Chapter 2

Location: Planet Dantooine

The command center was nice and clean by now, thanks to the help of several of Leia's officers and troops. She'd let the pilots continue working on the maintenance hangar, which was necessary to fixing up the U-Wing that was down there. Leia found that working on the communications relay was very relaxing, and mentally stimulating enough that she was able to just continue toying with the device along with an old friend, R2-D2. And thanks mainly to R2 the comms system was now operational within the confines of their new base. The intercom system now worked, a bit scratchy but it worked all the same. Long range comms were still out, but the rest of the base started to come together with reports of the plumbing being up and running, power to the hangar doors was restored, and the extent of the base was fully explored with a hidden bunker in a cave being their access to the surface, which was covered by wild nerf, a very common source of meat. But the kitchen needed fixing up before they decided to go bring down as big a game as a nerf.

However, she had a couple good engineers that survived the fighting and were working on the kitchen's cooking apparatuses with gusto. The promise of fresh meat did wonders to men whose energy and morale was at an all-time low. It actually gave Leia a bit of a chuckle thinking about how that was a common thread to all men. As she worked R2 rolled around, working constantly until he had fixed something to his liking. When Leia finished with the main comms station in the command center she snapped the panel back into place.

"Well old friend, let's see if this works," Leia sighed as she hit the power button.

The controls hummed to life, and she looked down to see the yellow frequency input waves coming in clearly, she checked to be sure that the output transceivers were ready to take any frequencies and transmitters were checked as well. It was fixed and ready for use. Leia shut it down after a couple system checks, and was more than happy to lean back in her chair and take a quick break and close her eyes.

The door opened partway through her rest, and she opened her eyes to see her right-hand woman, Lieutenant Connix. She had a great big smile on her face, clearly something good had happened.

"Lieutenant, you have something to share I assume?" Leia asked.

"Yes ma'am," the young officer nodded, "We've just gotten the gas lines working, we now have hot water and a way to cook food and the cooler is now holding its temperature. Sergeant Andel is requesting permission to go hunt a Nerf to prepare something to eat for tonight."

"Permission granted," Leia nodded, "But Sergeant Andel will first get the kitchen and mess hall cleaned up."

"Yes ma'am," the lieutenant said with a giggle.

"What other rations do we have?" Leia asked, the topic of supplies now coming to the forefront.

"We have several small boxes of old powdered bread and vitamin patty portions, it's not much but it'll keep bellies full for a time," Lieutenant Connix responded, "We can stretch them to last for a month or two at the very most."

"Oh Rey won't like that," Leia smiled, "That was almost all she ate since she was on Jakku."

"We can explore the riverbed, there might be some plants there we can forage," Connix offered, "Just to provide some diversity."

"After we get our security system and a watch set up organize a party, you and two others. See what you can find for wild edibles."

"Yes ma'am."

Leia nodded as a dismissal, and the young woman left the room. C3P0 then entered right behind her.

"General, I have excellent news, I have successfully restored power to the cleaner droids and linked them to the base's restored broadcasting system. They will begin tidying this horrid place up in not time," the protocol droid said proudly.

"Thank you Threepio," Leia said softly, but paused before asking something, "We've been together a long time, haven't we?" she asked softly, "You, me, Artoo, it's been a long road."

R2 heard the talk and rolled over, beeping in response.

"It had been, many, many years," C3P0 agreed, "Many good friends come and gone."

"And we're still fighting the same war," Leia bemoaned, "Nothing has changed, nothing has been won. I want this to end Threepio, I want these people to be able to live in a galaxy that doesn't have to fear an Empire, the First Order, the Sith. I want to end this suffering."

"If I may, these soldiers of yours are dedicated. I detect very few discernable quantitative differences between them and the soldiers that we fought alongside those many years ago," Threepio said quickly.

"I know. I see many of the same faces in different people," Leia smiled, "Which is why I know they can win this war."

"The odds of that are-," Threepio about started to say but a glare from Leia made him stop and look down and to the side, "I know, you don't want to know the odds."

Location: Planet Lah'mu

The group was supposed to be there for a simple heist of weapons and equipment to sell on the black market. New Republic arsenals were being abandoned, and Bala-Tik knew that they had an opportunity to take a fortune into the Guavian Death Gang's warehouses. They now had a real opportunity to take some Republic personnel to the First Order for a decent bounty. Not only that but he very easily could see some real opportunity for advancement within the gang for his revenge on Solo by bringing the Millennium Falcon back to their headquarters, a trophy and a warning to those who would swindle their organization. This was something that his second in command, a younger gangster by the name of Arka that Bala-Tik didn't particularly like very much, had reminded him.

Needless to say, things were going fairly well. The only question in his mind was if he wouldn't get a better price for the women from slavers who were always on the lookout for attractive young girls, and these pilots certainly fit the profile for a hefty sale once they were put into a revealing outfit to get the bids coming in. First, he needed to be sure that the tales were true, that Solo was indeed dead. If so, then they'd take the Republic personnel they'd captured and get some prices from the First Order and get them all sold for some credits. If the girls could be sold for more, then he'd take them to a slave market, dress them accordingly, and get them sold just the same way as he planned to sell the Republic weapons he was seeing around him.

"Here, weapons," his second said as he walked to the open gate, "Here's where they were loading. Any signs of Solo?" the mob lieutenant asked his six security troops.

"Not yet," Bala-Tik shook his head, "Perhaps the rumors were right, maybe he is dead."

"Probably, otherwise we would've heard something by now, Solo's no coward," Arka smirked as he waved one of the troops to look into the vault. He didn't notice the E-WEB Heavy Blaster Cannon set up with a motion detector rigged to the trigger.

One of them arrived at the gate, and then a loud blaster shot and a dash of red sent the cyborg soldier flying across the gate. Another ran in and got blasted in the back from above by a blaster bolt coming from above and behind them. The group turned and saw a single figure firing a pistol into their ranks, but missed.

"Solo!" Bala-Tik roared, and fired a concussive blast up into the railing. A hole was merely blasted in the duracrete.

The remaining soldiers took off after them, firing into the railing at the figure masked in the darkness but a second figure blasted the leading pursuer in the chest with a blue bolt cutting the security soldier off and sent him tumbling down a few metal stairs.

"They boobytrapped the armory, an E-WEB was set up in the vault," Arak wheezed, he was a fat individual, not very well suited to this kind of work.

"Clever buggers," Bala-Tik growled unhappily as he peered around the corner, but as he did that a blaster bolt zinged right by his head and struck his fourth soldier who tumbled back into a stack of boxes and sent them falling onto the ground.

"Don't move!" a man's voice warned him and his last two troops.

Bala-Tik leveled his blaster to see that Arak had a blaster to his head, and the holder was a familiar face, FN-2187, the traitor. A fairly sizeable bounty was being offered for his head.

"Well, just my luck," Bala-Tik smiled, and Arak's eyes widened as the Guavian Death Gang lieutenant fired a concussive blast the struck his own second right in the chest and threw him back into Finn and leveled and pinned him to the ground.

Finn had the breath knocked out of him, not having expected the guy to just blow away his own guy with so little hesitance. Not only that he would have never expected the blow to have lifted the portly individual off his feet and squarely onto him. He groaned as the two Guavian soldiers stepped over to him and leveled their blasters at him, his body was pinned and he only had his arms free. He tried to draw his GLIE-44 Blaster Pistol, but the two blasters of the soldiers were facing him.

"The First Order will pay us a hefty price for you," Bala-Tik responded.

"You have to get me there first," Finn snarled.

"Oh we don't need you, just yer head," the gangster smirked, and leveled his blaster to Finn's chest.

"You might find your head missing though," Poe's voice threatened, coming up behind the gangster and had his blaster against the man's temple.

"And what exactly do you think's gonna happen here? You'll order my men to stand down and you'll just waltz out with whatever ya like?" Bala-Tik laughed.

"No I was figuring you would," Poe retorted.

"Fat chance of that mate," he said quickly, but Poe jabbed the barrel of his weapon against his temple.

"Do it."

But Bala-Tik had a surprise in store, when he remained silent and backed away just a bit he knew Poe would jab at him with his blaster again. And he did so, but when he jabbed forward Bala-Tik ducked and raised the butt of his blaster up and into Poe's arms, knocking them up and knocked the blaster pistol in his hands free and then tried aiming into Poe's head. But the pilot was quick on the uptake, and grabbed the concussion rifle's barrel and spun to the left, using Bala-Tik's own momentum against him and threw the man into the concrete wall. One of the security soldiers turned to fire at Poe, but Finn snatched the dead gangter's blaster and fired into the side of the cyborg who dropped. This came at a cost however, as the last remaining now fired down into the body that Finn lifted to cover him. The blaster bolts burnt holes into the portly man's body, and Finn was suddenly thankful for the former man's obesity, otherwise he'd be very dead. He lifted his blaster up and fired into the cyborg's leg, and he crumpled down and fired three more times and killed him.

"Finn!" Poe yelled as he struggled with Bala-Tik, who was quite an adept fighter.

He threw several punches the gang lieutenant blocked each with rapid forearm blocks and then Poe tried kicking at him to throw his balance off. But the response was as swift as it was effective. With a kick to block Bala-Tik held it and then threw his foot down and caught Poe in the opposite knee and made yell in pain and collapse to one knee. Bala-Tik lifted his other leg and brought it into Poe's face once and sent him sprawling onto the ground.

Then Finn sprinted over, and grabbed the gangster around the waist lifted him up and spun and slung him viciously into the stack of crates that had already been fallen. This dislodged the blaster he held from his hands and wrapped its sling loosely around his neck. This didn't deter the man, who was proving to be an adept fighter and he lifted an empty box up with one foot and kicked it at Finn with some velocity. It hit the former Stormtrooper in the chest and knocked him back allowing the man to get up. Finn threw a punch that Bala-Tik evaded with a sidestep and punched across Finn's chin and then jabbed him in the chest as Finn threw a wild right that he ducked under. Finn reeled from the strike and Bala-Tik threw another left cross that spun the other man around. But Poe rose with a crate lid in his hands and clubbed the man across the back of the head making him stumble forward and Finn followed up with a left haymaker that completely knocked the man unconscious.

"Yeah! How you gonna deliver my head now?!" Finn roared in triumph looking down at his opponent.

"Tone it down, tone it down. Remember he about kicked both our asses," Poe reminded him, feeling the blood dribbling from his nose, wincing at the pain.

"Yeah, and no one needs to know about that part," Finn said through pants as he dug through the pockets of the gangsters, and tossed their weapons away and bound Bala-Tik's hands behind his back.

"Agreed."

The two then grabbed their own weapons and ran back towards the hangar, opening several doors on the way through which was very much relieving to them, because that would have prevented them from being heard. But that wasn't to be, the cyborg troops of the Guavian Death Gang knew all about the engagement through their cybernetic implants and saw the statuses of their comrades blink out. They knew that something had gone wrong. However, due to the mass of duracrete between them and their dead comrades they had no idea what exactly had transpired.

In the hangar the remaining fourteen soldiers now started to try and figure out what to do, none were trained in leadership nor were they granted authority in doing so. This gave Rey her moment, she closed her eyes, and concentrated on her cuffs. It was time to make a move. She envisioned the lock on the cuffs, focused upon it, and then felt the click against her wrists and the pressure relented immediately. She could have gotten up and fought immediately, but she would've been alone in fighting fourteen enemy soldiers, and she was unarmed. So she started to figure out a plan, and then she saw BB-8, and cocked her head in curiosity at what the droid was doing.

She could see that BB-8 was going back forth between the different T-70 X-Wings, quietly fiddling with them and then moving onto the next to the one. Rey had no idea what BB-8 had in mind, but on closer inspection she saw a thin command cable being trailed from each X-Wing. She and the others were intrigued by the droid's activities, and some of the pilots figured out his intentions. Jessika started quickly trying to get the tape off her mouth to warn the others, she knew what BB-8 was trying to do. The tape peeled off, and she gasped aloud.

"Watch for the blasters on those X-Wings, get down when they deploy," she warned at a whisper.

"Whmm?" Rey asked through the tape over mouth.

The others nodded after their minds ran through the information provided to them. Rey wasn't all that familiar with the T-70 X-Wing, so what Jessika said went over her head, but she decided to nod anyway. It was more than likely that, knowing BB-8, the firing would miss her. But her own plans were changing, she figured that BB-8 was going to use the X-Wings as weapons, and she needed to make certain that all the enemy soldiers were going to be in the open to be able to be killed.

At this point a single Guavian Death Gang pilot ran inside, holding a datapad, he showed it to a trio of the red-uniformed soldiers and spoke quickly and quietly. He then pointed to Rey, and her gut dropped as she realized that she'd been found out. One of the soldiers there waved for her to be brought over. A single Guavian soldier grabbed her by the arm and lifted her up. But Rey revealed her trump card, and grabbed his blaster by the barrel and snapped her hand up and sent the man flying into the wall headfirst, snapping his neck and blew a hole into another's chest and turned to face the others, but she was already being shot at. The young Jedi ducked and fired back from behind a cart of crates and fell back to the door into the warehouse. It didn't take long, and she was inside the warehouse blaster fire pummeling the concrete, she hated having to depart and leave the others and refused to retreat any further. However footfalls caught her attention and she turned with the blaster in hand and she saw Poe and Finn rush in.

"Whoa, whoa!" Poe pleaded and Rey lowered her weapon.

Finn rushed over and peeled the tape off rapidly.

"Ow!" she yelped, rubbing her cheek.

"You alright?" Finn asked.

"Yeah, but the others…" Rey said and then a series of rapid blaster fire got their attention and they all feared the worst.

"No!" Poe roared as he ran in, blaster raised, but was amazed by the sight that confronted him.

All the Guavian Death Gang troops were dead, smoking holes in their bodies as they lay on the ground and the Resistance members still bound against the wall were laying on their sides, starting to get back up, untouched by the flurry of firing that had struck their captors. They were in the clear.

"Captain!" Jessika called out, "We're alright get their ship!"

"Rey!" Poe called out, snatching the helmet he had left by one of the X-Wings and pulled it on. He heard the warbling engines of the Guavian Death Gang ship outside, and knew that it had to be dealt with.

"I've never flown one of these before!" she reminded him.

"It's easy! If you can fly the Falcon you can fly an X-Wing," he assured her as he got into the closest one and Rey followed up the ladder to another one next to it.

She had grabbed her new white helmet off of the ground and pulled it on, and dropped into the pilot's seat and tried remembering the layout of an X-Wing's controls from the T-65's she would run across from time to time on Jakku. It all came back to her and she hit the required controls to close the canopy and started up the engines, which hummed to life and glowed. It was an amazing feeling to be behind one of these craft, the elite of the starfighter corps were always seen as X-Wing jockeys. Now she was on her way to becoming one of them. And she was intent on preserving this X-Wing, and lifted of gently, and followed Poe who zipped out of the hangar and after the Guavian freighter.

The X-Wing passed through the hangar door and was powered forward instantly upon her pushing of the throttle. Rey's petite form was thrown into the seat and she smiled brightly, and followed Poe's engine lights into the sky where she saw the slow lumbering 100 meter long Cargo Empress-Class Superfreighter trying to escape. The ship was an old obsolete design with weak shields and a weak hull. But the Guavian Death Gang didn't satisfy themselves with this and modified this ship with four rapid fire dual laser autoturrets and improved its hull and shields with additional components and put two outboard engine nacelles from a C-ROC Gonzati-Class Cruiser onto the middle front of the ship. Rey could see, even from a distance, that it was painted with red and black, and had a Guavian Death Gang logo on the middle of its ventral hull. It was no TIE Fighter, but destroying it was needed.

"Alright Rey, this ship is as crummy as freighters get, but don't underestimate those autoturrets," Poe warned, "Lock on with torpedoes and follow me, target those engines and it'll take the plunge."

"Copy," Rey responded, and fiddled with trying to get her S-Foils opened, but the T-65's she was familiar with had a different control board for that, "How do I open my S-Foils?" she asked.

"Blue button on your throttle," Poe informed her, "On the end of the hand lever."

Rey felt the button, pushed it and saw her S-Foils open, and she and Poe now closed within weapons range. And the red laser fire of the turrets on the ship zipped between them. Poe evaded easily, and fired a pair of proton torpedoes, and the purple projectiles smashed into the ship's right front side. The explosions tore the makeshift nacelle from the side of the ship and the vessel began listing quickly and Rey double tapped her torpedo trigger that was below the control nob on the flat of the face of the joystick and fired her own torpedoes when she lined up her HUD and heard the beeping of a locked warhead. Unfortunately but she hadn't been locked onto the proper setting, and her proton torpedoes simply blew a gaping hole into the middle of the ship sending fire and smoke belching from the ship as they passed it.

"You weren't locked on," Poe informed her.

"It was beeping!" Rey replied.

"You were locked onto the ship's profile, not the heat of the engines, flick the nob on the top of the stick to the left that's your heat seeking mode, left is profile lock, bottom toggles safety and top toggles torpedo speed," Poe instructed.

"Got it," Rey nodded when she saw the change in her HUD upon feeling the click of the rubber nob on top of her joystick by her thumb.

"Alright another pass, let's make sure that ship doesn't get away," Poe smirked as he banked around, seeing Rey keeping pace. He saw the freighter, smoking and now starting to lose altitude. But before either of them could fire the ship suddenly exploded violently, tearing the ship in two and sent both halves plummeting into disintegrating pieces, "Or it'll blow up and save us the munitions."

He pulled away, watching for any signs of escape pods, but the Cargo Empress-Class was infamous for its completely unsafe design by putting the cockpit and escape pods on opposite sides of the hundred-meter-long ship, a very, very unsafe design practice. So his examination yielded nothing, and he was satisfied with that.

"Alright, Rey, how's it feel to fly and X-Wing?" Poe asked her, coming up next to the newly-christened pilot.

"It's amazing, I never thought I'd ever fly one of these before," she said giddily, and exhibited this with yanking back on the stick and rolling over and dove and came up a few hundred feet over the water with Poe easily staying with her.

"It's a rush like no other that's for sure," Poe agreed, "Now, let's get back, we have to finish what we came to do."

"Right," Rey sighed, unhappy at having to leave the cockpit after having just gotten into the groove.

"Don't worry, we might be able to come back for more fighters and equipment, there's more flying to do, hopefully," Poe responded with a laugh, "Plus, you need a droid for that fighter."

"I suppose," Rey agreed, and Poe banked hard and headed back in to the warehouse hangar. The two X-Wings landed victoriously to see the four Republic soldiers tossing the Guavian Death Gang bodies into a pile outside and poked at the fragile cliff to bury them in landslide dirt.

"We're good to keep loading! Let's hurry it up!" Poe ordered, "We've got a war to fight."

"I'd hate to leave these," Shriv sighed as he looked at the other fighters still there, "Seems a pity."

"Oh I'm not leaving these for these gangster scumbags to come back for," Poe growled, tapping his foot as he thought of ideas, "Hey Corporal?! You said you had a bunch of BB units right?"

"Yes sir," the NCO replied as he and his comrades continued working.

"Okay…okay I have an idea," Poe said as he thought through an old Republic protocol for their droids, "BB units have a preprogrammed flight function, but they were never meant as a primary pilot, they don't have combat functions as base programming, it was meant as a backup in case the pilot was incapacitated. But…they might be able to just move them from here to there. That can free us to pilot these shuttles, and bring more equipment and supplies back to base."

"It'll take time to program all those droids to do that," Zay responded, placing her hands on her hips.

"Not if we directly rig those BB units to a computer network and BB-8 can download the instructions directly to them with the base mainframe offering a boost to speed," Finn suggested.

"I can help with that," Rey offered.

"BB-8, get to it buddy," Poe ordered, "In the meantime, the rest of you load up those shuttles. We've gotta hurry this up. If the Guavian Death Gang found it the First Order won't be far behind."

"Right, BB-8 let's go," Rey agreed and with BB-8 ran off, aiming to get this new plan done so she and the others could off the planet, no sense in getting caught again. Next time they might not be so lucky.

Rey followed BB-8 who had downloaded the base schematics and followed the beeping droid straight to the command center. BB-8 smashed through the old chairs and plugged into a computer jack, the screens started to show the numerous BB units going through programming and status bars showed up. BB-8 then beeped to Rey. He needed her to unpack the units from their storage crates.

"Right, you lot can do everything but unpack yourselves?" Rey teased, and BB-8 beeped angrily, "Oi! That's uncalled for!" she said and moved on.

She ran to the shelves, and saw the labels for the BB units, dozens of them. She pulled them off, opened the containers and saw the red and gray droids blinking red on their "eye", they were readying for activation. It was a very physical process. Soon Rey was stepping over dozens of BB units, all self-balancing and awaiting orders. She could tell that seeing this horde of droids rolling out would be quite a sight.

"Alright, all the BB units are ready for instructions," she said into her comm.

"Good timing, we just got a fire lit under us, First Order Star Destroyer, they just dropped out of hyperspace," Poe warned everyone, "BB-8, I need you to reprogram some of those droids to fly the shuttles, pilots we'll take the fighters, we need to get those shuttles loaded right now!"

"It's possible the Destroyer's not here for the depot at all, this is only and old and small and classified facility right?" Finn asked over the comms.

"Yeah, right," Poe replied.

"Then First Order protocol is to assert dominance over the main population centers' defenses, does Dantooine have any defenses?" Finn continued.

"No, none, the Republic never got around to fortifying the planet, it didn't matter too much," Poe responded.

"Then we might have time, this place is well hidden, and is remote, no reason for the First Order to come here looking for us. And with the resources of one destroyer it will take at least a day to find us if they follow protocol and sweep out from the population centers," Finn further explained.

BB-8 now interrupted, he had access to scanners, and his response was clear evidence to Finn's own analysis.

"He said the destroyer's descending onto the capital, that's thousands of miles away," Rey sighed in relief, but she knew it wasn't too nice to be thankful for the subjugation of a free city.

"Alright, keep working, pack everything we can, I want to empty as much of this depot as we can, stuff crates in every nook and cranny you can find," Poe ordered, "Even if we have to dump contents to make room do it."

"We've got four shuttles loaded already with ammunition, weapons, equipment, and supplies, it won't take very long to get the rest loaded with eleven of us helping," Shriv replied, "Recommend we stick to munitions and parts, especially for the X-Wings."

"Load two of the shuttles with torpedoes and the other two with parts. How many flightsuits and flight helmets do we have?" Poe asked.

"We've got at least a hundred of each," Zay responded, "We've packed the Falcon with those and infantry gear as well. Should be enough to equip a couple companies."

"Last of the arsenal's being emptied Captain," Niv informed him, "We've got all of the blasters and explosives and ammunition stowed now, and all the dead gangsters are gone."

"Wait a minute, all of them? We didn't kill one of them," Poe reminded the others, seeking clarification.

Rey listened to all of this as she lowered the last of the droid boxes and reached down to lift the ball-shaped utility droid from its foam wrapping. She'd been so wrapped up in her work that her senses weren't all that attuned due to the focus of lifting boxes from high up and gently bringing them down, but as she lifted the droid up and out of its crate she felt cold dread build up suddenly. Turning a sharp blow to the side of her head alerted her to the danger at the same moment she was caught by it. She fell to the ground in a heap and groaned painfully, trying to get her hands out from under her. Rey attempted to look back to see what had hit her and she could say she wasn't necessarily surprised. Standing over her was Bala-Tik, nose bloody, and eyes filled with rage, in his hand he had a metal pipe. He now recognized this girl, she was the First Order's primary person of interest, the biggest bounty in the galaxy was placed on her head, the Jedi.

"Thought we wouldn't figure it out eh?" Bala-Tik said as he wiped the blood from his nose, "You almost got away didn't ya?"

"Rey, what's your status?" Finn asked on her comm, and she tried pulling her blaster to blast this gangster.

Focusing clearly was incredibly difficult, her vision was blurry, and she felt blood starting to drip onto her temple and on her face. The blow had been a glancing one, but she'd still been hit in the head by a metal pipe. Not many people could take a blow like that and be perfectly fine immediately. When she reached for her pistol Bala-Tik stepped hard onto her arm.

"I hear it's not the First Order itself that wants you so badly, I hear it's the Supreme Leader, I can see why. Seems an awful pity, maybe when on our way to the First Order I'll…" he threatened, smiling sadistically.

But Rey was in luck, at that moment the floor full of BB units gave a sudden and rapid series of startup beeps, and each and every one of the forty plus droids swiveled their heads and beeped, looking straight at Bala-Tik. The swarm of droids all at once deployed their electro-shock stunners from the sides of their heads and as one swarmed at the Gangster firing into him with powerful electronic surges. The sounds of his screams and the beeps and zaps and rolling metal balls filled Rey's ears. Soon, out of sight, Bala-Tik fell, and a continuous stream of electricity sent smoke billowing from his barely-living body.

The droids rolled out, still in the beeping booping swarm that they'd activated in. The group left the room, and Rey staggered to her feet as BB-8 rolled in, beeping at her.

"Very funny, but your kind still can't get out of a storage crate," she groaned, pressing her hand to the growing lump on her head and felt it wet with blood that was coating her temple and dribbled onto her chin, "Let's get outta here."

She managed to regain her bearings and only had a horrific headache when she got to the hangar where Zay saw her first as she pulled on her own helmet.

"Rey what happened?" the raven-haired girl asked.

"Bala-Tik, he got loose and clubbed me, but the droids stunned him," Rey waved off, "I'm okay though, let's go."

"Here's your helmet then," Zay smirked in a mix of respect and humor and tossed Rey's fresh white helmet over to her.

Rey caught it, but her left hand, which had been covered in blood, left a red handprint on the left side of the helmet's main forward shell. She looked at it a moment, and decided she kind of liked that look, and made a mental note to wash off the blood and put a handprint on that same spot. Around her the last munitions, equipment, and supplies were being loaded into the shuttles. The BB units that had been activated had swarmed to their X-Wings and gotten scooped right into the craft, and in a wave the engines ignited. One zipped out to the outside, where Rey remembered her own X-Wing was parked.

"Okay, everyone load up, we're getting outta here," Poe ordered, waving a hand in the air, wearing a new flightsuit for himself along with a white new helmet that he would need to customize for himself.

He waited for Rey, and saw the blood.

"Bala-Tik?"

"Yeah, said he wanted to cash in the 'largest bounty in the galaxy' for me," she responded, slipping the helmet on, wincing at the pain.

"Can you fly?"

"Of course," she responded as the first X-Wings lifted off and she climbed up into the cockpit, and the BB unit in the astromech slot greeted her with a pilot beep and boop, "Nice to meet you BB-3C, I guess you're mine now?"

"Talk with your droid on the way!" Poe teased as she nimbly climbed into his own starfighter.

"Don't tell me how to talk with my droid!" Rey called out as her canopy began closing.

The X-Wings now poured from the hangar, and Rey watched the continuous stream climb into the sky, falling into formation as the shuttles joined the crowd of rapidly accelerating craft. Rey now easily piloted her X-Wing to join them. Soon the Millennium Falcon finished their little fleet and she could see that they were in the clear.

"All ships, let's head home, we got what we came for," Poe declared proudly, and in a outpour of jumps all forty X-Wings darted away out of sight, and soon Rey joined them, step one of the Resistance's comeback was complete.

Well that's a wrap for this chapter. I got a few chapters of A Brutal Reality done and felt a rush of writing fever and got a chapter of this churned out.

Rey got her first run on an X-Wing, hopefully I can develop a droid for her as well. I didn't like the new X-Wing design when it first came out, but it has really grown on me, and frankly it is a natural military progression that makes sense, the flight characteristics are much smoother, faster, and make the fighter significantly lighter. All-in-all I like the T-70 X-Wing. Next chapter I am looking forward to developing Zay a bit, I was a bit disappointed they didn't have much time to work on her character in Battlefront II, if there's a comic with her in it I'd love to see if there's more to the character. As for Rey I think she and Zay could end up becoming a pair of good friends, seems like Rey's never had a girl friend, the ratio has been towards the males (Except in monopoly of military leadership, but that's a nasty topic for another time and place).

Next Chapter Preview: The Resistance has its new tools, time to salvage from the Republic's ruins.