Chapter Text
The Endar Spire burned like a candle in the vast darkness of space, the rear of the Hammerhead-Class Cruiser aflame with its own fuel, the vast hull shuddering, shielding shimmering in and out of existence. Inside, soldiers raced like rodents trapped inside a maze, watching in horror as beams of light cut through the Spire’s exterior and into her soft belly, Sith in shining suits of armor spilling into her.
Cass hugged the walls tight, tuning out the claxxons as they roared as the interior lights flickered again, the Spire shuddering underneath him as she seized under the strain of her attackers. He could see from the porthole the Leviathan, a sleek Interdictor-Class Destroyer haloed by the atmosphere of Taris, a Sith flagship that had become infamous for its role in the destruction of Telos.
Around him, people were dying, blaster fire ricocheting off of the shielded interior plating, vibroblades humming as they cut through plate armor. He had the premonition that most of the soldiers on the Spire wouldn’t live to see Taris, and then ones that did might not live to see the morning -- though he had no intentions of being one of them.
Lieutenant Cassus Jaylen had survived the Corellian Run; he sure as hell wasn’t going to let the Sith Empire stop him from getting off this ship alive.
Diving around a corner, Cass loosed the flap on his belt, pressing the ignition button on a frag grenade, listening to it as it began to hum, the sound increasing in pitch and frequency as he lobbed it clear across the corridor. The explosion was satisfying and sent the bodies of the Sith soldiers flying, black and silver blurs that smacked into walls, bones cracking sickeningly.
It wasn’t a pleasant way to die, but Cass was unarmed, fumbling out of his bunk in the panic. Right now, he didn’t have the option of giving the Sith a gentler or more dignified death, and even if he did, quick and dirty was what would keep him alive.
“As my father used to say, there are two kinds of people in this Galaxy,” he said to his audience of bodies, kneeling by one of the corpses and pulling the blaster rifle from its fingers, checking to make sure the energy cell wasn’t damaged or unstable. “Those who are dead--”
Cass turned and spun down the hall toward the Bridge, glad that the barracks were so close to the Command Deck. If he could reach the escape pods, assuming they hadn’t already been jettisoned, he could get out of here.
“And those who are alive,” he finished as the ship shook again, his uncanny reflexes saving him from a nasty tumble to the ground.
Cass pressed onward, trying to take advantage of the chaos to slip by the Sith unnoticed, picturing the back alleys of Nar Shaddaa in his mind. If he could navigate the maze that was the Corellian Sector, he could navigate a failing cruiser with locked down blast doors. They were both about as filled with smoke, and equally dimly lit, he thought as he bore a sharp right to travel toward the helm.
Three standard weeks he was aboard this cruiser, three weeks and just like that his first tour of duty as a commissioned officer was about to come to a close. He’d been called in to consult, trained on Coruscant for this, and for what? To slam through Taris’ atmosphere in a metal egg in the hopes that he survived the crash?
Oh goody.
Skidding to a stop, Cass quickly pressed himself into the shadows, his heart leaping at the humming of lightsabers, their glow cast against the walls, warring blue and red. He could hear the grunts of exertion, and though he couldn’t see the duelists, he could well imagine the clash of their blades and the sparks that flew between them.
For a moment, he deliberated, certain the Dark Jedi would try to kill him if he passed, his thoughts interrupted by a loud groan and then the sound of an explosion. The Spire rocked violently beneath his feet and he stumbled forward, catching his hand against the metal, the bodies of the Jedi and her dark counterpart at his feet. It seemed he’d been especially lucky, though a strange awareness tingled at the back of his neck, like… like there was something he had been forgetting.
May the Force be with you.
Shaking his head to rid himself of the sensation, Cass’ grip on the blaster rifle tightened until his knuckles turned white with strain, jaw set into a grim frown. He took a stilling breath and steeled himself, pushing his hesitation and fear of the unknown behind him, drawing instead of the well of pure determination within him.
Pressing forward, Cass made his way to the Bridge without further interruption, forced to shoot the door’s keypad, watching them open with a whoosh of cold air. The bridge itself was now little more than a crypt, eerily silent, the bodies of Sith and Republic personnel alike littering the deck, though there was no sign of the Captain or any of the Jedi he’d been recruited to consult with.
Running a hand over the lower half of his face, Cass cursed loudly, walking over toward the ship’s central terminal to see if he could discern anything from it. In bright red letters, WARNING: POWER LEVELS CRITICAL flashed across the screen, and Cass knew that if he couldn’t get off the ship -- and soon -- he really would crash and burn in Taris’ atmo.
“Son of a Hutt!”
He nearly shot the terminal, for all the good it would do him, but quickly reigned in the impulse. Cassus had a reputation for being a quick draw, clever, and unerringly calm in pressure situations. Giving in to his anger right now would only waste precious time, something he couldn’t afford. He wasn’t about to blow his chances throwing a pointless temper tantrum that might alert his enemies to his location.
A breath whistled past his teeth as he strode toward the second exit, and the second branch, of the ship. The escape pods were on the deck below this one, and he knew Hammerhead vessels well enough to know that there was a service lift to the deck below this one only a few corridors
away. The Sith probably knew about it too, though -- most of them, he reminded himself, had been Republic soldiers once before deserting.
He couldn’t imagine ever betraying the Republic.
“How are you going to get out of this one, Cass?” he muttered under his breath, making his steps as light as he could, though stealth had never been his strongest asset; that honor belonged solely to his sharp tongue. “This is a worse situation than the hold off with the Black Sun. At least gangsters can be bribed --”
Sith were zealots, as Cass was squarely reminded when he approached the group of them guarding the lift and they fired on him without question. There was no reasoning with someone who had dedicated themselves to the subjugation of the Republic and the eradication of all resistance, though he was forced to admit that Malak’s Sith were… far more brutal than they were under Revan.
He’d been evading or fighting the Sith for as long as they had existed, smuggling goods past their blockades and the Interdictor Destroyers. Cass knew the Sith, knew how they thought and, most importantly, knew how to fight them.
Standing his ground, he slung the rifle into position, letting instinct take over his actions. He’d learned long ago that instinct was a better guide in piloting and fighting than any astrogation chart or special scope could ever be. Instinct could compensate for things that the senses alone could not.
Firing off a single shot, Cass watched the blaster bolt pierce a chink in the first Sith’s armor, cutting clean through his abdomen. As it rang out, Cass found himself firmly in the state of mind needed for fighting, everything else fading until his focus was a pin prick.
He rammed the butt of his rifle into the soldier that charged him, hard enough that he stumbled backward. Taking advantage of the man’s lost balance, he reached out with his free hand and grabbed the blaster pistol from the Sith’s belt, firing off a round at the Sith who still shot at him from a distance. He watched the man crumple onto the ground, quickly sidestepping a long swipe from a vibroblade, spinning to find the final Sith recovered and charging at him.
“Catch,” Cass said with a lopsided grin, tossing the blaster rifle at the advancing soldier.
The man jumped backwards to avoid the weapon, but that gave Cassus enough time to act. With a speed that was nearly superhuman, he turned the blaster pistol on his opponent, unleashing a stream of blaster bolts at key weak point. The Sith collapsed, and Cass leapt at the opportunity to kick the vibroblade from the Sith’s hand, shooting him in the stomach to end the threat.
“Take that, you chrome-plated schutta.”
Tucking the blaster into the holster strapped to his utility belt, Cass opened the door to the emergency lift, edging the body of one of the Sith out of the way with his boot. He knew he couldn't be far now, he thought as he leaned against the outside of the lift and looked up at the dim red and orange lights above his head. The Sith were unlikely to have spread far onto the lower floor, most of their energy concentrated on crashing the ship, not commandeering it.
Things would have been different under Revan, who prefered to take prisoners and convert them to his cause, even if he had to torture them to do it. Cass had nearly been taken a few times himself, back when he’d owned a freighter, before a Republic Recruiter in the Dealer’s Den had stumbled upon his sense of patriotism.
His stop came, and he crept from the creaking, whirring lift into the bright light of one of the lower corridors. The hallways here were less damaged, which confirmed his suspicions that there were fewer Sith on this deck. That alone would explain the few escape pods he had seen jettisoned; the Sith probably didn’t care about a few low-ranking officers or soldiers escaping, not when they were here for the Jedi.
Not when they were here for Bastila Shan.
Besides, the very presence of an Interdictor Destroyer, especially the Leviathan, probably meant that Taris was already under blockade. Vaguely, Cass thought that Malak would have been more intelligent to let the Endar Spire dock and take the Jedi into custody that way, but he doubted the man who had bombed Telos was capable of that kind of subtlety.
Hanging a sharp right, Cassus headed toward the escape pods, paying attention to the sounds of the ship around him. Above, he could hear the sounds of battle, distant through the heavy alloys that composed the Spire, but around him all was quiet save the humming of the white lights above. It didn’t take him long to find the right room, after all he’d been on Hammerhead Cruisers before, opening it to find it already occupied.
“Another survivor?” The man was wearing a naval uniform, red, black, and orange, a look of relief on his face; Cass didn’t miss the insignia pinned to his jacket -- Captain. “I was starting to worry no one else would make it out.”
“It was close,” Cassus admitted. “But I’d get out of here now, if I were you. The Bridge has been taken. There’s not many people left alive -- The Sith are killing everyone they come across.”
“I’m not surprised,” the man said, brushing his hand over the stubble on his chin, his dark eyes casting a worried look about the room. “But you’re right. We can’t waste time here -- Bastila’s already left.”
Of course she had.
Cass wasn’t actually that surprised that the Jedi had already abandoned ship, but couldn’t help feel annoyed about it anyway. Wasn’t it the job of the Jedi to protect everyone else? Even if Malak was after her, Jedi weren’t supposed to fear death or capture, so all these people had died for no reason, just to cover her escape.
He wouldn’t die for her.
“Come on,” Cass said, punching a sequence into the screen next to the last escape pod. “We don’t do anyone any good by staying on this flying crypt.”
Regret rattled around in the cage of his chest as he looked back over his shoulder, wishing he could have done more for whatever survivors there were, before he plunged into the darkness of the escape pod. Inside, the blue and green lights of the interface screens hummed with quiet energy, growing more intense after the man slipped into the vessel after him and the door closed with a loud hiss as the airlock sealed.
“Lieutenant?” The Captain asked as he sat down on the opposite side of the cramped orb, for all the good it did him -- Cass was tall, and took up enough space that he already felt like the walls were closing in on him. “You’re the one who transferred onto the ship with the Jedi, aren’t you? The new officer?”
“And you have to be Captain Onasi,” Cass said, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath as escaped lurched beneath them and then shot off toward Taris, where it would be dragged into the planet’s atmo. “I’ve heard stories about you.”
If the man answered, Cass didn’t hear it beyond the sound of an explosion and the sudden jarring pain in his head, accompanied by a ringing in his ears. Hissing, he doubled over, curling in on himself, trying to fight against the sensation of being pulled underneath dark waves, struggling to breathe.
It was a losing battle.
Darkness consumed him, dragging him down into its depths, the screaming of the pod as it passed through the atmosphere a poor lullaby to sing him to sleep.
The bridge of the Behemoth was shadowy and cold, awash in the sort of hate he’d only felt before in the presence of the Sith. Not the soldiers, who felt just like any other person, or the Dark Jedi, who felt like a well of selfishness and anger. No, this was the presence of a Sith, the complete absence of mercy and warmth only felt in company of those who had embraced a philosophy that put power above compassion.
It manifested like a chill, creeping about his ankles, hanging like a shroud about his shoulders. The source was obvious, the shrouded figure of the Dark Lord, who seemed to leech light from the air around him, draining all warmth from the room.
Across from him stood the Jedi, the anathema to his darkness, easily overwhelmed in the wake of his incredible power. They broke against the wake of his wrath, cut down, their feeble light snuffed out like a candle in a hurricane. There was nothing they could have done to stay standing, the darkness of the Sith so overwhelming that none of them had any chance of defeating him, not without intervention from the Force.
“The situation is bleak,” said the voice from beside him in a tone of agreement, causing him to recoil as he turned and found the dark entity standing at his side. “Though I don’t know why you care. If the outcome is their failure, you benefit.”
Cass opened his mouth to protest, but the man held up his hand to silence him, staring directly into his face. The Sith had no features, just a distinct black and red mask, one which the smuggler recognized almost immediately as belonging to Darth Revan, the Lord of the Sith.
“I don’t want to hear you argue with me,” the Sith said said in his altered voice, deep and mechanical from behind the mask. “I know what benefits you better than you do, little bird. You can try to fly away, but you can never escape your past.”
“If you’re trying to intimidate me, it’s not going to work,” Cass said, even as the cold that emanated from the Dark Lord penetrated his clothing and raised the hairs on his arms to painful attention.
“Intimidate you?” Lord Revan sounded amused, the world around them wavering as another image came into sight, that of a woman in gold, her face obscured by light, her core that of molten fire. “I’m trying to help you.”
He walked toward her, robes trailing after him like a shroud of darkness, dissipating into the air, tendrils of cold and black slithering along the ground after him. The freezing center of the Dark Lord wavered in the woman’s burning heat, the blackness of his soul warming to uncertain silver, snow melt after a long winter.
“Beware Bastila Shan,” said the Dark Lord, drawing away from the Jedi. “She’s young, brash… but powerful in ways she does not yet understand. Do not allow her to have undue influence over you, Jaylen. She could shake the core of who you are.” Revan reached out a black hand toward her, gauntlets grasping her blazing heart and squeezing, his darkness seeping into her like a poison. “Snuff out her light, taint it. Don’t waste a resource like her. Call to her and she will come.”
“I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about buddy, but if you think you can just tell me what to do--!!”
The words seemed to rush from his lungs, the breath to speak stolen from his lips, and he could feel Revan’s eyes on him, so cold that they burned him. Fear threatened to consume him, but he fought against it, squeezing his eyes shut as he struggled to breathe while he tried to quell the emotion in his chest.
“You’ll do it because it’s in your best interest,” the Dark Lord said. “And because your best interest is the best interest of the Galaxy. You wouldn’t fail them, Jaylen.”
He tried to break the Dark Lord’s mental grasp, but his will wasn’t strong enough, and he flailed uselessly and silently in the wake of Revan’s hatred. Whatever this was, whatever the reason for it, he couldn’t fight back, and that terror alone was enough to make him struggle more desperately.
Beneath them, the Behemoth began to shake like the Endar Spire as she slowly began to break apart under fire. The Dark Lord turned away from him, looking toward the depths of space, which burned orange and red with the light of explosive plasma colliding with the Behemoth’s shielding.
“Remember, bird -- beware Shan. She could be your unraveling.”
He looked over his shoulder, and for a moment, Cass could swear he saw a glint of pale yellow from the depths of the mask, the eyes of a predator glaring from the darkness. The sight made his blood run cold as he ceased struggling, those words making his chest constrict for reasons he couldn’t quite grasp. It was like chasing smoke, trying to figure out why the words inspired such desperation in him, understanding dancing just beyond his grasp.
The Behemoth shook again, and Cass was knocked off balance, watching in mute horror as he tumbled to his knees and the Dark Lord was consumed by fire. The ship itself began to combust, heat chasing him across the bridge, jolting him awake, his mind immediately fogging, recollection lost in the terror of the nightmare.
He was left with the sense that something important had just happened, but he couldn’t recall exactly what it was. It felt hollow, empty, on the fear and the phantom heat of the Endar’s flames lingering on his neck.
Wait… Wait…
The Endar Spire!
“Son of a H--”
“Whoa, hey there!” A hand pressed to Cass’ chest, pushing him back down onto a bed, even though the last thing he remembered the burning Spire and the tiny escape pod stuck in the wake of its fiery death knell. “Calm down there, Lieutenant.”
Cass drew in a sharp breath through his nose, trying to fight against the urge to sit up and struggle against the hand on his chest. An ill-thought out, impulsive reaction wouldn’t do him any good right now, not when he had no idea where the hell he was or who the hell he was with. Instead, he struggled to remember what he had been doing before he’d woken up, thinking about the Spire, the escape pod, Jedi Shan, and the man he’d escaped with…
“Captain?”
“Good. I thought you’d hit your head so hard you were never going to wake up.” There was a thoughtful pause and then a sigh as the hand retracted, allowing Cass to slowly push himself into a sitting position. “Glad to see I was wrong.”
It took a moment for Cass to adjust to the dim overhead lighting of the small room, but when he did, he saw the grizzled and drawn face of Captain Onasi looking down at him. His backdrop was little more than a closet covered in construction with a door off to one side that Cass was willing to bet lead to a tiny refresher.
“Whatever this place is, it looks like someone’s still doing work to get it up and running,” Cass said, rubbing the front of his head to find it bandaged with a piece of old cloth; tarp, maybe? “Taris…?”
“We’re in an abandoned apartment in the Upper City, Lieutenant,” Captain Onasi adjusted the chair he was sitting in, tipping it back on two legs. “I dragged your unconscious ass here after we crashed to avoid the Sith patrons. Most of the other tenants in this neighborhood are aliens, so no one is questioning our presence.”
“Right. Taris is infamously racist. No one is going to whistleblow if we give them space,” Cass said as he ran his hand over his lower face, finding stubble already growing there, rough against his palm. “No wonder my stomach feels like a bottomless pit. I’ve been out at least a day. Have any water?”
The Captain nodded, reached out to a nearby desk that Cass hadn’t even noticed, dropped his chair back to the ground, and pressed a canteen into Cass’ hands. “There are some nutrient bars in the pack over there,” he said with a nod toward the foot of the bed. “I grabbed what I could when the alarms started blaring, but it’s not much. It will have to last us until we can get off this rock.”
“Tell me what happened?” Cass asked, pressing a button and listening to the locks on the canteen hiss as they opened, pressing the opening to his lips before taking a long drink.
“There’s not much more to tell,” said the Captain with a heavy shrug. “I got here and did some scouting, but I can’t figure out what happened to Bastila Shan, only that her escape pod crashed in the Undercity and that everyone in this damn place is looking for her. The Exchange wants her because they want to sell her to the Sith, the Sith want her because Malak wants her, and the civilians want her so the Sith get off their planet.”
Cass nodded as he leaned forward and reached out for the pack. “I saw the Leviathan from the Command Deck on the Spire. If an Interdictor Class ship is here, you can bet your ass that it’s a blockade. These poor idiots never had a chance.”
As he rummaged through the bag for the (tasteless) nutrient bars, the Captain continued to speak. “The thing is, we don’t really have a choice but to find Bastila, either. As far as I figure, she’s our best way out of here. All of this was her mission, after all, and she may still have information relevant to the Jedi Council, which means we have to get her back to them in one piece.”
“Play the good Republic Soldier, right?” Cass asked with an arch of his eyebrow as he pulled apart the foil. “Save the Jedi, maybe get reassigned somewhere less stressful? Except not.” He took a bite of the nutrient bar and chewed thoughtfully, swallowing before he continued. “Big Hero is like all Jedi and has the gravity of a small star. We’re both doomed to get pulled into her mission by proving ourselves brave and worthy, and they’ll tell us it's our destiny.”
“You have a better alternative, Lieutenant?” the Captain didn’t sound defensive, just resigned and tired, tugging at his beard as he spoke. “The Sith might destroy everything if she doesn’t get back to the Jedi. She’s the only reason we’ve won any battles against them at all.”
“No. I don’t,” Cass admitted, crumpling the wrapper in his hand. “I just think it was a mistake to kill Revan. The Jedi have only made the Sith Empire more unpredictable. It would take a miracle to save us now, and the Jedi won’t provide it, especially not in the form of some spoiled Jedi Princess.”
“How can you possibly think leaving Revan alive would have been a good idea? You didn’t even fight in the Mandalorian Wars. You can’t know what it was like, what he did. How he betrayed us,” the Captain cut himself off and breathed out a sigh, as if forcibly releasing his anger from his body. “Listen. I’m not here to argue politics with you. I think we can both agree that we have to get off of Taris as soon as possible, and that Shan is the best way to do it. What matters is figuring out our next move.”
Cass nodded and swung his legs over the side of the bed, pulling the makeshift bandage from his head and musing his long, dark hair so some of it hung over the small gash. “First of all? Medpac. I can’t be walking around looking like I got hit in the face with a stun baton. Then we gather some real information. You’re lucky I used to be a smuggler, Captain.” He offered the other man a lazy, easy smile to try to break the tension between them. “I know how to get information out of the locals, but --oh. You’ll want it to be a low class cantina. The rich don’t say anything interesting.”
Something about Cass’ demeanour must have put the man at ease, because the Captain quickly relaxed and stood, the chair scraping against the metal floor. “Call me Carth. We’re going to blow our cover pretty early if you keep calling me Captain.”
“Cassus Jaylen,” said Cass as he stood, holding out his hand and looking down into Carth’s face with an easygoing smile still plastered on his lips. “Call me Cass.”
“What the… You’re as tall as a Wookie,” Carth said as he took Cass’ hand and shook it.
“Not remotely, but it’s hard to tell when there isn’t a Wookie around to compare.” Cass pulled away and turned back to the pack to rummage for a medpac. “Got any weapons around here? I know I was carrying a blaster pistol when I was knocked out. I’m not going out there unarmed.”
“I stowed them in the lockbox under the bed. Let me… Let me get them.”
Cass stabbed the medpac into his leg to administer the kolto while Carth worked on getting the weapons, finding himself fully armed but a moment later. Carth was shrugging off his officer’s jacket and stashing it in the lockbox, which he shoved back underneath the bed, leaving him standing in a t-shirt and a pair of heavy canvas pants.
“Ready to go, Cass?”
“I was born ready, Carth,” Cass said, turning the safety on his pistol off.
He had the nagging feeling he’d need it, and his instincts were never wrong.