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Her eye sensors trembled and stiffened and she looked up at him.

“Go,” she said.

“How can I?” he answered. “I have sworn allegiance to the Princess and the return of the Republic.”

The lamproid’s teeth shifted in amusement, even as her gasp of pain formed mist in the icy air.

“You never meant to wear the uniform of a Rebel. That day in the cantina, when we first met, you only accepted my offer to join the Alliance as a way to wrap yourself in my coils.”

She was right, of course. The first time in the cantina—the real first time—he had made much of his Rebel sympathies, sensing it might make him a more acceptable companion to her. But in time, he had come to believe in what the Alliance stood for. He had become a proud and willing warrior in its cause. But now Dice was dying and the past no longer mattered.

“What is the past?” Dice asked, reading his mind again.

Sivrak tore the med-kit from his belt, somehow knowing that another battle was being fought above a world of forests. He stared blankly at the contents of the kit. Most of its salves and ointments were for his species. He had no idea how they would react with Florn biology. But he had to do something.

“You have done something,” Dice said soothingly. Her voice was calm, almost peaceful. She fixed her light sensors on the clear blue sky.

“We are alike,” she continued, “as you have always known. The hunter and the killer know the sick and diseased must be culled from the herd—and the Empire is rotten with corruption. That is why you must leave me, to continue our fight until its end.”

The vials and tubes from the med-kit spilled into the snow from Sivrak’s rigid paws. “Dice, no. I can’t.”

“I know you can’t. In time, I know you won’t. But for now, my love, you must. Alliance and Empire. Predator and prey.”

Sivrak’s communicator sounded the evacuation code sound. A terse voice announced that Imperial troops had entered the base.

“I will die with you here,” Sivrak said.

He cradled her head close against his warm body.

“What is death compared to love?” Dice asked, her voice fading.

Sivrak could not move. He was losing her.

“What you must do,” she whispered, “is believe in the Force.”

“If you wish me to,” Sivrak said thickly, unwilling to argue with the old religion if that is what brought her peace at this time. He felt the mourning cry rise in his chest.

“Not because I wish you to, but because there is no other choice you can make.”

Before Sivrak could answer, the lamproid’s body shivered, then quietened. He stared down at Dice as one by one her light sensors drooped, losing focus, losing contact. And then, amid the sounds of battle light-years removed from the moment that they shared, Dice blessed him with the Force, willing it to remain with him, forever.

Sivrak held her body until a walker destroyed the main generator and the fall-back lines finally fell. Energy beams cut through the air like falling stars. Sivrak’s communicator relayed a final evacuation alert. The roar of departing transports, now launching two at a time, was continuous.

But as if he were on a different world, one that knew no war or conflict, Sivrak arose and moved with a slowness and surety that set him apart from the chaos around him.

He heard no explosions as he laid Dice upon the snow, sheltering her in an alcove of the trench. He felt no walker’s footfall as he arranged her fur-trimmed hood around her serene, unmoving face, and caressed her ringed teeth that were never again to know the bliss of shredded flesh.

A human Rebel slipped to a near halt in the trench and pulled on Sivrak’s arm to urge him to the evacuation point. But Sivrak’s snarl sent the human on alone.

Then Sivrak stood over his beloved and took his blaster from his holster. He had heard the stories of what the Imperial biogeneticists did with the bodies of the Rebel dead. How parts could be cloned and kept alive for unspeakable research, or Imperial sport. He set the blaster for full immolation.

“May your Force be with you,” he said in the most intimate