The thing about peace at the Praxeum is that it always feels slightly suspicious.

  The jungle hums, the students laugh, Tionne’s music drifts through the halls, and some quiet part of you starts looking around for the price tag.

  A week after we’d started scratching Tari-Ashla into the stone of the training yard, things felt almost… good. My muscles hurt in that honest way that comes from doing hard work well. The echoes in my bones had gone from gnawing to nudging. Even my dreams had stopped trying to drown me.

  The day started with Kam calling my name in the middle of morning drills.

  “Kae’rin!”

  I broke off mid-sequence, my saber humming down to rest position. The younger initiates around me sagged in relief. Kam’s classes had that effect on people. He could make you feel proud of one good parry and vaguely ashamed of how you were breathing at the same time.

  “Yes, Master?” I said, trying not to pant.

  He jerked his chin toward the temple entrance. “With me. Bring your sense of responsibility.”

  Meral whispered, “That means trouble,” as I passed her.

  Toran, two lines over, mouthed, “If you die, can I have your datapad?”

  “Absolutely not,” I said, and followed Kam out.

  ? ? ?

  Tionne and Kam were waiting in one of the smaller briefing rooms near the comm center. The room smelled faintly of old paper and jungle dust. A holographic map hovered in the air between them, depicting the southern hemisphere of Yavin IV. I recognized the large, vaguely triangular shape of the Great Temple… and, further south, near the river, the marker for Wetyin’s Colony.

  My attention snagged there.

  Wetyin’s Colony meant people. A town. Noise. Food that didn’t come out of temple kitchens. I tried not to sound hopeful as I stepped closer.

  “You wanted me?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Tionne said. Her voice always sounded like it had just finished singing, even when she was only saying my name. “We have a small logistics problem.”

  “By ‘small,’ she means ‘annoying,’” Kam added.

  The map zoomed in on Wetyin’s Colony. Little icons popped up—warehouses, the starport, the council hall, the riverside docks.

  “The colony’s harvest festival is next week,” Tionne said. “They’ve promised us preserved food, medicinal herbs, and replacement tools in exchange for some of our spare power converters, agro-droids, and a crate of datapads.”

  Kam tapped a datapad in his hand. “The problem is, most of the instructors who’d usually handle the pickup are either offworld or already overworked. So we need someone responsible to take a cargo hoversled down, supervise the loading, bring everything back.”

  I nodded slowly. “All right. When do we leave?”

  “We,” Kam repeated, with a faint smile. “I like that. You, and two others.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “The two loudest people in the training yard.”

  “Toran and Meral,” Tionne said gently.

  I stared up at the ceiling. “Of course.”

  “Toran can handle machinery, and Meral knows half the town council by their first names.” Kam shrugged. “And we trust you to keep them from accidentally starting a small war.”

  “I can’t make promises about the war,” I muttered. “But I’ll try.”

  “There’s one more thing,” Tionne added.

  I braced. “Yes?”

  “They’re in the middle of their harvest festival,” she said. “You’ll have three days. You’re allowed to enjoy them.”

  That stopped me. “Wait. You mean… actually… off-duty? At a festival?”

  Kam gave me a long-suffering look. “Try not to sound so suspicious. It’s leave, Solen. Limited, somewhat supervised, and contingent on you bringing the hoversled back in one piece. But leave.”

  “I—” I cleared my throat. “Understood.”

  “Good.” He thumbed the datapad off. “You leave in two hours. Go drag your partners in crime out of whatever trouble they’re in and tell them to pack light. Training sabers only. No blasters. No ‘souvenirs’ from the armoury.”

  I eyed him. “You’re saying that like it’s happened before.”

  “It has,” Kam said. “Multiple times. Get moving.”

  ? ? ?

  Two hours later, the sun had climbed high enough to turn the temple stones into a slow bake oven, and we were standing beside a battered cargo hoversled near the southern gate.

  The hoversled looked like it had opinions about this trip. The repulsor housings whined, the control yoke had clearly been repaired three times by three different people with three different philosophies, and someone had painted a faded nerf on the side with a speech bubble that said, It’ll buff out.

  Toran ran a hand lovingly along the edge of the sled. “She’s beautiful.”

  “She’s a crate with an ego problem,” Meral said, tossing her pack into the back.

  I strapped my own bundle down beside hers. “Tionne said the town has food stalls?”

  Meral grinned. “Food, music, dancing, ridiculous contests, questionable fashion choices. It’s a proper festival. The stewards go all-out.”

  Toran hopped into the driver’s seat, flicking switches with more confidence than the sled deserved. “Which means we have to get there alive if we want to see any of it. Everyone hold onto something.”

  “I swear,” I said, climbing up to the front bench, “if you tip us over—”

  He shoved the throttle forward.

  The hoversled lurched, coughed, and then glided off the stone ramp like it had been doing this its entire life. The junglescape opened before us—towering trees, thick tangles of vine, shafts of sunlight cutting through the canopy like spears.

  Meral stood near the back, one hand on a support rail, hair pulled up into a messy knot, face tilted into the wind. “This is so much better than running laps.”

  “It’s only better if we make it there in one piece,” I said.

  Toran whooped as the sled skimmed over a root cluster. “Relax. I’ve driven worse.”

  “Name three,” I said.

  “A half-dead landspeeder, a construction platform, and Kyle’s mood after someone misplaces his lightsaber,” he said.

  “That’s not—”

  “Look!” Meral interrupted, pointing.

  Through a gap in the trees, the Massassi Ruins stretched out — mute stone bones of an older age, half-swallowed by the jungle. The path we followed wound past fallen pillars and broken arches, then descended toward the river valley where Wetyin’s Colony sat.

  As we rode, the air thickened with humidity and scents — wet earth, flowering plants, something sweet frying in oil from far away. Despite myself, I felt the knot in my chest loosen by a fraction. Maybe, just maybe, this would be simple.

  The Force, somewhere deep under the noise of hover engines and festival anticipation, hummed in a slow, watchful chord.

  ? ? ?

  You could hear Wetyin’s Colony before you saw it.

  Drums. Laughter. The mechanical whine of machinery. Voices layered over one another in Basic, in accented Huttese, in at least three languages I didn’t recognize.

  Then the jungle broke.

  The town sprawled along the riverbank, a patchwork of stone and prefabricated buildings, wooden walkways and repurposed Rebel-era structures. Multi-colored banners hung between rooftops. Strings of glow-lanterns crisscrossed the main street, unlit in the afternoon but ready for night.

  Booths lined the central square — some with skewers of meat sizzling over open flames, others with woven cloth, carved wooden figures, crates of fruit in improbable shapes and colors. A group of Rodian children chased each other around a fountain, shrieking with laughter.

  Toran whistled low. “Okay, that’s… actually impressive.”

  “Wetyin’s Colony doesn’t do things halfway,” Meral said, smug. “Told you.”

  We brought the hoversled to a stop near a warehouse whose walls were patched with three generations of repairs. The Zabrak quartermaster we’d briefly met during the council visits, Rhi Vask, was there to meet us — broad-shouldered, one horn chipped, a faint scar running down one cheek.

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  She wore a festival sash over a battered old Rebel jacket. Somehow, it worked.

  “You must be our pack animals,” she said by way of greeting.

  Meral grinned and stepped forward. “Good to see you too, Rhi.”

  Rhi’s severe expression cracked into a rare smile. “Meral. You’ve grown. Taller. Louder.”

  “I’ve been practicing,” Meral said. “These are my friends, Kae’rin and Toran.”

  Rhi eyed us both, cataloging, weighing, filing away. Former Rebel soldiers all had that look in common.

  “Jedi trainees,” she said. “Kam mentioned you’d be armed with glow-sticks and good intentions.”

  “Training sabers,” I said, trying not to sound defensive.

  “Glow-sticks,” Toran muttered.

  Rhi snorted. “Either way, you’re welcome. Park your sled inside. We’ll load it up over the next couple days.”

  “Days,” Toran repeated. “Plural. As in…”

  Rhi rolled her eyes. “You’re cleared to stay for the festival. Don’t break anything you can’t fix.” She narrowed her gaze at him. “Especially not my generators.”

  “No promises,” he said, then flinched as Meral elbowed him. “I mean — yes ma’am. Responsible. That’s me.”

  Rhi shook her head and walked away, shouting orders to a couple of dockhands lugging crates.

  The warehouse swallowed the sled with a hollow echo as we guided it inside. Rows of storage containers lined the walls, marked with stenciled labels, color codes, the sort of organized chaos that kept a town alive.

  “So,” Meral said, once we’d locked the sled down. “We’ve done our duty. We’ve arrived. We parked. We didn’t crash. That means…”

  “Food,” Toran finished.

  “Exploration,” I amended.

  “Exploratory food,” he said. “Compromise.”

  ? ? ?

  Before we were allowed to disappear into festival chaos, Rhi dragged us to the council house — a slightly grander building flanked by potted trees and the flags of a dozen worlds that had settlers here.

  Inside, the air was cooler, stirred by old fans mounted under the ceiling. A circular table sat in the center, surrounded by a half-dozen chairs, only three of which were occupied.

  “Welcome back, Meral,” said a Devaronian with a missing left horn. He rose stiffly and bowed. “And welcome, Jedi.”

  Meral bowed back. “Steward Brann. Steward Kel.” She nodded to the others — a human woman with gray-streaked hair and sharp eyes, and a Togruta man whose lekku were wrapped in patterned cloth.

  “This is —,”

  “Kae’rin Solen and Toran Vennar,” came a voice from the door. I turned to come face to face with one of the few people in the town I actually knew.

  “Steward Haron!” The polite mask on my face melted into a genuine smile.

  “I’m glad it’s you the Order sent — I owe you much, personally. And so does the town, possibly — we don’t know yet the actual value of the ore my Varlo discovered.”

  “So these are the brave but reckless young Jedi who found Varlo?” The Togruta tilted his head, apparently revising his opinion of us.

  “This time we’re here just for supplies. And the festival.” Meral laughed. “Get cargo and… not get into trouble.”

  “I resent that last part,” Toran said under his breath.

  Steward Kel —the human— smiled faintly. “We appreciate the Praxeum’s help. It’s good to see young faces.” Her gaze lingered on me. “When I was your age, the Empire was still sending Inspectors to ‘check compliance.’” The word tasted sour when she said it.

  I thought of my father’s bloodied knuckles the day the Empire fell. “I remember,” I said softly.

  Brann clasped his hands. “We won’t keep you long. You have three days. Enjoy the festival. The loading schedule is already planned, we’ll send workers to the warehouse. Your primary duty is to ensure the cargo makes it back to the Praxeum intact.”

  “We can do that,” I said.

  Kel’s eyes twinkled. “And if anything goes wrong during the festival, it never hurts to have some Jedi-trained talent on hand.”

  “We’re not Jedi yet,” Toran said.

  “Just trainees,” Meral added.

  “On Yavin,” Kel said, “that’s close enough.”

  We left the council house with our heads full of permission and our stomachs empty.

  Time to fix that.

  ? ? ?

  By late afternoon, the main square had transformed into something that felt halfway between a market and a battlefield of smells. Skewers sizzled over open fires, vendors shouted in three languages at once, children wove through the crowd with sticky fingers and loud opinions.

  Music pulsed from a raised platform where a Twi’lek, a human, and a Bith were arguing over tempo with their instruments. Strings of lanterns hung overhead, not yet lit but already swaying gently in the thick air.

  We tried to be dignified about it. Really.

  That lasted about thirty seconds.

  “Oh stars,” Meral breathed, spotting a stall with deep-fried something. “I haven’t had festival fritters in years.”

  Toran pointed at a different booth. “And that’s grilled rycrit. And those are sugared spiced nuts. And that—”

  “I can’t eat all of it,” I said.

  “You say that,” he replied, “but that’s quitter talk.”

  We ended up with a little of everything — fritters, grilled skewers, some sort of spiced root vegetable that stained my fingers orange. We ate standing at the edge of the square, watching the chaos.

  A group of teenagers had turned a side alley into an impromptu dance floor. A Rodian boy jumped up onto a barrel and announced the start of a “Friendly Skills Challenge.” Prizes, he claimed, included honor, respect, and possibly pie.

  “You should join,” Meral told me.

  “I’d rather fight another pack of howlers,” I said.

  “Toran?” she asked.

  He puffed out his chest. “Watch and learn.”

  We watched him trip over the first balance beam, fail spectacularly at a throwing contest, and somehow win a pie-eating race by sheer stubbornness.

  He stumbled back to us later, cheeks smeared with berry filling.

  “I regret everything,” he said. “But also nothing.”

  “Very inspiring,” I said.

  The sun slid lower, turning the sky into a smear of pink behind the treeline. Glow-lanterns flickered to life overhead, casting the square in soft colors. Somebody started a slow song; couples with years of history in their shoulders and hands stepped onto the dance floor.

  I disappeared into shadows before Toran could get any ideas.

  But I felt the heat in my cheeks at the thought.

  ? ? ?

  We found Rhi later at a table near the river, sharing a bottle of something sharp-smelling with a handful of older veterans. She waved us over, poured us each a watered-down splash.

  “To surviving another year,” she said. “And to festivals that don’t get crashed by uninvited Imperials.”

  The others laughed, a little too sharply. I felt my shoulders tense.

  “Has that happened before?” I asked.

  “Not here,” Rhi said. “Not yet.”

  She took a sip, grimaced. “But we hear things. Always.”

  “What kind of things?” Meral asked.

  One of the veterans, an older human with a cybernetic eye, sniffed. “Strange movements near Kathol. Rumors of Imperial holdouts consolidating under new leadership. Someone said they saw four Star Destroyers rendezvous in the same sector.”

  “Could be anything,” Rhi said. “Could be nothing. But a lot of our people lived through the first war. Hard habit to shake, looking over your shoulder.”

  ? ? ?

  The second night of the festival was quieter for us because we were already tired and because Toran had nearly gotten into an arm-wrestling match with a Trandoshan, which Meral shut down with a single look.

  “We have to go back to the Praxeum in two days,” she reminded him. “You’re not doing it with broken arms.”

  “But think of the story,” he protested.

  “Think of the lecture,” I countered.

  He conceded that point.

  We spent most of the evening listening to a local band play old Rebellion marching songs turned strangely sentimental by distance and safety. Kids fell asleep on their parents’ laps. Lanterns swung in a soft wind. Somewhere, someone set off a small, illegal firework that fizzled more than exploded, causing more laughter than awe.

  It felt… good.

  So of course, it couldn’t last.

  ? ? ?

  The first real sign that things were about to go wrong came before dawn on the third day.

  I woke to the distant crackle of raised voices and the sharp, insect-buzz whine of overtaxed comm equipment. The hostel guest room we’d been given was small but comfortable—bunk beds, a narrow dresser, a viewport that looked out over the river.

  Meral was already awake on the bunk below, blinking blearily.

  “You hear that?” she murmured.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  We pulled on boots and stepped outside. The morning air was heavy and gray, clouds hanging low over the town. In the direction of the starport, I heard the staccato bark of someone swearing creatively into a headset.

  We followed the noise.

  The comm tower near the port was a repurposed Imperial transceiver, now patched with mismatched parts and colorful tarps. A small crowd had gathered at its base — Rhi, the stewards, a few pilots, a couple of worried-looking farmers.

  A thin human woman in a faded orange flight suit clung to the base of the tower, shouting up at the man leaning out of the access hatch.

  “Try cycling the receiver again! No, the other one! The big one!”

  “I did!” came the reply. “It’s not us, something’s jamming us!”

  The word jamming landed like a stone in my stomach.

  “Rhi?” I said.

  She turned, eyes tight. “We’re picking up something big on the edge of system. Could be a convoy, could be a fleet. Whatever it is, it’s scrambling long-range comms.”

  “Can you get through to the Praxeum?” I asked.

  “Short-range, maybe,” she said. “If they’re listening. But we can’t punch out-system.”

  The Force pressed against my ribs — not in sharp alarm, but in a slow, gathering pressure.

  “Do you know who it is?” Meral asked.

  Rhi hesitated. “Too far to get IDs. But it’s organized. Big. And they’re not answering hails.”

  That told me more than I wanted to know.

  The woman in the flight suit, slid down the ladder, wiping sweat from her brow. “We can’t assume trouble yet,” she said, sounding like someone who very much assumed trouble. “It could be New Republic. It could be cargo haulers.”

  “New Republic doesn’t jam civilian comms on approach,” Rhi said.

  “Not on purpose,” the woman conceded.

  The crowd muttered. Fear, old and well-practiced, stirred under the surface of the town’s normal calm.

  I closed my eyes for a moment, reached out.

  For an instant, I felt it. Metal, mass, weapon power, aligned in the cold, precise geometry of a battle group. And under it, like a distant echo of a scream, a faint vision of a man straining to push back the sky.

  I opened my eyes quickly.

  “Toran,” I said. “Where is he?”

  “Hostel roof,” Meral said. “Trying to get a better look. Come on.”

  ? ? ?

  We found him on top of the hostel, standing on a water tank, squinting up through a pair of macrobinoculars he’d borrowed from someone.

  “I don’t like that,” he said, without preamble.

  “What?” I asked.

  He handed me the macrobinoculars.

  At first, I saw only clouds.

  Then the clouds shifted.

  High up, streaking across the upper atmosphere, were faint, dark shapes — too distant to see clearly, but recognizable in outline if you’d grown up on holos of Imperial might. Star Destroyers.

  My throat went dry.

  “Maybe they’re just passing through,” Meral said.

  As if in answer, the air around us filled with a new sound—low at first, then sharper, closer. The shriek of engines knifing through the sky.

  I lowered the macrobinoculars and looked east.

  TIE Fighters.

  Dozens of them, breaking from the clouds in tight formations, black butterflies catching the light. They screamed overhead, banking toward the jungle northward—toward the Great Temple.

  A heartbeat later, the town alarms began to blare.

  A klaxon wailed through Wetyin’s Colony, loud enough to rattle windowpanes and bones alike. People spilled into the streets, half-dressed, half-awake, fully terrified.

  Rhi’s voice came over the local loudspeakers. “All noncombatants to shelters! All defense volunteers report to muster points! This is not a drill!”

  Another flight of TIEs roared overhead, lower this time. One peeled off from the formation and strafed the edge of the jungle just beyond the town, laser fire lancing into trees and sending a flock of winged creatures screaming into the air.

  An explosion rolled through the distant canopy like a thunderclap.

  I grabbed the railing hard enough that it bit into my palm.

  “They’re not just going for the Praxeum,” I said. “They’re coming here.”

  “Of course they are,” Toran said, voice tight. “Big, obvious settlement, former Rebel world, Jedi Praxeum up the road…”

  Meral swallowed. “We should get to the militia. Help coordinate.”

  I reached down and unclipped my training saber. The metal felt too light. Too small.

  But it was what I had.

  “Let’s move,” I said.

  We ran for the stairs as another TIE screamed low over the town, its green bolts stitching a line of fire across the far warehouses.

  Festival banners snapped in the shockwave, torn free and flung into the smoke.

  Three days’ leave, I thought.

  The universe had a terrible sense of humor.

  And somewhere, far to the north, under the bones of the Great Temple, the Force shuddered as the fleet in the sky opened fire.