A furious battle filled the windows of the Millennium Falcon's cockpit as it cleared the enemy flagship. A hodgepodge of different types of fighters were darting in every direction, spewing multicolored laser blasts every which way. The New Republic Battlecruiser was also visible in the distance and it seemed to be back online, raining blasts forward from its battery of hull cannons.

"Keep trying to get my father on that commlink.", Lara said to Finn as she piloted the Falcon into the thick of the battle. "He must have gotten out of there by now."

"I'm trying." he repied. "Nothing but static so far."

"Chewie, see if you can take out some fighters with our forward gun.", she said turning to her co-pilot. I'm gonna maneuver us over there to help out that group of P-35's"

Chewie growled in agreement as Lara accelerated the ship towards one of the many dogfights surrounding them.


Han Solo looked around at the abandoned bridge of the Spearhead. Emergency lights were flashing steadily from almost every station and the constant whine of the shipboard alarms were coming close to splitting his skull in two. Just as he was arriving to this weird scene from out of a pirates tale about a ghost ship that he had once heard as a child, Han had heard and felt what he surmised was some kind of emergency craft decoupling from the larger hull.

He's running again, the Admiral thought with a heavy heart. What did we do to fail him?

A memory flashed through Han's mind just then. The moment when Leia told him that she was pregnant and his subsequent feeling of bewilderment and joy. Bewilderment that he was going to be a father after spending almost his whole life on the move with no attachments to anyone except his best friend, Chewie. Joy at the realization that he was going to create a family with this wonderful loving woman he had met in the most dire of circumstances and had grown so close to that it felt as if they had become one.

More memories came flooding in. Jacen as a small child showing the expected Force sensitivity and the wonder on his little face as he realized it. The two of them racing hoverbikes they had constructed from scratch around an old, abandoned track on Corellia. Jacen helping his sister up after a nasty fall while exploring a cave on Boz Pity and then carefully cleaning up her wound while she howled in pain.

So many good days, so much happiness and love that his son had shown. He was devastated when Luke had told Leia and him that he sensed the Dark Side in their son. At first they denied it, it wasn't true. It COULDN'T be true. He was such a wonderful child. But something had changed, they eventually came to see. The boy was becoming different, cold, distant. Still, they felt sure that Luke would be able to help him, save him as it were.

The day that Luke showed up out of the blue, however, and told them about the murders was a devastating break from reality. It took many years for Han to come to accept the fact that Jacen, himself, made his own choice to become who he now was. It wasn't an easy realization to come to grips with, though. Deep down he knew that his wife, even though she outwardly showed agreement with her husband, never felt the same about it. She always harbored the guilt, she always felt that she as a Jedi in training should have been able to do more.

Han had to forcefully stop the rush of interconnected thoughts and images before they spiraled out of control. He finally took a deep breath, pushing the memories aside and brought his thoughts back to the present.

Now that he was standing here in the derelict command center of Jacen's ship, Han realized he had to get started on the whole reason he came. He found and sat down at the station that controlled the propulsion system and after flipping through a few navigational screens on the terminal punched in a set of coordinates. With the trajectory set, he engaged the smaller broadside engines to change the ship's angle forward. When the enemy bomber that had remained targeting the surface of Nuldarra came into sight, Han locked in the course and punched the sunlight engines to accelerate the nearly dead ship forward. More alarms immediately sounded calling out a frantic warning that the ship was now on a collision course. A countdown began from another station indicating that impact would take place in ninety-three seconds. Han pulled his commlink from his pocket as he sat back in the station seat and sent a transmission.


"I GOT SOMETHING-!", Finn cried out. "Transmission coming in on the commlink."

"Lara…Chewie…", Han's voice crackled over the device.

"Dad, you made it off.", Lara shouted excitedly as she was swooping the Falcon to chase a set of drones.

"No.", came the somber reply.

"What do you mean…", she started to say before the realization of what he meant hit her like a punch to the stomach.

"He's still on that ship-!", she screamed to her companions in the cockpit. "We're breaking off and heading back there. We have to get him."

Chewbacca howled in agreement as she threw the Falcon into a sharp one hundred and eighty degree turn back to the doomed flagship. What they all saw as the Falcon came about made each one's blood turn to ice.

The damaged enemy flagship had split into two pieces. One of them was smaller and seemed to have broken off from the bottom of the main hull. It was actually heading away from the battle with some smaller craft that looked like escape pods trailing it. The remaining part had engaged its sublight engines and was rocketing towards one of the other ships in its own fleet in an apparent attempt to ram it.

"Dad….NO-!", Lara cried into the commlink. "DON'T…"

"Lara, please tell you mother that I love her very much.", Han said with an emotional tremble in his voice.

"And I love you too." He continued, choking back tears. "Promise me you'll finish your training. The galaxy needs the Jedi and you will be the best one…the one that leads all others after Luke is gone."

Tears were rolling down Lara's cheeks and she watched the ship her father was piloting get ever closer to its final destination.

"Dad, I love you too and I promise.", she said so quietly that the others in the cockpit barely heard.

"Good Bye.", came the last words from her father as the enemy craft collided.

The view through the Falcon's windows became a blinding white flash of heat and light as both large capital ships exploded and sent debris in a thousand different directions. Several fighters on both sides were caught in the supernova, not able to get to safety. Others that had seen what was about to happen had been able to turn from the impending devastation and were now blasting away from the huge ball of energy, trying frantically to stay ahead of its shock wave.

Chewbacca howled in pain as the explosion continued to brighten in intensity. His best friend, the one who saved his life all those years ago was now gone. The Wookie pounded his fists in anger on the control panel in front of his co-pilots seat before heartbreakingly dropping his head and whimpering in deep sorrow.

Although the grief of her father's heroic death was stabbing her in the heart and making it difficult to process what would come next, Lara instinctively banked the ship's yoke hard right to turn away from the expanding plasma. A blast of the engines and they were again racing back towards Nuldarra just like after their escape.


Leia Organa felt a wave of grief as she watched the red hologram of the enemy flagship inexplicably turn course and fly into the red hologram of one of the bombers. As they both winked out of existence she knew what had happened. The pain of loss hit her mind with the ferociousness of the actual explosion itself high above the control dome, as she realized that she was never going to see her husband again. The man who almost ran away from her life so many years ago yet stuck around had just made the ultimate sacrifice to save his family and millions of beings on this planet.

She fell to her knees at the side of the holo-table prompting a rush of people to her side to find out what had happened and assist her if need be. Leia heard what seemed like a hundred voices asking her a thousand questions but she didn't respond. She remained slumped over to feel what The Force was telling her. She remembered a lesson that Luke had tried to impart to her about attachment and loss of loved ones. It made no sense to her then and made even less sense now. How are you supposed to celebrate a loved ones passing when all you can feel is blinding pain, she thought.

Suddenly, Leia saw Luke in front of her somehow. Of course, he wasn't really there and the more she looked the more she realized it was more of a "feeling" of Luke than an actual vision. He emanated grief. From far, far away he somehow knew what had happened. For what seemed like an eternity, they locked gazes. Both of them sharing in a moment of sadness and loss from across the universe. It was painful but yet, strangely comforting. When her brother finally nodded to her as if to say-It's going to be all right-and then faded from her mind, Leia regained her composure. She stood upright which had the effect of setting her concerned attendants at ease. She then set her attention again to the still smoldering battle above the planet.

"All forces, focus all of your energy on destroying the cannon underneath that last ship.", Leia commanded. "If we can, I want the vessel captured and boarded. Their surviving crew can provide us valuable information."

Replies flooded in on all channels and within minutes, the battle was officially over.

Leia turned from the hologram, exited the room without uttering another word and retired to her personal chamber.