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Arthur Morgan saw the star fall.
He was riding back to camp from Valentine, the sky a bruised purple behind the black skeletons of the trees, when something tore across the firmament. Not like a shooting star. Those were quick, clean streaks across the night. This thing was angry—white-gold with a ragged orange tail, ripping the darkness open as it went.
It burned low over the Heartlands, screaming. The horses in the nearby paddocks spooked and bolted. The air shook in Arthur’s lungs.
Then it hit.
The flash turned the horizon white. A few seconds later, the sound reached him—a rolling, grinding roar that rattled his teeth. The ground seemed to thump under his horse’s hooves.
“Easy, boy,” Arthur muttered, rubbing the gelding’s neck as the animal danced. “Easy. I seen worse than fireworks.”
He hadn’t, not like that. Not in all his years.
The thing had come down somewhere past the train tracks, out near the low hills that rolled toward Flatneck Station. Fire was already blooming up from the dark—a low, pulsing glow, too bright to be brushfire.
Arthur watched it for one second too long.
Then the outlaw in him and the part of him that had once been a curious boy made the same decision.
He pulled the reins, turned toward the light, and kicked his horse into a run.
Up close, the world didn’t make sense.
Whatever had fallen had carved a long black scar through the earth, like the land had been plowed by something with no respect for rock and soil. Trees lay splintered in a jagged line. A shallow creek had been vaporized into a hiss of steam that clung to the grass. The air smelled of hot metal, scorched dirt, and something sharp, like lightning had been bottled and smashed.
Arthur dismounted, leading his horse by the reins. The beast wanted absolutely none of this and kept tossing his head, but Arthur clicked his tongue and tugged him forward.
At the end of the scar sat the… thing.
It was like an iron carriage without wheels, half-buried in the earth. Angular, sleek and curved at once, its surface a dull gray that glowed here and there with faint blue lines. Smoke seeped from fractures in its hull. Strange symbols ran along one side, glowing weakly. They weren’t letters he knew. They weren’t letters anybody knew.
Arthur’s hand went to his gun, because that was what you did when the world stopped making sense.
The side of the carriage hissed.
Arthur froze.
A line appeared on the hull, light spilling from within. The line split, angled out, and a hatch fell open with a metallic groan, belching steam and smoke.
The world went quiet for a heartbeat.
Then someone staggered out.
Arthur expected a demon, or a machine, or some twisted Pinkerton experiment. Instead, it was just… a man. Maybe a little younger than Arthur. Dark hair, shaved closer than most men wore it around these parts. Clothing like nothing Arthur had seen—somewhere between armor and robes, layers of dark fabric strapped and buckled, scorched in places, with plates of something not quite metal at the shoulders and chest.
He stumbled, caught himself on the side of the wreck, then dropped to one knee. One hand clutched a burn at his side. The other held—
A sword of blue fire.
Arthur didn’t realize his gun was drawn until he heard the click of the hammer.
The stranger’s head snapped up, eyes wild and bright even in the smoke. He took in Arthur in a blink: hat, bandana, revolver levelled.
“Don’t shoot,” the man said, and it wasn’t English. Not at first. The words slipped past Arthur’s ears like water.
Then they seemed to snap into place.
“Don’t shoot,” the man repeated, this time in clear, accented English, like his tongue had remembered something. “Please.”
Arthur stared at the glowing blade.
It hummed. A clean, impossible sound, like a tuning fork and a whisper of thunder. Blue light danced along the barrel of Arthur’s revolver.
“You… some kind of magician?” Arthur asked.
The man blinked, then almost smiled despite the pain on his face. “Something like that.”
He glanced past Arthur, up at the sky. His expression tightened.
“They’ll be coming,” he muttered. “I don’t have much time.”
“Who’s ‘they’?” Arthur asked. The word Pinkertons floated up in his mind, sour as bile. “You runnin’ from the law, mister? ‘Cause I got some experience with that.”
“Not your law.” The man grimaced, looked down at his side. Blood seeped between his fingers, dark in the alien light. “Not your world. I need—”
The night ripped open again.
Arthur flinched, instinctively turning toward the sound. Another streak of light roared down from the stars, smaller and sharper than the first. No graceful arc this time—just a direct, predatory plunge.
“Of course,” the stranger breathed. “They tracked the pod.”
The second star screamed across the sky and hit the ground a few miles off, nearer to the tracks. The earth shuddered.
Arthur’s horse nearly ripped the reins from his hand.
The stranger pushed himself upright, teeth gritted. The blue blade hummed louder, as if answering some distant call.
“What’s your name?” Arthur asked, because names mattered. Because if this was the devil, he wanted to know what to curse.
“Talan,” the man said. “Jedi Knight Talan Jiro.” He swayed, braced a hand on the wreck again. “You are…?”
Arthur hesitated. The sensible part of him said lie. The part of him that had ridden toward a fallen star said truth.
“Arthur Morgan.”
Talan nodded like the name meant something.
“Arthur Morgan,” he repeated slowly. “Can your people fight?”
Arthur huffed a short, humorless laugh. “You could say that.”
“Then I need your help,” Talan said. “Because they won’t just be after me. They’ll burn through your world like it’s kindling.”
Arthur holstered his gun without deciding to. He didn’t trust this stranger. Didn’t trust the glowing blade, or the words. But he knew the look in Talan’s eyes.
He’d seen it in his own.
“All right,” Arthur said. “Let’s get you outta this damn ditch first.”
They didn’t make it very far before the night gave birth to more monsters.
Arthur got Talan onto his horse—barely, the Jedi gritting his teeth and muttering something in that other language under his breath. The blue blade had vanished into a hilt that Talan clipped at his belt. The wreck behind them hissed and popped as it cooled in the dirt.
They had just crested the low ridge that overlooked the train tracks when Arthur heard a new sound.
Not thunder.
Not the rumble of a steam train.
A deep, pulsing thrump, steady as a heartbeat and wrong in every way.
Talan tensed behind him. “Speeder.”
“A what now?”
“You call them… wagons?” Talan frowned. “But no animals. Flying. Skimming.”
“Wagons don’t fly,” Arthur muttered.
“Yours don’t,” Talan said grimly. “Ours do.”
The sound grew louder, then resolved into sight.
A shape moved low over the ground, coming up from the direction of the second impact site. It rode the air, no wheels, no tracks, just a pair of thrumming engines glowing red at the back. Harsh white lights stabbed out from its front. It moved faster than any wagon had a right to go, skimming over grass and rock like it hated the idea of touching earth.
Arthur’s mind tried to reject it. His hand went to his gun instead.
On the front of the thing, a figure stood braced, cloak whipping in the wind. A long, slender silhouette, helmet glinting, something like a sword hilt at their hip.
Behind them, Arthur could make out shapes in white armor, faceless and identical, holding long, dark rifles.
“You got cavalry on these skies too?” Arthur murmured.
“They’re not cavalry.” Talan’s voice had gone low and flat. “They’re Inquisitorius. And stormtroopers.”
Arthur squinted. “What’s an… ink-wizit—”
“Bad,” Talan cut in. “They are very, very bad men, Arthur Morgan.”
The speeder angled toward them.
“They’ve seen us,” Talan said. “Ride.”
Arthur didn’t need telling twice. He dug his heels in. The horse bolted down the slope, hooves pounding.
A beam of red light sizzled over his head and sliced a tree branch clean off. The severed wood dropped in front of them, still smoking.
Arthur swore. “What in all hell—”
“Faster!” Talan shouted, one hand grabbing Arthur’s shoulder, the other fumbling for his hilt.
The speeder howled behind them. Red bolts stitched the ground around their horse, sending up geysers of dirt. One shot clipped a rock and sent it spinning, glowing where it had been struck.
“Left!” Talan barked.
Arthur wrenched the reins. The horse veered, almost skidding, darting between two boulders. A bolt burned past where their heads had been.
Then blue light flared beside him.
The hum of Talan’s blade cut through the night. Arthur risked a glance back.
The Jedi was half-twisted in the saddle, holding on with his knees, his right hand gripping the glowing sword. He swept it up, batting a red bolt aside. It ricocheted away into the darkness with a scream.
He did it again. Again. Each stroke impossibly precise, the sword moving faster than Arthur’s eyes could follow.
The stormtroopers kept firing.
“Where we goin’?” Arthur shouted, breath burning his lungs.
“Somewhere with cover,” Talan grunted. “You have a… camp? A town? Somewhere I can’t be flanked?”
Arthur thought of Valentine. Thought of starting a war in the middle of a populated town with whatever these bastards were.
He thought of Dutch.
“Horseshoe Overlook,” he decided aloud, even as his stomach clenched. “There’s a ridge. We got guns. Folks who know how to use ’em.”
“You sure they’ll fight?” Talan asked, batting aside another bolt that would’ve cooked Arthur’s skull.
“Dutch loves a cause,” Arthur snarled. “Let’s give him a real pretty one.”
The gang wasn’t expecting a flying wagon of white-armored demons, but they adapted quick.
“Arthur, what the hell is that?” John yelled, ducking as a red bolt blew a chunk of rock off the boulder above his head.
“Trouble!” Arthur shouted back, because there wasn’t a word big enough.
He and Talan had ridden into camp half-dead and half-disbelieved, babbling about fallen stars and sky-devils. Dutch had laughed, then frowned, then smiled that smile he did when he smelled opportunity.
“We got men in white armor chasin’ one of your… Jedi,” Arthur had said. “With guns that spit light and carriages that fly.”
Dutch had gone very quiet, taken a long pull on his cigarette, and said, “Then, my boy, sounds like we are on the cutting edge of civilization.”
Now, as the speeder banked over the ridge and stormtroopers poured precise red fire down into their position, Arthur wondered if civilization could kindly cut someone else for once.
“Sadie, right side!” Hosea barked, levering his rifle. “Javier, get to that rock and make yourself useful!”
“Already there, viejo!” Javier snapped back, sliding into cover.
The speeder screamed past, engines kicking up dust. The Inquisitor stood steady at the front, cloak snapping, their helmet a dark, sleek thing with a visor that glowed faintly red. A curved metal hilt lay in their hand like a promise.
Talan stood in the center of camp, sword of light in hand, the blue glow painting his face in stark lines.
The Inquisitor raised a hand.
Arthur felt pressure in his chest, like the air itself had clenched.
The speeder jerked sideways without turning, as if something invisible had grabbed it and yanked it out of its path. It swung around in a tight, impossible arc, coming to face them head-on, hovering in place over the edge of the ridge.
The stormtroopers lined up behind the Inquisitor, rifles levelled.
“Target acquired,” a flat, modulated voice called. “Unknown indigenous combatants. Orders?”
“Minimal collateral,” the Inquisitor said, their voice smooth and amused, filtered through the helmet’s speakers. “We need the Jedi alive. The locals… are optional.”
“Copy.”
Dutch stepped out into the open like he was walking into a parlor.
“Now hold on there, friend,” he called, spreading his arms wide. “Let’s not be too hasty. We’re reasonable people here. No need for any more… collateral.”
“Get back, Dutch!” Arthur hissed.
Dutch ignored him, smile dazzling in the harsh white light. “We may not be as technologically… sophisticated as you, but we do believe in negotiation. Surely even folks from the stars can appreciate—”
The Inquisitor flicked a finger.
Dutch’s feet left the ground.
He choked, suddenly yanked up by nothing, fingers clawing at his throat. His hat tumbled down, landing near Arthur’s boots. Dutch hung there, several feet in the air, kicking, face reddening as he tried to breathe.
“Dutch!” Hosea shouted, half-rising.
“Stay down!” Talan barked.
Arthur took one step forward, gun in hand, every instinct screaming. The Inquisitor turned their helmeted face toward him. Arthur felt that same crushing pressure clamp around his chest, squeezing his lungs, his ribs.
He’d been held underwater once as a boy. Dutch had pulled him out then, coughing.
This felt like the river had come back for him.
“Interesting,” the Inquisitor mused. “These primitives are more resilient than they look. They have… spirit.”
Talan stepped out into the open.
“Let him go,” he said.
The Inquisitor’s helmet tilted. “Talan Jiro. The Council’s lost golden boy.” The modulated voice dripped false sympathy. “Look at you now. Crashed on a backwater, surrounded by savages.”
“These ‘savages’ have done nothing to you,” Talan said, blue light humming at his side. “This world is under my protection now.”
“Oh, that’s adorable,” the Inquisitor cooed. “You broke half a fleet fleeing to the ass-end of nowhere, and you still think you’re a knight.”
They clenched their fist.
Dutch gagged.
Talan’s jaw tightened. Then he moved.
Arthur almost missed it. One second Talan was standing still, the next he was a streak of motion, blade snapping up.
The invisible choke on Arthur’s chest vanished. He dropped to one knee, gasping. Dutch fell to the dirt with a heavy thud, coughing.
A line of blue light bit through the air between Talan and the speeder, aimed straight at the Inquisitor.
The Inquisitor drew their own weapon and ignited it in one fluid motion.
Their blade came out red.
Blue and red met in a shower of sparks that hissed as they hit the dry grass.
For a moment, everything held still.
Then the world exploded.
“Now!” Hosea bellowed.
The gang opened fire.
Rifles cracked. Pistols barked. Sadie’s shotgun roared.
The stormtroopers responded in a tight, disciplined volley, their red bolts searing the air. One of Javier’s shots caught a trooper in the chest; he jerked and went down, armor smoking. Another trooper took a slug to the visor and toppled back off the speeder.
But for every hit, three shots came in return. A bolt hit Bill in the shoulder; he spun and crashed into a crate, cursing. Another blew apart a crate near the stew pot, sending splinters flying.
Arthur crawled to Dutch, grabbed his arm, dragging him back toward cover.
“I had that under control,” Dutch wheezed.
“You nearly had your damn neck snapped,” Arthur snapped. “Stay down.”
He risked a glance over the crate.
Talan and the Inquisitor were a blur of clashing light.
The speeder hovered just over the ridge, engines whining, keeping them both suspended above open air. Each swing of their blades sent sparks flying. The blue and red locked, pushed, separated, then crashed together again.
“You can walk away, Talan,” the Inquisitor said, voice perfectly steady despite the intensity of the duel. “Tell me where the Holocron is, and I’ll make your execution quick. Your new little pets can live out their brutish little lives in peace.”
“You’ve clearly never met these people,” Talan grunted, ducking under a swing that would’ve taken his head. “They don’t do peace very well.”
Arthur’s eye caught movement. A stormtrooper had broken from formation, flanking the camp, aiming down at Sadie’s position. Sadie was busy reloading, muttering a stream of curses. She didn’t see him.
Arthur’s world narrowed.
He took a breath. Everything slowed.
The sound of the engines. The hum of the blades. The crack and hiss of gunfire. All stretched out, pulled thin. The trooper’s movement turned syrupy, the rifle coming up with painful slowness.
Arthur’s vision sharpened.
Red-paint armor. Narrow slit of the visor. The tiniest sliver of black under the chin where the armor’s seal wasn’t tight.
His thumb brushed the hammer back on his revolver. The cylinder turned, each click a heartbeat.
He felt the line between his finger and the target. The world faded around it.
Now.
He fired.
The shot took the trooper right under the helmet. The man’s head snapped back. He dropped like his strings had been cut, rifle clattering beside him.
The world snapped back into speed. Arthur exhaled slowly, an odd tingling running up his arm.
“What the hell was that?” he muttered.
“Dead-eye, son,” Hosea called, reloading. “You look like you seen God.”
Arthur shook himself, popping out of cover again, firing twice, dropping another trooper who’d been lining up on John.
On the ridge, Talan and the Inquisitor broke apart. The Inquisitor flicked their free hand. A crate shot up from the ground and hurtled toward Talan like a cannonball.
Talan raised his palm. The crate stopped dead in midair, wood creaking under invisible strain. For a moment, it hung there between them, trembling.
Then both pushed.
The crate exploded in a storm of splinters that rained down over the camp.
“Arthur!” Hosea yelled.
Arthur turned in time to see one of the splinters—a chunk of wood the size of a throwing knife—coming straight for his face.
He flinched, raising an arm.
The shard stopped an inch from his eye.
It hung there, spinning slightly.
Arthur stared at it. His arm shook, hand outstretched. His breath came fast.
He hadn’t meant to do that.
Talan’s eyes flicked toward him. For a heartbeat, surprise broke the focus on his face.
“Well, that’s… interesting,” he muttered.
The Inquisitor felt it too.
“You’re attuning to them already,” they purred. “You always did pick up strays, Talan.”
They kicked off the front of the speeder, boots hitting the dirt of the ridge, red blade carving a burning line as they slid down toward the camp.
“Bring me the outlaw,” they said. “He might be… useful.”
Arthur swallowed, let the shard of wood drop. Suddenly, he felt very, very exposed.
“Over my dead body,” he growled, more to himself than anyone.
“Probable,” the Inquisitor replied, striding through the gunfire like they had all the time in the world.
They had to move. The Inquisitor wasn’t going to be stopped by a handful of guns and a half-dead Jedi.
“Fall back to the wagons!” Hosea shouted. “We get down the slope, we can draw ’em into close quarters—”
“No,” Talan said sharply, deflecting a bolt so close to Arthur that he smelled scorched leather. “We cannot stay. They’ll call for reinforcements. Orbital bombardment, if they’re desperate enough.”
“Orbit what?” Javier spluttered.
“They’ll drop fire from the sky,” Talan said. “On your camp. On your town. On everything.”
Dutch staggered to his feet, clutching his bruised throat. His eyes were wild, hair disheveled.
“They burn my camp, they burn my dream,” he rasped. “We can’t have that.”
“Then we take the fight away from here,” Talan said. “We lure them to… somewhere else. Somewhere we can control the terrain.”
Arthur’s mind flicked through a map of the area, all the places they’d robbed trains and held up coaches and ambushed patrols.
His stomach dropped as one location rose to the front.
“The canyon,” he said. “Down past Flatneck. There’s a gorge. One way in. Hard to get out of if you don’t know the trick.”
Talan nodded. “Perfect. We draw them into a bottleneck.”
Hosea grimaced. “We might get bottled in there ourselves.”
“Or we might finish this,” Arthur said, meeting his eyes. “Before they decide to bring more of their sky-wagons.”
Hosea looked at Dutch. “It’s your call.”
Dutch hesitated. For a second, the mask slipped and Arthur saw the fear there. Then the grin came back, sharp and bright.
“Gentlemen,” Dutch said hoarsely, “today, we fight the future.”
Sadie pumped her shotgun. “’Bout time.”
The Inquisitor advanced, pace calm, deflecting shots with contemptuous flicks of their wrist.
“You can’t run, Talan,” they called. “Your little ship is scrap. Your beacon is shattered. Your friends are light-years away and probably already dead. Surrender, and I might even tell you how they died.”
Talan squared his shoulders, planting himself between the Inquisitor and the camp.
“Arthur,” he murmured. “Get them out. I’ll hold—”
“Oh, hell no,” Arthur cut in. “You ain’t pullin’ no noble solo stand. I’ve seen how that story ends.”
“It’s my duty,” Talan insisted.
“And this is my turf,” Arthur snapped back. “You listen here, sky-boy. We move together, or we don’t move at all.”
Talan blinked, then a small, startled smile tugged at his mouth.
“Your grasp of Jedi philosophy is… unorthodox,” he said.
Arthur cocked his gun. “That a compliment?”
“In this case? Yes.”
“Then shut up and run.”
The canyon was a scar in the earth, narrow and deep, with walls of rock that rose like jagged teeth. The gang had used it before—an ambush point, a place to disappear when the law got a little too close. There was one main way in and out, a winding path that hugged the cliffside, barely wide enough for wagons.
They rode like the devil himself was on their heels.
Behind them, the speeder howled, engines flaring. A second one joined it, streaking down from the stars—sleeker, meaner, its hull marked with a symbol Arthur was starting to recognize: a black circle carved by white lines, cold and merciless.
Small, fast ships screamed overhead—smaller than the first wreck, more maneuverable. They sliced through the clouds, leaving trails of ionized air.
“Starfighters,” Talan shouted over the wind. “They really don’t like you.”
“Story of my life,” Arthur muttered.
By the time they hit the canyon, two more of the white-armored troops had caught up on smaller, single-rider speeders, flanking the main transport. Red bolts spat at their backs.
Arthur felt that weird quiet bleed in again—the way time stretched, the way the world’s noise thinned. He could feel the lines between things. Trajectories. Angles.
He turned in the saddle, firing twice. One of the pursuing speeders lurched, engine exploding in a blossom of orange flame. The trooper tumbled off, armor scraping sparks off rock.
The canyon swallowed them.
The walls rose on either side, closing off the sky. The sound of the engines bounced back and forth, echoing.
“Positions!” Hosea yelled as they reached the narrowest point. “Same as the last time we robbed that express! Sadie on the overhang, Javier with the dynamite—”
“And me?” Arthur called.
“You and our new friend,” Hosea said, nodding to Talan. “You make sure their leader doesn’t turn us all into ash.”
“Very reassuring,” Talan muttered.
They dismounted fast. Sadie scrambled up a rough path to a ledge overlooking the canyon floor, rifle slung, shotgun ready. Javier ducked behind a boulder, fuse and sticks of dynamite already in his hands. Bill and John took cover behind rocks further back, guns trained on the canyon mouth.
Dutch leaned on a boulder, chest still heaving, but there was a feverish light in his eyes.
“This is it,” he murmured. “We’re fighting men from the stars, boys.” He laughed, the sound a little too sharp. “They’ll tell stories ’bout this. Dutch van der Linde against the empire of the heavens.”
Arthur ignored him.
He stood in the middle of the canyon floor, revolver in one hand, sawed-off shotgun holstered, Talan at his side.
The speeder roared into view a moment later.
It skimmed into the canyon, engines kicking up dust and pebbles, stormtroopers clinging to handholds. The Inquisitor stood at the front again, cape snapping behind them like a dark wing.
They slowed, then halted, hovering a foot off the ground.
The starfighters howled overhead, but the canyon walls kept them from getting a clear shot. For now, it was just the transport, the troopers, and the Inquisitor.
“You’ve chosen a very photogenic place to die,” the Inquisitor observed, helmet panning around. “Very dramatic. Very… you, Talan.”
“Glad you approve,” Talan said. He lifted his sword. The blue glow painted the rock around them, reflected in the stormtroopers’ visors.
Arthur rolled his shoulders, feeling that strange tingle again, like he’d stuck his fingers in a live telegraph wire and it hadn’t quite let go.
“I count eight of ’em,” he muttered to Talan. “Plus the fancy one.”
“Nine troopers,” Talan corrected. “And the ‘fancy one’ has killed more Jedi than you have bullets.”
“Well, that’s just great.”
“Remember what you did with the shard,” Talan said quietly. “That focus. That stillness. Try to touch it again. Let the Force guide you, but—”
“If you say ‘trust in my feelings,’ I swear I’m gonna hit you,” Arthur muttered.
The Inquisitor ignited their blade.
Red washed over the canyon.
“Open fire,” they said.
The gang responded in kind.
Rifles cracked from above. Javier’s first stick of dynamite sailed through the air, fuse hissing, and landed on the speeder’s rear deck.
A stormtrooper reacted fast, kicking it away. It exploded against the canyon wall, showering them with debris but leaving the speeder mostly intact.
Red bolts carved lines of searing light through the dust. One hit the rock near Sadie, showering her with chips. She laughed, wild and delighted, poking her shotgun over the edge.
“Come on then, you shiny bastards!” she yelled, firing both barrels. One trooper’s helmet shattered; he toppled back into the canyon floor.
Arthur stepped forward, gun up. The world narrowed.
He saw paths. Lines of fire before they happened. Where the troopers would shift, where their weight would fall, how their rifles would track.
He moved.
His first shot took a trooper in the knee joint. The second hit another in the gap under his arm as he turned. The man jerked, dropped his rifle, and went down.
“Not bad,” Talan said through gritted teeth, stepping into the storm of bolts, his blade a blur. He deflected shots away from Arthur, sending one up into the canyon wall where it knocked loose a rain of stones on the troopers.
The Inquisitor jumped.
They soared off the front of the speeder, cape billowing, red blade leaving a burning arc behind them. They came down in front of Talan with enough force to crack the stone, driving him back a step.
“We’re doing this again?” they purred. “I’d hoped your crash would have broken more of you.”
“I’m full of surprises,” Talan said, meeting their blade.
They clashed.
It wasn’t like the movies Arthur had once seen in makeshift picture houses. There was no elegant dance, no measured, balletic duel. This was a vicious, close-in brawl with light instead of steel. Sparks flew in constant showers as blue and red crashed, scraped, shoved.
The Inquisitor fought like they were enjoying themselves. Talan fought like a man trying very hard not to die.
Arthur saw one of the stormtroopers break from the firing line, circling wide, trying to flank behind a boulder that would give him a clean shot at Javier’s dynamite stash.
“Not today,” Arthur muttered.
He holstered his pistol, drew the shotgun, and sprinted.
A bolt grazed his arm, burning more than biting. He hissed but didn’t slow.
The trooper rounded the boulder, raising his rifle.
Arthur barged into him, shoulder first, knocking the man down. They hit the ground in a tangle of limbs. The trooper tried to bring his rifle around.
Arthur’s hand shot out, grabbing the barrel. Hot metal seared his palm. He snarled, pain flaring.
The trooper’s finger tightened on the trigger.
No.
The word was more feeling than sound. The air between them seemed to thicken. The rifle jerked sideways of its own accord, yanked by an invisible hand. The bolt went wild, burning a streak into the dirt.
Arthur didn’t question it. He smashed the butt of his shotgun into the trooper’s helmet once, twice. The visor cracked. The man went still.
Arthur staggered up, heart pounding, eyes wide.
“What the hell is happening to me?” he gasped.
“You’re adapting,” Talan called, barely sparing him a glance as he locked blades with the Inquisitor. “We’ll… talk about it later!”
The Inquisitor shoved Talan back with a burst of invisible force. He flew a few feet, boots scraping stone, barely keeping his footing.
“You’re losing your touch,” they said. “Maybe you are better suited to these dirt-scratchers.”
“I’m… improvising,” Talan panted.
Arthur saw it then.
The speeder, still hovering. The remaining stormtroopers clustered near it. The canyon walls narrowing just behind them where the rock pinched in.
He turned to Javier. “You got any more of that dynamite?”
Javier grinned, eyes wild. “Always, hermano.”
Arthur pointed to the pinch point. “We blow that. We bring the roof down behind ’em. Trap ‘em. Make it just us and their boss.”
“And then what?” Bill yelled, reloading.
“Then we do somethin’ real stupid,” Arthur said. “But we do it without their fancy wagon and half their guns.”
Javier considered, then lit two fuses at once.
“You asked for stupid,” he said, and hurled them.
The sticks arced over the speeder, fuses trailing sparks, and slammed into the rock face just beyond the stormtroopers.
The Inquisitor glanced up.
“Oh,” they said. “Clever.”
The dynamite blew.
The explosion shook the canyon. Rock split, chunks of stone the size of wagons shearing off. A cloud of dust and smoke swallowed the rear of the speeder, stormtroopers vanishing in the chaos.
When it cleared, the canyon behind them was a wall of jagged rock. The speeder lay half-buried, engines whining weakly. Two troopers crawled from the wreckage, armor scraped and cracked.
The way out was gone. On both sides.
“Congratulations,” the Inquisitor said dryly. “You’ve trapped yourselves with me.”
“Yeah,” Arthur said. “That’s sorta the idea.”
He stepped forward, shotgun levelled.
The Inquisitor turned their helmet toward him.
“Ah,” they murmured. “The outlaw. You’re bleeding into the currents more than I expected.”
“Lucky me,” Arthur said.
“Unlucky,” they corrected. “You could have been… refined. Shaped. But you’re attached to this pathetic little mud-ball. It will be your grave.”
They raised their free hand.
The ground vanished under Arthur.
He flew through the air, slammed into a boulder. Pain screamed up his back. The shotgun tore from his grip and clattered away.
He slid down the rock, gasping.
“Arthur!” Sadie called, voice distant over the ringing in his ears.
The Inquisitor stalked toward him, blade leaving little burns in the stone with every step.
Talan lunged.
He interposed himself between Arthur and the Inquisitor just as the red blade swung down. Blue met it in a shower of sparks that rained over Arthur’s prone form.
“Get up,” Talan grunted through clenched teeth. “I can’t… keep this up forever.”
“The hell you think I’m trying to do?” Arthur wheezed, forcing himself up onto his hands and knees.
The Inquisitor pressed them both back with a series of heavy blows. Talan’s arms shook.
“You always were sentimental,” they said. “Throwing away your life for some locals. For a bandit, at that. How very… Jedi of you.”
Their blade slipped past Talan’s guard and bit into his shoulder. He cried out, dropping to one knee, blue light dipping.
The Inquisitor raised their sword for the finishing blow.
Arthur moved without thinking.
He didn’t have a weapon.
He had… this.
He reached out.
Every time he’d ever lined up a shot. Every time he’d felt the world slow down. Every time he’d lived a heartbeat longer than he should have because some part of him saw the bullet before it moved.
He grabbed that.
The air around his hand thickened, tingled, hummed.
He caught the Inquisitor’s arm.
Not physically. His fingers closed around empty air, but he felt something solid there—like grabbing a rope he couldn’t see.
The Inquisitor froze mid-swing.
Talan stared.
The Inquisitor turned their helmet slowly toward Arthur. For the first time, he heard real surprise in their voice.
“Oh,” they breathed. “Well. That changes things.”
Arthur’s teeth ground together. His arm shook with effort. It felt like trying to hold back a stampeding bull with one hand and sheer stubbornness.
“Y—you ain’t… killing him,” Arthur grunted. “Not today.”
“Arthur,” Talan gasped. “Let go—”
“Shut up,” Arthur snarled through clenched teeth. “For once… in your life… let someone else… be stupid for you.”
The Inquisitor’s arm trembled, red blade still hovering over Talan’s neck.
“You’re strong,” they said. “Untrained. Raw. You’d make an excellent Inquisitor.”
Arthur pulled.
The Inquisitor stumbled forward a half-step, off-balance.
Talan surged up, using the opening. Blue light flashed.
The Inquisitor’s helmet went flying, spinning away across the stone.
Time seemed to pause.
Their face was human. Pale, scarred, eyes burned amber around the pupils. A lock of dark hair fell across their forehead.
They blinked once, as if startled by the feel of air on their skin.
Then they snarled, raising their free hand.
Arthur felt the canyon roar.
Stone cracked. The ground bucked. Boulders wrenched from the canyon walls, hanging in the air for a terrifying moment like giants’ teeth.
“Fine,” the Inquisitor spat. “We all die here.”
The rocks started to fall.
Talan dropped his blade, both hands shooting up.
Blue light flared around him, a dome of shimmering energy barely visible in the swirling dust. Stone slammed into it, bouncing off or skidding aside, but each impact drove Talan down further, his knees shaking, sweat pouring down his face.
The Inquisitor stood outside the dome, red blade extinguished, breathing hard.
“Your shield won’t last,” they panted. “You’re half-dead already.”
“Long enough,” Talan rasped.
“For what?” they sneered.
Talan looked at Arthur, eyes blazing now, not with light but with something fierce and desperate.
“For a choice.”
Arthur realized what he meant.
They were trapped. The canyon blocked. The starfighters overhead could bomb the whole place to rubble once they backed off far enough.
Unless…
“Talan,” Arthur said slowly. “What happens if one of their little sky-ships crashes into their big wreck?”
Talan’s eyes flicked toward the canyon entrance. Toward the hovering starfighters, weaving, trying to find an angle. Toward the speeder half-buried behind the blocked passage.
His face hardened.
“Chain reaction,” he said. “Engines, fuel cells, power cores… If we trigger it right, the blast will take out the canyon. Them. Maybe even any ship still in orbit waiting to follow up.”
“Us too,” Javier called, half-hysterical. “Don’t forget ‘us too’!”
“Yeah,” Arthur said. “Probably.”
He looked at Dutch.
Dutch stared back, for once silent.
Then Dutch laughed, sudden and bright. “What’s one canyon, boys?” he said. “We’ll just find another. We always do.”
Arthur looked at Talan again.
“Can you do it?” he asked. “Bring one of those star-whatsits down? Make it hit that transport proper?”
Talan’s arms shook. The dome of light around them flickered as another boulder crashed down, rolling off to the side.
“I can try,” he grunted. “But I’ll have to drop the shield. You’ll be exposed. They’ll shoot. They’ll all shoot.”
Arthur took a breath.
The air felt different now. Thicker. Sharper. Connected, like the whole canyon was one big web and he was standing right in the center.
His fingers still tingled.
“Then we don’t give ’em time to aim,” he said. “You pull your little trick. I cover you. The rest of ’em… they get down, shut up, and pray.”
“You can’t stop that much fire,” Talan protested.
“Maybe not,” Arthur said. “But I reckon I can slow it down.”
He met Talan’s gaze.
“You said this thing… Force. It’s about trust, right?” Arthur asked. “Well, I ain’t never trusted much. But right now, I’m gonna trust that if I jump, something is gonna be there to catch me before I hit the bottom.”
Talan stared at him, eyes wide.
“Arthur Morgan,” he said softly, “you are the worst candidate for Jedi training I have ever met.”
Arthur smirked. “Good thing I ain’t applyin’.”
Talan shut his eyes once, briefly, as if in prayer. Then he nodded.
“When the shield drops,” he said, “don’t think. Just feel. Let it all move through you. And if you live, I’ll yell at you later.”
“That’s the spirit,” Arthur muttered.
Talan took a breath.
The blue dome vanished.
The world came crashing back in.
Red bolts screamed toward them. The Inquisitor flung their hand out; a wave of invisible force slammed into Arthur and Talan, trying to throw them against the rocks again.
Arthur planted his feet.
He reached.
Not out—to the rifle, to the rock, to the Inquisitor—but in. To that place where the world slowed. To the hum he’d never had a word for. To every moment he’d somehow survived when he shouldn’t have.
He grabbed it and yanked.
The canyon… changed.
Sound stretched, warping. The red bolts slowed in the air, turning to streaks he could trace with his eyes. The rocks that were still falling did so lazily, like feathers. Even the Inquisitor’s snarl took an eternity to form.
Arthur saw it all.
He saw Talan fling his hands up toward the sky, eyes closed, reaching with something beyond muscle. He saw the starfighters overhead, their silhouettes dark against the thin strip of night visible between the canyon walls.
He saw one of them stutter mid-flight, like it had hit a pocket of thicker air.
He saw an invisible hand seize it.
Talan roared, a wordless sound that cut through the warped time like a blade.
The starfighter twisted, nose angling down.
Arthur felt his heart thump, slow and heavy.
He moved.
He stepped in front of Talan without really deciding to. His hands rose. The red bolts drifting toward them quivered, slowed further, like they were trying to push through syrup.
No, Arthur thought. Then—because it felt right—he thought it again without words, just as a push.
The bolts curved.
They slid past, kissing the air around him, slamming into rocks and spilled crates behind. One grazed his sleeve, burning fabric, but he didn’t feel it yet. Everything was too… big.
Time tried to snap back.
Arthur held it.
Somewhere far above, the starfighter howled as its engines screamed protest. It came down like a meteor, pulled by Talan’s will, angling toward the mouth of the canyon where the speeder lay half-buried in rubble.
The Inquisitor turned, eyes wide, feeling it too.
“No—”
The starfighter hit the wrecked transport.
For a heartbeat, there was a perfect, crystalline silence.
Then light.
White, searing, all-consuming. It ate the canyon, swallowed the rocks, washed over the stormtroopers, the Inquisitor, the wreck, everything.
Arthur felt himself fly again, but this time there was no pain. Just weightlessness, warmth, and a thin, high ringing like someone plucking a single string in the void.
So this is it, he thought distantly. Huh.
He saw Dutch reaching out, mouth forming his name. He saw Sadie laughing even as the blast hit. He saw Hosea’s lined face calm, almost proud.
He saw Talan beside him, eyes closed, hands still raised, blue light wrapped around them both like a cocoon as the wave of energy crashed into it.
Then, mercifully, he saw nothing.
Arthur woke up to rain.
It pattered on his face, cool and gentle. He blinked grit and ash from his eyes, coughing. His throat felt raw. His entire body ached like he’d been beaten and then thrown from a very tall horse.
Above him, the sky was a pale gray strip between canyon walls that had… changed.
The mouth of the canyon was gone.
In its place was a slope of fused rock, glassy and black, still steaming faintly. The rubble where the speeder had been was just… gone. Melted. The stone around it was scorched, veins of melted iron running through it like frozen rivers.
No sign of the starfighter. No sign of the transport. No sign of stormtroopers.
No sign of the Inquisitor.
Arthur pushed himself upright with a groan.
His ears rang. His head throbbed. But he was breathing.
“Arthur?” Sadie’s voice, hoarse but alive. “You dead, you stubborn bastard?”
“Not yet,” he rasped.
She appeared over the edge of a rock, hair singed, hat missing, face streaked with grime. She grinned when she saw him.
“Damn,” she said. “Guess I lost that bet with Bill.”
Bill snorted somewhere behind her. “I said he’d live, you crazy woman.”
“You said he’d live ‘for now,’” she shot back. “That ain’t the same as survivin’ an explosion from the sky.”
Arthur smiled weakly.
Dutch limped into view, clothes scorched, hat somehow back on his head, though singed at the brim.
“Well,” he croaked. “That was… invigorating.”
Hosea sat on a fallen rock, breathing hard, hand pressed to his side. John leaned against the canyon wall, clothes dusted white with stone powder. Javier was counting fingers and muttering in Spanish, but his grin was huge.
Everyone was singed, bruised, coughing.
But they were there.
Arthur looked around.
“Talan?” he asked, heart lurching.
A soft groan answered him.
He turned.
Talan lay a few feet away, half-buried in dust, one hand still curled like he was reaching for something. His face was pale under the grime, but his chest rose and fell.
Arthur hauled himself over, kneeling beside him.
“Hey,” he said, voice rough. “Wake up, sky-boy. You ain’t allowed to die yet. I still gotta yell at you about that whole ‘crash into my world and ruin my week’ business.”
Talan’s eyes fluttered, then opened slowly. They were bloodshot, but the light in them was still there.
“We’re… alive?” he asked.
“For now,” Arthur said softly. “Big boom. Lots of light. Then I woke up in the dirt. That usually means I ain’t dead yet.”
Talan wheezed a laugh, then winced, hand going to his shoulder.
“What about…?” He looked toward the melted canyon mouth. His face tightened. “I can’t… feel them. The starships. The beacon. The… presence in orbit.”
“Good news?” Arthur asked.
Talan took a breath, let it out.
“For your world, yes,” he said. “The patrol that followed me is gone. If there was a larger ship waiting, it’s either destroyed or… too wary to risk another close approach.”
“And for you?” Hosea asked quietly, coming closer.
Talan’s expression went distant.
“I’m stranded,” he said simply. “No ship. No way to contact the Order. Even if they got my distress signal, by the time they send anyone, decades could pass. Centuries.” He swallowed. “If anyone’s left to send help at all.”
Silence hung for a moment, the rain whispering over stone.
“So,” Sadie said eventually, “you’re stuck here.”
“Yes,” Talan said.
Sadie looked around the ruined canyon, the steaming rock, the group of scorched, coughing, half-mad outlaws and misfits.
“Could be worse,” she said. “Coulda landed in Saint Denis.”
Dutch chuckled, then started coughing again.
Arthur sat back, bones aching.
“So what now?” he asked.
Talan looked at him.
“You tell me,” the Jedi said. “This is your world, Arthur Morgan. I’m just a very lost guest.”
Arthur glanced at the melted canyon mouth again. At the strange glassy rock. At the faint, almost imperceptible hum in the air.
He reached into his pocket.
His fingers brushed something smooth.
He pulled it out.
A crystal. No bigger than a thumb. Pale blue, shot through with fine white lines. It glowed faintly in the dim light like it held its own tiny sky.
Talan inhaled sharply.
“How did you—”
“Found it,” Arthur said. “After the ship crash. Figured it might be important.” He rolled it between his fingers. It was warm. Comforting. The hum in the air seemed to get louder when he touched it. Not in his ears—in his bones.
“That’s a kyber crystal,” Talan said quietly. “The heart of a lightsaber. The heart of a Jedi’s connection to the Force.”
“Well,” Arthur said. “I ain’t sure I want my heart anywhere near that damn sword of yours. But it… helped. I think.”
Talan studied him.
“You felt it,” he said. “The way time shifted. The paths of the blaster bolts. The fall of the rocks. You held it, even if only for a moment.”
Arthur shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable.
“I seen… angles,” he admitted. “Lines. Like when I line up a shot. Just… everywhere. Everything. Like the whole damn world was a big ol’ gunfight and someone slowed it down for me.”
“That’s the Force,” Talan said. “Or… your first taste of it, anyway.”
Arthur snorted. “Feels like whiskey with a mean kick.”
“It’ll pass,” Talan said. “But if you… wished it, I could teach you to call it again.”
Arthur looked at him sharply.
“You offerin’ to make me one of your… Jedi?” he asked, the word awkward on his tongue.
Talan smiled faintly.
“You’d never survive the robes,” he said. “But there are… middle paths. Gray spaces. Ways to touch the Force without swearing vows you’d hate.”
Arthur looked down at the crystal again.
He thought of the way the Inquisitor had lifted Dutch like a rag, choked him without touching him. The way the stormtroopers had marched, faceless and identical. The way their star had burned down from the sky, uncaring.
Then he thought of the way the crystal had hummed in his hand.
Of the way he’d bent the path of death away from Talan’s neck.
He closed his hand around it.
“I ain’t much for gods and ghosts,” he said softly. “But if there’s somethin’ out there that lets me… protect people? Folks like mine? People who this ‘Empire’ of yours would chew up and spit out?”
He opened his hand. The crystal glowed a little brighter.
“Then I reckon I should at least learn how to spit back.”
Talan’s smile warmed, even through his exhaustion.
“Then, Arthur Morgan,” he said, “welcome to your very strange apprenticeship.”
Dutch huffed, offended. “Now wait just a minute,” he said. “You’re not gonna steal my right-hand man for some… mystical mumbo-jumbo—”
“Dutch,” Hosea said gently. “He’s already been stealing horses from God. This just gives him a manual.”
The gang laughed, tired and ragged but real.
Arthur slipped the kyber crystal back into his pocket.
He looked up at the gray sky, where the rain washed the last traces of smoke away.
Out there, somewhere, was a galaxy full of empires and orders and wars he’d never see.
Down here, there were still Pinkertons. Still towns strangled by rail companies. Still farmsteads burned by men who thought power meant tearing down anything softer than them.
He sighed.
“Come on,” he said, pushing himself to his feet and offering Talan a hand. “Let’s get back to camp before all this rain puts the fire out. Then you can explain what a holly-chron is, and I can explain why cows are more dangerous than half the things you fought tonight.”
Talan took his hand and hauled himself up, wincing.
“It’s Holocron,” he said.
“That what I said.”
“No, you—”
Arthur slung Talan’s arm over his shoulders, steadying him.
Behind them, the canyon steamed quietly, strange glass cooling under the rain. The melted rock hummed faintly, like it remembered the touch of distant stars.
Ahead, Horseshoe Overlook waited, battered but still there. A camp full of lost souls, runaways, dreamers.
And now, apparently, one very confused Jedi Knight.
As they limped toward their horses, Sadie fell into step beside them.
“So,” she said casually. “You gonna teach me how to throw people with my mind, too? ‘Cause I got a list.”
Talan sighed. “This planet is going to kill me.”
Arthur chuckled, the sound rolling out over the wet stone.
“Pardner,” he said, “that’s the first true thing you’ve said all day.”
The rain fell, soft and steady, washing the canyon clean.
Far above, in a sky that no longer held any Imperial ships—at least for now—the stars burned on, oblivious.
And down in the mud, under the quiet patter of the rain, a faint blue crystal throbbed in time with the heartbeat of a man who had never asked for a destiny, and now had one anyway.