S P Y
Level 1313, Coruscant
"The Plasteel Sun" Cantina
Speeders screamed through narrow sky lanes, their repulsorlifts humming with the strain of the undercity's weight. Neon signs buzzed and flickered in a thousand alien dialects, bathing the durasteel canyon walls in a synthetic rainbow of pinks, reds, and blues. Above, endless layers of forgotten towers stretched upward into shadow toward ceilings of metal and below, the light barely reached the street. Trash fires crackled in rusted drums. Drifters, slicers, and syndicate scum slinked through alleyways like shadows with debts. A Hutt-owned casino advertised gladiatorial combat in the old Foundry. Down the strip, a cantina pulsed with life, the sign above it flickering in Basic, but locals knew it simply as "The Plasteel Sun".
Music rumbled through its walls, some hybrid of droidstep and tribal drumming that spurred the masses. The place was crowded, gamblers shouted over sabacc tables, mercs traded kill-stories aloud, dancers ran to the dance floor, the air was thick with smoke and secrets. This was the life of the undercity, for commoner and criminal alike, a place where someone could get away.
Then the door groaned open.
A shadow stepped inside.
Hooded. Cloaked. Goggled. His silhouette was jagged and foreign, his face hidden behind a plague-mask that reeked of death and silence. A faint click-hiss of a voice modulator cut through the ambient noise as Zuv Ralen entered the cantina, and the atmosphere shifted ever so slightly. Like something had just gone wrong.
He paused in the doorway.
"Subject identified. Wedge Draav. Former Revenant Squadron. Discharged. Disillusioned."
The statement was meant for his own records, but it carried like a whisper laced with venom. The Imperial spy didn't bother to sit, he approached the former GA pilot, almost gliding in silence to the man hunched at the bar, jacket worn with sun-scorched patches and campaign medals long since forgotten. The kind of man whose ideals ran hot. Zuv placed a single Imperial credit chit on the table, its surface engraved with a crimson seal of the Empire. Then he spoke, not loudly, but clearly.
"You were thrown away. Not for failure. Not for cowardice. For principle."
The modulator carried a ghostly echo, mechanical yet intimately precise.
"The Alliance broke you. But we… repair what others discard."
He paused, tilting his mask ever so slightly. His presence was unsettling, but not threatening. Not yet. A recruiter in predator's skin.
"You've flown in wars they don't even write about. You've led men through hell and made it back. And now you sit here while the galaxy tears itself apart again."
Zuv leaned closer, his tone softer but no less deliberate.
"Just five minutes of your time, your drinks are on me."
