Star Wars: Before the Awakening

by Greg Rucka

Slipping the staff from her back, Rey left it leaning against the side of the speeder and made her way to the base of the Spike. The ground broke beneath her boots, glass popping and cracking. The pillar creaked as she reached its base, the Spike resettling in the sand, as if warning Rey to reconsider her plan.

  The metal, hot from a day in the sun, burned under her hands as she climbed. She used the edges of her wrap as makeshift gloves, but still the heat seeped through. There were more handholds and footholds than it had at first seemed, and she ascended quickly, focusing on what she was doing rather than what was above or quickly growing farther away below. It wasn’t until she felt the wind snapping the ends of her scarf that she realized how high she’d gone. Rey stopped, then wedged herself into a gap on the Spike where she could almost sit. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was secure, at least for the moment.

  The view was amazing. She’d climbed easily one hundred meters, maybe higher, she thought. Looking back the direction she’d come, she could just make out what she guessed was Niima, shimmering and distorted in the heat haze. Between her and the town stretched the majority of the known graveyard, the edge marked by the dead Star Destroyer, and from there even that appeared small. Rey shifted her weight to the side and pulled her macrobinoculars from her satchel. Only one of the lenses worked, so it was more a macromonocular, she figured, but it worked all the same. She brought it to her eyes and scanned the desert spread out before her.

  There were a couple of Teedos on the horizon, the range finder on the macros telling her they were over fifty kilometers out. They were walking their luggabeasts instead of riding them, which meant they’d been out on a long search and were returning home. She swept her gaze to the left, over the featureless desert. It was disappointing. There was nothing new to see, and the few wrecks she knew to be out that way were gone now, eaten once more by the desert.

  Something dug at her vision, a flash—metal or glass—just for an instant, and Rey swung her view back, slower, and felt her heartbeat quickening. She forced herself to look slowly and tried to retrace the path her eyes had taken, but it took genuine willpower to do it. The sun was dropping, and Rey knew that whatever the light had caught, it had been a case of right place, right time; in minutes, perhaps even seconds, the sun would drop even lower, and what had been revealed might vanish forever.

  She saw it again—the flare of sunlight glinting off exposed metal—and she refocused the macros and pulled out. What she found nearly made Rey fall off the Spike.

  It was a ship.

  Rey lowered the macros. She checked the sun again. By the time she climbed down, she’d have just enough time to make it back home before darkness fell. If she pushed to the wreck she would make it with daylight left, but there’d be no way to get back to the walker before the desert turned cold and dangerous with nightfall and everything that came with it. She could leave it for tomorrow, head out at dawn, and hope that she would be able to find the wreck again and that nobody else would discover it before she could claim it.

  It was those last two unknowns that made her decision: the fear that she would never be able to find it again and that someone would steal it from her.

  She stuffed the macros back in her satchel and began the long climb down.

  It was an old Ghtroc Industries 690, a small light freighter, and Rey recognized it instantly from her flight sim; she’d flown and crashed the later version, the 720, more times than she could count. The sun was kissing the horizon, bathing everything in soft gold light, and it made the ship look every bit as precious as Rey knew it was, because the greatest miracle of all—more than the fact that it hadn’t yet been discovered and claimed by anyone, as far as she could tell, more than the fact that it was almost entirely uncovered—was that the ship was intact.

  There was absolutely damage. She could see that even as she hopped off her speeder and stood staring at the vessel. The telemetry dish had been sheared from the top of the hull, and the cockpit windshield was missing several panes, presumably shattered on impact, and the two that remained were webbed with cracks. Along the hull to her left—the starboard side, Rey told herself—there was a gash that ran almost two meters and exposed corroded, melted wiring and hunks of missing cable. Whoever had brought it down had tried to take it through its landing cycle, and the front landing strut, at least as best she could see where the sand had shifted, was missing entirely.

  But it was a ship, it was in one piece, and Rey had found it—and that made it hers. Her face felt strange; she had an odd ache in her cheeks, and as she went closer, she caught her reflection in what was left of the cockpit’s windshield. She was filthy, but that was normal. What surprised her was that she was smiling, and when she tried to stop, the ache in her cheeks remained and she found that she was still doing it anyway.

  Unkar would pay…Rey tried to calculate what Unkar would pay for the ship, just like that. A hundred portions? Five hundred? Enough food that she could eat for a year. With water and maybe some other things, too: better tools, perhaps, or even a blaster so she could better protect herself, instead of having to rely on her staff. All that just for the wreck, and that didn’t even count anything Rey might find inside.

  Shadows were starting to stretch from the freighter across the sand. She was losing the light. Quickly, she pushed her speeder into cover beneath the cockpit, which was jutting up at a twenty-degree angle. She switched off the power, then scrambled around the side of the dune, trying to get a better look at the ship. It had listed to port, either because of the storm or simply the way it had gone down, and a large dune was beginning to sweep over the hull on that side. Another day, a strong wind, and the whole ship might end up hidden again.

  Sand slid beneath her feet as she summited the dune. With a running start, Rey leapt down and landed atop the hull. The exterior of the ship was burning hot, still holding the heat of the day, and she hissed in pain as she pushed herself back to her feet. She could feel the burn through her boots. The ship remained stable. It didn’t rock or wobble as she worked her way forward toward the cockpit. One of the missing panes was wide enough for her to slip through. Looking down she saw where the desert had spilled into the freighter, making almost a ramp of sand to aid her descent. She got down on her hands and knees, gritted her teeth when the hot metal burned her, and crawled inside. Once she was through she rolled onto her back and slid the rest of the way down.

  Rey ended up between two seats, the pilot and copilot positions. It was much cooler inside and strangely silent. The noise of the desert, which seemed quiet at the best of times, was entirely gone. There was nothing, just stillness. Ahead of her, the cockpit door hung half-open, its panels split and akimbo, and beyond that there was only darkness.

  Rey slid in the sand as she got to her feet and put a hand on the back of the pilot’s chair to steady herself. Something fell from the headrest and clattered against metal. Her eyes were still adjusting to the dimness, and it took a moment before she recognized what she’d knocked free. She found herself smiling again, despite herself.

  She picked up the fallen goggles and blew sand clear of the lenses. She held them up, examining them. There wasn’t a scratch on them. Rey slung the goggles around her neck, then pulled her flashlight from her satchel.

  She set out to explore her find.

  Rey’s biggest fear was that she would find a body or, worse, bodies, whatever remained of the unfortunate crew. She figured someone had to have taken the ship down, a pilot who’d started the landing cycle all those years before. It was quite conceivable it had been the last thing the pilot had ever done. So she was cautious, not because she was squeamish but because she didn’t want to be surprised by a corpse.

  There was no body to find, and there was a logical explanation for that: the freighter was missing both its escape pods. The landing cycle, Rey guessed, had been initiated by the autopilot in an attempt to save the ship.

  The Ghtroc was a small ship, especially for a freighter. The 720, the model she
was more familiar with, had been designed for a maximum crew of two, with room for another eight passengers and 135 metric tons of cargo capacity. The 690 was scaled down from that in all ways, designed for a crew of one, with room for three passengers and only 60 metric tons of cargo capacity.

  She made her way with care, working from the cockpit back. Due to the way the ship had settled, moving through it was treacherous though not unmanageable. Rey had to go slowly because she needed one hand to steady herself, the other for her light. She found the crew quarters, along with evidence of two people—old clothes and personal belongings—which she left alone. She found the galley and saw that half the rations had spoiled or gone to dust, but there were seventeen quick-meal packs still intact and sealed and a purifier jug that would turn dirty water into something she could drink. She almost laughed with joy.

  When Rey saw the green light, though, she did laugh.

  The reactor core was to the aft, and it should’ve been dead. There should’ve been no power running to any system aboard. She almost missed it. She thought it was a reflection from her flashlight, an afterimage, but when she turned away it clung to her peripheral vision. She half-slid to the main control panel. She was so excited she couldn’t catch her breath. The light was weak, but it was there, it was real, and it illuminated two words on the button. Her heart in her throat, Rey pressed it.

  Overhead and all around her, lights flickered to life as auxiliary power was restored to the freighter.

  If Unkar would pay five hundred portions for the wreck…what would he pay for a wreck that wasn’t a wreck? What would he pay for a ship?

  And the craziest idea of all, the one she’d been trying to ignore since she’d slid into the cockpit, the one she hadn’t allowed herself to entertain because it was dangerously close to hope: what would Unkar pay for a ship that worked?

  Rey spent the night on the freighter. She shut down the auxiliary power, both to prevent the batteries from draining any further and to keep light from leaking out of the ship. Her greatest fear was discovery, what would happen if someone else found her ship. They would undoubtedly try to take it from her; they would try to steal what was now hers. She wasn’t going to let that happen.

  She tried one of the beds in the crew cabin for sleep but found two things wrong with that plan. The first was that the angle of the ship meant she slid against the bulkhead with all her weight on her side. That was uncomfortable but bearable. The second, however, was the bed itself. It was far too soft. She ended up on the floor.

  First thing in the morning, Rey broke the seal on one of the quick-meals and ate, what was to her, some of the finest food she’d ever enjoyed. She had no idea what it was, but there was actual meat product and a sauce that was sweet and tangy at the same time and something she thought might be nuts, which popped between her teeth with a satisfying snap. There was also a small disk, encased in some sort of batter, and when she bit into that it mixed with an almost spicy sugar that was so intense she nearly gagged on its sweetness.

  The next order of business was protecting the ship from prying eyes. That was apparently something the previous owners had wanted, as well, because as Rey searched the cargo hold for something to cover the freighter, she found a displaced floor panel and, after some muscle and prying, managed to pop it open to reveal two folded sheets. Unfolding one, she discovered it was much larger than she’d first thought. There was an actuator tab on one corner, and Rey pressed it, not knowing what to expect. Still holding the edge of the enormous blanket, she watched it literally disappear before her eyes or, more precisely, blend to match its surroundings. When she pressed the actuator again, the fabric reverted to a dull flat gray. She remembered a Klatooinian salvager arguing with Unkar about something like that but much smaller. A memetic sheet, he’d called it.

  Rey concluded that whoever had owned the freighter before her hadn’t, perhaps, been concerned with operating legally.

  It took a while and some scrambling around the hull to get the two sheets positioned over her freighter and weighted down so they wouldn’t get away in a sudden gust of wind. Once activated, the ship all but vanished into the surrounding terrain. Rey didn’t have any idea how long the sheets would last, if they needed recharging or worked on a battery or even solar power—solar power would’ve been very nice, she thought—but they did the job well enough. You would have to be almost on top of the freighter before you realized there was something there besides desert.

  Rey climbed back inside. She was growing more familiar with the ship and was having an easier time moving about. She’d found an old paper notebook in the crew quarters and a couple of styluses for writing, and she took them with her when she switched the auxiliary power back on and brought the lights up once more. Then she set to work making a very careful inventory of the ship’s systems, working from the engines forward to the cockpit. She checked wiring, power couplings, cabling, conduits, rigging, component plating, circuitry. She was methodical and patient, and she filled page after page of the notebook with her findings: what worked, what didn’t, what needed repair, what could be jury-rigged, what would need to be salvaged from other vessels, what would have to be traded for or, worse, bought.

  It took four days for Rey to complete the list, and when she finished she treated herself to another of the quick-meals—she was down to eleven of them, and those battered disks were definitely her favorite. She looked over everything she’d written and wondered if it would be worth it to continue. It was an enormous amount of work. Most of the things on her list she could repair or jury-rig herself, but some of the items would need to be replaced entirely or rebuilt from scratch. Things like the missing cockpit windshield panes could be hunted down, but it would take time. Corroded wiring and missing couplings and conduits could be picked off of other pieces of salvage. But the premix chamber for the hyperdrive engines needed a new containment unit, and Rey didn’t have either the know-how or the facilities to make one herself. The portside dorsal repulsorlift emitter was totaled, and while it wasn’t strictly needed to fly—there were three other emitters and they all seemed relatively intact—not having it would make takeoff and landing a challenge. Never mind the fact that, perhaps most crucial of all, the ship had no fuel left, only what remained in the auxiliary batteries.

  Without fuel, there was no way she’d be able to fly her little freighter into Niima.

  That was something, Rey realized, she actually wanted. She wanted to be the ship that everyone looked up and stared at. She wanted to see the expressions on everyone’s faces as she came down the ramp and they saw it was her, Rey, who had flown that prize home. She wanted to see Unkar’s big eyes open wide and his face puff up in surprise, to hear him stammer as he made offer after offer for the ship, her ship, before she agreed.

  Five hundred portions? Try five thousand portions, Unkar. Try five thousand portions and a new speeder, a new set of tools, a spare generator, and the first pick of salvage that comes in for, say, the next two—no, four, no, five—years.

  She wanted that very much.

  That meant, she realized, it was time to get to work.

  The task was even harder and slower than Rey had imagined. Problems magnified and grew exponentially, and it wasn’t simply with the repairs to her ship. That would have been bad enough, just trying to get everything aboard working again. That would’ve been a full-time job in and of itself.

  She still needed to eat. She still needed to survive. She still needed to work, and that meant she had to work twice as hard, because she was effectively trying to gather salvage for two jobs. Every piece of salvage she managed to collect was now subjected to critical evaluation: was it for the ship or for Unkar? The best pieces, of course, were worth the most to Unkar and could bring multiple portions. Invariably, those same pieces were the ones Rey needed to repair her ship. The harder it was to replace, the more it was worth; the harder it was to replace, the less likely that Rey would find another.

  For that reason,
the ship had to come first; it had to be the priority. If it wasn’t, then all that work was for nothing. Two months, then three, then five passed, and she was almost always hungry, sometimes going two days without a meal before finally, begrudgingly trading Unkar for more than just one portion at a time. Days spent crawling through the graveyard, desperately searching for bits and pieces, racking her brain trying to remember where she had seen an oscillation gyro that might still work, an intact plate of duralloy shielding that was big enough to help seal the gash in her freighter’s side, a coercive reciprocating pump for the oxygen scrubbers. It was exhausting. It was unending.

  It took its toll, and Rey wasn’t as careful as she might have been.

  Much of what she salvaged, whether to be used on her freighter or traded to Unkar, needed to be cleaned. Rey would use the washing station at Niima, picking the times when the fewest people were around. She would scrub the filth and dirt and sand from her pieces, set them aside to dry, and then, as surreptitiously as she could, slip those components she needed for repairs back into her satchel. Some things she took in had no obvious salvage value at all but still needed to be washed. Cabling, for instance, was relatively easy to find but less than worthless as far as Unkar was concerned.

  “What’re you building?”

  Rey was bent down, scrubbing a particularly stubborn chunk of carbon scoring from a band limiter. She lifted her head sharply and stared the questioner accusingly in the eyes. The speaker was a human female, shorter than Rey but about her age. Her hair was short, shaved on the sides. Rey tried to remember her name.

  “Devi.”

  “Yeah,” the woman said. “You’re Rey, right? What’re you building?”

  “I’m not building anything.”

  “Unkar’s not gonna pay for that. Porto’s crew brought in, like, maybe a hundred band limiters in the last week. You gotta know that.”