THE SKIES ABOVE CORUSCANT, 40 YEARS ABE:

Outside the Super Star Destroyer, doomed stormtroopers and broken equipment spiraled off together into the void of space amidst a gust of rapidly-dissipating oxygen. A moment later an X-Wing starfighter bearing the red side-stripe of Rogue Squadron followed, a white and orange astromech droid spinning away from it.

The little droid was simple in shape: a small sphere with a smaller half-sphere rotating around it for a head. It spun that head around now so that it could keep its optical sensors focused on the Star Destroyer even as its body twirled through the void. After a moment three small hatches on the droid twisted open and emitted short puffs of air.

After a few moments of calculation, the droid stopped its spin and then, once it was oriented to face the hull of the ship again, it issued a longer jet and propelled itself back towards the Super Star Destroyer.

Unnoticed by BB-8, a figure in silver armor pulled itself hand-over-hand along a grapple cable reaching back to the ship. Her long black cloak stuck out stiff and straight behind her, held in place by the flash-frozen moisture of the hanger's vanished atmosphere. Frost stretched in thin, fanlike coils across the blank black visor of her gleaming helmet.

Far below, Coruscant glittered like an obsidian jewel. Little patches of fire flared and died as the detritus from the blown hanger hit the atmosphere, ignited, and burned to ash. If the silver-clad stormtrooper mourned the companions lost to void or reentry flames, she hid her feelings behind her helmet and kept climbing.

ABOARD THE MALACHOR, 40 YEARS ABE:

Inside the Super Star Destroyer, Poe Dameron and Breha Solo ran as if their lives depended on it.

"Where do we go?" Breha asked, shouting both from fear and in an attempt to be heard over the noise of their laboring breaths and rattling boots.

"I'm thinking!" Poe snapped back. "Um—this way!" He took a quick left turn down a crosscut hallway and Breha scrambled to follow. "If this thing is laid-out like a regular Impstar Super, this should take us to the auxiliary hanger maintenance corridors."

"You don't sound very certain," Breha said dubiously, but she didn't slack her breakneck pace.

"If you wanted certainty in your life you should have joined one of General Salm's squadrons, kid!" Poe shot back over his shoulder.

"Couldn't," Breha retorted breathlessly. "Uncle Wedge would have disowned me if I'd gone into Starfighter Command as anything but a Rogue!"

"That's true!" Poe agreed, breathing just as hard as the young Jedi, if not harder. "He took it hard enough when Syal opted for E-Wings instead of—"

"Stop!" Breha shouted, but it was too late: Poe had tripped the automatic sensor on the door in front of them. It swished open revealing the black-cloaked figure coming toward them down the hallway ahead, stormtroopers trotting along obediently beside. They were less than three meters away and closing briskly.

"How'd they do that?" Poe wondered, but Breha was already hauling on his arm.

"Dark Jedi!" she snapped. "Or Sith—I don't know! But definitely bad news!"

"You don't need to be trained in the Force to figure that out," Poe shouted as they sprinted off in the other direction, back towards the hallway junction. "All you need are eyeballs!"

"Well use yours to find us another path!" Breha said.

"Hold onto your hairbuns, kid, we'll get out of this yet," Poe assured his young pilot, but even as he spoke the door at the end of the next cross-hallway opened. It revealed another hanger, similar to the one that they had left moments ago, although this one still had a functioning magcon shield and, consequently, a full atmosphere along with its regular complement of mechanics and pilots.

Through the door stepped a tall, broad-shouldered figure clad in silver armor. Frost crusted the gleaming plates and stiffened the long black cloak that hung past the trooper's knees. She had no blaster in her hands this time, but the stormtrooper commander was unmistakable.

"Sithspit!" Poe shouted, skidding to a stop, Breha stumbling at his heels. "Wrong way!" he said, and the two turned around to run, but now the black-cloaked figure was walking up behind them. Both the black and silver figures were flanked by a dozen ordinary stormtroopers, all of them carrying blasters.

The two Rogues turned back and forth, looking for a way out. Breha looked up at the ceiling. "Maybe—" she began, but the black-clad figure raised a hand.

"Stop!" The voice was loud, crisp, and mechanical. It was also impossible to disobey. At the cloaked figure's gesture both Breha and Poe fell to their knees.

"Sith," Breha gasped, pressing her hands against the floor as though to fight a wave of dizziness.

"Not…exactly," the black-clad figure said. Despite the filtering helmet, amusement was plain in the soft words. "But you…you are quite definitely a Jedi."

Breha forced herself to look up at the dark and looming presence. "I am," she said, her voice clear and ringing. "I am Jedi Knight Breha Organa-Solo, and I am not afraid of you."

"Indeed?"

For a long moment silence stretched between the two figures, the orange and the black, broken only by the muffled clatter of boots as the stormtroopers clustered in behind their two masters. Then Poe raised a hand and said, "And I'm Commander Poe Dameron of Rogue Squadron. Not a Jedi. Also not afraid of you, for the record. Hi."

"Speak when spoken to, scum!" came another filtered voice, this one gruffer and angrier than the first.

It belonged to the silver armored stormtrooper who grabbed Poe's hair in one gauntleted fist and started to yank him backwards, but she stopped when the black-cloaked figure raised a hand.

"Enough, Phasma. This Commander Dameron is right: introductions should be made. It is only polite." A soft laugh followed the words, all the more chilling for its lightness. "It is a pleasure to meet you both, young Organa-Solo, young Dameron. You may call me Darth Revan."

Breha's eyes went wide. Poe started to open his mouth, unaware of Breha's shock and ready as ever with a smart-aleck remark, but Revan wasn't done speaking: "Now throw them in the brigg. I'll deal with them once Coruscant has fallen."

Revan turned in a swirl of black robes and strode off down the hallway, a detachment of stormtroopers falling in obediently behind.

"You heard the Dark Lord, scum," Phasma snapped. It wasn't clear if she was speaking to the Rogues or to her own soldiers. She yanked Poe upright by his hair while two other stormtroopers jumped forward to drag Breha to her feet. "Detention level—now!" Phasma barked and they moved out, Poe and Breha with their hands on their heads and the stormtroopers with their blasters raised and ready to fire.

Melting ice dripped off Phasma's cloak and pooled in her wake. Then a dozen marching feet smeared it across the deckplates, trampling the delicate ice crystals into oblivion.