Rey looked at Zed. The droid, as much as droids can, looked very unhappy. "I can go by myself," Rey offered.
"Oh no, madam. Master Alik wouldn't leave me in a place like that, and I'm not about to leave him."
Where Zed had gotten that idea, Rey was not at all sure. It must simply have been her programming, that unflappable loyalty and commitment. But she was very grateful that, while she couldn't risk Lump's return home to Kashyyyk, she would at least have Zed with her when she entered the gangsters' den.
"Besides," Zed continued, "the farm you are looking for is not much beyond that ridge. You'll need me." The farm. Yes, she needed Zed. She definitely did. Rey nodded sharply at the droid and began walking toward the dilapidated building, keeping her head up and her chest out, trying to force herself to feel more confident than she did. It wasn't that she was afraid of a fight – certainly not. She was armed with a saber, a blaster, a staff, and the Force. She was afraid of what she might find when she went inside.
Only as she came upon it did it occur to her that simply striding up to a building in broad daylight, with no cover whatsoever, could easily have gotten her shot. Too late to fret over that now. She pulled the poncho over her head and left it crumpled on the sand; too much extra fabric was a liability in a fight, and the fitted top and trousers were just right. She stepped to the side of the doorway and pushed Zed up against the wall beside her, where anyone inside would not see them, and she listened for voices.
Muffled conversation could be heard, but only if she held her breath. She closed her eyes and tried to think about Alik, tried to determine if he were here and if he were still alive. Surely she would have felt it if he'd died already, as she'd felt so many other deaths? Yes, surely she would have. He was alive. She wouldn't allow herself to consider any other option.
As if he could hear her thinking about him, she suddenly heard a shout from a familiar voice. Actually, it sounded less like a shout and more like a grunt of pain, like someone being beaten. That was it: she could wait no longer to gather information.
Rey drew her blaster, cocked it, and held it vertically in her right hand. She jerked her head toward the open door, urging Zed to follow, and headed inside.
There was no one in the first room of the building. It was just a dark room, and it looked like it was used little. She scanned the room with her eyes, just to be sure that there was no one here, waiting for them. No beings were lurking behind the dusty furniture, so she kept moving. Silently, silently, she walked, placing one foot in front of the other, slowly, trying to avoid making noise and tipping off Sargon and his men to her presence.
Zed followed her, trepidatious and slow. She was making an effort to move as little as possible to keep her motorized joints quiet. Zed was in fact a remarkably thoughtful machine, diligent in her duties. Her sense of devotion to Alik was charming: it seemed she was willing to do anything to keep him safe, though she'd only met him yesterday. Rey felt a certain kinship with that sentiment.
With a sharp exhale to relax her lungs, she slipped around the doorframe. This room was larger than the antechamber they'd just passed through, with better lighting in the form of old, yellow lamps hung midway up the walls. Tables piled with stuff, broken chairs, and dismembered droids in grim piles lay everywhere. And though she'd never touched the stuff, on one countertop Rey saw dusty heaps of spice waiting to be measured and packaged. Spice, that ruined lives and made healthy people into zombies, that stole parents from children and wives from husbands, that threatened Alik and made him afraid.
Just beyond that stood Sargon and another human male, their backs to her and Zed. A stout Ugnaught and lanky Quor'sav hovered nearby. The Ugnaught held a vibro-axe across his body, as if ready to strike, but the Quor'sav merely watched the scene as if uninterested. To Rey's surprise, seated the wrong way on a tipped-over chair was the Zabrak Lump had shot the day before, a blood-soaked bandage wrapped around his thigh and a cane clutched in his right hand. He looked like he wanted to use it as a cudgel against Alik, who stood in the middle of them.
Alik's right hand was chained to the bars on the wall behind him with a pair of binders. His hair, which had been neatly combed and arranged that morning, was a matted blob with red blood darkening to black in a streak amidst the blond. His beard had grown in more, increasing the haunted look on his face, and his eye was black and his lower lip split, a tiny trickle of blood starting down his chin. He wiped it on his shoulder, leaving a smudge on the fine cloth; it was not the only stain on his clothes, which were now dirty and streaked as if he'd been dragged through the sand before being splattered with his own blood. His left arm, the one not bound, clutched his side as if it hurt him.
"Gentlemen," Alik was saying through teeth clenched in pain, "I am quite sure that we can reach an agreement here -" The second human simply decked him in the jaw before he could finish.
The twinge of pity that plucked at Rey's heart was physically painful. He'd been beaten and chained up like an animal, with no chance to fight back – not that Alik was likely to do much fighting, she well knew. As she would have expected, he was still trying to talk his way out of this, and, as she would have expected, in this case it wasn't working. Alik didn't quite seem to grasp that and sputtered a bit of blood out of his mouth.
"Stop!" she shouted, leveling her blaster and resting her finger on its trigger. She pointed it squarely at the one who had just hit Alik; she wouldn't feel bad at all if her finger should slip.
Every one of them turned to look at her. Alik blinked, sort of stupidly, but then his vision focused and the astonished look that flickered over his face cleared to a broken smile. Rey let her eyes dash to his for just an instant, and she was reassured that he was, for the moment, all right.
"Release him and we'll both just leave," she said, as loudly and as clearly as she could. "It will be like this never happened."
Sargon scoffed. It had taken him a moment to recognize her, but now it was clear that he had placed her face as the woman who'd thrown him to the ground, humiliatingly, a few days before.
"A girl and a protocol droid," Sargon said, disdain dripping from his words. "That's who'll stick up for you. Guess the Wookiee couldn't be bothered."
At that, Rey's heart lifted. He had no idea what she was capable of. Couldn't even suspect it. To him, she was just a girl with a gun, a desert rat, nobody. He was very wrong.
Rey lifted her left hand and extended her index finger. She twirled it in the air and Alik's binders clicked open. He looked at his wrist, uncomprehending, but she turned her attention back to Sargon. She shook her head: he was a fool, and he was going to learn. She dropped the blaster and drew her staff from her back, smoothly, like the hundreds of thousands of times she'd done so before. She cracked it into the Quor'sav's head; he hadn't expected the blow and tumbled to the ground almost at the same moment the blaster landed.
Rey let the force of her swing carry her around into a forward spin, and she brought the staff down on Sargon's shoulder, dropping him to his knees. She felt the Ugnaught's approach behind her and jammed the staff backwards into his stomach. He gave a loud grunt as she titled the end upwards into him and then jerked it back a little more, shoving him away from her. The end of the staff still facing Sargon knocked him in the cheek, and the skin split instantly, blood leaping from the wound.
The Quor'sav was getting to his feet, so, using the Force, she reached out her hand and shoved him backwards. His feet dragged on the floor and he hit the spice-covered counter, kicking the drug up into a cloud around him with his feathers. A second gesture with her hand and he was back on the floor, flattened out and stunned. She pivoted on her right foot, turning away from the bloodied Sargon, to face the other human, the one who'd hit Alik. She knocked him hard with her staff, and then spun the staff around herself to block Sargon's attempted blow. Meanwhile, the Ugnaught had recovered himself enough to join in the fray, and Rey realized that she was going to have to fight all three of them at once.
She'd done it before, won an unfair fight. Harassing stormtroopers and over-eager drunks alike had received her blows, and that was before she knew how to use the Force. She swung the staff like it was a part of her, anticipating their movements with deft blows. She disarmed the Ugnaught, throwing the vibro-axe out of his hands with a mere swipe of her fingertips, and then leaping backwards to avoid Sargon's grasp. The fools couldn't touch her, she knew; they might get in a punch or a thrust here or there, but soon they'd be too tired to fight and that would be that.
The blaster shot, however, made them all stop. Rey watched as if the world slowed down, while the bolt crackled through the air and landed squarely in Zed's torso. Without so much as a scream, the droid burst into her component parts, violet metal spinning away in shards and bits.
Rey's lips parted in silent, agonizing protest. Then her brows furrowed. "No," she said, her voice a dark rumble in her chest that surprised even her. She turned to where the shot had originated, at the Zabrak who stood balanced on one leg, her own blaster clenched between his two hands.
White hot rage overflowed within her. She ignored Alik's horrified face, ignored the sudden look of panic on the Zabrak as she took a step toward him. She knew that she looked terrifying; she meant to use it.
The staff slipped out of her fingers and her right hand drew her lightsaber. She ignited the weapon, its blade humming menacingly, bathing her face in eerie golden light in the dim space. The others, Alik included, were rooted to their spots at the sight of it. A genuine lightsaber would have been shocking on its own, but its sudden appearance in her hand, the dark look on her face, and the powerful tightening of her muscles as she held it made for a chilling presentation.
Rey raised her left had again, stretched backward slightly toward the goons, and she froze them in place. She would not be disturbed. Her blade tilted to the side slightly, from vertical to perhaps sixty degrees, and she stalked toward the Zabrak. He still held her blaster, and, suddenly shaking, he turned it toward her. Her right hand still gripped the saber, and she turned her left hand to him. Palm facing him, she relaxed her fingers and touched them to the palm and the blaster dropped to the floor. The Zabrak was not paralyzed by the Force but by his own fear. He knew what he'd done. Rey gripped the lightsaber with both hands now and brought it up, through his body, starting at his side and tearing through almost to his throat. He made a gurgling noise as the blade sliced through him, and when she drew back, he slumped, dead, to the ground.
She turned back to the remaining three. The look of horror on all their faces was precisely the same as that which had been on the Zabrak's. They knew what was coming for them. Rey released them from her hold: she would not slaughter them like animals, chained down and helpless, even though that was exactly what they'd done to Alik.
She opened her hand and the vibro-axe flew into it. A weapon in each hand, Rey bared her teeth at the men. They began to scatter, but with a few steps she had caught up to the human who'd hit Alik in front of her. She spat a curse word at him, whatever came to her lips first, and then crossed the blades. Her downward strike was all power: how much of it was her own and how much the Force strengthening her, even she could not say. The blades bit into the man's flesh and she drew down, opening her arms and slicing him in two.
"You're a Jedi." Alik's voice broke into her consciousness. Wonder and awe permeated his words. A Jedi was a thing of myth, a sorceress. Implacable, unattached.
"I am no Jedi," she said, looking at him. His silver-blue eyes were fixed on her. "I'm something else." And she would show him her magic.
Two men remained, plus the Quor'sav that was beginning to rise from the ground. Rey dropped the axe with a heavy thump and extinguished her lightsaber. She lifted both hands with the hilt still in her grip, letting the power of the Force flow through her. The room itself began to shake, to vibrate with energy; the lights flickered off and then on and then off, plunging them into relative darkness; objects fell off shelves. At last, the very stone walls around them broke apart, clumps of sandstone blowing outward, the random junk and bars of spice flying away as before a hurricane. Sargon, the Ugnaught, and the Quor'sav lifted up as if caught by a deadly wind and tossed away like leaves. A ripple, like when a stone falls into water, emanated from where Rey stood, the desert sand rising and falling in a perfect circle that expanded out toward the bare horizon that surrounded them.
Rey and Alik were alone amidst the rubble.
If you're enjoying my story, please leave a comment! Thank you so much for reading! I'm almost finished writing it and I really think you'll like it!