Adventures of the Ebony Jedi
No flowing robes, no familiar weight of her customary armor. Just silk, suspicion, and the ghost of her true self coiled tight in her chest. Her lightsaber—the one they whispered about in the Outer Rim, the "silver vein in the darkness"—was not at her hip. It was a slender, bejeweled hairpin securing the intricate twist of her onyx hair. Elegant, invisible. A last resort.
The target was here. Somewhere among the glittering parasites and power brokers. The Chancellor’s envoy, a man named Kaelen Rax, moved through the crowd with a diplomat’s practiced ease. But the *real* Rax was in a cryo-pod three decks down, alive but unconscious. This was the doppelganger, a Gholek shifter, its cells a perfect, mutable mirror. Blades, blasters, scans—all useless. It would take a specific, resonant frequency to shatter its biological illusion.
Her blade’s frequency.
Vesper accepted a crystal flute from a droid, her eyes tracking the false Rax as he laughed too heartily at a corpulent baron’s joke. The plan was delicate, dangerous insanity: get close, ignite the saber *just enough* to emit a disruptive pulse, but not so much as to cause a panic or reveal herself. A surgical strike in a room full of scalpels.
She found her opening at the Sabacc table he favored. “Mind if I deal in?” Her voice was honeyed smoke, a stranger’s voice. The false Rax offered a slick smile, gesturing to the vacant seat beside him. “The more credits, the merrier.”
Cards were dealt. Credits piled and vanished. Vesper played her part—the savvy, slightly reckless heiress. All the while, she calculated. The pulse needed direct, unobstructed line-of-sight for a full three seconds. The shifter’s glamour would flicker, a split-second tell, visible only to her trained eyes. Then, she’d have to extract him quietly. No screams. No spectacle.
“A bold wager,” the shifter said, pushing a stack of chips forward. Its eyes, perfect copies of Rax’s icy blue, held no soul. Just data.
“Life is boring without boldness,” Vesper purred, reaching up as if to adjust her hairpin. Her fingers brushed the cool metal. *Now.*
Beneath the table, hidden by the rich damask cloth, her thumb found the ignition.
A soundless vibration hummed through her. Not a blade of light, but a wave of resonant energy, a silver note only the shifter’s biology could hear. She focused it like a lens, aiming at his hand on the table.
For a heartbeat, nothing.
Then, the skin on the back of his hand *rippled*. Like water disturbed by a stone. A fleeting, nauseating blur of greyish pulp beneath the human facade. His smile didn’t slip, but his eyes snapped to hers. In that instant, the pleasant diplomat vanished. Something ancient, predatory, and utterly cold looked out.
He knew.
“You’ll have to excuse me,” he said smoothly, rising. “A sudden headache.”
*Like hells you will.* Vesper was on her feet in a rustle of silk, her hand closing around his wrist. “The night is young, Ambassador. I insist on one more hand.” Her grip was durasteel.
The disruption had been too brief. She needed a stronger, longer burst. But here, in the open, it would be a beacon.
He tried to pull away, his form wavering at the edges under her touch. “Unhand me.”
Panic was a luxury she couldn’t afford. Nor was stealth, now. She leaned in, as if sharing a secret, and pressed the hairpin’s emitter against his side. “You’re leaving with me. Quietly. Or everyone sees what happens when a silver note hits a false chord.”
His other hand came up, not with a weapon, but fingers elongated, sharpened into bony spikes beneath the skin, straining against his façade. A threat only she could see.
“You’ll die with them,” he hissed, the voice beginning to fray, to sound like grinding stones.
Vesper ignited the saber.
Not a full blade, but a concentrated, fist-sized burst of silver-black plasma at the tip, buried in the folds of his jacket. It made no theatrical *snap-hiss*, only a deep, sub-audible **thrum** that vibrated in the teeth.
The shifter jerked. His form exploded in a cascade of optical static—a man, a grey mass, a tentacled horror, a man again—flickering like a broken hologram. A woman at the next table gasped, staring.
“Light show for the lady?” Vesper announced loudly, a manic grin plastered on her face. “A little trick I learned on Canto Bight!” She increased the power, the thrum deepening. The shifter shuddered, his camouflage collapsing inward. He wasn’t just revealed; he was *unmade*, cells scrambling, cohesion lost.
With a final, silent convulsion, he collapsed against her, a heavy, shapeless weight now cloaked in the illusion of a man who had too much to drink. Vesper slipped the hairpin back into her hair, her arm around his shoulders.
“He always could not hold his Taloran brandy,” she sighed theatrically to the staring guests. “Time to get him to his suite.”
She guided the inert, camouflaged mass through the crowd, smiles and nods her armor. The silver note still hummed in the air, a clean, dissonant echo in the glittering fog of deceit. The weapon had been a beacon. And it had found its prey. Now, the real work began.
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