Rey took a small, careful pace towards the door. This whole escapade had unquestionably been a mistake, and now she had to extricate herself from the situation as quickly as possible, and live long enough to hear Poe saying, 'I told you so'.

'He can't be alive.' The best way to deal with this was going to be calmly, using reason and logic. 'Look at the mask, Ben. It's melted. Luke said he burnt the body. He wouldn't have lied about something like that.'

'My uncle would have lied about anything.' There was a snarl in his voice and Rey kicked herself for mentioning Luke in the first place.

'Then how do you know that the visions that thing is showing you are the truth?'

'You know nothing of the dark side. It never lies. My grandfather promised me power, and now I rule the galaxy.'

'Your grandfather also promised you me, with a bellyful of children but you don't have that, do you?'

Something in his expression shifted. 'Not yet.'

Rey took a very large pace backwards, less carefully.

'And how do you even know that it's your grandfather showing you these visions? Anyone could have set up that mask as a holocron and just waited for you to find it. What about Snoke? Maybe it was him?'

'I didn't see Darth Vader until Snoke was dead. My grandfather speaks to me. He shows me my destiny.'

'Then why haven't you done anything about it?' she countered. 'If you've been seeing that vision for a year why haven't you found him yet?'

Something more sensible returned to his expression and the waves of triumph pouring off him receded slightly. 'I had…doubts,' he admitted. His gaze shifted slightly to the right and he focused on something past her shoulder. 'I thought it might be wish fulfilment – that I was just seeing what I wanted to see, but you...' His attention sharpened on her again. 'You see it too.'

There was something like gratitude in his tone, relief possibly, but Rey's mind was spinning over connections, weaving conclusions from the threads.

'And I'm the only one who can, aren't I? You killed Snoke, you couldn't ask him about the mask and there aren't any other dark side users as far as I know. Your uncle is dead, we've been hiding Leia too well over the last year to make sure you couldn't get to her and now she's dead too, which just leaves me. You needed me.' She caught her breath. 'More than that. You needed me here and you needed me compliant, not fighting you. And you thought that if I felt sorry for you I might be more willing to help.'

She put more distance between them. 'So, you pretended. You faked being upset about your mother's death. I thought you'd been crying but you were manipulating me all along. You just wanted me here so I could help you confirm this mad idea about your grandfather. This has nothing to do with Leia at all.'

She'd made it to the door now, took a deep breath in preparation for delivering her parting blow but he barely seemed to notice, caressing the outline of the mask with a fingertip.

'Make sure you have your lightsaber ready next time I see you.'

She commed the Resistance the minute she was outside the ship, ploughing a path through the storm in the direction of the clearing and Leia's body. 'Bring the transport, I'm done here.' Behind her, the command shuttle blazed into life, the rumble of firing engines drowning out the rain. 'And pick me up at the grave site, he'll be gone by the time you arrive.'

Poe's answering hail was cheerfully smug. 'And how did it go?'

She sighed. 'You were right. It was a mistake.'

Rey had to ask the question twice before she could quite comprehend the stupidity of the answer. 'Say that again – where are you having the funeral?'

Rose shot her a look from under artfully arranged hair, that seemed to have become both curlier and glossier since Rey had seen her on the graveside transport the previous night. 'Naboo. The General's ancestral home.'

'She's right you know.' Lieutenant Connix chirped from the navigator's chair. 'The General's mother was a queen. Her birth mother anyway. She met a Jedi and fell in love. Leia told me the story once, it was all very romantic.'

Rey was almost certain that Kaydel had ignored the most salient parts of that story but now was not the time to correct her. 'We are on our way to Naboo, to hold a secret funeral right in the middle of a First Order territory? Whose bright idea was this?'

'All the bright ideas are mine,' breezed Poe, unconcerned. 'Think about it, Rey. The Festival of Light has just started, it's a massive celebration, thousands of visitors milling about, the First Order completely overwhelmed trying to boss them all around. Where better to host a major gathering than in the middle of a major gathering? No one is going to question our guests, or us. We're hiding in plain sight.'

'If I remember right, the Festival of Light was supposed to celebrate Naboo joining the Galactic Republic. Are you sure it's even still happening?'

The transport dropped out of hyperspace and they immediately hit traffic, following the instructions of a stressed official squawking over the comms relay to the back of a very large queue for the temporary docking bays ringing the planet. From somewhere down below a rogue firework spiralled into a dramatic explosion of star shaped sparks.

'I'm sure. Stop worrying and let me handle it.' Poe tugged down the edge of his smartest jacket, turning to catch his reflection in the cockpit window.

Rey turned back to Rose. 'And what's the plan after we park the transport and ship the coffin down to the surface? What do you want me to do?'

Rose consulted her pad with a studious expression. 'We'll arrive in the capital together, but its best if everyone splits up straightaway. I don't want to attract any more attention than strictly necessary, no matter what General Dameron says. We're not due at the Theed Funeral Temple until early afternoon so I suggest you mingle. Go shopping. Take a boat trip on the Solleu. Look inconspicuous.'

Rey glanced down at the full set of white Jedi robes she'd been convinced into wearing for the second day in a row and wondered if inconspicuous was going to be possible.

Rose continued. 'When we get to the ceremony you don't have to make a speech or anything, we've got that covered, but I need you sitting on the stage where everyone can see you and later at the wake you might have to socialise a bit. Chat to people, let them see the lightsaber. Our supporters need to know we have a Jedi on our side, it's good for morale.'

After a complete year of being used as a one woman publicity campaign, Rey wasn't surprised by her role in proceedings. Rebuilding the Resistance after the disaster on Crait hadn't been easy, and she'd seen first-hand just how effective a display of mythical power could be at loosening purse strings and softening hearts and minds, but while she did her best, Rey was not a natural diplomat. She'd found herself envying the solitude that Luke had found on his island on more than one occasion.

So when the Resistance leadership stepped off the surface transportation in the middle of Theed, she wasted no time in disappearing into the crowd. And what a crowd it was. Both sides of the river were heaving with people, the wide boulevards thronged with revellers out to shop at one of the innumerable market stalls, sample something new from a street vendor's wares, gawk at the pleasure yachts and cruisers zipping up and down the water. The air buzzed with conversation, the lilting strains of orchestras positioned at strategic intervals drifted through the breeze and under everything wafted the strong scent of flowers.

But there was a brittleness to the atmosphere that the festivities couldn't quite disguise, and Rey didn't miss the subtle signals suggesting that not everything was quite as it appeared. First Order livery was everywhere, on banners fluttering from lampposts, projected onto the side of buildings, worn as insignia on the sleeves of the guards. Stormtroopers had been stationed at every street corner and formed up into ranks in the main squares but they seemed to be under orders to watch, content that their simple presence would stop the population from revolting.

Rey browsed through the jewellery market, poking at a trinket, weighing up a bracelet in the palm of her hand. She was only killing time but the more she wandered the more she noticed the looks she was getting. One trader plucked a ring out of her grasp just as she was about to try it on, glowering at Rey until she walked away, confused. At the next stall she was met with a curt, 'There's nothing for you here,' from the stall holder. At the next someone pulled curtains over the merchandise when they saw her approach, then turned their back at her polite 'Good afternoon.'

'People here have long memories,' said a voice at her back and Rey turned to find an Abednedo trader standing, arms crossed at the side of a stall she was about to pass. 'You're a Jedi, aren't you?'

She smiled at him, and he waved his mouth tendrils at her in a way that was probably meant to be friendly. 'Is it so obvious?'

'Lightsaber pretty much gives it away,' he remarked, nodding at the weapon on her hip. 'I thought all the Jedi were dead.'

'I'm the only one left now.'

'Sounds lonely,' he replied with a sympathetic frown. 'And these idiots aren't helping.' He nodded at his fellow merchants who had gone into a huddle across the way and were whispering urgently.

'What have they got against the Jedi?'

'Like I said, long memories. Jedi came here once, and not long after there was a war and their favourite queen got killed. They still hold memorials sometimes.'

'I know the story.'

'Then let me give you something to remember her by. Have this, it's a big seller, especially now that the First Order are in charge.' He held out a necklace engraved with a curling symbol that might have been a bird with outstretched wings, or a stylised flower. 'The crest of the Royal House of Naboo. The queen wore it. Maybe you can wear it at her daughter's funeral.'

Rey smiled at him. 'Won't you be in trouble with them?' She nodded at the collection of merchants, who were now giving her distinctly hostile stares from across the street.

His mouth made a brushing away gesture. 'It's not their fault. Everyone is on edge. The Festival is a third the size it used to be before the military came, and you need the First Order's approval for everything – the music, the speeches, even the fireworks. You can't say anything to anyone without worrying they're being paid to pass information to the authorities - anybody caught speaking to a Jedi would certainly be facing interrogation at the very least. Maybe even prison.'

'I didn't mean to cause you any trouble.'

'You haven't. I have a long memory too, and I remember when the Jedi fought bullies like this new emperor.'

'I have every intention of fighting him the next chance I get.'

Rey twisted the necklace between her fingers as she sat on the raised platform and listened to the eulogies. The funeral was packed – the original hall that Rose had booked had run out of capacity very early on and the whole event had been moved to the largest chamber in the funerary complex, with some attendees still standing outside. More than a few people were crying, although others sang and laughed, or danced, according to the respective customs of their homeworlds.

The service had now reached the part where mourners could share their stories and a small queue had formed to the side of the stage. Rey didn't know the man currently regaling the audience with an amusing anecdote about the time he had first met Leia at somewhere called Cloud City but then the General had had a network of contacts that spread amongst the stars, even though most of them had ignored her in her hour of need. The nasty part of Rey's mind kept suggesting that most of these people were here out of guilt, having abandoned the Resistance to a lonely death on Crait and then been caught out to find it was still alive and kicking after all.

'Rey, I need you.' Finn was working the control room, scanning for First Order activity outside the funeral, standing ready to signal the mourners to flee should they come too close.

Rey touched the communicator in her ear, conscious of the audience. 'Do we have company?'

'No. But there's a broadcast from the mole coming in as a live stream. You need to see it.'

With as much decorum as she could manage, Rey exited stage left, passing through a network of corridors into the mobile data centre that Rose had patched into the central Naboo surveillance network. Communications from the mole were always unexpected, and almost always incredibly useful. Whoever he or she was they had made initial contact while the Falcon had still been drifting through space, desperately in search of a safe harbour after the loss of Luke, and that very first message - although nothing more than a set of co-ordinates and the signature 'from a friend' - had started the fight back.

Of course, there had been furious arguments around whether or not the message could be trusted but Leia reasoned that it must be one of her old contacts reaching out privately having received the broadcast from her personal code. Whoever their new friend was, they were very well informed, because the co-ordinates led to a disused First Order supply facility with enough obsolete but functional weaponry to restock an army twice the size of the Resistance. There was also most of a griffin class light shuttle which Rose spent several weeks repairing, at which point it was packed full of explosives also provided by the base and then remotely piloted close enough to the Order's frigate Galactic Conqueror to blow a catastrophic hole in its side.

Then there was the coronation plot, Poe's daring plan to put the Resistance back on the map. With the detailed location of the Supreme Leader helpfully supplied by the mole, Poe was able to co-ordinate a covert mission in which the programming of various service droids was compromised. As a result, Kylo Ren been attacked in his rooms moments before the ceremony by a detonating floor sweeper droid. The burns on his face were so extensive when he appeared live on HoloNet to be crowned nearly half an hour later than the scheduled time, Rey was sure his survival was purely an unlucky chance.

Support for the Resistance had begun to trickle in after that, but it became a flood when General Pryde's brand new flagship, the mandator IV class siege Dreadnought Rampager was extensively damaged on its maiden voyage out of the Kuat-Entralla shipyard. Since then, armed with insider knowledge about the movements of its enemy and bolstered by the groundswell of discontent amongst new First Order territories, the Resistance had surged to unparalleled levels of popularity.

'What am I looking at?' The screen Rey could see over Finn's shoulder showed a grainy, black and white image so blurred that it could have been almost anything.

'It's been playing for a few minutes. I think it's a live feed from a stormtrooper bodycam, but I can't tell what planet he's on. It's a swamp, or a bog somewhere, I'm trying to narrow it down.'

The image cleared suddenly and Rey realised that whoever she was shadowing had stepped out from behind a tree, the end of a blaster clutched in one hand. In front of him, cutting a swathe through the poorly armed, poorly dressed, hungry looking natives was Kylo Ren. The stormtrooper got off a few shots but it was quite unnecessary. Kylo was flanked by several of his elite bodyguard, also dressed head to toe in dark clothing and brandishing a selection of lethal looking weapons.

Rey wasn't sure if the Knights of Ren actually had individual names, certainly no one on HoloNet had ever introduced them but they'd appeared on the scene not long after Kylo had taken control, loitering in the background of every shot. They had no lightsabers and consequently she assumed they were not Force sensitive but what they lacked in power they made up for with a savage efficiency, meting out death equally to men, women and children of every species. The inhabitants of this swamp planet, wherever it was, were falling by the dozen to their blades.

Since he was masked Rey had no sense of the emotions sparked in the Supreme Leader by this latest series of murders, but the routine, unhurried way in which he wielded his lightsaber told her that this was a battle he expected to win. Rey's host followed the attacking Knights as they mopped up the last of the paltry resistance, finally stopping at the edge of an expanse of dirty looking water, half covered by weed and scum.

'What's going on, Rey?' Finn asked her, obviously expecting her to be able to divine the wiles of the Emperor from no more evidence than some shaky camera work. 'What's so important about this attack? Why does the mole want us to see it right now?'

'Any guess on the location?' Watching Kylo wade calf deep into the water and raise his hands to the sky sent warning prickles along her spine. There was something not quite right here.

'The signal is so heavily masked I can't get a lock on it. What's he doing?'

'Looks like he's raising something from the bottom of the lake, but he seems to be talking so I don't think he's using the Force. Maybe he's asking it to come out. I wish we weren't standing so far away. Is there any way to tell this stormtrooper to get closer?'

'The mole only speaks, he does not listen.' Finn confirmed what she already knew. No one had any idea how to get in touch with the mole – communication was all one way.

On the screen the water bubbled, just one or two large pops at first, and then a more consistent stream of gurgling air emerged before the entire surface of the lake began to boil. Whatever was rising, it was very large. The picture became even more indistinct as the stormtrooper took several steps away.

The surface of the swamp heaved upwards, forming a circular mound for a second before the water broke, pouring away down the smooth, hairless head of what appeared to be a giant, drowned baby, eyes tight shut in its watery grave. The stormtrooper took another step back and Rey wasn't surprised. The footage didn't convey colour, or smell but there were patches of grey ooze down the infant's cheeks, suppurating pustules all over one side of its head and half its ear appeared to have rotted away. Rey imagined that the thing stank.

It also had lice, from out of the ruined ear emerged a long, articulated leg, followed by another as some kind of insect unfolded itself from the aural cavity, scuttling over the skin of its host, dislodging patches of loose flesh to fall heavily into the water. When the parasite had perched itself on top of the skull it gestured with one pestilential leg, and Kylo obviously started speaking to it.

'What's going on? Rey?' Poe had arrived at some point over the last few minutes and his voice sounded every bit as sick as Rey felt.

'Some sort of conversation? A negotiation?' On screen, the black clad figure stretched out a hand. 'He's using the Force. It's an interrogation. He's after something the creature knows.'

The scuttling bug twitched for a few brief seconds and then its legs windmilled in a blur of action as it sought the safety of its meaty cave.

'It didn't like that,' Poe remarked.

Kylo's hand tightened and the creature dropped, legs buckling under it as it fell on its back, the segments of its body thrashing in jerky, disjointed movements as it writhed on the baby's skull.

'Whatever it has, he really wants it.' Finn pushed at a few buttons. 'I'll see if I can zoom in on the face. If it doesn't talk, it's going to get killed.'

The pressure on the creature released and it sagged back, waving the tip of one appendage weakly.

Kylo said something more, and the bug dragged itself painfully over the pitted skin and with one trembling leg, dug around inside the dripping pulp of the baby's ear. When it came out again the limb cradled an object of some kind, something small, vaguely pyramid shaped. Kylo splashed further into the water, his hasty steps and the sudden urgency in his form telling Rey that this was what he had come for. His other arm shot out and the item propelled itself into his grasp.

He turned it over, pushing on the sides, then holding it in front of him as if he was concentrating. Finally, he gave it a shake and his head snapped up. The insect had nearly managed to make it back to the safety of its hidey hole, but the Force yanked it out again with such power that one of its legs was left behind.

It gestured briefly and Kylo's fingers made a few more movements and then, projected from the tip of the device a star chart flashed into being, rotating slowly in a blur of faint blue flashes.

'That's a map,' yelped Poe. 'Save that image Finn, quick. This is what the mole wanted us to see.'

'He's looking for something,' Rey whispered to herself. 'He's trying to find something.'

On screen, there was a satisfied nod from the Supreme Leader and he turned away, reaching the bank with a few long strides. Behind him the insect's torment was only just beginning and it shuddered as the Force caught it, its body appearing to constrict in an invisible vice. All of its remaining limbs convulsed for a second and then, with silent shriek, the head, thorax and abdomen detached in a spray of thick liquid and the thing went still.

The camera angle panned as the stormtrooper turned, clearly preparing to follow the rest of his battalion back to whatever transport he had arrived on and the picture cut out.

'I've got it.' Finn spooled the recording backwards, freezing on the star chart cast by the pyramid. 'Running it through the database. We'll find a match.'

'I'll never step on a cockroach again.' Poe shuddered. 'Where do you think he's going?' He glanced over at Rey with a raised eyebrow.

'Yesterday he told me Darth Vader was alive, but lost. Today he kills for a map and our mole thinks that this is so important we need to see it in real time. It's not hard to see the connection.' She jabbed at the screen. 'He thinks that chart will lead him to Vader. We need to find wherever the map goes and get there first.'

Finn shook his head. 'There's no match in the database. Not across the known systems anyway. That arrangements of stars isn't in our navigation computer, which means it's somewhere in the Unknown Regions. I don't see a destination on the chart either – even if we could work out the system we don't know which planet or moon the map is leading to.'

'Could we follow him? Track his shuttle?' Rey was clutching at straws.

'Not without knowing where it is at this exact moment – which we don't. We've lost him already.'

'Just wait a minute,' Poe interjected. 'Darth Vader's alive?'

'According to his grandson, although I'm not so sure. Either way, we can't take the risk that he's right. If we can't identify the system and we can't track his shuttle then we're going to need to find…' She jabbed at the pyramid frozen on the screen. 'Another one of those.'