Naturally, the first thing she heard when she came into the command center was Sabine's muttered, "Don't tell Hera."

Hera put on her calmest face, reminding herself that patronizing wasn't synonymous with uncaring. "What are we not telling Hera?" she asked brightly. She knew everyone who turned to her, but she kept her eyes locked on Sabine.

Technically, Hera could still pull rank on her, and if General Dodonna hadn't been standing right there, she might have tried. They were all settling into these new roles with one another, and it was hard to let go of the old ones. Hera might have mothered a half-starved fifteen year old girl six years ago, but now she had a friend who intended to be treated as an equal. Even when she was trying to mother Hera instead.

"Yeah, that was never going to work," Kanan said, straightening up from where he'd been leaning against the table.

"Who's dead?" Better to get it over with fast. She couldn't read Kanan's eyes the way she used to, relying on the quick, sharp twitches on the others' faces to give her clues.

"No one's dead," Sabine said, with a firm clarity that said she wasn't lying and was hoping like mad the next question wouldn't be the real issue.

Kanan said, "Let's go for a walk." He made his way to the door, easily navigating around the other people.

Sabine turned on him. "She doesn't need the stress right now."

"None of us do. Come on," he said, taking Hera's hand. "The weather's good today, or so I've heard."

"Tell me what's going on."

Dodonna said, "Commander Jarrus, that intelligence cannot be shared with the rest of the base."

Hera folded her arms. "Since when am I 'the rest of the base,' General?"

"Walk." Kanan took her hand again, and tugged. Hera let herself be pulled down the corridor, only her assurance that he knew better than to lie to her keeping her from turning on her heel and storming back into the command center. She kept the fuming inside until they'd exited the Massassi Temple, waving past the two guards on duty at the gate.

The weather was perfect today, she had to admit. If she was medically forbidden from flying for the next month, there were worse places to be grounded than the lush, humid jungles of Yavin's fourth moon. Birds and insects as long as her arm fluttered from the tree branches right above them, adding their own noise to the raucous thrum of life. On good days, and there weren't many of those lately, the pair of them took long walks together, Hera describing everything she saw, Kanan gossiping with amusement about their latest batch of colleagues, or just as often, both merely enjoying the other's reassuring presence as they wandered. Once they'd stumbled upon the decayed ruins of an old hearth, someone's home from centuries ago now reclaimed by the forest.

"Nothing lasts forever," Kanan had said, "not their world, not the Empire."

She waited until they were well away from the base. Kanan had nodded he didn't sense anyone near. "What are we not telling Hera? And why wasn't I invited to the meeting?"

"That was me. You said you were going to be lecturing new recruits all day on how to fly their X-Wings. I didn't think you'd want to be pulled away for what was supposed to be a boring update that I could tell you about later."

She wanted to argue, but it was true. She'd happily skip meetings if that meant more time in a ship. Sitting in a cockpit explaining to another set of immature pilots how to fly was the closest she could get to flying right now. She wouldn't even have known had she not been on her way back to the hangar from her daily appointment in medical.

"So update me."

"We've got a report back on the space station. It's a lot worse than we heard." She did know about this mission. Captain Antilles was in position to rendezvous any time now.

"How can it be worse?"

"They got the last kyber shipment through. The weapon has power now, and it's operational. They've already done two test fires."

She remembered another report from a few days ago. They'd suspected Imperial handiwork but hadn't been able to prove anything. "I saw the asteroid. What else did it destroy?"

"Geonosis is down a moon."

Hera stopped dead. "That's a lot bigger than we thought."

"Our spy says it's intended to be a planet killer. The two test fires weren't the main event. They're going to fire on an inhabited world."

The horrors the Empire was willing to commit had stopped surprising her, but she would never stop caring. "We have to take it down before they can do that." She paused. "That's not why Sabine didn't want me to know. What else is going on?" He didn't answer immediately. Hera took his arms. "You brought me out here to tell me. So tell me."

"They're looking for a military target. Tarkin's first choice would be our base, if he could find us."

No order had been sounded to evacuate. "He doesn't know where we are."

"No. He's chosen another target. Our intelligence says he's going to destroy one of the planets in open rebellion to serve as an example to the rest of the Empire."

There weren't many options. While dozens of worlds supported the Alliance, and many had offered covert funding and supplies, only a few had openly declared war. Two had managed to rid themselves of all Imperial presence and fought every day to keep themselves free.

Sabine had been right. Hera was supposed to limit how much stress she was under. She felt the weak-kneed dread filling her veins, telling her to fight, telling her to run, a poisonous cocktail of worry.

A coin spun in the air, both faces marred, a loser with every throw. "He'll choose Ryloth. Lothal has more strategic value if they recapture it. Ryloth is just a nuisance.

"That's our guess, too."

He was warm next to her, even in this humid forest. Alone, she could let herself rest against him, pushing back the panic. "We have to send word."

"We can't. The moment the Empire finds out there's an evacuation, they'll know we know. The only way we'll get our hands on those schematics is if they think we're unaware of what they're planning." His voice had gone dull. He didn't believe a word he was saying.

"That sounds like Dodonna talking. Kanan, we have to tell them." Her father might choose to stay and fight to the bitter end, but there were millions of innocents on Ryloth. He couldn't hope to save them all, but even a few survivors would be better than none. She could get a message to Ezra and Zeb to find a means to gets as many of Lothal's children off-world before the great, dark orb turned its eye on them next.

She had plans to make. The refugees would need to find safe homes. The Rebellion could absorb some but not all. Alderaan might take them, if Bail and his wife framed it as another mercy mission, pity on the poor survivors of the cataclysm.

"There isn't time," he said. "The weapon will be recharged by now. For all we know, they've already fired."

"Has anyone been in contact with Ryloth today?" Hera had wanted to send a message home for the last couple of weeks, and had chosen against it. Comm traffic needed to be carefully filtered and hidden, and she hadn't wanted to waste a signal, not until she had news.

"The last transmission was a few hours ago. Last word in from Lothal was yesterday. Communications are sporadic all over today," he said in half-apology. "We lost contact with Antilles, too. The droids are working on the comm systems again. I asked Chopper about it but he just swore at me a lot."

"You're saying we couldn't get a message through if we wanted to."

"Not right now."

And as he'd said, if they did get word out, it would only alert the Empire, perhaps force their hand to strike even sooner. Her home world would be shattered, and soon after, her second home would follow, where the rest of their piecemeal family still lived.

"I want to see those plans the second they're brought here. I can help find a weak point. " If Captain Antilles arrived with his precious cargo fast enough. If they could discover a weakness inside the killing machine. If they could hold back Tarkin's fist a little longer.

If she couldn't prevent the end of one world, she could fight for all the others that followed.

A bird cried out close by, loud above the noise of the jungle canopy. Out of fear, hunger, or love, there was no way to know.

There was no word from Ryloth for the rest of the day, and more worryingly, none from the Senate ship carrying Leia and the plans.

Hera returned to training, but found it difficult to concentrate. What would it be like, standing on the soil of a doomed world? Would the people stare into the sky, wondering at the bright burst of light glowing on the horizon and growing enormous, or would mothers and fathers rock their children to sleep, never glancing up, never knowing? Would the blast crack through the air like thunder, rupturing ears with the last great sound of destruction, or would death strike too swiftly for sound, all light and heat and color gone silent as smoke?

She set her trainees to exercises, hoping practice would make slightly less imperfect. She could slip away to where the Ghost sat, waiting to be useful just as impatiently as her pilot was. The ship's comms were far more reliable than those on the base. She could risk sending one message out.

"The worst is coming. Evacuate as many as you can."

"The worst is coming. Get out. Please, get out."

"We don't know what's coming, but get off-world as soon as you can. This hour. Take nothing with you."

"Run."

She could say anything. The coin spun, round and round. Ryloth. Lothal. Her father and the people she'd come from. The son she'd all but adopted and the people she'd sworn to help. Her gut wrenched with a quick, hard pain, but that happened a lot these days and the medical droids said it was perfectly normal and nothing to concern herself about.

"It's fine. Everything is fine. I just missed you."

"No. Not yet. A few more weeks. I'll call you. I promise."

Hera gave a quick note to one of her pilots to work on his stabilizers. Then she walked casually towards her own ship. Kanan was already on board, face ashen.

She sat heavily into the chair beside him. "Tell me."

"I felt it a few minutes ago. I can't explain. So many people." He shook his head, and later, much later, he would try to explain the echoes of screams only he could hear, crying out into the Force.

Hera looked at the Ghost's comm, and she typed "I love you" into the text-only system, sending the belated letter in two bursts. Then she took his hand and held it, neither acknowledging the other's trembling.

A ping came back two minutes later. She opened the message.

"What happened? I just felt something really bad," blinked at her with Ezra's home signal.

Hera took in a shuddering breath. Before she could breathe out, a second ping arrived. From Ryloth. Demanding holos and the name they'd chosen.

"I don't understand," she said.

"I don't, either."

She typed a quick reply to each, and set the messages for delayed bursts later. They made their way back to the hangar, where too many people stood around talking.

"What's happened?" Hera demanded of the first pilot she saw.

"Um. I'm not sure, ma'am."

"Be sure."

"Um. They're saying Alderaan's been destroyed."

The fear and grief she'd been carrying these last few hours loosened. The skeletal spirit of Death had walked past her, casting a bony shadow, and then He had passed on to another. Hera would grieve the loss and mourn with those who mourned. But deep inside her soul, where the emotion would not reach her face, she felt a bitter joy.

end