ABOARD THE MALACHOR, 40 YEARS ABE:

The deckplates were cold and hard under Bail's armored back, but the booted foot resting on his torso was colder and harder.

He raised his hands and took a breath, trying to gather his thoughts for a Force-push. Phasma gave him no time to focus. She reached down and grabbed him by the edge of his cracked chestplate, jerking him up towards her, and raised her shining fist in the air. Bail squeezed his eyes shut, struggling to center himself in the Force and, for once, failing-

Then his and Phasma's heads both snapped around to stare as a furious bellow cut through the hollow peal of the ship's alarms.

A stormtrooper with a burned black streak along his shoulder charged them like a battering ram, slamming into Phasma hard enough to throw her rolling across the floor in a clatter of armor plates, her cloak flapping around her like broken wings. Bail hit the deck as well, unable to get his feet under himself in time, and rolled back over to stare at his inexplicable rescuer. Why would a stormtrooper-? And then he understood.

"Finn?" he gasped.

Phasma threw her cloak out of her helmeted eyes and lurched back to her feet.

"Traitor scum!" she shouted, her voice a screech of shock and outrage.

"That's right!" Finn retorted, tearing off his helmet with one hand and thrusting the other down towards Bail.

Bail grasped it and let Finn haul him to his feet. If the wound that surely had to be lurking beneath that scorched streak on his armor pained him, he seemed too distracted by everything else that was happening to notice.

"I am FN-2187 and my name is Finn Ghanti, and I am a traitor to the Empire!"

"You're also unarmed," Phasma sneered, shaking off the tumble and curling her hands back into fists, "and about to die. So I hope your pretty little moment of defiance was worth it."

"It was," Finn said firmly, and reached back to pop open the canister on the back of his belt.

He meant to hand the lightsaber within to Bail, but Phasma moved faster than he'd anticipated-faster than anyone that large in armor that solid should have been able to. She was on them before Finn could do more than draw the hilt out. Instinctively, he shoved the injured Bail out of the way of her charge, sending him sprawling back across the deck, and thumbed the button on the unfamiliar weapon in his hand.

A blaze of purple light shot out with a snap-hiss and Finn got it up just in time to block Phasma's first blow. He blocked the second, too, but her third punch landed a glancing hit to his injured shoulder and he stumbled, groaning with pain, and barely managed to deflect the next one.

Phasma kicked one of his legs out from under him, but Finn brought the lightsaber down on her shoulder as he stumbled and the shower of sparks made her turn her face away instinctively, giving him just enough of a breather to lurch back to his feet. He glanced sideways towards Bail, hoping to hand the lightsaber over to someone who actually knew how to use it.

The young Jedi, instead of getting back to his feet and either rejoining the fight or running while he had the chance, had folded himself into a tailor's seat on the floor and now held his hands pressed against his face, eyes closed in concentration.

Finn had no more attention to spare for Jedi foolishness; it was all he could do to keep up with Phasma's attacks. The few strikes of his own he managed to land skidded off her armor without leaving so much as a dent. He was starting to think he had made a very, very big mistake.

A light clatter of metal off to the side drew Finn's attention away for a dangerous, crucial moment, and Phasma managed to lock her fingers around the lower hilt of Finn's borrowed lightsaber. She nearly wrenched it from his grip before the source of the clatter-Bail's lightsaber, skittering across the deckplates to shoot back into his hand-snapped to life and came down hard across the back of her helmet.

Phasma staggered forward, and now she was the one on the defensive. "Chakaare!" she shouted, her voice raw with mingled desperation and fury. "Scum! Filth!" Her words were underscored by the screech of light on metal as she frantically tried to hold their blades at bay.

Together, the Jedi Knight and the former stormtrooper battered her backwards across the hangar. Finn was too focused on hitting Phasma to notice that Bail's bloodied features already seemed to be restoring themselves to health, or at least fading from swollen red to the dull purple of old, half-healed bruises. He'd used the Force to undo some of the damage that Phasma had done-not all of it, not by a long shot, but enough to put himself back into the fight.

"Careful," Bail told Finn, his soft voice pitched just loud enough to carry over the clashing sabers, "don't overextend your swings too much or you'll end up hitting yourself on the backswing-"

"Got it," Finn grunted.

His blows were inelegant but competent, more about strength than finesse, but Bail was impressed. A lightsaber was a difficult weapon for a non-Jedi to wield-difficult and dangerous. The hilt was solid enough but the blade was made of pure, oscillating light. And light was weightless.

That meant that the dangerous part of the weapon seemed almost nonexistent...at least until it cut through something. And given that a lightsaber could cut through almost anything, it was extremely easy for a person to harm themselves with the deceptively beautiful, dangerous weapon. Even Bail's father, who had been around lightsabers for longer than Bail had been alive, was leery of the Jedi blades. With good reason: one twitch, and you could be down an entire limb. (Or worse.) One of Bail and Breha's friends and fellow trainees had learned that lesson all too well back when they'd been students at the Jedi Praxeum. Tenel Ka had eschewed a prosthetic replacement and hardly seemed to notice the lack of a second arm these days, but Bail was in no hurry to emulate her...nor to see this brave onetime stormtrooper who was risking everything to help them suffer similarly due to unfamiliarity with his sister's weapon.

But Finn seemed to be managing well enough.

That was good; between the two of them, they were keeping Phasma at bay and even beating her back, but the armored warrior was a formidable foe even without blade or blaster. Her lightsaber-proof armor-her beskar'gam, she had called it-was weapon enough. Bail was glad not to be facing her alone.

Finn's crude but effective strikes gave him enough breathing room that he could do more than defend, or even attack; he could look for a solution.

He found it in the form of the rows of TIE fighters resting in their cradles overhead.

"Keep her busy!" Bail shouted to Finn, then shut down his lightsaber, gathered himself and the Force, and leaped straight upwards.

"What?" Finn yelped, unable to stop himself from glancing up in the Jedi's wake. Phasma was not so easily distracted, and he had to look back quickly as the fight tilted abruptly from offense to defense. In the scant seconds in which Bail was gone, she managed to batter Finn back almost a full meter and to crack the plastoid on both his arms and one of his shins. Sweat poured down Finn's face. With an unfamiliar weapon in his hands, a throbbing wound already scorched into his shoulder, and no allies at his back, he was hopelessly outmatched. He knew he was seconds away from Phasma ripping the borrowed lightsaber from his hands and taking his head off with it.

Bail didn't intend to leave Finn alone that long. He soared upwards several meters, arcing in for a light landing on one of the cradles that held the rows of TIE fighters that lined the hangar's ceiling. He grasped the top edge of a solar panel with one hand and with the other he reignited his lightsaber and swung it down-not at the ship, but at the scaffolding that secured it.

With a screech of metal, the TIE tumbled free.

This time Phasma looked up, too. Her helmet hid her expression, but Bail could plainly see the horrified fear-and the momentary flash of betrayal-on Finn's face as he realized the TIE was going to land right on top of them.

Or it would have, if Bail had not used the Force to yank Finn backwards out of the way.

Phasma had no such savior, and had no time to do anything but raise her arms in a futile attempt to shield herself from the falling snubfighter before it crashed down on top of her.

Bail dropped easily back to the deck and caught Finn's shoulder to steady him as the former stormtrooper gaped at the wreckage. Flames licked at one end, their reflection dancing crazily in the cracked transparisteel of its broken viewport.

"Come on!" Bail shouted, and Finn shook himself out of his stupor enough to shut off Breha's lightsaber and fall into step alongside the young Jedi. Together they sprinted for the distant Lambda-shuttle that was their slim, best chance to escape this Super Star Destroyer with their lives-and, hopefully, their friends as well.