around 'annoy, seduce, or terrify everyone in the building.'"
"Hasn't failed yet," I reply.
Darius doesn't look thrilled. But she doesn't stop me either.
That means she understands what this is: ugly, necessary strategy.
I step up to Sarna's table.
She notices me long before I reach her. Hard not to.
When I stop, she arches her brow. "You're not subtle. I can see your armor from orbit."
"If the fleet could see this armor from orbit, they'd already be shooting at it," I say. "Seems they're busy glaring at the planet instead."
She snorts, amused despite herself. "Fair."
"You don't see many Mandalorians topside," she says, eyes sliding over my plates. "Most are dead, gone, or hiding in the Lower City with the gangs. You lost?"
"Not unless the bar moved," I reply. "You just happened to be sitting in front of the alcohol."
Carth mutters behind me, "Smooth," like it hurts.
Darius stays a step back, hood up, silent and watchful.
Sarna's gaze flicks to them. "Friends?"
"Complications," I say.
She laughs once, genuine. "That tracks."
The conversation doesn't solve everything yet. But it opens a crack: an invite later, a place called the North Apartments, off-duty troopers, music, ale, and the kind of bad decisions that lead to uniforms being left unattended.
A way in.
A way down.
A way closer to Bastila.
Carth hates it. I can feel it radiating off him.
Darius watches Sarna with a stillness that says she's memorizing the woman's voice and intention, weighing whether this is a trap or an opportunity.
It's both.
Everything on Taris is both.
We peel away from Sarna's table and nearly collide with a noblewoman holding court like she owns the air.
Jeweled circlet. Layered fabrics. Gold trim. The kind of outfit that screams I have never been hungry a day in my life.
She spots me and locks on like a turret.
"Oh, perfect," she sneers. "As if this city hasn't suffered enough, now we have Mandalorian trash swaggering around like it owns the place."
Carth mutters, "Here we go…"
She steps closer, chin high. "Do you have any idea what your people did to Taris?"
"I remember plenty," I say calmly. "I also remember Republic bombardments overshooting and hitting civilian blocks. Your war wasn't one-sided."
Her face flushes. "Don't you dare compare—"
"You're drunk," I tell her. "And loud. And boring."
Her eyes blaze. She lifts her drink like she's about to make a statement.
A passing Twi'lek dancer bumps her elbow at exactly the wrong moment.
The drink goes airborne.
It doesn't hit me.
It hits her.
Full up the front of her expensive dress, splashing her jewelry, her hair, her entire constructed identity.
The floor becomes slick with spilled ale.
She takes one step.
Her foot slides.
She goes down hard.
The cantina howls with laughter.
Carth makes a strangled sound and turns away, shoulders shaking.
Darius presses her lips together so hard it's basically a prayer. It fails. A tiny breath of laughter escapes anyway.
I look down at the noblewoman, soaked and furious.
"Gravity's a harsh mistress," I say.
She shrieks something about councils and executions and fathers, tries to storm off, slips again, catches herself on a table, then flees toward the exit in wet rage.
Carth wheezes, "I'm fine. I'm fine. I just… that was…"
"I didn't touch her," I say.
"Funny how that keeps happening around you," he manages between breaths.
Darius murmurs, almost to herself, "The Force has a sense of timing."
Carth stares at her. "Do not tell me the Force just bullied a noble."
Darius's eyes stay serene. "I said timing."
We drift to the Pazaak corner, a quieter alcove where the noise drops from "riot" to "hustle."
Garouk sits at a table shuffling cards with the calm of a man who's watched people lose everything and learned not to flinch.
He looks up at me. "You look like someone who's seen war. Not sure if that means you'll be good at Pazaak or terrible."
"I learn fast," I say.
Carth opens his mouth to complain we don't have time.
I beat him to it. "If we're staying on Taris, knowing how locals gamble is useful."
Carth closes his mouth again, expression pained. "Right. Intelligence gathering. Through cards."
Garouk teaches the rules. Twenty is the line. Go over, you lose. Side deck is where you win. Simple on the surface, complicated underneath.
Like most systems worth respecting.
We played a practice round. Then another. Patterns settle fast in my mind. Tempo. Risk. Pressure. Waiting one extra beat when instinct wants to rush.
It feels… familiar.
Across the room, a tall human with neat clothes and a very punchable smirk watches.
Niklos.
He saunters over like he's inspecting defective merchandise. "New player," he says. "I'm Niklos. Unofficial Pazaak champion of Taris. Anyone worth playing goes through me."
"So everyone worth playing has already beat you?" I ask.
His smile tightens.
Carth coughs to hide a laugh.
Niklos sits opposite me. "Low stakes. When you lose, you walk away knowing what a real Pazaak player looks like."
"And when will I win?" I ask.
He laughs like that's impossible. "You won't."
We play.
He talks constantly, needling, bragging, trying to throw off focus.
It doesn't work.
I play quietly. Let him rush. Let him chase twenty like it's salvation. Then I turn sets at the last second.
A 3 when he thinks I'll bust.
A -2 when he pushes too far.
Stand on 19 and let his greed do the rest.
He overshoots by one.
He stares at the card like it betrayed him. Then at me.
"You cheated," he says flatly.
"With visible standard cards everyone watched you deal?" I reply. "Impressive trick."
Garouk sighs. "Niklos. You lost. It happens."
"Not to me," Niklos snaps, standing up hard enough to rattle the table. He glares at me. "Enjoy your streak, stranger. Next time the cards fall my way."
"Statistically," I say, "no."
He storms off, muttering about Mandalorians and rigged tables.
Carth smirks. "I like him. He's honest about being petty."
Darius watches Niklos go, thoughtful. "That pride will make him careless," she murmurs. "Careless people talk."
"That's the point," I say.
A young woman slides into the space near our table like she belongs there.
A pleasant smile. Styled hair. A dress that stays just on the safe side of "expensive trouble." Eyes that count credits before they count faces.
Christya.
"You play well," she says honey-smoothly. "Not many take Niklos apart like that. I'm Christya."
"Venaku," I replied. "This is Carth. This is Darius."
She barely glances at Carth. Her eyes linger on my armor like it's a story she can sell.
"So mysterious," she purrs. "A Mandalorian warrior walking Taris like you own it…"
"You're working someone," I say.
Her smile falters. Just a hair.
"You have a target," I continued calmly. "A noble with more credits than sense. You bring them a 'famous duelist' or 'brilliant Pazaak player' to show off. They pay for everything. You take your cut."
Christya exhales, the mask dropping a few degrees. "You're… perceptive."
Carth's grin grows.
"You're not bad at the act," I add. "But you were watching the credits, not the cards."
She studies me, then gives a real smile. "Fine. Maybe I had a small arrangement. Niklos wins big, I get a nice evening on some noble's tab. You ruined that."
"But?" I ask.
"But watching his face when he lost was worth at least two free dinners," she says, genuinely amused. "So… call us even."
"Fair," I say.
She stands, hands on hips. "If you ever want someone to point you toward rich idiots and bad parties, come find me. Until then, try not to get arrested. It'd be a shame to waste… that."
Her gaze flicks over my helmet like she's trying to flirt with a durasteel wall.
Carth deadpans, "He's going to cherish that."
Christya laughs and walks off, already scanning the room for the next wallet with legs. Her hips swaying to try to grab attention, Venaku would admit the sight was rather pleasing before he turned his view away from her nicely shaped rear.
Carth sighs. "She's going to be trouble."
"She's already in trouble," I say. "Just not ours right now."
Darius's voice is quiet. "Everyone on this planet is in trouble. The difference is whether they're trouble we can use."
Carth looks at her, weary. "Jedi are terrifying when they start sounding practical."
Darius's eyes flick toward the cantina floor, toward Sarna's table, toward the ring, toward the exits and the elevators and the layers of the city below.
"We don't have the luxury of being delicate," she says.
No one argues.
Because above us, in orbit, the Sith fleet still hangs like a noose.
And somewhere in this stacked metal maze, Bastila is either hiding, captured… or already bleeding time.
We move again, circling the cantina the way predators and soldiers circle the same space for different reasons.
And in the corner of my visor, Bendak Starkiller sits in his throne of shadow and gold, waiting for the day the Hutt whispers his name like a curse.
One day.
Not today.
Today, we hunt the living.
Eventually, the cantina starts to feel too small for everything crammed inside it.
Too much noise. Too many eyes. Too many little social games played under a Sith blockade like that makes anyone safer.
We head for the exit.
The door hisses open and Taris spits us back out into the upper-city air, cooler and cleaner than it deserves to be. The walkway hums with traffic lanes overhead, distant speeders whining like insects, and the low murmur of citizens trying very hard to pretend the war is someone else's problem.
We don't make it far.
"YOU!"
The voice is familiar. Shrill. Weaponized indignation.
The noblewoman from earlier stands planted in the middle of the walkway like she paid rent on it. She's in a hastily changed but still expensive outfit. Hair re-coiffed, makeup redone, dignity repaired with credits and denial.
Her eyes are red-rimmed with fury.
Two Rodians flank her in piecemeal armor. Pistols out. Hands shaking just enough to tell me exactly how badly they don't want to be here.
"I told you I'd make you pay, you barbarian!" she shrieks. "You humiliated me in front of everyone! My father will hear of this, and so will the guards, and—"
"You brought friends," I say. "Good. I was starting to worry this walk would be dull."
Carth slides half a step closer, low voice tight. "We don't need this. Sith patrols are nearby. We start shooting in the open and they'll notice."
Darius is behind us, quiet, hood up, presence steady. I can feel her attention shift across the walkway like a cold breeze: eyes tracking angles, distance, civilians, cameras, anything that might turn this into a disaster.
I study the Rodians.
Feet set wrong. Grips too tight. Stances borrowed from street vids, not real training.
Not professionals.
Just muscle hired to look convincing.
"You boys really want to do this?" I ask them. "You're being underpaid."
The noblewoman jabs a finger at my chestplate like her nail is going to penetrate beskar by sheer entitlement.
"He insulted me, assaulted me, and made me slip!" she screams. "Teach him a lesson! Break that ugly helmet open!"
One Rodian's antennae twitch. He glances at the other. Fear of losing the credit payout fights fear of dying.
Credit fear wins.
He raises his blaster.
Carth mutters, flat and exhausted, "Here we go again—"
The Rodian never gets the shot off.
My pistol clears its holster in one smooth motion. No flourish. No drama. Just function.
One precise bolt hits his blaster in his hand.
The weapon detonates in a shower of sparks and molten fragments. The Rodian yelps, clutching scorched fingers as the ruined pistol clatters to the durasteel.
The second Rodian jerks his weapon up.
Carth is already moving, drawing and firing a clean warning bolt that scorches the ground between the thug's feet.
The Rodian freezes like his nervous system just received updated instructions.
"Last chance," I say calmly. "Walk away."
The noblewoman's face turns a spectacular shade of purple.
"Don't just stand there!" she shrieks at them. "He can't kill you! This is Upper Taris! There are laws!"
"At the moment," I tell her mildly, "I'm just enforcing physics."
The first Rodian snarls, humiliation overriding pain, and charges with his fist up.
He might as well be charging a bulkhead.
I step inside his swing, slam my forearm into his throat, pivot, and drive him into the walkway railing hard enough to make the whole structure thunk. He wheezes, air stolen. I hook his leg and dump him onto the ground.
The second Rodian hesitates.
I look at him.
"Don't," I say. One word.
His shoulders sag with relief. He drops his blaster like it just became radioactive.
Smart.
The noblewoman starts backing away, outrage breaking into real fear.
"You're… you're going to regret this!" she screeches. "My father sits on the council! We'll have you exiled, executed, erased! I'll—"
She spins to run.
Her heel catches on the dropped blaster.
She trips.
Again.
This time she goes full-length on the durasteel, hands scraping, an undignified yelp tearing out of her throat as she eats floor like it's a family tradition.
Nearby, someone laughs.
Then another.
The laughter spreads, quick and cruel, because even on a planet under Sith occupation people still love watching the rich fall down.
Carth pinches the bridge of his nose. "This is becoming a pattern."
Darius's voice cuts in, calm and sharp as glass. "Leave. Now."
The noblewoman scrambles up, face twisted between humiliation and panic, and bolts down the walkway wailing at the top of her lungs:
"DAAAADDYYY! THE MANDALORIAN TRIED TO KILL ME!"
Her voice echoes off the metal like a siren.
The Rodians drag themselves up. One clutches his throat, the other nursing burned fingers. They glare at me, then make the sensible choice and stagger off the opposite way.
No credits in the galaxy are worth dying for someone else's pride.
"Subtle," a voice says from a nearby doorway. "Very subtle."
We turn.
Kebla Yurt is leaning in the entrance of her Equipment Emporium, arms folded, one eyebrow arched. The warm shop light spills out behind her, illuminating stacked crates, weapon racks, medpacs, upgrade kits. The whole place smells like oiled metal and practical survival.
"You two are determined to make my stretch of walkway the most interesting on Taris," she says. "First you crash onto my planet. Then you show up in my shop with Sith wreckage still stuck to you. Now you're throwing nobles at the floor."
"She threw herself," I reply. "Repeatedly."
Carth offers her a sheepish half-smile that looks like it hurts. "We're trying not to cause trouble."
"You're failing," Kebla says. "But at least you're doing it in a way that doesn't cost me business. Yet."
Her eyes flick after the retreating noblewoman.
"Her father's got pull," she adds. "Likes to make noise when he thinks someone's insulted his precious heir. Don't be surprised if more hired idiots show up later."
"We'll handle it," I say.
"I don't doubt it," she replies. "You fight like someone allergic to losing."
Her gaze sharpens, more serious.
"You headed somewhere particular," Kebla asks, "or just wandering around collecting enemies?"
Carth glances at me, then at Darius, like he can't decide which is worse: telling Kebla the truth, or living it.
"We've got… an invitation," he says finally. "Sith party in the North Apartments."
Kebla whistles softly.
"Now that's either very clever or very stupid," she says. "Hard to tell which from here. Parties like that are where Sith officers let their guard down. Also where they decide who to make disappear when they're bored."
"We need information," I say. "About Bastila. About what the Sith are doing here."
Kebla nods once. "Then you're going to the right kind of wrong place."
She pauses, then leans her shoulder against the doorframe, lowering her voice like the walkway itself might be listening.
"And since you're clearly collecting chaos like it's a hobby," she adds, "here's something worth paying attention to: people are talking about the escape pods."
Carth's posture tightens instantly.
Kebla continues, unfazed. "Some burned up. Some hit the Lower City slabs. Some… maybe went deeper. There are rumors of Republic survivors in the Undercity. Troopers dug in near the outcast camp. Fighting rakghouls and Sith patrols."
Darius's head lifts. "A Jedi?"
Kebla shrugs. "Drunks aren't reliable, but the rumor persists. A robed figure. A glow in the dark. 'A woman who makes the air feel heavy,' according to one bartender. Sith are searching hard near the elevators. Harder than you'd expect for just crash survivors."
Darius goes still. "If Bastila made it down there…"
"Then she's on borrowed time," Carth finishes, jaw tight.
I feel it too, that cold squeeze behind my ribs. Not fear. Urgency.
Kebla studies me through the visor. "And one more thing. Word's spreading that there's a Mandalorian duelist in the cantina now. That alone is enough to make half the Upper City panic and the other half start betting."
Her eyes narrow. "Bendak Starkiller's name came up again."
Carth swears under his breath.
Darius's expression tightens slightly, not at Kebla, but at the implication. "He's here?"
"Oh, he's here," Kebla says. "And if he thinks you're interesting, he'll orbit you like a predator. That's what he does."
I don't respond.
Because I already know.
Kebla exhales. "So. Sith party. Undercity rumors. Davik's crews still shaking people down. Taris is doing its best to kill you in a variety of creative ways."
She flicks her chin toward the walkway. "Try not to die. If you survive that party, come back and tell me if any Sith mention lifting the blockade. I'd love to ship things off-world again before I die of boredom."
Carth manages a thin smirk. "We'll try to work that into the conversation. Somewhere between the second and third death stares."
"Good," Kebla says. "Now get out of here before a patrol swings by and starts asking me why there are Rodian-shaped dents in the railing."
"There aren't dents," I say.
"There will be if you keep fighting on my doorstep," she replies.
Fair.
We move on.
We don't go straight to the elevator.
We cut along the walkway toward the med clinic district because Darius subtly shifts her path that way, and I recognize the tell: she felt something. Not a vision. Not prophecy. Just the Force tugging at a knot of cruelty nearby.
Carth notices too, scowling. "We're really doing this? More detours?"
"We're doing what keeps people alive," Darius says quietly.
Carth mutters, "That's what I'm afraid of," but he follows.
The med clinic entrance is just ahead, lights flickering slightly in that upper-city way that says money exists here, but even money can't fix everything. People linger outside, wary, quiet. The air tastes faintly of disinfectant and stress.
And then I hear it.
"Please," an old man begs. "I just need more time."
Largo.
Faded clothes, patched but clean. Hands shaking as he holds them up. Pressed back against the wall like the wall might protect him.
Two men stand over him wearing Davik's colors. Light armor. Ugly confidence. The kind of thugs who think power is a baton and a smirk.
"You said that last week," one says, prodding Largo in the chest with a crackling stun baton. "Davik doesn't do 'more time.' He does 'more bodies.'"
The second thug smirks. "Maybe we take a finger. Send a message. Leave you enough hand to keep working."
Carth's face darkens. "Davik's people."
Darius's voice is low, controlled. "This is wrong."
"Most things are," I say, and start walking.
My boots hit the durasteel with deliberate weight.
Both thugs turn.
One sneers. "You again. The Mandalorian who thinks Taris is his personal hunting ground."
"The Mandalorian who caused a mess near the cantina," the other adds. "Davik didn't like that."
"Davik isn't here," I say. "You are."
The baton thug steps forward, baton crackling. "You're going to die on this planet, bucket-head."
He swings.
I catch his wrist mid-arc.
Twist.
Bone gives with a sharp crack under armor.
He makes a sound halfway between a scream and a gurgle as the baton drops from numb fingers.
I slam his head into the wall and he crumples, limp.
The second thug draws a blaster and fires on reflex.
Carth is already moving, yanking Largo down behind a crate as the bolt hisses past.
Darius takes a half-step forward, hand brushing her robe where her lightsaber hides.
She stops herself.
No blade. No public Force display. Not on an upper-city walkway under occupation.
So she does the Jedi thing instead: she holds the line with restraint, and her eyes lock onto the thug like a warning he can't quite explain.
I take the next shot on my shoulder plate. The impact is a dull punch, the armor and shields doing what they were made to do.
The thug's smirk dies.
He tries to backpedal.
Bad choice.
I close the distance, seize his blaster wrist, and drive a knee into his thigh. He collapses, leg giving out with a wet crack of ligament.
He tries to bring the blaster up with his other hand.
I slam my gauntlet into his throat, crushing the attempt to breathe into a harsh wheeze. He drops the weapon, hands clawing at his neck.
I don't finish him with a flourish.
I just end the fight.
A short twist, a hard shove to the deck, and the thug goes still in a way that leaves no doubt.
Silence drops over the walkway.
Not peace.
Silence like a room full of people deciding not to become witnesses.
Carth rises slowly, keeping himself between Largo and the street. His jaw is tight.
"Tell me he shot first," Carth says.
"He pointed a weapon at civilians," I answer. "He chose the outcome."
Darius exhales once, controlled, eyes on Largo. "You're safe," she says to the old man. "For now."
Largo stares at the bodies, then at me.
"You… you killed Davik's men," he whispers. "He'll know. He always knows."
I crouch so we're closer to eye level, visor reflecting his fear back at him.
"How much do you owe him?" I ask.
Largo swallows. "Two hundred credits. I borrowed when the quarantine hit. Business died. He… didn't care."
I pull a credit pouch from my belt, count out two hundred, and press it into Largo's shaking hands.
"There," I say. "You're paid up."
Largo's eyes go wide. "I… I can't take this. You need it. You—"
"You need it more," I say. "Use it smart. And if Davik sends more, don't meet them alone."
Carth watches me, expression conflicted. "You give away two hundred credits… right after making sure we need two hundred credits."
I check the thugs quickly, retrieve a chip from each. Not enough to justify what they were doing, but enough to keep the galaxy briefly honest.
"Now we're even," I say.
Carth blinks. "You realize that's exactly even."
"Then the universe is briefly balanced," I reply.
Darius's mouth twitches, almost a smile. "You call this balance?"
"It is for now," I say.
Largo clutches the credits like they're a life raft. "Thank you," he whispers. "I… I won't forget this."
Carth mutters, "Let's hope Davik does."
He won't.
No one like Davik forgets.
Which means we've just added ourselves to another list of people the galaxy wants dead.
Carth looks toward the elevator district with a grim, resigned breath. "So. Sith party next?"
Darius's gaze drifts up, as if she can feel the fleet through the ceiling of the world. "We need access. Uniforms. Information."
"And we need to keep moving," Carth adds, eyes scanning for patrols. "Because the longer we stand around, the more likely someone calls the wrong kind of attention."
I adjust the rifle on my back.
"Normal crash survivors die," I say. "We're doing better than that."
"For now," Carth answers, because he's allergic to optimism.
But then Venaku's eye turned towards a facility that grabbed his attention, Medical by looks of it and a protocol droid standing outside of its doors.
Perhaps the party can wait just a little bit longer.
Zelka Forn's medical facility was one of the last places in this sector that still believed in clean. Bright lights. Sterile air. Shelves of medpacs and kolto packs lined with obsessive symmetry, like order itself might keep the planet from collapsing.
A receptionist droid chirped a greeting the moment they stepped inside.
Venaku's armored boots sounded wrong in here. Too heavy. Too loud. Like bringing a battlefield into a chapel.
Zelka looked up from his datapad. Tired lines sat deep on his face, carved there by too many patients and not enough miracles.
"I heard shouting outside," he said flatly. "Tell me you didn't decide to turn my waiting room into a shooting range."
"We ended it before it got here," Carth replied, voice even, shoulders still carrying the tension of the walkway. "Davik's men."
Zelka's mouth tightened. "Davik never stops. You can patch a blaster wound. Harder to mend the kind of rot he spreads."
His gaze slid to Venaku's plates. The red armor. The visor. The war-worn silhouette that screamed old conflicts to anyone with memory.
"And harder still," Zelka added, "when Mandalorians and Sith have both marched over this world in living history."
"We're not here to march," Darius said, calm but careful. A robed man on Taris had to be careful about everything. "We're here for information."
Zelka studied him the way a physician studies a bruise. Not just the surface, but what it implies underneath.
"And treatment," Zelka said. "You all move like you've been thrown out of orbit."
Carth exhaled once. "That's not far off."
They kept it quiet at first. Zelka asked the practical questions. Who they were. Why they were walking around Upper City with the posture of people expecting to get shot. He gave them the short, bitter rundown on the quarantine, the tightening patrols, the way people in the Upper City pretended the plague was a Lower City problem because denial was cheaper than compassion.
Then Zelka said the word like it left a bad taste in his mouth.
"Rakghouls."
Even the droid seemed to go quieter, like the clinic itself didn't like the sound.
"The Sith have started throwing their least favorite patrols down there," Zelka continued. "None of them come back. And every night… I hear the howls louder."
Venaku went still.
Not the tense stillness of a fighter ready to strike. Something colder. Like the word had reached through his armor and found bare skin underneath.
Darius felt it too. The ripple through the Force wasn't dramatic. It was worse than that. It was familiar.
Cold water over stone.
Zelka noticed. Of course he noticed. He lived on details.
"You know that word," he said, eyes narrowing. "It's written in your posture."
Venaku's voice came out low. Controlled. The kind of control that meant the thing behind it was dangerous.
"I know more than the word," he said. "I know the world it buried."
Carth's expression sharpened, as if a file in his head had just clicked into place.
"Jebble," he said quietly.
Zelka blinked. "That frozen resource world out in the Outer Rim? I've heard rumors. The Mandalorians used it as a staging point… gathered recruits… and then there was a disaster. Orbital fire. Silence."
Darius' eyes stayed on Venaku. Not accusing. Not afraid. Just watching, like he already understood that what came next wasn't going to be pretty.
Venaku's helmet angled slightly, and for a moment the visor didn't feel like a mask. It felt like a sealed door holding something back.
"Jebble was a staging ground," he said. "Thousands of us. Neo-Crusader infantry. Armor. Warbands pulled from half the Outer Rim. We were building an army for more than a raid. Alderaan was just the first bite."
His words weren't boastful. They were factual. Like recounting weather.
He paused, and the clinic seemed to contract around the silence.
"Cold world," he continued. "Ice plains like dead oceans. Peaks like broken teeth. We filled it with banners and drills and engines… and we told ourselves the galaxy would bend because we wanted it to."
Zelka didn't interrupt. Neither did Carth.
Darius didn't either, but the Force around him tightened, like it remembered the shape of what Venaku was describing.
"Then Pulsipher brought something back," Venaku said. "A Sith artifact. The Muur Talisman."
Zelka's fingers curled slightly around his datapad. "Sith."
"Not Sith soldiers," Venaku corrected. "Sith legacy." He let the word hang, heavy with contempt. "The kind that doesn't need an army. It just needs one person stupid enough to touch it."
His voice sharpened at the edges.
"It didn't kill like a blaster. It changed people. Fast. Like a sickness with intention. Warriors started twisting inside their armor. Hands became claws. Teeth lengthened. Minds…" He swallowed the last word like it cut. "Gone."
A faint noise escaped one of Zelka's patients in the waiting area. A quiet, involuntary sound of fear.
Venaku didn't look away from Zelka.
"We called them rakghouls after the first dozen," he said. "Then after the first hundred. Then we stopped counting because it didn't matter. Jebble became a feeding frenzy wrapped in Mandalorian colors. Brothers tearing into brothers. Veterans shooting their own squads because it was mercy. And every minute you hesitated, you gave the plague another body."
Zelka stared at him, horror slowly replacing whatever skepticism he'd had left.
Darius' voice came softly, almost reluctant.
"And Cassus Fett."
Venaku's head inclined a fraction. Respect, but the kind you give a blade. Not a friend.
"Cassus understood what the rest of us didn't want to admit," Venaku said. "There are fights you can't win with courage. There are enemies you can't outshoot. So he did the only thing left."
His next words came out like iron hitting stone.
"He ordered the bombardment. Nuclear fire. A massive salvo. He wiped out everything on the surface. Us. The infected. The uninfected. The world itself."
Venaku's gauntlet tightened once, subtle, like the memory still had teeth.
"Jebble became a grave and a warning," he finished. "Some plagues are worse than orbital fire."
Zelka exhaled slowly, like his lungs had forgotten how to work.
"I'd heard pieces," he murmured. "Never… all of that."
Darius' gaze stayed distant for a moment, eyes unfocusing as if he was looking past the clinic walls.
"The Force remembers mass suffering," he said quietly. "Not as a story. As a scar."
Zelka looked at him. "You speak like a—"
"Like someone who's seen what relics do," Darius replied, careful. Controlled. Not denying. Not confirming.
Venaku's helmet angled toward Darius.
"And that's the part the galaxy forgets," he said. "People talk about the Force like it's light and wisdom. Like it's a priesthood. On Jebble, we learned the truth the hard way."
Carth glanced between them. "What truth?"
Venaku's answer came out grim, almost instructional.
"That the Force isn't just power," he said. "It's contagion, if the wrong hands shape it. The Mandalorians used to treat Jedi like dangerous opponents. After Jebble, we started treating Sith artifacts like bio-weapons. Something you don't 'capture.' Something you don't 'study.' Something you lock away or burn from orbit."
Darius didn't disagree.
He just said, quieter, "And yet your people still tried to understand it."
Venaku's visor didn't move, but the accusation landed anyway.
"Pulsipher was investigating the 'source' of Jedi power," Venaku admitted. "Trying to dissect the universe like it owed him answers." His voice dipped. "Jebble taught the clans a new superstition: if you chase the Force like prey, it eventually turns and bites."
Zelka rubbed his face with one hand, the motion of a man trying to keep his mind from sprinting into panic.
"If the strain down there is anything like what you're describing…" he began.
"It isn't," Darius said immediately. "The specific catalyst that turned Jebble into a slaughterhouse isn't on Taris. But…" He paused, choosing the next words with care. "Echoes travel. Plagues mutate. Fear spreads faster than infection."
Zelka's gaze flicked to a locked cabinet, then back.
"I've been working on a serum," he said. "A cure, of sorts. Limited. Unstable. But it can reverse the early stages if it's administered quickly enough. If I can perfect it, maybe I can keep the Undercity from becoming another… Jebble."
Carth's jaw tightened. "And the Sith let you do that?"
Zelka gave a humorless huff. "No. They'd rather watch it spread. Fear keeps people obedient. But they don't watch everything. Not yet."
He hesitated, then nodded toward a side door.
"There's something else you should see."
The back room smelled like antiseptic and desperation.
Five men lay on cots, armor stacked neatly beside them: Republic combat suits scorched by heat and atmosphere, marked by the brutal physics of an escape pod that didn't care about rank.
One soldier pushed himself up weakly when they entered, eyes narrowing as if the world was swimming.
"Onasi…?" he rasped. "Is that… you?"
Carth's composure cracked in a single breath.
"Harnik?" he said, stepping forward like he couldn't help it. "Stars above. I thought your pod spun off-starboard. I thought you were all dead."
"Almost," Harnik croaked, forcing a grim smile. "Doc found us. Hid us. Sith didn't."
Zelka folded his arms, protective without theatrics. "If the Sith learn they're here, they'll drag them into interrogation and ask questions with knives."
"We were on the Spire too," Darius said. "We got thrown clear in another pod. We came here to find out what's left."
Venaku looked over the injured men. Bandages. Burns. Eyes that had watched the sky burn and then kept living anyway.
"Five," he said quietly. "Five more than I thought survived."
One of the troopers swallowed, then asked the question that mattered.
"The Jedi," he rasped. "The one we were guarding. The one they wanted."
Darius didn't hesitate. "Alive. Somewhere on this planet. We're trying to reach her."
Zelka's expression hardened into something like a decision.
"You walk in here wearing Sith armor," he said to Carth. "With a Mandalorian who fights like war itself. And you talk like you're hunting a Jedi while the Sith hunt you." He stared at them a long second, then nodded once. "I understand."
He lifted his chin.
"I won't say a word. Not to anyone. You have my word. And my clinic, if you need it again."
Carth held out his hand. Zelka shook it, firm.
"Then you have ours," Carth said. "If we get Bastila off this rock, we'll remember who kept my men breathing."
Footsteps sounded in the main room.
Zelka's jaw tightened. "Speaking of people I wish weren't breathing."
They stepped back out to find Gurney waiting, hovering in the doorway with that particular blend of suspicion and hunger that only desperate opportunists perfected.
"So," Gurney said, eyes skating over them like they were inventory. "New patients. New problems. You fighting for or against the Sith today?"
"Depends who pays less," Venaku replied.
Gurney sniffed. "If you're looking to make credits, there are opportunities. Like that rakghoul serum the doctor's hoarding. Sith, Davik, someone will pay good money for a cure they can control."
"Gurney," Zelka warned, voice sharp.
"No," Gurney shot back. "Let's be honest. Giving a miracle cure to the Undercity does nothing for us. Selling it to someone powerful buys protection. Supplies. Maybe a shuttle off this doomed rock."
Venaku regarded him for a long moment. The clinic light reflected off his visor, turning it into a blank verdict.
"You'd sell a cure," Venaku said, measured, "to the kind of people who benefit when others die."
"I'd sell it to whoever can do something with it," Gurney snapped.
Darius' eyes went hard. "You mean whoever can weaponize it."
Gurney's face twisted. "Am I supposed to care who gets bitten? The Undercity's a graveyard already. At least this way someone lives."
Venaku took one step closer, not threatening, just inevitable.
"You sound like the scavengers after a battlefield," he said. "No clan. No code. Just hunger."
Gurney flushed. "Easy to talk about honor when you're wrapped in armor. Some of us have rent and food."
"I grew up on warships and ash worlds," Venaku said. "Honor isn't a luxury. It's what you have when everything else gets taken."
Gurney's lip curled. "Spare me. Your people burned the Outer Rim. Now you pretend to care about slum dwellers? Hypocrite."
"Maybe," Venaku said. "But I never sold a cure to the ones who profit from the sickness."
Carth stepped in, voice edged with anger he kept leashed. "If you sell that serum to Davik or the Sith, they don't save people with it. They decide who lives based on utility. Everyone else dies slower."
Gurney threw his hands up. "At least someone lives. That's more than your Republic's done for Taris."
Darius' voice went quiet. The kind of quiet that cuts.
"You're not wrong that the Republic failed this world," he said. "But you're using that failure to excuse your own choices. That's the coward's path."
Gurney stared at him, breathing hard.
"Easy for you," he spat. "You get to be heroes. I get to watch people die and count supplies. Keep your moral high ground. When the Sith crack this clinic open and drag everyone out, see how much your honor protects them."
He shoved past them, stalking toward the back, muttering.
Zelka let out a breath he'd been holding too long.
"I don't agree with him," Zelka said quietly. "But I can't pretend I haven't thought about what the serum could buy. That's how Davik hooks people. Desperation."
Venaku's helmet turned toward the door, toward the city beyond.
"Desperation makes good soldiers," he said. "It also makes good traitors."
Darius placed a hand on Zelka's shoulder, brief and steady.
"You're doing the right thing," he said. "Even when it costs you."
Zelka managed a thin, tired smile. "I hope the Force shares your confidence… Knight… whoever you are pretending not to be."
They left together.
Outside, Taris' artificial evening bled across the Upper City. Shadows lengthened. Patrols thickened. The world kept pretending it wasn't dying.
Carth adjusted the Sith armor he'd picked up through Sarna's invitation, the plates sitting wrong on him in every way that mattered.
"Party first," he muttered. "Then the Undercity. Then we pray this planet doesn't decide to kill us outright."
Darius nodded. "At Sarna's, keep weapons down and tempers quieter than your heartbeat. Drunk Sith talk. That's useful."
Venaku looked toward the North Apartments tower, feeling the weight of his blasters, the memory of Jebble like ice in his ribs, and the word rakghoul echoing with a history that didn't stay buried.
"Tonight we will drink with the occupiers," he said. "Tomorrow we go where they're too afraid to follow."
War didn't sleep.
It just changed addresses.