Chapter 39: Shah-tezh

"Bo-Katan? Bo-Katan Kryze?"

There was the vague hum of a live comm but no answer. Ursa sighed. It had taken her months and a few not insubstantial bribes to covertly get access to this comm-code and it was a kriffing dud. She cursed beneath her breath. Her di'kut contact within the Alliance was probably not affiliated with the Alliance at all. A swindler making easy credits, or worse – Empire-affiliated, working desperately to trace her call, to crush this new spark of rebellion.

But then-

Ursa stopped cursing. She'd heard something. A sharp intake of breath. Someone recognising her language, or her voice, or-

"Bo-Katan, it's me, it's…"

She'd told herself that under no circumstances would she reveal her name until she'd confirmed the identity on the other end of the line. She'd encrypted the comm as best she could and saying her name aloud would put all that work to waste.

"Please, Bo, it's.."

"It's you, Ursa Wren, calling after sixteen kriffing years?"

There was such venom in that voice but Ursa's shoulders sagged in relief. She'd found her.

"Bo, I'm so sorry," she sighed. "I could spend all day telling you how sorry I am. I could spend all day telling you what those sixteen years have been like for me. But it's not important."

A beat of silence, before Bo-Katan's stern reply.

"Isn't it?"

"It isn't," Ursa affirmed, even as her voice shook with emotion. "What you need to know, Bo, is that I nearly lost myself. But I've found myself again. I'm ready to fight."

"Following the good example set by your daughter?"

"Truly."

Bo-Katan gave a grunt of grudging affirmation.

"I doubt she learned all that from Alrich," she conceded.

Ursa felt a flush of warmth in her chest.

"I taught her everything her Ba'vodu Bo-Katan would have taught her."

She could not express it on this comm-call but there were years of history behind those words. In the years in which Ursa had detested herself, had thought herself unworthy of the air she breathed, she had pulled herself out of bed with the thought of her best friend. She could not be Ursa Wren in those years but she could try at being Bo-Katan Kryze. Bo-Katan would never lose the day in bed. Would never let all her muscles waste to nothing. Would never leave her daughter to grow without training.

"I can't sit through another kriffing dinner party with Gar Saxon," Ursa sighed instead. "I was thinking it's probably time we killed him."

Bo-Katan made a perhaps involuntary sound of approval. Another few beats of silence.

"Saxon's time is up," Bo-Katan agreed eventually. "Look, I'll speak to the boss-"

"Mothma?"

"Korkie. Mothma's pretty alright for a Republican but she's not my boss. Anyway, I'll speak to Korkie and we'll comm again. Arrange a meeting on a neutral location. We have to trust you're back for good, you know. Not just making some ploy to capture me and win Imperial favours on Krownest."

"I wouldn't do that, Bo."

Bo conceded the point with a sigh.

"Yeah. I know. Anyway, I look forward to killing Saxon with you."

Ursa grinned.

"Me too, Bo."

Cere Junda had left the Hidden Path and gone to Jedha for many reasons. For the knowledge that was lost. To honour the legacy of Jocasta Nu. To rest her aching body. To find stillness again in the Force after so many years adrift.

And she could admit to herself that she hadn't wanted to fight Trilla again. Further clashes had been inevitable and Cere might have found the Force again, might have locked that darkness inside her away for good, but she was still far from the perfect Jedi. For the attachment was still there, and Cere Junda had been unable to kill the Padawan she had ruined. Even if, sometimes, it felt like the kindest thing to do. When Cere had last fought Trilla, with Cal at her side, her presence in the Force had been almost unrecognisable from the girl Cere had trained so many years ago. A far cry even from the miserable teenager they had defeated on Arkanis. Cold, remorseless. Barely even angry, anymore. Darth Gelid, the Sith's apprentice, aptly named.

Cere had waited for years for the Force to present some other answer. Had hoped that through her training, perhaps Cal would have the strength to do what Cere had not. But the galaxy was becoming darker still and Trilla had become instrumental in its spiral. No one else had stopped her. Trilla was out there somewhere giving orders. Trilla would know what the kyber was for. Cere had many flaws but she was not a coward.

She left the Archives under Gerrera's protection – no matter what Jocasta Nu would have had to say about a famous terrorist as a guardian of knowledge – and set off to find her Padawan.

"Pilots are asking crazy money for a hitchhike," Luke grumbled. "I don't get it. It's not like it would cost anything to have us on board."

"They're asking because they know we have no choice but to pay," Leia summarised grimly.

They weaved through the crowds of Mos Eisley back towards Beru, who was a good enough sport to allow their company on journeys to the market, even though she was perfectly capable of carrying all their shopping by herself.

"But hey," Leia reasoned. "We shouldn't be so put out about it. How many times did Ba'vodu Korkie run out of credits on his travels when he was young?"

Luke snickered.

"More than anyone could count."

"Exactly. And he always figured something out, didn't he?"

Luke shook his head with a rueful grin.

"I don't think cage-fighting is an option for us, Leia."

Leia hummed her reluctant agreement. Word would get out of any cage-fighting ventures and they were hardly trained for it, anyway. Fighting each other with fence posts and their childhood wrestling was hardly adequate preparation.

"I'm not talking about the fighting, Luke. After Corellia, when Korkie was freighting refugees, remember the stories? He funded the whole project with a trip to some casino each lunar cycle. Until Kawlan and Cody figured out a better plan."

Luke nodded thoughtfully.

"We'd be better at gambling than fighting."

"Exactly. Besides, it's kind of fitting. You know Dad's freedom was won in a bet."

"That worked out well," Luke muttered.

"It did! For a while."

"Uh huh."

"Think of a number," Leia challenged. "From one to a hundred. Try not to let me read it."

They were jostled in their inattention by the rough milling crowd. Leia probed deeper, deeper…

"Thirty-nine."

"Nice job. My turn now. Think of a number."

Beru waved a beckoning arm and they finally fell into step beside her.

"You remembered to get the grain mix for the ahrisa?"

"Of course we did," Leia chirped. "Good price today."

"Are you sure you're thinking of a number?" Luke probed. "It feels like you're not thinking of anything."

Beru blinked in confusion. Leia grinned.

"I am. Promise."

Luke scowled and redoubled his efforts.

"It'll be easier on Force-blinds," Leia reassured him, with a comforting pat upon his shoulder.

Beru watched them with a suspicious frown.

"What are you two doing?"

"Nothing," Leia answered.

Luke, meanwhile, was rummaging in his bag of newly-purchased grain crackers, dyed in assorted colours. He closed his fist around a cracker of his choice.

"Tell me what colour it is, Leia."

Beru watched with a knowing smile.

"You're training, are you?"

Leia gave an off-handed shrug.

"Never know when you might need to be clever."

Beru looked as though she knew exactly how they were planning to employ their cleverness.

"Mhmm."

"It's orange, by the way, Luke."

Leia had a feeling that she would win big at the card table.

They met on Ukio, far from Yavin 4 and far from the Mandalore system, where life even under the Empire was not so different from perhaps how it had always been. Even the Empire that so loved crystal and ore needed food for its sentients and the crops on the renowned agri-world were allowed to grow undisturbed. The lean but unharrassed Ukians had, evidently, learned to peacefully accept whichever woefully unjust compensation they received for their trade. Bo-Katan stood waiting upon an undeveloped rocky plateau, watching the wind ripple through the verdant fields below, flanked by three soldiers on either side. Out of sight, hidden amongst the stone, her best long-range shooters were poised and aerial patrols skimmed overhead. She did not truly believe that Ursa would betray her. But strange things happened in the galaxy these days and the Alliance had its protocols. Bo-Katan would not be ambushed.

Ursa Wren arrived in a one-seat fighter, Corellian in design; she had abided by Bo-Katan's instruction that she avoid Imperial attention in anything recognisably Mandalorian. She wore her armour but held her buy'ce at her hip, her slender neck exposed. She carried only a single vibroblade at her belt. Bo-Katan must have allowed her surprise to show.

"Sabine's got my favourite blaster," Ursa supplied, in explanation.

She could have brought another.

"I recognised it," Bo-Katan admitted.

Ursa looked down at the fields in the valley beneath them. Nothing grew like that on ruined Mandalore.

"Nice spot you've chosen."

"Does Alrich know you're here?"

"Yes. He's in charge of looking after Tristan and keeping Saxon happy."

"Lucky him."

At this, Ursa cracked a smile.

"He knows I'd do something stupid if he left it to me. A knife in Saxon's throat across the dinner table, maybe. Something bound to bring down upon us the wrath of the Empire, in any case."

She stood a little taller, perhaps emboldened by the fact that none of the soldiers had yet tried to arrest her.

"Speaking of which," she pressed. "What's your plan? To stop them installing another puppet in Saxon's place?"

Bo-Katan shook her head.

"We're not talking plans yet, Ursa."

Ursa barked out half a laugh.

"I've already proven I didn't come to kill you, haven't I?"

Bo-Katan tilted her head, gave a delicate shrug.

"You could be biding your time."

Ursa snorted.

"I've wasted enough years of my life playing by their rules, Bo."

Ruma, to her credit – still as outspoken as she had been as Pre Vizsla's teenage second-in-command – had waited at least one full minute before butting in.

"Are we just going to chit-chat as a means of establishing loyalty, Alor'ad? Or are we going to give her the job?"

Bo-Katan grudgingly conceded the point.

"There's something we could use your help with," she told Ursa. "Lower risk sending you in than one of us already known to be rebels."

If Ursa was surprised to be given a test she did not show it.

"What can I do for you?"

"Korkie wants allies before we go in. Otherwise the change won't stand," Bo-Katan explained. "Fenn Rau. Mandalorian Protectors. Concord Dawn. Think you can get him on our side?"

Ursa raised a brow.

"You know the Empire employs the Protectors to hunt rebels?"

"The Empire was a fan of yours too," Bo-Katan pointed out.

Ursa shrugged.

"Yeah. Sure. I'll sort something out."

Bo-Katan cracked a smile.

"Good. Go get him. Then we'll talk knives in Saxon's throat."

Cere caused poorly-disguised havoc in the Devaron system and waited for the Inquisitors to be sent her way; her former Padawan was now the Emperor's foremost soldier and would surely be above a solitary rebel – Jedi or otherwise – raiding Imperial convoys. But the lowly Inquisitors did not come. She wondered for several weeks whether Trilla had fallen so far that she had returned to a Jedi-like focus, from peace to anger to a sort of apathetic peace once again, and did not care to hunt her at all. But when the Imperial fleet's finest star destroyer appeared in the sky, Cere knew that her former Padawan did not yet play the faultless Shah-tezh of her Sith Master.

She waited in meditation in the jungle where she could not be trapped or corralled into Imperial capture. The precaution was unnecessary. Trilla did not bring the massive reinforcements to which she had the right. Her fighter travelled down alone. And when the Sith apprentice emerged from the descending ramp, cloak whipping behind her, Darth Gelid was not cold. She did not crackle with the flames of her miserable adolescence, but with the quiet, dangerous white hot anger of searing coals.

"After all these years?" she demanded.

Even her voice had changed. Grown to womanhood. Descended to the Sith. The red light of her 'saber illuminated the deep angles of her face.

"After you trained another Padawan? You summon me now?"

Cere held her own lightsaber at her side, unignited. There is always peace in the Force. Mace Windu, slipping into the Force over Arkanis, resplendent with peace in the Force.

"I cannot allow you to tear apart this galaxy, Trilla."

A bark of disparaging laughter.

"Have you come to kill me?"

"No."

And that anger deepened, sparked, the coals stoked.

"You cannot save me, Junda," she sneered. "You are years too late."

"I know."

There is always peace in the Force. But it was difficult to find in that moment.

You are years too late.

So there had been a time. Even in Trilla's mind, there had been a time. Some part of her waiting for her Master, her true Master, the Master who had sworn always to protect her, to come and save her. Cere had come to fight her. To steal from her. Now to interrogate her. But never once to save her.

"You must save yourself, Trilla," she urged, voice shaking. "There is no other way from here."

The Sith's eyes glinted a dangerous yellow.

"I am beyond such weakness now."

Junda's years of disappearance had been well-spent in communion with the Force. The Jedi was stronger than Trilla had ever known her to be despite the age in her sinewy frame. Their 'sabers clashed with furious force and Trilla knew that she had never fought like this before. That she may never fight like this again. That all those empty years had been building to this moment.

She turned the wind to a gale and she tore down the trees. She turned the entire jungle into her weapon, flung every projectile she could summon at her former Master. And yet Junda dodged, leapt, deflected. Some cocoon of stillness about her. Landed few blows, and yet each one perfectly timed. Trilla snarled her frustration and fought harder still.

Cere Junda had once taught her about effortlessness. About stepping back and allowing the Force to lead one's motions. About the brilliant ease of fighting without anger.

Trilla did not know those words anymore. She knew pain and she knew anger and she knew hurt. There was always peace in the Force and she would never know it again.

Cere Junda had not yet conquered the last of her fears. As she fought Trilla, she felt that old enemy rising up inside her. Tightening in her chest. She did not fear to be the weaker soldier amongst them, to be slain at her former Padawan's feet. She feared that she was the stronger of them still. But a Jedi finds their meaning in compassion. There was a galaxy to save from the Sith before her and Cere Junda allowed it to sharpen her focus. She was the only person in the galaxy who could do this task.

She pressed. Lunged. And brought one of Trilla's uprooted trees – the Sith apprentice had, perhaps, become drunk on her new power – down to strike her in the back.

Trilla collapsed to the ground beneath its enormous weight and Cere did not waste a moment; she would lose her conviction if she did. She grappled with the Sith apprentice as she tried to regain her footing, pressed her back into the ground. Their lightsabers rolled uselessly away. Cere pinned the younger woman's body to the ground, arms at her sides, found in the Force what her body did not have in weight.

What are you doing to this galaxy? What are you building with all that kyber?

They had shared a connection once. Read each other's thoughts as easily as their own. Won so many battles, side by side. That bond did not exist anymore. But it was the chisel that Cere needed to force apart those shields now.

It wasn't fair. Cere had lived decades longer in communion with the Force. Her former Padawan had grown so strong. But she could not match her at this.

A moon. No. A space station. A space station with a thrumming heart of kyber. A ray of green light. And a planet blown apart in mere seconds, leaving empty space as though it had never existed at all. A sinister whisper.

There will be no more rebellion, Apprentice, when this power is ours.

Trilla gave a howl of pain and kicked Cere in her gut, casting her precious moments too late from her body. Each summoned their lightsaber to their hand but Trilla struck first. White, blinding pain. Cere staggered where she stood but deflected the fatal blow. And they stared at each other in disbelief.

Cere had told herself all these years that she could not kill her Padawan. That it was a phenomenon too unnatural to ever reconcile. And yet she had done something so much worse to her. Had torn through her defences and invaded the private recesses of her mind. The violation had left Trilla shaking in her entire body.

"He will kill me for this," she professed.

And yet neither had the strength nor the heart to end it now; Trilla was shattered in the Force and Cere in her body. Cere staggered back into the jungle, hobbling on a thigh that gaped with a 'saber burn. Down to bone, she thought. She would lose the leg, perhaps. A smaller price than she ought to have paid.

The Sith apprentice did not follow her.

"It is too late, Junda," she muttered. "It is unassailable."

Ursa Wren disembarked from her ship on Concord Dawn with borrowed blasters drawn. Her reception was about as warm as she'd expected.

"If I were a less honourable soldier, I'd have shot you on sight," Rau extended in greeting.

Ursa holstered Bo-Katan's spare blasters.

"I can always trust you to be a gentleman, Rau."

"Whereas you, Countess Wren, I trust for nothing."

Ursa gave a gracious sigh.

"So you wouldn't believe I've switched sides again?"

Rau barked out a laugh.

"Again? It is certainly your habit to cast your allegiance where it suits you."

"It doesn't suit me at all," Ursa reasoned, folding her arms. "Life was far simpler for my family entertaining Gar Saxon at the dinner table. But I can't do it anymore. His time is up."

She'd been bold to play this card but it was the only card she had to play. Fenn Rau was right; they had little in common and every reason to be enemies. Rau and his Protectors had been loyal to the Kryze government and the Republic in the years when Ursa and Bo-Katan had fought for the Death Watch under Pre Vizsla. It had been Bo-Katan who had taken the leadership of the newly formed Peace Corps – a title Rau would not have been unreasonable to expect for himself. Those years of fighting on the same side had not softened Rau's dislike of the former Death Watch soldiers and Ursa's subservience to Saxon in the years gone past could have only deepened it.

But Ursa had lived in awkward parallel to Fenn Rau for long enough to know that he might not have liked her, but he detested Saxon.

"Are you going to invite me in?" Ursa pressed, in his silence.

Rau grumbled but waved an obliging hand and she followed him out of the cold.

"Cheerful lighting."

"Does it not make you feel at home?"

"Krownest sees occasional sun."

They sat at opposite ends of an unadorned table. It reminded Ursa, with a faint pang of nostalgia, of living in soldiers' quarters once more.

"So you have come to ask me to join some suicide mission against Gar Saxon and his Empire?"

Ursa shook her head.

"It's not a suicide mission."

"Do you remember what happened to Satine Kryze?" Rau challenged.

"Her son and sister remember best of all," Ursa agreed. "And yet they have courage enough for this fight."

Rau's gaze widened in brief surprise then narrowed.

"You are working with Korkaran Kryze?"

"Working my way back into his favour."

"And I am to be some sort of gift you proffer up to him?"

"You are to be an ally. If you see fit."

Rau grimaced.

"The Prince no longer knows what it is to live on Mandalore."

"He knows what it is to live under the Empire. And he knows how to fight."

Rau gave a grudging nod.

"He and his troops have fought honourably. I have heard of the lives saved across the galaxy."

His gaze sharpened.

"Which is why I find it difficult to believe they are willing to fight alongside you," he sniped, almost childishly, before softening. "Or me."

They were not friends. They were nothing close to it. But they weren't enemies, anymore. Ursa knew that shame too.

"I hear you have been far less accommodating to the Empire's rule than I have been."

Rau sighed.

"I have done what I could get away with. But they have asked me to report rebel activity and I have obliged often enough to remain in their good graces."

"No one will hold it against you," Ursa told him. "They forgave me."

Rau made a noise of scepticism but did not argue the point any further.

"They deserve our protection," Ursa pressed. "Those fighting against Imperial colonisation on Mandalore. Those fighting against Imperial colonisation everywhere. Against the destruction of ancient cultures everywhere. Even if you cannot join the fight yet, Fenn, you can protect them. Allow them free passage."

"My protection counts for little," Rau muttered. "The might of the Empire is enormous. I have lost one war for the Republic and you are asking me to join another."

"We won't let it be another," Ursa willed. "We won't. My daughter is fighting that battle and she deserves to have her home back. The home that I let her be lost from."

Rau raised a brow.

"So it is your own guilt that has brought you here to me?"

Ursa shook her head.

"Years ago, I drowned in my guilt. But I am not sorry anymore. I am here to fight. I will fight for the rest of my life."

She grasped Rau's wrist across the table.

"Fight with us. Find your honour again."

Rau watched her with stony gaze but did not flinch away from her touch.

"Or instead," Ursa reasoned. "Report me to the Empire, have another Saxon installed on Krownest, and forget about ever seeing Mandalore free again in your lifetime."

Rau thought a long moment in silence.

"I will speak to the Prince," he decided eventually. "But not because I find you at all agreeable."

Ursa grinned and released his wrist.

"And here I was, thinking we were best friends."

"You're crazy, Wren," Rau muttered.

He rose to his feet, grumbling to himself.

"And I've gone crazy too, it seems."

He shook his head in faint disbelief.

"Crazy enough for another losing war."

Ursa Wren had made good on her word. Fenn Rau and his Protectors had granted the Alliance valuable tracts of safe passage through their pocket of Mandalorian space and Rau had survived all of Korkie's rather invasive probes through the Force in assessment of his loyalty. After a few lunar cycles of safe rebel travel through Concord Dawn, Korkie delivered both of the recruits to Yavin 4 for their first meeting as members of the Mandalorian branch of the Alliance to Restore the Republic.

"Our time is very close now," Korkie outlined.

He pointed to each of his companions across the table in turn. Bo-Katan, Ursa, Fenn.

"Kalevala, Krownest and Concord Dawn. With those that are loyal to us, we have the means now to re-take Mandalore from its Imperial invaders."

"Are you saying I finally have licence to kill Saxon?" Ursa asked.

Korkie avoided the grimace that was still, after all these years, his natural response to such a question. His mother had never killed her enemies. And he never wanted to feel again what he had felt when he near-fatally wounded Trilla Suduri.

"We will depose of Saxon," Korkie agreed.

The Alliance had no prison cells. Had no soldiers to spare guarding prisoners. And the prisons his mother had built would be nothing but rubble on the surface of Mandalore.

"It should be me," he mused. "I am the Mand'alor."

His Ba'vodu fixed him with knowing gaze.

"You've proven yourself already. You don't need to do it, Korkie."

The close eyes of his new allies upon him.

"I can do it," Korkie asserted.

"I know," Bo-Katan agreed. "But I don't think you want to. And that's not an insult, ad'ik."

Korkie groaned. Thirty-kriffing-standard and fondly called a child at the most important political meeting of his life.

"I think you don't want to do it and that's because you're a good person," Bo-Katan went on. "We know what you have done and what you can do. And we admire you. All of us admire you."

There was no dissent from around the table.

"But anyhow, Ursa and I are both angry and morally compromised. We gave into that long ago. None of those Jedi-pacifist qualms. Let us do it."

Korkie looked at Fenn Rau for the faintest sign of disapproval. But there was none.

"Honour is not measured in scalps," Fenn agreed.

Korkie blinked his surprise and tried not to look too relieved.

"Well, anyhow, we-"

He paused then, with a frown. Something amiss in the Force. He looked up and saw the door slam open.

"Cere?"

Korkie had not seen the Jedi Master since Arkanis. And even then, he wasn't sure he'd seen her so distressed.

"Excuse the interruption. They told me I'd find you here. Korkie? We need to talk."

Korkie rose warily to his feet, his companions perplexed around him. He followed Cere out of the meeting room and into the narrow corridor.

"What's wrong, Cere?"

The Jedi Master sighed, agitated.

"I needed to speak to someone from the Alliance and I don't know if anyone else will believe me…"

She pressed her hand to her forehead, smoothed away her grimace, took a steadying breath.

"The Empire's making a superweapon. Planet-destroyer."

Korkie blinked.

"What?"

"I've been on Jedha. They've been mining kyber like crazy there-"

"They're mining like crazy everywhere."

"But it's kyber, Korkie. And the rate at which they are mining it is obscene. Nothing they've ever done before. And I suspected it was for weapons manufacturing so I went out to Devaron and-"

She blanched.

"I've seen it, Korkie."

"Seen it? The superweapon? On Devaron?"

"Through Trilla," Cere explained. "I goaded her with sabotage of Devaron and she came to stop me and I-"

Her nausea was palpable in the Force, her breaths coming heavy and hard.

"I knew that I could overpower her in the Force. Use the bond that we once had-"

She broke off, disgusted with herself.

"Anyway. I saw it."

Korkie nodded pensively. He was not the righteous teenager who had so detested Cere for her failures. The morality of using one's broken Padawan bond to glimpse protected thoughts could be pondered at another date and in any case was no worse than Korkie having stabbed a lightsaber into Trilla's gut on Yaga Minor.

"What does planet-destroyer even mean?" he asked.

"I mean it destroys planets, Korkie," Cere muttered grimly. "Blows them to pieces."

"Whole planets?"

"Leaves behind nothing but a sort of sparse asteroid field."

Korkie rubbed at his forehead.

"Well…"

He sighed.

"I guess we'd better do something about that. Before we take my own planet back."

He gave an admittedly extravagant groan.

"I don't imagine the Empire would need much encouragement to destroy Mandalore forever."

How he would tell his freshly-formed band of Mandalorian liberators would be a headache. The Mand'alor wasn't supposed to flake on plans. He wondered vaguely what Fenn Rau's appetite for destroying superweapons was like.

"Bad timing," he muttered.

Cere fixed him with pointed gaze.

"Good timing," she corrected him. "It's a good thing I told you now and you didn't see it for the first time hovering above Mandalore."

Korkie acquiesced with a nod.

"Yeah. You're right. Is it done?"

"I don't think so."

"And where is it?"

"Don't know. She pushed me out before I could see."

"Hmm."

Korkie leaned against the wall, ran a pensive thumb along the angle of his jaw.

"You look like your father after a Council meeting," Cere informed him. "A bad Council meeting."

Korkie snickered.

"And I feel like him too. But no matter. Thank you for telling me, Cere. And thank you for…"

He hesitated.

"Thank you for your courage. For the pain of finding that information."

Cere shook her head.

"I shouldn't be thanked."

Korkie shrugged.

"The ends justify the means, perhaps."

He didn't know if that was true. He'd not figured out what he believed in, exactly, in his hurried ascension to adulthood in this moral minefield of a galaxy. His mother had never been a utilitarian. And he wasn't sure, exactly, what his father had believed in, except for Anakin.

"Well, I suppose we come up with a plan to destroy the superweapon?" he ventured.

"Some proof of its existence would help," Cere muttered. "The ravings of a mad Jedi don't hold much weight. Not to mention some plans would come in handy. I don't know how in the hells we're even going to begin to destroy it."

Korkie nodded, somewhat fortified. He still felt an impostor with Darksaber in hand, sometimes. But he could do this, one step at a time.

"Plans," he agreed. "We'll need to find some plans."

A successful week of writing: we now know that 5000 words can be written on my week's commute to and from work. So hopefully the chapters keep coming at a good rate.

Lots of logistics and plot progression in this chapter - I hope it was still an enjoyable read. I love hot mess adolescent Korkie with all my heart but I love adult Korkie too, still trying to figure out exactly how to be the Mand'alor. We all get impostor syndrome sometimes, right?

Next chapter, a defecting Imperial pilot knows something about those plans. Korkie recruits some friends ahead of the Rebellion's biggest battle to date.

xx - S.