Chapter 10: Have to Escape Together, For Some Reason
Rey crawled ahead through the ceiling ventilation system, with the newly-sprung prisoner following immediately behind her. She was trying not to think of what a spectacular view Kylo Ren had of her ass.
"Here," she told him, gesturing to the grate in front of her. Once loosened, she pulled it aside, and proceeded to jump down from the high ceiling, her companion following suit. Luckily, there appeared to be no one in that particular hallway.
"There," she whispered, gesturing to a large door only a meter away. "Take a ship and get out of here."
He stuck his head into the doorway, and retracted it promptly. "Where's my ship?"
She stared at him, aghast. "How should I know? Just take that fighter!"
He glanced at the nearby vintage A-wing, face wrinkling in apparent disgust.
"I. Want. My. Ship," he said threateningly. "This hanger is only tall enough for snub fighters. Where do they keep larger ships?"
Rey thought a moment. "Probably in the big one, down at the end," she told him, gesturing down the hall.
Kylo took off running.
Rey shook her head, muttering to herself. "You Solos do get attached to your ships..."
"I heard that!" he bellowed irritably.
She stepped forward to follow, but stopped abruptly. She felt that distinct ripple in the Force that surround the General. Kylo apparently felt it too, slowing to a stop just before Leia Organa appeared several meters down the corridor, and directly in their path.
Rey could feel the tension rolling off both Kylo and the General, as they saw each other for the first time in years.
"I know it was you," Leia said. But there was no accusation in her voice. It was something much more like - gratitude. That didn't make any sense...
Kylo made no answer.
"I know you were the one who sent the warning that Illenium was the next target. I will never, ever be able to prove it, but I know." The General paused, swallowing what was either a sob, or her pride. "Whatever you've told yourself, what you did to your father does not define who you are."
Rey watched in complete fascination, dying to know how this would play out. Kylo just stood there, his face not quite visible from where Rey was standing. He slowly walked toward his estranged mother, the mutual tension escalating with every step. Rey desperately wished that she could have seen the look on his face. Murderous anger? Abject shame? Tender affection? It could have been any or all of those.
Rey's hand found it's way to her side, and hovered over her saber. She was sure as hell not going to let another murder happen right before her eyes. At the same time, she certainly didn't want to hamper any potential heart-felt reconciliation. Perhaps that was the way she would help redeem him?
He stopped just in front of his mother, and Rey could see that sad smile spread across the General's face.
"Ben, nothing will ever stop the conflict in you."
Rey felt a burst of unmitigated pain emanating from Kylo, as if the unpalatable truth his mother was speaking was another bowcaster bolt slamming into his gut.
"But you could at least choose to be on the right side of that conflict," Leia told him, all but glowing with tragically unconditional love.
Rey saw Kylo hang his head for a moment, and then raise a hand, as if he was about to pull his estranged mother into a hug. But instead, Kylo's hand formed into a pinching motion, and the General fell unconscious. Kylo caught her as she fell, and laid her out on the floor, cradling his mother's head in one hand, to keep it from banging against the ground.
Fortunately, Rey could feel that the General was alive and unhurt, but she still felt compelled to scream at him. "What the hell is wrong with you?!"
He ignored her, proceeding to roll his mother onto her stomach, arranging limp limbs in a sort of flailing position.
"What are you doing?!" Rey demanded.
"Saving her from a firing squad of her own!" he shouted furiously, more defensive than ever. "People will automatically assume that she helped me escape! Militaries have a term for that type of thing, one that's pretty consistently tied to execution. But they'll be less suspicious if it looks I attacked her."
"Oh..." was all Rey could think of to say. This would have been a logical time for her to consider how her own actions were likely to call her loyalty into question. But like most people, Rey's mind wasn't always at its most logical in the middle of a crisis.
All she could think of was the perplexing dichotomy she'd just witnessed. He could have killed his other parent, but he hadn't.
As usual, he sensed the gist of her thoughts. The habitual bitterness of his vibes increased exponentially, a constant whisper into a deafening roar. "There would be no point! I already made my grand gesture, and a hell of a lot of good it did me!"
Before she could say anything, Kylo turned on his heel and took off again, and Rey immediately moved to follow. Luckily, Kylo's ship actually was in the larger hanger, as predicted. He strode in without any apparent hesitation, right past several mechanics. Said mechanics, being unarmed and unstupid, backed away wordlessly. They weren't armed, but Rey knew perfectly well that they were going call someone who was.
The ramp to the command shuttle was already down. Kylo stepped onto it, but stopped abruptly.
"Where's my lightsaber?"
Rey's jaw dropped. "I have no idea! It's probably in a court evidence locker! It might not even be on the station anymore!"
He stepped back down the ramp, and loomed over her threateningly. "I. Want. My. Saber."
She stepped forward, staring back without fear.
"You WANT a punch in the face!" Rey shouted. First the ship, and now the lightsaber. She'd had it with his spoiled brat bullshit. "I am not going to let you run all over this station, killing everyone you come across, just to find that shoddy excuse for a lightsaber!"
Kylo took a step forward anyway, and Rey ignited her weapon, standing directly in his path. She may not have been able to read his mind, but she had the instincts of a fighter. She could tell he was about to make a move.
"Try it Kylo. I dare you!"
He glared at her. "You won't kill me."
"Do you care to stake your life on that?" she asked fiercely. "Care to prove your own premonition wrong?"
Luckily, Kylo Ren was not quite dumb/arrogant enough to face Rey when she was armed and he wasn't.
"Some rescue," he muttered, his murderous glare fading as he walked back up the ramp, almost casually. He was apparently trying to salvage his pride by pretending he didn't much care, one way or the other.
But yet again, he stopped at the top of the ramp, and turned to Rey.
"What the hell are you waiting for?!" he shouted, beckoning to her with his hand. "Come on!"
"What? No!" Rey exclaimed.
He threw up his hands, in a way not unlike how the General often did in moments of frustration. "Everyone is going to know that you helped me! If you stay here, you'll end up in that cell right where I was!"
Security finally arrived at the hangar, in the form of a dozen or so heavily armed men.
Rey's eyes flinched shut, and she walked up the ramp. "I have a bad feeling about this," she declared, as the Force required this to be said every now and then.
The interior of the shuttle was not what she'd expected. Somehow, she'd assumed that it would be all red-tinted lights, swirling smoky miasma, and a layer of rancid black grease over everything. In fact, it was rather tidy, and well lit.
Kylo threw himself into the pilot seat and immediately began initiating the launch sequence. Without thinking, Rey took the copilot's seat. She watched him curiously, wondering if he actually knew how to fly this thing. She suspected that he must have had some lacky do it for him.
The shuttle lifted off, it's massive black wings slowly opening, like some big, evil butterfly. Unfortunately, the ship had been parked off the side, and one wing scraped against the wall as it unfurled. Both Kylo and Rey flinched at the metallic screeching.
Rey leaned over, reaching for the main controls. "Let me! I can -"
Kylo shoved her away. "Strap in and shut up!" he shouted. She reluctantly complied, fully expecting to find herself surrounded by a fiery explosion any second.
To her surprise, he seemed to get it together, and managed to get the shuttle out of the hangar in one piece.
"Do you know how to program a nav computer?" he barked at her as they flew into the darkness.
"Yeah," she said, turning in her seat to the computer. "Where are we going?"
"No idea," he grunted. "Just punch in coordinates for somewhere in open space. Something not on an established trade route -"
He stopped mid-sentence, eyes narrowing, as if trying to identify a faint strain of music. Rey's response was similar.
"They've alerted the sentry ships, " she murmured.
"Five," he added. "Coming in from 1.27."
"We need to get out of here!" Rey declared, returning her attention to the nav display.
Kylo rolled his eyes. "Thanks, Grand Admiral Obvious!"
"No time to enter a new destination," Rey continued, frantically jabbing at the display. "It'll just have to be one of your saved coordinates."
"I cleared them out, just before I was captured. You'll have to input from scratch. Doesn't matter where, for the moment."
Sure enough, there were no pre-programmed destinations in system memory. Interesting that he'd had the foresight to wipe out potentially sensitive tactical locations just before the ship fell into enemy hands.
"You're crazy! That'll take several minutes! Those fighters -"
"Leave them to me," Kylo growled.
They could hear the high-pitched hiss of the approaching x-wings.
"Do you have a gunner position?!"
"Don't need one," he grumbled. "Now do the do the damn computer!"
The ship suddenly jolted. They were taking fire.
"It's just a magpulse," Rey explained hopefully. "They're trying to disable us."
"I'd imagine that's more a favor to you than it is to me," Kylo muttered. "Now do. The. Computer."
Again, she reluctantly complied, watching him out of the corner of her eye. His hands moved over to the weapons controls, just as the first x-wing flew into view. But that wasn't likely to do much good. The x-wings were so much more nimble than the lumbering command shuttle, he'd never get one in his sights long enough to get a target lock. Even so, Rey imagined the pilots in those ships, men and women who could easily be acquaintances from her time on the station. Even if there was only the slightest chance of him actually hitting something...
"Mag pulse only!" Rey leaned over again, flicking the switch that toggled between laser and ion cannons. "They're not trying to kill us either!"
Kylo turned to her with a scowl. "YOU-" he bellowed fiercely, holding up a finger for silence, "are lucky that I owe you one!"
Surprisingly, he made no move to switch the cannons back. Instead, he immediately began to fire. Even more surprising, he appeared to be operating the rear guns. Blind, and not even attempting to use the targeting computer.
And one by one, the x-wings were going down.
Fucking Skywalkers.
Meanwhile, Rey was still frantically programming the computer, fighting the overwhelming urge to be distracted by the spectacle of someone using the Force to augment their piloting skills. She'd heard Master Skywalker talk about it, but she'd never actually seen it. But all she could do was hear Kylo muttering, intelligibility fading in and out.
"Hold still... hah... you little shit... bit closer... have you now... hah!"
"Shields at thirty percent!" Rey declared, as an alarm began to sound.
"Twenty percent!" she corrected herself, panic rising.
"Then hurry the hell up!" Kylo ordered.
"Almost - almost got it - almost - got it -" Rey muttered, licking her lips in concentration. Another alarm sounded. "Shields at ZERO percent!"
The ship gave particularly alarming lurch, and a third alarm sounded. "Sublights are dead," Kylo announced sternly. She wasn't sure, but she thought she saw him mouthing some phrase containing the word baby. "It's hyperspace or nothing."
"Almost - almost - almost got - it - done!" Rey exclaimed, slamming her fist down on the enter switch.
"Hit it!"
Next time: I Hate You - I Know
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