He was dreaming again. Seth knew he had to be because he recognized the space that occupied all his dreams. The cold bridge of a nameless warship was as eerie as ever, but this time it was different. Seth didn't feel small and helpless at all. In fact, Seth didn't feel anything, as if he were a disembodied fly on the wall observing the entire scene. And the scene was not one of yelling and screaming and argument and fear - it was one of battle. Two lightsabers clashed, red against yellow, streaking in magnificent displays of light as they whirled about and connected with a hiss. One figure, wielding red, was hooded and ominous. The other, a woman who must have been on the cusp of adulthood, wielding gold.

He watched as sparks flew into the air with every attack and counter-attack, while three additional Jedi stood behind the woman, lightsabers drawn and at the ready but not with the intention of rushing into the fray. The gold lightsaber parried, flicking the blood red blade out of the way before the woman cut down her opponent with hardly a second thought. She continued her advance down the bridge, but blackness enveloped Seth's vision and suddenly he was sitting in a bed. He blinked a few times as he adjusted to the scenery change.

He definitely didn't recognize where he was whatsoever, and he struggled to remember how he came to this place. He sat up, touching his head and hissing at the white-hot pain he felt as his fingers came in contact with heavy bruising on the back of his head.

"You're awake, thank the Force." Seth's head snapped toward the voice, and he realized he was sitting in an unfamiliar studio-style apartment. On the opposite side of the room sat a familiar face, and though he didn't remember how he'd gotten to the apartment, it didn't take much for him to remember his superior officer.

"Captain Onasi, sir!" his hand snapped into a salute and he swung his legs over the side of the bed in an attempt to stand up.

"Whoa whoa whoa," Onasi held his hands up in front of him. "At ease, soldier. Sit back down. You've been slipping in and out of consciousness for a couple of days, you need to take it easy."

"Yes, sir," Seth said as he sat back down. He was aware of a faint throbbing in his skull but it wasn't unbearably painful. "You said I was out for a couple of days, sir?"

"Four," Onasi responded. "And quite a bit's happened in those four days. You were banged up pretty bad when we crashed, it was all I could do just to drag you away from the crash site. Luckily I stumbled upon this abandoned apartment, so we've been holed up in here. The Sith have declared martial law and put in place a planet-wide blockade. I haven't been able to make contact with Commander Shan or any of the other Republic forces that managed to escape the Endar Spire. So it looks like it's just me and you for now, kid."

"So what's next, sir? Do we wait for Commander Shan's orders?"

"Well, first off, if it's just gonna be the two of us against the forces of Taris, I'd like to skip the formalities. Call me Carth."

"Yes, sir," Seth responded dutifully.

"Yes, Carth," Carth corrected him. "This planet is crawling with Sith soldiers. We need to blend in, and acting like a soldier is only gonna raise the red flag to them. And if Bastila - yes, we're dropping the formalities with her as well - were able to get orders to us, she would have done so by now. Which means she's either lying low, or she's been captured. And both of those possibilities require our action."

"And what action would that be, sir?" Seth waited as Carth stared him down for a long while. "Carth," the sixteen-year-old amended.

"Just gotta get you in the habit so you don't slip up in front of Sith troops," the older man said with a smile. "And we're gonna find her, and work with her to develop a strategy to get off this rock."

"How are we supposed to find one person on a planet of billions of people?"

"Bastila's a Jedi, and wherever a Jedi goes, an onslaught of crazy circumstances is sure to follow. If we keep our ears to the ground, we'll find her, don't worry."

Seth stood, grabbing his blaster off the nightstand and sheathing his sword, Striker before turning to Carth. "If that's the case, then we'd better start looking soon."

"Whoa, cool your jets, private." Carth held his hands up in front of him in a halting gesture, a look of amusement written across his features. "You just woke up. Finding Bastila is a high priority but I need you at your best."

"Sir, I promise I'm fine. I'm quick with recoveries."

"I believe that, but for the sake of caution, I'm asking you to wait until tomorrow morning to jump into the action, alright?"

Seth sighed, undoing the clips binding his sword and sheath to his utility belt and placing his blaster back on the nightstand. "Yes, sir."

There were a few moments of silence before Carth again broke the quiet. "So I read your file, said you volunteered for the navy when you were fourteen?" Seth nodded. "What prompted you to sign on so young?"

"I figured it was the best way to a better life," Seth shrugged. "I mean sure, war's not the ideal life, but at least here I know I'll have a roof over my head and food to eat and people I can trust by my side. Most of the time."

"If there's anything I've learned kid, trust is the last thing you should count on."

"I grew up on Coruscant, sir, and not the nice side of Coruscant either. I know what it means to not be able to trust anyone. And I can tell you, the people inside of the Republic, even some of the ones at the Academy who know nothing but their parents' money and how to be utterly centered in their own world, those people are much more trustworthy than most."

"Right, I get that. I'm just saying you should never let your guard down, no matter how comfortable you get."

"I'm getting the sense that there's a story behind this."

"There is," Carth said bluntly. "And it's a story I'm not keen on telling, so keep your questions to yourself."

Seth opened his mouth to retort, but stopped himself. "Yes… sir," he said slowly, biting his tongue to stop the flow of burning questions.

"You hungry?" Carth asked, changing the subject on the turn of a dime.

"I… what?"

"You've been out for four days, are you hungry?"

He hadn't thought about it once, but now that Carth had mentioned it, Seth realized just how empty his stomach was, and he nodded ferociously.

"While you were out I did some scouting around, listening in for possible hints on Bastila's location," Carth continued. "And in the process of doing so found some of the best Tarisian take-out the planet has to offer." He stood, holstering his pistol. "I'll be back. I hope you like braised tach."

Carth wasn't sure how he felt bringing an underage private into a cantina with him, but he really had no other option. He had procured some fake ID's from a hacker hiding out in the same apartment complex he and Seth had holed up in, and luckily Seth looked just old enough to pull off the age on the card, but it still made him uneasy. "Just remember, Seth, we aren't here to have fun-"

"I know, I know, I'm not gonna try and drink while we're here," Seth said exasperatedly. "That's the fifth time you've needed reassurance that I won't, and I know I said I wasn't gonna press the trust issues thing but this is getting ridiculous."

Carth gritted his teeth. "I… The trust issues have nothing to do with this!" he snapped. "Rather, it's my own conscience giving a sixteen year old the power to drink."

"You do know that a majority of the underage recruits sneak juma into the barracks on a regular basis, right sir?" Carth's eyes went wide, but Seth continued to reassure him, "Not saying I drink with my fellow recruits on a regular basis, because I don't. I'm just saying that you're not putting me under any extra temptation than I've already faced. Besides, I hear alcohol costs a fortune here, no thank you.

Carth sighed. "Alright, alright, my conscience is alleviated, at least a little bit."

"Although I've always wanted to try Tarisian Ale." Carth snapped a fixed stare on the private, who looked back at him coolly before cracking a grin. "Kidding, sir."

The cantina was much nicer than most Carth had been to throughout years of galaxy travel. He was used to shore leave on backwater planets with run-down bars smelling of stale booze and inhabited by shady characters and lowlives trying to drown their sorrows in a bottle of juma. The cantina of Taris' Upper City, however, was quite the opposite. Well-lit, lively, and smelling of mouth-wateringly delicious Tarisian food, the cantina was the first place Carth had actually felt welcome since crash-landing on the planet.

The establishment was divided into four wings to provide some form of entertainment or relaxation to suit the tastes of just about any guest that wandered through the massive front entrance from the Upper City streets. For the gambler, a luxury pazaak den was set up just inside the cantina's entrance, although one card shark seemed to have monopolized the den, so the area had become less of a gaming hub and more of the man's personal lounge. For the sports fans, there was a lounge dedicated to Taris' professional dueling circuit. Opposite the dueling lounge was a music lounge, where a live band played despite the fact that the only reason tenants even came to their side of the cantina was for the scantily-clad twi'lek dancing onstage alongside them.

And, of course, the bar. It had been Carth's first pit-stop after ensuring the safety of a then-still-unconscious Seth. The captain had been able to hole up within the abandoned apartment with the injured teenager for all of about a day before he began to get stir-crazy. What with everything he'd endured in the battle of the Endar Spire, Carth had treated himself to what he had felt was a well-deserved drink. He'd been back every day since. So when he ventured in with the younger man at his side for the second time, his feet moved him towards the back to the bar without Carth really consciously aware of where he was going until he'd arrived.

"Back again, already?" the bartender asked, recognizing the captain with just a glance. "This quarantine may have you off-worlders upset, but it sure is giving me some fresh new regulars. Tarisian ale for ya?"

"Please," Carth said with a nod, and the bartender turned his back on the two to prepare the drink.

"Regular?" Seth asked amusedly, raising a curious eyebrow. "We've been here for what, a week?"

Carth turned a withering glare on the private before turning back to the counter to receive his drink. The bartender pointed at Seth. "Anything for you, sir?"

Seth glanced at Carth before adamantly shaking his head no. "I...ahh… I'm here for the dancers, actually," he said quickly, retreating to the music lounge.

"He old enough to be in here?" the bartender asked casually as he wiped down the inside of a glass with a wet rag.

Carth shrugged. "Just turned twenty, so if your cantina was based back on one of the core worlds, he'd be a little too young. You outer rim worlds are a bit less strict, though, your drinking age is, what? Eighteen? Nineteen?" He was glad years of service had called for a few unconventional undercover ops - Carth had become adept at on-the-spot improvisation.

"Nineteen," the bartender confirmed, "although now that the Sith have seized control of the government, who knows if that's going to even be enforced? May as well be a cantina based down in the Lower City if no one's going to try and uphold the integrity of this establishment."

"It's much cleaner, at any rate," Carth supplied with a smile. "Or at least, that's what I've heard. The Sith aren't allowing anyone down there besides their own."

"Trust me, it's a good thing they're keeping the wanderers out. Lower City is dangerous."

"So I've been told," the captain replied. "But you gotta wonder - what's so important to the Sith that they feel the need to keep the privileged separate from the riff-raff?"

"I don't think that it's about keeping the people separate so much as keeping an eye on what goes in or out," the bartender set down the glass and leaned in close to Carth, dropping his voice to a whisper. "They're looking for something."

There hadn't been a large supply of twi'leks in the Republic's human-dominated Coruscant Military Academy, and Seth was just now realizing that they looked much different in person than they did in their overly-sexualized roles in the galactic media. While the dancers before him still wore the bare minimum of clothing allowed by Tarisian public decency laws and moved their bodies tantalizingly to the music, he was able to appreciate the twi'lek species much more now than he had flipping through his roommates' holozines back at the academy.

He kept a respectful distance, and although his eyes did wander the lithe bodies of the dancers, Seth did his best to avert them and ward off the testosterone-fueled thoughts before he disrespected them, even if it was just in his mind.

He felt a friendly elbow brush up against his arm, and next to him a man who couldn't have been more than five years Seth's elder grinned and pointed at the dancers. "Total babes, huh?"

Seth nodded politely. "They're beautiful," he agreed.

"Oh, beautiful doesn't even begin to cover it, man!" the other man said excitedly.

"Oh, leave him alone, Yun," a woman called from behind them, and Seth turned to see a tall, fair-skinned woman pulling long red hair from a tight bun. It tumbled over her shoulders in waves, and she tucked a strand behind her ear before facing the two young men. She looked younger than her friend, probably only a couple years older than Seth. "He's obviously got more conservative tastes." She turned to Seth. "Don't mind him, he never gets any action back at the military base, so he runs straight here whenever we're off duty just to remember what the female body looks like."

Seth snorted involuntarily, and Yun turned a bright shade of red. "Not my fault you and half the other junior officer women are too busy vying for a promotion to blow off a little steam," he argued back, attempting to defend his honor.

"Please," the woman said with a roll of her eyes. "I wouldn't be caught dead 'blowing off a little steam' with you, promotion or no promotion."

"Junior officer?" Seth inquired curiously.

The woman smiled as she turned her attention back to the younger man. "Yeah! We're with the Sith occupation force. Yun and I completed basic training a few months back, and ended up getting our first posting out here on this backwater planet. Not necessarily the most ideal location to get stuck on for your first tour, but we make the best of it."

Seth's eyebrows rose, although he did his best to hide his surprise. For all he knew, this woman could have been a part of the attack on the Endar Spire. Yet she seemed… normal. Almost an exact foil to Seth, who'd just recently graduated from the academy and gotten his first official posting. Both were trying to make the best of their less-than-ideal situations.

She must have mistaken Seth's silence for offense, and she quickly spoke again. "You're not a local are you? I didn't mean to call Taris a backwater, I just-"

Seth cut her off, smiling despite himself, "No, no, I'm an off-worlder. I'd be gone if not for the quarantine." He wanted to stay polite, and civil, and most importantly for reasons he couldn't comprehend, he wanted this woman to like him. It was an odd change of feeling compared to the rage he'd felt aboard the Endar Spire.

The woman put her palm to her forehead embarrassedly. "That's even worse. We're the ones keeping you stuck here; you probably hate us Sith."

Seth paused. "Well, yeah," he admitted. "But you're just following orders. Can't really hate you personally for that."

She smiled. "You're not like most off-worlders. You're understanding… and pretty cute, even with that baby face of yours."

He smiled shyly, chuckling to himself a bit. "I'm Seth, by the way," he said sticking a hand out to shake hers. She returned the gesture, and he noted how soft her skin was as he shook her hand.

"Sarna," she replied. They were both quiet for a moment, before she spoke up once again. "I can't believe I'm asking a stranger this - I promise I'm not usually this forward - but do you have any plans tonight? Some of the other junior officers and I are having a party at my apartment, and I'd love to see you again."

Seth was quiet for a moment, unsure of how to respond. He almost wanted to go, but he was unsure of how he was going to explain to Carth his desire to attend a Sith party. "I…" he paused as Sarna looked back at him eagerly, "... might be able to go."

She beamed "Oh, good! We'll be heading over there as soon as our shifts end tonight. We won't even be running back to the military base to lock up our uniforms, so you wouldn't have to worry about waiting up for us."

"Sarna, we'd better head back," Yun said. He glanced at Seth momentarily. "Looks like I'll be seeing you tonight, then."

"Maybe," Seth asserted, not wanting to be locked into a plan yet.

"Hopefully," Sarna corrected with a flirtatious smile. "I can't wait to see you again, Seth," she said sultrily before following Yun from the room and out of the cantina.

Seth took a deep breath, still trying to wrap his head around what had just happened. He rejoined Carth at the bar, only half-listening as his commanding officer relayed the information he'd gathered from the bartender. "It looks like Bastila's pod crashed on the lower levels of Taris," Carth was saying, "but we can't get down there unless we can somehow convince the Sith we're with them. So we're just about as stuck as we were when we were at square one."

"D'you think that if we were dressed head to toe in Sith uniforms they'd let us down there?" Seth asked thoughtfully, a plan already developing in his head.

"It's a thought, but unless you're planning on assaulting an officer in the streets and taking his armor, I don't know how we'd obtain a Sith uniform."

"Well, I actually think I have a way to get those pretty civilly, sir."

Carth cocked an eyebrow. "What are you thinking, Private."

"Tell me, sir, were you ever much of a partier in your younger days?"