With a hard jolt, the Millennium Falcon came out of lightspeed. Set against a surreal backdrop of black space with a gazillion of stars and the blue planet of Ragoon VI, was the enormous Mega-class Star Dreadnought of the First Order, the Sovereign. Resurgent-class Star Destroyers escorted it.
No TIE Fighters streamed out of the flagship yet. Perhaps their entire fleet could complete the jump to get here before the First Order launched their defenses...
Too late. Small dots left the ships and flew toward them.
"Here comes the welcoming party!" Poe said through the comlink. "Let's show our appreciation for the last time!"
Green lasers shot at them as the Resistance fleet broke formation. Rey watched their X-wings, Y-wings, ARC-170s, and other scavenged ships from the Clone Wars fly off, being chased by the black TIE Fighters, as they did the same. Her grip tightened on the controls as she swiveled her view around, searching for a TIE Fighter to shoot. She longed to ignore them and go find Ben, but the most-pressing obstacle needed to be taken care of first, or it could hinder her. And, besides, they were the perfect outlet to unleash her anger on.
The Force warned her of approaching danger before the scream of that TIE Fighter did. Whipping the gun around to her right, she fired before the ship came into sight. Rey had to turn from the explosion to destroy another Fighter.
Rey relied on the Force to guide her—wherever a feeling directed her, she turned that way and shot down the TIE Fighter headed toward the Falcon. Chewie performed several aerial maneuvers and Rey on the gun wiped out those tailing them many times. She even took down the ones following others when they came in range.
"At this rate, we could leave the Fighters to Rey and she'd wipe out their whole fleet! Wow!" Rose crowed.
"Hey, I'm getting some!" Finn protested.
"But not like Rey!" Chewbacca warbled and Rose translated for the ex-Stormtrooper who didn't understand Shyriiwook. "Chewie agrees with me."
"Leave some for the rest of us, Rey!" Poe said.
He didn't say that in the joking, playful manner the pilot was known for. Poe was still mad at her. If only he knew it hadn't been Rey who had used the Force on him but Ben, and how close he had come to being killed but she had saved him, maybe Poe wouldn't be so cross.
All of a sudden, an ARC-170 in Rey's view exploded. The laser did not come from a TIE Fighter, nor was it as small.
Rey swiveled in the direction of the shot to see another large white streak coming at her. Chewbacca roared as Rose yelled a warning; the Falcon took a sharp nosedive, so the laser missed them. It came from the Sovereign.
"Bronze Three, Bronze Four, follow me!" Poe ordered. "We're taking out those guns! The rest of you protect the shuttles as they get to the hangar bay!"
Poe's black X-wing, flanked by two Y-wings, flew toward the Sovereign.
Asking the Force to be with those three pilots in particular, Rey focused on what she had been doing. She continued to shoot down TIE Fighters and even caught one's shot using the Force and sent it flying back, blowing up that ship.
Sensing another missile shot from the Sovereign, Rey rotated to face the Dreadnought and released the controls.
"Don't dive, Chewie!" she yelled.
With her hands raised, Rey diverted the shot to streak toward one of the larger ships accompanying the flagship of the First Order. The laser hit and blew a giant hole in that Resurgent-class Star Destroyer; the ship began to nosedive.
Finn whooped. "It's awesome to have a Jedi on your team!"
After a while of destroying more TIE Fighters, Chewie had the Falcon follow a shuttle into a hangar bay. Going from the dark space into a bright area was blinding. Rey did a last sweep of the bay for Stormtroopers as they landed before jumping out of the gunner's chair and climbing up. Finn met her with the ten Resistance members at the boarding ramp before it lowered. When it dropped, they exited, ready for a fight.
Ground-troops poured out of the only Nu-class attack shuttle to land. With its capacity of thirty men and the ten fighters on the Millennium Falcon, the Resistance was now only forty-five strong against hundreds, if not thousands, of Stormtroopers and six expert Knights of Ren. Rey knew their chance of success was slim, but they hadn't lost hope to at least try.
As soon as she put foot into the Sovereign, Rey felt Ben's distress; his helplessness. She called out to Ben through the Force; he didn't verbally respond but reacted to her presence—he knew she was now there. Whatever the Knights of Ren had done to him hasn't been painful, but it still wasn't good.
Stormtroopers stormed into the hangar bay and fired as they hurried to take cover behind silver crates or spare ships; the Resistance side did the same. Astromech droids fled as blaster-fire filled the air, followed by streaking red lasers. Every now and then, a cry of pain sounded; a Resistance member dropped, followed by another.
Rey had left her blaster at Akiva in fears of one of the Knights of Ren stealing it off her hip as she fought with a lightsaber and using it on her. So, she ignited her double-bladed lightsaber and vaulted over the container she crouched behind. Drawing most of the fire—as she had planned—Rey deflected it all; on sporadic openings, she used the Force to topple boxes onto Troopers or picked them up and hurled them into others. She refrained from using those abilities affiliated with the Dark Side as to not scare the ones behind her that she had turned.
Sharp blasts from a X-wing sounded and boxes the Stormtroopers hid behind obliterated. Men and women yelled as forms in white armor were blown back. Rey couldn't see any still-standing opposition in their way through the smoke.
Rose said, "Nice lightsaber!" as she ran up to Rey.
The whir of a landing X-wing brought their attention over to Poe's black ship. As soon as it landed, BB-8 dropped down from the droid socket as the pilot climbed out.
"Made it easier for those still playing in the dogfight out there: the big guns are gone," Poe said as he jogged up to them.
He looked at Finn. "What's the layout?"
Finn nodded toward the opening they just cleared. "The Bridge should be that way, on the second floor."
"Where's the Throne Room? I'm being drawn there," she added for the benefit of the confused looks when he and Poe turned to face her.
His eyes lit with realization. "Oh, Kylo Ren."
Rey nodded to avoid further explanation. "Yes, he is there, along with others."
"Alright, then," Poe began. He pointed at the surviving ground-forces. "Ten of you go with Finn and Rose to the Bridge; ten come with me and Rey to the Throne Room. She'll take care of Kylo Ren; we'll handle the rest." He looked back at the Wookiee. "Chewie, you good with just five remaining with you to protect our rides out of here?"
Chewbacca roared in agreement.
The fighter pilot turned back around. "Then, let's move, people."
BB-8 zipped ahead of them to spot trouble around a corner so they wouldn't be caught unprepared for a blaster fight. Quite a few times, he squealed and came rolling back with red lasers shooting around him. The first skirmish they only lost one; the next was four, then three.
When they came upon a crossroads of sorts—the hallway forking—Finn stopped them.
He pointed down the right corridor. "That goes to the Throne Room. The elevator should be in the middle."
Rose patted the satchel holding bombs draped around her. "We'll take care of the controls; you take care of the leaders."
"If either of our groups isn't back here in twenty minutes, we go looking for the other. Got it?" Poe asked.
Finn, Rose, and the others in their group nodded. Their party of eight headed off down the left hallway and Rey, Poe, BB-8, and six Resistance fighters went right.
Reaching the elevator without anyone impeding them set off alarms in Rey's head. Considering who she was heading to meet made everything make sense.
"I don't like the feeling of this," Poe began after they had all piled into the large elevator and it was going up. "It feels like a trap."
He had sensed something was wrong, too.
"Because it's a trap for me." Rey faced Poe. "There will be six force-users—I bet General Hux is with them, too—in that room who hold someone I care about to draw me out. Something in there prevents the Force—I can't speak with the one they have through it. I'm hoping whatever they have affects them as well, so they won't sense you being with me. In hopes that it does, I want you, BB-8, and the others to hide behind the walls until I call you in."
She touched Poe's face. "Now, you will hear things, Poe, which will shed light on my actions back at Akiva. I want you to remember that I am still me—I have always been me, and I always will be.
"But I'm sorry. I know you cared about me, but my heart had already belonged to another—even though I didn't admit it until much later."
He gave her a small smile. "Why is this sounding like a goodbye?"
She smiled in response. "I hope it's not. But if it is, know that I like you, just not in the way that you had hoped." Rey kissed him on the cheek.
With concern written on his face, Poe stepped back to huddle with three others behind a wall of the elevator. Rey positioned herself in the middle of the elevator as it came to a stop; she released a breath of courage as the doors opened onto the Throne Room.