The Force Awakens (Star Wars) (18 page)

Careful not to damage a single one of the immense, unique growths, the Resistance squadron put down between them. Grassy mounds camouflaged hangars and other structures. Resistance techs
were everywhere in evidence, repairing damaged craft, running cables, cleaning and refurbishing. The base was a hive of activity, nearly all of which was hidden from above. One restoration team was hard at work on the parked
Millennium Falcon
, an ugly duckling among the sleeker X-wings and support craft.

The sight of a singular figure in the cockpit of an X-wing that had just landed sent Finn
running. Fast as he was moving, he was no match for BB-8. Rolling at maximum speed, the droid nearly knocked him down as it shot past him in its haste to reach the fighter with the black insignia. Its canopy was already open; the pilot had removed his helmet and was chatting with one of the techs as he descended from the cockpit.

Poe Dameron.

No wonder, Finn thought, he and the others
had marveled at the pilot’s skill during the course of the counterattack at Maz’s castle. This was clearly, indisputably, the best pilot in the Resistance. His presence, however, defied reason.

Finn just stared at him, hardly believing what he was seeing.

Kneeling and chatting with BB-8, the pilot was nodding at something the droid was saying. It took him a moment to look up and glance
to his right. The expression on his face when he recognized Finn was no less astonished than that of the ex-trooper. Smiling, he rose and gestured as Finn continued toward him.

For a moment they just stared, each overwhelmed to find the other alive. Finn could only shake his head in wonder.

“Poe,” he said. “Poe Dameron. Best pilot in the Resistance. I can attest to that, because I got
to see him in action. Hell, I was in action with him!”

“Finn!” the other man shouted with a grin. “Bravest trooper in the— Well, ex-trooper.”

They embraced, then stood back from each other.

“You’re alive!” Finn’s observation was heartfelt.

“So are you,” Poe countered, adding the unnecessary.

Finn studied him intently. “You look like you’re in one piece. I can hardly believe
it. I thought you were dead: shot up in that TIE fighter we stole. I ejected. When I finally found the wreckage, I looked for you. Pulled your jacket out of your ship before it got swallowed by the sand. What happened to you?”

“I wasn’t dead, just momentarily out of it,” the pilot explained. “Came around long enough to see that you had got out. Pulled out of the dive just long enough to set
down—hard. Impact threw me clear. Woke up at night; no you, no ship, no nothing. Went looking—in the wrong direction. Got picked up by some itinerant trader.” He grinned. “Tell you all about it sometime.” A plaintive beep caused him to turn and look down. “Beebee-Ate says that you saved him.”

Finn eyed the droid. “It wasn’t just me.” A slow smile spread across his face and his eyes twinkled.
“Tell you all about it sometime.”

“Either way, you completed my mission.” Poe gestured at their surroundings. “Beebee-Ate is here, where he was supposed to come all along.
And
you saved my jacket.”

Finn started to slip out of it. “Oh, sorry—here.”

Poe grinned anew. “No, no. Just kidding. You keep it. It suits you.” He held up an arm. “I’ve got a new one. Suits me.” His tone turned
somber. “You’re a good man, Finn. The Resistance needs the help of more like you.”

“Poe—I need
your
help.”

The pilot shrugged. “Anything.”

“I need to see General Organa,” Finn told him. “Can you manage that?”

Buried deep in the native vegetation, the base command center was staffed by guards at multiple levels. The readily recognized Poe, however, had no difficulty proceeding
deeper into the complex or bringing his friend with him.

When they arrived at the conference room, they found Leia conversing earnestly with a number of senior Resistance officers. From
his training, Finn recognized among them the prominent admirals Statura and Ackbar. All looked over as the two younger men entered. Without hesitating, Poe moved directly to Leia.

“General Organa. Sorry
to interrupt, but”—he indicated his companion—“this is Finn and he needs to talk to you.”

Excusing herself, she turned away from the officers and directly to Finn. “And I need to talk to him.” She took Finn’s hand.

She had, Finn mused as he gazed back at her, dark eyes that had seen too much.

“That was incredibly brave, what you did. Renouncing the First Order is almost unheard of.
To do that, and then to compound the risk by saving this man’s life, marks you as…”

Clearly, she had been fully briefed about Finn’s exploits. Not that any of that mattered, not now. Anyway, he had grown immune to compliments he didn’t think he deserved. What was important was that every passing moment had become precious to him. Otherwise he could never have imagined interrupting someone
like General Organa.

“Thank you, ma’am, but I’m here to talk about a friend of mine who was taken prisoner during the clash on Takodana.”

She nodded understandingly. “Han told me about the girl. I’m sorry.”

That startled Finn, but before he could comment further, Poe jumped in. There was little he wouldn’t do to help Finn, but the needs of the Resistance had to outweigh everyone’s
personal concerns.

“Finn’s familiar with the weapon that destroyed the Hosnian system. He worked on the world where it’s based.”

Leia’s excitement was palpable. “You worked on the weapon itself?”

“No,” Finn demurred. “I’m a trooper, not an engineer or a physicist. But I’ve had some tech training, and in the course of that, everyone was told the purpose of the base. I can’t tell you
how the weapon functions; the science is beyond me. But I
do
know where it is. Or rather, where it’s controlled from.”

“No reason to keep that a secret from the people guarding it,” Poe pointed out with quiet glee, “since stormtroopers never defect.”

“We’re desperate,” Leia told Finn, “for anything you can tell us. Until the Hosnian system was annihilated, we didn’t even know such a weapon
existed.”

“It’s located on the world that serves as the First Order’s main base,” Finn told her. “I’m sure that’s where they’ve taken my friend. I need to get there, fast.”

“I’ll try to help you,” she replied. “You have my word. I’m sure you understand that because of what happened to the Hosnian system, right now the Resistance has other priorities. But if they happen to coincide…” Leia
paused, and Finn got the impression that his urgency to find someone was something Leia understood all too well. “Then we’ll do our best to find your friend,” she finished. She indicated the nearby group of officers. “Right now I need you to tell Admiral Ackbar all you know. Everything you can remember about the First Order base, down to the smallest and seemingly most insignificant detail.” She
paused again for a moment, lost in thought.

“The girl,” she inquired, her voice strengthening. “What can you tell me about her that might help us locate her? What’s her name?”

Finn struggled to contain his emotions. “Rey.”

A strong voice, not human, rumbled behind Finn. Turning, he found himself staring back at the widely set eyes of Admiral Ackbar.

“Come with me, young man. I
wish to hear everything and anything you have to say, and myself, I have a great many questions to ask you.”

Sitting up on the scanner bed in the med center, Chewbacca was quiet as Dr. Kalonia worked on the Wookiee’s injured shoulder. Dark of hair and eyes with a kindly demeanor, the physician was far more adept than Finn had been, and the device she was employing could not be felt even
while it was in use. As the lingering pain faded, Chewie growled appreciatively at the doctor.

“You’re most welcome.”

The Wookiee looked over and down at himself. All signs of the wound had nearly been erased, at which sight he groaned softly.

“That sounds very scary,” Kalonia commented as she worked. Another series of gentle moans. “Yes, you’re very brave.”

T
HE SEARCH HAD
taken BB-8 some time, but he finally found what he was looking for. Or rather, who. Or maybe both, since an intelligent droid technically qualified as both a who and a what. In the dark, dusty storeroom he rolled over to the R2 unit and beeped a greeting, the transmission sequence too rapid and too exhaustive for any human to follow. It didn’t matter. There was no
response from the immobile R2 unit.

BB-8 tried again, utilizing a different droid language. When that also failed, he moved forward and gave the other mechanical a forceful nudge. Like everything else, that too failed to generate a response.

Observing the unsuccessful interaction, C-3PO came forward out of the shadows.

“You’re wasting your time, I’m afraid. It is very doubtful that
Artoo would have the rest of the map in his backup data.” When BB-8 queried the protocol droid, C-3PO responded without hesitation.

“He’s been locked down in self-imposed low-power mode. He just hasn’t been the same since Master Luke went away.”

A new voice, that of a human this time, called to them. “Beebee-Ate!”

In response, the spherical droid reluctantly rolled over to the officer
who had interrupted.

“General needs you!”

Beeping a polite farewell to C-3PO and a final thought to the silent R2-D2, BB-8 followed the officer out of the storage area. Behind them, C-3PO bent over his old friend.

“Oh, do try and cheer up, Artoo. This enforced immobility is no good for you. Your cognitive circuits will atrophy from lack of use.”

His affable urging proved no more
effective than had BB-8’s authoritative querying. The R2 unit remained as it was: silent, unmoving, and unresponsive.

In the main conference room, C-3PO worked on BB-8’s flank while Han and several officers looked on. Complying with the protocol droid’s orders, BB-8 obediently opened a locked and sealed port on its side.

“Ah, thank you. That’s it.”

Reaching in, C-3PO removed
a tiny device. Turning, he inserted it into a matching slot in the multi-sided table-projector that dominated the center of the room. Immediately, a three-dimensional map filled the space above the flat-topped apparatus with stars, nebulae, and other stellar phenomena. Leia studied the display intently. But though her eyes roved knowledgably through the compacted cosmos, she failed to find what she
was looking for. Her dissatisfaction was unmistakable.

While he was in his own way equally disappointed, C-3PO was not programmed to display it. Instead, he merely expressed a rational regret.

“General, while I have already completed a preliminary analysis,
I’ll inform you of my final determination only when I have finished comparing the information available in this map to that in our
full database. There. I’ve finished. Unfortunately, I have to conclude that this map contains insufficient data with which to make a match to any system in our records.”

From a corner, Han spoke up. “Told you.”

Leia ignored him. “What a fool I was to think we could just find Luke and bring him back.”

He moved toward her. “Leia…”

She growled at him. “Don’t do that.”

It stopped
him cold. “Do what?”

Her voice was flat. “Be nice to me.” Whirling, she stomped off. More than a little bewildered, he followed. Though he caught up to her easily, she didn’t stop, nor did she look in his direction.

“Hey, I’m here to help,” he told her.

She continued to march forward, her gaze set straight ahead. “When did that ever
help
? And don’t say the Death Star.”

Frustrated,
he stepped out in front of her to block her path. When he spoke again, his tone softened until he was almost pleading—as much as Han Solo was capable of pleading.

“Will you just stop and listen to me for a minute?
Please?
”

The change in tone did more to mollify her than anything else. She eyed him impatiently. “I’m listening, Han.”

“I didn’t plan on coming here,” he explained. “I know
whenever you look at me, you’re reminded of him. So I stayed away.”

She stared at him, shaking her head slowly. “
That’s
what you think? That I don’t want to be reminded of him, that I want to forget him?
I want him back
.”

What could he say to that? What possible response could he give to a willful denial of reason? “He’s gone, Leia. He was always drawn to the dark side. There was nothing
we could’ve done to stop it, no matter how hard we tried.” His final words were the hardest to get out. “There was too much Vader in him.”

“That’s why I wanted him to train with Luke,” Leia said. “I just never should have sent him away. That’s when I lost him. When I lost you both.”

Han dipped his head. “We both had to deal with it in our own way.” He shrugged. “I went back to the only
thing I was ever good at.”

“We both did,” Leia admitted.

He met her eyes steadily. “We’ve lost our son, forever.”

Leia bit her lower lip, refusing to concede. “No. It was Snoke.”

Han drew back slightly. “Snoke?”

She nodded. “He knew our child would be strong with the Force. That he was born with equal potential for good or evil.”

“You knew this from the beginning? Why didn’t
you tell me?”

She sighed. “Many reasons. I was hoping that I was wrong, that it wasn’t true. I hoped I could sway him, turn him away from the dark side, without having to involve you.” A small smile appeared. “You had—you have—wonderful qualities, Han, but patience and understanding were never among them. I was afraid that your reactions would only drive him farther to the dark side. I thought
I could shield him from Snoke’s influence and you from what was happening.” Her voice dropped. “It’s clear now that I was wrong. Whether your involvement would have made a difference, we’ll never know.”

He had trouble believing what he was hearing. “So Snoke was watching our son.”

“Always,” she told him. “From the shadows, in the beginning, even before
I
realized what was happening, he
was manipulating everything, pulling our son toward the dark side.

“But nothing’s impossible, Han. Not even now, at this late time. I have this feeling that if anyone can save him—it’s you.”

He wanted to laugh derisively. If he did, he knew she might never speak to him again. “Me? No. If Luke couldn’t reach him, with all his skills and training, how can I?”

She was nodding slowly.
“Luke is a Jedi. But you’re his father. There’s still light in him. I know it.”

The complex restraining apparatus held Rey upright against an angled platform in the cell. She woke slowly. Disoriented, at first she thought she was alone. Her oversight was understandable, since the other person in the holding area did not move, did not make a sound, and at times scarcely seemed to breathe.

Though startled by his unsettlingly silent presence, she took a moment to take stock of her surroundings. They were as different as could be imagined from her previous ones. The last thing she
remembered was the confrontation in the forest on Takodana, the sounds of battle, and sending away the droid BB-8. That, and then the mind probe. The pain. Her efforts to shut it out, and the contemptuous
ease with which her mental defenses had been brushed aside. Even now, there was a lingering ache at the back of her eyes.

The forest was gone. So was Maz’s castle. Bereft of a point of reference, she had no choice but to ask.

“Where am I?”

“Does the physical location really matter so much?” In Kylo Ren’s voice there was unexpected gentleness. Not quite sympathy, but something less
than the hostility with which he had confronted her in the forest. “You’re my guest.”

With an ease that was more frightening than any physical approach, he waved casually in her direction. A couple of clicks, and the restraints fell away from her arms. She tried to take the demonstration in stride as she rubbed her wrists. The last thing she wanted was for him to think he could intimidate
her any more than he already had. Looking around the room, she confirmed that they were alone.

“Where are the others? The ones who were fighting with me?”

He sniffed disdainfully. “You mean the traitors, murderers, and thieves you call friends? Consider carefully now: I could easily tell you they were all killed, righteously slain in battle. But I would prefer to be honest with you from
the beginning. You will be relieved to hear that as far as their current status and well-being is concerned—I have no idea.”

She stared at him. Though at the moment he was calm, she could not escape the feeling that a wrong word, an unsatisfactory response, might set him off.
Be very careful with this person
, she told herself.

He looked at her as if she had just spoken aloud. For all the
chance she had of hiding her emotions from him, she realized, she might as well have voiced her thoughts.

“You still want to kill me,” he murmured.

Her true self got the better of her and she replied tactlessly, despite
the danger. “That happens when you’re being hunted by a creature in a mask.”

She had a moment to ponder his possible reaction and to fear it. But he did not do what
she expected. Instead, he reached up, unlatched and removed his mask. She just stared at him in silence.

In itself the narrow face that looked back at her was not remarkable. It was almost sensitive. If not for the intensity of his gaze, Ren could have passed for someone she might have met on the dusty streets of Niima Outpost. But there was—that gaze. That, and what lay simmering behind it.

“Is it true?” he finally asked. “You’re just a scavenger?” She didn’t respond, and, perhaps sensing her embarrassment, he changed the subject. “Tell me about the droid.”

She swallowed. “It’s a BB unit with a selenium drive and a thermal hyperscan vindicator, internal self-correcting gyroscopic propulsion system, optics corrected to—”

“I am familiar with general droid technical specifications.
I don’t need to acquire one: What I want is located in its memory. It’s carrying a section of a transgalactic navigational chart. We have the rest, recovered from the archives of the Empire. We need the last piece. Somehow,
you
convinced the droid to show it to you. You. A simple, solitary scavenger. How is that?”

She looked away. How did he know that? By the same means he had used to learn
everything else?

“I know you’ve seen the map,” he repeated. “It’s what I need. At the moment, it is all that I need.” When she maintained her silence, he almost sighed. “I can take whatever I want.”

Her muscles tightened. “Then you don’t need me to tell you anything.”

“True.” He rose, resigned. “I would have preferred to avoid this. Despite what you may believe, it gives me no pleasure.
I will go as easily as possible—but I
will
take what I need.”

She knew that trying to resist him physically would not only be useless but would likely result in unpleasantness of a kind she
preferred not to imagine. So she remained motionless and silent, her arms at her sides, as his hand rose toward her face. He touched her again, as he had in the forest on Takodana.

And hesitated. What
was that? Something there. Something unexpected.

As she strained to resist the probe, he pushed into her, brushing aside her awkward attempts to keep him out. While he investigated her mind, he spoke softly.

“You’ve been so lonely,” he murmured as he searched for what he needed. “So afraid to leave.” A thin smile crossed his face. “At night, desperate to sleep, you’d imagine an ocean.
I can see it…I can see the island.”

Tears were streaming down her face from the effort she was making to withstand him. Increasingly desperate, she did try to strike out. But just as on Takodana, her body refused to respond.

“And Han Solo,” Ren continued relentlessly. “He feels like the father you never had. A dead end, that vision. Let it go. I can tell you for a fact he would have disappointed
you.”

All the rage and terror bottled up inside her came out as she turned to meet his stare.

“Get—out—of—my—head.”

It only made him lean in closer, enhancing her feeling of complete helplessness. “Rey—you’ve seen the map. It’s in there. And I am going to take it. Don’t be afraid.”

Where the strength to defy him came from she did not know, but if anything, her voice grew a little
stronger.
“I’m not giving you anything.”

His response reflected his unconcern. “We’ll see.”

Narrowing his gaze and his focus, he locked eyes with her. She met his stare without trying to look away. She should have looked away. It would have been the rational thing to do. The sane thing to do. Instead, she just glared, trying not to flinch, not to blink.

Ah
, he thought to himself.
Something there, of interest
. Not the image of the map. That would take another moment. But definitely
something worth investigating. He shifted his perception toward it, seeking to identify, to analyze, to—

The barrier he encountered stopped him cold. And it was he, Kylo Ren, who blinked. It made no sense. He pushed, hard, with his mind—and the probe went nowhere.

A look of amazement replaced
the fear on Rey’s face as she discovered herself inside
his
mind. Stunned at the realization, she found herself inexorably drawn to—to…

“You,” she heard herself saying clearly, “you’re
afraid
. That you will never be as strong as—Darth Vader!”

His hand pulled sharply away from her cheek as if her skin had suddenly turned white-hot. Confused, rattled, he stumbled back from her. Her gaze
followed him. Her eyes were the same, but something else had changed—something behind them, in her stare and in her posture. He moved to leave and, at the last moment, gestured powerfully in her direction. The restraints that had held her wrists snapped back into place, once again securing her to the inclined platform. Then he once again donned his mask and was gone.

In the corridor, a stunned
Ren found that he was breathing hard. That in itself was unsettling. He did not know what had just transpired in the holding cell and, not knowing, was left uncertain how to proceed. He was spared further bewilderment when a trooper appeared, coming toward him. Straightening, Ren gathered himself.