I kind of suspected that this next sequence was too long for a single chapter; so here is its first half, and I'll post the second half as a new chapter later today ( tomorrow in EST terms).

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"What is it, K?" she yells as she sprints onto the bridge.

"It is a realspace re-entry alert," K's makeshift voice answers. "On a Lambda-class shuttle it is default-programmed to go off one standard minute before coming out of hyperspace."

She breathes a sigh of relief; she was expecting a system failure or a proximity alarm.

"Cassian?"

It is a vain attempt; by now he looks well and truly out of it.

"K?"

"Yes, Jyn?"

"Pull up your files on emergency first aid medications."

"Ready," he says a second later, before she has even managed to undo the latches on the medpack lid.

"What should I give him? A painkiller, what else?" She finally gets the box open and rifles through the contents; a few self-adhesive patches, an injector pistol and an array of capsules, bundled-up bandages, a couple of disinfectant bottles and a black wrist strap that she recognizes as a pulse monitor and temperature gauge.

"A painkiller injection is a good start," K confirms, "Look for the blue capsules with the Athakam logo. Considering the injuries Cassian has sustained, it may be best to give him two shots at once. You can give him more later as needed."

"What else?" she asks after she has followed K's instruction, injecting the double dose into her unconscious companion's forearm in quick succession.

Before K can reply, the ship shudders, and she has to steady herself against the control console, doing her best to avoid hitting any of the keys, as the blue void resolves into lines that presently become stars.

She peers anxiously into the black sky.

Nothing.

No planets, no suns, no ships. Must be the spot the Death Star jumped to after destroying Jedha City as a sort of stopover point, before following them to Scarif.

So far, so good. She can return to the urgent task at hand.

"K, what else?" she prompts.

"Since Cassian also has a concussion, I would advise a stim patch. It may interfere with the painkiller due to their respective opposite effects, but it is important to keep him conscious as long as possible."

"He's unconscious already," she retorts.

"He will come around once you have applied the patch, but you will need to keep watch over him after that. If he goes into a coma, especially if he has suffered a brain hemorrhage in impact, he may not…"

"What does the stim patch look like?" She knows perfectly well what Cassian may not do, and she does not want to hear or think about it until he has come around.

"Yellow with an orange stripe."

"Found it," she calls out a bit later. "How many should I give him?"

"Just one. Given his overall state, it is best to keep stimulants to a minimum." Great; between the injuries and the concussion, they are in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation. "And make sure you do not exceed one every six hours."

"And if it isn't enough to keep him awake?" she asks as she presses the patch over the side of Cassian's neck, not so much counting on K's answer as voicing her frustration.

"You could try slapping him if he starts drifting off. Lightly, I mean."

"Lightly or not, I'm not doing it."

"Well, failing that you'll have to do what you can to keep him alert and hold his attention. Talk to him, or better, get him to talk to you. It usually helps."

"I'll do my best."

"I noticed that we reverted to realspace," K comments presently. "Do you know where we are?"

"I was about to ask you the same question," she counters.

"I will be able to tell you once you have given me the coordinates. Look for the three sets of figures at the upper right hand corner of the main display."

"Well?" she asks after she has read out the numbers and given K a reasonable time to process them.

"We're in Imperial space," he announces, and she scowls even though it is not entirely unexpected. "On the edge of the Outer Rim. The nearest solar system is approximately three lightyears away."

That last part should be good news; it looks like there is no one here to spot or harass them, and with any luck they could be on the vector to Yavin so as to make it there with a relatively short jump.

"But the jump took us in the opposite direction from the system our base is in," K continues.

Well, so much for the short jump.

"What's going on?"

She is so surprised at Cassian's voice as to give a start before the relief registers. He still slurs the words, but sounds better than before, if only marginally.

"We reverted to realspace," she informs him, "and I gave you the painkiller and stim patch that must have brought you around."

"Thanks. Do you– does K know where we are?"

She answers on K's behalf, though her answer is a question in itself.

"You want the good news or the bad news?"

"The bad," he prompts. Typical, but practical.

"We're in the middle of nowhere."

"And the good?"

This time K jumps in ahead of her. "Well, we're in the middle of– "

"All right," Cassian cuts him short, though he does look somewhat amused, or at least relieved. "Where exactly in the middle of nowhere are we?"

K duly supplies the coordinates, and explains their position the same way he explained it to Jyn minutes earlier.

"How much power do we have left?" is Cassian's reaction to K's summary. He must be thinking about the jump to Yavin, too.

"Where do I look?" she prompts him, to save him the trouble of leaning toward the console.

Her first reaction at seeing the figure is instant concern, though in truth she knows next to nothing of the Imperial shuttle power consumption profile. "Twenty-eight percent," she announces. "How bad is it?"

Cassian's scowl is instant enough, and eloquent enough, to give her an answer. K takes a few seconds to run the calculation before delivering essentially the same conclusion.

"It's not enough to take us directly to our base," he states, and for once, the impersonal level tone is kind of appropriate. "We have to look for a stopover point to replace or recharge the fuel cells."

"In Imperial space," Cassian cuts in.

"We are on an Imperial shuttle, Cassian," K counters.

"We aren't exactly credible as an Imperial crew," Cassian shoots back. "How far to the nearest Outer Rim systems?"

"Give us a list of all habitable Outer Rim systems that we can reach with our current residual power," Jyn prompts before K answers. It may be a better bet than just going to the nearest one; with any luck, between her and Cassian, they will stumble on a world that may not be outright hostile where either of them might recall a friendly face.

"Including those under Imperial government?"

"Including those," she confirms. Not the best option by any measure, but not all Imperial government outposts are equally zealous in enforcing order.

A few minutes pass; eventually K announces that he is ready.

"How many?"

"Fifty seven that can be reached before our power level drops to five percent."

"OK, bring them up," she prompts him, and reads out the names for Cassian's benefit when they start scrolling down the secondary display. "Agamar, Anoth, Atzerri, Bakura, Belsavis, Bespin, Bestine, Carratos, Dantooine, Dathomir, Dorval– wait!"

Her excited exclamation is met with a simultaneous "What?", one in a flat synthetic voice and one in a suddenly-alert one.

"Dorvalla could be a really good spot." She tries not sound too excited. Not to get too excited, for that matter. "I've been there a few times. There's an Imperial government but it's pretty laid back, and it has a big busy spaceport and a mild climate. Best of all, we could get access to a bacta tank and a 2-1B," she finishes, shooting Cassian a pointed look.

"How do you know?" He does not exactly share her excitement, regardless of the bacta mention.

"There's someone there I used to work for. Well, someone I did a few jobs for, after Saw Gerrera left me to fend on my own," she corrects herself before continuing. "We parted on good terms, and last I remember, he had no intention of moving off planet. His wife is really obsessed with her looks, so she pestered him to get her a personal bacta tank and a surgeon droid to stay young and beautiful." Her voice is neutral, though her face likely shows what she thinks of that sort of preoccupation; still, on this occasion another person's vanity may be used to their advantage.

"He must be pretty well off," Cassian remarks in a non-committal tone.

"He is," she confirms. "He's made plenty of credits smuggling ryll."

"He's a Twi'lek, then?" Cassian prompts. It is fairly common knowledge that Twi'leks hold a virtual monopoly where the ryll trade is concerned.

"Sure is."

"He's a long way from home," K observes.

"And from what little I recall of Dorvalla, he chose the planet that least resembles Ryloth to settle on," Cassian adds.

"You've been?"

"No, but I remember reading a brief a couple of years ago. Was supposed to meet a contact there but we ended up meeting at another location. Looked decent enough as planets go. What's this guy's name?"

The non sequitur throws her, if only for an instant.

"Nawara Olan. Heard of him?"

"No, but I heard of his clan." He makes a sour face. "And of all the Twi'leki clans, the one you picked to work for is the only one with Imperial sympathies?"

She mirrors his expression with a sour, or at least stern, face of her own. "I wasn't giving much thought to it at the time…" She pauses. After Saw had left her – abandoned her – she resolved not to give a damn about rebellious guerrillas and political leanings, so long as she could get paid. "But you're wrong on Nawara's account. His brothers, the other Olan leaders, are Imperial sympathisers, true, but he's the black bantha in the family, if you wish, and doesn't give a hoot about politics either way. He never saw eye-to-eye on business with the head of the clan so he struck out on his own and left Ryloth about ten years ago. From what I recall, he'd had no contact with the rest of his family since then."

If Cassian is surprised at her animated defence of her one-time paymaster, he does not show it. "Where does he get the ryll, then? I thought Ryloth was the only planet with large deposits– "

"That was one of the reasons he settled on Dorvalla. That, and as you say, the fact that he was looking for a planet most different from his home, I guess. He somehow found out that the minerals making up much of Dorvalla's mountain ridges, when heat treated and soaked in an acidic solution, can be used to produce synthetic ryll, as good as the highest kor grade found on Ryloth. And to make things better, he found a profitable business line importing de-humidifiers into Dorvalla that provides the perfect cover for the cargo vessels he runs in and out." Strictly speaking, ryll is a mild enough stimulant with ancillary medicinal uses as not to be illegal; but ryll trade has always been restricted by its relatively short supply, and in recent years endangered by the Empire's greed that saw the imposition of prohibitive duties. It is only thanks to the highly inhospitable conditions on Ryloth that Imperials never set foot on the Twi'leki homeworld to wrest the lucrative mining business away from the locals.

"You think you can trust him?" Cassian may not sound entirely convinced by her narrative, but he seems sufficiently intrigued by it to be willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

She hesitates, momentarily unsure how much she can trust Nawara as opposed to how much she wants to trust him for the benefit of getting Cassian the treatment he desperately needs. In the end she just goes for the honest answer.

"Well, one thing I know is that he's got no love for the Empire. I don't know how much I can trust him other than that, but to the best of my knowledge he bore no grudges against me when we parted. And a bacta tank and a 2-1B in private hands aren't easy to come by."

"Let's hope he and his wife didn't get divorced," Cassian comments in a deadpan tone, and her mouth twitches up at the quip. "K?"

"Yes, Cassian?"

"You heard what Jyn said. You have our current coordinates, and you should have the ones for Dorvalla stored in your memory. Let us know when you're done crunching the jump numbers, so we can copy them to the navicomp."

And let us all hope I didn't just make a big mistake, Jyn thinks, as the white star lines fill her field of vision a third time on this improbable trip.

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TBC

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I am pretty sure you remember the two Twi'leks from Return of the Jedi: Jabba's cunning majordomo Bib Fortuna and the hapless dancing girl Oola who ends up killed by the Rancor. Their main distinguishing feature, apart from the orange-red eyes, consists of a pair of thick fleshy "tails" growing out the back of their heads, so-called lekku. The background facts for their homeworld and ryll properties and production come from The Krytos Trap, one of the old X-Wing series books. To summarise the pre-Disney canon, Ryloth, their home planet, has highly inhospitable conditions, with half of it baked to a scorching heat and the other half frozen in a permanent night, and they live in artificial cave networks around the terminator line. Ryll, whose trade they control, is a mild "spice", ie stimulant / medical component. Twi'leki society follows a fairly rigid clan structure and is honour-bound to a large extent. For the most part Twi'leks sided with the Rebel Alliance, but with most of them being cunning and tough negotiators, it is not surprising that a few, like Jabba's manager, have pretty shady allegiances.

The Carida military academy and Kuat Drive Yards both come from pre-Disney canon books. The planets on the list Jyn reads out that are not mentioned in the original films also come from Extended Universe books, though I confess I got their names from a sourcebook. Dorvalla is mentioned there once and is not described in any detail, so in later chapters I sort of go to town making up my descriptions of its conditions and surroundings.