The Force Awakens (Star Wars)

by Alan Dean Foster

  Plutt was beside himself, any thought of restraint gone. As his voice rose, other scavengers in the room looked up from their work. Even for the irritable merchant, the outburst was exceptional.

  “Sweetheart,” he bellowed, his tone belying his choice of words, “we already had a deal!”

  Grinning tightly, she echoed his earlier observation. “Conditions have changed.” Reaching down, she reactivated the droid. BB-8’s head immediately swung up into its natural dorsal position. Had the droid possessed eyelids, it would have blinked.

  “Conditions have…” Plutt looked like was he going to explode. “You think you can be snide with me, girl? You think you can play games here? Who do you think you are?”

  She drew herself up with as much pride as she could muster. “I am an independent operator, scavenger of the metal lands, free of debt and beholden to no one. Least of all to a small-time trader named Plutt.”

  “You are…you are…” The merchant tried to control himself. “You have nothing. You are nothing!”

  “On the contrary,” she shot back, “I just told you who I am. As to what I have, that would be my freedom and my pride.” Murmurs of assent rose from behind her, from the vicinity of the worktables. She had said aloud what her colleagues and compatriots, regardless of species, all wanted to say but dared not. At least not to Plutt’s ugly face.

  All pretense of deference gone, Rey took a step toward the chair and shot the merchant behind it so steely a glance that he visibly flinched. BB-8 reacted with a beep of admiration. Resisting the urge to give the sphere a reassuring pat, Rey concluded the day’s dealings with Unkar Plutt.

  “The droid is not for sale.”

  With that she turned and headed toward the big tent’s exit, the excitedly beeping droid pacing her effortlessly.

  Plutt watched her go. He was starting to calm down, his mind working systematically. The confrontation had almost escalated beyond repair. Such loss of control was not like him. In the course of negotiations he would often shout, yell, occasionally pound the service shelf in front of him. But all the time, he was calculating. It was all about the business, all about the profit. Never personal. Not even now, when it involved the lovely but disrespectful Rey. That was something of a pity, he mused as he picked up a communicator.

  A voice answered. Ignoring the newly arrived scavenger who had tentatively approached, Plutt turned away and lowered his voice.

  “I have a job for you.” With a free hand he slammed the service portal opening shut, leaving the scavenger holding his bag of goods and staring blankly at the merchant’s back.

  —

  Slumped and shackled in the seat, Poe was still breathing. Beyond that, he no longer cared much what happened to him. It wasn’t his fault, he kept telling himself. For an ordinary person, no matter how strong they thought themselves, resisting the probing of a creature like Kylo Ren was simply not possible. He had tried. There was no shame in the failure.

  He didn’t much care what they might do with him now, though he could guess. Having given up what little of value he had possessed, he was no longer of any use to them. There was nothing about X-wing weapons systems the First Order did not already know, and as a mere pilot, he would not be expected to know anything about military movements or tactics. He had rendered himself expendable. No, not expendable. Less than that. He was now extraneous. As such, he doubted they would keep him alive. He would not receive food, but he might become it.

  His head came up as the door to the holding cell whooshed open and a stormtrooper entered. At least, Poe mused, it would be over soon. He could look forward to freedom from any further tormenting thoughts. The trooper’s words to the room’s single guard surprised him, however.

  “I’m taking the prisoner to Kylo Ren.”

  Poe sagged in his seat. What more did they want from him? Everything, anything of value that he had known was now known to them. Had they overlooked some line of questioning? He could not think of one. But then, at the moment, his mind was not functioning properly.

  The guard wondered, too. “I was not told to expect you. Why would Ren wish to question the prisoner outside the cell?”

  The new arrival’s voice darkened. “Do you dare to question Kylo Ren’s motives?”

  “No, no, that’s not what I meant! I…” Without another word, the guard proceeded to release the prisoner from his shackles. It took twice as long as it should have, since in his sudden nervousness he kept fumbling the task.

  Procedure demanded that the trooper keep his weapon trained on the prisoner at all times as together they made their way down the corridor. Another time, another place, Poe might have considered making a grab for it. But he was far too weakened to contemplate such a likely fatal effort. In any case, the trooper seemed as competent as all his kind and gave no indication of relaxing his vigilance.

  A rough prod with the weapon’s muzzle caused Poe to stumble and nearly fall. So exhausted was he that he could not even raise an objection or mutter a curse.

  “Turn here,” the trooper commanded sharply.

  The passageway they entered seemed unusually narrow and poorly lit. In contrast to the one they had just left, they encountered no personnel. No troopers, no techs, no general crew.

  A gloved hand clutching his shoulder brought him to a halt. Poe took in his claustrophobic surroundings. An odd place to carry out an execution, he thought resignedly. Apparently they were not going to make a show of him.

  The trooper’s words came low and fast. “Listen carefully and pay attention. You do exactly as I say, I can get you out of here.”

  Within Poe’s wounded brain something like cognizance stirred. He turned and gawked at the trooper’s mask. “If…what? Who are you?”

  In lieu of reply, the trooper removed his helmet—a helmet that had been cleaned of the blood that had been smeared across it by the flailing hand of a dying trooper far below, in the course of a minor battle on an obscure corner of the planet Jakku.

  “Will you be quiet and just listen to me? This is a rescue. I’m helping you escape.” When a stunned Poe didn’t respond, the trooper shook his shoulder firmly. “Can you fly a TIE fighter?”

  Poe finally stopped gaping at the dark-skinned young man and found his voice. “What’s going on here? Are you—with the Resistance?”

  “What?” The trooper indicated their surroundings. “That’s crazy! How long do you think anyone with Resistance sympathies would last on a ship like this? You’re under continuous observation. You so much as wink the wrong way and before you know it, the psytechs are all over you. No, I’m just breaking you out.” He cast a nervous glance up and down the narrow, dim corridor. “Can you fly a…”

  Having long since surrendered anything resembling hope, it took Poe more than a moment to begin regaining it. “I can fly anything. Wings, no wings, push-pull echo force, in or out of lightspeed—just show it to me. But why are you helping me?”

  The trooper spoke while staring nervously down the corridor. “Because it’s the right thing to do.”

  Poe shook his head, not buying it for a second. “Buddy, if we’re gonna do this, we have to be honest with each other.”

  The trooper stared at him for a long moment. “I need a pilot.”

  Poe nodded. A wide grin broke across his face. “Well, you just got me.”

  FN-2187 was taken aback by Poe’s quick agreement. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” Poe insisted. “We’re gonna do this. If you can get me into something that flies, that is.”

  The trooper slipped his helmet back over his head. For an instant, the whole enterprise teetered on the edge of believability. Was he being set up? Poe wondered. No longer needed, was he being made the subject of some cruel psychological trial, only to be thrown away at the conclusion? Yet there was something about the trooper that made Poe feel he could trust him. His manner, his look: T
here was something that said “throw in your lot with this one and you won’t be sorry that you did.”

  The trooper pointed back in the direction they had come. “This way. And stop looking so positive. Optimism doesn’t fit a prisoner’s profile.”

  Poe obediently lowered his head and adopted as morose an expression as possible. Once, as they re-entered the main corridor, a hint of a smile broke through, to be quickly quashed.

  The longer no one intercepted them and no one questioned their passage, the more Poe dared to allow himself to hope. What they were attempting bordered on the insane. Escaping from the custody of the First Order, much less from inside a Star Destroyer, was nearly impossible.

  Nearly.

  The very unfeasibility of it worked in their favor. He could not be a prisoner trying to escape, because prisoners simply did not escape. Just as stormtroopers did not desert their posts to facilitate such flight.

  Ordinary troopers were one thing; the group of officers coming toward them as they entered the hangar was quite something else. Face still resolutely aimed downward, Poe tensed and fought not to meet their eyes. Beside him, the trooper nudged him gently with the end of his blaster and muttered tightly.

  “Stay calm, stay calm.”

  Poe swallowed as the officers drew near—and walked on by.

  “I am calm,” Poe whispered.

  “I was talking to myself,” the trooper explained as they maintained their methodical tread toward the far side of the enclosure.

  “Oh, boy,” Poe whispered, this time to himself.

  “Act nervous,” the trooper advised him. “As if you’re being sent to your doom.”

  Poe swallowed. “Thanks for the tip.”

  The craft they were approaching was a Special Forces TIE fighter. Poe couldn’t help it—raising his gaze, he raked the ship with his eyes. If one discounted its origins, its dark angles took on a deadly beauty. No one stood near it: no techs, no maintenance workers, and no guards. What reason could there be to have to post a guard beside a ship inside a Star Destroyer? The entry hatch was open. Open and inviting: He had to will himself not to break into a run. There was no telling if the fighter was functional, or if it was being monitored by automated hangar security. The hangar’s atmosphere was contained, of course. Otherwise he wouldn’t be able to speculate about such things, since he would be a cold, dead protein crisp floating in space. How to get the massive access portal open?

  One thing at a time, he told himself. Get to the ship first. Then get on board. Find out if it was operational.

  A tech droid came toward them, trundling along the open floor. He could sense the trooper at his side tightening up. They maintained their pace and direction. So did the droid. It was very close now, its optics easily able to resolve the fine details of prisoner and escort. What would they do if it started to ask questions?

  Questioning a prisoner and guard not being a part of the tech droid’s protocol, it continued on past without beeping so much as a casual query.

  IV

  THE INTERIOR OF the TIE fighter was spotless. Droids and techs had done their work well, leaving it ready for pilot and gunner. It was a true pilot who now settled himself into the cockpit command seat. As to the other missing crew member, that remained to be seen.

  Slipping free of his bloody, confining jacket, Poe examined the controls laid out before him. Some were familiar from his professional studies of First Order ships, others from perusing details of Old Imperial craft. What he didn’t recognize immediately, he felt sure he could work around. A modern fighter like this one would be naturally forgiving, its computational components engineered to compensate for pilot miscues and oversights. He was relying on the likelihood that the ship itself would automatically correct for any minor mistakes in judgment.

  Minor mistakes. He still had to fly the damn thing.

  Movement behind him caused him to glance back over his shoulder. Having shed his helmet, the trooper who had freed him was settling himself into the gunner’s seat and struggling to make sense of his surroundings. Poe tried to project reassurance as he punched instrumentation. A whine began to rise from the ship’s stern.

  “I always wanted to fly one of these things,” Poe said. “Can you shoot?”

  “Anything designed for ground troops, I can. Blasters.”

  Poe reflected that his companion sounded less than confident. “Same principle! Only the results are a lot more expansive. The toggle on the left should be to switch between cannons, missiles, and pulse. Use the instrumentation on the right to aim—let the autotargeting help you—and triggers to fire!”

  Leaning slightly forward, the trooper tried to absorb what he was seeing as well as what the former prisoner was telling him. There were far more controls than those he was hearing about. Which were the ones he really needed to worry about?

  “This is very complicated,” he confessed, “and I’m not sure where to start. Maybe if we waited a moment or two so you could clarify a few things?”

  Freed from his shackles, then freed from captivity, Poe was not in a mood that allowed for a period of leisurely instruction. For one thing, he doubted he was going to have the opportunity. Any second now, someone was going to wonder why the Special Forces fighter was lighting its engines with the hatch closed.

  “No time,” he yelled back. “Consider this on-the-job training!”

  Working only semi-familiar controls, he persuaded the ship to lift. Unfortunately, it was still tethered to support lines. Cables twanged as they went taut, holding the TIE fighter to the deck.

  Inside the main control room for Hangar Six, a confused tech turned from his console to the officer passing close behind him.

  “Sir, we have an unsanctioned departure from Bay Two.”

  The First Order colonel halted, turned, and stared out the sweeping port that overlooked the hangar floor. At the far end, a fighter could be seen struggling to decouple from its support cabling. Neither the apparent preflight movements nor the fact that cabling was still engaged made any sense. That they were occurring simultaneously suggested a serious miscarriage of duty—or the inconceivable.

  “Get me communications with that vessel. Alert ship command, notify General Hux, and stop that fighter!”

  Throughout the Finalizer, confusion expanded exponentially. Departments were alerted that normally went unexercised while the ship was in orbit around peaceful planets. Off-duty personnel were roused to the sound of alarms ringing on their personal communicators. Contradictory commands flew back and forth between bemused sections. A large majority of those alerted responded slowly and reluctantly, confident that what they were responding to was nothing more than a drill.

  No such illusions afflicted the hurriedly assembled troopers who were struggling to push the heavy weapons platform into position on the hangar deck. The musical spang of cables snapping away from the TIE fighter pressed them to move even faster. The officer in charge was shouting, but no command could ready the weapon any quicker than its energizing program allowed. It would take another moment or two to fully power up.

  Seeing the threat that was being prepared on the other side of the hangar, Poe proffered his companion some urgent advice. “Okay—now would be a good time to start shooting.”

  Behind him, the defecting trooper’s gaze wandered desperately over the plethora of controls laid out before him. “I’ll do my best. I’m not sure I can…”

  A massive wave of blasts from the TIE fighter’s primary arsenal filled the hangar. Internal weapons emplacements shattered. Troopers and mobile cannon were obliterated. Parked TIE fighters were reduced to rubble, fragments of fuselage and wings bouncing off the deck, ceiling, and walls. One collective burst demolished the hangar control room. Where moments before there had been calm, now there was bedlam, alarm, and fire.

  The latter was extinguished when the fighter lifted, spun on
its axis, and Poe activated the TIE fighter’s departure mode. It had been locked down by the hangar controllers, but when FN-2187 imploded the operations center, all electronics that were usually controlled from there had gone neutral. The Special Forces TIE fighter had no trouble resolving the problem, automatically issuing the necessary directives.

  “Sorry, boys!” the trooper seated in the gunner’s chair yelled, even though there was no one save Poe to hear him. Accelerating, the Special Forces craft blasted clear of the Star Destroyer’s flank, leaving in its wake a splay of smashed TIE fighters, dead troopers, and an assortment of ruined accessory material.

  Poe was becoming more and more comfortable with the vessel’s instrumentation. In a very short period of time, his mood had swung from fatalistic to exalting. Not only was he alive, not only was he free—he had a ship! And what a ship: a Special Forces TIE fighter. He was certain of one thing as he maneuvered around the immense destroyer: Nobody was going to make him a prisoner of the First Order ever again.

  “This thing really moves.” He shook his head in admiration. Fine engineering knew no politics. “I’m not going to waste this chance: I owe some people in that ship a little payback. We’ll take out as many weapons systems as we can.”

  The trooper had expected to run as far and as fast as the TIE fighter would take them. “Shouldn’t we go for lightspeed as soon as we can?”

  A tight, humorless grin crossed Poe’s face. “Someone on that ship called me the best pilot in the Resistance. I wouldn’t want to disappoint him. Don’t you worry. I’ll get us in position. Just stay sharp and follow my lead.” He paused only briefly. “How about this? Every time you see the destroyer, you shoot at it.”

  Still unhappy with the direction their escape had taken, FN-2187 relaxed ever so slightly. “I can do that.”

  It wasn’t a ship, Poe told himself as he gleefully manipulated the manual instrumentation. It was a part of him, an extension of his own body. As fire began to lance out toward them from the immense starship, he whirled and spun the TIE fighter, utilizing predictors as well as his own skills to avoid the blasts. Taking them underneath the mother ship, he danced back and through gaps and openings, executing maneuvers beyond the abilities of all but the best pilots. Several skirted the edge of believability. Poe didn’t care. He was free and he was flying.