"Now that's what I call beautiful women!" Lando felt like he was living a dream. In the bright, tropical sunlight of Supher, he rested on a lounge chair with a fruity drink in his hand. Palm Tree Beach was everybody's favorite beach.
A group of dancers was before Lando. They practiced a traditional Supherian dance called The Suphera. They moved like hula dancers. Mixed in with the group of women were a couple of unique-looking aliens. Perhaps Lando should stay on Supher. He was away from everything there: the First Order, the Phonolukamy Blockade, and that pesky Kylo Ren. Unfortunately, he couldn't enjoy his vacation long because Finn had to ruin it.
He rushed to Lando's side and grabbed the back of his chair. "Mr. Calrissian!"
"Shh," Lando said. He held up his hand. "I'm in the moment. These dancers love my company." He took another sip from his drink.
Finn's cheeks puffed out. "This is important."
Lando continued to lounge. However, he lowered his drink when the young man leaned close to his ear.
"It's about Rey."
That got Lando to his feet. "What about Rey?"
***
"Rey's missing, and we won't do anything about it?" Finn asked Leia, who was teaching Temiri, Akinli, Akon, Beatrice, and Shudu how to use the Force to dodge blaster bolts in the academy's front yard.
"We don't need to," she answered. "She's done what she must do. Since she's left, the Beacerika is no longer threatening the Resistance base."
"But where she's going are the Suicide Territories!" Lando argued. "Someone has to make sure she gets through them safely."
Chewie, R2, BB-8, C-3PO, Rose, and Poe stood off to the side.
Poe crossed his arms. He smirked at Lando. "Let me guess... That someone is you?"
Lando glanced at him. "I just think you should get help from someone who knows this galaxy inside and out. Please, Commander, I made the Kessel Run with Han Solo in twelve parsecs."
"And I've fought multiple battles in outer space," Poe argued. "Unlike you, Mr. Calrissian, I'm not a smuggler. I'm a pilot."
Leia chuckled, but she did not take her eyes off her students. "You're a very impulsive pilot, I have to admit. Temiri, chin up. Feel the Force around you."
Temiri tried to concentrate, but it was challenging. He pulled his helmet off his head, showing a mass of tangled hair, and told her, "I can't, General. I'm worried about Master Rey."
"See?" Finn asked. "Even he agrees we should go after her."
Without asking for Leia's permission, Lando came up with a plan. "I can get us past the blockade to the wormhole. After all, I did just come back from Phonolukamy myself."
"What were you doing there in the first place?" Finn wanted to know.
"I'll tell you on the Falcon. Now, let's move."
"You're not serious, are you?" Leia said. She hoped she was wrong, but she knew she wasn't. The Force told her so.
Poe turned to her. "Sorry, Leia, but Rey is our friend," he admitted. "We can't have her roaming around the Suicide Territories by herself. She didn't even take Bee-Bee-Ate with her. Therefore, she is vulnerable."
BB-8 rolled to his side and chirped with agreement.
"You think Rey is vulnerable?" Leia snapped. "She lifted those rocks during the Battle of Crait like they were nothing! Not to mention, she also threw Mr. Calrissian yesterday."
"And I'm still feeling it," Lando grumbled. He rubbed his hip.
"We have to do this, Leia," Finn said. "Rey needs us. If she finds Kylo Ren, he will turn her to the Dark side."
"You don't know that."
Rose ignored Leia's response. "And if she turns to the Dark side, the whole galaxy is in turmoil. We need to snap her out of it."
"Personally, General, I think this whole plan is preposterous," 3PO stated.
"It may be preposterous," Finn said, "but it's the right thing to do."
Leia stared at him. It looked like she was thinking. Finn had the makings of a great leader one day.
Through a round of roars, Chewie begged for her to let them go.
Finally, Leia sighed. "Fine, but I hope you know what you're getting yourselves into. If and when you find Rey, you must leave her alone. Only watch her from a distance. She can have no distractions if she is going to confront Kylo Ren."
"Yes!" Instantly, Temiri dropped his helmet and joined the group of friends. "I want to go, too!"
"Whoa, whoa, shortstack!" Finn gently pushed the young boy away. "This mission is too dangerous for a little man like you."
"But I can't just stay here. Rey is my friend, too. I want to help," Temiri argued. The desperation in his voice and eyes almost caused Finn to comply, but he decided not to.
"Not today, Temiri. You are in the care of General Organa."
Leia gently took Temiri's arm. She pulled him close.
Shudu, Akon, Akinli, and Beatrice put their exercise on hold. They, too, tried to volunteer, only to be rejected.
While Poe, Chewie, Rose, Finn, R2, and BB-8 started to make their way to the base's headquarters, Temiri watched them upsettingly.
C-3PO tried to stay behind, but Finn was not having any of that. He grabbed hold of the droid's arm and pulled him away.
Akinli, Akon, Beatrice, Shudu, Leia, and Temiri did not take their eyes off the friends until they disappeared inside the base individually.
Upset and slightly angry, Temiri lowered his head. He felt Leia tighten her grip on him.
"Come on, Temiri," she said. "I need to talk to you."
***
Rey prepared to pull The Resistance Proud out of lightspeed. She turned on the autopilot and hurried over to a chair at the back of the cockpit, which housed a console. Thinking hard, she pressed a button on the center of it. The second she did, blue holographic lasers scanned her hand.
"Welcome, Rey," said a robotic voice. Holographic stars exploded from the console and surrounded her. Within the hologram was a map of the Suicide Territories.
Rey examined it and rubbed her chin. "So, I'm here and want to be here." She slid her hand across her current coordinates and stopped at an image of a vast wormhole—the Phonolukamy Wormhole.
It flashed a few times, and the mechanical voice said, "I am detecting massive life forms. It looks like a blockade's conquered your destination."
"So it's true," Rey told herself. "The First Order has set up a blockade to prevent people from entering and leaving the wormhole. Why Phonolukamy, though? What is so important that the First Order had to disturb a dystopian planet?" Right when she asked that, she felt something. An aura, but this was not a new aura. It felt familiar. "Ben," the young woman spoke under her breath. With those words, she dropped out of lightspeed.
The force at which she did threw her into her chair. Clenching her teeth, Rey grabbed the back of it and lugged herself to her feet. She leaped back into the pilot seat.
A TIE Silencer appeared behind her, followed closely by a group of TIE Fighters. In the cockpit of the Silencer, Kylo Ren/Ben Solo focused on The Resistance Proud. He communicated to the rest of the TIEs behind him and proudly said, "We've got her."
The First Order had pulled Rey into an unexpected ambush.
***
Before boarding the Millennium Falcon, Finn slipped into Rey's room and picked up the ancient Jedi texts she took from Ahch-To. She left them on her desk. He had to read up on the Jedi religion to see if there was hope in saving her. The bundle had five books: the Aionomica, Rammahgon, Karobela, Reacher, and the Xiteska.
Finn stuffed them into a satchel he wore over his shoulder and met up with Rose in the hallway.
"You know," she joked, "the last time I saw you carrying a satchel, I stunned you."
"You're not going to do that again, right?"
"No, because it is okay to run away this time." Rose cracked a small smile. She pecked Finn's cheek.
He blushed. He needed that kiss. It calmed him down. "Are we ready?" he asked his girlfriend.
She nodded. "We are."
***
Rey saw the approaching TIE Silencer and TIE Fighters out of the corners of her eyes. Her jaw dropped. "I'm so dumb. I fell right for their trap," she said.
"Approaching the Phonolukamy Blockade," said the mechanical voice from the console she was just at.
Rey thought about leaping back into lightspeed to get out of there, but her mind returned to why she left Supher in the first place. She had to win Phonolukamy back from the First Order.
Two TIEs came at her from either side, but she thought fast. She waited until the last second, and then she punched the accelerator. The Resistance Proud shot straight up. The surprise ascent caused the TIEs to crash head-on with each other. A massive explosion lit up the space surrounding the spaceships.
Kylo Ren groaned with frustration. He punched his own flying console. "We don't want to kill her," he communicated to the surviving TIEs. "We just need to disable her ship. That will buy me time to climb aboard and capture her."
"Supreme Leader!" one of his stormtroopers communicated back. "She's heading for the wormhole!"
"Then stop her!" Kylo shouted. "We can't let her reach Phonolukamy!" Just as he said that, the ship the stormtrooper just spoke to him from exploded like the two before it. Scraps of metal narrowly missed Ren. Rey had managed to strike it with one of The Proud's guns.
"Whoa," she shouted, "this is crazy! I can't believe I just did that!" She had to admit, just like Leia told her on Supher, she almost enjoyed herself.
Ren, though, was not having fun at all. If Rey took out another one of his TIEs, he would lose it. "It's time to play dirty," he said, punching the button that activated his guns. "I'll show her the true power of the Suicide Territories."
***
Rose and Finn were the last to board the Millennium Falcon in Supher's spaceport. They met up with Chewie, Lando, R2, BB-8, C-3PO, and Poe in the cockpit.
"What took you so long?" Lando asked from the pilot seat.
Finn placed his satchel beside his chair and plopped on it. He answered Lando's question. "There are so many twists and turns in the Resistance base that Rose and I lost our way."
Poe rolled his eyes, but he went ahead and approached Lando from behind. "So, what's the plan?"
"The plan, Commander?" Lando asked. "I'll tell you the plan. We're going to gun it to the wormhole."
"That's our plan?" Poe raised his voice. "That has to be the worst plan ever! Have you ever heard of stealth? Why do you think I was able to slip by the First Order's guards during the bombing raid? You know what? I don't think you're cut out to be the pilot." He tried to push Lando out of the pilot seat, but Chewie roared at him.
"Oh my! I don't think Chewie wants you to be the pilot, Mr. Dameron," 3PO said.
"Why not? I'd make a much better pilot than this lunatic."
Poe's response made Lando mad. He punched the Falcon's steering console and jumped up from his seat. "Is that a challenge, Commander?"
"Oh, for the love of—!" Finn slapped his hands to his temples. "Can we save the honeymoon for later? I thought we were chasing after Rey."
"Sit down, boy," Lando told Poe through gritted teeth. "I'll show you how the professionals fly."
***
Ren led Rey on a wild goose chase through a meteoroid belt. He shot at the rocks. Bits and pieces of them headed for her ship.
She ducked under one of the meteoroids and opened fire, but she hit nothing. Kylo Ren had vanished into midair. Sweating and breathless, the young Jedi brought The Proud to a stop and searched the area. Her senses tingled as the TIEs gained up on her, but there was still no sign of the conflicted Supreme Leader.
She heard a voice in her head. "Kill them, Rey. Kill them all."
Without thinking, Rey gave herself to the voice—to the Dark side. She unleashed all her rage. She yelled as she went on a rampage with the gun.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Each blast took out one or more TIEs. It went on and on.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Ren, who hid behind a colossal meteoroid, felt what she felt. He could see everything that was going on through a Force vision. "Beautiful," he said.
However, as the seconds progressed, Rey grew even more violent. Before long, she shot at everything that moved and took out every ship that belonged to the First Order. Everyone except Kylo Ren.
Her rampage made Ben uncomfortable. He knew he was a violent person, but what Rey was doing exceeded his violence. He kept on hearing the screams and dying calls for help from his comrades. A searing pain engulfed his head, but he tried to shake it off.
The voice Rey heard kept telling her, "Kill them all. Show them your power." She continued to obey it.
Eventually, Ben could take no more. "Stop!" he yelled through the Force.
Rey heard him, but for the first time, she felt more fear in Ben's heart than anger and sorrow. At his request, she stopped. Her eyes widened when she saw all the destruction in the meteoroid belt. Wait a minute; she did not just do that, right? Her lightsaber trembled on her belt. It, too, feared her power.
"What did I just do?" the young woman fearfully asked herself.
"Stop!" Ben shouted again. He emerged from the meteoroid he had been hiding behind. It almost looked like he was about to cry. He never felt so much fear around Rey during all his encounters with her.
Fingers still on the gun's trigger, Rey slowly turned her head. Her hazel brown eyes landed on the Silencer, which floated directly before her. "Ben."
Boom! The second she said that, a meteoroid crept up on her from behind and smashed into The Proud's tail.
Yelling, Rey fell forward in her chair. She tumbled into the flying console. The impact knocked her unconscious, and her injured arm started to bleed again. What happened couldn't have been a coincidence. Somebody was punishing her, and it wasn't Kylo Ren.
The whole interior of The Proud flashed red. "Danger! Danger! All systems are down! The ship is about to blow!" announced the mechanical voice.
From where he hovered, Ben shouted, "No! Stop! She doesn't deserve this!" Without a second thought, he punched his Silencer's accelerator.
***
Whoosh! The Millennium Falcon whisked across the No'Ela Lagoon, causing turquoise water to shoot up. Just flying the ship again, Lando was one happy guy. He laughed, Chewie as well. They worked together to steer the Falcon toward space.
In the cockpit, Rose grabbed Finn's arm. Her eyes widened to an exceptionally humorous size; she was surprised by how fast the Falcon flew.
"Now, this is what I call flying! Whoo!" Poe shouted. He lifted his hands high over his head and glanced at Finn, who had his back glued to the back of his seat. "Don't you agree, Finn?"
"No!" Finn shouted. "I hate flying!"
***
General Leia Organa, after finishing her lessons for the morning, watched the Falcon's ascent into the atmosphere from Rhilei Beach, the beach that housed Dark Side Island. "Impulsive youths," she mumbled under her breath. She used her cane to kick up sand and seaweed.
That was when she felt another disturbance in the Force. It was so powerful that the general sank to her knees in the sand. She brought her palm to her chest. Rey. Kylo Ren. She felt them. Something had happened, something horrifying. Leia no longer felt Rey's aura. It was just as quiet as the area she was in. Ben's aura, though, was powerful. It was almost as if he was there with her. She felt his light.
Leia tightened her grip on her cane. Eyes rolling up to the blue atmosphere, she begged, "Ben, please. Save her."
ns 15.158.61.12da2
