The hiss of my lightsaber retracting slices through the spice fog, a fading whine that leaves the back of my throat raw. The Pyke enforcer's body slumps against the container's durasteel wall, cybernetic eye flickering out, spice-stained teeth bared in a dead grin. The stink of blood mixes with the cauterized reek of his chest wound, the white-blue blade's work done. My hand steadies the hilt.
Sobriety sits wrong on me. The world sharpens too much without rotgut's cushion, every sign-flicker cutting too sharp, every distant swoop bike's roar dragged across raw nerves. Juno's voice still haunts me. Fight. Survive. Live. Her mantra holds steady in my chest, the only rhythm I can trust. Sera's eyes surface in the dark of my mind, wide with dreams of being like her dad.
The shipping container's walls, pitted with rust, groan under the weight of stacked crates, a faint glow from Nar Shaddaa's Corellian Sector seeping through a warped seam. I'd torn into the enforcer's mind before the blade fell, Force clawing through his thoughts, tearing for anything useful. Nothing useful. Black Nebula, Pyke stronghold, that was all I could grab, and every cantina rat from here to the Promenade already knows the Pykes run that place. His cybernetic eye had fixed on me, certain I'd kill him anyway. He was right. Kael Druun, the Pyke lord who sent hunters to Corellia almost a year back, is close now. A Starkiller promise made, just shy of being fulfilled.
My boots scrape the grated floor, the container vibrating through my soles. I've carved this beachhead for the Je'daii. A foothold in Nar Shaddaa's gut, chasing Druun and Revan's artifacts and leads. His voice echoes from Mustafar. Hunt the Veiled Covenant's Rakata relics. Look for any clues on Shepard, radio silent for months now, his whereabouts a mystery unto itself. Druun's hunters dared to challenge me on Corellia, them quickly now becoming the hunted, and Druun will learn what the indelible legend of Starkiller means.
The container's door screeches open, the sector's sign-glare slashing my eyes. Zevra stands in the glow, Twi'lek lekku swaying, her lightdaggers faint embers at her side.
"My Shadow."
She bows with grace. Her cloak, stitched with hidden Je'daii runes, catches the light. Her eyes sharp as kyber.
"PROXY has uncovered something you'll wish to see."
"Very well."
I step out of the makeshift shipping container prison, which is now the thug's grave, into the warehouse, a Hutt shipping depot turned fortress, its durasteel walls groaning under the spice trade's weight. Crates stamped with Black Sun claws loom like tombstones, shadows twisting under flickering sodium-arc lamps. The air traffic roars outside, all those engines a war cry slicing Nar Shaddaa's smog. Five Shades patrol, lightdaggers at the ready. Kaelor stands rigid near the entrance, a Zabrak whose emerald blades stay sheathed but whose horns catch the light across skin like a promise. Myra checks a crate's hololock, Mirialan fingers deft, green skin dusted with spice. Two Initiates cloaked in gray move like specters, their steps silent as the Je'daii's destiny demands.
My Shades' lives are a weight I carry, their loyalty my chain. My boots ring on the grates, passing a rusted astromech sparking with smuggler mods, stolen from a Hutt dock. A holoscreen flickers, Nar Shaddaa's skyline clawing a smog-choked sky, the Black Nebula Spire's lit crown piercing the Refugee Sector. The promise I made over Druun burns hotter than anything else in my skull. He'll pay in blood.
Zevra's cloak whispers as she matches my stride. Her Twi'lek accent slides like smoke.
"The enforcer was stubborn. May Bogan consume him."
"In balance."
My response flat and measured. The comms area sprawls at the warehouse's core, a nest of holoscreens, power cells, and scavenged tech. PROXY hunches over a console, optics burning bright, manipulators dancing across a durasteel datacard etched with Pyke cipher.
"Master, my circuits pale before your forceful finesse, but this datacard, plucked from our friend's belt pouch, has something curious."
I lean in, spice dust stinging my nose.
"Speak, rustbucket."
PROXY's screen flares, text scrolling in Pyke cipher.
"Kael Druun is meeting with a consultant bounty hunter tonight, at this penthouse, as the sector lights die."
His voice sharpens with purpose.
"Our late friend was assigned to stand watch while Druun met with strategic counsel. The name of this bounty hunter..."
He pauses, optics flaring.
"Boba Fett."
My breath catches. Fett. Seventeen years, rotgut blurring the blaze of Kashyyyk's ruin. Juno's scream, Sera's blood, Fett's shadow slipping through my grip, untouched no matter where I looked for him. Now, sober, the clarity is a vibroblade to the chest. Fett still being alive and close enough to touch, scheming in Nar Shaddaa's underworld. Revan's mission can wait. Shepard's whereabouts can wait. Fett is here, and my family will be avenged. I turn, sign-glow casting my shadow across the warehouse. Zevra stands ready. Kaelor and Myra step forward, cloaks whispering like ghosts. The Initiates freeze, eyes wide under hoods.
"Zevra."
Voice low, my grip on the words drawn taut as steel.
"Kaelor, Myra, to the Black Nebula Spire. Scout it. By the time I arrive, I want an entry plan and Druun's head on a platter. New data suggest Fett will be there with him. Make sure we have a clear path."
"My Shadow."
Kaelor rumbles. His horns catch the light as he bows with Myra in unison. Their movements are liquid smoke.
"It will be done."
The Shades melt into the warehouse's shadows, lightdagger hilts catching the dock lights. I stride through the depot, boots ringing on durasteel, the depot's lights painting my cloak in hard angles. Shades snap to attention, their loyalty a current in the air. Starkiller is awake and hunting.
Galen Marek emerged from the shipping container's secret entrance, his shrouded form slicing through Nar Shaddaa's sodium-arc fog. Five Shades flanked him, cloaks stirring, sewn with hidden Je'daii runes, their steps fluid as specters in the smog. The depot's durasteel gates framed the exodus, rusted hinges groaning under the weight of spice and betrayal. A SoroSuub V-90 airspeeder roared awake, its black hull a polished blade, red accent lights flaring. Galen's driver slid behind the controls, fingers flicking the false transponder, dodging a skiff's prying sensors. Another Shade settled beside her, holopad casting Spire schematics in dim light. Galen claimed the rear, nerf-leather seats cold beneath him, the V-90's shields humming a low, lethal hymn. Two swoop bikes snarled to life, Flitknot frames of black durasteel etched with aurodium, their repulsorlift thrusters spitting embers. Two Shades mounted them, cloaks billowing like wraiths, lightdagger hilts catching chrome glare as they flanked the V-90. The entourage surged into the skylane, a dark arrow piercing Nar Shaddaa's rotting heart, aimed at the Refugee Sector's Black Nebula Spire.
The Spire loomed ahead, its penthouse a fortress where the Pykes ruled their kingdom. Skylanes boiled with chaos, rusted airspeeders weaving through Hutt barges, their silks tattered by acid rain, Black Sun drones ferrying spice, engines whining like trapped beasts. Nar Shaddaa's holo-veins flickered, a city feasting on its own decay. Skylanes twisted, giving way to alleys where a Twi'lek beggar fled a Black Sun vibroblade, her credits skittering across filth-slick duracrete, enforcers' laughter brittle as shattered glass. Zann Consortium swoop gangs roared, blasters cracking against Pyke riders, sparks painting the dark in fleeting fire. Beneath a Hutt billboard, its hologram flickering with promises of spice and sin, a cloaked dealer sealed a deal, vibroknife flashing as credits vanished into shadow. The city's underclass bled, its spires clawing a smog-choked sky, signage buzzing overhead. Galen's V-90 faded, a phantom bound for retribution, as the skyline shifted, towers parting to reveal the Promenade's fevered glow.
In the same sector, The Twin Falls Palace burned in the night, its central dome repaired from a rogue airspeeder's crash months back. Inside, chandeliers swayed, their glow warped by smoke, illuminating sabacc tables where credits clinked like funeral bells. Hutt enforcers prowled, scales slick under armored vests, vibroaxes slung low, guarding vaults swollen with secrets. Twi'lek dancers spun, their silks catching light. Corellian smugglers bartered in hissed tones. Rodian spice-runners wagered fortunes with trembling hands. The Palace ran on greed and desperation.
A lone figure stood at a sabacc table, cards dancing in his hands with a gambler's grace. Torel wore a visor that shadowed watchful eyes, dark hair slicked against the casino's heat. His fingers brushed a hidden ace, tilting the odds with surgical calm, every move a soldier's gambit. A Rodian gambler, snout stained with spice, slammed the table, his slurred roar cutting through the din. Torel's look, cold as durasteel, quelled the outburst, a faint smirk masking the predator beneath. His eyes flicked to a Hutt guard by a vaulted door.
The sabacc cards snapped in my grip, plasticky, worn, like the cheap chips I'd tossed on Silversun Strip, outbluffing Khan's goons with a smirk and a bad hand. Nar Shaddaa's Twin Falls Palace wasn't the Silver Coast Casino, but the spice murk, not cigar smoke, choked the same, burning the throat. A Rodian's snout twitched, spice crusting his claws, credits bleeding out with every dumb bet. Shift change was coming, three months of planning wound tight as a primed detonator, and the sub-basement vault held everything that mattered. My N7 armor. The Wraith and Predator. Omni-tool. My name. My life. All of it caged by Hutt greed.
The casino seethed, a rotting beast draped in opulence. Chandeliers swayed, light fracturing through the chemical fog, splintered shadows dancing on sabacc tables. Hutt enforcers slithered through the crowd. Rodian spice-runners bet fortunes with shaking hands, eyes wild, pupils blown on something worse than any drug I've seen. Twilight bled through the dome, the skyline a serrated sprawl of spice-soaked rot, Omega's underbelly but meaner. The crowd thinned, gamblers staggering to dives or beds, guards slacking, their eyes half-shut. Three months as Torel, playing pawn in this Hutt cesspool, and tonight, I'd burn it down if I had to.
The Twi'lek bartender flicked her lekku, her smirk cutting through as she swallowed my lie about an off-the-books pot for an exclusive fight in the VIP lounge, bait to yank security from their patrols. A human dealer had twitched like he'd seen a Reaper, his brittle laugh masking nerves as he slipped the EMP chip under the table by a Rodian, its pulse ready to fry the table. A waitress with a sniper's eyes continues spreading rumors about the exclusive fight and what the pot is for, her gossip luring more mech sentries away. A bouncer slurred boasts about his access to the building over ale, too drunk to notice me swipe his keycard hours ago. They were all tools, not squadmates, their moves my chessboard, and twilight was my cue.
The Rodian slammed the table.
"Cheat!"
Spitting spice flecks. The EMP chip activated, a faint spark under the table. Lights flickered, the holodisplay fritzing in a static storm, shouts erupting across the floor. Gamblers surged, credits spilling out onto the floor, the remaining Hutt guards lumbering over. The bartender's rumor reached security, holos screaming about the lounge. The Hutt's mechs then rushed upstairs. I slipped from the table and toward the maintenance shafts with the bouncer's keycard, visor low, fading into the chaos.
Service tunnels snaked under the casino, ferrocrete walls slick with condensation, cold as Illium's undercity biting through my vest. Garish light flickered through cracked panels, streaks cutting the dark like Aria's Afterlife backrooms. The narcotic stink clung to everything, the iron bite of old blood, the kind of smell I never forgot once I'd cleared a Collector pod. My boots echoed, each step a map carved in my head, three months prowling these guts, memorizing every twist, every blind spot, like charting Omega's backstreets for Aria. The maintenance shaft gaped ahead, its grate rusted, groaning under my hands as I pried it open. The tunnel tightened, pipes hissing steam, and I crouched, heart steady, and looked down the shaft dropping several floors. Holding onto one of the pipes, I slid down.
The sub-basement was a crypt, Hutt graffiti scrawled on walls dim under emergency lights. The vault stood in front of me, a metal slab, its armored glass a shrine to greed. My N7 armor sat behind it, plates arranged like a soldier's tomb. The Wraith's barrel caught the light, sleek as a Mako's cannon. The Predator's grip, waiting for my hand. The Hutts had made my own gear into treasures, and the awe of it had me caged behind a locked door.
I ran the room before I let myself want any of it. Two bodies, both mechs, optics scanning a fixed arc. One laser grid across the door, motion-keyed, beams flickering like Illium traps. A gold-plated protocol unit off to the side, monitoring logs, prattling to itself like EDI with a superiority complex. Biometric scanners flanking the door, retinal and voice, indicators blinking steady. No cover worth the name. And every tool I'd have trusted to crack it was sitting on the wrong side of the glass.
The mechs ran a fixed sweep, and I'd clocked it from an alcove I stayed crouched in, a nine-second window where both optics swung off the vault and onto the corridor mouth. Upstairs, the rest of my planning was paying out. The dealer's EMP had killed the sabacc table, the bartender's rumor had dragged the floor security toward a VIP fight that didn't exist, and the Hutt's mechs were stacking up around a lounge two levels above me. The plan firing on schedule.
The biometrics went first. With no Omni-tool, I'd built the substitute the slow way, a datapad cobbled from casino scrap, loaded with the vault tech's own access. Three weeks of buying his ale had gotten me his lock code. His retinal print and a clean clip of his voice I'd scraped off the casino's own logs. I held the pad to the scanner. The retinal plate washed green. The voice prompt chimed, and the recording stuttered, the static this galaxy bled into everything electronic crawling through the casino wiring and dragging at the playback, and for half a beat the scan hung on the edge of a lockout. Then it caught. The protocol mech logged an authorized entry and went back to its ledgers, none the wiser.
The grid I couldn't fake. Beating it needed the Omni-tool behind the glass, and I wasn't there yet. So I did it the only way I had left. I'd stashed a cracked plex panel behind the alcove a week back, and I yanked it with a biotic lift, eezo waking in my gut, the panel rising off the floor on nothing. Fine control was needed. This was threading a needle with my livelihood just on the other side. I walked the panel into the beam plane, blinding the photosensors the way a sheet of glass kills a motion eye, and the red beams strobed against it, one grazing close enough to read my sleeve. The field shivered in my grip. I held it. The grid stayed blind. The maglock released under the tech's code, a heavy clunk I felt in my teeth.
The lead mech came around early. Optics swung toward the alcove, servos winding up to scan. No time to be elegant. I dropped a stasis field over it, the eezo bubble snapping shut around the chassis mid-stride, and the thing froze with one foot off the grate, locked in a shell of warped space. The field crackled, the galaxy's static gnawing at its edges, the snapback way softer here but present and already redlining behind my eyes. I didn't have long. I didn't need long.
The case unsealed with the vault, the pane sliding back off my life. I slung the N7 armor over my shoulder, plates clinking, a familiar drag I'd gone too long without. The Wraith clipped to my back, heavy and right. The Predator holstered at my hip, compact and warm. The Omni-tool flickered alive on my wrist, its dim interface a lifeline to worlds I'd saved. Torel was now gone, a lie I'd shed the way I'd shed Cerberus's leash after the Collector base. Months of groveling, playing as a Hutt pawn, wearing a name that wasn't mine. Behind me the stasis let go with a snap, the mech finishing its ruined step into empty air, too late to matter. I was already in the back stairwell, phosphor-wash flickering through the slits. Hutt laughter echoed up, guttural and cruel, credits clinking, holoscreens droning, a din I'd outrun on the Citadel.
A lounge's murk bled into the corridor, pipes trailing smoke, holoscreens flashing races of some craft I hadn't had a name for across leather booths. I've heard them called Podracers once before. Large beast skulls lined the top of the walls, teeth sharp, Hutt trophies I imagine. Two enforcers sprawled on the couch, vests unbuttoned, spice on their breath, swaggering as they gloated, the same swagger Cerberus shock troopers had before I put them down.
"Comms are goin' nuts."
The first enforcer's voice cut low through the spice fog.
"Black Nebula's under attack right now. Some old Force legend, Starkiller they're callin' him, just crashed Druun's meet."
"Fett's in there with him, tearin' the place apart."
The other chuckled, his pipe burning low.
"Fett's a menace, man. My credits are on him, but that Spire's gettin' gutted floor by floor as we speak."
My gut twisted, a slug hit like facing Reapers. Galen, here, on Nar Shaddaa. That name, Fett, sounded familiar, Galen's wife and his daughter's killer, he let it slip when we first met up with Talis. Galen wouldn't be defeated so easily, not to some relic or a washed-up gang these jokers were describing. The smog drowned their laughs, but I was already moving, garage close, urgency now a fire, like racing to save Garrus from Omega's gutters. I had to reach Galen, now. The worker's garage was a ferrocrete cave, hovercars and cycles rusting under flickering lights, a dive uglier than Citadel's lower wards. My Strato-Hauler 66 lurked in a maintenance bay under a tarp hiding its mottled gray hull, pocked with carbon scoring.
I pulled the tarp free, the canopy's scratched transparisteel fogging under my breath. Cracked leather seats stank of grease, fuzzy dice swaying. My own personal joke. The repulsorlift coil wheezed, thrusters coughing, one misfiring. Jizz tunes crackled through the radio, Nar Shaddaa's defiance, like Afterlife's beat. The yoke rattled, gauges flickering, navicomputer glitching ghost routes. I tapped the Omni-tool, comms reaching for Revan, anyone, a lifeline to whatever home I'd scraped together here in Skyriver. Static hissed, dead. I was still alone in Nar Shaddaa's rot. No time to linger. The gate groaned open, twilight's purple fading to the city's electric scream. I gunned the Strato-Hauler, thrusters roaring, dampeners rattling like a Mako drop. Skylanes blurred, towers stabbing the dark, hovercycles weaving like Vorcha. The Refugee Sector now my destination, the Black Nebula Spire looming in the skyline, a dark lance beyond the Promenade's swirl. High on its face the upper floors flared, fire and strobing alarm-light, and a heartbeat later the concussion rolled across the skylane and thumped through the canopy. Galen. He'd already brought the storm, his vendetta against Fett, I'm sure, driving his actions. I floored it, the skycar screaming through the air.
The SoroSuub V-90's engines die as I step from its glossy black hull, the Refugee Sector's parking garage a shadowed crypt of duracrete and rust. Spice stings my eyes, the Black Nebula Spire's lance piercing the smog, a taunt flung across the kilometers between us. My hooded shroud shifts, lightsabers at my hips. Juno's scream still in my skull, seventeen years drowned in rotgut, but Boba Fett's name, now a hot coal lodged behind my ribs.
Zevra stands at my side, cloak a whisper, lightdagger hilt catching the chrome glare. Ryn flanks me, fresh from recon, gaze steel, holopad dim with Spire schematics. Vren and Sylis dismount their swoops, cloaks billowing, blaster rifles drawn from saddle bags. Kaelor and Myra emerge from the garage's gloom, scouts returned as I'd commanded.
"Report."
I demand. Kaelor's grunt cuts through, steady as durasteel.
"Skybridge, top route, My Shadow. Entry at the 200th floor, there is a ventilation shaft to the penthouse. Sensor nodes every ten meters, alarm relays tied to Pyke droids. Drone patrols mapped here."
Myra's tone is precise in her follow-up.
"PROXY's cracked their security already. Skybridge is exposed, wind's vicious though, drones are still armed and fast. The timing's critical."
Ryn's holopad flickers to life.
"Entry's solid, but we should move now or we miss our window."
"Kaelor, Myra, back to base, be ready for anything. Zevra, Ryn, with me. Vren and Sylis, you two are on overwatch. PROXY, I need you to make sure we don't get any surprises."
Kaelor and Myra bow, Vren and Sylis mount their swoops, engines snarling as they peel away. The skybridge arches from the garage, a durasteel spine linking to the Spire's mid-tier, its top a razor's edge slick with acid rain. I lead, the shadowed sovereign, my Shades clearing the way with lethal grace. The wind screams, tearing at my shroud, but Zevra vaults a beam, her body a fluid arc, beskar-traced disruptor sparking to silence a sensor node's red eye. Ryn scales a girder, disruptor doing its work as an alarm relay goes dark. I stride behind, Force guiding my steps, their movements a dance of death drilled deep by Je'daii training. Every step carries me closer to the man who put Juno in the ground.
PROXY's voice crackles, clipped and tactical.
"Master, a Pyke drone approaches, forty meters, armed, and woefully inconvenient. I suggest haste."
I signal. Zevra flattens against a beam, Ryn's cloak a shadow on durasteel. The drone hovers nearby, optics scanning, then veers, lost in the smog. Zevra's disruptor sparks again, killing the final sensor, her fingers steady. We sprint with precision slicing through the gale, cloaks trailing like wraiths. The Spire's ventilation shaft gapes at the 200th floor, a durasteel grate. Ryn pries it open, metal groaning under his grip, and we slip inside, the shaft's chill biting my skin like a blade.
The Spire's innards are a labyrinth of duracrete and holosigns, smoke seeping through ducts like venomous mist. We weave through service tunnels, my Force sense a taut wire, Zevra and Ryn moving lethal ahead. A Pyke guard rounds a corner unexpectedly with blaster raised, but Zevra's fingers snap his neck with a silent twist before it's fully trained. Ryn's disruptor fries another relay panel. I keep in lockstep, directing their strikes with a glance, their actions an extension of my will. Security corridors are ahead, hologlow bleeding through cracked panels.
A turbolift shaft gapes, cables swaying in the dark, and we scale it, muscles burning. It leads to the penthouse level, its rungs slick with grease. Zevra climbs first, disabling a motion sensor with a disruptor's spark. Ryn follows, breath steady. I ascend last, closer now, Fett's shadow almost tangible in the Force.
The penthouse access is a transparisteel balcony, its overhang a shadowed perch above Nar Shaddaa's sprawl. We crouch, cloaks blending with the dark, the city's chrome towers stabbing the sky as the twilight hours set in.
Below, the penthouse gleams, a lair of Pyke ambition. Durasteel walls catch the aurodium inlays, transparisteel panels frame the skyline's chaotic sprawl, spice urns and vibroblade racks glint like trophies of conquest. Kael Druun paces, cane tapping a rhythm of greed.
And there he is. Boba Fett stands like a cybernetic wraith, Mandalorian armor, red eyes glowing through a pitted visor. His rasp is cold, authoritative, now a crime lord's edge.
"Druun, your Pykes are bleedin' credits. Lock the spice lanes, arm your crews, or the Hutts'll carve you out of any advantage you have left in the Red Sand game. I can of course take care of this, pay me my fee, and you'll be running the whole district soon enough. I guarantee it."
Druun's voice wavers, desperate, losing ground.
"We're tryin' on our own, Fett. The Hutts press us hard, but alright. I'll finally take you up on your offer, what's the fee, we'll make it right."
My blood roars, sobriety sharpening every syllable. Fett. Juno's scream. Sera's blood on my hands. My fists tremble, lightsabers itching to ignite. Zevra's hand grazes mine, a warning, but rage is a supernova, Fett's voice the spark. Every sensor we disabled, every rung we climbed, all of it for this moment, and the discipline shatters the instant his red eyes catch mine.
I leap. Transparisteel shatters as I crash through the penthouse outer walls.
"Fett!"
I roar as Force lightning arcs from my hands, durasteel tables buckling under the raw power, dual lightsabers igniting with a crackling white-blue. My storm now unleashed.
Zevra vaults in behind me, her amber lightdagger igniting mid-air. She lands inside the nearest guard's reach before he can level his blaster and opens his throat with one short upward stroke, down to the spine. He drops the weapon to clutch the wound and finds nothing left to hold. Ryn comes through the gap she leaves, low and fast, his orange blade punching through the next guard's sternum and out his back. He rides the body down, twists the hilt once to be sure, and the man is dead before his knees touch the floor.
My Force choke clamps Druun's throat, windpipe buckling, blood flecking his lips as he gasps, eyes bulging. He reaches for his cane, a cunning Pyke trick, and triggers a hidden turbolift, durasteel doors hissing open through the breach's debris. Fett's whipcord lashes out, monofilament slicing my forearm, blood beading as I release the choke on Druun to dodge, fury blazing. The turbolift doors snap shut, Druun's cowardice now slipping through my grasp, a raw wound in my gut hotter than Mustafar's sulfuric air.
Fett spins, EE-3 carbine barking, plasma bolts hammering the air. I toss a blade to reflect them back mid-air and hold my free hand out, the Force closing around the nearest Pyke and driving him headfirst into a durasteel column. The impact folds his skull against the metal, and he slides down it in a long red smear as my blade returns to my hand. Zevra takes the arm off a charging guard at the shoulder, her lightdagger shearing through the joint so cleanly the limb hits the floor before he understands it's gone, blaster still locked in the dead fingers. Ryn meets the next one head-on and opens him from hip to collarbone, the body coming apart in two directions. Fett's jetpack flares, carrying him clear of my next strike, and the wall behind him bursts into molten glass and sparks. The penthouse has become an abattoir.
Mid-fight, Fett's rasp cuts through, cold and deliberate.
"Juno screamed like a little sleemo, Starkiller. Your little girl died begging for her life."
And the rage goes white. My blades become a wall of motion, shearing through durasteel tables, sparks falling like hot rain. I charge, lightning leaping from my fingers, and Fett's flamethrower roars up to meet it. Fire and current collide between us. Napalm catches my mantle, the heat raising blisters along my arm, and the sheet of flame buys him the room to drive me back a step. Zevra fights through it, ducking a guard's blaster and burying her lightdagger under his jaw, the blade punching up through the roof of his mouth so he dies mid-shout, the cry trapped in his chest. Ryn cuts in beside her, catching the vibroblade meant for her spine, its ultrasonic edge grazing his cloak.
My Force sense is stretched thin across the room, and Fett uses it. He feints with a decoy bolt from the carbine, and Ryn reads the shot and pivots to deflect it, exactly as Fett wants. The wrist rocket launches at point-blank range, and the blast takes Ryn full in the chest. Shrapnel opens his torso to the spine, ribs blown outward, and he folds around the wound with a wet, choking sound, his lightdagger now extinguished and rolling away across the floor.
Ryn. My Shade. Zevra's anguished cry cuts the air, her lightdagger wavering, cloak now stained with his blood.
Fett comes for me through the explosion's smoke, red eyes steady behind the helmet's visor. Grief drags at the Force sense the rotgut used to numb, and my blades shake in my hands. He fakes high with a burst of the jetpack, then snaps the whipcord low. The monofilament bites into my wrist and slicks my grip with blood, and in the half-second it costs me he is already inside my guard. His vibroblade comes up and across my chest, its ultrasonic edge parting armor and flesh in one long stroke, and the blood comes hot and fast. The pain whites out everything. My lightsabers fall from my hands, and I go down with them, the penthouse tilting around me.
Fett pauses, visor mirroring my bloodied shroud.
"You failed them. Juno. That daughter of yours. This fool who followed you to their grave. So much for the Starkiller rising like a pyraeth."
His boot slams my chest, a thunderstrike, transparisteel shattering all around me. Nar Shaddaa's skyline opens under me, its lit maw roaring as I plummet, blood trailing like a comet's tail. Wind tears my shroud, signage streaks smearing into long bright lines, the Spire's face racing upward, Juno's whisper somewhere in the roar, Sera's laugh tangled in the wind shear, the city's lights fracturing and blurring and the ground a distant hunger rushing closer.
Zevra's shout pierces the chaos, her cloak flailing in the wind as she leaps through the window after me, lightdagger hilts clipped to her belt, loyalty sharper than my rage. Fett's silhouette watches me from above, triumphant, as the edges of my vision start to black out.