In the time that followed their first kill, they lost half their speeders taking down another two walkers. By the time there was only one left, three remained. And Inej was arguing with another person to leave.
"Getting yourself killed won't help anyone!"
Judging by the grumbling Matthias heard before he switched off the comm, the pilot wasn't thrilled. But he didn't need to be thrilled. He just needed to do it.
He did it. And not a moment too soon; their last speeder exploded off the side mere heartbeats later.
"So, now it's just you and me, Inej," Matthias said dejectedly.
"Just you and me," she agreed, "and it's time for a change in tactics. Do you have the darksaber on you?"
His hand went to his waist. "Yes." He couldn't say why he'd kept it at his side since he first showed it to Inej, but he had, and apparently she'd been counting on it.
"Great." He could practically hear the cogs ticking in her brain, working, working. . . "Then let's bring back a legend."
Jesper didn't know what he was doing here. He just knew that, with Kuwei gone, Nina needed help.
He'd never held a lightsaber before, but the crystal around his neck hummed in tune with the blade he held. It was heavier than he'd expected, the casing cold in his hands, slippery with snow; he had to clutch it tightly.
Especially when he felt the telltale tug on the hilt.
"No!" he said stupidly, gripping it tighter. His thoughts moved slowly. Koroleva's hand was out again; she was trying to take it from him!
And if she did, that was just one more weapon she'd be able to wield against Nina.
"No," he repeated, and tugged it closer to himself. Despite the fact that it was the last thing he wanted to do, he made to march towards the pair, lightsaber clutched in a form he distantly remembered watching Nina teach Kuwei. Stars, but he wished he'd actually taken up the offer for her to teach him too, if only so he had that skill set when it came down to it. . .
He drew level with Nina, and pointed Kuwei's lightsaber at the armour-clad woman in a feeble parody of a threat.
"Jesper," Nina warned, "duck."
Though the beginnings of a half-formed "What-" stuck in his throat, he ducked. She somersaulted over his head - over Koroleva's head - and was carving her lightsaber down before she'd even landed. A large swathe of the crimson cape Koroleva wore was ripped away, burning, and the woman turned with vengeance, red saber already lit and swinging. They met with a crash, then Koroleva flicked her hand back and Jesper barely caught the lightsaber as it tried to jump out of his hand.
"Don't have the guts to face me on even footing?" Nina taunted. Jesper wondered at that. She'd been calm and rational - non-confrontational - before; what had changed?
You did, he realised. She's trying to draw attention away from you.
"I have every advantage over you already, young one," Koroleva replied. "And that pirate," she spoke the word with disdain, "has no right to that weapon."
"The way I see it," Jesper said loudly. He hated the look of panic on Nina's face, but couldn't she see he was just trying to help? He just wanted to help, "is that so long as I'm holding the weapon, it's mine to wield."
Koroleva's full attention snapped onto him, leaving Nina unbalanced and flailing in the snow. Through his newly-embraced connection to the Force, he could feel her anger, all suddenly directed at him - feel her disgust over his remark like cold water running down his back.
"You will pay for your insolence," she hissed.
"As you said, I'm a pirate." Jesper didn't think his tone came out quite as carefree as he was going for, but it was good enough. "I don't even know what that means!"
With a roar, she started towards him, but then there was a crash. There had been several crashes in the past half hour - Jesper could only hope Inej and Matthias were doing a good job of vanquishing the walkers - but this one felt important in a way he couldn't quite explain.
The three of them looked towards the battle.
Imperial forces were retreating, Jesper realised joyously. The smoking corpses of fallen walkers littered the snow. And the biggest one had someone standing on it.
"Oh, Force. . ." he heard Nina whisper.
It was Matthias.
Jesper couldn't quite stop his mouth from falling open as he watched the Mandalorian lift his right arm - and the object he was holding in it. From this distance, it looked just like a sword of some kind, but both Jesper's sense and his feelings told him that wasn't accurate. Swords made of metal never grew dark enough to give off the illusion that they absorbed all the light that hit them - that they positively glowed with it. And he could feel the blade he carried as well. It power writhed, like a beast on a tether. Chaotic neutral that perhaps had once been light.
It felt like the lightsaber in his hands, Jesper realised. It felt like the lightsaber except. . . colder. Older.
Much, much older.
Nina didn't seem to understand what was going on anymore than he did, but she used it all the same. She turned to Koroleva. "You've lost," she snarled. There was a tremor in her voice, and for a moment Jesper's eyes were drawn to Kuwei's corpse, cooling in the snow. "Your forces are in retreat. Your Destroyers can't bombard us; the shield is still intact. Now, surrender."
Koroleva's voice was a snarl, too, and it was much more terrifying than Nina's. "All of what you've said is true," she sneered, "but it does not change the fact that I can still leave both your bodies lying under your precious generator, then take it out myself."
She raised her lightsaber again; Nina tensed, weapon coming forward in a protective stance. Then Koroleva froze. Cocked her head to one side, listening.
"I will not," she snapped, voice cold. Jesper was momentarily confused until he heard the rush of static crackling through the air. She was speaking to someone on her comlink. "Admiral," she began heatedly, "I-" She was cut off.
Nina and Jesper shared a confused glance.
There was another tense minute, then there was a minute change in Koroleva's posture. Her shoulders slumped slightly, and if Jesper could see her face, he imagined it would be the picture of defeat.
"As the Emperor commands," she said in a monotone voice. "We shall press the attack once we've called for reinforcements."
Jesper didn't know whether she'd simply forgotten he and Nina were there, or simply considered them so incompetent and insignificant that it made no difference if she revealed the Empire's strategy. Jesper suspected the latter; she didn't seem to think very highly of them as it was.
Then she turned her back and stalked away, crimson cape flapped in the wind. Within moments, she'd been swallowed by the storm.
Jesper was suddenly hyperaware of how cold his face was.
"We should get back the base," he said slowly. "They'll want to know that there's another wave coming within the next few days."
Nina didn't respond. When he glanced at her face, he saw her gaze was still transfixed on Kuwei's body, lying motionless in the snow.
The relief in the hangar was palpable - and infectious. Wylan couldn't stop grinning as two more pilots streaked past him, whirling each other round in some mad victory dance.
They'd won.
The words were chanted over and over, and if anything that made them seem even more unreal. They'd won.
The Empire had been driven away. They'd won.
Matthias was holding court by the open landing ramp of the Barrel, Inej standing a little way off and nodding as he narrated the tale. Wylan still couldn't believe the stunt he and Inej had pulled, even if the darksaber was hanging at Matthias's side, clear for everyone to see.
A snippet of the conversation drifted over. ". . .and so Inej told me to open the hatch and climb out onto the walker and take it out with the saber alone! I did, and it cuts through even their armour extremely efficiently. . ." Matthias's voice was animated - he sounded more like an excited little boy than the gruff bodyguard Wylan had come to know. It was. . . heart-warming.
Then Wylan's warm heart was chilled by a sudden rush of cold air, and the sombre party that came in the door with it.
He began to smile when he saw Jesper come in, but aborted the attempt when he saw his face. In his hands he held a sheet - no, not a sheet. A body, with a sheet flung over it. He had the ankles; Nina, walking in after him, held the head.
It hit Wylan half a thought later. Where's Kuwei?
The baby of their group. The little one. The one he'd strongly suspected had a crush on Jesper.
His eyes were drawn to the body. Oh.
Oh.
He felt his heart break a little more than it already had.
Even Matthias's enthusiastic storytelling halted, and he looked over at the sorry pair with big blue eyes, like a kicked puppy. Nina's grief seemed to increase the cold in the room; Wylan shivered where he stood.
She handed Kuwei's body to Jesper, then walked up to Inej. Her friend's dark eyes tracked her silently as she walked, expression unchanging, until Nina stood in front of her and said in a monotone voice, "Rebel command are worried they'll launch another attack soon, once they've regrouped. We're to all evacuate immediately. Get on a ship and go. They'll send coordinates for the rendezvous point to everyone else, but we're to return to General Kir-Bataar and the Monsua Nebula."
Inej just nodded, once at Nina, then once at the pilots milling about. The celebration broke up and they all headed towards their respective ships.
She reached for the bag at her side. "Here's your satchel."
Nina took it slowly, weighing it in her hands. Then her hand pressed against one of the ridges pushing its way through the fabric, and she stiffened. Dug around in the satchel. Drew it out.
It looked like a music box.
That was all Wylan could make out before she threw it to the ground and walked away.
Inej glanced at the - now slightly broken - object, then narrowed her eyes slightly at Nina's retreating back. But she didn't comment on anything, and soon enough she was following her up the ramp, onto a shuttle, and Wylan had to follow as well.
It was with approximately zero regret Inej watched the snowy surface of Hoth recede beneath them, then disappear entirely to the folds of hyperspace. She was tired of being cold - not the familiar cold of space, that is, but the cold of ice, snow. The cold that could kill you.
And she was tired of the other cold, the cold that was currently enveloping her ship. It seemed to emanate from Kuwei's body; every word Nina said was frozen with it. Inej half expected to see her breath puff out in front of her.
She sighed, hand straying to the spot in her hair where, only a few weeks ago, she'd placed the candlewick flower Kaz had given her. The one she'd been wearing while they'd come up with the mission plan for the boys' excursion to Naboo, that had tinted everything she saw gold.
She wondered where Kaz was. Gone to deal with Oomen and Pekka? How well had that fared?
Almost as though it had heard her silent query, her comlink chimed. She glanced down, read the message almost lazily. Then she stiffened.
Almost before she could think, she was typing in Tamar's frequency and listening to her comlink ring.
Jesper couldn't stand the silence. He couldn't stand the heavy shroud the body on the dejarik table cast over everything. He. Couldn't. Take it.
Wylan was the one who broke it - Jesper cast him a grateful look, then glanced away quickly, guilt churning in his stomach. The lordling's face still bore bruises from their escapade on Naboo. "How did it happen?"
Nina was quiet for a moment, still staring into thin air, then she clenched the fist in her lap. "Koroleva." There was a finality to the word. A promise, too. "It was Koroleva."
It all came back to Koroleva, Jesper mused. The Chosen One of the Jedi, Alina Starkiller. He'd been a boy when the Clone Wars raged, but he remembered the reports on the holonet, the faces that were plastered everywhere in Republic propaganda. Starkiller and Nazyalensky save the day again! She'd been an icon, an ideal. Little Jesper had even had a crush on her, of sorts.
She was an easy person to have a crush on. She was practically a saint.
And to many, when the Jedi had fallen and Starkiller pronounced dead, a martyr.
The silence fell again, the undisturbed surface of a lake. "I'm sorry," Jesper said into it. The words were thrown out like a pebble, and sank quickly. Before long, they may have never been said at all.
Where do we go from here? Jesper wanted to ask. Logically, he knew the answer. They were going back to Starkiller base.
But he meant it in a more intangible way than that. Where do we go? What do we do? They'd formed a team of sorts in the time they'd spent together, and as young as Kuwei was, he'd been a part of it. What were they meant to do now that one of their members was gone?
At least Inej seemed to be functioning at normal capacity. It was good to know at least one person could be relied upon to not fall apart.
Jesper clenched his fist. Not like you.
He glanced up at Wylan again, at the violet, violent bruise on his pale face.
You could've stopped it. You didn't stop it.
He clenched his fist harder; the veins stood out on the back of his hand in stark relief.
You weren't enough to stop it.
Maybe he should just leave the Rebellion - maybe he'd been a fool to actively try to convince Kaz to join it. Maybe he should leave, and go far, far away. If he couldn't keep Wylan from being hurt, how could he help anyone else? How could he be relied upon to help the galaxy?
I wasn't good enough.
That voice in his head, the one that always seemed to sound exactly like Kaz, didn't hesitate to snap back: So get better.
Do better.
Be better.
Stronger, smarter, more powerful. What had Kuwei said, when he'd first asked Nina to train him as a Jedi?
I want to be able to defend myself. I want to have those skills in my repertoire. The age of the Jedi is over, but their abilities aren't obsolete.
Jesper closed his eyes.
I want to be able to stop anything like this from ever happening again.
His hand brushed the crystal at his neck. For a moment, he imagined he could hear his mother's laughter catching on the wind. She hadn't deserved the fate she'd been given.
None of them had.
Kuwei was gone now. Kuwei could never do what he'd promised to do, could never honour his father in that way. But Jesper could.
Jesper could carry that legacy. For the boy who'd died in the snow. For his mother, who'd died before her time. For Wylan, who so many people had sworn (and failed) to protect.
He opened his eyes and his mouth moved before he could stop it. "Nina?"
She glanced up. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her irises as hard as shards of glass.
Jesper yanked on his necklace. The thread he wore it on broke with a snap, and the kyber crystal lay unmoving on the palm of his hand. It was warm - not from contact with his body, he suspected, but from some innate inner energy - and it hummed softly against his skin, its light gilding the harsh lines of his hand. "I want you to teach me how to use the Force."
"I won't teach you to become a Jedi. It's time for the Jedi to end." Her tone was flat, and Jesper wondered what had caused such a radical change in her, but he shook it off. He trusted her judgement; if she said it was time for them to end, it was time.
So he shook his head. "No. I want to finish what Kuwei started. I don't want to ignore this power I have anymore. Not when I can do good with it." He looked past her, to Wylan. "Not when I can save people with it."
The blush that overtook the lordling's face almost hid the bruise covering it.
Nina drew in a breath to answer - but then Inej strode in, her face the picture of worry.
She wasted no time on preamble. "I picked up a distress call," she said. "It's from Kaz." She swallowed. "Pekka Rollins captured him."
Inej tried to calm her racing heart as they rushed into the cockpit with her and she played back the message. She'd already watched it twice: once, when she'd first received it, then again when she didn't believe it.
The blue figure of Kaz shimmered into existence, and then he started talking.
"I'm prerecording this before I head into Pekka's palace, and my droid-" He said the word with some modicum of disgust, "-will send it if I don't return to the Barrel in two days. Of course, it might be too late by then, but I doubt it. Pekka's a fan of extending the suffering of those who defy him.
"I went back to Tatooine to pay off my debt to Pekka, in hopes that he'll stop sending bounty hunters after me. It's putting us all at risk." Inej didn't miss the surprised twitch Jesper gave at the use of 'us'. "But it's been a while since the deadline for the debt was due, so Pekka might not decide to let me off the hook and throw me in the brig to be used as an example for when he thinks someone's at risk of defying him again. In which case: do not come after me. Inej, Jesper, do you hear that? Do not-"
She clicked off the recording. "After that he just spews a bunch of insults at us."
Jesper was bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. "We're going after him, right?"
Inej shrugged. "Depends."
"On what?" He sounded affronted - and offended - at the idea.
"I was going to put it to a vote."
Jesper's voice was getting shriller and shriller. "So if you and I are the only ones voting to rescue him, we're just not going to rescue him?"
"No." She met his eyes steadily. "If we're the only ones who want to rescue him, I'll dump everyone else at Starkiller base and then we'll go rescue him."
Jesper froze, the breath leaving him all at once. "That sounds fair," he admitted, then turned to Wylan, Matthias and Nina where they stood behind them. "Well?"
Jesper watched as Nina crossed her arms. "I'm no fan of Kaz, but if Inej's is going anyway there's no way in Hell I'm letting her go in without me."
Wylan's voice was quiet, but he met Jesper's eye and said, "It's the same for me."
Matthias hesitated, then placed his hand on Wylan's shoulder in a clear sign of support. He was in.
"Alright." There was a smile in Inej's voice, but he noticed her hands trembling as she turned back to the controls to edit the hyperspace coordinates.
Tatooine means something to her, he deduced, and she doesn't want to go back. But she will.
For Kaz.
It was Wylan who, in a jittery voice, asked, "Aren't we going to alert Rebel Command?"
"I'd rather ask for forgiveness than permission, to be quite frank," Inej said, her fear only noticeable through the slight tension in her voice, "but I've left a message with Tamar- she wasn't picking up - and I will comm her again once we get there." She sat back from the navicomputer, her face weary. "We just have to get there first."
They were all staring out of the viewport as the ship jumped back to hyperspace. As the crew stood still for perhaps a moment longer than necessary, watching the blue swirl, Jesper wondered whether they wouldn't have gone mad by the time they reached Tatooine.
Whether they weren't already mad for going there - and taking on Pekka Rollins - in the first place.
.
End of Part II
.
