Hyperspace falls away with a jolt, the ship trembling with the same stubborn shudder the Mako used to throw after a bad drop, too battered to quit but making sure I knew it was unhappy about it. Its hull creaks under the strain of a thousand patched-up escapes I will never hear the full story of.
And there it is. Coruscant.
It does not just fill the viewport. It swallows it. An impossible sprawl of steel and light welded onto a planet's corpse, a city that ate its own surface and kept building upward until the towers punched through the atmospheric shell and bled into orbital twilight. The scale lands in my chest with the compression the Citadel put there the first time I docked at the Presidium, that recalibration of what "big" means. Far below, hugging the curve of the world, the underlayers flicker with a different kind of light, holosign glare and emergency floods and the glow of a billion small fires, a sprawl that reads like Omega's underbelly stretched across an entire hemisphere and left a thousand years to fester.
I lean a shoulder against the cool transparisteel, arms crossed tight over my N7 plating, the city-world filling the glass until it's the only thing the viewport has room for.
"Hell of a sight," I mutter, the words rough, scraping out small against the beast glaring through the glass.
A clipped synthesized voice cuts through the engine's growl, dry with a glint of mischief.
"Well, it's not exactly tourist-friendly, Commander."
PROXY drifts beside Galen's station, his photoreceptors flickering dull orange in the cockpit's emergency glow, whirring with a cheeky click that bounces off the walls. He is Galen's tether to the world, the humor that keeps the man from drowning in his own head.
Galen does not flinch. He sits hunched over the controls, hands clamped on the console's edges, knuckles stark against the worn metal. A tremor runs through his fingers, faint but steady, the liquor's grip burning through him. His eyes are distant, locked somewhere beyond the viewport, the look of a man chasing what he cannot name. It nags at me to figure out what drives a man like him. What pulls him back. What keeps him afloat instead of drowning. When it sounds like the latter is his goal.
The Rogue Shadow shudders hard, a long protesting groan as it grazes the upper edge of Coruscant's atmosphere. Durasteel plates creak, every weld a different bad day I'll never get the story of. Gravity tugs, pulling my boots harder against the deck, the vibration climbing from a hum to a roar that sinks into my marrow and rattles my teeth. Outside, the city rushes up. Not just towers now but canyons of permacrete and tarnished chrome, veined with rivers of light from swooping traffic lanes, an urban canyon system that makes the Citadel's Wards look like a small suburb.
The cockpit fills with the strain of the engines and the hiss of recycled air, stale and overworked, stinging my nose with hot circuitry and old grease. We angle lower, and through the smog a ruin looms. A massive dome, its spires cracked and blackened, half-swallowed by newer towers that claw over its bones.
"Place looked important?" I grunt, squinting at the wreckage, my curiosity pulling at the edges of what a guest to an entire universe would ponder.
Galen's voice breaks, gruff and low, eyes still on the controls.
"That's where the Jedi fell. Sith tore it all down, turned it into their playground 'til the Empire ate itself."
The words carry weight, a history I had only caught scraps of from Revan, now confirmed from a different angle. Jedi. Sith. Titles that mean power, blood, and not much else to me yet, but I am building the picture, one fragment at a time. What the hell does it all mean? I file it as I file every piece of intel in a new theater, without judgment, with patience, waiting for a pattern to emerge.
Another structure slides into view, a sprawling rotunda, its grandeur chipped and shadowed.
"That one looks like it was even more important," I press, leaning closer to the viewport.
"Senate," Galen mutters, barely a breath.
Something shuts behind his eyes, and he gives the controls a quarter-turn they don't need, but he offers nothing more. Just enough to spark the itch in me, Jedi and Sith and Senate weaving into the picture of a galaxy I am still assembling.
The upper spires fade behind us, sinking away as we drop toward layers where the light turns thick and dirty, holographic advertisements bleeding through accumulated neglect. Level 1313. A lawless sprawl that makes Omega look like a regulated trade hub. My instincts cannot map it yet, but they're already working, filing the traffic patterns, the density of the structures, the way the light sources shift from natural to artificial to improvised the deeper we go.
The comm crackles, spitting static unexpectedly before a voice punches through, rough with a Twi'lek rasp.
"Marek? Stars, I thought you were dead. Rumors said you bit the dust years back."
"Still breathing," Galen voice flat and crisp, "I need a place to land, Talis, for old times' sake."
Talis's laugh grinds out, rough but warm, almost a friend's edge.
"Old times? You owe me from Dantooine, two crates of nova crystals, never paid in full. Krayt Claws nearly took my head when they came to collect."
"Let's settle the debt then. Give me a bay number?"
Static hisses long and heavy. Talis's pause stretches long enough to make anyone think he hung up the call.
"Fine," he sighs, a gruff chuckle underneath. "Bay 56, same spot as always. Don't make me regret this, Galen, you bastard."
The line snaps dead, a fond jab echoing in the silence. Galen gives a fractional shrug, eyes tracing the descent path.
"Old contractor I used to do some work with after my time with the Rebels."
PROXY drifts closer, servos ticking as he angles in.
"Master, your negotiation skills remain... impeccable."
The engines finally choke out, settling into the uneven knock of cycling down, rattling the deck plating under my boots. Beyond the transparisteel viewport, Landing Bay 56 pulses, the sick red-and-green glare of failing holosigns bleeding through layers of grime and damp, glinting off oil-slicked permacrete, the spill catching the light in slow iridescent runnels. The air inside is all burnt wiring and hot metal, undercut by the sour bite of spilled rotgut that clings to the corners. The orange emergency lights stutter, the glow catching on scratches and dents, turning the familiar space into something alien.
I push up from the pilot's seat, planting a hand flat on the console's cool edge to steady the tremor creeping through my fingers. My vision goes loose at the edges, the old familiar pull gnawing at the back of my skull. Habit takes over, a soldier's ritual frayed by too many nights on Mustafar. I reach for my twin sabers, their grips rough and worn under my palms. Clip them to my belt, the weight settling into the worn place at my hip where it always rides. My hand brushes the pouch at my hip and the worn metal of Juno's Rebel insignia presses cool against the pad of my thumb, the scratch pattern mapped into my skin from years of reaching for it. Behind it, Sera's bead, smooth river stone from Kashyyyk's banks, and the warmth of it hits before the weight does, a small thing that carries more than my sabers ever will. My fingers linger, the tremor flaring. Juno's sharp laugh. Sera's small hand. I ball my fist and shove it down. Check the blaster at my back, Juno's WESTAR-34, cool and solid against my palm, another piece of her I carry into battle.
Beside me, Shepard moves with a soldier's routine. His pistol whirs softly, folding tight with a mechanical hum, snapping to his thigh armor with a muted click that barely stirs the stale air. He taps his wrist and a holo display flares, orange light washing his face, hard lines softening for a breath as a photo flickers up, a woman with dark hair framing a sharp face, eyes piercing even in the grainy glow. His thumb hovers, jaw clenching, eyes narrowing, a raw ache spilling out, separation's sting carving a shadow across his face. I catch it mid-motion, the despair, the hollow of losing what tethered a man. My gut twists, Juno's echo staring back at me. He doesn't see me watching, or doesn't care. A low grunt rumbles out.
"Ready whenever you are."
His gaze flicks forward, snapping his wrist clean of the holo. I nod, sharp, turning away.
The ramp grinds down with a screech that claws the air, metal grinding on metal, opening onto Bay 56's cavernous sprawl. The heat hits first, a wave of burnt fuel and stale sweat and a sour bite that stings my throat, rolling over me wet and close until I breathe through my mouth to keep it down. Holos flicker, cheap mods and shadier deals flashing in garish reds and greens, throwing hard slants of light across the permacrete slick with oil and grime that pools in cracks. Shadows loom deeper than they should, figures slouched against crates, eyes glinting under hoods, syndicate goons tracking us with lazy menace. My boots hit the floor hard, the thud echoing in the vast humming space, cutting through the buzz of a bay that never sleeps. My eyes scan slow, slicing through the murk.
There he is.
Talis Vorn, halfway across, leaning on a corroded crate, one boot hooked up on its lip, blaster loose at his hip, a smuggler's ease masking the steel of a vet who'd outrun his share of blasters. I grunt low, rough with recognition.
"Knew he'd be here."
Shepard steps down behind me, posture tight, eyes narrowing at the goons' shadows, missing nothing. PROXY hovers at his flank, photoreceptors glinting red in the wash of the bay's signs, his usual jab simmering under the scars, held back but sharp. My gut tightens. Talis. He is a shard of a life I buried, Rebel runs and Dantooine, here for blood owed, not just credits. The liquor's voice rises again behind my teeth, flask heavy in my coat, but I crush it. Focus. Talis is a mirror I'll have to face whether I want to or not.
He pushes off the crate, boots scuffing through dust and grime, swaggering toward us with a grin that flashes wide, rough and warm, a Twi'lek rasp cutting through the bay's hum.
"Stars, Marek, you look like bantha fodder warmed over."
His whole stance loosens into the old familiarity.
"You've proved those outlandish rumors wrong."
My jaw locks.
"Rumors lie," I bite out, voice low and flat.
Talis chuckles, the sound catching and breaking low in his throat, and slaps my shoulder. Hard. Familiar. A war buddy's touch that lands heavier than it should.
"So, Dantooine, you bastard," he says, grin widening. "You iced that Krayt Claw thug, and left me to deal with cleanup, two crates gone missing too, nearly got spaced."
"Corellia."
I shoot back, meeting his gaze.
"That Hutt run, you ditched me with Tabarith's goons closing in. Barely got out."
Talis roars, the laugh bouncing off the bay's walls, head tipping back with it.
"Fair point, you son of a Sithspawn! Don't you ever let anything change."
The warmth hangs fragile, a thread from a life I lost. Shepard shifts behind me, silent, eyes steady, watching, not judging. Talis's grin fades, eyes raking me, catching the tremor, the hollow stare I can't hide. He jerks a thumb at my ship.
"So where's Juno? Figured she'd have your hide for letting the Shadow rot like this. Thing's a damn disgrace."
Her name hits like a slug round. I freeze, air thinning, the signs dimming, the bay's hum swallowed by a roar in my ears. My hand twitches toward the flask, brushes the glass, clenches it and drops. Silence stretches thick, suffocating.
"She's gone, Talis." The words come apart in my mouth. "Guess the rumors weren't all lies."
Talis's grin vanishes, shock slamming into his face, eyes widening, lekku stilling.
"What…!?" he breathes, then louder, rougher. "What the kriff?"
His hand falls limp, dangling at his side, the smuggler gone, just a man staring at a ghost. He searches me, hunting for a lie, finds none.
"You two were..." he starts, voice dropping, faltering.
I cut him off, the words ripping free, broken.
"We had a daughter, Sera." My voice cracks, halting mid-breath, dropping to a whisper. "Fett… ended her."
My gaze drops to the permacrete, grime blurring, hand falling heavy. Shepard's boots hold steady in my periphery, a silent wall. Talis stares, gutted, face slack, a horror too big for words.
"Stars, Galen." His voice is thick. Raw. "You're drowning in that shit, aren't you?"
His eyes flick to the flask's outline.
"Keeps me moving," I say, barely audible, a truth dragged up from under the drink.
Shepard's stare holds, unblinking, filing it, the cost sinking in. Talis grins faintly and slaps a hand against his thigh, dust puffing off worn pants.
"You're not dragging this crew through shadows tonight, Marek. Crash at my place and we'll get sorted in the morning."
PROXY hums, the dents in his chassis catching the light.
"Indeed, Master. Thicker walls, a locked door sounds most useful."
Talis snorts, quick and gruff, a spark of war-buddy humor lighting the bay's murk for a breath.
He stands there with his eyes locked on mine, waiting for my nod like a squad mate holding a line. I give it, slow and stiff. Acceptance sinks into my bones like damp rotgut settling in my gut. Talis's offer is solid ground, a war buddy's rope tossed across years of murk I can't shake alone. Shepard breaks his silence.
"Your call."
I step to the Shadow's console, fingers brushing the scratched edge. I punch the lock. A low hum kicks up, grinding through the cockpit's bones. The ramp screeches shut with a groan loud enough to shake the bay's stagnant air. Talis watches, arms crossed, boots scuffing the permacrete.
"Don't worry. My pad, my rules," he grunts, voice rough but warm.
"Runs under an old friend's name who no one's sniffing around for down here. She'll be fine."
His eyes flick to the Shadow, its bulk sealed tight under the bay's failing glow, then back to me. A smuggler's assurance carved from years of ducking syndicates and Imps. He turns slow, boots grinding dust into the slick floor, and starts toward a dark passage snaking deep into 1313's guts.
"Move it, you lazy bastards," he barks, warmth rough and real, a war buddy's call ringing off the crates.
We plunge into 1313's guts. Streets twisting tight between massive support towers, Coruscant's structural bones slick with fungal rot that glistens black in the guttering light. The floor crumbles underfoot, broken lips of permacrete snagging my boots, while pipes hiss steam, rust and decay stinking up the air, settling in my lungs with the cling of wet fallout on my armor after a dirty-bomb detonation. Holographic signs buzz fitfully over cramped dens and cantinas, reds bleeding into greens, casting sharp glows on Twi'leks with wary eyes, hulking Besalisks shoving through the throng, and hooded figures slinking into alleys. Pistols glint openly, hands twitching near triggers, eyes following us from shadowed doorways. The desperation is in the stones themselves, every door barred, every hand riding close to a trigger.
My chest tightens. Not fear. Assessment. This is an operational environment I cannot map in a single pass, and the tactician in me hates that. Omega had been bad but contained, a station with finite corridors and an exit you could fight your way to. This goes in every direction, up and down and sideways. Soldier's routine keeps me steady. One foot, then the next. Scan left, scan right. Track the contraband. Note the alleys. File the route for the return trip.
Talis leads us to a nondescript durasteel door, triple-locked, pitted with plasma burns, and shoves it open into a cramped bolthole. Stale cigarra smoke and spilled ale have soaked into the air of the bolthole, walls scratched with Rebel starbirds and crude tags, a holo stutters static in the corner, casting weak light over crates stacked with smuggled goods, unlabeled, and a battered game table ringed with burns. Slatted blinds leak 1313's synthetic glow, reds and greens bleeding through the accumulated grit on the glass.
Talis flops onto a bunk piled with stained flight jackets, grabbing a bottle and three chipped glasses from a crate.
"Best rotgut this side of 1000," he grunts, pouring deep.
Sharp cheap stink hits my nose, alcohol that would strip paint off a Mako's undercarriage. He shoves a glass my way, then Galen's. Galen takes his, hand trembling as he raises it.
"To old friends," he slurs, voice rough, meeting the Twi'lek's gaze.
His eyes slide to me, bleary but warm.
"To new friends, and new alliances."
He downs it in one, grin wide. I smirk, soldier's nod, and lift mine.
"To keeping one foot in front of the other."
The rotgut burns like ryncol, straight through the esophagus and into the gut, the kind of heat that says the drink was not made for enjoyment but for forgetting. I sip. Let the warmth settle.
Talis barks a laugh and slaps the table.
"Drink up, soldier!"
He refills Galen's glass, tops his own. Silence drags rough, 1313's hum seeping through the blinds, Talis spinning half-tales of smuggling runs gone sour, no names, no dates, the practiced vagueness of a man who had survived by never giving away more than he meant to. Galen nurses his second, the drink softening his edges, his grin loosening, his guard dropping only as far as the liquor lets it, when the drink reminds his nervous system what relaxation feels like.
I wait. Let the glasses fill and empty. Let the stories flow. Fourth glass, Galen slurs something about the Hutts. Talis chuckles. I sip, watching the room, watching the door, watching the way Talis's lekku twitch when a topic gets close to something real. I lean in, voice low.
"This level's crawling. Any trouble lately? The odd Sith or two?"
Talis swirls his glass, sipping slow, the humor going out of his face, his grin flattening to a hard line.
"The Sith don't exist anymore, Shepard. Closest I could say is some First Order washouts have been poking around lately. Old troopers though, nothing to do with the Force. We normally don't cross paths, so we pay each other no mind."
His lekku twitches. Eyes glinting. The tell of a man who knows more than he is selling. I file it away.
Fifth glass, Galen's head hits the table. A dull thud, the glass tipping, ale pooling sticky on the floor, grin still plastered on his face. Out cold. Talis lets out a laugh.
"Lightweight."
Sixth pour. I press, casual but firm.
"Those troopers you mentioned. First Order… didn't they have a regiment name the Sith Eternal though?"
Talis sways, glass sloshing, eyes flicking to Galen's unconscious form, then back to me.
"Ain't saying much about them, soldier. You're awfully in the know for not being from around here."
"Come on, Talis. What's got your tongue? For Marek's sake, give us something."
We both glance at Galen, sprawled out, grinning like a damn fool.
Talis chuckles soft, then sighs, rough.
"Alright. For Marek."
He leans forward, elbows dropping to his knees, the rotgut dragging at every motion.
"There's a girl, works a joint I know. She's got this client that's been ranting, throwing around some dead Sith's name the First Order used, 'Revan something,' I think. Claims to be part of your Eternal cult."
Revan. Someone in the First Order's remnant is invoking Revan's name. The man I had left on Mustafar three days ago, meditating at the edge of a lava moat, mask reflecting the light. The man whose legend I had watched bend three Knights to their knees on volcanic glass. The man whose name should not exist in any intelligence channel because he had been entombed for four thousand years.
The tactical implications resolve, one feeding the next. If the Sith Eternal is regrouping under Revan's banner, they are not just rebuilding. They are branding. Recruiting. Turning a name older than the Republic into a rallying flag for whatever comes after Exegol's failure. And they are doing it on Level 1313, in the depths of the galaxy's former capital, where nobody from the surface will notice until it is too late.
"Revan!?"
I keep it low, but the word slips out sharp, soldier's instinct overriding operational calm for a half-second before I lock it down. Talis squints, bleary.
"That hit a nerve? Don't let yourself get scared over dead Sith lords, Shepard."
Voice flat again.
"Well, she worth talking to?"
He nods slowly, slumping back, the rotgut pulling him toward the same unconsciousness that has claimed Galen.
"Yeah. I'll set it up tomorrow evening. Time for sleep now though..."
Talis falls out of his chair and onto the floor.
"That works."
Mind racing. The intel burning behind my eyes, I settle on the couch facing the entrance, Predator within arm's reach on the cushion beside me, positioned so I can clear the door with one motion if it opens wrong.
Sleep comes in fragments. The couch is too short and the air is too thick and 1313's synthetic glow bleeds through the blinds in shifting colors that paint the ceiling in patterns my subconscious reads as threat indicators. I drift in and out, the rotgut's warmth fading, the operational calculations running on a background loop as they always do when I am in hostile territory with no extraction plan.
Then the dream found me again.
The Reaper frequency, that subsonic vibration that bypassed the ears and resonated in the bones, the frequency Sovereign had used on Saren and the Collectors had used on the colonists and the thing had used on the scientists who had spent too long in its proximity.
"Shepard, you're ours. Eternity waits."
The whisper did not come from a direction. It came from inside the dream, woven into the walls of a corridor that looked like the Normandy's CIC but stretched wrong, the angles off, the lights replaced by a red glow that pulsed with a heartbeat that was not mine.
She stood at the end of the corridor. Miranda. Dark hair falling across her face, her catsuit torn at the shoulder as it had been after the Collector base, her eyes sharp and clear for one breath before they went blank, the light going out of them like a derelict when its power core fails. Not sudden. Gradual. The worst kind of dying, the kind where you watch it happen and cannot reach across the distance fast enough.
"Why'd you leave me?" Her voice cracked, soft and pleading.
Her fingers reached for my chest, and I felt the cold of them through the armor, through the weave, through the skin. Real enough to flinch from. Real enough that for one terrible second I could not tell if I was dreaming or if I had woken up in the wrong timeline, the one where the Crucible had not fired and the Reapers had won and everyone I had ever loved was a husk walking the corridors of a dead ship.
I watch as the shadows swallow her whole.
Then, I am awake.
Chest heaving. Sweat cold on my neck. The Predator already in my hand, pulled from the cushion by reflex before my mind had finished cataloguing the room. 1313's glow bleeds through the blinds, shifting reds and greens painting the ceiling. Galen's snoring rumbles from the table where he has not moved. Talis's bulk is a shadow on the bunk he's moved to. PROXY's photoreceptors blink dim in standby mode.
No threat. No Reapers. No Miranda. The room is what it is. A couch in a bolthole thirteen hundred floors below a sky I have never seen, in a galaxy that does not have mass relays or the Alliance or a single familiar star.
My boots hit the floor quiet. Instinct pulling me upright, the dream's residue refusing to lift, that low hum at the base of the skull those nightmares always leave behind, the kind that takes hours to forget. I crack a ration pack, heat water on the busted stove, let the bitter coffee cut through the fog. The mug warms my hands. The caffeine hits my system as I sip. The operational mind re-engages, filing the dream in the same locked compartment, acknowledged and contained, because a soldier who lets his nightmares run his operations is a soldier who gets people killed.
I pull up my omni-tool, the orange glow washing my face in the pre-dawn dark. Miranda and me, a rare stretch of shore leave in the middle of the war, the Citadel party at the apartment Anderson had signed over to me on the Silversun Strip. The one where Wrex had broken the hot tub and Grunt had headbutted the bar and Tali had gotten drunk on triple-filtered turian brandy and sung that quarian folk song that made Garrus pretend he had something in his eye. Miranda's laugh in the recording is sharp and real, the laugh she only let out when the armor was down and the mission was over and we had survived another impossible thing. My arm around her waist. Her head tilting toward my shoulder. The Citadel's lights behind us, the Presidium's artificial sky cycling through its sunset simulation.
"You promised we'd make it."
Not to the camera. To me. Her eyes finding mine with that look that was equal parts challenge and faith, the look that said she had rebuilt me from dead tissue and she would be damned if the galaxy got to take me back.
My thumb hovers over the screen. Jaw clenching. I close the vid. Let the ache sink into the place where I keep it, next to the Virmire call and the Bahak relay and every other weight I carry because stopping is not an option.
The comm buzzes, cutting the silence. Revan's voice crackles through, steady and measured, the tone of a man delivering a briefing from a war room.
"Shepard, status."
"1313," Voice low, one eye on the door, one ear on Galen stirring somewhere behind me.
"We have a lead. Got a girl with a client who keeps ranting 'Revan something.' And First Order washouts, it sounds like. Talis is setting up the meet today."
A pause. Then his voice sharpens, the edge of a commander who has just received intelligence that changes the shape of the board.
"Understood. There is a development here as well. A New Jedi Council ambassador arrived yesterday. I am on my way to determine what they desire of us. Will update when I have clarity into their intent."
The comms then cut out. No goodbye.
Galen stumbles in from the main room, boots dragging on the floor, the hangover heavy in his eyes, locking onto me mid-motion.
"Jedi on Mustafar?" His voice is rough, waking slow, but the operational awareness is there underneath the hangover, the instinct of a man who had spent his life reading the Jedi-Sith axis and could not afford to miss a shift in its balance.
I turn, coffee in my hand.
"Talis spilled last night after you went down. The girl I was telling Revan about, she may know something."
Galen's focus sharpens under the hangover, eyes narrowing, the pilot surfacing.
"Great, it'll be hours before he's up."
Hours did indeed crawl. Talis's snores rumble through the pad until the bunk creaks loud and he stumbles in, moving like every joint aches, face creased with the particular misery of a man who had matched Galen Marek drink for drink and won.
"Kriff me, Marek," he groans, voice gravel, thick with hangover.
Galen snaps up.
"That girl, where's she at?"
Talis waves a hand.
"Same old bullhead, ain't changed a bit. I'll take you."
His smirk twitches, warm under the grog. He stretches, wincing.
"Let me grab some caf and a smoke. My head's splitting. Then we'll move."
I nod. We wait as Talis shuffles to the stove, 1313 waiting beyond the door, in no hurry with the patience of a place that knows there's nothing worth running to.