BB-8 rolled his body up the entrance platform. I ducked under the hatch, the man squeezed in, then Rey slammed the lever, sealing us in to the ship. Jogging slightly through the hall, she pointed to a ladder. "Weapons are down there."

Climbing to the second floor, the man called, "You ever fly this thing before?"

"This ship hasn't flown in years!" said Rey. 

Assuming she was searching for the cockpit, I ran after her. As I settled into the co-pilot seat, I noticed her staring at me. 

"What are you doing?" she muttered.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" I asked. I flipped on what appeared to be the engines.

At the time, I continued to be just as a mystery as she was to myself. She spent another moment staring, then focused the entirety of her attention on the control panel.

The engines were ready to go. She carefully applied one hand to the handle and applied the slightest pressure. The handle was stuck. Rey jerked it into forward position, which unstuck the handle, but also sent the ship lurching forward.

"Incoming!" I shouted, pointing through the shutters at an incoming TIE fighter.

"Don't just sit there, help me!" she ordered.

"I'm trying!" I yelled, scanning the console quickly. "This ship is a piece of jun--"

As if it didn't want me calling it junk, the ship sprung into action, sending us flying into the empty desert.

"I guess that works," I said. "What did you do?"

"I just pressed a random button," admitted Rey. 

During the few seconds we were free of blasts from TIE fighters, I secured the seat belt over my body. Rey's hands left the control panel for a second, and from the ditch we were flying over came two TIE fighters, firing at the belly of our ship.

Rey threw her arms on the panel, jerking the break into position, then shoving the handle as far forward as it would go. She maneuvered the ship to fly in strange patterns across the open land, avoiding a majority of the blasts by the TIE fighters. At one point, the ship performed a barrel roll to avoid a missile.

A thud came from the hallway, followed by a emotional beep from my poor droid. "BB-8, you hold on!"

I threw my hands over her torso, groping her chair for a seat belt. The basics of flying were drilled into my brain, thanks to Poe, but I wasn't aiming to test my knowledge.

Rey craned her neck to the hallway. "Are you ever going to shoot back?"

"Are the shields up?" the man yelled back.

"Job for the co-pilot," said Rey.

I turned a pair of blue and red knobs. "Now they are."

"Not the shields," she said.

"Well, I am incredibly dizzy at the moment," I defended.

"Left, left, down five. Up two... Yes! Hit it!"

Again, Rey jerked the breaks, except that time, she flew the ship in a vertical circle around the incoming TIE fighters. During the flip, our gunner gained a clear shot, fired, and proceeded to destroy one of the ships.

Rey exerted a sigh of relief. "Nice job!"

"I'm getting pretty good at this..." the man breathed.

"Don't get too cocky," I said. "We've still got one more to take out."

Judging by how the ship was reacting to the multiple fake-out's Rey had performed, she could handle one more.

However, the moment we spiraled into the sky, the TIE fighter anticipated our move. He stayed low and fired, successfully hitting the canon we were using to fire back with.

"Are you all right?" shouted Rey. 

"I'm fine! The gun's stuck in forward!"

"You have to lose him," I said. "Find cover."

Wide eyed, Rey nodded. "I can do this. I can do this." She inhaled and jutted the handle into forward.

I blinked once and the bright sun was replaced with darkness. The longer we zoomed throughout the hollow area, I came to understand where Rey sent us into. We were flying inside the skeleton of an Imperial Walker.

To avoid blasts, Rey piloted the ship in ways that, personally, I wouldn't have, but she kept us alive for the time being, so I kept quiet. However, when she almost crashed the ship trying to zip in and out of the Walker's rotting exterior, I shook my head wildly. Poe always said dying in a cockpit would be an honorable death-- I was not Poe. 

"I can get to the other gun--"

"Wait, wait!" she yelled. "Hold on!"

"As if I wasn't already," the man replied. He sounded nauseous. I couldn't blame him.

"Not you," she said. "I'm setting you up a clean shot!"

Rey slammed the break, jerked the handle in a fast motion, and in the daylight once more, she flew the ship high into the sky. At a rather high altitude, she asked me to kill the engines.

And for some reason, I obeyed without question. Lucky for our plan, I was incredibly confused on the location of the engine dials and buttons, which in turn, made it appeared as though our ship was malfunctioning. We fell fast. Rey flipped the ship on its belly.

A surprised gasp came from our gunner, followed by an excessive amount of trigger pulls, and when Rey and I successfully gave the ship life, we saw the TIE fighter explode upon contact with the sand.