Prologue

Dark. The night sky above her was pregnant with rain, heavy and menacing. Deep rumbles of thunder wrapped around her like a cloak: intimate, like they existed for her alone. A single bolt of lightning tore through the air, just bright enough for her to see an endless expanse of sky above her. Another sharp burst of light and she could see a beautiful, hovering city, rising pearlescent through the caliginous clouds.

The air was cold, biting into her skin like ice. She ignored it. She had a purpose, a mission, and lives depended on her success. The Alliance? Yes, of course. But more than the Alliance, too. Something more elemental, deeper; a fight for survival, for good, that spanned generations, millennia, one that eclipsed her fight against the Empire.

She felt small, a spark of light in a cloaked hood of astronomical size. One of trillions but the only one wearing white. She turned her head, stepped around herself in a circle. No one else, no other points of light. Utterly alone in the vastness.

All alone … but for a seeping darkness. Heavy. Strangling. She imagined it in a corner: huddled, breathing heavy and wrapped in a robe of empty nothingness. Like gravity, it pulled bodies toward itself: engorged in matter, stealing light.

"Hello?" she shouted into the void. "Who's there?"

But the void didn't answer in words, only in great peals of thunder. Booms like ion cannons echoed around her like she was in a giant room. She eyed the great, floating city, a peaceful contrast against the rip-roar of the storm around her.

Was this her mission? She didn't know.

She took a step, confident and sure, but fell. Weightless and yet duracrete-heavy, she tumbled through the sky like a rock, the dark clouds of the storm devouring her whole as she slipped beneath the city. They offered nothing to stop her fall; she reached and reached but nothing had shape or form. It was all cloud and vapor.

"Han?" she yelled into the darkness. "Luke!"

They were here somewhere, she knew. She could feel them, feel the bubbling, excitable energy of Luke, the calmer, more combustible aura of Han. They were focused on another task, something else, separate from her mission but in lock-step. Where were they? They could help, they could—

I have them, a deep voice said.

She wasn't sure if the voice had form or not, if it existed in the midst of the freefall or only in her head. It felt close, like a breath on her neck. Near enough to fight, surely, and she was ready to fight for her men, for the men who fought for her.

"Chewie!" She tried to push back the despair. If Chewie was here, everything could be saved. Chewie could help her, could sense where they all were—

I have all of them.

"Where?" she asked, her voice tinny in the wind of her fall. She couldn't see anything anymore; the lightning had fled and the thunder had only come closer.

The voice didn't answer. Dread ran circuits down her spine.

"Chewie!" she screamed into the night. "Han!"

They are mine, the voice said but now it sounded more like the thunder itself, deep and owning, surrounding her on all sides as the air pressure dropped.

She tried to cry out but the darkness enveloped her. She resisted, flinging her arms and legs wide to fight, but it was too strong, like a heavy, cold, wet blanket. She couldn't move, couldn't breathe, couldn't think.

Who are you? she asked but it wasn't from her lips. It was a thought, a wisp of an inward cry. She tried again. What do you want?

I'm coming, it said, and the pressure strangled her into blackness. I'm coming.

Author's Note: Welcome back! I'm so excited to share this continuation of C&P with you!

To celebrate the kick-off of this sequel, I will be posting chapter 2 next Friday, November 1st. From then on, C&P2 will update on the first of each month. I know you guys would rather get regular updates and a happy author than an anxious one who disappears under the strain of weekly updates. Thank you for your support: I think this schedule will work best for everyone.

Special thanks to AmongstEmeraldClouds, who has agreed to beta this story over the next several months. She's in it for the long haul and will make this crazy story better for all of you, adding a second set of eyes to a plot that could swallow all of us whole if I let it. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

And, lastly, thank you for coming back for a second course of C&P. This story is a labor of love and I know I can trust my readers to be kind in their comments and reviews. Strap in tight, my friends. We're in for a wild ride. -KR