Hello! I hope you enjoy this first chapter because I've enjoyed writing it. I'll admit that I'm new to the Star Wars fandom and particularly new to writing it. I've done some research but you can never do enough, in my opinion. If I've messed up anything universe-wise such as planet names or things like Tie Fighters, etc. I'd appreciate you letting me know. And as this is a fresh idea for me, not everything is fully formulated so I'm very interested in feedback and where you think this might/should go. Thank you! I only own Gage.

Gage pulled her safety goggles down over her eyes before rolling under the Snowspeeder on her creeper. She unlocked the control panel, found the pair of faulty wires, and turned on her hand torch. Sparks flew as she fused them. Though it was late, Gage wanted the maintenance done before she forced herself to rest. Sleep had been hard to come by since she joined the First Order and particularly since she'd been given a position on the Finalizer.

"I'm the best mechanic in the galaxy," she'd stated when asked why the First Order should bother with her, "and the Resistance's loss is your gain." What had started as a joke between Gage and Poe had become the tagline General Leia saddled her with. "Poe Dameron and Gage Marlow, the best pilot and mechanic in the galaxy!" Poe would say as he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and Gage would laugh, aching to be a pilot too. The words sounded hollow and fake when she said them seriously but they must have rung true because here she was.

It had all started with Poe's hurried whisper, "General Leia wants to see you." Gage remembered how Poe assumed that Leia was finally going to give her a commission, an X-Wing Fighter, an orange jumpsuit, a flight jacket; all the things she had been coveting for years. Gage had thought it more likely that Leia wanted her to look at R2-D2 again or compliment her on the work she'd done on Poe's BB unit. Both of them had been incorrect.

"I want information on the First Order, Gage," Leia had said, "and I think you can get it for me."

Gage wasn't sure why Leia had picked her to be her first intelligence officer (the term "spy" sounded too criminal, however accurate it may have been). She found it particularly strange, considering how Leia wouldn't even give her a pilot position. There were times when Gage resented Leia for that. She sucked a breath in through her teeth as she turned off the hand torch and tucked it into the belt of her grey jumpsuit, realizing this was one of those times.

There were few things Gage liked more than flying. In fact, she could only think of two; Poe's charming, infectious laugh and Poe himself. She was a good technician, perhaps even a great one, but she didn't love being a mechanic. It was a lonely job, where most people only came to her when they needed something fixed, where she was forced to watch her best friend slowly leaving her behind, and being one of Leia's best technicians kept her grounded. Leia had never admitted it but Gage knew the reason she had never received the pilot commission was because Leia was afraid of losing her to it. "I want to actually do something for the Resistance. I want to be more than a mechanic," Gage always told Poe and suddenly, she was. By comparison, "double agent" sounded much better, even with the multiple negative implications and Leia's formal appraisal of her as "unremarkable."

"No one in the First Order will notice you, certainly not my son or any other high ranking officials," Leia had told her. Avoiding the attention of Ben Solo and his new friends in the First Order was part of the assignment so Gage didn't rankle at Leia's blunt words. If being overlooked was what the Resistance required her to do, Gage felt sure she could do it. I play that part well enough now, she'd thought.

Gage grabbed her light before pushing the wires she'd been working on back in the control panel. While her hands were still in the Snowspeeder, she decided to check for any other weaknesses. Her fingers ran along pipes and tubes, tightening and loosening valves along the way.

Gage would readily admit that not much had changed for her since coming into the First Order. Leia said, "Everyone needs a mechanic," and that was certainly true. X-Wings weren't that different from Tie Fighters, blasters and droids malfunctioned everywhere, and she still worked long hours. The only noticeable difference was the animosity most in the First Order threw her way.

She occupied a strange place in the First Order hierarchy. Neither a Stormtrooper nor someone in charge. Neither trustworthy nor deceitful. Only worth notice when a Stormtrooper wanted to let off steam but good enough to come to when there was a genuine problem. And that had been in the months before she'd worked her way onto the Finalizer, their finest ship. Recruits were rare in the First Order and defectors even rarer. That was a title Gage could only share with Leia's son, now called Kylo Ren, and she bore the suspicion that came with it.

She'd been on the Finalizer mere days and had already drawn far too much attention. But it's to be expected, she told herself, testing the strength of a pipe. Leaving the Resistance doesn't happen every day. Luckily, she'd sent her first pod back to base before boarding. No one in the First Order had blinked an eye at a pod being ejected with no life forms on it. They'd just assumed someone somewhere had a mistake and while their newest member was an ex-Resistance fighter, there was doubt she could manage such a thing. Gage couldn't help smiling at the thought.

Suddenly, her fingers slipped, loosening a valve far too much. Oil splattered across the chest of her jumpsuit. "Of course," she muttered, quickly covering the leak with a hand. As if in response, a streak of oil ran down her cheek. With her free hand, Gage dropped her light and perhaps foolishly, shed her goggles. She tried to tighten the valve with her fingers but they were too slick. Groaning, she felt for a wrench, more than aware she didn't have one in her belt. The wrench she needed was buried in her toolbox, which was sitting near her feet in front of the Snowspeeder. Gage had been the only one on the floor for hours and she couldn't risk rolling out on her creeper and dealing with the massive mess that would be made in her wake. General Hux had already been looking for reasons to throw her off the Finalizer and she didn't need to give him any more.

She angled her foot and tried to slip it through the handle of her toolbox but only succeeded in knocking it over. "Damn," Gage whispered when she heard the clang of metal hitting the floor. She loosened her grip on the pipe for just a second, long enough for a drop of oil to run the length of her scalp. She scooted her creeper out as far as she dared go and felt for the wrench with her foot. She heard a screwdriver roll across the floor. "Come on," she murmured.

She paused, oil running over her glove, when she thought she heard footsteps approaching. "Hey!" Gage called. For good measure, she kicked another screwdriver to make some noise. I know you see me, she thought. I can hear them now, 'Oh, that's just the Resistance girl. Let her drown in oil.' But the footsteps came to a stop at the Snowspeeder and Gage tried not to sigh in relief when she saw the outline of boots beside her own. "Would you hand me a pipe wrench?" she asked, oil slipping beneath her sleeve. She gestured at the overturned toolbox with her foot.

A wrench slid to rest beside her free hand, so quickly that she hadn't seen them grab it. She took it eagerly before letting her face fall. It wasn't right and Gage doubted that this person would be willing to help her twice. Caring too much about other Stormtroopers was frowned upon and she wasn't even one of them. Gage was still an outsider after six months in the First Order. She didn't see that changing any time soon. She clenched her jaw and threw the wrench anyway. It came to a halt in front of their boots.

"Not that one! The wrench I'm looking for has an adjustable head and a red handle." Not a moment later, something else clattered to the floor near her hand. She picked it up, a wrench with an adjustable head and a red handle. "Great, that's it! Thanks." Gage winced. Saying "thanks" wasn't a First Order thing to do, even if someone higher up in the chain of command did you a favor. Which are few and far between.

Gage shrugged it off and brought the wrench up to take care of the situation at hand. She shifted her fingers blocking the leak to adjust the wrench and closed her eyes in time for oil to splash against her chest again. Blinking them back open, she locked the wrench around the valve and tightened. Slowly, the flow of oil altogether stopped and Gage slouched against her creeper, laughing in relief. A glance towards her toolbox told her that she hadn't been left alone. Great, she thought. By myself on the floor with a Stormtrooper. Still, she wasn't nervous. If she had to knock one out to prove that she wasn't to be messed with, well, Gage had no problem with that. If they wanted something done, she was practiced at telling them what they wanted to hear. If they inquired about the Resistance, she had her very practiced speech.

She rolled out from underneath the Snowspeeder and asked lowly, "Is there something I can help you with?" The wrench fell from her hand as she sat up and saw who had helped her. She would have preferred an anonymous Stormtrooper. Standing before Gage was Kylo Ren. Since coming aboard the Finalizer, she had only seen him a handful of times and those from a safe distance. From her position on the ground, he appeared larger than life, taller than a man had any right to be.

"Yes, there is," he replied, a black mask distorting what must be an already deep voice. Gage nervously pulled off her dirty gloves, slick with oil, and tossed them onto a tray with her half-eaten dinner. She certainly wasn't going to finish it now.

"Yes, sir," she responded, fishing around on the floor behind her for her cleaning rag. Finding it, she grabbed the wrench again and forced herself to her feet. "What do you need me to do?" She began to fiddle with cleaning the wrench, noticing that oil had sunk through her glove to stain the nails of her left hand.

The main floor was well and truly deserted, no one to see if he decided to kill her for daring to ask for not just one tool but two. Their only company was an array of Tie Fighters and Snowspeeders. Gage caught her reflection in a pane of glass on one of the former. Though it was distorted, she could see the mark of black on her cheek, the oil across her chest and neck, even the mark of slickness in her dark hair. This was not the way to make a first real impression with someone like Kylo Ren, filthy and on your back. He already held the power in most situations. Why make it easier for him?

"You call yourself the best mechanic in the galaxy," he said. Gage rubbed the rag along her collarbone, hoping she was making progress.

Her full lips parted in a dry laugh. "I did say that," she admitted. "I would tell you it's an exaggeration but I'm certainly the best you've got." She took the corner of the rag to her cheek but only smeared the mark.

"I want you to prove it." There was something unnerving about not knowing where he was looking, which Gage supposed was the entire point.

"Gladly, sir." Gage expected him to gesture at his shuttle behind him, say that light speed was acting up or that his pilots had noticed their cockpit controls were malfunctioning; problems she had solved a myriad of times before this.

"Why did you leave the Resistance, Gage Marlow?" He said her full name as if it was one. And I should have known that's what he wanted, she thought. Gage's fingers instinctively went to her hand torch when he took a step toward her. This time she knew Kylo Ren was looking at her hands, one wrapped around a wrench and the other around the hand torch.

"I grew tired of General Leia's leadership." Gage made her grip relax and kept her eyes on his visor.

"You grew tired of her not giving you what you want," he declared.

"Yes," she confessed coolly before pausing. "I've heard you can read minds. Is that what you just did to me?"

"No. Your face is easy to read." She nodded, dark hair falling over her shoulder. Guess I should get a mask like everyone else, she considered. Leia had mentioned before a group of Resistance fighters, including Gage and Poe, that the Force could influence weaker minds and even look into them. Before leaving, Gage had trained herself to keep focused on tasks at hand and nothing more. A blank mind could be as suspicious as thinking, "I'm a spy!" as far as Gage was concerned. Even the sharpest mind could fall prey to a clever trick. "What is it that you wanted?"

"I wanted to be a pilot." Gage kicked her toolbox to an upright position and tossed the wrench into it. "But Leia knew I was a better mechanic. She was right, of course. I'm an excellent one."

"Is that the only reason you came to the First Order?"

"No, sir," she replied. "Being there didn't feel… quite right. It's hard to explain." Being there was lonesome without Poe, she thought.

"Your loyalty has been questioned. Captain Phasma's squad is suspicious of you and General Hux would have you executed." Kylo Ren managed to seem larger when delivering threats and Gage straightened her posture to halfway match him. She wasn't a tall girl but she didn't consider herself small either.

"Do they question your loyalty too?" Gage asked before she could regret it. "You defected."

There was a long pause where she expected to see his infamous cross-guard lightsaber flash before cutting her down. Gage's nervous fingers crept back to her hand torch. But he didn't acknowledge it.

"You wanted me to do something for you, sir?" she reminded him, hoping he'd tell her to fix up an old Tie Fighter and be done with it.

"Yes," he remarked, his voice a tinge mechanical. "There's an issue with my helmet that none of the other technicians have been able to figure out."

"Your helmet?" she questioned. "I've never worked on anything like that before. What's the problem with it?" Kylo Ren didn't respond. He only stood there, tall and intimidating. Probably laughing at me behind that dark mask. "Oh, so it's a test. All right," she said. "I'll pass it." She extended a hand before immediately drawing it back. He'd never show me his face, she realized. Then part of the power dynamic would shift in someone else's favor. "Send it my way tomorrow."

He walked away from her without a word of acknowledgement. So much for not drawing attention, Gage thought and began collecting her scattered tools.