Actions

Work Header

Star Wars: Episode IX - A Wind to Shake the Stars

Summary:

Duel of the Fates-based. Troubled by visions of his defeat, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren has gone in search of an ancient dark side power. In his absence, the Knights of Ren hunt Rey, the last Jedi, as she and the rest of the Resistance attempt to rally the galaxy to their cause. Meanwhile, a dark presence prepares to return to the galaxy. . . .

Chapter 1: Main Title and the Moon of Kuat

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. . . .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

STAR

WARS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Episode IX

 

A WIND TO SHAKE THE STARS

 

The iron grip of the FIRST ORDER has spread to the furthest reaches of the galaxy.  Only a few scattered planets remain unoccupied.  Traitorous acts are punishable by death.

 

Troubled by visions of his defeat, Supreme Leader KYLO REN has gone in search of an  ancient dark side power.  In his absence, The Knights of Ren have been dispatched to hunt REY, the last Jedi.

 

Determined to suffocate a growing unrest, CHANCELLOR HUX has silenced all communication between neighboring systems.  Meanwhile, the Resistance, led by GENERAL LEIA ORGANA, has planned a secret mission to prevent their annihilation and forge a path to freedom. . . .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter One

 

The Moon of Kuat

 

Stars, seemingly receding to infinity.  That was all the small, graphite-colored astromech droid could see.  If he rolled back just a bit, he would see that he was peering out the transparisteel viewport of a starkly designed shuttle; but if he stayed where he was, he could pretend that he was alone in the inky, star-specked vastnesses of space.

At the edges of the droid’s vision, two prongs—the sharp points of a space station— drifted into view as the ship coasted into a docking bay.  The grand illusion of tranquility was broken.  Disappointed, the droid rolled towards the exit of the First Order transport.  He had a mission to complete.

He joined his companions on this journey: other droids, of diverse form and function, brought to work at the Kuat Drive Yards.  The boarding ramp descended before them with a hiss of pneumatics.  In the press to get out, the gray BB Unit swerved to avoid a hulking Hexadecimal loadlifter and scraped his spherical body against the side wall of the transport.  He looked down, examining a new scuff in his paint that revealed a flash of orange beneath the gray coating.  He chirped worriedly, and rolled until the telltale scrape was hidden beneath his domed head.

 

In a cramped room stacked with scavenged Imperial gear, a small comlink lay on a table.  A red light began to blink on its side in response to some signal.  A gloved hand grabbed and activated it.

“Beebee-Ate, are you in?” asked Rose Tico.

An affirmative beep came through the communications device.

“Good,” Rose said, looking through the broken roof of her hideout at the orbital ring hanging high above the surface of the moon of Kuat.  First Order Star Destroyers protruded from its rim like vicious teeth poised to crush the galaxy.  Beyond, she could pick out the planet Kuat, visible only as a pale bluish-green disc encircled by the thin metal ribbon of another, larger, orbital ring.  “I need eyes on the checkpoint,” she said.

Inside the moon’s orbital ring, BB-8 rolled out of the cavernous docking bay and into a sleek black hallway.  He wove through a forest of legs, searching for the right scomp terminal.

“I hear the T-16s are being phased back in,” a passing stormtrooper said to another walking beside him.

“Figures,” grumbled his companion.  “The T-17s are junk.”

BB-8 finally found the correct port and plugged his computer uplink arm into the round socket in the middle.  He turned his arm back and forth, searching the computer network until he found what Rose needed: access to the holomonitor system of the orbital ring complex.

On the moon’s surface, Rose strapped on a beaten, cracked leather flight helmet and flipped down the attached electrogoggles.  The heads-up display showed a grid of garbled, blurry images that resolved into dozens of live feeds of the orbital shipyard and its surrounding area.  Rose selected and enlarged a video of an outlying security station.  A boxy, dun-colored dropship descended towards the checkpoint.

“Here they come,” she said.

 

The dropship landed in a canyon of white and blue sedimentary rock, the wind of its passage kicking up a cloud of silver sand.  A few stormtroopers gathered around it as a batch of migrant workers trudged out of the craft, shielding their eyes from the harsh sunlight.  They comprised downtrodden humans and aliens from across the galaxy, submitting to the rule of the First Order in exchange for safety and whatever meagre scraps of food they could be spared.  The stormtroopers motioned them towards a weapons detector set into a thick border wall.  

Not all of the beings in the small crowd were migrants, however.  Among them was stormtrooper-turned-Resistance fighter Finn, disguised in layers of thin, worn rags.

“Checkpoint,” whispered Finn.  “Keep your head down.”

The man behind him nodded, his features hidden by a dusty robe and a cloth covering the lower part of his face.  As the migrants were funneled towards the scanner, a bottleneck quickly formed.  Ragged aliens barked at each other in a dozen tongues.  An immense, gray-skinned Drovian shoved Finn.

“Whoa, hey.  No trouble here,” said Finn.

The Drovian was not appeased.  It picked Finn up with a single radially symmetrical, three-clawed hand and bared its sharp teeth at him.

“Trouble. TROUBLE!” shouted Finn.

The robed man stepped forward and pulled something from a leather pouch under his robe.  “Easy, pal,” he said.

The Drovian rounded to face the man, whose face covering had slipped to reveal the face of Commander Poe Dameron.  The Resistance pilot held out a dried, three-eyed Peckto fish.

“Here,” he said. “I couldn’t finish it.”

The Drovian dropped Finn, speared the fish on one of his talons, and munched on it with a contented, nasal bubble.  Poe removed his hand from a blaster concealed under his robe.

“Thanks,” said Finn as he stood up and brushed sand off his rags.

“Don’t mention it,” Poe said as he pulled the mask back over his nose.

The stormtroopers had formed the workers into a queue before the weapons scanner.  Finn and Poe walked to the back of the line.

“How’ll we know if Beebee-Ate hacked the mainframe?” asked Finn.

The weapons scanner beeped.  Stormtroopers pulled a mangy Gotal out of the line.  The alien pleaded for his life, pointing desperately at his metallic horns.  Unsympathetic stormtroopers marched him behind a high wall, out of view of the other migrants.  The muted sound of blaster fire came from behind it.

“We’ll know,” Poe said grimly.

Poe and Finn stepped into the large rectangular detector.  As they entered, the machine gave a shudder and shut off.

“We lost power.  Hold the line,” said one of the stormtroopers.  Others re-emerged from behind the wall, their blasters smoking.  Finn and Poe looked at each other tensely.

Aboard the orbital ring, BB-8 spun his scomp link.  Down the hall, a clumsy stormtrooper dropped a crate of spanners.  They clattered noisily on the hard floor.  Startled, BB-8 nervously spun his dome to face the trooper, then recovered and concentrated on his task.

At the security checkpoint, a stormtrooper smacked the console.  The scanner powered up again, with Finn and Poe still inside.  The alarm did not sound.  The Resistance infiltrators let out the breaths they had been holding.

The stormtrooper waved them forward.  “Move along.  Move along.”

Poe and Finn passed through the wall into a vast migrant encampment.  Modular grey housing units painted with colorful geometric and organic symbols from the inhabitants’ home worlds were set at regular intervals.  Workers shuffled down the dusty streets, heads down, attempting to avoid the gaze of stormtrooper patrols.  Small animals prowled around buildings and vaporators.  A heavily robed Tusken eyed Finn and Poe as they passed.

In the distance, a towering powershaft that was plunged deep in the planet’s core soared skyward to connect with the orbital ring.  Transparisteel panels set inside a scaffolding of metal let out the blue glow of the energy mined here.  Power flowed up the shaft, destined to fuel the fleet of ships assembled on the ring above.  A pair of TIE Fighters screamed past the imposing structure and flew over the worker’s colony.

Poe locked eyes with a furry alien watching them from a nearby machine shop.  The alien, Biss Kova, tapped his cheek.

“That’s our guy,” Poe said.  He and Finn followed their contact into a hut.  Inside, a big-cheeked, hairless baby of the same species bounced inside a hanging sea cow stomach.  Its mother, Dal Kova, brushed melted fat onto an unappetizing-looking roast.

Rose emerged from behind a beaded curtain in the back of the hut.  “You said six days.  I’ve been here six weeks,” she said.

“We’ve been busy,” said Poe wearily, uncovering his face and pulling down his hood.

“Besides, this place doesn’t seem so bad,” Finn said, looking around the building curiously.

“Good people,” Rose responded.  Terrible food.”

Rose led them back through the curtain to her surveillance den.  She unrolled a canvas map on the table and dropped a holoprojector onto it.

“This is our access point,” she said as the device projected an image of the orbital ring and the powershaft.

“This powershaft delivers raw ore to the orbital ring,” Rose continued.  “A detonation directly into the energy stream, here, will cause a chain reaction—”

“—and take the whole thing down,” Poe finished.

Finn looked up at the orbital ring, where a dozen Star Destroyers were refueling.  “Along with their new fleet.”

The baby began to cry.  Rose walked back into the main room and shook a rattle at it.

“How do we know they haven’t detected Beebee’s signature?” asked Poe as he followed her.  “There’s a lot we don’t know.  That’s why I voted for the other plan.”

Finn looked at him.  “This is when we second guess the plan? Right now?”

“We can take out the enemy’s fuel source and be light years away before they know what hit them.  But we have to move now,” Rose said as she stuck a finger in the baby’s mouth.  The alien gurgled.

Finn and Poe looked at Rose and the baby, then at each other, then back at Rose.  She really had been down here awhile.

“Okay,” Poe conceded.  “Let’s blow this thing and go home.”

Poe, Finn, and Rose emerged from the hut and walked towards the massive powershaft base, trying to look casual and unhurried.  The Tusken wandered past far behind them.

Poe spoke into a comlink.  “Beebee-Ate?  Don’t worry, buddy, I’m alive.  Unlock the powershaft doors and get ready with that shuttle.”

BB-8 gave the terminal one final crank and then detached his scomp link.  He sped down the corridor past a viewport that gave a view of the sun cresting the glowing orange and blue surface of the Kuat moon.

A trio of heavily armored, space-gray mechtroopers guarded the powershaft doors.  Poe stunned one with his blaster while Finn and Rose took down the other two with electro-shock prods.  Poe unlatched a keycard from the belt of one of the unconscious mechtroopers and threw it to Finn, who swiped it through a slot set in a wall panel.  The blast doors slid open.  Finn, Poe, and Rose stepped through and looked up at the giant cylinder of blue particle energy rushing upwards.

Poe took out three dart-like, aerodynamic thermal detonators.  “We’ll have twenty seconds before detonation.  Give or take.”

“Give or take how long?” asked Rose.

Poe grimaced and handed Finn and Rose a detonator each.  “Not long enough to be a problem.  Just take it nice and easy, like pitching a Pilmetto Stick.”

Finn said, “We didn’t have that. . .”

Poe activated his charge.

“Oh, we’re going now?!” asked Finn incredulously.

Poe tossed his detonator underhand.  It was caught by the particle flow and rocketed upwards.  Rose’s charge soon joined it.  Finn chucked his like a live grenade and ran for the exit.

Poe activated his comm.  “Beebee-Ate, bombs are away.  We’ll meet you at the relay point.”

BB-8 warbled a reply as he rolled into the droid socket of a tiny maintenance shuttle, old and forgotten.  The ship powered up as he plugged into it.

The Resistance fighters ran out the door to find themselves face-to-face with a platoon of stormtroopers and mechtroopers.

“Drop your weapons!” said one of the troopers.

Workers craned their necks at the disturbance, trying to see what was happening without getting too close.  The masked Tusken lurked among them.

Poe looked up at the orbital ring and hissed, “Distraction in three, two, one. . .now!”  He dove to the ground and rolled, anticipating the explosion.  Nothing happened.  He halted and looked up at the stormtroopers surrounding them.  “Hey, fellas,” he said weakly.

“Shut up, scum,” one of them responded.

 

Inside the Kuat moon Orbital Ring’s command center, a First Order officer holding a datapad rushed up to Admiral Vonn.  The Admiral was standing at the command center’s viewport in the textbook Imperial posture: back straight, hands clasped behind him, and legs slightly apart.  He turned to look at the officer with piercing blue eyes that complemented his shock of steel-gray hair.

“Blast shields have contained the explosion, Admiral,” the young officer said.  “All systems stable.”

Vonn turned back to survey the moon of Kuat glowing below, his mouth turned up in a sneer.  “Their outdated tactics are pitiful,” he scoffed.

 

Rose and Finn looked up at the fully intact and operational orbital ring.

“Any second now,” Poe said, tension audible in his voice.

Suddenly, the hooded Tusken ran forward.   From its gloved hands sprang two beams of bright, searing energy surrounded by light blue halos.  The Tusken slashed at the stormtroopers, dual lightsaber cutting through flesh and armor alike.  The First Order soldiers turned and fired wildly, but the Tusken weaved and dodged, scything its way through them.  Finn, Rose, and Poe ducked and blasted at the troopers.

Soon, stormtrooper bodies littered the ground.  Poe stuck his head and right hand out from behind cover, his blaster pistol smoking.  The Tusken pulled off its mask and dropped it on the ground.  It was Rey.

“Rey?” Poe said.

“Rey! What are you doing here?” asked Finn.

Rey spun and blocked a blaster bolt with her lightsaber.  The weapon was a combination of Rey’s own staff and Anakin’s broken saber.  As she moved, the tan Tusken robes fell from her shoulders to reveal a shirt, trousers, and wrappings of pure white.

“A simple ‘thank you’ would do,” Rey said curtly.

She threw the lightsaber towards an approaching group of soldiers and ducked behind a power regulator.  The spinning blade sliced through everything in its path, then returned to her as she rose to catch it.

Poe tucked his head down and scrambled behind a generator.  “I thought you weren’t coming,” he yelled as he fired on a stormtrooper that was trying to sneak up on him from the far side of the powershaft.  “Important Jedi business, I believe you said.”

“I changed my mind.  And I didn’t say that,” Rey shouted over the noise of blaster fire.

“Well, why didn’t you tell me?  Tell us?”

Finn decided it was time to intercede.  “Uh, guys?  Now might not be the best time.”

A blaster shot hit the generator Poe was sheltering behind, leaving behind a smoking black scorch mark.

Definitely not the best time,” Poe agreed.

Rey used the Force to push back a squad of eight stormtroopers, sending them clattering.  The migrant workers pointed to Rey in awe, whispering to each other reverentially.

“Jedi! Jedi!” children cheered.

More stormtroopers flooded into the square, but the migrants blocked their path.  Some threw rocks or swung hammers and work tools.  Some stormtroopers fell under their assault, but others began firing into the crowd.

Poe shouted, “Rey, we gotta go!”

Rey hesitated. “I have to help them!” she called.

Troop transports hove into view, emerging from their docking bays beyond the migrant encampment.  Behind them, TIE Fighters returning from patrol flew towards the powershaft. 

“Not here.  Not now,” Poe said tersely.

Rey knew he was right, but hated to leave these people.  Their behavior was inspiring, a promise of revolution.  To abandon them, no doubt to First Order punishment, felt like a betrayal of their faith in her.  Nevertheless, she reluctantly followed Poe through the blast doors.

Finn moved to join them, but a fallen stormtrooper grabbed his ankle.  His left eye looked pleadingly at Finn from the wreckage of his blasted, broken helmet.  Finn felt a shock of recognition.  Memories of his stormtrooper days rushed back to him.  He didn’t know this trooper’s name, or when they had met, but those piercing green eyes still seemed familiar somehow.  Finn pulled his leg free of the wounded soldier’s grip, following his friends, but the incident still left him shaken.

 

An officer raced to Admiral Vonn.

“What happened down there?” the commander snapped.

“The infiltrators.  The last Jedi is with them, sir,” the officer replied.  She sounded out of breath.

The blood seemed to drain from Vonn’s face.  “Alert the Knights of Ren.”

 

Rey, Poe, Finn, and Rose raced towards a maintenance turbolift next to the energy channel.

Poe shouted into his comlink.  “Beebee-Ate, we’re coming up to you!  Plan’s gone sidewise.”

BB-8 beeped incredulously, his shuttle already out of the orbital ring and on its way to the rendezvous point on the planet’s surface.

While Rose sliced into the turbolift controls, Poe studied the orbital ring thoughtfully.

“We’re gonna need another ship,” he said.

His eyes settled on a colossal First Order ship docked above them.  Its design differed sharply from that of the Star Destroyers around it.  While the ship’s top resembled that of a Resurgent-class Star Destroyer, its underside swept downwards in a broad curve from aft to fore, terminating in an imposing vertical fin sticking down from the bow of the ship.  Its hull, painted a stark white still unsullied by dust and radiation, shone like a gem in the light of the Kuat system’s orange-silver sun.

Rey followed his gaze upwards.  “You’re not serious,” she said.

Finn said, “That’s an Eclipse-class Dreadnought.  You can’t fly—”

“I can fly anything,” Poe interjected.

Rose stood up as the turbolift door opened.  “We’re in,” she said.

When the group had entered the cramped space, the transparisteel door slid shut, cutting off all sound from outside.  Rose fiddled with the lift controls.  The capsule rocketed upwards.

“Too. . . fast. . . ,” Finn gasped as the rapid acceleration pressed them against the floor of the turbolift.  Rose connected a pair of wires and the capsule crashed to a halt.  There was a brief moment of weightlessness, during which Poe hit his head on the ceiling.  Then everyone was on the floor again.

Rose got to her knees and dusted herself off.  She said, “All right, let’s try that again.”

 

The turbolift continued upwards at a more sedate pace.  When it finally halted, its door opened in front of the Resistance fighters to reveal the kilometers-wide stern of the Eclipse Dreadnought.  A tangle of thick fuel lines were attached to the giant ion engines.

Poe was first out of the lift.  He and Finn had changed out of their migrant disguises, which were now tucked into their satchels.  Both wore a battle-ready ensemble of shirt and trousers.  Finn still wore Poe’s old jacket.  They moved into the docking bay, blasters in hand, but no enemies confronted them.  The enormous space was empty of life.

Rey asked, “Are you sure about this?”

“Nope,” replied Poe.

“We had better odds on Raxus Prime,” Rose quipped.

“That was not my fault,” Finn said.  “You need to let Raxus Prime go.”

Poe leapt into the control seat of a Glide Rover used to load supplies onto the ship.  The rest of the group scrambled into the rear of the vehicle as it sped off.

 

Admiral Vonn watched them race towards the Eclipse from an observation tower.

“Where are they going?” he mused.

The Glide Rover disappeared into the docked destroyer.  Slowly, the Rebels’ plan dawned on Vonn.  His right eye began to twitch.

He muttered to himself, “They can’t possibly. . .”

He seemed to gain control of himself and leaned over a First Order technician.

“How many men are on that ship?”

“Just the bridge crew and a few guards, sir,” the orange-vested tech said.  “The rest are on dock leave.”

Admiral Vonn straightened and took a deep breath.  “Rush as many troops as you can spare to that sector,” he ordered.  “If the ship leaves the dock, destroy it.”

 

Finn led the way towards the bridge of the ship.  As he turned a corner, two stormtroopers raised their blasters.

“Hey, you’re not supposed to be-” one said before Finn shot him.  Rose blasted the other.

Four more troopers stationed in front the bridge door at the end of the corridor opened fire on them.  Rey rushed forward, lightsaber deflecting their shots, while the others followed, their blasters spitting overheated plasma.

There were only two troopers left guarding the door when a clatter of armor sounded behind the quartet.  Another four troopers ran into the hallway and began firing up it at them.

“You take out the ones behind us!” Rey yelled.  “I’ll handle these two.”

She leapt forward and slashed through both stormtroopers’ blasters with one flowing motion, before using the Force to slam them against the walls.  The troopers collapsed to the floor.

Rey turned to see Finn and Poe shoot the final remaining stormtrooper simultaneously.  Rose hurried to the door and pulled open the control panel.

 

The bridge of the Eclipse swarmed with First Order crew members, most of them working at consoles on either side of a central walkway.  Set in the middle of the walkway was a raised, swiveling command seat.

A blaster shot sounded from the rear of the bridge.  The crew of the dreadnought spun around to see Rose lowering her heavy blaster to cover them.  Finn sealed the door behind them.  A hole in the ceiling sparked.

“Who’s in charge here?” Poe asked.

A gray-uniformed Deck Officer marched forward.  “I am,” he said bravely.

“Great.  I’m your new pilot,” Poe improvised.  “Where does the pilot sit?”

Rey stepped forward and waved her palm, encompassing the entire bridge crew with the gesture.  “You will set a course for the Nirauan system.”

The Deck Officer turned smartly to the crew and commanded, “Set a course for the Nirauan System!”

The crewmen turned back to their consoles and began preparing the ship for launch.

“Does she do that to us?” Poe asked.  Finn shrugged.

Poe and Rey took the helm and began pressing buttons.

“Cold start the engines.  We can jump right to hyperspace if we overheat the laser cannon drive,” Rey said.

Poe replied, “The exhaust will spill over—”

“—into the propulsion systems,” Rey continued.  “We can freeze the chamber.”

Poe looked at her with a gleam in his eye as they continued to flip switches.  He asked quietly, “Don’t you see?  You and I?  How we—”

Not the time.

Finn sat at a massive control board with dozens of buttons.  “Okay, I’m going to need very specific instructions,” he said.

Rose, working at the navigation console, reported, “Shields up.  Setting calculations for lightspeed.”

“Let’s go!” urged Poe.

“Don’t rush me,” Rose shot back.  “I mess this up and we’ll fly right into the sun.”

Finn tapped a screen in front of him.  The ship’s exterior lights clicked on.

“I found the lights.  I turned on the lights!” Finn exclaimed.

One of the First Order crewmen came back to himself.  He eyed Finn confusedly and asked, “Who are you—”

Finn punched him in the jaw with a WHACK!  The crewman slumped to the ground, unconscious.

Finn said, “Let’s get somewhere else fast.”

“Working on it. . .” said Poe as he eased his hands into the steering rig.  “Who uses an inverted control yoke?” he asked of no one in particular.

Fuel conduits were pulled loose, spitting blue energy, as the Eclipse scraped out of the docking bay.  The Star Destroyer’s exterior lights blinked on and off in gridded patches.  As the ship nosed into space, the orbital ring’s heavy cannons swiveled towards it and began to fire, the energy bursts absorbed by the ship’s shields.

Poe struggled with the controls.  He leaned back, and the craft’s prow began to dip downwards.

“The black empty part is where we should be pointed!” Rey shouted.

“I’m trying!” Poe yelled.  “Everything’s backwards!”

Finn looked out the window at the planet seeming to rise towards them.  “‘I can fly anything,’” he said, striking a heroic pose.

Poe gained control of the ship’s trajectory, but it began to rotate, the moon seeming to roll from the bottom of the viewport to the top.

“Okay, we’re spinning now,” Rey said tensely.

TIE Fighters converged on the Star Destroyer.  Finn found the turret controls and began firing into their midst.  Stray blaster fire ignited the fuel-soaked docking bay.

“Do we have the droid?” Poe asked anxiously.

Stray fire from the orbital ring’s cannons had destroyed the engines of BB-8’s maintenance shuttle.  His burning ship was more than a dozen meters away from the Eclipse’s hangar.

“Beebee-Ate, now!” Rey said through the comlink.

BB-8 steeled himself and ejected from the droid socket.  He floated through cold, empty space, the light of the growing fire on the orbital ring reflecting off his metal shell.  Despite his precise internal timekeeping, those moments felt like hours to the droid.  Finally, BB-8 floated into the hangar, the Eclipse’s internal gravity grabbing him as he passed through the oxygen shield.  He fell and landed with a resounding clang, his dome on one side, then righted himself and gave a triumphant whistle into the comlink.

“We got him!” Rey cheered.

Burning fuel in the docking bay behind the Eclipse blossomed into an orange fireball, touching off a chain reaction.  Explosions engulfed the orbital ring, severing it.

Rose’s console flashed.  “Good for lightspeed!” she said.

Rey leaned past Poe and shoved forward the hyperdrive lever.  The stars stretched into streaks of light before them.

The Eclipse’s engines lit up briefly as the hyperdrive engaged; then the dreadnought vanished.  The cannons on the orbital ring ceased firing. The damaged portion of the station burned briefly before the damage control mechanisms cut off the air supply, snuffing out the fire.  Then there was silence.

Suddenly, a jagged black ship dropped out of hyperspace: the Knife 9, a heavily modified transport and assault ship.  Sharp wings formed a point in front of the its cockpit, slicing through empty space as it flew towards the orbital ring.  The sinister vessel settled on a landing pad connected to the station, four spiny black stabilizer fins folding flat against the wings.  The ship’s boarding ramp descended as its occupants, the Knights of Ren, emerged from its darkened interior.

First out of the ship was Hattaska Ren, wielding a brutal war club.  Jaedec Ren skipped lightly down the ramp and leaned against his Beskar vibro-ax, the ghostly rictus of his mask turned up towards empty space.  Ott and Lorl Ren marched out and stood guard on either side of the Knife 9’s boarding ramp.  Kuruk Ren hefted his sniper rifle and stared moodily at the orbital ring.  Finally, the second in command of the Knights, Solonny Ren, emerged.  She studied the scene in silence, her gridded mask revealing nothing of her thoughts.  Then she glided towards the orbital ring, long coat sweeping in her wake.  The other Knights moved into formation behind her.

Admiral Vonn led a column of stormtroopers and officers out of a door in the orbital ring.  Some of the more junior officers nervously eyed the unforgiving vacuum surrounding them, kept at bay only by an oxygen shield enveloping the landing platform.  Admiral Vonn halted midway between the station and the Knife 9.  Solonny Ren stopped just before him and stared at him ominously.

“W-we uploaded a veil cipher to the droid,” Vonn said.  “You’ll have—her location the moment a probe is within range of its transmitter.”

Solonny Ren unclipped a thin, rectangular object from her belt.  A narrow black blade of energy surrounded by a white halo sprang from it and impaled Admiral Vonn in the chest.  The Admiral gasped and then collapsed to the floor of the landing pad, an expression of shock frozen on his face.  A few stormtroopers instinctively raised their blasters.  The Knights of Ren raised their weapons threateningly.  The officers and stormtroopers backed away.

Solonny Ren deactivated the Darksaber and returned to the Knife 9, the Knights of Ren following her.  The orbital ring personnel hurried back to the station, glad that the Knights had no more interest in them.  Admiral Vonn’s slowly cooling body lay on the landing platform, eyes staring sightlessly up at the stars.

Notes:

Originally published 1/6/20; lightly edited as of 11/5/21.

Chapter 2: Workings of Evil

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Chapter Two

 

Workings of Evil

 

Skyscrapers pierced the dense cloud layer that hung above Coruscant.  A TIE Echelon descended through the fog into the heart of the planet-covering metropolis, now far removed from its halcyon days.  As the assault shuttle floated downwards, boxy new structures gave way to the curving, magnificent architecture of the Old Republic.  The security craft skimmed over decrepit streets before landing on a broad avenue lined with squalid dwellings.  Immigrants from a thousand systems lived in these slums, all seeking a better life for their children.

The Echelon’s front ramp dropped open.  A squad of eight stormtroopers mounted on hovering black and red speeder bikes disembarked.  They separated and zoomed down narrow alleys, dispersing through the city.  One buzzed past a peeling propaganda poster on a grimy wall.  It was emblazoned with the First Order symbol and the slogan JOIN TODAY.  Above JOIN, someone had scrawled DON’T in bright red paint.

In a narrow passageway next to the poster, two patrolling stormtroopers roughed up a limbless Trodatome.  A pair of bright green eyes watched them from under a mop of tousled red hair.  Both the eyes and the hair belonged to a tanned, heavily freckled twelve-year-old boy named Dade.  

Dade hated living in this city, so unlike the fields of his native Dantooine.  He hated the grime, and the noise, and the stench.  More than anything, he hated the First Order.

One of the stormtroopers pushed the alien to the ground.  It flailed helplessly.

The boy’s eyes narrowed.  

Dade bent to the ground and picked up a piece of broken plascrete.  He aimed carefully and threw it, striking one of the troopers on the helmet.  The two stormtroopers spun towards him, blasters raised.  But the boy had already vanished.

A Bantha horn sounded from above as Dade raced through a warren of back alleys and dusty streets.  Plumes of smoke billowed out of factories, tarnishing once-gleaming buildings.  Finally, he reached Monument Plaza, a wide square with four bulbous, roughly conical black statues.  Above it hovered the First Order Capitol, a dark, roughly hexagonal structure blocking out the light.  Building-like protrusions hung from its underside, as though in mockery of the city below.  The tallest of the projections stretched from the center of the Capitol to a transparisteel dome in the center of the plaza.  Sealed inside the dome was the rocky peak of one of Coruscant’s highest mountains.

Thousands of people were gathered in the square.  Their attention was drawn to a high platform on which First Order stormtrooper executioners held a ragged, hooded figure.  A row of troopers stood in a line before the dais.

Dade wove through the crowd, pushing closer to the dais.  A towering hologram of Chancellor Armitage Hux flickered on above the platform.  The hologram spoke.

“Today, another conspirator stands charged with treason.”

The stormtroopers removed the prisoner’s hood, revealing the hairy, jowled face of Biss Kova.

“Though support for his cause has all but vanished, let this day remind us of the consequences for defying our Supreme Leader,” Hux continued, his voice echoing across the square.

The executioners led Biss Kova to a mechanism hanging over the edge of the dais.  The device had two thin steel posts which held a hissing red lightsaber blade between them.  A rack lay under it.  Biss Kova stared ahead silently.

“Kylo Ren is not without pity, just as the traitor before you is not without remorse.  And so, your benevolent ruler offers to spare this. . . man’s life in exchange for the location of the Resistance Base,” Hux’s hologram said.

Biss Kova’s face tightened slightly.  He began chanting, “Kofa rebiva tora famlia. . .”

Hux grew annoyed.  “So be it,” he said.

The Chancellor’s image motioned to the executioner stormtroopers.  They strapped Biss Kova into the guillotine, positioning his head under the blade.  The alien continued to chant defiantly.

A woman in the crowd covered Dade’s eyes.  He peeled her fingers away angrily.  He would not ignore what was happening.  He would bear witness to this outrage, this atrocity.  His jaw clenched as Hux gave the final, decisive signal.

The lightsaber blade fell.

 

From the First Order Capitol, Hux looked down at the thousands gathered in Monument Plaza.  They were a distant blur from this height.

Hux heard boot-heels clicking behind him.  He turned to see Commander Sellik, his second in military command, a solidly-built man several decades older than Hux.

“Sir?  They’re here,” Sellik said in a low baritone.

“Good,” Hux said.  He strode purposefully towards the Capitol’s war room, the teal-uniformed officer following him.

 

A clawed hand reached into a silver tureen of baby shaaks huddling together for warmth.  The shaaks tried to climb the sides of the dish with their tiny legs as the hand grabbed one of the very plumpest of the animals.  The hand’s owner, Lord Gherlid, threw the squealing shaak into his razor-toothed mouth and crunched down on it.  The animal’s screaming stopped.  Lord Gherlid sucked the blubber out of the shaak’s bulbous abdomen and spit its carcass onto the floor.  It landed with a wet splat.

The alien warlord sat at a long table in the Capitol war room, crowded with galactic despots and magnates allied—at least for the moment—with the First Order.  Tribal chiefs coated in elaborate robes and stolen jewels sat shoulder to shoulder with arms dealers dressed in elaborate formal wear.  They all looked up as Chancellor Hux entered the room and sat down.  His nostrils flared at the foul smell of the more unkempt beings in attendance.  Sellik stood at attention beside the door.

The participants of the meeting looked at each other, unwilling to break the silence.  Finally, a pale human wearing a tall black hat cleared his throat.  “The Kuat Drive Yards are displeased with your performance, Chancellor,” he said in a thin, whispery voice.  “You promised us your soldiers would protect our profit margin.  What do you have to say for yourself?”

“I assure you, the First Order will recompense Kay-Dee-Wye for the damage caused to your facilities,” Hux replied, “and the stolen Destroyer will soon be found.  Our probe droids are scouring the galaxy as we speak.”

Lord Gherlid gave a harsh laugh, spraying bits of baby shaak on the table.  “A Dreadnought-class warship just slipped through your fingers, Hux.  Your words don’t inspire confidence.”

“A lone signal won’t be difficult to find.  Our transmissions blockade has silenced millions of systems,” Chancellor Hux said irritably.

Gherlid thrust another shaak into his maw.  “You can silence planets, not people,” he said through a full mouth.  “There have been uprisings, even on my worlds.   We must not allow the seeds of revolution to take root.”

The Chancellor drew himself up in his seat and spoke louder, to make it clear he was addressing the entire room.  “The First Order will punish those who defy your rule.  Submit your youth for conditioning.  They will teach your elders the rule of law.”

Jor Nult, a Weequay with long, filthy dreadlocks, responded.  “It’s Skywalker they believe in, not the law.  And his apprentice, this girl, this Jedi.  She’s become a symbol of hope.”

A Harch weapons dealer named Raykar Shen twitched his pedipalps and clicked his curved fangs together.  “The people believe she will destroy you, Hux,” he intoned loftily.  “And your master.”

Hux sneered.  “Kylo Ren is no master, certainly not mine.”

A shapeless, fleshy being called Uggmot pounded on the table with his tiny hands.  We must kill the last Jedi!” he said in a thick alien language.

“The Knights of Ren have been dispatched to eliminate her,” Hux answered.

Lord Gherlid momentarily ceased picking his teeth with a baby shaak leg.  “Our fates in the hands of zealots?” he growled.  “You ask for our confidence, yet provide nothing to inspire it.  Where is Kylo Ren?

Chancellor Hux took a deep breath before replying.  “The Supreme Leader will return when he acquires the knowledge he seeks.”

His audience stirred, unsatisfied.

“When?” Jor Nult asked.

Hux spoke through gritted teeth.  “Soon.”

Notes:

Originally published 8/6/20; lightly edited as of 11/5/21 and 10/10/21.

Chapter 3: Ajan Kloss

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Chapter Three

 

Ajan Kloss

 

The Nirauan system was in Wild Space, just beyond the Outer Rim.  It was close enough to the Resistance’s base on Ajan Kloss to be useful as a rendezvous point, but still far enough away to not endanger the freedom fighters.

The Eclipse Dreadnought floated in orbit around the third planet out from the system’s red star.  X-Wing starfighters and light cruisers surrounded the vessel.  Poe stood in the middle of the ship’s bridge, now empty of the First Order crew, who had been mind-tricked by twos and threes and locked in their barracks.  Rose and Finn were seated at consoles nearby. 

The door opened behind them.  Poe turned to see Kaydel Ko Connix step onto the bridge, accompanied by a bevy of Resistance personnel.  Poe saluted her.  

“Colonel Connix,” he said.

She nodded.  “Commander Dameron.  Mission accomplished?”

“Not exactly,” Poe said.  “We damaged the orbital ring, but we were unable to destroy it.  On the other hand, we stole a Star Destroyer.”

“Thank you,” Connix said, waving at the ship around them.  “I hadn’t noticed.  Didn’t you think that was rather risky?”

Rose looked up from a console.  “I disabled their homing beacon,” she said.  “We’re free and clear.”

“Would you bet your life on that?” Connix responded.

Rose pursed her lips.

Connix addressed a short blond Resistance trooper next to her.  “Captain Kin, have your company scan the ship.  This thing could be crawling with enemy troops.”  She turned back to Poe and raised her voice.  “But our team didn’t consider that, did they?”

“Come on, tell me you haven’t always wanted one of these,” Poe said.

Connix rolled her eyes.  Pilots, she thought.  “Oh well, at least you had enough sense to not come straight back to Ajan Kloss.”

“Actually, that was Rey’s idea,” Rose said.

Colonel Connix threw up her hands as she left the bridge.

 

The Eclipse descended to planetfall over the jungles of Ajan Kloss, the ship’s escort of Resistance craft seeming like insects in comparison to the hulking mass of the dreadnought.  When the Star Destroyer had landed on a scrubby mesa a few hundred meters from the Resistance base, Poe, Rose, Finn, and various Resistance members who had stayed onboard to run the ship headed for the bridge door.

Finn stopped when he saw Rey standing alone in a corridor off the bridge.  He approached her tentatively.

Finn asked, “You okay?”

“I failed,” Rey said.

“Don’t say that,” Finn said.  “They know our tactics.  We’ve been fighting this war too long.”

Rey shook her head.  That wasn’t what she meant.  “Those people, the children.  I saw hope in their eyes.”

“They believe in you.  We all do,” Finn said.

Rey whispered, “I can’t be who they need me to be.  I’m not strong enough.”

“That’s not true,” Finn said.  He patted her shoulder reassuringly and headed for the exit.  Rey sighed and trailed after him.

The Kuat infiltration team descended the slope and trekked through the underbrush, accompanied by Colonel Connix, the Resistance bridge crew, and a couple squads of Resistance soldiers leading the handcuffed First Order prisoners.  They eventually walked into a broad clearing outside the Resistance base.  Starfighters and freighters were arranged haphazardly on the edges of the forest.

General Leia Organa approached the group.  The Deck Officer of the Eclipse, who had spent most of the journey in sulky silence, realized that he was in the presence of leadership.

“You are in strict violation of the Corellian Accords!” he shouted.

“Yeah, put it on my tab,” Poe retorted.

Rose ripped his cuff title off the sleeve of his uniform.  “You mind?” she asked.  “I collect these.”

Colonel Connix stopped in front of Leia and motioned to the First Order crewmembers.  “What should we do with them, General?”

“Cook them dinner.  They look thin,” Leia replied.

The Deck Officer was still yelling as he was led into a bunker cut in the side of a rock face.  “The punishment for your act of rebellion will be swift and—” he got out before the doors slammed in his face.

Rey watched Poe walk away towards a Mon Calamari Resistance officer.

“Junior.  Get Beebee-Ate scrubbed down,” he ordered.

“Yes, Commander,” the officer said in a slightly wet voice.

Rey turned to Leia.  “I’m sorry for rushing off, General.  I had to get away from here for awhile.  I’m just—not feeling myself,” Rey said.  “I know it looks li—it looks like I’m making excuses.”

“Don’t tell me what things look like, tell me what they are,” Leia responded.

Rey paused for a moment, then took a deep breath.  “There’s something between us.  I can’t explain it.”

“Ben,” Leia said, her face radiating understanding.

“Yes,” Rey admitted.  “Every night I wake up screaming.  Every night, another bad dream.  I’ve tried to reach him, but inside his mind. . . it’s horrible.  I’m starting to think it isn’t possible to turn him back to the light.”

Leia shook her head.  “Nothing’s impossible.”

Rey smiled.  “Yes, Master.”

 

Finn was tightening a bolt on a grappling cannon when a loud clank from behind startled him.  He closed his eyes as memories flooded back.

The noise of the blaster falling to the floor was deafening.  A slim child lay curled next to it, weeping.  He had broken down when he had been ordered to fire on enemy troops in a holographic combat simulator.

“Off to reconditioning with you!” a stormtrooper yelled, heaving the boy off the ground and dragging him towards the exit of the simulation chamber.  The child didn’t bother to resist.  His silently pleading green eyes were the last thing Finn saw before the door slammed shut.

Finn tried to keep his left hand from shaking.

“Hey.  It’s okay,” a voice said.

Finn opened his eyes to see Rose beside him.

“One of the stormtroopers on Kuat,” Finn said.  “I knew him.  I don’t remember much about him, but. . . we trained together, when we were kids.  He looked so scared.  I remember that feeling.”

Rose responded, “I don’t think that feeling ever goes away.”

Finn stared into the forest, his eyes far away.  “I can’t let more people end up like him, like me.  It has to stop.”

Rose put a hand on his.  Finn’s breathing eased.

“That’s what we’re fighting for,” Rose said.

 

Rey hung in the air, eyes closed and legs crossed.  BB-8, his familiar white-and-orange paint job restored, warily watched the large rocks floating lazily about her.

Rey was trying to meditate, but thoughts of her bad dreams kept intruding.  They had been growing worse of late.  She pushed them out of her mind, but a dark, ominous feeling replaced them.  She felt as though some huge evil was closing in on her, unseen, preparing to strike.

Rey finally gave up.  Inner peace would not come today.  “Uchhh,” she groaned as she turned heels-over-head in the air and sank gently to the ground.

“Rey,” Leia said as she turned to face her apprentice, “Be patient.”

“I’m doing my best to be, Master,” Rey sighed as she walked past.  “I’m going to run the training course.”

 

A trio of TIE Fighters flew towards the Resurgent-class Star Destroyer Steadfast, in orbit around the volcanic world of Mustafar.

In a grove of unhealthy irontrees on the planet’s surface, a brutal battle raged.  Stormtroopers fired into the midst of masked, Sith-worshipping Alazmec colonists.  In the center of the maelstrom, a dark-cloaked figure cut down the Sith cultists.

The black-robed figure had answered to many names in his life.  He had once been called Ben Solo.  Some addressed him as Supreme Leader.  The name he preferred, however, was the one he had taken for himself: Kylo Ren.

Kylo Ren blocked one of the cultist’s spears and slashed at its torso.  He parried his enemies’ yellow blaster bolts as he waded through smoke and flames into their midst.  Kylo impaled a robe-shrouded cultist with one of the quillons of his unstable red lightsaber before slamming him into the ground.  He reversed his grip on the blade, savagely stabbing another Alazmec before pulling a third through his sword with the Force.  Kylo stabbed his downed foe with its own spear and cut off the arm of another.

The last cultist fell.  Kylo Ren sucked in deep breaths, his face caked in dirt and sweat, straggly dark hair falling untidily over his face.  He looked around him.  The burning forest was littered with fallen stormtroopers and Alazmec cultists.  A couple of stormtroopers far from the Supreme Leader looked around as if in disbelief that the fighting had stopped.  

Kylo looked up at the dark, abandoned edifice of a ruined castle.  Its two pointed black spires, though crumbling, still towered menacingly over the Mustafarian landscape.  The entrance gaped open like the mouth of a dead man.  Kylo Ren stalked forward into it and entered Fortress Vader.

 

Rey ran through the misty jungles of Ajan Kloss, dodging trees and bushes.  She grabbed a helmet off of a pole set next to a gorge, glancing behind her at a training remote whizzing down the path after her.  Rey put the helmet over her head and pulled the blast shield down.  Balancing precariously on a single rope stretched taut over the ravine, she deflected the bolts of the remote using one of her dual lightsaber’s blades.  BB-8, who had been following her at a distance, watched her inquisitively.

Rey dropped the helmet on the far side of the gap and sped deeper into the forest, continuing to deflect the ball-shaped remote’s attacks.  She bounded onto a large rock, pushed off it, and sprung into a tree, grabbing hold of a sturdy branch.  Rey cut a section from a red ribbon that was hanging from a higher branch and then let go.  She landed gracefully on the ground, catching the cloth strip around her left wrist.  She then headed back in the direction she had come.

Rey ran atop a fallen trunk sticking partway into the chasm, jumped over the vertiginous drop, and rolled to her feet.  BB-8 had been waiting for her by the gorge.  He followed her as she disappeared into the woods,  the training remote pursuing them.

 

Kylo Ren descended into a dark chamber buried deep under Fortress Vader.  He raised his crossguard lightsaber, illuminating the decrepit room with red light.  Tiny creatures scurried away from him and hid in crumbling masonry.  A chill wind blew against his cheek.

Kylo sensed a presence.  “Leave me alone,” he said.

The voice of his uncle and erstwhile master Luke Skywalker cut through the silence.  “This is where the dark path leads,” it said.  “An empty tomb.”

“And where did your path lead?” Kylo questioned.  “You’re a ghost.”

“I know what you’re searching for, Ben,” Luke said.  “Your master promised you strength, but you feel hollow.”

Kylo responded, “Soon I will be more powerful than any Jedi.  Even you.”

“Are you sure?” Luke asked.

Kylo snapped.  He spun, swinging his lightsaber at empty space.

As though from a great distance, Luke whispered, “Go home, Ben. . . go home to Leia. . . .”

Luke’s spirit had fled, but Kylo was still shaken.  Nevertheless, he turned and continued into the crypt.  Before him was an altar.  A trigonal pyramid cunningly crafted of metal rested upon the stone slab.  A red energy glowed inside the artifact.  Kylo recognized it as a Sith holocron.  He knelt before it, held out his palm, and drew on the dark side of the Force.  The four sharp corners of the holocron pulled away from it as it rose into the air.  It projected a blurry blue hologram of Emperor Palpatine.

“Lord Vader,” the hologram said.  “Young Skywalker will soon be ours, as I have foreseen.  However, the unforeseen is worthy of preparation.  Should Skywalker strike me down, you will take him to the Remnicore System.  There you will find Tor Valum, master of the Sith Lord who instructed me.”

The holocron emitted a laser that scanned up and down Kylo’s body.

“Here the son of Skywalker will acquire a great ability—beyond what you could hope to command in your damaged state,” Palpatine continued.  “With it, you will harness the untapped power of Mortis.  At last we will realize—”

The holocron detected that Kylo Ren was not Darth Vader.  The energy inside it grew brighter.  Palpatine’s image stuttered.

“—the d-destiny. . . po-potential—” the hologram said as it broke up.

The energy in the holocron continued to build.  A blast of red lightning shot from the artifact into Kylo’s eyes.  The energy spread over his face, raw, purple veins breaking out through his skin.  Kylo Ren screamed as a vision flashed before him.

 

Rey lost her balance and tumbled to the ground.  She winced.

Luke Skywalker’s voice spoke in her head.  “Your pain is an illusion.”

“It isn’t actually,” Rey said tartly.

Rey scrambled to her feet, earth staining her white clothing.  She still held the red ribbon in her left hand.  As the training remote buzzed around her, she activated her lightsaber.  The remote fired a stinging red bolt of energy, striking her on the shoulder.

BB-8 rolled into the clearing in time to see Rey swing wildly at the remote.  Rey regained some of her composure and watched the hovering remote carefully, searching for an opening.  Finally, she lunged.  The remote dodged upwards and shot her again.  Rey’s temper flared.  She slashed recklessly at the remote.  As the training droid evaded her, her lightsaber chopped through two thick trees.  She threw it at the remote.  Her weapon whirled across the clearing, felling another tree.

Rey pulled a thin stick from the forest floor into her right hand and spun.  There was a crunch as the wood impaled the little training droid against a tree.  Rey reached out and caught the blue lightsaber in her left hand as it returned to her.

Rey halted, sensing a sharp but distant pain.  Suddenly, she was wracked by a vision, the same vision that plagued Kylo on the opposite side of the galaxy.

 

A mountain.  Snow on the jagged peaks.  A temple older than time.  Inside, an ancient chamber.  A well of light, pulsing from deep below.  Two massive thrones built into the rock.  Kylo Ren faces Rey before the two thrones.  They fight fiercely.  Kylo Ren holding out his hand in Snoke’s throne room.  He says, “Join me.”  His voice blends with Darth Vader’s.  Vader’s helmet stands on a pedestal in Kylo’s chambers.  Rey’s face, lit by twin red lightsabers.  Luke Skywalker turns to face Rey on Ahch-To.  Kylo on Mustafar, mere moments ago, looks upon his grisly handiwork.  Luke, long years ago, yells “You killed—”  Han Solo approaches Kylo Ren on Starkiller Base.  Han shouts “Ben.”  Kylo plunges his lightsaber into his father’s chest.  Han touches his son’s cheek.  Han falls towards a white light while Kylo, bathed in red, looks down at him.  Rey, as a young girl, screams as Unkar Plutt pulls her away from a transport ship leaving Jakku.  Rey being held by her mother.  Rey’s voice, from the Ahch-To Mirror Cave, says “—my parents.”  The Knights of Ren stand in the rain.  A woman’s scream.  A stormy sky over a city.  Another mountain, another temple, both darker.  An overpoweringly evil presence.

 

The vision slipped away.  Kylo fell into unconsciousness.

 

Rey came back to herself, gasping for breath.  She focused inwards.  Slowly, she became calm.

A beep to Rey’s right caught her attention.  She turned to see BB-8 trapped under a fallen tree.  A round panel on his side had popped off, exposing metal and wiring.  He warbled plaintively.

“Beebee-Ate, I’m so sorry,” Rey said as she dropped the stick and the red cloth to the ground beside the shattered remnants of the remote.  She ran to him and heaved the thick trunk off the droid.

Rey gathered up BB-8’s missing panel and the crimson ribbon.  The Jedi-in-training and the astromech moved towards the edge of a cliff overlooking the Resistance base.

“What did you see?” asked a voice from behind them.  Rey turned to see Luke step into the light.  He was dressed in tan robes, his graying hair and beard framing his lined face.  A slight aura of blue shimmered around him.

“Han.  Kylo.  My parents. . . . A mountain, two thrones in the rock.  Kylo Ren fought me before them.  And something else, something darker. . .”  Rey struggled to put into words what she had seen, but the images defied speech, slipping away from her like oil from water.

“You saw the future,” Luke said.

“Kylo saw it too,” Rey said as she settled onto a fallen tree trunk.  “I could feel him.  Like he was. . . there with me.”

“Where?” asked Luke.

Rey said, “Mortis.”

Luke looked at Rey gravely.  He sat down beside her on the log.

“What do you know of Mortis?” he inquired.

“It’s an ancient place.  From a time before the Jedi, before the Sith.  Two thrones, two powerful beings.  One of darkness, the other of light.  Together, they brought balance.”  Rey shook her head.  “But it’s a myth.”

“So was I, if you remember,” Luke said.  He seemed more tangible than before, almost all traces of blue light gone.  The Jedi Master settled back and took a deep breath.  Rey briefly wondered if he actually needed to, or if it was just a familiar affectation.

“Beneath the Temple of Mortis lies a power beyond anything the Jedi have ever known,” Luke said.  “If Kylo reaches the temple, all we’ve fought for will be lost.  You have to confront him.”

Rey met his gaze.  “You want me to. . . kill Leia’s son?”

Luke sighed.  “The future is always in motion.  What will happen if you face him, I know not.”

“There’s good in him,” Rey said.

“There’s good in all of us,” Luke replied.  “But the boy I knew is gone.”

Rey stared at the ground, crestfallen.

The Jedi Master spoke again.  “You tried to save him, Rey; you can’t blame yourself for not succeeding.  Only his mother can save him, if he will allow himself to be saved.  But the balance of the Force must be preserved.”

Rey scoffed.  “‘Balance.’  Dark suffocates the light.  Light extinguishes the dark.  Over and over.  How is that balance?”

“I never really understood it, either,” said Luke.  “Perhaps it means something different from what the Jedi of old believed.”

Rey looked down at the Resistance base.  She could see Chewbacca at the near end of the encampment, working on the Millennium Falcon.  Poe was fine-tuning the thrusters of his X-Wing starfighter.  Further away, Finn and Rose calibrated a grappling cannon.

“I spent my whole life wanting a family,” Rey said.  “Now I’ve got one.  I won’t abandon them.”

“The Force is speaking to you, Rey.”

“Maybe I’m not who it thinks I am,” Rey spat.

“Who are you?” asked Luke.

“I’m no one.”

Luke stood.  “If that’s what you believe, then the last Jedi is truly dead.”

Rey rose to face him.  “Maybe he is,” she said quietly.

 

Rey trudged dejectedly back to the Resistance base, BB-8 trailing behind.  Poe was still working on his X-Wing.  When he spotted Rey, he dropped his tools and walked towards her, a grin on his face.  It disappeared when he saw the astromech behind her.

Poe asked accusingly, “What did you do to the droid?”

“I’m sorry.  It was an accident,” said Rey sheepishly as Poe dropped into a crouch to examine BB-8.

“Buddy.  Look at you.  You’re a mess,” the pilot said.  BB-8 beeped at him.

Poe stood up.  “You dropped a tree on him?!”

“I said it was an accident,” Rey responded brittlely.

“Right, you accidentally drop lumber on people now?  What’s next, you gonna drop a tree on me?  Drop one on Finn maybe?”

His words were infuriating, but Rey couldn’t keep the corner of her mouth from curling up.  “You know what you are?” she asked.  “You’re difficult.  Really difficult.  You’re a difficult man.”

“You—You are. . . mmh,” Poe said, shaking his head.

They were starting to attract stares from various Resistance members.  Rey decided to attempt to make peace.  “I promise I’ll fix him,” she said, holding out a round, orange panel.

Poe waved it away.  “What exactly happened out there?”

“I got distracted. I think I’m just tired.  That’s all,” she said.  The explanation didn’t convince either of them.

“What’s wrong?” asked Poe.

Rey hesitated.  “I—I can’t tell you.”

“Why?  Is it a secret?”  His voice dropped into a mock-conspiratorial whisper.  “A Jedi secret?”

“Please stop.”

Dameron shed his jocular manner.  He took the round piece of metal from Rey.  “All right.  We’ll fix him together.”

Rey was suddenly aware that Poe was standing closer to her than he ever had before.

“I can’t,” Rey said, stepping back.  “There are rules.  Jedi rules.”

“Hey, I get it,” Poe said gently, holding his hands up.  “No attachments, Jedi path, I’ve read that story too.  But. . .”  He caught himself, holding back words.  “I’m just saying you don’t have to do this alone.”

Rey smiled wanly.

Through a crowd of pilots, Leia noticed Rey and Poe together.  She recognized the tension under their argument; it reminded her of Han and herself, so long ago. . . .  Leia considered intervening, but decided against it.  Sometimes, you just had to let the young figure things out for themselves.  Nevertheless, she thought, Be careful, Rey.

 

Rey and Poe looked up from their repairs on BB-8 as Finn ran by.  “Poe, Rey, you need to see this!” he called.  “Chewie found something amazing!”

Poe and Rey looked at each other bemusedly and followed him.  Rose joined them as Finn led the way out of the Resistance base.  They scrambled through the forest and up a steep rock face to the Eclipse Star Destroyer.  After wandering around inside the vessel for a while, they finally spotted Chewbacca.

The Wookiee was standing next to a large blast door, looking into the hull of the ship through a small rectangular porthole.  When he saw the group, he brayed excitedly and motioned them over.  As the other Resistance members gathered around him, Chewie opened the door.

Beyond the blast door was a two kilometer-long expanse of decommissioned Imperial weaponry.  Ships, walkers, speeders, assault tanks, and mobile heavy artillery vehicles sat next to rows of blasters, mounds of thermal detonators, and piles of more esoteric weaponry.

“This is enough firepower to take the Capitol,” Finn said, his eyes lighting up.

“See?  When have I ever come back empty handed?”  Poe slapped Finn’s back.  “This.  This was the plan.”

“Was it?” Rose asked doubtfully.

Finn walked into the arsenal, looking about in awe.  “We have ships.  Weapons.  All we need is an army.”

“How?” Poe wondered.  “Nobody can hear us.  We’re alone in the dark.”

As the others started to explore the arsenal, Rey stood in the door and thought.  Poe’s words had called something to mind, if she could just remember what. . . .

Finally, Rey spoke.  “You said we were alone. . . but we don’t have to be.”

 

Rey opened an ancient, brown-covered Jedi text and lay it on the Millennium Falcon’s Dejarik table.  Finn, Poe, Rose, and Chewie gathered around her.

“The Jedi had a communications system in the days of the Old Republic,” Rey said excitedly.  “A Force beacon, engineered to call the outlying systems to war.  It was powered by a nexus beneath the temple.”

Rey pointed at a sketch of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant.  The drawing depicted light flowing from the spire of the temple into space.

“No way it still works,” Finn said.

Poe cut in, “Old Republic tech is better than the junk we have today.”

“That signal pre-dates the Empire by thousands of years,” Rose mused.  “The First Order’s blockade couldn’t possibly disrupt its frequency.”

“I guess it’s worth a shot,” said Finn.

All eyes turned to Poe.  He shrugged.  “Anything’s worth a shot.”

Chewie roared optimistically.

“Yeah, I hope so too.  Rey?”

Rey hesitated.  In her excitement, she had briefly forgotten the dark feeling from her meditations, but now the unexplained dread had returned, stronger than before.

Rey,” Poe said loudly.

She snapped out of her thoughts.  “Hope is all we have left,” she said.

 

Poe and Chewbacca were doing maintenance work on the Falcon.  A short distance away, Rey sat on a crate, perusing the Jedi texts in the fading light.

“You like him, don’t you?”

Rey spun to see Maz Kanata standing beside her.

“I don’t—what?”

Maz waved in Poe’s general direction.  He was staring at Rey.  Chewbacca tossed him a wrench, which he barely caught.

“The pilot,” Maz said.  “You are fond of him, and he of you.”

“Is it that obvious?” Rey asked, mortified.

Maz smiled reassuringly.  “Leia told me.  But she did not wish to interfere.  I have fewer compunctions.”

“I can’t be in love with him, or with anyone.  It’s against the Jedi code,” Rey said.

“My child,” Maz said, adjusting her goggles, “I am no Jedi, but I can give you one piece of advice.  Don’t let some old man who died a thousand years before you were born dictate how you live your life.”

Rey protested, “But Jedi are supposed to be free of attachments.”

“Nonsense.  The Force attaches everything to everything else.  What the Jedi mean is that you must not be selfish and possessive.  You must not be jealous.  You must not attempt to save the ones you love when it is their time to pass on.  If you can avoid these things, then it does not matter if you love.”

Rey digested this.  Finally, she said, “Thank you for your advice.”

“You’re welcome, child,” the pirate queen replied warmly.  “At my age, minding other people’s business is one of the great pleasures.  Besides, talking to you gave me a good opportunity to watch Chewbacca.”

Rey laughed.  It was the first time she could remember laughing in a long while.  She relaxed and turned back to her reading.

 

Darkness fell over Ajan Kloss.  In the briefing room of the Resistance base, a crowd of Resistance personnel gathered around a holotable.  Poe stood across from Leia.  He fiddled with the table’s controls, and a hologram of the First Order Capitol lit up above it.

“As you know, the First Order has silenced communication between all neighboring systems,” Poe said.  “The source of the blockade is a transmission jammer deep in the First Order Capitol on Coruscant, here.”

The hologram blinked and zoomed in on a cube within the Capitol.

“So far, we’ve been unable to find a weakness,” Poe continued.  “No thermal exhaust port, no oscillator.”

Leia smiled proudly.  He was a born leader.

“In other words, they’re onto us,” Snap Wexley grumbled.  “No shortcuts.”

“Exactly.  Our forces are too depleted to mount a direct assault, but we’ve found an alternative to attacking the jammer,” Poe said.  He pressed a button.  The hologram of the Capitol dissipated and was replaced by an image of the five-spired Jedi Temple.

“There’s a beacon under the Jedi Temple on Coruscant,” Rey said as Poe displayed schematics of an ancient machine.  "It needs two Kyber crystals in order to be activated.  We think there are some on Bonadan.”

“It’s an analog system from the days of the Old Republic, so the First Order’s jamming can’t block it,” Rose piped up.

Poe took charge again.  “A small team will activate the beacon and summon the galaxy to war.”

The hologram showed a light shooting from the central spire of the temple.  The image zoomed out to a star map.  The light traveled from Coruscant and connected fifty other planets.

“When they succeed. . . the rest of us will be ready,” Poe finished.

Finn stepped forward.  “I’ll lead the team, General.”

“I’ll lead the team, General,” Rose said.  “But I’ll let him think he’s doing it.”

Leia looked at Rey, sensing the conflict within her.  “Rey?” she asked.

“They’re looking for me, it’s dangerous enough as it is.”  She paused and then said quietly, “I can’t go with you.”

Poe’s smile faded.

Leia didn’t press the issue.  “Finn, Rose, prepare for your mission,” she ordered.  “Everyone else, dismissed.”

The Resistance members began to file out of the room.

On the edge of the room, R2-D2 beeped.

“Coruscant?” said C-3PO.  “Finally a good idea from those scrambled circuits of yours.  Coruscant will be quite pleasant this time of year.”

Artoo blatted and rolled into a narrow corridor leading out of the base.  Threepio followed him.  The golden droid said, “Yes, a properly refined city will be welcome after hoveling down here like a Gundark.”

Rey left the briefing room by the same corridor the droids had taken.  Poe followed her.

“Hey,” he said.  “What was that about?”

Rey responded bleakly, “I have to bring an end to all this.  I have to confront him.”

“Mmmhmm.  You’re just gonna ‘confront him’?  Who talks like that?”

“Jedi do.  I’m new to this.”

“Okay, I’m going with you.”

“No.  I have to go alone,” Rey said, walking down the corridor.

Poe followed her determinedly.  “Hey.  Look, I know you think I’m wasted air, Master Jedi—”

“Please stop calling me that—”

“—but tell me, where is this confrontation going to happen?”

“Mortis,” said Rey.  “In the Unknown Regions.”

“Mortis is a myth,” said Poe.

“It isn’t.  I saw it.”

“Oh, you saw it.  And how do you plan on finding it?”

“I’ll. . . figure it out.”

“Hey, Threepio!” Poe called.

C-3PO and R2-D2 turned to face them.

“Do you know where Mortis is?” Poe asked.

Artoo beeped.

“Mortis does not appear on any star chart,” Threepio said.  “The last known sighting was more than half a century ago.”

Poe turned back to Rey.  “Does your book have any star maps?  The location of a wayfinder maybe?”

"No.”

“See?”  Poe said.  “It’s a fool’s errand rushing off to a legendary planet when you don’t even know where it is.”

Rey’s head drooped.  “I need to think,” she said.

Poe watched Rey walk away.  He sighed.

 

Poe climbed to the second level of the Resistance base.  Here, there were no plascrete walls; instead, rough stone corridors led to a natural cave with a wide opening looking out over the encampment outside.  In the center of the space stood the Resistance’s flagship, the long-thought-destroyed Tantive IV.  The Corellian CR90 corvette housed the quarters and offices of many in the Resistance command staff.

Poe climbed aboard the brightly lit cruiser and took the elevator up to the third deck.  He knocked on a door.

“Come in,” said a slightly muffled voice.

Poe touched a button next to the door, which slid open to reveal a well-furnished, but not ostentatious, office.  At an antique desk in the center of the room sat General Leia.  She looked up at him expectantly.

“You wanted to see me, General?” Poe said.

 

The next morning dawned bright and clear.  There seemed to be less fog than usual, even at sunrise when Poe and Chewbacca began loading the Falcon.

“Because I’m not sending her out there alone, that’s why,” Poe said.

“Braaggghh!” said Chewbacca.

“Will you trust me?”

The sun had risen over the tops of the trees when Poe pulled the fuel hose out of the Falcon.  Rey walked up to him.  

“You were right before,” Rey said.  “I’m going to get the Kyber Crystals from the Forbidden Desert of Bonadan.”

“I know.  We’re going with you,” Poe said, tapping her arm as he walked past towards the Falcon’s boarding ramp.  Chewie, Finn, Rose, C-3PO and BB-8 followed him.

“What?”

“I’ve got new orders from the General.  There’s a Resistance informant on Bonadan with a message for her.  She has personally tasked me with making contact with the informant and relaying it to her.”  Poe waved at the others.  “I have chosen these other Resistance members as my team for this mission.  And, since we’re going to the same place, it only makes sense for us to travel with you.”

“I need to go alone,” Rey said.

“Yeah,” said Finn.  “Alone with friends.”

“It’s too dangerous, Finn.”

The others gathered behind Finn.

“We go together,” the ex-stormtrooper said.

Chewie roared his agreement.

Rey looked from one face to the next.  All held firm.

BB-8 beeped.

“I wholeheartedly agree,” Threepio said.

Rey shook her head at her friends, but a smile played across her lips.  She gave in.

 

A small crowd of Resistance fighters gathered to see the team off.

Connix and Dameron saluted each other.

“Colonel,” Poe said, “hold the fort while we’re away.”

“Don’t worry, Commander,” the Resistance officer said sweetly.  “I’m sure we can keep the base in perfectly good condition without you.”

Poe smirked and walked up to Rey, who was staring out at the verdant jungle.  Sunlight streamed through the fog and dappled the ground with shadows of leaves.

“Hey, we should get goin’,” Poe said.

Rey looked at him and then turned back to the forest.

“What is it?” Poe asked.

“Nothing,” said Rey.  The feeling of doom had dissipated, and a calm had descended upon her.  She did not know where her path would lead, but she would trust in the Force, and in her friends.  What else could she do?

See-Threepio stood next to Artoo-Detoo.

“In the event that I do not return, I want you to know that you have been a—a real friend, Artoo,” the golden droid said.  “My best one in fact.”

R2-D2 beeped a farewell as his companion walked towards the Millennium Falcon.

Rey walked up to Leia.

“I suppose this is goodbye,” Rey said.

The General shook her head.  “No.”

“You’re right,” Rey said.  “It’s not.  I will return and complete my training.  I promise.”

BB-8 beeped.

Rey looked down at him.  “No, you can’t do it for me.”

“Never underestimate a droid,” Leia remarked.

Rey looked back to Leia.  “There’s so much I want to tell you,” she said, voice quavering.

“Tell me when you get back,” said Leia.  She hugged Rey like the daughter she never had.  “Rey. . . never be afraid of who you are.”

A tear rolled down Rey’s cheek onto Leia’s shoulder.

 

The Millennium Falcon lifted off from the Resistance base.  The freighter flew over the jungle canopies and past the grounded Eclipse into the skies of Ajan Kloss.  Inside, Rey and Chewbacca occupied the pilot’s and copilot’s chairs, respectively.  Finn and Poe took the rear seats, Rose leaning against the back of Finn’s.  C-3PO crowded into the cabin as BB-8 beeped to himself just outside.

Chewie growled a question.

Rey smiled at him.  “It is,” she said.

The cloudy atmosphere of Ajan Kloss receded behind the Falcon as it soared into space.

Notes:

Originally published 19/6/20; lightly edited as of 21/5/21.

Chapter 4: Shadows of Hate

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Chapter Four

 

Shadows of Hate

 

The long, sleek, black-and-red TIE whisper screamed out of the dark Coruscant sky and into a docking bay in the First Order Capitol.  The rear of the starfighter whipped sideways as it came to an abrupt halt and settled to the floor.  The top hatch sprung open.

Kylo Ren clambered out of the starfighter and leapt to the ground.  Nearby stormtroopers rushed to stand in orderly rows.  They raised their fists in the air as the Supreme Leader passed between them.  Kylo paid them little mind.  He had no time for pomp and formality today.

A gaggle of officers emerged from the blast doors leading into the docking bay.  Kylo pointed at the highest-ranking one.

“Where are the Knights of Ren?” he demanded.

“They just arrived,” the officer said.  “Their ship is in Docking Bay Ninety-four.”

Kylo pushed past her brusquely and stalked away.

 

The Knights of Ren sat in the dimly lit interior of the Knife 9.  Solonny and Hattaska Ren were talking quietly.  Jaedec, Ott, and Lorl sat around a crate, playing sabacc.  Kuruk brooded in a corner.

The Knights looked up as the boarding ramp of the Knife 9 descended and Kylo Ren stomped into the ship.  They knelt before him.

“Rise,” Kylo said.

The Knights did so.  Solonny Ren eyed their master.

“Hello, Kylo,” she said.

Kylo nodded slightly, acknowledging her greeting without returning it himself.

Solonny stepped towards him.

“Aww, did you hurt yourself?” she asked, caressing the inflamed veins on his cheek with her gloved hand.  Kylo flinched away from her touch minutely.

“S-s-so skittish,” Solonny said as she crept behind him, her fingers playing over his shoulders.  “I remember when you begged for my touch. . . Kylo.”

Kylo fought to keep his face expressionless.  “I require the services of Albrekh,” he said tonelessly.

“He’s in the back,” Hattaska said.  He led Kylo to the rear of the ship, where a grubby, long-eared alien sat at a work table.  The metalsmith looked up, his eyes hidden by electrogoggles.

Kylo brought a bag out of his robes and poured the broken shards of his mask onto the table.  He and the Knights watched in silence as Albrekh reassembled the fragments with his grubby fingers and hammered them into place.  As the Symeong applied molten red sarrassian iron to solder the pieces together, he murmured bitter nothings to himself.

Finally, the job was done.  Albrekh turned the finished helmet to face Kylo Ren.  Kylo picked it up and placed it gingerly over his head.  Immediately, he felt more in control.  He turned to the Knights of Ren.

“Report on your hunt for the scavenger,” he said, his voice distorted by the mask.

“She has proven to be most elusive,” Solonny replied.  “But we had a recent break on Kuat.  We’re certain we can find her.”

Kylo said, “Good.  Remember your orders; I want her alive.”

“Don’t worry,” Solonny said.  “We won’t hurt your girlfriend.  Much.”

Kylo studied her a moment and then left, his dark cape swirling after him.

 

On an upper floor of 500 Republica, a high-end apartment building in the Federal District of Coruscant, was a grand, spacious chamber.  Inside, a trickle of water ran through an indoor fountain.  Ornate drapes hung from the walls.  A throne-like, swiveling chair faced the dark skyline of Coruscant, visible through a massive window running the length of the room.  This sumptuous private suite had once housed a Centrist politician who had fled to the Outer Rim after his corruption and graft were exposed.  It now belonged to an even less savory occupant.

Chancellor Hux removed his greatcoat and cape, folded the garments, and placed them neatly over the back of an intricately carved wooden chair.  On the accompanying desk, he set his peaked black cap.  Hux walked to the edge of his quarters and caught himself in a full-length mirror.  He gingerly touched a streak of grey hair.  Hux considered it a mark of his devotion to the First Order; the product of unceasing stress, of long days and longer nights spent planning strategy and giving orders.  His was the true work, done while the Supreme Leader wasted his time hunting for myths in the Outer Rim.

Hux peered into a glass case set on the wall.  It contained several items, including a holocron, a Jedi star compass, and other trinkets of less rarity.  The object in his collection which he prized the most, however, rested upon a pedestal in the center of the display case: a shining, electrum-plated lightsaber hilt.  Hux gazed at the weapon enviously.

A thought occurred to the Chancellor.  He removed several gold coins from his trouser pocket and placed one on the table.  Hux extended his hand and concentrated on moving the coin with the Force.  It didn’t budge.  Hux’s face reddened from the strain.

“Nnngh!” he groaned.

“Has all been well in my absence?” a distorted voice said.

Startled, Hux looked up at a dark form standing in the shadows of the room.

“Supreme Leader,” Hux said with as much composure as he could muster.  “You’ve returned.  If I’d known—”

Kylo cut him off.  “I don’t need grand displays and processions.  Or titles.  Chancellor.”  He stepped into the light.  The cracks in his mask seemed to glow blood-red.

“I sense. . . unease about my appearance, Hux.”

“About the mask?” Hux responded rather stiffly.  “No sir.  Well done.”

“My Knights tell me the girl was within your grasp,” Kylo rumbled.

Hux snapped, “Apparently your Knights took it upon themselves to deal with my Admiral’s failure.”

“And how should I address your failure?” Kylo asked.

Hux turned whiter and took a small step back.

Kylo matched his movement.  “She’s beloved, isn’t she?”

“Belief is the solace of peasants.  The people cling to folklore, but they fear the First Order.”

“They fear me,” Kylo Ren said.  “Soon I will command the Force in ways unseen since the Ancients.  The ability to destroy a planet will be. . . insignificant.”

Hux regarded him with mixed fear and awe.  “The power described in the Sith texts.  You’ve found it?”

“It is within my reach,” said Kylo.  “With what I’ve seen on Mustafar, the First Order is about to become a true Empire.”

“What are your orders?” asked Chancellor Hux.

Kylo Ren placed his hands on the desk and leaned forward.  “Find the Resistance,” he boomed.  “Wipe them out, and prepare to crush any worlds that defy us.”

“And the girl?”

“Leave her to me.”

 

Kylo Ren stood in his quarters in the First Order Capitol.  While his chamber on the Supremacy had been shadowy and gray, his new room was a stark white cathedral of angular walls and pointed spires.  Bright light shone from wall panels, contrasting with the dark, starry sky visible through a diamond-shaped viewport.  Near the center of the chamber, Darth Vader’s helmet lay on a low stand.

Kylo reached across the stars with his mind.

 

Aboard the Millennium Falcon, in an alcove covered in instrument panels and exposed mechanical parts, Rey sat reading.  She looked up from the book as she sensed the presence of another mind touching hers.  The Jedi-in-training dropped her text and stood up.  Her surroundings seemed to darken and fall away as Kylo Ren snapped into view before her.

He spoke first.  His voice seemed to echo.  “I knew you couldn’t keep me out forever.  Our bond is too strong.”

“I’m not trying to keep you out,” Rey retorted.  “Are you still searching for power?”

“Yes.  Soon I will be stronger than Darth Vader.”

“You don’t have to do this,” Rey said.  “I feel the light in you, Ben.”

“I must find what I seek,” Kylo said.  “You don’t understand why yet.  But you will.  Soon.”

“What will you do then?  Do you still want to kill me?”

“No.  I have other plans,” said Kylo.  “I offered you my hand once.  You wanted to take it.  Why didn’t you?”

Rey answered his question with another.  “You could have killed me.  Why didn’t you?”

“You can’t hide, Rey,” Kylo whispered.  “Not from me.”

“I see through the cracks in your mask,” Rey said fiercely.  “You’re haunted.  You can’t stop seeing what you did to your father.”

“I’m haunted by more than that,” Kylo responded, stepping forward.  “Do you still count the days since your parents left?  Such pain in you.  Such anger.  I don’t want to have to kill you.”  He was close enough to touch.  Rey stepped back, but cold metal dug into her back, stopping her.

“I’ve seen the future,” Kylo continued.  “You’re going to come to me, and I’m going to turn you to the dark side.  When I offer you my hand again. . . you’ll take it.”

“We’ll see,” hissed Rey.

“Yes,” Kylo said.  “We will.”

Kylo disappeared.  Rey found herself staring through the doorway of the nook into an empty corridor.  She shivered slightly.

 

Kylo Ren lowered himself into the cockpit of his starfighter.  A probe droid, unit designation VX-20, settled into a data dock set over the Supreme Leader’s right shoulder.

“Set a course for Remnicore,” he commanded.

VX-20 beeped affirmation.

Hux watched Kylo’s TIE whisper fly towards the stars.  His lip curled.  “Goodbye, Ren,” he said coldly.

Notes:

Originally published 26/6/21; lightly edited as of 21/5/21.

Chapter 5: Bonadan

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Chapter Five

 

Bonadan

 

Chewbacca moaned quietly to himself as he scrutinized the holographic creatures on the Millennium Falcon’s Dejarik table.  He seemed to be taking his time about it.  Poe and Finn sat across from him.

Poe leaned forward.  “You ever gonna go?” he asked.

The Wookiee’s eyes scanned forth and back between his two opponents.  He sniffed.

“He can’t beat us every time,” Finn muttered, stroking his chin.

Poe responded, “Well, apparently, he does.”

“How does he do it?”

“This guy right here?” Poe said.  “It’s ’cause he cheats.”

Chewbacca roared angrily.

“I’m kidding! ” Poe said loudly.

“Oh, come on, take your turn,” said Finn.

“You’re two-hundred and fifty years old—”

“You’re taking forever.  That’s cheating.”

“—of course you’re better than us.”

“That’s why we think you’re cheating.”

A beeping noise made all three of the competitors look up.

Rose, sitting in a swiveling chair, scrutinized an instrument panel next to her.  “Looks like we’re coming up on Bonadan,” she said.

Chewbacca growled and waved an arm at Finn and Poe as he stood.

“Don’t worry,” said Finn.

“We’re not gonna turn it off,” reassured Poe.

Chewbacca roared a combined agreement and threat as he headed for the cockpit.

Finn commented, “He’s cheating.”

“Definitely,” said Poe as he rose and turned off the holochess game.

Rey and Chewbacca took their seats in the cockpit.  Rey pushed the hyperdrive lever forward.  The blue of hyperspace turned to white streaks, which then resolved into individual points of starlight.

“Let’s go over the plan one last time,” Poe said.  “We’re going to the second planet in the Bonadan system—”

“—to find Kyber crystals hidden at the Jedi Temple in the Forbidden Valley,” interjected Rey.

“But that’s not all we’re doing,” continued Poe.  “We’re also meeting an informant with a message for General Leia.”

Rose asked, “How are we supposed to find this informant?”

“He’s supposed to meet us near the Jedi temple,” Poe replied, shrugging.  “There isn’t much life on the second planet, so he shouldn’t be too hard to find.  I guess we’ll see when we get there.”

 

The Bonadan system was one of the most densely populated regions of the Corporate Sector.  Despite the polluted state which centuries of mining and industry had left them in, the planets Bonadan and Roonadan were twin hubs of commerce.  Tycoons and nobles from across the galaxy traveled there to conduct business.

The second planet of the Bonadan system, however, was a runty, tide-locked world, one side perpetually turned towards the sun, the other forever in shadow.  Both were almost uninhabitable, for opposing reasons: the sunward side was a parched desert, the dark side a freezing, ice-covered ocean.  In between the two extremes, a narrow twilight zone boasted the only settlement of off-worlders.

The Millennium Falcon descended into a valley ringed by rounded mountains that cradled the lone city.  The sun hung low over the peaks, casting a dim half-light over the settlement.  Smoke rose from houses built on top of one another, held in place by ropes and intricate scaffolding, while broad canals spotted with junk boats reflected the glowing lights of bustling nightmarkets.

The Falcon landed on a multi-level docking array shaped like a giant plant stalk, the landing pads the tower’s leaves.  Rey, Poe, Finn, Rose, Chewbacca, and BB-8 trooped down the boarding ramp.  Two stumpy Langoles named Oke and Sokko ran up to them.  Poe tossed them some credits and promptly became embroiled in an argument with the aliens.

“I know it’s a Corellian light freighter, but you’re gonna say it’s a Praddor Cruiser in the registry.  That’s why I winked when I gave you the money!  Understand what’s happening here?”

Oke and Sokko chattered angrily at him, their voices rising.

“Okay, which one of you is in charge, because you’re both the size of children where I come from,” Poe said, exasperated.  “Chewie, will you straighten these guys out?”

Chewbacca roared at the Langoles.  Their chattering turned to shrieks, though whether they were of fury or terror was unclear.

The landing pads descended smoothly, rotating around the central tower.  It stopped at ground level, just above a broad canal.

“Come on,” Finn said to the others.  “Let’s find this Jedi temple,”

“It’s a ways inland,” Rey said, consulting an old, brown map.  “We should probably find some sort of transportation.”

They were interrupted by a commotion from behind them.

“Braaaggghh!” Chewbacca roared as he lifted one of the Langoles off the ground and shook him.  Their cries were now definitely of terror.

“Aw, Chewie!” Poe chided.  Negotiate.  Persuade, quietly.”

The towering Wookiee shook his head and whined that he was being persuasive.

“Let’s just go,” Poe said.  Chewbacca gave Oke and Sokko a parting growl and followed the others into the nightmarket.

Bright lights and strange smells assaulted the group as they passed aliens and humans haggling over artisan crafts and live animals.  Packs of teenagers ate bizarre street food bought or stolen from market stalls.  Children laughed at buskers, jugglers, puppet shows.

“Come witness the frothing eye of Loyyil Karn!” A hawker shouted, beckoning them towards a curtained booth.  Rey lingered but moved on.  C-3PO stopped and had to be pulled away by Poe.

“I still don’t see why we had to land in town and then trek to the Jedi temple,” Poe said.

“Trust me,” Rose replied.  “You do not want to get caught for a parking violation in this sector.”

“Besides, there’s a shipyard right over there,” Finn added, pointing at a stall with a sign reading Mistan’s Previously Owned Watercraft.

Mistan was a strong-chinned man dressed in a blue and purple plaid robe.  “I’m Mistan, and I’d eat my hat to make you a deal!” he said, waving his arms.  Considering the prodigious size of his broad-brimmed hat, this was quite a statement.

“We would like to rent a boat,” Poe said.  “Just for a few hours, probably.”

Mistan grinned broadly, leading them down a pier.  “This way, ladies, gents, droids…thing.”

Chewbacca growled.

Mistan hurriedly continued his spiel.  “I can see that you’re tourists with refined and distinguished tastes.  Might I recommend this specimen of unparalleled sea-going excellence?”  He pointed at an ornately decorated yacht longer than the Millennium Falcon.  “Comes with the full complement of features: high-power propellor, hover capability, fully stocked maxibar—”

Poe winced.  “We’re looking for something a little…smaller.”  He lowered his voice.  “More inconspicuous.”

Mistan had tapped his foot impatiently as Poe spoke.  Now he smiled once more and smoothly pivoted on his heel, continuing down the pier.  “Of course, of course!  I can see that you’re travelers on a budget.  That’s why I keep some vessels in stock just for people like you!  How about this baby?”

He gestured proudly at an old, beaten rowboat that seemed as though it would spring a leak if someone so much as looked at it wrong.  It would certainly not support four humans, two droids, and a Wookiee.

“How about that one?” Finn suggested, pointing at a medium-sized junk boat with a few sails and a pole attached to the rear.

“Ah…a man with truly superior taste!” Mistan complimented him.  “That’s one of the most popular classes of craft on this planet, and for good reason!  It may not be fancy, but it’s reliable.  Sails for when the wind is blowing, pole for when it isn’t.  I’ve never had a customer who wasn’t satisfied with one of those—”

“We’ll take it,” Poe cut in.

“A terrific choice!” Mistan said.  “Of course, now there is the matter of payment…”

After a brief bit of haggling, Poe and Mistan struck a deal.  Poe handed the salesman some credits, which Mistan made vanish with breathtaking speed.  The Resistance team climbed aboard the junk and pushed off, Chewbacca poling it up the broad canal towards the desert beyond the hills.

Poe sat in the bow of the boat.  “You know, this reminds me of my grandfather,” he said.

Rey, who had been leaning against the railing of the ferry gazing at the passing nightmarkets, looked at him.

“During the war, and sometimes, after my mother. . . passed, I used to stay with my grandfather,” Poe continued.  “We would go out in an old boat he had named the Shara Bey, after my mom.  He tried to teach me to fish, but I was terrible at it.  Not enough patience.  I was good at sailing, though.”

Rey said gently, “Losing your mother must have been hard.”

“It was,” Poe said.  He pulled a chain necklace out of his collar and fiddled with the silver ring hung from it.  “She used to take me up in her A-Wing, teach me to fly it.  Anytime I’m in a cockpit, I feel like she’s with me.”

“Was that her ring?” Rey asked.

“Yes.  Someday I’ll give it to the right person.”  Poe eyed her.  “What do you remember about your family?”

Rey dug for a memory of the times before her abandonment.  “My father and I would build starships out of wood.  They could fit in your hand.”

“Anything else?”

“I remember love.  That’s why I waited for so long.”  A note of doubt crept into her voice.  “But I must have imagined it.  They were no one.”

The junk rounded a hill, entering the broad, sandy plain of the Forbidden Desert.  Poe looked at Rey, the growing sunlight bathing her in radiance, shining from her eyes.  He wished he could change the past for her, for both of them.  But he could not; so instead he simply said, “No one is no one.”

Rey absorbed his words, then smiled.  To Poe, her face seemed brighter than the sun.

Chewbacca roared.

“Okay, Chewie, I know it’s my turn,” Poe said, taking the pole from him.

“This boat trip reminds me of a story as well,” See-Threepio expounded.  “Once, I was on Drexel with Artoo and Master Luke. . . .”

There was a collective sigh from his fellow passengers.

 

The sun was noticeably higher in the sky when the canal opened out into a small lake.  Rose handed the pole to Chewbacca, who guided the boat onto the sandy bank.

Poe stepped off the boat and said, “We walk from here.”

The others disembarked behind him.

“I can see the temple,” Rey said, standing on her toes to peer over a large rock outcropping.  “It’s on that hill.”

“What’s that noise?” Finn asked, cocking his head.

“It’s probably just the wind,” said Poe.

Rose said, “It doesn’t sound like wind.  It sounds like. . . drums.”

Chewbacca growled his agreement with Rose.

“Well, let’s find out,” Poe said.  The rest of the group followed him as he led them around the rock.  A wide valley opened beneath them, full of people of numerous species dancing and singing.  Many of them were tentacle-faced desert dwellers in colorful saris and chunky jewelry; others were townspeople or off-worlders, dressed in utilitarian garb or the latest Nabooan fashions.  Fireworks exploded in the air above the masses, spraying colored powder.

What is this? ” Poe asked, stupefied.

“The Aki-Aki Festival of the Ancestors,” C-3PO said.  “The celebration occurs only once every forty-two years.”

Poe buried his face in his hand.

Finn squinted into the light.  “Well, that’s lucky.”

“Lucky indeed!”  Threepio raised a metallic arm to emphasize his point.  “This festival is known for both its colorful kites, and its delectable sweets.”

The rest of the group turned to stare at See-Threepio.  The protocol droid turned away and pretended to be very interested in the desert to his right.

Festival-goers threw small, carved statuettes into a flaming brazier.  The Resistance team wove through crowds of celebrants swaying to the music.

“Not too much life, huh?” Rose asked Poe sarcastically.

Poe shot her a dirty look.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Rey said, staring around her in wonder.

Finn rejoined, “I’ve never seen so few Kyber crystals.”

BB-8 curiously examined some metal canisters spraying jets of yellow pigment into the air.

“There are always random First Order patrols in crowds like these,” said Poe.  He turned to look behind him.  “Keep your head down, Chewie.”  Chewie, walking near the back of the group, dropped into a half-crouch.

Rey watched a pair of Aki-Akis cradling and bouncing their snub-nosed, bald babies.

“Change of plans,” Poe said.  “Let’s split up.  Rey, Beebee-Ate and I will search the Jedi temple for the Kyber crystals.  Everyone else, pair up and try to find the informant.”

Rey, Poe, and BB-8 split off from the group and wandered past people wrangling unruly riding animals and carrying candies on poles over their backs.  Rey drank in the sights, but then tensed as she spotted a trio of mechtroopers scanning the crowd ahead.  Poe followed her gaze and put his hand on his blaster.

“No,” Rey said, pulling up her white hood and dragging Poe into a food vendor’s stall.  They surveilled the troopers through hanging cloths.

The stall’s owner, an ancient female Utai, barked, “Cassasan!  Nep.  Nep.  She waved a bowl of clawfish soup in their direction.

“No.  Not hungry,” Poe said, waving it away.

The pink-skinned peddler held out a steaming ladle to the pilot.  Depee cassasan! ” she insisted in an offended tone.  One of the mechtroopers seemed to be looking in their direction.

“Okay,” said Poe, taking the ladle.  “Here.  Just. . . shhh.  He drank.  “Mmm.  See?  Mmmm.”  His face turned red, and he coughed from the intense heat of the spicy dish.

The Utai and her friends laughed.  Arno tow di? ” the shopkeeper asked.

“No, it’s good,” Poe said hoarsely.  He coughed harder.  The mechtrooper was moving towards them, attracted by the sound. . . .

Rey decided the situation called for drastic action.  She grabbed Poe by his shirt and kissed him on the mouth, her hood obscuring his face.

From afar, the mechtrooper saw a pair of lovers surrounded by applauding Utai women.  He moved on.

Rey and Poe pulled away from each other.  They were both breathing heavily, for more reasons than one.  It took a moment for them to recover.

“Did it work?” Rey asked.

“I mean, I think so,” Poe said.

Rey shot her eyes at the mechtroopers walking away.

“Oh,” said Poe, catching on.  “So that wasn’t—”

“No,” Rey lied.

Rey and Poe looked at each other, wishing that the Force could stop time.

Hesitantly, Rey said, “We should—”

“Right.  Yeah.”

They headed for the edge of the crowd, BB-8 beeping happily to himself.  Skirting the throng, the trio soon came to the base of the stony slope leading up to the Jedi temple.  A narrow path cut into the rock face zigzagged upwards.

After a long, arduous climb, they reached the top and got their first good look at the temple.  It appeared to be carved directly out of the rock, without any visible seams.  Three spires soared upwards out of the blocky structure.  Two enormous stone doors faced them.

Rey stepped forward and used the Force to push the doors open.  They swung back with a harsh, grinding creak.  Rey, Poe, and BB-8 stared into the dark interior of the temple.  Poe turned on a flashlight, casting a thin green beam of light onto sandy floors and rough walls.  Rey activated her lightsaber and walked in, its blue glow lighting her path like a torch.  Poe looked at its much brighter light and then at his own, which now seemed paltry in comparison.  Peeved, he flipped his flashlight to reverse his grip on it and followed Rey into the darkness.

 

Finn and Rose were hot and tired.  They had searched what seemed like the entire festival, to no avail.  Finally, they had taken shelter under a candy seller’s awning in exchange for buying some of his fluffy wares.

Finn was wiping sweat off his neck with a threadbare rag when someone dragged him off balance and pulled his hands behind his back.  Beside him, Rose was similarly held by a man dressed in a brown uniform and a blast helmet.  Finn recognized him from an intelligence report as a Corporate Sector Authority Security Police Officer.

“You’re fugitives from the Cantonica system,” one of the officers said.  “You’re under arrest for escaping custody, animal theft, resisting arrest, destruction of property, and parking violation twenty-seven-bee-stroke-six.  You have a right to remain silent.”

“You’re going to Stars’ End for a lo-o-ong time,” added the one holding Rose as as he removed a pair of handcuffs from his belt.

Suddenly, the first officer was lifted into the air by a large, furry arm.  Chewbacca slammed him against the ground and roared.  The other officer pulled a riot gun from his holster and pointed it at the Wookiee, but Rose twisted free of his one-handed grip.  She zapped him with her electroshock prod and he fell, stunned.  The first officer, who had been trying to rise to his feet, abruptly found himself with a Wookiee’s foot covering his face.  Then Rose shocked him too.

“Oh, my,” said C-3PO, emerging from behind a stall.  Despite his lack of discrete facial expressions, the droid still managed to radiate shock at the violence.  He was, improbably, holding some sort of fried, scaly animal on a stick.  Chewbacca grabbed the skewered beast from him.

“Just in time, Chewie,” Finn said.  “Any sign of the informant?”

Chewbacca roared a negative through a mouthful of serpent-on-a-stick.

“Yeah, us neither,” said Rose.

Finn pointed at the unconscious Security Police Officers and asked, “What are we going to do with these guys?”

 

Rey, Poe, and BB-8 had combed through the lower levels of the temple and were now ascending the tallest of the three towers.  At the top of the spiral staircase, they climbed through a trapdoor into a small room, bare except for a wooden chest.  Sunlight streamed through windows cut in the rock walls, illuminating dust floating in the air.

Rey rushed to the chest and knelt before it, but then her shoulders slumped.  The box’s lid had been stoved in.  It was empty.

“This is where they were kept.  I can feel it.  But they’re gone,” Rey said.

Poe bent and examined the wreckage of the chest.  “Yup, looks like the scavengers got here long before us.”  As soon as he said it, he knew it was a mistake.  He tensed, expecting an explosion of anger, but Rey merely looked at him desolately.  She collapsed to the floor, her back to the broken chest.

“This was a waste of time.  I shouldn’t have come here.”

Poe attempted to cheer her up.  “Hey, there’s still the informant.  We can still—”

You don’t understand,” Rey said fiercely.  “I'm putting you all in danger by being here.”

“So? They want to find me too.”

“It’s different.  You’re not the last Jedi.”  Poe was surprised by the bitterness in her voice.  “I never wanted this.  To be the person everyone is looking to, to save them.  To know that if you fail, the hope of the galaxy dies.”

Poe knelt before her and took her shoulders.  “Look, I—I don’t know a lot about Jedi stuff.  But I do know that you have friends.  The First Order wins by making us think we’re alone.  But we’re not alone.  Even if we fail, others will rise up and take our place.”  Poe paused.  “I’ll be here for you, Rey.  Whatever happens.”

Rey smiled and then hugged him.  Poe held her lightly, but Rey clung to him like a lifeline.

BB-8 beeped at them from the other side of the room.  Rey extricated herself from their embrace and crossed over to him.

“Yeah, I see it,” she said, kneeling.

The droid extended a nozzle and blew compressed air at a pile of sand, revealing the corner of a book.  Rey picked it up and shook the dust out of its pages.

“See?  We found something,” Poe remarked.

BB-8 looked from Poe to Rey.  Unbeknownst to any of them, his antenna was transmitting an encoded message on a First Order frequency.  Near the edges of the Bonadan system, a probe droid had picked up the signal and relayed it to the First Order Capitol.  The message lit up a bored technician’s screen, shaking him out of his late afternoon stupor.  He reported it to the chief comms officer, who in turn reported it to the second-in-command of the First Order military.

 

A loud knocking awoke Chancellor Armitage Hux from a dream in which he was engaged in a vicious screaming match with Kylo Ren.  He stumbled out of bed, rubbing grit from his eyes, and heaved open the door to his suite.

“What is it?” he snapped.

Commander Sellik was standing in the corridor, a surprised look on his face.  He had never seen his superior officer in his pyjamas.  He quickly regained his composure.  “Sir, one of our probes picked up the droid’s signal.  We’ve found them.”

“Ready my ship,” Hux commanded.  “I want to witness their extinction myself.”

“Shall I inform the Supreme Leader?”

“No,” said Hux.  “Let Kylo and the girl fulfill the empty promises of their ancient religion.  In the end they’ll destroy each other, as Jedi and Sith always have.  Then we will rise.  Strong, decisive.  Ready to bring true order to the galaxy.”

Commander Sellik eyed Hux, unnerved by his intensity.

“Alert the local troops and prepare the attack,” said Hux.  Then he shut the door and began to pull on his uniform.

 

Rey, Poe, and BB-8 walked up to Finn, Rose, Chewbacca, and C-3PO.  Finn and Rose were carrying a large bundle of fabric between them, while the Wookiee had another slung over his shoulder.

“What’d we miss?” Poe asked, eyeing the colorful cloth.

“Not much,” said Finn.  “Some guys tried to arrest us.”

One of the rolls of cloth started yelling something in a muffled voice.  Rose punched it.  The shouting stopped.

“We haven’t found the informant,” Finn said, seemingly oblivious to Rose attacking textiles next to him.

Rey sighed.  “We didn’t find any Kyber Crystals.”

“So, what do we do now?” Finn asked, looking at Poe.

“Freeze!”

A single stormtrooper was pointing a blaster at them, moving it back and forth to cover them all.  “Hold it right there,” he ordered.  Into his helmet, he said, “I’ve located the Resistance fugitives.  All units report to—ahhh!”  An arrow had buried itself in his visor.

The Resistance fighters turned to see where the projectile had come from.  They saw a figure wearing a metal helmet and black robes that folded back to reveal a flowery yellow lining.  He was holding a crossbow in his right hand.  The masked being scanned the crowd for more troopers and then said in a distorted voice, “Follow me.”

Finn, Rose, and Chewbacca dumped their burdens to the ground.  They and the other Resistance members followed him through the festival to a treadable, a boxy metal vehicle surrounded by two giant treads.  

“Hurry,” he said.

The dimly lit interior of the machine was festooned with nets, ropes, chains, and baskets hanging from the ceiling.  The team climbed aboard as their mysterious benefactor opened a slit in the wall between the passenger compartment and the driver.  A hairy alien with shining, three-lensed blue eyes turned to look through the gap.

Meeta tobiah,” the masked man instructed.

“Okay!” the serpentine driver shouted in a gruff voice.

“How’d you find us?” Finn asked the informant.

The man removed his helmet.  It was Lando Calrissian.  “Wookiees stand out in a crowd,” he said, eyes twinkling.

Chewbacca warbled happily and hugged Lando.

“It’s good to see you too, old buddy!” Lando exclaimed, grinning.

C-3PO said, “This is General Lando Calrissian.”

Rey looked back at the protocol droid.  “We know who he is, Threepio.”

“It is. . . an honor, General,” said Finn.

“I’m pleased to meet all of you nice young folks as well.  Especially you, sweetheart,” Lando said smoothly, kissing Rose’s hand.  She opened her mouth, an expression of equal parts surprise and joy on her face.

“All right, all right,” said Finn, taking her hand from him.

“General Calrissian, what’s the intelligence you’ve got for us?” Poe asked.

“Ah, yes,” said Lando, handing Poe a data disc.  “This has information from sources in the First Order.  They tell me there’s a rift among the officers.  A number of warlords and tycoons are unhappy with Kylo Ren’s leadership, and they’re pushing to have him removed and replaced.”

“An internal struggle inside the First Order could be just the opportunity we need,” Poe strategized.

“And there’s something else,” Lando said, his tones hushed.  “There are rumors of a mysterious figure running the First Order behind the scenes.  They say he’s some sort of dark side user.”

A grim silence descended upon the band.  They exchanged worried glances.

Finally Rey spoke.  “We’re looking for Kyber crystals,” she said.  “We need them to send a message to the galaxy.  We thought there were some in the Jedi temple here on Bonadan, but they were gone.”

“I know who has them,” said Lando.

“You do?” asked Finn.  “Who?”  He looked around as if he expected the person to spring out from a dark corner.

“Her name’s Nomi,” the General responded.  “She’s a navigator—and force-sensitive.  Spice diggers used to pay her to find deposits on asteroids.”

“She worked with spice miners?” Rose asked incredulously.  “Can we trust her?”

“She’s a little off, but she’s no friend to the First Order.  Her den is out past Lurch Canyon.”

“Where’s that?” inquired Poe.

“We should be coming up on it now,” Lando said, looking out a barred window partly obscured by a cluster of small red berries.  “The First Order could be here any moment.  Go!”

The Resistance team began to exit the treadable, one at a time.

Chewbacca roared at Lando to take care of himself.

“You too, Chewie,” his old friend responded.

Rey turned to leave, but then stopped.  She said, “Leia needs pilots, General.”

“My flying days are long gone,” said Lando.  “But do me a favor. . . give Leia my love.”

“You should give it to her yourself,” Rey said.  “Thank you.”  Then she leapt out the door.

 

Nomi’s den was a cylindrical cottage-like structure built atop a raised platform of rock.  A few paces beyond it, the ground fell away into a jagged canyon.

The inside of the building was occupied by a single circular room draped in colorful silks.  Devoted followers, seekers of advice, and sightseers sat near the walls, smoking pipes and vaporizer devices.  An electroharpist played ethereal, keening music.

In the middle of the room, the stone floor had hundreds of small marbles fitted into rounded depressions.  A fluffy pillow rested on them.  On the pillow sat Nomi, a tiny, wide-eyed alien the size of a small human child.  She consulted quietly with a Rodian couple on the brink of divorce.  They cried, touching antennae.

The crew of the Falcon entered through a curtain of hanging beads and took in the surroundings.

“Easy on the details,” Poe said.  “She doesn’t have to know who we are or why we’re here.  Just what we need.”

Nomi smiled past the Rodians at the group of Resistance members by the entryway.  “A Jedi,” she said.  “The last.”

Everyone in the chamber turned to look at them.

“Or this,” Poe said testily.  “We can do it this way.”

Nomi nodded to the couple before her and touched their chests.  “Go.”  She spoke to Rey.  “Come.  Sit.  The Jedi and the friends.”

The gallery of observers made conspiratorial asides.

“If you don’t mind, I would prefer to stay here,” C-3PO said quietly, looking nervously at the marbles set in the floor.

“All right,” said Rey.  She and the others in the group approached Nomi.

“Remove your footwear,” the alien said.

They did so, with the exception of Chewbacca and BB-8, who weren’t wearing any.  The marbles felt cool, hard, and slippery under their bare feet.  They sat.

“You seek Kyber crystals.”

“Yes,” Rey agreed.

“You seek them for what purpose?  To bring healing, or destruction?”

Rey considered this.  She did plan to use the crystals to bring about violence. . . but it was necessary.  At the same time, she felt that Nomi’s huge, dark eyes could see her very soul.  There was no way she could lie to this being.

She said, “Might not some destruction be needed, for healing to occur?”

Nomi smiled.  “The Jedi speaks truth.  The crystals are here.”  She produced a bag from under the pillow and opened it to reveal dozens of white Kyber crystals.

“Which ones do I take?”  Rey asked.

“The crystals are living.  They choose their own masters.  You must hear the music of the crystal, find the sound that harmonizes with the music in yourself.”

Rey closed her eyes.  She could hear a variety of tones, like a chorus of voices.  She focused on the sounds that resonated most within her.  She reached out.  Two crystals rose from the bag and her hand closed around them.

Rey could hear Rose gasping and BB-8 beeping quietly behind her.  She opened her eyes and looked at the crystals that lay in her palm.  They were the same size and shape, but mirror images.

“The Jedi chooses wisely,” said Nomi.  “A balanced pair, each the complement of the other.”

“Thank you,” Rey breathed.  She rose to go, as did the others.

“Stay,” said Nomi.  “You also seek a place.”

Rey sank to her knees.  “Yes.”

“Mortis is the place.”

At the mention of Mortis, Poe frowned.  “Look, we’re in a hurry—”

Nomi cut him off.  “The man will not speak.”

Poe sat down beside Rey, his expression grim.

“The destination is very old,” Nomi said.  “The first to know the Force.  The first where the good was done.  And the evil too.”

“How do I find it?” Rey asked.

“The destination lies within.  The power of Skywalker will lead you.”

Rey’s forehead creased in puzzlement.  “What do you mean the power—”

“The mouth of the Jedi stops and the mind makes the picture,” said Nomi.  “The Force fills the Jedi and reveals the destination.”  The tiny marbles in the floor rose into the air, forming a three-dimensional map of the galaxy.

The Resistance team stared at the marbles floating around them in awe.

“The eyes close,” Nomi continued.  “Only the Jedi knows the path. . . .”  Her voice grew distant as Rey fell deep into meditation.

Mortis.  Snow on the peak.  Flaming autumn leaves in the valley below.

Nomi’s voice cut through the vision.  “There the two will meet.  Drawn together by the Force.”

The temple.  Two thrones in the rock.  A well of light, pulsing from deep within the mountain below.

“The dark side and the light.”

A cloaked figure standing before Rey, his mask familiar, unmistakable.

“Then she will make the sacrifice.”

A flash of red light.

Rey snapped out of her vision.

“Wait, what?” asked Poe.

A flat, black, oval stone drifted from the edge of the marble planetarium and into Nomi’s palm.

“What do you mean, sacrifice?” Poe asked hotly.

Nomi handed the stone to Geb, a tiny Anzellan astroscrivener seated at a minute easel.  He painted a starmap of the chosen location.

“The Jedi must go alone,” said Nomi.

“No, hold on a second,” Poe said.  Finn put a hand on his friend's shoulder.

“Map is-a ready,” Geb the astroscrivener said as he tore the drawing off his easel, limped to Rey and handed it over.

“This map will lead you to the starting point of your journey,” said Nomi.  “Only those who are meant to can find Mortis.”

Rey took the star map from the tiny artist and said, “Thank you.”  She stood.

“We’re not leaving.  What did she see?” Poe asked.  He turned to Rey.  “What did you see?”

“The Jedi will make the journey.  The journey will answer the question.”

What question?   Poe asked, agitated.  “Can we all just take a deep breath and talk about this?”

Rey paused at the door.  “Is there another path?”

Nomi stared at Rey, her wide eyes unreadable.  “There is always another path.”

 

Outside the den, Poe confronted Rey.  “You’re not going to Mortis.”

Finn was staring into the distance.  “Do you hear that?” he asked.

“Master Luke said I had to,” Rey told Poe.  “The fate of the galaxy depends on it.”

“Guys. . .” said Finn.

Poe was implacable.  “The fate of the galaxy also depends on us defeating the First Order.  We need you with us, not on some wild bantha chase.”

“But if Kylo gains the power he seeks, he’ll be unstoppable!”

Then I’m going with you! 

“GUYS!” Finn shouted.

Rey and Poe looked up from their argument to see Finn pointing at the sky.  A line of TIE Fighters and Atmospheric Assault Landers were descending to planetfall.

“It’s the First Order.  They’ve found us.”

Notes:

Originally published 13 July 2020; edited and expanded as of 25 June 2021.

Chapter 6: Tor Valum

Chapter Text

Chapter Six

 

Tor Valum

 

Kylo’s TIE whisper entered the atmosphere of Remnicore, a cold black planet veined with silver.  The starfighter sped over floes of white lava and frozen, stunted trees.  In the distance, the rays of the setting sun glinted off a ruined building in the shape of a giant black cube driven into the ground point-first.

Inside the cockpit, Kylo struggled to keep his concentration focused on his flying.  Since being injured by the Sith holocron, he had been ravaged by visions and voices.  Currently, Supreme Leader Snoke murmured in the back of his mind, his words indistinct.  Suddenly, the voice snapped into focus.

—the power of Mortis! ” Snoke rasped.

Kylo involuntarily jerked at the controls.  His ship grazed a ridge and plowed into the obsidian terrain of a wide valley.

Kylo emerged from the ship battered and bloodied.  His left arm didn’t seem to work anymore, and his arms, chest and legs were covered in scrapes and burns.  In his right hand, he held his torn, singed cape, which he had used to smother an electrical fire started by the crash.

The Supreme Leader of the First Order staggered forward a few steps and then collapsed face down, his cape billowing out beside him like a shroud.

 

Kylo Ren jerked awake.  He was lying on a bed of straw and wood, staring at a rough, rocky ceiling.  The warm light of a torch flickered at the right edge of his vision.  He was unsure of how long he had been unconscious; was it hours? Days?

He lifted his head slightly to take in his surroundings.  On the left side of his bed were several large pots, as well as a stone table, which his mask and several small vessels rested upon.  Two gaps in the rock wall to his right led into other portions of what was apparently a cave system.  Near the foot of his bed stood a diminutive figure clad in robes and a head covering that seemed to be sized for a much larger being.  It had its back turned to Kylo.

Kylo sat up.  His muscles ached and his head swam, but after a moment he gained enough of a grip on himself to survey his injuries.  They seemed to have had some sort of greenish salve applied to them, after which they had been bandaged.  His left arm was wrapped in a cast of stiffened wrappings.  Kylo peeled one of the bandages on his chest up enough to see that the wound was still raw.  Not days, then.

The figure at the foot of the bed had noticed that Kylo was awake.  It turned towards him, revealing that its tan headscarf almost enveloped its head.  A narrow gap in the cloth showed the gray skin of the creature’s face.  Its flat nostrils were placed directly in between large, wide set black eyes.

The alien called out in a language unintelligible to Kylo.  A handful of other creatures of the same species entered the rock chamber from the openings in the right wall.  They milled around Kylo, examining his wounds, changing his bandages, and grinding spices with a mortar and pestle.  One proffered a clay pot full of a steaming soup.  Kylo accepted the soup and let the beings fuss around him.

After he had finished eating, Kylo attempted to communicate with the beings.  He pointed at himself and said, “Kylo.”

“Kah-lo,” they intoned.  “Kah-lo!”

The largest of the creatures, who seemed to be some sort of chief, pointed at himself and said, “Wommel.”  Then he pointed to each of his fellows in turn and said, “Wommel.”  Apparently the name of his species (or his tribe-Kylo wasn’t sure there was much of a difference) was Wommel.  He was unable to determine if they had personal names.

Kylo donned his helmet and slung his tattered cape over his back.  Through hand signs, he indicated to the Wommels that he wished to be on his way and that he was grateful for their help.  They jabbered at him and led him to the entrance of their cave.  Kylo stepped out into the night.

The Wommels’ cave was in the valley wall nearest to Kylo’s downed TIE, from which he summoned VX-20.  The droid’s display told him the time: less than half a day since his crash.  Together, the man and the probe droid set off for the cuboid building at the other end of the valley.  A deep canyon stretched towards and cut through the edifice, as though a beam of energy had cloven through building and ground alike.  

Kylo Ren wondered about the Wommels’ actions as he walked.  They must have known that he was potentially dangerous.  They could have killed him or merely left him for dead, but instead they used their own, no doubt scarce, resources to heal him.  They must have done it out of. . . kindness.  Kylo was surprisingly moved.

As Kylo neared the structure, he passed the skeletons of fell war beasts, empty suits of armor, and robes draped over broken shields.  Banners and flags fluttered in the chill breeze.  A Sith helmet lay on the ground, a skull moldering within.

VX-20 beeped as a red light flashed on its surface.  The droid had detected a lifeform.

The doors of the fortress opened inwards.  Kylo lowered his hand and entered.  He removed his lightsaber from his belt and activated it as he passed between huge stone statues looming ominously out of the darkness.

Kylo crept warily into a vast circular chamber stacked with broken spacecraft parts, ancient military equipment and piles of silver ore.  A glowing white fire crackling in a stone pit cast a dim, ghastly light over the scene.  He drew closer to the flame.

“What do you seek?” A voice whispered.

Kylo spun and raised his lightsaber.  “Reveal yourself,” he said.

The largest mound of junk moved.  Spindly but powerful arms pulled the detritus aside, revealing the head and tense, muscular torso of a huge black creature.  The tatters of what might once have been a cloak clung to a broad, triangular head.  Six beady black eyes set on fin-like projections to either side of the creature’s flat, rugose face examined Kylo Ren.

Kylo stood his ground.  “I seek the Sith Master Tor Valum.”

“I am neither Sith nor Master,” the thing said.  “But I was once called Tor Valum.”

“You trained Darth Plagueis?” asked Kylo.

Tor Valum said, “That name means nothing to me.”

Kylo’s lightsaber darted out, stopping centimetres from Tor Valum’s taut, leathery skin.  “Does your life?” he asked angrily.

Tor Valum smiled, revealing sharp, blackened teeth.  “You threaten me with death.  How amusing.”

“You are weak,” Kylo said.  “I feel nothing.”

“You feel what I allow you to feel.  Child.”  The creature extended a long, bony finger, pointing to Kylo’s mask.  “Reveal yourself.”

Kylo lowered his lightsaber and removed his helmet.  The glowing red cracks of the mask mirrored the crimson traceries of his corrupted veins.

Tor Valum appeared oddly entertained.  “Mmmmm,” he sighed.  “You wish to obtain the power of those who came before; to take your place among the Gods of Mortis.”

Kylo admitted, “I do.”

“To rule the galaxy without armies, without starships.”

“Yes.”

“Your master taught you well.  Yet you fear the frailty of your vessel.”  Tor Valum leaned closer.  “You need this power.”

Kylo’s jaw tensed.  He nodded.

“Kneel before me,” said Tor Valum.

The red lightsaber shut off.  Kylo knelt.

“You call yourself a Sith,” Valum intoned.  “But the Sith are unrepentant, remorseless.  You are haunted by the past, by your very existence.”

“I have no regrets,” Kylo said sharply.

“You lie.  Until you confront your past, your fate will be the same as theirs.”  Tor Valum motioned to the battlefield in the valley below, where empty Jedi Knight and Sith Marauder armor lay side by side, surrounded by the withered husks of men and animals.

“The Living Force is nourishment.  The more one consumes, the stronger one becomes.  To take life. . . is to cheat death.”  The creature lifted his body with his arms and walked forward on them.

Kylo studied his strange new master.  “Teach me,” he said.

Tor Valum grinned once more.  “With pleasure.”

Chapter 7: Pursuit

Chapter Text

Chapter Seven

 

Pursuit

 

Two old Aki-Akis sat side by side atop a hill.  They looked up as the crew of the Millennium Falcon crested the rise and ran past, C-3PO shuffling along hurriedly in the rear.  In the middle distance, a line of ships descended from a Star Destroyer hanging above.

“There!  Those speeders,” Poe said, pointing at a pair of vehicles hanging from a metal docking station at the edge of the festival.  The group ran past some sort of metal-encased beast to them.  Poe dropped to the ground underneath a blue transport skimmer and began working on the underbelly.  Rose opened a panel in the side of a red speeder and rewired it.

C-3PO stumbled to a halt.  “No need to worry, I made it,” he said, waving his metal arms.

The blue speeder coughed and spat dust out of its triangular front grille.  Poe scrambled to his feet and turned as he heard shouts and screams from the midst of the festival.  Solonny Ren strode menacingly through the crowd towards them, Ott and Lorl shoving aside celebrants on either side of her.

“We gotta go!” Poe called.

Rose, Rey, Chewbacca and BB-8 had already set off aboard the red skimmer.  Finn and C-3PO got onto the blue speeder behind Poe and sped away.

A First Order Jet trooper standing atop a rocky outcropping watched the two skimmers heading in the direction of the city, leaving twin trails of dust in their wakes.  He lifted a white comlink towards his helmet and reported, “I’ve spotted the fugitives.”

 

The Resistance-commandeered skimmers zipped across the sandy plain.  Green blaster bolts flashed by them, one hitting the blue skimmer.  Finn lost his balance and Poe ducked.

Rey looked behind them.  A pair of First Order Treadspeeders were tearing across the desert, unloading their side mounted laser cannons at the skimmers.  Rey pulled out the blaster pistol Han Solo had given her and fired at them.  Chewbacca joined her with his bowcaster, but their shots were absorbed by the treadspeeder bikes’ shields.  BB-8 beeped worriedly.

One of the treadspeeders’ metal bodies sprang upwards, catapulting a jet trooper seated behind the driver into the air.  The other speeder executed the same maneuver a moment later.  Chewbacca growled unhappily.

C-3PO pointed at the jet troopers soaring after them and shouted, “Ah, they fly now!”

Poe looked over his shoulder.  “Jet troopers!  I hate these guys.”

Rose banked her skimmer to the right, while Poe peeled off towards a canyon.  The jet troopers began to fire explosive rounds into the desert ahead of the rounded red skimmer, the blasts blowing sand into the air.  Rose veered between the explosions while Rey activated one of her lightsaber’s blades, deflecting blaster bolts with her left hand while returning fire with her right.

The blue speeder zoomed down the narrow canyon.

“Did we lose ‘em?” Poe asked.

Finn shouted over the engine noise.  “Looks like it.”

“Excellent job, sir!” praised C-3PO.

One of the treadspeeder bikes jumped off a low hill and entered the canyon.  It fired.  The blue skimmer swayed as it was struck again.

“Terrible job, sir,” chided C-3PO.

Rose piloted her speeder between two lines of thin metal poles, dodging the other treadspeeder bike’s fire.  BB-8 examined a metal canister leaning against the back of the craft.  He beeped a question.

“Not now, Beebee-Ate,” Rey told the droid.

The astromech tapped a circular indentation in the metal drum with one of his arms, producing sparks.  After a few tries, he punctured the casing and yellow powder began to leak from it.  The canister twirled into the air before exploding.

The treadspeeder pursuing them drove directly into the cloud of pigment.  The driver tried futilely to wave it away.  Unable to see the terrain, he careened over a rocky ridge and flew into the air.

Rose swerved, giving Rey a shot at the treadspeeder.  Rey took it, pumping blaster fire into the exposed underside of the enemy vehicle, which blew apart.

“Never underestimate a droid,” Rey said as Rose gunned the engine and sped away.  The burning wreck of the treadspeeder fell to the ground behind them.  The jet troopers left white trails of vapor behind them as they continued the chase.

The other treadspeeder still hounded Poe, Finn, and C-3PO.  Finn occasionally returned fire, more in hopes of keeping the enemy driver off balance than out of any real hope of damaging the bike, which rolled over or leapt all obstacles.  A shot from the First Order speeder struck a pole in the middle of the skimmer.  Finn ducked into a crouch.

A coil of rope hanging next to Finn caught his attention.  He grabbed the metal hook attached to one end of the rope and threw it at the ground ahead of the treadspeeder.  It caught in the speeder bike’s track, pulling the rope after it.  The treadspeeder shuddered as its internal mechanisms sparked and flamed.

Finn tied the other end of the rapidly uncoiling rope to the blue skimmer’s central pole.  “Poe?” he called.

Poe braked and pivoted the skimmer simultaneously.  The treadspeeder bike swung around on the end of the rope and crashed into the canyon wall, where it exploded.  Finn, Poe, and even C-3PO whooped and cheered as they left the canyon.

Chewbacca scored a bulls-eye on one of the jet troopers.  The soldier screamed, hit the ground, and rolled before lying still.  The red skimmer passed the trooper, following the poles as they curved to run parallel to a canal.

Poe pulled up beside them.  “Did we get all of them?” he asked.

The final jet trooper flew into view, firing his blaster.  He was met by a barrage of fire from the crews of both skimmers.  One of the bolts struck the trooper in the chest, sending him corkscrewing through the air.  He slammed into a cliffside and blossomed into a fireball.

“Keep following the canal,” Poe said.  “It leads straight to the city.”

Suddenly, an explosion rocked the desert, the blast wave launching both skimmers skyward.  The Resistance crew splashed into the canal as the Knife 9 zipped by overhead.

“Will the agony ever end?” moaned C-3PO as he sank into the water.  Chewbacca grabbed him and began paddling towards shore.

A double-masted razorsail catamaran floated on the water a few meters away, tied to one of the metal poles.  Poe swam to the boat’s ladder and climbed aboard.  Finn and Rose followed him and untied the craft while Chewbacca pulled C-3PO and BB-8 on board.

“Get on!” Poe called to Rey.

“No,” said Rey.  “Get to the Falcon.  I’ll hold them off.”

Poe looked stricken.

“Go!” Rey shouted.

Finn tugged Poe’s arm.  The pilot took the helm.  He threw a glance over his shoulder before activating the razorsail’s turbofan and speeding away.

 

The Steadfast bore down upon Bonadan as two more Resurgent-class Star Destroyers arrived from hyperspace, flanking it.  Aboard the Steadfast ’s bridge, Hux looked upon the globe shining beyond the viewport.

“Obliterate any ships leaving the planet!” the Chancellor commanded.  He turned to the gunnery captain.  “Charge the primary weapon!”

 

Rey looked at the horizon, where a tiny dot crept into view from behind a dark hill.  She focused on her breathing.  When she could make out the outline of the approaching ship, Rey removed the lightsaber from her belt and activated one of its blades.

The Knife 9 drew closer, skimming along the surface of the desert.  Hattaska Ren piloted the vessel with cold precision, while Solonny, Jaedec, Ott, and Lorl sat in surrounding cockpit chairs.  The red-tinted viewport threw a ghastly light on the Knights of Ren.

Rey watched calmly as the craft accelerated towards her.  She dropped into a crouch, facing away from the ship, her lightsaber ready at her side.

The Knife 9 was almost touching the ground as it streaked towards the Jedi.  Rey looked over her shoulder, judging speed and distance.  Then she began to run.

The Knights’ ship drew closer and closer.  Just before it reached her, Rey leapt upwards.  She seemed to hang in the air as her lightsaber sliced through the Knife 9’s left wing where it connected to the ship’s hull.  Rey landed on one knee in the cloud of sand kicked up by the vessel’s passage.

The left wing of the Knife 9 sagged, the partly severed attachment point unable to support its weight.  Hattaska Ren looked at his instruments in alarm as the ship shook.  Finally, the damaged wing broke off completely.  The transport collided with the ground and flipped end over end before bursting into flames.

Rey rose to her feet as the cloud of dust dissipated.  She shut off the lightsaber and turned to head for the city, but a movement in the distance caught her eye.  Through a haze of heat, she watched the Knights of Ren emerge from the smoking wreckage of the Knife 9.  They stalked slowly towards her.

Rey looked up as she heard a familiar whine of engines.  The Millennium Falcon swooped towards her from the hills surrounding the city, halting just above the ground.

“Hold her steady,” Poe shouted to Chewbacca, seated beside him in the cockpit.  “Finn, move fast.”

Finn stood on the lowered boarding ramp.  “Rey, come on,” he yelled, beckoning with his arms.

Dozens of TIE Fighters screeched towards the Falcon.  “Locked on target,” one of the pilots said flatly.

Poe watched the approaching swarm of fighters silhouetted against the low-hanging sun.  “Finn, we’re about to be cooked!”

Rey steeled herself and took a running jump.

“Come on, I got you,” Finn said as he grabbed Rey’s arm and pulled her aboard.

Poe pushed open the throttle and the Millennium Falcon shot away, TIE Fighters and green energy bolts whizzing after it.

Finn and Rey rushed to the gun wells, Finn taking the bottom turret while Rey swung into the top seat.  They opened fire on the pursuing TIEs while Poe steered between two of the tall hills surrounding the city.

The Falcon shuddered as it was hammered by laser fire.  Damage alarms blared.

Poe shouted over his shoulder, “Finn, Rey, you’re supposed to be getting rid of those things!”

Finn struck one of the TIE Fighters.  It spiraled into a hill and exploded.  “Got one!”

“How many left?”

“Too many,” Rey shouted back as she took out another TIE.

 

The gunnery captain of the Steadfast reported, “Primary weapon charged, sir.”

“Fire!” ordered Chancellor Hux.

Black-helmeted gunners flipped switches and adjusted gauges, aiming the axial superlaser mounted under the Star Destroyer.  The giant cannon fired a beam of blazing red energy towards Bonadan.  Hux's pale face glowed in its light.

 

The Millennium Falcon zoomed over the dark side of the planet.  Chewbacca pointed into the darkness and growled.

“What?” Poe shouted, flipping a switch on a panel to his left to turn on the headlights.  

Chewbacca roared and motioned.  Poe turned in time to see the Steadfast’s superlaser crack open the ground before them with a thunderous roar.  Chunks of ice, rock, and ice-covered rock spun upwards.  The Falcon lurched as a large piece of debris struck its right side.  Chewbacca growled.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I know,” Poe said.

C-3PO stepped into the cockpit.  “I’m afraid our shields cannot withstand a superlaser of this magnitude—”

“Tell me the odds, Threepio.  I like numbers,” Rose requested.

While the protocol droid rattled off figures, Poe yelled into his headset.  “We can’t make the jump with all this debris.”

The Falcon wove around the chunks of planetary crust.  Several TIE Fighters collided with fragments of stone and blew up, but others evaded them, shooting at frozen rock and the Resistance ship alike.

Poe buzzed across the surface of a frost-covered mountain whirling into space.  “Finn, we can boulder these TIEs,” Poe said.

“I was just thinking that,” Finn said, swiveling his turret and firing on the mountain.  The peak blew apart, sending rocky projectiles wheeling into the path of the pursuing craft.  Explosions flared behind the Millennium Falcon as it rocketed out of the debris field.

“We’re clear!” Rey shouted.

Poe told Chewbacca, “Punch it!”

The Millennium Falcon streaked into hyperspace.  Five First Order TIEs disappeared after it.

 

The Falcon dropped out of lightspeed on a twilit world covered in crystalline stalagmites sticking diagonally upwards.  Poe heaved on the controls, narrowly missing one of the spikes.  Stray fire from the First Order TIEs hit the stalagmites, sending shards of crystal flying.

“They’re still on us!” Finn yelled as the ship rocked.  “How are they still on us?”

“They must have some sort of homing beacon hidden on board,” Poe fumed.  “Rose, scan the ship.”

“Roger.”

Poe zigzagged between the huge spires.  One of the TIE pilots tried to dodge Rey’s fire and ran directly into one of the projections.

Poe pulled the lightspeed lever back.  Streaks of light appeared outside the cockpit, building into a bright flash that disappeared to reveal the blue cloudiness of hyperspace.

“What are you doing?” Finn asked.

“Lightspeed skipping,” answered Poe, stretching to press buttons on a side panel.

Rey shouted, “You can’t lightspeed skip the Falcon!”

“Actually, turns out you can,” Poe said.  Control panels sparked as he pushed the lever forward and they dropped into the midst of a forest of tall, white towers.  Huge mirrors attached to the buildings reflected the freighter and starfighters as the ships wove between them.  One of the mirrors sliced an unlucky TIE in half.

Rose studied a portable scanner.  “I can’t find any trace of a bug,” she said.

“Keep looking,” said Poe as the mirror-spires blurred into blueness.

 

“Sir, they’ve left the Bonadan system,” an officer informed Chancellor Hux.

“Our fighters are still in pursuit,” said a comms technician.  “They’re in the Crystal Chaos of Cardovyte.”

“Set course for Cardovyte!” Hux commanded.

“No, wait,” said the comms tech.  “They’re on Ivexia now.”

“They must be lightspeed skipping,” Commander Sellik postulated.  “There’s no way a ship this size can keep pace with them.”

“We don’t have to,” Hux said.  “Order the Relentless to set course for Ivexia.  Tell the Xyston to await my orders.”

 

A band of children rode fathiers along a cliffside overlooking the ocean.  They cheered as the Millennium Falcon swept past in the skies above.  One of the children, a boy wielding a javelin made from a broom, lifted a silver ring with an inlaid Rebel Alliance starbird in salute.

Three remaining TIE Fighters dropped out of hyperspace.  Finn grazed one of them. The starfighter crashed onto the beach, its flaming, wingless cockpit rolling across the sand.

“I’ve got something!” Rose shouted.  “There’s a transmission being beamed from this ship.”

“How do I shut it down?” Poe asked.

“It’s not coming from the ship itself,” she said.  “It’s coming from. . . Beebee-Ate?”

Poe jerked the hyperspace handle back and then forward.  They were now racing through a murky green nebula.

“Okay, Beebee-Ate,” Rose said, kneeling before the droid.  “I’m going to have to turn you off for a bit.”

BB-8 beeped his assent and bobbed his dome, before falling silent as Rose found a switch on its underside.  The lights on his metal body went dark.

The Millennium Falcon rolled, dodging enemy fire.  The triangular maw of an immense worm-like creature reared out of the emerald mists before it.

“Last jump, maybe forever,” said Poe.

C-3PO screamed as the creature prepared to engulf them.

Poe shouted, “Hold on!” as he threw back the lever once more.  The Millennium Falcon shot past the monster and into hyperspace as the two remaining TIE Fighters crashed into its throat.  The creature closed its three-tusked mouth over them and dove back into the green gloom.

 

The Steadfast dropped out of hyperspace into the Typhonic Nebula.

Chancellor Hux stared into the clouds.  “Well, where are they?” he snapped.

“Sir, the droid’s signal cut off a few dozen ticks before we arrived,” a comms tech informed him.  “Their last known position was here in the Megafauna Chasm.”

An officer reported, “We’ve lost all contact with Hush and Incarnadine Squadrons.”

“No sign of the Corellian freighter,” said a sensor technician.

“So they’ve slipped away again,” said Hux.  He allowed himself a moment to stew.  He had been on the cusp of catching the last Jedi, her companions, and the Millennium Falcon to boot.  If he had managed such a feat, when both the Supreme Leader and his precious knights had failed, it would have been irrefutable proof that Kylo Ren should be taking orders from him, not vice versa.  Now the opportunity for such a coup had been snatched from his grasp.

The voice of a comms officer disrupted his brooding.  “Sir, we’re receiving a message from Coruscant.  Highest priority channel.”

Hux said wearily, “Put it through.”

“It’s just a line of text,” said the technician.  “It says, ‘Chancellor.  Return to the Capitol.’  The odd thing is, there’s no signature code.”

Hux stiffened.  “Repeat that.”

“I said there’s no signature code.”

Hux stared blankly into the verdant nebula.

“Sir?  Are you all right?” Commander Sellik asked.

“Of course I am,” Hux said testily.  “Set course for Coruscant.  Immediately.”

The bridge buzzed with activity as Hux turned on his heel and left, lost deep in thought.

Chapter 8: Stranded

Chapter Text

Chapter Eight

 

Stranded

 

The Millennium Falcon trailed smoke as it descended towards a snowy world.  The ship wobbled unsteadily over a glassy, frozen ocean before crashing into the ice.

Poe Dameron unfolded himself from his seat.  Most of the battered freighter’s instruments had died on the way down.  One of the corridor lights blinked hesitantly and then went out.

“You okay?” Poe asked his companions.

Chewbacca growled a yes.

“I’m just fine,” Rose said through clenched teeth, her knuckles white as she clung tightly to her chair.  BB-8 sat motionlessly at her feet.

Poe pulled out his flashlight and shone it into the dark passageway.  The tool seemed to be getting a lot of use today.  He started down the corridor, Chewbacca following him.  “Rey!  Finn!”

C-3PO’s glowing yellow eyes appeared out of the darkness.  “You didn’t say my name, sir, but I’m all right.”

Poe made his way to the gun wells in the middle of the ship.  Rey, who had climbed partway down the ladder, let go and fell into his waiting arms.

“You all right?”

“Yeah,” she said.  “Where’s Finn?”

Finn emerged from the rear of the ship.  “I’m good.”

“Ah!  Master Finn,” said See-Threepio.

Finn asked, “What is this place?”

“This isn’t the afterlife, is it?” C-3PO wondered.  “Are droids allowed here?”

“All I saw on the way down was a lot of ice,” said Poe.  “But I was trying to keep us from turning into pink smears on the ground.  Thought we were goners.”

“We might still be,” Threepio suggested.

Poe said, “Let’s get out of the ship, scout around—”

He broke off as the Falcon listed violently to one side.  The crew braced themselves against the walls.

C-3PO said, “Sir, it’s quite possible this afterlife is not entirely stable.”

“It’s worse than that,” Rose said, walking into the corridor.  She had BB-8 cradled in her arms like an oversized metal baby.  “Look down.”

Poe pointed his flashlight at the floor.  Water trickled past their feet.

“All right, let’s just get out of here,” said Poe.  “Everybody grab what you can and get to the top hatch.”

Rey ran to her cabin.  By the light of her saber, she grabbed some books and shoved them into her satchel.  She sprinted to the forward hatch, where Finn was pushing Chewbacca through the hatchway while Rose and Poe pulled him up by the arms.

The crew finally managed to heave the Wookiee out.  The water was already up to Finn’s and Rey’s knees.  Poe kneeled next to the hatch, holding out his hand.  “Rey, Finn, c’mon.”

The Millennium Falcon lurched again.  Poe jumped back as it slipped under the ice.  Water poured through the hatch of the sinking ship, submerging Rey and Finn up to their necks.

“Take my hand,” Rey shouted.  Finn grabbed her as she pushed through the aperture and launched herself into the frigid ocean.  They swam upwards, heading for the hole in the ice.

“Finn!” Poe shouted, staring into the water.  “Rey!”

The water was horribly still.  Suddenly, Rey’s and Finn’s heads broke the surface, gasping for breath.  Their friends dragged them onto the ice sheet.

Rey used the Force to pull the water out of Finn’s clothing, then her own.  She waved her hand.  The liquid splashed onto the ice.

“I can’t believe we lost Han’s ship,” Rey panted.  She glared at Poe.  “What were you thinking, lightspeed skipping?”

“Well, it got us out of there, didn’t it?”

“Poe, the compressor’s down!”

Finn stared at the sky.  “You two. . .”

Poe said, “Oh, I know, I was there.”

“. . . every time.”

“Well now we’re stuck here on—”  Rey turned to C-3PO.  “Where are we, anyway?”

“I’m afraid such information is usually supplied by an astromech droid,” said C-3PO.  “I merely translate—”

“—stuck here in the middle of nowhere with no ship and no way to call for help!” Rey shouted.  Her voice reverberated across the ice field.

“Okay, guys, arguing won’t help us,” Finn said.  “You said it yourself, Rey.  We’ve got enough problems already without infighting.”

Rey and Poe looked at him.  “You’re right,” Rey admitted after a moment.

“Let’s find some shelter,” Poe said, tiredly.  “Then we can try to think our way out of this.”

The group was trekking across the ice towards a line of hills in the distance when something round and metallic caught Chewbacca’s attention.  He plodded towards the object and barked at the others.  They came up beside him, looking down at his find.  It was the radar dish of the Millennium Falcon.

“It must have broken off when we crashed,” Poe said.  His face brightened.  “We can call for help!”

“What about the transmission blockade?” Finn asked.

Poe slapped his forehead.  “Oh.  Right.”

Rose pursed her lips.  She felt the stirrings of an idea, but its final form remained frustratingly unclear.  “Let’s bring it along,” she said.  “I think I might be able to get around the jamming, but I need time to think.”

The Resistance band set off once more, Chewbacca rolling the dish along beside them.  Soon they had reached the hills, which curved upwards into frost-covered uplands.  A steep cliff sloped downwards from the tundra to the ice sheet.

The group made camp beside a large pile of rocks that broke the worst of the biting wind.  Rey and Finn set about making a fire while Poe and Chewbacca attached the radar dish to a portable power supply and Rose sliced into BB-8’s programming.  After working with the droid for a while, Rose called Poe over.

“I’ve found the problem,” Rose said.  “There was a veil cipher inserted into Beebee-Ate’s code, which caused him to transmit a location signal.  The First Order could detect it whenever they were within range of his antenna.  I’ve deactivated the program.”

“How did he pick it up?” Poe asked.

“Based on Beebee’s log, it was uploaded when we were on the Moon of Kuat.”

“You mean,” Poe said, taken aback, “they could have found us when we were at Nirauan, or even on Ajan Kloss?”

“Technically, yes,” said Rose.  “Their probes must never have been there when we were.”

“So. . . can we turn him on now?” Poe asked, raising his eyebrows.

“Yep,” Rose replied, flipping the droid’s power switch.  BB-8 raised his dome and shook it as though to clear his mechanical mind after a long nap.

“Are you all right, pal?” Poe asked.  The droid twirled in a circle and gave a cheerful beep.

Poe smiled.  “Glad to hear it.”

Rose let the man and droid catch up and walked over to Chewbacca.  “I have an idea,” she said.

 

Poe walked up to Finn and Rose, who had successfully built a small blaze.  The pilot plopped down on a flat rock.

“Well, I know where we are now,” he told them.  “Beebee-Ate says we’re on the planet Wavett.”

“Wavett,” muttered Rey.  “Great.”  She removed a book from her satchel and walked away towards the rocks.

Poe looked at her retreating back and then turned to Finn.  “Do you think I should—” he began.

“Probably best to leave her alone for now,” Finn advised.

Poe stared into the fire for a long while as the light faded from the sky.  Finally he spoke.  “She’s amazing,” he said.

Finn didn’t ask who Poe was talking about.  He knew well enough.

“The things she can do. . . I can’t even imagine being capable of stuff like that,” Poe continued.  “But she’s so hard on herself.  When we were on Bonadan, she said she was responsible for the entire galaxy.”

“Doesn’t surprise me,” said Finn, thinking of his and Rey’s conversation just after the mission to Kuat.

Poe said, “I want to help her, but sometimes she just pushes me away.”

“All we can do is be here for her when she needs us,” Finn told him.

“I know,” said Poe.

They lapsed into silence again.

“You know, you and her are pretty much family to me now,” Poe ventured after a while.  “You’re like the brother I never had, and Rey. . . well. . .” he trailed off lamely.

Finn wasn’t looking at him.  He seemed lost in his own thoughts, the fire casting a flickering orange glow across his face.  “I never had a family.  When I was in the First Order I didn’t even have a proper name.”  He looked up at Poe.  “Rose and you two are my family.”

They were both ruminating over this when Rose and Chewbacca sat down at the fire.  “Hey, guys!” Rose said cheerily.  “We came up with a way to send a transmission.”

“Oh?” Poe inquired.

“We know that the First Order is able to send transmissions between systems somehow,” Rose explained.  “Our best guess at how they do this is that the jammer is programmed to briefly unblock certain frequencies according to a complex algorithm.  Their transmitters use the same algorithm to send the signal, hopping between the unjammed frequencies.” Rose said.

“Uh-huh. . .” prompted Poe, not quite seeing the significance of this.

“My examination of the veil cipher confirms this theory,” Rose said.  “Beebee-Ate’s antenna isn’t strong enough to send signals across interstellar space, but whoever wrote the veil cipher couldn’t know where it would end up.  Because it might have been uploaded to a starship or portable comm center with a long range, it was written to send signals according to the First Order’s frequency-hopping protocol.”

“Which means we can use the algorithm to send a signal too!” Finn exclaimed, kissing her on the cheek.  “Rose, you’re a genius.”

“Aw, thanks,” Rose said, hugging him.  “But a real genius, like Drusil Bephorin, would have been able to determine the algorithm by studying First Order transmissions a long time ago.”

Chewbacca roared.

“I concur with Chewbacca’s assessment,” C-3PO said.  “You are quite clever, Mistress Tico.”

This time Rose merely blushed and murmured something that sounded like, “S’nothing.”

“So, have you sent the signal yet?” Poe asked.

“No,” said Rose.  “There’s a chance this could tell the First Order where we are, and we wanted to make sure everyone else was onboard with the plan.”

Finn said, “We should go tell Rey then.”

“I heard,” Rey said.  She stepped out of the shadows beyond the ring of firelight.

Poe asked, “And?”

“Do it,” said Rey.  “I’m for whatever has a chance at getting us out of here.”

“Okay,” Rose said.  “We’ll go send the distress call right now.”  She and Chewbacca headed towards the makeshift transmitter.

“We should all get some sleep,” Poe said, looking up at the dark, star-studded sky.  “It’s been a long day.”

“I’ll take first watch,” Rey volunteered.

Poe asked concernedly, “Are you sure?”

“I’ll be fine,” Rey said, hoping she would be.

 

While her organic friends slept in their bedrolls, and her mechanical ones lay in low-power mode, Rey sat next to the fire, paging through the book she had found on Bonadan.  Most of the sections she had read so far were about Force healing, a skill she had been studying of late.  She and Leia had used the technique to heal the crystal that now powered her lightsaber, as it had powered Luke’s and his father’s before him.

Important and interesting as the text was, Rey’s concentration began to fail.  Her mind wandered to thoughts of her parents.  No one might be no one, but the pain of her long abandonment was still keen.  She didn’t even know what her parents’ names had been.

Rey wondered if Finn cared about who his parents were.  She lazily considered waking him up and asking him, but decided against it.  He needed his sleep, and she could ask him tomorrow.  Besides, she felt so tired just now. . . .

Rey’s eyes closed.  She sank backwards and slipped into sleep.

 

Rey found herself in the bright, warm sands of Jakku.  Wind whistled over the desert dunes.

A child’s voice screamed.  Rey turned to see herself as she had been years ago, a little girl reaching out for her parents as Unkar Plutt dragged her away.

“Come back!  Wait!” the child cried, reaching out her hand.

Rey stepped towards the scene, her feet digging into the sand.  Before her stood a lightly bearded man and a woman clad in a dark blue robe.  The man was, with some difficulty, holding the woman back.  Rey felt an instant shock of recognition.  They were her parents.  She tried to call out to them, but no sound emerged from her throat.

Rey’s mother slipped free of the arm around her and ran towards her daughter, but Rey’s father grabbed her and held her back.

“No!” Rey’s father shouted.  “We can’t!  It’s too dangerous.”

Rey’s mother ceased struggling.  “Stay here!” she called, pain etched in a prematurely lined face.  “Wait for us!  We’ll come back.  Understand?  I promise we’ll come back.”

Rey’s eyes watered, matching those of her younger self, as they both watched the transport ship carrying her parents rise into the sky.

“Come back!” the girl screamed.

 

Rey jerked upwards, breathing heavily.  The book she had been reading lay open on her lap.  The fire guttered nearby.

“They were afraid,” Rey said, devastated by her vision.  “Why were they afraid?”

No response emerged from the darkness.  Rey walked along the edge of the cliff, the chill breeze cutting at her limbs and face.  She looked out from the top of the precipice.  Pinpoints of starlight in the sky above reflected off the glassy surface of the frozen sea below.

“Luke!” Rey shouted.  “Tell me!  Why were they afraid?”  The bitter wind snatched away and muffled her words.

“He can’t tell you, Rey,” a harsh, distorted voice said from behind her.  “But I can.”

Rey spun, igniting her lightsaber reflexively.  Kylo Ren stood before her, snow fluttering tranquilly around his image.

It was day on Remnicore.  Kylo was standing near the Wommels’ cave, his back to his downed TIE whisper.  “I know the rest of your story,” he said.

Rey turned away from him.

“Rey.”

Rey rounded on him, raising her lightsaber.  “You’re lying.”

Kylo walked slowly towards her.  “I never lied to you.”

Rey stepped backwards, halting at the cliff’s edge.  She looked down at the vertiginous drop behind her.

“Your parents were no one,” Kylo continued.  “They chose to be.  Your mother was strong.  Almost as strong as you."

Rey spat, “Don’t.”

“She could have become powerful indeed.  But she was a coward,” Kylo said contemptuously.  “She chose to marry a craftsman and spend her days trading scrap on a dustball.”

Rey seemed on the verge of tears.  “I don’t want this.”

“I’ve been in your head,” said Kylo.  “I know what happened to them.”

“No!” Rey shrieked, whirling towards him.  Kylo dodged back before bringing his lightsaber up to block her next strike.  Their blades locked, spitting sparks.

 

Rey’s mother kneels in a tent, hugging her daughter tightly.  “Rey, be brave.” she says.

Her father rushes into the tent.  He crouches next to them and tells Rey, “You’ll be safe here.  I promise.”

 

Rey shoved Kylo’s blade sideways.  The two combatants circled each other.

“I don’t need you to tell me what happened.  I know what you did,” Rey accused.  “Deep down, I’ve always known.  My parents didn’t sell me for drinking money.  They were hiding me from you.

Kylo seemed more intrigued than anything else.  “So you remember.”

“You killed my parents, didn’t you?”

“You blame me for your life on Jakku,” Kylo rumbled.  “You should thank me for it.  You were safe.”

“Stop talking!” Rey shouted.  She swung wildly at Kylo.  He parried deftly.  One of her attacks sliced into a basket of fruit gathered by the Wommels.  Small red globes spilled across the cold, hard ground of Wavett.

Rey caught Kylo’s saber with her own and pushed it downwards.  Snow sizzled and melted as the two beams of energy pierced the frost-covered earth.

 

Violent sounds frayed at the edges of Finn’s awareness.  He rolled over, trying to tune out the noise and return wholly to the bosom of sleep, only to feel someone shaking him.  He cracked open his eyes to see Rose peering down at him grimly.

“Rey’s gone,” she said.

 

Rey and Kylo slashed viciously at each other, then stepped away.

“You don’t know the whole story,” Kylo said.

Rey darted forward and struck out, her momentum carrying her past him.  Kylo brushed her blow away.  He turned slowly towards her.

Rey twirled her lightsaber, readying for another attack.  “Say it!  Did you kill them?”

“No,” Kylo denied.  I buried them.”

Rey stared at him, uncomprehending.

“Snoke made his orders clear,” said Kylo.  “Find anyone who could destroy him.  It didn’t take us long to hear about you.”

 

Rain pours down.   A red lightsaber plunges through a man’s chest.  He falls, dozens of others littering the ground around him.  The Knights of Ren stand in their midst, weapons at the ready.  Kylo breaks ranks and advances.

 

“They hid you well.  When we caught up to them, they were on a wet, miserable backwater world.  They had taken shelter among a group of colonists foolish enough to fight to protect them.  It was hard work getting at them.  Nevertheless, we found them eventually.  But they wouldn’t say where you were.  So Snoke gave the order.”

 

Rey’s parents kneel aboard the Knights’ ship.  Solonny Ren unsheathes a barbed, curving knife and plunges it into Rey’s father’s chest.  Her mother screams, then watches in silent fear as Hattaska Ren lifts his club.

 

“After the Knights had done their work, I took your parents’ bodies back to Jakku and laid them to rest in a shallow grave.”

“I don’t believe you,” Rey hissed.

Kylo took something out of his robe.  “Perhaps this will help convince you,” he said, holding it out.

Rey looked at the object in his hand.  It seemed to be a small piece of wood.  Rey warily stepped forward.  Holding her lightsaber at the ready, she grabbed the object and then backed away quickly.

Rey examined the trinket.  It was a carefully carved model of a round spaceship with a distinctive gap in the front: the Millennium Falcon.  She looked up at Kylo, her eyes wide.

“I told Snoke that with your parents dead, we were unable to find you.  But I knew you had never left Jakku.  I always knew where you were.”

“How?”

“Come find me,” Kylo Ren said, “and I’ll tell you.”  Then he vanished.

 

Rey’s friends found her sitting in the midst of torn, inexplicably fruit-covered ground.  She was cradling something to her chest and sobbing quietly.

Finn rushed to her, kneeling by her side.  “Rey, are you all right?”

“Talk to me, Rey,” Poe said on her other side.

“What happened here?” wondered Rose, examining a piece of red fruit.  “I don’t recognize this stuff.”

Finn shot her a look.

Rose whispered sulkily, “It was a valid question.”  But she knelt next to Rey anyway.

Rey recovered enough to croak, “I’ll be fine.”  She picked herself up off the ground and headed back to the camp.

Poe and Finn glanced at each other uneasily before following her.  “I’ll take next watch,” Poe said, loud enough to reach Rey’s ears.

Rey seemed not to notice.  She crawled into her bedroll and sank into blessedly dreamless darkness.

Chapter 9: Dark Lord's Return

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Chapter Nine

 

Dark Lord’s Return

 

Deep in the interior of the First Order Capitol, a door slid open.  Armitage Hux stepped through it into a dark, cavernous chamber which had been set aside as a throne room.  Kylo Ren had never used the space, however, preferring to spend his time fighting on the front lines of the war or scouring the galaxy for Sith arcana.  And so the great hall, with its black walls, black floor, high black ceiling, and ponderous black throne had lain almost abandoned for more than a year, entered only by cleaning droids and the very lowliest of technicians. . . until its new occupant had arrived.

Nobody that Hux had questioned since returning to the Capitol had been willing to say exactly when the room's new tenant had taken residence, or from whence he had come.  Nevertheless, the word had spread among the Capitol’s personnel, whispered in hushed tones between officers, muttered by stormtroopers on boring guard duty: the being in the throne room was to be obeyed without question.

By the light shining through the doorway behind him, Hux could make out the six fully armed and armored Knights of Ren standing near the far end of the room.  On the great throne behind them, an indistinct shape sat swathed in shadows.

A rough voice spoke from the gloom.  “We would be honored if you would join us. . . Chancellor Hux,” it said, drawing out the title mockingly.

Hux slowly walked forward into the murky chamber.  His footfalls sounded uncomfortably loud against the hard floor.

“Come,” the voice said, addressing the Knights of Ren.  “Make room for our guest.”

The Knights parted into two columns on either side of the throne, making an aisle for Hux to walk down.  Or a gauntlet to run, he thought.  Warily, he passed between the Knights, halting before the throne.  Hux caught a glimpse of a pallid, claw-like hand as he knelt.

“Supreme Leader,” Hux said.  “You have returned.”

“You are surprised,” the thing on the throne noted, motioning for Hux to stand.  It leaned forward out of the shadows, revealing the scarred, shriveled face of Supreme Leader Snoke.

“You were. . . not in one piece, when last I saw you,” Hux replied, rising to his feet.

“Reports of my death have been greatly distorted.  Kylo Ren told you the girl killed me, did he not?” the Supreme Leader asked.  He raised his hand to forestall Hux’s response.  “Ah, I see it is so.  In truth, Kylo Ren sought to kill me, in order to usurp control of the First Order.”

“He’s a traitor, then,” said Hux, carefully modulating his voice so as not to betray the triumph he felt welling up inside.

“Indeed,” Snoke agreed.  “As such, he is no longer fit to lead the Knights of Ren.  They shall take orders directly from me.  Provided, of course, that they find this arrangement. . . agreeable?”

A tense silence descended upon the room.  The blaster pistol on Hux’s left hip, normally a comforting weight, now seemed wholly inadequate for his defence.  His hand crept surreptitiously towards the weapon.

To Hux’s left, Solonny Ren fell to one knee before the throne.  “Thus it shall be,” she said.

Hux relaxed slightly.

Hattaska Ren hesitated a moment before also genuflecting.  The other Knights joined him on the floor.  “Thus it shall be!” they chanted.

“Good.  Then I shall charge you with your new missions.  Solonny, Ott, and Lorl Ren: you shall remain with me at the Capitol.  Hattaska, Jaedec and Kuruk: you shall continue your hunt for the last Jedi.  When you find the girl, kill her.”  Snoke waved his hand.  “Knights, go forth upon thy quest.”

Hattaska led two of the other Knights from the room.

“What of Kylo Ren?” Hux asked.  “He is dangerous.  If he tries to seize power once more—”

“Leave that to me,” Snoke interjected.  “Kylo Ren will come to us, in time.  What boots it, expending our resources to find that which will return of its own volition?”

The Supreme Leader rose from his throne and stepped forward, the train of a long, shimmering black robe trailing after him.  “My long-laid plans are close to fruition; they must not be tampered with.  Yet the forces of the Resistance are gathering.  Soon they will strike a decisive blow.  I suggest you make preparations, Chancellor Hux, for the final battle comes swiftly, and cannot be halted.”

“Yes, Supreme Leader.”

“I wish to make an address to the galaxy,” Snoke stated, heading for the door to the throne room.  Hux and the remaining Knights fell in line behind him.

“Let the word go forth, to every system and every world, that Snoke the eternal, ruler of all, has returned to his rightful place.”

Hux inclined his head.  “It shall be arranged, Supreme Leader.”

 

Sparks flew as mechanics repaired the cruiser Tantive IV in the hangar of the Resistance base on Ajan Kloss.  Snap Wexley walked past the ship towards General Leia Organa, a worried look on his face.

“General,” Snap said.  “We just picked up the news-disc from a messenger probe.  It carried reports of a First Order raid at the Festival of Ancestors on Bonadan.”

“This mission is everything.  We can not fail,” averred Leia.  “Any word from Rey?”

Falcon’s still not back,” Snap responded grimly.

Colonel Connix, standing next to Leia, asked, “Do you have to say it like that?”

“Like what?”

“Do me a personal favor,” Leia recommended, “be optimistic.”

“Yes, ma’am,” assented Snap, nodding.  “This is—this is terrific.  You’re not gonna believe how well this is gonna turn out.  It’s gonna be great.”

Connix sighed and walked away, shaking her head.  Leia just cast her gaze downwards, disheartened.

 

Aboard the Knife 10, Hattaska Ren floated in the liquid of an electro-oxygen meditation chamber, his head bowed in an induced sleep.  Wires protruded from his mask and fed into a large computer.

Kuruk Ren looked on impassively as Jaedec approached the chamber.  “What do you see, brother?” Jaedec asked, pressing his hand to the cool glass surface of the cylindrical chamber.

Hattaska stirred.  Suddenly, he lifted his hand and pressed it against the glass opposite Jaedec’s.

Jaedec’s head tilted back.  He nodded, removing his hand from the side of the chamber.

“Set a course for Wavett,” Jaedec said to Kuruk.

The Knife 10 shifted course and set out upon its maiden voyage.

Notes:

Updates are liable to be either sparse or non-existent for the next few months.

Chapter 10: Showdown on Wavett

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Chapter Ten

 

Showdown on Wavett

 

The nights were long on Wavett.  Despite her nocturnal encounter with Kylo Ren, Rey felt almost too well rested when she awoke in the morning.

The camp seemed emptier than it had the previous night.  Rose was monitoring the transmitter while C-3PO and BB-8 communed on subjects of interest only to droids.  Finn, Poe, and Chewbacca were nowhere to be seen.

“Where are the others?” Rey asked.

“They went out on a scouting mission.  As if there’s anything to scout,” Rose snorted.

Rey stared at Rose awkwardly.

“Is something wrong?” Rose inquired.

“I—I don’t know if I should even ask this,” Rey said.  “But…when your sister died, how did you…get over it?”

Rose looked at her and sighed.

“I—I’m sorry,” Rey apologized.  “I shouldn’t have—”

“No, it’s all right,” Rose said, putting her hand on Rey’s shoulder.  “A loss like that—it’s not really something you can just get over.  It’s more a matter of moving forward, not letting it get in your way.  I cried a lot.  I still cry sometimes.  But my sister died fighting for what she believed in, and the best way for me to honor her is to carry on that fight.  The important thing is to just keep going.  But…give yourself time to grieve too.”

“Thank you,” Rey said.  She stared at the sky for a moment before walking away.

As Rey fixed herself a scant breakfast of ration bars and veg-meat, she turned her thoughts from her grief over her parents to the immediate problem facing her.  After last night, she was even less willing to sit around waiting to be rescued, but there seemed to be no other choice.  The Millennium Falcon must have been at the bottom of Wavett’s ocean by now.  Could there be some way of recovering it?

Filing that thought away, Rey pulled her satchel of books from her bed-roll.  She fished Geb’s hand-drawn star map out of it and scrutinized the brown paper.  Coruscant was clearly labeled at one end of the map.  A line delineated a hyperspace pathway following the Namadii Corridor and the Entralla Route before trailing off near the edge of Wild Space just past Bastion.  A small dot labelled Mortis was near the opposite end from Coruscant.

Rey set the map on a flat rock nearby, took a bite of her rations, and turned back to her bag.  She hesitated briefly before picking up the book from the temple on Bonadan.  It fell open to a place near the end.  Rey frowned, preparing to turn back to where she had left off the previous night, but then gasped as she saw what was written at the top of the page.

 

Part the Twelfth: The Power of Sky-Walking

 

Excitedly flipping gritty, parchment-like pages, Rey quickly skimmed through the chapter.  It described a method of using the Force to sense the fastest safe hyperspace routes to reach a destination.  Nomi’s words suddenly became clear to Rey.  She would follow the map as far as it would lead her; from there the Force would be her guide.  But first, she needed to get off this bloody planet.

With a determined cast to her face, Rey stuffed the book and the map back into her satchel, swung it over her shoulder, and grabbed the remains of her breakfast.  Then she set off along the cliff.

As she walked, the sharp cliff flattened out, giving way to rounded bluffs covered in heavy layers of snow.  Rey noticed that in the absence of the others, she was paying more attention to her environment, from the grey clouds hanging in the sky above to the sounds of snow crunching under her boots and winter wind whistling past.  She wondered if the solitude also enabled her to more easily attune herself to the Force.  She certainly found it easier to meditate when she was alone, but perhaps that was merely due to lack of distractions.

Soon, Rey found herself scrambling downhill onto the frozen surface of the ocean.  As she crossed the thick ice sheet, she looked for the hole left by the Millennium Falcon when it crashed.  She soon found it, a jagged tear in the ice that was already beginning to freeze over.  She leaned over the hole, staring down into the water, but was unable to see the ship; the water quickly became impenetrably dark.  It was like looking into a pit, reminding her uncomfortably of the slimy, vine-choked entrance to the cave on Ahch-To.

Shaking off her memories, Rey closed her eyes and reached out through the Force, her awareness skating over the ice.  Rey forced herself to focus on the column of water directly beneath the hole.  She felt a shock of arctic cold as her mind seemed to dive, her consciousness descending into the chill, murky depths.  Deeper and deeper into the water she reached, until it threatened to crush her, the unbearable pressure compacting her into an infinitesimal point.  She pushed on, going deeper, even as she became aware of the immensity of the ocean.  It was so vast, and she so tiny, she was certain she would be engulfed, swept away by the rushing of huge undersea currents.  Then she began to awaken to the presence of life, of tiny, glowing microorganisms and pale, eyeless fish that inhabited the cavernous depths, never imagining the world of the surface, or of travel between the stars.  Yet they had been disturbed, their gloomy existence encroached upon by an object that fell from the heavens.

At last, Rey reached the bottom of the ocean.  Mind touched metal.  She had found the Millennium Falcon.  Now she began to move it, shifting it carefully off the seabed before pulling it up, first slowly, then with increasing speed.  As her sense of self ascended, following a narrow thread of thought, so did the ship.  Soon they were both rushing upwards, parting the water behind them.  Rey slowed the craft and turned it right-side up before it breached the surface.  Her eyes snapped open.

 

Poe, Finn, and Chewbacca walked into the makeshift camp.

“Good morning,” Rose said, looking over at them.  “Nice of you guys to drop by!”

BB-8 whistled happily and unplugged from a portable charger.

“I missed you too, pal,” Poe said fondly as the astromech rolled up to him and bobbled his dome.

Rose asked, “See anything interesting?”

Chewbacca roared.

“You said it, Chewie,” Finn remarked.  “Nothing but ice, snow, frost…and some more ice and snow.”

“Also some rock,” Poe put in.  “Don’t forget about all the nice rock.”  He looked around.  “Say, where’s Rey?”

“I think she decided to stretch her legs,” said Rose, pointing towards the ocean.  “Last I saw she was standing by the spot we crashed at, out on the ice sheet.”

“We better take a look,” said Poe.  He clambered onto the lip of the cliff and looked out over the near-featureless white plane.  Finn and BB-8 followed him.

Rey stood on the ice sheet, her arm outstretched.  Hanging in the air before her was the Millennium Falcon, water pouring down its sides, the morning sun glinting on its cockpit.

“There she is,” Poe breathed.  “She’s a survivor.”

Finn didn’t ask which one he meant.

Rey pivoted, her boots sliding on the ice.  She gave the Falcon a push, sending it gliding slowly towards the cliff.  The others watched in awe as it crept closer and closer to them before floating over the edge of the cliff and settling gently onto the thick snows.

“Let’s get that ship fixed,” Poe said.

 

Sparks flew in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon as Poe, Chewbacca, and C-3PO attempted to repair its wiring.

“What a dreadful situation,” C-3PO said as Poe zapped himself and bit back an oath.  “Is every day like this for you people?”

Chewbacca warbled noncommittally.

“Madness,” the protocol droid continued.

Finn leaned through the hatch.  “How goes the wiring?”

“It would go better if we could ever find his volume control,” Poe said, jerking a thumb towards C-3PO.  “How goes patching the leak?”

“Rey and I have sealed up the outside,” Finn reported.  “Once we reinforce the interior, we should be airtight.  Just try not to get us into any dogfights.”

“That’s not always my call,” Poe groused.

Rose burst into the cockpit.  “You need to see this,” she gasped.

“Wait, what?” asked Finn.  “What’s—”

“A transmission,” Rose breathed, “from the First Order.  It’s playing on every frequency.”

She led them into the main crew compartment.  Rey and BB-8 were already there, watching a hologram being displayed over the Dejarik table.  A lined, withered face with a deep gash in its forehead stared out at them.

“Hear, O peoples of the galaxy, and mark my words well,” the face said.

In a dimly-lit dive bar on the planet Kijimi, an aged, bearded man with a metal patch covering one eye looked up from the glass he was cleaning.

“For decades, I have bent the arc of history towards where we now stand.  The fall of the Jedi; the creation of the Empire; the rise of the First Order; I engineered all these things, that I might bring about what is now to occur.”

The old man shook his head sadly.  He knew nothing good could come of this.  In a dark corner, a helmeted spice runner slammed her cup down on the table and put her hand on her blaster.

“And now, at last, the work of generations is complete.  The great error is corrected.  The day of victory is at hand.  The day of revenge.  The day of the Sith.”

In a First Order outpost on the planet Arkanis, a platoon of Stormtroopers stood at attention, a drizzle of rain running off their armor.  As they watched their leader, they raised their fists in salute.

“The First Order is hereby reorganized into the Final Order, a régime which will last a thousand years.  All worlds must submit to its command, and all who dare resist its might shall be utterly annihilated.”

Resistance fighters on Ajan Kloss listened in silent shock to the message they were receiving.  General Leia bent her head, horror washing over her, unwilling even to look upon the twisted face before her.

“And who should preside over this great new order but I?  I, Supreme Leader Snoke, the Eternal Ruler of this, my galaxy.”

As the transmission ended and began to repeat, Kylo Ren snapped off the portable holoprojector he held before him, his face stony.  He stomped towards Tor Valum’s fortress.

 

“Well, that was…disturbing,” Poe said.  “And what’s worse, it lines up with what General Calrissian told us.”

“Yeah,” Finn agreed.  He looked at Rey to gauge her reaction, only to find she had slipped out of the room.  

Finn found Rey standing by the port side hull of the ship, screwing a metal panel in place with a hydrospanner.  As he watched, she paused and lowered the tool, seeming to stare out beyond the ship at something very far away.

“He killed my mother,” she whispered, so quietly Finn could hardly hear her.  “And my father.  I’m going to find Snoke…and destroy him.”

Finn came up beside her.  “Rey…that doesn’t sound like you,” he said.  “Rey, I know you, I—”

“People keep telling me they know me.”  Rey shook her head.  There was something terribly cold in her voice.  “I’m afraid no-one does.”

Finn tried to think up a good response, but before he could, the ship shook as the sound of an explosion boomed through it.  They both looked up reflexively, startled, and then rushed into the main corridor.

As Rey and Finn reached the door out of the ship, Poe emerged from the cockpit.  “It’s those guys from Bonadan!” he yelled.  “I thought you got rid of them!”

Another explosion rocked the Falcon.  Rey punched a button on the door controls.  She ran down the boarding ramp, Finn and Poe following her.

An obsidian assault craft sliced through the air above them, its angular form silhouetted against the white sky.  Rey immediately recognized it as the same model as the ship that she had destroyed, the one that had carried the Knights of Ren.

Rey extended her arm, reaching out with the Force.  The Knife 10 jerked back as it encountered unforeseen and powerful resistance.  Black smoke belched from its engines.

In the Knife 10’s cockpit, Jaedec Ren heaved on the throttle.  The ship began to slowly pull away from the ground, slipping from Rey’s grasp.

Rey pulled harder, the effort making her grit her teeth, her arm shaking with the strain.  The Knights’ ship lurched and wobbled, bits of metal flaking off as it began to be pulled apart by two almost evenly-matched forces.

“Land the ship!” Hattaska Ren ordered.  “Let’s take this fight to the ground.”

Jaedec slowly released the throttle and brought the Knife 10 down, landing near the cliffside.  Rey lowered her hand as Rose and Chewbacca emerged from the Falcon.  The Knights of Ren emerged from their ship, weapons at the ready.

Rey stepped forward and activated her lightsaber.  “Stand back,” she said.

Rey and the Knights faced each other across the barren, icy plain.  A tense silence stretched out between them.  Hattaska pressed a button on his war club and a halo of crackling red energy surrounded its head.  Jaedec shifted his weight, hefting his vibro-ax ominously.  Poe tightened his grip on his blaster, taking aim at Kuruk.

As though at some unseen signal, Rey and Hattaska rushed towards each other.  Jaedec sprinted towards the cliff, firing a pistol, while Kuruk kneeled by the Knife 10’s boarding ramp, firing his rifle on full automatic.  Rose ducked behind a boulder as a barrage of blaster bolts flew towards them.  Poe and Finn got off a couple of shots, but were also forced to take cover as fire peppered the rocks.  Chewbacca growled defiantly and jogged towards the Falcon.

Hattaska and Rey crashed together, their weapons throwing off sparks at the sheer force of the impact.  Their momentum carried them past each other, sliding across the ice before whirling to face each other.  They swung at each other again, lightsaber and war club locking.

Jaedec raced along the cliffside.  Suddenly, the ice ahead of him burst upwards as it was struck by a metal quarrel enveloped in hot plasma.  Jaedec looked up to see Chewbacca charging towards him.  The Knight snapped off several pistol shots, but the Wookiee dodged aside.

Chewbacca swung at Jaedec with a furry fist, striking him on the helmet.  Disoriented by the blow, Jaedec tried to lift his ax in defense, but felt a large hand close around his neck.  Chewbacca picked Jaedec up and hurled him off the cliff, then raised his bowcaster and fired, hitting the Knight as he fell.  Jaedec landed in a crumpled heap on the jagged stones at the foot of the cliff.  Chewbacca roared in triumph.

Rey and Hattaska fought ferociously, Rey spinning away from the Knight’s swings while striking out with her blades.  Hattaska parried with his club and lunged.  Rey sidestepped and Force-pushed him over the edge of the cliff.

Kuruk fired another salvo.  A blaster bolt hit Chewbacca.  The Wookiee howled in pain and collapsed to the ground.

Rey spun to see the hairy body lying motionless on the ice.  Chewie!” she shrieked, her voice reverberating across the frozen plain.  She felt hot and cold at the same time.  Rage coursed through her.

Rey raced towards Kuruk.  He raised his rifle and fired at her, but she deflected every blast, sending them flying away.  Poe, Finn, and Rose popped out from behind the rocks and shot at Kuruk.  The Knight stumbled back as his armor absorbed the blasts, but he still stood.  Rey reached out with the Force and pulled Kuruk onto her lightsaber, impaling him through his chest.

Hattaska Ren leapt straight upwards and landed at the top of the cliff, emitting a ghostly screech.  He pulled a vibromachete from his belt and flew towards Rey, swinging wildly with both club and blade.  Rey separated the two halves of her saber, blocking Hattaska’s strikes with her left-hand blade while her right blade remained in Kuruk’s chest.  She shoved Hattaska back and withdrew her right blade, lashing out with it.

Hattaska’s cudgel crashed down, cracking the ice, as Rey sidestepped and rejoined her lightsaber.  She thrust at the Knight, but a quick swipe of his machete sliced into her left hand.  Rey dropped her lightsaber and fell to the ground, unarmed.

Hattaska stood over her and raised his club for a killing blow.  The sight was horribly familiar to Rey.  She had seen a similar sight just last night; the ugly metal helmet before her was the last thing her mother had seen before her death.

Hattaska Ren brought his club down towards Rey’s head, but she extended her good hand, teeth clenched and eyes burning.  Energy built at her fingertips and leapt towards Hattaska.  Hattaska Ren spasmed as blue Force lightning poured out of Rey and coursed through him.  His body fell, smoking, and landed with a thud.

Rey rose slowly and looked down at her hand.  Her friends watched her uneasily, their eyes wide.  BB-8 appeared at the bottom of the Millennium Falcon’s boarding ramp, his single photoreceptor silently questioning.

Rose hurried to Chewbacca.  The Wookiee raised his head weakly and growled something.

“He’ll be all right!” Rose called.  “It was just a graze.”  There was something hollow in her voice.  She and Finn helped Chewbacca stand up and led him towards the Falcon.

Rey walked up to the group.  “I—I had no choice,” she said.

“It’s okay,” said Poe.  “Jedi do that, right?”

Rey couldn’t meet his gaze.  “I’ve seen that mask before.  I’ve seen all of them.”

Poe turned to follow the others.  Rey didn’t move.

“Rey, let’s go,” Poe said.

“No.”  The word fell from her lips like a lead weight.  “I’m going down a path you can’t follow.”

“What are you talking about?” Poe asked, dumbfounded.  “This was the plan.”

“The Resistance needs you.  Leia needs you.  Finn, Rose, Chewbacca, Beebee-Ate…even See-Threepio.  They all need you.”

“Rey.  Get on the ship,” Poe coaxed.  “Please.”

Rey shook her head.  “You have to leave this place.  The Knights were tracking me.  My presence endangers all of you.”

She reached into her satchel, drew out the twin Kyber crystals, and placed them gently into Finn’s hand.  “Go to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant.  Use the crystals to activate the beacon.”

Poe insisted, “I’m not leaving you.”

Rey took a deep breath, steeling herself for what she hated to do, but knew she had to.  She raised her hand and waved it slightly.  “You will leave this place and go back to help the Resistance.”

“I’m not—don’t do this…”

She leaned forward, delicately brushing a lock of hair up off his forehead.  “You will leave this place and—and go back to help the Resistance.”  Her eyes began to water.  She sniffed, fighting back the tears she knew she couldn’t allow to fall.

Chewbacca, Rose, and Finn stood by the boarding ramp, looking back at Rey and Poe.  The Wookiee howled once more, this time in sadness.

“No….” Poe said.  “You can’t…”

Something slotted into place in Rey’s head.  She waved her hand in just the right way, and said in a calm and controlled voice, “You will leave this place and go back to help the Resistance.

Poe felt his mind slipping away from him.  He tried to fight it, tried to think of Rey, of how much he cared about her and wanted to stay with her, but her words imposed themselves upon him, robbing him of the will to resist their meaning.  He said, “I…I have to leave this place.  I have to help the Resistance.”

Rey took Poe’s face in her hands and kissed him gently.  When she pulled away, he looked as though he had been stabbed.  Rey turned him towards the Falcon, pushing him lightly away from her.

Poe walked past the others and up the ramp.  Finn and Rose followed him, supporting Chewbacca.  BB-8 looked up at Rey, then up the ramp at Poe, torn between them.

Rey was deliberately cold.  “Go!” she commanded the droid, pointing.

BB-8 beeped mournfully and rolled up to the others.  Rey watched as the ramp rose behind them.  Poe held up a hand in farewell, his sentience breaking through the mind trick for a brief moment.  Then the ramp shut completely, and Rey turned away.

Rey hurried to the Knife 10, wanting to be on her way before she could have second thoughts.  She entered the dark craft and made her way from its shadowy interior to the cockpit.  She placed the star map on the console and weighed it down with her lightsaber.

Rey examined the wound Hattaska had given her.  It was a long, straight cut stretching across the back of her left hand.  It was hard to tell in the crimson light filtering through the viewport, but it was bleeding.  Rey fished the red ribbon she had cut on Ajan Kloss out of her satchel and bound it tightly around her hand.

Rey caught her red-tinged reflection in the viewport, her sole companion from now on.  She quickly punched buttons and threw switches, readying the Knife 10 for takeoff.  The ship rose into the air and streaked into the hazy sky, disappearing from view.

Notes:

…And we're back!

Chapter 11: Echoes of the Past

Chapter Text

Chapter Eleven

 

Echoes of the Past

 

Poe sat in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon, his eyes focused on nothing in particular and his arms tightly crossed.  Finn sat down in the chair next to him.

“Hey,” he ventured.  “You all right?”

Poe shook his head as though clearing wool from his mind.  “I think so.”  He shifted slightly, his expression hardening.  “How could she just leave us like that?” he asked hotly.

“She’s not herself.  You have no idea what she’s fighting.”

“Oh, and you do?” Poe snapped.

Finn drew himself up in his seat.  “Yeah,” he answered.  “I do.  And so does Leia.”

Poe ran a hand down his face.  “I’m sorry.  I shouldn’t be angry.  At either of you.”

“It’s all right,” Finn said.  “We’ve all been through a lot lately.”

“So,” Poe asked.  “What’s going on with her?  I know she feels a lot of responsibility as the last Jedi, but is…is there something else?”

Finn studied him a moment, weighing whether to tell him his friend’s secret.  He finally admitted, “It’s Kylo Ren.”

Kylo Ren?” Poe asked, bewildered.

“There’s some kind of connection between them,” Finn explained.  “It’s been there since Starkiller.  They can see each other, communicate, even halfway across the galaxy from each other.  Even Leia doesn’t fully understand their bond.  I think that’s what happened last night.  She and Kylo were fighting somehow.”

Poe stared out the viewport.  “Damn,” he said.  “Kylo Ren.”

They sat in silence for a while.  Finally, Finn asked, “Can you fly?”

“I can always fly.”  The pilot’s hands began to expertly play over the controls, readying the ship for takeoff.

Rose, the droids, and Chewbacca entered the cockpit.  The Wookiee had a bacta pouch attached to his left side.

“How is he?” Finn asked.

“Give him a few days and he’ll be back to bashing in heads,” replied Rose.

Chewbacca gave a low growl of agreement.

The Millennium Falcon soared upwards like a long-trapped bird finally set free.  It flew through the cloud layer and exited Wavett’s atmosphere, the star-specked vista of the galaxy opening before it.  Poe Dameron had seldom been happier to see this view.  He leaned forward and threw back the lightspeed lever.

There was no streaking of stars or jerk of acceleration.  Instead, an awful grinding noise filled the cockpit.

Poe threw himself back into his seat and buried his face in his hands.  “Oh, come on!” he exclaimed.  “After everything that’s happened to us, this.”

“I agree,” said C-3PO.  “The situation appears truly hopeless.”

“Don’t give up yet,” Rose said.  “Let’s see how bad the damage is.”

The crew trooped to the engine room.  Poe pulled open the panel covering the hyperdrive.

“It’s bad,” he said.

The hyperdrive’s metal casing was charred and blackened, and many of the delicate interior components had been melted to slag by electrical fires.  It was clearly damaged beyond what they could fix with what they had on board.

Poe headed back towards the fore of the ship, the rest following him.  “We can still use the backup hyperdrive.  It’ll be slow, but we can at least get to an inhabited system, buy a replacement drive.”

“Maybe you should send out another distress signal, Rose,” Finn suggested as they entered the cockpit.

Rose looked up and stopped in her tracks.  

“Rose, what is it?” Finn asked.

“We don’t need to send another distress call,” she responded, pointing out the viewport.  “Look!”

A large, boxy gray starship hung “above” them.  It had a maw-like docking bay running the length of its front and dozens of cargo containers attached to a metal lattice on the stern.

Poe eyed the ship warily.  “Is that the First Order?”

“Let me take a look,” Finn said, climbing onto the console.

Chewbacca roared for Finn to get his dirty feet off the nice, clean control panel.

“I don’t think it’s First Order,” Finn said, clambering down.  “Sorry, Chewie.”

The Wookiee murmured something to the effect that he had better be sorry.

“Looks like a bulk freighter,” Rose said, scrutinizing the ship.  Baleen-class, I think.”

A crackle came from the comms.  “This is the Wattled Purrgil,” said a voice.  “Are you the folks who sent out the distress call?”

Poe pressed a button.  “Yes,” he replied.  “This is the Pomojema.  We seem to be having some trouble with our hyperdrive.”

“You should be able to fit into the docking bay if you maneuver carefully.  It’s a bit cluttered, I’m afraid.”

“Copy that.  Over,” Poe said, turning off the comms.

“Do you think we can trust him?” Finn asked.

“What other options do we have?  It beats floating in space for weeks,” Rose shot back.

Poe adjusted the controls and let the Falcon coast towards the open docking bay of the larger cargo ship.  He expertly maneuvered in, sliding between a half-deconstructed interstellar transport and a rack of deactivated loading droids.

The Resistance crew exited the Falcon and looked around for the owner of the freighter.  An elderly man emerged from the dark recesses of the docking bay.  He had a large, white beard and was wearing grimy, grease-stained coveralls.

“Howdy, folks,” the man said.  “The name’s Fobis, Fobis Doolevy.  I’m the captain of this ship.”

“Pleased to meet you, Captain Doolevy,” Poe said.  “My names’s Kes.”

“Nice to meetcha, Captain Kes.  You say you’ve got hyperdrive problems?”

“Yes, the damage is pretty substantial.  We might have to replace the whole thing.”

Fobis asked, “Permission to come aboard?”

“Sure,” responded Poe nonchalantly.

Poe and Chewbacca led Fobis into the Falcon.  The rest of the crew remained outside and looked around the interior of the bulk freighter.

“Well, Captain Doolevy certainly won’t win any awards for neatness,” C-3PO said, casting a disapproving glance about him.  His observation was not unwarranted.  Ship parts, cargo hauling devices, and food wrappers were strewn haphazardly across the floor or collected into piles.  Wires and cables hung from the ceiling like lianas and vines in a tropical jungle.  The walls of the landing bay were obscured by mountains of junk and detritus.  There were few lights, lending a murky feel.

BB-8 rolled forward into the depths of the docking bay.

“Should we stop him?” Finn asked as the astromech disappeared into the gloom.

“Let him explore,” Rose said, sitting down on a crate.  “I don’t think he’ll get into too much trouble.”

BB-8 wove through piles of junk, looking for anything interesting.  A cone-shaped piece of white and green metal, its narrow end pointed downwards, caught his attention.  Three long antennae stuck out of the cone’s wide end.  He beeped curiously.  As he rolled closer, he realized that it was the head of a small droid, shrouded in dirt and cobwebs.

BB-8 gingerly reached out with a mechanical arm and pressed a port on the antenna-dotted wide end of the conical head.  It shot upwards, revealing that it was balanced on a single wide wheel by a metal pole attached to the axle.

“Ba-battery—charged,” the droid said tinnily.  He turned his head and rolled back and forth, his wheel squeaking, as he focused on his reviver.  “He-hello.”

BB-8 beeped at him and led him towards the Falcon.

Rose looked down as the droids rolled up to her.

“Hello-hello,” said the green and white droid.

“Hello,” Rose replied, reaching towards him.

The droid scooted away from her hand.  “No-no-no thank you.”

“Looks like someone treated you badly,” said Rose.  “It’s all right, I won’t hurt you.  What’s your name?”

“D-d-Dee-Oh,” the timid droid stuttered.

“Dee-Oh?”

He nodded.

Fobis emerged from the Falcon, Poe and Chewbacca following.  “You’re in luck,” he proclaimed.  “I’ve got some Isu-Sim parts sitting around someplace in here.  Let’s see, was it this pile?  No, that one.”

He reached into one of the mounds of metal and began to pull out mechanical components.  “Zimfeld nozzle,” he rattled off, handing a tube to Poe.  “Durkheim channel, Flume Capacitor, Neutron Pack.”

Soon, Poe, Chewbacca, and Finn were carrying armfuls of tools and hyperdrive parts.  They headed back into the light freighter.  Fobis hefted his own bundle and moved to follow them, but Rose stepped in front of him.

“Is this your droid?” she asked, pointing at D-O.

Fobis leaned forward and stared at the droid.  “I can’t say I’ve ever seen it before,” he confessed.  “If I have, it must not have registered.  I don’t have much use for any 'droid that can’t carry cargo.  I bought this ship off a Bestoonian a few years back; it came with a lot of junk.  It was probably his.”

“He seems to have been through some bad things.”

“That’s quite possible.  That Bestoonian seemed like a rough customer.  Odd thing is, he gave me a great deal, barely haggled.”  Fobis stroked his beard.  “He almost seemed like he was glad to get rid of this ship.”

Rose digested this information.  “If you don’t have any use for him, may he come with us?  If he wants to, that is.”

They looked at D-O, who was driving circles around BB-8 and chanting, “Friend—friend.”

“Sure,” Fobis said.  “No skin off my snout, as a Kubaz I used to know always said.  Now, let’s go get your hyperdrive fixed.”

“A capital idea, Captain Doolevy,” C-3PO said as they boarded the Millennium Falcon.  “I never before thought I could miss standing on solid ground so much.”

 

“Well, I’d say your hyperdrive should work now,” Fobis said as Finn secured the final new component in place.

“Thank you for your help, Captain,” Poe said.  “You’ve done us a great service.  Is there any way we can repay you?”

“Oh, no, no.” Fobis waved his hand.  “I’m only too happy to help a fellow spacer.  There’ve been plenty of times I’ve been helped out tight jams by strangers; I’d be a pretty sorry fellow if I couldn’t pass it on to others.”

Poe escorted the older man to the Millennium Falcon’s boarding ramp.  “Thank you again.”

“Safe travels and fair stars to you,” Fobis said, giving a two-fingered salute.  “Oh, and one more thing…”

“What?” Poe asked.

Fobis’s eyes twinkled.  “If you see the last Jedi, Commander Dameron, give her my regards.”

Poe looked at him for a moment.  “Okay,” he said finally as he closed the boarding ramp.  “May the Force be with you.”

Fobis watched as The Millennium Falcon pulled out of the docking bay, turned, and flew away.  Its engines lit up briefly as it made the jump to hyperspace, and then it was gone.

Fobis turned away and walked back towards the bridge of his freighter.  “Never can tell who you’ll meet in this galaxy,” he said, shaking his head.  “Never can tell.”

 

A gray-hided Gronk boar picked its way along a rocky ridge on Remnicore, using its three tusks to root for any bits of organic matter on the ground that might prove edible.  Suddenly, alerted by some primal instinct, it began to run, only to be halted as its hooves lifted off the ground.  The boar struggled against the invisible grip, running in place and squealing wildly, but to no avail.  Its eyes rolled back in its head as the Living Force was drained from it, flowing into a black-gloved hand.  Muscle and fat shriveled away until the animal was little more than skin hanging loosely off of bone.

Kylo Ren opened his eyes and let go of the creature’s withered husk, letting it drop to the ground.  His face had more life now, eyes bright, angry red traceries gone.

The scar Rey had given him on Starkiller remained, however.  When Kylo had asked why, Tor Valum had said simply, “Some wounds are best healed by those who inflicted them.”

Now, Tor Valum looked at Kylo with a broad smile.  “You have grown strong in this technique.  You are almost a master in it.”

“Teach me more,” Kylo requested.

“I know things that would split your mind asunder were I to reveal them to you.” Tor Valum said.  “I can teach you little you could safely handle that you do not already possess.”

Kylo Ren was only partially listening to his master’s words, his attention drawn to an opening in the rock face.  A faint glow came from within it.

“What’s down there?” Kylo asked.

Tor Valum followed his gaze.  “A vergence in the Force.  A place strong in the dark…and the light.”

“I can feel it.”

“If you are drawn to it, you must enter, or it will give you no rest.  Go.”

Kylo picked his mask up off the boulder it rested upon and placed it on his head.  He drew his lightsaber and descended into the cave.

The red light from Kylo’s saber was refracted by the cavern’s ice-covered walls.  The space seemed vast and empty.  Yet Kylo could sense a presence, one that he had never encountered before, but which was still strangely familiar.

From the darkness came the sound of labored, mechanically-assisted breathing.  Kylo strained his eyes into the darkness, trying to make out the source of the noise.  He could feel the presence drawing nearer to him, the breathing growing louder.  Then another lightsaber sprang to life in the cave, casting a dim red glow on the hulking, black-armored form of Darth Vader.

“Grandfather?” Kylo asked.

Vader did not respond.  Instead, he stepped forward, swinging his lightsaber at Kylo’s head.  Kylo parried the blow easily.  Vader took a step back and then lashed out again.  Kylo beat his sword aside and lunged.

Vader dodged with surprising speed and struck back, Kylo barely managing to catch the Dark Lord’s lightsaber on the crossguard of his own.  The two combatants pulled back and circled each other, looking for any opening.

Kylo Ren launched a vicious assault, hammering blows against his ancestor, but it was like attacking a wall.  Vader firmly blocked each attack, no matter how brutal or subtle.

“You are strong,” Darth Vader boomed, his voice echoing in the cave, “but you are no Sith.”

“I don’t…have to be,” panted Kylo.  He felt himself beginning to tire.

Vader seemed to sense Kylo’s weakness.  His lightsaber became a blur, seeming to strike at Kylo from every direction.  It was only a matter of time before one of his blows landed.

Finally, it happened.  Kylo shunted aside a swift cut at his legs, but was unable to lift his blade in time to stop the Sith Lord’s next swing.  Vader slashed him across the chest.  Kylo screamed in pain and fell to the ground.

Kylo struggled to remove his helmet.  He finally managed to pull it off, gasping for breath.  He looked down at his chest.  The wound was gone.

Darth Vader loomed over him.  His lightsaber snapped off.  A glow from within the ice itself reflected off his armor.

Kylo knelt.  “Show me how to be strong like you,” he said, “Grandfather.”

Vader reached up with both hands.  There was a hiss of air as he pulled off the top part of his helmet, then removed the collar containing the breathing apparatus from around his neck.

Where Vader had been, there now stood a dashing young man, his face framed by long, light brown hair.  He had a scar running through his right eyebrow.  The life support armor had faded away, replaced by dark robes.

Anakin Skywalker examined the black mask he held in his hands.  “This is not strength,” he said.  He let Vader’s helmet fall to the ground, where it shattered into dozens of pieces.

“It is weakness.  I sought power to save those I loved, but in the process I destroyed them and everything they fought for.  I was reduced to a shell of a man, unable to survive apart from machinery.  Why do you seek power?”

“To destroy Snoke,” Kylo answered.  “To rule the galaxy.”

“No,” interjected Anakin.  “To hide your shame for what you did to your parents.  To your uncle.”

Luke betrayed me!” shouted Kylo.  Your son tried to kill me.”

“And in retaliation you burned down his temple and slaughtered his students.”

“As you once did,” Kylo countered.

“You don’t have to repeat my mistakes, Ben,” Anakin said.  “Stop this while you still can, while a few others still care about you.”

Kylo narrowed his eyes.  “I understand you now.  Your weakness.  Your pain.  You allowed love to cloud your judgement.  I will succeed where you failed.  Snoke shall fall, as will anyone else in my way.”

“And then what?” asked Anakin.

“I….” Kylo faltered.  “I don’t know.”

“The darkness is not your destiny.  Turn back to the light, Ben.”  Anakin stepped back into the shadows and faded from view.

Kylo Ren staggered out of the cave confused and troubled.  Tor Valum was waiting patiently by its entrance.

“Tell me about Mortis,” Kylo said.

Tor Valum responded, “It is the well of the Living Force.  The source of the galaxy’s birth.  A crossroads where the cosmic and the material meet.”

“I want to be stronger than those who came before,” said Kylo, hunger burning in his eyes.  “Where is it?”

“I can show you the way,” Tor Valum said.  “But you must do me a favor.”

“What favor?”

Tor Valum grinned.  “You will not find it difficult.  You have done it often enough before.  But first, I must tell you a tale.  Sit.”

Kylo Ren sat on the rocky ground.

“You think me hideous, do you not?”  Tor Valum raised a hand to stay Kylo’s answer.  “No, I see it in your eyes…I am perfectly aware of how I appear to others.  Yet I was not always so.

“Once, a long time ago, I was glorious and majestic to behold.  My sole purpose was to preserve and protect this planet.  I kept light and darkness, life and death, in balance, and shielded my world from those who would ravage it and exploit its resources.  Yet I grew proud, and hungered after knowledge forbidden to my kind.  It corrupted my heart, although it did not yet touch my flesh.

“Nevertheless, I grew wise, as I thought, in the dark side of the Force.  Beings came from across the galaxy, as you did, to learn my ways.  But they then used my teachings to bring suffering and destruction.  So others came, strong in the light, to prevent anyone from learning from me.”

“The Jedi,” Kylo said.

“Yes,” acknowledged Tor Valum.  “The Jedi and the Sith fought a great and bloody battle before my fortress.  I tried to stop their fight, but my power and theirs combined and escaped the control of any of us.  Strange energies and magics were released, warping the land.  They turned me into the creature you see before you, now as twisted on the outside as I was within.  But the fight at last was ended; the combatants had been wiped out.

“I emerged from the ruins of my fortress to a desolate wasteland.  Little life is now left on my world, except for scrawny plants, sickly animals, and those poor creatures who saved you from your ship.

“Since that day, I have taught but two other beings.  You are one.”

“The other…is Snoke,” Kylo realized.

“Yes,” Tor Valum admitted.  “Another of my great mistakes.  The only reason I was willing to train you was because I knew you would wish to kill him.  But before you can destroy Snoke, you must find Mortis.  Reach into my mind.”

Kylo Ren stretched out his hand.  There was a shock of unfamiliarity as he entered the ancient creature’s brain; it was unlike any he had experienced before, as much pure Force energy as it was neurons and synapses.

“Do you see it?” asked Tor Valum, gritting his teeth as his thoughts were probed.

“I see it,” Kylo said.  “A mountain in winter.  No, autumn.”

“Can you see the way?”

“Yes.  Across the stars, and then…sideways.”

“You have what you need.”

Kylo pulled out of Tor Valum’s mind.

“Now: the favor,” Tor Valum said.  “I grow weary of this wretched form, and this near-dead world.  Kill me, that I may leave them.  And then, perhaps, I shall take a new form, and my world will grow again.”

Kylo Ren drew his lightsaber.  “You’re certain you want this?”

“Yes…strike me down!”

Kylo drove his lightsaber into his master’s chest, then turned it off.  Tor Valum gasped in pain and sank to the ground.  His body disappeared into nothingness, leaving only a tattered robe.  Thank you,” a voice whispered as a chill wind caught the garment, carrying it up over a ridge and out of sight.

Kylo stood silently for a moment.  Then he turned and headed for his TIE whisper.

 

It was night, but General Leia was still awake, looking out over the jungle of Ajan Kloss.

“He is going to Mortis,” a voice said.

Leia did not seem startled.  “I feel it too.”

Luke Skywalker’s spirit stepped forward to stand by his sister’s side.  “He’ll soon be more powerful than our father.”

“So will she.”

“She feels too much.  Love.  Anger.”

“Don’t we all?” Leia asked, giving him a look.

Luke smiled slightly.  “Well…”

“I’ve lost everything, and everyone.  But I would still choose to love.”

They stood in silence for a while.

Finally, Leia asked, “Can he be saved?”

“I don’t know.”  Luke paused, then continued, “It’s almost time.”

“I know,” said Leia.  “Will he be there?”

“All who were, and some who are yet to be, are here.”

Leia looked at her brother.  “Trust her instincts.  She may not follow the path of the Jedi, but she’s our only hope.”

Chapter 12: Mortis

Chapter Text

Chapter Twelve

 

Mortis

 

A persistent beeping awoke Rey from a fitful slumber.  She stumbled out of a bunk in the rear of the Knife 10 and sat down in the pilot’s seat.  A screen on the control panel stated that she had almost reached the destination she had entered into the navicomputer upon leaving Wavett.

Rey pushed forward the hyperspace lever.  The assault ship dropped into realspace.  There were no stars or planets nearby, only empty vacuum for light-years around.  Rey used her instruments to scan the closest stars, but found nothing out of the ordinary.

Rey closed her eyes.  Mortis,” she thought.  Mortis.”  Her brow furrowed with mental effort.

Nothing happened.  Words might have power, but apparently thinking the name of her destination would not conjure it up.

Rey mulled the problem before her.  When she started this journey, she had known she would have to use the unfamiliar power of “Sky-Walking” without the aid of a teacher.  She thought back to when she had first begun to use the Force.  It worked best when she didn’t try too hard, instead letting herself act naturally.

Rey breathed in and out deeply and steadily, clearing her mind of worry and tension.  Then she thought, not of the name Mortis, but of the images of the world she had seen in her visions…lush forests, snowy mountains, a temple carved in the rock….

She suddenly knew Mortis’s location, seeing the path to it as clearly as if she went there every day.  Rey reached forward as though in a trance and manipulated the controls.  The Knife 10 jumped into hyperspace, guided only by Rey’s own intuition.

 

In the briefing room of the Resistance base on Ajan Kloss, General Leia and a small group of officers and leaders of Resistance cells were gathered around a holotable.  Colonel Connix stood next to Leia, determinedly stifling a yawn.  The room was distractingly warm, the sweltering heat of the jungle outside overwhelming the secondhand climate control equipment of the base.

“We appreciate what you’ve brought us, General Syndulla, but what we need are people, not weapons,” said Commander Larma D’Acy, her hair tied back with a bandanna.

“I know that, Commander,” the Twi’lek General across from her replied in an eminently reasonable tone.  “Phoenix Squadron is doing all it can to recruit more personnel.  But asking people to leave their daily lives to fight a war is never easy, and it won’t be any easier after that broadcast.”

A voice floated through the open door leading out of the base.  “Hey, Falcon’s back!”  Connix looked up to see a flash of orange as a starfighter pilot ran by.

She leaned closer to Leia.  “May I be excused?” she whispered.

“Yes,” Leia granted.

Connix left the shadowy bunker and stepped out into the late afternoon sun.  Technicians, troopers, and pilots rushed past, many carrying fire extinguishing equipment.  Connix was swept up in the mad dash of people scrambling downhill towards the battered, flaming light freighter in the middle of the clearing.

“Come on, get over here!” someone called.

A man waved and pointed at the ship.  “I need a fire crew here!  And another one in the back, go, go!

“It’s on fire!” Poe shouted, emerging from the cloud of smoke.  “The whole thing’s on fire, all of it’s…it’s on fire.”

Connix walked up to him and saluted.  “Commander.”

“Hey,” Poe responded, half-heartedly returning the salute.  He sounded worn out.

“How’d it go out there?”

“Really bad, actually,” huffed Poe.  “Really bad.”

“No spy?”

“No,” Poe replied.  “Spy.”

“Did we make contact with the spy or not?” Connix asked, annoyed.

“There’s a mole in the First Order and they sent us a message,” Finn said as he joined them.  “It basically told us what we all just learned.”

“Wait.”  Connix held up a finger.  “Where’s Rey?”

“She went on alone,” Poe said.  “To look for Mortis.  Her choice, not mine.”

Chewbacca roared something.

“Hey, we could use a medic over here!” Rose called.

A woman wearing an armband with MED written on it in large letters rushed to the Wookiee’s side and opened her field kit, pulling out a healing field generator and some bacta bulbs.

Poe said, “I’ve gotta see the General.”

“She’s in a meeting right now, but there’s an all-personnel assembly at nineteen-hundred.  You can tell us all what you’ve learned then.”  Connix motioned for Poe to follow her.  “Come on, there’s something I need to show you.”

 

A pair of blast doors opened.  Connix led Poe, Finn, Rose, and BB-8 across the bridge of the captured Star Destroyer.

“Take a look,” she said.

Poe stared out the viewport.  “Wow.”

Before them stretched an enormous orange starbird symbol, painted atop the hull of the capital ship.  The “wings” and “head” pointed directly towards the bow.

“Welcome to the Rebel Eclipse,” said Connix.  “That’s what the troops have taken to calling it.”

“Impressive,” Rose said.  “Most impressive.”

“It was done by a Mandalorian artist,” Connix explained.  “Her methods were quite… explosive.”

“I’ll bet,” said Poe, grinning.

“If we hurry, we might be able to catch her before she leaves.”

 

They followed Connix into the enormous armory of the ship.  Crowds of Resistance soldiers and mechanics were inside the vast hangar, painting and retrofitting First Order ships and vehicles.

Connix led them towards a cluster of AT-STs with teeth and red stripes drawn on their sides.  On top of a movable ladder next to one of the walkers sat an armored figure, spray-painting a zig-zag pattern on the war machine.

“Sabine?” Connix called.

The figure slid down the ladder, landing lightly on her feet.  She was clad in orange and blue armor, complementing her orange-tipped black hair.  A pair of hefty blaster pistols was holstered on her hips.

“Hello,” Sabine said.  “I hope you don’t mind that I drew on your Star Destroyer, Commander Dameron.  I was willing to wait for you to get back, but Leia said I could go ahead, and, well…she’s the General.”

“That she is,” agreed Poe.  “And I don’t mind.  It’s an amazing piece.”

“Thank you,” said Sabine, inclining her head.  “For the compliment, and for giving me such a large canvas to work on.”

“I’m surprised you know my name,” Poe said.

“Are you kidding?  I have your poster on my wall.”

“You have a poster?” Finn asked, dumbfounded.

“Long story,” Poe said.  “Tell you later.”

Sabine turned to Rose.  “You must be Commander Tico.  Your mechanics are very efficient.”

“Thank you.”

“Some of them show real talent.  One of them painted a terrific rancor head,” she said, jerking her thumb at a walker.

“Poe, who is this person?” Finn asked quietly.

Sabine apparently heard him.  “You’re Finn, right?” she said.  It was more a statement than a question.  “The defector?  I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Finn looked bemused.  “I wish I could say the same.”

“I’m Sabine Wren.  I’m a rebel…and an artist…and a fair number of other things, too.”

“Trust me, Finn, she’s been in this fight a long time,” Poe said.  “How’s Phoenix Squadron?”

“We could be a lot better.  It’s a challenge just to get enough people to fight.  The First Order’s grip is even tighter than the Galactic Empire’s.  The Empire at least put on a show of benevolence in the early years, to hide what it really was.  These thugs use sheer terror.”

“I know.  We sent out a call for help at the battle of Crait.”  Poe shook his head.  “Nobody came.  Everyone’s so afraid.  They’ve given up.  Maybe the war’s already over, and we just haven’t stopped fighting it yet.”

“Nah…I don’t think you really believe that.  Remember: there are more of us.”

“Sabine!”

They all whirled to see a green-skinned Twi’lek in a utilitarian jumpsuit walking towards them.  She was flanked by a green-haired man about Poe’s age and a short, battered, gray and orange astromech droid.

“Sabine, we’d better get going if we want to make the rendezvous with the Ryloth Defense Force.”

“Okay, Hera,” Sabine said, picking up a rounded helmet and tucking it under her arm.  She shrugged at the others.  “Gotta go.  You’ll have to decorate the rest of this stuff without my help.”

Poe said, “It was very nice to finally meet you, Sabine.”

“You too.  Bye.”  She flashed three fingers in the air in a Starbird symbol as she followed General Syndulla out of the hangar.

Connix looked at Poe.  “What’s the message?”

 

A large crowd of Resistance fighters had gathered around a cluster of computer consoles under the cockpit of the Tantive IV.  Stragglers joined the group’s margins as Poe spoke.

“We’ve decoded the intel from the First Order spy, and it confirms the worst.”  He sighed.  “Somehow, Snoke has returned.”

There was a murmur from the crowd.  Finn met Leia’s gaze.  The General looked down.

Commander D’Acy seemed skeptical.  “Wait.  Do we believe this?”

“It cannot be,” protested Colonel Aftab Ackbar.  “The Supreme Leader is dead.  The last Jedi herself saw him killed!”

“Dark science,” postulated Beaumont Kin.  Snap Wexley looked over at him.  “Cloning.  Secrets only the Sith knew.”

“I’m the last to doubt Rey’s word, but we all saw that transmission.  And we got this intel before it,” said Poe.

“There were always whispers,” Captain Kin said.  “That he wasn’t really gone, that he had found a way to cheat death.”

Poe said grimly, “So Snoke’s been out there all this time.  Since the Clone Wars, or before.  Pulling the strings.”

Leia looked at him.  “Always in the shadows, from the very beginning.”

“He’s been planning his revenge,” Poe continued.  “The First Order—the Final Order—has a new strategy for ensuring control, called Base Delta Omega.”

“It’s a new form of orbital bombardment,” explained Rose.  “They can fire a Star Destroyer’s axial superlaser into a planet’s core, unleashing earthquakes and causing catastrophic climatic damage.  It’ll kill everyone on the planet, without using the amounts of energy a Death Star or Starkiller weapon would require.”

“In seventy-two hours, attacks on all free worlds begin,” Poe concluded.

Chewbacca groaned sadly, shaking his head.

“If we want to stop him, we must strike now,” said Maz Kanata.  “We must rally the galaxy.”

“I have the Kyber crystals to activate the beacon.  We leave tomorrow,” Finn said.

R2-D2 chirped.

“Why, yes, I suppose I am ready for a vacation to Coruscant.  It should be much more relaxing than my last trip.”  C-3PO somehow managed to give the impression that he was inwardly shuddering in horror.

“Very well then,” Leia said.  “Meeting dismissed.  May the Force be with us all.”

 

The Knife 10 dropped out of lightspeed into swirling, roiling clouds of carmine and cobalt, the colours mingling and separating.  Violent winds rocked the vessel.  Rey guided it through the maelstrom, swooping around plumes of superheated gas and the floating, desiccated carcasses of huge spacefaring creatures.  After a few minutes, the nebula parted, revealing an enormous black circle the size of a planet.

The ship rattled as alarms blared.  It was being pulled inexorably towards the darkness.

Rey had heard old spacers tell stories of objects like this, supermassive null points in the galaxy from which nothing could escape, not even light.  No one really knew what happened to ships that entered them.  Were they ripped apart into streams of energetic particles?  Spit out into some other realm?  Or did they simply float for all eternity in a sea of blackness?

She would know soon enough.  Rey pulled back on the lightspeed lever and made the jump into the void.  Stars streaked into straight lines, then warped and twisted as she passed into the black hole.  Rey saw an image of the Knife 10 before her.  The light reflected off of the ship had been bent as it traveled all the way around the gravitational anomaly until it returned to its source.  Then there were an infinity of Knife 10’s stretching into the blackness, and an infinity of Reys sitting in their cockpits, like in the Mirror cave on Ahch-To.

Images flickered rapidly across Rey’s vision, like splinters of her mind’s eye:

Finn, covered in dust and lying on his back, takes her outstretched hand/Han Solo hands her a blaster pistol/Kylo Ren reaches into her mind/Leia smiles as she boards the Falcon to find Luke takes the lightsaber Snoke snarls Poe yells “Rey!” Hattaska Ren’s electrified mask

…and then it all stopped.

There was a planet in her path.  Heavy clouds swirled over part of it.  To the left of the clouds was an area of rich green; to the right, barren rock dotted with orange and red points of flaming lava.  Distant, unfamiliar stars were visible, but the globe did not seem to orbit a sun.  Nevertheless, the world was brightly lit.

Suddenly, the Knife 10’s power shut off.  The lights on the dashboard went dark as it dropped into free fall.  The underside of the ship glowed with heat and caught fire as it plunged into the atmosphere.

Rey tried frantically to restore electricity, but to no avail.  The controls were completely dead.  The surface of the planet rose quickly, rushing up to meet the crippled craft.

The power flicked back on.  Rey heaved back on the throttle, struggling to pull out of the uncontrolled dive.  Branches lashed the Knife 10 as it skimmed through treetops.  Then it crashed into a riverbed, shuddering to a stop.

Steam rose, vaporized by the heat of the downed ship.  Tiny fish leapt out of the water and ran away on stubby fins.

Rey pried herself out of the Knife 10 and sloshed to the riverbank.  She looked back at the smoking ship.  No turning back now, she thought.

Rey stepped into the dense forest.  As she hiked, the leaves changed color at an accelerated rate, green pigment dying as summer became fall.

The trees parted as the ground fell away in a steep ledge before Rey.  The valley below was covered in brilliant, shining autumnal reds, yellows, and oranges.  Hills covered in greenery floated above, held aloft by no visible support.  A line of snow-covered mountains towered beyond them.  A stone temple was barely visible at the summit of the highest peak.

She descended into the valley.

 

Kylo Ren landed his TIE whisper on a stony tor.  He emerged from the starfighter and scanned his surroundings.  Barren rock stretched away in every direction, occasionally dotted with clumps of dead trees, their bare branches rustling in a chill wind.  In the distance was a mountain range, partially obscured by wispy white streaks of mist.

Kylo could feel that the Force was strong in this place.  He set off towards the mountains.  Soon, white fog had enveloped him.  He trudged onwards, unable to see more than a few meters ahead.

A deep gorge appeared out of the haze before him, cutting through the ground.  It was spanned by a natural bridge of stone.  Tall granite slabs reared on either side, roughly shaped into brutish faces.  It felt like a gate; to what, he wasn’t certain.

A whisper of wind swirled around him, fluttering his cape.  It almost seemed to say something.  Kylo crossed the bridge and continued onwards.

As he drew closer to the mountains, the trees grew thicker and more alive, forming a forest.  Snow began to fall, covering the trees.  Glimpses of the temple atop the mountain broke through the canopy above.

Suddenly, the wind stopped blowing.  Ahead of Kylo stood a house, smoke rising from its chimney.

A black-robed figure, a hood covering its head, approached the house.  It grabbed the iron door handle and twisted it.  The door swung open.

In the doorway stood Han Solo.  His hair was graying and his face was beginning to show the signs of years of stress and hard living, but he was not yet the old man he had been on Starkiller Base.  He was wearing a beaten, fur-lined brown coat and thick trousers.  “What are you doing, Ben?” he asked.

“That’s not my name anymore,” said the robed figure.  Kylo, watching from the shadow of a spiny tree, recognized it as his own voice.  There was something different about it, though; it was…younger.  The voice of a boy, not a man.

“Your mother can’t see you here.  Not like that.”

The boy pulled his hood down.  Kylo caught a brief glimpse of his pimply, beardless teenaged self.

“I’m not coming back,” the young Ben Solo said.  “There’s a greater destiny for me.”

His father regarded him with sadness and fear.  “It’s a lie, son.  Empty promises.  You have everything you need right here.”

“What, you?  Her?  You were never there for me when I needed you,” said Ben bitterly.  “My master says I have unequalled power.  Neither of you understand.”

Han shook his head.  “Your mother understands more than anyone.”

“She sent me away.”

“To learn.  To grow.”

“I have grown.”

Han stepped forward, closing the distance between himself and his son.  “Your mother loves you.”

“She’s afraid of me.”

Han’s gaze fell to the lightsaber hanging from Ben’s belt.  It was long and black, with two side vents and exposed wires hanging out messily.  Han held out his hand.  “Give me the lightsaber, son.”

Ben stared at his father, his expression betraying the turmoil inside him.  “You know I can’t.”

 

The light dies around Kylo.  He looks at his father’s face, bathed in blood-red light.  His grip tightens on the lightsaber.

He plunges the blade into Han Solo.  Han’s expression is one of shock, sadness.  Betrayal.

“Thank you,” Kylo says, his voice shaking.  He pulls the saber out of his father’s chest.

Han reaches up, his arm shaking, and lightly touches his son’s cheek.  His eyes are full of love even as the life drains from him and he falls away.

 

Kylo snapped out of the vision.  He was kneeling in the snow, disturbed, shaken, and alone once more.

He rose to his feet and took his first steps up the mountain.

 

Rey scaled the icy peak, blasted by wind and sleet.  She reached a plateau and climbed onto it, silently thanking the Force for a brief chance to rest.

Two tall stone statues stood on either side of the ledge.  Their features had been partially worn away by time and weather, but one seemed to be a woman with flowing hair, the other a bald man with a sinister expression.

Rey sat down, taking deep breaths of thin, oxygen-poor air.  As she leaned against the mountain, the rocks behind her gave way.  She tumbled backwards into darkness.

 

In an underground chamber is a rough-hewn throne, jagged spikes of stone fanned out behind it.  Upon it sits Rey, in robes of blackest midnight.  To her right hand stands Kylo Ren, maskless and holding his saber at the ready.

A Final Order officer enters the chamber and kneels before them.  “Empress, all the preparations have been completed,” he says.

Rey orders, “Execute Protocol Base Delta Omega.”

Holograms appear in the air above them, showing dozens of planets, each with a Star Destroyer in orbit above it.  The Destroyers fire beams of blazing red light from cannons on their undersides.  One by one, each world is torn open, surfaces heaving as plumes of smoke and magma explode from their cores.

Rey smiles.

 

Rey scrambled to her feet.  She was in a cave, lit only by the light slanting down from the narrow crevice she had fallen through, around two meters above the floor.  She could see no other way out.  She felt around on the rock wall for a handhold, but then paused.  She sensed…something.  A presence.

Rey spun to see her own face, lit by the ghastly crimson glow of two parallel lightsaber blades.  She stepped back.  Her doppelgänger flipped one of the shafts of energy down on a hinge to form a double-bladed saber like Rey’s own.

“Don’t be afraid of who you are,” the double said, in an oddly comforting tone.  She stepped forward and swung viciously at Rey.

Rey barely managed to bring her own lightsaber up in time to deflect her dark opposite’s attack.  The black-robed figure lashed out with the speed of a striking snake.  Rey counterattacked, parried, deflected, and blocked, all in just a few moments.

The double folded her unstable blades together, trapping Rey’s own weapon between them.  Rey stared at her in horror.  The doppelgänger snarled at her, baring sharply pointed teeth.

Rey stumbled backwards and fell through an opening that had been hidden behind a corner of the cave wall.  Her lightsaber shut off.  She stood up.  She was on a narrow overhang of rock sticking out from the mountainside, a dizzying drop before her.  A narrow path on one side wound upwards towards the plateau with the statues.

Rey peered back into the cave.  She could see only darkness.  She turned away from it and continued her climb.

 

Kylo Ren reached the mountaintop and studied the temple carved into it.  Uninterpretable runes, carvings, and symbols covered the façade of the imposing stone structure.  A heavy, sealed door was set in the center.  Stairs led down from a wide platform before the door to a flat terrace covering most of the height.  Opposite the steps, a broad bridge stretched to the tip of a much thinner peak, perhaps a hundred meters away.

Rey stood on the platform atop the stairs, several meters to the left of the door.  Kylo climbed the steps one at a time.  The white-robed Jedi-in-training and the masked, black-clad warrior of darkness faced each other.

“I knew you would come,” Kylo grated.

“How did you know I was still on Jakku?  And why didn’t you tell Snoke?” Rey asked.  “Tell me.”

“I looked into your mother’s mind.  She fought me with everything she had, but it wasn’t enough.  I saw where they had hidden you.  But I also saw you.  And that someday, you would fight by my side.” Kylo answered.  He stepped forward slowly.  Rey stayed where she was, determined to not back down this time.  “Snoke wanted you because of your power.  He claimed he linked our minds, but that was a lie.  What Snoke doesn’t know is we’re a dyad in the Force, Rey.  Two that are one.”

Kylo stopped directly in front of the stone door.  “The living Force binds us together.  As my power grows, so does yours.  Once I realized we had this connection, I knew I had to protect you.  So I buried the information deep in my mind, where Snoke couldn’t see it.  Even I forgot how much I knew.  It wasn’t until I returned to Jakku, searching for the map to Skywalker, that I began to remember.”

“You let them die,” Rey accused.

“There was no way to save them.  If I had let them be taken to Snoke, he would have broken their minds.  And then you would be dead too.”  Kylo turned his helmeted head towards the temple.  “The Force is strong in this place.  Can you feel it?  It makes our bond stronger too.”

Rey dug into his mind.  It was very easy.  “You’re in pain.  Beneath that mask.”

“Get out of my head.  You won’t like what you find.”  Kylo made a shoving motion.  Rey’s feet slid backwards a bit, but she held out a hand, using the Force to anchor herself in place.

“I’m stronger than Anakin Skywalker,” Kylo lied.  “Stronger than his son.”

“But you’re still afraid.”

“Of what?  You?  Snoke?”

“Of what you’ve become,” said Rey.  “The Dark Side has left you empty.  Alone.”

“I don’t have to be alone.  With the power of this place, we could rule the galaxy as the Ancients did.  The Dark Side and the Light.  We’ll kill him—together—and take the throne.”  There was a mechanical click as Kylo pulled off his helmet.  He met Rey’s gaze.

“You know what you need to do,” Kylo breathed, his voice low.  “You know.”  He held out his black-gloved left hand.

“I do,” she spat.  “You murdered Han Solo….”

“I’m not here for you, Rey.”

“Killed thousands, allowed millions of people to die…and you still think I would join you?”

Kylo’s jaw tightened.  “All I want is behind that door.”

Rey ignited her dual-bladed lightsaber.  “Then you’ll have to kill me.”

She swung at Kylo.  He retreated and dodged aside, sliding on the smooth stone, as she spun and lunged.  Finally, he brought up his own saber.  Sparks flew as the energy beams crashed into each other.  Then he wheeled and leapt to the foot of the stairs.  Rey jumped after him.

 

A light drizzle of rain fell on Ajan Kloss.  Inside the Resistance base, a pair of headphones slammed against the side of a computer console.  General Leia pressed her hand down against the control board.  She could sense Rey and her son’s conflict.  At the same time, she felt an ache in her chest.  Her time was drawing near; she had accepted that already.  She could only hope that the rest of the Resistance would carry on, and that her passing might help her son come back to the light.

Beaumont Kin, Rose, Snap Wexley, and a few other pilots and techs glanced up from their screens as Leia walked slowly towards the rear of the cavern.

“General?” Poe called, walking towards her.  “General!”

Maz Kanata halted him.  “Leia knows what must be done, Poe.  To save her son now will take all the strength she has left.”

R2-D2 gave a low, mournful whistle as Connix rushed to Leia’s side and helped her along.

“Get Finn and Chewie,” Poe told Rose.  She ran for the barracks.

 

Rey cut at Kylo, who parried and backed away, cape swirling around him.  The wind had picked up, carrying drops of rain that made the rock slick and slippery.  Almost immediately, Kylo had felt outmatched.  He was unused to fighting someone wielding a double blade.  As soon as he parried one strike, another was rushing towards him from an unexpected direction.  He swung wildly at Rey as she lunged, but his saber only scored the stone floor.  He barely stopped her next chop with a quillon.

Rey twirled her saberstaff, readying another attack, but Kylo was ready this time.  He blocked her downward stroke and made a few quick slices to keep her blade engaged while he attempted to outflank her.  She turned to face him, but he locked her sword with his and spun it in an attempt to disarm her.  The move threw her off balance.

Rey grunted and stepped backwards, taking a moment to recover before counterattacking.  Kylo deflected and ducked, the sapphire saber whizzing over his head.  Rey sliced and thrust at him violently, but then paused.  Their blades crackled against each other as she stared at something behind Kylo, loose strands of wet hair plastered against her face.  Kylo took the risk of glancing back.  A dark, ominous storm cloud rolled towards them, thunder rumbling as lightning flashed within.

Rain began to pour from the sky, pounding the grey stone of the bridge as Rey pressed Kylo back onto it.  She shouted with effort, teeth gritted, as she spun and slammed her sword against his.  Flashes of blue and red lit the water as it sizzled against their lightsabers and soaked their clothing.  They hammered at each other relentlessly, completely focused on their fight.  There was no time or energy to spare for talk now.  Neither of them would give in to the other.  This was a battle to the death.

Kylo allowed Rey to continue pushing him back, making careful, controlled counterstrikes and blocking her wild assaults.  The weight of Rey’s next blow brought them both to their knees, sabers crossed.  Kylo pushed up with all his might.  Rey’s lightstaff slid sideways, but she continued the assault.  They traded quick, short cuts as she darted around him to face towards the temple, before making a powerful downwards swing that trapped Kylo’s blade under hers.  The scarlet saber sank into the stone of the bridge.  Kylo pushed it slowly towards her, rainwater hissing as it boiled into steam.

Rey let go and leapt upwards, backflipping through the storm and making a three-point landing a dozen meters away.  She stood, sucking in air.

Thunder roared.  Kylo stalked towards her through a curtain of rain, water dripping from his chin, his mouth a grim line.  He reversed his grip on the lightsaber.  No more games, he thought.  It’s time to finish this.

Kylo sped up as he covered the remaining distance and made a long, backhanded slash.  Rey dodged, shunting his stroke aside as he slid past.  Kylo turned and pushed his sword towards her, relying on brute strength.  She stretched out her hand, using the Force to hold back his fiery saber long enough to parry it with her own.  Kylo, however, continued to press his attack, putting his whole body into each blow.

Rey swung in a wide arc, intending to drive Kylo away for at least a moment, but he reached out and held the blade in place, as she had done moments earlier.  The energy beam hummed like a nest of Bluebarb wasps, its azure light flaring away from his outstretched hand.  Rey sidestepped, freeing the one blade and lashing out with its twin as Kylo hastily raised his own saber.  They made several swift strikes at each other, Rey spinning and grunting with effort, Kylo planting his feet firmly on the ground.

Rey stepped back.  She was beginning to tire, but Kylo seemed as strong as ever, as though he had access to a hidden reserve of energy.  Her only chance now was to keep fighting, hoping that he would make some mistake, leave some opening she could exploit.  Rey swung at him, both hands firmly planted on her lightstaff.  He parried easily.  She took a moment to recover, then swung, spun, swung again.  Kylo rotated her sword and locked it with his, then jerked both upwards violently.  Rey stumbled away, barely holding onto her lightsaber.  She shook her left hand, opening and closing it as she tried to recover from the bruising force that had almost wrenched her hilt out of her grip.

Rey aimed a strike at his legs, caught his lightsaber with her own, and twirled it, trying the same disarming maneuver he had used against her.  He turned as well, however, so that they were side by side, swords crossed in front of them.  Kylo pushed her away and rained down blows.  She deflected the first few, shrieking as each fell, but then dropped to her knees.

Rey suddenly realized that she was going to lose.  There was simply no way around it.  Kylo was too strong and experienced, and she too weak; the last glimmer of a dying light.  She had failed.  She had failed everyone: Luke, Leia, her friends, the Resistance, the galaxy.  Kylo would kill her, take the power of this place, and fight Snoke with it.  It didn’t matter who won that battle; the result would be the same.  A new era of tyranny, stretching onwards, perhaps forever.

Why her?  Why was she the one to carry this burden?  Why not some rich man’s son, trained in fencing from his youth, or some priestess’s daughter, trained in the Force from infancy?  Why a nobody, daughter of junk traders, from a junk planet?  Why not someone like Ben Solo?  He was born with everything she hadn’t had: a loving family, friends, even something so simple as a name.  Yet he had thrown it all away for a twisted dream of dark power.

She hated him.  He had taken her prisoner, invaded her mind, killed the closest thing she had found to a father, hounded her and her friends across the galaxy, never allowed her a moment’s peace.  She hated, hated, hated him.

She struck upwards; most likely a futile gesture, but all she had left to her.  Kylo beat her blade down, knocking her onto her back.  She jabbed at him again.  He brushed her saber away, but her continued resistance seemed to aggravate him.

Kylo raised his lightsaber.  This would be the final blow.  He was certain of it.  But then he felt something pressing against his mind: another vision, brought on by the immense power of this place.  He struggled, trying to prevent it, but it was like trying to hold back the sea.

 

You must know what to do if I am killed,” says Snoke.

Kylo responds, “Surely that will never happen.”

Snoke cuts him off.  “Do not attempt to flatter me.  If I am struck down, you must take revenge upon my murderer.  To challenge someone with enough strength to destroy me, you will need to become even greater.  You must find—the power of Mortis!”

“Where can I find it?”

“Study the Sith texts.  They will lead you to what you seek.  Do you remember what I have told you?”

“Yes,” Kylo answers.

“Good.”  Snoke waves his hand.  “You will forget that this conversation ever happened.”

 

Kylo stared into space, his eyes far away.  Rainwater dripped from his hair.  His lightsaber slipped from his hand, tumbling slowly downwards…

…until it was caught by Rey.  She reared up, ignited it, and with a cry of mixed fright, rage, and loathing, thrust it deep into his abdomen.  A hot thrill of triumph rushed through her.  She had done it!  She had won!

Pain shot through Kylo, jerking him out of his vision.  He gasped for breath as he stared down at his own lightsaber, impaled in him as it had been in his father.  So this, this awful burning, was what it had felt like.

Then he sensed something else, something beyond the screams of his nerves.  Kylo turned his head, looking behind him, as Leia softly whispered, “Ben.

Rey’s eyes widened.  “Leia,” she breathed.  The vermillion lightsaber shut off.  Kylo fell backwards onto the ground.

What had she done?  She had struck down Leia’s son in anger and hatred.  He was unarmed, just as Han had been.  She was no better than Kylo.  She began to cry, tears rolling down her cheeks.  Both lightsabers dropped from her hands, landing with hollow clinks.

Kylo lay on the hard flagstone, arms propping him up slightly, head resting on his chest as he fought to remain conscious.  Rey bent down over him, examining the wound she had inflicted.  Raw, red flesh, cauterized by the heat, surrounded a thin, irregular hole.  She reached out, pressed her palm against his chest, and concentrated.

 

Leia slowly lay down on a bunk, holding in her hand the Medal of Bravery that she had given to Han long ago.  Han, she thought, if you’re out there, perhaps you can help Ben.  Perhaps you can do what I can’t.

She sensed, then, that her son was in pain.  Immediately, she knew what to do.  She let go of her own life force, pushing it far away, to a realm beyond the reality she knew.

 

The rain had died down to a light sprinkle now.  Rey felt Leia’s life flow through her and into Kylo.  He took deep, slightly unsteady breaths as the edges of the wound grew together and regenerated into smooth, pale flesh.

 

Leia’s arm fell to her side and went limp as she breathed her last.  At the foot of her cot, R2-D2 rocked back and forth, beeping sadly.

 

Kylo turned his head towards Rey, staring into her eyes.  He was fully healed, of all the many wounds he had sustained in his life.  Even the scar of their duel on the Starkiller was gone.  Rey gazed at him, sadness and regret etched on her face as her tears, mingling with the rain, fell onto him.  Thunder rolled in the distance as she pulled away slowly.

“I did want to take your hand.”  She sniffed.  Ben’s hand.”

She picked up her lightsaber and stood to leave.

He stopped her with just one word.  “Solana.”

Rey paused.

He sat up.  “Your parents were Dirk and Mara Solana.”

The names were familiar to her, yet distant.  She felt she had heard them many times, but they stirred only a faint echo of memory now, not the love they must have once.  She whirled, running away across the bridge.

 

A small crowd had gathered around Leia in the small rough-hewn room.  More Resistance members stood outside, in silent attendance.

Leia’s body faded away, her clothes slowly collapsing.

Chewbacca gave a long, heartbroken wail.  He clung to the bed and thrashed about.

“Chewie,” Finn said, hugging him, “It’ll be okay.”  Chewbacca seemed to calm a bit, but buried his face in his paws and moaned.  Poe knelt and put a hand on the stricken Wookiee’s shoulder.

Maz and Rose pulled a white sheet over the bunk.

“Goodbye, dear Princess,” Maz Kanata said quietly.

 

Kylo stood upon the end of the stone span, a sheer drop before him, staring into the gray sky as his thoughts raced.  Why had they healed him?  Why had his mother sacrificed herself, so a man who despised everything she stood for could live?  Why had Rey allowed herself to be the channel through which his mother’s life had reached him, after striking him down in hatred just seconds before?

He knew the answer, although he didn’t want to admit it.  It was because of the same kindness that had motivated the Wommels, and something else besides: love.  A virtue he had loathed for so long as weakness.

A chill wind blew past.

“Hey, kid,” a familiar voice said from behind him.

Kylo continued to stare ahead, then slowly pivoted to look behind him.  Standing a couple meters away was Han Solo, looking just as he had before his death: tousled grey hair; an age-worn, stubble-covered face; a brown leather jacket hanging off his torso.

They regarded each other for a long moment.  Finally Han spoke.  “I miss you, son.”

“Your son is dead.”

“No,” Han said, stepping closer.  “Kylo Ren is dead.  My son is alive.”

His son glanced away briefly.  He swallowed.  “You’re not real.  You’re just a memory.”

“I’m as real as I need to be.”  One end of the old smuggler’s mouth curved up slightly.  “Come home.”

“It’s too late.”  He shook his head slightly.  “I can’t go back to her now.  Just like you can’t.  She’s gone.”

“Your mother’s gone…elsewhere.  But what she stood for, what she fought for—that’s not gone.”  Han sighed.  “Ben…”

“I know what I have to do, but I don’t know if I have the strength to do it,” he blurted.

Han touched his son’s cheek gently.  “You do.”

To his surprise, he actually felt his father’s touch.  He stared down at the black hilt of the lightsaber, the kin-slayer, in his right hand.  “Dad,” he said.  He sniffed and drew a shaky breath, struggling against the tears he felt welling up.

Han smiled.  “I know.”

Ben Solo looked at his father for the last time, then spun and threw the lightsaber over the cliff.  It arced away, turning end over end before disappearing into the mist.

He turned back, but his father was gone.  The wind whistled by, ruffling his hair.  Ben Solo stood alone once more.

 

Rey had descended the first few dozen meters of the mountain in a mad rush.  After that, she had decided she didn’t want to break her neck, and exercised more caution as she continued her climb down.  Therefore, night had fallen when she at last entered the forest.  The grass had withered and died, while the trees now glowed with an eerie blue translucence.

The Knife 10 was still in the riverbed it had crashed in, but the water had frozen around it.  As Rey approached the ship, a flock of small, dark-furred creatures took off from perches in the nearby trees, twittering crazily.  Thin, membranous wings bore them into the darkness.

Rey entered the ship and fell into the chair.  She snapped on the power and grabbed the controls, hoping the damaged craft would still fly.  Its engines grumbled and shook, but it rose above the forest and sliced through the clouds, nearing the star-specked curtain of night.

Suddenly, there was a blinding white flash.  Rey blinked.  Mortis was nowhere in sight.

She studied the navicomputer.  Its astrogation system indicated the ship was drifting in the Wastes, near the Zeta Zero-Nine system.  Rey took a moment to marvel at what she had seen, then punched familiar coordinates into the computer.  It took a few minutes to plot a safe course, but when it had, she pushed the lever and leapt away.

 

Ben Solo had come to several important realizations.

First, he had had to confront the fact that his life had, since his teenage years, been built atop a framework of lies and deceptions.  Snoke had lied to him, but Ben had also lied to himself.  His parents had cared about him, and so had Luke.  For far too long had Snoke’s voice, and his own selfish desires, blinded him to their love.

Second, he was no longer living just for himself.  His mother (and Rey) had given him the undeserved gift of a second chance at life.  It was only fitting that he dedicate at least part of it to what Leia herself cared about.  He doubted, however, that the Resistance would take kindly to a former Supreme Leader of the First Order dropping in on their secret base.  Whatever he did would have to be done alone.

Third, rethinking one’s life and worldview from the bottom up took a lot of time and energy.  It had already been hours since he had seen the flare of Rey’s engines climb into the sky before promptly winking out of existence.

Now, Ben Solo stood before the temple of the Ancients.  He had come to Mortis to find enough power to kill Snoke and retake the galaxy.  Even if he no longer had ambitions of rule, his former master was still trying to subjugate the galaxy.  Snoke needed to die.  Perhaps there was something in this place that would help Ben destroy him forever.

Ben climbed the stairs leading to the temple for the second time.  He reached out.  The heavy stone door ground open, the dust of millennia spilling from its cracks.  He entered gingerly, all too aware that he was unarmed.

The interior of the temple shone with light from no apparent source.  Huge statues of humanoids, griffins, and gargoyles ringed an immense round slab of unpolished marble.  Beyond the round stone were two thrones, carved into the wall of the temple. 

Ben crossed the cavernous space and stood in front of the thrones. They seemed sized for someone larger than a normal human.  A rounded design like a four-petaled flower was carved onto the back of the chair to his left.  The one on the right had a jagged X-shaped symbol, like a cluster of sharp, three-lobed leaves.  Each emblem contained a smaller version of the other within it.  Between the two thrones was a cylindrical altar of stone.

Atop the altar was a large, three-sided metal pyramid.  It bore an uncomfortable similarity to a Sith holocron.  A blocky rectangular object with thick ridges wrapping around it was visible through gaps in the metal plates.

Ben used the Force to unfold the pyramid.  He reached into the metal casing, grabbed the object, and pulled it out.  Turquoise smoke coalesced along one side of it with a sound like the keening of damned souls.  The wail died away as the smoke resolved itself into a long metal blade.

Ben Solo tucked the Dagger of Mortis into his belt.  He left the temple and began his long journey down the mountain.

Chapter 13: Final Orders

Chapter Text

Chapter Thirteen

 

Final Orders

 

Commander Larma D’Acy stood in the middle of a crush of Resistance personnel.  An all-hands meeting had been hastily called, but it was hardly necessary; no one wanted to miss this briefing.

D’Acy spoke.  “Today is a sad day for the Resistance.  Our leader, General Leia Organa, has passed.  She was not only a princess, or a commander; she was, to many of us, a dear friend.  She shall be sorely missed.

“However, she would not have wanted our sorrow over her loss to cause us to fail in our convictions.  We must carry on the fight she no longer can.  To this end, we must find new leadership.  Luckily, Leia herself left instructions as to what should be done in the event of her death or permanent incapacitation, so that there will be no uncertainty as to our course of action.”  D’Acy shot Poe Dameron a significant look.  He shifted uncomfortably.

Commander D’Acy glanced down at a datapad, then continued.  “First, Aftab Ackbar shall be promoted to Vice Admiral.”  She drew a rank badge from a small case.  A lieutenant passed it to the Mon Calamari.

“Next, Kaydel Ko Connix shall be appointed as General—”

It makes sense, Poe thought.  The young officer had shown herself to have a brilliant strategic mind and an unflinching loyalty to the cause, having risen quickly through the ranks to become Leia’s de facto chief of staff.  She would be a good General.  He tried to shrug off the slight, irrational twinge of disappointment he felt.  After all, he was just a pilot.  That was what he was good at, that was—

“—of the Resistance ground forces.”

What?

“Finally, Poe Dameron is hereby appointed Admiral of the Fleet and acting General of the Resistance.”

Connix sidled up next to him.  “I guess you are in command now…Admiral Dameron.”

Poe numbly received the metal rectangle displaying his new rank.  He had imagined leading the Resistance, but it had always seemed a distant possibility, something that might happen when the war was all but over and Leia felt she could leave the mopping up to others.  Except that would have never happened; he knew her better than that.  She wouldn’t have given up until the fight was done.  But now she was gone, and the responsibility fell on his shoulders.  Had he really been hoping for this, mere moments ago?

He suddenly became aware that the crowd was looking at him expectantly, doubtless hoping for an inspiring speech.  He scrambled to think of something to say.

“I…ah….”  Great beginning, Dameron.

“I can’t replace Leia,” he managed finally.  “I’m not a politician or a great speech-maker.  But I promise all of you…I will do my best to lead you, and see this war through.”

His words seemed rather hollow to himself, but the gathered pilots, troopers, and techs seemed satisfied.  A few nodded.

“Meeting dismissed,” Poe finished.  “May the Force be with you all.”  And with me, especially.

 

The Lady Luck, a long, sleek Sorosuub Luxury 3000 space yacht, descended towards Ajan Kloss.  It glided over the jungles like a huge white shorebird, following an encrypted beacon to its destination.  The vessel decelerated as it approached the Resistance base, then settled lightly next to the Millennium Falcon.

Pilots and engineers looked up with curiosity, and in a few cases recognition, as the ship’s owner descended the boarding ramp.  He surveyed the Resistance encampment, breathing in the humid scents of the jungle, a pleasant change from dry, dusty desert air.  Then he stepped onto the spongy, rain-moistened ground and headed for the command center, his cape trailing after.

 

Poe sat in a dim nook in the rear of the base, staring at the cot on which Leia had rested.  Now there was nothing on it but a bundle of clothing and personal belongings covered with a white sheet.

“I gotta tell you, I don’t really know…how to do this.” Poe breathed, clasping his hands together as if in supplication.  “What you did…”  He shook his head.  “Yeah, I’m not ready.”

“Neither were we,” said a voice.

Poe looked up to see General Lando Calrissian step into the alcove.  The former smuggler and baron was dressed in a bright yellow shirt, a flowing black cape, and black trousers.  A shiny chromium-plated blaster hung at his hip.  “Han, Luke, Leia, me.”  He shrugged.  “Who’s ever ready?”

Poe stood up.  “How’d you do it?  Defeat an empire, with almost…nothing?”

“We had each other,” Lando said with a smile.  That’s how we won.”

 

D-O rummaged around in a box of tools.

“Hey, don’t touch that,” scolded Finn.  “That’s my friend’s.”

“So—sorry.”  The droid cocked its head.  “Your friend is gone?”

Finn looked to the sky.  “Yeah, she’s gone.  I don’t know where.”

“You miss her.”

“Yeah, I do.”  Finn rested an arm on the back of his metal chair and looked at D-O.  “So, what’s your story?”

 

Finn and Poe hurried towards each other.  D-O trailed behind Finn.

“I gotta talk to you about something,” Finn said.

“I gotta talk to you about something,” Poe responded, pointing at him.  “I can’t do this alone.  I need you in command with me.”

“Well this droid has—thank you.  I appreciate that,” Finn said, touching his friend’s chest.

“General,” Poe addressed him.

Finn nodded.  “General.  This droid has a ton of information about what Snoke has been doing.”

“Wait, what, cone-face?” Poe asked incredulously.

“I am Dee-Oh,” D-O volunteered.

“Sorry, Dee-Oh.”

“He used to belong to a Jedi hunter, a Sith cultist named Ochi of Bestoon,” Finn explained.  “He says that once, they traveled to the Western Reaches.  Jakku.”

“Why was Ochi going there?”

“To bring the little girl he was supposed to find to the Supreme Leader.  He wanted her alive.  Snoke’s been trying to build an army of Force-sensitive soldiers.”  Finn’s eyes burned with anger.  “They were going to do to Rey what they did to me.”

 

Chewbacca sat morosely on a large crate, wiping down his bowcaster with a rag.  Lando walked up to him and leaned on a long black cane topped with a polished metal ornament in the shape of Cloud City.

“How are you, Chewie?” Lando asked quietly.

The Wookiee looked up and mumbled something softly.

Lando said, “Yeah, I guess we are the last of the old crew.  These young folks seem pretty capable, though.”

Chewbacca growled that they were, except at Dejarik.  Lando laughed.

 

Poe and Finn carried supplies to the Phantom Hawk, a ship Rose had pieced together from scrap and cast-off parts.  Its front had a bulbous cockpit, a laser turret set immediately behind it.  A pair of exposed, oversized engines hung from the sides of a hull taken from an old gunship, while two large fins and a few smaller ones splayed out from the rear at odd angles.  Various parts of the vessel were haphazardly painted a mossy green, while the rest was bare metal.

Rose exited the ship, holding a datapad.  “I’ve been studying Star Destroyer schematics in conjunction with the spy’s data,” she said.  “I may have found a weakness.”

“What?” Poe asked.  “I’ll take any good news.”

“If the Final Order plans to use their Destroyers to crack open planets, the Axial Superlasers must consume a tremendous amount of energy,” Rose stipulated.  “They’re probably directly connected to the main reactors, without the usual safety throttling.  Hitting the cannons might kick off a chain reaction and blow the whole ship.  Of course, I haven’t run all the math yet, but I’ve told my best engineers to work on it.”

Finn said, “I like it.”

“I’ll pass your idea on to the Starfighter Corps and the rest of the Navy,” said Poe.

Lando and Chewbacca wandered towards them.  “What’s the plan, Admiral?” Lando asked, sitting down on a box.

Poe answered, “Finn, Rose, Artoo, and Threepio are going to Coruscant.  There’s a beacon under the Jedi Temple that the First Order can’t jam.  We’re going to rally the galaxy.”

Lando gave a half-shrug.  “That’s our chance!  Any way I can help?”

“As a matter of fact, we do have a mission in mind for you,” Finn put in.

“We want you and Chewie to take the Falcon to the Outer Rim,” said Poe.  “Send out a call for help to anybody listening, and round up every smuggler, pirate, and mercenary you think might be sympathetic to our cause.”

“We can do that,” said Lando, grinning.  “Can’t we, Chewie?”

Chewbacca roared his assent.

“We’ll rendezvous at Ord Mantell,” Poe declared.  “Send us a message when you get there.  Rose has figured out the Final Order’s frequency-hopping algorithm, so we can get around the jammer somewhat, but if we tried to broadcast to the whole galaxy they would shut down all frequencies.”

As they talked, Rose had been tinkering with the Hawk’s innards.  She called to a nearby pair of droids.  “This is a Corellian hyperdrive.  Artoo, do we have a keycode for this?”

R2-D2 projected a holographic jumble of letters and numbers.  A line of gibberish lit up in red; a perfect match.  He whistled proudly.

“This is every hyperdrive key in the old Imperial fleet,” Rose marveled, studying the rows of text.  “They still use these.  Artoo, where’d you get this?”

The astromech beeped.

“I thought I told you to erase the data from Bespin’s central computer,” C-3PO chided.  “You don’t know where it’s been.”

“He won’t want to erase this, though,” said General Connix, walking up to the group gathered around the ship.  She waved a datacard at them.  “Finally finished putting together the message.”  Connix looked down and said sadly, “I only wish Leia herself could have delivered the speech she wrote.”

“We all do,” agreed Poe.

Connix bent over R2-D2 and inserted the datacard into the slot under his photoreceptor.  He beeped, acknowledging that the information had been transferred.

Finn looked at Poe.  “Guess this is goodbye.”

“Don’t say that,” the pilot said, shaking his head.  “We’ll meet again.  On Coruscant, with any luck.”

“Right.”

There was a moment of awkward silence, then Finn pulled Poe into an embrace and hugged him.  “Take care.”

“You too.”

Finn forced himself away, swallowing back his emotions.  He halted by the open bay doors on the side of the Phantom Hawk.

Rose sweated, straining to loosen a recalcitrant bolt with her Harris wrench.  “No, hop onboard, relax,” she gasped, her voice dripping sarcasm.  “I’ll handle all of this…work.”

Poe watched as his friend disappeared into the ship.

 

Lando stood aboard the Falcon, taking in the familiar sight of its rooms and corridors, light fixtures and instrument panels.  He sighed.  Once, the Falcon had been gleaming and new, ready to meet the galaxy and take on anything; just like he had been.  Now, they had both been worn down by the years.  Still, it was good to be back.

Chewbacca walked past him, growling something about old times come ’round once more.  Lando smiled and followed him towards the cockpit.

 

Rose and Finn took their seats under the rounded plasteel of the Phantom Hawk’s cockpit.  C-3PO and R2-D2 stood behind them.

Artoo whistled a question.

“Nervous?  I’m not nervous,” said Threepio.  “I have the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission.”

The shorter droid blatted skeptically.

 

The Millennium Falcon rose out of the jungle.  The freighter turned and gathered speed, engines whining, before streaking away into the pale blue sky.  Behind it, the Phantom Hawk lifted through the treetops and flew away in the opposite direction.

Poe’s eyes followed the ships as they left.  Words came to him; whether he had heard them before, he wasn’t sure, but they felt right.  He said them aloud.

“Godspeed, Rebels.”

 

Armitage Hux stood in the First Order Capitol’s control centre, leaning over a table as he studied a large screen that displayed a map of the galaxy.  Officers bustled about, informing him of ship movements and taking messages.

A hologram of Snoke’s head flickered on in front of him.  “General Hux.  Report on your preparations for the battle.”

“All is proceeding apace, Supreme Leader,” Hux responded.  “The fleet is in place above Coruscant, ready to fire on any Resistance ships the moment they exit hyperspace.  All major hyperlanes around the planet are monitored and guarded by Interdictor vessels.”

“And what of Protocol Base Delta Omega?”

“Our ships are ready to fire as soon as you give the command.”

Snoke’s mouth curled back like a wound.  “Good.  Keep me informed of any major developments.”

“I will, Supreme Leader.”

The hologram snapped off.

 

Snoke turned off the communications array built into his throne and nodded to the armored warriors before him.  “Speak.”

“We have still been unable to sense our brethren,” said Solonny Ren.  “We have no choice but to presume they are dead.”

Snoke scowled.  “Unfortunate, but not unexpected.  We always knew the girl was a formidable opponent.”

Solonny lifted her head slightly.  “We are at half strength, milord.  I fear our order may not survive the coming fight.”

“You wish reinforcements,” observed Snoke.  He tapped a button on the throne.  A holographic line of Red-armored stormtroopers appeared between himself and the Knights.  “I possess a legion of Sith Troopers.  A few of them are slightly Force-sensitive, and all have access to an infusion of midi-chlorian-enriched blood.  It gives them a boost of power.  The effects fade after a few hours, and they are obviously not as skilled as yourselves in their use of the Force; nevertheless, they are well-trained, effective fighters.  I have personally scoured their minds to ensure there is no trace of treachery in them.  You may each have a squad to command.”

Solonny inclined her head.  “Thank you, Supreme Leader.”  She turned to go, motioning Ott and Lorl to follow.

“I have one more matter to discuss with you,” said Snoke.  The Knights stopped.  “I am adopting a new, or rather a very old, throne room.  The excavations have been successful.”

Chapter 14: Beacon of Hope

Chapter Text

Chapter Fourteen

 

Beacon of Hope

 

“We should be coming up on Coruscant soon,” said Rose.  “When we get there—”

She was cut off as the Phantom Hawk shook.  The blue of hyperspace disappeared, replaced by a starry sky.  Ahead of them was a long, angular gray cruiser.  A cluster of four spherical gravity well projectors bulged out of the hull near its bridge.

A crisp but bored voice sounded over the comms.  “This is the Final Order Star Destroyer Immobilizer.  State your ship’s name, registration, cargo, and destination.”

“This is the Ripe Jogan, carrying droid parts to Coruscant,” Rose said, thumbing the comms switch.  “Transferring registration now.”

Finn and Rose waited tensely for a reply.  Finally, it came.  “You may proceed out of the gravity well and return to hyperspace.”

They both let out sighs of relief.  Rose pushed forward on the sublight thrusters and flew past the Interdictor-class Star Destroyer.

“I didn’t know they were blocking hyperlanes,” Finn said.

“Neither did I,” Rose admitted.  “They must suspect there’s an attack coming.”

They were out of range of the gravity well.  Rose threw back the lever, and her ship leapt back into the otherworldly blue cloudiness.

 

The Phantom Hawk dropped into realspace over Coruscant.  Circles and grids of light traced across the surface of the darkened ecumenopolis.  The ship steadily descended towards the Federal District, passing tall towers visible only by the illumination cast from windows and screens showing Final Order propaganda.  The sprawl of the city stretched downwards from the skyscrapers to the underground levels below them, dense and alive, like the roots of a vast, world-encompassing tree.

Finn and Rose observed the nightscape through the cockpit viewport.

“So many people living underground,” Finn commented, looking down at the lights visible in canyons and pits that plunged below street level.

Rose pulled a face.  “Rich folks don’t spend much time thinking about what they’re standing on.”

“I’m afraid all my knowledge of Coruscant is limited to the upper levels,” C-3PO informed them.

R2-D2 beeped.

“Elitist?” asked See-Threepio indignantly.  “Where do you even learn these words?”

Finn pointed at the dark shape of the Jedi Temple in the distance.  “That’s it.  Drop Artoo and Threepio at street level.”

 

The Phantom Hawk rose from the boulevard, leaving the two droids behind.  It ascended to land atop an abandoned skyscraper.  The metal plating had been stripped off the roof of the building, leaving only bare metal beams and girders.

The bay doors of the ship slid open.  Rose and Finn carried a large case out of the opening, set it down, and opened it.  They pulled out a grappling cannon and unfolded its tripod stand.

There were three loud thunk’s as Rose used a handheld bolter to fasten the tripod into the metal of the roof.  Finn clipped a sniper scope and a rangefinder onto the cannon’s barrel and looked down the scope, aiming the crosshairs at the top of the Jedi Temple’s central spire.  The rangefinder informed him that the Tranquility Spire was almost a half-kilometer away.

Rose asked, “Ready?”

“I don’t know,” Finn said, looking at her.  “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

“Well, no sense worrying about it.”

Finn frowned and turned back to the grappling gun, adjusting for the distance and slight breeze.  He took a shallow breath, held it, and squeezed the trigger.  There was a muffled boom as a small explosive charge propelled a grappling hook out the barrel and across the expanse, a thin metal wire trailing after it.

Finn pressed a button on the side of the cannon.  A motor whirred as it pulled back the wire, then stopped as its sensors detected that the cord had pulled taut.  Finn gave the wire an extra tug just to make certain the grapnel had stuck firmly in place.

Rose attached a pair of harnesses to the cable.  “You don’t have a fear of heights, do you?”

“It’s not the height I’m afraid of, it’s hitting the ground.”

“So you’ll be fine if we don’t fall,” Rose said brightly as she buckled herself into a harness and stepped off the edge of the roof into empty air.

They zip-lined towards the temple.  Finn told himself not to look down, but did anyway and instantly regretted it.  They were whizzing along hundreds of meters above the ground.  He forced his head up and looked past Rose to the Temple Spire, which now appeared to be rushing towards them at an alarming rate.

Rose and Finn crashed through a shattered round window.  They unbuckled themselves and took stock of their surroundings.

They were standing on a roughly hexagonal platform, just behind a large black throne listing unsteadily to its left.  A few meters to either side, there was no floor, revealing a drop into apparently bottomless darkness.  Before the throne, a few low steps fell down to a walkway which descended, by way of more steps, into a larger space before ending in a turbolift.  The floor of the larger area before them curved upwards, like the bottom of a canal.  Stubby black pillars, each with six boxy embellishments sticking out from the top like ugly mechanical flower petals, lined the platform and the walkway.  The grapnel had stuck into the nearest column on the throne’s right.

Finn spoke into his comlink.  “Artoo, you have that message ready?”

R2-D2 beeped an affirmative as he led C-3PO up Processional Way towards the Jedi Temple.  They walked past several large yellow machines parked on the broad boulevard, then climbed the stairs to the base of the temple.

See-Threepio surveyed the ziggurat’s crumbling masonry and the work tools strewn around in disarray before the once-grand entryway.  He exclaimed, “Why, this looks more like a construction zone than a temple!”

Artoo-Detoo chirped and whistled.

“An excavation site?  And those machines were mining vehicles?  How odd.  Why would someone dig a mine under a temple?”

R2 beeped that he lacked sufficient data to answer.  He continued onwards through arched gateways into the interior of the structure, navigating by way of blueprints he had acquired long ago.

 

Rose and Finn were engaged in an in-depth examination of the chamber, sliding their fingers across the smooth walls and floor.

“Why is there a throne in here?” Finn asked.

“This wasn’t just the Jedi Temple.  After the Jedi were all but wiped out at the end of the Clone Wars, Emperor Palpatine turned it into his palace.  Seems kind of petty to me.”  She looked at Finn.  “I guess they didn’t teach you much galactic history in the First Order.”

“Nope,” he answered.  “Just fighting, physical fitness, and operating military equipment.  I also got some sanitation training.  Oh, and lots of Bantha fodder about how great the First Order is.”

Rose sniffed.  Then a horrible thought struck her.  What if Palpatine had removed the beacon?  Their whole mission might fail because of a long-dead Sith Lord’s renovation project.

Rose pressed her ear against the curved wall and tapped it.  It rang hollowly.  She took a fusioncutter from her tool belt, pulled her goggles down over her eyes, and sliced into the metal.  Finn turned to watch her.

After a few minutes, Rose had cut a deep groove around a rectangular area of the wall.  She threw her weight against it.  The panel broke away from the metal around it, crashing inwards.  Rose barely managed to avoid falling with it, grabbing hold of the hole’s edge.  She shone a flashlight into the darkness.  Around a meter inside was another wall.  Rose stepped into the small space.

“This must be the original wall of this room,” said Rose.  She scanned her light across it, then stopped as it lit upon a triangle-shaped socket.  “Aha!  There’s a hole in the wall.”

Rose came back out and set to work on cutting open the opposite wall.  When she was done, Finn climbed through the hole.

“Found one,” Finn said, as he saw an identical slot.  He pulled a cloth-wrapped bundle out of his satchel and unfolded it to reveal the pair of Kyber crystals Rey had entrusted to him.  He threw one to Rose.

“No!” cried Rose as she caught it.  “Very rare, five-thousand year old Kyber crystal here!  You hand it to me.”

“Sorry,” said Finn sheepishly.

They went back into the dark crannies.  “Ready?” Finn called.  “Three, two…”.

There was a loud click as they inserted their crystals into the sockets.  The spire rumbled, then there came an awful grinding noise.  Rose snatched her crystal out of its slot.

“Of course!  The floor isn’t original either.”  Her eyes gleamed.  “It’ll have to go.”  She bent down with her trusty cutting torch once more.

Soon, they had pulled up a large portion of the walkway to reveal polished stone decorated with elaborate patterns of dark and light brown.

Rose wiped sweat off her brow.  “Whew, I didn’t think I would be doing this much heavy lifting tonight.  Let’s hope this beacon is worth it.”

“Yeah,” agreed Finn.  They placed their crystals into the slots once more.  This time, a round section of the exposed floor slid away and a huge copper machine rose up out of it.  A complex network of metal tubes and wires surrounded a translucent central conducting chamber humming with power.

Then it shorted out, sparks flying.  The machine went dark.

“Can’t it be easy?” Rose asked with a long-suffering air.  “Just one time?”

 

R2-D2 led C-3PO through a crumbling wall into a grand hall several floors below ground level.  Mounted on a pedestal in the center of the room was a massive white Kyber crystal, as tall as a human: one of the few objects the Jedi had acquired that Emperor Palpatine had not removed.  Above was a high, vaulted ceiling with a small hole in the center, leading up into the Temple Spire.  The sparse, echoey quality of the chamber lent it a cathedral-like atmosphere.  It made Threepio, and even the usually prosaic Artoo, feel rather small and insignificant.

 

Sparks flew as Rose lay under the beacon, welding a broken conducting tube into place.

“Will this old thing work with modern droids?” Finn wondered.

Rose didn’t look away from her work.  “You’re asking me about the mechanics of a Force-powered antenna.”

“Out of your realm of expertise?”

“Out of anyone’s realm of expertise.”  She snapped a panel shut and shimmied out from under the machine.  She studied it, then flipped a large, rusty, and important-looking lever.

Nothing happened.

Finn began, “So is there like an ‘on’ button, or—”

The apparatus thrummed.  A crackle of electricity lit up the conducting chamber, then settled into a steady, bright white glow.

Rose glanced at Finn.  “Listen, if this goes sideways—I just want to say…”

“Say what?”  There was an uncharacteristic catch in her voice that made him look up at her.

“I—I love you.”

“Yeah.”  Finn squeezed her hand.  “I love you too.”

The beacon shot a thin column of light down the spire and into the Kyber crystal below.

C-3PO lurched as the ground vibrated.  The huge crystal glowed as it was activated, magnifying the energy it had been exposed to by a thousand-fold before shooting it back upwards.

R2-D2 bravely wheeled up to the beam and projected a holographic message directly into it.  The light began to pulse, transmitting the stream of data.

Finn and Rose watched in awe as the machine before them focused and aimed the beam, sending it streaming away into the sky.

The poor and downtrodden of Coruscant looked up at the beacon, their faces warmed by its light.  Dade climbed atop a crumbling roof to get a better look, smiling hopefully.

The blazing beam of light left the planet and tore through sub-hyperspace, leaving a white streak across the skies of worlds throughout the galaxy.

 

On Agora Six, hills rose above a dense green layer of palm trees.  Atop one of the mounds sat a thousand-year-old receiver station, built in the days of the Old Republic.  A beam of brilliant light speared down from the cloudless sky and touched the dish atop the building.

Within the station, an ancient copper machine absorbed the light.  Its gears spun and whirled as monitors came to life, displaying Aurebesh text.

An aged monk of the Dai Bendu, his white beard reaching to his waist, rose out of his meditative position.  He shuffled to the window and looked up, astounded at the light pouring down from the sky.  He had tended to this apparatus almost all his life, as his predecessors had before him, and theirs before them, going back generations; yet he had never thought he would see it in use.  He murmured a quiet prayer to the Force.

Lights blinked and flashed on the timeworn console of the contraption as it decoded the datastream and converted it back into an image: Connix, in a plain white shirt decorated only by her new rank badge.

Peasants bustled about a small market.  Suddenly, a man cried out and pointed at the light hitting the hilltop receiver in the distance.  The others followed his outstretched finger with their gaze.

Suddenly, a nearby R4 astromech droid beeped wildly and projected the hologram of Connix.

This is General Kaydel Ko Connix of the Resistance,” said the image.  The time has come to forge a path to freedom.  The forces of oppression have ruled our galaxy for too long.

The receiver reflected the beam of light, angling it away on a different trajectory into the sky.  It connected to Trask, a water-covered moon of the huge gas planet Kol Iben.

A crew of Quarren workers in a dockside shipyard looked up as the light hit a receiver perched on a cliff overlooking the ocean.  Every droid nearby simultaneously projected the message.

Connix disappeared, replaced by an old recording of Leia at an assembly of the New Republic Senate, her intelligent brown eyes focused on an unseen speaker.  Connix’s voice continued to speak.  For the last few years, I have served under General Leia Organa, founder of the Resistance.

The Mon Calamari patrons of a floating eatery paused to listen to the hologram emanating from several droid servers.

She devoted her life to the cause of freedom.  She is now gone, but her spirit lives on in her followers.

A nomadic village of straw huts floated freely on the waters of the planet Gria.  Light touched a man-made stone tower on the horizon, then split in two and soared away in different directions.  Amphibious villagers watched, wide-eyed, as an outdated machine in their town’s center projected a still image of a young man dressed in black.

Jedi Master Luke Skywalker brought about the death of Emperor Palpatine, freeing the galaxy from his rule.  On Crait, he faced down the might of the First Order all alone, giving his life so that freedom’s spark would not be extinguished.

Furry, long-snouted Bothans looked up as every screen in Drev’starn, capitol city of Bothawui, displayed Rey’s face.

He also trained Rey, the last Jedi.  She still fights for the Resistance, seeking to restore peace and justice.

Bossk was draped regally over the throne of his pleasure palace in the sun-scorched plains of Trandosha, basking in the radiant heat that emanated through his skylight.  His eyes flicked at his servant droid, which had disturbed his repose by inexplicably bursting forth with some bit of Resistance propaganda.

These heroes have done much, but they, and the rest of the Resistance, cannot succeed alone.  We must join together and fight.  Send your fastest ships.  All your warriors.

Bossk looked out an arched window at the light connecting to a jagged spire of red rock in the distance.  He hissed at the disturbance.  Then a shadow fell over him.  He looked up to see a Star Destroyer blocking out the sun.  Bossk slowly clenched his clawed hand into a fist.

Our voices will not be silenced.  We can no longer live in the shadow of tyranny.  We must step into the light.

The twin suns of Tatooine set behind a brother and sister standing at the base of a moisture vaporator.  They watched raptly as their R6 unit played the hologram.

Together, we can make a wind like the galaxy has never before seen.  A wind that will topple the Final Order.  A wind to shake the stars.

Poe Dameron watched as the beam traveled from system to system, planet to planet, forming a glowing web of light in the night sky.  Connix stood next to him, aware that her voice was being heard across the galaxy.  Dozens of other Resistance fighters—troopers, pilots, technicians, mechanics, officers, grunts—joined them in silent vigil, their eyes reflecting the light of a new hope.

 

Finn and Rose watched as the light soared into the darkness.  Over the thrum of energy, Finn heard a more ominous sound: the roar of engines.  He turned to Rose.  “Go.  Go.”

They ran for the broken window.  Finn pulled Rose to the ground as green laser fire flashed towards them.  There was a thunderous crash.  Stone fell from the ceiling.

Rose and Finn climbed from the rubble, coughing on dust.

“You okay?” Rose gasped.

A trio of TIE Fighters screamed by the tower, then looped around to make another pass.

“Come on!” yelled Finn.  He clipped onto the wire.  Rose grabbed on behind him.  They whizzed away from the spire as its pinnacle exploded in a fireball.

R2-D2 and C-3PO hurried out of the temple, a cloud of dust billowing out behind them.  The TIE Fighters pursued Finn and Rose, blasting away.  Rose drew her own gun and returned fire.  One of her shots penetrated the windscreen of a TIE, hitting the pilot.  The starfighter spun out and crashed into a high-rise.

The Tranquility Spire collapsed behind them.  The zip-line jerked and snapped.  Rose screamed as she fell away, disappearing into the darkness.

Rose! ” Finn shouted as he clung desperately to the line.  He swung into an open floor of the unfinished skyscraper.

Finn struggled to unhook himself from the line as the TIE Fighters hovered around the skeletal structure, firing into it.  Blasts punched holes in the plascrete floor and ricocheted off of durasteel girders.  Finn finally pulled himself loose and ran.  A lance of green light almost hit him just as he slid into a half-finished stairwell.

 

The Resistance watched as the light streaming from Coruscant disappeared, the fire of revolution extinguished.  The front of the beam continued to propagate, however, the network shifting and stretching.

 

Hux had been in the midst of calling his personal speeder to return to his suite when the Capitol control centre had exploded into activity.  Now, screens and holographic displays around the room showed security footage of a ziggurat labeled Imperial Palace, the status of the TIE Fighters responding to the disturbance, and recordings of the beacon’s light stretching upwards.

“Supreme Leader,” said Hux into the holocomm.  “The Resistance attempted to subvert the communications blockade.”

The pitted face seemed amused.  “I am aware.”

“Our TIE Fighters destroyed the transmitter, but not before their propaganda was disseminated to a number of systems.  Such treachery cannot stand.  We must respond swiftly.”

Snoke regarded him coldly.  “Let them all come.  It will save us the trouble of hunting down any disloyal elements.”

Hux insisted, “Surely an early demonstration of Base Delta Omega would—”  He stopped talking as he felt a tightness around his windpipe.

“You have served me well of late, General,” said Snoke, “but do not forget who rules the Final Order.”

Hux said, his voice strained, “Of course—not…Supreme Leader.”

Snoke’s face disappeared.  Hux fell heavily into his chair, surreptitiously massaging his neck.

 

Finn snuck out of the skyscraper, disoriented, blood trickling from cuts on his forehead and hands.  Voices echoed around him as flashlight beams played across the side of the superstructure, searching for him.  A three-legged UA-TT walker approached, scanning the darkness with a floodlight mounted on the side of its crew compartment.

Finn ducked into a shadowy alleyway.  A lone Stormtrooper noticed the movement and entered it cautiously, sweeping a blaster-mounted light across the tunnel.

Finn rose from behind a pile of scrap metal and shoved a shock prod into the back of the soldier’s neck.  The Stormtrooper collapsed.  Finn confiscated the blaster and covered the trooper.

“Look at me,” Finn said.

The Stormtrooper moaned, half-conscious.

Finn motioned with the blaster.  “Take off your helmet.”

The trooper pulled it off.  She was a dark-skinned woman with hair that would be curly if it weren’t cropped so close to her scalp.  Her eyes were scared, vulnerable; disillusioned, even.

“What do you remember?  How far back?”

The Stormtrooper looked confused.  “Huh?”

“Do you remember when you were taken?” asked Finn.  “Remember your parents?”

“I—” she hesitated.  “I don’t know.”

Finn replied, “Yeah, you do.  You remember everything.  Conditioning camp.  Blind fires.”

“It was t-training.”

“That’s what they tell you.”  Finn stepped forward, some of the light reflecting into his face.  He pulled the helmet from her grasp and regarded its ugly, skull-like visage.

“You’re him.  The traitor,” the trooper said.  “They tried to suppress it, but we still heard your story.”

“That’s right.  We’re siblings.  All of us.”  He tossed the helmet away.  “Give me your comlink.”

The trooper unclipped the black-and-white cylinder from her belt and handed it over.

Finn continued, “It’s not what they said it would be, is it?  The things we’re ordered to do.  They’re not right.”

The Stormtrooper took in what Finn had said.  Her structures of belief, the lies she repeated to herself for fear of what would happen if she didn’t, had been torn open and were now breaking apart.  Soon, they would no longer hold her life together.  The prospect scared her.

Finn saw the fear in her eyes.  “What’s your name?” he asked gently.

“JN-1719.”

“Not that,” said Finn.  “You had a name once.  A real one.  Do you remember it?”

She shook her head no.

“Get a name.  That’s the first step.”  Finn tucked the short-barreled rifle into his belt and kicked open a sewer grate.

“Then what?”

Finn turned back to face her.  “Find something worth fighting for.”  Then he dropped into the dark sewer and was gone.

JN-1719 stared at the hole in the ground for a moment and then walked away into the night.

 

R2-D2 and C-3PO had wandered away from the heart of the Federal District and into inhabited areas.  They passed homeless city-dwellers huddled near fires burning in oil drums.  Most didn’t look up, but others cast covetous looks at them.

The astromech droid whistled something.

“What do you mean I stand out?” asked C-3PO.

R2 beeped.

C-3PO retorted, “Gold is not ostentatious.  Leave the vocabulary to me, you glorified mechanic.”

A Vobati vagabond, covered head to toe in a brown suit with a mesh screen obscuring his face, stepped in front of Threepio.  Several other beings of various species appeared from behind him, rubbing the protocol droid’s shiny metal plating.

“Excuse me!” C-3PO exclaimed, shocked.  “Oh my.  We’ve only just met!”

A strobe light blinded the ragged group.  “Get away from that droid!” ordered the voice of a Stormtrooper.

They scattered.  The light shut off, revealing that both it and the audio recording came from R2-D2.

“Thank goodness,” said See-Threepio.  “Don’t ever leave me again.”

Artoo chirped.

“Yes, finding some sort of shelter is a good idea indeed!”

 

Commander Sellik approached Chancellor Hux.  “We recovered the spies’ ship, but one of them got away.  One of our TIE Fighters was destroyed.”

“I’ve seen the report, Commander,” Hux snapped.  He knew the officer didn’t deserve his venom, but he wasn’t in a charitable mood.  “Is that all?”

“No, General.  We found one of the Resistance agents hanging from a cable snagged on an aerial.  We’ve taken the prisoner to Interrogation Six.”

 

Rose gradually awoke.  Her hands and feet were strapped to a rack, holding her almost vertical, but tilted back a bit.  Thirty degrees, maybe?  She should have been able to tell—the room was brightly lit, with clean lines, and Rose was good at judging spatial relationships—but everything seemed to swim in and out when she tried to focus.

She struggled a bit, but the metal around her wrists and ankles was tight, and a wave of tiredness washed over her.  She closed her eyes and slipped away for a while.

When Rose woke up again, Chancellor Armitage Hux was standing before her, another officer and a pair of Stormtroopers behind him.

Hux asked, “Are you comfortable?”

“Yeah, I have one of these at home.”  She attempted a defiant sneer, but her mouth was dry and the words came out in a rasp.

“You changed the stolen Destroyer’s signature codes so we couldn’t trace it,” Hux stated.  “Give me the new codes.”

Rose had recovered her voice.  “You know, they told me to pick something easy to remember, like Life Day, but…”

“You think this is funny.  Very well.”  Hux held out his hand.  He shut his eyes, a look of intense concentration creasing his face.

“Are you trying to use the Force on me?”

“Be quiet,” ordered Hux.

Rose tried to hold in a laugh.  “Oh no, see…you’re not special.  I mean, at all.”

“Shut up!”  Hux yelled furiously.  He took a deep breath, attempting to calm himself.  “We have other ways to extract information.”  He turned to the blue-uniformed officer standing just to one side of him.  “Bring in the interrogation equipment.”

“Is that strictly necessary, sir?” asked the officer in a low, quiet voice.  Rose noticed distractedly that he had very aggressive sideburns that stretched down to his chin.  “They’ve probably changed those codes a half-dozen times by now.”

Hux’s eyes narrowed.  “Are you growing soft, Sellik?  Someone with your impeccable record of service ought to know we must give no quarter to these filth.  If there is even a chance of extracting useful information from her, we must take it.”

“Of course, sir,” Sellik said, politely agreeing with his superior.  “I merely meant that such a mean duty as this may perhaps be left to someone less important than yourself.”

Chancellor Hux didn’t respond, instead motioning to one of the Stormtroopers.  The trooper opened a blast door to reveal an electric torture device, bristling with electroshock arms and thin needles.

Rose braced for a more painful kind of defiance.

Chapter 15: Return to Ahch-To

Chapter Text

Chapter Fifteen

 

Return to Ahch-To

 

Shrieks broke the quiet of the lush green isle.  At its base, near the crashing seas, a fire blazed, sending up a plume of black smoke.

Rey stood next to a pile of driftwood, picking up and then flinging each piece into the burning shell of the Knife 10.  She paused from her labor and stood for a moment, smoky air filling her lungs.  The fire licked greedily at the black ship, its heat warming her face while her hair and hood flapped in a chill sea breeze.

A pair of ash-covered porgs, braver than most of their fellows, stood on a small mound covered in scraggly grass and watched the scene curiously.  One of them gave a high-pitched squawk.

Rey drew her lightsaber from her belt and looked down at it.  It had served her well these past few years, but now she wanted no part of it.  She took the hilt in her left hand, wound up, and tossed it towards the fire.

A hand closed around the lightsaber before it could enter the flames.  The hand’s owner strode sedately away from the burning ship, the firelight shining through him.  He stopped before Rey and gave her a hard stare.  “A Jedi’s weapon deserves more respect.”

“Master Skywalker,” Rey gasped.  Sparks blew past her.

Luke tossed his head as he asked gruffly, “What are you doing?”

Rey sat upon a wide, flat rock face, cradling the lightsaber, which Luke had returned to her.  The tale poured out of her.  “I saw myself on the dark throne.  With Ben next to me.  I thought the way to prevent that future was to defeat him, but I…I gave in to the Dark Side.  I wanted to kill him.  I would have, if Leia hadn’t given her own life to heal him.”  She shook her head.  “I’m never leaving this place, I’m doing what you did.”

“I was wrong,” Luke said, shrugging slightly.  A lock of his insubstantial hair waved in the wind.  “It was fear that kept me here.”  He looked into Rey’s eyes.  “What are you most afraid of?”

Rey was silent for a space.  Waves crashed in the distance.  “Myself.”

“Because of the pull to the darkness you’ve always felt.  Leia knew it too.”

“She still trained me,” Rey whispered.

Luke sat down next to her.  “Because she saw your spirit.  Your heart.  Do you know what she told me about the first time she saw you?  She said it was like a voice whispered in her ear: balance.  You struck down Ben in anger, but then you stepped back.  You didn’t let your negative feelings control you.  You preserved the balance within yourself.”

“But Leia died because of me!”

“It’s not your fault.  My sister knew her time was coming.  She was able to help her son with her final breath.”

Rey processed this, then said, “It’s not only the darkness within myself I fear.  It’s also that I’m not good enough to be the last Jedi.  My parents were just…people.  Not heroes or politicians.”

Everyone’s parents are just people.  Even if they are heroes or politicians.”  Luke’s eyes met hers.  He said quietly, “Rey, some things are stronger than blood.  You’re not like me.  Or my father.  You’re new.  Whatever happens, remember: the Force chose you, Rey.  This is your story, no-one else’s.  Confronting fear is the destiny of a Jedi.  Your destiny.  If you don’t face Snoke, it will mean the end of the Jedi. . . and the war will be lost.”

Luke stood.  “There’s something my sister would want you to have.”

 

Rey pulled a grey stone out of the wall of one of the round rock huts of the Jedi village set among the jagged peaks.  She reached into the gap and brought out a bundle wrapped in a white cloth.  After untying the strap that held it together, Rey unfolded the fabric to reveal a shiny metal lightsaber hilt.  She picked it up reverently.  “Leia’s saber.”

Luke stood behind her.  “It was the last night of her training,” he said.

 

The saber on the ground rattled, then flew upwards.  Across the forest clearing, a figure stepped out into the open, his green blade at the ready, the blast shield of a helmet hiding his face.

His opponent, wearing a similar helmet, activated the saber, its beam casting a blue light.  She ran at him, swinging in a wide arc.  They dueled, striking and parrying quickly.

Leia kicked Luke in the stomach.  He groaned and fell to the ground, then pulled up his blast shield.  Leia lifted her own and stared into the forest of Ajan Kloss, a vision of the future flashing through her mind.

 

“Leia told me that she had sensed death, destruction, and the fall of her son on her Jedi path.  She chose to renounce the title of Jedi Knight, instead focusing on her political career.  She surrendered her saber to me, and said that one day, it would be picked up again, by someone who would finish her journey.

“A thousand generations live in you now.  But this is your fight.  You’ll take both sabers to Coruscant.”

Rey stood up.  “I can’t get there.  I destroyed the Knights’ ship.”

“You have everything you need,” Luke assured her.

 

Rey had descended the long grassy slope to the foot of the island.  Now, she stood atop rocky cliffs sloping down into an inlet.  The two lightsabers at her hip gleamed.

The sound of rushing liquid came from below.  Rey looked out past a knoll covered in grass, stones, and flowers as Luke’s old X-Wing, Red Five, rose out of the ocean, water pouring out of it.  The starfighter was draped in seaweed, its top left S-foil missing.

Rey glanced over her shoulder.  Luke stood atop a ledge, his left hand outstretched as he levitated his ship.  He smiled.  An answering smile crossed Rey’s face.  She gazed back up as Luke began to lower the fighter to the ground.

 

Rey was welding the wing Luke had appropriated for his hut’s door back in place when she heard a low rumble.  She looked up.  A Star Destroyer was emerging from the thick clouds above.

“Luke!” she called.  “It’s the Final Order.  I brought them here.”

Luke appeared next to her.  “How?”

“I forgot,” Rey breathed.  “When I was on the Supremacy, Snoke saw into my mind, saw where you had hidden.  I thought the knowledge had died with him, but if he’s alive…”

Luke’s voice was tight.  “I’m not letting anyone destroy this temple, this island, this planet, or the people who live here.”

“But we only have a few lightsabers!”

“We have the Force and a few lightsabers.”

 

Captain Chesille Sabrond stood stiffly on the bridge of the Resurgent-class Star Destroyer Derriphan.  Supreme Leader Snoke himself had personally commanded her to travel into the Unknown Regions and make this world burn, starting with this insignificant speck of land.  It was the greatest honor she had ever received; but a deserved one, she thought.  Throughout her career, she had shown herself to be both unflinchingly loyal and efficient to the point of ruthlessness.

A gray-uniformed lieutenant looked out the bridge viewport.  He turned to his commanding officer.  “Captain.  The island is in view.”

“Charge primary weapon,” she ordered.

The axial superlaser hanging from the cruiser’s underside aimed at the island, a red glow building inside its barrel.

 

Inside one of the stone huts sat a large wooden box containing all of the personal effects that visitors to the island had left behind, carefully gathered by the Lanai caretakers who lived on the island.  Luke lifted the lid.  Inside were numerous objects and trinkets he didn’t recognize, as well as his clothes, Han’s golden dice, and a lightsaber.

Rey looked up at Luke, standing high above, atop the cliff where she had first laid eyes on him.  The sun glinted on the metal hilt he held aloft.  He turned it on, a blade of emerald energy springing forth, and then threw it.  It whirled away towards the Star Destroyer bearing down upon them, flying further than anyone could fling it naturally.

The lightsaber struck the base of the superlaser, where the cannon was attached to the ship.  Luke controlled its motion, cutting through power cables and computerized controls.

 

“Primary weapon is charged,” reported a technician.

Captain Sabrond said coolly, “Fire.”

Nothing happened.

“I said, fire!”

“The superlaser doesn’t appear to be responding, sir.”

“What?”

Another technician reported, “We’re losing atmospheric integrity, Captain.  Something has breached the hull.”

 

The Derriphan’s axial superlaser splashed into the ocean below the battlecruiser.  It had been neatly severed from the Star Destroyer by Luke’s lightsaber, which was now cutting through the ship’s underbelly, moving towards the bow.

The Star Destroyer’s turbolasers opened fire.  Spears of green light flew downwards.  Some hit the ocean, sending up sprays of water; others struck the land, blasting holes in the rock.  Caretakers screamed and ran for cover.  A squadron of TIE bombers launched out of the hangars and screeched towards the island.

Luke and Rey stretched out their arms and held back the bombardment, keeping it from reaching the ground.  Rey switched on her sabers and threw them.  She used the Force to guide them towards the sizzling plasma bolts overhead, deflecting the energy beams towards the TIEs.  One after another, the bombers were struck and their explosives detonated, blowing them apart in huge balls of fire.  Soon they were all gone.  Rey continued redirecting the Derriphan’s fire, now aiming it back at the Star Destroyer.

 

“Sir, our deflector shields are absorbing heavy fire.  They’re turning our attacks against us somehow.”

A starfighter control officer cried, “All of Engulfer Squadron is gone!”

“Who’s doing this?” demanded Sabrond.

The Lieutenant motioned to a screen showing a zoomed-in view of the island.  One robed figure was just visible on a cliff’s edge, another near the shore.  “It’s Skywalker.  And the girl.”

“Skywalker’s dead, Lieutenant Lenwith.  It must be some trick.”

“Look!” said a black-helmeted gunner, pointing out the viewport.  A green lightsaber was slicing through the Destroyer’s top, heading straight for the bridge.

Captain Sabrond realized that she was dealing with things beyond her own understanding, things she had never been trained for.  “Cease fire.  Take us out of atmosphere.”

The Derriphan heaved its bulk away from Ahch-To’s surface.

 

Luke’s eyes narrowed.  The wind picked up, choppy waves troubling the surface of the sea.  In the sky above, the clouds darkened, lightning crackling and flashing within them.

 

The Star Destroyer rose through a raging storm, electricity stabbing at it.  It pushed through the haze, the blackness of space in view.

“Are we out of the planet’s gravity well?”

“Not yet, Captain,” the navigator informed her, looking up from her station in the data pit.  “It’ll be a few minutes yet.”

“Make the jump.”

“Sir?”

“I said make the jump.”

“Yes, sir.”  The stars elongated into streaks before them.

A lightning bolt leapt out of the clouds and struck the rear of the vessel.  One of the three massive ion engines exploded.  The other two went dark.

The ship lurched.  The stars shrank down to pinpricks once more.  Alarms blared.  Sabrond snapped, “Damage report.”

“Electrical overload, Captain.  We lost one ion engine.  Hyperdrive is shorted out.”

“Use the backup hyperdrive.  Just get us out of here!  The normally unflappable captain was almost shouting as she struggled to cope with an emotion she hadn’t truly felt in years: terror.

The backup hyperdrive engaged.  There was a jerk of acceleration and then the Derriphan was back in the blessed blue of hyperspace.

Captain Chesille Sabrond sagged.  Then she drew herself up, spun on her heel, and walked off the bridge, feeling an overwhelming need to lie down.

 

The dark clouds dissipated.  A lightsaber hilt fell from the sky into a ghostly hand.  Rey pulled her own lightsabers back to her and hung them from her belt once more.

The Lanai rushed down the slope and mobbed Rey, cheering, waving brooms and other tools, and doing surprisingly energetic victory dances.  Rey bowed and shook hard-skinned little hands.  Luke appeared behind the crowd.

“I think they like me,” Rey observed.

Luke grinned lopsidedly as he replied, “Can’t imagine why.”  Then he gave a two-finger salute and faded away.

Chapter 16: Uprising

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Chapter Sixteen

 

Uprising

 

C-3PO and R2-D2 huddled inside a deserted building in a densely populated Coruscant tenement.  From outside came the clatter of boots and walkers, the bark of troopers, and an occasional scream or burst of blaster fire.  The night raids had started shortly after nightfall, but now, in that darkest of hours that comes just before the dawn, they were intensifying.

“UATT Walker Patrol, head down Thoroughfare Sixty,” a voice said over a speaker.  Klaxons whooped.

An alien ran along a narrow road, then ducked through an arched portal as a column of Stormtroopers marched past and stopped before a small, dilapidated house.  The squad leader shouted, “Open up, you’re wanted for questioning!”  He began to bang on a door with the butt of his rifle.  A Patrol Speeder flew by overhead, sweeping a spotlight over roofs and streets.

Another squadron of soldiers walked by the droids’ hiding place.  “Check this side of the street,” their commander ordered.

Artoo and Threepio stayed completely still as a trooper punched the buttons next to the outside of the door they were behind.  He reported, “Door is locked, move on to the next one.”

C-3PO and R2-D2 peered warily out a broken window as the column of armored figures marched off.  A few meters away, a pair of Stormtroopers were pointing their blasters at a man.  “You!  Up against the wall.  Show me identification.”

“Where’s your identification?”

Across the street from the droids, the door the troopers had been pounding on finally gave out.  A few soldiers entered and frog-marched out a woman and a bald man.  “Please!” the woman screamed.  “Please leave her alone, she didn’t do anything!  She’s just a child.”

“Quiet!” a Stormtrooper ordered.  An officer motioned to the others.  They dragged out a small girl, struggling futilely.

In front of the next building over stood a terrified, waist-high Chadra-Fan.  Beeeeek!  Beeeek naaat!” he piped, begging for mercy.  A Stormtrooper shoved his long rifle into the furry alien’s stomach.  He doubled up in pain.  Other white-armored troopers plucked a trio of tiny, wailing infants from their perch on the ceiling.

A pair of prison speeders landed on the street.  The Stormtroopers pushed the frightened citizens into them, separating the children from their parents and herding them into cages aboard transports bound for conditioning camps.  The younglings screamed, reaching through durasteel bars, as the craft rose into the night sky.

“I can’t watch.  How horrible,” C-3PO said, turning away from the window.

His companion beeped melancholically.

“I agree, Artoo.  We may not survive this time,” Threepio remarked despondently.  “We’ll never find Master Finn now.”

 

Sludge spurted out of pipes and chutes into a tank of gelatinous, semi-solid muck.  Finn slid out of one of the chutes and splashed into the translucent ooze, which swallowed him up to his neck.  He sputtered, spitting out slurry that had splashed into his mouth.  “Ughh.”

A pack of sewer rats stood atop the jiggling mass, feeding on the refuse encased in it.  One of them approached Finn and sniffed, its whiskers brushing his face.  Finn struggled to pull his arms out of the thick goop.  “Hey!” he shouted.  “Get away!  Ugghgh!”

The rat licked his face just as he pulled out an arm and swatted it away.  The other sewer rats squeaked and scattered.

Finn drew a breath of fetid air, taking care to use his mouth rather than his nose.  Then he saw why the rats had scattered.  Emerging from a wide tunnel into the tank was a colossal Gryock, an eyeless white larva sucking in the sewage through a circular mouth two meters in diameter.

“Oh no.  No, no, no!”  Finn struggled, dislodging himself briefly and then getting stuck in the muck again.  The Gryock closed in on him, its pale, soft, segmented body undulating as it slipped slowly through the slime.  It made a horrible slurping sound as it fed, then paused as though it sensed Finn’s presence.  The nightmarish round maw opened even wider, teeth sticking out of its lipless edge like knives, the creature’s pinkish insides pulsing wetly.

Just as Finn was about to be engulfed whole, a hatch above him opened.  Light poured down.  Finn looked up to see a mess of tousled red hair above a round, boyish face.

“Give me your hand!” he shouted at Finn.

Finn grabbed the kid’s hand and pulled himself up through the hatch just as the Gryock heaved itself forward and chomped down.  The child slammed down the hatch as the creature thrashed about, denied its prey.

Finn collapsed to the metal floor of the sewer tunnel, caked in sludge.  He gasped out, “That was.  So many disgusting things.  All at once.”

“I’ve seen worse,” his benefactor said, offering a hand.  “Dade.”

“Just one name?”

“What’s wrong with that, Finn?”

“You know me.”

Dade shrugged.  “We’ve been tracking you since you landed.”

“We?”

A distant screeching sound echoed down the tunnel.

“What was that?” asked Finn.

“You don’t want to find out,” replied Dade.  “Come on.”

“Hang on.  How do I know this isn’t a trap?”

The youth flashed a Resistance ring.  “Trust me.”

Finn scraped some of the muck off himself and followed Dade down the narrow tunnel, their boots splashing in shallow water.  A light gleamed far ahead.

“I’m not originally from this stink-hole, you know,” Dade informed Finn.  “My mother brought me here a few years back, before the New Republic blew up.”

“You live with her?”

Dade looked down at the murky water they were sloshing through.  “She’s not around anymore.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It happens.”  Dade tried to say it nonchalantly, but there was a tell-tale tremble in his voice.  “I’m good at fending for myself.  Anyway, First Order purged a ten kilometer radius around the Capitol after the galaxy went dark.  Took most able bodies to the conditioning camps.”

“Did anyone escape?”

“Just us,” said Dade.  He opened a rusty door.  They stepped through into an abandoned underground prison.  Hundreds of cells were cut into the walls of the vast rotunda, a complex network of makeshift catwalks and ladders connecting them.  Many of the compartments had metal panels or fabric curtains shielding their interiors from view.  A central control tower loomed ominously in the middle of the panopticon.  The space swarmed with people of all ages, wandering about, leaning out of their dwellings, or talking with their friends.

“You live here?” Finn marveled.  “How many people are down here?”

“Ten thousand.  Maybe more.”

“Do you have weapons?”

“Some of us.  We steal or scrounge or make more every day.  There are other groups like this, elsewhere in the city.  That’s what they’re afraid of.  A million of us rise up, the First Order’s finished.”

Finn considered that idea, letting it burrow deep into his mind.  He looked out across the cavern at the huddled masses of humanity; a thousand faces, waiting for a leader. “You’re right.  This revolution starts right here.  Right now.”

“Sure,” agreed the boy.  “All we need’s ships, weapons.  An army.”

“We have one.”

Finn kicked open the door of the old command tower.  He climbed into the turbolift, which to his surprise still worked, and rode it to the top level.  From here, he could look down upon the entire sea of downtrodden people.  He fired up the comm system and brought the tarnished grille of the speaker close to his mouth.

“My name is Finn,” his voice boomed out.  “I bring a message from the Resistance.”

An elderly woman, tired and worn down by tyranny and war since the rise of the Empire, exited her cell.  She looked at the brave, determined face of the man in the high tower.

“The Final Order rules by fear,” Finn continued.  “They build ships to intimidate us.  Wear masks to frighten us.  I used to be afraid of them.  But I’m not anymore.  Because I realized that they’re the ones who are scared.”

The woman picked up a large wooden spoon and rapped it rhythmically against the wall of the old prison.

“This is not the time to run and hide underground.  We’re going to show them we’re not afraid.  If we take the Capitol, the galaxy will join us!”

A wiry, gray-furred Jenet joined in the clamor, squeaking her approval and banging a bent fork against a cracked cup.  A man dressed in once-rich maroon robes began to clap.

“They’ve taken enough of us.  Now we take the war to them.  Together we can strike back!  Together we can resist!”

Hundreds, then thousands of people cheered, shouted, and clanked their possessions together in unison.  Finn stood up straight.  He was no longer a traitor or deserter; now he was a revolutionary, a leader.

 

The dawn came slowly over Coruscant.  A diffuse yellowish light filtered down through clouds of pollution.  Huge megastructures cast dim shadows over the city.  The streets were empty and silent, the skyways bare of traffic except for Final Order patrol craft.

R2-D2 and C-3PO emerged from a dingy, shadowy alleyway into a wider, slightly better lit thoroughfare.  The desolate urban landscape of peeling paint, boarded-up buildings, and cracked or crumbling walls seemed to swallow them up.

Artoo beeped quietly.

“I agree,” See-Threepio said.  “This isn’t the Coruscant I remember.”

A shadow fell over them as a towering AT-AT Walker rounded a corner onto the boulevard.  C-3PO and R2-D2 watched it trundle past, dwarfing them with its size.  Then the massive war machine stopped.  A smoking, overturned Final Order Assault Tank, its treads broken, lay in the walker’s path.  The droids watched curiously.

Inside the cockpit, the Walker Drivers looked down through the viewport at the smoldering remains of the tank.  “Any life forms?” asked the pilot.

His copilot studied a data readout.  “Nope.”

Finn and a hundred People’s Resistance Fighters were hunkered down in an upper story of an empty building next to the AT-AT.  The walker’s head was just below them outside.

Finn said, “Now.”

A handful of floor-mounted grappling guns fired hooks over the AT-AT to the building opposite.  Finn clipped a carabiner onto one of the zip-lines.  He and twenty other Resistance fighters swung out over the street and then let go, landing on top of the walker.

The group ran up the back of the walker to its head.  One of the Coruscanti citizens cut open the top hatch with a vibrosaw.  Finn tossed in an EMP grenade.  There was a flash of light and a sizzle of electricity within the cockpit.  The drivers groaned and slumped over the controls.

“Clear!” Finn called.  He dropped into the crew compartment and pushed the drivers aside, taking the helm.  A brown, six-eyed Azumel took the seat beside him.

Finn shouted “Load up!” as he pushed a button.  Panels on the sides of the walker slid open.  More freedom fighters rappelled into the cavity.  A crowd of armed citizens poured out of the alleys to escort the great durasteel beast as it knocked aside the tank and began to slowly walk up the boulevard.

A pair of TIE Daggers zipped around a corner and headed towards the commandeered AT-AT.  Finn opened fire with the heavy laser cannons set on either side of the walker’s head.  His first few shots went wide, but he then scored a direct hit, blowing one TIE out of the sky.  The other fighter screamed forward.  It fired wildly, hitting the walker, but the machine’s thick armor plating held.  Finn aimed carefully and depressed the firing stud.  A crimson beam clipped one of the blade-shaped wings of the TIE, which veered off course and crashed onto the street.

The crowd roared and marched forward.

 

The AT-AT turned the corner onto Imperial Boulevard, heading towards Monument Plaza.  Inside, Finn stoked revolt via a loudspeaker on the roof, hooked up to the walker’s comm system.  “We will no longer live in silence!  Gather your weapons!  Rise up!  Strike back!”

A golden droid wandered among the cheering revolutionaries, unsure as to how he got here.  Finn squinted out the window at him.  “Threepio?”

Finn climbed halfway out of the hatch for a better look.  Suddenly, he was yanked upwards through the opening and thrown onto the back of the walker.  Above him stood a mechtrooper, the grilled gray mask resembling a face with bared teeth.  The mechtrooper stepped forward heavily, whirring noises coming from the servomotors that powered his metal exoskeleton.

Finn picked himself up, spreading his legs for balance atop the moving walker.  He struck at the trooper with the edge of his hand, aiming for the unarmored neck.  The mechtrooper blocked the attack with a raised arm.  Finn threw a punch, but hit the metal breastplate.  The trooper didn’t even flinch, but pain shot up Finn’s left arm.  He groaned, cradling his injured hand.

The mechtrooper raised his right fist with a mechanical whine.  Finn dodged the first punch, but the trooper’s other hand pistoned out, hitting him in the stomach.  The Resistance fighter fell backwards, then jerked his head aside as the trooper bent over him and lashed out, his Beskar gauntlets leaving dents in the durasteel armor covering the AT-AT.

Finn scrambled away and got up, then charged the mechtrooper, tackling him.  They both fell down, grappling with each other, and rolled off the edge of the walker, dropping twenty meters.  The mechtrooper’s back slammed against the road, Finn atop him.  The Final Order soldier kept fighting, apparently unharmed.

Finn had managed to get a hand around the mechtrooper’s throat when he heard a shriek of metal behind him.  One of the walker’s feet was raised, about to step on them.  They rolled away just as the metal appendage crashed down where they had been a moment ago.

The mechtrooper threw Finn off of himself.  Finn regained his feet and stumbled away.  A burly Coruscanti Resistance fighter came up behind the mechtrooper.  He slammed a spade down on the helmet, which rang dully.  The mechtrooper turned his head slightly to face the man.  Then a metal-clad arm whipped around like a crane, sweeping him off his feet and throwing him back several meters.

Finn had reached the side of a building.  He picked up a large piece of the crumbling plascrete wall, durasteel rebar sticking jaggedly out of its edges, and carried it heavily towards the mechtrooper.  The trooper was grabbing a blaster rifle off the ground when Finn brought the fragment of wall down on his head.  It exploded, showering both the combatants in dust and chunks of plascrete.  The metal rebar fell onto the street, clinking lamely.

The mechtrooper’s actuators hummed as he grabbed Finn’s shirtfront and slammed him to the ground.  Finn cried out as a heavy boot came down on his chest.  The trooper aimed the blaster at his heart.  “Last words, FN-2187?” he growled.

Finn spat at him.  The metal-clad finger tightened on the trigger.  A single blaster shot rang out.

The mechtrooper pitched sideways and clattered face-down against the pavement in a heap of armored limbs, a smoking hole in the back of his neck.

Finn looked up at a unit of Stormtroopers.  The leader took off her helmet and smiled at him, revealing an interesting gap in her teeth.  It was JN-1719.  She extended her hand to Finn.  He took it, letting her pull him to his feet.

JN-1719 handed him a blaster.  “I’ve got a name,” she said.  “Jannah.”

“I like it,” Finn said.

“And I’ve got something to fight for,” she said, pointing her thumb at the soldiers behind her.  The Stormtroopers took off the white helmets and threw them aside, their faces at last exposed to the fresh air and clear light of freedom.

 

Armitage Hux paced impatiently in the corridor outside the interrogation chamber.  Screams of pain came from the next room, in between the sounds of metal armatures humming as they poked and prodded, delivering jabs and electric shocks.  The woman had been frustratingly unforthcoming.  Perhaps Sellik had been right and this was a waste of time.

As though Hux’s thoughts of the older officer had summoned him, Commander Sellik appeared around a corner and walked up to Hux, his face grim.  “Chancellor.  There’s been an insurrection, right here in Core Square.  Word has spread to other districts.”

“Decimate them.”

“Sir…the leader is a former FN unit.”

“Two-one-eight-seven?”

“Yes sir,” affirmed Sellik.  “He was aided by a regiment of our own.”

Hux twitched.  “Impossible.”

“We’re dispatching additional units to address the revolt.”

No.  No.  Recall the FN units from active duty.  Tell all Stormtrooper battalions to hold their positions and not engage with the enemy.”

“Sir?” Sellik asked, unsure if he was interpreting his superior right.

“If there is a flaw in their programming, we must correct it.  Convene a meeting of the Supreme Council.  Make sure General Engell is there; I want to speak to her especially.”

 

General Kaydel Ko Connix had been busier than ever since ascending to her new position as head of the Resistance army, but she still occasionally found a moment to monitor comms chatter, as she had so often as an operations controller.  Since the First Order had draped their curtain of silence over the galaxy, she usually heard only static and gave up after a minute or two of scanning random frequencies.  What she heard now, however, almost made her shout for joy.  She stabbed at the recording button and then ripped her headphones off.

Poe looked away from a galactic map being projected by a holotable as Connix rushed up to him.  “I just heard a message from a Final Order transmitter,” she blurted.  “Finn is alive.  He has an army ready to storm the Capitol.  They need reinforcements.”

“Call an all-hands meeting,” Poe ordered.  “Now.”

 

The Supreme Council was a group of twelve high-ranking officers, formed by Kylo Ren to run the First Order while he pursued other interests.  It was often fractious, rife with political maneuvering and petty squabbles; but even after Snoke’s return, it had proven useful as a way to coordinate the Final Order’s staggeringly complex bureaucracy.

Chancellor Hux sat at the head of the long black table in the war room, the morning light streaming through the window behind him giving his hair a fiery glow.  Commander Sellik was to Hux’s right.  Despite not being a formal part of the council, his decades of experience in both First Order and Empire had granted him a de facto position on it.  Six other officials, those stationed on Coruscant or passing through between postings, were physically present.  Another handful, assigned far from the Core to occupy worlds, quell rebellions, or hunt Resistance cells, appeared via hologram.  A few aides stood at the periphery of the room.

“There has been an uprising here on Coruscant,” Hux began.

General Bellava Parnadee scowled at him.  “Then why haven’t you put it down?  I have important work to do.”

“I know of your hatred for wasted time, General,” Hux replied to her frostily.  “I called all of you together because it has come to my attention that the rebels are being led by a former Stormtrooper.  Eff-en-two-one-eight-seven.”

“So?” scoffed General Domaric Quinn, a middle-aged man with a receding hairline.  “He’s just one soldier.”

“He is also being aided by troopers of the 248th and 474th battalions.”  Hux let this sink in and then continued, “If their conditioning is faulty, we must find the error and eliminate it.  General Engel?”

The attention of the room turned on a pale, lined face.  “FN-2187’s betrayal occurred during Captain Phasma’s oversight of Stormtrooper training, not mine,” its owner said anxiously.  “I am certain we can recondition any defective troops.”

The holographic form of aged Admiral Notir, displaying his exasperating tendency to restate another person’s speech before adding to it, meandered ponderously, “I agree with you, Amrett, and am quite confident in both your talents, and that these troops’ loyalty can, probably, be regained—no doubt of that, in fact; but why, if I may be so bold as to ask of you, or for that matter the council as a whole, is their programming failing in the first place?”

“You say they are being led by a former Stormtrooper.  Perhaps he has isolated the cause of his own programming defect, and has turned it into a memetic trigger that breaks through other troopers’ conditioning,” suggested Doctor Fridolf Klinzer, head of the Department of Military Research.

Notir and several of the other officers nodded sagely, pretending to understand.  General Parnadee was having none of it.  “Explain.”

“In short, I suspect that certain external stimuli make the Stormtrooper programming prone to failure.  The exact nature of the infectious idiom could be anything; a phrase, an image, a sound, a smell…”

Parnadee made a circling motion with her index finger in a ‘get on with it’ gesture.

The scientist continued, “If my theory is correct, we can probably reduce any further spread of the memetic agent by restricting Stormtroopers from communicating with anyone but their immediate superiors.”

“But then our troops’ tactical coordination will be shot to hell!” General Kruvcha shouted, attempting to bang his holographic fist on the table.

“If Dr. Klinzer is right, we only need to take such drastic measures on Coruscant,” said Sellik coolly.  “I suggest troopers only be allowed to have contact with their superiors and their squad-mates.”

General Amrett Engel muttered, “I still don’t think there are any programming flaws.”

“I agree with Sellik’s proposal,” Hux said, talking past her.  “However, we must be prepared for the possibility that more of our Stormtroopers turn against us.  I believe we should deploy the Sith troopers.”

“Those zealots?  They’re practically a cult.  Conjurers and soothsayers.  Pffah.  We don’t need their kind,” General Quinn said scornfully.

Hux found relying on Snoke’s personal legion distasteful himself, but knew it would be dangerous to admit it, something the hard-headed skeptic Quinn seemed not to understand.  Instead, he remarked pointedly, “Perhaps fanaticism is all that inspires loyalty anymore.”

Admiral Frantis Griss said, “I agree with Hux.”  A few of the other councillors nodded.  Quinn looked around the room, saw that he was outnumbered, and decided not to press the issue.

“We are decided then,” said Hux, standing up.  “We shall impose an inter-unit comms ban immediately, and reinforce our regulars with the Sith Eternal forces.”

“Wait,” someone said quietly from the back of the room.  Silence fell as everyone looked at the speaker, who was sitting placidly at a corner of the table, on the other end from Hux.  He seldom actively engaged in the combative council meetings, and most (but not all) of the other officers tended to forget he was even there.  He was easy to miss, being a short, bland-looking person dressed in an off-white uniform, with oddly indistinct features and colourless hair.  Nevertheless, one look into the piercing black pupils of his wide white eyes were enough to convince anyone that the man missed nothing.  This was Admiral Min M. Illuv, chief of the Final Order Security Bureau.

“You say this…insurrection…is led by FN-2187,” he said.  The others had to strain to hear his small, dried-up voice.  “Why don’t we just…kill him?”

There was a slight murmur from a few of the others.  Hux said as lightly as he could, “If one of your agents can do the job, I am not opposed to your making the attempt.”

Illuv did not smile, but the barest hint of a curl touched the edge of his thin lips.  “Good.”

 

The Resistance had gathered once more under the Tantive IV, with Poe now the main focus of attention.

“Finn has started an uprising on Coruscant,” he briefed the assembled personnel.  “He has an army on the ground, both Coruscanti citizens and Stormtrooper defectors.  They’re on Imperial Boulevard, just a few hundred meters from the Capitol.”

Major Ranch, the second-in-command of the Engineering Corps, asked, “Any sign of Commander Tico?”

“We haven’t heard much beyond rumors,” Poe said.  “But Finn is alive.  We need to put our pilots in the sky and our troops on the ground, and back him up.  This is what we’ve been waiting for.  If we take the Capitol, we can destroy that jammer and call the whole galaxy to war.”

Commander D’Acy frowned.  “All we have is what’s on this moon.  You can’t win a war with a hundred pilots.”

“Plus one,” said Poe.

C’ai Threnalli, Poe’s Abednedo wingman, said something in his low-pitched language.

“Sorry, plus two.”

BB-8 beeped.

“Okay, I get it,” Poe said.  “Anyway, that’s where Lando and Chewie come in.  They’ve taken the Falcon to the Outer Rim to gather forces.”

“We’ve run the numbers.  The way those Star Destroyers have been modified, hitting the cannons is likely to ignite the main reactors,” said Ranch.

A pilot named Wrobie Tyce asked, “So how do we get through the ships’ shields?”

“We need to pull some Holdo maneuvers,” Beaumont Kin urged.  “Do some real damage.”  Aftab Ackbar, who was standing next to him, nodded.

“Come on, that move is one in a million,” said Poe.  “Fighters and freighters can take out their cannons if there are enough of us.  We’ll be backed up by the Rebel Eclipse.”

Eakkay duga raygae kah!” Nien Nunb protested.

General Connix agreed, “He’s right.  We’d be no more than bugs to them.”

“The Final Order is relentless,” said Larma D’Acy, shaking her head.  “They’ll kill millions.  We’ve all seen it before.  It’s too reckless.”

“Resistance is reckless!  Passion is the greatest weapon we have!  This is our best shot at ending the war.  We can not throw it away,” Poe argued.

“Passion is not a viable strategy,” D’Acy shot back.  “It’s taken us three years to rebuild to where we were before we evacuated D’Qar.  You remember Crait as well as I do.  What if no one answers our call?”

“Then the war for hearts and minds is already lost.  But I don’t believe it is.  We’ve got friends out there.  They’ll come if they know there’s hope.”

The crowd murmured, unconvinced.

“They will.  The First Order wins by making us think we’re alone.”  Poe shook his head.  “We’re not alone.  Good people will fight if we lead them.  Leia never gave up.  And neither will we.”

Poe looked at Larma D’Acy, Nien Nunb, and the other veterans of the last war.  “The Rebels fought the Empire and won.  You showed us it could be done.  But that was your war.  This one’s ours.  Let us fight it.”

He turned to the younger Resistance members; Kaydel Connix, Snap Wexley, Aftab Ackbar, and dozens of others ready to give their all for freedom.  “What our mothers and fathers fought for, we will not let die.  Not today.  Today, we make our last stand.  For the galaxy.  For Ackbar.  For Holdo.  For Ematt.  For Leia.  And for everyone else we’ve lost.

“Finn and Rose have already lit the beacon-fire.  We just need to burn the First Order down.  I won’t force anyone to fight, but I’m going to Coruscant.  Who’s with me?”

Snap’s hand shot into the air, followed in short order by Threnalli’s, Kin’s, Ackbar’s, and those of most of the other pilots and troopers.  Nien Nunb put up a gloved hand a moment later.  Connix calmly stared into the distance, then raised her hand beside her head as though she were taking an oath.

The eyes of everyone who was still undecided fell on Larma D’Acy.  She glanced behind her at her wife, Wrobie Tyce, who had her hand in the air.  Wrobie gave an apologetic smile.  D’Acy reluctantly raised her hand.  “I guess we’re all with you.”

Poe said, satisfied but serious, “Good.  Ready all weapons and attack ships.  This is a full assault.”

 

The Resistance base was soon full of people rushing to and fro.  Engineers refueled the Tantive IV and pulled up the ladder leading into the ship as steam billowed out from its cooling system.  Glide rovers buzzed about, carrying fuel and supplies.  Outside, pilots and soldiers hugged or kissed their relatives, loved ones, or friends.  An engineers gave a thumbs-up to a pilot in a jungle X-hopper.  Starfighter engines coughed and spat sparks, or hummed smoothly to life.  Cranes lowered astromech droids into their sockets aboard fighters or bombers.  Ground controllers waved poles with green and red lights.

A ground crew member tossed Snap Wexley his helmet.  The pilot in turn tossed a brown bag to a mechanic working on an A-Wing, who took it and ran to another ship.  Snap kissed his wife, Karé Kun, goodbye, before they both headed for their X-Wings.

Aboard the Rebel Eclipse, Resistance soldiers marched into Atmospheric Assault Landers, carrying bundles and crates of extra weapons, ammunition, and ordnance with them.  Assault Tanks rolled into the cargo holds of massive heavy transports.  Dropships were readied, walkers depending from them like clothing hanging from racks.

Poe Dameron stood in the midst of the bustle, mentally preparing himself for the battle ahead and the greatly increased responsibility he would bear for the fate of the Resistance.  He didn’t even see the Lieutenant walking towards him until the trim young man was a meter away.

“Sir, we’re receiving a message from a single starfighter requesting clearance to land.  It’s an old craft ID.  The computer registers it as…Luke Skywalker?”

 

The X-Wing landed in the clearing and was immediately swarmed by technicians and engineers.  The ship’s pilot removed a battered flight helmet decorated with red starbirds.

Poe approached the ship, BB-8 trailing along behind him.  “Rey?” he called.  “Rey!”

“Poe!” Rey scrambled out of the starfighter and ran towards him.  They fell into each other’s arms.

“Rey, I’m so glad you’re all right, I was so worried—”  Poe broke off, his breathing ragged.  “Leia—she—”

“I know,” said Rey, looking up at him.

“Rey, I—I was being selfish earlier, by demanding to stay with you.  I realize now that we needed to be in different places.”

“It’s all right,” Rey said quietly.  “I’m sorry for mind tricking you.  It was wrong.  Forgive me?”

Poe smiled slightly.  “Always.”

Rey buried her face in Poe’s shoulder.  The astromech at their feet beeped cheerily.  They held each other for an all too brief moment, then Rey pushed Poe away slightly and said, “I need to defeat Snoke.”

“Finn’s on Coruscant with an army,” said Poe.  He waved his arm at the ordered tumult around them.  “We’re going to help him take the Capitol.”

“Coruscant,” Rey said.  “That’s where I’m going.”

“Then we go together.”

 

The Tantive IV launched from the hangar of the Resistance base, tree branches bending as it passed through the canopy.  Starfighters and transport haulers rose out of the forest and coalesced around the corvette.  Then the Rebel Eclipse lifted off the ground, looking like a marble mountain that had came loose from the moon.  The smaller ships swarmed into the  vast dreadnought’s hangars as it lumbered skyward.

 

Like the ripples from a rock thrown into a lake, the actions of two droids, a brave mechanic, and a once-nameless former Stormtrooper reverberate across the galaxy.  As the Resistance and the last Jedi race towards Coruscant aboard the Rebel Eclipse, so does the starfighter of the sole surviving descendent of Anakin Skywalker; both on their way to the final battle between freedom and tyranny, Resistance and Final Order…Jedi and Sith.

Notes:

The next chapter or two will be long, and might take a while to put up.

Chapter 17: The Second Battle of Coruscant

Chapter Text

Chapter Seventeen

 

The Second Battle Of Coruscant

 

Ben Solo’s TIE whisper was jerked roughly out of hyperspace, its rear whipping sideways as it slammed to a halt.  Ahead of the starfighter was an Interdictor.  A voice came through the comm system.  “This is the Final Order Star Destroyer Immobilizer.  State your ship’s name, registration, cargo, and destination.”

Ben flicked on his speaker.  “This is Supreme Leader Kylo Ren of the First Order.  Let me pass,” he commanded.  Then he shut off the comms.  “Hang on, VX-20.  This could get hairy.”

He cruised slowly past the Star Destroyer, ready to take evasive action at the first hint of danger.  After a drawn-out silence, the voice said, “You may proceed out of the gravity well and return to hyperspace.”

Ben opened up his throttle and roared away from the Interdictor, then jumped to hyperspace before the crew could change their mind.

On the bridge of the Immobilizer, Captain Baston Holt stood before a hologram of Chancellor Hux.  “Kylo Ren is en route to Coruscant, sir.”

“Thank you for informing me, Captain,” said Hux, a thin smile playing across his lips.  “Your loyalty shall be rewarded.”

 

The TIE whisper descended through the thick clouds, past hovering Star Destroyers that threw angular shadows over the city below.  Ben steered towards the Federal District, passing over a large crowd gathered on Imperial Boulevard.  A massive ziggurat, strikingly different from the skyscrapers that dominated the cityscape, came into view.  Ben guided his fighter down, landing lightly on the Processional Way before the Jedi Temple.

Ben leapt out of the TIE, feeling slightly naked without a lightsaber on his belt and a cloak drawn about his shoulders.  Instead, he wore on one hip a hold-out pistol that had long lain unused in a compartment of his TIE, and on the other, the Dagger of Mortis.  He stepped warily towards the Jedi Temple.  The noise of shouting and clanking walkers came from afar off, but the path towards the huge stone structure before him seemed clear of all obstacles, apart from some yellow mining machines parked to one side.  Nevertheless, something felt wrong about the situation.  If it was a trap, however, there was likely no better course of action than to spring it.

Ben drew closer to the broad stairs, unable to ignore the sensation that there was a target on his back.  When he was midway between his ship and the temple, he heard a clatter of armored feet.  Dozens of stormtroopers rushed across the plaza and encircled Ben, blasters pointed at him.  Ben’s hand twitched instinctively towards his belt, but he suppressed his urge to attack.  If they had just wanted him dead, they would have shot him already.  There was more at play here.  He would wait, and see what they wanted, and who they were taking orders from.

A shadow fell over Ben and the stormtroopers as an Upsilon-class command shuttle flew over the temple and landed before it, its wings folding up like those of a carrion bird preparing to feast.  The ramp descended, its hydraulics hissing and squirting steam.  Out of the ship’s belly stepped Chancellor Armitage Hux.

Hux walked up to Ben.  “Kylo Ren,” he said slowly, savoring every syllable.  “I’ve been waiting a long time for this day.”

Ben said flatly, “I need to see Snoke.  Tell your troopers to stand down.”

“Why don’t you tell them yourself?”  Hux smiled coldly.  “I don’t have to do a thing you command.  You’re not the Supreme Leader anymore…if you ever were.  You’re just a traitor.  Like your parents.”

“I can make you let me through,” Ben blustered.

“Perhaps you could; perhaps not—you are massively outnumbered.  But why are you, one man alone, even able to pose a threat to us?  Why do you have such power, over minds and matter, while I lack it?  Is it because of your vaunted lineage?  You’re the whelp of a criminal and a terrorist,” said Hux, voice dripping with disdain.  My father served the Empire with loyalty and distinction.”

“You always hated your father.”

“I suppose that’s the one thing we have in common,” Hux sneered.

“No,” said Ben.  “It really isn’t.”

“No matter.  What I want to know—what I need to know—is this: without your Force powers, are you really any better than me?  Therefore…” Hux pulled off a fine black glove and threw it to the ground.  “I, Chancellor Armitage Hux of the Final Order, challenge you, Kylo Ren…to a duel.”

Ben asked, “Under what terms?”

“A fair fight, to first blood, with no usage of Force powers.”

“Why should I agree to this?”

“We have much the same goals, currently,” Hux said with false benevolence.  “You wish to see Snoke, and I wish to take you to him.  Therefore, if you win, my men and I shall let you pass."

“And if I lose?”

Hux’s blue eyes were cold.  “Then I drag you before the Supreme Leader in chains.”

Ben considered the offer for a moment, then said, “I accept.”

Hux motioned to the stormtroopers, who backed away from the two duelists, although they kept their blasters ready.  Hux threw off his greatcoat and drew a polished lightsaber hilt from his belt.  A purple-haloed blade of energy sprang forth from it.  Hux adopted a formal fencing stance, putting one foot forward and pointing the saber at Ben, letting his left arm counterbalance him.

“I see you’ve been training,” Ben complimented him.  “Good posture.”

Hux hissed through gritted teeth, “Draw.”

“Sure.  You really shouldn’t be so tense,” Ben advised, as he casually drew his pistol and shot Hux in the left leg.

Hux screamed in pain as he fell to the ground.  The saber dropped from his hand and rolled away.  Shoot him,” he shouted, holding his injured limb.  SHOOT HIM!

Ben was already in motion.  He threw his arms apart, pushing away everything around him with a powerful wave of Force energy.  The stormtroopers surrounding him were flung away as though thrown by a concussion bomb, then landed hard on the ground, clearing a path of escape.  Ben dashed towards the command shuttle, blaster bolts whizzing past him, fired by the few soldiers left standing.

The stormtroopers began to get up.  Ben turned and opened up with his gun, while simultaneously freezing in place any enemy fire that would have hit him.  A half-dozen stormtroopers went down, but the others kept shooting.  Ben kept moving towards the shuttle, dodging and ducking under energy bolts.

Ben made it to the side of the shuttle just as a pair of troopers came out from behind it.  He blasted one in the head, then Force-pulled the other’s blaster away.  He weaved behind the unarmed stormtrooper and grabbed his neck just as a bunch of his fellows rounded the corner and began firing.  Ben’s hapless human shield was soon riddled with smoking holes in the front of his armor.  Ben dropped him and ran for the steps leading up to the temple.

Another squad of stormtroopers was stationed at the head of the stairs.  They began to shoot at Ben as he pounded up towards them.  The cohort chasing him reached the base and fired up at him.  Ben dropped prone, under the crossfire, the hard stone steps digging into his ribs.  Several stormtroopers fell to friendly fire.  Then Ben was on his feet again, blasting the few troopers remaining above.  He dove behind a pedestal supporting a towering bronzium statue of a Jedi Sage Master, its face deliberately marred by the Empire.

Ben felt as much as heard the blaster fire thudding into the block at his back.  He popped his head and right arm out from behind it, dropping a couple of the handful of stormtroopers who were climbing towards him.  The rest of the troopers had gathered in a crowd at the base of the stairs, ready to shoot him down.  He ducked back behind the plinth as blood-red bolts chipped flecks of stone off it.

Ben sprung from his hiding place and ran for the imposing, ornately engraved blocks that marched away into the darkness of the main entrance hall.  Several blaster shots narrowly missed him before he took cover behind one of the squat concave pillars that supported the massive, rectangular columns.  He went left and sprinted across the smooth stone floor, heading for the main entrance.

A trooper standing in the grand entrance hall of the Jedi Temple spun to the ground, a smoking hole in his helmet, as Ben ran through, pistol at the ready.  Another stormtrooper emerged out of a side passage.  Ben shot this one without even looking at him.  He left the hall, entering the temple proper.

“Sir, he’s entered the Imperial Palace,” a stormtrooper captain informed Hux, who was now lying on a gurney, a medic applying bacta to his leg.  “Should we pursue him in?”

“No,” Hux spat.  “We’ll let Snoke take care of him.  Withdraw our troops and bring us back to the Capitol.”

The captain, who had respected Kylo Ren and didn’t like becoming involved in political infighting, said, “Very good, sir.”  He scooped Hux’s lightsaber off the ground and handed it to the Chancellor, whom a pair of stormtroopers were carrying towards the command shuttle.

 

Rose lay motionless in an interrogation chair.  Her clothes were ripped, thin slashes and pinpricks of blood peeking through the torn fabric.

A commotion from outside the interrogation chamber roused her from a stupor of dark, drug-laced visions.  Someone was barking orders in a deep, booming voice.  She wished he would stop.  He was making her head hurt.

Rose pried open her eyes and looked at the door.  It slid open, and two figures entered: a stormtrooper and the blue-uniformed man who had been with Hux.  What was his name?  Sellik, that was it.

“Transfer to cell block six,” Sellik told the stormtrooper.  “We want her in maximum security.”

The trooper opened the restraints around Rose’s wrists and ankles, then pulled her off the rack.  She slumped forward in his arms, doing her best impression of unconsciousness.  She was halfway there already, so it wasn’t hard to pull off.

As the stormtrooper dragged her towards the door, Rose opened her eyes.  The trooper’s blaster was hanging just centimeters from her face.  Did she dare grab it?

She dared.  Her left hand shot out, finding the stock of the weapon and drawing it out of its holster.

“Hey!” The trooper shouted, grabbing for her arm.  She swung it out of reach, awkwardly trying to simultaneously aim the blaster and break free of his grip on her other arm.  The trooper, apparently giving up on subtlety, punched her in the face.  Rose fell to the ground and everything went black.

Everything stayed black.  Rose hadn’t been knocked out; the lights had gone off.  She heard a zapping sound and a grunt of pain, then the clunk of betaplast armor hitting the floor.

The lights came back on to reveal Sellik, standing in an attitude of relative composure, his left hand on the illumination control panel and his right holding an electro-shock prod.  “Handy device, this,” he said.  “Compact, mostly nonlethal, but effective.  Yours, I believe.”  He held it out to Rose.

Rose took it, almost as stunned as the stormtrooper at her feet.  “Why are you helping me?”

“I’m the spy.”

“You mean the mole who’s been feeding information to Lando?”

“There are a few steps between us, but essentially, yes.”  The man looked out a small window set in the door.  “We don’t have much time.”  He pulled a code cylinder out of one of the pockets on the front of his uniform and handed it to Rose.  “This will get you through any door in the Capitol.  There are escape pods on the port and starboard ends of most levels.  Lock the door on your way out.”

“You mean lock you in?  What are you going to do?”

“Take a sedative and lie on the floor until someone notices my absence and finds me here.  Now go.”

Rose turned to leave, but paused at the door.  “What’s your name?”

The man smiled slightly.  “You can call me…Fulcrum.”

“Thank you, Fulcrum,” Rose said.  She slid the door open, looked both ways down the hallway, and stepped out.  As she shut the door behind her, she saw the spy sitting on the floor, placing a small pill on his tongue.

 

The AT-AT Walker’s foot stomped down.  It had almost reached the end of the boulevard, where the Final Order Capitol cast its shadow over the city.  The Coruscanti Resistance army moved with the walker, thousands strong.  Some carried blasters, while others were armed with nothing but clubs and passion.  Finn marched in front with Jannah and the rest of the defectors.

Dade rode atop the AT-AT, his legs dangling through the top hatch of its head, preaching through the loudspeaker.  “Rise up!  Join the fight!”

Small bands of revolutionaries were constantly appearing in side alleys, joining the throng.  They were like trickles of water, merging with others and building to a stream, that stream in turn building to a river, then a flood that would wash over the Capitol and bring it crashing down.

A hush fell over the crowd as they heard the distant sound of boots thudding against the ground, marching in lockstep.  The Final Order had mostly stayed out of their way so far, but now they were gathering in force before the entrance to Monument Plaza.

The sun cut through the overcast sky, revealing the full extent of the Capitol’s defenses.  A thousand stormtroopers stood in neat rows, their helmets and armor, betaplast shields, riot control batons, and blasters gleaming in the sickly yellow light.  Mechtroopers rose out of their ranks.  Behind the soldiers were bulky assault tanks and broad, towering AT-MT walkers, twice as tall as AT-ATs and bristling with weapons.

Finn halted his advance.  “Stand your ground!” he called, raising his hand.  “We can turn the stormtroopers to our side.”

An Ithorian handed Finn a loudhailer.  “My name is Finn,” he said into it.  “I was once a stormtrooper called FN-2187.  The First Order tried to make me into a weapon.  But I realized that what they told me to do was wrong.  I disobeyed their orders.  So can you.”

The line of stormtroopers stirred uneasily.  A few lowered their weapons and took off their helmets.

“Don’t listen to him!” shouted their silver-armored captain.  “Open fire!”

The Final Order machines began to clank forward.  Some of the stormtroopers began to fire.  One of the defectors standing next to Finn cried out as he was hit on the shoulder.

“I don’t think they want to listen!” yelled Jannah.

“They’ve been lied too, just like we were.  Try to use only necessary force.”  Finn changed his blaster setting to stun.  He pulled the trigger, sending blue rings of energized particles towards the white-helmeted troops.

The Resistance army surged forward, crashing into the stormtroopers’ shield wall.  The two forces exchanged blows from riot staffs, makeshift clubs, and fists, punctuated by stun shots and blaster bolts.

The crowd at his back carried Finn into the line of stormtroopers.  One of them swung a riot baton at him, purple electricity crackling at its tip.  Finn fired point blank.  The trooper was enveloped by a cloud of cobalt charge and fell to the ground, unconscious.  Finn took the trooper’s baton.

Finn shouted, “Come on!” and ran forward, firing the blaster with one hand and laying about him with the baton in the other.

 

Admiral Poe Dameron stood before the viewports on the bridge of the Rebel Eclipse, looking out at the blue hyper-nebula swimming outside the glasteel.  Behind him, Vice Admiral Aftab Ackbar sat in the swiveling command chair in the center of the bridge, flanked by Rey, BB-8, General Kaydel Ko Connix, and Commander Larma D’Acy.  Dozens of Resistance naval personnel sat at the control panels to either side, their rough bush clothing contrasting sharply with the gleaming walls and spotless floors.

They had stopped briefly at Ord Mantell and dropped a probe droid in orbit, sending out a message that the Resistance had gone to Coruscant.  Poe hoped Lando would pick up the signal and follow them.

“Estimated time of arrival fifteen minutes,” the navigator reported.

“Good,” said Poe, turning away from the windows.  “Rey, Beebee-Ate, we should probably get to our fighters.”

“Are you certain you should be running the risk of flying a lightly shielded snub, Admiral Dameron?” D’Acy asked.

Poe replied, “We need every pilot and ship we’ve got to win this.  Besides, flying is what I’m best at.  I’ll be more useful out there than in here.”

“And if you go down?”

“Then Ackbar or Connix will have to take over.”  He grinned sardonically.  “You’re fourth in the chain of command now, don’t worry too much.”

“Still—” D’Acy cut her sentence short as the ship shuddered.  They all looked out the viewports as a flash of red light heralded a transition from blue to star-specked black.

“We’ve been pulled out of hyperspace,” said a sensor tech.  Interdictor-class Star Destroyer, dead ahead!”

“We’re being hailed,” another announced.

Poe said, “Put it through.”

“This is the Final Order Star Destroyer Immobilizer,” a clipped voice addressed them.  “State your ship’s name, registration, cargo, and destination.”

Poe stepped over to the communications console.  “This is Admiral Poe Dameron of the Resistance.  Our ship, the Rebel Eclipse, is bringing a cargo of freedom to Coruscant.”

There was a long pause.  Poe was about to say something more, when a hologram of a tall man appeared before the command chair.  “This is Captain Baston Holt of the Final Order.  Your dreadnought is the stolen property of our government, the only legitimate authority in this galaxy.  Therefore, I order you and your crew of insurgents to surrender and prepare to be boarded.”

“I have one word for you,” Poe said.  Karabast!  He shut off the comms.  “Give me the helm.”

“Yessir.”

As Poe sat down at the pilot’s console, Connix looked at Rey.  “Please don’t tell me he’s going to do what I think he’s going to do.”

“He’s going to do what you think he’s going to do,” Rey responded truthfully.

“I told you not to tell me that.”

“Force preserve us all,” murmured D’Acy.

Poe was concentrating on the controls, pivoting the Star Destroyer until its bow was pointed at the Immobilizer.  Then he gave the sublight engines full power, letting them push the dreadnought towards the other ship.

Aboard the bridge of the Immobilizer, Captain Holt realized with horror what the commandeered battleship was about to do.  “Take evasive action!” he shouted.

The bottom tip of the Rebel Eclipse’s prow caressed the top surface of the interdictor, its Beskar edge slicing through the durasteel hull like paper.  Poe pushed the ship downwards, striking deeper into the enemy craft.  The ram tore through the center of the ship, explosions blossoming in its wake, then crashed through the bridge and out the stern, cleaving the Immobilizer in twain.

Poe stood up, allowing the pilot to resume his seat.  He turned towards Rey and Ackbar, who were calmly regarding the destruction, and Connix and D’Acy, who were cringing visibly.  Poe grinned.  “I think I finally figured out those controls.”

The two burning halves of the Immobilizer drifted slowly apart as the Rebel Eclipse, its explosion-blackened bow’s point trailing bent scraps of metal like a flag, turned to Coruscant and jumped away.

 

Chancellor Hux stepped into the Capitol control centre, using a black metal cane to support himself.  A bandage was wrapped around his left leg, stained by a large red patch of blood.

Hux scanned the crowd of Final Order personnel.  “Where’s Commander Sellik?” He demanded.

“I…I don’t know, sir,” stammered a Lieutenant.

“Well, go find him.”

“Yessir.”  The Lieutenant walked briskly away.  Hux frowned at his retreating back.  It wasn’t like Sellik to leave his post, especially when he knew Hux was gone.

“Someone get me Admiral Griss!” Hux commanded.

 

Ben Solo had descended into the bowels of the Jedi Temple, passing through crumbling and broken interior walls.  Now, he had reached a place where the floor had been broken apart and huge slabs of stone removed from it, leaving a black hole that gaped at him like the maw of a Sarlacc.

Ben crouched beside the broken opening, straining his eyes against the darkness.  He could barely make out a vague form below and across from him.  Ben backed away from the gap in the ground and took a running start, leaping into the void.  He slammed into a hard, rough surface and clung to it tenaciously.  “Ow,” he groaned.

Ben looked down.  As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he realized he was holding onto a giant chain, each link as large as himself, slanting away into the darkness below, further than he could see.  Slowly, carefully, he shimmied downwards.  The air here was cold and clammy, but he soon grew warm from his effort.  He found himself in a nervous sweat due to the imminent danger of falling, often having to pause in his climb to wipe his hands, one at a time, on his shirt and trousers.  He could feel more sweat pooling in his boots.  After a while, he forgot there was any existence outside of the continuous cycle of moving one arm, then the other, then his legs, as he inched ever lower.

Finally, after what almost seemed like an eternity in the darkness, Ben reached the bottom.  He spent a few minutes recovering from his exertion, taking the opportunity to look around in the dim light filtering through the hole in the roof.  He was at one end of a long, cavernous chamber, in which immense statues and thick columns marched away towards the shadowy far wall.  That vast stone edifice had a narrow gap in it, a vertical line of even deeper darkness.

Ben walked slowly across the vast crypt towards the opening, passing the fallen head of one of the statues, its stone face seeming to stare impassively at the ceiling.  He entered the crevice in the rock.

 

The Rebel Eclipse dropped out of lightspeed, the city-planet glowing beneath it in the noon light.  An armada of Final Order craft hovered over the metropolis, suspended in neat rows above the Federal District, with the Capitol in their midst.  Even more ships were visible afar off, while on the horizon lowered the dark clouds of a brewing storm.

Vice Admiral Ackbar spun around in the command chair in the bridge’s center, as his father used to do in ships of a markedly different design.  “Send the fleet to planetfall.  Surprise is the only advantage we have.”

 

Hux looked out the viewport of the command deck at Imperial Boulevard.  Smoke rose between the buildings.  Hux’s gaze dropped to the disorderly scrum before the entrance to Monument Plaza, where a Final Order assault tank was crawling slowly forward like some sort of metal-armored arthropod.

“Chancellor, we’ve detected a ship in orbit,” an officer notified him.  “One of ours, but with unrecognized signature codes.”

“It’s the stolen Eclipse.  Summon all Destroyers to the Capitol.  We can end this uprising and eliminate the Resistance in one triumphant day.”

 

Poe ran through the docking bay of the Rebel Eclipse.  He leapt into his orange X-wing’s cockpit and fired it up.  “You good back there, Beebee-Ate?”  An affirmative beep came from the droid socket.

Poe pulled on his helmet and spoke into the headset.  “All wings report in.”

“Alpha Flight standing by.”

“Beta Squadron standing by.”

“Tantive IV toonoonet en,” Nien Nunb said in Sullustan.

“Delta Squadron standing by.”

General Connix reported, “The Fortitude and all other transport haulers, landers, and dropships are ready.”

“Chi Squadron standing by,” said Snap Wexley.

Rey took a deep breath and stated, “Red Five standing by.”

“Okay, let’s kick the Final Order’s ass.  All ships launch,” ordered Poe.  “Go, go, go!”

The Resistance craft sped out of the hangar.  The city opened out below them, dozens of Star Destroyers hanging above it.  “Look at that fleet,” Poe marveled.

Atop the Capitol, the Star Destroyers, and assorted skyscrapers, turbolasers and ion cannons rotated and locked into place.  The batteries fired upwards, unleashing hell on the dreadnought and the cloud of tiny specks pouring out of it.

“Damn it!” Poe swore, dodging the anti-air fire.

The Resistance craft rocketed downwards, lasers zipping past them.  One green bolt dinged a Y-wing.  Another hit a B-wing, blowing off its cockpit; the first Resistance casualty of many this day.

“Welcome to Coruscant!” Poe shouted.  He spun and zoomed downwards, trying to evade the barrage through sheer speed.

An A-wing jerked out of a turbolaser’s path, peeling away from the rest of the fleet.  Its pilot, a man named Vanik, warned, “Watch your starboard, Wexley!”

“Whoa!” gasped Snap as his X-wing and Vanik’s fighter whizzed past each other, narrowly avoiding a head-on collision.

Wrobie Tyce wove round flak in her A-wing.  “We can’t survive this.  They’ll pick us off one by one.” 

“Get to their altitude, they can’t fire on us without hitting each other,” advised Poe.  “All wings, cover those landers.  Don’t give up!  Help is coming!”

Aftab Ackbar’s voice came through the comms.  “Prime main gun!”

A panel on the bow of the Rebel Eclipse slid upwards to reveal a superlaser, twice the size of those on the Resurgent-class.  The dreadnought unloaded the giant weapon on a Star Destroyer.  The broad red beam pierced the ship, blowing it apart from the inside.

The Resistance starfighters flew into the teeth of the enemy, passing the side of one Destroyer and the aft of another, dwarfed by the huge ion engines.  Squadrons of TIEs, standard fighters as well as Brutes, whispers, Daggers, Marauders and special forces models, launched from the capital ships’ docking bays, their laser cannons spitting green fire.

“Incoming TIEs,” Snap stated.

“I see ’em,” said Poe as a trio of TIE Daggers zipped towards them, firing on the troop transports.  He accelerated ahead of the landers, drawing away fire and taking focused, accurate shots.  One TIE exploded and spun out as he whooshed past it, then the other two followed it down as Poe’s aim proved true.  BB-8 chirped.  Despite the danger, both pilot and droid felt the exhilaration of being in their element.

The fighters and transports descended towards planetfall through billowing waves of emerald fire.

 

Rey had broken off from the rest of the Resistance attack force.  She coasted over Processional Way, engaging the landing gear and touching down next to a TIE whisper.  She took a deep breath, calming herself, then undid the old flight helmet’s chinstrap and popped open the cockpit.

Rey looked out at the forms of fallen stormtroopers lying on the street and draped across the stairs.  Clearly some sort of fight had taken place here.  She reached out through the Force, seeking out a familiar presence—and finding it.  Ben was in the Jedi Temple.

Rey ran up the path to the temple, taking the stairs two at a time.  When she reached the top, she took a moment to stare up in awe at the grand architecture of this ancient place, home to generations of Jedi.  Then she hurried on, into the darkness.

 

The battle on the ground had bogged down into a brutal melee, with both sides alternately striking and shoving at the other.  As soon as someone on the front fell, the person behind would step in to hold the line.

A blocky assault tank ground through the Resistance lines, cannons on its front blasting.  Jannah unhooked a grenade from a bandolier across her chest and threw it.  It skipped on the ground, landing below the tank.  The grenade exploded next to one of the tracks, the shockwave flipping the machine sideways.  The tank landed upside down, but the railgun on its belly continued shooting.

R2-D2 and C-3PO walked through heavy laser fire.  Nearby, a Final Order Astromech droid designated R8-O8 rolled to a scomp terminal on the side of the overturned tank and plugged in.  R2 beeped urgently.

“He’s sending a distress signal!” See-Threepio shouted.  “Stop him!”

Nobody in the ragtag Resistance force was listening; they were all engaged in their own desperate struggles.  Artoo beeped furiously at his companion.

“Me?” The protocol droid asked, taken aback.  “But I’m not programmed for violence, Artoo.”

Beeeeep!” R2-D2 shrieked at him.

C-3PO steeled himself and hustled past blaster bolts.  He pulled open the back panel of R8-O8.  “I do apologize for this,” he said as he reached into the droid’s innards and ripped out circuitry.  The astromech wailed in distress, adding to his horror.

“Please go quietly,” Threepio begged.  He gave one last yank.  R8-O8 shot sparks, then tipped over and clanged to the ground.

Artoo waddled past the deactivated droid and plugged into the vacated scomp link, sending his own command.  The railgun stopped, spun, and fired on the stormtroopers, peppering them with metal slugs.

Finn climbed onto the tank, breathing heavily.  “Threepio,” he gasped.  “Artoo.  Good to…see you.”

C-3PO fretted over the inanimate shell of R8-O8.  “I’ve done horrible things.  I may never be the same,” he moaned.

Shadows glided over the long boulevard towards the Capitol and the Rebel army, cast by a squadron of angular-winged TIE bombers.  Geysers of plascrete spewed upwards as the TIEs carpeted the avenue with explosives.  Finn turned and stared up at the bombers about to decimate them.

One of the TIEs exploded as X-wings, A-wings, and B-wings dove from the sky behind them, an orange X-wing at the forefront.  The Resistance ships dropped into the trench between the buildings and eviscerated the bombers, which spun into each other and blew open, the explosives onboard igniting into red flowers of fire.  Above the rest of the starfighters, The Y-wings of Delta Squadron fired proton torpedoes or dropped bombs on rooftop anti-air emplacements.  Finn and Jannah cheered, joined by stormtrooper defectors and Coruscanti citizens alike, as the fighters swept overhead.

In the cockpit of the transport ship Fortitude, Connix looked through a pair of macro binoculars at the battle taking place below.  “There he is,” Connix said.  “I’ve got a visual on the General.  And…he does have an army.  Take us down behind their lines.”

Resistance transports landed on the boulevard.  AT-ATs and AT-STs colorfully painted with starbirds, stripes, checkers, eyes and teeth, and numerous other patterns fell to the street from dropships.  Speeder bikes zoomed out of cargo doors.  Resistance troopers poured out of transports and landers.

General Kaydel Ko Connix and Captain Beaumont Kin, both of them carrying hefty blaster rifles, came up behind Finn.

“What’s the plan, General?” Connix asked.

“We’re trying to convince the stormtroopers to join us,” Finn told them, pointing to where a defector named Rafe (formerly RK-514) was talking to a few groggy troopers shaking off the aftereffects of stun blasts.  “We want to save them, not kill them.”

“You heard the General,” Kin shouted to a squad of Resistance commandos that had taken up positions around them.  “Stun blasts, droid poppers and crippling shots when possible!”  The troops ran forward, blue rings blazing from their blasters.

Hope swelled in Finn’s breast.  “You feel that?  We are the Resistance!  All of us!”  He leapt off the tank, charging once more into the breach.

 

“They’ve landed troop carriers,” Admiral Frantis Griss told Hux.  He had left the Capitol after the Supreme Council meeting, but had rushed back as soon as he was notified of the Resistance attack.

Griss’s chief aide, Commander Masir Trach, studied the read-out on a nearby console.  “The Resistance has deployed multiple speeders and walkers.  Scopes are registering AT-ATs and AT-STs.”  He looked up, a worried expression on his face.  “They’re using our equipment.”

“Of course they are,” Hux said sourly.  “They’re just common thieves, deep down.”

The Lieutenant whom Hux had sent to find Sellik came up behind him.  “Chancellor, we located the Commander.”

Hux turned to face him.  “Good.”

“He was locked inside Interrogation Six, along with a stormtrooper,” the Lieutenant said.  “The prisoner is gone.  The trooper said there was a scuffle; she grabbed his gun and then he blacked out.”

“And Sellik?”

“He was unconscious when we first found him, sir.  After we woke him up, we couldn’t get anything sensible out of him.  He kept babbling about…ah…dancing Hoojibs.”

“Hoojibs?”

The Lieutenant looked uncomfortable.  “Yes, sir.  Hoojibs.  Singing excerpts of Bith light operas, he said.  We…thought it best to take him to infirmary.”

Hux barely refrained from burying his face in his hands.  “Put out a bulletin that the prisoner has escaped,” he ordered.

 

Ben stepped out of the stone fissure into a colossal amphitheater lit by a dim blue glow with no clear source.  The walls were lined with rows and rows of seats carved directly into the bedrock, upon which sat hundreds, perhaps thousands of robed figures.  As they saw him, they began to chant in the ancient Sith tongue.  In the infrequent gaps between the stands were spiny, curving columns that seemed as much like organic structures as ones shaped by intelligent life.  In the center of the coliseum was a circular, raised platform, surrounded by a squad of long-caped Sovereign Protectors, their crimson armor a cross between those of the Sith troopers and Praetorian Guards.

Seemingly without being controlled by his thoughts, Ben’s legs carried him towards the dais.  He climbed onto it.  In its center was a round altar with runes carved into its side.  Across from Ben was a massive seat formed of dark stone, jagged spikes of rock sticking out from behind it; the Throne of the Sith, which had sat here under the Jedi Temple for millennia, like an evil canker hidden beneath the light.

The three remaining Knights of Ren stood around the throne.  Upon it sat a hunched, gaunt form wearing a robe of red velvet, its teeth revealed in a smile like a knife-wound.  It spread its arms in a gesture of welcome, and in a familiar mock-jovial rasp that sent chills down Ben’s spine, proclaimed, “Ahhh, the wayward son has returned.”

“You should be dead,” said Ben.

“My boy, I have died before.  The dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be…unnatural.”

Ben drew closer to his old master, until he could see the sinews covered by the pale, wrinkled skin.  “You could be a clone, a projection.”

“Have you so little faith even now?” the thing inquired.  It drew back a long sleeve, exposing its left forearm, which was ringed by an indentation above the wrist.  “Behold!  A mark of the wounds you inflicted upon me.”

He had already believed it, but now Ben knew it to be true; this was Snoke.  He felt fear twist in his gut, and suppressed it by taking refuge in anger.  He drew his pistol and pointed it at Snoke’s forehead.  “I’ve killed you before.  I can kill you once again.”

Snoke’s grin deepened.  “Indeed, you can.  But why should you, when I can give you so much?”

Ben’s eyes narrowed.  “What can you give me?”

“Everything.”

“I no longer wish to rule,” replied Ben.

“I know what you want: the girl.  Her fierceness, her hatred of you just makes you desire her more.  I can give her to you.  All you have to do…is give me that.”  Snoke leaned forward and pointed his shriveled finger at the knife on Ben’s belt.

“No deal,” Ben said.  He fired.  A neat hole opened in Snoke’s forehead like a third eye.  His scarred, oversized head fell sideways against his shoulder as his upper body slumped back against the throne.

The cultists gave a great shout of dismay.  Ben turned towards the exit, and saw that his way was blocked by the crimson-armored Protectors.

A noise from behind Ben made him look over his shoulder.  The corpse of the Supreme Leader was moving, making feeble attempts to sit up.  It finally managed it, the glazed dead eyes staring sightlessly forward.  The skin around the hole in Snoke’s broad forehead grew slowly towards its center, then knit together, leaving behind only a slight circular depression.  Then intelligence returned to the eyes and the mouth grinned, and Snoke was alive once more.

“Do not fear that feeble attack, my faithful,” Snoke shouted to the crowd.  “Nothing shall stop my ascension to ultimate power.”  He lowered his voice, addressing Ben.  “You see?  What I told you was true.  I can be neither beaten nor betrayed.  You sought to betray me, as I knew you would, but failed, likewise.  I even guided you towards the treachery, and would have been disappointed if you did not act upon your murderous impulses, for then you would not be worthy of the title…of Sith.”

 

The storm was rolling in over the Federal District, casting a shadow over the city, while above the clouds, a decidedly less natural tumult was already unfolding.

A Mandator IV-class siege dreadnought came out of hyperspace with an audible WHOOM of displaced air.  It fired its turbolasers on the Rebel Eclipse.  The larger ship’s deflector shields absorbed the energy.

“Engage starboard cannons!” Vice Admiral Ackbar gurgled.  He swiveled in his chair, waving his webbed hands as though he were a conductor at the head of an orchestra playing a particularly violent piece: Symphony No. 9 in G Major—“Final Battle.”

Gun ports on the side of the Eclipse slid open, pushing out twenty massive ion cannons.  They fired in unison, shooting red bolts at the Final Order ship.  As they impacted, they formed parti-colored electrical storms that danced across the metal surface.  The bow of the dreadnought dipped as its systems failed and explosions bloomed across it.

Ackbar clenched his fist as the bridge erupted in cheers of victory.  Their high spirits ebbed, however, as ten more enemy vessels appeared in realspace at once: a handful of Star Destroyers, three snub-nosed Maxima-A class heavy cruisers, and a pair of boxy, ungainly-looking Dissident-class light cruisers.

“Come about!” ordered Ackbar.  The Eclipse turned towards the new arrivals and unleashed its superlaser and all its turbolasers on them.  The Final Order battleships fired back as they rumbled forward to engage, the lasers lighting up the darkness of space.  TIE fighters skimmed across the Eclipse, trying in vain to pierce the shields and thick armor and occasionally blowing apart as they were caught in the crossfire between the capital ships.

 

Three X-wings flew towards the Capitol, the gargantuan complex hanging over them like a ghastly metallic tree.  Now that they were so close to it, the pilots could finally get a sense of its scale, its sheer immensity.

Poe was in the lead X-wing.  “See any soft spots, Snap?”

“Just looks like a bunch of metal to me, boss.”

“I don’t see anything special,” said C’ai Threnalli.

“Alright, arm proton torpedoes.”

Six explosive charges enveloped in pink balls of particle energy streaked towards the Capitol.  They hit its underside, bursting into an immense conflagration.  Some of the projections hanging beneath the building fell as their support beams were ripped away, crashing to the ground like metal stalactites.

 

The floor of the Capitol control deck shook, throwing Hux off balance.  He grabbed for an instrument panel, saving himself from a fall, as the lights flickered overhead and the dull boom of an explosion sounded somewhere far off.

Chancellor Hux regained his footing and returned to watching a holographic representation of the air battle.  A tiny, translucent Star Destroyer exploded before his eyes, victim of one of the Rebel Eclipse’s ion cannon broadsides.  “How is this not over?” Hux demanded.

“It’s the stolen dreadnought, sir,” Admiral Griss explained.  “Our fleet isn’t equipped to engage a ship of that magnitude—”

Hux interrupted, “I mean all of it.  We should be crushing them like the scum they are.”

“General Engell is hailing us,” a comms officer broke in.

Hux said resignedly, “Put her through.”

A holographic image of General Engell's head appeared to one side of the miniature battle.  “Chancellor,” she addressed him, her face drawn with worry, “Our troops are in retreat.  Every sector is besieged, not just the Federal District.  The civilian population is in open revolt; they boil out of the ground, strike, and then hide before our troops can mobilize.  And there have been reports of more defections, even insider attacks.  One whole unit has gone dark.”

Hux’s mouth twisted, his voice brimming with barely restrained fury.  “I want Sith troopers on the ground.  Now.”

 

The trio of X-wings continued their attack run, weaving through a grid of lasers and ion pulses fired by the cannons atop the Capitol.  Poe strafed the structure, taking out several turrets in a continuous, dizzying display of aeronautic prowess.

“We’ve got eight—no, nine—evil eyes on us,” said Snap Wexley, using a Rebel pilot nickname for TIEs.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” said Poe testily.

“Karé thinks she’s pregnant.”

What?

C’ai Threnalli called, “Poe, watch out!”

Poe narrowly dodged an emerald beam.  “OK, no gossip during dogfights.  We’ll try to lose ’em in the streets.”

On the eleventh floor of BlasTech Industries galactic headquarters, a team of accountants looked up from calculating the net revenue for the third quarter of 9 FO as a trio of X-wings sped by, chased by a squadron of TIE fighters with cannons screeching.  The Resistance pilots wove between buildings and around corners, trying to shake their pursuers.  As they emerged from an especially labyrinthine section, they saw a squadron of TIE Daggers buzzing towards them.

Poe spun his X-wing on its axis, firing wildly as sky and ground whirled about him.  A few of the Daggers exploded.  Poe dove and skimmed along the avenue, while his wingmen instead went into a climb.

The squadron of TIEs pursuing them met the one ahead.  Some of the fighters collided with each other, sending stabilizer vanes twirling away like pinwheels.  Others jerked sideways, only to crash into buildings, sending fire and glassteel raining down.  Poe looped around and picked off the only survivor, a TIE Dagger.  It burst into flames and crashed into the head office of Sienar Fleet System’s Coruscant branch.

 

Rose snuck down a crisp white hallway to a window overlooking a vast architectonic abyss encircling the center column of the Capitol.  Attached to the thick metal spine was a colossal cube-shaped machine—the communications jammer.  It was completely encased in armor, with no catwalks or ladders leading to it.  There was no way she could reach it.

Rose ducked into a recess as she heard approaching voices.  A procession of officers and technicians rounded the corner and walked past her hiding place.

Admiral Griss, in the center of the group, ordered, “Ready the hyperdrive.”

Rose held in a gasp.  Hyperdrive?  The Capitol is a ship!

“In the unlikely event our defenses are breached, we’ll make the jump to lightspeed,” Griss continued.

Rose watched a pair of Final Order techs break away from the rest.  She crept after them, trying to keep at a distance without losing sight of them.  They walked briskly down the corridors to a bank of turbolifts and got into one of them.

Rose dashed to the lift next to the one the technicians had entered.  As the doors closed, she jabbed the button labeled “engineering deck”, hoping that was where the technicians were going.

She must have been right, for when the doors slid open, she caught a brief glimpse of the techs’ backs, disappearing into a side passage.  Rose hurried after, catching up just as they scanned the ID badges on their uniforms before a door and disappeared through it.

Rose crept to the door and inserted the code cylinder Fulcrum had given her into a round slot beside it.  The portal slid open, and she stepped through it.

Rose found herself in a dimly-lit control room, filled with navigation consoles.  The technicians were standing at a control board at the far end of the room.  Before them was a window looking out on the main engine core, a large room lined with complicated equipment  and a crackling blue beam of energy blazing in its center.  The energy stream reminded Rose of the powershaft on Kuat.

“Prepare for surface disengagement,” said one of the technicians, who seemed to be the other’s superior.  “Ready engines for hyperspace.”

The other nav tech frowned.

The head tech explained, “Purely precautionary.”

Rose slipped behind the consoles and opened a panel in the floor.  She crawled down into the subspace below the nav control room, a cramped half-room filled with stacks of computer towers and thick data cables.

The techs were still audible, their voices carrying through the floor.  “Ready to set coordinates, sir.”

“Plot a course for the Forve system,” said the head tech.

Rose found one of the hyperdrive control computers.  She opened its case and set to work on the motherboard.

 

Rey had made her way down to the lowest level of the Jedi temple, and found the hole in the floor.  She leapt through it into the darkness, landing on the giant chain.  Rey quickly clambered down it, using the skills and muscle memory she had developed through years of scavenging in broken Imperial ships.

When she reached the bottom, Rey dropped lightly to the ground.  She looked up at the ancient statues looming out of the darkness as she passed between them, keeping her hand close to her lightsaber.  Finally, she came to the fissure in the rock face and entered it.

 

“You still haven’t told me how you’re alive,” Ben said.

Snoke seemed to ignore the inquiry.  “Tell me, have you ever heard of the Triumph of Darth Plagueis the Wise?” he asked.

“No,” Ben responded.

“I thought not,” said Snoke smugly.  “Few know it in its uncorrupted form.  It’s an old Sith legend.  Darth Plagueis was a Dark Lord of the Sith so powerful and so wise, he could use the Force to influence the midichlorians, and create life itself.  But despite his power over life, he had not power over death.

“Plagueis became dreadfully afraid of dying, and in hopes of finding some way to prevent it, he devoted himself to studying arcane texts, penned by men gone mad with knowledge.  Their scribblings led him to a barren world, where an ancient being revealed to him a method of cheating death, of returning from beyond; and more than this, the path to Mortis, and power beyond imagination.

“Plagueis returned to inhabited regions, and began to insinuate himself into the aristocracy of the Republic, with the aim of achieving not only esoteric wisdom, but also political power.  He met a girl named Breta, a Princess of Alderaan, and courted her.  In his attempts to win her, he showed her his experiments on using midichlorians and bioengineering to achieve immortality.  She feigned awe and bedazzlement, yet secretly, the small-minded fool felt horror and disgust.  She informed the Republic Judicial Forces, who destroyed Plagueis’s lab and all his work, as well as the map he had made of the way to Mortis.  Although he could have stopped them, he did not wish to reveal his true nature as a Sith, for the Jedi were many and powerful in those days.

“Instead, Plagueis bided his time, and set about the long, hard task of recreating his research from nothing, working in more carefully hidden and far-flung refuges.  During this time, he took an apprentice, and showed him many of his secrets.  However, he knew that someday, his apprentice would seek to supplant him, as was the Sith way, and Plagueis prepared himself for that eventuality.

“After years of learning, Plagueis’s apprentice, believing his master had taught him all he knew, struck him down in his sleep.  The apprentice left, glorying in his victory, and achieved great power.  Yet he had become afraid, late in his life when his sight was clouded, and built observatories to scan the stars beyond the galaxy, looking for signs of Plagueis’s return.  Before he could make a more thorough search of the dark and strange places of the universe, however, his downfall came, courtesy of his own overweening arrogance.  It was that same arrogance that had allowed him to believe, even for a moment, that his master Plagueis was truly dead, when he had merely shed his mortal frame like a serpent sheds its skin.

“For though Darth Plagueis had died, his spirit lived on.  He sojourned long and far in the World Between Worlds and in the Spaces Beyond Space, learning much; and when the time was ripe, he returned to his body in this realm, and took charge of the remnants of his apprentice’s once-great works, shaping them into a dagger in the heart of the hated Republic.

“Much like the apprentice in the story, you have done my bidding, even when you thought me dead.”

“I did not,” denied Ben.

“Was it not I who first whispered the name of Mortis in your ear?”  He imitated the growl of Emperor Palpatine, “I have been every voice—YOU HAVE EVER HEARD”—he shouted in his own voice—“inside your head,” he finished in Darth Vader’s mechanical boom.

Snoke resumed his normal rasp.  “Long have I sought Mortis, yet never have I been able to reach it.  I sent proxies, trusted emissaries, but they also failed.  With each frustration, I grew more convinced that the Ancients who ruled the place were deliberately barring my way.

“For a time, I gave up my search, and turned to other pursuits; but I heard a rumor that the ‘Chosen One,’ along with his master and apprentice, visited Mortis during the Clone Wars.  This sparked my interest anew.  And then I found you…descendant of Vader, last-born Skywalker; and furthermore, rightful heir to the throne of the dead world Alderaan!  I speculated that you could reach Mortis, and bring back to me the key to its power.  And now,” Snoke chuckled, “you have played your part to perfection, as I knew you would.”

 

The arrival of the Resistance had turned the tide of the ground battle.  The stormtroopers were now in open retreat, the combined force of citizens, defectors, and Resistance troopers overwhelming them.  The Final Order’s AT-MTs stood alone, slugging it out with the Resistance’s smaller walkers.

Finn and Jannah pelted forward, shoulder to shoulder, firing nonstop at the Final Order army.  Just behind them ran General Connix and Captain Kin, leading the Resistance soldiers.  “Keep going!” shouted Kin.

Atmospheric Assault Landers descended to the street, turrets atop them firing as the boarding ramps crashed down.  Red-armored Sith troopers marched out of them, two by two, firing heavy blaster cannons.  They slowly advanced, seemingly untroubled by the fire of the Rebel army.

 

Snap Wexley scanned the skies.  “Still no Falcon or backup.”

BB-8 beeped a query.

“I don’t know, Beebee,” Poe answered.  “Maybe nobody else is coming.”

“What do we do, Admiral?” asked C’ai Threnalli.

Poe adjusted his headset audio pickup.  “We gotta hit ’em ourselves.”

Wrobie Tyce said incredulously, “What can we do against these things?”

“Just stay alive!”

“That Destroyer’s shields are down,” reported Jessika Pava.

“So are that one’s,” said Snap.  “The Eclipse is whittling away at all of them.”

Poe swept up from below one of the Star Destroyers, other starfighters following in his wake.  They concentrated their fire on the giant superlaser protruding from the battleship’s hangar bay.  The cannon exploded, then touched off a chain reaction leading back to the power core.  The Star Destroyer’s metal shell cracked open as a massive fireball blossomed out of the ship, tearing it apart from the inside.

 

Rey walked through the fissure in the rock.  The gap was narrow enough that she could touch both of the rough walls at the same time.  A faint blue lambency and the murmur of a rough voice came from ahead.

 

“Join me once more,” Snoke coaxed.  “I shall restore you to your former place, and give you the girl, the galaxy…whatever you wish.  Surely you realize now that you cannot defeat me.”  Snoke’s voice suddenly cracked like a whip, commanding, “Give me the Dagger of Mortis!”

“No.”

“It was not a request,” grated Snoke, waving a hand imperiously.  “Knights!”

Rey stepped into the amphitheatre and looked out at the sea of Sith cultists, the squads of red-armored troopers, the Knights of Ren, Supreme Leader Snoke, and, near the exact center of the chamber, Ben Solo.

The Knights of Ren surrounding Ben drew closer to him.  Ben fired, but the blaster bolts ricocheted off their armor.  Lorl struck out with his scythe’s handle, knocking the pistol out of Ben’s hand.

Ben whirled, using the Force to knock Lorl Ren to the ground.  Ott retaliated, pushing Ben off balance as Solonny slashed at him.  Ben ducked as the Darksaber whistled over his head, slicing through a few flyaway hairs.

Lorl sprang to his feet and swung his scythe at Ben.  Ben dodged, but Ott hit him with the flat of his huge vibrocleaver, its edge splitting his lip.  Solonny kicked him in the stomach, driving him to his knees.  The hilt of Ott’s cleaver slammed into the back of Ben’s head.

A squad of Sith troopers surrounded Rey.  She pulled her lightsaber from her belt and activated one of the blades.

Ben slowly rose, bruises already blossoming on his face, blood trickling down his chin.  He stared at the Knights and their master as defiantly as he could, but then found himself looking instead at someone visible to him only in his mind; someone standing directly behind him.

Rey raised her saber into the ready position, the shining blade of energy limning her face with blue light.  She was about to launch herself at the Sith troopers, but something made her hesitate.

Time seemed to slow for both Rey and Ben as they saw each other through the Force, their eyes meeting.  In that moment they felt like one being, with one mind, one soul, and one purpose.  Ben gave a minute nod, of both understanding and readiness.  Rey drew back her saber until it was behind her, as though winding up for a strike, but then withdrew her empty hand.

Ben Solo reached behind him and pulled out the lightsaber, the fusion of Anakin’s and Rey’s weapons.  The Knights stepped back involuntarily.  Ben gave a nonchalant shrug.  Then he swung the lightsaber in a broad arc, grazing Ott’s shoulder and slicing through a Sovereign Protector’s chest.  A shower of sparks sprayed from each successful strike.  Ben spun and parried Lorl’s scythe, then twirled the lightsaber, preparing to attack again.

“It’s the Jedi girl,” Snoke shouted, pointing at Rey.  “Kill her!”

Rey quickly drew Leia’s lightsaber, igniting it, as the Sith troopers aimed their double-pronged rifles at her.  They fired.  Rey used the Force to redirect one plasma bolt into a trooper’s chest, another harmlessly into the stone floor.  She spun her saber, using it to deflect blasts into two more Protectors.  One of them fell and moved no more, but the other was saved by his armor and kept shooting.  Rey pushed one of his beams into the helmet of another trooper.

Solonny Ren stalked down from the platform, leaving Ott and Lorl to handle Kylo.  She brandished the Darksaber at Rey.  “So you’re the chit that’s given Kylo such trouble.  You may be good against Sovereign Protectors—but how about this?”  She swept forward, swinging the Darksaber.

Rey brought up her lightsaber, parrying the thin black blade of energy.  Solonny slashed viciously at her.  The knight seemed less like a woman wielding a weapon and more like a living sword with an attached body, her every movement focused on violence.

After giving ground steadily before the unrelenting assault, Rey saw her chance.  She sliced at Solonny’s head, cutting through her mask.  The lower half of the gridded faceplate fell to the ground, neatly shorn away.

“You do have spirit,” hissed Solonny.  “I wonder, is your blood is as sweet as your father’s was?”  She drew a vibroknife from below her robes, lifted it to the now-exposed lower half of her face, and ran her long, pointed tongue up it.

Rey felt revulsion flush through her.  She channeled it into a brutal assault, hammering at Solonny, but the knight slid nimbly away from every blow.

Ben parried Lorl’s scythe and Ott’s cleaver, then blocked the force pikes of two Sovereign Protectors, throwing their weapons upwards and forcing them off balance.  Ott tried to stab him in the back, but Ben swung his lightsaber behind him.  The cleaver glanced off the plasma beam.  Ben spun and parried Lorl again, while simultaneously Force-pushing a Sith trooper off the platform.  Then another Protector fell to him, a gaping gash in its chest armor.

Ott prepared to swing again, but Ben jabbed at him, impaling him in the chest.  Ott Ren collapsed.  Lorl leapt at Ben, enraged by his companion’s death, only to fall to a swift slash across the neck.  Ben rushed off the dais.

Solonny had regained the upper hand, forcing Rey to retreat.

“Rey!  Switch!” Ben called, running towards them.

Rey spun away as Ben engaged Solonny’s blade with his.  The Sith troopers began to fire at her again.  Rey used the Force to spin one Protector so that he shot another.  She deflected the rest of the bolts with her lightsaber, felling three more troopers, before slamming another Protector to the ground and flinging him away, wrapping him up in his cape.

Ben and Solonny danced around each others swings, their long hours of sparring allowing each to predict the other’s moves.

“Your girl’s quite feisty, Kylo.  I can see why she appeals to you,” Solonny teased, locking her saber of darkness with his of light.  “Do you like her more than you did me?”

Ben grunted and shoved Solonny away, freeing his weapon.  He dodged the knight’s next thrust, then leapt over her and ran her through from behind.

Ben put his mouth next to Solonny’s ear, hidden under the remnants of her helmet, and whispered, “I never did like you, Solonny.”

Solonny sagged.  Ben pulled his lightsaber free and let her sink to the ground, where she curled into herself like a dying snake and then lay still.

Rey cut a trooper in half, then turned to see Ben fling the last Sovereign Protector away like a bloody rag.  The man in black and the woman in white walked onto the dais and looked at each other, in the flesh this time.  Then they turned as one to face the throne, raising their lightsabers to the ready.

Snoke stood up and clapped slowly, the sound of his applause echoing through the enormous space.  “Bravo, both of you!  Seldom have I seen swordplay of such skill.  You are both worthy of being Jedi—or Sith.  The choice of light or dark is yours, but one will bring you power beyond imagining, the other consign you to the abyss.”

Rey said venomously, “I came to destroy the Sith, not join them.”

Snoke laughed, his mirth trailing off into a high-pitched wheeze.  “I shall warn any Lords of the Sith whom I encounter to be wary of you.”

“Aren’t you a Sith?”

“I have transcended such titles.  They are far too…limiting.”

“You’re a tyrant just the same,” said Rey.

“I see you are little changed from our last encounter.  Perhaps you are too hasty with your words.”  Snoke stretched out his arms.  A grinding and cracking came from above as the ceiling opened, four huge slabs of stone pushing upwards through the foundations of the Jedi Temple.  Flecks of rock fell from above as Snoke blew a hole through the interior of the temple, sending stone fountaining upwards, and then threw aside the remnants of the temple’s broken central spire to reveal the sky.

Rey looked up through the jagged-edged hole at the space battle high above, the tiny fighter craft looking like insects as they zipped between the rows of mammoth Star Destroyers.  As she watched, a pair of TIE Daggers shot down a Y-wing, the bomber spinning and trailing flames before it blew open.

“They don’t have long,” the Supreme Leader intoned.  “No-one is coming to help them.  Only you have the power to save them; strike down Kylo Ren and take your place by my side, and I shall call off the fleet.  Refuse, and your new family dies…just as your parents did.”

“No.  I will never turn to the dark side.”

Snoke lowered his voice.  “I know what you really want.  You don’t want your friends; you want your parents.  I can bring them back to life.”

Rey shook her head.  “I don’t believe you.”

“Ah, but you do,” said Snoke, seductively reasonable.  “You have been to Mortis; you know of its power.  You are unable to harness it, but I can.  Help me, and you can have everything—everyone—you want…forever.”

Rey knew it must be a trick, but she still felt tempted.  Could he really bring her parents back?  Could she finally get to know her mother and father?

It didn’t matter.  Even if he could resurrect her parents, she was too big a threat to him.  He would destroy her as soon as she helped him achieve his goals.  And she would never betray her friends, no matter the cost to herself.  Rey spat, “No.  I’ll never bow to a murderer like you.”

“Kylo Ren…surely you see reason?  You cannot kill me, for I cannot be killed.”

“Perhaps…perhaps not,” Ben said thoughtfully.  “What do you want?”

Power,” Snoke responded, greed burning brightly in his sunken eyes.  “Power to rule the galaxy, not through the clumsy tools of servants and soldiers, ships and battle stations, but directly.  Power enough to control anyone, to crush worlds with the twitch of a finger, to move stars even while sunk in the depths of dreams.  Power enough to be rightfully called the Sith’ari—a living god.”

Ben said slowly, as though the truth of his words was being revealed to him even as he spoke them, “Power is worth less than the uses you put it to once you have attained it.”

“We stand together,” said Rey.  “And we stand against you.”

Snoke frowned.  “Stand together…die together.”

Rey and Ben rushed forward.  Snoke threw up a hand, knocking Ben to the ground.  The Dagger of Mortis slipped out of Ben’s belt and flew into Snoke’s hand.

Rey swung at Snoke, but the Supreme Leader used the Force to jerk her arm sideways.  Leia’s lightsaber slipped out of her grasp and clattered to the ground.  Snoke struck out with the dagger, blindingly fast, slashing across her eyes.  Rey screamed, falling to her knees as a flash of red lit up her vision, and then saw no more.

Chapter 18: The Stars, Shaken

Chapter Text

Chapter Eighteen

 

The Stars, Shaken

 

Sith troopers pressed steadily down Imperial Boulevard, driving the Resistance forces back step by bloody step, dozens falling where they stood.  Behind them, AT-MTs trundled forward, cannons blowing gaping holes in the street.

One of the Sith troopers used the Force to pull a Resistance soldier from behind a downed UATT.  The soldier tried to scramble back into cover, but the Sith trooper held him in place and gunned him down.

Most of the Coruscanti citizens were now in open rout, rushing away from the implacable advance of the red-armored soldiers.  Sith jetpack troopers landed in front of them, firing grenade launchers.  A wall of flame rose up, blocking the crowd’s escape.  This revolution was turning into a massacre.

General Connix fell to the ground as a bolt hit her in the leg.  Captain Kin pulled her up and half-carried, half-dragged her away from the battlefront.

A low-flying TIE strafed the street as Finn, Jannah, and several other defectors jogged towards the landers.  “We have to evacuate!” Jannah shouted.  “Get as many people out as possible!”

“We can’t!” Finn yelled back.  “We barely made it down here.  We’ll never get out under this much fire!”  He looked around at the remnants of the Resistance, cut off and surrounded by enemies, firing back at impossible odds as they fought for their very survival.  His eyes began to water.  This was how it would all end.  This was how liberty would die.

It began to rain, large drops falling from the sky like tears.

 

Spears of plasmic death flashed above Coruscant, illumining the grim clouds like lightning.  Two Star Destroyers fired their superlasers on the Rebel Eclipse simultaneously.  A red cocoon formed around the dreadnought as its deflector shields held back the unleashed energy.  The Eclipse blasted at one of its attackers with its own superlaser and broadsided the other with its cannons.  The Final Order ships exploded and fell through the clouds towards the planet below.

“Shields at thirty-eight percent, Vice Admiral,” a technician called.

“Change our plane of attack!  Don’t let them line up on us!” Ackbar commanded, weary but steadfast.

Another Resurgent-class Destroyer appeared out of hyperspace, and another, the odds shifting more and more out of their favor.

 

Inside the cockpit of his X-wing, Poe Dameron plunged through the chaos of swarming TIE fighters and sheets of laser fire.  He zipped between a pair of burning Destroyers just before they collided behind him.  He watched as more enemy ships arrived and sent fighters streaming down towards Coruscant.

“We’ll have no chance down there if those reinforcements make it through,” he said.  “We need more ships.”

A trio of TIE daggers pursued an A-Wing, green fire whizzing after it.

“Vanik, they’re on your tail,” Poe warned.

“Yeah, I see ’em,” acknowledged the pilot, looking out his windscreen.

Poe said, “No, n—no, Vanik! 

The TIEs’ fire hit the A-Wing.  Vanik screamed as his fighter was engulfed in flames.

No! ” Poe shouted as he watched Vanik’s burning craft spin out of control and crash into a Star Destroyer.

“Alpha Three is down,” reported Alpha Leader, delivering Vanik’s epitaph.

The comms chatter took on a panicked tone as more Resistance starfighters fell.

“Fire’s coming in, three degrees.”

An X-wing pilot said, “They’re on my tail, I can’t get—Ahhh!”  The TIEs hit him too, his wings spiraling away as he dropped towards the city.

“They’re everywhere!” yelled Kallie Lintra.

“—too late.  Ahhh!”

Karé Kun cautioned, “Pull in!”

Laserfire struck a Y-Wing, knocking out one of its thrusters.

“Delta Leader’s hit.  Who is leading Delta?”

Delta Leader, despite struggling to stay aloft, still responded.  “Fickser’s second-in-command.  Losing altitude.”

“More ships arriving from hyperspace, Admiral,” Ackbar reported.

Poe’s head drooped, his chin on his chest.

“Admiral, what’s our next move?”

“Poe, what now?”

Poe drew a shallow breath as he looked up again, green and red light flashing across his face.  He felt like crying.  “My friends,” he said, choking up slightly, “I’m sorry.  I thought we had a shot.  But there’s just too many of them.”

There was a peculiar buzzing crackle from his comms.  Then a smooth, familiar voice said, “But there are more of us, Poe.  There are more of us.”

Poe jerked his control stick forward and soared upwards, past a Star Destroyer and into the upper atmosphere.  He emerged from the cloud layer, and looked out at the starfield ahead.  Before him was a massive fleet, thousands of ships strong, with more spilling into realspace every second.  In fact, it was more than just a fleet, it was a fleet of fleets; hundreds of types of ships drawn from all across the galaxy, flown by Resistance sympathizers; planetary militias, peacekeepers and defense forces; veterans of prior wars; spacers, smugglers, mercenaries, pirates, and bounty hunters.  More than a dozen bulbous Mon Calamari Star Cruisers served as rallying points and launching platforms for smaller craft.  Resistance cells, Rebel veterans, and New Republic remnants contributed Nebulon-B and -C escort frigates, Corellian CR90 corvettes, Brahatok-class gunships, Hammerheads, Free Virgillia-class Bunkerbusters, GR-75 medium transports, Pelta- and Vakbeor-class frigates, and MG-100 StarFortress bombers.  Scattered throughout the rest of the armada were freighters, quadjumpers, longhaulers, Pursuer-class enforcers, Guavian Death Gang ships, a whole sub-fleet of Hynestian Cruisers, an ancient Cronian battlebird, a Nubian yacht, and even a Star Tours speeder.

“Look at this,” breathed Poe, astonished.  Look at this…

As Poe scanned the immense armada, his eyes fell on its vanguard, which comprised a Durosian fighter, a Gozanti Armed Transport, a Lantillian GX1 short hauler, a Wookiee Auzituck anti-slaver gunship, and freighters from Drovan, the Mining Guild, and Coruscant itself.  Just to one side was the recently reformed Phoenix Squadron: a CR90, a Hammerhead, and a Lothalian corvette; the Shadow Caster; and the Sato’s Hammer, all led by the Ghost.

The Millennium Falcon swooped into view at the head of the fleet.  Lando Calrissian helmed the controls, laughing with pure joy and exhilaration as the fate of the galaxy once more depended on his ship’s ability to out-fly anything else in the air.  Chewbacca glanced at him, an unmistakable smile on his furry face.

Lando said, “All wings report in.”

“Mon Calamari fleet, standing by,” said a slippery voice.

“This is the Ghost,” Hera Syndulla reported.  “Phoenix Squadron is standing by.”

“Ryloth Defense Authority, standing by.”

Anodyne Two, standing by.”

“Chandrilan Resistance, standing by.”

“Phantom Squadron, standing by.”

“Alphabet Two, standing by.”

“Zay Versio with Inferno Squad, standing by.  Look at all these ships!”

“J-Squadron, standing by.”

Shriiizzeeek’k’k’zzz—

“This is Captain Imanuel Doza of the Colossus.  We are here to help.”

“—the Rand Ecliptic, standing by.”

“Free Mandalore, ready for action.”

“DROID LIBERATION FRONT SHIP L3-37 ARMED AND OPERATIONAL FULL STOP”

“This is Captain Fobis Doolevy of the Wattled Purrgil, standing by.”

“Zorii Bliss here—”

“—Mori Mome, on behalf of the Black Sun Syndicate—”

“I am Hondo Ohnaka, pirate king, and I am here to save the day! 

Poe made a broad turn in his X-wing, dropping behind the Falcon.  “Hit those underbelly cannons,” he commanded.  “Every one we knock out is a world saved.”

The light freighter and the starfighter skimmed over the Rebel Eclipse, followed closely by a U-wing and a Victor-wing.  Behind them, the rest of the fleet swept towards the Final Order fleet like an unstoppable wave of metal, opening up with a withering barrage of energized plasma.

 

A burning TIE Dagger crashed into the army of Sith troopers and tanks on Imperial Boulevard.  Finn looked up as a battalion of unfamiliar ships descended through the clouds and joined the firefight in the sky.  “What?  Lando, you did it.  You did it!  YEAH!”  He raised his rifle into the air, yelling to anyone who could hear.  “We got backup!”

 

A Venator-class Star Destroyer hove into the thick of battle, trading broadsides with its latter-day counterparts.  The vast doors atop it opened and Z-95 Headhunters, ARC-170s, and Low-Altitude Assault Transports emerged from the cruiser’s hangar.  Nearby, Vulture Droids buzzed out of a Lucrehulk-class Droid Control Ship, accompanying Separatist landing craft.

A Y-wing climbed towards a Star Destroyer’s underside, spinning out of the path of a TIE fighter’s blasts before blowing it away.  The bomber poured fire into the Destroyer’s superlaser, avoiding the barrel of the cannon by meters as it plunged through the flames belching out of it.

“So long, sky trash,” a voice said over the comms.

Snap wondered, “Who’s that flier?”

“Don’t you recognize your own mother, Temmin?”

“MOM!” Snap shouted, almost blowing out his audio pickup.

Poe said, “It’s an honor to fly with you, Norra.”

“Is Wedge here too?” Snap asked excitedly.

“Right here on the Falcon, Snap,” Wedge Antilles replied.  He swiveled the turret gun to take out a TIE Brute as the freighter twirled with surprising grace to avoid turbolaser fire.  “Nice flying, Lando.”

 

The Final Order Capitol’s control deck was growing increasingly chaotic.  Officers and technicians sat before long rows of computer consoles, attempting to coordinate the battle.

“Another ship down.  We lost a Destroyer!”

“Systems not responding.”

“Where did they get all these fighter craft?” Hux demanded.  “They have no navy.  Not one of this scale.”

“It’s not a navy, sir,” answered Admiral Griss.  “It’s just…people.”

 

Dozens of ships descended to Imperial Boulevard and the streets around it.  Resistance sympathizers from across the galaxy, with dozens of types of arms and armor, spilled out of troop transports and freighters.  Planetary militias, peacekeepers, defense forces, and veterans of prior wars fanned out in tactical formations.  Spacers, smugglers, mercenaries, pirates, and bounty hunters surged forward in chaotic masses or bounced from one piece of cover to another.  Starfighters, light cruisers, and a refurbished Republic Gunship hovered over the street, firing lasers and missiles at Final Order soldiers and walkers.

The Meson Martinet landed on a wide road off the boulevard.  Sidon Ithano, resplendent in his crimson helmet and robes, exited his ship and surveyed the battle.  His first mate, Quiggold, followed, peg leg clanking as he descended the metal stairwell.  Behind him marched a tan-skinned human with a dark beard, at the head of a column of other pirates.

A commandeered First Order troop transport landed on the boulevard and a squad of B2 super battle droids trundled out, opening fire on Final Order troopers with their arm cannons.  A lone, battered B1 droid and a green-skinned Nikto followed them.

The bearded pirate watched the battle droids mow down a squad of stormtroopers.  “Never thought I would be on the same side as a bunch of clankers,” he mused.

“Aye, time makes strange allies, Kix,” Sidon Ithano replied.  He raised his voice.  “Now, me hearties, let us have at these scalawags!”

The scrum of pirates shouted and whooped as they charged into battle.  Kix looked down at the blue-and-white helmet in his hands, remembering countless brothers who had worn the same face as himself.  “One last time.  For all of you,” he whispered.  Then he put his helmet on, drew his blaster, and charged into battle, shouting, “And for the Republic!”

 

A pair of TIE Marauders locked on to Poe, spitting lasers from cannons on each of their three crew pods.  “I’ve got TIEs hot on my tail.  Some sort of new models, I can’t shake ’em.”

“Hold tight, Poe, I gotcha,” said a youthful voice.  Blaster fire severed the Marauders’ wings, sending the pods tumbling downwards as a squadron of colorful racing starfighters zoomed by.

“Ha!” Poe laughed.  “Kaz!  You made it!”

“It took us a while, but we caught up to you eventually,” responded Kazuda Xiono.  “Couldn’t let you have all the fun!”

“Aces, we’ve got a Star Destroyer at point-oh-two,” said a deep voice.  “Kaz, Tam, Torra and I will take out the cannon.  Everyone else cover for us.”

Poe said, “Good to see you back in the fight, Jarek.”

“I didn’t realize how much I missed it until I got in a cockpit again,” Yeager replied as the Aces peeled away.

Poe zipped off to attack another Destroyer, followed by Norra, Snap, Hondo Ohnaka’s Katooni, a U-wing, a B-wing, a Razor Assault Ship, and two gleaming Naboo N-1 starfighters.

 

Rey and Ben lay before the Throne of the Sith, beneath the Jedi Temple.  Snoke walked past their prone forms, holding aloft the blood-stained Dagger of Mortis.

“The ritual begins,” he shouted.  “The sacrifice has been made, and soon, the power to alter reality itself shall be mine!”

The Sith cultists chanted in their dark tongue as Snoke waved a hand.  Two figures, taller than the cultists around them, emerged from the crowd.  They wore robes and reflective goggles, both deep purple.  Between them, they carried a complex circular device with a hole in its center.  A clamp and an articulated metal arm holding a large lens stuck out over the gap in the apparatus.

The pair of Attendants placed the device on the altar before the throne, aligning the hole in its center with a bowl-shaped depression in the stone.  They carefully adjusted the lens, communing with each other by emitting electromagnetic radiation.

“The key is ready!” yelled Snoke as he stepped up to the altar and placed the dagger into the clamp.  A rivulet of blood ran down the blade’s edge, a single red drop falling from its tip.

As soon as the blood landed on the hollow in the stone, flames roared upwards from the altar, engulfing the knife.  The runes ringing the sides of the stone cylinder glowed with unholy power.  A bolt of vermillion lightning leapt from the hilt of the dagger to the glass above as the Attendants fiddled with controls on the machine.  The lens seemed to redirect and focus the electricity, straightening it into a red beam of light that speared out and struck the ground near the edge of the dais opposite the throne.  The crimson energy clung to the rock and then expanded outwards across it, seeming to strip away the stone as though something from a higher level of reality were replacing it.

“Behold!” proclaimed Snoke.  “The portal…opens!”

A huge ring of red light now blazed on the floor, pulsing and undulating as though alive.  Snoke walked over to it and looked down, into a darkness studded with points of light.  Turning slowly in the middle of the blackness was a glowing orb, its surface covered in patches of white, green, and grey.  It seemed to grow, larger and larger, until it filled the circle.  Clouds, forests, rock, and magma became visible as it resolved into a planet.

“At long last, the time has come!” shouted Snoke.  “The power of Mortis, the conduit between the Living and the Cosmic Force, is within my reach.  Now, to seize it!   He extended his sinewy arms.  A point of light appeared in the clouds above Mortis and grew in intensity as it drew closer, revealing itself to be a glowing stream of pure Force energy.  The beam flowed upwards through the portal and into Snoke’s hands.

Snoke seemed to expand.  First, his hands grew fuller, the flesh expanding to fill the skin, which pulled tight.  Snoke’s spine straightened, drawing him to his full height, as the scars and wrinkles on his head faded.  He grinned, revealing smooth, straight teeth, as the Sith cultists chanted triumphantly.

“Finally, my body has been restored, and the grievous wounds given by my apprentice have healed,” gloried Snoke.  “Now, to begin remaking the galaxy in my own image!”  He raised his hands into the air and pushed upwards.  There was a low rumble of shifting rock as the floor and walls of the shrine began to tremble.

The remaining spires of the Jedi Temple collapsed as the ground beneath them shook.  A vast mountain of blackest obsidian rose out of the bedrock below, its peak pushing aside the remnants of the once-grand zigurrat.  The Shrine in the Depths ascended within the pinnacle of the dark mount.  Within the mountain, the dais rose even further, a column of stone carrying it upwards through the hole in the roof of the chamber.

Snoke lowered his hands.  The cityscape of Coruscant opened out below him, dark and drear below the clouds.

 

Ben Solo’s head hurt.  He was lying down, hard stone digging into his back.  He tried to remember how he had gotten here.  After a moment, the memory came crashing back.  He was in the Sith shrine beneath the Jedi Temple.  Snoke had thrown him to the ground.  He must have hit his head and blacked out.  Ben groaned and rolled over, then pulled himself onto his hands and knees.

Snoke turned his gaze upon Ben and raised him into the air.  “As my last apprentice fell, victim of his hubris, so fall you,” Snoke said.  He flung Ben away.  Ben tumbled down the steep mountainside and into a deep fissure.

Snoke sat down on the Throne of the Sith and looked up at the battle raging above, numerous Star Destroyers burning as smaller craft swarmed around them.  “Now, to crush this pitiful Resistance,” Snoke muttered as he drew more power through the portal and into himself.  He let it leap upwards in a massive bolt of lightning that soared into the clouds and then burst outwards in every direction.  The searing electricity leapt from ship to ship, striking Resistance vessels while leaving TIEs and Star Destroyers unscathed.

 

A blindingly bright streak of lightning struck Poe Dameron’s X-wing.  Electricity danced across the metal shell of the starfighter as it spun like a wind-tossed leaf and began to drop.  Inside the cockpit, alarms blared and patterns of static interference played across the dashboard console screen.

“Beebee, my systems are failing,” Poe said, flicking a switch to give him full manual control over the beleaguered craft.

BB-8 screamed as the current overloaded his capacitors and taxed his dampeners to the breaking point.

“Does anyone copy?”

There was no answer from the comms.  Outside Poe’s cockpit, a Sullustan cargo freighter’s bow dipped.  Nearby, frigates, corvettes, and even a Mon Calamari cruiser plummeted planetward as they were disabled by the electrical storm.

Poe struggled to restart his sputtering engines as the ground rushed up towards him.  “Come on, come on…raaah! 

The thrusters cut back in.  Poe heaved the control stick back as the ship dropped into a canyon of buildings.

 

Finn stood near the landers, firing a heavy blaster rifle that a Resistance trooper had handed him.  He looked up as an orange X-wing screamed overhead.  The starfighter made a hard landing on Imperial Boulevard, knocking down Sith troopers as it skidded down the street and screeched to a halt.

“Save that pilot!” Finn shouted.  He, Jannah, and her squad blasted their way towards the crashed ship.

A Sith trooper fired into a crowd of Coruscanti citizens using a tripod-mounted repeating blaster, two others troopers flanking him.  Jannah lobbed a grenade at the soldiers  as she passed, blowing them into the air.

Finn made it to the starfighter and climbed onto the wing.  An orange and white astromech beeped at him frantically.

“Beebee-Ate?”

The cockpit popped open.  Poe scrambled out.  “Finn!”

“Poe!” shouted Finn.  He dropped to one knee behind the wing and fired at nearby Sith troopers.

“Told you we’d meet again!” yelled Poe as he lifted BB-8 out of the droid socket and set him down on the pavement.  The electricity-dazed droid wobbled and shook his dome as if to clear it.

Another ship—a freighter—fell from the sky before leveling out, buzzing over their heads.  It crashed through the legs of the AT-MTs, cutting the mechanical beasts off at the knees.  They toppled as the freighter ground to a stop before the entrance to Monument Plaza, the pile of metal almost blocking the street.

A Sith jetpack trooper flew by, firing down at them.  Jannah produced an energy bow, pulled back the string, and sent a polarized metal arrow upwards.  It buried itself in the jetpack of the trooper, who whirled out of control, trailing smoke, and slammed into a building.

“Where’d you get that?” Finn asked.

“I had to replace the gun you took from me, so I raided the armoury after I had made up my mind to defect.  It had a lot of unusual weapons confiscated from across the galaxy,” answered Jannah.  Incoming!

A fresh batch of heavy AT-MTs emerged from the streets surrounding Monument Plaza, shooting down the boulevard at the landers.  Cannon fire rained down from the Capitol above as lightning crackled across the sky.

 

Snoke cackled as power poured out of his hands.  Rey lay on her side on the stone before him, blind and bleeding and utterly motionless.  Then her hand moved.  She pushed herself onto her back as her eyes fluttered open, staring sightlessly at the sky.

Above her, Resistance ships fell, electricity ripping through them.  The Tantive IV rolled sluggishly as it sunk lower in the sky.  A shower of sparks exploded out of the corvette’s controls as Nien Nunb clung tenaciously to them and his copilot tried in vain to shield his face.

Rey could not see the death and destruction, but she could feel it, seemingly stronger now that one of her other senses was gone.  Light flashed across her face as a single red tear, blood and salty lacrimal fluid mingling within it, rolled down her temple and became lost in her hair.

“Be with me,” Rey whispered.  “Be with me.”

Her consciousness seemed to ascend, floating above the chaos and tumult to the unseen stars, those seemingly immutable and eternal bodies that (she knew in her head) were only balls of hot plasma, yet which still had a faint air of mystery and wonder about them.

“Be with me.”

A voice spoke, softly, as though far away or long ago.  “These are your final steps, Rey.  Rise, and take them.”  She recognized it as one she had first heard upon touching the lightsaber in Maz Kanata’s castle.  A name floated to the surface of her mind: Obi-Wan Kenobi.

“Rey.”  A man’s voice.

A high, light woman’s: “Rey.”

“Rey.”  A deep baritone.

Rey realized she could recognize all of them.  They were the Jedi who had come before her, generations of them.

“Bring back the balance, Rey, as I did,” Anakin Skywalker said.

Luminara Unduli intoned, “In the night, find the light, Rey.”

“You’re not alone, Rey,” said Mace Windu.

“Alone, never have you been.  One, we are, bound by the Force.”

Qui-Gon Jinn told her, “Every Jedi who ever lived, lives in you.  And we will not be broken.”

“The Force surrounds you, Rey,” said Anakin.

Aayla Secura advised, “Let it guide you…”

“…as it guided us,” Ahsoka Tano finished.

Mace: “Feel the Force, flowing through you, Rey.”

Anakin: “Let it lift you.”

“Rise, Rey,” Adi Gallia said.

Rey turned onto her side again and raised her left arm.  It felt like lifting an agonizingly heavy weight.  She slammed her palm against the rough stone in front of her face.

“We stand behind you, Rey,” Qui-Gon encouraged.

Obi-Wan: “Rey!”

“Rise in the Force,” croaked Yoda.

Rey grunted as she moved her leg.  The pain was too much.  She couldn’t do it.

Caleb Dume urged her on.  “In the heart of a Jedi lies her strength.”

Rey gritted her teeth and placed one of her feet below her.

“Rise.”

“Rise!”

Rey gasped for breath.

“Rey,” said Luke, “The Force will be with you, always.”

With all her strength, the last Jedi rose.  Leia’s lightsaber clattered across the rock and flew into her hand.  She unwrapped the strip of cloth from around her hand and tied it around her ruined eyes, then ignited the energy blade.

Snoke stopped shooting lightning and stood to face the blind, bruised, determined woman before him.  His mouth turned downwards into a frown.  “Let your death be the final word in the story of rebellion.”  He pointed his hands towards her and blue lightning sprung from them.

Rey raised the lightsaber.  The crackling current danced madly around the plasma blade, but was unable to pass it.

 

The ships of the galactic citizens’ fleet stabilized as the lightning dissipated.  Snap Wexley’s static-riddled instrument display screen resolved into an attitude indicator.  “We’re back on!  Poe, are you there?”

“I went down, but I’m okay.  I’m with Finn and Connix.  Take over for me.”

“Copy.  Everyone hear that?” Snap asked.  “This is our last chance, we gotta hit those cannons now.”  His X-wing went into a climb, the Ghost, the Aerie, and a couple of Mandalorian Fang fighters paralleling his course.

 

“Incoming communication, sir,” an officer informed General Hux.

“Who is it?”

“Lord Gherlid.”

Hux frowned.  “Doesn’t he know we’re in a battle?”

“I believe that’s the subject he wishes to discuss.”

“Fine, put him on,” Hux sighed.

A holographic image of the warlord’s hoary head flicked into existence.  Hux thought he somehow looked even uglier than he did in person; but at least this way he wouldn’t smell.

“General Hux!” Gherlid shouted.  “You promised your stormtroopers would help me control my worlds.  If that is so, why have they boarded their ships and left?”

“Lord Gherlid,” said Hux, with a tranquility he did not actually feel, “I can assure you that our withdrawal is temporary.  We are in the midst of a crisis.  The Resistance has finally mounted a direct attack, thereby exposing themselves.  After we have crushed their paltry forces, we shall restore our troop deployments in your fiefdom to previous levels.”

“I don’t need your empty words, Hux,” spat Gherlid.  “I need boots on dirt and fists in faces!  My people are in open revolt.  They’re on the steps of my palace right now!”

Hux spread his hands in a placatory gesture.  “I am sorry, Lord Gherlid, but the Final Order cannot afford to help you at the expense of the safety and security of the rest of the galaxy.”

“Safety and security my twisted finduncle!  I don’t—”  Lord Gherlid stopped and looked away to his left at something beyond the holoprojector’s view.  There was the faint sound of someone yelling “Incoming!”, followed by a muffled explosion and shattering glass.  Gherlid picked up a large, mean-looking cannon.  “Die, peasant dogs!” he shouted, opening it up.  Then he disappeared, his feed shifting and warping before it turned into blue static.

Hux stared for a moment at the spot where Gherlid’s image had been.  He sniffed.  “Can’t say I’ll miss him.”  Then he winced as a sharp pain shot through his injured leg.  He half-turned towards the crew of the bridge.  Techs looked up at him expectantly.

“Someone get me a chair,” Hux called.

 

Poe stood at the top of the Fortitude’s boarding ramp, firing at wave after wave of enemy troops.

Connix, sitting at a comms terminal with a cloth bandage around her leg, called to him.  “Admiral, our agent on the inside is contacting you.”

Poe threw a brief, confused glance in her direction.  “We have an agent on the inside?”

Connix activated the comm speaker.  Rose’s voice crackled out of it.  “The Capitol is a ship!”

“Rose?” asked Poe.  “Slow down.”

Rose was patched into a comm terminal, stray sparks falling around her from hotwired cables strung between processing towers.  “They’re going to leave the planet!  I can disable the hyperdrive, but I need the keycodes in Artoo’s memory drive.”

“Artoo’s with Finn,” said Poe.  “Patch her through,” he told Connix.

Finn had found cover behind a fallen AT-ST and was taking out Sith troopers with precise shots from his rifle.  The comlink on his belt squawked.  “Finn!  It’s me!”

Finn brought the comm to his mouth and yelled into it.  “Rose?  Rose, you’re alive!  Stay where you are, we’re coming for you!”

Great,” Rose said, rolling her eyes.  “Listen carefully!  I need Artoo to transfer the hyperdrive keys to me before this thing takes off.”

“Hyperdrive?  Where are you?”

“There’s a scomp link terminal at the base of the Capitol.  I’ll have a direct connection to him from there.  Got it?”

Finn looked around frantically.  “Artoo-Detoo!  Where are you?”

Finn spotted C-3PO and R2-D2 hiding behind an overturned assault tank.  He raced across the battlefield to them, shooting a Sith trooper and hurdling bodies as he ran.  Jannah and Poe followed him.

Finn made it to the tank and grabbed R2-D2.  “We need to get you to the Capitol,” he said urgently.

See-Threepio ventured nervously, “Master Finn, we’re more suited for rear unit duty.”

R2 beeped, determined.

“For glory?” asked Threepio incredulously.  “What are you saying, Artoo?  There’s no such thing as glory for droids!”

Finn looked down the war-torn boulevard, his eyes tracing the long path to Monument Plaza and the base of the Capitol.  Final Order transports touched down, even more Sith troopers and mechtroopers spilling out of them.

“You know the odds better than any of us.  None of this matters if we don’t reach that terminal.  Do we have a choice?”

See-Threepio seemed taken aback.  He turned his head away from them and looked out at the scorched and blackened street, at the motionless forms and ruined machinery scattered across it, at the soldiers exchanging fire and scrambling from one piece of cover to the next.  It reminded him of similar scenes of destruction, on world after world, down the decades.  When he spoke, his metallic voice was small and pricked through with emotion.  “If this mission fails…it was all for nothing.  All we’ve done; all this time.”

He turned to face Finn, Poe, and Jannah again.  He couldn’t let down them or the rest of the Resistance.  He delved into his memory banks, bringing up images of the people he had served with over the decades.  There were rebels and diplomats, soldiers and spies and Ewoks.  Chewbacca, Lando, Rose, and Mistress Rey were elsewhere in this very same battle, he knew.  Others faces were even dearer: Captain Solo, Master Skywalker, Princess Leia, Senator Organa; all of them gone now.  Through it all, the one constant was his oldest and dearest companion, his counterpart, R2-D2.

Poe grew slightly uneasy.  The protocol droid had been silently staring at them for a while now.  Poe half-pointed at him.  “What’re you doing there, Threepio?”

“Taking one last look, sir,” said See-Threepio.  “At my friends.”

Finn frowned, his eyes watering a little.  Poe gave a slight nod of respect.

Threepio turned again, to face the Capitol.  “Come along, Artoo.  We have a mission to complete.”

See-Threepio stepped out from behind the tank, Artoo-Detoo rolling along beside him.  Their human compatriots watched them go, moved by the bravery exhibited by the two droids.

An AT-MT advanced down the street towards them, its cannons firing indiscriminately as it swiveled its mechanical head back and forth.  A blast from one of the smaller turrets on the side of the walker’s head hit Artoo-Detoo squarely on his dome, blowing it open.  He slammed backwards into the side of the tank and then crashed to the ground.

“Artoo?” called Threepio.  “Artoo!”

The little astromech lay silent and unmoving, a ragged, scorched black hole in the side of his dome.

“Jannah, cover us!”  Finn shouted as he scrambled to R2.  Jannah stood atop the tank, firing a hail of arrows, as Finn heaved the droid’s metal shell up and dragged it back behind the machine.

C-3PO cried, “Artoo!  Artoo, say something!”

Finn waved smoke away from Artoo’s burnt body.  The droid’s circuits were completely dead, no power coursing through his kilometers of wiring.

“Those codes are in here somewhere,” Finn muttered.  He opened a panel and pulled out Artoo’s memory drive.  “I’m sorry, buddy.”

Finn stood up.  “We have to get this to the Capitol.”

“I don’t think any of us can get much further than they did,” predicted Jannah.  “Besides, does your arm have a scomp link?”

“I know who does,” Poe said.  He yelled over the din of battle, “Beebee-Ate!”

BB-8 rolled up and bobbled his dome in salute.

“You know what to do, pal,” said Poe.  “Just get to the Capitol and plug in.”

The astromech popped open a compartment in his round body.  Poe took Artoo’s memory drive from Finn, knelt down, and inserted it.  “It’s all up to you now.  Okay?”

“Rose, send Beebee-Ate the terminal coordinates,” Finn said into his comm.  “He’s got this.”  He addressed the droid.  “You got this, right?”

BB-8 nodded silently, focused.

“Covering fire!” Poe called.  He, Finn, Jannah, and some nearby defectors fired into the waves of approaching Final Order soldiers.  “Go!  Go!”

BB-8 rolled into the midst of the battle, dodging around stray fire and explosions.  He wove through the legs of the AT-MT that had shot Artoo, then raced past craters and fallen troopers.  Poe and Finn watched the little droid from afar, inspired.

The AT-MT fired in their direction again.  The tank they had been behind exploded, knocking Finn off his feet.  His ears rang and his vision swam.  Jannah’s voice warbled distortedly, “Fall back!”

Finn got to his knees and looked around.  C-3PO was still huddled over R2-D2’s fallen body.

“Threepio!  We have to move!” Finn yelled.

C-3PO looked up, his hand on Artoo’s broken head.  His voice box sounded as though it were breaking when he said, “I can’t leave him.”

Poe stepped past Finn and grabbed R2-D2’s barrel-shaped body.  Finn gently removed Threepio’s metal hand and took the astromech’s head.  Together, they heaved up the scorched metal shell and bore it away, C-3PO following them.

 

BB-8 rolled through Monument Plaza past dozens of troopers rushing in the opposite direction.  They swarmed out of the Capitol’s central elevator onto a broad platform, then down a pair of ramps into the square.  The astromech avoided them, ducking under the platform and rounding the Capitol until he spotted the circular depression of a scomp terminal, just above the clear dome the entire structure rested on.

BB-8 fired a pair of grappling hooks into a metal panel just above the terminal and pulled himself up, sliding over the smooth, convex transparisteel surface of the dome until he was at its top.  He extended his scomp arm, sticking it into the terminal socket and connecting to the Final Order Capitol’s internal network.

Rose grinned as BB-8’s data feed reached her computer tower, lighting up its control panel with a flood of keycodes.  “Attaboy,” she whispered.

 

Star Destroyers fell from the sky like knives, trailing flames and debris.  Alarms blared, worrying at the edges of General Hux’s focus as he watched the destruction.  Behind him, officers ran about, frantically preparing for departure.

Hux stood up, leaning heavily on his cane, and looked down at the battle still raging on the street below.  Final Order troopers kept pouring out of the Capitol, transports, shuttles, anything that could carry soldiers, but the Resistance forces were now pushing them back, drawing ever closer.  It was even worse in the air, as another Star Destroyer blew apart before his eyes.  They were losing.  The Final Order’s well-maintained war machine was losing to this mob of riff-raff.  He couldn’t bear it.

“Bomb the city!” he shouted, spittle flying from his mouth.  “Decimate every last being!”

“We can’t do that,” said Admiral Griss.

“Why not?” Hux screeched.  “Are you going soft too?  Like Sellik did?”

“No,” Griss said.  He looked vaguely confused.  “Our forces are outnumbered, sir.”

Hux seemed to collapse.  “I…” he looked around the bridge, as though searching for someone to tell him it would all be all right.  He saw no-one.  Mustering his last reserves of willpower, he said briskly, “Prepare my shuttle.  I need to rest and recover from my injury.  I leave you in charge in my absence, Admiral.”

Griss’s eyebrows rose in surprise.  “Thank you, sir.”

Hux tried to think of something to say in response, but couldn’t.  Instead he simply walked off the bridge.

 

Snoke drew on more and more energy, sending it surging through his fingertips towards Rey, where it sizzled and crackled around her lightsaber.

“You are nothing,” spat Snoke.  “A scavenger girl is no match for the power in me.  I was once Plagueis, and now am Snoke—the Sith’ari.  You are no one!”

“No one is no one,” said Rey.  “The Force flows through all things, and I am one with it.  I will not deny my anger, and I will not reject my love.  I am the light…”  A whupping sound, as of something whirling through the air, came from behind her.  Rey opened her hand as a thin, rectangular hilt flew into it, pulled to her as though it had always belonged to her.  “…and I am the darkness.”

Rey brought the Darksaber up, crossing it with Leia’s lightsaber.  Now, the two blades not only absorbed the lightning, but repelled and reflected it.  For the first time, an expression of worry crossed Snoke’s face.  “I am the Ashla, and the Bogan,” said Rey, and it seemed to her as though she were not thinking about what to say, but instead letting the words well up from deep within her.  She began to move towards the Dark Lord, one heavy, difficult step at a time.  “The cosmic, and the living.”  The roar of the current superheating the air between them was deafening.  Spiny tongues of electricity radiated from Rey’s crossed sabers, pricking and burning her skin.

Snoke put more energy into his attack, but Rey gritted her teeth and pressed forward.  “I am the balance.  And you…are unbalanced.”  She gave her sabers a final push.  The column of lightning completely reversed direction and shot towards Snoke.  He cried out as he was blown backwards into the Throne of the Sith, his own lightning tearing through him, burning away his skin.  Snoke ceased his lightning and collapsed weakly into the massive stone seat.

Rey threw the Darksaber at the device atop the altar, shearing clean through it.  The red lightning died away and the portal to Mortis winked out of existence, replaced with bare stone.  Rey caught the Darksaber as it spun back to her.

“The gate is closed, Snoke,” said Rey.  “You’ve failed.  Give up now, and the Resistance will grant you mercy.”

Snoke looked up, staring at Rey with pure hatred, his face bubbling with cankers as it repaired the damage from his electrocution.  Never,” he growled.  He raised his arms.  Behind him, a massive block from the Jedi Temple, twice as tall as himself, rose into the air.  He flung it at Rey.

Rey halted the stone in midair and then threw it aside.  It smashed through a half-broken wall and crashed to the ground.  Snoke raised a half-dozen more blocks and threw them at her at once.  She deflected all but one of them, which she lobbed back at him.

Snoke stopped the stone, then turned his attention to one of the collapsed spires.  Uprooting a long section of it, he sent it spinning towards her.  She pushed back, locking both of them in a struggle to move the vast stone cylinder towards the other.  Pressure built on the section of spire, fractures forming a web of cracks.  Finally, the stress became too much for it to handle, and its center shattered, raining down chunks of masonry between the two combatants.

Snoke let go of the tower, letting it crash to the mountaintop, and sent dozens of boulders streaking towards Rey from all directions.  There were more than she could deflect.  They piled up around her, sealing her in, like a burial mound.  Rey concentrated and sent a wave of the Force outwards, blowing the rocky prison apart.

Rey ran towards Snoke, who threw up a wall of Force, attempting to push her away.  She halted, but pushed back just as hard, forcing him to brace himself against the throne.  Snoke looked at her, stunned at the power she was wielding.  She was almost glowing, near-unfathomable amounts of the Force coursing through her.

“Perhaps I do not need the power of Mortis,” mused Snoke.  “There is more than enough power…within you.”  He raised his arm, palm open, and pulled, extracting the Living Force from Rey.

Rey rose into the air as energy streamed out of her, flowing from her body into Snoke’s hand.  She bent her head back and screamed to the sky.

 

The Citizens’ fleet ripped through the remaining Final Order fleet.  More Star Destroyers fell, one narrowly missing the huge dome of the Senate building, shaking the ground of the Federal District as it plunged deep into Coruscant’s underground.  A few other cruisers and lighter ships withdrew, some even rising higher into the atmosphere to attempt an escape into hyperspace.

“All ships, continue harrying the Final Order,” Vice Admiral Ackbar commanded.  “We can end this war today.”

Lando added his own advice.  “Cripple the engines of any Final Order craft trying to flee.”

 

Poe and Finn were both sheltering behind the bulbous cockpit of a crashed TIE Fighter, having escorted what remained of R2-D2 to a lander.  Poe leaned sideways around the wreckage and blasted a Sith trooper in the chest.  “The Final Order seems to be falling back,” he observed.

Finn risked a look.  The Final Order troopers were continuing to fire, but they were now walking backwards, slowly withdrawing.  The Resistance forces, however, were advancing, darting from one destroyed tank or walker to the next.

As Poe and Finn continued to watch, the AT-MT that had been keeping much of the Resistance pinned behind cover was rocked by laser fire.  Resistance AT-STs and AT-ATs shot at it from behind, taking advantage of its relative lack of rear armaments.  Then an A-Wing swooped over the boulevard, firing on the war machine, followed by a bulky freighter.  The AT-MT fired upwards, hitting the larger ship.  The freighter’s shields absorbed the blow as it flew right over the walker, a pair of canisters dropping out of its cargo bay.

Poe looked away as a massive explosion engulfed the head of the AT-MT.  Finn was not so lucky, the light briefly blinding him.

“What was that?” asked Finn, blinking away stars.

“Rhydonium,” answered Poe.  “Usually used as starship fuel.”

The chassis and legs of the AT-MT collapsed sideways, thick, dark smoke pouring out of a gaping hole in its front, its head entirely gone.  A cheer went up from a group of Resistance soldiers.  “Twilight Company, forward!” their commander shouted as they pelted into the open.  A Toydarian flew past Finn and Poe, cackling crazily as he fired twin blaster pistols.

“We better get going, or we’re gonna be leading from the rear,” Poe observed.  He turned to everyone behind them and waved his blaster pistol.  “We have them on the retreat!  Come on!”

The Resistance army surged out from behind the wreckage like a flood.  They rushed full-tilt at the enemy, pausing only to aim and fire their weapons.  Many Final Order troops fell, while others turned tail and fled.

Some Sith Troopers boarded their Atmospheric Assault Landers, attempting to evacuate.  Resistance commandos and ex-stormtroopers threw grenades and fired at the landers’ engines.  A pair of the transports escaped, but three more crashed to the street and fulminated into balls of fire.  Another was hit by an AT-AT and careened into a building.

The remainder of the troopers, trying to make their escape on foot, had found their way blocked by the pile of downed walkers in front of the plaza.  They turned and stood with their backs to the wreckage, firing wildly as they made their last stand.

The Resistance army peppered the wall of metal with their blasters.  Sith Troopers tried to deflect their fire with the Force, but were eventually cut down as the midichlorians infused into their blood were unable to keep up with the amount of power streaking towards them.  Mechtroopers blazed away with their arm cannons, their armor deflecting blaster bolts, only to fall to grenades or well-placed shots from walkers.  One mechtrooper had his head nearly taken off by a man wielding a shovel.  A few troopers were shot in the back as they tried to tried to scramble frantically over the barrier, falling onto the growing pile of armored bodies.

Eventually, the fighting trailed off.  There were no more visible Final Order troopers left standing.

“Did we get all of them?” asked Poe.

Several pairs of white-gauntleted hands appeared over the leg of an AT-MT.  “We surrender!” called a voice.  As the Resistance watched, four stormtroopers and a mechtrooper clambered over the metal knee joint, their hands raised over their heads.

“Send them to Rafe, in the back,” Finn said.  He climbed to the top of the pile of wreckage, then ducked back behind it as an energy beam sizzled through the space his head had occupied a moment earlier.  He had gotten a momentary glimpse of troopers arrayed before the entrance to Monument Plaza, blasters drawn and aimed upwards.  “There’s a lot more of them on the other side,” he called down.

“You heard the man!” shouted Poe.  “To the barricades!”

The Resistance army surged upwards, taking up prone positions atop the scrap pile.  They fired downwards into the crowd of Final Order soldiers, who fired back just as ferociously.  The Resistance had more cover, however, only their heads and arms exposed as they slid forward to shoot before disappearing once more behind the metal shells of the Final Order’s own machines.  The AT-AT also reared over the fallen walkers, taking out whole squads with its batteries.

Soon, these Final Order soldiers were also retreating.  The Resistance army slid down to the pavement and charged after them, fighting them in the street, in the entrance to the plaza, even at the base of the Capitol itself.

 

The man who had gone by the name of Commander Randsul Sellik for the past five years, and the codename of Fulcrum for even longer, hurried down a corridor aboard the Final Order capitol.  Just around the next corner, he knew, was a bank of escape pods.  He just had to board one of them and he would have completed another successful clandestine mission.

He rounded the bend, and was immediately confronted by the barrel of a blaster pistol.  It was held by a squat figure in a uniform the color of spoiled cream, standing in the middle of the hall.

“I see…my suspicions about you were correct,” Admiral Min Illuv said, just a hint of a smug smile on his usually impassive face.  “Put your gun on the floor.”

Fulcrum slowly pulled his own blaster out of its holster and bent over, laying it on the hard metal.

“Now step back.”

Fulcrum stepped away from the weapon, then stood up and met Illuv’s gaze.  “How long have you known?”

“Long enough,” responded Illuv vaguely, as he stepped forward and slid the blaster back towards him with his foot.  “Your people were quite clever, I must admit.  It would have been readily apparent if they had changed your actual record in the personnel database we inherited from the Empire…but records are being created all the time.  By creating a wholly new, falsified profile of an Imperial officer with a spotless military career…halted only by the collapse of the government he served and a stint in a New Republic prison…they made you both unsuspicious and likely to be placed in the officer corps upon your recruitment into the First Order.  From there you could rise through the ranks until you were in one of the most sensitive positions in our entire governing apparatus.  Truly…a masterstroke of intelligence.”

“Some of those records were almost true.  Much to my regret.”

“Indeed.”  Illuv picked up Fulcrum’s pistol.  “But I suspected; there was something too pat…too perfect about you.  It took many days and nights of data conversion…of cross referencing…but eventually I was sure.  You were not ‘Randsul Sellik,’ some competent Imperial veteran who joined us out of the blue one day.  Your face, your voice, even certain peculiarities of speech, such as the colloquialism ‘Core Square,’ used mainly by Coruscantis who grew up before the Empire; all pointed to your true identity…”  There was a note of triumph in Illuv’s voice as he said slowly, “Agent Alexsandr Kallus, formerly of the Imperial Security Bureau, now an undercover operative for the Resistance.”

Fulcrum nodded slightly, acknowledging the truth of the assertion.  “I am.”  Then he shot Illuv a look.  “Why don’t you have any of your agents with you?”

“They are all busy with other matters,” Illuv said vaguely.  “I hardly thought I needed them to catch you.”

“You should be careful,” said Kallus, dark humor in his voice.  “Someone could sneak up on you.”

“Are you referring to that…Resistance rat you freed?  She’ll be trapped soon enough.  Just as you have been.”

“So you’ve caught me,” Kallus said, raising his hands.  “Now what?”

Illuv was suddenly all business.  He motioned with his pistol.  “I believe you have a datachip in your possession.  Set it down and slide it over.”

Kallus’s mouth tightened, but he reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a small square of metal.  He set it on the floor and slid it towards Illuv.

Illuv didn’t even bother picking it up.  His foot stamped down, hard.  There was a sharp crack, then a series of pops and crunches as the heel of Iluv’s boot ground the datachip into powder.  Kallus’s shoulders slumped.

“It won’t be so bad.  If you cooperate with us and tell us what you know, we can avoid any…unpleasantries….”  Illuv’s tongue flicked out, quickly licking his lips.  He looked as though he would rather prefer it if there were some unpleasantries.

Kallus knew Illuv was too ruthless to actually leave him alive.  He tensed his muscles, preparing to spring at Illuv and try to wrest the gun from him, but he kept his face and voice calm.  “I don’t know that much; the Resistance deliberately withheld information, so that I couldn’t reveal it under duress.  Besides, would you really believe anything I told you?”

“I…shall be the judge of what knowledge is valuable and truthful.  I am the interrogator here…Kallus.”  Illuv cocked his head.  “But perhaps you are right.  If you have nothing of worth to offer…then I bid you…good-bye.”  Illuv raised his pistol, then screamed and fell on his face, jerking and spasming.

Behind Illuv’s prone form stood Rose.  She blew a bit of smoke away from the twin prongs of her electro-shock prod.  “Handy device, this,” she said curtly.

“Good job,” commended Kallus, stooping to retrieve his blaster.

Rose smiled.  “Now, shall we jump ship in this escape pod?”

“Yes, let’s.”  Kallus turned to the nearest hatchway and inserted his remaining code cylinder into its access panel.  The door did not open; instead, a red light on the panel began to flash.

“Illuv must have revoked my code cylinder’s privileges,” Kallus growled.

“It’s OK, I can slice it,” said Rose, dropping to one knee.

A clatter of armor and boots came from around the corner.

“Not fast enough,” said Kallus.  “Let’s get out of here.”  He ran down the corridor.  Rose got up and followed him, just as a squad of stormtroopers rounded the bend.  The soldiers began to fire at them.  Rose snapped off a couple of shots, hitting one of the troopers, before diving into a side passage.

 

Rey floated in mid-air, her arms hanging perpendicular to her body and her teeth clenched.  She struggled to form coherent thoughts as her life was sucked away.  Luke,” she pleaded silently.  Luke, Leia, help me.”

Luke’s voice spoke in her mind.  Use the Force, Rey.

Rey did as he said, pulling on as much of the Force as she could, struggling to build a bulwark around herself to keep out Snoke, but her energy was still being slowly, inexorably, drained away.

Luke spoke again.  Let go, Rey.

For a moment, Rey did not understand.  And then she did.

To win, she would have to let go of herself.  Make the sacrifice, as Nomi had said.  She would die, but so would Snoke.

Rey let herself go.  She allowed Snoke to pull away all her life force, all the energy she had built up, and to keep pulling, through her, straight into the Cosmic Force.  For an instant, she became a conduit to all of existence.  There was no longer just one Rey, there were untold infinities of Reys.  She was a tiny, newly-hatched water insect, staring at its first dawn through compound eyes.  She was an ancient tree, swaying gently in a cool, moist breeze.  She was a granite mountain, a dying star, a single mote of dust.

Snoke laughed maniacally as power flooded him.  The girl had given up!  She was weak after all, just like her parents had been, and now his power and supremacy would never be challenged again.

Then Snoke realized what was flowing into him now was pure light side energy.  He tried to bend it to the Dark Side, but he could not.  It was doing the will of the Force, and would not be turned to his own purposes.  Snoke tried to stem the flow, release his hold on the girl, but something was preventing him from doing so.  He could feel the light burning inside him, ripping him open, lysing his corrupted cells faster than his modified midichlorians could regenerate them.  He had been held together by the darkness for so long that the light was corrosive to his very essence.

Snoke looked beyond Rey, and for the first time in decades, he felt true fear.  Arrayed before him was an army of ghosts, stretching away into the distance-millions of translucent, shimmering figures.  More than a thousand generations of Jedi, clad in robes, tunics, or battle armor, all of them with their hands outstretched, forcing him to take in more and more of the light.

Snoke saw his life before him, then, as vividly as though it were a holofilm before his eyes.  He saw his years of study in the dark side, the many masters he had sought out and subsequently betrayed, the entire governments and armies he had manipulated.  He saw his vast network of influential subordinates, so many of whom had thought they were acting of their own volition, while really carrying out orders he had planted in their minds.

He saw Hego Damask, who had served him faithfully before meeting an unspeakably gruesome end.  Snoke had stolen his identity with the ease of putting on a suit of clothes, casting an illusory mask of the Muun banker’s face over his own visage in the sight of all who met him.

He saw the face of Breta, princess of Alderaan, her disgust barely hidden as she looked upon the unfortunates Snoke had hung from his wall, their exposed organs pulsing as they suffered through his early experiments in unnaturally extending life.  Her features changed into the cool eyes, patrician nose, and deceptively benign smile of his first and most accomplished apprentice.  Sheev Palpatine had thought himself the puppet master, when he had only been the chief puppet, eventually falling to his own hubris.  Ben Solo’s story was much the same as Palpatine’s.  He betrayed his master and thought him dead; he ruled for a time; and then he fell.  Snoke took a bit of pleasure in that exquisite symmetry.

But now Snoke saw a new face: his own, as it had been in his long-ago youth, the mouth cruel and the blue eyes glowing with the fire of an unquenchable hunger.  Those eyes had changed little down the years, always burning just as brightly, while the rest of him warped and ran, twisting as he delved deeper into perversion and degeneracy.  Snoke saw himself, then, for what he truly was; a small, petty thing, always grasping, gripping, lusting for one thing only: power.  Power to destroy, power to inflict pain on others, power for no end but its own propagation and enlargement.  He was nothing but a parasite, seeking to suck the life out of the whole galaxy.  And in that fleeting moment of clarity, Snoke loathed himself.

Snoke screamed at his fear of the abyss, his anger at the Jedi, his hatred of himself, and the pain in every fibre of his body as the Force consumed him.  His skin peeled off his muscles, his flesh boiled off his bones, and Snoke vaporized, becoming nought but dust in the wind that blasted outwards from where he had stood.

Rey returned to consciousness of herself for one brief moment, just long enough to feel the last of her life force on the verge of slipping away.  Then she collapsed to the stone floor and lay still.

 

Finn emerged, blood-stained and dirty, from the smoke of battle into the dying orange light of sunset, the dark storm clouds scudding away.  Before him was a field of armored forms; behind him, his own army, of soldiers, citizens, and defectors.  Poe stepped up beside him, surveying the fallen.

“Do you feel that?” asked Finn.

Poe looked at him.  “Feel what?”

“It’s like a darkness just lifted,” Finn said, struggling to find the right words.  “Or like an annoying sound just stopped, and its absence is the only reason I noticed it.”

“I don’t sense anything,” said Poe.  He spotted a fallen Resistance flag on the ground and bent to pick it up, then stood and handed the pole to Finn.

Finn took the flag, then climbed up the bow of the crashed freighter to the top of the barricade.  Poe and Jannah climbed with him, then stood beside him as the wind caught the banner and unfurled it to its full length, the blue starbird revealed in all its glory.

 

Agent Sharp of the Final Order Security Bureau had one purpose in life: assassination.  His current target was below him, in the boulevard before Monument Plaza.  Sharp himself had received his orders less than two hours ago, directly from Admiral Illuv himself.  That hadn’t been much time to get acquainted with the mark and set up his shooting nest, at a window in the sixth floor of a building just to the left of the plaza entrance, but Sharp had managed.  He always did.  That was why he was the best sniper in the FOSB.

Sharp adjusted his scope and shifted position slightly.  He could see the target, a former stormtrooper designated FN-2187, just below him.  But there was another person walking just behind him, clad in the orange jumpsuit of a Resistance pilot.  Sharp knew that the man, Poe Dameron, was a higher-value target than the defector.  When presented with such a situation, Sharp had been given leeway to ignore orders and act as he saw fit.

Agent Sharp re-aimed his rifle, centering his crosshairs on Dameron’s heart.

 

Finn’s eyes widened.  “Get down!” he shouted, grabbing Poe’s arm and pulling him towards himself.  A single blaster bolt flashed towards them, hitting Poe in the left arm.  Poe cried out in pain.

“Poe!” Finn shouted.  “You OK?”

Poe said through gritted teeth, “Nope.”

“Where’d that come from?” asked Jannah, her bow at the ready.

 

Agent Sharp swore to himself.  How had the defector known he was about to fire?  It seemed inconceivable.

Sharp adjusted his aim and prepared to take another shot, but something large and grey moved in front of his scope, blocking his view, accompanied by a metallic screech and a crash.  He looked up, directly at the head of an AT-AT Walker, level with his window.  Sharp tried to leap backwards, but a red laser beam was already streaking towards him.

Dade eased his thumb off the firing stud of the AT-AT’s right main battery, watching the explosion erupt out of the window where the Final Order sniper had been a moment before.  He whispered, “That was for my mother, you sleemo.”

 

“Medic!” Finn shouted.  “We need a medic over here.”

A man ran over to them.  He took off his white and blue helmet to reveal a scruffy, bearded face and knelt over Poe.  Finn and Jannah stared at him as he pulled a bacta patch out of his backpack.

“It’s all right, I’m a medic,” the soldier said.  He pointed at a red medical sigil on his shoulder armor.  “See?”

Poe squinted at him, trying to ignore the pain and figure out why the man seemed so familiar.  “Do I know you?  I feel like I’ve seen you before.”

“I don’t think so, sir.  I just have one of those faces.”

“Well, what’s your name?” Poe asked.

“See-tee-six-one-one-six of the Grand Army of the Republic, at your service, sir.  But you can call me Kix.”

The ground shook.  They all looked up as the Capitol left its moorings, panels on its underside and central spire opening to reveal vast engines rumbling to life.

Poe managed to sit up.  “Everybody get back!” he shouted.

“Is Rose still on that thing?” Finn asked.  He spotted BB-8 rolling towards them, fleeing from the quaking plaza.  “Beebee-Ate!  Where is she?”

 

Rose and Kallus ran across the roof of the Capitol.  Behind them, stormtroopers were emerging out of an access hatch.  Kallus turned and fired a few shots at them, hitting one.

Admiral Illuv emerged from the hatch and advanced, firing a pistol, his mouth set into a grim line.  Kallus and Rose ducked behind a turbolaser emplacement.

The Capitol lurched and tilted, beginning its ascent.  Rose and Kallus slid across the smooth metal surface.  Rose crashed into a boxy protrusion covered in blinking lights and antennae, then grabbed Kallus’s hand before he slipped any further towards the edge of the Capitol.  Several stormtroopers were not so lucky, gravity and their inertia sending them falling over the side.  Admiral Illuv glided past them on his hands and knees, trying to find purchase.  He halted only a meter away from them as the fingers of his left hand found a gap between the metal plates.  He still held his gun in his right.

“Give me your hand,” Kallus said, extending his own.

Illuv narrowed his eyes.

“We won’t hurt you,” Kallus assured him.  “I changed.  So can you.”

Illuv seemed to waver for a moment, but then pointed his pistol awkwardly at them.  “Long live the Final Order,” he muttered.

The Capitol shook again as more engines came online.  Illuv’s left hand slipped free of its precarious grip just as he fired.  The bolt bounced harmlessly off the Capitol’s armored roof.  Illuv fell away from them, sliding down the gray metal, then disappeared over the edge of the Capitol and was gone.

Rose shouted into a comlink over the whistle of the wind.  “This is Rose, I need a pickup.  I’m on top of the Capitol.  Does anyone copy?”

 

Snap Wexley spoke into his helmet pickup.  “I see you.  I’m going to get you.”  He turned his X-Wing, pointing it towards the Capitol.

“You’re too far away, Snap,” said Wrobie Tyce.  “You won’t make it.”

Snap responded, “Trust me, I’m fast.”

“Not as fast as this ship,” said Lando Calrissian.  Snap looked up as the Millennium Falcon rocketed past him, seeming to leave behind a blue trail as it streaked towards the Capitol.

“Hold on, Chewie,” Lando laughed.

Chewbacca roared and trimmed controls as the agile smuggling ship slid next to the Capitol, which was now tilted at more than forty-five degrees from vertical.  Lando held the freighter just below Rose and Kallus as Chewbacca rose to go aftwards.

“Jump!” Rose shouted.  They both leapt off the Capitol, landing heavily atop the Falcon.  The porthole atop the ship opened to reveal Chewbacca’s furry face as the ship peeled away from the Capitol.

 

Admiral Griss looked down at the metropolis shrinking below him.  Because the artificial gravity had been activated several minutes before, Griss could look straight down at it through the windows of the command deck.  A massive shadow cast by the Capitol moved slowly across the cityscape, like the shadow of a marine predator on a shallow seabed.

A technician came up to him.  “Ready for lightspeed, sir.”

 

The Falcon descended onto Imperial Boulevard, its ramp springing open just long enough to discharge Rose and Kallus.  Rose stumbled away from the freighter as it took flight once more, on its way to finish the air battle.  Kallus calmly watched the ship go.

“Rose!” Finn called, running to her.  He gently laid a hand on her cheek.  “Are you all right?”

Rose smiled wanly and touched his hand.  “I’m fine,” she said affectionately.  “Just a little tired and sore.”

She looked up at the Capitol, now backlit against the setting sun.  Poe (who was now standing, his left arm in a white cloth sling), Jannah, Kallus, Kix, BB-8, and C-3PO followed her eyes.

“They’re getting away!” cried See-Threepio.

Finn looked at Rose.  “Did you disable the hyperdrive?”

Rose blushed.  “I couldn’t figure it out,” she admitted.

Hope fell away from them.  The war was not over.

“So I made some adjustments to their navicomputer,” Rose continued.  “Without precise calculations, that thing could bounce too close to a supernova, or—”

The Capitol jumped to lightspeed.

A split-second later, a blindingly bright explosion lit up the sky as the Capitol collided with a distant star.  The malfunctioning hyperdrive of the huge station tore a hole in hyperspace as it was consumed by the super-hot plasma in the core of a massive blue giant, sending the star’s light into sub-hyperspace and allowing it to radiate across the galaxy.  The massive explosion lit up the skies of a million worlds, from Lah’mu to Polis Massa and from Csilla to Eadu.

“—fly right into a star,” finished Rose.

 

Aboard the Eclipse, Vice Admiral Ackbar shielded his eyes from the enormous explosion pulsating in deep space, brighter than anything else visible in the starry twilight on the edge of Coruscant’s atmosphere—save the world’s own sun.  The crew of the dreadnought cheered, hugged, and slapped each other on the back.

Communications systems crackled to life as the signal blockade vanished and people across the galaxy saw the glowing beacon of hope in the sky.  A cacophony of voices poured forth, urging their sistren and brethren to fight.

 

Hux stared out the wide window of his luxurious suite, his face frozen in an expression of shock and horror.  It couldn’t be possible, but it was.  The Capitol had been reduced to molten metal, all but destroying the Final Order.  The regime he had served, been disciplined by, and eventually ascended to the top of, the only way of life he had ever known, had evaporated in an instant.

Hux finally realized the tragic truth.  He had lost the star wars.  The great dream of a galaxy ruled by law and order had been crushed.  Now, the forces of chaos would reign supreme.  Would they come for him next?  Would they beat down his door, drag him out of his chamber, and tear him apart in his own hallway?  Or would they exert more restraint and hold a show trial, only to summarily and publicly execute him?

He would never find out.  He refused to live in a galaxy ruled by such animals.  It was better to die with a modicum of dignity.

Hux pulled his lightsaber out of his belt, examining the exquisite craftsmanship of the weapon for the last time.  Then he pressed it against himself and flicked the activation switch.

The purple blade of energy sprang through his chest and out his back.  Hux groaned in pain and gritted his teeth as he collapsed into the fetal position.  He had expected it to hurt, but the pain was so much worse than he had anticipated.  Hux had just enough time to wonder whether he had made the right decision before he lost consciousness.

Hux slumped sideways and lay still as, outside the window, the last Final Order ships descended to Coruscant’s surface, wreathed in smoke and flames.

 

Rey felt a wave of joy wash over her, the jubilation of an entire planet, a whole galaxy.  She knew what it meant.  They had won.  They had all won, and she could rest.  Rey was at peace as the last of her life force slipped away.

 

In front of Monument Plaza, the Resistance army stared into the sky, awestruck.  Finn could not celebrate, however, as a crushing, tremendous sense of loss almost made him fall over.  “No…Rey…”

He looked at Poe.  Poe looked back, his eyes speaking volumes.

“You feel it too,” Finn said.

Poe nodded his affirmation.  Rey was gone.

 

Rey awoke, as though from sleep, to find herself enveloped in darkness.  She felt as though she were lying on her back, supported by a cushion of nothingness.  She could see and hear nothing.  Yet she was not afraid.

For how long Rey remained in absolute blackness and silence, she knew not, but slowly, points of light began to gather around her.  They danced like fireflies, unhurriedly floating upwards.  She rose with them, the darkness gradually giving way to light.

Soon, she was surrounded by a vast, seemingly unending whiteness, stretching away in all directions, including down.  Some of the brighter particles of energy flickered around her, while many more were visible in the distance, flitting about.  She floated into what she felt was an upright position and stretched out her hand.  One of the little glimmers of light landed on it.  As it lay in her palm, it felt impossibly insubstantial, as though it were hardly present.  Rey brought it close to her face, examining it.  It was an ovoid cell, its translucent membrane allowing her to see the delicate structures inside it.  A diaphanous, folded inner membrane enclosed even tinier particles and microscopically thin fibers.

“Oh,” Rey said, remembering something discussed in the Jedi texts, “you’re a midichlorian, aren’t you?”

The gossamer ellipse did not respond, instead simply pulsing slowly with light.  It rested in her hand a while, then floated upwards, joining its fellows in weaving complex patterns around and above her.

Rey looked up to see three figures in the distance, approaching her.  Two were around her own height, while the being between them was considerably shorter.  As they drew nearer, she recognized them as Yoda, Luke Skywalker, and Obi-Wan Kenobi.  The three Jedi stopped before her and looked at her expectantly.

“Is this death?” Rey asked.

Obi-Wan answered first.  “In this place, there is no such thing as death—only adjustments of multiple factors to alter one’s state of being.”

“I can see,” Rey wondered.

“Your true self is free of suffering,” explained Obi-Wan.  “Free of pain.”

“Taught us much, you have,” Yoda professed.

Rey was slightly taken aback.  “I’ve taught you?”

Mmm,” hummed the ancient, diminutive Jedi.  “Succeeded where we have failed, you did.  Narrow was our point of view.”

“You chose to embrace the Dark Side and the Light,” clarified Luke.  “To find balance within.”

“Co-exist, they must; as in all of us, such feelings do.  The truth of this, we now see.”

“You said there was no death here,” Rey reasoned, “but if I’m here…with you…”

“A choice, you must make.  To return, or to remain.”

“Here, there is serenity,” Luke said.  “Knowledge.  Peace.  Those lost, but not forgotten.”

“And if I leave?”

Obi-Wan looked her in the eyes, an expression of utmost seriousness on his face.  “If you return to where you left, you will face a galaxy in turmoil.  Pain, suffering.  The loss of those you love.”

“But living, will you be,” Yoda foretold.  “Love, you shall.”

Rey looked beyond them, at the shimmering flecks of energy afar off.  “You said there were others here.  Those I’ve lost.  May I see them?”

The three Jedi shared a look.  “This may be a dangerous boon to grant,” Obi-Wan worried.  “Seeing the ones she wishes could sway her to the wrong decision.”

“Only she can know what the right path for her is,” countered Luke.  “Perhaps this will strengthen her resolve, in time to come.”

“Agree with Master Skywalker, I do,” said Yoda.  “Hers alone, the choice must be.”

“Very well.”  Obi-Wan stepped away from the others and bowed slightly to Rey.  She passed between Kenobi and Yoda.  An impossibly fine white thread seemed to hang in the aether before her.

Luke instructed, “Follow the silver cord, and it will lead you to those whom you seek.”

Rey followed the string, although there was no ground for her to walk upon.  Her surroundings did not seem to shift substantially, but when she turned to look behind her after a time, her three mentors had shrunk to tiny forms on what would have been the horizon, had such a thing existed here.  She journeyed on, until in the distance, two beings appeared.

Rey began to run, excitement building, although she remembered to keep an eye on the string.  “Mother?  Father!”

She was almost to them.  The faces that turned to face her were strange, yet achingly familiar.  It was them.  It was! “Father!  Mother! ” she shouted.  “I’m here.  I’ve found you…”

Rey! ” her mother exclaimed as her daughter fell into her arms.  “I’ve missed you so much, dear.”

Rey hugged her mother tightly, then pulled away and embraced her father.

“I always knew my little girl would come find us someday,” her father said.

“But Dirk,” his wife said, shooting him a significant look.  “Does this mean…”

Rey collapsed to her knees between them.  “I’ve been given a choice.  To stay or go.”

“Well, you mustn’t remain here on our account,” Mara Solana said.

“Yes,” Dirk agreed.  “You have your whole life ahead of you.”

“But I don’t want to leave you,” Rey said, burying her face, and hiding her tears, in her mother’s rough outer cloak.  “I waited for you, for years.  I can’t just give you up, now that I’ve found you.”

“You won’t really be leaving us,” Mara assured her.  “We’ve always been watching over you.”

“We love you.”

Rey pulled back enough to look up at both of them.

“And we are so proud of you, our Rey of sunshine,” said Mara.

“Go, daughter,” her father said.  “Live long and well, and when you return to us, a long time from now, you shall tell us your wonderful story.”

“We will always be with you,” her mother said, placing a hand on Rey’s chest, “in here.”

Rey smiled, slightly, through her tears.  She considered the life she had yet to live…and made her decision.

“Thank you.  I love you both more than I can say.  Good—goodbye for now.”

“Farewell, Rey,” her parents said together, as they faded into the cosmic force.

The light grew brighter, overwhelming Rey.  Obi-Wan’s voice echoed in her mind.  “You are a Jedi, Rey Solana.  But you shall not be the last.”

 

A bruised hand, skin scraped off its knuckles, gripped a lip of rock.  The owner of the hand, Ben Solo, pulled himself onto the platform atop the dark mountain that had risen through the Jedi Temple.  He rose into a half crouch and stumbled towards the still, white-swathed form lying near the round altar.  Then he fell, barely keeping himself from landing on his face by throwing out his right arm to catch himself.  He groaned.

After testing the strength in his arm, Ben pushed off the ground and stood.  He continued to limp towards Rey, favoring his right leg due to a sprained ankle, while holding a wound in his left side with both hands.  When he had almost reached her, he fell again.  He crawled to her side and touched her arm.  It was cool to the touch.  Ben awkwardly shifted into a sitting position, pulling Rey into his arms.  Her head lolled, and she had no trace of a pulse.  She was dead.  Ben sucked in shaky gasps of air, trying to suppress swelling sorrow.  He looked behind him, but could see no trace of Snoke.

Ben hugged her cold body, resting his chin on her shoulder, staring unseeingly past the broken, rocky ground.  He had never wanted to see her like this, even at his most selfish and angry.  She deserved better than this.  She had always been better than him.  If anyone deserved to die, it was himself.  She had even helped save his life…

A surge of hope welled up in Ben’s breast.  Could he bring her back to life?  It would likely cost his own, but if there was a chance he could save her, he had to take it.  Ben pulled back and placed his right hand on Rey’s waist, then closed his eyes and calmed his breathing.

Ben let his life force flow into Rey.  He could feel himself growing weaker, feel the energy building inside her.  It wasn’t enough, however; in his weakened, injured state, he didn’t have enough reserves to bring her back, even if he killed himself.

Ben almost panicked, but forced himself to remain calm, to think.  He reached out in the Force, searching for any reserves of energy he could use, and then realized that what he needed had been with him the whole time.  Ben tapped this reservoir, pouring all of it into Rey.

Rey’s chest rose as she breathed in.  She lifted her bloodied left hand and placed it on his right.  Ben opened his eyes and found himself staring into hers, completely healed save for a faint scar on either side of them and across the bridge of her nose.

Rey looked at him, an expression of surprise on her face.  “Ben.”  She smiled with genuine affection and touched his cheek.

Ben smiled back, grinning more broadly than he had in more than a decade.

The ground beneath them rumbled.

“We need to get out of here,” Ben said.  They struggled to their feet, then stumbled towards the edge of the platform, half-supporting each other.  As they started down the mountain, it began to quake violently.  The platform with the altar sank back down into the depths, as the peak around it also began to crumble.

Rey and Ben half-walked, half-fell down the dark mountain, passing through the destroyed remnants of the Jedi Temple.  If either of them had been alone, they would have lacked the strength to continue, but together, they somehow found the willpower to keep descending, though they were cut by sharp stones and thrown off-balance by the increasingly violent shakings of the ground beneath them.  When they were three-quarters of the way down, the mountain began to collapse in on itself in earnest, starting from the top and continuing down.  They could faintly hear the screams of the Sith cultists below as they were crushed beneath tons of rock.  Finally, they reached their ships, now at the base of the mount.

Burning fragments of Final Order ships fell, trailing billowing plumes of black smoke.  Between them flew a grey X-Wing and a black TIE whisper, racing away from the dark mountain as it caved in, leaving a gaping pit in the surface of Coruscant.  Rey flicked a switch in her cockpit, once again wearing Luke’s flight helmet, then looked out her windscreen at the angular black starfighter beside her, no longer a source of dread.

 

Finn, Poe, Rose, Jannah, Connix, Kallus, C-3PO, and BB-8 were being driven through the streets of Coruscant in an airspeeder comandeered and piloted by a Coruscanti citizen with a previous life as a speeder-jacker.  She stayed close to the road, weaving around debris and crashed vehicles as they passed between bombed-out buildings, heading for an industrial landing strip which had been designated as a rendezvous point.

“There, look!” Finn said, lowering a pair of macrobinoculars.  “Red Five is in the air.  Rey’s alive!”

“I see her,” agreed Poe.

Connix was listening to comms chatter over a headset wired to a portable antenna and signal decoder.  “People are rising up all over the galaxy,” she informed them.

“Poe? We did it,” said Finn.

Poe leaned back, breathing deeply, finally able to relax after years of war.  “We did it.”  He watched as Rey’s X-Wing and a TIE whisper trimmed their course to follow the Millennium Falcon.  The TIE gave him pause—wasn’t that Kylo Ren’s ship?  He was sure there was a good explanation for it, though, and right now he was too tired to worry about it.  He watched as Snap’s X-Wing joined the other three ships as they flew over Monument Plaza and joined the stream of others heading for the spaceport, sunlight glinting off their hulls.

 

A Star Destroyer fell from the sky of Bespin, smoke streaming from gashes on its top as starfighters and Twin-pod cloud cars climbed away from it.  It dropped past Cloud City, the mining colony hanging in the air like a giant top, and through stratocumuli colored brilliant oranges and gentle pinks by the sunset.

 

In a basement in Coronet City on Coruscant, the top slicer in the Collective looked up from one of the many consoles lining the walls of the room.  “The virus has infiltrated all Final Order systems on the planet and is ready for activation,” he informed Nifera Shu.

The dark-skinned woman’s jaw tightened.  At last you will be avenged, Hasadar, my husband, she thought.  “Do it.”

The slicer slouched forward and pressed a key.  Words flashed on his screen: Executing program…

Aboard the Star Destroyer Deconstructor, every console on the bridge lit up with an image of a serpent with white horns against a blood-red background, and the message: This ship is now under the control of the Collective.  Do not be alarmed.

Technicians shouted and frantically mashed buttons, but only succeeded in making some of the recalcitrant computers shoot sparks at them.  “We’ve lost all controls!” one tech cried.

The Star Destroyer splashed into the sea, which already held numerous TIE Fighters and shuttles which had also been taken over by the computer virus.

 

Over the green fields of Naboo, N-1 Starfighters wove around laser fire and engaged in high-speed dogfights with TIEs.  Gungan-built Bullbabong bombers dropped round boomas, spheres of energized plasma, onto the Star Destroyer Dictator.  The Destroyer began to list to one side as the electromagnetic pulses deactivated its systems.  On the ground, Nabooans and Gungans cheered, some of them holding stormtroopers at gun- or spear-point.

 

On Thyferra, a swarm of insectoid Vratix rebels scuttled towards a bacta factory, pursued by a platoon of stormtroopers.  The gray-green Thyferrans used four of their six appendages for locomotion, occasionally pivoting their surprisingly flexible bodies to fire blaster rifles with the remaining two.  Finally, they reached the hulking industrial building and crawled inside, sometimes climbing over each other.

The stormtroopers followed them into the factory.  “It’s dark!” one perceptive soldier exclaimed.

The lieutenant leading the troopers ordered, “Use your lamps!”  He fumbled on his belt for his own device, eventually pulling it out and switching it on.

He almost wished he hadn’t.  Rolling towards them was a towering blue wave of bacta.  The stormtroopers just had time to shout various warnings and oaths before it crashed over them, slamming them against the front wall of the factory.  Troopers screamed and gurgled as the viscous slime seeped into their helmets.  Most were unable to even struggle when chitinous claws reached through the liquid and wrested their blasters from them.

 

Over the forest moon of Endor, two halves of the Star Destroyer Defoliator drifted apart, the cruiser neatly split apart by a lightspeed ram from a heavy freighter.  The legendary Ewok warrior Wicket W. Warrick, chief of Bright Tree Village, and his son Pommet watched from a fern-covered clearing.

Wicket made a satisfied noise and planted his spear firmly on the ground.  See that?  Our friends helped us once more, as they did so many suns and moons ago.

Pommet looked at his father.  Princess Leia?  See-Threepio?” he asked, recalling stories he had been told many times since he was but a wokling.

Perhaps it was the Princess, or the golden god.  We can but speculate.  Wicket ambled downhill towards the village, his son following.  There will be much rich feasting and lighting of fireworks this night.”

 

On Lothal, the Final Order had already been all but defeated, the planet having risen in open rebellion as soon as the Resistance’s message had reached it, led by the Ghost crew and Phoenix Squadron.  Burning fragments of Destroyers, cruisers, and a dreadnought lay scattered across the rolling fields of grass.  In Capital City, citizens marched legions of stormtroopers into detention camps.

 

Above Jakku, fire and smoke spewed out of the Resurgent-class Star Destroyer Revanchist as it fell towards the Graveyard of Giants, coming to rest on the sands near the wreckage of the Imperial-class Destroyer Inflictor.

 

“Hey look, that’s a T-6 Shuttle,” Poe said, pointing into the sky.  “You can tell by the broad, fan-like wings.  The Jedi used to fly them.”

Rose chimed in, “I think that other ship’s a Pelta-class.”

The staff speeder passed through an arched metal gateway and sped onto the landing strip.  Numerous ships were bending their courses downwards, or beginning their landing cycles.  Others had already landed, arranged haphazardly on the tarmac.  A Delta Squadron Y-wing pilot climbed down a ladder from her cockpit and hugged a ground controller.  Throngs of other pilots, troopers, techs, and Coruscanti clapped, pumped their fists in the air, or embraced.

The driver stopped near the Millennium Falcon and a shuttle carrying many of the higher-ranked Resistance officers, just as the Ghost landed nearby.  “We’re here,” she informed them.

They exited the airspeeder, Rose helping Connix down and half-supporting her as the recently-minted General limped towards the Falcon, a bandage around her left leg.  BB-8 rolled ahead of them, weaving around starships and past scores of pilots, a gonk droid, and a meter-high Shungbeek wearing a flight suit and a globular glass helmet filled with argon.

D-O wheeled up to BB-8.  The larger droid beeped a hello.

“Happy,” said D-O, simply.

Finn patted Beaumont Kin on the shoulder as he walked past.  Chewbacca, coming down the Falcon’s ramp, saw them.  He warbled something as he swept Rose off the ground in a huge furry hug.  Rose squealed.  A scrappy-looking soldier laughed at the sight, but then had a pilot throw herself at him, too.  Nearby, a woman cried into a man’s shoulder.  Former stormtroopers wandered dazedly around, having shed their helmets, and sometimes the rest of their armor.

Poe pushed gently but firmly through the crowd, scanning every face for features that had grown ever more familiar and beloved over the past few years—and not finding them.  Snap Wexley waved at him, then continued talking to a green Nikto and a Battle Droid.  “I used to have a B1, a long time ago.  I called him Mr. Bones…”

“That is a very terrifying name!” the Nikto said cheerfully before giving a strange, wheezing laugh.

A lander arrived at the airstrip, carrying Major Ranch and several other engineers.  They carried a blue-and-white astromech droid out and carefully lowered him to the plascrete tarmac.

Ranch saluted Rose.  “I think we have Artoo-Detoo mostly repaired.  The damage looked a lot worse than it actually was.  We’ll have to find a replacement dome, but other than that he should work when his proper memory chip is put back.”

“Thank you for prioritizing him,” C-3PO said.  “If you can’t repair him…I can’t imagine what I’d do without him!  I know he’s stubborn, but I—”

“He’ll be fine, Threepio,” Rose reassured him.  “Beebee-Ate!”

BB-8 rolled up to her and opened a compartment.  Rose pulled the memory drive out of it and stuck it into R2-D2, then pulled a welding torch out of her tool belt and set to work.

Beaumont hugged a limbless yellow Trodatome.  Pilots and troopers laughed together.  A Ground Logistics officer talked to a Caphex spy with enormous white sideburns that stuck out beyond the sides of her face like wings.  Larma D’Acy and Wrobie Tyce held each other close, then pulled away just enough to kiss before falling into each other again.

A muscular purple Lasat talking to a pistol-wielding protocol droid and a pointy-chinned bounty hunter looked up to see Kallus standing nearby.  He threw his arms wide and clapped Kallus on the back, almost knocking him over.

“Careful, Zeb!  I’m not as hale as I once was,” Kallus warned.

“Sorry,” Zeb responded, running his hand behind his neck sheepishly.  “Forgot how fragile humans get.”

“No matter.  It’s good to see you again after so long, old friend.”

Rose welded the last few wires in place and stood up.  “Artoo should be up and running again.”

A light on the front of R2-D2’s dome flickered on, cycling through red and blue.  He chirped.

“Oh, Artoo,” See-Threepio said, bending down to hug the astromech, “I’m so glad you’re back.”

Artoo chirped curtly that he was glad too.

Threepio pulled back.  “Your parts are showing,” he chided.

Artoo burbled something rude at him.

Threepio was about to respond in kind, but then detected a whooshing noise, similar to the X-Wings that had been landing nearby, but subtly different.  It was undercut by the throaty growl of a TIE model.

See-Threepio tilted his head up.  “Did you hear that?” he asked Artoo.

An old T-65 X-Wing extended its landing gear and touched down on the landing strip.  BB-8 rolled up to watch as the cockpit opened to reveal Rey, pulling off a battered flight helmet.  BB-8 started towards the X-Wing.

Rey leapt out of Red Five and ran to BB-8, crouching down to adjust his antenna, a grin on her face.  Then she looked behind her.  Ben stumbled away from his TIE whisper, his face drawn and pale.

Rey came up to Ben.  “Are you all right?”

“I’ll be fine,” Ben said.  “Resurrecting the dead takes a lot out of you.  Right now I just want to sleee…”

Rey caught him as he fell.  He was deathly cold.  She didn’t know what sort of injuries he might have sustained, and the strain of saving her would only compound them.  “Medic!” she screamed.

A Mohsenian with fluffy grey fur rushed over to them.

“What’s wrong with him?” Rey asked.

The medic put his long white snout next to Ben and sniffed.  “Some bruising,” he said.  “Minor lacerations and puncture wounds, but something else…he seems weak.  We’d better take him to hospital.”  He spoke into a comms unit and a pair of soldiers arrived carrying a stretcher.  They lifted Ben into it and bore him away.  Rey watched them go, worry etched into her face, but then turned away.  There was no more she could do for him now.

Lando had been talking to Wedge, but Wedge was now talking to Norra, Snap, and Karé.  Lando wandered away and sat down on a long rectangular crate.  Seeing Wedge with his family had made him reflect on his own attempts to start one.  Lando was not usually a man who brooded over the past, but now he stared at nothing, thinking of a wonderful woman and a beautiful baby girl, and the terrible day he had come home from a mission to find his daughter gone.

Jannah sat down next to Lando, drawn by an impulse she couldn’t explain.  “Where are you from, General?”

“Socorro, in the Gold System.”  Lando turned to look at her.  “What about you, kid?”

“Oh.”  She shook her head, trying to cover the hint of sadness in her face with a slight smile.  “I don’t know.”

Lando beamed.  “Well, let’s find out.”

Jannah stared in surprise, then slowly smiled back.

Aftab Ackbar threw up his webbed hands in triumph.  Chewbacca put his paws on Beaumont Kin’s left shoulder and Connix’s right, Rose standing next to them.  Even the normally stoic pirate Sidon Ithano hugged someone.  Rey walked slowly through the crowd of people, many of them giving her encouraging words or a pat on the back.

Poe and Finn were also making their way through the throng.  Poe was the first to see Rey.  She was covered in blood, grime, and dust, her hair a mess, her once-white wrappings now a dingy grey.  She was the most beautiful thing Poe had ever seen.

Poe came to a halt and gave Finn a slight tap to catch his attention, then pointed with his good hand.  Finn’s eyes widened as he caught sight of his friend.

Rey saw them, then.  She pressed her lips together as her breath caught, on the verge of laughs or sobs.

All three of them came together in a tight embrace, Rey and Poe both resting their heads on Finn’s shoulders.  Finn fought back tears as Poe, reaching around him, clasped Rey’s hand in his.  They stayed like that for a long time.

Chapter 19: Memories, Farewells, and Beginnings

Chapter Text

Chapter Nineteen

 

Memories, Farewells, and Beginnings

 

A Resistance flag flew in Monument Plaza, next to the peak of Mount Umate.  Thousands of citizens filled the square, glorying in their newly-won freedom, as work crews cleared away the debris of yesterday’s battle.

In a ceremonial hall near the Galactic Senate Building, hundreds of Resistance personnel and leaders from across the galaxy stood at attention or sat in rows of ragged, but comfortable, cushioned antique chairs.  On a low platform at one end of the hall stood General Lando Calrissian, General Connix, Nien Nunb (wearing a flexpoly bacta suit to treat burns), Colonel D’Acy, and a few other high-ranking Resistance officers, as well as Maz Kanata and several droids.  In the exact center of the platform stood former Chancellor Mon Mothma, clad in a flowing white robe.  Though her face was lined by age and long illness, and her hair as silver as the Hanna pendant she wore around her neck, she still emanated an air of quiet calm and poise that seemed to settle over the vast chamber.

A group of musicians struck up a stately march as the high doors at the front of the hall slid open and six beings walked in.  Rey and Poe walked side by side, BB-8 rolling along beside them, followed by Rose and Finn (holding hands), and Chewbacca bringing up the rear.  They passed briskly down the center aisle of the hall and stopped on the stairs before the platform, fanning out into a line.

Mon Mothma took a circular silver medal with a raised starbird engraved upon it from a box held by a Chandrilan military official.  “We present these medals to you.  For valiantly leading our forces to victory…”  She hung the medal around Poe’s neck as the pilot smiled winningly.  BB-8 beeped excitedly at his feet.

The former Chancellor and head of the Rebel Alliance took another medal from the box.  “For lighting the beacon-fire of freedom, and raising an army in the seat of our enemy’s power,” she said as she placed it on Finn, who looked serious but pleased.  She gave another to Rose, who beamed.  “For likewise lighting the beacon, and destroying the Final Order’s capitol.”

Mon Mothma picked up another medal.  “For defeating, through self-sacrifice, the Dark Lord responsible for generations of war and suffering,” she proclaimed as she presented it to Rey.  Rey nodded her thanks.

“We also wish to recognize several other individuals for their contributions to the cause of freedom, not only in this battle, but in the years and decades previous.  For his services in the battles of Coruscant, Endor, Tanab, and on numerous other occasions…” Chancellor Mothma hung the fifth and final medal in the box around Lando’s neck.

“Finally, for forty years of service and accomplishments too numerous to name, we have a very special medal.  Maz?”

Maz Kanata raised her hand.  “Chewie.”

Chewbacca knelt before her.

“This is for you,” Maz stated as she handed him the Alderaanian Medal of Bravery given to Han Solo decades before.

Chewbacca held the medal gently in his paw, treasuring the memories it brought back, of the man who had been his partner in too many mishaps, scams, and adventures to count.  He looked up at Maz, who simply smiled at him lovingly, the edges of her eyes and mouth crinkling.

The heroes of the hour turned to face the audience.  As applause thundered in their ears, none of them could refrain from smiling.  Rey’s smile fled swiftly, however, as she searched for a face in the crowd and did not see what she sought.  

Mon Mothma was speaking again.  “It is my understanding that the droid Artoo-Detoo, who has played a critical role in many events of galactic importance, recently reviewed many files of some historical interest while cycling through his memory banks, and decided they should be shared.  He has requested to be allowed to play some of them for you here today.”

Artoo-Detoo waddled up to a large holoprojector and plugged into it.  A full-color, larger-than-life image appeared above the stage of a young woman, covered head to toe in a long red cloak, kneeling as she scrubbed something in front of her.  A voice asked her, “Who-sa are you-sa?”

The girl smiled.  “I’m Padmé.”

She disappeared, replaced by a droid’s eye view of a space battle.  Dozens of vulture droids buzzed around a few Naboo starfighters in the upper portion of the image, while the lower part was occupied by a small boy wearing a brown flight helmet sitting in the rounded cockpit of another fighter.  The image panned to show a brown vulture droid pursuing the starship, firing laser beams flying directly at it.  The view shifted again, entering the hangar of a rounded Lucrehulk-class cargo freighter.

The boy fired laser blasts, blowing away battle droids, then let loose two blue proton torpedoes.  He sped out of the hangar and back towards the planet Naboo, as behind him a chain reaction of explosions tore apart the droid control ship.

The people and droids on stage descended the stairs, as above them, Republic gunships dropped into the Petranaki arena on Geonosis, raining plasma onto the droid army.  As they settled into their seats in the front row of the crowd, Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala were wed in Naboo’s lake country.

“So, what are you going to do, now that the war is over?” Poe whispered to Rey as Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Ahsoka Tano cut their way through a field of battle droids.

“I don’t know,” Rey admitted as the scene shifted to another battle, on another world.  “I’ve never really had a chance to determine my own future before.  I’ve always been scrambling to survive, and the past few years, fighting the First Order.”  She paused.  “What will you do?”

“Probably stay in the Resistance, or whatever military forms out of or supplants it.  As long as I get to fly, I’ll be pretty happy.  Especially if I’m with you.”  He squeezed her hand gently as Padmé blasted a battle droid in its faceplate.  “Nice shot, that lady.”

“It won’t all be jetting about the galaxy,” Rey reminded.  “You’re an admiral now, you have responsibilities.”

Poe replied with a surprising amount of solemnity.  “I know.”

Kaydel Ko Connix found herself sitting next to Mon Mothma.  The older woman’s eyes were fixed on the hologram, which now showed a man and a woman running to each other and embracing, obscured by a choking haze of smoke.  They talked briefly, the woman pleading, but then beginning to slowly back away.  The taller, darker figure seemed to grow angry and reached out his hand.  The woman’s own hands went to her throat before she collapsed.

Mon Mothma tore her gaze away from the recording, pain visible on her face.  She stared blankly at the floor for a moment before looking at Connix, pointedly ignoring the image of master and apprentice striking and counter-attacking, moving so blazingly fast that their blue lightsabers almost became a single bright blur shifting and warping between them.

“I was impressed by your speech,” Mon Mothma said.  “You have much of Leia’s spirit about you.”

Connix bobbed her head.  “Thank you, Chancellor.  She wrote it; I merely delivered it.”

“Nevertheless, a speech is no more than pretty words on a page before a speaker gives them the form by which they will be remembered down the ages.  Leia knew that, and so, I suspect, do you.”  Mothma shot a glance at the hologram, which now showed a funeral procession at twilight, then shifted the subject.  “Have you ever considered a career in politics?”

“I did, when I was much younger,” Connix admitted.  “But the New Republic never seemed to get anything done.”

“I know that frustration all too well; many years I spent in trying to wring agreement from the fractious members of the Senate—a task far harder than herding tookas.  Nevertheless, what has the goal of this war been, if not to re-establish a functioning democracy?”

Mothma turned back to the hologram, which now showed Leia as a teenager, addressing the Imperial Senate.

Connix looked uncomfortable.  “I always thought once we won, everything would…sort itself out.  Fall into place, somehow.  I always thought Leia would be here to lead us.”

Mothma turned her head to see Connix looking at her.  The former chancellor raised her eyebrows.  “I certainly can’t lead you,” she said.  “I’m far too old and tired, and too frequently ill, for such strenuous work.”

Zeb and Kallus watched younger versions of themselves brawl, their bo-rifles crackling with energy as they clashed.  Kallus winced as the holographic Zeb slammed his staff into the hologram of Kallus, knocking him off his feet.

“That hurt,” said Kallus.

“You deserved it, back then.” Zeb ribbed.  “Right, Hera?”

General Syndulla, on Zeb’s other side, murmured something noncommittal.

See-Threepio watched himself and Artoo being sold to Luke.  He had seldom seen a hologram of himself, and was rather astounded at how grimy he had looked after not even a full day on Tatooine.  The image cut to Obi-Wan Kenobi pulling a lightsaber out of a battered trunk and presenting it to Luke Skywalker, who flicked it on and swept it back and forth a few times to get a feel for the weapon.

“That reminds me,” Kallus addressed Rose, leaning across the center aisle.  “I have something here for you.”  He fished a thin band of cloth out of his pocket and handed it to Rose.

Rose took the cuff title with glee.  “Ooh, a Tarkin,” she gushed, reading the name written on it in aurebesh.  “I don’t have any of these.  Thank you!  This will make a fine addition to my collection.”

“I thought you would like it,” Kallus responded as Luke’s X-Wing rushed down a metal trench.

Poe shot a glance at Finn.  “You know, I still don’t understand one thing.  How did you know that sniper was going to shoot me?”

“I don’t know,” said Finn, staring fixedly at the hologram.  “Just a feeling.”

Poe raised one eyebrow.  “A feeling, huh?”

Finn didn’t respond.  Poe looked back up to see a small green Jedi lifting an X-Wing from a murky swamp.

Luke saluted from the plank of a skiff floating above blazing sands.  Han and Leia stood side by side in front of the heavy blast doors of a bunker, firing at stormtroopers.  Chewbacca put a furry arm around Lando as they watched themselves and their old friends, dancing, singing, laughing, or being mobbed by Ewoks doing all these things.

The stream of images continued to flash by: Luke training a new generation of Jedi, including his nephew Ben; Luke’s temple damaged and burning; BB-8 and R2-D2 assembling the map to Luke’s location; Luke in the Millennium Falcon for the final time.  Then Artoo showed a bit of the Second Battle of Coruscant, and the hologram flickered out.

Some people in the audience stood and clapped or cheered.  Others remained seated, maintaining a respectful silence or contemplating what they had witnessed, today or years and decades ago.

Rey rose from her seat.  She should have felt joyful, but a strange sense of hollowness had stolen over her.  The day before, after the battle, she had scarfed down an oversize portion of rations to restore her energy, then gone to bed early.  This morning, she had been told of her itinerary of a memorial ceremony for Leia, followed by the medal ceremony, and hadn’t had a chance to sit and meditate.  But sitting in the dark, staring into the flickering images of the past, she had become aware of an odd feeling of loss, of something that she hadn’t consciously known was a part of her suddenly being absent.

Rey made her way to the edge of the hall and slipped out onto the Senate plaza.  She walked onto the avenue which led up to the stately curves of the old Galactic Senate Building, passing a tall, spindly statue of one of the founders of the Republic.  Her steps quickened as she saw a lone figure standing before a broad dais in the center of the avenue.

Ben Solo was draped in a white hospital gown, staring moodily at a stone plaque fixed atop the empty plinth, which had a deep hollow in its center, as though something large had been removed from it.  He looked up as Rey neared him.

Rey looked down at the plaque, although she had been there when it was placed that morning.  Engraved into the stone was the legend:

 

LEIA NABERRIE SKYWALKER ORGANA SOLO of ALDERAAN:

Daughter, Princess, Senator, Wife, Mother, General,

REBEL.

 

“You weren’t at the memorial ceremony,” Rey said.

“I’ve grown weary of ceremony,” sniffed Ben.  “Besides, they wouldn’t have wanted me there anyway.”

“You don’t know that.  You’re her son, surely they would have allowed you to pay respects to your own mother.  Besides, anyone can change.  My friend Finn used to be a stormtrooper, now he’s a general in the Resistance.”

“He wasn’t the Supreme Leader,” Ben said harshly.  “He doesn’t have the blood of thousands, maybe millions on his hands.  I fully expect to be put on trial for war crimes as soon as Dr. Kalonia certifies me well enough, then shipped away to some prison planet for the rest of my life.  Even now, I’m kept under constant watch.”  He jerked his head to indicate two Resistance troopers standing a respectable distance behind him, their hands resting lightly on the hilts of blaster pistols slung at their waists.  Ben looked down at his own hands.  “The more I think about it, the more I believe I may have been better off dying on that mountain.”

Rey walked around to face him.  “Don’t say that, Ben.  The Resistance is merciful to those who acknowledge their past mistakes.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” muttered Ben.

Rey seemed to remember something.  “I need your help.  Follow me.”  She set off across the avenue once more, walking further away from the ceremonial hall she had left.  Ben followed, bemused.

 

“Have you seen Rey anywhere?” Poe asked Finn.  “She was right here next to me, and then she slipped off someplace.”

Finn shrugged.  “I’m sure she can take care of herself.  Maybe she needed to use the refresher.”  He turned to talk to Rose.

Maybe.” Poe sounded dubious.  His attention was diverted, however, as Kallus came up to him, holding a neatly pressed blue uniform.

“I have something of utmost importance for you, Admiral,” said the aged intelligence operative.

Poe raised his eyebrows.  “A Final Order officer’s uniform?”

“Not just any officer’s uniform, mine; but that’s not the important part.”  Kallus ripped open the hem of the shirt and reached inside, then pulled out a datachip.  “This is.  It contains the complete contents of the Final Order Capitol’s central computer.  Personnel data, troop movements, clandestine operatives, and the location of every base, outpost, and research facility.  All the information you need to wipe the galaxy clean of any Final Order remnants.”

“I thought that had been destroyed!” Rose interjected.

Kallus smiled.  “Always back up your data.”

“Thank you,” Poe said.  “You’ve done a great service for the Resistance and for freedom today, and in your many years undercover.”

Kallus acknowledged Poe’s praise with a quiet, “Just doing my duty, sir.”  He nodded to Rose.  “Ma’am.”  Then he slipped away into the crowd.

Another face caught Poe’s eye, and he pushed through the throng towards it.  “Chancellor Mothma.  It’s an honor to meet you.”  He looked past her, to where Connix was talking with a blond man wearing a dark blue velvet cloak.  “And it’s good to see you again, too, Senator Casterfo.”

“The pleasure’s all mine, Admiral Dameron,” replied Ransolm Casterfo, completely unfazed at the interruption in the conversation he had been engaged in.  “Without your efforts, I would no doubt still be in a First Order prison…or worse.”

Connix put in, “It would have been far harder to rally the galaxy without your help in maintaining diplomatic relations with friendly worlds, though.”

“One good turn deserves another of like kind,” said Casterfo lightly.

“I’m glad to see you all know each other already,” Mon Mothma said.  “I wished to speak to all of you today, and it will be far easier to address you all at once.”  She murmured to Connix, “You’ve heard some of what I am about to say to these two gentlemen, but I shall both expand upon it and deliver novel information, so I request your continued presence.”

Poe asked, “What do you want to talk to us about?”

“In a word,” Mothma responded, “Democracy.  Most people who fight in a war are too caught up in the moment to plan for what happens after, which is why so many rebellions devolve into infighting, or even tyranny, as soon as (or even before) they succeed.  When the Alliance to Restore the Republic won the decisive victories at Endor and Jakku, we had numerous members and allies with experience in politics or civil leadership, even former Republic or Imperial Senators.  I am among their number.  Yet even with that combined expertise, and the echoes of the Republic still in the minds of many, it was tremendously difficult to establish a functional democracy after so many years of authoritarianism.  Social and political structures have great inertia; it is difficult to alter them quickly, even through force.  And the galaxy is in a far worse state now than it was after Endor.”

Poe nodded.  “I may not be a politician, but I think I see what you’re saying.  You’re worried that the galaxy is too broken and traumatized for a handful of scruffy freedom fighters to establish a government and make it stick.”

Suddenly Mothma looked very old.  “I have seen two republics fall, one destroyed from within, the other from without.  The old Republic grew rotten, eaten away by corporate interests and a power-mad chancellor who was eventually revealed to be a Sith Lord and master manipulator.  The New Republic was shaky from the start.  I was able to build some consensus during my term as chancellor, but when I stepped down, the Senate became increasingly gridlocked and partisan.  After Leia’s parentage was revealed…”

Ransolm Casterfo cringed.  “I’m still sorry about that.”

“I know, Ransolm,” said Mothma.  “In any case, after Leia left to lead the Resistance, the New Republic Senate was unable to agree even on the color of the sky.  Some of them were actively conspiring with the First Order, and the others never saw the danger of it until the Starkiller was upon them.  So these are the twin fatal flaws republic has faced in my lifetime: one concentrated power too much, in one seemingly trustworthy but ultimately wicked individual.  The other was so ineffectual that without a firm hand guiding it, it was practically useless.”

“If I might offer my own opinion on the New Republic Senate,” Casterfo cut in, “I think the key problem with that body was that not every Senator was truly committed to democracy.  Many of my former political…‘allies’—though they were false even in that regard, and I shall never again call them friends—were covertly committed to fascism and autocracy.  Many of them seceded even before Starkiller, and later joined the First Order willingly.”

“Sadly, I agree with your assessment,” sighed Mothma.  “In our rush to make peace after Endor, we were too willing to allow Imperial collaborators to retain their political power, thinking that to not do so would only prolong the war.  We justified this to ourselves by repeating that democracy is about differing viewpoints.  I see now that we were wrong to be so lenient.”

“People who want to topple and destroy democracy can’t be allowed to have a say in it,” said Connix.

Mon Mothma nodded.  “Precisely.  If we are tolerant of intolerance, intolerance inevitably wins.”  She smiled at Connix.  “You see?  You’re a natural.”

“So are you volunteering to lead the establishment of a new government?” asked Poe.

“Oh, no,” said Mothma.  “As I told General Connix, I’m too old for this sort of thing.  But I don’t think you’ll need anything more than my advice.  I believe you…all of you, in this Resistance that Leia built…will find the way forward.  To a brighter, freer future.”

“I can help,” offered Casterfo.  “I’m not quite a doddering old man just yet.  And I’ve always known my duty.”

“I expect you to help,” Mon Mothma told him.  “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to return to my lodgings and rest.  This has already been a far more draining day than I have been used to of late.”

 

Rey had led Ben to the Senate Gardens, his guard escort trailing behind.  The once well-maintained greenhouse, filed with plants from across the galaxy, was now overgrown.  Trees reached to the roof and grew sideways, as bushes and other flora spilled out of their beds of dark soil into the elegantly tiled footpaths that wound sinuously between them.  Purple vines and strange, sweet-smelling flowers grew up the inside walls.

“What did you bring me here for?” Ben asked, staring warily into the foliage.  A plant with broad, waxy leaves swayed in the mechanically-generated breeze next to a crop of bulbous orange and blue Felucian fungi that shone brightly under the growing lights.

“I need you to help me carry soil,” said Rey, picking up a hefty bag from a pile in a corner and dropping it onto a hovercart.

“Carry…soil?”

“Well, and collect a bit of organic material, to give it richness—I read about that in an astroecology book your mother lent me.  Like this.”  Rey retrieved a large, thin sack from a corner and opened it.  Then she stood next to the garden bed, closed her eyes, and concentrated.  Loose clumps of dirt, fallen leaves, and even tiny insects rose into the air.  They floated towards the bag, assembling into a thin stream, and dropped into its bottom.  “Think you can handle that?”

Ben picked up a bag and stepped forward.  “Of course.”  He raised his hands and dirt practically jumped into the air.  Ben swirled the particles around himself like a small tornado before dropping them into the sack.

Rey and Ben placed their fertilizer and a few more bags of topsoil on the cart, then pushed it out of the Senate Gardens and back onto the avenue.  Ben soon perceived they were returning to the empty pedestal.

“Emperor Palpatine put up a giant statue of himself here when he ruled,” said Ben.  “It was torn down after the Empire fell.”

“I know.  Some people in the Resistance wanted to put a statue of Leia here.  Maybe they will someday, but I don’t know that she would have liked a blank-faced effigy of herself looming over everyone.  I think she would have preferred this.”  Rey opened her satchel and pulled out a translucent orb.  She pressed a button on its side and the upper hemisphere separated from the lower, folding back to reveal a small plant, its roots floating in a gelatinous nutrient fluid.

“Is that…?”

“Yes, an uneti sapling.  Descended from the Great Tree in the Jedi Temple.  Leia grew it from a seed Luke gave her a decade ago.”  Rey looked at Ben.  “Will you help me plant it?”

“Yes.”

Rey set the sapling, still in its pod, on the street.  She and Ben heaved up the bags and poured dirt into the depression in the dais, filling it up until the soil was flush with the stone side.  Rey shifted a little of the loam out of the center to form a slight hole.

Rey and Ben reached out through the Force, touching the little sapling.  It seemed to glow with light in their minds as they gently lifted it out of its temporary home in the orb and sent it floating over the bed of soil, then nestled it gently into the earth, covering its pale roots.

Rey stepped back and spoke, knowing her words to be true.  “It shall grow, in darkness and starshine, snow and rain, to become a great tree; a memorial down the centuries to she who first grew it.”

 

“Then the stormtroopers started shooting at me, so I leapt off the platform and onto this crane thing,” Kazuda Xiono said, jumping slightly to illustrate, then losing his balance and falling over a chair.  Jarek Yeager shook his head.

Poe bent down and reached out a hand to pull Kaz back to his feet.  He was about to ask if Kaz was all right, when he looked up to see a familiar face.

“Dad!” cried Poe.

Kes Dameron scooped his son up in a gundark-sized hug.  “It’s good to see you, son.”  He pulled back enough to look Poe up and down.  “And look at the man you’ve become.  An Admiral in the Resistance.  I never would have dreamed it.”  His face softened.  “Your mother would be so proud.”

“She is, Dad,” said Poe, toying with the ring on his necklace.  “I can feel it.”  He hesitated a moment, then ventured, “C’mon.  There’s someone I want you to meet.”

 

Rey watched Ben walk away in the direction of the hospital.  Suddenly, the open, flat  avenue felt very chill and windy.  She wrapped her arms around herself and sat down on the dais, looking down at the tree.  “I suppose it’s just you and me, now,” she whispered to it.

“Rey!” called a familiar voice.  At once, the world felt much warmer.  She looked up to see Poe and a stocky, middle-aged man walking towards her.

“Hi.”  The older man extended a broad, callused hand.  “I’m Kes Dameron.”

Rey stood up and took his offered hand.  “Pleased to meet you.  I’m Rey.”

“Poe tells me you’re the last Jedi,” Kes said.  “That’s good.  I met Luke Skywalker once.  Greatest man I ever knew.”

Poe jokingly warned, “He’ll talk your ears off with his old war stories if you let him, Rey.  How about we get some lunch and then we can all swap tales?  Snap found a great noodle place a few levels down in one of the other districts last night.”

 

Rey awoke early the next morning.  After a long and laughter-filled lunch with Poe and his father, she had meditated briefly, then joined her friends for a ceremonial banquet held in their honor.  However, she had made sure not to indulge in any of the many intoxicants offered to them and had excused herself early, using the handy explanation that she was not yet fully recovered from her battlefield exertions.  It was half true; she had been tired.  The deeper reason, however, was that Rey had discovered being fêted and pampered suited her as ill as it did Ben Solo.  After a life spent clawing through sand for survival, she had thought she would appreciate a chance to relax, but she instead found herself casting about for some new purpose.

She had gotten up in the middle of the night and stepped onto the balcony of the apartment that she had been temporarily assigned for some fresh air.  The lights of the second night of celebration still twinkled in the city beyond.  It was only then that Rey had thought of a loose end which wanted tying up.

Now, Rey swung her satchel over her shoulder and pulled on heavy work gloves.  She was going scavenging in the ruins of the Jedi Temple.

Rey wandered through the labyrinth of streets until she found the thoroughfare leading to the former site of the temple.  When she had made her way to the vast crater, she stared over the edge.  There was a steep drop at the rim, but just beyond it, a jumble of rock sloped down most of the way to the middle of the depression.  In the center, however, opened a gaping hole through which was only darkness.  Luckily for Rey, she saw the part of the temple she wanted to reach—the top chamber of the central spire—just outside the pit.

Rey tied a rope around a seemingly stable stone outcropping and slid down it, into the crater.  She picked her way across the rough rocks and jagged masonry that had once been part of the Jedi Temple.  Just above the top of the spire, the rock had been pulverized into a grey-brown dust.  When Rey stepped into the dust, her foot hit a metal panel.  She shook the rock flakes off it and, for old times’ sake, sat down.  She slid several meters down the sandy slope, smiling to herself as she thought of all the times she had done the same on Jakku.  How much simpler life had been then—she had only to worry about dying from the thousand dangers in the desert, rather than being hunted by millions of soldiers.

Rey got to her feet and entered the top of the Tranquility Spire.  The inside was littered with chunks of stone, scraps of metal, and shards of shattered glass.  She gazed briefly at the badly damaged throne at the far end of the chamber, then looked more intently at the beacon in the center.  That might be worth salvaging someday, Rey thought.

Rey turned her attention to the side walls of the spire.  She shifted aside a piece of metal and reached into the darkness.  Her hand touched a depression in the wall and she drew forth a clear white Kyber crystal: one of the two she had been given by Nomi.  It glinted as she held it up to the morning light streaming through the broken window behind the throne.  Then she crossed the chamber to retrieve the crystal’s twin.

Rey left the spire and started the difficult climb back to Coruscant’s surface, the Kyber crystals tucked safely away in her satchel.  Perhaps she would return to scavenge in the Temple again, but now she had something else to do.

 

Ben Solo stood alone in the Ninth Hall of the Galactic Courts of Justice.  A bevy of Resistance officers looked down at him from a raised box against the far wall.  Several rebel soldiers stood at each end of the hall, some nervously resting hands on their blasters.

Commander D’Acy spoke from behind a lectern.  “As Kylo Ren, you committed numerous crimes of aggression and war.  Your reign of terror has been well documented.  Do you accept responsibility for your actions?”

Ben met her eyes with his own.  “I do,” he affirmed.

“Good.  In normal circumstances your actions would be obvious grounds for a war crimes tribunal.  However, these are not normal circumstances.  The Resistance has yet to establish an official justice system.  In addition, the last Jedi, Rey, has testified that you committed your most heinous acts while under the manipulation of Supreme Leader Snoke, and all of them while your mind was clouded by the dark side.  She has also stated that you played an integral part in the defeat of Snoke, and has vouched for your future good behaviour.  Furthermore, we are aware of your great power with the Force, and the difficulties of keeping you imprisoned should you wish to escape.”  D’Acy leaned forward.  “In short, we cannot be bothered to babysit you.  We have too many better things to do.”

Ben wondered, Are they actually going to let me walk free?

“Therefore, we have decided to grant you a conditional pardon,” D’Acy continued.  “You are, as of this moment, a free man.

Ben was genuinely grateful.  “Thank you.”

“Do not rush to thank me; your freedom cuts both ways.  You are hated by untold millions across the galaxy.  Some of them may seek to kill you, and you cannot rely upon the Resistance to protect you.  You must ensure your own safety.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“I am sure you can.  Nevertheless, we formally recommend that you find a sparsely populated world to settle on for the next few years.”

Ben nodded.  “Good idea.  I think I know just the place.”

“Finally, we shall leave you with a warning.  The Resistance wants to have as little to do with you as possible from now on.  However, if the Resistance, or the Republic, or whatever government is formed from our organization, hears that you have turned back to your old ways—if you torture, or murder, or attempt to rule so much as a gang of thugs or a petty fiefdom—we will bring to bear our full military might to bring you to justice.  Do you accept these terms?”

“I do.”

D’Acy rapped a small wooden gavel three times against a round metal sound block, the metallic rings carrying clearly through the cavernous hall.  “Then you may leave, and this meeting is formally adjourned.”

Ben walked out of the courtroom, an odd sense of unreality washing over him.  Surely, after all those years of evil and destruction, they wouldn’t just let him go.  It didn’t make sense; surely it had to be some trick…but deep inside, he knew the truth.  It was no trick or trap.  The years of taking orders from Snoke, or uneasily ruling alongside Hux, the dark side clouding his thoughts with malice and anger all the while, were over.  He was finally free.

Ben stepped into the turbolift to return to the ground floor.  As soon as the doors closed he began to sob.

He had never allowed himself to truly mourn any of his family in the years since Starkiller and Crait.  He had thought it weakness, failure, to show such emotion, but now he let all of it out.  He cried for his father, trying to remember him not impaled by Ben’s own saber, but as he had been when Ben was a boy, and his final words to him on Mortis.  He cried for his mother, giving the last of her life to save him.  He cried for Luke.  He knew now that Luke wasn’t actually trying to kill him that night, that it was all a dreadful misunderstanding brought on by Snoke’s poisoning of his own mind, and he thought of the many times Luke had taught him a valuable, unheeded lesson about the Force, or just life; how he had smiled when Ben succeeded at some task during his Jedi training.

He could remember these moments, with a clarity that had been absent when he was under the influence of the dark side.  He would treasure the memories forever.

As Ben exited the Galactic Hall of Justice, wiping tears away with the sleeve of his hospital gown, two figures walked towards him.  The taller one gave a familiar roar.  The other smiled winningly and said, “Hey, hotshot, how’s it going?”

Ben threw his arms around Chewbacca, then pulled Lando into the hug too.  “Wonderful.  Chewie…Uncle Lando…everything’s wonderful.”

 

Ben stood on a balcony overlooking a Coruscant airfield that had once been a staging area for Republic cruisers.  He was wearing a new set of white robes, his pistol strapped to his belt.  He sensed a presence behind him, at once familiar and strange, but didn’t turn to look.

Rey came up next to him.  “You’re really leaving then?”

“Yes.  Dr. Kalonia certified me fit for space travel, though she clucked her tongue about my still being weak,” Ben replied.  “It’s time I was going.”  The corner of his mouth quirked upward in a half-smile.  “Besides, I want to leave before the Resistance changes its mind about letting me.”

Rey pulled a cloth bundle from her satchel.  “I brought you a going-away present.”

Ben took the bundle.  It made a metallic clink, and was heavier than he had expected.  He untied the leather cord and unfolded the orange cloth to reveal two lightsabers.  One was his mother’s, its intricate metal pieces polished to a brilliant shine.  The other was Anakin Skywalker’s, its two halves sealed together with a leather strap and additional metal welded on.

“I can’t take both,” Ben said.  “Surely you need one.”

Rey pulled another lightsaber from her bag.  This one was made of black metal, many of the pieces taken from her staff.  Rey held it by its rough cloth handgrip and spun a gear just above it.  Green and blue light flashed inside it, visible through a thin gap where only struts held it together, then the top of the saber split apart like an eight-petaled metal flower blooming.  A beam of yellow plasma sprang out from the heart of the lightsaber.  Then Rey turned another gear, this one below her hand, and another blade shot from the other end of the saber.

Ben nodded appreciatively.  “A fine weapon.”

“Powered by two crystals,” Rey responded.  “Both perfect mirrors to each other.  Twin halves of a greater whole.”

Ben looked strangely at her, and Rey met his gaze.  “I know what you did…what you had to do, to save me,” Rey said.  “You used our bond, didn’t you?”

“Yes.  I didn’t have enough power otherwise.  It was the only way.”

“Is it…gone?”

“Yes.  It’s gone now, Rey.  You’re free of it.”

His words were clearly meant to be comforting, but they only irked Rey.  She looked away from him.  “For the longest time, I only wanted you out of my head.  But now I almost want you back,” she admitted.  She turned back to him, her eyes watering.  “What if I don’t want to be free of you…of it?”

“Maybe it’ll grow back,” Ben suggested.  He sounded like he didn’t believe it either.

“You don’t have to go,” Rey said, now looking up at the sky.  “You could stay.  Help me…help me rebuild the Jedi Order.”

Ben’s tone was gentle, gentler than she had known it could be.  “I can’t, Rey.  I spent so long under Snoke’s thumb…all the things I’ve seen, the things I’ve done…the unspeakable atrocities….  I spent so long as Kylo Ren, I hardly know who Ben Solo is anymore.  I need to figure out who I am.”

Rey sniffed hard, then nodded.  “I understand.”

“I wouldn’t be good for you, Rey.  We both know it.”  Ben gave that half-smile again, the one Rey now realized he inherited from his father.  “Besides, I went to that ceremonial banquet—I thought: why not, it’s food.  I was at the other end of the hall from you, but I saw how the pilot…sorry, Admiral Dameron…looks at you.  And how you looked at him.”

Rey was quiet for a moment, then said, “Thank you.  I believe you just clarified a great many things for me.”  

“I’m glad I could,” Ben said.  “However, I do want one thing from you.  The first thing I ever asked you for, in fact.”

“What?”

“The map.  To the island.”

Rey’s eyes widened as his meaning sank in.  Then she took a piece of paper out of her satchel and wrote out a set of coordinates.  She held out the note.  “May the Force be with you, Ben Solo.”

Ben took the scrap of paper.  “The Force will be with you, Rey Solana,” he responded, “always.”  Then he turned, his robes swirling, and descended a ramp towards his TIE whisper.  Rey watched him go.

A TIE fighter screamed across the sky of Coruscant, the roar of its engines echoing in its wake.  People in the streets looked up, instinctively fearing violence, but the starfighter turned upwards and disappeared into the sky.  A Nikto woman watched it go, then looked back down at her green-faced, squalling baby.  The war was over.  There was nothing to be afraid of now.

 

Poe stood on an airstrip, arms crossed, watching Resistance troopers escort the crew of the Star Destroyer Derriphan into a waiting prison transport.  He stifled a yawn.  Normally, he would enjoy seeing another bunch of stuck-up First Order officers being frog-marched away, but right now, he just felt weary of the whole business.

Poe felt more than heard something approaching from behind him.  He turned, his hand creeping towards his holster, then relaxed when he saw that it was Rey.  She shot a significant look at him.

“Sorry,” Poe apologized.  “Old habits die hard.”

“If this is a bad time…”

“No, it’s fine.  Really.  I was bored anyway.  I assume you wanted to talk to me about something?”

“Yes; but first, what’s this?” Rey asked, motioning towards the compulsory military parade before them.

“Oh, some Final Order Destroyer got damaged out in the Unknown Regions and just finally managed to limp back home.  Funny thing, a lot of the crew keep rambling about being attacked by a lightsaber-wielding woman and a ghost.  At first it seemed like the typical stories people tell after going space-crazy on long voyages, but those two elements stayed constant.”  Poe gave her a cheeky half-smile.  “I don’t suppose you’d know anything about this?”

“Well, maybe…” Rey said innocently.

“You’ll have to tell me the whole story later.  So….”  Poe suddenly seemed at a loss for words.  He looked down at the ground and fiddled with his necklace, rocking back and forth on his heels.

“So.”

“What did you want to talk to me about?”

“I…I don’t know.  The future, I guess.  I know you said you’d always be a pilot, and that you’d stay with the Resistance.  But I think I’ve figured out what I want to do.  All my life, until I left Jakku, I was waiting for my parents.  But while I was waiting, I wasn’t truly living.  I don’t want any other child to have to wait.  If their parents are dead or gone, I want to help them find people who will care for them.  And if they’re Force-sensitive, I want to help them understand and use their powers to help people, or at least enable them to defend themselves.”

Poe raised an eyebrow.  “You want to run an orphanage?”

“I suppose.  I thought of it more as a rustic retreat, on some planet with a lot of green.”

“You know what?” Poe said, his voice warmer.  “I think that’s a great idea.  Maybe I’ll help out too, when I’m not mopping up the scum of the galaxy.”  Poe’s expression grew more serious.  “There was actually something I wanted to talk to you about too.  You remember in the boat on Bonadan, when I told you about my mother?”

“Yes…”

“I finally found someone I want to give her ring to.”

Rey, scarcely daring to breathe, asked, “Who?”

Poe met her eyes.  “You.  Now that you’ve found one surname, would you be willing to add another?”  He took his necklace off, unclasped it and let the ring drop off it into his hand.  Then he dropped to one knee.  “Rey, will you accept this ring from me, as a plight of our love and troth?”

Rey was not a very eloquent person by nature, but in this instance her eyes spoke with such plain sincerity and love that words were almost unnecessary. “Yes.”  Rey bent down, let Poe slip the ring onto her finger, and then threw her arms around him.  “Yes, of course I will!”

Some may object that an airstrip is an unromantic location, but that day, Rey and Poe found it entirely sufficient.  In any case, they passed there one of the happiest hours of either of their lives, although it was but a foretaste of the many joys that they would yet find together.

 

As twilight fell over Coruscant, an armored figure crept towards the crater where the Jedi Temple had once stood.  The warrior scanned her surroundings, making sure no-one was watching, then leapt into empty space.  As she fell, she activated the jetpack on her back, slowing her descent into the darkness.  She floated gently downwards, between fallen towers and jumbles of stone lit only by her rocket’s red glare.

The warrior’s boots landed on the rock floor of the shrine of the Sith as she shut off her jetpack.  She flicked on a light attached to her helmet and scanned it methodically across the ground, then began to walk, making as orderly a sweep of the massive chamber as was possible given the piles of debris littered across it.  Finally, she spied something, a dull gleam in the darkness, reflecting her light.  Holding her breath, she drew nearer to the object.  Could it truly be what she had searched for, for so long?

She reached out one gloved hand and grabbed the object, a thin piece of metal with right-angled ridges and a rectangular guard.  The warrior flicked it on, and almost gasped as a black blade of energy, crackling white traceries of energy within it, sprang from the hilt.  She swung it at a pile of rubble, shearing cleanly through the rock.

Satisfied, the warrior shut off the Darksaber, hung it from her belt, and activated her jetpack, flying upwards to the city above, and then off into the night.

Chapter 20: A New Home

Chapter Text

Chapter Twenty

 

A New Home

 

As the sun set over Ahch-To, the caretakers of the first Jedi temple hobbled to the coastline for a nighttime soirée with their sea-going mates, the porgs curbed their far-flung foraging and began to fly in the directions of their nests, and Ben Solo meditated, as he had done every day at this time since he arrived here.  How long ago had that been?  Weeks? Months?  Surely not years; the seasons had not yet changed, although Ben was as yet unaware of how long the seasons on this world actually were.  Nevertheless, Ben almost felt as if he had always been here, that this was where he had truly belonged ever since his birth.  He felt connected to the caretakers, and the porgs, and the fish, and the grass, and even the stones that made up the island’s buildings.

The stone he sat cross-legged upon now, he knew, was the same his uncle Luke had sat upon when he projected his image across the galaxy, to Crait, three years and what felt like a lifetime ago.  Sometimes Luke visited him, and Ben now welcomed his wisdom and his company, in a way he never truly had when they were formally master and pupil.  His mother also appeared to him, though less frequently, and gave him love and indescribable comfort.  His father visited him too, but only in his dreams.  They were good dreams, however, far better than nightmares that had often racked him when he was under the influence of the dark side.  His mother usually appeared with her husband, often approving of his words, other times chiding him for his gruff manner.

Ben had thought long and hard about his past and his future.  He did not know if he could ever truly atone for his many dark deeds, or if he should even try.  Perhaps he should simply live out the rest of his life on this island; it was a pleasanter prison than any other he could think of, and likely better than he deserved.  Then again, maybe Rey, or someone else, would seek him out, if they needed his help.  He might even grow bored and lonely, as the only living human on this planet; although, having finally found peace, he could scarcely imagine that right now.

Perhaps someday, he would return to the grand galaxy beyond this planet.  But for now, as he opened his eyes to watch the setting sun disappear into the ocean, he was content.

 

On the planet Modesta, rolling fields of tall grass, occasionally dotted with trees, glowed verdantly in the late afternoon light.  On a slight rise in the midst of one of the plains sat a round, two-story wooden house, its domed roof covered with living greenery.  A thin wisp of smoke curled up from the narrow, off-center chimney of the cabin.  Nearby stood several small outbuildings and a fenced-in yard with a few livestock grazing contentedly.

Inside the homestead, Poe sat in a large, padded brown chair by a crackling fireplace.  A dozen children of various ages were gathered in a circle at his feet.

“…and the light could be seen all over the galaxy, in every system.  Finn and Rose gave us all hope.”

A fair-haired, serious-faced little girl only seven solar cycles old turned to the pair seated at a wooden table nearby.  “Is that true?”

“Yes, it is.  We did light the beacon on Coruscant,” Finn affirmed.

Rose looked up from the parts of a droid motivator spread out before her long enough to shoot Finn a significant look.

“But obviously it was a team effort,” Finn continued, relatively smoothly.  “General Connix delivered the speech, and General Leia wrote it.”

“And we wouldn’t have won if Lando hadn’t guided the citizens’ fleet to Coruscant,” Poe put in.

Finn countered, “We also needed the leadership of you, and Ackbar Junior, and even Commander D’Acy.”

“She’s General D’Acy now, actually,” said Poe.  “She assumed leadership of the Resistance ground forces after Connix stepped down because of her leg.  I hear Connix is considering a run for Chancellor.”

Temiri Blagg, an older boy leaning against the table next to Rose, raised his hand.  “What about Master Skywalker?”

“Yes, he played one of the biggest roles of all,” agreed Poe.  “The Resistance wouldn’t have survived, and the galaxy would never have rallied, without him, and without the mantle of the Jedi being carried on by Rey.”  Poe looked around, but Rey was absent, although Poe had been sure she was with them when he started this story.  “In any case, the important point is that we can’t succeed by ourselves.  We need everyone to work together to make a better galaxy.  That includes Jedi, and Resistance fighters, and even children like you.”

“Tell us another story,” suggested Dade, now grown tanned and rosy-cheeked from country living.

Rose stood.  “No more stories now.  The sun’s fading, and we should make the most of it.”

The children leapt to their feet and ran out into the daylight.  Finn and Poe rose with them and followed them out.  They watched as the younglings raced about the pasture, trying to hook metal rings around the tiny horns of a nerf foal.  BB-8 rolled around them in dizzying circles, beeping excitedly.

The serious girl turned her body just so, putting her outstretched, ring-holding hand in the path of the foal.  The nerf’s horn caught the ring as it plunged past.  The girl smiled at her achievement, then made a pulling motion.  The ring flew back through the air and into her hand.

Poe caught sight of a single figure, far out in the fields.  He peeled himself off of the post on the front porch that he had been leaning against and walked towards her.  BB-8 looked up from the children’s game and followed him.

After a couple minute’s walk, Poe reached the figure, who turned to look at him with clear eyes, a faint scar on either side of them and across her nose.

“Hey,” asked Poe, “are you all right?”

“Yes,” Rey confirmed.  “I’m fine.  I’m just…thinking.”

“Well, it’s getting late.  Think about getting dinner.”

“I will.”

Poe drew her close and kissed her long and tenderly, then drew back.  “See you back at the house.”  He turned to walk back the way he had come, but BB-8 remained behind, giving an inquisitive beep.

“I’m fine, BB-8, really,” Rey said, smiling.  “In fact, I’ve never been happier.”  She regarded the ring on her finger and the lightsaber at her belt, representatives of the twin burdens, duties, and joys she had taken on as she began this new chapter of her life.  Then she looked up at the faint but clearly visible spirits of Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa, smiling beatifically at her.

BB-8 rolled back towards the ranch, his doubly-round form mirroring the twin suns sinking below the horizon.  Rey stole one last glance at her two mentors and the binary sunset behind them, before turning to follow the droid, at last, towards home.