Author's Note: I so appreciate your messages and comments encouraging me to not give up on this story. An Order Reborn has taken a long time for me to write, due to life challenges, job changes, etc. But it seems many of you still want to see this thing finished. Which is good, because it's almost done! Not sure on a chapter count, but we are close. If you haven't yet, please follow my new story, Haunted, which takes place after the events of The Rise of Skywalker. But I promise that An Order Reborn will be finished. My favorite OC, Kezzik, would not allow me to rest until I wrote this chapter. Damn him, he wants to have his heroic moment, too.

Leave me a comment, follow me on Tumblr at erickawrites ... and Happy New Year!

Kezzik couldn't tear his gaze from the holo images. The Star Destroyers were clearing Yavin Prime now, coming in range of the temple. Once they were past the red gas giant, they would have a clear shot at them. Kriff, there were so damned many of them.

A middle-aged human working the station beside him broke the silence in the control room. "There's a message."

"Patch it through," Qi'ra responded.

A man's voice, prim and confident flooded the tense space. "This is General Girard of the Sith Fleet. Emperor Palpatine would like you all to know that he is taking control of this temple. You are outnumbered five hundred to one. There is no hope of a fight. Surrender now and we may let the children live."

Qi'ra's face blanched.

So many young trainees. He thought about Samra, what it might mean for her to lose Aayla. His heart wrenched painfully as he imagined everything she'd worked for these years since the temple, destroyed in the briefest flash of a turbolaser.

General Girard continued, "You have five minutes to give a decision before we begin our purge of your little operation." The way he twisted the last word made ice erupt in his veins.

They stood staring at the comm panel long after it had gone silent.

Quinn was the first to speak again, his voice coming from a different station. "I've just had another message. Word that the First Order is on its way. There has been a mutiny aboard the fleet, stormtrooper rebels have overcome the officers and they are with us now. They belong to the Resistance."

Qi'ra's eyes grew wide. "Are you sure?"

Quinn nodded. "I just had confirmation. The newly repaired Supremacy and a half dozen Star Destroyers are on their way."

"Impressive," she replied, the hollowness in her voice betraying the hopelessness of their situation, "but still… not enough."

Finn crossed the room to peer down at the station Quinn was working at. "But it gives us a chance."

Qi'ra was unmoved. "We only have five minutes. How far out are they?"

Finn glanced down at the panel again, shared a word with Quinn, and responded loudly enough for the room to hear. "At least an hour."

"We'll be dead by then," came the woman's frantic voice at the comm station.

Qi'ra raked an agitated hand through her silver hair. She paced for several seconds, weighing the decision, visibly straining under the burden she'd been forced to shoulder.

A desperate sort of hope flared in his chest. He would not bow down now, not when he had Samra back. He finally felt like a human being again, all for it to be ripped from him like this?

No.

Kezzik felt the shell of a plan forming in his mind. Time. They only needed time.

Quinn's persistent voice broke through his thoughts. "You don't think we could hold out here for that long? What if we split up, hide transports all over the planet, force them to chase us down and give the First Order time to reinforce us?"

Qi'ra positioned her hands on her hips, but before she could argue further, Kezzik straightened, projecting his voice with as much confidence as he could muster. "I'm going to the Emperor's flagship. I can try to manipulate him to change his mind, to buy us time."

Qi'ra was shaking her head. "Don't waste your time. There's no way – "

Qi'ra stopped her complaint halfway through to gawk at Samra who was now standing behind her, wearing his favorite tight black Nexu hide leggings and a low-cut long jacket. She smiled at him and his heart nearly stopped.

"I'm going with him."

Rey called out through that interconnected web of life and death, to anyone who would listen, collecting the strength of the Jedi she knew were a part of the living Force. Like a soothing balm, their energy strengthened her enough to stand again and she held her lightsaber in a defensive position against the robed figure of Emperor Palpatine.

She stepped forward slowly, stealing a glance at Ben who lay crumpled in a heap near the pile of glowing soul stones, which were now smoldering with an eerie red-orange glow.

Rey closed her eyes, tapping into that precious thread that connected them - The Bond. But something was wrong. Rey gagged on the choking realization that he had wrapped himself around that sacred tether between them. The radiant golden cord between them was veined through with a dark taint, fingers of death ripping at it until it was frayed at the edges. The Emperor had found a way to corrupt the most pure part of herself, her love and eternal connection to Ben Solo.

She gasped as she came back to herself, fire filling her blood, ears pounding with rage as she charged at the Emperor with a throat-shredding roar. But with a flick of his hand she was pushed back. Her shoulder erupted in agony as she landed hard, sliding back against the stone, pinned there by an invisible vise in the Force.

Through the haze of pain, she watched Palpatine bend to one knee, his twisted fingers injecting a needle into his own skeletal arm, crimson beginning to fill the vial in his grip. He waved a hand, and five hooded figures she hadn't ever seen emerged from an alcove at the far side of the room, they joined Temiri and Aayla's emotionless forms, and approached her in a semi-circle.

She felt the invisible hand tighten around her, stifling her movements and giving her the feeling of being buried alive. She couldn't breathe deeply enough, her chest too tight to suck in air. The figures approached, and the one holding a syringe stuck her unceremoniously in the arm. She wriggled and fought against the invisible Force, but it was like struggling against the inevitable, struggling against a pre-determined fate.

Even the Force seemed bogged down by this incredible shift of power.

The Emperor cackled again, before moving to kneel beside Ben's body which was sprawled at an awkward angle on the ground. As Palpatine reached for Ben's arm, she could see he wasn't lifeless after all, but was struggling against the same energy she fought. The Emperor stooped to collect another vial, moving deftly for someone who appeared half-dead, and in a rush of realization, his intention became clear. She compared his actions with something they had read in one of the ancient texts, and her stomach lurched.

A soul is both claimed and released from the vessel through the same process. The alchemist will require three measures of blood in equal parts.

One part from someone you love.

One part from someone you hate.

One part from yourself.

The Emperor was planning something worse than she could have ever imagined. He would never let them die together mercifully. No, that would be far too quick. A noble death was too good for them. He was planning something horrible with their very souls.

A wave of panic threatened to drown her where she lay, still unable to move.

With the vials filled with their blood, the figures re-converged, presenting the Emperor with his final prize, her blood, and he pulled out several dark vessels from his inner robes. Bile rose in her throat as the weight of what he was about to do struck her. Their sacred, life-giving blood was being joined, and immediately spoiled for an unimaginable evil. He would own their souls and do with them what he pleased.

He spilled the contents together as he mumbled indiscernible words, repeating something again and again in a hissing whisper that chilled her. The air around them thickened with a cold, misty weight that clung to every inch of her exposed skin.

"Even now, my fleet outstrips your pitiful defenses five hundred fold. And with your Bond broken and bled for my power, the galaxy will bow to its true master… me."

He raised his head and pulled his robe back from his face, revealing a withered, skeletal monstrosity that should not belong to a living creature.

He curled his wicked laughter like a weapon around her heart and she floated, only halfway aware of being terrified as she drifted away from herself forever.

Kezzik hadn't stopped gripping Samra's hand since climbing aboard the Steelshade. And now, as the nose of the Emperor's ship cut across the blackness of space, emerging from behind the expanse of the red gas planet, the sheer magnitude of what they planned to do crushed the air from his chest.

He'd begged Samra to stay behind, but she'd only stared at him with that stubborn icy glare of hers and Kezzik knew he'd lost that argument before it had ever begun. He only hoped Qi'ra's coder was right when he said he could get them through the shields to the Emperor's flagship. Because this was their only shot.

Many more had volunteered for the mission, but Kezzik and Samra had denied them. They didn't plan to fight their way through to the control room, but to sneak their way through. And for that, none were better suited than the two of them.

Zeke squawked insufferably from Samra's shoulder as she punched the required codes into the panel and inserted the key chip, making the transmission. The flagship was an older ship, imperial age, and Qi'ra's coder had worked for the Empire. He had a trove of chips and ciphers, codes and passwords that he believed could still get through the defensive shields. At least for long enough to go unnoticed until someone ran their hourly diagnostic checks, at that point there were no promises.

They both held their breath as Samra punched the final key to send the transmission.

Even Zeke froze, eyes transfixed on the blinking red lights indicating the transfer of information was in process. One blink, two blinks, three… Relief flooded the cockpit as the light turned solid green.

They were in.

Samra punched several more keys, accepting the landing orders. Docking bay twelve. Their lives and the lives of everyone in that temple rested on what happened in docking back twelve.

Kezzik's heart had begun to pound relentlessly, before he realized that he was actually feeling anxious. Death actually mattered to him now. A foreign feeling and he reached out through the Force, centering himself for what was to come.

"Really, Kezzie?" Samra's voice was a honeyed purr against his ear. "You're going to spend what could be our last moments together meditating?" Samra's full lip curled into a smirk and thoughts of meditation were instantly thrown out the airlock.

He reached over, combing trembling fingers through her perfect black hair, speaking a thousand words through his fingertips.

Zeke craned his skinny little neck toward him, beady eyes boring into his own, and Kezzik readied himself for the stabs of those needle-sharp teeth embedding into the back of his hand. Instead, the little dragon hopped gently from Samra's shoulder onto his arm, before climbing the rest of the way to perch on his shoulder.

Samra's wide smile was enough to light the darkest night within himself. "Qi'ra tells me that Astralis lives," she said, a soft air of pride shining through her tone.

Kezzik nodded, moving his fingers from her hair to the shell of her ear, to trace the outline of her cheek, her lips.

"I felt you. When you healed her," she said, eyes beginning to glisten with each word she spoke, and he didn't miss the tiny tremble of her perfect lower lip. "You risked yourself to bring her back."

"You would have done the same," he said, never taking his eyes from her.

"I love you," she said, dark eyes blazing with the truth of her words. "I never stopped loving you."

Zeke nuzzled his little scaled head against Kezzik's cheek and for a moment he could imagine happiness. A family. Things he would never have let himself consider mere weeks ago. "You are my everything," he said, before capturing her in a crushing, passionate kiss that told her exactly how much he loved her.

By the time he pulled away, she was gasping in little panting breaths that sent fire through his veins. His need for her was an ache at his very core and in that moment, he realized that everything he had done from the time the Jedi Temple was destroyed, had been nothing but a vain attempt to fill that ache. Every lie, every mission, every murder had been completed to try to numb this part of himself he never had a chance to fill on his own.

Now, the very thought of numbing this need made him sick to his stomach. He would fight to his last breath to feel it. To feel alive.

"Kezzie, you're not getting sentimental on me now, are you?" she asked, studying his frown lines with her fingers. He closed his eyes to relish the sensation, every touch a precious treasure.

"You know me, always the hopeless romantic."

But Samra knew he wore his sarcasm like armor and it was only she who could peel it away completely, leaving his soul bared to her.

"We are going to save the day, Kezzie." Her mischievous wink stopped his heart, then sent it beating wildly again at twice its regular speed. "Then, we'll have all the time in the galaxy for you to show me just how sentimental you've become."

And then Samra kissed him, deep and fierce, her Force wrapping him in a protective embrace and for a moment, he believed her.