Nar Shaddaa, Corellian Sector | 19 BBY
The stench hit me before anything else. Its something I would need time to get used too.
Recycled air thick with chemicals, unwashed bodies, and something organic rotting in the ventilation system. Nar Shaddaa smelled like desperation had been distilled into atmosphere and pumped through every corridor of the vertical city. I'd been here twice during the war, both times on extraction missions that had gone sideways fast. The Smuggler's Moon didn't improve with familiarity.
My boots hit the landing pad with a hollow clang that echoed across rusted durasteel. The freighter that had carried me from the Corellian Trade Spine was already cycling its engines for departure, the captain eager to be gone before anyone asked questions about his passenger manifest. Smart man. The kind of paranoia that kept you breathing in places like this.
I pulled my hood lower and started walking. The datapad Organa had given me contained Sabetha Drel's coordinates, tucked deep in the Red Sector where legitimate business went to die. Three levels down from the current pad, which meant navigating the lifts without attracting attention. Simple enough if you knew how to move like you belonged.
The system pulsed.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
QUEST UPDATE: Forge a New Path
Objective 1: Depart Alderaan safely - COMPLETE
Objective 2: Establish base of operations - IN PROGRESS
Current location identified: Nar Shaddaa, Red Sector
Threat assessment: HIGH
Recommendation: Minimize Force signature, avoid confrontation
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
I thought dismiss and the text faded. The system had proven useful during the journey here, quantifying everything from my physical conditioning to the quality of sleep I wasn't getting. But its constant presence was like having someone looking over my shoulder, commenting on every decision.
The lift down was crowded. Rodians, Nikto, a Weequay who smelled like he'd bathed in engine coolant, two humans who kept their hands near their blasters and their eyes on everyone else. Standard fare for Hutt Space. Nobody spoke. Nobody made eye contact. The universal language of people who had learned that curiosity was expensive.
I kept my breathing shallow, my presence in the Force compressed to something barely noticeable. During my time on Alderaan, I'd practiced this particular skill until the system registered it as a new ability: Force Stealth, Level 3. Not true invisibility like some Masters could achieve, but enough to blur the edges of my presence. To anyone sensitive to the Force, I'd feel like background noise rather than a trained Padawan.
The lift stopped twice before reaching Red Sector. Each time, passengers shuffled out and new ones shuffled in. The demographics got rougher with each level. More weapons openly carried. More cybernetic augmentations. More scars that told stories of violence survived.
When the doors finally opened on my level, I stepped out into controlled chaos.
Red Sector earned its name from the neon that bathed everything in shades of crimson and rust. Cantinas, gambling dens, brothels, and establishments that combined all three lined the main corridor. Music bled from doorways, a dozen different genres competing for dominance. Barkers called out offers in Huttese and Basic and languages I didn't recognize. And underneath it all, the constant hum of commerce both legal and otherwise.
I checked the datapad. Sabetha's establishment was called the Fractured Mirror, a cantina three blocks deeper into the sector. The route took me past storefronts selling everything from spice to slaves to salvaged droid parts. I kept my eyes forward and my hand away from my lightsaber. Drawing that weapon here would be like setting off a flare.
The Fractured Mirror was smaller than I expected. A hole-in-the-wall establishment squeezed between a pawn shop and something that advertised "discreet medical services" in six languages. The entrance was a battered door with a broken holoprojector that flickered weakly, trying and failing to display whatever image it had been programmed for.
I pushed through and into dimmer light.
The interior was cleaner than the exterior suggested. Booths lined the walls, each one providing at least the illusion of privacy. The bar itself was actual wood, which meant someone had spent serious credits importing it from a planet with trees. A dozen patrons occupied various seats, nursing drinks and conducting business in low voices.
Behind the bar, a Twi'lek woman polished a glass with mechanical precision. Her lekku were marked with pale blue tattoos that suggested clan affiliation, though I didn't recognize the patterns. She looked up as I entered, her eyes tracking me with the kind of assessment that calculated threat level and profit potential in the same glance.
I walked to the bar and slid onto a stool. "I'm looking for Sabetha Drel."
"Most people who come looking for me have appointments." Her Basic was unaccented, which meant she'd probably been off Ryloth since childhood. "You have an appointment?"
"Bail Organa sent word."
Something shifted in her expression. Not surprise, exactly. More like confirmation of a suspicion. She set down the glass and leaned forward slightly. "The senator has interesting taste in associates these days. You have identification?"
I pulled out the forged credentials Organa had provided. They identified me as Jace Reth, freighter mechanic from Corellia, recently unemployed due to "corporate restructuring." The kind of background that was boring enough to be believable.
Sabetha glanced at the credentials for exactly two seconds before handing them back. "Those are decent work. Not perfect, but they'll hold up to casual inspection." She studied my face. "You don't look like a mechanic."
"I look like someone who needs information and has credits to pay for it."
"Direct. I appreciate that." She gestured toward one of the back booths. "We can talk privately. But first, house rules. No weapons on the table. No Force tricks. And if you try anything stupid, I have three people in this room who will put you down before you reach the door."
I followed her gaze and picked out the guards. A Zabrak in the corner booth who was definitely armed despite drinking alone. A human woman at the bar who was too alert to be an ordinary patron. And someone in the shadows near the back, barely visible but radiating the kind of stillness that came from professional training.
"Understood," I said.
We moved to the booth she'd indicated. I slid in first, keeping my back to the wall out of habit. Sabetha sat across from me and tapped something on the table's surface. A privacy field hummed to life, creating a bubble of white noise that would make our conversation inaudible to anyone outside it.
"So," she said. "The senator's message was cryptic, but the timing is interesting. Empire cracks down on the Jedi, suddenly he's sending young humans to the Outer Rim. You're not hard to figure out."
My hand moved toward my lightsaber before I caught myself. Her eyes tracked the motion and something like amusement flickered across her face.
"Relax. If I wanted to collect the bounty on Jedi, I would have already called Imperial Intelligence. But I have a policy against working for fascists, and the Empire definitely qualifies." She leaned back. "What do you need?"
The directness threw me. I'd expected negotiation, games, the kind of verbal sparring that information brokers supposedly lived for. Instead she'd cut straight to business.
"Work," I said. "The kind that pays well enough to establish a base of operations here. And information. Rumors about other Jedi survivors, Imperial movements, anything useful."
"Work I can provide. Information is more expensive, especially the kind you're asking about." She pulled out a datapad and scrolled through something. "I have three jobs available right now that match your probable skill set. First is escort duty. Local merchant needs protection for a shipment moving through gang territory. Simple but boring. Second is retrieval. Rich offworlder lost something valuable in a gambling den and wants it back without going through official channels. Third is extraction. Someone needs to disappear and requires discrete transport offworld."
The system flickered to life without prompting.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
OPTIONAL QUESTS AVAILABLE
Quest: Underworld Work - Escort
Difficulty: Easy
Reward: 500 credits, +1 CHA, +25 XP
Quest: Underworld Work - Retrieval
Difficulty: Moderate
Reward: 1,000 credits, New skill unlock [Stealth], +50 XP
Quest: Underworld Work - Extraction
Difficulty: Hard
Reward: 2,000 credits, +1 LUK, +100 XP, Reputation increase
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
I stared at the options while Sabetha waited patiently. The escort job was safe but paid poorly. The retrieval offered better compensation and would teach me skills I'd need in this environment. The extraction was the most dangerous but also the most lucrative.
"Tell me about the extraction," I said.
"Subject is a former Republic Intelligence analyst. Low-level, nothing critical, but she has information the Empire wants. They've put out feelers in Hutt Space, which means local muscle will be looking for her soon." Sabetha pulled up a holo of a human woman, maybe thirty standard years, with the kind of exhausted expression that came from running too long. "She's hiding in a warehouse complex in the Corellian Sector. You get her to my contact at the spaceport, they get her offworld. Simple."
"If it's simple, why the high payout?"
"Because simple doesn't mean easy. The warehouse is in disputed territory between two gangs who are both looking for ways to curry favor with Imperial Intelligence. And the Empire has at least one agent in the sector actively hunting her."
An Imperial agent. Someone trained, equipped, and motivated to capture or kill anyone helping Republic fugitives. Exactly the kind of attention I should be avoiding.
But 2,000 credits would set me up properly. Would buy equipment, safe housing, time to plan my next moves without worrying about where my next meal was coming from.
"I'll take it," I said.
Sabetha raised an eyebrow. "You don't want time to think about it?"
"Thinking doesn't change the situation. When do I start?"
She smiled, and for the first time I saw something like approval in her expression. "Tonight. The longer she stays in one place, the more likely someone finds her." She transferred data to my datapad. "Warehouse location, contact information for my spaceport associate, and a brief on the gang territories you'll be moving through. Don't get caught, don't start a war, and don't let the Empire take her alive."
The system registered the quest acceptance.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
QUEST ACCEPTED: Underworld Work - Extraction
Objective: Extract Republic Intelligence analyst from hostile territory
Time limit: 12 hours
Warning: Imperial presence detected. Extreme caution advised.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
I stood to leave but Sabetha's voice stopped me. "One more thing. Organa vouched for you, which buys you some trust. But trust only goes so far in this business. You screw me, you screw him, and you'll find Nar Shaddaa significantly less hospitable."
"Understood."
"Good." She deactivated the privacy field. "Oh, and Jace? Whatever you're carrying under that cloak, keep it hidden. The Empire's offering bounties for Jedi artifacts these days. Lot of opportunists looking to cash in."
I nodded and made my way out of the Fractured Mirror. The Red Sector seemed brighter now, or maybe my eyes had just adjusted to the gloom. The crowds moved around me like water around stone, everyone absorbed in their own survival.
Twelve hours to extract a target from hostile territory while avoiding Imperial attention. The smart play would have been to refuse, to take the safer job and build up gradually. But safety was a luxury that belonged to the galaxy before Order 66.
This galaxy required different choices.
Master Drallig used to say that Ataru practitioners lived in the moment, committed fully to each strike without dwelling on what came after. That philosophy had kept me alive on the Temple landing pad. Maybe it would work here too.
I checked my chrono. Seven hours until nightfall, when moving through gang territory would be marginally safer. Time enough to scout the location, identify escape routes, prepare contingencies.