commandor | (no subject)

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Sometimes, in the flight from a planet or a mission, it's handy to have a real pilot around.

Cassian is competent. But not much more than that -- a quick hand at navigation, but honestly never quite managed the fluidity in commanding a ship that really good pilots took for granted.

So, no complaints from him as he crosses the tarmac, steps up the ramp of the tiny ship that he doesn't even know the name of, and slides his bag off his shoulder. A glance confirms that Dameron is already there, running through preflight, and Cassian joins him, after stowing the mission materials.

Dameron. Not who Cassian would have picked to be his partner on an assassination. But easily the best pilot in the Resistance, and that's some reassurance when they're going to be picking their way out through a thick double-ring around the planet, crawling with First Order sensors. The way in will be clear, obviously; the way out will have to be disguised, and that's where the rings come in.

Cassian is curt and quiet during the ride in. They get a landing site in a paved field, crowded. There's a local festival going on, one that requires the planetary governor to make an appearance. The governor is a First Order loyalist, handing his planet over gladly to the hands of stormtroopers.

"Stay here," orders Cassian, once they're down. He shrugs on a parka, since the wind outside is bitter and cold, and snow has started to fall. "I'll be back in four hours, no more. If I tell you, or if you don't hear from me for more than that, you take off. You go." No need to get them both killed if Cassian bungles this. "When I say, you get the ship ready to go."

Dameron doesn't even know what Cassian is here to do. Operational security.

He slips out and into the crowd.

In fact, it's three hours later (after he's moved through the crowd, dodged the additional security, overwhelmed with the influx; after he found his vantage point and fired a handful of shots, left behind the evidence to frame one of the planetary factions) that he returns. The spirit of the place has turned quickly from beehive to hornet's nest, and Cassian is breathless from the run when he ducks back inside.

"Go," he snaps, "now, go." He slams the ramp control, and shucks off the parka. Chaos scares people; there are already a handful of ships fleeing, and they haven't gotten the port shut down yet. They might not be able to, given the huge additional numbers of ships that are there for the occasion.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The TIEs are still a few kilometers from real effective range, thinks Cassian, and then thinks: what the hell does he know about effective range? A handful of numbers, that's all he's memorized, and it all sounds pretty hollow when you can see lasers break apart a nearby asteroid, necessitating an extra roll to avoid the new motion.

"Seems heartfelt to me."

A dark tone. He really wishes he could do something besides sit here and nurse the hyperdrive.

He bites his lip.

"The longer they chase us," he says, "the longer for innocents on the planet to get clear." Just putting that out there. Every smuggler has romantic notions of navigating a close-in asteroid belt, hiding and losing a tail, but Cassian is starting to think that Dameron might actually be capable of it.

"Sure does," Poe agrees with a shallow nod. Debris bounces off the deflector shield in small pulses of pink-iridescent light, and he guides the ship lower into the field, toward a slightly denser sector populated with larger chunks of rock. "Well. Time to show 'em we know how to play hard to get, huh?"

It's easy enough to suit action to words. Those laser strikes are still wild, but there's definitely more of them now, shearing off chunks and shards of those asteroids -- shearing off, but not obliterating. The larger ones, at least, seem sturdy enough to withstand a TIE's lasers, and Poe breathes out slowly through his nose. It's easier to manage the debris, though it ultimately means a little less opportunity to catch those unshielded starfighters with rocky shrapnel.

The Captain's words catch him by surprise, but Poe doesn't dare look now. Instead, he hums thoughtfully; the Heartline is durable, but it's a repurposed smuggling craft, built to be fast and low-profile, with no weapons to speak of beyond a defensive flare launcher array. "I suppose we could play tag for a while -- chew up those squadrons until we hit our fuel limit."

A pause. Poe's the kind of pilot that crashes in like a tidal wave and smashes the opposition. Grinding TIEs in the teeth of an asteroid belt won't be the hardest thing he's done by lightyears, but he's not certain how much time it'll buy, ultimately. "Which isn't a no," he adds, because the idea of buying any time for people to get clear suits Poe just fine, "but we're looking at ten minutes, maybe eleven before we're gonna need to jump."

Refueling hadn't been on the itinerary, planetside. In this moment, Poe's half-tempted to curse at the oversight.

He accepts Poe's estimate without reaction. "Ten may be enough." For one person, for five people, for the streets to get just a little clearer, for another ship to make jump. Who knows. A lot of the time, in this line of work, you never get to find out if anything you did made a real difference. You learn to live with it.

Tense silence, and then the numbers finish on the hyperspace computer. "Ready to jump," he says. Slots them into the navigation. All Poe has to do is pull the lever to get them into hyperspace.

"All right, buddy," Poe murmurs, but he's grinning -- in defiance of the enemy on their tail, sure, but also with some sharp-edged pleasure at the thought of going up against the First Order once again. Andor doesn't order him into the fight, though he could. Hell, Andor hasn't really done much for issuing firm orders in the first place.

Then again, Poe hasn't been much inclined to argue. In the heartbeats following Andor's announcement, it feels like he's leaving the specifics of their departure to Poe himself.

And then there's no more time to think about those things, because those TIEs are close enough now to take half-decent shots, and it leaves Poe needing to split his attention between the obstacles ahead and TIEs jockeying to maneuver around the ship. He turns the ship on its side once again, and scoots between two larger asteroids; a number of those TIE's sweep around the sides, but one is daring enough to follow through.

It's a mistake, one announced in an explosion to their aft as a solar array scrapes craggy rock and catches there, momentum grabbing the fighter and swinging into the side of the asteroid like a child smashing a toy into a wall.

Poe glances up, sees the underbelly of a pair of TIEs racing ahead of them, arcing high. Not far ahead, the debris is getting thicker, smaller, more dangerous as they near the space where those rings cross. "Thanks for that," Poe says at last. "Guess we'll see if these are any good, huh?"

Cassian could give orders. He could make this call, and he believes that Dameron would do his best to obey. He doesn't hesitate on other missions. Every other sentence to Kay is an order; when he has other Rebel ground operatives along, he tells them exactly what to do.

But he puts great stock in his instinct. And, instinctively, this feels like a situation where Dameron knows better than Cassian what to do. How to proceed.

They can jump from within the rings, though the odds start crowding up on being yanked back out of hyperspace before getting far. Should pick a vector as clear of space rock as they can, or get out of range of the debris before making the leap.

"The cluster ahead," says Cassian -- "Scattering our sensors." Warning Poe that the obstacles behind it might not be visible, and also telling him that it may increase the confusion among the TIEs.

Poe has a moment of barely-conscious understanding, recognition that once again Andor is leaving the decision up to him. Strangely enough, it leaves him with an equally fleeting, barely acknowledged sense of having something to prove -- offering proof that he's up to the real challenge here, as well as buying additional time.

A TIE manages a lucky shot on their aft, though the deflector shield absorbs it without a significant drop. Poe twitches the yoke, and the Heartline quickly slips to port, skimming just meters above the battered, sheared-off hull of some sort of freighter as they race for the chaotic expanse ahead. Andor's comment prompts a glance at the board from Poe, as well -- not that he doesn't trust the Captain, but because he wants to know how bad it is.

Not great, but not impossible. "Guess that explains some of the casualties out there," he says, and weaves his way through another span of asteroids, chased by green bolts of energy. To have an effect that size, he supposes some part of one of those moons of long ago must've been loaded with iron ... that, or maybe it's a deterrent of of some sort.

Where his sensors are still functional, another three TIEs have disappeared from the board. "Make 'em pay for it, if they decide to chase us," Poe murmurs. "might send 'em circling the dead zone, waiting for us to come out, too. Buying time, right?"

Could be iron; could be any one of a dozen heavy metallic minerals that interfere with sensor readings. None of them are usually this concentrated, of course. And those of them that are have usually been mined extensively.

Some of the fragments are large, Cassian realizes. Large enough to --

"Land on one," he says, suddenly. "Land, and shut the ship down." The fragments here are orbiting in two different directions -- they'll untangle and the TIEs won't know which cloud to follow. Their attention will be split, and they'll be caught up in hunting in a thicket of rocks. "That one -- there is a hollow." A crater that's deep enough that it's nearly a cave, walled with iron. The hollow means some limited shelter against collisions. Its rotation is relatively slow; not fast enough to be dizzying, and not impossible to match with a few choice maneuvers.

Not for a pilot like Poe Dameron, anyway.

"We'll wait," says Cassian. "The orbit carries us south and starward. From there, almost nothing is in our way on the hyperspace vector. We detach, and jump." Several hours, but if they can pull it off, they can go from engines cold to jump in less than thirty seconds. Not enough time to be caught.

He looks to Poe. His eyes are alight, with the idea, the plan. They can do this.

Poe's bark of laughter is sharp and sudden -- incredulous at first (they need to fly, they need to fight and then they need to go), but after a moment's thought, he realizes it's got some merit. Buying time, and a hell of a lot more of it than a few dangerous passes through the debris field will give anyone.

"All right," Poe says, glancing at Andor, a little taken aback by the sudden surge of life in his eyes. The sensor board is mostly useless at this point, but the amount of fire has reduced dramatically in the last few moments, and that means plenty -- likely they're mulling over directions, receiving orders from that Star Destroyer on whether to pursue or fan out to wait. "All right." Either way, if they want to do this, there's not much time, and so rather than think too hard about the potential for screwing this up catastrophically, he tries to gauge the speed and angle of the asteroid's rotation, and slips beneath the oversized chunk of rock, switching to retrothrusters in a maneuver that leaves the inertial compensator struggling to keep pace.

He feels terribly vulnerable like this ,but forces himself not to think about that, either, to instead activate the ship's small tractor beam to pull the ship in as he feathers thrust and retrothrust to keep pace with its rotation. He doesn't dare use the spotlight, and the effort feels a little bit like groping in the dark.

It's not a completely elegant landing. The length of the ship means he has to turn it sideways to fit the shape of that narrow crater; as a result, only half of the viewport affords a view of the stars in front of them. One of the landing struts crunches and squeals against an outcrop It's not perfect, not by a long shot, but they're shadowed by a jagged overhang, nestled up tight against the belly of their asteroid. Ready and capable of bolting, if need be.

Poe realizes he's holding his breath as the ship's hum abruptly cuts to silence, as the lights from the consoles bade to darkness. He releases it in a shuddering sigh, then glances to Andor, vaguely curious -- but there's a little bit of pleasure there, too. "Don't suppose you brought any cards along, huh?"

And then --

Silence.

There's nothing like the silence of space. On a planet, the quiet is never quite quiet; there is always a breath of wind, the rustle as it passes through leaves or grass or the hollow sounds it makes over stones and sand. There are birds, there are creatures. On a ship, a functioning ship, there's never quite a silence either. The constant, distant hum of engines, life support; vague hints of people moving through the corridors. Often, voices, distant or proximate.

Silence is never fully silence.

Except here.

A dead, flat quiet. And yet, when Cassian closes his eyes, he can hear the soft sound of Poe breathing. He can hear a hint of strain as the ship grows accustomed to the lack of internal gravity, of the stresses of rotation. He can hear Poe shift, turn his head to look to Cassian.

It's a silence that throws a spotlight on every sound, and casts all else into obscurity.

"No," admits Cassian. "Too bad. I could stand to win a few credits off a pilot."

There's a bunk in the back. Blankets. Cassian undoes the harness holding him to the chair and delicately pushes off from two points. He maneuvers in microgravity with a graceful precision; it's always come easily to him. No up and down, and every limb, every shift of his body, must have a purpose. He floats by the ceiling, one hand flat on the ceiling to arrest his motion, one foot against the wall to keep him steady.

He slides open the emergency compartment and flicks on the two oxygen recirculators. Unfortunate fact about that technology: it works better and longer the more oxygen is already in the air. Something that small won't give off a signature large enough for Imperials to spot.

He anchors them to the wall with two carabiners. There are a few chemical heat packs, but they shouldn't end up needing those so quickly. That's for exposure to the elements, on more hostile worlds. There are two blankets, though, and Cassian retrieves them.

"You figure that's how it'd be, huh?" Poe laughs with a sense of genuine amusement, despite the niggling sense of being a sitting hutt out here like this. His attention turns, again and again, out the viewport. Like he's expecting to see the glow of ion engines coming into view at any moment. Like he'd be able to do anything about it now, if they did. "Tell you what, buddy; next time I see the right side of a few credits, maybe we'll see."

It's an empty bluff -- Poe's terrible at sabacc, terrible at anything, really, that requires deception. He's pretty sure Andor would wipe the floor with him, but it's a nice thought, anyway.

His attention finds Andor once more, as he maneuvers himself out of his seat, gently propelling himself across the cabin. It's a little interesting, how natural he looks like that, like he was born to it -- Poe's learned how to be functional in zero gee over the years, but never felt particularly confident about it. He finds himself wondering if it's something he learned before he joined up, but doubts he'll ever ask.

Mostly, it reassures Poe a little to think that Andor's done this before, and he turns his attention back out the viewport while his companion works in relative silence. That's the part he's not terribly fond of, really -- quiet is one thing, but silence? Usually, it marks the passing of something terrible.

He glances back, catching a glimpse of the blankets in Andor's arms as he returns toward the small pilot's cabin, and makes a face. "Wish I'd have known we were gonna be taking an unscheduled rest stop," Poe calls over the back of his chair. "Would've dressed for it."

Cassian returns; he unfolds one of the blankets and spreads it over Poe, tucking it into the harness so it'll be less likely to float away with any movement. He does have to touch Poe to do this, and he does it briskly and perfunctorily. It might be that they have to share body heat to be comfortable through this. Cassian won't mention that until he thinks Poe looks genuinely cold, though.

"I didn't know," he says. It's an apology. "I didn't expect they would have a Star Destroyer so close." And, in fact, that speaks to the possibility that Cassian just took out someone more important than even the Resistance had realized. "I would have warned you."

Operational security be damned.

He slides into his own chair, getting the blanket under control and wrapped around him under the harness.

"You were insulted, weren't you?" asks Cassian, looking over to Poe. "That she didn't just use you for this assignment."

This, too, surprises Poe, and he blinks up at Andor as the man all but tucks him into his chair. There's a lot of questions he has about his companion, and the longer he spends in his presence, the longer that list grows. "Well," he says, and grins widely, just in case Andor takes his surprise for trepidation or disapproval, "my thanks, Captain." Beyond that, the lack of functional gravity leaves the overgrown fall of Andor's hair half-hovering above his head. The effect is probably more amusing than it has any right to be.

Poe waves off the apology with a faint shake of his head quickly, though. "You're off the hook for that one; ain't like you're some future-sensing Jedi, right? Unless you are." He laughs, then carefully extracts an arm from beneath the blanket to scratch the underside of his jaw. "Been on enough of these joyrides to know you never know what's gonna happen. At least I'm not the poor sucker diving out of a headhunter at a moving ship, this time around."

He's babbling a little, and recognizes it a little later, recognizes that's his brain doing its best to casually ignore the implications of First Order assets that are once again delivering aid to New Republic personnel who call. Any sense of good humor fades as Poe stares out at the jagged edge of the overhang, the debris-strewn expanse of space beyond. "Would've wanted to fly something with some punch, if we did know. Suppose we'll be seeing more of that, now they've made their move."

More of the New Republic's people, turned or turning. People who apparently haven't learned a damn thing from the last war. It's enough to make his skin crawl -- or maybe that's just the recognition that they're all but unprotected, like this.

Cassian's question has him glancing over sharply, surprised all over again. "She's been doing this longer than we've been alive, Captain." A pause, and then Poe sighs heavily. "If the General thinks I'm not the one, then I'm not the one."

He can feel the warmth radiating out from Poe's body. He must come from a warm planet -- yes, he came from Yavin, didn't he? He'll get cold fast, if he keeps that up.

Cassian came from somewhere warm, but it's been a long time since then. He's adapted.

He lets Poe keep speaking, as he settles himself in. The pilot's anxious about sitting still; that much is clear. Running and hiding, though, is where Cassian lives. His entire life is carrying out tasks that couldn't possibly be done with a fair fight, if the whole might of the First Order was turned against him. Poe is used to being the underdog, but an underdog that slugs it out all the same.

Though Cassian is curious, now, about diving out of a headhunter at a moving ship.

"She uses you for... finding. Flying. Those specific missions where failure might mean that the galaxy has no one left to fight." Cassian glances sideways, to Poe. "Most of the missions I have are boring, or pointless. Or without a specific goal, just to find anything important, to develop networks of contacts. It needs subtlety. Someone who won't be noticed." He looks forward, again. "Or someone who'll pull the trigger when it's not a fair fight." Like this one.

Cassian might not particularly like that about himself. There was a time, years and year ago, when putting his hands on a gun and looking through a scope, intending to pull the trigger, left him shaking and sweating, heart pounding so hard he could feel it in the back of his throat. He was just a kid, and he still cared about things like that. None of that is true anymore.

Now, he just pulls the trigger.

"Pick up her laundry when she's busy, too," Poe says with another smile -- teasing again, yes, but there's an unmistakable note of pride there, too. He believes in the New Republic, even now, even after this, but it's General Leia Organa he trusts, wholeheartedly.

He wonders why Cassian Andor is telling him these things. He's never questioned the Intelligence arm of the Resistance -- at least not their usefulness, or their ability to get things done. He's certainly not questioning Andor's presence on this mission, much less expecting justifications. And yet, he thinks of the General, of the things she'd said to him the first time they'd met. She'd said he'd been looking for adventure, for the chance to do good in pursuit of that ... he wonders if Andor sees those same things, or if he's summarizing Poe's own dossier as explanation.

"Not just an adventure-seeking flyboy, y'know," Poe says, but there's no hint of offense taken in the way he says it. If anything, he's just -- curious. About this. About Andor. "I can do subtle." He laughs quietly after that, wondering at what point he started feeling the need to justify himself. At least he knows better than to try to argue unnoticed. The way his own missions tend to skew ... well. Poe has his own extensive network, but sometimes the downside of that is that it's hard to run into someone familiar, for better or worse.

The humor fades quickly, though. Poe pulls away from his study of Andor to stare out the viewport again, silent for several seconds. He opens his mouth to speak, then thinks better of it. Tries again, a moment later. "I vaped a planet, Captain. I think -- I think it's fair to say we've all moved a little past fair fights."

He sees the trust in Poe's eyes, in the cant of his smile. He wonders what it would be like to trust anyone and anything that wholeheartedly.

That, there, is why he is the one for this kind of mission and Poe isn't. Cassian doesn't trust, but he doesn't rest, either. He never stops fighting. His flame has gone from embers to bonfires and back again, but it's never gone out. He's exactly the person you need if you want someone dead at any cost -- at all cost.

Vaped a planet. It actually takes Cassian a second to understand. He never thought of Starkiller as a planet. Just as another creation, another weapon, like the Death Star.

He lets his eyes shift back to Poe, and he gives a slight, fractional nod. Fair point. Still: those were soldiers. They were asking for it. Not civilians (who may, to be fair, also have been asking for it).

"Not adventure," says Cassian. "That's not what I meant. If you wanted adventure, there are other ways. If you wanted to put yourself in between the First Order and the people out here, this is it." But Poe still chose this. He chose it because he knew the fight with the First Order could get into the Core, because he knew that this was everyone's fight long before the Republic was willing to admit it. He still could have stayed away. Cassian couldn't. This fight has infected him. He breathes it; it's in his blood; it's a shadow in his eyes.

"But you're right," he murmurs. "We're a long way from a fair fight."

Poe's newest -- possibly his new closest -- friend is a former stormtrooper, an indelible mark of humanity in a war that almost demands they throw exactly that away, if only for the sake of sanity. No child in arms, no child abandoned asks to be indoctrinated. But for all that, Poe had not hesitated to pull the trigger, in the name of things like necessity and survival -- not just for himself, but for the Resistance. The New Republic. The galaxy itself.

Poe does not blame those beneath the armor, even as he kills them. No, Poe saves his fury for the people who did this to them. People that know better.

"My parents were both rebels," Poe says, and that smile inches back, little by little. "They didn't join up just to keep me safe. Like hell I could just sit back and let this thing they helped build crumble. Helping people, absolutely, but -- this is for them, and the others, too." Proof that all those sacrifices decades ago weren't wasted.

Poe settles back in his seat, adjusts the blanket to curl his hands into the coarse fabric. Already, he feels the chill creeping into his fingertips; the next few hours promise to be an exercise in discomfort. To pull his attention away from the fact, he glances back over at Andor, chewing on his question before he decides whether or not to bother asking.

Curiosity wins out, as it usually does. "How bad were they?"

They. The people Cassian killed, presumably. Cassian releases a breath. He considers changing the subject, noting how Poe settles the blanket more closely around himself. Already cold. And the ship is chilling very fast, probably through the physical contact to the asteroid.

Damn.

"That world has a fault line," says Cassian, "between two continents, drifting apart. It makes a trench, all the way down to the mantle. It is a natural source of geothermal energy. And the full length of it is nothing but factories." He assumes that Poe doesn't know the details of this. Why would he? "Torpedoes. Power sources. Forging metal parts that need the kind of heat most planets can't provide."

He shifts. His eyes stay focused forward. "This planet suffered when the Empire died. Factories closed. Jobs ended. But, recently, there's been a change. Nothing official reported to the Republic, but factories are lighting up where they've been dark for decades. And there are signs. Imports have gone up, and the planetary government has started to build again. But they haven't taken any money from the Republic.

"I've been here for months, to find out what happened. No one is talking about it. No holonews. Nothing. And I found out why."

A little huff. He looks down. "They were making -- everything. Weapons, hyperdrives, power cores. And it's going outward, to the First Order. All of it."

Poe listens to everything Andor has to say without comment. It's not ... really an unfamiliar story. Not every system has grown prosperous beneath the banner of the New Republic; Poe certainly isn't blind to that, particularly over the last several years as the senate has ground itself to a halt with infighting and politicking, rather than guiding their people.

He shivers. How many more are there, not yet discovered?

"From there, it all sounds so reasonable, doesn't it?" Poe glances over at Andor, breathes a slow sigh of disappointment. "We can bring you back what you thought you had. Just smile and close your eyes while we wipe out a star system or two, go back to crushing nonhumans beneath our heels. Seems like too many people who should know better have just ... forgotten."

Every argument comes back to that too-often hidden cost. Poe has seen just how seductive ignorance can be, but he doesn't understand how the tragedies of the Empire can be shrugged off, even as the groundwork for a repeat performance is laid bare. "And the people profiting off of it?" But Poe wonders if he doesn't already know. This world is likely already lost, as a new senate -- a vulnerable senate, with the fleet gone -- scrambles to fill the void. This ... probably wasn't about changing minds and restoring the Republic's authority, but rather sowing chaos and doubt among those who would take over.

No, Poe thinks. As usual, General Organa is right. These aren't the sorts of missions he was made for at all.

"Everyone on that planet is profiting from it." That's just an economic fact. The explosive growth in currency and value on the planet, the reinvestment via the planetary government, the greater taxes, the greater stimulus -- it all works as a cycle. So, by stopping the First Order from being a part of this planet, Cassian would hurt a great many innocent people, people who had no idea what was going on.

"But now they know," he says, to Poe. "They know the governor is dead, and a First Order ship is in orbit. There is evidence that a Vader Lives group was responsible. This is too big for a coverup."

Now, this planet will know what was happening. And maybe they'll come out in favor of the First Order at first, maybe not. It doesn't matter, because Republic connections will dry up, Republic planets will stop trading, and there will be negative economic consequences. And no one to blame but the First Order. Which will have, in the meantime, been preoccupied hunting down the Vader Lives groups on the planet, of which there are many, given the connections this planet had to the Empire.

In fact, there was a fair amount of speculation on whether those groups would try to claim credit for the assassination anyway. Cassian thinks they will. A few other Intelligence people came down on the other side. There's a betting pool.

Sowing chaos and doubt... yes.

But also giving nearby planets a chance to understand what happened here and defend themselves from the more subtle kinds of First Order intrusion.

He watches Poe's reaction. "See?" he asks. "You have to be a special kind of bastard to try this." Like Cassian is.

That part, at least, Poe can focus on. He takes it up eagerly. It's easy enough to point at countless, faceless people just trying to survive and prosper, people who seize upon the tools to do so when they're laid before them, and say they didn't know. But now, as Andor points out, they do. Wherever their choices may take them from this point, it's not with eyes closed. Poe hopes that he's right -- that those people are wise enough and brave enough to do the right thing, even as their predecessors had failed decades ago.

Truly, they've moved well beyond fair fights. A few years ago, General Organa had been horrified at the suggestion of kidnapping a senator. Now, the Resistance assassinates governors.

"That's one way to think of it, I suppose," Poe says, and fixes Andor with a sharper look. "Is that how you see yourself?"

There are more people that Cassian has killed for the Resistance. Never such a blatant assassination, done to make a point.

"It was my idea," he says, bluntly, suddenly humorless. "What else would you call me?" The question is some combination of rhetorical and serious; he doesn't believe there's any real answer that Poe can offer, but he would listen if Poe did offer one.

His idea, his mission. His careful study of the planet's political situation, though he was backed up by other operatives, analysts. If this goes sideways, it's his fault.

Andor's admission comes as a surprise to Poe -- not that he doubts the Captain is incapable of it, but he'd assumed, for no real reason that comes to mind now that he examines the thought, that it had been the product of some upper echelon's careful strategy. Really, he thinks he should know better by now. General Organa gives him free rein, more often than not. He's not arrogant enough to think he's somehow the only one with that sort of responsibility.

Cassian Andor has killed a governor. Poe Dameron has killed a world. Perhaps his own mission had more immediacy, but with the current situation ... well, they have both acted to address a necessary problem.

Poe tilts his head against the back of his seat as he continues to watch Andor, wondering if he's expecting some sort of accusation. He'd like to think his reputation is better than that. "A soldier," Poe says simply. "Fighting on a different front, maybe, but it ain't that different."

Again, a characterization that's fair enough.

"I don't know many soldiers who don't think of themselves as bastards," says Cassian. "One way or another." But combat is different from what he does. He has to dip into the darkness on a regular basis. Too regular for comfort.

He gives Poe another careful glance, but this time he's looking for signs of the invading cold.

"I don't like how fast you're losing heat," says Cassian. "We should move to the bunk."

"Well, I'm a nice guy," Poe says with an exaggerated shrug, another flash of perfect teeth. "Doing my part to drop the hammer on bastards, right?" No, there's no one that Poe can think of off the top of his head that would say as much. Hell, he's pretty sure most of his pilots would be offended at the idea; they're a righteous lot for the most part, plenty of them bearing scars from the old Empire, the rest all too aware of who and what they're up against to doubt the way their scales balance. Then again, for the most part, there's not a lot of room for doubt. Most of their missions are clear cut, with immediate, obvious enemies actively causing harm -- no room for shades of gray.

There's not really a comparison, is there? "Suppose you and I run in pretty different circles, though." In the moment, Poe finds himself starkly aware of how easy he has it in comparison. Not that piloting doesn't require its own sharp set of skills or have its own set of issues to wrestle with, but there's cost, and there's cost.

One of Poe's eyebrows quirks, as he finally registers the look Andor's giving him. It takes another few seconds to actually register the words coming out of his mouth, though. A quiet, vaguely incredulous laugh; Poe's extremities might getting a little icy, but his teeth aren't exactly chattering yet. "Yeah, well, me either -- wait. What?" He withdraws a hand from beneath the blanket to jab a finger towards the viewport. "There's two dozen TIEs out there somewhere, buddy. They catch us napping, we're gone."

Poe doesn't mention the fact that if they catch them precisely as they are, their chances aren't that much better.

"You know as well as I do that every minute means their likelihood of finding us is lower," says Cassian, "and that if one does see us, we don't have a chance at getting the ship up and running before we're dead." But, really, if they weren't found in the first ten minutes, the odds are in their favor. The rings are moving, and the TIEs don't know where exactly to look.

"On top of that," says Cassian, "the colder you get, the harder it will be to warm you up." Like with the oxygen recyclers: it helps if you start when you don't really need it.

Helplessness doesn't come easy to any of them. And if not leading a mission was enough to bother Poe, then taking a nap while there are TIEs searching for them would be practically panic-inducing.

"No," says Cassian, "they know the odds, too. They'll spread out and wait for us to move, rather than grinding down fighters they don't have. They have time. We don't."