Poe's breath calmed and deepened, his pupils dilating as his mind settled into the tight instinctual niche between thought and fear, between action and reaction. He heard his pilots steady, measured breaths, and the harried back and forth chatter of the fleeing transports; the brazen howling of the evacuation alarm; he saw the mass of TIEs growing before him, solidifying from an indistinguishable cloud of menace to a swarm of individual ships intent on one purpose—destroying them utterly. He took in and studied the massive bows of the incoming Star Destroyers as they shuddered ever closer to Base. All of this he saw and understood in the space of half a second.

In another few seconds they'd be in range, but the TIEs had the advantage, he knew it.

"Evasive action! Split and engage!" He shouted and his team peeled away from his wings just as a volley of green laserfire seared through the shadowed sky. Poe jerked back on the stick, twisting them into an insane pirouette between two Special Forces TIEs, the thin edges of their wings passing so closely above the canopy that Finn ducked with a gasp. Poe fired without hesitation, almost without conscious thought. The nearest TIE tore apart with a concussive wave that shuddered through the old X-wing and blasted through their ears, but before he could engage the second he was forced into a rolling dive. Red had not been put through such maneuvers in decades and the rusty engines roared in protest. Hold together, hold together, Poe silently pleaded. Green splinters of light darted harmlessly between the S-foils as Poe wove through the fray; there was no lack for targets. An explosion flashed to his starboard side; Jess destroying her chosen prey.

Finn twisted in his seat, craning to look back at base; transport after transport shot into the sky. He wondered how many were left on the ground.

Shadows ghosted over their canopy as waves of TIES passed them by, utterly unconcerned with the meager threat offered by 8 X-wings—they were engaged in a larger purpose. What did the loss of ten, twenty, even thirty TIES matter in the end? The horrible realization stuck Poe heavily then, though he'd known it all along. There's not enough of us. There was no singular target they could focus on to bring the enemy to their collective knees; no chain reaction to start; no chance for a single ship to do anything more than try to stay alive.

Poe nailed another TIE, closed his S-foils, and threaded the gap between the broad, hexagonal wing panels of two flanking TIEs. He swept a tight loop and dropped, falling behind them and pulled the S-foils open again before the phalanx could break away. Poe fired succinctly, each blazing red bolt striking home. The TIEs knocked into each other before ratcheting into a fireball and raining shrapnel from the sky.

"Poe, they're gaining on Base!" Finn yelled through his headset. A potent mixture of helplessness, fear, and rage churned Finn's stomach and he clenched hard to the back of Poe's seat, bracing against each sudden, wrenching twist and dive. He would've given anything for a cannon of his own to fire.

"Climb! Climb out of it, guys! They're gonna keep us pinned down while they target the transports! Watch your backs and head them off!"

The shadow rumbled darkly above them, the heady atmospheric weight of the Star Destroyers throbbing in their ears and rattling their teeth as they turned after the TIES that had passed them by for easier prey. A green laser bolt nearly as big around as their ship tore through the mess, scattering both TIEs and X-wings as a turbolaser cannon lazily opened fire. The air uptakes in their cockpit reeked of burning ozone.

"Watch for fire from those destroyers!" Snap shouted.

"I've got one on my tail! Point 22!" Ziff barked.

"I've got it—" Bastian began but was cut short as Ziff's yell echoed through their headsets and the noise of his channel stuttered into buzzing silence. Poe saw his shattered ship belching smoke as it spun end over end to fireball in the canopy below. He grit his teeth, a hard breath full of rage and agony wringing from his throat but there was no time to let Ziff's death in. Finn squeezed his eyes shut—he'd seen droves of pilot's die in the cold, cloudy sky above Starkiller Base, and he had regretted it. It had been horrible, of course, but how much more horrible it was now to have a name and face to go with the wreckage. He wondered if the TIE pilots understood what it was they were doing, or if they regarded this battle as little more than a simulation; as if a holoprojection could drive home the finality of death. He felt a moment's sickness for Poe.

Mouth thin, Poe put the X-wing through its paces, about facing with a suddenness that slung Finn against his restraints and into the side of the ship. He picked a TIE from Nien Nunb's fighter, rocketed upwards and bulls-eyed another. He jenked to the right, slamming the thrusters back and dropping as suddenly as he'd ascended as green flashes strobed overhead, searing dark streaks into the transparisteel canopy. Finn jerked; if the bolts had been a few inches lower, they would've been decapitated.

An icy blue light shot past them, lancing harmlessly past the control deck of the nearest Destroyer. The Resistance Base's one ion cannon pulsed and Poe's heart went out to the souls who had stayed behind to man it. As one, every turbolaser cannon studding the hull of each Star Destroyer swiveled toward the offending ion canon and fired in a flash of concentrated brightness and energy that blinded them, scrambling the sensors of TIE's and X-wings alike. Ventral cannons quickly followed suit and the resultant explosion shuddered through the dark earth of D'Qar.

No, Poe moaned to himself as Base all but vaporized before their eyes in a column of fire and tar-black smoke that plumed into the air. The tarmac split, fuel and machinery housed far below combusting and building, one onto the other, in a mushrooming mound of flame. Far below he could see the surviving ground crew scattering like ants across the ruined earth, and a transport torn open like a tin can used for target practice. BB-8 wailed, Black One sweeping past Poe's line of sight and raining bolt after bolt upon the endless stream of TIES.

Poe was, for one frozen moment, speechless. It's gone. They're gone. It was Finn's voice that roused him out of his horror. "That transport! Poe, on your starboard!"

He twisted them to the right with a tight yell that hurt Finn worse than any physical injury he'd ever sustained. Three TIES clustered behind the last remaining transport and Poe rose behind them like a storm, tearing through them like a lightsaber through flesh. A bolt impacted the port wing, glancing off their minimal shielding and spiraling them into a wild dive. The world spun in a grey-green blur and Finn cold only grit his teeth and brace himself as Poe steeled every muscle in his body against the stick and cut power to the starboard engine. They leveled out, and Poe slammed them roughly back to full throttle at the last possible instant; Finn could hear branches scrapping against the belly of the ship.

"Poe!" Jess shrieked.

"Don't focus on me! Keep on that transport!" He shouted harshly as they gained altitude. His hands flew over the dash, redistributed all shielding to the rear deflector panels. "Once they're clear, jump immediately!"

Another barrage of turbolaser fire erupted from the two Star Destroyers, piercing through the thick plume of smoke that boiled up from Base. Anything and anyone that had managed to survive could not have made it through this second attack; all that remained of the sheltering low green mounds and duracrete runway were atomized. Fire belched from the crater like blood from an open wound; it's stuttering flash lighting up the sky behind them as they doggedly trailed after the last transport. The roar of the explosion mingled with the hollow rasping howl of the pursuing TIEs until it seemed that the sound vibrations themselves would tear them apart. Green streaks of laser fire shot past them, as numerous as the stars above their heads. Live Nek screamed and then was gone, his X-wing exploding just aft of the transport. Can't think about it. Don't think about it. At last the lumpy patch-work ship jolted through the atmosphere, streaking away from the planet and then stretching into nothingness as it jumped to safety.

"All teams jump now!" Poe commanded and they did so, five ships elongating into the fathomless distance before vanishing into the dark. Another bolt rattled Red as Poe twisted and dodged in a spree of unhinged movement that would've made season even seasoned pilots vomit. Finn clamped his eyes shut and gripped the edges of his seat, saliva pooling in his mouth.

"Finn, I need you to enter these numbers into the Nav computer." Poe grit out. It was nearly an impossible task split his focus between keeping them alive and forming a coherent sentence.

"Okay," Finn breathed, unbolting his fingers from his seat. His shaking hand hovered above the foreign screen.

"Press the green button and type: 1-275-45-333-1." Sweat dripped down Poe's forehead and ran down his neck, the muscles in his arms quivering against his tight grip on the stick. There was a new roughness in the ship that frightened him, but there was no point in voicing it and scaring Finn as well.

"Right." Finn punched the coordinates in, his eyes tight on the gently glowing screen.

"Press the green button again and then turn both dials at the bottom—" He jerked, nearly biting his tongue off as another bolt darted across their canopy and glanced off their weakening rear deflector panel. His calm voice belied the fear that rattled him. "Turn both dials to the right until they snap into place."

"I've got it!" Finn shouted. He tensed, expecting the now familiar strobing blue star-streaks to envelop them. But it didn't happen. "Poe?" He managed.

"No astromech—gonna, hnng!" Poe jolted reflexively as a line of green fire just missed the nose-cone, "gonna take some time!"

We don't have time, Finn realized with a hollow drop to his stomach. Rage and exhaustion filled him in equal measure. It wasn't fair. He wanted suddenly to thank Poe, to tell him that he loved him, but his mouth had frozen. He watched with downcast eyes as the ancient nav-computer slowly plotted its course. D'Qar glowed beneath them, a jewel of blue and green, all signs of their battle soothed into nothingness by the sheer virtue of distance. It really was quite pretty, Finn thought with a small sad smile. Though he'd lived there for only a few weeks, the planet had become home to him in a way that no place ever had before. Because of Poe, he thought. He was glad of that.

Poe twisted, all senses peeled utterly raw, cutting the engines again; his thrust and forwards momentum sent them arcing up and over the foremost TIEs and from this new vantage point, Poe managed to take out five more of them before those in their wake realized their danger. Poe slammed the engines back on and again a warning roughness rattled through the fuselage as they dove below their pursuers. Come ON! Poe nearly screamed.

"It's done! Rotate to .493!" Finn's heart thundered in his throat. He couldn't believe it. Maybe, just maybe, they'd make it out of this.

Poe jerked them about so hard that it knocked the breath out of each of them. "Press the lever to the left all the way forwards!"

Finn rammed it towards Poe's seat while at the same time Poe slammed the S-foils closed. The searing green net of enemy fire closed on nothingness as they burst into the jump-tunnel, the gentle blue and white lights flowing serenely past their scorched canopy. The sudden stillness seemed to mock the chaos they had just barely escaped. Finn slouched back in his seat with a ragged gasp, adrenaline shaking him from head to toe against his restraints. Poe could not yet let up; he kept his eyes solidly dead ahead, afraid that closing them for one second would break him. His body shook with the force needed to keep the ship steady. His readouts showed a power drop by 5.8 percent in his port engines; any more stress and they might lose an engine entirely—an event they would be unlikely to survive while traveling at lightspeed. He swallowed dryly.

After a few tensely silent minutes, Finn spoke. "Poe…I'm sorry…"

"Don't." Poe's brittle voice threatened to break.

Finn closed his mouth wordlessly, understanding at once, and kept his eyes on the nav computer. They sat in silence for several minutes and Finn became aware of the roughness shivering through the left side of his seat. This ship is an antique…he remembered suddenly. He'd entirely forgotten in the heat of the moment. I can't believe Poe got us out of there. The computer chimed brightly as they approached their destination, the sound horribly out of place in their ears and Poe dropped to sublight.

They found eleven of Bases 12 transports and Leia's small, mon-cal style capital ship hanging in the glittering blackness before them.

"Oh thank gods!" Snap yelled while at the same time BB-8 burbled, and Jess gasped, "You made it!"

"All teams, report." Poe said and the brittleness was gone from his voice; he was back to being Black Leader. He set his jaw, bracing for the voices that would not answer.

"Blue Two, copy." Snap said quickly.

"R-Red Four." Bastian managed and the thickness of his tone nearly undid Poe's control.

Nien Nunb chattered.

"Blue Three, copy." Said Jess.

[BB-8, copy.]

"Black Leader, report. What happened back there? We're missing a transport," The Generals voice, hard and bracing as a cold breeze. Poe felt some of his energy flare back to life in the face of Leia's strength.

"Those Star Destroyers fired on Base with their full armament—there's nothing left, General. At all." He shook his head, the words bitter in his mouth. "The last transport didn't make it off the tarmac. I'm sorry."

Several seconds passed before her reply came through their headsets. "So am I, Colonel. We'll run through a personnel check and—" She broke off as proximity alarms wailed to life onboard her capital ship.

The alert pinged across Poe's dash just as two more Star Destroyers lanced out of hyperspace, so closely and so suddenly it was as if they'd always been there. Their nearness sent a liquid hot thrill of fear through Finn's body; he felt that he might be swept through the force-fields of any one of the hangars that pitted the thin edges like feral, glowing eyes. He had only just allowed himself to feel that he'd escaped certain death only to find its cold grey claws reaching out for him once more. "This is impossible." Finn murmured hollowly, his eyes wide as TIEs poured from the nearest Destroyers flanks and the green fire started once more. Poe did not allow himself even a second to be shocked. "All teams, form up!"

"All craft, jump immediately!" Leia's voice commanded.

"Transports, keep clear of the bow!" Poe yelled as his team broke apart to engage the screaming TIEs.

Four transports jumped. The fifth and sixth halted as if frozen. Slowly, agonizingly, they were reeled in, disappearing beneath the pointed bow of the nearest Destroyer to be drawn into its gleaming bowels.

Poe felt his control of Red slipping. It took all of his strength to keep it from listing to port and nosing down, never mind attempting the complex evasive maneuvers he'd earlier employed. He allowed the ship to drop as a wedge of TIE's nearly scalped them, and then twisted about to fire on their retreating forms. Three fireballed immediately, and the fourth and fifth split away to pursue Leia's capital ship.

No you don't. Poe thought savagely as he peeled after them. He swatted them from her ship as if they were little more than stinging insects. The second Destroyer loosed its fleet and space all but boiled with enemy ships and a blinding cacophony of crisscrossing laser fire. He saw a flash, and Snap's ship shot through the wreckage of his target.

"Poe, we can't keep this up!" Snap yelled unnecessarily.

"Just keep your eyes on those transports—as soon as—" He broke off, dodging and firing on a diving TIE. "As soon as they're clear, get to the second rendezvous point!"

He watched with some relief as Leia's ship neatly avoided the tractor beam that had snared a third transport and then streaked away into the void. Good—she's made it at least.

The last of the free transports safely jumped.

"Jump now, do not wait for us!" Poe yelled as a bolt glanced their port wing panel and rattled them to the bones.

"Poe, we can't just leave you in that old ship to-" Jess protested but Poe interrupted her fiercely.

"That is an order! Jump now!" He yelled. "Finn, hit the green button and type in these coordinates, okay? 2-128-75-639-7."

"Okay!" Finn wrenched his mouth open and forced himself to breathe as he entered in the new jump point and twisted the dials as before. Come on, please, just one more time, he pleaded with the ship. First one X-wing and then another vanished into safety. Poe rotated about; if he couldn't jump along with the rest of them, he could at least cover their escapes. For the sheer number of TIEs swarming his tiny fleet, he felt that they should have been turned into shrapnel long ago; it was almost as if they were taking it easy on them, and the thought sent a flood of ice into his guts though he couldn't explain why. He picked a TIE out of Snap's wake, dodged and looped upwards to break up a phalanx heading for Black One. The s-foils on Bastian's ship closed, preparing for the jump, but twin bursts of green fire shattered his X-wing so immediately that he hadn't even had time to scream.

Poe breathed hard out of his nose, face tight. Snap and then Black One vanished.

"Poe! That Destroyer is coming about!" Finn yelled, pointing needlessly to their port. One of the mountainous shapes slowly swiveled up out of the darkness like a sea monster from the deeps of Kamino. Finn's eyes widened; it was a maneuver that would put them within the grasp of their tractor beam. At the same time, the TIEs surrounding them ceased firing with an uncanny suddenness. Finn understood with an intuitive clarity that raised the hairs on the back of his neck. "They know it's us!" He shouted.

"That's impossible!" Poe retorted.

"Who else could fly this old ship like you are? I'm telling you, they know it's us! They're trying to save themselves from paying out a bounty by doing it themselves!"

"Not gonna happen!" Poe grit his teeth, diverting all power from their flickering shields to the engines. They were flying bare, but Poe preferred dying quickly in space to being tortured to death, if it came down to it, and he assumed that Finn would choose the same. But the TIE's remained conspicuously silent, drifting eerily around them like carrion birds waiting for a chance at a kill that was not theirs to make. The port engine shuddered, and Red began to list with such insistency that Poe could hardly keep them from coiling into a broad spiral. The Destroyer gained.

"Finn?" Poe asked tightly.

"Almost…almost there…" Finn bit his lip, his breath coming quick as he threw a look behind his shoulder; the Star Destroyer filled his vision. The nav computer chimed. "Now!" Finn yelled. Poe wrenched the S-foils closed just as Finn triggered them into the jump tunnel.

Red wobbled dangerously among the swirling lights, and Poe was hyperaware to every fluctuation in engine sound. Red lights sprung up across his dash like wildfires and Poe's hands danced across the controls, rerouting power in every way that he knew to keep them spaceworthy. Port engine functionality was down to 58 percent, and he was certain that an aileron on their upper port wing had been damaged. Just make it out of this tunnel. That's all you gotta do, Red. Finn had frozen to his seat once more, listening to the ship in the same way that prey listens for predators. He didn't need to be a mechanic or a pilot to know that the high whining that vibrated through the fuselage was not good. And they were low on fuel; Red had never been prepped to fly such a lengthy and dangerous course.

"Are you okay, Finn?" Poe asked while forcing his bodyweight against the stick. He needed to hear Finn's voice now, needed some distraction from the fact that Red was trying to quit on him.

"Yeah…yeah, I'm okay…" He couldn't bring himself to explain to Poe how badly the closeness of those Destroyers had unmanned him.

"I'm sorry, baby. This has been a rough ride—can't be good on your back."

"I'm okay, Poe. I would've been dead a million times if it had been anyone else piloting us." He felt embarrassed to have Poe worried about something as minor as his back when so many people had died. Poe's mouth thinned at Finn's praise—he didn't feel that he'd flown hard enough. Ziff, Liv Nek, and Bastian were all the proof he needed of that. The nav computer chimed and he sent a silent plea out to the universe to let them emerge from hyperspace in one piece. He dropped to sublight into absolute madness.

Two Destroyers awaited them, and they did not have time to wonder whether they were the same two that they had just escaped or separate ships altogether. One transport burned, listing to starboard while smoke belched from a hole in its ventral panels. Poe tried not to see the bodies that had been sucked into the vacuum and now drifted eerily like dolls in the blackness. He heard Finn's horrified gasp as he forced them away from the grisly sight.

"We've been made!" Poe yelled as he honed in on a TIE. It mushroomed beneath two well-placed bolts and Red shot through the wreckage with a warning wobble that clacked their teeth together. "They're tracking us!"

Static buzzed in their ears. "…I repeat, jump randomly!" Leia shouted.

It was a slaughter. Poe saw it happening as if it were a slow-mo replay on a holovid. He drew power from their wounded engines and back into the shields, and Red screamed in protest. Finn's sweaty hands gripped each side of his seat as if he could hold the ship together with his grip. The transport directly below them was hit and sent spinning end over end out of control. Poe bulls-eyed three more TIEs but it wasn't enough as Nien Nunb's ship sheered too close to a sweeping phalanx and collided head-on with the leader. The explosion seared across their canopy and Poe hurriedly tried to blink the brightness of the Sullustan's death from his eyes before they met a similar fate.

"Damn it!" He heard Snap yell furiously as he dodged and dove for open space. Leia's capital ship took a hit but vanished into the jump tunnel only a second later. Another transport froze in its escape, dragged backwards into the stomach of a Destroyer, its engines revving red-hot in its desperation to escape the fatal snare. A green bolt glanced off their starboard wing. The remaining four transports leapt away.

"BB-8, starboard, starboard!" Poe yelled. Red refused to turn with the speed he needed and the orange and black ship buckled before their eyes. They just dodged beneath the explosion and Poe's involuntary cry hit Finn like a knife to his heart. "BB-8, come in!"

Silence answered.

Poe bit the inside of his cheek, his hands shaking against the stick. Jess's ship plumed past, trailing fire from her cockpit.

"Jess, eject!" He commanded desperately as he picked two TIE's from her smoke stream. A garbled voice thick with interference grated through their headsets. Poe grimaced, "Jess, I'm losing you! Repeat! Jess?!" Red bucked and Poe's face was lit suddenly with red from below. His display showed the port engine operating at 42 percent capacity. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Snap's ship still weaving about the perimeter of the fray.

"Snap get out of here! Jump, now!"

"No can do, Colonel! I'm not jumping till you guys do!"

"Godsdammit," Poe muttered. He'd committed the coordinates for their two rendezvous points to memory as soon as Leia had given them to him, but without an astromech to navigate for him, he had only two other planetary ids memorized. Corescant was too far; they'd end up drifting through space on auxiliary power until they either froze to death or chanced to be picked up. C-3PO would have told him the odds of survival were 2,354,781 to 1. He shouted his only other option, the planetary coordinates he knew by heart. "Finn, get ready!"

"Okay!" Finn jabbed the green button.

"5-108-56-364-3!"

"Got it!" Finn unglued his jaws; they had clenched hard at the sight of the torch that was Jess' ship. He waited on the edge of his seat, eyes darting to the back of Poe's helmeted head, to Snap's X-wing threading an insane course through the clouds of TIES. He'd lost sight entirely of Jess and dared to hope that she'd managed to jump.

An explosion rattled them from above and the shattered remnants of a TIE wing went skidding off into space like a discus. "Thanks, Snap." Poe's arms were quivering by this point as Red fought his every move; he felt like his muscles had turned to water and would sluice out of his body at any second.

"How's she holding?" Snap peered down at the listing, drooping ship, sweat streaming down his forehead.

"…Good. It's fine."

"Shit." Snap was not fooled in the least. "Can you make the jump?"

"Got no choice. You better move out as soon as we do."

The port engine display glowed cherry red, searing the numbers 41% efficiency into Poe's eyes. "Hey Finn…how we doing?"

"Just a few more seconds." He answered, his eyes tight on the nav computer.

"Good, I—"

"Now!" Finn shouted.

Please…please just once more…Poe thought to himself as he closed the S-foils. There was no time to say goodbye to Snap; the jump-tunnel closed about them. Alarms filled the cockpit as the stars elongated and whirred past, and Finn was surprised by the strange calmness that bloomed through his chest. Perhaps the human mind could only deal with so many near-death experiences in a row before it shut down and refused to process any more information.

It was dangerous to adjust velocity while in a jump tunnel, Poe knew this beyond a shadow of a doubt. He could hear his mother and countless instructors beating it into his head to never attempt such a thing, but he had no choice; whether he willed it or no, the port engine was taking matters into its own hands. He cut power to the starboard engine and all deflector panels, and channeled that energy into the rattling housing of his port side. The star-streaks shuddered around them, flickering for a moment in a way that made Poe's stomach drop to his toes; they'd almost been torn out of hyperspace. They were a hair away from it happening again. And…he realized with a heavy tug of exhaustion, if we manage to make it out of the jump tunnel, there's still the planet's atmosphere to get through… A fierce need to speak to Finn overwhelmed him.

"Hey, remember back on the Finalizer, when you tried to tell me that busting me out was 'the right thing to do'?" He asked lightly.

"Yeah?" Finn breathed, fear sparking through his stomach. This sounded too much like reminiscing in the face of defeat. Red groaned beneath them and rocked hard to the right as their port aileron twisted off and was immediately lost to sight.

"You were so full of shit." Poe grinned, though his arms and neck screamed against the force needed to keep the X-wing level. "You just wanted to save me for my hot ass, right?"

"Poe, don't…"

"Listen… baby…"

"No. No goodbyes, do you hear me, Poe?" Finn said so solidly that Poe swallowed his next words.

"Okay."

"Tell me when we're both on the ground."

Poe held on in tight silence, his eyes focused on the blackness dead center among the icy blues and whites. "…It's gonna be rough, Finn." He warned.

Finn huffed a laugh. "What else is new?"

The nav computer chimed and Poe closed his eyes. Here goes nothing.

AN: I AM SO SORRY. Both for the content, and for how long you had to wait for this chapter. I was on vacation for my birthday and I have no smartphone, laptop, or tablet, so interneting was out of the question (I'm a secret Luddite!). Well. The shit hath well and truly hit. I didn't give myself a lot of time to edit this, because I wanted to get it up as quickly as I could, so I apologize for grammar/spelling mistakes. Jeeeez, this chapter has been in my mind for months and I both dreaded writing and was evilly excited to finally get to it. Don't give up on these guys though-there'll be a few fun canon introductions next chapter that will make up for this slaughter, I hope. Reviews are super, super appreciated! Thanks for reading! (I'M SO SORRY).