Wrestling a lot of plot right now and action scenes are very much not my strong suit. Hope it's come out okay.

Chapter 58: With Flying Colours

Yoda had known it would end like this. He watched them spar as though preparing for war, as though war could be won with kyber and swords. He watched them spar as though the Sith Emperor had not instead won his war with deceit and temptation and manipulation. By the time Sidious had raised his 'saber against the Jedi Council, the war had already been lost. Yoda's defeat in battle in the Senate chambers had been the least of his failures.

How to protect these young ones now? It had taken Yoda eight hundred years and two decades of exile to come to understand the rise of the Sith. To even begin to heal those wounds. To find the serenity in the Force – to find forgiveness, for guilt was but a manifestation of attachment – and to find his croaking voice to teach again.

"A war, you intend to fight?"

His apprentices paused in their dawn-hour combat. They had already extended their skills far beyond what he had intended to teach them thus far. He had delayed the acquisition of their kyber so long, had devoted all his teachings to their knowledge of the Force, to the connection between their luminous and corporal bodies. But perhaps because of his teachings, the 'sabers hung now from their frames already as naturally as their limbs.

"The Emperor's fighting one," Ariarne answered, with a sigh.

They had received a rare transmission overnight, with the radio-comms Luke had so assiduously maintained against the gnawing leaf-tails and erosive humidity. A near-ghost had been projected over the swamp: not Padme Amidala but her daughter. She'd spoken with her father's cavalier affect of some military disaster, had reassured her brother of her safety. But Yoda had felt the pull, then, that existed between them. Luke's feelings of futility, his burning desire to be gone from this place and into the wounded galaxy again.

Ariarne and the spectre of Leia Skywalker had talked him around. But it would only be a matter of time.

"The war of the Sith is fought with the Dark Side," Yoda advised. "Learn to confront it, you must, or pawns in his game, you will become."

He waved a hand and his apprentices followed him along the edge of the swamp and down into a valley. They soon began to lag behind, trepidation in their footsteps. For all their youthful curiosity, they had left this hollow beneath the nearby gnarltree unexplored. The warnings in the Force were obvious. Insidious, seeping cold that soon clenched around one's chest and pressed its finger where there should have been breath. A heavy, sinking darkness.

"Master Yoda?"

Ariarne's voice, in the mist behind him. Her face, already, had been obscured.

"This doesn't feel right. Where are we going?"

"To a place that is strong with the Dark Side of the Force."

Yoda halted, finally, before the cave, where the vergence of darkness loomed, and waited for the heavy bootsteps of his companions to arrive beside him.

"A domain of evil, this is."

"No kidding," Luke muttered.

"Inside, you must go."

Luke and Ariarne shuffled almost imperceptibly closer to one another.

"What's in there?" Luke asked.

Yoda sighed. It was a question too enormous to answer. The whole galaxy was contained inside that cave, enshrouded within a spectre of darkness. Yoda had seen a thousand faces in there, in the visit after visit he had pressed himself through. He had seen Dooku and Windu, Junda and Jinn. Cropped-haired Kenobi with a boy at his side, still a boy himself – how had he been so blind? – left to struggle along a path of his own. Broken Skywalker and dying Amidala. His every failure. Every life upon his hands.

He had seen Darth Sidious. Been mocked by him. My greatest apprentice.

Yoda had seen them all and he had forgiven himself. There was no other way to go on.

"There is only," he mused, "what you take with you."

Luke looked perplexed. Ariarne set her jaw with heavy understanding.

"On Ilum, Master…" she murmured, in half-hearted protest, "On Ilum we were tested-"

"A young Padawan's test, you passed," Yoda countered. "A place of balance, Ilum is. This vergence, young ones, is of the Dark Side only."

Luke grimaced.

"And you want us to…"

"From our fears, we learn. Need your lightsabers, you will not."

But neither Padawan removed the hilt from their belt. They were born of a generation of soldiers. How had the Order been so blind for so long, trained so many generations of soldiers?

But Yoda did not press the point. The choice was their own. It was unkind, perhaps, to put them through it. But if he did not, Sidious would.

This was not the endless rush of faces and visions and slipping, screaming futures that Ariarne had glimpsed on Ilum. The cave was cold and quiet and there was no singing promise of her waiting kyber. Its glow seemed to dampen by her side as the darkness set in.

The figure emerged hard and fast, with all the ferocity of a soldier who had fought a thousand battles and was not in the habit of losing. Ariarne lifted her 'saber to fend the lunging red blade from her chest. The cave was ice cold but there was an angry heat emanating off the black-cloaked warrior. Ariarne knew her immediately. This was the Sith apprentice who had captured her and tortured her and had blown her planet to space dust.

There was no time to think. The intensity of the battle was too great and the emotion dizzying in the Force. In no one else had Ariarne ever felt such anger. Such unbridled hatred. She parried desperately and could not catch her breath, let alone her serenity. Each blow of blade against blade seemed to scream.

Anger-hatred-despair-anger-hatred-despair-

It was too much. And Ariarne just wanted it to stop. Needed the silence. Needed a lungful of air. And she hated Gelid for bringing that delirium upon her, for pressing her down to suffocate in this flood of grief and-

"Leave me!"

Ariarne's voice was barely her own; it came from deep in her gut, rasped hoarse in her throat. And with that cry, her blade pierced cleanly through the Sith's heart.

Darth Gelid fell to her knees but did not keel and die as she should have. Instead, she dropped her head into her hands, removed her mask. And the face that looked up at Ariarne's was a teenager's face, younger than her own, swollen and streaked with tears as though she had been crying for days. A girl who had known all of the pain Ariarne had been subject to and more.

"Help me!" she sobbed.

Ariarne looked at her with bewilderment and a faint disgust. She still, despite it all, hated her. There was a strange ringing in her ears. The light within the cave had somehow changed. Ariarne looked down and saw the glow of guilty crimson in her own hand.

Luke had expected to see himself in the darkness, as he had on Ilum. That was the Force's test for him, was it not? The danger Master Yoda cautioned them against in every teaching: the potent, slippery lure of the Dark Side.

But the yellow-eyed figure that emerged from the darkness of the cave was not himself. The warrior was taller and gripped a blue 'saber with metallic hand. They engaged in the slow dance of patient combat. Luke tried to make out the face in the darkness. He knew that face. But it was impossible. He was seeing something bizarre, something so wrong and unnatural-

A stinging blow of the blue blade against his hand. Luke stumbled backward and steadied.

"Dad-"

There was no answer. No explanation. Only memory of Master Yoda's words ringing in his mind.

Nearly lost to the Dark Side, Anakin Skywalker was, for fear of the future.

Their battle intensified. Blades of green and blue that never should have met with such aggression, flashing and illuminating the depths of the cave. There was a deeper darkness still beyond them. A faint, cackling laughter echoed around them.

"Dad, please, it's me-"

But this twisted spectre of Anakin Skywalker heard no reason and Luke knew that this could not be his father. He lifted his blade and leapt not at the duelling warrior but above and beyond him, into the darkness, where the puppet-master must have pulled his strings. Luke sunk his blade into the heart of the darkness and collapsed in a heap. The effort of it had sapped all of the strength from his body. He would, perhaps, stay here forever.

But there was a hand like winter sunlight upon his shoulder.

"Hey, come on, let's get out of here."

Ariarne.

A spark of warmth in his chest, life coming slowly back into his limbs. He let her lift him to his feet. She was trembling. Luke extended a hand to where the apparition of his father had stood.

"Did you see-"

"No," Ariarne answered. "I think we saw different things."

She did not elaborate. She kept looking down at the blue lightsaber in her hand, as though to ensure it was still there, as they walked, together, towards the promise of light.

"Learn anything useful?" she asked, eventually.

The mouth of the cave was coming into view, the cold abating. Luke considered a moment, tried for words despite the dryness of his mouth.

"Guess so. We keep my dad away from the Emperor. You?"

"Uh…"

Another anxious glance at her lightsaber.

"Nothing ground-breaking. I'm sure you can guess Darth Gelid wasn't born murderous."

"Right."

"A gentle reminder not to be angry."

Her face was pale in the emerging light of the swamp. She was trembling faintly still. Luke wasn't sure gentle was the right word for it.

"You okay?"

"Of course."

She said it with the air of someone who had no choice in the matter. Our focus determines our reality, Master Yoda had taught them. And Luke didn't know anyone as determined as Ariarne.

"Another trial passed," he offered, with a weak smile.

She managed the tight smile of grim humour. He knew Ariarne so well, had lived by her side for so long. And yet, there was so much she did not tell him.

"With flying colours," she declared bitterly, extinguishing her blade.

"I don't think he's here," Korkie sighed.

They had made their second fruitless scan of the Moraband system.

"He probably fixed his ship," Fenn agreed.

Sabine cursed at the ship's controls.

"I thought…"

She trailed off. She had thought wrong.

"You're allowed to make mistakes," Korkie counselled mildly. "I've made thousands. But we'd best hurry our way back to Mandalorian space, I think."

Sabine groaned.

"He could be anywhere."

"He could be anywhere," Korkie agreed. "But if I were setting a trap for us…"

No one argued. A grim solemnity settled over the ship.

"I'm going to kill him," Sabine muttered.

And they jumped for Mandalore before Korkie could argue the case for pacifism.

"Today's the real thing, Commander."

They had been evacuating Echo Base in small, orderly aliquots – a ship here, loaded to capacity with valuable supplies, a squadron of fighters there. It had been delicate work; being ambushed in their shield-protected fortress was one thing, being picked off in the vulnerability of open space was even worse. But they'd been successful so far and Rex had almost been optimistic enough to entertain the slim possibility that the Empire did not yet know the location of their base on Hoth, and that they had evacuated in time.

With a cheerful blue horizon full of star destroyers this morning, Rex knew better. Ahsoka Tano stood beside him, arms folded at her chest. Her face gave nothing away. But the curtness of her words over her comms did.

"Shields up now, please. Sectors One through Eight for emergency evacuation. Nine and Ten on a temporary offensive."

They turned in synchrony and marched back into the blooming chaos of the hangar, where crated goods were being loaded onto ships and shrieking tauntauns set free. Leia Skywalker, bulky in her snow-jacket, strode to block their path.

"You'll need more than two sectors on the offensive to cover this evacuation, Commander Tano."

"We'll be fine," Ahsoka assured her, with a fleeting smile. "Rex and I count for a couple of extra soldiers each. You need to get your people moving."

"Already have."

The troops beneath the Alliance's most freshly-promoted captain were, naturally, the best-drilled on Echo Base.

"And you need to get yourself moving," Rex advised firmly.

"But-"

"Anakin will kill me if the Empire doesn't," Ahsoka countered. "You've nearly died too many times. I'm on my last strike. And really, Leia, you're no good to this galaxy dead in combat with a-"

She craned her neck to look at the live holo-projection of the unfolding drama outside the armoured doors.

"-an AT-AT walker."

"Brilliant," Rex muttered.

"As you can see, we've not got time to argue," Ahsoka concluded. "Get going, Skykid. We'll see you soon."

Ahsoka didn't make promises she couldn't keep. She was not like the Jedi Council of old, who had promised to protect all of their younglings, and then surrendered her unflinchingly to Tarkin. She kept her promises, blast it. And she'd told Leia that she'd see her soon.

She shouldn't have been thinking of those years long ago. She'd not thought of those days since she was young and lost. She'd risen above it, found a makeshift home on Mandalore and then at Barriss's side and finally with the Rebel Alliance. They hadn't hurt her. Or at least that was what Ahsoka had been in the habit of telling herself, she supposed, until this very moment today in the midst of battle, hurt bubbling up again.

The war was driving her sentimental and crazy. Something about the ceaseless proximity to death. Ahsoka pressed her fighter onwards, hurtling low above the ice, weaving the legs of the enormous droid attackers. The cables were the sort of idea Anakin would have come up with, once upon a time.

Ahsoka laid a finger on her comms.

"How are you doing back at the base?"

"Six sectors out, Commander. All engaged in combat. Heavy Imperial fire."

"Kriff's sakes."

They were supposed to be occupying all of the Imperial firepower. But their troops seemed to be karking endless.

"Get the other two out, then. And that includes Skywalker."

"On our way, Commander. The Falcon's taking up the rear."

"Alright. Fine."

The Force did not feel fine. It felt like a blizzard screaming around her, even on this strangely clear day. Ahsoka detached from her cable and allowed the weight of the walker to crash down behind her. The ice and snow erupted into the sky and crashed down like a waterfall.

"Beautiful work, Commander," Rex commended her, from the comms of a nearby fighter.

"Shame there's about ten more of them."

And Imperial fighters, too, swooping low to meet them. These enemies would pick them off with the precision the gargantuan walkers lacked.

"Nearly time for us to get out of here," Rex consoled her. "Two sectors leaving now."

Which left their own two sectors as the last on-planet. Ahsoka thought of the soldiers that she had kept by her side in this mad dogfight. They were primarily natborns; they had chosen this path. But it didn't make it all that much easier to lead them. They had chosen this fight because the Empire had taken everything else from them. And what sort of choice was that?

No. They had chosen this fight because they had hope. Ahsoka thought of Luke and Ariarne on Dagobah. Of Leia on the Falcon, beginning her escape. There was hope, for the future. And she would protect it.

She began the perilous swing around the legs of another walker, spinning to avoid the fire of a pursuing TIE fighter.

"It's gonna take some sort of manoeuvre to get ourselves out of here," she commed, to the group at large. "You all peel off, Nine and Ten, when I give the word."

"Commander…"

Rex's voice, uneasy. Uneasy about more than just her taking charge of his sector.

"I've got a plan, Rex."

She would give the Faulties and her soldiers the best chance she could, drawing the Imperial focus onto herself. After all these years, they could not resist a Jedi. She was a priceless relic of the world they had near destroyed, a hunting trophy above all others. She swooped, darted, fired a few extra belligerent shots and pressed onwards, towards the AT-AT walker that had advanced the furthest towards the rebel base and its shield generator.

"Alright, Sectors Nine and Ten, disengage and get to that rendezvous point now."

Ahsoka commed her message through and hit the cockpit release as she drew beneath the enormous walker. She leapt upwards, the Force surging through her limbs, drawing her lightsabers from her belt and jamming the twin blades into the underside of the Imperial craft.

The exposed skin on the lower half of her face burned with the sudden cold. She hung from the walker and saw the flashes of movement, felt the spark of excitement, of the Imperial fighters locking in on this exposed target.

She levered her legs upwards with a grunt and carved an opening large enough only to cast in a detonator. There were ion cannon blasts searing past her already and she'd need to keep moving. Kept the location of her beached fighter tethered in her mind. She'd make it back. She'd make it out.

Blades extinguished, she swung herself from the belly of the wounded beast and onto the leg of the adjacent walker, scrambling upwards to repeat the ploy. There was the creaking and slow crash of the leading walker behind her. The fire of a pursuing fighter clipped her heel, struck the walker's mechanical leg. Ahsoka leapt from limb to limb, working her way upwards. It wouldn't be so easy, on the second attempt. There were several fighters locked onto her now.

Exactly as planned, right?

It would have been nice, in this mess, to have Anakin by her side. He'd have brought down half the fleet already, she suspected. But Anakin was growing into the warrior the Jedi Council had never allowed him to be. Fighting to save more lives than in Sectors Nine and Ten, more than in the whole Rebel Alliance…

There was no time to think of him. Ahsoka slashed at the underside of the walker and knew she'd pushed her luck far enough. It was time to get out. She'd bought them as much time as she could.

She flipped from the walker – maimed, but not toppled – in the direction of her fighter. Slipped in through the open cockpit and landed squarely, if not inelegantly, in her seat. But as the cockpit hood drew closed her engine refused to hum to life.

"Ah, kriff."

Back at Echo Base, they'd stored their fighters in the generator room: the only place where the engines wouldn't freeze and stall.

She was stranded.

And there was another way, of course there would be another way, and she'd get out of here just fine. She'd promised Leia that she would. She'd just-

But her cold-stalled ship was a target easy enough even for an Imperial buckethead to hit. There was a boom of sound and Ahsoka's vision turned snow-white. Stranded on this infernal planet, forevermore.

Rex swung low over the snow. His third attempt. And likely the last that the Imperial forces would allow him to make. But he wasn't going to leave her there.

It was a bad enough hit that any ordinary pilot should be dead. That was good news, on one hand, because the Imperial forces had lost interest and flown off. It wasn't such good news, of course, on the other. Ahsoka Tano was no ordinary soldier but Rex knew that Jedi could die like anyone else.

On the third attempt Rex finally reached her, hooked an arm inside her jacket and hauled her from the wreckage. A yelp of pain. She was more than dead weight in his hands; her arms flailed for him, caught on, pulled herself in. She was alive.

Alive, but far from well. She collapsed in on top of him, clumsy, like a child. Rex squashed her in awkwardly beside him in the swirling wind and slammed shut the cockpit. They began to pick up speed again just as an inquisitive TIE fighter drew near again.

"Too risky," Ahsoka mumbled. "Should have left me."

"I did alright, didn't I?"

"You did stupid."

Rex didn't really care what she called him, so long as she was alive and talking to him. He adjusted the stabilisers as they shot up and away from their pursuer. The fighter was not, admittedly, designed to be flown with a full-grown human and Togruta both cramped into the cockpit, half sitting on top of one another. Ahsoka's montrals were squashed against the roof, her neck angled awkwardly down. Blood trickled down her forehead. Her eyes were closed and her breathing shallow. Pain.

"'D'the Falcon get out?"

Rex stopped short of answering that he didn't know; the rebel forces had scattered as planned. But if Ahsoka was confused enough to think there was a way of knowing, it was perhaps permissible to…

"I'm sure they did."

It wasn't quite a lie. Han Solo and Chewbacca had managed a lifetime of outrageous escapes in that battered flying electrical hazard. There was no reason they shouldn't have done so again.

"We should find them," Ahsoka mumbled. "The kids…"

"They're not kids, and they'll be fine."

A grunt of effort beside him; Rex glanced over briefly to see that Ahsoka had managed to crack open an eye. The other was swelling rapidly.

"You said it," she accused. "Before. You said that they were kids."

Rex conceded a smile.

"Glad you can remember that far back. Your brain's still working."

A crooked half-smile in return.

"Never stops."

Rex was gracious enough not to argue the point.

"Well," he sighed, "they might be kids to us now, but they can handle themselves. Leia most of all. She's older than you were in the war against the Seppies, don't forget."

Ahsoka closed her eye again but managed to snipe a reply.

"Speaking of forgetful, are you forgetting that you're younger than me?"

In this wearying body, beside a brilliant warrior in her prime? Rex could have laughed or he could have cried.

"Not sure there's much sense in measuring my life in standard years."

Ahsoka gave a huff of half-hearted disagreement and softened her body beside him, slumping heavy against his shoulder. Rex adjusted the stabilisers again and made no complaint.

"We were kids together," Ahsoka muttered. "In that war. All of us."

And Rex could not argue with that. No number of years on Kamino could have taught him what it was really like out there, with your brothers dying around you.

"We made it out alright," he reassured her, himself. "And they will too."

The fighter didn't have much going for it but it would survive the hyperspace jump to the rendezvous point beyond the Outer Rim. After years of growth the Rebel Alliance seemed only to be growing smaller and more disparate now; their new home would be on a planet lonelier than Hoth, lonelier even than forgotten Kamino.

"Can we call them?" Ahsoka asked, with bruised voice.

The comms panel of the fighter flashed a sporadic red. The transmission beacon must have been destroyed by the TIE fire. They would be without long-range comms for a little while. But if that was the worst of it, then perhaps it wasn't so bad. The danger was abating now, the Imperial forces thinning to specks behind them. They would not jump to hyperspace yet; Rex would monitor Ahsoka's head injury a night or two. But they'd find somewhere else to lie low. Rex spared a hand from the controls, laid it upon his commander's arm.

"Have a rest. We'll call them soon."

Ahsoka gave a low groan and complied. Her head lolled against his own.

"Only because I trust you."

It was the highest accolade Rex had ever been granted.

"I appreciate that, Commander."

Han was coming to know the strange look in Leia's eyes when she sensed something in that maybe-not-so-make-believe Force. Her grip was tight on his shoulder, as though she had half a mind to throw him out of the pilot's seat and fly the ship herself.

"It's Gelid," she announced. "Following us personally."

Han sighed.

"How flattering. Check the deflector shields, Chewie."

His co-pilot complied; Leia hummed her sceptical agreement.

"Now would be a great time to jump to hyperspace, Han, if you were so inclined."

Inclination wasn't the problem. Han couldn't get them away from that ice-ball – not to mention the spray of TIE fighters and Darth Gelid's star destroyer looming behind them – soon enough. Leia, for all her travels aboard the Falcon, hadn't seemed to have grasped that this sort of manoeuvre took calculations and preparation. Not to mention he was sort of occupied not getting shot down.

"I'm working on it, sweetheart. Just give me a sec and I'll have us-"

"Hurry him up, Chewie!"

"We're hurrying!"

"They're getting closer," Leia supplied, unhelpfully.

Coordinates finally placed and checked, Han shifted his hand to the jump-lever.

"Uh-huh. Watch this."

But there was… nothing. A whole lot of karking nothing, from the ship that had never let him down, not unless you counted-

"Watch what?"

Korkie had told him it was a good sign, to argue like they were married already. Han wasn't so sure.

"Your turn," he huffed, "since you think it's so easy."

Han vaulted from the pilot's seat and made his way to the engine bay, beckoning Chewie behind him. Leia fixed a scowl on the hurtling horizon but there was no doubt it was meant for him.

"You piece of-"

Leia was an alright sort of pilot, even is she wasn't quite the same freak of nature that her brother was, but Han could admit that flying out of this mess was probably a pretty tall order. He had barely got a lungful of the smoking hyperdrive and taken the hydro-spanner in his hand before the ship was struck with a blow he couldn't ignore.

"Change of plans, Chewie. Kriff the hyperdrive."

Han scarpered back to the cockpit and leapt back into the pilot's seat. He had never been so relived to see an asteroid belt in his whole karking life. Leia lost what little colour in her face Hoth's weak sun hadn't already bleached out of her.

"You really don't have to do this to impress me," she groaned.

But it was the best he could do. Han didn't care to impress her, only to live another day by her side. He took a deep breath and hurtled into the asteroid belt, TIE fighters showering into sparks behind him like some kriffing firework show.

It had all been one big screaming mess all the way from Keldabe to the Moraband system and now over Kalevala, where it transpired that Tiber was planning to test his weapon upon Korkie's distant kin. Sabine knew she needed to find her head again if she were going to lead this blasted operation; her mum and Bo-Katan both seemed all too ready to take control themselves. She'd given up the flying job to find some peace and concentrate. Fenn had eagerly claimed the pilot's seat before Korkie could do so and banished him from the cockpit on the grounds that he was "a bad influence". Sabine would have enjoyed gathering gossip for her next mission with the Rebel Alliance had she not had more important problems to address. And so she had come to find herself hunched over her data-pad at the back of the ship, where the engines were loudest but at least no one would talk to her, gathering her thoughts.

"Mind if I join you?"

Korkie sidled in, half-armoured, and cast himself to sit on the floor beneath her without waiting for permission.

"I'm working," Sabine muttered, indicating the holo-projection of a generic star destroyer's internal layout.

There was no way of knowing whether Saxon's particular star destroyer had been customised or re-fitted. But she would work with what she had.

"Meditate with me?"

Sabine finally tore her eyes away from the projection, looked at him with heavy scepticism.

"Like a Jetii?"

Korkie shrugged.

"You're no less a Jetii than I am."

Sabine rolled her eyes.

"Halfis more than none."

Korkie shook his head.

"It's not about parentage. It's about what you can feel."

He closed his eyes and heaved a sigh. A sort of calm seemed to suffuse through the space. And yes, Sabine felt it.

She'd felt – known, sensed, guessed – many things in her life. She'd been quick on her feet and dodged blows better than most. Known when to duck and when to strike. Her mother had called it soldier's intuition. But she could not have been of Jetii nature like Korkie – no matter how much he denied the title, Korkie was something special. Korkie always knew who to trust, and how to deceive someone he didn't, while Sabine had been stupid enough to create a Mando-killer as a blasted intellectual exercise while being trained in an Academy run by the sort of people that anyone would know were bad.

Except that all of her classmates had stayed, she supposed. All of them had kept submitting their assignments, when Sabine had felt that great change calling her and left for a better galaxy.

But that had been nothing more than growing up and growing sensible.

"It's not dar'Manda to meditate upon your enemy and make a good plan," Korkie advised, without opening his eyes.

Sabine scowled and switched off her data-pad. She wasn't going to be able to concentrate on the map with him breathing like that.

"Tiber is outnumbered," Korkie went on. "And he's not used that weapon on Kalevala yet, which can only mean he's not happy with it. He's relying on manipulating us. You know him."

That much was true; Sabine knew Tiber Saxon better than anyone else aboard this ship. She'd suffered in his classroom long enough. She'd known him and she'd felt him. She'd read him, hadn't she? She remembered the day she had tried for so long to forget, that terrible sinking moment of realisation as she'd looked at him and when she had known that she had to destroy that prototype and all of its plans. She had been too late, that time.

Sabine closed her eyes and reached for that clarity. It had eluded her, in her fears, in the days gone past. Her soldier's intuition. Her gut. The blasted Force. It didn't matter what it was. Korkie was a warm presence beside her, drawing her gently along.

Tiber and the way he had watched her, sketching in the back of his class. That hunger. Tiber stalking from Keldabe angry, but with a simmering confidence. His shadowed grand plan. Sabine fell into that feeling. What she had known that day. What she had always known of Tiber. And she swore she could almost sense him now, could almost grasp-

"We're nearly here, you know."

Her mother's voice. Sabine snapped open her eyes. The doorway was crowded with armoured figures, Bo-Katan a half-step behind Ursa.

"I do know," Sabine asserted.

She probably didn't look like a soldier who knew. Sabine sat up taller, scooped her helmet from the bench beside her into her grasp.

"I've got a plan, if you're ready to hear it."

"Please."

Sabine waved a hand, beckoned Korkie from the floor, and strode back to the main hold where Fenn sat at the controls.

"Alright. So the situation is…"

Sabine didn't know exactly how she knew it. But after all these days of fear and uncertainty, she trusted her gut.

"Tiber hasn't set this trap for Korkie. Sure, you're a good prize and all-"

A fleeting wink from the Mand'alor.

"Thanks, Sab'ika."

"-but he's set this trap for me. He's made a shitty version of my weapon and he wants me to fix it. We can use this to our advantage."

Guarded scepticism, from her watching audience. But a smile and a nod of encouragement from the Mando-Jetii.

"I know I've made a mistake. But I need you all to trust me now."

Korkie's voice was earnest and quiet.

"To the end of the galaxy, Sab'ika."

Sabine could only hope the blessing of the Mand'alor was enough to get away with what she said next.

"I'm going to get captured."

Ursa grimaced.

"There has to be a better way-"

"This is the best way."

"You know," Korkie mused. "I might get captured too."

And despite all his insistence upon proper flying etiquette, Fenn Rau threw both of his hands up from the control panels in exasperation.

"This, Mand'alor, is some sort of psychopathology."

Korkie raised his own hands in placation.

"If he has me, he'll be pleased with himself, and he'll be complacent. It'll make it easier for the rest of you. Besides, I trust Sabine."

Bo-Katan groaned.

"What's wrong with just storming the place the old-fashioned way?"

Sabine shrugged.

"Someone getting fried, probably."

Bo-Katan looked from Sabine to Korkie and back again as she presumably contemplated mutiny.

"Fine," she sighed. "Only because your stupid plans always seem to work, somehow."

"This is Sabine's plan," Korkie advised courteously. "I'm just providing support."

"You are just providing headaches," Fenn countered.

A bleep over the radar, as the distant star destroyer came into range. Ursa rearranged her weapons at her belt.

"Guess it's time to find out whether it's a good plan or not."

Aaaaah it's all happening. Had a lot planned for this chapter that will come next chapter instead: the Falcon crew flee the Empire, the Mandalorians face off against Tiber and Luke and Ariarne have a big decision to make. I will try to ease my foot off the ceaseless-action-accelerator and remember that this whole series started with a love story.

Thanks, as always, for reading along!

xx - S.