I know this is a bit of a filler chapter, but we get onto the really (over)dramatic stuff from here on out.

"What the kriff was that?" a pilot shouted at Matthias in the hangar. He let her shout; shaken and terrified, he felt like shouting himself. "You were supposed to be there to keep the peace, not annihilate it!"

"Pilot," Inej tried.

"And you just sat there after they attacked; those pilots who moved to cover you were my friends, and they died because you-"

"Pilot," Inej repeated, more forcefully. She caught the woman's arm and made her face her. "You need some rest. It was a traumatic experience for all of us."

The woman nodded, and tucked a lock of her dark hair behind her ear. Perhaps it was Inej's status as Flight Leader, or perhaps it was the fact she'd destroyed the Death Star, but the pilot respected her enough to heed her words. She walked away quietly,

Her face had been soft as she addressed the pilot, but when she looked at him, she had no mercy. "What happened out there? We almost didn't get away - they ripped us apart. Pilots lost their lives on what was supposed to be a peaceful mission."

He fought the urge to cower; despite her diminutive stature Inej had a way of making her displeasure clear and terrifying. "I don't know."

"You're a traitor?"

"I defected, Inej." He said the words slowly - he found it was the first time he'd actually said them aloud. "That's treason."

She sighed, and ran her hand along her long plait. She nodded her head towards the door to the hangar, and they started walking. "I suppose." She glanced up and met his eyes, brows set in a frown. "But that man's - Brum's? - tone of voice. . . He hated you. Personally."

There was a question there. Matthias didn't know whether he wanted to answer it or not.

At his reticence, Inej continued, "We need to know if it'll be a threat going forward. If his hatred will unbalance him, or just make him pursue us with more vigour. . . Not to mention it could endanger both you and whoever's with you when you're on solo missions. Even if you don't tell me, you'd need to tell whoever that is - Jesper, Nina. . ." She glanced at him to gauge his reaction; he forcibly kept his face neutral. Undaunted, she hit the sweet spot: "Or Wylan. They'd have to know."

Wylan. The one he'd sworn to protect.

Inej didn't smile, but he could swear she looked smug despite it. He shook his head. "I hate you." Respected her, liked her - but hated her a little, too.

She shrugged. "You know that we need to know. For the Alliance."

And he found himself taking comfort in those words: It wasn't just Wylan he was protecting. Not anymore. It was Nina, Inej, too. For the Alliance.

"Brum trained me," he got out. "I knew he was a Protector, once, but I figured he was still training cadets at the Imperial Academy on Mandalore. At home, he's the face of all Imperial propaganda: Their staunchest supporter, personifying strength and order. He even looks the part - he's getting old now, but he was handsome in his youth. He's even been depicted wielding the darksaber by some of his fanatics."

Inej's brow furrowed. "Darksaber?"

Matthias hesitated for a moment. They were wandering through the corridors of General Kul-Bataar's flagship now; anyone could hear them. But it wasn't like it was a secret.

"It was a lightsaber made by the first Mandalorian ever inducted into the Jedi Order," he said, almost like it was an admission. Inej's eyebrows climbed her forehead. "When he died, the lightsaber was kept by the Jedi, before the Mandalorians reclaimed it and used it in their - our - ever-raging wars. It became the ultimate symbol of everything Mandalore stood for. Strength, prowess-"

"-war, violence, ruin. . ." Inej finished with a drawl.

He gave her a narrow look. "Coming from someone fighting in a galactic civil war."

"Point taken." Inej frowned again. "So, it's a propaganda war. This darksaber represents strength, and to be depicted with it is a great honour, and sends a powerful message. How could we undo that? Make Brum - and the Empire - lose credibility on Mandalore?" She narrowed her eyes. "What happened to it? Where is it now? If we could depict a Rebel with it actually in their possession, it could have a massive effect."

Matthias thought of that crate he'd found. Thought of the Mandalorian armour it had contained - and the weapon with a blade as dark as night. . .

"Inej," he said slowly, "you will never believe your luck."

Kaz still refused to fly the ship, so Jesper had to dump Wylan in the back with strict orders to not die in order to fly the ship out of the system.

"My, aren't we popular today," he muttered to himself as he watched the squadron after squadron of TIE fighters being dispatched to pursue them. "Kaz, get on the guns!"

The rattle of blasterfire answered his shout and he inhaled, letting the breath clear his mind, let his focus narrow to the here and now. Except his focus wasn't on the here and now, because hadn't Nina told him he opened himself up to the Force only when flying? And didn't the Force connect all living things? Even the things on the cusp of death, with mortal wounds, like-

Like-

Wylan.

He could feel the lordling in the back of his mind, a guttering star threatening to wink out. He could feel it as surely as he felt the movements of the ship underneath him, Kaz's grim determination, the stutter of his own frantic heart. Wylan was dying.

Jesper swerved to avoid more gunfire.

When he'd seen the trooper behind Van Eck raise his blaster, he'd wanted to fire there and then. He'd burned with it, that need to protect Wylan, that abject refusal to lose anyone else he loved. But a voice in his head - one that sounded suspiciously like Kaz - had told him to stick to the plan. Let the events play out as they would. Maybe the trooper would miss; maybe they wouldn't be able to hit Wylan. Stormtroopers' awful aim was legendary, after all.

If he'd been a Jedi - had any conscious grasp of the Force at all, really - he could have made sure it happened. He could have yanked the blaster right out of the trooper's hand or, if all else failed, at least redirect the bullet so it didn't hit its target.

But Jesper had chosen not to learn about the Force. All he'd been able to do was watch.

And now Wylan might be dying because of it.

The ship rocked - Jesper more felt than heard Wylan's grunt of pain as he was thrown off the bed - and Jesper didn't know how he knew it had happened just that it was true - as true as the fact that he needed to fly or that TIE fighter was going to paint a swathe of oil all over his viewport. . .

It seemed like an eternity before he could yank back the lever and they escaped into the peaceful bliss of hyperspace.

Thoroughly shaken, he went back to check on Wylan, but the kid was already awake.

Already awake, and had already ransacked the draws of the Barrel to administer his own wounds.

"Are you. . ." Jesper began the question, but didn't finish it. He didn't know what to say, anyway.

"Matthias taught me first aid," Wylan said as he wrapped the bandage around his torso. "In case I ever got hurt when he wasn't there." His voice was calm. Too calm. He was in shock.

"Wylan. . ." Jesper began, but the lordling held up his hand.

"Don't." His voice cracked. "Please." He took a deep breath. "I don't want to talk about it right now. I need. . ."

He let the question trail off into obscurity.

"Okay." Jesper found he was scared to speak above a soft whisper; Wylan looked so pale, so fragile, like a stray wind might blow him away. "I'll. . . I'll just. . ."

He fled the room.

"Kaz." The smuggler was still sitting at the guns, staring into the blue of hyperspace. "Don't do that - you'll go mad," Jesper awkwardly tried to joke, but Kaz looked. . . thoughtful. Somewhere between his scheming face and his neutral face, his current expression was as confusing as Kaz's general behaviour. "You alright?"

"Fine."

When it was clear that Kaz wasn't going to elaborate, Jesper hesitated, then added, "That shadow, on the roof. You did take care of it, didn't you?"

"No."

Great. Just great. "What was it?"

"A bounty hunter." Kaz flexed his pale fingers. "Don't worry, Jesper. He wasn't after you."

"Okay."

Nothing about this conversation made any sense, but it was clear Kaz wasn't going to say anything else, so Jesper didn't pry.

For the rest of the flight back the ship was eerily silent.

Nikolai Lantsov again reviewed the reports with the holos of the white landscape of the desolate planet Hoth and sighed to himself.

It wasn't that he disliked snow. They'd gotten enough of it on Naboo in the winter, when it was cold enough that the planet's bounty of water froze, and he and Vasily had often engaged in no-holds-barred snowball fights. Even back then, Vasily had glowered at him with that look, of jealousy and anger and hatred - the look of a nexu being forced to accept a new cub into the pack when it was perfectly fine on its own, thank you very much. And when Nikolai had gone into politics in his early teens - the time that most Nubian politicians did - the gap had only widened.

He'd mourned when his brother had died on the Death Star, of course. But more mourned the fact that his brother's selfish choices had led him there than his actual death.

So it wasn't snow itself that bothered him. It was the abundance of it. It got everywhere: no haven was dry, pilots and mechanics growing more and more irascible as their fingers froze until they couldn't work on their starships. No one could get anything productive done.

They needed to leave soon. Being here was slowly killing morale - it felt a little too much like lying down and waiting to die.

There was a beep on his comlink which jerked him from his reverie; he reached for it instinctively and was asking, in a forcibly pleasant voice, "What is it?"

"We sent out troops to investigate a blip on the scanners, as you ordered earlier, and they found an Imperial probe droid. The trooper's awaiting further instructions."

"Do not engage the probe," he ordered instantly, and had to stifle a shudder. Probes were ghastly things. . . Spindly legs. . . Massive optical sensors. . . "If we're lucky maybe it won't come across the base."

"The trooper says negative, sir. We're patching him through to you now to explain."

Nikolai nodded, and winced when the unpleasant crash of static came over the comlink. That was another thing about the snow: it disrupted their communications a little too effectively for comfort. "Trooper?"

"Affirmative-khk- Senator," came the reply, breaking up with an alarming frequency. Nikolai winced again, and decided against correcting him on his title. "The probe spotted us-kghgkkhk-shot at us, took out most of my men. We had to shoot-kghgkkhk-back. Didn't hit it that hard-kghkk-self-destructed. But if-kgkhk-transmitting when-khk-blew-"

"Say no more, soldier," Nikolai assured him. "You get back to Echo Base. I'll give the order to begin evacuation."

"Copy that, Senator." The man disconnected.

Nikolai took a deep breath. "Order all troops to begin evacuation, operate escape plan delta." He glanced upwards, towards the ceiling, like he could see aboveground and watch the Star Destroyers that would surely soon be reverting to realspace above them. "The Empire's found us." A touch bitterly - it had been six months since the Death Star, six months - he added, "Again."

"Focus on the Force, Kuwei, feel it, in your breath and in your bones and in your heart, flowing through you. . ."

"You're not helping," Kuwei grumbled, but he kept his eyes shut and Nina watched with ecstatic pride as the lightsaber he was trying to levitate wobbled, and wobbled, and. . .

"I did it!" Kuwei shouted joyfully when his eyes snapped open to see.

"Careful," Nina warned as the lightsaber dived for the ground and her student - could she in good faith call him a padawan, when she was still a padawan herself? - hastened to catch it before it hit the ground. After a few moments of trembling, it rose up to his eye level again.

"Brilliant," she said, "now - focus!"

Using the Force, she jabbed the lightsaber's activation button and turned it on.

Kuwei yelped and dropped the saber. "That's not fair!" he whined once it had clattered to the floor. "I was afraid it was going to hurt someone!"

"Lesson One of this new Jedi Order we seem to be building," Nina said, "and let's not tell any surviving Jedi we might run into about it, because they will not approve: Never let fear rule you."

Kuwei was quiet for a moment, then said, "I thought that was what all Jedi did."

Nina shook her head. "I've thought about this long and hard, and I've concluded that the Jedi attitude towards negative emotions like fear and anger and hate is wrong. One should not reject them, or treat them as taboo, or bottle them up. That is unbelievably unhealthy. Instead, see them as positive things. It helps with meditation.

"For example," she took in a deep breath, then breathed out. Closed her eyes, crossed her legs. "I hate the Empire because I loved the Jedi Order and the Republic, and now I also love all of you. Hate springs from love. It is not inherently evil."

She breathed in, then breathed out.

"I'm angry at the Empire because I believe in right and wrong, and its actions err firmly on one side of that line. Anger springs from morality - at least, my all-encompassing righteous anger does."

Breathed in, breathed out.

"And I fear the Empire because I have so much to lose. The last dregs of the Jedi. The last hope for the Republic. Inej. Matthias. You. All the other Rebels who could go the same way Anika did. I fear because I care, and because it forestalls any unpleasant consequences. As Inej is prone to say, when fear arrives, something is about to happen."

In, out.

Eyes open.

"I'm usually awful as meditation," she admitted to Kuwei, whose face seemed awestruck. "I can't quiet my mind. It's too full, of emotions, of fears, of hopes and dreams and possibilities. It's too loud." She took a deep breath and smiled. "But when my thoughts align, there's. . . peace.

"It's also therapeutic," she added. "And in this war, Force knows everyone needs therapy. Your support system-" She thought of Alina Starkiller, and her throat clogged up. "You are only as stable as your support system is."

Kuwei looked confused, but he nodded. "I can consider trying that," he said quietly.

Nina nodded back, beaming. "Good. Then we can-" Her comlink went off.

She read the message and said to Kuwei, "We're headed off to the Hoth system to help Senator Lantsov's evacuation. They detonated a probe droid by accident and now they think the Empire's on their way. We're the Rebel cell closest to them with a stable base, so we're heading over there to escort them here."

"Will it be dangerous?" Kuwei, for someone who'd been sombrely thinking about meditation less than two minutes before, looked far too excited at the concept.

"Probably," Nina said, with admittedly more cheer than necessary. "If the Imperial Fleet gets there before we do, there might even be a battle!" She paused, dread wrapping itself around her innards like wool. "Stark- Koroleva," she cursed herself for her slip; after all she'd learned about her, she couldn't just class Starkiller as a two-dimensional evil Sith Lord anymore, "might be there."

Instead of fear, it was glee that shone in his face. "Then we'll get to end her."

"Don't let your anger rule you," she warned.

His mouth twitched as he said, "My anger is righteous, and it springs from the fact that the galaxy would be much better off without Lady Koroleva in it. It is a moral pursuit."

Nina stared blankly for a moment. "I hate it when people actually listen to what I'm saying."

Kuwei laughed. "Are we all going?"

Nina shrugged. "Well, I understand Kaz, Jesper and Wylan are going since they just got back from whatever their mission was - and Wylan's new job is to catalogue all the stuff being moved from place to place, so he has to go. Kaz might fly off again," like he did on Inej, she didn't say, "but Jesper will probably go. And I think General Kir-Bataar contacted her brother's cell as well, so, since Inej and Matthias are with them, they ought to be coming as well."

"So, literally everyone."

"Pretty much." She picked up her satchel, the edges of Alina Starkiller's music box inside it hard and sharp against her hand, and made to put Zoya's lightsaber - the one they'd been training with - away, before she paused. Handed it to Kuwei. "Keep it."

His shocked face was priceless.

"We don't have the time or resources for you to make your own at the moment," she explained, "and you're trained enough by now to be considered a threat by Koroleva if we run into her. It'd be best if you were armed for such an encounter."

"We can take her together," he said assuredly, holding the lightsaber in his hands reverently. "It'll be two against one."

Overcome by a sudden surge of fondness, she ruffled his hair. "Perhaps." She grinned. "Now let's get moving. We've got Rebels to save."