The hull was made of silver metal, torn from the walls of Star Destroyers and painstakingly welded together. Rounded triangles of glass created the two cockpit windows, giving the ramshackled starship a strangely angular bug-eyed appearance. Twin, half-intact tie-fighters formed the engines, sticking out of the back of the ship like burrowed insects.

Dameron stared. BB-8 had described this pilot's-nightmare to him before, but the droid had been far more generous then the monstrosity deserved. Visible welding lines were the least of the cosmetic issues, but far more concerning was the fact that it relied on entire tie-fighters for propulsion. The idea of wrangling not one, but two fighters in an attempt to push another ship through space horrified him to the core.

"This," declared the insane scavenger, an infuriatingly ignorant note of pride in his voice, "is the Desert Rat. I've been working on it for almost five years."

.

Raey waited, hoping to get some reaction from his pilot companion. Dameron did not reply. He stared at the ship for a long moment, then walked up to it to slam a fist against the side.

"Hey!" cried Raey, starting forward, but Dameron shot him a sidelong glare that stopped him in his tracks.

"This," he said firmly, "is supposed to be a starship. If it rattles," thump, "if it dents," thump, "if it falls apart because I hit it, it is not a starship - it's a deathtrap."

He kicked the landing gear, scowled at the windows that had taken Raey months of careful work to set in their frames.

"You've glued together a ship from... scrap. Can it fly? Will the force of the engines shake it apart?" He climbed up onto the cockpit and shoved an elbow into the Desert Rat's eye. "Answer me this – is this ship even airtight?"

Raey's jaw tensed. "I didn't have any way to test that until I got my hands on a droid," he said tightly, "but yes, it is. I know how ships work."

"Because you've climbed around in the guts of a dead Star Destroyer? That's convincing." Dameron stomped on a maintenance hatch, then shot Raey a look and kicked the panel open. "Oops."

"It's meant to open!" Raey protested. "It's sealed off from the interior, though."

"I broke the latch," Dameron replied dryly. "With my foot. What do you think leaving, or entering, an atmosphere would do to it?"

The temptation to kick something was getting stronger, and if Raey gave in the target wouldn't be his ship. "Okay, I will try to fix the hatch. But the rest -"

"-- Is junk." Dameron slid down the side, landing with a light umph back on the cave floor, his breathing heavy. "It is junk you have meticulously put together, yes, but it is still junk. How soon do you imagine you could get this thing space-ready?"

Raey winced. He didn't have a time-frame, but he had never thought he needed one. The Rat would be done when it was done, and that was that.

Dameron noticed the hesitation. "Ah. Well, BB-8 seems to think we can actually make this thing safe to fly, but I wish you hadn't tried to be so ambitious. Just one of those tie-fighters would have been easy to repair in comparison."

That had been the original plan – fix a fighter – but Raey didn't bother to mention that. If Dameron didn't like the Desert Rat , that was Dameron's problem.

"Not 'we'," he said instead, turning the stern tone right back around on his guest. "It's only been a few days since the desert almost killed you. It will take weeks to fully recover, and the one thing people sick with the sun shouldn't do is exert themselves in hot desert air."

The pilot began to protest, but BB-8 helpfully interrupted him, bumping against his leg with a light squeal that Raey didn't need any help translating.

"You're going to be no help to the Resistance if you cause yourself permanent damage. BB-8 and I can handle the actual work."

Clearly, Dameron didn't like the suggestion, but he didn't need much convincing. His reckless decision to climb around on and attack Raey's ship had already made Raey's point for him.

The Desert Rat's hull was already done, the result of years of attempts and tests and new attempts, so what Raey really needed help with was the inside of his masterpiece. Not the wiring, that he could handle. The vaporators, the life support, the artificial gravity - all had been fairly straight-forward as far as ships go. Pull the parts out of fighters, fix them up and put them through stress-tests until they broke again... it was familiar work. No, what Raey had spent months banging his head against with no breakthroughs were the computers.

"It should be easy," he complained to BB-8 in the safety of the Rat's cockpit, away from Dameron's judgmental hearing. "Get the two tie-fighters to talk to my main console, and just follow the orders as I input them. But they just won't cooperate with me."

Bwoo bewoo...

The translator, strapped to Raey's forearm now, lit up. ~Anti-tampering techniques~ Finally, a relevant thought.

"You have gotten the other Imperial parts to work with my system, though." He flicked a switch on the console and the circulator began to hum lightly. BB-8 made his response from the astromech-port and this time the translator didn't do so well.

~With sometimes the objects are unkind.~

Raey sat down and pulled the offending device off his arm. "I really have to learn to speak droid myself," he grumbled, producing a tiny screwdriver from his belt. "At least we are closer then we used to be..."

.

Despite Raey's resistance to taking advice, Dameron refused to give in. Trusting his life to a starship built by one young man in a desert was somewhat terrifying, but if it was necessary then he had no intention of keeping silent on the safety concerns. Raey might know a lot about how to take apart (and, Dameron reluctantly admitted to himself, put back together) Imperial ships, but he had no frame of reference for what a pilot actually had to look out for. What was actually important once you got in the air.

For hours, BB-8 wrestled with the uncooperative fighters inside the ship, and outside the humans wrestled over everything else.

The scavenger did not want to yield. He dug in his heels, defensive of his scrapyard monster whenever Dameron pointed out a flaw, so Dameron backed off and watched. Not that he wasn't making mental notes, but he kept them to himself for a while. It dawned on him that this was a very important project to his younger companion, far more so then he could have guessed. Any perceived attack on the ship was taken as an attack on him.

"How many times have you checked the landing gear?" Dameron called out, testing the waters. Raey hesitated before replying, cautious but not yet defensive. Dameron let the topic die, but the question stuck with Raey. Within the hour, he was under the Desert Rat on his back, double-checking the retraction/extension system.

"Has your ship faced a sandstorm out here before?" Dameron asked sometime later. Space debris couldn't exactly be simulated on the ground, but sand getting into important exposed parts was a real concern on worlds like this. Raey proudly explained how the ship had almost been buried by just such a storm, and how he had put together and installed air-pressure cleaning devices to forcibly dislodge any blockage that threatened the engines, clogged the landing gear, or obscured the cockpit.

And with that, Dameron had Raey figured.

His advice came in the form of questions, then mild suggestions as the hours became one day, then another. As he got used to talking to Raey, Raey got used to listening to him.

And the hack-job of a starship crept closer and closer to its first flight test.

.

"I am willing to admit that maybe using two fighters for propulsion wasn't my best idea," admitted Raey finally, his eyes fixed on the wobbling tie-fighters straining against the metal frames that held them. BB-8 had managed to break into the flight systems from the cockpit of the Desert Rat early that morning, but now a new problem raised its vicious head. For some reason, there were issues with getting them to act in synchronicity.

"If we had somehow managed to retrieve my fighter, I could be off this planet by now," sighed Dameron. "It was practically fine. Just a few minor..." he shrugged half-heartedly, "...explosions that need fixing, and it would be fine."

"It's not too late to go find it, is it?"

"How long do you reckon Beebee lasted before getting found and captured by a native?"

Raey squinted at the roof of the cave. "Couple hours, half a day, judging by how close to death you were when we found you."

"How long could a significantly larger X-Wing go unnoticed?"

"Point taken."

A frustrated squeal of droid rage rose from the ship, and the tie-fighters died. The hull of Raey's ship groaned as it settled back onto the cave floor from the uneven hover it had managed to achieve.

"Well," declared Raey, rising. "We are almost out of water, and I should try and find something to trade for food next week. Do you want to come back to the At-At with me, or stay here so BB-8 can keep working? I can drop off the other barrel here before heading for the graveyard."

Dameron nodded at the ship. "He's on a roll. Do what you have to."

It felt odd, leaving someone else in charge of his big project, but Raey appreciated the help. He wouldn't even know where to begin with some of the work BB-8 was doing, and the little droid had become... well, if there was ever a droid capable of sheer human determination, then BB-8 had it.

He hopped on the dust-runner and pulled his sand goggles down over his eyes, then, with barely a glance behind him, steered the awkward desert speeder out of the cave into the canyon-proper. It was still early – he should be able to get home for his climbing gear and supplies and still get back before evening.

He didn't make it a third of the way before hearing the dull echo of shrieks. Shrill, metallic, and coming closer. His eyes scanned the horizon, and there they were. Nothing but dots for a moment, gleaming in the sunlight, but even as he focused on them they grew larger. Not that he needed any confirmation of what they were – the sound was enough.

Tie-fighters. The First Order.

The dust-runner protested with a shudder as he yanked the controls around, veering off-course. With luck, they would go past without noticing him. He looked for some dune to hide behind, or an outcropping of rock he could use for cover... but then glanced back at the quickly-closing fighters. They were strangely clustered together, he realized. This wasn't a searching pattern... they were coming from town in close formation.

And they were heading straight towards his canyon.

It clicked together all too easily. Raey's heart jumped into his throat and he wheeled the dust-runner around again, back the way he had come. The old metal shook and the engine roared as he pushed the speeder to its limits, kicking up sand as it sped across the desert.

Hurry... hurry!

The question of how they knew flashed through his mind, and then was abandoned as quickly as if he had dropped it from his shaking dust-runner. It didn't matter. Instinct told him they knew, and now he just had to get back there before they caught up.

Then what?

That was harder to let go of. Raey didn't know what to do next. Hide in the caves? He abandoned that idea immediately as a vision presented itself to him, a vision of the tie-fighters firing into the desert, cracking the canyon apart and bringing a hundred tons of rock and sand down to bury them alive.

Flee?

He glanced behind him, back at the oncoming tie-fighters. They seemed closer, but distance was hard to reckon in the desert. How far could he get before they overtook him? How far could he get with the dust-runner weighed down by a passenger and a droid?

Fight back?

His staff clung, lashed, to the side of the dust-runner, and he knew Dameron had his blaster back at the canyon, but against tie-fighters? No.

The Desert Rat?

Raey grimaced. Maybe. That was their best chance – a weak 'maybe'.

As the fighters' whining grew louder, and the canyon grew closer, Raey wondered if he should just... veer off. They weren't after him. No one cared about one more scavenger on Jakku.

He considered it seriously, and he knew it would be the smart decision. Eventually, there might be another droid who could finish the work on his ship. Even if there wasn't, he could keep working from the headstart BB-8 had given him. There was no reason to risk his life for the Resistance.

And yet his fingers stayed locked in place, steering the dust-runner straight and true. The fighters were behind him, so close now that the roar of their engines throbbed in his ears and set his teeth on edge.

There!

He swerved down into the sloping trench, and before he reached the bottom the tie-fighters screeched by overhead. For a moment, the wild hope that they were going to continue on that way made Raey's heart leap, but then he heard them peel apart, turning away from one another as they swung around.

They are going to block both ends of the canyon. Raey realized he was holding his breath as he forced the dust-runner into a final sprint, skidding into the Desert Rat's cave like a drifting pod-racer across a finish line.

"Dameron! They're coming!" he screamed, but the Resistance pilot was already on his feet, blaster in hand.

"I heard them," he said grimly, then pounded on the side of Raey's ship. "Beebee! We need her airborne now. How many fighters, Raey?"

"Twelve."

"Sithspit."

Raey dragged his staff out of the dust-runner's netting, then looked over at the Desert Rat in dismay. "We can't outrun a squadron in this," he protested. "We haven't even managed to get the engines to work together yet."

"They can't reach us in here from the air," Dameron replied briskly, hauling what few supplies they had left up the Desert Rat's shallow ramp. "Twelve fighters... and they don't know we have a working ship in here. They will have to approach on foot, and that's when we take off." His voice became muffled – Raey ran up after him and found him standing at the top of the ramp, ready to seal the ship. "We don't need to outrun them; we just need to get to their tie-fighters faster then they do."

Raey's eyes widened with the realization. Dameron noticed and a cocky grin spread across his lips.

"Fighter to fighter, they won't stand a chance. I've practiced on the best the First Order has to offer. Come on, let's see if this welded rust-bucket can fly."

BB-8 gave a hasty status report when they docked through the low doorway into the cockpit. Raey didn't even bother looking at his translator – Dameron understood the message and immediately began barking out orders.

"We don't have time to be polite, Beebee. If they don't like each other, fine. Give me access to the left fighter on the pilot controls, and Raey will take the right at the co-pilot station. And I told you to get the engines running! Raey! We're going to have to fly straight up out of this canyon as soon as the first trooper pokes his head into this cave. It would take longer to get back out on the right side, correct?"

Raey slid into the co-pilot chair, his heart beginning to pound again. "Uh... yeah."

"Then that's where we will head. I'm going to call out directions and degrees- blast it, you're not trained. Directions, then. Just follow my lead, and for the love of the Force, relax. You're going to strangle your steering before we even get off the ground." The ship shuddered, then began to roar as BB-8 activated the tie-fighters' engines.

Raey abruptly released the steering controls, then realized his palms were sweaty. He took a forced deep breath and wiped his hands against his desert-dweller robes.

"We're going to die," he muttered, then took his controls again, more carefully.

"Don't jerk the sticks when I call a direction," Dameron warned. "You will want to, especially if I make a correction, but keep the movement steady. The last thing we want is for one of our engines to tear off. Keep at quarter-thrust until we clear the canyon."

Raey swallowed. "Got it."

"Beebee, keep your eye on our fighters. If anything starts going wrong, tell me. Then fix it."

Bweep!

"Not the time, buddy!"

Movement. White against the dusty brown of the desert rocks.

"Forward!" cried Dameron, and Raey immediately pressed his control sticks forward.

"Don't jerk," he whispered to himself, and forced his hands to obey. The Desert Rat lurched awkwardly forward and out into the light of the canyon, already slanting as one of the engines pushed past the other. Raey jumped in his seat as blaster bolts hit the hull outside with harsh, metallic clangs.

"Up, now!"

Heart in his throat, Raey obeyed, trying to match Dameron's speed without yanking uncontrollably at his controls. How am I supposed to do this? he asked desperately, but didn't dare speak aloud. The ship was shaking so hard he was surprised Dameron hadn't bitten his tongue already.

The Desert Rat soared upwards with less elegance then a drunken Hutt. A brush with the canyon wall sent a rush of adrenaline through Raey's body and, without realizing it, his grip on the sticks became vice-like again.

"Aaaand right, slow and steady."

Raey's hands jerked. A shriek of metal warned him, too late, to be more careful, and BB-8 squealed in concern.

"Steady, Raey!"

"Yeah, yeah, I've got it," he insisted shakily. His mouth was dry... when was the last time he had had a sip of water? He needed one now.

"A little to the left. Just a touch... a touch more... good. Hold straight, and prepare to increase to three-quarters thrust on 'go'. Ready? Three, two, one, go!"

Raey pushed the right engine and the Desert Rat jumped forward. In the following, almost quiet moment, finally able to collect a thought, Raey realized with a shock that his ship was flying.

It flies...

"A nudge to the right."

He gave the sticks the lightest of pushes to the right, and he could feel the Rat responding. Suddenly, the almost jokingly disparaging name he had given his ship felt wrong, unwarranted. When it had just been an unfinished project hiding in a cave, Desert Rat was fine. Not now. Not in the sky.

"Prepare to decrease to half thrust. On 'go'. Ready? Three, two, one, go." Success. "And now to one-quarter thrust. Ready?"

Three, two, one, go, Raey counted off right alongside the pilot, and the Rat slowed smoothly.

"Now for the tricky part. Give me a downward nudge."

Raey complied, and this time Dameron moved to match his movement, not the other way around.

"Now, repeat that. As exact as you can."

The Desert Rat protested, but it was a mild creak compared to the beginning of their short flight. Dameron nodded, satisfied.

"Good. See the fighters up ahead? We need to land next to them. Keep that degree, that nudge, the same no matter how many times I repeat the order, got it? When I call 'half', decrease the speed by half of whatever it is currently. 'Cut' means cut power completely. Got it?"

Raey quickly wiped off his palms again and nodded, brow furrowed in concentration.

"Out loud, Raey."

"Yes, I got it."

"Good. You're doing well. Alright... aaaand nudge."

The Desert Rat dipped.

"And nudge."

Again.

"Beebee, is our landing gear extended?"

Wobebeep!

"Keep it that way. Halve speed... and nudge."

Raey's stomach lurched as the ship swooped down.

"And nudge... and half... and nudge."

The Desert Rat shook and shrieked, trying to stay together as Raey struggled to keep up with Dameron. The Resistance pilot was in his own world, it seemed, concentrating intently even as he snapped out commands.

"Nudge. Nudge. Nudge..."

Each time, Raey felt like his measurement was slipping. No wonder nudge wasn't a real metric. The ground was close... Raey almost felt like he could hear sand, kicked up in their passing, hitting the bottom of the hull. The tie-fighters they were after were right there, sitting abandoned in the sand...

"Brace, and cut!"

Brace-?

The Desert Rat slammed into the ground with a painful thump and snap of metal. Raey pitched backwards, his chair swiveling with the movement to deposit him without warning on the floor. He rolled over, groaning, but then heard Dameron's sharp,

"Get up, we have to hurry! Beebee, go!"

Raey pushed himself off the floor, teeth clenched against the pain of new bruises. Dameron grabbed his elbow and hauled him the rest of the way to his feet, then whirled around and grabbed his blaster from where it, too, had fallen to the floor.

"Run!"

Raey snatched his staff and ran. BB-8 stood at the top of the already-opening ramp, but Dameron didn't wait for it to hit the sand; he jumped, landed in a crouch, then took off towards the nearest tie-fighter with Raey and BB-8 hard on his heels.

"Will there be room?" Raey cried as they got closer. The Imperial fighters seemed so small compared to his Desert Rat. Dameron didn't even answer, he just climbed up the side of the fighter and popped the hatch.

"Here, give Beebee a boost," he said, bracing himself against the upright wing of the tie-fighter. Raey stopped next to the ship and heaved the small but heavy droid up. Dameron took BB-8 from him and let the droid fall with a thump into the tie-fighter, then crouched and offered Raey his hand.

"Plug into the guns," he called down to BB-8 as Raey clambered up after him. "Raey, you'll have to squeeze in next to Beebee." Dameron glanced back towards the entrance of the canyon, then dropped into the fighter.

Raey scrambled up after him, hesitating at the hatch as Dameron maneuvered into the pilot's chair. Then, just before following the older man's lead (and perhaps moved to double-check by the same paranoia as Dameron), he looked up to scan the desert one more time.

Right in front of them, in the stretch of sand between the Desert Rat and the fighters where they could not have helped but notice, there stood a man. Huge, almost too large to be human. Jet black armor covered him from head to foot, and a heavy cloak hung off his broad shoulders, barely moving in the faint desert breeze.

"Fly..."

Raey's voice barely made it past his teeth. His chest constricted, capturing all breath inside him along with the warning. Dameron said something, but Raey couldn't make out his words anymore past the blood pounding in his ears.

Move, Raey, move!

But he couldn't. He felt paralyzed by a stare he could not see behind the helmet, a weight pressing around him unlike anything he had ever known.

Then BB-8 beeped urgently at him, cutting through the natural sounds deafening him, and Raey threw himself down the hatch.

"Go!" he screamed, not caring that his voice cracked in fear. "Go, go, go!"

"The hatch-"

"JUST FLY!"

Outside, the armored man held out his hand to the side. A deep hum filled the air, and the sand shone red.

"What the v-" Dameron cursed, the flash of light yanking his attention up from the control panel. Raey leaned over the front chair, eyes fixed on the figure in the sand outside and the lightsaber now glowing in his hand.

The tie-fighter roared as Dameron thrust the power to full, and the sudden surge sent sand blowing upward into the air. The figure became obscured, but his saber did not. The red glow burned through the sand, then it suddenly leapt forward. Raey cried out, then the tie-fighter pitched sideways. One wing fell first, separated from the main body of the fighter by one clean throw. BB-8 squealed a warning, but it was too late. The tie-fighter hit the ground and both humans slammed into the wall, then ceiling, then floor as their ship rolled and tumbled across the sand.

A heavy droid body hit Raey in the shoulder and something snapped out of place, but he had no breath left to scream. The movement stopped, but everything already hurt. His vision swam, his head felt as split as the tie-fighter. He saw light... beside him?... and he slowly managed to get the arm that still worked over to grab the lip of the hatch.

Out...

A groan behind him. Something tugged at his belt. He had to get out safely, then get Dameron out. Fire... they had crashed, and crashes caused fire.

His thoughts spun. Raey pulled himself out of the fighter and rolled over onto the sand, groaning.

Distant yells, coming closer. Urgency surged through him. He tried to rise, but his stomach lurched and he knelt helplessly on all fours, dizziness making even pushing himself up seem like an impossible feat.

Black boots entered his dazed vision. A lump of fear filled his throat, and then...

A flash of pain, and darkness overwhelmed him.