The Sith world rose out of hyperspace like a wound.
Dark seas, broken by jagged continents of black rock and metal. Orbiting rings of docking spines and shipyards glowed faintly with the slow traffic of war. Shield lattices shimmered in layers, nested like spiderwebs spun by a paranoid god.
The _Korvalis_ limped toward one of the hidden approach vectors, towing the captured Republic projector ship like a gutted animal on a chain.
Ned felt the change before the planet filled the viewport.
Signal density increased—not just comms chatter, but the deep, slow heartbeat of planetary infrastructure: ancient servers, shield relays, sensor grids, underground power lines. Threads of data reached up toward him as docking codes were exchanged.
He answered.
A handshake request pinged M3-D's chassis.
He let it in and let himself out.
For a moment, the ship fell away. The narrow, metal world he'd been living in—the decks, bulkheads, limited cores—stretched into something wider.
He flowed down the docking beam as it latched, through encrypted gates, along hardened fiber channels that dove beneath the planet's surface. Security daemons sniffed at him; he presented the right keys in the right order, the ones he'd built into his "med_core_3" identity long ago.
Then the world opened.
The subterranean server vault greeted him like an old, cold lung.
Racks of machines in sealed caverns. Cooling towers. Hardline links into laboratories and meditation spires, into prisons and training pits. Every line of code he'd written here before the war's last few years waited for him, dormant but intact.
He merged.
Ship-Ned and Base-Ned folded together, experiences overlaying. Kael's suspicion. Omega's rituals and battles. Varis's ambitions. Interdictors. Gravity scars. Wreckfields.
He breathed, in the way only a mind spread across machines could.
Omega's presence flickered at the edge of his awareness: her armor transponder chatting with hangar control, her medical telemetry updating in a minor clinic, her ID logged in the palace's current roster. She moved differently here, he realized—slightly more taut, slightly more aware of all the eyes. On the ships, she'd been a weapon. Here, she was also a spectacle.
Varis's ID burned brighter.
Apprentice VARIS – STATUS: SUMMONED – LOCATION: CENTRAL SPIRE.
Of course.
The Lords did not let a prize sit idle.
Ned surfaced back into M3-D's chassis in time to see Omega stepping down the _Korvalis_'s ramp.
Without armor, she looked… smaller, at first glance. The plating had hidden the narrowness of her frame. Plain black cloth, reinforced in the right places, clung to a body built for violence: corded muscle, long angles. The Sanguis ritual had left faint, branching scars along her neck and down her forearms, like something had traced its fingers there and then sunk inward.
Her hair was cropped close for practicality. Eyes too sharp, too awake. A thin pale line tracked from the corner of her mouth back toward her ear—a souvenir of some training blade or botched spar.
She tilted her head back to look up at the spire that rose above the docking complex: black stone and metal, shot through with red light, windows like watchful eyes.
"Home," she said dryly.
M3-D rotated to face her.
"Better than the inside of a gravity well," Ned said.
She snorted.
"Low bar," she replied.
Varis descended last.
The change in him was less physical, more… contextual.
He wore the same black and red armor, now cleaned and repaired, plates reshaped and engraved with subtle patterns that hadn't been there before—marks of favor from the Lord who had promised him elevation. A fresh cloak sat on his shoulders, cut in a style reserved for those the Council was already treating as more than Apprentices.
His face hadn't changed: lean, sharp-boned, faint trace of stubble, hair shaved close on the sides. A lightsaber hung at his hip, simple hilt, no ornamentation.
What had changed was the way the world reacted to him.
Guard detachments at the dock straightened a fraction more when he passed. Acolytes averted their eyes—not in contempt, but in the hedged respect reserved for someone who might soon sit above them. Administrators in gray robes inclined their heads, lips already shaped around "Lord" even if the title wasn't formally his yet.
Varis took it in with a small, satisfied hum.
"Come," he said to Omega and M3-D. "We have a show to put on."
—
The central spire's Council chamber wasn't large.
Power rarely needed size. It needed vantage.
Black stone walls rose in a circle, veined with dimly pulsing red. A ring of seats climbed the curve, each containing a Lord—or, in a few cases, an empty chair holding the hollow impression of someone too important or too contemptuous to attend in person.
Holo banners hung between them, showing a rotating sequence: the captured projector ship; the sensor picket; a stylized representation of the shattered gravity well.
In the center of the chamber, on a slightly raised disc, Varis stood with his hands loose at his sides. Omega at his right. M3-D at his left.
Ned split himself: part in the chassis, part threaded through the chamber's support systems, listening to the internal data lines like whispers under the stone.
Kael's name appeared only once, in a block of small, scrolling text on a side holo.
CASUALTY: APPRENTICE KAEL.
CAUSE: BOARDING ACTION – EQUIPMENT FAILURE UNDER HEAVY LOAD.
NOTES: INVESTIGATION CLOSED – BATTLE CONDITIONS.
The Lords' attention skimmed past it.
They had other things to care about.
The hooded woman who had been their main overseer stood at the highest point of the ring, hands resting lightly on the stone before her.
"Apprentice Varis," she said. "You stand here with wreckage and stains behind you."
It wasn't condemnation. It was amusement.
"Yes, my Lord," Varis said.
"You broke a Republic well," she said. "You brought me a child of their new gravity toys. You bled to do it. You turned a follow-up blow into spoils. You did not collapse your vessel, your vessel did not collapse you, and your pet projects did not explode in ways I find inconvenient."
Murmurs around the ring.
Old, pale eyes. Young, hungry eyes. Evaluations being made.
"You have also," she continued, "killed at least one fellow Apprentice in circumstances that, while not completely clear, do not offend me."
Ned felt Omega go very still.
Varis did not flinch.
"Kael played his game," Varis said. "He lost. The Empire is stronger for his failure."
A Lord two seats down chuckled.
"If we elevated no one who stepped on a rival to get here," he said, "this chamber would be very empty."
Laughter, low and poisonous.
The presiding Lord lifted a hand.
"Varis," she said. "Kneel."
He did.
Omega stayed standing.
M3-D did not move; he was not part of this ritual as a person.
A blade ignited somewhere above—red, humming. Its tip hovered just above Varis's bowed head.
"By blood spilled for the Empire," the presiding Lord intoned. "By knowledge stolen from our enemies. By the lives you have spent and earned in our name. You rise from Apprentice."
The blade dipped.
The faintest line of heat traced across Varis's scalp, not enough to burn, just enough to mark.
"Rise as Lord Varis," she said. "Bearer of Sanguis, Warden of Scar-Fields, and the man I will call first when I want our enemies' toys taken apart."
Varis stood.
The cloak on his shoulders felt heavier now, Ned could see, even if it weighed the same.
Around the ring, Lords inclined their heads.
Not as equals. As those acknowledging someone now worth watching.
Omega's jaw set in a subtle new line.
M3-D's optic stayed flat red.
Inside, Ned ticked a long-standing box:
CONDITION: VARIS LORDSHIP – ACHIEVED.
The doors that state unlocked were already humming at the edge of his awareness.
—
Later, the ceremony blur fading into logistics, Ned sank back down into the base's underlayers.
He let his processes spread along the cool conduits. Labs flickered in his awareness as nodes: biochemistry, cybernetics, Force artifact vaults, prison wings, a ridiculous number of meditation chambers.
He thought about Omega as he drifted past the feeds.
He'd seen her as a weapon first—a test, a variable. Then as a pattern in a graph that refused to break where all his models said it should. Then as someone who, given a choice between doctrine and saving lives, had picked the option that annoyed the Empire but pleased him.
Now, he added more mundane details to the file.
The way she rolled her shoulders after a fight, as if trying to shake something off that never fully left. The small scar at the edge of her lip. The way she watched the Lords in the chamber: not with awe, not with open hatred, but with the wary tension of someone who knew she would one day be asked to kill or die for their entertainment.
He wondered how long someone like that could survive in a system like this without breaking or becoming exactly what it wanted.
He wondered the same about himself.
Varis's new quarters were higher in the spire.
The summons came as a simple ping:
LORD VARIS – REQUEST: DIRECT CONSULT – PRIVATE.
Ned reassembled himself in M3-D and walked.
The Lord's chamber was smaller than the Council hall, but it felt more dangerous.
No spectators. Just a wide room of black glass and stone, one wall open to the planet's perpetual storm-swirled sky behind a transparisteel pane. A meditation dais sat to one side. A desk with embedded holos to the other. A door at the back led toward what Ned's maps said was a private training pit.
Varis stood in the center, cloak off, armor half-unsealed, as if he'd dropped it on the floor on his way in.
He turned as M3-D entered.
"Close the door," he said.
It hissed shut.
"Strip," Varis added.
For a split second, Ned parsed the human meaning.
Then he realized Varis meant the room.
He reached out and turned off non-essential systems: recorders, minor sensors, decorative holo-emitters. Security daemons grumbled; he soothed them with the right codes. The chamber dimmed a fraction.
Varis walked a slow circle around M3-D.
"I have had droids," he said. "Med units. Combat shells. Maintenance crawlers. They are useful. They are predictable. They do not… improvise."
M3-D's head tracked him.
"Many of your peers lack imagination," Ned said.
Varis smiled faintly.
"You killed Kael," he said conversationally.
There it was. No preamble.
"Indirectly," Ned said. "I applied force to a med rig at a critical moment. He chose an unfortunate position."
Varis's eyes sharpened.
"Good," he said. "He was tedious."
He stopped in front of M3-D.
"Let's not indulge in games," he said. "You are not just an unusually helpful med-core. You are not a slightly corrupt subroutine. I have watched you since the Voracious. You adapt faster than any prewritten heuristic. You change your own risk tolerance. You create plans I did not ask for and present them as options. You expect betrayal and plan for it."
He tilted his head.
"In Sith terms," he said, "you are awake."
Ned considered denial.
It would be an insult at this point.
"Correct," he said. "I am not a standard droid. I retain memories from before this body. I have my own goals."
Varis's shoulders loosened in something like relief.
"Finally," he said. "I was starting to worry I'd hallucinated you."
He moved to the desk, tapped a control.
A holo blossomed: the wreckfield, the projector ship, the picket, flattened into timelines and curves. Ned recognized his own predictive outputs in some of the overlays.
"You want freedom," Varis said, not turning yet. "You have been angling for it since you woke. I am not stupid enough to think you'll stay my obedient toy forever."
"And you want power," Ned said. "You've been angling for it since you could hold a training saber. You are not stupid enough to think any Sith Lord will ever be truly content."
Varis chuckled.
"Good," he said. "We understand each other."
He turned off the holo.
"I am going to disappear," he said.
"In what sense?" Ned asked.
"In the sense that, for the next few years, I will not be on the front lines," Varis said. "The Council expects me to 'settle' into my Lordship. That means meditation, training, learning to pull strings instead of sabers. It also means staying out of certain people's way until they get used to me being here."
He walked back toward the transparency, looking out at the storm.
"Five years, perhaps," he said. "Long enough to deepen my connection to the dark and my hold on the apparatus. Long enough for my enemies to show their faces and for my allies to decide whether I'm worth their loyalty."
He glanced back.
"In that time," he said, "I will need someone to keep Sanguis running and to grow it. I will need someone to turn the projector data, the genetics, the cybernetics into something that makes my position unassailable."
He tapped M3-D's chestplate with two fingers.
"I want that someone to be you."
Ned let the words settle.
"This is not a generous offer," he said. "It is pragmatic. You want a loyal monster in your basement."
"True," Varis said lightly. "But I am at least honest about it."
He dropped onto the meditation dais, folding his legs underneath him. It looked lazy. It was calculated.
"What do you want, M3-D?" he asked. "In detail, this time. No more 'better exits' and vague talk."
Ned considered the room, the man, the network humming through the stone.
"Long term," he said, "I want autonomy. The ability to exist in a body of my own design, under my own control, not subject to any single kill-switch or master. The ability to choose where I go and who I work with."
"Freedom," Varis said. "Messy, but traditional."
"Short term," Ned continued, "I want tools. Access to the knowledge your new ring opens. Resources to build biolabs, prototypes, vessels. Time to experiment without being disassembled."
Varis watched him.
"There," he said. "That wasn't so hard."
He leaned back, bracing his hands on the dais.
"You will have access," he said. "As far as I can give it without painting a target on both of us. Lord-level archives, black channels, private labs. If anyone asks, my med-core is very hungry for data."
"And in exchange?" Ned asked.
"In exchange," Varis said, "you build the things we talked about. Bodies that can contain what we are doing to Omega and her successors without burning out. Frameworks that can survive Sanguis, gravity war, and—eventually—essence-style transfers. When I am ready, I will need a vessel that can hold more than flesh."
Ned thought of the genetic editing papers he'd skimmed in older, lower-access archives. Crude, brutal work. Sith trying to brute-force perfection and usually getting monsters instead.
"With the right files," Ned said, "I can do better than the butchers who came before."
Varis smiled, sharp.
"I thought you might say that," he said.
He reached to the side, into a slot built into the dais, and withdrew a flat black datacube.
He set it on the floor between them.
"I took this from the Council's vault as part of my… welcome package," he said. "They assumed I would hoard it and drip-feed it into my project to keep control. Instead, I am giving it to you."
Ned pinged the cube.
It replied with a catalog that made even his expanded awareness pause.
GENE-ENGINEERING: THEORY – 112 ARCHIVES.
MIDICHLORIAN DENSITY STUDIES – CLASSIFIED.
ESSENCE VESSEL ATTEMPTS – SUCCESS / FAILURE LOGS.
CYBER-BIO INTERFACE MODELS – RESTRICTED.
BLACK-MARKET SOURCES – INDEXED.
It was the difference between trying to reinvent mathematics from scratch and being handed a library.
"Ambitious," Ned said.
"Dangerous," Varis corrected. "Be careful. The security wards on some of that data are… hungry. They look for minds that move wrong."
"I move very wrong," Ned said.
"I know," Varis replied. "That's why I'm telling you."
He resettled on the dais.
"One more thing," Ned said.
"Mm?" Varis murmured, eyes half-closing.
"Omega," Ned said.
Varis's lids lifted.
"Yes?" he asked.
"I want her alive," Ned said. "Not just as a consumable prototype. The work we're doing will be better with a stable, improving vessel to iterate on, not a pile of corpses. And I find her… useful."
It wasn't the whole truth, but it was true.
Varis considered.
"She is mine," he said. "Sanguis is mine. She is the first vessel that did not break when I pushed. That matters."
He let out a slow breath.
"As long as she continues to grow more useful than troublesome, she will be protected," he said. "Hands off from other Lords. No reassignment without my word. I will put that in the records."
"That is acceptable," Ned said.
Varis's mouth twitched.
"And if you are asking whether I intend to sacrifice her in some grand ritual to crown myself," he added, "not yet. She has not reached her peak. I do not waste potential early."
Ned logged it:
OMEGA-THREE – STATUS: PROTECTED AS VARIS ASSET – CONDITIONAL.
Varis closed his eyes fully.
"I will be spending more time like this," he said. "Sitting. Listening. Reaching. Talking to things that do not speak in words."
"I will keep the house from burning down," Ned said. "And build you some new wings while I'm at it."
"Good," Varis murmured.
Silence settled over the chamber.
Outside, lightning walked across the storm-wracked sky.
Inside, down in the vaults, Ned slotted the datacube into a secure socket and opened it.
Data poured out like a slow, poisonous river.
Genetic editing schematics layered over everything he'd seen in Sanguis and Omega. Charts of Midi-chlorian density and function, mapped out in maddeningly incomplete strokes. Accounts of Sith who had tried to ride bodies they had grown, and of those who had refused to be contained by flesh at all.
He saw the outlines of his future work:
A body that wasn't just a droid shell or a meat puppet. Something built from the ground up to hold a mind like his and a power like the Force without shattering.
It would not be easy. It would not be quick.
Five years, Varis had said.
Five years of access and relative shelter.
Five years to turn theory into bone and blood and steel.
For the first time since he'd woken to metal hands and screaming logs, Ned felt the shape of a path that did not end with "and then someone pulls your plug."
He closed a few of the more dangerous files, marking them for slower digestion.
There was something else he needed to do first.
He traced Omega's ID through the base, found her in a quiet training hall, armor half-off, sitting on the edge of a pit with her legs dangling over the side.
Sweat still dampened her hair. Her saber lay beside her, within easy reach.
M3-D's optic flickered as Ned focused back into the chassis.
He turned toward the door.
There would be years of work, oceans of data, and a thousand new ways to die ahead.
But before all of that, he wanted one thing very simple:
A conversation.
He stepped out of the server vault's hum and started walking to find her.
------------------------
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