IT HAD HAPPENED this way to the Jedi, Kanan remembered. Responding to some command from the Emperor, clone troopers had eliminated the Republic’s cherished fighting force. It had been a dark day—by far, the darkest in Caleb Dume’s young life. Kanan Jarrus usually avoided thinking about it.

But seeing the stormtroopers turning on their master: That was both amazing and delicious. Even if the Imperials were also pointing their weapons at Kanan and his friends. More troops hoisted open the main door, bringing the total number of white-armored guards to a dozen.

Up atop the bulk-loader, Kanan saw that Hera didn’t know what to think. But there was no mistaking Vidian’s reaction to the holographic captain.

“This is a rash act, Sloane. Have you lost your mind?”

“You’re under arrest for multiple violations of the Imperial legal code. Falsification of testimony to the Emperor. Profiteering without permission of the Emperor. Breach of faith with the Emperor. Attempting to damage or destroy strategic assets deemed vital to—”

“The Emperor,” Vidian finished, anger rising. “You dare invoke his name?” He pointed at Kanan. “These—anarchists have poisoned your mind against me. They’re Gorse partisans, seeking to hinder our project.” He looked back outside the viewports at the moon. “A project that must go on!”

“Forget it, Vidian,” Sloane said. “You won’t be destroying anything today.”

Kanan could hardly restrain his response. His gambit had worked, after all.

Vidian stared as the pair of stormtroopers approached him, as if deciding what to do. “I don’t think so,” he said. He looked over to a pair of his cybernetic assistants. “Restore the Detonation Control uplink.”

Sloane snapped at him. “We already disconnected—”

“You disconnected nothing. The injection towers, the logistical systems—you only installed them. My workers manufactured them—and my workers can take back control for me at any time.”

“If that’s the way you want it,” Sloane said. “Death warrant extended to all workers on Forager’s bridge. Stormtroopers, fire!”

The stormtroopers executed their order—and several of Vidian’s aides—immediately, at point-blank range. Vidian yelled something, but Kanan didn’t hear it. Blasterfire blazing all around, he hit the deck. Scrambling behind the smashed remains of the forklift cab, he saw Zaluna. She looked rough, her face a scorched mess.

We’ve got to get out of here. He looked back to see Hera scrambling down the bulk-loader to the floor, dodging shots as she did. All around, Vidian’s droids and aides fell.

Blaster in hand, Kanan considered joining in before having second thoughts. For an older man—if any man was still in that body—Vidian had worked into a superhuman rage. Whatever source powered the man’s limbs, it had yet to run out of juice. Shaking off a blaster shot from a stormtrooper, Vidian launched himself at his attacker, crushing the man’s helmet in his hands. A horrific scream later, and Vidian was on to another stormtrooper.

Kanan spotted a newly opened portal to the side. Hera provided cover fire as Kanan lifted Zaluna’s body. He rushed to the exit and set her down outside the door.

“Wait here,” he said.

“That…a joke?” she muttered.

“Sorry.” Kanan turned back to face the room.

Hera, even amid chaos, remembered what they most needed to do. “The comm console,” she called out, pointing past the latest melee. She leapt out from behind the forklift, even as Kanan bounded from the other side.

Vidian was already there.

The last stormtrooper had already fallen, Kanan realized too late. To a person, Vidian’s workers were all down, too—just more workplace casualties in the count’s machine. Only he, Hera, and Vidian remained here alive. And Vidian had just completed punching in a series of keys. “Detonation Control linkup restored,” Vidian said. “Just over a minute to spare.”

It was the same smug, self-satisfied voice they’d always heard from Vidian—but the man himself was much changed. His tunic was in tatters; his artificial skin and nose had been scorched off his face, leaving just a charred silver mask. Sparks flew from his mechanical joints. Yet he was unbowed. He turned back to Kanan and Hera. “I don’t know what you told Sloane. But once the Emperor sees my results, it won’t matter.”

“Your results?” Hera yelled. “Destruction and genocide!”

Vidian snorted. “You’re going about this wrong, you know. You’ll never get anywhere against the Empire. You’re too undisciplined, too disorganized.”

“We’ll learn,” Hera said, brandishing her weapon. “The people will stop you. We’ll stop you.”

“We’ve had this fight before, the three of us. You don’t have anything that can hurt me.”

“Maybe I do.” Kanan felt for the holder on his left leg where his lightsaber was hidden.

“Nonsense,” Vidian said, waving his hand dismissively. “If you had anything, you’d have used it already. Right?”

Hera looked searchingly at Kanan as Vidian turned back to the console. Kanan began to reach for his secret weapon—but then he paused. Something, somewhere told him: No, not that. Not now.

Not yet.

“Forget him, Twi’lek,” the cyborg said, reaching for the console. “He doesn’t have what it takes to stop me.”

“But I do,” said Captain Sloane, hologram flickering back into view. Her expression was icy, her eyes narrow. “Ultimatum gunnery control, target the transmission tower and fire.”

Now Kanan moved. Moved the way his instincts told him to go. He dived not at Vidian, but at Hera, bowling her over even as one of the viewports behind the count lit up like a hundred suns.

If there was a sound, Kanan didn’t hear it. There was only light, and motion, and heat as Forager wrenched violently under the impact of the Star Destroyer’s turbolaser barrage. Rolling away from Hera, it took what seemed like an eternity for his eyes to adjust. The lights were out in the command center, and Vidian was staggering around like one caught in a hurricane. Kanan realized why, looking out the windows. It wasn’t just Ultimatum, now, but the TIE fighters pummeling Forager’s energy shield. The vessel was in one piece—for the moment—but every strike on the shield shook everything inside madly.

Somehow, Vidian reached the console again. Kanan was ready to go after him, even shaken—but this time it was Hera who grabbed him, keeping him down close to the floor. He saw the reason. Forager’s superstructure was holding, but the transmission tower, visible through the room’s viewports, shook itself to pieces under a direct hit on the shield from Ultimatum.

Sloane had called her shot, Kanan realized. And her gunners had done their jobs.

His chance to destroy Cynda gone, Vidian howled and turned. He ran back through the main entrance, paying Kanan and Hera no mind. Finding his blaster on the floor nearby, Kanan rose to follow Vidian.

Behind him, Hera called out. “Kanan, no!” He looked back. She was still getting to her knees near the door he had dragged Zaluna through, beneath the catwalk that had been damaged earlier. “We have to get to a—”

Time stopped for Kanan. And then it started again, slowly.

He saw everything. He saw the TIE bomber outside, unloosing its torpedo at Forager’s energy shield. He saw the bridge shake violently, in response. He saw the heavy durasteel catwalk, already weakened from Hera’s forklift entrance, snap from its moorings. He saw it fall toward Hera. Hera—not oblivious, but in no position to get out of the way.

He recognized the obstacles between them—the debris and the bodies, lying across the fastest route. Without thinking, he swept them away with his mind, clearing a path. No barrier blocked him from Hera.

And he moved. He moved faster than when he’d saved Yelkin, faster than he’d remembered moving in years. All in the hope of grabbing her and diving beneath the doorway.

Except time moved faster, too—faster than his hopes. He reached her too late, just as he’d been too late to save Master Billaba. The Force had been too late for many that day. But it was with him now, as he slid to the floor by Hera’s side. Hera, knowing the danger she was in, put her hand up as if to shoo him away, to safety. Kanan looked instead upward, waving with his hand—

—and suspending the giant catwalk in midair, centimeters from his and Hera’s heads.

She stared at it, dumbfounded—and then at him. Self-conscious, Kanan shoved at the air, pushing the levitated mass off to the side. It landed with a colossal crash.

Forager shuddered again under the Imperial attack. The view outside was a thing of perversely wondrous beauty, he thought: flashes of light before the moon as the starfighters made their runs. But it all paled before the look he saw here in the darkness, in Hera’s eyes.

“But—” she started to say. “But you’re—”

With a wry smile, Kanan put his finger to her mouth. “Shh. Don’t tell anyone.”

She looked at him for a long moment in wonderment before understanding came to her—and a gentle smile came to her face. She nodded. “Let’s go.”