"Well, I want to keep the feeling! I don't want to complicate it. If I stay with this fancy new government, eventually they're going to want me to do things I'm trying not to do. I am, quite frankly, tired of following orders."

"Fair." She arches an eyebrow. "What then? Travel the space lanes, having adventures? Settle down with your boy toy and a couple of purra-birds as pets?"

"Both? Neither?" Another sigh. "I really don't know."

"You are takask wallask ti dan. A man without a star."

"Oh, please. Some old saying. Go on now, tell me what it means."

"My aunt used to say it. She ran a crew of her own, and whenever she had to replace someone, or use someone for one purpose or another, she always said she looked for takask wallask ti dan-a man without a star. Someone without a home, without purpose."

"That's depressing."

"But is it true?"

He harrumphs, then idly twists his mustache. She bats his hand away from it and he frowns.

"You could come with me," she says. "Turns out, I could use a man without a star."

"I would make an excellent bounty hunter."

"Don't get cocky."

"That's like telling the rain not to fall." He puts his hands behind his head and lies back. "I would join you, but I don't think your calling is my calling, either. Maybe my calling is drunken-but-lovable rake. Impossibly handsome Chandrilan layabout. Charming house-husband, worthless but for his chiseled cheekbones and his whiplash wit."

"Try it on. See if it fits."

"I may." He sits back up. "Is this goodbye, then? Are you leaving right from here? Or can I expect a ride?"

"I'll head back to Chandrila. I'm sure everyone will be all..." She makes a face. "Warm and fuzzy in the aftermath of Liberation Day. So if you want one last ride in the Halo, I'm offering. We can tell Norra together."

"Thank you, magnanimous bounty hunter. What about your boy toy?" Sinjir gestures unsubtly with his head toward the commando, Jom Barell, working one platform away, helping pack up thermal detonators in a harness sling. "I think he came back to Irudiru for you and you alone. Broke rank and everything."

"We have to be done. We had fun. That has to be it. I need this bone to make a clean break. It'll heal faster that way." For him, or for you? she asks herself. She sneers. "I don't want some stray trailing after me. I don't owe him. He made his choices and now I'm making mine."

"I really will miss you."

"Fine. I will...miss you, too."

He leans his head on her shoulder.

- He knows why she's come over, so he just gets it out of the way. Jom doesn't even finish bolting shut the detonator box and he says over his shoulder: "I know, you've come to let me down gently."

"I don't do anything gently," Jas says. He can't tell if her tone is playful or not.

He turns and grabs a leaf-fiber rag, wiping his hands on it before tucking its corner in his pocket. "I want to tell you first that you were right."

"I know."

"Do you even know about what?"

She shrugs. "I'm right about everything."

"Keep telling yourself that, Emari." He laughs. "No, you were right that I came to Irudiru chasing you. Then I came here and we fought. And they took me and they took my eye-"

"I don't owe you that. Don't put that on me."

He shakes his head. "I'm not. That's the point. I stayed because it's the right thing. I gave up my eye because it's the right thing." Jom leans in now-she sees that he's aged over this trip. Dark shadows cross his face. He looks weathered, like wind-whipped leather. But he grins just the same. "And you stayed because it's the right thing, too. You're a better person than you think, Jas Emari."

"Don't make me kill you, Jom."

"All this is me saying, I get it. We're done. It's good. I'm staying behind with the Wookiees. See if I can't help them."

"Good luck, Jom."

"You too. I'll see you later, bounty hunter."

- Leia knows she should worry. After all, here she is on a world not her own, a world still with one leg in an Imperial trap, and she's pregnant. Her back hurts. She's hungry all the time. What if something goes wrong? She knows she should be worried, and yet she isn't. In fact, the only thing that worries her is just how little worry she has.

She feels good. Happy, even. She has Evaan standing by. She has Han. She has her baby boy growing inside her. The Wookiees have their world back-almost, at least. And she's here because she listened to Luke. He told her to let go. To let the Force flow through her. She did. She's here.

All is well.

Chewie comes up behind Han again, growling playfully as he gives her husband a big lung-crushing hug. Solo winces and pulls away, laughing. "You big lug, I know, I know, we did it." She's never seen Chewie so happy. He has family here. Family they intend to help him find. And then she wonders: Will he stay? Now that the Wookiee has his home, will he remain behind on Kashyyyk? Han seems to think so. He told her last night as they slept under the stars, He has his family, and we'll have ours. The Wookiee gurgles and lopes off toward Kirratha, where they're loading crates into a handful of stolen LAIT ships. Then they'll take them from city to city, settlement to settlement, assessing the Imperial presence as they go. Leia told Han that she could maybe call in the New Republic, and he said, proud as a cockbird, We don't need them.

Maybe, she thinks, he's right.

But then Wedge hobbles over, followed by Evaan. Evaan tells her, "Princess. You have to see this."

Wedge takes her to a transceiver and patches in a HoloNet feed.

It's then she watches the Liberation Day events unfold in Hanna City. The liberated rebels turning on their rescuers. The chancellor, shot. Others, too: Madine, Agate, Hostis Ij. Some still alive, others dead-the data coming in tells a confusing story with conflicting reports. Chaos has seized the capital, that much is clear. Leia's heart breaks as she watches. Further, she can't help but feel that if she had stayed...she might have been one of those dead. Or maybe she could've helped stop it. A choice too late to make, with consequences that will forever remain unseen.

Just the same: The Empire did this. That much, she knows.

A hand falls on her shoulder. Her husband's. He stands behind her, shell-shocked. "We just...we rescued those people. I...don't...understand." He visibly swallows. It's rare to see him rattled. This has done it.

"I have to go back."

It takes him a moment to find his focus. But soon he's looking at her with clear eyes. He nods and says, "I know."

"I don't want to. I want to stay here. With you. With Chewie."

"I know that, too. But I have to go, too. I have to come home."

"You could stay here. I'd understand. Help Chewie-"

"Chewie's got this. He and the others have hard work ahead of them. My part is over, Leia. I want to be by your side through this. Whatever...this is. And whoever did this? They'll pay."

"I'm going to go prep the Falcon," she says.

"I won't be far behind. I have to say goodbye, first."

She cups his cheek, then kisses him. Sadness shines in her eyes. Not sadness for her. But sadness for him. Because this will be hard for him. She knows that. He won't admit it. But saying goodbye might kill him.

Leia lets her hand linger on his face, and then she's gone, heading toward their ships with Wedge in tow.

- Chewie is there with Kirratha, picking up crates that it would take three of Han to lift. The Wookiee is as strong as these trees. Sometimes it feels like he's damn near as tall, too.

It doesn't take long for his copilot to see him there. Chewie and he have always been in sync. Okay, sure, sometimes Chewie goes one way and Han goes another but they always meet on the other side of things and at the end of every day, what needs to get done damn well gets done. They're partners. Have been for most of the life that Han can (or cares to) remember.

Chewie grunts and growls.

"Ah, you're doing fine, you big lunk."

Another growl. This one, a question.

"I, ahhh." Wow, this is harder than he thought. Han scuffs a heel and throws up his hands like he's folding at the sabacc table. "I thought this day would come later, Chewie, but something's happened and-"

The Wookiee steps up and nods, rumbling a soft response. Chewie understands. Even before Han says it, Chewie gets it. In sync yet again to no one's surprise. Chewie knows that Han has to go. And what's the first thing that the gargantuan hair-beast does? The Wookiee offers to come along right now. Han waves both hands and shakes his head as vigorously as he can, even waggling his finger up in his friend's shaggy face.

"No. No! You have to stay here. We fought like hell for this and now...this is yours. Okay? All yours. This is home. You got people here and I want you to find them. You hear me? That's my last demand. No arguments." Chewie rumbles but Han reiterates, more firmly this time: "I said no arguments. You be with your family. I have to go start mine."

A moment of silence stretches out between them and deep in the space between Han's heart and his gut he wants to seize on the desire that lives there-he wants to tell Chewie, Just kidding, let's go, pal, get on board the ship and let's see what trouble we can cook up. Then they'll race off together to Malastare or Warrin Station or back to that dusty Mos Eisley cantina to pick up some other wayward dust-farmer kid...and then when he gets home and his baby, his son is born, Chewie will be right there doing whatever needs doing because that's who Chewie is.

But he doesn't say any of that.

Chewie hugs him and purrs.

"I'll be back. We're not done, you and I. We'll see each other again. I'm gonna be a father and no way my kid won't have you in his life."

One more bark and yip as Chewie pets his head.

"Yeah, pal. I know." He sighs. "I love you, too."

This is nowhere.

At least, not anywhere Sloane can identify.

Out there is the consumptive void of space. No planets, no space stations, no other ships. Nothing and nowhere.

The little cargo ship is the only thing out here. Sloane cuts the engines. It drifts. The ship could be her tomb, she realizes.

Every breath she pulls through her chest feels like she's inhaling broken glass. At least the bleeding has stopped. As she shifts in her seat, her pants peel away with a crackle as the tacky seal of dried blood breaks.

Survive. Fight. Get Rax.

She ponders opening a comm channel. In her head she conjures a message to Rax-a bitter threat that tells him she's coming for him, even though truly, she's dying here in the void. He will always be forced to look over his shoulder in case she might be sneaking up behind him with a whetted blade. It would be a wonderful curse to pass along. A small castigation sent preemptively from beyond the grave.

Her finger hovers over the button.

Sloane's mind is muddy. She thinks instead to go find medical help-certainly, she deserves survival. But where would she go? She fears the Empire has now fallen fully into the betrayer's hands. And anywhere else might earn her a one-way ticket back to Chandrila, because by now she suspects the word is out for her capture. She imagines her face up on a bunch of holoposters like a common criminal. What a crass indignity.

No. She has to wait. She sent out her message. She made her play. She can't get to the junk moon on her own, but someone else can...

Wait. The realization slowly comes to her that she is not alone on this ship. That is a mad, impossible thought. It is clearly her body dying-the toxins are running laps through her now. She's hallucinating. And yet, she feels someone's gaze boring into the back of her head.

Paranoid, she turns around.

A man is standing there. Pale. Mussed-up hair.

He has a blaster. A small, graphene blaster.

"Get off my ship," she murmurs, her words a smeary mess.

"You did this to me," the man says.

"Put you on a cargo ship in the middle of nowhere?" She barks a mirthless laugh. "Hardly. How did you get here?"

"I saw your uniform. I followed you. To get answers."

"Why announce yourself now?"

"Because I wanted to see what you were doing."

Her chin dips. "You won't find any answers from me."

"You turned me into a monster!"

Sloane blinks. He looks familiar. "You are one of them." She doesn't have to explain to him what that means-one of the captives-turned-murderers. A traitor made by the Empire. Not her Empire, though.

"Yes." The man trembles. "And you're going to pay for it."

"I'd rather not. Since it's not me that did this to you. The blame falls squarely on someone else's shoulders." Her words slur together. "I don't even know what happened there. I was set up, same as you."

"Not the same as me!" the man screams, and fires the blaster.

She doesn't flinch; her mind is slow, her body hurting, and the shot comes and goes before she even realizes what happened. The bolt scores the steel above her head. She blinks. "You missed."

"If you didn't do this, who did?"

"A man named Gallius Rax. At least, that's the name he gives. You want whoever did this to you, go have at him." Her eyelids flutter as her chin dips. "Leave me in peace."

"You know him. You can help me."

"I look like I can help anybody? Can't even...help myself."

"You're hurt."