The Seizure of the Ruler's Hand
Kaelen moved through the darkness of the spaceport with desperate speed, the sirens and shouted orders of the Imperial garrison a frantic chorus around her. The backup generators were humming to life, casting emergency red lights across the hangar bay.
She reached the perimeter of the sealed bay where the Ruler's Hand sat—a needle of black-and-silver arrogance. She found the point where Vexa’s team had entered through the old maintenance shaft and squeezed through.
The bay was chaos. Troopers were struggling to restore power, their flashlights bouncing erratically.
Kaelen didn't engage them. She used the confusion as cover, moving from shadow to shadow, an amber blur cutting across the hangar floor. She reached the yacht's boarding ramp, sliced the control panel, and pulled herself inside.
She found the cockpit—plush leather, polished chrome, and banks of sophisticated displays. Kaelen bypassed the electronic security in seconds, overriding the pre-flight checks and bringing the engines online. The ship rumbled to life beneath her.
But the cockpit door hissed open, and the silence that followed was chilling.
The Inquisitor stood there. He was covered in soot, and his helmet was scarred, but his crimson, double-bladed saber was ignited and spinning lazily in his grip. He had anticipated her move, trusting his instinct over the panic of his troops.
"I knew your spirit, Padawan," the Inquisitor sneered, his voice a low, synthetic rasp. "You would never run without your prize."
"The prize is off-world," Kaelen snapped, flipping controls to open the main hangar doors.
She didn't wait. Kaelen ignited her amber saber and surged forward, attacking first. She was faster now, fueled by adrenaline and the raw knowledge that her allies' lives depended on this moment. She didn't fight for a victory; she fought for time.
The Inquisitor met her with a savage intensity. The space was tight, forcing him to rely on short, powerful swings rather than the wide, dizzying arcs of his spinning saber. The narrow confines of the cockpit became a deadly cage. Kaelen used the control panels themselves, shoving her body against them to deflect strikes, letting the Inquisitor’s wild swings damage the very ship they fought in.
A red blade sheared across the navigational screen. Sparks flew.
"You fight well for a feral beast!" the Inquisitor taunted.
"I learned that from the Empire!" she roared back.
She locked blades with him, then brought her knee up hard, smashing into his helmet visor. The Inquisitor stumbled, letting out a wordless growl of pain.
Kaelen seized the moment. She slammed her fist onto the master release lever for the landing gear.
The cockpit alarms shrieked a deafening warning.
"What are you doing?" the Inquisitor shrieked, backing away.
"Ending this," Kaelen said, launching herself into the pilot's seat.
She slammed the main throttle forward. The Ruler's Hand, its bay doors still sealed, roared into life.
Zero-G Escape
The ship shot forward, ramming the sealed hangar doors. The armored doors buckled with a screech of tortured metal, but they held.
CRASH! The yacht slammed to a halt.
"You have doomed us both!" the Inquisitor raged, launching himself at her with a full Force-assisted attack.
Kaelen didn't bother dodging. She grabbed the emergency depressurization switch and pulled it.
A klaxon sounded. The atmospheric seals on the damaged hangar doors blew out. The remaining panels of the hangar were ripped open as the vacuum of space roared in.
The sudden, explosive decompression was absolute.
Kaelen anchored herself to the controls with the Force, but the Inquisitor was caught completely off guard. The massive outward rush of air, equipment, and debris dragged his armored body backward.
His spinning saber was wrenched from his grip. He grabbed a reinforced structural pillar, his dark power barely holding him in place.
Kaelen looked up. In the brief, catastrophic chaos, she saw Vexa’s group—the rebels and the children—being sucked into the vacuum. They were wrapped in emergency webbing, and the stronger Xylotians were desperately holding onto the hangar floor.
Kaelen reached out with the Force, not to fight the Inquisitor, but to shield and stabilize her people. She created a tenuous, invisible bubble of resistance around Vexa's group, anchoring them firmly to the deck.
The Inquisitor, seeing his prey escaping him, howled in fury. He lunged back toward Kaelen.
"You will not leave Xylos!"
Kaelen brought her saber down, not on him, but on the yacht's main control tether.
The tether snapped. Freed from the wreckage of the hangar doors, the Ruler's Hand shot through the newly created hole in the bay and into the open, toxic sky.
The last thing Kaelen saw was the Inquisitor, still anchored to the control pillar, watching the yacht vanish, his face contorted in incandescent rage.
Kaelen immediately stabilized the flight, correcting the yacht's ascent. She stumbled into the passenger compartment, where Vexa and the others were already strapping into the padded seats, coughing from the brief exposure to the vacuum.
"The cockpit's breached!" Kaelen gasped, sealing the door behind her and collapsing into the nearest seat. "But we're out. Xylos is behind us."
Vexa looked at the children, all alive, all safe. Then she looked at the Jedi, who was bleeding, exhausted, yet fiercely alive.
"Where now?" Vexa asked.
Kaelen leaned her head back, feeling the yacht break free of Xylos's atmosphere. She reached out with the Force, feeling the scattered, faint sparks of hope in the galaxy—worlds like Xylos, suffering under the Empire.
"We find a place to heal," Kaelen said, forcing a weary smile. "Then we find a place to fight."
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