Private Old habits die hard

[Vess Sadragen]

She sat cross-legged beside a low-mounted antenna array, her portable terminal balanced across her knees. A soft blue glow lit up her face in faint pulses as data scrolled past the screen, lines of code flowing steadily under her fingertips. She worked without haste, without worry, just... focus. This was her rhythm now.

A hooded jacket concealed most of her silhouette, but the weight at her belt was unmistakable. The lightsaber was there, hidden beneath layers of fabric and utility gear.

Vess didn’t think about it often, not anymore. The Hidden Path. The years spent threading through old halls and abandoned temples, listening to grand plans. Hope was a currency there just like fear had been before. But even then, she’d felt it. That quiet undercurrent. Like they were all passengers on a ship no one really knew how to sail.

She didn’t leave angry. Didn’t leave clean, either. Just… drifted. Like always. In some ways she did miss it, but she shook her head it was time to focus.

Her gaze flicked to the vault across the street a low-slung fortress buried into the bones of a repurposed water plant. Not corporate, not government. Private sector, deep net. A data house that traded in secrets too old or ugly to be useful until someone decided they were again.

“Lily, you getting my feed?” she murmured into the comm clipped to her collar, eyes narrowing as fresh telemetry synced across her screen. “Spike should sync once you reach the mainframe node. Slot it and step back. If it sparks, it’s just me slicing.”

The job wasn’t a smash-and-grab. Not exactly. They weren’t after credits or weapons. Tonight’s prize was quieter: archival telemetry, encrypted transaction records, and a full client list from a private broker who specialized in restricted hyperlane maps. Someone had paid a lot to make sure those lanes stayed hidden. Someone else was paying more to make sure they didn’t.

She exhaled slowly, brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “I’ll keep you clean on cams and floorplan just don’t trip any alarms This rig can spoof heat signatures and mag-locks but not dumb luck.”

A brief flicker on her screen warned her of an incoming signal.

“Oh, and Lily?” Vess leaned slightly forward, smirking as she keyed in a new string. “Try not to get shot. I’m billing extra if I have to remote-fly your corpse out.”

She cracked her knuckles, posture relaxing again as the signal solidified.

Time to work.

TAG: Lily Rhodes
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[Lily Rhodes]

Water seeped into her boots, cold and uncomfortable as she slipped in through the grate. The old waste pipes stank of rust and stale water whose surface shimmered with rot. Lily didn’t pay it too much mind, she’d stepped in and smelt worse. She stepped slowly, careful not to disturb the surface too much as she passed underneath the fortresses walls, crouching low as she reached the tunnel's end and set to work removing bolts with quick and quiet precision as Vess’s voice cracked over the comms in her ears.

“Yeah, I hear you.” she replied with her voice low as she slipped into the fortress, lifting the grate back into place behind her and moving on, hugging the walls and slinking through shadows as Vess reminded her of her task, warning of alarms and traps. Part of her wanted to tell her she’d once broken into the space station owned by the former Head of the Sith Order’s Inquisition without back up, but the fact that she’d ultimately been caught made the brag feel hollow.

Besides, the last person she wanted to think about right now was him.

She tucked into an alcove and held her breath as a patrol moved her way, shadow and silence concealing her as they passed, Vess’s teasing echoing in her ear.

“You know it’s easier to not get shot if you tell me when people are coming.” She hissed once they’d passed, slipping out of her hiding place and moving on. She could have teleported in, but without seeing the lay of the land or knowing what traps might be waiting for them, they’d decided old school was the best way in.

She pressed forward, heading deeper in towards the vault, letting her instinct guide her forward.

 

[Vess Sadragen]

"Working on it," Vess murmured, her voice slipping through Lily's comm with a smooth, unhurried confidence that almost masked the fact she was threading a needle with a frayed wire.

Hazel eyes narrowed on the screen in front of her, the glow painting her features in shifting amber and blue as she traced the lines of code spiraling across her terminal. the low hum of the building's old power grid vibrating faintly beneath her. The air was cool and sharp this high up, the scent of ozone carried in from distant stormbreakers rolling in from the horizon.

"Some of this network's still living in the past," she said, voice low and dry. "Old command subroutines, half-spoofed system checks like it thinks the war's still happening and someone just forgot to turn the lights off."

Her gaze flicked to a camera feed then another. One patrol shimmered into view just long enough to confirm its position. The next blinked out completely.

"You've got a blind spot up ahead, Delta corridor. Twelve seconds, give or take. Stick close to the wall and don't try anything fancy. After that, there's a thermal wire across the stairwell I haven't cracked yet, so if you like your eyebrows, maybe don't test it."

A gust of wind swept across the rooftop, tugging at the long braid tucked beneath her hood and rattling the datapads clipped to her satchel but her hand stayed firmly on the keys. No time for distractions.

She hesitated, just for a moment, watching Lily's vitals flicker across the corner of her screen. Heart rate steady. Movement fluid. A pro.

"I was going to warn you about that last patrol," she added, a hint of a smirk coloring her tone. "But you looked like you had it handled. Some people like when I'm less chatty."

TAG: Lily Rhodes
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[Lily Rhodes]

Lily kept moving, clinging to shadows while Vess explained the complications of slicing into an network that was a mesh of old and new. A lot of it went over her head. Lily could crack a lock, maybe bypass an alarm or two but slicing had never really been of interest, she preferred a more hands on approach. Not only was she could at it, but she liked the thrill it brought.

"Copy that." She said picking up her pace and sliding into Delta corridor, hugging the wall as she moved, the timer counting away the seconds in her head. She crouched at the bottom of the stairwell, scanning for the wire a smile curling her lips when she spotted it. "I like chatty, reminds me I'm not on my own. I spend enough time alone moving from place to place, its nice to have company." She straightened. "Don't waste your time on the wire, I can bypass it."

The force gathered and folded at her command, snapping her from the bottom of the stairs to the top. Lily didn't look back, shifting across the hall back into the shadows she kept moving. The vault was close. "How did you get into this kinda stuff?"

 

[Vess Sadragen]

Vess didn't answer right away. Her hazel eyes tracked Lily's biometrics as they disappeared and reappeared, she blinked a couple of times and tilted her head. Teleportation? Neat trick.

A faint hum of static from the terminal filled the silence, broken only by the quiet click of her fingers as they tapped out another bypass. She wasn't rushing. Lily was in, and so far, nobody was dead. That was progress.

"Into slicing?" she finally replied, tone thoughtful. "Started as necessity. You grow up on the streets of Denon, you pick up a useful skill or you die of hunger. Turns out I was always good with tech and machines."

A smirk tugged at her lips as she rerouted a junction node. A camera feed blinked online and she caught a glimpse of Lily flitting between shadows like a ghost. Clean work.

"Eventually, someone notices. Someone always does. They offer you more credits to do it for them instead of to them. And next thing you know, you're the quiet girl in the corner making other people look brilliant."

There was no bitterness in her voice just a detached, dry amusement. She leaned back slightly, flexing her fingers before her eyes swept over the screen again.

"I didn't set out to be a slicer," she added, softer now. "Didn't set out to be a lot of things. Life's funny that way."

A moment passed before her voice returned.

"What about you, what got you into the life of breaking and entering?"

A new node lit up on her terminal.

"Also good move. I'm officially adding 'show-off' to your file."

TAG: Lily Rhodes
​

 

[Lily Rhodes]

Lily chuckled, the sound low and contained. "I've been called worse."

She knew Denon, not as well as she knew Coruscant but they were shaped the same, they bore the same pressure for a kid with no family and no support. Find a way to make a living or die trying. Denon carried memory for Lily, one that never failed to bring a smile to her face. Its not always you can claim to have stolen a Grandmaster's wallet.

"Coruscant's undercity is where I started out. Picking pockets and scraping by, I picked the wrong pocket and instead of getting my ass beat, I was offered a job, kinda grew from there."

She paused at an intersection, out of habit more than necessity. "I never set out to be anything other than alive. Its made it a lot easier to roll with the punches."

There had been a lot of punches, but the moments between normally made up for it. "Now, I just do jobs because it keeps me out of bigger trouble, if you can believe it." She went quiet, the fight on Jaibrek as the Sith Order tore through the Firefist, eradicating Tof and calling it liberation. the Tof were nasty, that much was certain, but it was like trading one evil for another.

"I can see the mainframe, but I can't tell if I'm clear."

Vess Sadragen

 

[Vess Sadragen]

Vess huffed softly, the sound barely there over the whisper of wind across the rooftop. Her fingers paused for half a second above the keys before resuming, hazel eyes narrowing as she pulled Lily’s feed into a tighter overlay.

“Coruscant,” she said, almost to herself. “Yeah. That tracks.”

A memory surfaced uninvited neon glare bleeding through rain, a pressure in the air she’d mistaken for intent. For about three solid seconds she’d been convinced the woman closing the distance was there to end her. Hand had gone instinctively toward a weapon she didn’t want to use. Turned out she wasn’t being hunted at all. Just… evaluated. Recruited, maybe. Funny how those moments rewired a life.

“Ran into someone one Denon once,” Vess added, voice even. “Thought I it was the end of me. Turns out I’d just picked the wrong night to be clever.” A faint smirk crept in. “Still walked away breathing. Barely. Guess we both learned early that survival counts as a win.”

She dragged a window aside and brought up a schematic of the corridor Lily was standing in, ghosting old infrastructure over newer security like mismatched bones. Parts of it were blind to her dead zones where the mesh didn’t quite reach.

“Alright,” she said, focus snapping back to the present. “You’re not clear-clear. I’ve got blind spots around the mainframe old system never fully integrated. No alarms screaming yet, but I don’t like what I can’t see.”

Her gaze flicked to a secondary readout, jaw tightening just a touch.

“Give me ten seconds. Don’t touch anything shiny, don’t breathe too loud, and if your instincts start yelling listen to them. Underworld kids don’t survive by ignoring that feeling.”

Keys chimed softly under her hands.

“And hey,” she added, lighter now, “I'd like to hear about this life changing wallet one day, for now let’s just make sure we leave this place with something better than a good story.”

TAG: Lily Rhodes
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