LN found a pair of standard trooper uniforms tucked away in the cramped crew-quarters, clean and pressed in their containers according to Imperial standards. She neatly set her armor at the foot of the lower bunk and, after a quick wash in the incredibly small bathroom, changed into the plain black shirt and matching pants. In accordance with her current, extremely rebellious mood, she left the final piece of the uniform, the black hat, where it was.
Now what?
Only after she finished changing did she allow herself to ask that question. The uncomfortable fact was that she had no idea how to even formulate a plan beyond the escape itself, but she could hardly expect the scavenger to come up with one. He, clearly, barely knew his way around a cockpit, much less the galaxy with the First Order actively chasing him down.
Not my problem.
She looked at herself in the polished silver wall. Without consciously intending to do so, she had gotten dressed almost as if for inspection. Her shoulders were high and straight, her shirt had no wrinkles and was neatly tucked in at the belt, but her damp hair ruined the otherwise picture-perfect image. Short as it was, it still managed to stick out on one side. She ran her fingers through it to make it smooth, then abruptly and recklessly scruffed it violently with both hands. She pulled her shirt up and let it hang over the belt, like an absolute sloven.
"I am not part of your perfect order anymore," she told her reflection out loud, her tone dripping with petty spite. "In fact, I'm going to sleep in uniform... and then wear it tomorrow wrinkled."
"Are you... alright?"
The interruption made her jump. She whirled around, hand moving automatically to her weaponless belt.
Raey stood in the doorway, his expression caught between amusement and concern. LN relaxed from her combat-ready stance with a scowl, tugging at the edges of her uniform shirt to straighten it.
"Do you need something?" she asked bluntly. He tilted his head back towards the cockpit.
"The computer says we're about to come out of hyperspace-"
A subtle lurch ran through the ship, the enormous deceleration reduced to a mere representation of itself by the shuttle's ingenious design. LN had suffered through hours of RK-3297 rattling off shuttle blueprints and hyperdrive specs, so a reluctant (though still a fairly ignorant) appreciation of the complexity of hyperspace travel had wormed its way into her conscious mind.
She led the way back into the cockpit, the scavenger following close on her heels.
Their shuttle hung in the empty space between star systems, no planets, moons, stations, or nebulae anywhere near close enough to mark the location as significant. Perhaps once, long ago, some skirmish had taken place here that had put the coordinates on the Imperial database, but now it was just one set of numbers in a long line of unimportant numbers that stormtroopers memorized by the unit.
LN lowered herself into the co-pilot's chair. For some reason, she liked the angle better from the right side of the console.
"We need a destination now, Raey," she said, testing out the name cautiously. Sounded like an officer's name, but, then again, she rarely heard names beyond those of the First Order's officers. "Perhaps... you should consider looking for those coordinates."
The scavenger let out a huff of annoyance. "What is so important about these coordinates? What do they lead to, a derelict treasure ship? Some ancient planet made of pure gold?"
"I don't know," confessed LN, "but it is something the Resistance and the First Order want. If we found it... we might be able to ransom it off for protection. From either side," she was quick to add.
Raey leaned against the wall behind the empty pilot's chair, arms crossed thoughtfully. LN occupied herself by testing the controls on the co-pilot's side, making sure the steering still moved smoothly and the levers hadn't been neglected by some slacker on maintenance duty. They hadn't been.
"Regardless of what they lead to," Raey said finally, avoiding the actual suggestion, "I never had anything to do with these coordinates. I didn't even know that was what Dameron was running from the First Order for. This is a spaceship, though, there have to be other coordinates in the computer."
"This is a First Order shuttle," LN corrected. "The only locations it has saved are places we shouldn't go anywhere near under any circumstances. I have a few more emergency coordinates memorized, but they are all just as empty as this one."
"How in the galaxy does anyone find anywhere they haven't been before, then?"
"Information transfers between ships, planet directories."
"Directories... like the libraries of every conceivable kind of information they have on Coruscant?"
"We are not going to Coruscant."
"You're tucking in your shirt, LN."
LN froze, then stubbornly shoved her shirt back under the belt and tugged once, twice, to make sure it was straight.
"And?" she challenged. Raey shrugged, turning the empty chair around so he could sit down with his back to the controls.
"Nothing, I just thought you were making a statement." He ran a hand up and down his bare arm, then repeated the motion on his other side. LN realized suddenly why he always seemed to be crossing his arms - the desert-dweller was cold.
"There is another uniform under the bunk," she informed him. "It might not be as... showy as your native robes, but First Order uniforms are very practical."
Raey drew in a sharp breath like he was about to argue, but then (when LN glanced at him) he quickly shut his mouth again. He rose sharply, his chair spinning around a little from the movement.
"Sure, thanks," he said briefly, then hurriedly left the room.
LN turned back to her controls, finishing up the pre-flight tests she had abandoned on the Domination. The ship had gotten them out without incident, but the unfinished protocol nagged at the back of her mind.
The familiar routine soothed her tense nerves, helped her put her thoughts in order. She ran back over the events of the last hour or two in her mind while she ran over system diagnostics on the computer, looking for things gone wrong.
The biggest one, the blaring error she couldn't shake, was right at the pivotal moment. She heard the warning about the coup, she glanced over at FL-2218...
"Keep moving."
Their voices all sounded so similar through their helmets. Emotion did not translate well. Even so, she had heard the lack of hope in his words, and she had acted based on that.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
But... perhaps I was wrong-
Alarms appeared on the monitor, began beeping across the board. She stiffened, banishing all other thoughts, and grabbed the steering.
Something was coming out of the darkness. The sensors picked them up first, but the red dots moved erratically at the edge of range, moving at different speeds and in unpredictable directions. Either the ships approaching were piloted by age-mad droids, or there was something blocking an accurate sensor scan.
Then, LN saw them. Nothing more then black shapes, dark against the darkness of space, but they blocked different stars as they moved. She squinted, leaning forward in her chair to try and get a better look while the erratic scans moved closer and closer.
In what seemed a blink of an eye, they were on her. One moment the shapes were nothing but dark movement somewhere out there, and the next moment a dozen snapping, writhing monsters had leapt forward, exposed by the light of the shuttle. LN jumped back with a cry as a huge, curved beak slammed into the shield right in front of her, tentacles lined with vicious hooks spreading out in all directions to completely block the cockpit's view. The shuttle lurched, attacked from every angle as the swarm latched onto every exposed piece of metal and began to dig in. Metal thudded and screeched with each impact, but the worst sound was an intolerable, shivering chatter, its violent vibrations running through the shuttle and into LN's bones.
"Raey!" she screamed. "Get out here. We have to move!"
.
Raey shuddered as he pulled the shirt over his bare chest, a weird sense of disgust twisting in his stomach at the touch of First Order cloth. It was one thing to pick the uniform up, but to put it on? It was practically Imperial... and now he was wearing it.
"I am not going to look like a wimp in front of the soldier," he muttered, annoyed at himself. He kept his own boots, and the black First Order ones lay in a pile on the floor along with the hat and the silver-clasped belt. His own leather boots went on over the black First Order socks (they sure knew how to stick with a theme). His utility belt had been confiscated, but he didn't need it. His desert robes had a simple cloth belt sewn right in, and he had no intentions of leaving those behind in favor of a stinking Imperial uniform.
"Oh, sorry," he corrected sarcastically to himself. "First Order uniform."
He pulled on his second boot and was just reaching for his robes when a sudden impact shook the shuttle, the lurch knocking him backwards into the wall without warning. LN's yell reached him a moment later. Raey pulled himself up on the edge of the double bunk and darted out of the room.
A large, tentacle-y something filled the cockpit view, a monster comprised of jagged organic spikes and scaled, flailing appendages that radiated out from some horrifying beaked mouth, the only feature in an otherwise bulbous, shapeless sac-body.
"What in the-" began Raey, but LN interrupted him with a snap.
"Get on the wheel and move. I can't input coordinates and drive this shuttle at the same time."
Something outside scrapped horribly and another shiver ran through the shuttle. Raey winced, knowing the sound but never this close and clean.
"Are those things eating our ship?" he asked, astonished. He tried to avoid looking at the fleshy mouth sliding across their shield as he jumped into the pilot's chair.
"Trying to," LN replied through gritted teeth. "Shake them off us or we're jumping to hyperspace with half a shuttle."
Raey hesitated, wondering how, exactly, one was supposed to shake space-monsters in a void, then abruptly pushed the sticks to the left as far as they would go. Then to the right. Is this working?!
"It's not working," he cried, looking to LN for help. The stormtrooper was hunched over her console, barely paying attention.
"Forward shields are almost gone," she muttered, as much to herself as to Raey. "No weapons... stupid shuttle. Alright, no choice. Hold tight!"
She punched the hyperdrive and immediately the swarm retreated, pushed away from the shuttle. Raey got a great look at the one right in front of them as it floated away, all its tentacles fanning out like ugly flower petals from the gaping, beaked mouth in the middle, the carnivorous trap.
Then the shuttle jumped into hyperspace, and that nightmare-inducing sight was replaced by the far more awe-inspiring streaks of a million stars.
"I don't know what those were, but I hate them," said Raey, leaning back in his chair. LN let out a huffy breath, her brow still furrowed in annoyance.
"The galaxy is a wild and disgusting place," she replied coldly. "Things like that need to be exterminated..." Then she looked over at him, her expression immediately changing from irritated to calculating. "Well, if nothing else, at least you look like a proper co-pilot now. Though you forgot the belt."
That made it Raey's turn to scowl, looking down at the stiff black pants digging uncomfortably into the back of his knee as he sat. "You interrupted me halfway through tying my boots." I hate this uniform.
An alert appeared on Raey's monitor, a warning about a compromised fuel-line. His face fell.
"Uh oh."
LN pulled up a systems diagnostic on her side of the cockpit. "It's minor, for now," she said calmly. "We aren't in any immediate danger, but the sooner we find somewhere to lay low and get some repairs, the better."
"Where are we going now?"
"Another rendezvous location. A stalling tactic, nothing more. Hopefully this one won't have become hunting grounds for space-predators since it was last used."
Raey fiddled with the folded cuff of his newly-acquired shirt, his thoughts racing. He had heard spacers at the trading post talk about the other planets they had been to, or were going to once they left Jakku, but they never talked in terms of coordinates. He knew names – Coruscant (the old heart of the Republic), Nar-Shadda (the trade-center of scumbags), Hosnian Prime (home of the New Republic), and Tatooine, of course, the homeland of Luke Skywalker – but nothing to actually get him to those planets.
"We may have to risk a world sympathetic to the First Order," LN said finally, reluctantly, as she pored over the computer. "We have the shuttle, the uniforms, and there are several already programmed into the navigation system."
"Break in, steal a starmap, and get out?"
LN's mouth twitched, her eyes narrowed. "Even that would be very dangerous, especially since they know what you look like." She eyed him, again with a calculating look. "With a bit of straightening up, and a severe haircut, you could pass for an Order pilot... perhaps one who was assigned to a double-sun outpost as a punishment position. There's no hiding that exposure tan."
Raey shifted in his seat, uncomfortable under her gaze. "I don't have the accent for it," he protested. LN shook her head impatiently.
"Whatever the rest of the galaxy might think, the First Order isn't just a bunch of Imperials under a different name. It won't be a dead giveaway if you talk like you've lived a decade on a backwater if we fit it into a believable backstory. The real question is... are you willing to risk it? If they caught me, I'd be executed at best and reconditioned at worst. I'm not important. You, on the other hand, would be handed straight over to the Knights."
She has a point.
Raey grimaced and stood. "Let me think about it. How long can we keep going with this level of damage?"
"Hours, at least. I will know more once I run a systems check."
"Then I will think fast."
.
Raey sat on the uncomfortable lower bunk, his shoulders slumped and head bowed to keep from smacking against the metal frame of the upper bed. He fiddled thoughtlessly with the belt of his over-robe, straightening the rarely-used and now quite twisted sections of hardy cloth. His thoughts were just as tangled, but nowhere near as easy to figure out.
A lot had happened all at once, and now here he was with a First Order stormtrooper in the middle of nowhere. Dameron was gone, imprisoned or worse by the First Order's very own dark cult, and BB-8... the Order could be doing any number of terrible things to the helpful little droid. Droid torture, memory-wipe, reprogramming – all of which was all too easy to imagine, and horrifying to consider.
Landing on an old-Imperial world...
Raey did not like that idea at all, but the alternatives were, what? Their shuttle dying in the cold of space, leaving them to slowly perish from... whatever it was people died from in space. Dehydration, perhaps. Oxygen deprivation when the power failed?
He dug a finger under a fold of cloth around the belt-area where a pocket's seams were coming apart, digging out sand. He let it fall out into his palm and stared at it. Sand from his home, destined now to never return. He tipped his hand and let it fall to the ground, then began shaking out his robes section by section to get the rest of the sand out.
Plink.
"That wasn't sand."
He lowered his robes and leaned out from under the bunk, sweeping the floor with his gaze. An out-of-place reflection caught his eyes, sitting among the scattered grains of sand.
A data-chip. Small, compact, the kind of device that could be easily tucked into some small pocket or fold, lost among layers of cloth.
Raey picked it up, turned it over in his palm, then let himself fall back onto the mattress. An irrational laugh shook him silently, a sudden and unexpected release of tension, uncertainty, and slow-building resentment. He stared up at the bottom of the mattress above him and chuckled, the result and purpose of Dameron's secret mission clenched in his fist.