The Liberator's severed aftsection exploded in a bright silent bloom behind the Karah Wind, spewing billowing orange flame with streaks of blue-white heat, typical of a solar ionization reactor. The spray of flaming debris and shimmering particles outshone the field of stars tenfold.

The glowing remains splattered on the sky began to drift away from the fading cloud, finding their way down toward the planet turning silently below. They followed in the path of escape pods ejected moments earlier, those that hadn't been fortunate enough to depart from the wayward chunk of ship on the side facing the Silent Waters. It began to rain past the Karah Wind as it glided in a broad, swooping arc down through the atmosphere.

The Karah Wind was on automatic descent, but the Commander, alone on the bridge, gripped his flight stick tightly with a white hand. He could hear muffled shouts from the corridors behind him, as one of the only two medics they had on board struggled to save the other one. The panic was contagious.

Arkwright searched the panel at his left anxiously. "Shields," he said aloud, eyes darting around his controls. "Shields ..." Come on, they're obvious, where the hell are they?

Here. He reached, and hesitated as he tried to make his brain produce the proper sequences. His hand quivered as he pushed buttons.

"Warm up the coils ... check that the relays are all clear ... secondary alternators first ... "

Something clunked against the hull high above and behind him, and his nervous hands stuffed up the sequence. Breathing shakily, he worked his way back through it, swiped a stinging bead of sweat out of the corner of one eye, and raised shields.

Darktrayn had been frantically furious to know who'd blown the emergency boom separators without warning. Him certainly wouldn't have, Auriga was still unconscious in one of the Karah Wind's med tanks, and it wasn't Flynn. His first thought after realizing what happened was emergency failsafe, to preserve the rest of the ship.

One of the last things he thought he'd heard on the commlink from Darktrayn was that they didn't have one. It wasn't a standard thing on a Nebulon, but Arkwright was pretty sure he remembered something about one being slaved into the systems somewhere during Atticus' days. Pretty sure; the more he thought about it the more he second-guessed whether the snatches of a conversation he recalled were really about some other ship. Between succumbing to the terrifying thought that this battle would be his last and the stress of playing Acting CO through it all, he could barely even remember what he'd eaten last.

That, granted, was also a very long time ago.

A white light blinked with an accompanying noise. Commlink. Arkwright stabbed the button with a finger and said "What?"

"Uh ... Dragon Leader, sir," Wick said, his voice laced with transmission noise. "We split up to keep an eye on these pods as they're coming down, but they're pretty widely scattered. Several are coming down in urban areas. What do you want us to do?"

Arkwright sat back and clutched the bridge of his nose, eyes shut. "How many are we looking at?"

"I count maybe ... five or six on the ground. Just as many on the way down. My R2's telling me we have Imps already moving towards the ones in inhabited areas."

"Can you hold them off those pods until we can pick them up?"

"Not effectively," Wick replied. "There's ... there's only five of us left, sir. None of us has any missiles, either. The pods that came down in the woods and mountains are safe for a while, but the ones in the civilized areas are up you know what creek unless you don't mind us making piles of civilian bodies. Uh, sir."

Time passed while Arkwright sat thinking and unmoving.

"Wish I could tell you otherwise, Commander."

Sitting up and opening his eyes, Flynn spoke again. "All right ... I've got Rince and a few of the grunts on board," he explained, trying to slow his voice to a measured pitch to let his brain keep up. "I'll take the Karah Wind down to one and try to pick up those engineers before the Empire does, and then just go from there. Keep your squadron high and watch over the other pods."

Wick paused, obviously aware that this plan wasn't entirely effective. "Wolfe could help us out, right?" he said at length. "Drop rescue parties, or at least send us some of Downes' fighters," Wick asked.

The Avenger hadn't been scared off for good, the Judicator and whatever ships were behind her would join them soon after, and Wolfe had the remains of the Liberator to watch over, but Arkwright didn't have the conviction to explain all that at the moment. "I doubt it," was all he said. "We could have picked much better worlds to blow up over."

"That's the other thing I wanted to ask," said the disembodied voice. "Where are we?"

"Darpa sector. Charts say Ralltiir."

"They're sympathetic, aren't they?"

"Yeah, well, they went vocal before Yavin, I think." Arkwright furrowed his brow in thought. "But the Empire installed their own heavy rulership. Governor-Moff."

"So they disbanded the local government?"

"Yeah, shot 'em all I think, along with every rebel they could dig up."

"So ... " Wick said, "we're not looking at the friendliest of places."

Arkwright drew in a deep breath. "No."

"Lovely." Wick paused. "Copy, sir. Stawick out." The background radio fuzz ceased with a click.

The situation didn't look very bright to Flynn, and the pilot's voice betrayed he knew the same. The Silent Waters would have a tough time staying in the system long enough for them to rescue all of their lost crew.

The shouting from the corridor had ceased. The Commander sincerely hoped that was good news.