The Mandalorian had ordered them to remain outside of his vessel while he inspected it. Or locked up his belongings. Or perhaps both. Cassian wasn't sure what the Mandalorian was so insistent upon hiding – but it gave the spy time to get his bearings.

Poe Dameron had quite literally fallen into Cassian's path. He brought with him a relatively new X-wing, unscathed by their crash-landing, and knowledge of the galaxy's state of affairs thirty years down the line. The pilot was utterly convinced he was telling Cassian the truth, and he'd done nothing to otherwise suggest he was impaired in some manner. Short of a bruised leg he'd incurred while mucking about their cargo hold mid-crash, he'd gotten off lightly compared to Cassian.

And then there was the matter of his surname.

Dameron.

Cassian was positive he'd heard the name before. He just couldn't recall where, or even when… until the Mandalorian bounty hunter revealed his purpose on Geezor.

The Mandalorian was hunting for a Kes Dameron, ordered by a Republic senator.

How interesting.

His back ached from where the Mandalorian had slammed him into Geezor's unforgiving rocky ground, his knees all scraped up. He'd followed the bounty hunter without question – if he wanted answers, the man's ship was the best way to retrieve them. Then he could prove (to himself) that Poe was indeed from the future.

Because at the moment, too many variables weren't adding up. Poe Dameron falls through a temporal anomaly from thirty years in the future, just in time to encounter a Mandalorian bounty hunter looking for his father, Kes? Cassian Andor wasn't one to believe in coincidences.

"What do you think he's doing in there," Poe muttered, his bound hands pressing into the skin below his chin, pulling them away every so often to check if he was still bleeding. He wasn't. "Do you think he's cleaning up or something?"

Cassian grimaced, shuffling on his feet. He wasn't quite sure what to make of the Mandalorian's hesitation to allow them aboard, but frankly, he didn't give a damn. He had many questions about the Mandalorian's ship as it was – the model was new, if he recalled correctly, yet this vessel looked like it'd been torn apart and put back together again. Either the bounty hunter had seen many combat skirmishes (unlikely, since the ship didn't appear equipped very equipped for that right now) or something else was going on.

If they could get back into space, have BB-8 run those scans, he was fine with the Mandalorian hiding whatever he wanted to hide.

"Accept his hospitality," Cassian warned. "We need his ship."

Poe rose an eyebrow, raising and nodding to his cuffed hands – a gesture of the Mandalorian's 'hospitality'.

"Just cooperate," the spy huffed. He thumbed around his pocket for his commlink, paging K-2SO. "Kay? Kay, are you there?"

He was met with silence.

"You sure he's okay? He took a pretty nasty hit," said Poe.

"He's fine. He's just being-"

"I'm not talking to you," came the voice of one very upset ex-Imperial droid. Cassian rolled his eyes.

"I'm sorry. We had little choice."

"So I should be thankful you even bothered to check on me?"

"Kay-"

"Don't you 'Kay' me!" exclaimed the droid. "I'm down one arm thanks to your armoured friend – do you know how long it's going to take to find a replacement?"

"Days?"

"Days- I mean-" K-2 made a verbal show of 'coughing'. "Yes. Days."

"I'm sorry you got caught up in our… tiff, but I need you on standby. Start pulling parts from the Rogue Star you think might help repair that X-wing."

Poe perked up at that. "You should ask him about foreign equipment embedded into the hull."

Cassian's eyebrows pulled together in silent query.

"Don't you want to know what you hit?" Poe clarified. Cassian rubbed at his eyes, disappointed he'd missed that line of investigation himself.

"Kaytoo, take a look at the impact damage from our flight. Try to determine what we hit."

"Because that's relevant right now," K-2SO grumbled.

"You never know," Cassian muttered. "I'll contact you when we return."

The closed the com channel.

The ramp of the Mandalorian's ship hissed, extending out to the ground once more. The bounty hunter stood at the top and gestured for them to enter. "Don't touch anything," he said.

Cassian and Poe nodded. The pilot made a show of glancing around, taking in as much of the ship as possible. Cassian followed the bounty hunter to the cockpit, no questions asked.

He dropped into a seat behind the bounty hunter, grateful at the chance to take a seat after so long standing. His neck – and now his shoulders and back – protested movement. After the Rogue Star's crash, he was pushing himself too hard. Poe remained standing, still getting a good look at the ship's controls.

"How far?" the Mandalorian asked.

Poe glanced at Cassian for the answer. Right, Cassian thought to himself. Poe had been knocked unconscious during the trip. And cuffed to a bed while they tried to determine who he was.

"Follow my ship's ion trail off-world."

The bounty hunter began the ship's pre-flight sequence, shuddering as it lifted from the ground. A twinge radiated up the side of Cassian's neck – earning a sympathetic glance from Poe when he rubbed at it.

"It looks… smaller."

The vicious cloud was widespread. Grey puffs dimmed the illumination of the stars far on the other side, giving the area of dusty look. It did not appear dense – only chaotic, swirls expanding across darkness, lightning cracking through them. When K-2SO piloted them through it, Cassian hadn't had the time to really get a good look at its appearance. He didn't appear to miss much. Frankly, he didn't really want to get any closer.

"It looks the same," Cassian countered. "Or, at least, I think it does."

"Alright, Beebee-Ate," Poe said to the small droid. "Tell us what you know."

The Mandalorian's helmet turned ever so slightly toward the droid. Cassian couldn't determine whether it was curiosity or caution. His gloved hands remained firmly on his ship's controls, and he said nothing while BB-8 worked. The spy's eyebrows pulled together, bottom eyelid twitching when BB-8 started whistling in its odd abbreviated binary.

"Whoa," Poe stuttered toward BB-8. "Slow down. Radiation?"

The unit whistled again – though this time, Cassian could keep up. "Chronometric radiation," he said. The droid expressed its approval at his translation, performing its impression of a nod.

"Chronometric radiation… means time travel, right? That's not a made-up thing?"

"No. There was work done, many years ago by the Republic, theorising potential travel between specific points in time."

Poe gaped. "…right."

"It was abandoned fairly quickly. Man does not have the technology to manipulate time itself. The Jedi once considered it a talent of theirs, but… they never shared any information, and their practises were theorised never to involve matter or radiation," the spy explained. He had to avoid eye-rolling at a term coined by resistance fighters that spoke of the subject – 'space magic' didn't really have a place in Cassian's vocabulary. He believed, with little doubt, that everything could be explained. "But chronometric radiation was at least documented – it's a natural phenomenon. Its discovery was meant to put to rest distress regarding pilots going missing. Mysterious rumours. Those kinds of things."

"Exactly what happened to me 'things'," the pilot said bluntly. "So… what, I can just fly back through it and end up back in my own time?"

Cassian had opened his mouth to respond, but BB-8 chirped again, rather urgently. "Picking up an old Imperial signal," Poe relayed. Cassian's chest tightened. "Not a ship, though. A beacon of some kind."

"Communications beacon?" asked the Mandalorian – the first he'd spoken since they'd taken off.

"No, it's… navigational?"

Cassian rubbed at his chin. He'd never heard of the Empire needing a navigational beacon. The Geezor system wasn't important by any stretch of the imagination. It lacked any kind of resource viable for the Empire and held no population worth exploiting. It wasn't exactly dense in navigational dangers, either – aside from this radiation cloud, maybe.

…could the Empire be exploiting the cloud?

"We haven't encountered any imperial vessels yet," Cassian said slowly to the Mandalorian. "It's worth the risk to investigate."

He was met with silence. After a moment of what Cassian hoped was contemplation, the bounty hunter flicked at his control panel. The ship's engines started once more, and they changed course. They flew alongside the cloud, a large breadth of space between it and the ship keeping them firmly out of harms way.

There, just in the distance, was the imperial beacon BB-8 had spoken about. The large cylindrical object had antennae pointed directly toward the cloud. Automatic thrusters appeared to keep it in alignment with the phenomenon.

It was also severely dented in its middle. Further inspection gave the three sight to electrical sparks zipping across its panelling.

"I would bet all my available credits," Poe drawled with a smile spreading across his face, "that was the thing you hit."

Cassian thought back to the damage on the Rogue Star's wing, of a different calibre than the damage caused by the crash landing. He wouldn't be able to confirm without bringing the beacon aboard, but it was entirely possible the component Poe pulled from the Rogue Star belonged to this beacon. Its thrusters would have brought it back into alignment with the storm after the collision.

But what was its purpose here?

"Beebee-Ate," Cassian turned to the droid. "Is the beacon broadcasting?"

It nodded, whistling what sounded like coordinates – though they were four sequences too long to be anywhere Cassian recognised. He asked the droid to repeat the digits again, but they were the same – the droid wasn't wrong. Cassian gave a frustrated huff, his shoulders heavy as he leaned back in his chair.

"Piloting coordinates are based on the X and Y axis of the galaxy, so… these are-"

"Incorrect," muttered Cassian behind closed eyes. His teeth clenched as a muscle in his neck spasmed. "They're too long."

"No- Cassian, these aren't spatial coordinates. This thing is parked next to a chronometric radiation cloud – these must be temporal coordinates. Buddy, repeat the sequence."

And so BB-8 did, Poe following the binary with an explanation of year and month (the two sequences Cassian had assumed to be the spatial coordinates), followed by day, hour, minute, and second.

"I don't get it," Poe muttered. "I thought this morning you said it was 7976."

Cassian briefly cracked an eye open. "It is 7976."

"If my math is right, this beacon is broadcasting coordinates for-" he froze for a moment, a shudder running across the pilot's chest. "7987."

The spy's eyes opened wide at that information. He shot upright in his chair, staring through the window toward the beacon outside. "It might have changed the coordinates recently?"

The pilot failed to answer. He looked shell-shocked, brown eyes staring far away as his bound hands clutched at a small object on a chain around his neck – a ring, maybe. Cassian hadn't noticed it before, but it had relevant sentimental value to the pilot now.

The Mandalorian made a small, amused huff under his helmet. That was all Cassian needed. "…it's us, too. Kaytoo and I… were… pulled out of our time?" he asked the bounty hunter.

The helmet turned to him. No words were spoken.

"Then… this beacon-"

"Can get us back," Poe said quietly. He blinked, swallowing. He dropped his hands away from the chain around his neck.

"This means the Empire is capable of temporal travel," Cassian breathed. "This takes precedence, Poe. I'm sorry."

"Excuse me?"

"I have to get this back to the Rebellion. Immediately."

"I need to go home!"

"And once we deliver this information to my superiors, I will personally see to it."

"What happened to preserving the timeline?"

Cassian struck him with a sharp, cold look. "You are a member of an evolved rebellion are you not? This information can help us end our war decades before yours even begins! With this technology, we can turn the tide!"

"Cassian – my war is over!" Poe exclaimed. "I can't just undo everything we did, everything we worked for! The people we lost- how does this make their sacrifices worth anything?"

"Think about it. If the Rebellion goes back, corrects the mistakes the Republic made, your people won't be sacrificed in the first place."

Poe's mouth snapped shut, his eyebrows tight in their place. He was at loss.

Good, Cassian thought. This was the logical course.

He turned his attention back to the Mandalorian. "If we alter the coordinates, you can take us-"

"I'm not taking you anywhere."

Hearing him speak was a shock to Cassian's system. Even Poe was startled. "Holy kriff he spoke more than two words."

"Mandalorian… your people are scattering under the Empire's weight. They know not who to trust." The spy leaned forward, clasping his hands together. "We can change what happened, to your people. And to mine."

"Cassian…" the pilot warned in the background, but the spy and the Mandalorian were locked in a gaze with each other.

Silence permeated the cabin again. But Cassian was sure. If they could harness the way the Empire was manipulating this chronometric cloud… they could fix everything. They could end the fight, they could rest. They could set time as they liked. This was a good thing, to exist without the Empire. Without the Republic, to be independent.

"I'm not interested," the Mandalorian said. "Do what you like. I want no part in it."

Cassian pulled back. So that's how it would be.

Fine.

"Then we need another ship. The X-wing won't hold all of us, and it can't tow the Rogue Star."

A quiet sigh emitted from the helmet. "I know someone nearby that may be able to help."

"Drop me off back at the X-wing first," snapped Poe. Cassian turned, raising an eyebrow toward him in query. "Kaytoo will need help making repairs."