Wylan found that, despite his numerous travels with his father when he was younger, he had never seen such a deplorable planet as Hoth.

His wound - healed enough in the few days the hyperspace trip had taken for him to participate in the evacuation - throbbed amongst the cold and the wet; he shivered, trying to ignore the stabbing pain in his side.

Kaz was staring upwards. When Wylan glanced up through a break in the snowy clouds, he saw a squadron of Alliance A-wings revert to realspace just beyond the atmosphere.

"Inej is leading them," Nina said next to them. "I recognise her flight patterns." Kaz nodded wordlessly, his gaze still fixed on the sky.

"I recognise that shield generator," Kuwei said idly. "I had to study how to put it together and take it apart as part of the work my father set me."

All he got were grunts of acknowledgement.

They reached Echo Base in quick time and were instantly assigned to the hangar, where they were to load crates onto the transports. Wylan was in charge of keeping the itinerary up to date.

It was dull work, a grim silence permeating the air, but Inej and her squadron landed soon after, and Wylan was soon treated to a once-over one could only receive from Matthias.

It was quick, harsh, thorough: his eyes lingered on the faint wince Wylan made when his motions aggravated his wound slightly, the way he stood to accommodate for it. "What happened to you?" It was half-threatening, half-insulted: why hadn't Wylan invited him? Why hadn't been there to stop it from happening? He would kill whoever did it. . .

"The lordling here," Jesper chimed in cheerfully, eyes fixed on the stack of crates teetering precariously in his arms, "got himself shot."

"What." Matthias's hand hovered over what looked like the hilt of something at his hip. Someone was going to die, judging by that tone, and Wylan sincerely hoped it wasn't Jesper. Kaz stepped away from the bulk of the group and led Inej with him. Wylan was tempted to follow, if only to avoid this awkward conversation, but any given interaction between Kaz and Inej was confusing, so that likely wouldn't help his state of mind.

"My father sent me a message claiming he wanted to defect," he said quietly instead, staring at the datapad in his hands, and the itinerary written on it. He wouldn't meet Matthias's eye. "Even if there was virtually no chance it was valid, I needed to confirm that."

Ever the analyst, understanding bloomed quickly on Matthias's face. "And you couldn't take me with you because that would be too predictable. He would've known what he was up against. With a pair of reprobate smugglers-"

"I object to that," Jesper announced airily.

"-your plan would be pretty hard to predict," the bodyguard conceded, heedless of Jesper's objection. "I see your plan." He folded his arms across his massive chest. "But you still could have informed me of it before you ran off to get shot at."

Wylan felt his face heat up - the only reason he had in mind was that he hadn't wanted Matthias chaperoning this trip with Jesper - but thankfully, it was the smuggler himself who came to his aid.

"We were on a time constraint," the Corellian explained. "You know how long the hyperspace trip to Naboo is. We had a deadline, and we had to reach it."

"Inej was supposed to tell you," Wylan blurted out, then clapped a hand over his mouth. Great. Shift the blame onto their captain. Perfect way to resolve the argument.

Matthias didn't believe it for a second. He just gave Wylan a very, very sceptical look.

He sighed. "Alright, alright, I-"

"Van Eck!" Wylan jumped out of his ship to see Senator Lantsov himself speed-walking through the hangar. As he passed, he shouted, "Get back to work, we're on a time constraint!" There was humour in his voice, but it didn't outweigh the urgency.

Wylan got back to work. "Jesper, those crates go onto shuttle-"

Alarms blared throughout the hangar. Everyone froze, then peered up, out of the hangar exit, into the cloudy skies outside.

Inej was the first to move, leaping away from where she'd been standing, Kaz having disappeared, and running towards the snowspeeders at the other end of the hangar. She nimbly flipped onto the wing, slid into the cockpit and strapped herself in. Matthias and the rest of her squadron followed suit, and within minutes they were all launched and zooming out of the hangar, leaving dust and wind in their wake.

Everyone in the hangar seemed to have frozen. Wylan's pulse hammered like a rabbit's heartbeat in his throat; he swallowed tightly, then lifted his hands to the surface of the datapad. They were trembling.

"Well?" he snapped suddenly, shocking himself as much as the people around him. "Get moving! The Empire's here!"

The words ran through the cavernous room, invoking the sort of terror one might expect. Wylan glanced out of the hangar entrance again. There, beyond the white snowy plains, beyond the grey-bellied clouds, below the blue-tinted atmosphere and beyond any hope or doubt, Imperial Star Destroyers had coalesced into existence like daggers strew among the heavens in place of stars.

Was that Koroleva's flagship? He squinted, but the only thing he could tell was that the lead ship was massive - a few kilometres long, at least. Otherwise, he was much too far away.

A bustle of activity resumed around him as he released a shaky breath.

The Empire was here.


"Inej, I need to leave," Kaz said the moment he pulled her aside. He was never one to waste time.

She sighed. "I know. I was wondering how long you would actually stay for."

"It's not that." That surprised her. She glanced up at him, eyes wide. "When I was on Naboo with Wylan, I saw Oomen."

"Pekka's favoured bounty hunter?" There was a dryness to her throat; Inej had to fight for her breath, for a moment. The name brought back memories she longed to forget, of too much skin, leering glances from all sorts of species, a cold shackle around her neck, the lump of the transmitter inserted into the flesh just below her collarbone. . . "What does this mean?"

"I think," Kaz said reluctantly, "he might be a little bit bitter I never actually delivered him the money promised from that one smuggling job."

Oh, Force, Kaz. "So he hired bounty hunters to track you down and make an example of you."

"Yes." Kaz rarely minced words. "So I need to leave. I can't risk Oomen finding your Rebellion because of me."

Inej took a deep breath, then asked the question that had been hanging between them for months by now: "Why not?" She paused to make sure she had his attention, then grasped his hand and reiterated, "What do you care?"

"I don't," he said immediately, but it was a knee-jerk response. She knew he didn't mean it. "That is. . ."

He sighed, and squeezed her hands.

"I don't care, per se," he admitted, "but. . . There's a fire here. You've always had that fire, and now you've given it to Jesper, too. Wylan, Nina, Matthias. Your squadron. You said you'd blow up the Death Star, despite nigh-on impossible odds, and you did it." He smiled slightly, then released her hands. "It makes me wonder what else you'll do."

Inej wrapped her hands around herself, the chill of Hoth suddenly much more potent. "Kaz Brekker, Rebel sympathiser," she commented, with an attempt at a smirk.

"Don't get ahead of yourself," he warned, but he was smiling too. In a move that took her by surprise, he kissed her cheek then stepped away again. "I'll be back," he promised, then ran to his ship.

"I know you will," she said to the empty space he left behind. It was true.

Kaz was gone by the time the Empire arrived.


Kuwei reached for the lightsaber clipped at his belt, but Nina put her hand on his to halt him. "Don't," she warned. "The Empire's set up a blockade; laser swords won't do anything about the rows and rows of capital ships. We have to keep loading the transports.."

"But that's Koroleva!" he protested.

Force, had Nina been this bad as a padawan? No wonder Zoya had become as responsible as she had. Nina could feel herself becoming responsible.

What an awful thought.

"Standard evacuation procedure is to fire two shots from the ground-based ion cannon to allow each transport to escape," Nina explained, getting an overwhelming sense of déjà vu from the conversation during the Battle of Dantooine, where Inej had explained it to Jesper. "We have to load these transports in order for them to be cleared to escape."

Kuwei frowned, but nodded. "I- I understand."

"Besides, you'll get the fight you're looking for," Nina assured him, almost sarcastically. She really did sound like Zoya now. "We haven't been obliterated via orbital bombardment just yet, so I assume High Command have raised the shield. If Koroleva wants us dead, she'll have to use a ground-based assault to do it." She accepted another crate from Wylan and made to run it up the ramp.

Realisation - a long with a little too much excitement - dawned on Kuwei's face. "And she'll be leading it."

"Most likely." She strolled back down the ramp to accept the next one.

"What about Inej and her starfighters?"

"They're probably taking down the AT-ATs coming at us as we speak with tow cables and the likes." Nina shrugged - at least, she shrugged as much as it's possible to shrug when one is holding two massive boxes of supplies. "Don't worry about Inej. She can take care of herself."

"You worry about her," Kuwei said, half-accusingly. At her bewildered look, he explained, "I can sense it."

Her eyebrows shot up, but they soon settled into their natural positions again. "Well, Inej is my friend. It's my job to worry about her. She does the same for me."

"And me," Kuwei insisted. "And Kaz. And Jesper and Wylan and Matthias. She's a friend of all of us, and she's my friend, too. I get to worry about her."

Nina blinked, then had to busy herself with the next batch of supplies she was hauling to prevent her padawan noticing the tears in her eyes. Her voice was a blanket of forced calm. "I'm sure she'd be thrilled to hear that."

There was boom, then the base shuddered slightly. Wylan was conversing heatedly with someone on his comlink, before he turned to them.

"Kuwei," he said, meeting the boy's eyes with sort of urgency Nina had rarely seen in the lordling. "You said you knew how to put together our model of shield generator, right?"

Kuwei nodded wordlessly.

"The Imperial walkers took one out. If one of a pair failed, could you boost the power supply to the second to make it work double time? Or just, more effectively than it could otherwise?"

Her padawan's brow furrowed as he considered it. After a moment, he nodded grimly. "I can do it."

Jesper tossed the helmet of the Rebellion's snow gear to Wylan; Wylan passed it to Kuwei. "Then you're our only hope, Kuwei. We need you to get that shield operating, before the Empire overruns us all." He turned his solemn blue gaze on Nina. "We need you-"

"To defend his back while he works, got it," she confirmed. He nodded wearily; she almost felt sorry for him. She'd already seen Inej sacrifice her mental health and wellbeing, once, to the burden of leadership. She didn't want to see Wylan go through that as well.

But a more pertinent aim, she realised as she looked at Kuwei - so young, so vulnerable, so in need of protecting - and the expression on his face, was whether she could stop herself from doing it.


Kaz saw the Imperial ships arrive, but they did so too late to stop him. He flew right through a gap in their not-quite-assembled blockade and jumped to hyperspace.

That is, he didn't. As Inej had told Jesper, Kaz didn't fly his own ship. Instead, he'd yanked an old astromech droid out of one of the Barrel's cupboards and powered it up, setting it to plot their course and fly them out of there.

He hadn't lied to Inej when he'd said he hated droids, but necessity trumped sentiment. The moment they were in hyperspace he sent the droid to the back to shut down for a while, with instructions only to come back once they were due to revert to realspace.

He shook his head, scorning what a mess his life had become. Here he was. A farm boy without a farm. A pilot who couldn't fly his own ship. And a Rebel in all but name.

But as radical the changes Inej had brought into his life were, he could only pin upon her the blame for one of those things. The rest was all his fault.

It was no matter. He'd survived before; he would survive now. There was no way to change his past, but he could change the future, and maybe get Pekka off his back before he led the Empire right to Inej and Jesper.

So he sat in the passenger seat and activated his comlink. The person he commed took several rings to reply - he had always been a bit of a mess - but Kaz was patient. He had time. He could wait.

"Big Bolliger," he greeted with a smile like a whiplash when the man's face shone blue in the hologram. "So good to see you again."

Bolliger clearly didn't share the sentiment. He glowered at Kaz, but the sweat beaded on his brow and the way the hologram shook - as if the hand holding the comlink was shaking - betrayed his fear.

It was satisfying.

"What do you want, Brekker?"

"Only for you to pay up your end of the deal," Kaz said sweetly, "and tell me what the price on my head is, who's eyeing it, and who Pekka hired specifically to target me."

"Pekka will kill me if I do."

"And if you don't, I'll reveal exactly what happens whenever you accidentally drop a shipment and the Empire mysteriously finds out the hideout of a member of the Hutt clan." Kaz propped his chin on his hand. "Either way, Pekka will kill you." Honestly, Pekka probably already knew about Bolliger's cowardice, and how he always sold out his employer to save his own skin; he was probably glad to have had so much of the competition thinned by outside sources.

But Bolliger didn't need to know that.

The smuggler's face screwed up in a parody of thought. Kaz didn't believe it for a second: even if Bolliger had the brains to think, Kaz had backed him into a corner. There was only one choice he could make.

"Pekka's offered forty-five thousand credits to whoever delivers you to him, dead or alive," Bolliger grumbled - practically growled. Kaz was mildly insulted. Inej had at least sixty thousand on her head for blowing up the Death Star, and Hutts were far more lavish that the Empire. "And as for the bounty hunters he sent specifically, there's Oomen, of course," he was Pekka's favourite, "Aerts, Gerrigan, Filip, that whole gang. He also got Geels to lend him some: Elzinger and the likes."

Kaz would absolutely not acknowledge the hard nugget of sense in the back of his mind that was currently secreting fear like a crushed meiloorun. "My, my, that is an impressive list." He wasn't surprised that Pekka had decided to get a fellow Hutt like Geels involved, but it unsettled him all the same. "The slug really wants me dead."

"You lost him a lot of money when you didn't come through on that shipment, and you haven't paid him back in the last year."

"That was an observation, not an invitation for you to talk, Bolliger." He paused in thought. "But I can use this information. I'll call you back soon for more." Before the smuggler could object, Kaz disconnected the call.

Oomen had come close to catching him, that much was certain, but what about the others? Maybe he ought to keep that old astromech droid activated just so it could scan for homing devices or incoming ships.

Or maybe he could face this problem head on. He had enough money for a down payment on his debt, and if he ever really wanted Pekka to suffer for what he'd done to Kaz's family, he needed to have an actual contingency plan. He didn't - not yet - but he figured it would be best to not have Pekka expecting a strike from him. It would be best to make Pekka think he didn't have an enemy in Kaz.

It wouldn't be easy - in fact, it got harder every time he remembered how his father and brother had died, one wasting away from thirst and the other shot like cannon fodder, every time he remembered how he'd first seen Inej, clad in a metal bikini with the chain around her neck in that slug's hand - but he could do it. He had to do it.

They all deserved justice. But it was a lawless galaxy, one where justice was a fickle concept that only fools like the Rebels believed in. The only obtainable thing that was similar to it was revenge.

And Kaz would have it. For Jordie. For Inej. For him.

And, as Inej would no doubt say, for every other slave and smuggler who'd toiled under Pekka's yoke until he saw fit to break them.

Pekka the Hutt would fall. He knew it in his bones. It wasn't the Force, but something much realer. Something earned.

"Brick by brick," he whispered. "Brick by brick."

Then: "Droid! Set course for Tatooine!"