Makeb-Talaos City
Evening Time
Cassian felt the danger a half-second before it manifested, just enough time for instinct, discipline, and fury to tighten into a single sharpened thread.
The first bolt seared past his cheek as he pivoted, cloak snapping behind him. In the dark alleyway, four silhouettes emerging from the shadows, blades and suppressed blasters glinting under the dim industrial lights. Of course, Cassian didn’t waste breath on words, he moved.
A snap of the wrist, his first shot caught the closest assassin in the throat, dropping him before he could even scream. The second lunged with a vibroblade, Cassian stepped inside the arc, seized the attacker’s wrist, and drove an elbow into the hinge of his jaw so hard the man collapsed sideways, unconscious before he hit the ground.
Another tried to flank him, a mistake. Cassian turned with surgical precision, a single bolt splitting the assassin’s visor open like cracked glass.
The fourth charged him, armored, determined, and screaming something incoherent behind the modulator. Cassian reversed his grip on the blaster and slammed the butt into the man’s helmet, once, twice, hard enough to fracture composite plating. The assassin staggered, dropped to his knees, breath ragged. Blood bubbled from beneath the mask.
Cassian grabbed him by the front of the vest and tore the helmet off. He looked like a seasoned veteran, as his eyes already went glossy. He still managed a smile, a terrible one.
“You think this stops anything?” he rasped, a laugh tearing from his chest. “When your family is hanging for the whole world to see, brother, sister, when they beg you to save them, and you can’t. Honorable Cassian Abrantes, how does it feel to know how truly alone you are. To have that feeling of powerlessness. At the end of the day, we will always be a step ahead of your honorable self.”
His smile widened despite the blood on his teeth.
“That’s when you die, Abrantes.”
Cassian didn’t let him finish breathing. A single shot, clean, efficient, ended the threat.
He holstered the blaster only long enough to crouch and search the body. Standard kit. Spare power packs. A patch bearing Deras’ mark.
And….a datapad.
Old. Scratched. Locked behind poor encryption. Cassian sliced through the code in seconds.
The screen lit, And his blood went cold. Images. Taken days ago. Maybe hours.
Elian at the Royal Academy flight yard, laughing with other cadets, crosshairs drawn over his chest. Sibylla, walking alongside Aurelian Veruna in Theed, timestamped, tracked, annotated. His parents at the vineyard. His mother with a crate of grapes, Father right next to her and lightline routes plotted around them.
And the final image, was of Cassian himself. And he wasn't alone...
Standing with Shade outside a quiet café in Moenia. Her hand at his shoulder. Neither of them are aware of the camera. He swallowed once, the movement tight, controlled. Then he opened his comm and keyed in Sibylla’s frequency. The moment the line connected, he didn’t waste time with pleasantries.
“Sibylla. Respond immediately. I need confirmation....” Cassian took a deep breath to steady himself, amidst the rising anger in him. “Please just check with the family and make sure everyone is okay, including Aurelian.” The last part would sound strange, but as Sibylla loved him, his loss would be just as great as any member of their family. Cassian knew he didn’t need it, but he would have to try to protect him too.
His voice was steady.
But the storm behind it was unmistakable.
