STAR WARS.
Episode IV.
---
It is a time of desperation.
The Rebel Alliance has stolen secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the Death Star, a space station with power to destroy entire worlds.
A small Rebel vessel, the Tantive IV, flees across the Outer Rim, hoping to deliver the plans to agents waiting on the desert world of Tatooine.
But the Empire has dispatched more than a warship. Darth Vader himself pursues the rebels aboard his dreaded flagship, the Black Maw, a vessel of fear and annihilation.
Hope rests on the survival of two droids... and one recruit hiding more than he knows.
---
The stars were endless. Cold. Watching.
From the bridge of the Tantive IV, they looked like grains of silver scattered across an ocean of black glass. But no one aboard the ship was looking at stars tonight.
They were listening.
The sensor array crackled again, its hum rising like the low growl of something ancient, and then fell silent.
The crew shifted. Tension moved through them like a ripple in taut wire. The air itself seemed to change.
"No signature," said the comms officer, eyes wide as the scan refreshed. "No beacon. No identification ping."
Captain Antilles leaned forward slowly. He didn't speak. He didn't need to.
Through the forward viewport, space bent.
It didn't flash into view with the roar of hyperspace. No burst of light. No thunder.
Just a shape.
Vast. Silent. Endless.
The Black Maw.
Its hull was matte black, coated in armor that didn't reflect—it consumed. The shape was familiar but twisted, more brutal than a standard Star Destroyer, more like a weapon than a ship. It didn't announce itself. It didn't threaten. It simply existed. And in its presence, everything else felt small.
Antilles drew in a breath through his teeth. "Sound the alert."
The klaxons began to howl.
Below decks, in narrow corridors and echoing hangars, the lights shifted to emergency crimson. Rebel crew members rushed to battle stations, armor half-clipped, voices raised over the intercom.
On the bridge, Leia Organa stood unmoving.
She didn't blink. She didn't flinch.
She had known this would happen.
The officers glanced to her, not out of fear, but reverence. She was only nineteen, but there was something in her voice, her stance, that made older men follow orders without question. She had the presence of someone who already knew how to die well.
But she wasn't ready to do that just yet.
"All hands," she said, her voice sharp and clear as glass. "Prepare for engagement. Prepare the escape pods. Load the droids."
Her tone didn't shake. But as the others obeyed, she hesitated just a moment, just long enough to turn her gaze across the bridge to one man standing silently at the side console.
Kael Renn.
Or at least, that was the name on his files.
She'd been watching him for weeks now. He acted green. Fumbled when expected. Followed orders, said "yes ma'am," kept his head down. Too perfect. Too clean. But once, just once, she'd seen him walking out of the crew showers, towel low on his hips, steam curling over a body that didn't belong to a recruit.
Hard muscle. Not bulky, but dense. Cut like a warrior's, like someone who had spent their life fighting, and winning.
Her knees had gone weak. And when he'd turned to look at her, calm and unbothered, she'd felt something strange clench inside her chest.
Now, as chaos rippled outward, she couldn't stop her eyes from finding him again.
He wasn't panicking. Wasn't even moving.
He just watched her.
And she... liked that he did.
The ship groaned as the klaxons grew louder. The floor shivered. Antilles barked orders, and deck officers rushed to relay them. The bridge descended into controlled chaos.
But Leia stayed still.
She stepped forward, up onto the central platform where her voice would carry.
"This is Leia Organa," she said. "To all decks."
The chaos quieted, just slightly.
She took a breath.
"You all know what we carry. You know what the Empire is chasing. You know what happens if we fall."
She let the silence hang.
"They don't want to kill us. Not yet. They want to break us. To show the galaxy that the last spark of resistance has gone out."
Her hands curled slightly at her sides.
"But they're wrong. We are the last flame. And if we burn tonight, then we burn bright enough for the stars to see."
She stepped back.
There was no cheering. No applause.
Only silence.
The silence of those who had already decided to die with purpose.
And as the bridge crew returned to their stations, Leia looked once more at Kael.
He hadn't moved.
But this time, when their eyes met, she felt heat rise in her throat.
Because she didn't just want him to live.
She needed him to.
And maybe, just maybe, if anyone could make it across the sands of Tatooine, if anyone could disappear into the dust and emerge on the other side with hope still burning in his hands, it was him.
But as Leia looked at him, the stars then suddenly disappeared. Not from the viewport, but from the crew's eyes. As the Black Maw loomed larger, it seemed to erase light itself. There was no warning shot. No demand for surrender. Just a single moment where the stars vanished behind its hull, and everyone aboard the Tantive IV realized something deep and primal.
They weren't facing a warship.
They were facing a funeral pyre.
The impact came a breath later.
The first torpedo didn't explode on contact. It drilled, a high-pitched screech as molten plasma bored into the main engine coil. The blast came a second later, a pulse that rocked the ship like a hammer blow.
Kael staggered backward against the console, arms shielding his face as sparks rained from the overhead panels. Screams echoed through the comms.
"We've lost main propulsion!" "Hull breach on Deck Six, repeat, Deck Six is venting!" "Multiple casualties, fires in the lower maintenance bay!"
Leia braced herself against the rail as another torpedo struck. The lights flickered. A low, rumbling groan came from deep in the ship's belly, the kind of sound metal makes right before it gives out.
Somewhere below, part of the lower hull peeled open like fruit.
She didn't flinch.
"Seal off the lower decks," she said, calm despite the chaos. "Pull all units back to choke points. Prioritize corridor defense."
Antilles, blood trickling from his temple, snapped a salute.
"Yes, Princess."
The ship was already dying.
But it wouldn't die quietly.
Kael dropped into a full sprint as the corridors tilted beneath him. His helmet lay discarded, he didn't need it. His pulse was steady. His breathing even.
He passed fire crews dragging hoses toward the burning east wing. Saw medics covering corpses with tarps made from rebel flags. A young girl, maybe seventeen, handed him a fresh blaster and nodded silently before taking up position behind a barricade.
Everyone knew this was the end.
But they weren't retreating.
They were digging in.
He turned a corner and slammed through the final bulkhead before the pod bay. Two security officers were already there, priming the launch chamber. R2 was hooked into the nav rig. C-3PO was babbling something about escape trajectories.
Leia was waiting.
She turned the moment Kael entered.
Their eyes locked.
He didn't slow.
"You summoned me?"
"I did."
She stepped forward and handed him the data drive.
"The plans are on here. Encrypted, triple-layered. You'll take R2. He's already mapped a path across the surface. The rendezvous is still live, Mos Eisley, docking bay ninety-four. You find Solo. You survive. And you deliver that message."
Kael took the drive without a word.
But his hand brushed hers.
And Leia didn't pull away.
For a moment, just a breath, everything stopped.
Screams, alarms, smoke, fire, it all fell silent.
"Why me?" he asked.
Her voice trembled now. Not from fear.
From something deeper.
"Because I've watched you, Kael. I've seen how you move. How you fight when no one is watching. I know you're not who you say you are. But I don't care. You're the only one I trust to get them there."
He looked away, jaw tense.
"I'm not,"
She stepped closer. Pressed a hand against his chest, palm against the bare, scorched skin beneath his armor strap.
"You are," she whispered. "You might be the only one who can still make it across that desert."
He swallowed. His breath hitched.
Then she kissed him.
It wasn't long. It wasn't shy.
It was fire meeting fire.
She pulled back just slightly.
"That's for luck, handsome."
He stared at her, eyes wide, armor forgotten, throat burning.
Then she stepped away.
"Now go."
Outside, the first drop pods hit.
Like spears from the sky.
They tore into the Tantive IV's outer hull with precision cuts, plasma saws igniting along the seams. One by one, black-armored elite stormtroopers began pouring out, not stumbling, not rushing. Advancing.
Kael turned to the droids.
"Time to run."
R2 rolled into the pod. C-3PO followed, muttering something about regretting every decision that had brought him to this moment.
Kael looked back once.
Leia stood at the far end of the hall, blaster in hand, hair half-fallen from its royal braid. The smoke wrapped around her. The alarms blared louder.
And still she stood.
He closed the hatch.
The pod launched into the night.
The last flame left the ship.
And behind it, hell descended.