Since the Battle of Crait, Chewbacca had made extensive repairs and upgrades to the Millennium Falcon. He poured countless hours and Thalers into his work to the point where the Falcon was arguably in a better shape than it had been since Han and Leia's wedding. As the old ship once again followed a Hyperion stream, the Wookiee sat on the reupholstered semicircular bench contemplating his next move.

Finn stared at Chewbacca across the Dejarik table, supporting his head with his arm and idly tapping his cheek with his index finger. Poe sat to his immediate right, comfortably spreading his arms across the back of the bench.

"You ever gonna go?" Poe asked, boredom obvious in his voice.

Chewbacca momentarily glared at him before looking back to the board.

Finn leaned back to whisper to Poe. "He can't beat us every time."

Poe shrugged. "Apparently, he can."

"How does he do it?"

Poe nodded once towards Chewbacca. "This guy right here? It's 'cause he cheats."

Chewbacca growled loudly.

"I'm kidding," Poe said with a laugh.

Finn rolled his eyes. "Come on, take your turn. You're taking forever. That's cheating."

"He's two and a half centuries old. Of course he's better than us."

The brass navigation box on the bridge chimed. Chewbacca grumbled to his opponents as he stood and started towards the deck hatch.

"Don't worry," Poe reassured. "We won't touch it."

Finn craned his neck around to watch the Wookiee. Once he was out of sight Finn looked back to Poe. "He's cheating."

Poe furrowed his brow and nodded. "Oh, definitely." The two of them repacked the game pieces into their drawer before making their way topside.

Finn headed towards the cargo hatch on the foredeck while Poe on his way to the bridge passed by a Trodatome tending to the rigging winches. Poe put a hand to his mouth and called up to him. "Klaud, good work on the stuns'l booms. Look good as new."

The crowned slug nodded and muttered something in his complex native tongue before setting back to his work. Klaud rather liked parts runs like this. He got the chance to be out at sea and visit exotic destinations without having to worry about being shot at. Fitting the Tantive's engine with the new steam regulator once they got back to Ajan Kloss was an added bonus.

The Millennium Falcon emerged into the cold waters of the northern World Sea. Clear skies and a fair wind greeted the ship and her crew as the Falcon made for an ice shelf studded with watchtowers.

The Sinta Glacier Colony was a moderately sized outpost built as a stopover for whaling ships on their way to the Eastern Ice Fields. The Sinta Glacier was chosen not just for the convenient location but also for the abnormal strength of its ice. Since its founding during the early days of the whaling boom, Sinta Colony managed to maintain independence from major outside governing thanks to its famously effective militia.

Passage into the colony's ice cavern harbor was made possible by the three tunnels bored into the glacier. After receiving confirmation from his contact, Poe sailed the Millennium Falcon into the smallest one. "Okay everyone, let's keep things sharp. In and out in five. These are patrolled waters, they're gonna know we're here."

Finn slid the cargo hatch open. "You ready down there, Artu?"

The white and blue nautical automaton whistled an affirmative.

Sinta Colony's harbor was a tall cavern deep in the heart of the glacier ringed with quays and dockyards able to accommodate all manner of vessel up to the largest double hulled whaler. A massive round magelight hanging from the ceiling bathed the harbor and dockside shops in a pleasant turquoise light.

A violet lamp guided Poe towards one of the docks where an attraction field finished drawing the Falcon into a berth. An approaching Ovissian waved to Finn as Chewbacca ran out the gangplank.

"Boolio, good to see you," Finn said as the horned man walked aboard. "You got something for us?"

Boolio half pointed to a crane swinging a load towards the Falcon. "You mean besides your regulator?" He laughed. "Oh, yeah. You'll like this. Seems we've got a new ally: a spy in the First Order!"

Finn's jaw dropped. "A spy? Who?"

"I don't know." He pulled out a folded letter whose wax seal was still intact. "I found this tucked in me sales records after the First Order's last visit a few days ago. No way it got there by accident."

Finn recognized the document's border color. This was high level intelligence. Whoever had placed it in Boolio's records at least had to be a colonel. "This could be big."

"Oi! Hurry up and get that thing in their hold already! They ain't got all day!" Boolio turned back to Finn. "Sorry. You'd best get that back to Leia as soon as possible."

Poe perked up at a droning sound coming up one of the tunnels. He stood and yelled. "Finn! We're about to get cooked!"

Finn and Boolio both looked to the regulator. Just a few more seconds and Artu would be able to start lashing it down.

Boolio nodded to Finn. "Don't worry about paying me this time. Win the war and I'll call us even." He gave Finn a friendly slap to his bicep then jogged down the gangplank.

Poe could now see the TIEs encroaching from the middle tunnel. "Finn!"

The cargo hook detached from its load and started to reel back in. Finn shot Poe a thumbs up. "We got it!"

Poe put the engine full astern and pulled away from the dock as the TIEs entered the harbor. Shells burst against the Millennium Falcon's shield wards while Finn and Chewbacca ran to the Moze guns. Klaud rushed below deck as quickly as his flippers would allow. Once Poe had brought the ship about, he gave the engine full steam ahead and aimed her towards the tunnel by which they had first entered.

As more TIE shots cracked behind him, Poe misjudged his speed on the first curve and scraped the side of the bow against the tunnel's icy wall. Chewbacca roared in dismay.

"I know! I know! I'm sorry!" Poe swore as more rounds peppered the wards. "Finn, you're supposed to be getting rid of those things!"

Finn took a deep breath and held his crystal pendant for a moment. He steadied his Moze gun's aim and rattled off two quick bursts. The explosive shells found their marks, perfectly downing two of the pursuing TIEs. "Ooh, yeah!"

"That's more like it! How many are left?"

Finn loosed another burst. "Too many."

Chewbacca grunted a suggestion.

"What?" Finn asked, unable to translate despite his practicing Shyriiwook.

"Good thinking, Chewie," Poe said with a twinkle in his eye. "Finn, do you remember that big observation bridge from the way in? The one that looked about ready to fall apart?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I do!"

"Chewie says we give it the push it needs."

Finn smiled towards the Wookiee. "I like the way you think!"

More shells hammered the wards, making their surfaces swirl as they weakened. Poe bit his lip. "Come on. Hold just a few more seconds. Okay, eyes up, you two! The bridge is right around the next bend!"

Finn and Chewbacca angled their guns up. "On my signal, Chewie, fire at the supports!"

Poe watched the brass masthead clear the bottom of the decrepit wooden bridge. He stole a glance behind at the TIEs and shook his head. This plan was crazy, but he had pulled off crazier.

Finn concentrated and waited until he felt that gentle tug inside him. "Now, Chewie!"

Two streams of shells streaked towards the support beams anchored to the tunnel walls. Splinters flew in every direction as the rounds exploded on impact. The bridge groaned under its own weight before the sounds of dry cracking echoed up and down the tunnel. With no chance to compensate for the falling obstacle, all but three of the TIEs slammed into the bridge at speed, with most exploding on impact.

"Just three left Poe!"

"Nice job, you two. Try to hold them off, I'm opening a gate as soon as we're out of the tunnel."

Chewbacca roared to express his concern about the navigation box not having enough time to plot a course.

"No time, big guy. Wards are almost down. We're skipping out of here."

The Wookiee wailed in anguish at Poe's rashness.

Hyperion skipping is an exceptionally dangerous technique of blindly entering and exiting Hyperius. Doing so not only means the ship could emerge into an unsafe location, but also puts heavy strain on the Hyperion crystal and ship. A curiosity of the technique is that the gates stay open for much longer than usual, and it is unclear as to why this is.

Poe tapped out the sequence for the navigation box's destination override and mashed his thumb into the green crystal on the front of the box.

The entire trip through Hyperius took less than five seconds, but that was long enough for the Millennium Falcon to reach the Nine Needles. The TIEs, having made use of the gate left behind, emerged immediately after the Falcon.

Poe opened the newly repaired stuns'ls to coax as much speed out of the ship as he could. He weaved between the towering columns of the Nine Needles vainly trying to outmaneuver the First Order flying machines. Rounds struck the wards and Poe gritted his teeth as he said a silent prayer to any god that would listen.

Finn yelled out Poe's name as he struggled to draw a bead on their pursuers. Poe swore and mashed the crystal again.

The Millennium Falcon shot out of a gate, framed by the ruined skyline of Coruscant, the once greatest city in the world now struggling to rebuild even so long after the fall of the Empire. Two of the three TIEs followed out, the third not having reached the entry gate in time. Finn and Chewbacca fired burst after burst at the First Order pilots while Poe navigated the shallowly submerged wrecks of enormous ships that choked the waters.

Chewbacca scored a decisive hit on one of the TIEs just as the shield wards shattered. Poe swore again, louder this time, and opened another gate while the struck TIE fell to the sea in flames.

Chewbacca howled at Poe.

"Yeah, well Rey's not here, is she?" Poe thumbed the crystal to exit Hyperius.

The gate dumped the Falcon into a reef caught in the midst of a typhoon. Poe quickly tapped the rune to haul in the sails a moment before a powerful crosswind rocked the ship.

Lightning lit up a massive lumbering creature squatting in the shallows dead ahead. Chewbacca recognized it as something he hadn't seen since the escape from Hoth; a carcanna.

Poe balked. "That's a big crab. Okay, last skip. Hopefully. Hold on!" He pressed the crystal and a gate opened right in front of the carcanna.

Klaud peered out of the deck hatch to see what was going on to cause the Hyperion crystal to heat up so much and screamed at the hulking crab in front of them.

The Millennium Falcon passed through the gate without issue, but the same could not be said for the TIE. A rogue wind blew it off course at the last second and it crashed headlong into the sea. The stone titan crab's relatively small mouth pincers plucked the injured pilot from the water and popped the poor soul into its maw.

Ajan Kloss was the fourth smallest island in the Ajara island chain located in the southern tropics. While the big island was known for its reputation as a weary sailor's paradise, little Ajan Kloss remained unknown to all but the Ajara natives and a handful of outsiders. Only the moss and lichen encrusted ruins of a wat stood as the sole building on the island before the establishment of the Resistance base in Brightstone Cove.

In the shaded glade that was once the courtyard of Ajan Kloss' wat, Rey meditated on a large stone beneath an ancient and gnarled fig tree. She had long since abandoned the three buns she had kept from her childhood, preferring now to keep her hair mostly down with only a part of it tied back into a ponytail. Her sleeveless robes were a dark slate color with a grey tabard so pale as to almost be white, a style that wouldn't have looked out of place on one of the Knights of the Old Republic.

"Be with me," Rey whispered. "Be with me... Be with me..." She sighed and shook her head. "They're not with me."

Rey sat for a moment longer and listened to the birds singing their strange trilling songs. It was no wonder why Leia suggested Ajan Kloss for the base. Between the sights, sounds, and delectable fruit, morale had never been higher. There was an undeniable aura of positivity here unlike anywhere else Rey had ever been, almost certainly in part due to the conflux of three Light ley lines.

Rey pushed herself off the stone and retrieved her staff from the ground. After slinging it over her shoulder, she followed the winding overgrown path out of the courtyard. Upon passing through the crumbling front gate, she was surprised to see Leia and Bibi-Eit coming up the trail towards her.

Rey pouted slightly with concern. "Should you be this far out right now?"

Leia waved a dismissive hand. "Oh, don't worry about me, I'm fine. The exercise is good for me. I hate that I still need to use this thing, though." She shook her cane. "Enough about me, though. Did you have any luck today?"

Rey shook her head. "No. I don't understand it. I can feel the Force so strongly here, but I still can't do it. I'm starting to think it isn't possible to hear the voices of Jedi that came before."

"Patience. Nothing's impossible. Even when Luke trained me here, it still took time to grasp things. 'You can't cross a bridge that hasn't been fully built yet.'"

Rey huffed a quiet laugh and cracked a smile. "Is that what he told you?"

Leia grinned. "Whatever gave it away? Oh!" She reached into her dress pocket and pulled out Rey's repaired Lightblade hilt. "Rose fixed the problem. She said the cradle was misaligned in the barrel. The blade should reach its full length again."

Rey took the sword from Leia's outstretched hand and looked it over. Most of the repairs had been done by Rey herself, but it had been Rose's magical-mechanical skill that had made the old Lightblade functional again.

Rey put the hilt on her hip then looked back to Leia. "I'm going to run the training course before heading back. Do you want to come, Bibi-Eit?"

The micronaut squealed in excitement.

Leia smiled. "Then I'll see you two back in the cove."

Originally built by Luke before he established a more permanent school in Ossus, the training course tested a student's endurance, agility, and focus under stress. It spanned the length of Ajan Kloss' Diamondhead Ridge which formed the island's spine and had some of the toughest terrain in the chain. Nearly all of the wood had to be replaced due to rot, but the stone and metal sections of the course were in in almost the same state as they had been left decades before.

Rey sprinted down the first part of the course, following the stacked stone trail markers. Even with the uneven ground, this was by far the easiest section. Bibi-Eit rolled after her, keeping apace as best he could.

Seeker balls were floating metal spheres that shot out metal pellets with pressurized air. Originally designed to automatically hunt vermin, some use it to hone their reflexes. Luke was no different, incorporating them quite heavily into Lightblade training.

As Rey neared a pair of stumps marking the end of the endurance section of the course, a pair of seeker balls activated and sped towards her. Rey grabbed an old visored helmet from one of the stumps as she passed between them and put it on for the purpose of obscuring her vision. She ignited her Lightblade in time to deflect the first pellet and continued along the course.

Further ahead, a deep ravine cut through the ridge with only a narrow log to span the wide gap. Rey jogged backwards towards it, still voluntarily blinded and deflecting pellets. She mounted the ersatz bridge with a hop and spread her arms for balance.

Rey deflected the incoming pellets all while backpedaling across the log. She shifted back and forth between a normal and reverse grip on her Lightblade as well as switching up which hand held it.

Once on the far side of the ravine, Rey removed her helmet and dropped it on the ground. She started sprinting again, putting her sword over her shoulder to block a shot from behind.

Up ahead a scrap of red cloth taken from a First Order banner hung from a tree branch high off the ground. Steeling herself, Rey sprinted towards the trunk of a nearby tree. She ran up the trunk and grabbed ahold of one of the branches with her offhand.

Rey swung back and forth once to build momentum and launched herself towards the banner scrap. She cut through it while in midair and rolled on hitting the ground. Without stopping, she spun and caught the falling red cloth while sprinting back towards the ravine.

Instead of crossing the log back, Rey focused her Force magic into her legs. With an almighty leap, she cleared the chasm, landing next to the waiting Bibi-Eit with the seeker balls hot on her heels.

Far away, in his throne room, Kylo Ren stared at the disfigured helmet of his grandfather. Palpatine had claimed to be every voice he had ever heard, but one repeated phrase always felt different to every other thing he had heard. "Finish what I started" was an enigma, one that Kylo had been trying to understand since he had realized who was saying it to him.

Kylo had interpreted the order very differently at various stages of his life, but each reasoning felt hollow. He reached out his hand and placed it atop the helm, focusing on the phrase. "...Show me, Grandfather. Show me what I need to do to fulfill your command."

Rey felt a tremor in the Force as she was running and snagged her foot on a root. Hitting the ground knocked the wind out of her and she hastily rolled over to try to block an incoming seeker ball shot.

The tremor came again and Rey failed to stop the pellet. It hit her on her right bicep immediately below her scar. It stung badly, but did not break the skin.

Rey ran towards the stone circle that made up the final part of the training course. Clumps of moss and the odd sapling grew out from between the flagstones and a ring of eight wrist thick rusty iron rods marked the halfway point between the center and the edge.

Rey moved to the center of the circle and took up her ready position. She quietly whistled as she released a deep breath through pursed lips. There was a rising unease in the pit of her stomach that dredged up the negative emotions that as a Jedi she was supposed to suppress - something that had become proportionally more difficult as her powers had grown.

The seeker ball on which Rey focused her attention made a sudden dart to the right and fired a pellet. It struck Rey on her collarbone and she yelped in pain and alarm. She growled and tightened the grip on her Lightblade.

Rey blocked the next shot, but the other seeker ball struck her in the shoulder blade immediately afterwards. She lashed out at it in frustration at the same time another tremor came and missed, narrowly missing cutting one of the iron rods.

Kylo's brow twitched. He could feel tremors in the Force. They pulsed like a heartbeat, albeit a very slow one. "...Show me." Visions began to appear before his eyes.

Rey threw her Lightblade, starting it on an arc back around. At the same time, she unslung her staff and dodged another pellet. As the Lightblade came back around, the hilt struck the seeker ball behind Rey. The ball deactivated and fell to the ground.

Rey whirled her staff around and whacked the other seeker ball out of the air with a metallic clang. She held out her offhand which still held the red cloth and caught the returning Lightblade, not noticing that it had cut through one of the rods on the way for the strongest tremor yet.

This tremor brought with it a wave of coldness that penetrated Rey to her very core. Visions flashed before her eyes, too quickly for her to fully parse their meanings. She saw a black throne topped by a stone brazier and framed by a fan of jagged rocks. She saw her younger self watching her parents leave her in Jakku. She saw her mother holding her close in her childhood home.

Faster and faster the visions came, perfectly matching Rey's racing heart. She saw Kylo telling her to join him, her own face though ghastly pale, a distorted skeletal helmet, a metal pyramid with crystal panes held in a gloved hand, Luke begging Ben to stop, the death of Han Solo, and finally Kylo Ren himself standing before her.

The visions ended for Kylo with him staring at Rey. She had the pallor and stunned expression of someone who had seen a ghost. Kylo set his jaw and withdrew his hand from his grandfather's helmet.

Rey shook like a leaf in a wind. The visions had disturbed her, but that was not what was the most troubling thing. It had been months since she and Kylo had been connected by the Force, but even then, she had been able to sense the flame of the Light inside him, sputtering as it was. When she had just seen him, that Light was only a dying ember.

Gradually, Rey became aware of Bibi-Eit chirping nearby. She looked to him and gasped. The iron rod she had inadvertently cut had landed on him and was pinning him to the ground.

Rey jogged over to him. "Bibi-Eit, I'm so sorry." She grunted with effort as she lifted the heavy rod off the micronaut.

Bibi-Eit was undamaged for the most part with the exception of one of his chassis door coverings being bent out of shape. Rey removed it to prevent it from catching on anything as they made their way back to base.

Brightstone Cove was a large sea cave along the southern Kloss coast out of view from the eyes of passing ships. Crystalline spikes jutted out from every crevice of the cave, glowing with the magics that bathed the island. Anchored in the middle of the floating harbor among many other similarly sized vessels was a ship whose name was familiar to any Rebel: the Tantive.

The refurbished Alderaanian corvette had been gifted back to Leia two months after the Battle of Crait by one of her fellow former Imperial senators who had discovered it mouldering in the abandoned Yarma salvage yard. The Tantive served as a temporary floating base until the establishment of the more permanent one in Ajan Kloss and continued to serve as the base's barracks afterwards. Despite the refurbishment, the old ship needed constant upkeep, but the boost to morale it offered made the cost worthwhile.

The base bustled with the usual activity expected of late afternoon by the time Rey and Bibi-Eit returned. The sounds of gentle waves, hammers, and saws filled the cave. Off to the side someone tried vainly to shoo a hungry seagull away from their meal. From the workshop, the unique pungent odor of whale oil wafted out of a disassembled crosswing engine.

As Rey headed towards the command center, Rose spotted her from her tinker's table. She stood and jogged over to her, wiping her hands on her leather apron while swapping which hand held her project. "Rey!"

Rey paused and turned. "Ah, Rose."

Rose's smile turned to a perplexed frown on seeing her friend's dour expression. "Is something wrong?"

"I just... There's something I need to discuss with Leia."

"Oh, well if you need to go, this can wait."

Rey glanced over to Leia who was busy speaking with Commander Larma D'Acy. "No, I've got a moment."

Rose smiled excitedly. "While I was working on your Lightblade, I was thinking about the schematic you showed me and got a little inspired. I hope you don't mind, but I made that hinge you had in mind." She held out a squared U shaped piece of black metal. "I made it from spare automaton parts."

Rey turned the piece over in her hand. It had a good weight for what she needed while seeming very sturdy. The two pivots at the corners of the squared U were strong with nice crisp holdopens. She held one of the legs and flicked her wrist, letting the hinge open with a sharp snap.

Rose smiled sheepishly. "I'm sorry the finish is so rough. You got back earlier than I expected."

Rey flicked the hinge closed again. "No, no, It's perfect! Thank you!" She handed Rose's creation back to its smiling maker.

"I'll go ahead and finish this up tomorrow then. Oh! How did the adjustment do? Did it fix the problem?"

"Perfectly." Over Rose's shoulder, Rey noticed Leia looking in her direction. "Oh, it looks like Leia's available now. I'll have to catch back up with you later. Thank you again. Come on, Bibi-Eit."

Leia watched Rey walk over to her with puzzlement. "You're back early."

"I didn't finish the training course. I got distracted."

Leia frowned. "Distracted? That's unusual for you. Is something wrong."

"I..." Rey sighed. "Lately, I haven't been feeling myself."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, it- I know it's going to sound strange, but that broadcast after Crait... I've been meditating on it, but every time I do I get the feeling that it was directed at me and..."

"And Ben," Leia finished.

Rey nodded. "I've sensed a change in him and the Force itself. It keeps drawing my focus away and... I'm afraid it's getting to the point where I can't ignore it. I don't want to sound like I'm making excuses..."

"Rey, I know you well enough to know you aren't one to make excuses. I also know you've been pushing yourself. Too much, in my opinion. You can't rush these things. Get some rest."

Lieutenant Kaydel Connix approached the pair. "General?"

Leia turned.

"Still no word from the Falcon. Colonel Ackbar is starting to worry."

Leia shook her head and looked back to Rey. She was surprised to see Rey holding out her Lightblade hilt.

"Someday I will earn this sword, but right now, I don't think my head's in the right place."

Bibi-Eit chirped inquisitively.

Rey glanced down at him. "No, you can't earn it for me."

Leia chuckled and accepted the hilt. "Never underestimate an automaton. Now get some rest."

Rey smiled. "Yes, Master."