The tram station - a place that, to the best of Raey's knowledge, should have been bustling - seemed deserted. Crates were stacked on the loading bay and the cargo tram lines were empty, but the passenger units were all in the station; a half dozen empty, unmanned vehicles in a sad straight row.

"Perhaps they aren't going to bring in the rest of the personnel until the station is finished?" suggested Ar'tak, but Raey didn't think so. He kept his suspicions to himself while he broke into the nearest passenger tram's locked door controls.

It would be a long ride to their destination. The lines on the tunnel walls blurred together as the tram sped swiftly down its track, but Raey barely felt the movement past an initial, rather mild lurch of acceleration. Any other day, his thoughts would be fixed on the systems hidden within the metal vehicle - the fully operational, modern version of ruined, rusted machines he had been tearing apart for years - but now he barely considered it.

At some point, a cold knot had started twisting itself up in his stomach. Now he couldn't ignore it any longer; it made his heart pound, even while sitting still, and, despite the First Order uniform he wore over his desert robes, he felt cold all the way to his bones.

But he didn't say anything. Ar'tak seemed fine. Cautious, yes, and subdued, but he didn't look like he had a nest of sand-vipers coiled up inside his chest. That's how Raey felt, and the longer they sat on their high-speed stolen tram, the stronger the sensation became.

Finally, without even meaning to, the words slipped out.

"Perhaps this was a bad idea."

Ar'tak looked over at him, but Raey kept his gaze fixed on the corrugated floor. He didn't want to explain himself, and Ar'tak didn't ask him to. A moment later, the Jedi apprentice looked away again.

"Maybe it was."

But the Force led us here. We are supposed to do something on this planet, something important... right?

But Ar'tak didn't say any of that. Raey's suggestion hung in the air, uncontested.

The tram felt like it was going far too slow.

Sounds of people and machinery greeted them at the tram station when they stopped. Not inside the station itself - it was just as empty as the one they had begun their journey at - but beyond, in the halls. Raey cautiously approached the door and was greeted by a beeping mouse-droid zipping past his feet, making cute little sounds as it zig-zagged down the hall. Stormtroopers with drawn blasters stood guarding a large cargo crate a little ways up the hall while someone in a slight-variation of the uniform Raey was wearing berated them angrily. A couple contracted workers (they were easily spotted by the general aura of grunginess that the First Order would never accept in their own troops) wrestled with a piece of their own equipment (again, Raey deduced it was theirs' and not the First Order's by the rust) down the other side of the hall. The mouse-droid swerved to avoid their feet as it scurried past.

"Where are we going now?" hissed Ar'tak out of the side of his mouth, and Raey nodded shortly to the left.

"Past those troopers. Just... make sure they can see your lightsaber hilt or something. We don't want another confrontation."

Ar'tak licked his lips nervously. "Agreed."

But no one gave them more then a lingering glance as they passed. Raey kept his shoulders squared and let his concern turn into a fixed scowl, one he hoped would ward away the casual observers. Ar'tak did his best to look intimidating, but his light clothes and silver-hilted lightsaber just looked more and more incriminating the longer they spent among the First Order. Someone may have already reported them, for all Raey knew... the Knights of Ren could be planning something horrific even as he and Ar'tak crept through the halls.

"This way."

Raey waited until they turned a corner and there was no one watching them, then rubbed away the sweat beading his neck. He ran through the sector map in his mind, counting off turns and doorways. He knew the way to the detention cells from here, the closest ones to where the Knights had been recorded landing, but every step felt more and more like a terrible, terrible idea. With each door and hall, they ran the risk of running straight into a dark Force warrior who would barely need one look at Ar'tak before deciding to slaughter them both.

An alarm suddenly blared through the hall and Raey jumped, a curse half-forming on his lips before trailing off into heavy, anxious breathing. Ar'tak's fingers closed firmly around his lightsaber and he looked quickly over his shoulder, but there were only dirty workers hauling cargo. No attackers.

"Hostiles inbound," said a stern voice over the wailing alarm. "First Order, to your posts." The voice changed, female now, but the tone did not. "Civilians, report to your rally points immediately. Mandatory reminder: any civilians found outside designated areas during hostile scenarios will be shot on sight, with no compensation due the company or associates."

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

The workers, the civilians, began scurrying around in the same way Raey had seen a hundred times on Jakku, but this time he and Ar'tak were the ones being avoided. The glances shot at them, before cautiously curious, were now downright terrified as people hurried past, cowering.

The threat, he realized, was very real. These people knew to fear the uniforms.

"We should hurry," muttered Ar'tak, and Raey picked up his pace.

"'Inbound', they said," he replied quietly. "That's not us - someone else is coming." LN. He bit his lip, thinking. "Hostiles, plural. It's not just her..."

They glanced at one another, and Raey could see his thoughts repeated in Ar'tak's eyes.

"The Resistance?"

If they were right...

"The shield," Raey exclaimed, then lowered his voice, shooting a worried glance around them. No one was paying any attention to them - the hall was quickly emptying. "If it is the Resistance, they will have a better chance without the planetary shield."

"Do you know how to shut something like that down?"

"I can figure it out." Raey refused to let his uncertainty show. This wasn't old Imperial tech, this was all First Order. They were similar in a lot of ways, but he had never had the chance to poke around in something of this scale. He banished the doubt and nodded firmly, more for his benefit then Ar'tak's. "No, I've got this. And we have to hurry... I've got to get to a computer. A control room."

"What about the rescue plan? If, and we can't be sure it is the Resistance up there, but if we do succeed in lowering the shield and they do manage to do significant damage, we are going to be right in the line of fire."

A prickle of foreboding crept up Raey's back. He took a deep breath, but Ar'tak realized what he was thinking before he had the chance to say it. The chagrian cracked a humorless smile.

"We have to split up, don't we?"

Raey grimaced, but could not refute the conclusion. "I'll get to a control room, try to find a weakness in the shield system or a way to shut it off, and sabotage the defences. You keep going down to the detention cells, break Dameron out, and then secure a ship for our escape."

"We're risking a lot on completely unsubstantiated information," warned Ar'tak, and Raey nodded.

"I'm trusting my instincts. What do yours say?"

Ar'tak rubbed his thumb against the rim of his lightsaber's emitter, still dangling from his belt. For a long moment, he remained quiet. Then, "We won't be able to communicate."

Raey checked the settings, then handed Ar'tak his stolen datapad. "I've got the unit number, so just hold onto it until I find another and send you a message."

"What if I don't hear from-"

"You will." Raey shifted impatiently on his toes. "And we are wasting time. The area map is on there; get Dameron, get a ship, wait for me."

He didn't wait for another stalling question. If Ar'tak kept talking, Raey would lose his nerve, so he didn't give him the chance. He gave the instructions, and he took off.

Ar'tak's voice rose, echoing slightly in the now-empty hall as he called after him.

"May the Force be with you, Raey!"

There were men in the control room. Raey counted three people; two technicians and the officer leaning over their shoulders, hands pressed against the desk as he glared at their screens.

No lightsaber, no mind-tricking powers, no LN. Raey didn't give himself the time to second-guess himself - he raised his chin, straightened his shoulders, clasped his hands behind his back, and strode into the room as if he owned the place.

The officer glanced up at him as Raey entered, an intense scowl landing on, but not directed at, him. Raey saw the eyes flicker down his wrinkled uniform, then back up to meet his gaze.

"What are you doing here?" the First Order officer demanded, straightening. Raey ran with the first thing to come to mind.

"Civilians are getting in the way of my fighter pilots," he snapped impatiently as he walked forward towards the three, as if it made all the sense in the world. "I need a map of designation points."

The officer's frown deepened, the story ringing blatantly false, but Raey didn't need him to believe it. He just needed the hesitation.

He had seen an armory on the area map. He had found a stun baton in the armory.

He lunged forward and whipped the baton out from behind his back, jabbing it into the officer's ribs. The technicians reacted, one with an unbalanced lunge to his feet and a cry and the other with a hasty slap towards one of the big, obvious alarm buttons every control room seemed to have. Raey was just a heartbeat ahead of them. Before the officer had fallen, Raey ducked, almost to the floor, and thrust the baton upwards into the signal center of the console, switching settings on the move. The baton, wired with the latest variation of his experimental make-shift power-intensifier, burst into action. The console sparked and sizzled, frying the alarm and throwing the technician who had been touching it backwards in the same instant. The other technician tried to run - Raey grabbed the officer's blaster from the unconscious man's belt and fired, twice, before getting a lucky hit. He had aimed low - the running tech collapsed to one side, screaming, with a scorched hole in his leg.

"Shut up and don't cause any trouble," Raey warned, trying to sound threatening. "I don't need to kill anyone, but I will if you push me."

The technician nodded tightly, his lips pressed together to hold back his pained groans. Raey hesitated, unsure if he dared turn his back on the man, but he also wasn't sure how long his electricity tricks would keep the other two down.

"Gotta take the chance," he muttered to himself. He shot out all but one of the other consoles, then got to work on the last one. Then a notion struck him.

He turned on the cowering technician and hefted his new blaster.

"You're going to help me find something."