Kyja's first act was to strap a visored helmet over her dark hair and check that her armor was all in place.

"H333, are all weapons online and ready?" Her voice and actions were steady for the moment. This first part wasn't the risky part. She'd caught plenty of lone travelers, plenty of criminals.

A beep from the floating droid assured her that everything on The Sarlacc's Revenge was exactly where it had been when she'd checked it two hours ago. A few moments later there was a flash of light and, just as Rosha had said, a Resistance T-65 starfighter slowed from hyperspace and began its way toward Jakku.

"What a piece of junk," Kyja muttered. Her mouth twisted as she studied it a moment longer. "New engines though."

A flick of a few switches and her larger vessel lit up and lurched forward.

She kept her gunship slightly off-course, gaining on the starfighter as its pilot prepared for the descent to the dusty brown planet. Gun range was more important than getting behind him at the moment and she'd found that most people paid little attention to her ship if it wasn't directly attacking th-.

Her eyes caught on a flashing red light.

"Incoming Com?" She looked curiously at the little white vessel. She could just make out a vague impression of chipped paint and dented metal. "Why not? H, be ready to fire."

A growl of machinery replied. Kyja put on her best attempt at innocent voice as she accepted the comlink.

"You in trouble out there? Never seen a fighter out here."

There was a pause.

"Not at all. Just wondering who would be joining me at Jakku of all places," A man's cheerful voice replied.

His ship was starting to speed up.

Kyja rolled her shoulders and readied for the chase.

"Jakku? Oh, I can't count the hours I've spent enjoying the views out here." On a whim, she reached over and began tracking the source of the link. Something about the confidence in that voice was making her uneasy. "What brings you out here... Sorry, didn't catch your name."

"You first, ma'am. You are the one following me after all."

"Following y-?" The starfighter suddenly veered sharply off to its right and sped skipping across the outside of Jakku's atmosphere. "Shab."

"That's what I thought."

Kyja swung her ship into gear and the thrill of the chase began to drum in her bones, every other distraction floating away with the fire of reentry.

"Well, you're faster than I'd hoped you be, I'll give you that."

Almost every other distraction.

Kyja's hands were glued to the controls and she didn't dare reach over to cut off the transmission. She lost a bit of distance as she angled herself to get behind the starfighter. Her eyes saw black space, distant stars and thousands of miles of dirt. And a small white ship she was just barely ready to fire on.

"Nice try." The man laughed as he swung his ship around and ducked beneath her.

Kyja slammed a button down and the jets atop the ship reversed, already chasing after the rebel before she'd finished turning the body to follow.

She heard a questioning whistle in her ear as they both entered the atmosphere, both pilots adjusting quickly to the new friction.

"I gotta get me one of those." The voice quipped.

"You are going to need a new ship in a moment."

All she saw now was various shades of brown of a hundred sand dunes: they were headed straight down.

She didn't like that.

"H, begin firing."

"Oh, no you don't."

Just as she'd wanted, his ship straightened out and began to fly parallel to the surface. Her shots flew harmlessly down into the desert but now gravity was aiding her in gaining ground. The two ships danced over the planet, veering back and forth across the blue of the sky. She was never quite close enough to shoot, he never could quite lose her. She refused to take her eyes off of him for a second.

"Seriously, Big Guns, what's your story?" The man said. "No First Order flunkie has moves like that."

"Thanks."

Probably shouldn't have said that.

Kyja shrugged it off.

No one he could tell if he was dead.

"Maybe you should join me and become a merc." She said as she fired a shot that just missed a twisting wing. "You deserve a better fighter, don't you think?"

They were quickly approaching civilization now. Kyja called off the droid as she caught sight of ships entering and leaving the port ahead. Her eyes narrowed on the white starfighter, just a little closer and one shot would be enough to take him out.

"Thanks. But I'm alright."

Suddenly his ship ducked straight down again, flying back beneath her just as he had before.

Kyja readied to follow as he curved around to fly back... just as a ship appeared from below and cut her off from behind.

The bounty hunter dipped her ship as well, rivets groaning at the sudden drop. What she found was a maze of transports waiting for her, ten times The Sarlacc's size and each heading a different direction at a different speed. He'd circled around while she'd been distracted and was headed straight for it.

"Oh, don't you dare."

"Sorry, Guns."

He was already darting between them.

Kyja hesitated.

She had him tracked. But if she gave up too quickly-

A loud and sickening crunch told her she'd waited too long. Kyja's body slammed into the side of her seat and her entire gunship tipped as a cargo vessel hit the left jet and didn't bother to stop. She could hear a shelf tipping behind her and the thuds and clanks of all her belongings spilling outlasted just a bit longer than the breath she'd taken in and held when she heard them start to fall.

There was nothing to do but hold on and wait for it to end.

So she waited.

Waited.

Waited.

"You're not still listening to this, are you?" She asked with a wince.

He laughed in her ear.

The com shut off just as The Sarlacc pulled free and righted itself.

Kyja leaned back in her seat and groaned as lights began flashing everywhere and H333's angry beeping began. She could see a Rodian making rude gestures at her from the gunport of the cargo ship. She winced and was suddenly very glad she'd left her helmet on for the ride.

As the cargo ship left the atmosphere, Kyja reached out and gently guided her gunship out of the traffic and down to the port. The ship landed with a painful settling of metal and something big swinging against the hull at the impact of meeting the ground.

"Send the First Order that tracking link, will you, H?" Kyja stood tiredly and slammed a button with a bit too much force for the shape The Sarlacc's Revenge was in. The hull door hissed and lowered into a ramp as the woman gathered a few tools and snatched a small bag from the same drawer.

She stormed outside, tossed the bag at the man waiting to collect her docking fee, and began the climb up her damaged ship.

As she worked, some alien children gathered to write down the curse words she was spitting nonstop. She ignored them except to ask one of them to toss her back a tool she'd dropped and to laugh and offer encouragement when they had to try a few times to reach her. She continued the cursing after that, but it was more for show. Kyja was thinking it over and she was pretty sure the First Order would be more pleased with a location than with a dead body.

They tended to want to do their dirty work themselves, after all.

Her family had firsthand experience with that.

...

Kyja headed out about an hour later, ship flight ready but beeping in protest at how little time she'd put into repairing it. She was already busy as the groaning ship rose in the air, replying to worried messages through H333 and promising to call her father later when there was no risk of being bugged. The First Order had replied to her message with a location and a few commands for how to proceed, which she memorized as quickly as she could.

She wanted them to like her enough to not care about her.

She wanted them to forget she was there.

Maybe that would get her their secrets.

One hand plotting a course to the rendezvous she'd been sent, Kyja pulled a mirror from her pocket. As The Sarlacc's Revenge lurched forward and headed into space her eyes were only on the glass. The woman's eyes searched every one of her own features, memorizing: thin nose, thin face, dark hair, dark eyes, downturned mouth. She tried a few expressions to see how they twisted her face.

She'd done it all before but... she'd never really thought she would get this far.

Belatedly, she wondered if she should have found a way to look at herself from a different angle but then the star destroyer pulled into sight and the false smile twisted into an expression of resolve. It filled the sky just like the planets did, offering nothing to admire as it began to block off the stars.

Just a big, ugly, ship filled with murderers and their many, many guns.

Filled with kidnappers

Her gunship flew toward a docking bay along with two or three First Order x-wings. The bounty hunter offered the codes without a thought as she was hailed and then invited in. The huge ship grew larger and larger until it loomed everywhere she looked and then she was landing and she was part of it.

What if they recognize you? And the helmet went back over her head. Which was silly after so many years but she didn't know yet if Hux or his men were here. Or how much the stormtroopers might be able to figure out... But then again, she wasn't here to avoid risk.

Kyja laughed at herself and soon she was marching out into the pristine docking bay, glancing up with a wry smile no one could see to study the smoke pouring again from the injured jet. Men and women in full armor milled around her, a sea of inhuman masks with a few officers thrown in just to annoy her with their faces. It wouldn't matter how much she got to walk around: unless she got what she wanted by listening to voices? Maybe from their heights...?

She considered the sea of helmets around her.

No.

There were too many.

Plan A: failed.

Kyja found one of the officers approaching and nodded in greeting. Neither of them bothered with introductions and she had soon arranged for repairs and handed over the tracking signal. A long minute of the officer pressing buttons and her father's little group of bounty hunters was twice as rich as it had been before, Kyja three times as rich as she had been before. Then she was being led away from the action into one of dozens of blank looking hallways. She had no idea how long they walked through them, undecorated, all doors closed off, just walls and walls of white. Infinite identical intersections with infinite identical storm troopers. The officers were all blurring together as well.

She was instantly far too lost to explore, much less try to get a glimpse of every face on the ship.

Plan B: failed.

Kyja was slightly encouraged by the eyes that followed her everywhere. She overheard one or two stormtroopers commenting on the color of her armor. Could they be interested enough to talk to her... Did stormtroopers gossip? Should she show her face and hope to be found instead? She was itching to feel things out.

Still, she didn't truly mind when the officer let her into a small, blank looking apartment and she was left alone. People could lie or tell tales, after all. People could get suspicious of someone who asked too many questions.

Truth was easier to find on your own.

The officer shut the door behind her, barely bothering to wait for his own voice to finish telling her to stay until summoned. Kyja nodded to the closed door and then turned to look around. White walls. White couch. White tables. Nothing looked interesting or comfortable. Just clean.

Typical First Order friendliness.

Her gaze swept the room again, this time taking in the lack of exits, lack of anything to hide behind if someone stood in the doorway, the security camera watching her and the doorway. Her eyes caught on a little lip on the wall and she walked over to the couch, pretending not to look at the wall behind it. There was a small panel below it she probably wasn't supposed notice.

She would start there.

Trying not to think about how silly this all was if they weren't actually watching her, Kyja dumped her bag beside her on a small couch and began fiddling with bits of tech. She continued this for several minutes, until she knew she'd made enough for a decent loop and a few buttons commanded the camera-and any others nearby that she hadn't seen-to ignore the next few minutes of the room's activity.

Then she leapt over the side of the couch and sprinted across the room, a small metal box tight between her fingers.

The panel she'd eyed popped open easily and the wire she wanted was as easy to find as it had the hundred times she'd practiced. It took a few seconds more to tap into their information logs and soon the program she and her father had designed was scanning at a rate too fast for her eyes to follow. Kyja took a deep breath. There was nothing she could do but wait. Wait and hope that no one walked into the room.

Kyja considered this thought.

A moment later she was holding her hacking device in one hand and a very large gun in the other. If she was going to be suspicious she might as well go big.

Big Guns. That was what that idiot rebel had called her. They'd probably caught him by now, a few seconds faster than they would have without her. Maybe if she failed they'd end up in the same cell. Or the same grave.

The device beeped and she abruptly stopped the scolding she was about to give herself. It took a few seconds for her to disconnect everything. By the time she was back on the couch, setting herself back into the end position of her loop, the camera had only been blind for two minutes.

Kyja took a shaky breath and slipped the precious device onto her belt. She looked around to find that the room was actually fairly nice, with a bed and a washroom off to one side. The washroom was what she wanted right now and she launched herself lightly over the back of the couch and headed over. Her helmet settled nicely under one arm and she splashed some water over her sweaty face and then her neck.

She walked casually back to the couch and then finally, finally called up the list she'd downloaded from the star destroyer's data banks.

FJ-1111, FJ-1112, FJ-1113... It went on and on through the FKs, FLs, FMs, FNs, FOs, all the way to the GSs and HGs with a few CBs and DWs thrown in. And that was it.

No names...

Plan C: failed.

Kyja tossed the device into her back and her helmet quickly followed.

She lay back on the couch with the slow movements of someone who had pushed herself too hard and would now feel it for a Very Long Time, pretending to herself that it was just mental exhaustion. Her jaw wasn't clenched against how pointless this was, how useless this was, how lost she and her family would always be when compared to this giant, skrogging ship.

Kyja covered her face with one arm and let her eyes rest.

It was fine.

It would be fine.

She just needed a new goal, that was all.

The bounty hunter considered this for a long moment, chewing her lip as she waited for some epiphany to come.

A new goal.

She had nothing. She didn't know enough.

Therefore she needed someone else.

Her stomach twisted at all the different ways for that to go wrong.

Plan D: get help.

Or, rather, Plan D: hope the people angry enough to start a resistance didn't hold a grudge.