Star Wars: The Last Jedi Read online

  She placed the beacon back in her satchel, hearing someone approach. She knew who it was, and her anger at him for tricking her returned. “‘Raid and plunder’?” she asked.

  “In a way,” Luke said.

  “I thought they were in danger. I was trying to do something!”

  “Then ask what the Resistance truly needs. Because it’s not an old, failed husk of a religion.”

  She turned to him, this sad man in filthy robes. “The legend of Luke Skywalker that you hate so much. I believed in it,” she said. “I was wrong.”

  It hurt to say those words, because they denied her past and her dreams. But as of now, they were the truth.

  She walked off, not looking back until Luke was but a shade in the moonlight.

  ROSE grabbed the bars of the jail cell where the Canto Bight police had unceremoniously dumped her and Finn. “This is a big mistake. We didn’t do anything!”

  The man standing guard rolled his eyes. “You crashed a shuttle on a public beach.”

  It peeved her he had called it a crash. Sure, she could’ve down better in teaching Finn how to land the craft, and they might have dug up a hole, but the transport pod had remained intact. “What, did we break the sand? You can’t break sand! Hey, don’t—”

  The guard went down the corridor, leaving them alone. She withdrew from the bars and paced. Finn, meanwhile, tried his luck on the cell door’s lock. He pressed random keys on its code pad, shook the mechanism a couple of times, and prodded the hole with his fingernail.

  “So after that totally works, what’s our plan?” Rose asked.

  The lock buzzed, and for a moment she thought maybe he’d actually done it, but then a metal plate dropped over the keypad. Finn gave up.

  “The thing that failed was our plan,” he said. “Without a thief to break us into that Destroyer, it’s shot. And even if they let us out in the morning and find him, our fleet will be out of time. We’re done.”

  A hoarse voice spoke up behind them. “Hey, I’m a thief.”

  The cell was big, and from one of its dark corners, a stranger rose from a squeaky bunk. He was middle-aged and human, though he might’ve also passed for one of the gigantic rats Rose had seen on the march to the jailhouse. He wore a shabby leather duster over raggedy clothes and scratched himself all over rather rudely. His boots were tied together by the laces, allowing him to hang them over his neck. “Sorry, couldn’t help but overhear all the boring stuff you were saying really loudly while I was trying to sleep. Thief? Codebreaker?” He lifted two dirt-caked thumbs, indicating himself. “Yo.”

  “Yeah…we’re not talking about picking pockets,” Finn said.

  Their cellmate chuckled to himself. “Don’t let the wrapper fool you, friend. Me and First Order codeage go way back. If the price is right, I can break you into old man Snoke’s b-boudoir.”

  “We’re good,” Rose said.

  The man shrugged, as if it was their loss.

  “Besides,” Finn said, “if you’re such a good thief, what are you doing in here?”

  “Brother, this is the one place in town I can get some sleep without worrying about the cops.” He took a cap from the bed and placed it on his head, giving it a rakish tilt. A rust-rimmed silver band was stitched into the cap’s fabric, inscribed with the words DON’T JOIN in large letters. “Let me take a look at the lock.”

  Finn moved aside as the self-proclaimed thief shuffled over to the lock and tinkered with it. After a tap, the door opened.

  He walked out, as if there were nothing to it.

  Rose looked at Finn, astonished. Then sirens rang out. Hurrying through the door, they couldn’t see where the thief had gone, so they turned and ran down the corridor.

  Prisoners called out from the cells they dashed past. More alarms sounded. A voice crackled over a comm. “Lock down the exits! Everyone fan out!”

  Glowrods shone ahead and behind, getting nearer every second. The guards were closing in on them.

  Rose’s boot clanged on something metallic. An iron grill was set in the floor. She and Finn managed to wrench it loose. A great stink wafted out of the hole, so awful she had to cover her nose and mouth. But they were out of options. Either they went down there or they got caught. And if they got caught, they’d be thrown somewhere far worse than the city sewer.

  She seized the top rung of a ladder and hastened down into the gloom. Before descending behind her, Finn tried to drag the heavy grill back in place. It wouldn’t move no matter how hard he heaved, so he left the hole uncovered and scrambled down the ladder.

  At first they argued about what direction to take, until echoes above them forced them to choose. Rather than follow the sewage down to its drainage point, they headed up the tunnel’s slight slope. Finn had to stoop so he didn’t bump his head.

  “This brings back memories—foul memories,” Finn said, splashing through the muck. “Spent a training cycle cleaning the waste system on Starkiller Base.”

  Rose did her best to breathe only through her mouth. “You mopped floors, cleaned sewers…I thought you were a stormtrooper?”

  “That’s how the First Order made us into troopers. Either you learn how to fight or you’re scrubbing filth the rest of your short life.”

  The farther they went, the nastier the stench grew, and soon Rose felt she might pass out. She was on the verge of doing so when they finally came across another ladder. She shimmied up the rungs after Finn, delighted to leave the sewer—except that the next place they climbed into didn’t smell any better.

  They emerged in the racetrack stables, where magnificent fathiers were held in dingy stalls. One of the animals thrust its muzzle through the boards to sniff them. It still wore its saddle from the night’s race.

  Ignoring the stink, Rose stepped right up to it, wanting to pet it. She stopped when she saw a haggard, half-starved stable boy staring back at her. He dropped the broom he was using to clean the stall and reached for an alarm on the wall.

  “No, no, no!” Finn shouted.

  “We’re with the Resistance!” Rose said. As proof of where her loyalties lay, she flicked the catch on her ring. It slid open to reveal the starbird insignia of the old Rebel Alliance.

  The boy’s hand dropped away from the alarm button. Slowly, he smiled and she smiled back. A commotion outside abbreviated a more formal introduction. The guards were on their tail.

  The stable boy opened the pen and gave the fathier a slap on its rump. The beast lowered its hind legs to the ground. Rose mounted first, then Finn. Another tap on its rear and the fathier was up, quickening toward a pair of doors that opened to the racetrack.

  “How’d you know the kid would help us?” Finn asked.

  “On my home planet, there are too many like him, whose families the First Order destroyed. Most are secret supporters of the Resistance.”

  The barn doors opened ahead of them, right as they heard a loud crash behind them. The Canto Bight police breached the stable and rushed inside. “There they are!” yelled the captain.

  Grinning at Rose, the boy keyed a panel. Every stall in the stable opened. The captive fathiers sprinted for their freedom, blocking the cops from Rose and Finn.

  Rose and Finn’s fathier shot out onto the racetrack. She held its neck, and Finn clutched her waist. The creature had accelerated so quickly that a fall off its back would result in a snapped neck, a broken spine, or being trampled by the herd following close behind.

  Police speeders whooshed above them, lighting up the night sky. The speeders were designed to maneuver through the confines of a city, and their operators sat in harnesses rigged to a control board and four horizontal stabilizers that assisted in balance. Guns on the speeders’ central vanes took aim.

  But the fathier Rose and Finn rode was no simpleminded beast. Aware of the danger, it snuffed and bolted off the racetrack, through the window wall of the casino.

  Rose covered her face as glass shattered around her. The fathier burst through the cocktail lou
nge, smashing into the bar and leading the herd in a stampede around the casino. Gaming tables were given the hoof. Jubilee wheels went flying off their spinners. Credits spewed out of toppled lugjack machines. The rich and famous fled for their lives.

  Rose and Finn’s fathier carried them through another window out to the front of the casino. Valets scattered as the herd went on a mad dash into the city center, toppling luxury landspeeders, café chairs, and anything else that stood in their way. The police resumed their chase from above, but their spotlights and repulsorjets couldn’t keep up with the beasts.

  The herd veered down an alley, then raced along the rooftops of a lower level of the city. Their hooves pulverized a sunroof and the entire herd dropped into a steamy sauna occupied by an assortment of species, some toweled, some not, all sweating. After a brief scramble, the fathiers righted themselves and surged out of the building, losing little momentum as they pounded the pavement of the streets.

  Rose inhaled the wind. “Yee-haw!” This was even better than she’d ever imagined. Her sister would have loved it.

  Finn, however, moaned in terror as their fathier made a beeline for the sea wall.

  A breath before imminent collision, the lead fathier leapt over the wall and the herd followed suit. They landed on the beach and galloped along the moonlit ocean, kicking up sand.

  Energy beams lanced out from the pursuing speeders. One struck a fathier. It skidded and fell, but the stampede didn’t stop, going ever faster.

  The beach terminated in a bluff. As with the wall, the herd ran toward it, but it was much too high to hurdle. Instead, their hooves bit into the ground and they clambered up the side of the bluff. Rose clutched the fathier’s neck as tightly as she could while Finn nearly squeezed out all the breath in her lungs.

  Coming to a ledge, the fathiers continued their run in single file, rounding the bluff. But the climb had slowed them, allowing the police speeders to catch up. One by one, fathiers tumbled off the cliff, hit by the speeders’ weapons.

  “This is a shooting gallery,” Finn said. “Get us out!”

  As she had seen heroines do in holofilms, Rose pulled the fathier’s soft mane to turn it to the right. It obeyed, rushing up a steep and rocky path to emerge in a meadow with the herd behind it.

  Grasslands were the fathiers’ natural terrain, and on it the creatures quickly outdistanced the police. But Rose couldn’t bear any more fathiers being mowed down for her benefit. She clicked her tongue and yanked the mane again, trusting that the jockeys on Cantonica used the same gestures as they did on Otomok.

  They did. While the rest of the herd veered left, Rose and Finn’s mount slewed to the right. As Rose had hoped, the spotlights of the police speeders stayed on them and not the other fathiers.

  “They’re letting the herd go!” Rose shouted. “Now if we can just—”

  Finn screamed at the top of his lungs. “Cliff!”

  The fathier halted in a spray of dirt, casting them off. Rose thumped into the ground, saved from broken bones by the cushy grass. When she and Finn got back on their feet, they found themselves standing on the edge of a vast ravine, the ocean swirling hundreds of meters below. The other edge—if there was one—was hidden in the darkness.

  The police speeders neared, their headlamps getting brighter. “Well, it was worth it to tear up that town,” Finn said. “Make ’em hurt.”

  Rose knew Finn was just trying to put a good face on a terrible situation, but right then her only concern was for the fathier that had taken them here.

  She unharnessed the saddle from its back. “Thank you.” She gave the loyal beast a gentle smack and it galloped off to rejoin its herd. “Now it’s worth it.”

  Something loud whirred behind them. Rose turned, about to raise her hands in surrender, and saw the ship that rose from the ravine. It was a trim star yacht, sporting twin speedvanes on the prow, the kind of craft one only saw in racing mags, a rich person’s dream. It could only be owned by—

  “The Master Codebreaker?” A hatch popped open on its hull and an astromech dome peeped out.

  “Beebee-Ate!” Finn said. “Are you flying that thing?”

  The droid assailed them in binary for leaving him behind in the casino. “No, we were coming back for you,” Finn said, eyeing the approaching speeders. “Just come on, pick us up!”

  Their former cellmate with the cap came up behind BB-8. “Oh, you need a lift? Say the magic words.”

  “Pretty…please?” Finn stammered.

  The thief scowled. Rose knew that manners weren’t what moved men like this.

  “You’re hired,” she said.

  Those were the magic words. The man lowered the ramp and they boarded. Before the hatch fully closed, the yacht had rocketed past the cops to an altitude airspeeders couldn’t reach—the stars.

  “CHEWIE, get her ready for launch. We’re leaving.”

  Rey spoke into her comlink as she backtracked along the same path that had taken her to Luke the day of her arrival. Now it would return her to the Millennium Falcon and the Resistance. She was done trying to persuade the stubborn Skywalker. He was a lost cause.

  A dark presence pinched the back of her mind, as it had twice before. She gritted her teeth. “I’d rather not do this now.”

  “Me too,” Kylo Ren said.

  She spun around at the sound of his voice. “Why did you hate your father?”

  “Because he was a weak-minded fool,” Ren snarled. She saw him standing in his lair on a Star Destroyer, shirtless, his torso as pale as bleached bone.

  Rey momentarily looked away in embarrassment, even though the vision came to her through the Force. “Give me an honest answer. You had a father who loved you.”

  “I didn’t hate him.”

  His lie incensed her. “Then why did you kill him? I don’t understand.”

  “No?” Ren said with a laugh. “Your own parents threw you away like garbage—”

  “No, they didn’t,” Rey objected.

  “Oh, they did, and you still can’t stop needing them. It’s your greatest weakness. You look for them everywhere. In Han Solo, and now in Skywalker.”

  Rey wanted to protest, but she had nothing to say. For once, Kylo Ren told the truth. After meeting Finn, Han Solo, and Chewbacca, she hadn’t returned to Jakku to wait for her parents as she kept asserting she would. She’d stayed with Han because he’d taken her under his wing. Even after Kylo Ren had murdered him, she didn’t go back. She went to Ahch-To, leaving friends like Finn behind, to find someone else to mentor her.

  She was selfish, she realized—for what she sought was more than a mentor.

  She wanted a parent.

  Ren’s lips curled into a smile. He turned the conversation back to Luke. “Did he tell you what happened that night?”

  “Yes,” she said. But she doubted Luke had told her every detail—and she knew Ren could sense her doubt.

  “No he didn’t,” Ren said.

  A new vision came to Rey, showing Kylo Ren’s personal quarters in the Jedi temple. Ren slept on a pallet, visible in a crackling green glow.

  Luke Skywalker, robed in black, hovered over him, holding his lightsaber. The Jedi Master’s face was not the aged and tired one Rey knew, but a twisted and tormented face. The face of a monster.

  Luke lowered his saber to kill the youth.

  But Ren was already awake and called his own lightsaber to him. His blue blade parried Luke’s green one. The swords sizzled. Energy sparked. Ren stretched out with his other hand to the ceiling. It quaked, fractured, and then caved in on Luke Skywalker.

  “Liar,” Rey said, cutting off the vision. Luke may not have told her all the truth, but he could never be a murderer.

  Could he?

  “Let the past die,” Kylo Ren said. “Kill it if you have to. That’s the only way to become what you were meant to be.”

  His image and presence disappeared from her mind. Yet his words remained, like salt in a wound.

  She felt
another nudge in the Force, down the cliff but in the opposite direction of the Falcon. She didn’t resist the pull. She proceeded toward it. While she was still on this world, she was determined to learn all the secrets Luke wouldn’t teach her.

  She reached a large hole in the ground. Dark moss grew around the edge. It was the same hole she’d seen in her vision when training with Luke. A place of darkness.

  She bent down and touched the moss. It was spongy and moist, yet offered no clues to what lay below. She looked around her. Little else thrived on this plane of rock.

  Her foot slipped. She couldn’t right her balance. The moss under her split and she fell, into the darkness, into the hole.

  She landed with a splash in a pool of water. Gasping, she paddled to an outcropping of stone. She was lucky she didn’t drown. Swimming lessons had not been a priority on Jakku.

  She heaved herself onto the ledge, discovering she was in a cavern, probably beneath the ocean. And standing before her, dripping wet, her hair undone from the plunge, was none other than herself.

  It took her a moment to realize her double was but a reflection. The obsidian in the cavern wall, scoured smooth by centuries of erosion, acted like a curved mirror. On its glassy surface, she could see not only a single image of herself but infinite reflections funneling to a point in the center.

  When she turned her head, a moment later the reflections also turned their heads, as if following her lead. She snapped her fingers, and the reflections did the same, one after the other. Every movement she made was exactly reproduced, though slightly delayed. Inside the mirror, in all her images, Rey appeared to be the same as her physical self. It was as if she was made of an uncountable number of pieces, yet was also a singular whole.

  Perhaps that was what Luke had meant when he had spoken about the Force. It was like a mirror, reflecting outward and inward, connecting everything with itself in the paradox of life.

  But there was something else here. Somewhere in that chain of reflections lay the secret of her past, the secret of her parents. She had seen it in her nightmares. Now she had to look inside herself to pull it out.