Ahsoka couldn't decide between sobbing with relief or destroying every bit of furniture on the bridge in joy at the sound of Cody's voice. She settled for grinning wide enough for her face to ache. "Yes, absolutely. We've all missed you."

"Fair warning: I have a ship full of First Order cadets who will likely want to go home. We are helping them get home," Cody declared when she started to object. She could almost imagine his glare. "I've cut a deal here and we're going to keep it."

"Then they get as little exposure to us as possible." It would be a tremendous security risk to let them onboard the Raddus if they weren't staying. "Head to these coordinates and wait for the rest of us. Your vodë will be happy to see you again."

She sent the rendezvous information over and Cody's modified cruiser, barely visible beyond the battle, zipped off into hyperspace. Behind her, the General was already comming the medbay to prepare for a number of people needing genetics testing, in case any of the cadets Cody had rescued wanted to find their families.

Captain Solo stepped up beside Ahsoka to stare at the planet below, his eyes hollow and worried. "I can't imagine what seeing that must be like for you." He gestured to the vast, monolithic barrel of the laser projecting from a canyon cut across half the planet.

Ashoka swallowed hard. The sheer scale of the thing, what the Empire and First Order had done to Ilum, was devastating. "I'm trying not to look at it, honestly. It feels even worse." The entire planet was crying out into the Force with its pain; she'd sensed it from where the fleet had waited for Face Division's signal. Ilum had been twisted into a world of Darkness, not from malevolence or rage, but through agony and hopelessness.

"Your son isn't on that thing, is he?" she asked. Solo stared a bit longer, his lined face creased with concern.

"He is." He hesitated and then said softly, "I can feel it."

Ahsoka reached out and rested a hand on his shoulder. "He'll be alright."

Solo shook his head slowly. "He hasn't been alright for a long time. But thanks." He gave her a wan smile. "I just wish this wasn't happening."

She squeezed gently and let go. "One fight at a time."

"Yeah." He rubbed his jaw, rough with greying stubble. "I can't help but feel like it's my fault, somehow. Like, maybe if I'd taken the time to listen, or just spent more time with him…. But I was always there, when he was little. I helped him with his homework, took him to school." Solo laughed sadly. "Sometimes, on the days when there were no classes, I'd act like we were misbehaving - playing hooky, you know? - and take him out in the Falcon for the day. Just me and him. It was our little secret that wasn't really a secret. I can never see what I could have done differently."

"I felt that way for a long time, after I found out about Anakin," Ahsoka admitted quietly. "But we have to remember that the choices others make are not our responsibility. Nobody has that much influence over another person. Even Anakin turned against Palpatine, in the end."

"Yeah," he echoed softly. "You think there's a chance we can get him back?"

Ahsoka let herself really see Ilum, what was left of it, the mutilated shell of a once lovely, sacred world. This was Sidious' work, through and through: the man had left everything he touched scarred and tainted. "There's always a chance."

Spears of pain lanced up his left leg every time he put weight on it; something in his knee had been damaged in his fall. Kylo Ren ignored it, using the pain to strengthen himself through the Dark side, as his grandfather had taught him. His Knights formed up around him as he moved with purpose through the stark corridors of Starkiller Base.

Tension hung thickly in the command center and silence fell as he entered. Armitage Hux - who had taken over as General after his father Brendol's death under mysterious circumstances two years earlier - gave Kylo a thin smile as he stalked across the room. He and Kylo despised each other mutually, united only by their hatred of the Republic. To Kylo, Hux was a simpering social climber who had gained his position by removing his competition rather than trying to succeed on his own merit; to Hux, Kylo was little better than a mercenary, the Supreme Leader's pet enforcer who overstepped his authority on an almost daily basis and accounted for over half of the base's non-combat property damage.

"Lord Ren. Come to witness the first discharge of the greatest weapon ever built? Alas there's no time for an appropriate ceremony, but the opportunity-"

"Shut. Up," Kylo gritted between his teeth, ignoring the way several nearby troopers stiffened. "You will not fire on Phaseera. There is a prize on that planet worth claiming." He couldn't expect Hux to understand or appreciate the presence of Kylo's sister in the line of fire.

Hux aimed a disdainful glare in his direction. "My orders come from the Supreme Leader-"

"I am countermanding those orders." Under his mask, Kylo twitched a smile at Hux's angry flush: the other man hated being interrupted. "You will rescind the firing order immediately and stand down."

"You don't have the authority," Hux sneered.

Kylo pulled his lightsaber; several of the nearby crew flinched as it screeched to life, but he kept it down at his side angled towards the floor. "I can always ask your replacement to do it." He would happily liberate the man's head from his shoulders, but Hux had his uses in dealing with the Moffs. The troopers around them had drawn blasters; his Knights had their own weapons at the ready.

Hux's lips thinned. "There is a Resistance army on our doorstep, a Resistance fleet overhead, and you want us to delay eliminating their precious Jedi. No, I will not delay ignition for even a moment. Our time has come, Lord Ren. We cannot afford a delay."

If it hadn't been for the fact that Kylo's sister was on that world - that he had this one chance to find her and bring her to a place where she might receive proper training, where they might finish their grandfather's work to bring peace and order to the galaxy - Kylo might have admitted the argument was valid. But firing the Starkiller would kill the one person in the galaxy whom he cared about more than himself. He leveled his blade at Hux's chest, reducing the three metres between them by half.

All the internal lights went red and a deep, hooting alarm assaulted their ears.

Everyone twitched, and in that moment of distraction, something punched Kylo in the ribs, where his armour was thinner. He got his blade up in time to block Hux's second shot as the other man snarled, "Open fire!"

Command staff screamed and ducked below their desks as blaster bolts, almost invisible in the red light, filled the air. Kylo poured every bit of the fresh agony in his side into his defense, swatting lasers away from himself and the Knights as the Knights returned fire. In the hellish gloom, he thought he saw Hux fleeing the command centre with a set of guards.

Kylo severed a trooper's arm, the limb and weapon it had held falling to the floor, before stabbing them through the chest; the shielded plastoid might stop a stun burst, but it was no proof against concentrated plasma beams. The remaining stormtroopers died or retreated, leaving the command centre abruptly quiet.

Except for those damned alarms.

Kylo snapped his fingers at the nearest crewmember, still huddled under his station. "You. Find out why the evacuation alarm is going off."

"Y-yes, Lord Ren!" The man's hands shook visibly as he went into Starkiller Base's systems. "Sir, it... it looks like the reactor core is starting to overload!"

What. "Verify. Now!"

It took a minute more, everyone else in the room frozen in place as they waited. At last the crewman stiffened and practically bolted from his chair. "Confirmed reactor overload, manual source. This isn't an accident, sir, it's sabotage!"

In any other circumstance, Kylo would never have been so relieved. But this was still an important and expensive project. "Can you shut it down?"

"Negative, they've locked us out of the control system. We have fifteen minutes to get clear." The man looked up nervously. "Are you going to kill me if I run, sir?"

"No." Without waiting to see if the crew moved, Kylo turned on his heel, one hand pressed to his wounded side as he led his Knights to the upper-level secured hangar where his command shuttle was kept.

Nobody so much as glanced at Eight-Seven as he, Slip, and the younger trooper - who called herself Tane - led the Doctor and an enemy in trooper armour through the halls and into one of the crew lifts. By the time they'd reached the upper hangar level, where the speeders and evacuation craft were stored, the fifteen-minute evac alarms were battering their ears, and everyone had far bigger problems to worry about.

"This way!" He led them down a narrower corridor, away from the orderly panic of the crew in the main arteries. It was a risk being this close to the command centre, but if they ended up on an evac shuttle, all five of them would be in trouble. The personal hangars had the highest security on the base, but Eight-Seven had the access codes.

Captain Phasma had said Eight-Seven was the best of the best, one of the most promising. Officer quality. She'd probably have very different words for him if she saw him now.

She did. "FN-2187, you have abandoned your post." The sight of her towering chromed figure coming down a cross-corridor, black cloak streaming behind her, was going to haunt his nightmares for months.

There wasn't time to try to bluff her; if they let her get too close, they were all toast. Eight-Seven raised his blaster and fired without a second thought, pushing Doctor Tai-Sa behind him as he backed away from his commanding officer. "Run!"

She was fast, firing back with no hesitation, and Eight-Seven couldn't help a reflexive duck before reaching the protection of the next corner.

Kix joined him in providing covering fire; Eight-Seven would never have expected Slip or Tane to shoot at the Captain. Unlike he had in the field outside the secondary cargo hangar, the older man was laying down precise kill-shots that staggered her as they rebounded from her carapace and helmet. "Keep moving!" he yelled over the screech of battle.

Right: Eight-Seven was the one with the access codes. He hustled, still moving backwards down the hall. Slip and Tane had fetched up against the door with the Doctor shielded behind them. Fumbling a little, Eight-Seven punched the codes in with a shaking hand. The door seemed to take aeons to process the command, and he turned to add cover fire for Kix. The enemy medic was an astonishingly good shot, and Eight-Seven shifted his aim toward Captain Phasma's head and chest, yelling, "Go low!"

Kix got it: his next shot took Phasma in the knee joint, sending her stumbling to the floor.

The door finally opened and Eight-Seven shoved the others through, waited for Kix to pass him, and ducked into the hangar himself before hitting the door controls and locking them.

"Shouldn't you shoot the controls out?" Kix asked as they ran for one of the smaller shuttles.

Eight-Seven shook his head. "That doesn't work here; it locks the door open," he said between gasps for air. "You know how to fly this thing?"

The ramp opened smoothly and Kix shrugged. "Shuttle controls are pretty universal." The older man barely sounded winded at all, and Eight-Seven couldn't help a twinge of envy. "Any of you shinies got pilot training?"

All three of them shook their heads - the Doctor simply gave Kix a patient stare as she strapped herself into one of the jump seats - and Kix sighed. He tossed his borrowed helmet into the cargo area and shucked the armour, which he'd insisted on squeezing over his fatigues. "Right. Eight-Seven, you're my copilot." He pointed at the chair on the right. "Obviously, I am not officially a pilot, so it'll probably get bumpy. Strap in, and no screaming."

The evacuation alert had locked all hangar bay doors open, so getting out wasn't a problem. The ship wobbled a bit on its repulsors as the wings lowered into flight configuration, but Kix's hands were steady and confident on the controls. Eight-Seven stared at the panel in front of him, trying to make sense of what he was looking at.

"That's navigation," Kix said, pointing to one part of the panel. They slipped easily into the flock of ships abandoning the main base, and he pointed to another part of the panel. "That's comms. Turn it on. The green switch there. See those numbers? Set it to channel 1138, and plug this in." He handed Eight-Seven a code cylinder without looking.

Channel 1138 was nothing but garbled nonsense until the code cylinder did its job decrypting things. Then voices blared into the cockpit, the call and response of fighter pilots and commanders in battle. Eight-Seven fumbled for one of the headsets, hoping that listening to the direct output would help him parse things better.

They stayed among the fleeing First Order ships until they were beyond the upper atmosphere; then Kix slowly eased them away from the rest. He angled them towards the biggest ship in the Resistance fleet, and it didn't take long for them to notice.

"Attention, First Order shuttle Aurek-23, this is the Resistance ship Raddus. You are entering an active combat zone; if you do not alter course, you may be caught in the crossfire."

That was unexpectedly civil of them. Eight-Seven glanced at Kix, who reached over and punched in an ID. "Commander Kix here. I got split off from my Division and had to steal a ship to extract Doctor Tai-Sa. An escort in would be appreciated."

When the voice on the other end replied, they sounded much more friendly. "Ident check confirmed, Commander. We'll send some volunteers to make sure you get home safe."

Home. Eight-Seven sat back in his chair, stunned at the sudden realisation that he wouldn't be able to go home. Whatever 'home' might be. The place he had trained and grown up was about to become several million metric tons of space debris.

A new voice from the comm, warm and lightly teasing, broke his train of thought. "Hey there, Aurek-23, you look a little out of place."

Eight-Seven looked at Kix, who waved a hand loosely; the older man was busy with the controls. Clearing his throat, he stuttered, "Uh, yeah, you could kind of say that." A glance out the window showed two black-painted X-wing fighters taking up escort positions ahead of them.

"Well, I'm Black Leader. Me and Black Three here will get you through this mess. What's your name, buddy? You're definitely not the Commander."

Kix was rolling his eyes, grinning. "Black Lead's just like that, Shiny. You can chat, the comm's secure."

Twitching a grin, Eight-Seven said, "Right," and hit the button to respond. "I, uh. I'm FN-2187. I helped your Commander."

There was a long silence as a pair of X-Wings formed up with them. A woman's voice - Black Three - said, "You're First Order?"

"I- well, no, I guess I'm not, anymore."

Black Leader came back, sounding offended. "I can't call you that, that's not a name. FN, huh? How about Finn?"

Eight-Seven stared speechless at the comm. His first meeting with the Resistance and they were offering him a name? Names were special among the First Order stormtroopers: they had to mean something.

Kix was looking at him, eyebrows raised; a relic of a previous generation who had also only been given a number and a blaster, ordered to fight and die for an army he'd never signed up for. "What do you think, Shiny?"

A massive grin spread across his face and he replied, "Finn. I like it. Call me Finn."

Phasma used the wall to lever herself up; she couldn't quite suppress a groan at the flare of pain in her knee.

FN-2187, FN-2003, and TA-9320 were already gone with the enemy agent and their captive - she would never get the door open in time. The traitors' tags in her HUD burned into her eyes; their betrayal was too great to even respond to. The evacuation alarm was their doing; the presence of the enemy agent suggested they had helped him engineer the destruction of Starkiller Base.

It was unthinkable. FN-2183's performance had been exemplary, her only concern regarding his tendency to cover for FN-2003's errors, but had never questioned his loyalties. FN-2003, called 'Slip' for his clumsiness, was a weak link in the FN squad, but he was fanatically dedicated. TA-9320, 'Tane', had looked to be following in FN-2187's footsteps down the officer track.

What had happened?

Her fellow Captain's words came back to her. " If we want to build the First Order to be better than the Empire, we can't keep repeating our predecessors' mistakes." Could Pfie Geritt have created sleeper agents among their troopers? No, too complicated. The man had treated them like his children: he had taught them empathy.

Gritting her teeth, Phasma limped down the corridor toward the nearest open hangar. The old man would have some explaining to do the next time they met.

"Captain!"

She glanced over her shoulder. General Hux and several guards were hurrying toward her.

"You're injured! What happened?"

She allowed GC-6249 to support her at Hux's command. Showing weakness was not permitted… but dying because she couldn't reach a shuttle in time was foolish. "FN-2187, FN-2003, and TA-9320 are traitors. Where is GC-8319?" The General's personal guard was missing someone.

Hux's face pinched. "Kylo Ren has turned against the Supreme Leader and attempted to lead a mutiny."

That did not surprise her at all. "I see. We need to regroup." As soon as they were aboard the shuttle, she shook off her support and settled into the pilot's chair. "Give the order to have Captain Geritt detained when we reach the rendezvous. I have questions for him."

Kix set their stolen shuttle down unevenly in the Raddus' hangar, apologising to his passengers for the bump as one of the repulsors cut out too early. All of his brothers had been trained to pilot basic air- and spacecraft, because emergencies were inevitable, but that didn't mean they were all virtuosos like Oddball. Beside them, a battered shuttle with extensive modifications settled far more gently; someone else had shown up to the party, likely a Fulcrum agent.

Kix couldn't wait to see the look on Cody's face.

"Alright, kids, helmets off. Resistance security will want a few words with you." He herded them down the ramp behind the doctor, who was looking around with a massive smile. She looked like she was taking her first breath of fresh air in forty years, and maybe she was. The fact that it was many-times recycled and laden with the heated-metal stench of fuel and the deceptively sweet aroma of repulsor downwash didn't seem to matter.

Slip, Tane, and the newly-dubbed Finn shifted uncomfortably as they watched people bustling back and forth. The side hatch on the other shuttle opened and Jesse hopped out; he sprinted over to Kix and Kix's ducklings stiffened. Kix's riduur crashed into him, staggering him backwards a step and kissing him firmly before pretending to do a visual inspection.

"Are you sure you're alright, cyarë?" he asked, pushing Kix's eyebrow up with his thumb and peering at his eye. Kix put his hand over Jesse's face and pushed him back a bit, grinning.

"I'm fine, di'kut. I'll let Perrin and Ahsoka check me over once everything settles down." A check from a Force user would probably be more useful: Kix was familiar enough with his own symptoms to know he definitely had a concussion, but having the inside of his head scrambled around was an unfamiliar situation.

"Who's all this?" Jesse asked, eyeing the ducklings.

"Finn, Slip, Tane, and that's Doctor Anann Tai-Sa. This is my husband, Jesse," Kix said with an eyeroll.

The ducklings were staring at Jesse wide-eyed, and eventually Tane ventured, "I'm sorry, sir… it's just that you look remarkably like Captain Geritt. More than- than your husband does." She flushed a darker green at the idea.

Jesse posed with a hand held primly under his chin. "This used to be the best-known face in the galaxy, kiddo. There were millions of us." He gestured to the shuttle, where a platoon - Trapper's, it looked like - was forming up as they disembarked.

Kix did a double take and swore at Jesse, punching his arm. "How long were you planning on waiting before telling me?" Before Jesse could answer, Kix jogged over to where a man with a heartbreakingly familiar tattoo was standing with his helmet clutched under one arm. "Dogma?!"

The other man's eyes went huge. "Kix? Jesse told us you were on ice for forty years, but… wow."

Kix grabbed his brother in a tight hug. "You're still younger than me. What the hell are you doing here? They marched you off and you just disappeared after that banthashit went down with Krell."

Dogma grimaced; none of them had fond memories of Umbara. "Fox messed with the prison records, stuck a bucket over my head, and called me Law for a couple years. Nobody ever asked." His smile was an unhappy, twisted thing. "It was pretty obvious how much of a damn the nat-borns really gave about us. But, uh. If you think I'm a surprise, we've got a better one, who's being a little shit and hiding in the ship to pop out and say 'boo'," he added, raising his voice.

"You never let me have any fun!" Another man hopped out, landing with one hand on Dogma's shoulder and the other on Kix's. "Hey Kixeypoo."

Kix stared at him for a long moment. Then he pointed. "YOU."

"Oh, shit, I pissed off the medic!" The man - Fives, how was he Fives?! - raised his hands to ward off Kix's furious glare. "Dogma?"

"Nah, this one's all on you, vod. Have fun!" Dogma said happily and wandered off to talk to Rex.

Fives yelped as Kix grasped his face in both hands and dragged him in to press their foreheads together. Tears prickled Kix's eyes and he blinked them back. "You'd better have a damned good explanation for being alive."

The tension bled out of Fives' frame - more solidly bulked now that they were no longer on the ridiculous ration restrictions of the GAR - and he reached up to wrap a hand around the back of Kix's neck. "You don't look a day older than when I last saw you in 79s."

"Yeah, about that…."

Fives winced. "Yeah, Jesse told me. I'd apologise for getting you involved, but things seem to have worked out?"

"You couldn't have known Dooku would have his operatives grab me." Kix pulled back a little. "So what's your story?"

"Remember what they did for General Kenobi when they made it look like he'd been assassinated? Same thing, except Fox didn't warn me first." Fives turned to glare at the man in question, who had taken a seat on the edge of the hatch to watch them.

Fox shrugged. "Something wasn't sitting right with me, but with Fives being paranoid, it seemed better to beg forgiveness than ask permission."

"I still haven't forgiven you for it, you know."

"Oh, I know." Fox dropped to the deck and hugged Kix. "But you're alive, and it's a price worth paying. We took our chips out as soon as he told us about them," he explained. "Went AWOL during the chaos of Order 66, ended up part of an Alliance operations cell in the back of beyond, real isolated. Got recruited by a Fulcrum agent who had connections to get us a fix for the double aging crap."

Fives offered a sad smile. "We had no idea any of the rest of you were still kicking shebs until earlier this year. Fox wasn't kidding about us being isolated."

Kix aimed a finger at him and was about to make a crack about their team being overdue for a physical when the timer he'd set on his chrono went off. He swore, hurrying to look out through the Raddus' open hangar door with the others following behind. The bisected sphere of Ilum hung in the distance below them. It still looked like a pearl, despite what had been done to it. "I hope we're far enough out-"

"We told them to start pulling back,"Jesse said as he came over and wrapped his arm around Kix's waist.

There was no change for a few tense minutes, and Kix wondered if someone had caught the overload in time to reverse the effects. Then a glow started deep within the canyon, near the base of the superlaser, growing brighter with each second, until something ruptured. Blinding energy streamed out of the gash across Ilum's equator, taking the easiest way out. Three First Order ships hanging too close and too low on the orbital plane were obliterated, tiny pinpricks of distant explosions ahead of the disk of the energy flare.

A high-pitched sound, like an insect whine, built in volume until everyone in the hangar was pressing their hands to their aural sensory organs. Kix doubled over in pain: the noise wasn't audible, it was inside his head, and nothing could block it.

On the Raddus' bridge, Ahsoka caught Captain Solo as he staggered. She pressed a hand to her montral and focused on her shields, wrapping as much protection around her mind and Han's as she could as Ilum's death throes swept outwards. Dimly, she sensed the General on the other side of the bridge doing the same.

It wasn't merely the sound of all life on Ilum crying out in terror, it was the crystals themselves releasing their pain into the Force all at once. Ahsoka gritted her teeth and smoothed the surface of her shields until they were like a water-scoured rock, allowing the torrential currents to buffet harmlessly past.

"Uncle Luke? Something's wrong."

Luke Skywalker glanced away from the six youngest students he was teaching to see Rey, who was rubbing her temples as if she had a headache, coming across the grassy yard. Now that he turned his own focus inwards, he could feel it too.

And it was building.

"Hold!"

Every student immediately pulled their training sabers back to guard and stepped back from their partner. Luke motioned them to gather around him. "Quickly, focus your shields like we taught you."

He ended up with Rey tucked against his right side and eight-year old A'mar, one of their foundlings, wrapped around his left leg. Luke's own shields he stretched out over the group - they were barely beginners and whatever was coming was bigger than they could withstand.

It struck like a cresting wave, crashing down over their heads; someone whimpered, but Luke could feel all of them holding strong - stronger together than they were individually. He sheltered the children from the worst of it; beside him, Rey added her own strength, keeping their youngest from experiencing the pain and horror that washed through the Force.

It was over with shocking suddenness, the shriek of a dying world tapering into a hoarse whisper. And just at the end, Luke could have sworn it felt not like disappointment or despair, but gratitude.

Kix's head was pounding even worse than before, and several people had fallen to their knees. One of his ducklings, Finn, had collapsed at the foot of the stolen shuttle's ramp, and a Resistance security officer was checking the kid over.

Doctor Anann Tai-Sa, unwilling designer of the Sunbeam superweapon, knelt before the hangar's force field, sobbing into her hands in relief.