AN: Also, I am surprised no one seemed to get the correct setting within Star Wars… it was funny enough to me that it made me comment on it within the chapter ;)

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Waking up in the arms of my girls was probably the thing that finally, finally let myself believe we had made it out of Earth Bet. Maybe dying followed by having my soul nearly ripped apart had had a bigger impact than I would have thought.

Mentally kicking myself for that level of sarcasm as it wasn’t healthy, I looked around the cabin. It was pretty standard gray and incredibly minimalistic. If we were going to live here longer it might be a good idea to spruce it up some.

Still, as much as I wished we could have taken a moment to rest, we didn’t have time. This world was apparently about to end. In fact, the only reason we hadn’t already moved on was because, according to both Dinah and Luna, we still had multiple hours left and we still had no idea where to go.

I mean, once I had healed enough to pop away, it didn’t really matter where in the universe we were. The question was the time, and while I wasn’t sure how long exactly it would be, several days was probably an optimistic estimate. In that respect, this planet with its breathable atmosphere, space to walk around outside the ship, and fresh food supplies was just as good as any other location we could pick.

Looking around I noticed that Amy was still asleep, but the rest of the girls in our room had their eyes open and seemed to be relaxing in bed.

“Morning Girls.”

There was a chorus of “Morning” back and some half-hearted swearing from Amy before she rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. She really didn’t function in the morning without her coffee. A part of me wondered why she hadn’t messed with her own brain chemistry to fix that, but then again I didn’t really care if she liked her morning routine as is.

Pushing myself up I left my room to find the bathroom attached to the crew quarters area. The entire section was partitioned away from the common area by a small hall and wall with the door at the end. The bathroom wasn’t much to write home about, it was small and very simplistic.

What caught my attention was the circular room at the end where I could see what looked like a shower. Yet I didn’t see anywhere where the water would come out nor much of a drain at the bottom.

Deciding I would just have to figure this out later, I finished my business, washed my hands, and exited the bathroom. Walking back down the hall towards the common area of the ship I turned the corner and seeing several girls already up and around the dining table I nearly tripped over a robot. A robot that was so blindingly familiar that I actually facepalmed.

The robot looked like a trash can with a rounded top that was already swiveling back and forth while beeping. The two arms coming down from the trashcan along with a central leg from the center of the base was iconic enough to make my jaw drop. Honestly the only reason I instantly knew this was not somehow R2D2 was because it had green highlights instead of blue.

I just stared for several seconds before I finally hesitantly apologized to the droid. “Sorry…”

The astromech swiveled back and forth a few times, communicating something in annoyed beeps and tones that I still managed to interpret as ‘please be more careful’. Yet my mind was already spiraling away with the implications.

The first thought was that part of me kinda wanted to meet R2 as the sarcastic and willful droid was arguably the main protagonist of the entire Star Wars franchise, but seeing another of the same general model was still pretty cool.

But that meant… that meant that this was obviously the Star Wars universe…

Now thinking back on what I had obviously missed, I pulled my hand away from my face so I could hit my forehead again.

All the clues were there. Being driven by my emotions as a way to the dark side of the force, with our magic powers close enough to potentially let us fall prey to the same risks. The fact the world was going to be destroyed, the shuttle that we were now standing in which made me think I had seen something like it in the movies.

The question was WHEN exactly we were. I would have liked to believe that a world being destroyed would narrow it down… but it really didn’t. Especially when you factored in all of the Old Republic games and stories.

Finally looking up I spotted Lisa looking at me while sitting on the dining table, swinging her legs back and forth. She was probably there to watch my revelation of something she had already figured out. Indeed her smile was absolutely giddy and I realized she was going to be insufferable about this even before she opened her mouth. “Finally figured it out, did you?”

My sigh was long and slow, but in the end I didn’t have to say anything as Amy, who had finally exited the hall behind me and was making her way directly towards our coffee maker, gave her a single look and Lisa’s mouth snapped shut and she made the zipping motion.

Good to see that even Lisa knew when and when NOT to mess with Amy.

It was then that I heard a voice from what had to be the ship’s intercom. “Good Morning, Max, Amy, Taylor, Ahri, Sabah.” Then as Dinah and Luna exited their room Thea continued, “Good Morning Dinah, Good Morning Luna.”

Luna practically did a little twirl as she spun to look everywhere. “Good Morning, Thea! So good that you will be there to keep the Wrackspurts Away! Do you think I can learn to do that as well?”

Thea was quiet and I realized that even if she was a copy of Dragon, with her limited hardware and slightly less developed logic matrixes, she probably wasn't quite up to the demands of understanding Luna quite yet.

Instead I asked the obvious question on how she was using the ship’s speakers to speak to us. “Thea, did you connect to the ship, and if so, how?”

Thea paused for a moment where I wondered if she was going to answer. “I am sorry, Max. I do not understand Luna’s question. I have a small fabricator in my server rack and after reading through the manual that Sabah showed me yesterday I was able to make an interface to the ship’s access ports. These ships are made so that a droid may operate them in a crisis, however interestingly enough, the ship had no central processor for me to access directly. It is more of a remote control.”

I blinked and thought about it before I answered. “That is true. In the Star Wars movies, the droids are able to control the ships, especially R2D2, but there is never any artificial intelligence on the ship itself. I suppose that would make the ships harder to hack, seeing as most of the controls are hardware based, but it is still a little strange seeing as everything else has some level of AI in it.”

It was Taylor who spoke up while eating one of the ration packs. The packs that looked to me like some sort of dense granola bar. “I wonder if the lack of AI on their ship was because they also wanted their AI to be able to follow them around and between ships.”

I nodded. “That also makes sense, I guess.” Pausing for a second I shrugged. “Well, regardless, let's eat. If we are going to enchant this entire ship to be stronger and stealthier, then we are going to need to get started. Dinah, Luna, how much time do we have before we need to be gone?”

Dinah and Luna looked at each other before Dinah slowly answered. “About 6 hours, but we should start leaving in 5.”

Nodding, I turned to Look towards Thea’s computer server in the corner. “Thea, can you fly the shuttle by yourself and can you plan a course away from this planet?” I paused, then asked, “And while we are at it, what planet are we on?”

Thea answered in a more confident tone. “Of course, and for where we are, the star maps and flight logs list us on a planet called Scarlif.”

I paused and racked my brain, but no… I could not think of a planet with that name. “Damn, I don’t know that planet, but then again, I don’t actually remember many of the planet names except for the famous ones like Tatooine. What about all of you? I assume Star Wars was made on both of your versions of Earth, since none of you look confused.”

Hermione who realized that I was talking to her as well shrugged. “Sorry, no.”

I winced and nodded. “Right, only the original trilogy was made at this point in the 1990s.” Looking around I was hopeful, but there was a lot of head shaking so I sighed. “And we lost a lot of our books, movies, and two of our media computers. Yeah it probably wasn’t going to be on the pirated anime computer or our games computers that we still have, but we also don’t really have time to search anyway. Regardless, we can expand your knowledge of Star Wars later as while, in my opinion, the prequels weren’t as good, they weren’t overly terrible either.” I paused. “However, let's not talk about the sequels, I am still annoyed at how Finn who could have been awesome never graduated from being comic relief and Luke went from the most forgiving character in the story to one that would kill his nephew over a vision.” Everyone looked confused so I waved my hand to move the discussion along as I considered other options. “I mean there were also all those games and animated movies. Maybe we will move on to those.” I mused “A lot of those were way better anyway.

It was at that point that I heard a voice from behind me, “So you are really from a different Earth, that is so cool.” and I spun around before I remembered who was talking. “Damn It, Aisha… stop doing that!”

The teenage black girl simply smirked and pranced around me to get her breakfast. A part of me wondered when Amy had made her black again since we had helped them hide by turning them vaguely Mexican, but it didn’t really matter.

Sighing I shook my head before following her over to the table and pulled out a ration pack from its tin foil wrapper. As I bit into it, I found it tasted like a very light combination of sourdough bread, blueberries, and if I was being honest, hints of cardboard. Oh, it was subtle as one would expect from mass produced food, but what was there definitely had that combination, it was… weird.

Still, that was definitely better than starving and while I doubted the exact same wheat and blueberries were common in this universe, I suppose it did have to taste like something and those flavors were what my brain came up with. Again, it could have been worse.

After breakfast I did some quick power testing and found I could probably hold open a small portal without any strain regardless of how far I pushed the other end away. However my speed of moving them around was a lot slower. Plus I was now struggling to hold open even a half dozen portals at the same time. That was way down from the two dozen I had done pretty easily on Yamatai.

Still, I supposed the distance not being a limitation made sense as wormholes, or whatever my portals counted as, were already fundamentally giving space the middle finger so more distance between them wouldn’t matter much. However I was still annoyed that my speed, size, and amount would still be limited for a while longer. Especially as the soul deep ache I was still feeling had once again dropped considerably.

In fact, the speed in particular made me annoyed and I promised myself that I would work on that once I healed. If I had managed to pop us away quicker, none of this would have happened.

Making a small one meter by half meter wide portal and attaching it to a metal plate, probably originally debris from our pocket home, gave the scavenging team a method they could carry around with them to instantly return.

Yet there was still a few minutes of discussion as we debated on who would be doing what. In the end, said team ended up consisting of Ahri, Aisha and (due to her own insistence since she would know what was valuable) Lisa. Lisa might have also been trying to avoid Amy as Amy was still waking up with her second cup of coffee and the two were turning out to be like water and oil.

However, that did raise some concerns. I reminded Aisha multiple times that with her powers, we wouldn’t remember to wait for her when we left if she kept her powers on all the time. Yet, as I was learning to expect, I simply got a raspberry in return before she basically bounced out the door.

I suspected that she had already done her own exploring in the last few days, but if she wanted to help steal stuff for the Family, I wasn’t going to stop her.

The rest of us circled the ship to start our enchanting and engraving.

I spent some time with Hermione discussing the possible runes we could have used, but in the end we settled on a Elder Futhark Algiz rune for protection and strength and the traditional chinese character Yǐn for concealment.

Yet, just like when I wanted to create the headbands I didn’t feel like I was writing those runes, it felt like I was almost writing in English unless I really focused on what I was doing. I also didn’t seem to be writing them exactly the way that I remembered seeing them in books and I wondered if something about my ability was improving them somehow.

Another part of me had worried that the runes in another language wouldn’t work in this universe, yet after a few seconds, the runes in question seemed to morph before our eyes into what my brain processed as the ancient galactic basic word for ‘defense’ and ‘hidden’ respectively. It made me wonder what exactly our omnilingual skill was actually doing as it seemed too wide spread for a simple translation spell.

Regardless of my thoughts, the group of us crawled around the ship carefully marking out the locations from Hermione and Xeno Lovegood’s calculations. According to their analysis, the proper number of engravings was 7 plus 1 with one in the center of the cockpit and three down each side plus an additional one on the top of the back engine. It would encompass the numbers 7, 3, 2, and 1 while also being 2 cubed. Said engravings would then need to be filled with a mixture of gold and silver before the enchantment was cast.

This was the moment that I realized that while I might be good, maybe even really good at enchantment, I wasn’t a genius like Hermione. It was also clear that while Xeno might not have been as good as his late wife in spell creation and enchanting, he wasn’t a slouch either. That just left me with the grunt work of using the enchanted knives to cut the indentations for said inlays before the rest could inlay them.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Finally, nearly three hours later, I stepped back and admired our work. Each rune was tied to a central ward stone that was mounted in the cockpit. While I doubted I would ever deactivate the protection and strength rune, if the concealment rune was more powerful than I expected then it might get us into trouble if no one could detect the ship at all, like while landing. I really did not want other ships running into us because they couldn’t pick us up on their scanners. Yet I also really, REALLY didn’t aswant to be shot out of the sky as we tried to leave by whatever was going to be attacking this world.

Now ready for the enchantment, we lined up equidistant in a rough oval around the ship. It had taken a little while to get our chants to line up but everyone was ready. From Xeno and Hermione's suggestion we were going to try a three layer enchantment for the protection that would lie underneath the technological shields. A enchantment ward that I realized was what they had used in the battle of Hogwarts. “Protego Maxima… Fianto Duri… Repello Inimicum!” Now feeling the stress of casting such a powerful protection ward, we carefully, but quickly tied it to the hull and then the master rune before nearly collapsing in exhaustion.

It ended up taking nearly twenty minutes before we were ready to do it again for the notice-me-not ward. A few minutes of prep saw us chanting in unison, “Repello Observio” and tying it first to the concealment runes across the hull and then to the other master rune in the cockpit.

When we once again picked ourselves off the ground I waved tiredly at the rest of us to gather around, “Excellent work, Let’s get inside.”

As we climbed up the ramp I spoke up. “Thea, what type of Hyperdrive does this ship have anyway?”

Thea spoke up almost immediately. “This ship is equipped with a 1.5 class Hyperdrive.”

I blinked, I vaguely remembered that hyperdrives were a little funny in the Star Wars universe. That pretty much anything could have a hyperdrive installed, but it was actually the smaller and lighter craft that could typically go the fastest. I also was pretty sure hearing that hyperdrives were also rated on an inverse scale with the lower the number the better. So while I wasn’t positive, I was pretty sure that with the exception of most high-end military ships and some of the wealthy aristocrats, we were probably high up on the speed scale.

However, that speed was somewhat limited by navigation. If my understanding of the Star Wars Lore was correct, then when we left this universe, without the known hyperlanes, the ship would have to spend perhaps hours or even days plotting a course in hyperspace that would avoid planets and gravity wells. The ship's shields could obviously deal with micrometeorites and maybe even asteroids, but nothing could survive hitting a sun. I frowned, that might limit the shuttle’s utility outside this universe.

I paused and thought about it for a moment. Wait, didn’t asteroids have a non-trivial amount of gold and silver inside them? A small grin lit up my face. Even without selling technology or items we might have solved our money problem in most Earth-type worlds. I mean if we could just spend a day or two scanning the asteroid belts for gold before refining it with either technology or magic… well the ship would basically become a money printer.

That did assume that I would be able to pull the entire ship into a pocket dimension. A big question considering it was bigger than our original pocket home. Honestly I wasn’t even sure it would be possible even if I was at 100%.

I shook my head, we had more important things to plan for right now.

Speaking up so Thea could hear me I hit the button to close the ramp behind me, only taking one final look at our pocket home, probably for the last time. Most of the girls also seemed to be doing the same thing behind me.. “Thea, please prepare for liftoff. I want to be gone before whatever happens to this planet gets us as well.”

Thea was almost giddy in her response. “Aye, Aye Captain…” which was immediately followed by the ship's engines beginning to hum as they powered up. Then I felt the entire ship shudder as the thrusters were warmed up. Finally in the air, pulling out of the trees and lifting up into the sky, I felt myself calm down now that we were ready to leave at any time.

Now able to think about more than just getting off this rock, I almost asked why Thea had decided to call me captain, but after a moment I shook my head and turned to walk into the cargo bay. If I questioned every little thing one of my girls did, I wouldn’t ever have time for anything else.

Aware we were probably down to the final hour I checked in with our scavenger team again. “Ahri, is your team finished?” I had obviously left the portal open in the cargo hold and there was already a new pile of equipment and supplies. I wasn’t entirely sure what all of the parts were, but I assumed that Lisa’s power was telling her that they were important.

The view out of the portal shifted and spun around quickly before we were greeted with Ahri’s face as she held the piece of scrap metal it was attached to up in front of herself.

I might have been able to help them more if I had been controlling the portal itself and the amount of things they could steal from these people was obviously limited by the size of the portal I had given them. However I had been busy with the engraving and enchanting and the portal was both big enough to escape through and small enough to easily be carried around.

Ahri actually looked pleased with herself at her haul. “We are doing well, however we noticed some blaster fire.”

Ahri turned the portal plate back around and I was witness to the beginning of a suddenly vicious firefight. Seeing a gunfight with blasters instead of gunfire was a little interesting as each soldier was revealed whenever they fired. I wasn’t sure about all of the tactical ramifications, but I was more interested in who exactly each side was.

I looked around and yet, I didn’t really recognize any of the people running around. Characters and their real-life counterparts were often not exactly alike and I was drawing a blank until I finally got a good look at the tower at the center of the complex that my girls had mentioned.

Once again, something niggled at the back of my brain telling me I had seen it before. Yet there was so much Star Wars lore and time periods I was having trouble narrowing it down. Especially as I hadn’t paid attention to that franchise recently, doubly so because of my annoyance with the sequel trilogy.

Speaking up so Ahri could hear me above the blaster fire I said, “Get your team ready to leave. We will begin lifting off in less than 15 minutes and I don’t want to test exactly how far my portals can stretch while I am still not back up to one hundred percent.”

Ahri turned the portal back to her and nodded. “Will do. We will be out in under 15.”

Luna stepped up behind me looking vaguely concerned and pointed to a couple in a serious firefight. “We need to help them.”

I turned to look at her eyebrow raised and looked behind Ahri towards a young woman and a slightly older man. Once again I momentarily wondered where I had seen these people before… with a deceptively silent pop… a moon arrived in the sky.

It was like the color faded away from the world as my brain struggled to understand what I was seeing. Like my brain was a record scratching backwards, over and over, replaying the same thought of ‘What just happened?’. Trying to understand what I was looking at.

Then… then there was a moment… a horrible moment when I realized…

The moment where all the puzzle pieces I had seen were put together.

This was Rogue One.

Mouth suddenly dry, I swallowed, face pale. Yet the immature part of my brain didn’t let this moment pass as I realized I still wanted to say a version of the famous line. “Shit… that isn’t a moon, that's the bloody Death Star.”

At this point everyone was either standing behind me looking at the sky through the portal or running to look at the Death Star through our cockpit windows.

Swallowing again I frantically tried to remember what I could of the Rogue One story. Honestly, I remember it being a good movie, but it was also a little forgettable in every way except, unlike most Star Wars stories, everyone died at the end. Yet it was starting to come back to me. I remember that without the sacrifice done by… right it was Jyn, Cassian, and their crew, the rebels wouldn’t have known how to defeat the Empire’s Death Star.

So in what was basically a suicide mission. They had snuck onto this planet and, in what was fairly obviously a trap, were trying to steal the Death Star blueprints and upload them to the fleet that should be arriving in orbit any second.

Honestly I should have remembered the tower in the center of the complex, but a planet being blown up seemed like it was part of nearly half of all the Star Wars plotlines. Hell, it happened in Rogue One… twice. It was also clear why none of my girls recognized the setting. Rogue one came out a few years before 2020 and it was only 2013 on Earth Bet while Hogwarts was in the 1990s.

However it was then as I saw what was part of the infiltration team get gunned down that I hesitated for a moment. Was I really going to endanger my girls again? Hermione, Lisa, and Aisha didn’t even have the phylactery fail safe. Hell, we hadn’t even fully recovered from the last attempt at helping people. Yeah those people were my girl’s family and unlike here they were in a place that now in retrospect was expecting us to return and had been preparing a trap…

Shaking my head I called everyone over. “Well, I know where we are now and we really, REALLY don’t have much time. Thea, start pulling us away, I want some distance as soon as we can get it from both the Death Star and the planet.”

I swallowed, now looking at the rest of the girls including Ahri, Lisa, and Aisha through the portal. “Long story short. Before the beginning of the first Star Wars Movie, episode 4, it talks about how a lot of lives were lost to get the blueprints to the Death Star.” I gestured in the general direction of said artificial moon. “The people below us, especially those two” pointing at what must be Jyn and Cassian, “are on a suicide mission to get those plans and send them to the resistance with the hope that someone can use that to destroy the Death Star. In maybe a minute or two the rebel fleet should arrive and start a space battle above us in order to bring down the shields and fly close enough that they can transmit the data up. However, the Death Star will notice the transmission and blow up the planet with the infiltration team still on it.”

There was silence as everyone just stared at the Death Star before I started giving out some orders. “Unless someone feels strongly that we should run right now I want supporting fire for the Rogue One Team. We are going to be fighting from here with Ahri’s team on the ground going for the blueprints directly. Ahri, with your stealth abilities and Lisa’s insight you shouldn’t have any issues. But I want you ready to hop back through the portal at a moment’s notice.”

Turning to Dinah and Luna, I continued. “I want to know 10 minutes before they fire. If we can’t help or save them before that we are going to cut our losses and run. Like we said yesterday. We are not here to sacrifice ourselves for everyone else.”

Seeing their nods I turned to Taylor and Amy. “I know you have found bugs here. I want a swarm through the portal to cover for our girls. Swarm down anyone who might hit them if you can, or intercept blaster bolts if you can’t. Those dragonflies the size of small birds here are probably big enough for that. Our girls shouldn’t be found with Ahri’s illusions, but I don’t want to take chances.”

A firm nod from Taylor saw me turn towards Ahri. “Like I said, your first priority is being safe and getting out with our team, but if you can, grab the blueprints and help the Rogue One team, especially Jyn and Cassian. Help the others if you can, but they were the ones to upload the data so should be closer to your target.”

Turning to look towards Thea’s server rack I clarified my previous direction. “Thea, I seriously want us ready to jump away at a moment’s notice so start moving us to a place we can do that.”

Finally opening up what amounted to one foot wide sniper holes about 100 meters above the ground I prepared our overwatch position. The corresponding portals on our side were scattered around the huttle’s cargo hold. Seeing this my girls spread out to start giving covering fire to the team on the ground.

In the original portal behind me, I heard the blaster fire get louder as Ahri’s team circled around Jyn and Cassian making their way towards the outpost that apparently had the servers for the blueprints.

Noticing a group of three storm troopers in black armor arrive and start giving devastating accurate fire at the team I frowned and cast the strongest explosion hex I could. However instead of a large explosion I expected it felt like my heart wanted to rip itself out of my chest and the pathetic dull red hex barely pushed the troopers over before they got up and started firing again.

Frowning at my somewhat feeble magical abilities with my soul this hurt I remembered the guns we had stolen from Earth Bet the first time around. We had moved them over there in the corner of the cargo hold. One of the boxes even had an AK-47. I considered for only a moment before I grabbed it and started casting… a few silencing spells, strengthening spells on the bullets, cooling charm on the barrel, and a bottomless enchantment on the magazine might make this a bit more of a fair fight. Plus, even if this ‘slug thrower’ was horribly outdated, it was a lot less conspicuous than the blinding lights that everyone else was firing.

Our fire was obviously helping as the team moved towards the server outpost, but I could tell that it still wasn’t enough. Things got even more dire as I spotted some of the lumbering walkers that the Imperials had been using crossing the forest. We didn’t have anything that could deal with those plus the Star Destroyers that had come with the death star were obviously going to be expelling a huge amount of tie fighters that would probably be arriving soon. All of this would make our escape even tharder even after we got the blueprints.

Seriously, where was the rebel fleet? I hadn’t seen Rogue one recently, but I was pretty sure they were here at this point. Turning I saw a large laser turret turn and line up a shot on several men running down one of the beaches. I swiveled my gun, but before I could do anything I watched as several of the rebel commandos were gunned down, their bodies burning and broken with one being nearly cut in half before the turret stopped firing. Down the beach I saw a dozen similar sights as the Rogue One team simply didn’t have the numbers or fire power needed to assault this base.

ss

I swallowed again. What was going on?

d

A horrible thought crossed my mind. Was this another one of those doomed universes? Maybe in this one Luke didn’t have those plans in order to destroy the Death Star.

Trying to calm myself I shook my head. I couldn’t get wrapped up in what ifs. Plus Luke was basically the Chosen One version 2 and a space wizard to boot. That was to say nothing of the semi-sentient mystical force pushing him to his destiny. So there was a good chance that the resistance would find a way to defeat the Death Star, but without these plans it just wouldn’t be as straightforward.

Focusing back on the battle I let out another stream of gunfire that struggled to punch through the storm trooper armor, but even the best armor seemed to only stop maybe the first half dozen shots. That made them annoying to try to bring down, but with a bottomless magazine as magic duplicated the bullets, I had ammo to spare.

In fact I lost track of time as we rained down death from above with surprisingly few enemies actually looking up to try to spot us. It made me assume Ahri might actually be doing her best to block sight of us since she wasn’t doing much fighting herself. She was well outside of her 20 meter direct range, but she might be looping the illusions through the primary portal she was still holding.

That was until out of nowhere we were all stopped by Aisha’s voice next to Ahri. “I got the plans, Lisa explained how to download them and they are on this data chip.” She said, holding up the data chip in question.

I was surprised. The resistance hadn’t even gotten all that close to the server outpost yet. Hell, the Rebel fleet still hadn’t even showed up. Yet I only blinked in confusion for a few more moments before I called everyone back. “We got it, get back to the shuttle!”

Yet something was already changing as my girls jumped back through the portal. Either someone had noticed the plans had been downloaded directly or there had been some sort of electronic alarm as a few moments later the amount of blaster fire aimed at the Rogue One team quadrupled, wiping out most of the remaining men. From what I could see there were barely a dozen left and those continued to fall. There was also still no Rebel fleet.

Had the Empire been toying with the ground team to try to get the rebel fleet to arrive where they could crush them?

Regardless, I considered for a moment how to get Jyn’s and Cassian’s attention when suddenly Dinah and Luna both stiffened and screamed out. “Something changed. Go NOW!”

Turning my head slightly I yelled. “You heard her, Thea!”

Turning back I glanced at Jyn and Cassian and, seeing two more men gunned down right next to them, I simply opened a portal under their feet and let them drop through into our shuttle before Luna stunned them.

Now with the blueprints and at least two of the Rogue One team on board, saved from their fate, I looked around for any other survivors, yet in those few moments I couldn’t see anyone else.

It was at that moment, before I could check the surrounding area that, with a sickening feeling on the back of my neck, I noticed the green light building behind me. A moment later I heard the blast as the Death Star beam shot through the top of the tower, striking the edge of the imperial base.

Immediately looking in that direction I watched in horror as the atmosphere, only a few miles away from us, started to burn. Shutting the portals as quickly as I could I turned to yell, “Thea, get us off of this planet, now!”

I could tell, even through the limited vocal range of the computer speakers, Thea could understand the stress of the moment yet her response was somewhat comforting. “Understood, The shield around the planet is gone and we should be outside the atmosphere and gravity well before the explosion hits us.”

There was a pause before her synthetic voice gained a worried edge to it. “Uh, Captain, most of the Imperials seem to be avoiding us, but there is one tie fighter zeroing in on us.”

I paused as I noticed Luna who had gone quite pale. “It’s him!”

I felt the blood drain from my own face. I had forgotten that Darth Vader arrives at the end of this movie and carves a bloody path through everything to try to get the data back. As a former Jedi and now a Sith, he is also one of those previously mentioned space wizards who could see limited glimpses of the future. Hell, it might have been him that noticed the plans had been downloaded and moved up the timetable.

This time my previously fond curse was much less jovial even as I kept it under my breath. “Damn Precogs.” Hell with the Emperor Palpatine cloaking the future, it was no wonder Dinah and Luna. Had only had moments to notice the timeline had been moved up.

Knowing that Darth Vader’s tie fighter was screaming towards us I started running to the cockpit while yelling with my urgency. “Thea, get us into Hyperspace! Get us out of here!”

There was a pause as she obviously started preparing as we watched the tie fighter approach. Thea’s response was obviously worried, but she still responded with the most logical answer. “Trying before we get out of the atmosphere has a near certain probability of destroying the ship… the soonest we can jump is when we are clear, in 20 seconds from… now.”

I grimaced but I didn’t have a better answer to that even as I could feel Thea warming up the hyperdrives. Yet, at the same time I watched as Darth Vader’s tie fighter opened fire and I realized that we weren’t going to make it.

I knew this ship had shields, but it was a mostly civilian ship.

What could they do against a tie fighter?

Flinching, already trying to figure out how I could open a portal to somewhere safe, I braced for impact. Yet before I could think of something that could help or a place to go while the planet below us exploded I watched as the first shot was absorbed by the ship's shields before they started to flicker out. My panic spiked even higher but before I could make some sort of hail mary portal to the Death Star itself, I felt the hum as the magical wards around the ship flared up and absorbed the next half dozen shots with ease, not even letting a shudder reach us through the hull.

I saw everyone stop in shock at how well that had worked. Hell, I think even Vader was surprised at how effective the wards had been as he stopped shooting. Although having seen the movies maybe I shouldn’t have been. If Vader could stop a blaster against his literal palm, why couldn’t a ward powered by a rune carefully engraved over hours before being enchanted by a half dozen wizards do the same to bolts from a tie fighter?

Then a second later we cleared the atmosphere and finished our jump into hyperspace. Vader was left behind as we disappeared into a flash of light.

There was a moment where we all slumped into whatever chair or against whatever wall we could find, just coming down from what seemed like certain death.

Interlude Leia:

Leia had felt terrible about advising that they back out of the attack on Scarlif, but she hadn’t been able to sleep for three days now. It would have been a disaster.

Plus, her gut had seemed to say that those blueprints would be retrieved some other way before she returned from Tatooine.

It was heartbreaking, but it made sense.

Risking the entire Resistance fleet for a small chance was foolish in the extreme.

She would just have to mourn those men and women and beg they got out of there alive, force willing.

Interlude Yoda:

Yoda’s ears twitched as he considered the future. The grand path hadn’t changed, but some of the details had…

And…

And he would get to see these changes first hand.

A small giggle came from his throat. If die here he would, well… fun he would have.