The Last Jedi_Expanded Edition [Star Wars]

by Jason Fry

  Suddenly it was all too much for Finn. The yacht alone was enough to finance a fairly decent retirement, after all.

  “You murdering bastard!” he howled, struggling to break the stormtroopers’ grip.

  DJ looked up from his work, surprised.

  “Oh, take it easy, Big F,” he said. “They blow you up today, you blow them up tomorrow. It’s just business.”

  “You’re wrong,” Finn said.

  “Maybe,” DJ replied.

  And it hit Finn—DJ would learn too late just how wrong he was.

  Yes, there were double-dealers around the conflict—arms dealers and financiers and grifters like DJ, drawn to money and misery like mynocks to a whisper of energy in deep space.

  But that didn’t mean the conflict itself was their invention. It wasn’t some cynical exercise beyond anyone’s control. It was a showdown between those who believed in freedom, with all its messiness and uncertainties, and those who worshipped order, and saw murder on an unimaginable scale as a fair price for that order.

  And everyone was caught up in that conflict, whether they admitted it or not. There were no bystanders and no neutrals—and no difference between what you did when faced with an evil regime and who you were.

  You could pretend that regime didn’t exist, or rationalize its excesses away, or seek to insulate yourself through wealth or connections, or flee it and hide, or hope that for whatever capricious reason it would crush people other than you.

  And all of those things were easy to do. The harder thing by far was to fight—to attract that murderous regime’s attention, and become an object of its malice.

  But that was the only thing to do. Those who chose something else were hoping that the monster they had ignored would eat them last.

  Finn had fought. It had taken him awhile to understand that running wasn’t an answer, but he had figured it out. He had fought to save Rey, at first, but Poe had been right—this was far larger than one person, or two, or two billion.

  And so Finn had fought for Poe, too. And for General Organa. And for Rose—who’d lost her sister and her parents and her planet and responded by fighting even harder.

  He hadn’t won—that was an annoying detail, to say the very least. But he’d fought. And here, at the end, he found he wouldn’t trade having fought and lost for being DJ.

  Not even if the First Order had filled a stolen yacht to bursting with coins.

  * * *

  —

  Hux watched coldly as Finn struggled in his troops’ grasp. FN-2187’s defection had been more than an embarrassing reversal to the training program that had begun with Hux’s own father—this one traitor had prolonged the search for Skywalker and given the Resistance crucial intelligence that had led to the destruction of Starkiller Base.

  Hux would have liked nothing more than to consign him to an interrogation room for the better part of forever. But soon, very soon, FN-2187’s treachery would no longer matter.

  He eyed the young woman next to the deserter, also wasting her time battling his troops. He had no idea who she was—but the medallion peeking out of the neck of her stolen uniform struck him as familiar.

  Hux stepped closer and saw he’d been correct.

  “The Otomok system?” he asked, grabbing the struggling woman’s face to force her to look at him. “That brings back memories. You vermin may draw a little blood with a bite now and then, but we’ll always win.”

  He savored the fury in her eyes—at least until she bit him, hard, drawing blood from the meat of his palm and hanging on like a maddened nek.

  He yelped as the stormtroopers dragged her away from him, spitting and snarling. Hux stared at the half-moon of punctures on his hand. Undoubtedly infected, given the filthy habits and utter lack of breeding the First Order had seen in that benighted star system.

  Hux briefly allowed himself to return to the idea of sending both of them to the detention level for extensive interrogation. But no, his first instinct had been correct. Traitors and insurgents were vermin, and beneath his notice. He’d lingered too long as it was—a leader of his stature had far more important duties to attend to.

  Still, his hand hurt.

  “Execute them both!” he ordered, then strode out of the hangar.

  * * *

  —

  Snoke’s Praetorian guards advanced on Kylo and Rey in silence, their faces concealed by the faceplates of their helmets.

  Rey could hear a hum from their bladed weapons and realized the edges were enhanced by ultrasonic generators. And there was something else—not a sound, but a sensation she could feel as a throb in her teeth and sinuses.

  That was familiar from Jakku, somehow, and after a moment she realized what it was: an intense magnetic field, probably generated by the guards’ armor. If proximity to it affected Rey this way, it had to be a source of constant pain for the beings encased in that armor.

  A moment later and the guards were on them, blades whirling and whining. Rey shifted her feet, raising her lightsaber to meet one guard’s polearm as he tried to split open her skull. She expected the lightsaber to cleave the weapon apart, but it merely blocked the blow, and the impact sent painful vibrations shooting up her arms and into her shoulders.

  Rey fell back and dodged the segmented whip of another guard. She could hear Kylo’s lightsaber spitting and crackling behind her, and his grunts of effort.

  The first guard aimed a slash at her knees, which she sent wide, then turned her block into an arcing slash at his face. It nicked the brim of his helmet and he stumbled away, regarding her with newfound respect. She offered him a savage grin—only to duck as she sensed another guard aiming a windmill kick at her face.

  Rey fell backward, bumping into Kylo’s back. Her lightsaber rose and fell, wheeling in sweeps as the guards came at her from a bewildering variety of angles.

  There were too many attacks to keep track of, suddenly, and she felt her heart begin to hammer.

  A guard rushed at her with a double-bladed staff and she brought her lightsaber crashing down on its middle—then nearly fell when he yanked the weapon apart, slashing at her with a blade in each hand. Rey shifted her feet to redistribute her weight, then brought her lightsaber up in a blur, knocking aside a vicious thrust from a humming voulge.

  She hadn’t seen the thrust coming—but the Force had warned her.

  Stretch out with your feelings.

  A flurry of chops from the humming lightsaber pushed back the guard with the voulge. Rey exhaled, opening her mind to the Force, and the room seemed to snap into focus.

  She sensed Kylo’s excitement, and his hunger—as if he were a beast finally freed to confront its tormenters.

  She felt the guards’ coldness, mixed with determination. Their master had been undone through treachery, and they would be the instruments of retribution.

  And around all of them, she perceived the ever-shifting web of the Force.

  She heard a clatter of armor as one of the guards went down behind her, felled by Kylo. Two rushed Rey at once, a whip and a vicious ax flashing. The whip locked around the blade of her lightsaber, its segments sparking and flashing, but she wrested it free and batted the ax away.

  Rey reached out with her hand and shoved one guard backward with the Force, then found herself spinning in the other direction. An ax struck sparks from the floor, leaving its wielder’s arms outstretched in front of her.

  She brought the lightsaber down hard on the armored arms and the blade hacked through them, the vibrations in her arms vanishing as the blow interrupted the armor’s mag-coils and shut off the field.

  The guards backed away as the ax wielder crashed to the floor. Rey risked a look at Kylo and saw him yank a Praetorian with a whip toward him with the Force, spitting him on his lightsaber blade. The man slumped and Kylo shoved his body free with his b
ooted foot.

  Rey’s arm buzzed and stung as one of the guards slashed at her with his voulge, missing her with the deadly blade but striking her with his weapon’s crimson housing. Rey backed off with a yelp of pain, trying to will feeling back into her tingling fingers.

  She tried to anticipate her attackers’ motions, using the Force to warn her where they would be. But they were everywhere now, hot and bright in her perceptions. She just barely dodged a slash at her face, so close she could smell ozone.

  It was too much—even with the Force. She was tiring, and her impressions felt like they would drown her: Sensations of life, death, light, and dark poured in on her from all directions. It was too much, a challenge bigger than what her limited training had prepared her for.

  So much bigger.

  Rey realized she was correct—but that she’d asked the wrong question. She couldn’t direct the Force well enough to last long against three elite warriors in lightsaber-resistant armor. But she could let it direct her, allow it to make her its instrument.

  One of the guards rushed at her, electro-whip crackling with energy that would shock her into unconsciousness. Rey’s eyes didn’t track the coiling tip of the whip, but her lightsaber was there to deflect it and sent its wielder staggering away—and then the blade interjected itself between her and the slashes of another guard’s twin blades.

  The Praetorian with the voulge saw his opening and charged at Rey, weapon lowered to open her belly.

  The lightsaber knocked it aside and found his throat.

  Two left. In her hands the lightsaber was a wheel of blue fire that sent her attackers spinning away. One guard’s sudden uncertainty bloomed in the Force and Rey advanced on him, his whip connecting with air, then falling from his hand as the lightsaber found a gap between his armor’s segments.

  Rey was breathing hard now. The guard with two blades rushed her. She dodged, but he was faster than she thought and got behind her, his weapons seeking her throat. The lightsaber spun in her hands as she switched to a reverse grip, sending the blade through her opponent’s midsection. His body sagged against her back and she shrugged him off, his armor clattering against the floor.

  A strange sound reached her ears—and she felt a sudden spike of fear in the Force.

  Kylo had downed another guard, but the last one had him in a headlock and was forcing the edge of his weapon closer to his throat. Rey saw Kylo’s black lightsaber lying on the floor where it had been dropped. He had one hand on his enemy’s weapon; the other, empty, was flailing for purchase.

  “Ben!” Rey called, hurling Luke’s lightsaber across the room.

  Kylo raised his hand and the lightsaber smacked into it as if drawn there. Kylo looked at the ancient weapon he had sought so avidly, his eyes blazing. He ignited it, then turned it off almost as quickly. The guard behind him slumped to the floor, a smoking hole in his red helmet.

  Rey and Kylo stood amid the smoke and carnage, gasping for breath, then looked at each other. Rey’s eyes were filled with joy.

  The deck of Snoke’s throne room thrummed, and the air was lit by the glow of turbolaser fire. Rey rushed to the oculus, staring at the pinpricks of light that represented the Resistance fleet.

  So few.

  “The fleet!” she yelled. “Order them to stop firing! There’s still time to save the fleet!”

  She found Kylo standing over Snoke, Luke’s lightsaber in his hand. He stared down at the body of his master. Above them, the First Order banners burned.

  “Ben?” she asked.

  “That’s my old name,” he said.

  “What?”

  There was neither fear nor anger in Kylo’s eyes now—just a deep resolve.

  “It’s time to let the old things die,” he said. “Rey, I want you to join me. Snoke, Skywalker, the Sith, the Jedi, the rebels? Let it all die. We can rule together and bring a new order to the galaxy.”

  She stared at him in disbelief and horror.

  “Don’t do this, Ben,” Rey said quietly. “Please don’t go this way.”

  Kylo stepped over Snoke’s corpse.

  “You’re holding on,” he said. “Let go.”

  He advanced on Rey, the ignited lightsaber held loosely in one hand. But there was no threat in his approach.

  Somehow, suddenly, that scared her even more.

  “Do you want to know the truth about your parents?” he asked. “Or have you always known and have you just hidden it away—hidden it from yourself? Let it go. You know the truth. Say it!”

  Rey tried to find the strength to deny him, to shove him away. But he was right. She did know the truth—and it was the same as her greatest fear, the one that had haunted her for so long.

  A truth she could find no refuge from.

  “They were nobody,” she said.

  “They were filthy junk traders who sold you off for drinking money,” Kylo said. “They’re dead in a pauper’s grave in the Jakku desert.”

  Tears filled Rey’s eyes. She fought to keep her emotions contained, fearing that if she released them even for a moment they would overwhelm her and sweep her away.

  Kylo was a pace away now, his eyes locked on hers.

  “You have no place in this story,” he said. “You come from nothing. You are nothing.”

  And then his eyes softened.

  “But not to me. Join me. Please.”

  He turned his uncle’s lightsaber off and stretched out his hand to her.

  As Hux departed from the hangar, surreptitiously shaking the hand Rose had bitten, the stormtroopers drove Finn and Rose to their knees.

  Phasma stared down at them, and Rose realized she could see herself, small and distorted, in the First Order captain’s chrome gargoyle mask.

  “Blasters are too good for them,” she said. “Let’s make it hurt.”

  Rose looked over at Finn, who was trying to break the stormtroopers’ grip on him, and had a strange thought: At least she was dying beside him.

  It was true that she’d wanted to strangle him for the first few hours after meeting him, which wasn’t the best start to a relationship. But they’d fought together on Canto Bight and in the very heart of the First Order. They’d fought for the Resistance, despite Finn’s initial reluctance. And they’d fought for each other.

  Somewhere in that whirlwind of events Rose had started to trust him. And more than that, she’d begun to care for him.

  “On my command,” Phasma said, and the stormtroopers holding them in place shifted uneasily.

  Did Finn know what Phasma had in mind for them?

  Rose glanced over at him, and the look on his face made her wish she hadn’t.

  * * *

  —

  Aboard the Raddus, Holdo hastily rechecked that the heavy cruiser’s navicomputer hadn’t kicked back the overrides that she’d had to program into it. Proximity alerts flashed on the console, but she ignored them.

  The First Order flagship began to slide across space ahead of the Raddus, outside the temporary bridge’s viewports. Turbolaser fire continued to lance out from its bow, destroying the Resistance transports seeking safety on Crait.

  Holdo reminded herself that there was only one way to help the evacuees—if she attracted the First Order’s attention too early, her desperate gambit would come to nothing. The only thing she could do was wait.

  * * *

  —

  Captain Peavey stood at attention on the Supremacy’s bridge, watching as yet another Resistance transport vanished into flame.

  “Your gunnery crews have done excellent work, Captain,” he said to Yago, pitching his voice to be heard in the crew pits. “I commend them.”

  Yago received this praise with a stiff nod, but beneath his reserve Peavey thought the man was pleased.

  The Mon Calamari warship’s captain had
clearly hoped that the transports fleeing its hangar would go undetected at such long range—a gambit that might have succeeded if not for a tip from Hux, of all people, to zero in on trace emissions in the cruiser’s vicinity.

  Once the Supremacy’s crews had analyzed the emissions, it had been relatively straightforward for comm/scan to home in on their signatures, discover the ruse, and begin picking off the transports one by one. But at this range, the crews’ accuracy was still impressive.

  Yago’s officers had trained them well, and Peavey intended to make sure they got the credit. Given all the work they had ahead of them, it wouldn’t do to have resentments fester among the navy’s top ranks.

  “What is that heavy cruiser doing, though?” Yago asked, eyeing the holotank suspiciously.

  Peavey glanced at the holotank, curious what the other captain had seen.

  At this range, the First Order’s turbolaser blasts could destroy the transports, but simply bounced off the heavy cruiser’s shields—and the Mon Calamari warship’s own guns were no threat to the First Order flagship. So the Supremacy had simply ignored the Resistance ship, dismissing it as a distraction.

  “She’s coming about,” Yago said. “Scan the engine signature for gamma radiation.”

  Peavey nodded. He had expected the Resistance captain either to jump to hyperspace in the hope of drawing off the First Order pursuit, or to make a suicidal attack in order to buy time for the transports. It appeared the captain had opted for the former, though he had to know it was far too late for that tactic to succeed.

  Before Peavey could consult with Yago, Hux swept onto the bridge, looking agitated. His boot heels rang on the polished deck.

  “Sir, the Resistance cruiser is preparing to jump to lightspeed,” a monitor called up from one of the crew pits.