Aw, sorry 17, don't cry! Enjoy the action and antics this chapter instead.

Chapter 14: All In

Cham Syndulla stood upon a table that had been dragged out into the makeshift hangar; his office was too small to accommodate his eager troops, and it didn't feel right to brief them in the mess hall. His eyes scanned the crowd beneath him, noting his new contingent of human soldiers with some caution.

"The Perilous will be hit by the space mines as she exits hyperspace," Cham outlined. "We'll apologise. Call it leftover debris from the Clone Wars. Isval will lead the primary response-"

Korkie caught a trace of consternation as the General laid eyes upon his second-in-command. There were feelings of tenderness there. They had perhaps argued the point.

"-and will aim to board the Perilous peaceablyin the guise of a maintenance crew. If admitted on board, the crew will aim to access the engine room and place a set of detonators sufficient for the explosion of the ship and death of all on board."

The General gave a nod of grateful acknowledgement to Pok.

"If we can pull that off as planned," Isval emphasised, "We take out the Emperor and his deputy and we pass it off as an accident. No ramifications for Ryloth."

"But if there is any complication at any stage," Cham cut in, soberly, "The rest of you come into play. We will deploy all of our fighters in an effort to take down that Star Destroyer. And at that point it's no longer a stealth mission."

There was a dull murmur of understanding. But the Hammer of Ryloth pressed on, eyeing his soldiers with stern warning.

"If we fail at our first plan, then we are all in. Then it's organised rebellion and we succeed or we are obliterated."

Isval watched the space mine detonate against the hull of the Perilous in a shower of white and gold. A flurry of vulture droids began to scuttle across the ship's hull, prising at its cladding.

"Ready, sisters? Brothers?"

They projected the green and yellow lights of a maintenance crew upon their humble ship as they approached. Isval pressed a finger to the radio transmitter.

"B17 maintenance crew to Perilous. Our sincerest apologies for the incident. Separatist space mines remain a hazard in Ryloth air space. Permission to board for maintenance works?"

The voice of an Imperial officer crackled over the comms.

"These should have been cleared out months ago."

"It is a resource-intensive task, Sir. We've cleared thousands already but sadly hundreds still remain."

"We will provide Imperial forces for ongoing assistance. Permission to board granted."

Isval flicked off the comms.

"We take no prisoners, sisters. These are the scum that would sell us like livestock. They would send you to the mines, brothers, and never let you see sunlight again!"

The soldiers raised their weapons in fierce agreement, their cry filling the small cabin.

"No prisoners!"

Isval grinned and let her words roar through her.

"For a Free Ryloth!"

The echo filled her skull.

"For a Free Ryloth!"

Mace hadn't been enveloped in this sort of silence since peacetime in the Jedi Temple. There was the weary thrum of his ship's engine and nothing else. No murmur of men or metallic footfalls. No breathing of sleeping companions. No one calling him General, or Master, or by his name.

There was nothing.

Peace. Mace had called this peace, in another lifetime. He had craved this silence in a Temple full of babbling crechelings and giggling Initiates and righteously debating Padawans. He had craved the quiet in which it had been easier for him to slip into the welcoming arms of the Force, to feel its flow and know its secrets. But in this silence he knew nothing.

The time is not right.

His own voice. Only his own voice. The Force, too, seemed to have gone quiet.

Korkie sat behind the controls of a second-rate starfighter and waited for the crackle of General Syndulla's voice over the ageing radio comms.

"Peaceful access to the Perilous has been obtained according to plan at 0741."

The fighter was an old Whitecloak, presumably scavenged from the early days of the Clone Wars, when there weren't quite enough Delta-Sevens to go around amongst all the Jedi freshly turned into Generals. Korkie could not help but think of his brother as he sat in that cramped cockpit. Of the first Anakin that he had known. The Anakin from Before.

Anakin would have loved to do this, once upon a time. He would have brought this weary machine back to life, made it pirouette through space like it was worth a million credits. He would have defended this planet as fiercely as it had been his own. For in those days Tatooine had been distant and Anakin all but homeless.

Was it fair for Korkie to resent him now? Now that he had lost his own home and taken up the fight, while Anakin retreated back to the desert sands?

Of course, it was not. But nothing was fair in the galaxy these days.

"Two Imperial casualties aboard the Perilous, General."

Isval's voice now.

"We've hidden the bodies and gained entry into the engine room. Might make it through unscathed but it was close. Fighters to stand by."

"Fighters standing by, Isval."

Korkie drummed his fingers absently against the console. Where was his fear? For he knew that the boarding crew would not make it through unscathed. He knew that the Sith Lord who had engineered a galactic war could not be ambushed. He knew what Mace Windu had known when he chose to leave them behind. There was no battle to be won here. Korkie thought of Kawlan hammering false hulls into ships on Yaga Minor and felt his first twinge of remorse. But still no fear.

"We're detected, General."

Isval was terse now, her words punctuated by the sound of blaster fire.

"Are the explosives placed, Isval?"

"Placing them-"

Isval gave a grunt of pain.

"Nearly there, General, we just need to-"

"Starfighters up now," Cham cut in. "You are to destroy any craft or piece of debris large enough to accommodate a humanoid."

Korkie stomped and flicked his Whitecloak into gear, rising quickly through the sparse atmosphere of Ryloth's second moon. He tried, effortfully, to push Anakin from his mind. He thought instead of Han on Corellia, of his corkscrews through traffic lanes.

You're unbelievably lucky, you know, that your air-filled head didn't fly off your neck when Gansar hit you.

Han had been right then and he was right today. Korkie accelerated through the atmosphere until he was enveloped in the silence of space. He was an idealist and he always would be. He could only hope he was still lucky.

Over the comms, there was a series of crashes and clunks and distant expletives before Isval's voice rose clearly again.

"Explosives are placed, General."

"You need to get your troops out, Isval."

"We can detonate now."

"Do not detonate now. Get out of there."

The Imperial Star Destroyer loomed enormous in the windshield of the old Whitecloak now.

"They'll escape, General, if we wait any longer."

The blaster fire aboard the Perilous had intensified.

"We're not going to make it off anytime soon, General. I'm sorry but I have to do this. For Ryloth. For a free Ryloth."

"Isval-"

Such pain in the General's voice. And the pain suddenly in Korkie's chest too, as his keen eyes picked out a streak of movement on the distant side of the Star Destroyer. He slammed his hand onto his radio comms.

"Do not detonate. An escape craft has detached from the port side. I repeat, do not detonate. Our targets are not on board."

Isval's words were panted from between crashing footsteps.

"You sure? Who's verified this? Could be a decoy."

Korkie leaned into the embedded microphone at the console.

"This is Ben speaking. They're not on board. I can feel it. Don't go killing yourself for nothing, Isval. Do not detonate."

As he spoke, Korkie pulled up to swoop over the Star Destroyer in pursuit of the escape craft. He watched his fellow starfighters following in his peripheral vision. The comms crackled once more.

"This is General Syndulla. As per Ben. Do not detonate until safely off-board."

Isval huffed and there was a crashing sound that Korkie thought he might have heard before – the rattle of stormtrooper armour after a heavy fall.

"Fine," Isval panted. "But you lot need to catch that craft."

"In pursuit, Isval."

Korkie caught a streak of yellow as Cham Syndulla's far superior starfighter pulled in front of him to take the lead of the attack formation.

"Good eyes, Ben."

"Thank you, General."

"You understand that it is unacceptable for an unranked soldier to give orders in such a manner."

But Korkie could hear the vein of warmth beneath the General's words.

"I'll await your punishment at mission's end, General."

Korkie could almost hear the wry smile.

"I like your optimism, young revolutionary."

"Go, go, go! Eshgo, come on! Where's Faylin? Are we all-"

One, two, three Twi'leks skidded through the loading dock and onto the purported Rylothian maintenance ship. Four survivors. Four of the fourteen who had entered the Star Destroyer under the guise of the B17 maintenance crew.

"Have we got anyone else coming?" Isval demanded.

Her soldiers were grim and tight-jawed.

"No."

"No one else."

It was difficult, somehow, for Isval to take in the air, for her lungs to perform the actions they had flowed through ceaselessly every moment of her life.

"Okay, I-"

"We've got to go, boss."

Drim was firing up the engine while Crost heaved shut their faulty blast doors. Isval felt for the detonator controller in her suddenly clumsy hand.

"Shall we?"

"Let's go."

The pursuing blaster fire was softer now, with the doors slid shut, and softer still with the echo of Isval's heartbeat in her ears. They were lifting, drifting. Neither victors nor defeated.

"We're out, General," Isval managed, into her comms. "Permission to detonate?"

"We're all clear. Blow it up, Isval."

For a moment, there was nothing. And then their view was swallowed up by dazzling, showering light.

The spectacle of the imploding Perilous was dimming now, as the showering white-hot sparks flitted and faded and the enormous cloud of orange smoke thinned to grey.

"This is far bolder, my Lord, than I had expected of the Twi'leks."

Grievous knew he oughtn't have spoken at all. The Emperor was displeased and Grievous had seen subordinates killed for so much as fidgeting with a cuff when the Sith Lord was in such a mood. But it had to be discussed, did it not? They had grossly misjudged the animosity of the Twi'lek freedom fighters and standing in silence wouldn't mend the fact.

Sidious's upper lip, already curled in displeasure, sharpened into a snarl.

"You know very little of the galaxy, General."

Grievous nodded, dipped his grotesque height.

"I defer to your wisdom, my Lord."

Sidious tutted.

"Flattery will not win you any favours, General."

Grievous would keep quiet on the matter but in truth he cared less for the Emperor's favours with each day that passed. He was a warrior in his own right and Sidious seemed to have forgotten it. He shouldn't have been on the Perilous to begin with, on this ludicrous farce of a diplomatic mission to visit and gently bully the idiotic Orn Free Taa. He had volunteered his services many times against the growing threat of the Free Ryloth Movement. They had waited too long; they should have employed violence from the start. Their tolerance had bred unforgiveable boldness in the Twi'leks.

"How will we navigate this disruption, my Lord?"

He was beginning to know and understand the Emperor – as much as a Sith Lord could, he supposed, be understood – and had the sense that already his potent anger was fading now to cool determination, in the way that molten lava cooled into obsidian. Grievous might have had his doubts but he understood then that the Emperor had none.

"We will do what we came to do, General," the Emperor declared, placing each word with precision. "We will land on Ryloth and we will destroy their freedom movement."

How were they to do that when the Perilous had been obliterated with thousands of occupying troops aboard? Grievous dared not ask. The Emperor turned his gaze away then from the looming planet and towards the pursuing Twi'leks in their scavenged fighters. They were fast approaching combat range.

"If you should wish you make any contribution at all to our cause, General," he added, with disdain, "I do believe this escape craft has some cannons of its own."

Korkie cursed beneath his breath. The bastards had started firing back. Of course, the escape shuttles aboard an Imperial Star Destroyer would be equipped with long-range ion cannons. Were those the infamous Borstel brand Thunderbolts Anakin had warned him about?

"Don't sit static, pilots," General Syndulla instructed over comms. "They'll pluck us out. Let's switch this formation up. Variant one."

Korkie realised that in his hasty inclusion into the Free Ryloth Movement's air force he'd not learned any of the formation variants. He drifted vaguely in a direction that made sense and slotted in behind the ship piloted by Boil – the only ship in the fleet in worse shape than his own.

It was Boil's voice, or perhaps one of his brothers', that crackled over the radio comms next.

"We've got pursuers coming now from the Star Destroyer, General."

"What in the hells are those?"

"New twin ion engine fighter. Haven't you been watching any propaganda recently, Trapper?"

Unfortunately, the TIE fighters seemed to handle better in space than they had under Han's effortful piloting in Corellian atmosphere. Korkie darted side to side and felt the tight proximity of the ion bolts sailing past him. His breath was beginning to feel tighter now in his chest.

"Stars, alright then."

He swerved in a larger manoeuvre, looping back to strike a pursuer. The TIE fighter spiralled and Korkie let out a breath of relief.

"Stay close, Ben," Cham warned over the comms. "We don't want to leave you behind."

Korkie pressed the Whitecloak forwards to fall back into formation.

"Yes, Sir."

"Our focus is on taking down that escape shuttle."

"Agreed, Sir."

If only he had a good R2 unit on board; he'd have been able to utilise his rear blaster set to tackle both. But Korkie listened to his general and latched his focus onto the larger craft ahead. There was no doubt the Emperor was aboard. Korkie had felt that coldness only once before.

Perhaps it was the thought of that day – of Padme, of the blood draining from her face as the warmth drained from the Force around her – that broke Korkie's focus then. Cody's voice pressed urgently through the comms as his ship drew it to support him.

"Watch it, Korkie!"

He had drifted wide as their battalion of starfighters arced to attack the escape shuttle at its relatively unarmed exit side. The TIE fighter that had been a distant pursuer was suddenly dangerously close. It levelled its blasters, then dropped low. Listed. Spiralled. Korkie couldn't quite make sense of what had happened.

"Didn't know you could fly forwards and shoot backwards, kiddo."

"I-"

Korkie whipped his neck back and then forward again as they hurtled onwards towards Ryloth. He hadn't fired those shots. Which could only mean that…

He chanced another look behind him and caught the faintest glimpse of green. He took a steadying breath and probed the Force around him. Another breath. He checked that his comms were turned off.

"Hera kriffing Syndulla, if that's you sitting in the back of my karking Whitecloak…"

The child's voice was prim and righteous.

"I'm not supposed to know those words."

It was all Korkie could do to keep his hands on the steering console; he'd have liked to throw them up in his outrageous disbelief.

"You're not supposed to be sitting in my doshing fighter either, Hera! Kriff's sakes. I thought I was a di'kut when I was your age but you have really taken the karking cake here."

"Are you teaching me profanity on purpose now?" she asked.

"I'm still trying to comprehend what you've kriffing done, Hera."

The daughter of the General in his fighter. The eleven-standard-year-old daughter of the General in his fighter.

"It was easy," Hera told him. "There's a spot down here for an internal R2 unit."

"It was stupid," Korkie countered.

"It was unfair not to let me come! The only reason this ship flies is because of me, you know. I fixed it up all by myself."

"This ship barely flies, fraghead," Korkie grumbled.

He could not see the stowaway, sitting directly behind and below him, but could feel her indignation in the Force.

"Gorg-face," she retaliated.

Korkie cocked a brow but was sparingly amused.

"I thought you didn't know any curse words?"

"I live on a military base."

"Hmm."

"Fly left. I'll hit the one at seven o'clock."

Korkie sighed.

"You're not hitting anything else, Hera. We're going back to the moon."

"What?"

"I'm not putting you in danger," he reiterated. "We're going back."

"But this is our chance to kill the Emperor!" she wailed.

Korkie shook his head.

"And you've compromised that chance, Hera. We're going back. Well done."

Hera groaned.

"Who taught you to speak like that? You sound just like my stupid dad."

"Your dad isn't stupid, Hera. Be quiet for a second, please."

Korkie laid a finger on his comms.

"General, this is Kryze. I've got engine troubles. I'm going back."

"You going to make it back, kid?"

"Yeah, she's got just enough left in her, I think."

"How are we going to get you back behind that line of TIE fighters?"

"I'll figure it out, General. Don't waste efforts on me."

But General Syndulla would not be convinced.

"You'll get yourself shot, Kryze. You're better off coasting down to the planet. We'll cover you. Pick you up at battle's end."

"I'll go with him, General," came Cody's voice.

Korkie would have liked to argue the point but another barrage of cannon fire was coming his way. He released his hand from the comms and dipped low below the fighter formation.

"Alright, rakeweed, listen up. You are not to touch that trigger for anything less than certain death."

Hera brightened at this.

"So I can fire?"

Korkie gritted his teeth.

"Only if it saves you being blown to pieces first. We are disengaging from this fight and flying low-profile down to Ryloth."

Hera gave an exorbitant sigh.

"Have you forgotten that the kriffing Emperor's on that shuttle?"

"You've pushed your luck far enough today, Hera."

And perhaps in truth she had already pushed it too far entirely, for a spiteful TIE fighter found their left wing even as they drifted away from the field of battle, and the casual coast down to Ryloth that the General had envisioned for the old Whitecloak became something more of a spiral.

Cody landed neatly beside the battered Whitecloak fighter, which Korkie had, through valiant piloting efforts, controlled in its spiral to crash with the impact through its failing wing, leaving the cockpit relatively unscathed.

"You okay, Korkie?"

There was a muffled holler to the affirmative as the teenager pushed against the slightly misshapen doorframe; it strained and then gave way with a clatter. A blond head emerged from beneath the steel and glass.

"Unscathed," he reported blithely.

The young man clambered then from the cockpit but did not leap to the ground. He leaned back into the ship and extended an arm, grasped in turn by a green-skinned hand.

"That was an exciting landing!"

It was a child's voice, chirping with good humour. Cody hurried over to the ship to assist.

"Korkie, what in the hells is-"

"This is my stowaway," he reported curtly. "Hera Syndulla. Hence why we needed to leave the conflict and make an emergency landing."

"Hence why you're still alive at all," Hera grumbled, wiping at the engine grease on her tunic as she clambered down to ground level.

"Hera did manage to hit a TIE fighter," Korkie conceded, graciously. "After getting us both into a world of trouble."

The child huffed and folded her arms. Korkie threw up his hands in irritable appeal but said nothing further. All around them, the equatorial rainforest of Ryloth hummed and buzzed with life. They had damaged the canopy on their landing but still the sky was largely obscured by fanning green leaves. The overlying clouds were heavy with waiting rain. There was no sign above of the approaching space battle.

"How do you think we went on the landing, Cody?" Korkie asked, eventually. "I tried to steer away from where the Emperor's shuttle will be landing but I didn't make it as far east as I'd have liked."

Cody hummed his agreement; they were hardly distant from his estimation of the likely landing zone, perhaps an hour's hike at the most.

"Our position isn't ideal," he conceded.

His measured tone did little to temper his young companions; Hera hurled Korkie a ferocious scowl.

"I told you we should have stayed in the air!"

"And let the TIE fighters have a few more shots at us?"

"If you weren't such a rubbish pilot-"

"Bantha shit!"

"We need a plan," Cody interrupted firmly. "We're stuck down here until the battle is done and the Movement can send a ship to collect us."

Korkie blanched. Cody did not have the boy's ability for mind-reading but suspected that he, too, was considering the very possible eventuality of the Free Ryloth Movement's complete destruction in the space battle overhead.

Hera shrugged.

"Can't we all fit in your ship, soldier, and fly straight out?"

At the provocation, Korkie lapsed immediately from his attempt at a composed adult countenance.

"In that fighter?" he scoffed. "No chance, Hera. It's made to seat one."

He looked at the child with reproach. Hera grimaced.

"Don't say-"

"Like my Whitecloak," he finished, spitefully. "Also built for one."

Hera muttered something beneath her breath. Korkie's brows jumped.

"Did you just call me a mudscuffer?"

Cody sighed.

"Korkie, Hera – that's enough."

Korkie looked vaguely remorseful, Hera not at all.

"We need to know if and where that Imperial craft is landing so that we can get well out of the way," Cody resolved, returning his mind to the task at hand. "The comms on my ship still work. I'll call the General."

Hera looked far more worried at the mention of her father than the incoming Sith Lord.

"Please, soldier, don't tell my dad. Please."

"Don't tell him," Korkie echoed, to Cody's surprise. "The less people who know that Hera's here, the better. It's the sort of information that the Emperor will use against us."

For the first time, a small furrow of worry creased Hera's brow. Cody felt a pang of worry in his own chest.

"Alright," he conceded. "I'll tell him it's just you and I."

Cham gave the coordinates a hurried glance as he zipped side to side evading fire from the pursuing TIE fighters.

"We'll try to drive them clear, Cody," he promised. "But I'm afraid we're losing control ourselves. I don't think we'll be able to destroy this ship before it lands. All those TIEs have picked off nearly half our fighters now and it's heavily armoured-"

Cham's breath caught as he swerved out of the path of an imploding ally's starfighter.

"We'll do what we can," he resolved. "But you'd best be ready. I think this is going to very soon become a land battle."

The unnatural silence surrounding Mace Windu began, slowly, to wane. It was as though the Force around him was waking from a strange hibernation. He heard whispers, felt nudges, as that precious connection warmed and hummed again. But the return was not so comforting as it might have been. There were murmurs of unease and flashes of visions. A village in flames. Blood on the rich earth. The Force nipped and gnawed at Mace like a petulant beast.

The time is not right.

Something was not right, that much was certain. Mace felt uneasy in his own skin. He had the inexplicable sense that he was flying in the wrong direction.

"No. Please."

Mace had never pleaded with the Force before; not in his adult life, at least. Every Knight knew that the Force was no nursemaid. He spoke out of weakness, of desperation.

"The time is not…"

But he could not say the words anymore. Mace Windu took a deep sigh and turned the ship around.

The battle was still unwinnable. So why was he doing this?

Because those clones had followed him across the galaxy and he could hardly abandon them now. Because Korkie kriffing Kryze had asked him to. Because the fight may not have been winnable but the boy was right. If they lived in fear they would never win. A war could not be won until battles had been won and battles could not be won until miniscule victories had been won amidst the losses. He could not defeat Sidious. But if he stood tall enough before him he might present some sort of obstacle. He might buy a minute. A handful of blows. He would do what he could to protect Korkie's life and maybe a few more besides. If he could sow some hope, any hope…

"The time may never be right," he admitted to himself, as his ship leapt back into hyperspace.

"If this is going to be a land battle, I want a weapon," Hera announced.

They were trooping through the jungle away from their conspicuous landing site in the hopes that the evil Emperor wouldn't be able to find them amidst the dense foliage – hardly a sophisticated plan, Hera thought, from a Clone War veteran. The soldier who had introduced himself as Cody looked reluctant at her suggestion.

"She'll need something, Cody, we can't just leave her completely defenceless," Ben reasoned. "What do you fight with, Hera? Blade or blaster?"

Hera levelled her gaze at him in suspicion – she'd suspected they still weren't talking – but decided against jeopardising his amiability.

"Blaster, please."

The boy snorted.

"Checks out."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

He smirked and dipped his gaze.

"Nothing."

"You think you're better than me because you fight with a-"

She caught a glimpse of his belt as he handed her a blaster.

"Is that a lightsaber?" Hera gasped.

The boy pulled his jacket forward to obscure it from her view.

"'Course not. Just a vibroblade. How rich do you think I am?"

"That handle didn't look cheap," Hera remarked, clambering over the thick undergrowth to get closer to him and try for another look. "I've seen lightsabers before when the Jedi came to Ryloth. And they looked just like that."

The boy shrugged with a non-committal noise of disagreement and pressed onwards. Hera looked at him and wondered whether he'd be too angry if she said it.

"When you commed my dad, when you said you had engine trouble…"

She'd ventured too far now. She couldn't go back.

"You said your name was Kryze," Hera spat out.

The boy had a look that could kill.

"You are familiar with the concept of surnames, Hera?"

She nodded.

"Ben Kryze, then?"

Another shrug.

"It's a famous surname," Hera observed.

She'd pieced it slowly together over their trek through the jungle. That faintly familiar face. The aristocratic accent he'd not quite quashed. It was not the irritable teenager but the clone soldier who handed Hera the inevitable reprimand.

"Not now, Hera."

Cody gestured with a tilt of his head to the sky, from which the drone of an engine was becoming faintly audible.

"Point taken," Hera conceded. "Now, do either of you actually have a plan, or would you like to hear mine?"

Queen Hera! I'm very excited to be giving her some time to shine in the action of the coming chapters. She and Korkie are a dynamic duo, no?

Next chapter, the battle unfolds on Ryloth.

xx - S.