What is up my dudes?! Here we are with the promised Part II! I'm excited to get going with this one, cause there's a lot of stuff in Part I that's carrying over here, and I can't wait to see how you guys react to it!

As you can tell, we are now officially entering into canon material! Yay! I'm pretty astringent about sticking to canon events, but I am adapting the canon for this story, so stuff like dialogue probably won't be exactly the same (unless something is just golden and I can't leave it out). Same goes for exact details in action. I may fudge it a little every now and then. In theory, this should make stuff flow a little better and lead to more genuine character interactions, and then I won't be word-for-word copying someone else's work.

So strap yourselves in, grab a drink, and enjoy this first chapter of Skyfire Part II!

PS - Happy birthday to the man behind our favorite flyboy! This one's for you, Oscar. We love you! :)

Chapter 1: Sabre Strike

This looked a lot easier on paper.

Rocketing through space didn't usually bother someone like Poe Dameron—he spent the vast majority of his time traveling at the speed of light—but that was when he had his fighter.

Or anything else that flew.

Right now, it was just him. No fighter. No astromech.

Just an EVA suit and the hope that, somehow, he and Karé and Iolo could pull this crazy stunt off without getting caught.

Not succeeding and getting away had minor consequences. Not succeeding and getting caught? That would make them criminals.

As if stealing a Pinnacle-class yacht wasn't criminal enough.

But the Hevurion Grace wasn't wanted for its specs as a ship. As sleek and as beautiful as she was, it was what she might have on board that made her so valuable. It was why Leia had sent them after it in the first place.

This ship had been spotted in First Order space on more than one occasion. And it's owner—Senator Erudo Ro-Kiintor, someone who every Resistance pilot present hated to the marrow of his bones—had been taking hand-outs from the First Order. This was the man responsible for delaying or completely derailing sanctions against the First Order. This was someone who could throw the rug over the proverbial hole in the floor with only a sentence or two, and everyone—Populist or Centrist or otherwise—would turn a blind eye.

This was the man responsible for covering Rattatak.

Poe would be lying if he said that that didn't make what he was about to do incredibly satisfying.

Assuming he could get to the yacht in one piece.

As soon as he'd pulled the ejection handle, the Z-95 Headhunter Poe had refitted specifically for this mission disappeared underneath him faster than he could blink. His breath fogged the inside of his EVA helmet, so he couldn't quite see where he was going. The suit itself restricted a lot of his movement. It had been hell to fly in. It would probably be even worse to run in.

The ungodly speed he was going at somehow made the wait to find that out even longer.

A timer clicked down the seconds in the corner of his helmet. From the second the Hevurion Grace went sublight, it had been counting down. That was the real kicker: they had to be in and out with the Grace in less than eight minutes… or they'd be flying for their lives against a sector patrol.

A New Republic sector patrol.

That was the reason for the Headhunters, for the EVA suits, for their entire disguise as some of the most famous pirates in the galaxy. Absolutely no one could know who had really stolen the Hevurion Grace.

In other words, if they got caught, they were on their own. No help from the Resistance would come, because it couldn't.

The Hevurion Grace steadily grew in the front of his vision; the stars blurred past him so quickly they looked like white streaks. He looked at his timer.

One minute, thirty seconds.

That gave him only six and a half more. The good thing was that now he was close enough to the Grace that her ventral side took up almost his entire field of vision.

He suddenly had a sinking feeling that perhaps he was going too fast.

He needed a way to slow down. Now. He'd already deployed the suit's maneuver jets and tried to decelerate, but it wasn't enough.

He only had a second the brace for the impact.

Poe's body slammed into the Grace's hull hard enough he saw stars, even though he'd by some miracle hit his back and not his head. His breath flew out of his lungs. Blood slithered up his throat. Gritting his teeth, using the pain in his lumbar to fuel him, Poe climbed up the side of the Grace's hull, clawed for the hatch, and through the limited dexterity his hands had in the EVA suit, he managed to break the seals on the hatch and throw himself inside. He lost seventeen more precious seconds resealing it before he pulled his weightless self down the ladder and into the ship itself.

Then the gravity came back online, and he slammed into the floor. The fresh bruise in the small of his back screamed.

He didn't let himself stop to catch his breath. His entire entrance had wasted two minutes, and he couldn't waste a second more.

Unstable legs pushed Poe's body from the durasteel floor. Every siren that could have been going off was, thanks to Iolo disabling most of the ship's systems the second it came out of hyperspace, and the wailing shredded his head as he plowed towards the cockpit. Poe reached for his blaster as he ran-stumbled towards it.

The back of Ro-Kiintor's bald head shone from one of the passenger seats. For a fleeting second, Poe imagined what would happen if he put a plugged a blaster bolt through the back of it.

The Senator, the pilot, and a servant all stared up at him. Poe was glad they wouldn't recognize him through the suit's tinted helmet… and that they couldn't see the smirk budding on his face.

"This vessel is now the property of the Irving Boys!" he thundered, the speakers in the EVA suit turning his voice alien.

Furious, Ro-Kiintor shot to his feet. He tried to emulate the authority with which Poe had seen him speak in Senate debates, but his pale face had flushed ghost white.

"Fool!" He tried to laugh, and it made him look even more ridiculous. "Do you know who I am? Do you—"

"I know that if you don't get into that escape pod in the next three seconds, I'm putting one between your eyes!"

No one moved, so he fired one single shot into the ground for emphasis.

Poe never would have actually shot the Senator, but it didn't make watching him scramble out of his seat and diving for the escape pod any less entertaining. Once the ship informed him that the pod had launched, he yanked off his helmet and took a few deep breaths of clean air before flopping into the cockpit.

He didn't have an astromech, so after he restarted the engines that Iolo's modified concussion missile had so effectively disabled, he'd need to enter the jump coordinates himself.

But first, he'd patch himself through to his squadron.

"Karé, Iolo, acknowledge."

"Loud and clear, boss." Karé Kun came though as confidently as ever. "How're you doing over there?"

"Still got five minutes." Poe flipped a few switches, and the vibration in the floor cued him that the engines were now online. "Let me plug in these coordinates—"

"Guys, I see something." In contrast to his wingman's acknowledgement, Iolo Arana sounded like he'd found a dangerous animal on his fuselage. The Keshian's infrared-sensitive eyes allowed him to see heat signatures, even if he was sublight and the object in question was still in hyperspace. By the tone of his voice, Poe guessed it couldn't have been good.

But it couldn't have been a New Republic patrol. He'd been on one long enough himself to know there was no way they could have mobilized that fast. They had another three minutes at least—

The patrol in question snapped into realspace, and Poe's already nauseous stomach dropped to the pit of his toes.

Where he'd expected to find X-wings, he counted eighteen TIE fighters, a frigate, and a few assault ships—

—all under the command of a massive Resurgent-class Star Destroyer.

"Not good."

Captain Mila Dameron was usually grateful for a day off.

She could rest her feet from the hard white floors of the cruiser's med bay, recollect herself, and relax a little. They were rare. As a matter of fact, one of the first things she'd learned once she'd joined the Resistance was that everyone, everywhere, was working on something. All the time. Many people, herself included, wore more than one hat, and they would until they could recruit more personnel. She got to sleep in that day. She had license to do almost whatever she wanted.

Despite all of that, elated was the last word Mila would have used to describe herself that morning. And even farther fetched—so unbelievably far away from the mark that it was almost comical to think about—was the idea of relaxation.

Of all days to have off, it had to be this one.

She'd watched those Headhunters take off from the hangar, and since then, Mila had hardly been able to think. All she could hear in her head, loud and on repeat like an emergency siren:

He's going to die. He's going to die. And if he doesn't, he'll get caught and arrested and tried… and then he'll die.

She'd sat on the edge of their bed in their shared officer's quarters, trying to make herself breathe. She'd found that the exercises sometimes slowed her racing heart and quieted her racing mind.

But today, after nearly an hour of trying, they had done nothing.

BB-8 rolled up beside her, clearly still a little befuddled. Even though he'd been sidelined from the mission for a perfectly good reason—Poe had told him that the Headhunters were too small for astromech assist—Mila could only chock up the droid's deflated beeps and drooped rolling as pouting. Had she not been on the verge of panicking herself, she might have thought it was funny.

BB-8 pressed up against her calf and warbled, wiggling a little bit as he spoke. Mila nodded.

"Good idea, buddy," she said tremulously. "I'm getting restless, too. Lead on."

Mila followed him to the door and stepped out into the hallway. The light was so bright it hurt Mila's eyes.

Pacing the cruiser was the best thing either of them could come up with for a distraction, and it, at this point, was a whole lot better than nothing.

He'll be fine. He'll be fine...

"Karé! Iolo!" Poe's shouted so loud it made his throat raw. "Jump! Get out of here, now!"

TIEs groaned past the Hevurion Grace, weaving in and out of the view of the canopy, almost like they were taunting him. Poe eyed the jump computer, and it was nowhere near close to having finished its calculations. Nor were the engines fully warmed up.

BB-8 could have done it in a few seconds flat. If only those Headhunters had been bigger.

Poe knew Karé and Iolo well enough to predict their reactions to the letter, but he still found himself groaning when they, in synch, came over the comms:

"Hell no!"

"That's an order, you two! There are way too many of them!" A TIE opened fire on Karé's Z-95 a little too close to the Grace for comfort, but it proved his point. "You stay, and you'll be killed!"

"We leave, and we lose that information and you for sure!" Karé had dug her heels into the sand, and Poe knew there would be no moving her. "I don't know about Iolo, but I'm not going down that path again—" she blew past the canopy again, Corellian-rolled, and destroyed the TIE that had been trailing her "—especially when I don't have to!"

Poe sighed. "Karé—"

"Gotta agree with Captain Kun on this one, sir." Looked like Karé had backup. "You can court martial us later. It's all of us or none of us."

Iolo had a point, and even though they'd just openly defied him and he, technically, should have given them an earful for it, Poe found himself grinning.

"Fine then. You get killed, it's not on me."

The two Headhunters flashed in and out of his vision as Poe watched the ship's control panel. When next he looked up, Karé and Iolo had cut the TIEs down to nine… but more had swarmed from the belly of that Resurgent-class to replace them faster than Karé and Iolo could take them down.

Stuck in that fancy cockpit, there was nothing Poe could do but watch them fly for their lives. All three pilots had moved closer to the Uvoss gas giant that loomed behind them, hoping the planet's massive gravity pull would discourage them.

It hadn't worked.

A static thump cracked through Poe's comm, one that sent his heart into his mouth. One of Iolo's engines belched smoke, but the Keshian flew on. Flashes of events Poe would rather not relive taunted his eyes and made his blood run cold.

He couldn't do this again. He absolutely wouldn't.

"You're hit, Iolo," Poe said. "Get out of here, before they jump all over you. Do it now, that's an order."

"No can do, Commander. Staying put."

Damn you, Arana.

They needed a way out. Even if the computer wasn't ready to make the jump, Poe still scrambled to think of one. He stared down the Resurgent-class, almost as if he could peer into the beady eyes of the excuse of a person running it.

And all of a sudden, it came to him.

"Guys," he said. "I need you to fly straight at that destroyer."

"Okay." Karé scoffed as she knocked yet another TIE fighter out of the frame of existence. "All that talk about not wanting to get us killed, and now you want us to do the number one thing that could do just that?"

"That puts us in range of her tractor beams, sir," Iolo protested.

"So we run at her from the back." Poe was already moving to do just that. "Resurgent beams are on the front. We go behind her, and she's got to turn around to chase us, or to suck us in. That buys us a lot of time."

A blinking light on the console caught Poe's attention, and a victorious grin stretched across his face.

"And looks like the Grace is ready for the jump." Carefully, Poe angled the ship's nose towards the destroyer. "Flank me. We do this together."

"Right, okay." Karé had seen where he was going, so she'd settled into position as Poe had been speaking. "Running right at that thing. Sounds exhilarating. Coming, Iolo?"

The Keshian didn't share her enthusiasm. "Do I have a choice?"

"No," Poe said.

Iolo, still smoking, came up portside. Poe took a deep breath.

"On three. Up and over. And as soon as I give the signal, jump."

Poe gave the Grace's thrusters everything he could. She handled so well now that she was fully awake, she was practically putty in his hands. He came at the destroyer so fast that for a fleeting second, his eyes tricked him into thinking it was backing into him.

Those officers were clearly surprised by their move, because it took them a lot longer than Poe anticipated to open fire. TIEs poured from the Resurgent's belly.

The destroyer fired at them almost constantly now. The Grace took a hit to the stern, but her shields held. The yacht and the Headhunters wove over and under one another trying to evade fire, and somehow, all three pilots found themselves ahead of the destroyer. Poe jerked the Grace's nose upwards.

Not yet… not yet….

The TIEs that had struggled to keep up with them now swarmed at them from behind, and they had backup.

"Now! Jump now!"

Poe jerked back on the jump initiator, and the Hevurion Grace slid into the safety of the hyperspace tunnel.