Raey's breath caught in his throat.

He suddenly remembered, vividly, the red lightsaber that had torn through the wing of his first stolen Tie-fighter, the crash that had gotten Dameron and him captured in the first place. That Knight had been a threat without features, a shadow in the whirling sand, but these two didn't seem to care to maintain that same distant mystique.

The man with the lightsaber wore the same kind of robes and cloak as the acolytes who had chased Raey into Leia's temple, but his hood was thrown back to reveal the pale, tattooed headtails of a twi'lek. There was no color in his skin, just light grey and the black of the markings, but the glow of his lightsaber gave his ashen flesh a reddish tinge.

The woman next to him wore armor, not robes, and her face was hidden by a matching helmet. Jet black plate, swooping up at the shoulders and ridged all over like the bony spines of small fish had been incorporated into the design to please some twisted aesthetic. If not for the way she stood, it would have been hard to determine her gender from the armor itself, but she leaned heavily on one leg, head cocked and bare hands planted on her armored sides in an unmistakably feminine pose. Raey had seen women at the trading posts stand like that – he always tried to avoid them.

He saw all that, and yet no one made a move. Ar'tak slid one foot forward, ready for anything, and yet his lightsaber still hung, untouched, at his belt. The twi'lek man tilted his wrist, letting his lightsaber twirl in slow, vertical ovals at his side, but neither he nor his armored companion moved to attack.

LN's voice was low, quiet enough that even Raey, just on the other side of Ar'tak, could barely hear her. "Can you take them?"

Ar'tak had gone completely serious, not a hint of his earlier good humor remaining as he replied, "It depends."

"On?"

"If they are as confident with the Force as they are with their lightsabers."

As if on cue, the twi'lek twitched and leaned forward, his spinning lightsaber stopping to point steadily at Ar'tak.

"Let me bring it down myself, my lady," he said gleefully, projecting so his rough voice echoed around the hanger. "Allow me to claim it's crystal for the Knights."

The woman's voice sounded as eager as her companion's, though her expression was hidden by the carved mask of her helmet.

"No, dearest one, not yet. This little Jedi brought friends. We are outnumbered, you see... I couldn't let you fight alone against all those blue-eyes."

Ar'tak's eyes (the only blue ones among them) narrowed. "I will try to hold them off," he muttered out of the side of his mouth. "Get to the fighter and take off as soon as you can."

LN stiffened and Raey grabbed Ar'tak's arm.

"We're not going to just fly off without you," he protested, but Ar'tak shook him off with a scowl.

"The acolyte, I could probably handle, even with the lightsaber. But that woman is a Knight. Can't you feel it, Raey? We can't win this. I'm the only one who can stall them, so I have to."

"Blue-eyes!" called the twi'lek, stalking closer. "You are the last thing I need to bring before the forge, so draw your lightsaber. And don't let my woman kill you - that's my job."

The armored woman unclipped a black hilt from her fish-spine belt, and the smile in her voice grew even more obvious. "Final strike to whoever gets it first!" she exclaimed, and lunged forward.

Everything lit up at once. Ar'tak's lightsaber appeared in his hand in the blink of an eye, the pale blue searing to life so close to Raey that he could feel the heat radiating off it. The Knight's lightsaber leapt from her hand even as it ignited, a whirling violet projectile that easily passed the twi'lek charging them, aimed directly at Raey's face.

"Run!" yelled Ar'tak, but he didn't need to. LN was already moving, darting off to the left, her stolen blaster blazing. Raey threw himself to the right, ducking low as Ar'tak's lightsaber swung to intercept the purple blade. They met with a flash of clashing sound, then Ar'tak was moving, running to meet the Knight and her acolyte.

Blaster bolts flew over Raey's head, deflected by the Knight who, somehow, already had her lightsaber back in hand. LN cried out, but whether from shock or pain or something else, Raey couldn't tell. He kept his head down and sprinted off to the right, adrenaline and fear adding to his speed.

Lightsabers clashed noisily behind him, but he didn't look. He turned in an arc and ran towards the fighters, hoping desperately that Ar'tak's distraction would hold. He had seen what those Jedi weapons were capable of. If they cut through starships so easily, his puny bones wouldn't stand a chance.

Blaster fire. He risked a glance.

LN was closing from the left, still firing. Ar'tak and the black acolyte were face to face, sabers locked, but only for an instant. The armored Knight didn't even look at LN - she deflected blaster bolts without seeming to notice and pounced at Ar'tak, forcing the Jedi apprentice to retreat hastily before her flashing blade.

They weren't paying attention to him.

"LN!" Raey screamed, and her head jerked towards him in surprise. He pointed at the Knight's fighter, sitting right next to the one he was just about to reach. He didn't wait to make sure she acknowledged, or even understood, his plan and climbed up onto the roof of their fighter, gritting his teeth against the continued, frantic sounds of battle just beyond his peripheral vision.

"Concentrate," he told himself firmly. "Step one: get in-" He pulled the hatch open with a grunt. "- the ship!"

A glance up showed LN had, at least, the first part of his spontaneous plan down. She crouched on top of the Knight's fighter, waiting for the hatch to finish its automatic opening sequence while firing off carefully-aimed shots at the duelists.

Raey slid down through the opening hatch the moment the gap was wide enough, then clambered recklessly over seats to reach the front controls. "Engines, on," he muttered from a very awkward position; his legs pushed against the gunner's chair, his stomach pressed against the top of the pilot's chair, and one hand exploring the control console while the other braced against the armrest to hold him steady. A roar of engines told him he had found the right button, then he slid backwards into the gunner chair. "Guns, guns, where are the guns?"

They were pretty intuitive. He found the activation switch, clutched the triggers, and gave the targeting system a cursory glance before abandoning it as unnecessary. There were no enemy fighters in the hanger, and people didn't show up. He rose in his chair and saw the three combatants close to the hanger wall, their lightsabers a whirling light-show of near-death experiences.

The triggers clicked in with a satisfying chck. Two huge bolts of green energy roared over the heads of the fighters and hit the wall with shuddering impacts Raey could feel in his bones.

"Come on, Ar'tak!"

There was no way the apprentice could hear him from the wrong side of a fighter, lightsabers humming in his ears, but somehow... he almost seemed to. The distraction of Raey's practice-shot didn't appear to phase him and he used it to disengage from a hopelessly outmatched fight; thrusting out a hand (and Jedi magic) to push the twi'lek acolyte back through the air, then dodging away from the Knight's swing to get out of reach.

Then, he took off towards the fighters.

Raey had to get the ship turning. He ground his teeth together and abandoned the gunner's chair, vaulting over into the pilot's position. The set-up wasn't the same as the one in the shuttle, but it was close enough that Raey knew his technical instincts would take him the rest of the way.

The fighter rose slowly into the air, angling down and turning just slightly towards the enemies. Raey didn't close his eyes - he couldn't without losing sight of his targets - but he pretended he did. He concentrated on the weapons console, on the triggers he had been using moments before. The satisfying click as they depressed.

Chck.

The Knight leapt backwards, flipping through the air to avoid the shot. The fighter fire and smoke forced the combatants further apart, and Ar'tak didn't need to continue the fight. He ran, straight towards the fighter from the side while Raey rained shots down at the lightsaber-wielding enemies.

Then Ar'tak was yanked backwards, his momentum flipping him off his feet into a vicious fall. He rolled over onto his hands and knees, visibly shaking, and Raey felt his own throat closing. The guns stopped firing as his concentration broke. The Knight strode out of the smoke, her black gauntlet clenched in a fist.

LN's ship roared in, the wings scrapping against the floor, flat-out ramming into the acolyte through the smokey haze. The Knight's upraised hand dropped and she whirled towards LN, but the former-stormtrooper didn't stick around. The fighter turned abruptly in place and then swooped out of the hanger, out into open space. Raey's focus snapped back to his own ship as hard boots hit the hull, then Ar'tak dropped in through the still-open hatch.

"Go!" he panted, his voice pained, and pulled the hatch closed with his Jedi powers. Raey followed LN's wise lead and yanked the controls around, then gave the engine every bit of power the little fighter could handle.

Somehow, even over the roar of the engines and the increasing distance, Raey still heard, or felt, the Knight screaming at him. Like the acolyte in the jungle, she promised death.

.

"Are you alright?" Raey shouted over the screaming engines of their ship. Ar'tak's reply was tight with barely-suppressed pain.

"She got me twice. Narrow misses, both times... could have lost a leg. And my head."

Raey meant to say something, but in the moment he spent trying to figure out what to say, their fighter's communicator crackled to life.

"The station turrets are warming up," LN warned, and her fighter swerved in its path next to them. "Don't zigzag; they will find your center and it only takes one or two good hits to kill a light fighter. Be unpredictable."

"Easy to say, hard to do," muttered Raey to himself. A set of coordinates flickered across his console and LN continued barking orders.

"This is the location I got from the station. Meet me there. We may not have long before someone figures out what we were after and they come after us, so we have to move fast."

"Swerve!" exclaimed Ar'tak and Raey reacted almost before the apprentice could finish the word, diving to and peeling away from LN's fighter only a moment before turret-fire from the station ripped through space between them.

"Why is it that every time I get to pilot a spaceship, people immediately begin trying to kill me?"

It wasn't meant to be a real question, but Ar'tak, having spent nowhere near enough time around him to know Raey's habits, took it as such.

"Maybe because, if people weren't trying to kill you, LN would insist on piloting the ship?"

Raey jerked the controls sideways to avoid another stream of turret-fire and Ar'tak yelped, thrown sideways by the sudden change of direction. His groan of pain made Raey wince in sympathy, but he couldn't straighten out just yet. He caught a glimpse of LN's fighter darting off into hyperspace out of the corner of his eye and realized he should be putting the coordinates she had sent through the fighter's nav-computer.

"It's fine," he muttered under his breath, letting go of the steering with one hand so he could input the hyperdrive sequence. His eyes constantly moved, back and forth between screens. The fighter was significantly different from the shuttle LN had taught him in, but he knew these ships. LN had told him the operations that needed to be done in order for the ship to launch off into hyperspace, and navigating the different systems to engage those operations was just a matter of understanding the mechanics. "Easy as sand."

"What does that mean?"

"Not talking to you, Ar'tak."

The communicator blinked at him again, but the voice that came through the computer wasn't LN's this time - it was the Knight's.

"Run, Jedi," she said, hatred dripping from every word. "Run away to your hiding hole, lurk in the dark like the rodents you are. The Fury will find you. He is close, and when he digs you out you will run right into our blades. So flee, little blue-"

Raey turned off the communicator, cutting short what he was sure would have become a long and unbearable rant. Ar'tak let out a sharp sigh of breath.

"I hate bloody Sith," the apprentice grumbled, then hissed in pain again. "Or whatever they are..."

The navigation computer finished processing the coordinates and Raey's hand moved to hover over the hyperdrive controls. "Hold on," he warned.

The little fighter leapt forward at his command, away from the station full of people who wanted to kill them.

.

LN stared, horrified, at the world below her tiny fighter. Those tiny, timid, incomplete rumors she had been hearing for years, whispered between crews and condensed into their most basic forms, solidified together now into one cohesive whole.

The Knights are building something.

The Empire left us one last weapon.

The New Republic is doomed.

Troopers are being reassigned. Hundreds of thousands of them, and no one knows where they are going...

It was a superweapon, that much she understood, but the sheer scope of it made what should have been reasonable seem impossible. Insane, even.

She stared down the barrel of a planet-turned-cannon, a huge dark maw rimmed with city-sized structures that she couldn't even begin to guess the purpose of.

Hundreds of thousands?

Millions. It would take millions, at least, to build this monster. Not stormtroopers - they would be security - but machines. Or slaves. Either way, it would be an enormously expensive project, and to keep it secret...?

The First Order is getting outside help.

Raey's voice finally managed to break through her haze, repeating impatiently his demands for answers. She had none, but she had to do something. There were First Order ships in-between them and the planet-weapon, and sooner or later someone would notice them.

"Raey? The situation has changed. We need to go."

"But we came to rescue Dameron, and that hasn't changed. We always knew he would be somewhere dangerous."

LN shook her head, not caring that Raey couldn't see her. "This is bigger then your friend. Bigger then any of us. That... that is a planet-killer. Don't you see? And no one knows about it. We have to get out of here. We have to warn..."

"Planet-killer?"

"This is the end, Raey. Their secret weapon. This is how they mean to destroy the Republic... the Resistance... New Alderaan. Anyone and everyone who the Knights decide to kill."

Raey went quiet for a minute. LN used the time to examine the ships hovering around the planet.

The Resurrection.

The Knights' flagship was the only destroyer in sight. A score of other large ships, huge haulers and cargo ships, shared space with smaller transports of a dozen different varieties. Some old Imperial, but more were alien.

The communicator blinked. "I can't leave him behind again, LN. I have to try. Ar'tak has got my back, so you go and warn the princess. We might even be able to find some information down there that can help the Resistance when they try to assault this thing."

LN grimaced. "I can't let you do that. You and Ar'tak will stick out like... well, like aliens in a row of stormtroopers. You don't know how to act, how to walk, and there will be thousands of eyes on you every-"

"That's not your decision to make, LN. Ar'tak and I are going down there. You can come with us if you really want to, but both of us agree that you should go warn Leia and the Resistance. You're right; this is a threat they need to know about."

Ar'tak's voice, quieter and more distant, added, "Tell Master Leia that the Knights might know where New Alderaan is. I don't know who 'the Fury' is, but if anyone knows what to do about the Knight's threat, it would be Master Leia."

They won't make it to the surface. "You will be shot down before-"

"LN." Ar'tak's voice grew clearer, and LN could almost see him leaning over Raey's shoulder as he spoke. "Trust me. Trust us. The Force is calling me, and I think Raey feels it, too. He and I have something to do on that planet, something important. Perhaps it is saving one of the leaders of the Resistance, but perhaps it is even bigger then that."

Raey's voice, trembling with excitement. "This could be our Death Star, LN. We might be the Rogues, putting everything on the line to bring vital information about the weapon to the Rebellion."

"That mission did not end well for the messengers, Raey."

"But if not for them, the galaxy would still belong to the Empire. The old heroes knew when risks had to be taken."

"But we're not going to die," interrupted Ar'tak firmly. "I can feel it. Go on, LN, and don't worry. The Force will be with us."

LN closed her eyes for a long moment, then gave in. "I hope it will be," she replied quietly. "Raey, send me the coordinates to New Alderaan."