“Shield controls are on the other side of the console,” she shot back. “Not so easy without a copilot!”
Below, Finn continued to struggle with the highly responsive, wildly swinging turret. “Try sitting in this thing!”
Realizing it was impossible to reach the necessary instrumentation while seated in full pilot’s position, Rey momentarily let go of the controls. She’d have to do this manually, she knew. Put any ship on autopilot and the vectoring would immediately be sensed by a pursuer, who could then lock on and blow you out of the sky. In contrast, there was just enough wild wobble in their flight path as she leaned to her right to confuse any electronic predictors. Her stretching, however, caused the ship to cant sharply as she tried to activate the shield instrumentation on the copilot’s side while maintaining some semblance of flight control.
“Beebee-Ate, hold on!”
Her warning came too late for the droid. Beeping madly, he rolled ceilingward as the ship spun.
Fingers straining, she just managed to reach the shield controls and flick them to life, in the process having to brush away several clumps of excessively long, rough yellow-brown hairs that had become caught in the console. Relieved, she straightened in the pilot’s seat and resumed full command, stabilizing the vessel.
“I’m going low!” she shouted, mindful of Finn’s advice.
Driving the ship surfaceward, she pulled up at the last possible moment and sent them screaming across the ground, clipping the crests of at least two dunes. Trying to match the maneuver while pursuing at high speed, both TIE fighters shot past, unable to slow in time. They did, however, each manage to get off successive bursts from their weaponry. Had the vessel’s shields not been up, the twin blasts might well have brought them down. Just like its engines, the stolen vessel’s shields proved unexpectedly robust.
Tougher than it looks, she thought as she strove to accelerate and dodge. The original owner had plainly had some serious, and probably illegal, modifications made to his vessel that on numerous worlds were worthy of fines and possible imprisonment. She resolved to thank that individual profusely if she ever had the occasion to make that acquaintance. Provided she survived the next hour.
A blast rocked them, and she barely managed to hang on tightly enough to avoid a looming sandstone monolith. Swallowing, she yelled as loud as she could.
“Could use some offense down there, you know? Maybe before our body parts are scattered all over the desert? Y’ever gonna fire back? Hold on, Beebee-Ate, hold on!”
Within the cylindrical corridor, the droid was beeping madly as he rolled up the walls, across the ceiling, and everywhere except where he wanted to be. Capable of comprehending the causes of nausea, the droid was fortunate it was not a condition his kind were subject to, but his internal gyros were being forced to work overtime.
“Working on it!” Finn called back to her. A moment later the weapons systems finally came to life beneath his hands. Spinning the turret, he began firing back at their pursuit. The primitive targeting system was clumsier than anything he had trained on or studied, and his blasts missed.
Another detonation rocked the ship. If not for their shields, he knew, they would have been debris by now. His mouth tight, he continued firing. The pursuing fighters came on, almost disdainful of their quarry’s defensive efforts.
“We need cover!” he yelled even as he kept firing. “Quick!”
“We’re about to get some!”
While she knew little more than theory when it came to maneuvering and fighting in free space, Rey had plenty of experience defending herself on the desiccated surface of Jakku. At least in the vicinity of Niima Outpost, she was familiar with every dune field, every canyon complex, every crater and escarpment. Keeping as close to the ground as possible, she rose and darted over rocks and dunes, grazing one upthrust ridge so closely that she took a chunk out of it. Unwilling to sacrifice distance to gain altitude in order to attack from above, the two TIE fighters stayed close.
Just a little farther, she told herself as she clung grimly to the controls. Just keep them off a little longer. She was heading for her favorite scavenging spot: the ships’ graveyard. Let them try to follow her in there! She banked hard, low enough to cut a crease in the sand.
Half wild, a burst from the craft’s guns crossed the flight path of one of the tailing TIE fighters and happened to catch it where its shields were momentarily unpowered. Part of the craft crumpled instantly, causing it to trail wreckage as its pilot strove to keep it aloft.
“Whooooo!” Finn allowed himself a triumphant shout without letting go of the firing controls. To himself he added, more softly, “Damn, that was lucky.”
“Nice shot!” Rey’s praise reached him from above. He accepted it silently, without wasting time explaining that his success was due as much to her wrenching the ship around unpredictably as to any innate targeting ability on his part.
As she sent them snaking into the enormous field of derelict spacecraft and other industrial waste, the damaged TIE fighter slammed into one of the metal mountains and came apart. Out of nowhere, a brace of scavengers appeared to begin claiming portions of the remains. No one bothered to check the cockpit of the downed craft to see if the pilot might somehow have survived the crash.
Trailed by the surviving fighter, the ship slalomed through the colossal debris field. Sparks flew as she grazed towering metal walls and fallen station sections, but the hull of the borrowed craft held together. As he was banged around in the gunner’s seat, Finn tried to keep track of their remaining pursuer while peering out at a trash-paved surface that frequently came entirely too near to where he happened to be sitting.
Likewise, the next blast that erupted in his vicinity also came too close. The concussion set the turret spinning. When it finally stabilized, its rattled occupant was horrified to find that it had been jammed facing forward. He could not rotate it in any direction. At the same time, alarms began to sound throughout the ship, indicating that more than just the gunner’s position had sustained damage.
“Guns are stuck in forward position!” he yelled upward. “I can’t move ’em! You gotta lose our pursuit!”
Yet another blast rocked their craft. Much more of this, Rey knew, and modifications aside, one of the TIE fighter’s bursts was going to overwhelm their shields. The vessel they had commandeered was a small freighter, not a warship.
Ahead lay the bulk of a downed Super Star Destroyer, its mass inconceivably large where it rested on the sand. Pulling on the controls, she drove the ship downward—and into the gaping breach that was the center of a ruined engine thruster. If she hoped this maneuver might dissuade their remaining pursuer, she was wrong. Unwilling to give ground, the pilot of the surviving TIE fighter took his craft in after her.
As he sat gawking out the turret’s transparent canopy, a disbelieving Finn gauged the proximity of the metal walls that were racing past on either side of them.
“Are we really doing this?”
Sparks continued to flare from their ship’s sides as Rey negotiated one increasingly narrow passage after another. Even a former crewmember would not have been as familiar with the corridors she chose. But she had not merely familiarized herself with them from a diagram: She knew them intimately, having inspected them individually and on foot or with climbing gear.
“Get ready!” she yelled to him.
Finn nodded energetically. “Okay, okay! I’m ready!” Then he frowned. “Ready for what?”
Have to time this just right, Rey told herself as she prepared. And if Finn wasn’t ready, the maneuver she was about to try wouldn’t matter. They would be shot down as surely as Unkar Plutt underpaid his scavengers. Finn was relying on her skills; now she had to rely on his.
Uninterrupted light appeared at the far end of the service corridor down which she was flying. Another blast from the unrelenting TIE fighter pilot near
ly sent their craft crashing into the corridor’s ceiling, and she only managed to correct at the last instant. There was no time to check readouts to see if any critical part of the stolen ship had been damaged. All that mattered was that they were still airborne and the controls continued to respond to her touch.
Then they were out, flying in bright sunlight. The instant the ship emerged from the decaying guts of the old Super Star Destroyer, she cut the power just so and swung the ship completely around.
Fortunately, as a trained stormtrooper, Finn was used to wild swings of his personal cosmos. So where such a tight aerial twist and turn might cause another, less experienced passenger to lose the contents of his or her stomach, Finn retained not only those but his wits, as well.
Now heading directly back toward the immense relic, he once more found the surviving TIE fighter directly in his sights, and he reacted accordingly. Whether it was their vessel’s sudden and unexpected reappearance just outside his own targeting instrumentation or the shock of what seemed to be a suicide plunge, the fighter pilot’s fire missed.
Finn’s did not.
Rey turned the ship hard away from the hulk of the Super Star Destroyer as the remaining TIE fighter burst into flames, lost speed and altitude, and crashed to the surface in their wake. Working the controls, a jubilant Rey sent the ship accelerating into the clouds. Those, and the sun-blasted surface of Jakku, soon fell astern, giving way to the cold yet comforting blackness of space.
Feeling confident that she could now entrust temporary control of the ship to its autopilot without fear of being tracked, she slipping out of her harness and hurried out of the cockpit. In doing so she passed BB-8, who after the acrobatic aerial contortions of the past few minutes was only now able to steady himself.
“You okay?” she inquired in passing. Several short, curt beeps avowed that he was, while also communicating that the experience they had just gone through had been less than pleasurable.
She found Finn in the lounge, trying to regulate his breathing while coming down from an adrenaline high. Turning to her as she slowed, he gave her a wide, disarming grin.
“That was some piloting!”
“Thanks.” She shrugged. “I’ve been flying every kind of junk you can imagine almost since I could walk.” It was her turn to smile. “Speaking of which, that was some shooting! I was worried you wouldn’t have time to react.”
“You could have told me what you had in mind. Might’ve saved me a heart palpitation or two.”
She shook her head. “No time. I had to pull the turn almost as soon as I thought of it. I just had to rely on your ability to react to the maneuver.”
He nodded. “Good thing my hands were frozen to the track and fire controls. When all of a sudden he showed up in my sights, all I had to do was twitch my fingers.”
“You got him on the first blast!”
His smile gave way to a touch of self-satisfaction. “It was a pretty good shot, wasn’t it?”
“It was perfect!” Rey told him. It was silent in the lounge for a long moment before he murmured, “Why are we…”
“Staring at each other? I don’t know…”
The need for possibly uncomfortable answers was obviated by a series of insistent beeps from BB-8, who had rolled in to join them. Rey knelt beside the agitated droid.
“Hey, calm down! You’re okay, we’re all okay. For the moment, at least.” She indicated Finn. “Everything’s going to work out fine. He’s with the Resistance and he’s going to get you home. We both will.” She slid a hand along the droid’s curving flank. “I’m not going to abandon you now. Not after turning down the kind of payment Plutt was offering.” More beeps, to which she responded, “I’m just kidding. The amount wasn’t what mattered. I just got a huge charge out of being able to deny that bloated bastard something he wanted so badly.”
Having calmed the droid, she returned her attention to the room’s other occupant. “I don’t know your name.”
Startled, he realized that on that score he was equally ignorant. “FN-2—Finn. Name’s Finn. What’s yours?”
“My name is Rey.” This time when she smiled, all trace of the hardened, desert-dwelling scavenger melted away. It was a sweet smile, he found himself thinking. Warm. He repeated the name, enjoying the way his lips parted as he murmured the single syllable.
“Rey…”
He would have said much more, but this time it was the ship itself that interrupted. On the far side of the lounge, a section of decking broke loose, shot upward, and banked off the ceiling before coming to rest on the floor. Hissing vapor was starting to fill the room, threatening to overwhelm the ability of the atmospheric scrubbers to cleanse it.
Rey didn’t hesitate. Ignoring the emission spewing from beneath the deck, she raced over to peer down past the ragged edge of the opening. Finn joined her. He suspected the venting gas had to be nontoxic; otherwise they would have been sprawled out on the floor by now, unconscious or dying. Standing alongside her, he tried to see past the raging mist and down into the depths of whatever had blown.
She tried to see while simultaneously shielding her eyes. “I don’t know. Just hope it’s not the motivator. Ship of this age and class is bound to have one.” Sitting down, she slid both legs into the opening.
Finn stared at her. “You’re going down there? Without even knowing what the problem is?”
They locked eyes. “The only way to know what the problem is is to go down there. Unless you’ve got a better idea?”
He gave a reluctant shake of his head. “I’m real good at blowing things up. Not so good at putting them together. You sure there isn’t anything I can do?”
She tried to smile but couldn’t. “While I’m down there, don’t touch anything whose function you don’t understand completely—and if you hear a lot of screaming and cursing, stand by.”
He considered. “You’ll want me to pull you up?”
This time she did manage the smile. “Only if there’s just screaming and no cursing.” With that she slipped over the edge and down. Her slender form was quickly obscured by the roaring vapor.
VII
THE GREAT SWEEP of the external observation portal on the Star Destroyer Finalizer allowed anyone standing before it an uninterrupted view of the vastness of space. Suns and nebulae, mysteries and conundrums, all were laid out before the viewer. It was a view intended to awe and inspire, hence the presence of the portal where visual pickups and monitors would have sufficed just as well.
Kylo Ren regarded it in silence. He had been trained in contemplation, was skilled in deliberation, could remain meditating just so for hours at a time.
But he was losing patience.
Approaching from behind, all Lieutenant Mitaka could see was a tall, caped figure silhouetted against the spray of stars. He did not look forward to having to make the report. It was his responsibility and he had no choice. Nor was it the first time he had been compelled to deliver bad news to a superior officer. But Kylo Ren was different. Not precisely a superior officer but something else. At that moment, Mitaka would rather have been anywhere else in the civilized galaxy than alone in a room with Kylo Ren.
The caped figure did not turn. He did not have to. Mitaka knew Ren was as aware of his arrival as if he had watched him approach. He was tracking the lieutenant with something other than eyes.
“Something to report, Lieutenant? Or have you come, like myself, to marvel at the view?”
“Sir?”
A gloved hand rose to take in the sweep of light and energy arrayed before them. “Look at it, Lieutenant. So much beauty among so much turmoil. In a way, we are but an infinitely smaller reflection of the same conflict. It is the task of the First Order to remove the disorder from our own existence, so that civilization may be returned to the stability that promotes progress. A stability that existed under the Empire, was reduced
to anarchy by the Rebellion, was inherited in turn by the so-called Republic, and will be restored by us. Future historians will look upon this as the time when a strong hand brought the rule of law back to civilization.”
Mitaka forbore mentioning that the Republics had developed their own codes of law. To do so would have been…indelicate, and he doubted that Ren was in the mood for a political discussion of any kind. Standing at attention, he presented his brief report.
“Sir. Despite our best efforts, we were unable to acquire the Beebee-Ate droid on Jakku.”
Now Ren did turn. Mitaka would have preferred it the other way. He always found it unsettling to have to gaze at the metal mask beneath the cowl.
“It was destroyed? Do not tell me, Lieutenant, that the droid was destroyed.”
Mitaka swallowed hard. “No, sir. At least, not as far as we are able to determine. Reports from the ground indicate—”
He was interrupted. “No aerial survey results?”
“Two TIE fighters accompanied the recovery party. Contact has been lost with both and it is assumed…it is assumed they encountered unforeseen difficulties.”
Ren sneered softly. “You equivocate like a senator. Go on.”
“Reports from our troopers on the ground indicate that the droid escaped capture by taking flight aboard a stolen Corellian freighter, a YT model. An older craft but in the hands of a competent pilot, a capable one.”
Atypically, a touch of uncertainty colored Ren’s response. “The droid stole a freighter?”
“Not exactly, sir. Again, according to these preliminary reports, it had help.” Mitaka was starting to sweat. “We have no confirmation, but brief glimpses by our troopers correlated with the location of an earlier crash site lead us to believe that trooper FN-2187 may have been—”
He broke off as Ren reached for the lightsaber at his belt, activated the weapon, and raised the intense red band high. Expecting a swift judgment, Mitaka closed his eyes. After a moment, finding his head still attached to his neck, he dared to open them once more. Ren was slashing at the console nearby, at the walls, at the deck, rending and ripping, slashing long lines of bleeding metal into the very fabric of the ship. His rage was terrible to behold. Mitaka strove to remain perfectly still, to control his breathing, to become as invisible as possible lest he become nothing more than an inadvertent recipient of Ren’s fury. Whether by chance or design, Ren spared him.