Chapter Text
"A woman lost in the desert must take such water she is offered, no matter who it comes from"
I looked over at Rose as she dozed on the cot next to mine. Her helmet lay discarded beside her, but she was still dressed head to toe in her armored leather, and her eyes were closed in a facsimile of sleep.I knew it wasn’t real sleep, however much she might want it, because any minute now we would be called to muster and she definitely couldn’t afford to be caught napping while we were still on duty. Her blaster was still clutched to her chest in readiness.
I fleetingly thought about pulling the blanket up and over her so that she could stay undisturbed for a few moments longer when I heard a noise outside of our kevlar tent door.
“PFC Tico, Specialist Niima, stand to attention!”
It was a robotically modulated voice I recognized instantly. Our troop leader, Commander Ren.
I felt my pulse quicken - in the two years of being part of his conscript platoon, he rarely addressed us directly. All of his orders were run through the sergeant.
This was a first and my stomach curled uncomfortably with tension.
Rose’s eyes opened instantly and I reached over to help her scramble to her feet, the skin-tight uniform she wore creaking as she quickly came to attention. I did the same beside her, raising my hand in salute as the opening of the tent was thrown wide.
The Commander's tall form filled up the entranceway, and I could hear the uncomfortable sound of his amplified breathing echo in our small space.
I could scent him too.
Alpha.
I couldn’t see his expression, hidden as it was behind the close fitting black mask, but his body language was somewhere between irritated and hostile.
My stomach tightened again.
The other soldiers rarely came to our tent. When the Imperium came calling for conscripts most families sent one of their sons so Rose and I were the only females in the platoon of twenty. I was an orphan and so had automatically been sent at seventeen with no brother to take my place and Rose’s sister had died before completing her basic training and so had been forced to join to fulfill her family's requirements.
So we were two women, alone out here on some god-forsaken planet, doing our mandatory three years duty for the Imperium, and hoping to make it through alive.
There were no concessions given for us being women, which I was grateful for, except for our own tent away from the men. I was grateful for that too. Not having to share a space with seventeen soldiers who smelled to high heaven after a day of maneuvers was enough to earn my ever-lasting gratitude, and I wasn’t naive enough to not know we were much safer here together watching each other’s backs than we ever would be in a shared space.
A few years being a young orphaned Beta alone on Jakku had taught me that.
Commander Ren took another step inside our tent and the top of his helmet brushed the roof, making the sides shake a little.
“At ease,” he ordered, and Rose and I hastily dropped our hands.
His eyes were hidden behind a layer of beskar but I could almost feel the disapproval as I imagined he saw Rose’s unmade bed. She must have sensed it too because she fidgeted on her feet uncomfortably.
“I need soldiers for an unscheduled patrol in the morning,” he announced, “The men are having their routine medicals tomorrow, so you’ll both be needed on duty.”
The Imperium liked to keep a close eye on the health of their army - and medicals for the men were scheduled every six standard cycles with routine predictability. Rose’s and mine were less frequent. Whether because women were a novelty still in the army, or whether because they deemed us less valuable, I was never sure. If it wasn’t to replace the annual suppressor that kept our beta bodies regulated and infertile, I suspected they wouldn’t see us at all.
My fingers subconsciously went up to the minute chip at the back of my arm and felt the raised lump under my skin through the leather armor. It must need replacing soon, I realized, feeling the soft edges where my flesh had grown around it.
Ren’s helmet moved minutely as if he were tracking the motion of my hand and I dropped it quickly down again.
“Be ready at dawn,” Ren announced, “We’ve had reports of smoke seven parsecs away, so we’ll take speeders to investigate,” and departed back through the tent door.
…
“What do you think Commander Ren looks like under that helmet?” Rose asked idly from her cot bed a few hours later as we readied ourselves to sleep.
I thought about it for a moment.
Our commander was very careful never to be seen bare faced, including not eating with the troops and making sure to use the wash tent after the other men had finished. In all the time I’d been a soldier, he’d never slipped up once.
So of course the camp had to come up with a reason why.
One theory was that he had been horribly disfigured by blaster fire, enough that even the Imperium’s best surgeons couldn’t repair the damage. The second, the more fanciful of the two, was that he was the secret son of Lord Palpatine, and wore the mask to hide his startling resemblance to his father.
Given how hideous the holos of Lord Palpatine were, I hoped for the Commander’s sake that it was blaster fire.
“Dark hair,” I mused.
“Why do you think that?”
“I saw him without his gloves once,”
Rose let out a pretend, shocked, inhale of air which made me laugh.
In addition to the helmet, Commander Ren was never without his dark leather gloves nor his stark black clothes. But once I’d helped him repair a transport, which he’d done surprisingly well for a rumored son of someone important, and he’d had to peel off his gloves to pick out a part which had become wedged that my own fingers were too short to reach.
“And the hair on his wrist was dark,” I went on, remembering the long elegant fingers of his hand, the tensing of the muscles of his arm as he’d worked the screwdriver.
I quickly pushed that thought away.
“So, dark hair. Although he could be bald?“ Rose pointed out.
“He’s not!” I snapped back far too quickly and that made her chuckle again from her bed. I was glad the lack of light hid my face.
“Eyes?”
“Dark as well,” I answered, again too quickly.
Rose sat up in bed and looked over at me.
“Rey - have you been thinking about the Commander?” she asked slyly, and I could just about make out her expression through the darkness. She was smirking.
“Of course not!” I huffed back at her, although it was a lie.
I had, frequently. There was precious little else to do on this desolate planet.
I’d been a soldier for nearly two and a half cycles - all my adult life ever since the transport had brought me to the base at eighteen and I’d been assigned to Commander Ren’s patrol.
Six more months and I’d be free to leave.
It should make me happy - Rose was counting the days before she could reunite with her family and be free from her military service. Every week a message arrived from her parents with news of home and it was clear they were all counting the days.
For me, the army had become my family, the only one I had anyway. Rose was like a sister to me, the soldiers I worked with like wayward brothers, and Commander Ren was my - .
My brain stopped there.
Father was wrong. I couldn’t believe he was that much older than me. Someone had told me once he was one of the youngest Commanders in the Imperium, a decorated war hero, before he’d taken over command of our ragtag unit of conscripts.
Commander Ren never paid me much attention - not directly anyway - although I had found out that it had been he who had noticed my skills with repairing equipment and had me trained as a mechanic specialist. Thanks to that recommendation I would be able to leave the army with a skill that I could market, which given the other options before me as a penniless beta orphan was a lifeline I’d be eternally grateful for.
But other than that one act of kindness, he was as much of an arsehole to me as he was to everyone else in the platoon. Brusk, bad tempered, and emotionless.
“We should try and get some sleep,” Rose interrupted my thoughts, and I heard her lying back down in her little cot and adjusting the blanket around herself, “We’ll have to be on our toes tomorrow if it’s just the three of us on patrol. Night Rey, sleep well,”
…
I was up earlier than Rose to ready the speeders. By the time my wrist comm beeped at five to seven, all three transports were ready and waiting. The Commander’s, the largest, had been equipped with a day pack, mine with the medic kit, and Rose's a day’s worth of food.
I ran one final check that they were full of fuel and fully functioning, before attaching my blaster to the holster on my back, and a sheathed knife and hand gun strapped to each of my outer thighs so that I could grab any of them if needed.
Not that that happened often. We were officially a ‘reconnaissance’ unit which meant either we were the ones sent in first to ready the area for elite combat troops, or we were the ones left behind when they departed.
I had seen war and death over the years, enough to know that I wanted to see it as little as possible, and that all the many, many hours I spent learning to use the weapons I had wouldn’t be enough to save me in almost all circumstances.
The Imperium army was frequently a deadly place for disposable female conscripts like me.
So when we were stationed on this planet a year ago, while all the other soldiers grumbled about boredom and being stuck in the ‘fucking arse-end of the galaxy’, I spent my days taking apart any equipment I could find to hone my skills and my nights thanking the stars for my luck.
Exactly on time Commander Ren emerged from his quarters and I watched his tall form make his way across the sand-strewn empty camp now that the other soldiers had departed for the med-ship to where I waited. Behind him I saw Rose scurrying to catch up, taking a few frantic last bites of her breakfast rations. She had her helmet held in her spare hand, and I watched her hastily tie up her straight black hair as she ran. It was like mine, long enough to reach her shoulders, another sign that our medical was overdue since that was when they would shave our heads and return it to army regulation length of nonexistent.
“Is everything ready, Niima?” the Commander asked and he took a few long strides over to inspect my work without waiting for my reply. Rose took the chance to hand me a bundle of food and I hastily pushed it into my pocket while Ren examined the speeders.
He seemed satisfied and put some more supplies in the carrier at the back before turning to us both.
“The night patrol saw more light and movement through the IR binocs last night. It’s likely to be one of the hunting groups from the settlement,” Ren’s deep metallic-tinged voice explained, “But we should be prepared if it isn’t,”
He didn’t say anything else, but Rose and I took his meaning.
We were stationed on this planet for one reason only - to warn the Imperium if the enemy decided to use this dust bowl as a jumping off point for an invasion.
A year ago there had been over a thousand troops stationed here but as the months pressed on, and more important priorities were decided, our number was slowly whittled down until it was just us - a tiny platoon of twenty conscripted soldiers waiting in the dirt. If the enemy did invade, we’d be lucky if we had the time to send off a distress message before we were all vapourized.
Ren gave the speeders one last examination, and then climbed on board with surprising grace given the size of him. He looked back and waited for Rose and I to mount up as well and put on our helmets, and then he twisted his wrist, gunned the engine, and shot off into the morning sunlight.
…
It took a few hours to reach the coordinates. Both suns had ridden high in the sky by the time the Commander signaled for us to stop, his gloved hand raised in a fist. He had taken us to one of the only points of shelter in the endless desert, a vast rock outcrop as large as a transport ship. It had a name, I knew that, the original planet’s population had considered it sacred, but there was nothing left of that civilization now, and my memory refused to supply me with the answer.
I watched Ren dismount the speeder and was grateful that he had brought us to a stop in the shelter of the rock. It was hot now that the morning cool had burnt away, and the combat leathers we wore were designed for deflecting weapons, not for long journeys in the heat of the day. I longed to take off my helmet too, for the slight breeze to hit my face, but without an order from the Commander I was forbidden to.
“We need to climb to the top of the ridge to get a clear line of sight down the valley,” Commander Ren gestured upwards to where the rocks ended in a jagged line twenty feet above us, “Niima, you come with me. Tico, set up a camp here and send a message back to base,”
He didn’t wait for a reply but strode towards the rockface that rose above us. Ren took a long moment to study the formation and I knew he was picking a path upwards. I was doing the same, long days spent looking for scraps of equipment amongst the debris of broken transports on Jakku had taught me to climb anything.
The Commander hesitated for a moment with his hands against the sides of his helmet, as if he were contemplating removing it, and I felt a strange little hum in my chest at the thought. His hands fell back a moment later and then he moved into the wall and began to climb.
His long limbs ate up the rock, moving easily along the lower section, and his superior strength and alpha physique which even his thick leather armor couldn’t disguise was an advantage as he pulled himself up easily. I wasn’t far behind though. What I lacked in body size I gained having done this hundreds of times before and predictable stone was much easier to climb than the corroded bowels of ships where you were never sure whether anything would hold. I quickly caught him up until I was just below him, mirroring his every move.
After a few minutes of climbing Ren reached the edge of the rock face and effortlessly pulled himself up and over onto the flat top of the outcrop. I saw him look down for me and his helmet jerked back in surprise when he realized quite how close I was. His hand reached out, dark glove intact, and I grabbed it as he heaved me up and over the lip to come to rest next to him.
For a moment we rested next to each other and I couldn’t help but feel how oddly intimate it was, lying next to the Commander’s large body, particularly as I could taste his scent in the air, amplified by the exercise. He might have read my mind, because I watched his chest take a deep inhale and then he rolled himself gracefully away from me and carefully crawled to the edge of the rock, body kept low, until he reached a hidden vantage point to look out over the valley beyond. A moment later I followed behind.
As I watched he slid out his binoc from his utility pocket and for a moment I wondered whether I would finally see him without his helmet. Disappointingly the binoc must have been specially adapted because he pressed it to the metal eye slit, and began to search the horizon.
I had no such equipment so I pulled my own helmet off, grateful for the cooler breeze against my hot face, and shook out my damp hair. The Commander moved uncomfortably next to me, sliding his body a few inches further away and I tried not to be embarrassed that I probably reeked after our climb. Still, I was a soldier, and soldiers shouldn’t care about that, so I adjusted the settings on my visualizer and focussed on scanning the desert for any signs of movement.
For a good five minutes we worked alongside each other in silence, only the tiny sounds of the whirring of our binocs for company. Eventually though I felt the Commander suddenly still beside me and his gloved fingers moved to adjust the settings of his viewer.
“There!” he said, his voice low and quiet, and he inclined his head a fraction to the west.
I shifted to where he motioned and searched fruitlessly for a minute as I tried to find any sign of life. All I could see was an endless expanse of hazy sand.
“It’s a camp - they’ve camouflaged the equipment,” Ren continued, the voice modulator making his words harsh, “Look for where the sand is moving,”
I stared again and scanned the area fruitlessly until I felt the touch of the Commander’s hand on my face. He tilted my head so that I was looking where he wished. The warmth of his glove was hot where his large hand cupped my chin and then his fingers slid away.
“See?”
It took a moment for me to reply because I felt strangely light headed. Ren had only touched me for the briefest moment, a perfunctory contact to help me look in the right direction, but my body had responded with a sudden shiver as if he’d caressed my bare skin.
I made myself concentrate on the viewfinder pressed to my eye and stared out into the amplified horizon. No wonder I had missed it on several sweeps. There was an area far to the right where a large section of sand seemed to billow and move as if it were being blown by the wind. I narrowed my focus and honed in on the spot until I could just about make out the edges of a large covering which must have been thrown over the equipment to disguise it. I mentally calculated how large it must be and realized that what might look like a spot in the distance was likely a sizeable camp, definitely not a hunting party who had lost their way, and underneath that camouflage there would be equipment and soldiers and -
From below us, at the base of the rock formation, I heard a thin popping noise, followed by a harsh cry, and the Commander was up on his feet and moving before my brain had even registered that it was the sound of muffled gunfire.
Rose!
I was up a moment later. Ren had reached the edge of the rocks before me and was crouching down, blaster drawn, scanning the scene below us.
Rose was alive, it was the first thing my brain registered, although she was hurt. She was slumped against the rock wall, one arm clutching her shoulder, and there were half a dozen figures arranged around her. I couldn’t hear what was being said but it was obvious by the gestures to our three speeders they were asking her where the rest of the group were.
They were going to figure out in the next few minutes that we were above them.
The Commander slid his blaster back into the holster on his waist and replaced it with a knife from the strap on his thigh. I knew why - the noise of blaster fire would alert anyone at the distant camp to our position and once it did there would be no way we’d ever be able to outrun them on our speeders. We might kill the enemy below us, but we’d certainly die shortly afterwards.
I copied him, replacing my gun with the serrated utility knife I’d brought, and stared at it for a moment. I had never killed before - I’d been in my share of battles but never in the front line - always in the rear with the equipment, another privilege of being a mechanic. But I knew what to do, I was as highly trained as any other soldier, and Rose’s life was in the balance.
The Commander tracked my movements and seemed to stare at the knife in my hand, and then it was almost like I could feel his eyes flick over me even though they were hidden by the black mask he wore, taking in my slight form, tall for a woman, but tiny compared to the hulking enemy soldiers below us.
“Stay here,” he commanded, his voice quiet, “Cover me - that’s an order,” and began to move to the far edge of the rockface where his descent would be unseen until he reached the ground.
I reached out my hand to stop him and shook my head.
“There’s four of them,” I whispered back, surprised at the steel in my voice, “I can fight - I know what I’m doing.” and then in case there was any doubt, “I’m coming - you can’t stop me!”
I knew I was defying my commanding officer and a small part of my mind reminded me that the punishment for that transgression was death, but I pushed it away. Below me I could see Rose slink further down the rock wall and the figures around her grew more agitated.
The Commander saw it too, and I heard an angry sigh through the voice modulator.
“We’ll descend on the far side and then approach them from behind. Do whatever it takes to disarm them quickly, kill them if you can, just don’t let them use their blasters. And put your helmet back on!”
The last was said with what sounded like exasperation. I nodded, pushing the hard metal back over my head, and followed the Commander across the rocks until we reached the far edge. This descent was easier than the climb up had been and Ren silently clambered down the rock wall, careful to be as soundless as possible. I followed close behind and when we reached the sand below, he signaled for me to follow him.
We ran, crouching low, and I tried not to think about anything other than helping Rose, even though my heart was beating twice its normal speed, but I followed the Commander, finding some comfort in his large shape in front of me.
When we rounded the edge of the rocks he slowed, and then halted.
Fifteen feet in front of us were the backs of the four men. They must have been on foot patrol because there was no sign of any equipment or transports. I could hear the one furthest from me, his accent sharp and guttural, interrogating Rose. My friend was standing now, still leaning against the wall, and I could see that her hand pressed to her shoulder was red with blood.
She must be able to see us by now but she gave no outward sign except for the smallest rise of her chin and flicker of her eyes.
“I’ve told you,” I heard her say, “they took off to the East. They will be several miles out. I can’t contact them - “
The enemy soldier nearest her stepped in closer and backhanded her. I could hear the sickening thud as her head snapped back against the wall. The Commander gave the lowest, warning growl which I knew was a command to stand still, and it took everything I had not to foolishly run forward into the fray.
Somehow Rose recovered and she slowly brought her head forward, an awful grin on her face.
She winked then, the slightest movement of her eye, and I knew, somehow I knew she would do her best to distract them. I crouched a little lower, ready to leap forward as I saw her open her mouth and spit a trail of blood into the face of the nearest man, and then headbutted the other straight in the forehead.
The Commander moved before I did, but I was only a breath behind. I tackled the enemy closest to me to the ground, relishing the surprised shout he made just as my shoulder collided with his body. I only managed to hit him with enough force to make him stumble so when he reached for his blaster I acted on instinct, taking the knife in my hand and plunging it into the side of the arm that held the weapon.
He dropped it, groaning, and I kicked the gun away and pulled the knife free as he swung towards me. The man towered over me, and I saw his eyes narrow in anger. He lunged then, ignoring the blood that I could see soaking his arm, and my training demanded I plunge that knife straight into his thigh as close to the artery there as I could.
But I hesitated too long, somehow unable to make that killing blow, and in that instant he grabbed my wrist that held the knife and pulled me towards him. I could see the hatred on his face and knew he fully intended to kill me, and he grabbed me back against his body and pulled my arm into his chest.
I struggled against him, futilely trying to stomp on his instep to make him release me, but he only held me tighter. His hand tightened on my wrist, digging into the tendons, and I knew that as soon as I let go of the knife he would use it to stab me in turn.
His other hand came up and around my throat, just below the line of my helmet.
“Drop the knife, Imperium bitch,” the man leant lower and growled against my ear.
My gaze darkened as air left my lungs and I looked over and saw Rose lying still on the ground. Whether she was dead or alive I didn’t know. Beside her I could see Commander Ren fighting, one enemy prone on the floor and he was battling the remaining two, his technique vicious and lethal.
The enemy who held me tightened the grip on my neck and I tried to take one last lungful of air before I fought back.
In that moment I felt him suddenly stiffen in shock and the hand around my throat abruptly loosened and moved to my helmet. He pulled it roughly from my head and I was lightheaded with surprise as light rushed in and I could see him even more clearly. The man’s eyes were wide, glazed, his scarred mouth open revealing rotting teeth, and his blood covered hand grabbed the back of my neck, under my hair, dirty fingers digging into my skin as if looking for something.
“Niima!” I heard the Commander shout, his voice amplified and hollow, and I saw him kill the man he fought with a brutal snap of his neck while the other charged at him.
But the man who held me paid him no attention.
He was gazing at me as if hypnotized, huffing and panting, and then he said something that made no sense at all.
“Omega!”
…
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