Damerey: The Atropos Rule

II. - Silence

Poe and Rey were rising the boarding ramp. They both entered Millennium Falcon. Rey consecutively closed the ramp behind her and Poe continued his way up to the main hold. Rey followed.

"Sir, there's a very important message from Ajan Kloss," Rey heard C-3PO's voice from the main hull.

"What is it?" Poe's voice came after. He spoke calmly, just as nothing's happened.

"Bad news, Threepio?" Rey asked C-3PO when she entered the hold. Chewie sat back the bench, behind the dejarik table and silently observed the conversation, BB-8 and R2-D2 curiously peered from behind of 3PO and Poe stood in front of him, hand on hip.

"Not exactly, miss Rey," C-3PO uttered, "the message is not complete."

Poe glanced at Rey and she threw a concerned frown at him. Not exactly. But something bad must have happened. And why is not the message whole? This is not going to be good.

"I have a bad feeling about this," stated Poe.

"How do you mean not exactly, Threepio?" said Rey.

"Well, the message says the Resistance, at least what left of them when the others left, lost their communications with Core planets, miss Rey," C3PO waved his hand.

"What does that suppose to mean?" Rey made a sound of desperation. This is not happening. Maybe it's just something, that could be explained easily. Not complicated business. But the way, how C3PO served this news to them wasn't really reassuring.

"Can we see the message?" asked Poe, still calmly.

"Oh, of course, sir," accepted C-3PO.

"Chewie, you have seen that?" Rey turned towards sitting Chewie and he responded with outraged moan followed by a nod.

"Yes, he has already seen-"

"Play the message, Threepio," ordered Poe.

"Yes, sir," said C-3PO and waved at BB-8, "Beebee-Ate, shall you?"

"Beep-beep-boo!" acknowledged BB-8 and rolled from behind of 3PO.

In front of them appeared big hologram showing Rose Tico and Finn at the resistance base on Ajan Kloss. Both of them had insistent faces and his voices sounded very pleading. But the holo was very unstable. Not unstable like casually. Their video would be shaky and crash. Every second the video had fallen and gone blank for a while.

"Resistance to Millennium Falcon. Rey, Poe fly back as soon as you can. The communications between Core planets have shut d-wn. There's no signal. We susp-ct that there's going to be ab-olute sile-ce in the -ole g-laxy s-n. The sil-ce is g-ow-ng-" the video crashed and Poe with Rey looked at each other. Rey knitted her eyebrows.

It seemed like silence eventually grew as much that they couldn't send a message without a problem. But what happened? Why? They have to get back to the base. Immediately. They need to find out what's behind that.

"Well, it doesn't have to be exactly the worst," said Poe and shrugged.

"I agree, sir-"

Rey incredulously shook her head and abruptly dashed into the cockpit access corridor. "We need to go now!" she shouted from the corridor.

"Yeah, she's right," said Poe, "Chewie, get up there!"

"Raawwghhtght!" Chewie nodded, he jumped out of the bench and with loud stamping followed Rey.

Poe considered for a while. "Threepio and Artoo, check if systems are stable, just to be sure," ordered Poe and also headed to the cockpit, following Rey and Chewie's arguing.