—STAR WARS—

CHAPTER FOUR

This was where technology went to die. A mass graveyard of ships and space stations, slowly sinking into the desert sands. With titanic mountains of metal, cliffs of plasticine derivatives, oceans of splayed ceramics were jumbled together in a phantasmagoric industrial Badlands that none dared enter, for fear of being poisoned, cut, or lost forever.

Still, there were few who ventured into the graveyard— not out of daring but desperation. These forgotten remnants of past aggressions were a feasting ground for vermin, scrappers and scavengers.

One such scavenger clung insectlike to a dark metal wall, pimpled with protruding sensors and manipulators, and other decaying mechanisms. Clad in light protective goggles with green and glowing lenses, face mask, gloves and grey desert clothing, the busy scavenger was burdened with a substantial backpack full of make-shift tools. She also had on a belt with a strong zipline cable that was at the moment the only thing keeping her from any fatal accidents with Jakku's gravity. Strapped to the backpack, she also had a multifunction quarterstaff made from an old metallic rod she scavenged from a Rebel Alliance medical frigate just a few clicks east of the site she was exploring now.

After determining that a piece before her was no longer profitable, she discarded it and began climbing up. The scavenger was meticulous. Just this week she had already explored more than 80% of the giant thirty-year-old Imperial Star Destroyer, picking at its carcass for spare parts like vultures.

Taking a tool from her bag, the scavenger began examining what appeared to be a ventilation filter. She took out a limited range hydrospanner and started the process of removing it. Her head tilted to a side once she had the device in her hands, then produced her own little device and hooked its little prongs to the filter. The screen on the device would display the object's technical readings. It took a while but soon enough her reader gave the all clear. Ecstatic, the scavenger bagged the ventilation filter, adding to her slowly growing collection and commenced her perilous descent.

The scavenger found herself within a large docking bay, with old TIE fighters lay broken and buried in debris and sand. It was quiet but even the smallest sounds echoed in the vast emptiness. She added what was recovered from her bag to a small pile of scrap metal or barely working parts atop a sheet of cloth on the floor, and laboured under a double load toward a distant slit of sunlight.

Through monumental cylindrical thrusters, the slender figure shoved the goggles up onto her forehead and squinted at the blasted surroundings. Rey was nearly twenty, with dark hair hidden under a habit, and darker eyes with a hint of something deeper within. There was a freshness about her that the harsh landscape had failed to eliminate. Anyone glancing at her would have thought her soft: a serious error in judgement.

She took out a small cylindrical cannister, checking to vaguely measure how much water she actually had left before ultimately taking her sip. Under the blistering sun, she was beginning to feel the fatigue. It had been a respectable day's work, enough to ensure she would eat tonight.

As she continued to drink from her canteen, she spotted a speeder zooming the left in the far distance— a dot to the naked eye, but Rey had her electrobinoculars. She saw it was a friend of hers and fellow scrapper, Mashra, dashing off toward Niima Outpost, leaving a long trail of dust behind her. Rey sighed and wiped the sweat from her brow as she replaced her goggles and covered up her mouth and nose with the bottom part of her habit. She looked out onto an ocean of sand, the ashen remains of ships, Star Destroyers and giant metal walkers, littered, half buried in the waves like magnificent tombstones.

A great battle was waged here, a final battle. She heard the stories from local elders that here was where the Galactic Empire made its last stand against the Rebel Alliance…a decisive battle.

Rey sighed. It was time to go home. Finding a curved piece of sheet metal, Rey rid it down the sandy slope carrying her bounty behind her. At the bottom was a large rusted speeder of her own. She had built it out of an old podracer engine she found near her home. It was a difficult process getting it to work, but the speeder proved invaluable to her scavenging.

The young woman loaded up a wide mesh net that covered the front side of her vehicle. All of the junk and mechanical nick-knacks she had laboured to acquire, all laid out to bare—Rey couldn't lie, she felt some pride in seeing her accomplishments like this. Hopefully Unkar Plutt would see it the same way too.

She climbed onto the driver's seat and with a strong kick ignited the speeder to life. She steadied herself on it for a little while as the engine began to struggle, a bit of anxiety coursed through her as she cursed her luck. That was Rey's life, she reflected: a succession of anxious moments, interrupted only by the novelty of occasional panic.

The speeder finally felt like going, she raised up a trail of dust and sand in her wake. Racing along the flat desert floor, she allowed the speeder's perceptors to guide her between endless rows and piles of ruined starcrafts, obsolete or fatally damaged military equipment, civilian mechanicals that had outlived their prescribed lifetime, and long downed Imperial vessels. She passed other scrappers dwelling in the wreckage, rummaging through the piles for things to trade in at one of the many outposts on Jakku.

Though it took hours, the journey to Niima outpost went by rather smoothly. Rey breathed a sigh of relief as soon as she whooshed through the town's main gate, connected to circular perimeter fencing that contained the repository of manifold cultures, represented in the treasures that the scavengers religiously submitted.

Rey parked her speeder as close to the central pavilion as she could and unloaded her loot into a nearby rag. She glared at every passer-by that seemed to find an interest in her business. It was important not to look vulnerable around people in townships and hamlets especially in the Outer Rim territories.

In the shade of the pavilion, the scavenger turned her habit into a scarf around her neck and swiftly made her way to a cleaning station. When it came to salvage, appearances did matter. Compared to the strenuous work she had put into its recovery; a bit of polishing and buffing added a little to the overall effort.

Around her, other scavengers were doing the same. Humans and nonhumans communicated freely, commenting on one another's findings and exchanging gossip, mostly in the local patois. They filled a good deal of the available workspace though personal space was still observed rather rigorously. When not chatting amiably with one another, they strove to learn where their competitors were finding their best salvages.

They were also not above stealing from one another when the opportunity presented itself. Rey kept a very close eye on her goods. Her attention to the incessant scrubbing she was engaged in was interrupted by the aggressiveness of the woman opposite her. An old Theelin woman dressed in ragged, dirty clothing was silently cleaning her own finds though knowing the woman who they called Chass na Chadic, she probably snatched it off of another scrapper. Rey did not realise she had stopped her scrubbing her attention had wandered off, just staring at Chadic, the old hag was oblivious, meticulously cleaning a piece of broken hyperdrive thermostat gear. If she'd only looked at the bottom, she'd realise…there was no bottom.

Rey had known the elder Theelin woman for most of her life but no one ever actually paid much attention to her…especially when she complained. Most of the Niima Outpost regarded Chadic with contempt than anything else, for Rey, she felt only pity. The old woman couldn't speak anymore, she could barely comprehend anything she told her, and evidenced by the piles of junk she was unsuccessfully cleaning, she could do little else, or so she would have had them believe.

Nevertheless, her image triggered a thought that had crept up in the young woman's head every now and again.

Chadic had been there on Jakku for over thirty years. Apparently, she had once fought in the Rebellion but any attempt by her to prod the woman of information, even some allusions, went ignored. Instead Chass na Chadic remained locked in the same old routine of acquire junk, clean junk, sell junk…repeated at least once in a day.

Was this a mirror into her own future? To pick at scraps in this backwater planet for the rest of her life?

Rey's eyes moved away and over the Theelin, beyond them where a human woman, clad in wrapping of deep maroon that shaded to purple, a band of turquoise makeup across her eyes and forefingers indicating her clan. Standing on a ship's open ramp, she surveyed her surroundings. A moment later, a similarly clad and decorated boy appeared and moved to join her. A domestic exchange ensued, during which the adult did something to the child's hair before lifting the child up and placing him onto her shoulders. Rey looked on with longing blue eyes as the woman went into the ship with the child on her back.

It was a VCX-100 light freighter. A quality ship, Rey thought. The woman must have been a merchant, come down for supplies. Under different circumstances she would have either asked to be taken with them or snuck aboard in a heartbeat, but this place, it still had a hold on her. Rey needed to wait…at least until her parents came back. That was what she promised herself every day.

The young scavenger smiled as she watched the freighter lift off, its thruster engines burning blue flames, sending the vessel into space.

One day…any day now….

She had finished polishing his salvaged hardware far quicker than she expected and immediately hauled her salvage before a small exchange booth at the very heart of the tent. Fashioned from an old sand-crawler, dark brown from rust and age, it was surrounded by recently purchased components.

"A decent offering, Rey, if nothing remarkable," assessed the lumpish shape seated slightly above behind the counter. The Crolute's stout build terminated at the top in a thick, fleshy, hairless skull whose most prominent feature was a broad, flat nose and an overabundance of excess skin below his chin, or where one would expect to find the chin. That was Unkar Plutt. The junk boss of this side of Jakku, scavenger king who by all rights owned her. "What you've brought me today is worth…hmm…one quarter portion."

To say that Rey felt immeasurable disappointment at hearing this was an understatement, yet she tried her hardest not to give him the pleasure of seeing her disappointment. She just took the packet; a combination of dehydrated veg-meat and polystarch, locked behind a conveniently divided plastic sachet.

Plutt chuckled as she took a moment just to look at what her hard work and wrought. "That's my girl," he commended her.

The young woman said nothing as she turned and marched away. His presence disgusted her…but he also took care of her for years before he let her loose on the junkyard planet.

—=O=—

Another hour's journey out on the salt flats of the Goazon Badlands and Rey could finally, truly relax a little. In the coarse, rough and irritating sands there, where an Imperial All Terrain Armoured Transport had been downed decades prior, as well as a nice little Y-wing fighter that had seemed to have crashed into it; was where Rey had decided to make her home.

After carefully unloading her gear and supplies into the homemade cabinets and shelves, she began preparation of the ration pack she had earned. She emptied the polystarch powder into a small bowl of warm water— warm because there was nothing cooler on this desert heap. While she waited for the water to absorb, she spotted her old doll she had found in one of the salvage sites. The doll was robed in black, and held in one of its hands a thin stick that appeared to glow in certain lightings. Its face was more than damaged so you couldn't make out many facial features but she knew who it was modelled on…or at least what her imagination often held it to be…

She held the great, legendary sorcerer Luke Skywalker in her hand, admiring the figure that often calmed her troubled heart whenever she saw him. The fictions made roughing the days all the less tedious for her. Luke Skywalker, whose saga told of humble beginnings not unlike her own, a mythological hero who killed evil demons and dark gods.

Soon the polystarch rose into a spherical ball of bread, she took the bread and emptied out the veg-meat mix, opting to have her lunch/dinner outside by the Y-wing.

Under the dying sun of Jakku, the scavenger basks in its cooling rays. A silver plate of food that she could not care less for beyond basic nutrition, though by then Rey could faintly appreciate the bland taste of Imperial era ration packs. As she feasted, she stared out onto the descending sun and could not help but wander about the wider universe, how exciting it would be to explore it all.

When she finished, she picked up the plate and licked it dry before setting it aside. She then gulped down what was left of the water from her canteen— only a few drops left, she would need to stop by a vapor spire tomorrow to refill. For the next few minutes, she just sat there. It was still rather early to turn in and Rey still had a lot of energy left inside her.

The young scavenger went into the cockpit of the wrecked Y-wing where a badly damaged Rebel Alliance helmet rested on atop the seat. She put it on and sat herself inside. It always felt quite electrifying to be in there. She imagined herself in the thick of battle over the Jakku plains and started making blaster noises with her mouth. 'Rebel base, this is Gold Leader Luke Skywalker. I've got a bogey on my six. I can't shake 'em— bsshhh, bsshhh, bsshhh! I'm gonna come around, try to lose 'em off one of the bigger cruisers!'

She imagined being the hero of her stories, winning acclaim and leading the others to victory, surrounded by fanfare and friends…but soon the illusion was not enough and she was alone once again.

Something squealed that was not shifting sand.

Rising quickly, Rey removed her helmet. The sound could not have come from within its long-dead electronics. Even as she inspected the headpiece, the noise was repeated. A hysterical, panicked beeping. Whirling, she hopped out of the Y-wing cockpit and rushed to the dwelling and emerged a moment later with her bo-staff. The beeping was sounding continuously now, no less frantic for its frequency.

Reaching the top of a nearby dune, she found herself gazing down at a sight curious as it was unexpected. Trapped in a net of local organic material, a small spherical droid was attempting to escape its captor, an effort rendered extremely difficult by the fearful mechanical's total absence of limbs. Mounted atop a squat, four-footed, square helmeted luggabeast, a native Teedo was struggling to constrain and reel in the legless but overactive insubordinate droid.

When uncertain as to anything taking place on Jakku, Rey knew, it was always reasonable to assume that something untoward was happening. At least until she understood the particulars of the confrontation she was witnessing; it was only right to call it to a momentary halt.

Teedo stopped moving, his gaze now falling above to the girl standing on the dune, staff in hand and looking rather menacing herself. Slightly unfazed, he asked her what she was looking at. He knew who she was and he knew she was not often worth the trouble.

"Tal'ama parqual," she said calmly.

Teedo and BB-8 stopped wrestling and all of their attention was on her.

"Parqual!" Teedo responded, making an effort to simultaneously control both his heavy-headed mount and his captive. "Zatana tappan-aboo!"

Rey immediately took offense to Teedo's tone and speech, which far exceeded the bounds of common courtesy that existed between desert-dwellers and made rather difficult coexistence possible. The luggabeast rider knew better, and his intemperate words were enough to decide her own course of action.

She decided to descend down toward them, staff still at the ready and a mean, angry look in her eyes. She began to hack at the net, finally freeing the droid. "Namago!" she growled at her fellow scavenger. "Ta bana contoqual!"

Seeing that Teedo was losing his prize, the Teedo unleashed a long torrent of indigenous invective. None of which had the slightest effect on Rey, who just stared right back at him.

"Noma," she smiled defiantly. "Ano tamata, zatana. Mee teesa rotta co pana pee toppa chama."

Long and drawn out, the Teedo's response to this would have been unprintable on any civilised world. Turning the metal-enclosed head of its mount, the unpleasant sand-dwelling scavenger departed in the opposite direction. As soon as the native was a safe distance away, BB-8 rolled clear of the netting and began beeping loudly and challengingly at his direction.

"Shhh," Rey hastened to quiet the robot. "Don't tempt it. enough insults can override anyone's common sense, even a Teedo's." BB-8 instantly went silent.

Rey knelt down, noticing the droid's antenna was bent on its domed head. BB-8 started beeping and whistling and to the droid's surprise, the scavenger understood him.

"Oh, that's just Teedo, a local. He's like me, actually," she told him. "Except Teedo's particularly impolite. Wanted you for parts." As she examined the scored markings on her softly beeping new acquaintance, her interest continued to deepen. "Where'd you come from?"

The droid beeped a reply. Pursing her lips, Rey shook her head.

"I don't know what that means." A string of beeps followed. This time, she smiled. "Oh classified, is it? Well, me too. Top secret." Once she straightened the antenna, she returned it to the droid who whistled a 'thank you', then rose back up. "I'll keep mine and you can keep yours. She then gestured to certain directions before her. "Niima outpost is that way. You'll find a droid bath there…or what usually passes for one on this rock. Stay off of Kelvin Ridge. Keep away from the Empty Quarter or you'll drown in the sand. Otherwise, you'll be okay. The closer you get to civilisation, the less likely you are of bumping into a Teedo."

Satisfied with the help she offered, Rey moved away and back to her AT-AT. BB-8 looked in the direction she had pointed, then back at her. After some careful consideration, the droid began to follow suit, halting only when she turned on him sharply.

"Hey, don't follow me. You can't come." More beeping, distinctly more anxious this time. She grew angry. "No! And don't ask me again. I'm not your friend. This is Jakku. Nobody has friends here. Just survivors." Turning once more, she moved off with long strides.

The beeping that sounded now was laced with unmistakable desperation, poignant enough to make her stop. Turning once more, she looked back at the imploring droid. She didn't like it—she didn't like him. Her fondness for most machinery extended to its trade equivalent in food. For reasons she could not fathom, she found herself feeling sorry for this small, helpless droid. She sighed, mentally kicking herself for what she was about to do. Rey gestured for the droid to follow.

BB-8 whistled happily behind.

"Don't make me regret this, alright?" The droid made an affirmative beep as it rolled over the rough sand. "What are you called, anyway?"

Again, the droid made several energetic beeps to introduce himself.

"Oh…is that Beebee-Ate? Well, nice to meet you, then. My name is Rey."

—=O=—

Miles and miles away, a young man woke in a panic, half submerged in sand and the metal wreckage of a First Order TIE fighter. FN-2187 looked about himself and hurriedly scuffled out of the debris. Suddenly the ground below began to rumble, he could feel the vibrations. The renegade stormtrooper climbed his way out as the wreckage began to sink into the sands at an alarming rate.

Once safely out, FN-2187 began to scan the ruined TIE fighter for any sign of his pilot companion. "Poe!" he cried out as the sands continued to swallow the ship. "Poe, you've gotta get out of there!" but there was no answer. He saw the sleeve of what he thought was Captain Dameron's leather jacket. The renegade dove for it, hoping to find the pilot attached to it, but once the cockpit vanished, he exerted one last iota of strength and yanked the sleeve. To his horror, he found no owner of the jacket. "POE!"

Then the sands began to take him as well. His feet starting to sink. FN-2187 leaped out of the pit and by tooth and nail, managed to crawl out.

He was out. Standing over the dunes, the stormtrooper turned to look at the sinking ship which was up to the tip of its wing. He tried again to call for his companion but was meat with further silence. He could not believe it, had he just killed Poe Dameron? The renegade stormtrooper fell to his knees and began to sob, mostly out of the loss of his new friend but also because of the immense fatigue he was beginning to feel the brunt of.

Back on Jakku. Back in the hot, desert junkyard of a planet that had no other use except to allow people to die in its sands, FN-2187 sighed is despair. Once those sands had completely vanished the First Order starfighter, he began to look around him, still seeking any sign of Poe. But there was nothing there. Nothing but oceans upon oceans of empty, barren deserts. Perhaps he should leave it all up to chance and just go…anywhere. North, south, east, west did not matter anymore. He ripped off his stormtrooper chest-piece armour and neckbrace that was restricting his breathing, then began walking.

—=O=—