Breathe. Just
breathe.
As it had so often the
past few months, the thought cutting through Rey's mind came in the
voice of Luke Skywalker. It somehow broke through the tension and
nerves bound up in her emotions and strained muscles, reminding her
of the core of her Jedi training, of her need to balance herself
before taking on the world around her. She needed that reminding
more and more every day, as the First Order's grip on the galaxy grew
tighter and tighter and her hopes ever dimmer.
She also particularly
needed it for herself, right now, cramped as she was in a storage
room with Rose and the several packs of explosives they had stacked
alongside them. Their uniforms were stretches thin by all the
compact weapons and equipment stashed into every pocket and lining.
The double-pronged ends of her newly-forged lightsaber dug an
especially painful groove in her back, where it sat tucked into a
special lining in the back of her suit. By her count they had about
two minutes to go before the latest guard check would leave the
repair deck, leaving the whole place empty for what should, in
theory, be enough time for their mission.
Their mission had been
long in setting up and even longer in planning; Rey, Rose, Finn, and
Poe, along with R2-D2 and BB8, had arrived at their destination a
week earlier, the massive ring of shipyards surrounding the planet
Kuat, known as the Kuat Drive Yards. For generations upon
generations, these legendary facilities had produced the biggest and
best ships of the line for the Galactic Republic, then the Empire,
then the New Republic, and now the First Order. Its production
capacity made holding it nearly as essential to any galactic
government as holding Coruscant itself. Sadly, the Rebellion was
still in no position to contest control of even the smallest Outer
Rim world, much less a Core Planet like Kuat.
They were, however,
hoping to cause enough damage to significantly hinder whatever the
First Order's commanders were planning next. While the shipyards ran
all the way around the entire planet, the most important and
centralmost segment of the Ring was the Prime Yard; sporting the
largest landing platform in the entire facility, providing gravity
and air held in by a special force field, the Prime Yard featured a
series of movable, retractable "arms" reaching out into
space. These "arms" were effectively long hallways with
rail lines for transport that allowed the fast movement of workers
and materials across the entire length of some of the grandest
behemoths of space travel, like the feared Imperial Star Destroyer.
These arms could be sifted around, lengthened, and shortened as
needed from a grand control center sitting over the landing platform.
The longest and largest
of the arms was currently devoted to the production of a new
Dreadnought, one even larger than most. With this ship situated to
the right site of the command center, nearly all of the other large
production arms had been shifted over to the left side, where they
currently sat idle. All available personnel were to devote
themselves to the completion of the Dreadnought to the exclusion of
all else, on pain of occuring the wrath of the First Order and its
legendarily unstable Supreme Leader.
After sneaking into the
central platform of the facility, the small team of rebels laid low
for a few days while gathering as much intel as possible on worker
shifts and guard routes; soon they established the longest period of
time when the arm would be free of both workers and guards, and
decided to use that as their window.
The plan was twofold- Rey
and Rose would take their supply of specially-designed thermal
detonators onto the arm, strategically placing them at the mouth of
the regularly-spaced access ports connecting the arm to the ship.
Meanwhile, Finn, Poe, and the droids would launch a surprise attack
to take out the workers in the control room. While the droids took
over the system controlling the arms, Finn and Poe would send a
general evacuation order sounding throughout that section of the
facility, in an effort to minimize non-First Order casualties. By
then, at the very latest, every stormtrooper in the facility would
definitely be coming for their heads, but according to the layout of
guard posts they'd spent days carefully analyzing, the amount of time
it would take to gather a force able to bust through the sealed doors
should be long enough for them to finish their primary task; using
the droids to shift the arm with a massive Star-class Dreadnought
attached to it until the ship was facing the command platform at a
sharp, 90-degree angle.
By then, Rey and Rose
should have finished placing the detonators and be on their way back
to the landing platform, using two of the special, rocket-propelled
spacesuits stored all across the facility for spacewalking
emergencies. Once they made their way out of the command center to
the ship they had prepped and waiting for their escape on the landing
platform, and with (hopefully) all civilian personnel having
evacuated to safer parts of the facility, they would detonate the
charges remotely. On their own, several dozen thermal detonators
would obviously not do any major damage to either a Dreadnought or
even the arm itself. The very force of the explosions would,
however, especially within the vacuum of space, push the Dreanought
into a slow drift....
.....straight into the
landing deck and command center, with all its sophisticated and
delicate computer systems. Neither the atmospheric force field nor
the reinforced glass that made up the windows of the command center
were built to withstand the sheer weight and bulk of a Star-class
ship bearing directly into them. Even iff the force of the crash
ended up not being enough to break through the Ring entirely, it
would at the very least leave the most critical segment of the
shipyards crippled and an utter wreck, delaying the further
production of any more warships for the First Order for the
foreseeable future.
That, at least, was the
plan, agreed upon after endless hours of heated debate. All that was
left was to set it into motion and hope nothing went awry.
That is to say, all that
was left was the hardest part of all.
"Okay," Rose
muttered, "I think I heard the last of them leave around the
corner. Rey, we all clear?"
Rey inhaled slowly and
stretched out with the Force, feeling beyond the door they stood
wedged behind, into the hallway and out into the liftways heading
towards their target. Nothing.
She nodded, "We're
clear. Let's go."
Slowly, carefully, the
eased open the door and untangled themslves, slowly rubbing the blood
back into their legs and arms. Rose checked her watch.
"If the boys are on
schedule, they should be taking over the control facility in about 20
minutes' time. Let's try and finish before they start moving that
thing."
Rey nodded and they
started a light run towards the production arm and the first of the
connective hatches. They truly were alone here, but Rey couldn't
shake a bad feeling, as if a shadow still dogged them. After
wrestling with it in her mind for a bit, she decided to just push it
away as best she could. She'd been feeling something of the sort
almost every day since Crait, and it wouldn't do to let it hold her
back now.
Rounding the last corner,
they found themselves standing at the far end of the massive,
five-kilometer long hallway that made up the main part of the arm.
To save themselves distance while making their escape, they clammered
into one of the grounded speeders on thin rail lines that facilitated
fast transportation over the distance so as to start the far end,
then work their way back towards the front end, closest to the
landing platform, visible outside the hatch windows to their left.
To their right, Rey quickly noted the closet containing the space
suits they would need later.
No more words were
needed. With a grim determination, Rey and Rose sped out to the far
end and started moving back in increments, stopping in front of each
patch of access doors. With the Force, Rey would quickly feel out
the main hinges they wanted to target, and would lift up the needed
explosives, floating them over to attach them securely to each hinge.
In this way, they were able to cover segments relatively quickly,
and after just over a quarter of an hour they were once again nearing
the entrance they'd started at. Looking at the half-dozen or so
doorways left, they started to get out of the speeder when a stab of
premonition hit Rey in the back of her head, leaving her cold with
shock.
"Rose," she
whispered, "we have to hide. Now!"
They quickly scampered
behind a stack of parts sitting next to one of the last doors. A
crack between the boxes allowed Rey to see the entrance, where she
soon learned what, exactly, the Force had been warning her about.
A whole company of
stormtroopers, led by a commander in pitch-black armor, were marching
directly towards them.
Rey and Rose looked at
each other in horror. How? No military patrols were
scheduled for another hour. They'd gone through the station plans so
many times Rey had started to worry she'd start seeing timetables in
her sleep. There was no way they'd been detected, she was sure of
it. What could have gone wrong?
She realized this is what
had been pressing at the back of her head all the morning. That
awful feeling that something, somehow, would definitely go wrong
today.
Whatever the reason for
this hitch, she knew she would have to think over it later. Now, she
had to act, or their mission- as well as their lives- were as good as
fragged.
"Rose."
"Yeah."
"Get ready to
move. While I take care of them, you move as fast as you can to the
last set of doors. Get the explosives set up and I'll clear our
escape."
Rey glanced over. Rose's
eyes were set, a confident smile on their face.
"Roger that. You
got this."
Rey allowed herself a
short smile before she braced herself and stood up to face the
incoming soldiers, simultaneously pulling out her lightsaber and
igniting the twin blades of crystal blue on either end, holding in a
ready stance horizontal to the ground. Carefully following the
instruction in the old Jedi texts, she'd spent a whole week taking
the burnt remnants of Luke's lightsaber and combining it with parts
from her old quarterstaff. Though her years in the desert had made
her adept at using two-sided weapons, she had not yet had the chance
to actually test using a lightsaber version in combat. Oh well,
she thought silently, first time for everything.
Out loud, she said, "I
am Rey, Jedi Knight of the Resistance. Leave now, and your lives
will be spared."
The troopers glanced at
each other for just a moment- Rey could practically hear their silent
laughter ringing out in the Force- before they turned back, lifted
their weapons, and began firing. At the same time, Rose jumped up
and started firing from her blaster as she ran towards the long
archway to the last set of doors. Rey matched her movements, quickly
swinging both ends of her lightsaber to bat back blaster bolts that
attempted to cut Rose down, until she made the shelter of the
archway.
Alrighty then, Rey
though, gritting her teeth, you had your chance. And weaving
her blades in an arc in front of her, plasma-red bolts dancing off
the ends, she dove forward. With the Force guiding her every move,
her eyes seeing each turn of a soldier, each pull of a trigger,
before it happened, her body moved of its own accord. With blue
streaks left in the air behind her to mark her path, she ducked,
leapt, and parried, each thrust leaving another soldier crumbling to
the ground behind her.
It was a testament to the
professionalism of the soldiers that, even as the hopelessness of
their situation must have been made clear, she felt no flicker of
fear or panic in the Force; only a grim concentration of their
killing intent on her person. Sensing that Rose was almost finished-
meaning that they were just about out of time for their part of the
plan- she realized she needed to speed this fight up a bit. Letting
just a bit of her concentration stray over to the large, metal closet
containing the space suits to her left, with a thought she tugged-
-and sent the whole thing
spinning through the rest of the troup before her, catching them so
unawares that only two had enough time to duck away from the massive
crush of metal spinning towards their heads; the black-suited
commander, who leapt backwards with a gymnast's skill, and a lone
regular trooper at the very front, who jerked forward to avoid the
closet only to find himself staring down a second later at a blue
fountain that suddenly burned through the center of his chestplate.
As he fell to the ground,
the commander took stock of the situation for a moment before tossing
away his blaster and pulling a wicked-looking vibroblade from behind
his back. Spinning it expertly, he leapt over the remains of the
fight before him and charged Rey head-on. He was elite, clearly, and
Rey allowed herself a moment's regret that someone like that had
ended up fighting on the side of the First Order before slicing off
first the arm holding his blade, then his helmed head.
It was over.
Before she could even
turn to see if Rose had left the hatch, she felt a great shuttering
all around her, and a momentun so great she just barely stayed on her
feet; the arm was moving.
She then saw Rose,
bracing herself against the frame of the door to the ship; "We're
all set. Seems like the boys did their part too."
"Yeah," Rey
nodded, "then let's get to our ship."
It had, Finn reflected,
all gone astonishingly according to plan so far. Timing their part
to begin right when Rey and Rose should be about halfway done placing
the detonators, BB8 had jacked into the defensive systems of the
command center from an outside port and triggered a switch that
flooded the room with stun gas. After waiting a minute for
everything to clear, he and Poe had quickly dashed in and pulled the
unconscious crew into a side closet, sealing them inside. They then
closed and sealed the two entrance doors while the two droids joined
efforts in hacking into the general system and sending off the
evacuation warning. So far, so good.
Once they saw via
security cam feeds that evacuations were actually being carried out,
they turned their attention to the control programs for the arms
themselves. With R2-D2 tweedling instructions, Poe started to move
the arm with the Dreadnought attached to it inward, watching out the
window as it started to slowly turn towards them. Again, so far so
good.
Somehow, though, Finn
couldn't avoid a strange sensation, running up the back of his neck.
Almost like a premonition. Like things had been too smooth.
Somehow, something was going about to go wrong. He just couldn't
figure out-
-the feeling suddenly
became a sharp pressure in his brain.
"Um, Poe..." he
said, quietly.
Poe was so intensely
focused on the controls he didn't even glance up. "Yeahwhat?"
Finn glanced back at the
doors, which to his eyes seemed to triple in height, casting a
massive shadow over them.
"POE!"
Poe turned, "Wha-"
BOOM.
The two doors shook as if
they'd been hit by torpedoes. Jumping with shock, grabbing their
weapons, they both looked down at the security footage being fed in
from right outside the center; on both ends were large companies of
stormtroopers, the heads of which held large, sizzling, ramming-type
devices clearly meant to blow throw the sealing mechanisms that were
supposed to protect the center from just such an attack.
"Aw what the hell,"
Poe groaned, his mouth twisting in a grimace, "we checked all
this, there shouldn't have been this many soldiers nearby." He
glanced at Finn, "Could they have known?"
Finn shook his head
helplessly, "No idea. But we have to hold out as long as we
can. And hope that Rey and Rose can get to the ship in time."
Another BOOM.
Poe sighed. "Whelp.
Firefight it is then. See ya in hell buddy."
"Yeah..."
Rose felt a shuddering
sensation in her suit as she and Rey broke through the light force
field around the landing platform. With gravity once again acting on
them after a good quarter-hour of spaceflight, thrusters in the sides
of the suits automatically kicked in, turning what would have been a
sharp drop onto a very hard surface into a gentle descent.
After pulling off their
helmets, noting the emptiness of the place- the emergency alarm had
clearly done its job- and locating their getaway ship, Rose turned to
find Rey staring back at the arm they'd just left, her brow furrowed.
Once Rose looked at it too, she understood why.
They'd felt the arm begin
its shift, but somehow, while they were in transit, it had stopped.
Instead of facing the command platform directly, the arm and ship
were sitting silent and still only about halfway turned inwards, at a
45-degree angle, not nearly enough to do the kind of damage they'd
been aiming for.
"Blast. Something
must have stopped them. Rey, can you feel anything?"
"No....the command
center is shrouded in darkness. They're alive but they're in
trouble. We need to get the ship and get up their fast."
"Got it."
They turned and ran over
to the ship, which they'd thankfully pre-prepped that morning. A few
minutes later, they were swinging into the air and turning towards
the glass windows of the command center above them.
This was, Poe thought,
supremely annoying.
Pinned down as they were,
with no option for retreat, all he and Finn could do was keep on
jumping up and sending out supressing fire to keep the troopers from
overwhelming them completely. They'd kept moving the arm as long as
they could, but once the troopers had managed to fully bust in the
doors, the flying laser bolts had forced the droids to break off
connection with the system and scurry with the two of them out of the
direct line of fire. BB8, always a trooper, had tried reaccessing
the system from the other side of the computers, but one of the
soldiers must have been carrying some kind of override drive, because
the entire center then shut down completely. Nothing more they could
do now, other than hope that Rey and Rose could find a way to get
them out of this mess. And that sort of momentary helplessness was,
as far as Poe was concerned, about as bad as death itself, if not
worse.
Not much time to dwell on
it, though. He and Finn kept alternating jumping up and sending as
many blasts as possible into the consoles behind and bove them,
enough that any stormtrooper trying to jump out and towards them fell
back down with smoking holes in their armor. They couldn't keep this
up for long against so many, though.
"Where the hell-"
Poe began, but was cut off by the sudden glare of lights flaring up
behind them. Glancing back, they saw Rose sitting at the helm of
their getaway ship, hovering just outside the center, and beneath the
forward nose, torpedoes armed and ready.
Instantly, Finn, Poe, and
the droids ducked out of site as Rose let loose, first with the
torpedoes to shatter the glass separating her from the inside of the
command center, then with a fury of laser blasts that drove the
stormtroopers further back towards the doors.
Quickly, she flipped the
ship around while opening the entrance hatch at the back of the ship,
where Rey stood balanced, lightsaber at the ready.
Thank the Force,
Rey thought, seeing that all four of their companions were still in
one piece. She proceeded to flip over them, deflecting the bolts
that the remaining soldiers had already started to send back their
way, the blasts from the ship notwithstanding. Rey gritted her
teeth; they had no more time for this. Again, with a thought,
she picked up the biggest piece of metal she could quickly identify-
in this case, a heavy metal table sitting at the far side of the
room- and sent it careening across the entire upper level, this time
sending the troopers really scrambling for cover.
Suddenly, right as the
table was about to finish its arc towards the other end of the
command center, she felt a different wave of power in the Force, one
dark and full of fury, smash back into the table to send it rocketing
up into the ceiling, after which it crumbled uselessly back to the
ground. Glancing at the source of the power, it all suddenly made
sense. Why patrols had appeared when they weren't supposed to. Why
there had been enough soldiers nearby to prevent their plan from
being carried out in full. Why exactly what wasn't allowed to go
wrong did.
Entering the command
center from the upper-right doorway, a black-clad figure holding a
massive, thick blade, pulsing with the Dark Side, a clenched fist
held in the direction where the table had been.
Even without having ever
seen him before , Rey knew instantly who he was. A Knight of Ren.
One of the perverted personal soldiers of Kylo Ren, the most feared
of his enforcers.
Without hesitating, the
Knight began to swing his blade eagerly, advancing on Rey.
She wasn't terribly
worried about losing to someone who, though powerful, was clearly
only marginally trained in the use of the Force, but she knew that
this was the worst possible time for her to get bogged down in a
swordfight. Using the distance still between them to her advantage,
and sensing that Finn, Poe, and the droids had already safely
scrambled onto the ship, she jumped backwards herself, Finn grabbing
her outstretched arm to help to pull her in.
"ROSE, PUNCH IT"
yelled Poe. Rose obliged, closing the hatch as she quickly
accelerated out of the landing deck and out towards the rim of the
facility, where they would make the jump to lightspeed.
Having arrived at the
precipice of broken class and machinery a second too late, the Knight
just stood there, staring at the ship. Even after the hatch door
closed, Rey could feel him following her in the Force.
She shook her head to
ward off the unpleasant sensation, and heard Rose telling Poe to "go
ahead and detonate it." He pressed the remote detonator they
had stashed on the ship, and the watched silently as a row of fire
and debris sprayed outwards from the other side of the Dreadnought.
It immediately began it's drift, but with the angle all wrong, it was
clear that, at most, all it would do was maybe take a few other
production arms out with it. The command center, as well as the
heart of Prime Yard, would get by with minimal damage.
Within the ship, everyone
had a grim expression on their faces. "All that time, all that
effort....and we won't change much of anything with this." Finn
lamented. "Damn. It."
A second passed, then
two, then three; clearly, no one felt up to responding. Back at the
far side of the spreading wreckage, a group of First Order ships
sprang out of hyperspace, clearly backup that had been called in.
Shimmers that indicated groups of TIE fighters immediately began
spreading out from them, some of them clearly tracking towards their
getaway shuttle, but they were too far away. Before any of them got
into firing range, they would made the leap to hyperspace, making
first a series of random jumps to avoid being followed before setting
on their real course, to the current rebel base on Talrezan Four.
So ended the
less-than-spectacular Raid of Kuat.