Nar Shaddaa’s lower districts were a maze designed by paranoia.
Narrow service corridors bled into neon-drowned streets. Rusted ladders climbed toward broken catwalks. Surveillance holos flickered uselessly, half-disabled by slicers who’d long since been paid or killed.
Lucien walked into the dead end knowingly.
The alley terminated in a sealed cargo lift. Nowhere to advance. Limited angles of escape.
He stopped at its center.
“You prefer to corner your quarry,” Lucien said without turning. “It creates the illusion of control.”
A heavy boot scraped against permacrete behind him.
Kel Cerar stepped into view at the mouth of the alley — armored, deliberate, utterly steady. One blaster pistol already drawn. The second rested low at his side, ready.
“I prefer certainty,” Kel replied. No distortion this time. Just a flat, seasoned voice.
Lucien turned slowly, cloak falling into place as though arranged by unseen hands. Even here, even cornered, he looked composed — like a noble receiving an inconvenient guest.
“And you believe this is it?” Lucien asked mildly. “Certainty?”
Kel answered with action.
Both pistols came up in a fluid cross-draw, firing staggered bursts designed to limit deflection angles. Not panic fire. Trained suppression.
Lucien moved with sharp economy — not dramatic, not reckless. He pivoted behind a durasteel support column, bolts chewing into metal where he had stood.
He did not rush forward.
He waited.
Kel advanced two steps, adjusting angle, herding him again. Professional containment. No wasted motion.
“You rely on range,” Lucien observed from cover. “Sensibly. It compensates.”
“For what?” Kel asked, firing again.
“For doubt.”
There — subtle pressure in the Force. Not a shove. Not a trick. Just a whisper at the edge of Kel’s instincts. A suggestion that the alley felt narrower than it was. That the angles were imperfect. That something was missing.
Kel’s firing cadence shifted half a beat.
Tiny.
But real.
Lucien seized it.
He emerged not toward Kel — but sideways, vaulting onto a low maintenance conduit. A bolt tore through fabric at his shoulder, burning cloth but not flesh.
Pain flickered across his nerves. He did not show it.
In one smooth motion, Lucien drew his Sith sword.
The blade was dark metal etched with crimson veins — a weapon of weight and intention, not light and flash. It hummed faintly as it met a blaster bolt, the cortosis-forged edge dispersing the energy in a violent spray of sparks.
Kel didn’t hesitate.
He split stance, pistols firing alternating patterns now — one high, one low — forcing Lucien into constant adjustment.
“You talk too much,” Kel said calmly.
“On the contrary,” Lucien replied, stepping inside the alley’s narrowing geometry, blade redirecting another bolt into the wall beside Kel’s helmet, showering him in molten fragments.
“I’m studying you.”
Lucien closed distance abruptly — not recklessly, but during a reload fraction when Kel’s right pistol cycled.
The Sith sword came down in a precise diagonal cut.
Kel met it with armored forearm, beskar shrieking as metal scraped metal. At the same time, the second pistol discharged point-blank into Lucien’s side.
The shot struck — glancing, tearing cloth and biting shallow.
Lucien inhaled sharply.
Then smiled.
“You see?” he murmured, blade locking against armor as their faces came within inches.
“You’re not as certain as you pretend.”
Steam rolled between them.
Two predators.
No illusions now.
Only proximity.
