Star Wars: I Am a Slave ✓

Chapter 9 - The Ravager

Ani said, "You're headed to the bridge, Rey."

"The bridge?"

"The command center. Must be something up there they need."

After two hours of climbing, they reached a real ladder that scaled a bulkhead. However, due to the incline of the ship, the ladder lay at a 75-degree incline over their heads. Climbing on it would require holding on for dear life as one's back would be to the current floor. Gravity would pull at the weight of the climbers as they tried to move to the bridge.

Camaraderie flowed among the salvage crew. As each of the team would enter the hatch to the bridge, the ones above him would pull him up. Rey was the second-to-last to go up, but she found it quite easy to scrabble up due to her slight form and all of the climbing Ani had been making her do in the cellar.

When Rey was up, she looked around at the bridge—the catwalk between the two command trenches. Then she notice her granddad's ghost walking slowly with his hands behind his back straight down the catwalk to the viewport. "Ani, what are you doing?"

"Remembering a time long-past," Ani said bittersweetly. "Join with me, and I'll let you see what this looked like in her prime days."

Rey closed her eyes and allowed her awareness to meld with her grandfather's. All of a sudden she saw the bridge, lit in red. The blackness of space and an unknown starscape hung outside. Two other star destroyers passed by the viewport, colliding. Three officers stood to the portside. Another ten officers huddled around control panels in each of the command trenches.

"Why is everything red, Ani?"

"That is how I remember it. My life-support mask had red lenses."

Rey puzzled over that last statement. The tone with which her grandfather had spoken indicated he did not want to discuss it further.

The leader, whose name she had figured out was Kurat'suh, spoke to his team. "This is where the fun begins. Unkar has an order for the computer modules. We're going to disable the entire array from both trenches and then lower them through the viewport. Let's get going. Girl, you stay close to me. We will need you to get into the tight crawl spaces."

Rey nodded. As the crew took off their gloves for precise manipulation of their tools, she stripped the binding tape off her wrists, removed her gloves, and shoved them into the carryall bag Unkar had given her earlier that day.

As the day wore on, the temperature climbed in the Ravager. Without the life-support devices working, Jakku's intense heat turned the Ravager into an oven.

Sweat pouring down each scavenger's face interfered with their vision as they used their portable power tools to unbolt the computers from the deck. Eventually, Kurat'suh called Rey over. "Think you can get in there, Girl?" he asked, pointing at a small access panel. "Undo all the bolts and wires?"

"Spanner," she said, holding her hand out.

Kurat'suh dug a hydrospanner out of his toolbag and handed it to her. He also gave her a pair of pinchers and torque driver. He secured a headlamp to her skull and turned it on.

Rey knelt down at the narrow access tube and crawled inside. It was slightly cooler inside the crawlspace but tight. She reached the first terminal connections soon after. Two bolts secured it to the deck inside the crawlspace, and many leads scattered off in different directions down the tube. 

The lithe girl started on the bolts, tugging and pushing until one finally moved. The other was frozen.

Rey sat down and took a break, frustrated. 

Ani said, "You're getting it, Rey. What do we do in the cellar when something won't move?"

"Use more force," Rey said.

"Yes, but not more force but the Force. Try again." 

Rey screwed up her face in concentration and tried using the Force on the bolt. After a few seconds of hesitation, it started unscrewing slowly.

"Very good!"

"How about these wires?" Rey pointed to a nest of multi-colored wires leading from the terminal housing.

"You can't disconnect them without cutting them. Use your pinchers. There's a cutting feature near the joint."

Rey reached up and snipped the wires. She then crawled back to the access port. "First one's done. Had to cut the wires, though. They were kilometers long and would take all day just to do one set."

"Can't be helped. Go in order and finish up the rest in this trench, then we'll do the other trench. Bang on the unit when you're done so we can pull it out," Kurat'suh said.

Rey squirmed back into the access tunnel and started on the next one.

Ani kept her company, teaching her about the different wires and terminals—where they led to, what they controlled, and how she could salvage them later herself. "Rey, remember that AT-AT we saw on the way here?"

"Yeah," she answered while loosening a bolt.

"That's going to be your new home."

"When?"

"Soon. Very, very soon."