by Jason Fry
Rose and DJ exchanged a puzzled glance.
“It’s how they taught us to walk,” Finn said, then sighed. “Brass it out, people. It’ll be okay. Only problem is we don’t have working code cylinders.”
Rose eyed the silver capsules adorning Finn’s tunic.
“Those don’t work?” she asked.
“Afraid not. They’ve been reset to unregistered status. Probably some officers forgot to take them off and they wound up in the hamper.”
Rose looked at DJ, who was cleaning his fingernails to no discernible improvement.
“Can’t you reprogram them? You’re the codebeaker, after all.”
“In a laundry room?” DJ drawled. “Nuh-uh. That’s heavy code, friends. Need a white shirt to fire it up. Mess it around elsewhere, alarms start ringing. Clang clang clang clang. Lots and lots of alarms.”
Rose glared at him, frustrated, and the grubby thief raised his hands.
“The Do It? It was the Getting You Here. And the Do It has been done.”
“And the getting the tracker shut off,” Finn reminded him.
“And that. This, though? The stuff in the middle? Not this guy’s department, friends.”
“So can we even reach the tracker?” Rose asked.
“Sure,” Finn said. “We just have to avoid the major security checkpoints between here and there, that’s all.”
“And how many of those are there?”
Finn tried to remember. “Three? No, four. Except maybe…look, there are a few. It’ll be okay.”
“You keep saying that,” Rose said.
* * *
—
The laundry room was deep in the Supremacy’s lower levels, near the huge warship’s stern. During the first few minutes of their journey toward the distant tracking-control room, they encountered no one—just a lone mouse droid that regarded BB-8 curiously before letting out a puzzled but cheerful chirp.
Finn eyed BB-8’s scorched and dingy finish. “We should have gotten you a uniform, too. Hmm.”
He paused at a technician’s station by the turbolift bank and scooped up a rectangular black trash can.
BB-8 hooted derisively.
“You’re kidding, right?” Rose asked.
The turbolift chimed.
“It’ll be okay,” Finn said. She rolled her eyes.
The lift rose silently, then opened into a massive commons area filled with control stations and swarming with officers. Rose stopped fussing with her cap and shrank back, eyes wide.
“I didn’t sign up for this, man,” DJ said.
“Eyes forward,” Finn said. “Hey. Breathe.”
He reached out and realigned Rose’s cap—she’d somehow gotten it on backward—then covered BB-8 with the trash bin.
“Okay, let’s do this,” Finn said.
He squared his shoulders and stepped out of the turbolift. Rose exchanged a dismayed look with DJ and followed him, with BB-8 gliding along beside them.
Rose was certain they’d get no more than a few meters across the vast commons before the alarm went up and stormtroopers swarmed them. But as Finn predicted, the officers barely looked at them—and the few that did seemed loath to make eye contact.
Rose was convinced that her impersonation of an actual officer was the worst acting job in the history of infiltration. Was she walking too slowly? Too quickly? With too much of a slouch? And she didn’t dare look at DJ, let alone the rolling trash can next to him.
But Finn…Finn looked like a model officer, striding through the commons like he owned it. He practically radiated aloof confidence.
But then Finn had grown up in such surroundings, she supposed. This was the world to which he was accustomed, and by comparison the Resistance must have felt chaotic and haphazard. Maybe it hadn’t just been his infatuation with Rey that had driven him to flee, she thought—maybe he’d also been trying to escape unfamiliar surroundings in which he was alone and didn’t fit in.
Rose was a bit frightened of this new Finn, striding briskly in his polished boots. It was as if she were seeing the capable First Order officer he might have become—a well-engineered cog in its war machine, designed to further its murderous work.
She pushed the thought away. He had rejected that future—and with it, thrown away his entire past. He wasn’t FN-2187, not anymore. He was Finn—her friend.
“Major?” someone asked, loud and insistent and far too close. “Could you okay this nav assignment?”
Major. Major. That’s you, dummy!
A junior officer was standing beside her with a datapad.
Rose looked it over coldly and gave him a muttered okay and what she hoped was an officious nod—the minimum amount of time she could spare for an underling who was bothering her.
They walked on, leaving the junior officer behind. But were eyes lingering on them? And what about those mouse droids? Was it her imagination, or were they fixated on the motile trash can sliding through their midst?
“This isn’t working,” DJ warned under his breath.
No, it wasn’t her imagination.
“Almost there,” Finn said.
There. A long-nosed, scowling man with suspicious, darting eyes and a permanent scowl. A man in a white tunic. And rolling next to him, a First Order BB-series astromech.
Those BB units could see a full range of spectra, Rose knew. The man was First Order Security Bureau. And he was looking right at them.
Six stormtroopers stood at the turbolift bank, their postures indicating they were waiting and not on guard duty. Finn reached around one of them and jabbed at the lift controls.
The security officer was still looking at them.
And now he was walking toward them, not hurriedly but with determined steps. Behind him trundled the BB unit.
Rose wanted to scream. Where was the lift? They were surrounded by the pinnacle of warship evolution and the stupid lift still wouldn’t come.
It finally arrived and Rose hurried inside, DJ on her heels. She turned and found the senior officer just steps away. Now he was hurrying, his eyes boring holes in them.
She stabbed at the controls, willing the doors to close.
They closed in the security officer’s face.
Rose reminded herself to remain stock-still—a major didn’t exhale in nervous relief, high-five her fellow officers, or pat the top of overturned trash cans. Even a stormtrooper might find that odd.
Still, she couldn’t resist a glance at Finn—and discovered that one of the stormtroopers was looking at him, too, head cocked.
DJ’s hand crept toward his blaster.
What had they done wrong? And why, out of the four of them, was Finn the one who had attracted attention?
“Is there a problem, soldier?” Finn asked coldly, but Rose could hear the fear creeping into his voice.
“FN Twenty-one eighty-seven?” the trooper asked, voice modulated by his helmet.
Finn’s eyes widened. Rose looked at DJ, found the thief pale with fright.
“You don’t remember me,” the trooper said. “Nine twenty-six, from induct camp. Batch Eight. But I remember you.”
DJ’s hand was on his blaster now, trying to work it free without anyone noticing. The other stormtroopers’ attention was riveted on the conversation in their midst.
“Nine twenty-six…please don’t,” Finn said.
“I’m sorry, Twenty-one eighty-seven,” the soldier replied.
Rose knew it was hopeless. Even if DJ did get the drop on one of the troopers, there were five others. And anyway, the turbolift would be rated for blasterfire—a few stray bolts caroming around in this enclosed space would kill them as effectively as any public execution.
She put her hand on DJ’s, stopping his draw.
“I know I’m not supposed to initia
te contact with officers, but look at you!” the stormtrooper told Finn. “Never took you for captain material. Batch Eight, heigh-ho!”
And then he reached out and gave Finn a friendly swat on the butt.
Finn nodded stiffly as the doors opened.
“Batch Eight,” he said.
The troopers headed in one direction and the four of them headed in the other, stopping once they were around the corner. Finn gasped in relief, and a wan-sounding beep came from beneath BB-8’s trash can. As for Rose, she thought she was going to throw up.
“Let’s get to that tracker—fast,” she said.
“Right around the corner,” Finn promised. “It’ll be okay.”
* * *
—
There were just a few officers on the Raddus’s temporary bridge, beneath the Mon Calamari craft’s pointed nose. And none of them were prepared to see Poe, Connix, and several Resistance pilots storm in with their blasters drawn.
The Resistance officers looked aghast, but C-3PO looked up from a monitor as if nothing were amiss.
“Ah, Captain Dameron,” he said. “Admiral Holdo is looking for you.”
“We spoke,” Poe said, nodding at his fellow mutineers. “Get them down to the hangar.”
The officers were escorted out. C-3PO watched them go, obviously confused, as Poe studied the bridge consoles, longing for the simplicity of a control yoke and a trigger.
After several anxious moments of searching, he found what he was looking for. He powered down the transports in the hangar, watching the scene on the monitor in satisfaction as the lights flickered and left Holdo and her entourage peering through the gloom.
But none of it would mean anything unless Finn and Rose had found a way to shut down the First Order tracker that kept the Raddus pinned in place.
* * *
—
As Finn rounded the corner, he was grimly certain that he had made a mistake somewhere, leading them in some random direction through the Supremacy’s guts instead of to the tracking-control station.
But no, ahead of them the corridor ended at a formidable-looking door. Beyond it, through combat-rated viewports, he saw rows of computer banks and imposing circuit breakers rated for the power needs of an A-class process.
“This is it,” Finn said, debating whether or not to tease Rose about all the worrying she’d done. He decided not to—why jinx things?
DJ studied the door control.
“Gimme a mo,” he said.
“Good time to figure out how we get back to the fleet?” Rose asked.
Finn considered that. “I know where the nearest escape pods are.”
“Of course you do,” Rose said.
Finn rolled his eyes.
DJ pulled Rose’s medallion out of his coat and pushed it into the innards of the control panel.
“Haysian smelt,” he said. “Best conductor.”
A moment later he tossed the medallion to Rose.
She tried to hide her astonishment. She was afraid she’d burst into tears, and there wasn’t time for that—or for anything else.
“You’re welcome,” DJ said.
Beneath the trash barrel, they heard a muffled voice—which Finn realized was Poe’s. A moment later, BB-8 extended a mechanical arm from beneath the bin, flipping the comlink in Finn’s direction.
“Poe, we’re almost there,” Finn said. “Have the cruiser prepped for lightspeed.”
“Yeah, I’m on it,” Poe said over the comlink. “Just hurry.”
“Is this going to work?” Rose asked. “It seems like it’s actually going to work.”
“Almost there,” DJ said.
* * *
—
Poe hurriedly input coordinates into the Raddus’s navicomputer. The terminus of their jump didn’t particularly matter—all they needed was to be close enough to a world where the Resistance could communicate with its allies and acquire more fuel. By the time the First Order’s hunters found them, they’d be gone again.
C-3PO was staring at him now. “Sir, I’m almost afraid to ask, but—”
“Good instinct, Threepio. Go with that.”
Then motion from the hangar caught his eye on the monitor. Smoky vapor was spilling out of a fuel hose, pierced by flashing rings of stun beams. Holdo had made her move—Poe could see her in the middle of the fight, directing her loyalists.
“Seal that door!” he shouted to a pilot by the entrance to the bridge.
The pilot did so, overriding the controls to lock out anyone trying to enter from the other side.
Now all Poe could do was wait.
C-3PO began shuffling toward the door. Poe watched the protocol droid in disbelief.
“Threepio, stay away from that door,” Poe warned him.
C-3PO turned indignantly.
“It would be quite against my programming to be party to a mutiny,” he huffed. “It is not correct protocol!”
Sparks flew from the juncture of the bridge doors as someone began cutting through from the other side. C-3PO executed a hasty about-face and headed in the other direction as quickly as his servomotors allowed.
Poe exchanged a glance with the other pilots, then looked worriedly at the sparking door.
“Finn?” he yelled into his comlink.
* * *
—
“Now or never!” Finn called to DJ.
“Now,” DJ said with a look of sleepy satisfaction, then stepped back.
The door opened and Finn and Rose rushed in, with DJ and BB-8 trailing behind. Rose eyed the circuit breakers, tracing the pathways of power conduits.
Three levers, five seconds. Easy job.
Something hissed on either side of them. Two doors opened and the BB unit from the commons rolled inside, its electronic eye fixed balefully on them. A dozen stormtroopers rushed in, blasters drawn. Behind them came the security officer from the commons area.
Finn looked glumly at the stormtroopers as they clattered into the control room. There were far too many of them even to think of starting a firefight.
Then a new sound reached his ears—a dreadfully familiar one. The slow, measured tread of armored feet.
Captain Phasma walked into the control room, rifle cradled in her mirror-bright gauntlets.
“FN Twenty-one eighty-seven,” she purred. “So good to have you back.”
* * *
—
Poe was still trying to process that he’d just heard his friends being captured when sparks began to fly from the doors to the Raddus’s temporary bridge. He fumbled for his sidearm as the doors groaned open, then waited for the smoke to clear, keeping his blaster leveled at the bridge entrance.
Leia Organa walked through the smoke in her hospital gown, her steps a bit shaky, her face grave.
Relief flooded through Poe. He lowered his blaster.
Before he could say anything—how happy he was to see her, how horribly wrong everything had gone without her—Leia raised her blaster and stunned him.
Interpreting visions of the future was a dangerous game. Whether Jedi, Sith, or some other sect less celebrated by history, all those who used the Force to explore possible time lines kept that uppermost in their minds. Those who didn’t died regretting that they hadn’t.
Snoke had learned that lesson many years ago, when he was young and the galaxy was very different. These days, what struck him was how much visions of the future left out.
For example, who would have guessed that the girl Rey would be so slim and fragile-looking? She looked lost in the throne room, dwarfed by both her surroundings and the galaxy-shaking events for which she was the unlikely and unwitting fulcrum.
But Snoke knew appearances were often deceiving—sometimes fatally so. Underestimating Rey had nearly cost Kylo Ren his life, after all.
Snoke knew better. For he had his own legions of uncounted dead, their ranks filled by those who had underestimated him.
Snoke knew he himself was an unlikely fulcrum, just about the furthest thing from what the tattered remnants of Palpatine’s Empire had imagined as a leader. The admirals and generals who’d survived the fury of the Empire’s implosion and the New Republic’s wrath had envisioned being led by someone else, anyone else: pitiless, devious Gallius Rax; dutiful, cautious Rae Sloane; the slippery political fanatic Ormes Apolin; or even an unhinged but ambitious military architect such as Brendol Hux.
All of those would-be leaders had been co-opted, sidelined, or destroyed, leaving only Armitage Hux, the mad son of a mad father. And that one was but a mouthpiece, a miscast tinkerer whose rantings could only persuade the sort of rabble who blindly worshipped rage and lunatic certainty.
Though galactic history would record it differently—Snoke would see to that—the evolution of the First Order had been more improvisation than master plan. That was another element visions tended to miss.
Palpatine had engineered the Contingency to simultaneously destroy his Empire and ensure its rebirth, ruthlessly winnowing its ranks and rebuilding them with who and what survived. The rebuilding was to take place in the Unknown Regions, secretly explored by Imperial scouts and seeded with shipyards, laboratories, and storehouses—an enormously expensive effort that had taken decades, and been kept hidden from all but the elect.
But the Imperial refugees’ military preparations had been insufficient bulwarks against the terrors of the Unknown Regions. Grasping in the dark among strange stars, they had come perilously close to destruction, and it had not been military might that saved them.
It had been knowledge—Snoke’s knowledge.
Which, ironically, led back to Palpatine and his secrets.
Palpatine’s true identity as Darth Sidious, heir to the Sith, had been an even greater secret than the Contingency. And the Empire’s explorations into the Unknown Regions had served both aspects of its ruler. For Sidious knew that the galaxy’s knowledge of the Force had come from those long-abandoned, half-legendary star systems, and that great truths awaited rediscovery among them.