Sorry for the delay in updates, everybody; I was recruited to a major Skyrim mod project and got thoroughly distracted by it! I promise to split my focus better moving forward. We're getting close to the finale, anyway!

ABOARD THE MALACHOR , 40 YEARS ABE:

The hallways of the Super Star Destroyer seemed oddly empty, but perhaps that was only to be expected: a ship this large required a crew of almost 300,000 just to operate and could hold more people than many cities. Roughly a third would be on duty at all times, assuming that the Malachor was flying with a full complement of staff. Given how depleted the Imperial fleet had become in recent years, Bail wouldn't have been surprised to learn that they were operating on a tighter personnel budget than was considered optimal. Add to that the fact that many of the stormtroopers and pilots who bunked on the ship were probably on or flying patrol over Coruscant right now, and the sparse hallways made sense.

They were still eerie.

Bail had spent a not-inconsiderable portion of his youth on military vessels. With a senator and a Jedi for one parent, a retired admiral for the other, and the head of the entire Jedi Order for an uncle-not to mention his wide-ranging assortment of adoptive quasi-relations who served the New Republic in a variety of roles-he thought of Mon Cal cruisers with the same comfortable fondness with which most beings regarded their childhood neighborhoods. More than a few vessels flying in the New Republic's navy were re-purposed Imperial ships, too, so he'd been on his fair share of Star Destroyers before this. He'd found them comparatively severe, even after New Republic retrofitting, but not distressingly so.

This was different.

It wasn't just the eerily-flat coloring-Imperial Gray from walls to ceiling, the homogeneity alleviated only by the color-leeching banks of vertical white glowpanels and the occasional blood red splash of a label or a control panel's buttons. (New Republic military vessels were hardly a rainbow themselves, but there was something about the precise shade of gray used by the Empire that drained all the life from a place.) Something about this ship felt different...dark.

Bail wondered if it was the mysterious presence he'd felt near Breha earlier.

He wondered if it was Revan.

The weight of the lightsaber hilt on his back was a comfort. So, oddly, was the presence of the former stormtrooper walking beside him. Bail hadn't known Finn for very long, but the man's aura in the Force was clear and bright and solid. He felt like someone who had a good heart, someone who could be relied upon. Bail didn't quite operate on the same level of gut-instinct as his father, who had never outgrown either his tendency to leap without looking or the good luck that let him land on his feet more often than not-but he was a Jedi. They learned to trust their feelings.

And his feelings told him that Finn, regardless of his history with the Empire, was trustworthy.

That didn't mean that Bail was ready to go around trusting every stormtrooper who crossed his path, of course. When a half-phalanx of six marched around a corner towards them, Bail had to fight the instinctive urge to swing the blaster he held up into firing position.

Instead he made himself focus on keeping his breathing even, to concentrate on matching the pace of Finn's steps with as much precision as the real stormtroopers matched one another's. It was hard; nothing in his life had ever prepared Bail Organa-Solo for conformity. But his sister's life might rest on him convincing these troopers that he was one of them so for Rey, he would try.

For a moment, it seemed like he was going to succeed. Then an officer-a major, according to her rank insignia-stepped crisply out of a turbolift tube and saw them all. "Troopers!" she snapped.

The six stormtroopers walking towards Bail and Finn spun immediately to face her, hands raising in salute. "Sir!" they barked.

Finn's halt-and-salute was just as fast, Bail moving a second slower and cursing himself. He had Jedi reflexes, and yet he had never learned how to jump to a superior officer's orders. Breha probably could have done it, for all that Rogue Squadron to this day remained one of the more irregular and iconoclastic of the New Republics' units-but Bail? He'd never had any military training, only Jedi instruction. And Jedi did not put much weight on ranks and orders.

Fortunately, the major had stopped them for a purpose other than a snap-inspection; if she noticed Bail's fumble, his hesitation, she ignored it.

"Come with me," she said. "There have been reports of anomalies in engineering sector 1138. We're going to make sure there's not a human cause, and kill it if there is."

"Yessir," the real troopers said. They held their salutes while she walked past them, then fell into step behind her with the same neat precision that had characterized their pace before the interruption.

Bail could feel Finn's worry radiating into the Force beside him. Every minute they delayed increased the risk that their ruse would be discovered; increased the danger facing Stella; increased the chances this rescue would fail and leave them all thrown into cells alongside Breha. They didn't have time to waste investigating engineering anomalies.

"Sir!" Bail said, doing his best to adopt the sort of crisp, brusque tones common to low-ranking Imperial troops. "We are already attending to other orders, sir." He hoped the helmet's vocoder would compensate for whatever elements of his polished Coruscanti accent he couldn't suppress-or that the major, if she noticed, would think that he was trying to sound like a higher-ranked officer, who all tended to adopt the accent in hopes of appearing sophisticated whether they had been raised on one of the Core Worlds or not.

The major turned her whole body sideways to look at him, an expression of appalled incredulity on her face. "Excuse me, trooper?"

"Sir! With regrets, sir, we are already attending to other orders, sir." Was this how stormtroopers spoke? Bail realized he had no real idea. They were usually just faceless agents of the enemy to him, a source of laserbolts to bat away and white-armored limbs to sever. He'd never thought to really listen to them before.

The major didn't seem to suspect anything was wrong, at least, although she wasn't cooperating either. "Well you have new orders now, trooper. So let's go."

She started forward again, clearly expecting Bail and Finn to follow.

Finn looked at Bail, his Force-presence frantic now, and raised his blaster slightly. The silent question was clear: were they going to have to try and fight their way out of this?

Bail gave his head a minute shake in the negative. He waited until the troopers had all marched past him, then stepped into place at the rear of the line-and held up one hand.

"We don't need to go with you," he said. He was no longer trying to sound like anything but what he was, although the helmet's vocoder rendered his soft voice harsh and strange.

The major and the stormtroopers following her all stopped. It was a unified halt, but lacked the crisp precision of their earlier steps. "You don't need to go with us," they all repeated, speaking together but not quite in perfect unison, giving their words a slight echo as they crossed one another.

Bail could feel sweat break-out on his brow. Controlling seven separate minds to such a degree all at once like this was difficult.

"You have enough support already. You will proceed to engineering without us."

"We have enough support already. We will proceed to engineering without you."

"In fact," Bail continued, "you will forget you ever saw us. There were only six stormtroopers in this hallway. We were never here."

"We will forget we saw you. There were only six stormtroopers in this hallway. You were never here."

"Good," said Bail, and lowered his hand to chest-height, palm still raised, as though preparing to ward-off a blow.

The major and her six stormtroopers resumed marching. They did not look back.

When they turned the corner, Bail dropped his hand. He heaved a deep breath, lowered his head for a moment, and waited for his heart to stop pounding.

It didn't.

"Let's go," he croaked.

Finn didn't say anything, but he started walking quickly. They were halfway to the turbolift before Bail realized that the other man was keeping a wider berth from him than he had before. Reaching out into the Force, he felt a cold, sickening spike of fear.

They reached the turbolift and Finn punched the controls to open the door. They stepped inside and it snapped closed behind them with the unsettling speed of Imperial architecture everywhere. Finn tapped the controls and the lift took off, whisking them down to the detention level.

Finn stepped to the far side of the turbolift and faced forward stiffly, clearly making an effort not to look at Bail. He was now cradling his blaster against his chest as though it was his only lifeline back from the frozen vacuum of the void.

Oh, Bail realized. Jedi.

"It won't hurt them," he said.

Finn flinched. "What?"

"The mind-trick I used. It won't hurt them. In a few minutes they'll forget it ever happened."

"Like they'll forget they ever saw us."

"Yes," Bail said, his voice bright with enthusiasm.

Finn held his E-19 tighter.

Beneath his helmet, Bail frowned, wondering why that had made things worse instead of offering the reassurance he had thought it would-and then it clicked. It wasn't that one moment that was upsetting Finn; all that had done was bring his simmering fear of the Jedi-of the Force-to the forefront. He'd been scared the whole time, Bail had known that, but he had ascribed it to the very reasonable fear of a man walking back into danger that he'd already run away from once. And surely he had been afraid of that, of what the Empire would do if they caught him-but he'd been afraid of more than that.

He'd been afraid of Bail.

Bail winced, clarity bringing with it a cold rush of regret.

"I'm sorry about...before, when I pretended that mom and I could use the Force to crack your brain open."

Bail's voice made Finn flinch, fearful of the inexplicable power that voice could hold. Then the words that the young Jedi was speaking penetrated, and he glanced sideways at him.

"I knew you were scared of Jedi, and I used that as a weapon against you. I'm sorry."

Finn lifted his shoulders in an awkward shrug. "You were trying to save your sister."

"Yes, but it was cruel."

Finn nodded, not quite accepting the apology but not rejecting it either. He was glad they were having this conversation with their helmets on. It made it easier, not having to look at Bail or know that Bail was looking at him.

"So...you can't really do that?" he asked anxiously. "Reach in someone's head and-and take out their thoughts, or whatever?"

Bail barked a laugh, the soft sound roughened by his helmet's vocodor. "No," he said. "That's not something Jedi can do. I wouldn't have even been able to make those troopers forget they saw us, if it had been for more than a few minutes. I could only reach that thought because it was still fresh in their brains, and not something memorable either. They probably walk past a hundred, five hundred stormtroopers a day. Folding the two of us in as just another fleeting glimpse in the hallway, not worth noting, not worth remembering when it happened or where-yeah, I could do that. But if we'd been, say, singing or dancing or sparring with lightsabers?" Bail chuckled. "They'd have remembered that even if I didn't want them to."

"Oh," said Finn. "So there's...limits. To what you can do. To people's thoughts."

"Of course," said Bail. He sounded surprised. "Loads. And any kind of mind-influence works best on a subject that's calm or distracted or otherwise not trying to fight it. It's hardly fool-proof. We don't really control people, Finn. Just...nudge them a little. Make a suggestion that seems like it came from inside their own head, rather than outside, and hope they're willing to follow it."

"So...that major, she could have still ordered us to go with her if she'd really wanted us to?"

Bail nodded. "Yeah, but she already had six stormtroopers. She didn't really need two more, and she knew it. We didn't matter, so it wasn't too hard to nudge her into thinking we didn't matter. Into thinking she'd never met us at all."

"Ah," said Finn. He wasn't used to the idea of Jedi having limits, but he supposed it made sense. If they didn't, the Empire would never have been able to stand against them for so long. "Huh."

Bail continued, "Jedi can't just rearrange people's minds, their memories, at will. Well…" He paused, making Finn's blood run cold again, then amended, "Maybe one or two of the most advanced teachers could, if they really put their minds to it. But it's not something most Jedi can do." Bail cocked his head; he sounded like he was grinning now. "And definitely not me."

"Huh," said Finn a second time. He wasn't sure he was convinced, but somehow he was reassured anyway. He shifted his weight, letting his blaster settle more naturally against his waist. "Well, that's good to know."

"We're really not that scary," Bail insisted. "Honest. I put my boots on one foot at a time just like any other biped. Sometimes I even trip over my own robes."

Finn snorted. He didn't believe that , but it was nice of Bail to pretend. It made him seem more...ordinary. Less like a nightmare creature of unfathomable powers who could take over your mind at a whim or slaughter an entire platoon single-handed.

Less like Revan.

The turbolift door slid up and they stepped out together into one of the main hallways of the detention bay. There was little to visually distinguish it from the rest of the ship, save for the small red markings in the corners of every transept that designated this as a high security area-well, that and the cell doors that lined the walls, of course.

"We gotta move fast," Finn said. It was easier to shake-off his unease about the Jedi when he had something to do, a mission to accomplish. He could shift his focus to that and push aside his fear. "The codes I got us will bypass the automated security, but there are human analysts on monitoring duty. If one of them spots a solitary stormtrooper on the holocams-or a trooper escorting a prisoner without backup-they'll send a squad to investigate."

"Got it," Bail said. "If you get into trouble, yell for me real loud in your head."

Finn started, gaping behind his helmet. "Will that...work?" he asked, not sure if he wanted Bail to be joking or not.

Bail shrugged. "Sometimes," he said.

Finn made a strangled noise that was as close as he could get right now to an acknowledgement.

Bail clapped him on the shoulder. "May the Force be with you," he said, and walked briskly towards the end of the hall.

Finn shuddered. "No thanks," he muttered and set off in the other direction. All he wanted to do was find this stupid Commander Dameron person and get out of here-and after that, away from the Jedi-as fast as possible. He walked down the detention sector hallway as quickly as he could go without actually breaking into a run. If someone in security monitoring spotted him down here alone, they'd try to comm him. When that didn't work-and it wouldn't, because his helmet's comm wasn't linked to the ship's systems-they would send a squad to investigate, but they wouldn't come in shooting just because of one misplaced stormtrooper.

An unidentified stormtrooper sprinting through the detention level, on the other hand, would look a lot more suspicious on the monitors, and a lot more like something that ought to be shot on sight-so he made himself walk. Even though every cell in his body wanted him to turn and run to the nearest escape pod as fast as he could go, he made himself walk forward at a steady-quick-pace towards cell 3261.

It was halfway down a branching hallway and Finn was so focused on getting to it that when he arrived, he almost walked past it before he realized. Jerking backwards, he fumbled the code-stick from his belt-pouch and inserted it in the door's reader. He tried not to look at the shiny black astromech plugged into a terminal five meters down the hallway. It was just an astromech performing some sort of maintenance task, and it ought to be paying him as little attention as he was it-it just felt like it was looking at him, because of the way the light hit its array of optical sensors. But right now any scrutiny made him sweat, even the imaginary.

Finn's breath caught in his throat as the computer cycled through the codes, deciding whether his access was legitimate. It should work-he'd downloaded them from a central computer node-but Finn was no slicer. If it didn't, he wasn't sure what he would do…

But then the red light over the door's controls switched to blue. Finn heaved a sigh of relief, grabbed the code cylinder, and stepped inside.

There was a man in an orange jumpsuit, tall and lanky, his black curls ragged, sitting up from the narrow bunk against the far wall. This had to be Commander Dameron; even if the data on the code-stick hadn't confirmed it, no one else on an Imperial Star Destroyer would be wearing that garish color.

Dameron spoke before Finn could even get his mouth open.

"Problem with the armory?"

That wasn't anything like what Finn had expected him to say.

He stared, dumbfounded. "What?"

Dameron smirked. Despite the puffy circles of exhaustion under his eyes and the scruff on his chin, he had a cocky sort of charm. "You're a lot shorter than my last stormtrooper," he said sardonically. "What happened, the armor shrink in the wash?"

Finn stared. "Huh?" he said, then his brain seemed to jolt back into gear. "Oh, you must be talking about Phasma." He shook his head. It was time to get this mission back on track, which meant jumping past whatever nonsense Dameron was spouting and explaining the situation. "I'm Finn Ghanti," he said. "I'm here to rescue you."

Dameron didn't look all that enlighted. "You're who?" he asked.

Finn frowned and yanked off his helmet. Maybe if he looked less like a stormtrooper, the Rebe-the New Republic pilot would be more inclined to trust him. "I'm here with Bail Organa-Solo and Stella Calrissian and I'm offering to get you out of this cell," he said impatiently, "do you really care who I am?"

Dameron shrugged. "Good point," he said and gestured towards the door. "Lead on."