IV
The interior of the TIE fighter was spotless. Droids and techs had done their work well, leaving it ready for pilot and gunner. It was a true pilot who now settled himself into the cockpit command seat. As to the other missing crew member, that remained to be seen.
Slipping free of his bloody, confining jacket, Poe examined the controls laid out before him. Some were familiar from his professional studies of First Order ships, others from perusing details of Old Imperial craft. What he didn’t recognize immediately, he felt sure he could work around. A modern fighter like this one would be naturally forgiving, its computational components engineered to compensate for pilot miscues and oversights. He was relying on the likelihood that the ship itself would automatically correct for any minor mistakes in judgment.
Minor mistakes. He still had to fly the damn thing.
Movement behind him caused him to glance back over his shoulder. Having shed his helmet, the trooper who had freed him was settling himself into the gunner’s seat and struggling to make sense of his surroundings. Poe tried to project reassurance as he punched instrumentation. A whine began to rise from the ship’s stern.
“I always wanted to fly one of these things,” Poe said. “Can you shoot?”
“Anything designed for ground troops, I can. Blasters.”
Poe reflected that his companion sounded less than confident. “Same principle! Only the results are a lot more expansive. The toggle on the left should be to switch between cannons, missiles, and pulse. Use the instrumentation on the right to aim—let the autotargeting help you—and triggers to fire!”
Leaning slightly forward, the trooper tried to absorb what he was seeing as well as what the former prisoner was telling him. There were far more controls than those he was hearing about. Which were the ones he really needed to worry about?
“This is very complicated,” he confessed, “and I’m not sure where to start. Maybe if we waited a moment or two so you could clarify a few things?”
Freed from his shackles, then freed from captivity, Poe was not in a mood that allowed for a period of leisurely instruction. For one thing, he doubted he was going to have the opportunity. Any second now, someone was going to wonder why the Special Forces fighter was lighting its engines with the hatch closed.
“No time,” he yelled back. “Consider this on-the-job training!”
Working only semi-familiar controls, he persuaded the ship to lift. Unfortunately, it was still tethered to support lines. Cables twanged as they went taut, holding the TIE fighter to the deck.
Inside the main control room for Hangar Six, a confused tech turned from his console to the officer passing close behind him.
“Sir, we have an unsanctioned departure from Bay Two.”
The First Order colonel halted, turned, and stared out the sweeping port that overlooked the hangar floor. At the far end, a fighter could be seen struggling to decouple from its support cabling. Neither the apparent preflight movements nor the fact that cabling was still engaged made any sense. That they were occurring simultaneously suggested a serious miscarriage of duty—or the inconceivable.
“Get me communications with that vessel. Alert ship command, notify General Hux, and stop that fighter!”
Throughout the Finalizer, confusion expanded exponentially. Departments were alerted that normally went unexercised while the ship was in orbit around peaceful planets. Off-duty personnel were roused to the sound of alarms ringing on their personal communicators. Contradictory commands flew back and forth between bemused sections. A large majority of those alerted responded slowly and reluctantly, confident that what they were responding to was nothing more than a drill.
No such illusions afflicted the hurriedly assembled troopers who were struggling to push the heavy weapons platform into position on the hangar deck. The musical spang of cables snapping away from the TIE fighter pressed them to move even faster. The officer in charge was shouting, but no command could ready the weapon any quicker than its energizing program allowed. It would take another moment or two to fully power up.
Seeing the threat that was being prepared on the other side of the hangar, Poe proffered his companion some urgent advice. “Okay—now would be a good time to start shooting.”
Behind him, the defecting trooper’s gaze wandered desperately over the plethora of controls laid out before him. “I’ll do my best. I’m not sure I can . . .”
A massive wave of blasts from the TIE fighter’s primary arsenal filled the hangar. Internal weapons emplacements shattered. Troopers and mobile cannon were obliterated. Parked TIE fighters were reduced to rubble, fragments of fuselage and wings bouncing off the deck, ceiling, and walls. One collective burst demolished the hangar control room. Where moments before there had been calm, now there was bedlam, alarm, and fire.
The latter was extinguished when the fighter lifted, spun on its axis, and Poe activated the TIE fighter’s departure mode. It had been locked down by the hangar controllers, but when FN-2187 imploded the operations center, all electronics that were usually controlled from there had gone neutral. The Special Forces TIE fighter had no trouble resolving the problem, automatically issuing the necessary directives.
“Sorry, boys!” the trooper seated in the gunner’s chair yelled, even though there was no one save Poe to hear him. Accelerating, the Special Forces craft blasted clear of the Star Destroyer’s flank, leaving in its wake a splay of smashed TIE fighters, dead troopers, and an assortment of ruined accessory material.
Poe was becoming more and more comfortable with the vessel’s instrumentation. In a very short period of time, his mood had swung from fatalistic to exalting. Not only was he alive, not only was he free—he had a ship! And what a ship: a Special Forces TIE fighter. He was certain of one thing as he maneuvered around the immense destroyer: Nobody was going to make him a prisoner of the First Order ever again.
“This thing really moves.” He shook his head in admiration. Fine engineering knew no politics. “I’m not going to waste this chance: I owe some people in that ship a little payback. We’ll take out as many weapons systems as we can.”
The trooper had expected to run as far and as fast as the TIE fighter would take them. “Shouldn’t we go for lightspeed as soon as we can?”
A tight, humorless grin crossed Poe’s face. “Someone on that ship called me the best pilot in the Resistance. I wouldn’t want to disappoint him. Don’t you worry. I’ll get us in position. Just stay sharp and follow my lead.” He paused only briefly. “How about this? Every time you see the destroyer, you shoot at it.”
Still unhappy with the direction their escape had taken, FN-2187 relaxed ever so slightly. “I can do that.”
It wasn’t a ship, Poe told himself as he gleefully manipulated the manual instrumentation. It was a part of him, an extension of his own body. As fire began to lance out toward them from the immense starship, he whirled and spun the TIE fighter, utilizing predictors as well as his own skills to avoid the blasts. Taking them underneath the mother ship, he danced back and through gaps and openings, executing maneuvers beyond the abilities of all but the best pilots. Several skirted the edge of believability. Poe didn’t care. He was free and he was flying.
Behind him, the renegade trooper unleashed blast after blast, triggering explosions in a frenzy of random damage that could only panic and confuse those on the vast vessel above them. A brace of cannons loomed ahead—but the trooper seemed content to fire indiscriminately at their surroundings. That needed to change, Poe knew, or they would never get the chance to jump to lightspeed.
“Dammit, a target is coming to you. My right, your left. You see it?”
Targeting controls brought the major weapons emplacement into bold view on one of the trooper’s screens. “Hold on. I see it.” He readied himself, then unleashed fire at the precise moment when aptitude interlocked with instrumentation.
The whole gun emplacement erupted in a rapidly shrinking fireball. Debris spun around them as Poe took them through the devastation, the fighter’s shields warding off whatever he could not directly avoid.
Unable to restrain himself, the trooper let out a yell that echoed around the cockpit. “Yes! Did you see that?”
Poe whipped the TIE fighter around to the side of the Finalizer. “Told ya you could do it! What’s your name?”
“FN-2187.”
“FN-whaa?”
“That’s the only name they ever gave me.”
The longing in the trooper’s voice was all too human. That, and something more. Something that had driven him, among his hundreds, his thousands of colleagues, to step outside the comfort zone of training and regimentation, something that had ignited some exceptional spark of individualism within him. Poe knew that spark was present in the man behind him, and he now made it his task to see that it did not fade away. But where to start?
“If that’s the name they gave you, then I ain’t using it. ‘FN,’ huh? I’m calling you Finn. That all right with you?”
Behind him, the trooper considered. A delighted smile spread slowly across his face. “Yeah, ‘Finn.’ I like that! But now you’re one up on me.”
“Sorry?”
“I don’t know your name. If you tell me it’s RS-736 or something like that, I’m going to be seriously confused.”
The pilot had to laugh. “I’m Poe. Poe Dameron.”
“Good to meet you, Poe!”
“Good to meet you, Finn!” Settling on a line of attack, he prepared to dive once more into the heart of the Star Destroyer, a bug attacking a bantha.
But it was a bug with a very nasty bite.
On the main bridge of the Finalizer, General Hux peered over the shoulder of Lieutenant Mitaka. While there could be no single central command station on a vessel as enormous as the Star Destroyer, Mitaka’s console approximated such a position as effectively as anything could.
Hux could hardly believe what he had been told. Not only had the prisoner escaped, he had managed to find his way to an operational hangar, slip aboard an outfitted and ready-to-fly fighter, and blast his way free. And not just any fighter, but a Special Forces TIE fighter. If the proof had not been right in front of him, making a treacherous nuisance of itself as the ship’s perceptors strove to keep track of the stolen fighter, Hux would not have believed such a thing possible.
A very slight shudder ran through the deck. Mitaka’s voice was even, but Hux could tell that the dark-haired lieutenant was shaken by what he was seeing. “They’ve taken out an entire bank of defensive weaponry. And they continue to attack. They’re not running.”
Hux didn’t understand. It was beyond comprehension. Prisoners ran from prisons, they didn’t stick around to assault their jailers. The action smacked of an unshakeable wish to commit suicide. What he knew of the escaped prisoner strongly suggested a desire to live. What had happened to change him? Or, Hux thought, was the profile that had been drawn up by the psytechs simply wrong?
Formal profile or not, of one thing he was now certain: They had badly underestimated what had seemed to be a Resistance pilot on the verge of physical and emotional collapse.
“Engage the ventral cannons,” Hux ordered.
“Bringing them online,” Mitaka said.
No matter how close a flight path the escaped pilot took, Hux knew that sensors would prevent the guns from firing adjacent to the ship’s structure itself. Exceptional pilot that he was, the escaped prisoner would know that. Probably he was counting on it, which was why he continued to fly so close to the destroyer’s surface instead of bolting for empty space. Now Hux was counting on the pilot sustaining the same strategy. The longer he remained within the destroyer’s sphere of armed influence, the more forces could be brought against him, and the less chance he would have to make a second, more permanent escape.
A voice sounded behind him: unmistakable, controlled, and plainly displeased. “Is it the Resistance pilot?”
Hux turned to face Kylo Ren. Unable to see past the metallic mask, unable to perceive eyes or mouth, one had to rely on subtle changes in voice and tone to try to descry the tall man’s mood. Hux knew immediately that mood equaled if not exceeded his own consternation.
“Yes, and he had help.” Though Hux was loath to admit it, he had no choice. “One of our own. We’re checking the registers now to identify which stormtrooper it was.”
While the all-concealing mask made it difficult to tell the focus of Ren’s attention, it was plainly not on the general. “FN-2187.”
It unnerved Hux that Kylo Ren had managed to ascertain the identity of the rogue trooper before the ship’s own command staff. But then, Ren had access to a great many aspects of knowledge from which ordinary mortals like himself were excluded, Hux knew. He would have inquired further, but the taller figure had already turned and headed off. Ren’s indifference was far more unsettling than would have been anything as common as a straightforward insult. Shaking off the encounter, Hux turned his attention back to the lieutenant’s console.
“Ventral cannons hot,” the lieutenant reported.
“Fire,” Hux commanded.
One detonation followed another as the Finalizer’s weapons systems struggled to isolate the darting TIE fighter from the debris among which it danced. Poe was constantly changing his flight path, never doing anything predictable, utilizing the destruction he and his companion had already wrought to confuse the predictors that were an integral part of the big guns’ operating systems. Though more debris provided more cover, Poe knew he couldn’t keep up such maneuvering forever. Ultimately, the damage he and Finn had caused would be reduced to fragments, and then to powder, by the efforts of the destroyer’s weapons. Bereft of anywhere to hide, the TIE fighter would eventually catch a powerful laser pulse. That would be the end of the game. Before that happened, they had to get clear.
No doubt every gunner, every weapons system operator on the destroyer, was just waiting for the stolen fighter to break outsystem preparatory to making a jump to lightspeed. Their attention would be focused in those directions, away from the ship and toward the great darkness. The last thing they would expect someone escaping from the vicinity of the planet Jakku to do would be to—head for Jakku.
As he sent the TIE fighter roaring toward the desert world below, a hand reached forward and down to rap him on the shoulder. “Wait—this isn’t right! Where are you going?” Behind them, a few desultory blasts erupted from the Star Destroyer’s weapons. It would take very little time for the great ship to bring all its power to bear on the fleeing fighter. But very little time was all a pilot like Poe needed.
“You mean, where are we going. Back to Jakku, that’s where.” As if, he thought, the brown and yellow globe expanding rapidly in front of them wasn’t indication enough. But he could sympathize with Finn’s confusion. What they were doing made no sense. Always, he knew, the best way to avoid predictability. Even if it was a little mad.
“What? Jakku? No, no, no! Poe, we gotta get outta this system!” The TIE fighter rocked crazily as one near-miss after another reached them from the destroyer and Poe fought to confuse any automatic trackers. Finn’s voice grew calmer, but only slightly. “Oh, okay, I got it. We’re gonna go sub-atmosphere, circle the planet, and strike for lightspeed on the other side, out of the big guy’s range, right? Right? Tell me I’m right, Poe.”
Poe didn’t bother to shake his head, focusing on the fighter’s wonderfully responsive controls. “I got to get to my droid before the First Order does!”
Finn gaped at the back of the pilot’s head. “Your droid? What does a droid have to do with escaping?”
“It’s not about escaping. This whole business isn’t about escaping.”
“Could’ve fooled me.” Feeling slightly numb, Finn slumped back in his seat. “You must really, really, really like this droid.”
“He’s a BB unit. One of a kind. Orange and white. Utterly unique and utterly invaluable.”
Finn’s voice rose anew. “I don’t care what color it is! I don’t care if it’s capable of invisibility! No droid can be that important!”
Poe let out a private, knowing grunt. “This one is, pal.”
“Okay,” Finn countered, “you say that it’s important. I’ll tell you what’s important, pal. Getting as far away from the First Order and its representatives as we can, as fast as we can! That’s what’s important. To me, anyway.” He lowered his voice. “I saved your life, Poe. At the very least, you owe me mine. We go back to Jakku, we die.”
“That’s a chance we’ve got to take.” The pilot’s stance was unshakeable. “This isn’t about my life, or yours. I’m sorry, Finn, but there are far greater things at stake. Forces are in motion that must be dealt with. Unfortunately, I seem to be at the center of them. It’s a responsibility I can’t—I won’t—forgo. I’m sorry you’ve become caught up in the middle of it, but I can’t do anything about that.”
“I don’t care how important this droid of yours is, or what you and it are involved in. For you and me, Jakku is another word for death.”
Poe could not dispute Finn’s logic, so he ignored it—just as he had set aside reason when he had rushed into the village in a futile attempt to save the life of Lor San Tekka.
Of course, he reminded himself, that hadn’t turned out so well, either. But he was being nothing if not truthful. He had sworn an oath to the Resistance, and he had no intention of breaking it now. No matter how bad the odds. He took a deep breath. Although it meant breaking protocol, Finn deserved to know.
“My droid’s got a map that leads to Luke Skywalker.”
It took Finn a moment—a long moment—for the full impact of the pilot’s declaration to hit home. “You gotta be kidding me! Skywalk— I never should have rescued you!”
Even as he spoke, a burst from the destroyer intercepted Poe’s latest evasive effort. Sparks flew within the cockpit, followed by an eruption of acrid smoke and fumes. The fighter’s engines flared wildly, sending it out of control. And since it was headed straight toward the surface of Jakku, that was where it continued to race—out of control.
Finn quit looking for something to shoot at because his instrumentation had gone completely dead. Coughing, fighting for breath, he yelled in the pilot’s direction. “All weapons systems are down! My controls are neutralized! You?”
There was no reply, save for the now continuous shrilling of the fighter’s alarms. Finn waved at the increasingly dense smoke as he strained forward toward his new friend—and drew back in horror.
Poe was not moving. His eyes were shut. Blood streamed down his face.
“No—noooo! Poe!”
No response came from the unconscious pilot. Eying him in the closed, smoky confines of the cockpit, his own eyes filling with tears in response to the increasingly bad air, Finn couldn’t even tell if the other man was still alive. The blackness of space was gone now, completely blotted out by the increasingly proximate surface of Jakku. Even if he could somehow take Poe’s place, Finn knew he could not safely set down an undamaged fighter, much less one in this condition.
He did, however, figure out the location of his seat’s eject control. Equipped with a manual override in the event of total electronics failure, it was clearly marked. Gripping the handle, he wrenched on it as hard as he could. Neither the extra muscle nor additional adrenaline was necessary. The handle moved smoothly and without resistance. A moment later, he felt his body being ripped away from the TIE fighter. The universe spun wildly around him, and for a brief moment his sight was filled with alternating visions of yellow planet, black space, and white clouds.
Then he passed out.
On the Finalizer command deck, General Hux had moved away from Mitaka’s station. Wandering from console to console, he proceeded to question a succession of technicians and fire-control officers. The anxiety that had been building in him but which he had managed to keep restrained was greatly lightened when one tech looked up at him to report.
“They’ve been hit.”
Hux’s expression did not change, but inside he felt considerable relief. He studied the tech’s console, his gaze flicking rapidly from one readout to the next. The details coming in appeared conclusive, but in this matter there was no room for mere ninety-nine percent certainty; no room for analytical equivocation.
“Destroyed?”
The tech’s response as he studied his instruments confirmed the general’s circumspection. “Disabled only, it would appear.”
Hux leaned closer. “He could be trying to throw us off.”
“If so,” the tech reported, “he’s going to grave extremes. Sensors show pieces of the fighter are becoming detached and flying off. Such actions could not be carried out by the operator of the fighter itself and must be the result of the craft having suffered serious damage.” He paused a moment, added, “I hew to my original opinion, sir. No one would choose to voluntarily engage in a descent such as the one the fighter is currently taking.”
“Very well, then,” Hux conceded. “They are disabled, perhaps fatally so. Given that and what you can divine of their present vector, what is the projected location of touchdown?”
Once more the technician analyzed his readouts. “The fighter is projected to crash somewhere in the Goazon Badlands. At this range and given the nature of the topography in question, it is impossible to predict the exact angle and velocity with which it will strike.”
Hux nodded thoughtfully. “They were going back for the droid. That’s the only explanation that makes any sense. Otherwise they would have tried to hit lightspeed as soon as the pilot had had enough of teasing us.” He shrugged slightly. “It doesn’t matter now. Or at least it won’t once termination of this regrettable interruption is confirmed. Send a squad to the projected crash site and instruct them to scan not only the wreckage but the surrounding area. If they can’t find bodies, then have them vac the debris. I won’t accept that the pilot and the traitor are both dead until I have tangible biological proof.” His tone darkened only slightly, but it was enough to cause the tech to wish the senior officer would resume his wandering.
“Biological traces are acceptable,” Hux murmured, “but a couple of skulls would be better.”
It felt to Finn as if it took him longer to escape from the confines of the encapsulated, ejected gunner’s seat than it had to travel from plunging fighter to planetary surface. The clips and buckles, braces and foam that were intended to set him down in one piece now seemed designed to prevent him from ever emerging onto his own two feet. There was a sequence that had to be followed—first this control, then this button, then slide this to unlock—before the gear could be convinced to let him go. Or rather, he thought frantically, to let go of him.
Eventually he succeeded in freeing himself from the tangle of safety tackle. Staggering clear, he took in his surroundings. His spirits fell. He was alive, but if the environment in which he presently found himself was anything to go by, not for long.
The dusky dune field stretched in all directions, to every horizon. Somehow blue sky and sand now seemed more forbidding than the blackness of space. The warships that had largely been his home were sealed, environmentally controlled little worlds. Anything one needed was readily available, right at hand. Food, water, entertainment, sleeping facilities: All were no more than a few steps away. It was more than a little ironic that someone comfortable in the vastness of space should suddenly find himself suffering from a touch of agoraphobia.
Glancing skyward, he expected to see a landing craft or two dropping out of the clouds in hot pursuit. But his gaze was rewarded only by the sight of a pair of native avians soaring southward. They looked, he decided uncomfortably, too big to be herbivores. At least they were not circling the spot where he had landed—or him. Yet.
Something else manifested over the eastern dunes. Smoke. The wind had dropped off, allowing it to rise in a column instead of being blown sideways and dispersed. Otherwise he would have noticed it earlier, despite his distress. Someone was making a fire in this forsaken place, or . . .
He started toward it, struggling in the remnants of his armor. Logic insisted no one could have survived the fighter’s crash without ejecting beforehand, as he had done. But logic also insisted that it was impossible to escape from a First Order spacecraft, and they had done that. Not that it would matter if he was found here, wandering alive among the dunes. Of one thing he was certain: His former colleagues would not understand, no matter how hard he tried to explain. No one fled the First Order and lived.
The sand sucked at his feet as he stumbled toward the rising smoke. “Poe! Say something if you can hear me! Poe!” He did not expect a response, but he hoped for one.
Flame had joined smoke in enveloping the wreck of the TIE fighter. Built more robustly than the typical ship of its class, the Special Forces craft had survived the crash landing, although hardly intact. Debris from the impact was scattered over a wide area. Careful not to cut himself on twisted shards of metal and still-hot composite, he pushed through the heat and haze until he reached the cockpit. It lay crushed and open to the desert air. Trying to shield his eyes against the smoke, Finn moved in closer. Something—there was something sticking out of the wreckage. An arm.
Ignoring the heat and the licking flames, Finn reached in until he could get a grip on it. First one hand, then both, then pull—and it came free in his hands. No arm, no body: just Poe’s jacket. Frustrated, he threw it aside and tried to enter the ruined cockpit. Increasing smoke and heat made it impossible for him to even see, much less work his way inside.
“Poe!”
He felt his legs start to go out from under him. But they hadn’t buckled; the ground had. Looking down, he saw sand beginning to slide beneath him. His feet were already half covered. He was sinking. In front of him, the ruins of the ship began to slide into the hollow in which it had come to rest. Sand was crawling up the wings and reaching for the open cockpit. If he didn’t get away from the quicksand, it was clear he was going to join the TIE fighter in premature internment. He began backpedaling frantically, yelling at the disappearing vessel.
“POE!”
Going. Down, down into the sand, to a depth that could not be imagined. Maybe just below the surface, he thought as he scrambled to find safe footing. Maybe much, much deeper.
The more the sand covered the fighter, the faster the vessel sank, until in a few moments it was completely gone. Joining it was most of the debris that the hard landing had thrown aside. There was nothing. Nothing to show that—
A violent explosion erupted almost beneath his feet, sending him staggering backward. For an instant, the substantial fireball that blew skyward flared an angry black and red before dissipating into the atmosphere. Regaining his footing, he stumbled forward. In place of the vanished TIE fighter there was some scattered debris and fused sand. Nothing more, and certainly no sign of another human being. Unlike the fighter, in the case of his companion there were no surviving fragments.
Drained of energy and overwhelmed, he started kicking at the sand, as if exposing a lower layer might reveal something, anything, familiar or encouraging. But each kick exposed only more sand. Looking around wildly, he saw only the silent dunes. It was as if nothing had ever touched this place; certainly not the hand of civilization.
He had escaped. He had survived. He had landed intact and apparently unharmed. And by the looks of things, he was just as dead as if none of it had ever happened. He inhaled deeply, then screamed at the empty planet, knowing as he did so that there was no one around to hear him.
“I DON’T . . . KNOW WHAT . . . TO DO!”