Author's Note:
Thanks to ivanruzic3758 for editing my published chapters, and for being the first to point out the 'ship name "Renny." :)
Kylo Ren's TIE fighter soared over the castle parapets and blasted them with another flurry of strafing fire. His two wingmen followed his example, their green bolts streaking out seconds after his.
Fury beat alongside feral hunger in the Force within Kylo. How dare the time ship escape his grasp? But he'd found it again, thanks to the Supreme Leader's guidance. Snoke had sensed when the time ship transported, and followed its special signature in the Force to its next destination. The process took longer than Kylo expected or wanted, but now he was here, ready to claim his prize.
First he had to find it, and before that, the denigrates who patronized this castle needed to be pounded into submission before they could mount any resistance.
'Resistance:' The irony of Kylo's thought wasn't lost on him, and he gripped the control yokes tighter at the idea of losing his chance to relocate his old Jedi master, Luke Skywalker. A crowd of people emerged from one of the castle's many side entrances at that moment, and he used them to satisfy his anger. His starfighter's weapons splattered the escapees to pulp.
….
"How did they find us?" Jenny demanded as another tremor tossed her about.
"How do you know they're here for us?" Rey replied, crouching low to the ground to maintain her balance this time.
"Our ship!" Jenny piped, eyes flashing. "They must be after our ship!"
Rey noted that Jenny said 'our' ship, not 'my' ship. Of course, she could be referring to Tinny…
"How can you be sure?" Rey asked.
"Come on Rey! You think it's only a coincidence they showed up here less than a day after we did? No, whoever these First Order lot are, they must want my ship's ability to time travel."
Rumbles and explosive sounds reverberated throughout the castle.
"Good thing it's broken, then," Rey said dryly.
Jenny crouched beside her and gripped both her shoulders.
"We've got to stop them!" Jenny implored, eyes gleaming. "These people are in danger because of us!"
Rey's jaw tightened. "You're right," she said to Jenny. "We've somehow led them here and put Maz and everyone else in harm's way."
Jenny stood and drew her odd blaster, flicking off what must have been the safety switch. "We can distract them and get them firing at us instead of this place," she said. "Time to make things right. Come on!"
She sprinted down the hallway, and Rey followed closely behind her.
The hallway heaved beneath their feet a third time, and screams echoed in the distance.
….
"I want the Lawman's Guild and the Shomani Delegation manning the East Gate!" Maz shouted into her comm link. "And Jolay's boys are on the fluid-tech ballista!"
She stood atop a statue in the center of the dining hall. The statue, a bulbous, abstract design, stood two meters tall and possessed a head that flattened out conveniently for her. Flurries of activity surrounded her. Most of the activity showed order and purpose, but she could see more panicked trampling than she liked.
"Keep your wits!" she called to a madly murmuring Ithorian as he dashed past her platform. "We've planned for this. Trust in yourself and trust in the Force!"
"Maz!"
She turned toward the voice and her heart lifted at the sight of Jenny and Rey dashing across the hall toward her. They soon reached her, faces flustered and battle-alert but neither appearing exhausted or overcome by panic.
Good, Maz thought, very good.
"We've caused this!" Jenny confessed. "I'm sorry Maz! They're after us. But don't worry, we'll take care of them!"
Maz adjusted her glasses and peered intently at Jenny. "You cannot blame yourself for the evil choices of others. And the First Order is evil. I do not blame you. And you must recognize that you cannot take them on all by yourself."
"Wouldn't think of it," Jenny said. "It's my ship they're after, so we're going to them a little peepshow! And when they start chasing it, we'll lead the whole mess of them off your world."
"Very well," Maz intoned gravely. As the Force willed. "Fly swiftly and bravely, Child."
She turned to Rey, and she felt once again like a swamp moth must feel when entranced by a pest shield: knowing that to keep looking meant being drawn toward a fiery death, but unable to look away all the same.
"Rey, Child, I have something for you," Maz said.
Rey's eyebrows rose. "Me?" she questioned.
"Yes. There's not much time, but in the crook of this statue's lower half, there is a satchel. Take it."
Rey's brow furrowed, but she knelt out of sight, and emerged moments later holding the simple brown satchel in her hands.
"What is this?" Rey asked.
"There is no time to explain now," Maz said. "Take it with you. It will help you and Jenny on your journey."
A host of troubled emotions crossed Rey's face, and Maz read them all clearly. Her aged mouth twitched in a regretful smile.
"You are more than your past," Maz said to Rey, ignoring the increasing volume of the blasts to the roof or the shower of stone flecks that began raining down. "Remember that Rey. Remember."
Rey stared at Maz, eyes quivering in vulnerability and curiosity, and opened her mouth to speak.
A deafening explosion blew apart the towering double doors at the end of the chamber, blasting apart or crushing anyone nearby, and a squadron of Stormtroopers charged in.
"They're here, those animals!" Maz spat. Her entire body coiled for action, ready to defend her home and those under her care. She deftly tossed the jet pack lying on the platform beside her onto her back and withdrew a belt of weapons from its belly.
"Maz, you can't fight them on your own!" Rey protested.
"I'm not on my own," Maz assured her. "I have planned for this day. I will survive as the Force wills it. Now go!"
And she activated the jet pack and rocketed into the air.
…..
"Maz..." Rey groaned, watching her streak through the chamber. Her legs ached to sprint after her, and her arms itched to draw her staff.
"She's right," Jenny breathed, stepping close to her. "She's doing her part. We need to do ours and lead the First Order away."
Rey clenched her jaw resolutely, yielding to Jenny's reasoning, and to her very presence. "Right."
"Lovely," Jenny said. "Come along then!"
She turned and dashed across the room.
Rey eyed the satchel curiously for a brief moment, then slung it over her shoulder and tightened it securely place before rushing after Jenny.
…
"The lift will be faster than the stairs!" Jenny shouted to Rey as they ran, leading her to a deserted wing of the castle.
"This place has elevators?" Rey questioned.
"Only a handful," Jenny said. "Good thing Maz gave me the complete tour the last time. Here we are! This one will take us straight to the staircase outside the private hangar."
"I'd prefer for it to take us to the private hangar instead," Rey said.
"Beggars can't be choosers, you know?"
Jenny slapped a circular panel in the wall, made of the same stone as the bricks surrounding it, and a rectangular segment of the wall ground open. Jenny stepped inside.
The moment Rey joined her, Jenny remembered the cramped interiors of the lifts in this place. She and Rey stood shoulder to shoulder, with barely any room.
Jenny looked at Rey, keenly aware of how their panting breaths echoed loudly in the lift capsule and mingled in the meager space between their mouths. She gave Rey her best apologetic smile.
"I didn't plan this, I promise," Jenny said.
Rey rolled her eyes. "Just press the button." She nodded at the control panel inlaid in the wall beside Jenny.
Seconds later the door shut and the lift grumbled shakily upward.
"I hope we make it to the top before this thing drops like a stone," Rey mumbled.
"The price of the shortcut, I reckon," Jenny replied.
Jenny's heart hammered in her chest, and not only from the running or the threat of the First Order. Rey stood so close, the rigid yet supple warmness of her body brushing Jenny's arm and hip. Jenny wanted so badly to hold her, at least for the few moments of peace available to them during their brief journey in the lift.
But Rey had made her choice rather clear in the hallway outside their rooms. Which meant the polite, sensible thing to do was move on and appreciate Rey's friendship and…
...ah, chuck it.
Jenny twisted to face Rey, not shirking when, like she expected, her ample chest pressed into Rey's modest one. Her eyes gazed upward into the eyes of the subtly taller woman. Rey's eyes widened and her face flushed redder.
"Jenny..."
"Rey, listen, I know we've only known each other a couple days, but you are the most incredible thing that's happened to me," Jenny told her. The words had taken days to solidify, but now they pounded for freedom inside her, desperate for release. "Fierce but kind, brave but vulnerable, worn but gorgeous."
Jenny gulped, striving to steady her erratic thoughts into a coherent string. "I'm still learning who I am, my place in the universe." Hell, she hadn't told Rey the half of it. Her father: a time traveler, yes. But Jenny left out the bit about him being an alien, and the cloning machine, and how some days she woke up and wasn't sure if she wanted to be a soldier or a…
…doctor.
"I want you to come with me, help me learn," Jenny continued. "Because, I think you're still figuring out who you are too. You've spent so many nights alone." Her arms wrapped around Rey's waist, almost of their own accord. She pressed her bosom firmly into Rey's, like she could rub their hearts together. "You deserve better," Jenny said. "I don't want you to experience one more lonely midnight in the cold desert. Come with me Rey, to...anywhere! Before, after, in between, doesn't matter if I have you."
Rey peered down at her, and the haunted, sad expression on her countenance nearly caused Jenny's bones to ache. "Jenny, I…I wish I could explain, it's so difficult..."
The next thing Jenny knew, the lift door growled open, revealing a horde of white-armored soldiers staring silently at them.
Behind the soldiers, Jenny could see the stairway leading to the private hangar.
Bloody wonderful, Jenny thought sarcastically.
"Well, can't you see we're having a private discussion?" Jenny told the armored figures.
….
No sooner had Jenny finished quipping to the Stormtroopers than she flew into motion.
Jenny's blaster jumped into view from behind Rey and fired. Rey was surprised to see blue bolts of energy similar to stun bursts dart from its barrel, instead of the salvo she witnessed during the fight with the hound lizards.
The three nearest troopers staggered and then collapsed from the attack, but the row behind them leveled their weapons.
Jenny kept moving.
Rey's jaw dropped as she watched Jenny perform a series of handstands, nimbly springing from hands to feet to hands again, her body arcing end over end.
Jenny landed on her feet in the midst of the troopers' current front line. She downed two of the soldiers with her gun, then holstered it in the blink of an eye.
Rey blinked again, and Jenny had withdrawn two short truncheons, presumably from beneath the leather pads covering her thighs. She swung them into motion, smacking the troopers on either side of her in the joint between their helmets and their chest armor. Rey heard a vibrating purr and saw the troopers shudder and convulse as the truncheons touched them. They staggered back, and Jenny swept their feet from under them with two perfect, powerful swipes of the batons.
Rey's instincts drove her forward in the next instant, moving seamlessly to join Jenny in combat. Her staff was in her hands, and she dropped the blunt tip viciously onto the helmet of the nearest trooper Jenny had just downed. She heard the armor crunch inward satisfyingly.
Rey wasted no time, whopping a trooper in the gut and sending him stumbling backward, then driving the front of her staff into the back of a Stormtrooper who was leveling his blaster at Jenny's head. The trooper tumbled forward, and one of Jenny's truncheons drove his head into the floor.
Rey's years of desperate fighting experienced allowed her to easily read Jenny's movements in a matter of moments and alter her movements to compensate. She flowed beside Jenny, following up each of Jenny's baton strikes with a twist of her staff. Rey descended into the familiar dance of battling for her life.
And the entire time, she heard the oscillating hum from Jenny's truncheons.
Troopers toppled to the ground or slammed into the wall of the hallway in the wake of the two women, until the only Stormtroopers within a three meter radius lay unconscious on the floor. A group of the soldiers massed on either side of the Rey and Jenny, but neither side fired a shot, probably for fear of friendly fire.
And the stairway to the hangar holding Jenny's ship now waited behind the two girls.
Rey and Jenny exchanged knowing glances, then fled up the stone steps, Jenny in the lead.
"Nice fighting!" Jenny called over her shoulder as she bounded up the stairs. "You're a natural!"
Yes, Rey thought in bitter amusement, a natural.
"What are those things?" Rey called to her, pointing at the batons that still hung from her hands.
Jenny grinned cheekily down at her as she ran. "Ultrasonic truncheons. I had a feeling they'd come in handy. I wish I'd been wrong."
"Ultrasonic…," Rey murmured. She decided that Jenny had proved quite resourceful and creative when it came to weaponry. "Why didn't you just shoot them? Why was your blaster on stun?"
Jenny didn't answer right away. "Someone once told me violence isn't always the answer. I'm trying to prove him right."
Rey gripped her staff. "Tell that to someone who was raised on a nowhere planet like mine," she said bitterly.
"And yet," Jenny said between breaths, "you carry a staff instead of a gun or a knife."
"I…," Rey said, surprised. Jenny was correct. "I guess..."
"We're here!" Jenny exclaimed.
They emerged into the hangar. Jenny's rocket ship waited nearby.
"Home free!" Jenny sang. "Come on Rey, time to cause a distraction!"
Rey took a running step forward, and suddenly found herself thrown off her feet. She sailed through the air and her shoulder slammed into the ground, hard. Her staff fell from her hands and clattered across the floor.
She scrambled to her feet and spun around.
And gaped in horrified shock and disbelief as she saw Jenny floating above the floor, hands at her sides and a look of bewilderment on her face.
A familiar helmeted, robed figure strode out of the staircase and into the hangar, gloved hand outstretched in Jenny's direction.
"I am Kylo Ren, master of the Knights of Ren and enforcer of the First Order," the figure's mechanically distorted voice said. "And that ship belongs to me."
