Rey had always felt an affinity with the great starships studding the sands of Jakku. They had a lonely majesty which she liked. They were unwillingly abandoned, but their scale meant they could never be forgotten. They endured in the desert. Monuments which stood amongst the uniform dunes. They seemed patient and steady.

  Rey sometimes liked to stand as still as she could while watching them, copying them. She felt that they shared some kinship in that way.

  Rey didn’t feel any sort of familiarity with rushing through Niima Outpost like a scurrying skitterrat.

  BB-8 rolled by her heel, beeping in confusion. Rey thought she could feel every eye on her as she dodged between cloth walls. She needed to get back to her skimmer. She could hunker down in one of the scrap hulks until she came up with a better plan.

  Behind her, she felt more attention. They were coming after the droid.

  “Quick, this way.”

  She ducked through a small awning-shaded passage, holding the cloth back for BB-8 as she did. The little droid was starting to get scared by her attitude. Rey pushed forward until she burst into the magward side of the outpost. She quickly scanned her surroundings. A few people were looking at her askance, but not with hunger. One man was bent over the well next to a happerbore.

  BB-8 rolled against her shin insistently. He gave a series of demanding tones, unable to hide their quiver. Rey bent to one knee in front of the little droid, meeting his lens seriously.

  “BB, you’re in danger. I don't know why, but Unkar just told everyone that he thinks you are very valuable. Someone is going to try and take him up on that offer.”

  The lens spun as the droid held still. He beeped at her, a quiet, small, scared question. Rey forced a tight smile, pushing down her own fear. She nodded.

  “We have options. There is an old Hunter-Killer droid who lives rise-ward of here. He might be willing to protect you until we know more.”

  A shadow fell across the sands to Rey’s left.

  “Perhaps you should not be so hasty, Rey-sadi”

  The voice was slick, each word shaped heavily with tongue. Rey pushed to her feet and spun around. A near-human man swaddled in thick furs with coolant tubes threaded underneath. His skin was oddly smooth for Jakku, and he had pearlescent, almost-blue teeth. Rey recognised him as Takir, one of Unkar’s sometimes thugs.

  “There is no need to involve others, Rey-sadi. There is much benefit for each of us here, and Unkar has ensured that the droid will not be harmed before he is passed on. Does this not sound reasonable, Rey-sadi?”

  Rey felt someone’s feet move behind her. BB-8 rolled lightly into her heels, beeping a warning. Rey rolled her shoulder to release her quarterstaff from where it was strapped across her back, catching it in her hand. She looked into Takir's slightly glassy eyes. She could feel his accomplice, it would be either Kerl or Himim, circling her back like a stone in her boot.

  Takir stretched his smile even wider, idly sticking his hands on his hips where a cudgel was holstered.

  “Little one, I watched over you when you had the rath-fever as a child. It would bring me sadness to have this unpleasantness come between us. What would you even do? There is no possibility you have enough rations to stay away for any time.”

  Rey felt her jaw clench. It always came down to this. She had known the people of Niima outpost all her life, from far before she had been able to look after herself. They had each had their part in raising her. Teaching her their tricks, imparting their beliefs. She had always been the youngest person in Niima, and she was a child of the community.

  But now, when she was grown and strong. Now that she was able to take care of herself and have her own thoughts. Those who had been her kind faces and wise teachers found themselves weighing their past care against what she could now do for them. An invisible scale on which her entire childhood was weighed as debt.

  She found distance, didn't cause a fuss. Kept polite and assisted where she could. But still more was expected. Rey knew that this wasn’t what families were meant to be. She would lie in her cot, cradled by the durasteel of a dead warmachine, and know that something was missing. Families were meant to be a soft light that filled a space with care and trust. Not an ever-expanding list of debt, slights and favours.

  Rey had been surrounded by the people who had raised her all her life and had never felt more alone.

  A flurry of movement behind her took advantage of her distraction. BB-8’s squeal of alarm was muffled as a sandcloth sack was thrown over him. Rey turned to see Kerl yanking on the drawstring before a rush of air behind her made her duck to the ground.

  Takir’s club swung over her head as she crouched to the ground. The ugly thing hummed in the air with some hidden power source.

  Rey gripped her staff in two hands, lunging up from her crouch. She aimed the metal tip at Takir’s throat, but it was pushed away with a wild swing of his meaty offhand.

  Takir jutted the cudgel towards her midriff in a quick jab. Fearing the strange hum, Rey knocked the club away from her body. She could feel a current running along the metal in her staff, vibrating as if she had jarred it.

  Stepping close to the thug, Rey spun an elbow towards his face. Her teeth were bared and vicious as she felt the elbow connect.

  Behind her, Kerl was struggling to get a grip on BB-8 to drag him through the sand. Rey swung the butt of her staff at the man, clipping him on the temple.

  Takir grabbed her arm, trying to pull her off balance. Rey kicked. Catching the hard tip of her shoe into his inner thigh.

  She was breathing heavily now, but both of the thugs were reeling back, panting. Rey kept up her feral snarl, glancing between the two men.

  “Stupid girl,” rasped Takir, wiping clear spittle from the side of his mouth, “you can’t fight all of Niima. We can wait. You will starve.”

  Jerking his head to the side, Takir slouched deeper into Niima, Kerl following by his side.

  Rey watched until they were out of sight, then scanned the area. A few people had turned to watch the commotion. The man who had collapsed at the well was frozen in place, halfway towards them.

  Rey tugged the coarse sack off of BB-8. He beeped indignantly at the sudden glare. His little head swivelled around, angrily searching for the attackers.

  “Hold still, BB,” said Rey, trying to search for any sign of damage on the droid.

  He looked clear enough. The beeping suddenly cut off as BB-8 froze. His lens was fixated on her right. Rey glanced in that direction.

  BB-8 was staring at the man who had been at the well. A man who was now staring back at both of them.

  The little droid gave a soft set of beeps. The man’s jacket?

  The beeping ramped into a buzzing flurry of angry tones as BB-8 frantically turned between Rey and the man. Rey couldn't make it all out. BB-8 was calling the man a thief. A thief might have a ship. Maybe this could be a fix for both of them.

  Plucking her quarterstaff from the sand, Rey lept to her feet. The man was still midway between them and the fountain, seemingly frozen as Rey bared down on him. His eyes darted between her and the droid. Finally, he broke. He spun around and tried to break into a run.

  His boots dug inexpertly into the sand. He seemed to almost stumble forward into the mess of tents. Rey marked the passage and ducked into a separate tent to cut ahead. She could see his form scampering through the tent as he crashed against the fabric.

  Turning a corner, Rey swung her staff without looking, letting it catch the man across his oncoming brow.

  He careened backwards, caught off guard. Another strike caused his feet to fly into the air, and his back crashed against the sand.

  He was dark-skinned with soft features and close-shorn hair. He was wearing some kind of tight undersuit and a scuffed pilot's jacket. The man’s eyes were keeping her in sight while darting around the tent. Rey could almost feel the machinery ticking in his mind. Like a scuppered mechanism of jagged gears skipping over oft-repaired tracks.

  Rey raised her staff to his throat, keeping him pressed to the ground. Sweat beaded on his neck as she felt his skin against the staff.

  “What's your hurry, thief?” Rey spat.

  The thrill was building inside her from the fight, and she was struggling to keep a grin off her face. The man looked bewildered.

  “What? Thief?!”

  BB-8 rolled forward from behind her. One of his arc-welder arms extended from his body and jabbed into the man’s shoulder, shocking him. The man yelped, and BB-8 beeped petulantly.

  “Hey! What did I do?”

  “Your jacket! You stole it!”

  The man looked down at the jacket he was wearing, and understanding seemed to pulse through his eyes. He lifted his hands in surrender, and he patted the air in a placating gesture.

  “Whoa! I've had a pretty messed-up day, alright?! So I'd appreciate it if you stop accusing me- Ow! Stop it!”

  BB-8 was jolting the man again. His squawking, hitting an even higher pitch.

  “Where’d you get it then? BB-8 says you stole it from his friend!”

  The man’s head swivelled between her and the droid. His jaw tightened as all at once he began to deflate. He met BB-8’s large lens with his eyes.

  “It belonged to Poe Dameron. That was his name, right?”

  BB-8 froze. All the anger fled the small form as he heard the question. Rey pulled her staff back an inch. The muscles in the man’s throat bobbed as he swallowed before continuing.

  “He got captured… By the First Order. I helped him escape, but our ship crashed… Poe didn’t make it”

  BB-8 rolled back. The arc torch went dark, and his head bowed towards the sand. The man watched his reaction, sadness filling his face.

  “Look, I tried to help him. I’m sorry.”

  BB-8 beeped a faint excuse before rolling back out of the way. His lens was tilted down, and he didn’t look at the man on the ground.

  Rey watched BB-8 go. Her friend was in pain, but she felt awkward and clumsy. She didn’t want to say the wrong thing and make it worse. On the other hand, the words of the man were finally starting to lock into place.

  He said he escaped from the First Order, and his ship had crashed. He would also be looking for a way off the planet.

  “Are you with the Resistance?”

  A plan was forming in her mind. A Resistance member would have contacts and friends. They would be able to take in BB-8 and keep him safe from Unkar.

  The man held her eyes like a startled bloggin.

  “Obviously,” he responded a touch breathily. “Yes. I am. I'm with the Resistance, yeah. I'm with the Resistance.”

  This could work. Rey pulled her staff to the side and stepped away, giving the man some space to breathe. She studied him. The undersuit looked like what Kinra might wear under her armour. The man had scars that looked like burns or other injuries, battle damage. He didn’t have a blaster, but his hand kept moving like he expected to be holding one.

  He was watching her face as her eyes picked at his body. She suddenly felt embarrassed.

  “I’ve never met a Resistance fighter before,” she said quickly.

  “Well, this is what we look like. Some of us. Others look different.”

  BB-8 gave a mad series of beeps, breaking in between them. Rey moved to see what had alarmed him. Pulling a shadecloth aside, Rey could see two figures in clean, white plastioid armour. They were talking to one of the Teedos, who, in turn, was pointing in their direction.

  “Oh, we need to go,” said the man behind her, peering under her arm, already on his feet.

  The troopers across the way locked onto her and instantly raised two bulky-looking blasters. They began yelling orders distorted by the garbling of their helmets. Rey froze under the glare of the blasters, almost hypnotised. She had never had a blaster aimed at her so violently.

  “Come on!”

  The Resistance fighter grabbed her hand and pulled her to the side. A rattle of red plasma burned through the sand cloth where she had been standing. They had shot at her. Before they could even speak to her. In the middle of Niima, with all those people around.

  Rey’s hand was being tugged forward as the Resistance fighter zigzagged through the ramshackle cloth stands. She stumbled before catching her feet in the sand and loping into a sprint.

  Next to her, a cleaning unit burst into a screech of steam as another bolt struck through the tents.

  BB-8 was wheeling close to her heels as the sand burst into gouts of charred glass from errant plasma. The blaster bolts were coming from more directions now. Every turn they made revealed more of the white-armoured troopers.

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  Blue plasma suddenly streaked in the corner of Rey’s vision. It wasn’t just them who were being shot at. The violence had struck Niima like a pincer pile. Rey could see Devat hunkered behind a collapsed happabore, taking potshots at whatever he felt with a truly ancient-looking rifle.

  Niima had always been full of those running from something or somewhere. Paranoid and desperate. Rey had never imagined her home as a violent place, but suddenly it seemed like a teeming mass of blasters, shockprods, and vibroblades had been boiling beneath the surface.

  The first blaster shots seemed to lift the curitan on the polite lie of the outpost. More blasters than Rey had ever seen had been pulled from beneath sand or from awning tent poles. The mess of half roads and shallow dwellings was now alight with the colours of ionised gas.

  “BB-8, stay close!” yelled the Resistance fighter.

  She still didn’t know his name. His fingers gripped hers. It was tight and secure. The pressure felt alien and strange in Rey’s own hand.

  He was also slowing them down by his unfamiliarity with the sand.

  A beeping object thudded in the sand far to their left. It was small and metallic. Rey’s rush-altered mind barely registered it before it detonated in a pulse that massaged Rey’s organs. All the breath rushed from her body. She stumbled and was almost dragged back onto her feet by the grip of the Resistance man. His eyes were looking back at her, filled with concern and near panic.

  Rey rallied and pulled them into a tent she wasn’t familiar with.

  The heavy cloth dulled the noise of carnage from outside. They both split, Rey, bending over as she gasped for the dry air. The space was empty with only a basic cot and rug on the floor.

  “They shot at me,” Rey got out between breaths, ”I don’t even know them.”

  “Yeah! They saw you with me. You’re marked.”

  Her entire home was now a warzone. People were dying out there whom she had known her entire life. All over one droid? She turned to BB-8. The little droid was silent and twitching. A superficial scorch mark arced along the side of his chassis.

  “Are you ok?”

  “Shh.”

  The resistance fighter was making a hushing gesture and staring at the ceiling. Rey couldn’t see anything, but there was a noise. It was almost like the screech of metal but sustained. It sounded like it was coming from the sky. The scream was growing louder by the second.

  Rey saw the Resistance fighter’s eyes widen in recognition. He met her eyes.

  “Fastest way out of here!”

  She gestured with her chin in the direction of the landing yards, the closest edge of Niima. He waved the droid to follow him and took her hand again. She could have pulled away. She certainly would have been faster on her own. Even BB-8 rolled across the soft sand more quickly than the man’s heavy steps.

  Rey let him tug them out of the tent.

  The howling was louder now. A horrible keening which felt like it was bearing down on them. They raced through the wreckage of stalls, collapsed and smouldering.

  Careening from behind them, two dark starfighters shot into view. The scream became intolerable. It was coming from both the fighters.

  Rey had seen ruined TIE’s in the hulks of broken hangars. Two parallel hexagonal panels with an orb cockpit held between them. She had never seen them so sleek, shiny and black. She had never thought they would move so quickly. Like rabid steelpeckers swooping with mad anger. She had never envisioned the noise, like a drill held to the base of her skull.

  The scream stuttered with the sounds of heavy cannon fire. Rey turned her head enough to see a line of rapidly approaching eruptions in the sand before she was lifted from the earth. The sand jumped beneath her as her entire body felt like it had been punched through the sky.

  Rey landed on the ground hard. Sound dropped from the world, replaced by a high-pitched ringing. The blazing sand felt like chipped glass against her face. Rey tried to press herself up to her hands. One of her eyes was swollen by grit, and her muscles felt like they were filled with lead.

  BB-8 rolled beneath her chest, propping her up. A blast of compressed air cleared the sand from her face. The ringing resolved to concerned beeps and whines from the little droid. Rey’s vision was alternating between spinning and rapidly snapping back into place.

  Her eyes gained brief focus as she saw the collapsed figure of the Resistance fighter with the leather pilot's jacket. He wasn’t moving.

  “Hey!”

  Dread gathered as bile in her throat as she scrambled over the sand. She was at his side, shaking his shoulder. BB-8 gave a panicked tone as together they rolled him so his face wasn’t drowning in sand.

  He sputtered and groaned softly against the light. Relief cracked across Rey’s chest. He was alive. Rapidly blinking the sand out of his eyes, the resistance fighter took in the situation. He met her eyes and took hold of her shoulder.

  “Are you ok?” He said, eyes darting across her to search for any injury.

  His pupils were still catching up to being conscious again. Her ears were still faintly ringing. They didn’t have a history. No series of long favours or network of debts. They didn’t owe eachother anything. But still, there was care in his eyes.

  “Yeah.”

  She held out her hand for him to grab.

  “Follow me.”

  He nodded easily and took her hand without a second thought.

  *****

  They raced across the open outskirts of Niima. A spaceport in name only. A wide open flat with ships parked for repair or storage. Behind them, three pairs of TIE fighters ground Niima into hot glass.

  The TIE’s darted across the sky, carving lines across people and structures in the outpost. Brief explosions lit the sky as one of the TIEs exploded in the blue flare of a surface-to-air rocket.

  Ships were taking off around them. Some were mere freighters ponderously picking up speed to escape. Others slid back hidden panels to reveal hidden and likely illegal weaponry to fire back into the dark starfighters.

  Two of the TIEs broke off, turning in the direction of the starport. Rey could feel the press of their targeting retina arcing rapidly across her back.

  They were out of Niima now. There were no ditches or even dunes to hide under. Only a vast plane of flattened sand.

  “We can’t outrun them!” yelled the Resistance fighter from beside her.

  There were several ships still on the ground. Ahead of them was a quadjumper, which Rey knew had only been on Jakku for a few months. It had sleek, rounded hull plates. The small cockpit quickly bent to a massive four-point engine block. She had taken odd jobs to do repairs on it. Enough to know it was well-maintained.

  Far better maintained than the light freighter to her left. Unkar had owned that for the previous few years. The thing was a mess of modifications and differing styles. It even had a walk-in cloak room.

  The quadjumper would climb out of the gravity well faster than the TIEs. Its hyperdrive was loud but strong. They would be able to scatter along with the rest of the ships until the Resistance man could get to his friends.

  Once Rey had gotten them to safety, she could bring the quad jumper back. She could regather with the others from Niima. They could rebuild. Maybe if people found out what had happened, her family would finally come find her.

  “We need to get to that ship!” she yelled over the approaching scream of the TIEs.

  “There’s one closer!” retorted the Resistance man, looking at the light freighter.

  “We’re dead in that garbage!”

  She kept to her dead run, her feet kicking up bursts of sand. The quadjumper was only a moment away. Another ship nearby pulled off the ground just as the TIEs carved across the sky over their heads.

  The dark fighters cast bursts of green plasma to the ground. Two bolts pierced the fleeing ship, detonations rippling in their wake. Another bolt lanced through the oversized engine block of the quadjumper. It erupted into a massive explosion. Debris scattered into the air as dark smoke hid the exit of the TIEs.

  Rey skidded to a stop, stunned by the destruction. She grit her teeth and turned back the way they came, towards the freighter. The Resistance fighter seemed to be about to say something, but snapped his mouth shut in favour of running once he saw her expression.

  They sprinted across the desert as the sounds of other explosions cracked through the pure blue of the Jakku sky. Smudges of black now marred the airspace. Ships which had failed to escape.

  Rey and BB-8 were the first to burn up the ramp into the light freighter. The ship was almost a disk with two front-facing manibles and an outrigger cockpit. The back quarter of the disk was almost entirely engines of an ancient design.

  The ship was junk, with most of the hull plates having been scrapped for use elsewhere. Heavy-duty shield cloth had been draped across the sections where the internals had been exposed to hungry skitter rats.

  The Resistance fighter came up the ramp as Rey slammed on the ramp closure switch. He was panting, his eyes scraping the inside of the freighter.

  “Gunner’s seat?” He asked.

  Wasn’t he a pilot? If he didn't fly, then Rey would have to. Rey had done practice runs before, test flights. Mostly, she had flown in her imagination behind the ruined steering consoles of decrepit wrecks.

  “Down there,” she replied, even as she turned to the cockpit before he could see the uncertainty on her face, “BB-8 with me.”

  Unslinging her staff and throwing it to the side, Rey buckled herself into the pilot's chair. The console loomed in front of her. Covered in dials and switches, gauges and blank readouts.

  Ok, so she knew she needed power. Rey had taken apart enough consoles for scrap. She knew what an ignition looked like. She reached forward towards a covered black and yellow switch.

  BB-8 gave a warbling squawk from behind her. A small laser pointer sprouted from his head, indicating an almost identical switch just underneath the console.

  “Which nightmare being did that?! Ok, BB! I’m gonna need your help here.”

  With the two of them working together, the ship roared to life. Rey found a rhythm quickly with BB-8’s help. The more she moved the console and got responses, the more she found herself understanding the thing.

  Her legs ached from the run, and she felt like half her face was sunburnt from the stray blaster fire. But her heart soared. It was exhilarating to be inside a living ship. Not running her fingers along sand-pitted rust, but dancing atop glowing buttons. Feeling plasma hum and throttle through her feet.

  She yanked a lever connected to an inset purple thing, which felt like it was an inertial dampener.

  Rey wrapped a hand around the yoke.

  “I can do this, I can do this.”

  In the distance, through the window of the cockpit, Rey could see two of the TIEs ending one of their massive banking turns. They seemed to almost hover in the air, suddenly still. Or maybe she just couldn’t see their movement because they were coming straight at her.

  She pulled back, and the ship burst into motion. The thrust was greater than Rey had thought. She moved the controls, and the velocity changed like a flighty bird. The ship spun before she gained a sense of the response.

  The junkheap handled better than she expected.

  The freighter zipped into the air, throwing Jakku into its wake. Rey threw the engines towards the outpost in a turn which had the side of the ship carving furrows into the sand. The two TIEs flicked to the side to match her turn as the freighter cast Niima away.

  Rey heard shouting coming from deeper in the ship. She grabbed the headset from the clip and wrapped it so the band was attached to her temple and jaw.

  “-low! Stay low!”

  “What?!”

  “Stay low! It confuses their tracking!”

  Rey pressed the yoke forward even as an alarm started to blare from across the other side of the console. Kicking up one knee to keep control of the yoke, Rey reached across to the diagnostic alarm. Excess mass venting, she needed to… There, she flicked three of the gravitational regulators until the alarm subsided.

  Rey glanced back at the cockpit window to see the planet rapidly approaching.

  She released her knee, making the freighter cant dangerously before regaining control with her hands. The freighter banked upwards in a dangerous arc. A hollow clang thrummed through the ship as the tail briefly dug into the sand.

  BB-8 was thrown towards the ceiling by the change in inertia. He warbled indignantly in the air.

  Green laser blasts came down ahead of them. The two TIEs were gaining on them, following their mad path with ease.

  A blast from above rocked the light freighter. What was the gunner doing back there?

  “What are you doing back there?! Are you ever going to fire back?!”

  “I’m working on it!” the reply came through the headset and then echoed shrilly from down the corridor. “Have you got the shields up?”

  Shields. Where were the shields? They would be with security and countermeasures. Grunting with exertion, she stomped at her staff, still lying on the deck. As it jumped into the air, she grabbed it and used it to open up three switches on the copilot's side.

  This had to be the worst-designed ship in the history of the galaxy.

  The smooth hum triggered as blue bars rapidly filled on one of the cross consoles.

  Underneath the deck, Rey could feel the thumping of the turbolaser from the gunner’s perch. Return fire rattled the ship as Rey saw the new blue bars suddenly dip precipitously.

  “We need some cover! Quick!” yelled the Resistance man inside her ear.

  Rey scanned the window in front of them. Jakku didn’t have cities or plants or even clouds. It was nothing but a graveyard for the ruins of star destroyers. Massive star destroyers. A terrible idea clicked into place.

  “I think I can get us some cover!”

  Rey banked towards the sands before jerking the yoke to the side. The inertial dampeners couldn’t compensate, and Rey felt herself lift out of the chair. BB-8 threw out a mess of guide cables, which clamped into the walls to hold himself up. Rey hooked a foot under the console to keep herself seated.

  Ahead, the ship graveyard dominated the window. Rey dove deeper in, curving around colossal fins and giant dagger hulks.

  The turbolaser underneath her pulsed with a steady rhythm. The TIEs banked behind her. Following every turn. Rey could hear the Resistance fighter muttering to himself over the comms.

  “Come on… Come on.”

  The TIEs careened into view, and a well-placed shot took one directly through the cockpit.

  “Nice shot!” she yelled down at the gunner.

  “I’m getting pretty good at this,” scraped its way through the radio, garbled from the muttering.

  Rey didn’t have time to question what he had said. The other TIE spiralled to avoid the explosion but managed to cast another shot into the base of the light freighter. The debris of the destroyed TIE crashed into the sand. A troupe of scavengers darted out from underneath old wrecks, already scrambling for the new scrap.

  Rey slalomed through old ships. Their mountainous hulls cast deep into the sand.

  “That last shot! The cannon's stuck in the forward position, I can't move it! You gotta lose 'em!”

  Rey clenched her jaw.

  “Get ready.”

  “Ready for what?”

  Not thinking about her bad ideas any further, she plunged the freighter towards the cavernous engine drive of the fallen star destroyer. The internals of the rear of the capital ship loomed. Most of the inner space had been destroyed or scrapped. That left only the supporting structure. A spiderweb of metal lattice and durasteel, the most rigid sections of the ship.

  Rey weaved the freighter through the gaps, growing slimmer and slimmer by the second. The TIE followed doggedly, its small frame lending to quicker turns in the tight space. The enemy pilot wasnt firing anymore, putting all his attention into flying.

  Rey could feel sweat coursing across her face. Her teeth hurt. Her eye still felt bruised and gritty. The yoke was clammy in her hand as she teased tiny movements from the ship to avoid scattering into yet another piece of scrap. A screech broke through the hull before an alarm was drowned out by an awful keening noise.

  The error console had huge swathes of the ship flashing yellow, and the shields were fully depleted. A small glimmer of sunlight appeared in front of her. The target lock alarm overtook all the other errors.

  Rey yanked on the yoke, pulling straight up as they shot out into the clear sky. The freighter inverted as the thrust pulled them upsidedown. Rey cut the engine, forward pulse dropped to nothing.

  The freighter hung, temporarily suspended between forces. The lower cannon, stuck in forward position, pointed straight down. The cannon gave a brief pulse. The TIE emerged from the relic hulk directly into the battery of fire spat out by the turbolaser.

  The small dark fighter erupted into a brilliant explosion of white light and dark smoke. Rey rapidly restarted the engines, pulling them out of their free fall. The freighter righted, and they pulled up into the sky.

  Wooping sounds of celebration came from over the comms. Rey fell back in her chair. All the tension suddenly left her body. She hurt all over.

  They still needed to escape. The thrust from the little ship was pulsing them out of the gravity of Jakku. With sudden shock, Rey realised that the planet she had spent her whole life on was rapidly disappearing from underneath her. The vast blue of the sky disintegrated into a blackness of void and stars. Grey dagger-shaped capital ships littered the space-scape.

  Rey felt a deep horror as Jakku grew further away. She wanted to scream.

  Rey hadn’t ever performed a hyperjump, but BB-8 had already found a data port to access. The console moved under his direction. Rey felt an abominable lurching in her throat.

  *****

  Stars, blurring and burning.

  Masses of space bent and curving. Inevitable balance.

  Life. Everywhere. Always.

  Connection.