Star Wars: Before the Awakening (9 page)

“It works,” Devi said. “It scorchin’ well works, Rey!”

“It works,” Rey said softly. All the repairs seemed to be holding. A few warning lights were flashing, but they were all nonessential systems, at least for the moment. The engines were still in synch and at full power.

“I’m glad it works,” Strunk said. “Can we land again, please?”

Devi turned in her chair to look at him. “You
big baby.”

“No, he’s right,” Rey said. “We don’t want to be seen, not yet.”

“Right, yeah.”

Rey banked the ship, the maneuver graceful and effortless, and circled back to where they’d lifted off. The sense of movement, the response of the freighter to her commands, had her smiling again. Her flight sim, for all its wonder and entertainment, had never captured that, and how could it? How could
it have ever synthesized the reality of that freedom and power?

She set down the ship as gently as it had lifted off, powered down the engines in sequence, then put the main batteries back into standby mode. The sky had turned to dusk.

Devi got out of the copilot’s seat and clapped Rey on the shoulder again. “Mechanic
and
pilot, you do it all! C’mon, Strunk, let’s go home. See you tomorrow,
Rey. We’re gonna find that conversion chamber for the hyperdrive for you. We get that,
then
we’re in business!”

Without a word, Rey watched them disembark down the boarding ramp.

She couldn’t sleep.

Within the walls of the walker, Rey lay on her pile of blankets and stared up at the ceiling, listening to the soft moan of the wind as it caught in the cracks of the hull. She’d shut off her power
for the night, and it was very dark. She was tired, but she couldn’t keep her mind from racing. Questions and thoughts, memories long buried and fresh. When she held her breath, she could still feel the freighter coming alive in her hands, the elation of the flight. It had been extraordinary, better than she’d ever imagined.

It wasn’t only that. The sense of accomplishment was profound. She had
found a spacecraft that had lain in the sand for years—decades, even—and nursed it back to health. She had, with her hands and her smarts, taken it into the air once more. That was something to be proud of, though pride itself was a new feeling for her and she didn’t know what to do with it. It wouldn’t take much more to finish the job, to return the Ghtroc to something of its former glory. She
could see the end in sight.

Maybe that’s the trouble
, she thought. Maybe that was the reason for the sickening, dull feeling that started in her gut. The sensation seemed to swirl and dance as it rose to her mind, yet it stayed just out of reach. It was as if Rey was chasing images in a dream—images she couldn’t identify or name.

Rey rolled from side to side on her blankets, struggling to get
comfortable, trying to push away thoughts that refused to leave. She didn’t trust Devi or Strunk, either of them alone and certainly not together. Yet each time she had that thought, she remembered everything they
had
done, all the times they’d kept their word. They had delivered on every promise. They had followed her instructions. They had, without question, helped bring the freighter back to
life. She
should
trust them. She
wanted
to trust them.

But Rey couldn’t. They would betray her. Try to trick her. Try to steal the prize, cut her out of the sale. As much as she wanted to believe otherwise, she was certain that Devi and Strunk would turn on her, and soon.

The ship was alone, unprotected, out in the desert.

It was the dead of night and bitterly cold.

Rey sat up and reached
for her boots in the dark. She pulled them on, then found her goggles and her staff. She took one of the blankets and switched on a light long enough to find a knife. She cut a slit in the blanket’s center, then pulled it over her head, wearing it as a poncho. She switched off the light, shoved the door open, and stepped into the desert night. Somewhere, out beyond the dunes, Rey heard the distant
howl of a gnaw-jaw summoning its swarm.

The world was bright. The stars were magnificent and turned the desert a luminescent gray. Rey drove, goggles over her eyes and head down, the makeshift poncho weak protection against the cold. Her hands ached on the speeder’s controls. She went faster than she should’ve but not as fast as she could, and a sickening sense of dread pushed at her from within,
as if it could climb from her belly to her throat.

She wasn’t afraid of violence. She didn’t enjoy it, but she wasn’t afraid of it. It was a necessary part of surviving on Jakku. She’d learned to defend herself early. She had been in more fights than she could remember. More wins than losses, thankfully. She was good enough that the word had spread in Niima to stay clear of her and what she could
do with her staff. She could fight. She would fight, if necessary.

Devi, Rey decided, would be the dangerous one. Strunk was strong, but he was slow and followed Devi’s lead. Devi was quick, and Rey had seen the vibro-knife she carried on her belt, knew that she wore a cut-down shock stick strapped to her left leg, beneath her pants. If it came to a fight, Rey would go for Devi first. Then she’d
deal with Strunk.

She wasn’t looking forward to it.

The ship was exactly as Rey had left it, undisturbed and silent. She slid the speeder into cover at the aft end of the ship, then stopped and listened to the silence of the desert. There was no wind. There was no sound but her own breathing. She shivered, rubbed her aching, cold hands together, heard the sand whispering beneath her feet as
she walked to the loading ramp and keyed the passcode. The ramp lowered on its hydraulics, the noise of it sudden and all the louder in the stillness of the night.

Rey climbed aboard, then shut and locked the ramp behind her. It was dark in the main compartment, lit by only the faint glow of starlight creeping in from the cockpit corridor. She followed the light into the cockpit and lowered herself
into the pilot’s seat. She pulled her goggles down so they hung at her neck and laid her staff across her thighs.

She felt foolish. She’d been so certain that she would arrive to find the ship already gone or, if she was lucky, Devi and Strunk in the process of trying to steal it. She had ridden through the Graveyard and across the Crackle and risked gnaw-jaws and frostbite and crashing all because
she couldn’t bring herself to trust them. She wondered if the situation had been reversed, if Devi and Strunk had been the ones to discover the ship and Rey had stumbled on it later, would they have felt the same? Would Rey have done to them what she was certain they planned to do to her?

She was so tired.

She shut her eyes. She felt sleep tugging at her, pulling her down. She half-dreamt of
being warm, of being small, lost memories trying to swim their way to the surface. She opened her eyes, and it was still night. The stars shimmered, limitless in the sky. She closed her eyes again, then opened them. At the lip of the dune ahead of her, she saw shadows moving.

Rey started awake, one hand tightening around her staff. She wasn’t entirely certain she hadn’t been dreaming. She slid
forward in the pilot’s seat, almost onto her knees on the cockpit floor, using the flight console to conceal herself.

The shadows moved again. Two figures were descending the dune toward the ship. She couldn’t quite make them out, and then she saw two more shapes cresting the dune, leading luggabeasts.

Four Teedos coming toward her.

As they drew closer, Rey could make out details. All the Teedos
were armed, most of them with staves but one had a rifle. She couldn’t see their markings in the darkness, but she didn’t need to. They had come either to take the ship or to destroy it. It didn’t matter. Either way, Rey wouldn’t let them.

The Ghtroc was armed with a fore-mounted dual laser cannon, but the gun was nonoperative. Rey had restored the wiring and firing controls as best she could,
but the Tibanna gas required to charge the weapons had long before leaked into the atmosphere and was impossible to replenish. Never mind that using the cannon was a terminal solution, and willing though she was to defend her prize, Rey didn’t want to kill anyone if she could avoid it.

Rey rolled from the pilot’s chair to the floor and crawled quickly back to the cockpit hallway before getting
to her feet. She stumbled through the darkness to the loading ramp, hit the release, and followed it down as it descended, then jumped out before it had touched the ground. Rey ran to the front of the freighter, both hands on her staff. She skidded to a stop, facing the Teedos.

They paused their advance, the nearest of them—the one with the rifle—six, maybe seven meters away. For a long moment
nobody moved and nobody spoke. One of the luggabeasts huffed, pawing at the sand, its gears grinding.

“This is mine,” Rey said. “It’s my ship, do you understand? You can’t have it.”

The Teedos didn’t respond. A deeper darkness had descended. Rey couldn’t tell who she was dealing with, scavengers or worse. Her stomach was tight, an ache in the pit of her gut, and she could feel her heart beating
in her breast. It was, if anything, colder than before. When she spoke, her breath made clouds of condensation in the air.

“Leave,” Rey said. “Go away.”

The Teedo nearest her, rifle still lowered, turned his wrapped head to look back at the others. Their bodies were always hidden—everything, including their eyes—so even if the light had been better, Rey wouldn’t have been able to read anything in their expressions. The body language was clear enough, though. The Teedo in the lead looked back at her. They had no
intention of leaving.

“I don’t want to fight,” Rey said. “I don’t want to fight, but I will. I will.”

The Teedo with the rifle brought the weapon up to his shoulder. Six meters was a close-range shot but too far for Rey to cover the distance before he could make it. She figured she had to try, anyway. If she got lucky, if she led with her staff, maybe she would hit the end of the weapon before
he fired, maybe she could knock it away, force him to miss. Rey doubted she would be so lucky, but she didn’t see any other choice.

She never got the chance to find out.

A blaster bolt zapped into the sand between her and the Teedo with the rifle. The shot was brilliant red in the darkness and made the sand spit and sizzle. A second shot followed the first, hitting closer to the Teedo. Both
had come from Rey’s right, atop one of the dunes.

“You heard her,” Devi said. “It’s her ship.”

She was standing just over the rise, a small blaster held in both hands. Strunk was beside her, and as Devi spoke, he ran clumsily down the slope, splashing sand as he went. His hands were empty, but he seemed even bigger than before, twice the height of the tallest Teedo.

“I don’t have a lot of shots
in this thing,” Devi said. “But I’ve got enough left. A couple of you are gonna get really hurt. Or maybe worse.”

Strunk had reached the bottom and jogged up alongside Rey. He touched her elbow as he passed but kept moving forward, striding toward the Teedo with the rifle. He reached out and grabbed the weapon by its long barrel, then pulled it aside. The Teedo didn’t let go, but he couldn’t
control where it was pointing. Strunk yanked, and the rifle came out of the Teedo’s three-fingered grip. Strunk turned the gun in his hands, found the charging clip, and tore it free. He flung the cartridge over the dunes, then handed the rifle back to the Teedo.

“It’s time for you to leave,” Devi said.

The Teedos turned and went back the way they had come.

“You’re welcome,” Devi said, following
Rey up the ramp and back into the ship. Strunk’s footsteps were heavy on the metal behind them.

“What were you doing out here?” Rey asked. She flicked on the lights in the main compartment and hit the switch to close the ramp once more.

Devi tucked the little blaster into one of her many pockets and ran her grimy fingers through her hair, looking up at Rey. She seemed puzzled.

“We were keeping
watch.”

“Keeping watch?”

“Yeah, Strunk and I have been camping out here pretty much the last two weeks whenever you headed home.” Devi looked genuinely confused. “Someone had to stay on guard, right?”

“Two weeks?”

“About that, yeah. I’d have thought you’d be more grateful.”

Rey looked at her staff, then set it against a bulkhead. She didn’t know how she should feel. They had been sleeping
out in the cold for two weeks, risking the gnaw-jaws and everything else just to guard the ship.

“I didn’t know you were doing that,” Rey said.

“We’ve got one of those old emergency shelters we pulled from a wrecked X-wing a couple years ago. It’s pretty warm inside, though it gets kinda cozy.” Devi shot a grin at Strunk, who was standing mutely by, listening closely. “We normally wait until
we see you arrive and then we head out on the salvage runs, get our portions, like that. Hadn’t you wondered why you were always here first?”

“I just thought I was early.”

“Nah, Rey, we’ve been making sure everything stays safe.”

Rey considered and found that she was struggling with what she should say. It came slowly. “Thank you.”