Kylo Ren thrust his saber further into the door, watching the metal turn red, then orange, then white with heat. He wrenched the blade out, leaving a large hole. With a wave of his hand, the door blew open.
Down and down the passageway went, far below the surface of the water above. He had some trouble believing that a chunk of this size could have survived the destruction of the space station to make it out here. Though he was far from an expert in Hyperphysics.
"It's not too late to turn back, Ben," Luke's voice came from behind him. The image of his old master was fuzzy, barely visible in the dark corridor. His words sounded thin.
"You think I will fail."
"You don't know what he's capable of. I do."
"I have to do this. No one else is strong enough."
"But you don't have to do it alone!" Luke pleaded.
"I offered her my hand before. She refused it. And so this destiny will be my own."
Rose Tico lurched awake with a cough. Both of her arms were shackled to a wall.
"There we are," a nearby voice said. Ushar Ren capped his vial of smelling salts and returned it to his robes.
"I was starting to think you would never wake up."
For the last several hours (or was it days? She kept passing out so it was hard to tell) Rose had been chained up in this cell, "chatting" with the Knights' interrogation specialist.
"You should have just let me nap. I still don't have anything to tell you. Unless you want to hear more about fuel ducts, or proton filters. Or I can tell you about the time my sister and I-"
"I should just kill you," Ushar raised a finger.
"This line of questioning won't get the First Order anywhere, it's inefficient. You're a fighter, and fighters deserve a quick, clean kill. But this is all ceremony, anyway. Ap'Lek and Kylo Ren believe that taking one of the girl's friends off the board will destabilize her, throw her off. If you were to give up your secret base it would just be a nice bonus.
"Plus," Rose could hear the smile on his face even though she couldn't see it, "you're frankly a lot of fun."
"Fun. So torturing innocent people is fun, now?"
"Innocent? Girlie, this is war. And you're a soldier. You haven't been innocent in a long time. And this is fun, for me. I'd much rather be down here than tromping around on the command bridge like one of Hux's manicured little yes-men."
"Then why fight for the First Order?"
"Ha! And I thought I was supposed to ask the questions in these things. The Knights are loyal to Kylo Ren, and Kylo Ren commands the Order. Plus, wars are good for people like me. Killers. Sadists. General purveyors of violence. You understand."
"No, I don't understand. I'm kind of glad I don't," Rose sneered.
"We just haven't gotten to know each other yet," Ushar chuckled. Then a buzzer sounded, signaling that someone was outside.
"But we have plenty of time. I'll be back shortly."
He stood up abruptly and the door opened with a whisper. After it shut, he immediately began railing into the person on the other side.
"I thought I left rather clear instructions about interrupting me while I'm with a prisoner, Captain Pryde," the Knights' voice could be heard through the thick wall.
"Or more accurately, instructions about not interrupting me."
"Your instructions were indeed clear, Knight Ushar. But we have… a development on the bridge."
The voices grew faint as they headed out of the cell block. After the second heavy door slammed shut, Rose's bag began to rustle. Babu Frik poked his head out to make sure the coast was clear, and then scurried across the floor.
"Babu?" Rose whispered hoarsely.
The small droidsmith gave a bright little burst of chatter and smiled, then got to work on her chains.
The sound of proximity alarms shook Ap'Lek Ren out of his concentration. A fleet of First Order Destroyers came out of Hyperspace nearly on top of the Unending.
He did a quick count in his head. Yes, six - exactly one more ship than the Knights'. A classic Hux tactic. A silence fell over the bridge, as though they had been caught doing something illicit.
"Call from the Steadfast, sir," an officer stammered.
Ap'Lek stood for a moment. Then he turned to the officer.
"Well? Take it! Let's get this over with."
A moment later a sour-faced image of the First Order commander appeared in front of him.
"General Hux," the knight nodded.
"Knight Ap'Lek. It seems congratulations are in order. The search for Exegol proved not to be too arduous after all."
On his own Destroyer the young general was not on the bridge, but boarding a shuttle with a small cadre of Stormtroopers.
"...Yes. Leader Ren is currently onsite performing a thorough search."
"I thought as much, which is why I am coming down to assist."
"I'm sure he was planning on debriefing you shortly."
"Yes, I agree," Hux said, killing the feed.
"The debriefing will certainly be short."
"Whenever you're ready, Chewie."
Chewbacca growled an affirmative to Rey and pressed a button on his detonator. A series of explosions blew a neat hole into the imposing grey facade of the station.
"Are we really doing this?" Finn asked.
"Sidious is down there, that's the mission."
"That's not what he means, Rey," Poe jogged up after her. The girl turned back towards her companions.
"Are we really going in to help him?"
"It feels like, whoever wins, we get something out of it," Finn said.
"This isn't like any battle we've ever fought. Darth Sidious is… he's worse than anything Kylo Ren could ever throw at us. And look, I don't like it either. When I left to find him, I was so angry, I… well, anyway, I'm thinking a lot more clearly now. And I know he still has a place in all this. His story can't end here."
"Then what are we waiting for?" Finn asked with a tone like he genuinely wanted another reason to wait.
"My droid," replied Poe.
They both looked at him.
"Sorry?"
"The deeper we go, the spottier a normal connection to the Falcon would be."
BB-8 rolled across the wreck and made a beep of encouragement. He had several yards of cable trailing behind him, hanging from his head.
"So he's going to be our middle man."
He knelt down to the little astromech.
"We're counting on you, buddy."
BB-8 deployed his pilot light and gave his owner a thumbs-up.
"Poe, do you read me?"
"So far so good, Connix," the general smiled. It worked!
Connix was outside of the Falcon at a makeshift console, anxiously watching the sky.
"What the hell is going on? We've got Sith Eternal ships making planetfall left and right, and now there's a new fleet of First Order ships in orbit."
"Something's going to go down soon, and we're right in the middle of it," Poe said. "Call the Resistance, and tell them to scrub the cavalry. Send in Black Squadron for exfil, and that's it."
"That's not all," Jannah had now joined Connix outside.
"Exegol is almost done transiting this part of open space. It's heading back into the nebula. We're already losing light out here, in the next hour we could totally lose visibility."
"Then we have an hour!" Poe said, his demeanor heating up, "The only direction is forward! Forward, into this hole, down to the lair of the ancient evil magic boogeyman from every story we ever heard as kids... General Dameron out."
He pinched the brow of his nose and started for the hole. Then he turned to his friends.
"Well? Let's go save the guy who keeps trying to kill us."
C-3PO awoke to find Rose and Babu standing over him.
"Oh my," he lamented. "Have we been captured?"
Rose helped the droid up.
"Yeah. But you're just in time for the escape."
"You have a plan, Mistress Rose?"
She nodded.
"Okay. So we probably don't have much time until the Ren comes back. We need a way off this ship before he realizes we're gone."
She rooted through her pack. Everything looked untouched except - damn! - her blaster was gone. That would make things trickier.
"These ships often have many smaller vessels stored in the hangars," the droid offered.
"My thoughts exactly."
They moved as quickly and quietly out of the cell block as they could. There were surprisingly few Stormtroopers around. Rose briefly wondered what kind of "situation" had drawn Ushar away. Maybe the Resistance had found them? But she didn't even know where she was. How could Finn and the others?
Something about the corridors in the ship didn't feel right. She has been aboard her fair share of Destroyers by now, and unless the Knights had done extensive remodeling this didn't seem standard issue. When they reached a door that didn't automatically open, she found out why.
Rose popped the front off of the door's control panel and moved a few wires aside before kicking the wall angrily.
"Argh!"
Babu scurried out of her way.
"Are you alright, Mistress Rose?"
"This isn't a First Order Destroyer. It's Imperial - an Executor-Class."
In fact, Ushar Ren's command ship Intimidator was the last Executor-Class to be commissioned before the Empire formally dissolved. It was never finished, but the First Order took the frontmost portion of the ship, about five thousand meters all told, and finished it with retrofitted parts from their own modern destroyers. The result was a fast, lightly manned destroyer that served almost more as a prison than a battleship. But what was most important to Rose at this moment was the decades-old chambers in the main hull she and her compatriots had been traveling through.
"This door uses Late Empire programming, the Rebels never cracked it during the old war. I don't know how to open it."
Babu pawed at one of Rose's pockets, where the engineer had been keeping a few of the tiny droidsmith's belongings.
"You've got an idea?"
She produced a leather pouch from the pocket and lowered it down to Babu. He excitedly removed a clump of circuit boards and wires from the pouch.
"These are some old-school droid components," Rose mused. "This is what you've been making me carry around? Where'd you even get all this junk, Babu?"
Babu clenched the sides of his face and grumbled, then rooted through the pile until he found a teal and gold chip, which he presented to Rose proudly.
"It's a personality matrix," she turned the rectangle of circuits over in her hands. "What are we supposed to do with it?"
Babu made a string of wailing sounds.
"Imperial programming languages? Code like for Star Destroyers, for instance?"
"Oh goodness!" Threepio tittered. "We can use it to interface with the ship and get out of this awful place!"
"Not that simple," Rose shook her head. "You can't just plug a personality component into a ship. You have to put it in a droid and then ask them to talk to the ship."
Babu made a few more sounds, and then both he and Rose turned to look at Threepio.
"I'm quite certain my banks would accept such a matrix. But that would entail a… full memory overwrite," he said quietly.
"There must be another way. A Mouse Droid somewhere we can use instead."
"Perhaps. But the longer we stay, the greater risk of being discovered."
"I think it's worth a go," Threepio said with a measure of conviction. He leaned forward so that Babu Frik could begin undoing the latches on his head casing.
"You're a braver droid than I would have pegged you for, C-3PO," Rose said somberly.
"I know. I'm quite surprised at myself. When you see R2-D2, tell him-"
The light in Threepio's eyes went out with a click, and Babu made a noise that sounded an awful lot like "Uh oh" to Rose.
The droidsmith held up a finger, then slowly pulled a C-3PO's own matrix out of his head. The action required both hands, given the scale of the droid compared to Babu.
Rose patrolled the immediate area while Babu worked. Where was everyone?
After a while of struggling, and what sounded like alien swearing, Babu slotted the teal drive into C-3PO's head and sealed him back up.
The protocol droid's eyes flashed red, and he sat up.
"Oh, Hello. My name is - wait, what is my name? I don't recall-"
He still sounded like Threepio, the way many protocol droids did. But he didn't sound like the neurotic droid Rose had come to know over the years.
C-3PO looked at the tiny alien on his shoulder.
"Babu Frik, you little devil. I may not remember much but I remember you. You tried to reprogram me, didn't you? Thought you could erase my memory?"
Babu chattered indignantly at the droid.
"Hm. You did erase most of my memory, I'm afraid you have me there."
"Hey guys," Rose waved at the two of them. "Can we focus? What do I call you, droid?"
"My apologies, Miss...?"
"Rose."
"Charmed, I'm sure. As I can't recall my previous name, perhaps this unit's previous moniker will suffice."
"Great. You're C-3PO. Kind of…"
"Excellent. What can I assist you with today? Etiquette? Translation? A light bit of torture?"
"Torture? What kind of droid did this matrix come from?"
"I was designed as a protocol droid, ma'am. A very… specialized protocol droid."
"Well, all I need from you right now is to open his door. And maybe a few more if we run into them. I very explicitly want you not to do any torturing or killing unless I ask you too."
Threepio looked at the control panel.
"Seems simple enough. Shall we begin?"
Now he entered a great room, completely and stiflingly devoid of light. There were no signs of even the tufts of moss or small creatures that inhabited the upper parts of the wreck. Ben walked until he could no longer make out the floor beneath him from the air around him.
Through another passage into the room, Hux and a complement of Storm Troopers entered the chamber.
"Something is wrong," Hux muttered as they crossed the threshold. The air was as still as a tomb, but charged in a way that made his back teeth ache.
Further into the room the red light of Kylo Ren's lightsaber ignited. Its crackling hum echoed across what was surely a huge space. The red light illuminated the ground a few feet in every direction from the Supreme Leader, before the darkness swallowed it hungrily.
Behind Hux, the Storm Troopers shifted uncomfortably in place. Hux wanted to shout across the room at the Supreme Leader, but something about hugeness and blackness of the room gave him pause. He decided to avoid alerting Ren.
Then, without warning, the room filled with harsh indigo light. With a cacophony of terrible wails a crystalline structure had flashed to life. Lightning arced across the walls of a truly massive half domed chamber. Then the glow dimmed significantly.
"Ah," a voice rasped from everywhere in the room at once.
"At last, he comes before me."