by Jason Fry
—
To Canady’s disgust, Bascus was still monitoring the destruction on D’Qar—admittedly impressive but now thoroughly irrelevant—even as the Resistance bombers closed on the Fulminatrix and her now-defenseless topside.
Canady ordered the second wave of TIEs to double back and protect the ship, then called for the auto cannons to be recharged—and to target the Resistance flagship.
If that interfered with Hux’s carefully planned demonstration, well, Canady would accept the consequences.
He had a ship to save.
* * *
—
In the belly turret of Cobalt Hammer, Paige clutched her dual triggers and sent blast after blast of fire into space around her.
Every shot rattled the glass ball encapsulating her—between that and the impact of near-misses from marauding TIEs, she’d bitten her tongue more times than she could count. The temperature was rising inside the ball, sending sweat running down her forehead and into her eyes. She wanted desperately to wipe it away, but didn’t dare let go of the triggers.
An MG-100 StarFortress flew like a torpid asteroid, and so each bomber relied on its neighbors for protection, flying so the rear and ball gunners could overlap their fields of fire.
But as Fossil had taught her, a plan only lasted until you got punched. Three bombers had been destroyed, forcing Cobalt and Crimson squadrons to shift their positions. And still the TIEs kept coming, dueling X-wings and A-wings that wheeled and circled around the bombers, trying to protect them from the relentless First Order fire.
A TIE smashed into the clip of one of Crimson Squadron’s bombers, detonating its payload and taking out two neighboring bombers in a devastating chain reaction.
Over the shared channel, C’ai Threnalli yelped in Abnedish, warning Poe that they couldn’t hold off the attackers.
“Yes we can!” urged Poe, speeding toward the dogfight in his X-wing. “Stay tight with the bombers!”
Paige pumped bolts at a TIE wheeling across her vision, the belly turret swiveling smoothly to follow the enemy fighter’s path. Laser bolts pierced its ball cockpit, sending its solar panels spiraling off in either direction.
Rose would have gotten a kick out of that one—on their first bomber missions, Fossil had lectured her about needing to pay attention to her flight-engineer duties and not to her big sister’s prowess as a gunner. But Paige had no time to exult—another TIE was pinwheeling toward her, emerald laserfire lancing out in search of Cobalt Hammer.
Ahead, the Dreadnought’s nose was approaching like a shoreline.
“We’re almost there!” Tallie said. “Bombardiers, begin drop sequence!”
Above her on the flight deck Nix Jerd would now be inputting commands into the bombardier’s pedestal, initiating the bomb sequence and activating the remote trigger he carried. Paige knew his command would send more than a thousand magno-charges tumbling out of Cobalt Hammer’s bomb bay, drawn to the target below. She would be able to watch them all the way down, and would feel the familiar lurch as their bomber shed its payload and rose, freed of the proton bombs’ mass.
If they reached the target.
Brilliant white light flared to starboard and Cobalt Hammer was slammed sideways, the bomber’s fuselage groaning under the strain. Paige had instinctively thrown up her hands to protect her face and was left fumbling for the triggers, frantically trying to blink away the spots in her vision.
The First Order pilots had taken advantage of her lapse to dive at Cobalt Hammer, near-misses shaking the bomber. Paige fired back frantically, turning to check the position of the other bombers.
There were no other bombers.
Cobalt Hammer was the only StarFortress left.
* * *
—
“Auto cannons aimed,” Bascus said.
“Forty seconds to full charge,” Goneril added.
Canady stopped himself from ordering his sensor officers to review the Resistance flagship’s schematics and calculate its most vulnerable points. It didn’t matter—the Fulminatrix’s cannons would chew the enemy warship apart in mere moments.
Canady grimaced—he was thinking like Bascus, or Hux. He surveyed his instruments and scowled at the lone StarFortress still flying above his Dreadnought’s hull, at the center of a decaying fighter escort.
“Destroy that last bomber,” he said.
* * *
—
A black X-wing passed below Paige’s turret, close enough that she could see the astromech in its droid socket.
“Cobalt bombardier, why aren’t your bay doors open?” Poe demanded. “Paige, come in!”
Paige saw, to her horror, that the doors at the bottom of Cobalt Hammer’s bomb magazine were shut. She called for Nix, then the other members of her crew, but heard nothing.
When was the last transmission she’d received from another member of her crew? And why wasn’t Spennie firing?
Below her, the Dreadnought’s hull was a vast expanse.
Moving quickly, Paige released the magnetic lock on the ball-turret hatch and scrambled up into the bomb bay, manually opening the doors below her. Through wisps of smoke she saw Nix lying on the catwalk overhead, the trigger clutched in his hand.
“Nix!” she screamed. “Nix!”
“Drop the payload!” Poe shouted in her ear. “Now!”
Paige scrambled up the ladder to the flight deck. Nix, she saw immediately, was dead. She’d just pulled the remote trigger from his grip when a blast shook Cobalt Hammer. Her foot slipped and the remote tumbled out of her grasp as she grabbed for the edge of the catwalk—and missed.
She slammed into the deck at the bottom of the bomb bay, ten meters down. Her eyelids fluttered and she tried to move her legs but couldn’t. Above her, through vision gone blurry, she could see the trigger where it had come to rest on the very edge of the catwalk.
Everything hurt. She wanted to sleep and fought desperately not to, forcing her foot to rise and slam into the ladder. High above her head, the catwalk rattled and the trigger twitched.
* * *
—
“Auto cannons fully charged,” Bascus said, leaning forward eagerly.
“Fire!” Canady shouted.
* * *
—
Paige drove her foot into the ladder again, pain shooting up her leg. Had the trigger moved? She couldn’t tell. Her legs were shaking. She willed them to be still and aimed one last kick at the base of the ladder.
The trigger bounced and fell off the catwalk. She reached up a trembling hand, trying to follow the trigger as it tumbled through the air, bouncing this way and that off the magno-charges in their racks.
Somehow, it fell into her hand.
Click.
The rack safeties opened with a whine. Paige’s hand crept up her flight suit to her collar, hunting for the Otomok medallion around her neck. She found it as the bombs fell like black rain out of the racks, drawn magnetically down toward the distant landscape of the Dreadnought’s surface. Found it and held it tight as Cobalt Hammer shuddered, lost power, and plummeted into the fire and ruin below.
* * *
—
As the dreadnought broke apart, the Resistance starfighters peeled off and raced for the safety of the Raddus, pursued by TIEs.
Poe whooped in triumph, opening the throttle up as he raced toward the distant Resistance fleet.
“Start the lightspeed jump, now!” he yelled.
Fire lanced out from the Star Destroyers behind him. Ignoring BB-8’s squalls and the red lights all over his flight console, Poe flew into the Raddus’s fighter hangar at full speed.
A moment later the Resistance ships had vanished, leaving the laserfire from the First Order warships to bisect empty space.
* * *
—
On
the bridge of the Finalizer, jubilation was replaced by shocked silence. Hux stood and stared at the empty space where the Resistance fleet had been a moment earlier, then turned his head to regard the burning remains of Canady’s shattered Dreadnought.
“General, Supreme Leader Snoke is making contact from his ship,” called a communications monitor.
Hux forced himself to look impassive, not daring to wonder if he’d succeeded.
“Excellent,” he told her. “I’ll take it in my chambers.”
But a moment later a huge hologram of Snoke’s head had appeared on the bridge. The leader of the First Order’s face loomed over Hux, his startling blue eyes blazing.
“Oh good, Supreme Leader—” Hux began, but an unseen force slammed him into the polished black floor of the bridge.
“General Hux,” Snoke said. “My disappointment in your performance cannot be overstated.”
Hux fought to rise and reclaim his dignity.
“They can’t get away, Supreme Leader!” he insisted. “We have them tied on the end of a string!”
* * *
—
Finn woke with a start, yelling Rey’s name—and immediately banged his head.
He looked around wildly, expecting to find himself in the snowy forests of the planet that the First Order had gutted to transform into Starkiller Base. That was the last thing he remembered: the slim figure of Rey standing her ground as a bloodied Kylo Ren advanced on her, his crimson lightsaber spitting and snarling.
That same lightsaber had struck Finn from behind, making every nerve in his body spasm in agony. It had left him lying in the snow, smelling his own burnt flesh, his body trying to fold itself in half around a line of fire carved up his back. He’d tried to force his arms and legs to move, to get him back on his feet.
As a soldier must.
No, as a friend must.
Finn looked around, confused. This part of the forest was strangely different. There was still snow everywhere, but it was warmer, and the underbrush was oddly angular. Because—
Because it wasn’t a forest at all.
He was surrounded by white, but it wasn’t snow—it was the walls and ceiling of a room. He was lying on a gurney, with a transparent medical cocoon above his head. Around him were crates and equipment, scattered haphazardly.
And there was no sign of Rey.
Finn shoved the medical cocoon’s bubble aside. His arm creaked strangely as he did so, and an odd smell—briny and oceanic—made his nostrils flare. He realized he was wearing a bacta suit of clear flexpoly, ribbed and shot through with tubing. It was an old suit—the First Order would have fed it into a trash compactor long ago in favor of a newer model.
But then he had escaped the First Order and his life as FN-2187 to follow Rey from Jakku to Takodana and then to Starkiller Base. He’d returned to the heart of the First Order’s war machine to rescue her from Ren, only to find she’d rescued herself.
Had she done so again, after Finn lost consciousness in the snow? Had she saved him? It was entirely possible—Rey was impulsive, stubborn, and short-tempered, but also self-reliant and capable.
If that was what had happened, perhaps she was nearby.
Finn scrambled to his feet and promptly fell over. When he got himself righted again, healing bacta fluid was spurting out of the suit and pooling around his feet. His back ached dully and his mind was foggy.
He stumbled across the cluttered space to a window filled with blue radiance—the unmistakable signature of hyperspace. That answered one question, at least—he was aboard a starship.
Trying to focus, Finn turned away from the window. He found a door and fumbled with its controls, emerging in a hallway. Soldiers hurried past, wearing the patchwork uniforms of the Resistance. Before he could force a question from his befuddled mind they had vanished down the hallway, ignoring him completely.
Finn followed them as quickly as he could, calling Rey’s name.
* * *
—
The moment Poe set Black One down on the flight deck of the Raddus’s fighter hangar, the X-wing began bombarding BB-8 with action items that it insisted had to be immediately put right by competent technicians.
This time, the astromech simply uploaded all 106 action items to the Resistance’s starfighter maintenance-request database. Goss Toowers could deal with the temperamental X-wing for the next couple of hours. Maybe he’d even schedule a much-needed memory wipe.
The cockpit canopy rose and a weary Poe removed his helmet.
“Well done, pal,” he told BB-8.
As Poe climbed down from his X-wing, BB-8 began disengaging his linkages. But Black One wasn’t done. That booster engine was obviously a dangerous, shoddy aftermarket product that never should have been installed, but since it had been, had BB-8 recorded the starfighter’s top speed during the just-completed engagement? And wasn’t it the top speed ever recorded for a T-70 X-wing?
BB-8 had to admit to mild curiosity about the question. The answer came back from the Raddus’s tactical database instantly—it was. No sooner had BB-8 passed that along than Black One, being Black One, had another query: Was it the top speed ever recorded for any starfighter?
That was a more complicated query, one BB-8 immediately decided would be a waste of his processing cycles, let alone those of the Resistance flagship. So the astromech assured Black One that it had set that record, too.
If that was true, good for Black One. And if it wasn’t? Well, the X-wing was overdue for a lesson in humility.
BB-8’s visual sensors flagged something odd in the corridor beyond the hangar door. The astromech reviewed the data and tootled at Poe in puzzlement.
“Finn naked leaking bag what?” Poe replied. “Your chips all right?”
But a closer look revealed that was indeed a Finn Naked Leaking Bag shuffling past the hangar door, streamers of bacta jetting from innumerable ports in his suit. Poe ran toward the former First Order stormtrooper.
“Buddy!” he called. “Let’s get you dressed. You must have a thousand questions.”
But when he finally seemed to recognize Poe, Finn only had one.
“Where’s Rey?”
The stairway was built from ancient stones, cracked with age and grooved by the tread of countless feet. It rose from the edge of the sea and wound its way up the peak above Rey’s head, a black line against the green, obscured here and there by wisps of cloud.
Rey picked up her staff and adjusted her satchel where it hung from her shoulder. She imagined she could feel the weight of the lightsaber inside it—the mysterious ancient weapon that had called to her beneath Maz Kanata’s castle, and that she had carried with her to this stormy planet of gray seas dotted with green islands.
A planet identified on BB-8’s map with the legend AHCH-TO.
Rey eyed the first of those broad stones—the beginning of the end of her long journey from the sands of Jakku—and looked behind her, where the battered, saucer-shaped Millennium Falcon stood on its landing gear. The ship’s bulk all but filled a wide, flat area just above the sea.
Chewbacca stood at the foot of the freighter’s ramp, the astromech R2-D2 at his side. The Wookiee called out encouragement to Rey, while R2-D2 whistled and rocked on his two stubby legs.
Well then. It wasn’t like she’d come thousands of light-years to stop here. She started up the stairs, the wind whipping her dark hair across her face.
After Jakku, Ahch-To seemed like something plucked from a dream. The air was damp, with the tang of salt, and the island’s steep slopes were a vivid, verdant green. A few days earlier, green had been a color Rey had only dreamed of—now she was surrounded by variations on it, from the tufts of emerald grass to the grayish moss that clung to slabs of rock.
The ocean was a study in seemingly impossible colors, too, but these were forever morphi
ng and changing: Here the water looked black or gray, while there it was green or blue, and everywhere it was dappled with yellow whorls of reflected sun or the white crescents of wave tops. When she’d first stood outside the Falcon, Rey’s brain had insisted on interpreting the water as a surface, and her stomach had rebelled at that surface’s refusal to be still. Now, surrounded by the sea, she realized that what she was seeing was just the uppermost layer of something deep, vast, and eternally in motion. She’d thought of the island as a tiny dot on the water, but that, too, was a misperception—the island was the pinnacle of a mountain that began in darkness, rising from the bones of the planet far below.
She looked back and was surprised by how small the Falcon already looked—and amused to see Chewbacca offer her a wave. The Wookiee had declined to come with her, explaining that the Falcon had years’ worth of malfunctions, breakdowns, and ill-advised modifications that needed to be put right.
R2-D2 had been more willing, but had gotten no farther than the base of the first step before retreating with an electronic sigh.
The slopes around Rey were full of life. Sticklike insects regarded her inscrutably as they picked their way through the grass, while birds rode the winds above her head. Many of the rocky outcroppings she passed were rookeries for small, chubby avians. They were curious about the intruder, peering at her with big, liquid eyes and challenging her with fusillades of squawks. Their flying struck Rey as a triumph of determination over ability—they looked like airborne rocks, hurtling themselves off the cliffs and flapping their stubby wings desperately until somehow leveling out centimeters from disaster.
Rey stopped to catch her breath—she was used to scaling the towering ruins of Star Destroyers, but the climb was still a long one. The Falcon was an off-white circle far below her now; above her, the stair continued its roundabout ascent.
She told herself just to climb and not to think about what awaited her at the top, but that was impossible. It would be a cruel cosmic joke indeed to find that Jedi Master Luke Skywalker—the man she’d assumed was a myth—had packed up some time ago. But something told Rey he hadn’t. Somehow she was certain of his presence—it was like a fleeting something captured in peripheral vision, or the tickling sensation between the shoulder blades that hinted at a presence behind you.