"It's like walking through a dream, serenity and paranoia colliding in a single sensation, but you must see past it."
Thayla was suddenly spurred from her daydream. She rubbed her sore temples and looked around to find the rest of the cockpit empty.
"Darson?" she called out. "Mel?"
Her heart skipped a beat when she realized they were truly gone, and it nearly stopped completely when she looked out through the viewport and saw nothing but empty blackness.
She jumped over to the captain's chair, her eyes darting between the control panel and the outside world. The void of space wasn't exactly teeming with life in the first place, but there were no stars, no comets, no planets far off in the distance. The Gangrene was nowhere to be seen, and neither was Jon's ARC-99 fighter.
The Jedi suddenly felt very alone. She grabbed her chest to slow her unstable breathing, but tendrils of paranoia and worry still squirmed within her mind.
"There is no emotion, there is peace," she said to herself, but the words seemed hollow.
However, soon a strange feeling swept over her. It was a familiar sense of calm that she hadn't felt in a very long time.
"Young one, you are never lost when you have the force," Kinnie whispered, from somewhere very far away. "Be serene, my student."
Suddenly, Thayla could see through the fog. She could see the insidious temptation of the dark side for what it was and cut herself free.
"Thayla! Answer me, dammit!" said a voice on the dashboard.
The yellow light once again cascaded through the viewport. She held down the button on the control panel and told Jon, "I'm here. I'm ok."
"Finally! Don't scare me like that."
She turned around when she heard a loud clattering sound. Darson, armed with a large pipe, was hammering a vent on the wall and screaming, "Get away from me!"
Meanwhile, Mel was also talking to someone and yanking on an oxygen line with all of her might. "What is this doing on the ship?"
Fortunately, Mel suddenly fell to the ground when an electric shock rendered her unconscious. It turned out that the ship had been held in one piece by the one crew member unaffected by the force.
"Dolt!"
The droid beeped in reply, glad to see that Thayla was ok, before quickly heading back to its console and going back to piloting the ship.
"I'll worry about them. Keep us on course for the center."
It once again beeped in reply.
Thayla grabbed a string of loose wire from a nearby repair crate and rushed over to the ship's captain.
"Away, beast!" he called out, swinging the pipe at Thayla's head. She ducked under his clumsy swing and knocked the wind out of him with a swift strike in the gut.
Darson doubled over and moments later Thayla had his hands tied behind his back. He began to squirm just as she finished wrapping a second length of wire around his chest and tying him to the very vent he had been banging on.
"Jedi, help! It has me!"
Thayla held his head in her hands and did her best to clear away the darkness. His mind did begin to clear somewhat, right as Mel rose up from the floor.
The Jedi grabbed the copilot before she could go back to pulling their vital systems out of the wall. Luckily, Mel was still rather disoriented from the zap and easy to subdue.
With them taken care of, Thayla returned to the captain's chair and asked the droid, "What can I do to help?"
Letters began to flash across a screen on the console.
"Jon, D0-1T says we're at the center, but there's nothing here."
"It has to be… it's gotta be…"
"Is there any way to scan for the battery or the… the… the whatever makes a space station run?"
"Yeah, over in the…"
Jon's sentences continued to trail off into nothingness. Thayla pressed the button once more, but stopped herself before she could ask him what was wrong.
"I know it. It has to be over here."
His ship suddenly turned on a dime. His flying was erratic.
"Thayla, something is… It's this way."
She didn't have to reach far to feel the darkness seeping into his mind, but this time she was familiar with it. Looking off, far from where Jon was heading, she could vividly see the golden ship from her vision.
She could feel its hull that was drenched in the dark side, but she could also feel its fear.
"Droid, that way," she called out. D0-1T followed her outstretched hand.
"Thayla, you…" Jon trailed off for the last time, as the strings were finally cut and the golden ship veered off at the sight of her.
"Jon, follow me. We're about to end this."