“Stars take you, Besrik. If I catch you sniffing around my bunk one more time–!”

“Hey, hey, take it easy! I just… uh… I was looking for my lost ocular lens. Yeah…”

Nerva held Besrik harder against the wall, her forearm against the Mon Cal’s throat. She pulled her fist back, but before she could make contact with the slicer’s face, a flash of red hair and venom appeared in between them.

“Enough! Save it for the Hidden Chain,” Vizla barked, displeased.

Nerva stepped back one pace, glowering. Maybe she couldn’t talk back to the old Mandalorian, but she could damn well give her the best glare she could as she walked back and dropped down onto her bunk.

“Thanks, boss. I–”

Vizla whipped around to face the Mon Cal. “Can it, Besrik. I don’t pay you to antagonize the rest of the crew. Now get back to work.”

The slicer looked around the room, as if Vizla had been talking to someone–anyone–other than him. He opened his mouth to reply, thought better of it, then rushed out of the crew quarters. Vizla followed, a storm of restless irritation, and when she cleared the door, there he was. In the hallway. Looming, like he always did, since the day they busted him out of that cell.

Unsettled by the Sith’s scrutinizing gaze–sharp as a blade despite the hint of exhaustion around his eyes–Nerva quickly pulled one of her vibroknives into her lap, cleaning it with an uneasy vigor. She kept her eyes down, her hands busy, until she felt that dark looming presence finally disappear from the corridor.

Letting out a slow breath, she set the vibroknife aside. Without its familiar weight, her hands shook, and she closed her eyes to try and calm down. But instead of regaining the control she felt slipping away, she heard voices. Two of them, Vizla and Besrik, all the way across the safe house. The Mando was giving the slicer orders for his next mission, with a colorful promise of what would happen to him if he messed things up.

Back in her bunk, Nerva smiled. Weeks without Besrik’s stupid face around every corner, always getting in the way–wonderful.

— — — — —

“Don’t know why she cares that Besrik is missing. He’s useless,” Nerva grumbled, watching Vizla from across the old warehouse they picked for a rendezvous. She was laying into Besrik’s go-between, the one who was supposed to deliver the Mon Cal slicer’s latest haul.

The old Sith was there too, in his usual spot next to Vizla, arms crossed impatiently over his chest despite his outward impassivity–unimpressed with the reasons the go-between had shown up empty-handed.

“Besrik was our ticket to this moon that Heta Kol’s taken over,” Barlit shrugged and rubbed the back of his closely-shaved head, awkwardly folding the tree trunks he called arms and leaning against the door to the back alley they were meant to be guarding. “How’re we gonna get there now? We’re toast if we fly through Sith space without a way to take the heat off us.”

“Don’t give him that much credit,” Maelee scoffed, tightening the straps securing her bandolier around her torso. She gestured with her head toward Vizla and the old Sith. “Nothing’s gonna stop those two from getting to Khar Shian.”

Barlit and Maelee’s back-and-forth faded from Nerva’s awareness. The shouting across the room had stopped. Besrik’s broker was nowhere to be seen. Yet Nerva could still hear Vizla and the Sith trading barbs, as clearly as if they were standing where her crewmates were now.

“I did not take you for such a fool,” the old Sith growled. Nerva’s skin crawled, and she risked a glance toward the pair. Vizla was pacing next to the Sith, like a starving nexu in a cage that was too small.

“You have a better idea?” Vizla snapped, not bothering to raise her eyes from the floor as her footfall continued to beat its steady rhythm.

“The Stygian Caldera is not like an enemy line you can break. It is unpredictable, treacherous to the ill-prepared.” The Sith stood firm as he watched, unmoved by Vizla’s agitation. “You are right to want to avoid detection in any region controlled by the Sith–but without preparation for the nebula’s dangers, the only assured outcome is disaster.”

“Alright. So be a Sith. Tell me how else we get into Sith space. Without getting caught.” Vizla’s boots continued to pound across the metal floor.

“We don’t. And your bullheaded fixation on avoiding bloodshed is slowing us down!”

“Then what the hell did I break you out for?” Vizla stopped suddenly, fire blazing in her eyes as she cut the old Sith off with her vicious criticism.

He uncrossed his arms slowly, purposefully–the way Nerva might unsheathe her best blade. “Without my help, you would have failed in your pursuit of Heta Kol long ago.” He stepped toward Vizla, towering over the Mandalorian’s unflinching form.

Nerva’s skin prickled–she could feel the roiling turbulence, sparking dangerously between them, ready to combust. Maelee and Barlit watched in surprise as she hustled toward the standoff.

The old Sith’s words became clearer the closer she got to them, the closer he got to Vizla.

“Your mind is as clouded by obsession as it was the day you first appeared outside my prison. I believed that determination would see us through to the end, but you have no focus to your anger! This blind desire to kill a petty malcontent who holds no real significance… it serves neither of our goals.”

Nerva cleared her throat–what she thought she needed to do to get their attention, to cool their anger–but she could already feel the old Sith’s scrutiny on her, even while his eyes were burning into Vizla’s.

“What happened to Besrik?” Nerva winced inwardly. They’d never buy that she actually cared enough to ask.

“He’s done.” Vizla’s eyes stayed on the old Sith, the clipped words for him alone. “We’ve got a new way to get to Khar Shian.”

Nerva glanced between the two. “So, what do we–”

“Ne’johaa! Stop asking questions,” Vizla snarled as she rounded on Nerva. “We know where the traitor is–now we just have to get there. Nothing more to it than that.”

The old Mando looked past her, where Barlit and Maelee were joining the group. But before they got too close, Vizla strode past them all, beckoning with a rough wave of her arm and a barked order.

“Let’s move!”

Nerva didn’t have to see Barlit and Maelee to feel their apprehension as they left. When she moved to follow, something kept her rooted to the spot… the old Sith and his looming presence next to her, watching Vizla storm away.

“Why do you serve her?”

His cold voice made her stop, flinching at that word. Serve. It made her feel sick, off-kilter, wrong.

For a moment–no longer than it took to half-form the thought–she considered walking away. But she shrugged as she turned, a gesture of nonchalance that she definitely didn’t feel.

“You can’t beat the credits.”

“Liar,” the old Sith growled as his sharp eyes studied her–limbs stiff and expression arranged with fabricated defiance–for something he could believe. “You are not a Mandalorian, yet you make her battles your own.”

“And you don’t? Or was this whole trip just a chance for two old friends to catch up?”

“Such presumptions. Shae is beyond capable. She is powerful. Loyal. But our partnership only exists because the Force has twisted my path with hers…”

Nerva could practically feel him poking around her mind as he spoke, like he would pry understanding from it himself even if no words were said out loud. She shook her head, a futile attempt to make the chilling sensation go away, but he didn’t relent:

“You follow her, when you could carve your place in the galaxy with the raw power at your fingertips. Why submit to this existence, to the company of loathsome slicers and aimless mercenaries, when you could have more…? When you could be everything?”

“Because I don’t want to,” Nerva bit out; the unsettling feelingthat his presence evoked finally broke her restraint. “It’s useful, the Force–but I know what happens to the people who have it, once you Sith throw them into the meat grinder. Into the academy.”

She let her opinion linger, dripping with bile as he listened.

“And I wasn’t lying, about the credits. Vizla has always made sure my pockets are so full, I never have to work for any other boss. Less risk that way–I don’t have to worry about some greedy womp rat turning me in for a fat payday. So yeah, if she needs me, I’m there. Seeing as how I owe my freedom to her and all.”

The old Sith stood up straighter as he sneered. “If that is what you truly believe–that your freedom is a debt that must be repaid to another–then you are not free at all.”

“Fine. I’m not free. But I’m not dead either–and that’s because of Vizla.”

“And that is your only concern?” The old Sith’s eyes narrowed, picking apart every disappointing detail in Nerva’s answer.

Suddenly, she could feel the shrewd analysis that seemed to pour from his gaze start to pull back. His cold words still pressed down on her as he turned and walked away, but that suffocating energy that always clung to him finally started to dissipate.

“Yeah! Staying alive is a prettybigconcern!” Nerva spat at the old Sith’s retreating form. “But I know that’s something you Sith can’t wrap your heads around.”

He stopped, stood still for a moment that seemed to stretch on forever. Nerva felt her fingers go numb–what was she thinking?

“The Sith do not understand many things.”

The old Sith’s voice was even and cool–the opposite of what Nerva expected to hear. His words were filled with a conviction that only the fearlessly unwavering truly know. “They refuse to see; how many paths to power truly exist… how many of them they do not control.”

He looked over his shoulder, and from the little of his expression that Nerva could see, he was… tired. But the glimpse of it was brief, quickly smothered and replaced by the hardened glower of a battle-tested warrior leading his armies on the trail of conquest.

“Stop hiding from your strength. When this is over, find one of these paths. Forge one, if you must. Walk it, face its tribulations, master its limits. Make it yours.”

The old Sith walked on as soon as the command had left his mouth, but Nerva didn’t follow. His words shifted, in and out of her focus, one phrase coming into sharp clarity as he rounded the corner.

“When what’s over?”

She couldn’t stop from calling out. But the only answer she received was the fading thud of the old Sith’s boots on the ground.

— — — — —

Click… Click… Click… Click… Click…

The sound was almost deafening in the unusual quiet of the safehouse. The crew hardly ever had any downtime, but Vizla was taking her sweet time telling them what their next move would be. So Barlit was getting in some target practice, Maelee was on a supply run, the old Sith was… Nerva didn’t really want to know what he was up to.

She stopped in the corridor when she identified where the sound was coming from: the compact space–that barely counted as a room–that the crew used for a kitchen and makeshift mess hall.

Nerva poked her head in; Vizla had her back to the door, one leg propped up in the seat next to hers, her head bowed and her thumb flicking the button on her holocomm. On, then off. On, then off again.

“In or out, Minerva. You know I hate that sneaking around osik,” Vizla grumbled.

Nerva obliged, pulled out another chair, and sank into it.

“I’ll remember that, next time you ask me to get the drop on some Hidden Chain,” she smirked, leaning back. But that constant sound–the clicking on the holocomm in the silence that followed–made Nerva’s eye twitch. Just to be spiteful, she nearly pointed out that Vizla was about to have them “sneak in” to Sith space, but before she could–

“Malgus thinks I need to rally my people–have them take us through Sith space.”

The old Sith’s name set Nerva’s teeth on edge, even more so than the slow click, click, click.

“As much as I hate saying it… maybe he has a point.” Nerva paused, but Vizla didn’t respond. The old Mandalorian stared, taut with determination, at the holocomm. Her knuckles whitened as she gripped it harder, her thumb still toying with the button.

“I could hear what he was saying. About the Stygian Caldera, how dangerous it is.”

Click, click. Click, click.

Nerva sighed. Was she really going to make her do this? Make her agree with the old Sith? She didn’t want to–but the doubt and the uncertainty in Vizla’s head was calling to her, louder and more unnerving than the clicking.

“I know you don’t have a plan to get us through the nebula. So… if we can’t get in the back door, what’s wrong with fighting our way to Khar Shian?”

Click, click. Click–

Nerva’s eyes dropped to the holocomm, to where Vizla’s thumb had finally stopped moving that blasted button back and forth. It was quiet enough that Nerva could practically hear the gears whirring in the old Mando’s head.

Click.

This time, the sound was decisive. The channels on Vizla’s holocomm crackled open, and she squared her shoulders, like she was steeling herself to make a call. The seconds ticked by–but she kept silent, kept watching the device, hesitating like she was desperate for it to speak first. To tell her the right course of action.

“Sith love their cannon fodder. Doesn’t matter how many verde they lose, as long as they win the battle. I can’t even count how many soldiers I’ve seen die at the end of their own master’s lightsaber.”

Nerva looked up again. Vizla’s gaze was still fixed to the table in front of her as she spoke, but she was leagues away–charging with an Imperial vanguard in a time before she had so much weight on her shoulders.

“I never could see eye-to-eye with my bosses about that, when I was on the Empire’s payroll. It’s why I kept kicking up a fuss until they let me work with someone like Malgus. He was one of the only darjetii who always chose honor–even if it meant he had to find another way to get the job done.”

Vizla’s irritated huff broke the silence.

“But now… when it’s my people on the line… he wants me to throw them into the fire. Use them as shields and step over their carcasses on the way to Khar Shian.” She turned the holocomm off with one last click and shoved it away from her.

Without conscious thought, Nerva’s hand shot forward, blocking the holocomm’s path as it skidded across the tabletop. She leaned back again as she withdrew her arm.

“I have no idea what goes on in the old man’s head. I don’t want to know. But maybe he suggested it because he knows it’ll work. I mean, if Mandalorians can’t pull off tearing their way through Sith space, what chance do we have?”

Vizla narrowed her eyes at her, and for a moment, Nerva felt how she did when the old Sith shot her that same look: picked apart and scorned for not seeing things the right way.

“They are not cannon fodder.” Vizla scowled and shot up from her seat. Her glare fell to the holocomm on the table again, her fists clenching and releasing in a steady cadence. Like the click of the call button, back and forth. Like the options in her head that she couldn’t choose between.

“I’m not gonna call up anyone and ask them to take hits for me, just because the pressure’s on. Especially not Mandalorians! If I do, then what was the point of me–”

Vizla’s hands finally stilled, except for the occasional twitch of a trigger finger. She rubbed one hand down her face as she exhaled, and it revealed something–etched in the lines of her features–that Nerva never thought she’d see there: hopelessness.

“Whatever Heta’s doing on Khar Shian is big. Might even be something we can’t handle.”

Nerva could hear what Vizla wasn’t saying, hidden in the spaces between the words: the reason that the former “Mandalore the Avenger” wasn’t going to drag her people into this fight with her. Something that even Nerva knew that no Mandalorian would ever admit: I don’t think I can win this.

So she gave that unspoken worry a wide berth that she knew the old Mando would appreciate. “Isn’t that why we brought the Sith?” Nerva snorted in dry amusement and stood up from the table.

Vizla barked a mirthless laugh, incredulous and unconvinced, and swiped her holocomm from the table. “We can’t handle him either…”

Her brows furrowed with concern as her words faded away. She was struggling with what she wanted to say–something rare for the old Mandalorian.

“I know how it sounds. After everything I just said… taking you and Maelee and Barlit along for this, but not my people.”

Nerva frowned. “You don’t have to explain–”

“No. I do,” Vizla firmly cut her off. She needed to say this, and someone needed to hear it.

“This… all of it–is my mess. Running back to Jekiah and my trat’ade and anyone who was foolish enough to ever be on my side, dragging them along behind me… it’s just gonna make the mess bigger. All I need is a few good blasters and the people I know will help me finish this for good.”

Vizla exhaled, aggravatedly pressing her fingers between her brows.

“If you want this to be the end of the road, I wouldn’t blame you. And I won’t hold it against you if you call it quits here. But before you decide… just know that Malgus needs to get to Khar Shian.”

She lowered her hand away from her eyes, hardened with steady resolve. “For all his ranting and raving, he knows he can’t get there without a ride–and we’re all he’s got. He’s not going to let anything happen to us in that nebula.”

Silence settled between the two, allowing Nerva to examine each word the old Mando said–and the unspoken reality underneath them: this is the way it is; nothing will convince her otherwise.

But Nerva couldn’t help but question it anyway.

“He must have done something really special back in the day, for you to still put this much trust in him.”

Vizla shook her head. “He and I made a deal. Not much more to it than that. And one thing hasn’t changed since the last time I fought next to him… the old gorax still knows a thing or two about honor. Most of the time.”

The old Mando shoved her holocomm into her pocket. Firm. Final.

“Be ready to move tomorrow.”

— — — — —

“Navigation’s gone!” Barlit bellowed over the roar of the Whisper–not from its engines, but from the squall of dust that mercilessly bombarded theshuttle’s exterior as it barreled through the nebula.

“It’s not gone, haar’chak, it’s just… off the mark.” Next to Barlit, Vizla’s hand–unnervingly steady–flew over the controls.

“I warned you this would happen,” the old Sith snarled behind Vizla, one angry fist braced against the roof as the shuttle lurched.

“Then do something about it!”

The Whisper dipped, and the old Sith planted his feet, refused to act. “You chose this! It is your miscalculation to correct. Now see us through it!”

The last of his words rang loudly in Nerva’s ears–where he clearly meant them to land. Her head snapped toward him, her stare a fiery accusation of disbelief despite her growing panic. How easily he could fix this, instead of proving some petty, self-righteous point: to her, to Vizla, to himself.

The lights on the Whisper’s control panel flashed–off and on, then off again with a terrifyingly shrill alarm. Vizla’s hand froze above the controls, curled tightly, then slammed hard against the console. In a blur of red and metal, she tore out of her seat toward the obstinate Sith.

Nerva quickly slipped into the empty chair and strapped herself in, uselessly flipping switches and triggers. The presence of the others was suffocating around her: Barlit was frantically trying to restore power to the engines, his fingers shaking and fumbling; Maelee stood frozen, wide-eyed with terror; and Vizla was on her feet in front of the old Sith–an akk dog ready to shred its prey.

Through the window in front of Nerva, bolts of searing energy arced between clouds of gas that grew closer by the second.

“Hey! We need to get–”

“Come on, hut’uun, you need this just as bad as I do! No–you need it more!” Vizla’s taunting, amplified with broken rage, rang out over the unrelenting roar of the nebula, over Nerva’s urgent demand for help.

Nerva swung her head back toward the flashes of light. They were bigger, brighter as the shuttle shook and pitched closer in the storm. Nerva could feelevery burst of energy spark through her nerves, over her skin, in every part of her being.

“Vizla–get over here…!”

Nerva could feel the old Sith’s gaze boring into the back of her head, even through the overwhelming cacophony of dust and lightning and Vizla as she rained her frantic desperation down upon him.

“We both know you won’t lay down and die until you’ve got your shebs in that machine!”

“Shae–!” Nerva bellowed, but the old Mando refused to stop.

“So quit messing around and fix this already!”

“Damn it!” Nerva burst from her seat, so hard and so sudden that her shoulder and chest tore the strap from its bearings as she leapt to her feet. She grit her teeth against the pain and thrust her arm forward wildly.

Bolts of energy surged violently toward the Whisper… only to glance away into the roaring clouds of dust around the shuttle–diverted by the invisible Force barrier emanating from Nerva’s outstretched palm.

She froze, arm held out stiffly, determinedly. The onslaught of sounds, the shouting, the screeching of dust particles and electric current against the hull, the groaning of the Whisper’s beaten and broken systems… all went quiet, dampened, as they listed through the storm.

When they finally broke through the other side of the maelstrom, Nerva’s legs buckled, collapsing her into the seat at the shuttle’s controls. Her own heavy breathing echoed in her ears as the others just stared: Maelee and Barlit in shock, the old Sith in ominous approval, and Vizla… surprised, but with a hint of confirmed suspicions.

The Whisper continued to drift, toward a darkness without chaos and debris that waited for them, then through the edge of the nebula. The interior of the Stygian Caldera. Sith space.

Barlit blinked, coming back to reality, weakly tapping at one of the dark nav screens. “Uh… not sure where we are exactly.” He flipped the toggle for the main thruster a few times, but nothing happened in response. His massive shoulders slumped. “Not that it matters.”

“No. It doesn’t.” The old Sith pointed into the vast darkness surrounding them on all sides. Ahead of the Whisper–nestled among scattered pins of light–another shuttle came into view. The craft was larger, bulkier, but still clearly built to move without notice.

Another–its twin–appeared just behind it, and the two shuttles shifted direction. Both were headed straight toward the Whisper.

“Haar’chak, those are Hidden Chain shuttles,” Vizla hissed under her breath.

Nerva didn’t have to look behind her to see what she could feel: the Mandalorian’s hand as it twitched toward the blaster at her hip. The old Sith’s cruel smile of satisfaction beneath his respirator.

With nothing left to hide, Nerva pushed herself to her feet, rolled the pain in her shoulder away. She leaned down and yanked her vibroknife from her boot. When she straightened again, the Hidden Chain shuttles–their ticket to Khar Shian–were in hailing distance.

A new path had presented itself, and they were ready to take it.