Star Wars: Hope of the Galaxy

by BuffShipper

Summary:

A fix-it of "Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker" with

●NO EMPEROR PALPATINE
●Rey is a Nobody
●Hux is NOT a spy
●Ben Solo lives
●A happy ending

The last Jedi Rey and the Resistance race against time to prevent the launch of the Final Order fleet by Supreme Leader Kylo Ren —a fleet began by Emperor Palpatine and the Sith Eternal Cult before his death and continued by Snoke during his rise to power—on Exegol, the hidden planet of the Sith...

Chapter 1: Prologue

"LIGHT. DARKNESS. A BALANCE."

---

Following the Battle of Crait, the First Order scavenged the bisected remains of their massive flagship, the Supremacy—halved by a desperate hyperspace ram from the Resistance's Mon Calamari Cruiser, the Raddus, piloted by the brave rebel Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo.

Like insects over a rotting carcass their salvage ships scoured the wreck for anything useful—intact TIE Fighters and other craft, munitions, durasteel and the like.

However, the newly appointed Supreme Leader, Kylo Ren, had his sights on several smaller, yet no less important objects entombed within the derelict leviathan.

The first objects were the shards of the helmet that he himself had destroyed in a fit of rage, still in a crumpled heap of metal in the same turbolift he'd left it in.

The next objects were the various accoutrements belonging to the previous Supreme Leader, Snoke—murdered by his successor.

Slicers were brought in to procure personal files to be decrypted for Kylo’s future analysis. Items on Snoke's bisected person—just like his beloved vessel—most notably the curious obsidian-stone ring he always wore, were removed and analyzed.

The process of salvage would take weeks for such a large vessel until its empty husk would be scuttled into a nearby sun. But Kylo would not be waiting that long. He left the task to be overseen by General Hux.

Kylo then ventured to the ship of his Knights of Ren, the Night Buzzard. Calling them together again had been unexpectedly and perhaps uncannily easy. They’d accepted him without question, saying the results of his trial years ago—where he killed their former leader Ren in a duel to take over the Knights— still stood. He remained their rightful leader.

His Knights of Ren were an enclave of masked, Dark Side devoted Force-sensitive warriors from the Unknown Regions that roamed the galaxy causing wanton destruction as mercenaries and marauders. The Knights only answered to him, and they would become the new enforcers to his reign as Supreme Leader. Snoke had his Praetorian Guard, Kylo would have his Knights.

Inside the ship's armory, they arrayed themselves before him, kneeling in submission before rising one by one.

The first to rise was Trudgen, who wore robes consisting of a heavy weave tabard and hood, accessorized with armor plates that were taken from his fallen enemies. His mask incorporated a fragment of a death trooper's helmet into its design, giving him the appearance of a samurai. He weilded an enormous vibro-cleaver and had a smaller but no less deadly cleaver sheathed at his thick waistbelt.

Following him was Ap'lek, who wore lightweight plastoid armor beneath his tunic, a water-shedding oiled cloak, had raised teeth on his gauntlets and greaves, and wore a smoke canister on his belt. He wore a patchwork mask of stolen pieces of armor that was molded into the shape of an unsettling, sinister face of a trickster. His weapon was that of a Mandalorian executioner's axe.

Next was Kuruk, who wore an attire made of a sound-dampening susurra-weave fabric. He had soft-soled boots for silent tread and collar rings to carry his plasma bolt shells for his precision double-barreled blaster rifle, which had three firing modes that included a pump-action plasma bolt launcher, a rapid-fire mode, and a sniper mode. His helmet had a breath screen and vocoder grid as well as blinder flannels designed to focus his vision forward and recesses cut for peripheral line-of-sight.

Rising after him was Ushar, a Knight built for blunt force trauma, as he wore ironweave vambraces for a crushing backhand and carried a war hammer with a studded pummel and a concussion absorption head that could release stored kinetic energy in a sudden shockwave. In addition, Ushar carried a vibromachete in an inverted sheath on his torso as well as three thermal detonators. His helmet featured breathing tubes as well as anti-ox filters, suggesting that Ushar or his mask was of non-human origin.

If Ushar was a warrior built for blunt force, his compatriot Vicrul was a man built to eviscerate, as he carried a wicked vibro-scythe, shaped into sawtooth crook for catching enemy blades as well as a short sword he kept at his belt. His priest-like coat was made from the skin of an unknown, monstrously large reptile and he wore case-hardened helmet was made of pastillion ore and featured synth-leather ear flaps to conceal its opening seam. It's silver faceplate resembled the gridded shell of a grenade.

Cardo was the last to rise, with his arm cannon ever at the ready-- wore a coat made from the fire-resistant hide of a riftiaworm and accessorized with a blaster pistol holster on his left leg, tri-braced plasteel-armored greaves, a chest strap to carry concussion grenades, and plasma bolt shells on his lower chestplate. Cardo's helmet was the most basic of the Knight helms: it was a blast furnace plate molded into a mask and included a neck protector.

Now that the ceremony of their meeting was over, it was time to reforge the symbol of his leadership.

“I have your word?” Kylo Ren said to Albrekh, a Symeong metallurgist who worked for the Knights, repairing their armor and weapons.

“It will be stronger than it was before,” the ape-like Albrekh hissed back.

Albrekh was the first Symeong whom Kylo had ever encountered. He was small and thin, with a jutting jaw and long, pointed, wide-spaced ears that twitched with every sound or breath of air. Most important, he was a Sith alchemist trained in classic metallurgy, capable of smithing feats unheard of in the modern galaxy. He stood before a heavy stone table, awaiting the shards Ren had promised.

Kylo dumped the shards onto the stone table. He wasn’t sure how the alchemist would pull it off. There were too many pieces, some of them warped beyond recognition.

Albrekh rubbed his gloved hands together in anticipation and got to work. It would take a long time. That was fine. Kylo wasn’t known for his patience, but even he found some things worth waiting for.

The alchemist spread all the pieces across the table. With uncanny perception and speed, he solved the puzzle of their fitting, placing them in proximity to one another in such a way that Kylo could begin to see how the pieces would again become a mask.

The alchemist used heat pliers and a special mallet to hammer the warped fragments back into shape. The whole room glowed red from the molten metal stewing in a cauldron off to the side. Sarrassian iron, Albrekh had told him. Next to Mandalorian beskar, Sarrassian iron was the toughest ore in the galaxy, and contained special properties that resonated with the Dark Side of the Force.

With steady hands, the alchemist placed adjoining pieces side by side, then propped them together with magnetic forceps. He grabbed a long application tool that looked like a metal snake and used it to pour bloody iron into the crack between pieces. It cooled instantly, forming a red adhesive stronger than steel.

Kylo Ren was fascinated by power. Extreme competence was a type of power, and he watched spellbound as Albrekh repeated the process of fitting the shards together, molding them with molten red ore, over and over with severe patience, focus, and precision.

Kylo flexed his own hands, wondering how the alchemist’s palms weren’t cramping, how his flesh wasn’t burning to ash. His gloves protected him, no doubt, their fabric yet another Sith secret lost to the rest of the galaxy.

Finally, the alchemist balanced the mask on a stand and reached for a large ladle. He poured water over the reforged helmet. The water hissed, turning to steam that fogged Kylo’s view. Albrekh repeated the process, again and again, until the mask was fully cooled.

The alchemist removed his gloves. With his bare, hairy hands, he grabbed the mask and offered it up to Kylo Ren.

“It’s safe to wear,” he assured.

Kylo took it, admired it. The mask was a thing of jagged beauty. Shaped just as before, but now full of red fractures like crimson lightning.

Broken and re-formed. Like the Knights. Like his grandfather. The Knights of Ren raised their weapons in honor as Kylo placed the mask over his head. It was heavier than ever. It reeked of molten metal.

It was perfect.

Notes:

Credit:

This work incorporates excerpts from the TROS Extended Edition Novelization by Rae Carson and lore from supplementary materials and Wookieepedia.

Thanks:

Big shoutout to my bestest beta buddy Autumnspice!

Chapter 2: The Hidden World of the Sith

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

STAR WARS

HOPE OF THE GALAXY

Flames of rebellion burn across the galaxy. The tyrannical FIRST ORDER has retaliated by attacking any planetary system that supports their enemy.

As REY, sole heir to the Jedi, continues her training, General LEIA ORGANA sends her brave agents across the stars to unite the disparate worlds in the name of Resistance.

Meanwhile, Supreme Leader KYLO REN and his KNIGHTS OF REN travel to MUSTAFAR in search of a SITH artifact belonging to his late grandfather, DARTH VADER...

---

The Night Buzzard approached the red planet Mustafar, twinned in orbit with the grey gas giant Jestefad.

The Night Buzzard, a Oubliette-class transport heavily modified and armed by the Knights of Ren, spewed noxious gas into Mustafar's smoky, sulfurous atmosphere,  the vessel's engines crudely modified to generate more thrust, taking a toll on the insulation baffles. The Knight Kuruk guided the Buzzard to planetfall, the forward laser cannon turret, mid ship laser cannon turret, rear heavy laser cannon turret, and rear-facing fixed laser cannons all at the ready in case of attack.

The vessel landed in a forest clearing. The Knights rushed from the Night Buzzard first, fanning out to secure the area for their leader.

The area secured, Kylo stepped out of the Buzzard and onto the planet's surface. The ground was ashy like snow, and the sky was tinged a pale red, like a perpetual sunset. The air was smoky, but breathable through his mask.

Taking an anticipatory breath, Kylo ignited his lightsaber and stepped forward to his meet destiny, to battle. 

***

The Alazmac of Winsit was a cult dedicated to the stewardship of Fortress Vader and the reinvigoration of Corvax Fen and all of Mustafar to its former thriving state through the planting of forests of irontrees.

The fact that they felt they had to defend themselves against him was insulting. Fortress Vader was his birthright. He should be welcomed.

The cultists emerged from the Fen, clad in their dark cloaks and face obscuring helmets that made their heads look like flying saucers with glowing red eyes, armed with their outdated melee weapons and scavenged blasters.

Kylo cut them down, one after another, as Kuruk and Cardo fired volley after volley of around him.

At his right, Trudgen cleaved a cultist diagonally in half with his vibro-cleaver.

A slash with Kylo’s crimson-bladed crossguard lightsaber took off a cultist's arm, followed by a slash down the chest to finish him off.

At Kylo’s left, Vicrul disemboweled a cultist with his vibro-scythe while impaling another with his short vibro-sword.

Another cultist came at him with a blaster, so Kylo took his saber in a reverse grip and deflected the bolts before using the cultist's momentum against him by lifting the cultist up by his middle and slamming him down, using a lateral blade to slice across the cultist's chest.

With the saber still in a reverse grip, Kylo slid backwards and impaled a cultist, igniting a trail of fire at his feet. The cultist died by Kylo’s blade, his body resting on Kylo’s back— not that it slowed down the dark warrior in the slightest.

Kylo extended his hand, using the Force to disarm another cultist before pulling him forth and slicing him in half.

Ushar swung his heavy war-hammer overhead and struck the ground with a mighty blow, cracking the earth and sending a shockwave of kinetic energy and Force power that stunned the incoming cultists, causing them to stumble and fall like dominoes around him—leaving them easy pickings for Ap'lek's savage Mandalorian executioner's axe.

Kylo and his Knights continued in this savage and methodical fashion until corpses littered the ground, barely more than lumps of shadow in the gloom. The air smelled of ozone and scorched vegetation. All was eerily silent as Ren looked around, catching his breath.

Kylo Ren's journey to Mustafar felt to him like a pilgrimage of sorts, visiting the planet his grandfather, the great Sith Lord Darth Vader, once resided.

Mustafar had been somewhere he'd always wanted to visit once he'd discovered his lineage to Vader and embraced the Dark Side, but his Master Snoke had always kept him away—explicitly forbidding it even—for whatever reason.

With Snoke dead, of course, Kylo answered to no one, and would answer to no one. Through his analysis of Snoke's ring, Kylo discovered that the obsidian stone-peice was sourced from Mustafar—more specifically the obsidian that built Fortress Vader. The symbols etched into to the sides of the ring were Sith in origin. After pouring through Snoke's files, old records, and his library of arcane lore, Kylo determined his next move was Mustafar.

There, he would find an artifact belonging to his grandfather that promised to solve the mystery of Snoke and his ties to the Sith.

In preparation for the journey, Kylo did his research on the planet.

Long ago, an ancient artifact called the Bright Star crystal had turned the once lush and fertile landscape of Mustafar into a hellscape, a hellscape that had played host to the battle between his grandfather and Vader's former Jedi Master, Obi-Wan Kenobi. It was a battle that Vader had lost, burning him alive and nearly killing him—necessitating the use of his ubiquitous life support suit and rendering him a cyborg for the rest of his life.

But after the destruction of the Bright Star crystal a generation ago, the ecosystem had begun to replenish itself.

Kylo Ren showed mercy to nothing and no one, but even he had a grudging appreciation for things that struggled to survive. Even though the nearest lava flow was many klicks away, it seemed as though the air ought to be too hot and chemical for life to truly thrive here.

The truth was, Mustafar was teeming with life—all connected through the Force. Like those hapless cultists he’d just killed, the surrounding forest of twisted irontrees, or even the extremophile organisms that swarmed the lava flows. All fragile but determined, mutilated but indomitable.

It was no wonder his grandfather has chosen this place for a home.

With his lightsaber still ignited and his Knights not far behind, Kylo strode through the forest, the ruins of his grandfather's once great castle in sight beyond the smoking canopies of the irontrees. A malevolence lay ahead, a darkness that had nothing to do with the planet’s day and night cycle. His guard was up, and it would stay up until he got what he came for.

A few more steps and the ground became soggy. The mist thickened. A small splash indicated that his presence had been noticed.

Finally, the trees broke open onto a small lake with brackish water, bordered on all sides by forest and large black lumps like boulders, jutting out of the ground at odd angles. No, not boulders, he noted upon closer look, but rather fallen remnants of Darth Vader’s castle.

An oily film slicked across the lake’s still surface. But as Kylo approached, the water bubbled up in the center, sending tiny waves to lap at his boots.

A giant emerged, a hairless creature sheening with wetness, bits of lake detritus clinging to its pasty skin. Its eyes were squeezed shut, but it could still see after a fashion, because draped over its massive bald head and across one shoulder was a second creature with long spidery tentacles. The two were locked in symbiosis. Kylo sensed the giant’s pain, as though it were a slave to the spidery being that clung to it. Yet neither could it survive alone.

The Knights kept their distance, weapons at the ready, unsure what to make of the odd duo that greeted their master.

The spider creature spoke. “I am the Eye of the Webbish Bog. I know what you seek.”

“You will give it to me,” Kylo commanded, reaching out with his hand.

The Eye cocked its head, making an eerie squealing noise. It took a moment for Kylo to realize the creature was laughing at him.

“No need for that,” the Eye said. “Do you really think my lord would have left it in the guardianship of one who could be swayed by a trick of the Force?”

No, he supposed not.

“You’ve been seeking it for a while, yes? I must warn you, our fiery planet burns away deception. If you proceed down this path, you will encounter your true self.”

Kylo was growing impatient. He glared in silence.

“Fine,” the creature snapped, as though disappointed that Kylo would not indulge him in ceremony. “In accordance with Lord Vader’s wishes, you have defeated my protectors and earned it. His Wayfinder.”

The blind giant beneath the Eye raised its enormous hand from the water and pointed toward a small island in the lake. On it was a stone structure, like an altar.

Kylo turned off his lightsaber and hooked it to his belt. He waded into the shallow lake, soaking his boots and cloak. The water was warm, and the ground beneath the water a sludge that sucked at his feet. He ignored it all, the altar was his goal.

Up close, he saw a symbol like a the silhouette of a diamond on top of an arrowhead set inside a circle—a symbol that he had seen engraved on Snoke's ring— engraved too on the lid of the altar. With a great shove, he heaved the stone lid of the altar into the lake with a great splash, revealing a pyramidal object inside. He reached for it greedily, as if something was going to swoop in and snatch it from him. It fit satisfyingly in his hand, heavy and hot, and he stared at it a moment, lost in its red glow. The sides were etched glass framed in deep-gray resin. The crimson light within seemed to pulse faintly. Kylo had come a long way for this, and yet he hesitated, eyeing the pyramid with distrust.

Surely his grandfather would have made it harder than this? Those cultists were too easy to kill. This creature too easy to convince. Then again, he was Vader’s heir. The object belonged to him.

“It will guide you through the Unknown Regions,” the Eye said. “To Exegol. To the hidden world of the Sith.”

Kylo held the Wayfinder up close, staring into it like an orbuculum. The etchings in the glass clarified into patterns. Star charts. Alignment markers. Something stirred deep within him, suggesting ancient knowledge and power, and he felt a rush of triumph. 

Kylo looked up, and was startled to discover that the Eye was gone, slipped back beneath the surface of a lake so still it was as though nothing lived within it at all. His Knights were waiting. How long had he been staring at the pyramid?

Kylo Ren wasted no more time. He sloshed out of the lake and rejoined his Knights on the shore and they returned to the Night Buzzard. At last Kylo then relinquished the Wayfinder to Kuruk, who connected the pyramid to the navicomputer, attaching ports where indicated by the glass etchings. The nav interface lit up with new information, but it also blared a warning. For these coordinates would take them beyond the Western Reaches into the Unknown Regions. Kuruk overrode the warning and jumped the Buzzard to lightspeed. The stars turned to streams of matter.

Kuruk was a highly capable pilot who was surpassed only by Kylo Ren himself, but even so, the Knight had to  call upon every bit of piloting acumen in conjunction with the Wayfinder to navigate safely through the treacherous Unknown Regions.

The Unknown Regions remained uncharted because a chaotic web of anomalies had created a near-impenetrable barrier to exploration. Only the most foolhardy or desperate ventured there: criminals, refugees, and remnants of the old Imperial fleet who had refused to accept New Republic rule that became the First Order.

A few planets had been discovered, but their populations remained small, and their trade with the rest of the galaxy had been throttled by the navigational risk. The Sith and the Jedi had found paths through to even more dangerous, more hidden worlds—or so legends said—and the specific, carefully stepped coordinate jumps required to safely navigate the anomalies were among their most closely guarded secrets.

And Vader had left them a guide, a compass, to find one of those hidden worlds.

The Night Buzzard bumped out of lightspeed into rough space; it felt as though he were flying through gravel. He double-checked the nav— the Buzzard was on course. He had to have faith that Vader’s Wayfinder would steer them true.

That, and the Force. Though Kuruk and his brethren were not as learned in the ways of the Force as their master, they could each touch the Force in their own ways, and so Kuruk drew on the proprioception, uncanny accuracy, and finesse granted to him by the Force and gripped the controls in cold focus. Once his flight steadied, Kuruk sent the Buzzard to the next set of coordinates.

This time, instead of the streaming stars of hyperspace, the Buzzard entered a glowing red mesh of hexes. Kylo  heard tales of the Red Honeycomb Zone of exotic space—some called it the Blood Net, others called it the Ship Eater—but until now he hadn’t been sure he believed any of them. It was one of the only known safe passages through the anomalies of the Unknown Regions, but it seemed malevolent and angry, and the sensor indicators on his console flashed wildly, unsure what to make of it.

Most pilots, when traveling faster-than-light for a while, used the time to stretch, do some interior checks and maintenance, or even sleep. But Kuruk didn’t dare let his guard down, especially when performing for his master. He had to be ready for anything. From experience, Kuruk knew that time and distance became near meaningless in exotic space. He had no idea exactly when he’d revert to realspace or what would be waiting for him when he did.

It seemed as though only a short time had passed before the Buzzard lurched out of the Red Honeycomb Zone and slowed. Kylo and his Knights were prepared to attack or evade, but found themselves on a perfectly normal approach, the planet Exegol looming before them. From space, it seemed dead and gray, shrouded in massive dark storm systems. As they neared, the clouds burst with jagged light. It would be a rough ride down.

They entered the planet's stormy atmosphere and skimmed along the windy white desert plains. The entry had been difficult, but the landing easy. The planet’s entire surface was a landing pad—flat and empty.

Boldly, Kylo leapt from the Night Buzzard and strode across boundless cracked ground, igniting his lightsaber not only for protection-- but also for visibility. The air was hazy, hot and dry, and lightning split the sky in unending rage.

His Knights followed, their deadly weapons drawn.

His boot knocked over a small silica tree, where lightning had turned grit and sand into a branching tumor of glass.

Reaching out with the Force, Kylo could detect a moderate amount of life nearby, most of it deep below the surface. The Dark Side was strong in this place, almost as if it had warped the planet from the inside-out.

The Force led him to a massive, inverted pyramid-like structure, a black leviathan licked by bolts of lightning. It was the Citadel from his visions: a brutal edifice of stone that hovered off the ground and  towered high enough that its peak was nearly lost in haze.

Kylo didn’t need to see the entrance to know where it was, because he could feel it beckoning him, welcoming him. It was not the soft, warm welcoming of home or safety but rather one of conquest and need. His skin prickled. The Force was strong here, but it was different. Twisted, rotten, as though filtered through a miasma of decay. He reminded himself that new things grew out of old decay.

Lightning crackled in the gap between ground and edifice. The space was just high enough for him to stride comfortably. He felt the weight of the massive structure as he walked beneath, trusting it to not fall and crush him.

It took power to create something so awe inspiring. That power would be his.

Kylo’s footsteps echoed, and the bare stone ceiling seemed reddish in the light of his blade. Something clanged, like a gigantic gear moving into place. Suddenly the area he stood upon separated itself from the floor, becoming a floating disk that lowered him into the depths of the citadel.

As they descended, Kylo found himself captivated by the wall before him, which was carved with colossal stone faces, all rendered in exquisite detail. Massive iron chains trailed down from the ceiling, as if mooring the statues in place. Something dark and inescapable moved within him, and he understood that he was viewing a monument. So much history and memory all in one place, and he was caught between reverence and rage. This was his inheritance; he knew it like he knew the feel of a lightsaber in his grip. But monuments preserved the past, and if he had learned anything recently it was that the past needed to die.

The disk came to a gentle halt in a vast space that brought to mind a cathedral. The stone faces were high above him now, crowning enormous statues of ancient lords. At his feet, dark chasms jagged through the floor, and Kylo could not gauge their depths. The chasms crackled with lightning, searing his vision, as though a bit of the planet’s sky had been trapped within its crust.

They were not alone. Figures moved in the shadows, slight and stooped. Not dangerous—not yet, anyway—as they went about whatever work they were doing. They wore black, threadbare robes, and bandages shrouded their faces.

Kylo and the Knights continued into a laboratory-like chamber ahead. On his left, a flash of lightning illuminated a several huge glass tanks, containing dead creatures in various states of mutated deformity, preserved through mechanical umbilicals. They were all the same creature, Kylo realized with a start—and not just any creatures. The wrinkled, hairless face. Sunken eyes. They all had the visage of a man Kylo had only seen in holograms: the former Emperor Palpatine.

Kylo stepped closer to the nearest vat, at once fascinated and repulsed.

Suddenly, a voice like pure snake oil reverberated from the shadows, breaking the silence.

"Many have come to Exegol seeking immortality. Darth Noctyss… Darth Sanguis… Darth Sidious… but alas, none have succeeded…"

Kylo swung his lightsaber towards the source of the voice. His Knights pointed their weapons in every other direction, covering all angles in case of attack.

"Show yourself! Who are you?!" demanded Kylo. "What is this place?!"

A group of seven hooded figures in deep, bloodred cloaks emerged from the shadows. Unlike the other cultists, their faces were uncovered, but their pale features were hidden under hoods.

They bowed low before Kylo, as one would during prayer.

The center one—the cultist who spoke before— replied, "We are the Sith Eternal. We have worshipped the Sith for generations."

Kylo leveled his saber at the lead cultist. "The Sith are extinct."

The lead cultist did not flinch. "And yet their legacy remains, Kylo Ren, Heir of Lord Vader…"

Kylo scoffed, his fingers tightening around his lightsaber. "Feh. Do not speak to me about legacy, fool! I have no use for barren wastelands and dusty relics. Give me a reason why I should not slay you all where you kneel."

Still, the lead cultist kept his composure. "Before his demise, Lord Sidious brought the might of the Empire to Exegol. He had the vision of a fleet far beyond anything the galaxy had ever seen."

Kylo's head tilted in curiosity. He lowered his lightsaber to his side.

"Continue."

A smile split across the lead cultist's pallid features, revealing rotting teeth. "For a time, the future of the Sith and Lord Sidious's glorious vision remained uncertain… that was until the Eye determined a worthy successor… Lord Snoke!"

"Snoke?" Again, Kylo’s interest was piqued. The symbol on Snoke's ring was identical to the symbol on the altar containing his grandfather's Wayfinder. Little was known of his former Master, and how he had come to ascend the First Order so quickly. 

"Yes…under Lord Snoke, construction of the fleet began, and the smoldering embers of the Sith Empire blazed anew with his First Order!" replied the lead cultist. Murmurs echoed through the chamber at the mention of Snoke's name.

There. There was the answer to a question Kylo had pondered for years. How Snoke had acquired power so quickly. But Kylo had that power now. And their apparent reverence for Snoke offended him.

Kylo snorted derisively. "Snoke is dead. I killed him."

"And according to the Ways of the Sith, you are his successor," the lead cultist looked up beseechingly, zealotry coloring his voice. "Lord Ren, after years of tireless labor under Lord Snoke, Lord Sidious's vision is complete. The Final Order fleet is yours!"

Kylo deactivated his lightsaber.

"Show me."

A huge stone corridor beyond the laboratory chamber opened up, leading to an arena-like amphitheater, as big as a hollowed-out mountain. Kylo and the Knights headed towards it, past the red-robed cultists.

Thunderous marching filled his ears. Thousands upon thousands of stormtroopers, shining in crimson armor, filed into the amphitheater through all sides like spilled blood until they formed two separate sides, facing each other like opposing armies. Around them, the arena was brimming with robed figures. There were hundreds of thousands of them—millions perhaps— faceless in the dark distance, but pulsing and rumbling with zealotry. Religious disciples, awaiting the return of the Sith.

Waiting for him.

A massive hologram of a diamond-shaped Star Destroyer filled the amphitheater before splitting into dozens, then hundreds, and then thousands of Star Destroyers, dotting the air like stars. 

Behind them, the lead cultist intoned, "Lord Ren, may we humbly present to his majesty the Xyston class Star Destroyer. Ten thousand strong. Each with the planet destroying power of a Death Star. With Lord Snoke's hyperspace tracking technology, there will be nowhere for enemies of your Final Order to hide."

Kylo’s heart was racing. So much power. A starfield of Destroyers. The largest fleet the galaxy had ever known. Exegol was a world populated by the Sith Eternal, true believers in the Dark Side of the Force, devoting their lives to this. They had built a fleet that will bring an end to the galactic rebellion... once and for all.

A single, giant obelisk replaced the field of Star Destroyers. It unfurled like a metal flower, exposing its petal-antennae— a navigation tower that would coordinate their final ascension.

Then, Kylo’s gaze was pulled forward. A chill pimpled the flesh of his arms because— illuminated by the hologram and flashes of lightning— was a wide stone dias. Resting upon that dais was a chair with spikes curving up and around it, like a halo of giant thorns. The throne of the Sith.

Kylo stepped forward. The hologram switched off. He walked toward the dais, through the parted red sea of statue-like Sith Troopers. With each step he took, the rumble grew louder.

As he approached the dias, the rumbling swelled and became a collective, worshipful welcome.

He walked up the steps of the dias, taking in the sight of his new throne. He ran his hand along the carved stone, smooth and cool.

Kylo turned, looking upon his subjects. He beckoned his Knights forward. When they reached the steps, they bowed. Kylo nodded, and they joined him upon the dias, three Knights on either side of him.

The Sith Troopers turned in lockstep to face them.

Kylo drew his lightsaber, ignited it, and pointed it to the sky, his Knights following suit with their armaments.

The cultists and Sith Troopers cheered, their fervor seeming to shake the foundations of the Citadel, of the very planet itself.

Kylo lowered his saber, extinguished it, and sat upon the throne. The cheering grew even louder, a deafening celebration.

He raised a single hand. The cheering ceased. A collective breath was held as the Sith Eternal awaited their new god-king's first command.

"Begin preparations for launch. Long live the Final Order."

Chapter 3: Doctrine of the Dyad

Rey sat a figure in white, cross-legged, eyes closed. She didn’t remember rising off the ground, but she was vaguely aware that somehow she’d ended up floating. Pebbles and small boulders hovered around her, like a field of asteroids orbiting their sun. The Force flowed through her, buoyed her, connected her to everything. The lush rain forest moon of Ajan Kloss was teeming with life. She could feel every tree and fern, every reptile and insect. A few strides away in a hidden den, a small furry creature groomed its litter of four kits.

Rey inhaled through her nose and sent her awareness into the void. Peace and calm were key, Leia always said. She reached, she searched, she felt the breeze on her cheeks, she smelled loamy soil, damp from the recent rain.

“Be with me, be with me, be with me,” she murmured. But she heard… nothing except wind in the trees and chirruping insects.

“Be with me… be with me…” She waited all of a second, maybe two. “They’re not with me.”

"Ugh!" Rey made a noise of exasperation, then flipped herself neatly to land on the ground. Rocks toppled around her.

“Rey,” Leia said. The general could put so much into a single word: chastisement, acceptance, amusement, fondness. Maybe that’s why she’d become such a powerful leader. “Be patient.”

“I’m starting to think it’s impossible. To sense my parents in the Force. To even remember anything about them,” Rey said, striding toward Leia. "It's been too long."

Rey was frustrated. She needed this. The question of what happened to her parents still lingered in her mind, hanging over her like an albatross. She refused to believe Kylo’s claim that they were just filthy junk traders who sold her for drinking money. That they were dead in a pauper's grave somewhere in the Jakku desert. There just had to be more to it than that, right? Leia warned her that the truth may pose more questions than answers and bring more pain than peace, but at Rey’s insistence that the knowledge would be closure, encouraged Rey to look inward, into the Force, into the deep recesses of her memory. So far, however, the exercise had yielded more frustration than results. It was as if those memories were locked in a vault, behind a firewall that she didn't have the access codes for.

Leia gave Rey a sympathetic look. Her Master always managed to look neat and tidy, no matter how muddy their makeshift base got. Her hair was pulled back into a circlet of braids, and she wore a quilted vest over a brown tunic. Alderaanian jewelry always dangled from her earlobes, wrapped her wrists and fingers. Her eyes were bright and knowing, as always, but Rey had noticed that her movements had slowed recently, as though her bones ached.

She had heard that an attack from the First Order on the starship she was on fleeing the Resistance base on D'Qar sent her hurtling into the void of space, almost killing her. To everyone's knowledge, she made a full recovery, but sometimes Rey wondered...

Leia’s face held a hint of a smile. “Nothing’s impossible.”

Rey smiled back at her and echoed her sentiment. "Nothing’s impossible."

Rey grabbed her blast helmet and leapt to her feet. Rey needed to run. Or maybe hit something.

Leia handed her the Skywalker saber. Rey took it. Then she dashed into the jungle with BB-8 rolling after her.

***

Leia watched Rey sprint away, a hint of a smile on her lips. Training the girl always filled her with pride, but also misgiving. Rey was both a wonderful and an exasperating student. Frustrated with anything she didn’t pick up quickly, completely unaware how fast she did pick things up.

She wasn’t one to judge, though. Leia had exasperated Luke just as much. She treasured those moments with him.

She still used the lessons he taught her every day. Once you touch the Force, it’s part of you always. Over the years, she continued to learn, to grow. There were times on the Senate floor when the meditations she'd practiced with Luke were the only thing that kept her from causing a galactic incident.

He was disappointed at first when she’d left, but he understood.

She felt another life calling to her. A feeling. Visions. Of serving the galaxy in different ways. She gave him her lightsaber and told him to pass it on to a promising student someday.

He'd must have held out hope that she would return to it someday. With a smile Leia thought, he should have known better. Once she made a decision, it was for keeps. Her father— her adoptive one—taught her that.

There was something about growing old that made her connection with the Force even stronger. When the body began to fail, the mind reached out, unencumbered by physical ability. The truth was, Leia couldn’t run through the jungle if she wanted to.

Peace and calm came easily because her body craved them.

Then again, perhaps Leia had never been young. By the time she’d reached the age Rey was now, she was leading a rebellion.

Rey could be a great leader someday, and she would be, if Leia had anything to do with it. The girl had darkness inside her, just like Ben. But Leia would not make the same mistakes she had with her son. She would not give in to fear—neither of the darkness rising within her pupil nor of her own questionable qualifications as a teacher. Most importantly, she would never send Rey away like she had done with him.

Leia turned and began walking back toward the base. She reached out a hand and let her fingers trail through the ferns and broad-leafed creepers that lined her path.

Ajan Kloss held so many good memories. Years ago, she’d trained here with Luke, who had declared it 'Nice Dagobah.' He’d claimed it was as wet, warm, green, and overflowing with life as the planet where he’d trained with Yoda —except it didn’t smell bad.

She stepped into a clearing. To her right, a large tree with a massive trunk reached for sunlight, spreading a canopy of branches that shaded the clearing, keeping anything else from growing except ground creeping ferns and low, sparse grass. Leia had trained right here, in this very spot. She reached out and touched the tree trunk reverently. A large bole of bark had formed around an old wound. It was almost sealed shut.

Leia had been the one to damage the tree. She’d swung for Luke with her lightsaber and missed, slashing into the tree trunk instead.

This tree had been healing itself for more than two decades.

Oh, Luke, I hope I’m doing this right, she thought. Leia was no Jedi Master, but she had learned from the best. And not just from Luke; over the years she’d occasionally heard the voice of Obi-Wan Kenobi through the Force, and even more rarely, that of Yoda.

Some days it had felt as though she’d learned from the Force itself. She was first and foremost a politician and a general, but she had accepted her Jedi legacy and embraced it as best she could.

And maybe that’s exactly what Rey needed: training in the Force not from a formal Master, but rather someone grounded in the everyday minutiae of life and survival. Obi-Wan had failed to keep Vader from the Dark Side. Luke had failed the same way with Ben. She had failed Ben herself by sending Ben away when she could have begun his training, had she not been so wrapped up in her political career.

She could not fail Rey.

Insects sang as she walked. Birds warbled overhead, and tiny amphibians trilled their mating calls. Odd how such a raucous place could be so peaceful. The noise was so loud, so ever-present, and so soothing, it was almost as perfect as silence.

Many years ago, not long after the Battle of Endor, she’d discovered the meditative power of sound. She and Luke had stolen away for some training, and somehow she’d ended up standing on her hands while Luke slung good-natured taunts her way. Even with help from the Force, her shoulders had started to burn, her arms wobble. They’d already spent the last hour sparring with their lightsabers, and her body was exhausted.

 

“You know,” Luke had said, his voice smug, “when I did this on Dagobah, Yoda was sitting on my feet.”

He said that a lot back then. 'When I did this on Dagobah'…It was obnoxious and completely unhelpful. So Leia reminded him, “You’re being obnoxious and completely unhelpful.”

“I also did it one-handed,” he added.

He was trying to provoke her, to teach her a lesson about anger and impatience, and all that nonsense. Luke had forgotten that his student was a superb strategist who’d already benefited from a royal education. Leia would not be provoked.

Instead, she considered. She reached out to the Force, let it flow through her like blood in her veins. A tiny insect began rubbing its mandibles together, whistling a sweet, high song.

Some instinct guided her, and Leia focused on the sound. It was beautiful, pure, ethereal—completely untethered to the worries of leadership and teaching, failure and learning. With focus, and with delight, Leia raised herself off the ground. She floated upside down, feet pointed to the sky.

After a moment, she lifted her arms and held them parallel to the ground.

But she was just a student, new to the ways of the Force, and when she came back to herself, fully realized what she’d done, she whipped her hands back down lest she fall.

She did it just in time. Her form collapsed, and she found herself kneeling in mud. No matter. She’d do better next time.

Leia looked up to find Luke staring at her, mouth open. “Did you ever do that with Yoda?” she couldn’t resist asking.

He shook his head wordlessly.

“I can do better,” she insisted. “Float longer.”

Luke found his voice.

“You’re going to make me a better teacher,” he said.

Not the response she’d expected. “What do you mean?”

He reached down, helped her up.

“Your footwork is terrible,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong, your lightsaber craft is coming along, but… you do other things. Naturally.”

His face turned apologetic. “What I mean is, you’re exceptional. Just… different.”

Then he had smiled, with that wide farm-boy grin that had stayed with him all the way up until the night of the temple disaster.

 

Leia shook off the memory with effort. Memories were coming fast and vivid these days.

She was glad for this one, though. It would be the key to training Rey. Leia and Rey were different, the last remnants of a dead Order, and together, they would carve a new path.

***

Thick green foliage whipped past Rey as she ran, the flag in her hand flashing red with each pump of her arms. She bounded over tangled ferns, dodged hanging vines. Sweat soaked her collar, and her thighs burned with effort.

Even so, running through the jungle was not harder than running ankle-deep in desert sand. She could do this all day.

Rey had already taken out the first two training remotes and captured the flags they guarded. She had leapt a massive gorge, fought blindly over a ravine while balanced on a tightrope made of vines, traversed a thin ridge high above the jungle canopy.

Now the course had her doubling back, where she encountered BB-8. It warbled at her.

“One to go,” she said. “C’mon!”

The final remote eluded her because it was faster. Trickier. More droid than remote. She’d told Leia she wanted a challenge today, and Leia had delivered.

BB-8 sped after her, beeping complaints every time it had to dodge a tree root. Rey hid a smile. She was continually impressed by how well the little droid kept up with her, whether they were running the sands of Jakku, the rocky trails of Takodana, or the jungles of Ajan Kloss. His maneuverability made him the perfect training companion.

He bleated a warning.

“I sense it, BB-8," She slid to a halt.

The spherical remote had stopped and now hovered midair as if waiting for her, or maybe taunting her. It was different from the other two she’d taken out, a wicked red shell surrounding shining metal firing ports. It hummed dark and low—she felt that hum deep in her chest.

Rey unhooked the reforged Skywalker lightsaber from her utility belt and ignited it. Crackling bluish light glowed against the leaves around her as she stared the remote down. She was going to destroy this thing.

Suddenly a blast shot out from one of the ports. Stinging pain exploded in her upper arm. Rey resisted the urge to clutch her arm or even grunt in pain. She deserved it, after all. She hadn’t been ready. Determination is not the same as readiness, Leia would say. 

Well, she wasn’t one to make the same mistake twice. The next time it fired, she whipped up her lightsaber to deflect the blast and sent it flying into the trees.

She didn’t even have a chance to congratulate herself before another blast hit her in the chest. Of course multiple ports meant multiple blasts. She had to focus.

She breathed deep through her nose. Reached out to the Force. The training remote started to buzz around her, flashing angry red as it slung stinging darts in a dizzying array, but she let instinct take over and whirled her lightsaber with equally dizzying speed deflecting every single attack.

Connecting to the Force came easily these days. So easily it was like breathing. But the peace, the calm that Leia was always going on about eluded her. So even though she could counter the remote’s every move, she couldn’t find her opening for attack. Patience, she imagined Leia saying. Wait for your moment…

The remote was behind her, then in front of her, then high above her head, darting through the air like a buzzing insect and if she could just smash it…

The remote sped away and she tore after it. It stopped again, fired a few bolts to goad her. Teeth gritted, she swung her lightsaber. The remote dodged, and her blade missed, slicing through a tree trunk; sparks and leaves and bark splinters rained down as the tree toppled, smashing jungle foliage on its way down.

She leapt over the downed trunk after the remote. Swung again. The remote swooped around as if anticipating the arc of her blade, barely evading when the lightsaber slid through another tree as if it were made of butter.

A roiling dark cloud of frustration grew inside her. She hardly realized what she was doing as raw instinct took over. Rey threw her lightsaber, winging it like a propeller through the air at the red remote. It dodged, and the lightsaber sliced through yet another tree. The remote screamed as it dived for her head, but this time she was ready.

She reached with the Force for a downed branch. It flew into her hand. She anticipated the exact angle of attack, and she whipped up the branch and thrust it into the remote, spearing it against a nearby tree trunk. Her lightsaber returned to her hand with a satisfying smack. The crushed red remote twitched and sparked against the tree. She glared at it as triumph filled her. Maybe patience was overrat—

---

Kylo Ren stood before a black durasteel box that sat atop an obsidian pillar that appeared to be almost like an extension of the polished black floors. He was maskless, his mask resting atop a table that contained the ashes of his enemies. He was in the spartan black and white of his quarters aboard the Finalizer, having returned from Exegol. He had brought with him a data drive with schematics of the Final Order fleet, briefed General Hux and ordered the convening of his Supreme Council. He then ordered not to be disturbed—he would join the Council when they arrived at his discretion. 

Not even his Knights joined him for this occasion, remaining aboard the Night Buzzard as the ship rested inside one of the Finalizer's spacious hangars. He would summon them when they were required.

He opened it, and with a hiss of vapor the fire-warped mask of his grandfather was revealed to him.

Gazing upon the ruined visage of the Sith Lord, Kylo’s mind traveled back to his recent excursion to the Sith planet...

 

The lead cultist, who had given his name as Kharon, High Inquisitor of the Sith Eternal, gave Kylo and his Knights a tour of the vast underground shipyard where the Final Order fleet was constructed. This greatly impressed Kylo, and Kharon then led Kylo to the hangars where the Sith Eternal TIE Fighters were docked, in the Citadel's upper levels. 

Eventually, they came to the Arcane Library, where the ancient Sith texts and artifacts were stored. Kylo came upon an ancient text—so ancient they were written on paper,  yellowing and worn with age.

He opened it and skimmed through it until he came upon a passage. The text was written in runic language of the Sith, ur-Kittât, a language he had only begun to study.

"I've seen this these runes before," Kylo said, showing Kharon. "Carved upon the walls of the Citadel. What do they mean?"

Kharon bowed his head in reverence. "They speak of the Doctrine of the Dyad, my Lord."

Dyad. The word reverberated in his soul. Suddenly, his entire focus shifted to that word. What it was. What it meant.

"Tell me everything," demanded Kylo.

"Dzworokka yun; nyâshqûwai, nwiqûwai. Wotok tsawakmidwanottoi, yuntok hyarutmidwanottoi," intoned Kharon. "There should be two; no more, no less. First to embody power, second to crave power."

"The Rule of Two," deduced Kylo. Snoke had spoke of such things during his teachings.

Kharon nodded. "For a millennium, the Sith have adhered to the Rule of Two, established by Darth Bane. But this decree is said to merely be a pale imitation of its predecessor, the Doctrine of the Dyad. Legends claim that two beings sharing this profound connection gain access to a great number of abilities—skills beyond the grasp of even the most powerful Force wielder."

Kylo's heart raced. A Dyad. 

He turned to his Knights. "Prepare the ship." The Knights hurried off. Turning to Kharon, he said. "Await my return. Then, and only then, the launch will commence. When I return, so too will the Dyad."

Kharon's slit-like eyes widened and he bowed low. "Yes, my Lord."

But Kylo was already a receding figure in the distance. He had no time for ceremony. He had much more important matters to attend to.

They were a Dyad. Him and Rey. They had to be. He knew it with every fiber of his being.

Not a day has gone by that he hasn't thought of her or dreamed of her, nor has he stopped hunting her. The Force would connect them every so often, but those connections were brief and few and far between.

He had been unsure of what to make of the connections: when she had left him on The Supremacy, rage had filled his heart and clouded his mind, and he regarded the connection as a curse. He had found himself just short wishing for her death, for a part of him knew that such a thought was unbearable.

But now Kylo knew their connection was much more. Deeper than Snoke had claimed. Deeper than he and surely she had imagined.

In the short span of time they were united nearly a year ago, they were unstoppable. Two halves made whole. Complete.

A Dyad.

Her. The scavenger. The last Jedi.

And she would be his.

 

With the same certainty and determination he had then, Kylo placed his hand on his grandfather's mask, closed his eyes, and focused, reaching out with the Force...

---

Whispers filled Rey’s ears. No, her very mind. She whirled, seeking their source even as the realization dawned: It was happening again.

The jungle around her faded. All went deathly silent as sweltering darkness closed in, threatening to smother her. An image sprang to mind, and she flinched away, though there was no avoiding the horrible sights.

 

A flash of lightning, a rumble of thunder. A great stone structure, shaped like a giant claw, its bent fingers reaching ever upward. It was a throne, Rey realized then—

"Come back!" cried a little girl, reaching out for a departing starship. It was her—

"Join me..." Kylo asked of Rey as their bare fingertips met from across the bond...

The claw-throne again--

"Please..." he plead of her, holding his gloved hand out in supplication...

A hooded figure sat on that claw-throne as Kylo’s mask flashed subliminally in her mind's eye, blurring her focus. She needed to see the figure's face.

It was her. It was Rey—

 

Quickly as it appeared, the vision evaporated like morning mist, and Rey was left gasping in the jungle. She was so relieved to sense the life and light and humid green around her that it took her a moment to come fully back to herself. She heard beeping, and traced the sound to a felled tree. With a start she realized that beneath it was a very indignant BB-8.

Rey dashed over to the the astromech and scrambled to push some branches away.

“I’m so sorry!” she cried.

BB-8 babbled at her while she extricated him from the fallen trunk —it took a little help from the Force to free the droid completely.

One of the orange discs that protected his modular tool bay had popped off, exposing a dark channel to its motive system.

She’d hurt her friend. Poe was going to be livid with her, but not any more livid than she was with herself.

The little droid warbled at her.

“Yes, BB-8," Rey sighed. "It happened to me again.”

He whirred at her, part question, part empathy.

She had received flashes of dark, disturbing visions, images of places and devices that she had never been or have seen before. All she knew was that Ben...Kylo Ren was involved, and that disturbed her even further. But how could she explain that to BB-8?

She looked beseechingly at her astromech friend. “I have visions of things that frighten me. I don’t want to lose this… Leia …my friends… I don’t want to let them down."

There it was. Her greatest fear. That these people she’d come to care for so much would be disappointed in her. Maybe even hurt by her. She’d been alone for so long… she couldn’t bear the thought of losing any of them.

“But no one here understands…except Kylo Ren," Rey continued, even though the little droid couldn't possibly have had the answers for her. "If the son of Han and Leia can be turned, can’t any of us?"

Ben... Kylo Ren. He meant for her to see that vision, she knew that much for sure. For what purpose, however, Rey didn't know.

Even after all these months, on opposite sides of the war, Rey still found herself thinking of him, dreaming about him, worrying about him. At times she'd find herself in the same room as him, and the feelings she tried to keep under the surface would boil over and before she could do anything about them...he'd vanish.

"Oh, Ben... what are you up to, now?"

A twig cracked, and Rey looked up. Snap Wexley and Rose Tico were walking toward her, questions writ all over their faces.

“How much of that did you hear?” Rey asked guiltily.

“Of what?” replied the portly and bearded X-Wing pilot Snap, failing to look innocent.

“Nothing,” Rey mumbled.

Rose’s expression softened with empathy. The commander of the Engineering Corps had a disarming quality about her. Whenever she spoke to Rey, it was all Rey could do to keep from spilling all her fears and worries to her friend.

“You okay?” she asked.

Rey fumbled for a convincing reply. “Yes, of course, I was just doing…”

“Jedi stuff,” Rose finished for her.

Rey nodded. “Yeah.”

Thankfully, Rose chose not to press her. She said, “The general asked for you.”

Rey took a deep breath. It was decision time. Should she tell Leia about her dark vision or keep it to herself?

Chapter 4: The Sinta Glacier Colony

Their base on Ajan Kloss was barely cobbled together. Consoles sat outside, exposed to the elements. A massive cave provided some shelter for sleeping, and an old rebel blockade runner called the Tantive IV—currently grounded while awaiting replacement parts—served as command quarters for Leia as well as a communications center.

Rey, like many Resistance fighters, had chosen to sleep on a cot tucked against a wall of green jungle near the entrance. A footlocker, a workbench, and a lot of mud completed her personal “quarters.” Still, it was better than sand. Besides, she liked sleeping out in the open, her subconscious constantly monitoring the comings and goings around her. It was a reminder that she was part of something. That she wasn’t alone anymore.

Rey told Leia after all—at least part of it—and she was so glad she did. The general thought her vision might even be important enough to send her out for confirmation once the Falcon returned. Leia was considering it, anyway.

So Rey knelt on the ground near her workbench to do some aspirational packing. Leia and BB-8 watched as she shoved rations and supplies into her bag. Okay, mostly rations.

Her Resistance friends were always complaining about the food, saying it was tasteless and unsatisfying, but Rey had no idea what they were talking about. She’d never eaten so well in her life, or so often. She always kept a few nutrient packs stuffed under her cot, though. Just in case.

She eyed the unfinished lightsaber on her workbench. It wasn’t ready yet, and the one she’d painstakingly repaired—the Skywalker saber —didn’t really belong to her. So her quarterstaff would have to suffice as a weapon. Which was just fine. It had served her well on Jakku for years.

In fact, someday, once she had mastered this lightsaber-building business, she might design one that felt more like a quarterstaff in her hand. Familiar and hefty. Two business ends. Maybe with a hinge in the middle for portability.

She’d learned a lot about lightsabers by reforging Skywalker's. Luke's ancient Jedi texts had offered some guidance—like how to repair the kyber crystal—and her experience building daily tools from scavenged parts plus a little help from Rose had provided the rest. Rey was confident she’d eventually finish her own from scratch, even though there was no one to teach her how.

“Do you know where the vision came from?” Leia asked as Rey crammed one more ration bar into her pack.

“I wish I knew… but I can’t tell what the vision was. It…” Words failed her. How to describe something so intense? So strangely personal? That she was sure Leia’s son was the source of them?

Rey hefted her bag and stepped toward Leia, carefully avoiding a power line snaking across the bare ground.

“I’m listening,” Leia prompted.

“I didn’t finish the training course. I let the visions distract me. I’m just not feeling myself. I know it looks…it looks like I’m making excuses.”

Leia’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t tell me what things look like. Tell me what they are.”

Maybe trying to tell Leia about her vision had been a mistake after all. “I think I’m just tired. That’s all.”

Leia gave her an arch look that made her feel like the worst liar who had ever been caught lying.

Rey was relieved to be interrupted by Lieutenant Connix’s voice. “General?”

Leia looked over. The blonde Kaydel Ko Connix wore her hair in braids now, wrapped around her head like a crown—just like Leia. A lot of the young woman were doing that, but Rey was willing to bet Leia hadn’t noticed that her Alderaanian hairstyle had started a trend.

“The Falcon still hasn’t arrived,” Connix reported. “Commander’s asking for guidance.”

The general would have to go deal with that, so Rey grabbed the Skywalker saber and handed it to her. She always returned the lightsaber to Leia. The lightsaber had called to her on Takodana, and had served her well against Kylo Ren on Starkiller and in a temporary alliance with him on the Supremacy against Snoke's Praetorian Guards, but it was always meant to go back into Luke’s hands. And with Luke gone, that lightsaber was the only thing Leia had left of her brother.

“I will finish my training,” Rey told her. “One day.”

BB-8 beeped a question, which coaxed a smile out of Rey. “No, you can’t do it for me.”

“Never underestimate a droid,” Leia said with a hint of a smile.

Then she headed off after Connix, her family's lightsaber in hand.

“Yes, Master,” Rey murmurred at her back. BB-8 whirred at Rey, and she knelt before it.

“I tried,” she said in a near-whisper. “But… I couldn’t tell her the whole truth. Who knows what she’d think if I did?”

Rey had tried. Truly. She’d opened her mouth, but the words had caught in her throat. How do you say something so horrible aloud?

BB-8 beeped again, a little more demanding.

“No, I tell you everything. Let’s get you fixed.”

Rey headed through the base toward the mechanic’s station. She’d look for Rose first. If Rose wasn’t available, she’d fix BB-8 herself, so long as she could get her hands on the right parts.

BB-8 rolled after her, chirping sadly.

“Oh, don’t worry about them," Rey assured the astromech. "They’re just picking up parts. I’m sure our friends are fine.”

***

They were not fine. Poe braced himself for the next hit. They were losing, their soldiers crushed by the onslaught, their enemy gloating in their faces. He loved to see them suffer. He gave them a sly look as he started to make a move… then changed his mind.

“Are you ever going to go?” Poe said to Chewbacca, as the towering Wookiee studied the dejarik board. They sat around the table, Chewie on one side, Poe and Finn on the other. It was a long ride in the Millennium Falcon to the Sinta Glacier Colony, and they had to pass the time somehow. This was their third game. On the last mission, they’d played two games. Before that… well, Poe had lost track.

“He can’t beat us every time,” Finn said.

“And yet, he seems to,” Poe grumbled.

Finn’s eyes narrowed. “How does he do it?”

“He does it because he cheats,” Poe said.

Chewie roared in offense.

“I’m kidding!” Poe said, hands up in surrender. “You’re two hundred fifty years old. Of course you’re better than us.”

“Just make a move already,” Finn said.

The Falcon beeped, indicating that they were nearing their destination.

Chewbacca rose from the dejarik table, moaning with insistence.

“Of course we’re not going to turn it off,” Poe said, trying to appear affronted.

“Don’t worry,” Finn assured the Wookiee.

Chewie left and headed toward the cockpit.

Once he was out of earshot, Poe murmured, “He’s cheating.”

“Definitely,” Finn agreed with a grin. It was moments like this that he felt like he belonged. Having long forgotten his true name, the only purpose he ever had prior to meeting Poe was as a loyal stormtrooper to the First Order as FN-2187. When he had decided to rebel against the First Order by refusing to massacre a village on Jakku, and solidified it by rescuing the hotshot ace pilot of the Resistance from the First Order ship he was imprisoned on. In that short amount of time, FN-2187 and Poe Dameron became best friends, with Poe even giving him his chosen name.

They both reached the dejarik board at the same time and turned it off.

Poe followed Chewie, passing R2-D2 on his way to the cockpit, who was trying to fix a pesky short that had been working its way through the Falcon’s electronics ever since their last mission. “Artoo, I hope you got that surge fixed!"

He reached the cockpit as the Falcon came out of lightspeed in front of a massive, mountainous asteroid made of ice.

With a nod to Chewie, he dropped into the pilot’s chair.

From the viewport window, he could see its comet origins in its uneven surface, the way gas lifted off it like fog. It seemed small, its chasms merely cracks on a glowing white space lump. Just as he hoped, the Falcon detected no sign of pursuit. Poe aimed the freighter toward the rendezvous point and plunged toward the mining colony.

Finn passed the entrance to the cockpit and headed toward the top hatch to get ready for their pick-up.

Based on the sparks flying out of the panel that R2-D2 was repairing, they’d been lucky on their last assignment. If the Falcon had suffered one more hit, they would have been a pile of flaming debris.

Well, maybe it wasn’t really luck. He and Poe and Chewie made a good team. A great team, on those rare occasions when Rey accompanied them. But Rey had more important things to worry about now.

“Force” things that Finn was doing his best to understand. He’d seen what Rey could do, sensed how important she was to their cause. But he had to admit, when he was out here, and she was back on Ajan Kloss, he missed her.

Poe had taken the Falcon into the Sinta ice tunnels, where water vapor and mining processes created a bit of atmosphere. The ship felt wobbly beneath Finn’s feet, as though it was fishtailing. Not Poe’s fault, he was certain. These asteroids were tricky.

The Falcon lurched to a stop.

“I’m opening the portal!” Finn called out to Poe.

Finn hit the release, and the round hatch above him revealed a dim icy corridor, a wash of cold, moist air, and the greenish-yellow face of an Ovissian with a wide, horn-to-horn grin.

“Boolio!” Finn called out. Boolio was a mine overseer who’d been siphoning surplus minerals to Resistance-friendly transports for months. Finn himself had picked up shipments twice.

“What’s so important?" Finn asked. "You got the regulator?” 

Leia needed the regulator desperately to get the Tantive IV in top flying shape once again, but these old-model parts were hard to come by, and this was one of the few they’d been able to track down. It was also the cheapest.

Boolio shook his head.

“No part,” he replied. “We have a new ally. A spy in the First Order!”

Finn’s mouth dropped open. “Who?”

“No idea, but the news is bad. Transfer the spy’s message to your droid!” Boolio urged, the regulator already forgotten.

Boolio tossed down a data cable. Finn grabbed it.

“Any idea at all who—” Finn began.

“They wouldn’t say. But someone left a datafile in my office after the last First Order inspection.” He looked back over his shoulder nervously.

Finn gestured at R2-D2, who rolled toward him. He inserted the cable into the droid’s dataport. All the while, his mind was racing.

This was why Boolio had insisted they come all the way across the galaxy for the regulator. This was why he’d told them the part was critical, that it wouldn’t last long. It was a rare piece, sure, practically an antique. But Boolio’s urgency had seemed excessive, especially in relation to the rock-bottom price he was offering.

Now it all made sense. Somehow he’d gotten a message from a First Order spy. And as a mere mine overseer, he didn’t have access to a secure frequency. His only choice was to draw them here in person by promising a part that didn’t really exist.

“Please hurry,” Boolio warned. “If they knew to leave the message with me, then someone in the First Order knows I’ve been in contact with the Resistance.”

Which meant the First Order could return at any moment. Finn found himself tapping the side of his thigh, as if to hurry the transfer along. Old tech, low temps… who knew what kind of shape that data cable was in? They could be here for hours…

From inside the bridge, Poe slouched in the pilot’s seat. He didn’t understand what was taking Finn so long. They had to retrieve a part, pay Boolio, get the hell out of here. That was it.

The Falcon’s sensor beeped aggressively, startling Poe from his slouch. He gaped at the console. Was he reading this right? Twenty-something objects approaching from all directions. TIE Fighters, based on the size and speed.

“Finn, we’re about to be cooked!” He started flicking switches, getting the Falcon ready for a hot exit.

“We’re almost there!” Finn called back.

Get there faster, Poe thought as he looked for ways out of this trap. Options were limited and growing fewer by the second.

Exactly how hard was it to grab a single replacement part?

Down at the top hatch,  R2-D2 beeped that the transfer was complete. Finn yanked the cable from the droid’s dataport.

Boolio pulled it up fast, hand over hand, saying, “They found me. Go, now!”

“How can we repay you?” Finn asked. They’d brought untraceable currency, on Leia’s insistence. The Resistance had a reputation for paying fair, and she would never jeopardize it. But it wouldn’t be nearly enough to trade for First Order intel.

“Win the war!” Boolio said, and then he slammed the hatch shut—

—just as Finn heard the familiar scream of approaching TIEs.

He dashed past R2-D2 and burst into the cockpit.

“I’ve got bad news!” he told Poe.

“I’ve got worse,” replied Poe. “Get to the turret!”

Finn scrambled for the turret guns as Poe maneuvered the Falcon through the vast chasms of Sinta Glacier Colony.

Blue-black ice streamed past in a blur, interrupted occasionally by massive machinery.

The chasms were testing his skills to their limits, but they also provided an opportunity. The TIEs chasing them were keeping up so far, but he was the better pilot.

He and Chewie just had to hang on long enough for the TIEs to make a mistake and hit a wall, or better yet, for Finn to pick them off with the turret.

If only Rey had come along. Then they’d have two operational turrets, and those TIEs wouldn’t stand a chance.

A blast tore at the Falcon, nearly throwing him from his seat.

Chewbacca moaned.

“Finn!” Poe yelled. “You’re supposed to be getting rid of those TIEs!”

A TIE jerked out of its flight path and spun into the wall of ice, where it became an exploding fireball.

Chewie roared at Poe.

“I got one,” Finn retorted.

“What do you mean both rear shields?” Poe snapped to Chewbacca, ignoring Finn.

An alarm in the cockpit began screaming. Poe reached to flick it off. Chewie growled something at him.

“What?” Poe asked impatiently.

Chewie pointed ahead and slightly to the side, where an enormous mining structure jutted from the ice wall. They were seconds away. This was the opportunity Poe had been hoping for.

“Chewie, good thinking.” Poe said, diverting all remaning shield power to the top, because for this to work, they’d have to cut it very close.

“Finn, we can boulder these TIEs!” he hollered toward the turret station.

“I was just thinking that,” Finn hollered back.

This kind of maneuver was tough to pull off in the light gravity of a small celestial body, but he was Poe Dameron, renowned Resistance pilot.

He flipped the Falcon neatly, lining up the shot. Finn spun the lower turret to shoot straight ahead. Not quite yet, buddy… you have to time it just right…

“Now!” Poe yelled.

Finn fired. Metal groaned against metal as the machinery broke away from the wall.

The Falcon roared under it just as it tumbled, crashing into the three TIEs. Explosions lit up the chasm on all sides, turning the ice walls to fire.

Finn whooped. “Now get us back to base!”

But their celebration was short-lived. More TIEs appeared in the cockpit viewport. Too many.

Ahead was a sheer wall of ice, dirty with machinery and slag. There was nowhere to go. No way to… Poe got a terrible idea.

“How thick do you think that ice wall is?” Poe said.

Chewie roared, leaving no doubt what he thought of Poe’s plan.

Finn braced himself as best he could in the turret seat as Poe engaged the throttle.

The TIEs were nearly on them. The ice wall loomed straight ahead; where did Poe think they could go? They were definitely going to die.

The Falcon’s engines roared, and Finn squeezed his eyes shut.

His last thought before they hit the wall of ice was that at least he wouldn’t die a stormtrooper.

The impact wrenched his neck. Metal screeched, Artoo squealed, and the freighter shook like a leaf in a hurricane.

Suddenly they burst into open space. Finn didn’t even have time to take a breath of relief before Poe engaged the hyperdrive. The Sinta Glacier Colony disappeared into a stream of light.

The TIEs would follow; they had the technological capability now. There was no getting away.

Chewie roared so fast it was hard for Finn to understand.

“Poe’s about to what?!” Finn yelled toward the cockpit.

Chewie moaned that the pilot was about to do nothing good.

In his nearly three hundred years of life, Chewbacca had seen a great many things and had flown with a great many pilots, but few were as reckless as Poe Dameron, and that included the late Han Solo, the former owner of the Falcon and one of Chewie's dearest friends. That was saying something.

"Hyperspace skipping?! Are you kriffing kidding me?!!" shrieked Finn from the turret pod, his dark skin growing red from panic.

“Don’t worry, buddy,” Poe said, and Finn wasn’t sure if he was talking to him or the Wookiee. “We have the fuel for it. Besides, Rose installed gravimetric compensators to make these quick jumps safe.”

“Safer,” Finn clarified between gritted teeth. “The compensators make jumping slightly safer.”

“That’s what I said," Poe snapped. "Hold on!”

"Don't do it again!" Finn screeched as the The Falcon jumped to lightspeed for another skip. 

Moments later, the ship popped out of lightspeed into a massive cavern-like structure dripping with sparkling, ship-killing stalagmites. A bright star reflected daggers of light from the crystal columns into Finn’s eyes, but Poe maneuvered through them neatly.

The TIEs that popped into view around them weren’t so lucky. Several exploded before Poe jumped right back to lightspeed.

Finn felt a little sick to his stomach. "No more!"

The Falcon then entered a bright space filled with shining white towers—the readout screen identified the Mirror Spires of Ivexia—and their reflective surfaces made it hard for Finn to tell which ones were real or how many TIEs were still in pursuit. Poe barely avoided collision as more TIEs crashed around them.

Another jump, this time landing them in the middle of the Typhonic Nebula.

The giant, tooth-rimmed maw of a massive space creature loomed before them.

“How do you know how to do this?!” Finn shouted.

"Well buddy, it's quite simple. You just plug in the coordinates and you-" Poe explained. 

Chewie roared his disapproval.

“Yeah, well Rey’s not here, is she?” Poe shot back. “Okay, last jump, maybe forever!”

"I take it back! I don't care how it works!" hollered Finn. "I just don't want to die!"

Artoo rolled uncontrollably across the bridge, squealing indignantly the whole time.

The Falcon lurched into hyperspace, as the last of the TIEs rammed itself down the creature’s gullet.

"Relax, relax. We lost them," Poe announced. "We're home free, buddy!"

Chewbacca grumbled in gratitude, leaning back in his seat.

Finn stumbled jelly-legged to the bridge, slumping into a chair. "Poe."

"Yeah, buddy?" replied Poe as they found their bearings.

"If you ever, EVER, do that again, I will throw you out of the nearest airlock, and Chewie here will help me. Right, Chewie?" Finn warned.

Chewbacca roared his agreement, and the three burst out laughing as they made their way back to the Resistance base, thanking the Force for their good fortune.

***

The Jedi texts were strewn across her workbench, and Rey was poring over them for the hundredth time. Luke’s added notes on training had been invaluable to her and Leia.

C-3PO had translated much of the rest, which had helped Rey learn about the history of the Jedi and the Sith. But some of the writings remained a mystery, their language too old or too secret to be in even Threepio’s databanks.

The odd thing was that some of the mysterious notations were in Luke’s handwriting, which meant they had been carefully ciphered on purpose.

Rey’s friend Beaumont—a former historian and current Resistance intelligence officer—had been working to help her unlock these portions, and Rey hoped to find the answers soon together soon.

In the meantime, she was looking for a clue in the translated texts, anything that might help her interpret her vision.

Or better yet, something that would help her find peace. Now that the Force was awake inside her, she had more questions than ever before, about Luke, her connection to Kylo, the Jedi of the past, the nightmarish visions that haunted her.

If she could embrace Leia’s calm, she was certain the visions would stop altogether. She’d sleep better, train better, become a Jedi to make Leia and her friend s proud of her.

Leia heard her brother’s voice once in a while; she’d said as much. But he never revealed himself to her. Rey didn’t want to consider too hard why that might be. Their relationship had been so strained on Ahch-To. His guilt over Ben Solo's turn to the Dark Side into Kylo Ren and the loss of his Jedi temple had made him bitter and jaded. He refused to train her. Something had made him change his mind, and he came to help the Resistance escape in their most desperate hour.

She wasn’t even sure she knew what it meant for a Jedi Master to die. A remnant of Luke remained—she could feel it.

No one's ever really gone, Leia had told her.

But she didn’t understand it. Sometimes the gaping void of what she didn’t know overwhelmed her.

She itched to be in the fight, but the girl from Jakku was still inside her, and that girl yearned to survive.

Leia was right; she had to prepare herself. How could she possibly learn all she needed in time? One thing about her visions was absolutely clear: The fight would soon come to her, whether she was ready or not.

“Rey!” Nimi Chireen called, startling her from her thoughts. “Falcon’s back.”

Well, that was a relief. Rey had started to legitimately worry about her friends.

“Thanks, Nimi," replied Rey.

Nimi was a new pilot who’d just been given charge of her own fighter. Poe thought she had great potential.

Rey hurried over to the landing area, which was no more than a cleared space in the middle of the jungle. Good thing the Falcon could land on a credit chip.

She stopped short when she saw the old freighter, and her heart clenched.

Black smoke curled up from the engines. Scorch marks streaked the hull. The sub-alternators were a writhing mass of charred wires and warped housing. What had Poe done?

The pilot himself was striding down the ramp, and she briefly forgot to be angry. She was just glad to see him back safe.

“It’s on fire!” Poe was yelling, as droids and mechanics started hosing down the smoking bits. “Whole thing’s on fire. All of it. On fire!”

He spotted her approaching. “Hey!”

“Hey!” she called back. “I heard there’s a spy?”

Poe seemed a bit haggard, sweat sheening his brow, his beige shirt and brown pants blotched with oil stains. He’d apparently done his best to conduct some emergency repairs on the trip back.

“Really could have used your help out there," he said as soon as he caught sight of Rey.

“How’d it go?” she asked.

“Really bad," replied Poe.

Something sparked under the Falcon’s belly. “Han’s ship…”

Poe’s face fell even farther when he spotted BB-8 and his dislodged tool-bay rim. “What did you do to the droid?!"

“What did you do to the Falcon?!” Rey retorted.

“Falcon’s in a lot better shape than he is!" Poe roared.

“BB-8's not on fire!" Rey roared back.

“What left of him isn’t on fire,” snapped Poe.

What was Poe talking about? It was just a tool-bay cover!

“Tell me what happened,” demanded Rey, trying to change the subject.

“You tell me first!” Poe pointed a finger at her. 

She gave him a humorless smile. “You know what you are?”

“What?” Poe raised an eyebrow in challenge.

“You’re difficult," Rey said through her teeth. "You’re a really difficult man.”

“We’ll, you’re…” Poe made a noise of exasperation.

“Rey!” came Finn’s voice from inside the Falcon.

“Finn!" said Rey excitedly. "You made it back!”

Finn was descending the ramp, and his face lit up as she approached.

“Barely,” he said with a boyish grin. Finn had grown his hair out a bit in defiance of First Order regulation, and wore a uniform of blue trousers with brown stripes that went into brown boots, a brown long-sleeved shirt, and an open khaki vest. In general, Finn had become easier in his own skin in the months after Crait.

BB-8 warbled at Poe, telling him about the training mishap, while Rey wrapped her arms around her friend in a tight hug.

Letting Finn fly off and put himself in danger without her was one of the hardest things about Jedi training. She was always so relieved when he returned in one piece.

“Buddy, look at you,” Poe lamented, inspecting BB-8’s damaged casing.

“Bad mood?” Rey asked Finn.

“Me?” he asked in reply.

“No, him,” she said, with a nod toward Poe.

“Always,” Finn said, drawing the word out with a flourish.

“Do we have a spy?” asked Rey.

Chewie interjected with an outraged, multisyllabic moan.

Rey’s eyes widened. “Lightspeed skipped?”

Finn winced. “Oh, boy…”

“I got us back, didn’t I?” interjected Poe.

“The compressor’s down,” accused Rey.

“I know,” Poe snarked. “I was there.”

“You can’t lightspeed skip the Falcon!" Rey chided. How could Poe take that kind of risk with one of the Resistance’s most precious assets? Besides, she loved that ship…

“Actually, it turns out you can,” Poe countered, unblinking.

“Guys,” groaned Finn, trying to sound reasonable. “We just landed.”

“What happened?” Rey demanded.

“Bad news is what happened,” Poe said.

Rey felt her frustration build. She understood that Poe had just been through something, but she needed information.

She turned to Finn. “Did we make contact with a spy or not?”

“Yeah. We got a mole in the First Order.” Finn confirmed. “They sent us a message.”

Poe started to head off, but he couldn’t resist throwing some final words at Rey over his shoulder: “You dropped a tree on him.”

“You blew both sub-alternators,” she slung back.

“Guys,” moaned Finn in exasperation.

“Maybe you should be out there with us" yelled Poe, rounding on her.

He was good and angry now, but Rey could sense it had little to do with BB-8. “You know I want to be!”

“Rey…” Finn pleaded.

“But you’re not,” Poe shook his head. “You’re here training for what?”

He took a deep breath, as if considering. Rey could see the exact moment he decided to give it to her straight. “You’re the best fighter we have. We need you out there, not here.”

Rey sighed. Poe was always trying to get Rey on more missions as of late, as if her commitment to Jedi training made her any less committed to the Resistance cause. She could understand his concerns and frustrations, but he could never understand the Dark shroud that hung over the Force and how important it was that she was ready to face it as the sole Force sensitive in the Resistance.

"Hey hey hey! Alright guys!" Finn interrupted. "The First Order intel is being decrypted as we speak."

Finn turned to Poe. "Which means that you'll be needed for debriefing."

Poe nodded, and gave Rey a dirty look as he finally walked away.

"I'm sorry about him. Believe me, it was a rough trip. He'll get over it," Finn said once Poe was out of earshot.

"I bet," Rey shrugged. "I suppose we're all on edge."

"Yeah," sighed Finn. "Sleeping better?"

"Eh," Rey replied. She wasn't.

"I bet we'll be more on edge once we find out what the hell is going on," Finn predicted, trudging up to the base with Rey.

Optimism was an asset in the desert, but Rey couldn't help but agree.

Chapter 5: Threat of the Final Order

The Resistance quickly convened in their ranshack "command center" under the Tantive IV as word of the Falcon's return spread, and quiet fell over the crowd as Poe held court.

Commander D’Acy as well as the diminutive alien Maz Kanata stood by Leia. Ancient by well over a thousand years, 'the pirate queen's' knowledge of the Force was vast, and with the ever growing spectre of the Dark Side, she had decided to leave her smuggler's den of a castle on the planet of Takadona to officially join the Resistance, despite her millennia long stance of neutrality.

"They call it the 'Final Order'. The largest fleet the galaxy has ever known," said Poe gravely. "It was begun by the Emperor during the days the Empire, continued by Snoke over the past couple decades, and inherited now by Kylo Ren. Soon, attacks on all free worlds will begin.”

Rose frowned. “Wait… do we believe this?”

Chewie warbled something.

“In the Unknown Regions,” Poe answered. "The fleet was constructed by the Sith Eternal— Sith loyalists on a planet called Exegol.”

Rey’s eyes flew wide. Exegol.

R2-D2 danced in place, demanding that C-3PO tell everyone about Exegol.

“The planet does not appear on any star chart,” the protocol droid began, but Rey was hardly paying attention. She had seen a passage about it in the Jedi texts. She was sure of it. Beyond that, she felt it may have something to do with her visions. “But legend describes it as the hidden world of the Sith.”

Exegol. Rey had to get back to the Jedi texts. She slipped away while the others continued to talk and sprinted up a rise to the rocky bit of ground that made up her 'quarters.'

As she reached her workbench, she heard Commander D’Acy say, “This Sith Eternal.... they must have been behind Snoke's rise to power and the formation of the First Order."

“They've been out there all this time,” Poe agreed. “Picking up where the Empire left off.”

“Always,” came General Leia’s voice. “In the shadows. From the very beginning.”

“If we want to stop Kylo Ren,” Maz said, her gentle voice penetrating the din with quiet authority, “we must find the Sith Eternal. We must find Exegol.”

Rey rummaged around in the crate where she kept the Jedi texts. Where was it? She tossed one aside. Then another.

Threepio flicked the switch on a holodisc.

Ships in miniature manifested above the holo disc. They were tiny and blueish, giving little clue to their actual scale. But there were so many. They were like stars in the night sky.

Aftab Ackbar, son of the legendary late Mon Calamari Admiral Gial Ackbar, was shaking his head. “They’ll crush us! My father warned this day would come.”

Rey dug deeper into the crate. The text she was looking for had a large round seal on the front... There! She grabbed it and rushed back down to the group.

They hardly noticed when she returned. Everyone’s faces had fallen. They were all thinking the same thing.

“We’re not ready,” lamented Beaumont. “Only half our ships are working. We have no large-scale weapons.”

Rose raised her chin. “So we fix them. Fast.”

“Friends,” Leia said, her voice commanding attention. “This is the only moment that counts. Everything we’ve fought for is at stake.”

“If this fleet launches,” warned Beaumont, “freedom dies in the galaxy.”

Softly, Rey interjected: “Master, er, General. May I speak with you?”

***

Leia wouldn’t have minded if Rey had chosen to show her findings from the Jedi texts to everyone else, but Leia had a feeling that their discussion would include more than what she’d found in there. So they were alone in Leia’s quarters, one of the texts open before them.

“I know how to get to Exegol,” Rey said, her finger tracing as she searched, “because your brother wrote about it in the Jedi texts.”

Leia perked up. “Tell me!”

“Luke searched for it. He nearly found it.” Rey spotted what she was looking for and brought the book closer. “There are ciphers here I can’t read, but he said, ‘to get there you need one of these.’ A Sith Wayfinder.”

She pointed to a drawing of a pyramidal object. Rey looked up at Leia, eyes wide. “They lead the way to Exegol.”

Leia’s breath came fast. If Luke had already been searching, then they simply had to find his trail and pick up where he’d left off. This gave them somewhere to start. It gave them hope.

“If we’re to find this fleet,” Rey continued, “to stop what we both feel is coming, I need to finish what Luke started. Find Exegol.”

Now Leia’s breath came fast for a different reason.

“No,” she choked out. Rey wasn’t ready. There was so much left for the girl to learn! If Rey left too soon, she could be drawn to the Dark Side. Leia had sensed her pull to the Dark, the same way she had sensed it in Ben years ago.

But as Rey’s eyes continued to plead with her, Leia had to face the truth: Rey needed more training, it was true. But the real reason she couldn’t bear to see the girl go was that she’d grown deeply fond of her. Luke had told her that the Master-Padawan bond was strong.

“What have I been training for if not for this?” Rey reasoned. “I don’t want to go without your blessing. But I will.”

Leia was still shaking her head.

“I will,” Rey insisted. “It’s what you would do.”

Leia had no answer for that.

***

After Rey left, Leia sat heavily on a couch inside her cavern quarters. Ramifications were hitting from all sides. The massive fleet Ben—he would always be Ben to her—had discovered could mean an end to the Resistance, the end of hope for the galaxy.

Unless the Resistance stopped him, the Sith would rise again.

The Sith had undoubtedly been planning this for years. Maybe generations. The Emperor and her biological father, Darth Vader, should have been the last of them.

But when one fell, another rose. Always. First Snoke, and now her own son seemed poised to take the mantle.

She flashed back to Rey, to the girl’s bleak face as she’d attempted to explain her dark vision. Rey was holding something back, but Leia wasn’t the kind to push that sort of thing. It wouldn’t be good leadership. People were ready when they were ready.

But if Rey’s vision had anything to do with the rising Sith fleet, maybe she should make an exception and push a little more.

In any case, they had to do something. Now. Before Ben could claim Darth Vader’s legacy once and for all.

It’s just that she was so tired. She’d hoped to have a little more time… to train Rey in the ways of the Jedi, to train Poe in the ways of command, to see Finn and Connix and Rose all grow into the great leaders she knew they could be.

But she did not have the luxury of time, or rest, or even regret.

Leia sensed Commander D’Acy at her back.

“We have to do something,” she said to her friend.

D’Acy was a middle-aged blond woman who was far too high-ranking and qualified for the grunt work she’d taken on to get their base operational. But she’d also become a friend and adviser to Leia.

Between D’Acy and Maz Kanata, there was the occasional day when Leia could almost forget her grief over losing Amilyn Holdo. Almost.

“We’ll think of something,” assured D’Acy, her voice full of understanding.

“Last time we sent for help, no one came,” said Leia. “No one answered the call.”

Even as she said the words, she had to concede to herself that it wasn’t that simple. Thanks to some risky assignments led by Poe, Rey, Finn, and Snap, they’d learned that the First Order had been doggedly pursuing their sympathizers, restricting communications, cutting off supply lines, capturing or even assassinating allies. In short, no one had answered the call because very few had even heard it.

That day on Crait had been Leia’s darkest moment. She’d thought the spark of hope had died. She remembered sitting down in the old rebel outpost, exhausted, out of options, while her own son came for her blood. The First Order deployed a siege cannon that would make short work of the armored hangar doors. They were all going to die, and the Resistance with them.

And then her brother had appeared. Luke had distracted the First Order long enough for them all to escape, and their small remnant had survived to carry on the fight. Since then, they’d been reestablishing contact with old allies, calling in favors, recruiting everyone sympathetic to their cause.

Maz Kanata joining up had been a huge win, for instance—she had more connections in more places than the rest of them combined. They were growing. They were almost a force to be reckoned with.

She’d been wrong to lose hope that day. She wouldn’t make that mistake again.

Leia stood to go. There was work to be done.

***

Rey had barely finished packing when Maz found her at her workbench.

Maz was tiny and unassuming, but her warm wide eyes and compelling voice made Rey want to do anything Maz asked of her. She braced herself.

“Leia and Rose will stay behind to plan the attack on the fleet,” Maz told her. “But there can be no attack until you’ve completed Luke’s mission. To find Exegol.”

Rey’s heart raced. She knew she had to do this. She wanted to do this. But she wasn’t ready. “Maz, I might be a danger to the mission—to everyone. I’m afraid that I—”

“There is no one else,” Maz said, somehow managing to sound gentle and firm at the same time. “The search for Exegol is a task for a Jedi.”

Rey glanced at the pieces of her unfinished lightsaber. Maz had urged her to take the Skywalker saber long ago, when Rey found it beneath her castle on Takodana. Maz had seen what Rey would become before anyone else.

“I’m not a full Jedi. Not yet. I’m not as strong as Leia thinks.”

Maz leaned forward. “You won’t know how strong you are until you know how strong you have to be.”

Rey shook her head. “The Dark Side has plans for me. If I go, Kylo Ren will find me.”

Maz was not impressed by that in the least.

“You have faced him before,” she reminded her with a dismissive wave.

Rey’s voice dropped to a near-whisper. “It’s not him I’m afraid of.”

Maz studied her a moment. Finally, she said, “To find the darkest place in the galaxy you will need to face the darkest part of yourself.”

Somehow she knew what Rey was up against. Somehow, Maz always knew.

“You must go,” Maz urged. “The Force has led you here. You must trust in it. Always.”

***

Rey disconnected a fuel hose from the Falcon. Rose had worked miracles, getting the compressor back online, repairing the sub-alternators. Rey herself had buffed out some of the scorch marks and fine-tuned the rear shields. The ship was nearly prepped and ready, and anticipation buzzed in her limbs. She was moments away from being behind those controls again.

She’d run a few assignments with Finn and Poe when they’d first established the base on Ajan Kloss, but for months now she’d been stuck here, training, training, training. Poring over the ancient Jedi texts with Beaumont’s and C-3PO’s help. Working on first the Skywalker saber and then later her own lightsaber. But she yearned to see space again. To get back in the fight. To feel truly useful.

Wiping her hands, she cut around the Falcon toward the on-ramp, and nearly ran into Rose.

“Thank you,” Rey said to the mechanic. “I can’t believe how fast you got this ship ready.”

Rose smiled. “You know I’d do anything for you and the Falcon.”

There were so many things Rey ought to say to her. She settled for “You’ve been so kind to me. You and Beaumont, Connix and Snap…”

Rose’s smile faltered and became an accusing glare. “Why does it feel like you’re saying goodbye forever?”

“I’m not! I just…” Rey didn’t know what she was trying to say. Before she could figure it out, Rose enveloped her in a hug.

“Me too,” she said to Rey. “Now go do your Jedi stuff.”

After a final squeeze, Rose headed toward the Falcon for a last-minute inspection of the ship’s landing gear.

Rey was about to grab a crate and load it onto the ship when Poe nearly collided with her.

“So you got her up and running,” Poe said.

“You were right before,” she blurted. “I can’t stay. I’m gonna pick up Luke’s search for Exegol.”

“Yeah, I know,” Poe said, giving her shoulder a friendly smack. “We’re going with you."

He hollered back into the Falcon: "Chewie, did you get that compressor fixed?”

Chewie brayed that Rose had helped him.

Rey stood, mouth agape, as Poe grabbed a crate of supplies and started helping Chewie load the ship. Before she could formulate a response, she caught sight of Finn approaching. Him too?

Rey grabbed Finn’s shoulder and yanked him close.

“I need to go alone!” she cried.

He nodded. “Alone with your friends.”

“No," Rey shook her head. "It’s too dangerous, Finn.”

Poe and Chewie drew near, BB-8 rolling after them.

Finn lifted a chin at them in acknowledgment. To Rey he said, “We go together.”

Chewie loudly agreed with Finn.

BB-8 beeped his own insistence on going.

“I wholeheartedly agree,” C-3PO said.

Rey looked around at them. Poe was giving her an arch look, as if daring her to contradict them. Finn was as earnest and determined as always. Chewie just seemed impatient to be off.

Her friends. She was terrified for them all. But she couldn’t keep herself from smiling.

Knowing something in her head was different from knowing it in her heart. Rey had understood on some level that she wasn’t alone anymore, but now she knew it, and it was so wonderful it hurt.

Tears filled her eyes. Loneliness was a kind of agony. But belonging was another.

***

While they’d packed their things, Beaumont had been doing some final research. Now Rey and her friends gathered with him beneath the jungle canopy to go over what he’d learned.

Beaumont Kin was a slight, sandy-haired man who appeared younger than his years. He wore a mud-speckled field jacket and always carried a holstered blaster—on strict orders from Rose and Connix, who insisted that even an academic had to have a good blaster at his side. He was once a merry man, but the war with the First Order had hardened him.

He bent over a console table, Jedi texts arrayed before him. The pages of one had started to curl up at the edges, thanks to the moisture in the air.

Once they learned all they could, Rey was determined to have them scanned and preserved properly. Some kind of hermetically sealed container, maybe. Surely Leia could spare the resources for that?

“I’ve analyzed Luke’s ciphers,” Beaumont said. “Learned a little more about the Wayfinders.”

He pointed to a familiar page from one of the texts, the one with the drawing of a pyramidal object.

“Ancient things,” Beaumont said. “Only two were made; one for the Sith Master, one for the apprentice.”

"The Emperor and Darth Vader," Rey deduced.

Beaumont nodded.

Rey peered closer. She’d always found the markings on the Wayfinder odd. Circles with lines leading away from them, like crude navigation charts.

Beaumont pointed to some ciphered text. “Luke was on the hunt for the Emperor’s Wayfinder, but his trail went cold on a desert world called Pasaana.”

“In the Middian system?” asked Finn.

Rey had heard the name. She’d once met a junk dealer at Niima Outpost who made regular stops in the Middian system.

“You been?” Beaumont said. “Can’t get a decent meal there. At least Pasaana’s unoccupied.”

Finn frowned, and Rey knew exactly what that frown meant. For now. Unoccupied for now.

“So we start on Pasaana,” decided Poe.

“Yes,” Beaumont agreed. “Luke left coordinates. They point to the Forbidden Valley.”

Well, that didn’t sound foreboding at all.

***

Leia, came Luke’s voice.

“No, Luke,” Leia whispered back.

It’s time, Luke said. He’d been pleading with her for a while now, and his voice was relentless. As if it came from within her very own soul.

“Not just yet," Leia replied firmly, and Luke’s presence faded.

She stood in her quarters, holding Han’s Medal of Bravery. She’d had it with her since the day their son had killed him. She wouldn’t be surprised if someday her thumb wore a path through the engraved medal, so often did she find herself rubbing it back and forth, lost in memory.

“When you gave that medal to Han, how could you know?” came another voice at her back, just as relentless, almost as dear. Maz Kanata.

Leia turned. Maz was holding Luke’s lightsaber. Once again Leia was struck by how someone so tiny could have such a formidable presence. Maz filled every room she was in.

“How could you know where your life would take you?” Maz said. When Leia didn’t answer right away, Maz waved the question away with a flick of her fingers and changed the subject. “I know you fear Rey’s pull to the Dark Side. To him. That your son may be her undoing. Or she his.”

Leia frowned. Maybe she’d shared too much with Maz.

“But as you have often reminded me,” Maz went on, “the future is uncertain. The girl must find her true path.”

Something about that hit home. “True path…” Leia murmured.

Had Ben’s turn set him on his true path? Leia was resigned to what had happened, but she couldn’t believe it was his true path. And she couldn’t believe it was Rey’s, either.

Yet something about Maz’s words pestered her. She knew this feeling. The Force was trying to tell her something. About Rey and her journey. About Ben's.

“Your spirit is strong, my friend,” Maz said. “But you are not well. Your body grows weaker and weaker. Give her your blessing."

Leia sighed. Being blown off the bridge of the Raddus into the vacuum of space had taken a toll. She had saved herself that day through the power of the Force, but her body had paid a steep price.

She offered the Skywalker lightsaber to Leia, who took it sadly. Leia realized then why she was so afraid. It wasn’t just Rey turning to the Dark. It was about Rey’s life. Ben's life. was just as afraid for her son as she was for Rey. Could Rey stand up to Kylo Ren? If she couldn’t, would she be sending Rey to her death?

And if she could, would she be sending Rey to kill her own son?

“You must. While you still can,” Maz added. “While there is still hope.”

***

Everyone was saying their goodbyes. Rey looked around, the finality of it all like a weight in her gut. It was possible they wouldn’t come back from this. How could the skeleton crew of a single ship discover a way to defeat the greatest fleet the galaxy had ever seen?

It seemed ludicrous. But it was their only play. 

“Rose, last chance!” offered Finn.

Rose took his hands. “The General asked me to study the specs of the old destroyers. So we can stop the fleet if you find them.”

“If...?” Finn raised an eyebrow.

Rose smiled. 

“When," Rose finally said.

Finn grinned back. “When.”

They hugged tightly, and Rose said, “We’ll be on long-range. Take care of Rey.” After a moment, she added, “Take care of yourself.”

She glanced over at Rey, who lifted her chin in acknowledgment.

Rey would have loved to have her company on this mission, but Leia was right: Rose was needed on base. In addition to studying Star Destroyer specs, Rose would be doing everything she could to get what ships they had in top fighting shape.

Rey watched as Finn and Rose shared a quiet moment of goodbye together. They shared a tender kiss and touched foreheads, and Rey had to look away, an odd, indescribable feeling of longing overcoming her.

Rey watched them hug again, murmur their "I love yous", still feeling a oddly left out. Because there was someone she despearately wanted to say goodbye to, but she wasn’t sure how to go about it. Rey had been alone for so much of her life. Having relationships with people was a new skill, far more difficult to learn than floating rocks with your mind or fighting remotes with your lightsaber.

Uncertain, Rey turned and looked around the base. This mess of jungle and wires and exposed terminals had become home, and it would be harder to leave than she thought.

She loved the foliage, the way rain collected on broad waxy leaves, the scent of loamy soil. Green, she had decided—the color of jungles and forests and grass and life—was her favorite.

“We should get going,” came Poe’s voice. When he noticed her staring off into space, he added, “What is it?”

“Nothing,” Rey replied, a soft and gentle lie.

“Rey?” came another voice, and relief filled her. Leia.

She hurried toward the general, blurting, “There’s so much I want to tell you!”

Rey should have told the truth about her vision.

She should say how much Leia’s mentorship had meant to her. Thank her for giving her a place with the Resistance and letting her make the Falcon her own. Tell her how much she admired—

“Tell me when you get back,” Leia said.

The general’s hands came up, offering her the Skywalker saber.

Gingerly, Rey took it. Luke’s lightsaber always fit so perfectly in her hand. Like two pieces of a puzzle clicking together.

Leia was entrusting Rey with her family's lightsaber once again, just as she entrusted her with it on her journey to Ahch-To. The lightsaber was meant to go back into Luke’s hands then, but he had refused it and Rey ultimately had to take it up in an attempt to turn his nephew Kylo Ren back to the Light—which resulted in his ascension to Supreme Leader and the split of the Skywalker saber.

That mission failed. This one couldn't. Rey could only hope that Leia’s faith in her was well-placed, because she wasn't sure.

As if she could sense Rey's trepidation, Leia reached for her and hugged her tight, like she never wanted to let go.

Rey closed her eyes, absorbing Leia’s strength and calm. They stood together a long moment.

"Rey," Leia whispered. "Do what you can for him, but stay true to yourself. He'll only find his way back if he chooses to."

Rey bit her lip. She had barely mentioned him since Crait, but Leia could see right through her. She knew. And she still hoped.

Rey felt tears well up in her eyes, but she swallowed them down and Rey tightened her embrace before they parted.

"May the Force be with you," Leia began, taking Rey's face in her hands.

"Always," finished Rey, and the two exchanged a meaningful look before Rey nodded and set off towards the Falcon, walking past C-3P0, who was saying his goodbyes to his long time astromech companion, R2-D2. 

C-3PO bent over R2-D2, speaking with uncharacteristic softness.

“In the event I do not return,” he said, “I want you to know: You have been a superb friend, Artoo. My best one, in fact.”

R2-D2 responded with a sorrowful whir.

BB-8 rolled up and exchanged beeps of goodbye with his fellow astromech.

Rey smiled to the three and waved to Artoo, and the astromech beeped its final goodbye as her, Threepio, and BB-8 made their way up the ramp, closing it behind them as they went to the bridge. Rey settled into the pilot’s seat inside the Millennium Falcon. Beside her, Chewie huffed a warm greeting. They locked eyes, and she smiled.

“It is,” she responded. “Let’s take her up.”

Poe and Finn entered the cockpit, followed by C-3PO and BB-8.

Her skeleton crew. The best crew.

As they lifted off, Maz and Leia stood together on the jungle floor, watching them go. Leia’s heart ached. It was just like watching Ben leave to go train with Luke. Like watching Han go off on a mission without her. It was like saying goodbye to part of her own self.

“If she finds Exegol,” Maz said, “she may just survive.”

Like Leia, Maz occasionally caught glimpses of people and places, presents and futures, through the power of the Force. Like Leia, she rarely understood what they meant.

“But if she doesn’t,” Maz added, “the galaxy will surely not.”

Leia had done her best to hide her worry from Rey, if not her affection.

That girl might be their last hope.

And Ben's.

***

The last of Kylo Ren's Supreme Council had arrived to the Finalizer via shuttles from their assorted Star Destroyers. 

The Supreme Leader would address them in due time. But first things first. He’d gotten word that a spy had been captured. He knew exactly how to deal with spies.

He donned his mask once more, summoned his Knights to his quarters, and then the sinister septet charged down a corridor of the Finalizer, a phalanx of sweeping black robes and black masks.

Stormtroopers and officers flinched away as they passed. He barely paid them any mind. 

They came to a halt before Captain Peavy, an Imperial veteran who ran the bridge of the command ship with impressive professionalism, maintaining a rigid, unimpeachable posture while on duty. 

Behind Captain Peavy, stormtroopers approached, dragging something between them: an alien with yellow-green skin and four horns—two large horns wide against his skull, and two smaller ones hooking under his mandible. He wore an orange mining thermal suit and a defiant expression.

“Supreme Leader,” Peavy acknowledged. “The Ovissian Boolio. Captured at the glacier colony, sir. A traitor.”

Kylo did not hesitate. He ignited his lightsaber and brought it down in a single fluid motion. The traitor’s head fell. One of its horns smacked the corridor floor with a resounding thunk.

***

All his officers were already seated around the table of the Supreme Council conference room—Generals Domaric Quinn, Enric Pryde, Armitage Hux, Bellava Parnadee, Amret Engell, and a handful of others—when Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, flanked by his Knights, strode inside.

During Snoke's reign as Supreme Leader when the Council was simply known as the First Order High Command, Snoke would have simply communicated with them by hologram, but Kylo preferred to speak with his Generals in person. When the situation called for it, that would require them to come to him. They would have nowhere to hide, none of the security a Star Destroyer would provide them. It would just be them, and him.

Kylo didn't call these meetings often, though. Since becoming Supreme Leader, he had grown to loathe these type of meetings, the politicking, power grabs, the never ending game of oneupsmanship these petty people play. He'd much prefer to fill his roundtable with his Knights, but the truth of the matter was that the Order simply could not run without these people.

The atmosphere of the chambers changed when Kylo and his Knights entered, the small talk and joking over, replaced by nervous muttering and fearful staring.

Lieutenant Dopheld Mitaka, whom Kylo viewed as too timid to be an officer— but too amusing a whipping boy to kill— was serving General Hux tea as they waited.

"We have a traitor in our midst!" Kylo began, slamming Boolio’s head down onto the table. They all flinched, he noted with satisfaction. Mitaka's metallic tea tray clanked around in his hands, but the young officer didn't drop it. Kylo turned his back to them and walked toward the viewport.

“He should find it more difficult now,” he said, gazing out at the stars, “to deliver messages to the Resistance.”

Kylo waited for all his officers to take a good, long look at the severed head before he added, “General Hux has reported to you the details of my journey to Exegol.”

Well, not all the details, of course. Little about the scavenger. But they’d been briefed about the fleet they’d discovered there, that Kylo Ren had been made ruler of the Sith Eternal and would commandeer everything for the First Order.

“The First Order is about to become a true Empire,” Kylo added triumphantly.

Silence around the table. Green liquid oozed from the alien’s head and pooled on the surface. Mitaka, ashen and shaken, refused to look at it, instead staring fixedly at Kylo and his mask.

Kylo turned slowly to Hux, drawing out the silence to uncomfortable levels. “I sense unease about our beheaded guest, Lt. Mitaka."

Mitaka blinked. “N-no, sir. Well done.”

"Well, you wouldn't mind removing the traitor from our sight, then?" Kylo sneered, gesturing to Boolio's oozing head. "He's making quite a mess on our conference table."

"N--not at all, S-Supreme Leader," replied Mitaka, though his entire demeanor suggested the opposite.

With shaking hands, Mitaka put the tea tray on the table, tucked the teapot under his arm, placed Boolio’s head on the tray, and stumbled towards the door. He avoided the intimidating gazes of the Knights, but Ushar still made an aggressive feint toward him that made Mitaka drop everything with a resounding clatter. With everyone's eyes on him, he scrambled to gather the head and the teapot on the tray. He quickly exited the conference room.

Drawing the silence out, Kylo turned back to his generals.

“These allies on Exegol,” came General Quinn’s voice. “They sound like a cult. Awaiting the return of the Sith. Conjurers and soothsayers."

His voice dripped with contempt. Quinn was old enough to have been a junior officer in the Empire, and he had little patience for anything that even hinted at religion or mysticism. Quinn made it a point to voice his opinions on the matter when the subject arose, much to Kylo's annoyance. He’d have to get over that if he wanted to keep his position.

Kylo studied his officers. Quinn’s words seemed to have made the rest uncomfortable, especially Hux, whose expression had gone completely taut.

General Pryde, a elder statesman from the days of the Empire who was part of a second wave of leadership that Snoke had kept in reserve in the Unknown Regions after the unveiling of Starkiller Base, spoke up.

“They've conjured legions of Star Destroyers,” he pointed out. “The Sith fleet will increase our resources ten thousand fold. I see this as a sure victory for the Order.”

Pryde turned to General Hux.

“Such range and power will correct the error of Starkiller Base,” he said, leaving no doubt as to whom he thought responsible for that debacle.

Kylo grinned under his helmet as he watched the ginger-haired Hux squirm. He hated Hux, and Hux hated him, but Hux’s impressive—albeit messy— track record as a general made him too valuable to kill. 

"The 'error' of Starkiller Base, General?" General Hux spoke up indignantly. "Need I remind you that 'the error' obliterated the entire Hosnian system and the New Republic? As I destroyed solar systems, what, pray tell, were you doing as you hid in the Unknown Regions?"

There. Hux’s cunning and shap tongue was the reason why he became and remained the highest ranking officer on the command ship. Kylo kept him close to keep his eye on him—to ensure Hux was plotting against enemies of the Order and not him.

Pryde was just about to angrily retort when Kylo silenced the room with a raised hand. With Kylo's penchant for using that very hand to violently strangle subordinates with the Force, even a simple movement was a threat.

"You have something to offer, General Parnadee?" said Kylo.

“Why yes, Supreme Leader. I believe we’ll need to increase recruitments,” the dark-skinned General Parnadee pointed out with more than a hint of glee. “Harvest more of the galaxy’s young—”

General Engell, a fellow woman, nodded in agreement. Parnadee had doubled recruitment already after the death of Phasma had left a void in that area of responsibility. Kylo appreciated her enthusiasm.

“This fleet,” interrupted Quinn. “What is it… a gift?”

Kylo’s helmeted head turned slowly towards Quinn. The man’s insolence was vexing him to no end. One more word...

“What are they asking for in return?” Quinn pressed. “Do they—”

Kylo thrust out his arm, calling on all his anger, all his impatience. General Quinn flew high, slammed into the ceiling. Something in his body fractured loudly, but it didn’t matter if the internal wound was mortal or not because Kylo kept him stuffed against the ceiling, gasping like a fish out of water, gradually choking to death.

"They ask nothing! I am their king! I am their god!" Kylo stared his officers down. They were all visibly shaken. Good.

“Prepare to crush any worlds that defy us,” he spat out, clenching his fist to squeeze the last of Quinn’s air out of his lungs, deflating his organs like a balloon. The general fell to the table, dead. Red blood trickled from Quinn’s skull, mixing with the green ooze left by Boolio’s head. "Or suffer his fate."

Casually, Kylo turned to his Knights as the surviving officers scattered from the room like rats, retreating to their shuttles, taking them to their Star Destroyers in order to carry out his command. “Prepare the hunt for the scavenger. She will soon be mine."

He wanted to kill the past, yes. Rule supreme over the galaxy, certainly. And the massive fleet on Exegol would help him do it. 

But the ambition that cut into his being was the thought of reigning side by side with her. With Rey. They were connected. A Dyad. They had defeated Snoke. Together they would be invincible.

Chapter 6: The Forbidden Valley

The Millennium Falcon made it's way through the Pasaana atmosphere and to the desert below to a smooth landing, guided by the expert flying of Poe Dameron and Chewbacca.

"We're here, folks," Poe announced, powering down the Falcon.

Finn peered out the window, shaking his head. "Another desert. I hate deserts."

Rey stood up from her seat, beckoning BB-8 to her. "Tell me about it."

"Deserts are old hat for me, I'm afraid," C-3PO commented. "I'm not quite fond of it myself. It gets everywhere. It's coarse, rough, irritating..."

"You're coarse, rough, and irritating," Poe teased.

"I beg your pardon?" Threepio replied.

Chewie chuckled as they exited down the ramp of the Falcon and into the dry heat of the desert.

By virtue of spending most of her life in the desert, Rey quickly adjusted and maneuvered through the sand dunes. Begrudgingly, her human, droid, and Wookiee companions followed.

Pasaana reminded her so much of Jakku that it gave her an unexpected pang. The sand was redder in color, and the air smelled tangier, as though life thrived here in a way it didn’t on Jakku.

But the sun was just as relentless, the sand just as insidious, the wind just as dusty and dry.

How had she ever survived in a place like this? With no green anywhere to be found? Without the protective embrace of humidity? Without good Resistance-requisitioned boots and a freighter full of water stores parked nearby?

Rey peered through the quadnocs at the endless ocher desert of the Forbidden Valley.

“You sure this is it?” Poe asked at her back.

“Oh, yes,” Threepio answered. “These are the exact coordinates that Master Luke left behind.”

Poe opened his mouth to speak, but a colossal drumbeat pierced the sky, so deep it thrummed in Rey’s chest. It was followed by a single syllabic thunderclap, as though a giant crowd shouted a word in unison.

“What was that?” Poe said.

They all crept forward, following their ears. Rey knew how tricky things could be in the desert. The wind and sand and snaking buttes made it nearly impossible to tell which direction a noise was coming from.

Threepio waddled forward faster than all of them. “It sounds like the end of a local Aki-Aki prayer—” he began.

“Shhh! Threepio! ” Finn warned.

The drum sounded again, rolling into a series of beats like a coming storm. Then a mass of voices rose in joyful chorus, and the desert was suddenly filled with alien music that was as beautiful as it was startling.

“Why it is!” Threepio exclaimed. “We happen to have arrived the very day of their Festival of the Ancestors!”

Rey’s heart was already sinking by the time they rounded a rocky outcropping to reveal a wide valley stretching below them—and the unspeakably huge crowd of Aki-Aki gathered there.

Tens of thousands, whirling about in their cloaks, waving colorful flags. No, hundreds of thousands.

Kites and banners floated in the air, tents and canopies provided spots of shade, and everywhere were cloaked figures, their movements marking them as not-quite-human. They danced and mingled, sang and ate, bought wares and sold them, from the near edge of the valley, all the way to the world’s rocky horizon.

For a “forbidden” valley there sure were a lot of beings down there.

“This only happens once every forty-two years!” Threepio informed his companions in delight.

Poe grabbed the quadnocs from Finn and peered through them.

Even without the ’nocs, a few figures at the valley’s near edge clarified in Rey’s view. They were indeed humanoid, with double, prehensile trunks and thick skin well suited to sun and sand.

All at once the Aki-Aki flowed together like a wave and broke into a celebratory dance centered on a circle of bonfires. Brightly colored smoke rose from the fires, yellow, red, and teal dominating.

Building-sized treadable vehicles circled the entire camp, their massive treads kicking up sprays of sand.

Rey would have found it all inspiring and beautiful, if it were not so disappointing. Picking up Luke’s trail would be nearly impossible in this giant crowd.

“Well, that’s lucky,” Finn grumbled.

“Indeed!” Threepio agreed cheerfully, taking the wrong meaning. “The festival is known for its colorful kites and delectable sweets!”

One by one, they turned to glare at him.

Again, the protocol droid completely misunderstood their meaning, and waddled around to look behind him.

This was going to be much more difficult than they thought.

***

General Hux strode down the corridor of the command ship, barely keeping pace with Ren and his Knights and their bass-drum boot steps. They were always around now, stuck like adhesive to their master, Kylo Ren.

Hux hated the fact that he couldn’t see their faces behind their masks. Maybe they had something to hide. They were probably hideous, scarred beyond recognition. It was cold comfort.

Hux had to update Kylo on their progress, or rather lack thereof. Hux hated being the messenger boy, but he was one of the few officers that were able to deliver bad news without getting their head lopped off with a lightsaber or getting choked to death with the Force.

“Sir,” reported Hux. “No leads yet, but the search for the girl continues.”

Kylo stopped and whipped around to face Hux.

“There’s no time," he snapped impatiently, the mask distorting his voice.

Hux distrusted masks on principle, but he was glad for Kylo’s because it spared him the indignant assault of the Supreme Leader’s hair. A good leader led by example, and Kylo’s hair was the furthest thing from regulation. A small detail, to be sure, but details mattered, and this one represented everything Hux hated about Kylo Ren. He was the exception to everything. Outside the rules. Disordered.

When Hux finally took his rightful place as Supreme Leader, the first thing he’d do was make Kylo cut off his hair.

Wasting no time, Kylo abruptly turned on his heels and continued on. "I’ll need to locate her myself.”

“Yes, Supreme Leader,” agreed Hux at Kylo’s back. “When she’s found, I’ll personally take the kill squads to—”

“The Knights of Ren will lead this hunt, General Hux. There is no room for error!" snarled Kylo, curling his fingers like claws. Hux felt a catch in his throat—an invisible warning.

“Scan all systems for a Corellian YT-1300,” Kylo said to his Knights as Hux coughed for air. “The Millennium Falcon is the ship she’ll be in."

Hux fell to his knees. Kylo released him, and Hux rose to his feet in the corridor, massaging his throat as he watched his hated rival stride away from him, the Knights close at his heels.

The threat on the scavenger girl's life had triggered that vociferous reaction from Kylo. Kylo cared little about anyone, but evidently he cared for her.

Rubbing his throat, Hux grinned to himself. He may have just found the crack in Kylo Ren's armor. A weakness to exploit.

Hux was a shark, and he smelled blood in the water.

***

Few paid them any mind as they wandered through the festival. Though the vast majority of attendees were Aki-Aki, it appeared species from all over the galaxy had come to the celebration.

Poe and Finn scanned the crowd, unsmiling, focused, all business. A clue had to be here somewhere. If they looked hard enough—stay alert, stay smart, Poe had said—they’d figure out their next move.

But Rey found it hard to pay attention to the task at hand. The dancing was beautiful, so full of life and color, flowing like water, joyful.

She saw a tiny Aki-Aki girl stumble in the crowd. Her parents shot forward to rescue her, yanked her up and cuddled her close before she could come to harm. The little girl went right back to dancing as though nothing had happened, without a care in the world because she had others to care for her.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” breathed Rey in awe.

“I’ve never seen so few Wayfinders,” Finn replied drily.

“There are always random First Order patrols in crowds like these,” Poe reminded them. “Keep your heads down. Especially you, Chewie.”

Chewie obliged by hunching over, but Rey wasn’t sure it made him any less noticeable.

“Let’s split up, see what the locals know,” Poe said.

He and Finn headed off, but Rey’s legs were rooted in place when she heard the name "Skywalker." A group of Aki-Aki were performing a puppet show, reenacting a scene from the Battle of Crait where the projection of Luke Skywalker stood down a AT-AT Walker. The children stared wide-eyed, sometimes laughing. A mother dressed in bright pink sat with them, holding her infant in her arms. Unlike the adults, the little ones didn’t possess long, bifurcated trunks but rather stubby little noses and plump cheeks. Rey thought they were adorable.

Something tugged on her tunic, and she looked down to find a young Aki-Aki girl in a green robe trying to get her attention. Rey knelt to eye-level before her.

The girl held a trinket in her hands, made from woven jute strands and beaded with colorful grain—some kind of corn, maybe.

Rey allowed her to place it around her neck. The Aki girl chattered the whole time, in a language Rey had never heard in all her years on Jakku.

BB-8 warbled at the girl, and Rey translated: “My friend’s asking what the fires are for?”

C-3PO repeated the question in the Aki language, and the girl answered without hesitation.

“Their ancestors live in the fire,” C-3PO said. “This is how they show their gratitude. She says her name is Nambi Ghima.”

Rey smiled. "I'm Rey.”

Nambi asked a question, and C-3PO translated: “She would be honored to know your family name.”

Rey’s smile froze. She honestly hadn't given it much thought. She wasn't even completely sure 'Rey' was her real name. It was just the only name she knew. “I... I don’t have one. I’m just Rey.”

The words echoed in her head. Just Rey.

Her gut twinged with a sudden warning. She’d learned to trust this kind of warning, ever since connecting with the Force. She stood, seeking its source.

All at once the sky darkened, as though day changed to night in the space of a moment. The bonfires were suddenly bright, casting the Forbidden Valley in ethereal light. The sounds of the festival faded. Something rumbled deep in her chest, something angry and desperate and… familiar.

Then the festival was gone, whisked away and replaced by endless sand, whipped into flurries by the wind.

She sensed him before she saw him, the familiar thing, as close as her own breath. It was Kylo Ren, black clad as always, his cape sweeping the ground. He stared at her in foreboding silence through his mask. The mask was different now, a patchwork of wicked black pieced together with angry red lines.

Her skin dimpled with sudden cold. This wasn’t a vision. It was a Force connection, and with the connection came a certainty that turned the blood in her veins to ice: He’d been looking for her.

“That necklace suits you, Rey,” he said, simply and without preamble in that modulator that made his already deep voice even deeper.

It did something strange to her, to hear her name on his lips. Had he ever spoken it aloud before? She couldn’t remember… Still, she refused to oblige him with small talk.

“I offered you my hand once,” he said in that maddeningly calm voice. “You wanted to take it.”

Rey didn’t deny it.

“Why didn’t you?” he asked.

“You could have killed me,” Rey countered. “Why didn’t you?”

“You can’t hide, Rey. Not from me.”

Now that the shock of seeing him again was wearing off, Rey began to notice other things. Like the fact that his voice carried an undercurrent of tension, or maybe even regret. That his cloaked form cast a shadow on the desert floor, as though he were really, truly there with her.

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

She imagined that moment as clearly as she could, Han’s hand on Kylo’s cheek, gazing at his son with love even as his dying body slumped over the chaotic red lightsaber that had skewered him and fell into the abyss.

Rey wrapped her mind around the image. Threw it at Kylo.

He flinched.

Then he threw an image right back at her. Tally marks, scratched into the wall of her downed, sand-filled AT-AT. “Do you still count the days since your parents left? Such pain in you. Such anger.”

He began walking toward her. She steeled herself.

“Where are you?” he asked, reaching for her mind, grabbing something before she could barricade her thoughts. “Somewhere that reminds you of home on Jakku. Of waiting for parents that would never return. The ache of being alone.”

She would not show weakness. She would not let tears fill her eyes. She would not.

“My mother doesn’t see the darkness in you,” he went on relentlessly. “Your friends don’t, either. But I do.”

And that was Kylo’s mistake. Because he was deeply wrong about all of it. Leia knew about her dark visions, about the rage and impatience that always threatened their training sessions. Maz knew it, too.

She opened her mouth to tell him to go kiss a rathtar, but he moved too fast, into her space so that he loomed over her. He smelled of molten iron.

“I don’t want to kill you,” he said. “I’m going to find you, Rey. When I offer you my hand again, you’ll take it.”

Not a chance.

“We’ll see,” she snapped.

Before Rey could blink, he ripped the necklace from her neck, leaving her nape stinging.

The ground tilted. The empty desert disappeared, and Rey was back at the festival, Aki-Aki whirling around her. A tall male approached, a yoke around his neck that branched out into a magnificent display of wares—grain jewelry, colorful fans, candies.

Her fingers drifted to her neck, to the empty space where the necklace should have been. Her nape still smarted.

It had been their most powerful Force connection yet. Even when she’d been in the hut on Ahch-To and their hands had met, it had been nothing like this—so vivid, so dangerously palpable. This time, they’d been in each other’s spaces.

While she’d been occupied with Kylo, the crowd had pushed in around her, separating her from her friends. She dodged the merchant, searching for the droids—there!

She waved at them to follow as she hurried off in the direction she’d last seen Poe and Finn and Chewie. She had to reach them now. She had to get her friends to safety.

She spotted Chewie first; even slouching he was at least a head taller than anyone else in the crowd. He stood with Poe and Finn just outside a tent, talking to one of the locals. She wasted no time.

“We have to go,” Rey said, interrupting their conversation. “Back to the Falcon, now.”

“Where were you?” demanded Poe.

But Finn read her face and instead asked, “What’s wrong? What happened?”

“Kylo Ren,” she replied worriedly. “He knows we’re here.”

Or at least he would soon enough.

Poe and Finn did not question or hesitate. They took off around the tent, heading in the general direction of the parked Falcon. BB-8 rolled along with them as C-3PO struggled to catch up.

They’d find another way to investigate the Forbidden Valley. After dark, maybe she could send C-3PO to—

They almost collided with a stormtrooper, who whipped up his blaster.

“Hold it right there!” he ordered.

They froze. Rey began reaching for the Force.

Over his comlink, he added, “I’ve located the Resistance fugitives. All units report to—”

Suddenly there was a resounding crack. The stormtrooper’s head jerked backward, an arrow shaft sticking out of his left eye lens. He toppled into the sand, where he twitched once, then went completely still.

They whirled, seeking the source of the arrow. A tall helmeted figure stood just inside the tent, holding back the flap with a walking stick. In the other hand was a scoped dart shooter that looked like a smaller, lighter version of Chewie’s bowcaster.

“Follow me,” came another modulated voice, but not as deep as Kylo Ren's. Friendlier, also. “Hurry.”

Rey exchanged quick glances with her friends, who all nodded, and they set off after the helmeted figure.

He hurried in the opposite direction, away from the Falcon, but he’d just saved them a lot of trouble so no one protested. That had been an amazing shot, which meant they were in dangerous company. It had happened fast enough that the stormtrooper had been unable to relay their exact location.

So Rey hoped they were doing the right thing by trusting the stranger.

They passed C-3PO, who was still hurrying to catch up to them.

“Oh, slow down!” the droid protested to their backs. “What sort of friends are you?”

The helmeted figure weaved through the crowd, leading them to one of the giant treadable vehicles. The entirety of the vehicle sheltered within its massive treads—the huge drum wheels, the cabin, the entrance portal. It sparked with familiarity; the propulsion system, the drive shaft, even the hanging cargo nets all reminded her of the speeder she’d cobbled together on Jakku, even though this vehicle was ten times the size and lacked any repulsorlift.

Whatever happened to her old speeder? she wondered to herself. A Teedo had likely grabbed it. No, that miserly Crolute Unkar Plutt had undoubtedly scavenged it for parts. He probably hadn’t even waited a day after Rey was gone.

The helmeted figure hurried them through the entrance into the hot, claustrophobic cabin. Supplies and trinkets dangled from the ceiling, and the drive shaft ran right through the center, barely allowing enough headroom. Threepio was the last to board.

“To the east passage, Kalo’ne!” the helmeted figure called to the driver.

The treadable jerked, then lumbered forward. This was no getaway vehicle; it was much too slow. But it did get them out of sight and away from the last location where they’d been spotted.

The First Order would inevitably find them again, but Rey dared to hope they’d bought themselves some time.

Their mysterious rescuer was putting himself at great risk to help them.

“Leia sent me a transmission,” the stranger said. "And I could never say no to her."

Finn perked up. "Who are you? How’d you find us?”

The figure reached for his helmet and lifted it from his head, revealing aged dark skin, close-cropped hair flecked with grey, and a handsome, mustached grin.

“Wookiees stand out in a crowd,” the man chuckled.

Chewie roared a name and practically leapt over Finn to reach the man.

Lando? Rey thought. Well, no wonder. She’d heard so much about him from Leia and Chewie. The Falcon had once belonged to him!

Chewie grabbed Lando in a hug, lifting him from the ground, nearly crushing the poor fellow.

Lando just laughed. “Good to see you, too, old buddy!"

“This is General Lando Calrissian!” C-3PO announced from behind them. “Allow me to give you a complete history of—”

“We know who he is, Threepio,” interrupted Rey, looking back at him.

“It’s an honor to meet you, General,” nodded Finn.

Chewie talked fast, and Finn frowned. Finn had been working hard to learn Shyriiwook and Binary—Rey was impressed with how fast he’d picked them up—but he still struggled to understand when things got intense.

“Yes, Leia told me to keep an eye out for you,” replied Lando.

“General Calrissian, we’re looking for Exegol,” added Poe, hurrying the small talk.

Lando froze for a split second, but then he softened with resignation. “Of course you are.”

***

“You’re certain, My Lord?” Trudgen asked.

“It was her,” Kylo insisted. Strange how his Knights could doubt the power of the Force, after everything that had happened. Or maybe it was him they doubted. “Once the necklace is analyzed, we’ll know exactly where she is."

Tishra Kandia hurried toward them, Rey’s necklace dangling from her hand. Kandia was a top intelligence officer, and one of the few who never balked at his orders to expend First Order resources to find the girl.

“Sir,” reported Officer Kandia. “Microanalysis says this comes from the Middian system, Pasaana, Forbidden Valley.”

Kylo felt a surge of hope. He’d have to move fast. Their Force connection had alerted Rey to his intentions, and she’d flee Pasaana as soon as she’d gotten what she’d come for—whatever that was.

Kylo turned and headed toward the TIE hangar.

“Prepare the Whisper and alert the local troops,” he ordered the Knights. “Send a division. I want them alive.”

"Alive, My Lord?" questioned Vicrul.

"The Knights of Ren don't take prisoners!" roared Ushar. The other Knights murmured in agreement, stepping forth in a clear challenge.

Kylo halted. Disobedience and mutiny was something he could not, would not tolerate. If he gave in to his Knights now, they would overrun him. He must enforce his dominance! In a fiery flash, he spun around and drew his lightsaber, leveling it at each of them in turn.

"The First Order takes prisoners, and so will you, so long as I am Master of the Knights of Ren," hissed Kylo. "Challenge me if you dare..."

The Knights backed off, each declining to challenge him. As one, they bowed in submission.

Satisfied, Kylo Ren turned and resumed his trek toward the hangar.

***

Lando Calrissian leaned forward so they could all hear him over the rumble of the treadable.

“ 'Bout twenty odd years ago, Luke and I were chasing down a real scoundrel. He tried to snatch away Han and Leia’s boy, Ben. So naturally we wanted to find out why,” he explained.

Rey startled at the sound of Ben's name.

Lando activated his wristlink, showing a holo of a creature that seemed not-quite human, with yellow skin, large black eyes, soft features, and some kind of cybernetic headgear. He didn’t look dangerous at all, but Rey was suddenly filled with a strong sense of hatred at the sight of him.

“His name was Ochi of Bestoon. A Sith assassin and thief since the Clone Wars," Lando continued. "He was on Luke’s radar before because he spent his days after the Empire searching for Sith relics for some Dark Side cultists. Our guess was that cult had sent him after lil' Ben, for—"

"Snoke," realized Rey. Considering everything they'd learned about the First Order’s connection to the Sith, Snoke was the only logical reason the Sith would want to kill or more likely kidnap him. To think they were after Ben so young...

Lando shrugged. "Maybe..."

"How'd you find him?" asked Poe.

"Well, Ochi was a slippery fellow, but a sloppy drunk. He laid low for a while, but word got out from the underground that Ochi was sighted bragging at a cantina that the Sith had also tasked him with finding the Emperor’s Wayfinder," Lando switched over to a holo display of a pyramidal object. "And that he had its coordinates inscribed.”

“Inscribed where?” Rey asked.

“That’s the question, kiddo,” Lando said. “We chased Ochi halfway across the galaxy.”

“Here to Pasaana,” Finn concluded.

Lando nodded. “Where the trail went cold. Ochi disappeared into the desert. Luke sensed he was still here. We found his ship— abandoned—but no Ochi. No clue. No Wayfinder.”

Something about the way he said it… “So you stayed here?” she asked.

“Here and there. The desert helps you forget,” Lando said, and sadness tinged his voice.

The cabin jerked as the treadable lurched over a boulder. C-3PO grabbed a hanging net to steady himself.

Lando went on: “First Order went after us—the leaders from the old wars. They took our kids.”

His gaze grew distant. “My girl Kadara wasn’t even old enough to walk. Far as I know, she’s a stormtrooper now.”

Finn’s face turned grim. Rey resisted the urge to put a hand on his shoulder; sometimes, sympathy was hard to bear.

“They turned our kids into our enemies. To kill the spirit of the Rebellion for good.” Lando said in a defeated voice. “Kadara. Hell, ol' Snoke got Ben in the end, didn't he? Turned him into Kylo Ren. Now he runs the show!"

Rey and Finn locked eyes, and she knew he was thinking along the same lines she was. Ripping children away from their homes and pressing them into service wasn’t only about filling ranks. It was about crushing the opposition’s spirit. Because wars weren’t fought with just ships and weapons, but with grit and resolve. That’s why Leia was always talking about hope. It was as essential to victory as good supply lines or reliable intel.

Was that why Luke had exiled himself too? Did losing Ben to the Dark Side after everything they did to stop Ochi kill his spirit?

“We need to get to that ship,” urged Rey. “Search it again.”

The treadable lurched to a halt. A familiar screaming sound pierced the air. TIE fighters. They peeked out from the entrance portal and spotted them gliding along the horizon.

The First Order’s reach now extended throughout the galaxy, which was why they’d run into a stormtrooper even here.

That meant Kylo could have backup troops on the ground in the space of an hour. Maybe less. Those TIEs could be an advance unit, scouting on the Supreme Leader’s behalf. Come to think of it, Kylo had certainly deployed scouts and probe droids everywhere already.

She’d sensed how desperate he was to find her. They would have to be very fast, and very careful.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” grumbled Lando, peering out of the treadable's port. “Ochi’s ship is growing rust out past Lurch Canyon. It’s the only clue I’ve got. Go.”

They tumbled out of the treadable, all except Chewie who moaned mournfully at Lando. Lando reached for Chewie’s arm and squeezed, as though saying goodbye.

“Leia needs pilots, General," Rey offered before she left.

“My flying days are long gone,” Lando replied sadly. “But give Leia my love.”

Rey thought of how she’d almost missed an opportunity to say goodbye to Leia, and she tried one last time: “You should give it to her yourself. Thank you.”

Though Lando was practically a stranger to her, she could read the yearning in his face plain as a desert day. Maybe she’d gotten through.

Lando’s treadable had taken them across the valley to the other end of the festival grounds, far away from the tent where they’d encountered the stormtrooper. Now they just had to find transportation to the canyon Lando had mentioned.

“There!” Poe yelled, pointing. “Those speeders!”

They all sprinted toward a group of parked skimmers. C-3PO struggled to keep up.

Some of the skimmers were empty—probably for rent to festivalgoers—and several others were loaded with goods.

Rey had no idea how they’d pay; they knew better than to walk these crowds carrying hard, untraceable currency, and had left most of it on the Falcon.

Poe rolled beneath one of the skimmers, ripped open a panel, and quickly set about rewiring.

Finn gave him a suspicious look. “How do you know how to do that?”

“No need to worry,” C-3PO said, finally catching up. “I made it.”

An older Aki-Aki with a missing trunk began running toward them, yelling and waving his huge calloused hands.

Undaunted, Poe did the same thing to a second speeder.

“We gotta go!” he hollered, hopping into it.

Finn gaped at Poe, and Rey shared his astonishment. The pilot had somehow overridden the ident locks in the space of mere moments. They’d have to get Poe to teach them that one.

But as Rey grabbed the tiller of the first skimmer, a weight settled in her stomach. She hated stealing, even when it was absolutely necessary. She avoided doing it as much as she could on Jakku.

Chewie and BB-8 climbed in behind her, and Rey gunned the engine. The old Aki-Aki screamed insults at their backs as they raced away.

The desert flew by around them, a sea of wind-rippled sand interspersed with islands of layered buttes that scraped the sky. It was beautiful, in its way.

BB-8 warbled at her, complaining.

“It doesn’t go any faster, BB-8!” snapped Rey.

Back on Jakku, Rey had loved climbing onto her speeder after a hard day’s work and whipping across the dunes. It cooled the sweat from her skin, made her feel a little bit free.

As the speeder skimmed the sand, peppering her face with grit, she decided that she’d try to enjoy the ride. She just hoped they were going in the right direction.

---

Wind and sand stung Finn’s cheeks as he, Poe, and Threepio raced across the desert, and without protective goggles he could hardly keep his eyes open. He had no idea how Poe was piloting this thing—it was like no speeder he’d encountered before.

Come to think of it, he had no idea how Poe did a lot of things.

“Ripping speeders, lightspeed skipping,” he yelled to Poe. “How do you know how to do shifty stuff like that?”

“Just stuff I picked up,” shrugged Poe.

“Where?” Finn pressed. Not in the Resistance, surely. Leia and Poe tried to keep their operations above board as much as possible. Finn trusted Poe with his life, but there was plenty he still didn’t know about his friend.

Before Poe could respond, the skimmer jerked sideways with an impact. Finn smelled blaster scorching as more laser bolts missed, sailing past them.

The First Order had found them. Stealing the speeders had probably triggered alarms and informant networks all across the valley—which was still better than getting caught and arrested at the festival. But now two treadspeeders pursued them, each one carrying two troopers. Their treads kicked up sand in their wakes as they closed fast.

Finn and Threepio clung to the steering vane as Poe began evasive maneuvers, swerving back and forth to make them as difficult a target as possible.

Off to their right, running parallel, Rey was doing the same. Netted bundles of goods swung around in the cargo,basket, threatening to spill. Finn yanked out his blaster and started firing, but Poe’s veering made his shots go wide.

Behind Rey, Chewie’s luck with his bowcaster was just as terrible. Still, their shots were making it dangerous for the First Order speeders to close the distance, so Finn kept at it. Gradually, he sensed a rhythm to Poe’s maneuvering, and he timed his shots accordingly, getting closer and closer to his target.

Almost there… just a little to the left. He lined up the shot, anticipated Poe’s swerve…

Right before he pulled the trigger, the rear passengers of each treadspeeder, launched into the air with jetpacks.

Finn got off a few experimental shots with his blaster, but hitting a flying object from the back of a swerving skimmer was harder than impossible.

“Rey!” Poe yelled. “We should split—"

“Split up,” she yelled back.

“Yeah!”

They peeled off, Rey angling right with Chewie and BB-8 toward a dust grain farm. Poe steered Finn and Threepio leftward into a narrow rocky canyon.

Their pursuing treadspeeders split up just as Finn had hoped. But his breath caught when he realized both of the flying jet troopers had disappeared, as though Rey were their true quarry.

The canyon closed in around them. Poe’s driving took them so close to the walls that Finn could have reached out and scraped them with the tip of his blaster.

The treadspeeder was gaining on them.

“Hold on!” Poe yelled, aiming directly for the canyon’s wall.

“Oh, my!” cried C-3PO as Poe lifted the skimmer’s nose, and suddenly they were racing up the cliff’s edge. Goods shifted to the back of the speeder. Threepio's golden grip on the steering vane slipped, filling the air with a horrible metal-on-metal screeching.

Finn had completed minimum stormtrooper training with speeders, but even he knew that repulsorlift technology wasn’t robust enough for them to continue skimming a cliff wall for long. And in an outdated junker like this, things were probably even worse than he knew.

“Did we lose them?” Poe hollered, bumping the speeder back down to the canyon floor.

Finn searched their surroundings. Just sand and outcroppings and walls as far as the eye could see. “Looks like it.”

“Excellent job, sir!” Threepio shouted. But he spoke too soon because the prow of a treadspeeder cornered a butte and came screaming toward them.

“Nope, still there!” Finn yelled.

“Terrible job, sir,” deadpanned Threepio.

Poe laid into the throttle, but the skimmer didn’t have any more to give. Finn resumed firing with his blaster—calmer now, letting his instincts guide him—a shot landed! The treadspeeder jerked sideways but resumed the chase in the blink of an eye. Finn hadn’t damaged it at all.

The treadspeeder had shields.

Emboldened, the trooper lifted his blaster and fired. Finn hit the deck just in time as the trooper’s shot impacted a bundle of dried goods, which blackened to smoke.

He was about to jump to his feet and fire back, but right at his nose was a long coiled rope with large metal hooks on each end. They stuck to the magnetized floor—a nice feature for holding down cargo, but not exactly helpful now. He muscled one away from the floor, lifted it, threw it toward the speeder.

The hook landed on the ground. Just as he’d hoped, the speeder drove right over it. The hook punctured the rubberized tread, caught, and held. The rope at Finn’s feet uncoiled at an alarming rate as it wound around the trooper’s tread.

Maybe he should have thought this through better…Their skimmer was slower than the treadspeeder, but it was also heavier. That gave him an idea.

The vane Threepio clung to was solid metal, sturdy enough to provide additional steering and stability, just like a mast. Finn grabbed the second hook and secured it to the pole, making sure it held tight.

“Poe,” he warned.

The pilot turned, saw the hook wrapped around the vane. “I gotcha!”

The treadspeeder was eating up their rope. It went taut; the skimmer jerked, and Finn nearly lost his footing.

Poe angled the rudder sharply left, pushing them into an impossible right turn. They cornered so hard it felt as though Finn’s cheeks were struggling to stay on his face.

The rope remained taut between them. The treadspeeder skidded in an arc around the fulcrum of Poe’s hairpin turn, skidded, skidded, sand flying everywhere…and finally slammed into the side of the canyon, where it exploded into a ball of fire and dust.

“Wooo!” Finn yelled. He couldn’t believe that had worked.

---

Even though they’d split up, Rey was left to deal with three pursuers. At least Poe and Finn would have a chance.

Chewbacca fired doggedly at the treadspeeder with his bowcaster, but he paused when the jet troopers suddenly hit the throttle and pulled even with them—and then confusingly moved ahead. Their strategy quickly became clear when they started firing charges to the ground in front of their skimmer.

Rey yanked the tiller, turning the skimmer at the last moment, barely dodging an explosion. She ducked away from the ensuing debris cloud even as she dodged again, turning away from the treadspeeder.

Good thing the controls on this skimmer were sensitive, but she still found it necessary to anticipate, reacting a split second sooner than should be humanly possible. It was taking all her concentration.

The speeder and jet troopers were still in pursuit. Rey knew she couldn’t keep this up forever. She’d eventually make a mistake.

“Get them!” she yelled to Chewie. “I’ll go for the speeder.”

It was possible to dodge obstacles ahead of them while shooting at something behind them, right? Well, she was about to find out.

Chewie kept the jet troopers busy with his bowcaster, but Rey found herself slaloming through grain-processing pipes that jutted from the ground, like an orchard of metal. She yanked up the blaster Han had given her, let the Force fill her, fired several times in quick succession at the treadspeeder.

Her shots hit, but they did no damage.

“The front shields are up,” realized Rey.

BB-8 began to beep excitedly about something he’d found.

“Not now, BB-8!" snapped Rey.

Chewie yelled, pointing.

Rey saw a lump in the distance. No, a ship. Ochi’s freighter?! It hunkered atop a sandstone bluff, overlooking a vast, windswept valley interspersed with dark sand like blots of spilled ink. The ship’s hull was blasted by sand and wind, its landing struts drowning in small dunes. “I see it!”

She ducked instinctively as a laser blast heated the air by her ear.

One of Chewie’s shots landed square on a jet trooper, who bulleted to the ground.

The Wookiee roared. Two to go.

The treadspeeder continued to fire at them, and the remaining jet trooper seemed inspired by the death of his comrade to double his efforts, lobbing charge after charge.

Between evasions, Rey managed to get a few shots off with her blaster. Many of them hit the treadspeeder. None did any damage.

“Their shields are too strong,” she yelled, ducking another cloud of stinging grit.

BB-8 had lodged himself behind Rey’s tiller, taking advantage of the mag plates to keep himself from rolling off the skiff. One of his compartments opened, and his welding arm shot out toward one of the many containers in the cargo area. Rey didn’t bother to ask or admonish; she focused on dodging charges and grain pipes, letting the little droid do whatever he was going to do.

BB-8 reached toward a metal canister with his welding arm and pecked at it, opening up a dark hole. Before anything could escape the now-compromised canister, BB-8 body-bumped it, hard enough to disengage the maglocks and send it flying into the air behind them.

It released a cloud of smoke as it fell—bright, sunshiny yellow, just like the colored smoke at the festival. Opaque as a wall.

The stormtrooper driving the speeder couldn’t react fast enough to avoid it. The cloud blinded him, and he panicked, swerving left and launching up the slope of a rock. The speeder shot high, exposing a fuel tank that was unprotected by its forward shields.

Rey aimed her blaster and pulled the trigger. The treadspeeder exploded.

BB-8 beeped smugly.

“Never underestimate a droid!” Rey whooped.

One to go. But neither Rey nor Chewie could spot him anywhere. The remaining jet trooper had disappeared.

Rey’s senses were on high alert as she steered the skiff toward the abandoned freighter. As they approached, the lines of the hull manifested into something recognizable. 

Poe’s skimmer appeared over the rise. Everyone seemed haggard and windblown, but were otherwise fine.

“You get them all?” Finn called.

“There’s one left,” she called back, searching the wide blue sky.

Nothing in sight. No help for it but to continue on. Together, the skimmers raced for the ship.

Rey steered toward the on-ramp.

A ship like this would never survive long on Jakku. It would be stripped for parts within days.

Maybe the Forbidden Valley really was forbidden, only used once every forty-two years during the Festival of Ancestors. There had to be an explanation for why this ship remained untouched.

As she and her friends were about to jump out of their skimmers, something roared overhead. Charges exploded all around them, throwing them to the sand and blowing their speeders to smithereens.

Everyone whipped up their weapons and fired; Rey wasn’t sure which of them hit, but the jet trooper spiraled out of the sky and slammed into a cliff. His jetpack detonated, shooting him into yet another bluff and out of sight.

Rey had just enough time to register that the sand around her was a different color—more black than ocher... and that she’d seen this kind of sand before-- before she sank up to her hips in it .

Her friends were descending around her, especially Poe.

“…the hell is this?” he squealed, trying to extricate himself, but his movement only made him sink farther and faster.

“Sinking fields!” Rey said. The Sinking Fields of Jakku had taken many an unwary soul. She should have recognized the sand right away. “Grab onto something!”

But there was nothing to grab onto. Chewie called out, panicked.

C-3PO dropped all the way to his recharge coupling. “Oh, what an ignoble end!” he exclaimed.

BB-8’s round body spun wildly in the mire, to no avail. Within the space of a breath, the little droid disappeared beneath the surface.

"BB-8!" Rey screamed.

Tears filled her eyes as she panic-thrashed against the sand.

Rey was going to lose them all. Not to a dark and powerful enemy, but to a natural phenomenon she should have recognized. Jakku was going to have its last word after all.

She locked eyes with Finn. Her friend’s face was stricken.

“Rey!” he yelled. He dropped, the sand reaching his shoulders and then to his chin as he sank. “Rey!”

“Finn!” she cried as her friend disappeared beneath the surface, followed by Threepio and Poe.

Rey reached for Chewie as if in apology, and he reached back. She held her breath as sand covered her mouth, her nose, her eyes.

Grit filled her ears, scraped her skin. The world went dark.

***

General Leia was in the command center, getting briefed by Rose Tico on the status of their tiny-but-growing fleet.

“Everyone who can hold a wrench or pilex driver is repairing and upgrading ships,” reported Rose. “We’re working as fast as we can.”

Leia nodded. Just outside, sparks were flying everywhere, and she was about to ask for status updates on a few specific ships, but Snap Wexley hurried toward her, interrupting them.

“General, we’re getting reports of a raid at the Festival of Ancestors.”

Of course they were. Of course the First Order had found her people.

“This mission is everything,” Leia said. “It cannot fail.”

Then, her voice a little plaintive, she asked, “Any word from Rey?”

Snap shook his head. “The Falcon’s not responding.”

At the look on Leia’s face, Rose said to Snap, “Do you have to say it like that?”

“Like… what?” he said.

“Do me a personal favor,” Leia chided. “Be optimistic.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Snap, forcing his features into bland pleasantness. “This is… this is terrific. You’re not gonna believe how well… This is gonna turn out great.”

Leia resisted rolling her eyes. But she said, “Major Wexley, requiring optimism doesn’t mean hiding the truth.”

“Yeah, what aren’t you telling us?” Rose demanded.

Snap shuffled his feet. “The raid at the Festival… General Leia… Our eyes on the ground say it’s the Knights of Ren."

Chapter 7: The Bestoon Legacy

Sand was scraping Poe’s eyelids, shoving into his ears, up his nostrils. Any moment now, he’d lose control and inhale a mouthful of grit. The sand would scrape away at his lungs in the painful seconds it would take to choke to death.

Just when he thought he couldn’t hold his breath a moment more, his feet met air. His torso broke through a layer of packed sand, and he dropped, hitting the ground hard.

BB-8 dropped after him, plunking down just a few meters away.

Poe gasped to replenish his lungs, shaking sand out of his hair, blinking rapidly to clear the grit from his eyes. He looked around; BB-8 was right beside him. It was too dark to see well, but they had fallen into some kind of tunnel made of hard-packed sand.

A gaping dark maw marked what might be an adjoining tunnel. Hopefully, he’d find the rest of his friends there. He got to his feet, dusted himself off, and stepped toward the maw.

“Rey? Finn?” he called out.

“You didn’t say my name, sir, but I’m all right,” C-3PO responded from a few meters away.

A squelching noise made Poe turn; it was Rey, her legs dangling from the ceiling. He hurried over to keep her from dropping as hard as he had. After he lowered her to the ground, she bent over, coughing.

“I should have used the Force,” she muttered between coughs. “I panicked… I didn’t even think to…”

“Rey? You all right?” asked Poe, concerned.

She nodded. Her face was covered in sand. “Where’s Finn?”

“And where’s Chewie?” Poe said.

Chewbacca dropped through the ceiling and thunked to the ground. Poe winced at the impact, but Chewie shook himself off, seemingly unscathed.

“Finn?” Rey repeated.

He appeared in the entrance to the adjoining tunnel. Sand peppered the twists of his black hair.

“Yeah, I’m good,” he assured. “What is this place?”

C-3PO doddered toward them.

“This isn’t the afterlife, is it?” he asked. “Are droids allowed here?”

Poe felt like he could truly breathe again, now that everyone was accounted for. He’d had it with people dying on his watch. “Thought we were goners."

“We might still be, sir,” C-3PO reminded him helpfully.

Finn looked around the dark tunnel. “Which way out?”

Rey unhooked her lightsaber and turned it on. Its blade lit the walls around them in soft blue, and Poe could feel its hum in the back of his throat as she waved it around, studying the walls.

Poe reached for his glow rod and turned it on. Its glow compared with the lightsaber’s was like that of a moon to a sun. He shrugged and aimed it forward anyway, seeking an exit.

“This way,” Rey said, and headed off.

Finn gave him a look and turned to follow Rey.

He thought of protesting, of asking how Rey could possibly know which equally unremarkable direction was the right one. But Poe had learned that when Rey said things that way, her face determined, her voice unwavering, a fellow ought to just follow.

***

Lando Calrissian crouched on a rock outcropping, making himself as small as possible. Directly below and within spitting distance was the Millennium Falcon, surrounded by stormtroopers. Behind them was a high rock cliff, and Lando could make out several dark figures.

His helmet zoomed in on the image until he could identify them: the Knights of Ren. They eyed his ship like vultures.

His ship. He hadn’t been prepared for the sting of nostalgia that overcame him when he laid eyes on the Falcon again.

Lando had re-donned his mask and crept to this viewing perch, hoping he could grab the Falcon and return it to Chewie before the First Order found it. But he hadn’t been fast enough.

A desert trooper wearing a colored pauldron strode forward.

“Confiscate, scan, and destroy that ship,” the stormtrooper commander ordered. “By order of the Supreme Leader.”

Lando’s breath grew tight with rage, and his helmet hummed to keep up with the task of filtration. The First Order always destroyed what you loved.

It hurt even worse to know that lil' Ben was the one ordering her destruction.

He’d been spending a lot of time on Pasaana to get away from all that. The Aki-Aki were joyful and nonviolent, and they’d welcomed him without question or reservation. He’d had to don the helmet, sure, because an old Rebellion general was nothing if not recognizable. A small price to pay for a little peace and quiet.

But maybe scoundrels like him didn’t get to have peace. Maybe trouble always came looking, no matter what.

He watched, his determination growing, as the desert troopers broke the locks and forced the Falcon open. Then the best ship in the whole galaxy lifted off and screamed out of the atmosphere, its fusion engines glowing blue, no doubt heading for an incineration
hangar.

Lando knew what he had to do.

***

The sand burrow made for easy traveling with its flat, hard-packed ground and cooler air—which was good because Rey had no idea how long it would take to find an exit. She only knew that a strange instinct drew her forward.

Let it guide you, she imagined Leia saying. She’d been doing that a lot lately, imagining what Leia would counsel her to do.

She should have let the Force guide her when she and her friends were sinking into the sand. Rey wasn’t sure what she would have done, but… something. Calling on the Force was easy. But she needed to make it her first instinct.

Leia had observed that her formative years on Jakku had taught her to look for tactile solutions to impossible problems. Leia thought that could be why it took so long for the Force to awaken inside her, and why it might take even longer to shake that kind of conditioning.

But Rey didn’t have that kind of time, and she wouldn’t let herself make that mistake again. BB-8 beeped a question.

“I don’t want to know what made these tunnels,” Poe answered.

“Judging by the bore circumference,” C-3PO said, “any number of deadly species could—”

“Do not want to know,” Poe repeated. “Not.”

The tunnel curved around, and Rey followed. 

BB-8 warbled at something ahead, which brought them up short.

Something metallic flashed in the glow of Rey’s lightsaber as they peered closer.

“What’s that?” Poe asked, aiming his glow rod.

“A speeder?” Finn asked.

"An old one,” Rey said. Its steering vane was bent at an impossible angle, and it was outdated by at least a decade, but the dry, windless tunnel had largely preserved the acceleration module and repulsorlift. If she stripped this thing for parts, she could get at least three portions for her trouble.

“Perhaps we’ll find the driver,” C-3PO said.

BB-8 told C-3PO what he thought of that.

“Yeah, I think dead, too,” agreed Poe.

Chewie complained that he was getting thirsty.

C-3PO waddled over to the speeder’s hood ornament and bent over, peering close. “It’s a hex charm."

“A what?” Poe said.

“A common emblem of Sith loyalists!” C-3PO said, delighted.

“The Sith…” Rey murmured. This was the place her instincts had been leading her to, no doubt about it. But it was not the hex charm that had drawn her. Something else…

“Luke sensed it,” Rey breathed. “Ochi never left this place.”

Disappeared into the desert, Lando had told them.

“He was headed away from his ship,” Poe said. “Same thing happened to us happened to him.”

That explained why the freighter had remained untouched for all these years. Anyone familiar with Pasaana knew better than to go near this place, the same way the residents of Jakku knew to stay clear of the Sinking Fields.

“So how did Ochi get out?” Finn asked, looking around for an exit.

Rey stepped toward the speeder, her limbs tingling. “He didn’t...”

At her feet was a pile of old bones.

“No, he didn’t,” Finn agreed.

“Bones,” said Poe, looking away in disgust. “I don’t like bones.”

Ochi’s speeder had fallen into the tunnel, and either he’d died on impact, or he’d injured himself so badly that he’d died slowly, trapped and alone.

Good, thought Rey. She shook off the thought. She musn't think like that.

BB-8 warbled that he’d found something.

Rey moved next to him and peered closer at the pile of bones. Tattered clothes clung to the remains. A leather belt with a knife sheath circled his pelvis. The sheath was empty.

BB-8 extended a tube from his tool compartment and began blowing away some nearby sand. Gradually, an object appeared—long and metallic, with a still-sharp blade.

Rey’s heart began to race as she picked it up, gripped its cold handle.

This dagger. Those runes…

Screams rending the air, the metallic scent of blood, the feel of blade against bone and sinew…

Rey blinked the vision away, feeling sick. “Horrible things have happened with this,” she murmured.

Poe took it from her, and a weight lifted from her shoulders when the dagger left her hand.

“It has writing on it,” Poe pointed out, studying the blade’s etchings.

“Of course it does, sir!” C-3PO said cheerfully. “Perhaps I can translate.”

It was an archaic text Rey had never encountered in all her years at Niima Outpost. The blade itself was silvery but untarnished, with a scalloped edge designed to do as much damage coming out of a body as sliding into it. A hefty, curved crossguard protected a leather-wrapped handle. She’d never seen anything like it.

C-3PO took it from Poe, and a weight was lifted from her shoulders when the dagger left her hand.

“What does it say?” Poe asked.

“Sith assassins often inscribed their secrets on…” the droid observed. “Oh! Look! The location of the Wayfinder!”

They all practically knocked heads trying to get a closer look.

“What’s it say?” Poe demanded again.

“Where’s the Wayfinder?” Finn said.

“I’m afraid I cannot tell you,” C-3PO said.

Poe gaped at him. “Twenty-point-three-fazillion languages, and you can’t read that?”

“Oh, I have read it, sir!” C-3PO enthused. “I know exactly where the Wayfinder is. Unfortunately, it’s written in the runic language of the Sith.”

“So what?” Rey said.

“My programming forbids me from translating it. I am physically incapable!”

“Wait,” said Poe. “Wait. The one time we want you to talk you can’t?”

“Irony, sir.”

Rey was surprised to learn that C-3PO knew what irony was.

“My vocal processors cannot phonate words translated from Sith,” the droid explained.

A hulking shadow moved behind him. Something huge, and—Rey sensed—in great pain. Rey lifted her lightsaber in readiness.

Oblivious, C-3PO added, “I believe the rule was passed by the Senate of the Old Repub—”

The thing in the shadows hissed, manifested into a serpent more massive than a happabore with a dark and mottled segmented body and wicked red eyes.

C-3PO turned. The droid dropped the dagger into the dirt and screamed, “Serpent!” as the snake opened its massive jaw to reveal sharp fangs dripping venom. It drew back into a striking position.

“Rey,” Finn whispered.

BB-8 rolled behind Rey as Chewie whipped up his bowcaster, preparing to fire.

The Force should always be her first instinct. So Rey reached out to the bowcaster to lower it, her eyes glued to the snake’s huge fangs. She’d once heard about this creature—a vexis—from a trader.

He’d been complaining about Jakku, and how it was hard to get a decent drink anywhere on the planet, but at least Jakku had never been home to a vexis, like some of the other desert planets.

“I’m gonna blast it," declared Poe, aiming his blaster.

“Don’t blast it,” Finn hissed, his gaze fixed on the snake.

The vexis rose even higher. It hiss-roared, blowing Chewie’s fur back.

It was terrifying. Rey could sense its rage, its hunger. But she also sensed great pain. Unsure exactly what she was doing, she handed her lightsaber to Finn and stepped forward.

“Rey—” Finn protested.

“It might be injured,” she said.

“Might just be a giant killer sand snake,” Poe countered.

Rey narrowed her eyes as she approached the serpent’s body.

“More light,” she ordered.

Poe aimed his glow rod where she pointed, illuminating the creature.

Yes, the serpent was definitely wounded. A giant gash ran across several segments. 

She spoke gently, to comfort herself as much as the snake. “Leia says when something’s trying to hurt you, it was usually hurt by something bigger."

"You healed this lightsaber, didn't you?" Finn asked, indicating the weapon he was holding. "Do you think it would work on that thing?"

"I don't know, and I think it may be too dangerous to try," Rey replied. "But I should be able to reason with it..."

"And that's not dangerous?!" hissed Poe. "It's a wild beast!"

"The Force is within every living thing," argued Rey. "Besides, it hasn't attacked us yet."

"Yet," repeated Poe.

"Shh!" shushed Rey. She took a deep breath.

Carefully, slowly, Rey climbed over the vexis’s curved body until she stood within its coils. If it decided to kill her, all it had to do was squeeze…

She closed her eyes and focused, reaching for the Force. "We are not here to hurt you... let us pass..."

She felt the vexis calming. It lowered its head to hers. It was so huge. It could devour her in a single gulp. It regarded her for a moment, and then moved its head in what could've been perceived as a nod.

The snake uncoiled around her, leaving her free. It slithered away into the dark, forging a new path in the hard-packed sand as easily as if it were an eel swimming through water.

When it disappeared, they could see a clear circle of sky. Poe and Finn exchanged a look. BB-8 rolled up to Rey, beeping softly.

“Well,” Finn said. “We’ve got our way out.”

He started after the vexis. Chewie bent down to retrieve the dagger, stuffed it into his pack, then he followed Finn toward the light of day.

Poe stared at Rey for a moment before following them out with the droids close behind. 

Rey spared one last glance at Ochi’s remains before rejoining her friends in the sun.

***

The tunnel dumped them even closer to Ochi’s rusty freighter. It perched atop a huge rock platform, an island of stability in a sea of shifting mires. Rey and her friends climbed toward it.

“We cannot possibly fly in that old wreck!” C-3PO protested. He struggled to keep up over the jutting rocks. If they survived this, Rey would make sure he got an oil bath.

“We gotta keep moving,” Poe urged from just ahead. “Find someone who can translate that dagger."

“I suggest we return to the Millennium Falcon at once," advised Threepio.

“They’ll be waiting at the Falcon,” argued Poe, preparing to scale the rock that Ochi’s ship was resting on.

Finn squatted low and cupped his hands to give Poe a boost. “They’ll send us to the pits of Griq."

“And use you as a target droid,” added Poe, using Finn’s boost to heave himself up the rock face.

“You both make excellent points at times,” Threepio conceded.

Rey frowned. Finn and Poe were having a bit of fun with the uptight protocol droid, but it was true that the Falcon was probably in First Order hands by now. Chewie had locked it down tight, but the First Order would get past all their security precautions eventually. It was possible she’d never see that ship again.

Suddenly, a familiar presence hit Rey like a thunderclap, and she froze in place.

“Rey?” Finn turned to see what had made her pause.

His face was still dusty from their tour of the tunnels, and as usual his inherent kindness and concern were smeared all over his features. She would not allow him to be hurt by what was coming.

She would protect her friend, even if it meant doing something she was pretty sure Leia wouldn’t approve of. It was one thing to use the Force to influence a wild beast or mind trick the enemy. It was another to use it to manipulate a friend. But Rey reconciled that it was for a good reason.

That mattered, right?

“I’ll be right behind you,” she said gently.

He frowned.

She gave a little push with the Force and added, “It’s okay.”

He was wordless as she handed over her haversack and quarterstaff—everything save the lightsaber hooked to her belt.

She felt his eyes on her back as she descended the rocks and—avoiding the shifting mires this time—sprinted out onto a wide, flat stretch of desert.

Go, Finn, she thought, pushing a little harder with the Force.

She didn’t dare to look and see if he obeyed, because all her attention was drawn to a black mote on the horizon, flying fast and low, approaching her.

She squared her shoulders as the mote became a TIE fighter. His TIE fighter. She wasn’t sure how yet, but she would not give ground.

She would protect her friends. At any cost.

***

Finn’s head was fuzzy. Maybe it was the heat. Maybe it was the fact that Rey had told him to go, and he’d just left her in the desert without question. Something about that didn’t make sense.

Poe hit the freighter’s hatch release, and the access ramp descended.

Finn followed Poe, Chewie, and the droids into a dark central hold choking in sand. Ochi hadn’t sealed this place up before being swallowed by the mires. He must have thought he’d be returning before long.

The hold was filled with junk, and the walls remained mostly open to the ship’s inner workings—Finn recognized emergency atmo tanks, a particle shield booster, along with endless wires and ducts and latches whose uses remained a mystery, though he’d bet Poe or Rey would know what they were. The interior was so messy it made the Falcon look almost tidy.

On a wall near the entrance to the sleeping quarters, a metal plaque identified the ship: BESTOON LEGACY.

“Let’s try waking up the converters,” Poe said, heading toward the cockpit, pushing cobwebs and junk out of the way.

“This ship is filthy!” C-3PO said, and Finn had to agree. Phasma would have made his entire unit scrub latrines with their toothbrushes if she’d ever caught them failing to lash down cargo or mop up dirt.

While Poe started hitting switches, Finn peered inside a cargo box. It was filled with blaster pistols. He looked around, noting several other boxes. Were they all filled with weapons?

Lights flickered on around him. The floor began to vibrate as the power plant cranked to life.

“Look at that,” Poe said.

Finally, some luck. But they couldn’t leave without Rey, who still hadn’t entered the ship.

“Where is she?” Finn asked no one in particular.

He hurried to the cockpit viewport and searched the vast desert. There. A tiny, wind-whipped figure. She’d managed to travel quite a distance.

“Chewie,” Finn said, thinking of the Wookiee’s long stride and superior speed. “Tell Rey we gotta go.”

Chewie moaned assent, then headed out to fetch her.

A moment later the Wookiee appeared in view of the viewport, but he promptly disappeared behind a rock formation on his way toward the desert floor and Rey.

***

Kylo Ren sensed her before he saw her. As he flew his TIE Whisper along the flat desert, she was a bright presence in his mind, practically glowing with determination and ferocity.

Something odd pulled at his chest. It was the same feeling he’d had when he’d faced his father for the last time, when he’d made the decision to kill Han Solo.

He finally understood. You had to kill the past, yes, but you had to kill the light, too, to fully claim the darkness.

Han Solo was his past. But Rey was his light.

That’s why Kylo was still in agony. That’s why he couldn’t shake the memory of his father’s hand against his cheek, of those eyes full of love and understanding. Kylo hadn’t yet destroyed his light.

Kylo knew he couldn't kill her. She was too important. They were a Dyad. Her power would make him stronger, and Snoke taught him to value strength above all else.

But he could destroy the light in her. Yes. Snuff it out until the darkness remained.

And there she stood, barely a dot against the ocher sand, her shoulders squared, facing him down. The scavenger was terrified; he could sense it like he could sense the sweat dampening his gloves.

Yet despite her terror, she was unwavering, ready and waiting.

She should be mindless with fear. She should be cowering. She should have turned to the dark when he gave her the chance.

How could she resist? How dared she?!

Rage turned his vision red. If Rey wanted to survive what came next, she would have to manifest more power than she ever had before. Show him who she was.

He watched as Rey unhooked her lightsaber and lit it.

Kylo Ren hit the throttle.

***

Rey saw the TIE approach, felt his intentions. Kylo Ren’s pain and killing rage were breathtaking.

She was terrified, yes, but she was also strangely calm. Luke had told her that fear leads to the Dark Side. But it turned out that terror and calm could coexist. Maybe this is what Leia had been trying to teach her.

The Force thrummed in her blood, filled her limbs with readiness. She allowed the TIE to approach. Sensing it was the right time, she turned away, lowered herself into a fighting lunge.

Rey glanced back. He was close enough that she could see the shape of his helmet through the cockpit viewport.

***

Finn hated feeling useless as Poe flicked the controls, made adjustments.

The rumbling floor beneath his feet steadied, and the clanking of the turbines smoothed into a steady hum. They had achieved flight readiness.

But Chewie had not returned with Rey.

“What the hell’s she doing?” Poe demanded. “Where is Chewie?”

Finn peered out the cockpit viewport. It was hard to make out details from here, but it seemed she was crouched, her lightsaber lit.

He should be out there, helping her…

The strangest thing happened. In yearning to help her, in reaching for her, he sensed something. A danger. A presence.

“It’s Ren,” he whispered.

Probably just a bad feeling…right?

Just in case, he put a hand to his holster to check his blaster and jogged down the ramp into the desert.

He headed for the outcropping that Chewbacca had disappeared behind, but he stopped short and quickly hunkered down when he heard footsteps. Slowly, carefully, he peered around the rock—and nearly gasped out loud.

Chewbacca was a one-Wookiee army, hiding behind a small barrier of boulders as he traded fire with a squad of stormtroopers. As he fired his bowcaster, the stormtroopers returned fire with the blue concentric rings of stun blasts.

They were looking for prisoners.

Finn drew his blaster. The First Order wasn't getting any prisoners if he could help it.

He began to advance. As Finn approached, he then noticed several troopers sneak behind Chewie from the rocky outcropping and fire stun blasts at him.

Finn froze in place a distance away. Chewie whipped around, shaking off the blast with a guttural roar. He charged at the troopers, tossing one like a rag doll into the stone barrier and backhanded another that sent the trooper's helmet— and the head inside— flying from his body.

He bulldozed another, and the stormtroopers began to retreat.

Chewie looked like he was gaining the upper hand, but then tall figures with dark armor and strange weapons joined the stormtroopers. Malevolence radiated from the dark figures in waves— Finn felt like he was choking on it.

The Knights of Ren.

Chewbacca turned to face the new threat. He charged after the Knights. The troopers behind Chewie closed in and peppered him with stun blasts. A Knight—the large one with the war hammer— lunged forward and with a swift upward swing, struck Chewbacca in the jaw with a sickening crack, knocking the Wookiee out cold. He fell in a heap, and was quickly manacled and dragged to a transport.

Finn wanted to scream, but he couldn't without giving away his position. There was nothing he could do now. They had a prisoner now—and considering he was a deserter of the Order—they'd probably just kill him on the spot. Attacking them all at once would be suicide.

He ducked back behind a large boulder. Within moments Chewie would be loaded onto a transport and taken away. Probably tortured for information and killed.

Finn cursed himself. Cursed the First Order.

Rey was still out there, exposed, alone in the middle of the desert. With Chewie captured, she would be next.

He needed a plan. He'd have to retreat back to the Bestoon Legacy and come up with another plan with Poe.

No, that wouldn’t work. Not enough time.

He had to warn Rey.

***

The Bestoon Legacy was ready to take off, but now Poe was sitting alone in the cockpit without a crew. First Rey and Chewie, and now Finn was gone, too. Where the hell were—

He gasped. Rey had started to run, her lightsaber whipping beside her with each stride. A TIE was bearing down on her, flying so low that it kicked up clouds of sand. It would be on her in moments.

***

Rey sucked air as she sprinted.

She would only pull this off with good speed and a lot of help from the Force, but her training with Leia was paying off. She was fit and her limbs were strong. Her lungs were capable. More important, her mind was ready.

She pressed forward, picking up more speed.

The TIE was close now; its scream was bright in her ears.

Still not close enough. She reached out for the connection she shared with Kylo and felt his determination. She threw a wave of ferocity right back at him.

Her shoulder blades prickled as the ship bore down on her. Not just yet… a few strides more… now!

She leapt up and flipped backward, sweeping her legs in an aerial arc.

Below her, Kylo Ren craned his neck to track her flight as she whipped her lightsaber down at the support pylon.

The TIE screamed past in a cloud of choking dust and Rey landed neatly in the sand in a crouch.

Her eyes narrowed, ready for anything, Rey watched the TIE start to wobble.

She sensed Kylo’s frustration as he compensated at the controls. The support pylon buckled, and the left wing clipped the ground.

Out of control, the TIE tumbled, wings ripping off their struts.

The remaining ball holding Kylo Ren rolled at an impossible speed, leaving a ditch in the sand. Finally it slammed into an embankment, where it lay still.

Rey turned off her lightsaber. She hoped he was dead. No, she didn’t. She hoped… she didn’t know what she hoped.

She hooked her lightsaber to her belt and headed toward Ochi’s freighter.

A figure appeared ahead, familiar in his blue pants and flight jacket.

“Rey!” Finn screamed at her across the desert plain. “They got Chewie!”

A transport lifted into view, its drive thrusters already glowing blue.

Finn punched the air with his finger. “Chewie’s in there!”

No. No, no, no, no. She’d been here before, standing helplessly as sand blasted her skin, watching a ship carry away someone she loved. Where there had been calm, now there was only terror. It filled her mind, overflowed into pure, hot power. She reached out with the Force, imagined herself grabbing the transport, wrenching it back planetside.

It actually slowed. Wobbled in the air. Its engines began to whine.

Rey gritted her teeth. Sweat poured from her forehead. She would not let them take Chewie from her.

***

Kylo Ren yanked off his mask to get some fresh air.

He was an idiot. His stomach roiled with this inevitable certainty as he gingerly stepped around the burning wreckage of his TIE. She had run like a frightened womp rat, and in his blind rage he had succumbed to the temptation, not pausing to consider that maybe she had a plan.

With this realization came another certainty, even more gut wrenching: He was relieved he hadn’t killed her.

Snoke had always encouraged him to pursue his impulses. They were a shortcut to the Dark Side—and unimaginable power. But his impulse to kill Rey had almost ruined everything he’d been planning.

Kylo didn’t know how to reconcile that. The path to the Dark Side lay in succumbing to one’s desires. But his deepest desire, the thing he wanted most, would require planning and patience. 

There was a way. He just had to learn it.

Kylo sensed a tug in the Force as he stepped from billowing smoke into clear air. Far away, Rey stood in the sand, straining, her arm reaching toward—

A flying transport? And she was succeeding in slowing it down!

It didn’t matter what—or who—was inside that transport that made Rey desperate to prevent its escape. He was not going to let her have it.

He reached out, felt the massive machinery in his mind, yanked it toward himself.

***

The transport almost jerked out of her grip, and she gasped at the familiar presence. Kylo, alive and well. Rey would not let him have Chewie. Chewie was hers.

She strained to regain control, and she felt the ship lurch in her direction, but then it whipped right back.

Rey tried to remember her training. Let the Force guide your actions, Leia would say.

But thinking of Leia, her training, even for the briefest moment made her lose concentration, and the ship listed again in Kylo’s direction.

Kylo watched her with a smirk on his scarred face as she struggled to pull the transport back. He was impressed, but he would not let her have it.

Rey, determined to not only rescue Chewbacca but to undermine her estranged suitor, gritted her teeth and redoubled her efforts, establishing firm control of the ship.

Kylo scowled and stepped in, blocking her pull. In a sort of rematch of their tug-of-war over Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber the year prior, the pair struggled over the flight path of the transport, with Rey pulling it back and Kylo pushing it forward.

Kylo's teeth gritted with the effort, but Rey was so determined to not only get Chewie back but to one-up Kylo that she bore down with all the strength of her being. Blood screamed in her ears, and her heart was a massive drum in her chest. She drew on her rage at Kylo, at the First Order, even at Unkar Plutt. She drew on her terror for Chewie’s life, remembered what it felt like to watch Han Solo drop into the abyss at Starkiller Base. She drew on pain too: the aching hollowness of an empty stomach, the bruised knuckles with no bacta to soothe them, the feel of grit in her molars after a windy day, the dagger-sharp silence of loneliness.

Rey opened her mouth in a silent scream. 

The transport couldn't handle the strain of it's own propulsion and the twin Force energies acting upon it, and its durasteel hull warped and bent before exploding in a deafening fireball in the blue Pasaana skies.

Rey stumbled back, gasping for air as bits of wreckage rained down onto the desert plain. The transport—and everyone inside—reduced to nothingness.

She stared down in horror at her hand, at Kylo, at the bits of wreckage that littered the sand around them.

What had they done?

"CHEWIE!!!" shrieked Rey, her stomach heaving, tears pouring down her cheeks. And then the vision came, like a psychic lightning strike.

 

"Come back!"

The starship slowed, straining as if it was towing an immensely heavy weight. It shook, the durasteel warping like a tin can. 

"Come back!"

The starship, unable to handle the pull of the invisible forces acting upon it, exploded into a brilliant cloud of fire, smoke, and durasteel.

 

Rey shook off the vision, her eyes burning with tears, glaring with rage at Kylo. 

He had appeared just as shocked as she was, but whether it was for Chewbacca or the loss of his men, Rey had no idea, and at that moment, she didn't care.

"Rey..." Kylo mouthed, pleading.

Their eyes met. Rey could sense his remorse for Chewbacca from across the bond, and her rage subsided. She felt the inexplicable urge to go to him, but a volley of blaster fire directed at Kylo from behind her broke her out of her confused reverie. 

"COME ON, REY!" shouted Finn as he directed another volley at Kylo, who stumbled back to avoid the blaster fire. "GO! GO!"

The Bestoon Legacy swooped down, guided towards the sand by Poe, it's entrance ramp descending as Finn sprinted towards it.

“Rey!” It was Poe, calling to her.

“They’re coming!” He pointed toward the horizon, and she turned. Half a dozen First Order TIEs were quickly approaching.

“But Chewie… He…” stammered Rey.

“I’m sorry!” Poe yelled. “But we have to go. Now!”

Rey had no choice but to retreat. She would not lose any more friends. With one last look at Kylo, she rejoined her friends and the Bestoon Legacy shot off towards space, leaving Kylo feeling exactly as he did the year before on Crait: full of regret at his half-victory as she escapes him yet again.

Chapter 8: Kijimi

Ochi’s freighter may have been flightworthy, but that didn’t mean it was in good shape. The Bestoon Legacy had been grounded on Pasaana for years, which meant they didn’t dare take it far until Rey and her friends could hide out for a bit, do a thorough check of the ship’s systems, and regain their bearings.

Poe told everyone he knew exactly where to go, and Rey was happy to cede that decision to him.

She sat in the copilot’s seat and provided support as he guided the Bestoon Legacy into the rings of a large, glowing planet.

The rings were made mostly of ice drifts. They reflected plenty of light from the system’s cool sun, and constantly shed vapor. It was a good hiding spot, one that would confuse most ships’ sensor sweeps—perfect for smugglers. One of these days, she might ask Poe how he knew about this place.

“Rey,” Poe began, as he set the ship to drift alongside an ice floe, but when he saw her face, he changed his mind about whatever he was going to say. Instead, he went with: “I’ll start some diagnostics. Why don’t you…take a moment?”

It was the gentlest he’d been with her for a long time. She nodded wordlessly and headed into the central hold, found a cushioned bench near the back, and plunked down.

What have I done?

Fear led to the dark side after all. She’d been fine so long as her fear was tempered by peace and resolve. But the moment she gave in to rage and terror… Chewbacca was gone. The Falcon was probably gone. Ochi’s dagger was gone. She had ruined everything.

As if reading her thoughts, BB-8 gave her a long, mournful beep.

C-3PO said, “Poor, poor Chewbacca.”

Tears were pouring down her cheeks. She couldn’t stop them.

Chewie had done so much for her. The Falcon was arguably his by right, but after Han died, Chewie had offered the pilot’s seat to her. And she had repaid this act of enormous generosity and respect by killing him.

Finn stepped forward. His face was stricken. He said, “It wasn’t your fault.”

“It was,” Rey said, unable to look at him. “I lost control.”

“No, it was Ren. He made you do it.”

Rey shook her head. “You saw what happened. I'm just as much to blame as him. I'm no better."

"You're way better," argued Finn.

"No. Finn, there are things you don’t know.”

“Then tell me.” He gazed at her, waiting patiently, no trace of judgment on his face.

She whispered, "When the transport exploded... I had a vision. No... a memory. Finn... I think I made something like this happen before..."

She looked away, unable to face him. Rey wished she could run, but on this tiny freighter, there was nowhere to go.

Poe stepped into the hold from the cockpit. His face was haggard, but he seemed as determined as ever. He’d been so serious lately, often on the verge of anger ever since Crait.

He felt responsible for the decimation of the Resistance, Rey knew. She understood what that was like, and she braced herself. She wasn’t going to blame him one bit for laying into her; she was just going to take it.

He didn’t lay into her. Poe said, “So what are we gonna do?”

“What can we do?” shrugged Finn. “We gotta go back to base.”

Poe was shaking his head. “We don’t have time to go back. We are not giving up. If we do that, Chewie died for nothing.”

Poe was right. Rey was selfish to wallow in misery. She still had the Resistance to think about, their plan to find the Sith fleet. Chewie would want her to press on.

“What is there to do?” Finn asked, his voice as despairing as she felt. “Chewie had the dagger. That was the only clue to the Wayfinder. It’s gone.”

“So true,” C-3PO added sadly. “The inscription lives only in my memory now.”

Finn’s and Poe’s heads whipped toward C-3PO, and they pinned him with a collective glare.

“Hold on,” said Poe. “You got the dagger inscription in your memory?”

“Oh, yes, Master Poe," confirmed C-3PO. "But a translation from a forbidden language cannot be retrieved. That is, short of a complete redactive memory bypass.”

“A complete what?” said Finn.

C-3PO flailed his arms. “Oh, it’s a terribly dangerous act, performed on unwitting droids by degenerates and criminals!”

Finn looked to Poe. “We might not have a choice."

Poe’s eyes were narrowed in thought. “I know a black-market droidsmith.”

“Black-market droidsmith!” C-3PO exclaimed.

Poe seemed almost apologetic when he added, “But he’s on Kijimi.”

“What’s wrong with Kijimi?” Finn asked.

Poe seemed hesitant to answer. At Finn’s look of insistence, he said, “I had a little bad luck on Kijimi…”

Poe sighed, then added, “But if this mission fails, it was all for nothing."

Finn nodded. “We’re in this to the end.”

Rey had been looking back and forth between them as they talked, offering nothing, still expecting them to blame her, maybe even start yelling. But they hadn’t. Not once. Instead, they both looked to her for input. They both still trusted her, even Finn, who knew her darkest secret.

She couldn’t bring herself to speak as she reached out and took Finn’s hand. In turn, Finn looked to Poe and extended his own hand. Poe shrugged once and then took it.

“For Chewie,” Rey choked out.

C-3PO teetered over to them and valiantly attempted to join hands, too, despite the fact that he didn’t have full articulation of his elbows or adequate spatial awareness.

Oblivious that he’d accidentally knocked Finn’s feet with his own hard, metal ones, C-3PO solemnly said, “For the Wookiee.”

Never underestimate a droid, Rey thought. They held hands for a long moment.

Poe was the first to let go.

“To Kijimi.” he said, and left for the cockpit to finish his diagnostics. Finn followed.

Rey was about to go after them and make herself useful, but BB-8 caught her eye as he rolled away toward the corner, where an old, lumpy cloth sat discarded. He opened a port and reached out with his grip arm, yanked back the cloth.

Beneath it was a rusty green droid, as lifeless and cold as a piece of scrap. It was tiny, with a conical head and a unicycle mechanism.

The only droids Rey had ever encountered that were so small were used strictly for maintenance and janitorial work. This one seemed different. It had a motivator compartment and a higher-end transmitter array.

BB-8 opened a side panel on the tiny, rusty droid, plugged in, and began to charge it. Rey wasn’t sure how well that would work out, but she couldn’t blame BB-8 for trying to give a little of his own energy to help another.

Suddenly, the little droid was stirring to life.

“B-b-battery charged!” he announced. He tried to roll forward, but his uni-wheel squealed in protest. He stared up at BB-8 in an awe and wonder, whirring at the larger droid in a worshipful tone.

“He-hello!” squeaked the little droid.

BB-8 warbled back, telling him to follow. Together, they rolled toward Rey, the tiny droid’s wheel squeaking with each rotation.

“Hello-hello!” the droid said to Rey. “I’m D-O.”

“Hello,” Rey smiled, reaching out to touch the odd little droid, but D-O recoiled, cowering in the corner.

“No-no-no thank you,” he said.

She respected his wishes, withdrawing her hand. He needed lubricant badly, but Rey didn’t see droid maintenance supplies anywhere in the hold. What kind of horrible person kept a droid but never maintained them?

BB-8 beeped a question to Rey.

“Looks like someone treated him badly,” Rey answered.

Little D-O cocked its head at her.

“It’s okay,” she told him. “You’re with us now.”

***

It had been a relatively quick shuttle ride from the desert to The Finalizer for Kylo Ren. His TIE Whisper was beyond repair, but not to worry. There would be another Whisper series TIE waiting for him at the ship.

Still, he wasn't in the best of moods when he arrived, and most of his subordinates were smart to avoid him lest they incur his wrath. Even a janitor droid scurried out of his way.

Most, for General Hux and Captain Peavy were waiting for him.

If they had been any lower ranking, he would have tossed them out of the nearest airlock for even looking at him the wrong way.

Peavy smartly kept his mouth shut, but Hux immediately started talking.

“We recovered the scavenger’s ship,” Hux began. “It has been commandeered and towed to the incineration hangar for processing once a scan of its databanks is completed."

It was of little consolation to Kylo. His father's ancient freighter had been captured—without Rey inside. Kylo simply nodded for Hux to continue.

"Under command of the Knights of Ren,” Hux said pointedly, “we suffered losses. Troops, TIEs, a transport was destroyed—”

“I'm well aware," snapped Kylo, shoving past Hux. "Is that all?"

"No, Supreme Leader, " replied Hux with the ghost of a smile. “There was another transport in the desert. It brought back a valuable prisoner.”

Kylo's stride hitched. The Resistance forces had been greatly depleted at Crait. Anyone left was immensely valuable. “Prisoner?”

"The beast that flew with Han Solo, Supreme Leader."

Kylo's heart skipped a beat. "Take me to him."

***

Kijimi City was an ancient, once-grand city that had been slowly carved into a snowy mountainside over the course of centuries. Its cobblestone streets twisted at steep, narrow angles, and slippery steps limned in ice and snow had caused more than one unwary person to regret their visit.

Poe hurried down an alleyway, the hood of his coat tight against his face, his breath frosting the air.

Snow flurried down, making every step slick and dangerous.

He was lightheaded, his heart pattered fast, and he felt a tight headache coming on. He knew from experience that a body adjusted to the altitude eventually, but he hoped they wouldn’t be around long enough.

In the meantime, he couldn’t afford to get altitude sickness. As he traveled, he took lots of slow deep breaths to give his body as much oxygen to work with as possible.

It was nighttime, but like all large cities, Kijimi never quite slept. Oil lamps, sodium sconces, and the occasional cantina window pooled light onto the flagstone streets. He tried to avoid them all, sticking to darkness.

First Order troopers were everywhere.

Poe watched from the shadows as a group of troopers pounded on a door, demanding entry.

Down the street a way, he found a small family huddled beneath an overhang, trying to disappear into the stone.

Another turn, another set of steps, and Poe watched a snowtrooper drag a tiny, wailing girl away from her mother. He glanced at Rey. Her eyes were wide and her jaw tight.

He wished there was something he could do to help.

There was. Finding that droidsmith, translating the dagger, and obliterating the Star Destroyer fleet could put a stop to all of this for good. He just had to figure out how.

Poe entered the Thieves’ Quarter, and the alleys narrowed. A noxious stink made him wince. The sewer was backed up. Which meant one of the criminal syndicates had taken over this territory.

Probably the Intracluster Gatherers, who were notorious for deferring maintenance, letting basic amenities like plumbing and power fall into disrepair just to save a few credits.

It broke his heart a little. His memories of Kijimi were a mixed bag at best, but he hated to see the place even more run down, strangled by First Order occupation.

It was happening in the Yavin system, on Corellia, and now even distant worlds like Pasaana weren’t safe. The First Order burned away everything that made the galaxy light and beautiful. Kijimi, like so many others, was now a shadow of what it used to be.

Poe finally reached his friends, who had been waiting for him in a dark alcove. Rey, Finn, and even C-3PO wore long, hooded coats, which Poe had liberated from the Opranko Guildhouse. The protocol droid had informed Poe that his internal thermostat made a coat unnecessary, but thanked him nonetheless.

Poe had ordered C-3PO to keep his hood up over his bright, stupid, golden head no matter what.

Only BB-8 and his tiny new friend went undisguised.

“Snowtroopers are everywhere,” Poe told them all. “We gotta find another way around.”

“Then I suggest we leave,” C-3PO said, too loudly. “Who votes we leave?”

“Threepio, clam it,” Poe ordered. Did the droid ever modulate the volume of his voice? “Follow me.”

They’d only gone two steps before Poe stopped them again. The cone-headed droid was squealing like a dying rodent.

“Is there anything we can do about that?” he asked, on edge.

“Master Poe,” C-3PO said. “I will carry him.”

He leaned down, scooped up the tiny droid, and cradled him like a lapdog under his arm. Rey reached over and pulled C-3PO’s coat closed, shrouding them both.

“Thank you, thank you,” came a muffled voice.

They set off again. His nose and cheeks were going numb in the icy air. They would tingle and itch like mad when they finally warmed up.

Back in the day, plenty of his buddies had suffered frostbite in this place. One of the many reasons he’d been glad to leave it behind.

Poe led them through the twisted streets, up a flight of stairs, all the while doing his best to avoid trooper squads and lookouts.

He half expected Finn or Rey to needle him about how he knew so much about this place; they’d been relentless on the flight over, asking him about hot-wiring speeders, finding smugglers’ hideouts, all of it. But they were as silent as a grave as they crept through the narrow passageways, tense with alertness.

They were nearly to their destination.

“All right,” Poe whispered. “Let’s head down this—”

The tip of a blaster barrel was suddenly boring into his skull. Poe closed his eyes. He’d been afraid of this. No matter how sneaky you were, on Kijimi someone else was sneakier.

“Heard you were spotted at Monk’s Gate,” came a female voice, filtered through a helmet vocoder. He knew that voice, even through a vocoder.

“I thought,” she continued, “He’s not stupid enough to come back here.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised,” Poe replied.

He dared to look at her.

Zorii Bliss. She was tall and lithe, in a maroon flight suit trimmed in coppery bronzium. Just like he remembered. Except her twin blasters were newer, and her helmet and visor—which shrouded her entire face—had a few more dings in it.

“What’s going on?” Finn demanded.

“Who’s this?” added Rey.

“Uh, Zorii, this is Rey, Finn, and—” Poe began before the pressure of the blaster against his skull deepened.

“I could pull this trigger right now,” threatened Zorii.

“I’ve seen you do worse.”

“For a lot less.”

“Can we try talking this out?” pleaded Poe.

“Nope," hissed Zorii. "I wanna see your brains in the snow.”

“So…you’re still mad?”

“What is this?” Rey said. Poe knew that look. His friend was drawing on the Force. He had to defuse this situation quick.

Zorii said, “Really hoped I’d never see you again, Poe Dameron of the Resistance.”

She said the word Resistance like it tasted rotten in her mouth.

“Oh, we’re all in the Resistance!” C-3PO said.

“Threepio!” Finn snapped. “Shut. Up.”

Once in a while, it was actually best to lead with the truth.

Here goes nothing, Poe thought.

“We need help, Zorii,” he said. “We gotta crack this droid’s head open.”

“Pardon me?” C-3PO said.

“We’re on our way to Babu Frik,” Poe added.

“You’re outta luck,” Zorii hissed. “Babu only works for crew nowadays. That’s not you anymore.”

With the word you, the pressure on his skull became unbearable.

Rey looked back and forth between them. “What ‘crew’?"

“Funny he never mentioned it,” Zorii said, in a tone that meant it wasn’t funny at all. “Your friend’s old job was running spice.”

Poe’s shoulders deflated. There it was. Now there’d be no end to it.

As if on cue, Finn cut in. “Wait wait wait wait. You were a spice runner?”

“You were a stormtrooper!” Poe retorted.

“Were you a spice runner?” Rey prodded.

Poe bristled. “Were you a scavenger? We could do this all night…”

Two figures materialized out of the darkness, tall, armed beings, one from each direction, blocking their exits. Zorii shifted her blaster to Poe’s neck.

“You don’t have all night,” Zorii spat at him. “You don’t even have now. You know, I’m still digging out of the hole you put me in when you left to join the cause.”

Her gaze shifted to Rey. “You? You’re the one they’re looking for. Bounty for her just might cover us.”

To the oncoming thugs, she ordered, “Djak’kankah! All of them!”

“No Djak’kankah!” Poe protested, but Rey was already moving like lightning, swinging up her staff to knock Zorii’s blaster out of her hand.

In the same, single fluid movement, she whipped her staff around, slammed the end into the face of one of Zorii’s thugs, then hefted it and threw it like a spear into the face of the other.

Before anyone could react, Rey had ignited her lightsaber and brought the tip to Zorii’s neck. Zorii had to hear the crackle near her ear, had to realize she’d been pinned with an ancient Jedi weapon. But Zorii’s reactions were always hidden by that helmet.

Poe didn’t mind admitting that he was feeling a little bit smug as Rey said, in a preternaturally kind voice, “We really could use your help. Please.”

Zorii studied Rey through her mask. Poe could hear her breathing, hear her thinking.

“Not that you care,” Zorii said at last, her voice as cool and steady as ever, her mask still closed, “but I think you’re okay.”

Rey blinked. “I… care.” Rey retracted her lightsaber, clipped it to her belt.

Zorii looked at Poe. A bit of tension left her shoulders as she came to a decision. “We can get to Babu’s through the Thieves’ Quarter.”

She headed off, and Poe indicated for his friends to follow.

Behind them came the unmistakable tat-tat of stormtroopers marching in formation. They slipped out of the alley before they could be spotted.

As they traveled a snowy passageway, Finn leaned over to him and whispered, “Poe Dameron: Spice Runner.”

“Don’t.”

“Runner of Spice.”

“All right.”

He glanced over at Rey, who was silent and frowning, lost in her own thoughts. Or maybe she was focused. Sensing something.

***

Rounding the corner far enough behind them that they couldn’t be seen but could see their quarry was the Knights of Ren.

They had tracked them all the way from Pasaana, to the ice rings of the planet where they had stopped, to here.

The First Order had been alerted, and their master would soon be on his way.

"Lord Ren wants the girl," said Ushar in a heavily modulated voice, as blunt as his war hammer. "Kill the rest."

***

Rey couldn’t help trying to calculate the portion value of everything she saw.

Babu Frik’s workshop was a cramped maze of tools and droid parts. The walls were wholly obscured by shelves, piled with wires and electronics. Every table surface was covered, every nook and cranny filled to overflowing. Parts even draped from the ceiling overhead— Rey noted a pair of dismembered legs hanging, possibly from an old battle droid from the Clone Wars.

It was a fortune in parts. That astromech head dome, for instance, was in great condition. It was made of plastex, which meant it would be easy to buff out the scorch marks and sell it for—

Something bumped her foot. A janitor droid mopped up a bit of melted snow they’d tracked in, then scurried away.

“I haven’t the faintest idea why I agreed to this,” complained C-3PO, drawing Rey’s attention back to the droid, “I must be malfunctioning.”

He was reclined on a workbench, with so many wires sticking out of his head it almost looked like he’d grown fur.

“You’re going to be okay,” Rey assured him.

Babu Frik himself was nearly invisible, hidden behind C-3PO’s rear head plate.

He was one of the tiniest beings Rey had ever seen, his height barely stretching as long as her forearm. He poked around in C-3PO’s head with an electroprobe, muttering in Anzellan, occasionally interspersed with words in Basic.

He had a grizzled face highlighted by bright, intelligent eyes, and gray brows as long and stiff as whisk brooms. The welding goggles he wore on the top of his head were armored against scorching. What kind of dangerous work was this fellow involved in to require weapons-grade work armor?

Rey crouched beside him.

“Babu Frik?” she asked. “Can you help us with this?

Babu responded, but Rey had no idea what he was saying.

She looked toward the spice runner. “Zorii? Is this going to work?”

Zorii said something in Anzellan, and Babu responded as though annoyed at being interrupted. The words were delightful, clanging against one another fast and curt, like metal parts tumbling into a melting vat. Rey wished she had time to learn the language.

“Babu says he’s found something in your droid’s forbidden memory bank,” Zorii said. “Words translated from… Sith?”

“Yes!” Rey exclaimed.

“That’s what we need,” confirmed Poe.

The spice runner turned on Poe.

“Who are you hanging around with that speaks Sith?” demanded Zorii, and Rey could have sworn that Zorii glanced toward the lightsaber at her belt.

“Can we make him translate it?” asked Finn.

Zorii and Babu spoke back and forth. Then Zorii said, “Yes. But doing so will trigger a complete memory wipe.”

“…Complete memory wipe?” C-3PO said in a tremulous voice.

“Wait wait,” Poe said to Babu. “You’re saying we make him translate… and he won’t remember anything?”

“Droid remember go blank!” Babu said.

“No!” said C-3PO.

“Blank blank,” said Babu.

“There must be some other way,” C-3PO pleaded.

Rey hated this. C-3PO was right, of course—in a way. Leia had told her a little about the droid’s history. Along with R2-D2, he’d survived the Clone Wars, the Galactic Civil War, and now the Resistance against the First Order.

Leia’s biological father, Anakin, had built C-3PO when he was a little boy. But the golden droid remembered little of it. His memory had been wiped at least once that Leia knew of. Rey wasn’t sure she could stomach doing that to him again.

“You know the odds better than any of us,” Rey said gently. “Is there any other choice?”

C-3PO was silent a long moment, considering. He muttered, “If this mission fails, it was all for nothing.  All we’ve done… all this time…”

Poe’s exact words from earlier, before they’d all held hands and vowed to press on. Droids continued to amaze her.

C-3PO looked up. His gaze moved to each of them in turn, lingering on one face then another.

“What, uh…what’re you doing there, Threepio?” Poe asked.

“Taking one last look, sir. At my friends.”

They all stood in silence, watching C-3PO quietly say goodbye.

Rey could hardly believe this was happening. She’d lost Chewie, and now she might lose C-3PO. How much loss could a person take?

The sound of a large vehicle filtered in through the walls. Babu cocked his head and said, “Uh-oh.”

Zorii cleared her throat. “Night raids are starting. I’ll keep a lookout.”

She moved as if to leave.

“I’m coming with you,” said Poe.

“You never did trust me,” Zorii said, laughing a little.

“Do you trust me?” he asked.

“Nope.”

Together Zorii and Poe exited the workshop. Rey watched them go, wondering how far she could push Poe to talk about his history with the spice runner.

After they were gone, C-3PO addressed Babu Frik in a brave and steady voice: “You may proceed."

***

Poe and Zorii sat on the rooftop of Babu’s workshop. The city spread out before them, dark and icy.

Kijimi used to quiet down during this deep hour of the night, but no longer. Laser flashes glowed briefly between buildings. Distant shouts echoed strangely over the rooftops.

Several blocks away, a First Order UA-TT walker thudded through the streets. Poe watched a small figure dart away from its heavy steps, fleeing for their life.

He was glad Zorii had brought a flask, because he really needed a drink. Poe lifted the flask and sipped. The liquid burned his throat, warmed his insides.

He sighed. It had been years since any skordu had passed his lips. It was a popular drink on Kijimi, distilled from a high-altitude fungus that grew in icy caves and crevices.

Local legend was that the Dai Bendu monks had first invented it, back when Kijimi City had been a religious stronghold—almost a holy site—before the city was overtaken by thieves and squatters and refugees.

Poe wasn’t sure he believed that Kijimi City had ever been a place of peace and contemplation. But with a little skordu in his belly, he could almost pretend.

“Is every night this bad?” Poe asked, staring off over the rooftops. Kijimi City was a drinking town, because drinking kept a body warm. Cantinas selling skordu or Ultra-Ox made a killing. If he could do it all over again, he might consider running booze instead of spice. He offered Zorii the flask.

“Most nights, worse,” she replied. “First Order’s taken most of the children. I can’t stand the cries anymore. I’ve saved up enough to.get out. I’m going to the Colonies.”

Poe whipped his head to look at her. She took the flask, turned her face away. Out of sight, her mask swicked open. She tilted her head back to take a swig. The mask thumped closed. Zorii handed the flask back to him, her face shrouded once again.

“How?” he asked. “They blocked those hyperlanes.”

No one was getting to the Colonies these days without special authorization. The First Order wanted everyone to stay right here in well-mapped sectors, where they could be controlled.

Zorii fished into a belt compartment, drawing out a small object that flashed in the pale glow of a nearby oil lamp. It was round like a coin and latticed, with a port for connectivity.

Poe whistled. “First Order captain’s medallion. I’ve never even seen a real one."

“Free passage through any blockade," confirmed Zorii. "Landing privileges at any garrison.”

“Who’d you bribe? What’d you pay?” Poe asked, his voice incredulous.

Zorii touched the side of her mask. Her visor shield retracted, finally revealing depthless wide-spaced green eyes that seemed almost yellow in the lamp light. Poe swallowed hard. Her eyes had always affected him strangely.

“Wanna come with me?” she asked, sounding suddenly vulnerable.

***

Kylo Ren stopped before the door of Interrogation Six, rallying his thoughts. He had all the power now, he reminded himself. The Wookiee was his past. He meant nothing to him. And yet he felt remorse when he thought he was dead... No... that was weakness....

Kylo opened the door.

Chewbacca was shackled to the wall. He looked up at Kylo, fury in his eyes.

“I have not forgotten that you shot me,” Kylo said. That wound had resulted in a defeat at Rey’s hands. Had he been in top fighting form, the scavenger never would have gotten the best of him. He would have been able to subdue her then. He would have been able to teach her the ways of the Force, without his mother or uncle poisoning her mind with their lies.

With a wave of Kylo’s hand, Chewbacca’s shackles opened and clanked to the floor. He removed the lightsaber from his belt. Dropped it to the ground.

“Kill me,” Kylo taunted. “I’m unarmed. Now’s your chance. Have your revenge for Han Solo.”

Chewbacca had never been stupid, and so he made no move. But he growled, dark and low.

“Feel that?” Kylo continued, merciless. “It makes you feel alive, doesn’t it? That burning. The Dark Side. It makes you powerful. You understand that. The scavenger will understand it, too. She will be mine.”

He sensed a stab of fear from the Wookiee, on Rey’s behalf. Kylo smiled beneath his mask, for he’d just been given his way in. Chewbacca loved the girl. In time, he would love her as much as he’d loved Han Solo. The way he’d never really loved Ben. Snoke had been the one to show him that.

Kylo’s voice crackled with rage. “What was her mission? Where is she going? Give me the answer… or I’ll take it myself.”

It should have been satisfying to watch Chewbacca wince in fear. Kylo should have felt pleasure in reaching out with the Force, inserting himself into the Wookiee’s mind, ripping away his memories and thoughts.

Instead, it was exhausting. He saw flashes of the Wookiee laughing with a much younger Han Solo than he himself remembered. Felt Chewbacca’s joy when his best friend married the woman he’d come to love like a sister. Saw the Wookiee cuddling a human toddler, teaching an older boy to fly a speeder, target practice with a young man, their blasters set on stun against a haphazard dummy made of rocks.

Uncle Chewie, he’d called him back then.

Nausea rolled around in the pit of Kylo’s stomach when he finally walked away from Interrogation Six. He’d gotten what he needed. Surely the sense of triumph would follow soon.

***

Inside the workshop, Rey watched Babu operate on C-3PO, deep in thought. She was wondering if there was still another way to get the dagger inscription that didn’t involve splitting Threepio’s head open.

The protocol droid’s head plate had been removed, and Babu was elbow-deep inside C-3PO’s head.

Distantly, through the building’s stone walls, came the muted sound of screaming. Occasional blasterfire.

Rey wasn’t sure if the First Order was tearing the city apart looking for them, or if it was like this all the time.

She looked toward Finn, who winced at every sound of battle.. Not in fear, she noted, but in empathy. He was one of the kindest people she’d ever met. No, the kindest.

Rey had waited so long on Jakku for her parents to come back for her, scratching out the days against the metal wall of her AT-AT scavenged home. No one ever did. She had vague memories of Unkar Plutt raising her for a few years in a halfhearted, ham-fisted way, before booting her out into the desert to fend for herself as a little girl. Even he had never bothered to check on her. To care.

But then she’d met Finn, and after a short time together, she’d been captured by Kylo Ren and taken to Starkiller Base. That’s when Finn had done something no one in her life had done before, the thing she’d yearned for her parents to do: He’d come to get her. At tremendous peril to himself. Before anyone knew she could wield a lightsaber or use the Force or any of it. She was nothing, just another scavenger from another Forceforsaken planet, when he’d risked his life to save hers. And she’d never forget it.

Sparks flew from C-3PO’s head, startling her. She couldn’t stand to watch anymore.

Rey stepped away, out of view, and hunkered down on the floor. BB-8 rolled over and whirred at her softly.

Behind him came D-O, trailing BB-8 eagerly, his uni-wheel squeaking with every revolution.

Rey grabbed an oil can and moved toward the tiny droid, who recoiled at the sight of Rey looming over him, an unfamiliar object in her hand.

“It’s just oil,” she said gently. “Won’t hurt. I promise.”

***

Supreme Leader Kylo Ren strode away from the hangar bay and interrogation rooms, rejoining General Hux and Captain Peavy.

Kylo said, “I want all the Wookiee’s belongings brought to my quarters.”

Hux hid his smile. Ren was practically frothing at the mouth. He had a history with his father’s copilot, and seeing the Wookiee had done something to him. The Supreme Leader was likely not thinking with a clear head. Good.

“Sir,” Peavy said. “The Knights of Ren have tracked the scavenger.”

“To a settlement called Kijimi,” added Hux. “They’re searching there now."

"Very well."

Hux asked, “Shall we destroy the city, Supreme—” Kylo stuck a long finger in Hux’s face, effectively shushing him.

“Set a course for Kijimi,” he said. “I want her taken alive.”

His words dismissed them all, and Kylo Ren hurried off alone.

Hux stood with his hands clasped behind his back and watched him go, smiling to himself as Kylo unraveled.

***

Snow was drifting down, melting against Zorii’s helmet. Poe stared at her. How do you say no to eyes like that? He sighed. You think of everyone else you care about, that’s how.

“I can’t walk out on this war,” Poe told Zorii. “Not until it’s over.”

As the Kijimi night grew even colder, Poe remembered something Leia was constantly reminding him: Always be recruiting.

“The Resistance could use a pilot like you,” he told her. Truly, she was one heck of a pilot, thanks in no small part to his teaching and encouragement. “We’re down to almost no one.”

Then he slammed his mouth shut. Admitting how dire things had become was likely not the best recruitment strategy. It was the damn skordu making him so flippant.

“Why?” she said. “You hear about pockets of rebellion all over the galaxy.”

“Just stories,” Poe murmured, looking down at his hands. “We put out a call for help at the Battle of Crait. Nobody came. First Order’s made everyone so afraid… that I’m afraid maybe everyone’s given up.”

Since then, it had become clear that the First Order controlled so many lines of communication, had so many jammers operating at strategic locations throughout the galaxy, that they couldn’t be sure their call for help had even been heard.

Leia and Poe had spent the ensuing months trying to reconnect with old allies and friends, reestablish communications, bolster their network of sympathizers and spies. They’d even made contact with former Imperials and rescued some high-profile First Order targets from imprisonment.

But their progress had been painfully incremental, and Poe couldn’t shake his greatest fear, that the real reason no one came was because they’d all lost hope.

“I don’t believe you believe that,” she said. She stared up at the jagged mountain peaks; this time of night they looked like massive razors of shadow. “They win by making you think you’re alone. Remember? There’re more of us than there are of them.”

Along the dark horizon, a handful of ships appeared, small at first but growing ever larger as they approached. When they breached the city boundaries, they spread out and flashed on huge searchlights. The lights swept back and forth, lighting up sections of the city brighter than day.

“The hell are those?” Poe asked.

Zorii stood up. “Your cue to leave.”

***

The first few drops of lubricant Rey applied to D-O did absolutely nothing. He was drier than the Rakith Plateau in high summer. But he made soft whirring sounds of happiness, so she kept at it— applying it to his head joint, his wheel rotor, even the base of his communications array.

“Squeaky wheel,” he informed her solemnly. “I-I-I-I have a squeeeeeaky wheel.”

“Now try,” Rey said.

He rolled back and forth experimentally. Not a sound.

“Squeak eliminated,” he said. Then he shrieked in delight and took off on a freewheeling rampage, running circles around the workshop, whipping about BB-8 as if enticing him to play.

“Thank you. Very kind.”

Instead of making her feel good, Rey’s stomach suddenly roiled at the droid’s gratitude.

Finn stepped over to see what the fuss was about and smiled. He gave Rey a light elbow to the side as if to say: Good job.

His smile faltered when he saw the stricken look on her face.

"No," she muttered. "I'm not kind..."

"What’s wrong?" he asked.

“Finn,” Rey said, keeping her gaze on the tiny droid. "There's more I need to tell you."

"About the vision?" Finn inquired. "Rey, please. You gotta stop beating yourself up about that. Chewie's death was an accident. I'm sure whatever happened way back when was an accident, too."

"No, Finn. I killed Chewie, and now I'm just standing by as Threepio is killed just to translate that damned dagger!“ screamed Rey. Finn went to put a calming hand on her shoulder and she flinched away. "What if this is all a mistake? What if I'm just as bad as Ochi?!"

Finn shook his head. "No. I don't believe that."

Rey hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell Leia. But now, with everything else that happened, she had to tell someone or the secret would devour her from within.

"I had a vision. A different vision. Before, on Ajan Kloss. I saw the throne of the Sith. I saw who was on it.”

Finn’s eyes narrowed. “Ren?”

Rey shook her head. “Me.”

Finn’s mouth parted in shock.

Before Finn could speak, Zorii dashed inside, Poe at her heels.

“The scanners are coming,” she announced.

“Did we get it?” asked Poe. “Babu?”

Rey and Finn exchanged a startled glance. Finn’s gaze lingered on Rey for a moment before he replied to Poe with "Not yet. And we can't leave until he's done."

But another spark popped over C-3PO’s head, and Babu climbed down to give the droid some space.

“Ay-yep,” confirmed Babu. “Droid is ready!”

Something inside C-3PO seemed to purr, as if he was powering up after a long nap. His eyes flashed on—bright, eerie red. He cocked his head to look at them all—a sharp, jerky, almost hostile motion.

“Is okay,” Babu said. “Is unlock! Droid unlock!”

Rey’s heart sank. No matter what happened next, no matter if they were successful, she had lost another friend.

The droid who used to be C-3PO sat up and spoke, his vocal intonators using a strange new modulation that was dark and low.

“The Emperor’s Wayfinder,” he said, “is sealed inside the Imperial Vaults. At delta-three-six transient nine-three-six bearing three-two on a moon in the Endor system. From the southern shore. Only this blade tells, only this blade tells…”

The droid jerked once, then slumped as if powering down. His eyes went dark, his body stilled.

Oh, Threepio, I’m so sorry, Rey thought.

“The Endor system?” Finn wondered solemnly. “Where the last war ended?”

“Endor!” Babu enthused. “I know this. Babu will help.”

The little droidsmith started to reach for something, but the entire workshop began rattling. Bolts and screws spilled from shelves. The battle droid legs hanging from the ceiling swung violently.

Poe ran to the nearest window, and Rey followed. Together they peered up into the night.

A massive Star Destroyer cruised low over the mountains, blocking out the sky. The blowback from its thrusters shook the city, tossing trash and loose snow about, creating chaos.

“Ren’s Destroyer,” said Poe.

Even in the night, Finn knew that Destroyer anywhere. He'd been on it for years. "The Finalizer..."

He had found them again. Rey tensed to flee. If they ran for Ochi’s freighter right this second, they might have a chance. She was about to say as much, but she gasped instead.

Kylo Ren was near. And his conflicted mind was dwelling on torture. He’d ripped away someone’s thoughts, the same way he’d tried to rip away hers when they’d first met, except with far greater results…

Her stomach turned over.

“Rey?” Finn asked, concerned.

“Chewie…” Rey gasped. Kylo had done something to him. Recently. Maybe only moments ago.

“What about him?” Finn pressed.

“He’s on Kylo Ren’s ship..." Rey breathed, hardly daring to believe it.

She hadn’t killed Chewie after all! She could still save him! “

"He’s alive, I feel it!" Rey called, her self-doubt giving way to hope and determination with every word. "Finn, he must’ve been on a different transport!”

“We have to go get him!” Finn declared.

Zorii’s modulated voice came out almost like a squeak. “Your friend’s on that sky trash?”

“I guess he is,” Poe said, in a voice as glad as Rey felt.

Something inside the workshop clattered, and they all whirled.

Poe’s hand flew to his blaster.

It was C-3PO, rebooting. His eyes flashed a familiar gold. “Allow me to introduce myself! I am C-3PO, human–cyborg relations! And you are?”

“Okay, that’s gonna be a problem,” Poe grumbled, but Rey’s relief was like a punch to the gut. The droid was back, in some semblance of his former self.

“Helloooo,” said Babu. “I, Babu Frik.”

“You’ve got bigger problems,” Zorii reminded them. “To the alleys. Let’s go!”

***

The sounds of pursuit were all around them as Poe and his friends hurried through the crooked streets of Kijimi City, keeping low to avoid troopers.

But their group was only as fast as their slowest member, which was C-3PO. Always C-3PO, shuffling along at half the speed of everyone else.

“Threepio, move your metal ass!” snapped Poe impatiently.

“How dare you!” the droid replied, affronted. “We’ve only just met!”

They turned a corner. Ochi’s freighter was straight ahead, and Poe’s chest was suddenly aching and empty. At least this time he wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye.

Zorii and Rey exchanged a nod, and then by silent mutual agreement, Rey ran ahead with Finn and the droids, giving Poe and Zorii a moment alone.

Zorii pulled the captain’s medallion from her belt and handed it to him.

“Might get you on a capital ship,” she said. “Go help your friend.”

Poe stared at the medallion, his breath catching in his throat. The fact that Zorii refused to talk about its acquisition meant she’d done unspeakable things to obtain it.

He said, “I don’t think I can take this.”

“I don’t care what you think.”

Poe smiled. Still the same Zorii.

“Poe!” came Rey’s voice. “It’s the Knights. Come on!”

Poe took the medallion, but his feet were rooted. How could he leave Zorii again? What do you even say in a moment like this? He settled for, “Can I kiss you?”

“Go,” she ordered, giving his chest a shove, but he smugly noted the amusement in her voice.

Reluctantly, smiling just a little, he stepped away from Zorii and then dashed after his friends.

Chapter 9: Star Destroyer Rescue

Finn followed Poe and Rey as they raced into the cockpit. Rey took the pilot’s seat, and Poe slipped into the seat beside her. Both started flicking a dizzying array of switches. Lights came on, and the engines hummed to life.

Finn tried to pay attention. Unlike Rey and Poe, he was not a natural pilot, but he was still supposed to be learning how to fly. Leia expected every member of her core team to be able to fly something in a pinch.

“Hang tight,” Poe warned. “We’re going up hot.”

In the Falcon, 'going up hot' meant Finn had better get himself to the turret station, but there was nothing for a third passenger to do in the Bestoon Legacy-- the cockpit didn’t even have a place to sit.

Until there was something for him to shoot at with a blaster, Finn would have to settle for holding on tight and offering encouragement. He was good at encouraging. He could encourage all day.

“Uh, you’re both doing great,” he muttered.

Rey lifted them away from the planet at such a fast, steep angle that the acceleration compensators couldn’t keep Finn’s stomach from dropping into his feet and pressing like lead against the floor.

Within moments they had cleared the atmosphere and were quickly approaching the massive Star Destroyer that was most certainly Kylo Ren’s command ship.

How was it that he always ended up flying toward First Order ships?

Rey slipped Zorii’s captain’s medallion into the dash slot. BB-8 and D-O rolled into the cockpit, which made the place a bit cramped, but Finn didn’t mind. When you were about to try to sneak aboard an enemy ship—again—and your heart was racing and your feet twitched to flee, it was helpful to have something blocking your exit.

Everyone in the cockpit was dead silent as they waited to see if they would get blown to bits.

Something beeped, and Poe’s shoulders slumped with relief. “Medallion works. Cleared for cargo hangar twelve.”

“Hang on, Chewie,” Rey murmured. “We’re coming.”

“Whoever this Chewie is,” muttered C-3PO, “this is madness.”

There’d been a time when Finn would have agreed with the droid, before he’d had friends.

Traffic was heavy, with supply ships, TIEs, and shuttles flying to and from the various hangars. Rey angled them neatly toward one, slowing to regulation speed, slipping through the containment field, touching the freighter down onto the shiny hangar floor with the lightest kiss.

Together they rushed down the ramp. Two patrol troopers approached, stepping in unison. One said, “Credentials and manife—”

Finn blasted him. Poe got the other. Both collapsed to the ground. So much for sneaking.

Rey turned to the droids, who were attempting to follow.

“You three stay there,” she ordered.

“Happily,” squeaked C-3PO.

“Which way?” Poe asked.

"It's been a while," replied Finn. If he wandered around a little, he’d be able to figure out where to go. "Follow me!” 

They jogged down a corridor. Just as in Starkiller Base, the floors were pristine, the light panels, dataports, and even support struts sparkling with newness and state-of-the-art technology.

Finn knew exactly how much work it took to keep everything looking like it just came off a Corellian assembly line. He preferred the dirt and fallen leaves and intruding tree roots of the Ajan Kloss base any day.

They turned a corner and came face-to-face with another pair of patrol troopers, who raised their rifles.

“Drop your weapons!” one ordered.

Finn did not want to kill anyone else. He never relished in killing stormtroopers—as he of course was one himself once — and logistically, leaving a trail of bodies throughout the ship would just make it all the harder to rescue Chewie and escape. But if he had no choice… He moved his finger to the trigger.

Rey said, her voice full of quiet strength: “It’s okay that we’re here.”

Finn held his breath.

“It’s okay that you’re here,” the stormtrooper echoed.

The other trooper nodded.

“It’s good,” he added.

“You’re relieved that we’re here,” continued Rey.

“Thank goodness you’re here!” said the first trooper, his shoulders going slack.

“Welcome, guys!” said the second.

Poe leaned over and whispered in Finn’s ear: “Does she do that to us?”

Of course not. She’d never—no, wait… she definitely would. To protect them. To keep one of them from following her into the desert and getting run down by Kylo Ren’s TIE fighter.

Oh, hell. Finn fought down a surge of righteous anger. He would definitely have to talk to her about it, but now was not the time. 

“We’re looking for a prisoner,” probed Rey.

The stormtroopers cheerfully gave directions to the cellblock where Chewie was being held.

After the troopers resumed their patrol, Finn and his friends raced away. Within moments, they came to a split in the corridor, just like the troopers had described.

Rey stopped in her tracks, and Finn’s heart thudded in his chest. He knew that look. It meant their plan was about to take a detour.

“Chewie’s this way,” he reminded her.

Half to herself, Rey replied, “The dagger’s on this ship. We need it.”

“Why?” questioned Poe. C-3PO had already translated it, already given them the coordinates of the Emperor’s Wayfinder.

“A feeling!” Rey explained.

“Rey, you can’t just—” Finn grabbed Poe’s arm to silence him.

“I’ll meet you back in the hangar.” She dashed off before either of them could protest.

“Chewie,” Finn reminded him.

Poe nodded, and together they jogged down the corridor.

***

Supreme Leader Kylo Ren approached a squad of snowtroopers who gathered at the steps to Monk’s Gate. At his back were the Knights of Ren. Vicrul's vibro-scythe and Ap'lek's Mandalorian axe dripped with blood from their swath of destruction through the city in search of the scavenger. In the background, he could hear Kuruk and Cardo firing their weapons. Cardo was reputed to be a walking cannon turret—he was living up to that reputation. Houses were being demolished by Ushar's war hammer. If the cries of terror in the distance were any indication, Trudgen was most certainly in the depths of the city, butchering away with his vibro-cleaver.

"Lieutenant Barok,” the Supreme Leader said. His voice was tight and calm, though the snowtroopers could sense that he was barely containing his rage. He looked around, almost as though he was sniffing the air.

“We have a perimeter around the city—” the lieutenant began, but Kylo cut him off with a finger in his face.

“We’re too late,” he snapped. “The scavenger is gone.”

Kylo then let loose a roar of frustration and whipped out his lightsaber, the blade teeming and sparking with chaotic red light. He slashed it back and forth in a rage, toppling a column of stone, slicing a neehwa oil lantern in two. The lieutenant and his snowtrooper squad slunk away from his wrath, but his Knights looked on as though amused.

When Kylo was done, boulders and lantern scrap lay scattered on the ground, the melted water pooling beneath them already freezingback up at the edges.

“She had help,” Kylo said to his Knights, his voice calm once again. “Find them. Destroy them.”

***

Finn and Poe reached the prisoner cellblock and found the cell that supposedly held Chewie. Finn hit the switch, and the door whooshed open to reveal the Wookiee, manacled to the wall.

He growled and moaned excitedly, almost too fast for Finn to follow with his rudimentary understanding of Shyriiwook—he only caught the words for “surprised” and “danger” and “much gladness.”

“Of course we came for you!” Poe said.

Chewie rattled off a question.

“Rey’s here,” explained Finn. “She’s gonna get the dagger.”

Chewbacca started to chatter, something about Kylo Ren and information and how very sorry he was, but they didn’t have time.

It would take moments for the First Order to figure out that Ochi’s freighter didn’t belong in hangar twelve, if they hadn’t already. And once that happened, even off-duty stormtroopers would be called upon to join the search for intruders. Finn had endured that drill a hundred times.

"It's okay, Chewie," said Poe sympathetically. This sort of scenario was how he and Finn had first met. "Been there before."

“We’ve got Ochi’s ship,” Finn added. “Follow me.”

He hurried down the corridor to a door and hit the release. It whooshed up—revealing a stormtrooper who raised his blaster.

Finn hit the release again, slamming the door down. “Wrong way!”

They sprinted away in the opposite direction—and ran right into another stormtrooper, who began to fire. They’d caught him by surprise, and his first shots were wild.

“Not really a right way, is there?” Poe said, taking out the stormtrooper. He crouched over the fallen trooper, dislodged his blaster rifle from beneath the body and slid it along the floor toward Chewie.

The Wookiee grabbed it, and brought the rifle to bear just in time to blast two stormtroopers who had come up behind them.

They ducked around a corner—

And almost collided with an entire squad. Rifles whipped up, and the corridor became hot with laser blasts. Poe dropped to the ground, and Finn watched in horror as his friend clutched his arm in pain.

“Poe!” he yelled. The pilot’s arm was charred and oozing. He needed medical attention right away.

Suddenly they were surrounded by troopers, way too many for the three of them to fight off.

“You there, put your weapons down," ordered the trooper. Chewie reluctantly threw his stolen blaster rifle to the ground. "Hands up! Now!”

Finn raised his hands in surrender. He knew exactly what would happen next: interrogation, execution.

He’d been on the verge of execution before, on the Supremacy, Captain Phasma looming over him like a chrome-plated reaper. A fellow couldn’t reasonably expect to get out of that kind of situation more than once.

Chewie brayed in frustration, and Poe said “Hey, fellas,” with the bravado only a fighter pilot could pull off.

“Shut up, scum,” snapped a stormtrooper, in a voice that reminded Finn so much of Phasma that he had to resist the urge to snap back.

He hoped Rey was faring better. If she found that dagger and got back to the ship, their mission still stood a chance.

***

Rey entered a bright black and white space with soaring ceilings and clean perfection. Kylo Ren’s private quarters.

She stepped slowly, carefully, still drawn to the dagger. The room was beautiful and light-filled, but devoid of warmth. As though he didn’t care about anything or anyone.

Or maybe that wasn’t entirely true, because a few more steps brought her to a pedestal, deep black in contrast with its surroundings, jutting unchallenged from the shiny white floor. A place of honor.

Displayed atop the pedestal was a warped black mask, its eyeholes and vocoder still gaping but melted like heated wax, smeared into a display of perpetual agony. She stared at it a long time—too long—unable to look away. She’d seen this mask in Kylo’s thoughts, when he’d tried to pull Luke’s map from her mind on Starkiller Base. It had belonged to his grandfather, Darth Vader.

But that horrible mask was not what she’d come for, and she wanted nothing to do with it. She glanced around… there! On a table opposite the pedestal were Chewie’s things—his bowcaster and satchel. Kylo must have ordered Chewie’s belongings be sent to his quarters after he interrogated him for information.

Which led her to... Ochi’s dagger. If Kylo searched Chewie’s mind, then he must have discovered their mission to find the Emperor’s Wayfinder to Exegol, and the role the dagger played in it.

Rey reached for the dagger. Wrapped her fingers around the handle—

The floor shifted beneath her feet, and the air went dark.

“Where are you?” came Kylo Ren’s modulated voice.

Rey let go of the dagger like a child caught in the cookie jar and whirled around to face him. Kylo stood alone before her, masked, surrounded by darkness. Snow dusted his cape.

“You’re hard to find,” he said.

“You’re hard to get rid of.” She began to turn away. He was worth no more of her time.

"Oh, but deep down I know you don't want to get rid of me," replied Kylo, his artificial voice tinged with amusement.

"But you don't? You nearly ran me down in the desert!" Rey snapped.

“I pushed you in the desert because I needed to see it. I needed you to see it. Who you are. I know the rest of your story. Rey…”

“No,” Rey hissed, She spun back around. Whipped up her lightsaber and aimed it at his throat. “You’re lying.”

“I wasn't lying, Rey. Your parents were no one," pressed Kylo. "They sold you for drinking money. They threw you away like trash!"

“Don’t!” she said through gritted teeth. She hated this. That he had knowledge of her that she didn’t, that he was the one to tell her.

“You remember more than you say.” As she backed away, he reminded her, “I’ve been in your head.”

“No," she pleaded, even as pieces of a lifelong puzzle began to click together in her head. She’d dreamed of finding out about her parents, slowed down her Jedi training under Leia in order to search the Force for them, but as the knowledge began to clarify inside her, Rey finally considered that maybe she’d rather not know.  "I don’t want this.” And she didn’t. Not from him.

“Search your memory,” he urged.

“No!” She swung the lightsaber. He brought his own to bear, and they clashed, blue on red.

“Remember them,” he demanded, relentless. “See them!”

 

" No! Come back!" Rey screamed at her parent's starship as it departed into the Jakku sky. "Come back!"

She was confused. Where were they going? Why weren't they taking her with them?

"Come, girl! Come!" roared the monstrous Unkar Plutt as he dragged her away. "You're mine now!"

Rey struggled against the brutish Crolute. She didn't know this man. Why did her parents leave her with him?

"Come back!" Rey reached out towards the sky, as if to try to snatch the fleeing starship out of the sky. "Come back!"

The starship slowed, straining as if it was towing an immensely heavy weight. It shook, the metal warping like a tin can. 

"Come back!"

The starship, unable to handle the pull of the invisible forces acting upon it, exploding into a brilliant cloud of fire, smoke, and metal.

Unkar snorted as the debris rained down, unfazed by the spontaneous explosion. "That was a halfway decent starship, too... oh well. At least there'll be plenty of salvage. Now come, girl!"

Rey stood rooted to the spot, staring at the dark cloud that used to be her parents.

"I SAID COME, OR I'LL LEAVE YOU HERE TO DIE WITH THEM!" roared Unkar.

Her legs heavy, Rey followed. They made it, somehow they did, she’d told herself. And they'll come back for her, someday...

 

"You did it, Rey. You killed them with the Force. You've repressed it all this time," Kylo revealed.

"Stop talking!" Rey sobbed.

"All those years alone... waiting for parents that were never, ever coming back," Kylo sighed. Rey could sense sympathy in his modulated voice. He wasn't relishing this.

"No!!!" shrieked Rey, pushing the vision away, even as she pushed against Kylo’s lightsaber, thrusting him back.

They circled each other. “You're not so different than me... we're the same. The blood of our fathers stains our hands!"

"No!" She rushed him, swiped and stabbed with a series of blows. She was faster now, the lightsaber more like an extension of herself than a separate weapon, but he countered easily.

Rey swung; he dodged. Her lightsaber sliced through a basket. Red berries came from nowhere, spilled out, brighter than blood against the… white floor of Kylo’s quarters?

They were together and they were separate, in each other’s minds and spaces, but Rey didn’t care, she just wanted to land a blow, to hurt him. Their blades sizzled with impact as they fought, creeping closer to Vader’s mask.

“Tell me where you are,” Kylo demanded. “I have something else to tell you...”

"I don't want to hear it!" Rey attacked again. He dodged, stepped back to give them some space.

“I've learned something about our connection on Exegol,” he continued, like a patient teacher, as though they weren’t in the fight of their lives. “Our connection wasn't because of Snoke. It is something more.”

She circled him slowly, looking for an opening. Anything to get him to stop talking.

“Rey, we are something more...”

“No!” Rey screamed, launching herself at Kylo.

Their blades clashed, hummed with impact, and all at once she glimpsed his location, or maybe she was actually there for a split second—the shadowy stone rooftop, the icy air. Kijimi. He had probably just missed her.

She was having no luck getting past his guard, so she swung blindly, chaotically. He moved to block.

The pedestal shattered. Darth Vader’s mask tumbled toward the ground… and disappeared.

“So that’s where you are...” Kylo said, looking down, presumably at the mask in the snow where he stood. “Do you know what we are?”

“No,” she said, but the confusion on her face was the only answer he needed.

Immense satisfaction tinged his voice as he said, “I’ll come and tell you.”

Rey took several steps backward. What had she done? She’d let her anger get the best of her again. Let herself get distracted. Now Kylo knew exactly where she and her friends were.

She half expected him to renew the attack, but he didn’t. All went silent. Her vision of him winked out. Her own breathing was loud in her ears. The shattered black remains of the pedestal were strewn at her feet.

What just happened?

No time. She had to get everyone off this ship now, before Kylo returned. She hefted the dagger, grabbed Chewie’s things, and sprinted for the freighter.

***

It didn’t take long for First Order officers to appear on the scene.

Finn glared as General Hux approached, flanked by Lieutenant Mitaka and a few other officers.

They were so dead.

Hux stepped into Finn’s space, so close he could feel the general’s hot breath on his skin. They locked eyes.

“At last,” Hux said smugly. "I knew it was only a matter of time before you get yourself caught yet again, FN-2187. I swear, it's almost pathological with you."

"The girl’s not with them,” blurted one of the stormtroopers holding them prisoner.

"Feh. Makes little difference to me," sneered Hux. "Take them away. Terminate them.”

Finn couldn’t believe it. No interrogation? Not even a single question from the allegiant general? What was so important about Rey that they’d ignore the opportunity to get intel about the Resistance from members of its core leadership?

If Finn had a credit for everyone who wanted him dead for deserting the First Order… Well, he had no regrets, no matter what happened next.

Hux left, but Mitaka tagged along as stormtroopers thrust rifle butts into their backs and shoved them down the corridor toward the execution chamber.

It was a small room, with jets built into the walls. Once they were dead, the jets would release heat and toxins to break down their remains, then vacuum everything up, leaving a perfectly sterile chamber. All physical trace of their existence would be obliterated.

“Turn around,” a stormtrooper ordered.

They faced the wall.

“Actually, I’d like to do this one myself,” Mitaka said, and Finn heard the click of a blaster accepting a new identiprint. "No way was I going to miss the opportunity to be the one to kill the traitorous FN-2187..."

Suddenly Finn realized he did have one regret: that he couldn’t see Rose one last time...

A blaster shrieked.

Death did not come. Finn opened his eyes and turned.

Mitaka stood over the stormtroopers’ dead bodies, his blaster tip smoking after close-range fire on the highest setting.

“I’m the spy,” Mitaka announced.

“What?!” exclaimed Poe.

“You?!” added Finn.

“We don’t have much time,” Mitaka warned.

Finn, Poe, and Chewie all gaped at him.

“I knew it!” Poe said, sticking a finger in Mitaka’s face.

“You did not,” Finn said, rolling his eyes, which he knew was petty, but who cared? They were alive. He looked Mitaka up and down suspiciously. "Why are you helping us?"

Mitaka looked around the execution chamber disdainfully. "My parents were Imperial loyalists. I joined believing that everything the First Order was doing was for the greater good. But after the Hosnian Cataclysm, I saw how wrong I was. I signed up for order. Not genocide."

Finn, Poe, and Chewie looked at each other and nodded. They had no choice but to trust him.

***

Rey peeked around the corner. The droids were being questioned outside the ship by stormtroopers. For once, she was glad of C-3PO’s memory wipe. She trusted BB-8 to say nothing. But D-O was an unknown factor.

“What’s your operating number?” a stormtrooper was asking C-3PO.

The droid responded with an unintelligible soup of syllables.

“That’s not even a language!” growled the stormtrooper.

Rey took a moment to focus, line up her shots, fired…one, two, three shots: three hits. The stormtroopers crumpled to the ground as Rey sprinted for the freighter.

“Oh, dear!” cried Threepio. “I’ve never been in a laser battle before!”

Rey was nearly to the on-ramp when she sensed a familiar presence. Kylo Ren.

“Where are the others?” she asked.

“They haven’t come back," replied the protocol droid.

A TIE screamed into the hangar bay and landed hard. He was on that fighter, and he was looking for her.

She thrust everything she was carrying at C-3PO—her quarterstaff, the dagger, Chewie’s satchel—and yelled to the droids, “Find them! Go!”

Better for them to take their chances inside the maze of a Star Destroyer than face Kylo Ren.

Rey was vaguely aware of C-3PO scurrying out of the hangar with BB-8 and D-O on his heels as she took a deep breath and advanced on the TIE.

The hatch opened and Kylo emerged. His face was hidden behind his mask, and his cloak whipped at his heels.

***

Mitaka had good news for Finn and Poe: The Millennium Falcon had been commandeered by the First Order and was right here on the Finalizer. Finn could hardly believe their luck.

But he also had bad news: It was scheduled to be incinerated, by order of Supreme Leader Kylo Ren. They could save the ship and get away in it, but they’d have to be quick. And they’d have to leave the droids behind. Finn would come back for them somehow. And Rey.

Lieutenant Mitaka led the way. They passed officers and stormtroopers, droids and maintenance crew, and although a giant, hairy Wookiee occasionally made someone do a double take, Mitaka’s presence gave them unhindered passage through the ship’s corridors.

“Look!” came a familiar mechanical voice behind them. “There they are!”

Finn spun. C-3PO! Looking ridiculous in Chewie’s bandolier, and carrying the Wookiee’s satchel and bowcaster. With him were BB-8 and the little cone-head droid.

“Friends!” said the cone-head droid.

Poe seemed as relieved as Finn felt. “BB-8, Threepio, come on!"

Mitaka hustled them toward a door.

“I shut down the impeders,” he said. “You’ve got seconds.”

The general opened the door revealing the Falcon, unscathed except for the entrance lock, which was a conspicuous mess of charred wires. No worries— Rose could have that lock working in no time.

“There she is,” whistled Poe. “She’s a survivor.”

They headed toward the ship, but Finn felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Wait!” said Mitaka. “Blast me. Arm or leg. Doesn't matter. Quick!”

“What? Why?” demanded Finn.

“Or they’ll know," explained Mitaka.

Finn raised his blaster. He hesitated.

“Come with us,” pleaded Finn.

Mitaka smiled sadly. "I can do more good here."

Finn nodded and sighed. Mitaka had earned his respect. An officer of the First Order that was willing to risk life and literal limb to help them, to help the Resistance cause. He stood back and aimed. Mitaka squeezed his eyes shut.

"I'm sorry!" Finn winced as he shot Mitaka in the leg.

Mitaka grunted and fell to the ground, sweat breaking out on his suddenly red face. Finn hesitated again, going over to help Mitaka.

"Go!" he shouted.

Finn flinched, sparing one last glance at him before joining Poe and Chewie on the Falcon.  

***

Rey and Kylo circled each other like stalking wolves, slow and intense. An audience formed around them as stormtroopers charged into the hangar to watch.

He was going to tell her something important. She was desperate to hear it. But maybe she should just kill him. Or maybe she should flee.

“What did you learn on Exegol? What is our connection?" Her question became a demand. "Tell me.”

Kylo pressed forward mercilessly, backing her closer and closer to the void. “We are a dyad in the Force, Rey. The Dyad of legend. Two that are One."

Her heart stopped. A dyad.

His words rang with truth, deep in her very soul. They shattered her, emptied her of everything.

She forced herself to continue edging toward the abyss where the hangar ended and the high atmosphere of Kijimi began.

Rey peered over, gauged the distance to the hazy ground. Too high a jump, even with the help of the Force. Maybe she should try it anyway.

“Come with me to Exegol," Kylo said. “Rule the galaxy with me. Please,”

He removed his mask. A gesture of vulnerability. Of trust. It suddenly occurred to her how long it had been since she’d seen his face. The scar on his cheek had faded, but it would still mark him forever.

“You know what you need to do,” he beseeched. “You know."

He extended his black-gloved hand to her.

She looked at it. Remembered. The last time he’d extended a hand to her had been in the wreakage of Snoke’s throne room. Their combined power had defeated him. It was true that together they could do such incredible things.

Rey had to look away from his pleading eyes. He was really doing this again. Offering her the galaxy. Did he not realize that killing tyrants and claiming their titles meant nothing to her? That offering himself and not the galaxy was the way to her heart?

Suddenly, she sensed a weight at her back and along with it, Finn, his presence a bright beacon of light, piercing the dark.

“I do know,” she told Kylo. Rey turned toward the abyss.

The Falcon rose before her. Stormtroopers volleyed blasts at the ship, but the Falcon swiveled on an invisible axis. Poe hit the thrusters, blowing back everything in the hanger. Stormtroopers slid away helplessly.

Rey braced herself. She sensed Kylo doing the same behind her.

The Falcon remained hovering in the air as the access ramp descended, revealing Finn, wearing a breather and wielding a blaster.

“Rey!” he called.

Debris flew past her, kicked up by the wash of the Falcon’s engines.

Rey turned back to Kylo one last time. She hated him for telling her. And yet she was glad he had. A dyad…

“C’mon!” yelled Finn.

Rey sprinted for the edge, then launched herself toward the Falcon. Finn grabbed her arm before she could sail by, and swung her onto the ramp. They sprinted into the Falcon’s belly as the ramp rose, closing them in, and the floor shuddered beneath her feet as Poe whipped the ship around and hit the accelerator.

***

Back on Ajan Kloss, Leia held her breath. Lieutenant Connix had run to fetch her the moment they’d received the signal, but it was coded.

Please be the Falcon, she thought.

She listened on her headset as Rose worked the console controls, decrypting. A red light turned blue, and the console beeped.

Rose grinned. “We’re picking up their flight signature! General, the Falcon’s flying again!”

Leia couldn’t even savor her relief because a wave of weakness washed over her, making her stumble. The headset was suddenly too hot and tight. She jerked it off, let it fall to the ground.

Leia, came her brother’s maddening voice. It’s time.

I can’t, she told him. There’s too much to do.

She felt his understanding, his love, maybe even a touch of amusement.

There is only one thing left, he said. And then you can rest.

Dizziness overtook her. She felt herself falling, the edges of the world caving in on her. She was vaguely aware of Connix’s arms wrapping around her, boosting her, the lieutenant’s worried voice: “General?”

Rose moved toward Leia in alarm, but Leia stopped her with a weak gesture.

"I'll be fine, Rose. Just try to get in touch with the Falcon," she ordered. She nodded to Connix to guide her to her quarters. Leia just needed to lie down for a bit. That’s all.

***

Lieutenant Mitaka stood before General Hux, several stormtroopers beside them. His leg wound had been smothered in bacta gel and bandaged. Now his leg was uncomfortably warm and a little bit itchy. Small price to pay for getting away with treason and murder.

“It was a coordinated incursion, General,” Mitaka reported. “They overpowered the guards and forced me to take them to their ship.”

Hux stared at him a moment, nose high, eyes narrowed. “I see.”

Mitaka kept his face perfectly, determinedly blank.

The bandage around his pants was stained with blood.

A good showing that would bolster his account, he thought. But beneath his pant leg, a bit of bacta gel had oozed through the bandage and begun to slither, wet and warm, down his leg.

Hux frowned. Something flashed in his eyes, something Mitaka had never seen before.

He suddenly found the act of breathing to be nearly impossible.

Hux turned to the unit leader. “Fire.”

The stormtrooper lifted his rifle, pointed it at Mitaka, and shot him point-blank in the chest.

Mitaka was not dead before he hit the ground. His mouth opened and closed soundlessly as flashes of pain lit up every fiber of his being.

“Alert the Supreme Leader that the spy was found,” he heard Hux say. "Pity. He made a damn good cup of tea."

A surge of hatred flashed through his dying consciousness at Hux, at the First Order, all of it. But his very last thought was of Kylo Ren. He hated that man above all, hated all the abuse he had suffered under him. Yet over and over again, he had faced the Jedi Rey and lost. It gave him one bright shining spark of hope against the oncoming dark: Kylo Ren might still lose.

Then that spark, too, was consumed by darkness, and Dopheld Mitaka knew no more.

***

Back aboard the Falcon, Rey found herself engulfed in Chewbacca's giant, hairy Wookiee hug.

“I missed you, too,” she said. She’d gotten Chewie back. She hadn’t killed him. But the fact remained that she had lost control. The only reason her friend wasn’t dead was pure, dumb luck.

She’d lost control twice since then, with Kylo. Something had been happening to her, and she finally understood what it was. The darkness growing inside her; it all made sense now. 

More than anything in the galaxy, she wanted to run back to Leia, beg her teacher for help. Her father was Darth Vader after all.  But there was no time. Rey was still committed to their mission, now more than ever. The mission was all that mattered.

Finn exited the cockpit and ran past them, saying, “Gear regulator’s out.”

He paused when he saw her face. “You okay?”

Rey nodded, and Finn hurried toward the back to start repairs.

Chewie moaned his thanks for coming after him.

Rey forced a smile and said, “I’m so happy to…” Her voice trailed off.

Chewie shrugged and headed into the cockpit to help Poe.

Rey stood there a moment, a little relieved to be alone. She just needed to collect her thoughts. She leaned against the wall outside the cockpit and closed her eyes.

From inside came the sound of alarms beeping, then Chewie asking why they weren’t being followed.

“I dunno why they’re not following us,” Poe said. “But I don’t trust it.”

Because he already knew where they were going, that’s why. She was putting her friends in danger just by being here. Kylo Ren would always find her, no matter what.

Chewie gave Poe a rundown of damage to the Falcon.

“What do you mean, landing gear’s busted?" questioned Poe skeptically.  "How busted?”

Chewie told him to look at the readout himself if Poe didn’t believe him.

“Well,” said Poe. “That’s something else we gotta fix. I’m just glad we got you back. I’m not sure General Leia would have survived losing you.”

And it would have been her fault.

Rey straightened. Time to stop feeling sorry for herself and get back to work. She headed into the rear of the ship, where she found Finn at a panel, trying to fix the gear regulator.

Wordlessly, he handed her an electroprobe. They worked together in companionable silence for a while. Sparks shot up from the panel as they rewired, welded, and tested.

At last, Finn said, “Whatever Ren said to you, you can’t trust it.”

“All that matters is the Wayfinder,” Rey said. “Getting to Exegol.”

“That’s what we’re doing,” Finn said, giving the command junction one last solder.

Rey lowered her electroprobe. She felt dazed. Her mind kept replaying the sickening vision in her head, over and over: her parents abandoning her. Her outstretched hand, pulling them back with the Force that was awakening inside her. The destruction of her parents' starship.

“I killed them," Rey blurted.

Finn paused what he was doing to stare at her. "Who?"

"My mother, and my father,” she whispered.

"The vision?" he murmured sympathetically.

Rey nodded. "With the Force. After they dumped me on Jakku."

Finn shook his head skeptically. "Rey... is that what happened between you and... him back there? Did he show you—" 

"Yes!" Rey choked.

"Rey... he's gotta be lying to you. I mean—" Finn reasoned.

"No," Rey sighed. "He's never lied to me."

Confusion crossed Finn's face. "What're you talking about? He's never lied to you?"

"You wouldn't understand," Rey replied. Avoiding his eyes, she lifted the probe and tested Finn’s newly wired junction.

"C'mon, Rey. Try me. I'd understand. I think I'd know you enough to—" Finn began.

She slammed the panel shut. "People keep on telling me that they know me. I'm afraid no one does."

"Rey...what are you saying?" begged Finn. Rey knew she was being a little unfair. Finn knew what it was like to grow up without a family, to finally find belonging and friends in a place you never expected. He understood her better than most people.

Most people.

"He does. He understands me." Rey said simply.

"What?!" Finn cried.

"We... we're a dyad in the Force. 'Two that are One'," confessed Rey.

"How long?" Finn asked suspiciously.

"Since we met," Rey replied. "Maybe longer than that... look... I know what it sounds like, but—"

"I'm not saying anything! He's obviously bad news! I mean, how many times did he try to kill you?" Finn shook his head.

"He wasn't trying to kill me. He was trying to turn me," Rey corrected.

"To the Dark Side," concluded Finn.

"Yes. He wants me to rule with him. He offered his hand to me before on the Supremacy and just an hour ago on the Finalizer."

Finn looked her in the eyes and grabbed her shoulders, as if he was willing her to see reason. "Rey. He's using you. He doesn't—"

"He loves me. In his own twisted way, I know he loves me," Rey revealed.

"Do you? Do you love him?" Finn implored, his eyes searching.

"Yes. No... I... a part of me does. I.... I just know I'm... I'm incomplete... without him."

Finn jerked away, his hands flying off of her like she was burning hot. "No. Just no. I can't believe this, Rey. Kylo Ren?!"

"There's something there. Inside of him. Deep down, Finn." Rey begged. "There's Ben. There's Ben Solo."

"Ben?" Finn snapped. "I can't do this, Rey. I gotta go... I.. I  think we're close to Kef Bir."

With that, Finn left Rey feeling worse than before. She felt groundless, adrift. 

She’d spent so much time and energy getting to know a new Rey already—one who could use the Force and fight for a cause greater than herself. But maybe that Rey was just a skin to be shed. A temporary person. A new Rey, a dark Rey was rising inside her, struggling to break free.

This must be why they identified children so young in the days of the old Jedi Order. They needed a foundation, knowledge, care, because the only way to survive their awakening into power was to be surrounded by those who had done it all before.

Rey had no one she could talk to that was sensitive in the Force. That could understand. Luke was dead, his voice closed off to her. Leia was half a galaxy away.

She realized that her hand hurt. She’d been gripping the electroprobe so tightly, its ridges were digging into her palm.

Rey took a deep breath. She’d try to fix the landing gear next. It would give her something else to think about.

***

Kylo Ren—donning his mask once more— surveyed the hangar bay, awaiting the return of his Knights as they winded down their massacre of Kijimi. He had held them back too much on Pasaana; they would not stop until their bloodlust had been sated.

The command ship had lost four stormtroopers, one cargo pilot, and two maintenance workers when the Falcon’s engine wash had flooded the hanger, pushing them into the high atmosphere of Kijimi.

On top of that, an officer alerted him that Lieutenant Mitaka had been the spy that leaked the specs of the Final Order fleet to the Resistance. Kylo was impressed—he didn't think the Lieutenant had it in him— and he would have executed Mitaka himself if Hux hadn't done it.

Kylo considered it all a small price to pay to encounter Rey again, to provoke her into a rage, to say the word dyad and watch the truth of it wash over her lovely face.

The remaining maintenance crew had quickly restored the hanger to working order, but small fires burned throughout the bay. A few troopers lay injured on the floor; one bled badly from a leg wound.

He hardly paid attention. He kept seeing her face, the way her plush lips had parted with surprise, the way her lithe body had canted toward him. If the Millennium Falcon hadn’t appeared, she might have come to him, taken his hand.

Kylo really hated that ship.

At last the Night Buzzard returned. His Knights filed out of the ship, their weapons still slick with blood and offal. Kuruk, the pilot, exited last, Vader’s mask in tow.

The Knight handed Vader’s mask to his Master, and Kylo debriefed them on the scavenger’s latest escape.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t pursue?” Kuruk asked.

“No. I had the dagger scanned,” replied Kylo. "I know where she's going, and what she's after."

“Very good, my Lord," confirmed Kuruk.

"Take my grandfather's Wayfinder. Lead the command ship to Exegol. Do not launch the fleet until I return."

Kuruk and the other Knights bowed. "It will be done, my Lord."

Kylo considered his grandfather's mask. Thought of the power it took to send it through the bond. Power his grandfather never had. He handed it back to Kuruk, who took it back with surprise.

"Show them what remains of the Sith," Kylo hissed. "When I return with Rey, we, the Dyad, will show them what true power is!"

With that, Kylo turned and headed toward his TIE Whisper. He could feel the piercing gazes of his Knights follow him to his TIE, but he didn’t care. His thoughts were on more important matters.

Rey.

He’d been so very close. But now she knew the truth. She would accept it. She would come to understand that darkness was her destiny. Next time he saw her, she would turn.

Chapter 10: The Ocean Moon of Endor

Kef Bir was technically a moon of Endor, but to Rey it seemed like a whole world.

Flying into the atmosphere had revealed vast seas interrupted by tentative patches of land, covered mostly with grass. Shrubbery was scarce, settlements nonexistent.

C-3PO had connected with the HoloNet and (quite insistently) informed them that Kef Bir used to be almost entirely underwater.

But recent decades had seen several cataclysmic events, which had vented water into the atmosphere and caused tectonic upheaval, revealing more and more landmasses. Some theorized that the destruction of the second Death Star was to blame. Debris from the moon-sized base not only had rained down for years, but had collided with several nearby asteroids, creating a chain reaction of bolide hits to the moon’s surface and atmosphere.

Kef Bir had calmed in the past decade, and life was finding a hold. The moon was rumored to have even attracted a small number of settlers and refugees, though this was unconfirmed, and the moon’s official designation remained “uninhabited.”

Rey hadn’t been able to fix the landing gear and repulsors entirely by the time they arrived—just enough to slow their impact a little. Which was why, when they all exited the Falcon bruised and shell-shocked, it was to the sight of a massive scar in the damp ground, running behind them in a straight line as far as the eye could see.

The ship’s fuselage was half buried in mud, and they’d had to exit out of the top hatch, but the Falcon remained almost flightworthy, and with a few repairs and a little luck they’d be able to take off.

After Rey had gotten what she’d come for.

The air smelled of salt and sun-kissed grass. Water prickled her skin, as though something was kicking up spray. The sky roiled with angry gray clouds, but everything remained bright, for the gas giant Endor provided reflected light in addition to the system’s sun.

Leaving Chewie behind to run repairs, Rey led the others up a steep, grassy slope, following the coordinates they’d gotten from C-3PO. Even the droids followed; D-O’s uni-wheel was surprisingly effective against the grassy terrain.

Her breath came hard and her legs burned by the time their heads crested the top. Then Rey forgot to breathe at all.

They stood on the edge of a cliff at least six hundred meters high. Below them, a violent steel sea stretched into fog. Swells the height of a Star Destroyer rolled back to reveal jagged black shoals, only to crash back down in an explosion of white water and froth.

So much water, all in one place, carving cliffs, spearing the sky, spraying them with wetness, even at this distance. Where she’d come from, water was one of the most valuable substances in the galaxy. Turned out, it was also one of the most powerful.

The fog was clearing, and their view of the ocean pushed farther and farther into the horizon. A shape began to emerge, like a mountain of metal. No, a whole mountain range of metal.

Beside her, Finn gasped.

It was a ship, or rather the remains of one, except this ship was larger than any ship Rey had ever seen. Its tattered hull arched out of the violent swells like an upside-down bowl, the jagged remains of its superlaser focus lens aimed at the sky. It was just like the starship graveyard on Jakku, except wetter. And about a thousand times bigger.

“What-what is that?” D-O asked.

“It’s the Death Star,” Rey said, staring at the colossal wreck. “It’s a bad place, from an old war.”

“I don’t think General Leia had any idea this was here,” murmured Poe, his voice filled with wonder. “A huge chunk of the second Death Star, still intact…”

“Of course not, Master Poe!” cried C-3PO. “It was likely submerged for more than a decade after the Battle of Endor. A terrible battle, according to the HoloNet. Oh, I would hate to endure something so dreadful.”

BB-8 warbled a question.

“From the sky, BB-8,” replied Rey.

“The Wayfinder’s in the Imperial Vaults,” Finn said, as if saying the words would help him believe it. “In the Death Star.”

“I hate to be practical,” Poe said, “but it’s gonna take us years to find it.”

Poe was right. How do you search something the size of a moon? Where do you even start?

Rey blinked, remembering.

From the southern shore… C-3PO had said.

She whispered, “Only this blade tells.”

She retrieved the dagger of Ochi of Bestoon. Held up its wicked edge so that it shimmered in the light.

The shape of the blade lined up exactly with the outline of the wreck.

Poe leaned forward.

Rey peered closer. The dagger’s crossguard was hinged. Keeping the blade aligned exactly where it was, she used her other hand to gently swing the crossguard down until it clicked into place—

—And pointed out a very specific section of ruin, southwest of the superlaser lens: a star-shaped structure, nestled in a crook of the jutting wreckage.

"The Wayfinder’s there,” Rey said.

For the shape of the blade and the hinged crossguard to have lined up precisely, whoever had modified the blade— whether it was Ochi himself or someone else— must have actually been here and found the Wayfinder already, modifying the dagger so that it indicated to Ochi exactly where to stand when he came here to claim it.

Judging by his remains in the Pasaana desert, Ochi never was able to come for his treasure. Luke and Lando saw to that.

Good. Ochi would have kidnapped Ben when he was a child and have taken him to Snoke. He committed untold murders with this very dagger. Now she was going to take the Wayfinder he never managed to utilize and let it guide her to Exegol. She was going to end the Sith once and for all.

“Heads up,” Poe warned, taking Rey out of her dark thoughts.

Rey whirled. Finn and Poe whipped up their blasters.

A young woman about Rey’s age rode toward them atop a creature that looked like a fathier with tusks except large-boned and with a more generous coat of fur. The woman had dark skin like Finn’s, and beautiful obsidian hair that framed her face like a halo.

The only weapon she carried that Rey could see was a bow, and Rey found herself filled with admiration and kinship when she noted that the bow was made of salvaged blaster parts. This woman would have done fine on Jakku.

Then nearly a dozen others rode up behind her, similarly mounted and armed.

“Rough landing?” asked the woman.

“I’ve seen worse,” said Poe dryly.

“I’ve seen better,” the woman said. The woman's gaze fixed upon Finn and her eyes went wide.

"You're FN-2187!" she exclaimed.

At the sound of his old name, Finn raised his blaster with Poe following suit. Rey's hand cautiously rested on her lightsaber. She felt no malice, but the woman certainly looked like trouble.

"The name's Finn," declared Finn defensively, his trigger finger twitching.

The woman lowered her bow. "My designation was TZ-1719, but I chose the name Jannah."

"You're a stormtrooper?" Finn asked, his weapon still raised.

"Was," Jannah corrected. "We all were."

Finn raised his eyebrow.

"We're not going to harm you," Jannah assured. "Well, I mean...we were thinking about it... but then we saw who it was."

"Yeah?" Finn replied disbelievingly.

"Finn, when you left the Order... you have no idea what you started," Jannah began, the emotion rising in her voice. "There were just whispers of dissent at first. Small groups. Nothing significant... but when you stood up to Phasma and, and then Crait... Finn... your name became legend."

Finn lowered his weapon. He nodded to Poe. Rey's shoulders relaxed.

"Those of who left stuck to what we knew. Bounty hunting, mercenary work... stuff like that," Jannah began.

"Why are you here?" Finn asked.

Jannah nodded to the wreckage of the Death Star. The others followed her distant gaze.

"Scavenging?" Rey speculated.

"It's been untouched for over thirty years," Jannah explained. "Superstition said that it was still haunted by the spirit of the Emperor... that his evil still lingered. But we've seen evil elsewhere, in different forms. First Snoke. Then in Kylo Ren. Ghosts don't scare us."

She glanced at the wreckage and back to them. "You're going in there, aren't you?"

Rey stepped forward, feeling a smidge of optimism.

“We need to get out to that wreck,” Rey replied, pointing towards the wreckage behind her. “There’s something inside we need.”

“Something that could end the war for good,” Finn added, hoping his reputation among the riders could increase their chances of help.

Jannah considered a moment, and then said, “We have fishing skimmers. I can take you there by water.”

“Do you see that water?!” Poe cried gesticulating at the churning sea.

“Not now,” agreed Jannah. “Too dangerous. We can get there at low tide. First light tomorrow.”

“We can’t wait that long,” insisted Rey. She turned to Poe and Finn for support. “Kylo Ren’s right behind us.”

“Kylo Ren?” Jannah exclaimed, exchanging a startled look with some of her fellow riders. "He's coming?!"

“We don’t have time,” Rey repeated. "Don't you have a ship? From when you escaped?"

"Running repairs from a salvage run gone wrong," Jannah explained.

“Well, do we have a choice at this point?” Poe said. “Let’s get fixing the Falcon.” To Jannah he asked, “Do you have any parts to spare?”

“It's mostly First Order regulation parts and scavenged junk, but they should fit most ships," Jannah offered.

It was unanimous. The expedition to the wreckage would be suspended until the Falcon was repaired and in running condition.

They all headed down the hillside toward the Falcon, except Rey, who lingered, gazing out over the ocean at the wreckage of the Death Star. To be so close…

After a moment, she forced herself to turn and follow her friends.

***

The riders had dismounted to let their creatures graze and work out some kinks.

Orbaks, Jannah had called them. Finn thought they were great, the way they kicked up dirt when they ran, tossed their long manes, play-fought with their huge tusks. They were a lot like the fathiers he and Rose had ridden on Canto Bight, except joyful and free. Also stouter, as though built for endurance and cold weather.

He smiled as an orbak snuffled BB-8. It made a noise—half grunt, half whinny—which BB-8 imitated with limited success.

“Hello!” said the little cone droid.

The orbak tossed its mane and roared in response—not an unfriendly gesture—but the tiny droid recoiled.

“No, thank you. No, thank you,” he said, as BB-8 tried to assure him that the orbak was friendly. Finn left them to get to know one another, entering the Falcon.

“What a dreadful situation,” C-3PO was saying, as he and Poe ran a diagnostic on the forward shields. “Is every day like this for you people? Madness!”

“Did we ever find his volume control?” muttered Poe.

Their crash landing had also damaged the Falcon’s reserve atmo tank, though it wasn’t yet leaking. Fixing it now would prevent a much larger problem later. Finn got to work, glad to have something to fill the time, to distract himself from worrying about Rey.

A while later, Jannah entered, carrying a small rez cylinder— exactly what he needed to patch the tank.

“It’s an oh-six, but it’ll work," she said, handing it to him.

Finn took the cylinder and started to install it. “I never knew there were more like me!”

“Deserters. All of us here were stormtroopers. We mutinied at the Battle of Ansett Island. They told us to fire on civilians,” Jannah explained.

Finn winced. He knew exactly how that felt.

“We wouldn’t do it,” Jannah said. “We laid down our weapons.”

“All of you?” Finn asked, looking up at her.

She nodded. “The whole company. We had enough. We left, laid low, and then we started taking salvage jobs to stay alive."

"Still better than the First Order," Finn pointed out.

"Yes," Jannah agreed. "All thanks to your example, Finn."

Whatever Finn was about to say in response was cut off when Poe and BB-8 rushed toward them.

Finn sighed and muttered a silent curse to himself. Somehow he knew exactly what Poe had come to tell them.

“Rey’s gone,” Poe said.

As one, they all rushed from the Falcon. Droids trailing, they clambered up the rise.

“She took the skimmer?” Jannah asked in disbelief.

Finn raised his quadnocs and swept his gaze across the sea.

“I see her,” he announced. “Waaaayyy out there.”

He handed the ’nocs to Poe.

“What the hell’s she thinking?” Poe demanded.

Finn knew exactly what she was thinking; she was going after the Sith alone, in a misguided attempt to keep her friends from harm. Stupid, wonderful, maddening Rey. Despite their differences of the past day— of the Force manipulation, of the revelation of her complicated relationship with Kylo Ren—Finn knee her heart was in the right place.

She was like a sister to him. And as her brother, he had to help her.

“We gotta go after her,” he declared.

“We’ll fix the Falcon and get out there as fast as we can,” Poe said, hurrying down the rise toward the ship.

Finn followed.

“We’re going to lose her!” he said, his voice rising. Lose her—not necessarily to death. Possibly to something worse. 

To Kylo Ren. To the Sith.

Chewie and Jannah kept back, saying nothing as they argued.

“She left us!” Poe snapped. “What do you want us to do? Swim?”

“She’s not herself," reasoned Finn. "You don’t know what she’s fighting.”

Poe stopped. Whirled. “Oh, but you do?”

“I do," nodded Finn. "And Leia does.”

“I’m not Leia!” yelled Poe.

Finn stuck a finger in Poe’s face. “That’s for damn sure.”

Poe recoiled as if struck, and guilt pierced Finn. That had been too harsh. Too close to the truth of Poe’s worries and fears. He should have known better. Before he could apologize, Poe tossed the ’nocs to him and walked away.

Finn sighed, climbing back up the rise. He lifted the ’nocs, and gazed out across the ocean. Rey’s skiff was barely more than a mote against the turbulent water. He had no idea how she was managing to navigate that thing, how she hadn’t capsized yet.

He couldn’t swim to her—that would be suicide. Maybe Poe was right and the only thing to do was repair the Falcon as fast as possible.

“Finn?” came Jannah’s voice.

He lowered the quadnocs.

“There’s another skimmer,” she said.

Hope stabbed through him. He started running.

***

The fact that the Millennium Falcon was transmitting again had probably already traveled base-wide, but Leia sensed it was time for a motivational talk. She ordered everyone to gather so she could officially report.

It was the perfect time for good news. A brief tropical storm had dropped the temperature. Birds chattered in the jungle canopy above, celebrating the delightful coolness.

“I’m very pleased to report that the Millennium Falcon sent us a transmission on long-range,” she announced. “Their mission is back on track.”

People clapped one another on the back. She saw smiles. Connix and Rose even hugged. This had been the right choice.

“Our hope is with them, but our work is here. Commander Tico reports that the two fighters we liberated from the Corellian scrapyard are now flight ready," continued Leia to more applause.

“My congratulations and thanks to the entire Engineering Corps for pulling off that miracle. But our work has just begun—”

Leia. Of course he chose the end of her speech to interrupt.

You’re becoming a pest, she told Luke.

She felt his smile.

It's time to say goodbye, he said softly.

Not just yet…

But the words she’d been planning got stuck in her mouth, and instead she ended with, “I’m so proud of all of you. As long as we never lose hope, our cause lives on.”

She stumbled a little on her way to her quarters, but Connix was there in a flash to support her.

As they headed past the Tantive IV, she overheard R2-D2 ask Maz Kanata a question.

“Yes, Artoo,” replied Maz. “She knows what she has to do. To reach her son now will take all she has left.”

Leia decided to ignore that, like she was ignoring Luke. She was just so tired. If she could lie down… Connix helped her to her cot.

After the lieutenant left, Leia grabbed Han’s medal and lay back, holding it close to her chest.

***

Before Rey had touched down on Takodana with Han Solo, the only body of water she’d ever seen was the slimy communal trough at Niima Outpost. Then, on Ahch-To, she’d always eyed the sea with a bit of distrust.

The ways of water were terrifying and alien to her, and she knew she’d be facing her most unpredictable enemy yet.

Still, this ocean was even worse than Rey had anticipated.

The skimmer she’d stolen was a marvel of recycling ingenuity, with two pontoons made for cutting through waves, bouncing over rough water, turning with her slightest touch of the rudder.

But the waves were higher than buildings, creating eddies and whirlpools and massive explosions of froth. It took all her concentration to keep from capsizing.

The skimmer itself became her enemy when an unexpected wave ripped the rudder from her hand, slamming it sideways and almost knocking her into the water. A few more near-disasters and she figured out that she needed to aim for the waves instead of against them, and trust the skimmer to make the climb.

Soaked and shivering, she pushed on toward the Death Star wreckage, toward the exact spot identified by the dagger.

The star-shaped chamber was so high, so isolated. But maybe she could reach it by climbing up the inside of the structure, sheltered somewhat from the waves.

The wreckage loomed higher and larger as she approached. Water churned against the massive hull, pulled back to reveal tantalizing access points, only to crash back and drown them in the next moment. Rey had no idea how she would get on board with her life intact.

She crested another wave, and her heart leapt into her throat as the skimmer dropped down the other side. She was too close to the wreck. Her momentum was going to slam her into the hull, shatter the skimmer into a thousand pieces…

Instead, her skimmer was sucked into a vast canyon of metal that stretched nearly to the horizon. Here the water was somewhat sheltered by the warped walls scraping the sky to either side.

Her journey slowed. Compared with the open ocean, it was almost peaceful.

She craned her neck. Flying creatures nested far above at the canyon’s zenith. They winged in circles, crying out as they came in to land.

The dagger had told her where to go, but she found she didn’t need it. Something drew her forward, the pull of it heavy in her bones. 

She aimed the skimmer toward a section of wall that seemed to have good hand- and footholds. She tied the skimmer down as best she could, checked that her lightsaber was still attached to her belt, and began to climb.

It had been a while since she’d spelunked through the ruins of a downed starship. Her grip remained strong, but everything was wet and slippery. Patience was the key. Slow and deliberate, Rey. Test every hold before putting weight on it.

She was far above the surface of the water, the skimmer a bobbing speck, when she found entry into the hull.

Avoiding sharp metal, she ducked inside and scooted along a canted beam to a wide shaft, where she resumed her climb. It was drier here, but also darker, and she found herself working by feel.

Her path of handholds ended. There was nowhere to go except across the empty shaft, where a fallen strut created a way forward. It would be an impossible leap.

She called on the Force, launched with all her might, sailed through the shaft across a depthless maw, landed on hands and feet.

Rey resumed her climb. Her back and shoulders burned by the time the shaft opened into a vast chamber. The floor was sloped upward, slippery with water, covered in seaweed and metal detritus and even pieces of stormtrooper armor, blackened by fire.

Wind whistled through gaping holes in the walls, and she shivered. This place had been something once. Something important.

Ahead, the sloped floor led to a huge viewport, half shattered, bayed out to the sky. Before it was a dais of some sort, containing the ocean-soaked remains of a chair. No, a throne.

This had been the Emperor’s throne room. Luke had fought his father Darth Vader here, and the energy—or maybe memory—of that battle still lingered.

She closed her eyes and sensed terror, pain, regret, and… a determination to save someone who was deeply loved.

Rey stepped toward the throne. One of the most powerful Dark Side users in history once sat on that throne, and now, over thirty years later, Kylo Ren was looking to claim it.

The floor quivered beneath her feet, and she leapt back just in time as a large panel dropped away.

It clattered on its way down, the sounds growing ever fainter. She did not hear it land.

Rey crept along the shadowy walls, where she hoped the floor was better supported, and came to a door. It had a complicated access mechanism that marked it as valuable and significant. Maybe a vault. What she sought was assuredly inside. Now it was just a matter of getting through the lock.

Maybe she could muscle it. She pressed with all her strength, but the door wouldn't budge. Of course it wouldn't.

She could cut through it with her lightsaber, but she didn't know how long that would take. 

How did Ochi get in? She wondered. All he had was the—

The dagger. She took it from her belt and raised it to the door. After a moment, something clicked and the door whooshed open. As if it still had a power source.

Darkness enveloped her as she stepped inside. The door slammed down behind her.

Rey moved forward, inexplicably drawn.

Shapes manifested around her, fragments of a person. It was her, she realized with dawning dismay. She was walking through a hall of shattered mirrors, seeing her own form reflected back at her over and over, like in the cave beneath Ahch-To.

Except here the shattered glass only gave her jagged pieces of herself—an arm here, a boot there, a lock of soaking hair, a bruised temple. The shards of reflection were a puzzle that she ached to solve, as though doing so might make a whole person finally appear.

No, she would not allow herself to go through this again. The tease, the promise of knowledge and insight, only to come up with nothing.

Rey closed her mind to the mirrors and continued forward, toward the thing calling to her.

The Wayfinder hovered between black fittings, its pyramidal shape glowing soft red from within.

She reached for it and took it. Triumph filled her. Finally.

The triumph shifted, became burgeoning dread.

Sweat broke out on her forehead, and her neck prickled. She was being watched.

Slowly, still grasping the Wayfinder, Rey turned.

A hooded figure materialized, glided toward her with inexorable purpose, dark cloak sweeping the ground. The figure practically radiated power, and something else… a cold and ravenous hunger.

A red lightsaber appeared in the figure’s hand, chaotic like Kylo’s, with two parallel blades. Light from the blade finally illuminated a face as pale and gaunt as it was fierce.

Rey gasped, stumbling backward. It was her. Her face, her form. Cold and dark, wearing a Sith cloak, whole at last.

Horrified, she watched as the dark mirror Rey swung her blades apart, forming a long, fiery quarterstaff. It was the very saber she’d tentatively begun designing in her mind.

This couldn’t be real. It was a vision, nothing more.

But the dark Rey’s steps echoed when they met the floor, and her lightstaff reeked of ozone. Her power was incredible, intoxicating. Almost against her will, Rey began to reach with her hand…

The mirrored dark visage of Rey spoke: “Let the past die. Kill it if you have to.”

"No!" screamed Rey. She whipped her lightsaber forward, seeking a killing blow. The Dark Rey had her lightstaff raised within a split second. Their blades clashed, blue on red, sparking and angry.

Rey refused to lose her grasp on the Wayfinder, which gave the Dark Rey the advantage. With two hands on her weapon and a fierce gaze, the dark one pushed, pinning Rey’s weapon, forcing her back, one step, then another.

Rey slid into the throne room. Her stomach roiled and tears streamed down her face.

She was about to be defeated by her own self, her deepest fear made flesh, the side of herself that she tried to suppress. She could not let that happen. She would not.

With everything that she had, Rey parried Dark Rey's blade to the side. She then brought her blade upwards diagonally for a backhand slash, but Dark Rey ducked, spun, and ran Rey through the stomach with her own fiery blade.

Rey looked down in horror as Dark Rey pushed the blade deeper into her stomach, barely registering the fact that her dark mirror-self disappeared as she stumbled backward, tripping. 

She fell, and the Wayfinder slipped from her hand, sliding across the sloped floor.

Rey's stomach burned in searing pain. She glanced down at her belly, fearing what she would find. But there was no wound. There wasn't even a hole or singe on her tunic as she ran her hands along the area she was impaled.

Quickly, she recovered her wits and scrambled after the Wayfinder, desperate to reach it.

Another hand got there first, larger, black-gloved. She looked up.

Kylo Ren loomed, his shoulders dimpled with drops of ocean.

Despair nearly choked her. To escape a future dark self, only to collide with Kylo Ren. It felt like her worst nightmares coming true.

It felt like destiny.

The pain in Rey’s belly became boiling rage that coursed throughout her veins. She launched to her feet and re-ignited her lightsaber.

“Look at yourself,” he said. He had donned his mask yet again, angering her even further. “You wanted to prove to my mother that you were a Jedi.”

His modulated voice oozed contempt for that notion. “But you’ve proven something else. You can’t go back to her now. Like I can’t.”

His words further infuriated her. Because he was wrong. Leia sensed the darkness within her. And she had still chosen to train her. Kylo Ren did not understand his mother at all.

“Give it to me,” Rey ordered.

He seemed confused for a moment, as though surprised that she could still resist.

“The Dark Side is in our nature,” he tried again. “Surrender to it.”

“Give it. To me,” Rey demanded again, pushing with the Force.

He lifted the Wayfinder, stared at it. “The only way you’re getting to Exegol is with me.” He hooked the Wayfinder to a clasp on his belt.

“Or through you!” Rey screamed, erupting forward, swinging her lightsaber.

Kylo leapt out of the way of her blow, ducked under the next. He whirled away from her, cape flying.

Vaguely, through her haze of fury, she realized he was not attacking her, and somehow this enraged her further.

She reached, drew power from the Force as though she were a bottomless whirlpool—more, more, more. Her attacks increased in speed.

Finally, he could dodge no longer. His own lightsaber was suddenly brought to bear, and they clashed, their blades crackling and humming with energy.

Over and over she swiped, slammed, stabbed, and he countered with effort, matching her ferocity. But he gave ground.

Kylo stepped back and dropped into the shaft behind him.

Without a second thought, Rey leapt after him.

She hardly recalled traveling any distance, but somehow they ended up outside the wreckage, on a bridgelike hunk of metal only meters wide.

A massive gun turret loomed over them, and beyond it,  half drowning in spray was Kylo’s parked TIE.

The ocean raged all around, but Rey pressed her attack, oblivious to the added danger.

Kylo had no choice but to attack in kind, and it was so satisfying to her to strike, again and again, only to have their blades clash like cymbals. The impacts shivered into her shoulders, bruised her spine and hips.

It was better than thinking about what she’d seen, what he’d done. Who she was.

A presence cut through her awareness, shining and bright. And a voice screaming: “Rey!”

Finn was running toward her, leaving Jannah behind to watch their skimmer.

Even through the haze of her anger, Rey’s instinct to protect Finn was overwhelming.

With no thought at all, she called on the Force and thrust out with her hand. He flew backward toward Jannah at the edge of the bridge-wreck. A wave crashed down on the stretch of bridge between them, cutting Finn and Jannah off from her sight.

The sea was boiling now with a rising tide. As Rey raged against Kylo Ren, the Force opened itself to her, flooding her with new power, and she found herself leaping out of the way of massive waves, then landing on her feet only to leap again.

Kylo leapt after her, using the Force to propel himself into the sky, then again to control his landings.

With the Dark Side growing stronger within her, Rey resolved not to leave this place until one of them was dead.

But her blade was not breaking through his guard. She gritted her teeth and attacked him with Force energy. He flew backward, caught himself, and landed neatly.

Kylo advanced, pushing with his own Force energy. 

Rey’s temples began to throb with pain, but she stood her ground.

He sent the thought directly into her mind: I know you.

No one does, she shot back.

But I do.

Rey screamed and launched herself at him again.

He was physically stronger. The longer they fought, the clearer it became. But she was a little faster. Their sabers collided. He pushed.

She slid backward on the slick metal surface, his chaotic blade gradually getting closer and closer to her face. She felt its vibration near her cheeks.

Out of the corner of her eye, Rey saw a colossal oncoming wave. The ocean was reaching high tide. She leapt as the wave crashed down, using the Force to propel herself high and backward.

Rey landed in a crouch before another gun turret. She looked around. No sign of Kylo Ren. Maybe the wave had washed him away.

No, there he was, striding unerringly toward her, ocean water pouring from his helmet. He had withstood the wave. His unerring stride said that he could withstand anything, a juggernaut.

She attacked, and he countered. But she was tiring, slowing. She hadn’t slept in how long? And she was not yet recovered from healing the vexis snake on Pasaana. Her hand smarted with every blow.

Another attack, another block, and this one knocked her off her feet.

Kylo loomed over her, raising his lightsaber for the killing blow.

Rey glared up at him, preparing to dodge, accepting that maybe she wouldn’t be fast enough.

Kylo froze, lightsaber held high.

---

Leia, there is only one thing left to do, came Luke’s voice.

Galaxy save us all from big brothers, she thought.

Luke said, You must try to reach Ben.

She flashed back to holding her tiny son in her arms, his black hair still wet with birth, the way he’d cried all the time in those early months but settled whenever he sensed that she or Han or Chewie was near.

His first steps. His first word. The first time he’d sent a toy flying across the room with the power of the Force, calling on his tiny, toddler rage.

I never gave up hope for him, she said.

Tell him, said Luke.

With his words came a rush of knowledge, and a vision-memory of Luke sitting cross-legged atop a cliff of Ahch-To, shaking with effort as he projected himself onto the battlefield at Crait.

The effort to reach Ben would take everything she had left.

She couldn’t do it. It would be her ultimate failure, to leave behind everyone she loved, everything she’d worked for. Leia had to stay. She had to continue fanning the tiny flame of hope, or the Resistance would die.

Her thumb went back and forth across the cool face of Han’s medal. Her heart had been so full of hope then, after their first big victory against the Empire.

Giving these medals to Luke and Han had been more than a public celebration-- they’d been a symbolic awarding of leadership. She’d shared the burden ever since that day.

She sighed with a heavy realization. She’d had it backward.

Letting go wasn’t giving up. It was the ultimate act of hope—hope for her protégés Rey and Poe, faith in the lessons she’d taught them.

The last thing they would learn from her was how to go on without her, thus finally embracing their own destinies as leaders.

Bail Organa had been the one to teach her that. Her adopted father had trusted her to find Obi-Wan Kenobi and save the rebellion when she was just a young woman with less experience than any of them.

Leia, Luke prompted.

If Vader could become Anakin again, Kylo Ren could become Ben. Her son was tempted by the light; she could sense it. But even if he never turned back the way Anakin had, she still loved him, and her legacy was secure.

She was Leia Amidala Skywalker Organa Solo. As she caressed Han’s medal, she fully embraced all those inheritances.

So that’s how it would be. A final act of hope, and then she would rest.

Leia reached for the Force, let it surround her, fill her. She thought the effort would exhaust her, but she felt a momentary rush of strength and energy as she connected with every living thing.

She reached deeper, and then deeper still. With all the life and love and hope and forgiveness in her being, she called out:

“Ben!”

Leia’s last thought washed through the galaxy like a wave. She was vaguely aware of Han’s medal clattering to the floor, a whir of sadness from R2-D2, and finally a surge of welcome from Luke, who was not alone…

---

Ben... It's not too late to come home. I won't give up on you. I'll be with you... until the end.

Kylo’s Ren’s gaze suddenly became distant as he sensed his mother's presence, heard her voice. 

"Mother..."

He dropped his lightsaber. Rey caught it, exultation filling her. She was going to win.

Through the Force came a mighty sundering. Kylo Ren stumbled.

Rey’s stolen blade pierced Kylo, running him through—as incomparable loss washed through her soul, snapping her out of her Dark Side-fueled bloodlust, leaving her feeling carved out, empty and aching.

“Leia!” she cried out, dropping Kylo’s lightsaber like a hot potato. It clattered to the wreck and deactivated.

Kylo pulled off his helmet, tossing it aside. Clutching his side, he collapsed, staring up at her in agony, his chest heaving. He blinked hard, against pain, against whatever he was feeling.

Leia’s last thoughts had been of her, and Poe, and the Resistance—but mostly Ben. Leia still loved him. She had forgiven him. She had called him to the Light.

Rey’s hands trembled as she turned off her lightsaber and hooked it to her belt.

She knelt before him. "Oh no... Ben..." she lamented, reaching out to gingerly touch his belly. "I'm so sorry..."

Kylo’s wound was mortal, that was clear. His eyes searched her face, though she wasn’t certain what he was looking for. His cheeks were wet, and she couldn’t tell where ocean spray ended and tears began.

“Your mother…” Rey sobbed. She felt like she was being ripped apart by her grief for Leia, by her deep shame for giving in to the Dark Side and grievously injuring Kylo. 

And now that the rage had left her, Rey didn’t know what to do. As if reading her mind, Kylo took her hand and lifted it from his stomach, gazing into her eyes.

"You won," Kylo gasped. "Take... the Way...finder... leave me..."

He closed his eyes, as if accepting the inevitable end.

She’d had a chance to kill him twice before, and she hadn’t. With him broken before her, vulnerable, she found she was even less eager to watch him die, nor leave him again.

Rey shook her head. "No. Not this time."

His eyes flew open. He stared at her in confusion, and maybe… longing?

"C'mon! I'm not leaving you!" she declared. She took his arm and draped it over her shoulders, wrapping an arm around his waist. With an exhausted grunt, she heaved him up to his feet, leading him toward his TIE.

"Rey..." he grunted.

"I'm getting you out of here," she repeated. "Whether you like it or not."

Kylo glanced suspiciously at her. Nonetheless, he took out a remote control on his belt and pressed a button, opening the cockpit of his TIE.

While most TIEs Rey had seen were accessed by a hatch on top, Kylo’s TIE hinged open from the front. Which was good, because she wasn't sure she'd be able to drag his heavy ass up and over and stuff him inside. The interior was more spacious than a regular TIE and boasted a pair of back-to-back seats like the TIE/sf space superiority fighter Finn and Poe escaped the First Order in.

Rey glanced at him. "A two seater? You were really that sure that I would agree to go with you to Exegol?"

"Looks... like I... got my... wish..." murmured Kylo weakly. 

"Well, partially," replied Rey. "We're not going to Exegol."

"Where... are we... going...?"

Rey had to think about it. She wasn't entirely sure herself. She knew he couldn’t take him back to the Resistance base. She certainly wouldn't return him to the First Order. 

"Somewhere safe," was all she told him. Rey helped him climb into the cockpit and climbed in behind him. He collapsed into the rear-facing seat with a wheeze, tilting his head back against the headrest. He had already resigned himself to whatever Rey had in store for him.

She dropped into the pilot’s seat. It took a moment to orient herself to the strange controls, but they soon made sense to her, as flight controls always did.

As the TIE Whisper ascended into the sky, Rey saw that Finn and Jannah were motes on another island of wreckage. In the distance, she could see the familiar shape of the Falcon approaching. She was glad. They would be okay.

Rey let instinct guide her as she punched the coordinates into the navicomputer. With Kylo Ren in tow, she broke atmosphere and entered hyperspace.

Chapter 11: A Renewed Hope

General Armitage Hux stood aboard the bridge of the Finalizer as the Star Destroyer exited the Red Honeycomb Zone of exotic space, coming before the grey planet of Exegol. They had followed the Night Buzzard, ship of the Knights of Ren. He considered ordering the gunners to blow the transport out of the sky, but he resisted the urge.

The Destroyer followed the Night Buzzard into the stormy atmosphere. The bridge's sensors detected a structure up ahead. Hux frowned when they came to the Citadel. The Buzzard continued down and parked near the structure while the Finalizer remained in the sky. He had expected a vast shipyard to rival Corellia or the Kuat Drive Yards. All he saw was a nondescript upside-down pyramid that jutted from the ground like an obsidian tumor.

"Where the hell are the ships?!" snapped Hux indignantly. "

"I believe the shipyard is underground, General," replied Captain Peavey with an arched brow. "The atmosphere is much too corrosive for prolonged exposure."

Hux’s nose wrinkled. "How absurd... ah well. Let's do what we came to do. Patch in communications."

Hux composed himself. Straightened his uniform, slicked his hair.

"This is Armitage Hux, General of the First Order Command Ship the Finalizer. By order of Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, the launch is to begin now."

There was no reply, just an indication that the message was received. Several minutes passed, and then a klaxon rang out. Lightning flashed, revealing cracked ground. The barren landscape shook, then shattered. A mountain erupted onto the surface. Dirt and chunks of soil fell away, revealing a metal hull, striped with red. Around it, more mountains broke the surface, resolving into massive Star Destroyers, half again the size of the Destroyers from the days of the Empire.

The navigation tower erupted, along with more ships—and more and more—until tens of thousands hovered in the atmosphere.

Even Hux was impressed. More than impressed. He hadn’t been so impressed by destructive ingenuity since he'd first laid eyes on the completed Starkiller Base from space. The destructive capabilities were the same, but on on a far more far-reaching scale. Starkiller Base was not an error as General Pryde had so insultingly suggested, but he would concede that it was an enormous target, and therein lied its weakness—a weakness it shared with the first and second Death Star.

A weakness the Final Order fleet did not share. The same power, none of the weaknesses.

The ships would be temporarily vulnerable, unable to raise shields in the planet’s hellish climate, but there was no choice. Much of the final building, inspection, testing, and maintenance would have occur in atmosphere. The Sith crews would work triple shifts to get it done.

Hux’s misgivings about the harsh climate of the planet were cast aside and forgotten. Everything he had worked for his whole life was finally coming to fruition. He could have stayed forever, admiring the sight of the Final Order fleet, but he had work to do. He smiled as he ended the transmission. 

***

The coral sun set over the ocean of Ahch-To as Rey guided the TIE Whisper to landfall. She was trying not to rush and crash the vessel, but Kylo was dying. He was unconcious, his breathing labored and ragged.

The moment the TIE touched down on the rocky shore, Rey immediately popped open the canopy and began to drag Kylo’s body out, using every bit of muscle she had. She would have landed the TIE higher up by the village of stone huts, but she didn't see enough clearance and had to make due. It would be a long journey up carrying Kylo’s weight. She hoped he'd make it.

The Lanai, the native caretakers of the island, gathered in curiosity high above the plateau as Rey hefted Kylo out of his seat. One Lanai gestured to the TIE, and several hurried off back to their community. When they returned, they carried with them a stretcher, and made the journey down the long trail of stone steps to the beach. Rey lowered Kylo down to the stretcher, and the Lanai grunted with the effort of carrying Kylo’s heavy body. Several more joined their sistren in supporting the weight and aiding them back up the steps.

Rey watched them as they carried Kylo away with a surprising strength and determination. She moved to follow, but sensed a familiar presence behind her. She turned, and Luke Skywalker stood, a spirit limned in a soft blue light.

She should have felt joy at seeing her old master return, but instead she felt shame.

"I failed, Master Skywalker," lamented Rey.

"How?" he asked, a genuine question, as if it wasn't obvious.

Rey swallowed. "I gave in to the Dark Side."

"You came back," he reasoned.

Rey shook her head. "I lost myself and now Ben may die because of me."

"He may live because of you," Luke pointed out.

"Every time, Master Skywalker. Every time I go to the Dark, bad things happen. The people I love get hurt, or worse, they die. All because of me. A failure who will never be a Jedi."

"You've only failed if you've given up hope," said Luke softly. "Do you still have hope?"

Rey had to think. She found she couldn’t speak under the spirit's soft yet intense gaze.

"If not hope in yourself, but in others? Do believe that hope can be a light in the darkness?" he prodded, patient.

"Yes," Rey nodded. "Yes I do."

"Do you trust in the Force, Rey? Do you trust the Force to guide you?" 

Rey felt the Jedi Master’s words fill her with confidence and strength. She squared her shoulders, set her jaw, puffed out her chest. "Yes."

He smiled. "Then you have everything you need."

***

Poe, Finn, Chewie, and the droids hurried down the Falcon’s ramp into the jungle base. The place was denser now—more consoles, more people, even a few more ships. The Resistance had been busy while they were away.

Poe was glad to see Commander D’Acy waiting to greet them at the bottom of the ramp.

“Poe,” she said, her voice heavy with solemnity. “Something’s happened. Finn—”

“This can’t wait,” Finn interrupted.

“We gotta see the general,” Poe explained.

D’Acy’s face was stricken.

“She’s gone,” she said.

Poe froze, staring at the commander, his mind refusing to parse what she’d just said.

Chewie moaned, rolled his head back, dropped to his knees. Finn tried to comfort the Wookiee, but Chewie waved him off, grieving loudly.

Beaumont spread bacta gel on Poe’s blaster wound, rebandaged it, all the while saying nothing.

A moment later, D’Acy appeared again. “Poe. You need to hear this.”

He looked back and forth between them—Beaumont, to D’Acy, and back to Beaumont again. How were they still working? Doing anything? How could they? Leia was gone, and the Resistance with her.

He allowed D’Acy to lead him and Beaumont to a communications console.

Something beeped on Rose’s console, and she hurried over.

“Listen,” she said. “It’s on every frequency.”

The console crackled and popped, and a now horribly familiar voice began speaking.

<The Resistance is dead,> the voice of General Hux warned. <The Empire is reborn. All worlds, surrender or die. The Final Order begins.>

And then the message repeated on a loop. 

Everyone turned to Poe.

“Leia made you acting general,” Rose said. “What now?”

Commander D’Acy put a hand on his shoulder and looked him straight in the eye. She said, “We await orders.”

His first impulse was to refuse. He’d never run from anything in his life, but he wanted to run now. He couldn’t accept that Leia was gone, much less take on her job.

He wasn’t ready. Maybe he’d never be ready. He’d made terrible mistakes, gotten so many people killed. He thought he’d have more time to learn. To atone for what he’d done. What had she been thinking, naming him acting general?

He’d thought he was past this. She’d told him as much. But maybe forgiving yourself was a longer, harder process than a fellow realized.

Suddenly, a memory of Leia popped into his mind, clear as day, and he imagined her voice so deeply and profoundly it was almost like she was standing right there.

Failure is the greatest teacher, she said.

***

Finn sat alone on Rey’s cot. He couldn’t believe Leia was gone. She had accepted him so readily, hadn’t even blinked when she’d learned he was a former stormtrooper, a First Order deserter. In fact, she’d called him brave, and soon considered him one of her most valuable assets. She’d set up training and education opportunities for him. Pushed him to learn, to always do better for himself. Leia hadn’t spent nearly as much time with him as with Poe or Rey, but it was clear that she’d expected great things from him. And because of that he'd wanted to prove himself to her, to the whole Resistance, to himself.

He glanced at Rey's half-built lightsaber. He missed her too. She wasn't dead, he felt that for sure. But she was somewhere out there, and she was in trouble while he just sat here like a lost child, waiting for something to happen.

He hated that he felt so helpless. They were supposed to look out for each other, to watch each other's back! He knew she could take care of herself, but that still didn't stop him from worrying.

He could only hope that whatever she was going through with Kylo Ren, with the Sith and the Dark Side and all that stuff... that she'd be okay. That she'd make it out the other side in one piece.

"Hey," Rose appeared in the opening of Rey's tent, interrupting his thoughts. "I figured I'd find you here. You miss her?"

Finn chuckled darkly. "Who? Which one? Take your pick!"

Rose say down next to him and put a comforting arm around his shoulders. He laid his head on her chest. He could hear her heartbeat, steady and true. He closed his eyes. It always brought him comfort. 

"I miss her—both of them—too," Rose cooed, stroking the small braids Finn had taken to twisting since he started growing out his thick, dark hair. 

"What do we do now?" Finn asked.

"I don't know?" sighed Rose. "Without the Wayfinder, we have no way to Exegol."

The tiny droid they’d rescued from Ochi’s ship toddled toward him and began poking around Rey’s things. He noticed Rey’s half-built lightsaber and inclined his pointy nose cone toward it.

Finn shot up from the cot. “Hey, don’t touch that! That’s my friend’s.”

The tiny droid recoiled, cocked his head.

“So-so sorry,” it said. “She is gone.”

“Yeah, she’s gone,” sighed Finn. “I don’t know where.”

The droid rolled back and forth. “I miss her.”

“Yeah, I miss her, too.”

Finn felt Rose's hand on his shoulder. She smiled at the droid. "Where'd you find this little guy?"

"Pasaana," replied Finn. "He belonged to that Sith assassin that Luke Skywalker was after." He shook his head. "I don't even know his name."

"I am D-O!" chirped the droid.

"Wait," Rose's eyebrows furrowed. "The same Sith assassin that found the clue to the Wayfinder?"

"Yes yes! I want to help! I know Exegol. We had been there before!"

Finn and Rose stared at the droid.

***

C-3PO wandered the base, disoriented. The place was a disaster, with cables strewn everywhere, jungle vines invading everything.

Mud was starting to clog his joints. An oil bath would be just the thing, but he had no idea who to ask.

This ragtag group of beings included humans, Mon Calamari, a Wookiee, and a dozen other species—not to mention several droids. No one culture or language seemed to dominate, which meant C-3PO had no idea what the protocol was.

An R2-series astromech spotted him and rolled in his direction. He was white with blue markings, and he bore the scars of battle. An uncouth little thing, but it paid to be polite in these circumstances.

“Hello,” the protocol droid said. “I am C-3PO, human–cyborg relations. And you are?”

The astromech rolled back as if struck. Then beeped insistently.

“My memory backup?" demanded C-3PO. "Why would a stubby astromech droid have my memory stored?”

The little droid beeped again, irritated.

“Well, I’m quite certain I’d remember if I had a best friend.” C- 3PO turned away. There was nothing worse than an astromech with delusions of grandeur.

The astromech warbled insistently.

“You want to put what in my head? Under no circumstances—”

The blue droid extended its transfer arm and began to chase after him.

“You stay away from me with that!”

More warbling, almost too fast to keep up with.

“Whatever are you referring to? What history together?”

The astromech whistled, more gently now. Its words stopped C-3PO in his tracks. The golden droid looked up at the ship looming over them.

“On a ship like that?” C-3PO said. “With a princess? You’re malfunctioning!”

But he let the little droid approach.

***

Poe sat in the dark, beside Leia’s cot. All that remained was her empty clothes. According to Maz, Leia passed and rejoined the Force, where the physical body fades and the spirit lives on. 

Poe didn’t know what that meant, but if it meant that Leia was still around somehow, well, he had a lot of things left to say.

“I gotta tell you,” he told her. “I don’t know how to do this. What you did… I’m not ready.”

“Neither were we,” came a voice from the shadows, and Poe turned. It was Lando Calrissian.

The former Rebellion general had flown to Ajan Kloss on his ship, the Lady Luck, almost as soon as they’d left Pasaana.

Something Rey had said convinced him, and Poe was so glad he was here.

“Luke. Han. Leia. Me,” Lando said. “Who’s ever ready?”

Poe stepped toward him. According to Connix, Lando had been overcome with grief when he arrived just a little too late. He’d missed his chance to say goodbye.

Lando looked as sad as Poe felt, his brow knitted, his shoulders slumped. He kept eyeing Leia’s empty clothes. He’d probably regret not coming sooner for the rest of his life. Poe understood what it was to regret.

“How did you do it?” Poe asked. “How did you defeat an Empire with almost nothing?”

Lando was silent for a long moment. Then: “We had each other. That’s how we won. We were friends.”

A light dawned in Poe’s mind. For the first time since his return to Ajan Kloss, he smiled.

***

Poe went searching for Finn. Finn and Rose found him first. His friend rushed toward him, the tiny conical droid lapping at his heels.

“I gotta tell you something,” Finn said, his voice urgent.

“I gotta tell you something,” Poe returned. “I can’t do this alone. I need you in command with me. Tell me yours.”

“This droid!—uh, that’s really nice, I appreciate that…”

“General,” Poe said, saluting.

Finn awkwardly saluted back. “Uh, General, this droid has a trove of data on Exegol.”

“Wait, what?” Poe asked. “Cone face?”

“I am D-O!” the droid exclaimed.

“Sorry. D-O,” said Poe, looking at the droid, back at Finn. "But I thought Ochi never made it to Exegol."

Finn took a deep breath. “He never made it back. Ochi served the Emperor and Vader long before he served Snoke."

Poe gaped at him. "Does he know the way?"

Finn shook his head. "No. But he knows what kind of conditions to expect when we get there."

"When? Don't you mean if?"

Finn glanced at Rose and grinned. "I mean when."

Poe patted him on the shoulder and grinned back. "When."

***

Rey entered Luke’s old hut. It was still in good condition, maintained by the Lanai caretakers in his absence. Kylo lay across Luke’s cot, shirtless, sweating, pallid and gasping for air. He was surrounded by attending Lanai, who were nursing his wounds with some medical supplies Luke had on hand.

It wouldn't be enough to save him.

Rey pulled a chair from Luke’s study and sat next to him. She remembered the Vexis snake from Pasaana, and Finn’s suggestion that she try to heal the creature the way she healed the kyber crystal of the Skywalker saber. She didn't try it then. She'd found another way. But now there was no other way.

She either healed Ben the way she'd healed the kyber, or he would die.

But she had hope. And she trusted the Force.

She reached out and placed her hand gently on his chest. His heart raced under her palm.

“You were right," she whispered to him. "I did want to take your hand. Ben’s hand.”

She closed her eyes and focused, drawing on the Force, drawing on everything around her, drawing on the life within herself. The air filled with a resonant hum. 

---

A young Ben Solo—a boy no more than nine— ran for what felt like forever in the darkness. He had to get away from the voice, the awful, mean voice that plagued his nightmares and even his waking hours. Ben heard the clink of a blade. He looked behind him, the momentary distraction causing him to run into a looming figure with yellow skin and dead, electronic eyes. Ochi of Bestoon raised his Sith blade.

Ben cowered, but the strike didn't come. Instead, he heard the ignition of a lightsaber. He looked above him, and saw his Uncle Luke, bathed in emerald light, murder in his eyes as he raised his Jedi blade.

Ben pulled the darkness down on them both and ran. A bolt of lightning struck the path before him, setting ablaze the Jedi Temple on Ossus. His fellow padawans, caught in the blaze. The surviving padawans—his best friend Tai, Voe, the Quarren Hennix— they accused him. "No," he tried to say, "it wasn't me." But they wouldn’t listen. As he raised his blue lightsaber blade to defend himself, a red blade cut them down. It was Ren, his silver helmet reflecting crimson light as he raised the lightsaber blade of the Knights of Ren.

A burning anger, a rage, overcame Ben, and he ran Ren through. Ren’s blood bled Ben's blue blade red. Ben Solo became Kylo Ren. And Ren would only be the first of Kylo Ren’s many victims. Countless, nameless faces flashed by Ben's eyes as the Knights of Ren rampaged through the galaxy, murdering and pillaging in the name of the Shadow.

And then Snoke appeared before him, the voice that had haunted his nightmares and his every waking life.

His new master, looming over him; a skeletal, humanoid giant with a deformed head. He raised his long, spider-like hands. Lightning erupted from his fingertips, wracking Ben's body with pain. Over and over, until Ben only felt pain, only felt rage.

Pain and rage that continued as he witnessed the Hosnian Cataclysm. Pain and rage that continued as he murdered his father, Han Solo. When he murdered Snoke to usurp his throne. When he laid siege to Crait and lashed out against his Uncle Luke. He raised his crossguard blade. Roared in frustration when his Uncle Luke turned out to be a Force Projection, sent to distract him long enough for the Resistance to escape.

But he also felt sadness and shame. Alone in the heart of the abandoned Crait command center, holding his father’s lucky dice. The father he'd killed. Then dice faded away when the life-force of his uncle faded too from the strain of his Force Projection feat. And then he saw Rey from across the bond, looking down on him with disappointment and contempt, her features twisting and morphing until she was her Dark self. She raised her crimson lightstaff blades and ran him through.

He crumpled to the sediment floor of the command center, and as he fell onto his side, he came face-to-face with his dead mother, Leia.

"No!" he cried. It was all his fault. His parents' deaths. Rey’s darkness.

Because of his darkness. A darkness that was all-consuming. A darkness that reduced him to nothing but pain and rage. Sadness and shame.

In this darkness the boy Ben Solo lay in the fetal position, crying. 

He wanted to die. The galaxy would be better off without him. He closed his eyes, praying for it all to mercifully end.

And then he saw it.

A bright light. Blinding.

Was it Death?

He climbed to his feet. The light felt warm, inviting. The light resolved into a glowing figure of a person, reaching its hand out to him.

Ben Solo walked towards the light-figure, and took its hand...

---

Ben gasped and sat up sharply from the cot. The Lanai backed away from him. Rey blinked her eyes open, startled. She gasped at the sight. 

Ben's muscle and sinew and skin were renewed, rejoined. Even the scar on his face and chest had knitted closed, leaving his cheek smooth and perfect.

She had done it. She had healed him!

He looked around wildly, covered in a sheen of sweat. The Lanai cowered back, uncertain of what to make of this wild man the strange girl from before had brought to them, now that he was conscious. Some even scampered out of the hut.

Rey reached out and touched his cheek, made him look at her. His eyes were wide, fearful, confused.

"Ben. BenBenBenBen, look at me, shhh, shhh, shhh" she cooed. She ran her fingers through his wet hair. "It's okay. It's okay. You're safe."

Ben took several calming breaths. Blinked. With a shaking hand he reached up and touched Rey’s cheek. 

"Rey..." he murmured.

She smiled, tilting her head into his touch, his large hands nearly enveloping half of her face. "Ben."

"How?" he asked, his eyes that had been fearful and wild— and stern and wrathful before then— were now full of wonder and... love? Affection and longing?

Rey couldn’t answer. There was so much she wanted to say, but the words were caught in her throat. How had Rey not noticed before that he had the long face and posture of his father, the warm brown eyes of his mother? Had she even ever seen him smile? His perfect teeth, plush lips?

Their lips drew closer until...

"A Dyad in the Force," came Luke’s voice. "A power like life itself."

They abruptly broke apart.

Ben glared at Luke, who stood in the doorway. He glanced at Rey accusingly before grabbing his shirt from a folded pile that included his tunic and cape and then he stormed out of the hut, walking right through Luke as he did so. Rey went to follow him, but Luke put a ghostly hand on her shoulder.

"Leave him to me," he advised. "We have much to talk about."

***

Ben Solo stormed out of the hut. His first thought upon exiting the hut was that they hadn’t left Kef Bir, as they were on a grassy landmass surrounded by vast ocean. Perhaps they were in a different hemisphere, where a settlement lived in the stone huts that surrounded him as he looked around.  However, he wasn't sure if the odd, short, fish-headed alien creatures that glared at him suspiciously were native to Kef Bir.

Ben glared at them back and pulled on his shirt, noting the hole burned into the stomach by his own lightsaber. He headed out to the cliff, looking out into the ocean. He saw Luke’s sunken X-Wing under the waves.

"The island..." he murmured. The island he saw in Rey’s mind back when he’d been in her mind at Starkiller. The island where Luke Skywalker had exiled himself and remained until his death.

"Hey kid," came Luke’s voice from behind him, as if thinking his name had summoned him from whatever pit in the netherworld he resided in.

"Go away," was Ben's reply. He didn't look at his uncle. He didn't even know if he was visible, or if he was just another voice in his head.

“You already know what I’m going to say,” Luke said mournfully. 

“You’ve said it before.”

“And I’ll never be able to say it enough.”

"It doesn't matter now," snapped Ben. 

“That’s where you’re wrong, Ben,” said Luke, striding step closer to him. “It matters more now than ever.”

Ben remembered the night in his room at the temple, the memory fresh from his deathbed vision. It was a memory he’d kept locked in his mind in a steel trap, returning to it again and again to allow the terror and the fury fuel his darkness. He remembered it so vividly that it struck him now that he didn’t have a single memory of his uncle other than that one that held any meaning to him anymore.

“I don’t know if I can forgive you,” Ben said, angry and hurt.

“You don’t have to forgive me, and I’m not asking for forgiveness,” replied Luke, standing now beside him. “I only want you to know that I know I wronged you. I didn’t trust you or myself, and I gave in to fear. I failed you. And I’m sorry.”

Ben didn't know what to say to that. They stood in silence for a few moments until Ben spoke again. "Is that why you had Rey bring me here? So you could apologize?"

"I didn't lead Rey here," denied Luke. "The Force led her here. And now the Force calls upon you to make a choice."

Ben snorted derisively. "Oh, this is about turning me, isn't it?

“Ben, I’ve talked about it so much in those simple terms, but too late in my life did I come to understand my father’s conflict. Your conflict. The Jedi and the Sith have always talked about turning. It’s not about being on one side or the other. It’s about where you’re headed. Did my father reject the Emperor’s teachings? Yes. For a moment. But it was the right moment.”

Again, Ben didn't know how to reply. So Luke continued. "You can return to the First Order and reign supreme with your Sith fleet. You can do as I did and stay exiled on this island, hiding in shame and fear. Or you can take the other path. The path home."

Ben shook his head. “It’s too late now." It was something the voices in his head had always said. It’s too late for you. They’ll never take you back. 

“It’s never too late.”

"After what I've done..." Ben choked out. He reached for some way to understand. To accept. "How did you do it? How did you save my grandfather after everything he'd done?"

"I didn't. Anakin Skywalker saved himself," replied Luke with a soft smile. "I only reminded him that he could."

Ben finally turned to look at Luke. He was a spirit, almost transparent. He looked different than the way Ben had remembered him last— older, his dark goatee a full beard and his hair longer and grayer. He wore light-colored Jedi robes instead of the black he'd favored before.

His uncle’s bright blue eyes bore into his very soul. Instead of finding the hatred and judgment he expected, Ben instead found love in them. Acceptance.

Just like his father. 

Ben stared at his uncle, afraid to believe his words. Afraid of the truth of what he was now feeling.

Snoke had lied about this. Snoke had lied about all of it. All those voices in his head, torturing him throughout the years, they had promised him that a moment like this could never happen. They don’t care about you. Just their precious New Republic. Just their precious Resistance.

All lies.

Despite everything, his Uncle Luke still believed in him. So had his mother and father, he realized. When he'd murdered his father on Snoke's orders, he'd saw only love in his father’s dying eyes. Despite everything, his mother gave her life to reach him.

Ben heard the creaking sound of the hut's makeshift door opening and closing. He turned to the source of the sound, and saw Rey standing in the doorway. She waved at them.

Rey. Even after everything that had happened between them, Rey believed in his inner light enough to save his life.

"She's a special girl," observed Luke.

"Yes," agreed Ben. "She is."

"A bit pushy," added Luke, grinning at Ben.

Ben couldn't help but grin back. Nothing more needed to be said between them. They both felt it.

"Well, it looks like you two are getting on better," said Rey as she approached them.

Ben glanced at Luke and back to Rey. "We have an understanding."

"Good. That's a start," she started down the path that led to the stone steps that in turn led to the TIE Whisper. "Now to the fleet."

Ben stood rooted to the spot. "Rey, the Sith fleet is going to launch eventually, with or without me. There's nothing we can do about that."

Rey stopped and turned, giving him the same determined look he'd seen many times before. "I'm going to try, with or without you. But I was hoping with you."

It was the same look she gave him after they had defeated Snoke and his Praetorian Guard. She’d called on him to end the Supremacy's attack on the fleeing Resistance. He called on her to cut off her old ties and join him in ruling the galaxy. He'd said she was nothing, but not to him.

It didn’t end well for either of them, and it closed the divide that the discovery of their bond had opened for them. 

"Ben, you are still the Supreme Leader," implored Rey. "You can call the fleet off. You have to try."

Ben wasn't sure what direction his life would take him now. But he knew that as long as he had Rey, he was going in the right direction.

"Well...?" Rey turned back to Ben. Her eyes were pleading.

"I... can try. But—"

"But what?"

"If we're going to Exegol, I'm going to need a weapon," said Ben. "I recall you leaving mine behind."

Rey’s eyes widened and she gasped. "Shit! I... I must have—"

"I suppose it's for the best," Ben interrupted quickly. "I spilled enough blood with that one anyway," he added bitterly.

Luke put a blue-limned hand on Ben's shoulder. “I believe I can help you with that. Come. There’s something your mother would want you to have,” he said. “Follow me.”

Luke led them back inside his old hut.  He pointed toward a loose brick in the wall.

“In there,” he said.

Ben removed the brick and reached inside. His fingertips encountered a hard object wrapped in soft leather. He pulled it out and unwrapped it.

It was a lightsaber, shining with relative newness. As soon as his hands gripped it, he sensed its owner, and he smiled.

“Mom’s lightsaber,” he said.

“It was the last night of her training,” Luke said.

Ben caught glimpses of his memory—lightsabers clashing, their blades lighting the jungle around them in soft violet and green. Their fight was fierce, but Ben felt a sense of fun. Of joy. Luke had loved training his sister.

Luke found himself toppled to the ground, his fall cushioned by a bed of ferns. He looked up at his twin—a much younger version of Ben's mother—who grinned, but her face held sadness too. Resignation.

“Leia told me that she had sensed the end of her Jedi path. Another life called to her. You,” Luke said. “She surrendered her saber to me and said that one day, it would be picked up again by someone who would finish her journey.”

Ben stared at it. Was he meant to have this?

"I can't think of anyone more fitting than you to pass it on to," added Luke.

Ben activated his mother's lightsaber, bathing the hut in a brilliant violet light. He turned to Rey, a look of joy and determination on his face. Rey beamed at him.

"A Dyad in the Force, a power like life itself," repeated Luke. Ben deactivated the lightsaber and he and Rey turned to look at him. "As One, you Two will have power beyond the strongest Force users in history, but take heed, for it is also a power that can destroy life itself. Trust in the Force, let it be your guide." He looked upon them with such fondness it made Rey’s heart ache. "I'm so proud of you. The both of you. A thousand generations live in you now."

The blue-limned spirit of Leia Organa appeared next to Luke. She retained her mature visage, but the afterlife had restored her vitality after the deterioration of her health in her final years. She was beautiful and radiant.

Rey took Ben's hand. He squeezed her hand as his mother approached. Leia took their hands in both of hers. Impossibly, they could feel her touch. She smiled at her padawan; and smiled at the wayward son who had finally come home.

She spoke, her voice powerful and resonant, a song. “No one's ever really gone. We will always be with you.”

Notes:

Shoutout to postedbygaslight's "You'll Be the One to Turn" for the inspiration behind Luke and Ben's encounter in this chapter!