Chapter Sixteen
Uprising
C-3PO and R2-D2 huddled inside a deserted building in a densely populated Coruscant tenement. From outside came the clatter of boots and walkers, the bark of troopers, and an occasional scream or burst of blaster fire. The night raids had started shortly after nightfall, but now, in that darkest of hours that comes just before the dawn, they were intensifying.
"UATT Walker Patrol, head down Thoroughfare Sixty," a voice said over a speaker. Klaxons whooped.
An alien ran along a narrow road, then ducked through an arched portal as a column of Stormtroopers marched past and stopped before a small, dilapidated house. The squad leader shouted, "Open up, you're wanted for questioning!" He began to bang on a door with the butt of his rifle. A Patrol Speeder flew by overhead, sweeping a spotlight over roofs and streets.
Another squadron of soldiers walked by the droids' hiding place. "Check this side of the street," their commander ordered.
Artoo and Threepio stayed completely still as a trooper punched the buttons next to the outside of the door they were behind. He reported, "Door is locked, move on to the next one."
C-3PO and R2-D2 peered warily out a broken window as the column of armored figures marched off. A few meters away, a pair of Stormtroopers were pointing their blasters at a man. "You! Up against the wall. Show me identification."
"Where's your identification?"
Across the street from the droids, the door the troopers had been pounding on finally gave out. A few soldiers entered and frog-marched out a woman and a bald man. "Please!" the woman screamed. "Please leave her alone, she didn't do anything! She's just a child."
"Quiet!" a Stormtrooper ordered. An officer motioned to the others. They dragged out a small girl, struggling futilely.
In front of the next building over stood a terrified, waist-high Chadra-Fan. "Beeeeek! Beeeek naaat!" he piped, begging for mercy. A Stormtrooper shoved his long rifle into the furry alien's stomach. He doubled up in pain. Other white-armored troopers plucked a trio of tiny, wailing infants from their perch on the ceiling.
A pair of prison speeders landed on the street. The Stormtroopers pushed the frightened citizens into them, separating the children from their parents and herding them into cages aboard transports bound for conditioning camps. The younglings screamed, reaching through durasteel bars, as the craft rose into the night sky.
"I can't watch. How horrible," C-3PO said, turning away from the window.
His companion beeped melancholically.
"I agree, Artoo. We may not survive this time," Threepio remarked despondently. "We'll never find Master Finn now."
Sludge spurted out of pipes and chutes into a tank of gelatinous, semi-solid muck. Finn slid out of one of the chutes and splashed into the translucent ooze, which swallowed him up to his neck. He sputtered, spitting out slurry that had splashed into his mouth. "Ughh."
A pack of sewer rats stood atop the jiggling mass, feeding on the refuse encased in it. One of them approached Finn and sniffed, its whiskers brushing his face. Finn struggled to pull his arms out of the thick goop. "Hey!" he shouted. "Get away! Ugghgh!"
The rat licked his face just as he pulled out an arm and swatted it away. The other sewer rats squeaked and scattered.
Finn drew a breath of fetid air, taking care to use his mouth rather than his nose. Then he saw why the rats had scattered. Emerging from a wide tunnel into the tank was a colossal Gryock, an eyeless white larva sucking in the sewage through a circular mouth two meters in diameter.
"Oh no. No, no, no!" Finn struggled, dislodging himself briefly and then getting stuck in the muck again. The Gryock closed in on him, its pale, soft, segmented body undulating as it slipped slowly through the slime. It made a horrible slurping sound as it fed, then paused as though it sensed Finn's presence. The nightmarish round maw opened even wider, teeth sticking out of its lipless edge like knives, the creature's pinkish insides pulsing wetly.
Just as Finn was about to be engulfed whole, a hatch above him opened. Light poured down. Finn looked up to see a mess of tousled red hair above a round, boyish face.
"Give me your hand!" he shouted at Finn.
Finn grabbed the kid's hand and pulled himself up through the hatch just as the Gryock heaved itself forward and chomped down. The child slammed down the hatch as the creature thrashed about, denied its prey.
Finn collapsed to the metal floor of the sewer tunnel, caked in sludge. He gasped out, "That was. So many disgusting things. All at once."
"I've seen worse," his benefactor said, offering a hand. "Dade."
"Just one name?"
"What's wrong with that, Finn?"
"You know me."
Dade shrugged. "We've been tracking you since you landed."
"We?"
A distant screeching sound echoed down the tunnel.
"What was that?" asked Finn.
"You don't want to find out," replied Dade. "Come on."
"Hang on. How do I know this isn't a trap?"
The youth flashed a Resistance ring. "Trust me."
Finn scraped some of the muck off himself and followed Dade down the narrow tunnel, their boots splashing in shallow water. A light gleamed far ahead.
"I'm not originally from this stink-hole, you know," Dade informed Finn. "My mother brought me here a few years back, before the New Republic blew up."
"You live with her?"
Dade looked down at the murky water they were sloshing through. "She's not around anymore."
"I'm sorry."
"It happens." Dade tried to say it nonchalantly, but there was a tell-tale tremble in his voice. "I'm good at fending for myself. Anyway, First Order purged a ten kilometer radius around the Capitol after the galaxy went dark. Took most able bodies to the conditioning camps."
"Did anyone escape?"
"Just us," said Dade. He opened a rusty door. They stepped through into an abandoned underground prison. Hundreds of cells were cut into the walls of the vast rotunda, a complex network of makeshift catwalks and ladders connecting them. Many of the compartments had metal panels or fabric curtains shielding their interiors from view. A central control tower loomed ominously in the middle of the panopticon. The space swarmed with people of all ages, wandering about, leaning out of their dwellings, or talking with their friends.
"You live here?" Finn marveled. "How many people are down here?"
"Ten thousand. Maybe more."
"Do you have weapons?"
"Some of us. We steal or scrounge or make more every day. There are other groups like this, elsewhere in the city. That's what they're afraid of. A million of us rise up, the First Order's finished."
Finn considered that idea, letting it burrow deep into his mind. He looked out across the cavern at the huddled masses of humanity; a thousand faces, waiting for a leader. "You're right. This revolution starts right here. Right now."
"Sure," agreed the boy. "All we need's ships, weapons. An army."
"We have one."
Finn kicked open the door of the old command tower. He climbed into the turbolift, which to his surprise still worked, and rode it to the top level. From here, he could look down upon the entire sea of downtrodden people. He fired up the comm system and brought the tarnished grille of the speaker close to his mouth.
"My name is Finn," his voice boomed out. "I bring a message from the Resistance."
An elderly woman, tired and worn down by tyranny and war since the rise of the Empire, exited her cell. She looked at the brave, determined face of the man in the high tower.
"The Final Order rules by fear," Finn continued. "They build ships to intimidate us. Wear masks to frighten us. I used to be afraid of them. But I'm not anymore. Because I realized that they're the ones who are scared."
The woman picked up a large wooden spoon and rapped it rhythmically against the wall of the old prison.
"This is not the time to run and hide underground. We're going to show them we're not afraid. If we take the Capitol, the galaxy will join us!"
A wiry, gray-furred Jenet joined in the clamor, squeaking her approval and banging a bent fork against a cracked cup. A man dressed in once-rich maroon robes began to clap.
"They've taken enough of us. Now we take the war to them. Together we can strike back! Together we can resist!"
Hundreds, then thousands of people cheered, shouted, and clanked their possessions together in unison. Finn stood up straight. He was no longer a traitor or deserter; now he was a revolutionary, a leader.
The dawn came slowly over Coruscant. A diffuse yellowish light filtered down through clouds of pollution. Huge megastructures cast dim shadows over the city. The streets were empty and silent, the skyways bare of traffic except for Final Order patrol craft.
R2-D2 and C-3PO emerged from a dingy, shadowy alleyway into a wider, slightly better lit thoroughfare. The desolate urban landscape of peeling paint, boarded-up buildings, and cracked or crumbling walls seemed to swallow them up.
Artoo beeped quietly.
"I agree," See-Threepio said. "This isn't the Coruscant I remember."
A shadow fell over them as a towering AT-AT Walker rounded a corner onto the boulevard. C-3PO and R2-D2 watched it trundle past, dwarfing them with its size. Then the massive war machine stopped. A smoking, overturned Final Order Assault Tank, its treads broken, lay in the walker's path. The droids watched curiously.
Inside the cockpit, the Walker Drivers looked down through the viewport at the smoldering remains of the tank. "Any life forms?" asked the pilot.
His copilot studied a data readout. "Nope."
Finn and a hundred People's Resistance Fighters were hunkered down in an upper story of an empty building next to the AT-AT. The walker's head was just below them outside.
Finn said, "Now."
A handful of floor-mounted grappling guns fired hooks over the AT-AT to the building opposite. Finn clipped a carabiner onto one of the zip-lines. He and twenty other Resistance fighters swung out over the street and then let go, landing on top of the walker.
The group ran up the back of the walker to its head. One of the Coruscanti citizens cut open the top hatch with a vibrosaw. Finn tossed in an EMP grenade. There was a flash of light and a sizzle of electricity within the cockpit. The drivers groaned and slumped over the controls.
"Clear!" Finn called. He dropped into the crew compartment and pushed the drivers aside, taking the helm. A brown, six-eyed Azumel took the seat beside him.
Finn shouted "Load up!" as he pushed a button. Panels on the sides of the walker slid open. More freedom fighters rappelled into the cavity. A crowd of armed citizens poured out of the alleys to escort the great durasteel beast as it knocked aside the tank and began to slowly walk up the boulevard.
A pair of TIE Daggers zipped around a corner and headed towards the commandeered AT-AT. Finn opened fire with the heavy laser cannons set on either side of the walker's head. His first few shots went wide, but he then scored a direct hit, blowing one TIE out of the sky. The other fighter screamed forward. It fired wildly, hitting the walker, but the machine's thick armor plating held. Finn aimed carefully and depressed the firing stud. A crimson beam clipped one of the blade-shaped wings of the TIE, which veered off course and crashed onto the street.
The crowd roared and marched forward.
The AT-AT turned the corner onto Imperial Boulevard, heading towards Monument Plaza. Inside, Finn stoked revolt via a loudspeaker on the roof, hooked up to the walker's comm system. "We will no longer live in silence! Gather your weapons! Rise up! Strike back!"
A golden droid wandered among the cheering revolutionaries, unsure as to how he got here. Finn squinted out the window at him. "Threepio?"
Finn climbed halfway out of the hatch for a better look. Suddenly, he was yanked upwards through the opening and thrown onto the back of the walker. Above him stood a mechtrooper, the grilled gray mask resembling a face with bared teeth. The mechtrooper stepped forward heavily, whirring noises coming from the servomotors that powered his metal exoskeleton.
Finn picked himself up, spreading his legs for balance atop the moving walker. He struck at the trooper with the edge of his hand, aiming for the unarmored neck. The mechtrooper blocked the attack with a raised arm. Finn threw a punch, but hit the metal breastplate. The trooper didn't even flinch, but pain shot up Finn's left arm. He groaned, cradling his injured hand.
The mechtrooper raised his right fist with a mechanical whine. Finn dodged the first punch, but the trooper's other hand pistoned out, hitting him in the stomach. The Resistance fighter fell backwards, then jerked his head aside as the trooper bent over him and lashed out, his Beskar gauntlets leaving dents in the durasteel armor covering the AT-AT.
Finn scrambled away and got up, then charged the mechtrooper, tackling him. They both fell down, grappling with each other, and rolled off the edge of the walker, dropping twenty meters. The mechtrooper's back slammed against the road, Finn atop him. The Final Order soldier kept fighting, apparently unharmed.
Finn had managed to get a hand around the mechtrooper's throat when he heard a shriek of metal behind him. One of the walker's feet was raised, about to step on them. They rolled away just as the metal appendage crashed down where they had been a moment ago.
The mechtrooper threw Finn off of himself. Finn regained his feet and stumbled away. A burly Coruscanti Resistance fighter came up behind the mechtrooper. He slammed a spade down on the helmet, which rang dully. The mechtrooper turned his head slightly to face the man. Then a metal-clad arm whipped around like a crane, sweeping him off his feet and throwing him back several meters.
Finn had reached the side of a building. He picked up a large piece of the crumbling plascrete wall, durasteel rebar sticking jaggedly out of its edges, and carried it heavily towards the mechtrooper. The trooper was grabbing a blaster rifle off the ground when Finn brought the fragment of wall down on his head. It exploded, showering both the combatants in dust and chunks of plascrete. The metal rebar fell onto the street, clinking lamely.
The mechtrooper's actuators hummed as he grabbed Finn's shirtfront and slammed him to the ground. Finn cried out as a heavy boot came down on his chest. The trooper aimed the blaster at his heart. "Last words, FN-2187?" he growled.
Finn spat at him. The metal-clad finger tightened on the trigger. A single blaster shot rang out.
The mechtrooper pitched sideways and clattered face-down against the pavement in a heap of armored limbs, a smoking hole in the back of his neck.
Finn looked up at a unit of Stormtroopers. The leader took off her helmet and smiled at him, revealing an interesting gap in her teeth. It was JN-1719. She extended her hand to Finn. He took it, letting her pull him to his feet.
JN-1719 handed him a blaster. "I've got a name," she said. "Jannah."
"I like it," Finn said.
"And I've got something to fight for," she said, pointing her thumb at the soldiers behind her. The Stormtroopers took off the white helmets and threw them aside, their faces at last exposed to the fresh air and clear light of freedom.
Armitage Hux paced impatiently in the corridor outside the interrogation chamber. Screams of pain came from the next room, in between the sounds of metal armatures humming as they poked and prodded, delivering jabs and electric shocks. The woman had been frustratingly unforthcoming. Perhaps Sellik had been right and this was a waste of time.
As though Hux's thoughts of the older officer had summoned him, Commander Sellik appeared around a corner and walked up to Hux, his face grim. "Chancellor. There's been an insurrection, right here in Core Square. Word has spread to other districts."
"Decimate them."
"Sir…the leader is a former FN unit."
"Two-one-eight-seven?"
"Yes sir," affirmed Sellik. "He was aided by a regiment of our own."
Hux twitched. "Impossible."
"We're dispatching additional units to address the revolt."
"No. No. Recall the FN units from active duty. Tell all Stormtrooper battalions to hold their positions and not engage with the enemy."
"Sir?" Sellik asked, unsure if he was interpreting his superior right.
"If there is a flaw in their programming, we must correct it. Convene a meeting of the Supreme Council. Make sure General Engell is there; I want to speak to her especially."
General Kaydel Ko Connix had been busier than ever since ascending to her new position as head of the Resistance army, but she still occasionally found a moment to monitor comms chatter, as she had so often as an operations controller. Since the First Order had draped their curtain of silence over the galaxy, she usually heard only static and gave up after a minute or two of scanning random frequencies. What she heard now, however, almost made her shout for joy. She stabbed at the recording button and then ripped her headphones off.
Poe looked away from a galactic map being projected by a holotable as Connix rushed up to him. "I just heard a message from a Final Order transmitter," she blurted. "Finn is alive. He has an army ready to storm the Capitol. They need reinforcements."
"Call an all-hands meeting," Poe ordered. "Now."
The Supreme Council was a group of twelve high-ranking officers, formed by Kylo Ren to run the First Order while he pursued other interests. It was often fractious, rife with political maneuvering and petty squabbles; but even after Snoke's return, it had proven useful as a way to coordinate the Final Order's staggeringly complex bureaucracy.
Chancellor Hux sat at the head of the long black table in the war room, the morning light streaming through the window behind him giving his hair a fiery glow. Commander Sellik was to Hux's right. Despite not being a formal part of the council, his decades of experience in both First Order and Empire had granted him a de facto position on it. Six other officials, those stationed on Coruscant or passing through between postings, were physically present. Another handful, assigned far from the Core to occupy worlds, quell rebellions, or hunt Resistance cells, appeared via hologram. A few aides stood at the periphery of the room.
"There has been an uprising here on Coruscant," Hux began.
General Bellava Parnadee scowled at him. "Then why haven't you put it down? I have important work to do."
"I know of your hatred for wasted time, General," Hux replied to her frostily. "I called all of you together because it has come to my attention that the rebels are being led by a former Stormtrooper. Eff-en-two-one-eight-seven."
"So?" scoffed General Domaric Quinn, a middle-aged man with a receding hairline. "He's just one soldier."
"He is also being aided by troopers of the 248th and 474th battalions." Hux let this sink in and then continued, "If their conditioning is faulty, we must find the error and eliminate it. General Engel?"
The attention of the room turned on a pale, lined face. "FN-2187's betrayal occurred during Captain Phasma's oversight of Stormtrooper training, not mine," its owner said anxiously. "I am certain we can recondition any defective troops."
The holographic form of aged Admiral Notir, displaying his exasperating tendency to restate another person's speech before adding to it, meandered ponderously, "I agree with you, Amrett, and am quite confident in both your talents, and that these troops' loyalty can, probably, be regained—no doubt of that, in fact; but why, if I may be so bold as to ask of you, or for that matter the council as a whole, is their programming failing in the first place?"
"You say they are being led by a former Stormtrooper. Perhaps he has isolated the cause of his own programming defect, and has turned it into a memetic trigger that breaks through other troopers' conditioning," suggested Doctor Fridolf Klinzer, head of the Department of Military Research.
Notir and several of the other officers nodded sagely, pretending to understand. General Parnadee was having none of it. "Explain."
"In short, I suspect that certain external stimuli make the Stormtrooper programming prone to failure. The exact nature of the infectious idiom could be anything; a phrase, an image, a sound, a smell…"
Parnadee made a circling motion with her index finger in a 'get on with it' gesture.
The scientist continued, "If my theory is correct, we can probably reduce any further spread of the memetic agent by restricting Stormtroopers from communicating with anyone but their immediate superiors."
"But then our troops' tactical coordination will be shot to hell!" General Kruvcha shouted, attempting to bang his holographic fist on the table.
"If Dr. Klinzer is right, we only need to take such drastic measures on Coruscant," said Sellik coolly. "I suggest troopers only be allowed to have contact with their superiors and their squad-mates."
General Amrett Engel muttered, "I still don't think there are any programming flaws."
"I agree with Sellik's proposal," Hux said, talking past her. "However, we must be prepared for the possibility that more of our Stormtroopers turn against us. I believe we should deploy the Sith troopers."
"Those zealots? They're practically a cult. Conjurers and soothsayers. Pffah. We don't need their kind," General Quinn said scornfully.
Hux found relying on Snoke's personal legion distasteful himself, but knew it would be dangerous to admit it, something the hard-headed skeptic Quinn seemed not to understand. Instead, he remarked pointedly, "Perhaps fanaticism is all that inspires loyalty anymore."
Admiral Frantis Griss said, "I agree with Hux." A few of the other councillors nodded. Quinn looked around the room, saw that he was outnumbered, and decided not to press the issue.
"We are decided then," said Hux, standing up. "We shall impose an inter-unit comms ban immediately, and reinforce our regulars with the Sith Eternal forces."
"Wait," someone said quietly from the back of the room. Silence fell as everyone looked at the speaker, who was sitting placidly at a corner of the table, on the other end from Hux. He seldom actively engaged in the combative council meetings, and most (but not all) of the other officers tended to forget he was even there. He was easy to miss, being a short, bland-looking person dressed in an off-white uniform, with oddly indistinct features and colourless hair. Nevertheless, one look into the piercing black pupils of his wide white eyes were enough to convince anyone that the man missed nothing. This was Admiral Min M. Illuv, chief of the Final Order Security Bureau.
"You say this…insurrection…is led by FN-2187," he said. The others had to strain to hear his small, dried-up voice. "Why don't we just…kill him?"
There was a slight murmur from a few of the others. Hux said as lightly as he could, "If one of your agents can do the job, I am not opposed to your making the attempt."
Illuv did not smile, but the barest hint of a curl touched the edge of his thin lips. "Good."
The Resistance had gathered once more under the Tantive IV, with Poe now the main focus of attention.
"Finn has started an uprising on Coruscant," he briefed the assembled personnel. "He has an army on the ground, both Coruscanti citizens and Stormtrooper defectors. They're on Imperial Boulevard, just a few hundred meters from the Capitol."
Major Ranch, the second-in-command of the Engineering Corps, asked, "Any sign of Commander Tico?"
"We haven't heard much beyond rumors," Poe said. "But Finn is alive. We need to put our pilots in the sky and our troops on the ground, and back him up. This is what we've been waiting for. If we take the Capitol, we can destroy that jammer and call the whole galaxy to war."
Commander D'Acy frowned. "All we have is what's on this moon. You can't win a war with a hundred pilots."
"Plus one," said Poe.
C'ai Threnalli, Poe's Abednedo wingman, said something in his low-pitched language.
"Sorry, plus two."
BB-8 beeped.
"Okay, I get it," Poe said. "Anyway, that's where Lando and Chewie come in. They've taken the Falcon to the Outer Rim to gather forces."
"We've run the numbers. The way those Star Destroyers have been modified, hitting the cannons is likely to ignite the main reactors," said Ranch.
A pilot named Wrobie Tyce asked, "So how do we get through the ships' shields?"
"We need to pull some Holdo maneuvers," Beaumont Kin urged. "Do some real damage." Aftab Ackbar, who was standing next to him, nodded.
"Come on, that move is one in a million," said Poe. "Fighters and freighters can take out their cannons if there are enough of us. We'll be backed up by the Rebel Eclipse."
"Eakkay duga raygae kah!" Nien Nunb protested.
General Connix agreed, "He's right. We'd be no more than bugs to them."
"The Final Order is relentless," said Larma D'Acy, shaking her head. "They'll kill millions. We've all seen it before. It's too reckless."
"Resistance is reckless! Passion is the greatest weapon we have! This is our best shot at ending the war. We can not throw it away," Poe argued.
"Passion is not a viable strategy," D'Acy shot back. "It's taken us three years to rebuild to where we were before we evacuated D'Qar. You remember Crait as well as I do. What if no one answers our call?"
"Then the war for hearts and minds is already lost. But I don't believe it is. We've got friends out there. They'll come if they know there's hope."
The crowd murmured, unconvinced.
"They will. The First Order wins by making us think we're alone." Poe shook his head. "We're not alone. Good people will fight if we lead them. Leia never gave up. And neither will we."
Poe looked at Larma D'Acy, Nien Nunb, and the other veterans of the last war. "The Rebels fought the Empire and won. You showed us it could be done. But that was your war. This one's ours. Let us fight it."
He turned to the younger Resistance members; Kaydel Connix, Snap Wexley, Aftab Ackbar, and dozens of others ready to give their all for freedom. "What our mothers and fathers fought for, we will not let die. Not today. Today, we make our last stand. For the galaxy. For Ackbar. For Holdo. For Ematt. For Leia. And for everyone else we've lost.
"Finn and Rose have already lit the beacon-fire. We just need to burn the First Order down. I won't force anyone to fight, but I'm going to Coruscant. Who's with me?"
Snap's hand shot into the air, followed in short order by Threnalli's, Kin's, Ackbar's, and those of most of the other pilots and troopers. Nien Nunb put up a gloved hand a moment later. Connix calmly stared into the distance, then raised her hand beside her head as though she were taking an oath.
The eyes of everyone who was still undecided fell on Larma D'Acy. She glanced behind her at her wife, Wrobie Tyce, who had her hand in the air. Wrobie gave an apologetic smile. D'Acy reluctantly raised her hand. "I guess we're all with you."
Poe said, satisfied but serious, "Good. Ready all weapons and attack ships. This is a full assault."
The Resistance base was soon full of people rushing to and fro. Engineers refueled the Tantive IV and pulled up the ladder leading into the ship as steam billowed out from its cooling system. Glide rovers buzzed about, carrying fuel and supplies. Outside, pilots and soldiers hugged or kissed their relatives, loved ones, or friends. An engineers gave a thumbs-up to a pilot in a jungle X-hopper. Starfighter engines coughed and spat sparks, or hummed smoothly to life. Cranes lowered astromech droids into their sockets aboard fighters or bombers. Ground controllers waved poles with green and red lights.
A ground crew member tossed Snap Wexley his helmet. The pilot in turn tossed a brown bag to a mechanic working on an A-Wing, who took it and ran to another ship. Snap kissed his wife, Karé Kun, goodbye, before they both headed for their X-Wings.
Aboard the Rebel Eclipse, Resistance soldiers marched into Atmospheric Assault Landers, carrying bundles and crates of extra weapons, ammunition, and ordnance with them. Assault Tanks rolled into the cargo holds of massive heavy transports. Dropships were readied, walkers depending from them like clothing hanging from racks.
Poe Dameron stood in the midst of the bustle, mentally preparing himself for the battle ahead and the greatly increased responsibility he would bear for the fate of the Resistance. He didn't even see the Lieutenant walking towards him until the trim young man was a meter away.
"Sir, we're receiving a message from a single starfighter requesting clearance to land. It's an old craft ID. The computer registers it as…Luke Skywalker?"
The X-Wing landed in the clearing and was immediately swarmed by technicians and engineers. The ship's pilot removed a battered flight helmet decorated with red starbirds.
Poe approached the ship, BB-8 trailing along behind him. "Rey?" he called. "Rey!"
"Poe!" Rey scrambled out of the starfighter and ran towards him. They fell into each other's arms.
"Rey, I'm so glad you're all right, I was so worried—" Poe broke off, his breathing ragged. "Leia—she—"
"I know," said Rey, looking up at him.
"Rey, I—I was being selfish earlier, by demanding to stay with you. I realize now that we needed to be in different places."
"It's all right," Rey said quietly. "I'm sorry for mind tricking you. It was wrong. Forgive me?"
Poe smiled slightly. "Always."
Rey buried her face in Poe's shoulder. The astromech at their feet beeped cheerily. They held each other for an all too brief moment, then Rey pushed Poe away slightly and said, "I need to defeat Snoke."
"Finn's on Coruscant with an army," said Poe. He waved his arm at the ordered tumult around them. "We're going to help him take the Capitol."
"Coruscant," Rey said. "That's where I'm going."
"Then we go together."
The Tantive IV launched from the hangar of the Resistance base, tree branches bending as it passed through the canopy. Starfighters and transport haulers rose out of the forest and coalesced around the corvette. Then the Rebel Eclipse lifted off the ground, looking like a marble mountain that had came loose from the moon. The smaller ships swarmed into the vast dreadnought's hangars as it lumbered skyward.
Like the ripples from a rock thrown into a lake, the actions of two droids, a brave mechanic, and a once-nameless former Stormtrooper reverberate across the galaxy. As the Resistance and the last Jedi race towards Coruscant aboard the Rebel Eclipse, so does the starfighter of the sole surviving descendent of Anakin Skywalker; both on their way to the final battle between freedom and tyranny, Resistance and Final Order…Jedi and Sith.