Two. They'd been building the second one in secret. My mother and father helped bring it down, about four years after the Battle of Yavin. That was the end of the Empire.

[ Except for, as his father put it, "cleanup." (It's another Death Star.) Except for Jakku, (I wish that were the case.) and the Empire's loyalists, (This was the Death Star.) and the attacks on Naboo and other occupied worlds.

Except--

Except.

Except for those lights he keeps remembering. Except for those awful red streamers and their nova terminations.

Starkiller Base.

Poe leans hard against the counter, waves of uncomfortable, internal heat washing from head to stomach, one after another. He remembers. He remembers being told, now, what those lights had been. He remembers coming out of hyperspace and making the approach at Takodana with those lights faint above them. Not having time to wonder. The adrenaline rush of the fight, the triumph of seeing the First Order retreat knowing he hadn't lost anyone.

Then being told what had happened to the Hosnian System, and having to tell the pilots who flew with him. The rest already knew.

And he just told Cassian that there were two Death Stars. Poe imagines being informed of a second Starkiller, when they haven't even conquered the first.

In a whisper: ] Fuck.

[ As soon as Cassian sets his glass down, Poe pulls him into a hug. ]