The stormtrooper's body arched slightly before he crumpled, hitting the ground with a solid thud and crunch of plasteel armor. The back of his armor was scorched and melted where the blaster bolt had hit, right in the center of the man's back.

Standing behind the dead stormtrooper was Mirana, blaster held up and ready. Aaliyah stood behind her.

"What took you so long?" Ardeth demanded, straightening up from his defensive crouch and deactivating his lightsaber.

"We ran into some old friends." Mirana said, holstering her blaster and deliberately ignoring the deep, steadying breath Ardeth took. Her body was practically vibrating from the adrenaline rush anyway, so it wasn't like she could say anything to him about it. "They really wanted to talk."

"Huh. And the friends that we ran into just kept trying to kill us. I feel unloved." Ardeth said, eliciting a slightly hysterical giggle from Aaliyah. He gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile and retrieved a blaster rifle and checked the charge. Nodding his approval, Ardeth turned to Terue. "You know how to fire a blaster?"

"I-" Terue started.

"Good." Ardeth said false brightly. "Point it at the target and pull the trigger. Just make sure it's a stormtrooper and not me before you shoot. You kill me, and I'll be ticked."

"Okay." Terue said, drawing the word out so it was two syllables. He turned to Mirana. "Is he always like this?"

"Only when he's mad." Mirana said, taking blaster power cells from the downed stormtroopers.

"I'm not mad. I'm annoyed." Ardeth protested. "You haven't seen me mad yet. When I get mad, I blow stuff up."

"He does." Mirana agreed, inwardly smiling at the flummoxed stares they were receiving from Terue and Aaliyah. Ardeth was channeling his inner Raoul, something he usually did when he was in a fire fight. Usually, Ardeth's sense of humor was dry and similar to Master Kenobi's, but she, the Skywalkers, Raoul, and Mara had been rubbing off on him.

"Did you contact Stark and let him know about the situation?" Ardeth asked, giving the universal signal to get a move on, people, which had Terue and Aaliyah scurrying after them.

"Yes. He has Second Chance on standby." Mirana said, taking point. Terue and Aaliyah walked behind her, Terue gripping his confiscated blaster tightly, Aaliyah creeping behind him, one hand fisted in the back of his shirt like a terrified child. Ardeth, who was bringing up the rear, decided to cut her a break this time. It wasn't like she got wrapped up in Rebel escapes all the time. Compared to some of their escapades, this one was downright tame.

"Does this happen often?" Aaliyah asked, trotting after Terue and Mirana.

"A mission goes to hell in a hand basket? We pick up people that want to join the Alliance?" Mirana asked. "You'll have to be more specific."

"Uh," Aaliyah started.

"What does a hand basket have to do with a mission going to hell?" Ardeth interrupted. "I thought that it was the road to Hell that was paved with good intentions."

Mirana shrugged, lekku twitching against her back. "That too. I've heard some of the humans use the expression. The situation seemed to warrant it."

Ardeth snorted and ducked under a rusted fire escape that had detached itself from its mooring and was leaning against the building on the opposite side of the cramped alley. "Sounds like something Jinn would say."

"You know, I think I did hear it from him. He was talking to Jansen-"

"Shh. I can hear something-" Terue said, only to have Ardeth grab him by the back of his nerf hide jacket and yank him back against the wall.

"Whatever you do, don't move." Ardeth commanded, drawing the Force into himself, and, his face screwed up in concentration, projected it back outward.

It wasn't an illusion per se, just a blurring of the group's image. When the stormtroopers looked at the Twi'leks' stretch of wall, the stormtroopers' eyes would just slide across them without really seeing them. It was one of the oldest tricks Ardeth had learned, completely by accident, when he was a child playing nerf-and-rancor on Tatooine with other children. If he concentrated hard enough, and focused on the thought I'm not here; you can't see me, it became true. Unfortunately, this would be the first time Ardeth would use this trick for anything with higher stakes than a child's game.

It worked. The group of eight stormtroopers tromped by, completely ignoring the four Twi'leks that were pressed against the wall of decaying ferrocrete. When they turned the corner, Ardeth released the illusion with a relieved sigh and grimaced at the headache that had taken residence at the base of his skull. It pulsed in time with his heartbeat.

"Let's not do that again." Ardeth said, pushing away from the wall. "My head hurts."

"How sure were you that that was going to work?" Mirana asked. Ardeth had told her about his ability to project illusions, and by her expression, she remembered that while he'd had the theory, Ardeth had never actually had the chance to test it in the field.

"About fifty-fifty." Ardeth admitted, rubbing the back of his neck and rolling his shoulders in an attempt to release some of the tension in his muscles.

"You bet our lives on a chance that whatever it was you did would work!?" Aaliyah, who had been quiet up until that point, demanded, blue eyes flashing in her pale face, lekku writhing in irritation. "What if it hadn't?"

"It definitely won't work if you don't pipe down." Mirana hissed. "If you get much louder, it wouldn't surprise me if the whole garrison knew where we are."

Aaliyah glowered, but the glare on her delicate face wasn't very threatening after facing down an irate Mara Jade. Compared to Mara, Aaliyah, with her creamy skin, blue eyes, long lekku and petite frame, was cute. But like a pitten, Ardeth suspected that she had claws to go with the cuteness, and what he had initially taken for a lack of backbone was really a will like durasteel that had been thrown off its foundation. Once she achieved equilibrium, Aaliyah would be a force to be reckoned with. She would get along well with Leia and the rest of the Skywalker clan, he thought.

"If it hadn't, we would have fought our way out." Ardeth told her. They were still taking alleys and unkempt side streets, winding a route through Kala'uun's seedier parts back to the Second Chance's hangar. They were almost there. Ardeth recognized the cantina where their latest misadventure had started, neon sign glowing over the shabby establishment's door, loudly announcing that it was open, despite the fact that it was early in the morning.

Following Ardeth's gaze, Mirana smiled. "It's five o'clock somewhere."

Ardeth grinned and shook his head, gave his vest a sharp tug, and slipped out of the alley, blending with the crowd of beings that were moving between shops and open air cafés, Mirana walking by his side, Terue and Aaliyah trying their best to keep up and look like they belonged there. Aaliyah trotted at Ardeth's side. She had a good sabacc face. If he hadn't known any better, Ardeth would have thought that she was just another face in a sea of beings out on her normal daily routine.

Terue had lost his appropriated blaster somewhere, and was keeping pace easily with his long legs. Mirana walked half a stride in front of them, eyes shifting uneasily around the other beings.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, they came to the spaceport.

"Kriffing stang." Mirana said.

"That about sums it up." Ardeth agreed, taking in the stormtroopers arrayed around the entrance. "They really don't want us leaving, do they?"

"They like us too much to let us leave," Mirana deadpanned.

"What do we do now?" Aaliyah asked softly. "It's not like we can just barge past them. Not out in the open like this."

"Keep walking." Ardeth said softly, putting a hand each on Terue and Aaliyah's shoulders and propelling the duo onward, and away from the spaceport. Seeing an alley, he tightened his grip and pushed them into the mouth, cringing slightly at the odor that came from what he hoped was a pile of rags. Mirana followed, blaster drawn and ready.

"But the entrance is that way!" Aaliyah said, twisting away from Ardeth and pointing back the way they had come.

"And we already established that we can't go that way." Ardeth said, releasing Terue from his hold and walking onward, trailing one hand against the spaceport's wall. "Mira, what docking bay were we in?"

"Twenty-eight." Mirana said, rolling her eyes at the nickname.

Ardeth ignited his lightsaber. "Tell Stark to get her ready to blast out of here." Then he drove the blue blade through the wall and started to cut his way through.

"What's he doing?" Terue demanded. "They'll hear it!"

The lightsaber vibrated violently in Ardeth's hands as he dragged the blade through the thick duraplast that the spaceport's walls were constructed from. Readjusting his two handed grip and pushing the blade in up to the hilt, Ardeth said, "Making an entrance."

When the cut was finished, Ardeth levitated the oval section out and gently placed it on the ground, sending up a puff of dust. Releasing the activation plate on his lightsaber, he drew his blaster in his other hand. "Stay close to me." Ardeth said, gesturing Terue and Aaliyah to follow.

Mirana ducked through the hole last, and waited impatiently as Ardeth levitated the section he had cut back into place. It wouldn't hold against a close inspection, but for now it would keep their escape route from being immediately obvious. Reigniting his lightsaber, he ran the tip around the edge, welding the edges together. "We're in twenty-nine right now. If we go through that wall-" Ardeth pointed at the one wall in the empty docking bay. "We'll be in twenty-eight. Does Stark have anything to add?"

"Only that the ship is under guard." Mirana said.

"Great. Any trackers?"

"He electrified the hull every time they tried."

Ardeth chuckled. "That droid is spending too much time with Artoo."

"And Ace."

"Ace isn't nearly as bad." Ardeth said, thinking about Raoul Tano's red and silver astromech. "It's Gage that you've gotta watch." It was true. Jinn Skywalker's black and white astromech seemed determined to give Artoo-Detoo a run for his money in the personality department. The two of them were a match made in the depths of Hell, Ardeth thought.

"How many guards?"

"Two. I don't think they expected us to find a way through."

"Ye of little faith." Ardeth sighed. "Okay, you two," he turned and pointed at Terue and Aaliyah. "Stay close. Don't get shot."

"Good advice." Terue muttered. "Anything else?"

Mirana and Ardeth exchanged looks. "Don't die." Mirana said at the same time Ardeth said, "No, I think that covers it."

"You're crazy." Aaliyah stated.

"Yep." Ardeth said cheerfully. Then he ignited his lightsaber and drove it through the wall for the second time that day. The durasteel wall was thinner there, and Ardeth finished the cut quickly. A quick shove with the Force, and the piece of the wall fell forward, into their ship's hangar with a loud bang of ferrocrete meeting durasteel.

The two stormtrooper guards fired blindly before the dust cleared, and two bolts made it through the hole. Ardeth batted them back, angling his lightsaber to send the bolts into the guards' chests. One hit its mark, but the second stormtrooper dove to the ground and rolled behind one of Second Chance's landing struts. The ship shuddered as Stark electrified it again, and the man gave a shout of pain and pulled away, fully distracted from the firefight and making a perfect target for Mirana, whose shot hit in the middle of his back.

"Let's get out of here." Mirana said, stepping through Ardeth's improvised door. "Stark! Open up!"

"Before more stormtroopers get here." Ardeth finished her thought under his breath, jogging after her, lightsaber in hand. "Come on." He ordered over his shoulder.

"That's your ship?" Aaliyah asked, running after Mirana. Terue followed in her wake, matching strides with Ardeth.

"We should get a DNA test done." Terue said suddenly, and Ardeth turned to look at him, ignoring the animated conversation between Mirana and Aaliyah.

"Let's get off planet first okay?" Ardeth said, dodging the statement entirely. If the test confirmed what he feared it would, he wasn't quite sure how he should react. Should he be thrilled that he had found his biological family? Ardeth had found a family in his fellow Jedi in the years he'd been a part of the Alliance. He had brothers in Jinn, Luke and Raoul, sisters in Leia, Grace and Mara, a father in Obi-Wan, a mother in Padmé, an aunt in Ahsoka, uncles in Anakin and Rex and possibly something more in Mirana- the idea of his family expanding more, giving him more to lose, more that could be used against him in the coming war terrified him.

What troubled him even more was that he didn't know what to feel.

STAR WARS

It didn't take a genius to realize that something was bothering Ardeth. And Mirana was pretty sure she knew what it was. Really, she just thought he was overthinking it. If she was ever given the chance to find the parents she had been separated from as a young child, she would jump on it. And here Ardeth was, with a family he didn't know he had falling into his lap, and he was scared. Terrified, if she was reading him correctly.

Sometimes, she just didn't understand males. Of any species.

Clapping Ardeth on his shoulder on her way to Second Chance's cockpit, Mirana whispered, "Head in the game, Jedi. You can worry about other stuff later. Right now I need you in the top turret."

"Right." Ardeth said, leaping the rest of the way up the ramp, and scaling the ladder into the top blaster cannon turret.

"Where do you want us?" Terue demanded, scrambling after Mirana into the cockpit with Aaliyah in tow.

Mirana was flipping switches and bringing the repulsor lifts and sublight engines from standby to flight status before she sat in the pilot's chair, completely ignoring the younger two Twi'leks. "She ready to go Stark?"

At the astromech's affirmative whistle, Mirana flicked on the ship's intercom. "We're set to go. Be ready."

Ardeth's voice crackled over the speaker. "Ready and waiting."

"Sit down and strap in. This might get a little bumpy." Mirana said. When neither Terue nor Aaliyah moved, she twisted in the pilot's chair even as she pulled on her crash webbing. "Well?"

"Oh!"

Mirana rolled her eyes as the two scrambled into the navigator and copilot's chairs. Stark gave a rude sounding warble and plugged himself into the ship's navicomputer.

It took surprisingly little persuasion on Mirana's part for the traffic controllers of Kala'uun's spaceport to let them go, and Mirana suspected the text message that they received said something along the lines of good luck.

For all that the Empire wanted to keep them, the one star destroyer in orbit over the planet was on the far side, between Ryloth itself and the planet's sun. It was too far away to bring its turbolasers and tractor beams to into play. As far away as it was, the destroyer only showed on her sensors as a star destroyer-sized blip, the name didn't register. Not that Mirana was complaining. The steady pew-pew-pew, of her own laser cannon,grumbled Twi'leki curses, and whoops of victory that came over the ship wide intercom assured her that Ardeth had more than enough to worry about as it was.

"You can get us out of here… any… time… now." Ardeth said, his sentence punctuated by the cannon fire. "It's getting a little hot back here."

"Working on it!" Mirana shouted back, corkscrewing her ship around several TIE fighters, juking and diving to avoid their fire.

"Work faster!" Ardeth shouted.

Stark gave an electronic squawk as the ship shuddered under the TIEs' fire, and then gave a triumphant squeal as Second Chance finally exited Ryloth's gravity well.

"Yes!" Mirana hissed. "Punch it!" Star lines extended across the cockpit canopy as they escaped into hyperspace. "That was fun." Mirana said, extracting herself from her crash webbing.

"Let's not do it again sometime." Ardeth said over the ship's intercom. "Cut it a little close, don't you think?"

"Sure." Mirana said, standing and looking at Terue and Aaliyah. Terue's aqua skin was pale, and he looked sick. Aaliyah's pale, almost white skin was tinged a sickly shade of green, and her blue eyes were wide. "Oh, no." Mirana said, pointing out the door of the cockpit. "If you're gonna hurl, you go to the 'fresher. No one throws up on my ship."

Aaliyah made a soft noise, freed herself from the webbing of her seat, clamped one hand over her mouth, and sprinted from the cockpit.

"Well," Mirana drawled. "She ain't gonna be a pilot."

Terue burst into hysterical laughter.

STAR WARS

"I thought I'd find you here."

Ardeth didn't look up from the datapad he'd been staring at for the past half-hour. Like maybe if he stared at it long enough, what it was telling him would change.

Jinn Skywalker sat next to him. "Beautiful view." Jinn commented.

It was true. The Alliance's newest base on Yavin IV was set up in the ziggurat-like temples in the jungles. The gas giant of Yavin and the sun were vying for the biggest portion of the jungle moon's sky, and Yavin IV's various sister moons were arrayed across the sky as far as Ardeth could see. The unspoiled beauty of the jungle surrounded them, perched as they were at the very summit of the largest pyramid. The calls of wildlife around them added to the peaceful atmosphere. Up there, Ardeth could almost forget he wasn't the only being on the moon.

"Can I?" Jinn asked, gesturing at the datapad.

Wordlessly, Ardeth held it out to him.

Jinn read through the document and whistled through his teeth. Then he grinned and clapped Ardeth on the shoulder, his sense in the Force nothing but almost joyful. "Congratulations, big brother."

When Ardeth didn't immediately respond, Jinn bumped his shoulder against Ardeth's. "All right. What's eating you?"

Ardeth opened his mouth to deny it, but Jinn cut him off.

"And don't say it's nothing. Mirana said you were acting funny on the trip back, and Luke and Raoul noticed it too. And if Leia was here, she'd sit on you until you spilled. But she's not here, so that duty falls to me. Now. Spill." The younger human commanded, shuffling away slightly to sit more comfortably and staring expectantly at Ardeth, blue eyes bright.

Ardeth exhaled in a gust. "By being related to me, they have giant targets on their backs. I'm putting them in danger by being here. What if the Empire hurts them to get to me? I… I don't… gah." Ardeth dropped his head into his hands. If he had hair like Jinn did, he would probably have given it a good yank out of sheer frustration.

Jinn just studied him for a moment. "What about them?"

"What?" Ardeth asked, looking up.

Jinn swept his shaggy blond hair out of his eyes. "What about what they want? I talked to both of them. They wanted to come with you even before they knew you were their brother." Jinn sighed. "It's like us right now with Grace. She's twelve years old. She should be worrying about some crush at school, and instead she's bugging me and Luke to teach her to fly the X-Wings."

"What does that have to do with Terue and Aaliyah?" Ardeth asked, confused.

Jinn rolled his eyes, and the look he gave Ardeth suggested that the answer was fairly obvious. "You can't stop them from joining." He held up a hand to forestall Ardeth's protest. "What you can do is teach them to fight. To protect themselves, so that they have a chance of getting through this alive. Prepare them as best you can. You said Aaliyah's Force- sensitive? Teach her to use it. The only thing we can do is give them the things they need to fight. After that, it's up to them."

Ardeth sighed again. "I guess I never thought about it that way. It makes sense." He admitted ruefully. "I've been so worried about me, I didn't think about them."

Jinn laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. "Now that your head's screwed on straight, I'll leave you alone."

"How do you deal with it?" Ardeth asked Jinn's retreating back.

Jinn paused. "Deal with what?"

"What if one of them dies?"

The muscles in Jinn's back and arms tightened. "We'd have to keep moving forward. Pull together." He looked back over his shoulder at Ardeth. "And pray like hell that it doesn't happen. Because if it does, I'm not sure how any one of us would cope."

Ardeth swallowed hard. "What do you do with the fear that it could happen?"

Jinn blew out a breath. "When we go into combat, I put my emotions in a box. And all I worry about is getting me and my wingman through it."

"Oh." Ardeth nodded.

A hand landed on his shoulder. "That fear?" Jinn asked. "It's love. You love them already, and you're afraid of losing them. Fight for them. It makes things easier." Then Jinn turned and descended back down the pyramid.

"Fight for them." Ardeth murmured, turning back to watch the sun set.

STAR WARS

Well, that's over and done with, and my excuses for not working on Change of Destiny's sequel have run dry. Thanks for reading! Reviews are appreciated!

-CommChatter