It was a request that she couldn't refuse. Or to be more specific, it was a request that she shouldn't refuse, because if there was any chance at all that she could neutralise the First Order by removing its leader she should take it. A war had just begun which was likely to last for years before it was concluded and many lives would be lost along the way. If Rey could save those people simply by bringing Kylo Ren into the light then she should attempt to do so, no matter what the cost.

But she hesitated. Sitting there with her heart still full of the tremulous hope in his eyes, her thoughts were mired in doubt. There had been little opportunity for observing the finer points of human nature in her short life, but she didn't think that many people would upend their entire world view after a short conversation with a relative stranger. Surely redemption was a process that wouldn't just happen overnight – no one just woke up in the morning and found they had become a different person. The idea that the pre-eminent dark side user in the galaxy, the leader of a militia bent on tyranny and control would suddenly decide to start playing with the good guys seemed bizarre at best, and premeditated at worst. It was possible that Leia's death had impacted her son on some fundamental level, or that guilt over the murder of his father had finally overwhelmed him, but Rey didn't trust either of these factors to have motivated such a change.

And there was also the question of whether he should be allowed to repent at all. He was a murderer, a war criminal, and over the last year countless injustices had been enacted in his name. Should he be offered forgiveness just because he'd changed his mind?

'And for those who slept through the morning briefing, and then didn't bother to turn up at the afternoon briefing, and are now sitting in the corner ignoring me, Pasaana is located in the Arkanis sector, and after we've dropped out of the Vaschean Way in a couple of minutes we'll be nearly there. It's a desert planet people – I know we're all familiar with those but don't get complacent. This one is known for quicksand, so watch where you're putting your feet. The locals are Aki-Aki, you'll spot them by the facial ganglia but our contact is an offworlder by the name of Ochi. He's expecting us so we're just here for the meeting and then we're gone. Pasaana is First Order occupied but it's just a small garrison, so if we don't bother them, they shouldn't bother us. Do not engage them, that's an order. We don't want to reveal our sources by letting them know we know what they're up to. Rey, have you heard a single word I've said?'

She frowned at the General, lounging on a chair on the other side of the Falcon's crew cabin. 'Desert planet – I can handle it. Poe, what if we capture Kylo Ren?'

He jumped a little at that. 'I'm not expecting him to show up but if he does I'd rather kill him than capture him. What makes you think he's going to be on Pasaana?'

She shook her head. 'I don't mean on Pasaana, I mean in general. What if I'm fighting him and I capture him – what happens then?'

He shrugged as if he hadn't given the subject much thought. 'We put him on trial and when he's convicted we execute him, simple.'

'But say he showed remorse. If he pleaded guilty and admitted his crimes would we still execute him then? Or just send him to the spice mines or something?'

'We'd set him free.' Rose was busy adjusting her sand goggles. 'And we'd put out a broadcast on HoloNet telling everyone in the galaxy exactly when and where we were setting him free and let justice take care of itself. Imagine how many people in the galaxy have lost their families because of him – he wouldn't last five minutes.'

'Are you likely to try to capture him rather than kill him, then?' Finn was giving her a curious look.

'No. It was just a hypothetical question. Count me in for Team Slaughter. I'd better go and fetch my lightsaber just in case I do need to murder anyone today.' She wasn't really sure why she was cross, but her annoyance only got worse as she headed towards her bunk to find the sound of the Falcon's engines cutting out around her again.

'This isn't a good time,' she complained as Ben appeared in the middle of the corridor.

His face had held an expectant expression, but it hardened into irritation as soon as she'd finished. 'My apologies for bothering you. How much longer do you think it'll be before you decide whether to help me or not?'

'I don't know, I'm busy right now.' She kept the volume low to avoid any of the Resistance overhearing this conversation.

'Busy with what? What could be more important than this? Where are you? We need to meet.'

'Why do you need to know where I am?'

'Because I told you things I've never told anyone else and you've made me wait eight and a half hours for an answer. And now you're too busy. Tell me where you are.' He took a step forward.

She wasn't worried about being threatened by a projection. 'I'm with the Resistance. If I tell you where I am you'll turn up with a fleet and kill us all.'

His eyes narrowed. 'You don't trust me. After all that I said.'

'Of course I don't trust you,' she hissed. 'You can't just turn up in my sitting room, tell me you're sorry and expect me to say it's all going to be alright. It isn't. Even if you're telling the truth – and quite frankly I'm not convinced – how do you expect this is going to play out? You leave the First Order and join the Resistance? I don't see it, I'm sorry.'

'I never said I wanted to join the Resistance. And I never said I was sorry either, I said I was wrong. But now I'm starting to regret I said anything at all. Where are you? I need to see you right now.' He took another few paces forward, stopped well within striking distance.

She had nothing with which to strike him, and even if she had it wouldn't have made any difference given that he wasn't actually there. 'This is all a trick to get me to tell you where I am. You're pretending to be weak so I'll trust you – I fell for that before, and I'm not falling for it again. Go away.'

His face grew darker and he took another pace, managing to loom over her in the bright illumination of the corridor. 'It isn't a trick. I knew exactly where you were on Utapau's moon and I made no attempt to harm you then. I'm coming to see you Rey, whether you want me to or not.'

She threw up her hands to push him away and he moved at the same time, grasping for her neck as the bond snapped with an almost audible click. She slumped against the wall, breathing hard.

Finn's voice called from the cabin. 'Everything all right?'

'Absolutely fine.' It was only when she caught her reflection in the airlock viewport as the Resistance prepared to disembark that she realised the necklace she'd been given on Naboo was missing.

The capital of Pasaana turned out to be a city made entirely of tents. Nestled within a cluster of rock formations the washed out colours of the tired looking dwellings gave the impression that the settlement had simply been swept into place like detritus from a storm and was still awaiting clean up. Rey was keen to leave as quickly as possible, not because the heat and the wind reminded her of Jakku, but because she couldn't remember the last time she'd seen her necklace and that made her profoundly uncomfortable. It just wasn't possible for physical objects to pass through the bridge between herself and Ben, because if it were he'd be dead already, but that knowledge didn't seem to be helping. He'd swiped at her neck and now her necklace was missing, and he'd seemed quite determined to find out where she was.

'We're here to see Ochi.' Four members of the Resistance landing party looked expectantly at the short and hairy humanoid behind the counter. 'We're here about the Sith artefacts.'

The little man wrung all four of his hands and affected a confused expression. 'Sith artefacts? Ochi has no Sith artefacts. Very powerful they would be, and very banned. Ochi doesn't deal in such things. Ochi can show you other items though, very holy, very rare.'

Poe frowned at him. 'We're not with the First Order. We're the Resistance - Lando Calrissian sent us.'

'Ochi knows no one of that name. Ochi is a simple trader, he knows nothing of politics, or of the Resistance. He keeps his business out of such things.'

'Ochi is expecting us, we have an appointment.'

'And plenty of money,' Finn clarified, clearly reasoning that this argument would help.

'Ochi did not know who the appointment was with. Unfortunately, Ochi is busy, and all appointments have been cancelled. Ochi regrets that he is not able to assist.'

Poe rolled his eyes, gestured at the counter. 'Rey.'

She sighed heavily, made a tiny movement with one finger. 'You will take us to the Sith artefacts.'

'I will take you to the Sith artefacts,' the shopkeeper repeated, his eyes glazing. 'Follow me.'

Rey was expecting the items they needed to be stored in a back room somewhere but Ochi appeared to have been more careful than any of them would have guessed. They trailed the little man to the back of his tent where a small cargo skiff waited, tethered to a landing spike. Swinging himself up into the pilot's seat Ochi waited until all four of his customers were strapped in behind him and then paused, his hands on the controls.

'You will take us to the Sith artefacts,' Rey reminded him and he smiled faintly and set off.

After an hour of rocketing at top speed through the desert heat Rey wished she'd paid attention to Poe's briefing and had brought more water with her than a single canteen. Cocooned behind her goggles, with her hair tucked up into a sensible cap and swathed in beige desert fatigues Rose appeared in her element, but both Finn and Poe were sporting sweat soaked shirts. Another half an hour brought them to the base of a cluster of the dull red cliffs that made up the bedrock of Pasaana and the skiff was hooked to a docking ring set into the wall that was so well camouflaged it was almost invisible.

'You will take us to the Sith artefacts.' Rey got in first, before Ochi could stop once again.

He nodded, approached the rock wall and laid one of his palms on a hidden reader behind a twist of sandstone. A clanking, grinding sound emerged from deep within the formation and an irregular shaped hole appeared low down in the bluff face, low enough that kneeling would be required to gain access. Ochi didn't hesitate, dropping to his many hands and knees and slipping into the crawl space with alacrity. Rey followed, in case her mind control should require another top up and followed the dealer's hairy backside down the narrow passage.

Although the floor of the tunnel was sand, it was cool out of the sun and the drop in temperature was a welcome relief. Rey could tell that her cheeks were going to be sunburned after this adventure was over, because even in the semi darkness they were still hot. It was only a few paces through the crawlspace before the tunnel opened out into a much wider cavern, and Ochi reached out to activate glow panels hidden in the walls.

Rey studied the assembled merchandise in awe. 'You will stand here and not be a nuisance,' she murmured as the other members of the Resistance exited the tunnel.

'I will stand here and not be a nuisance,' Ochi repeated.

'Don't you ever try that on me,' Poe remarked, brushing sand off his trousers. 'Hell, look at this place.'

It was apparent from the items on the racks and racks of shelving, the various statues, weapons and ancient equipment positioned on the floor that this was not so much a shop as a museum. Rey turned in a circle attempting to take it all in. She'd had no idea there were so many Sith relics still left in the galaxy, let alone that they all might have been collected in one place. She had a new respect for Ochi and perhaps a little more fear as well - he must have a deep and longstanding interest in the traditions of the Sith order to have acquired all its history, although she'd felt no form of Force sensitivity from his mind.

She wandered towards one of the many shelves of holocrons and selected one at random. It buzzed and stirred in her hand, like a fly trapped in a jar and she could feel its resistance to her touch. She replaced it, moved over to another section and picked up a dagger, engraved with markings in a language she couldn't read. Returning it, she drifted on to a rack of lightsabers, tracing the bent outline of a slim, reticulated saberstaff with antique casing.

From behind her, Finn said, 'Well?'

'Well what?'

'Which one do we need?'

Rey shrugged, clipping the weapon to her belt absently. 'I have no idea. I'm not a Sith. These things don't speak to me.' Even as she said it she was aware that this was a lie. To her, to the senses she had spent the last year honing, this whole room was alive. There were things in the shadows that had woken up when they felt her approach, as aware of her power in the light as she was aware of their grounding in the dark.

They would answer to her, she felt, if she only called in the right way.

'I thought the Force was just a personal choice?' Rose sounded impatient. 'Some people choose the light and some choose the dark and some go from one to the other, like Kylo Ren. Can't you just think like the other side for a bit?'

'We've already been here longer than I was expecting Rey, and it's more than an hour back to the Falcon. We don't have a lot of time left.' Poe's voice was worried.

She nodded, stretched out her hand, and opened her mind. There were eyes, eyes in the darkness, watching her. She could feel the brush of their attention like an insect crawling over her skin. Faint chittering filled the shadows. She breathed, focused as she had been taught and then there it was. A presence, lurking somewhere outside, trying to find her and growing closer by the second. She reached out towards it, feeling on an instinctual level that this was what she sought, this was what she had been missing. She drew it closer, wrapped the strands of her power around it and pulled it in. I am here, she told it. Come and find me.

I am coming, it answered. I am coming.

She walked towards that thread of connection, nurtured it inside her, felt it become more solid and familiar with every passing step. Her fingers reached into the empty air, grasping. So close, so close.

'Er, Rey?' Finn's voice shattered her reverie a split second before she crashed straight into the wall.

'Ouch.' She peeled her eyes open to find she was back where she started - at some point she'd walked away from the Sith archive and was now pressing her nose against the rock wall right above the tunnel through which they'd climbed. 'I don't understand. I could feel something. It was getting closer.' She concentrated, centred herself in the Force and then – 'It's still here. It feels right. It's what I've been looking for. We need to go this way.'

'Are you sure?' Rose didn't sound convinced. 'That's the way out.'

Rey ignored her, scrambled back through the passageway following the directions of the Force. The sudden light and heat of the desert on the other side of the rock blinded her momentarily as she emerged into the blaze of the Pasaana star. There was a scrabbling noise as one by one the Resistance clambered out of the cave.

'Oh, shit,' yelped Poe.

'What the fuck are they doing here?' Finn had also been surprised into swearing.

Rose just said, 'Rey? Rey?' There was something accusatory in her tone.

Rey was transfixed by the broad, dagger shaped outline of a Star Destroyer hovering a slight distance away in the direction from which the skiff had come. The whine of approaching TIE fighters hurt her ears. 'He's here,' she said.