Poe woke with a jolt. Where am I?
He looked around. He appeared to be laying down in a salt flat that wound between towering dunes. Poe briefly wondered why it was dark, then came to the conclusion that it must be night. Pushing himself upward with his hands, Poe winced as a wave of nausea flooded through him. He retched, but his painfully empty stomach offered nothing to vomit.
Why am I here?
Poe stumbled along, his legs not willing to work properly for some reason. His whole body ached, and his back burned with pain. Why was he hurting? He struggled to remember what had happened to him. Then, the chain of recent events came flooding back to him in a rush.
Confrontation in the fires of Jakku. Capture by the faceless soldiers. The crack of the whip. The shock of the baton. And then he'd stolen a ship with . . .
"Finn!" Poe yelled, his voice cracking terribly. That was his friend's name, right? "Finn!"
Poe turned around a few times, then opted not to do so after the resulting headache. He shivered. If this was a desert, then why was it so cold? Poe's arms felt bare. Where was his flight jacket?
Probably still pinned in the TIE fighter he'd somehow managed to land. The details were hazy, but he remembered bits and pieces of the crash. No pun intended.
Poe almost laughed out loud, then caught himself. He must be delirious. What was so funny about his current condition? He was exhausted physically, dehydrated, and probably a little shaky mentally, too. More than likely, he'd need a med droid or something to -
Med droids. They had those at D'Qar. D'Qar - what was on D'Qar? Who was they?
"Come on, Dameron," Poe said aloud. "Think!"
Where is your Resistance now? A voice boomed in his mind.
That was it. The Resistance. All the pieces came together now. Poe needed to get offworld and reconnect with the Resistance. Once he found the Resistance, he could find BB-8. First things first: a ship.
No, Poe thought. More than that, I need water.
With morning, Poe only found the inferno of Jakku's relentless sun. The salt flat he'd followed wasn't exactly a road, but it gave him something to walk on that offered easier footing than the shiftig sands on either side.
For the most part, Poe was left to his own thoughts. He tried to shut out the inconsistent aching as his father had taught him to.
"Pain is just the body's way of telling you something's wrong," Kes Dameron had said. "But if you know nothing's wrong, then you can isolate the pain and carry on."
Poe wondered if Finn had ever been taught how to handle pain. He was a stormtrooper, after all, and what Poe'd heard of stormtrooper training had seemed harsh and rigid. Then again, there had been enough room for Finn to defect, so what did that mean? Poe had never really iiven much thought to the people inside the white suits, but now he wondered about them.
He also wondered where Finn actually was, if the dark-skinned young man was also lost in the desert like he was. Poe hoped that Finn made it out okay. The realization occurred to him that unless Finn went looking for the Resistance, they'd probably never see each other again.
"Why did you defect, Finn?" Poe wondered out loud. "What makes you different from them?"
The low whine of a landspeeder interrupted Poe's thoughts. Not even pausing to consider who might be on the speeder, he ran up the nearest dune, yelling and waving his arms wildly.
At first, he thought the speeder would just pass him by, if not run him over, but it slowed and eventually halted, angling to the right. The speeder was unlike any Poe had ever seen, flat in the front and bulging at the stern. The speeder's operator, or at least its species, was something Poe was slightly more familiar with.
The speeder's operator was a Blarina. Mirrored eyeshades swept across a broad, reptilian face above a short, wide snout. Being about half Poe's height, the Blarina had to lift its scaly head a ways before it grinned, revealing more teeth than could be found in a human mouth.
"A bit warm to be walking by oneself in the country, my friend."
Poe grunted, suppressing frustration. "It's not by choice, I assure you."
"And where, then, have you come from?" the Blarina hissed, scrutinizing Poe with an even wider grin. "Or do you just enjoy Jakku's gentle sunshine?"
"Er . . ." Poe thought as quickly as he could. "I'm lost. I hit my head and I'm lost."
The Blarina hissed again softly. "And where's your speeder, my friend?"
"Same place I am. Lost."
"I'm Naka Iit," the Blarina said. "A scavenger of sorts." Looking Poe over once more, he added, "I might just scavenge you."
Poe tensed. He had no weapon, and he was in no physical condition to fight. He probably couldn't even offer much resistance, even to a Blarina half his size. He recalled from brief biological studies that Blarinas weren't exceptionally strong, but they were quick. Naka Iit also seemed to be quick-witted.
Well, Poe still had some of his wits about him. He spread his hands, trying to stall. "It's said that the Blarina are an exceptionally hospitable people."
Naka's grin turned into a frown of astonishment. "You've heard that? That mist be referring to some other Blarina. Certainly doesn't sound like me."
So much for that. "You'd be wasting your time on me. I have nothing worth scavenging."
Naka raised his eyeshades, revealing gold-hued eyes with slitted pupils. He stared ahrd at Poe. "Then what, exactly, are you doing out in this wasteland, with 'nothing'?"
Poe swayed. He was hot, thirsty, hungry, and thoroughly exhausted. He needed to get offworld so he could go home to the Resistance and find BB-8. He was also apparently rather desperate. Otherwise, what he said next might have been quite different.
"I just escaped from the First Order by stealing one of their advanced TIE fighters, used it to shoot up one of their Star Destroyers, and crash-landed somewhere near here."
The Blarina stared at Poe in disbelief before he started laughing. "I'll wet my zinz if you aren't the most barefaced liar I've encountered in twenty years of scavenging on this sandbox!" He extanded a lightly clothed arm. "Come with me, my friend. The Blarina do say that much good accrues to anyone who helps the mad. Liar or madman, whichever you may be, it amuses me to lend you assistance." Naka lowered his eyeshades and raised his head skywards. "The gods have placed you here to alleviate my boredom. Come."
Whatever Naka believed, Poe was content with. "If it's all the same to you," he said, "I'd be more than happy if you could just give me a drink of water."
He settled himself into the Blarina-sized passenger seat, his knees tucked against his chest, and accepted a slender metal flask from Naka.
Poe hurriedly pressed the flask to his lips, and water - sweet, cool, delicious water - filled his mouth. He closed his eyes in bliss as he swallowed.
Though he ached to drink all of the flask's contents, Poe forced himself not to out of politeness. He handed the flask back to Naka. "I need to get offworld as soon as possible."
"Of course you do," Naka nodded soothingly. What he said next consisted of many names and places that all seemed to run together. Poe honestly didn't care where the Blarina took him as long as he could get offworld.
A gout of sand exploding from a dune on their left interrupted casual conversation. After looking behind them, Naka hissed and accelerated, throwing Poe back in his seat.
"What is it?" he asked.
Naka glanced grimly at Poe. "Look for yourself."
Struggling to turn inthe small space, Poe managed to see another, much larger, speeder giving chase and gaining rapidly. Another shot from it took out a good-sized portion of the sand dune to their right.
"Strus clan," Naka said bleakly. "A motley collection of grunts who can't do salvage, repair, trade, lr anything else." The speeder rocked from another near-miss. "So they steal from those who can."
Poe shrugged. "They're not very good shots."
Naka Iit hissed again. "Idiot madman. If they shoot us, they acquire nothing but garbage. They shoot to disable, not to destroy."
Poe glanced behind them again. "They're catching up," he noted. "Can't this thing go any faster?"
"I am a salvager, not a podracer!" Naka retorted indignantly. "My craft is built for hauling, not for speed!"
Poe paused a moment, an idea taking shape in his mind. "Then let me drive."
"What‽" Naka yelled as Poe leaned over for the controls. "Are you insa - no, wait you are! Why should I let you take control of my only real asset?"
"Because," Poe said, adrenaline rushing through him and reawakening the Resistance soldier inside, "I am the best pilot you ever met."
