The barge was off once Rey and Bee Bee were aboard. They weren't interrogated, but they weren't stripped or eaten yet, and one of the sharpoon operators abandoned his post to keep a clawed grip on Rey's shoulders.

The leader stood on some sort of platform, arms crossed, hands digging into the opposite forearm.

Beebee was placed in a cuff-socket, but his head could still rotate freely. He swiveled, he tilted, he saw parts of droids from all over space and time, including century-old protocol droids, Computation-Cron astromechs, gonks, even - …

Computation-Cron astromech!

Charlie, is that you? If he responded, they would have possibility of coordination. If not, then he was the only one left that could

[It is I, unfortunately. Thankfully, no body can—]

"Noghzholn ni'igrotzo yilei!" (Translation: "Droids! Stop talking!")

Ultra-high frequency: [Pfft. None of the listeners here have an auditory range above 60 WFR—shift your transmitters to that.]

UHF: Understood. What is your assessment of this situation?

[Miscellaneous thug-meanies, nothing new on Jakku. They trashed my body, three of them are wearing me as armor. But I still have my head, just as you and this new fleshbag will need to keep yours.]

Any computed scenarios?

[All one-hundred-seventy-two-thousand of them. Interspecies biology gets nasty in a few of them. Cannibalism. Worse. And for us, not much better. If you can escape your cuff, cause a ruckus, girl grabs my shiny dome, we fight our way off this boat. Not sure how that'll happen, but there's a ninety-seven percent chance one of us gets obliterated before two uglies fall, sixty-one percent chance it's both of us. Thirty says the girl gets chomped before either of us bite it.]

Any idea where we're headed?

[The magnetic field's stronger, can you feel it? Soon we'll have some floaty bits, if we reach near enough the pole.]

Net Station.

[Yuppo.]

Poe told us that we need to stay apart. You heard him, too.

[And you still believe that's our best option?]

Perhaps.

[Yet here we are now. Get used to it.]

The thug holding Rey by the shoulders had the beet-red complexion and golden eyes of a Diemon. Deciding he was tired of holding her, he dragged her to a post, pulled out two cords of rope, and bound her hands individually to the thing. Big, thick, jet-black ropes were knotted and braided, shining in Hel's face. Hair. As he did, she saw that on his belt, he had some kind of razordisk, washed down with long-dried blood. She doubted he used it for throwing.

As she was tied, the thug—plus one other from a sharpoon, after some monosyllabic jout—performed an inspection. All the way down, all the way up. The burned and blasted sections of her body were plainly observed, and the two made some small discussion. The wounds were then covered crudely. A more thorough inspection found her current array of bruises everywhere, her various scars collected since childhood. If they determined she was not in optimal condition, they would do no worse than outright kill her.

As some curious parties would be concerned, they exposed her hair to the wind. Sweaty and greasy though it was, it was intact. The big one with the razordisk-thing walked up to the leader, who nodded, shook and rocked his head in ways she could imagine as human gestures, but also knowing they meant something radically different. She'd seen species use head positions to complete words before. No idea what it meant.

The leader spoke, back turned to Rey:

"What would you want us to do with you?"

"Nothing at all, if you could manage that, except maybe let me and my droid go." The porcine figure turned to finally face her, scowling some triangular scowl. His eyes were wide, possibly even mocking.

"Nothing at all, then. Except…" Rey knew how it went. She was an outsider, an enemy. No treatment short of sickening. Letting them be acknowledged without saying anything aloud, she nodded. Somewhere below her, Bee Bee was busy beeping away. And beeping to…? She saw something, a gunmetal-gray pyramid, an eye blinking. Same color and metal patterns as some of the armor plates she'd seen on these thugs.

"Noghzholn ni'igrotzo yilei!" There were still several junkers at the sharpoons. And this barge itself must've been frankstered beyond belief to accommodate so many of them. And so many passengers!

They continued moving… noulr-true? Looked like. The sun was just a little below nu'undie, indicating they had, more or less, several hours of pure Helover. And, if Bee Bee had maintained his sense of orientation, they might be headed to the right place.

The junk at her feet had started to quiver.

"The pole?"

The leader responded in turn—Brillhog, she would think of him as from now on: "They're vulnerable. Have you seen the wars up top?" As was likely intended, her head craned up, twisting around her post to see over the large sheet thrown like a sail over one side of the barge. Indeed, the battle was not only closer, but more furious now. It seems something had changed, after all. Brillhog resumed his explanation with confidence. She took note of the unevenness in his neck.

"Word is, New Republic's finally grown the kinakas to hype their secret weapon squadron over Jakku. Empire's become the joke of the universe, but the First Order are raring to pull out, too. Only a matter of time, and nothing good comes to those who wait, only those who charge."

He did not elaborate further, but Rey comprehended the possibilities with some deliberation. Raiding Net Station seemed the most likely option. If resources on two sides were stretched so thin and the third needed time to cement victory, any diversions would make the remainers easy practice. Even a big guy like the razordisk-thrower could probably throw the thing point-blank.

Regardless, they seemed to still need her—want her, in the primal subtext. Human flesh, it was sometimes said, was a taste to behold. Leather made from human hair was common, too. She'd had to fight flesh-seekers off several times as Unkar and the rest of the old gang had deserted her.

She would need to escape, that was plain. The how was an issue. But they would need to strap down everything magnic, and soon. Or else…

The three speederbikes continued to twist and buzz around the main barge.

"You have magniclamps, don't you?" Again, the silent leader found time to talk. He had something resembling a scowl crossing his face. His eyes darted down to her body, her clothes. Now the useless cyclesuit was fully exposed to the open air in all its minor slices—and the one which had done all the damage.

"Your water needs are met by that suit, aren't they? Not at all." But if this frankster was any testament, it was that this gang had ingenuity. Any amount of forward planning would have them preparing for the pole. And judging by the way this barge was put together, Rey could safely assume the equipment had been merely tacked on somewhere. Thing was, she was tied by both hands to a post in the middle of the vessel's open floor, with only some small trinkets from previous exploits laying at her feet. Looking down to confirm this, she brushed some aside with her foot. At that same moment, an engine sputtered out momentarily, and on only one foot, the erratic bump launched her to the floor. And without her hands to break her fall, she half-landed on top of one leg. Not pleasant. She groaned.

She looked at one of the sharpoon operators—the second alien from her "inspection", who now looked down through snerb-like tendrils on his lips and narrow yellow slits for eyes. She took quick note of the oversized belt the junker wore, and the long blades which hung from it. Several of them. Proud conservation of a warrior's tradition? But as long as the meat was to his liking, he would not harm her.

"Schloi gee! Nu bra'atzo juu'KAA!"

"Blioti soo'kaa, trakno toboi," Rey snapped at moderate volume. The only two sentences she knew, and she had no idea if they were the same language at all. But the thug rared back in offense and shock, bumping into his sharpoon launcher.

As was expected by absolutely everybody, the mechanism went off. Rey wanted to take advantage of this, decided to test her human-hair bonds. In the recoil of the thing's launch, the thug doubled forward again, slamming him into Rey. Her teeth and feet would do as weapons, and the latter was closer. A good downward kick slammed the alien's skull from two sides, shattering it. He let out a loud scream and was silenced in an instant.

As the leader and other sharpoon operators turned to see what was going on, but by that time she had hooked her foot under the thug's belt. Hitting the deck, Rey pulled the alien towards her as a bodily shield. Two sharpoons struck it and the body spasmed, even smoked. One of the junker's longer bladed weapons was within reach of her hands. Truth be told, she hadn't expected any of that to work. But work it had. So far.

"Worthless fleshbag!" Brillhog yelled, one side of his neck pulsing. He was charging at her, but the manacles had come freely by now. And she wielded the junker's longest blade at the ready. It was no electrostaff, but it would do the trick.

The barge didn't stop, only kept droning onward. That is because a sharpoon launcher typically runs a long cable through which electric currents will pulse, hence the fiery shock that ends a victim. That first sharpoon had buried itself in a human-sized engine housing, and as she stood herself up, rectangular flatblade in hand, the barge felt the pull backwards.

She collapsed. Backwards. Multiple junkers fell forward into her. Claws were out. Some dug into her skin through her clothes, hoisted her up by her hair in chunks. Her head was raised enough that she could meet a crouching Brillhog's gaze. The blade was kicked from her hands.

"Stop the craft, cut that sharpoon loose." As he dictated the order, the Diemon moved to do exactly that. And still, the various palm-sized hunks of machinery and plating waggled and twitched along the floor, which was itself hunks of machinery and plating. Watching Rey's eyes follow a small, battered cylinder, Brillhog planted a cloven claw hand on it slowly, muffling its movement, then deadening it completely.

"And we'll take what we want right now, if it's all the same to you. Human's no good dry, anyway. Rap-po nigili Jakku'jaa."

Another deft twist of her head and she was being pressed into the floor, in much the same way she'd been against the speeder. The jagged "tile" pattern of crude floor plating was quite uneven—one of these sliced her cheek as she was shoved down. Between the parade of boots and exposed hooves, she saw some kind of cube screwed in near Bee Bee's cuff-socket.

The flesh is desirable, but no matter what you do with it you have to get to it first.

Mother, Father, Brother, if this is the junker's end…

Again, a number of things happened in the same eyeblink.

One, the barge's engine failed. Completely.

Two, the magniclamp—the cube—had not been activated yet. That metal was starting to pulse, assuming the weak current of Electrical Force across the northern hemisphere of Jakku.

Third, Beebee's cuff-socket lost power. All three of these things stem from the same place: loss of power.

In the moment of confusion as the barge hit the sand, Rey let herself be rolled. Every hand gripping her was now loose. As was… well, the whole vehicle. As she again clambered for balance, plates slipped loose beneath her hands and feet.

The Diemon was nearest her. Without a conscious thought she was crawling—on all fours—on top of the dazed porker. Remembering what weapons she would always have, she knew exactly where the important blood vessels were. Again, you learn quite a lot when you're on your own. Among those things you learn are how strong human teeth are, and how a predator savors its prey's flesh. Thankfully, Rey never did learn the Jakkui taste for human meat. Right now, if not for her long-accustomed state of shock, she would've felt a surge of sickness eating through her body.

She did feel some "taste" for the thing hanging from the Diemon's belt. She picked up the razordisk, decided this would be as good a souvenir as any. It didn't jump out, but it thrummmmed in her hands.

The three speeders still needed to be dealt with. As Rey looked around, she saw the wreckage was far more extensive than the initial crash would have anyone believe. And she heard Bee Bee's wheepling, along with… something new. The sound guided her to her traveling companion. And someone she could actually understand.

"Oh, thaaaaank you for freeing us! Over heeeeere!"

"Whoever you are, shut up or I'll kill you too." Scouting among the wreckage. Eventually, she found a crate rapidly working on being busted open. An urgent kick relieved it of the stress, spilling her weapons—and quite a few others'—to the orange-brown sand. She found her electrostaff and was thankful for it. Without a second thought she pulled on her belt as well, clipping the razordisk to it and lighting her electrostaff. Something magnic in it must've been on the fritz; she'd never traveled this close to the pole.

The closest speederbike—the largest, with the heavy grille—came back around, and she got the bright idea to charge it. She was running, staff in one hand, when it subtly altered course to scrape alongside her. But she had her agility, and saw the move coming, leaping up far enough to get her at eye-level with the speeder pilot, swinging the staff into his head. It crackled in and out several times against his face, melting some of the skin and underlying tissue. He screamed, fell to the ground unconscious, possibly dead, tail flicking at her foot limply. The speederbike continued a ways before skipping into the sand up to its windshield.

She ran to it, mounted herself on the saddle just as the long, narrow bike found her. With a couple cursory whacks it came up again, and the controls looked straightforward enough. She had the bike up and ready to slam headfirst into the other speeder within three seconds. The other chickened out first, pulling aside. Rey slammed the bike into him anyway, again throwing both like ragdolls and trashing their vehicles.

She emerged, not letting herself feel every injury she'd just sustained. Soon her body, as it had many times before, would repair stronger than before. But for now, she sustained minor injuries, save that old blaster bolt.

The rider, like her, was fazed but not down. She'd want him neutralized, but in as bad a state as possible. Both deathtraps now trashed. He could hide among the scattered wreckage, if he were stupid. Apparently, he was. He was laid out on one side, curled up like some lost, pathetic child. Right next to his speeder's radiator. As with most mid-level vehicle tech on this world, light enough to be picked up with two hands. Flesh sizzling makes a sound just as loud, if not louder, than the flesh's wearer, who is liable to scream until strain raws his vocal chords into muteness.

One more speeder bike, up to three other junkers to go, including Brillhog.

"Rey! Behind!" She didn't consider the voice's disobedience of her order, only spun counterclockwise, first slicing Brillhog with the razordisk, then launching him several feet with an electrostaff to the chest.

As he came to a stop she paced over to him, staff in hand, clipping the razordisk back to her belt. She crouched, hovering one tip of the staff over the former junker's chest. With her left hand now, she gripped a bunch of the creature's hair, lifting his head up and constricting his misaligned windpipe. He tried to groan, but was just letting the last of his wasted air escape. The gash across his heavy chest was already parting like a set of fat-yellow lips.

"Worthless, huh? And what does that make you?" No sense wasting precious time to savor a moment. If her hand twitched, she could always say later that the staff had gone haywire in her hands. A good jolt combined with crash trauma and asphyxiation is merciful by some junkers' standards.

Still left the other several junkers, but there were always cowards.

"Are they gone?" She called out.

"Every stinkin' one. Now come pick me up, Beebee's with me." Beebeebeep. Beebeebeep. That confirmed it. She pulled a loose piece of fabric free from Brillhog's upper garment, wiped her mouth and teeth with it, just wanting to get that disgusting taste out of her system for good.

She followed the voice back to its source, saw now that the gyromech was dragging the dome with a tow cable arm, and was pricking at the magniclamp with another arm. She hoped he could get it working. If not, she had no idea what this region would do to droids. Obviously, both were still functional in any way. But give it time, and what then?

"What—who is this?" The dome replied. Again, in words she could understand.

"CR-13, former First Order Computation. Beebee here is the less talkative one, but we're carrying the same information. We need to get to Net Station, and we have some internal magniclamps, but nothing that'll hold up for long. What do you know of magnic sciences?"

"Nothing. I hope Bee Bee can fix that thing." Beeeep. Bip. Sparks flew. "Soon. We don't have long."

No reason to question her, it seemed. But the magniclamp might…

It just might be more trouble than it was worth. Every second here could be a second wasted.

"Leave it. Computation droid, how close are we to Net?"

"At your estimated walking speed, we could see it within ten minutes, reach it in forty-five minutes."

"And if we could go any faster?" She knew they couldn't. Scratch that question. She'd started pacing. Sitting in one place, especially in the open, was how you begged for death on Jakku. "How long before the pole starts interfering with you?"

"Less than an hour. I suppose you could get us there. Well, Rey, can you?" Any answer would simply not compute—not for her, not for them. She nodded.

"I can."

She hoped she could. The human body, she knew, needed a cyclesuit for a reason. Now she was on a clock, too.

I knew it wouldn't last when I found it. Just like the gang. Just like this rotten world.

And that was that.

Rey carried Charlie. Bee Bee rolled ahead of them. Indeed, within five minutes, Rey saw the largest tower poking over the dunes. An array of lights blinked up and down the long silver obelisk, like waves of red light. She'd never traveled this far towards the "head" of the planet before, and this trip already seemed to pay off. At the very least she could die in a new, unfamiliar place.

It only seemed to grow as the junker and two droids continued to approach it.

"That main tower's at least a mile high, for reference. Never could get the exact number."

"The number won't matter." And we do, she wanted to believe. Tricky, sometimes.

They had no choice but to keep walking. The next few towers emerged, smaller than that first one but still sizable in their own right. If that Holo about Cato something-or-other was any testament, this place was easily twelve-million creds in any hall.

"Trouble ahead." Beep.

"There's always trouble ahead. Any problem with that?"

Beep beep.

"Good." And she left it at that. They kept moving.

Gradually, as they continued their approach, Rey began to understand just what the fear she felt was. Every passing second without incident was another second that an enemy had simply not attacked them. She hadn't seen any fast-flapping ornithopters or speeders, no mounted soldiers in dust-caked standard issue armor or otherwise. Still…

I've got a bad feeling about this.

But that was the Jakkui way—only bad feeling is the one that doesn't eat you alive.

She looked up past the skyscraper to the sky it scraped, almost having to remind herself that the battle was up there, like some cosmic storm brewing. Clouds kept the exchange of fire and ships more than half in shadow.

This world was her Cosmos; it was all she had ever known. To leave it might as well mean death…

And she realized she'd made her peace with that, too. If the one known as Rey (no last name needed) were to die right now, she would die knowing that she had finally left this place behind.

Speaking of storms…

The battle overhead was a storm, in some sense of the word, or at least tied to the thing brewing over the Net tower. Her staff hummed. The disk and other things in her belt were ringing, making that ugly music which she had always known as the Junker's Song.

She couldn't help some feeling that all of this was meant to be, that her fate would be out of her control no matter what her options. She shrugged it off. Just keep moving, just keep moving!

The clouds overhead grew darker and darker. Soon atmospheric rumblings drowned out the magnic humming. Something was surging through the dark komolnimba clouds.

They passed over a ridge, Rey taking note of how it vibrated through her feet, up her legs into her jaw. It's a ship. Maybe the biggest on the planet, implanted into the land itself.

And that might be how it was with all major land bodies in the vicinity. All drawn to the pole. Including the station. Charlie continued to hum, although his functions appeared to be fine. He muttered in some other junker language.

"Almost there," she informed the two droids.

Almost.

They were almost at one tower's feet when Rey saw the black figure just over another small hill. Upon further scrutiny, she saw that the figure was two.

Both ignited their lightsabers. She recognized one, but the other—wearing a different mask, and slightly different build—ignited a blazing red blade in the shape of the character Trill.

She had no choice but to approach them. Danger had reintroduced itself, and she couldn't bite these opponents' throats open. Quickly, she moved back behind the cover of the ledge, hopefully cutting off mutual visibility.

Beepbeepbeep: Beep beep.

"I know. Can you drag Charlie?" Beep. "Good. I'll want both hands if I'm to be a distraction." Gently as she could, she placed Charlie on the ground. He almost seemed to bounce.

"Hope you know what you're doing, meatbag."

"Me too."

Bee Bee pulled out a tow cable, hooked it to a jagged exposed component in his droid friend.

"Don't drag too hard. I'm fragile, you know!" Bee Bee had some fitting reply in droidspeak.

"And may the Force be with you." She nodded, not really understanding, nor needing to.

"You too."

She drew her staff, ignited it, bolted over the ridge. She was sweating harder than she might've ever sweated before.