ADMIRAL PIETT

Even though the wounded Imperial troops were not aware of their three senior most officers defecting, they needed a rallying point if they were to be moved quietly and efficiently with no chance of runners making a break for it. Not even half of the rebel forces were to be escorting the nearly eighty men who had been rescued from the battlefield following the bridge detonation, but those who could be spared would need to be heavily guarded since there was still some seeds of mistrust sewn into the troopers' minds after word got around that there had been a major disagreement between Veers and the princess. Thankfully, no finer details than that had been spilled, otherwise Piett knew that the men would have turned on him, Jerjerrod, and Motti, but the men still obviously respected Veers first and foremost and would follow his lead, so to keep the peace and prevent Veers from leading some sort of mutiny against the rebel escorts, Piett and the other two decided that they had best volunteer themselves unless they wanted to hear of some disaster after the fact.

Battered after their intensive training, knackered from fitful sleep, and on edge from considering all the ways in which they could potentially fall captive or victim to the Sith, the three of them made up the middle of the pack of moving wounded and rebels. Those who could not walk were carried on stretchers borne by soldiers who had merely been taken captive while maintaining a clean bill of health. Near the front of the line with two guards holding their blasters on him from behind was Veers, though he appeared positively docile this morning, which was throwing up all sorts of warning flags to Piett since he knew Veers well enough to know when he was tactically backing down. Veers did not accept defeat in any form and his brain would be working overtime to find some way to salvage something from his argument the previous night.

It was a two hour walk to the extraction point which was as far from the encampment that General Solo felt safe traveling with less than half of their able-bodied forces and so many wounded to cater to. By now Piett should have been used to trekking through the wilderness with his ankles snagging on upturned roots and branches swatting him in the face, but he had been in the cold and lifeless reaches of space for too long and despite coming from a planet with similar vegetation, he was not adapting as quickly as he would have liked to. If he wasn't careful, he was going to end up adding to the tally of Imperial soldiers who needed to be airlifted to the medical frigate.

Admittedly, General Solo was a very hands-on leader who did not make his men do anything that he himself could or would not do, and so he led the procession with the locating device that would guide them to their destination. Princess Leia and Chewbacca were not far behind and Commander Skywalker was at the rear to call out any stragglers or those who tried to make a break for it but to their credit, the Imperial soldiers did recognize the mercy they had been shown and were respecting the rules of war.

Two humid, grueling hours later as the sun was fast on the descent, they came upon a clearing that was untouched by mankind and very obviously not what the general had intended, for he consulted his communicator and Piett could hear him protesting before the call ended and he announced a change in plans.

"There's been a complication and the transports won't be here until the early morning," he told the entirety of their traveling party. "Until then, everyone just has to sit tight. Our field medics will see that everyone has enough of whatever they need to last them through to the morning. Set up camp right out of sight under the trees here. Scouts on perimeter to secure the area. Brinx and Sant, take west, Corley…" He began to divide up assignments and Piett was just getting ready to make a seat out of the soft earth and settle in for a well-earned nap when he heard his name. "Piett and Motti, on south patrol. Three hour rotations, which means whoever starts is back at it in nine hours."

"Did he just give us free roaming privileges?" asked Motti in polite disbelief.

"I believe so, and I am just thrilled," said Piett with no enthusiasm as he picked his utility belt back up from where he had already taken it off. It weighed some ten pounds and though it was not anywhere close to the gear other rebels were toting around, it made his back ache to have to support an additional ten pounds at his waist.

"Keep your communicators on," advised Commander Skywalker.

"No, I thought it would be best to switch them off in case of an emergency," said Motti under his breath.

"Clear your head of all emotion if you have to fight, Admiral," the Jedi reminded Motti. "But try not to engage unless you absolutely have to. Don't take unnecessary risks."

"And you've nothing to offer Firmus in terms of advice?" Motti questioned somewhat indignantly.

"He's not the one with an unpredictable temper now, is he?"

Instead of answering Commander Skywalker's pointed question, Motti stood waiting for Jerjerrod to speak some words of gloom and doom, as he was prone to do, or at the very least, insist on going out on patrol with them, but in putting his talk with Piett into practice, Jerjerrod only offered a curt, "Be careful."

"Do you think we're planning on being careless?" Motti returned, but with what was almost an appreciative nod that Jerjerrod was allowing him to go forth unburdened by dire warnings.

As the ill-equipped scouts that they were, Piett and Motti had next to no idea what exactly they were meant to be doing, but after ten minutes of hiking out into the forest with the late evening sun ahead of them, they figured it would be useless and shameful to go back now and ask how they ought to complete their task. They both agreed that perhaps another twenty minutes heading west ought to put them far enough out of range of the temporary campsite to give the rebels time to flee if they happened to spot a mass of Imperial troopers inbound for the extraction point. They would travel the two miles assigned to them back and forth until it was time for a rotation and hope that their shift went by uneventfully.

Personally, Piett thought that General Solo was a bit daft in sending the two least experienced and prepared individuals out on patrol, but upon further reflection, he realized it was to break some of the tension that had been building with Veers being in such close proximity to the men who had broken with him. This was also an opportunity for Piett and Motti to prove that they were not completely useless when sent out on their own with no Jedi or other member of the rebel troupe beside them to assist if they found trouble (which was highly likely with Motti as Piett's scouting partner).

Doubting Motti also meant inviting mishaps to occur, or so the Jedi believed, so Piett tried to remain optimistic that he and Motti would have nothing to report when they hiked back to camp. Despite a moment of panic during which Piett had walked into a mess of spiderwebs and smacked repeatedly at himself to ensure no living spiders had made their way onto him, they largely spent their shift in silence. It was a pleasant change from listening to Motti argue about anything and everything to just spending time in his company and remembering all those long hours spent studying as schoolboys back before Motti had developed such a penchant for disagreeing with anyone who would care to quarrel with him. Piett was hard pressed to remember a time where Motti did not try to have some sort of rebuttal for everything, but he did recall when Motti was less hardened by the ways of the universe, and he thought he saw a glimpse of that man now as Motti walked relatively unbothered beside him.

Piett dared not even believe it when they checked the time and saw that their shift was nearly over and they headed back with about a twenty minutes overlap that the next rotation did not complain about at all. With nothing to report, they each acknowledged Jerjerrod before settling down onto bedrolls and promptly passing out from the endless walking they had done that day.

Once he was asleep, though, Piett wished he was lucid enough to force himself to wake up, for he was also walking in his dreams while being pursued by the blood-drained body of Lykar Voss. He attempted to quicken his gait, but his legs would not obey and if anything, they slowed him down. Whichever way Piett turned, Voss was there to follow him, always gaining, until Piett collided with the very solid form of Veers. Though he had crashed into Veers hard enough to make any other man stumble, Veers did not move, but neither did he seem to even notice that Piett was there. His eyes looked without seeing, focused on something Piett could not see. Several times Piett hurried away from the sight of Veers standing comatose but when he would look back to see if Voss was still tailing him, he would run headlong into Veers again until he had lost count of how many times he had encountered the general. After picking himself up yet again, a hand closed on his shoulder and he scrambled to break free, only to find Motti standing over him and shaking him awake for their second shift.

While Commander Skywalker saw them off again, Jerjerrod could not be woken for anything, but Piett could not blame him, for he knew Jerjerrod did not sleep well these days either and would take whatever he could get. Piett did stop for a moment to observe the commander in his state of rest, though. After living such private lives, Piett was getting more and more glimpses into what his friends looked like when their guard was down and seeing them asleep was one of those things that revealed something deeper about them. Piett himself slept on his right side, as he had spent years facing the door to his quarters so he could quickly stand up and to attention if called upon straight from bed. Motti also slept on his side, but it changed every night and one leg was always curled inward as if he were subconsciously trying to make himself as small as possible. It was discomfiting to see Jerjerrod sleep straight on his back with his arms at his sides either as if he stood at attention even in his sleep or if he had been placed in a coffin. He never moved in his sleep either compared to Motti who twitched something terrible, giving him all the greater appearance that he was dead.

Piett was tempted to go and nudge Jerjerrod awake just so he did not have to see the commander looking like a corpse, but Motti was already heading out into the trees and Piett hurried to catch up. They set their alerts for the agreed upon rotation time and then once again fell into the rhythm of slogging up and down their portion of the perimeter though now they walked with much more caution since it was but an hour until dawn and the moon was still covered in darkness. Aided by the lights from their blasters, they picked their way precariously across their two mile hike with Piett enjoying himself much less this time since he had had the nightmare of walking and running for some eight hours and was thoroughly sick of it now.

They both pulled up short when they thought they heard a human shout from the south, but when nothing came after, they continued on, though slightly more on edge. It had not been a cry from camp after they checked in to ask if there had been any disturbances, but Piett had grown so accustomed to hearing men's voices as an eternal background noise that anything not sounding like a voice made him uneasy.

As one of their three hours elapsed, Motti stopped to urinate off of their path and as such, he had tucked his blaster away for a moment. Coming level with Piett, he then took a step forward with Piett, but where Motti suddenly tried to take his step back, Piett did not have the foresight to sense the danger he had just walked into. He felt his ankle being yanked out from underneath him as his body was turned upside down and hoisted some thirty feet in the air. The blood immediately rushed to his head and an unmanly yelp of surprise burst out of him. Motti had not managed to evade the trap despite his abilities and so both he and Piett threw out their hands to avoid colliding with each other head-on. Their shoulders rammed together and each gave a grunt of pain and they surely would have smacked against each other an additional several times if Piett didn't have the sense to grab hold of Motti so that they swung back and forth together with the remaining momentum rather than rammed into each other from opposite directions.

With his temples starting to pound and his leg going numb, Piett tried to calculate how far up they were, but in the darkness, it was difficult to say. He tried to reach his utility belt, but the blood in his arms made them feel like lead and he couldn't bend at the waist to retrieve anything that might have been of some use.

"Why didn't you say something before I stepped in this trap?" he asked Motti after he concluded that he could not free himself.

"I realized it too late, or did you think that I wanted to end up dangling upside down just for my own amusement?"

"I won't question how you choose to spend your free time, but it'll take them at least an hour to reach us from camp unless we manage to cut ourselves down."

"I could shoot you down, but that's a long way to fall without a cushion," Motti offered. "And it would alert every person and animal within five miles that we're here."

Piett was going to offer to do the same, but he had dropped his blaster and the light on it had either been switched off or broken when it fell out of his hands, so he could not see where it lay. "How can you tell how far it is to the ground?"

"Can't you? We're high enough that if we were prey, we would be safe from predators for a good long while until an Ewok came along and cut us down, so we have to be at least thirty, maybe forty feet up. If I shot you down, you'd fall and break something for sure."

"And you wouldn't?"

"I don't think so."

"Why do you say that?"

Piett knew that Motti had guessed the outcome of his fall back to the ground purely based on the fact that he had managed to keep his feet much better after being enlightened to his connection with the Force, but of course he wouldn't admit that now.

Glad that at least his communicuff was close at hand, Piett spoke into it and said with his face burning with embarrassment that no one could see, "If anyone reads, we got snared in what I believe is an Ewok spring trap. I can send our coordinates, but we have no way to get down."

"Copy that, Admiral, someone is headed your way now," came Commander Skywalker's voice.

"Wonderful."

Now with nothing to do but to wait and hope they didn't pass out or worse from dangling upside down for the next hour, they tried not to speak to one another since it made their growing headaches worse, but Motti was apparently miffed that he had fallen into such a base trap and complained, "Why would they set up a trap this far out? Any game they captured would be too heavy to carry for all those miles back to their camp."

"Our Ewoks didn't do this; this is another tribe, I would guess."

"A tribe that hasn't made friends with humans and will likely eat them."

"Thank you, that's a tremendous comfort."

Once again, Piett reached upward, but his arms were too short and he could not lift himself vertically to grab his knife, but he knew he could not wait here for much longer without some dire repercussions from hanging upside down, and so he gave Motti a proposition.

"I have an idea, but it's questionable and likely dangerous and painful."

"It already sounds terrible, so let's do it," Motti invited recklessly.

"You may be able to reach my knife and cut me free, then hold onto my arms when my legs fall and when I say, drop me."

"That's actually worse than I anticipated it would be."

"I don't want to be unconscious when they find us and I'm starting to lose feeling in my legs. We need to get down and they'll likely have to shoot us down anyway–"

"But they'll have something to catch us instead of just falling to the ground and hoping it doesn't hurt."

"I'm hoping that tucking my legs and rolling once I hit the ground will help me avoid most of the damage, but that's only if you drop me at the right time."

"Then I don't want to hear one word if this doesn't go according to your plan because I'm against it."

That seemed a bit rich coming from the one individual who was the one always making a fuss about this or that, but since so much of Piett's plan relied on Motti's cooperation, he said nothing. Motti held onto the material at Piett's chest to anchor himself and then attempted to bend upward to take the knife from Piett's belt since he had a shorter reach even if he had longer limbs filled with more blood. Without too much struggling, he pulled the knife free and then had Piett repeat the worst-sounding part of the plan.

"I'll have about a second to grab you once the vine snaps," he cautioned.

"I was beginning to realize that just now, so instead, you're going to hold onto me as I try to cut myself free."

"How?"

"Support me."

"Yes, but how?"

Piett had to map out his vision despite the pounding in his head until he was satisfied that Motti knew step for step what he was supposed to do and then with his knife clutched between his teeth, contorted his abdominal muscles and reached upward for his trapped leg. He locked one arm around it, grateful that at least he was flexible enough to be in this position for more than a few seconds without getting a leg cramp. Underneath him, he felt Motti's hands pushing upward to give him the boost he needed and quickly withdrawing the knife, Piett touched the serrated edge of the blade to the vine. In three fluid back and forth strokes, the thick wet cordage snapped and Piett felt himself falling for a fraction of a second as his organs readjusted to being upright but gave him the sensation that they were trying to rearrange themselves and he vomited slightly in his mouth. Motti had secured a hold on his back and shoulder but now only had a handle on one arm and was quickly losing his grip.

Jamming the knife into his belt, Piett reached up frantically to grab Motti's other hand, hating that he knew relatively how far up he was now precariously suspended and how far down he had to go. There was nothing else for it but to fall and hope that by rolling forward as Commander Skywalker had taught him, he could take the tension off of his knees and legs to avoid snapping bone.

"Try to swing me to give me a little momentum," he told Motti who huffed with exertion.

"I'm about to drop you as it is."

Piett made back and forth motions with his legs to get himself swaying slightly, anything to avoid a straight fall, but as he did so, he felt himself slipping again as his sweaty hands began to slide out of Motti's.

"I can't hold you–"

"Conan–"

Motti's hands released him and as he fell, Piett tried to focus only on that instant that his feet would come into contact with the ground. It came all too soon and he felt a sharp pain shoot through his left ankle but let his body continue forward on the slight downhill slope as he went into a somersault and then landed on his back.

"Are you alright?" called Motti not two seconds after Piett had come to a halt.

"Conan, you are my friend, and I care very much for you, but once we get you down, I'm going to have to kill you."

"I didn't drop you on purpose–" Motti cut himself off and Piett could see his silhouette pointing to the north. "Something's coming this way."

Piett sat halfway up to listen and indeed, heard voices headed swiftly this way. "They'll have heard that vine snap and us talking. Stay still and don't make a sound. Let them pass and they'll never know we were here."

"They're going to walk right over you," Motti protested.

"They won't," Piett insisted, and then pressed a finger to his lips, but realized that Motti might not be able to see such a subtle action and said harshly, "Shh!". It was a slim hope that the troopers wouldn't look up to see Motti dangling there even in the low light of dawn, but they were in the worst situation possible with Piett unarmed and Motti in a compromised position.

Laying back down and hoping the foliage properly concealed the more visible parts of his uniform, he grabbed a fistful of mud and smudged it over his face to disguise the paleness of it before taking his knife and clutching it to his chest as he heard the footfalls coming closer along with the sounds of two troopers insisting that they had heard something.

"Can't have been much further than this," one was insisting.

"It was just a branch snapping, some animal triggered it," said the other.

"I heard voices."

From where he lay, Piett could see the troopers headed unwittingly straight for him. The light was on the rise now and quickly growing brighter and as pale beams of bluish-white light poked through the trees, Motti's now quite visible form was drawing his own blaster in preparation. It was an act of defense for Piett whose hiding place was about to be compromised if the troopers took five steps forward and stepped on him, as he lay directly in their path.

Piett shook his head violently, but Motti had already fired as the troopers walked beneath him and his shot hit one trooper's shoulder from above and went right down through the heart. The second trooper glanced up and raised his blaster rifle. Hoping that this time he was enough, Piett sprang from his hiding place and threw his arms around the trooper's legs just as the shot went off.

He reveled in his own daring and luck for too long and though the trooper had been taken by surprise, he recovered quicker than Piett. Reaching behind him, the trooper elbowed Piett in the back and sent him flat, then delivered a swift and painful kick to Piett's side. Piett grabbed the trooper's foot and wrenched it sideways to throw the latter off balance and then dived on top of him with his knife positioned to stab the trooper in the throat if he could find the weak spot between the helmet and the chest plate armor. The trooper had caught Piett's offensive wrist and being much larger and stronger, was quickly able to disarm him and punch him in the mouth.

Now tasting blood from where he had bitten into his own cheek, Piett fell to his side and saw the trooper coming down over him with his own knife turned back on him and he crossed his wrists to protect himself in the only way he knew how. His arms were already sagging with the weight of the trooper laying across them and the point of the knife was hovering just inches from Piett's throat.

"Stand down, trooper!" he hollered, though he didn't know why he bothered, since that command worked so well the last time. The blade was dangerously close to Piett's jugular now to the point where he felt it tickle the fine hairs there and in full-fledged panic, he cried, "I'm Admiral Firmus Piett with the Imperial fleet, drop your weapon!"

The trooper gave no pause, but doubled down, so even if he recognized Piett by face or name, he chose not to acknowledge him, or else he had been given orders to kill Piett (and likely the others) on sight. Piett had nothing to rely on, nothing and no one to come to his aid. This was him against a bigger, stronger, more experienced, more lethal man in armor while he had only his wits, which he was quickly about to lose as he felt the knife knick him. He gave an exclamation of frustration and terror that he couldn't throw the trooper off and the knife started its descent into his throat.

There came a burst of purple at the center of the trooper's helmet, a small shower of red onto Piett's face, and then Piett saw Jerjerrod standing over him. Jerjerrod lugged the body off of Piett who lay gasping for breath and wiped impatiently at the blood trickle he felt on his neck. He couldn't afford to show just how desperate he had been by giving in to the dry sob he felt at the back of his throat. It was a close thing in how he had nearly lost his bowels in fright and though he had managed to hold onto them, the fact that he had felt how close he was was embarrassing enough.

"Did he get you?" asked Jerjerrod, but when Piett had no answer, he felt himself being urgently shaken by his friend. "Firmus, are you hurt?"

"Not by him," Piett managed as his adrenaline began to die down just enough for him to feel the twinge in his ankle from his fall. Tucking his left leg in, he tested the dexterity of his ankle and found that it only hurt when he moved it inward, so he at least was able to walk back to camp where he could have it looked at.

It was here that Piett saw that Commander Skywalker and of all people, Princess Leia had come with Jerjerrod. There was also one other soldier, but the princess explained, "We were on neighboring watch and also answered the call for help. Just lucky that we met up at the same time."

Piett was about to say that it was almost unlucky for him that they had spent time meeting up since he had almost had his throat slit if Jerjerrod hadn't arrived in time, but he figured that would sound ungrateful.

"Where's Admiral Motti?" asked the Jedi.

"Here," came a pained voice from several feet away. They all hurried over to find that Motti lay on his side after having fallen when the trooper's shot snapped the vine holding up his ankle.

"What happened?" Princess Leia questioned.

"The ground broke my fall is what happened," answered Motti. "I didn't anticipate that the blaster shot would cut me loose and was still faced head-down, but somehow I righted myself and landed on my feet, then I blacked out, and my head is pounding."

"Let me see," Commander Skywalker offered and as he helped Motti sit up, he tested Motti's body with a gentle probe here and there of his fingers to check for broken bones, but after a few minutes, he concluded that Motti was positively unscathed.

"I almost snapped my ankle in two; how did you manage to not do the same?" Piett questioned, disgruntled.

"For a reason he won't admit," answered Commander Skywalker. "Though he likely blacked out from the blood rushing out of his head after hanging there for so long. You didn't black out, did you?" he posed to Piett.

No, Piett had not lost consciousness, but that hardly seemed like a triumph over Motti landing on his feet without bruising or breaking anything. Piett attributed his ability to stay alert to the fact that he rolled and then remained on his back to level out the blood in his body while Motti had had to completely flip one hundred and eighty degrees. He was even more resentful of the fact that Motti had already been uncoordinated when he fired at the trooper and jeopardized both of them but still was no worse off for it while Piett was the one with the nearly opened jugular and the pain in his ankle.

Trying not to sound accusatory, Piett asked Motti, "Why did you shoot at them?"

"They were about to step on you, or did you somehow not notice?"

"I could have shifted so that they would miss me–"

"And how were you supposed to communicate that with me? You had a knife against their blasters and they would have shot you at point-blank range. I took care of one for you–"

"And I had to deal with the other who was about to shoot you as the dangling target you were and I almost got killed for it. I didn't want to engage with them because I'm not physically capable of fighting them and you put me in that position with no choice in the matter. Think next time, Conan."

Motti bristled at the thankless response he had gotten from Piett, but Piett was past the point of caring about always having to walk on eggshells around Motti's now known delicate temper. If Motti wanted to have a go at him for speaking the truth, he was welcome to, and Piett would kick him in the groin for it. The man needed to get a grip sometime and called out when he made brash mistakes.

"I'll try to do better next time," said Motti, though he barely moved his lips as he spoke. If that was his attempt at an apology, it was a weak one, but his anger had already abated and he now just seemed back to his petty self.

"If you both can walk, we'll head back now. We have another team already inbound to finish out your shift," said the princess. "Commander?"

Though the five of them had started off in the direction of camp, Jerjerrod was standing over the body of the trooper he had killed. His lightsaber had been deactivated, but the grip was still in his hand and he was staring remorsefully down at his kill. It had been a necessary act, but as Piett had come to learn himself, giving the order to kill and doing it oneself were completely different. Now Jerjerrod had killed three men by his own hand: one rebel, one Imperial officer, and one trooper, along with all of those who had been on the bridge, but he had only felt those men's deaths, not willingly and knowingly killed them. He had followed an order then, but hadn't been close enough to see the bodies in the aftermath, not like the rebel he had massacred or Needa he had mercy-killed, or here where he had had to choose to ignite his lightsaber and stick it through the head of one of his own men to save his friend. This death would weigh heavier on him than that of the rebel, though perhaps not quite to the level that Needa's did. This death was the first he had made as a fully realized Force-sensitive being.

"Tiaan…" called Piett, and though his forehead still had wrinkle lines of sorrow and worry etched into them, Jerjerrod answered the summons and walked away from his kill.

They moved in relative silence apart from Commander Skywalker attempting to reassure Jerjerrod that he had done the right thing and that the trooper's death was a necessary one, but that the fact that Jerjerrod felt remorse was a good thing. However, Jerjerrod did not look the least bit consoled about that fact.

Nearly forty minutes later they were within sight of the camp and now that morning had fully come and the sun was well on its way into the sky, the transports should have been arriving for the wounded Imperial soldiers. The rebels were looking to the skies in anticipation of the landing aircraft but the only Imperial who was also standing was Veers, suspiciously unguarded and in full view of where Piett, Jerjerrod, and Motti had come out of the woods as if he was waiting for them. He stood stock still, immovable, and though he was not fully facing them, Piett noted how his eyes were settled on something past them, something he alone knew to look for.

Piett did know these men even after years of having to mask every emotion and feeling that they longed to exchange. Even Veers, who still stood to his Imperial roots in refusing to expose anything that would define him as human, had a telling sign, and Piett picked up on it instantly.

Veers's eyebrow was cocked, an obvious display for those who knew what it meant, and what it meant in this moment was that Veers had outsmarted his rebel captors.

Commander Skywalker and Princess Leia had moved on to confer with General Solo, but Piett and the other two approached Veers and saw what was his definition of a smirk in the slightest upward twinge to the right side of his lips.

"If I thought you might be able to make it, I would tell the three of you to run," he said superiorly.

Having read Veers as Piett had, interpreting the signs, and no doubt feeling the overwhelming vengeful swell emitting from the general, Jerjerrod asked in horror, "Maxim, what have you done?"

"What was always expected of me," said Veers without remorse and between his bound hands, Piett spotted a communicator.

"You fucking bastard," he cursed. He did not have time to process the betrayal as his instincts told him to salvage however many lives he could in compensation for Veers's decision. Calling out to General Solo, he raised his voice as he never had before, as if he stood at the command deck with hundreds of men in line behind him waiting for his orders. "General, our campsite is compromised, move your men out now! Imperial soldiers, keep your hands up in surrender or the ships that are about to come will fire on you. Do not rendezvous at the campsite or you'll lead Imperial forces right to you. All of you, run!"

He heard the telltale sound of towering AT-ST Walkers crushing living vegetation with every step of their metallic feet as Imperial forces converged on the pickup site that was now being broadcasted to every Imperial scanner in the area. Utter chaos erupted as some of the wounded soldiers held up their hands and others tried to scatter in fear of being trampled or shot at by their own.

"Firmus, now!" called Jerjerrod as he, Motti, and the rebel leaders waited at the edge of the clearing for him.

For the first time, Piett wished for a strong connection with the Force to be able to see inside Veers's mind and heart and know exactly how much malice lay there. He wanted to know how any man could choose to stab a friend in the back for a tyrant and how that man could do such an act with a clear conscience. But he would never know because unless he shot Veers down now as retribution for his betrayal, Veers would return to the Empire's service and Piett would flee for his life.

It tore at his lungs, at his gut, at his heart, but Piett turned away from the site of Veers standing there gloating in his victory as scores of Imperials rallied behind and around him, and ran.