And that is what she proceeded to do.
If she could push him out of her mind and enter his, what else could she do? What might she be able to do with regard to someone else? Someone less skilled, untrained in the ways of the Force? The single guard posted just inside the front of her cell, for example?
“You!”
He turned toward her, patently unconcerned and not a little bored. She studied him closely. As he was about to speak, she addressed him clearly and firmly—and not only with her voice.
“You will remove these restraints. And you will leave this cell, with the door open, and retire to your living quarters.”
The guard eyed her silently. He did not look in the least intimidated. Her confidence wavering as she shifted slightly in her bonds, she repeated what she had said with as much authority as she could muster.
“You will remove these restraints. And you will leave this cell, with the door open, and retire to your living quarters. You will speak of this encounter to no one.”
Raising the heavy, black-and-white rifle he held, he came toward her. Heart pounding, she watched him approach. Was she going to be killed, freed, or maybe laughed at? Halting before her, he looked down into her eyes. When he spoke again, there was a notable alteration in his voice. It was significantly less confrontational and—distant.
“I will remove these restraints. And leave this cell, with the door open, and retire to my living quarters. I will speak of this encounter to no one.”
Working methodically, he unlatched her shackles. He stood and stared at her for a moment, then turned and wordlessly started for the doorway. Lying in shock on the reclined platform, Rey hardly knew what to do next. She was free. No, she corrected herself: She was free of this cell. That hardly constituted freedom.
But it was a beginning.
As the guard reached the doorway, she spoke hastily. “And you will drop your weapon.”
“I will drop my weapon,” he responded in the same uninflected voice. This he proceeded to do, setting the rifle down on the floor, then turning left into the outside corridor to depart in silence.
For a long moment she stared at the open portal. Deciding that it was not a joke and that the guard was not waiting for her just outside the cell, she moved to pick up the weapon and leave.
—
Normally there was something relaxing about traveling in hyperspace, Finn mused. There was no fighting in hyperspace and very rarely any kind of surprise. Hyperspace travel allowed time for reflection, for casual conversation with comrades, for checking out and preparing one’s equipment.
Not this time. Not in the course of this jump.
Weary of living with only his own thoughts, he left the lounge and moved forward into the cockpit, where he found Han and Chewbacca in their respective seats, monitoring the journey.
“I haven’t asked you,” he said to the pilot. “How are we getting in?”
Han explained without looking up from his console. “Any kind of defense will be geared to guard against an attack in force. They shouldn’t be prepared for an attempt by a single ship to slip in. That would obviously be suicide.”
Finn nodded as he pondered this. “Okay, now I’m really encouraged. Let’s say that your optimistic assessment is wrong, and they’re even prepared to detect and destroy a single ship. How do we avoid that?”
“No planetary defense system can be sustained at a constant rate. It would take too much power. Besides, it isn’t necessary. All planetary shields have a fractional refresh. Instead of being constantly ‘on,’ they fluctuate at a predetermined rate. Keeps anything traveling less than lightspeed from getting through. Theoretically, a ship could get its nose in when a shield is off. Half a second later, the shield snaps back on and—well, it isn’t good for anyone on that ship.”
“Okay, I get that,” Finn told him. “Which brings me back to my first question: How are we getting in? Without being cut in half by an oscillating shield?”
“Easy.” The way Han said the word made it sound like the simplest thing in the world. “We won’t be going slower than lightspeed.”
Unsure he’d heard correctly, Finn gaped at him. “We’re gonna make our landing approach at lightspeed? Nobody’s ever done that! At least, I’ve never heard of anybody ever doing it.”
One did not have to be fluent in the Wookiee language to get the gist of Chewbacca’s comment.
Han smiled pleasantly. “We’re coming up on the system. I’d sit down, if I were you. Chewie, get ready.”
As the wide-eyed Finn scrambled for a seat and harness and found himself wishing for a number of very large, soft pads, Chewbacca groaned his readiness. Han studied the readouts before him. The Wookiee raised a hand over his own console.
“And…” Han followed the declining fractions intently. “Now!”
Human and Wookiee hands flew over the main console, supplementing as best they could the approach and landing information they had preprogrammed into the Falcon’s instrumentation. Not unexpectedly, more than one last-second override was required in order to make the ship do something that was against its nature and perform maneuvers for which it had never been designed.
And just like that, they were inside the shields.
At that point they were traveling at very much sublightspeed, continuing to slow at an incredible rate, and heading above snow-covered ground directly for a forest that was not as tall but was far denser than the one on D’Qar. Chewbacca howled loudly enough for Finn to hear him clearly above the wild, blaring alarms.
“I am pulling up!” Han yelled as he fought with the recalcitrant controls.
While the trees were packed more closely together than those that formed a canopy above the Resistance base, they were much smaller in diameter. The Falcon went plowing through them as both pilot and copilot struggled to bring the ship up. A moment later it was clear of the ground and shooting skyward—which was an equally undesirable outcome.
“Any higher, they’ll see us!” Han shouted. Of course, if the vicinity of the First Order base was monitored by ground-scanning satellites, they were likely to be seen anyway. They could only hope that the instruments on board any such reconnaissance craft were aimed out toward space and not down at the landscape.
Down again they went as Han and Chewbacca fought to retain control while trying to level off. They almost succeeded. Back again among the trees, Han fluttered the sublight drive while Chewie fought to keep the ship functional. They continued to slow. In the end, it was the forest that braked them, as hundreds of trees splintered and flew around them. The descending Falcon still kept going. Fortunately, the whiteness through which it plowed was composed of relatively fresh snow, not ice. It finally eased to a stop, half buried.
On the surface, all was cold and quiet once again.
—
Ren struggled to control himself. A great deal of his education had been devoted to learning how to live and move forward in the absence of emotion. Right now, he needed every bit of that training to stay calm. As bad as had been the girl’s expulsion of his probing, worse was the knowledge she had acquired. At the moment, he did not feel powerful.
He felt diminished.
Becoming aware that an officer was waiting patiently for him to acknowledge his presence, Ren waved the man forward.
“We have not found the girl yet, sir. The alarm has been propagated throughout the base and all troopers are on alert.”
“Yes.” Ren’s voice was almost indifferent, as if the bulk of his thoughts were elsewhere. He looked at the officer. “The trooper who was on guard?”
“Still being debriefed, sir. He doesn’t remember what happened. One minute he was at his post, at ease. The next, he found himself in his quarters, changing out of uniform. Initial assessment indicates he is telling the truth.” The officer hesitated. “If you would wish to try stronger met
hods I can…”
“No—no. Keep questioning him. Just—questioning. He may remember something.” His tone darkened. “The girl. She’s here somewhere. There’s nowhere for her to go. When you find her, bring her…” His voice drifted away, as did his attention.
The officer waited: to be questioned further, to be given additional instructions, to be brusquely dismissed. But Kylo Ren simply stared into the distance, seeing something that was not apparent to the officer, and maintained his silence.
—
There was no movement in the forest. A few flakes of snow drifting down made no sound. In the midst of the trees, at the terminus of a very isolated and very linear disaster, rose an unnatural mound piled high with whiteness. From somewhere within came a groan, deep, reverberant, and disgruntled.
“Oh, yeah?” The voice that responded was sharp and decidedly non-Wookiee in origin. “You try it!”
Beneath the snow and within the mound that was the Millennium Falcon, sparks erupted in the passageway behind the cockpit. Having succinctly delivered himself of his opinion of the most recent effort at piloting by the ship’s captain, Chewbacca rose from his seat and headed back to deal with the problem, leaving Finn alone in the cockpit with a brooding Han.
“That should’ve gone better.” Han was studying the readouts that were still functioning. He shook his head, leaning forward to examine a particular telltale. “That wasn’t supposed to be so rough. Nearly was worse than that.”
Seeing that Han was having a difficult time coming to terms with their arrival, Finn tried to reassure him. “Hey, you just performed the improbable by doing the impossible. It’s not like there was precedent to follow. I mean, I’m not a pilot, but I’ve been around a lot of pilots, and I’ve never even heard anybody talking about trying what you just did. You did great.” He gestured around them: at the still intact cockpit, at the sky visible through that part of the forward port that wasn’t covered by snow, and at himself.
“We’re down, we’re alive, we’re all in one piece. I don’t understand. What more could you ask for?”
Han’s expression didn’t change as he rose and moved to help Chewie. “Was a time it wouldn’t have been so rough.”
Not knowing how to respond to that, Finn, wisely, said nothing.
—
Within the command center on D’Qar, conversation was muted. Officers spoke in whispers, if at all, as everyone waited for word. When it came—no one said “if”—then talk would resume as normal. But for now, no one dared voice what they were thinking. What they feared.
Confirmation would come via a series of hastily linked encrypted hyperspace relays. It would be necessarily condensed, as well as reduced to a mathematical formula to minimize any chance of it being intercepted on its way out. As more and more time passed, initial hope began to flag.
Then Admiral Statura broke the tension, looking up from his console to smile at Leia. “The Falcon has landed, ma’am.”
Moving to his side, she looked at his readouts. What they told wasn’t much, but it was enough. “I wish there was more information. I wish we knew—” She stopped herself. Slipping through the First Order’s planetary shields and landing safely would be worth nothing if the Falcon were discovered. She knew there could be no further communication until they had accomplished their task. “Tell me they’ll get the shields down.”
Statura’s reply was firm. “They’ll get the shields down.”
“That was only marginally convincing,” she told him.
He smiled anew. “That’s what we’re operating on, ma’am. Margin, and a thin one at that.”
She nodded and turned to a controller. “Send off the X-wings.”
“Yes, General!” On the heels of contact with the Millennium Falcon, the controller managed to muster some genuine enthusiasm. The operator seated beside her conveyed the formal order.
“All fighters cleared for takeoff.”
“Go, blue team. Go, red team,” the controller added.
Having been standing by and waiting for the word, the first dozen Resistance fighters to depart were away in an instant. Droids calculated and recalculated approach patterns to the First Order base, reducing options to those deemed most likely to succeed, while the pilots did their best to restrain themselves and conserve their energy for the actual attack.
In the lead was an X-wing marked with distinctive black patterning. Poe was intent on the instrumentation, while BB-8 attended to matters better left to a mechanical. Behind them, the surface of D’Qar fell rapidly away.
“All teams, this is Black Leader,” Poe said to the cockpit’s omnipickup, “altitude confirmed. Distance confirmed. Arrival coordinates confirmed.” He activated several controls, and the X-wing’s hyperspace propulsion system prepared to distort space and time. “Hold for jump to lightspeed on my go!”
When he was confident all was in readiness, he gave the signal. Like flames going out, one fighter after another vanished from the present reality in a streak of light.
—
He had to see for himself. As he strode down the corridor where walls of exposed igneous rock alternated with panels and consoles of metal and spun synthetics, Ren’s emotions were boiling. His present mental state contradicted all of his training, but he could not help himself. He had reacted poorly to what had happened earlier, and that had been reflected in the Supreme Leader’s judgment. To add to the discomfort, that slimy sycophant Hux always seemed to appear at the most awkward possible moment.
He gritted his teeth, angry at himself. It was a measure of his current weakness that something like jealousy toward an insignificant simpleton like Hux could even enter his mind. It was nothing but a waste of physical energy and mental concentration. Hux—Hux was not worthy of such attention.
The girl, on the other hand…
Entering the holding cell, he found it, as expected, deserted. In the center, the single coppery-hued, angled bench stood empty, its multiple curving restraints open and mocking beneath the subdued red illumination from the ceiling. Unable to contain himself any longer, he pulled his lightsaber, thumbed it to life, and launched into a series of wild swings and strikes, methodically reducing the room to rubble.
Hearing his howls of outrage, a pair of stormtroopers crossing at the far end of the access hallway changed course to investigate. What they saw within the cell as bits and pieces of red-hot debris came flying out caused them to retreat the way they had come—fast.
XVI
THANKS TO THE snow and the heavy forest cover, the patrol droid did not see them, and the deformation warp from a heat distorter Chewbacca carried in a pouch served to mask their thermal signatures. From time to time, Finn had taken the more primitive but also effective precaution of using a branch to wipe out their footprints as they advanced. Where they could, they kept to rocky surfaces, the better to minimize evidence of their passage. Slung across the Wookiee’s back was a duffel packed with advanced dentons whose explosive potential greatly exceeded their size.
Lengthening his stride, Finn moved up alongside Han and pointed. “There’s a flood tunnel over that ridge. We can get in that way.”
Han looked over at him. “You sure it isn’t safety screened? We can cut through ordinary stuff, but…”
Finn shook his head. “There’s no screen at all. A screen would defeat the tunnel’s purpose.”
Han frowned at him. “You said you worked here. You never told us your specialty.”
Finn looked away as he replied. “Sanitation.”
Han gaped at him. “Sanitation? How do you know how to take down the shields?” He indicated Chewie’s backpack. “We’ve got enough stuff to do the job, but we have to know where to set it. We’ve only got one chance to do this right. If we fail to bring their shields down, we might as well pack up and apply for First Order citizenship.” His voice lowered. “Also, everyone in t
he D’Qar system is going to die.”
“I don’t know how to take out the shields, Han,” Finn admitted. “I’m here to get Rey.”
Han turned a slow, frustrated circle. “Anything else you’ve overlooked? Anything else you’ve forgotten to tell us?” Nearby, Chewbacca added his own groaning comment. “People are counting on us! The galaxy is counting on us!”
“Solo,” Finn shot back, “we’ll figure it out! We got here, didn’t we?”
“Yeah? How?”
Finn smiled encouragingly. “We’ll use the Force!”
Han rolled his eyes. “Again the Force. Always the Force.” His gaze returned to the hopeful Finn. “I haven’t got time to explain it to you, kid, but—that’s not how the Force works.” He looked up and around. “Where’s that patrol droid?” Chewie growled back at him. “Oh really? You’re cold?”
—
Red borders flanked a ventilation grid that ran the length of the floor as Rey ran down the hallway, her former guard’s blaster rifle gripped tightly in both hands. Needing to catch her breath, she ducked into an alcove that provided at least a nominal amount of cover from anyone moving up or down the passage. Though free of the holding cell, she had no destination in mind. A short survey of her surroundings provided one.
A long walkway was flanked on one side by a stone-and-steel wall. Possibly an exterior barrier, it offered no hope of an exit. But on the other side of the walkway…
At the far end was a doorway leading to an open hangar. While she couldn’t see far beyond, lines of parked TIE fighters suggested the possibility of escape. All that stood in her way was the narrow, railing-free walkway that crossed a vast, open atrium—and at the far end, a group of stormtroopers engaged in idle conversation. No one was looking in her direction.