Chapter 6 - Belly of the Beast

Centaxday, Nelona 2nd

Outskirts of the Jakku system

Resurgent-Class Star Destroyer Ravager

When he heard the unmistakable metallic sound of landing gears touching down on a hard platform along with the sudden hiss of decompressing air, Poe's stomach dropped. He had a feeling he knew where he was and when the ramp to their transport fell to the floor, that much was confirmed.

"Move it."

The Troopers either side of him pushed him roughly by the shoulder and he stumbled onto the flight deck. When he did, though, his eyes went wide. All around him was the bowels of a next generation Star Destroyer, probably a Battlecruiser based on the size of its hangar. It had been over twenty years since the New Republic had even an inkling to the technological advancements the Imperial Remnants had been cooking up and here it showed.

He felt a rough hand on his shoulder and he instinctively shook away. A blaster rifle came up to his face and he held up his restrained hands, chuckling with a wry smile, "I got nowhere to go, buckethead. So you might as well relax."

"Funny," the Trooper growled, "move."

He was shoved roughly and he started walking. That of course didn't stop him from taking mental notes. What immediately surprised him was the number of droids walking around. Of course, there were plenty of personnel dressed in navy gray uniforms performing various tasks, but the droids outnumbered them three to one in that regard. The droids in question looked like upgraded B-1's, adorned in black and red markings.

That made him wonder why. Did the First Order lack the necessary bodies to man their ships, so made up the difference with droids? That probably explained their use of droid fighters, but where did the get the resources out in the Unknown Regions?

Another odd quirk he picked up were the officers, distinguished from the other ship crew with their black trousers and white blouses. They spoke with over-pronounced Coruscanti accents that reminded him of the planet's upper political echelon. Even the Stormtroopers spoke vaguely urban sounding Coruscanti, with even a variety to them.

He chuckled at those revelations. Even after getting kicked from Coruscant, the Imperials still kept up their aristocratic traditions, right down to creating a social divide between officers and soldiers. Some things never change. He ended up eating his words by what he saw next.

"You've gotta be kidding me," he whispered at the sight of next-gen TIE Defenders lining the walkway. Poe shook his head at the sight of the six winged craft perched like birds of prey. The Defender program had been the boogeyman of his academy days. The brainchild of the infamous Grand Admiral Thrawn early in the days of the Rebellion, these fighters were a match, sometimes even superior to the X-Wing.

He remembered the program had been shut down due to Rebel sabotage, mounting production costs, and of course the fact that Thrawn had been mysteriously reassigned to the Unknown Regions to deal with some crisis. The details of which were still classified to his paygrade. And yet, here they were again, and that made him wonder how.

He was shoved along, giving him a chance to observe the craft in more detail. He noticed then that there were two variants, painted black and white with crimson flight marks. There was the stock version, similar to the old TIE/D. However, the second was longer and bulkier, with an expanded cockpit. He craned his head, noticing an underslung blaster cannon connected by a giro, all pointed backwards. Combined with a number of cameras likewise pointed that way, he suspected these modifications were meant for a secondary gunner.

'Although if that be the case,' Poe thought, 'at what cost?'

He then turned to his left and across the massive hangar was yet another railway, this time for a line of bomber Poe had only ever seen the blueprints for during Flight School. The TIE/Pn or Punisher was an advanced variant of the TIE-Bomber, with additional missile and bomb pods, and what he suspected to be a shield generator.

Poe shuddered at the thought of them in action, and part of him was glad that they hadn't been deployed en mass to Jakku. He had already seen the gruesome work of similar bomber craft in both the Outer Rim and the Antiga system. Poe could only laugh as he was led further into the depths of the Ravager.

'What other toys are these guys packing?' He thought to himself as the door shut behind him with a hiss.

Phasma hadn't spoken a word on the ride back, the empty seats making up half the dropship haunting her. Echo-Two-One hadn't been the only unit to receive casualties. Echo-Two-Three had being wiped out to a man, and every fireteam had suffered a casualty. It wasn't particularly singular, but every death weighed heavily on her mind. In retrospect, the casualty projection for the assault had been considerably higher, but even these many was hard.

However, the situation of FN-2187, or Eighty-Seven as his men called… had called him, was unique in a morbid sense. Though others had died, their squads were still relatively intact with brothers alive to aid in the grieving process.

Phasma cursed softly. Those who claimed that the bondness of her Troopers and the subsequent grieving for lost comrades was a weakness, were fools. She had learned long ago that family was everything. You could lose everything, but you still had family. You still had the tribe.

Phasma sighed wearily as she looked down at the Trooper in question, seated across from her with his head hung low. She knew what it meant to be the last of her tribe. To know the feeling of… powerlessness, as the ones you know were stripped away one after the other.

She knew all too well.

"Making touchdown," the pilot responded over the comm., "welcome home, Troopers."

The ramp hiss open as it clangged to the floor, and the Troopers departed. Phasma was the last to leave. Eighty Seven hadn't moved when the others had departed. Instead, he continued to wallow in sorrow, holding his head in his hands.

"FN-2187."

The Trooper looked up, the bloody handprint shining brightly against the hangar backdrop. Phasma stared at him for a long moment before she commanded, "Take off your helmet, Trooper."

Eighty-Seven did not immediately respond to the order. Any other time, such disobedience would've received an immediate snap of her voice. Instead, she calmly repeated the command, "Take off your helmet, Trooper."

Eighty-Seven stared at her again before nodding somberly. When he removed the helm, she could clearly see his stained cheeks. His eyes averted downward, his silence telling. She shook her head softly, and with a subtle hiss, revealed the face many in the Corps regarded as Mother.

"Eighty-Seven," the name caught the Troopers attention, "I read your platoon leaders reports. There was nothing you could've done differently. You did your job the best any could."

"My men…" Eighty-Seven whispered, a noticeable strain upon his voice as he coughed to regain it, "my men are dead and I'm not."

Phasma closed her eyes. She could see it. The young girl of 16 left in a radioactive desert, her family in graves before her.

"I should've died with them," Eighty-Seven uttered almost at the moment she herself remembered saying those same words all those years ago.

"No," she shook her head, "there is no need to waste another life, Trooper. Especially not yours."

"I failed them, ma'am. I promised to get them out alive, and I failed them."

"And you would fail them if you died needlessly."

He didn't respond. He just continued to stare at the floor as though it were alive. She sighed, taking a seat next to the younger man, staring at the same floor. "I know what it's like."

He looked her way and she continued. "To have everything you know, everything you grew comfortable with just… disappears. That the memory you carry stings until it becomes venom in your soul."

He continued to stare at her, his expression unreadable. She shook her head. "And one day, you end up catching yourself wishing that none of it ever existed, so that you would be spared the burden of carrying it."

She sighed, closing her eyes as her head drooped. "It never gets easier. It just becomes something else."

They sat in the silence of the craft for a long length. They might have even sat for hours if not for the flight crew coming in to make repairs. As the two of them rose and returned their helms, the Captain took him by the shoulder.

"I'm putting you on reserve status until I determine you're fit for active duty again."

"You're sending me back," Eighty-Seven's voice rang hollow, "to the Colonies?"

She nodded. "However, I want you to report to Psych-Aid at 1500 hours tomorrow for evaluation. Until then, get some rest," she patted his shoulder comfortingly and turned to head back for her own debriefing, "take as much time as you need."

"Ma'am?"

She stopped and turned, "Yes, Trooper?"

"The pilot we captured… what's going to happen to him?"

"The same as all our enemies. Interrogated for information and disposed of at a later date."

Eighty-Seven's stare, even behind the helmet, was unusual. One that she didn't fully understand in the moment. She smiled slightly though.

"Do not worry about such matters, Trooper. Rest," she about faced and continued her march, calling in her comm, "justice will come to him soon enough."

Back on the planet, dawn rose over the horizon as BB-8 ascended the hill, overlooking the previous night's slaughter. Smoke rose from the center in oily blacks and grays, the remains of the homes and buildings scorched into rubble like tombstones. The signs of war lay heavy and all the droid could do was close his eye and shake his head.

Part of him hadn't wanted to come back; to just keep running into the desert and maybe find a way off world. But he couldn't do it. He couldn't run knowing that his friend might still be out there looking for him. He also knew that if he did come back, there was a chance that he might not like what he would find.

He eventually made the decision to turn around and come back. Now, he needed to follow through. He rose somberly from his spot and made his way down to the center of the village, where piles and piles of bodies had been tossed into a bonfire. Grimly, he began scanning them, quickly detecting that they'd been shot first before being burned.

'They wanted to hide the evidence,' he quietly concluded, 'or at least delay its discovery.'

He pulled up Poe's medical file. Facial identification was impossible now, so he would have to do a dental examination. He popped his skeletal arms and began the minutes long process. He was glad he was organic; he was sure the process would've made him sick if he was. But in the end, he was relieved when he finished. Poe wasn't in the pile.

In fact, most of the men were John Doe's with no known medical records. He supposed that was a bit of a tragedy, the men dying nameless. Suddenly, a fresh identification came to his processors and he spun around.

'The old man.'

He hovered over the remains, his examination indicating that he'd been killed by a penetration to the chest cavity. What was odd was that it had an exit wound in direct line with the entry wound, and both had been seared by a heat greater than the fire that had cooked the body. Greater even that a blaster burn. There was only one weapon on his medical records that had those kinds of characteristics, and the thought made him shudder.

Was it irony that Lor San had been practically skewered by the weapon of a Jedi? He didn't know and he didn't care. He gave a final glance to the old man, nodded solemnly and moved on. He still had to find Poe, and time wasn't on his side.

For the next several minutes, he searched every nook and cranny, piling over stone and ruin but finding nothing. Hopelessness crept into his mind, and BB-8 considered turning around and getting out of this pit before he found himself joining the dead. However, there was one more section of the village he hadn't checked, and this had more promising results.

There was an adobe house on the far side of the village with eight foot holes in the walls. They hadn't been made by blaster fire, but instead had been made by blunt force.

Doors were invented for a reason, but no!' BB-8 griped as he moved inside, 'We have to go and smash through walls like that giant pitcher from the drink commercials.'

Inside were signs of a battle with blaster burns everywhere but no bodies. He was about to turn around when he saw something glinting in the sunlight. His eye widened as he realized what it was. He carefully plucked it up, staring at it for a long moment. He had never held a lightsaber before, so he figured for being curious.

He held it in both hands and ignited it. The cobalt blade burned like the brightest flame, and BB-8 almost dropped it out of fright. But he held it, feeling a kind of wonder as he stared into the flame. After a moment, he deactivated it and stored it safely inside his internal compartments. It didn't feel right leaving it here.

He quickly made his way out of the village, coming to the conclusion that Poe had been taken by the enemy. There was nothing left for him to do then but complete the mission. He might not see his friend again, but he would ensure that his sacrifice would not be in vain. As the sun rose in the east, BB-8 set out for what lay beyond in the miles of shifting scarlet sand.