“Master Qui-Gon!
Obi-Wan!
Cousin!” Kurt’s heart lodged itself in his throat.
The Jedi couldn’t die here — not Qui-Gon, not with everything Kurt had planned around him.
In whatever future Kurt was trying to build, this open-minded Master might be a potential non-hostile observer, or even, in some roundabout way, cover for everything he intended to do.
“I’m fine.
Protect yourself!” A steady voice cut through the roar of the explosion.
Just as the grinning Twi’lek swung his vibro-axe toward the shadow moving through the smoke, a blade of emerald light snapped alive, tearing the dark apart like thunder.
Vmmm—
Qui-Gon spun out of the haze with practiced grace, his green blade carving a perfect arc, catching the heavy double-axe strike dead in its downward swing.
Sparks scattered in every direction.
The force of the blow drove Qui-Gon half a step back, but his eyes stayed calm as still water.
“Obi-Wan!
Protect the Duchess!” Qui-Gon’s voice stayed level even as his blade whirled into a shimmering green wall, absorbing the Twi’lek’s furious assault blow after blow, each clash of axe and saber shrieking with grinding metal and bursting energy.
Obi-Wan moved just as fast.
The instant the wall blew open, he didn’t run for the door — he used the Force to launch himself backward through the room’s inner window in a controlled flip, lightsaber flaring blue mid-air.
He scaled the outer wall like something out of a nightmare for whoever was waiting above, climbing hand over hand — Satine’s room was one floor up.
“The Duchess is in danger!” Obi-Wan’s voice crackled over comms, edged with urgency.
Upstairs, fighting had already broken out outside Satine’s door.
Her personal guards fought to hold the line, but they were clearly outmatched by killers who’d planned this to the second.
Satine’s face had gone pale, but her eyes stayed hard and clear.
She held a small, elegant blaster pistol, watching for any opening.
Just as one bounty hunter broke through the last of the guards, grinning, weapon rising toward her—
Vmmm—
A blade of blue-white light dropped from above like a judgment, punching straight through the ceiling and clean through the hunter’s shoulder.
Obi-Wan Kenobi fell into the room, blade already turning mid-strike to sever the man’s arm at the joint.
He landed without breaking stride, saber whirling into a defensive wall between the hunters and Satine, engaging the two remaining attackers at once.
His swordwork wasn’t as refined as Qui-Gon’s yet, but he made up for it in speed and sheer nerve, his blade weaving so tight and fast that neither hunter could find an opening to close the distance.
Downstairs, Qui-Gon’s fight with the Twi’lek had turned into a full-blown clash — the alien’s raw strength was terrifying, each swing of his axe tearing the air with a shriek, and Qui-Gon relied on precise anticipation and redirection to keep from being overwhelmed outright.
But the human woman with the sniper rifle was the real problem.
She struck from the shadows like a viper, each precisely placed shot forcing Qui-Gon to dodge or deflect, pinning down his movement far more than the axe ever could.
“Kurt!
The sniper!” Qui-Gon’s voice stayed steady even mid-exchange.
Using the corridor’s support pillars and the chaos as cover, he moved with both pistols drawn.
He didn’t have a lightsaber to block bolts out of the air — all he had was his helmet’s tactical overlay and the faint, half-formed warnings the Force fed him, weaving through the crossfire, closing the gap step by careful step.
“Annoying little bug.” The sniper clocked him as a threat, her tactical visor flashing red, the barrel swinging toward him — a lethal red beam streaking straight for his face.
A jolt of pure, instinctive dread crawled up Kurt’s spine.
He threw himself sideways almost before he’d consciously decided to, the bolt scoring past close enough to scorch his shoulder plate.
Heat seared across his skin as he hit the ground rolling, both pistols coming up on nothing but reflex and a flicker of Force-given instinct, and he fired.
Bang bang bang!
Not at her — at the floor beneath her feet, and the wall beside her.
The sniper had to break position to avoid the spray of shrapnel and debris, and her suppression on Qui-Gon broke with it.
“Now!” Kurt seized the opening, surging up and charging straight for the corner she’d taken cover behind.
He needed to close the distance — at range, against a marksman like that, he had no chance at all.
At the same moment, the pressure on Qui-Gon vanished.
Something sharp flickered in his eyes.
“Hah!” A low, controlled exhale, and Qui-Gon stopped merely blocking.
His green blade seemed to come alive, hooking around the Twi’lek’s axe and wrenching it off-line with a single precise pull.
The alien’s massive frame staggered, thrown off balance.
Qui-Gon’s other hand snapped out, a Force push landing square on the Twi’lek’s chest like an invisible battering ram.
Whud!
The Twi’lek doubled over, coughing blood.
His huge body flew backward and slammed into the corridor wall hard enough to cave it in, the axe torn from his grip and clattering away.
“Boss!” The Devaronian demolitions expert, working the barricade, snarled in fury, his shoulder cannon opening up in a wild spray while he hurled two shock grenades in the same motion.
Qui-Gon’s blade deflected the incoming bolts, and he leapt back lightly, absorbing the shockwave head-on, stumbling only a few steps under the blast.
While the Devaronian’s attention stayed locked on Qui-Gon, Kurt closed the last of the distance to the sniper.
Her rifle was useless in a space this tight.
She dropped it without hesitation, pulling a knife from her belt in a single vicious motion, aiming straight for Kurt’s throat.
Kurt’s eyes went cold behind his visor.
He didn’t try to block it with his pistol — he dropped low instead, letting the blade skate across his helmet in a shower of sparks.
At the same time, he drove a full-force punch into her exposed ribs.
Crack.
The bone gave with a sound impossible to mistake.
She gasped in pain, her posture buckling, and Kurt didn’t let up — a knee slammed into her stomach, followed by a hard chop to the side of her neck.
Her eyes rolled back and she crumpled.
Sniper down.
Kurt spun back toward the others. Get faster updates on g.com.
Qui-Gon had already regained his footing, blade leveled at the Twi’lek struggling back up and the panicking Devaronian.
Obi-Wan had cleared the threat upstairs and was escorting Satine down the stairs.
The fight was already lost, and everyone in that corridor knew it.
The Twi’lek roared, something desperate and wild flashing in his eyes, snatching up his remaining axe for what looked like a suicide charge — and the Devaronian slammed his thumb down on a detonator.
Beep-beep-beep — BOOM.
BOOM!
Proximity mines and sticky charges he’d planted through the corridor earlier went off in sequence, swallowing the hallway in fire and smoke and flying debris.
“Watch out!” Qui-Gon’s shout cut through the roar, the Force surging out from him in a protective wall, sweeping Obi-Wan, Satine, and Kurt behind its shield as the blast wave broke against it and died.
When the smoke began to clear, the corridor was unrecognizable — scorched black where the Twi’lek and the Devaronian had stood, nothing left of either of them but wreckage.
They’d chosen to die there, or more precisely, used their deaths to buy cover for someone else’s escape.
“They ran?” Kurt scanned the wreckage, brow furrowed behind his visor.
He didn’t believe those three were the whole team — the killing intent he’d sensed earlier had been more than that.
Qui-Gon released the Force, his face a shade paler than before, sweeping the scene with sharp, focused eyes — eyes that came to rest, finally, on Kurt.
Then slowly, his gaze shifted toward the far end of the corridor, to a half-collapsed ventilation shaft.
A faint trace lingered there, already fading fast.
“No.
There’s a fourth.” Qui-Gon’s voice was low, certain.
“A more cautious one.
He used his companions’ sacrifice and the explosion as cover to get out — through there.” He pointed at the vent.
Kurt followed his hand, snapping his helmet’s night vision and thermal overlay on instantly.
Deep in the shaft, a blurred heat signature — subtly warmer than the surrounding metal — was already moving fast.
“After him!” Kurt didn’t hesitate.
He needed to know who’d sent this team.
Death Watch?
Someone else entirely?
Satine’s safety hung on the answer — and so did his own, and the base’s.
He was moving before the thought finished, diving into the vent, body compact and quick.
Something like approval flickered through Qui-Gon’s eyes, layered with something deeper — this young Mandalorian was decisive, sharp, his grasp of the Force rough and untrained but shot through with raw instinct and real strength.
More than that: his need to protect Satine, and anyone he counted as family, ran bone-deep, almost beyond his own control.
“Obi-Wan.
Guard the Duchess.
Secure the scene, treat the wounded.” Qui-Gon’s orders came fast, and then he was moving too, weightless as a falling feather, slipping into the vent without a sound.
He chased after Kurt, green blade lighting the dark, dust-choked, rubble-strewn passage ahead of them both.