VEERING away from the Raddus in his TIE silencer, Kylo Ren watched his torpedoes tear open the cruiser’s hangar and decimate the starfighters within. The brilliance of the explosions dazzled him.

But he was not done. He wanted to take out more than a hangar full of starfighters. He wanted to eliminate the Resistance’s leaders.

Ren looped his fighter around for another attack run, and the two black-and-red TIEs behind him did the same. Fast though they were, they struggled to keep up, for Ren had followed the example of his grandfather Darth Vader and flew a custom TIE. The silencer bore a sleek, sinister design, with an oblong cockpit, a squashed rectangular viewport, and two solar wings that were notched and slanted like those on an interceptor. It tore through space with unrivaled speed and packed weaponry as devastating as the Special Forces TIEs flying with it.

Closing in on the cruiser’s bridge, Ren waited for a torpedo lock. Since he had annihilated the cruiser’s starfighters in the hangar, he needn’t worry about any A-wings or X-wings harassing him, and the turbolasers on the First Order’s Destroyers were keeping the cruiser busy.

The targeting computer beeped. His fingers twitched, ready to fire—until a sensation in the Force made him hesitate. On that bridge stood someone once close to him, as close as anyone could or ever would be. A person who shared his stubbornness, tenacity, and defiance.

His mother.

He felt that Leia—or General Organa as her minions in the Resistance called her—sensed him too. She held no anger against him, despite what he had done, despite that he had killed his father and her husband. For some reason, she still cared for him, as if he hadn’t changed, as if he were still Ben Solo, her son.

How dare she.

His anger fused into an emotional missile. He launched it at her through the Force, a bolt of pure rage. He felt her stagger back and it gave him joy. He wanted her to know his pain. He wasn’t Ben Solo. He was Kylo Ren. And he would sever his bond with her once and for all.

But he didn’t press the trigger. Something blocked him at the last moment—some twinge of guilt or deep-seated fear.

Nothing stopped the other TIE pilots from firing. A pair of mag-pulse warheads struck the cruiser’s bridge and Ren felt a chorus of voices crying out in the Force before they went quiet.

Ren jerked his flight yoke, rolling his silencer to avoid the debris. His breathing was strained. He might not have personally killed his parent this time, but the bond had been severed nonetheless.

He no longer felt his mother.

General Hux addressed him on the comm. “The Resistance has pulled out of range of our Destroyers. We can’t cover you at this distance. Return to the fleet.”

Ren’s anger flared again. “No!” he snapped back. It would be folly to retreat when a couple more well-placed shots could destroy the cruiser. Other TIE squadrons had downed the cargo hauler Vigil. They could eradicate the fleet right here, right now.

Wounded though it might be, the Raddus wasn’t going down without a fight. Its turbolasers nailed one of the TIEs flying beside Ren, blowing it to pieces.

“Snoke’s command,” Hux said on the comm. “They won’t last long burning fuel like this. It’s just a matter of time.”

The cruiser’s guns erased a second TIE from Ren’s scopes. If he continued the assault without the Destroyers’ protection, he and his squadron could all die. Then victory would be pointless.

He turned his silencer away from the cruiser and commanded the TIEs to do the same.

In a flash of light, Admiral Ackbar, the most esteemed military commander of his generation, was gone. Ackbar’s number two, Captain Gawat, went with him, as did the rest of the bridge crew on the Raddus. Either they were vaporized in the explosion or sucked out into the vacuum of space.

Only Leia survived.

She drifted, arms spread, between burning fragments of the bridge. Her training in the Force allowed her to slow her breathing and retain some of her heat, but she would not last out here forever. She was being suffocated, deprived of oxygen. Soon she would join the rest.

Several TIEs and a fighter in the shape of a claw flew past the debris back toward the fleet of Star Destroyers. Her son had piloted that fighter—her wayward, vicious, vengeful son. Corrupted by Snoke, Ben had committed the most reprehensible acts of violence against the most innocent among them. And Leia felt responsible. All her life she had worked to guard the galaxy from evil, but she could not protect it from the evils of her own child.

And yet still she loved him.

She would’ve done anything to see Ben again, as Han had, if only for a moment.

The stars blurred. A chill bit into her bones. She readied herself for the end.

A light floated in front of her, circular in shape, like a micro-sized moon. It was her beacon. The bracelet had come loose from her wrist.

She took hold of it. Its soft light reminded her of Rey.

The beacon needed to be returned to the cruiser, else the girl might never find the Resistance to bring Luke back. And then every last hope would be extinguished.

Leia shut her eyes and dropped her head to her chest. She forgot about the cold in her bones and even her breath. Her sole focus was the Force.

She rode its currents back into the hole in the cruiser bridge.

Finn pushed himself up, groggy from the fall. The First Order attack had knocked him off his feet and into a bulkhead. He’d been chasing after Poe, but with the corridor branching ahead, he couldn’t tell which direction Poe had gone.

Rounding the bend, he skidded to a halt. Crew were crowded around an open airlock, where droids were carrying out a stretcher. “Her life signs are weak, but she’s fighting,” a medic reported.

Poe stood among the crew, gesturing frantically. “Move back! Give room!”

Finn stepped to the side to let the stretcher pass. On it lay none other than General Leia Organa.

An object dropped from her hand and fell near Finn’s feet. No one else noticed, so Finn picked it up. It was the wrist beacon that the general had showed him on the bridge.

He moved away from the crowd and examined the glowing beacon. Somewhere out in the wide galaxy, Rey had one, too.