“THAT’S IT? They don’t know anything else?”

“Try again to get through to Coruscant.”

“Every communication network is completely jammed—”

Voices echoed throughout the abandoned rebel base on Dantooine, which had become for the time being a makeshift Imperial station. Groups of officers huddled around—some still in full landing armor but most by then wearing only pieces of the plating. Although their troop commander remained in charge, for hours no orders had been given to anyone but communications officers. There was nothing for them to do but wait and be afraid.

Thane paced the length of the hall, which seemed to have been blasted from solid rock, making it feel a bit as if they were huddling in a cave. The pieces of information they’d been able to gather so far were contradictory, confusing, and ominous. Some said the Death Star had been destroyed; others claimed it was damaged and unable to communicate; still others said the news had to be false—a ploy meant to coax the rebels out of hiding so they could be more efficiently slaughtered.

Most of the soldiers in the room seemed to believe the last scenario, which had led to a lot of cursing and big talk about how when they were in charge, they’d never initiate an action like that without properly informing and preparing everyone down the chain of command. A few others protested, saying that spies could be anywhere. If even a member of the Imperial Senate as illustrious as Princess Leia Organa could turn traitor, anyone could. So this big diversion had to be kept secret until the last possible moment.

Not everyone was convinced, though. Thane had exchanged glances with a handful of others who remained tense and silent.

The Death Star can’t have been lost. It would take a dozen Star Destroyers and attack cruisers to make any impact on a station that size. The Rebel Alliance is clearly more powerful than our superior officers let us know, but if they had a fleet that large, they would’ve provoked direct action before now. That part of his analysis felt rock solid to Thane; however, the rest was less certain. If the Death Star has been damaged, how badly? It’s the size of an entire moon, so how can all the communications systems be down? And why wouldn’t the ships docked there be able to respond, either?

If the rebels had attacked the Death Star with a fleet capable of causing real damage, the big Imperial ships would have been launched. They would have gone into battle.

Thane leaned against the rough-hewn stone wall of the rebel base, canteen of nutritive milk in one hand. He thought of the Devastator in all its majesty and power, and he imagined its laser cannons blasting the rebel fleet to shreds. He pictured it over and over—the shards of metal, the spinning debris, the brief pulses of flame before they were snuffed out by the vacuum of space.

If he imagined the Devastator winning, he didn’t have to imagine what else might have happened during the battle he envisioned—to the ship, to Nash Windrider, or to Ciena.

After a few hours at her post, Ciena’s ears rang with the squeals of badly filtered transmissions. Her head swam with the endless amounts of data she had to process, fast. For now she had to give her ship and her Empire everything she had.

The Devastator’s senior officers were in conference, as they had been for what seemed like hours. If any of them knew the reason behind the Death Star’s sudden, terrifying silence, they had not yet shared it with the crew.

For the time being Ciena could do no more than continue to sort through the endless data packets sent from the Death Star before it went quiet. Many of these contained no useful information whatsoever, but until they had a full explanation, she could afford to ignore nothing.

When she recognized Jude’s number on one packet, she opened it immediately. She didn’t care whether this one was important or not; Ciena needed to know what Jude had been doing before the Death Star—became damaged, or infiltrated, or whatever had gone so horribly wrong.

But Jude’s data was important. Ciena read a report from Jude Edivon to her superior officer and all local commanders in which Jude explained that her analysis had shown the rebel attack with small starfighters did in fact pose a threat to the Death Star. She’d found a flaw nobody else had suspected—something to do with an exhaust port—and had sensed a weakness where everyone else saw invulnerability.

Although the likelihood of a direct hit is remote, Jude had written, the consequences could be highly destructive to the station, even fatal.

If anyone had sent a response to Jude’s warning, Ciena had not yet found it.

Fatal to the station? To the Death Star? No. Jude must have meant only that officers would be killed in some resulting small explosion. That made far more sense than the idea that an X-wing fighter could destroy something the size of a moon.

Yet the darkness and silence remained.

Shortly after Ciena had sent this information to command, she received a message to report to docking bay forty-seven. Nash shot her a look as she walked out, clearly as curious as she was about what could possibly be going on. She hoped to be able to fill him in soon.

Instead, she found she had a new assignment.

A stone-faced commander told her and the other pilot, “Lieutenant Ree, Lieutenant Sai, you’re to take a Gozanticlass freighter to the Yavin system to rendezvous with Lord Vader and bring him back to the Devastator.”

It was as though steel bands had been tightening around her, then were suddenly loosed. Ciena managed not to sigh out loud. Darth Vader is alive. He was able to contact our ship. So whatever happened on the Death Star wasn’t the worst-case scenario. She still hadn’t allowed herself to fully contemplate what the “worst-case scenario” might be.

The commander continued: “You are to disclose your mission to no one—not during your journey or at any time afterward. You will maintain communications silence unless otherwise ordered by Lord Vader, or if…the rendezvous does not take place as planned.”

What was that supposed to mean? Ciena glanced sideways at her fellow pilot, whose expression might as well have been carved in stone.

Once they were alone in the freighter’s cockpit, however, Lieutenant Sai proved to be anything but stoic. “What are we supposed to do?” she said just after their ship had gone into hyperspace. “Fly up to the totally silent Death Star without asking them any questions? Or even getting permission to dock?”

“It’s going to make more sense when we get there,” Ciena said.

“Why are you so sure?”

“Because it can’t make any less sense than it does now.”

That earned her a laugh. “True. By the way, I’m called Berisse.”

“Ciena.”

Berisse turned out to have graduated from the academy on Lothal the year before. Her brilliant smile shone brightly against her tan skin. She was as stout as regulations allowed, with dark, shining hair she kept even more tightly braided than Ciena’s. When she learned that Ciena had been on the Devastator only a few short weeks, she promised to show her around, and even offered some sympathy for Nash. “That’s rough,” she said. “Imagine finding out your entire planet turned traitor.”

Even that can’t be as bad as seeing it completely destroyed, Ciena nearly said—but that was when the sensors began to chime. “Yavin,” she said, swinging back into position at the controls. “Dropping out of hyperspace.”

“Dropping out of hyperspace,” Berisse confirmed. She, too, was back in official mode.

The dread Ciena had kept at bay by chatting with Berisse returned, stronger than before. She told herself that at least now she would know how bad the situation was. She wouldn’t have to worry about Jude any longer. Nothing could be worse than not knowing.

The freighter dropped out of hyperdrive and into hell.

Berisse gasped out loud. Ciena couldn’t even catch her breath. They were on the outskirts of a vast debris field, twisted metal floating in every direction. Some pieces were enormous—the size of a light cruiser—but others were fragments even smaller than a human head. Splinters connected with the freighter’s windows and stuck to the transparency in patterns like frost or cracks.

“I can’t believe it,” Berisse said, voice shaking. “It’s gone. It’s completely gone.”

The Death Star had been destroyed.

Jude’s warning echoed louder in Ciena’s head. Fatal. Now she knew Jude was dead.

A few other classmates had been stationed aboard the Death Star; at least a dozen people Ciena knew had been murdered that day. Thousands upon thousands of soldiers, most of them not even roused to battle stations—they would have been sleeping, eating, getting a drink in one of the cantinas, with no idea that moment was one of their last. But Jude had known the danger. Was she frightened? In her last terrible moments, had Jude known it was the end? The idea made Ciena’s throat tighten and her eyes fill with tears.

“Lord Vader’s signal.” Berisse snapped out of her shock to get back to work. “Let’s go.”

Numbly, Ciena steered the freighter around the edge of the debris field. She wanted to cry; she wanted to scream. The command officers had to have known what happened. Why hadn’t they told the fleet? The entire galaxy? But maybe they had believed this as impossible as she had. Ciena finally recognized that her mission was not only to retrieve Darth Vader but also to confirm that the worst had happened. They had sent her to bear witness to another massacre.

Her sorrow for Jude flooded her mind until she couldn’t feel anything. Ciena went through the motions as they approached Lord Vader’s damaged TIE fighter, grateful for the training that had taught her how to respond even when she was falling apart.

Vader’s ship slowly took form in the darkness. She first saw the strange rotation of several pieces of debris, as if they were being shoved back by repulsor beams. Then she saw the form of a TIE fighter with angled wings. Vader was flying just beyond the ever-expanding debris field.

“Initiating airlock sequence,” Ciena said. She was grateful Berisse didn’t know her very well yet, so she wouldn’t hear how strained and unnatural her voice had become. “Three—two—one.”

Berisse hit the controls that would release one of a quartet of docking umbilicals from the ship’s belly. Carefully, they extended the tube to the top of the TIE fighter’s spherical cockpit.

“Met Lord Vader yet?” Berisse said lightly.

“I—uh, no.” Ciena could hardly focus enough to speak.

“I’m going to let you go back there and greet him.”

Normally, Imperial officers strove to be the first to talk to anyone of higher rank. Those were opportunities to stand out from the pack. Ciena had never cared less about advancement. And yet she had the impression Berisse wasn’t doing her a favor.

They say he is a great man, she reminded herself as she stood at the airlock, waiting for the all clear to enter the bay. That he has the Emperor’s favor. And they say he can bend the Force itself to his will. Though Ciena believed in the Force, she was doubtful that anyone could control it so completely. She wondered if she would be proven wrong.

Ciena needed a superior officer she could respect. Someone who would take charge, someone in whom she could put her trust. She walked into the airlock corridor just as the pressure door hissed open. Reassured, she stepped forward—

—then stopped as she saw Vader for the first time.

Black armor sheathed him entirely. This was no TIE pilot’s gear, however; instead Ciena recognized a life-support suit, one more comprehensive than she’d ever seen or imagined before. Nothing of Vader’s human skin or face remained visible beneath his gleaming carapace, and a black cape shrouded him from shoulder to floor. As he stepped forward, she realized how tall he was—taller than any other human she had ever encountered. In the cramped corridor, his stature was even more intimidating. But worst of all was the sound of his breath. The harsh rasp of his respirator system echoed until it seemed to fill the space.

What is he? Ciena wondered. Her splintered mind refused to accept Lord Vader as human. He seemed more like a nightmare vision, or a creature from the scary stories Mumma used to tell around the kindred gathering fires. Evil seemed to ooze from him, to pool within the space until there was no more air. Ciena’s uniform collar felt too tight.

Only a few moments before, she’d been determined to greet her superior officer with dignity. Now she only hoped not to faint.

As Darth Vader stepped away from the airlock door, she heard his deep metallic voice for the first time. “Are you here by the Emperor’s command?”

“We received our orders from the command staff of the Devastator, sir,” Ciena managed to respond. She had to fight the instinctive need to draw away from Vader. “I have no information regarding their contact with the Emperor.”

Vader took this in for what seemed to be a very long time. Ciena’s nervousness continued to grow until he ordered, “You and your fellow pilot will remain in the hold for the remainder of the voyage. I will take command of this freighter until we have returned to the Devastator.”

“Yes, sir.”

She didn’t care about being hauled back to her Star Destroyer like so much cargo. Ciena was grateful to sink down to the floor, put her head on her knees, and take deep breaths. At least now she didn’t have to act. Even to think. She tried to forget she’d ever seen Darth Vader, and almost succeeded. Her battered mind could hold on to nothing but the scene of devastation she’d witnessed, and her grief for Jude.

A thousand memories of her friend shone in Ciena’s memory like candles: the times they’d laughed and talked in their bunks late at night, how Jude had rushed to defend Ciena when she’d been accused of sabotaging Thane’s laser cannon and then comforted her after the argument that followed, even how unexpectedly glamorous Jude had looked at the reception. One of the best friends she’d ever had, or would have, had been annihilated. Blasted to atoms.

Berisse was apologetic when she joined Ciena. “Lord Vader can be a little—overpowering when you first see him.”

“Yeah,” Ciena said faintly.

“I didn’t feel like I could take it. Doesn’t mean it was any easier for you. Sorry.” Berisse leaned back against the wall like a puppet freed from its strings. “I know he’s just wearing a life-support suit, and it’s stupid to be frightened of someone who has different needs, right? But that respirator—”

“He could be monitoring us right now,” Ciena pointed out. Berisse fell silent.

When they returned to the Devastator, Ciena was grateful to finally be off duty. She went to the deck where her crew quarters were located. She freshened up. She spent a few minutes crying into a towel for Jude. Then she pulled herself together and walked back toward her bunk—only to pause as she saw another junior officer in the corridor heading to the auxiliary bridge. “Nash?”

Nash Windrider nodded. He still moved slowly, a bit like a man sleepwalking, but his uniform was regulation neat and his voice calm. “All hands are needed.”

“You’re sure you’re ready?”

“I have to be,” he said simply.

She put one hand on his arm. “Are you positive? You’ve been through a lot.” How inadequate. His entire planet had been destroyed in the hopes that it would end a war, and those hopes had proved futile. Nash had to be profoundly devastated.

His voice low, he said, “The Empire is all I have left. I need to be of use. I want to serve.”

Ciena still wondered whether Nash could handle it, but she decided to stop fighting him. He deserved the chance to try. “Okay. I’ll walk you up there.”

Nash nodded, his silence perhaps a tacit acknowledgment that he remained on the emotional brink.

She noticed then that he’d cut his hair; the long braids he’d worn tied at the nape of his neck throughout his academy years had been shorn completely. Maybe the braids had carried meaning on Alderaan, or maybe the change was symbolic for Nash—something he’d done as a kind of farewell. Regardless, Ciena knew better than to ask.

The corridors of the Devastator were eerily silent; only a few courier droids and a handful of guards walked along the metal-mesh floors. Without the usual bustle of activity, the few sounds remaining were amplified to strange effect: the echoing of their footsteps, even the faint hiss of the ship’s ventilation system. Despite her misery and fury, she realized that deep within her was a small sense of—reassurance.

The Death Star will never destroy another world.

She would always mourn Jude and the others who had died aboard the Death Star, would always recognize its explosion as the act of terrorism it was. Yet Ciena took some comfort from the fact that no other planet would suffer Alderaan’s fate. Its destruction had been the Emperor’s last-ditch effort to end a bloody war before it began; that effort had failed. War had come. The devastation to follow would no doubt be terrible; Ciena expected to see constant combat and war readiness for a long time to come. She would have to kill and risk being killed.

But that was war. The combatants would be soldiers prepared for battle. That Ciena could accept.

Shortly before they reached the auxiliary bridge, Nash said, “Ciena?”

“Do you need out of this duty shift?” Exhausted though Ciena was, she would volunteer to work the next few hours in Nash’s stead if it would help.

“No. It’s just—before I left my cabin, I was thinking of Thane. I wanted to talk with him. So I searched for information about the Dantooine transport.” Nash hesitated before finishing. “They’d received orders to return to the Death Star.”

The blood in her veins froze. Ciena stood stock-still in the corridor, unable to take another step. She swallowed hard. “And Thane?”

“He would’ve been aboard. Do you know if the transport docked before the explosion?”

“No.”

All that time, Ciena had kept going by promising herself that she’d be able to talk about everything with Thane soon—by reminding herself that at least her best friend in the world had escaped.

But what if he hadn’t? What if Thane had been killed, too?

It took almost a week—the longest and most agonizing of his life—for Thane’s ship to receive new, definite orders. His vessel, a short-haul transport, hadn’t been stocked with nearly enough provisions, so they’d had to commandeer foodstuffs from the nearest town. Although the ship had bunks, they were intended more for emergency use by the injured than for actual sleep. Rather than lie on those, Thane and several others had moved into the bunks the rebels left behind.

How strange it felt to lie on the enemy’s bed, to see where someone had drawn a crude figure of an X-wing fighter on the wall, and to know an X-wing like that had been the weapon that destroyed the Death Star—and maybe Ciena with it.

So Thane should have been relieved to be back aboard his own ship, fully armored and with his blaster at his side. Nothing was worse than not knowing, he’d told himself. Once they’d rendezvoused with the Imperial fleet, he would finally find out for certain what had happened to all his friends.

But when he tried to imagine what he’d do if they told him Ciena was dead, his mind went blank. It was as if his brain refused to show him anything beyond that point.

“Kyrell,” his commander said as they prepared for lightspeed. “Did you not send family messages confirming your survival? I show you as a yes, but we’ve got no responses.”

“You wouldn’t,” Thane said, without much emotion. He didn’t think his family actually wanted him dead—though maybe Dalven wouldn’t have minded—but writing back was apparently beyond their interests.

What did I ever do to them, besides being born? he thought for the thousandth time.

Yet thinking of that made him want to talk to Ciena, the only person who’d ever really understood how screwed up his family was. The pit of fear in his belly grew heavier, and he spoke hardly one word on their way to rendezvous with the fleet.

When the transport came out of lightspeed, a few people muttered and one person emitted a low whistle of surprise. Outside hovered more ships than Thane had ever seen in one place, even over Coruscant. TIE fighters swarmed like gnats scurrying over the surface of every larger vessel. Countless transports and smaller ships had been pulled into rough formation around the dozen or so Star Destroyers that obviously formed the new core of the Imperial Starfleet.

Was one of those Star Destroyers the Devastator? From the outside the ships were as identical as slices of the same pie.

Even as their transport rose into the main docking bay, their commander was shouting their new orders. “N-O-Seven-One-Eight, you’re to report to the Star Destroyer Eliminator immediately, to Lieutenant Commander Cherik. N-Y-One-One-Two, same orders. A-V-Five-Four-Seven—”

Thane lifted his head.

“You transfer to the troop ship Watchtower for transport and deployment to Kerev Doi.”

He was being sent to a spice-mining world? The order sounded absurd to Thane for the instant it took him to put the pieces together. Wherever spice was a commodity, finances became shady. If you wanted to hide money—vast sums of it, the kind of funds that could support an entire rebel army—Kerev Doi was one of the very few places in the galaxy to which you could turn. They were being sent to shake the place down, maybe to cut the Rebellion off at the source. That made sense. Yet he found himself thinking of Kerev Doi in a very different light. Spice worlds were heavily trafficked by ships both legitimate and criminal. Even many of the legitimate vessels didn’t keep careful records about their trips there. Every storybook or holo about running away from home featured one of the spice worlds and colorful images of the exotic ships and traders who might whisk anyone away from the life they had known before.

Kerev Doi was a place where he could get lost.

Thane caught himself. It wasn’t like he was actually planning on leaving the Imperial fleet, at least not yet. Not until he’d learned what had become of Ciena, Nash, and the rest, and maybe not ever. But he was perhaps…testing the idea. Getting used to it.

If Ciena had died, what was left for him there? Nothing.

“Sir?” he said to his commanding officer, who looked annoyed at the interruption. “Which Star Destroyer is this?”

“Does it matter, Lieutenant Kyrell?”

“It does to me, sir.”

His commanding officer wasn’t impressed by any show of independence. “You’re on the Devastator. But if you’re not on the Watchtower within the hour, you’re out of the fleet.”

The Devastator. Thane breathed out. Okay, Ciena’s probably fine. She was safe and sound on her ship the entire time.

Unless maybe she stayed behind on the Death Star for a duty assignment—or she was visiting Jude and the Devastator pulled out too quickly for her to rejoin it—

He disembarked with only a wrist communicator to tell him where to find the Watchtower’s docking berth. From the looks of things, he didn’t have much time, but maybe enough to stop at a communications panel. Even if the system informed him she was on duty, it would be proof she was alive. How was he supposed to get on another ship and fly away from the Devastator without even knowing?

“Thane!”

He turned and saw Ciena, halfway across the crowded bay, and it was like the hard shell around him cracked and crumbled away. He forgot about Kerev Doi, about escape. It was impossible to think about anything but the sight of her there, then, alive. “Ciena!”

Then all that mattered was pushing through the crowd, shouldering aside stormtrooper grunts and senior officers alike, so he could get to her.

Ciena flung her arms around Thane’s neck, and he embraced her back so tightly that she could barely breathe. She didn’t care, not now.

“You’re alive,” she said, her voice breaking. “You’re alive. We didn’t know whether your transport had returned to the Death Star—”

“I didn’t know if the Devastator made it, and nobody knows what the hell is going on—”

“It’s so terrible—”

“Did you—?”

They stopped trying to talk over each other and just laughed for a moment, out of pure joy. Ciena looked up at Thane, and she saw the man he had become, the one she was in some ways only beginning to know—and yet who was already as much a part of her as her bone or blood.

“I’m supposed to report to the Watchtower within the hour,” Thane said. “Are you free?”

She could’ve groaned. Already she was late to report for her next shift—but then, to the side, she saw Berisse gesturing at her, clearly saying, Go on! I’ve got it! Ciena turned back to Thane. “I have a few minutes.”

They worked their way through the busy docking bay to a side corridor; it led to a recreation area and, as such, was currently deserted. Though the roar of activity continued only a few meters away, there the two of them could be nearly alone.

“Are you all right?” Thane brushed a loose curl back from her cheek as he framed her face with his hands.

Ciena knew he wasn’t talking about battle injuries. “Nash Windrider is safe. He’s torn up about Alderaan—” It was hard even to say the planet’s name. Thane winced when he heard it. “Still, he’s on duty. But Jude died on the Death Star.”

“I’m sorry.” He pulled her back into his arms, and she leaned her head against his chest.

They’d never touched each other like that; no doubt Thane was as vividly aware of that as she was. And yet embracing him, being held by him, felt natural. Right.

“I really thought I’d lost you,” she whispered. “Everything else I could handle, because I had to, but when I realized you might have been killed—I knew I couldn’t get through that. Not ever.”

Ciena expected him to say something like, “Of course you could; you’re strong” or “Don’t worry about me.” Instead, Thane folded her deeper in his embrace. “This whole week, I didn’t know if you were dead or alive. The Empire has been turned upside down, and we’re going to war, and not one damn bit of it mattered. You were the only one I could think about.”

Ciena stood on tiptoe to hug him tighter. Thane’s fingers traced along her jawline as he brushed his lips against her forehead, then tilted her face up toward his. But it was Ciena who brought their mouths together for their first kiss.

Oh, she thought as their lips opened against each other. It’s not whether he’s my friend or someone I love. He’s both. Thane’s always been both, since the beginning.

This wasn’t the start of something; it was their discovery, their admission, of what had been between them for a very long while.

When they pulled apart, Thane took a deep breath. “That was—very—”

“Yeah.” Then they both laughed, more gently this time, and he kissed her forehead again.

She slid her arms down his shoulders to take his hands in hers. Thane’s crooked smile made Ciena feel as if she were melting inside. Why couldn’t this have happened at a moment when they could really be alone?

But a few stolen minutes in a noisy docking bay were all they had, and she didn’t intend to waste them. “Listen to me,” Ciena said. “As crazy as things are, we’ll be together again. I don’t know where or when, but it’s going to happen.”

“It will,” he answered, brightening. “No matter what, I’m going to find you.”

That was a strange way to put it. Once they worked past this initial confusion, Imperial records would be able to connect the two of them at any time. But Ciena didn’t care. She was too overcome, already yearning for the next time they’d be together before they’d even said good-bye. “How can I miss you when you’re still here?”

“Because I already miss you, too. But it’s not forever. Not even for long.”

Thane kissed her again, and after days of holding strong against loss, grief, and terror, Ciena let herself surrender to a moment of happiness.

Then she walked him to his transport, kissed him once more at the ramp as a few officers inside whistled, and, finally, ran like hell for her duty station.

When she got to her console, Berisse stepped aside with a motion like a waiter presenting the dessert. “I owe you one,” Ciena breathed as she tried to steady herself.

“You owe me way more than one,” Berisse answered.

Ciena glanced sideways at Berisse; the two of them started to smile at the craziness of it all. Amazing how, in situations like that, you could become good friends in only a couple of days. She got back to work, but on one viewscreen she brought up the docking bay feed so she could see the Watchtower disengage and set off for the infinity of space, taking Thane with it.