THEY SAT BY JO, tending to his wounds and nursing him back to something resembling good health. He was beaten up, but worse, his spirit was broken.

“We’re not going to let them take you to your parents,” Mattis told Jo.

Jo shook his head weakly. “You are. You can’t risk your own lives.”

“We can and we will.” That was Lorica, more resolute than Mattis had ever seen her. And he’d seen her really obstinate. “When Ingo returns, I’m going to make him open this cell and let us out. Maybe he’ll even come with us.”

“And if that fails, I have this hole,” Mattis said, leaving Jo’s side and dragging the bunk away from his barely dug tunnel.

“That’s a great hole, Mattis,” Jo said sarcastically. He winced with pain as he laughed.

“Hey! Don’t make fun of my hole.” Mattis was feeling very sensitive about his efforts. After all, his escape plan was going better than Jo’s, wasn’t it? Jo had been found out by the First Order, whereas no one yet knew about Mattis’s tunnel.

Lorica and Jo laughed at him some more. “Mattis,” Lorica said, “you’ve barely made any progress. Let me work on Ingo some more. I’m sure I can push him to free us before they come for Jo.”

Jo pushed himself up so he was leaning against the wall. “Forget your hole for a minute,” he told Mattis.

“I’ll never forget my hole. Someday that hole is going to be a tunnel.”

Jo shook his head in good humor. “Just for a minute.”

“Fine. But I don’t want to talk about Lorica using her woo-woo powers on Ingo anymore.”

“Are you threatened because my plan is going to work and your hole isn’t big enough for a space beetle?” Lorica scoffed.

“Forget Ingo, too,” Jo said.

“Huh?” Both Lorica and Mattis shot Jo questioning looks.

“Just—just for a minute,” Jo clarified. He sighed and offered them a pained smile. Smiling was unusual for Jo. It was even more unusual considering their circumstances. “I’m about to be punished by the First Order,” he reminded them.

“We know. That’s why we’re talking about getting you out of here,” Lorica countered. Then, to Mattis, she added, “I think he might have brain damage.”

“My brain is doing great,” Jo told her. “I just want to talk to you two.”

“We’re talking,” Mattis said. “These are words. I’m saying them. Words, words, words.”

Jo laughed dryly. “This is what I want,” he said. “I’m about to leave you guys forever. I don’t know what the First Order will do to me. I don’t think they’ll kill me; my parents aren’t that heartless. But I’ll never return to the Resistance.”

“Jo…” Mattis started to tell Jo that he was being silly. Surely he would return to them. But he couldn’t be his usual optimistic self. Not now. Jo was right. Once Wanten sent him away, Jo would be gone forever. Mattis was surprised to find himself depressed about this. He and Jo hadn’t gotten along very often, but after everything that had happened on Vodran, and the way Jo had stuck his neck out for them, he realized that they were friends after all.

Jo nodded, as if he’d read Mattis’s mind and was confirming their friendship. “I just want to remember something good,” he said.

“I want stories, too!” Cost chirped from her place in the bunk above Lorica. Mattis had almost forgotten she was there.

“Did anything good actually happen back on the base?” Lorica said snarkily.

“I met you guys,” Mattis said. It just fell out of his mouth.

“You mean, you met Dec and Aygee,” Lorica said.

“No,” Jo corrected her. “He means us. Right, Mattis?”

“Yeah,” Mattis admitted. “I mean, I know we weren’t friends at first, but I looked up to you two. Even though you were so mean, Jo.”

“I wanted to make you a good pilot.”

“I know. You just didn’t count on having a bunch of recruits who didn’t follow the rules that you understood. Me, Dec, Aygee-Ninety, Klimo. The way you learned to train us isn’t the way we’re built to learn, I guess. I’m sorry about it.”

“You’re going to be a great pilot,” Jo told him sincerely.

“I hope I am,” Mattis replied. “And if I am, it’s partly because of both of you. You weren’t always so bad.”

“We weren’t? Darn. We tried to be,” Jo joked.

“What about Snap and Karé’s wedding?”

“There was no wedding between Snap Wexley and Karé Kun,” Jo said seriously, and they all laughed. Because, of course, there had been. It was the worst-kept secret on the Resistance base. Somehow, J-Squadron had wound up right in the middle of it.

Snap Wexley, Karé Kun, and the rest of Black Squadron were all idolized by the new recruits. They, under the command of Poe Dameron, got to go on all the cool missions. And they, under the orders of Poe Dameron, were tasked with carrying out the secret wedding. Like everything J-Squadron had a hand in, though, it had been a disaster. Fortunately, Snap and Karé’s wedding was a hilarious disaster.

Poe had instructed Jo that the Resistance leaders should not find out about the wedding; General Leia and Admiral Ackbar and the others already had enough on their plates without worrying about the love story between a couple of their best pilots. He asked Jo if J-Squadron could help. So Jo gathered J-Squadron and dictated to each of them their duties for the secret wedding. Naturally, Jo didn’t consider anyone’s strengths or interests before handing out orders. He simply had a list of what had to be accomplished and tasked his recruits with each item.

That was how AG-90 wound up in charge of music, which turned out to be a happy accident. AG did a bit of fiddling with his vocoder and was able to turn his usually tuneless warbling into a sweet, melodic quaver that trilled like some pastoral bird or a relative of an axton-tarsier, those big-eyed, floppy-eared furry pets native to Ques. It was a lovely, if unrecognizable, tune to accompany Karé down the makeshift aisle that Sari had created. Sari outdid herself, scrounging for materials and then foraging in the nearby woods for decorative flowers and branches and the like. She transformed the little corner of the tarmac where the ceremony was held into a woodland hideaway.

The trouble arose because of Mattis and Klimo’s assignment. They were put in charge of food. That actually hadn’t been one of Poe Dameron’s requests—he reasoned, smartly, that it would be too difficult to prepare anything special on the base. They had access to what was in the mess, and that was all. But Jo, wanting to impress the older pilot, insisted. And because he didn’t himself know what to do, he put Mattis and Klimo in charge of “preparing something special” for Snap, Karé, and their guests.

“They got something special, all right,” Mattis said, remembering. “They’re definitely not going to forget the food.”

“Or what the food did to everyone,” Jo agreed.

Mattis was handy in the kitchen. Growing up at the orphan farm on Durkteel, he’d learned to prepare foods with meager supplies for the younger kids. Oddy Muva of Black Squadron gained Mattis access to the mess hall, and Mattis and Klimo got to work. Mattis mixed up some crackling pudding from crackling pods and canned bantha milk. He wished he’d kept an eye on his concoction, though, because he later learned that, when he wasn’t looking, Klimo took the opportunity to throw in a dash of anilam, the powdered flavoring harvested from izy-leaves. Mattis didn’t know where Klimo found izy-leaves. Later, they were all laughing and farting too hard to figure it out.

As the host, Jo had the not-so-bright idea that all the attending wedding guests—which included almost everyone on the base, except for the leadership—should eat Mattis’s pudding before the ceremony. Which meant that everyone was happy and full during the dewy-eyed procession and heartfelt vows.

Poe himself officiated the wedding of his friends. If he felt the same rumbling in his guts that everyone else did as the ceremony proceeded, he was too cool a customer to show it. But he must have, for when it came time for him to ask if Snap Wexley took Karé Kun to be his wife, he only got as far as, “Do you, Snap Wexley, take Karé Kun to be your—” before his insides erupted in the most atmosphere-ripping flatulence the galaxy ever heard. Everyone laughed, because they sympathized. Their insides were doing somersaults as well.

But Poe Dameron was always cool, and he began again, asking, “Do you, Snap Wexley, take Karé Kun to be your wife?” managing to get the whole sentence out that time.

Snap was not so lucky. “I—” he began, and what followed was a four-alarm fart that lasted longer than the ceremony itself had thus far.

A wave of laughter washed over the crowd. And then again when Karé, in disbelief, yelled at her soon-to-be husband and then let out a deep, meteoric toot herself. She slapped both hands over her face, completely embarrassed, as Snap, Poe, and everyone else just let laughter reign.

Because soon, everyone who’d eaten the crackling pudding was sounding off like firecrackers, tooting and honking and letting loose with all kinds of gassy exclamations. It was mortifying and uproarious all at once. Mattis stood beside Jo, who emitted a high-pitched wheeeeeet! that was unlike anything anyone had ever heard. After it happened, Jo glared at Mattis as if to say, This is your fault. His anger was undercut, however, by another flatulent bellow and then peals of laughter that he just couldn’t help.

None of them could.

Amid the squeals of laughter and clamor of gut-ripping gas, Snap and Karé were married, AG, Oddy, and some of the others struck up a happy musical beat, and everyone on the Resistance base laughed and danced and farted late into the night.

Jo didn’t punish J-Squadron because, as he said, no one would ever mention the event again but in hushed whispers, but Mattis knew Jo had other reasons. It was because he’d had fun. It had been wild and silly, and there wasn’t a lot of opportunity for that in the Resistance. Fighting against the forces of evil was serious business, as it should be, but sometimes it was helpful to let loose and laugh. Mattis suspected Jo knew that, and that was why he didn’t exact any punishment.

“So, thanks,” Mattis said now, in their cell on Vodran. And as if to punctuate his point, Mattis released a prolonged monotone fart.

“Oh, Mattis, come on!” Lorica yelled, waving her hand in front of her face.

“You know you had fun, too,” Mattis scolded her. “Admit it. You like us.”

“Leave me out of your love fest,” Lorica said. For someone with a strong connection to emotions, she really tried to keep herself away from them.

“Lorica, you report for this love fest straightaway, soldier!” Jo ordered with a laugh.

“Not funny,” she told him.

“I think someone needs a hug.”

“I don’t need a hug.” Lorica scowled.

“You’re getting a hug,” Mattis said, and helped Jo to his feet.

The two of them wrapped themselves around her and, though she remained stiff and guarded, she laughed and said, “Okay, okay, I’ll miss you when you get thrown in a First Order cell.”

“I’m already in a First Order cell,” Jo pointed out, releasing Lorica and returning to the bunk with no small amount of hurt.

“But maybe not for long,” Mattis said. He was resolved, especially after that trip down memory lane, that Jo wouldn’t be taken from them. “There’s still the hole. If we work together, we can—”

“No!” Cost bolted upright in her upper bunk so forcefully she nearly hit her head on the ceiling. “Don’t say it! Don’t talk about it!”

“Cost,” Lorica said in that calming way she had.

Cost put her hands over her ears and shook her head, as if she could resist Lorica’s emotional sway. “No, no, no, no,” she repeated. “Don’t say it. The walls talk! The walls talk!”

“That’s just Gherd,” Mattis told Cost, lightly grabbing her wrist and pulling it from her head. “He’s a friend. And he can help us, too. He knows the tunnels in here. He can dig out with us. All together, Cost.”

“No, I am the ears of the wall!” Cost wailed.

Cost had crawled back into her confused mind, Mattis figured. He was worried about her, but she was just another plate on the buffet of worries he presently had. And he didn’t have time to decipher her ramblings. He had to work on his tunnel, he had to protect Jo, and he had to make sure that Lorica wasn’t slipping into true emotions for Ingo. His bounty of anxiety-inducing tasks was overflowing.

“She’s been spying,” Lorica said, as realization dawned on her.

“What? Cost? No.” Mattis waved away the idea. How could Cost spy on them? She barely knew what was real. She had no memory; the thing with the tentacles had taken it from her.

“Yes,” Lorica said, turning on Cost. “She was the only other one in the cell when Jo came to tell me he was working on an escape plan.”

Cost’s eyes were like two moons, pale and welling with liquid. She nodded limply. “I told,” she sobbed.

Jo was halfway out of the bunk before the pain hit him and he had to stop. “You got me roughed up,” he said angrily. “They could have killed me.”

Cost sobbed some more.

“She didn’t know,” Mattis explained. He knew that was true. Cost would never have willfully sent any of them to harm. After the things she had told Mattis about her own travails, he couldn’t imagine she’d ever try to hurt someone else.

“They talk and talk,” Cost pleaded with Jo, trying to make him understand her. “Confused Cost.”

“See?” Mattis said.

“Why are you defending her?” Jo barked.

“Jo, don’t get upset,” Lorica said calmly.

“I’m upset!”

“Stop yelling!” Cost covered her ears, trying to retreat from them.

“You doomed us.” Jo pointed harshly at Cost. “You doomed us all. I could have gotten us out of here. All of us.”

“Do you really think you’re smarter than I am, Jerjerrod?” A new voice joined them from the other side of the bars. It was Ingo, drawn by their arguing. “Are everyone’s secrets coming out to play? See, that’s what we do. We make you fight each other, so you don’t fight us. We give you secrets or we take them away. Isn’t that right, Lorica? Do you want to tell the group the secrets we have?”

Lorica shook her head. The color had drained from her face. Mattis could see that she didn’t want to tell her secret, whatever it was. And Mattis was certain, whatever it was, he didn’t want to hear it.