Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Page 11
A chrome-armored trooper pushed through the ranks. “Eff-Enn-Two-One-Eight-Seven. So good to have you back.”
Finn grimaced. He should’ve known a trash compactor would never be able to hold his former commanding officer, Captain Phasma.
POE readied the Raddus for a hyperspace jump, blaster in hand. Minutes before, he had taken complete control of the bridge and sent the crew to the hangar. The only ones who stayed were Lieutenant Connix and General Organa’s assistant, C-3PO.
Though more anxious than usual, the protocol droid obeyed Poe’s orders, having opened up a comm channel with the team on the Mega-Destroyer through BB-8. But Finn’s report that they were within reach of the tracker flustered C-3PO. “Sir, I’m almost afraid to ask, but—”
Poe had no time to argue with the droid. “Good instinct, Threepio. Go with that.” As he entered hyperspace coordinates, a screen monitoring the hangar lit up with blaster fire. Holdo and her crew were fighting back, and Poe knew his small group of mutineers holding the hangar wouldn’t last long.
“Seal that door!” he yelled to Connix. The lieutenant did as commanded, rushing back to a console to assist with astronavigation. But C-3PO hustled toward the door access controls.
“Threepio, stay away from that!”
“It would be quite against my programming to be a party to mutiny, Captain Dameron!” said the droid, evidently having computed what was going on. “It is not correct protocol.”
The edges of the door began to glow and spark. Someone was trying to cut through it. The firefight still blazed on the screen, so Holdo’s troops couldn’t be behind it. Had those loyal to Poe turned against him?
C-3PO backpedaled from the door but kept talking. “I will have some very strong words in my official report when this is all over.”
Poe pounded his fist on the comm button. “Finn?” There was no response. “Finn, are you there?” Where had Finn gone? “Finn!”
Then Poe heard cries and protests on the comm. The worst had happened. The First Order’s troopers had found his friends and taken them prisoner.
It seemed like Poe would share a similar fate. A section of the bridge door clanked to the floor, melted from the other side. Keeping one hand atop the hyperspace lever, Poe raised his pistol at the intruder.
General Leia Organa ducked through the hole.
Shocked but overjoyed to see she had recovered, Poe lowered his weapon.
The general triggered hers.
A stun bolt coursed through Poe’s nerves. He blacked out.
In the cavernous throne room, Rey stood petrified.
The being in the golden robes looked more dead than alive, like a cadaver animated by some evil force. He loomed large in the chair, yet his eyes were small, pinpricks of misery that froze Rey in cold terror.
This was the Supreme Leader of the First Order, the one known as Snoke.
He curled a finger and the shackles around her wrists released to clang on the floor. “Come closer, child.”
Summoning every iota of will, she refused.
“So much strength,” he said. “Darkness rises, and light to meet it. I warned my young apprentice that as he grew stronger, his equal in the light would rise.”
Kylo Ren continued to kneel, even as Luke’s lightsaber was torn from his grasp and shot into Snoke’s hand.
The Supreme Leader studied the weapon. “That light was Skywalker, I assumed,” he said, “wrongly.”
He placed the hilt on the arm of his chair, then motioned to Rey. “Closer, I said.”
Rey dug in her heels, but she was pulled forward against her will, past a pair of guards in red armor, until she stood at the foot of the throne. While her body would not obey her, her mind remained free.
“You underestimate Skywalker and Ben Solo,” she said, with a look at Kylo Ren, “and me. It will be your downfall.”
“Oh.” Snoke sounded intrigued. “Have you seen something? A weakness in my apprentice? Is that why you came? Young fool. It was I who bridged your minds. I stoked Ren’s conflicted soul. I knew he was not strong enough to hide it from you, and you were not strong enough to resist the bait.”
As if pulled by cords, Rey was wrenched up the stairs in front of Snoke’s mangled face. “Now you will give me Skywalker,” he said, “then I will kill you with the cruelest stroke.”
She wanted to mount a proper defense. But all she could manage was one word. “No.”
Snoke smacked his thin lips. “Yes.”
He flicked his hand and Rey flew off her feet, slamming into an invisible wall a few meters away. He kept her levitating high off the floor as the hideous tentacles of his mind invaded hers, contorting the flesh of her face.
“Give…me…everything!”
Snoke’s tendrils slithered like snakes around her brain, and with one vicious pull seemed to yank her lobes apart. She flailed and screamed, but there was no end to the pain.
With her mind went her defiance. She gave Snoke everything.
Rose endured shoves and kicks from the stormtroopers as Captain Phasma took them into the Mega-Destroyer’s hangar. Finn was roughed up even more. DJ, on the other hand, was nowhere to be seen.
The hangar offered no opportunities for revenge or escape. The First Order’s firepower was on full display with a dizzying array of TIE fighters, droid walkers, assault shuttles, and combat-ready stormtroopers. A tall and trim military officer with hay-colored hair watched over it all.
“General Hux. I have caught the intruders,” Phasma said.
The man turned toward them and Rose recognized him immediately. Though Armitage Hux looked far too young to be a general, Rose knew the First Order thrived on the passion and arrogance of youth, which were Hux’s chief qualities.
Hux slapped Finn across the cheek. Finn didn’t flinch. “Well done, Phasma. I can’t say I approve of the methods, but I can’t argue with the results,” Hux said.
DJ stepped out from behind a row of troopers as the sleek Libertine settled on the hangar floor. Flight officers guided a repulsor sled of credit crates into its hold.
“Your ship and payment, just as we agreed,” Phasma said to DJ.
Rose scowled at the thief. “You lying snake!”
“We got caught,” he said. “I cut a d-deal.”
She regretted not trusting her instincts. DJ was just as he looked, a deceitful, flimflamming, rubbish-mouthed rat. Even his slogan “Don’t join” was a lie. He had joined a side—the wrong side. And he’d pay for it, if she ever had a chance to do anything about it. “You lousy, double-crossing—”
She pounced on the traitor.
None of her swings connected before troopers restrained her. She thrashed in their grip as another officer delivered a report to Hux. “Sir, we checked on the information from the thief. Thirty Resistance transports have just launched from the cruiser.”
Hux favored DJ with a half grin. “You told us the truth! Will wonders never cease?” He turned back to the officer. “Our weapons are ready?”
“Ready and aimed, sir.”
Finn gave Rose a look of despair. DJ had not only sold them out, he’d sold out Poe and the whole Resistance.
“Sorry, guys,” the thief said with a shrug. He went over to the credit crates.
“Fire at will,” Hux told the officer.
AFTER the stun bolt wore off, Poe received a shock of another kind. He found himself lying in the cargo hold of a transport. Through a viewport he saw the Raddus receding. This could only mean his attempt to jump the cruiser to lightspeed had failed. Holdo had won. The Resistance was doomed.
“Poe, look.” General Organa stood with Commander D’Acy at another viewport across the hold. She motioned for Poe to join them.
Poe rose and walked over to them, taking the general’s hand. Her gesture told him that any discord between them no longer existed.
Out the viewport, a white orb shone brighter and bigger than any star. “What is that?” Poe asked. “There are no systems near us.”
“The mineral planet Crait,” D’Acy said.
Poe noticed scant variation in the world’s topography. There were no signs of seas or lakes. “There’s a rebel base there?”
“Remote but heavily armored, with enough power to get a distress signal to our allies scattered in the Outer Rim,” D’Acy said.
Their talk confused him. Had they forgotten about the fleet of Star Destroyers in pursuit?
The general answered before Poe could ask. “The First Order is tracking our big ship. They aren’t monitoring for small transports.”
Poe began to connect the dots. “So…we’ll slip down to the surface unnoticed and hide till they pass.” He thought out loud before realizing: “It’ll work!” He looked at the planet and the other Resistance transports that flew toward it. “Why didn’t the vice admiral tell me?”
General Organa slipped the bracelet beacon off Poe’s wrist. In all the activity, he’d forgotten he was even wearing it. “The fewer who knew the better. Protecting the light was more important to her than looking like a hero.”
Poe turned to the other viewport. The Raddus shrank in size as it led the Mega-Destroyer and its armada away from the planet.
Holdo and her crew were giving up their lives for the Resistance.
Poe felt ashamed he’d ever questioned her loyalty. She didn’t just play the part of a hero, Vice Admiral Holdo was a hero.
The Mega-Destroyer suddenly disgorged a blinding storm of energy, not at the cruiser but past it, at the transports. The viewports automatically darkened to dim a blinding explosion.
D’Acy gasped. General Organa sighed. Poe stumbled toward the cockpit as shockwaves from other explosions rocked the transport. The First Order had foiled Holdo’s plan. The Mega-Destroyer’s cannons had the range to hit the transports even while tracking the cruiser.
By the time Poe reached the cockpit, fifteen of the thirty Resistance transports had been blown apart. “Give it full thrusters, full speed!”
The pilot’s face was red from stress. “I am, sir, I am!”
Poe knew the pilot couldn’t do much more. The transports had been designed for cargo hauling, not battle. It’d be a miracle if one transport even managed to land on the planet.
Kylo Ren averted his eyes from the mental torture Snoke was inflicting on Rey. But that didn’t stop him from hearing Rey’s screams. He knew the anguish of a mind being torn open and having its secrets ripped out. He’d performed the act many times himself—even on Rey after he had captured her on Takodana.
When his master had taken what he wanted, Rey fell to the ground near Ren with a bone-crunching thud. She turned over, groaning.
“Well, well, well,” Snoke said, “I did not expect Skywalker to be so wise. We will give him and the Jedi Order the death he longs for. After the rebels are gone, we will go to his planet and obliterate the entire island.”
The revelation startled Ren. Luke Skywalker was a coward, not someone who sought death. If he wanted out, why didn’t he do it himself?
Whimpering in pain, Rey rolled on the floor, lifting her hand toward Snoke. The lightsaber flew from the throne’s armrest toward her.
Snoke flicked his wrist and the lightsaber looped around Rey to club her in the skull, as if reprimanding a naughty child. The hilt then returned to the throne and settled back on the armrest.
“Such spunk. Look here now.” Snoke gestured and Rey slid past the silent Praetorian Guard toward the oval oculus that peered through a gap in the red curtains. Ren stepped forward to look through the lens. What he saw thrilled him.
The Mega-Destroyer’s cannons reached across the expanse to winnow out the fleeing Resistance transports. The enemy cruiser lagged far behind them, its engines sputtering.
“The entire Resistance is on those transports. Soon they will all be gone,” Snoke said. “For you, all is lost.”
But Rey had not surrendered herself to despair. The desert girl had more than just spunk. Her eyes burned with a silent fire.
She still had hope.
The girl raised her hand again, and so taken was Ren by her defiance, he failed to notice that she reached not toward Luke’s old lightsaber but toward his. It unfastened from his belt and sprang into her hand, its fiery blade igniting.
He was an imbecile to let down his guard—and now she had embarrassed him in front of his master! He advanced on her with the Praetorians.
Snoke snickered, holding out a hand to halt them. “You have the spirit of a true Jedi,” he said to Rey. With a sweep of the same hand, he flung her across the room. “And because of that, you must die.”
The lightsaber flew out of her grip, retracting its blade as it landed near Ren. He did not pick it up. Rather, he awaited the inevitable punishment for his lack of awareness.
But there was no punishment, not even a scolding from his master. “My worthy apprentice,” the Supreme Leader said, almost warmly, “son of darkness, heir apparent to Lord Vader, where there was conflict I now sense resolve. Where there was weakness, strength. Complete your training. Fulfill your destiny.”
Ren looked down at the lightsaber. So this was it. This was the moment for which he had long waited. He’d been mistaken to think he had completed his training by killing his father. Only by killing the girl could he achieve the destiny his master foresaw.
He retrieved his lightsaber and strode toward Rey. A single stroke was all it would take. One might even say he was being merciful, sparing her from his master’s torture.
Snoke contorted his finger. The girl’s arms were wrenched behind her back and she was pulled to her knees.
“Ben,” she said.
“I know what I have to do,” he said.
But as he looked into her eyes, he hesitated. Just as he had hesitated to launch the torpedoes that would kill his mother. Emotions churned inside him, pangs of fear and guilt he could never fully purge. They reminded him of a part of himself he had thought he destroyed—another destiny in which he had once believed, told to him by another master.
“You think he will turn? You pathetic child,” Snoke said to Rey. “I cannot be betrayed. I cannot be beaten. I see his mind. I see his every intent.”
Ren held out the hilt toward Rey’s chest. He needn’t see her die. All he had to do was ignite the blade and it would be over.
Snoke shut his eyes and kinked his mouth in a sicklelike grin. “Yes. I see him turning the lightsaber to strike true.”
At that instant, Kylo Ren perceived his true destiny. It was a destiny not prophesied by any master, but a destiny he chose for himself.
He slipped his free hand behind his back and gestured. The lightsaber on the throne’s armrest pivoted a quarter turn.
Snoke’s eyes remained close, his grin sharpening. “And now, foolish child,” he rasped, “he ignites it and kills his true enemy.”
Revenge came easier than Kylo Ren had ever imagined. But a twitch of his finger and he paid back all the punishment he had suffered over the years.
On the armrest, the blue blade of Luke’s lightsaber activated with a snap-hiss and stabbed Snoke straight through his waist. The Supreme Leader gasped, staring at his apprentice. Ren called on the Force again, slicing sideways with the blade and cleaving his master in two.
His master should have learned never to let down his guard.
As the halves of Snoke tumbled from the throne, Ren enjoyed a rush of dark gratification. What he should have done to Skywalker, he had done to Snoke.
He was his own master now.
The Praetorian Guards charged with their weapons. Ren sent Luke’s saber spiraling to Rey. Rising, she caught the hilt and looked at him. That hope in her eyes burned even brighter now.
They turned their backs to each other and fought as one.
The Supremacy rumbled with each blast of its megalaser batteries
. Visible through the hangar’s magnetically shielded portal, tiny dots that were the Resistance transports blinked out of existence one after the other.
“Murderer!”
Though Finn struggled in the grip of stormtroopers, he directed his slur at DJ. The thief tallied the stacks of credits near his stolen ship, not the least bit offended. “Take it easy, Big F. They blow you up today, you blow them up tomorrow. It’s just business.”
“You’re wrong,” Finn spat.
DJ shrugged. “Maybe.”
Seeming satisfied by the progress of the attack, General Hux turned from the portal to his prisoners. Rose’s necklace caught his glance. He grabbed the crescent medallion. “The Otomok system. That brings back memories,” he said, rather fondly. “You vermin may draw a little blood with a bite now and then, but we’ll always win.”
As if inspired by his speech, Rose leaned forward and bit Hux’s hand, breaking skin. He shrieked like a whelp while stormtroopers wrested her away from him. Blood stained her teeth.
“Execute them both!” Hux shouted at Phasma. Clasping his injured hand, he hurried off.
At Phasma’s nod, the troopers shoved Finn and Rose to their knees. “Blasters are too good for them. Let’s make it hurt.”
The troopers drew laser axes from a supply locker. The heads of the weapons hummed, vibrating at an incredible speed. Finn and Rose tried to wriggle free, to no avail. Finn looked around for BB-8 but couldn’t see the droid. Maybe he would get away to tell Poe what had happened.
“On my command,” Phasma said.
Finn felt a sudden bond with the villagers he’d encountered during a raid on Jakku. Those poor people had posed no threat to the First Order, yet Phasma had carried out Kylo Ren’s order to shoot them all. Finn’s decision not to fire with the rest of his squad was the decision that had changed his life. It was when he had finally overcome the First Order’s browbeating and brainwashing and had broken with their heartless violence. It was when he had started down the path of protecting innocents rather than preserving tyranny, a path that led him to Poe, Rey, and now Rose, the first true friends he’d ever had.