Hey, guys! Yes, it's been forever since I posted the first chapter, but here's the second! Don't you worry, I'm really not abandoning this story. This chapter was hard to write, so it took me time, but I did my best for it to be nice for you guys to read. Hope you enjoy it! Have a nice reading!


CHAPTER TWO

THE JEWEL –

2 YEARS LATER

ON LAH'MU

The mornings in Lah'mu started very cold, for the sun took long to rise, so the shadows took over the western hemisphere of the planet, where its scarce population lived. However, when the sun was up, the weather got warmer, and it lasted until the night because the sunset happened late. After that, it turned cold again. The days were not the longest, but they were enough for farmers to work in their plantations, which were not big, but got to feed the whole village. The routine was simple there, nothing too special, mainly because something new happening was rare. It was pretty much the same every day.

In fact, the last unusual thing that had happened on that planet was a TIE Fighter coming from the sky and bringing two First Order servants running from the downfall of the organization, which they did right in time.

Right now, it'd been almost one year since the First Order had lost the war and been destroyed for good.

The Galaxy was in peace. The New Galactic Order had been created to rule democratically over it, and take care of the war's aftermath. And it had been a big war. Even in Lah'mu, a planet far away from everything, the news came about what happened after what was named the Battle of Crait, where the Resistance was reborn from the almost-sure defeat and, among the next whole year, had battles after battles against the First Order, until they finally won. Honestly, it seemed weird to think it had happened, because the truth was that the First Order had much more forces than the Resistance, even if it had suffered a huge attack on the Supremacy – and on Crait, apparently – it was much more organized, structured, and powerful. Troopers and officers might have doubted it because of what happened in the Supremacy, but Phasma knew it was true. And yet, the First Order had lost.

And, yet, there she was, watching everything happen from far away, and no one had the slightest idea that she was there.

"…I brought you here because I didn't feel it was safe to take you to the Finalizer or the Absolution… If the First Order lost, what would they do to you? It was a possibility I couldn't ignore..." SR-1134 had said on that same day in which Phasma had woken up. Or better, Sarii, that's how the locals had decided to call her, she'd said that too. Not that it made any difference to Phasma. She didn't care about how her former trooper was called now that she was no longer a trooper. She didn't care much about her intentions for bringing her to Lah'mu either. Had she saved her life? Yes, the Captain would probably be dead if it wasn't for her. But when she felt fully awake and realized how painful her body was and how impossible it seemed to move, she incredibly wondered if it had been worth it in the end.

Mainly when the local doctor, Hectre, came to explain to her all of her injuries, which were more than she could count.

"First of all, don't try to talk or move," he'd said. "You're pretty much all broken up, and there's soot in your throat and lungs. We didn't have the right instruments to clean it up with you asleep, so there was only one option: controlling the infection with meds until we could wake you up for you to help me clean it."

When he said that, Phasma couldn't imagine how painful it would be to 'clean it'. It was the first thing Hectre did: put a device inside both of her nostrils to suck the soot out of her system. All she had to do was keep on breathing normally through her mouth – which was everything but easy. But she did it anyway. It hurt like hellish torture, much like being drawn into boiling water. Those were seconds that lasted like hours, and not just once, because no one would take that without an interval. When the device was removed from her nose for the second time, Phasma couldn't help but cough hardly.

"You were great," Hectre said. Phasma was barely listening, because her coughs were keeping her busy at the moment. "It's almost all clean. Just o more time and we're done."

Of course she'd have to go through that one more time. Unable to talk, she just blinked to sign she'd understood, and Hectre restarted the procedure. Sarii was there the whole time, from the beginning to the end of it. There was a kind of sorrow in her eyes, something that Phasma hated to see. She didn't need anyone's pity. Just they wait, she'd get up from that bed and seek revenge.

Yeah, that's what she thought. However, getting up from that bed would be far from easy, and even farther from fast.

Hectre kept her on painkillers, but, on the first night, she cried for how much her body ached. The broken bones, the burns, and mainly, the spine. Phasma didn't remember the last time she'd cried. It'd probably happened past ten years ago, when she was suffering hard sexual abuse in the hands of Brendol Hux. In the end, her last tears had been of joy, on the day he was declared dead, and she knew she'd been the one who'd brought death to that bastard, although the whole First Order believed he'd just gotten ill, except her and Armitage, who'd helped her in her revenge.

But back then she was walking. She could move, she could see with her two eyes. How would she ever get revenge on FN-2187 now that all of that seemed to be gone? In fact, even Armitage was gone, she'd come to know that eventually.

Phasma slept alone in the med bay, so no one saw her crying. As she couldn't eat at first, Sarii came every day to give her liquid proteins to keep her fed up, twice a day. It tasted horrible, but Phasma tried not to care. No matter what she would do later on, she had to strengthen herself now.

A couple of days later, Hectre took a careful look at Phasma's spine, with the help of a scanner and a droid. He tried to move her in the litter, and she felt the worst pain when he did. "Is your back aching?" he asked. Phasma looked around with her right eye, only to check if two of Hectre's assistants – and Sarii, of course – were still there, and they were. "Don't play the tough girl, I need to know: is it aching or not?" she hated that question. Completely against her will, she blinked slowly so that the doctor would know the answer was 'yes'. "It's worse than I thought."

"What do you mean?" Sarii asked, in the corner of the room.

"She shouldn't be feeling pain with such a slow movement at this point," Hectre replied. "It indicates that her vertebrae are not healing in the speed I believed they would."

This wasn't something Phasma wanted to hear. Not at all. She moved her eye to the doctor, trying to inquire how long would it take for her to walk again, but he was looking at Sarii, not at her.

"And how long do you think it will take her to go back on standing and walking on her own?" Sarii asked again. At least, it seemed like she'd read Phasma's mind at that moment.

Hectre just sighed worriedly. "Only time will say for sure, but judging by the pain she felt right now, I'd say a year, more or less," and of course, that was something else Phasma did not want to hear.

The days passed slowly for her inside that med bay. She could hear the sounds of the village out there as clear as the silence of the night, which was rare in the First Order ships. She was also not used to natural light anymore, and she could see some of the sunlight through the small windows close to the roof of the med bay. At first, she didn't wish to see more of it, but as time passed, the desire for fresh air became almost unbearable. She never wished for a tranquil life in a farm village, of course not, but she'd been raised in battlefields, and that made her crave for a baton in her hands, for the sweat dripping down her blonde hair and wetting her face to the point of making her eyes burn. It made her crave fighting.

Eventually, after her lungs and throat were clean, her voice came back to normal, which made her life at least a little bit easier, because she could talk when she wanted to ask for food or for things that people who ate regularly needed to do. Sarii was the one who generally brought the food, but when it came to biological needs, the caretakers were always Hectre and his female assistant. The first bath came only after past a month, and it was a terrible thing, not exactly because the burns ached – and they did – but because you couldn't do much by yourself to clean your body when you couldn't even move.

Phasma started feeling her limbs again after some time. Not that she didn't feel them before, but it was impossible to make any move with them. And when the first moves came, they came with pain. The simplest making fists cause a twinge on her spine, which, although already healing, was still wounded, as well as all the twenty-seven bones that were still partially broken. As months passed, Hectre said that both were going better than he expected, but Phasma still wondered, alone at night, how long it would take for her to be the same as before. That is, if she ever got to it.

The first time she left the med bay was after that, when the burns healed enough to be resistant to infections and bacteria from the outside. Her spine was still injured, though, and some bones hadn't yet mended, so she was taken outside seated on a moving chair, which Sarii conducted. Hectre had taught her to do so. The first place she took Phasma to was the main garden of the village, where she said the farmers used to hold meetings and celebrations. "They know you're coming out today, and they've been curious about you for a long time now…" Sarii said. "They might come to talk, or–"

"I'm used to strangers coming to see me, don't worry. I'm not afraid of people," Phasma interrupted. It wasn't completely true, though. Being seen in a bright shiny armor by everyone was different from being the wounded and almost disabled woman who couldn't even walk. For Phasma's annoyment, Sarii seemed to know how she felt deep inside, and that's precisely why she'd said that.

"Well…" she said. "At least there's one good thing in the main garden: a holocaster."

"And why do you think that's good?" Phasma asked.

"At least we'll get to know what's happening in the galaxy," Sarii replied. Phasma said nothing else. Honestly, she had no interest in seeing the news from the rest of the galaxy, from the First Order or the Resistance. At least not until she was back to normal and could think of how to get revenge on FN-2187. She would still delude herself with that for a very long time, until the news came that, somehow, the Resistance had won.

Generally, when she came out of the med bay, the little more than a hundred people from the village indeed tried to talk to her and were nice to both her and Sarii. Not that she cared, but Sarii seemed to enjoy that. That's why, on the day the war ended, the locals called her on the med bay to watch the Resistance's victory being broadcasted live. Phasma was on the litter when she first heard the locals' agitation, and in a couple of minutes someone called Sarii outside. However, she only talked to them for a couple of minutes and then came back inside. She looked at Phasma for some seconds in silence, and then finally said: "The Resistance has won, Captain."

Sarii probably expected another kind of reaction, but Phasma just shrugged. "It doesn't matter," Sarii kept quiet at that, and sit at a chair aside the litter. "Why aren't you outside there celebrating with them? I know you want it."

"It doesn't make any difference at all, Captain, it's like you said," Sarii replied.

"You're not very good at lying," Phasma said. Sarii looked down for some seconds.

"It's a good village here, you know…" she said. "And they've been receptive to us all along… There might be some kind of future here–"

"Of course you gotta find your future here, Sarii, where else can you go?" Phasma asked.

"I'm not talking only about me, Captain."

Phasma didn't bother looking at Sarii at first. "Don't be ridiculous. It's not like it could work for me too," she said.

"Why not?"

"What do you think is going to happen, Sarii? That I'm gonna suddenly discover that I always dreamed of being a farmer in a forgotten corner of the galaxy? That's not an option, and it never will be."

Sarii looked down. "I understand that, Captain, but… There's not really another option–"

"So now you know why I don't want to talk anymore about that," Phasma interrupted. Sarii was quiet. Phasma then sighed and said: "You know, I was wrong. There're a lot of places you can go. You're healthy and free, no one knows who you are. You could get yourself a safe and fresh start now that the war is over."

"How would I possibly do that?" Sarii asked.

"You could start by going out there and celebrating the end of the war."

"Are you saying you want me to leave?"

"Yes, Sarii, I'm kindly asking you to leave me alone," Phasma hardly replied. Again, Sarii looked down. Phasma didn't say anything else. After some seconds, Sarii finally got up from the chair and left. It was better like that. Phasma preferred being alone.

However, that night, something different happened. After Phasma slept, images of the First Order came to her mind, the power, the glory, the countless battles she'd been to, and then, the fire. It burned, she could feel her skin boil and melt faster and faster, making her heart beat harder, and she couldn't breathe. The pain was taking over.

"Captain!"

Phasma opened her eyes suddenly, and the first thing she saw was that the lights of the med bay were on. She felt that she was sweating and trembling, and the pain she was feeling seconds ago seemed to still be there, fading away very slowly. Sarii was in front of her, and Hectre was aside.

"You were screaming…" Sarii continued. Realizing what was happening, Phasma finally breathed deep.

"It was just a nightmare," she replied.

"What did you dream of?" Hectre asked.

Phasma just closed her eyes, wondering what difference that would make. "Fire," she said, still with her eyes closed. When she opened them, she saw Sarii looking confused at Hectre.

"Is she off the meds?" she asked.

"No, the meds are normal," said Hectre, checking the intravenous medicines Phasma was taking, as she did every night. They were to prevent pain, so perhaps they thought she'd felt pain and it had caused the nightmare. Phasma had doubts about that. "I'll give her something to sleep, and we'll talk about that tomorrow."

Phasma didn't want to talk about that, but she didn't say anything at the moment. It would be pointless anyway because Hectre ministered the sleeping meds and she slowly fell into a dreamless sleep.

The next day, the elder doctor indeed came to the med bay when Phasma woke up. He and his female assistant put her seated on the moving chair and when the girl left, he asked Phasma about the nightmare.

"It was just the fire, nothing else," she lied.

"You don't have to worry about that, it's normal to have nightmares after being exposed to a traumatic situation," Hectre said.

"I'm not traumatized." Phasma rebuked.

"Judging by the night terror you had yesterday, you are," Hectre calmly told her, and didn't give her time to talk back. "Do you think it happened because the First Order lost the war?"

"Why does it have to have happened for a reason in the first place?" Phasma asked, irritated.

"Dreams generally have reasons to happen, Phasma."

"So you're a head doctor now?"

Hectre laughed a little. "No, but I've helped many of these people on going through difficult times since we came to this place, mainly to run from the wars of the galaxy," Phasma wasn't exactly convinced by that story. "Most of them didn't want to live among such conflicts and had to deal with the loss of friends and family members. We all had to deal with trauma, but eventually, we restarted our lives."

Phasma looked at the doctor. "What do you mean by restarted our lives? Living from what the land gives you, finding someone to love and having children? Are you married, by chance?"

"I was, for a long time," Hectre replied. "She died some years ago."

"No children?" Phasma asked.

"Not all men can give their wives a child, Phasma. And that's alright. The important thing is that humanity and affection help people going through trauma."

"Well, as I said, there's no trauma," Phasma reinforced.

Hectre then sighed. "If you say so…"

The doctor didn't insist on the conversation about the nightmare, and Sarii didn't dare to touch the subject later on. But it didn't exactly disappear, because Phasma had more nightmares. Not every night, but very often. She didn't get to wake up screaming again, but in her head, she screamed a lot. Those were symptoms she'd never had before, not even when Brendol Hux forced himself into her. She dreamed of him sometimes, but she was always able to control these dreams, so they didn't scare her. Those with the fire did. And although no one could see her dreams, she realized Sarii noticed what was happening, because she woke up in a certain night after one of these dreams and saw her watching her sleep. The trooper pretended not to be, but she was often in the med bay during nighttime, sleeping seated on that chair, or not really sleeping, for a reason Phasma couldn't understand. But it wasn't like she cared about what Sarii did.

Hectre's math was right about when she would go back on trying to walk; soon after the war ended, he started teaching her some exercises to prepare her legs for walking, and after some days, she finally put her feet on the ground again.

In the first seconds, it felt the weirdest thing in the universe. At that point, her burns were already healed and she could already sit comfortably and eat on her own using her arms and hands. Her bones were fixed. Still, her feet seemed to have forgotten what it was like to keep her standing. The exercises had strengthened her legs before she tried to walk, but they still felt weak, to the point of not baring her weight and almost making her fall down. Hectre and one of his assistants held her before she reached the ground. Sarii was watching everything, and seemed to be truly afflicted to see that.

"It's alright, it's normal to fall in the first steps. Maybe it's too early and she's not yet ready," Hectre said, and that made Phasma deeply angry. It'd been past a year since Sarii had taken her to that planet, and she'd been treated like a cripple ever since then, but she was not one. Hectre could know a lot about the healing process of everyone in that village, but he didn't know her.

Before they could say anything, she used all the strength she had and took another step, and this one kept her standing. And she didn't fall even in the next, and as both Hectre and his assistant stopped holding her, she walked five steps forward and then kept on standing and looking at everyone in the med bay, not for more than a couple of seconds, except for Sarii, because she saw a relieved smile on her face. "I told you she'd recover," the trooper said.

Hectre nodded. "You were right, Sarii. That was very good for the first time."

"I want to try some more," Phasma said.

"Wait for tomorrow, it's better for your legs," Hectre told her. "But you did great."

Phasma's legs were indeed trembling at that moment, because they were still too weak, but she kept on standing until the moving chair was brought for her to sit. That night, she finally slept a little bit more relieved.

In the next days, she made more muscular exercises and walked regularly in order to get used to the movements again, which happened naturally as time passed. Her back still hurt, but she insisted on walking even though. Eventually, it became a habit again, and that was when she finally left the med bay for good, and a small house with two bedrooms was given for her to share with Sarii.

Sarii was actually already living there, but she spent most of her time on the med bay and even slept there often. For Phasma, moving to the little house was at the same time comforting and anguishing, because she'd been on a med bay for more than a year and couldn't take it anymore, but as soon as she entered the new house, she realized that the med bay was the most technological place in the entire village. This reminded her of Parnassos, and as little as the resemblance was, she didn't like it.

Phasma still visited the med bay a lot, to practice her movements in a safer place. Sarii usually came along, although, since they'd moved out, she'd started doing more things along with the locals, which Phasma didn't. In fact, all she did outside the house was going to the med bay and to a forest that surrounded the village, to which she'd gone still in the moving chair, along with Sarii, some months ago. The place was silent and almost always empty, since the farmers only used it to walk some miles to another area of the planet, where they used to bury all the waste produced in the village that couldn't be recycled or used in the plantations. They'd found out that it was the best way not to damage the planet, so they took the trails on a one-day trip to do it from time to time. Sarii had gone with them once, and only returned at night, meeting Phasma on the house, already preparing to sleep. "This planet's beautiful. The forest, the beaches… It's an untouched piece of the galaxy," Sarii talked a lot, but Phasma didn't always reply, so their conversations were pretty much monologues. "Do you want to go watch the HoloNet?"

"No," Phasma replied.

Sarii walked to her. "You spent the whole day inside here, I imagine."

"Yes."

"So why not coming out? Now that you're back on walking, there's nothing holding you inside, you can live your life, do your things… Right?"

Phasma didn't look at Sarii while she talked. 'Living your life' was an annoying and generical sentence that said nothing in the end. "Right. I'll do something new tomorrow."

"What?" Sarii asked.

Phasma looked at her, then. "Fighting."

When the morning came, Phasma went to the forest before most of the village woke up, got herself a big twig that was on the floor and, after finding an area with enough room to practice, she concentrated and made a simple fighting move she remembered.

The pain that stroke into her spine was hellish.

"You shouldn't do this, Captain, it might harm all your treatment…"

Of course Sarii had followed her. It was what she did the most since they'd come to that planet. "I'm walking normally now. Fighting is a natural consequence."

"But we're not on the First Order, there's no need of fighting here…" Sarii insisted again, while Phasma made another move, and, once more, it caused her a killing pain. She stopped for a moment to breathe.

"We never know when we'll need to fight," it was all Phasma said, and went back to her practice ignoring that Sarii was there.

On the first days, Phasma could barely stand ten minutes of fighting, and that made her angry and frustrated. But there was something powerful about her anger, that made her stronger ever since she was a child. Moved by the feeling, she ignored both Sarii and Hectre, later on, telling her to stop, and ignored even her pain, that got better but never went away. Even when the months passed and the fighting moves became natural again, her body, mainly her spine, still ached. But Phasma didn't stop.

She practiced early in the morning and by the end of the afternoon, when the villagers were returning from their plantations. Sarii stopped going with her eventually, and the rest of the village didn't ask about it. Phasma liked it better this way; she could fight in peace, finally. Even because no one had anything to do with that, and mainly, with her future plans.

Phasma hadn't given up on making FN-2187 pay. She still didn't know how, but she'd get her revenge.

That afternoon was colder than most, but she'd been training for more than two hours now, so she was sweating a lot and didn't mind the cold. By now, her fighting was so much better, but she didn't feel it was the same as before, that's why she kept on practicing. She'd built a baton with old metal pieces the farmers had, and she'd been using it to practice for some time now. It was heavier than the one she used on the First Order, but by now she was already used with that. The sun was almost going down, but she kept on making moves and simulating a fight, dealing with her pain until her spine didn't let her continue. Phasma then stopped, gasping a little, and realizing she'd practiced more that day than she used to do, which made her tired and sore.

That still wasn't enough. She'd need to practice for more time before leaving Lah'mu to fulfill her plans.

Holding the baton she'd left on the ground for a moment to rest, Phasma finally left the forest to go back to the village. Sweat was dripping down her face and hair, which reached half of her back now, and she didn't like to tie it back, so she just left it as it was. The clothes she wore had been given by the locals, and were very simple, nothing but a shirt, pants and a pair of boots. She left the forest in a couple of minutes and walked down the entrance of the village. Her body was still aching, so she decided to go to the med bay to ask Hectre for a painkiller injection.

Some farmers were also returning from their plantations, but no one said more than a couple of words to her. It was usually like that now, and Phasma preferred it. She went straight to the med bay and found Hectre as soon as she entered, finishing giving one of the villagers some meds. He noticed she was there as soon as the man left. "How was your day, Phasma?"

"Good," Phasma replied. "I need painkillers."

"And why is that?" Hectre asked.

"I was fighting and it hurt more than it usually does."

"You can't fill yourself up with painkillers and pretend it's gonna be alright with your body. You'll get addicted and the pain's gonna get worse."

"I have no choice, I need it to keep on practicing my fighting," Phasma said, emotionless.

"I've told you more than once:" Hectre repeated. "You shouldn't be practicing fighting."

"What I do is not up to you," Phasma rebuked.

Hectre got a painkiller injection and applied it on her arm, finally. "No, it's not up to me, but it doesn't change a fact that you need to accept, Phasma: your glorious warrior days are over."

Phasma looked at the elder doctor firmly, with her only working eye, which had caused her hard times with her fighting in the beginning, but now she had gotten used to it. Hectre just removed the injection from her arm and stared at her with an irritating calm gaze.

Just he waited. "We'll see about that," Phasma didn't wait for Hectre to say anything and it just left the med bay to go to her house.

Sarii wasn't there, so Phasma decided to take a shower. Their bedrooms were separate, but they shared the bathroom. Phasma didn't really care about it, though, because she didn't like to spend much time in the bathroom, at least not anymore. Bathrooms had mirrors, and she wasn't comfortable with looking at her reflection at the moment, even if she would never admit it to anyone. That's why the mirrors hadn't been removed from the house. Now she avoided looking at them, but she still remembered the first time she'd seen her reflection after she'd fallen into the fire: the burns were already healed, but they'd made parts of her skin thick and rough, mainly on her face, where it had even gotten reddish around her now blank and injured eye that had gotten blind.

After the shower, Phasma ate some vegetables that were in the kitchen and left to the village's main garden, where the farmers were at their weekly meeting while watching the HoloNet. Sarii hadn't returned to the house, so she was probably there.

Indeed, she was, seated at a table braiding her brown hair, that had grown as well, and she also hadn't cut it. She saw Phasma right away, and Phasma seated at her side to watch the HoloNet, as she wasn't interested in what the villagers were discussing with Hectre, who was also there. The HoloNet was broadcasting a show host by a reporter called Alma Snaifred, who weekly told supposedly-untold stories from the war between the Resistance and the First Order. Not that Phasma cared, as always, but everyone seemed interested in that skinny blonde young woman digging controversial stories from that time of the galaxy. According to what Phasma had come to know, Snaifred was very famous.

"What is she talking about today?" Phasma asked Sarii.

"About the people from Jakku during the war," she said.

"Did she really go to Jakku to tell these stories?" Phasma said, not really believing that, although the images in the holocaster were from Alma Snaifred in Jakku's dunes. "That's impressive."

Both of them kept on watching the show until it was almost over, when the discussion between the villagers became more interesting.

"Someone has to go bury the trash tomorrow. There's less than usual, so it's not necessary that many of you go, though," Hectre announced.

"I could go, but I gotta work a lot on my plantation tomorrow," a man said, and a woman aside him nodded her agreement. In some seconds, many villagers started saying that they couldn't go either, whether because of their work in the farms or because of children, ill relatives and many other reasons. While they talked, Phasma thought a little.

"I can go," she said. The villagers looked at her, mainly Hectre and Sarii, who was still seated at her side.

"It's not much trash but there's still some, and it's bad for your spine to carry weight," said Hectre.

"I won't carry weight, Sarii will," Phasma replied, turning her head aside then and looking at Sarii. Not surprisingly, she nodded right away. Phasma turned to Hectre again. "Also, she knows the way, so we'll never get lost."

"Sarii?" Hectre asked.

Sarii just nodded once more. "It's alright, I can carry the trash myself and dig the hole to bury it. Since it's not much, we might be back before sunset."

Seeing that they agreed and that no one seemed to oppose to that, Hectre just shrugged. "Alright. If that's the case, you can leave tomorrow morning."

Phasma nodded, and while the villagers started talking among themselves again, she turned to Sarii and announced: "I'm going to sleep."

"Why did you offer to go bury the waste, Captain?" Sarii asked.

"My back is aching too much, I can't practice tomorrow," Phasma replied. "At least I'll have something to do." she didn't wait for Sarii's response, and just left to the house they shared, where she went to her room and laid in the humble bed it had to sleep. But before she closed her eyes, she looked at the corner of the room, where she'd left, like they were abandoned, the pieces of her chromed armor. The metallic pieces that had saved her from turning into ashes.

And, bedside, in the small nightstand, her helmet, still broken where FN-2187 had hit it, seemed reflective and shiny even in the dark. Before sleeping, Phasma always stared at it. Somehow, she felt like it was watching over her, a silly feeling she'd strangely gotten attached to.

Unfortunately, her old helmet looking to her wasn't enough to protect her from the nightmares with the fire.


ON KESSEL

Kessel's atmosphere was filled with ships coming and going from it everywhere, but one of them was stationed, and it'd been for a while now. Big as it was, the ship had room for smaller and simpler ships on its lower floor, which had an exit for those too, through where a slender girl with medium-dark skin and long brown hair was getting ready to fly. While setting up her own ship, she listened to her boss, a tall man with a black beard, instructing: "They're probably getting there in a couple of minutes, according to what you said. Stay in their meeting the less you can, just enough to get the information we need, and then run out before they notice and come back."

She checked the ship's energy and made sure it was enough. "Understood."

Aside her boss, a Dug and another man were watching her departure. "Are you sure they trust you enough to let you know this information?" the Dug asked.

"I've given them clues for many trophies they got in the last year, so yes, they trust me," the girl replied.

"The many trophies we abdicated from in order for them to gain your trust and never discover you work for me," said the boss.

"But all those trophies combined are not worth half the cash we gonna make with this one, Darios," the girl reminded him.

He gave a satisfied smile. "Of course. That's why I agreed with this plan," while she retributed his smile, she got her metal baton from the floor to put it inside her ship. "Why are you taking this?"

She shrugged. "One can never be too careful," as she finished talking, she put on her hard black helmet to hide her face. "I'll be back shortly."

"I'm sure you will," Darios said, and the girl entered the ship, then waited for the big ship's exit to open and flew away.

"Do you really trust her enough to bring us this information?" the man aside the dug asked. He wasn't that tall, but was bigger when it came to muscles.

"Of course I don't," Darios replied. "That's why you gonna follow her. Get your ship and make sure to spy on them without being seen. Get the information we need and watch her. If she doesn't leave as soon as she hears it from them, you come back before her and we leave to get the trophy before them. And I'll deal with her later," at the same moment, the man nodded and entered a ship aside, also departing in a few seconds.

The girl was ready to land by then. Wearing black and brown clothes and a pair of old boots, she mingled easily among the people who walked quickly in the streets of that not-so-bright area of Kessel, where every kind of smuggler and forbidden substances dealer found room to do their negotiations. It was also where trophy hunters groups met sometimes. When she left her ship, she got her baton and also a blaster she always carried with her.

Indeed, one could never be too careful.

She knew where to go, and it was only a few blocks away, so she hurried to get to the small and somewhat hidden low-rank cantina; a great place for trophy hunters to disguise and meet with whoever they wanted. This time, the group was in a separate room, all its ten members standing in front of a table where a man was seated, drinking from a bottle.

"What took you so long?" a dark-skinned bald man asked her, the one who was closer to the one who was seated.

"I had to find a safe place for my ship. It's far, so I had to walk to here," the girl replied, taking off her helmet.

"Any luck with what I sent you to catch on Cantonica?" the man asked again.

"Unfortunately not. The trophy was already gone when I arrived, so I thought better returning, since this trophy is more important."

The bald man just snorted. "We'll deal with that later," he turned to te seated man, who was still drinking. "Well, Temon, I hope you've brought us here for a reason."

Temon cleared his throat. "I wouldn't waste your time, Arman, you know that. It was hard to track since all the First Order cruisers were lost after the end of the war, as you well know, but luckily some of their data remained untouched."

"So you found it?" Arman asked. Temon smiled ironically.

"Yes, my friend. I know where your trophy is," he cleared his throat again. "But I had to contact every kind of person and alien in this underworld to hack this data, I'm owing a lot of people now… I need more cash."

"What? This wasn't part of our deal!" Arman protested.

"Again, I won't waste your time. If you don't pay me, be sure Darios's crew will," Temon calmly said, and the girl was frightened to hear Darios's name, to the point of, when she saw Arman didn't seem likely to give away, she said:

"Pay him, Arman. Whatever we spend with him, will not come close to what the New Galactic Order will pay to us when we deliver them the trophy…"

Arman didn't like that at all, but he must have done the math and realized she was right, because he ordered one of the members to put a bag with credits upon Temon's table in the act. "Now tell me the location, Temon."

Temon counted the credits and, finally, said: "Lah'mu."

Arman was shocked. "Lah'mu? That's impossible, don't you play with me–"

"That's the location, my friend." Temon interrupted. "We tracked down all the supremacy's data, and precisely on that tragic day, a TIE Fighter flew from there to Lah'mu. Whoever flew it probably didn't think it was still sending coordinates to their central, and, among that chaos, it seems like the First Order didn't care about such coordinates. I bet all these credits that if you fly to Lah'mu, you'll find the First Order jewel only pretending to be dead."

All the members of that crew were now paying full attention to what Temon was saying, probably drunk with the thought of the payment they'd share after that specific trophy was delivered to the New Galactic Order. It'd be a lot of cash, the girl knew that, but she didn't let herself be fooled by it. While the others were distracted, agile as she'd learned to be, she left the room in absolute silence, reached the cantina's door and ran to her ship the fastest she could. When she reached it, she immediately programmed its route: straight to Lah'mu.

She was about to close the ship's door when she saw, right in front of it but still outside, the figure of a man watching her carefully, and she recognized instantly the man who was with Darios and the dug when she'd left their ship. He'd seen her, and he'd probably also seen the location she was programming her ship to fly to. It was too late now.

At the same moment, the man started to run, and she got to pick up her blaster and shoot in his direction, but he was faster; he entered another ship stationed some yards away and left the ground before her shots could cause damage. The girl just watched it leave, her heart pounding in her chest. Her plans had gone wrong, but there was still something she could do.

Even if her ship was smaller and much less potent, she could still jump to hyperspace and go to Lah'mu. Both Arman and Darios now knew the information she wanted to use with privilege, so she would fight them both if she had to. And all their men. But she'd catch that trophy.

She would be the one to catch Captain Phasma.


So, yeah, Phasma is not as safe as she thinks. Do you have any guess on what will happen in chapter 3? Tell me what you think! If you enjoyed this chapter, please, leave a comment! It makes my day!

Thanks for reading and may the Force be with you all!