Private Ghost in the Circle

[Bastila Sal-Soren]

Bastila Sal-Soren had learned how to disappear in plain sight, the Jedi had taught her and it was an art she was beginning to master. It was a far cry from the social circles on Naboo where she, like her family stood at the center of all things like radiant beams of light to be stared at in awe. Here she was no more then dust on the wall.
She’d tracked the lead across three systems, piecing it together from half-buried manifests and corrupted comm logs—all dating back to the months before her father’s death. It was a weapons trail. Small shipments, under-the-table deals, nothing overt. But the pattern was there. And at the end of it sat a name she hadn't heard of yet: Vrax.

She hadn’t said anything to Brandyn, Briana or the Council. It wasn’t sanctioned work. But the name wouldn’t let her go. This wasn’t just about pirates or forged documents, there was something more.
This was about what her father had done—and who continued to profit from it after he was gone.

So she went dark. Made her excuses. Adopted her new name. Let the trail pull her toward the outer rim, into the underworld where Vrax’s operation was burrowed deep in Kal’Shebbol’s trading district.

Now Bastila was known as Kira. She was Soft-spoken. Kept to herself. Good with details and documents, especially ones for the new Royal Naboo Republic that was becoming a thing of an obsession for Vrax’s group. They called her "the Ghost Scribe." They thought she was just a forger—quiet, competent, easily forgotten.
She let them believe it.

Her workspace was a glorified storage closet—barely wide enough to stretch her arms in. One dented stool, one battered print machine older that was well older then Bastila, and a slab of metal that passed for a desk. The walls were coated in grime and old adhesive strips from long-forgotten posters. There were no windows. Just a single yellowing light fixture overhead that flickered every third minute like it was trying to stutter out a warning.
Still, it was enough. The hum of the machine, the hiss of data chips feeding through—these were sounds she could control. In here, the galaxy narrowed into something manageable. A forge in the dark.

And sometimes, when the door creaked open, Bastila got to give a real performance.

"Still alive in there, Kira?" came a familiar voice, rough and amused.
It was Drex, one of Vrax’s lesser lieutenants. Lean, half-drunk, always grinning like he knew something no one else did. He leaned against the doorway, arms crossed, eyes scanning the room like he might catch a secret hiding in the dust.

"Alive enough to finish your latest shipment," Bastila replied, not looking up from the datapad she was encoding. Her voice was light, dry, and carefully unremarkable. Much like her grime covered face and roughly pulled back hair.

"That’s what I like about you. Efficient." He stepped into the room, ducking slightly under the low frame. She heard him give a solid sniff, wet and deep, she had to pause from feeling disgusted. “Though, stars, how do you breathe in here?”

“I don’t,” she said flatly, refusing to look up from her station. “I hold my breath between jobs.”

Drex chuckled, scratching at the scruff on his jaw. “You’re wasted on paperwork, you know. Ever think about field work? Bet you’d be a real surprise with a blaster.”

She allowed herself a slight smirk, eyes still on the datafeed. “Surprise is half the point, isn’t it?”

“Ha! That it is.” He knocked his knuckles against the metal doorframe. “Well, we’ve got another run tonight. If you’re angling for a transfer out of this broom closet, now’s the time to make your move. Could use an extra set of hands.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

He lingered a moment too long, then left, his boots echoing down the corridor with a lazy rhythm. As the door closed behind him, Bastila’s smile vanished. She slotted a chip into the printer, watching as it spat out a falsified cargo clearance in seconds. One more lie for the pile.

But Drex had slipped. Tonight. A run. He thought she wasn’t listening, but she heard everything. It meant the complex would be relatively empty.

She leaned back slightly, the chair creaking beneath her. The lights flickered again.

This was never just about a pirate ring. It was about the answers buried under their floorboards—how everything seemed to point towards people in close association with her father, the man who she thought she had known and apparently knew nothing about.

They thought they had a forger—compliant and clever. What they really had was a Jedi in shadow, with a long memory, unfinished business and a thirst for knowing how much of a rabbit hole it was.

And when the time came, she would tear their network down—
She set a timer on her wrist chrono.
The time was nearly here.

​

 

[Bastila Sal-Soren]

The timer on her chrono buzzed twice. Quiet. Subtle. Right on time.
Bastila moved with precision, sliding off the dented stool and slipping out of the cramped room that had served as her cage for the last week. She didn’t lock the door—didn’t need to. No one came looking for Kira unless they needed a document forged, and tonight, they’d all be focused on the run.

Exactly as Drex had said.

Later in the day she’d overheard more than Drex had shared—not just about the timing, but about something that had stirred the run forward, an extra reason for the route. There was a package that had to be intercepted, a shipment being delayed due to it being needed. Drex had tried to wave it off, but she’d seen it—the tightness in his jaw, the shift in his eyes. It wasn’t routine. It was panic pretending to be boredom.

And if it was important enough for Vrax to pull strings and reroute crews, then it was probably something important enough for her to dig into.
The halls of the Kal’Shebbol complex were choked in half-light and recycled air, the overhead lamps dim and blinking like they were too tired to stay on. The bulkheads were streaked with rust and the faint smears of oil left behind by generations of smugglers and slicers. The air tasted like metal and dust. A far cry from the lavish surrounds of Naboo.

She moved like smoke—fluid, quiet, forgettable. No cloak. No armor. Just the same grease-streaked tunic and worn trousers as always. A background presence. A ghost.
But under her belt, nestled at the curve of her spine, was her lightsaber.
She hadn’t used it here. Not once. Not even to meditate. But she felt it all the same—the subtle weight of it, and the silent promise humming in its core.

The central archive room was locked, but the door wasn’t her real obstacle—it was the time. Minutes ticking too fast. Shadows that were already beginning to thin. She sliced the lock with practiced fingers, the pad giving way with a reluctant hiss. She slipped inside.
The archive stank of ozone and old smoke. Rows of obsolete terminals stretched in uneven lines, their casings faded to a yellow-gray. Backup datachips were stacked in open crates, some labeled, most not. A broken ceiling vent exhaled stale warmth into the room like the breath of some slumbering beast.

Her boots were silent against the grating as she scanned the shelves. She moved quickly, eyes flicking over labels, cross-referencing aliases and trade codes she’d committed to memory. She wasn’t searching blind. She knew what she was looking for.

Then she found it.

A manifest, its case cracked at the corner. Logged under a shell handler: Rovari Transit Solutions. The receiver: Kal’Shebbol. The sender: Cortessan Finance Group, Naboo. Dated three months before her father’s death.

The breath she drew in felt sharp. Cold.

She slid the manifest chip into the nearest display screen and let it begin its loading process, she had to see it with her own eyes and now. Her hope starting to settle.
Not because it confirmed anything—not yet. But because it pointed somewhere. It meant that her weeks of combing whispers had not come to naught. It had the shape of a trail, and trails led to truth.

A scrape echoed from the hallway outside. Boots. Close.

She killed the screen and moved like instinct, slipping between two towering racks of equipment just as the door slid open with a mechanical groan.
Two pirates stepped in, young and smug and unaware of anything beyond their own noise.

“You think Drex’ll notice we’re not on the run?”
“Nah. Guy’s half-blind on his best day. Just gotta grab the shipment log and bounce.”

She didn’t move. Not even to breathe. One hand rested on the hilt beneath her tunic, the other braced lightly against the wall. She was just another shadow in a place that had long since stopped caring about its corners.
Let them go. Let them leave.
And they did, their laughter trailed off, boots clunking back down the corridor until it faded entirely.

She exhaled slowly, then emerged, heart still steady, senses sharp.

She was close now. Closer than she’d ever been.
Close to what, she still didn’t know—truth, guilt, closure. Maybe even the version of her father that had existed in the shadows while the rest of her family basked in the light, but this was no longer about forged manifests or names scrawled in corrupted logs.

This was about Bastila Sal-Soren. And the truth she’d been denied her entire life.

She returned to the console and removed the chip slipping it into her sleeve made sure to wipe her trace on the console itself, when something shifted. A painful flick in the back of her mind, like her instincts telling her to straighten up.
A dull thrum pulsed through the floor vents—three slow vibrations. Then silence.
Her brow creased. That wasn’t part of the usual cycle.

A nearby terminal blinked to life, unprompted. Text rolled across the screen, glitched and faded, but legible:
“Inbound Docking Clearance Granted. ID: VRA-7XJ. Vessel: Grinning Scourge. Status: Early Return.”

The room suddenly felt colder.

That was Drex’s ship. It wasn’t due back for another six hours.

She froze, mind racing, then powered down the console and slipped out the door. The corridor outside was even darker now, emergency strips lining the floor with sickly red light. The hum of machinery had grown jagged, urgent.
Something had gone wrong, they were back early.

And if they discovered that a crate manifest had been accessed in the window they’d been gone—if they realized a name had been peeled away from the rot of their system—they’d come looking.

She moved fast, keeping to the edges. Past pipes that groaned overhead like the facility itself was warning her. Past peeling signs and flickering cameras that hadn’t worked in decades—but might work now.
She ducked into a side stairwell, metal steps groaning beneath her weight. The deeper levels of the complex were alive with power surges, the cargo lifts already rumbling back to life.

Whatever had happened out there—whatever that intercepted package had stirred—it was enough to change the air.
She pressed against the wall, the durasteel cool through her sleeve. Her saber shifted slightly at her back. She didn’t draw it.

Not yet, but she couldn’t shake the impending feeling that the time where she would have to use it was coming very soon.
And if tonight had to end in fire—so be it.

​

 

[Bastila Sal-Soren]

The celebration echoed down the main corridor long before Bastila saw them—boisterous shouts, the clatter of gear on durasteel, and the unmistakable stench of adrenaline and cheap spirits. The pirates were back, earlier than expected, riding the high of some half-won skirmish.

She leaned casually against the junction wall, datapad in hand, feigning disinterest. Her posture was relaxed, but her heartbeat betrayed her, thrumming hard and fast in her chest. Any Force-sensitive nearby could have heard it.

They were louder than usual. Drunker, too. That was the first sign something had shifted.

The second was the prisoner.

He was dragged between two of them, stumbling, blood crusted across his jawline, one arm bound in a rough sling. His shirt hung in tatters, one eye nearly swollen shut. But even in that state—perhaps especially in that state—his gaze was sharp. And when he saw her, he stopped.

Not from pain. Not from fear.

Recognition.

Bastila felt the chill before the realization struck. He knew her.

But she didn’t know him.

She forced her expression to remain neutral. Not a flicker of surprise. No tension in her brow. Just a subtle adjustment of her grip on the datapad, her face angled slightly away as if lost in thought. But inside, her senses lit like wildfire behind her eyes.

He said nothing. Didn't cry out. But his stare lingered, heavy with meaning.

The pirates thought they’d brought in a courier—someone smuggling data, weapons, maybe credits. Whatever they believed he carried, he was now something else entirely. A threat. One she hadn’t accounted for.

"Get him to the sublevels," someone barked. "Vrax’ll want eyes on him first thing."

They hauled the man forward. He stumbled again, dragged around the bend, but not before casting one last glance her way.

Bastila let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Her grip had bent the edge of the datapad casing.

Who was he? How did he know her? And why now?

She should’ve returned to her quarters. Reassessed. Dug into the fragmented internal logs for answers. But her legs moved of their own accord, carrying her forward.

Too fast.

Too curious.

She caught up to one of the stragglers, a younger pirate still riding the high of whatever victory they thought they’d earned.

“Hey,” she called, voice low but direct. “The guy you brought in—what’s his story?”

He paused, eyeing her. Kira. The quiet one. The forger. Not the type to ask questions.

He shrugged. “Intel runner, I think. Tried to slip the perimeter. Vrax thinks he’s tied to the Republic. Or something bigger. Why, you know him?”

She shook her head—too quickly. “No. Just… never seen one come back alive.”

The pirate snorted. “Yeah, well. Might not be for long.”

He turned and vanished into the gloom.

Bastila stood frozen, the mechanical hum of the vents suddenly loud in her ears.

She didn’t know him.

But he knew her.

And someone in this fortress was going to start asking the same questions she was.

She backed into a dark alcove, hidden behind a jammed service panel, heart pounding. For weeks she’d been invisible—just Kira, the Ghost Scribe, silent and forgettable. But this changed everything.

If he spoke her name, her cover was gone.

She closed her eyes, jaw set.

She already had what she came for. The chip was warm in her sleeve—a data trail from the archives, a key to everything she’d been chasing.

But now there was him.

He wasn’t just a threat. He might be carrying something important—something the pirates were desperate to reclaim. The entire operation smelled bigger than Vrax’s usual fare. And that look he gave her—it wasn’t just familiarity.

It was warning.

If he talked, she lost everything.

If she ran, she lost whatever he carried.

If she waited, she risked being too late for both.

She turned, eyes tracing the shadowed hall toward the sublevels.

She had a choice to make.

And no matter which way she moved, something would be left behind.

​

 

[Bastila Sal-Soren]

The corridors narrowed as Bastila moved toward the sublevels, the air growing thicker with the tang of coolant and stale blood. She kept her pace unhurried, precise—each step echoing faintly through the long-forgotten service routes she'd memorized to avoid the main hallways.

She wasn’t supposed to be down here—not officially. The sublevels were reserved for holding, interrogation, disposal. Whatever name they used, it was where questions were asked without expecting answers.

At a junction, she paused and adjusted the tool pouch at her hip, slipping out a blank ident tag and slotting in a forged access code. It wasn’t perfect—but it only needed to hold for five minutes.

Long enough to get eyes on the prisoner.

Long enough to see what kind of threat she was actually dealing with.

A rusted blast door loomed ahead, its keypad half-melted from some long-forgotten sabotage. She bypassed it with a manual override—old tech, weak wiring. The door screeched open just enough for her to slip through.

The detention level was colder. Quieter. Just the hum of outdated life support systems and the flicker of dying fluorescents overhead. Most of the cells stood open like waiting mouths—empty, lifeless. But two remained sealed.

She approached the second. The lights were dimmed inside, but not off.

Enough to see him.

The prisoner sat slouched against the wall, legs sprawled, head low—but not unconscious. He was alert. Watching. Waiting.

He looked up when she approached—and didn’t look away.

She didn’t speak. Not yet. She stepped closer, fingers resting near her belt. Ready, but not threatening.

"You came down here?" he rasped, voice raw from injury. Or interrogation. Or both. "Interesting."

She didn’t answer. But something in her chest went cold.

This wasn’t idle recognition.

He knew her. Not Kira, not the alias. This man knew who she really was—and there was a strange, intimate familiarity of who she was in his voice. Not just her name. Not just her face. It was deeper than that. Relished recognition

"Which lets me ask the question I’ve had since I walked off that ship," he said after a moment, with a bitter, hollow laugh. "If I’m allowed that right?"

"Should I trust you?" Her voice was low. Controlled. Neutral.

He leaned back against the wall, grimacing at the motion. "Maybe not. I don’t think you would if you knew who I was. What I know."

Her pulse jumped.

"You’re in the wrong place," he went on, eyes locked on hers. "Why would one of the Sal-Soren brats be here? You lot are probably the only ones in the galaxy who understand how deep this thing goes. And yet—here you are. Standing in the heart of it. Pretending you’re a ghost. Unless…" His eyes widened, “You actually have no idea?”

Behind her, the saber hummed faintly beneath her coat. As if sensing her hand’s reflexive urge to draw it.

"Who are you?" she asked quietly.

He smiled—broken, but not beaten. "Nobody of interest. Just a courier. Not that it means much now." He stared at her then, deep and unwavering. "By the Force, she was right. You do have his eyes. His little Sweetcream."

That hit too close.

Too true.

Then—footsteps.

Heavy. Metallic. Steady.

Her head jerked toward the corridor. She wasn’t alone anymore.

The sound echoed—rhythmic and getting louder, like a hammer tapping closer and closer against a wall of glass.

Security patrol.

She met the prisoner’s gaze, a flicker of fear breaking through the practiced calm. "Who told you that name?" she demanded, voice sharp as she drew the blaster from her hip and leveled it at him. “That name? Who the feth told you that?”

“I can’t—” He winced, pain carving deep lines into his face. “Get me out of here, and I’ll tell you everything. I still have a delivery to make.”

His eyes flicked to the doorway. The footsteps had become boots now—multiple sets. Echoes clattering against durasteel. Too close. Too many.

Time was a collapsing thing. Folding in on itself.

He nodded once—sharp and grim. "If I live, you’ll have your answers."

Bastila turned, heart pounding in her ribs like a war drum. She moved fast and without sound, slipping back into the shadows a heartbeat before the guards swept into the corridor—armoured shapes beneath harsh lights.

She didn’t breathe until the darkness swallowed her again.

Her boots carried her away, fast and silent. Her thoughts didn’t follow.

They lagged. Spiralled. Collided.

He wasn’t lying. She knew it.

He had answers she hadn’t even known to ask. And somehow, impossibly, he knew things about her no one should.

This wasn’t just about her father’s shadow anymore.

This was about her.

Someone out there knew far more than she was comfortable with—and now the only person who could help untangle it was locked in a cell beneath a pirate fortress.

And she was trapped here with him.

​

 

[Bastila Sal-Soren]

She made it six decks up before her legs stopped moving.
She was alone now—wedged into a narrow service alcove between coolant tanks, cold metal pressed against her spine. Machinery droned somewhere above. Below, boots echoed. Slow. Methodical. Not after her. Not yet.

She’d decided she was done. It was time to get out. Before her cover cracked, before it spiralled and she landed back in pirate hands—with no Brandyn bursting through the bulkhead this time to pull her out.
She’d done everything right. Got in. Got out. Stayed clean. Unseen.
She should have kept moving.
But something was wrong.
Not alarms. Not breach signals.

Worse.

Her gut twisted first.
That old instinct—sharpened on rooftops, battlefields, Jedi courts—screaming that something just offstage was about to turn the whole play into tragedy. Then the Force hit her. It wasn't a whisper nor was it a vision.
It was a shockwave—crashing through her like a detonator blast—forcing her to drop her to one knee.
Her palm slammed against the durasteel wall, cold stinging her skin. Her breath vanished. Her heart staggered.

Go back.

It wasn’t a voice. The Force didn’t speak like that. But the message was unmistakable.

Go back.

She clenched her jaw, dragging herself upright. “No. I got what I needed. I can’t—” But the Force shoved under her ribs again. Gripping tight. Like a fist locked around her lungs.

He was still down there and something else was coming.
Something that knew who she was. Something that had waited—waited until she was in too deep, too far gone to walk away.

It was clear, the prisoner knew too much, but now the Force was screaming he wasn’t the only one.

Her mind raced—looping through patrol routes, clearance codes not yet burned, the backup exit through the hangar that might already be compromised. Everything in her training told her to run, she couldn't shake the feeling of something heavier than fear coiled low in her chest. Waiting.

If she left now, there wouldn’t be another chance. This wasn’t about exposure anymore, it was about being too late.

She turned. Teeth gritted. Hands already checking her gear.
She was going back.

She didn’t take the same path down and it made sure that every corridor felt tighter now. Every shadow sharper. Her boots barely made a sound on the metal grates as she descended deck by deck, slipping through maintenance shafts and bypassing checkpoints she’d mapped but never meant to use.
Her fingers hovered near her blaster the entire way, the Force had gone quiet—but not still. Like a breath held just behind her ear.

Then it twisted, a spike of cold behind her eyes. Not danger.

Death.

She froze mid-step—one foot hovering above the next stair. “Frakk.”

Her pace quickened as she came to a sharp corner. Another sealed hatch forced open. The corridor ahead stretched toward the detention level, yawning like a throat, darker than before. One of the overhead lights was dead, casting the far end in a deeper shadow.
She reached the second cell.
The door was open this time.

Her stomach dropped. Inside, the prisoner lay just as she’d left him—except for the blackened hole seared into the side of his temple. A single, clean blaster shot. No signs of struggle. No warning. It was an execution. Quiet. Professional.

She stepped in slowly. Her breath shallow now, eyes sweeping the room. No forced entry. No trace of who had come. No time wasted.
It hadn’t been long. The body was still warm, her gaze lingered. It wasn’t her first corpse. Wouldn’t be her last. But this one had been silenced for a reason.
He’d known something, something worth killing for, Something she’d just missed.

Clang.

Metal boots struck the grating outside. Not one pair.
Two. Maybe three and voices. Muffled. but Too close.

She spun, hand drifting toward her concealed lightsaber—only to freeze as a patrol rounded the corner in a half sprint.

Three pirates, two held rifles and one wore stripes on his jacket witha look that said he already didn’t like what he was seeing.
They saw her and they saw the body.
They saw the blaster still in her hand.

The silence shattered.

“You!” one barked. The young one from earlier—she recognized him now. Kalen. His hand dropped to his own blaster. “Step away from the cell!”

Bastila didn’t move.

For a suspended second, everything narrowed—breath, blood, and silence. To her, it lasted a lifetime. Her mind running combat calculus at light speed. Vectors. Trajectories. Escape windows. Then, with her options weighed she raised her hands, slow and deliberate—blaster still dangling between her fingers.

“Wasn’t me,” she said, voice low, level.
The pirates held. Tense. Triggers half-pressed.
Kalen took a cautious step forward, trying to mask the shake in his voice. “Drop the weapon, Kira.”
She didn’t blink. “He was alive ten minutes ago. Check the timestamp on the cell logs.”
“No more talking,” growled the second one, stepping forward now that someone else had broken the ice. “On the ground. Now.”

Still, Bastila didn’t move.
The body behind her was a mystery.
But this?
This she could handle.
Her fingers twitched. Eyes closed. Just for a moment.

Then the Force surged—tight and deliberate. Not a whisper now, but a command. Her will behind it like a hammer behind glass.

The saber tore free from the magnetic clasp beneath her coat, slicing the air in a blur of violet to her hand where she caught it mid-spin.

Snap-hiss.
Light flared, casting long shadows across the cell. The room bloomed in sudden amethyst causing Kalen opened his mouth to shout.
He was Too slow.
She moved like a storm breaking its tether.
The saber arced through the air, clean and decisive. The nearest pirate’s rifle hissed into slag, half-melted before his scream had even formed.

Blaster fire erupted at the entrance.
One bolt scorched her arm—fabric and skin seared in a sharp, fiery kiss. The next two she caught mid-air. One rebounded into the ceiling, the other buried itself in the chest of the shooter who’d fired it.

She advanced.
No wasted motion. No hesitation. Every strike was a lesson taught by Jakku’s Jedi Temple—and this was her final exam.

The second pirate tried to run. The Force gripped him like a vice. Legs seized. Muscles locked. He dropped hard when her saber swept low, cutting through his thigh with precision leaving only Kalen remaining.

Blaster trembling. Eyes wide.
Too green to fire.
Too afraid to flee.

She stepped forward and leveled the blade at his chest. “Who ordered the execution?” Her voice cut cleaner than her saber.
He stood frozen, mouth open but useless.
The saber hummed louder. Closer. “Who?” she snapped.

“I—I don’t know!” he stammered. “Wasn’t us. Someone higher—I swear it! He was already dead when we got the alert!”

She stared him down and in his eyes, she saw it.
Truth, or enough of it to matter.

The silence of the cell pressed in behind her.
The body wasn’t cooling anymore. It was cold.
Bastila backed away, never turning her back on Kalen.
“Get out of here,” she said, voice like steel. “Before I change my mind.”

He didn’t need convincing and with a blur of boots, he was gone.
The others wouldn’t be getting up, but reinforcements wouldn’t be far behind.
Her eyes returned to the corpse.
A courier silenced. A message lost.
Unless—She froze.

The satchel.

He hadn’t had it when they brought him in. No sign of it here. Which meant it had been seized. Or hidden. Somewhere inside this compound.
Whatever was inside had gotten him killed.
And now, it was her only lead.

Bastila turned.
Her saber still burned in her grip, casting long shadows behind her, but she no longer walked in them.

She moved forward—this time not hidden by the dark.

This time, she rejected it.

She was going to find what he’d died trying to deliver.

​

 

[Bastila Sal-Soren]

The station began to shift the further she went.
Not physically—no tilt or tremor. But the atmosphere changed. It was the kind of quiet that wasn’t quiet at all. Something systemic. Coordinated.

She felt it first in the flickering of the overhead lights. Not a power failure—too deliberate for that. Then came the soft crack of the intercom system sparking to life. Not a voice. Just static. Then just as it had appeared it cut off.
A warning. It was in no doubt, they knew.

She didn’t run. She turned sharply, following the inner ring corridor that bordered the detention level—one hand gripping the still-humming saber, the other brushing the wall for hidden seams.

She remembered the intake officer’s logbook. The mention of confiscated gear. Standard procedure. If the courier had smuggled anything in—data, tech, encrypted drives—it’d be held in Storage Delta. One floor down. Behind a rotating guard shift. Normally easy to bypass. Now? Well it was more complicated.
But not impossible.
She rerouted through a side maintenance tunnel, narrower than the last. The bulkheads here were older—sweating with moisture and wrapped in silent heat. She moved fast. No longer creeping. No longer pretending.

Kira was gone. Bastila Sal-Soren removed that mask and allowed her own to show through.

When she reached Delta Storage, the door was already unlocked. Not open but very clearly unlocked. The first thing that hit her was the silence.
Too silent.
The door hissed open under her hand, and the darkness inside didn’t greet her — it waited. There were no alarms. No damage. No fresh breach.

Bastila stepped inside. Slow. Measured. Her saber still drawn, its violet light sweeping side to side like a predator’s eye.
Rows of lockers. Equipment crates. Personal effects bins stacked three-high. All of it perfectly in place.
Except for the courier’s satchel.

It wasn’t here.

The shelf where it should’ve been was bare. No scuff marks. Not even the faint imprint of weight left behind. Like it had never existed at all.
Her brow furrowed.
No. It had to be here.
She could feel it. That lingering edge of energy, like a scent caught on the air. Something heavy had been taken. Recently. Carefully.

Too carefully.

Her breath shallowed.
Then she heard it. A click.
Not mechanical, but Organic.

Bastila spun just as a boot scraped behind a crate.
She dropped low—one knee to the ground, saber angling up as three figures burst from cover at once.
Pirates. One in matte black armour with a repeater slung across his chest. Another with a shock pike. The third moved quieter—holding twin vibroblades and a look of calm Bastila didn’t like.
"She’s here," the armoured one snarled. "I told you—someone was down here."
They gave no warning, they just aimed at her and charged.

Her saber flared—cutting across the first bolt in mid-air, sending it ricocheting into the ceiling with a snap. She didn’t stop. Couldn’t. The Force surged—tight, precise, surgical.
She moved.
The one with the pike swung wide—reckless. Bastila ducked beneath the arc and drove her saber straight through the haft, severing it in half with a hiss of melting metal. The pirate staggered and found no time to recover as Bastila closed in. cover.

One twist of her wrist, one short slash—non-lethal, precise—sent him crumpling.
The second came from her flank, fast. Too fast for ordinary muscle. The twin blades gleamed—and whirled toward her stomach.
She stepped back, let one blade pass just under her ribs, then slammed the pommel of her saber into his jaw. He reeled.

"Who took it?" she barked, spinning toward the third.

The one in armour raised his blaster again—too slow.
She hurled her saber.
It spun like a wheel of fire—cut through the barrel of his weapon and came flying back into her palm. He scrambled backward, crashing into the lockers.

"Answer me!" The one with the vibroblades hissed—bleeding now, but still on his feet. “We don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She advanced. Saber pointed low, steady. “The satchel. It was here.”

"It wasn’t when we got here," the armoured one spat. "Orders were to watch the room. That’s all. That’s all, I swear!"

She looked at them—and the Force pressed in again, but not with answers.
With absence.
Even these men had been left in the dark.
They were bait.
Bait for what though? Her? She stepped back. Breathing hard.

“Get out of my way,” she said, voice flat as steel.
The three didn’t need convincing, one limped, one ran, one nearly tripped over himself getting to the door.
And Bastila was left again in the quiet, but not the peace that she was hoping for.

This hadn’t been about stopping her, It had been about slowing her.
She turned her saber over slowly in her grip.
The satchel was gone and that meant—Someone was ahead of her, someone else was in this game.

Not chasing.

Waiting.

​

 

[Bastila Sal-Soren]

Delta Storage reeked of rust and freon.

The cold tang of recycled air clung to every surface, damp with condensation and the oily breath of machines left too long unchecked. Fluorescent strips blinked overhead, casting the corridor in a rhythm of stuttering light—white, then dark. White, then dark.

Bastila stood in the shadow of the open container, the lock panel half-melted where someone else had bypassed it with precision. The satchel was gone.

Her breath caught—not in surprise, but calculation. This wasn’t a random theft. Someone knew what was in that case. Someone who’d moved faster than she had.

She knelt by the lock, fingers grazing the edges of the scorched panel. The melting pattern was too clean for pirate tech. No brute-force splice, no mess. Whoever did this knew how to crack security without leaving a trace. And as her eyes narrowed, something else caught her attention—a small data fragment still humming in the access port, missed in the rush.

She pulled it out with a hiss and scanned it.

A spike of recognition chilled her spine.
An obsolete Republic clearance prefix. Buried, half-corrupted—but there.

Her lips pressed into a line. No pirate would have that. And if they did… they didn’t get it on their own.

Behind her: a step.
Then another.
Too synchronized for dockworkers. Too quiet for looters.

She turned slowly, the cloak around her shoulders falling still. Seven figures emerged from the gloom of the corridor—pirates, but not the slovenly kind. These were lean, alert, weapons drawn. Their leader’s grin was all teeth, no warmth.

She said nothing. Didn’t reach for her saber. Didn’t move.

They expected fear. Maybe a plea.

What they got was light.

[...]

(No changes to combat section — continues as above until she escapes)

[...]

She reached an access ladder, climbed. Her gloves slipped once—blood-slick—but she didn’t stop.

The auxiliary hangar was two levels up. Barely patrolled, mostly reserved for impounded cargo haulers and grounded shuttles too worthless to scrap. She bypassed the maintenance lock with a fried security card and a silent prayer.

Inside: shadows, crates, silence. And luck.

A small courier ship. Old Corellian model, all stub wings and personality. Its paneling was scorched from some forgotten skirmish, but the engines hummed with promise in standby mode. Someone had left it prepped for a fast exit.

Perfect.

She climbed aboard, keyed the hatch shut, and limped toward the cockpit. No alarms yet. Maybe the pirates were still chasing ghosts through the lower decks. Maybe not. Either way, she was out of time.

The seat greeted her like a blow to the ribs—too hard, too cold—but she dropped into it and fired up the systems. The ship purred to life, eager to flee. Her fingers danced over the controls, muscle memory overriding exhaustion.

Outside the viewport, warning lights blinked like distant flares—red on steel, a countdown she didn’t wait to finish.

The hangar shields lit up blue as the blast doors parted.

She launched.

Stars flared across the viewport, and the black swallowed her.

Only then did she allow the silence in.

It came heavy. Not peace—never that—but weight. The kind that pressed into her chest, slow and merciless.

The adrenaline was gone. The fight was gone. The satchel was gone.

And something else.

She reached into her jacket and pulled out the fragment she’d salvaged from the lock. It flickered again—faint, dying—but that same Republic tag code blinked once more. Faint, but familiar. From her days training in orbital stations, systems only Republic military infrastructure would recognize.

Someone wanted her to know. Or didn’t care if she found it.

Her grip tightened.

Whoever had beaten her to the case hadn’t just been lucky. They had access. Access tied to the Republic—or someone who could fake it well enough to slip past standard protocols.

Her breath caught.
She pressed a hand to her mouth.
Silent. Just for a second.

Then she blinked it back. Forced it down.

She wasn’t done.

She turned her face to the stars, jaw clenched, knuckles white on the controls.

They thought they’d shaken her.

Let them think it.

Bastila flew into the void—hunted, bleeding, furious—and vanished.

​