A Dynasty of Two

The twin suns of Jakku were merciless. They beat down on the endless expanse of skeletal Star Destroyers, baking the metal until the air above it shimmered like a mirage. For Rey, this was simply the air she breathed. The heat was a constant companion, the grit of sand a permanent texture on her skin, under her nails, in her food.

Her life was measured in portions. A day’s hard scavenging—a gyro-stabilizer from a fallen TIE, a handful of conductor rods—might earn her a quarter portion from Unkar Plutt. A quarter portion was not enough. Not for two.

“Kael, stay close,” she called out, her voice raspy from thirst.

The boy, no older than eight, with wide, dark eyes that held too much of the galaxy’s sorrow, nodded from his perch atop a rusted bulkhead. He was her shadow, her responsibility. She’d found him two years ago, huddled beside a crashed escape pod, another piece of flotsam the desert had failed to swallow. He was also her secret—a dangerous, volatile secret.

“I’m just looking,” he chirped, his attention fixed on a precarious stack of salvaged plating Rey had spent the morning assembling.

“Don’t look too hard,” she warned. She knew what that look meant. It was the precursor to the strange hum that sometimes filled the air around him, the faint tremor in the metal that wasn't from the wind.

She turned back to her work, wrestling a power converter from the gut of a derelict transport. It was heavy, stubborn. Her muscles screamed in protest. Just as it came loose, she heard a sickening groan of stressed metal from behind her. She whirled around. The neat stack of plating was wobbling, vibrating as if shaken by an unseen hand.

“Kael, no!”

But it was too late. With a deafening shriek, the pile collapsed, a cascade of durasteel and duraplast crashing down the dune. A day’s work, gone. Worse, it slid directly into the path of her speeder, parked at the base of the wreck.

“Scrap!” Rey scrambled down the dune, her heart pounding with a familiar, sickening dread. Unkar would give her nothing for this. They would go hungry.

Grief quickly turned to frantic urgency. She could still salvage some of it. She had to. Blinded by panic, she jumped onto her speeder, kicking the accelerator to life. She would circle around, try to head off the worst of the slide. She yanked the controls, her movements jerky and desperate. The old machine sputtered, then lurched violently, not forward, but sideways. The steering column, a piece she’d patched together a dozen times, finally gave.

She was no longer in control. The speeder careened toward a section of the wreck she usually avoided—a part of a ship that looked different, sleeker, its hull a matte black that seemed to drink the light. It wasn’t Imperial, not old Republic. It was something else. She braced for impact, a curse dying on her lips.

The collision was a jarring thud, not the catastrophic explosion she’d expected. Her head snapped forward, striking the console. Stars burst behind her eyes, momentarily brighter than Jakku’s suns. When her vision cleared, she was looking at the imposing hull of the strange ship, her speeder’s front end crumpled against it. A ramp was lowering with a near-silent hiss.

Fear, cold and sharp, cut through her daze. Whoever owned this ship would not be happy. She fumbled with the ignition, but the speeder only coughed a plume of black smoke.

A figure emerged from the shadows of the ramp, silhouetted against the ship’s dark interior. He was tall, impossibly so, and broad-shouldered, draped in fine, dark fabrics that waved in the hot wind. He moved with a predator’s grace, his heavy boots making no sound on the sand. As he stepped into the light, her breath caught.

He wasn’t wearing a helmet, but his face might as well have been a mask of stone. A shock of black hair fell across his brow. His features were severe, aristocratic, his mouth a straight, unyielding line. But it was his eyes that held her captive. They were dark, deep-set, and blazing with an intensity that felt like a physical force. They swept over her, her wrecked speeder, her tattered clothes, and the terrified face of Kael peering over the dune. The air around him suddenly felt cold, the oppressive heat of the desert pushed back by his mere presence.

“Are you hurt?” His voice was a low baritone, a deep rumble that vibrated through the metal of her speeder. It wasn’t a question of concern. It was a demand for information.

Rey found her voice, though it came out as a broken whisper. “No. I’m… I’m sorry. The steering gave out. I’ll pay for the damages. I have parts…” She gestured vaguely at the ruined pile of her morning’s work, the absurdity of the offer hanging in the dead air.

He didn't look at the scrap. His gaze remained locked on her, analytical and unnervingly still. He took another step closer, and she felt a strange pressure in her mind, a phantom touch probing at the edges of her thoughts. She recoiled instinctively, a wall of pure, stubborn will rising to meet it.

For the first time, a flicker of something—surprise? interest?—crossed his face. The pressure vanished.

“The damage is irrelevant,” he said, his voice clipped. He glanced up at Kael, and for a fleeting moment, the boy flinched as if struck. “See to your child.”

With that, he turned, his long coat swirling around him, and strode back up the ramp without a backward glance. The ramp hissed shut, and a moment later, the ship lifted silently from the sand, leaving nothing behind but a patch of cool, disturbed ground and a profound, chilling silence.

Rey didn't move until the black ship was a disappearing speck in the unforgiving sky.

That night, at Niima Outpost, the stale air of the cantina reeked of spilt Jawa juice and desperation. Rey exchanged the few parts she had managed to salvage for a miserable half-portion. As she and Kael huddled in a dark corner, sharing the chalky bread, she felt it again—that cold, focused presence.

Across the crowded room, he was there. He sat alone in a booth, nursing a drink, his dark clothes making him a void in the chaos. He wasn't looking at her, but she knew, with a certainty that made the hairs on her arms stand up, that he was aware of her every move. He was watching. And waiting.