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Asajj Ventress is getting used to Coruscant.
She doesn’t like it.
That would imply emotional attachment, and emotional attachment to Coruscant is how a person ends up defending traffic patterns, developing opinions about Senate districts, and paying twelve credits for caf that tastes like burnt engine lubricant.
Still, the planet is becoming acceptable.
It isn’t Serenno, with its cold mountains and palaces built to make everyone beneath them feel appropriately small. It certainly isn’t Dathomir, where the forests breathed around her and the dark belonged to creatures old enough to remember the first witches.
Coruscant has no true darkness.
Even at night, light bleeds through the windows, climbs the walls, and turns the ceiling of her apartment a permanent shade of city-orange. Speeders hiss between towers at every hour. Somewhere beneath her, several billion people continue existing with no regard for whether she wants them to be quiet.
But the apartment is hers.
Officially, it doesn’t exist.
The Guard assigned it to an identity that died eleven years ago, inside a residential tower owned by a shell company that technically belongs to the Office of Sanitation. Its windows are polarized. Its security system is military-grade. The refresher works, the food storage is full, and the bed is considerably better than the cargo holds, caves, alleys, and abandoned warehouses she has occupied since Dooku ordered her death.
There is even a small balcony.
Asajj uses it to glare at the Jedi Temple.
The Temple rises several districts away, pale towers cutting into the skyline with all the subtlety of a monument built by people convinced they are the center of the Force.
She can feel them from here.
Thousands of Jedi. Masters, Knights, children, initiates, archivists, healers. Their presence presses against the edges of her awareness, bright and disciplined and irritatingly serene.
Not one of them knows she is alive.
That part improves the view considerably.
Asajj lifts her cup and drinks.
The caf is terrible.
She drinks it anyway.
The Guard provides housing, food, forged identification, medical care, and legal protection in exchange for bounty work that cannot appear on official records. Sometimes she tracks Separatist agents. Sometimes she retrieves stolen military property. Twice, she has collected senators who fled Coruscant before Guard investigators could execute arrest warrants.
The second senator had attempted to bribe her.
Asajj had accepted the credits, delivered him to Stone, and then reported the bribe so the Guard could add it to his charges.
Fox had stared at her across his desk for a long moment.
“You took the money.”
“Yes.”
“You kept it.”
“Naturally.”
“And then gave us the account information.”
“I’m a bounty hunter, not an amateur.”
Fox had added a clause to her contract requiring disclosure of all bribes over five thousand credits.
Asajj now encourages suspects to offer four thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine.
She has purpose again.
Not the kind Dooku gave her. His purpose had been obedience dressed as destiny, every mission another chance to prove herself worthy of an apprenticeship he’d never intended to honor.
The Guard’s purpose is refreshingly transactional.
Find this person.
Recover this evidence.
Do not kill anyone unless necessary.
Absolutely do not kill senators inside the Senate Dome because the paperwork becomes “unmanageable.”
She completes the assignment.
They pay her.
Nobody asks her to kneel.
Nobody calls her assassin with the careful contempt of a Jedi pretending judgment is compassion.
Nobody tries to murder her because an unseen master fears she has become too powerful.
Her door chimes.
Asajj sets down the cup and reaches for one of the curved hilts on the table.
She doesn’t ignite it.
The Guard knows better than to visit unannounced.
Everyone else deserves the surprise.
“Identify.”
“Ghost.”
Asajj opens the door.
Commander Ghost stands in the corridor wearing black-and-red armor without a helmet. Blonde hair is braided tight against her skull. She carries no visible datapad, no bounty puck, and no expression.
Asajj has decided she likes Ghost.
Ghost has decided nothing.
“You’re early,” Asajj says.
“You’re awake.”
“I sleep.”
“Not according to the building logs.”
Asajj leans against the doorframe. “Do you monitor everyone’s sleep?”
“Only residents who might attempt to assassinate the Chancellor.”
“I haven’t attempted it.”
Ghost looks at her.
“Recently,” Asajj adds.
Ghost enters without waiting for permission.
Asajj closes the door.
The Commander walks directly to the table and places a small data wafer beside the abandoned cup.
“New assignment.”
“I finished the last one yesterday.”
“You finished it by throwing the target through a restaurant window.”
“He landed inside.”
“The restaurant was on the eighty-fourth floor.”
“He had a repulsor harness.”
“He wasn’t wearing it.”
Asajj smiles.
“He is now more cautious.”
“He’s in traction.”
“Then he has time to reflect.”
Ghost activates the wafer.
A Neimoidian face appears above the table, followed by shipping manifests, banking records, and a list of known associates.
“Separatist financial courier,” Ghost says. “He arrived under diplomatic immunity six hours ago.”
“Diplomatic immunity makes arrest difficult.”
“That’s why you aren’t arresting him.”
Asajj studies the file.
“You want the data.”
“We want a copy of his account ledger before he leaves Coruscant.”
“And if he notices me?”
“He believes you’re dead.”
“So do the Jedi.”
“That’s the point.”
The image shifts to display the courier’s hotel.
It is less than two districts from the Senate Dome.
Asajj’s amusement fades.
The Senate is closer than the Temple.
The presence inside it is quieter, but quieter does not mean weaker.
She first noticed it after moving into the apartment.
A shadow buried beneath millions of living minds. Old, controlled, and hidden with such skill that most Force-users would mistake it for the natural weight of the city.
Asajj knows better.
She remembers kneeling in holographic blue light while Dooku spoke to a hooded figure. She remembers a voice that made the air feel cold. She remembers the terror behind Dooku’s eyes when his Master ordered him to eliminate her.
The Sith Master is somewhere inside the Senate.
Perhaps not every day. Perhaps not always in the same room.
But he is there.
Close enough that sometimes Asajj wakes with her hand around a lightsaber and the taste of lightning at the back of her throat.
“Choose another operative,” she says.
Ghost’s eyes narrow slightly.
“You know the building.”
“I know many buildings.”
“You’ve infiltrated the Senate district before.”
“While attempting to kill people. It simplifies navigation.”
Ghost deactivates the display.
“What’s wrong?”
Asajj looks toward the windows.
The Temple gleams in the distance. Beyond it, the Senate Dome rises against the horizon, round and golden and infested with politicians.
“The Jedi are irritating,” she says. “They glow so loudly that one wonders how they manage espionage.”
Ghost waits.
“The other presence is not.”
“You’ve mentioned a dark-side user in the Senate before.”
“I mentioned a Sith.”
“Chief Fox classified the report.”
“And ignored it?”
“No.”
That makes Asajj look at her.
Ghost’s expression remains flat, but her stillness has changed. The Guard does not possess the Force, yet its officers have become very good at communicating threat through silence.
“What is he doing?” Asajj asks.
“Investigating.”
“The Chancellor?”
“The Senate.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It’s the one you’re cleared to receive.”
Asajj circles the table.
“Your Chief is either brave or stupid.”
“Both can be operationally useful.”
“He cannot investigate a Sith Lord through financial audits.”
“You’d be surprised what Fox can investigate through financial audits.”
Despite herself, Asajj believes that.
Fox had obtained control over the Grand Army because a Senate statute used the wrong definition of emergency authority. He regarded bureaucracy as other warriors regarded a blade. Something to sharpen, conceal, and push between the ribs when the enemy was distracted.
Still, Fox is flesh.
The presence in the Senate is something else.
“If the Sith discovers what I am,” Asajj says, “he will kill me.”
Ghost doesn’t offer reassurance.
Good.
Asajj would have distrusted it.
“If the Jedi discover you,” Ghost says, “they’ll arrest you.”
“They’ll try.”
“And if Dooku discovers you?”
Asajj’s fingers tighten around the back of a chair.
“He’ll send someone.”
“Then we maintain the fiction that you’re dead.”
Ghost taps the data wafer.
“The courier leaves tomorrow. This assignment doesn’t require entry into the Senate Dome.”
“Only the district.”
“Yes.”
“Where Jedi patrol.”
“Yes.”
“And where your Sith Master may sense me.”
Ghost’s gaze sharpens.
“Not ours.”
The correction comes instantly.
Asajj looks at her.
Ghost looks back.
Not ours.
The Guard serves the Chancellor. Officially.
They guard his office, escort his staff, execute security orders, and bleed across Coruscant whenever someone decides the Republic’s government needs another dramatic hostage crisis.
Yet Ghost’s voice holds no loyalty to the thing hidden beneath the Senate.
Interesting.
Asajj picks up the data wafer.
“I want double.”
“Your contract specifies standard rates.”
“My contract also specifies threat adjustments.”
“The courier isn’t dangerous.”
“The neighborhood is.”
Ghost considers that.
“Twenty-five percent.”
“Seventy-five.”
“Thirty.”
“Sixty.”
“Thirty-five and authorization to retain any undeclared credits you locate.”
Asajj smiles.
“Done.”
Ghost turns toward the door.
“Try not to kill the courier.”
“I make no promises.”
“You signed several.”
“I make no additional promises.”
Ghost pauses at the threshold.
“Medical wants you to attend your follow-up tomorrow.”
“I’m healed.”
“Scalper disagrees.”
“Scalper always disagrees.”
“She said if you miss another appointment, she’ll retrieve you herself.”
Asajj considers the Guard’s Chief Medical Officer, her ruined voice, her unsettling eyes, and the fact that even Fox obeys when Scalper points at a medbay cot.
“I’ll attend.”
Ghost leaves.
Asajj locks the door and looks down at the assignment.
Housing.
Food.
Purpose.
No legal persecution, provided she keeps her blades away from senators and her existence away from the Jedi.
It is not freedom.
Freedom is a word used by people who have never had to negotiate the terms of their survival.
This is something more practical.
A place to sleep. Work worth doing. An enemy who believes she is dead.
Asajj returns to the balcony.
The Temple stands to her left.
The Senate stands to her right.
Light and darkness, each convinced it has hidden its failures behind stone walls and ceremony.
She lifts the awful caf in a silent toast to both.
Coruscant is dangerous, overcrowded, dishonest, and filled with people she would happily throw from windows.
It is becoming almost comfortable.