I blink, eyes gritty as if dusted with Ossus sand. The holo-vid sharpens, pulling me into Saria's birth, 15 ABY. Tionne's silver hair spilled across the frame, comet-bright, her eyes alive with a joy that cut through the decades. Saria's cry sliced through the silence, sharp and fierce, a blade of sound that etched itself into my marrow. My hands, younger then, trembled in the vid, reaching for her tiny form, fingers clumsy with awe. The excitement, mine and Tionne's, burned bright, a shared fire that warms my chest now, here in the dark of the lounge. I must've fallen asleep chasing that moment, when the galaxy wasn't so heavy, when family was enough.
As the memory fades the lounge's shadows creep back, and my thoughts drift to Tionne. On Ossus she'd be standing vigil beside Korrin's bacta pod, silver hair aglow in the kyber-lit medical chamber, hands adjusting the monitors that tracked his fragile pulse. EV-9T9 would be humming alongside her, rune-etched frame calibrating bacta flow with mechanical precision, a droid's devotion mirroring her own. Korrin's life hung by the thread of Tionne's skill and will. Months of this now, battling his Chiss metabolism and the neural scarring carbonite left behind, her healing trances weaving hope into every flicker of green on the readout. I could almost hear her voice, steady as a saber's hum, whispering that he'd pull through. It's who she is. The heart of our Order, the anchor for our family, holding us all through every storm that hits. Light-years from her side, that strength still reaches me, a warmth steadying my grip on the Noghri leather trim at my hip. Korrin's fight, Tionne's fight, is why I'm here facing the dark. For them, for Saria and Kalia, for the future we've sworn to protect.
The couch's patched synthweave bites into my hip, my folly, biting back. Sixty-three years old, and I'm still daft enough to doze off sprawled like a Padawan after a long spar. My neck's locked at an angle that screams regret, joints creaking like the Roamer's landing gear on a cold morning. The lounge hangs dim around me, shadows pooling in the corners, the holo-vid projector's blue flicker its only pulse, a drone weaving through the deeper thrum of the hull like blood through hull-plate veins. My white braid snags on the cushion's frayed seam and I shift, the tug hard enough to make me wince. Dried korva leaves from Tionne's crates in the cargo hold scent the recycled air, earthy and close, her presence tightening something behind my ribs.
My fingers graze the projector, its casing inert and worn smooth from years of handling. I click it off. Blue glow snuffed to nothing. The silence that rushes in is thick, broken only by the ship breathing through its hull, the steady rhythm of a vessel that's outlived the wars it was never built for. I sit up slow, spine protesting, a dull ache spreading from neck to shoulders, rust along a weld seam. Old bones don't forgive a night twisted into couch cushion. The table before me, carved from Yavin 4 timber, bears the marks of our life. Kalia's knife scratches from a game turned rough. Saria's careful etchings of Ossus's kyber-lit dome, lines precise as her diplomacy. Tionne's musical runes glow faint along the walls, silver threads curling like the notes she'd sing, each one a stitch holding this ship together more than any bolt I've driven.
Saria's a Jedi Knight now. Twenty-seven, her path carved clear, her strength a quiet fire that burns without smoke. But Kalia, my youngest, my Padawan, sits grounded on Ossus, her spark dimmed for safety. Thirteen, bold as a blaster's crack, her green training saber should be singing in the Roamer's hold, not idling under another master's watch. I chose to shield her from this mission, from whispers of Sith on Chandrila. Her training stalls because of it, and the guilt sits heavier than the lightsaber at my thigh. Saria's knighthood proves what a Jedi can become. Kalia's still only an ember I'm starving of air. I shake my head, shoving the thought into the hold where I keep the rest. Duty calls, sharp as a vibroblade. Chandrila looms ahead of us, a noble there named Seraphine, a council ally, reporting dark figures, artifacts, a chill in the Force. I adjust my council robes, Noghri leather trim frayed but solid where it catches on calloused fingers. Standing, my boots scuff the deck, plating cool and tracked from years of our footsteps. Varn Kessar at the helm and Sylar Voon on nav keep the Roamer steady, their work a steady pulse from the cockpit I've been avoiding long enough.
The lounge's air shifts cooler near the bulkhead where Tionne's runes pulse, their silver pulse, starlight trapped in hull plating. My hand lingers on a curling glyph, smooth under my thumb, its curve a ghost of the song she carved it from. A thin score runs beneath it from Kalia's training remote gone rogue, a burn mark bright as her defiance. This ship's no polished SoroSuub yacht, not anymore. I found it derelict in Yavin's orbit, a broken shell, and spent years welding it back to purpose, Tionne beside me, EV-9T9's servos whirring complaints. Every panel and every bolt carries our story, a vessel forged from ruin the way I was forged from ruin. I step toward the corridor, the deck plates biting through my boot soles, their edges ground to a rounded flatness by a decade of pacing. The lounge hatch hisses open onto a narrow passage walled in a patchwork of original hull plating and salvaged plates I welded in Yavin's humid hangars, the seams ridged under my trailing fingers. Recessed lumas throw a warm amber wash that catches the training hold's open hatch, and I pause there, drawn by habit.
The hold's padded mats, scavenged from a Rebel-era gym, are scorched black from Kalia's Soresu drills, burn marks curling in patterns I've memorized. A rack of wooden practice sabers lines the far wall, my own carvings, their grain polished by her grip until the wood has gone to mirror. A training remote sits dead in its cradle, repulsors silent, hull dented from strikes she landed with more fury than form. I should be in there teaching her the difference. Instead I stand in the corridor, a man watching his own house through a window.
I move on. The passage curves past the medical bay, hatch sealed, but I see it behind my eyes anyway. Bacta tanks bubbling in blue-green light, EV-9T9's runes etched into shelving, Tionne's herbs stacked neat as battlefield triage. The air shifts, carrying a tang of solder from the workshop. A maintenance panel hangs open nearby, wires spilling, Yavin vine down a temple column, my tools scattered across a workbench bolted to the deck. I forged half this ship's systems on that surface, hyperdrive, shields, cannons, every piece scrapped together from other vessels' bones. The deck slopes upward and the engines' growl deepens, the twin J-77 ion drives a steady heartbeat muffled for stealth. I pass the meditation chamber with its small viewport dark save for the blue whisper of the kyber shard inside. The corridor tightens, plating giving way to reinforced sections where weld lines ridge coarse under my fingertips, each seam a memory of nights spent rebuilding what the galaxy broke. A concealed hatch for the V-65 Land speeder's deployment sits flush against the hull, servos primed, Kalia's low-power scorch marks dotting its frame in constellations only she could map. The cockpit's light spills ahead, its viewport a streaking blur of starlines fading toward Chandrila's curve. I pause, hand finding the saber at my hip, its scratched durasteel hilt a weight that has centered me through three decades of war and whatever this is supposed to be instead.
The cockpit door slides open and I step through, boots firm on polished decking. The Starfield Roamer's nerve center gleams around me, SoroSuub bones refined by Jedi engineers into something leaner, hungrier. The narrow transparisteel viewport stretches wide, hyperspace's blue-white streaks casting soft shadows across the console array. Two padded flight seats hold my crew. Varn Kessar hunches over the yoke, broad shoulders locked, hands unwavering, his entire body a statement that the ship will fly where he points it and nowhere else. Sylar Voon's fingers move across the navicomputer in a rhythm I've learned to trust more than most Force visions, her lekku twitching faintly with each calculation, her focus a blade she never sheathes. The console pulses with Jedi astrogation charts, holographic lines crisp against dark screens. The Class 1.0 hyperdrive thrums warm through the deck, a vibration so constant it's become the ship's heartbeat and mine. Clean metallic air fills my lungs, and the kyber shard in my pocket answers the engines with a faint pulse against my thigh.
"ETA, Sylar?" I ask, voice gravel-rough, slicing through the hyperdrive's drone. I lean against the console, its edge slick under my palm, robes shifting with the motion. "We should be coming up on her soon, Master," Sylar replies, her tone clipped, each word stripped to its load-bearing minimum. Her lekku curl slightly as her eyes flick to the navicomputer's lit keys. I nod, thumb finding the Vjun scar on the hilt, a ridge of memory under calloused skin. "Systems check," I say, voice low, even. "Keep it tight." Varn grunts, hands unwavering on the yoke. "All green, Master." Nothing wasted. Not a syllable more than the situation requires. Sylar's fingers fly across screens that flicker with diagnostics, her precision a mechanism I've staked lives on before and will again. The cockpit's clarity mirrors the focus I need, a Jedi's mind settling before the shadow waiting on Chandrila.
I unclasp my datapad from my belt, its duraplast casing rubbed slick from a thousand missions, and tap the screen. Seraphine's report loads in Aurebesh, the words stark against the backlight. Sith-like figures ambushing a Hanna City patrol near her estate, three dead, their blasters cold on the ground, locals gripped by a fear that bleeds through even the clinical formatting. I study the text, eyes narrowing. The names jump. Sith. Killings. Seraphine's estate, marble and glass, rises in my mind, a council ally tangled in something that tastes wrong, rotten weld joint wrong, a warning before the collapse. "Anything on diagnostics?" I ask Sylar, voice a low growl edged with the tension building in my gut. She glances at her screen, lekku still, mind sifting. "All green, Master," she says, voice precise. "Console's clean, systems nominal." Her fingers hover over the keys as if daring the data to shift. Varn adjusts the yoke with a grunt. "Steady on course." His focus anchors the Roamer the way a keel anchors a ship in crosscurrent, invisible until you need it.
I tap the comms panel, its surface flat under my fingertip, the Jedi-specific scrambler whining to life with a crackle of static that clears to silence, a secure line to Ossus if things go sideways. My hand returns to the saber, its heft a covenant against the unknown. The cockpit air hangs thin and clean, but Seraphine's report sits on my shoulders, ballast I can't shift. I lean harder into the console, its edge biting my palm, grounding me in metal and purpose. The navicomputer pings, its chime a blaster snap through the cockpit's fog. The viewport shifts. Starlines dissolve. Chandrila's blue-green curve swells before us, misty valleys and forests glinting under a pale sun that makes the planet look gentler than any planet has a right to look when you're coming in on a report like Seraphine's. Her estate spaceport glows in the distance as we descend, marble-and-transparisteel courtyard catching light, spires rising, polished blades against the cloud layer. Console screens flicker with landing vectors, holographic lines tracing our approach in clean geometry. The hyperdrive's pulse fades to a murmur, and the J-77s kick in with an even pulse through the deck, the transition clean. A trailing floral scent drifts from the air recyclers as Chandrila's atmosphere creeps aboard, softening the metallic tang into something almost peaceful. Almost.
"Hail the spaceport," I tell Varn, voice edged, saber-slow. He keys the comms without hesitation. "Starfield Roamer, Jedi vessel, ID tag SR-4471, requesting clearance, Seraphine estate," Varn says, his voice clipped, steady as deck plate. The Chandrilan control responds, voice crisp through the comms. "Roamer, transmit Jedi credentials. Confirmed ID tag SR-4471." Varn taps the console, sending the encrypted codes. "Credentials sent." A pause, then control crackles back. "Roamer, ID verified, Jedi credentials confirmed. Clearance granted, vector 3-7, pad 4. Stay on approach." "Copy, vector 3-7," Varn replies, fingers precise on the yoke, banking the ship in a motion so controlled the inertial dampeners barely register it. The estate's spires rise through the viewport, marble bright against misty valleys. Sylar locks coordinates, gaze fixed, holographic vectors locked on her screens. "Pad 4 locked, Master," she says, lekku still, tone sharp but settled. The Roamer descends, landing gear extending with a thin mechanical whine, the deck shuddering beneath me. Chandrila fills the viewport with its beauty, and the beauty is the lie, the mask drawn over whatever Seraphine's report left unsaid. My hand tightens on the saber's hilt, its familiar weight an anchor against the tug of instinct telling me the shadow down there has teeth.
The Roamer touches down, landing gear settling on polished stone with a gentle thud that resonates through the hull. The engines' hum dies, leaving the cockpit wrapped in a silence broken only by Chandrila's floral air drifting through the vents. I stand straighter, robes settling, leather creaking at my shoulders, and scan the viewport one last time. The estate's spires flash under cloud-filtered sun, a calm that doesn't reach the Force. I turn toward the dorsal hatch and find Aurelia already waiting there, her blue-green lightsaber at her side, her nod the kind that costs nothing because it carries everything. "Ready, Master," she says, voice low, a quiet anchor. The dorsal hatch seals behind us with a tight hiss, its metal clang raw as a snapped bone in the stillness of Seraphine's estate spaceport.
My boots grind against obsidian tiles, their star etchings catching Chandrila's pale sun like the cracked plains of Dantooine under my feet decades ago, when I was a boy running from shadows. The courtyard stretches wide, a reflective sea of black stone fringed with jasmine-like trees, petals drifting slow as ash, their scent acrid and floral, cutting through the damp air, a memory I can't afford to chase. Aurelia strides beside me, her saber riding her hip the way a surgeon's scalpel rides a pocket, ready but sheathed, and the Force around her reads as bedrock. My robes shift against my frame, Noghri leather stiff at the seams, catching on fingers weathered by years of wrench work and blade work in equal measure.
The administrative rep, a Chandrilan in crisp silks, adjusts her glasses with a quick flick, her bow curt as a blaster's snap. "Master Solusar, Lady Seraphine awaits," she says, voice even as a Dantooine stream, but her glasses catch the light as she adjusts them again, a nervous tic dressed in professionalism that my training reads before my courtesy can ignore it. My thumb finds the Vjun scar on the hilt, a ridge from darker days I don't think about anymore. Aurelia's steps fall silent beside me, her saber's hilt catching the courtyard's glow in a thin line of light. The rep gestures toward the entrance hall, silks swishing, and I follow, scanning the obsidian tiles where star patterns mirror my shadow, a dead man walking off Dantooine's red earth.
We cross the courtyard, tiles unyielding and flat underfoot, the jasmine scent thickening, cloying now, the rot-sweet air of Yavin's hangar bays after monsoon, when the jungle tries to reclaim every bolt you've driven. The entrance hall opens above us, ceiling soaring with cascading chandeliers that scatter light in fractured constellations across a polished stone floor. Holo-sculptures of Chandrilan flora float along the walls, vines curling, blooms pulsing in soft blues, their projections casting patterns that ripple as we pass. Every surface performing. A faint acoustic buzz drones beneath the opulence, hidden comms whispering surveillance, a sound that pricks my senses, blade-on-skin, before the cut registers. My robes creak with each step, leather protesting, and my fingers curl at my side, not gripping but ready, the space between reaching and holding measured in decades of practice.
The rep leads us through a curving corridor, its floor a mosaic of ancient Chandrilan trade routes in blue and gold that flashes under recessed lumas, the map of a galaxy that trades in favors and debts. Transparisteel skylights span the ceiling, revealing clouded sky, the light shifting and dappled, throwing shadows across the mosaics that twist underfoot like remotes tracking a spar. The rep's glasses flash as she adjusts them, her pace measured, but the twitch in her fingers has sharpened, a frequency change I catalog without comment. My boots scuff the mosaic, its texture a faded braille under scuffed soles, and Aurelia keeps pace at my flank, her eyes flicking to the skylights where the clouds' haze sits heavy and grey, a ceiling above the ceiling. Nowhere to hide in a place this polished. The conference hall's gilded doors loom ahead, etched with swirling vines that catch the lumas' flicker and hold it in their grooves like solder pooling in a weld joint. The rep pauses, glasses catching light one final time, and presses a control panel. The doors part with a grinding mechanical breath, revealing a chamber built to impress and built to contain.
The conference hall stretches vast around us, its scale designed to shrink whoever walks in. A long polished table gleams at the center, reflecting the golden cascade of chandeliers overhead, their crystals trembling with the ventilation's breath. High-backed synthweave chairs line the table, cushions stiff, built for posture, not comfort. The skylights pour clouded light into the room, battling the chandeliers' warmth for dominance, and neither wins. Wall panels shimmer with abstract Chandrilan starbursts, their metallic sheen sterile despite the glow, and six guards in ceremonial armor line the perimeter, the decorations they're pretending to be. Their vibrospears glint. Visors hide eyes that track me with the patient focus of predators who've been told to wait. Seraphine stands at the table's head, silver robes flowing like bacta through a feed line, her smile carefully assembled, hands performing the choreography of hospitality with a precision that reads as rehearsal. A slow pour of Chandrilan wine, a tilt of her head, measured gestures that move too smoothly, the poise of a blade form performed to conceal the killing stroke.
The rep adjusts her glasses and gestures to the chairs, her voice clipped as a trigger's click. "Please, Master Solusar, be seated." I stand unmoving, the kyber pendant beneath my robes hums against my chest, dormant and waiting. Aurelia mirrors my stillness at my shoulder, her blue-green saber poised, her body language a wall drawn in flesh and training. The rep steps back, silks blending against the wall panels until she's furniture. Seraphine's smile widens, and she offers a glass of wine, the crimson liquid catching the golden light, her fingers lingering on the stem too long, too controlled, the way Dantooine's wind goes dead still before the storm that rips the harvest flat. "Master Solusar, a toast to our alliance," she says, her voice smooth as polished Chandrilan stone, her gestures deliberate, a second pour, a nod. "The Sith-like figures troubling Hanna City are mere bandits, stirring unrest among my people." A holotable at the center burns, its display flickering with patrol logs, units moving through Hanna City grids, bandit sightings scattered, meaningless static, and not one mention of the ambush that left three dead with their blasters cold on the ground. My Force senses flare, her lie cutting through the room's manufactured warmth like a cracked kyber's hum through silence. The floral air turns cloying. The overhead light presses down. The skylights' clouded light thickens overhead, a blast shield cycling shut. Her gestures continue, another pour, a smile stretched too thin at the edges, and every one of them rings false, counterfeit credits, wrong weight, wrong sound, the difference between what's offered and what's real. I lean forward, palm pressing the durasteel table, its cold biting my palm, a field forge left overnight on Dantooine, my eyes boring into hers. "Bandits don't attack with precision," I growl, voice low as gravel, thick with the dust of my homeworld. "Seraphine. What game are you playing at?"
Her smile tightens, a fracture in heated stone. The Force surges, danger flooding my senses in a wave that tastes of iron and ozone. Aurelia shifts beside me, hand closing on her saber, her stillness now the coiled readiness of muscle before the strike. The guards' vibrospears catch the crystal light, armor shifting as weight transfers to the balls of armored feet, the room's geometry shifting around the violence they're waiting to commit. Seraphine's hands pause, wine glass hovering, her voice still level but carrying an edge now, the blade showing through the silk. "You misunderstand, Master Solusar. My people need protection, not suspicion." The Force screams through me, a pulse like a kyber shattering in its housing, and I step closer, the saber's hilt tight in my grip, the Vjun scar biting my thumb. "The light binds, not breaks," I say, voice cutting low. "There is deceit behind your words, Seraphine." Her eyes flash, the mask slipping, and the danger around us spikes hot as a blaster's muzzle flash.
Her smile twists to venom, teeth bared, a kath hound's snarl. "You walk around perverting what it means to be the galaxy's protector," she spits, her wrist flicking sharp as a whip. The guards surge before I can draw. Six vibrospears thrusting, stun blasters spitting, the ambush hitting fast and brutal and ugly like a Dantooine dust storm swallowing the plains whole. My hand scrabbles for the saber, Aurelia's fingers clawing for hers, but the guards are already inside our reach, armor rattling, rockfall in a corridor. A ysalamiri's null field chokes the Force out of the room, its silence crushing, the void of a night gone black and airless, stripping my reflexes down to raw flesh and bone where the Force used to live. I duck a stun bolt, its acrid crack singeing my robes, the overhead glow hazing into streaks. Aurelia twists, dodging a vibrostaff, but a stun bolt slams her chest with a dull concussive thud. Her body crumples to the durasteel floor. Silent. Her saber clatters from her hand, unignited, rolling away, a spent power cell off a workbench.
I lunge, deflecting a vibrostaff with my forearm, bone jarring against cortosis-laced metal, the impact a white flash behind my eyes. The guards press from every angle, their visors blank, each blaster butt a hammer driving into my ribs with the mechanical rhythm of men trained to break things efficiently. Seraphine steps close, her eyes blazing with the certainty of someone delivering a verdict she's rehearsed, and slams a blaster pistol hilt into my temple. The crack splits the world in two. "Traitor, you're no Jedi," she snarls, voice cutting through the ringing dark. "The true Order is who I serve." The dark rolls in from the edges, hull breach behind my eyes. My vision blurs. Aurelia's fallen form, her hand still twitching against the cold floor, is the last image my eyes hold before I slump to bare metal, its frost biting my cheek like a winter ground against a boy's bare skin. Then another sharp sensation, a black silence claims the world around me.