Tales from the Galaxy

by Kam I Am

Tales of Womp Rats before they were target practice, Kaminoans before they cloned, and how the Force has really felt about its perpetual clash between dark and light. There's one about how Jar-Jar was the prophet no one listened to and that time Sebulba plotted to kill Anakin after the Boonta Eve Classic. A collection of oneshots and short stories, pick at random.

8. Where Sky Ends

Where Sky Ends

Part One:

13 BBY

Rain.

For all the weather-control stations Coruscant had bouncing around orbit, rain was all-too common.

Not that I was one to complain. Rain was good for the plants, and the plants were the one thing still keeping this place breathable. Down here in the dregs of the under-levels, there wasn't much else a guy could ask for. You got the full symbiosis. Rain to earth, earth to man.

Man to ruin.

That's often exactly what brought people to my office.

Case in point: Mrs. Deiden. Late-30s, red hair, slender body. She had the kind of eyes that had seen it all, the kind of heart that wished she hadn't, and the kind of lungs that could care less.

My gaze settled on the cigarette at her lips, smoke lazing in a pool near the ceiling of my makeshift office.

In turn, she regarded the placard on my desk, as if reassuring her decision to come here.

Gebrin Myles. Private Investigations.

That was my working title, anyways. A catch-all that glossed over the rougher parts of the job description. Truth was, if somebody went missing down here, they were probably already dead. And if there was a person inquiring, they usually had more interest covering up answers than they did asking questions.

Hands pressed over my vest jacket at the thought. It felt old, in undeniable need of a press. Fingers settled on straightening my collar before turning to regard her. "Do you know what the first step to disappearing is, Mrs. Deiden?"

She didn't answer, not at first. Too enamored by the bit of light she had been dabbing into the ashtray. Eventually, our eyes met, her head shaking no softly.

"It's to stop giving people a reason to care. Friends, family, loved ones. A person doesn't mean much without those things."

"Abel has plenty of people who care for him, though. Good people."

"I'm sure he did, all the best."

"Does," she corrected me with another puff of smoke. "And what makes you think he'd want to go missing?"

"Well - and this is important to keep in mind - those feelings have to be shared. If they're not, those folks probably didn't mean much to the person in the first place."

Her look soured. "You know, if I wanted relationship advice I could have gone to a marriage counselor."

I smiled in turn. "If you needed marriage advice this late in the game you probably don't have a relationship."

"I take it that's why you're not in one, Mr. Myles?" She asked with a satisfied gleam. Like she had settled on the trump card of our mental exercise.

My jaw went hard then, gridlocked.

"Get out."

The light faltered. "But-"

"Leave. And take the lighter with you."

One moment, a huff of smoke and disgust. The next, up and out the door. She had left a shadowy silence in her wake.

That was all in a days' work for me. Turn down the cases that weren't worth the effort and scare off the ones that were. Perhaps that's what drew me to Mr. Green - he still hadn't made his mind up yet.

I regarded my datapad again, the news report still gleaming as urgently as it had when it came in earlier that morning. Mr. Green didn't sound like the kind of alias one would take up to murder a dozen innocents, but the results spoke for themselves.

Having been a conscript in the Clone Wars it was everybody's vain hope that civilian re-entry might have done Green some good. He was a Jedi though - a fugitive. Those weren't the kind renown for keeping their heads down. Not in this day and age. The reports of his exploits had been sketchy at first, strangulation here, arson there. The kind of non-news an upper-level pleb might casually gossip about on their turbo-lift to work. Frankly, this was around the point where I'd given up hope for him. The fool was just pushing his luck, a gambler that didn't know when to stay away from the tables.

And when Green finally folded, he was sure to implicate half the underworld along with him. Arms trafficking was a long way from murder, but going under the nose of the Black Sun's "legal" channels might as well have made it so.

Now the bounties were racking up, now he was worth my time.

I dumped the ashtray and got to work.

. . .

---

Wind.

It was the one thing keeping this city in its perpetual state of motion. The one thing the brochures never seemed to tell you about. High winds, tail winds, breaking wind.

I could feel the closest commuter give a disgusted look, shuffle away from the seat next to me.

For as forward-thinking as Grav-Trains promised to be, all the usual problems of mass transit still lingered. Poor ventilation, juicy funk puddles, the linger of bowel movements in the air. With all its faults, the heap of dirt caking the walls might as well have just been slathered on for aesthetic.

When you rode the train as much as I did you had to try and find a sense of escape where you could. There was a blissful few minutes upon start-up where everything would go dark, quiet.

Then, the harsh whine of thrusters revving into overdrive. The dirt cake gave way to a white-blue glow, the interior shaking in violent protest. Surging well past the speed of sound, it was fairly easy to tell veterans apart from first-timers. Your ass was either planted firmly on a bench or flopping hopelessly to the back of the tram. "The fastest possible speed in the tightest possible space", that had been the metro's tagline for a reason.

By the time we started flirting with the supersonic my eyes would naturally find themselves shut. No more sweat stains, no more migraines. Transit here always felt 'airier' than lightspeed, more dream-like. As if gravity had given us all permission to quietly float an inch above our seats. Then again, maybe that was just a sign the compartment hadn't been properly pressurized.

When I opened my eyes again, the tram had already started to de-escalate. The dream was over. One moment my window had been a blur of colors, the next, a slew of tenement buildings. Tenements stacked on tenements. Single-occupant homes lined like prison blocks for the adoring masses. Flashy prison blocks, I had to admit. More and more ads had to make up for what declining rent-payers could not. Blitz campaigns for Ardees and Holostars. Eventually, that was all this place had become - one giant, gleaming billboard.

Despite their convenience, most of the tram's rails were in a sort of limbo between districts. Neither here nor there, the in-between where city development had fallen away years ago. Dank, dark corners where plague ran rampant and Cthon were rumored to reside. And kilometers below sea-level, 'night zombies' weren't the half of it. Down here, it never was. The city became less a skyline and more the sky line. A strip of night or day that came when the haze of pollution would clear up enough to deem it necessary.

By the time I got off the train, that strip had settled on an eerie grey, the winds no less fitting for the show.

On the plus side, it didn't smell like piss anymore.

Two steps out, and I already found myself enveloped back into the mass. A tired public pushing out from another days' work. There were distractions to pull you in every corner. A flock of repto-mammals being herded off into the nearest alleyway. A toothless salesman selling Twi'lek head tails. A mail droid handing out pamphlets for a Jawa masseuse.

For a guy with dark hair and darker eyes, I was the exact sort of nameless face they were looking for. The kind of unsuspecting idiot who'd get strung out of some easy Creds.

As if to save me from that eventuality, a motorized shopping cart came trudging through the chaos - nearly over my leg. It was pushed along by a little stub of a man, his clothes well-worn. Tattered even, if we were going by an upper-leveler's definition.

My gaze fell to the cart's repulsor engine, rotund sphere a couple sizes larger than its user. Mundane as the device was, the emblem gleaming on its side was undeniable - it was Separatist tech. Bygone symbols for a bygone way of thinking. The kind of thinking I had lost an arm and a leg to stamp out.

A mech-fist clenched instinctively at the thought. Wouldn't be much of a detective if I didn't follow the imperative to investigate.

The man's voyage was longer than anticipated, keeping up was a test of my patience. More than once we rounded the same corner, maybe to lose any unwanted attention - attention like me. Eventually, he settled on the overhang beneath an old storefront. The shop was abandoned, a flaming astromech there to reinforce the point.

The fire was for more than keeping warm, though. There was a spit roast over the top, a slug charring on its skewer. Duracrete slug - a Coruscanti delicacy. This one was a prize, had to have been four, maybe five meters long. It practically rounded down the other side of the alley. Longest one I'd ever seen. Admittedly, most of those had been found burrowing holes through the cement walls of my apartment.

All the same, things were clicking pretty fast. A string of spices and seasonings were the hover carts' contents, a pair of children its hungry recipients.

"Find your own," the vagrant hissed in turn, shouldering his family's meal as I approached.

And I decided I would. Something about mollusk innards roasting by the glow of neon lights could really work a guy's appetite. Maybe food could nurse some of the pride I had just lost after trailing a homeless person for six blocks.

Another moment, and I'm out from the overhang, back into the windstorm. It was usually better than this, there was probably a tour guide cursing the weather somewhere. We all were.

Everyone except Jekk, that was. He was the one guy I knew who never seemed to complain about the weather down here. The storms were good for him - good for business. Storms kept customers indoors. Kept the casino cash going, and the bad times flowing. While his Sabacc Den wasn't exactly renowned for its fine-dining experience, Jekk was famous for wining and dining any old war buddy of his that came to stop by. For those unlucky few it was found in the Tibanna District.

Tucked away in a corner on the south bend you'd have to squeeze through a service tunnel just to get there. It was an addendum to the district's original layout, an inconvenience. But then, you were going to run into a lot of those when you started altering floor plans from centuries ago. Squeezing from one end to the other was a painfully tighter experience than it should have been. The choke point might as well have been some broken metaphor for the surrounding public.

A public, I realized as I got closer, that I didn't quite blend in with. With space slugs and Lizard-Wookiees serving as sentries at Jekk's gates, there weren't many humans that could. Its reputation kind of preceded itself. Complaints were settled in broken bones, here. Toughness judged by how many cans of whiskey you could shotgun in a single sitting.

With a liver half the size of theirs, I wasn't exactly optimistic about making friends at face-value.

Somehow though, I muscled my way in. Perhaps it was my dashing good looks. The guards were certainly still glowering back at me, like a piece of meat too raw to eat.

"Gebrin!" A voice called out from behind the bar, just before one of the watchmen could change their minds about me.

I settled down at the counter with a relieved sigh. Sliding suit jacket over chair, I gave the bartender a hard look. His stitch of hair was a haphazard cross between black and gray. "Jekk."

"Long time no see, Lieutenant," he acknowledged with a smile, a few ceramic teeth glinting in the bar lights. "What'll it be? Scotch? Ale?"

I side-eyed the Sabacc tables in the corner before answering, credits burning a hole in my pocket. "Water. No ice."

"Always original," he murmured back, disappearing behind the counter for the requested beverage. "I take it you got my message?"

"Kind of hard to ignore that many. What's the word?"

"It hasn't been great. People are more than a little shaken up about, uh... 'recent events'."

"Well, yeah," I admit, hand reaching over to receive the drink. "When the Black Sun can't take down a guy you know there's a problem."

"Can't or won't," Jekk suggested. "With those syndicate types it's always hard to tell what game they're playing."

"Some Jedi just ramming through one of their armed convoys doesn't happen every day. I doubt that's the case."

I could feel Jekk tense at the implication. "Have you heard why they call him Mr. Green yet? They say it's because that's all his victims see. The green glow of his laser sword." His eyes started to grow a little bug-eyed as he spoke.

It was a struggle to keep from laughing. "Sounds like the tagline for some Imperial propaganda film."

And with the new boundaries the Empire were venturing into, that wasn't far from the truth. It was almost a wonder that Jekk's place hadn't folded yet. Gambling wasn't exactly illegal here, not yet. It lived in the kind of grey area that gave the local patrols the liberty of making it be whatever they needed that day. For as all-encompassing as the Empire's policies tended to be, that suited their needs just fine.

"They say Mr. Green's a changeling you know, a shapeshifter. It's starting to creep the public out - the customers, especially. A fire here is traced back to a shanking there - all in the same time span. He's fast, Geb. Too fast. Like, like he's-"

"Like he's more than one person," I breathed back knowingly. I had read the reports, after all. They were starting to get hard to ignore.

"Even still, they say he's always the same - bald, feature-less." A bottle of cognac was retrieved as he spoke. "A face that has no face."

Two glasses were placed down, amber liquid. Another moment and they were clinked together - a reluctant toast. "That's why we've got you out there, bud. I know you've got this. Can always trust an Antarian Ranger to lead the way."

The liquor burnt my throat as he spoke. "Right..."

With the conversation coming to an uneasy end, I panned my gaze over the rest of the bar. Eyes settled on the elongated mass of fang and scales bouncing in the fish tank at the middle of the room. The locals called it a Sando beast. A baby one, although its muscled form kept me deceived. "It's for aesthetic", Jekk often insisted. Even now, I was pretty sure he got strong-armed into holding it here for one of the local gangs.

Strong-arming was the name of the game around here. The enforcers at the gate were a good indicator of the crowd this place tended to draw. They weren't easy on the eyes. I recognized a few faces - had to think twice about investigating a few others. They all had the same idea, though. You could hear it in their hushed whispers. Mr. Green was a bad man, the kind that needed to be brought to justice. Or the highest-bidder. Down here they were often one and the same.

Not having enough troubles to deal with, I settled on playing a hand of Sabacc at the tables. A couple, actually. Just enough to hate myself all the bit more.

Playing the regulars tended to be as much of a gamble as the game itself. This time was no different - a Herglic named Freya. To say she was a whale of a woman wasn't insult - it was fact. Her face was crusty, weathered. Cracked by the ailings of time and any fool unwise enough to throw a drunken fist her way. She was the best Sabacc player this side of Happyland - and she liked to take people's money. I hated Freya, and our games went about as well as anticipated.

"Here," she had finally hummed between rounds. "A good omen for your troubles."

She flicked me a card. The Six of Sabres.

"Cute."

When a Herglic gave you something, you took it. Even if your greater instincts were telling you to dump the omen in a fish tank as soon as you were out of eyeshot. Pockets suitably less full, I figured it was time to go.

'Intel acquisition' had proven less productive than I had hoped, even the slimiest of know-it-alls here seemed to be as clueless about Mr. Green as I was. There was only one guy more bumbling, though. Figures he'd be a teenager, the kind to waddle right into a guy. Figures even more that it'd be one I knew.

It wasn't often a head was burrowed into my chest, panicked, breathless. The kid's gaze traveled up to meet mine, face all cut up and tired. He was a Balosar, a species that was human as they came if it weren't for the head-antennas pulsating in every direction. I raised an eyebrow at the basketcase. "Velker?"

"Geb," he gulped back, side-eying the bouncers he had just snuck past. "I, I-"

"Shouldn't you be home? I mean, this isn't the first watering hole I'd hit up, not bad for a -"

"No, no," he interrupted. "This is bad, bad. I was being chased, had to go somewhere safe."

A chuckle, my first real laugh of the night. "Sabacc Dens aren't my ideal safehouse, kid."

"When you've got a parade of plastics on your trail there aren't exactly many alternatives."

"Plastics?" I repeated, all-too-familiar with the stormtrooper colloquial. My eyes went wide in the next moment. "Hang on, you brought them here?"

"It's not that I 'brought' them, they just kinda... followed me."

Only then did the blood trailing his ear become visible. Only then did the danger become imminent. "Jekk! We're going to have company -"

A laser cracked through the air as I spoke. Next moment, it was tearing a crater through the Lizard-Wookiee's neck. Scales went one way, phlegm the other. His six-eyed cranium thumped to the floor, breathing staggered. A shot like that was enough to kill. The space slug clattered down on top of him, confirming the theory.

So much for the bouncers.

I slammed Velker to the ground in turn, as much out of anger as it was care for his safety. We slid beneath an overturned table, cowering just before two more bursts could clean us off our feet. Over the ruckus, I heard Jekk screeching from behind the counter. "Hide the money! I haven't renewed my gambling permit!"

If Velker wasn't bleeding everywhere I'd be scoffing. This wasn't about gambling, this was about the score of thugs and lowlifes inhabiting the place. All lined up like this, we were practically doing the police's work for them.

As it stood, the mob was doing the best they could to live up to their reputation. Imperial-issued stun rifles and police batons weren't much of a match for the kind of underworld heat we were packing.

Not all was going well, though. Freya lay face down on a Sabacc table, her stack of playing cards lined with crimson. Velker was practically sobbing into my shoulder at this point, cupping a bloody nose. Hopefully broken. Would serve the kid right.

My gaze still scoured the entrance, trying to find a way to get him out.

I wasn't a hero, but I was human.

Another shot flared by, this one settling a scorch mark on the fish tank meters above us. My gaze traveled from the tank to a chair sprawled out on the floor, then back to the tank. Or more specifically, the baby Sando beast swimming within, all but begging to be released.

Don't have to tell me twice.

I'm slamming the aquarium open in the next moment, chair splintering out of my hand as water flooded through the establishment. The brute's hand-fins flailed in turn, grabbing the nearest trooper by the leg as it surfed onto the greasy floors. It was as much mealtime as it was distraction. Jekk never really did bother with feeding the thing. Suddenly, we had an opening. An escape route just big enough for us to dash through.

I turn back to the kid, not eager to stay for the main course.

"Time to move."

---

Where Sky Ends

Part Two:

Luck.

It was hard to argue I was having much. Not with how I did at the tables.

As we cleared the Den though, it was becoming more apparent just how fortunate we really were. An entire precinct of plastics had gone about quarantining the block, caution tape trailing from alley to alley. Stormtroopers marched in and out of the establishment, dragging petrified bodies around like they were keepers of the morgue. The sheen had long faded from their armor, now scorched and laden with blaster-fire. White plastic soaked in the glow of neon lights, mucky flesh dripping off their tired forms.

From rain to shootout back to rain, the torrent wasn't going to be giving the soldiers a break anytime soon. Thank the Architect for that service tunnel. It was the one thing keeping us out of the spotlight. And more importantly, out of the weather. Wind was picking back up into a monsoon.

Velker leaned next to me, against the concaving walls. He was practically heaving for air. After the mad dash we just made, I couldn't blame him. At least the kid's nose had cleared up some, geyser of blood settling down to a drip. The sobs were equally reduced, back to a whimper now.

The once over I gave him was enough to make me shake my head. "You sure know how to piss people off."

Insult had stopped him mid-writhe. He brought his shoulders up into a painful shrug. "Hey, everybody's gotta have a talent."

"Yours is a bad one. The kind that's probably going to get you killed."

He played me off with a wave of his hand this time, tried to prop himself against the wall unsuccessfully. "Yeah? By who?"

"For one," I began, slinging rain-soaked jacket over my shoulder, "the patrol that was expecting to detain a kid and not an entire shooting gallery's worth of uglies."

"Their mistake."

"Yeah, yours too. A lot of those thugs saw you - they know they got shot and jailed because of you. Those guys might look dumb - are dumb - but they're the type that don't forget easy."

My gaze bounced back to the patrol as we spoke. They were starting to wrap up now. Dazed combatants were cuffed, outlaws being herded off into a number of security speeders. "I have half a mind to dump you here, you know. It's not like you don't know how to find your own way home."

The kid perked up, trails of dried blood forming a mask around his face."Half as in... you're not going to?"

"Not with this killer on the loose. After I just saved your neck I don't need to hear about you getting shanked in a dark alleyway somewhere. Your mother would never let me hear the end of it."

"Right... My mom," he considered sheepishly. "How much of this are you going to tell her about exactly?"

"She's got enough problems on her hands without hearing about how her son should've been shot up in a Cantina brawl," I stated with a roll of my eyes. "How's she holding up these days?"

"Not... so good," he admitted reluctantly, hand finally wiping away dried blood. "Those creds I was trying to get were for her medicine."

My face went solemn then. "I have been meaning to go and see her."

"Well, standing around here's not going to do her any good."

"Neither is getting jailed for petty theft," I reasoned with a shake of my head. "You're right though, it's getting late. We should go."

We rose in the next moment, but halted just as fast.

"Actually," I turned back to face him again, regarding the unmistakable dent in his nose. "There's one thing we should probably do before we leave."

"Wait, what?"

He shrunk against the wall as I approached. A flurry of hands, a yelp of pain, one pair of re-aligned nostrils later, and we were set.

---

Disappearing.

Around here, it was easier than it had any right to be.

Velker and I made a bee-line for the Artisan's district as soon as we ducked out from the service tunnel. The surge of street lights made it an attractive option. Shadows were the last thing we needed to worry about. The plaza-wide rain tarp didn't hurt matters either.

Stalls were lined up as far as the eye could see, further than any late night patrol would ever bother to look. The place was chock full with the sort of off-world exports you'd only expect to find in a politician's high-rise somewhere. Glass-blown jewelry, ceramic pots, assorted paperweights. Our mere presence probably should have been enough to shatter something.

After a half hour of pretending to be connoisseurs we finally settled on a bench. It was only natural to catch our breath, and I wasn't about to admit how lost we were.

Arms leaned up to rest against my head, watching as patrons walked to and fro, service droids carrying their fragile purchases. "Y'know, I never bothered to ask, Velk. What were you trying to steal, anyways?"

"Not trying, succeeding."

Velker pulled his jacket back then, revealing the item in question. A thermal detonator hung within, the explosive strung like a bundle of onions. I practically threw him off the bench in alarm. "The hell you doing with that?"

"It's a replica, pal," he mouthed back, pocketing the device before I could snatch it away. "The plastics had a pretty similar reaction - they were following me because they thought it was the real thing."

"What's a fake explosive gonna do other than convince your flatmates that you're a terrorist?"

Another shrug, this one well-humored. "People don't seem to be as receptive to blasters these days, and since I can't legally own one."

I shook my head. "So you steal the fake, get tailed by a patrol, and decide leading them to Jekk's is a good idea... Why exactly?"

"I mean, he always did tell me to come by if I was in a spot of trouble."

My gaze glowered over the merchandise, wondering how much I could get away with smashing. "Something tells me he didn't mean this kind of trouble, Velk. And I've got a hunch he was more interested in having your mom come along with you. Don't trust everybody that offers a helping hand."

"Does that include you?"

"That goes double for me," I reasoned with another shake of my head. "Not everyday you can count on a guy to drag you out of a bar fight. And if he is, it's probably because he wanted to make a point out of beating you up in particular."

"I can handle myself," he spat back, crossing his arms. "Remember that time I helped you with a case?"

"That, doesn't-" I shook my head in annoyance. The point stood. He had helped me, if 'help' meant directing me towards the body of a junkie that had been decaying in a diner's parking lot for months. In the end, re-igniting the cold case had done more to implicate than reward me.

"Way I see it, we make a pretty good team. If you were ever looking to expand..."

Before I can shut that down there's a crack of noise from the nearest alleyway. The kind that's loud enough to shake the violet street lamps far above. Trouble was the last thing we needed right now, but there was no stopping Velker and his replica military-grade detonator. He was already bounding down the street. Commotion seemed to be a good trigger for the kid's morbid curiosity.

All things considered, The disturbance was pretty timely.

I spotted a fresh band of plastics ambling through the venues as we left. Though, the further down the block we got leaving became less a matter of choice, and more one of force. The scattering of lowlifes had transitioned into a larger force, practically a herd at this point. Either everyone else was as curious as we were, or something big was going on.

Meandering down the street, I turned to the closest suspect. She had her hair pulled back into a ponytail, tank-top revealing flesh-white skin that hadn't seen a day of sun. "Hey lady, any idea what everybody's problem is?"

"Haven't ya heard? It's Tatooine's New Year!"

"I didn't realize that was something worth celebrating," I murmured back, watching as the parade-goer disappeared into the growing crowd.

The sights started to make more sense. Patrons were dressed in strange headgear, vaguely speciesist. They were waving a bunch of fake pikes around like they were glowsticks. In the distance I could even spot a life-size Krayt Dragon float, it was 'driven' by a string of people. Several pairs of feet poked out from beneath its garish exterior.

Velker turned to me after several moments contemplation. "What's a 'year'? And why's everybody dressed up like they're moisture farmers? I think we're in the weird part of the city again."

A chuckle came in response - my second of the day. It was only natural for the concept of 'years' to be lost on the kid. Standard cycles weren't measured, not down here. Without the sun, it was hard enough to keep track of days, let alone weeks or months. I patted him on the shoulder as we went. "You haven't even seen the weird part of the city yet."

We were tempted to stay around for the festivities, maybe pick up some chicks in skimpy Tusken Raider costumes. But the approach of stormtroopers nearby gleamed ever-present beneath the burn of Tatooine's twin street lights.

So we carried on, the trek from point A to point B proving all the trickier. Hard to plan for a festival cutting us off from the main road. We ended up going back out and around the same alleyway. No doubt aware of the road block, a slew of food vendors had lined the street corner. The wares they sold were appetizing, but the merchants themselves were no kinder.

Same couldn't be said about the accompanying street musicians. Those damn musicians. Of all the things I've heard people claim to be universal, music taste is not among them. Maybe that's how they were aiming to make their money's worth, though - I almost considered paying them to stop.

We meandered past, trying to ignore a Gammorean banging his tambourine to the beat of a song only he could decipher.

They tried to draw us in, best they could. Almost like they were fending citizens off from the edge of society. We carried on all the same, soon privy to a string of bridges, overpass lining overpass. Each one taking us further than we had any right to go. Just some small insight into the megacity's network of interconnected loneliness.

Sticking true to the musician's warning, less and less establishments dotted the streets as we cleared the Artisan's District. But the ones that were proved no less alluring.

At some point the bridge's landscapes had shifted, away from the industrialized choke boxes, into something different. Something more natural. It wasn't common for neon lighting to be paired with sprawling rainforests and temperate savannas, but that's what greeted us. It was all smoke and mirrors, of course. Holographic projections that the shop owners had spruced up, anything to get a schmuck to wander through with doe-eyes. Their architects had taken up a simple motto. If you couldn't get a customer through the door, you got rid of the door. And, in effect, they had done just that. Street paths gave way to catwalks, sawed down to single-file strips, digitized havens supported by a series of dis-proportioned building tops.

Interspersed between the landscapes were their shops, jammed into any crevice just wide enough to hold them. The gleam of holograms betrayed the wear in the retailer's eyes. They were shattered. Broken, but defiant. Driven by a constant state of operation. The illusion of wonder hiding their lust for commercialism.

Or, something like that anyways.

It wasn't hard to see why all those festivals had taken place far from this place. Desperation reeked hard, even with the shopkeep's flashy backdrops it was all about getting foot traffic.

By the time we pushed through the glum and got back to realer pastures, our journey was coming to a close. The tops of the tenement buildings were just visible now, poking out far in the distance. There was one more valley between us though, one last obstacle.

The Red Light District.

I made sure to keep Velker closer here. Ordinarily, we would have taken a tram from 11th to 38th and avoided this sideshow altogether. But the weather delays coupled with the prospect of a security screening made mass transit less attractive. If the previous sector had been society at its glut, this was it at its fringe. Buildings were spaced at random, no longer supported by structurally sound development, stores lined on precarious stilts. Where before the projections had settled on sights and sounds from far offworld, they were different now. The aim was no longer to entice, but to consume. Now they spoke to things closer to home, and there wasn't much about home worth speaking about.

The most obvious example came as we passed a gentleman's club. "Little Temple" was as unassuming a club name as they came. Its Jedi aesthetic would have been more fitting before Order 66, but the owners had kept with it all the same. Long after the clientele of weary Clones had stopped coming through to fulfill their fantasies. Despite their adherence to the theme, they had been finding other ways to evolve.

Namely, the scantily clad dancers stationed at the entryway. There was a smattering from every corner of the galaxy, from the Twi'leks of Ryloth to the slugs of Nal Hutta. One size for all, and many more inside.

The dancers were holographic, of course. My own experiences reinforced that fact, but the line of projectors atop the entrance made it all the more obvious. I could feel Velker drooling next to me all the same, practically had to drag him from wandering inside. "No dice, kid. The realest thing about them are the vocals in their voice modulator."

The side eyes glance he gave me said it all. "Yeah, I mean, I knew that. Obviously. Just look at them."

Every once in awhile we'd still cut through an alleyway, stop, and survey our surroundings. Imperial patrols, Black Sun dags, even the ever elusive Mr. Green could be hiding on a shadowy street corner. The standard alphabet soup of tyrants and murders was growing larger by the day. The fact we didn't find any trouble was more telling than if we had.

Finally though, chock full of paranoia, we had made it. Unburdened and unscathed.

"There she is," Velker announced with a sweeping gesture to his tenement building. It was one of the bigger ones I had passed on the train ride down here, just one panel in the cityscape's elaborate billboard. Halfway up the steps, the kid stopped.

"You know Geb, you're an alright guy," he said, giving me a hesitant pat on the shoulder. The quiver in his hands hadn't gone without notice, even this far removed from the bar fight he still seemed a little shell-shocked.

I played it off all the same. "Well, glad somebody thinks so."

"The way you handled those guys back at the Den, I kinda want to be like that someday."

"You mean the fish tank...?"

"Yeah, the fish tank," he said, raising his voice with a nod. "As it stands, I'm lucky if the kriffing landlord doesn't push me around."

"Landlord's are supposed to push you around. That's kind of their job, Velk."

"Yeah, but I mean, it's more than that. You're a, uh," he gestured at my chest then, hands grasping for the suitable words.

"I'm a nobody," I decided for him. "A finder maybe, but one that knows when to keep his head down."

We continued up the steps to the apartment, rain pounding all the harder. "If you know what's right for you, you'll do the same, Velk."

. . .

---

Memories.

For a place this worn-down it was hard to believe that I'd have so many of them. But as I meandered through the tenement's lobby, it was harder to keep them from flooding back. Long talks with the doorman, the nerfherd of a landlord, the paint chipping off the walls. It was the most depressingly nostalgic thing I had seen this side of Happyland.

I used to come here years ago. Back before the War. Back before I enlisted. Back when we were still talking.

But that was a long time ago, these days I was doing well enough to make end's meet. If our earlier conversation was anything to go off of, Velker was at a similar crossroads. His detonator 'ploy' would probably work to keep his landlord off his back, and he'd need it to. This tenement was falling apart in more ways than one. Opting to take the stairs for that same reason, it wasn't long until we arrived at the room in question, three dozen stories above ground-level.

For a long moment we stayed there. Detective and teenager. Neither one willing to rasp on the door's graffiti-laden frame, though for infinitely different reasons. Becoming more cognizant of the fact I was going to miss the Grav-Train's last eastbound trip of the night, I finally relented. One firm knock on the door.

For an equally long moment, there was no reply. Velker and I were left to exchange awkward stares, vaguely aware of the smell of Deathsticks stewing in the next room over. Finally though, the door creaked open, and the memories came rushing all the faster.

She was thinner. That's what I noticed first. Frail and gaunt, though maybe that had just come with age. Even still, all these years later I could still say she wore that gray dress well. Better than any Zeltron ever had the right to.

"Hey Dejana," I finally offered her, bouncing between a wave and a stupid grin. Her appearance was true to form, skin a shade brighter than any humans could ever be. Had a heart bigger too, a glance at the adopted Balosar boy all but confirmed that.

Her expression was equally friendly, but turned to alarm as her own gaze settled on Velker's appearance. "Hang on, is that blood?"

The teenager brushed me aside then, soaring through their ratty living space. "Craziest nose bleed ever, Ma. Really wouldn't believe it. Thank the Architect that Geb was there for me, had a handkerchief ready and everything."

Her gaze bounced to me now. "This was a nose bleed?"

"Right, yeah, just going to go wash up," Velker shouted back, rushing down the hall, past a torn-up sofa and into the restroom.

As I struggled to formulate a response, Dejana had one supplied. "Should I be worried?"

I chuckled again - third of the day. "'Worried' is pretty much the default state of mind with Velker."

With a sigh she sat down at the dining table, motioning for me to do the same. "I suppose you're right, he's just been making things so..."

"Difficult," I answered knowingly, wincing at my bar fight scrapes as I took a seat.

"Exactly. It's only been recently, right when the turf wars started getting bad again. He was keeping his head down before that, you know. You had been a good influence on him."

I shifted uncomfortably at her implication. "I have been meaning to stop by more recently, you know. It's just I've been..."

"Busy," she provided for me in turn. "You always were, Geb."

I diverted my gaze then, the heap of pill bottles on the table suddenly becoming all the more apparent.

She had been a doctor before all this - a combat medic. I had met her in between tours during the War. The fact that the plague hit her as soon as she got back was more criminal than any case I'd ever investigate. She was the only woman I ever loved. The only woman I would never dare to marry. Most guys were worried about marrying a gold digger, I was more worried about becoming a gravedigger. Selfish as that may be.

Sensing the lull in conversation she spoke up again. "In any case, it was nice seeing you again. You should stop by more often. Why not stay for dinner?"

I could feel a hand hover near my chest at the question, like I was trying to shine my 'bearer of bad news' badge. "I can't. Not tonight. I've uh, got a case I'm working on... You might have heard about it. I just came by to drop Velk off, and now that I have, I'm realizing the station's going to close soon, probably going to miss my train."

We were friends. I was reinforcing that point - a little less succinctly than I might have liked, but reinforcing it nonetheless. Friends didn't impose on other friends any longer than they had to. I got up from my chair as I finished.

She traced my retreating form. "Some other night then."

"Some other night," I repeated with a nod. "Maybe... tomorrow?"

Her smile brightened. "Tomorrow it is."

The walk from table to exit felt drunken then, almost like it was reeling by in slow motion. My mind was equal parts thrilled and incoherent as to why I had just suggested that. "I'll... see you for dinner, Dejana."

"Just don't be late this time. I'm always worried when you're late, Geb."

I played her off with a sheepish grin. "Come on, when have I ever given you reason to worry?"

. . .

---

Pain.

It felt good not to be on the receiving end for once.

Three minutes removed from Dejana's, I was already busting things up again. This guy was no different. The right hook I threw slammed harder than any man's had the right to. Fist connected, teeth exploding into blood.

For a murderer, Mr. Green sure didn't know how to take a punch.

The alley's faint light gave me a glimpse at his face, or lack thereof. Hairless, beardless, identity-less. If Jekk's description had been right, this was the devil himself. Though the tattoo trailing down his neck made me second guess. It was a cog with eight spokes, like a symbol for the sun that an Ancient might've drawn up long ago. It was the Republic's emblem. A Republic that no longer existed.

I hesitated at the thought.

Grubby fists wasted no time in capitalizing, slamming me up against the street wall, head clinking in audible distress. The follow-up punch was swift, if he wasn't still woozy there'd be a crater-sized hole in my cheek. Instead, fist met wall, a bundle of bone sprouting where his knuckles should have been.

Still mourning the loss of his hand, I wasted no time in pinning him down with the other. The alleyway's back wall was doing most of the heavy-lifting in our melee.

"Who are you working for? Empire? Black Sun?"

"Your mother."

I twisted his hand a little further back, fighting off the urge to snap his wrist. Again the concern came rushing back. Who knew how long he had been following me and Velk? The New Year's parade? The night club? He had jumped me almost as soon as I had left Dejana's apartment.

Green kicked out of the pin then, a snarl and the gleam of circuitry indicating he had an endgame. The sheen of a vibro-knife came swiping down next. I caught it full on, practically on instinct, the blade making a clink as it slammed against my hand. Metal against prosthetic metal.

His shocked expression said it all.

"Yeah."

Cybernetics had their perks.

Next moment I was using the blade to turn him on a dial, the idiot refusing to let go. That worked for me, gave me leverage as I slammed him right back up against the tenement. The familiar thump as his head hit against the wall gave me no small satisfaction. Propping him up by the neck was an added bonus. For a while we stayed this way, a stalemating force of exhaustion. He just withered there, gasping. Didn't even try to escape. We were dazed, bloodied, smog lacing our uneasy breaths.

"Why did you follow me?" I finally asked, contemplating whether to snap his wrist again.

"Looked like an easy mark. Weak."

Now I really did snap his wrist. With two limp hands there wasn't anything left to prop him up with, he skidded down with a whimper.

In the moment's freedom he didn't bother retaliating. He aimed for something in his jacket instead, clawed at it with half-functioning hands. The glint in the street lights was undeniable, I tried to slap the pill away a moment too late.

Within the span of a second his whole body was convulsing. A pile of foam trailed from his decrepit lips, adding to the street's already sludgy floors. He wouldn't be murdering anyone, not anymore.

Reluctantly, I leaned down to investigate. Finger prints were, predictably, singed off. Eyebrows too. Either this guy was overcompensating for a unibrow or he really, really didn't want people to recognize him. He fit the description Jekk had given me to a tee, but his final action gave me pause. Something told me a psychopath like Mr. Green would have more pride than to end it all with a suicide capsule.

Ultimately, I came to the logical conclusion: this wasn't him. It couldn't be, had to be one of his lackeys. Outside of the fact Mr. Green had been convincing morons to dress up as himself, I was just as clueless as I had ever been. Just as alone. The thought made me kick the thug's vibro-blade in disgust, clattering down the alleyway. Hands in my pockets, I was just about to leave when the knife's gleam caught my eye one more time.

Slowly, I picked it up, ran it through my hands. After a while I settled on the handle, and more importantly, the name at its heft, etched by a factory droid long ago.

Deiden.

That name sounded familiar. Too familiar.

I gave the dead assassin one last regard. I didn't find who he worked for, but at least now I knew someone who could.

---

Where Sky Ends

Part Three:

Humility.

It was a hard concept to come to terms with. Especially for me. Especially down here.

It didn't take very long to relocate Mrs. Deiden. She had practically telegraphed where she was going after leaving my office earlier that day. I had debated how I wanted to go about doing this. Telling someone their missing spouse was arming a group of mass murders didn't sound like a good way to make friends.

Mrs. Deiden opted to meet me again, all the same. She told me she was on call here at the club but didn't mind being asked a few questions, so long as they were brief. We sat at a table furthest from the cadence of 'Little Temple's' nightly debauchery. Mrs. Deiden was one of the few flesh and blood dancers left down here in the Red Light District, yet to be replaced by a holographic equivalent. Sitting beneath the haze of synths and neons it was hard to grab a hold of her attention, let alone keep a conversation going. Brief as my questions were I had tried to make my case for the better part of an hour now.

No doubt she still remembered how our last discussion went, no doubt she was just trying to get even.

After an hour's worth of stonewalling I had to finally throw my hands in the air. "Look, I can't do anything to help Abel if you won't tell me what you know."

"Why don't you ask the police for help instead?" She suggested dryly, the usual cigarette by her lips. "I hear they've got a knack for wild bantha chases these day."

"You really want me to go to the Security Force with the evidence I've got? With the people your husband are in league with?"

"Suspected to be in league with," she countered with a puff of smoke.

"Right. 'Suspected'," I repeated with as much conviction as I could still muster. "It's not like the blade on Mr. Green's man was custom-made or anything, not like it was engraved with Deiden's name when I found it."

She bit down on her lip then, shifted a bit closer to me. "You promise you'll help Abel?"

"I promise I can give him a chance. That's a lot more than the patrol of stormtroopers looking to bring him in for questioning can do."

Another pause, this one more labored than the last, more conflicted. Finally, she sighed, "Abel kept telling me about this greenhouse he has out in the wastelands. Told me never to follow him down there, said that was where he was going to go right before he, well... "

I nodded solemnly as she drifted off.

She shook her head then, went to pull something from her bag. "Anyways, he gave me this key card just in case he didn't turn back up, says it should open the door. Don't know what he expected me to do with it, really... I can hardly afford the train fare back home, let alone just fly out to the wastes at a moment's notice."

There was a sense of reverence as I pulled the card from her, an eagerness as I finally pocketed the chunk of plastic. It was my first real clue in all of this mess. "I appreciate this, Mrs. Deiden. I won't let you down."

"Well, considering how our last conversation went, it's a little late to be making promises like that. Just... make sure there's still something left of him to bring back, yeah?"

So often that was all that my client's asked for, so rarely was that what I was able to grant. Even still, as I rose from the table I spared a nod for the request. "I'll do my best."

The confluence of light and sound turned to rain as I departed Mrs. Deiden. There was a renewed vigor in my step as I headed away from the glitzy club and back to society. What was left of it, anyways. At this time of night only Cthon and drunkards were still gung-ho enough to be roaming the streets. I pulled my trench coat tighter around my frame at the thought, grateful for the relative reprieve.

Finally, some peace and quiet. Finally, a chance to focus on my next move.

"Oy, Geb!" a familiar Balosar called out as he bounded down the street, head-antennas bobbing in the wind. "Mom says you're coming over for dinner tomorrow!"

The familiarity there called for an angry sigh. "Didn't I just take you home, Velker?"

He skidded to a halt before me, in much better spirits than the last time I saw him. "My nose was feeling better so Ma said I could come out and play again."

"Well there's no 'playing' where I'm going. Hell, probably not going to be much left of anything with an arms dealer involved..."

"Arms dealer?" Velker repeated, finally yanking his gaze away from the parade of entertainers back inside the club. "Maybe I can come with you? Maybe he could give me a real thermal detonator-"

"No," I stated firmly. "You need to go home, Velk. I'm not going to tell you again. I've already had to drag your hide out of one scrap tonight. I swear if I have to make it two I'll-"

"All right, all right," the kid interjected, feigning a touch of guilt. "I get it, 'I need to keep my head down'. 'Mind my own business'."

"Well, just make sure you're not minding it here," I pointed out, gesturing back to the flashy night club I had just left, dancers ever imploring us to make a quick visit.

He shot me a sheepish grin. "Oh, right. Wouldn't dream of it..."

. . .

---

Patience.

It looked like mine was finally starting to pay off.

By the time I left Velker and climbed out of the Red Light District the sun had drifted over the underlevel's horizon. The dawn of a new day, all but a flicker of light at sky's edge.

As I began my ascent away from the surface, that line grew a little clearer in its shine. Air rides weren't a common travel option down here in the underlevels, but this was a special case for a special case. My first real link to Deiden, and from him, to Mr. Green. The airspeeder I had paid fare for was automated to take me on the quickest possible path down to the wastelands. Considering what my end point was I wouldn't have minded a more scenic option.

All the same, we were fast approaching the end destination. The Industrial Wastes. The district-spanning anvil that had forged Coruscant's cities. Centuries ago, it was where the planet's reputation itself had first been built, where the metal for all its finest skyscrapers had been crafted. It was a prosperous construction land once, one of blacksmiths and metalworkers. Time had wrought its way since those days. Mass migration had required its populace to expand outward, then upward. Soon the Wastes had all but been forgotten, soon its people were too. Entire species swept quietly under the rug, one calculated piece of legislation after the next.

Nowadays, all this area amounted to was a string of landfills. Even 'fills' might have been doing it a disservice, though. Soaring high above it became all the clearer that there were entire districts piled with trash, wastes of the material and humanoid variety. Powering districts down here only became viable for the government when worthwhile people were actually around to inhabit them. The deluge of junkies that now bummed it in the Wastes seemingly didn't qualify.

It wasn't the junkies I was interested in, though, nor the mix of metal and trash engulfing them. It was the garden shimmering at the midst of it all.

As my airspeeder touched down in the clearing next to Deiden's greenhouse it was a struggle not to hypothesize how exactly such a place got here. The exterior of its transparisteel encasement was painted holographic, there to reflect a world that Coruscant could no longer pretend to be.

Disembarking my craft, I could already feel the scent of soot washing over me, cringe at the glass crunching beneath my boots. So much of this place was desolate, wasted away by time and government mandate. Yet I stumbled upon something else as I took a step forward. Something small and faint. Something beautiful.

A Rominaria blossom. A forgotten flower native to a distant world. Lying here beneath the trash like this it felt like a gem among the weeds. It was all I could do not to yank it free of the ground, admire its beauty up close.

"Like what you see?" A male's voice uttered behind me, heavy in its delivery.

I turned away from the flower slowly, unperturbed by the faceless voice calling out from somewhere unseen. "More or less. Didn't know goldmines could come in green."

"I hear they're quite a common sight offworld," the voice admitted, a hint of solemn underlying his reply as he echoed closer.

Out from the shadows of the workshop, a creature approached me first. A type of wolf with slenders of white fur coating its frame. The beast sniffed as it approached me, glimmers of curiosity in its ashen eyes.

I ventured a hand down to pet the animal. Reluctantly at first, but it was a gesture the canine received with enthusiasm. He was naked in parts, overly-patchy in others. Like somebody had tried to stitch together all the fur the creature had ever lost.

"Does your dog have a name?" I called out to the shadows, still expecting to see its owner at some point.

"I'm sure he does," the voice called back, words emanating from the creature itself this time.

My gaze traveled the length of the store in bewilderment, then settled back on the dog, slowly acknowledging the vocabulator strapped to his collar. "How exactly are you seeing me right now?"

"With my eyes," the man replied with a laugh, one ill-fitting for the animal attached to it. "My pup sees well enough for the both of us. Though, something tells me you didn't come here to play with my dog."

"No," I acknowledged bluntly, finally withdrawing my hand from the canine. "I'm looking for somebody."

"Aren't we all? I could make you a copy of them if you were really that desperate. A replica."

"Clones," I concluded almost immediately after considering the offer. "That's why your operation is hidden out here, I take it? So far outside of the government's purview?"

"Quite the head on you, Mr. Myles," the disembodied voice called from behind me this time. "No wonder you're a detective."

I flip around then, still struggling to put face to voice. "Already know my name and profession? Bit early in a conversation to be running database searches on someone, wouldn't you say?"

"Oh please, I am the database."

Finally he had stepped fully away from the shadow, body illuminated by the smog and graying skies. Declaring him a man would have been a disservice to droid activists everywhere. Circuity bound his cylindrical tomb of a body, extension wires tying his mass of metal back to the power generator at the center of the greenhouse. Out here in the grey clearing he towered over me, all but blocking out my surroundings.

It took me a second to take 'his' presence in, calm the urge to whip my pistol out. "You know, I think I preferred you more when you were a dog..."

"Most do," he admitted with a chuckle, bits of cable and machinery trailing the ground as he ventured another step closer. "I edited that pup's code myself, you know. Line by line, piece by piece. Did it all by hand." His eye fixtures swung wistfully over the artificial creature as he spoke. "Like it was my child."

I offered a scratch of my chin, trying to comprehend the concept. "A droid that can create life?"

"I wonder how astounded your people's Architect would be if he knew all that his creations have gone on to become," the automaton challenged with a question of his own.

"Probably more terrified than 'astounded' at this point," I level with the machine, careful to maintain the meter of space between us.

He seemed to falter at the thought. "So, who is it you've set yourself on finding down here, Mr. Myles?"

"What, your 'database' can't tell you that?"

"I have been known to enjoy the formality of a good question from time to time."

There's a faint pause then, an acknowledgement that our interaction could take two very different turns depending on what I said next. "... Deiden. Abel Deiden. He went missing a few days ago, wife's been worried sick about him. Considering you're hooked up to his shop I'm sure you've heard of him."

The lace of circuits lining his mouth seemed to curve upward at the suggestion. "Who says I'm not him?"

"I wouldn't know," I admitted, answering truthfully. "Though, I don't think you could be. Considering who Mrs. Deiden is I'm searching for someone that's a little more, well..."

"Human," the machine finished . "Yes... I've run into that technicality a time or two before. Tell me, what would you do if I told you where Mr. Deiden was?"

"Only what I have to."

"A man of action," the machine nodded, wires bobbing enthusiastically from his chin. "Good, good. You remind me of my owner in that way. Tell me why that is, though - what makes you men so determined to act? So driven by a cause?"

Suddenly our conversation was going a separate path, pivoting in a direction I hadn't anticipated. "Why do you ask?"

"Why wouldn't I? These are just questions, Mr. Myles. Same as the ones you ask your clients everyday. After investigating so many others why have you never bothered to investigate yourself?"

Another instigating question met with another simple answer. "Because there's nothing for me to investigate. I don't have anything to hide."

"Yet you still run," he noted simply. "Hide down here on the lower levels with all the rest of us pieces of scrap."

One knock on my metallic chest is enough to confirm the thought. "Not much more than scrap to me these days, anyways."

The machine seemed to wither at the sound. "But you were more than this, not so long ago. You were whole before the Clone War. Tell me, what drew you to fight that fight? The one that costed you your arms and legs? What spurred you to sacrifice them? How did you remain so eager to fight someone else's war when you had already lost so much?"

A barrage of questions for only one answer. "Because it was the right thing to do."

Now the machine urged himself forward again, tried to push for the advance. "Was it really? You stand here defeated because of it, you know. Body ravaged for a cause and government that no longer exists."

If the words weren't so cutting I might have been angrier. As is, all I can manage to do is stand there quietly, grit my teeth. "And who was it that made you the moral authority on what causes are justifiable?"

"My owner certainly tried to convince me I could," he answered softly. "The Republic that was promised to us at war's end was not what was granted. Mr. Deiden saw that truth long before it became a reality. He saw society for what it truly is: an abject failure. Now he seeks to remedy that failure. Create a better galaxy in his own image."

"Has creating an army of body doubles for Mr. Green served that image? Has it stopped the killings? Made things more peaceful?"

It takes the droid longer to respond this time. "Abel's dealings with Mr. Green are... most regrettable. I won't lie to you, in recent days, my owner has done truly horrific things. His creations now are not the same ones I agreed to work on together all those years ago on Kamino."

"But you still helped him to engineer those murderers anyways," I concluded. "Even as his 'assistant' you realize that implicates you just as much as it does him?"

"I anticipate this is when you'll threaten to jail me if I don't tell you where he is?"

I shrug at his analysis, loosen my pistol slightly. "Only if you really want it to go that away. You don't seem to share much love for what Abel's become these days."

He looks between me and the holster then, shaking his head with a tired sigh. "Old Town. That's where Mr. Green said they were going before he forced him out.

They're bunkered down in the Opera House."

. . .

---

Resolve.

That was all that was keeping me going at this point. Resolve to do the right thing, resolve to rescue Mr. Deiden from himself. From those he had elected to do business with. I had made a promise to his wife, and I intended to keep it.

The Opera House had been a favorite haunt of the Emperor back in the day. Back before he had an entire galaxy to run. It was quite a few levels above the Wastes, even further from the districts I had long called home. Government regulators had closed the place off years ago now, claimed it had served its purpose.

Standing before it now, with the full knowledge that Mr. Green was inside, I guess not everyone had the same idea.

The chilled silence that permeated Old Town's surrounding plaza was broken here. Now there was music playing. A soft melody emanating from the other side of the wooden opera doors.

I found myself hesitating at that door's handle. There was still time to turn back. Time enough to let another group make this visit, to fight with better arms and better odds.

The odds had never discouraged me before, though. What was one more tempt of fate?

Steel fingers latched the door free, pulled it as wide open as it had been in years. The perfume of nobles and politicians still ran rampant in the air as I stepped inside. The soft harmony of music once humming from the closed door now erupted into a harsh cacophony of noise. String and wind instruments echoed at random, sped up to an indecipherable degree. Notes traveled the length of the shadowy complex, eager to escape through the door I had left ajar.

For a moment I wish that I could leave with them. But my legs were carrying me forward instead, one resigned step after the next.

Every few minutes I would hear the music stop, crackle static. Then, ever so slowly, it would cycle back, start anew. The Opera House hadn't enjoyed live music in years, Deiden's recordings would have to do.

It didn't take me long to stumble on the aforementioned recorder. He was bound to a chair at the center of the decrepit chamber, all alone in the hazy shadows of the Opera House.

"Abel...?" I ventured softly, stirring the slender man away from his sleep. All tied up like this, it looked like he hadn't eaten in days.

Orbs of black flittered open to greet me then, pencil-neck slouched over to one side. He was a Kaminoan. A cloner far, far from home. Mrs. Deiden seemed to have a peculiar taste in men.

Without a readily available response to answer me, I supplied him with one. "I think your wife's looking for you."

"Wife?" Abel's eyes opened a little bigger then, twitching in confusion. "What wife?"

"Mrs. Deiden?" I repeated for him, hoping his absent-mind was just the case of a long night. "She's been worried sick about you, you know."

"Yes, I suppose she would be," he considered with a gaze at the faint auxiliary lights far above. "She always was a bit attached to me, that one."

"Well, she is your wife."

"My creation," he corrected with a shake of his head. "The first of them, actually. These days I'm sure she'd like to think she was the only one."

My mind filtered back to the dog at the greenhouse, to the dancer at the club. The aimlessness they both seemed to inherit from their master. An artificial mandate. "You certainly have been making a mess of things."

Regret filled his eyes at the observation. "Trying to clean a mess up is more like it."

"Is that how you justified making all of Green's men faceless? Leaving them without identity?"

"I gave them purpose," Abel countered with a hiss. "That's more important than identity has ever been."

"Not in my line of business it isn't..."

"And which line is that, exactly?" The question coming not from Abel, but someone else. Someone far away. His words echoed all across the establishment, music having shuttered quiet several moments earlier.

My pistol was out before he could even finish talking, primed over the source of the speaker. "The line of making right. Of getting even."

"Is that what you came here to do? 'Get even'?" Mr. Green repeated with a hint of amusement, stepping out from beneath shadow's blanket. Tattered robes lined over his tall frame. Adorned to his face was a mask of plain white, features indistinguishable from its wood finish.

"You know, I'm getting really kriffing tired of all you people hiding behind your masks and shadows."

"Masks are the standard in my line of business," he echoed back.

My gaze bounced between Abel and Mr. Green then, blaster pistol the only thing keeping the latter at bay. "Is it my turn to ask, then? Why are you doing this? Why make the clones? Why double-cross the Black Sun?"

"If you had bothered to look around here you might have already found your answer."

Eyes thrust past the Jedi then, out to the hoard of weapon caches stacked behind Abel, each adorned with the emblem of the specific criminal organization they had been stolen from. Something made me hesitate as I inspected them closer, though... these weren't just weapons. They were explosives. Bundles of them, lengthy boxes stacked high enough to reach the overhang far above. "So that's your grand plan then? Blow everything up?"

"Not everything," Green corrected. "Only what the Force demands of me. Blood for blood."

"It's the Force that's demanding you to spite us all?"

"It's the Force demanding I save what's left."

My gaze drifted back down to Abel, his white skin bruised a dark purple. "You seem to leave scars with all the people you try to 'save'."

"Battle scars are something to take pride in, Gebrin," he answered with a small chuckle, eyes glancing over my exposed prosthetics. "I'd have assumed you to know that better than anyone."

I hardly paused as he called me by name. Seemed like it was becoming common knowledge at this point. Metal knuckles crack their fleshy partners instead. "'Pride', huh? Might be time for somebody to change your tune on that."

I can feel his face curling into a smile behind that mask now, hands folding behind his back. "I'd love to see you try."

There was a moment of silence then, my own small way of trying to delay the inevitable. I only saw one path our encounter could go down now, and it was probably going to hurt. Abel looked up at me, I looked down at him. Out of my periphery I could feel Mr. Green taking another step forward, challenging me to act. To do something.

Next moment everything was spiraling forward. In a flash of light I had blasted Abel's chains away, started helping him out of this Opera-shaped prison. Mr. Green was charging forth in turn, brandishing the blade that had given him his namesake. Racing down the hallway with Abel in tow it was all I could do to keep pace, to not let him close in on us.

Turns out when your opponent's a Jedi they don't have to be close to you. One second, I was bounding down the hallway, the next, I was suspended in the air, a telepathic play-thing at Mr. Green's disposal. One thrust of his hand was all he needed to send my body cratering through the air, crashing into a third story balcony. All I could do was brace myself, my mechno-arm shattering violently on impact. Three, maybe four places. At least it had shielded my body from the brunt of the blow. At least I wasn't a splat on the wall.

One step upward and I could already feel the cost of that trade-off. Gears were bleeding out of my shoulder, arm dropping limp at my side. "Oh Force, it hurts..."

Leaning myself up against the side railing with my good arm I glanced back down to the ground level, spotted Abel gaping up at me from the foyer. Fear had rooted him in place. Mr. Green was stalking towards him now, seemingly assuming that he had already tossed me out of his life. Time to correct him.

Struggling with a half-functioning hand, it was all I could do to raise the barrel of my pistol against the parapet, level it with Mr. Green's outline. A squeeze of the trigger caught him off guard - the laser-fire smacked him straight in the face.

Immediately, he recoiled. Coughing and sputtering, smoke trailing from his featureless mask. Soon the smoke got to be too much for him. Soon that mask had to be ripped away, exposing his bloodied face.

For a moment, that's all his identity is to me. A mix of smoke, blood, and shadow. Then it cleared and I realized that I recognized the face beneath it all.

"Rahm...?"

The realization justified my next actions, hastened my trigger finger. It wasn't just Rahm Kota I was aiming for this time, it was the nest of criminal explosives he had been working months to acquire. It was all the lives I had witnessed him take along the way.

Blood for blood, he had said.

That was all I could think of as I pulled the trigger, as the explosives erupted and the Opera House came caving down on top of us.

---

Where Sky Ends

Part Four:

19 BBY

Concordia.

One of the forest-clad moons of Mandalore. A teeming hotbed for insurgents ever since the onset of the Clone Wars.

Horror stories about its mountaintops had rocked the barracks for years. By the time we landed there we already knew all about the reputation of the revolutionaries, the executions they ordered en masse. How they'd grind the captive's bones down and mix it with beskar.

Tall tales like that were enough to scare almost anyone. Never us, though. You could call the 23rd Battalion a lot of things, but scared wasn't one of them. Tired, on the other hand? That was a given. We had just sustained heavy losses in the battle of Jabiim, one of the only non-clone divisions that willingly fought in that massacre. One of the last battalions to put pride over reason.

I don't remember how many bodies I buried that day. How many dog tags I yanked from the whirlpools of mud.

Even still, Rahm never wavered in calling our last stands there a valiant sacrifice. Promised that we were a legion of heroes that would be immortalized in scripture. That our exploits would stand above all the others because we ended up doing things the right way, got the 'right' people.

We all knew the truth, though. Sacrifices like ours were lucky to get a passing mention on the evening Holonews. Right way or not, the historians decided to call it the Clone Wars for a reason. Volunteer soldiers were considered thrillseekers, not heroes.

Quietly, we started to wonder how long it could keep going like this. How long we could keep pretending we were these unshakable beacons of hope. That we were somehow capable of defeating an enemy that was growing infinite in number.

But we didn't voice such concerns to General Kota back in those days. Hell, we never did.

We just listened.

. . .

---

Present Day, 13 BBY

Opera House

"Cough."

I wheezed.

"Cough."

I wheezed again. Harder.

The middle-aged EMT glanced down at my metal frame with a frown. "Why did you say you came down here again, Mr. Myles?"

Weakly, I panned my gaze to meet hers, shards of bone-metal glinting in the auxiliary lights. "I was feeling nostalgic. Used to be a theater major, you know."

My aspirations did little to sway her. "Nostalgia's no reason to go fighting mass murderers. You could have been killed."

I laughed grimly. "Probably should have."

We sat on a gunky bench just outside the ruins of the Opera House, flame and smoke pounding its half-crumbled dome to ruin. Legions of fire-control droids stood further ahead of us, beating back the blaze with high-powered water hoses.

The sight brought me back to a night ago. Back to when Velker initiated a shootout that I had to end by way of Sando Beast. All things considered, I was cutting it a bit close with the authorities these days.

As if only to hammer home the point, the EMT swiped an bacta swab across my face, stinging the synth-flesh. "You should be counting your lucky stars that Kaminoan was around to drag you out of the wreckage."

"Can't count what I can't see," I reminded the technician, waving a hand to the perpetually skyless void.

She just shook her head again, went to reassess my injuries. Lines of screws and metal knobs lined the pavement all around us, streaks of blood that leaked from my arm since I had been pulled from the fire. "We can re-graft your prosthetic tissue but the servos are going to take awhile to calibrate, might be a couple hours."

That was a couple hours too many.

"No need to," I decided, waving her off with my still-functioning arm. "I can fix it up myself. Not my first beating, believe it or not."

"Who'd find that hard to believe?" Abel asked weakly, the aforementioned Kaminoan finally lumbering into view. He wore a lopsided smile, his frame towering over the park bench. The smile felt ill-fitting at the current juncture. He looked every bit as bruised and battered as I was. Probably moreso, knowing what Rahm had done to him.

"Fair point," I finally acknowledged sheepishly. Humor was a worthwhile remedy when it felt like every one of your limbs had been systematically turned inside out. "I guess the medic here makes a good point - I ought to thank you for making sure this beating wasn't my last."

"You? Thank me? Were it not for your heroics inside I'd likely still be making faceless automatons in a genetic sweatshop somewhere."

Firing point-blank at a metric ton's worth of explosives wasn't my idea of heroic, but then, I hadn't intended to come out living on the other side.

"Let's call ourselves even, then."

Abel took that as an invitation to grab the seat next to me, the EMT drifting away from us both with a shake of her head.

In turn, he nodded up to the police chief that was milling about. "Doesn't seem like I'll be going anywhere for awhile. They want to bring me in for questioning."

Brief as I had known him, I couldn't help but feel a touch of sympathy. Abel's moral compass might have been genetically-altered, but he didn't come off as a bad person. Not to the guy who's metal carcass he had just dragged out of a burning building. "Look, if you need any legal advice, any help, I know a couple good attorneys that I could call a favor in with."

"No need," he said with an all-knowing smile. "I've 'made' an attorney or two of my own. They'll be arriving here from the greenhouse shortly."

"... Of course they will be." We were living in a day and age where flesh model substitutes weren't a surprise, but an expectation.

"Even still, I'm not optimistic that litigation will go along in my favor..."

"No," I agreed. "I can't imagine that it will."

"That's neither here nor there at this point," he decided with a considerably cheerier wave of his hand. "I followed my passions and they brought me here… forcibly or not, I have no regrets. Well, maybe one. If only those explosives had finished the damn job."

"What?" My eyes widened. "Are you trying to tell me Rahm's still alive?"

His already weak shoulders seemed to dip a bit further. "The lack of a dead body thus far would seem to imply so, yes. Unfortunately."

If I gripped the bench post any harder than I was it probably would have shattered. How? How was Rahm still alive? Everything but the skin of my knuckles had been sacrificed in my effort and this bastard still wasn't dead.

"Where's he going, then? What's his endgame?"

"This was his endgame," Abel acknowledged with another glance at the inferno raging before us. "Without those explosives... I don't know what Rahm will do. Where he'll go."

"That's not good enough, Abel."

"No," he acknowledged glumly. "I suppose it's not."

We sat there for awhile, stewing in the ramifications. I thought about the War. Thought about how Rahm refused to die then, too. Thought about all the soldiers he had wasted in his futile quest, in a vain attempt to deny the reality that had been closing in all around us long before that day on Concordia.

In that moment, it all started to seem obvious to me. "Well, guess I'll have to do us one better."

"What?" Abel sputtered, watching as I staggered to my feet. "Where do you think you're going?"

The servos in my jaw worked themselves into something resembling a grin.

"Where he's been."

. . .

---

Memorials.

The notion had seemed so foreign to us at the time. Why would our battalion want to remember what we had done? The lives we had taken.

I suppose Rahm was right, in a way. We had been immortalized.

At war's end there had been a city mandate to remember all the valiant sacrifices that were made throughout that three-year span. It was why I was up here, dozens of levels above my home, marching past a memorial wall that stretched out as far as the eye could see.

The turbolift I took to get here had been an interesting affair. I'd like to think the upper-levelers that gawked at me at every turn knew of cyborgs, but they'd never seen one. Not in the 'flesh'. Not one that had all but been grinded to stardust, like me.

These days, the stares were getting easier to deal with. I guess I was just getting used to them. Seven years worth of hiding in the slums pretending to play detective can make a guy feel like he's forgotten a lot of things.

There was no forgetting the war, though. No forgetting Rahm. Not when my own body couldn't stop giving me reminders.

I walked that memorial wall for what must have been miles. Saw every soldier's name etched in stone, every ID-number from one to a billion. In a past life Abel might have even made some of these souls himself.

Abel didn't make me, though. I had decided to enlist as a service volunteer despite all the protests from my friends and families. Ironic that I'd be the only one left standing all these years later.

At march's end, the irony wasn't feeling so welcome. I'd heard stories about this section before. Heard how all the other survivors would come up to pay their respects. I'd even come up here once myself, back when it was still under construction. When the idea of enshrining soldiers in metal hadn't made sense yet.

Back before it happened to me.

Reluctantly, my gaze fell to the inscription carved at the bottom.

"In honor of the 23rd Battalion. For services in battle, and their aid in the liberation of Concordia."

Just like that, I was back in the forest. Back in the midst of that hellscape. Back to that moment of hesitation when a live grenade had pinged between the both of us. Back to deciding whether it was me or Rahm that was going to live that day.

And sure enough, there we were. Two names, side by side. General Rahm Kota. Lieutenant Commander Gebrin Myles.

I could feel myself go stone in the face. Rigid. I read the two names again. Again and again, at least a dozen times.

Gebrin Myles.

Rahm Kota.

We had been partners. Compatriots. Brothers in a war that hadn't made sense from the first air drop. And yet, we promised to fight the fight the right way. No 'clones', no shortcuts, only people. Citizens vowing to do the right thing for their galaxy.

That was what he had promised.

There was a mechno-arm sized hole in the wall before I even knew what I was doing. Then another, and another. Punches thrown again and again until I had driven my fist right through the memorial's surface. Right where our names had been written. Now there were no more names to read. No more memories to fight back. Now there was only regret.

I slumped next to the rubble of it all. The conduits in my knuckle sparked harshly, trying to cope with motor-digits that had just been smashed three times over. It had been a messy display of emotion. A necessary one.

It's one thing for your commanding officer to be a psychopath during the war, it's another thing after.

Even still, defacing a war monument was bound to attract attention. It always did. As if each strike of metal against metal had been a ringing bell for all the other war vets to converge on.

I didn't even realize they were surrounding me. Not at first. Not until I looked back up and felt like I was reliving the battle of Jabiim all over again. There were Clones all around me. Scores of them. But these weren't like normal Clones, these were the kind that had already outlived their usefulness. For them, this was life after the War. Real life. The life they weren't ever intended to see. No pristine helmets hid their faces now. No military-issued armor and rifles preset to kill. Only hunger, fear, and rags. For all their genetic coding and implementation, happiness still seemed to elude them.

They were an older batch, by the looks of it. The gray was starting to get to their heads, bodies deteriorating at an unreasonably rapid pace. All the same, they were free. The Empire had done something to them after the War was over, 'decommissioned' them. Set them off to wander the streets in good faith, a bunch of look-alike vagabonds.

"What brings a clanker out here?" The lead clone asked me, greeted by a round of chuckles from his entourage of test tube babies.

My fists tightened at the insult - what was left of my fists, anyways. A concerted level of restraint made me acknowledge him with a nod of the head. "Went out for a stroll from the lower levels. Wanted to admire some beauty for once."

"Yeah, you need a spot of beauty in your life, don't you?" The next closest one remarked, beady gaze traveling from metallic lips to the corroded lump swelling on my forehead.

"And you could probably use a right kick in the ass. Might want to see if your programmers can do anything about that."

"Nobody 'programmed' me."

"No," I agreed with a clench of my teeth. Like I already knew I was about to say something really stupid. "You're right. They just decided to piss your genetic code into a test tube one day, didn't they? Far more efficient that way."

All the mental failsafes that were supposed to keep them calm started to fall away in that moment. I could already tell where this was headed.

If the clones squinted real hard I probably didn't look all that different from a battle droid to them. Not to their half-robot brains. I probably didn't look like I'd hesitate in mowing down a village full of innocents, either.

That's how it all started. Me, struggling to my feet like some half-deformed hunchback. Them, venturing closer with every step of their deteriorating limbs. In a moment, they were on me. All six of them. Like a pack of Nexu that had smelled fresh meat in their metal jungle.

I think my eyesight was the first thing to go. It's hard to tell which when all your senses are falling like dominoes.

I know for sure that I swung a couple lashes out. My fists were like stumps poking against their genetically superior bodies.

A greasy fluid filled my mouth as one of them slammed a boot against my face. It tasted more like oil than it did blood. Probably a mix of both.

I don't know how long the beating lasted. How long it could last. All I know is that by the time it was over, I... couldn't breath. Couldn't suck air through my windpipe. Like all the beatings had finally caught up to me and the exo-frame that kept my flesh sack configured had finally punctured a lung.

That's how I was pretty sure I was about to die. Aimless, breathless, and with a mouth full of oil.

I thought about a lot of things while I sat there gargling. I thought about how dumb the war had been, how my parent's were right and I had been naive to join up. How the galaxy we got at war end's wasn't the one that Rahm promised us all.

Then I thought about Deja and Velker, and how, just for a second, maybe it had all been worth it.

By the time a pair of boots came racing up to me, that was about all I really could think about. The only thought as my neural network drifted in and out of consciousness, vaguely aware of the fact that we had somehow taken the lift from District 11 to District 38. That they - whoever they were - had dragged me back all this way and still made it home before sunrise.

Back again, just in time for the daily rat race.

. . .

---

Water.

The kind that tasted warm and coppery. Drinking from the shower head was never a good idea, most of all down here. There were at least a half dozen old wives' tales that said so. The kind that probably had some science to back it up. But water was water, and getting beat to the edge of death could sure make a guy thirsty.

In the early days it had always been a toss up of what I'd start with. Would it be the oil bath first and then the shower? No, shower first, oil second. Past a certain age I realized it didn't matter. The first negated the second, and I was probably still going to stink either way.

As I stepped out of the shower one glance in the holographic mirror said it all. My face had never been all that recognizable to me, but it hadn't been this unrecognizable, either.

If it weren't for this little patch of skin where hair follicles still grew, I probably would have insisted that the guy looking back had never been me at all. But I still had the hair, which meant I still used to have a beard, too. A short, scraggly beard that made me look dumb. Maybe it's better it can't grow these days.

Outside this one patch where it still does, anyways. This one defiant spot of real flesh. Who'd have thought a chin strap would be good for anything? The razor stings every time I shave. It's that good sting though, the kind that reminds you that you're back to work, back to life. Back to the silly things that don't matter.

I didn't bother cleaning the cut when I was finished. I never did.

The bathroom I miraculously found myself in was vaguely familiar, but it wasn't until I stepped back out into the ratty living room that I knew for sure.

Deja and Velker sat hunched over on the couch, looking like the closest thing I'd ever had to home.

"... Hi."

Being home didn't mean it still couldn't be awkward.

All pretense was over in the next moment, Deja stood up and gave a big smile that cast away the pharmacy's worth of pills she had no doubt swallowed that morning. "I guess you did make it here for dinner, in a way."

"Yeah," I acknowledged with as much depth as the crumples in my voice box would still allow. "I guess I did."

A stride forward reminded me how heavy walking still felt. The first wobble was played off well enough, it was the second one that got me, the snag in the carpet that sent splinters running up my legs.

Velker shot up from the couch and slid an arm across my shoulder before I could faceplant with the floor.

"Thanks, Velk," I said in a voice that still wasn't mine. "Guess I still need to find my legs."

"You've been out for two days, Geb," Deja reasoned with a shake of her head, making space for me to slump down on the couch. "You're lucky to be walking at all."

"Two days," I breathed back, trying to make sense of the passage of time. "Guess it's over, then."

Velker gave a scratch of his head. "Guess what's over?"

"The trail for Ra-, for Mr. Green. It's gone cold."

"They found Rahm, Gebrin," Deja said. "Just a while after we found you, actually."

"What? Where?"

"At the War Memorial. Right where you… punched a hole through it, actually. Rahm just stood there for most of the night. The news said it was the clones that finally took him down. That they were the ones that finished the fight. Seven dead, a dozen injured."

"The clones?" I repeated in half delusion.

"The clones," she confirmed with a nod.

I sat there, nonplussed for awhile. It wasn't until the seventh reenactment of the scene by Velker that it finally started to settle in. Mr. Green was dead. He went to the same memorial I did and decided to give himself up.

All the while Deja kept looking at me, watching as the realization dawned on my face. "What's wrong, Geb?" she asked in a way that scoped beyond the obvious.

"Nothing, just… I guess they really were good for something, after all. The clones."

It had taken me until the edge of life to figure that one out. It took Rahm even further than that. And yet, sitting here now I still couldn't be sure who had gotten the short end of the stick - him or me.

End