by Jason Fry
Blasts carved through the ground nearby and he juked his speeder back and forth, hoping to spoil the fighters’ aim. They were losing speeders—why wasn’t Poe ordering them to go after that cannon?
Another speeder vanished in flames, its pilot’s cry dissolving into static.
We’re losing.
Then his eyes widened.
“Rose! Behind you!”
Three TIE fighters chased Rose’s ski speeder across the plains, laser cannons firing deadly bursts. Before Finn could turn to help her, the first TIE was incinerated. Then the second one vanished in a ball of fire. Then the third was gone.
Rose dodged debris raining down from the skies, then looked up to locate her savior. Her eyes widened at the sight of a battered freighter hurtling overhead. The ship looked like it wasn’t in much better shape than the ski speeders—but somehow it maneuvered like an X-wing.
She didn’t recognize the ship, but apparently Finn did, because he let out a crow of triumph.
* * *
—
Aboard the Millennium Falcon, Chewbacca saw the TIEs explode and let loose with a Wookiee battle cry—one echoed by the porg sitting on the console next to him.
Meanwhile, in the lower turret, Rey wheeled and fired at more of the TIEs. Another one exploded and she bared her teeth in a predator’s grin. The First Order pilots had been so busy terrorizing their groundbound prey that they’d forgotten the sky might hold other hunters.
“Oh, I like this,” she said, blasting yet another TIE.
Aboard her stolen escape shuttle, Rey had waited in increasing frustration as the First Order’s Star Destroyers formed a cordon above the planet and drop ships began descending, bearing walkers and a mysterious cylinder she didn’t recognize.
She’d hoped that Finn and General Organa were down there and hadn’t been caught aboard one of the many transports she’d seen destroyed. It was terrible to think that they might already be dead—or might die while she waited helplessly for the Falcon to return. By the time the freighter had emerged from hyperspace she’d been frantic—and annoyed Chewbacca enough that he silenced her with an aggrieved howl as she hurried through the air lock.
The Wookiee sent the Falcon spinning away from a pair of TIEs, leaving Rey perfectly positioned to bracket one fighter in her gunsights. She took a moment to admire Chewbacca’s grace as a pilot, letting herself sink into the Force and allowing it to guide her actions. As two more TIEs flowered into flame, she spotted more TIEs inbound, having left their position above the First Order walkers. The fighters formed a loose line behind the Falcon, jockeying for a shot at its stern.
“Chewie!” Rey yelled into her headset. “Peel off from the battle! Draw them away from the speeders!”
Chewbacca accelerated away from the battlefield, the TIEs strung out behind him like the tail of a child’s kite. Below, Rey watched creatures with crystalline fur running along the sodium plains, their eyes intent on the strange avians above them.
Ahead, a crevasse split the salt pan like a great red wound. The freighter dipped down into it and Rey stared at the walls of the canyon in amazement—they were studded with outcroppings of crystal that flashed in the sun.
Behind them, two TIEs collided, the pilots misreading each other’s intentions as they sought a safe heading through the rapidly narrowing crevasse. The explosion sent chunks of crystal spinning away from the walls. One block punctured the main viewport of a fighter, sending it spinning into the walls. And Rey peppered the other TIEs with murderous fire.
* * *
—
From the cockpit of his ski speeder, Poe watched in amazement as all the TIEs chased the Falcon, vanishing into the skies to the north.
“She drew them all off—all of them!” he said wonderingly.
“Oh, they hate that ship!” exulted Finn.
“There it is!” Rose yelled over the comm.
Poe saw what had caught her eye: Two tug walkers were dragging the siege cannon out in front of the main force. The tugs reminded Poe of massive beetles, stumping along on multiple hexagonal limbs. Thick cables connected the tugs to the cannon, hauling it along with minimal help from its repulsorlifts.
Shorn of their fighter cordon, the First Order commanders had apparently decided to press the attack. The walkers sent blast after blast in the direction of the Resistance redoubt, scattering soldiers in the trenches.
“Our only shot is right down the throat,” Finn said as the six remaining ski speeders raced for the cannon.
* * *
—
Inside the command shuttle, Kylo was fuming.
The sight of his father’s battered ship had filled him with fury, and he’d screamed for the gunners to blow it out of the sky. Hux had promptly dispatched all fighters to do so, stripping the walkers of air cover and leaving their gunners struggling to target the nimble speeders—which were racing for the siege cannon.
Kylo didn’t think the speeders could damage the massive cannon, which was almost ready to start the firing sequence. But he’d also thought Starkiller Base was impregnable—and his mother’s vermin had turned the superweapon into a debris ring in the Unknown Regions.
“All firepower on those speeders!” he ordered.
“Concentrate all fire on the speeders!” yelled Hux.
Kylo looked at him with distaste.
* * *
—
“Hold tight!” Poe yelled as the walkers turned their attention away from the distant trenches and opened fire on the speeders, sending gouts of red shooting up from new craters blasted into the salt. It felt like his speeder was going to come apart even if none of the laser blasts found its target.
“That is a big gun,” Rose said in astonishment.
He could only agree. The siege cannon reminded him of a massive gun barrel, two hundred meters in length, with a glowing orange core. Poe banked his speeder and raked the cable connecting the cannon with one of the tug walkers, hoping to see it part under fire. Guns atop the tug walker opened up, forcing him to swerve away.
Undeterred, Poe came around for another pass, heavy fire all around him, and stared at the cable in dismay. He’d merely scorched the surface.
The core of the siege cannon began to glow brightly, and Poe saw smoke rising from it. As he watched in disbelief, the sodium began to melt in front of the cannon, the crust running like liquid. Even at this distance, he could feel the heat of it.
Another speeder exploded, hit by fire from one of the walkers. Poe saw Nien Nunb slide his own speeder over to fill the hole in the formation and admired the cool efficiency of the old rebel veteran’s maneuver.
But it wasn’t enough to change the outcome, Poe realized. Nothing could do that now. They’d failed.
The cannon was just a couple hundred meters away, but Poe refused to let himself be tempted. His speeder would be cooked before he got close enough for it to matter.
“Pull off!” he ordered.
“What?” He could hear the disbelief in Finn’s voice.
“The gun’s charged. It’s a suicide run! All craft, pull away.”
“No! I’m almost there!”
“Retreat! That’s an order!”
The other three ski speeders pulled away, following his lead, but Finn’s continued to race toward the cannon.
“Finn, it’s too late!” Rose yelled. “Don’t do this!”
“I won’t let them win!” Finn said, his voice wild.
“No!” Rose yelled. “Finn, listen to—”
She saw him paw the headset off and fling it aside. He was just fifty meters from the cannon, seeking to fly straight down the barrel—but his speeder was already scorched and blistered. And ahead of him the air itself was burning, ignited by the terrifying heat of the cannon’s tracer beam.
No, Rose thought, teeth gritt
ed. They’d come too far together for her to watch while he threw his life away. She banked her speeder hard, following Finn’s heading. Her medallion swung wildly on the console. She grabbed it, jamming it around her neck a moment before her speeder smashed into Finn’s, just short of the massive cannon’s muzzle.
The impact sent Finn’s speeder tumbling out of the cannon’s path while Rose’s slewed wildly, its outrigger coming apart. Then the ground rushed up at her, a crimson-and-white whirl.
* * *
—
Sound.
Rose couldn’t tell where it was coming from in the darkness around her, but she knew it was important, somehow. Important and connected with her.
She tried to focus on it, but her head hurt too badly. Everything hurt, in fact. She just wanted to sleep, in the hope that the pain and the noise would recede, would let her be.
She heard the sound again, and realized it was her name.
It was Finn’s voice calling her name. Urgently, his voice full of fear.
Rose forced her eyes open. She was slumped in the twisted cockpit of her ski speeder, or what was left of it. The plain around her was a chaotic jumble of salt chunks and red dirt. Finn was running toward her. And behind him, a maelstrom of smoke was rising into the air.
She tried to call to him, to tell him where she was, and that she was okay. But she had trouble making her voice work. And she was pretty sure that she was not, in fact, anything close to okay.
She opened her eyes and saw his face next to hers, eyes wild.
“Why did you stop me?” he asked.
Rose willed her voice to work. This next part was important. She had to make him understand.
“Saved you, dummy,” she said. “That’s how we’re going to win. Not fighting what we hate—saving what we love.”
The First Order cannon fired, a brilliant scientific sun. A massive bolt of energy crossed the plain between it and the shield door, igniting the air with a roar and sending a hot wind whipping across the salt flats.
As the shield door was torn apart, Rose inclined her head and kissed Finn—just in case he hadn’t heard her, or had missed her meaning.
The big goof had a good heart. But he also had a way of missing the obvious.
High above the battlefield, safe in the shelter of the command shuttle, Kylo watched impassively as the siege cannon went dark, its fires spent. The massive door protecting the remnants of the Resistance was riven by a fissure down its center, and huge chunks of stone fell from the edges of the wound.
Beside Kylo, Hux surveyed the damage with a mixture of awe and pleasure.
This was the future, he knew—Resistance dead-enders and New Republic revanchists fleeing the First Order’s might until there was nowhere left to run, then cowering in holes on forgotten worlds. It would do them no good—they would be dug out by Hux’s machines and dragged out by his troops.
It would be slow work—but never tedious. Because he would enjoy every engagement, surrender, and execution. The galaxy had been hobbled by disease for far too long, but Hux had sterilized the infection. Now he would cut out the dead tissue.
Ren, he sensed, shared his satisfaction at seeing the goal they had pursued for so long finally at hand.
“General Hux, advance,” he said. “No quarter. No prisoners.”
* * *
—
The Resistance officers inside the mine turned away from the enormous light and heat of the blast, keeping their faces averted until the shaking and the rumble of falling stone had subsided.
Leia lowered her hands from her face and found sunlight streaming in through the breached door. It lent a strange beauty to the gloomy chamber within, as if the site had been transformed into a cathedral.
Connix looked up from her console, where she’d been monitoring their transmissions. “There’s no response.”
D’Acy looked grave. “Our distress signal has been received at multiple points,” she said. “But no response. They’ve heard us, but nobody’s coming.”
Leia’s face fell. She gathered herself, reflexively reaching back into her memory for a hundred speeches she’d made during a hundred desperate battles, for words that would give these brave fighters the strength and courage they needed to keep on.
But there was nothing. And she wasn’t going to peddle false hope to these men and women. They deserved better.
“We fought to the end, but the galaxy has lost its hope,” she said. “The spark is out.”
An awful silence hung over the mine. Then it was broken by slow, deliberate footsteps from a darkened tunnel in the back of the chamber.
Luke Skywalker walked into the room, clad in black Jedi robes. His hands—one flesh and blood, one mechanical—reached up for his hood and pushed it back. His dark beard was just beginning to gray and his eyes were a bright blue, studying each of the Resistance fighters in turn.
Leia watched her brother approach in disbelief. She was dreaming, and for a moment that made her angry. Here, at the end, her mind had broken and left her seeing things.
But no, everyone else in the room was looking where she was looking, their expressions amazed.
“Luke!” she said.
“Master Luke!” C-3PO said with evident delight, winning a nod and a smile from his former master.
That, finally, convinced Leia—droids didn’t hallucinate.
Apparently C-3PO’s data banks lacked guidance about the proper etiquette for greeting long-vanished masters who’d somehow conjured themselves halfway across a galaxy: For once the protocol droid chose to remain silent. His photoreceptors followed Luke as he crossed the room to stand before his sister.
“I know what you’re going to say,” Leia said. “I changed my hair.”
“It’s nice that way,” Luke replied and then his smile faded. “Leia…I’m sorry.”
“I know. I know you are. I’m just glad you’re here, at the end.”
Her brother’s expression was grave.
“I came to face him, Leia. But I can’t save him.”
Not long ago, she knew, this would have pierced her to her core. But now there was nothing but a dull ache.
“I know,” she said. “I held out hope for so long, but now I know. My son is gone.”
Luke’s eyes were warm—with understanding and love, but something else, too. It was knowledge, she sensed—a knowledge vast, deep, and strange, but also comforting. It had changed him—remade him utterly—yet the Luke of her youth remained, at the heart of whatever he had become.
“No one’s ever really gone,” he said quietly, leaning forward to kiss her on the forehead as he took her hands in his.
When they touched, she immediately understood. A slight smile played at the corners of her mouth, and her eyes shone with the secret the two of them now shared.
Brother and sister stood like that for a moment. Then Luke let go of Leia’s hands. Offering C-3PO a wink, he walked with those same unhurried steps into the light pouring into the Resistance’s refuge, out through the shattered door, and onto the surrounding plain.
Leia opened her hand and smiled at the sight of Han Solo’s dice, resting in her palm.
* * *
—
Working quickly, Finn rigged a makeshift travois out of broken hull plating and wiring and strapped Rose to it. He didn’t have time to process what she’d said to him, before she kissed him, or to worry about how badly she might be hurt. He had to focus on getting her to a safe place. Fortunately, he remembered his survival training—or, more accurately, he’d drilled enough that it had become muscle memory, with his hands knowing what to do even while his brain stumbled and fumbled.
It occurred to him that, ironically, he had Phasma to thank for that.
There was a long crack in the door to the old rebel base now. Finn double-checked that Rose
wouldn’t fall off the contraption he’d rigged, tilted the travois, and began to pull it behind him, hurrying across the salt plains toward the distant lines of the trenches.
He kept glancing at the towering walkers, fearing that at any moment one of the huge, animal-like heads would tilt their way and open fire. But the walkers simply trudged along without taking any apparent notice of them.
After a moment he realized why.
They don’t think we matter. Because they know they’ve won.
The biggest problem was more mundane—crossing the plain. The battle had opened craters in the salt crust—bowls of red, some of them still crowned with faint coils of smoke. Around them, the sodium layer had been shattered into chunks that grabbed at Finn’s feet and left the travois bogged down. Elsewhere, the crust was intact but dangerously slippery. The wind had picked up, and tiny flying nodules of salt stung Finn’s face.
He settled into a determined jog—a pace he hoped wouldn’t exhaust him or cause Rose too much pain—and tried not to think about what would happen if he got her back to the shattered base. In all likelihood, any medical droid that wound up treating Rose would belong to the First Order, and he’d have accomplished nothing but ensuring she’d be in good health on the day of their execution.
But what was he going to do instead? Leave her to die?
And besides, Rey was still out there somewhere. As long as that was true, they had hope. He wouldn’t stop believing in that, or in her.
The trenches were close now, lines of deeper red snugged up against the mountainside.
“…dragging me,” Rose mumbled behind him.
“What’s that?” he asked. Finn was breathing hard now and stopped for a moment, to make sure he wasn’t hurting her any more than he had to.
Rose peered at him, eyes hazy.
“When we met I was dragging you,” she said quietly, and gave him a smile. “Now you’re dragging me.”
