"The babies tied in a bundle

Warmed over silver flame

Mother does anything to keep them warm

And loves them all the same"

- unknown

...

(…Jakku, several miles west of Net Station, circa 30 ABY…)

Stealing a speeder from the First Order is harder than it appears, as Finn and Poe would agree more readily than most.

It was a clear night, not a cloud overhead, and the light show overhead was simply blissful. If only they could enjoy it. The wind threw sand in their faces, which, thankfully, were masked by First Order troopers' helmets.

"How close are we?" Finn called through his helmet, aiming the question backward at perhaps the best pilot he'd ever known. His partner couldn't answer for some time, as he was so absorbed in trying to navigate this damned wind! When his concentration wasn't on the veritable jigsaw map of joysticks and navigation globes this old raft had for a control module, he was imagining what kind of strange things this wind would do to people, and to their machines.

Finally, he replied.

"Telemetry must be wrong, it has us listed as less than three miles from the station. How could anyone live here, man?"

Finn came back with this: "Gotta do what you gotta do, I suppose."

"I suppose."

Neither were the most conversational at a time like this. Both wanted to be; how could they? Make small talk as they'd committed treason and would probably be killed for it—sure, that sounds easy enough!

He fingered the precious cargo in his satchel one more time. All there. Good.

Thankfully, the droids were less picky in terms of talk. Finn tried his luck with them.

"Beebee, can you confirm our location?" The little BB-8 droid did exactly that. A single beep. Yes. "Anything you want to add? Two beeps. Nope!

Now Finn tried their second astromech-type: CR-13, better known as "Charlie".

"Charlie, anything you'd like to add to your cohort's spiel?"

Now, this droid—a bottle-green update on the old R-models with a confusingly triangular head—was more inclined towards chatter.

"Allow me to catch y'all up on the many hibbity-jibbities of this little planet, JAKKU-AKKU-AKKu-AKku-Akku-akku… (artificial reverberation) Once a thriving farm planet with an unnaturally strong magnetic—"

"Wrong kind of conversation, Charlie."

Best to go it stoic, Finn supposed. Poe did it so beautifully, no reason he can't, too. As the lookout at the front of their little skiff, he might as well do some looking.

Under such a unique sky as this, this world could be called beautiful in its own way, he supposed. Even in the sand, an unsettlingly rusty orange with the occasional glint of some scrap. If he looked farther away, towards the horizon…

At least one Star Destroyer was out there, seemingly stabbed facefirst into the ground like a wooden stake. Countless other ships. Some of them old, most of them abandoned.

"Do you know what they say about Jakku? 'The sand's red because it is where ships bleed,' or something like that."

Charlie wasn't wrong. This planet would be best served as a graveyard, ship, human or otherwise. No living creature seemed to belong here. They were intruders. But let this intrusion serve its purpose.

Finn seemed to hear the words before his partner said them.

"Uh-oh."

And all at once, they were being chased.

Two First Order ornithopters behind them. Old TIE-style ball cockpits with the rest of the new ship built around them, forming a shape that Finn most quickly equated to Corellian Dragonflies: long in back, held afloat by an array of wings which moved so fast they simply weren't there.

They moved with the roar of one of those Star Destroyers on the horizon. And they had guns. Solid-round.

Finn resorted to the old lower-Caprican expletive as he remembered that last bit. It was muffled by his helmet.

"Frak. Poe?"

"On it. Change of plans."

And so it went: Poe dropped altitude so that their bottom fin scratched the sand. If he remembered his physics, it'd screw up what little visibility they had for those precious few moments. Hard right. Their objective was now on the port side, but there was a canyon drop on starboard.

"Everyone, strap in. Tight." Finn saw the two astromechs take their place at modified side-by-side charging ports, and was picking up their fastening cable before he knew it. He'd also forgotten how tricky walking on a skiff like this could be. He pulled the cable up from the right, pulled it left across the two, and slammed it into its socket on the right side. He himself opted to take the sightseer's seat, made sure both the shoulder and waist belts were fastened tightly. The whole thing took about forty seconds.

The ornithopters were still behind them, seeming to gain. Poe pulled them up on one of the monitors and used his own preferred curse. Time for some trickery. And well-placed countermeasures.

Two idiots with astromechs and a scratch-skiff wouldn't have normally been prepared for eluding First Order ships, but these were prepared (sort of) idiots. You'd be surprised what two idiots can do with some stolen blasters and spare target droids. The light show behind them would rival the view overhead. And then, what about a nice, completely inobtrusive fighter 'chute or two?

And then Poe went down. Forty-five degrees within a second, eighty within two. He might've been chuckling, but Finn couldn't hear him.

Now what was their plan?

Poe must've had some feeling about this place, because they were soon nestled in a mouth on the cliff face, and they were level just as quickly. Finn took his first breath in what felt like ages, and quickly dismounted, leaping to the solid ground. Unfortunately, everything else outside was still hundreds of feet above the ground. Even in the dead of night.

"We don't have long, but I have a plan," Poe called. His helmet was off. "Let's get these droids out of there." Finn was walking back to the skiff and helping to free them already. BB-8 blipped in relief to both of them, as if he was almost as freaked out by heights as Finn was. Charlie immediately started giving them a piece of his CPU.

"Now listen here, you little ungrateful fleshbags! You can't just turn us upside-down like that and expect no consequences! There will be Khaos to pay, mark my [indecipherable] words!"

"Get over it, big baby," Poe fired back with. "Whole world outside, if you don't mind walking on air. Be glad to help you right on out. Finn, the chips."

He felt around the satchel one more time. All there. Ready for whatever Poe planned.

"We need to upload both. Do you remember how?" Finn nodded. He popped open BB-8's data panel and plugged in all three chips. Pressed the "record" button like this was some archaic music pirater. Waited for the little orange snowman to give him the AOK to remove the chips one by one. He also added his own little holomessage—for the final cut.

"Universe, you need these. It's… it's complicated, but enclosed in the Net waves are some—"

"Finn, stop it. Either they'll understand or they won't. Besides, we're no Princesses Organa, you know." And with that, Finn terminated the message.

He seemed a bit disappointed, in all honesty. That was what it was. Or maybe just humor in the moment. No time for that. He handed the chips off to Poe, who repeated the process on Charlie in silence. Then words.

"We take them up, let them finish the journey. It's not that far."

"That's not a plan, Poe. That's a gamble. We don't have time for gambles."

"Gambles will have to do, because where one First Order ship is…" He let Finn finish the idea.

"Right. Gamble it is. Even if we'll die anyway."

"Then just be glad Little Baby Beebee over there won't be here to see that." Finn nodded grimly.

And up they went again. They didn't see those 'thopters at first.

The skiff leaned down onto the sand like a ramp, letting both droids just roll right off.

"Go in different directions," Finn told them. "If you stay together, you die together. Go. Now!"

He swore there was hurt in Beebee's eyes.

"We don't have time for this." Poe's voice carried, even without the speakers in a helmet. "Get moving."

With reluctance, they did. BB-8 went left, CR-13 went right.

And the two waited for the Order ships to find them. From there, they would deny having done anything that they'd just done. They would even do what they could against those specialized Interrogators that His Supremacy had trained.

Thankfully, both droids were well out of sight when the First Order patrol ship passed overhead. Its searchlight blocked out every other star in the sky. Even the ship itself, normally an unsettling perfect cube, was completely blocked out by that mini-star.

Finn wasn't happy with that change; he'd just gotten accustomed to the rainbow of turbolasers overhead.

"THIS IS PATROLMAN SKORR. OFFICERS FN-2187 AND PO-3675, YOU ARE UNDER ARREST FOR INSUBORDINATION, THEFT AND TREASON OF THE HIGHEST DEGREE AGAINST THE FIRST ORDER! PUT YOUR HANDS UP AND DO NOT RESIST CAPTIVITY!"