From Flames, I Soar

by Kurenaino

With the Empire at the height of its power and the shadow of a greater threat hanging above all those who would oppose Palpatine, the Specters, led by former Jedi Padawan Kanan Jarrus, are forced to contend with the Sith Lord that set the galaxy ablaze. Sequel to In Chaos, I Thrive.

69. Fallout

Chapter 69: Fallout

Chopper Base lay in ruins.

The metal buildings and the towering stone spires it was built into had been reduced to rubble and scrap, the long strip they had used as an airfield was filled with blackened craters and destroyed ships. Crates of weapons and supplies had been utterly destroyed, their contents left as smouldering ash or melted heaps. The droid army they had managed to obtain lay broken and scattered in barely recognizable pieces all over the blackened, once red earth.

And there were bodies. Lots and lots of bodies.

Those who had been too slow to make it out of the base before the shields failed, those who had been unlucky enough for their bunkers or places of safety to take enough direct hits from the bombardment to be collapsed or exposed, all of them lay scattered or partly buried as far as the eye could see. Some in pieces, some too badly burned to be identified, others easily recognizable and all the more painful for it. It was a gruesome sight, but even still, from the mouth of one of the winding tunnels beneath the compound that Vehemis and Vitios led them to, Hera Syndulla made herself look.

It was hard to believe that anyone at all had survived, looking out at the devastation laid out before her and knowing what they had just endured, but they had survived. At least, some of them had. Some, certainly, had been unfortunate enough to die in tunnel collapses caused by the aggressive assault, and others never made it to the tunnels at all. But for those that did manage to survive the battle above Atollon and evacuate in time to the tunnels, Hera thought there was a good chance they lived. If even half of those that had been at the base survived, it would be enough to begin again, or to join up with the faction on Yavin 4.

That is, if this staggering defeat hadn't also slain their will to fight.

Taking a deep breath, Hera ventured further out of the tunnel, her eyes fixed on the sky and scanning for any sign of the Imperial attack beginning again, but so far as she could tell, there was nothing, just the oppressive silence of a still and beaten world. It had been ten whole minutes since the last of the turbolaser fire struck, but she wasn't certain that they wouldn't begin again at the first detection of life or electronic activity. So she had ordered all coms shut down and every person to stay where they were, just in case the increased activity of a beaten people examining the wreckage of everything they had worked for drew further Imperial attention.

Though she couldn't see any sign of the Imperial fleet, Hera had no doubt that Thrawn was up there watching.

"Do you think they stopped because Kenobi made his move?" Ezra whispered from back inside the tunnel, and Hera slowly shook her head.

"I don't know..." she muttered, her eyes narrowing as she spotted someone walking slowly across the ruins of the base through the haze of smoke and settling dust. Her fingers touched the blaster on her hip, and a moment later she exhaled a sigh of relief when she made out the distinctive shape of montrails. She started to leave her cover, but stopped herself before she could step out into the open air, dread twisting in her stomach when she remembered what it was she feared she'd find out there.

She had seen the shield generator explode during the attack. They had all seen it in the moments before they were forced to scramble for cover when their best protection from the Imperial's bombardment of Atollon failed. Everyone that had been inside the generator's auxiliary building was almost certainly dead, either from the explosion itself, or from being too injured to escape the destructive rain of turbolaser fire.

Zeb and Kallus had been manning that station, and though a small part of her remained hopeful that they had found a way to save themselves, the ever practical Hera was fairly certain that she would find both their bodies in the wreckage. Kanan had been more certain than she was, a thing he felt deep in the Force, and a thing that Ezra too seemed to have experienced, though he had so far been doing a fine job of looking away from whatever it was he had felt. Sabine, on the other end of things, was absolutely certain that both of them were fine and refused to hear otherwise in the brief moment that it had been brought up when the bombardment had finally stopped.

Hera could hardly blame her for that. It was only a day ago that the young Mandalorian lost her mother, her brother, and her entire clan in another stroke of Imperial brutality. But regardless of what they may find out there, Hera knew very well that she'd have to face it eventually. They all would.

Taking a deep breath, Hera stepped out of her cover, and slowly began carefully stepping across the rubble strewn ground toward the Togruta, Kanan, Ezra and Sabine following close behind her, their weapons in their hands.

"Ahsoka," Hera said as loudly as she dared, little more than a loud whisper, but it was enough to get the woman's attention, and changing her course, the Togruta walked toward them.

"Well..." Ahsoka said quietly, a small, tight smile on her lips as she looked the Spectres over. "It hasn't been often, and not for a long while, but I've seen worse."

"You've got to be kidding..." Ezra deadpanned, and this time, the smile Ahsoka turned on him was a bit more genuine.

"Not at all," Ahsoka said. "The Clone Wars were a particular breed of nasty, especially when the fighting came even remotely close to Kenobi's sphere of influence." Her eyes hardened, her expression becoming grim. "We lost a lot of lives here. I don't mean to make light of that." She turned away from the group, gesturing for them to follow. "I'm going to take an account of our losses and look for survivors. You're welcome to join me, if you'd like."

"Is it safe?" Sabine asked in a voice that shook despite herself. "If Thrawn starts up again-" "He won't," Ahsoka interrupted. "There was a reason he stopped, Sabine. I don't know if it's because he's changing tactics, trying to capture us, or if Kenobi managed to stop him, but whatever it is, the bombardment is over, and I'd rather face what's coming next out in the open." A tight smirk crossed her lips as she pointed up toward the sky. "It's easier to see what's coming from out here anyway, and I try to be prepared when I can."

"...is Kenobi even alive?" Sabine asked quietly, and Ahsoka, threw a glance back at Kanan.

"I don't know..." Ahsoka said slowly. "All this death clouds the Force. I haven't been able to sense him for a while now."

"I haven't either," Kanan said almost absently, his gaze drifting up into the sky as if he were expecting something, then with a deep breath, he took Hera's hand and pulled her gently toward Ahsoka. "We need to find Zeb and Kallus."

A hard, uncomfortable silence fell over the already quiet group, a heavy weariness seeming to fall on Ahsoka's shoulders as she gestured out toward where the shield generator had once been, not terribly far from the command center when their base had been in tact, but now, pocketed with blackened craters and twisted metal scrap and heavy stone rubble, it looked to be a long, difficult trek. They slowly started picking their way across the terrain, climbing over debris when going around it seemed impossible and occasionally having the Force sensitive among them move aside the larger pieces of rubble that seemed too perilous to climb. More often than not, moving the wreckage unearthed more bodies, some dead, but some badly wounded but still alive.

With most of the dust having settled, they could see the silhouettes of the arachnoid krykna skittering across the rubble, the sensor beacons that had once kept them at bay destroyed in the attack and allowing them free reign of the compound that had once been safe from them. Worse still, these creatures were highly sensitive to negative emotions, which was likely part of the reason they had been drawn here, and their resistance to blaster fire could now leave the survivors in hiding in danger from the predatory creatures.

Eventually, they would finish picking through the dead and would be drawn to living prey.

"Well..." Ahsoka said, her voice strained as she lifted a large, mostly flat sheet of metal siding into the air with the Force and propped it against a massive, broken spire of stone. "I'm going to try and make a command post here where we can protect the injured."

"Guess that leaves us to deal with those things..." Ezra grumbled. "Great. After the day we've had, the last thing I wanted was more fighting."

"At least we'll be able to do something this time..." Sabine said with a roll of her eyes as she drew her blasters. "Sure beats getting flattened by Imperials..."

"You're probably better off keeping a watch out for survivors than trying to fight those things," Ahsoka said as she moved another stone, this one slotting unevenly behind the spire and the metal sheet. "Standard weaponry doesn't work too well against them, if you'll remember, and we don't exactly have the resources to drive them off." With a wave of her hand, she carefully moved one of the groaning, injured men into the crude but spacious shelter she had created. "Brutal as it is, I think they'll be preoccupied with the dead for a while."

"What?!" Ezra snapped, whipping his head around to stare at the impassive Togruta. "We can't just-"

"I don't like it anymore than you do," Ahsoka interrupted, raising her hand in a call for silence and patience. "But we start attacking those things, and they could easily swarm the area and kill the survivors. Sato and Dodanna didn't evacuate their ships only to have them be killed down here by oversized spiders."

It was harsh, the bitter sting of the rebel commanders' loss twisting their guts, but it was enough. Ahsoka was right, and slowly, Sabine holstered her blasters and Ezra took his hand off his lightsaber. Silently, Ahsoka returned to her work of moving the injured into her makeshift shelter, and patting Ezra on the shoulder, Kanan gestured for the boy to follow, the small group continuing their slow journey across the base toward the ruined shield generator, their pace slow and their footing unsteady as they carefully inched down into one of the craters blasted into the ground.

Movement caught out of the corner of Ezra's eye sent the boy's hand flying to the hilt of his lightsaber, the hairs of his neck standing on end when he thought he heard soft voices, and there, on top of one of the starfighters that had been blasted into oblivion, crawled one of the largest krykna he'd ever seen, it's multiple eyes staring right at him and thick saliva mixed with blood dripping from it's fangs. He drew his lightsaber, the blade hissing on and making the others quickly reel around to face the creature as it reared up and screeched, and-

"Oh, stop it, get out of here..." a soft, bored voice drawled, and obeying the command, the krykna lowered itself back down, its pointed legs slipping slightly on the starfighter's metal as it clambered down to the ground and almost lazily ambled away. Jaws slack, the Spectres watched as in the next moment, Vitios casually walked out from behind the starfighter, a large, durable bag slung over one shoulder and her forked, black tongue darting out from between her lips as the Chagrian ran her hand over the wreckage and climbed up into what was left of the cockpit.

Looking around, they only now noticed that all the other kyrkna had also left the immediate area.

"I swear, you Jedi are so jumpy..." Vitios continued with a roll of her eyes as she dropped the bag to the ground with a muffled clang, drew her own lightsaber, and thrust the blade into the sparking control board.

"Can you blame us after the day we've had?" Kanan asked, and glowing yellow eyes darted to look at him, eyes narrowed as she switched her saver off and pulled the starfighter's central drive from the open console.

"Yes," Vitios said flatly as she dropped the device to the ground next to her bag and turned her attention back to salvaging the ship, and near the smoking engine, Vehemis climbed on top of the dented casing from where she had been working out of sight, a grin on her face as she draped herself over one of the dented wings. "We've had the same day as you," Vitios continued, "and you don't see us acting like scared little tookas..."

"Hi, Kanan..." Vehemis drawled, wiggling her fingers in a wave and a sly, seductive smile crossing her face when she saw Hera's eyes narrow.

"I swear, Vehemis..." Vitios growled as she shot her companion a glare, and she was swiftly interrupted when the red skinned Twi'lek pointed an accusing finger at her.

"You said the entire rebellion wouldn't be eaten by spiders," Vehemis said in a dry, mocking tone. "You have no idea what you're talking about, so I don't have to listen to you!"

"...it wasn't the entire rebellion..." Vitios grumbled, but there was no argument in her as she ignited her lightsaber and silently returned to her work. With a triumphant grin, Vehemis slid off the starfighter and sauntered up to the Spectres, flashing Hera a friendly smile when the unamused rebel leader crossed her arms over her chest.

"So..." Vehemis drawled. "What are you guys doing all the way out here?"

"We might ask you the same thing," Hera said dryly, pointing toward one of the skittering krykna at the top of the crater's slopes. "You guys can control those things?"

"Tch, no..." Vehemis scoffed. "We aren't controlling them, we just have an...understanding." Again, she grinned, exposing her pronounced, pointed canines. "We lack our Master's talent for domination..."

"You generally lack for talent entirely," Vitios sneered as she switched off her saber, the starfighter's entire engine landing with a hard thud on the ground, and Vehemis rolled her eyes as her Chagrian companion stomped up to the group and shoved the bag of scrapped electronics into her hands. "We're salvaging everything we can find that might be useful," she said as she gestured back to the wreckage.

"You could help us look for survivors instead," Kanan said quickly as Vitios began to turn away. "Not all of our people made it to the tunnels before the shields failed. We found a few injured, and-"

"It's a waste of time," Vitios said dismissively, her hand straining slightly as she called upon the Force to lift the fallen engine casing.

"What?!" Ezra snapped as he strode forward, and both women looked at him entirely unimpressed. "We found survivors already, they're injured and they need our help!"

"We don't have the medical supplies to tend to the wounded," Vitios shot back, her forked tongue darting out between her lips in a hiss of irritation. "Nor do we have the ability to use the Force to heal." A faint, disdainful smirk quirked at the edge of her lips. "Do you?"

"We thought it a better use of our time to salvage what we in order to fix the ships that weren't damaged beyond repair so we could get off this rock," Vehemis put in, a wry smile on her lips as she leaned in toward Hera. "Including your ship, Captain..."

Hera hissed, her eyes darting up toward the edge of the crater toward what was once the command center where she had last put down the Ghost. With all that had happened, between the crushing losses and the death and the overwhelming destruction, the ship that had been her home for years had slipped her mind entirely, supplanted instead with a bitter mix of grief and determined anger.

"You've seen the Ghost?" Hera asked tightly, and Vehemis flashed her a wide grin, and she couldn't tell if it was genuinely friendly, or entirely mocking.

"We did," Vehemis answered in a lilting voice. "It was among the first ships we looked for. It's pretty badly damaged, but give it a few days and we might get it off the ground..."

"You better keep your hands off my ship!" Hera said sternly, and Vitios rolled her eyes, giving Vehemis a slight push in the direction of the ridge that the Spectres came from.

"Does it look like we have our hands on your ship, Syndulla?" Vitios scoffed. "We're salvaging. That's all." She gave a short, non-committal shrug. "We left the clone in charge of starting the repairs."

"We're going there now, if you wanna tag along," Vehemis said over her shoulder, giving Kanan a devious wink that was promptly ignored.

"We can't, not yet," Hera said tightly. "Like we said, we're searching for survivors, and we need to find Kallus and Zeb."

The two former Inquisitors gave each other a tight, uncomfortable look, the carefree, irrelevant attitude they carried cracking to reveal something profoundly raw beneath. And then, it was gone, but the smirks and the dismissive demeanor didn't return.

"Very well..." Vitios said as she once again pushed Vehemis to urge her forward. "I wish you the best of luck. But I wouldn't linger too long. I don't suspect we'll be welcome here much longer."

And before they could respond or ask what she meant, the women were gone, making their way almost effortlessly over the rubble, despite the weight of the pack filled with scrap and the large engine casing they had the Force bring long with them. The silence they were left in was oppressive, the weight pressing down upon their chests making it difficult to breathe, and after a moment, Kanan grabbed hold of Hera's hand and tugged her forward, and silently, they continued on their trek across the crater.

It didn't take them long to climb up the sloping edge with the aid of the debris, and once they had pulled themselves out of the crater, they had arrived at the still sparking twisted metal wreckage of the shield generator. Small fires still burned in the oil of melted remains of turbines and wires, the entire ground blackened and pockmarked by the strikes of turbolaser fire, the building that had once housed the machine entirely destroyed, much like the rest of their base. And much like everywhere else, bloodied and broken bodies littered the ground.

Ezra and Sabine quickly split off, the two teens jogging toward one of the piles of wreckage, Ezra's hand cutting through the air to lift scrap off the ground in a check for survivors. Her heart beating faster, Hera started to follow until Kanan's hand closed around her wrist, his face grim and pale as he gently pulled her away from the teens and toward another of the scattered piles. Her mouth suddenly dry, Hera swallowed hard and walked beside Kanan, the two silent and somber as they reached their destination and Kanan carefully lifted the large, dented sheet of metal and placed it aside.

From the moment she lost contact with Zeb when the generator overheated and exploded, deep down, past the part of her that clung desperately for hope, Hera had known where the search for Garazeb Orelios would lead. But now, faced with the reality of it, it hurt far deeper than she had been prepared for, the dull ache in her chest giving rise to the bitter sting of tears that welled up in her eyes.

In the hollow created by the twisted metal and broken ceramic, Hera looked down at Zeb, his purple fur singed and matted with dried blood, his leg torn off from mid-thigh and his body protectively covering Alexsandr Kallus, the Fulcrum agent's skin pale and burned, his torso pierced with a piece of jagged metal that left his flesh hopelessly torn. At least, Hera somberly thought as she looked down at the staggering amount of blood that covered the scrap and the ground, the severity of their injuries made it nearly certain that their death were swift. At this point, that was all she could have hoped for her friend.

That, and the deep, stomach churning thought that she had led them here.

"It wasn't your fault," Kanan said quietly, his hand resting upon her shoulder, and a swift flash of anger shot through her as she reeled on him, tears streaking down her face in fury at the nerve of the man to read her thoughts the way he did. The emotion was gone before it had a chance to take hold by the time she faced him.

"Isn't it..." she whispered, quickly wiping her arm across her eyes and sniffling as she looked down at the ground. "I led them here. They followed me because they trusted me to see them through, and this is where I led them..."

"They believed in this fight as much as the rest of us," Kanan said quietly. "Even knowing the risks, they still chose to follow you because this fight is worth it."

"Losses like this are a failure of the commander," Hera muttered as she looked down at Kallus and Zeb. "They didn't deserve this..."

Kanan said nothing, only carefully pulled her against him, and with a deep, shuddering breath, Hera held the Jedi tightly, her face pressed against his chest as she fought back the tears and the grief that sat heavy on her chest. There was still an enemy high above them, and she was still the commander on the scene, regardless of how few she had left to command. Until they were safely out of Thrawn's reach, she had a job to do, and grief and mourning for their friend and companion would have to wait. But that didn't mean she would be abandoning them. She couldn't. Not now, and not ever.

She had already failed them once. In this, she absolutely wouldn't fail them again.

"We can't leave them here for the krykna," Hera said firmly as she pulled away from Kanan and looked back down at Zeb and Kallus. "We shouldn't be leaving any of them for those creatures."

"I'll get Ezra and Sabine to help me collect the dead," Kanan said quietly. "You should get back to the Ghost and help Rex with the repairs."

"I need to see this through, Kanan..." Hera said quietly as she knelt down, her fingers lightly brushing the fur on Zeb's arm and the tears threatening to return to her eyes. "Zeb's family. More than my father was family, in the end..." Her expression hardened, the fleeting anger returning to her as she glanced up at the sky. "Another death that I'll make Thrawn pay for dearly..." Taking a deep breath, she eased herself down next to the two bodies, her foot slipping for a moment in only partially dried blood before she caught herself. "Give me a hand, will you?"

Taking a moment to quickly check for Ezra and Sabine and spotting the two teens far on the other side of the generator's foundation, Kanan closed his eyes and slowly lifted his hands, and Zeb and Kallus' bodies were carefully dislodged from where they lay and lifted in the hands of the Force. He gently laid them down on the ground, and Hera swiftly scrambled off the pile of twisted metal and stood silently beside Kanan, their fingers interlocking as they looked down at the bodies.

The silence was broken when Ezra and Sabine returned.

"Oh, no no no no no..." Ezra muttered as he rushed over, leaving Sabine supporting the injured woman they had found on their search. He skidded to a halt just before he reached Kanan and Hera, his feet digging gouges in the blackened earth and sending up a small cloud of ash in his wake. Tears streaming down his face, he dropped to his knees, laid his hand on Zeb's chest, and swiftly withdrew it at the too cold feel of his friend.

"Ezra..." Hera said quietly, and the teenager swiftly looked up, his lip quivering with emotion he was attempting but failing to repress.

"Kallus said he saw how he died," Ezra snapped at Kanan. "He said he saw it, didn't he?! Did you see it! Did you know this would happen?!"

"I don't know what I saw," Kanan said quietly, his voice devoid of emotion, which only served to anger the grief-stricken teen. "You know how unclear Force vision are, Ezra. But whatever it was that Kallus saw, I didn't see it."

"Well what good is the Force if we can't stop this from happening?!" Ezra shouted, his shoulders shaking with rage, and for just a second, Kanan thought he saw a pale, glowing glint ignite in his student's eyes. "I'm going to make them pay..." Ezra snarled between clenched teeth, his eyes squeezing tightly shut as tears ran down his face and fell upon the Lasat's chest. "All of them, I'll make them all pay for this..."

Kanan started to say something, but Hera's hand upon his shoulder quickly silenced the man, and with a gesture over her shoulder, Kanan turned back to see Sabine kneeling in front of the injured woman she and Ezra had returned with. At Hera's silent urging, Kanan nodded, gave the woman's hand a tight squeeze before he left her to deal with Ezra while he went to checked on Sabine. When he reached her, the Mandalorian was doing what she could to clean out an open, bloody wound on the woman's leg, her helmet keeping Kanan from seeing the emotions on her face, but he felt them just as keenly through the Force as if she had told him.

"I thought..." Sabine said quietly, her helmet filtering out the majority of the emotion from her voice, but not all of it. "I thought that since we found a survivor...I didn't even consider that..." She stopped, her hands shaking as she tore a piece of the woman's pants off into a thin, narrow strip. "I guess we've just been lucky up 'til now, haven't we..."

"Lucky and as prepared as we could be," Kanan quietly agreed.

"We just seemed unbeatable," Sabine continued. "We've been in so many bad situations and so many tight spots and we've always all come out of it. I thought..." She sniffled, her chin falling to her chest for a moment as she tied off the makeshift bandage around the woman's leg. "I really believed that we'd all make it through, no matter what. And after...a-after Mandalore..." She took a sharp, shaking breath and rose to her feet, starting to look over her shoulder to where Ezra and Hera stood, and quickly looked back down at the ground. "I'm so stupid..."

"You aren't," Kanan said quietly as he pulled the girl into a loose hug, and with a shaking sob, Sabine wrapped her arms tightly around the Jedi. "It isn't stupid to hope for the best," he continued. "We all do, or we wouldn't be in this fight at all." He paused, his hand running slowly over the girl's back. "Do you want to go over there? I'll go with you."

"No..." Sabine whimpered, her voice muffled by the helmet and thick with emotion. "I...I will. But I can't. Not now..."

"Whenever you're ready," Kanan said, giving the girl a small, sympathetic smile when she finally pulled away from him. "I'm going to have another look around the area. Do you want to come?"

"I'm going to watch after her," Sabine said as she gestured to the injured woman on the ground. "I'll com Ahsoka, maybe..." Her shoulders sagged as she sighed, and she gave a small, hopeless shrug. "I don't know. I just want to make sure she's stable enough to make it..."

"Alright," Kanan said, and with a final touch to the teenager's shoulder, he turned and walked off, away from Hera and Ezra and their dead crewmates, his eyes fixed on the dark horizon and the distant black storm clouds illuminated by flashes of lightning that jumped between them like deep, simmering anger. He took a deep breath that did nothing to relieve the ache in his chest, closed his eyes, and when he opened them once again, the would had shifted into the blaze of color that was the Force.

Sickly greens and pale yellows, inky blacks and deep, wrathful reds stained the world in a slow, languid churn, nothing at all like the usually vibrant bursts and occasional shadowed spots that usually marked the realm of the Force. It was damaged, torn asunder and steeped in the Dark Side that was summoned by death and grief and rage and hopelessness. It would recover, he knew. They would recover, the wound of this grievous injury would one day become the pale slash of a scar across the vibrant world of the Force. But for now...

He looked up, his eyes fixed upon the ice blue beast that spidered across the sky above them, the twin draconic heads fixing their piercing gaze down upon the devastation, and Kanan couldn't shake the feeling that it saw him, somehow knew that life still existed down upon its hunting grounds. Thrawn was still up there, he knew, still lying in wait, but at the moment, it didn't seem as if the man was actively on the hunt, if the stark, illusory images of the Force could be believed. Kanan wasn't sure it could be, but for now, he was more than willing to remain hopeful that for now, at least, it was over.

But he couldn't get a sense for Kenobi, or Luke and Leia who were trapped upon the Chimaera, and that was foreboding enough for Kanan to turn away from the sky. He wasn't sure they could handle any more death today, and the absence of Kenobi's particular void in the Force could very well be as bad as he feared if the cunning Sith had misread Thrawn.

Kanan looked back toward Hera, a faint smile on his face when he saw, through the muted, pallid sway of the Dark Side, a bright, shining speck of silver, small but more vibrant than anything the dreary landscape provided, a thing certainly out of place among all the destruction, but all the more welcome for it.

Yes. They'd be alright.

Another deep breath, and Kanan rubbed at his eyes, cursing quietly when the pull of grief and loss beat hard in his chest and his vision swam with tears that washed away the colors of the Force around him like rain. The loss of the Jedi, the Republic, his Master, had been devastating, pulling the entire galaxy out from beneath a young Caleb Dume and setting him adrift in a world that would see him slain for what he was. He hadn't so much recovered from that as he had simply survived, continued on aloof and adrift from place to place until he had met Hera. Another galaxy turning event that set him on his current path and gave him a family that even the Jedi had never truly given him. Zeb had been part of that family, and Kallus...well, his connection to Zeb as his lover made him a part of that family as well.

Their loss was not so shattering as the slaughter of the Jedi, but it was a precision strike that had cut far, far deeper for how close they had been. Kanan's world hadn't fallen apart with Zeb's death, but he had lost a brother, and it felt worse.

It was easy to see how love and loss could eat Kenobi alive the way it did.

He looked down into the blackened crater they had climbed out of, could see krykna climbing over rubble and far in the distance could see the flash of red sabers as Vitios and Vehemis continued their salvage work. For all the stone and metal and sand that covered Atollon, there wasn't any wood in sigh, and Kanan quickly realized it may well have been irrelevant. Once, the Jedi would burn their dead, but he didn't know what the Lasat would do. Following the genocide of his people, Zeb didn't speak much of the Lasat or the customs, much in the same way Kanan didn't speak much of the Jedi.

Taking a deep, steadying breath and wiping his eyes, Kanan turned around and began the walk back to Hera, his stride longer and his path more direct than the meandering way he took on the way out. When he made it back, Sabine had finally made it over to Zeb and Kallus and sat beside them and held the Lasat's hand, and Ezra had his lightsaber in hand and was carefully carving stone into long boxes deep enough to hold the two men. It was as good a thought as any, Kanan thought with a small smile, drawing his own lightsaber and igniting the blade as he approached Ezra and throwing a quick look over at Hera, the woman sitting beside the injured rebel as she worked on her datapad.

"Need help, kid?" Kanan asked, and Ezra looked up quickly before he returned to his work, his lips pressed into a hard line as he nodded.

"I-I didn't know what else to do..." Ezra mumbled. "We can't just leave them here, Kanan. If Hera can fix the Ghost, I thought maybe..." He huffed, his saber hissing off as he swiftly wiped his eyes. "Maybe Thrawn thinks we're all dead, maybe we can slip away and bring them...somewhere. Zeb's homeworld, or Lothal, or something..."

"Maybe we can," Kanan said quietly, knowing very well it wasn't going to happen, a thing he knew that Ezra was keenly aware of. But there was nothing else they could do, trapped down here as they were and at the mercy of the threat that loomed above them. With the ability to fight back robbed to them, clinging to what they could do for the dead and injured was better than having nothing at all.

"And if we can't," Ezra growled between clenched teeth, wiping his eyes once again as he sniffled and reignited his lightsaber, his hand patting one of the stone caskets, "these will at least keep the krykna out." He paused, giving a slight, indifferent shrug as he carefully touched his saber to the stone. "Hopefully..." he added as an afterthought, but Kanan knew Ezra well enough to know that it had been weighing on the teen.

Giving Ezra a small, tight smile, Kanan got to work on the other slab of stone, the two silent as the stone hissed and burnished beneath the plasma blades, slowly taking shape and blackening into hard, crystalized melted stone. As the project neared completion, the two Jedi working together on the second one after Ezra had finished the first one, Hera slowly approached, slipping her datapad into her pocket and eying the two for a moment before they switched the sabers off.

"Rex said Kenobi's girls dragged the survivors out of the tunnels and set them to work looking for the injured, collecting the dead and salvaging what they can," Hera said, a wry smirk touching her lips. "Not exactly like them, given our last conversation with them. I think you might have had an effect on them."

"Who, me?" Kanan asked, going for flippant, but he knew he fell terribly short. "I barely spoke to them. I think they're way more effected by all this than they're letting on."

"Oh, absolutely..." Hera muttered. "I'm going to go get to work on the Ghost. I'm taking Sabine with me, she wants to grab her paint and add to your work here."

"Good idea," Kanan said, looking over at Sabine as she carefully helped ease the injured woman to her feet, her arm slung over her shoulder for support. "Need me to walk you back?"

"I think I can manage," Hera said dismissively. "I'll have a plan by the time you guys are done here. Meet me back at the ship as soon as you can."

"Do you want to be here when..." Ezra began, but trailed off when a lump formed in his throat, and he gestured helplessly toward where Zeb and Kallus lay upon the ground. Casting a quick glance over her shoulder, Hera turned back to Ezra and game him a small, sympathetic smile.

"I've said my goodbyes," Hera whispered, her eyes cast toward the ground. "The best thing I can do now to honor his memory is make sure the rest of us get out of here alive."

Ezra said nothing, only nodded and ignited his lightsaber, and touching Kanan's cheek as she walked by, Hera walked away, squinting as she surveyed the area and waiting for Sabine and the injured woman to catch up before they continued together. They didn't go back the way they came, instead taking a much faster, more direct route around the edge of the crater, the majority of the debris that would have otherwise been in their way having fallen down the slope of the pit. As Rex had said, she could see the occasional teams of survivors of the battle climbing over the wreckage and working together to move stone and metal out of the way in their search for the dead and injured, others still carrying bags of tools and working on stripping whatever they could off the ruined ships and droids.

Strangely enough, the krykna had mysteriously seemed to vanish, and Vitios' earlier comment about no longer being welcome here suddenly rang more ominous than before.

They had only been walking for about fifteen minutes before they spotted the Ghost.

"Oh, I'm going to kill him..." Hera said under her breath as she took in the sight of her badly damaged and battered ship. "Thrawn isn't waging war against us, this is a personal attack."

"He's been like this from the start..." Sabine said bitterly as she readjusted the injured woman's arm over her shoulder. "Using my art to find our weaknesses, slaughtering my entire clan just to capture people Kenobi cares about..."

"He better have stopped shooting at us because Kenobi dealt with him," Hera bit out. "Because if he didn't, I'm going to make Thrawn wish he dealt with the Sith instead of me!" Her gaze darted toward the side of the ship when she saw movement out of the corner of her eye, her hand swiftly going to the blaster at her him, and she sighed in relief, her shoulders relaxing when she saw Ahsoka step out into the open.

"Found another?" the Togruta asked as she gestured toward the woman Sabine was assisting, and the Mandalorian nodded. "I've relocated," Ahsoka said as she gestured for the women to follow. "It's safer for us to all gather in one area, and since most of our salvageable ships are here..." She shrugged and pointed behind the Ghost at another structure, more sturdy than the first one she had built, a small cluster of people working just outside it, and Sabine carefully guided the woman toward it.

"Have we found many?" Hera asked, and Ahsoka slowly shook her head, her expression hardening.

"More than I thought," she said quietly. "But less than I hoped. And for many of them, there's not much we can do. Most of them will probably be dead in a few hours."

"We found Zeb and Kallus," Hera said quietly after Sabine had left the injured woman in the shelter and sprinted up the open ramp of the Ghost. "They're dead."

"...I'm sorry," Ahsoka whispered, her eyes following Sabine as the girl reemerged from the ship with a pack slung over her shoulder and took off running toward the edge of the crater. "Kallus was a good agent, and I know how much Zeb meant to you."

Hera said nothing, only bit down on her lip and nodded and shuffled toward her ship, her fingers running along the blackened hull as she surveyed the damage. From out here, at least, it looked salvageable, though it would take days for her to make flight worthy, days they might not even have. And even then, it would still need more extensive repairs that she wouldn't be able to complete here with their limited supplies and resources. All she could do now was a temporary fix and hope it was enough to get them safely away from Atollon to somewhere a more thorough repair job could be done.

That is, provided she didn't need to navigate them past an Imperial blockade.

Ahsoka followed after her and handed her a roll of tools, and giving her a grateful smile, the two women walked up the ramp and inside the ship, consulting briefly with Rex on the state of his repairs before they got to work on the various consoles in the cockpit. Without the scanning and diagnostics, it would be difficult to determine exactly where the damage was and exactly what had to be done to fix it, and Hera felt another flash of grief and anger that she quickly pushed away. She could certainly run these repairs, but what would take her hours would have taken Chopper a fraction of the time.

Just another one of the many things she'd make Thrawn pay for.

Half hour after she began, Sabine, Ezra and Kanan returned from what now served as Kallus and Zeb's final resting place, and together, the repairs to the ship went much faster and smoother, though there was a great deal they could do nothing about until Vitios and Vehemis returned with the more specific parts she needed.

It was nearly an hour later when the ship appeared in the sky.

The surviving rebels went scattering over the debris, disappearing into their tunnels and leaving the ruins appearing as empty as they had been in the immediate aftermath of the attack, the sound of engines heard before the ship was seen. The Ghost's newly repaired short range radar didn't register the ship or anything else that could have produced the sound, and with a quick look at Kanan, Hera ordered Ezra and Sabine to make repairs to their weapon systems as quickly as possible, and with that, she ran out of the ship, blaster in hand and Kanan close behind her.

It didn't take long to locate the ship, the flash in the sky as polished metal caught the light from the system's sun giving away its location as it shot quickly through the atmosphere, looking like it was going to fly past them for a moment before it swiftly changed directions and angled down directly toward them. Before the ship was clearly visible, Ahsoka had emerged to stand beside them, her own weapons ignored at her hip as she looked up into the sky, her eyes slowly tracking the ship.

It didn't take long for the ship to draw close enough for them to see the sleek, distinctive shape of the Umbra, and though none of them relaxed, Hera felt her heart leap in her chest. Maybe - maybe - the ship wasn't filled with ambushing Imperials and Kenobi had actually returned to them after his victory over Thrawn. Maybe this nightmare was finally over.

"I can't feel him," Kanan said to Ahsoka as the Umbra's landing struts extended as it slowly lowered to the ground, his hand tightening around his lightsaber.

"Kenobi's always been hard to detect," Ahsoka replied. "And with all the death here disturbing the Force, he could be even harder to sense."

"I hope you're right..." Kanan said as the Umbra's landing ramp extended, and he found himself holding his breath as they waited. It was only a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity before black boots appeared on the ramp, and they collectively let out a sigh of relief as the Sith Lord strode out of his ship.

"You incredible ass," Hera hissed between clenched teeth as she holstered her weapon. "What took you so long!"

"Miss me, Syndulla?" Kenobi drawled, flashing the woman a tight grin that the Twi'lek answered with a scowl.

"I'd miss you more if this victory hadn't been so costly," Hera said flatly. "It took us years to build all this. Destroying it all to take down one man doesn't feel worth it." Her face hardened. "It isn't worth it, not after the losses we've suffered today."

"It's worth it," Obi-Wan answered, but there was something in his voice, in the way his lip curled up into a smirk that struck Hera as off.

"Kenobi..." Hera said slowly. "You did kill Thrawn, right?"

"Well..."

"Don't tell me," Hera snarled as she took an aggressive step toward the Sith Lord, "that you let that bastard get away! Tell me we didn't lose everything for nothing, Kenobi!"

"I told you already, it's worth it!" Kenobi said, putting his hands up in a gesture that did nothing to placate the angry rebel leader. "I was victorious, as I said I'd be." A slight, almost sheepish smile crossed Obi-Wan's face. "But it's not what you're thinking."

Before Hera had a chance to demand an explanation, a second pair of boots appeared on the Umbra's ramp, and jaws slack, the assembled rebels gawked at the man that almost casually strolled out of the ship, an all too familiar figure that impassively surveyed the damage around him with glowing red eyes.

A furious, maniacal grin spread across Hera's face as she snatched her blaster from its holster and leveled it at Grand Admiral Thrawn's chest.

"No, no, no, wait, stop!" Kenobi said quickly as he darted protectively in front of the Chiss, his hands held out toward Hera in a silent plea to not do anything rash. "It's alright! I've struck a deal!"

"A deal?!" Hera snapped, her gaze darting between the Sith Lord and the rebellion's bitter enemy, an erratic twitch at the corner of her eyes as she kept the weapon pointed menacingly at the pair. "He took my droid! He stole a priceless family heirloom! He killed my father! He destroyed everything I've worked years to build! He ruined my ship!" She started to say something else, but a lump in her throat and the swift welling of tears made her stop and reconsider, and she swiftly committed to not giving the Chiss the satisfaction of knowing the depth of the loss they suffered that day. She turned an accusing look on the Sith, that sheepish look returned to his face. "What sort of deal could you have possibly struck with a monster!?"

"Alright, it's a lot, I admit..." Kenobi admitted with a guilty shrug, the acquiescence fading as quickly from his face as it had arrived, replaced instead with muted excitement that made Hera seethe. "But wouldn't you rather have that kind of destructive force on our side?"

"I'd rather have that kind of destructive force wiped out of existence!" Hera hissed, stalking forward with her weapon raised, and was stopped when Kanan wrapped a hard, unyielding hand around her wrist. She shot Kanan a ferocious glare, drew herself up and prepared to shout at him, and stopped when she was met with his calm, collected gaze, her anger faltering before his silent plea for patience.

She felt like an idiot for letting grief and overwhelming loss to get the better of her. The last time she let a mission get personal, she ended up playing into Thrawn's hands, and her father had died for it.

Hera took a deep breath, her furious gaze meeting the cold, impassive glowing Chiss eyes, and slowly lowered her weapon.

"You!"

The word was snarled, a deep, guttural growl that sounded nothing like the teenager who uttered it, and before Hera had a chance to turn around, Ezra and Sabine shot past her, their weapons in their hands as they sprinted toward the Imperial, the faintest glint of a pale, sickly yellow glow in Ezra's eyes. Hissing a curse as Kanan took off after the teens, Ahsoka reached out with the Force, wrenching Sabine's blasters out of her hand just as she fired, the jerk of the weapons making the shots go wild and far off target. With another pull, the Mandalorian was lifted off the ground and went flying back toward the Ghost, the girl landing with a scream of frustration on the ground, and despite the way she thrashed and struggled, she couldn't dislodge the invisible weight that pinned her to the dirt.

A similar effort to pull Ezra off his feet did nothing, repelled with a snapping hiss of fury from the Dark Side that cloaked the consumed teen. His entire body trembled with animal fury as he extended his hand, the Force howling its wrath and kicking up sand and ash as his hand contorted into a strangling hold around the Chiss' throat.

Thrawn didn't so much as move.

Shouting in rage and grasping his saber tight in both hands, he rose the weapon over his head, a snapping hiss cut through the air, and his weapon was caught in a shower of sparks as it collided with Kanan's blue blade, and with a swift flick of the older Jedi's weapon, Ezra was thrown off balance as he spun around, and Kanan slipped around behind him to stand between his student and the Chiss. Ezra's fury turned on the older Jedi, his eyes narrowing as he swung at the new obstacle between him and his target, but Kanan matched his every strike, expertly holding his ground even as Ezra made every effort through speed and ferocity to break past him.

"Ezra, stop!" Kanan said between clenched teeth, not a command so much as a plea to his student that lay so firmly clutched by the Dark Side.

"Get out of the way, Kanan!" Ezra snapped, ducking beneath the Jedi's blade and attempting to lunge past him, only for Kanan's leg to swiftly catch his own, sending him tumbling with a furious shout to the ground. "I'll kill him for what he's done!"

"You won't," Kanan said as he swiftly kicked Ezra's lightsaber out of the teen's reach, only for the blade to go flying back to Ezra's grip and reignite with a sharp hiss.

"Why are you defending him?!" Ezra growled, his lightsaber pointing menacingly over Kanan's shoulder at the Chiss. "He killed Zeb, Kanan!"

"Zeb is dead?" Obi-Wan said quietly, a slight trembling in his voice as his face hardened slightly, his eyes flicking over to look at Ahsoka who quietly nodded.

"Kallus too," the Togruta added quietly.

"I see..." Thrawn muttered. "You have my sympathies, rebels."

"It's your fault they're dead, you bastard!" Ezra snarled as he scrambled up from the ground and attempted to dart past Kanan, only to be restrained by the larger man, and with a scream of frustration, Ezra extended his hand and pushed out with the Force, willing it to slam the Chiss against the side of the Sith Lord's ship, the murderous intent making the teen's eyes blaze yellow. But again, Thrawn remained unaffected, the Admiral simply standing at Kenobi's side, his hands clasped behind his back, observing them as calmly as he would have been had they been discussing the weather.

It was enough to make frustrated, furious Ezra collapse against Kanan and sob against the man's shoulder.

The lightsaber dropping from Ezra's hand, Kanan carefully laid his foot over it, his arm wrapping around the boy's shoulders in a gesture that was equal parts to comfort him as it was to restrain him. He looked over at the Sith Lord and the Admiral, the two men remaining still and unmoving at the base of the Umbra's ramp, and casting a quick glance at Hera, he turned his attention back to Kenobi, the usual golden glowing eyes dull and muted, and their inability to sense him made more sense. Thrawn, it seemed, managed to rob the prodigious Sith Lord of his connection to the Force.

"What deal?" Kanan asked quietly, and the Sith Lord exhaled the breath that he had apparently been holding.

"Well," Kenobi drawled in a show of his previous bravado, but he lacked the arrogant swagger of before, the smirk on his lips doing nothing to conceal the lines of pain around his eyes. "First off, he stopped shooting at us, yeah?"

"How generous of him..." Hera said flatly as she crossed her arms over her chest. "And what did that cost us?"

"Nothing!" Kenobi assured her, the Chiss' eyes shifting to look at the Sith.

"It was offered as terms of your unconditional surrender," Thrawn said quietly, and with a cursed hiss, Obi-Wan clamped his hand over the Chiss' mouth.

"We discussed this, dear, we agreed that I'd do the talking, remember?" Kenobi said through clenched teeth, and turning his gaze back on the extremely unamused rebels, he flashed them a wide, nervous grin. "Alright, so maybe I surrendered," he said with an indifferent shrug, and swiftly raised his hands when weapons found their way back into tight grasps. "But! But!" he said swiftly as he stepped toward them. "I conceded this battle to win the war! That's our goal, isn't it?!"

"And we're going to win with what army, Kenobi?" Hera snapped. "Look around you! Years of work and dozens of rebel cells convinced to finally work together, destroyed in a single night! Our odds were steep before, but now, where do you plan on getting a large enough force to prove a threat to the Empire!"

"From the Chiss Ascendancy," Obi-Wan said slowly, the flippant tone gone in favor of grave weight. "I said I struck a deal," the Sith said quietly. "Thrawn will join us in our war against the Empire, and in exchange, we will take the entirety of our rebel fleet and journey with him to the Unknown Regions to aid his people."

"What. Fleet," Hera said pointedly between grit teeth, and this time, the Sith Lord evenly met her gaze.

"My Mandalorians," Kenobi said evenly. "Everyone who has survived the battle here. The entirety of the force at the Yavin base. That fleet." Ahsoka tensed, her hand touching the lightsaber at her belt, her eyes narrowing as she stepped forward and met the cold, hard glare of the Lord of the Sith.

"And should we refuse, he has the location of our other base so that he may end all resistance to the Empire," Ahsoka said quietly, a dangerous edge in her voice. "If we want to live, if we want to have even a chance of fighting back against the Empire, we have to agree to this. Tell me, Kenobi, was this your plan to manipulate us into doing this, or was it his?"

"You misunderstand," Thrawn said as he took a step forward, the man grabbing Kenobi's wrist when he tried again to cover his mouth and not even flinching when he found weapons raised and leveled at him once again. "Regardless of your compliance, my service to Palpatine's Empire has ended."

"Oh, has it?" Hera scoffed, the scowl on her face deepening when the Chiss' glowing red eyes turned to her. "I suppose that Palpatine doesn't know that."

"Indeed, he does not," Thrawn replied. "Certainly it will not take long before he learns of it, and certainly he will be displeased by this perceived betrayal."

"A bit of an understatement, don't you think?" Kanan asked dryly. "You worked for this guy, so I'm sure you know that you'll be relentlessly hunted with extreme prejudice."

"Never the less, I must leave," Thrawn said calmly, taking another step toward the rebels. "My people need me, and your assistance would be most appreciated."

"You're out of your mind if you think we'd agree to this," Hera said coldly. "After all you've done, why would we risk more of our lives in helping an enemy when we need to preserve what we have left for our own fight?"

"I never considered you my enemy, Captain Syndulla," Thrawn said with a slight bow of his head. "A cunning adversary, perhaps, but you were never my enemy, and I never sought your destruction."

"Oh, no?" Hera said sweetly, a wide grin spreading across her face that did nothing to ease the hard anger in her eyes. "What exactly was it you were trying to do here then, hmm?"

"End the rebellion," Thrawn said flatly. "But you are no use to me dead, and I sent my TIE Defenders to tag your ships to direct fire away from you, so as to preserve your life."

For a long moment, there was silence, stunned disbelief from all the rebels as they stared with slack jaws at the Chiss, trying to decide if the man was lying, but they quickly saw he wasn't. The claim, as outrageous as it was, made sense in a weird, backwards sort of way, and accounted for how they managed to survive, even with three Defenders on their tails for the duration of the battle. Kanan at the time had even said something about it, but Hera never for once considered that the frankly insane notion could actually be the truth.

And this, Hera noted sourly, must have happened even before the deal with Kenobi. It was beginning to look entirely possible that Thrawn's plan all along had been to capture them and send them to the Ascendancy.

"Oh, you incredible bastard..." Hera said between clenched teeth. "We may not be your enemy, but I can assure you that's not even remotely mutual!"

"Why," Ahsoka cut in, her tone thoughtful, and lowering her lightsabers, she stepped closer to the Grand Admiral, her eyes narrowing as she studied the Chiss' face. "Suppose we don't agree to this deal. Suppose we don't leave to help your people. You would still abandon the Empire. Why."

"Obi-Wan has already promised his personal assistance and his assets to the aid of my people," Thrawn said, and Ahsoka shook her head.

"That's not what I'm asking," the Togruta said flatly. "What I want to know is why. Why turn on the Empire?"

For a long moment, Thrawn was silent, his lips pressed in a hard line and his gaze on the ground before him, his fingers slowly rubbing together behind his back. With a slow, deep breath, he nodded, drew up to his full height, and looked at the rebels, the full power and confidence of his authority in his posture.

"Because the Death Star is a threat to us all," Thrawn said, his voice low and grim. "I am a warrior, Phoenix rebels. A warrior does not seek to understand evil, only to destroy it."

"The Death Star..." Ahsoka muttered. "Stardust? The Emperor's secret project?"

"Indeed..." Thrawn said. "My people face a force of evil, as your people do now. It is my duty to eliminate this evil."

"An evil you served for many years," Hera said pointedly, and Thrawn inclined his head.

"And my service to the Empire ended the moment I learned the nature of the weapon it seeks to create," the Chiss said quietly. "But before that moment, the Empire is a government, like any other."

"A government that oppresses the freedom of it's people!" Hera snapped. "A government that commits genocide against entire peoples if they're opposed and ravages entire worlds whenever it sees fit!"

"A government that employs and provides for billions," Thrawn said coldly. "Even with the rebel incursions, people on thousands of worlds live their lives under Imperial rule without seeing Stormtroopers or hearing TIE Fighters overhead." He calmly held up his hand when he saw the rebels' body temperature rise with anger and their eyes narrow with objection. "Certainly the Empire is corrupt," he amended. "Certainly it is tyrannical, but the tone of a government is set by its leader, and Palpatine will not live forever." His features hardened. "And now, the end of his reign will come sooner."

"You mean to instill Kenobi on the throne of the Empire," Ahsoka said, her eyes narrowing as she looked at the Sith Lord as he shrugged.

"I do," Thrawn said. "Together, Obi-Wan and I had the information on the Death Star the other was missing, and we now possess a completed picture of the project and its capabilities." Again, his face hardened. "This project crosses a vital line. I cannot continue serving a regime that would produce such a weapon."

Staring at the Chiss for a long moment in tense silence, Ahsoka returned her lightsabers to her belt, her posture relaxing as she crossed her arms over her chest.

"I believe you," Ahsoka said quietly, and beside her, with a heavy sigh, Hera holstered her own weapon. "But since you understand the threat that the Empire possesses, you know why we can't go with you."

"There is some time yet before the Death Star is operational," Thrawn said quietly. "But my people face immediate danger."

"If we can end the threat they face, we can free up the Chiss fleet to join our fight," Kenobi added. "Not a thrown together militia of discontented citizens, Ahsoka, a real, professional military from a fearsome warrior culture."

"...how long do we have before the Death Star is complete?" Ahsoka asked, her gaze turning from the Sith to the Admiral.

"Provided production continues as scheduled, it will be fully operational in approximately one standard year,," Thrawn said, the slightest twitch of a smile at the edge of his lips. "Based on the information I have gathered, the project has never met any of its projected deadlines. Stardust operates on a delay, due to the numerous channels and supply lines necessary to maintain the secrecy of the project. My projections based on the data place the project's completion at approximately two years."

"And how long will it take to deal with the threat against your people?" Ahsoka asked, pointedly ignoring the glares the Spectres sent her.

"I do not know," Thrawn answered. "I must first return to Csilla to evaluate the situation."

"Regardless of what you guys decide to do, I'm going," Obi-Wan said firmly, glancing up at Thrawn as the Chiss' eyes darted away from the rebels to scan the horizon. "Getting Thrawn to commit to our cause is how we win the war, and if helping his people is the price of his service, I'll gladly pay it."

"And how'd he get you to agree to that?!" Ezra spat, wrenching himself out of Kanan's grasp and reaching for his lightsaber again before Kanan grabbed hold of his wrist. Despite the dangerous flash in pale, glowing yellow eyes that narrowed at the Sith Lord, he made no move to break free of the Jedi again. "He keeping Luke and Leia hostage so he can have you on a leash?!" He scoffed when Kenobi's features hardened. "Who would have thought a Lord of the Sith would become pet to a kriffing Chiss."

"If you must know," Obi-Wan said tightly, "Luke, Leia, Bo-Katan and Cody are all unharmed aboard the Chimaera and serving as collateral while we speak."

"As prisoners," Hera said flatly.

"As guests," Kenobi said as he turned his attention to the Twi'lek. "As soon as I return Thrawn safely to his ship, they'll all be free to go." He shrugged. "Though not for long. They'll be coming with me to the Unknown Regions."

"Is that why you're protecting him!" Ezra snapped, and with a roll of his eyes, Obi-Wan looked again at the furious teen so tightly gripped in the Dark Side. "Don't think I didn't see that the Force doesn't work on him! You're shielding him! After all he's done, you're protecting the enemy!"

"No, he isn't," Kanan said slowly as he suddenly understood. "We haven't been able to feel Kenobi in the Force because he's been blocked from it." Frowning, he looked at the Admiral, the Chiss' eyes still fixed on something distant on the horizon. "He's still blocked from it. Which means Thrawn's shielding himself. He's figured out how to beat the Force."

"The technology to defeat the Force already exists," Thrawn muttered absently, his gaze remaining fixed on the distance. "I simply adapted it." He drew up tall, his attention finally returning to the rebels as he took a com device from his belt. "A gesture of peace between us, rebels," Thrawn said quietly, his eyes meeting Hera's and evenly holding her icy gaze. "I will summon shuttles to retrieve your wounded for transport back to the Chimaera."

"For imprisonment or execution?" Sabine snapped bitterly, and she felt herself seethe when glowing red eyes flicked briefly in her direction.

"For medical treatment," Thrawn said flatly as he turned his attention back to Hera. "I must return to Lothal for a few days to settle my affairs before my departure from Imperial service. Your people will be released there, should you decide against lending your strength to the Chiss Ascendancy."

"You want to bring us aboard an Imperial Star Destroyer with only your word to guarantee that your loyal Imperial crew won't decide to finish us off?" Kanan said dryly. "That isn't going to happen, Admiral."

"My word is my guarantee," Thrawn said evenly, and Hera scoffed.

"The word of an enemy doesn't mean anything at all," Hera bit out.

"And why not?" Kenobi growled, a frown on his face as he stepped toward the rebels. "I helped orchestrate the Clone Wars, I fought against the Republic, I committed genocide and indiscriminately slaughtered and enslaved the innocent. I hunted, killed and tortured more Jedi than I can count, and even still," he said as he delicately laid his hand upon his chest, "you trust me."

"You had to earn that trust," Hera said flatly. "And you were already fighting against the Empire! I-"

"I have your kalikori, Captain Syndulla," Thrawn interrupted, and Hera tensed, a flash of anger and pain on her face as she glared at the Admiral, her lekku squirming in irritation as he fingers touched the blaster at her hip. "I brought it with me with the intent to return it to you."

"Where. Is. It," Hera whispered, her voice cold and dangerous and filled with more threat than any of them had ever heard. Thrawn didn't seem to notice, only gestured casually back at the Umbra.

"On the ship," Thrawn said. "If you give me a moment, I will retrieve it."

"In exchange for sending us away from our fight?" Hera said, an accusation more than a question, and Thrawn shook his head.

"No," the Chiss said quietly. "An offering made in good faith. I only ask that you consider lending your strength to my people." Without another word, the Chiss turned and walked back up the ramp and disappeared into the ship, and the group took a collective breath, though the tension between them didn't ease.

"Well..." Kenobi said into the silence, his shoulders hunching with weariness. "That went better than I expected."

"You're just giving him free reign of your ship!?" Sabine nearly shouted as she wildly gestured to the Umbra's ramp. Kenobi just shrugged, his fingers running through his hair.

"I know he's a hard sell," Obi-Wan said, and grimaced when he realized just how ridiculous of an understatement that was. "He's done a lot of damage to us. He's taken a lot of people from us." He paused, his gaze flicking to the ground for a moment, quiet and mournful, contemplative silence quivering in the air, the weight of grief so heavy that the Force flickered with the slight flickers of the Sith Lord's touch as whatever took the Force from him slowly began to fade.

"For what it's worth, I trust him," Kenobi finally said. "He's an ally, and I don't think he much cares what you think of him, he'll fight for us all the same." He shrugged. "After all, the Empire famously hates aliens, and he's been fighting for them for years."

"You really think he's serious about this?" Kanan asked, and with a heavy sigh, Hera rubbed her face and pinched the bridge of her nose.

"He is..." Hera said reluctantly. "It doesn't make any sense for him to go through all this just to deceive us. If he wanted us killed, he would have kept up the orbital bombardment. If he wanted us captured, he would have launched a ground assault."

"Or it's just part of the plan," Ezra said bitterly. "Playing nice to get us to come quietly is very like him."

"It isn't," Ahsoka quietly countered. "He's got too much respect to go against terms of surrender or play tricks on an already defeated enemy."

"Respect?!" Sabine snapped, sending a glare toward the Togruta, but whatever her objection, it was silenced with a hard look from the Fulcrum leader, and looking back at the ship, she watched the Admiral walk back down the ramp, the carved, wooden kalikori held delicately in his hands. Despite herself, Hera found herself pushing away stinging tears as she ran toward him.

"I kept it in a place of honor in my collection," Thrawn said as he handed the totem over, and Hera held it close to her chest, her fingers tracing the delicate carvings upon it. "Will you be adding your own child to it?"

Hera's eyes snapped open and she looked up at the Chiss, only now aware of how close she was to him, close enough that she could feel the cold radiating off his body. She took a step away from his, her eyes never leaving that penetrating gaze, a frown on her lips as the Admiral's head tilted slightly as he observed her.

"Who I add to it isn't any business of yours," Hera said reflexively. "And I don't have a child."

For just a moment, Thrawn's head tilted further, his eyes narrowed slightly as his gaze flicked downward, and Hera had the distinct, unsettling impression that those alien eyes were looking right through her. Then, he looked away, his gaze once again turning toward the horizon.

"My shuttles will be here in three minutes to transport your people off the planet," Thrawn said flatly. "I will need your assistance in ensuring the evacuation is as swift and orderly as possible. I do not believe it is wise to linger here for longer than necessary."

"And why's that?" Ezra scoffed, a mocking smirk upon his face as he caught sight of a line of the native krykna scuttling over the debris in the direction Thrawn had been looking. "You scared of a few spiders, Thrawn?"

"Native predators are certainly a concern," Thrawn said, his voice calm and even as if he had missed the insult entirely. "But of greater concern is the shift in the atmospheric pressure."

"Shift? What shift?" Kanan began, and stopped when he suddenly felt what the Chiss had been talking about. Only he didn't feel any atmospheric change. The shift he felt vibrated through his bones, a deep, resonant thing that came not from nature, but from the Force.

"The change was sudden, though somewhat subtle," Thrawn said quietly, his eyes once again turned up toward the sky. "Atollon's environment does not make such a change possible." His eyes flicked to Obi-Wan. "Sorcery?"

"It certainly could be..." the Sith muttered, trying to reach out to the Force but finding it frustratingly still blocked to him, though a wry smirk touched his lips when out of the corner of his eye, he saw his acolytes in the distance, swiftly running over the rubble toward them. "I suppose we'll find out in a moment," he drawled, stepping around the Chiss just in time to see Vitios and Vehemis gracefully leap out of the large crater.

"Master!" Vitios hissed, her breathing fast and heavy as she rushed toward the Sith Lord. Behind her, Vehemis took a much slower, more sauntering approach, a sultry smile on her lips as she spied Kanan, started toward him, and swiftly stopped at the sight of the new alien among them. Her grin widened when she found the Chiss' eyes upon her, and with a soft chuckle, she waved flirtatiously at the Grand Admiral.

"Hi, Thrawn..." Vehemis drawled, and with a hiss of annoyance, Vitios grabbed the Twi'lek by the lekku and yanked to get the woman's attention away from the Chiss at their Master's side.

"Former Inquisitors?" Thrawn asked, though he didn't wait for a response, catching the Sith Lord's affirmative nod out of the corner of his eye as he walked away to meet the six Imperial shuttles that had appeared in the sky and had rapidly begun their descent.

"Well, ladies..." Kenobi drawled, flashing his two acolytes a wolfish smile. "Any word from your other Master?"

"Ooh, I told you, Vitios, I told you he'd already know!" Vehemis said as she shoved the other woman and dragged a long finger down the Sith Lord's chest. "Our Master is very good..."

"As a matter of fact..." Vitios said, shooting a glare at Vehemis but otherwise ignoring the woman. "He isn't exactly happy about war being brought to his world. I don't know what he's planning, but it's not going to be good."

"What other Master?" Ezra asked, and flashing the boy a wide grin, Obi-Wan draped his arm over the teenager's shoulders.

"Oh, nothing to worry yourself over, apprentice..." Kenobi said, his gaze meeting the furious yellow glow still present in the boy's eyes, and for a moment, he couldn't help but wonder if a part of the hold the Dark Side had on Ezra had nothing to do with grief and the pain of loss, and more to do with the Bendu's furious influence. "Just an ancient, Force-wielding being that's none too happy with us, from the sound of it." His face hardened as he gave Ezra a shove toward Ahsoka. "Which means we might very well be working on a time crunch. Get our people loaded on to those ships."

"But-"

"Your feelings on the matter are entirely irrelevant at the moment, Sabine," Obi-Wan said to the teenage girl he had so quickly interrupted. "We don't have another way out of here, unless you're fine with leaving our people at the mercy of giant invulnerable spiders and a cryptic, pissed Force creature."

"Certainly nothing we're in any shape to be dealing with," Ahsoka agreed as she touched Kanan's arm. "I think this place might be cursed. Ready to get our people the hell out of here?"

"I've never been so ready to run away from a place," Kanan said with a tight, humorless chuckle. "Kids, with us." He pointed at Vehemis and Vitios. "You're with us too."

"Ooooooh..." Vehemis whispered excitedly as she started toward the Jedi and grinned at Vitios. "I told you he'd give in eventually..." Vitios said nothing, only groaned in frustration as she followed after Kanan and Ahsoka.

"I'm keeping Sabine here with me," Hera said as she reached out and grabbed hold of the Mandalorian's wrist, and she gave Kanan a hard, unyielding look when it looked like he'd protest. "If things are about to get spooky, it sounds like you Force sensitives are better suited to this sort of thing," she said with a shrug, a fake nonchalance that didn't fool anyone. "And I need Sabine to help with the Ghost."

"Hera..."

"I'm not leaving my ship behind, Kanan!" Hera interrupted. "I won't. I can't. I'll make her fly, love. You know I will."

"...I know you will," Kanan said, and giving the woman a swift kiss, he ran off to begin the evacuation just as the Imperial forces exited the shuttles and began their sweep of the area.

Even with Kanan and Ahsoka's assurance, getting the battered rebel survivors to leave their hiding places and willingly go with the Imperial soldiers was a difficult task. It wasn't until the Stormtroopers began bringing the injured aboard the ships on repulsion stretchers as medics swiftly began treating the worst injuries with bacta and injecting them with powerful medications that the rebels slowly began leaving their shelters and making their way toward the ships, if only under the pretext of protecting their injured comrades from Imperials that almost certainly meant them harm. To their credit, Thrawn's soldiers were restrained and patient, their heavy blasters remaining strapped to their lower backs as they aided in the slow, methodical evacuation process.

The evacuation became much, much faster when black, billowing clouds appeared on the horizon, illuminated by flashes of lightning and swiftly rolling in toward them. Out across the Atollon wilderness, the lightning arching between the storm clouds was reflected off thousands of compound eyes as a massive swarm of large, hungry krykna scurried toward them.

They were out of time, and Hera finally had to admit that the Ghost wasn't going to be flying out of there.

Quickly commanding Sabine to pack it up, Hera ran out of the cockpit to the sound of the Mandalorian's protests, and she froze the second she stepped outside, her eyes fixed up at the sky. The roiling, brewing storm was gone, and instead, she stared up at a mythological beast spread out across the sky, the Chimaera looming above them in low atmosphere, the massive ship large enough and low enough to make Hera's chest tighten with the odd sensation of claustrophobia. On the horizon still only slightly visible beneath the bulk of the ship, she could still see the flashes of lightning in the black clouds, could feel the biting chill of the wind and the change in the air, and now that the Chimaera blocked sight of most of the sky, Hera couldn't help but wonder how close the storm really was.

Out of the corner of her eye, Hera saw one of the Imperial transports take off and fly up toward the Star Destroyer, the ship's flight pattern weaving and irregular through the unstable, stormy atmosphere. She looked over toward the rest of the shuttles, where her Force sensitives were aiding the Imperial soldiers in quickly loading the rebels onto the ships, and separate from the rest, watching over the work, was Thrawn and Kenobi, the two men positioned near the Umbra. With an irritated huff, Hera ran over to them, a frown on her face when she found that the Chiss wasn't overseeing the evacuation as she thought, but had his eyes glued to the datapad in his hands, while the Sith Lord stood with his eyes closed and his head slightly bowed as he so often did when he dove into the Force.

"The fleet has jumped to hyperspace as you ordered, sir," Hera heard as she drew closer to the pair, the voice female and slightly distorted by static and the datapad's small speakers. "The readings we're getting down here aren't good. I don't think it's safe for the Chimaera to be brought down to this altitude."

"It absolutely is not safe," Thrawn said quietly, his eyes briefly flicking up toward Hera as she drew closer and his finger swiftly swiping over the screen. "But we will not be here for long. Redirect as much power as you are able to reenforce the shields and tell Lieutenant Pyrondi to have all weapons at the ready and targeted on the coordinates I am sending you now."

For a moment, there was silence, and keeping close to the Sith Lord, Hera peered over the man's shoulder at the Admiral's datapad at the image of the thoughtful woman on the screen, her eyes fixed down at a board before her and a frown on her lips that grew deeper by the second.

"Admiral," the woman finally said. "You're certain you have the coordinates right?"

"I am certain," Thrawn said firmly. "Things here may not be as they seem. Be ready, Commodore." He switched the com function off, and beneath his breath, Kenobi hissed a curse, his eyes slowly opening with an irritated huff.

"It's no good, I can't push through..." Obi-Wan growled, his fingers running through his hair as he glared at the Chiss. "This would be a lot easier if my connection to the Force wasn't blocked."

"Indeed, it would..." Thrawn quietly agreed. "But you are not the only one with access to the Force, and my strategy does not rely on sorcery to secure our victory."

"Sort of like your strategy to deal with my infiltration of your Defender factory?" Kenobi slyly shot back. "There wasn't a lot that your tactics could do against magic wolves..."

"We really don't have the time for banter, Kenobi!" Hera snapped as she drew her weapon and pointed out toward the storm, the wilds dark and foreboding and with each flash of lightning, the ground shone with the reflected light off a thousand eyes. "We're out of time, and I can't get the Ghost to fly, so I'm going to need to fly your ship."

"Your ship could not be repaired?" Thrawn asked, and Hera shot him a vicious glare.

"No, Thrawn, it couldn't!" she shouted over the roar of engines as another of the Imperial transports left the ground. "I could if I had the time, but I don't! Who's fault is that!"

Thrawn didn't answer, only returned to work on his datapad, his fingers flicking swiftly over the screen, and as another shuttle left the ground, Ahsoka and Kanan ran up to them, Ezra trailing behind them s he and Sabine took up positions to stand against the krykna hoard that was swiftly bearing down upon them.

"Your girls decided to go with the last two shuttles," Kanan said to the Sith Lord, his eyes fixed warily on the Chiss. "The flying's getting pretty rough, and they think they can help stabilize the last few on the way up."

"Let's hope they can do it," Hera said as she started up the Umbra's ramp. "We need to get out of here."

A bright flash of lightning illuminated the area around them, the ships in the sky swaying violently in the air, and the crackling groan of metal rang in their ears as the Star Destroyer above them was hit, and with a quick glance at each other, they all sprinted up into the Umbra, Ezra and Sabine swiftly abandoning their positions and running after them.

By the time Hera had thrown herself into the pilot's seat, only two shuttles remained on the ground, brilliant flashes of red arching through the air as Vehemis and Vitios stood atop their assigned shuttles, lightsabers in hand as they slashed at the krykna that swarmed the ships, spindly severed legs and top-heavy bodies flung with the Force doing nothing to stop the relentless charge of the arachnids. The shuttles' engines flared to life, the jets of flame incinerating the krykna that were too close, the ships lifting off the weight with an unsteady wobble from the extra weight of the Krykna or...something else.

It was the same resistance Hera felt as she attempted to lift the Umbra off the ground, like the ship were fighting against a powerful magnet that pulled at it from all directions but up.

"Commodore," the Chiss' cold, monotone voice came from behind her, and Hera found herself flinching despite herself. The past twelve hours were a thing she would never, ever forget, but it had been so unbelievable that in the moment, she had forgotten that Thrawn had boarded the ship with them. "Has Hammerly adjusted to the new target?"

"She has," the female voice said from Thrawn's datapad, though the static made it difficult to hear her. "Wh-...are we-..." she continued through a connection that was rapidly deteriorating.

"Open fire," Thrawn commanded, his voice raised slightly and his eyes fixed out the viewport on his shop above them, and a second later, the furious sky lit up green with turbolaser fire, and the Umbra lurched beneath them, the yoke suddenly freed from the grasp that held it, and Hera swiftly shot the ship through the air out from beneath the Chimaera's shadow. Glancing down at the sensor readouts on the console before her, Hera saw that, like the Umbra, the Imperial shuttles had also been released and were now making their swift way up toward the Chimaera's open hangar. And, suddenly appearing on the sensor, the faded indicators of a tractor beam extending from the Chimaera to the ground, and within that beam, another ship appeared on the sensor display.

Hera turned around and looked up at Thrawn, the man's face calm and impassive as he looked out the viewport, though this close to him, she could see the tightness of his jaw. He hadn't been looking at what Hera had seen, his eyes instead focused on the focal point where the Star Destroyer had been firing. Which, at this angle, appeared to be directly at the storm itself. Hera swung the ship around, flying in closer toward the two fleeing shuttles and the slow moving object being pulled up from the ground, a faint smile on her lips as she turned back toward Thrawn.

"The Ghost," Hera said quietly, angling the Umbra upwards again, this time toward the blue glow of the Star Destroyer's hangar. "You're tractoring it in?"

"You said you would not leave without it," Thrawn said absently, his eyes focused out the viewport and the tension seeming to leave his shoulders as he watched something large and dark fall from the sky, lightning arching around the object like a large, dense storm cloud, and behind her, Hera heard Kanan suck in a sharp breath, his hand on the back of her seat tensing as he shuddered. With his own relieved breath, Thrawn stood up tall and returned his datapad to his belt, the Umbra flying smoothly as the Chiss left the cockpit.

The rebels collectively exhaled the breaths they had been holding.

"We're not really going in there, are we?" Ezra asked quietly, the teen looking haggard and exhausted, the pale yellow gone from his eyes along with the anger that had permeated his being before. Either the day had caught up with him or...

Hera looked back at Kanan and found a strange mix of grief and relief upon his face. Or maybe something else had been at play. Maybe the Force being they had talked about used pain and anger as an avenue to exert a level of control over a susceptible Force sensitive. And the way the Phoenix Cell broke against Thrawn's forces had left Ezra so very vulnerable.

"He has my ship, Ezra," Hera said calmly as she pointed the Umbra at the faint blue glow of the Chimaera's hangar bay. "I said I wouldn't leave without it, and I won't. And," she said quietly, casting a glance at Kenobi in the copilot's seat beside her, "it might be worth our time to see what Thrawn's about."

"Why," Sabine said stiffly, a tight, tense rage straining her voice that time hadn't yet begun to settle. "Thrawn talked pretty big about treason against the Empire, but he hasn't exactly committed any act of treason against them. Not yet. He could still turn us all over and go back to ruining lives..."

"I don't think so," Ahsoka said from the back of the cockpit. "Regardless of what we decide to do, Thrawn's service to Palpatine is over. And in light of the loss we just suffered, I'm inclined to do what I can to collect every resource I can." She looked over her shoulder at the cockpit's hatch the Chiss had disappeared through a few minutes earlier, the light fading around them as they flew up close to the mighty Star Destroyer. "If Thrawn can surgically destroy Imperial forces the way he destroyed us, we can't afford to lose him."

"I think we'd be better off if we did lose him..." Ezra muttered from his seat.

"I think we still have time to decide," Hera said quietly, the ship's yoke going taut in her hands as a docking tractor grabbed hold of the ship and slowly dragged them into the Chimaera's hangar bay. Leaning back in her seat, her fingers slowly dragged down the smooth, carved wood of her kalikori, the precious heirloom exactly as she remembered it, despite all this time in the Chiss' possession. True to his word, it seemed, the Admiral had taken pristine care of it. "Thrawn said we'll be returned to Lothal, and he won't leave for a few days," Hera continued quietly. "That gives us some time to decide what to do, and you better believe I'll be watching him very, very carefully."

---

Commodore Karyn Faro stared at the display before her, her jaw slack and for once not caring how plain the shock was written upon her face. She took a second to glance to her side, could see Commander Hammerly and Lieutenant Pyrondi out of the corner of her eye, the other two women looking just as disbelieving as she knew she did. Though she couldn't see the others so clearly, Faro knew the other officers and bridge crew that had assembled in the Thrawn's aft bridge conference room wore similar expressions. All but Thrawn, of course. Why would he? Looking over at the Admiral for a moment, she found the man as calm and impassive as ever. Which, given the circumstances, was frankly terrible.

The rebel fleet lay in ruins around Atollon, the security against incursion in this part of the Outer Rim certain for the foreseeable future. They had been ordered to return to Mandalore to put down that uprising as well, though Thrawn had diverted them to Lothal first, not an unusual thing for the Admiral, who preferred to go fully prepared into combat, and a return to Lothal to select the fleet that would accompany them was prudent.

And on top of everything else, Faro had just put in her application to command her own task force, a thing that she was almost certain to get, given her part in the absolute victory over the Phoenix Squadron.

And now this...

Treason. It was treason, and that was all there was to it.

"Sir," Faro breathed in a weak, shaking voice that broke the tense, uncomfortable silence around them. "You can't be serious..."

"I am afraid I am," Thrawn said, his own voice even and unspeakably grim, and he gestured to the hologram displayed over the table they sat around. "You have the information to draw your own conclusions."

"The information is fake," Faro bit out, a surge of sudden anger making her words far more bitter than she had intended. "It has to be! We defeat the Phoenix Squadron, you capture their leadership, you spend time actually interrogating the Shadow King, a man with a reputation for mind control, and then you bring us this?!" She shook her head, a bitter, almost frantic laugh tumbling from her lips before she could stop it. "No, I can't believe it. I won't believe it. He's lying to you, or he's controlling you, or-"

"Obi-Wan Kenobi was deprived of his Force abilities during his interrogation and he remains deprived even now," Thrawn interrupted, the calm in his voice making Faro's teeth grind together. "My mind is my own, Commodore, and everything we had discussed confirms or supports conclusions I have already arrived at." He paused, those glowing red eyes flicking to the hologram for a moment before once again locking with Faro's gaze. "This information is genuine."

"Is this what you always had Vanto working on?" Pyrondi asked quietly, and a faint smile twitched at the edge of Thrawn's lips.

"Indeed, it was," the Chiss said. "Granted, it was not always directly, but much of Nightswan's activities were in direct response to the massive amount of doonium the Empire was transporting."

"And we've seen the evidence ourselves," Hammerly muttered, her eyes fixed resolutely on the table. "We intercepted that freighter transporting Wookie slaves a few years back." She looked up at the Admiral. "They were being sent to work on this thing, weren't they?"

"That was my conclusion," Thrawn answered. "This project exists. That is not a matter for debate. What hangs in the balance now is what you will all do about it."

And there it was, Faro thought as the tense, uncomfortable silence fell once again over the room, a vice seeming to close in around her heart. Treason...

"You're really leaving?" Hammerly asked, and Thrawn seemed to draw up, calm and confident as ever.

"I am," he said quietly. "I cannot serve a regime that would create and use a weapon such as this."

"A weapon like this could end most threats before they could even begin," Faro said, hating the way how shaky and uncertain her voice sounded, but she truly didn't believe her own words. And when Thrawn's red eyes narrowed, she found the little nerve she had swiftly fleeing from her grasp.

"Thousands of people were killed during our battle with the rebels on Batonn and most of those deaths were civilians," Thrawn said, a cold edge to his voice that made the humans around the table collectively shudder. "Between the innocent and our own people, only a fraction of the total casualties were rebel insurgents. Colonel Yularen said it was one of the most horrendous things he had witnessed in his military career, and he served in many of the Clone Wars' most bloody conflicts." His eyes narrowed, his jaw tightening as he glanced around the room. "And for this slaughter, the Emperor promoted me to Grand Admiral. Do you really believe, Commodore, that with a weapon in hand capable of destroying entire planets, the Emperor would be judicious? Or do you believe a planet's entire populace would be considered an acceptable loss for the destruction of a handful of rebels?"

Faro didn't even try to find her voice. There wasn't anything she could say. Thrawn did everything he could to limit casualties, but she knew damn well that many military officers didn't, and she had served under her fair share of commanders who were too cruel or too stupid to care. And what happened at Batonn, with Thrawn's promotion and not even the slightest investigation into what actually happened down there, she knew Thrawn was right. She looked at the hologram floating above the table of the spherical battle station, the secretive Project Stardust that they had been dancing on the outskirts of for years now, and she knew that with this weapon in hand, there was no telling how many billions would die at the whim of some impulsive, cruel commander.

Treason...

"So that's it?" Pyrondi asked. "You're just...leaving the Empire?" There was silence for a moment, the Admiral standing still and expectantly as if he was waiting for her to continue, to come out and say what they were all thinking. But she didn't. The words desertion and treason seemed too heavy a stone to cast, even now when the Chiss had clearly crossed that line.

"Only for a time," Thrawn said slowly. "My people are in dire need of my assistance." A grim, humorless smile touched the Chiss' lips. "In a way, I will serve the Empire even in my aid to my people. The threat they face is a threat to us all."

"The Chiss are facing a threat to the Empire?" Faro asked, her eyes narrowing as she looked the Admiral over. "What threat?"

"An alien species called the Grysk," Thrawn said, and Faro saw the officers around the table all subtly lean in. "Conquerors that suborn and subjugate entire peoples by exerting the right pressure upon a populace. Already they have tried twice to instigate civil war among the Chiss in the hopes we would destroy each other sufficiently to make their own conquest effortless." He stropped, his posture stiffening as he glanced down at the table, but Faro could see the pain and frustration in the glow of his eyes. "Twice, we have repelled them. They suffered a major defeat before I left for the Empire that I had hoped would be enough to deter them for a time."

"But now they're back," Faro put in, and Thrawn nodded as his gaze met hers.

"Indeed, they are..." Thrawn said. "Already, they have made inroads into the Chiss culture, and if I do not go to their aid now, there soon may not be anything left for me to return to."

"But this is a threat to your people," Captain Dobbs said stiffly, the first thing that the TIE Defender pilot had said since the meeting began. "Not the Empire."

"The immediate threat is to the Chiss," Thrawn said calmly. "That does not mean the Empire is not at risk."

"But is it?" Dobbs pressed, and Thrawn took a deep, even breath and tapped the controls on the desk, the hologram of Project Stardust clearing and replaced with the galaxy map, the Imperial territory highlighted in a pale red.

"I was recently in contact with my people in order to send Obi-Wan's captive Chiss home," Thrawn said. "The military commander I contacted is currently on a mission outside the Ascendancy to hunt the Grysks, but was able to spare a shuttle to pick up the captive." Again, he tapped a key on the desk. "This is the location of the coordinates she sent me."

A dark blue point illuminated on the map, and Faro heard someone suck in a sharp breath, another hiss a quiet curse as they saw the coordinate's spot sat well within the red of the Empire's territory.

"I have not personally observed any evidence of Grysk presence within the Empire," Thrawn said into the uncomfortable silence. "But be assured, if the Chiss have ventured this far from home, the Grysk are here, and operating this far outside the Unknown Regions, they must necessarily have a base of operations." He paused, took a deep breath as his eyes roved over the map. "I imagine they have already begun seeking the necessary levers to control an Imperial populace. A conquest," Thrawn said quietly, "without force of arms, begun without our knowledge. By the time the necessary authorities become aware, it may already be too late."

"But you know," Pyrondi said swiftly. "You could stop them."

"I could," Thrawn said. "As could you."

Faro stiffened again, her heart pounding swiftly in her chest when she suddenly saw where this was going. Treason...it all came back to that. Not just Thrawn, but now it extended to all of them.

"You want us to fight these aliens," Faro said, hoping Thrawn would categorically deny it, and feeling ice drop into her stomach when the Admiral nodded.

"The situation that led me to my service to the Empire is somewhat complicated," Thrawn said in a slow, measured voice, "but I came here in search of allies to aid the Chiss in their next stand against the Grysk campaign to destroy us." He gestured to the map. "Now it seems as if the Grysks are a threat to us all."

"You've already said you have no proof of that," Dobbs said flatly. "We certainly haven't seen any proof of it. I haven't even heard of these aliens before today." He frowned as he glanced at the map. "All I see is an alien ship in Imperial territory, a military ship on a mission, going by what you said, which as far as I can see makes your Chiss invaders. How do we know they aren't the enemy here?"

"We know they aren't because the Admiral said they aren't!" Pyrondi snapped at the pilot across the table. "We've all served with him long enough to know better. If he says these Grysk are a threat, they're a threat."

"Stand down, Lieutenant..." Thrawn said calmly, and with a small huff, Pyrondi crossed her arms over her chest and sunk down a little in her seat. "The Captain has every right to question my claims, given the lack of evidence." He turned his eyes back on the Defender pilot. "I believe, Captain Dobbs, that I will be able to provide you with sufficient proof that the Grysk are indeed a threat to the Empire."

"How," Faro said flatly. "Do you intend to go off on your own and get this proof? Or do you expect to take the Chimaera so we can see this threat on our own?" She pointed an almost accusing finger at the Chiss. "Keeping in mind that you've already stated your intention to leave the Empire. Do I need to say what that looks like?"

"Treason," Thrawn said quietly, and Faro's body went rigid. They were all thinking it, she knew. They had been since this meeting began. But hearing it was still like a shot to the gut. "I called this meeting," Thrawn said after a long, tense moment of silence, "to give my most trusted officers an explanation as to why I am leaving my service to Emperor Palpatine. Certainly he will see my desertion as treason." He paused, his eyes flicking up from the table as he touched one of the monitor's keys, and the schematic of Project Stardust reappeared in the holofield.

"But I am a warrior," Thrawn continued quietly, "and a warrior does not cease to serve. My people cast me out for my preemptive actions against the Grysk, but what I did was for the good of the Ascendancy." The red eyes narrowed as his entire demeanor seemed to harden. "Just as what I do now is for the good of the Empire."

"And you want us to join you," Hammerly said. "That's why you asked us here."

"As I said, I asked you here to offer you an explanation and provide you with the information that led to my decision," Thrawn calmly responded, a faint smile at the edge of his lips. "But I had hoped that the Chimaera would aid my efforts in bringing an end to the Grysk threat, both to the Empire and to the Chiss."

Treason.

"And suppose we did this," Faro quickly said before anyone else had the chance to speak. "Suppose we agreed that the Grysk are a threat to the Empire and need to be destroyed. What then? As you already said, the Emperor will see this as treason, so following you would paint us all traitors as well." She tapped her finger on the table, her brow creasing as a frown touched her lips. "What happens to us after that? What about the rest of the crew who trusts us to lead them and doesn't know anything about this?"

"I had assumed that had you agreed to this course of action, the crew would have been informed of the situation and given the opportunity to choose if they stay," Thrawn said. "But as to your fates, it is not so bleak as you fear."

"No?" Faro scoffed. "Because from where I'm sitting, all I see is a charge of treason and a prompt execution."

"Certainly the Chiss Ascendancy would give you all a place among them, should you aid them in their time of need," Thrawn said calmly. "You would not be the first humans that the Chiss have accepted among them." There was a small, slight, excited gasp, and Faro quickly turned her head to see a wide grin upon Hammerly's face. She was only confused for a second before her mind chanced upon the same thought that the other woman certainly had.

"Is that where Commander Vanto went?" Hammerly asked, and with a slight smile of his own, Thrawn inclined his head.

"Indeed..." The Chiss said. "Even now, he aids my people in their fight against the Grysk."

"He just...went?" Dobbs asked, and Faro thought that despite the skepticism in his voice, despite all the objections he had raised earlier, the man appeared far more relaxed now that he had been before. "No evidence, no questions? He just...up and abandoned everything?"

"Of course he had questions," Thrawn said quietly. "I told him of my own fight against the Grysk, and he agreed with my assessment of the danger they posed, both to the Chiss and to the Empire." Again, he gestured at the holographic display of the Stardust Battle Station. "What I did not tell him of was this. At the time, I did not have the necessary information, but now that my information is complete..." The Admiral slowly shook his head. "It has considerably altered my own corse of action."

"But...not with your battle against the Grysk," Faro said slowly. "This changes what comes after."

"...indeed, it does..." Thrawn stopped, swiftly shutting his mouth and looking away from Faro, carefully weighing the information and his options, and with a small, resolute nod, he looked back at the officers around the table. "One of the terms of surrender I offered Obi-Wan Kenobi and the Phoenix rebels is that they journey with me to the Ascendancy to aid the Chiss in their war with the Grysk." He gestured again to the holographic image. "In light of the evil that Emperor Palpatine has chosen to create, I in turn have offered my service in their efforts to destroy the Death Star and put an end to Palpatine's reign."

Treason the word again hissed in Faro's mind, though to her surprise, she didn't feel that bitter sting of betrayal. They were far past the line of treason at this point. What was one more treason on top of the others?

"You want us to fight the Grysk to defend the Empire, only to tell us you're going to turn right around and destroy it?" Faro said with a disdainful scoff, but the swirl of emotions she felt were swiftly wiped away when the fierce determination of the Chiss' glowing eyes locked with hers.

"As I said, I will do what I must for the good of the Empire," Thrawn said, his voice low and so bitterly cold Faro felt the chill run up her spine. "I do not seek the Empire's destruction. I seek its longevity by supplanting Palpatine with a sustainable Emperor."

"And who would rule in his place!" Faro demanded. "You?"

"I have no mind for politics," Thrawn said flatly, his gaze fixed on Faro, and after a second, the Commodore gasped as she suddenly understood.

"You want to put Kenobi on the throne of the Empire?" Faro nearly wheezed, her stomach churning when the Admiral inclined his head.

"He is a proven leader," Thrawn said in his calm, even monotone, though each word felt like a new twist of the knife that Faro felt sink into her heart. "Both during the Clone Wars and in his opposition to Palpatine's reign."

"He's a rebel!"

"He is a usurper," Thrawn cooly corrected. "He seeks to preserve the Empire under wiser leadership, and his connections to the Empire's current rebel opposition could see the entire insurgency ended peacefully, without further combat or loss of life on either side."

"And he told you this, did he?!" Faro spat, and Thrawn shook his head.

"No..." he said quietly. "His actions have shown his intentions." He glanced away from the Commodore to look intently at the hologram. "Palpatine did not build this weapon with no intention to use it. I do not believe I am alone in my belief that the Death Star is a thing of evil. It must be destroyed before Palpatine has the chance to unleash its destructive potential."

"So..." Pyrondi said slowly, her lips pressing together for a moment as she took a swift, deep breath. "Destroy the threats to the Empire, both outside it and within its borders." She shrugged. "Sounds like what we do basically every day. When do we leave?"

"Are you out of your mind?!" Faro snapped at the woman beside her. "This is treason!"

"Is it?" Hammerly said from her other side, and Faro whipped her head around to stare in disbelief at the other woman. "Thrawn's right. We all saw what happened at Batonn. A lot of people are going to die with a weapon like that in our arsenal. A lot of innocent people."

"I am gratified by your support..." Thrawn said quietly, and Faro could hear the clear relief in the man's voice. "But Commodore Faro is correct. There is a great deal of difference between fighting an external threat to the Empire and turning our forces against the current Imperial regime. An informed decision will take more time and consideration."

"Time we'll get fighting the Grysks?" Pyrondi offered, and Thrawn inclined his head.

"Just so..." he said. "Time that may likewise be spent observing Obi-Wan Kenobi and his potential as a leader." A wry smirk touched the Chiss' lips. "I would not ask your aid in overthrowing the Emperor without allowing you an examination of his replacement."

"And if we refuse?" Faro asked, and Thrawn merely shrugged.

"Then I will go on my way without you," he said calmly. "I will travel to the Ascendancy aboard the Umbra, and when the Grysks have been defeated, I will return to the Empire and hope I do not face you in battle."

"Can't we tell others about this?" Hammerly asked, immediately breaking the uncomfortable, hard silence that began to fall over the room. "It took you years of investigation and a collaboration with a psychopathic warrior king to figure out what was going on. There's no way the other Grand Admirals know about this. If you told them, I'm sure at least some of them would object to the project and add their fleets to yours."

"That is certainly my intention when I return from my battles with the Grysk," Thrawn said. "But not now."

"Why not?" Pyrondi asked. "If you bring them on board now, you can bring a lot of extra firepower against the Grysk."

"Only it's way harder to get a bunch of Imperial Grand Admirals to take a fight outside the Empire that it would be to get them to turn on this thing," Dobbs said, his tone almost bitter and his arms crossed over his chest as he eyed the hologram. "Especially when that fight is against aliens they've never heard of and threatening an alien species they don't care about."

"Correct," Thrawn quietly. "I will stand against the Grysk without Imperial aid, unless, of course, you choose to join me. But upon my return, I do believe the military leaders that will stand with me against the Death Star will not be insignificant." A wry smirk touched the Chiss' face. "If not for the threat it possessed, for the folly of wasting so many limited resources into a single asset."

Faro stared at the holofield, her eyes slowly running over the scroll of data, her mind trying to wrap itself around the staggering power of such a weapon, though even with the information laid out before her, it was difficult to imagine anything being so powerful that it could bring destruction to an entire planet. But she had been at Batonn, had seen the damage that could be wrought by what she suspected was one cruel, callus person, and had witnessed the indifference to such a slaughter by those at the very top of the chain of command. She had seen the Wookie slaves that the Empire was secretly using, and it had never sat well with her, and now this...

Treason, her mind whispered deep into her thoughts, but suddenly, she wasn't so sure where that accusation laid. At the feet of Thrawn, the commander she had trusted for years, who now turned his back on the Empire he swore to serve, or at the feet of the Emperor himself, who would build a weapon that would bring immediate death to billions of innocent people at a whim.

"When are you leaving?" Faro asked.

"Three days," Thrawn said as he tapped a key on the monitor, the lights brightening as the hologram flickered off. "Five, if needed, but no more than that."

"Alright," she said as she rose from her seat. "You said you can show us proof of the Grysk threat to the Empire. I want to see it. After that..." She frowned, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot. "I suppose we'll decide what to do then."

"You honor me, Commodore..." Thrawn said as he inclined his head to the woman, and with a swift salute, Faro turned on her heel and left the room, the other officers following closely behind her. They'd talk about it, she knew, but after all that they had seen, all that they had heard, she had no doubt which direction they were all headed.