The Force Awakens (Star Wars), Page 3

  And in response, the figure of Kylo Ren turned and looked sideways, directly at the soldier. The trooper saw only light reflecting off a mask, and his own fear.

  He knows. He must know. And I’m…dead.

  But he wasn’t. The glance lasted barely a second. Then Ren resumed his pace, deep in thought as he strode toward the shuttle. In the course of returning to his ship he passed a blaster lying on the ground. It was Poe’s, the one that had come within an arm’s length of killing him. Once he was beyond its reach he touched it—but not with his hands. It rose, seemingly of its own accord, and flew free, smashing into a nearby structure and scaring the wits out of an idling stormtrooper unfortunate enough to be standing nearby.

  The purification of the village extended to its outskirts, where a clutch of troopers had just finished searching the damaged X-wing that had been abandoned there. Having done all they could with the tools and equipment at hand, they prepared to return to their units. Specialized gear could have reduced the Resistance fighter to its component parts, but that was not how they had been ordered to proceed.

  “Nothing there,” declared the last of the quartet as he descended from the fighter’s cockpit. “The usual Resistance trash; that’s all. Deep scan shows nothing in the fuselage or elsewhere.”

  As soon as he was safely out of range, his companions activated the pair of heavy weapons they had brought to bear on the hiding place. A couple of bursts was all it took to reduce both ship and outcropping to rubble.

  The sound of the exploding X-wing reverberated across the gravel flats and dunes. Far away now, a solitary spherical droid looked back even as it continued to flee. The fireball that rose into the sky suggested the detonation of something far more volatile than primitive buildings and scrapped mechanicals. If he could have rolled faster, the frightened droid would have done so.

  Contrary to much popular thought, desert worlds are not quiet at night. In the absence of light, an entirely different ecology springs to life. Moving with greater caution, BB-8 tried not to pause at each howl, every meep, the sounds of clawed feet scraping against bare rock. There were things in the vacant, wild regions of underdeveloped planets that would gladly take apart a solitary droid just to see what made it tick. Or roll, he knew. His internal gyros threatened to send him tumbling wildly at the very thought of such an encounter.

  Droids such as him were not meant for unpopulated places, and he desperately desired to find others like himself. Or, failing that, even people.

  —

  The shackles that Poe had worn on the troop transport were removed as soon as he and his captors disembarked. Aboard the Star Destroyer, there was no reason to physically restrain the prisoner. Apparently enjoying themselves, or perhaps merely impatient to get out of their armor, his escort chivvied him along with what he considered to be unnecessary roughness. Not that stormtroopers of any ilk were noted for their individual diplomacy. Considering whom he had tried to shoot, he knew he ought to consider himself fortunate that they had brought him aboard still attached to all his important appendages.

  A physical state of being, he knew, that could be altered at any moment.

  On the other side of the enormous and impressive receiving bay, other troopers were filing out, grateful that more of their number had not been lost on the expedition and looking forward to some rest and food. Intent on reliving the battle below, they paid no attention to one of their own who fell behind. When he was convinced no one was looking at him, the trooper turned and raced back into the open transport. He removed his helmet and proceeded to void the contents of his stomach into the nearest refuse receptacle. The terror in his expression was palpable. Fortunately, there was no one there to witness his disgrace.

  There was, however, now someone behind him.

  Terror gave way to cold fear as he found himself gazing back at Captain Phasma. How much had the senior officer seen? How much did she know? Too much, as it turned out.

  Aloof yet commanding, she indicated the rifle he still carried. “FN-2187. I understand you experienced some difficulty with your weapon. Please be so good as to submit it for inspection by your division’s technical team.”

  “Yes, Captain.” How he managed to reply without stammering he did not know. Instinct as opposed to training, he decided. Self-preservation.

  “And who gave you permission to remove that helmet?”

  He swallowed hard. “I’m sorry, Captain.”

  He could feel her disgust as he struggled to put the helmet back over his head. “Report to my division at once,” Phasma said.

  Worse, he knew miserably, was likely to come later.

  —

  It was where technology went to die.

  Mountains of metal, cliffs of plasticene derivatives, oceans of splayed ceramics were jumbled together in a phantasmagoric industrial badlands that none dared enter, for fear of being poisoned, cut, or lost forever. None except a very few, for whom daring was as much a sense as sight or hearing.

  One such individual clung insectlike to a dark metal wall pimpled with protruding sensors, manipulators, and other decaying mechanisms. Clad in light protective goggles with green lenses, face mask, gloves, and gray desert clothing, the busy figure was burdened with a substantial backpack. A multifunction staff strapped to her back made precision work in such tight and dangerous quarters difficult. Wielding an assortment of tools, the scavenger was excising an assortment of small devices from one metal wall. One after another, bits of booty found their way into the satchel that hung below the slender figure.

  When the satchel was full, the scavenger secured it shut and commenced a perilous descent, avoiding sharp projections and threatening gaps in the wall. Arriving at the bottom of the metallic canyon, the figure hefted a piece of larger salvage recovered earlier and then, laboring under the double load, headed toward a distant slit of sunlight.

  Outside the metal caverns and at last clear of danger, the scavenger shoved the goggles up on her forehead and squinted at the blasted surroundings. She was nearly twenty, with dark hair, darker eyes, and a hint of something deeper within. There was a freshness about her that the surrounding harsh landscape had failed to eliminate. Anyone glancing at her would have thought her soft: a serious error of judgment.

  It had been a respectable day’s work, enough to ensure she would eat tonight. Pulling a canteen from her belt, she wiped sweat from her face and shook the remaining contents of the container into her upturned mouth. There should be more, she told herself as she began tapping the side of the canteen. The last few drops sometimes clung stubbornly to the insulated interior.

  Concluding that she had drained the container of all its contents, she reattached it to her belt facing inward. The satchel and the larger piece of salvage were secured to a piece of sheet metal, which she sent sliding down the mountain of sand in front of her. Off to one side, shade was provided by one engine of a decomposing, old-model Star Destroyer. Too big to cut up, its technology obsolete, it had been left to molder on the hillside. In the desert climate, decay would take thousands of years. Being something less than portable, the great hulk of a shell was ignored while opportunistic scavengers such as Rey plundered its interior for saleable components.

  A second shard of sheet metal served as a sled for the girl to follow the results of the day’s labor down the dune slope. Practice allowed her to manipulate the metal skillfully enough so that she neither fell off nor crashed into any of the scattered debris that littered the dune face.

  At the bottom she stood and dusted herself off. Her dun-hued garb was desert basic, designed to protect the wearer from the sun and preserve body moisture. It was inexpensive, easily repaired, and unlovely. The same could be said for the clunky, boxy, beat-up speeder parked nearby. If the battered, rusty vehicle had a redeeming feature, it was the over-and-under twin engines. Since one or another tended to flare out and die at any given moment,
their utility stemmed more from their redundancy than from any ability to supply speed or maneuverability.

  After fastening her acquisitions to the transport, she climbed into the driver’s seat. For an anxious moment it seemed as if neither engine would ignite. Then one, and finally the other, roared to life. That was her life, Rey reflected: a succession of anxious moments, interrupted only by the novelty of occasional panic. All part and parcel of trying to survive on a backwater world as harsh and unforgiving as Jakku.

  Racing along the flat desert floor, she allowed the speeder’s perceptors to guide her between endless rows and piles of ruined starcraft, obsolete or fatally damaged military equipment, civilian mechanicals that had outlived their prescribed lifetime, and even long-downed Imperial vessels. No one visited here. No one came to take inventory or write history. In these times there was no nostalgia for death: especially not for that of machines.

  Instrumentation blinked. Barrier ahead: too much wreckage through which to maneuver. She knew the spot. Though going over would use more power, at this junction the only alternative was a wide and potentially dangerous detour. At least at altitude, she knew, there would be the benefit of cooler air.

  Lifting, the speeder rose over the crumpled metal before it, soaring to a necessary height. For the hell of it, she executed a barrel roll; a small moment of exhilaration in an otherwise humdrum existence. By the time she came out of it, Niima Outpost was plainly visible just ahead. Niima: center of the galaxy, repository of manifold cultures, offering to its myriad inhabitants a never-ending succession of entertainment, education, and enjoyable distractions.

  Her smile twisted. Niima was a functioning armpit of a town and nothing more, a place where no one asked questions and everyone went quietly about their own business. It was just large and developed enough that if you dropped dead in the street, there was a fifty percent chance someone might go to the trouble of raking up your body and passing it along to a local protein recycler, or cremator, or burial tech, if either of the latter were part of your personal philosophy and so indicated on your identification, and provided there were funds available to pay for your chosen means of disposal.

  Otherwise, the deserts of Jakku would take care of the remains in their own good time, and without rendering any opinions on the virtues of the deceased.

  As long as she could work, Rey had no intention of suffering such a fate. No one does, of course. Death displays nothing if not variety in its methods, which are often surprising and sometimes amusing. She parked her speeder, then unloaded her salvage and hauled it toward the community structure that had been built for that purpose and was open to all. No one offered to help her with the heavy load. In Niima, youth and gender were no barrier to neighborhood indifference.

  Once inside the tented, shaded structure, she unpacked the results of the day’s work, leaned her staff against a worktable, and began cleaning. When it came to salvage, appearance did matter. Compared to the strenuous work she had put into its recovery, a bit of polishing and buffing added little to the overall effort. Around her, other scavengers were doing the same. Humans and nonhumans communicated freely, commenting on one another’s findings and exchanging gossip, mostly in the local patois. They filled a good deal of the available workspace. When not chatting amiably with one another, they strove to learn where their competitors were finding their best salvage.

  Also, they were not above stealing from one another when the opportunity presented itself. Rey kept a close eye on her goods.

  Glancing up from her work, her gaze happened to fall outside the tent. The biped whose movements had caught her eye was human. A woman, clad in wrappings of deep maroon that shaded to purple, a band of turquoise makeup across her eyes and forefingers indicating her clan. Standing on a ship’s open ramp, she surveyed her surroundings. A moment later a similarly clad and decorated boy appeared and moved to join her. A domestic exchange ensued, during which the adult did something to the child’s hair. Returning to her work, Rey was only partially aware that the brush she was using on a narrow piece of salvaged electronics had begun to imitate the same caressing, grooming movement of the woman’s fingers.

  Coming up beside her, one of Unkar Plutt’s assistants barked at her and gestured in her direction with his staff, implying it would be in her best interests to focus on her work and not allow herself to be distracted. Without another glance in the direction of the mother and child, Rey returned to her own work.

  Finishing sooner than she expected, she made her way across the tent to the exchange booth. Fashioned from a small salvaged sand crawler, dark brown from rust and age, it was surrounded by piles of recently purchased components. In contrast to the dominant tenting, it boasted a solid suspended ceiling in the form of another piece of salvaged metal. In Niima, the most disagreeable part of surrendering salvage was taking payment. This was due not to the quality of the food one received as payment but to the nature of the individual distributing it.

  The lumpish shape seated slightly above and in front of her was not human. The Crolute’s stout build terminated at the top in a thick, fleshy, hairless skull whose most prominent feature was a broad, flat nose. The nasal cavity extended all the way up and into the bald, metal-capped head. A separate layer of flesh flowed downward like a second neck. Loose black pants were tucked into heavy work boots, while the long-sleeved, dun-colored shirt struggled to contain additional layers of neck. Half a dozen bicolored metal plates hung from his neck and shoulders to just below the thick knees. Muscles were hidden beneath an additional layer of blubber.

  While she knew he looked forward to their occasional business dealings, she could not say the same. Since that would have required not only listening to him but looking at him, she always strove to keep their encounters as brief as possible.

  Unkar Plutt, on the other hand, was delighted to extend their encounters for as long as she could stand it. He always took his time when examining her pieces, letting his gaze rove slowly over everything she put before him, making her wait. Only when the bounds of common courtesy had been markedly surpassed did he deign to acknowledge her presence.

  “Rey. A decent offering, if nothing remarkable. Today you get a quarter portion.”

  She did not give him the pleasure of seeing her disappointment, just took the pair of packets that appeared in the transfer drawer in front of him. One transparent package contained beige powder; the other, a more solid slab of something green.

  “That’s my girl,” Plutt commended her.

  Not replying, she turned and left, moving as quickly as she could without alerting him to the fact that his presence disgusted her. She could feel his eyes all over her until she exited the big tent.

  —

  Out on the salt flats of Jakku, the only place to shelter from the sun was inside something one had built oneself. Rey’s speeder was an insignificant speck against the fiery, setting mass as she slowed on approach to her residence. Climbing down, she left it parked where it had stopped. There was no reason to secure it. Few came this way. Those who did, including the pirates and bandits who haunted the desert wastelands, wouldn’t waste time trying to steal a vehicle as dated and banged-up as her transport.

  Unloading, she gathered her belongings and headed for the makeshift entrance that led into the belly of the half-destroyed AT-AT walker. It might be an ancient, rotting, rusting example of now useless military might, but to Rey, it was home.

  After carefully unloading her gear and supplies onto the homemade cabinets and shelves, she remembered to make a scratch mark on one interior wall of semi-malleable material. She had long since stopped bothering to count the scratches, which now numbered in the thousands.

  Bits and pieces of homemade décor ornamented isolated alcoves and corners: here a handmade doll fashioned from reclaimed orange flight suit material, there a cluster of dried desert flowers; on the far end of the bed insert, a pillow that had cost her
a day’s work. It wasn’t much, but where such examples of defiant individuality had been placed, they softened the drabness of their surroundings.

  Green slab-stuff sizzled in a makeshift cook pan. Opening the packet of beige powder, she dumped it into a tin half full of water. A brief stir activated the mixture, which promptly expanded and solidified into a loaf of something like bread. She slid the cooked meat off its pan and onto a plate, then slipped the loaf out of its container. Taking a seat, she dug into both as if she had not eaten in weeks. It seemed that these days all too many meals were like that.

  When she had finished, she picked up the plate and licked it dry before setting it aside. Rising, she moved to a window that looked in the direction of Niima. The signature contrail of a single ascending ship streaked the flat dark blue of the evening sky like chalk on slate. Wiping her mouth, she turned to a shelf where an old, badly damaged Rebellion helmet rested. She stared at it for a moment, then picked it up and put it on.

  Still wearing the helmet, she made her way outside into the cooling air. Nothing much to see tonight, she reflected. The sun going down. Tomorrow morning, the sun coming up. And so on to another day, not unlike its predecessor and the interminably repetitive ones that had gone before.

  She tried to think of something else—something that had changed, something that seemed different—if only to keep her mind from atrophying. But there was nothing. Nothing new. Certainly nothing to daydream about. On Jakku, things never changed.

  There was that occasional mention in the market of a rising new power in the galaxy. An organization that called itself “The First Order.” Determined, relentless. Nobody seemed to know much else about it. Not something to worry about here, she knew. Whatever it was, whatever it represented, it wouldn’t come to this backward, out-of-the-way world. Nobody came to Jakku.