The Mandalorian peered out from around the column and a cold fist closed around his chest. Stormtroopers lined the street, more than he could count, blasters raised and aimed in their direction. In the middle of the intimidating force stood Moff Gideon, arms crossed. Patient. Waiting.

Din looked over at Cara, huddled behind the column beside his. "We're pinned."

"No shit," she said with a grim smile that didn't meet her eyes. She held a blaster in each hand. "So what's the plan?"

"We can't face them all, and I can't fight them if I'm worrying about the kid the entire time. Take him and go back to the ship – he'll be safe there. Hail the Covert on the ship's comm system. Tell them that I sent you, that the foundling is under my protection, and they'll help you. I'll hold the Imps off as long as I can."

"That's your strategy? I'm not going to leave you, you idiot."

"It's the only way."

Cara stared at him, unmoving, and he repeated the directive with more urgency. "Cara, you have to go. Now!"

"No. They'll kill you."

"They'll kill us all if you don't leave now." Din added, "I have a plan." It wasn't a particularly good one, but she didn't need to know that.

"Is it anything like your strategy?" Cara asked sarcastically, but he heard the loss of resolve in her voice. She had been in enough firefights to learn the value of retreat.

The IG-11 beside Din asked, "What shall I do?"

"You're with me. We'll draw their fire. Distract them long enough for Cara to get the kid back to the ship."

There was a short pause as its newly programmed nurse functions overrode its base commands. "This…is acceptable."

Din touched his vambrace and the carrier beside him opened, revealing the small green child inside. He stared up at Din with huge black eyes, his long ears trembling. With fear? After so much time together, Din still wasn't sure what to think.

Cara reached in and pulled the child out, tucking him snugly behind her chest plate. He reached for Din with a quiet squeak and something in Din's chest pounded hard. He had to resist the urge to take him from her.

"You understand what's happening," Din said to the child. It was almost a plea. He repeated, "This is the only way. I'll meet you both back at the ship."

The foundling chirped again and Din, knowing that it was unwise to make dubious promises to a being that could control objects with his mind, said anyway, "I promise."

He ripped a cord from around his neck and handed it to Cara. It was a silver charm of a Mythosaur. "Here. Show this to the Covert when you find them. They'll know who it's from."

Din closed the carrier and peered around the column once more. The stormtroopers were advancing as one line now, closing in on them, less than twenty yards away. They were out of time.

"It's time to go," Din said. He touched his vambrace once more, programming the carrier to stay a safe distance behind him while still remaining visible. In order for this to work, Gideon needed to believe the child was still with him.

Cara looked over at him and he was started by the emotion in her expression. "Don't die before I get back, Mando."

He could only nod, aware of how much more hopeless his situation would be without her. There was more to say, he knew, but they had no time left.

As one, they stepped out from behind the columns. Without looking, Din fired one blaster shot into the head of a stormtrooper to his left and used his forward momentum to knock another trooper to the ground with a fierce kick. On his right, IG-11 advanced in step with him, its robotic arms spinning rapidly as it unleashed a hail of blaster fire. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Cara dart around the corner of the cantina, and noted with grim satisfaction that she was drawing considerably less fire than he and the droid.

A pulse of blaster fire caught him in the left pauldron, knocking him back into the arms of a nearby trooper. Din grabbed the trooper by the helmet and slammed him into the ground, firing a shot directly into the helmet. Another trooper grabbed him from behind, pulling him backward. He dropped to his knee, throwing his assailant off-balance, and hurled him over his head and into a nearby trooper.

They kept coming. Din remained on one knee and engaged the flame projector on his vambrace, sweeping the horizon with fire. The air filled with screams and the smell of charred metal and flesh – they were men, after all, beneath all of that armor. Nearby, IG-11 had converted one of its arms into a vibroblade and was holding its own in hand to hand combat with a few troopers who had managed to escape the fiery assault.

Too quickly, Din's flame projector fizzled out. He got to his feet and backed up toward the cantina, still firing his blaster into the smoke. Returning laser fire punched the dirt around him, but the smoke was obscuring the vision of the stormtroopers and making it difficult to hit their target. As if their aim could get any worse, he thought.

Out of the corner of his eye, Din spied an e-web heavy repeating blaster sitting unattended at the edge of the town square. The body of a stormtrooper, likely its intended operator, lay on the ground nearby. For the first time, Din had a glimmer of hope that he might get out of this alive. He lifted the e-web blaster off of its tripod with a grunt. It was heavy and awkward, but it would provide him with unlimited firepower as long as it remained connected to its power generator.

He fired indiscriminately, laying down a wave of firepower that struck down every trooper in the immediate vicinity.

Out of the chaos and clearing smoke, a dark figure emerged. Moff Gideon. His blaster was aimed at Din.

Din pivoted as quickly as he could with the unwieldy weapon to redirect its fire toward Gideon. Unexpectedly, Gideon's eyes shifted to a lower horizon, something just beside the Mandalorian, and his blaster moved to match. Din had a split-second of realization – the generator – but not nearly enough time to do anything about what was about to happen.

There was a shot, a loud bang that seemed to shake the very planet. An explosion, strangely distant. The last thing Din was aware of was being lifted off of his feet, hanging in the air for an impossibly long moment, a forceful impact…and then darkness.

Cara had never run from a fight before and doing so made her feel like a coward. She knew it was the right thing to do – the only thing to do, under the circumstances – but she had left Din back there to fend off an entire Imperial army. Where was the honor in that?

As if sensing her doubts, the little green child tucked snugly behind her breast plate squirmed and squeaked.

"I know," she said irritably, fighting the irrational feeling that she was being judged. "I don't like it, either."

Cara peered around the corner of the building and once against studied the Razor Crest, sitting unassumingly in the shipyard several hundred yards away. She had been watching it for the past few minutes to make sure there weren't any stormtroopers lying in wait for them – but she knew that every second she waited was one more second that Din was fighting out there, alone. She couldn't delay any longer.

And yet…she found herself hesitating. She didn't know how to fly the Razor Crest. She barely knew how to work the comms system. If Din was unable to hold them off – she hated that thought but had been in enough battles to understand the odds – it would only be a matter of time before Moff Gideon realized that the foundling wasn't in the carrier. They would head straight for the ship, Cara realized. And she and the kid would be trapped within its bowels, praying that the ground security protocols that she knew nothing about would hold the troopers back until help arrived. If help arrived.

On top of that, Cara wasn't really a sit-and-wait kind of person.

She made a quick decision and turned back toward the Marketplace. Their best chance of survival, she realized, was to find the Covert here on Nevarro and rally the Mandalorians to come to Din's aid.

She didn't let herself think about what might happen if they chose instead to abandon him based on the carnage that his actions had unleashed on them a few months ago.