On the Raddus' battle Bridge, under the sound of muffled explosions, a red eyed Commander D'Acy stood in front of the remaining Resistance officers trying to word the news she needed to deliver. "General Organa, Leia, is unconscious but recovering... That's the only good news I have... Admirals Ackbar and Statura... effectively the entire High Command... they're gone."

Horrified murmurs swept through the audience.

"Leia was the sole survivor on the bridge," D'Acy added.

Threepio shook his head. "Oh, dear. Oh, dear..."

D'Acy's voice cracked as she started speaking again. "If she were here, she'd say save your sorrow for after the fight. To that end, the chain of command is clear as to who should take her place..." She swept her arm towards a woman with lavender dyed hair. "Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo of the corvette Ninka."

Holdo bowed. "Thank you, Commander." She and D'Acy traded places and the Vice Admiral looked at the faces around her. "Four hundred of us on three ships. We're the very last of the Resistance... But we're not alone. In every corner of the world, the downtrodden and oppressed know our symbol, and they put their hope in it. We are the spark that will light the fire that will restore the Republic. That spark, this Resistance, must survive. That is our mission. Now, to your stations. And may the Force be with us."

Poe watched his fellow Resistance fighters begin to file out. He stopped one of them. "That's Admiral Holdo? The Battle of Chyron Atoll Admiral Holdo?"

"Yeah, why?"

Poe shrugged. "Not what I was expecting." He started towards Holdo. "Vice Admiral?"

"Commander Dameron," she acknowledged.

"With our current fuel consumption, there's a very limited amount of time that we can stay out of range of those Star Destroyers."

Holdo frowned. "Very kind of you to make me aware." She turned to one of the bridge crew. "Let's get those fuel projections."

Poe continued. "And we need to shake them before we can find a new base, so, what's our plan?"

Holdo raised an eyebrow and frowned at Poe. "Our plan, Captain? Not Commander, right? Wasn't it Leia's last official act to demote you for your Dreadnought plan where we lost our entire bomber fleet?" She turned and walked towards the bridge window.

Poe moved in front of her. "'Captain,' 'Commander,' you can call me whatever you like. I just want to know what's going on."

"Of course you do. I understand. I've dealt with plenty of trigger-happy flyboys like you. You're impulsive. Dangerous." Admiral Holdo sighed. "And the last thing we need right now. So stick to your post and follow my orders." She continued her walk towards the window.

Poe blew out his cheeks. Holdo was no Leia, that much was obvious.

Finn had retreated to his cabin for solitude after Leia was rescued. He was vaguely aware of D'Acy's and Holdo's announcement coming over the broadcast crystal, but didn't listen. His mind was instead focused on Rey.

He hadn't even seen her before she left. Now, his only link to her was the beaconstone bracelet he kept fidgeting with. The fear that Rey would return to a burning fleet and end up killed nagged at him constantly since the attack on the bridge.

Bibi-Eit rolled into the room and chirped inquisitively. Finn looked at him but didn't respond. The micronaut tried to cheer him up with silly antics like spinning and juggling, but quickly saw he had no effect.

An idea came to Bibi-Eit and he slid open a drawer on his chassis, revealing a small looking glass. The glass lit up with an image of Rey and Finn, with the latter on a hospital bed.

"We'll see each other again," the green recording of Rey said. "I believe that." She leaned over and kissed Finn's forehead. "Thank you, my friend."

Finn looked back to the bracelet and set his jaw. It wasn't ideal, but he knew what he would have to do to help Rey. He turned to Bibi-Eit. "All right, it was kind of weird that you recorded that. But thank you." He left the cabin with purpose.

Bibi-Eit wasn't entirely sure what Finn was going to do, but he was happy to see him free from his slump.

Trying not to seem suspicious, Finn walked through the corridors of the Raddus with a loaded haversack slung over his shoulder. Few people he passed paid him any mind, but those who did did little more than nod in acknowledgement of his presence. Finn would flash them a smile, but his eyes made it clear that the smiles were only superficial.

When Finn reached the upper portside escape balloon passage, his ears pricked up. Just on the edge of his hearing was the sound of someone crying. Finn leaned around the corner and peered up the passage.

Sitting on the floor next to an escape balloon alcove was a young woman. Her hands held a crescent shaped green gold medal and her thumb kept stroking the engraved surface.

Finn crept up the opposite arm of the passage, carefully placing his feet to maintain his stealth, and placed his haversack in one of the escape balloons. He was about to climb in when a voice startled him.

"What are you doing here?"

It was the young woman. She must have heard him after all. Finn struggled to regain his composure. "Hey. Uh, hi. Uh, I was... You know, I was just..."

The young woman gasped. "You're Finn! The Finn!" She laughed happily.

Finn blinked. "...What?"

"Sorry. I work behind pipes all day. Doing talking with Resistance heroes is not my forté." She sniffled then frowned. "Doing... Doing talking... Er, I'm Rose."

"Breathe," Finn said, leaning against the side of the balloon alcove to both try to seem casual and conceal his haversack.

Rose chuckled. "Okay."

"Look, I'm not a Resistance hero, but it was nice talking with you, Rose... May the Force be with you."

"Wow... You, too." Rose jogged towards Finn. "Okay, but you are a hero. You left the First Order, what you did in the Starkiller Base... When we heard about it, my sister Paige said 'Rose, that's a real hero.' 'Know right from wrong and don't run away when it gets hard,' she said."

Finn laughed sheepishly and hoped that Rose didn't notice how anxious he was growing.

"You know..." Rose drew a small forked stun prod from a leather thigh holster and thumbed the activation rune. Electricity arced between the two prongs of the fork. "Just this morning, I've had to stun three people trying to jump ship in the escape balloons."

"What?" Finn elongated the word for dramatic effect.

Rose nodded. "They were running away!"

"That's disgraceful."

"I know..." Rose sniffled again and put her stun prod away. As she did, her eyes trailed over the haversack behind Finn.

"Anyway. Got to get back to what I was doing, so..."

Rose frowned. "What were you doing?"

"Uh, just... Doing some checks..."

"Checking the escape balloons..." Rose nodded, still frowning.

"No, it's routine checks."

"...by boarding one. With a packed bag."

"Okay, listen, I'm-" Finn's vision suddenly went blue as Rose thrust her stun prod into his chest.

Rose returned her prod to her holster as Finn's unconscious body slumped to the floor.

When Finn regained consciousness, he immediately noticed that everything was sideways and moving. It quickly occurred to him that he was the one moving and tried to sit up to figure out where he was. His body, however, did not comply.

"I can't move. I can't- I can't move.

"I know," Rose said annoyedly. She grunted as she pulled a parts wagon behind her.

"What happened?"

"I'm taking you to the brig and turning you in for desertion."

"I was not deserting! I told you that-"

Rose whipped around and scowled at Finn. Fresh tear trails ran down her cheeks. "My sister just died protecting the fleet. And you were running away."

"I'm sorry. But this fleet is doomed, and if my friend comes back to it, she's doomed, too. I've got to get this..." Finn tried to raise his arm, then remembered his state. He shifted his torso until Rose could see the beaconstone bracelet. "I've got to get this far away from here. Then she'll find me and be safe."

"You're a selfish traitor." Rose turned and started to pull the cart again.

"Look, we can't outrun the First Order fleet-"

"We can jump into Hyperius!"

"Well, they can track us through Hyperius."

Rose stopped the cart again. "They can track us through Hyperius?"

"Yeah. They'd just show up thirty seconds later and we'd have wasted a lot of magic energy, which, by the way, the crystals are dangerously low on."

Rose sighed. "They can track us through Hyperius..."

"Yes! And they could... I can't feel my teeth. What did you hit me with?"

"...Active tracking..."

Finn furrowed his brow. "What now?"

"Trans-Hyperion tracking is new magic, but the underlying principles must be the same as any active tracking."

"They're only tracking us..."

"... from the lead ship," Rose finished. "But we can't get to the binding runes of the tracker. They'd control all that from the bridge."

"Well, I mean, yes, but all rune and sigil based tracking magic needs a..."

"...needs a separate sigil pyramid for triangulation," Rose finished again. She frowned. "But... Wait, but who knows where the secondary sigil pyramid is on a Star Destroyer?"

Finn smirked. "I'm the guy that used to mop the room that holds it. If I can get us there, I can..."

"...deactivate the tracker," Finn and Rose said in unison.

Poe pinched the bridge of his nose and leaned against the wall near Leia's infirmary bed. "Okay, just give it to me one more time. Simpler."

"So," began Finn, gesticulating with a still slightly numb hand, "the First Order's only tracking us from one Star Destroyer, the big one."

"So we blow that one up?"

"I like where your head's at, but no. They'd only start tracking us from another ship."

Rose stepped forward. "But if we can sneak on board the flagship..."

"...and sabotage the runes without them realizing," continued Finn.

"...they won't realize anything's wrong until the next tracker cycle - about six minutes," Rose concluded.

Finn started counting off on his fingers. "Sneak on board. Disable the tracker.

Our fleet escapes before the First Order realizes."

"Hmm." Poe rubbed his chin. He was as intrigued by the plan as the dynamic between Finn and his new friend. He was honestly a little jealous. "How'd you two meet?"

Rose smiled innocently. "Just luck."

Poe gave an amused huff. "Yeah? Good luck?"

Rose shrugged. "Not sure yet."

"Poe, we got to do this," Finn said confidently. "It'll save the fleet and it'll save Rey."

Poe looked down at the comatose Leia and thought deeply.

From the other side of the room, See Threepio piped up. "If I may be the sole voice of reason? Admiral Holdo will never agree to this plan."

Poe stroked Leia's hand and nodded. "Yeah, you're right, Threepio. It's a need-to-know plan, and she doesn't."

"That wasn't exactly my..." Threepio trailed off when it was obvious nobody was going to listen to him.

Poe led Finn and Rose towards the door. "All right, you guys disable that tracker, I'll be here to jump us into Hyperius. The question is how do we sneak you two onto Snoke's flagship?"

"We steal clearance ciphers," Rose offered.

"No," Finn said. "They're hexacrypted and reshuffled every hour. We can't get through their security screen undetected." His face fell at his realization. "Nobody can."

Poe raised his finger as an idea came to him. Within minutes, the silver form of Maz Kanata had taken shape in Leia's borrowed pocket font. Maz seemed to be preoccupied at the time, but listened to Poe's proposal nonetheless.

"Could I do it? Of course I could do it. But I can't do it. I'm a little tied down right now." She fired off several shots from a carbine that in her hands looked like a full-size musket.

Finn looked to Poe and Rose, concerned. "Maz? What is happening?"

"Union dispute. You do not want to hear about it." She hit the ground as though avoiding gunfire. "But, lucky for you, there's exactly one guy I trust who can crack that kind of security!" Maz jumped up and started sprinting. She slid presumably behind cover. "He's a master codebreaker, an Ace sky pilot, and a poet with a pistol."

"Oh, my," said Threepio. "It sounds like this codebreaker fellow can do everything."

"Oh, yes, he can," Maz purred.

Finn looked to his friends awkwardly.

"You'll find him with a red plom bloom on his lapel," Maz expounded. "He'll be rolling at a high stakes table in the casino in Canto Bight."

Poe groaned. "Canto Bight? No, no. That's... Maz... Is there any way that we can take care of this ourselves?"

"Sorry, kiddo. This is rarefied cracking. You want to get on that flagship, I only know one option. Find the master codebreaker." Maz ended the communication.

Poe sighed and shook his head. Finn removed the beaconstone bracelet and held it out to him, wordlessly communicating his commitment to what they needed to do.

Poe took the bracelet and patted Finn on his bicep. "You had better come back to me."