Author's Note: Obviously, all rights belong to LFL and Disney and Rian Johnson and whomever else owns the franchise nowadays. I am not as steeped in the Star Wars universe as many of my friends, so please forgive or gently correct any glaring errors that I may have made with regards to canon. I also haven't (yet) read any of the Leia-centric books in which Holdo was first introduced, so my interpretation of her character is based more or less entirely on Laura Dern's portrayal in TLJ, and I must once again apologize to those who care dreadfully about sticking to non-film canon; I really just wanted a non-tragic battle story about how Holdo's quirkiness makes her a formidable (and unpredictable) strategist, so I didn't get too fussed about a lot of the chronological details. Lastly, I am no more a scientist than George Lucas is a scientist, so although I pretend to hinge a lot of things in this fic on scientific principles, any actual scientists reading this will have to hand-wave away the fact that none of the purported science is real.

UPDATE: I've tweaked one or two numbers to reflect some retroactive research that I've done on very minor elements of this story (e.g., the number of TIEs that can be carried by a Star Destroyer, the number of days per Coruscant-standard year, etc.). None of said changes should be at all apparent to any returning readers, but knowing that they were made makes me feel much better as an author.

Flare

For the one-thousand six-hundred nineteenth day in a row, Colonel Amilyn Holdo of the Kromos pulled open the door of her closet, and sighed at the tidy row of uninspired beige Resistance uniforms that greeted her.

It wasn't as if she had expected anything to change overnight, but even after years of naval service, the daily disappointment still hadn't faded. When Holdo had first joined the Resistance, she had gleefully unpacked her bags, hanging dress after flowing dress in one closet of her tiny cabin, until her cabin mate appeared unexpectedly in the doorway.

"Hi!" Holdo had offered enthusiastically, holding out a hand and grinning broadly at the woman casting an unimpressed eye over her. "I'm Amilyn Holdo. Great to meet you."

"Larma D'Acy," replied the other coolly, shaking back her bouncy locks with a slightly scornful toss of her head. She crossed the small room in a few efficient strides and sat down on the lower bunk that she had already claimed. "What, may I ask, are those?"

"These?" Holdo gestured towards her impressive array of finery. "My clothes, of course. Does the Resistance think that we're all just going to wander around without any...?"

"They provide us with uniforms, of course," D'Acy snapped, sniffing disdainfully through her prominent nose as she lay back casually on her bunk, folded her arms behind her head, and shut her eyes. "You'll have to find somewhere else to store all of that rubbish when you get yours."

Holdo had stared at her new bunkmate (who was by now clearly trying to ignore the whimsically attired presence in her midst), then closed her closet door and climbed up to the upper bunk to nurse her ill humor, hidden from view. For the very briefest of moments — before she shook herself, and remembered that the other side committed war atrocities and wanted to enslave virtually the entire galaxy for the profit of its overlords — she wondered why on Gatalenta had she joined the Resistance, if its leaders were going to be as rigidly conformist and unimaginative as the First Order prided itself on being.

And although she knew that the leader of the Resistance had infinitely more important matters to handle than to sympathize with a disgruntled member of her latest rebellion, Holdo had desperately wished that Leia Organa were there, nonetheless, to make her feel better about the entire situation.

"It's to show that we're a meritocracy," Leia had finally explained, when her ship had docked on Takodana while the Kromos was refueling there, a month or so after Holdo's enlisting. Upon entering the cantina, the general had doubled over in helpless laughter at the unfamiliar sight of her exuberant friend attired in something so boring. "Most of the people in the Resistance didn't grow up on planets like Gatalenta or Alderaan; they can't afford clothes as fine as ours. We want to send them a message that it doesn't matter who you were before you joined the Resistance, only who you choose to be, now that you're here. And the uniform helps to remove some of those snap assumptions about class and privilege."

"But you don't always wear a standard uniform," Holdo had pointed out sullenly. "You get to express yourself just a little bit through some sartorial flair."

Leia — who was attired in a flowing golden robe with a high collar and ivory silk lining — had patted the indignant new recruit on the hand sympathetically, trying to suppress an eye roll of fond exasperation.

"That's only because they all know my name and rank without needing to see any insignia," she had reminded Holdo. "Work hard enough, and you may get there yourself, one day."

Years of fighting with the Resistance hadn't yet earned Holdo the recognition she'd need to pull off that feat. But she had shifted the opinions of her crew mates, whose undisguised snickers over her colorful hair gradually gave way to respectful murmurs, when Holdo proved that she had a brain for strategy under that unnatural corona. As Holdo had risen through the ranks, proving herself unflinching and endlessly patient in battle, even the prickly D'Acy had eventually come round, although she continued to occasionally hint in an almost-pleading tone that Holdo could save a lot of time and energy by not re-dyeing her hair quite so frequently in the bathroom of their tiny cabin.

And as the crew of the Kromos had grown to accept and admire the quirky but highly competent Gatalentan on their ship, she had reciprocated their devotion and trust. Growing up, Holdo had rebelled against her home planet's tranquility and disdain for extravagance; here, among the true rebels of the galaxy, she finally felt like she belonged. She and her team had laughed together, cried together, fought together, celebrated together, grieved together. Of all of the people she had ever met, this band of political misfits with a common vision were the ones who embraced her most fully for who she was. There was nothing that Amilyn Holdo wouldn't do for the Resistance.

Even wear the same dull uniform day after day, for years on end, apparently.

The day that would turn Amilyn Holdo into a legend began like any other, with her staring bleary-eyed at that unrelentingly monotonous row of identical uniforms, only a few seconds after she had stumbled resentfully out of bed at reveille. (Getting up these days was much more difficult, now that she had been promoted and had her own cabin. But D'Acy had curtly warned Holdo upon her promotion that she was more than willing to come shout what Holdo had grumpily dubbed her secondary "Larma 'larm" through the cabin door, if the colonel was ever late in getting to the bridge, and Holdo took the commander at her word.) After glaring for a few seconds at her options — or lack thereof — she sighed and tugged a uniform off its hanger.

"Come on, Amilyn," she muttered to herself as she dressed. "You'll never earn the right to wear whatever you want, if you don't show up for work on time."

Holdo had just seated herself across a mess table from the quiet but devastatingly attractive new Chiss recruit on the Kromos, and was trying to catch her eye discreetly over the rim of her mug of caf, when a siren suddenly began blaring through the ship, calling all senior officers to the bridge. Holdo sighed, seized a roll from a basket in the center of the table to eat en route, and winked when the Chiss glanced at her as she rose to answer the summons.

When she arrived on the bridge, stuffing the last of the roll into her mouth, the rest of the commanding officers were already there.

"And now Colonel Holdo is here, so I believe that's everyone," Vice Admiral Shiri announced. "Commander Lys?"

"We've received a distress signal from a medical convoy in the Chyron system, bringing much-needed supplies to our allies who were wounded in the recent, costly victory near Sullust," Lys replied crisply. "They say that they were attacked by about a dozen TIE fighters an hour ago."

"Status?" Bril asked.

"Escort vessels destroyed, shields running on auxiliary power," Lys recited. "Fuel supplies in critical condition, and hyperdrive disabled by a direct hit. Captain Lya'Fey says they can hold out for maybe another two hours, but that their escort vessels were only able to take out three of the TIEs before being destroyed, and the others have almost certainly called for reinforcements by now."

"And how many onboard the convoy?" Bril inquired.

"Five hundred people, and about 8,000 tons of medical supplies, about a third of it in liquid bacta," Lys answered.

"Do we have the capacity to take that much cargo on, in addition to all of the crew?" Shiri asked.

"We should be able to," muttered Bril, frantically typing a few logistical calculations into the monitor before him. "Might take some rearranging, but we can get it done."

"Good." Shiri turned to D'Acy. "Commander, what can you tell us about the Chyron system?"

"Not much, I'm afraid, Vice Admiral," D'Acy answered, furrowing her brow as she strove to recall what she could from her navigation classes about the Outer Rim. "It's a very small, remote system with a tiny sun that emits frequent solar flares. As a result, the civilizations on the planets are relatively primitive, difficult to locate or contact, and rely as little as possible on electricity. This makes the Chyron system ideal for, erm, smuggling large amounts of cargo with minimal detection. Easy for sizable transactions to be made without needing to worry about much oversight. It does have one defining characteristic, though: an asteroid belt that encircles the entire perimeter of the system. Ships can enter and exit the system from either side of the disc, although jumps to hyperspace are only possible from one direction, due to the positions of the surrounding interstellar bodies on the other."

"Well, as long as they haven't called in very heavy reinforcements, that shouldn't be too much trouble," Shiri muttered.

D'Acy looked as if she was about to say something more, but she quickly closed her mouth.

"Commander?" Shiri prompted, noting her hesitation.

"It's nothing," D'Acy insisted, but when Shiri continued to fix her with a pointed look, she went on. "This is entirely irrelevant to anything mission-related, but the only reason I remember anything about the Chyron system is because the asteroid belt is allegedly somewhat, erm, haunted."

"Haunted?" repeated Shiri, one eyebrow twitching upward.

"Well," continued D'Acy, almost apologetically, "this is all hearsay from smugglers, of course, but the local legends have it that anyone who tries to go through the Chyron Belt itself will get smashed to pieces by the asteroids."

"Indeed." Shiri's eyes twinkled mischievously. "Sounds like we either have some sentient asteroids on our hands, or else a handful of smugglers who swigged too much Ambrostine from their cargo before trying to fly out of the system. Commander Lys, stay tuned for any more communications from the convoy, and send an alert if any come through. Commander Bril, report to me once you've got a firm estimate of our hold's capacity and whether we'll have to refuel sooner rather than later with that much additional weight. Commander D'Acy, please be ready to provide an in situ assessment when we reach the system. Colonel Holdo, with me, please. The rest of you, please check all essential systems and ready the X-wings and fighters. Dismissed."

As Shiri exited the bridge, Holdo took a moment to turn back to D'Acy and mouth, Haunted? at her. D'Acy shook her head helplessly at Holdo, who grinned and followed her commanding officer out of the room.

"Colonel, you know that I value your opinion," said Shiri, stopping before a window and gazing out into the blur of stars passing by in hyperspace. "Tell me honestly, am I wrong to be doing this?"

"To be doing what?" asked Holdo. "Rescuing a convoy bringing critical aid to our allies? Helping those who need us? Vice Admiral, how could this not be the right action to take? This is what we do. This is why the Resistance exists."

Shiri laughed softly, her shoulders and lekku trembling.

"I do admire your convictions, Colonel," she said, turning to face Holdo. "But I was speaking more about the safety of our crew. We have no idea what kind of reinforcements the First Order will send, and the TIEs will almost certainly be guarding the accessible side of the system, firing at the convoy and waiting for its shields to fail when the ship runs out of fuel."

"We can easily pick off a dozen TIEs, if we need to," Holdo pointed out, "but if they've called in a Destroyer..."

"Exactly," sighed Shiri in response.

Neither needed to say aloud that the presence of an Imperial Star Destroyer against the strength of a weakened, smaller ship like the Kromos could turn an attempted rescue into a suicide mission.

"As a member of the Resistance, of course I believe that we must try to save our own," Shiri said wearily. "But as a vice admiral, I have to worry that my decisions will needlessly kill those under my command. You truly believe that it's right for me to send us charging into this fight, so unprepared?"

Holdo glanced at her commanding officer. The Twi'lek had barely gotten any sleep since their last battle, when a full third of the ship's X-wings had been damaged or destroyed, and a Dreadnaught had sliced away a good portion of the ship's hull, killing forty crew members, including Shiri's younger brother. The vice admiral's lavender skin, which usually matched Holdo's hair in its intensity, looked nearly gray with fatigue.

"We all signed up for this war knowing the risks, Vice Admiral," Holdo said quietly. "Hundreds of brave, wounded Resistance fighters are now expecting our aid. They faced the First Order and won because they believed that they were not alone. And now it's up to us to prove that they aren't. If it were your crew that so desperately needed those medical supplies, and another Resistance ship didn't even try to deliver them safely, what would you think? How much incentive would you have to continue the fight? What hope would you have left?"

Shiri smiled wanly.

"Thank you, Colonel," she said softly. "That was what I needed to hear."

Then she took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders.

"I want you to work with Commander D'Acy," she told Holdo. "When we reach the Chyron system, see if there's any way we can sneak a ship the size of the Kromos through the belt. We might need to reach our allies by stealth, if we can't fight our way through."

"Of course," Holdo replied. "Hopefully we'll be able to assess the situation thoroughly before the First Order realizes we're there, and make a solid plan of attack, accordingly. There's no need to rush into anything recklessly."

"Yes," agreed Shiri firmly, as if she were trying to convince herself. "That's very true. That will be all for now, Colonel Holdo. Thank you again."

Holdo wandered back onto the bridge, frowning pensively and twirling a strand of purple hair around one finger absent-mindedly.

"Do we have any unmanned craft? Probes, anything of that sort?" she asked Bril, who was still frantically trying to figure out how to fit such a vast quantity of bacta into the hold of the Kromos.

"A few surface probes, nothing too fancy," he answered, his eyes narrowed as he typed yet another sequence into the monitor before him.

"Can they be remotely controlled through space, without any sort of supporting atmosphere?"

"Sure. Why?"

"For testing the waters," Holdo shrugged. "Just in case Commander D'Acy is right about the sentient asteroids."

Bril paused his typing and looked up skeptically. Holdo suspected that he was about to ask her if she really thought that such a thing was possible, but after a glance at her purple hair, he thought better and instead went back to typing, shaking his head slightly as he did so.

"Brace yourselves, everyone, we're coming out of hyperspace," Lys called across the bridge, and Holdo seized the arm of a chair to steady herself as the smeared stars around them shuddered to a fixed stop.

Everyone promptly raced to nearest window and squinted out at the system beyond.

The Chyron Belt was undeniably beautiful. Oblong asteroids of glossy, smooth, black rock floated in a thick band around three desert planets and a red sun, tidily packed into the system's tight circumference. Holdo peered down behind Lys's shoulder at a scan of the system; the medical convoy and its attacking TIEs were visible at the edge of the screen, and, true to Shiri's predictions, the TIEs were blocking the convoy's one exit out of the system, bombarding its shields with a steady stream of fire. A Destroyer floated menacingly beyond them, notated on the screen by a bright green triangle.

"Great," muttered Holdo. She turned and scanned the bridge until she saw D'Acy sitting in a corner, intently reading what appeared to be an archive on asteroid belts. "Commander Bril, please have some of those probes loaded into a launcher. Commander D'Acy, with me, please. We have some sentient asteroids to provoke."

"I hope you realize that this is entirely ridiculous," D'Acy grumbled to Holdo as they strode down to the probe-launching dock. "I just skimmed through every archive we can access, reading up on asteroid behavior. There's no sign that asteroids observed in any system have been sentient, or haunted, for that matter..."

"Well, it never hurts to be sure, and just because something's never been observed, doesn't mean it doesn't exist, right?" Holdo halted in front of a launch screen and checked to make sure that the probe in question had been loaded properly. "Here goes nothing, at any rate..."

She pressed the launch button, and the two watched on the screen as the probe was released into the frozen vacuum around them. Holdo used the handles below the screen to guide it on a trajectory between two small asteroids on the edge of the belt, D'Acy looking on with a furrow of anxiety between her eyebrows.

Suddenly, when the probe had just passed into the belt proper, the nearest asteroid slammed violently into the probe, crushing it against an adjacent chunk of smooth metallic rock. The two women watched as the bleeping white dot on the screen before them blared red and disappeared.

"My gods," whispered D'Acy, looking slightly queasy.

"Interesting," muttered Holdo.

"Interesting?!" D'Acy repeated, her voice pitched significantly higher than usual. "Amilyn, that asteroid just deliberately rammed the probe we sent out there! Something is very wrong here."

"Let's not lose our heads just yet, Commander," Holdo ordered, typing instructions into the screen for a second probe to be loaded into the launching dock. She was very fond of Larma D'Acy, but having her uptight erstwhile cabin mate devolve into a fit of hysteria was the last thing that Holdo needed at the moment.

"You don't think that they'll notice us and attack if we keep sending probes into their midst, do you?" D'Acy asked hesitantly.

"I thought you were the one who was skeptical about the existence of haunted asteroids," Holdo reminded her. "Launching our second probe in three, two, one..."

This time, Holdo carefully steered the probe straight over the center of the long side of one asteroid, which quivered but did not strike. As she maneuvered it towards the second layer of asteroids, however, she allowed the probe to stray close to the left hand end of the asteroid, which whipped around suddenly and slammed into the probe with its far end.

D'Acy gulped, her eyes following the floating shards of metal that had been the probe. But Holdo remained focused on the asteroid, and she breathed a deep "ah" of realization just as the sirens on the Kromos all went off.

"All fighters to battle stations... TIE fighters incoming in twelve minutes and forty-nine seconds..."

"What's going on?" demanded Holdo as she and D'Acy raced back onto the bridge.

"We've been spotted," Shiri informed her grimly, pointing at a screen to where a bevy of TIE fighters was streaming at them from the triangle of the Destroyer in the distance.

"Are our cloaking devices not working?" Holdo asked angrily. The Kromos was a small enough ship that it should not have been visible with the naked eye from the Destroyer, especially not when positioned this close to the Chyron Belt.

"We sent a signal to the crew of the medical convoy, letting them know that we had arrived and were working on ways to sneak in through the belt and catch the First Order off its guard." Lys blushed. "Apparently, the Destroyer found a way to tune into our communication frequencies."

"What?" Holdo snapped. "How?"

"The convoy's using an old, outdated ship," Shiri sighed. "Most likely, its signaling encryption systems were easily overridden by the First Order. The point is, we've got company far sooner than expected."

"On top of ship-destroying asteroids," D'Acy burst out. "They keep smashing the probes we send into the system, unprovoked."

"What?" Shiri asked, turning to Holdo. "I thought that was a joke."

Holdo glanced over at D'Acy, and then around the rest of the bridge.

"Vice Admiral, permission to speak to you in private?" she said to Shiri. "And permission to issue orders to X-wing fighters to hold off engaging the enemy, for the time being?"

"You heard the colonel," Shiri said to the rest of the bridge as she led Holdo back towards the corridor where they had spoken earlier.

Holdo gestured to D'Acy to follow her, and then took off after Shiri.

"So the asteroids are hostile," Shiri repeated, crossing her arms skeptically.

"They certainly seem averse to letting anything enter their belt uninvited," D'Acy confirmed. "Now, the simple answer to all of this may be that they're not actually asteroids; they might be some sort of sentient space creature that no one has yet observed, or else some sort of programmed droid placed there by a now-defunct society within the planetary system, or perhaps even by the First Order..."

"Or there's an even simpler explanation," Holdo interrupted. "The asteroids aren't haunted or sentient. They're magnetic."

Shiri and D'Acy turned and stared at Holdo.

"All of the asteroids are oriented in the same direction," she pointed out, gesturing out the window towards the oblong objects floating in the distance. "It seems that they only react if a metallic object gets too close to one of their poles, which either causes the asteroid to attract the object, or else causes the attracted pole to swing around rapidly and collide with the object, before returning to its original orientation. I believe that our X-wings should to be able to move around the asteroids without any serious harm being caused to them, so long as they do so as quickly as possible and only fly near the asteroids when centered precisely at the spot between their poles. That way, any disturbance of the asteroids' magnetic fields should only impact any trailing enemy TIEs. Since any ship-tracking devices that the First Order is using will be radio-based, if our pilots cut their comms and any other signal-emitting elements, they should be able to navigate through the asteroids undetected, allowing them to re-emerge from the belt without warning, and attack the enemy from unexpected angles."

Shiri nodded slowly. D'Acy, however, continued to stare at Holdo.

"How, in the names of all of the gods put together, do you know so much about magnets?!" she demanded.

"So, assuming this is all accurate, what then is our overall plan, Colonel?" Shiri asked Holdo. "We know how to get our X-wings through the Chyron Belt. What about the Kromos?"

"We can't sneak the ship through the belt," Holdo assessed. "The asteroids are too close together for us to stay in the weaker parts of all of the asteroids' magnetic fields, even for a craft as small as the Kromos; we'd be bombarded to pieces immediately by what appear to be very dense metallic objects. And if we try to sneak around the outer edge of the Chyron Belt, and enter the system from the less-accessible side, we'll find ourselves face-to-face with the Destroyer, and make ourselves that much easier of a target. It's probably best if we stay outside the system until we've disabled the Destroyer, and then move in to rescue the crew of the convoy."

"We'll do our best," promised Shiri grimly.

Holdo nodded.

"Commander," she said, turning to D'Acy, "can you go find out as much as you can about the frequency of the solar flares around the system? I don't want our power to fail at an inopportune moment, due to an inconveniently timed electromagnetic pulse."

"Certainly, Colonel," answered D'Acy, excusing herself.

"You'd better go give instructions to the X-wing pilots," Shiri told Holdo.

"Me?" Holdo asked. The vice admiral always gave instructions to her own fighters.

"Yes, you." Shiri smiled. "This is your plan, Amilyn, and it's a damn complex one, so I want to make sure that the pilots get their instructions from the one person on the Kromos who understands all of its nuances."

"I'll try to keep things as simple as possible, since we don't have that much time," Holdo promised.

"Never a bad idea. And keep in mind that, as a commanding officer, you don't need to justify your decisions to anyone but me. In fact, if our unintentional leak of information just now was any lesson, sometimes it's best to only share what the rest of the crew needs to know. People might try to deviate slightly from your carefully wrought plans, otherwise, thinking they can get the same result through doing things their own way, with potentially catastrophic consequences. Our pilots trust you, and that should be enough, without your needing to talk them through every last detail."

Shiri clapped a hand proudly on Holdo's shoulder. The colonel beamed.

"Thank you, Vice Admiral."

"May the Force be with us all," Shiri replied, her words part-habit and part-supplication.

Standing on an elevated platform in the hangar, Holdo relayed the plans to the assembled X-wing pilots, a crowd of two dozen or so intense young rebels with their helmets clutched under their arms. She noticed several whispering concerns to one another when they heard that two of the three squadrons would be flying without active comm systems.

"I know it's an unusual directive," she called over the whispers. "But discretion is more important than perfect communication at this moment, and I trust all of you to know what you need to do, without waiting for instructions from our central command. Orange Squadron, I need you to keep those approaching TIEs off of us, this side of the Chyron Belt. You can keep your comms; the enemy will have you within visual range, so there's no need to try to keep your movements hidden. Yellow and Green Squadrons, since your comms will be disabled, wait for my visual instructions. White lights, retreat to the Kromos, as quickly as possible; blue lights, all fire on the Destroyer's cannons. I'll fly across the belt to give the signal when I've gotten more information about our situation. Remember, until then, fire only on the TIEs; stay well away from the Destroyer. Understood? Good luck, everyone."

When the X-wing pilots had murmured their assent and leapt into their fighters, Holdo made her way back to the bridge, her mind racing. She stood there by the wide window, watching the battle raging outside. Orange Squadron was doing an admirable job at mopping up the incoming TIEs; only one X-wing was lost before the remaining attackers went up in balls of flame. How many had there been? Fifteen? She estimated that most Destroyers had a capacity of 72 TIE fighters onboard; if they could split the difference, and eliminate most of the enemy's forces on this side of the Chyron Belt, then that would make their job that much easier.

"Reinforcements coming in," muttered Shiri, glancing at a navigation screen on which the next round of TIEs was approaching (Holdo estimated about fifteen or twenty more).

"We can take them, easily," she reassured her vice admiral.

"Oh, I don't doubt that," Shiri said with a serious chuckle. "I'm still just curious to see what you're going to do to get rid of this Destroyer, since I assume you have a plan mapped out for that, too?"

"Of course, Vice Admiral."

"Thank goodness. So. Why are we only focusing on TIE fighters right now?"

Holdo smiled.

"Because we want to make sure that, when the time is right, the First Order has no guns at its disposal except for the ones on their Destroyer. By the way, can we position ourselves so that, if need be, we can get out of here immediately on the hyperspace lane we took in here?"

Shiri raised her eyebrows.

"You're in charge of this mission, Colonel; just give the order. How far do you need us to go?"

"Only out and straight back. Depending on what Commander D'Acy is about to tell me, the ship may need to get well away from the system for a few minutes."

"Colonel?" Right on cue, D'Acy had returned. "I have the information you requested. It seems there's a solar flare in the system every seven to eight hours. I've instructed Commander Lys to keep an eye on any anomalies that she sees in the sun's plasma. She'll be able to give us a thirty-minute warning."

"Thank you, Commander," Holdo replied, and then she called across the bridge, "Commander Bril?"

"Yes, Colonel?"

"The ship that the convoy is flying — how resistant do you anticipate it will be against plasma radiation, if a solar flare arises?"

"Standard for any ship," he shrugged. "Its comm system may be old, but regulations for radiation shielding were put in place long before that model of freighter was designed. If a solar flare arises, we'll only need to worry about our X-wings, which are too small to provide any real protection."

"Right," muttered Holdo, crossing her arms and frowning out the window as one of their X-wings narrowly dodged a line of green fire from a TIE that was quickly exploded by a blast from one of the surface cannons on the Kromos. "Commander Lys, what's our estimate for the remaining shield power on the convoy?"

"One hour, Colonel, give or take a few minutes."

Holdo nodded, clearly deep in thought. The crew on the bridge watched over the next several minutes as Orange Squadron took out the rest of the second wave of TIEs. They were down to six of the original eleven members of the squadron, only nine of whom had been alive to fly into this battle, in the first place.

"Colonel?" Commander Lys called suddenly from across the bridge. "I'm detecting plasma motion from the Chyron sun, with an expected solar flare in about half an hour."

"Time to go warn our X-wings," Holdo sighed. "Vice Admiral, with your permission? And, if I may be so bold, please be ready to jump into hyperspace the instant I say so."

Shiri nodded.

Holdo raced down to the hangar, loaded her BB unit into one of the few remaining functional X-wings still there, and pulled on her own helmet. As her engines fired up, she said a quiet prayer to whatever forces there were in the galaxy. Then she put a hand on the controls, took a deep breath, and darted out into the void beyond the Kromos.

As Holdo moved into the Chyron Belt, she could feel the pull of the enormous metallic asteroids around her, but she kept steady and zoomed straight over the center of the first asteroid, then the next, then the next, their surfaces glinting in the red light of the Chyron sun. Occasionally, she could see out of the corner of her eye the edge of an asteroid whose magnetic field she had only just escaped, as its pole whipped around to find the object that had attracted it. More than once, her X-wing scraped across the debris left by a craft that had not been lucky enough to escape the Chyron Belt unscathed, although she could not tell if the fragments were those of an unlucky X-wing, or of a TIE fighter that had foolishly attempted to follow.

When Holdo finally emerged from the other side of the Chyron Belt, the battle was still raging. She watched as a Yellow Squadron pilot corkscrewed to avoid the fire of two TIEs, then dove back into the asteroid belt, letting the three pursuing TIEs dash themselves to pieces against the first asteroids they encountered. Holdo could tell that they had lost more brave pilots here, as well, but fewer than she had feared. She flew out into the center of the system, towards the convoy, and pressed a button on her dashboard. Bright white lights immediately began flashing from the edges of her wings, and she dodged to avoid the fire of the TIE fighters whose attention she had immediately attracted with both her lights and her active communications systems.

"Fall back!" Holdo shouted at the other Resistance fighters, even though she knew they could not hear her.

She circled and returned fire, blowing one of the TIEs on her trail out of the air, then looped back around and lurched to the side to avoid another jet of green fire from the second as she continued making her round, the white lights still flashing bright enough for all of her fighters to take note. When the TIE behind her made the mistake of trying to follow her back into the Chyron Belt, she heard a satisfying crunch as it hit the attracting pole of an asteroid; when another beam of green light shot past her, she circled back around and blew up the TIE where it had become helplessly trapped against the asteroid.

Holdo shot back out into the system, scanning for any more X-wings. It seemed that most had retreated back through the asteroid belt to the Kromos, per her instructions. But as she turned her attention to the Destroyer, she noticed fire being exchanged at its surface, and she pulled on the accelerator of her X-wing to speed towards this unexpected fight as quickly as she could.

"Stop!" she shouted at the lone Green Squadron pilot circling there, dodging skillfully around the surface fire from the Destroyer as he took aim at another of the cannons. Holdo glanced over the Destroyer; the pilot (possibly aided by now-departed friends) had shot out three of the ship's major surface cannons. She blinked her lights so that the pilot could not miss the bright white flashes, then gestured for him to get out of the system as she buzzed him. He shook his head stubbornly, dodged another jet of Destroyer fire, and took aim.

Holdo took aim as well, and with a sigh of exasperation, she shot out the Green Squadron X-wing's guns.

The pilot turned towards her in his cockpit, amazed and stung. She gestured again for him to return to their ship, and, having no further means of defending himself, he finally complied. Holdo covered his retreat, cursing under her breath about would-be-hero flyboys and their proclivity for nearly ruining missions with their self-centered idiocy.

"Colonel, are you there?" It was Lys. "Ten minutes until the solar flare; you'd better get out of there."

"We're on our way," Holdo paged back. "How's the rest of the fleet?"

"We've lost seven total of the twenty-five X-wings that flew out. Almost everyone's back onboard the ship."

"Great." Holdo glanced out towards the Destroyer; it was too far away. "One more Green Squadron pilot coming your way through the belt. When he arrives, I want you to jump into hyperspace, immediately. Don't come back until after the solar flare, maybe about fifteen minutes from now."

"Right, Colonel," responded Lys. "We'll pull the drive as soon as you're onboard."

"Don't wait for me," Holdo corrected her firmly. "That's an order, Commander."

There was a long silence on the other end of the comm.

"But, Colonel, you heard what Bril said about X-wings and radiation..."

"I did," Holdo told her. "But my job, as your commanding officer, is to make sure that you are able to execute your mission and get out of here alive. And, to that end, I am also forbidding you from telling Vice Admiral Shiri about this entire conversation, so that she can't counteract my order. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Colonel," replied Lys tearfully.

"Godspeed, Commander," Holdo smiled, wheeling her X-wing around as she watched the disobedient Green Squadron pilot disappear into the Chyron Belt.

The Destroyer floated there before her, immense and stark against the velvety backdrop of space. No more TIEs were streaming from its hangars, which Holdo took to mean that they had decimated its active capacities on that front; either the Destroyer had lost a large number of its TIEs in a recent battle and had just depleted its reserves, or the rest were still fueling and would not be battle-ready for another hour. She waited by the edge of the asteroid field until she could see the Kromos disappear abruptly from her screen as it jumped into hyperspace. Good. Her crew was safe from the approaching flare, and the convoy was now the only Resistance target left for the Destroyer within the Chyron system.

Holdo slowly piloted her X-wing towards the convoy. Five minutes to go.

"Message for the commanding officer," Holdo said, paging into the frequency for the enemy ship. "This is Colonel Amilyn Holdo of the Kromos. Retreat immediately or prepare to surrender your ship."

She ended the communication and waited. Her tiny fighter was stationed directly between the Destroyer and the convoy, defiant and utterly hopeless. Four minutes to go.

Her comm promptly sputtered to life.

"Rebel scum," spat a voice in response. "You honestly believe that you can defend that entire ship against the might of a Star Destroyer, in only that pathetic little craft?"

"Well, sure, maybe," Holdo replied. "Didn't you catch the part where we just destroyed every active TIE fighter aboard your funny triangle ship, with a laughably numerically inferior fleet of pathetic little craft?"

The Destroyer lobbed a shot in her direction, which she easily dodged. It fell far short of the convoy, whose shields were beginning to visibly crackle as their energy source ebbed away. Three minutes to go.

"Such bravado," sneered the voice from the Destroyer. "Were you not aware of the fact that your friends just abandoned you and this convoy? Perhaps it was too much to bear for them to have lost so many of their starfighters, seeing as we have dozens more Destroyers filled with TIE fighters, and yet we hear that your Resistance is losing critical able fighting craft by the minute."

That last bit was true, Holdo hated to admit, but she couldn't dwell on that now. Instead, she opted to feign panic, pretending she had no idea about the disappearance of the Kromos, hoping that it would prevent the Destroyer from realizing that it was gliding into a trap.

"That's... that's not true," she stammered convincingly. "They would never have disobeyed orders and left, not mid-mission."

The Destroyer began to move closer, so as to be in range of the hapless ships. Holdo's hands tightened on the steering wheel of her X-wing, her palms clammy in her pilot's gloves. Two minutes to go.

"Perhaps you should have questioned your crew's loyalty more carefully," the voice gloated. The Destroyer slowed and fired another series of shots, which Holdo once again managed to dodge, and which once again fell short of the convoy. "What a pity they decided to save their own skins, when they could have enjoyed the fireworks."

Holdo flew towards the Destroyer, speeding around its three defunct cannons, ducking out of the way of several other jets of spitfire, and taking out a fourth cannon, which exploded in a puff of flame and smoke.

"You mean those fireworks?" she asked innocently, as she glanced at her clock. One minute to go. "Yeah, I wish they'd been around to see that, too."

Her taunting was cut short as a shot from another cannon clipped her X-wing and the engines went down. Holdo cursed under her breath, but although her heart was racing with adrenaline and the paralyzing fear of imminent death, she couldn't help but smile. The Destroyer had accelerated again in response to her attack, and it was finally within range of the convoy, its surface cannons pummeling the ship's flickering shields in lieu of the functional TIE fighters it no longer had. And that meant that the enemy finally was enclosed entirely and inescapably within the electromagnetic field created by the surrounding Chyron Belt.

"You cannot flee," sneered the voice on her comm. "But we will not kill you yet. No, first you will watch us destroy this convoy that you have worked so hard to save, when its shields inevitably fail under our bombardment. Then we will take you onboard our ship and interrogate you for any useful information that you may have, Colonel. And only then, when you are little more than a shell of a living being, and every piece of intelligence that you have provided has been used to weaken or undermine your pathetic princess and her Rebel Alliance, only then will we finally grant you mercy and let you die."

Holdo, meanwhile, was counting down with the clock on her dashboard, her blood pounding in her ears at twice the tempo of the passing seconds. Twenty, nineteen, eighteen...

"I appreciate the offer, I really do," she said sweetly. "But you're wrong on a couple of counts. First of all, we're not the Rebel Alliance; we're the Resistance. You should know how important it is to get your terminology right, especially when identifying your adversaries. Second, I believe you were referring to our general, may the Force be with her always. And third, tempting as your capture-and-torture scenario is, I personally intend to go out with a bit more... shall we say, flair."

... three, two, one, zero.

Holdo couldn't see or hear the plasma wave hit. Later, when she tried to describe it, the best that she could do was say that it was like the very fabric of the system was crumpled, time and space compressed in upon themselves, a piece of intangible silk crushed in a cosmic hand. Her last impression was that of pressure so intense that the silence that accompanied it seemed to throb. And then everything went dark.

When she came to, Holdo couldn't feel any part of her body. Her vision swam, half hallucinating, half grasping for reality, until finally D'Acy's face solidified before her.

"Oh, thank the gods," D'Acy cried with a sob. "Dear, dear Amilyn, you're still alive!"

"Are you sure about that?" Holdo rasped weakly. She dimly perceived that she was swathed from head to toe in white bandages that she could only assume were drenched in bacta; her entire body had then been covered with another white bacta-soaked sheet. On top of all of this, a humidifier was steaming bacta into the air all around her, presumably so that her lungs could also benefit from the medicine's healing properties. Seems like we rescued that medical convoy and its cargo, after all, she thought vaguely.

"We were so worried," D'Acy wept, seemingly torn between wanting to wring Holdo's hand and not wanting to disturb her at all physically. "Vice Admiral Shiri was beside herself; first, for all of the reckless things that you did without exactly gaining her permission, because your orders were so lacking in context for what you had in mind for the Destroyer; and then, for what had happened to you, because she hadn't known to overrule your decision to stay behind and lure the Destroyer into position. And then Leia Organa herself turned up to see how you were doing. They've both met with Admiral Ackbar and Admiral Statura, the general and Vice Admiral Shiri have; and if you're not promoted for all of this, then by the gods, I'll eat my uniform, piece by piece."

"Leia's here?" Holdo repeated, too bleary-minded to enjoy the entertaining mental image that D'Acy had proffered. "How, and why...?"

D'Acy clasped her hands in front of her chest, beaming proudly at her former cabin mate.

"You're a legend, Amilyn," she announced breathlessly. "There isn't a soul in the galaxy who hasn't heard about the Battle of Chyron Belt by now. A solid knowledge of magnetic and electromagnetic forces, and you were able to strategize a way for us to take out nearly a hundred TIE fighters with minimal casualties, and to completely disable a Destroyer! Do you know, when we came back into the Chyron system after the solar flare, and found everything electronic within the perimeter of the asteroid belt totally shut down by the electromagnetic pulse, not only was it a piece of cake to put our systems on manual and load everything from the convoy onto the Kromos, but the entire crew of that Destroyer surrendered just like that!" She snapped her fingers for emphasis. "They're all being escorted to prison now, and you can bet we'll get a shipload of useful information out of their commanding officers..."

"And, in the meantime, recruitment is up and spirits are high throughout the Resistance," concluded a familiar voice.

"General Organa," gasped D'Acy, starstruck.

Leia's face moved into Holdo's line of vision, breaking into a smile as she took in her purple-haired friend's recovery.

"Could we have a moment?" she asked D'Acy, who retreated from the room in awed excitement.

Still smiling, Leia took Holdo's hand, and although Holdo still couldn't actually feel anything, she could imagine the sensation of the general's confident but gentle grasp.

"You know, if you had actually managed to get yourself killed in that battle, without saying a proper goodbye first, I might never have forgiven you," Leia said finally.

"I'm glad I made it through somehow, then." Holdo managed a weak smile in return, and then her face faded back into seriousness. "Do you know how bad the damage is?"

Leia let out a deep breath, knowing that Holdo would expected the full, terrible truth from her. Whimsical as her friend could be, the general knew that the Gatalentan had always hated for anything consequential to be sugarcoated.

"The medics are estimating four to five years," she said quietly. "It's a miracle you survived the radiation from that solar flare in something as flimsy as an X-wing, in the first place. The damage that it's already causing can be slowed, and the pain can be dulled; you'll be able to go about business as usual, between treatments. But you can't outfly death indefinitely, not when it comes to something like this."

A tear slid down Leia's cheek. Holdo nodded, and shot her the most reassuring smile she could.

"I was more than willing to die in that battle, General," she reminded her. "Even a few more years will be a blessing beyond what I could have hoped."

Leia nodded jerkily, then brusquely brushed the tear away.

"Please, Amilyn, don't you dare call me by my title in private, when it's just the two of us," she scolded. "Not unless you want me to call you 'Vice Admiral' in return?"

"Vice Admiral, huh?" Holdo repeated, grinning.

"I was pushing for Admiral, but there are apparently politics within the Resistance Navy to which I am not privy," Leia grumbled. "However, we're inaugurating two new ships in a few weeks, and although I'm sure you like that lovely commanding officer of yours as much as she likes you, how would you like a ship of your own? The Ninka is still up for grabs, and from what I hear, half of the officers in the Navy are vying to take command of her"

"I'd be honored," Holdo replied, stunned. She now felt that she owed poor Shiri multiple apologies, for more or less everything that had happened since the Kromos had received that distress call from the medical convoy.

"Good." Leia gestured with her head in the direction by which D'Acy had exited. "Better take that navigation commander of yours with you; I think she'd quit the fleet, if you didn't. By the way, she asked a very good question, while she was busy fretting over your comatose state... how did you know so much about magnets?"

"Oh. That." Holdo laughed. "Well, this won't surprise you, of all people, but when I was twenty, I spent an entire summer at a retreat on the use of magnets to redirect the Force through positive channels in the body. Lots of meditation, lots of chanting, and lots of discussing magnetic and electromagnetic fields, so that we could build our own magnetic body diagrams, and adjust the attracting and repelling elements between them as needed throughout the summer. Needless to say, I did not let Vice Admiral Shiri know that this was the source of knowledge to which she was entrusting the fate of her remaining three squadrons."

Leia chuckled and leaned forward to brush a strand of purple hair off of Holdo's forehead.

"Oh, Amilyn," she sighed. "Within this whole mess that we call existence, it's good to know that some things never change."

She gave Holdo's hand another squeeze that the newly anointed vice admiral could neither feel nor return, then laid it gently back on the bed as she stood.

"A very urgent matter arose just before I came in here, so I have to leave for Takodana immediately. But I'll be back to visit as soon as I can," Leia promised.

"So far as I know, I'll be right here," Holdo assured her with a smile.

"Is there anything that I can do for you, in the interim?" Leia asked, crossing her arms and pursing her lips in concern as she looked down at her friend's prone figure.

Holdo laughed.

"Leia, within the past five minutes, I've been told that I've somehow gained iconic status, a promotion, and my very own ship. What more could I really ask for?"

"The long-awaited right to wear whatever the hell you want while on duty, instead of just the same old boring uniform?" Leia offered with a wink. (Today, the Resistance leader sported merely a standard-issue vest in regal plum, worn open over a gray collared shirt and beige pants that went well with her practical brown boots.) "I'd certainly say you've earned that, just as much as you've earned the rest."

"Say hi to Maz for me," Holdo said in parting. "May the Force be with you."

"With you, as well," answered the general calmly as she quietly let herself out of the medical ward.

And as Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo of the Ninka let herself sink back into the embrace of sleep, she was certain that the Force had indeed been with her, for the briefest of life-changing moments in time.