by Jason Fry
* * *
—
Poe’s transport had escaped the Anodyne shortly before fingers of fire lanced out from the First Order flagship, eradicating the helpless frigate in seconds.
The explosion rattled the transport and lit the faces of the fighters he’d helped evacuate. Some had been helped out of the medical facilities, moved only because they would have died otherwise. They sat in silence, men and women left hazy by droid-administered sedatives or stoically ignoring what had to be terrible pain.
But the healthy crewers and soldiers barely looked up, either. They were staring at their boots, glum and miserable.
They don’t see a reason to hope. Because Holdo won’t give them one.
The Resistance ships flew on, but Poe wondered if the movement’s spirit had already left it.
Rey picked her way down the cracked and chipped stairs in the rain, careful of her footing—after everything she’d been through, it would be beyond ridiculous to kill herself falling down a wet staircase.
She found Chewbacca in the Falcon’s cockpit, fussing with the freighter’s hypertransceiver.
“Still can’t reach the Resistance?” she asked.
The Wookiee barked in frustration.
“Keep at it,” Rey said encouragingly. “If you get through, ask their status, and…ask about Finn.”
Chewbacca promised he would and Rey worked her way back to the ramp, wiping the rain off her forehead.
She wondered if she should have asked about the dozen porgs perched on the dashboard, watching the Wookiee work—or the porg that had been sitting companionably on his hairy shoulder.
She supposed the porgs would be dinner soon enough, and the Wookiee was using the Falcon as a larder. Treating tomorrow’s meal as today’s pet struck Rey as a bit odd, but then it was a big galaxy, and every species was entitled to its quirks.
* * *
—
It was raining harder now, and Rey lingered under the Falcon, looking out in wonder and occasionally extending a hand so she could feel the rain splashing in her palm. Water had been precious on Jakku, bartered and hoarded and fought over, and its gleeful abundance here still felt like a miracle. She knew the Caretakers would be gathering it in barrels, while the shallow roots of the island’s grass and shrubs eagerly drank in as much of it as they could.
Something tickled at her awareness and she turned to stare out at the gray sea, her happiness giving way to dread at what she already knew she would see.
Kylo was staring at her.
“Murderous snake,” Rey said as his eyes locked onto hers.
He came closer and she flinched, but refused to give ground.
“You aren’t really here—you can’t touch me,” she said. “I’m safe.”
“For someone who’s safe, you’re awfully afraid,” Kylo replied. He peered at her, eyes dark in his pale face, and she realized he could see the spray bouncing up from the stone and hitting her.
“You’re too late,” she said, determined to break through his air of detached curiosity. “You lost. I found Skywalker.”
“How’s that going?” Kylo asked, amused. Then his eyes flashed. “Has he told you what happened, the night I destroyed his temple? Has he told you why?”
“I know everything I need to know about you,” she countered, taken aback.
“You do?” he asked, and peered at her, eyes intent. “You do. You have that look in your eyes from the forest, when you called me a monster.”
He came within a meter or two of Rey, and she wondered what would happen if she refused to move and they intersected. Would she find herself in his mind again, and have to endure his presence in hers? Could they actually touch, across a galaxy?
“You are a monster,” Rey said, remembering the terror of her paralysis on Takodana.
She stared back at him—and found his eyes full of hurt. Hurt—and conflict.
“Yes, I am,” Kylo said, and there was no menace in his voice—only misery.
And then he was gone, leaving her watching the waves breaking on the stone. She stared into the heaving sea, not sure what she was searching for, then felt another tingle of awareness. She turned, looking up at the island, up into the rain, and saw Luke waiting for her.
* * *
—
In the metal heart of the Supremacy, Kylo stood and stared at the place Rey had been. He felt something strange and looked down at his gloved hand.
There was water on his palm.
He stared at it, then balled his hand into a fist to hide it from his sight.
Finn fell in love with Canto Bight the moment he flew over it.
He gazed down in disbelief at the sea, dotted with sleek yachts, and the graceful curve of the crescent bay, lined with stately, gorgeous hotels. Beyond them, the town was a sparkling jewel. Its broad boulevards surrounded a modern complex of tile and black glass, bathed in shimmering light of every spectrum. Beyond the complex was a warren of low stone buildings, crisscrossed by narrow, warmly lit streets.
Rose hadn’t wanted to land at the spaceport for fear that the shuttle would be recognized as a Resistance craft, so they came in low over the edge of the sea. Below them, couples strolled along the boardwalk, admiring the sunset, while children ran to the edge of the gentle waves, daring the water to attack their feet before running back up the beach to their parents.
Finn was so busy looking around that he forgot to look below. The shuttle plowed nose-first into the beach, flinging BB-8 across the cockpit and wrenching Rose and Finn sideways in their harnesses before it shuddered to a stop. Finn looked up guiltily as Rose extracted herself from the copilot’s chair, wincing. She’d bitten her lip and was pretty sure the restraints would leave bruises where they’d dug into her shoulders.
“What?” Finn asked. “We’re down in one piece, aren’t we?”
BB-8 squawked derisively. Rose just shook her head.
“I still think it’s a bad idea to leave the ship here,” Finn said.
“We can’t afford a berth at the spaceport, remember? Or to have our identities broadcast. Besides, if you’d made that landing at the spaceport we’d be in a medbay right now—or a crater.”
“But—”
“But nothing. Come on. The fleet needs us.”
They hurried up the beach to the boardwalk, then headed for the lights of the casino.
Crossing the tree-lined piazza in front of the Canto Casino and Racetrack, Finn nearly got hit by two luxury speeders—muscular, powerful street machines with growling engines. One after the other, organic chauffeurs leaned out of their windows to make unlikely anatomical suggestions.
Rose responded to the second chauffeur with a counter-suggestion that would have demanded a lot more privacy, and made BB-8 hoot in admiration.
“Don’t they have droid-speeders in this town?” Finn asked, pretty sure he was blushing.
Rose looked at him in surprise. “Any tourist can afford to ride with a droid,” she explained patiently. “If you’ve really got credits, you hire flesh-and-blood help.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” said an embarrassed Finn as they walked up the entryway to the casino, dodging the warning flickers from parked speeders’ anti-theft fields.
Finn sidestepped a hustling valet and looked from the elaborate, scented gardens to the holo-marquees greeting visitors.
“They’ve got a luxury hotel and a shopping concourse,” he marveled. “And twenty-two restaurants. How are we going to find the Master Codebreaker in all this?”
“Maybe he’ll find us,” Rose said, hurrying as liveried attendants grandly swept the double doors open. “All he has to do is look for the two rubes dressed like greasy speeder jockeys.”
Finn saw immediately what she meant. They were surrounded by humans and aliens of every conceivable species, from diminutive C
hadra-Fan to towering, long-armed Dor Namethians. But all of them were dressed immaculately: Finn’s eyes leapt from sleek chadors and billowing gowns to elegant tuxedos and lavish waistcoats with trains held high by attendants. Heads bore coronets; eyes peered through lorgnettes held in position by repulsorlifts; ears, noses, and appendages Finn didn’t recognize dripped with jewels of every hue; arms and digits were encircled by bracelets and rings that glittered in the light; and feet and ventral tentacles were held aloft by footwear that struck Finn as dangerously wide, high, or both.
The riot of color and wealth was so overwhelming that the most extraordinary outfit barely registered—but every eye seemed drawn to Finn’s dirty jacket and Rose’s maintenance jumpsuit. Finn wanted to find a hole to crawl into, but Rose simply looked around dismissively, deflecting an attendant’s offer of assistance. Then she squared her shoulders and marched across the lobby, with Finn rushing after her.
To his surprise, though, the casino’s staff treated them with the same extravagant groveling as the guests wearing outfits that cost as much as a small moon. Arms beckoned in welcome and greetings were offered in rapid-fire Outer Rim tongues as he and Rose strolled onto the main casino floor, BB-8 rolling along behind them.
“This place is great!” Finn exclaimed.
“No, it is not,” Rose muttered.
“Are you kidding? Yes. It. Is. Look at—look! And look!”
Rose glared at the rows of gaming tables, where laughing groups were wagering stacks of Cantocoins on everything from Savareen whist and Kuari zinbiddle to spins of the jubilee wheel and rounds of hazard toss. Elsewhere, gamblers carrying gleaming buckets surrounded carousels of floating slot machines, gold and glossy black with spinning reels on their faces. Bartenders juggled cocktail shakers, dealers in green tarbooshes and matching vests offered congratulations or sympathy, and server droids stepped carefully through the crowds, politely dipping heads as they nimbly rotated drink trays out of the path of the overserved and inattentive.
“Let’s find the Master Codebreaker and get out of here,” Rose said.
As they scanned the crowd, a small, dark-eyed alien in evening wear staggered up to BB-8 and jammed a coin in a diagnostic slot set in one of the droid’s tool bays. Confused and a little offended, BB-8 drew back and squawked at the drunken gambler—who squinted at the droid and then put another coin in.
“I wish Rey could see this,” Finn said as Rose pushed through the throngs of guests, hunting at each table for the crimson splash of a red plom bloom. Frustrated, she finally jumped on a table so she could scan the entire floor.
“What are you doing?” Finn asked, nervously eyeing a couple of aliens in dull-black clothing who he was pretty sure were security, as their eyes were always in motion and they never smiled.
“Our mission, remember? Stop drooling all over the scenery, stop pining for Rey, and get with it.”
“I was not pining for Rey,” Finn objected.
Rose looked scornful.
“Heavy pining. Heavy. You were ready to abandon the Resistance to help her. How can one person mean more to you than a whole cause?”
Finn looked away from a trio of jovial Suertons—no red plom blooms there—to glare at Rose.
“I was raised in an army to fight for a cause,” he said. “Then I met Rey. And for the first time I had someone I cared about to fight for. That’s who I wanted to be.”
He braced himself for another caustic remark, but Rose’s face softened.
“When she comes back, will she be a Jedi like in the stories?” she asked. “Brown robes, little rat tail?”
That made Finn laugh. “No. Rey a Jedi? Nah.”
He tried to figure out where an egg-laden Xi’Dec might affix a red plom bloom, then gave up
“But she’ll be different,” Rose said.
“No,” he insisted. Rey would always be Rey. He was sure of it, and a little annoyed by Rose’s failure to see that.
Rose looked skeptically at him before returning to her glowering appraisal of the wealthy gamblers around them.
“She’s on her own path,” she told him. “You need to find yours.”
“Thank you, wise master Rose.”
“Any time, youngling.”
“When I see her again she’ll just be Rey.”
He smiled at Rose, who shook her head and continued looking for new rich people to dislike.
* * *
—
BB-8 stood stock-still on the casino floor, beeping encouragingly. The inebriated alien stuck another coin into his tool bay and BB-8 warbled happily, flashing the diagnostic lights on his head, then offered a sad, droopy coo. Frustrated, the gambler dug in its bucket for yet another coin.
Rose had retreated to a bar on the side of the casino floor that was open to the evening breeze. A whiskered bartender in green-and-white livery readied a cocktail while gamblers sat in the shadows, studying decks of cards.
Rose glared at a pair of guests who sneered too obviously at her jumpsuit.
“I think we’ve covered the whole casino,” Finn said. “Where is this guy?”
Suddenly a blur of motion and a thunderous clatter filled the space behind the bar, rattling the glasses and bottles.
“Were those what I think they were?” Rose asked wonderingly.
She rushed through a door, Finn hurrying after her.
“Hey, what happened to not getting distracted?” he asked.
They found themselves on a balcony overlooking an oval racetrack, adjoining the casino. Spectators were cheering, their attention directed below, where twelve jockeys in iridescent livery were perched atop animals with tawny hides, long ears, and streaming tails.
“What are those things?” Finn asked, admiring the way their ears, legs, and tails parted the air. They looked like flesh-and-blood versions of exotic-model starfighters.
“Fathiers,” Rose said, entranced. “They were my sister’s favorite animal when we were kids. She never got to see a real one. So beautiful…”
“Look, this whole place is beautiful,” Finn said. “I mean, come on. Why do you hate it so much?”
“Look closer,” Rose suggested.
Finn spotted a pair of electrobinoculars mounted on the balcony railing and peered through them. The fathiers were in the home stretch. He could see sparks as the jockeys’ electro-whips rose and fell, ruthless strokes aimed at extracting more speed from their exhausted mounts.
Without taking her eyes off the racing fathiers, Rose reached into the top of her jumpsuit and extracted a medallion she wore on a cord around her neck.
“My sister and I grew up in a poor mining system,” she said. “The First Order stripped our ore to finance their military, then shelled us to test their weapons. They took everything we had.”
Finn looked up and found Rose clutching her medallion, pale with anger. She waved one arm accusingly at the cheering gamblers in the grandstand below.
“And who do you think these people are?” she asked him. “There’s only one business in the galaxy that will get you this rich.”
“War,” Finn said.
“Selling weapons to the First Order,” Rose said. “I wish I could put my fist through this whole lousy beautiful town.”
Finn didn’t know what to say. As he groped for an answer, BB-8 rolled up to them, his spherical body rattling strangely. The astromech beeped frantically.
“Red plom bloom?” Rose exclaimed. “Where?”
Rey stood opposite an outcropping of rock, practicing sparring with her staff.
On Jakku she’d rarely neglected such practice—she needed to defend herself against threats ranging from marauding Teedos to fellow scavengers willing to kill for a valuable bit of salvage. She’d let things slide since arriving on the island, though, and now she wished she hadn’t.
She was rusty, fo
r one thing. But the exertion also helped blow away the fog and frustration that had enveloped her. Here there were no gnomic Jedi utterances or malevolent visitations to contend with—just the need to keep her staff spinning and jabbing.
Rey didn’t allow herself a breather until she was sweating freely and her arms and shoulders ached. Leaning on the staff, ignoring the curious porgs circling overhead, she spotted Luke’s lightsaber peeking out of her bag.
Should she?
Of course she should.
The lightsaber felt different in her hands—it was heavier and there was none of the additional momentum supplied by the counterweight of her staff. But the principles weren’t too different. And the lightsaber seemed alive in her hands somehow—as if something inside it were simultaneously focusing her strength and guiding her thrusts and parries. Her sense of the energy around her felt sharpened, and the song of the blade seemed to resonate with the currents of the Force surrounding her, amplifying them.
She no longer noticed the sweat running down her face, or the fatigue weighting her arms and legs. There was only the motion of her body and the lightsaber, moving as one. Thrusting and parrying, wheeling and weaving, until the distinction blurred between weapon and wielder.
“Impressive,” Luke said.
The sound of his voice jerked her out of her trance. Turning to look at him, she stumbled slightly, her slash continuing so it intersected rock instead of just empty air.
The lightsaber bisected the outcropping she’d been mock-fighting and the top half slid away, vanishing over the edge of the cliff. Dirt and rock flew into the air, along with tufts of grass and indignant porgs.
As Luke watched in amusement, Rey deactivated the weapon and peeked over the cliff. The massive stone had obliterated a Caretaker’s cart and left a broad scar all the way down to the sea. Below, two Caretakers chattered in dismay, then stared up at her disapprovingly.
* * *