Disclaimer: Star Wars is owned by LucasFilm and the Disney Corporation, I own nothing beyond that of a lifelong film.
CHAPTER ONE
Vast and seemingly empty wastelands and dunes formed most of the Outer Rim territories, least of all the western planet of Jakku. In the oceans of sand were buried thousands of years of galactic history as such, not unlike places like Bracca, the planet became a breeding ground for scavengers and scrappers trading scrap metal and other materials for food or other privileges. It was more or less a rather inhospitable planet, more akin to a prison.
There were smaller villages on Jakku. More primitive, more rural. No one passing over this junkyard, or even through Tuanul would have suspected that it held a living secret. Even if they had, they would have found no reason to linger. The worlds of the galaxy were full of secrets, and there was no reason to suspect Jakku was any different. But this particular secret…
It was a peaceful place, as was the case with most small communities situated on desert worlds. A mostly flat settlement upon a round, slightly raised plateau held only a couple of hundreds.
Despite the desolation that was apparent at first glance, it boasted its characteristic assortment of indigenous life-forms. Regardless of the absence of much in the way of visible vegetation, the distant isolated hoots and mewling of nocturnal animals somehow native to the planet indicated that life was present even where none could readily be seen. A single wind chime yodelling in the occasional breeze provided a tinkling counterpoint to the yelps of hidden sand-dwellers.
With neither the place nor the motivation to hide, a creature that was decidedly non-native rolled eastward out of the village. Consisting of a domed head floating above a larger sphere, it was dull white with striking orange markings. Designated BB-8, the astromech droid had suddenly grown very, very concerned.
Where a human would see only an empty night sky, advanced calibrated synthetic optics saw a moving point of light in the distance. When the light resolved itself into four separate points, the droid commenced an agitated beeping.
The quartet of lights was descending in a controlled manner, on what could only be described as a calculated path, and they were rapidly slowing. If they continued in that fashion, they would make a controlled touchdown at… BB-8 performed an almost instantaneous calculation. Too near, far too near for coincidence.
Beeping and whistling in something approaching cybernetic panic, the droid spun and sped back toward the village.
The small village of Tuanul was home to a motley group of mixed galactic peoples as well as an assortment of used but still valuable machinery. A fair portion of the village population eked out a modest living; modifying and restoring such equipment for resale in larger towns or the junkyard outposts—scrappers were always in need of new tools.
As the droid sped past, the occasional human or alien worker glanced up from their tasks, frowning, bemused by the droid's apparent unwarranted haste as it raced through the community. Sadly BB-8's panic garnered their attention for no more than a second before they returned to their own businesses.
Like most of the buildings in Tuanul, the residence toward which he was speeding to was an odd amalgamation of the contemporary and the very primitive. Dwellings on many of the minor desert worlds were like that: designs dictated by necessity as well as the environment. This one resembled a simple hut with various electronics and multiple concealed enhancements capable of making living in a harsh, dry climate more than tolerable.
-=O=-
Though he was fatigued, Republic Fighter Pilot Poe Dameron tried not to let it show. He owed that much to his host. Besides he had a reputation to uphold. He had come a long way, gone through many difficult and dangerous circumstances to be in this place, in this moment. It was all on behalf of the Republic of course, most specifically, on the orders of Senator Organa herself. He was not going to let a minor inconvenience like exhaustion tarnish an audience with a great hero.
The pilot's visage framed by small pointed horns atop his bald head, was a bit proud of countenance— something that others, not knowing him might mistake for arrogance. Confident in his skills and in his mission, he sometimes displayed an impatience that arose only from a desire to fulfill his tasks.
From the moment the Zabrak pilot arrived, Tuanul had struck him as somewhat less than imposing, this was in notable contrast to his host. He had read the reports that Mission had given him in preparation. The person before him was a warhero, a statesman, and from his own impressions, a rather tragic figure. Now grown a little more larger, it wasn't so much fat that framed him but bulk and muscle, and bags under his eyes and rather chubby cheeks had given him a permanent scowl. Former Representative Jar Jar Binks placed a small leather sack in Poe's open palm, then covered both with his own hands. He smiled softly and nodded.
"These days I can only do so much, and perhaps dat was for da best." He sighed heavily and a look of sadness and regret emanated from his face. In his youth, Representative Binks fought alongside the Jedi and the Republic and saved his people. Then when the Clone Wars began, he became a statesman, it would have been the height of his pride and honour, were it not for the events that followed. Upon reflection he saw the errors in his ways. He had succumbed to political pressure and handed power to the utmost evil of entities in the universe.
When the Empire rose, not much had changed at first. His people thrived and flourished as it had before the Clone War. Binks himself had gained the favour of Chancellor Palpatine and the favour of Senator Amidala, both had counted among his close friends. But Sheev Palpatine blinded him. The Senate had changed, it had changed him—where once he was giddy, over-excited and often time clumsy and now he had adopted to a certain stoicism. Perhaps it was forced upon him with Padmé's death?
The Gungan remembered her fondly, and as clear as yesterday. She had been the only person to truly have faith in him, almost unquestionably. Padme had that effect on people; the ability to make any ordinary person feel they could achieve wonders. He sighed once more. "But daree is so much more dat needs to be done. But…perhaps dis will begin to make it right."
As the old Gungan's hand withdrew, Poe's tightened around the leather satchel. In size, it was small. In importance…
"Legend says this map in unobtainable," The Zabrak noted. "How'd you get it?"
Jar Jar Binks just smiled at him, clearly not yet willing to give up all his secrets.
Poe grinned back, accepting it. "It has been an honour to stand before you, Representative Binks. We're very grateful."
The grizzled Gungan shrugged his old robes tighter around his body. "Mesa travelled too far, seen too much to ignore da collective anguish dat threaten to drown da galaxy once again. Wesa cannot allow dis flood of darkness and despair— no matter how weakly tied to it, be what is left of moole legacy. Once, mesa questioned all of dis but now I see dat da universe has been dragged along by da Dark Side for far too long… and without da Jedi, daree can be no balance in da Force."
Though Poe was reasonably secure in his knowledge of such things, he was also intelligent enough to know he could not begin to discuss them in depth with someone like the great Jar Jar Binks, Former Representative of Naboo. Rather than make a fool of himself by trying to do so, he prepared to take his leave. He had a delivery to make. Casual philosophy would have to wait.
"Senator Organa has been after this for a long time," Poe remarked, making his way to the entrance of the hut.
"Princess Leia Organa," Jar Jar sighed, his heart somehow was beginning to lighten. It was only made public a few years ago that the Senator of Alderaan was in actuality the daughter of Imperial Commander and right hand of Palpatine, Lord Vader, and even later it was revealed that Vader had been his old friend all along. The daughter of Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala.
Leia and Binks had known each other for many years, sometimes when he came to visit Bail Organa on Alderaan for matters of state. He watched her grow before his very eyes. Who would have guessed where she had gotten her aptitude for politics; the blood of the fearsome Padmé of Naboo and then mentored by the kind yet calculating mind of Bail Organa. In the end he did end up helping her to restore the Republic after the Empire fell, even put her name for consideration as Chancellor which she ultimately declined.
"Shesa good woman," he smiled. "Shesa definitely royalty."
"Yeah, but don't call her 'Princess'," Poe told him. "Not to her face, anyway. She doesn't like it anymore…like really doesn't like it."
He was about to elaborate when a frantic metal sphere rolled into the room, barely braking in time to avoid hitting the two aliens. The two exchanged troubled glances before rushing outside.
With his quadnocs Poe scanned the horizon indicated by BB-8. "I count four of them," he murmured. Four ICV shuttles were inbound. He turned to Binks. "Not to be presumptuous, sir, but you need to hide."
Jar Jar did not need quadnocs. He already identified the incoming ships by the sounds they made as they descended. "Not to overstate the obvious, but yousa need to leave."
Despite the importance of his mission, Poe was conflicted. He held great respect for Representative Binks. How could he leave him here?
"Sir, if you don't mind, I must request—"
The elderly statesman cut him off. "But meesa do mind. Yousa spoke of da mission, Poe Dameron. Yousa spoke of da woman who gave it. Do not disappoint her." Both his gaze and his tone hardened. "Now fulfill it."
"But I cannot leave you—"
"My story is one of many thousands, master Poe. The universe will not suffer if it ends too soon. So, go. Now! While you have the chance." He then went back into his hut and when he emerged, the Gungan had produced an old Clone War era blaster. "I must see to the defense of the village." Then, not turning back, Representative Jar Jar Binks became Bombad General once again.
Poe hesitated a moment longer, then whirled and raced toward the southernmost border of the village with BB-8 pacing effortlessly behind. He passed many more people, rushing to General Binks now, guns and other manner of weaponry in hand, ready for a fight. How did such seemingly simple folk come into the possession of so many weapons? The pilot thought.
The ship that was parked some distance away from the village was well hidden beneath a high rock outcropping. That wouldn't shield his X-wing starfighter from sophisticated search gear however, Poe knew that. He just needed to exit the atmosphere and fast.
Poe hurried into the cockpit while his droid rolled into the co-piloting position but before he could even touch the controls to fire up his machine, blaster bolts had shot out from behind the craft, hitting the engines and thrusters. Things were heating up and not in the good way. He never even had the chance to turn the shields on before he had to abandon his escape plan with the starfighter. Poe normally took great care with his starfighters. This one was actually his first Next Generation X-wing, his record being seven complete aerial battles with zero shootdowns. It was how he was able to rise in the ranks.
Both he and BB-8 jumped off, falling into the sand as more stormtroopers in sleek white armour came up to them. Poe had his pistol in hand, without hesitating he shot two of them and knocked the third to the ground with his fists.
They made to escape but Poe realised that they were vastly outnumbered. Quickly he knelt before his small droid and took out the satchel he got from Binks. Inside was a small round stick of some kind. He placed the data stick into a small compartment within BB-8.
"We can't all make it buddy," he started, a little shaky. "But as of right now you are representing me. I need you to keep this chip safe, find a way off this rock and get it to Leia." For clarification and morale, Poe asked if the droid understood. BB-8 responded by whistling and chirping affirmatively. "I'm gonna miss you, boy."
And with that, Poe sent BB-8 into the wilderness.
—=O=—
In the village, the fight continued as a die-hard group of its inhabitants perhaps knowing all too well what these representatives of the First Order had in mind for them, were they to surrender. While the battle was a mismatch, it was not a slaughter. Villagers of Tuanul gave as good as they got. Jar Jar commanded the villagers from the centre, utilising strategies to trick the enemy into bunching themselves up into clusters.
Shot straight on, a trooper went down in a mass of shattered armour, shredded flesh and a spill of blood. One of his companions immediately rushed to his side and knelt to render assistance. A torn, bloody glove lifted toward the would-be-rescuer, bare fingers protruding from torn protective coverings. Faces behind helmets stared at one another. The rescuer recognised the fallen trooper. They had trained together. Shared meals, stories, experiences together. Now they were sharing death together. Combat was not at all like what they had envisioned.
A brief and spontaneous flailing by the downed stormtrooper splattered his rescuer's helmet covered face with blood. Then, finally, the hand fell and he moved no longer.
There was no assistance to be rendered here, the second trooper realised. He shot up, straight and stiff, unable to do anything else besides look around, surveying the hell he had found himself in. His weapon hung at his side—unfired. He stumbled back, away from his fallen comrade and that exposed, pale, pleading hand.
As madness ebbed and surged around him, he wandered through the village, feeling himself somewhat detached from the battle, like was viewing a holo-vid documentary drama than actually fighting.
Smoke and dust and fire rose from the devastated buildings around him. His helmet's aural receptors picked up the sounds of more explosions in the distance. Crackling flames did not rise from sand but from homes, small workshops, storage buildings. Movement coming in too close to him forced the stormtrooper to raise his gun reflexively, forcing him to come face to face with a frightened and unarmed woman, who inhaled sharply and froze. She had an expression on her face that the trooper would never forget. The look of one who was still alive yet realised that she was already dead.
For what felt like decades they stayed that way: predator and prey with each one fully aware of their part in this scenario. When he finally lowered the blaster's muzzle, the villager clearly couldn't believe it and continued to stare at him for another moment.
The moment was ended however, when a beam of searing red lazer flashed past his head and hit the woman straight onto her temple. She fell back, motionless like his friend earlier.
Again the blood marked stormtrooper stiffened, not even daring to turn around to address the trooper he knew had fired the shot.
Suddenly a thunderous hiss sounded above them as a shuttle in the old Imperial style descended upon the village. Some of the militant inhabitants had fled, some were successful while others hit the ground with blaster burns marking their backs.
But there were still fighters among them. Those who sought the initiative to open fire on the shuttle were dispatched immediately by a chrome armoured stormtrooper captain—Phasma, their handler.
The shuttle's wings folded before finally touching ground. When the bay doors opened, it was to allow a single figure to appear. Tall, with her entire face encased in a black, metal mask and hood. A dark, heavy cloak wrapped itself around her, hiding black robes hemmed with armour over the chest and shoulders. The dark menace marched casually through the remnants of the battle still raging, though Phasma was in the process of snuffing out the embers, and came in the direction of an old Gungan being escorted less than delicately toward them by two other stormtroopers.
The Gungan was then forced onto his knees before the tall, hooded figure whose arrival had transfixed the shell-shocked trooper. The village elder recognised who stood before him and knew that there was no point in running. Resignation finally slid over him like a dark cloud.
The hooded passenger from the shuttle examined the prisoner from top to bottom much as one would a relic in a museum. But the Gungan stared back evenly. Then the hooded woman spoke. "Jar Jar Binks, Representative of Naboo in the Imperial Senate. Captured at last."
"Former Representative, in every sense that entails," Jar Jar replied.
The mysterious warrior chuckled sneeringly at the elder Gungan. "Look at how old and pathetic you've become."
"Something far worse has happened to you than letting the way of the Force to run its course." The Gungan quickly adapted his courtly manner of speaking, his walls somewhat raised again as he struggled against his captors.
Word had no effect on the mask or, so far as Binks could tell, what lay behind it. There was no reaction, no outrage, just impatience. "You know what I've come for."
"And I know where you come from." The Gungan let his word sit first with the masked invader. Stern eyes met the vacant visors of his interrogator but Jar Jar let no panic display upon his snouted face. "From a time before you took up a mantle of a Knight of Ren. Before you came to call yourself the Kylo."
From behind the mask, a growl: feral, but still human. "Be careful, old man. If we did not think you could help us, I would have cut you down the moment I saw you." Then the woman knelt on one knee to meet the Gungan's eyes. "The map to Skywalker. We understand that you've come in possession of it, and now you will surrender it to the First Order."
At first Representative Binks grew silent. Refusing to meet the gaze of this Kylo Ren. "Yousa do not belong with them." Binks spoke softly, calmly, and in his steady voice did his Gungan roots begin to arise again. "Yousa no believe'n what they believe'n, child."
A soft almost quiet groan reverberated from Ren's mask. Her impatience gave way to exasperation. "How is it possible for a conversation to become so tedious, so quickly?"
A simple hand from the dark attacker had the troopers beginning to comb around the village—flametroopers started setting houses ablaze, knocking them down, while the others continued to harass the populace. They then gathered them toward the centre of the village, bunching them up like sheep in their pen. Jar Jar Binks, though still composed raised himself up seeming more active now, almost defiantly.
"This has one of two outcomes, Senator. Give me what I seek and live, or watch this village suffer the consequences."
"Yous'n may try," Binks responded, for though the villagers faced execution and torment, none had stopped their roars and chants of defiance. The old Gungan then rose to his feet, looking Ren dead in the face. Jar Jar Binks: Representative of the Gungan people of Naboo, Bombad General of its armies, spokesman of the Old Republic. "But good and evil will always be fighting inside yousa, child. It is in yous nature and yousa cannot deny the truth that is yous family."
Kylo seemed to step back, almost abated… almost.
"You know, you're right." Then a lightsaber appeared in one hand, flaring to life, a barely stable crimson shaft notable for two smaller projections at the hilt: a killer's weapon, an executioner's evil fetish of choice. In a blink of an eye, the Knight of Ren slashed from the side, cutting diagonally across and through the former stateman. A small yelp, barely audible escaped the Gungan's snout, and then he was gone, dead on in the dust.
The blood marked trooper could only watch in hidden horror at the events that just transpired, before Captain Phasma gave the order and the rest of his brethren opened fire on the huddled population.
"NO!" another figure rose from the dunes and began to open fire upon the invaders. His target was Kylo Ren herself.
—=O=—
AUTHOR'S NOTE: That's right, I wrote Jar Jar Binks into the story in place of Lor San Tekka who I was very confused about seeing first time I watched the movie. Don't get me wrong, I was ecstatic when first I saw this film. In fact, I watched it in theatres at least twelve times, got a free poster out of it. I do hope it doesn't rub people the wrong way. As much as the Gungan gets a bad rep, I actually was rooting for him to succeed the first time I saw Episode 1. I was crestfallen when I saw the negativity emanating from the fanbase targeting both the character and the actor Ahmed Best. Thus, I felt it appropriate to give his character a proper send off and some closure. Either you hated Jar Jar and get a kick out of seeing his character brutally murdered, or he was endearing and find some solace in seeing him die for a cause, the greater good.