Kyber Heart - Poe Dameron

Chapter 57

"I gotta talk to you about something." Urgency was in Finn's tone and step as he strode across the cave, meeting his friends halfway. The small white and green droid followed at his heels.

"I gotta talk to you about something," Poe returned as they reached each other. "I can't do this alone. I need you in command with us."

"This droid has – thank you. I appreciate that."

"General."

"General." Finn directed the title to both Poe and Nova – even without Poe nodding to her in reference, he would have safely assumed he would have asked her to lead with him. "This droid has a ton of information about Exegol."

Nova raised an eyebrow, glancing down at the conical droid, who looked back up at them with the sweet curiosity of a baby bird.

"What? Cone-face?" Poe said incredulously.

"I am Dee-Oh!" it corrected; its robotic chirp as indignant as a droid could replicate of a person's tone.

"Sorry. Dee-Oh."

"It was going to Exegol with Ochi of Bestoon," Finn said.

Poe frowned. "Why was Ochi going there?"

"To bring a little girl he was supposed to take from Jakku to the Emperor. And he wanted her alive."

Realisation dawned on Nova – there was only one little girl that could be. "Rey."

---

D-O politely spun, allowing Nova to plug a cable into the back of its head, hooking it into the console for the data transfer. Soon enough, the screen was littered with red and green lights, a complete readout – maps, diagrams, navigational codes, everything.

"All the information you need for an airstrike on Exegol," Finn said.

"Yeah, except how to get there," Poe said in disbelief. "Are you seeing these atmo readings?"

"It's a mess out there," Finn muttered. "Magnetic cross fields."

"Gravity wells, solar winds?" Rose added from beside him.

"How does a fleet even take off from there?" Nova asked in frustration. "Better yet, how do we stand a chance of surviving through all that?"

"Terribly sorry." C-3PO shuffled up behind them, accompanied by R2-D2. "I'm afraid Artoo's memory bank must be crossed with his logic receptors."

"What makes you say that?" Nova frowned – she knew better than to trust anything the protocol droid said about the astromech on face value. He was not exactly the most imaginative of droids.

"He says he is receiving a transmission from Master Luke."

R2-D2 happily let himself get plugged into another dataport, providing a new map on the display. A path was charted on it, and a blip denoted a craft in flight along it.

"That's an old craft ID," Poe said

"Yeah, but I recognise it," Nova said, leaning over the controls, finding the ID stored deep within their systems – almost forty years old. "That's Luke's X-Wing."

"It's transmitting course-marker signals on its way to the Unknown Regions," C-3PO observed.

"It's Rey," Finn said, eyes locked on the monitor. "She's going to Exegol. And She's showing us how to get there."

"Then we go together," Poe said firmly.

---

In the shadow of Leia's old blockade runner, Tantive IV, the Resistance assembled. Pilot, soldiers, all manner of personnel crowded around the three generals, making up an inner circle with a few of their most trusted ranking companions. In the centre was a hastily rigged-up holodisplay, the blue images of the readouts flickering in and out.