THE SKIES ABOVE CORUSCANT, 40 YEARS ABE:

In the upper atmosphere above Coruscant, a fierce battle was taking place between Rogue Squadron and a group of Imperial TIE interceptors—once twelve in number in counterpart to the Rogues, but already now reduced to eight thanks both to the superior shooting and flying of the Rogues, and to the X-Wings' greater suitability to atmospheric engagements.

The TIEs, with their squat wings and wider profile, suffered more drag from air resistance, particularly when turning, and while the pointed interceptor was less hampered than an ordinary TIE, their broad solar panels had nothing on an X-Wing's sleeker s-foils—not in atmosphere, anyway. In the frictionless void of space a TIE, particularly an interceptor, was both faster and more maneuverable than an X-Wing and ordinarily a canny snubfighter commander like Poe Dameron would have held his pilots to atmospheric maneuvering as long as the enemy fighters were willing to oblige by flying under such a handicap—but their mission today wasn't to vape the enemy, or even to win.

It was to run.

" Break atmo when you can and jump to hyperspace at your first opportunity, Rogues," Poe ordered as he threw his X-Wing into a dizzying loop designed to maximize the drag tugging at the squint trying to follow him. It set up an easy shot for his wingmate, Leeso, who obligingly drilled the TIE with two quad-linked laserburts, puncturing the spherical cockpit with a blaze of fire. Neither bothered to see if the pilot ejected; TIEs were not known for their survivability, although the interceptor was a monumental upgrade to the standard TIE in that respect—and many others.

Angling his ship around for an easy, atmosphere-friendly turn that would land him on Breha and Jaen's tail so he and Leeso could vape the pair of squints dogging their exhaust, Poe continued dictating instructions to his pilots: "Do not, repeat, do not wait for the entire squadron to form-up before commencing jump. As soon as you can make a break for it, do. Don't wait for the rest of us; we'll follow as we can…but we need to get that message to the fleet at all costs. Do you understand me?"

"Rogue Two, copy," Leeso said immediately, her voice its usual toneless rasp.

"Rogue Three, I hear you commander."

"Rogue Four understands, sir."

One by one his pilots called in, ending with Rogues Eleven and Twelve—Breha and Jaen, the youngest and newest transfers to the squadron. Poe might have worried about them more in an engagement like they were about to face, but Breha was a Jedi as well as a prodigally talented pilot and she was more than capable of looking after a wingmate who had more talent than experience, like Jaen.

That didn't mean he wasn't anxious about the prospect of getting Leia Organa's daughter vaped. Leia had been something like a second mother to Poe since before he had been old enough to officially join the Rebellion, and he respected her more than he did almost anyone else in the entire New Republic—maybe even more than he did the venerable Gial Ackbar. But Leia had told him to take Breha with him, even when he'd offered a chance to leave her out of this battle. She must have faith in her daughter's skills too…or at least, faith in the Force to which both she and Breha both had such a strong connection.

Poe squeezed his trigger once, twice, three times; a few meters behind and just to the side of his X-Wing, Leeso did the same. The two TIEs chasing Breha and Jaen collapsed in fire and shredding metal. Poe checked his sensor board and saw that only three of the interceptors were left—no, make that two; another one blinked out as Rogue Three, Ito, flew through the debris cloud where it had been a moment before.

"All right, Rogues," Poe said into his commlink, "that's enough dallying with the appetizer. Let's break space and go punch-out a Star Destroyer."

"Sir," Leeso's voice came over the comm immediately, "I thought you said the point of this engagement was not to engage with the enemy."

Poe grinned. "Yeah," he said, "of course I did. But as long as we're already in the neighborhood…"

Behind him, his BB-8 droid let out a mournful warble. Poe Dameron laughed.

Breha Organa-Solo checked that her deflector shields were angled to offer protection both fore and aft; it would have been dead embarrassing to be concentrating so much on the Star Destroyers ahead of her that she got vaped by a lucky shot from one of the tagalong TIEs still trailing them up from the devastated peace signing. It also would have been deadly, which was another good argument for evening her shields.

"How's it looking back there, Twelve?" Breha asked.

"Port side stabilizer's a little loose," Jaen answered. He sounded tense. "As soon as we're in vacuum I'll have my astromech see if she can lock it down."

"Good idea," Breha replied, meaning it on both levels: one of the benefits of flying an X-Wing was that on-the-fly repair-work was sometimes possible thanks to the droids they carried along, but the friction drag of atmospheric flying could be extremely hard on an astromech's delicate tools. They were specced for work in hard vacuum, designed not to freeze up or warp under the enormous pressures and freezing temperature of raw space—but the void was a very different environment than that of planetary atmospheres, especially when rocketing through those atmospheres at speeds this high. She was relieved that Jaen was canny enough to know better than to risk his droid on atmospheric repairs when they would soon be safely ensconced in vacuum instead; while the Twi'lek was a talented pilot—no one got into Rogue Squadron without being a talented pilot—he had less actual engagement experience than anyone else in the squadron, herself included. Plus, her twin brother had a massive crush on him. The least she could do was bring Bail's boyfriend home alive. "Shout if there's trouble," she ordered.

"Roger, Eleven."

Together the two pilots shot from the thin, wispy layer of stratosphere and into the cold of true vacuum. The interceptors trailing the squadron crossed a few seconds later and immediately jumped forward, their non-atmospheric speeds higher than an X-Wing's. Breha gritted her teeth and debated swinging around to loop behind the TIEs and try to vape them—but she remembered Commander Dameron's orders about engaging only when necessary.

She checked her shields one more time to make sure that her rear was protected from cheap potshots, then did her best to ignore the instincts screaming at her that letting an enemy sit on her tail was a terrible idea. They don't matter, she told herself firmly. They aren't the mission. They're just a—a distraction. So don't get distracted. Focus!

Breha did, both on the battle ahead and on the Force pulsing around her. She could feel the distant echo of the carnage on the surface—the raw wound of betrayal and pain throbbing in the back of her mind like a toothache. She tuned it out, spreading her awareness ahead of her, toward the Star Destroyers and the mass of TIEs swarming around them.

She couldn't help being chilled by the sight. It was one thing to joke about Rogue Squadron's penchant for pulling off impossible missions on the ground; quite another to stare down four Imperial Star Destroyers, five smaller support ships, at least a dozen squadrons of various makes of TIE fighter, and one Executor -class Super Star Destroyer.

Breha swallowed hard.

"Look at the size of that thing…"

"Cut the chatter Rogue Eleven," Commander Dameron snapped. "Rogues, break by wing on my mark and go evasive. Break away or punch through—I'll leave it up to your discretion. Don't bunch up. This isn't a mutual support situation. The more directions we go in, the better our odds of some of us getting through." There was a long pause as the X-Wings raced forward toward the Destroyers. From their flight paths screening the ships, four squadrons of TIEs split away and dove down to meet them. The distance narrowed fast. They had almost halved it when Poe continued, "It's been an honor flying with you all. Okay, mark!"

The formation of X-Wings split apart like a flock of flarion birds fleeing a blastail. Poe and Leeso flipped their ships into dizzying barrel rolls and curved straight for the center of the closest squadron. Breha and Jaen jerked their ships in a hard perpendicular turn and looped around for a low pass beneath the TIES. The other Rogues likewise broke by wing-pairs and either swooped wide or cut sharp straight toward the TIES. One pair of X-Wings angled to cross the starfighter screen between capital ships and flew directly into a turbolaser shot from one of the star destroyers, vaporizing instantly.

Breha felt their deaths through the Force and tightened her grip on her control yoke. This wasn't her first dogfight but it was the first time she had faced odds anything like this, the first time the stakes of failure had been so high. Growing up in the waning days of the war with the Empire, Breha's service as a Rogue had consisted mainly of peacekeeping duties and territorial squabbles-dangerous, sometimes deadly, but never with the fate of the whole New Republic resting on her wiry shoulders.

Was this how mom felt when she saw the Death Star? Breha wondered, and shook the thought away quickly. The middle of a dogfight was no place for woolgathering. She could talk to her mother about the early days of the Rebellion later-if she lived long enough.

"Okay Jaen, let's vape some eyeballs and go fetch Uncle Wedge," Breha told her wingman.

"Just as long as I don't have to call the Commander of the First Fleet 'uncle' anything," Jaen agreed, trying to joke through his nerves.

Breha grinned. "Uncle Admiral, maybe?"

"I think I'll stick with Admiral Antilles if it's all the same to you," Jaen said primly, juking his X-Wing around and punching three bright laserblasts through the solar panels of the TIE bearing down on him. The round ship spun sideways, crashing into its wingman and obliterating them both in a ball of fire. "Some of us didn't have our diapers changed by the greatest legends of the Rebellion, you know."

"No?" Breha said in an innocent voice as she spun her X-Wing like a top and drilled a blisteringly fast series of shots through the cockpit ball of the TIE fighter shooting towards her. "Huh. Who else do you get to do diaper duty, then? Oh right-Wookiees!"

Jaen didn't answer, unless a heavy sigh and a lekku twitch his wingmate couldn't see counted as an answer. Instead he focused on the battle, his dark blue face greenish with nerves and his pink lips tight and thin with strain. Breha's bantering had had the desired effect of stopping his hands from shaking on their instruments, but he was still too tense to keep up with their usual jokes.

Breha fell silent in concentration as well, and for several impossibly long seconds the only sounds were the terse warnings and commands of their squadronmates, the whine of engines, and the wail of astromechs as the twelve-now ten, then nine, then seven-X-Wings of Rogue Squadron fought an unwinnable battle in the shadow of five fearsome star destroyers.