A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...
STAR
WARS
Episode IX
THE NEW ORDER
In the wake of Supreme Leader Snoke's death, the FIRST ORDER is fractured, with KYLO REN and GENERAL HUX both vying for power beneath a façade of amicable co-operation. Hoping to cement his new position, Kylo Ren has deployed the KNIGHTS OF REN on missions throughout the galaxy.
The RESISTANCE is similarly troubled. Despite efforts to bolster their ranks, the untimely death of General Leia Organa has caused tension between the remaining leaders, resulting in a spate of uncoordinated and ill-prepared operations.
Compounding their fears, the Jedi Knight, REY, has been without a lightsaber for some time, causing many of her allies to question her effectiveness in the battles that lay ahead of them. In an effort to improve morale, Rey has set out on a mission to recover a set of lightsaber schematics from a nearby First Order base...
Rey braced herself against the snow, burying her hands in her arms. She watched the base from a nearby forest, waiting for her opportunity to sneak closer. The guards rounded the far corner, and she took it as her cue.
"Come on, R2." She motioned for the droid to follow her, and they approached the main entrance.
"Can you get us in?"
R2 beeped defiantly in response and set himself to work. Rey closed her eyes for a moment, searching the area with the Force. She could feel the stormtroopers swarming the inner halls, and the next pair of guards approaching behind her.
R2 whistled, drawing Rey away from her meditation. "Okay. Stay quiet and I'll let you know when to open it."
Rey moved towards the corner, taking care to keep her footsteps quiet. She sensed the approaching troopers, and reached out to the nearest tree. Holding for a moment, she slipped a hand into her shoulder-bag, gripping the blaster within. Without a blade, she couldn't afford to be as headstrong as she was used to.
As the patrolling troopers reached the corner, she swept her free hand down, snapping a branch, and sending a pile of wood and snow crashing to the ground. The guards turned sharply towards it, weapons raised.
"Check that out, I'll call it in." He lifted his hand to his ear as his partner advanced on the tree. "Patrol 2A. Suspicious noise at north entrance. No sightings, but we're investigating."
Rey waited for him to finish his report, then blasted the far trooper, killing him immediately, and held up her empty hand to the near one. "It was a false alarm. Just a lenkro in the trees."
The guard raised his hand again. "It was a false alarm. Just a lenkro in the trees."
"You will repeat any reply to me."
The guard removed his hand from his communicator. "Copy that, Patrol 2A. Continue patrol."
Satisfied with her handiwork, she shot the trooper, and returned to the entrance. She reached out again, and felt the inside patrol pass by.
"Now, R2."
The droid whirred his extender arm and the door hissed open, revealing corridors extending left, right, and ahead. Rey dashed inside and immediately shot to her left, killing the pair of troopers who had just passed. She flexed her free hand towards one of the thick steel panels covering the wall. The sheet buckled, loosening from its position. She pulled back with her hand, wrenching it from the wall.
She spun on her heels, using the metal sheet to block oncoming fire from behind her. She ducked behind it to completely cover herself as she advanced.
The trooper taking cover in an alcove on the right stopped firing, activating his comms. Rey launched the metal plate at the troops crowded on the left, flattening them into the wall.
"Under attack at North Entrance! It's th-" His transmission was cut short by a blaster bolt to the head.
Rey flipped the metal plate away from the others, and fired on them before they could scramble away. Rey sprinted over to one of the dead soldiers, and tore a helmet off. She pulled down her hood and scarf, and placed her snow-goggles around her neck, sliding the helmet over her head.
She activated the comms. "Resistance fighters at East Entrance! The Jedi is here! We need reinforcements! Repeat: Jedi at East Entrance!"
She shot the wall, hoping command would interpret it as a death-blow, before removing the helmet. She saw the face of the woman she'd taken the helmet from, lifeless eyes lying open.
Rey looked into the helmet's eyes, and thought back to Finn. She'd fought so hard to drag Ben back into the Light, but had failed to pay any mind to the thousands of Stormtroopers like Finn. Had they all been taken, like he had – torn from a family they'd never known? Brainwashed into submission, and sent to die for someone else's ideals?
She bit the inside of her cheek as she tightened her grip on the helmet. She was brought out of her reminiscence by R2 beeping as he sped up to her. She heard the stomping of imperial boots approaching beyond the next corner, and launched the helmet towards them. As the first trooper came into view, it impacted the side of his head. She flung her arm down, hitting him again and knocking him out.
As the other three came to a surprised stop, she flicked her hands together, smacking a pair of them into each other, and they slumped to the floor. The last one turned to her, gun raised, and she tore it from his grasp, lifting her own blaster level to him. With her free hand, she flicked upwards, removing his helmet to prevent him from reporting to his commanders.
"I want you to listen to me… have you heard of FN-2187?" She began stepping towards the soldier.
"FN… the deserter? What… what about him?" She could see the fear in his eyes, a certainty that he would soon be dead.
"I know him. He's my friend… and he's told me what happens to you, all of you. Abducted and conditioned, brought up just to kill." She put some power into her words – just enough to make him listen, truly understand what she was saying. She couldn't completely control his mind – that would wear off as soon as she left, and she needed him to remember this. "Force-fed propaganda until you can't think for yourself, then carted off to die for your leader's cause."
"I… that's n…" His voice trailed off.
"Have you ever been given a choice? Asked what you believe? Told why they send you to fight in their stead?"
The trooper's face was ashen, stunned into silence. He looked down at his armour, then back to Rey.
"FN-2187… his name is Finn. He made friends in the Resistance. You can too. Or you can run away from all of it – hide away on Dantooine, or Naboo, never see anyone from the First Order ever again." She looked into the Stormtrooper's eyes, and he almost looked like he was about to nod. "Think about it. Talk to the others, spread the word… make your own choices."
Rey lifted a hand to his head, and splayed her fingers, knocking him unconscious. She picked up one of the trooper's blasters and placed her own in her satchel. R2 had already moved on ahead, and she sprinted to catch up, following him to the main data vault in the south of the complex.
"Get us in." She left the droid to his work while she listened out for any approaching troopers.
She could hear a squad coming from the east, and fumbled with the new blaster. Finn had given her a run-down of the basic First Order weaponry, and she was looking for the switch for a stun setting, but was struggling to remember it properly.
"Screw it." she muttered, dropping the rifle and turning her attention to the wall on her right.
She laid both palms on it, and focused her mind. A ripple spread along the wall, springing the long metal strip from its rivets. She grunted as she ripped the plating from the wall, bending it towards the eastern corridor. It groaned as she contorted and twisted it to block the hallway as much as she could.
She peered through some of the gaps, and saw the soldiers stop dead as they turned the corner into the mass of twisted metal. R2 whistled as the door whirred open, and she followed the droid inside.
"Close it." she ordered, keeping an eye out in case anyone made it through her blockade.
R2 plugged into the computer, and beeped cheerily as he fulfilled her request. Rey took the chance to catch her breath, removing her gloves to air out her hands. As R2-D2 continued his search for the necessary data, she looked through the window to the plains below them, trees sparsely dotted amongst the snow.
She felt a familiar presence appear behind her, and she hung her head in exasperation, before calmly turning to face it.
"Ben." She leaned back on the console behind her, a tired look in her eyes.
"A Jedi assaulting one of my bases. I at least hope the report is accurate." His voice was distant, echoing through all the light-years between them.
Rey ignored his opening statement. "How are you? Since… your mothe-"
"Because if it's not you, then I'm afraid some poor rebel rat is about to be subject to a severe dose of overkill."
As he finished talking, the crackle of a lightsaber ignited on the other side of the door, causing Rey to abruptly stand back up. It hissed and spat when stabbed through the door, and continued as it began to carve a hole. Kylo was stood still, arms by his sides.
"That isn't you…" Rey frowned. "The Knights of Ren. One of Luke's other students – one you didn't murder."
"You still haven't fixed my grandfather's lightsaber, have you? That's what you're hunting for – schematics? You ran quite the risk putting yourself out here without one."
"Why can't you listen to me just once? Don't you see, whoever started this – whether it was Snoke, or us, or whatever else – this connection is an opportunity to find some… some sort of-"
"Resolution? This story of betrayal and murder, and you want to resolve it with words? You threw that chance away the last time you were on this ship. The only way this ends, is with one of us dead." He stared straight into her eyes, daring her to retort. "But you should look on the bright side – maybe you'll get to meet your parents after a-" The connection ended, and Kylo's presence disappeared from the room.
Rey sighed dejectedly. "R2, how's it coming?" she asked, turning back around.
Rey flexed her palm at the window, shattering it outwards as the droid whistled his reply, extracting from the base's system.
"Good. Communicator." R2 ejected the device towards her, and she caught it with one hand while lifting R2 out of the window with the other. "Chewie, bring the Falcon round the back of the base – you'll see us in the snow."
She lowered R2 to the ground outside, but was interrupted by the door exploding into the room. She spun to catch it with the Force, dropping a disgruntled R2 the rest of the way down. She felt the pressure from the new arrival pushing the giant slab of metal towards her, and she flung it aside, drawing her blaster and immediately firing at her enemy, a man dressed in black, carrying a red lightsaber.
He hastily blocked the blaster bolts, and they careened off to the side. Rey swept her hand back towards her adversary, slamming the detached door into him, and pinning him to the side. A pair of Stormtroopers entered behind him, and she pushed them back out of the room with a flick of her wrist.
She turned to leap out of the window, clearing the console in one clean motion, and landed on the ground far below, cushioning her fall with the Force.
She spotted R2 in the distance, and sprinted down the plains to the nearby trees. She heard the man in black behind her throw the metal slab off of him, shouting "Get up! Kill her!"
Rey curled her fingers into a fist, collecting the glass shards from the snow around her. When she heard the soft thud of her enemy landing in the snow, she stopped, spun on her heel, and sliced her arm through the air. The shards followed her direction, arcing towards their target, but he put out a hand to stop them, and a sharp crack echoed through the air. Over the course of a few seconds, the cracks deepened, and the glass eventually splintered, then ground itself into dust.
Rey ducked behind a tree as the Stormtroopers fired on her from the room above. R2 screeched, and she saw him fly through the air back towards the base. She grabbed him with the Force, locking him in place, suspended in mid-air between the two Force-users.
She fired her blaster at the man in black. He deflected the shots, but it took enough of his concentration that it allowed Rey to pull R2 back to her, and set him on the ground.
"Go, R2! Stick to cover so he can't see you – move!"
She heard the Knight begin to run towards her through the snow. She returned her blaster to her bag, closed her eyes, and searched the depths of the Force. As her connection deepened, her heart slowed, her mind cleared, and she began to see her surroundings – the man sprinting through the snow, the expanse between them, the concrete foundations and twisting metal of the base beyond him.
There wasn't much time, but she wanted, needed to know more about him. She wasn't sure what she was looking for – something good, something worth trying to help, hidden beneath the rage and hatred coursing through him? She touched his soul, only fleetingly, but enough to see into him. Flashes of memory, disjointed, but sharp – Luke's training ground, a night of fear and anger, the flash of a lightsaber gutting a child, another being Force-choked, her own face flickering onto their bodies.
She broke away, and returned to her mediation, concentrating on her true task. She felt the Force bending around her, curling around her fist, connecting her to her target.
"Size matters not." she muttered, remembering Luke's words, passed on from his own teacher.
She opened her eyes, and spun, flexing her hand towards the base. The roof of the control room split with an ear-piercing crunch, shedding snow from the top of the building. She curled her fist again, and the building groaned and creaked under the strain. After her recent change of heart, she ideally only wanted to knock the Stormtroopers unconscious, but with a Knight of Ren barrelling towards her, she couldn't afford that luxury.
She wrenched her fist back, collapsing the room, burying any troopers still inside, and ripping it entirely from the rest of the building. The mess of rock and metal crashed to the ground, pieces flying out of it, and snow pluming into the air.
Her enemy was almost upon her, and she was forced to jump away, dodging the incoming sideswipe so narrowly, the blade still severed a small lock of her hair. As he swung back, she reached out and grabbed the weapon's hilt, clasping his hand in her own. She willed her blaster into her other hand and brought it up, but he grabbed the top of the gun and kept it held away from him, a single bolt exploding in the snow next to them.
"Face it," he sneered. "You're lost, stumbling in the dark against a superior enemy. Without a lightsaber, you're as good as dead. Submit to the Supreme Leader's will!"
A pair of jet troopers from the base landed nearby, readying their blasters. Rey let go of her blaster, slamming her hand into her adversary's throat. He choked, and staggered as a result of the shock, his arms going limp. She wrapped her hand around his neck, trying to maintain the element of surprise for as long as possible.
She easily contorted his limp arm, using the blade to deflect the troopers' attacks back to them, killing them both. She turned back to the Knight, thrusting her arm forward, trying to push him off-balance.
"How many?" she snapped.
He managed to regain enough composure to avoid being toppled, and struck his fist into her side. Empowered by the Force, it was enough to send her to the ground, completely losing her grip, and falling onto a nearby rock.
He needed a couple of seconds to recover his composure, and Rey took the chance to act. She smacked her palm onto the rock, snapping a large chunk off of it. She threw it at her opponent, but he sliced it in two with his saber, and used his free hand to grab one of the resultant pieces and throw it back to her. She held up her palm, and the rock speeding towards her shattered into a shower of pebbles, peppering them both.
The Knight had predicted his attack would not land, and was immediately able to transition into a Force push, sending Rey careening into a tree. She grunted as she began scrambling to her feet, but the Knight had already begun his next attack, his fist crackling with electric energy. He loosed the lightning towards Rey, sending a powerful current through her body.
Rey was forced back to her hands and knees, screaming in pain. The man standing over her had an ugly grin on his face, enjoying his triumph. Newly confident of his next kill, he replaced his lightsaber back on his belt. However, as Rey got over the initial shock of the attack, she grit her teeth and punched the ground beneath her as she clamped her eyes shut and tried to stir up her connection to the Force.
Rey managed to move her leg forward, and began pushing to stand. The Knight's face snapped to one of shock and anger, and he threw his other hand forward, more lightning spewing from it. It overwhelmed Rey, causing her to collapse completely to the floor, and let out a guttural roar. Pain seared through her body, and her limbs began to contort as her muscles tightened.
A low rumble grew overhead, and the Millenium Falcon screamed past them, low to the ground. Both of the combatants were thrown along by the winds created by the ship's passing. Rey was slammed into a tree, pain stabbing through her ribs. The Knight of Ren was thrown forward and rolled along the floor.
The Falcon turned sharply, hovering above the battlefield as the bay doors opened, revealing Chewbacca standing on the ramp, bowcaster at the ready. He fired his weapon immediately, but his target had already recovered his footing and deflected the bolts away.
Rey's face crumpled with the effort it took her to claw her way back up to her knees. Eyes blurring, she barely managed to make out the shape of her blaster in the snow, several meters away from her. She could still feel the crackle of electricity in her flesh, her arm shaking as she reached out, and willed the blaster to her hand.
The man swept his empty hand through the air, blowing the wookiee off of the ship. Chewie let out a roar as he smacked into a tree and fell to the snow beneath.
Breathing rapidly, fingers numb, Rey scrabbled with the blaster, prying it open to reveal the power cell. She ripped it out, ignoring the heat radiating from it. She roared to get her enemy's attention as she threw the battery at him. He instinctually tried to deflect it, and as the saber pierced the battery, it exploded, knocking the man to the ground. The lightsaber deactivated as it was flung away.
Rey scrambled forward, veering into a nearby tree before pushing herself down on top of the fallen man. He reached for his weapon, but they both managed to land a hand on it as it flew back. It crackled as he tried to activate it, but was too badly damaged by the explosion to function properly. Instead, the hilt spat and sputtered, producing a small cone of energy, still just enough to cut through someone if it touched them.
The pair grappled for control of the weapon.
"How many children did you kill, when you burned their school to the ground?" Rey grunted through grit teeth, clawing at his hands on the saber hilt.
Her opponent snapped a hand to her throat, pushing her away from him, and causing her grasp on the hilt to slip. He brought it closer to her neck, but she managed to recover and keep it at bay.
"Not enough!" he snarled.
She kicked in the snow as she pushed against the saber hilt, desperately keeping it away from her face. She quickly scanned the area around them, and found a trooper's blaster nearby. One of her hands let go of the saber hilt as she reach out and caught the blaster, aimed squarely at her opponent's forehead.
His eyes snapped open as she squeezed the trigger, planting a laser bolt straight into his skull.
He went limp, releasing Rey's neck, and arms slumping to the ground.
She wheezed as she pushed herself away, rolling onto her back in the snow, blaster lying loosely in her palm. She took some deep breaths before letting out a sharp, short yell, kicking the ground with her heel, and running her hand up her face, roughly massaging the skin back to sensation.
The saber, still lit in the dead man's hand, whined quietly before crackling and splitting. Rey yelped in surprise, jolting her arm away from it before relaxing again, closing her eyes.
A soft growl prompted her to open them again.
"Thanks, Chewie."
She took his offer of a hand, lifting her to her feet, accompanied by a series of growls and grumbles.
"Battered and painful, but I'll live. How bad was that fall? Are you holding up?"
He growled dismissively as he propped her up with his arms and they began walking to the Falcon.
"Good. Let's get back to the Resistance, so I can lie down for a decade or two."