When she looked to the east she saw the Star Destroyers in slow freefall. Flames wreathed their hulls as they entered the atmosphere, and it would have been mesmerizing were they in a position to watch. Jyn was scanning the compound and saw only bodies. They were suddenly, eerily, alone.

The false moon appeared in the sky like just the real sort did, right there before Jyn ever noticed. Its eye was coming to bear on the little archipelago, and she didn't bother to wonder if the Empire would really incinerate what was left of their own forces just to scour the fight.

She would die here, she knew. It was almost family tradition; Ersos never lived long. The bitter corner of her mind, which she normally kept fastened by survival and aggression and anger, surfaced to air its resentment of the family curse. Cassian sagged at her side, and she found herself wishing Andors had better luck. There was a beach up ahead, and Jyn remembered the very different shore from her too-short time on Lah'mu, where she'd skip stones into the waves when they weren't too choppy. They'd go that way.

She maneuvered Cassian as best she could toward the beach. Her own ankle was twisted, but she could walk. Jyn had lived most of her life looking over her shoulder, but as she prepared to die she saw only straight ahead, to the ocean.

And so she might have missed the ship taking off, perhaps some last Imperial dreg making its escape, if it had not come bearing down upon them. The roar of its engines mingled with the one in Jyn's head, and she stared up at it hardly daring to believe, wondering if Bodhi had possibly managed to come get them. This Lambda had different identification markings than the one they'd arrived in; he must have stolen another ship!

"Come on," she urged Cassian with renewed energy, and they stumbled in a tangle toward the lowering ramp.

It was as they had reached the ramp's top and practically fallen into the main hold that the Death Star's eye lanced the horizon, and Jyn saw it distantly bloom between the rapidly closing hatch. The hold was empty and she struggled up with Cassian to snap him into a harness, and then herself. The shuttle was already surging away. For the second time Jyn watched through a transparisteel window as her footsteps were incinerated.

She was left with a familiar feeling of helplessness. The shadow of the Death Star seemed to go everywhere with her; you would know her path by its slaughter.

The ship rocked and bucked as the first concussive waves reached it ahead of the blaze. Emergency light bathed the hold in a dull red before that died as well, swamping them in a darkness that was breached by a sudden burst from the horizon. Sunlight from the dying sky swept over the hold like a microcosm of the ruination below.

Jyn and Cassian's hands found each other and gripped tight. Bodhi managed to coast the worst of the waves, having known from Jedha what to expect. At last the turbulence receded and she began to breathe again.

The thundering noise filled their ears and drowned any attempt to speak. They gazed at the destruction in their wake, the Empire's bid to stamp out the rebel attack, before Jyn turned her attention to the destruction still ahead. There was waning chaos in the space above Scarif and they could begin to make out the hulls of other ships, directly in their path.

"He's going the wrong way!" grunted Cassian, and Jyn hastily unbuckled so she could reach the comm.

Before she had a chance to press it, the comm flicked to life and the pilot's tinny voice said, "I'm going to reroute to another rendezvous point." At that the shuttle began to steer away from the remnants of the battle, toward clear space.

The voice was shaken and uncertain, and it was not Bodhi's.

Jyn and Cassian stared at one another. The Imperial pilot had mistaken them for comrades. They'd shed most of their uniforms but still wore the trousers and boots, and the pilot hadn't looked closely at the figures on the beach. She fought off the crashing disappointment and searched for anything that might be used as a weapon before the Imperial could discover his error, at which point he'd seal off the cockpit and open the hold to suffocating space.

Cassian ripped off his harness and followed Jyn, adrenaline again staving off the worst effects of his injuries. He limped over and showed her he still carried his blaster. Then he pressed the comm and said with the authority all officers shared, neutralizing his accent to the clipped Imperial ideal: "This is Lieutenant Sharr from Pad Seven. That was good timing. Is anyone else with you?"

Mercifully, the pilot knew no better and responded. "Just a gunnery sergeant. There wasn't time to—" And they heard the note of disbelief, unwilling even now to believe the betrayal. Jyn could relate but not sympathize, and hovered with an urgent glance for Cassian. A hundred plans flashed behind his eyes, no less clearly for the pain he was in.

"Set a course for the Uo system," he said finally. "There's a garrison there we can rendezvous with."

Jyn stared hotly at him.

Releasing the comm button Cassian muttered, "The garrison there is a joke. We just need to get to hyperspace."

Once they reached hyperspace, the pilot would not open the hatch, and couldn't drop into realspace without risking the entire ship. Nodding her understanding, Jyn's eyes rested on a heavy fire extinguisher, and she quietly eased it from its hanger. Cassian's grip tightened on the blaster.

"Is it big? What do we say when we get there?" the pilot asked nervously. Even with his base destroyed, he worried about being charged as a deserter. He followed orders with the relief of a lowly pilot glad to have an officer around to give commands.

"We'll wait and see what the Empire says," said Cassian. "It must have been a mistake."

"Yeah," came the rushed, desperate reply, then: "I mean, yes, sir. Setting a course for Uo."

There was a pause, and Jyn and Cassian waited with baited breath in case the sergeant decided to come out just then. A moment later they heard the pilot announce they were making the jump. The hyperdrive whined slightly and Jyn readied the extinguisher, muscling her way in front of Cassian. He shot her a look of protest that she ignored. He was holding it together but he was still seriously injured, duh. Even with her throbbing ankle she was in much better shape.

The cockpit door slid open and the gunnery sergeant stepped out into Jyn's attack. A single blow to the head and he was down. Cassian handed Jyn his blaster and she dashed into the cockpit, where the pilot was craning his neck to see the cause of the loud thump. She leveled the blaster squarely between his wide eyes.

"Out of the seat," she ordered. The pilot obeyed and shuffled away from the controls, hands held up. Cassian slipped into the chair and began surveying the controls without much familiarity.

"You're not a lieutenant," said the pilot numbly.

"Actually, he's a captain," said Jyn. She motioned him further into the hold. "Binders. On him and then yourself."

The pilot looked around wildly. "I don't—I don't know if I have any—"

That was something Jyn did have, and she tossed him a pair. Still in shock, he fastened them on the gunnery sergeant. "You're rebels."

Well, obviously.

"You destroyed our base!" the pilot cried.

"No, your side did that," said Jyn, but the pilot was shaking his head, refusing to accept it, and babbling accusations again now that he had found an enemy that didn't have to be his own commanding officers.

"It was you, you did it somehow…"

In a way, she supposed he was right. "Think what you want. If you cooperate, there's no reason for you to die." Actually she could think of several reasons that he should die, all of them fueled by the rage that was beating back the sorrow at the gate. Above all, she wanted to shoot him for not being Bodhi.

"Where is another pair of binders?" she asked down the barrel of the blaster.

Somewhere he discovered a modicum of courage. "I'm not telling you anything."

Jyn was in no mood. "Neither of you goes without a binder. You can find another pair or you can choose which of you gets to wear it and who gets the blaster bolt." She meant it. For a heartbeat she hoped there wasn't a second pair.

He stared hatefully at her before motioning to a side compartment. With her blaster trained on him, Jyn opened it and felt around the regulation supplies for the binders, tossing them to him when she found them. Once he'd snapped them on Jyn paused to examine them both. The pilot carried no weapons but Jyn found a blaster on the sergeant and tucked it away.

These Lambdas had a sealable storage locker large enough for them both. Under her direction the pilot dragged his sergeant into the hold, glaring at her all the while. She didn't remotely care; she would have shot him for the slightest provocation. The hatch sealed shut before his accusing face and she almost buckled from fatigue and suppressed despair.

Bodhi, K2S0, Chirrut and Baze, all the others…and the ones before them, her father, Saw…No. She forced them all into a space she would deal with later. She had done it so well all her life. So, too, did she push away the questions about the plans, and the fleet. For now.

Making sure the seal was locked tight, she walked unsteadily back to the cockpit to find Cassian in a decreasing state of focus. Almost certainly he had a concussion and the high tide of adrenaline had receded to expose the many injuries on the shore. Jyn rooted around in the same compartment in which she'd found the binders and drew out the medkit. It contained very little, basic astringents and bacta patches, some painkillers and stims. Imperials didn't need the same emergency supplies as rebels who were often cut far off from available medbays.

Cassian accepted them with such little protest she knew he was far worse off than he was letting on. "You're limping," he did point out.

"It's just sprained. It's sore, but it's not serious." Jyn spoke honestly, knowing he'd get his hackles up if she tried to downplay it.

He let her apply the patches. Jyn was as careful as she knew how to be but he was in awful pain and winced at every touch. It made her feel guilty; she'd learned some rough medic skills among Saw's people but never developed a gentle penchant for it. She knew enough to tell there were broken ribs and maybe a shoulder, along with myriad other injuries that came from such a nasty fall. Jyn inspected his scalp as well but had trouble interpreting the mess of bruises, blood and bumps as anything more specific than "not pretty."

He insisted on her taking a patch for her ankle and she nursed her private wounds in silence. Jyn felt drained, depleted. She wasn't about to process the people who'd died on Scarif. Determinedly detached, her only thought was: at least their bodies were incinerated. The Empire would not have the satisfaction of parading their corpses as she'd seen before. Then she slammed the hatch shut on those thoughts, before their meaning could overwhelm her.

"Can you fly this?" she asked Cassian. Though it wouldn't matter if the captain lost consciousness.

He frowned at the controls. "Not well," he admitted. "I could probably making a landing intact."

"Reassuring," muttered Jyn.

Cassian actually flashed her a tired smile. "Maybe I'll look up some refresher courses on the HoloNet."

She almost laughed, until she thought of the macabre statistics K2S0 would certainly have trotted out, and the laugh died on her lips. The captain followed her thoughts and fell silent a moment, while they stared at blank hyperspace. After a moment Jyn noticed that he was nodding off, and sharply tapped his head.

"None of that," she warned. "You're concussed."

A mild concussion would be none the worse for a few hours' sleep, but she was poor at telling how serious it was. He had to stay awake long enough to satisfy concerns about worse symptoms.

Cassian roused slightly, but his eyes didn't completely lose their glaze.

She wasn't sure how other people handled their griefs—whether, like her, they compartmentalized them and buried them away until they fossilized into old grudges, or if they simply cried, or openly mourned. Jyn knew she would mourn, in a way she thought she'd forgotten. In the more formal Alliance there were procedures, a martial discipline for processing grief, and Cassian was nothing if not disciplined.

"I'm sorry about your friends," she said. It would have been cruel of her not to.

"Thieves, rogues, spies, all," Cassian mumbled, sounding a little loopy. "And me too. Murderers and sneaks. Not the rebels you'd hear about in stories."

"You are in the ones the Empire tells," said Jyn. Her lips curled into a sardonic smile. "I like those."

He smiled at her again, but it faded a little. "I'm sorry too. For…too much."

While she appreciated the sentiment, it was another thing that would wait. The distance in his voice was a more pressing concern. "How long til we drop out of hyperspace?"

"A few hours." Cassian struggled with the answer and squinted at too-bright hyperspace. Jyn found a dimmer for the viewport.

Too long, she thought. Understandable, as they needed to put some distance between themselves and Scarif, but a real problem if he lapsed completely into unconsciousness before they reached Uo—which, by the way, was a system she knew almost nothing about. That, combined with handling two prisoners on her own, presented a combination of sticky problems that likely had only very sticky solutions.

"You need to stay awake. I'm going to need your help."

This stirred some dutiful reserve she knew she could rely on and Cassian tried to sit up in his seat. She felt bad again, for appealing to his responsibility when it felt so manipulative, but she was no pilot and the Imperial was an absolute last resort.

"Where'd you get so responsible, anyways?" she muttered. She'd always seen duty as a loose string anyone could tug on. Both she and the captain might have begun fighting the same enemies at early ages, yet their wars weren't the same.

"I fell in with different rebels," Cassian said wryly.

Jyn could hardly argue. Saw never preached about the greater good, only the cause of retribution, which had appealed to the little orphan girl who had hate to spare. Retribution and rage were the languages Jyn spoke best. She had no real desire to master the dialects of community, order, service…her fingers itched at the thought. To think she'd about thrown in with Cassian's lot, if they weren't blackguards to a man she never would have, and she told Cassian so. His laugh startled her.

"So, what…little Lieutenant Andor, nine years old?" she mused.

"That's a long time between promotions. Did Saw have officers?"

"Not really. Right hands, sometimes." I should know, I was one. "No real ranks."

Was that the difference, then? The chance to advance? It was simpler with Saw, and she'd always appreciated simplicity. Advancement meant dead stormtroopers, not honors. Did the little bars of rank really add so much legitimacy? Because Cassian did so want to be legitimate, she saw that now. He had a personal code of honor that suited a soldier better than a spy, and it never stopped chafing at the tasks he had to fulfill—and did fulfill, with deadly efficiency. That code which never fully aligned with espionage stopped him from trying to do anything else. Duty! That's all it was, and it's how they got you well and good.

There was a difference between a soldier and a guerilla fighter, and Jyn had never cared to close the gap.

"You could have become an infantry captain instead," she told Cassian, who seemed bemused. Or maybe he was getting dizzier.

"They've got brawlers," he said. They needed brains. Sure, but Jyn had always felt a lot better when she could throw a punch and have done with it.

"How are we going to contact the Alliance?"

Grimly, Cassian said, "We'll have to play that by ear. Once we hit realspace we'll assess how safe it is to transmit."

From the way he slurred, she'd end up doing it. "Tell me how."

He did, with pauses to muster words that were becoming foggier. Uo, it turned out, was not the backwater rural system she expected, but a buzzing metropolitan moon with what seemed like a similar setup to Nar Shaddaa: a minimal Imperial presence that was thankfully corrupt and trade managed largely by a series of syndicates. Another difference between Jyn and the rebel captain: he chose to disappear among people, while she skulked around the edges like a vrelt.

"You are going to need bacta," she said after he'd told her more.

"They have a tank there," Cassian murmured. Stiff hands attempted to rub away a worsening headache. "We'll say—"

Lurching over, he retched onto the floor of the cockpit. Jyn sprang over to him but was helpless to do anything but put a hand on his shoulder and hope the symptoms would end there. There wasn't any ice aboard the Lambda and neither of her prisoners was a medic—not that they could really do much for it anyway.

"Sorry," mumbled Cassian, wiping his mouth.

"You're wearing Imperial boots, I'd throw up on them too."

He laughed quietly and she was suddenly sorry for making the joke as he clutched his head.

"Maybe we—"

Jyn never had the chance to finish. The cockpit erupted into a flurry of warning lights and alarms and she looked up to see the streaking morass of hyperspace stop dead, and they were back in realspace.

"What?" she gasped. Were the calculations wrong? Did the pilot set a different course than he'd said? She frantically scanned the viewport and spied a large hull in the dead space. Its teardrop curves were a immediate giveaway for a Drell starship, and she felt her stomach sink. Drell ships were a common favorite among pirates, and more of them swarmed her view.

Cassian swore. "It pulled us from hyperspace."

She'd never heard of anything short of an Interdictor-class cruiser truly capable of reaching up like some god's fist and plucking a ship from lightspeed. It was the kind of horrifying fable you heard from ancient spacers in backwater bars, who would tell you as tall a tale as whatever tankard of ale you bought them. It didn't actually happen.

Everything happened in five seconds. Before there was any chance of seizing the controls, the Lambda was wracked by ion cannon fire. Control systems spasmed and died as the engines were disabled.

Jyn looked over the controls. "How do we fight?"

No answer.

Turning to Cassian, Jyn had her mouth open to ask again but the words died when she saw him slump to the floor. "Cassian!"

But his head started lolling and she heaved him back into the seat. There was no time to think, no time—

She slit open one of the auxiliary chairs in the cockpit under its seat and stowed one of her blasters. It would probably get found right away, but she didn't have a better idea just then. Let her prisoners stay where they were. Ion blasts had knocked out any chance to fight or flee, and Jyn despised not having the choice.

In a nanosecond she'd cursed in every language she knew and allowed a burst of outrage at the sheer terrible luck of it all. It felt like the spiraling circumstances that had landed her in the Wobani prison camp.

Clunks and the ramp's lowering gave her just enough time to seal the seat back up again. Seeing figures emerge into the hold, she stood again and brushed damp hair from Cassian's forehead. The Force is with me, I am with the Force…