There’s a moment—half a heartbeat, really—when the world holds still.

  A space so thin it feels like it shouldn’t exist.

  The kind of moment where everything in you knows what’s coming, but nothing in you is ready for it.

  ? ? ?

  In that thin space, I didn’t see the miner first.

  I felt him—felt the clean, cold line of his intent as sharply as a draft through an open door.

  The Force didn’t scream.

  It whispered.

  A single, tight note that told me everything was about to break.

  Then the moment snapped.

  The man lunged.

  The deck officer’s eyes widened as the blade came toward her, her whole body frozen between instincts. Someone behind me cried out—a sound more startled than afraid, because fear hadn’t caught up yet.

  Panic is slow.

  Intent is fast.

  Kirana was faster.

  She moved like she’d already lived this moment. Her hand caught the man’s wrist, stopping the blade inches from the officer’s throat. His arm shook with the effort of pushing through her grip, muscles bunching, teeth bared in something that wasn’t hatred so much as commitment.

  Someone shoved behind me. The corridor contracted around noise, motion, bodies half-rising from their seats.

  I didn’t think.

  My body did the thinking for me.

  I yanked the officer backward by the shoulder strap of her harness, stumbling us both against the bulkhead. She hit it, breath punched from her lungs, but alive. The blade scraped metal instead of skin.

  Kirana pivoted, slamming the miner into the wall with the controlled violence of someone who knows exactly how much force is needed to end a fight without ending a life. He struggled like a trapped animal, fingers clawing, boots slipping on the deck.

  And then —

  everything else went wrong.

  ? ? ?

  The lights cut to half-power.

  Gravity gave a sick little hiccup that made the floor sway under us.

  Doors at both ends of the corridor sealed with a metallic thud.

  The air circulators shifted pitch like someone had dropped a wrench into the works.

  All around, people started shouting.

  “What’s happening?”

  “Why are the doors locked?”

  “Let me out!”

  “Is it a malfunction?”

  “Make it stop—make it stop—”

  It was the sound of three thousand fraying nerves snapping at once.

  I pressed my palm flat to the wall, grounding myself against the vibrating metal. Through the Force, the ship was no longer the cautious hum of a transport doing its job. It was a map of discord, bright pockets of intent blooming like bruises through the hull.

  Cargo bay three—hostile intent.

  Crew lounge—fear, then tension.

  Secondary engine corridor—movement, fast, purposeful.

  Medical bay—confusion bordering on terror.

  Deck four aft—sharp, organized malice, like a blade hidden inside cloth.

  And beyond that—

  two other ships.

  Two other Jedi pairs feeling the same thing.

  Toran’s presence flaring like a spark in a dry forest.

  Meral’s sharpening into something precise and cold.

  We’d been wrong.

  We hadn’t been facing a handful of infiltrators.

  This was a network.

  And it had just activated.

  “Stay down!” I shouted at the passengers closest to me, half of whom were scrambling out of their chairs. “Stay seated—stay calm—don’t run—”

  No one listened, of course. Fear rarely listens.

  A Rodian pushed past me, stumbling toward the sealed door. A human man grabbed his arm, shouting for space. Someone tripped. Someone else stepped on someone’s hand. The corridor was turning into a stampede cradle, chaos feeding on itself.

  “Kae’rin!” Kirana barked—not in warning, but in direction.

  I knew what she meant. Handle the corridor. She had the knife-man under control. But this wasn’t one attack anymore. The whole deck was shifting toward panic, and panic is a battlefield all its own.

  I climbed onto one of the acceleration seats, planting my boots wide to stay balanced as gravity flickered again.

  “LISTEN TO ME!” I shouted, letting my voice cut through the noise like a cracked whip.

  Heads turned. Not enough. More noise rose, panic waves crashing out from the center. The Force pressed against my ribs, urging clarity. So I pushed—not with a mind trick but with presence. With posture. With tone. With the authority I hoped I sounded like I had.

  “This is a systems malfunction,” I lied. “If you move around, you make it worse. If you stay put, you stay safe.”

  A few people hesitated. That was all I needed. Fear is contagious; so is composure.

  “You two,” I pointed at a pair of older miners frozen in the aisle. “Sit. Now.”

  They sat. Shock is useful that way.

  “You—help that man up.”

  “You—check the straps on row four.”

  “Don’t use the doors; they’re locked for your safety.”

  “Keep breathing. Slow it down. Listen to my voice.”

  A rhythm formed.

  Order feeding on order instead of panic feeding on panic.

  The Force steadied around me, like a trembling rope finally going taut.

  Kirana slammed the knife-man onto the floor, disarming him with a wrist-twist that made his blade skitter across the deck and bounce under the nearest chair. He tried to buck her off. She shifted her weight, pinning him with her knee.

  “Stay down,” she warned, voice like a quiet storm.

  “He’s with them,” I said, breath short.

  “Obviously,” she muttered.

  The miner spat. “You think you can stop it? You think—”

  He didn’t get to finish. Kirana knocked him unconscious with a precise strike behind the ear.

  ? ? ?

  The shouting in the corridor softened—not because things were better, but because utter terror had burned hot enough to leave ash.

  A rhythmic clanging started somewhere deeper in the ship.

  Then a shout.

  Then another.

  Then a scream.

  Kirana looked at me. I looked at her.

  “This isn’t isolated,” I said.

  “No,” she agreed. “This is everywhere.”

  I reached out with the Force—and the ship opened beneath my mind like a hive that had been sleeping and now swarmed. The presence of the infiltrators pulsed across multiple decks, coordinated, patient no longer.

  And one thought cut through the noise like an icy wire:

  Toran.

  A spike of fear shot through our bond—not from him, but from someone near him.

  I inhaled sharply.

  “Kirana, Toran—”

  “I feel him,” she said. “Focus here first. We can’t help them if we lose control of our own deck.”

  She was right. Jedi taught you to let go of attachments, but attachments didn’t let go back. They clung, sharp and scared.

  I set my jaw. “What’s the plan?”

  “Stabilize the corridor,” she said. “Secure the officer. Find where the sabotage points are. And then—”

  Another distant crash rattled the hull.

  “—we hunt.”

  The ship shuddered. The lights flickered again. The sealed doors stayed sealed.

  But the worst sign was the comm channel.

  It didn’t just flicker.

  It cut out.

  Every ship-born instinct in me went cold.

  Kirana rose, wiping her knuckles on her sleeve. “We’re blind to the bridge.”

  “Then we’re not in prelude anymore,” I said. “We’re in the beginning.”

  She nodded.

  “Welcome to the trap.”

  ? ? ?

  The ship didn’t explode into chaos all at once. It unraveled.

  You could hear it happening — the wrong kinds of sounds, the ones a transport isn’t supposed to make unless it’s dying or being murdered.

  First came the pounding from the forward section.

  Then the shouts.

  Then the unmistakable metallic shriek of a door being forced open — not by error, not by malfunction, but by hands.

  Kirana and I exchanged a look that contained too much understanding and too little time.

  “Move,” she said.

  I slipped through the panicked crowd, brushing past the miner whose chair strap had torn loose, pressing a hand to his shoulder so he’d stay put. He nodded, dazed. Or maybe he just didn’t know what else to do.

  Kirana reached the sealed door at the end of the corridor and slammed her palm against the control panel. Nothing. No response. The red light pulsed dead.

  “Override?” I asked, breath sharp.

  “Not from here,” she said. “They’ve cut the midship controls.”

  Behind us, the deck officer I’d dragged to safety was struggling to her feet. She still looked like someone had snapped her mind in half and only one piece had made the jump.

  “What—what’s going on?” she stammered, voice thin.

  “Your crew has a problem,” Kirana said plainly. “Stay behind us. Stay low.”

  Before she could object, the ship jolted as if something heavy had slammed into the hull. The floor pitched, sending a few unbuckled passengers sprawling. Gravity dipped again, recovering violently a second later.

  A man shouted, “We’re under attack!”

  Another yelled, “The engines are failing!”

  Someone cried, “We’re all going to die!”

  The spiral was starting.

  ? ? ?

  I stepped back into the center of the corridor, lifting my hands, forcing my voice to rise above the panic without cracking.

  “Everyone sit down,” I said. “Now. Hands on the straps. Keep your heads low.”

  One woman wailed, “We can’t stay here—”

  “You can,” I said. “And you will. If you run, you get crushed in the halls. If you stay, you live. Look at me. Sit.”

  She sat.

  A few more followed. Then more. Fear obeys authority when it recognizes it.

  Kirana was already at the junction hatch, examining the panel with quick, precise movements. She wasn’t trying to open it; she was listening. Feeling. Sensing.

  Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  She pressed two fingers to the seam and inhaled sharply.

  “They’re on the other side,” she murmured.

  “How many?”

  “More than we want,” she said. “Less than kills us quickly.”

  Meaning: enough to be a problem, not enough to be a wall.

  She looked at me. “We need to move before they do.”

  I nodded, stepping beside her. “Drop the door?”

  A faint, humorless smile. “If only we had something sharp and glowy for that.”

  Our “temporary” sabers were still hidden under our jumpsuits, heavy and awkward and anything but graceful. But they would cut a door.

  If we risked revealing ourselves.

  Before the thought could settle, the hatch buckled inward, a deep dent appearing as if someone outside had rammed it with a battering ram.

  Passengers screamed.

  Chairs clattered.

  The deck officer stumbled back, paling.

  Kirana reached into her jumpsuit, fingers brushing her hidden saber.

  “Not yet,” I whispered.

  Her eyes narrowed. She didn’t argue.

  The dent deepened.

  Another crash.

  The metal groaned.

  We backed up into a defensive angle, not enough to draw attention, enough to move quickly when things went bad. Around us, the crowd pressed back against the walls and chairs, huddling together like a herd sensing predators on the wind.

  The hatch warped a third time.

  Then a voice on the other side barked something — too muffled to make out, but filled with the jagged authority of men who had practiced intimidating others.

  Kirana tilted her head, listening.

  “They’re giving orders,” she said softly. “Coordinated.”

  “How many?”

  “Six? More? Hard to tell through the wall.”

  “And they’re armed.”

  Another crash.

  “And impatient,” she added.

  Something in the Force twisted like a rope being pulled taut. A warning. A pressure that made the hair on my arms stand on end.

  “Kirana,” I said, “if they break through—”

  “They will.”

  “Then we need to—”

  “I know.”

  There wasn’t time for planning. Not real planning. Only instinct and training and the ugly, necessary willingness to act before the ship became a coffin.

  Kirana drew her saber.

  Not ignited — not yet.

  Just out.

  Held low, one hand on the emitter, the other on the hilt.

  I followed, fingers moving inside my jumpsuit, gripping the cool metal of my own makeshift saber.

  The hatch screamed.

  Metal tore.

  And then it burst inward.

  Not from explosives.

  From sheer force.

  ? ? ?

  Four men surged through first — miners by clothing, but not by movement. Their steps were balanced, coordinated, predatory. Each carried a weapon: scraps of sharpened metal, reinforced clubs, one with a shock-stick that hummed with stolen current.

  Behind them, more shadows shifted in the flickering corridor light.

  Passengers screamed. Some ducked under chairs. Others froze in terrified paralysis.

  The first man through swung his shock-stick at Kirana’s head.

  Her saber hissed to life mid-motion — a sharp, noble sound of a Jedi’s true blade, just in time to slice the shock-stick in half before the attacker understood he’d already lost.

  The two halves fell to the deck with a sputter.

  The man stared at the sparking remains, stunned.

  “Kae’rin!” Kirana snapped.

  I stepped forward, my own temporary blade igniting with a violent sputter that made the nearest passengers gasp.

  The second attacker lunged at me with a serrated piece of mining metal, swinging for my ribs. I pivoted, letting the Force guide the angle, and clipped the weapon’s edge clean off. Sparks sprayed. The blade’s heat stung my nose.

  He yelled and swung again with his bare hand. A mistake.

  I caught his wrist and slammed him into a bulkhead as Kirana had done earlier.

  He fell, stunned but breathing.

  The third man hesitated.

  Kirana didn’t.

  She drove her elbow into his throat, sending him choking backward, then swept his legs out with a precise twist of her body.

  The fourth man darted toward the miners cowering against the opposite wall — not to attack us, but to reach them. To take a hostage.

  I moved faster than I ever had in my life. My blade’s unstable hum tore a line of light across his path. He froze, inches from a terrified woman’s face.

  “No,” I said.

  Just that.

  A single syllable.

  He backed away.

  Or tried to.

  Kirana kicked him square in the chest, knocking the wind out of him. He collapsed onto the deck with a groan. For one breath, everything paused.

  The passengers stared at us — at our blades, at our stance, at the sudden and terrifying realization that the “crew” who’d been soothing their fears all day were something else entirely.

  Someone whispered, “Jedi…”

  And the word carried.

  Spread like fire in dry brush.

  Not reverent.

  Not hopeful.

  Not fearful.

  A mix of all three.

  ? ? ?

  Kirana didn’t acknowledge it. She stepped over the fallen men and peered through the torn hatch.

  “More coming,” she said.

  “How many?” I asked.

  She didn’t turn.

  “Too many.”

  She extended her senses. I extended mine.

  The ship was a labyrinth of shifting intent now. Hostile clusters blossoming across multiple decks. Sabotage points lighting up like warning nodes. Crew fighting or fleeing. Miners organizing in ways that no miner should.

  It wasn’t a riot.

  It was a takeover.

  Coordinated and timed.

  And the real heart of it wasn’t here.

  “Kirana,” I whispered, a tightness in my chest, “Toran—”

  She closed her eyes for just a second.

  “I feel him,” she said. “He’s alive.”

  Alive wasn’t enough.

  Alive meant he was in the same storm we were — and perhaps in deeper water.

  A new tremor ran through the deck — not gravity failure, not turbulence.

  A deliberate systems pulse.

  Someone was hacking the ship from inside.

  Kirana’s jaw tightened. “Bridge access. They’re cutting it.”

  “We need to move.”

  “Yes.”

  She shut down her blade but didn’t hide it. There was no point anymore.

  “We stay together,” she said. “We don’t get separated. And we don’t chase shadows. Understood?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  For a heartbeat, neither of us moved. Passengers stared at us like we were both salvation and danger in equal measure.

  “Stay here,” I told them. “Lock the restraints. Don’t leave this corridor. Don’t open any doors.”

  One man asked, “Are we safe?”

  “No,” I said honestly. “But you’re safer with us than without.”

  Their silence was answer enough.

  Kirana nodded toward the torn hatch.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  Was I?

  No.

  But that had never mattered before.

  “Yes,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  We stepped through the broken metal into the deeper, darker heart of Silver Gull.

  And directly into the center of the hijacking we should have seen coming.

  ? ? ?

  The corridor beyond the torn hatch felt smaller than it should have, as if the ship itself were tensing its muscles, waiting for a blow. The lights flickered in uneven intervals, spilling shadows down the walls like running ink. Somewhere above us, something heavy was dragged—or dropped.

  Kirana moved first, her steps measured, quiet, not cautious but deliberate. She walked like the ship belonged to her. I walked at her shoulder, the temporary saber cool against my ribs, every nerve in my arms and neck tight enough to hum.

  The Force crackled. Not loudly. More like static behind a wall—constant, present, impossible to ignore. I felt the miners massed behind us through the thin bulkhead, felt their confusion and terror and the brittle hope that maybe, maybe the Jedi would keep them alive through this.

  I didn’t feel particularly Jedi.

  ? ? ?

  The first junction was empty, but not cleanly empty. Something had been here—a cart overturned, spilled containers sliding across the deck with a metallic rasp. A smear on the wall indicated someone had been shoved hard enough to leave an imprint. A discarded comm wristband lay crushed underfoot.

  Kirana crouched, touching it lightly. “Broken,” she murmured. “Deliberately.”

  “Cutting communication,” I said.

  “Everything’s about division,” she grumbled. “Divide the crew. Divide the passengers. Divide our senses. Whoever orchestrated this knows exactly how we think.”

  I swallowed. “Tyber Zann.”

  “And his Consortium,” she said. “But this… this is more disciplined than I expected.” She straightened. “Stay close.”

  We turned left, toward the stairwell that led up to the secondary deck. The door was half-open—jammed crooked in its frame. A body leaned against it. Human. Middle-aged. Wearing Silver Gull’s engineering greys.

  I knelt beside him.

  Pulse.

  Alive, barely.

  His eyes fluttered open, glassy with shock. He grabbed my wrist with a hand that shook so violently the vibration traveled up my arm.

  “They—” he rasped. “Not crew… they’re not crew…”

  “I know,” I said. “Stay still. Help is coming.”

  “No.” His voice cracked. “Coming here. Now.”

  His grip tightened suddenly, desperate. I felt his fear hit the Force like a thrown stone.

  Kirana pulled me up just as footsteps pounded toward us from the upper deck—fast, many, no attempt at stealth.

  “Back,” Kirana said, and we took position at the base of the stairs, shoulder to shoulder.

  They came into view one by one. Then two at a time. Then more.

  Miners. At least, in appearance. But their movement gave them away.

  Miners shuffled. Miners limped. Miners wore exhaustion like a second skin.

  These moved like trained muscle—syncing steps without looking at each other, weight forward, weapons already drawn. Blades, shock-bars, a heavy wrench with dried blood on it.

  Eight of them.

  Maybe ten.

  All looking down at us like we were an obstacle on a checklist.

  The first one—a tall Rodian in a miner’s vest—pointed a makeshift spear down the stairs and snarled something in a language half-muffled by his breather.

  Kirana’s saber wasn’t ignited, but her hand rested on it. “Don’t take another step.”

  They took three.

  I felt the decision ripple through the Force before the first attack even began. These weren’t panicked miners. They were infiltrators. Saboteurs. And their window was closing.

  “Now?” I whispered.

  “Now,” she said.

  Our sabers ignited together—two unstable beams of light flashing through the stairwell, humming low and angry. The infiltrators hesitated, just for a heartbeat, the light staining their faces in sickly blue and white.

  Then they charged.

  ? ? ?

  The first man swung a serrated bar at Kirana’s head; she parried, twisting her wrist so fast the blade’s wobble flickered dangerously. The second attacker vaulted the railing entirely, coming at us from above.

  I stepped into him.

  I didn’t think. I didn’t have time to. The Force tugged at my muscles like a puppeteer with a single, sharp string. My saber angled, catching his downward strike, pushing his balance off. He crashed into the wall beside me, weapon skittering away.

  Another came at my flank—a broad-shouldered woman with burn scars along her arms, teeth clenched in a snarl that looked too focused for blind rage. She thrust forward, aiming for my stomach.

  I let my weight drop and pivoted, dragging my saber across the metal pipe she held. Sparks spat up. She hissed but didn’t slow, swinging again with brutal force.

  A half-forgotten motion rose in me—one of the proto-forms I’d remembered not so long ago. A step, a shift of hips, a circular deflection that felt like borrowing momentum from a ghost.

  Her strike missed by inches. Mine didn’t.

  She fell back, clutching her severed arm.

  Behind me, Kirana was a storm contained in muscle and discipline. She fought without flourish—every block precise, every strike efficient. She never took more space than she needed. She never gave the enemy more information than the minimum required.

  I caught a glimpse of her sweeping a man’s legs out from under him, catching his wrist mid-fall, turning his momentum into a throw. Another man slammed into her from behind; she ducked, elbowing backward into his ribs with a crack that echoed through the stairwell.

  Still more coming.

  Still more pushing down from above.

  We fought in a space too small for comfort, too narrow for full swings, too crowded for mistakes. The air filled with sweat, sparks, shouted curses, the hot metallic scent of saber-heated steel.

  I struck the fourth man across the knuckles; he dropped his blade with a cry. Before I could breathe, the fifth grabbed my sleeve, yanking me sideways toward the stair railing.

  I nearly lost my footing. Nearly. The Force jolted me upright again.

  Kirana shoved her attacker away long enough to glance at me. “Kae’rin!”

  “I’m fine!” I said, not entirely sure it was true.

  She caught another blow, her saber spitting and oscillating with instability, but still holding.

  Three more men still stood, blocking the stairway, weapons raised. One carried a heavy industrial cutter—the kind you didn’t want aimed at your ribs.

  This was too many.

  ? ? ?

  Far too many.

  I felt it—the shift in the Force, the tilt of danger, the sense of being outnumbered in a way even two Jedi couldn’t sustain forever.

  “Kirana,” I breathed, “we can’t hold this. We need a new position.”

  “I know,” she said through gritted teeth.

  She parried the cutter, sparks flying. The man behind her lunged.

  I didn’t think.

  I threw out my free hand—not to shove him, not to crush him, but to trip him. A subtle nudge in the Force. Just enough to make his balance tilt.

  He pitched forward down the stairs, knocking another man aside.

  “Move!” Kirana barked.

  We fell back from the stairwell mouth, slipping into the wide central junction where three hallways met. It wasn’t safer, but it was space. And we needed space.

  The infiltrators regrouped at the top of the stairs, glaring down at us through the flickering lights. Two had injuries. One bled from a shallow cut along his shoulder. One cradled a broken wrist. But they weren’t done.

  They weren’t trying to win this hallway.

  They were trying to delay us.

  And they’d done enough.

  Because at that moment —

  the entire ship lurched.

  Not a malfunction.

  Not turbulence.

  A coordinated systems disruption.

  Lights dimmed to emergency glow.

  Gravity sagged for a breath, then slammed back up.

  Pressure doors locked.

  Somewhere far away, alarms screamed.

  Somewhere else, alarms stayed dead when they should have screamed.

  The Force flared in my chest.

  Kirana—

  “I know,” she said.

  We weren’t the only ones under attack.

  I felt Toran through the bond — fear spiking, determination slamming down like a shutter. Meral’s mind sharpened into a point. Kyle’s presence steadied into a protective wall. Kyp blazed with anger before choking it down.

  This wasn’t a simple mutiny.

  This was three ships, eighteen decks, thousands of people — and a coordinated strike blooming across all of them like fire spreading through a dry forest.

  We took one step back. Then another.

  The infiltrators didn’t advance. They didn’t need to.

  They’d bought their time.

  They’d secured their foothold.

  They’d done their part.

  Now the real takeover could begin.

  ? ? ?

  Kirana extinguished her saber. I followed suit, though every instinct screamed to keep it lit.

  “We can’t chase them,” she said. “Not now.”

  “Then what?”

  “We go to the systems spine. See what’s still under our control.”

  “And if nothing is?”

  “Then we make something ours.”

  The ship let out another groan — deep, mechanical, like metal bending under too much strain. We stood in that dim junction, breathless, bruised, sabers still warm in our hands, and I realized: The hijacking wasn’t coming.

  It was already here. And we were standing in the wrong part of the wave.

  Kirana met my eyes, her breath steady despite everything.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  No. Absolutely no.

  “Yes,” I said.

  We turned toward the central passage, the one that led deeper into the ship’s heart.

  Where answers waited.

  Where danger gathered.

  Where control still existed — or had already been stolen.

  We ran.

  And remember to come back for more tomorrow.

  After that, we're going back to our regular schedule. After all, I do need some time to write and edit chapters in advance. ;)