—Chapter 24: Making Inroads—
From a penthouse conference room in the main building, Sharna Ren had a view of nearly the entire cloning facility—at least, the part of it that was above ground. Looking toward the heart of the facility, Sharna could see the whole docking bay. One after another, fresh clones—new soldiers—marched up the hallways feeding into the bay, clad in silver armor, carrying blasters and vibroblades. This was an army trained to destroy in the name of not only the First Order, but of Sharna Ren specifically. She had seen to their loyalty personally—as far as their conditioning was concerned, she was Supreme Leader. They would not recognize Hux's authority over hers.
Once these older clones were finished being outfitted, she would pull the next batch out of its acceleration. By then, that batch should be in their mid-twenties, developmentally speaking. They would be sent through the armories and outfitted just like those now standing proudly before her. By then, even the youngest clones should be of fighting age. At this rate of production, she would be amassing legions of dedicated, highly trained soldiers per day.
The Resistance wouldn't stand a chance against such an army.
She knew her actions had gotten under General Hux's skin. As much as she relished annoying him, and dressing him down in front of other officers, she also knew he was probably causing, or at least thinking about causing, some trouble for her. That she would have pushed and shoved her way to power in the wake of Faris's death had certainly not been part of his plans.
Knowing she couldn't stay up here enjoying the view of her armies forever, she turned to her Jedi hostage with a sigh. "Well, Jedi, I supposed we should go looking for dear sweet General Hux." And your boyfriend, who's bound to show up at some point once he realizes just how screwed you are, she thought. She gestured to the two stormtroopers in attendance to follow her out of the balcony area. Rey was still trussed to the levitating gurney.
Simeon Ren, who had been quietly standing at attention at the back of the room, noiselessly brought up the rear. His thoughts were his own.
—
Hux was not having a good day. In the last twenty-four hours, Hux's puppet leader had been killed, and the mantle of leadership had passed to Sharna Ren—apparently—too quickly for Hux to have been able to stop it. How had he so completely lost control of things?
Hux sighed. His own carelessness was to blame. He had left the Jedi's lightsaber out where she could see it, and somehow, she had retaken control of it, escaped, and murdered Faris Ren. Or escaped and then recovered the weapon, then murdered Faris. He really wasn't sure what order things must have happened in, since neither series of events struck him as entirely plausible—wherever the Force was involved, unexpected and impossible things seemed to occur. Whatever the case was, he had been overconfident to leave the weapon unsecured, and as a result, a power vacuum had been created and subsequently filled before he'd even had a chance to react. Sharna Ren was not a cooperative ally, and she had already done more damage than he could have imagined.
Hux cursed the Force. He didn't fully understand the limits of what its wielders could accomplish, so he couldn't really put it past them to pull off something sinister, no matter how little sense it made. Lately, the Force had relegated him to playing a perpetual game of catch up.
Hux had always had to trust his salvation to his own technological savvy, and this current situation would be no different. One by one, his clones were piling out of the odd numbered chambers in the west wing of the facility, working their way through the armories, preparing to defend the base.
While he had been concerned about accelerating their growth to this extreme, even he had to admit that these troops, his troops, were impressive. Give the devil her due, I suppose. Though really, with a template like Phasma, I'm not sure how much credit Sharna really deserves, he thought to himself as copy after copy of the finest soldier ever to serve under him paraded past. Still, though, they're not quite perfect, he thought, an unsettling feeling coming upon him.They should all be saluting me as they pass…
Hux's breath caught in his throat as something he hadn't considered suddenly dawned on him: What exactly had the clones' conditioning been preparing them for? He had taken it for granted that the programming he had overseen was still in place, but if Sharna Ren had overridden his acceleration protocols, there was no guarantee she hadn't tampered with the specific mental conditioning they received as well.
Suddenly very nervous, Hux stole away to find a private office where he could conduct a little research while he still had time.
—
Flying slowly around the cloning facility, cloaking device engaged, the men aboard the Millennium Falcon struggled to find a suitable landing site.
"Man, there are stormtroopers, like, everywhere," lamented Finn, taking a bite of an emergency cube concentrate he'd fished out of the Falcon's food stores. It was wretched, but it was his only food since breakfast in the canteen the day before, and was also all they had on board. He tried to pretend it was a tal-touri pastry instead, but his imagination simply wasn't that good—no imagination was.
"What's the crazy shiny armor all about?" asked Poe. "What happened to stormtroopers wearing white?"
"These must be the clones," speculated Ben. "Hux must have arranged for them to have the same armor Captain Phasma, the clone template, wore in life. Theirs was a… weird relationship."
"Those are Phasma clones!? Daaaamn!" exclaimed Finn, with a bewildered shake of his head that expressed both shock and admiration.
"Is that that much more worrisome than if it had been someone else?" asked Poe.
"Well, I don't know, she was kind of a badass. But I guess I kicked her ass once before already, so…" added Finn immodestly.
Poe snickered. "Oh, by the way, I had a thought," he then said abruptly. Ben and Finn looked at him expectantly. "Not to completely change the subject, but…"
"What?" asked Finn.
Poe took a second to think about how to broach the subject. "So it occurred to me earlier, while the rest of you were sleeping, that, uh…" he said, trailing off.
"Spit it out," demanded Ben.
Poe glanced away briefly before continuing. "…That you had already prepared Rey for her encounter with Faris Ren—whatever you did when you were touching her supposedly prepared her, right?"
"Right."
"So, where was the urgency in coming to her rescue? Don't get me wrong, I know that whatever you did prevented them from finding the base, but prior to that, we'd had to convince D'Acy that getting her was the only way to avoid detection. The whole reason we didn't go to Arkanis was because we were desperate to rescue her before Faris could force her to give us up…"
Finn and Ben stared at him, unblinking. Even Chewbacca had looked up from his console to see where Poe was going with this line of questioning.
"You would have preferred to go to Arkanis?" asked Ben flatly.
"Well, no, it's just that we sort of lied to the rest of the Resistance… we made them think this was an urgent priority, that the whole Resistance was screwed otherwise…"
There was another long pause. "It's possible that Faris could've still broken her… and they may yet redouble their efforts," offered Ben.
Poe raised his eyebrows at him incredulously. He shifted his glance to Finn, looking to him for support.
Finn just held up his hands, shrugging. "Hey, I realized all this immediately, but I didn't care. He'd already done what was needed to help the Resistance. After that, I just wanted her back."
Poe guffawed loudly. "You guys are the worst! I can't believe you duped the whole Resistance to set up a selfish rescue mission to get one person when the alternative was to prevent thousands of kids being taken!" The gravity of his words was completely undercut by the mirth in his tone.
"Those kids are fine," said Ben. "The ones who were taken were ones we didn't already know about anyway. Had we gone to Arkanis, it would've made no difference."
"Yeah, but… I mean…" stammered Poe. He still hadn't been able to wipe the wide, toothy grin off his face.
"Should we turn around and go back?" asked Finn.
Poe locked eyes with Finn, and the two immediately burst into another round of intense laughter.
Ben had been observing patiently, but by this point they had circled the entire facility and were no closer to finding a place to land. "Are you two ready to actually do something useful now? We've reached our target. Rey needs us."
Poe wiped tears from his eyes, and leaned a hand on Finn's shoulder to steady himself. "Yeah, yes. Absolutely. There is literally nothing I would rather do right now." Poe slapped Ben appreciatively on the back. Grimacing, Ben responded with a glance at Poe and nothing more.
Finn leaned forward over the copilot's console, looking out through the cockpit windows. "Our first concern is that we still need to find a place to land where we can actually get out without being spotted."
"Shit," Ben sighed. "There is literally no land around the base that is beyond the line of sight of these troopers." Ben thumped his fist on the Falcon's console. Chewbacca looked at him, but didn't growl.
"What about there?" Poe pointed out the transparisteel window into the very heart of the facility itself.
Ben turned to him, leveling him with an incredulous gaze. "On top of the docking bay? You realize that would put us dead center in the middle of all the stormtroopers."
"Yeah, but they're not looking up…" offered Poe, shrugging. He looked back at the others, adding with a sigh, "Do any of you have a better idea?"
Ben exhaled slowly, looking back toward the docking bay. "Chewie, do you think you could set us down gently enough?"
Chewbacca roared in affirmation, taking the controls in hand.
"Rooftop break in it is," declared Finn, straightening himself out and stretching his arms over his head. "Did everyone get enough to eat? Last food for a while, I'm sure."
Ben stuffed the last of his cube into his mouth and choked it down. Poe looked forlornly at what was left of his own cube and offered it to Chewbacca instead, who scoffed at him in response.
"Chewie, I think you should stay behind and monitor for Resistance forces," suggested Finn. "We may need you to pass messages back and forth."
"—Or fly interference if things really take a turn…" added Poe.
Chewbacca grunted his agreement, nodding.
The men headed to the storage lockers toward the rear of the ship to collect needed weapons and other tools. Poe grabbed a rope and grappling hook—breaking in this time around was going to require a lot more creativity than it had the last time. When each of them felt as ready as they would ever be, they exchanged looks with each other. As they felt the gentle pitching of the floor from Chewie settling the Falcon down on top of the docking bay roof, Ben nodded his acknowledgement that they were ready to exit. "Let's leave out the top hatch."
There was a whistling sound from the doorway behind them as R2-D2 rolled into view. C-3PO tottered up behind him, and the two droids stood observing from the rear of the storage room. "Best of luck, sir," intoned 3PO.
Poe and Finn looked at Ben. Straightening his spine, Ben nodded his acknowledgement of the droid. Turning away, the men headed for the hatch.
Ben exited first. The winds of Kamino were particularly bad from this high up, and Ben's hair whipped across his forehead chaotically. With his eyes, he could see that the troopers on the ground circling the building were focusing their attention away from the facility. With his other senses, however, Ben knew that the cavernous space under the roof was teeming with armed soldiers preparing for battle.
"Alright, let's go. Step quietly, and stay together." Ben climbed the rest of the way up the ladder, and slid carefully down the side of the Falcon. He landed softly, barely a thump to announce his presence, and that was nothing compared to the noise of the storm that was currently raging across the island. Finn and Poe followed Ben's lead.
Poe looked south, toward the main building. "Keep a low profile, we might be visible to anyone looking out those windows over there."
Ben glanced over his shoulder at the windows in question. "Let's just get off this roof," he answered. "Got your grappling hook ready? We'll go down on the north side."
The south side of the hangar, the side facing the main building, was the side that remained open and exposed, earning it the most concentrated defensive allocations. There was a whole battalion of stormtrooper clones standing in formation in the space between the open hangar doors and the main building.
The north side of the facility was a different story. The stormtrooper presence here was still too heavy to land a ship, but because there were no doors or entries, the defense was far less dense. The three of them watched from behind a balustrade on the facility roof as a pair of troopers on patrol walked past the area, followed momentarily by another patrol, and then another. They came like clockwork, circling the base, but it became clear after observing for a while that their focus was outward, watching for signs of attack.
"I think we can slip in behind them," Poe suggested.
"Then what?" asked Finn.
"There are emergency exits around here. Look, down in that nook. There's one," Ben pointed to where he was talking about, and sure enough, there, tucked in between two storerooms that jutted out from the main hangar, was a door.
"Great. We force our way in, and we're golden," said Finn.
"It's not that easy," Ben shook his head. "All emergency exits are programmed to remain locked unless someone inside Central Command triggers an evacuation alert. It'll be barred from the inside, and if it does open, it will set off alarms around the entire facility."
"Sounds like a 'door' in the loosest sense of the word…" Finn stared daggers at what he assumed was the alarm box.
"I can cut my way in with my lightsaber. Believe it or not, the way the doors are wired, that wouldn't trigger the alarms," Ben said.
"But won't that make it really obvious that someone broke in?" asked Poe.
"If you can think of a less obvious way for us to get in, I'm all ears, but we don't have a lot of time to think of one. We can't just stay out here forever."
"Well, it won't be long before those patrols notice the gaping hole in the door," cautioned Poe.
Ben huffed impatiently. "Look, we'll lay the cutout back over the hole once we're in. That's the best we can do. Let's just get inside already, we're wasting time!"
"Alright, hold on," Poe flipped on his comlink, "Chewie, you there? Great. We're on the north side, going to try and breach a wall. I want you to find any comm signals on the north and jam them for us," Poe waited a moment before the Wookiee responded. "Done? Great. Thanks, buddy." He turned to the others, "Well, that'll give us a little time if we're spotted, at least."
"Won't they notice if they can't talk to each other?" Finn asked.
"Not if they don't try to talk to each other," shrugged Poe.
"'Don't talk. Don't look up.' Another perfect day in the life of a stormtrooper…" Finn rolled his eyes.
"Let's go," urged Ben.
The men timed their descent to occur between marches, and then hurriedly ran in between the buildings to the nearest emergency exit door. They waited there silently as the first patrol passed by, walking on the edge of the complex not a hundred feet from them. All the patrolling guards had to do was look to their left, and the men would have been sitting ducks. Thankfully, that didn't appear to be a part of their "programming".
Ben took a moment to map what was on the other side so he knew they weren't walking right into a crowd of stormtroopers. They weren't. On top of that, he could see that on the opposite side was ample cover to shield them from the eyes of any would-be attackers. This was as good a point of entry as any they were likely to find. Igniting his saber, he began cutting into the door. The other two men watched the next patrol cross by warily.
"Dammit, they stopped!" whispered Finn with exigency. Ben was only about a quarter finished cutting the perimeter of an already modest-sized entry hole. Poe drew his blaster. Something had caused the two stormtroopers to pause there, staring out toward the ocean.
"Patience," cautioned Ben. Cutting through the door was like trying to stir a vat of molasses with a canoe oar, steady but slow.
The two stormtroopers continued walking, as both Poe and Finn let out deep breaths of relief. Sweat was running down Ben's forehead, but he was more than halfway finished.
The next patrol passed by without hesitation.
Mere seconds from completing his task, their luck finally ran out. The latest pair of stormtroopers came into eyesight, looking right at them.
"Shit!" yelled Poe. "Hurry up, we're under attack!"
"Just cover me! I'm almost done!" shouted Ben.
Poe and Finn unleashed a wave of blaster fire at the onrushing stormtroopers, slowing them down as the soldiers were forced to find cover to avoid being hit. This flurry of blasts drew the attention of the next patrol of stormtroopers, and soon the whole lot of them had regrouped and were running at the trio of intruders. Ben completed his cutting with a thunk of metal as the cutout fell toward them and onto the ground outside. Ben yanked Finn by his jacket and shoved him into the hole.
As Finn lifted one leg up and over the bottom of the opening, a deadly shot came toward him from the nearest stormtrooper. Raising his lightsaber, Ben deflected it into the ground. Poe returned fire, hitting the stormtrooper, but the blast bounced ineffectually off the surface of her armor.
Whispering frantically at them from inside the facility, Finn urged, "Just get in here, you can't shoot them with normal blasters!" He cursed himself for not sooner remembering that Phasma's armor was enough to deflect standard blaster fire. Most stormtroopers didn't have the raw physical strength to wear such armor, but of course, clones of the original Phasma did.
Thus reassured that their blasters could do them no harm, the clones ran full tilt toward the men, firing in quick succession. Poe holstered his blaster and followed Finn through the hole as Ben covered their escape, deflecting their blasts with his lightsaber to keep the other two safe.
Inside the hangar, however, Finn didn't feel very safe. Piled in front of this little-used emergency door was cover from prying eyes, to be sure, but cover in the form of pallet after pallet of thermal detonators. If one stray blaster bolt made its way through that hole, the entire docking bay could go up in flames.
Poe's attention had been toward the chaos outside, but a frantic jab in the ribs from Finn illuminated him to this greater threat. Just getting Ben inside wouldn't be enough to ensure their safety if the shots continued to come.
"Ben, we're screwed! There's a wall of detonators here!" screamed Poe out the hole in the door.
In response, Ben reached out and pulled the first pair of attackers towards him, ripping them off their feet. As they drew close enough, Ben simply impaled one on his lightsaber, and followed that up with a quick upward slash to cut down the other. The last two guards, however, were rapidly approaching, and they would be prepared for such an attack.
Holstering their blasters, the next wave of attackers barreled closer, vibroblades in hand. As the first of them arrived, her weapon clashed noisily against Ben's angry crimson blade.
Poe, witnessing the final stormtrooper mere seconds from becoming part of the fray, drew his blaster again, hoping to distract her from her attack. Sensing his intentions, Finn urgently pulled him back. "No, don't! It could just deflect right off and hit Ben instead!"
Not enjoying being a useless spectator, Poe cursed, climbing back outside. He ran to one of the fallen stormtroopers and scavenged the vibroblade from her waist. He had never used one before, but this seemed like as good a time as any to give it a whirl. As the final clone closed in toward Ben's rear side, Poe intercepted her slashing attack, and it was now two on two.
As the two pairs of fighters exchanged blows, it became clear who would outlast whom pretty quickly. Ben fought elegantly and efficiently waiting for an opening to strike a killing blow, but Poe was a mess, wielding an unfamiliar weapon against a far superior opponent. It seemed the only things keeping him alive were luck and his own tenacity.
Grunting, Ben abandoned all pretense of finesse and went for an overpowering brute force attack, cleaving the stormtrooper in half with a hail of sparks coming off the white-hot armor. He then turned to Poe, who had just been knocked onto his back with a swift kick to the chest, losing his vibroblade in the fall. As the clone's weapon arced downwards, Ben parried it, and the trooper shifted targets. Poe, recovering from his embarrassing position, crawled toward his lost blade, and, taking it firmly in his grasp, hacked at the back leg of Ben's antagonist. With a scream, the Phasma clone fell backward toward Poe, who met her descent with an upward thrust through the middle of her back.
Heaving with breath in the aftermath of a duel that had nearly claimed his life, Poe couldn't speak. He simply sat back on his knees and deactivated the vibroblade, looking up at Ben.
Ben took in the state of his wheezing companion. "You're terrible with a blade. You're lucky you're not dead."
"Hey," Poe choked out defensively, "I saved your ass."
Cocking his head to one side, Ben weighed Poe's observation for a moment. "Yeah, okay," he conceded. "Thanks."
"You're… welcome," huffed Poe in reply. Standing up, he swallowed hard, trying to get his breath back, and added, "And, you know… thanks, you… too… for before."
"Sure."
From inside the hangar, Finn took in the sight of the two unlikely allies in his midst. "I'm glad we're all on the same side," he commented. Ben and Poe looked at him, then back at each other, then back at Finn. "And now I think it's time you two hurried your asses in here. Time is short! Let's pull those bodies inside quickly, and then cover up this hole, before the next patrol comes."
Still panting heavily from his ordeal, Poe nodded in agreement. Ben finally extinguished his lightsaber, and together, they moved the bodies toward the rupture.
Climbing inside, Ben whistled in appreciation at the thousands of thermal detonators piled up before him. "That's a hell of a lot of explosives right there."
"No shit," agreed Poe, staring almost reverently up at the towering, incendiary heap just feet from his face.
"Okay, so where's Rey?" prompted Finn, with renewed resolve. Poe looked expectantly at Ben.
Ben shook his head. "I don't know yet, but I don't think this is the place to take the time to find out." With the stormtrooper bodies pulled inside, Ben used the Force to return the hunk of door to its place. With a little luck, nobody would notice it for a while. "Let's put some distance between us and this part of the complex. As soon as they notice those missing patrols, this whole place will go on lockdown."
"Agreed," said Poe, and the three of them quietly crept their way along the wall of munitions toward what they hoped would be someplace more private. With their fragile secrecy about to come to its inevitable end, they knew they had little time to waste looking for the perfect hiding spot.
