Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Regency AU)

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Finn, Resistance Sympathizer

I stepped off the ship and onto he heavily wooded island of D'Qar.

A furry body brushed past me and ran towards someone climbing down from his own ship.

Hey! I recognized him!

I took a few tentative running steps forward. "Poe? Poe Dameron?"

He looked up from where he'd been stroking his cat's head. "Finn!"

The pirate ran towards me and embraced me.

He was alive! He was alive!

"You're alive!"

"I know."

He pushed back. "Hey, that's my jacket."

"Oh!" I tried to remove it.

He stopped me. "No. Keep it. It suits you."

Then we went inside.

Poe removed the map from the leather pouch around BB's neck and spread it on the table. He studied it for a moment, then said, "This map isn't complete. It's only a section of the bigger map."

He traced a dotted trail past approximated islands, none of which I recognized.

"Now for the weapon," Leia said.

Poe let the map roll back on itself. "Right. They call it the Starkiller. It's a massive ship and superweapon."

"So it's another Death Star," one man said.

"Why don't we just blow this one up too?" Han asked, vaguely bored.

How could he be bored? This was a war council! This was cool!

"Toss me a bit of chalk, will ya, Finn?"

I turned and found some on a board behind me and threw it to him.

He caught it and began to draw on the slate table. "This is how big the Death Stars were," he said, drawing a ship outline about the size of two of his hands laid end to end. "This is Starkiller." He had to lean over the table to draw the bow of the ship. It was four times the size of the first one.

"So it's bigger. But these things always have a way to blow them up, right?" Han asked.

"Or sink them," Poe said. "This ship is sided with iron, so that'll be hard. It is steam powered, so if we hit a boiler, it'll go down. But," he glanced at me, "we have someone who worked on it here."

I shifted feet as everyone looked at me. This was my chance to figure out how to get Rey back.

"There's a water drain there," I said, pointing at the stern of the ship. "If you get a good cannon shot in there, you could blow up the boiler. The boiler is huge, almost the length of the ship, and it helps to power the super-cannons. Blow that up, the ship goes skyward."

"So it's that easy?" one of the ship's captains said.

"Not really. There's a cover for the drain, iron, about a foot thick. It's swung into place by eight thick ropes."