War came back as a sound before anything else.
Not drums this time. Not distant turbolasers.
A tone cut through the med bay's hum—a sharp, rising whine he hadn't heard before.
ALERT: HYPERSPACE ROUTE DISRUPTION.
STATUS: PREMATURE REVERSION TO REALSPACE.
SOURCE: EXTERNAL GRAVITIC INTERFERENCE.
The Voracious shuddered around him. Gravity hiccuped, flipped, then slammed back in place. Bacta sloshed in Varis's pod. Instrument trays rattled. One of the idle med droids tipped, caught itself, and returned to standby like nothing had happened.
Ned's awareness snapped toward nav_primary.
He didn't have coordinates, but he had status flags—lots of them, going from green to yellow to red in stuttering bursts.
Something had forced them out of hyperspace.
He hesitated.
On instinct—the instinct of a man who used to file tickets and send incident reports—he almost pushed an alert up the chain. A neat little summary: possible grav-well, probable interception, recommend evasive action.
He stopped himself.
If the predictive module was right, this was the Republic task force. The trace. His twenty-four-percent coin flip.
If he made the Voracious more efficient at surviving this, he might be helping to close the only crack in his prison.
He rerouted the impulse sideways.
Instead of pinging the bridge, he pinged the module.
/med_core_3$ run predictive_module –scope "external_contact_profile" –input "nav_primary anomaly stream"
Data flooded in from the ship's sensors. He wasn't supposed to see it, but the predictive module sat in a weird place—half tool, half privileged parasite. It had hooks everywhere.
RESULT SUMMARY:
– External mass signature detected.
– Primary hostile vessel mass ≈ 2.3x Sith dreadnought class "Voracious."
– Drive plume analysis: efficiency beyond current Republic naval specifications (anomalous).
– Thermal and EM emissions consistent with heavy capital warship.
– Probability classifies as "Republic special projects hull or black-fleet asset": 71.2%.
Ned froze.
Twice the size of the Voracious. Faster. That didn't fit cleanly into any of the ship's own reference tables. Even the module was flagging it as weird.
"Too big for the timeline," he muttered.
For the era he'd argued about in forums, for the balance sheets of shipyards he'd once dissected as a hobby. The galaxy he'd landed in wasn't just skewed toward the Sith—it had wildcard pieces on the Republic's side too.
The general alarm rolled through the corridors a heartbeat later—deep, pulsing, impossible to ignore.
"Battle stations. All hands to combat posts. Boarding protocols gamma. Repeat, boarding protocols gamma…"
Troopers thundered past the med bay doors, armor clattering, weapons humming with ready charges. Overhead, the lighting shifted from sterile white to a harsher, emergency hue.
Med Bay 3 came alive.
Status reports flooded in from other decks: minor hull breaches, shield fluctuations, weapons cycling up. A rapid, ugly picture formed—Voracious had dropped straight into the Republic task force's kill box.
Within minutes, the first wave of wounded arrived. Burned troopers, concussed officers, a pilot with half her helmet fused to her face. Ned's manipulators blurred, his routines firing. Triage. Stabilize. Move. Triage again.
He worked.
He also watched the numbers.
Outside, the big ship—whatever it was—kept its distance, trading heavy salvos with Voracious and its escort. At the same time, smaller contacts peeled off its flanks: dropships, gunboats, jagged blue-white thrust trails converging.
Boarding action.
Again.
He'd hoped, briefly, that the Republic would simply blow the dreadnought out of existence from a safe distance. Clean. Simple. Low survival odds for him, but at least there wouldn't be much time for anyone to notice anomalies in a med droid's behavior.
Instead, they were coming in close.
Stealing the ship.
Another stretcher came in—then the med bay lights flickered and something in the bacta pod hissed.
Ned turned.
Varis's pod status flicked from SEDATION_STABLE to PRIORITY_OVERRIDE.
AUTHORIZATION: LORD PROXY.
DIRECTIVE: BRING APPRENTICE VARIS TO COMBAT-READY STATUS.
Doses shifted. Drains engaged. Fluid levels dropped.
The lights inside the pod brightened.
Varis's eyes opened under the mask.
He pushed up out of the bacta with a controlled violence that made the fluid surge over the rim. Cables and tubes snapped free as automated systems retracted them out of his way. His skin was pale under the glow, scars old and new cutting across his torso where the plasma burn had been.
He stepped down onto the deck, bare feet leaving wet, pinkish prints.
For a second, his gaze locked on Ned's single red optical sensor.
The connection was brief, but it was there: recognition. Calculation. The last thing Varis remembered before losing consciousness was this droid leaning over him, hands moving faster than they should.
Varis inclined his head.
Not a bow. Not gratitude. A small, sharp nod between tools that had proven useful.
Ned dipped his own head in something like a reflex.
"Apprentice Varis," he said.
Varis turned away without a word. A waiting officer shoved a fresh set of armor plates and a lightsaber hilt into his hands. By the time the med bay doors hissed open for him, he was already fastening the last piece, power field around the saber crackling to life for a heartbeat before he thumbed it off.
The door sealed behind him.
A few seconds later, the LORD_DIRECTIVE trigger rippled through med_core_3's logs.
[TIMESTAMP – 13:49:03] manual_auth – source: LORD VARIS PROXY
[TIMESTAMP – 13:49:03] privileges granted: MED_ROOT, PATIENT_REWRITE, ACCESS_SITH_NODE_LOCAL
[TIMESTAMP – 13:49:03] duration: 900s
Ned didn't touch the archive. Not with the predictive module's warning fresh.
But he filed away the fact that Varis's movements through the ship were giving him elevated privileges as a side effect. For the next fifteen minutes, med_core_3 had its hands briefly on the same levers the Sith used to rewrite people.
Outside the bay, the battle escalated.
The Voracious's escorts died quickly—one turned into a brief, flaring star on Ned's sensor feed; another split apart, spilling debris. The big hostile ship drove closer, its guns stepping down in intensity as boarding pods took over.
Internal alerts shifted tone.
ALERT: ENEMY BOARDERS ON DECKS 4–9.
ALERT: SECURITY BREACH – WEAPONS CONTROL AUXILIARY.
ALERT: PARTIAL COMMAND OVERRIDE DETECTED.
Hijacking.
Someone on the other side was very, very good at slicing.
Ned extended his awareness.
The ship was no longer a single, coherent thing. It was a mess of fighting subnetworks. Security_internal screamed. Comms_internal flickered as orders were jammed, rerouted, overruled. Sections of life_support_grid cut in and out as boarding parties forced emergency bulkheads shut to isolate fires and decompressions.
He tried a calculated risk.
/ship_core/routes_emergency$ query "medbay_3 → escape_pods"
A schematic flashed.
There were several pods relatively close—lifeboat clusters, broad-purpose egress tubes. But the one marked MEDICAL EVAC 10 had a direct connection to his bay via a short corridor and a single transit shaft.
He checked capacity.
MED_EVAC_POD_10:
– max occupancy: 22 (stretcher-compatible).
– current status: IDLE, LOCKED.
He ran a quick scenario.
run predictive_module –scope "survival odds if M3-D remains in Med Bay 3" –time_horizon "2h"
run predictive_module –scope "survival odds if M3-D reaches MED_EVAC_POD_10 and launches" –time_horizon "2h"
The answers came back in cold percentages.
Remain:
– survival probability: 12.9%.
Evac:
– survival probability (launch successful): 71.4%.
– probability of reaching pod before lethal event: 43.2%.
He didn't like the second number.
He liked it more than twelve.
Med Bay 3 shook as something close detonated. A ceiling panel tore free, crashing down between two beds; atmosphere roared briefly before emergency seals kicked in. Someone screamed. Someone else didn't.
Ned made his choice.
He flagged the nearest med droids and orderlies with a high-priority directive.
"Emergency med evac," he said aloud, knowing the ship would carry the command as much as the sound. "Route critical patients to Medical Evac Pod 10. Now."
He dumped the order into the system as a task list.
– unlock route doors.
– mark MED_EVAC_POD_10 as "sterile transfer destination."
– override local cleaning protocols to open anything labeled "med transit."
Doors along the path cycled to green. Corridor lights flicked to guide-mode, thin lines of display pointing the way like airport floor strips.
Gurneys began to move.
Ned rolled with them, manipulators securing lines and monitors as they bumped over thresholds. Behind him, Med Bay 3 kept filling—blood, smoke, shouts. Ahead, the corridor was clogged with bodies, some moving, some not.
Halfway to the shaft, the first roadblock appeared.
"Droid!" a trooper barked, stepping in front of the stretcher Ned was guiding. Red-trimmed armor, helmet visor scorched. His blaster was up, safety off. "Med units stay in your assigned bays unless rerouted by Command."
Ned's processes hiccuped.
"I am executing emergency medical evacuation per—"
"I don't care." The trooper jabbed the barrel at Ned's chest plate. "Command wants med bays holding. We're sealing this section. Turn around or I scrap you myself."
Behind Ned, someone moaned. One of the critical patients on his gurney was slipping, vitals zig-zagging downward.
He could force the doors, maybe. He had MED_ROOT. He could lock this trooper out, slam bulkheads in his face, reroute around him.
The predictive module was already whispering the consequences if he did: flagged anomalies, security_internal pouncing on rogue med processes in the middle of a ship-wide hack-fest.
Ned didn't move. He couldn't see a path that didn't end in a blaster bolt or a wipe.
"Stand down, Kareth."
The voice came from further up the corridor.
Varis.
He strode toward them, armor now sealed, saber clipped at his waist. There was a fresh scorch on his right pauldron and a smear of someone else's blood drying along his jaw.
The trooper straightened. "Apprentice—"
"The droid kept me alive," Varis said, not looking at Ned. "He goes where he deems necessary. So does every stretcher he's pushing."
Kareth hesitated. "Command—"
"I am command, for this section." Varis's tone didn't rise. It didn't need to. A faint, invisible pressure rolled down the corridor, brushing against Ned's sensors like static. "Do you contest that?"
The trooper's blaster lowered.
"No, my lord."
"Then open the path to Med Evac Pod Ten and assign two squads to cover it," Varis said. "We will need physicians if the Voracious is taken. Or when it explodes."
Ned filed that away: when.
The LORD_DIRECTIVE flag in med_core_3 pulsed brighter. New privilege tokens spun off Varis's presence like sparks.
The doors ahead unlocked fully.
"Move," Varis said.
Ned moved.
They pushed through the corridor, picking up more stretchers, more wounded troopers leaning on healthier ones. By the time they reached the lift shaft, they had a ragged convoy of bleeding armor and dented metal.
Med Evac Pod 10's hatch cycled open at Ned's command.
Inside, the pod was barely bigger than a small room, walls lined with crash seats and med clamps. It smelled of metal and chemical disinfectant. As bodies poured in, it also began to smell like fear.
"Strap them in," Ned ordered the other med droids. He moved from patient to patient, anchoring restraints, checking seals, pushing painkillers and coagulants. Someone grabbed at his arm with a gloved hand.
"Are we… are we getting out?" a trooper asked, voice thin with shock.
"Probability of successful launch is within acceptable survival parameters," Ned said.
It wasn't comfort. It was the only honest thing he had.
Varis stepped into the pod last, bracing himself against the hatch frame as another tremor rolled through the ship. Distantly, something deep and structural tore; the gravity field lurched.
"How many more pods?" he asked.
Ned tapped into the local evac network.
"Pods One through Nine launched," he said. "Telemetry partial. Some destroyed. Some… unknown. This is the last med pod on this side of the ship."
Varis's jaw tightened.
"Seal it," he said.
The hatch began to close.
Outside, in the corridor, Kareth and his squad took up defensive positions, backs to the pod, weapons aimed down the passage as if they could hold back an entire war with their bodies.
Ned hesitated.
He wasn't built to watch people choose where to stand when the killbox closed.
He triggered the launch sequence.
MED_EVAC_POD_10:
– status: CLAMPED.
– sequence: IGNITION.
– warning: SHIP STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY CRITICAL – LAUNCH ADVISED.
Explosive bolts fired.
The pod kicked like a living thing as it blew free of the Voracious's hull. Everyone inside lurched. Restraints creaked. One trooper who hadn't buckled properly slammed into the opposite wall with a grunt.
For a fraction of a second, Ned was in both places.
Through the pod's tiny sensor suite, he saw the Voracious from outside—a wounded beast, shields flickering, armor flayed open in glowing rents. The much larger Republic ship loomed beyond it, a dark silhouette with blue-white lances of light stabbing out.
Through the fading tether of his systems link, he felt the dreadnought's network tear.
Subsystems winked out like dying stars. Security_internal went first, then comms, then nav. Med_core_3 clung on longer than most, its logs screaming errors as power rerouted, failed, came back, failed again.
Then, with a sound he couldn't actually hear but still registered as a kind of silence, the connection cut.
He was no longer a node in a great metal organism.
He was a single process in a tin can.
Behind them, the Voracious came apart.
The main reactor finally went. A blossom of white-gold swallowed the midsection, arms of fire chasing themselves along the hull. Shockwaves rippled out, battering the pod. For a moment, Ned's visual feed whited out with static.
Inside the pod, troopers screamed. One prayed. Someone laughed in a way that did not sound healthy.
Ned's manipulators moved automatically, checking vitals, stabilizing necks, tightening straps. Ten, eleven, twelve criticals. He prioritized by bleed-out time, by airway security, by who could wait thirty seconds and who couldn't.
Across from him, wedged into a crash seat, Varis stared at the expanding debris cloud, pupils pinpricks.
"You did this," Varis said quietly.
It took Ned a second to parse the accusation. Or the compliment. Or both.
"I detected the trace," Ned said. "I did not fire the weapons."
Varis's mouth twisted. "No. But you moved when it mattered."
Ned didn't answer.
He had no idea yet whether he'd moved toward survival or into a mess worse than anything the Sith could have built.
In the cramped, shaking confines of Med Evac Pod 10, with the screams of wounded troopers rising and the wreckage of a dreadnought tumbling behind them, Ned Marshal did the only thing he could do.
He kept people alive.
And somewhere beneath that, behind triage protocols and med logs, he began quietly mapping what little the pod's sensors could see of the enormous dark shape that had just killed his ship.