The shuttle's engines snarl like a turian drill sergeant chewing out a raw recruit, the hull rattling as we claw our way out of Yavin 4's crumbling orbit. That red jungle haze smears into the black, a fading wound I'd rather forget. My hands clamp the controls, levers and flashing junk as alien as a Keeper's console, no rhyme or reason to the layout. I've patched worse on the Normandy with Joker's whining ringing in my ears, so this isn't a death knell yet. Just a damn close call. The viewport clears, stars stabbing through the dust, cold and precise, and I let out a breath I hadn't clocked I was holding.
"Well. Still alive. Call it a draw."
Revan looms behind me, a shadow cut from the cockpit's thin glow, his violet saber clipped to his belt now that the chaos has dialed back to a dull roar. His scarred face is all sharp edges and quiet steel, composure earned by staring down something worse than death and deciding it isn't worth the flinch. But his eyes carry a flicker. Curiosity, bare and uninvited, the kind that doesn't mesh with the warrior carved into his posture.
One second we were gutting synthetic freaks, the next he had their escape route pinned down with the calm certainty of a man reading departure boards. I'm not sold, not fully. But with Yavin 4 a glowing wreck and whatever it was now tearing through the system, I'll tag along with the glowstick mystic until a better play shows its face.
I jab the console, squinting at the tangle of switches and a screen spitting static, a fried relay feed.
"Alright, let's see what this rust bucket's got."
I flip a toggle that makes the engines rasp lower, a throaty vibration that crawls up my spine and lodges in my teeth. Revan doesn't twitch, just watches me like I might initiate the self-destruct sequence. Decent odds, honestly.
"You don't steer these things with that mind trick of yours, do you?"
I toss him a grin, probing the edges of his stone wall.
"The Force shapes will to need."
His gaze catches on my wrist as the orange glow flares across the panel. Of course it does. The man probably flew warships with his mind in whatever old campaign he crawled out of, but that look tells me something different. He's studying my tech like I'd study a Prothean artifact, hungry the way a cartographer goes hungry when the map runs out.
"Great, I'll stick to swearing at it 'til it moves."
I slide my hands over the panel, muscle memory kicking in, years of jury-rigging the Normandy's guts with EDI's precision and Tali's workarounds paying off in ways neither of them will ever know. A nav screen blinks up, coughing out a star map I can't parse, all jagged lines and symbols that might as well be finger paintings. My tool whirrs, syncing with a glow that breaks it down, light fanning out across the mess and dragging sense out of gibberish.
"Engines are weak as a salarian's handshake."
I scowl at the readout as diagnostics scroll in a language my tech half-guesses at.
"This thing's damn slow. Barely got us out of orbit, and that's pushing it."
I scroll the map, fingers twitching over the controls.
"Those cloaked bastards must've hitched a ride off-world already. Probably had a bigger ship waiting. Closest pit stop's Kaelis Outpost. If we limp there, maybe we could find something that can catch up to them."
Revan nods, the silence heavy and deliberate, a man running calculations behind walls I can't breach.
"Mustafar lies far beyond this system. We need a vessel to cross the stars swiftly. Their trail will not linger."
His eyes go back to my wrist, taking its measure like it's one more system he intends to crack.
"Kaelis Outpost is our path."
"Yeah, about that."
I punch coordinates into the panel with a little extra force.
"You're locked in on this fire world deal. What's the play from your mind-reading, crystal ball?"
Inside, I chew it over. How is he so sure? Mask, Mustafar, destination, purpose, all laid bare like a man who's already read the last page. He's my only lead out of this mess. I'll roll the dice until I have a better hand.
Revan steps closer, voice flat and certain, no give in it.
"The Force reveals intent. Their greed burns bright, a hunger for what was mine, a strength beyond their grasp."
The weight in his tone is almost reverent.
"Uh-huh. That's real poetic."
I keep it light, but his certainty needles at me, a splinter lodged too deep to reach.
"Hope it's worth the trip, 'cause I'm not big on sightseeing in places that want to kill me."
The shuttle jolts as I lock the course, engines groaning in protest.
"Hang tight. This heap's not built for speed."
The next few hours are a slow bleed. The shuttle limps between stars, a wounded animal dragging itself home on spite alone. Every creak and groan from the hull spells out how close we cut it, the engines digesting their own components, the frame shuddering with every stray bit of Yavin 8 debris pinging off the plating. I lean over the console, coaxing the thrusters for any scrap of push, my wrist glowing as it runs scans on systems I'm learning to read by feel rather than label.
"Come on, don't give out on me now."
I tweak a dial as a red warning blinks. Fuel low, or maybe something structural. The map shows us inching along, sublight only, no relay snap or FTL hum to punch us forward. Whatever those cloaked figures jumped in, it wasn't a wreck like this one. They've left us in the dust.
I glance out the viewport. Yavin 8's debris has faded to a speck in the black, a ghost of that entity we outran. Revan stays quiet, staring out at the dark, his presence a steady weight at the edge of my awareness. He doesn't fidget, doesn't pace, just stands there, rooted, letting the silence accumulate. It makes me miss Garrus cracking wise over a busted scope or Wrex rumbling about gutting something before lunch. I tap the panel again and it spits a warning, something about thrust alignment or maybe just general mechanical resentment.
I smack it with a grunt. It steadies, grudgingly, and I shoot Revan a look.
"Will your Force magic fix busted thrusters?"
"Patience aids where haste fails."
His face doesn't move, but his eyes cut to my wrist again. The man is a fortress, and somewhere under all that stone he's curious as a kid who just found a working relic in the scrap. Makes me wonder what kind of wars carve someone like that.
"Tell that to the hull after we rattle the panels loose."
I lean back as the shuttle holds its shaky line for now.
"Guess you've seen worse than this pile falling apart."
He doesn't crack. He pulled his weight back on Yavin, and that saber isn't just for show. I'll take the stoic over a chatty liability any day of the week.
I rummage through the cockpit, boots scuffing the grimy floor, looking for anything useful. A locker in the corner catches my eye, dented, half-open, left behind in whatever rush sent those cloaked figures running. I pry it wide, my wrist flaring to cut the dark, and find a stash. A handful of metal chits stamped with some angular script I can't read.
"Hmm. Looks like our friends left us a tip."
I pocket them. Revan glances over, head tilting, but he doesn't ask. Just watches. If these things pass as cash at Kaelis, we get to eat. If not, I'll improvise.
The black stretches on, cold and endless, and I keep at the controls, nursing the shuttle through every stutter and complaint. A small asteroid looms sudden, spinning lazy in our path.
"Shit."
I yank a lever. The shuttle lurches hard, engines screaming as we swerve, the hull scraping something with a screech that sets my teeth on edge. The rock spins past, missing us by a margin I'd rather not calculate, and I let out a low whistle.
"Too close. This thing's got no reflexes."
Revan doesn't flinch, doesn't even blink, steady as a man who's already done the math on dying and filed it away.
Kaelis Outpost looms after hours of babysitting this wreck of a ship, a grimy metal ring orbiting the gas giant, corrosion and neon sputtering in the black, a back-alley beacon gone sour. The docking bay is a mess of jutting pylons and stuttering lights, spacers shouting over clanging metal, the sound bouncing off every hard surface until it blurs into one continuous wall of noise. I wrestle the shuttle in, aiming for a slot, but the controls fight me, sluggish, the engines gasping out their last useful effort.
"Come on."
I yank hard as we veer, scraping the hull on a pylon with a screech that would wake a husk swarm. The shuttle jolts, clamps thudding into place, and I power down the shuttle, exhaling with a sharp sigh.
"Smooth as a varren's hide."
I shake my head with a smirk on my face as I stand.
Revan trails me out the hatch, silent as we hit the deck, the air sour with spilled fuel and old sweat, traders haggling in guttural tongues I can't pin swirling around us. The station is a dive. Greasy cantinas leak stale fumes through open doorways, holos stutter with ads for junk nobody will buy, and spacers eyeball us with the calculating focus of people measuring how much we're worth stripped down to parts. My boots clang on the grated floor, my wrist whirring as I sweep the crowd, its light cutting through the fog of smoke and desperation.
Revan's eyes rake the docks, sharp and unblinking, reading the station the way I'd read a battlefield, cataloging threats and exits in a single sweep.
"An echo stirs here. Something dark. Half-there. I cannot name it."
His brow creases. I raise a brow, tapping my tool on reflex, sensors sweeping. Static, garbage signals, too much clutter to isolate anything clean. A dock thug lumbers over, big, scaly, face like a smashed crate, barking something I don't catch, one claw jabbing at my chest.
"Back off, ugly."
I step in, the omni-tool snapping a hot flare across my wrist in warning. He snarls, but a look from Revan, cold, unblinking, the kind of stare that carries the weight of not being impressed, sends him slinking back into the crowd.
"Thanks for the backup."
I tip my chin his way. He doesn't nod. Just keeps scanning, like the station's pulse is talking to him.
We push through the chaos, the deck a tangle of crates and buzzing signage, until a thin ping sounds from my sensors. A cantina ahead, green neon bleeding over a door that reeks of desperation and stale brew.
I nod that way.
"Worth a look? Could use a drink after all that."
Revan doesn't argue, just follows, robes brushing the filthy floor as we step in. The cantina is rough. Tables gouged with scorch marks from weapons I don't recognize, smoke layered over a chemical bite that catches at the back of my throat, alien growls dueling a jukebox's static whine in a contest nobody is winning. A few heads turn. Grubby spacers with greasy hair, a bug-eyed creep twitching in the corner, a lizard-faced thug glaring at us like we'd insulted his drink. Most stay hunched over their cups, drowning something they won't name. I slide into a corner booth, its cushions torn and leaking foam, and wave at a service mech creaking by on treads that squeal with every rotation.
"Two of whatever won't kill us."
I wave it away as it beeps and rolls off, gears protesting the request.
Revan sits across from me, a steady anchor in the cantina's noise, his eyes stripping the room layer by layer, reading the patrons and then reading past them.
"That blade of yours. How's it cut like that? Saw it slice whatever attacked like it was butter. Never seen anything burn so clean."
I nod at his saber. I've been chewing on it since the jungle. The weapon moves through metal and flesh with zero resistance, no heat bloom I can measure, no energy signature my sensors can classify. It breaks every rule of physics I've learned and a few I figured out by getting shot at.
He glances at it, weighing every word before releasing it.
"Kyber binds it, a living crystal, tuned to will. It channels the Force, sharpens intent into form."
There it was again, that focused curiosity surfacing, bright and unguarded in a way the rest of his face never is.
"Your tool. It also bends steel with light?"
"Something like that."
I lean back as the mech drops two mugs of brown swill, sloshing a little over the edge onto the scarred table.
"Hard-light edge, eezo core. Cuts, hacks, fixes damn near anything. Saved my ass more times than I can count."
I sip the slogwater. Bitter as a krogan's idea of hospitality, with a kick that burns all the way down and keeps burning even after it arrives.
"This could strip a hull bare. Your war tales got any brews this nasty?"
His lips twitch. Barely, but I catch it. I'll take it.
"Cantinas, yes. On Dxun, after battles, soldiers, Jedi, those who followed me. Mud and ash clotted the air, but not this... draught. Warriors gathered, faithful or broken, nursing what remained. Yet the weight lingered, choices that broke us, lives lost."
His eyes darken, staring into the untouched mug, shadows pooling in the liquid that have nothing to do with the cantina's bad lighting.
I nod, the grin dropping away.
"Yeah, I know that weight. The Reaper War, every day had a call like that. Lose a squad to save a city, trade a planet for a fleet. Watched good people fall 'cause I picked the bigger fight."
I take another swig, the burn steadying me, a familiar sharpness to focus against.
"Synthesis was supposed to be the end. Merging us with machines, ending the cycle. Guess I screwed that up too."
Revan's gaze meets mine, sharp and knowing, not just curious anymore. Something behind it has shifted, recognition working in behind his eyes.
"The Mandalorian Wars. I led thousands to die, to stop a worse ruin. Jedi called it betrayal. I called it need."
He pauses, then adds, quieter.
"Your Synthesis... a choice I might have made myself."
"Damn."
A low whistle escapes, the weight of that sinking through me and coming to rest near the bottom of my ribs.
"We're both fools for having to make the tough calls, then."
I raise my mug, a half-grin tugging my lips, the grim recognition that the man across from me walked the same path through a different war and came out just as broken.
"To screwing up for the right reasons."
He doesn't lift his. But something eases at the corner of his eyes, the ghost of acknowledgment that I'd bet my armor is the closest he gets to a toast.
"To purpose."
The air between us eases. Two soldiers who bled for their worlds and broke to save them.
"You've got a hell of a grip on that blade. Takes more than a crystal to move like that."
"Years honed it, through wars that sundered worlds. The saber is nothing without the hand that holds it."
His voice steady but distant, somewhere behind the walls. He pauses, eyes tracing my arm.
"Your power. Does it rise from within, or from that device on your arm?"
"My Biotics?"
I flex a hand, a thin blue shimmer playing under my skin, the eezo nodes in my nervous system answering the flex the way they always do, an involuntary pulse I stopped noticing years ago.
"Born with it, juiced up by an implant in my skull though. Lets me push, pull, smash whatever gets in my way."
I tap my wrist, the orange display flaring to answer.
"This little beauty's a different beast. Think of it as a 'do everything' device. You must run circles around folks with that Force trick?"
"Often. Armies have shifted, mountains moved. It answers will, not flesh alone."
An edge creeps in. Memory or pride, I can't tell which. His gaze holds mine, sharp and searching, piecing me into his framework.
"Quite the image. We'd have cleaned house together back home."
A rough voice cuts through the cantina's drone. A spacer at the bar, half-drunk, yelling over the din with the confidence of a man who owns nothing and therefore has nothing to lose.
"Those First Order bastards ran this sector like a damn prison camp back in the day, all stormtroopers stompin' around, TIEs overhead, enforcing their rules. Thought they'd own the stars 'til they lost the war seven years back. Rumor is they left a scout ship in a hurry when the fall happened, sittin' there, rustin' away."
He laughs, a wet hacking sound, spilling his drink as the crowd mutters around him.
I lower my mug, glancing at Revan.
"First Order, huh? That tingle your Force magic vibes?"
His eyes narrow, a crease forming, the same look he wore just hours ago.
"A whisper in the noise. But it pulls us forward."
Vague as hell, but enough of a thread to pull on. I fish out a few of those metal chits from the shuttle stash, figuring they'll pass here, and toss them on the table. The mech beeps, scooping them up with mechanical indifference, and we slip out. The cantina's noise fades as we walk further into the station's guts.
The third level is a maze of corroded hangars and dim lights, corridors coiling tight, the air sour with sulfur and grit that crunches under my boots with every step. Revan takes the lead, steps sure and deliberate, tracking something through the station's bones that I can only take on faith.
"It's stronger here."
His hand brushes a wall, oxidized flakes crumbling off in his wake, his fingers reading the surface by touch. I keep my omni-tool up, orange glow slicing the dark, but the readings stay choked, too much interference drowning any clean signal. We push through the maze, checking bay after bay. Locked shells with dented doors. Empty husks stripped to bones. Nothing worth spit. A wiry spacer with a scarred face blocks one, barking something about dock fees in a guttural snarl, his hand twitching toward a weapon at his hip.
"Move."
My voice flat, putting enough behind it to make him recalculate. He spits, stepping aside, but his eyes track us, ambush-patient. Revan's teeth set, that dark resonance chewing at him, and I'm about to call it quits when my tool flares twelve bays down, a sharp blip cutting through the noise clean and bright.
"Got something."
My voice low, picking up pace as my heartbeat kicks up a notch.
Bay 17's door looms ahead. Corroded, bolted tight, a slab of metal that looks like it hasn't budged in years. My tool reaches for the lock, orange tendrils flaring, but it fights back, circuits older than dirt. The lock has been commanded to stay shut. It intends to die trying.
"Open up, you stubborn bastard."
Sweat beads on my brow as I tweak the signal, the whine rising as it wrestles the mechanism. It clicks after a tense struggle, the door hissing open slow, spilling dim light on what looks to be a military ship. Black hull patched with decay, angular wings dulled but carrying the hard geometry of something built for war, not commerce. Every line of it screams old battles and the people who didn't come back from them.
"Well, damn."
I circle it, boots crunching on grit and scattered bolts.
"Looks like it's been sitting since those First Order clowns bailed. Beat to hell but hopefully still functional."
My sensors whirr, snagging a thin power trace. Still kicking. Barely. The difference between a ship and a coffin comes down to what I do in the next twenty minutes.
Revan steps up, hand hovering over the hull, eyes narrowing as he leans in close.
"Darkness clings to this vessel. An old will, half-there but real."
I raise a brow, but the chill in his tone sticks to my skin despite the station's stale heat. This isn't just scrap. It has a story, and it isn't a happy one.
"Let's pry this relic open."
I sync my wrist to the hatch. The light flickers, but it stutters, controls bucking hard, nothing like the Prothean interfaces I cracked before. Those at least had a logic you could reverse-engineer once you found the pattern. This is just obstinate.
"Son of a."
I grind my teeth as the signal sputters, the system's guts fighting every move. I adjust, forcing the tool to adapt, its whine rising as it claws through layer after layer of encrypted junk.
Sweat trickles as it finally clicks. The ramp drops with a heavy thud, kicking up a cloud of dust and stale air gone to rust and old coolant that hits me square in the face. Inside is cramped. Black panels scratched and faded, a cockpit stuttering with half-dead readouts, light dim enough to make everything look like after-action photos. My tool flares again, jacking in, but the systems buck another time, a tangle of wires and code that doesn't want to play nice. I curse under my breath, hands flying as I force it to mesh, slow, messy, until it starts to respond, grudgingly bending to me.
"Not as smooth as I'd hoped, but she'll move."
I wipe my brow as I drop into the pilot's seat, hands on controls. Levers and switches, a damn museum piece, no labels, just guesswork and grit.
"Alright, clunker, any chance you'll cooperate without a motivational speech?"
A bitter nod to the gap where EDI's voice should be, silky and precise, correcting my inputs before I finished making them. No voice here. Just dead air and a dash that screams junkyard reject. Revan stands beside me, watching, his shadow steady in the stuttering light.
"Does your vessel normally require flattery to function?"
His voice dry. A rare crack in the granite that catches me off guard.
"Only if I've caught her on a bad day."
Vents hiss, a light blinks green, and a shrill whine screeches from somewhere low in the ship's gut.
"Where's the damn lift-off? I've seen rachni wrecks with more life!"
The cockpit shudders, a groan rolling through the frame as I fumble a lever, and I curse.
"What the hell… built by a blind batarian?"
Revan watches, the dry edge still there under his calm, and I keep at it, refusing to let a dead man's ship win. My tool flares, threading the navi computer slow, light turning gibberish into coordinates I can actually use, bit by stubborn bit.
I find and lock Mustafar's heading as the panel chirps, finally yielding control.
"There we go."
The systems settle into a thin drone, signaling life.
We undock, the bay doors grinding open, and I nurse the ship out, scraping the hull on a strut as we clear the slot.
"Real graceful."
I power up the thrusters as the station shrinks behind us, its neon glow fading into the black. The console blinks, a new term surfacing on the display. Hyperdrive. I scowl, tapping my sensors as they pull data.
"What's this 'hyperdrive' crap?"
Revan leans in, pointing to a red lever on the dash, calm as ever, like he's run this jump a thousand times and never once found it worth remarking on.
"Set it free."
"Set it free? Real helpful."
With my brow up, I yank the lever hard, fingers tight. The engines roar to life, a jolt slamming me back into the seat as the stars smear into streaks outside. My gut lurches, the viewport blurring with a speed I can't quantify. No relay snap. No smooth FTL hum. Just bone-rattling force applied directly to everything I'm made of.
"Holy shit, that's a ride!"
I laugh, the rush hitting hard, adrenaline spiking as my teeth clack together.
"Alright, I'll give it, rough as hell, but it's got spunk!"
Revan stands steady, voice cutting through the rumble.
"Effective, if crude by your standards."
A hint of amusement lingers in the words, and I grin as the black swallows us whole.
The deep stretches out ahead, stars streaking past like tracer rounds as we burn toward a fiery world, two strangers in a scavenged rig chasing a thread through the dark on nothing but a feeling and a hunch. My omni-tool pings, snagging a half-buried log in the ship's systems, garbled static, words cutting through: power failing, repairs incomplete. I glance at Revan, his scarred face steady in the cockpit's weak glow, unreadable as ever.