The pilot began to call out instructions as FN-2187 felt the ship thrum to life.
“Use the toggle on the left to switch between missiles, cannons, and magpulse. Use the sight on the right to aim. Triggers to fire.”
FN-2187 was completely lost. “This is very complicated,” he confessed as the TIE fighter lurched forward.
But the ship was still attached to its docking station by a thick cable.
“I can fix this,” the pilot called over the sound of alarms.
All around them, First Order troops started to notice. Stormtroopers reached for their blasters and began to pepper the TIE with fire.
FN-2187 started firing back, at the walls of the landing bay, the troops on the ground, neighboring ships—really anything he could identify and target. One final volley took out the control room, allowing his pilot to release the TIE fighter’s docking cable and dart out into open space.
“This thing really moves!” The pilot was clearly in his element as he maneuvered the TIE under the belly of the Star Destroyer. “All right, we gotta take out as many of these cannons as we can or we’re not going to get very far. I’m going to get us in position. Just stay sharp.”
The TIE fighter dodged blaster fire, and the pilot turned the ship toward the Finalizer’s massive bank of cannons.
“Up ahead! Up ahead! You see it? I’ve got us dead centered. It’s a clean shot!”
“Okay, got it!” FN-2187 fired a spurt of green blasts and the cannons blew up in a shower of sparks.
“Yeah!” FN-2187 cheered as their TIE sailed through the flames. “Did you see that? Did you see that?”
“I saw it!” the Resistance fighter replied. “Hey, what’s your name?”
“Eff-Enn-Two-One-Eight-Seven!” the trooper answered, still focused on the task at hand.
“Eff-wha?”
FN-2187 shrugged. “That’s the only name they ever gave me.”
He could see the pilot shaking his head in disgust. “Well, I ain’t using it. Eff-Enn, huh? Finn. I’m going to call you Finn. Is that all right?”
“Finn,” FN-2187 said out loud. It would be a new name for a new start. “Yeah. Finn. I like that!”
The Resistance pilot introduced himself as Poe Dameron, but there was no time for chitchat. The First Order had fired a deadly blast from the ventral cannon, and Finn and Poe had to work together to outmaneuver and shoot down the blast.
Finn noticed that Poe had turned the ship back toward Jakku.
“No, no, no! We can’t go back to Jakku. We need to get out of this system!” Finn shouted.
Poe shook his head. “I’ve got to get my droid before the First Order does.”
Finn couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “What? A droid?”
“That’s right,” Poe replied as he dodged cannon fire. “He’s a BB unit. Orange and white. One of a kind.”
“I don’t care what color he is!” Finn yelled. “No droid can be that important. We’ve got to get as far away from the First Order as we can! We go back to Jakku, we die!”
Poe wouldn’t listen. “That droid has a map that leads straight to Luke Skywalker.”
Now Finn really couldn’t believe his ears. “Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me!”
But before Finn could say another word, a powerful blast hit their TIE fighter. The ship spiraled out of control, toward the sandy planet below, and there was nothing Finn or Poe could do to stop it.
Finn opened his eyes with a start. He was lying on the ground, strapped to his ejection seat and sweating under the hot desert sun.
When he staggered to his feet and looked around, there was only a vast ocean of sandy dunes in every direction, except for a small plume of black smoke rising in the distance. Finn stumbled toward the smoke.
“Poe!” Finn called expectantly as he followed the debris field to the downed TIE fighter.
Flames licked at the ship as he peered into the cockpit. Finn could barely make something out in the smoke-filled wreckage.
He reached in and pulled out Poe’s brown leather jacket, but before he could search the rest of the cockpit, he heard a strange groaning sound and the sand began to sink beneath him.
Finn quickly stepped back, staring, dumbfounded, as the sand dune swallowed the TIE whole.
And just when he thought the day couldn’t get any stranger…BOOM!
The sand erupted before him in one gigantic satisfied belch.
Finn was all alone.
But if he stayed there, the First Order would soon be upon him. There was no choice. He had to keep moving.
A FEW HOURS LATER, Finn was dejected, disoriented, and exhausted. Endless sand surrounded him in every direction, and he had no idea where he was. The sun burned him as he trudged up and down the enormous dunes.
Along the way, Finn had shed his white stormtrooper armor bit by bit. He had no use for the former symbol of his allegiance to the First Order. It was only weighing him down now, and he was glad when he threw off the last piece of it.
It was fortunate he had kept Poe’s jacket, because that was all he had to shield his head and eyes from the glare of the sun. Then again, his black shirt and pants did little to ward off the heat. Parched and on the verge of sunstroke, all he could do was continue to shuffle forward, hoping upon hope that he would find someone, somewhere, or something before his otherwise inevitable death.
Finn panted heavily as he climbed another massive dune, the sun blinding him as he crested it. But as his eyes adjusted to the glare, he noticed a small settlement below.
Finn tried to laugh, but his parched throat would only make croaking sounds. Moving as fast as his dehydrated body would take him, he stumbled toward the outpost.
To Finn, it looked more like a junkyard than a spaceport, but at that point he couldn’t afford to be choosy. A large outdoor market with loud merchants hawking all kinds of merchandise caught Finn’s attention and raised his hopes of finding something to drink.
But as he staggered through tented stalls and pleaded for something to quench his overwhelming thirst, scavengers, traders, and thieves looked at him with little sympathy.
“Water…water,” Finn begged, but the merchants pushed him out of the way, most of them with a curse or two, in favor of paying customers.
Finn was just about to give up all hope when he heard the beautiful sounds of sloshing behind him. He whirled around and saw a trough with a big slobbering happabore drinking from it.
Finn ran toward the trough and drew the brackish water to his mouth over and over again, trying not to gag. The happabore was not too happy about sharing, though, and suddenly used his large snout to knock Finn to the ground with a harrumph.
Finn was startled by the creature, but he was even more surprised to hear the crashing sounds of a struggle inside the market. Finn hoped it wasn’t stormtroopers. When he looked closer, he saw that it wasn’t the First Order.
It was a girl, and she was fighting off two attackers.
Finn ran forward, ready to defend the girl, but he quickly realized that she didn’t need his help. Dressed in the light-colored desert garb of the locals, the girl whirled a heavy staff like a pro. With just a few moves, both attackers were lying still in the sand.
Finn was impressed, and he looked around to see if anyone else was watching this girl beating two fools into the dirt. No one seemed fazed by it, though. Finn concluded that this must be a rough kind of village.
The girl, still breathing hard, removed a tarp that the attackers had thrown over a small droid. It was an orange-and-white BB unit.
The droid took notice of Finn and exclaimed something to the girl in binary. All of a sudden, the girl charged madly toward him, quarterstaff held threateningly.
After witnessing the girl’s fighting skills firsthand, Finn decided his best bet would be simply to run.
Dodging around tents and pushing aside onlookers, Finn ran as fast as he could through the market. Ducking into a tent, he chanced a look back to see whether he’d
lost the girl. No one was there.
Thwack!
The girl stepped in front of him and used her staff to slam him painfully to the ground.
“What’s your hurry, thief?” she growled.
Just then, the little BB unit rolled up to them. Easing around the girl, the droid extended a live electrical circuit and gave Finn a harsh jolt.
“Ow! Hey! What?” Finn sputtered, swatting at the little droid, who skittered behind the girl.
“The jacket. This droid says you stole it,” the girl insisted.
Finn looked down at the leather jacket he was wearing. He’d completely forgotten he had Poe’s jacket on.
“I’ve had a pretty messed-up day, all right? So I’d appreciate it if you’d stop accusing me—Ow! Stop it!”
The little droid had zapped him again. He was small, but man, was he tough.
“Then where’d you get it?” she asked. “It belongs to his master.”
That was when it all started making sense. Finn couldn’t believe it, though. Out of all the places on that planet, he had happened to stumble on the village where Poe Dameron’s droid was hiding?
Finn sighed. “It belonged to Poe Dameron. That was his name, right?”
The droid looked at Finn, then at the girl, then back at Finn. He looked almost hopeful, if a droid could even be such a thing. Finn felt terrible about what he had to say next.
“He was captured by the First Order. I helped him escape, but our ship crashed. Poe didn’t make it.”
The little droid’s head hung low.
“Look, I tried to help him. I’m sorry,” Finn said as the droid slowly rolled away.
The girl watched the droid and then turned to look at Finn. “So you’re with the Resistance?”
Finn met her gaze and noticed that she was quite pretty when she wasn’t hitting him with her staff. He wanted to be honest with her, but what would she think of him if she knew that he had been a stormtrooper?
“Obviously,” he lied as he stood from the sand. Then he dropped his voice low, attempting to sound both brave and secretive. “Yes, I am. I’m with the Resistance. Yeah, I am with the Resistance.”
“I’ve never met a Resistance fighter before,” she admitted.
Finn nodded. “Well, this is what we look like. Some of us.” Not wanting to dig himself too deep into detail, he added, “Others look different.”
The young woman gestured in the direction the little droid had rolled. “Beebee-Ate says he’s on a secret mission; he has to get back to your base.”
Finn nodded, thinking of the last words Poe had said to him. “Apparently he has a map that leads to Luke Skywalker, and everyone’s after it.”
“Luke Skywalker?” The young woman’s voice was filled with awe. “I thought he was a myth.”
FINN AND THE GIRL didn’t have much time to discuss the whereabouts of the missing Jedi, though, because BB-8 had rolled up, beeping at them like mad. The young woman seemed to be able to understand the little droid. Beckoning Finn to follow her, she peeked around a tent corner. Looking over her shoulder, Finn saw what had caused so much commotion from the little droid: stormtroopers!
Finn knew they had only seconds before the stormtroopers spotted them. They had to run—right away!
Out of pure instinct, Finn reached down and grabbed the young woman’s hand, then pulled her to concealment in a nearby tent.
The girl was confused. “What are you doing?”
“Come on!” Finn yelled as he dragged her away from the laser fire that ripped through the tent they had just vacated. “Come on, Beebee-Ate!”
Holding hands, they zigzagged through the market, dodging behind tents and around stacked containers. The young woman tried to pull her hand free from Finn’s, but he refused to let her go. If they separated, he’d lose both her and the droid. She might know the market, but that wouldn’t matter if a whole squadron of trained stormtroopers was on its way.
“Let go of me! I know how to run without you holding my hand!” she shouted over the laser fire. She freed her hand and gestured toward a nearby tent. “Beebee-Ate, stay close. This way.”
They darted into a tent for a momentary respite. Silently, they waited to see if the stormtroopers were nearby. Breathing heavily, the young woman looked accusingly at Finn. “They’re shooting at both of us!”
Finn searched the tent for a blaster. “Yeah, they saw you with me! You’re marked!”
She glared at him. “Well, thanks for that!” she said sarcastically.
“I’m not the one who chased you down with a stick,” he reminded her.
While they talked, a familiar whine was rising in the background of the market. Having heard the sound in hundreds of simulations, Finn knew what was about to happen and that they had only seconds left to live if they didn’t move immediately. Grabbing the young woman’s hand again, he dashed out of the tent and sprinted with her across the plaza.
“Stop taking my hand!” she shouted as she ran to keep up. But he didn’t have time to argue. Looking over his shoulder, he could see twin TIE fighters screaming over the town. Before they could take more than a few steps, the TIE fighters’ blasters opened fire and Finn felt the impact throw him into the air.
A few seconds later, the young woman was shaking him, looking concerned. He focused on her face. “Are you okay?” Finn asked.
She gave him a look of slight surprise, as if she’d never heard those words before.
“Yeah,” she said, and held her hand out to help him up. Grateful, he took it and didn’t let go. She began to pull him across the plaza toward the spaceport. “Follow me!”
They sprinted across the sand as the TIE fighters blasted the market again and again, trying to flush them out. They needed to choose a ship and attempt to get away.
“We can’t outrun them,” Finn wheezed.
The young woman pointed toward a parked four-engine ship a few landing pads down. “We might in that quadjumper,” she shouted over the screaming TIE fighters.
“We need a pilot!” Finn shouted.
The young woman smiled. “We’ve got one,” she said proudly.
Finn shook his head. She’s a pilot, too?
Another ship, an old YT cargo ship half hidden under some kind of covering, was much closer. They could be on board in seconds, instead of having to continue their headlong dash out in the open. “What about that ship?” he asked.
“That one’s garbage!” she shouted back.
But seconds later, the TIE fighters quickly turned their quadjumper into a massive fireball, stopping them short. Finn and the young woman looked at each other for a second.
“The garbage’ll do!” she screamed, and they turned and ran for the old ship.
FINN, BB-8, and the young woman dashed up the ramp and through the dank hallways of the old cargo ship. The girl ran toward the cockpit and gestured at a small ladder. “Gunner position’s down there!”
“You ever fly this thing?” he asked as he climbed down into the gunport.
“No! This ship hasn’t flown in years,” she shouted back.
“Great,” Finn said to himself as he slid into the antiquated gunner’s seat. He’d only ever been in the one TIE fighter, but he could tell that the First Order technology was far beyond what lay before him now. Instead of using readouts and targeting computers, like a TIE fighter, this ship required him to manually swing the guns into position by swiveling his seat. A control stalk maneuvered him and the guns 360 degrees. He just had to press two red buttons and they’d be in business—if they ever got off the ground.
“I can do this,” he whispered to himself.
Finn felt the ship’s engines shudder and roar to life. He was momentarily gratified to see that his pilot was able to steer them into the bright Jakku sky. But then he realized what she was probably thinking, and he knew he had to stop her from heading into the upper atmosphere, where more TIE fighters and the Finalizer were no doubt waiting for them.
Finn pulled o
n a comm set.
“Stay low! Stay low!” Finn shouted. “It’ll confuse their tracking systems.”
Finn heard the young woman call out to the droid, “Beebee-Ate! Hold on! I’m going low!”
Seconds later, the ship banked in a giant arc and soared across the sands of Jakku, within meters of the two incoming TIEs.
Finn tried to get his breath back under control as the ship shook and rocked from TIE fighter fire.
“What are you doing back there?” called the girl. “Are you ever going to fire back?”
Finn’s seat bucked like a wild bantha with each direct hit. “I’m working on it!”
Leaning left and right, Finn swung the cannons toward the TIE fighters and pressed down on the fire buttons. The guns spit red laser fire at the TIE fighters, which nimbly dodged out of the way. Again and again, Finn fired, but he couldn’t lock on to the ships with the bobbing and weaving his pilot was putting them through.
“We need cover, quick!” Finn shouted into his headset.
“We’re about to get some…I hope,” she answered.
Finn peered out of the gunport at the hulking wrecks they were heading toward and realized his pilot meant to take them into a starship graveyard. Giant Star Destroyers and rebel battle cruisers were everywhere, the remnants of a long-ago war.
“Come on, come on,” he muttered as the ship banked hard left and furrowed a row in the desert sands. The crazy maneuver placed one of the TIE fighters directly in his sights, and Finn blasted the ship into smoky bits that scattered across the sands.
“Nice shot,” he heard through his headset.
Finn puffed up a bit at the praise. “I am getting pretty good at this.” He smiled.
But just then, the remaining TIE fighter rocked Finn’s turret with laser fire. Finn pulled and jerked at his controls, but the cannon was jammed and refused to move.
Finn realized they were now defenseless.
“The cannon’s stuck in forward position. I can’t move it!” said Finn. “You’ve got to lose him!”
The ship weaved even more as the TIE fighter’s green laser fire got closer and closer. No matter how close they flew to the ground or how tightly the young woman maneuvered against the rusted starship hulls, the TIE pilot wouldn’t give up.
Finn's Story Page 2
