Bonded

Chapter 38: Exposed

CHAPTER SUMMARY: A rumor circulating after Bandomeer turns out to be true.

Heads up— This is a "no Kylo/Ben" chapter. There will be three more of these before the story is finished, one for Rey and two for Kylo/Ben.

"Hey, Finn!" Poe calls absently. "You done yet?"

"Give me a minute!"

Poe doesn't look up, eyes fixed on his datapad. He's standing in the center of the training room, surrounded by shipping crates. Normally, it's all open space, just a blue matted floor, but now it's covered in a miscellany of equipment scattered in piles.

Poe reviews the figures on his pad— 36 headsets, 90 commlinks, 40 transceivers, 13 subspace radios, 140 packs of bacta bandages, 6 lightpads, 18 field cauterizers...

His eyes start to glaze over. He tries to concentrate, but the figures seem to run together. He sighs, his lids drooping.

So tedious. He's not cut out for this.

Yet he feels like it's half his life now, managing things. This whole base is like one big list he has to wrangle. Every day, he wakes up and oversees it all, the instructors, the recruits, the weapons, the equipment, the training ops...

Not that he's complaining. It means a lot that Leia trusts him with this kind of responsibility. When she put him in charge of the training base, she told he'd be holding the heart of the organization in his hands. Everyone who joins the Resistance starts right here, under his guidance. It's the greatest privilege, to mold a new generation of heroes, teach them courage, strength, compassion.

It's just... every now and then he misses spending most of his time in a cockpit.

Suddenly, BB8 pops out from behind a stack of crates, chirping.

Poe snaps up.

"No, don't worry about that." He lowers his pad. "We just need the numbers right now."

The droid beeps once, rolling to meet him.

"Alright, buddy." Poe lifts his pad. "Tell me what you got."

BB8 launches into a string of beeps, and Poe follows along, nodding.

"Uh huh." He enters a note. "What about the class fives?"

The droid beeps matter-of-factly.

"Alright..." Poe enters more notes. "And the med droids?"

BB8 answers, bobbing back and forth.

"And how many need some work?"

The droid chirps.

"Really?" Poe balks. "None of them?"

BB8 beeps a confirmation.

"Man..." Poe smiles at his pad. "We're gettin' the good stuff now."

"You're telling me..." Finn walks up, stepping around a pile of headsets. "Someone sent us five bacta tanks, all new."

"Yeah?" Poe grins at him. "What else?"

"Uh..." Finn lifts his datapad. "We've got 6 nanocams, 17 autodocs, 90 field kits, over 800 ration packs, 300 K-18 bars, and..." He squints. "30 bottles of firewater."

"What?" Poe knits his eyebrows. "Who sent us that?"

Finn tsks, glancing at his pad.

"Someone named... Grekh Vizago?" He looks up. "From Canto Bight?"