Cymoon was horrible. Leia had barely been here for a few moments, and she already wanted to leave.
The fields upon fields of waste turned her stomach the more she looked, and eventually she just looked away.
A blue astromech droid—R2-D2, she though he was called; Padmé said he was on loan from Organa for this mission—rolled up to her and beeped.
She rolled her eyes. Her binary was a tad rusty, but— "I'm fine, R2-D2."
Another beep—a whistle.
"Fine—Artoo, then. But I'm still fine."
A sceptical shriek.
"Well, then your sensors aren't working properly, because I'm fine." She turned away. "And I don't want to talk about it right now."
A slow, low boop, then R2 rolled away. She watched him go slightly mournfully, then glanced back out the viewport.
Her breathing hitched when they landed.
Luke.
She could sense—
Had Luke—
No. No, she wasn't going to think about that.
She heard Qi'ra in the cockpit answering the hail and grimaced at the shrill voice of the overseer—Aggadeen, he introduced himself as and Padmé had said in her briefing; Aggadeen—as it came over the comm.
It sounded almost threatening when he finally said, "Welcome to Cymoon One."
Leia wanted to leave.
It felt. . . cold. . .
The shuttle set down and Leia made to shrug her helmet on, grimacing at the design.
When they emerged from the belly of the beat up shuttle, the garb of the guards uncomfortably hot and sweaty in the nauseating air, Qi'ra held her head high and strode forwards. Leia and Jyn followed in their costumes on either side, as stiff and alert as any bodyguards could be, and Artoo trundled along behind them. She still wasn't sure why he was here.
The man they met didn't look like much. Stern, human, the Core in his voice and in his sneer—he was Imperial to the bone.
He was flanked by six stormtroopers. Leia wondered just how threatened he felt.
"Greetings in the name of the Emperor," he ground out. "He thanks you for joining us today and hopes our negotiations prove swift and fruitful. I am Overseer Aggadeen . Whom do I have the. . . honour," there was a sneer to his voice, "of addressing?"
Leia tensed at the disgust she sensed—not just in Aggadeen, that was expected, but in the troopers behind him. It was expected that they might harbour some distaste for the so-called representatives of a crime cartel, after all, but not this. . .
This. . .
Well. The stormtroopers despised them; she could sense that. She just couldn't sense why.
Qi'ra's chin was high as she said, "Qi'ra, the official emissary from Crimson Dawn."
It had been a risk, using Crimson Dawn as their cover again. But Leia had reported that the other options, the Hutts, had ongoing hostilities between Jabba and Vader (small wonder why, now that she thought about it) so they refused to negotiate with the Empire at this time; the Pike syndicated had all but vanished in the seven years since the Empire had formally annexed Kessel, their main money maker, after they'd had a few too many slave uprisings; and Black Sun's prince was far too cosy with Palpatine as it was to ever need to rely on representatives to discuss a deal with the Empire.
So, as far as large syndicates with access to resources went, Crimson Dawn remained their best bet. And Qi'ra, as the ex-administrator, was their best choice to play the role.
A droid with a vaguely bug-like head stepped forwards and leaned in close to Qi'ra's face. She leaned back slightly, grimacing and shooting Aggadeen a look, but didn't object to the scan it took of her features.
Leia ground her teeth and swallowed. This was the moment of truth. If that droid had access to the databases of the Imperial Palace, where Qi'ra had been caught as a Rebel before, they were all done for; if not. . .
"Identity confirmed," the droid barked. "First name: Qi'ra. Last name: none. Known leading member of the Crimson Dawn syndicate, replaced Dryden Vos upon his murder."
If Qi'ra twitched outwardly at the mention of said murder, it was only with the slight shimmer of the Force that Leia noticed it.
"No Rebel matches, I suppose?" Aggadeen drawled.
Leia's breath hitched under the helmet. Did he suspect. . .?
No: did he know. . .?
The droid slowly turned its head to stare at Aggadeen.
"Yes," it continued. Leia's heart was a bird trying to take flight through her veins. "Number of files of known Rebels subject bears resemblance to: two million, six hundred and thirty seven thousand, eight hundred and twenty one. Pale-skinned, dark-haired human female is a highly common phenotype in the galaxy."
"Fine." Aggadeen waved his hand shortly. Despite the fact that the droid had cleared them, Leia did not relax. "Your. . . bodyguards must leave their weapons behind, as a safety precaution."
Safety. Huh.
Leia did hand them over—well, the ones that they knew would be detected by a scan, anyway; Qi'ra had already demonstrated in their final briefing the many ways a Crimson Dawn guard's uniform cold be used for this specific purpose—and hissed into the comlink in her helmet, desperate to hear the crackle of someone else's voice across it: "We're in. I think."
"You think?" came Biggs's dry voice. Wedge snorted in the background.
Leia rolled her eyes. Just because the pilots got the easy job of sitting back and waiting in the junk fields to pick them up, didn't mean—
"We're through," she hissed as they started walking. "Now shut up."
The factory, once they were inside, was impressive. Aggadeen had them walk through a vast warehouse of TIE cockpits being assembled, wings being fitted, viewports being attached, before they even stopped outside the door to the meeting room they were due to 'negotiate' in. Leia was half-looking around because it was her job, as a bodyguard, to take in and assess her surroundings, but also because she was genuinely in awe of the construction of quick, graceful ships like the TIE fighters. She thought of the TIE Defender she'd flown against Luke and her father, so long ago, and her heart ached.
"Marvellous," Qi'ra said. "I find it incredible, the amount of destructive power and grace the Empire can construct and dispatch within a moment's notice."
Aggadeen didn't quite know what to do with that. "Well, this is the largest, most effectively defended base in the galaxy, and our resources. . ."
Leia stopped listening after a while, too lost in nostalgia.
Luke should be here, she thought. He'd love— not a weapons factory necessarily, but seeing how those ships were built, how they were equipped—
Only he had been here recently, hadn't he?
She could sense him.
She wondered why.
She wondered if he'd known she soon would be, too.
The Force was swirling around her in dark, sluggish currents, and it was tugging her towards. . .
A corridor. Down there.
It felt cold. Horrible.
And yet she knew it was exactly where she needed to go.
She glanced at Aggadeen out of the corner of her eye. His nose was still turned up as he came to a halt in front of that door and said, "The negotiator will arrive shortly. You will await him within."
Qi'ra was still spinning poetic about the. . . TIE fighters? Imperial might? Leia didn't know, but she switched on her comm in her helmet and hissed to Jyn, "I have a feeling. I'm going to investigate down that corridor; something's there, something I need to see or know." Or confront, she added in her head.
Jyn snorted. "A feeling from the Force?"
"Yes," Leia snapped. "Cover for me."
Then she slipped away from the group and walked down the corridor, not caring who turned to stare.
Jyn couldn't turn to watch Leia go, but her heart was pounding in her ears. Kriff Force users and their nonsense anyway; they were far, far more trouble than they were worth.
"Your bodyguard seems to have wandered off," Aggadeen observed, though none of the guards made to follow Leia. That was odd.
Jyn ground out, before Qi'ra could no doubt come up with some eloquent explanation Leia would shatter the moment she returned, "She went to scout out the perimeter. We do not trust that the Empire hasn't left any surprises for us." She gave him a challenging look, though she doubted he could see it through her helmet. "No offence."
Aggadeen just scoffed. "Emissaries from crime cartels are hardly worth the effort of betraying."
There was something in that sentence.
The astromech droid rolled forwards. Jyn glared and tensed, reaching for the weapons concealed under her disguise—
Only to freeze when the door to the negotiating room burst open and ranks upon ranks of stormtroopers filed out, thoroughly boxing them in.
Jyn, Qi'ra and R2-D2 against a corridor jammed with bucket heads.
Well.
"Undercover Rebels, however," Aggadeen said, face twisting with a vicious sort of disgust, hatred, "are always worth the effort of stamping out."
Jyn was wearing armour; Qi'ra was not. She stepped forwards to cover her side, at least a little bit, but from all angles like this it was really impossible to help at all.
"Especially your friend who wandered off," Aggadeen said. Jyn would have rolled her eyes were she not too busy monitoring the situation; he liked to talk, didn't he? "As I understand it, she is a prize the Emperor will value above all—"
He frowned. "Your droid is leaking fluids."
Yes he was: R2-D2 was seeping greenish liquid all over the floor.
"Is Rebel property of such poor quality that it starts to fall apart at the slightest— AHH!"
Jyn grinned viciously and pivoted out of the way, careful not to touch any stormtroopers, as R2-D2 discharged a shock that shot right through the liquid, right through their armour, leaving the rest of the crowd untouched.
Before Aggadeen could even squeal, Qi'ra punched him. He collapsed.
Then she kicked him while he was down. "Which way to the main power core?"
Aggadeen coughed blood. "I am a sworn officer of the Empire, I will never—"
He was cut off when Qi'ra put a foot on his chest and pressed down. There was a blaster in her hand; Jyn wasn't sure if she'd grabbed it from one of the fallen stormtroopers littering the floor or if she'd had it on her the whole time.
She cocked it at him and purred, "Which way?"
Aggadeen shakily pointed in a direction—the opposite direction to where Leia had gone.
Whatever that feeling of hers had been, Jyn grouched, she hoped it was more useful than the actual direction of where they wanted to go.
Qi'ra smiled. "Thanks."
Then she shot him.
Jyn didn't flinch. She just gave her one glance, a nod, then they both turned in synchrony and headed for the core.
Leia could catch up with them later.
Someone was ahead.
Leia frowned. Someone was ahead—the person she was being drawn to?—and they were miserable.
No: multiple people were ahead.
Dozens of people were ahead.
They were. . .
Leia turned a corner, stomach roiling, then pushed open a door to view the cellar it led her down into. When she caught sight of the first person's eyes through the bars of a cage, she understood exactly.
Slaves.
Slaves.
She could've sworn this factory was supposed to be fully automated!
Another lie; another oversight of Imperial bureaucracy; another case of Imperial practice blatantly opposing the code she'd once believed in so fiercely. It didn't matter.
What mattered was that she got them out.
"Fully automated," she muttered to herself as she got closer, hit the bottom of the stairs and peered at the padlock. The slaves stared back at her with trepidation. "Fully automated. . ."
"Hey!"
She froze, then whirled on the balls of her feet, to face behind her, backing up against the bars.
"Step away from those cages," snarled a man—heavy-set, human, wearing a ridiculous helmet, getup, but worryingly enough wielding a electro-whip. He snapped it threateningly. "Unless you'd like to be in one."
This was the slave driver, huh?
For a moment Leia studied him, not moving an inch to back away from the cages. Distant memories, a feeling that ran as deeply in her blood as the feeling of homeliness on Naboo had, sparked: Tatooine. Her grandmother.
Her father.
She had to stop herself from seizing him around the throat and—
And what? Choking him was her father's style; perhaps snap his neck, or crush his head, or—
No.
She would enjoy that. It would let the dark side in.
But—she eyed the whip—she had no lightsaber to fight with.
"I said," he growled, "step away from the cages."
She twisted her lips and said, "No."
The whip snapped up, so fast it was just a wall of golden light, but Leia was faster; she seized his wrist with the Force and tried not to take satisfaction in the crunch she heard, nor the howl that followed. The whip clattered away across the floor.
She pivoted, drove her elbow into his chest through that ridiculous garb, and kicked the back of his knees. He went down with a grunt.
By the time he made to stand up again, she had a blaster to his head.
"I was never here," she intoned, trying to channel that. . . that peace Yoda had taught her.
His eyes crossed. "You— you were never— here. . ."
She stunned him.
A point blank stun shot, to the head. She didn't know what sort of damage that would cause—significant, she expected—but she hadn't killed him. Not personally.
Let him die with the base he worked on, when it went up in fire and smoke.
So long as she didn't kill him personally, it— it wouldn't be as satisfying for the darkness that still snapped at her heels.
She hoped.
It was still pretty damn satisfying.
The moment he slumped to the floor she marched over to the slaves' cages, and eyed the padlock. A few shied away from her, a few leaned in closer; she ignored them all.
She held the padlock in her hand, felt with the Force, and it clicked open.
The door swung to. They stared.
She held out her arms in a half-shrug, half-invitation.
"I'm here with the Rebel Alliance," she announced. "My name's Leia Skywalker. Anyone who wants to get out of here. . ."
She turned on her foot again and strode up the stairs, tossing over her shoulder, "Come with me."
She was a mere few steps down the corridor when one of the slaves got up the guts to jog after her, calling, "Wait!"
She did wait. The person—a young Rodian only slightly taller than her—caught up with her easily and said, breathless from awe more than exertion: "You're Leia Skywalker?"
She stiffened.
Turned to them.
"Yes," she said cautiously. "Where did you hear my name?"
"He said you were coming—that you'd be able to free us where he couldn't. He gave us a message, but she took it."
"What?" Leia swallowed. "Who said I was coming?" It can't be—
". . .Luke?" The Rodian frowned. "He was who the message was from, but he didn't deliver it to me—his. . . assistant did, a man named Han Solo."
That name meant nothing to her, but Luke meant everything. "But it was from him?"
"It was from him."
"What—" Her heart was racing, palms suddenly sweaty; the words were on the tip of her tongue but she couldn't bring herself to say them. Finally: "What did the message say?"
"I don't know, I didn't have the password to see it." His scowl was fierce, unnaturally fierce for his young face, but his vehemence in the Force was real. "She took it."
"Who?"
"The director," another slave—an orange-skinned Twi'lek woman—chimed in. "She took it; I don't know what she did with it. But her office is that way." She pointed. "If it's anywhere, it's there."
Leia nodded, though someone had replaced her intestines with blocks of ice.
If this Imperial director had taken it. . . if she told Palpatine, or her father. . .
What was on the message?
How brutal would Luke's punishment be, if he was caught?
"Which door?" she asked.
"The third on the right."
Another person added, "It says Director on it in Basic. I think."
"I understand." That was the tug in the Force she was meant to be following; she was sure of it. She was sure of it. "Thank— thank you. Continue on here, to the main power core, and tell my friends that Leia sent you—explain the situation. I'll be there soon."
Then, before they could protest, she took off again.
The darkness thickened again as she moved, even the slaves' slowly lightening cloud of pain moved away. She reached the door easily; she only paused briefly when she read the name on it.
Director Vilrein.
Her lips twisted. She didn't know what she'd expected.
The door was locked, but as with the cages, that was no match for her.
The office itself was standard, with few personal mementos, but with a specific touch that Leia had to admit she remembered Vilrein having. Everything organised in a specific way—not a way she could identify, but a way that was certainly recognisable.
She scanned the cabinets, the sleek desk, even the shutters on the windows. Where would she—?
She strode forwards; the door slammed behind her with a bang. There were two stacks of flimsi reports on the table; she leafed through them briefly, but that wasn't what she was looking for, she knew that. She was looking for something electronic—the Rodian boy had mentioned a pass code. . .
The drawers on the desk rattled as she rapped on them, and refused to budge when she tugged. Shoving a breath out through her nose, she unlocked them with the Force and tore them apart one by one but she didn't like doing that; every time she touched the Force it felt chilly, jittery, like something was about to—
The door slid open.
—happen.
She froze, still hunched over the second-lowest drawer on the right hand side, hand fisted in a worthless scrap of flimsi.
The sudden hum of a lightsaber, the stench in the Force, was all she needed to hear.
She propelled herself backwards just in time for a crimson blade to carve the desk in two with a crunch, sparks flying, not quite catching on the wood.
She landed on the windowsill, legs underneath her, and hissed.
One Inquisitor loomed in the doorway, broad-shouldered and tall, but the one who'd swung the saber was slimmer (though no less tall). He tilted his head, observing her over the pile of matchwood he'd made of the desk, and she knew he was smiling.
He said, "We've been waiting a long time for this, Sithspawn."
Her hand constricted on the glass of the window but it wasn't standard glass; shattering it would take precious seconds. Seconds she didn't have—
The first Inquisitor lunged and she leapt, letting him slam into the window while she danced around the edge of the desk, the cool plastisteel of the filing cabinets pressed against her back; she tossed a worried look at the larger Inquisitor—
He was approaching, saber spinning on those ridiculous hilts—
And the Force exploded.
Leia screamed and it answered her call. The storm of flimsi and plastisteel moved and she moved with it. She charged forwards, seized a massive chunk of the desk and lobbed it at the first Inquisitor. It shattered the window he'd crashed into; he fell.
Far.
It was a long drop onto toxic, jagged scrap.
Acidic winds barrelled in through the window now and seized the hair not fixed in Leia's plait, flapping in her face briefly as she turned—
—the second Inquisitor turned too—
—and she ducked as his lightsaber flew.
It impaled itself in what was left of the cabinets. The saber extinguished itself; it clattered to the floor.
She scooped it up before he could even try.
"What is it with Inquisitors and fancy tricks that get you nowhere?" she spat. When she lit it—single blade; one blade was all she needed—the anger that hissed and sparked floored her for a moment.
This was the weapon of a Sith. She'd forgotten that.
But it was still the best weapon she had right now.
She leapt forwards, using the ruins of the desk as a springboard—
—there was a tug on her in midair but she batted it away easily, even as that vast figure loomed—
—and she shoved the lightsaber through his guts.
"What is it with Inquisitors," she hissed, "and incompetence in general?"
She yanked it out again. He felt to his knees.
She left him to his death.
The moment she shut the door though, the Force tingled again.
She scanned her surroundings.
Then, Inquisitor's lightsaber still lit at her side, she sauntered down the corridor and drawled, "'Always two there are.' When did Palpatine see that for the shit it was?"
"Probably around the time," came the expected answering voice, enhanced with that mechanical burr, "he saw you for the bitch you were."
Leia pivoted to the corridor on her left, blade already raised to parry.
Good; the final Inquisitor, a heavy-set woman this time, had already struck. It glanced off the blade with a force that made Leia's arms ache, her teeth shake, but she stabbed forwards before she could recover. The Inquisitor just deflected it; Leia yanked her hand back before it could get amputated.
"Not trying to kill me?" she ground out.
"You, Sithspawn? Never." The Inquisitor rained down blows and Leia stumbled back, warding them off as best she could— "Our master wants you alive. He's saving your execution for someone special."
The corridor was too tight; Leia needed space to breathe. Space to run. The Inquisitor was too large and too strong to overpower by sheer force alone.
"Capture, then?" Leia's strike went wide; the blade skidded off the Inquisitor's to impale in the wall. She yanked it back hurriedly and conceded a few more steps.
She bared her teeth. "Good luck with that."
The Inquisitor ignored her—just kept approaching, Leia's pale, sweaty reflection gleaming in the carapace of her helmet.
"Your brother's looking forward to meeting you, I hear," she taunted, and Leia's heart jumped into her throat. "Palpatine wanted to give him the honour of capturing you himself, considering he put so much effort into building this trap, but as it was he settled for just giving the order. No matter." Similar to her dark side brother, back in the office, Leia could see her grin in the tilt of her helmet. "I'm sure he'll be the special person who gets the honour of formally executing you—"
Leia screamed.
The Inquisitor actually jerked back several steps at the ferocity of her blows and she lost precision, everything, in the sudden surge of red.
Luke.
Luke.
Luke.
What are you doing to Luke you monsters what have you made him do what will you make him do what will you make him become—
The Inquisitors hand flew down the corridor, still clutching the saber, and she squealed like an Ugnaught as she staggered back, collapsed. Leia's blade hovered in her face.
She could see her own reflection in her helmet. Her own furious, twisted, vicious face, glaring at the Inquisitor with more hatred than the whole galaxy could bear in a thousand years.
The sight of it was horrifying.
The sight of the stump of the hand made her think of—
—raging winds, screaming, a flash of red—
—Luke's scream on that fateful day, too.
She clutched her stolen lightsaber tightly, then tossed it away. Behind her. She had no use for that sort of rage, pain; she'd given her own red lightsaber up for a reason.
The Inquisitor stared.
Leia brought out her blaster and stunned her. Quietly. Without fuss.
Let her, too, die in the explosion.
It wasn't a merciful death.
But it was the most merciful for Leia.
So she just walked away.
She had a factory to blow.
And, she thought, she really, really needed a lightsaber of her own.
A ship manoeuvred through the atmosphere of Cymoon-1 to emerge before the yellowish clouds. Scanners picked it up immediately; it wasn't trying to hide, after all, and it was a strange, strange ship.
It was hailed, suspiciously and viciously, within moments.
The instant the comms officer received Lord Vader's personal code in return, however, they stopped.
The ship continued on.
"Have you set the charges?" Qi'ra asked, ponytail swinging as she glanced behind her again. Jyn was tempted to snap and ask her what she was so nervous about, but she understood it perfectly.
"Yes," she said instead. "Charges set." R2-D2 trundled up and beeped his affirmative.
She glanced over at the motley collection of slaves Leia had sent their way—without returning with them. Typical. "Are you all ready to go?"
"Yes, ma'am," came the response.
Jyn rolled her eyes. Ma'am.
Qi'ra shoved her thumb onto the activate button of the last charge, and smiled at the menacing beep, beep, beep that began to sound. "Let's go, then."
They made for the door. Jyn was already plotting out their route, where they needed to go, when she suddenly hissed, "Stop!"
The slaves stopped instantly. Qi'ra, entirely focused on what she was doing, didn't hear.
But Jyn did.
The clank of boots on the floor was hard to miss.
She lunged forwards—"I said stop!"—but wasn't fast enough to stop Qi'ra from spinning the seal on the door and swinging it open—
And dozens of bucket heads poured in.
Jyn swore, bringing up her blaster to pick off those troopers one by one—the only advantage they had here was that the door was narrow, only fit one at a time, and they kept tripping on the high ridge—but several had already made it in. The slaves served some sort of barrier at least, flinging themselves at them with a ferocity Jyn had to admire, but there were a lot of them, and they had blasters, and there were enough slaves that every time a trooper fired someone, at least, got hit, and—
R2-D2 squawked loudly. He ejected oil from one of his ports again and zapped as many as he could hit, jabbing even more with his pike but again, there were so many—
"Why are there so many?" Jyn demanded of Qi'ra. "The briefing said—"
"Clearly the briefing was wrong," she yelled back, "and from what Aggadeen said earlier, maybe they even knew we were coming!"
Jyn swore again and charged forwards.
The sheer audacity of the motion shocked at least a few troopers. She shot several and yanked her stun baton from at her waist to crash it into them; they fell into each other like white, armoured pins. A slight movement behind her; she pivoted, shot three more and dodged a shot, letting it go wide to impact the troopers behind her, but they were everywhere—
Except in one place.
"There's an opening!" she shouted. It was at one of the doors to the main reactor, a little further away, but it was less heavily guarded. "Go, go, go!"
Qi'ra was already sprinting for it by the time she finished and, after a moment's hesitation, staring with wide, glassy eyes at their fallen companions, the slaves followed too. R2-D2 screeched after them.
The comlink in Jyn's helmet began to beep.
"What, Skywalker?" she hissed. "We've walked into—"
"A trap, I know. I just took on three Inquisitors without a lightsaber." Leia's voice was snappish—in the way of one who was exhausted, and had no patience left for life's idiosyncrasies. "I'm heading to—"
"Find a way to get to the Star," Jyn ordered, "and we'll meet you there. If you don't, we're leaving without you."
Leia drawled, though the fact she was out of breath extracted some of its power: "Yes, ma'am."
Then they were out and the corridors zipped past in a grey and silver blur; Jyn hoped Qi'ra knew where she was going, because she was no longer sure her bearings were accurate; from what she could tell, they seemed to be heading away—
She ducked as shots rang out after them, and tried to ignore the cries.
"Here!" Qi'ra skidded to a halt in front of a broad set of doors and jabbed the button to open them. Jyn followed her inside—she had to; the troopers were gaining—but her mouth was open to criticise, to correct, to complain—
Then she shut it.
The room—not quite warehouse, not quite hangar—was full of. . .
"Speeder bikes." Qi'ra smiled grimly and tossed herself up onto one. Jyn took a moment to let R2-D2 hoist himself onto the end of a bike before she followed suit. The slaves did too.
"Which way to the Star?" Jyn shouted over the noise of their engines.
Qi'ra shouted back: "Follow my lead!"
They burst out of the hall in the same instant that the troopers managed to burst into it.
It wasn't a good speeder Leia had found near Vilrein's office, so battered and beaten down and broken Luke would cry if he set eyes on it. But it got her to the ship well enough.
She arrived moments behind what looked like a gaggle of speeder bikes and flew right up to Jyn and Qi'ra, leaping off the speeder before it had even stopped moving. "Did you set the charges?"
"Yes—"
"No thanks to you," Jyn glowered, "where were you?"
Leia glowered right back. "I told you, I had a few Inquisitors to take care of—now, is this everyone?"
"Everyone who survived."
Leia swallowed at that. She tried not to dwell on it. "So now we just get Wedge and Biggs and get the hell—" She froze.
Jyn scoffed. "Oh, what now—"
"Something's wrong," she said, casting her gaze around. She couldn't sense Wedge and Biggs, but she could sense. . .
Qi'ra asked, "Are you sure, Leia—"
"Observant, little sorceress."
A dozen heads swivelled to stare up at the source of the voice—a woman standing casually on top of the ship, one hand up—but Leia was the only one who truly glared.
She wasn't a large woman, not by any means, yet the cocky tilt of her head betrayed how well she could handle herself regardless. Brown hair, tan skin, a circuit-like tattoo snaking up her aloft arm holding what looked like a detonator. . .
Leia hissed, "Aphra."
Aphra's nose wrinkled. "That's Doctor Aphra to you."
"Not from what I've heard," Leia shot back. She had not, in fact, heard anything of the sort, but Aphra's insecurities about her doctorate screamed loudly in her mind the moment she thought about it, and she couldn't help but take a petty satisfaction in that.
Still. Aphra had a history of working for her father. She needed to—
"Ah ah, not so fast, little sorceress. Drop that blaster right now."
"Or what?" Leia challenged.
Aphra shrugged. "You're all standing in a field of micro-mines," she informed her. She waved her arm. "No prizes for guessing what this is for." Her voice turned flat. "Drop your weapons."
Leia dropped them. So did. . . everyone else.
"Leia," Qi'ra asked, "do you know this woman?"
"Oh yeah, Leia and I go way back," Aphra cut in. "Used to work for her father a lot—still do work for her father, in fact, which brings me to why I'm here."
She smiled. "Give me the girl and I'll let you all go before the factory blows."
"And why do you want her?" one of the slaves challenged. Leia winced.
"Her father wants her back, and I've been hired to do it for him." Aphra, Leia decided, was far too fond of theatrics. "Now, have you made your decision? One girl, against—"
Leia saw the spark of blue, the discharge, before she saw Aphra fall. And Aphra fell hard, right off the top off the ship onto the junk it was landed on. Strangely enough, Leia did not feel inclined to slow her fall.
Instead, she turned to the pile of junk the shot had come from—and stared.
Some of the slaves murmured: "It's her."
Leia snapped, "Vilrein."
Vilrein smiled self-deprecatingly, ignoring the blaster Leia suddenly had levelled at her. She tossed her own away. "It's good to see you too, my lady."
"What do you want," Leia said.
Vilrein just moved her head minutely. "I have something for you. From your brother."
All time stood still.
Slowly—excruciatingly slowly, she thought, but she couldn't bring herself to walk faster—Leia walked towards her.
When she was close enough, she hissed, "What?"
Vilrein held out her palm. Lying in the centre of it was an innocuous-looking datachip.
Leia took it reverently.
"Your brother gave it to his new bodyguard," Vilrein said, "to give it to one of the slaves. I didn't think they'd be able to get it to you, so I took it myself."
"Why?" Leia demanded.
Vilrein shrugged—a casual gesture that didn't fit her sharp, professional image at all.
"I can't say I'm a fan of the Emperor's methods," she said. "But from what I saw, I was a fan of yours."
Leia's hand closed around the chip.
"I see," she said. "So—what will you do now?"
Vilrein shrugged again, that same irreverent gesture. "Return to my office."
"I destroyed your office."
Her lips twitched. "I noticed."
"You'll return anyway?"
"I'll return to the factory, at least."
"The factory is about to blow." Leia leaned in. "You're far more use to me alive than dead."
"As you say: the factory is about to blow. I will be punished anyway. And I will not force those escaped slaves to suffer my presence any longer, so I cannot go with you."
"Then find another ship." Leia tilted her head towards Aphra's limp body; Qi'ra and Jyn was manhandling it on board. She figured the Rebellion would have some questions for that woman. "Our dear doctor must have one nearby."
Vilrein smiled sadly. "I can't fly."
Leia narrowed her eyes.
Lifted her chin.
"Then I will," she said, and it was more command than offer. She marched over to Jyn and Qi'ra by the lowered ramp; she could just hear Wedge and Biggs groaning, starting to stir, inside.
"I'm going to take Aphra's ship"—she'd seen it before; it was chaos, but flyable—"and drop Vilrein off somewhere we can use her later. I'll meet you back at base as soon as possible."
"On your own again?" Jyn asked, eyebrows raised, but Qi'ra waved her off.
"Of course," she said. There was something in her smile that was a little sharper than necessary—sadness, or bitterness, or exhaustion, Leia couldn't tell. "We'll see you back there."
Artoo squealed loudly.
Leia frowned down at him. "You want to come too?"
He made a self-satisfied beep, light flashing dark blue.
"I do not need a co-pilot."
A buzz.
"Fine, then." She turned on her heel and marched over to Vilrein. From the top of the nearest junk pile, she scanned the area: oh, there was the Ark Angel, as twisted and odd-looking as ever.
In the distance, the factory exploded.
"Let's get out of here," Leia grumbled. "I've been sick of this place since we arrived."