"Regroup on Verdant"

The trip back to Verdant was quiet enough that Lucy actually managed to catch a bit of sleep along the way. By the time Kyle woke her up, they were back at the Verdant Base, where night had apparently fallen. Pale moonlight filled the hangar as they walked down their ship's ramp, reflecting off of a small river which now ran through the hangar and out down the cliff that it had been built into. The river was just one of many details that Lucy had failed to notice whilst they'd been boarding the Inquisitor's ship; it seemed that she had underestimated just how overgrown the base had truly become.

Just as they'd hoped, the Empire remained seemingly oblivious to the existence of the Republic Military Base. Indeed, aside from Kyle, herself, and the Rebels, the only living creatures within the base that she could sense were Mynocks, Dataspiders, and a few other varmints.

"Where the hell are we?" Sarah asked, peering around with a distinct look of confusion at the moss and vines which covered everything. Her squad all wore matching expressions as they followed her down the ramp

"This is a Republic military base, or at least it was, I guess," Kyle answered. "This is where Lucy and I woke up yesterday."

"Woke up?" Sarah asked as she turned to face him. "Must've been a long nap."

"We were in stasis," Lucy explained, catching Sarah's attention. "From what we can tell, it's been at least nine-hundred years since we were last awake, probably a lot more."

Sarah looked at her with wide eyes, as though Lucy had suddenly grown a second head, before blinking and nodding. "Well, as much as I look forward to hearing your story, none of my men have slept in over a day. I don't suppose you have a place where we can sleep that isn't crawling with Mynocks and snakes?"

"The Hangar is probably your best bet, at least for tonight," Kyle answered her. "We can show you around tomorrow, and hopefully see about cleaning at least part of this place up. Maybe we can even get the power back online..."

"It'll do," Sarah said, her resignation faintly detectable over the exhaustion that radiated off of her. "Who's taking the first watch?"

Naturally, nobody spoke up, and Lucy could sense that nobody really wanted to. However, she could also sense something else, or perhaps more accurately, someone else. "I will."

The Rebels all nodded with relief, while Kyle turned to face her with exhaustion that was clearly derived from more than a lack of sleep. His eyes were still bloodshot, and she could see plainly that he was still very worried about her. Lucy gave him a quiet nod of reassurance, but she could tell that he'd need a bit more convincing.

Kyle always tended to get a bit carried away when it came to worrying about all sorts of things, usually those that were out of his control. She knew that he would insist on staying awake right alongside her, exhaustion be damned, and that was the last thing she wanted when she could tell that he very clearly needed the sleep.

"Much appreciated, Lucy," Sarah said. "We'll talk more in the morning. If you've really been away for nine-hundred years... I imagine you've probably got a few questions."

"They can wait. I'll be by the hangar entrance." Lucy replied, before turning to Kyle and subtly gesturing for him to follow her.

The two quietly walked across the hangar, sitting at its edge and looking out at the vast forest beneath them. Snow-capped mountains dominated the horizon, and the beautiful moonlight from several of Verdant's nine moons cast over the landscape.

"This planet really is beautiful, I never really got the chance to appreciate it back when, well..." Lucy trailed off, her focus hastily dismantled as Kyle wrapped his arm around her shoulders. It wasn't quite as warm as usual, what with the Stormtrooper armor that she had yet to change out of, but it was a welcome gesture nonetheless.

"That's no excuse to be staying up all night," Kyle softly chastised her. "Why not ask Paulen to stand watch? He's probably willing, and he's even slept recently... I made sure of it."
Lucy quietly chuckled at Kyle's words, before giving him a small smile. "I did get some sleep on the ride back. Besides, I want to try to connect with Satele, I'm hoping that I can talk to her."

Kyle softly nodded, recognizing now that she had good reason to want to stay awake. "I hope you can, I think we could all use her help... You promise to wake me up if you need me?"

In response, she leaned in, giving him a swift kiss on the cheek before giving him a reassuring smile. "I promise, now go get some sleep."

She took a great degree of glee at the way he blushed, and she could practically see his brain struggle to catch up as he instinctually answered her. "...Yes ma'am."

With no further objection, he stood up, sparing one further glance back at her before he went back to join the rest of the Rebels, most of whom were now laying out sleeping rolls from their packs. Lucy tried not to pay too much attention to them, and instead kept a lookout for anything that could pose a threat to them.

Verdant was a planet that was safer than most, but it was no stranger to predatory animals, specifically large cat-like creatures whose name she couldn't quite remember. The fact that Sarah likely didn't know that and had still elected to set a watch spoke favorably towards her competence. So far, Sarah seemed like a good leader, although her cold-blooded execution of Major Dauphin still didn't sit quite right in Lucy's mind.

Lucy reached out through the Force in addition to her physical senses, but didn't find anything of concern as the rest of the Rebels began to steadily fall asleep, until finally she was the only one awake. Her earlier exhaustion was certainly present, but it was negated in large part by the excitement that gripped her heart. If Satele really was still around, then Lucy knew that she was the perfect person to go to for guidance. Before she'd gone into stasis, Satele had been promoted to Grand Master of the entire Jedi Order, and was one of the wisest people Lucy had ever known.

Sitting down to meditate, Lucy reached out with the Force, hoping to feel Satele's presence just like she had on Utapau. After around a minute of mediation however, she failed to sense anything out of the ordinary, aside from a bitter cold that was brought on by the strong winds that blew past the hangar entrance. To help with the cold, she returned to the shuttle and slipped out of her Stormtrooper armor and back into her own, far more comfortable clothes. The familiar Jedi Robes and lightweight armor offered her a small degree of reassurance as she returned to the hangar entrance, to find that the cold was now much more tolerable, as if the base was now ready to receive her.

Minutes passed as she continued her mediation, patiently waiting for something, anything to reach back to her, but nothing did. Lucy pursed her lips, the Force never made anything easy, but this was far from a good sign. She's still here, I felt her presence... right?

Even though it had been less than a day ago, Lucy's memory of the battle with the Nos monsters wasn't great. Even so, she could have sworn that somebody had stopped the Nos monster who had nearly killed her, freezing it in place with the Force long enough for Kyle to kill it. Had she imagined it all, including Satele's presence? Or maybe her presence did still linger, but even through the Force, the two couldn't communicate.

With a hint of frustration, and after an hour of attempting to find Satele with the Force, Lucy stood up and paced the hangar. Everyone was still asleep, and her extensive mediation had made it very clear to her that Verdant Base was almost totally safe. Aside from the ambient darkness which the Galactic Empire cast over the Force, there was nothing that should've been disturbing her or her connection to the Force. Logical deduction suggested that there had to be something else, something that she was missing.

After a long period of pacing, Lucy sat down in one of the darker corners of the hangar, disturbing one of the Dataspiders who had been resting there and causing it to flee. She leaned her back against the wall as she sat on the ground as her mind ran circles around itself, the situation she was in steadily dawning on her. The idea of communicating with Satele was now absent from her mind as questions ran rampant in her head.

What was she doing? Why was she still here? So far out of time and out of place, it was like some kind of nightmare, one she couldn't wake up from. The rest of the Jedi were either dead or in hiding, the Republic was a distant memory, and the Empire that they stood against ruled over the entire Galaxy. What hope could they possibly have to survive, let alone defeat the Sith? Despite standing far from the hangar door, a grim coldness marched through the cool air to crash into her.

Her mental spiraling however, was promptly disturbed by the most unlikely of sources.

Less than ten meters away, where the rest of the group was sleeping, one of the Rebels let out a loud snore. At least, that was what Lucy thought, before she realized that the sound was actually coming from Kyle.

With quiet, deliberate movements, she crept over to Kyle's side, and realized that he wasn't snoring, he was talking. Being asleep, there was nothing intelligible to glean from his mutterings, only that it wasn't good. As she sat beside him, he shifted subconsciously in response to a grave disturbance running through his mind... a nightmare.

Briefly, Lucy contemplated waking him up. Kyle rarely had nightmares, and given the events of the previous day, it wasn't hard to guess what had inspired this one. Waking him up would also mean that she wouldn't have to be awake by herself, but it would have been a selfish thing to do. He badly needed the sleep, but leaving him stuck in a nightmare was also something that she wasn't going to even entertain the idea of doing.

After taking a brief moment to remove her glove, she placed her hand on his forehead and peered into his mind with the Force. She didn't spare the nightmare itself even a glance before she drove it from his mind with the Force. Steadily, Kyle's muttering and twitching ceased, and a small smile formed on her lips as he peacefully rested. For a moment she considered sitting down beside him for the remainder of her watch, but she was certain that she would end up drifting off to sleep if she did that, and so she reluctantly stood back up.

Now back at the hangar entrance, and feeling slightly less sorrowful, she decided to reach out with the Force once more. There was still a lingering anxiety within her, but steadily, she calmed herself, focusing not on her goal, but on the Force around her, and all that it interacted with. The soft radiance of the sleeping Rebels, the overgrowth of the hangar, the birds flying outside, the snake which cautiously crept away from the larger beings and out of the base, and Kyle, whose peaceful state seemed almost contagious... all of it was connected to the Force. Lucy had a connection to all of it, and as she focused on that connection, she could hear a voice before her.

"Well, it certainly took you long enough."

Lucy didn't realize that she had closed her eyes, but when she opened them, she gasped in shock. Before her was a ghostly blue apparition of Satele Shan, although she looked younger than when they had last met. The former Grand Master was clad in spectral Jedi robes, with a small smile on her face.

"Master?" Lucy uttered, barely able to believe her eyes.

Satele nodded. "It's good to see you again, Lucy."

Lucy forced herself to stay calm, to focus. She had hundreds of questions for Satele, but wasn't even sure where to start. What had happened to Satele, and how was she talking to her? What had she and Kyle missed? How long had they been gone? What went wrong with the stasis experiment?

Lucy eventually settled on that final question; it seemed like a good place to start. "What happened? We were only supposed to be in stasis for three days!"

Satele's smile vanished as she broke off eye contact. "I… am not sure. I only learned that you and Kyle were still alive after I had passed on, and by then, you had been gone for many, many years."

The cold night air seemed all the more chilling as Lucy absorbed what Satele had said, and the words that left her were some of the hardest she'd ever spoken. "...You thought we were dead?"

"I never gave up hope that you could have survived, not even when the Republic called off the search for you," Satele firmly answered. "Although I will admit... I didn't expect to find you two alive and well in a secret Republic Base."

It was hard to keep up with what she was saying, so much was packed into so few words, and it was all that Lucy could do to keep calm. "Then... how are you here? It must have been hundreds of years since... since you..."

"Since I died," Satele gently said, voicing the words that Lucy couldn't, locking eyes with her once more. "Death is only one part of a Jedi's journey, Lucy. We live on through the Cosmic Force, like with all things. I may have died a long time ago, but my spirit lives on, just as yours will."

Lucy nodded, mentally kicking herself. She'd known that, even a youngling would know all of the aspects of the Force.

"I see you're still being too hard on yourself," Satele said, a faintly stern tone to her voice. "I only learned about this power long after you were gone. Patience will do more than keep you safe, Lucy, it will bring you peace."

Again, Lucy nodded. That was something that Satele had a lot of issues drilling into her in the past, and she did her best to take what she said to heart. "I will."

"Good," Satele said with a satisfied nod. She then glanced around the hangar idly, taking in the sight of its disrepair and the Rebel troops scattered across the ground. "As for why I'm still here... When I passed on, I learned that you were still alive. I was able to see you, having been lost and forgotten... and completely unaware of the Galaxy that you would awaken in."

Lucy struggled to keep eye contact with her bygone Master, and struggled even more to take in what she was hearing. Up until now, there had still been some wild idea in the back of her mind that this could all be some dream, and that she would wake up back in the Temple on Tython or aboard her ship, and everything would be back to normal. But now, that illusion was shattered.

"It's like a nightmare," Lucy admitted. "You sense it too, right?"

Satele nodded. "From the moment I saw you here, frozen in time on this world, I had a vision. I saw the grim fate that would befall the Galaxy, and how you would awaken in the midst of it. I knew that I couldn't let you face it alone. So, I waited."

The significance of that commitment slowly dawned on Lucy, as she remembered how long they had been gone. "How long?"

"A little over three-thousand six-hundred years," Satele answered with a grim seriousness. "Although for me, it was like sleeping, just like it was for you."

Lucy let out a low breath, partly out of utter shock at just how short her own estimate had fallen, and partly out of relief. The idea that Satele would've been forced to experience thousands of years of isolation, all for her sake, was unbearable. Even if that had been the case, Lucy knew that Satele still would've done it.

There were tears in her eyes as she finally gathered the strength to speak again. "...Thank you."

Satele did her best to keep a small smile, but Lucy didn't miss the spectral tears on her own face. "I could never bear the thought of you being on your own, not in dark times such as these."

Lucy gratefully nodded, but spared a glance back towards Kyle and the rest of the sleeping Rebels as she wiped the tears from her face. She wasn't able to speak her mind, but Satele's gaze followed her own, and her former master offered her a somewhat smug grin.

"I'm very glad that you have him," she said. "I always thought that you two had the strength to keep the darkness within each other in check... I'm happy to see that I was right. Just keep an eye on him... you're going to need each other."

Steadily, Lucy found her voice again. "What do we do?"

"You are a Jedi, Lucy, you already know what to do," Satele pointed out. Her posture was stern, but her tone made very clear that trust that she still held for Lucy. "You are a keeper of the peace, a defender of justice, and a protector of the people of the Galaxy. You are needed, now more than ever."

Lucy nodded, and finally, stood up off of the ground, now standing evenly with Satele's spiritual apparition. "Where do I start?"

Satele's smile returned, bigger than ever. "Trust yourself, and those closest to you. Remember that I will be with you, even if you don't see me."

Lucy committed her former Master's words to heart, but didn't miss what else she had stayed. "You... can't stay?"

Satele shook her head, before gesturing at herself. "Saving you earlier cost me a lot of my strength, and speaking with you isn't much easier. If I have anything to say about it, we will speak again, but it will likely be some time before that can happen."

It hurt Lucy's heart to hear it, but the burden was eased by Satele's words. "Thank you, Master."

Satele nodded as she beamed with pride. "The Force will be with you, Lucy, always."

Not even a moment after she finished speaking, Lucy watched as the ghostly vision of Satele faded away. Her presence however, still lingered, and she couldn't help but smile at the knowledge that, even if it was only a single other person, she and Kyle weren't the only ones who were still around from times long since past.

Kyle woke up to the smell of something burning.

As he groggily opened his eyes, the sun pouring in through the hangar door stung his eyes, which he quickly rubbed clear. As he stood up, he could see the source of the smell. Two of the Rebels were cooking something with their mess kits around a campfire that they'd built right in the middle of the hangar. Kyle recognized both of them from the previous day's battle, but their names eluded his memory.

One was a human, who had shed his power armor and now only wore a simple outfit under a leather duster, which Kyle found refreshingly familiar to what some of the people from his own time had worn, especially pilots. Granted, those pilots hadn't necessarily always operated within the confines of Republic law, but it was a nice bit of nostalgia nonetheless. He had shaggy blond hair and blue eyes, much like Kyle himself did, but also possessed a unique feature in the form of a scraggy, mid-length beard.

The other Rebel was the one doing the cooking, and unlike the rest of Sarah Lyons' group, was clearly not a human. He stood more than two meters tall, with massive muscles and green skin, under which thick veins criss crossed back and forth. He wore a loose-fitting dark blue outfit, likely some form of jumpsuit, that had been ripped, torn, and burned in various places. His face was seemingly stuck in a permanent grimace, and he turned to face Kyle as he walked over.

"Ah, you're awake!" the Rebel said, his voice loud and bellowing, although Kyle somehow got the feeling that it wasn't intentional. "You have been asleep for some time, would you care to join us for breakfast?"

Given his half-awakened state, it took Kyle a moment to process the fact that the Rebels were cooking some kind of eggs. He also noticed that there was an opened Republic-issue blaster cleaning kit next to the two of them that, coupled with a familiar smell, led Kyle to only one conclusion.

"Uhhh... maybe," Kyle hesitantly answered as he sat next to them. "You know you're cooking with blaster lubricant, right?"

"I ran it through my scanner, and it says this stuff's identical to cooking oil, It'll work," the human spoke up as he turned to face Kyle. The dark bags under the man's eyes made it clear that he hadn't slept nearly as well as Kyle had. "If you're looking for your Jedi friend, she's been asleep aboard the ship for a few hours now. My name's Peter, and this is Fawkes."

"Thanks for the heads up. I'm Kyle," he introduced himself, trying his best to maintain eye contact while he finished waking up. "Where's everyone else?"

"Most of Sarah's men are out searching the woods for anything useful, or just sleeping," Peter answered as he leaned back into his makeshift seat, crafted from Republic supply crates. "Sarah and Tristain are somewhere else in the base. Lucy warned them that there might be some security systems still online, so we got told to sit around and wait for you to wake up while they scouted ahead."

Kyle nodded, grateful that Lucy had the foresight to warn the Rebels about the Base's security systems when he'd apparently forgotten to. Whatever had gone wrong at the base might have caused it to enter a lockdown state, and while Kyle couldn't recall if the Inquisitor's men had looked like they'd run into any automated defenses, that didn't mean that there weren't any dangers, even with the power being out.

There was something else in Peter's statement however, that had caught Kyle's attention. "You two aren't with Sarah's group?"

Peter and Fawkes exchanged a brief look at one another, before Peter answered. "Well, I guess we kind of are. After she and some other Rebels lost a battle on Fondor, they were in a pretty tight spot. Fawkes and I were in the area doing a little smuggling, and we decided to step in and help."

Called it, Kyle somewhat smugly thought as Peter revealed the nature of his career, but elected to avoid saying so out loud as to not be rude. "Good on you for doing that. Most of the smugglers back in my time were just looking for a quick buck."

"It was the right thing to do," Fawkes said, his booming voice catching Kyle somewhat off-guard. "We prefer to view smuggling as a profession, and not a way of life."

"More or less," Peter voiced his agreement. "Most of the smugglers we've dealt with would probably sell your kidneys for fifty credits, but that's just kinda how things are, I guess. Running into Sarah was a real stroke of luck for us though, not to mention running into you. Normally I'd judge you for luring us into a trap like that, but it did lead to us getting offworld, so I guess I shouldn't be too mad."

"Yeah, sorry about that, but Lucy and I were at a loss for what else to do," Kyle admitted. "Did she mention anything else?"
"She did, but I wasn't the one to talk to her, Sarah was," Peter answered. "Sarah then told the rest of us not to look around the rest of the base yet, and also not to wake you up. That was about it though."

Kyle couldn't help the small smile on his face, it was nice of Lucy to look out for him. "Where's Sarah now? I'll see if I can help her out."

"Probably not too far, here, follow me," Peter said as he stood up, grabbing a flashlight and a blaster pistol. "Fawkes, please make sure those don't burn."

"I will make sure of it!" Fawkes said.

Kyle followed Peter along further into the Republic Base, and Kyle couldn't help but wince when Peter's flashlight illuminated the remains of a fallen Republic Trooper. Their body was leaned up against the wall, and their blaster rifle rested in their lap. Rather strangely, it seemed like the body had only recently started to decompose.

"We decided to leave 'em for the time being," Peter explained, apparently noticing where Kyle's attention lay. "We weren't too sure what you and Lucy wanted to do for them... was that friend of yours?"

Kyle shook his head. "I can't tell, they're too far gone. Can't even tell what killed 'em..."

"We couldn't either. Some of the blasters we found had empty Tibanna cartridges, so there might've been a fight, but they also might've just leaked over the years." Peter added.

Kyle couldn't help but scowl, if something had attacked the base while he and Lucy had been in stasis, how were they still alive while everyone else had been killed? He immediately ruled out the idea that the Sith had been responsible; there was no evidence that they'd ever been present at all, and they would have certainly killed or captured him and Lucy.

Their conversation was interrupted, however, as they found Sarah and another one of the Rebels, presumably Tristain judging by what Peter had said, standing outside the overgrown blast door to what Kyle recognized was the command center. Both of them were clad in their power armor, albeit without their helmets. They both turned to face Kyle and Peter with their blasters raised, but relaxed once they recognized them.

"Good to see you awake," Sarah said. "You holding up okay?"

Kyle nodded, feeling a bit more alert than he had earlier. "Well enough, what's going on?"

"Lucy warned us the base's security might still be dangerous, even with the power being out, and said you might be able to help," Sarah explained. "I asked her if I should wake you up to ask about it, but the look on her face made it seem like she was going to throw me out of the hangar if I did, so I figured I'd let you sleep."

"Thanks," Kyle replied with a nod. "And don't worry about Lucy, she's not like that."

"I'd still rather not piss her off," Sarah said with a conspiratorial glance at Tristain, who chuckled agreeably in response. "How do we shut down the base's security systems?"

"They might already be offline," Tristain pointed out. "Remember the laser turrets we passed by on the way here? They weren't active."

"Those are only the visible ones," Kyle interjected quickly, doing his best to remember the layout of the base. "There's more that are concealed. They've got proximity sensors and run off of their own power supply, designed to lie in ambush for any Sith Infiltrators during a lockdown," Kyle explained. "As for how we shut them down... we have to get through that door. With any luck, we can find Commander Gil's credentials."

Sarah, Peter, and Tristain all looked to the command center's blast door with varying degrees of doubt before Sarah spoke up. "I don't suppose you have a key?"

"Well, not a key per say," Kyle replied as he unclipped the Inquisitor's Lightsaber from his belt. "Just a trick Lucy showed me. You might want to stand back."

All three of them stepped away to give Kyle space as he ignited the lightsaber, and one of its crimson red blades came to life. The lightsaber itself didn't look all that different to those that the Jedi and Sith from his own time had used, being a simple metal cylinder furnished in an ominous black and gunmetal gray. Even after having used it in battle during the previous day, Kyle still found the hefty weight of its hilt fairly surprising. For a weapon with a blade that wasn't even made of solid matter, the lightsaber weighed about as much as a typical sword would. The hefty weight aside, using a lightsaber to cut open a door, even one as heavy and durable as a blast door, did not require a great deal of skill.

After about a minute of continuous cutting, Kyle had made a sizable hole in the door of the command center, allowing the four of them to enter. Sarah and Peter both illuminated the room with their flashlights, revealing a pleasant surprise.

Quite unlike the rest of the base, the command center looked more or less just how Kyle remembered seeing it during his one and only visit… albeit now a fair bit darker and infinitely more dusty. The air was heavy and stale, but no vines, moss, or plantlife of any kind had made it into the room. But the relief of finding the command center was swiftly dashed however, when Peter's flashlight found the first body.

"By the Force..." Sarah muttered as the four of them looked at the body of the fallen Republic Trooper. This one had been of a Rodian, although little remained besides a mangled and broken skeleton. The fact that nothing was crushing him left only one possibility.

"Something attacked these guys," Peter noted as he cast his light over even more bodies, this time a two-man repeating blaster team who had been mauled, their weapon lying in pieces across one of the holotables. "...Something with claws, look at the armor."

Kyle felt a grim sorrow as he walked over to the skeletal remains of a Zabrak trooper, rolling him over to reveal a massive gash running through his skull. "These were some of the Republic's best, but it looks like whatever killed them didn't have too much trouble..."

"Kyle," Sarah called his name, gesturing towards one of the bodies. "The base commander you mentioned, is this him?"

He walked over to where she was shining her light, and sure enough, there was a Sullustan skeleton in an officer's uniform on the ground. Kyle walked over and rolled him onto his back, causing a small chip to fall out of his decayed hand; Commander Gil's credentials. With a bit of trepidation, he reached down and picked them up, taking a deep breath as he stood up.

"Now all we need is to get the power online, at least for the command center," Kyle said, swallowing his own nerves and doing his best to ignore the growing disturbance in his stomach. "...We'll bury these men once we know this place is safe."

Peter shot Kyle a doubtful look. "Kyle, if there's something around here that can kill an entire base full of trained soldiers, I think safety might be off the table."

"Whatever it was, it might not be around anymore," Sarah pointed out. "Remember how long he and Lucy have been in stasis? Whatever attacked this place is probably long since dead."

Peter nodded, but looked decidedly unconvinced. "...Yeah, probably."

In the meantime, Kyle was looking around the room, searching through computer terminals, displays, and holotables until he found what he was looking for. "This is the security terminal. If any of the base defenses are still online, they'll be linked to this. Tristain, does that power armor have a low-voltage outlet we can use?"

"It does, although I'm a little low on power as is. We're probably only going to get one try at this," Tristain replied as he set to work plugging his own armor into the terminal. "You weren't a technician, were you?"

"No, security officer. I didn't even work at bases like this, I was stationed at the Jedi Temple most of the time," Kyle explained. "That said, somebody had to fix the terminals whenever they got broken..."

After about a moment, Tristain tried to plug his armor into the terminal... only for the outlets to not match.

"I probably should have seen that coming," Kyle admitted. "Any ideas?"

"I've got one," Peter said as he stepped forward, pulling out a small knife and cutting a small hole in the rubber housing of Tristain's power cable. "Hold this steady, I'll be rather unhappy if that armor of yours cooks me."

Tristain obliged, and as Peter freed the bundle of wires from its housing, he steadily stretched it out into two prongs, before gently guiding both into the terminal's socket with his knife. His heavy gloves kept him safe from the electricity while he worked, all the while he muttered something about a square peg and a round hole.

Suddenly, the terminal blinked to life, and after an agonizingly slow bootup time, a prompt appeared requesting access credentials. He hastily entered them, and was greeted by another loading screen.

"By the Force... this thing actually works," Kyle remarked. "Maybe there's some hope for this place yet."

"Don't relax yet, I'm still holding a live wire here," Peter commented with a small degree of frustration.

Sarah gave him a sly look as he held the wire with remarkable stillness. "You've done this before, haven't you?"

"In my defense, I was stealing an Imperial Speeder. I wouldn't expect you to complain," Peter somewhat grumpily retorted.

The loading screen mercifully ended, and Kyle hastily set about navigating the interface. Just as he'd suspected, the base had entered a lockdown, but with Commander Gil's credentials, he was able to quickly release the lockdown, shutting down the automated defenses. As he did so, there was a loud clanging sound somewhere on the other side of the base, which acted as fairly direct evidence that at least some of the defenses had still been active and dangerous, but no longer were.

"Security's offline, we're good to go," Kyle said, prompting Peter to let go of the cable and step back from the live wire. "The base should be safe."

" Should be. " Peter pointedly remarked, gesturing towards the bodies of the Republic Troopers around them. "We'll have to keep an eye out for whatever did this... Still, I suppose there are worse places to hide, it's certainly far from the Empire's eyes."

"We could use a new headquarters," Sarah noted, before sparing a glance at Kyle. "What do you think?"

"It'll take a while to get everything back into working order..." Kyle noted, sparing a doubtful glance at the now-ancient computers that lined the room. "But I'd be happy to help you if I can."

Sarah gave him a grateful nod. "In that case, let's get started."

The next hour or so was very busy for Kyle, with him and the Rebels taking the time to gather the bodies of the fallen Republic soldiers and bury them in a clearing just outside the base. Kyle personally dug the grave for Commander Gils and buried him, but Glade and Tristain volunteered to spend the rest of the day making sure the rest of the bodies were given the respect they were due. They also took the effort to do the same with the bodies of the Stormtroopers and the Inquisitor.

The two of them would also be responsible for the grizzly task of seeing whether or not any of the armor and equipment was worth salvaging, and Kyle was very quick to look for any other job that he could do that didn't involve pulling loot off of the bodies of his fallen allies. It was a job that needed doing however, as even with the ammo and equipment that the Inquisitor's Stormtroopers had been carrying and had stored in their ship, the Rebel's supply situation was very dire. Thankfully, Sarah was putting together a plan to get into contact with another Rebel Cell to help alleviate that.

But with Kyle's hand in the grizzly work over, he found himself looking for something else to do. Thankfully, he already had something in mind, which would hopefully not be quite so depressing, and would certainly be less gruesome.

After a few minutes of searching, Kyle found Paulen in the cockpit of their ship. He was sitting alongside another one of the Rebels, a human woman whom he was seemingly showing his ship off to. She had shed her power armor now that the fighting was over, instead wearing a simple tan jumpsuit, blending well with her short brown hair and brown eyes. Though curiously, he noticed she had a pair of very pale blue tattoos under and above her eyes, which wasn't something you would see outside of the Core Worlds like Coruscant or Corellia, at least, not in Kyle's time. Both she and Paulen turned to face Kyle as he entered the cockpit.

"What's going on Paulen? Flight Lessons?" Kyle asked in a half-serious tone. "Maybe I should've stopped by sooner..."

The woman shook her head, before speaking in a noticeable High Galactic accent. "Not quite, I'd just stopped by to thank Paulen for saving us back on Utapau, and now he's showing me his ship."

Kyle raised a curious eyebrow. While he didn't actually object to Paulen claiming the ship, he couldn't help but imagine Paulen introducing the ship as his own might have had something to do with the cute woman sitting right next to him. "Your ship?"

"Yes, my ship!" Paulen argued, running a hand over the control console defensively before shoving a finger in Kyle's face. "Don't forget that I was aboard when you were flying earlier! Half of the cadets at my academy flew better than you while drunk , and they-"

Paulen stopped himself however, when the woman sitting beside him started to chuckle. "It's alright, Paulen. I think he's just joking. Right?"

"Right. Although he's not wrong about my flying..." Kyle confirmed. He then turned to the woman and held out his hand. "I'm Kyle, I'm not sure we've properly met."

"I'm Valerie, but please, just call me Val," she introduced herself. She glanced between Kyle and the pilot, then began to rise from her seat. "I can come back later if you need to speak to Paulen," she offered helpfully

Kyle spared a glance at Paulen, where their eyes met, and Kyle picked up on a quiet, unspoken message from his pilot friend. That being; Please don't mess this up for me.

A brief moment of thinking was all it took for Kyle to decide to play along. He'd never really been a great wingman, but he had come along to try and help Paulen out...

With the unspoken and practically instantaneous conversation over, Kyle turned his attention back to Val. "Don't worry. I did want to talk to Paulen, but that doesn't mean you need to leave."

Val nodded, and Kyle took a seat in the third chair as Paulen turned around to face him with a faint look of concern.

"Is something wrong?" the pilot asked, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees.

"Not quite, I just wanted to stop by and check on you," Kyle answered. "I know that it's been a really busy day or two for you, and I wanted to make sure that you're holding up okay."

Paulen let out a low, tired breath. "You're not wrong about that. Don't get me wrong, I didn't exactly have a lot of love for the Empire even before you and Lucy saved my ass. It just all happened so suddenly, it's kind of hard to adjust."

Kyle nodded, having obvious sympathies regarding that exact thing. But before he could speak up, Val beat him to the punch.

"I can relate," she spoke up with a similar exhaustion to Paulen's. "A month ago, I was fixing starfighters for the Alliance, and now I'm a full-blown soldier. Hell of it is, I can't quite tell how I got from one to the other."

"That does sound tough," Paulen sympathized. "At least I got to keep flying... you think you'd rather be fixing things?"

Val nodded without a moment's hesitation. "It's where I'm at my best. I can fight, don't get me wrong, I just wish I didn't have to."

"Well, I know Sarah wants to get this base back into working order, and there's a lot of things that'll need to be fixed," Kyle said, before an idea came to mind, and he turned to Paulen. "I know you've got your Mom to worry about, but I don't suppose you'd be willing to stick around a little while longer, lend us a hand?"

Paulen paused, his eyes subtly going back and forth between Kyle and Val, before he gave a brief nod. "I will, for certain. I need some extra time to think."

Kyle gave a faint smile, grateful that Paulen had picked up on what he was trying to do. He was also just glad to have Paulen stay around; as much as he didn't want to force Paulen down any particular path in life, he was hoping that he'd join them in the fight against the Empire. Flying such a broad ship down a narrow tunnel like that had been a real display of skill, and he knew that they were going to need as many skilled pilots as they could get if they were going to dethrone the Sith.

"We could always go and get your Mom away from the Empire, then you both could stay with us," Val offered. "Up until now the best pilot we've had was Peter, and… don't tell him I said this, but you're much better at flying."

Kyle resisted the urge to chuckle as Paulen blinked and faintly blushed, before awkwardly scratching the back of his head. "...I mean, I'll certainly give it some thought."

"That's all I ask," Val replied with a broad smile. "I'd be happy to have you around."

Now Paulen's blush became much more apparent, and Kyle resisted the urge to chuckle. Sensing that his work was more or less done, Kyle stood up and turned to leave. "Well, I'll be around if either of you need anything. Just give me a shout."

"Will do," Paulen said with a nod. "And Kyle? Thank you, and tell Lucy I said thanks as well... I'm glad I ran into you."

Kyle gave him a thumbs-up as he turned to leave, before opening the cockpit door and nearly running face-first into Lucy. Thankfully, she managed to back out of the way in time, and quickly steadied herself alongside him as the door closed behind him.

She softly chuckled and gave him a small smile. "You okay?"

"Yeah, just finished talking to Paulen and Val, he was showing her around his ship," Kyle answered, nodding his head back towards the cockpit. "He said thanks for saving him, by the way."

Lucy's eyes lit up. "Oh, let me go talk to him, I'll-"

"No no, wait," Kyle interrupted her, gently holding her back. "I think it's best that we give 'em some privacy."

Lucy paused for a moment, running what he'd said through her mind, before her smile faintly grew. "I see, well in that case, I'll go visit him later. How about you, did you sleep well?"

"Thanks to you, yes. I think you scared Sarah though," Kyle answered, to which Lucy gave a bashful laugh. "How about you, did your night go well?"

"Absolutely," Lucy happily answered. "I've got a lot I need to tell you about, come with me!"

Lucy grabbed him by the hand and pulled him along, leading him down the boarding ramp as he couldn't help but smile right alongside her.

Author's Notes: The decision to include the Lyons Pride from Fallout was largely because I wanted to write more of them after I wrote Knightfall, especially Peter, Fawkes, and Sarah. I've come up with some of my own lore for their Star Wars incarnations.