"The criminal is in here Lord Ren. Shall we execute her?" The Stromtrooper stood by the entrance to a small, decrepit tent. The ragged flap had been cut off and inside Kylo Ren could see the slave was bound on the floor, two Stromtroopers holding bayonets at her neck.
"Bring her out, I will do it myself." Ren smiled beneath his helmet. The scavengers in the village had been no challenge to his power. This slave would not be one either but she could serve as an example to others of her kind.
The Chiss were weak, they had almost been beaten by their enemies, the Grysk, and then subjugated by the Imperials. If they were truly strong then they would have never suffered so badly in their first war, let alone lost the second.
"Summon a droid. I want every slave in the fleet what happens when you defy the might of the First Order." The Stromtrooper nodded and stepped away, quietly speaking into his helmet. Two more of his comrades roughly carried the girl out of the tent by her arms. She was slumped over, dejected and beaten. Just as she should be. Kylo nodded and the two troopers dropped her to the ground. Behind them a third trooper emerged, Kylo noticed that they had a bloody handprint on their armour.
"Look at me." Kylo commanded.
The girl looked up, one of her eyes was swollen shut, the skin already turning a darker shade of blue. Despite that her one good eye still stared up at him, it glowed like a starfighter's thruster. Good, he could see the hatred in them.
"Go ahead," The girl spat, "I won't go back."
"Your hatred gives you strength. If only all your people were like this. It would make them useful." Kylo ignited his saber, enjoying the pleasant thrum of energy in his hand. It was raw power; the only true power in the galaxy. The power to kill, to conquer. The power of the Dark Side.
"Just do it, my family will remember me."
"Don't worry, They'll see you again soon."
"No! Leave them alone you monster!" The girl tried to leap to her feet, her arms struggling against the binders on her wrist. She gasped as one of the troopers smacked the stock of his blaster into her and she tumbled to the ground again. Kylo noticed the trooper behind them start to step forward. He stopped dead when Kylo leaned down and pulled the girl to her feet by her the collar of her stolen uniform.
"Your devotion to your family is admirable. It won't help you though, they are weak, just as you are." Kylo raised his glowing saber just inches from the girl's head. A part of him was thrilled to see the way her eyes stared down the length of the blade. Her red eyes were a weak imitation of its strength.
"The family of a Chiss is her strength. I wouldn't expect a human like you to understand." Kylo smiled, if only she knew. His family had led him to this; it had led him to power.
"I think I do. Your family cared for you, didn't they? I can feel it, your emotions betray you. You're afraid, your family had always been there to protect. They aren't here for you now."
The girl leaned back as far as Kylo's iron grip would allow, fear crept into her strange, alien eyes. He could feel the it rolling off her; the dank, primordial sense of an animal that knows it is doomed. It felt good.
She was on her knees before him, subjugated by his strength. Soon the whole galaxy would do the same and then… so would his family.
"No! Stay away from them! Stay away from me!"
Kylo recoiled, disgusted. Something surged through his body like an electric charge. His sense of the girl was blown away by it, the feeling of her fear vanished, replaced, for a moment, by his own. He knew this feeling; he hadn't felt its touch in many years but remembered it clearly. It was something very old, something that reminded him of his past and his family's legacy; his family's weakness.
He threw the girl back like she was putrid garbage. The Force gave him strength and she went flying into the tent. Fabric and metal collapsed around her, burying her beneath it.
What was happening? Had he felt the Force in the girl? Why would it choose a weakling like her? The Chiss had fallen so easily in part, because they hadn't been worthy of the Force. They had broken before it and the might of the Dark Side.
Why was it appearing now?
"Keep her alive but hide this discovery from your 'master.' She may prove useful." The rumbling voice of his true master said. As always, he heard it in his mind, heard it and felt it. His Master's voice was like the blast of air from a collapsed airlock, the pressure of a high gravity world and the hatred of a great beast.
"I will, master. What should I tell him?"
"Precisely what you have already said. Say that you will take her back to the fleet. We will find a way to make her disappear." The voice would, as always, give him the direction he needed. The sort of direction that only family could provide.
"As you wish. Lord Vader."
FN-2187 watched Kylo disappear into the village. Overhead the roaring engines of Kylo's shuttle filled the air, it would be arriving to deliver his droid. The downdraft of the ship's engines blew loose some of the tents and sent them skittering across the desert sands. 2187 could only just hear the Lieutenant give the order to burn the village through his helmet's speakers. A moment later the roar of several flamethrowers joined the cacophony of noise.
The assault of sounds matched the raging emotions withing him. The girl had been captured and would be killed by Kylo Ren just like 2201. He had failed to save someone, again.
The girl staggered from the tangle of struts and fabric she had been thrown into. Her head was bleeding, dark blood running down her face, cut through by tracks of her tears. She looked around, terrified as the world around her burned and she was surrounded by the cold faces of Stormtrooper helmets. She would die like this; terrified and alone.
Unless 2187 did something.
The switch for his blaster's firing mode was just above the grip, all it took was a twitch of his thumb and it flicked to 'stun'. 2187 took a deep breath, the two JD troopers were in front of him, the girl just off to his left and behind them, through the village, was empty desert. He could do this. He might not make it far but maybe the girl could still get away.
His boot felts like they were made of lead, his arms were even heavier. Even so, he took a step forward and slowly raised his rifle.
"All units! Hyperspace signatures detected above the planet. It's the New Republic!" The Lieutenant's voice called through his helmet. FN-2187 stopped, shocked; his was it. The New Republic were here. Would this be the start of the First Order's crusade for justice?
The two JD troopers span around, alarmed and saw 2187 with his blaster aimed at them. One of them shouted, the sound ripping 2187 from his shock. Instinct took hold and he fired twice, his blaster kicking up each time, accompanied by the characteristic quack of stun blasts.
One of the JD troopers started to curse and fell silent as the blast overloaded his nerves. They both collapsed, rigid, into the hot sand. 2187 ran forward and kicked away their blasters.
He rolled them over and checked the displays on their wrists. The small screens showed their vitals were stable; their hearts hadn't been damaged by the stun blasts. 2187 sighed in relief, it was rare but during his training some of his fellow troopers had been accidentally killed by stun blasts. He didn't want to kill a fellow Stormtrooper; his family. That would make him like Ren.
"Are you alright?" The Stormtrooper yelled over the chaos of the village. Rey didn't understand what she had just seen. The trooper who had betrayed her had just stunned the other two and was now walking toward her. Had he been telling the truth? Or was this another trap?
"Why are you doing this?" Rey said, backing away from the trooper over the ruins of the tent.
The trooper stopped, his comrades unconscious in the sand behind him. Slowly, he raised his hands to his head and lifted off his faceless helmet. It revealed a young human man, sweat dripping off his dark brown skin. He dropped the helmet to the ground and gave a worried smile.
"Because it's the right thing to do."
Rey stared at him for a moment, the strange feeling from earlier returned. It felt like something deep inside her was telling her to trust him. It was stronger than instinct, surer than knowledge. It felt right; as right as running from the First Order had been.
"Alright. Let's go. Before they wake up." The trooper nodded and jogged over, helping her out of the tangled tent and cutting through her binders with a slash of his vibrobayonet. Touching his bloodied hand felt strange. Stormtroopers had always been part of her life, but they were something to either obey or fear, not let them help you.
"Where should we go?" Rey asked.
"I'm not sure, anywhere but here. Come on, maybe we can lose them in the desert." The trooper said, pointing away from where Kylo Ren's ship had landed. Rey nodded and let the trooper lead her away, through the burning village.
Rey struggled to keep up with the trooper, not only was she still groggy from being flung through the air but she was much smaller than he was. Several times they had to pause and hide as pairs of Stormtroopers stalked past them, their bayonets glittering in the red sunset as they prowled for survivors. The trooper watched them each time, his face twisted with emotion. Each time Rey was sure he would betray her the strange feeling might say to trust him but she hadn't learned to be very trusting aboard the Rax.
"Who are you?" She whispered as they neared the final row of tents. Between the burning fabric and scorched metal she could see the endless, flat expanse of desert before them.
"I'm FN-2187. We're nearly there, once we're out we'll find a place to hide and wait for the rest of the troops to leave. Maybe we can find a trading post and get a way off this dust ball." He replied. Rey looked at the stretching desert before them and the burning red sun in the sky. She was suddenly unsure that dying in the desert would be any better than being executed.
"I'm Nithar'ey. The other humans call me 'Rey.' Thank you, for helping me." The trooper smiled. He had the sort of wide, friendly smile that Rey only remember from the early days of her childhood, before the First Order, before she had spent sixteen years trapped as a slave aboard a single ship.
"Okay Rey, are you ready?" He asked, gesturing toward the desert with his blaster.
She took a long, deep breath.
"I am."
--
"Hey Dameron, my scanners show something burning below us on the planet. Power signatures say there are some ships by it too. Should we check it out?" Jacen Dume asked from the cockpit of his U-wing.
"Copy that Dume, let's go. There's nothing up here anyway, just rocks and old space junk." Captain Poe Dameron's voice said through the commlink. He sounded disappointed and bored. Jacen didn't blame him; he'd joined the Phoenix Fleet to protect the galaxy, not chase Mynocks.
He sighed, pushing down on his controls and angling toward the power signatures on the planet. Through his view screen he watched Poe's Black X-Wing and the other two fighters of Black group follow suit; their thrusters blazing in the darkness of space.
The four ships tore through atmosphere, trailing vapour as they punched through layers of orange clouds. Poe lead the way, bursting through the final layer of cloud to level out and ease off the throttle. He watched steam rise from his S-foils as the heat of re-entry burned off the condensation from the clouds.
"Alright Jacen, what are we looking for?"
"A big fire, a few kilometres south. We should be able to see it. No idea what there s too burn out here though.'
"Maybe there's a ship in trouble or- Hang on, I see it." Poe titled his ship to left, turning the retracted s-oils perpendicular to the surface. Not far below he could see a bright flickering light on the surface, half hidden in the shadow of a huge sand dune. There were a few ships lit by the shifting flames including a large black ship with folded wings. He could just make out dozens of people swarming between the ships and tents like ants. Strangely they all looked like they were wearing…
"Are those… Stormtroopers?" Jacen asked over the radio. Poe frowned, that was impossible, the Empire had fallen decades ago.
"Let's take a closer look, something doesn't feel right. Lock your s-foils in attack position. Be careful." Behind him is droid, BB-8, tweeted in response and the ship's long wing-like S-foils split open.
The squadron descended quickly, noses diving sharply toward the burning village. Somewhere below them a Stormtrooper looked up and shouted, pointing at the ships. A moment later Jacen and Poe found themselves diving into a storm of red blaster fire.
"BB-8! Front deflector shields up!" Poe shouted, jerking his X-Wing into a tight roll. They were too far up for small arms fire to do any damage but he preferred not to take the chance. There was a snap and the hint of ozone as his deflector shields sprung up around the ship.
"What the hell are we dealing with Poe! Who's shooting at us?"
"No idea Jacen! Pull around and see if you can spot any civilians, that village looks real bad."
"Copy that, what are you going to do?"
"I'm going to see if I can get them to calm down a little. Black three, four follow me. Engines to max!"
The three X-wings continued their dive in tight formation, almost touching. Blaster shots slid harmlessly off their deflectors in a splash of colour. In his cockpit Poe smiled, watching the ground rapidly grow closer. He could see now that the people shooting him wore stark white armour, almost exactly like the old Imperial Stormtroopers sets he had seen in museums.
Poe set his teeth and yanked back on the controls, just as the rest of Black Squadron did the same. His body compressed into his seat as the inertial dampeners were almost overloaded. t felt like a Wookie had taken a seat on his chest, smacking the air out his lungs and his vision dimmed at the edges.
His X-Wing, with thrusters and repulsors screaming pulled out of the dive and levelled out just a dozen meters from the ground right alongside the other two Black pilots. As soon as he was level, Poe flared the thruster and shot across the top of the village. The force of the three X-Wing engines blasted the dozens of Stormtroopers off their feet and sent tents flying through the flames.
"Nice one Poe, don't let Rose know you pulled that move. She'll kill you for doing that to her poor X-Wings." Jacen was higher up, moving slowly east away from the village. The Stormtroopers, or whoever they were, were on the opposite side of the village so east was the only way anyone could go.
Down below the desert stretched out endlessly, reminding Jacen of the desert mesas of Ryloth. These were full of coarse sand though and completely devoid of any life, unlike the ones back home. Ryloth was a place of rugged beauty; Jakku was nothing but dead wastes.
"Poe I see something, looks like two people are making a break for it." He called, noticing two figures running through the sands below. One wore the white armour of a soldier, though it looked like they weren't wearing a helmet. Behind the solider another figure in loose black clothes was struggling to keep up. Jacen wasn't sure who they were but he did see the group of soldiers chasing after them.
"I see them. Whoever these people are they don't want those two getting away. I'll come around for another pass, you get in front of them, see if you can pick them up, they might have some answers for us." Poe ordered, swinging his X-wing in a wide arc around the village so he the two were running directly at him. He grinned and gunned the thrusters.
Rey looked up to see one of the black and orange starfighters come screaming toward her across the desert. She was a few meters behind 2187, gasping for breath as they sprinted across the endless sand.
They had started running just before the ships had shown up and blasted across the village. The confusion had given them some time to escape. She risked a glance behind her and saw a squad of troopers chasing after her; t their front Kylo Ren's red lightsabre crackled with light.
"Rey! Drop!" 2187 shouted and snapped off a few stun blasts at their pursuers. Kylo lazily flicked them away with his saber, barely pausing in his stride. Rey dropped to the sand with 2187 just as the ship passed over head, the downdraft was so strong that Rey felt like she was being stomped into the sand.
Kylo plunged his saber in the ground and somehow stayed standing as the Stormtroopers around him were blown away. He raised his gloved hand, fingers splayed wide then slapped down, palm first. Rey felt a something strange wash over, an unknown but familiar sensation raising that set the hair on her arms standing. The swirling cloud of sand that had been kicked up by the X-Wing vanished, the sand blown to the ground by some unseen force.
"Oh, that's not good." 2187 said. Coarse sand ran through his shaved black hair and poured off his armour as he pushed himself back up and grabbed Rey's hand. Her red eyes were wide with shock, staring straight at Kylo Ren who had raised his saber and was marching toward them.
"I felt it. I felt… him." Rey clutched her hands to her chest to stop them from shaking. Somehow that creature in black had brought the sand down and whatever he'd done, Rey had felt it. It was like the same feeling that told her to trust 2187 or had told her the First Order were at the village. It was like that but also not at all; it had felt wrong, twisted, corrupted.
"Rey! Move!" 2187 shouted next to her, grabbing her shoulder and pulling her around. The world snapped back into focus; bringing with it all its noise. Her ears were still ringing from the noise of the ship's engines but she could hear Stormtroopers yelling as they got to their feet and the crackling of Kylo's saber.
Rey jumped and ran, fear raging inside her. She ran faster, sweat pouring down her neck, until she was side by side with 2187's long strides. He looked terrified too, sand sticking to the sweat on his face. He had lost his blaster when the ship flew over; now they both unarmed, terrified and running for the lives.
There was another loud roar of Ion engines overhead. A long three-pronged ship flew low over her, the ships' downdraft whipping her short hair around and throwing sand up in a cloud. It drifted sideways through the air, turning so the was side on to Rey and hovered a few feet off the ground in front f her. It's thin wings, longer than it's short, blue and white body looked like an insurmountable wall to Rey. The four thick thruster tubes at its back would make running around it impossible.
Surrounded by a low, rolling cloud of sand and pursued by a dark creature Rey stopped, her last spark of hope dying. She was trapped.
There was screech of metal as a hatch on the side of the ship was thrown open and the maw of a blaster cannon's muzzle emerged. Rey closed her eyes, the darkness behind her eyes was the barrel of the cannon, the heat of her fear was Kylo's blazing saber. She heard the crack of the blaster. In her mind, she saw the end come.
A scorching line of heat passed over her shoulder, hot enough that she yelped despite the stolen flightsuit. Something grabbed her wrist and pulled her forward, a mix of voices shouting at her. Rey opened her eyes, 2187 was pulling her toward the ship. The blaster's muzzle glowed as it spat a flurry of bright blue light. It took her a moment to realise that it was not at her but at Kylo and the troopers behind her.
Klyo's lightsaber was a blur of dancing red, the blade spinning through the air in front of him, knocking away the torrent of blaster fire. Rey gasped and ran toward the ship. She could see a human in a khaki flightsuit and helmet shouting at her, waving for her to get in. Rey made it to the edge of the ship's open bay and turned, just in time to see Kylo Ren still advancing, his saber still swatting away blaster bolts like they were insects.
A strong pair of hands grabbed Rey by the shoulders and pulled her up into the open cargo bay. The enclosed space was filled by the roaring of the blaster canon, making it impossible to hear whatever the alien with green head tails behind the cannon was yelling. 2187 hauled himself up pulled Rey as far from the open door as he could.
Rey looked up at his face, expecting to see the same terror she felt. Instead, she saw that the was smiling, even as the red storm of Kylo Ren grew closer. The human rushed to the front of the ship and started to pull the ship up before they'd even dropped into the seat.
The ship shook beneath them, raising on it's roaring repulsorlifts. The alien at the gun stopped firing, roaring in what Rey realised was a husky, feminine voice. They were a dozen meters off the ground already and rising rapidly. They had escaped.
The Alien turned and pumped her fist in the air with a smile full of sharp teeth.
There was a flash of red behind her and the hiss of melting metal. She shirked and jumped forward falling to the metal deck beneath. The ship rocked violently, rolling to the side so that only the ground below was visible through the open hatch. The alien screamed as she realised she was sliding toward the hatch Rey just had time to see the terror in the alien's yellow through her visor.
2187 jumped forward, planting his feet against one of the low metal seats and just barely managed to grab the alien's outstretched hand. He heaved with the effort, his already exhausted body struggling to hold her. Rey slid down and grabbed the other hand tightly. Together they managed to pull her back and she clung to a railing with them.
"There's someone outside on the hull! Hold on!" A low voice yelled from the cockpit. From outside Rey heard the sound of crackling energy followed by the crash of a small explosion that rocked the ship.
"I just lost engine one!" The voice from up front yelled, it said something else that was lost as the ship fully turned over, even as it shook from the sputtering engine. Rey clung to the railing, 2187 and the alien right beside her. Both sets of eyes, brown and yellow went wide as the ship jerked back to level, throwing the three of them hard against the metal bulkhead.
"Ha! Enjoy the dust Sleemo!" The ship was still shaking with every dying spurt of the damaged engine. Rey realised with horror that the person on the ship must have been Kylo. The stories her family had told her had said that his red blade could slice through metal with ease. But they had been a dozen meters above the ground when he had leapt on. How was that possible?
"Blast it Jacen! Warn me before you spin Seline next time! "The green alien said, rubbing her lower back where she had hit the bulkhead. She pulled the bay door shut and stuck her head into the cockpit space up front.
"For the last time we're not calling the ship Seline, it's Spectre." The male pilot, Jacen, Rey assumed, shot back.
"Spectre? Who do you think we are, Rogue squadron? Instructor Antilles would laugh at you. Seline is a much better name."
"A better name for that Pantoran you met on Bfapassh maybe. Come up here and help me Mey, Poe will want to talk to our passengers."
The Alien fondly patted the metal wall of the ship and leaned toward it, "Don't worry Seline, you're much prettier than the other one." She cooed before climbing into the cockpit.
Rey and 2187 were left alone for the moment, both of them huddled up against the metal bulkhead at the back of the ship. Rey was still shaking from what had happened and completely exhausted.
Despite that, as she felt the ship go slide from the rough turbulence of atmosphere to the smooth glide of Zero-Gee she let herself smile. She had finally done it.
She was free of the First Order.