Corran’s terminal glowed pale green in the side hall, and people kept “passing by” it in slow loops.

  Durgen’s Star sat at the top of Tier Two like a dare written in clean font.

  ? Charter transport drift / debris-field hazard.

  ? Request: stabilize transport and recover sealed property.

  ? Note: charter routed through logistics shell.

  Toran read it twice, already doing math in his head. Meral leaned in over his shoulder with that quiet, sharp attention she wore when she didn’t like how tidy something looked.

  Corran stood nearby with his arms folded, expression flat.

  “This is environmental,” he said. “White dwarf, debris field. The contact is a representative for the transport owner. Name’s Hesk. He claims they don’t know what they’re carrying. They want the sealed container recovered intact.”

  “Claims,” Meral echoed.

  “Common enough,” Corran replied. “Shell companies exist for boring reasons too. Still. Keep your channel open. If the crew gets twitchy, you don’t play therapist. If it escalates, call.”

  Kyle, leaning against the far wall like he’d glued himself there, snorted. “We cleared you three for Tier Two less than a week ago. Try not to die heroically.”

  “Dying would be inconvenient regardless of heroism,” I said.

  Corran pointed down the corridor. “Bay Three. Fast shuttle, equipped for deep space ops and EVA. Good nav array. Don’t ‘upgrade’ it, Toran.”

  Toran’s mouth twitched. “Define upgrade.”

  Corran’s stare did the defining.

  We left.

  ? ? ?

  Bay Three smelled of fuel and damp air blown in from the jungle. The shuttle was squat and scarred, patched like a veteran. It didn’t look proud, which I trusted more than pride.

  I settled into the pilot seat and brought the console up. Toran strapped in behind me with his datapad. Meral dropped her bag in the rear compartment and checked her saber like she was checking her pulse.

  “Departing,” I said into the comm.

  Corran answered immediately. “Copy. Keep it live.”

  I acknowledged, and after a brief exchange with the control tower, our shuttle rolled up to the landing pad. We lifted out of Yavin’s humid air, climbed through the canopy breaks, and cut into open sky. Stars opened, indifferent and clean. Hyperspace stretched the Force thin, like fabric pulled tight. I held steady on the controls while Toran ran vectors and Meral listened to the ship’s vibration and the little silences between our words.

  Halfway there, Meral said, “This feels like someone trying too hard to sound ordinary.”

  Toran didn’t look up. “It’s a drift rescue.”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  I didn’t argue. The mission entry had been clean enough to be suspicious, and I’d learned the galaxy didn’t offer clean things without a reason.

  ? ? ?

  We dropped out of hyperspace into light that hurt.

  Durgen’s Star wasn’t warm. It was a white dwarf, small in the forward screen and still brutal, like a cold spark punched through black. Its glare bleached the cockpit. It didn’t feel like a sun. It felt like a scar.

  Around it, the system was wreckage. Mineral shards and ice fragments drifted in a wide, slow field, a remnant of something ancient that had torn itself apart and never stopped moving. The debris looked peaceful at a distance. Up close it was a river of knives.

  Sensors lit up with overlapping returns. The nav computer tried to draw safe corridors and kept correcting itself, annoyed that space refused to be simple.

  Toran leaned forward, eyes narrowed at his display. “Gravity gradient is steep. The debris is in a torus with micro-currents. Some of it’s stable, some of it’s being tugged into new paths. We don’t speed through this.”

  “I wasn’t planning to,” I said.

  I eased the shuttle into the field on a line Toran marked, hands light, timing heavy. The trick here wasn’t strength. It was commitment. Hesitation made you drift into the wrong place. The Force helped in the only way it ever really helped me when it mattered. Not fireworks. Timing. A pulse. A sense of where motion wanted to be a second before sensors finished screaming. A shard rotated, catching light like a blade. I adjusted. It passed.

  Meral watched the forward view and murmured, “It’s beautiful in a way that feels like a warning.”

  The transport pinged weakly on sensors deeper in the field. A medium hauler, old and patched, drifting with a slow tumble. Its thrusters fired in uneven bursts that nudged it into worse trajectories. A second hauler hovered a safe distance from the ever-changing gravitational currents, trying to follow closely - but not too close.

  I opened comms.

  “Charter transport,” I said. “This is Jedi shuttle from Yavin. Identify.”

  Static, then a voice tight with impatience. “Hesk here. Representative for the owner. I see you on my screen. I’m in the hauler to your starboard, following the target. You see it?”

  “I see it. Why is it in Durgen’s Star?”

  “Not my decision,” Hesk snapped. “The charter route. The logistics company said the corridor was safe. The pilot missed it. Now the owner’s staring at a loss.”

  “What’s on board?” I asked.

  “Sealed property container,” Hesk said quickly. “It’s insured. Don’t open it. Recover it intact, pull it out of the debris field and I’ll load it in.”

  “You don’t know what you’re transporting,” I said.

  A pause, then a brittle, forced calm. “I know what the paperwork says.”

  Meral leaned close enough that her breath warmed my ear. “He’s hiding behind words.”

  I didn’t respond. The channel stayed open.

  “Who’s the crew?” I asked.

  “Captain and hands,” Hesk replied. “They’re… skittish. They don’t want inspection. Just do the job and leave.”

  Skittish. That was a small word for a big problem.

  ? ? ?

  We latched to the hauler’s docking port, metal clunking through the hull. The transport’s airlock rim was dented and leaking a thin thread of vapor. The ship smelled wrong even through the seal.

  I stood, saber hilt present in my hand though the blade stayed dark. Meral lit hers the moment the inner door cycled, green light cutting through the red emergency glow inside. Toran carried a tool kit and a look that promised violence against any offensive machinery. The air on the other side was cold and stale, thick with grease and fear. Gravity was uneven, tugging at my boots like the ship couldn’t decide if it wanted to keep us.

  A man met us in the corridor, blaster held low but ready. Shaved head. Eyes too bright.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he said.

  “Your ship is drifting into scrap,” Toran replied. “Where’s your captain?”

  The man swallowed. “We’ll bring you the container. You take it and go.”

  Meral’s smile was thin. “You really want us to not walk your ship.”

  The captain appeared behind him, older, beard shot with gray, jacket patched with meaningless insignia. He looked at our sabers and measured the corridor like a man counting exits.

  “We appreciate the assistance,” he said, voice controlled. “But we’re on contract. No inspection. Stabilize us. Take the container. Leave.”

  “I need your thruster control,” Toran said. “Now.”

  “No one touches my systems,” the captain replied.

  The ship lurched, hard enough that a crate somewhere slammed into a bulkhead. Lights flickered. The captain grabbed the wall, anger and fear colliding in his eyes.

  Toran didn’t blink. “That’s what ‘dead’ feels like,” he said. “Pick.”

  The captain’s jaw worked. Then he jerked his head. “Bridge.”

  We moved fast. The ship was a mess of patchwork repairs, loose panels, wiring taped down. The kind of upkeep you did when you lived from job to job and never wanted to spend money on anything that didn’t keep you moving. On the bridge, Toran popped a panel and hissed a curse.

  “Your thruster control loop is scrambled,” he said. “Either your pilot is incompetent or someone did this on purpose.”

  The captain’s eyes tightened. “No one sabotaged my ship.”

  The woman beside him, scar on her jaw, shifted her blaster hand. She held it too comfortably. Her gaze kept snapping to my saber hilt like she was trying to decide how much it could ruin her day. Toran bridged circuits, rerouted power, disabled two lateral jets entirely. The transport’s shudder eased into a controlled drift.

  “There,” Toran said. “You’re stable for now.”

  The captain exhaled, relief flashing for a heartbeat. Then he hardened again, as if relief was dangerous.

  “Good. Now you take the container.”

  I listened, letting my senses reach past the bridge’s stale air into the ship’s deeper spaces. There was life behind the walls. Faint. Muffled. Too many pulses too close together, held in unnatural stillness.

  Not crew.

  Cargo.

  My stomach tightened.

  “Show me,” I said.

  The captain’s eyes narrowed. “No.”

  Meral’s grin vanished. “Of course.”

  The scarred woman moved first. Blaster rising, twitchy, committed. My saber snapped alive with blue light and the first bolt struck the blade and went into the ceiling. Sparks rained.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Toran ducked instinctively. “Seriously?”

  The corridor behind us flashed with more fire as two crew in the doorway joined in. The bridge filled with sharp sound and burning ozone.

  ? ? ?

  I didn’t swing at bodies. I cut weapons. I stepped in on the scarred woman’s line and split her blaster cleanly, front half dropping smoking to the deck. She stumbled back, eyes wide. Meral extended her hand and pinned her to the floor with invisible weight. The woman’s breath hitched. She couldn’t rise.

  “Stay down,” Meral said, calm as a blade.

  One of the doorway shooters tried to retreat. Toran yanked a loose cable down and snapped it across the man’s wrist. The blaster clattered and slid in the low gravity.

  “Nice,” Meral said without looking at him.

  The captain backed toward a side hatch, eyes darting. He wasn’t running. He was reaching for control. He slapped a wall switch. A heavy hatch sealed with a clunk that echoed through the deck. Red indicators lit.

  Meral swore. “He sealed something.”

  I turned my awareness toward the sealed hatch and felt the life behind it flare in panic, like trapped breath sensing violence. My blood went cold.

  “What’s in there,” I said.

  The captain’s blaster trembled. “Property. Sealed property.”

  “They’re alive,” I said.

  Silence.

  The captain’s shoulders sagged, like his spine finally stopped pretending.

  “They’re not supposed to be your problem,” he whispered.

  “They’re not supposed to be in boxes,” Meral replied.

  Toran dropped to a crouch at the hatch panel, tools already in hand.

  “It’s coded,” he muttered. “Of course it is.”

  He pried the panel open, bridged circuits, sparks snapping. The ship’s gravity flickered and I lifted a fraction. Toran’s hand caught my forearm automatically to steady me. It was quick. Practical. It still landed in my chest with a strange warmth because it happened without thought. The lock indicator blinked from red to amber.

  “Now,” Toran said.

  I pressed the release.

  Cold air hissed out, antiseptic and sharp.

  The container beyond wasn’t filled with crates.

  It was filled with pods.

  Rows of them, stacked in racks, each with a fogged window and a steady pulse of light like a heartbeat. Faces behind the glass. Different species, different ages, all held still. A few eyes were open, unfocused, staring past us like they’d been pulled half awake and left there.

  A hand pressed weakly against one window, smearing condensation.

  Meral’s breath caught.

  Toran went very still.

  On the far side, strapped to the deck, were sleek, high-end med beds still wrapped in shipping foam. Diagnostic rigs, auto-suture arrays, gear that belonged in a Core hospital. Bio-med shipment. State-of-the-art.

  For a second I forgot to breathe.

  The pod closest to me had a readout strip along its side, numbers and abbreviations scrolling in a loop. Temperature. Pulse. O? saturation. A warning icon that flickered and steadied again, like the system itself was tired. Behind the fogged window, a young woman’s face floated, lashes dark against pale skin. Her eyes were open just a slit. Not awake. Not asleep. Caught. Her fingers twitched against the inside glass, slow and weak.

  I lowered my saber and set my free hand on the pod casing. Cold seeped into my palm. Through the Force, the presence inside felt thin but real, clenched tight around fear like it was the only thing keeping her from vanishing.

  A faint sound came from somewhere down the row, a muffled tap that might have been a plea or might have been nothing more than muscle spasms. Meral stepped in beside me and swallowed hard.

  “How many,” she whispered.

  “Too many,” I said.

  Toran’s gaze moved over the racks, counting without wanting to. “We can’t wake them,” he said quietly. “Not here. Not like this. If the pods fail, if we panic them—”

  “I know,” I replied, and it hurt to say it because it meant leaving them in their boxes a little longer.

  My hand stayed on the casing anyway, just for a moment, as if contact could be a promise. Then I pulled back and turned toward the bridge before the anger in my chest could turn into something stupid.

  The captain’s voice broke. “We didn’t open them. We didn’t touch—”

  “You carried them,” I said.

  Behind us, the shaved-head man made a desperate lunge toward the hatch controls. Meral slammed him into the bulkhead with a telekinetic shove that stopped just short of breaking him. He slid down, groaning.

  “Enough,” she said.

  The captain’s eyes were wild now. “If you take them, we’re dead. The issuer will hunt us.”

  “Who chartered this?” Toran demanded.

  The captain shook his head violently. “A shell. That’s the point. We don’t know. We don’t ask.”

  Somewhere deep in the ship, an alarm chirped. The deck vibrated.

  Toran’s gaze snapped to his datapad. “Power draw spike,” he said. “Cargo bay systems are pulling from stabilizers. Someone’s trying to cycle something.”

  The scarred woman pinned on the bridge floor spat, “You don’t understand what you’re touching.”

  Meral tightened her hand and the woman gasped, pinned harder. “I understand plenty.”

  I didn’t waste time arguing.

  “We bring the ship,” I said.

  Toran nodded once, immediate. “We keep the pods powered. We get out of the field. We jump.”

  The captain laughed, sharp and miserable. “Engines are half dead.”

  “I can coax them,” Toran said. “But we need space. We need timing.”

  I looked back out through the corridor toward the viewport. Durgen’s Star’s light cut through everything. The debris drifted slow and merciless.

  Timing I could do.

  ? ? ?

  Meral secured the crew in the cargo hold, locked the door, and left them contained. Their eyes followed us like hatred was the only warmth they had left. Toran returned to the controls and started rerouting power again, hands moving too fast to be nervous.

  I stood at the viewport of the small bridge and widened my senses into the field. A narrow corridor opened between two drifting bands, a gap that would exist for seconds before it closed.

  “Toran,” I said. “On my mark.”

  He didn’t ask. “Ready.”

  I watched a cluster of ice fragments drift past, rotating. Behind them, darker mineral shards slid like a slow current. Between them, a brief clean line.

  “Now.”

  Thrusters fired. The transport shuddered, coughed, then caught enough to slide forward. A shard swung toward us, its edge catching dwarf-light. I reached with intent, a gentle nudge against its rotation. It altered by a hair and missed. A larger chunk tumbled into our path, too big to ignore. Toran swore and pushed the controls, but the ship responded sluggishly.

  Meral extended her hand and shoved, not the debris, but the ship itself. A telekinetic push against mass, small in distance and huge in effort. The transport’s line shifted just enough. The chunk swept past the viewport close enough that I saw ancient scorch marks and rivets.

  Meral’s breath came ragged. “I hate this,” she said.

  “Later,” Toran replied, voice tight. “Hate later.”

  We cleared the densest band in ugly increments. Survival measured in meters and seconds. The sensor alarms softened as the field thinned. Toran’s shoulders dropped by a fraction. “We’re out,” he said, like the words were fragile.

  The comm panel chimed.

  Hesk again.

  I opened the channel.

  “Status?” he demanded. “Do you have the container?”

  “We found living cargo,” I said.

  Silence, then a brittle laugh. “Impossible.”

  “Not impossible,” I replied. “Pods. Sentients. We are bringing the ship in.”

  Hesk’s voice rose. “You cannot do that. That’s property under contract.”

  “It just stopped being property,” I said.

  His breathing came hard over the channel. “Listen. Seal it. Take the container here. Complete the contract. Leave the rest. If this becomes a Republic matter—”

  “The shell will vanish,” Meral said quietly.

  “Who is that?” Hesk snapped.

  “No one you can threaten,” Meral answered.

  The channel crackled. Then it went dead, abrupt as a cut cord. The hovering hauler disappeared into hyperspace with a flash.

  Toran didn’t look up. “He bailed.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  I keyed Corran’s channel.

  “Durgen’s Star mission to Praxeum,” I said. “Mission escalated. We found sentients in pods in the cargo bay. Crew hostile but contained. Owner rep bailed. Also onboard: high-end bio-med shipment including med beds. We have stabilized the transport and are exiting Durgen’s Star. We are bringing the ship and survivors to Yavin.”

  Corran answered instantly, voice tight. “Copy. Keep the pods powered. Keep the crew under control. Get here safely.”

  “On our way.”

  ? ? ?

  Meral boarded the shuttle that brought us here, undocked from the hauler, and with one last warning look that said I better get to see you on Yavin, disappeared into hyperspace. I allowed myself a small smile at her concern. The ship was not winning any beauty contests but I trusted Toran to keep it flying for as long as we needed.

  He gave me a nod from the engineering station, stood up, and moved closer.

  “All systems ready. She’ll get us there.”

  “Then let’s leave this place.”

  I punched in the entry vectors and activated the drive. Hyperspace swallowed the white dwarf’s glare and replaced it with streaking lines. The ship’s hum steadied. The Force stretched thin again, but it didn’t feel empty. It felt tense, like a breath held.

  Only then did I realize Toran was braced close beside me over the nav display, shoulder nearly touching mine. We’d begun to move like that without noticing. Tight corridors, shared leverage, hands steadying each other before thought caught up.

  He glanced at me, eyes bright with adrenaline and exhaustion. “We did it,” he said.

  “Once you start something, you have to commit,” I replied, and wasn’t talking only about the mission.

  His mouth twitched. “Fair.”

  ? ? ?

  When we dropped into Yavin space, the planet’s green filled the screen like a promise.

  Kyle’s voice came over comm, dry. “You brought me a whole ship now. What’s next, a moon?”

  “Only a small one,” Toran replied.

  “Medbay is ready,” Kyle said. “Don’t do anything dramatic on final.”

  “Like explode,” Meral muttered behind him.

  We set the transport down on the largest pad. The moment the landing struts locked, the ship seemed to sag, exhausted. The airlock opened onto humidity and wet-leaf smell so alive it felt like an insult to the sterile cold inside.

  Luke was waiting near the pad edge with Tionne, Kam, Corran, and Mara. No speeches. No questions shouted across the open air. They moved immediately, turning shock into procedure. Tionne led med staff with hover platforms and portable power rigs.

  Meral guided them to the cargo bay without needing to speak. The crew was escorted out and brought inside the Great Temple under Kam’s and Mara’s watchful eyes. They didn’t fight now. Under Yavin’s open sky, they looked small and grimy and human, even with their anger. One of them, the shaved-head man, caught my gaze as he was escorted past.

  “This wasn’t supposed to be like this,” he said hoarsely.

  I didn’t answer. Because maybe it was supposed to be exactly like this, and that was the sickness.

  Only then we approached the container. When the hatch opened on Yavin, antiseptic air spilled into jungle heat. Inside, pods sat in rows, faces behind fogged windows, lights pulsing steady. A few eyes stared out, unfocused, caught between sleep and terror.

  Luke placed his palm against one pod window and closed his eyes briefly.

  When he opened them, his voice was quiet and absolute. “Get them inside. Now.”

  Tionne stopped for half a heartbeat, then her training took over. “Careful,” she said softly. “One at a time. Keep power stable.”

  The work became rhythm. Hover platforms slid under pods. Power feeds transferred. Med beds were unstrapped and moved like relics. When the last pod rolled down the ramp, the pad quieted. The transport sat there, patched hull steaming faintly, looking suddenly pathetic and enormous.

  Toran leaned against the ramp rail, shoulders slumping. His hands were still shaking from fine control and refused to admit it. Meral stood beside him, arms folded, gaze fixed on the Temple entrance where the survivors were being wheeled in.

  “Tier Two, huh,” she said, voice thin.

  Toran let out a rough laugh. “Tier Two.”

  I stepped closer without thinking and my fingers brushed Toran’s forearm where he gripped the rail. He looked down at my hand, then up at me. No declarations. No promises. Just a steadiness that held.

  A gravity.

  Meral’s mouth twitched like she wanted to make a joke and couldn’t find one that wouldn’t break something. She looked away first.

  Luke approached, stopping close enough that his presence warmed the air.

  “You did the right thing,” he said quietly, not as a lesson, just as acknowledgment.

  Then, practical again. “Go wash. Eat. Sleep if you can. We’ll take it from here.”

  We walked toward the Temple together, Toran matching my pace without thinking. The jungle smelled too alive, too thick, like it was insisting the galaxy still held beauty along with its rot. Behind us, landing pad lights blinked steady, and the transport sat like a wound we’d carried home.

  In the cold light of a white dwarf, we’d found lives boxed like property.

  And we’d opened the hatch.