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“Perhaps one of the most oft-overlooked, yet truly concerning aspects of the Clone Wars, was that the sheer scale of the conflict - the first truly galaxy-wide war in over two thousand years - prevented anything beyond rudimentary post-battle cleanup. Once a battle was declared, relief was provided by the victorious side (with various rates of success and consistency; see Olá’ma Kinsa’s chapter titled “Civilian’s Relief” included with this study), but often nothing beyond the most rudimentary clean-up was provided. Everything else was left to the system’s political and citizen bodies; that is, if the system was occupied, post-battles were cleaned by the respective societies. Battles that took place in unoccupied systems were quickly taken care of by scavengers.
“However, the Republic troops were stretched thin. Often, battle sites were too inaccessible or dangerous for local populations to organize adequate debris and body removal. This was a particular challenge for the truly vast number of space-based dogfights during this period...”
- Excerpt from: In the Darkness Between the Stars: Forgotten Histories of the Galaxy by Vars Chuchi.
“Oh, my love -
What lies forgotten
Between the stars?
Hope?
The universe is vast,
And beautiful,
And
Utterly
Terrifying.
It is foolish to think that it cares one ounce for you.”
- Traditional Bith Ballad“Startraveler’s Creed (Things to Remember)”
REPORT #65IX 112 [Designation RESOURCE RETRIEVAL; medium priority.]
ORIGIN BASE: IXM, sector Theta
GALACTIC STARDATE: 35 ABY
SCRAMBLE CODE: “sparks to ignite the stars”
--
RECIPIENTS: Finn [/?/]; Rey [/?/]
SHIP CODE: 1138AN Hopper
ASSIGNMENT: We need all the parts we can get. From current position, follow coordinates to 01.37* RA, +41.24* declination; quite a big debris field in orbit around the star. Should find some good stuff there. Bring back as much as you can haul (and I know Poe has been asking for specific parts for his bird; do not play favorites - get what you can, and he can come talk to me if he has a problem with that.); MTFBWY. -- RT, IXM Base Engineer
--
SYSTEM DESTINATION SET: ?? system; 01.37*RAb x +41.24*Dl x -1.04*OθG
NOTES: Unsettled, one red star, low gravity (14% of Yavin 4); debris field (old battle?) -- untouched by scavengers; unknown system? No planets. Materials in orbit around the star. Watch out for mines.
Finn keyed in a quick Affirmative, his fingers flying easily over the controls. “Rey,” he called over his shoulder as he waited for the signal to catch and transmit. “We picked up an assignment. Rose just sent it. It’s a hauling mission - she’s sending us to an old debris field to pick up whatever we can find.”
“Don’t they realize the entire reason for us to go to Luke was to get away from the assignments?” Rey’s frustrated voice leaked through the ship. Finn grinned, waited for her to chew over her annoyance, and then, an exaggerated sigh: “Give me the coordinates.”
He punched in the codes and then destroyed all record of the original transmission. They didn’t have to be this careful, especially not with such a low-priority mission. The First Order was still recuperating, still licking its wounds somewhere out among the stars; they’d been silent for weeks now - but Finn didn’t care. He took the time to wipe the memories of every ship he and Rey piloted, burner or no. Better safe than sorry, he thought. His tactical training was embedded in every cell of his body, and he took a small pleasure in using the First Order’s training against them now. It was miniscule revenge, but still, something was better than nothing. He knew what they would be looking for, how they would scan the radio waves and what keyphrases they would have tagged as top priority.
So he wiped everything, no matter what.
The coordinates Rose had sent them caught his eye just as the readout flashed and wiped it, and he frowned. 01.37*RAb x +41.24*Dl x -1.04*OθG. The numbers swelled up in his mind like he had sudden dropped into an ocean, and Finn closed his eyes, tracing the numbers that swam by, clear as day. Spherical trigonometry, galactic astronomy, mathematical navigation - all came to him as easily as breathing. Coordinates mapped themselves out, but when he traced these to their logical destination… nothing. Nearby systems labeled themselves automatically, but the coordinates Rose had sent ended in darkness. He opened his eyes, his frown deepening, and then made his way to the small cockpit where Rey had just finished punching in the coordinates.
Her hair was pulled back into a lazy half-bun, the tips of her dark brown hair brushing her gray Learner’s robes. Finn wore near identical-robes, but Rey had added her scavenger toolkit and moisture-wicking outer cloak, too. Despite having left Jakku behind nearly a year ago, Rey’s immediate, knee-jerk reaction to anything new was met with a critical eye, a quick once-over in her clever hands. Just like Finn, the marks of Rey’s childhood were a part of her, deeply woven into the synapses of her mind. Survival and cleverness were each a part of their very beings.
Finn’s heart swelled with love, and he kissed the top of her head as he took the co-pilot’s seat next to her.
Rey gave him a dopey, adoring smile until he grinned, and she punched them into hyperspace. As the mottled blue-white shifting patterns overtook their ship, she turned to look at him. At first her gaze was simply fond, but she could still see the confusion etched into his eyes. She cocked her head and rested her chin in her hands, fixing him with a serious look. “Head Navigator,” she asked in the official tone Rose sometimes had to use to get Black Squadron’s attention. “Where are we headed today?”
Finn smiled at the title, but couldn’t help a surge of annoyance from rising up when he admitted, “I don’t know.”
She blinked. “You don’t-”
“I know it’s in the Core, and it’ll take us near the Bith system, but I’ve never heard of these coordinates before. And Rose even said in her mission report that it might be an unknown system… or at least, unnamed.”
Rey frowned and was silent as she thought. “Or maybe… maybe it’s forgotten.” She pulled up the coordinates again and stared at them. The computer flashed three large question marks in place of where the system name was normally displayed. “I mean, how else would Rose know that there’s even a debris field there in the first place?”
Finn shrugged. “Maybe she’s sending us there to investigate a rumor of a debris field.”
“Hm. Well. All part of the fun, I guess.” She shot him a sly glance and took his hand, squeezing until he met her eyes. “What are the odds that she just sent us on a dud mission? Or maybe Poe sent that, as a prank?”
He laughed and kissed the back of her hand. “I guess we’ll find out in… hang on, don’t tell me… our hyperdrive is a core one… coming from Ahch-To… just under fifty-three minutes?”
Rey stared at him, then checked the calculations of the computer, and then cursed in mock frustration. “Dead on, as per usual. ...You know, I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to that.”
“What?”
Rey gestured at his head wildly, “You pulling complex equations like hyperspace travel time out of your ass like that!” She slumped back in her chair and kicked her feet up on the console, careful not to disrupt any of the controls. “My boyfriend is a super-genius,” she finished in wonder, lightly stroking the back of his hand.
Finn caught her eyes and gave her a cheeky grin. “Does the super-genius get a reward…?”
She laughed, her face bursting with her smile, and Finn’s heart fluttered as she leaned across the armrest to press her lips against his. “Of course – and besides, we do have fifty-three minutes to kill…” Her eyes were mischievous, her hands sneaking, and Finn grinned again.
His only answer was to pull her back for another, deeper kiss.
Finn hummed to himself as he checked the tractor beam’s mechanisms. Rey was in the cockpit, calculating the final trajectory, and she’d sent him to make sure the beam was still more or less functional. In a ship as old as this one, every piece of equipment needed to be checked at least four times. It groaned with age, shuddering as it traveled through hyperspace. Luckily, it seemed that the tractor beam was as functional as they could have hoped for. The storage space in their borrowed carrier was huge, one end of the space able to open completely. Rey would guess which pieces of debris were most valuable to the Resistance, Finn would pull them in, and they’d be done in about an hour or so. Hopefully, some of the junk would be useful.
The intercom status sign lit green, and Finn paused in his work, waiting for Rey to say something. However, after a moment, all that was coming through was a hissing, pulsing static. Finn frowned and said, “Rey?”
No response. He narrowed his eyes and then shrugged. Must be faulty wiring.
Before he could reach over to shut it off, it gave one last hiss and shut off on its own. He sprang to his feet and paced out of the storage space, arriving in the cockpit just in time to see the familiar strain of blue warped hyperspace snap back into reality.
Though they were still a good fifteen kliks away from the deep red star, its gravitational pull was immediate and intense. The ship whined and shook as Rey fought with it until the gravity stabilized, and all the while, the largest field of debris Finn had ever seen spun in slow, circular orbit around the star. Untold dozens of ships had been cracked and destroyed around this star, though he still couldn’t remember which battle had taken place around this area.
Rey gave a low whistle. “This is some junkyard,” she whispered, almost reverently. “Look at this! This is incredible; I wonder why it hasn’t been touched yet? Most of the stuff looks to be in decent condition.”
Bracing his eyes against the dull red gleam of the star, Finn squinted, following her outstretched hand. “Huh, yeah. But they don’t-”
The comms erupted into life once more. Sharp static and a high-pitched frequency whine pulsed through the old system, making both Finn and Rey jump out of their seats. As Rey fumbled with the controls, wincing against the grating sound, Finn slowly became aware of a faint swell of… something through the Force.
He glanced out of the viewport again, frowning, as the feeling swirled in his gut. It was dense and murky – like a faint memory of being sick. Very sick. And as they flew in closer to the debris field, it only grew stronger.
He opened his mouth to say something, but before he could speak Rey slammed the comm panel with her palm, and the sharp whine immediately stopped. “That was fucking weird,” she said, almost in wonder, settling at the controls once more. “I’ve never heard it do that before.”
Finn leaned back against his chair and mumbled, “Yeah, that happened in the storage bay, too.”
Rey glanced over at him, her eyebrows knit together in worry. “Hey,” she said softly. “You alright?”
He nodded and passed a hand over his face. “Just… really tired, all of a sudden. That’s all.” He tried to smile, but the sick feeling lurched and demanded his attention. “Do you sense that?”
She was quiet as they moved close enough to see the details on the wreckage. “Yeah. It’s… ugh.” Her mouth twisted in disgust, like a bad taste was lingering on her tongue.
He gave a half-hearted laugh. “Yeah. That’s what I think, too.” A shudder ran down his spine and he said slowly, “Let’s just get what we came here for and get out of here.”
“Agreed.”
Finn centered himself in the seat as Rey piloted them into the debris field, and the dull ache in his stomach only grew, a bad taste at the back of his mouth. His head started to ache as he gripped the tractor beam controls. Sooner we get some junk, the sooner we can leave.
They were silent as they worked, whether from the growing feeling of unease or simply from concentration, he couldn’t have said. Some of the pieces needed to be heavily modified, and as they approached the wreck of the Star Destroyer, the feeling of utter wrongness only grew in his gut. Rey was feeling it, too – she was counting her breaths, focusing on anything but the swelling tide of the Force around them.
Suddenly she stopped and exclaimed, “These look like the Star Destroyers on Jakku – but… but something’s off about them-”
“They’re not First Order Destroyers, that’s for sure. Maybe Empire-era?”
She shrugged. “I can’t tell from this far out, we’ll have to get closer. This must be really early shit, though…”
Before he could answer, static erupted on the comms once more – but this time, with a sinking feeling of dread, Finn heard a very deliberate tapping noise from the other end. Short-short-short, long-long-long, short-short-short.
“Okay, that’s… I don’t like that…” Rey murmured, and she disconnected the comms completely. The sound faded, but the tapping echoed around Finn’s skull. “We just have to get a few pieces. And then we’ll leave.”
He nodded and shuddered again. “What about that thing?”
“Uh… yeah, yeah. That should be useful.”
They fell back into silence – silence that should have been comfortable, silence that normally was comfortable. They’d been through so much together that sometimes all Finn wanted, all he needed, was to press his ear against Rey’s chest and hear her heartbeat, her steady breathing. Silence was supposed to be comfortable. But this – this was heavy, sore. Wrong.
Though the ship was old, the tractor beams were still heavy-duty strength, pulling in small bits of debris with ease. Soon they had enough to fill, in Finn’s estimation, about half the bay. Almost there, he thought to himself as he maneuvered an especially large piece of shrapnel into the ship’s beam. Almost done.
He pulled back on the controls to pull it in, and they nearly collided with the ancient escape pod lurking behind it.
Rey cursed and pushed away, as Finn let go of the debris and caught the pod in the tractor beam to stop it in its course, and his throat closed with a slow-creeping, dense dread as he registered the three bodies in stark-white armor floating inside.
“Stormtroopers?!” Rey exclaimed, gritting her teeth and snarling. “What are stormtroopers-”
“Those aren’t stormtroopers.” Finn said, very quietly. His white-knuckled grip on the tractor beam controls tightened as he stared at the buckets, the almost unnervingly familiar armor design. Everything rushed in his mind, all at once, as he went on, his tongue almost numb with disbelief, “Those are clone troopers.”
“Wha- but – the Clone Wars – that was almost fifty years ago…” Rey breathed. “They shouldn’t be- why are they still out here…?” She finished, her voice barely a whisper.
Finn’s heart was hammering against his ribs. He couldn’t look away from the bodies, from the men, long dead, left to float in orbit around a lonely star in the middle of nowhere. The First Order had held clones to the highest esteem, had drilled it into their ‘troopers heads that the clones had been the pinnacle of great soldiers and armies.
But they’d been left here. Forgotten.
“Gods, gods – they’re still here,” Rey whispered, gritting her teeth again – but Finn could see the tears in her eyes. Her grip was tight on the controls, and she slowly backed away from the ruined pod, away from the floating bodies. “They’re still here.”
They moved, and the trooper closest to them turned to stare.
Finn’s stomach dropped as they turned – one of the trooper’s hands twitched, he caught a glint of a helmet turning to look at them, the trooper was dead fifty years and he’d just twitched. He swallowed thickly, ignoring the sick feeling twisting around his guts, told himself it was just a strange twist of the light.
They moved away, tense and tight and wracked with nerves, and now, everywhere he looked, Finn could only see the brilliant white of trooper armor. Everywhere, everywhere, bodies were everywhere.
This is a graveyard, he thought. We shouldn’t be here.
The Force shuddered and tightened around his mind. He glanced up as the ruins of a Star Destroyer came into view, and Finn realized with dawning horror that they’d been wrong, very wrong. “This wasn’t a battle,” he whispered, staring at the Destroyer. “It’s only Republic ships. There are no Separatist ships here, have you noticed…? This wasn’t a battle,” he repeated numbly, “This was a massacre.”
As soon as the word left his mouth, the entire ship shuddered, listed to the side, and shut down completely.
Before Rey could curse, someone yelled out, “WATCH OUT!”
Rey jumped and Finn spun in his chair – it had sounded like someone had yelled it in his ear, and he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, it was a clone’s voice. Lurking beneath the military-trained calm, Finn felt the man’s fear, heard the miniscule tremor in his voice – and then it was gone.
It was dark and silent, the energy pressing on their ears like they’d just dived ten thousand leagues into an ocean. Crushing darkness, complete terror rose like bile in his throat. Only the blood red light of the star filtered through the viewport, soaking the cockpit into horrible, violent red.
The emergency lights flashed on, and the comms followed soon after.
Rey’s face drained of color as the static came through again. She reached over to him, reached for his hand, as short-short-short long-long-long short-short-short started up again, over and over and over.
“We have to get the ship back online, Rey,” he mumbled through the pit of fear in his stomach. “We have to get the ship back online, and then we’re getting the hell-”
“Please help.”
His throat closed as the clear and very unmistakable sound of breathing came through the unplugged comm system. Rey stared at it in horror, her grip as strong as durasteel on his hand.
And then:
“Please, gods, someone help us, they’re coming through-”
Rey let out a strange, half-strangled sort of moan – but Finn had already turned in his seat as the tapping continued, but it was moving, it was no longer coming from the comms.
It was coming from behind the storage bay doors.
Finn grabbed his blaster, pulled Rey to her feet, and aimed down the open corridor to the storage bay. “The engine controls-”
“-in the storage bay.” Rey whispered, finishing his sentence for him, as she groped in the shadows for her staff. “It’s in the storage bay.”
It was the longest walk of Finn’s life, and as they approached, he slowly became aware of someone walking behind the doors.
He stopped and motioned for Rey to listen.
She gritted her teeth, and her emotions – fear, anger, and a deep well of sadness – mirrored his own.
Finn took a cautious step towards the bay, and now he was certain: someone was in there, among the ruins they’d pulled in. Someone was walking, whispering, tapping on the metal, shuffling along in the dark, sighing mournfully to themselves. Rey was silent next to him, her palm sweaty in his own, as they stood before the locked door and listened. Her breaths were shaking and shivering, echoing in the long corridor in the dim emergency lights.
The footsteps stopped, and then started again. Like they were lost, or confused. Space-dwelling creatures weren’t that uncommon – he kept repeating that fact to himself, like he could pretend he didn’t already know that whatever was behind the door had to be human. The steps, the weight thrown behind them – two upright legs.
He knew he should be more frightened. Someone, somehow, living amongst the wrecks of a battle that happened a near half-century ago. It wasn’t possible – but he could hear them; he could sense them. His mouth was as dry as Jakku’s deserts, but he wasn’t scared. His mind was churning, the blaster hot and ready for action in his hands, but it wasn’t fear that raced through his blood.
It was a deep, unbearable sadness, the same sort of gut-wrenching horror and desperation that had wrenched through his mind when Ren had ordered the villagers to be slaughtered, when the First Order had destroyed the New Republic. That horrible feeling of inability to help – just to stand and watch and pray, hope, beg that their deaths were quick. And the sinking, dreaded knowledge that they weren’t. Something terrible had happened here, in this system, years before he’d been born, men had been slaughtered and hunted – but the Force pulsed with an ache so thorough that Finn felt it in his bones like a broken heartbeat.
Tears pricked the corners of his eyes the closer he stepped to the storage doors. The footsteps paused. And then a quiet, sort of mewling sob wrenched his heart to pieces.
It echoed down the corridor, a muffled, muted cry of desperate fear.
“Finn,” Rey whispered, moving closer to him, pressing her body against his arm. “Finn.”
“We have to check.” He pushed his fear down, slipped into the headspace of a general – calm and quiet, hyper-focused – with relative ease. “We have to get the ship back online.”
Rey’s answer was only to grip her staff tighter. She was forcing her fear down, too; he could sense it shrinking and folding in on itself.
He caught her eye. “Ready?”
She nodded, her jaw clenched, and reached out to the doorlock.
It slid open with a quiet hiss into inky blackness, and the footsteps stopped.
Finn activated the flashlight on the barrel of his blaster and aimed it into the darkness. They were so quiet that the ship’s backup generators thrummed like a pulse beneath their feet. Thin, weak, watery emergency lights barely pierced the solid black, casting the materials they’d collected into strange and twisted shadows. The blackness was so thick that the meager light was swallowed.
He took a deep breath and swallowed, tightening his grip on Rey’s hand. She squeezed back and then called out, “Hello?”
Nothing.
“The manual override for the engines are along the left wall,” she whispered, her voice shaking. “If we get them back online, we’ll get lights.”
“Right.” Finn murmured. The blood-red light from the star was oozing down the corridor from the viewports, but even that shuddered at the edges of the shadows in the storage.
As he took a step, he realized with a start that it was the same thick blackness that had swallowed Han Solo – it was not just the shadows that were the same. It was also the presence of something evil, something cruel, a killer with no remorse. Hands that were stained with the blood of thousands.
It had lingered around the star for decades, and now it was on their ship.
He squared his shoulders and stepped into storage, Rey by his side.
Their steps echoed back at them as they walked, every nerve sharpened by the adrenaline pumping through their veins. They stepped quickly and quietly through the darkness, marking their progress by the watery lights every meter. Gooseflesh raised on his arms – and suddenly Finn knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they were being watched.
He spun around and was met with yet more of the same, Rey frozen next to him, somehow as cold as ice despite her sweating palm, despite the sweat on her forehead. The weight of a hundred eyes were pressed upon his back; he felt like he was walking through sludge, like the darkness was pressing the breath out of his lungs. But he saw nothing. He held his breath, but the storage was as silent as a grave.
“Here,” Rey said, finally, taking a deep breath as the manual controls came into view. “Here, here we-”
In the deepest corners of the storage bay, someone started to weep.
Amidst the piles of junk that they had pulled in, the tapping, the shuffling, the low, shuddering breathy gasps of fear rose in a swell, like there was an entire battalion of lost lives hiding in the dark spaces of their ship, moaning with fear, and Finn released Rey’s hand to aim his blaster up and down the spindly walkway, his heart hammering against his ribs. “Fix it,” he hissed over his shoulder. “Rey – get us back online!”
The tapping started again, soft and then growing in urgency, short-short-short long-long-long short-short-short over and over and the words rose between his teeth, laying thick in his mouth, save our souls save our souls save our souls, begging and desperate and not understanding their fate, not understanding why they were left alone, and the Force started to scream.
The ghosts of this world started to scream and Finn’s knees almost buckled.
Behind him, Rey let out a hoarse cry as the emotions slammed into them, knocked the wind from their lungs – the massacre had happened fifty years ago, fifty years and they were forgotten and Finn wanted to sob – he was drowning in the fear, in the terror, in the anger of the slaughtered men left to mummify in space, it was crushing his lungs and weighed down his very muscles until he thought he would be crushed against the memory of their deaths. It wasn’t a memory, though – he felt the lives of hundreds being snuffed out, one by one. Systematically hunted. He stumbled back, every movement sending sharp spikes of pain through his blood and mind, he was almost certain he’d been cut to ribbons, but when he looked down his clothes and skin were unmarked, even as he heard the blood drip and splatter against the deck. “Rey!”
“Al-almost!” Her voice was broken, jagged and sharp and the tapping, the whispering, the sobbing was relentless, they had to get out of here, they couldn’t bring any of this back. They should never have come, the men who’d died didn’t deserve to be scavenged, and Finn shuddered, thick tears rolling down his cheeks as she grabbed his hand and yanked.
If the ship started to come to life, he did not know – he could not hear it over the screams.
They ran – back towards the cockpit as lights started to flicker back on, as the shadows were chased away, but still the horrible noises continued, still the begging, pleading, terrified voices continued to cry out – but as soon as Finn crossed the threshold it stopped.
All at once, the Force was silent, like it was holding its breath.
The materials they’d collected gleamed under the floodlights, and silence pulsed through the stale air.
The door slid shut and the grip on Finn’s lungs released and he took great, choking breaths. Rey let out a half-whimper and bent over double, drained and exhausted. Her hair was plastered to her forehead, her face pale and drawn tight, fear etched into her eyes.
They were silent, waiting for the cries and tapping to start again. Waiting for the surge of pure fear – but aside from their own ragged gasps, the ship was empty.
“What – are – is it gone?” Rey finally whispered.
He shook his head, breathing hard, staring at the door. “I don’t know.”
“I can’t hear them-” Rey swallowed and grabbed his arm. “Finn – they were so scared-”
“Shh, shh – wait. Listen…”
His nerves were scraped raw, but still something lingered. A light, ephemeral gleam of regret, like a finger up his spine.
It moved like the wind around him, and he shivered.
Blood pounded in his ears, and then, softly, right over his shoulder, “I never even got a name.”
Without thinking, Finn slammed his palm flat against the release and the malevolent star greedily reclaimed the carnage soaked in darkness.
Rey collapsed in a puddle and Finn slowly sank to his knees next to her, shivering on the cold metal of the deck, staring at the door until all of the pieces were gone, gone and returned to their graves. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…” he whispered, over and over and over, like a prayer to the dead, the forgotten. The nameless. “I’m so sorry…”
His teeth chattered as he pulled Rey close against his chest, as her arms wrapped tight around him, their heartbeats thrumming wildly, almost in sync. Shaking, Finn closed his eyes and didn’t think about the darkness. Didn’t think about the dead, about their memories lingering on, about the blood red light of the star.
He only let himself focus on the warmth in his arms, on Rey’s shivering breaths, the way they were tangled together on the floor. He knew he couldn’t move, not yet. All they could do was hold on to the light, to each other, and mourn in their own ways. So many lives… gone. And for what?
Taking the pieces, any of the pieces, removing the debris but leaving the bodies would have been a cruelty. The mere thought of it now sent jagged shards of ice through his blood – every piece was saturated in darkness.
This was a place of absolute cruelty; the Force was bent and misshapen and mutilated beyond recognition. His mind was numb, and all he wanted to do was get away from here as fast as he could.
Finn curled up closer to Rey. They huddled together in silence, clutching each other, holding the darkness at bay.
Holding the memories of the nameless, like echoes in their hearts.