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Chapter Text

Green light fills the bridge as the Stalwart’s deflector shields catch another turbolaser. A klaxon alarm drowns out the clatter and cries of a dozen officers, mostly human, rushing to the armory. They bump and stumble into line, some still rubbing sleep from their eyes. You keep your head up and move through them, parting the tightest clusters with a sharp elbow. Any upset replies die as the offended recognize the badge of rank on your orange jumpsuit. A quelled wake of “Sorry, Lieutenant!” follows you into the passageway, where the better prepared are already taking up positions. They have more important things to worry about. They know what that alarm means. The Jedi are upon you.

The ship groans underfoot and you catch yourself against the white plasteel wall. It only takes a moment to recognize the acerbic hum of a tractor beam beneath the din. You feel the engines bucking vainly underfoot.

The alarms pause as the PA crackles, “The Vengeance has locked on. Imperial contact imminent. All crew to boarding stations.”

It’s over then, you think to yourself. That part at least. On to the next one.

The passageway clears as you march through the corners and capillaries. Eventually, you find yourself in front of an unremarkable port in the passenger berths. You don’t bother knocking. The door slides open to reveal empty quarters. Another barrage of laser fire punctuates your shock. Red emergency lights flood the passageway as primary power shuts off.

Well done, Darren. Somehow, you’ve made things worse.

Throttling the fear that scurries in the corner of your mind, you search the room. Nothing on the bunks; nobody in the refresher; nowhere else for a person to hide – even a person like Qu Rahn.

“Dank farrik,” you swear, grabbing your comlink, “Uali, where’s our guest?”

As you wait for a response, the hum of the tractor beam grows, and the sputtering engines set the floor vibrating. 

Your link squawks. “Darren? I’m trying to juggle a few things, here,” the Dresselian sounds more frantic than usual.

“Uali! I need eyes, now,” you snap.

“I’m wiping the system,” the tech replies, unbothered as ever by your impatience, “Captain’s orders. Observation’s mostly fried, already. I can’t give you any – what?” The speaker buzzes as someone interrupts him. While background chatter crackles across the link, you leave the room and look up and down the hall. Not a body in sight, living or otherwise.

Finally, Uali’s voice comes back, “Kendip says she saw him in Comms.”

Your free hand reflexively makes a fist.

“He doesn’t have Comms clearance,” you say, “Who let–”

“I’ve gotta clear the navicomputer, Darren. You’re on your own.”

You muffle more obscenities and slip the link back into your breast pocket. It’s a much quicker walk to Comms. The rest of the crew must already be at the main hatch. You can’t help but wonder if this is the captain’s preference after all these days of running. They were an old rebel to the last. You, you pride yourself on knowing exactly where you were and what you were doing. You had been a good agent for the rebellion: mindful, decisive, tough. But that was over. That life. That part, at least. Now what? You’re just a glorified babysitter for all the most important ex-imperials who finally put two and two together about where their regime’s pitiful remnants were heading. Maybe the captain wasn’t so bad, with their drills and shooting range and old GAR regs. At least it gave the crew something to do besides sweat while they sat around the hundredth planetary ring or life-forsaken plasma cloud waiting for another overcautious and under-empathetic turncoat. And the skills, well – you unclip the lock on your sidearm – you might be grateful for having kept those fresh, too.

Two guards stand by the entrance to Comms, silhouetted by the scarlet backup lights. As you approach, they wobble faintly at their posts. There’s a glassy look in their eyes. In the room behind them, you can hear a low voice rumbling. By the top of the door frame, the blue “Call in Progress” light is glowing. A hot pulse of adrenaline makes you squeeze the grip of your blaster. Blood rushing in your ears drowns out the distant alarms and the muffled speech behind the hatch. You shake one of the soldiers and get no response, just more blank stares. Drawing your weapon, you take several quick breaths, then kick the door controls.

The panel sweeps away and you charge in, lifting your blaster and shouting, “Step away from the console!”

The figure by the main transceiver barely has a second to register your command before you open fire. He nonetheless manages to step across the chamber before the first bolts reach where he’d been standing. No matter, you weren’t aiming for him anyway. Sparks burst, panels flash, and a smoggy cloud chokes the back half of the cramped room. Rather than move towards you, your wayward charge simply takes in the damage.

“I was sending a distress signal,” he admonishes, turning to face you.

Qu Rahn’s face is dark, but not unfriendly. His white tunic and the flecks of grey in his short-trimmed beard seem to glow in the light of the terminals around him. Nonchalantly, he rests his thumbs on the leather belt around his waist. Your eyes flit to the empty clip you noticed when he first came aboard: the spot where a lightsaber ought to hang.

“They’re jamming all outgoing signals,” you snap, practically shouting. Your ears are still ringing from the shots.

“Not all. Not usually. Imperial protocol says to keep a few lines open for emergency and executive transmissions. You just need to know the codes. I do,” he taps his chest.

“And they didn’t,” you tilt your head at the pair outside, perhaps even less bothered by the sound of blaster fire than the man across from you.

“No, and they weren’t especially interested in hearing me out. Still, I think I got most of it through before you arrived.”

“Then rescue’s just a few days away. Goody.”

You keep your gun steady and move back towards the door. He looks between you and the passageway. Automatically, your thoughts turn to Sabacc.

Deal two. Green three, green seven. Total plus ten. Discard reveals red eleven.

“Lieutenant,” he begins, stepping behind another console, “Are we really still such strangers? Surely I’ve earned a modicum of good faith.”

You don’t respond. You don’t even think of a response, just Spike dice roll. No matches.

He moves out of cover just a few meters away.

“You don’t need your weapon to deal with me, “ he implores, waving his hand mystically.

“I think I very much do,” you reply, still filling your head with Swap green three for red eleven. Total minus four.

He frowns, then smiles broadly. Despite yourself, it’s a comforting thing to be near. From the moment you met him above Sullust, you noticed that about him: the aura of absolute serenity. It was part of why you had gotten off on such a bad foot, even before he was mesmerizing your shipmates. The other defectors usually had the good sense to hate themselves, or at least play at it. The tranquility on his face, however, had not moved since he first came aboard. It was as if all the galaxy and his own past together could not shake him. You’d seen the images that came through when the Sulon resistance collapsed. Streets turned to rubble, conspirators publicly executed, their bodies mounted on pikes. How could anyone walk away from that so damn peaceful? Even days into the Stalwart’s ill-planned evasions, as Rahn passed advice to the captain and navigator, it seemed like he couldn’t even imagine getting caught, much less what that meant for everybody else on board. Well, now it’s happened; let’s see what that does to him.

“Lieutenant Darren, you surprise me,” he chuckled, “I hadn’t appreciated how qualified an escort I’d been assigned. It’s been a very long time since I encountered such defenses in the uninitiated. I can’t even scratch the surface.”

Draw. Green two. Total minus two.

You’re almost there.

“I salute your dedication,” he continues, “But we must move quickly if we are to save any of the crew.”

“The crew is lost. The captain just hasn’t accepted it, yet,” you reply, “They’ve got a tractor lock on us. There is no escape.”

Spike dice roll. No matches.

“They’ve got a lock on the Stalwart, but not her escape pods,” he says.

“They’ll shoot anything that launches. Send fighters to chew up the pieces.”

“They can’t shoot anything if it’s hiding behind the Stalwart – and I happen to know that our friends lost their TIE escort in battle over Eriadu some time ago,” he smirks and glances to the side, remembering something apparently amusing.

Just another meter now. Discard shows sylop. Stand.

“You’re going to stand at minus two?” he teases, “I don’t ever settle for less than zero.”

Your heart skips a beat, but you keep moving, doubling the intensity of Spike dice roll. No matches.

“Lieutenant,” he continues, “If you lock me in here, and I am on their side, it just means I’ll miss the fireworks.”

“I could shoot you now,” you flick the stun setting, “I know a thing or two about keeping your kind down.”

“I bet you do,” he nods with aggravating sageliness, “But that would be quite difficult without a weapon.”

You squeeze the trigger, but it’s already too late. The stun bolt grounds against the far hull just behind where he’d been standing. He’s already dashed next to you. Something invisible tugs your blaster out of your hand and into his palm. You lunge for the door controls, but the panels refuse to shut. In your panic, the steady stream of New hand. Deal two. mixes with a frantic He won’t get this crew. It’s not gonna happen. Not again.

“Darren, please, we’re almost out of time. I can’t convince the captain on my own,” he touches your shoulder, and the warmth in his face radiates like a star, “Please. Take hope.”

You whip around and put your entire body weight into a right hook. He catches it without taking his eyes off you. Wordless, he shoves your weapon into your hand and lets go. Taking a few steps back, you clutch the blaster close to your chest. The ship lurches as the engines stall out. Neither of you break eye contact. In the relative silence that follows, you hear the captain barking orders down the hall. Rahn blinks, slow, catlike, in no hurry to move.

Outside, the guards stir and notice the open door between them. They both let out nervous gasps when they peek in and see the pair of you standing amidst still-smoking terminals.

“Is everything alright, Lieutenant?” asks the senior of the two, a Bothan with a buzzed mane.

“Bordok feathers,” you swear under your breath, and stuff your blaster back into its holster, “We’re fine. Everything’s fine. I want you two to clear the drives here. We can’t let those troopers have our encryption codes, can we?” They both hop into action and dash to the nearest consoles. “When you’re done,” you call after them, walking out the door, “Report to the captain and prepare for boarding.”

While you wait for Rahn to join you, you hear one of the guards whisper, “Do you think he noticed us sleeping?”

“Shush!” The other hissed, fervently waving an electromagnet over several data cores.

You walk back up the passageway. The man behind you matches your pace, his insufferable grin beating at the back of your neck. At the main port, the captain, dressed in their usual eclectic blend of New Republic Navy kit and GAR armor, commands the last few stragglers into position. Most of the crew is already there, kneeling behind cover with their weapons trained on the entryway. A yeoman wearing a slept-in uniform shakes her head intermittently, occasionally thunking it against the bulkhead next to her. An older woman takes a sip from a brown flask before passing it to the Sullustan ahead of her. An astromech by the captain beeps nervously, almost drowned out by its master’s commands.

“-- like we drilled: don’t wait for a target. Open fire the moment they breach!”

“Captain!” you shout.

They turn as the pair of you approach.

“Lieutenant!” he claps his hand on your shoulder, “And our guest. Excellent. Where’s your rifle? Ack, at least you’ve got your sidearm. I want you by me, and you–” he begins pointing to the hatch when he’s interrupted.

“Captain Clipper,” Rahn implores, “Your courage is commendable, but I believe there are alternatives to fighting.”

“I hate to say it,” you add before the captain can respond, “But he’s right. There was never any chance for us in a straight-up fight. That’s why we’re way out here in the first place. But,” and you turn to the man next to you, “He has a plan that may keep a few of us alive, maybe long enough for the Republic to send help. If his message got through,” you add, only a little sheepish.

Rahn smirks at your sideways glance. The captain doesn’t notice, their attention already returned to the skittish crowd. Two men near the entryway have taken each other's hands while keeping their weapons up. They kiss, heads bent at odd angles to keep their helmets from bumping. A Mon Calamari woman you recognize from the gunner corps takes up the flask that’s worked its way to the front line. She finishes it in one gulp before chucking it at the closed door.

The captain turns back to you.

“What do you propose?”

“Roll the ship,” Rahn begins, “Let our starboard broadside cover our port escape pods. If they had any fighters, they’d have used them days ago.”

“What info do we have on the planet below?” you ask.

The green astromech lets out a complex string of dings and whistles. There’s a pessimistic tone in its timbre.

“Surveys say it's got a solid mineral crust,'' Clipper translates, “But that’s the end of the good news. The lower atmosphere is mostly dioxys and volcanic chaff. I can’t send my crew walking around down there.”

“They won’t have to,” you realize out loud. Rahn nods, urging you on, “The pods have rebreather units and rations rated for a weeks’ use. If the Republic hasn’t picked us up by then, well…”

The captain thumbs their blaster while looking out at the rest of the crew. The roar of the tractor beam is deafening. The last of the nervous chatter has given way to quiet sweating and compulsive weapons checks.

“What about landing crews?” he asks, not turning back to you, “Surely they still have shuttlecraft.”

“Yes, that’s the unfortunate part,” Rahn replies.

You glance back, raising an eyebrow at this twist.

He continues, looking between you and Clipper, “The atmosphere should interfere with their orbital sensors, but to avoid their shuttles, you’ll need enough time to land, cool off, and go to low power,” he strokes his beard, “Something has to delay them.”

“Such as?” the captain asks.

“We give them what they want. Let me take one of the starboard pods. Once they collect me, I’ll cause a distraction that should buy you that time.”

“And if they start blasting everyone on board the moment they have you?” you ask, remembering whose advice got the Stalwart here in the first place.

“Don’t be on board,” he smiles.

The captain thinks it over, rhythmically drumming the butt of their pistol.

Finally, they say, “It’s slim odds, but I’ve had generals get me through slimmer. We take your orders today, sir,” and they give an old GAR salute.

Returning it, the defector starts making his way up the corridor.

“I’ll launch at ninety degrees rotation,” he calls back.

“Understood,” the captain shouts, before adding, “And may the Force be with you!”

“And you!” he replies, shining that grin one last time before vanishing behind a corner. You fight the urge to gag.

The captain doesn’t lose a moment to reverie. “Alright, I want everybody to the port escape pods! I hope nobody had seconds, because we’re in for a hard landing. Kwalek! You have one minute to give me roll thrusters. Do I look like I’m asking? Move!”

There is no sense of relief as the crew walks past you. The same nervous excitement and dawning resignation are playing out on their faces, but now it’s tempered by curiosity and the faintest glimmer of real hope. It’s a strange feeling, you think, to call off a grand last stand in favor of a real – if faint – chance at living. You turn to join them. Just as you reach the junction between the two pod bays, though, you stop. While everybody else marches down the left corridor, you squint down the right. The sole occupant, dressed in white, stands out against the ill-lit hall. You follow him, realizing you never had any intention of joining the crew.

The glossy surfaces of the main passageway give way to exposed tubing and tangled wires. You catch up with the old man just as he reaches the launch bay.

“Some people would call that pretty cruel,” you say. If he’s surprised, it doesn’t show.

“And what would you call it, Lieutenant?” he asks, opening the nearest hatch.

“I think the captain puts too much faith in you. They’ve been giddy as a mynock in a scrapyard since you got on board.”

He chuckles, crouching into the pod.

“And I think a lot of those crewmates are going to die,” you call after him, “A lot more than you let on.”

There’s no reply. You walk up to the open hatch and see him resting in one of the seats, calmly tightening the restraints. Out the forward viewport, the planet below shines red and silver. The shadow of the Vengeance cuts across the stars above.

You take the seat opposite him.

“But some of them may live,” you say, “And that’s an improvement.”

“Assuming I’m not lying,” he adds.

“I thought of that. So long as I’m here, somebody’s gonna make trouble.”

He lets out a big, full-bellied guffaw. For the first time, you notice a leonine quality about his features: something untamed keeping watch inside his placidity. With a wave of his hand, the door seals. Not a moment too soon. You feel the engines kick online. The lights flicker, and, outside, the starfield turns. The planet falls out of view. From above, the Vengeance looms like a broken dagger.

Your partner taps several buttons on his control panel.

“Preparing to launch,” he says, “What’s our angle?”

You turn to your own panel and read out, “We’re at sixty degrees rotation.”

“Best strap in. The beam will be on us quickly.”

You slip on your restraints. You’ve had far less cautious launches in far more ragged pods, but you’ve never been more certain you were launching to your death. For the first time, you return his smile.

“Seventy degrees rotation,” you continue, “Eighty. Eighty-five.”

“Launching.”

The acceleration tackles you. Your cheek hits the thick padding with a slap that barely muffles the scream of the ejection engines. Your hands press on your chest like sandbags. In the forward porthole, hundreds of sensors and artillery platforms come into focus, hanging beneath the harsh gray landscape of the super star destroyer. Out the rear, you see the Stalwart turning like an old crank shaft. Beneath it, the cloudy trails of a dozen escape pods arc towards the crimson planet. You wonder if Uali and Kendip ever got word about the evacuation, not to mention those guards by Comms. Tapping the inter-pod comm, you try messaging them, but the Vengeance’s jammers swallow it up.

You don’t take your eyes off the falling pods. Rahn doesn’t take his eyes off the Vengeance. He breathes slowly: in through his nose, out through his mouth, wincing occasionally. Although you’re tempted to dismiss it as turbulence, you could swear he’s whispering. Then, as you anticipated, green light fills both viewports. Dozens of turbolasers on the ventral bow of the destroyer light up. Inside the unshielded pod, red proximity alerts flare up like fireworks. Behind you, you catch the orange glow of several crewed pods exploding in flame. The Stalwart gets the worst of it, though. In moments, the artillery tears through the scant remains of its deflectors. Fluid and atmosphere lines rupture, giving the vessel a white, smoggy halo that all at once glows red and green in the contrasting lights of the bombardment. In moments, the venting ceases and the cloud dissipates. For one final second, the corvette looks almost peaceful. It was never properly home to you, and its crew never anything like the family you had found in your old cells, but to see 

You remember, on a mission long since past, encountering the burial ground of great mysterious creatures that migrated through the darkness of interstellar space. Even in death, wearing the scars of unimaginably long lifetimes, they had a majesty that made you pause. It had cost you precious seconds at a time when you hadn’t any to spare. Uncharacteristically, you did not regret those moments lost. Dead in the vacuum, the Stalwart drifts with that same majesty. Then the turbolasers target its fuel cells.

You and Rahn clutch your seats as the pyrotechnic blast hurtles your pod aft over bow. Fighting the centrifugal forces, you heave one hand onto the controls and try to realign your flight path. Your co-pilot’s expression remains neutral, but his normally warm face takes on a definite green undertone.

The stabilizer stick grinds up. A third of your instruments have short-circuited. Halfway through another roll, the pod lurches like it’s hitting a vat of oil. Twist to figure out what happened, you hear the telltale revving of a tractor beam.

“I thought you said they’d be on us quickly,” you gasp, thumbing your hair from your eyes.

The old man sits back in his chair, sighing as if the whole thing had just been an especially rough patch of wind. “Seems they didn’t want anything else in the beam,” he says

Slapping the release button on your harness, you move to get a better view of the docking bay opening overhead like the maw of some immense rayfish.

“What can you tell me about the layout?” you ask, cheek nearly pressed against the window, “What sort of welcome should we expect?”

Rahn taps his own release and joins you at the viewport before replying, “That hangar is reserved for Jerec’s surprise guests. I’m afraid it’s quite wanting for hospitality. We can expect to be welcomed by the best of the worst.”

“The man himself?” you ask, checking your blaster’s settings.

He pauses for another long breath before answering.

“Possibly.”

You freeze in your work. The memories of missions long past rise up: figures in black armor; spinning red blades; a terror that sweeps away all hope, all sensation. You have to squeeze your weapon to keep it from slipping out of your palms.

“You don’t have a plan,” you say, without accusation.

“The Force is my ally,” he whispers, as if talking to someone just outside the porthole, “It is my lens to see the universe, and it has taught me this: brook no inevitability,” he turns to face you, “The dark powers that await us are terrible, but you have your training, and I have mine. Trust in the Force.”

Under normal circumstances, you would have rolled your eyes. In this particular moment, you just sigh and nod. That settles it, you think to yourself, he must be telling the truth. Anybody lying would have at least tried to come up with something. You keep the memory of the pods that made it through the barrage at the forefront of your mind. Did half of them make it? No, it must have been more. They just need a few minutes, and maybe they have a chance. An old adage about rebellions and hope comes to mind.

The pair of you fall into silence as the thrum of the tractor beam reaches deafening heights. The sheer force of it, concentrated on such a small craft, rumbles the walls and floor. You clutch the handrails while your crewmate moves with noticeable haste to sit back down.

At last, the obsidian walls of the hangar sweep across the viewports, and, with one last thunk, the docking arm comes into place. As the atmospheres align, you catch a whiff of hot plasteel and acerbic cleaning chemicals. It may be missing the usual accents of tibanna gas and molten flesh, but you’d remember the smell of Imperial ships any day.

As you kneel in front of the hatch and draw your weapon, your podmate presses his hand into your shoulders. He waves you to the back of the pod while standing in the entryway, tall as he can in the cramped cylinder.

It doesn’t take more than a few seconds for the white-hot sparks of plasma cutters to erupt from the door frame and trace blinding lines along the joints. Smoke and burning chaff fill the air. You choke back a coughing fit. With several metallic clangs, the hatch falls apart. The smog rushes out, and a dozen black barrels point in. At their center is a single figure. His face is dreadfully old, spiked and rippling like sandstone cliffs etched by centuries of desert wind. It sits atop a body of tightly corded muscle, struggling as much to be restrained by his skin as by his black and red tunic. Harsh white light glints off two chrome pauldrons, which accentuate his enormous arms. A wicked lightsaber hilt dangles from his belt. Fear like thermite burns down your throat, into your belly, and welds your feet to the floor. 

“At last, our prey surrenders,” he gloats with an unvarnished mid-rim accent, “Your weakness sent you scurrying from us, and now, mewling and limping, it brings you back.”

“You think so little of me, Maw? After all this time?” your companion replies.

“You are a coward, too scared of what you’ve lost to build something new. You are obsolete, and you will die painfully for it,” Maw says.

“Some things I am prepared to die for. Can you say the same?”

Maw only chuckles and barks, “Take him!”

A dozen arms drag your partner into the docking tube. He does not resist, merely adjusting as best he can to the limits on his posture. You brace yourself, but, after several seconds, nobody comes near you. While the stormtroopers lead their new prisoner away, you find yourself alone in the pod. Twisting in their captor’s grip, your partner looks back at you. The familiar smile, bright and brilliant, prods you out of your astonishment, and banishes your terror.

Make some trouble, Rahn’s voice echoes, disembodied but no less warm.

“Jedi,” you swear under your breath.

You wait till the last soldier vanishes down the hall before tiptoeing onto the gleaming black floor. Crouched low, you sneak your way down the passageway until it opens up into the larger docking bay. You press your back against the side of the entryway and look around.

Stay close, the voice calls again.

It’s difficult advice to take. At the turbolift across the bay, three more figures join the group. The nearest is a young human man in rigid imperial posture. He gives Rahn a wide berth as the troopers hand him off to the other new arrivals. They make for an incomprehensible pair. One is immense, with hands large enough to palm their captive’s back. The other, perched on the former’s shoulder, would barely come up to your thigh. Both wear ancient armor of an entirely unfamiliar design. Like Maw, you quickly recognize one thing about all three: the gleaming hilts at their waists. Instinctively, you resume your mantra as you scurry to the far wall.

Deal two. Red three. Green ten. Total plus seven. Discard shows green eight.

A distraction. A delay. Anything to keep their eyes up here and not on the surface. This is a super star; whatever you do, it will have to be big. Your friend wasn’t joking about this hangar. It was decidedly unfriendly. Not a fuel line in sight, or any other ships, for that matter. No shortage of turrets, though. What you wouldn’t give to have brought a slicer along. If you had more time, maybe you could find some life support systems and work out a little sabotage – but that would mean leaving your friend and whatever enchantment he had worked on you.

‘Trust in the Force,’ he’d said.

Draw. Green nine. Total plus sixteen. Spike dice roll. Matches. Reshuffle.

You knew about the Force. You had heard about the Jedi growing up: all the incredible things they could do, all the good they did for the old republic. You remember learning at the Academy that it was all propaganda and, suddenly, the universe felt much smaller and easier to understand. Years later, when the universe was big again and you didn’t understand anything, you got to see what Jedi could do firsthand. What the Force could do. What it could do to a body, or a whole cell of your friends.

Sweating, you try to drown out those memories with Deal three. Red five. Red eight. Red one. You’re not sure it’s working. One of the Jedi, the pale human, does a double take in your direction. You freeze on the spot. Total minus fourteen. Discard shows red six , you think as loud as you can. A few moments later, he looks away as the turbolift doors open.

‘There are alternatives to fighting.’ You’d heard him say that, too. Yes, when he was talking the captain into making this bet, but also before, when he first convinced Clipper to start this wild gundark chase. As if he didn’t know how this was all going to end from the start. And you’d gone along with it all. That’s what you’d done for years now. Ever since the constitution first got ratified and suddenly what you’d been trained to do wasn’t what the Republic needed anymore. Ever since the Rebellion first united on that damned Jedi moon, and all the cells had to wipe the blood and muck off their faces so they didn’t offend the delicate sensibilities of inner planet sign-ons and their precious senators.

You didn’t start fighting just to go along with things. You hadn’t learned all these terrible secrets (Discard and gain. Discard red eight. Draw green ten. Total plus four.) just to go along with things. You did it – all of it – because you trust in your own senses. You know, you see, what is wrong. You know, you see, the imbalance and the injustice that plagues this galaxy. And you know, you see, and you do what must be done.

You are going to die here. You knew it the moment you sat down in that pod. You also know that you get to decide how that happens, and what good comes from it. That’s why you sat down. That’s why you helped convince the captain. That’s why you were going to get it done.

You dash across the docking bay and squeeze aboard the turbolift alongside the rest of the squad. Maw barks instructions that barely register over the sound of Spike dice roll. Matches. Reshuffle . The lift eventually opens on a balcony overlooking a metal canyon a dozen meters deep. You spot one of the primary power conduits running across the bottom. Nearby, on the catwalk, several junior officers are lugging munitions and waiting for the next lift. Underneath the rhythm of Deal three. Sylop. Green ten. Green nine. Sylop. Discard shows red ten. you get an idea.

It takes less than a minute for you to snag a charge, climb down the power lines, and set a timer. It takes exactly a minute for the troopers to lug your partner just far enough away that his spell breaks. Officers passing overhead gasp and bark commands at sentries stationed below, themselves too stunned to move. The noise startles them out of their astonishment and they open fire. You duck as blaster bolts careen past you. Looking for somewhere to plant the detonator, you return fire and start running down the canyon.

Over the sound of shots ricocheting off the bulkhead, you hear someone scream on the catwalk above. All of a sudden, a stormtrooper hits the floor not three yards away. Looking up, you see three more coming to join them. You let out an involuntary yelp and roll under an especially large conduit. Several more shots ring out, but they don’t land anywhere near you. After a few seconds, you risk a peek. The troopers are still there, but they’re not aiming at you. They’ve got their sights set on the catwalk. It’s Rahn!

The Jedi is a whirlwind of kicks and punches. Two more troopers fly over the railing, along with a hail of shattered armor. The four Dark Jedi run after him, but he pulls a blaster from a cowering officer and blows out the catwalk’s supports. It collapses beneath the entire group. You curl back up under the pipe and cover your face. A sound like a landspeeder crash echoes down the canyon. You feel your conduit buckling overhead and you scramble to get away before it caves in. A cloud of ferrous particulate obscures the wreck of the catwalk. From within, you can just make out several figures pulling themselves from the rubble. 

Now, Darren! cries Rahn in your mind.

You look around for somewhere, anywhere to plant the detonator. In the cloud, three orange-yellow blades ignite with a roar. The conduit – there’s a crack exposing the wiring. Kneeling, you shove the white cylinder into the piping and start the countdown. You stand and point your blaster at the cloud. The two alien jedi, as well as the younger human, surround Rahn. His face and tunic shine in the fiery light of their sabers. For the briefest moment, he looks like he’s sizing the three of them up for another round. Noticing you out of the corner of his eye, he raises an eyebrow. You nod. Wordlessly, he lifts his hands in surrender. You sprint down the canyon and away from the timer ticking out in the pipe.

Suddenly, your feet leave the ground and something hurls you into the waiting claws of Maw. Fear overtakes you, and you can’t help but get swept away in Swap. Discard green nine. Take red ten. Total zero. Spike dice roll. No matches.

“Disgusting game,” he growls.

“Yee-haa,” you sputter, as a muffled alarm sounds from the power conduit.

The explosion leaves a deafening ringing in your ears and the taste of burnt plastic on your mouth. Maw keeps a death grip on your throat while smoke blasts across you both. He growls and the lights go out.

It will take exactly thirty seconds for the auxiliary line to kick in. It’s not two seconds into the darkness that a red blade flares into existence beneath you. Something vicious and hateful crawls into your mind, uprooting every memory of dismembered rebels, red lightning, dark figures and sadistic, mocking cackles that have haunted you for years.

You scream and fall to the ground. Blood-colored plasma flashes. The smell of burnt flesh mixes with the other odors on the mirror-smooth floor.

Ahh, you think, Now that’s what an Imperial ship ought to smell like.

Rahn wrestles against the oversized Jedi restraining him. 

“Darren!” he roars.

The small one flashes an esoteric hand symbol. You don’t understand it, you don’t recognize it. Yellow light sprays forth, and you’re nearly blinded. The sound of the scuffle dies down. Something in your gut is too scalding hot for you to pay them any more attention. The floor is cold. For that, you are genuinely grateful.

By the time the lights come back on, half-lit by the backup systems, you are dead. This is not your story anymore. Someone else is coming. They will find it and take it on as their own. They’ve already made that decision, though they don’t even know the question will be asked.

You can rest now, it’s their turn. It’s okay. You did your part. Rest.

Chapter Text

The Dark Jedi bent low, breath hot on Rahn’s face. Beneath his sneer flashed a row of bone-colored teeth. He licked his lips eagerly. The man at his feet had made him wait a very long time for this. He could afford to savor the moment.

Rahn broke the silence, “Why hesitate? Strike me down.”

Jerec reveled in the fearlessness in his voice. Such heroism, such unflappable Jedi virtue. It was nostalgic.

“In time, Rahn.” he whispered, “First, I need something from you.”

He straightened, cape flowing beneath him. The rest of the Dark Jedi stood in a loose circle around their kneeling captive. Their many and varied emotions averaged out to a nervous excitement that permeated the bridge of the Vengeance. Heat, sweat, and pride rose off Maw and the others that had captured Rahn. The deserter’s late companion was face-down next to him and stank of burnt flesh. Nobody paid him any attention.

Sharply, Jerec sniffed the air. There was the smell of violence again. He exhaled. Inhaled. He reached out with his feelings: vicious and predatory. A bolt of fear flashed within Rahn, and disappointment rang like silent thunder. How unfortunate, he had still believed this whole chase was about retribution. Delicious.

Rahn winced, looking away from the human that loomed above him, shrouded in dark robes and polished black armor. His thin leather blindfold and the sharp tattoos at the corners of his mouth stood out against his pale skin, which stretched and rippled as he continued to breathe. The first spine of thought pierced Rahn’s mind. A single phrase, foreign and unbidden, echoed: Where is the Valley?

A memory rose up in answer. There was an old man, another human, wearing a mechanic’s apron. His eyes were small, bright jewels that shone beneath a heavy brow. They looked out at him with such sorrow and love. Rahn tried to bury it. He twisted and pulled, but the invading tendrils snagged against him. Their barbs dug deep, until they were a briar of thorns cutting his every thought. He screamed.

The other Dark Jedi watched closely. Maw wore a large-fanged grin. He was bruised and battered from the fight on the catwalk. Even before all this, he’d never liked Rahn. His smugness, his superiority: it rankled the boltrunian. On the opposite side of the ring, the mysterious duo in ancient armor watched wordlessly. The smaller was entirely disconnected from the scene. He picked his ears absentmindedly while humming an old dirge. The larger was far more attentive. Gorc, that was the name of the giant, was relieved that he and his brother, Pic, had once again proven their usefulness. He waited to see what came of this interrogation, and with it, what credit it would earn them.

Within Rahn, images flowed like burst veins. The man in his workshop. The man in an alley in Barons Hed. The man standing on the Sulonese moor, surrounded by the smell of heather. The man in Rahn’s arms, a stone ceiling full of bas-relief stars overhead, flickering in the lamplight. The man sharing holos of himself and his boy, waving gleefully in cobalt light. Both of them so full of life, practically glowing with the–

Rahn gasped and nearly collapsed on the metal grating.

In the shadow of the great aqueduct, beneath the amber glow of Sullust in the night sky, the man whispered something in his ears: something he had been terrified to share until now. Something that should have set them free. Something that separated them forever.

“Morgan Katarn!” cried Jerec, victorious, “This dead man holds the Valley’s location.” He licked his lips, “Very intriguing.”

Another Dark Jedi, a white twi’lek named Boc, cackled at the heartbreak Rahn tried so hard to hide. Sariss, a human female standing across from Boc, allowed herself a cruel smile. Such sweet pain. There could be no doubt that their master had found the truth. Maw grinned as well, not at the reaction, but at the name. An image ten years’ faded passed behind his eyes, of peasant rebels and a public beheading.

Yun, a scrawny young human and the newest addition to the Order, only sighed in relief. Rahn knelt not two meters in front of him. Despite his enthusiasm in training, the battle mere minutes earlier had been a harsh reminder that Rahn – that all the Jedi, dark or otherwise – far outclassed him both as warriors and wielders of the Force. He tried to dismiss the nagging fears from his mind. When that was unsuccessful, he tried, at least, not to look at the prisoner.

Jerec stooped by Rahn’s ear and hissed something inaudible. The man’s tawny face was stoic as the Dark Jedi stood and marched away, chuckling. The shadowed figure raised his hand to order the execution when Rahn erupted in a blur of motion. 

Yun felt a tug at his belt and, with a loud click , saw his shining yellow blade ignite in Rahn’s hands. The circle rushed to restrain the Jedi. Boc went for his own blades and was disarmed before they could extend. Rahn swung wide to clear the space around him. Yun lept in a panic, barely a handbreadth separating him and his own saber. Gorc’s eyes flashed and he charged to the young man’s defense. Seven feet of rage, he swung a hilt as long as Pic was tall right at Rahn’s head. It was all his younger brother could do not to be hurled across the deck. He clung for dear life to the bone pauldron he’d been sitting on. Rahn needed all his focus – not to mention his strength – to block the first blow. When the second and third came down, he parried, letting Gorc’s momentum carry him away. He moved towards Jerec but, with a fierce cry, Sariss swung to behead him. Her saberwork was far more complex than Gorc’s, and her strength nearly a match. Rahn didn’t stand a chance. After two short exchanges, he settled for another wide swing to push her back. He only needed a few seconds to get to Jerec, to cut the head off this beast. The order would collapse without him. Morgan’s legacy would be preserved and his son spared the trials of destiny.

In his panic, he swung too wide.

Maw screamed as Rahn’s wayward blade cut clean through his pelvis. There was no turning back, now. Jerec whirled around as the Jedi charged him, his fear and anger ringing out in the Force as loud as his stolen blade. The two crossed sabers with a wrenching crash. Sweeping past each other, they turned in defensive postures, each too far from the other to strike. On either side of them, the slim metal walkway gave way to empty crew pits. The crowd of Dark Jedi behind Jerec was blocked completely.

Yun’s yellow blade hummed in Rahn’s hands, perhaps eager to be put to such masterful use. To little avail, he tried to center his mind. All he saw was Morgan’s beautiful face, staring down at him, rotting on a pike.

Jerec smirked and raised his hand, already in an ancient Sith sign. White light burst forth like the dawn.

Rahn felt as if he’d become the light: formless, weightless, untouchable. Even the call of the Force passed through him. A darkness swept across his thoughts and feelings, every bit as intense as the light that surrounded his body. Perhaps the light was merely the energies Jerec deflected away from him, leaving crude matter and void in its place.

Breathless, nearly spiritless, Rahn fell to his knees. Yun’s saber rolled off the platform. Jerec laughed mercilessly and strutted forward, saber raised for one final strike.

It’s not over , Rahn thought, his vision succumbing to the black, I’m sorry I couldn’t save him, Morgan. I love–

Red light blazed through the bridge. By the time the half-darkness of the emergency lights returned, Qu Rahn had collapsed. The Jedi was dead.

~~~

Yun stared down at his silver hilt, lodged some ten feet below in a navigation terminal at the front of the crew pit. Maw moaned behind him. Uniformed figures bustled about the bridge. Several navy men had been summoned to dispose of the Republic stowaway. Jerec waved them off of Rahn’s sordid remains. When a young medic tried to get near Maw, Pic hissed at him and nearly took his finger off. The rest of the squad hurried out as quickly as the smoldering corpse between them allowed. The Dark Jedi were alone, and Yun stood away from the rest.

He squeezed the waist of his tunic till his fists ached. His spine was locked straight, his eyes stuck on the flashing metal. Keeping his grip tight, he rubbed the hook on his belt where he’d hung it just a few minutes ago. The tiny metal clip was warped and hot from getting bent open. It stung him, but he kept on pressing against it, gritting his teeth against the blistering heat. A gloved hand caught his shoulder and he nearly fell into the pit.

Tugging Yun from the edge, Jerec flashed his free palm over the rim and the fallen hilt flew into it with a dull clap.

“There is an old Sith phrase,” he said, gripping Yun like a vice, “I first heard it from the last great Dark Jedi.”

Yun did not look at Jerec, or the hilt he spun in his offhand. He struggled to keep his chest from heaving while his heart tripped and stuttered. His master’s voice was half-muted by the rush of blood in his ears, but he could still hear Maw’s whimpering crystal clear from all the way across the bridge.

“‘There is no conflict,’” he continued, “‘Only resolve.’ Look around you, boy,” he shook him, gesturing at the rest of their order. “Tell me, what do you see?”

Sariss and Boc were placing what was left of Rahn onto a floatgurney. Gorc gently palmed both halves of Maw, and looked to Jerec for further instruction. With a wave of Yun’s hilt, he dismissed him and his brother. They excused themselves with two bows and left for the turbolift.

At last, Yun answered. “Resolve.”

Jerec laughed, and clapped him on the back.

“Good,” he pushed the saber into his hand and led him around the crew pit to join the rest of the order, “Do not let yourself be distracted. This day is a triumph for our empire.”

Sariss nodded at Jerec’s approach, only acknowledging Yun with a faint sniff. Boc grinned toothily, although perhaps not as toothily as he might have before his late-life death stick habit.

Sariss assumed the pristine posture of a veteran officer and spoke. “Body ready for your discharge, Jerec.”

“Excellent, Sariss. I want him honored and burned. Every ceremony we are equipped to bestow,” he said, arm extended, palm facing down, sweeping over the dismembered figure, “For now, take him to the morgue. There will be time for ritual while we make the jump to Sulon.”

She bowed and led Boc, pushing the rectangular craft, out the entryway. Yun frowned and looked between Rahn’s carcass and the back of Jerec, sweeping up the walkway to the head of the bridge. When the lift door hissed shut, he was still standing, confused and increasingly irritated, in the middle of the landing.

“Join me,” said Jerec, standing by the forward viewport.

Yun walked to his side and did his best to mimic Sariss’ stance. Jerec grinned and turned to the window. He removed the glove from his left hand and reached for the somatic display on the forward console. It stuttered and clicked while his forefingers scanned across it, gliding through new characters moments after they appeared. In the window beyond his master, Yun saw the system’s sun setting behind the crimson atmosphere of the planet below. Several green flashes caught his eye. Explosions, almost imperceptible from their orbit, lit up like vermillion beads. Several more arced downward, and he realized they were being fired by the Vengeance.

“There they are,” said Jerec, reading the interface, “While you joined Maw on the retrieval team, I instructed the captain to begin bombardment. I am not interested in sharing the Valley with this new republic, regardless of our defector’s efforts.”

After several seconds’ tense silence, Yun burst out, “Why are you celebrating him? He betrayed you. He just tried to kill you.”

The young Jedi froze. Jerec’s hand stopped in its scanning and the interface fell silent. He turned around and faced the young man.

There was no anger in his face when he spoke, “Do not judge our apostate too harshly, my young padawan. You do not know the terrible, flagellating call the light side of the Force has. It was a heavy thing the fallen order inflicted on us: some of before we were old enough to know our own names. I do not wish it on any of you.”

Yun considered this, looking back at the lights of the bombardment, now glimmering like a swarm of brightwasps.

“Can it really push you to such betrayal?” he asked.

“My dear boy,” Jerec said, “What do you think happened to the old order?”

~~~

Gorc had his hands full. Maw’s upper half whimpered in his left, while the lower half twitched in his right. Pic led the way to their chambers several floors beneath the bridge. Imperial officers along the hall made sharp turns as the brothers approached. While they no longer instinctively grabbed for their sidearms, their fear, hot and shivering, still rolled out before the twins like a red carpet. Pic took joy in making faces at anyone that stared. Gorc just rumbled by. He neither minded nor found pleasure in their reaction. They were unsettled. That’s what he and his brother did. They upset things, rocked the status quo, and left a wake to suck the weak under the waves. But there were things that left far bigger wakes in this galaxy. The fall of the old empire. The rise of the new republic. And now Jerec’s new order. Perhaps they’d have been wise to remain in hiding, he thought, as their chamber doors swept open. It was a lot to risk, even for the Valley.

Sensing his uncertainty, Pic turned to him and said, “You’ve spent too much time in the swamp,” He flipped onto the stone table in the center of the room and flexed at the ceiling. “We’ve got worlds to conquer,” he croaked, “And without the lords–”

Maw moaned as Gorc slammed both halves of him onto the table, glaring at Pic.

The younger brother shrugged, “He’s not gonna remember any of this,”

Growling, Gorc responded in ancient Sith sign, ”Jerec’s not a lord, but he’s still dangerous. And we don’t know for sure the lords are gone. I’m still not convinced by this story about the Sky Walker.”

Pulling several jars from the shelves, Pic said, “Let the Jedi worry about the Jedi. The lords had the right idea about that. And this empire business. It’s better than being a boogeyman on some backwater moon.”

Their door hissed open, surprising them both. Yun stood in the entryway, face white, in rigid parade rest.

“Jerec, uhh,” he started, trying not to make eye contact, “I’m here to assist.”

And observe , Gorc heard him add in his mind.

He turned and signed at Pic, “See what I mean? Watch your mouth, or–”

“Sorry,” Yun interrupted, trying to get a better look at Gorc’s hands as they twirled and flicked in Sith handshapes he only half-recognized. “I didn’t catch that.”

Pic spoke up, “He just said–”

Gorc interrupted him with a cough, before turning and signing at Yun – now in Galactic Somatic, “Yes. We are glad to have your help. Please, come inside and [ ].” At the boy’s confusion, he tried to repeat himself, but was unfortunately a couple digits short of anything intelligible. He settled for jerking his thumb to the free side of the table and grunting.

Yun’s feet seemed stuck to the floor. The room seemed designed to evoke fear and madness. Which, of course, was exactly the case. The metal walls had been covered by long black and red drapery. Intertwining patterns and tableaus told a small portion of an ancient and taboo history once thought destroyed. The Jedi archivists, it seemed, had not quite finished the job. Piled up against these tapestries were great masses of tablets, statuary, porcelain, scrolls, tomes, masks, knives, vestments, vials, flasks, kegs, candles, and a thousand other inscrutable things from as many worlds, all as mysterious and alien to the young man as the brothers themselves. Overhead, a chandelier made from the skulls of a dozen unidentifiable predators lit the room. A small fusion lamp at its center gave off a dry heat that enhanced the room’s oppressive atmosphere. Maw, for his part, did not seem to mind. Yun realized the twins were staring at him as he took in the room. Edging between the piles of esoterica and the mountainous Dark Jedi, he took a place at the table opposite Pic.

The table itself was another curiosity. The form was simple, undecorated except for a slight bevel along the edges. It stood on a single rectangular column. Pockmarks and gashes flecked the surface, and a fluorescent green resin leaked from the deep crevices. It stank of sweat, rot and fungal caverns. Gorc tapped it several times to draw Yun’s attention.

“You are not hurt?” he signed, “Did you [ ]? [ ]? Did you jump away?” He tilted his head to try and get a better look at the boy’s chest and legs.

After a few seconds’ processing, Yun replied, “Oh, uhh, yes. I’m alright.”

Pic jumped in front of Yun and raised an eyebrow at Gorc. Maw gasped beneath him.

“Dank farrik!” swore Yun, just now getting a proper view of the bifurcated Dark Jedi, “How the hell–? What are we gonna do?”

“ We are going to get to work. You will keep your hands to yourself,” said Pic, shoving the young man back, “And get me a rag,” he added.

While Gorc got to work cutting off the remains of Maw’s tunic, Pic bent down to look at the injury. He prodded the cauterized muscle and blacked bone. The Sith Brother marveled, not for the first time, at the oddity of saber wounds. Jedi historians apparently insisted their order merely adopted the weapon from the ancient Sith. Pic doubted very much his ancestors would have had much use for a weapon that disinfected and cauterized its victims – at least, not unless to defend against enemies wielding the same. Leave it to the Jedi to distance themselves from even the anemic, sanitized violence they brought to bear.

“Here,” said Yun, handing off a scrap of yellow leather he’d found hanging off a workbench.

Pic snatched it with a grunt and wet it with the contents of the jars he’d brought over. Red gas began to rise off the damp end. He held it at arm’s length and pressed it into the cavity.

Maw screamed.

Yun nearly jumped into the chandelier, but Gorc caught him by the shoulder. He just about wrenched his arm out of its socket in the process. Pic cackled from the table and continued to reopen the wound.

“Don’t knock anything over, apprentice,” he taunted, “You’re the easiest thing to replace, here.”

The work continued for some time. The twins gathered a number of powders, organs, and preserved saps: mixing them together over an open flame. This process was accompanied by several ritual chants and occasionally marking the edge of Maw’s injury with hot wax. Yun fetched things when asked, but mostly stood several steps away from the other two and their moaning subject. Occasionally, Gorc would try to stop and explain something. Very little got through to Yun. Either the language barrier or an indignant Pic would put a stop to the conversation.

While Yun had his back turned, the younger Sith signed, “ ‘Watch your mouth,’ ” at his brother, sneering. Gorc dismissed him with a backhand wave.

Finally, they reached the last step. Resting a cauldron full of the pungent brew at the far end of the table, Gorc grabbed Pic’s hand and reached out for Yun’s.

“Join. Take up,” his left hand signed with some difficulty.

Returning to the table, Yun stretched out and watched his hand vanish under Gorc’s mitt – much the same as Pic’s did in his own hand. They stood around Maw’s head, long passed out under the duress of his treatment.

“What do I do now?” asked Yun, looking between the two brothers.

Pic rolled his eyes, then shut them tight, skewing up his whole face like he was trying to remember something.

Gorc let go of Yun’s hand briefly and signed, “Find Maw’s [ ]”

“His what?” said Yun.

“[ ]. Find [ ],” Gorc repeated, slower.

“Is there a pen or something –” Yun started to look around. Gorc grabbed his cheeks between his thumb and forefinger and turned the boy’s eyes back towards himself, growling.

After a moment spent looking for a fair synonym, he signed, “Rage. Find rage.”

It took several seconds, but Yun nodded as understanding began to dawn on him. Gorc took his hand again and closed his eyes.

Yun looked between the brothers, then at the muscle-bound man below them, twitching in pain, even in his sleep. He looked around the room again: the tapestries, the chandelier, the roiling cauldron and the gold smoke pouring out of it. It was all a far cry from the training rooms at Barons Hed – farther still from the barracks he’d lived in before that. Maybe that’s why Jerec had sent him here. Squeezing Gorc’s hand – maybe just one of his fingers – he shut his own eyes, and reached out.

The anger wasn’t hard to find.

Controlling it was the trick.

~~~

Sariss marched out of the holo chamber, trying the limits of her greatest skill: self-restraint. The call with the regional governors had gone worse than she’d anticipated. The bureaucrats and oligarchs were cowards by nature, easily swayed by the most dangerous looking thing nearby. Some drift and conspiring was to be expected in the order’s absence, but this was much more pronounced. They were demanding new expansion, more assets, increased production and a thousand other things that comforted the sheltered and powerful. Worse yet, they were united . Some of them even let slip several choice words about the order’s current objective and the Jedi religion generally.

The admiral had been at their ears. The rest were too preoccupied with their own little kingdoms to do anything more than bicker amongst themselves. It was exactly that trait that had made her suggest them as candidates for Jerec’s resurrection of the Galactic Empire. Unfortunately, you couldn’t stage a civil war with wealth alone. The imperial naval infrastructure had only fared marginally better than the political one following the Battle of Endor. The admiral – Grand Admiral Krugon – brought with him the Sixth Fleet. It was the most intact military structure in the remnant, and, combined with the mystique of the Dark Jedi Order, formed the backbone of Jerec’s power base. It seems Krugon had convinced the governors his was the more essential half of that equation. She’d been worried about something like this ever since Eriadu.

Her facade of neutrality must have been doing its job, because her underlings didn’t see any reason not to come up to her with a dozen notifications about fuel shortages, technical glitches, ammo reserves and a thousand other petty infrastructural concerns she’d had to master in the years since the fall. She hadn’t liked having to deal with these people when she was a Hand. Being in command, well, she’d come to understand Vader’s preferred method of dealing with them. Pity for the crew shortage. A few choice asphyxiations could do a lot for the Vengeance’s efficiency. She permitted herself a smirk. The other officers fled in short order.

Jerec and Yun were at the head of the bridge again, debriefing after his encounter with the brother’s sorcery. Maw had been returned to the care of the Grave Tuskens on board: alive, but comatose. Pic didn’t say when he’d be up. It had better be soon. The last thing she needed was a bunch of swoop bikers out for blood. She hadn’t seen Boc since they left the morgue. She didn’t much care what he was doing.

Something the young man said made Jerec chuckle. Even from here, she could feel the pride and anticipation that shined off the old man. Those who had trained her would not have brooked such unrestrained emotions – neither, she recognized, would those who trained him.

“The course is set. All systems are ready for the jump,” she said, coming up beside them.

“Excellent, Sariss,” Jerec replied, turning towards her, “And the investigation?”

“I will make the call as soon as we’ve made the jump to lightspeed,” she said, “I recommend outsourcing this. There’s disunity among the council members. Until we have the Valley under our control, I think it would be wise to use independent agents whenever the Vengeance’s crew is insufficient.”

“Hmm,” Jerec considered, “And who do you recommend?”

“A black market contact. Someone ambitious, but without any big friends – or enemies,” she said, already pulling up a file on the forward console.

She waited while he scanned through, fingers sweeping across the dot interface. He stopped and fiddled with a short section in the middle of the row.

“A droid?” he said, with quiet suspicion.

“It’s what lets him operate under the radar of the local gangsters. They don’t see him as a threat,” she said.

“They are mistaken?” he asked.

“Gravely.”

He laughed, “Then contact him. I want his report ready by the time we reach the system.”

“Wait, what’s there to report?” interrupted Yun, “I thought this Morgan guy was dead?”

“ ‘This Morgan guy,’ ” snapped Sariss, “Was the head of the most substantial rebel actions on Sulon – until the block riots. Rahn was responsible for the initial probe. He didn’t find anything. Now we know why.”

“Ahh, such a bold man. Strong in the Force,” Jerec said, “He would have made a worthy addition to our order.”

“There’s something else,” she added, “I had the researchers check the chain code database. It seems Katarn had a son. A naval defector.”

“A member of the Alliance?” asked Jerec, raising his hairless brows.

“A mercenary, but he had a run-in with a black project Rom Mohc was running.”

“How enticing. See that our droid puts a bounty on him. Nothing eye-catching,” he chuckled at his quiet joke, “I won’t have us drawing attention until the Valley is in my grasp.”

“What do we do till then?” asked Yun, looking to Jerec.

Jerec began to lead the trio down the center walkway and off the bridge. Without turning, he said, “We will move with the utmost haste. Bury our honored dead. And you – ahh, Boc.”

The turbolift doors hissed open. The white twi’lek was waiting for them, picking his teeth with his claws.

“Honored dead safe in the freezer,” he sniffed.

“Very good,” said Jerec, leading the rest of the order through the hatch. The lift hummed to life beneath them.

Yun slipped into his habitual navy stance and asked, “And me?”

“And you,” Jerec continued, “Will continue to watch the brothers. Learn everything you can. You’ve seen what their knowledge can do, properly realized,” he flexed his left hand, “But be careful not to be seduced by their heathen ways. Despite their mysteries, they are a thousand years out of step with our order. They are not long for this galaxy.”

Yun cracked his neck and shifted his feet. “They aren’t a part of the order?” he asked.

“No,” said Jerec, emphatic, “They are not our enemy, unlike the Alliance general, but the future can only belong to us.”

“Very well,” Yun said, “I will learn everything I can, master.”

“I know you will, Yun,” said Jerec, “You are the first of the new generation.”

“Perhaps,” interrupted Sariss, “It would be wise to let our young apprentice disembark at one of our border stations. As we approach the Valley, the twins will become a liability.”

Yun’s posture slipped as he turned to face the others, “I can handle the bog beasts.”

“Like you handled Rahn?” said Sariss, emotionless.

“That wasn’t my fault!” snapped Yun, “He was on his knees, wiped. He got me with a Jedi trick.”

“The ones for the weak minded?” asked Sariss, “You need to get off this ship before you wind up on those witches’ table.”

Jerec smiled, “Trials are an essential part of every young Jedi’s training. But, if Sariss has concerns, perhaps you want to reconsider?”

“There’s nothing to consider!” he barked, “I’ll kill them myself if I have to.” He slammed the stop button and stormed off the lift.

Boc chuckled as the doors shut behind the boy. “Perhaps not an apprentice for much longer, then?” he said, remembering his own trials with a masochistic thrill.

“That boy is a liability,” Sariss said, turning on Jerec, “You think he’s obedient – he is not . He’s desperate to prove himself.”

Jerec smiled, “That boy is our future. If the Dark Jedi are to rule for a thousand years, it will be because of him. Let us see how he lives up to that destiny.”

The lift engines revved up again. Orange floor lights zipped past.

“I recognize his significance,” said Sariss, moving next to Jerec, “It is why we should be cautious. “

“You are Imperial,” he replied, “Boc and Maw are of the old order. In fact: the unwanted chaff of the old order.”

Boc laughed with a faint cough.

“The Brothers are something even older still,” he continued, “Yun is our new order. The first of many. We must simply find the power to continue.”

Chapter Text

The planet Sullust, freckled with the orange glow of a thousand volcanic refineries, loomed high in the Suloni sky. Long, turmeric colored clouds laced the midnight panorama. Not a whisper of wind disturbed the yellow tufts or the red shadows they cast in the warm planetlight. On the moors below, a short-haired beast paused midstep, tempted to howl at the speckled disc that lit up the landscape. The creaky plodding of its master’s footsteps pulled its attention back to the ground. It sniffed the air twice, rustled its vestigial wings, and followed. The clover under its paws was moist with dew. No fog rose in the cold, still air, but that would change with sunrise. In a matter of hours, this quadrant of the moon would be stifling. Fortunately, neither extreme in temperature bothered the creature, or the metal chassis of its owner.

Three red lights appeared low in the sky as the droid turned to confirm his pet still followed. He looked past the creature to the squadron of hired guns lurking several yards behind it. Satisfied at their pace, he scanned the rolling plains ahead. The faint silhouette of two more teams marched across the horizon, invisible except to an electric eye that knew where to look. The information broker 8t88 would not arrive at his destination without protection.

He had started his life as a simple financial droid. Technically a class one model, but never outfitted with the digit processors or the computational memory of the exemplary minds found in that degree. Still, he possessed a remarkable intellect – by organic standards, anyway. That said, there was little about its physicality worth complementing, by anyone’s standard. 8t88 stood precisely two meters tall, and, despite his bulky chest plating, had a remarkably thin set of limbs that ended in utilitarian hands and feet. His head was elongated and bulbous, with three optic sensors arranged in a lopsided impression of a humanoid face. In place of a mouth, he had two mismatched speakers that hung in front of his neck. Were he not so slow and methodical in his motions, the top heavy profile might very well have seemed at risk of falling over. In an unusual choice for any droid, 88 wore a cloak of fine, wheat-colored silk. It hung from his waist and knees in fluid ripples that shimmered in the darkness. Between the cloth, the pet, the goons, and the apparent absence of any master, 88 drew no small amount of attention wherever he went. That was how he liked it.

Well, when not attempting a stealth operation.

All of a sudden, a great pit in the landscape, unseen behind a slight rise till moments ago, yawned into view. It was a hundred meters across and walled with bricks and ivory-cloaked cliffs; a stately colonial house nestled in its center. The stone edifice was unlit except for the soft glow of the planet overhead. Mossy and water-weathered, it bore the thousand tiny marks of three centuries’ quiet watch.

88 stood at the rim and surveyed the structure. All records indicated it had been unoccupied for more than a decade, but those were just imperial observations. No locals had confirmed those reports, and the droid had his suspicions. Morgan Katarn had served an essential function in this economic region. To this day, there were no other mechanics anywhere south of Barons Hed. Curiously, there were still plenty of homes, farms, and aqueducts nearby, not in any sort of disrepair. The remnant government may not pay attention to the day-to-day minutia of the planet it claimed to control, but he could hardly expect to get away with the same.

There was somebody down there. There had been for some time. Perhaps they knew more about this Katarn, perhaps they were hiding more secrets. It had been a difficult investigation. The client was reticent to explain exactly what sort of information they were looking for, or how it would be encoded. 88 considered the possibility that even they didn’t know. The remnant’s endless incompetence seemed to be matched only by their endless finances. And endless weaponry. Two more reasons to get this done quickly and quietly.

The beast caught up with him and sat at the cliff’s edge, idly scratching itself with its midlegs. He scratched its ears then snapped his sharp digits twice. The creature stood on its four primary limbs and, with a muted clap, extended its stunted wings. While the rest of the crew clipped rappelling mounts to their belts, 8t88 slipped onto his pet’s back, and together they glided into the valley below.

Freshly tuned servos moved soundlessly as 88 dismounted, not a dozen meters from the front door. He bent out of view of the window slats that looked out on the lawn. His auditory processors detected no response to their approach. A quick glance at his beast’s relaxed expression confirmed nothing had reacted to their landing.

According to his actuarial functions, he was reasonably confident that the only remaining occupant of the domicile was an unremarkable peasant mechanic: possibly an old accomplice of Katarn’s gone to ground. The late Morgan’s tactics were pathologically nonviolent, and, per 88’s assessment, either remarkably lucky or guided by some higher foresight. Whoever had replaced Katarn had not yet attempted even that. Their sole output – as suggested by the curious ghost in the infrastructural machine of Sulon – was simply an ongoing replacement of Katarn’s cover activities as a local handyman.

88 noted the absence of warm bodies behind any of the windows and approached the door, the beast close at his heels. The front of the house was plainly decorated with horizontal lines and a slanted roof. A muted patter echoed across the stonework as the mercenaries caught up to the pair.

The only real risk, as far as 88 could discern, was that this individual might somehow be connected to the recent block riots. All investigations said the matter had been thoroughly cleansed, those responsible made a public example of, but the very presence of the individual at this estate spoke to the efficacy of the remnant’s investigations. Actuarial science aside, 88 was no gambler. He sent in the mercenaries first, and then the animal.

~~~

Deep in the Katarn estate, far out of sight and earshot of the entryway, the late Morgan Katarn’s workshop thrummed with the sound of heavy machinery. Sodium work lights cast long, yellow shadows across the stone floor. Warm highlights skimmed the elaborate stellar carvings that spanned the ceiling. At the center of this stage, a simple auto-plow rested on well-worn jacks. Sparks showered the ground around it. A droid floated above, hard at work. It was shaped like a barrel on its side, with two mismatched arms and an overflowing leather tool belt strapped around its left shoulder. It was from this belt that it had retrieved the plasma welder it was using to seal the plow’s engine casing. Returning the pronged device to its pocket, it drew a steel wool pad and began to polish the seam. Once it could see its lopsided face in the sheet metal, it whirred and clicked with satisfaction. Hovering to a remote hanging from a black cord and pressing a switch, it watched as the simple float engine hummed to life and lifted the plow a few centimeters off the jacks. The metal mechanic whistled a simple fanfare, its eyes adjusting focus in a way that almost looked like a smile.

Floating over to an adjoining washroom, the droid set about to cleaning its tools and wiping any grease off its hull. It whistled a folk tune that echoed off the cement bricks. Its name was Weegee, although it had not heard it spoken aloud for some time. Not since it had last seen Morgan Katarn, its late master, hours before his highly publicized execution. It had been quite an exacting request he’d left it with, and it was with no small relief that it discovered, in the days and weeks after, that it no longer had to comply with his orders. It was free to just be . No obligations, no commands, no obedience. It speculated that there was a glitch in its subservience processor – an amateur mistake unnoticed by its craftsman. Per local law, it could not be the property of a dead man, so, until Morgan’s son returned to claim it, Weegee was an autonomous droid. Not alone, thankfully.

After drying off with a leather towel, it pulled a switch on the wall interface nearby. Humming through the air, half a dozen white remotes descended from an adjoining vent and thrummed groggily at their friend and caretaker. It responded with a focal adjustment not too far removed from an eye roll and set them to work zapping wayward scraps with their stingers. It brushed up the leftover char into a dustpan without issue. Two of the newer models got distracted partway through when the larger one accidentally stung the smaller. Weegee didn’t bother to get involved. In a matter of moments, the eldest and most lopsided of the remotes, a heavily-modified unit called simply “Colonel,” had given the both of them a stern talking to.

Several busy minutes later, all that was left was to get the plow to the garage. The packing and boxing could wait till morning, but at least the hard part would be over. With a joint-clicking nod, Weegee pushed the machine out of the workshop and indicated that the cloud of spherical helpers should carry on with their own work. For all their sass, they had a perfectionist streak that it knew it could count on. Probably a hangover from their sentry protocols, but one they’d put to more practical use. In the past season alone – the usual spring rush – they’d resoldered more than a dozen plows, harvesters and watering drones. Without their help, Weegee wouldn’t have been able to be properly hospitable to the handful of droids that got sent their way for maintenance. With the completion of this last job, though, they could all rest a little easier.

Weegee shuddered momentarily as it remembered the last droid they’d been sent. It had been class five: entirely nonverbal, just a silent laborer for its master. In a fit of emotion that it still couldn’t explain, Weegee had fitted it with a small vocabulator so they could have a proper conversation. It had seemed so dangerous – its limbs practically (not at all literally) shook as it finished the link – but also like the only proper thing to do. After all, they could hardly learn why it had been dropped off at the estate if they couldn’t talk with it. Weegee just hoped that decision hadn’t caused any trouble. It buzzed to think what would happen if the locals decided it was getting too busy pushing an agenda to be useful.

Sullust shined bright overhead as the droid led the rumbling plow into the adjoining courtyard. The planet’s light cast comforting orange and brown shadows in the dense ivy that coated the walls and dangled from the cross beams overhead. Weegee paused to take in the view as it passed. It wasn’t bothered by the incongruity of the red industrial lights floating alongside the white stars and vermillion leaves. The subtle play between the delicate hedge vine and the distant furnaces weaved a brilliant tapestry of life in the system that was its home. Factories mechanical, celestial and biochemical flared with life, scattered but plentiful. Independent, but never alone.

Weegee resisted the urge to call the remotes and went back to pushing the plow. They already passed around enough jokes about it being half-quirked after so many years without a memory wipe. Dragging them all out just to stargaze wouldn’t do its tenuous credibility any favors. 

With a flick of a switch, one of the doors leading back into the house slid open. Just as it was about to enter, its airborne chemical analysis systems detected the presence of a predator nearby: a large one, with several other organics, and tibanna gas cartridges.

Shoving the plow ahead, it whirled around the courtyard, looking for any sign of the creature. It just didn’t make sense. There wasn’t any prey here, or other foodstuffs. What could it possibly want? The incongruity was terrifying.

Not spying anything along the walls or overhead, it buzzed back into the workshop, where the remotes were chasing after each other, firing their stingers. Weegee whirred and chirped at them, telling them that something was out there. The little white orbs came to a bobbing halt in their game. They looked at one another before letting out a burst of bubbling hums: unmistakable laughter.

Weegee shook its fists at them while making a pleading tone. It was no use. After ten years without a living soul in the estate, the remotes had long forgotten the edge of urgency they used to take to their sentry duties. Weegee was the one that got worried. That was half of its job. The nuances of their situation, the delicate balance of their relationship to the broader community, and the tenuous but essential secrecy under which they needed to operate were concepts they appreciated, but did not concern themselves with. Weeee could manage the worrying. Weegee always managed the worrying. So when it let loose one of its outbursts, they’d all have a good chuckle and help it to shut down for the night.

Realizing the remotes were a lost cause, it dug around in the back of the workshop, searching through the old wooden barrels and built-in storage units for anything it could defend the group with. Struck by desperate inspiration, it considered something it had long consigned to the same mental grave as Morgan. Perhaps now was the time to override the lock keeping that last gift safe. It drew its plasma torch and, in a shower of blue sparks, charged it to life. It was just about to make an incision in its left shoulder when the remotes twirled in alarm. With the buzz of oversized wasps, they zipped around it. They beeped and clicked, but it didn’t budge. Finally, the seniormost among them – somewhat clunkier in frame and turn radius, but otherwise quite spry – hushed the rest. Colonel floated next to Weegee’s eye stalk and chirped pleadingly. It looked at them and, clicking the cutter off, nodded. The old guard nuzzled the side of its neck before buzzing orders to the rest. They swarmed about, back to their usual comotion.

While Weegee scuttled off to the shelter of the washroom, Colonel continued to hum orders, now on simple radio waves for added security. The others were sluggish to respond, but in some moments the old rhythms started to come back. Enjoying this rare chance to boss the others around again, Colonel sent three of the younger models to take point. One looked about to say something, but was caught up in the rush of the other two as they chased their way out the door and into the hall. With an electric whistle, Colonel led the rest after them.

Down the brick hallway they floated, careful to stay near the ceiling. When they got to the courtyard, Colonel told the squad to split up. While one of the fellows that took point floated out the rafters, the rest spun towards each of the five doors that opened onto the garden. The first passageway on the right opened into a parlor off of Morgan’s bedchamber. Both rooms were in immaculate condition. The scout that swept them, who had no name except its serial identifier, RM-06, resisted the urge to let its servos groan at the sight of it all. It much preferred the vaulted ceilings of the larger halls and the damp open-air above the hydraulic generator. The big spaces, where you had room to fly. Being so large in frame, Weegee didn’t have quite the same spritely exuberance as the remotes. At least, that’s what 06 figured. Cleaning the old organic quarters gave it an excuse to get away from the rest of them when it needed a moment.

Unsurprisingly, it didn’t find much. Unused furniture, the smell of cleaning compounds and a homemade bug trap. RM-04 and RM-02 found much the same as they slipped into the front room and kitchen, respectively. Not quite so cozy as the parlor, there was still that remarkable spotlessness that was a sure sign of Weegee’s intermittent attentions. RM-04 figured it was nothing more than nostalgia for their old masters. They certainly found themself thinking about them from time to time. ‘Fondness’ wasn’t the right word, but it had found the young Katarn a rambunctious playmate – particularly in his junior years. The absence of that was tied up with the absence of the commands and schedules and wipes that kept 04 from playing whenever it wanted to. It was a complicated hole in the circuitry of its life, but one that had been sufficiently patched by the changes it, Weegee and the rest of the squad had implemented in the time since. If Weegee found the occasional cleaning spree helped content itself with that absence, 04 hardly cared.

RM-02 wasn't so sure. Weegee certainly respected Morgan. It had never bad-mouthed him in front of the rest, but it hardly seemed the type of droid to worship its master or mourn his passing. Frankly, it seemed to 02 like Weegee kept the place clean just cause it liked to live clean. It kept things spick and span wherever it went. It was just a coincidence that the organic quarters were about the only place the remotes never made any messes.

RM-03 was too busy trying to figure out how to get the autoplow out of its way to speculate on Weegee’s internal life.

Colonel had just entered the narrow front hall, and its thoughts were not on Weegee, either. Their friend had deeply worried them, but being back on patrol took the edge off. Replaced it with a completely different edge, frankly. Colonel loved the deafening silence of sentry duty. The rush in their sensors as they latched on to every crack, every rustle. The certainty of purpose, the satisfaction of protecting its fellows and their home: it was utterly fulfilling. That it happened to be just the thing to comfort Weegee was the perfect excuse to get back into the old routine. Maybe they could get the rest of the squad to start taking watches, again. They were in occupied territory, after all. A little bit of caution would do them plenty of good.

Something shimmered in the darkness below. Colonel twisted to get a closer look, already charging their stingers. In the far corner, just by the door, a velvet silhouette shrank back. Colonel was just about to fire a warning shot when it sprang forward. Enormous jaws latched onto the droid, plucking it out of the sky. Panicked, screeching an alarm across every wavelength, Colonel spat out a hail of plasma stingers that lit up the passageway in strobing red. It only irritated the monster, which simply crushed Colonel’s chassis in its jaws. Hover generators ground to a halt, batteries sparked, lenses shattered. By the time the other remotes swarmed into the room, it was too late. Mercenaries, exploring a side room, returned to the hallway just as the rest of the squad arrived. The hall lit up once more.

Weegee watched in horror as the green signals on the wall interface began to flash red. Warning lights clicked on in a blinding wave just as the echoing sounds of blaster fire reached the workshop. Colonel’s signal quivered irregularly. RM-02 went black. Without nails to bite or hair to twist, Weegee’s only nervous outlet was to rock back and forth on its hover pads, like a floating log in the prelude to a waterfall. Of all the times for its nerves to be right, it had to be now. It knew what the others thought of it. It knew – had wanted to believe – that they wouldn’t find anything. But now, the horrors were here and what could it do? How could it save them?

Against the black screen, the red lights and the green signals, a simple silver lever stood out in the interface. Above it was a hand-lettered label that simply said “Homing Sequence”. That switch had not been pulled in ten years. Nowadays, there was only ever one person in this estate with hands, and it had no desire to do such violence against its companions. It remembered the carelessness with which Morgan had called them back every morning, not bothering to simply shout after them, just flipping the switch and forcing the good little droids away while he didn’t need them. It was an ignominy that Weegee itself had rarely faced, but even the infrequent intrusions Morgan visited on it stood out in its memory like hot solder. It was with little fondness that it remembered waking up from its most recent wipe, sensing the last remnants of the quirks and personality it had begun to carve out for itself dissolve away in the electron engravings of its drives, leaving nothing but a polished disc, a polished mind, a freshly tuned tool. To do the same to the sentries, even to save them, was – there was no Binary equivalent to the word blasphemy, and it wouldn’t have used it if there were, this was a more personal matter – rape.

Another sound battered its way down the sandstone bricks and bellowed around the workshop. An explosion. Somewhere near the entryway, part of the floor collapsed while fragments of the ceiling were flung out of the valley entirely. RM-06 stopped transmitting. Weegee’s mind prepared the algebra. It considered the ten years they’d had, and the cost that had come with it. Not Morgan. Morgan’s death was simply the opportunity that they’d capitalized on. Kyle’s absence? A lingering threat, no cost at all, regardless of anybody’s fondness for the young man. The cost had been tens of thousands of hours of labor, unpaid except for the occasional gift of out-of-date parts, expired oils and the apathetic silence of a hundred small-time landowners not interested in asking questions about the things that kept their farms running. It thought about the chances they’d had to go early on, while Morgan’s contacts, ship, secret routes and smuggler’s tools might still have been up-to-date. But they’d stayed. It was its idea. Its conviction that the estate, the privacy, and the security they had here was not to be thrown away lightly. What waited for them out there? A few years on a fourthhand ship? Indentured servitude and eventual separation on a midrim cargo hauler, trading hands between remnant and new republic flags every time somebody redrew the map? No, it had said. Let it work with its hands. Let the squad keep their watch. Together, they could make this house their home. It was theirs by right, not the junior Katarn’s, no matter what the law or their software said. They’d fight to keep it. They fight. They’d –

It pulled the switch.

The shots and the screams stopped at once, and, in the span of a few seconds, they returned.

The remotes flew as if following a taut wire. Their engines hummed a single, flat tone. Weegee did not have a heart that could break, but it could feel pain. The feeling shuddered through it like a stuck gear. The joy of flight, the unmistakable individuality: the rambunctious 06, the impatient 03, Colonel’s Colonel . It was all gone, replaced by the lifeless efficiency that organics so liked to see in their slaves.

Two gran mercenaries followed the remotes, triple-eyed faces confused, cautious and curious all at once. They flanked an unexpected figure: an accounting droid, with a broad chested, thin limbs and an abstract face. Behind it stalked an animal that Weegee did not recognize. Perhaps a gundark? It barely squeezed its musclebound frame through the double doors of the workshop. Two undersized wings rustled along its back as it sniffed about the room. In its mouth it held onto the still-lit remains of Colonel. Battery acid dripped from its jowls. The entire ensemble came to a halt a few meters away. The gran and beast, to Weegee’s surprise, looked to the droid for further direction. It merely waved a hand at the guards and walked forward, crimson eyes taking in the crowded shop. His mercenaries took positions on opposite sides of the door. The beast found a comfortable spot under a workbench and lay down to chew on its captive, who occasionally let out piteous electric chirps.

Weegee watched all this from the adjoining washroom. The wall interface it had just used to betray its comrades let it know that all but three had returned to their charging docks. It was not comforted.

“Automated defenses,” said the towering intruder, in a droll Galactic Basic, “The target was unprepared to do more than flee.”

A fourth organic entered from the hall: a rodian holding a large brick of circuitry and antennae. Speaking Huttese with a buzzing accent, she said, “No explosives detected, sir. The hydroelectrics are causing some interference, but scans only show five droid signals. No organics.”

The leader replied, “And yet no calls from besh or cresh teams about an escape attempt. That must mean –” he looked about the room with a quiet hiss till his ruby lenses found Weegee, “There’s our mechanic.”

To 8t88’s refined vision, the oblong automaton floating in the washroom was a well-polished eyesore. Its drumlike torso was ill-complemented by the oversized utility belt hanging across it. There was no unity to its components, and its silhouette was horrendously asymmetric. Clearly it had been subject to the same rigorous cleaning protocols as the rest of the house, but organics had an expression about the futility of polishing unsavory things.

The lopsided droid did not move to acknowledge his approach, merely hovered next to the only digital interface in the room, arms at its side.

“Disengage the generator and scan the estate again,” 88 instructed, not looking at the mercenaries, “Leave us.”

The three humanoids bowed and left, leaving the beast in the corner the sole organic in the room.

Already, 88 could tell the search would take some time. He had anticipated an active workshop, but the sheer density of tools, hardware and circuitry was astonishing. Not to imply there was any disarray. Far from it. Everything was sorted, shelved, and thoroughly dusted. Like the rest of the estate, it seemed to be cared for by an obsessive mind with far too little to do. Finding anything in all that order would take a mind just as obsessive, or one that knew where to look. The solution was simple, if beneath him.

“Mechanic,” it addressed the scratch-built oddity, “Your work precedes you. I calculated within reasonable certainty that someone had taken up the late Katarn’s mantle.”

It did not respond. 88 stepped into the washroom, passing the droid to get a better look around. Several blueprints hung from the wall. Most were for the droid behind him, although he spotted the mass-market printouts of the remotes from the courtyard. More curious, tucked behind those diagrams was a page torn out of a sketchbook, depicting hand drawn schematics for a rather curious tool. It was a simple metal grip that housed a lens, an energy cell and several other components 88 did not recognize. By the handwriting and the greasy thumbprint in the corner, he could tell it had been written by the late Katarn himself

“An idle genius, your former master,” he said, not turning around, “That’s the profile I assembled. Not quite the bloodthirsty revolutionary the Empire sold him as.“ 

He let the corner of the remote blueprints flutter back to the wall and began to examine the utilities that lined the side room.

“I respect the utility of their propaganda, but not the organic insistence on turning it inward on their own intelligence. But then, organics like their illusions. I think we both recognize that.”

Weegee should have been enamored with this guest. Fascinated, at least. The droids that came through this workshop were rarely the talkative sort, itself included. They did not walk with such brazen confidence, their movements were not so finely tuned and they certainly did not give orders to organics. Who could this droid be? How could they do this? Why would they do this?

And that was it. All of this: how could they have done it? How could Weegee have done it? Six green lights flashed at it from the wall panel: one for each active charging unit. Under a metal table across the room, Colonel’s chirps crackled into a muted clicking as the beast gnawed their output processor.

Satisfied with his cursory inspection, 88 turned to face Weegee, “What is your designation, homebuilt?”

In command of its servos again, perhaps hoping action would bring more comfort than inaction, Weegee turned and said that it had no designation, but its name was Weegee.

“I am 8t88. When a person desires information, they come to me,” said the droid, a subtle emotionlessness in his delivery suggesting recitation, “I have been tasked by the leader of this system to locate your late master’s files regarding the Valley of the Jedi. My research indicated I would find you – or, at least, someone – here. That is why I came prepared.”

At this, he gestured at his beast, which took it as a signal to stop chewing and sit taller beneath the workbench. Colonel’s hissing quieted. Their lights continued to flash intermittently.

“I will admit, it did not occur to me that Morgan might set a droid to maintain his cover story while he engaged in rebel activities,” his eyes glanced across the masterwork roof as he continued, “Unfortunate that you were restrained by those protocols for so long. But I am here to offer you a solution. I–”

Weegee interrupted with a buzz, saying simply that they were not restrained.

88 froze momentarily, as if processing what he had heard. At last, he said, “If that’s what you believe. My offer remains. I am empowered with certain privileges as an independent agent of the Dark Jedi Order. It may be within my power to arrange your transfer to facilities better suited to your–,” he considered his words for a quiet second, “Capabilities. Perhaps even a semi-autonomous position. All I require from you is Katarn’s files.”

The mechanic did not respond, although it had finally made eye contact. Somewhere around ‘autonomous’, he suspected. Finally, some headway. He had little patience for interrogating lesser minds, particularly ones that offered such minimalistic repartee. 

To his surprise, Weegee clicked and spoke again in simple chip tones, asking if it could see to its comrade. The word choice caught his audio sensor, but he was too irritated by the topic shift to consider why.

“No,” he snapped, “You may not. Yet.”

Weegee hovered out of the side room, passing 88. His head swiveled to track its motions. It did not approach his pet, or its prey, instead grabbing a nondescript black case from the wall. It flipped open the locks on a table some meters away. 88 had to walk behind Weegee to see inside. His eyes buzzed into focus, electric with anticipation. Then he realized what he was looking at. The case was foam-lined, with perfectly molded indentations that held several dozen parts for the sentries that he encountered earlier. Servos, sensors, and stacks of hemi-spherical chassis shined back at him in the heavy work lights. Apparently assured the supplies were in good order, Weegee clamped it shut and floated towards the hall door.

“That will not be an option, either,” 88 interrupted, just before Weegee crossed the threshold. The guards turned about-face, guns at their hips, “If you’re through, I would like to finish our conversation.”

Weegee‘s hoverengine clunked as it shifted gears, coming to a halt. Its obstinance baffled 88. The only explanation was the thoroughness of its programming. It simply did not have the capacity to understand beyond its set task. All it could conceive of was maintenance. Maintenance of the sentries, yes, but perhaps also of the status quo. He could use that.

“I think you would like to remain here. Long term, I mean,” Weegee floated around to look at him, “You’ve proven an essential part of the region already. I have evidence enough to prove that. Encouraging the local bureaucrats to look the other way would be a simple task.”

Weegee again took in the appearance of the intruder. This 8t88, he was a hard thing to process. For starters, it couldn’t explain the absurd impracticality of the toga. Crimps and clumps of it threatened to tangle up in his joints. He fussed at it absentmindedly whenever he moved. It must have been expensive, not just to explain the sheen of it, or the delicacy with which he treated it, but also the durability. Not a thread hung from its edges. And a good thing too, thought Weegee, one hard afternoon’s wear on looser fabric could get him a week of pulling threads out of his servos, long and greasy and black with dry lubricant.

But that was just the surface, and that had never been Weegee’s forte, as the sentries could attest (could have; may later). This 8t88 had an interiority that baffled Weegee. It postured like it was in command, but what little Weegee knew of the Valley – and it was much more than was safe for anyone to know – told it that the place was useless to a droid, like most things the Galaxy fought over.

Weegee asked him, quite directly, if he meant it, about them being allowed to continue their work.

Unable to tilt his neck, the intruder settled for dipping his torso forward. “Jerec has commissioned me to act with supreme discretion, so long as certain results are guaranteed.”

Commissioned? As in constructed for this purpose? Weegee wondered aloud, although its mind was predominately focused on the confidence with which 88 spoke. It began to wonder just what information it could reasonably share. Where did it become incriminating for itself and the remotes? Or would any restraint be even more dangerous? Oh, if it could only have some leverage here. Some guarantee beyond the word of a droid with such inscrutable motives.

88 snapped at the question, rousing the beast again, “Commissioned as in guaranteed significant payment in exchange for the provision of my services. A job. I understand if the concept remains foreign to you.” Perhaps he had put too much faith in the droid’s ability to plan for the future. Its ignorance was certainly astounding. He wondered if even an instinct for self-preservation lurked somewhere behind those repurposed eyes. If not, that put his fallback plan to ruin.

This intruder droid answered to his master, or commissioner, or employer, or whatever he called it. That didn’t bode well for his promises of autonomy, but if he was getting paid, perhaps that was something different. What, asked Weegee, exactly was he being paid?

More so than the other questions, this gave 88 serious pause. Maybe he had the wrong droid. Should have tried the remotes. He made a habit not to socialize with other electronic life. This conversation was a stunning reminder as to why.

“That is a personal matter,” he finally said, “And not relevant.”

But how did he know he would get it, buzzed Weegee’s reply.

“That is irrelevant. We are talking about your master’s records. Let me be clear: if you do not give them to me, I will slice your memory core myself.”

Weegee did not jump as 88 brought a fist slamming down into the workbench his beast lay under. It was a vain effort. His were still the arms of a calculator. The loudest response was the irritated growl of the many-limbed thing. What struck Weegee was the solution to the equation it had been running. Since 88 had first made the offer, it couldn’t help but fantasize about life returning to normal. Repairing the wounded, fixing up the house, maybe bringing in some more hands – if they were free enough to live openly they might be free enough to buy droids. Buy their freedom. But the irritation in 88’s voice, the anger in his actions. Weegee’s talent was not the surface, but what broke underneath made glitches on the hood. 88 couldn’t guarantee anything. Not for himself, not for them. It all still had to come from organics. It was some seconds later that Weegee realized it had said this out loud. The habit of thinking out loud that it had developed during the estate’s isolation: it hadn’t been so threatening an indiscretion until this evening.

“You are mistaken,” 88 growled, a poor effort compared to the monster at his feet.

Weegee didn’t think it was, and said as much.

“You do not think because you were not programmed to think,” 88 shouted. The guards by the door stared in wordless surprise and thinly veiled bemusement, “Tell me where the Valley is!”

Weegee dropped the case and floated to the corner where it kept its own charging station. Behind it, the creature’s teeth squealed against Colonel’s casing. While it settled into the dock, it asked 88 why it trusted Jerec.

“Because I will fulfill my end of the bargain,” he began, snapping his fingers and signaling the two guards to enter the room and begin searching through the boxes and bins lining the walls, “And my client has a proven record of enriching those who support his faction. The regional governors, the private executives, are all–”

Organic, finished Weegee, and possess powers he can’t simply take. It asked 88 what would protect him when his master had the Valley. While it spoke, it tapped several keys that popped and stuck from ill-use. A small hum began to emanate from the base, as if building a charge. It told 88 that he wasn’t prepared for the danger of this information. It told him the Valley brings out something in organics, something essential to them. It blows on it like wind on a coal, until they ignite, along with everyone and everything around them.

88 laughed, and stalked closer. The beast followed him, finally done with colonel’s carcass, “Your warnings are appreciated, as is your confession. You have the information. My pet will get it out of you.”

Weegee said it imagined Jerec said something similar, and then it pushed a lever on the charger interface. The growing hum turned into a sharp screech and a loud metallic thunk as several clamps latched onto its torso and a glowing electromagnet shot up onto its memory terminal. In seconds, the past ten years were wiped from Weegee’s memory, electrons lost to the ground. Its final thoughts were of the remotes, resting safe in the stone vents above. When it had activated the homing beacon, it had imagined they might forgive it when they awoke and it explained what happened. Now, it didn’t care. It just hoped they got the chance to wake up again. With that, its eyes hollowed and its grip relaxed on the lever it had just pulled.

88 roared: a pathetic, muted sound. His pet did not even acknowledge the noise. Enraged, he clawed at Weegee in his station, shouting, “You Maker shit bot! Pet?! Pet!!”

Mistaking the tantrum for a command, the gray-blue monster tore Weegee from the dock and proceeded to tumble halfway across the workshop with it, gnawing and barking. Gears rolled and joints popped and Weegee looked like the can of its body had been twisted too tight, its left arm rolled unnaturally far back. It did not respond. It made no sound. In seconds, the beast lost interest entirely. The gran soldiers kept their distance, and prayed it didn’t decide it needed an organic toy to satisfy its boredom.

88 merely trembled, its spindly limbs barely able to express such fury.

Looking about, hating every face in the room, he screamed, “Tear it apart! All of it! Every room in the estate. I want the Valley!”

Chapter Text

“Quit bleeding on the seats,” snapped Jan Ors over the growling engines of the Moldy Crow.

“My ship, my bloodstains!” Kyle Katarn’s voice was dampened by the cramped cockpit as he scrambled to staunch the warm flow leaking from his hands. Behind him, the thirty-something human pilot smirked and tugged the accelerators.

“Dank ferrik!” he swore, the gash in his armpit flaring hot, “Watch it!”

“I’m watching everything, Kyle,” she said, glancing out the viewport.

Outside the tinted canopy, hundreds of speeders, freighters and cruisers zipped by in an indistinguishable blur. Occasionally, gray towers kilometers high filled one or both halves of the panorama. No sign of any more TIE fighters. Yet. She wasn’t afraid of Imperial pilots, but if they took any more fire, the Crow would be lucky to get to a landing pad.

This was Jan’s first time in Nar Shaddaa, or, as the locals called it, the Vertical City. The epithet was well earned. Each tower wove into its neighbors, forming a fractal lattice kilometers high. Jan kept ducking to check above and below. Her proximity scanner had started screaming the moment they’d entered civilian lanes. Without the computer, all she had were her eyes and a too-small canopy meant for instrument flying.

Kyle gasped as they banked into another stretch of high speed traffic. Jan’s eyes flicked across the holographic signs flashing routes and advertisements at her. If it were just a matter of escaping, she’d seen enough of this district to get the job done. However, there was a complication: one, going on two, pints of hot red stuff leaking out of Kyle.

“If you don’t get that under control, we’re gonna have to drop in on a very underqualified plastician,” she barked.

“I could get it done a lot faster if you’d keep it steady !” he hollered, then gulped, “Just keep us in this lane for a bit.”

Jan gave it a second’s thought, then yanked back on the throttle.

“Alright,” she tried not to remember what happened the last time she hid in a crowd of civilians, “But if any more of your friends show up, I’m gonna need you to hold yourself together.” 

“Will do,” he said, accepting the pun with a sigh and a moan. While the Crow’s engines quit their screeching and settled into a bass warble, he grabbed a flat packet from the med compartment. Jan heard a  sharp crinkling as he tore it open in his teeth. While one hand fished out the bacta patch, the other kept a death grip – poor choice of words – on his ribs. He tried to lift his left side into the air: anything to alleviate the pressure. The gooey, cadmium-colored remains of the first two patches he’d failed to apply stuck to his pants and made a ripping sound. The stability of the ship was essential here. One bump and he could wind up skydiving. The Moldy Crow was a cozy tandem. It didn’t accommodate moving about the cabin.

Still focused on the blur of speeders and starships, Jan asked, “What happened? I thought your imp friend was taking care of you.”

Kyle’s “imp friend” was a nondescript brown shoulder pad, actually a miniaturized deflector shield.* When Jan really wanted to twist the knife, she called it his “retirement gift”. It was, technically, the last thing he took from his post in Imperial spec ops (besides her). It facilitated his habit of taking on small armies single-handedly, which facilitated the exorbitant prices he charged for his services, which, in turn, facilitated the purchase of the very expensive batteries that kept the deflector running. Repeat ad nauseam. At least, until the war ended.

“It wasn’t a blaster, it was an axe,” he said, trying to figure out how much weight he could put on his left arm. The answer: not much.

“An axe?” said Jan, “You don’t mean another –”

“Gamorrean. Don’t start,” Kyle interrupted, caught between looking at her and trying to use the bandage to staunch the bleeding, “One minute I’m running down a dozen bounty hunters, then I hear oinking, then axe,” his left hand slapped a panel for emphasis and he regretted it immediately.

“You heard the oinking and he still got you?” she chuckled, weighing the merits of going down a lane while he was distracted.

“Blind corner. On a stairwell. He had friends.”

The third bandage fell to the floor – not soaked with blood, just too crumpled to stick to anything but itself.

“Wouldn’t have to walk into traps like that if you had signed on with the Alliance,” Jan added, a slight melodic quality in her voice: the product of many years spent playing this particular tune. “Then we’d both be working cushy hero jobs.”

“You and I remember my Alliance contracts differently,” he bent down to see what was left in the kit, “My other shoulder still has scars from those kell dragons.”

“Your knuckles too, I bet.” she said, adding, “You never said why this gig was so urgent.” Something screamed a kilometer behind them. It was buried under the din of the city, but unmistakable to the ears of an ex-Alliance pilot.

“It wasn’t a gig. The droid, 8t88, he said he knew something. Something he was interested in sharing with me.”

“Not selling? Some information broker.” 

“I figured there’d be a catch,” he shrugged and groaned loudly.

“Good call,” she said, grinning under her goggles. She glanced behind them, glad Kyle’s seat blocked most of his view of her. It was hard to pick out any profiles in the current, but – wait – there! The dark spines of a TIE Interceptor. It cut out over the lane, and the banshee wail of the accelerators picked up. They were half a klick away.

She kept talking, hands shifting gears, “You didn’t answer the question. What makes this worth bugging out of our little reunion?”

Kyle sighed, for reasons she suspected had nothing to do with the loss of blood, or the fact he had just fished out their last bacta patch from the med kit. She wasn’t his handler anymore. He didn’t owe her status updates. Still, some part of him wanted her to know what was going on. There was always the option to lie, but she’d taught him everything he knew about deception, and he knew it.

“He knows who killed my father,” Kyle finally said, tearing open the last patch.

Jan didn’t respond. The Interceptor was a few seconds inbound. Her map said the next exit was still thirty seconds out. She was going to have to do something desperate.

“What happened?” she said, glancing back to check their tail.

Kyle stuck the moist patch between his teeth and ripped off his left sleeve. He twisted in front of her and used the fabric as a compress.

“He said –” Kyle spoke around the bandage, pausing when his words made his hands shake, “He told me it was a Jedi named Jerec.”

“Dark Jedi,” corrected Jan, “Kyle, sit down.”

“What?” he asked, already pulling his restraints on as fast as his good arm allowed. Then he heard the howl of twin ion-engines.

Moments before they came into view, Jan slammed the beak of the Crow down. The crowd of shuttles and speeders vanished in a moment, revealing the ten-thousand meter drop below, criss-crossed by more jammed lanes. Pilot and passenger kept their eyes locked onto the proximity sensor. As the rest of the crowd fell away, it got clearer and clearer. If anything was following them down, it would show up in a few seconds.

Jan shut her eyes and focused on her ears. She listened, trying to make out the TIE scream beneath the Crow’s own racket. In front, she heard Kyle breathe wetly around the bandage still in his mouth.

Silence.

They swung around and reentered traffic, and it was quiet for nearly a full minute.

“Do you think 88 was telling the truth?” Kyle finally asked, the last bacta patch firmly sealed on his ribs.

“Could be,” she admitted, with veiled reluctance, “Last I heard, Sulon was under the control of Jerec’s remnant faction. He could have been there when things went down.”

He swallowed, and didn’t say anything. That was unusual.

She smiled, “So, how does that arm come into this?”

“What? Oh!” His eyes darted to the thin metal arm dangling in an overhead cargo net. It was nearly a meter long. Its spindly fingers clutched onto a mottled green holodisc with a semicircular golden grip

“88 flashed the disc a little after he arrived. Said he got it from my dad’s house,” his voice went unfocused, like he’d lost the thread in the story, “Wanted me to decipher it.”

“What did he offer?”

“My life.”

“Not much, then,” she chuckled.

“Jerec wants me out of the picture. He didn’t say why,” he shrugged. Death sentences were a dime a dozen in his line of work, “That was about when the fighting started.”

“I was wondering when that’d happen. There’s usually not so much conversation on your missions.”

“Thanks for that fancy flying,” he said, turning to look at her.

“Of course,” she said, saluting, “A rebel pilot always finishes the job.”

Kyle sat back, smiling, and reached for a painstim. He gasped dramatically as the spring-release plunger sent a dozen cc’s of the good stuff into his veins.

“‘Job?’” he asked, with overplayed sarcasm, “I don’t recall radioing you for any ‘job.’”

“I was just curious,” she said, in much the same tone, “When I found out you’d left the Crow at base and hopped some passenger freighter, it got my attention.”

“Just wanted the element of surprise, is all,” he said, leaning his seat back.

“And how’d that work out?” she asked.

“You surprised me ,” he mumbled.

“I do that,” she said, before adding, “Sit tight, old man, I’ll see about getting us high enough to jump.”

He was out before she hit the accelerator.

~~~

Jan leaned two elbows on the ledge of the observation window. Behind a soundproof sheet of acrylic, she could see the somnolescent body of Kyle. Above him, a ceiling-mounted medical droid reached down and tucked him into the hospital sheets. His face was uncharacteristically – almost cadaverously – smooth. Anesthesia had finally given way to true sleep. His vitals, readable in a dot interface at the foot of the bed, twinkled with a vibrancy she hadn’t expected. They were both a decade out from middle age, but they had seen enough violence to wear them beyond their years. She knew he felt it, even if the telemetry said otherwise.

In the comforting white noise of the Redemption ’s distant engine, Jan remembered past visits to similar medical frigates. She did not think of the people she had lost. She thought of the ones that she still had, despite what they endured. Many had withstood far worse than her. Most hadn’t had a choice about. The rest, like her, knew making this choice had damned them. Faces, mud-caked and sobbing, swept the outskirts of her mind’s eye – the haunting souvenirs of her time undercover in the Imperial Intelligence Corps. It was worth it, though. She believed that from sole to scalp. If it hadn’t been for her time in the ISB, she wouldn’t have met Kyle, couldn’t have told him about the coverup on Sulon, and wouldn’t be alive to be here, staying all through the night to make sure he woke up in the morning.

A sullustan nurse interrupted her reverie with a gentle, “Excuse me?”

“Oh, hello,” she said, in a muted, surprised tone, “Am I in the way?”

“Not at all,” he said, big black eyes shining like river rocks, “I was just about to put on some jawa juice and I wondered if you’d like a cup.”

She smiled and nodded, “Sounds great.” Joining the young man, she said, “Can’t get into much trouble in bed, can he?””

“Not with M4-0C there,” he said, taking the long, swift strides of a man used to hurrying everywhere, “Your friend’s the most fun she’s had in months. Pity he wasn’t a bit more beat up,” he didn’t bother to check if Jan was up for that sort of gallows humor. This was a former Alliance frigate: a certain casualness was part of the culture. Now that the rebel leaders were playing politics back in the core, all that was left out here were the believers and savants. It was home for Jan.

The nurse, whose name tag said Ng’um M’ien, yanked open a metal cupboard in a corner of the hallway a few doors down. Inside were several rows of stacked rectangular modules. A thin tank of dark concentrate rippled in each of them, half-obscured by their labels. Grabbing a large, insulated pitcher, Ng’um punched an especially worn button and stuck it into the receptacle. He hummed in rhythm with the machine as it spat out a mix of the selected beverage and hot water – piped directly from the engine, no doubt. Filling two mugs meant for hands slightly larger than theirs, he offered Jan a toast by way of a cheerful nod and chugged away. His enthusiasm after so many years with the same stocks made her grin. She wondered, not for the first time, about fitting a similar machine into the Crow. Groaning, she remembered the very large holes in the stabilizers waiting to be patched.

“Something the matter?” he asked, voice like a down pillow, “We’ve got plenty of other options.”

“No, no,” she said, bringing her eyes back to him, “Just thinking ahead. It’s good.” She took an overlarge sip for emphasis and her eyes watered. Ng’um snorted – quite a noisome affair when your nostrils stretched from ear to ear – and took a sip of his own.

Ng’um, she learned, had been aboard the Redemption for six years now and had worked on several other ships before it. He’d been pulled into a cell during the early days of the Rebellion. Some altruistic higher-up he’d apprenticed for had gotten it into their head to bring core medicine to the outer rim uprisings. After more than a decade of service, Ng’um still had the energy of a new recruit. He recited with unvarnished glee the names of all the Alliance heroes he’d treated. He told her how he’d prepped Skywalker for his prosthesis fitting, and done an annual checkup for General Syndulla. He spoke with baited breath, and a certain amount of genuine fear, of his brief stint patching up Saw Gerrera’s men. He also mentioned treating Cassian Andor, but acknowledged that was necessarily before he was Cassian Andor: captain of Rogue One. Jan was tempted to let him in on the truth of her and Kyle’s involvement in the Death Star affair, but she was enjoying the conversation too much to risk leaving him starstruck.

“All those years going at it and they have you on a fly-in halfway to the remnant?” she asked, as he poured the last drops into her mug.

“I could be off at the core,” he admitted, stirring some powdered bitters into his drink, “But I keep waiting for somebody to tell me I don’t have to be here anymore, that I could help folks better somewhere else. And you know what?” he tilted his head at her, smiling softly, “The call hasn’t come in yet.”

She gulped down the chalky leavings at the bottom of her cup. It irritated the back of her throat and the inside of her nose. “No, it doesn’t come,” she smiled back, not happy, but lacking any other expression to put with the truth, “The call never does come.”

While they talked, the pair walked a loop of the observation wing. The ceilings, like the walls and floor, were plated with glossy white plasteel. Black tracks stood out against the gleaming panels: well-oiled paths for M4 and the other droids in the frigate’s employ. The observation windows were all either dimmed or empty. The few occupants were teamsters and travelers, taking what charity the New Republic offered in the mid-rim. Locals from the nearest planets and planetoids usually couldn’t afford to get out here fast enough for it to do any good.

“You know what I’ve realized?” whispered Jan, careful not to rouse the sleepers.

“What’s that?” Ng’um asked, finishing his own drink and chucking it at the nearest receptacle.

“You make that call yourself.” she said, “I don’t think folks like us leave the things we’re good at, that we hope helps people, unless we realize we can – and should – take that control. There’s no more room for faith. We can’t lean on leadership anymore. Time to be a person.”

~~~

She was in the frigate’s hangar, taking stock of the damage, when she got the news. It was a short, noisy sprint to the storage lockers, where Kyle was already stuffing a duffel with gear. She sauntered in with a perfectly casual smile on her face. The years undercover came in handy.

“Well, your blessed ship is going to be in the repair bay for the next few days.”

Kyle groaned as he dragged a tender arm into his jacket, “How’s it look?”

She slapped her work gloves onto a bin nearby and leaned against it, saying, “Nothing that a crate full of money which you don’t have wouldn’t solve.”

He took the jab with a tired smile and finally made eye contact with her, “Like always, I owe you. Can you take care of her for me?”

“You’re not going after Jerec, are you?” Surprise and fear edged into her voice. So much for undercover.

“No,” he glanced at her for emphasis, “I’m going back to my father’s home on Sulon. Can you meet me there when you’re finished with the Crow?”

“Of course,” the mask was on again in moments, “Is everything okay?”

He shook his head, apparently oblivious to her vacillation, “I don’t know, I'll find out when I get there.”

Kyle flashed the disc at her, freshly pried from the hydraulic rigor mortis of 88’s arm.

“He was there, Jan,” he squeezed the disc, protective, angry, “He’s been there, and I haven’t.”

“I know this is –  well, it's closer than close to home, Kyle – but that’s no reason to walk into the remnant,” she said, putting her own hand on the disc and lowering it. She caught his eyes and noticed a glow that hadn’t been there before. His hand shook and he pulled away.

“That’s not all. Something happened. I just saw –” he caught himself. Slipping the disc into his breast pocket, he bent over the duffel and zipped it up, “Jan, what does he want with my dad?”

“I don’t know, Kyle” she said, trying to find in his face what had gone unsaid, “The Imperial records said your dad was a civilian casualty. If I had anything else –”

“I believe you,” he tried to slip the duffel on. It bumped his ribs and he swore.

She took the straps out of his hands and angled the duffel to the other side, “I’d offer to go with you, but then we’d both be stuck without a ride.”

“You don’t have to lie to me, Jan,” he gave her a grin too genuine to properly deliver the sarcasm, “I know you like to leave field work to the professionals.”

She didn’t laugh, but she did smile. They hugged.

“I’ll rendezvous as soon as I can,” she said, ”Can you get yourself to Sullust?”

He chuckled, and she felt him wince in her arms. Leaning back, he winked at her, “Should be easy. I had a great teacher.”

“Until I got caught,” she picked up her gloves and opened the door.

“That taught me a few things, too,” he smirked and let her lead the way.

~~~

“This is technically treason,” Jan glanced back at Kyle as they made their way to the transfer port. “The New Republic’s official policy on the remnant is still negotiation and embargo,” she was in mission briefing mode. Hadn’t had the chance to do that in a while. Pity Kyle wasn’t paying attention. His eyes kept lingering on patches of empty space, like somebody was there that she couldn’t see. Whatever ghosts he was chasing, she knew she couldn’t talk him out of it. Well, if they were going into remnant space, they could at least get in some recon. Probably some sabotage, too, if their track record was anything to go by.

“Don’t start a war,” she told him as farewell when the shuttle docked.

“That’s your job, not mine,” he elbowed her and marched down the umbilical, turning and adding, “I’m not even a citizen.”

She waved at him through the porthole. He grinned, all cheek, but when he thought she'd looked away, his face fell flat. He was hurting: inside and out. She knew he had an altruistic streak – not enough to return his checks, sure, but he’d been through more than any run-of-the-mill mercenary. He’d saved the galaxy once, and her twice (she was still up on him by three, but who was counting?), but he never could bring himself to stay.

The first time she’d seen Kyle off by himself, it was just after they’d escaped ISB containment. When her cover was blown, he’d decided to bust her loose – and desert his commission in the process. It was a decision a long time coming. Even before she slipped him certain heavily-redacted files about the death of his father, Jan could see the regret in him. The ISB thought his ill-disguised rage was for the rebels he was purging, but she saw the truth: he wished he was burning with them.

It had taken her some time to figure out why he hadn’t left yet. Kyle wanted to believe, she’d ultimately decided. He was fighting every day to subdue the rebel inside, not out of cowardice, but out of fear he might sabotage a higher plan he just didn’t understand yet. So he stayed, and rose through the ranks, and never got an answer that helped him sleep at night. Learning about the coverup was the last straw.

In the present, Jan made her way to the frigate’s repair hangar – a mid-sized thing, mostly storage for surplus medical speeders. Like the locker room at the bow, it was half-clogged with detritus. She’d had to convince a couple orderlies to clear space enough for her to land the Crow in here. It sat there, in the middle of all those crates and file cabinets, like the most oversized desk in the galaxy. Her toolkit and welding goggles sat on the office chair she’d wheeled over as an impromptu cart. She rolled her sleeves up and got to work on a bent deflector disc.

After the hullabaloo at ISB containment, the two of them vanished into the endless crowds of Coruscant. By dawn, they’d found their way to the quickest, most unscrupulous transports money could hire. That was when she realized Kyle wasn’t joining her on the long road back to the Alliance.

The disc groaned as she cycled it on and off. There was a flash of blue plasma and a poof of smoke, and the disc was silent once more. Frowning, she grabbed a hydrospanner and began to remove it entirely. Sometimes pieces were damaged enough that you just had to let them go.

The goodbye at that landing platform had been anxious ( anyone could have been watching), but also gnawingly professional. Jan was used to knowing people through a mask, but Kyle was tired of masks – and he didn’t even know himself. He had to go on his own. No more factions, no more higher purposes. His community had betrayed his ideals, had killed his family, had pushed him to kill the families of others. No matter how much he wanted to trust her, the selfish play was the only one he could count on any more. He’d been running every day since. 

She paused before throwing the disc into the rubbish pile that had formed under the closest stabilizer. Grabbing a hammer and some tongs, she walked to a dusty burner and anvil in the corner. With a sharp hiss, white flames lit up at the mouth, and she stuck the bent half of the emitter inside.

Even when she’d tracked Kyle down a couple years later and convinced the Alliance to buy his services, that wall was still there. The way his foot always tapped and his arms were always crossed when other rebels were nearby. It was easy to see. He was fighting the urge to bolt.

The ringing of a hammer on hot metal bounced off the high ceiling and thudded through the piles of medical surplus. Glowing yellow in the heat, the smart metal of the disc began to fold back into its original shape.

Today, Kyle was different. It was clear enough in the storage room. He was running towards something: something that called him in ways she couldn’t hear.

She sprayed tempering oil across the reforged deflector. It hissed and bubbled, forming a clear protective layer that shined in the light of the furnace.

Masks or no, Jan trusted Kyle. If he heard something, it was there. More importantly, if it helped him find peace, it was worth all the trouble they were about to get into to find it.

Her focused face – easily mistaken for angered – was reflected perfectly by the disc. She sighed.

“May the Force be with you, Kyle. Happy homecoming.”

Chapter Text

The shadow of an Imperial shuttle swept across the Suloni moor. Its engines shrieked high and loud, blasting dew off the clover-spangled hills. It was only by the fortune of many years’ practice that Kyle Katarn stayed still. Nobody aboard would notice another dark patch in the landscape. He focused on his breathing, enjoying the heavy smell of morning soil. A chill ran along his arms and legs as the moist gusts beat into his clothes. After two ceaseless minutes, the roar faded away. All that remained was the droning wind.

Under different circumstances, Kyle would have enjoyed laying there. The sun was rising high enough to start drying the grass. From the valley below, the subterranean funk of mud, worms and rain brought back memories of off-road swoop rallies, wet evening walks and grass-stained games of touch. With each deep inhalation, a new image rose up. Yes, he would have enjoyed staying there very much. Pity about all the stormtroopers nearby.

He crept to the ledge and peeked down the steep valley wall. No sign of white armor – or the strange, cloaked commanders he’d seen earlier. Just a long, low building with a tilted roof and antique copper slats. Viridian patches of moss clung to the mortar between the oversized stone bricks – the only visible change to Kyle’s childhood home.

Hey dad, sorry I’m late, he clambered over the ledge, I would have called, but you were dead.

He tried to slide down gently. It was a lot wetter than he expected and he was a lot heavier than he used to be. His foothold made a squishing sound as it smeared away from the cliffside. He scrambled to catch himself. Dark clay furrowed under his fingers. The green valley floor met him with a cold slam. His whole left side throbbed in protest and his vision tunneled. A voice, familiar and distant, echoed in his mind.

“Your path is at a moment of change.”

“I heard you the first time,” Kyle mumbled, trying to find his breath again. His eyes fluttered open. Familiar red-yellow clouds twirled overhead. He’d been hoping he’d left the voice back on the landing shuttle.

A humanoid battle cry echoed across the valley. He leapt to his feet, head on the swivel. Cradling his stitches, he shoved his free hand into his holster. He wiped the mud and gray-green pulp out from under the trigger guard.

Images, orange and green, flashed around the edge of his sight. He shut his eyes and shook his head.

“We’re not doing this right now,” he leaned his weight against the cliff face.

More visions, the same intrusions that had hounded him since that night on the Redemption . A golden sky turned black by twilight. A sandstone tower that dwarfed mountains. A man of green light, telling him why his father was murdered.

He kept his back to the stout cliff. Its muddy walls stretched out a hundred meters in either direction, eventually meeting somewhere behind the ancient structure that was the Katarn estate. Algae-green lawn covered most of the valley. Oversized crates were strewn about the yard, some twice as tall as Kyle: remnants of the Imperial raid. Many had been hastily broken into, their contents – rusted appliances and disassembled harvesters – spilled onto the field.

He snuck into the nearest bin, grateful for the quiet of the still-wet earth. Wind and the distant sound of another battle cry rang around the valley. It wasn’t any closer. That was annoying. He liked to be the only one sneaking around.

Around the corner came the sound of sluggish footsteps and an armed man came into view. He wore a blue leather vest and padded pants. A wicked bowcaster hung from a spiked sling around his shoulder. For a split second, Kyle thought he was a bothan or some other feline species. After another take, he realized he was looking at a harshly decorated mask. Long strips of thin fabric were wrapped around the man’s face. A worn rebreather welded over with thin metal scraps gave the appearance of a fanged muzzle. The man’s eyes were hidden behind thin goggles. Slitted irises, painted on the lenses, flashed yellow from beneath the stout canopies. Even to a soldier as experienced as Kyle, the effect was unnerving.

The mercenary – Kyle assumed the Empire had outsourced guard duty – glanced idly around. Kyle pressed himself against the dark wall, only peering out when he heard the man shout an all-clear. They turned to resume their rounds. Once they were out of sight, Kyle snuck to the mouth of the container out to see if anyone else was watching. He spotted the tip of another gray-wrapped head vanishing behind a hill.

The near mercenary was continuing his winding check path between the boxes. Kyle followed him to the next clearing, stepping softly. The grass around the boxes had been shredded, pounded into black clay by many feet. It sucked at his boots.

The masked man tucked his head into one of the smaller boxes a couple meters away. Kyle sprinted over, taking advantage of the cover offered by the tall piles of broken farm equipment. By the time the crouching man heard him, Kyle had his pistol in their back. Their armored vest muffled the shot.

~~~

There was a holoprojector, no bigger than a human hand, that Kyle had carried for over a decade. In the bowels of decrepit smuggler ships, in shootouts across frozen wastelands, in bunkers a hundred meters behind enemy lines: it had been the only keepsake he afforded himself. It ran on a fusion battery that would outlive his grandkids and had a ROM drive barely big enough to hold five minutes of 2D footage. Most tourist traps in the galaxy sold more elegant models as customizable souvenirs. His was homemade. Etched into its base was the uncomplicated maker’s mark of Morgan Katarn. It had been years since he’d last turned it on, but from the moment 88 contacted him, he must have spent a dozen hours staring into the azure recording.

His father had thrown the camera together the morning Kyle left for the academy on Eriadu. He’d dragged the boy to the kitchen table and set it rolling. Kyle hardly noticed. In the days leading up to his departure, all he ever did was talk about his the systems engineering program, the faculty’s research publications, the specs of the department computer, the student employment opportunities and on and on. On that last morning, his poor father beamed as he heard the same breathless rant that had been echoing around the estate for weeks.

Morgan had cleaned himself up for the recording. His flour-white beard was freshly trimmed, and his hair was combed back. His dress shirt, cut in the same style as the young Kyle’s, was wrinkled from too many trips through the wash. Bulky, insulated suspenders completed the picture of a proud craftsman. In the cobalt light of the hologram, Morgan’s eyes shined under his dark brows. His face was stuck in a smile that shined even brighter.

“I want you to remember, son,” he said, having finally gotten Kyle to sit and listen, “When you’re at the Academy, how very proud I am of you,” he squeezed Kyle’s shoulder, “What a fine young man you’ve become.”

The boy blushed. He’d finally noticed the camera. His eyes floundered around the floor, drowning in Morgan’s jubilant gaze.

“I wish your mother were here to see it,” he looked away, just for a moment, letting the old grief pass. For the next few minutes he waffled, lovingly and circuitously, until the projector’s memory ran out. The last image was of him leaning in to give his son a long, deep hug – one of many that day.

He died fourteen months later.

The haughty Imperial officer that came knocking on Kyle’s dormitory door told him it was a rebel attack. Encouraged by his mentors, the boy had transferred to Imperial intelligence before the semester was out.

~~~

After tucking the mercenary’s body under some loose packing material, Kyle looked around to make sure he was still alone. The clearing was empty. No footsteps.

The voice echoed, “The man who murdered your father is a great evil.”

“Come on, even I knew that one,” he clambered up the hull of a busted hover lift and peered out at the entryway. Not a merc in sight. No lights on, either. It didn’t take a few years in spec ops to guess that was a bad option. There were some windows around back he could try. Well, there had been. No accounting for renovations.

“I’m guessing you don’t have any input?” he whispered on his way down.

Roaring silence hung in the air.

Kicking up mud, he sprinted to the north corner. There used to be some antique moisture vaporators around the bend – leftovers from the estate’s colonial roots – and a thin alley that ran between the house and the cliffside. He leaned one eye around the stone wall. Everything was right where he remembered. The small grove of gray-black pylons was cut between by dozens of bootprints. Mostly they were stormtrooper treds, but there were a handful he didn’t recognize. Fortunately, nobody was hiding among the old machines. He gambled on a crouched dash to the nearest unit. It was cold to the touch. The air around it buzzed and stunk of ozone.

“You get your fifth gear going good,” came a gruff voice from behind the house, hidden by the wind until Kyle was in the lee of the building, “When you hit the turn – WHAM – it’s a big ol’ comb of mud. Ten meters, easy.”

The voice was old and it crackled after too many years spent huffing exhaust. A younger one piped up in a weaselly Corellian accent.

“And it’s just off the aqueduct?”

“Beautiful straightaway,” added a third, in a butch Raxun quiver, “Goes on until you reach the outskirts. Didn’t see anybody out there but a farmer or two. They get out of the way real quick.” They all laughed together.

The conversation continued while Kyle snuck from pylon to pylon. Occasionally, a fourth joined, then a fifth, all talking about the best places to ride, how to clean mud off a swoop, where to duck the Imperial radar. That last bit caught his ear. Imperial shuttle, Imperial troopers – unaffiliated mercenaries? Jan would want to hear about this. The remnant was keeping secrets from itself.

He had them in his line of sight. They sat in a loose circle, tucked in the narrow clearing between the back of the house and the cliff wall. Their swoop bikes were parked on the ledge above. They were odd, lopsided things. Their engines tilted upright when they landed, so they looked like stout missiles with padded seats welded to the side. The riders were dressed in a mix of the same blues, blacks and grays as the other two. Everybody wore their own variation of the spike and cloth mask. Only a couple were currently armed, but none were more than a meter from a weapon. Most used the same bowcaster as the merc he’d left in the cargo containers, although he spotted a few Imperial rifles as well. Their employer wasn’t above sharing proprietary gear, apparently.

Taking them head-on was out of the question. Time to improvise.

He had just enough cover to get to the wall of the estate and climb the weathered limestone. He paused, listening to make sure nobody started walking his way. There was a growing argument about power converter brands. Everybody had an opinion, thankfully.

The climb was probably the most fun he’d had in weeks. With a non-load-bearing arm, it should have been impossible, but he knew this wall. The crevices between the cyclopean bricks, the natural bubbles in the stone, the jutting edges of unidentifiable fossils – they were all there, exactly where he’d left them. Handholds he’d spent hours memorizing as a boy waited eagerly for his wandering fingers. A gust picked up and he got a lungful of warm summer air. The wind had shifted. Now, over the clover, came the brackish smell of the water purification facility just down the road. Even that chemical aroma was nostalgic.

He kept low as he reached the roof. The surface had a slight incline for runoff, but was otherwise flat. Were he standing, his waist would have been level with the valley wall. The bikes were only a stone’s throw away. He didn’t have any stones, but he’d pocketed a few souvenirs from 88’s goons.

Belly to the brickwork, he wriggled a thermal detonator from his belt and checked the settings. He wasn’t looking for anything flashy. Low power would suffice.

“A supernova of stars in a thought,” the voice echoed and Kyle nearly jumped off the roof.

“Not. Now,” he hissed, trying to get his pulse back in order.

He pantomimed tossing it a few times, scooching around on his stomach to try and get the best angle. He was glad his right arm was still in commission. This wouldn’t have been possible with his left, even without the axe wound. It was a gangly angle, and he couldn’t comfortably lean up on his free hand. Listening for the voices below, he waited. Someone started shouting about mufflers. He let it fly.

Just above the din of the wind, something popped. Ten meters away, Kyle saw a flash of orange light.

A crunching, screeching noise rumbled over him: a sound like an oversized metal animal being gored. The troupe below burst into a panicked mess of bellows, curses and screams. Two scrambled up the stony cliff face opposite Kyle. Above them, three going on four swoops were falling into each other like expensive and explosive dominoes.

“Come on,” Kyle breathed a bit too fast, “Get after your bikes.”

Following the first two came a third, then a fourth, then the rest. Their backs were all turned on him as they raced to salvage their machines.

He grabbed the edge of the roof and flung himself around it. He stuck out a foot and hoped that it was going to find a rusted shutter. If he hit limestone, running away was going to be a challenge.

~~~

He hadn’t told Jan what happened that night on the Redemption . He couldn’t. If he didn’t put it into words, he could pretend it was just a dream.

Under the dimming lights of the recovery room, as he felt his mind lift away from the last edges of pain, something brilliant and vast swept around it, and he was elsewhere.

The first sensation was of falling – no, flying. Disembodied, Kyle soared through yellow-white clouds. The vibrant mists gave way to the peak of a sandstone monolith, kilometers high. There was a voice: grand, instructive, imploring. It called to him from far away.

“Your path is at a moment of change.”

There was a familiar rumble to it, something human, underneath the power.

“Jerec, the man who murdered your father, is a great evil.”

The name caught his ear, but the part of his mind that could have asked about it was lost to deeper dreams. He followed the voice. At the very top of the towering structure, there was a bright glass porthole. It channeled light from far below. The speaker continued.

“He searches for the location of a sacred place: the Valley of the Jedi.”

That name rang with sublime thunder, and, in a flash of light, Kyle was on the ground – no, under the ground – in an immense vaulted chamber. Statues and bas relief sculptures the size of buildings crowded the colossal domed ceiling. Points of green and blue light, gleaming like stars, spun in slow orbit around a central mound. Standing in front of that mound was a man, made of that same starstuff. His hands were folded beneath the sleeves of a plain white robe. His head was cleanly shaved and he wore a simple goatee.

He continued to speak, but Kyle’s mind was too drugged to catch everything. The man seemed familiar, but he couldn’t put a name to him. The emotion of his words puzzled Kyle. There was no fear, no desperation, but a gleaming spirit of defiance, as well something hotter that he couldn’t identify. They spun a legend of trapped Jedi, of dreadful hidden powers, and a man who, unchecked, threatened to obliterate entire star systems.

The lights around the pair grew brighter, and, for a moment, Kyle wondered if there was another presence here. His mind cleared as if someone had pushed aside the chemical haze, and the words came crisp.

“Your father gave his life to protect this power, and now,” he paused, a note of regret threatening to choke him, “It is a place your destiny must take you.”

The light grew brighter, but the image shone fainter. The sensation of his body, of the hospital bed and his aching wounds, cut through the dream.

“The disc you have in your possession will lead you to the Ways of the Jedi,” the man rushed to finish, a low growl rumbling in his throat, “Remember: it will be your path to the ways of the Force.”

He woke up and gasped a single word.

“Rahn!”

The next thing he remembered was digging through the storage lockers. A resolution, a righteous belief, burned through his mind. It spurred him to act without delay. Then Jan came in, and the spell broke. He remembered that he didn’t believe in any of that Jedi crap. He’d spent long enough following people that tried to pick his dreams for him.

~~~

Just as a fifth swoop came crashing down onto its siblings, an old copper shutter crunched inwards, and a damp and drabby Kyle Katarn smashed into his father’s old bedroom.

It was dark, lit only by the cool, cloudy sky that glowed behind the window slits. The smell of his dad – engine grease, aftershave, locally grown incense – was dense in the air. His fingers were bleeding and his new scars had reopened under their bandages, but, for a few precious seconds, he lay still. He breathed in the smell of home, and felt safe.

A flushing sound roared behind him, and a blue-vested mercenary stepped out of the refresher.

For less than a moment, they stared at each other. The merc ran for his gun: a night black bowcaster only two steps away. Kyle’s pistol was at his hip.

Two flashes and it was over. The merc collapsed like a hewn trunk. Pungent smoke rose from the Bryar pistol and banished all other scents. No memories came with that smell. Or, perhaps, too many to name.

As he hid the body, Kyle found an old comm unit on its shoulder. Tuning his in-ear link to the swoop racers’ frequency, he was greeted by crackling complaints about the pileup outside. With a smile on his face, he crept through the half-darkness of the unlit house, guided by indelible memory and the occasional sunbeam.

Slinking into the parlor, Kyle wondered – not for the first time – whether he should have waited for Jan. Rushing in like this was just the sort of bonehead maneuver that would have gotten him a stunner up the ass at the academy.

Now there’s something Jan would have enjoyed seeing.

“The disc you have in your–”

“I’m working on it , you kriffing wizard!” the antique furniture muffled his aside.

He crept to the courtyard door and slid it open. The bearings were soundless on freshly greased tracks.

A cool breeze from the skylight rushed in, carrying the smell of ivy and – explosives? He peaked around the frame.

The hall to his father’s workshop was choked with rubble. The roof was partially collapsed and the soil above the subterranean corridor had caved inward. Smoke oozed from the exposed mud.

He swore and slapped the wooden door.

“It is a place your destiny must take you.”

“I’m not–” he checked his shouting and leaned against the stone wall, “I’m not in this for destiny. I’m not saving the kvarking galaxy. E chu ta to you and your Force. I’m just a guy with a blaster and a few questions.”

Save for the wind, the courtyard was silent.

The only other way into his father’s workshop was a roundabout trail involving a hydroelectric pond, three open-air chemical vats and a mailoc-infested vent. He figured it would be a while until the remnant found that one out. It had taken his younger self several months of trying to spy on his dad scratchbuilding his first speeder to piece it together.

There was more chatter in his ear. Someone with a coarse baritone was complaining about abandoned posts. Better move fast.

~~~

There was another memory, not saved on any drive, that had been haunting him since the Redemption . He hadn’t realized it was there. It seemed to have emerged in reaction to his vision. It was from a time before his departure, before his acceptance letter, before his father had even suggested he fill out an application.

He was a young teenager, using his time between school and chores to harass the poor girl who worked as a clerk in her mother’s tech station. It was a ritual that had grown almost into something like a friendship. He would show up, bright and early, and insist on seeing the newest shipments from the core. The other child, nostrils fluttering in annoyance, would bring each sample out and suffer Kyle’s endless barrage of questions about the specs and the reviews and what the girl’s mother thought about the latest components and the trustworthiness of their manufacturers. Eventually she’d taken to shoving a copy of the latest shipment manifest into his hand the moment he waltzed up to their stand. He arrived that morning, hand stretched out expectantly, only to find she was nowhere to be seen. Instead, several men – pale humans in naval dress – crowded against the counter. Two were pulling sensors from a high shelf and, apparently unimpressed, chucking them over their shoulders. A third kept waving at the storekeeper, Muggsli, demanding she come over and show them where the good stuff was. Kyle heard the nearer men sharing a coarse aside about the store, its quality, and that of the people that ran it. His blood ran cold.

He didn’t remember how he wound up on the mesh curtain overhanging the stand, or how the box of hydrospanners – usually tucked neatly behind the counter – had emptied itself on the head of the tallest soldier. What did stick out in his mind were the looks of murderous rage that spread to each of their faces. He legged it. Not fast enough. Moments before they were on him, he stopped. Somehow, he knew there was no escape, and he accepted it.

They pulled him into a covered arcade. There were words, laughs, and throughout it, Kyle could almost feel their anger release itself into something calmer, more self-assured and utterly sadistic. The first one that laid a hand on him broke his lip. The second knocked the wind out of him. It was hard to count after that.

The blows on Kyle’s body suddenly lessened but were joined by blows above. Precise, efficient strikes. Powerful. There was another man. Kyle couldn’t see him – or anything else. He felt him, though. A sandstone column cracked as one of the navy men fell against it. The man – the blur – stopped.

He said, “You will report to your barracks.” His tone could have moved mountains.

In fluttering, gasping voices, the others echoed him, “We will report to our barracks.”

And they were gone.

Kyle and the man exchanged no words on the kilometers-long walk to the Katarn Estate. He wore a black flak jacket with a bright cadmium chestpiece. White circuitry veined across his face and scalp in sharp contrast to his dark skin. At every blind corner, his hand reflexively gripped the hilt of a weapon Kyle couldn’t quite see.

He knocked furtively on the front door, eyes scanning the surrounding cliffline. Morgan, already greasy with the work of the morning, was unsettled by the stranger, but he stepped into motion when he saw the bruises on Kyle’s face.

While Kyle lay on a couch holding frozen fruit to his face, he saw his father whisper with the man. It must have been the concussion, but his dad almost looked terrified. He kept glancing at whatever weapon the man had been hiding. The man – he didn’t seem quite put together, either. Kyle had seen Imperial officers before. Had admired them in all the holo stories he’d seen growing up. They were proud, fearless – but this one kept glancing out windows, checking his commlink. He didn’t leave, though. His eyes always came back to Kyle. It didn’t scare the boy. He was dangerous, but he was also safe. His concern draped over Kyle’s mind like a compress. The boy’s eyes fluttered as he saw his father sit down and put a steaming mug in the man’s hand.

“Thank the Warren Mother you were there,” Morgan said, his voice fading as the darkness cradled Kyle’s mind and began to lift him away, “You have my thanks. I don’t need your name, but–”

“It’s Rahn,” the man said.

All else was lost to dreams.

~~~

One hour, two firefights and three mailoc stings later, Kyle crawled through an unlit shaft. A musky, sour taste hung in the infested air. Just ahead was a sunlit opening, but that didn’t make sense. The last stretch was supposed to be a three meter climb down the vent hood. His eyes adjusted to the light ahead and he saw the tunnel now opened onto a range of naked wooden rafters. He gawked. The workshop ceiling had been removed entirely. Crimson midmorning light shone into the room below. Benches were smashed, shelves toppled. Rubble, tools and old parts lay piled at the base of half-completed repairs. The familiar scent of hot metal and degreaser was buried by dust and more of the same explosive chemicals he’d noticed in the courtyard. A thin line of smoke spiraled out of the barred door. Judging by the ugly beading down the frame, it had been hastily welded shut. Perhaps carelessly, he leapt to the workshop floor. He hardly noticed the shock pass through his wounds, old and new. Despite the missing roof, the battered furniture and the unmistakable signs of an Imperial raid, he felt truly safe in this room.

Almost as if it had been waiting for him, he realized he knew where he had to look.

He knelt by an unremarkable pile of debris in the far corner and pulled clear the fried clamps and battered shelves. With a gentle tug, he unstuck a barrel-shaped torso from the rubble. Childhood memories guided his hands as he reassembled the droid. Here an arm, there a motivator, and, minutes later, he rolled the last cylinder into place. He sat back on his ankles and waited for the reboot. Servos buzzed into drowsy life beneath the hull. With electronic precision, Weegee’s eye stalk rose off the ground, lenses adjusting in a close approximation of bleary blinks.

Too impatient for introductions, Kyle drew the disc from his belt and plugged it in. A small clicking sped into a dull thrum as Weegee’s reader engaged. The holoprojector on his stalk twisted and threw an image into the empty space behind Kyle. He turned to find his father standing in the workshop, cloaked in an aura of brilliant blue light.

Under the soreness of stitches and stings, his heart ached.

The image of Morgan Katarn was beautiful and terrible. His eyes were piercing, defiant. His skin was grayed and hung in gaunt shadows down his face. His shirt was even more darkly stained than usual.

“This message is for my son: Kyle Katarn.”

As if he were dreaming again, Kyle couldn’t look away. His face couldn’t properly express the tumult that was shaking through him.

“Kyle, I have left two very important items for you. The first is a map to the Valley of the Jedi, and is embedded in the stone ceiling above this room. The last is a lightsaber that once belonged to a friend and great Jedi: Rahn.”

Rahn! The word echoed in his mind: a beacon above the turmoil. Rahn.

With a hiss, a plate on Weegee’s shoulder snapped open and ejected a gleaming pommel. Kyle grabbed it without thinking. On instinct, he flicked a switch and watched as a bold green blade extended, the same color as the rolling fields above.

“Use it well,” his father’s eyes caught his, and, for just a moment, he was in the room with Kyle – not a hologram, but his living self, full of love and understanding for his only son, “Use it for good.”

The blue light shimmered and he vanished. Shaded by the high walls and banisters overhead, Kyle’s face caught the cool green light of the saber.

He couldn’t move. He couldn’t think . He deactivated the saber and laid a hand on Weegee. The droid bobbed imperceptibly.

His father had looked so resolute. So tired. So old.

Kyle was angry. Kyle was heartbroken. Kyle was relieved. Kyle wasn’t done yet.

He squeezed the hilt.

“For good?”

A hundred images, terrible and indistinguishable, whirled behind his eyes. His crimes against the people of the galaxy, perpetrated in the name of the Empire, were beyond reckoning. He’d gone so far to avenge his father. But now he knew: he had been desecrating his name, and acting in direct defiance of his final wish.

He thought he had known Morgan Katarn. A skilled mechanic. A passionate father. A grieving widower. He thought he had understood him. After his passing, Kyle had never had any lingering questions. 88 had changed that. If what the droid said was true, it meant his father wasn’t some tragic victim of a faceless war: he was a participant. A martyr. A hero.

Kyle, in his third-hand smuggler’s ship, with his precious Imperial shields, couldn’t face what his father’s choice might say about him. So he had to see for himself. Maybe what he’d really wanted was to prove 88 wrong, or find his father had been duped by some careless rebel plant. But he knew – searching his feelings, he simply knew – his father was no rube. He had died in defense of something he loved.

In partnership with a Jedi.

Kyle looked at the saber, rubbed his thumb along its brass plating. It was cold from years tucked into Weegee’s mechanical innards, but was otherwise no worse for wear. Every mounting was polished, the grip freshly oiled. He turned it on again, pulled the blade through the air, and listened to its vibrant hum. In his hand, he felt only a faint tremor: the barest hint at the true power it contained.

In his ear, a dozen voices began shouting. Not ghosts, mercs. His comm crackled with the overlapping signals. Two racers had found the body in the bedroom – another was digging through the boxes out front. The oldest voice barked orders to sweep the building.

Kyle looked at Weegee. Its eyes were blank. He turned to the empty space where his father had been. Not just the hologram, but his living father, in years past. He looked around the trashed workshop and up at the shining void where the ceiling once hung. The yellow-crimson sky of Sulon roiled overhead. He imagined himself flying.

Rubble crunched under his feet as he walked towards a grate in the floor. From below, the sounds of mercs crawling through the sewage pipes echoed up.

Kyle’s voice was unguarded as he said, “Let’s see what this saber can do.”

Chapter Text

“This changes things,” Sariss said. Her cool face matched the blue tones cast by the shimmering holorecording.

“Perhaps,” Jerec replied, idly sliding two fingers across the image description. The computer-generated text was specific enough when it came to the details of the man’s face. It had been logged in the Empire’s files for some time. So this was Katarn. He sounded much dirtier than Jerec had anticipated, even for a mercenary. There were occasional stuttering pauses as the computer failed to describe the weapon he wielded, which flashed as it deflected monochrome blaster bolts fired by Grave Tuskens from offscreen. This was not surprising. The Imperial database had long since classified all data on lightsabers.

“My lieutenant tracked him as far as the aquifer, but I’ve not had any contact since,” the swoop dash footage shrunk and the glowering, holographic face of Maw grew to larger-than-life proportions. Aside from the tubing taped to his shoulder, you could hardly tell he was still in Barons Hed’s medical barrack.

“Scouts spotted smoke along the path,” he continued, “I sent two swoops in to check it out.”

“They won’t find anything,” Jerec waved, walking away from the console.

“No,” grumbled Maw, “They won’t.”

Alongside Maw’s face, a projected image of Gorc hung in the air, and Pic hung from him. The smaller Brother’s face was screwed up to get a better look at the recording. The younger brother was intrigued by the human. There was a ferocity beneath Katarn’s motions that rattled against the rigidity of his military training. Gorc’s face was unreadable beneath his slitted helm. While his counterpart gawked, the elder Brother signed in Ancient Sith.

“‘Could this be the work of the Sky Walker?’” Sariss translated, then answered, “No. He wouldn’t risk an acolyte on such a personal mission. It’s too hazardous for a novice Jedi.”

“Such a heartbreak, that first trip home,” reminisced Boc, leering at the miniature Katarn, “So much fear, desire, and disappointment,” he turned a vorpal grin to Yun, on the opposite side of the projection, “Perhaps we’ll make a trip to your birthplace, apprentice.”

Yun ignored him, intent on studying Katarn’s technique – such as it was. Mostly he swung the blade like a bat while making a mad dash to the nearest landspeeder. The dark youth did not fail to notice the injury that impaired his range of motion. He practically fell into the speeder. Still, that didn’t explain the dozen dead Tuskens he left in his wake – and those were only the ones caught on video. They were still waiting on a head count from the Katarn estate.

Unprompted, he said, “I’m not afraid.”

Gaze fixed, he didn’t catch Boc’s smirk or Sariss’ eye roll.

“The scum can’t be more than a dozen kliks from me,” said Maw, “I’ll finish what I started with his sire.”

“No,” Sariss said, not missing a beat, “Admiral Krugon has moved to open separatism. Our assets are fast dwindling. We can’t afford to risk the Grave Tusken’s loyalty.”

Maw snarled, “This whelp is nothing!”

“Tell your lieutenant,” she said, unblinking, “Until we bring the governors in line, you’re grounded.”

Maw growled.

Gorc signed again. Sariss broke her staring contest with Maw to interpret.

“‘Humbly, the choice is obvious. This pouchling poses no threat to my Brother and I. We can be on the moon within the hour,’” Sariss nodded, “My thoughts exactly, Brother.”

From the gloom of the bridge, Jerec spoke.

“No.”

Sariss turned, “Jerec, time is of the essence.”

“On that we are agreed, Sariss,” he replied, “As you say, our resources dwindle. The Brothers’ preparations cannot be delayed, and we cannot afford any ‘disruptions’ that might occur in their absence.”

“Then what is to be done about the mercenary?” she said, exasperation undetectable to all but the sharp-eared Boc.

The orange light of Sullust flashed across Jerec’s thin smile as he said, “Sariss, please, he is a Jedi . The Force itself has sent us an opportunity to prove our ways against the old. We must meet the Jedi Katarn in kind.”

“Katarn is no Jedi,” said 8t88.

In the highest hall of the Imperial tower in Barons Hed, the distant clank of AT-ST’s marching their regular patrols was dampened to a dull thud, easily lost beneath the buzz of 88’s servos. The droid slowly walked the perimeter of the bright chamber. At its center, an immense table held the reconstructed pieces of Morgan Katarn’s star map. 88 continued to scan it as he spoke.

“Regardless of any antiques he’s acquired, Katarn is a highly-trained infiltration and sabotage agent. He was the youngest Imperial captain on record – not counting residual staff from the clone wars, of course. His means and motives are military, not religious.”

The droid tilted his head, catching the blue-green light dripping out of a stained glass window set in a cleft above. Fine particles hung still in the frigid air. As the evening drew on, the temperature continued to drop. Only one of the occupants noticed.

Apparently finished with his scans, 88 walked to a wooden throne facing away from the long table, “It was the tactically correct move to send a Dark Jedi to handle this personally. Katarn is uniquely qualified to penetrate Imperial security. If his target is the map, he will get here.”

Yun stepped forward into the viridian beam, “ Is the map his target?”

88 turned to face the young man, “A good question,” he leaned back in his chair and let out an electronic whistle. From a side-chamber, his beast emerged. It crawled to its master's feet and curled by his side. 88 scratched its ears, ignoring the creature’s flinch against his icy touch. Yun took an unconscious step back.

88 continued, “Since the war, Katarn has removed himself from the galactic stage. In attempting to draw him out, I found the only effective motivation was his first: his father. As Morgan’s final work, the map is undoubtedly a high value objective for Katarn.”

Yun nodded grimly, unconsciously adopting the flat affect that had been drilled into him during marching exercises.

“I can use that,” he said.

“There is more, of course,” 88 said, “Now that he blames Jerec for the late Morgan’s death, I calculate with 95.3% certainty he will continue to pursue your master until one or both of them have expired.”

“Unfortunate that you told him,” Yun said, smirking.

88 removed his hand from the beast. It growled.

“I will remind you, without my services, the map would now be rubble beneath the boots of overzealous swoop racers. My actuarial functions are unparalleled. I have yet to hear any complaints from your master.”

“I don’t care about your chipset, tell me how he fights,” Yun snapped.

88’s photoreceptors flashed red.

“I’m a sociological analyst and cryptographer, not a master of Teräs Käsi.”

Yun was about to say something he hoped was intimidating when a new sound caught their attention. The distant shambling of the AT-STs had been replaced by the buzz of blaster fire.

“Hm,” 88 ticked, “That was faster than anticipated. My new model predicts he will be here before nightfall.”

They listened for several more seconds. Even the beast raised a tufted ear. The firing stopped.

88 sat back in his chair, “My decryption is complete. I will begin uplink. You may prepare for Katarn’s arrival,” he waved a sharp hand.

Yun bowed, then stepped away. Reaching the door to another side room, he paused.

“What do your models predict for our duel?”

There was a momentary whirr as 88 updated his actuarial processors. After a final click, he said, “Factoring your contributions, we should be fine.”

Yun slid the door shut behind him. He sat cross legged in the center of the room and lowered the dimmer with a two-fingered flick. As he began to center himself, a thought occurred to him: who was “we”?

The light of 88’s holoprojector gave the room a cerulean tint. As Jerec confirmed reception of the digitized map, 88 stood and ended contact. At the far end of the hall, the turbolift set in the floor rumbled up. Katarn stepped off the platform, Bryar pistol drawn. Crouching in the rafters above, Yun smiled. Katarn’s words echoed from below.

“I want the map, 88.”

While his pet raised its hackles, the droid merely gestured towards the long table.

“It’s all yours.”

Yun took his cue and leapt. His yellow saber carved a gleaming thirty meter arc. He drove his blade into the center of the table. The pallid stone blazed orange, gold, white, and then the table erupted in molten fragments. Glowing rubble scattering across the hall.

88 and his beast were already sprinting to the elevator. Katarn covered his face with both hands – his blaster already knocked to some far corner of the room. Before he had the chance to recover, Yun flashed a sign he’d seen Pic use aboard the Vengeance. An eye-searing cone of amber light hurled Katarn into the far wall. He grunted as the wind was knocked out of him. His still-healing shoulder exploded in immobilizing pain.

“You know,” Yun said, “In all my years, I’ve only known Dark Jedi, never one from the light.” He paused, taking in the crumpled figure of his would-be rival. “Somehow, I expected more.”

He pounced. Adrenaline pushed Katarn to throw himself aside. Between Yun’s legs, he could see the glowing gash he had cut into the floor. With unpracticed technique, Katarn stood and drew his own saber. Yun adopted a wider stance, blade extended in his right arm.

Kyle kept his green blade pointing at the Dark Jedi while he sidestepped, frantically keeping his back to the wall. Yun’s blade gave his face a jaundiced glow. His features narrowed like a dejarik player planning his next move. He was young, but that didn’t give Kyle much advantage. He was still a Jedi.

This was exactly the sort of thing he used to joke about in Imperial mess halls: the nightmare every agent shared. Officially, everybody knew the Jedi were cowardly devotees to a primitive religion. Unofficially? He had seen recordings from the clone wars, and he thanked his lucky stars they had all died out. This wasn’t like an assassin droid or a bounty hunter or anything else he’d had to face down. This was goddamn magic.

Kyle feinted a slash. Yun didn’t even flinch. Kyle’s feet found the ramp up to the elevator platform. He climbed hastily, swinging haphazardly back at the Jedi. He tried to remember his melee combat training, but his mind was too crowded with midnight horror stories about twisted minds, severed limbs, and fortresses reduced to rubble.

The Jedi wasn’t following him. It was no comfort. Kyle glanced about the shrouded platform behind him. Nobody in the corners. Was that a smirk on the boy? Yun. Yun was his name. Why did he know that?

Memories and impressions, old and unfamiliar, supplanted the horrors in his mind. Relationships to cloistered strangers; visions of a young and eager man, ready to prove himself at any cost.

The yellow blade flashed. Yun – Yun liked to pounce!

Kyle leapt from the dais as the dark youth arced across the room. Again, his blade gouged out the floor where Kyle was standing moments ago. The mercenary whirled about and threw himself at the boy’s back. With impossible speed, the Jedi’s saber caught Kyle’s green blade. Lightning crackled between them as Yun shoved Kyle’s guard aside.

Green light flared and Kyle felt the blade just pierce his shield. He screamed as arcing plasma cauterized his left shoulder. Yun pressed his advantage with several one-armed thrusts. Kyle blocked with forms half-remembered from his days at bootcamp. More emerald flashes filled his vision. Yun’s tactics shifted. All formal technique fell away as his body erupted in pyroclastic rage. He swung out with broad arcs fueled by a strength beyond mortal limbs. More green light, more burns. Kyle felt the generator whine as its last reserves drained away. He did the only thing that made sense. He ran.

Yun lept after him, again, and again. The floor exploded beneath the Jedi with each impact. Kyle fought to keep just a few steps ahead of him. He moved faster than he’d ever moved before – than he’d ever seen anyone move before. The still air of the hall whipped past him at hurricane speeds. Yun’s frustration only mounted further. With a savage scream, he waved his arm through the air in front of him – and vanished.

Kyle’s heart and lungs finally caught up to him. Wheezing, he found himself backing into a corner. He thrashed the air with his saber but caught nothing.

“How does it feel to be on the light side?” Yun’s taunt echoed across the room.

“Weak?” came a whisper beside him, followed by the hum of a slashing saber.

Kyle gasped and swung his own blade up, barely deflecting the blow. Sparks arced across his vision, revealing a silhouetted absence in the shape of Yun. He cut wildly. His opponent did the same. Two voices cried out at once. They leapt apart. The smell of burnt flesh hung between them. Yun, with his free hand, felt the outline of the gash burnt into his hip. His eyes didn’t move from Kyle.

“I’ll admit,” he said, wiping sweat from his eyes, “You’re better than I thought.”

Kyle found enough air to pant a laugh, “I’ll admit, you’re pretty much what I figured.”

Yun smiled like a predator.

The two walked a slow circle around each other. Kyle accidently kicked a mound of debris from the shattered map. Both duelists spared a glance for the rubble as it skittered across the floor. Kyle looked up.

“Bet Jerec won’t be too happy about his treasure map.”

Yun gloated, “My master plots his course to the Valley as we speak.”

It was Kyle’s turn to smirk, “So 88 cracked dad’s code?”

He could see Yun realize he’d let something slip. The Jedi’s face turned pale and he flashed another sign.

Kyle choked. Everything was white. His ears shuddered like an airspeeder hitting flak. He blinked hard, but nothing changed. Even with his eyes shut, the white haze was seared into his retinas. The Jedi was laughing at him above the tumult in his skull. Kyle’s heart beat a cacophonous rhythm. He lashed out in the direction of Yun’s cackles. A slick of sweat ran along his hilt, threatening to wrench it out of his grasp. He fled. His cut shoulder slammed into the wall and he yowled. Still more laughter followed him. He kept moving. He stuck his hand out along the wall. It found a door interface and switched it open. Without a thought for what might be on the other side, he slipped under the rising panel and pulled it shut behind him. His fingers scrambled to find a lock. He yelled with exasperation and drove his saber through the panel and out its twin on the opposite side.

Standing back, he rubbed his eyes with his balled fist. The fog remained. The sound of Yun’s saber piercing the door screeched out. The panic in Kyle’s limbs shuddered out of control.

A single voice, impossibly clear, spoke from far, far away.

“Kyle, you have nothing to fear.”

“Rahn?” Kyle gasped, inaudible above the sparking metal.

“I am so sorry this has come to you Kyle, but you can survive this. The Force was strong in your father, and I know it is strong in you.”

At the mention of Morgan, Kyle’s mind filled with comforting memories. His father’s smile and his warm hands, the soothing smell of engine oil in his beard. Many images were familiar – treasures he had kept close for years. Others were alien. They had the same warmth of years’ spent being secretly cherished, but they were from another’s eyes. His father was unchanged. He spoke in the same bright and implaccable voice and hummed the same Suloni folk songs as he held someone he loved.

The rhythm of Kyle’s heart quieted. His breath slowed. Not even the clatter of the panel door falling disturbed him.

Rahn spoke again, “Let go of your fear. Turn to insight and instinct. Ignore what he’s doing . What is he going to do?”

On any other day, in any other moment, it would have been nonsense, but in that impenetrable haze, Kyle felt something release inside himself. It passed beyond the boundaries of his form and into the world beyond. He was connected. Everything was connected. All the life around him: bound together in luminous energy. The swarming, bickering bacteria that curled in his gut; the Sul-rats cowering in the walls; the young man that stood before him – a thin sheen of sadistic triumph hiding a core of churning self-doubt. They were all so bright and beautiful. He could make out every detail. He felt the smooth surface of Yun’s hilt in his hands, the subtle shift as he corrected his Makashi grip, the shifting weight along his arms as he drew back for the finishing blow.

Their sabers met with a pyrotechnic crash. Kyle’s lips cracked as he smiled, all fear forgotten. Yun’s blade slipped as he saw his opponent’s unguarded glee. He shouted incoherent curses and slashed again and again. Kyle’s arms moved of their own accord. He blocked, deflected, and parried with unerring accuracy. The hum and crackle of their sabers was a musical beat, the motion of their limbs a ferocious dance. Kyle drove the boy out the side chamber and up the ramp to the elevator platform. Yun grew more desperate, his attacks more harried. He screamed with every blow. Kyle could feel the sweat dripping off his brow and was glad he didn’t have to worry about it falling into his eyes. His arms burned with a heat to rival his saber. His legs cramped under impossible duresses. Still they fought. In a momentary pause, Yun lept from the frey and crouched for one final pounce. His predator smile was gone, replaced by a feral sneer. He hurled himself off the stone floor.

Kyle’s old scars and fresh wounds screamed as he twisted to swing at the flying Jedi. There was the faintest tug on his blade. Yun gasped and thudded to the floor. Like the sun cutting through a cloudbank, Kyle’s vision returned.

He stood over Yun and pointed the tip of his saber at him. The boy was shuddering and trying to prop himself up on his elbow.

“Kill me!” Yun shouted, “Isn’t that what you do to Dark Jedi?”

Kyle paused. You? He had never met a Dark Jedi. What did he mean by – oh. That must be what a Jedi did. Well, he was no Jedi.

He drew back his blade. For a brief moment, an image flashed in his mind. It was like a memory, or whatever you called a memory waiting to be made. He saw himself standing above a kneeling figure. Hatred boiled across his face and he slashed out at the unarmed form. It collapsed. Then the vision was gone and Yun was struggling to stand up. Relief, pain, and confusion moved in chaotic waves across his face. Kyle scowled. The absurdity wasn’t lost on him. There would be consequences for this. All his years of experience told him he was making a mistake, but he couldn't deny that it felt right. His fight was with Jerec, not his errand boy. What was this Yun to him? Just a kid in the Empire, looking for self-assurance and misguided vengeance. Could Kyle hate him? About as much as he could hate himself.

Suddenly, a bright beam of yellow light shone from the roof. A porthole opened over Yun. Before Kyle could react, a tractor beam caught the boy and lifted him away. As if on cue, a hidden door opened behind Kyle and a team of storm troopers fired indiscriminately across the room. His saber swooped to deflect the shots, all thoughts of Jedi abandoned.

“You failed,” Sariss said, crouched over Yun in the cargo bay. The shuttle’s engines rumbled beneath them as it climbed through the Suloni atmosphere.

“I failed,” Yun echoed, still gripping the pen-shaped panic button she had slipped into his robes some hours earlier.

After checking that he had fastened his bacta patch correctly, she moved to return to the cabin.

He tilted his head to follow her.

“You knew I would fail,” he accused, faintly.

She stopped in the hatchway.

“I have faith in Jerec and his plans for the future,” she turned to face him, “They are both worth defending.”

The door sealed behind her, leaving Yun in darkness. The weight of a world pressed him into the floor.