by Jason Fry
At the head of the troops was a man Finn recognized all too well—Armitage Hux.
Phasma led the prisoners right up to the pale, red-haired general, who was visibly seething.
Rose shot a look at Finn, who forced himself to remain expressionless. Phasma was brutal and pitiless—barracks rumors had it that she had been worshipped as the divine queen of a pre-industrial barbarian world before the First Order found her—but she was also disciplined and pragmatic.
Hux, on the other hand, was insane—irrational and perpetually enraged.
Hux eyed Finn, a muscle jumping in his sallow cheek, and then backhanded the former First Order stormtrooper.
Finn braced himself for a further assault, but Hux appeared content with the gesture—or, perhaps, the slap had hurt his hand worse than he’d expected.
“Well done, Phasma,” he spat. “I can’t say I approve of the methods, but I can’t argue with the results.”
The general’s eyes were locked on DJ, who looked very much like he wanted to be elsewhere.
The Libertine slipped through the hangar’s magnetic field, its engines whisper-quiet. Its landing gear extended and the sleek yacht settled to the deck with a stuttering of repulsorlifts, then sat silently. At Hux’s command, First Order officers guided a repulsor pallet up to the ship. Atop it stood stacks of black crates.
“Your ship and payment, just as we agreed,” Phasma told DJ.
Rose moved so quickly that Finn flinched. But there were too many stormtroopers between her and the Canto Bight thief. They intercepted her and held her fast, but she kept thrashing wildly.
“You lying snake!” Rose screamed at DJ.
“We got caught,” DJ said. “I cut a deal.”
Finn looked at him in horror. “Wait. Cut a deal with what?”
Rose bombarded him with oaths that would have made an Otomok stevedore blush.
DJ listened for a moment, then shrugged. “Yeah, okay. I apologize that I’m exactly who I said I was.”
No one noticed a droid.
Every day of existence brought BB-8 more evidence that this belief wasn’t a hypothesis but qualified as a theory, and perhaps should even be enshrined as a cosmic law.
When the stormtroopers burst into the tracking-control room, BB-8 had frozen, waiting for someone to wonder why Finn, Rose, and DJ had bothered lugging an overturned trash can along with them. At the very least, once the threat of sabotage had been dealt with, surely some luckless stormtrooper would be ordered to take the bin to maintenance, so it could be returned to the position specified by some tediously comprehensive First Order document. With no better alternative at hand, BB-8 had decided to shock as many of the troops as possible, at full intensity, before a blaster or ion weapon ended this futile resistance.
But nothing had happened. The stormtroopers had shackled Finn and Rose and led them away. DJ had followed them. And the room had been left empty.
BB-8’s first thought had been to continue his friends’ mission, shutting down the tracker himself and then telling Poe to have the fleet jump to hyperspace. So the astromech had shed his trash-barrel disguise and jacked into the First Order network. He had even succeeded in freezing security protocols that would have switched the active tracking to another station if the control room’s circuit breakers failed.
But that moment of triumph had been short-lived. The circuit breakers had to be thrown manually—tripping them through a power surge, even the erroneous report of one, would shut down the entire control room, with the tracking switching stations once again.
BB-8 had moaned in dismay. There was nothing he could do without his friends.
It had taken considerable gymnastics to maneuver the trash barrel back over himself—something that would have been the work of a few seconds for a friendly organic. But he’d managed it, and sped off after Phasma and her troops.
Now the astromech idled in the hallway, photoreceptors peering through the ventilation slots in the trash barrel and analyzing potential courses of action. All of them were assessed as vanishingly unlikely to succeed.
BB-8—still unnoticed but apparently helpless—whined miserably.
* * *
—
Inside the hangar, a First Order commander marched up to Hux.
“Sir, we checked on the information from the thief,” he said. “We ran a decloaking scan and sure enough, thirty Resistance transports have just launched from the cruiser.”
Hux regard DJ. He looked impressed—and surprised.
“You told us the truth. Will wonders never cease?”
The First Order general returned his attention to the commander. “Our weapons are ready?” he asked.
“Ready and aimed, sir.”
Holdo’s plan might well have worked, Rose thought—the bafflers would reduce the transports’ engine emissions to levels that would likely go undetected, particularly at such long range and with the First Order’s sensor crews tired and complacent after so many hours of pursuing the same target along the same course.
But now those crews would know where to look and what to look for. And the transports were slow, sluggish to maneuver, unarmed, and protected by only rudimentary shields.
It would be a slaughter.
Finn had reached the same conclusion. “No!” he exclaimed, horror on his face.
“Sorry, guys,” DJ mumbled.
Hux was flushed with triumph.
“Fire at will,” he told the commander.
“No!” Rose yelled, lunging at Hux this time. But the stormtroopers were wary of her now, and there were too many of them.
The Resistance was going to be destroyed, and there was nothing she or Finn could do about it.
* * *
—
The transport carrying Poe and Leia shook violently, and turbolaser fire flashed past the viewports. One of the transports vanished in a ball of fire, instantly vaporized.
Leia looked out, horrified—then turned her head to look at the surface of Crait below them. It took only seconds for her to perform the calculations.
They were moving too slowly.
There were too many transports.
The First Order knew about their ploy.
Around her, the Resistance crewers had seen the explosion—and from the dawning horror on their faces, they’d come to the same conclusion.
Poe looked over at Leia, frantic to do something—anything. He found her standing calmly, her expression stoic.
Panic wouldn’t save them—or anybody else. Whatever emotions were churning beneath Leia’s surface, they would remain hers alone.
Poe forced himself to try to follow her lead.
* * *
—
Aboard the Raddus, a stunned Holdo could only watch as another transport exploded.
A hologram shimmered to life at her console.
“Admiral, we’re taking fire!” reported a Resistance pilot, and she could hear panic in his voice. “What do we—do we turn around?”
“No! You’re too far out. Full speed to planetfall! Full speed!”
An instant later the hologram flared out of existence. Holdo thought she saw the pilot throw up his arms before it vanished.
Holdo choked back a dismayed cry. She had to do something. But what? There was no way the Raddus could defend the transports—they had moved beyond the protection of its shields.
She looked helplessly at her console, searching for some answer that eluded her. There was nothing.
A light blinked on the interface with the navicomputer.
Holdo called up the interface to dismiss whatever the alert was—it would only distract her while she tried to think—then paused.
Someone had entered hyperspace coordinates into the system, calculating a jump that had never been made. The navicomputer was as
king if the coordinates should be purged.
It was Dameron, she realized—he’d rushed to the bridge as part of the plan he’d concocted, the one she’d correctly dismissed as too reckless and desperate to succeed.
Holdo called the coordinates up on her console. The Mon Calamari cruiser had kept traveling along its heading for Crait since the coordinates had been entered into the navicomputer. As a result, the entry point for the hyperspace jump Poe had calculated was now behind the Raddus, on the other side of the First Order fleet.
Holdo stared at her screen, trying to figure out what she had missed, and concluded that her wild hope might not be completely unfounded.
* * *
—
Rey could feel Snoke in her head, his consciousness a live, hungry thing, carelessly sifting and sorting through what wasn’t his, what he had no right to.
The Supreme Leader must have taught Kylo this ability, she realized. But he was far more skilled than his apprentice. Rey was unable to push back against him—his mere presence threatened to overwhelm her. And unlike with Kylo, she had no sense of that mind being left open to her. Snoke’s presence felt like a pit, empty and cold and dark—as if the dark-side cave beneath Ahch-To had gone on forever.
Random bits of memory came back to her as the Supreme Leader scrutinized them and cast them aside. Here she was, alone at sunset on Jakku. Waking from a dream of a cool island in a gray sea. Stunned and reeling beneath Maz’s castle. Holding a lightsaber hilt out in mute appeal.
She felt his interest quicken at that last moment burned into her mind. That was what he wanted: Skywalker’s island, and the planet of which it was a part, and what it was called and how she had reached it.
Rey tried to blank her mind, to shut him out, to fight him off.
None of it worked. Snoke found what he wanted, took it, and discarded her.
She found herself on the floor of his throne room, writhing in pain, consumed by hatred for him.
He just laughed at her.
“Well, well,” he said, voice oozing satisfaction. “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.”
Rey raised her hand toward Luke’s lightsaber, sitting next to Snoke on the arm of his throne. She willed it into her hand—and it flew into the air, in a perfect arc that would end in her grasp.
Watching Rey struggle against him, Snoke smiled. Calling a lightsaber into one’s hand was such a trivial use of the Force—a trick for the greenest apprentice, its workings almost beneath the dignity of a master of the Force. Nevertheless, he admired the girl’s resolve. She was beaten but persisted.
Such hubris would have to be punished.
Snoke twisted his fingers, altering the weapon’s path so that it smacked Rey in the back of the head—then spun and continued back to its place beside him.
“Such spunk,” he said, feeling the hatred swelling in her and savoring it.
It was too bad, really. The girl’s power could have been catalyzed by hatred and fear, forging her into a potent weapon. In another era she would have made someone a superb apprentice.
“Look here now,” he said, summoning the Force to drag Rey across the room. The red curtains of the throne room parted, revealing a curved bank of viewports. Before one of them was a lens-like oculus. Forced to stare into it, Rey saw the Resistance fleet has been reduced to one warship and a collection of small transports. The smaller ships were exploding, erased one after another by the First Order’s guns.
“The entire Resistance is on those transports,” Snoke said. “Soon they will all be gone. For you, all is lost.”
Rey turned from the window, teeth bared. Her eyes burned like fire.
Oh yes. Such power. A pity, really.
“And still that fiery spit of hope,” Snoke said mockingly.
Rey’s hand reached out again, fingers splayed, and Snoke could feel the Force in motion around him. This time, her target wasn’t Skywalker’s weapon—but Kylo Ren’s.
This unexpected, desperate act caught Snoke’s apprentice by surprise. His lightsaber flew off his belt and across the room, the Praetorians tensing at its flight, to land in Rey’s hand.
She ignited it, the crimson blade a snarl of energy, the crossguard energy channels sputtering to life a moment later, and ran at Snoke.
The guards sprang forward, blades raised, but Snoke stopped them with a raised hand, chuckling at the sight of Rey, face bathed in the red light of the unstable blade.
“You have the spirit of a true Jedi,” he told her—then used the Force to fling her across the floor. She landed hard, groaning, and the lightsaber clattered and spun across the floor to land at Kylo’s feet, spinning like a top.
“And because of that you must die,” Snoke said, turning his cobalt-blue eyes to Kylo.
His apprentice had barely moved since delivering Rey, but his emotions had been simmering when he arrived, and begun to boil when Snoke revealed that he was the creator of Kylo’s mysterious connection with Rey.
Or at least they had boiled until a moment ago. Then the tumult had ceased, replaced by an eerie calm and focus. Snoke had been surprised, but pleased. Master and apprentice had work ahead of them, and Kylo—that endlessly conflicted mixture of light and dark—had finally found himself.
“My worthy apprentice, son of darkness, heir apparent to Lord Vader,” Snoke said, knowing how Kylo had yearned for such praise. “Where there was conflict, I now sense resolve. Where there was weakness, strength. Complete your training and fulfill your destiny.”
Kylo rose, his unlit lightsaber in one hand and the other held carelessly behind his back. Step by step, he advanced on the helpless Rey. Snoke used the Force to hoist her to her knees, arms pinned back. He eyed Kylo, wary of some new retreat into sentiment, into the weakness that had held him back for so long. But Kylo’s face was cold, and his eyes were determined.
“Ben!” Rey called out desperately.
Kylo stopped once Rey was within reach of his blade.
“I know what I have to do,” he said, his voice emotionless.
Snoke laughed. Bridging their minds had been a gamble, one he had weighed for some time. But it had worked even better than Snoke had hoped. It had fooled the girl into revealing Skywalker, but it had also forced Kylo to confront his weaknesses. By eliminating Rey, he would also be excising the flawed, hesitant, weak half of himself.
Rey’s eyes no longer burned. They were pleading. But Kylo wouldn’t even look at her. Snoke could feel that his attention was focused on what he had resolved to do.
“You think he will turn, you pathetic child?” Snoke asked Rey. “I cannot be betrayed. I cannot be beaten. I see his mind. I see his every intent.”
The Supreme Leader closed his eyes. This was a drama best appreciated through the Force, not the crude approximation offered by mundane senses.
“Yes!” he said. “I see him turning the lightsaber to strike true. And now, foolish child, he ignites it and kills his true enemy.”
It was the last thing the Supreme Leader ever said.
* * *
—
Kylo had indeed rotated the hilt of his lightsaber so it was pointed directly at Rey’s chest. But even as he did so, Luke’s lightsaber was rotating silently on the armrest of Snoke’s throne—unnoticed by either the Supreme Leader or the Praetorian guards.
When Kylo’s fingers twitched behind his back, the blue energy blade of Luke’s lightsaber sprang into existence, spearing Snoke. Then, with a flick of Kylo’s hand, the blade carved through his master, cutting him in two, and flew through the air into Rey’s hand as Kylo’s ignited his own lightsaber.
Kylo and Rey had a moment to lock eyes. Then the crimson-armored Praetorians were blurs of motion—four sets of pairs,
each pair brandishing the same variant of deadly edged weapons. It was too late to save their master, but they could at least avenge his murder.
Back-to-back, Kylo and Rey received their charge.
Another transport was incinerated and vanished, and this time Leia flinched, closing her eyes. All those lives lost—people she had recruited or attracted to her cause, fought alongside, sent into danger and been unable to save. They were gone forever, snuffed out in an instant, and there was nothing she could do.
While her eyes were closed she felt the transport rattle and heard the stifled gasps of those around her, and knew another ship had been destroyed.
Less than half of the transports evacuating the Raddus remained—and they were still short of planetfall.
Leia tried to imagine a miracle—Luke arriving with a flotilla of Jedi battleships he’d discovered somewhere, or Inferno Squad returning with a task force of Starhawks. But space remained empty.
Poe, unable to stand it, hurried to the cockpit. By the time he got there the First Order’s gunners had destroyed three more transports.
“Give it full thrusters! Full speed!” he urged the pilot.
“I am, sir,” she replied.
He recognized her beneath her helmet: Pamich Nerro Goode. She’d been a starfighter dispatcher back on D’Qar, and rated as a pilot. Transports and shuttles, but he’d noted her ability to stay cool under fire, and seen her as fighter pilot material.
And beside her—yes, that was Cova Nell, who already was a starfighter pilot.
They had the right people, which was critical for any mission. But it didn’t matter when you asked those people to do the impossible.
* * *
—
It was the sight of DJ counting his money that set Finn off.
The thief had his credits and his ride, yet he lingered, sifting through the crates the First Order had left for the Libertine to bear away. His reward was hard currency, of course—stacks of peggats, aurei, and zemids plundered from worlds the First Order had occupied. DJ had seen enough of the galaxy to know an electronic balance was just an arbitrary arrangement of pixels, and even an account could disappear with a few keystrokes.
