The hatch slammed shut with a hollow metallic noise, followed by the wrenching of the seal. It seemed to echo off the small corridor. Rey and Finn were both left with nothing but the window into the Rathtar cell.

  The hunger of the creature radiated coldly into the room. Rey got the sense it could somehow feel they were there. It was merely pressing against its cage until it found the spot which would let it out. No matter what Captain Solo said, these Rathtars seemed dangerous.

  “I’m not staying down here,” she said to Finn.

  He nodded in assent. The large freighter was bigger than any she had seen alive. It didn't feel like it would be able to attempt planetfall without falling apart. Rey had pulled apart larger ships across the desert of Jakku and always marvelled at the kilometres of pipes and cabling threaded through them like veins. She glanced upwards.

  “There is a service deck between the levels. We might even be able to hear what's going on upstairs.”

  “Perfect, I’ll boost you- never mind.”

  Finn was cut off as Rey jumped to the ceiling and grabbed onto a pipe, one which didn't have any condensation or steam coming off it. Swinging her legs, she hooked against a grate panel until it shifted to the side. Rey curved her calf until she got a good grip and then curled the rest of her body until she was secure in the small space.

  Rey looked below to see Finn standing, watching with his mouth slightly open. The attention made her ears feel hot. She held out her arm to him to pull him up.

  “Come on.”

  They linked wrists, and Finn kicked his feet against the wall to get into the small space. The service deck was small enough that they had to crawl. Above them, the floor was the thick grating of an industrial floor, built to drain fluids and be easily cleaned.

  Rey and Finn crawled forward into the little access deck until they could get a bead on the now flashing airlock. They were pressed shoulder to shoulder as they both craned their necks to glance upward. Rey noted how Finn’s shoulder was thick with muscle.

  For the second time, Rey found herself peering through the floor to watch as invaders boarded the ship. The thought made her ill. That she had just been here mere moments ago. Different, of course. But the repetition, the cycle. A sense of vertigo washed over her so strongly that she almost missed when the outer door cycled.

  The airlock portal cycled, and a human flanked by four bodyguards marched out. They were dressed in sheer leathers of black and dusky red. Each of them had round, full-faced helmets with plastoid red surfaces polished to a shine. The lead figure was clad in a severe suit with clean, pressed lines. Each of them held a repeating blaster slung across their shoulders.

  “Han Solo,” the leader called from the end of the corridor. ”You are a dead man.”

  So it was a shakedown. Rey felt oddly calmed. She was familiar with how this would play out. The captain spread his hands gregariously from the centre partition above Rey’s head.

  “Bala-Tik. What's the problem?”

  The suited man’s face bent into a snarl.

  “The problem is we loaned you fifty-thousand for this job!”

  Surely the man couldn’t mean fifty-thousand credits. Rey had been party to a few debt collection operations. When her hunger outweighed her pride. Always for sums which had seemed large at the time. A few hundred credits or a particularly valuable piece of scrap. She couldnt imagine what you could buy or sell with fifty-thousand.

  Did people even hand out that kind of money? How could you possibly trust someone once they have enough money to buy every ration on Jakku?

  “And,” continued Bala-Tik, his heavy eyebrows jutting in indignation, “you also borrowed fifty

  thousand from Kanjiklub.”

  A knot began to wind in Rey’s stomach. The numbers didn't even have meaning to her at this scale. She feared Captain Solo might not be in a very simple position.

  “That’s crazy. Kanjiklub?”

  Captain Solo was patting the air dismissivly an easy smile in his voice tinged by tension.

  “Who did you even hear that from? You can’t trust those little freaks.”

  “We want our money back, Solo. Now.”

  “Back? You think hunting rathtars is cheap? In the spring? I spent that money already.”

  “Kanjiklub want their money back, too!”

  “I told you,” the captain protested. “I never made a deal with Kanjiklub!”

  A wicked hiss went through the hallway as the airlock door on the other end of the corridor opened. Rey couldn’t twist enough in the small space to see far over her shoulder. Finn let out a breath of surprise as she brought her knee against him enough to spin around fully in the little access space.

  “Ahhh, Tesu Leech.” Captain Solo called down the corridor. “Y’know it’s actually really great to see you!”

  Rey rapidly started crawlling get a better line of sight, Finn hot on her heels. The second airlock was open now, and several shiny metal boots had made their way in. The newcomers were nearhumans kitted in an electric mix of ill-fitting armour scraps and weapons. Several of the armour sets bore blaster burns that looked like they had gone all the way through. Rey realised that these were probably not the original owners of some of these pieces.

  “Solo,” spoke the lead man in a clacking speech that made it more difficult for Rey to understand. “Kanjiklub has found you to be developing towards treachery. You do not have your friends in Corporate Space to protect you here.”

  Finn squeezed his way beside her.

  “What’s he saying?”

  Did he not understand the man? This was the second time this had happened, the first time with Mr Chewie. Maybe Finn struggled with strong accents?

  Tesu Leech cocked his massive blaster in his hands, and Finn gritted his teeth beside her. Well, at least he understood that much.

  “Boys.” Captain Solo was speaking through a hard-pressed grin. “You're both gonna get what I promised! Have I ever not delivered for you before?”

  “-Yes!”

  “-Twice!”

  Rey thought Captain Solo should not have let himself become so delinquent.

  “What was the second time?” The captain tried.

  “Your game is old, Solo. There's no one in the galaxy left for you to fail.”

  Bala-Tik had his hands on his blaster now, too.

  Rey saw the boots of Kanjiklub start to move forward. She jerked her chin at Finn, and they began crawling back into the centre of the undercorridor.

  “You have coasted on your reputation from the war for too long.” Clicked Tesu Leech. Rey thought he sounded proud. ”But we are in the Free Galaxy now. Noone rules this time. In the splintered shadows of former tyrants, the honour of each being is king.”

  Leech trilled, shaking his dreadlocks behind him.

  “You care for noone but yourself.”

  Mr Chewie luffed out a low growl of protest.

  “Of course, Master Chewbacca, once this slime is torn from you-”

  “Where did you get that droid?” Interrupted Bala-Tik.

  Rey felt a chill go down her spine. Bala-Tik’s eyes were locked towards Captain Solo’s feet. At BB-8.

  “Oh? Him?” Rey could feel Captain Solo’s brain ticking over.

  Rey threw her mind away from the conversation upstairs. She breathed in the hum of the ship around her. Her mind was spinning. It felt like it was all going wrong again. She hadn’t been able to even breathe ever since she left Jakku. Stupid, useless her. She needed to stay on Jakku. For.. why? Family? But they didn’t exist? She hadn’t changed that yet. Blood spins the engine stronger than seawater.

  “There are blast doors set into the corridor in case of decompression,” hissed Finn next to her.

  He was staring at the floor in front of him, face focused and determined.

  “Are there door controls down here?”

  His voice brought her back into the moment. Finally, she felt the ship against her fingers, ready to leap to her call.

  “We can reset the fuses.” She muttered, talking as she thought. ”Emergency will favour locking down decompression doors and opening internal corridors. Captain Solo will be able to get some distance.”

  Rey started the quick shuffle down a junction access. She felt almost a slight magnetic pull against her fingertips, like the ship was eager to have her find the fuse box.

  Above them, Captain Solo was speaking to the two groups.

  “The droid is a passenger, I couldn’t possibly reveal sensitive information like his boarding location. Y’know,” Captain Solo turned to Tesu Leech, “guest rights.”

  “The First Order is looking for an orange and white droid from Jakku.” Bala-Tik was dogged. ”Where did you pick it up from?”

  “Are they?” exclaimed Captain Solo, “I am afraid I gave my word to the little guy that I would respect his privacy. My captain’s honour.”

  “It is gratifying to hear you stand by an oath you have made, Captain.” Leech clicked. “A courageous way for you to die.”

  “...Damn.”

  The fuze cabinet was a blue box with a rack of redundancy pathways for each of the plasma flows. Rey started yanking on the inset fuzes to break the circuit. Beside her, Finn started grabbing fuzes of his own.

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  “Kill Solo,” snarled Bala-Tik. ”We’ll take the droid”

  Rey tore one more fuze amongst the now sparking and spitting box. A horrid thunk rang through the freighter. The entire access junction point went dark as the failure cascaded through the sub-deck. In the deck above them, there was the screech of free-falling metal and angry shouts as the massive decompression doors slammed into the deck, cutting off the invaders from Captain Solo.

  Rey turned to grin at Finn, her satisfied expression was mirrored on his face.

  From deep inside the ship, a trilling roar rattled the ship. Rey could almost feel it gust on her face. The air suddenly stank of rotten meat.

  Rey saw Finn’s face drop into horror. She looked back at the now completely dead fuze cabinet. Ah. It seemed as if the enclosure doors would open in case of an emergency. That made sense, now that she had the time to think about it. It would be kinder to give any animals contained a fighting chance if the ship were in danger.

  A rhythmic thrumming started to beat its way through the ship like a horde of colossal footsteps. The thrums were growing louder.

  “Rey, we need to move!”

  Finn was already crawling back the way they had come. The decompression doors had cut off the corridors on the access deck in the same places as in the deck above. Finn and Rey kept crawling past the now-sealed ducts. The door which concealed Bala-Tik and his Gauvian Death Gang rang like a gong. Rapid and irregular strikes rained against the bulkhead. Accented by the occasional spot of heat from a stray blaster shot.

  The door bowed as a heavy blow bent the durasteel in the middle. It would’t hold much longer.

  “Down, down, down.” Finn was muttering in a slight singsong as he swung his legs down into the lower deck. Not even bothering to climb, he jumped down, landing with bent knees to cushion the fall. He spun to offer his arms to Rey to guide her jump, which she took quickly.

  There was a screech of metal as a hunk of door scrap flew through the access level where they had just been. It careened further into the sub-deck before slamming into something with a crash. Another undulating roar rang from above them, accompanied by the sounds of plasma fire and people screaming.

  “A blaster, we need a really heavy blaster.” Finn was still muttering, his eyes frozen on where the metal had been thrown like a child's toy.

  Rey squeezed his hand to draw him back. She tugged lightly before they both started running down the open corridors.

  The door to the Rathtar enclosure was wide open. The dank shipping container-sized room was slick with mucus and notably empty of Rathtar. Behind the mucus, it looked like a strange dark metal had been welded to the interior of the room. Bright silvery streaks marred the corridor to the left, as if someone had taken a bulk saw and swung it at every surface they could see. Rey couldn’t piece it together. How would it move like that?

  They ran down the unmarred corridor, trying not to slam into walls as they sped around corners. The lights along the ceiling flared and flickered. The fuzes must have finished repathing. The beastial noises were constant now, echoing around each corridor and corner. In the repeating hallways, Rey felt that the ship was closing down on her.

  Suddenly, the left wall just ahead of exploded with motion. A long reddish brown limb blurred through the space, accompanied by the horrid screeching of tearing metal. A tentacle studded with writhing bonish hooks flailed through the adjacent wall and into their corridor. Even as the arm brushed against the opposite wall, the hooks blurred with motion to claw the durasteel apart.

  Rey and Finn slid to a stop before wrenching themselves back in the direction they had come. Rey heard another long screech of metal behind her before a whump of air and a ear rocking burst of noise. The air became wet and hot. She chanced a glimpse behind her and saw only a mass of curling organic movement surrounding a core of eyes and one enormous mouth.

  The sight gave Rey an extra burst of panic-fueled speed. She could hear the slapping of wet appendages on the floor behind her heels. Her legs hurt from the running, crawling and cramping. They spun into a new hallway just as Finn gave a yell of shock. Rey watched him fall to the floor, a lesser, unburred tentacle wrapped around his ankle. Faster than she could blink, he was pulled away, down the corridor.

  “Finn!”

  No. She couldn’t lose him. She wouldn’t lose him.

  Rey chased after Finn into the corridor with the Rathtar. Its back was towards her, and on the other side of it, she could see the flashes of blaster fire. The Rathtar was a huge creature, its main body almost filling the corridor. It supported itself in the air through heavy arms coiling against the floor. Its skin was wet and in constant movement. Each of its many tentacles writhed as if they didnt know how to be still. The largest two arms ended in wide, flat clubs from which the durasteel destroying hooks pulsed.

  “Rey,” screamed Finn, pointing, “the extinguisher!”

  Another tentacle clamped down on his arm, pulling it awkwardly behind him. Rey glanced to where he had indicated and saw the small canister in emergency beige. She gripped it with both hands and wrenched it out of its wall setting. It was heavier than she expected. It wouldn't leave even a bruise on the rubbery Rathtar skin, but Rey knew why Finn had pointed it out. They had both seen how the thing had torn through metal.

  Tucking the canister under her arm, she ran towards the Rathtar. Her eyes were locked onto the movements of the two club arms. She needed to time this exactly right. The smaller tentacles didn't have any of the hooks on them. It needed to be those clubs.

  Finn had managed to loosen the tentacle on his ankle and slow down the pull, but Rey could see another three smaller arms slithering towards him.

  Rey paused. She felt the moment as she watched the whirring of flesh. She gripped the canister, ready. Rey felt her breath as it left through her lips. Now. She threw the extinguisher just as one of the huge clubs began arcing back for another strike. The canister bumped against the club directly above the main body of the Rathtar. On instinct, the club arm twisted to envelop the extinguisher, hooks shredding the flimsy metal. The club erupted in white neutralising powder as the pressurised container was annihilated.

  The Rathtar’s roar was abruptly cut off as it was covered in the substance. The mucus along its skin began to swell like soap bubbles. All its tentacles retracted to scrape the inside of its enormous mouth.

  Finn was already back on his feet, wiping the mucus from his wrist as he ran towards her.

  “Thank you.” He gasped as they both began running full tilt away from the rapidly recovering Rathtar.

  They careened into another corridor only to stare directly down the muzzle of a blaster.

  “Oh, it’s you,” said Captain Solo, lifting his blaster into the air. He scrutinised them both. “You two help me with the door. Chewie, cover us.”

  BB-8 trilled happily as he saw them enter the small cargo hatch. Mr Chewie luffed in agreement and turned away from the maintenance hatch, which looked like it had been wrenched open through pure force.

  “What’s wrong with the door?” asked Rey, stepping forward.

  Mr Chewie gave a single bark as he used one arm to throw some of the heavy crates into a makeshift barricade.

  With the situation fully explained, Rey began reaching into the maintenance box to find the wires which would release the clamps so they could manually operate the door.

  An angry shout came from behind her, quickly followed by the thrumming of blaster fire.

  Rey ducked as a plasma bolt impacted against the bulkhead above her. Mr Chewie roared a challenge at the encroaching gang members before it morphed into a whine of pain.

  “Chewie! You ok?”

  Captain Solo crouched under blaster fire as he rushed to Mr Chewie’s side. Rey could hear the low, pained groans of Mr Chewie’s protests. One of the Gauvian Death Gang members began a threat before Captain Solo braced Mr Chewie’s oversized bowcaster rifle against the barricade and filled the corridor with a single burst of plasma.

  The bolt containment evaporated upon collision with the Death Ganger. White-hot beads of edge plasma expanded violently to scatter like drops of molten metal across the other gang members in the corridor. The core blaster gas pressed into the main Death Ganger, turning his grey organs a cooked pink colour, charred where they were exposed to air. The remainder of the plasma burned through the air in a shockwave, throwing the survivors back into the corridor walls with a series of wet thuds.

  Rey sparked the last wire as Finn threw his body back while gripping the door. With a thunk, the door popped out of its runners to be put against the wall by the now panting Finn.

  “Captain Solo!”

  The Captain turned to the now open door.

  “You,” he said, pointing at Finn, “help Chewie.”

  He slung the bowcaster across his back and pulled out his smaller blaster before stepping through the bulk door. Finn, drenched in sweat, moved to sling one of Mr Chewie’s arms over his shoulder.

  “Hurry up!” Called Captain Solo.

  Rey scurried through the door to see Captain Solo making quick strides to the lower ramp of the Millennium Falcon. He stopped on the ramp with a gun out to overwatch their approach. Finn and Mr Chewie were making easy time due to the wookiee’s large stride. Inside the Falcon, Rey went straight to the cockpit. She began the warm-up sequence for the engines.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Captain Solo pushed past her to sit in the captain's seat. He reached up to reveal a panel which Rey hadn’t seen before and began priming driver sequences.

  “I've flown this ship before,” said Rey, trying to hide her nerves, “and you could use a copilot.”

  “I’ve got a copilot.” Said Captain Solo, jerking his thumb behind him to indicate the galley.

  A roar of pain echoed from the same direction along with the panicked protests of Finn.

  Captain Solo growled in frustration before flickering his eyes to the copilot's chair in begrudged acceptance. Rey stifled her grin as she settled into the chair. The captain was quickly cycling the engines, so Rey adjusted the hemostasis controls to keep the rapid changes from doing any damage to the ship.

  Under their hands, the ship hummed to life. Tones of barely audible whines, of indicator lights and rapidly filling displays.

  “Watch the thrust,” ordered Captain Solo as the anti-gravs engaged and the telltale haptic buzz of inertial dampeners took hold. “We're goin' out of here at lightspeed.”

  “We’re inside a hangar.” Rey reminded him.

  “I’m not waiting for the Rathtars to change that.” He looked at her wide-eyed expression. “It’s not the stupidest thing I’ve done kid. You get a sense for these things.”

  Through the cockpit window, Rey saw a streak of armoured hull disappear as a thick brown tentacle carved through the floor of the hangar. Another blur of movement came as one of the interior hangar doors exploded inwards in a ball of fire. Running through it, several Kanjiklub members were firing behind them at an emerging Rathtar.

  The first Rathtar made a second slice into the hangar. Its slimy, writhing body twisted and contorted to squeeze through the gap it had made. The single enormous mouth seemed to look directly at Rey before letting out a bellowing roar.

  “I woke up with a good feeling about today,” muttered Captain Solo bitterly. “Angle the shields. Hang on back there!”

  The Kanjiklub members were now chasing after the Falcon. Once they saw the ship had no intention of sticking around, they opened fire into the Falcon’s underbelly. A flare of light came from the galley as something overloaded in a spray of sparks.

  Rey could hear Chewie roaring instructions to a panicked Finn. Finn, in turn, was yelling in an attempt to get the wookiee to sit still enough for a bandage.

  Another series of blaster shots crashed into the belly before an arcing sweep of a Rathtar tentacle transformed noisy gang members into clouds of wet mist and chunks of red meat. Amber warning lights lit across the dashboard. Something was damaged.

  The Falcon reoriented to face the hangar doors. Captain Solo pressed an unmarked button to fire the auxiliary cannons at the hangar door control switch. The entire hangar became bathed in red emergency lights as the door retreated into its recesses. The sounds from outside became nothing but the rushing of air before silence as vacuum fell.

  The Rathtars paused to anchor themselves to the floor or walls. Rey felt as if they were luxuriating in the sudden wind. Letting it tug at their appendages and whirl across their skin. The endless rage and hunger paused for a moment in the glory of the artificial breeze.

  Captain Solo oriented their nose to the now open expanse of stars. He laid a gentle hand across the lightspeed throttle.

  “Come on, baby, don't let me down.”

  Rey’s eyes skirted across the indicators. There was a bubble in the hyperfuel. It was caused by negative pressure building in a sub-line. Unkar had added a compressor. They needed to open a drag in the line. She could see the button for it on the pilot's side. She didnt know its name. It was done by one of the whirllers with the two side drivers. She didn’t know the name for that either. Captain Solo hadn’t seen it.

  Captain Solo pushed the throttle forward, and the engine whined into silence.

  “What?”

  His practised hands danced at the pump, double-pulsing the line pull to avoid an engine stall.

  Rey reached towards the switch which would clear the line. Captain Solo lightly slapped her hand down as it crossed his console. His eyes narrowed as he connected what she was reaching for to the near stall. He flickered his gaze to another screen displaying the fuel map. His face morphed into a snarl of anger, and he pressed the button down with his thumb.

  Captain Solo flared the throttle to a roar from the lightspeed engines. Space in the hangar warped as the mass bubble expanded, then tore at the now massless chunks of hangar. The bloody meat of the gangers disintegrated into photons as the mass-carrying protons and neutrons were shunted to a higher dimension. The Rathtars reeled away from the fleeing ship, carving deeper into the massive freighter to escape.

  Space blurred around them as the thrust pushed the Falcon into motion. The stars ahead of them stretched like elastic.

  Rey watched as the universe opened and they were swallowed.