STAR WARS.
Episode IV.
THE LAST FLAME.
> It is a time of desperation.
The Rebel Alliance has stolen secret plans to the DEATH STAR, the Empire's ultimate weapon—a battle station capable of vaporizing entire planets.
> Pursued by DARTH VADER's personal flagship, the rebel starship TANTIVE IV races toward the desert world of TATOOINE, where a smuggler waits in the shadows.
> But fuel is low. The Empire is closing in.
Onboard the fleeing ship is a young recruit hiding his name, his power, and a destiny even he does not understand...
---
The bridge of the Tantive IV was quiet—not calm, not steady, but the kind of brittle silence that settles when a storm is visible on the horizon but hasn't yet touched the ground.
Leia Organa stood at the command console, eyes fixed on the data feed scrolling across the main terminal. Her expression didn't shift, but the flicker of numbers reflected in her irises gave away the truth. It was getting closer.
A shape on long-range sensors—massive, heatless, silent. Too fast. Too steady.
The comms officer's voice cut through the tension, small and dry.
> "No signature. No transponder. No visible ID codes."
Captain Antilles stepped forward, grim-faced.
> "It's him."
Leia didn't respond. She didn't have to.
Outside the viewport, space bent—just slightly, just enough to suggest the arrival of something impossible. A black wedge began to eclipse the stars.
The ship was coming without noise. No trumpets. No broadcast demands.
Just presence.
The Black Maw. Vader's flagship. A vessel rumored to be older than the Rebellion itself—reforged, silent, and haunted by a shadow that breathed.
Leia felt her stomach twist, but not from fear.
From calculation.
They wouldn't outrun it. Not with the amount of fuel they had left after weeks of running. Not without backup, so they'd do the only thing left to do. They would make it all mean something.
She looked down at the surface scan of Tatooine. Mos Eisley shimmered on the far side of the planet. Their contact—Han Solo, a smuggler with a fast ship and no loyalties—was docked there. He'd agreed to the deal, money already paid, arrangements made.
But Leia hadn't told the crew he was just a hired gun.
She couldn't afford to.
Because now they would die for this mission. And she couldn't let them die thinking hope was already running.
And now the bridge stood too quiet, but it wasn't peace. It was the stillness before a detonation. The kind of stillness where every breath feels too loud, every heartbeat too slow.
She, Leia Organa stood on the upper platform, the soft glow of the tactical display casting gold across her white uniform. Behind her, the crew watched the void outside change shape as something massive closed in.
She could feel them losing hope.
She couldn't allow it.
A low vibration ran through the floor plating. It wasn't impact yet—just pressure. The gravity of something terrible drawing near.
Then Captain Antilles turned to her, and asked. "Orders, Princess?"
And so she stepped forward, and said.
"I'll speak."
He nodded once and gave her the floor.
Leia lifted her chin. Her hands were clasped behind her back. Her heart was hammering in her chest—but her voice, when it came, was steel, and honest as she said.
> "This ship will fall."
For a moment she paused, and listened to the silence, and then she continued.
> "The Empire does not want to destroy us. They want to destroy what we mean."
She stood straighter now, as she spoke, her eyes sweeping over the men and women. Most of them had served with her ever since she was but a girl. But now they looked tired and bloodied. While some of the newer once on the other hand seemed quite young, too young, barely her own age, and they were scared. She could see it in their eyes, well all except one. She wasn't sure why, but she always seemed to have a hard time looking away from his handsome face, but she quickly collected her thoughts nonetheless and continued her speech.
> "They want to make it look easy. They want to remind the galaxy that resistance is a whisper they can snuff out whenever they please."
> "But I will tell you this..."
Her voice rose.
> "What we do today will not be forgotten. Even if no one lives to speak of it. Because they cannot erase what we become when we stand together."
She paused—deliberately.
Then her voice sharpened, cutting through the smoke and the fear like a blade.
> "We are the last flame. And if we burn—then we burn so bright that the stars will remember us."
The crew didn't cheer.
They didn't need to.
They believed.
Then as she looked over them again and prepared to move, she once more caught the sight of him.
Kael, that was his name.
He was standing near the side console, half in shadow.
Still as stone. Still pretending to be nothing. Still hiding.
But she'd seen him. Really seen him.
He wasn't just strong. He was wrong—wrong in the way nature gets wrong when it makes something too perfect. Wrong in the way that says he wasn't born to survive. He was born to overcome.
She remembered the way his arms had looked slick with steam after training, the scars across his chest, the shape of his shoulders. The way her stomach had flipped the first time she saw him half-naked in the locker corridor.
And now?
Now she needed him.
Not just because he was handsome, strong and tall, and felt extremely reliable to her, but because he might be the only person on this ship who could walk through fire and sand and still reach the other side of the planet where that smuggler waited
And then for a moment their eyes met, she saw him, and he saw her. Her breath caught, but like always she quickly composed herself and didn't let anyone see it.
She merely turned her gaze away from him and continued her speech by saying.
> "We hold this ship, we hold the line. We buy time—not for ourselves, but for something greater."
She turned away, walking back to the terminal. Her hands trembled as she keyed in the security code for the final escape protocol.
> Private Channel: K-Alpha.
> "Kael. Move to Pod Bay Three. And come alone."
She didn't dare to look back at him, or say it in person. She didn't want to admit it, but she was shy.
But luckily no-one questioned her, and she could already feel him move.
And then the moment the transmission cut, and she felt him move, the stars suddenly seemed to disappear.
One blink ago, they had been there—scattered like dust across the viewport, beautiful and distant. Now, they were gone, smothered by a shape that slid silently out of hyperspace like a leviathan breaking through a still ocean.
The bridge crew didn't speak.
No one had to.
The readings were visible across every terminal: mass displacement, gravity bleed, unscannable heat signature.
And a name burned itself onto the tactical array.
The Black Maw.
Vader's flagship.
A starship so massive it was said to crush moons with its gravity well alone. No registry. No lights. No paint. It looked like it had been carved from a black hole.
The moment it finished its descent, the Tantive IV shook.
Not from impact, but merely from the massive ships presence. It was like the entire ship was holding its breath.
Kael also stood still now in the corridor, he was just outside the door. He couldn't believe his eyes, it was the first time he had ever seen such a ship.
He had heard her speech. Every word. And for a moment it had felt encouraging, but now seeing it, the Black Maw just outside the viewport he froze.
It didn't seem like some regular ship arriving, it felt more like it had come to consume. It blotted out the stars like a lid closing over a flame.
And then came the real sound, the scream.
A low, splitting shriek that rolled through the walls, up through the floor, into the teeth of every rebel aboard.
Torpedoes.
Four of them—long, spear-like drills made for ship breach rather than destruction. They shot from the belly of the Black Maw, glowing with interior heat, spiraling toward the engines of the Tantive IV with absolute silence.
They didn't flash when they hit.
They cut.
The first drilled through Engine Coil 1A. The scream of tearing steel erupted across half the ship. The second detonated a secondary reactor casing. Fuel lines ruptured. A fireball ripped through the lower maintenance deck.
Dozens were incinerated instantly.
A shockwave kicked through the air. Kael grabbed a brace bar and held tight as the corridor tilted thirty degrees and smoke surged through the overhead vents.
On the bridge, Captain Antilles staggered into a railing. The floor cracked. Sparks showered the consoles.
Leia didn't move.
Her fingers tightened on the edge of her terminal.
"Damage?" she said, steady.
"Main engines gone. Reactor two offline. Seventeen compartments decompressed. We're venting air in the rear quadrants—"
"Cut those doors. Reroute power to shields. Prep escape pod locks."
But then the Captain bitterly said.
"I'm sorry Princess, but it's over. Will never make it to the randevu point."
Leia's eye twitched as she turned toward him, and with defiance said.
"No. Not yet, not when we still breathe."
And then somewhere below, in the heart of the ship, a wall exploded inward. And the first Hellfinger drop pod slammed through.
For Kale it's coming began with a whine, not loud, not sharp. Just a rising tone, subtle as air pressure shifting. Then came the tremor—so soft it might have been missed. The kind of vibration that lived in the bones, not the ears.
Kael felt it before he heard it.
He had just reached the auxiliary lift outside pod bay three when the first Vorn-class drop pod slammed into the hull two decks above.
The Tantive IV shrieked.
Steel groaned like a dying animal. The corridor lights blew in bursts, sparks raining from the ceiling as the hull warped around the pressure. A pipe overhead burst, showering the deck in scalding steam.
Kael didn't flinch.
More impacts followed.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom-boom.
Each one landed like a blade.
Through the floor grating beneath his boots, he could feel it—the cutting rings activating. Plasma-edge drills, rotating at orbital velocity, slicing through the Tantive IV's hull like scalpels.
Then came the breach.
It started with a scream—not human, but mechanical. A high-pitched shriek of sheared metal and howling atmosphere, as the hull gave way under the spinning fangs of a plasma-cutter ring. The first Vorn-class pod split open like a steel blossom, the heat rolling off it in waves.
And from inside, they poured.
Not the usual stormtroopers in white plastoid, clumsy and overconfident. These were the black-armored specialists—an execution force clad in void-colored composite plating, matte-finished, their visors like opaque death masks.
Riot troopers came first—two abreast, shields raised, black boots thundering across the scorched deck. Behind them, a suppressor knelt low, already laying down cover fire in cold, controlled bursts. And then came the flamer—massive, hunched under the weight of a dual-rigged promethium tank, the nozzle of his weapon already glowing with caged fire.
None of them shouted.
They didn't speak. Didn't hesitate.
They moved like a single organism, like pieces of a war machine too old to question its purpose. And behind that first wave, came the second. Then the third.
They would not stop.
They had not come to capture.
They had come to cleanse.
The corridors of the Tantive IV became slaughterhouses.
Rebel soldiers scrambled to fortify choke points, dragging crates into firing lines, welding steel plating into last-minute barricades that wouldn't hold. Engineers turned fuel lines into makeshift traps. Medics dragged the wounded behind cover, pressing bloody hands to torn arteries while doors hissed shut between screams.
Smoke belched from blown-out ducts. The lights stuttered and died.
But the defenders did not break.
They fought in the dark. In the fire.
For the princess.
For the cause.
For each other.
Bolts screamed through the air—red and blue streaks of desperate resistance. Flamers responded with long, searing streams of liquid fire, igniting panels, walls, bodies. A purge trooper—massive, almost inhuman—hurled a live grenade into a medbay window, turning white walls into a canvas of blood and soot.
Another rebel, barely eighteen, uniform still too clean—leapt from a ruined ceiling vent and slammed a vibroknife through the side vent of a flamer's mask. The blade hit flesh.
The flamer stumbled.
Then turned.
And with a hiss, lit the corridor alive.
The boy didn't scream.
He just burned.
And still, others picked up his fallen rifle.
They would die here.
But not quietly.
Not without purpose.
Not while Leia Organa still breathed.
Kael on the other hand was moving through the chaos like wind made flesh.
He didn't rush. Didn't blink.
He flowed—like a machine too old to hesitate and too human to stop. Where others ducked and scrambled, he walked with silent precision. He'd trained for ambushes, but this wasn't training. This was something else. Something deeper.
A squad of three stormtroopers burst from a side hatch, rifles raised with practiced aggression.
Too slow.
Kael dropped low, rolling under the first bolt before the trigger was fully pulled. His hand struck the lead trooper's knee—not a blow, a surgical fracture. Armor cracked. Bone folded. The man collapsed mid-scream.
Kael rose into the second, his forearm blasting into the stormtrooper's chin with enough force to lift the man off the ground. Before he landed, Kael had already drawn his sidearm.
Two quick shots. One to the chest. One to the neck joint.
Clean. Cold. Efficient.
The third stormtrooper moved to flank—wrong angle, wrong timing.
Kael didn't even look.
He turned his torso with the movement and drove an elbow backward into the trooper's throat. The voice modulator burst. The man's spine whiplashed against the wall.
He slumped. Twitched. Didn't get up.
Kael stepped over him like smoke.
He didn't shout orders. Didn't flinch at the heat from the hallway fire. Didn't stop to check the screaming behind him.
He just moved.
His body wasn't responding to thought—it was remembering. Every step, every strike, every pivot—it was like the ship itself had trained him. Like the stormtroopers were in slow motion and his bones had learned the future.
Someone saw him—an officer, pinned behind a bulkhead, her uniform burned at the sleeve and a gash bleeding down her temple. She watched him take down all three men in five seconds.
Her lips moved, cracked with shock.
> "Who the hell is that?"
Another rebel, younger, wild-eyed and half-sobbing, peeked out from behind a stack of coolant tanks. His rifle trembled in his hands.
> "No one. That's just Kael. He's… a recruit, right?"
But his voice was hollow. Even he didn't believe it.
Because no recruit moved like that.
No recruit belonged in a war like this.
Kael pivoted down the next corridor without looking back, cloak trailing, boots silent against the fractured floor.
There was fire at his sides. There was death behind him.
And yet the way he moved—like the war had to catch up to him—felt more like prophecy than action.
In that moment, the battlefield didn't own him. It answered to him, and then he saw it. Far across the long corridor, another breach burst open. A flamer stepped through and let loose a full sweep of burning plasma into a squad of stunned rebels. And in less than a second they all were turned to ash.
Seeing this Kael didn't hesitate, he sprinted toward the flamer, his boots hammering the deck.
To his side a cowering rebel man tried to stop him by shouting. "Don't do it, he's got a heavy pack, it'll—"
But Kael wouldn't stop, not even as the flamer turned toward him and let loose another wave of flames. Instead he slid low beneath the fire, rolled behind a metallic crate, kicked off the ground, and vaulted up into a narrow vent ledge. The flamer turned to track him, but too late.
Kael dropped—blade drawn.
He landed on the flamer's back, drove the vibroknife into the gap between armor plates, and twisted.
The trooper screamed once, and the fire stopped.
Kael stood over the corpse, breath slow.
His skin was singed. His blade was blackened.
And somewhere deep in his chest, something else had stirred.
Not rage.
Not pride.
Something older.
Something that felt like it had been sleeping for a long, long time. It was something only spoken of legends now.
But unknown to Kael, he was being watched. Back on the bridge, lights were flickering red, as Leia stared at the incoming status readouts, her fingers pressed against her lips.
They were losing.
But one name—just one—kept popping up on the tactical tracker.
Confirmed alive. Still mobile. Still fighting.
> Kael Renn.
Her heart twisted.
Because the rest of the ship was dying.
But he was still moving.
And maybe, he still had a chance. She hoped just maybe he would survive somehow.