The planet below them was a patchwork of rich blue ocean and gentle green land, with white clouds swirling around in its atmosphere. She'd seen ocean planets and forest planets and desert planets, but this one was unique in its mottled beauty.
She couldn't believe Chewie had let them take the Falcon on this trip. He'd shown Lump everything he could about the ship to get him ready for the trip; Rey wouldn't have been glad to spare him the time, but it was obvious that for Chewie, this was a chance to spend time with his son – and perhaps, she realized belatedly, he feared that his boy might not come home.
Well, Rey thought at that, that's simply not going to happen. Lump is coming home, no matter what I have to do to make that so.
And while they worked, Rey held that crystal in her hand, turning it over and over. She'd remade Luke's lightsaber when she and Ben had torn it apart; she knew how it was to be done. But she'd had Leia with her then, and now she was alone. She watched Chewie as he climbed over the ship he knew so well, clanking around like it was nothing more than another tree.
I can do this, she said to herself, and so she had. And without Leia to guide her, she'd turned to the other shepherd she still had: Luke's texts. After all these weeks, even touching them made her heartbeat quicken. The spine creaked softly as she opened it, the familiar, dusty smell rising up to meet her. And so she'd worked, on the floor of the hangar, with the light of Chewie and Lump's welding falling over her.
I'm hungry, Lump said, a little bit petulantly. A hungry Wookiee is an unpleasant Wookiee, and no one wants an unpleasant Wookiee. They decided to land and find a meal, and planetary flight control found them a docking bay in a moderately sized city. They landed the Falcon and Rey began preparing to disembark. She picked up her stack of belongings and placed it carefully in one of Han's old smuggling compartments; she tightly latched the closure and squeezed the lock closed using the Force. The two lightsabers and the Jedi texts were too precious and too expensive for the average thief to resist, assuming someone knew what they were looking at, and she could neither risk carrying them through the city nor leaving them out even within locked ship. She pulled her long poncho over her head and laid the hood over her hair. She had no idea if anyone would recognize her – there was really no reason why anyone would - but nor was there any reason to be careless. She put a blaster on her hip and noted when Lump put the bowcaster on his back. One never knew what one might encounter in a strange city.
She let the Wookiee lead the way through the docking terminal, and out into the streets. Beings of all species were there: Trandoshans, Twi'leks, humans, and anything else she could imagine. It was not a wealthy city, and its citizens were dressed in garments of ordinary style, mostly in dark gRey or brown. Working class clothing. They had landed in a good place to hide: neither of them could reasonably put on airs and slip into the wealthy district of any city in the galaxy.
It was a gray, overcast day, threatening to rain at any moment. The city people walked around as if they were unconcerned, but Rey pulled her hood a little closer to her face. Rain still disturbed her, water just falling out of the sky. It seemed so very unnatural to a girl who had grown up in the desert.
She followed long as they made their way through the roads. No doubt, she knew, he was following his nose to find a place to eat. They didn't have a lot of credits, as this was meant to be a short trip, but they had no other use for the money except for food and fuel. Between the two of them, there was nothing on the Falcon that could break which couldn't fix themselves, and as long as they stayed together they had everything they needed.
The two of them entered a small cantina, not the nice kind of place with a band or bar, just an old Rhodian woman minding an open grill and a red-robed Jawa handing out beverages from the tray balanced on his head. If this is where Lump wanted to eat lunch, it seemed fine enough as far as it went. They sat at a table and the Jawa came over. Lump selected two cups and paid him. He handed one to Rey and lifted it his own as if to wish her health. Rey reciprocated the gesture and took a sip. In typical Wookiee fashion, it was some kind of beer, too strong for her taste and too bitter, but if it made him happy and she was pleased to enjoy it with him. The old woman offered only one meal, tubers diced and cooked on the open grill with cold meat of some sort in a spicy sweet sauce. It was nothing like Malla's cooking, but it was good nonetheless. Lump enjoyed his immensely and asked for a second portion. While he ate, Rey kept an eye on the door, ever aware of their surroundings and reaching out with her feelings to scan the crowd for trouble. It was nice to be out and about the galaxy with her friend; it was good to have a friend, someone to go on this journey with her. He was not here merely because he felt he owed her a debt, which she would gladly have canceled at any moment if it wouldn't wound his and his family's pride so, but because he had his father's taste for adventure and unquenchable attachment to his friends. For those few moments at lunch, Rey felt completely, entirely contented.
After a while they left and picked their way back to the ship. It was only a few blocks' walk, and they retraced their own steps precisely. However, at one intersection that had not been a problem before, a crowd had gathered, prevented from crossing by a long caravan of some sort. Rey could not stifle her exasperated sigh. She been happy at lunch, but now that they were getting back to the Falcon and its precious contents, she just wanted to be there. Lump, who stood so high above her, placed one hand on her shoulder and looked out above the crowd, looking for a gap and a chance to cross.
The sound of a street scuffle was unmistakable in her ear. Someone, only a few steps away from her, was being shoved up against the wall of a nearby building. She craned her neck, trying to be subtle, but unable to quell her curiosity. A young man, no older than she, with blond hair and a full, scraggly beard, had his back against the wall, while another man, a second human, his head covered with a large knit hat and the collar of his shirt pulled up high, pressed his forearm under the blond man's chin, choking him.
"I'm not interested, Sargon," the blond man said. Sargon, the one with the hat and collar, leaned a little harder on his throat and gave hissing reply but Rey could not quite make out. She stepped away from Lump and toward the two men. Sargon laid off and let the blond man take a breath; he coughed and said, his voice hoarse, "I said no and I meant it."
As Rey came around to men, she realized that Sargon had a small vibro-blade in the hand furthest from her, its slight purple glow lighting up the left side of the blonde man's face.
"Artess isn't going to be pleased with you," Sargon said.
"I don't really care what Artess thinks of me," the blond man replied. He put on a brave face, but Rey saw his eyes flicker over to the blade more than once. She thought, One can be brave and also prefer not to die.
The blond man gave a hard wriggle against Sargon, as if trying to get out of his grasp. Sargon shoved him back up against the wall, his lips curling menacingly. She didn't want to see what came next. Instead, instinctively, she pulled her staff off her back and poked one end into Sargon's ribs from behind.
"Leave him alone," she said, her voice as dark as she could make it. Sargon turned his head only, acknowledging her but not really looking at her, moving neither his forearm from the man's throat nor his blade from his face.
"This doesn't concern you," he said, dismissively. The blonde man looked at her over Sargon's shoulder, an indecipherable mix of emotions passing over his features.
"I don't know will you two are quarreling about," Rey said, "but I'm quite sure it's not worth killing a man over."
Sargon made a tsking noise with his tongue, as if he were disappointed that Rey had not left yet, and then pushed away from the blond man and whirled toward her.
Rey didn't have to think. A lifetime of streetfighting and a year of intensive Jedi training insured that. With the end of the quarterstaff already closest to Sargon, she smacked the vibro-blade out of his hand, and with the opposite end knocked him across the face. She spun the quarterstaff around and jabbed him as hard as she could in the stomach. He gave an audible "woof" noise and began to double over in pain. She brought the staff back down onto his shoulders, laying him out face first in the street. She put the point of her staff between his shoulder blades and pressed down with both hands.
"I said leave him alone," she said, as he lay at her feet.
"All right, all right," Sargon said, attempting to raise his hands and surrender. Rey straightened up, taking pressure off the staff to allow him to rise to his knees and then to his feet.
"Go," Rey said sharply. Sargon gave a glance at the blond man then disappeared into the crowd.
Rey leaned on her staff and looked at him. It had all happened in a matter of seconds; plenty of people on the street around them hadn't even seen what happened. The caravan had moved on, and the intersection cleared. Lump, momentarily distressed over losing sight of her, rejoined her and gave her a disapproving series of grunts.
"Thanks for that," the blond man said.
"What the hell was that exactly?" she asked. Only now did she notice that he was wearing clothing a good bit nicer than most of the other people on the street. A billowing, sky-blue, satin shirt was covered largely by a fine leather jerkin, with a gold embossed pattern pressed into it all around the edges; his trousers, whatever they were made of, had a soft sheen to them, and they were tucked into dark black leather boots. His hair was carefully combed, except for where it had been rumpled by Sargon, and he had dark blue leather gloves on his hands, one of which gripped a leather satchel. He did indeed look out of place on this street corner. Rey eyed him suspiciously. "Are you a smuggler or a spice dealer or something?"
A smile flickered nervously across his lips. "No, actually, the problem is precisely that I am not any of those things."
Rey sighed. He was going to be that kind of person. Okay, fine.
She shook her head and put her staff back into its holster across her back. "Whatever. You're welcome."
She nodded at Lump, encouraging them to move on back toward the Falcon
"No wait," the man said as they begin to turn their backs on him. "My name is Alik."
Rey turned back toward him, squinting slightly. She waited for him to finish his thought. Lump gurgled disapprovingly beside her; she glanced up at him, unable to disagree.
He was stumbling, thinking quickly. "Where are you two headed?"
None of your business, Lump said, protectively.
It just so happened, however, that the truth was much more unpleasant than any fiction Rey could think of – just the kind of place that no one in their right mind went to willingly. "Tatooine," she said.
"Tatooine?" Alik repeated. "Well that's perfect. That's where I'm headed myself. Perhaps I could get a ride with you."