"That one's a beauty!" Jenny said. "Any claims on that one?"
She pointed to the four, striking engine cylinders of a quadjumper on the edge of the field.
"I think Unkar owns it now, so I'd say it's fair game," Rey said.
"Just what I wanted to hear," Jenny sang.
Rey chuckled.
Her entire body felt lighter since Jenny's speech next to the bound Plutt. Every step seemed to carry less weight than an hour ago. Hope fluttered in her stomach the same way it had when she first found Jenny's ship.
"So what's the deal with you wearing the uniform of a First Order officer?" Rey asked.
"Psionic badge. Basically, creates an image of whatever clothing I want others to see."
"That's amazing!" Rey beamed. "Can it disguise your face too?"
"Nope," Jenny answered, shaking her head. "Most sentient minds are a lot harder to fool psychically when it comes to faces. Though every once in a while…"
She snickered quietly, as if remembering a private joke.
Rey smirked at her
"Anyway, great choice. You even gave yourself the rank of General."
"Did I?" Jenny asked. "Hmm."
When they arrived at the quadjumper, both women stopped to admire it, Rey with her hands on her hips and Jenny with her arms folded.
"No hyperdrive," Rey said, "but if you're component does what you say, that shouldn't matter, right?
"Right," said Jenny. "I just need a bit to install it."
She gave Rey a mischievous smile.
"Nice of your fellow scavengers to give me some of my tools back, isn't it?" she added.
Rey rolled her eyes.
"Just get to work, you nerf herder," she told Jenny.
Half an hour later, Rey sat in the narrow shadow of the quadjumper while Jenny scrambled around on top of it, working near one of the ion drives.
"So, once you get that installed, where are you off to?" Rey called up.
"Not sure," Jenny's voice replied. "I just sort of play the lottery and see where I end up next."
Rey thought about that. The idea of leaving Jakku seemed inexplicable, let alone just…traveling…anywhere.
"Actually, that's not entirely true," Jenny added.
Rey looked up even though she couldn't see her.
"What do you mean?"
Jenny's head popped over the side of the ship. A streak of grease smeared one of her cheeks. She smiled down at Rey.
"My dad. I'm looking for him. But I have no idea where he is. He could literally be anywhere. Past. Present. Future. Here. There. Anywhere. He can travel in time too, but ten times better than the way I do. The manipulator is scrap compared to his tech."
Rey's muscles tensed.
"Jenny, I need to tell you…"
A screaming wail suddenly echoed from overhead.
Three TIE fighters streaked over the outpost, escorting the boxy silhouette of a stormtrooper transport. The four ships touched down across the landing field.
Rey leaped to her feet
"The First Order is here!" Rey shouted.
"Is that bad?" Jenny asked, staring over the field.
"Yes!" Rey snapped.
"You sure they're after us?"
"They shot your ship down yesterday, then they sent a squad of stormtroopers today. Probably not a coincidence!" Rey replied.
The transport disgorged stormtroopers, the white-armored figures charging down the ramp.
Meanwhile, the TIE pilots walked away from their craft. Two wore the usual black pilot gear. But the third one, stepping away from a modified TIE, caught Rey's gaze immediately.
Also clothed all in black, the third figure strode slowly into the outpost with a frighteningly casual gate, as if all of existence waited on him, his cape and robes rippling in the hot desert breeze.
"Is this First Order really as bad as everyone says?" Jenny asked, drawing Rey back to her immediate surroundings.
"Trust me, if half the things I've heard about the First Order are true, you don't want anything to do with them. How much longer until you're done?"
"Five minutes, give or take," Jenny said.
"Well, hurry."
Jenny gave her a mock salute.
"Yes ma'am," Jenny called down emphatically.
Rey felt her face scrunch up in reluctant amusement as Jenny disappeared again.
Kylo Ren watched as the stormtroopers fanned out around the outpost visitors.
Most of those people were congregating around a derelict sandcrawler and dismantling it, passing its pieces, and other components stored inside, along to each other like greedy Jawas.
Nearby, a Crolute hung tied to a column with a gag in his mouth and rage in his eyes.
"Hands in the air, all of you!" barked Captain Phasma, her silver-toned armor gleaming in the desert sun.
Cries of fear and anguish filled the air, but everyone in sight complied, dropping whatever they carried and raising their hands above their heads.
Kylo's hunger for the time-traveling ship seemed ready to eat him alive, but he channeled it again, focusing on the task immediately at hand.
He scanned the crowd with his eyes, soon settling on the tied-up Crolute.
He strode slowly over to him.
The anger in the Crolute's deep-set eyes shifted instantly to fear. Kylo approved.
With a gloved hand, he yanked the gag out of the Crolute's mouth.
"You? What happened here?" Kylo demanded.
The Crolute rasped phlegm from his throat.
"I was assaulted by a stranger to the outpost, no provocation," he croaked. "The stranger turned these people against me, then ran away."
"Stranger," Kylo repeated. "A man?"
"No, woman," the Crolute replied. "Stole a prime piece of salvage from me. Some sort of space drive unlike anything I've seen before. Apparently, it came from some odd ship that crashed near the Graveyard."
Kylo clenched his fist and thought fast. Snoke had said the Doctor was a man. But this drive matched the type of technology Snoke claimed the Doctor possessed.
The Crolute leaned closer to Kylo.
"I could…happily turn it over to you if you could just–"
"This woman, where did she go?" Kylo demanded.
The Crolute motioned with his thick head. Kylo's gaze followed where he indicated.
In the distance, on the edge of the landing field, he saw a quadjumper with a figure sitting atop it.
Kylo activated the scope on his helmet and magnified.
The figure was a woman, currently working with tools on the ship's ion drive.
Without another word to the Crolute, Kylo signaled for his troops to follow and strode toward the landing field.
"Time's up!" Rey shouted.
The caped figure marched rapidly closer with every second, heading straight for them.
Jenny's head popped into view again.
"Oi, maybe my psionic badge will fool them," she called.
"It won't," Rey said.
"How do you know?" Jenny countered.
"Just a feeling, Jenny!" Rey said in exasperation.
Blaster bolts began pinging off the quadjumper.
Rey rushed to the rear of the ship and ducked for cover.
"Jenny!" she shouted in alarm.
"Right here," Jenny called.
She had already climbed inside the rear hatch. She lowered a ladder down. It thunked softly at Rey's feet.
"Come on!" Jenny urged.
"But I'm staying here! It's you they're after!"
"I think you're properly implicated by now!" Jenny said.
Rey gripped the ladder, then froze. The sand beneath her boots seemed to magnetize her and pull her down, down, down…
"Rey!"
She stared up into Jenny's petite, grease-smeared, soft-skinned face.
Gritting her teeth, Rey fought against the pull and climbed onto the ladder.
The grasp of the sand vanished, nothing more than an illusion of her mind.
Jenny helped her into the ship, then whipped up the ladder and shut the hatch.
The cabin was small, leaving little space between them. Rey felt Jenny's body heat and smelled her chamomile breath.
"Time to get this boy in the air," Jenny said.
She nudged Rey.
"You ready to fly him?" Jenny added.
Rey turned to hide the delighted surprise she felt on her face despite their dangerous situation.
"You got it."
Rey placed her staff on Jenny's backpack and pile of tools lying on the floor, then ran the short distance to the cockpit, opened the door, and climbed over the two retracted passenger seats.
The cockpit had even less space than the cabin, but its front wall consisted almost entirely of transparisteel viewports, greatly increasing visibility.
That visibility seemed to turn her stomach into knots. The caped figure had crossed into the landing field, his helmet looking directly across it and up at the quadjumper. Meanwhile, stormtroopers swarmed the field, the nearest ones charging less than ten meters from the quadjumper.
"E chu ta!" Rey hissed.
She flipped the ship on and felt its powerful engines awakening.
Then she saw two of the TIE fighters lifting off the ground.
Her hands scrambled as fast as they could.
Blaster bolts pinged and slammed into the quadjumper's hull. Rey heard something spraying sparks.
Her mind raced in a panic, realizing they were about to be grounded and captured.
No, she needed to focus, like hunting for parts on a vast Star Destroyer wreckage, focus on her goal.
Get this ship in the air.
Her fingers tapped and her hands pulled.
The quadjumper's engines lifted it off the ground with a thrumming hum.
"Fantastic!" Jenny shouted from the cabin. "Now let's get a shift on!"
Under Rey's guidance, the ship turned around and shot away from the landing field.
Rey's exhilaration was cut short when the ship suddenly lurched to a stop. She slammed her hands on the control panel to brace herself.
"Oi! What happened?" Jenny called.
The quadjumper's engines still thrummed powerfully, but something kept the ship from moving forward, like a tractor beam emanating from below.
"I don't know!" Rey called back. "I...don't understand!"
She pushed helplessly on the controls. The ship groaned. Its hull creaked. But it did not move forward.
"The ship needs to travel at a high speed for the manipulator to activate!" Jenny shouted. "Otherwise it can't transport the entire ship."
Rey didn't fully comprehend that, but she understood the basics. The ship needed to move.
Proximity alarms blared. Then the ship shuddered and damage alerts blinked on the control panel. Two TIE fighters streaked by the viewports.
The spherical ships arced around for another attack.
Rey gritted her teeth.
Focus on her goal.
The ship needed to move.
The thrumming of the four engines seemed to seep inside her very bones. The ship suddenly became an extension of her own body.
She groaned out loud in pain at the invisible power pulling on her, reminding her of the imaginary pull she'd felt moments earlier. Only this wasn't in her head, this was real, straining to slam her to the planet's surface.
The ship needed to move.
Jenny's face, petite and grease-smeared and soft.
The ship needed to move.
Rey's gritted teeth opened and her howl of exertion filled the cockpit.
Kylo's outstretched hand started to shake.
At first, he'd thought his hold on the quadjumper through the Force to be absolute, with the ship's return to the surface inevitable within seconds.
But now, he felt something pushing back, ripping his hold off one strand at a time.
The TIEs flew back around for another strafing run. Kylo just needed to hold the quadjumper in place long enough…
Without warning, Kylo flew backward as his hold over the quadjumper tore free in one final rip. He landed on his back in the sand.
"No!" he shouted in rage as he sat up. "No!"
The quadjumper shot into the sky like a bullet.
Enraged, Kylo glanced first at Captain Phasma, but she was too important, so he used the Force to seize a random trooper and yank him across the sand toward him.
The trooper screamed in alarm.
Snarling in a tantrum, Kylo drew his lightsaber and sliced the man vertically in half. He stepped between the toppling, fleshy halves, drinking in the pain of the death to quench his poisonous anger and disappointment.
"Kylo Ren to the Finalizer,"he said into his comlink, hiding his slightly labored breathing. "A TUG-b13 quadjumper is attempting to exit this system. Disable but do not destroy."
"Understood," quipped General Hux's voice over the comm.
Rey leaned over the controls, panting for breath, every muscle suddenly exhausted, doing her best to keep control of the ship as it raced out of the planet's gravity well.
She didn't understand what had just happened, but at least she'd attained her goal. The ship moved, and moved fast, so fast the ship's inertial dampeners barely compensated.
With no cargo to haul, the strength of the tug's mighty engines was unleashed to propel it forward at a dizzying speed.
Then Rey saw the massive spear point of the Star Destroyer above them. TIE fighters spewed from its belly, racing in their direction.
"Jenny!" Rey panted. "More TIEs incoming. What do I do?'
"Keep us on course!" Jenny called. "I've got you!"'
Rey took a deep, grateful breath.
The quadjumper gave the telltale lurch of a hyperspace jump, but Instead of the streaking lines of hyperspace, the spacecraft's viewports showed a tunnel of swirling kaleidoscope colors.
"Beautiful, wouldn't you say?"
Jenny had climbed into the cockpit. Her face hovered next to Rey's and her breath moistened Rey's cheek.
Rey turned to Jenny, their lips centimeters away, Jenny's bright eyes staring into hers.
"Yes," Rey said quietly. "Beautiful."