Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The dark, windowless room was filled with a confusing array of pipes and chutes. Like worms after rain, they ran through the room, opening their mouths here and there, following no rhyme or reason other than “here’s still some space left”. The muzzles opened into boxes on the floor or onto tables. Whatever came out of the crude transportation system apparently was scheduled to get packed up in this room. To that end fallen out of use workbenches were now serving as surfaces for boxes of all sizes. The boxes contained plastic bags, clips and small plastic pieces of various shapes and unknown function. Scattered across the room were mismatched chairs, some of which were even looking still stable enough to support a person’s weight.

Lined up along two of the walls were heavy looking tables. Someone had moved thin wooden panels in front of them to create a closed storage space underneath. When the light in the room went on, the things stored under those tables could be seen as faint outlines through the wood. The shapes were subtly moving… like creatures at rest, breathing, sometimes twitching uncomfortably in their sleep.

“Here they are.”

A low, male voice, belonging to a middle aged person.

The man moved one of the panels to the side.

“Not that this barrier would have kept them in”, he said. “It’s more of a discouragement. The panel gets kicked down – the noise alerts the security droid and someone gets in trouble. Teaching them boundaries and to behave.”

Said security droids were agitatedly moving closer, now that their potential prey had gotten offered a way out. The size of droideka, and also resembling them in their shape, but lacking shields and armed with nothing better than a light blaster set to stun and a small reservoir of liquid cable fluid to restrain fleeing people, these machines were dangerous to unarmed opponents only.

Under the tables now three persons started stirring, stretching, rolling over and shaking their limbs after having spent an uncomfortable night on the ground with no blanket whatsoever, let alone so much as the resemblance of a carpet on the metal-tiled floor. The shorter of the two males pushed himself into sitting position. Reflexively trying to rub his hurting neck, he was hindered by the fact that everyone’s hands were still restrained in front of their bodies.

“Shit…” the man uttered, what didn’t do anything to make the situation any less awkward. He lowered his cuffed hands again.

To his left and right a larger man and a short woman emerged from under the tables. A spherical droid with orange markings joined the trio with some delay. It uttered beeps to the effect of that it couldn’t yet judge what it was able to do with the newly attached restraining bolt.

“A droid?” A second voice asked, perplexed. This one was male, too, also human, but a little younger sounding than the first speaker.

“I was told to treat the droid as an independent threat, not a piece of personal property”, the older man replied. “And also that it’s a troublemaker, but we must not memory-wipe it on account of it possibly being in possession of important intel.”

“Well, I don’t know what to say”, the younger man said after a short pause. “Rebels. Rebel fighters. That’s a bit high profile. I mean, for now they look as if someone had put them thoroughly through the wringer, but they will recover and then there’s no telling what they might do. Why the fuck are they still wearing boots, even? So that they can comfortably kick their wardens in the family jewels, or what?”

“I didn’t want the prisoners to walk around the workshop barefoot. There’s always the odd pointy die or piece of scrap plastic lying around.”

“Well, yes, that makes sense, but combat boots? Please! See to it that these go.”

By now the trio had glimpsed as many details about their captors as possible without actually looking up.

The middle aged man was wearing a sturdy overall and judging from the way the light got reflected by his head he was also wearing goggles, either around the neck or strapped to a cap on this hat.
The younger man was clad in a First Order uniform, but of a branch the Resistance fighters couldn’t identify. He was armed with a light blaster and a sap. When he turned around, both the holster and the stick were flapping, since they were not strapped to the man’s leg. Somewhat less than a professional fighter, he might just be a warden in a civil prison, provided such a thing existed in the First Order.

A small town jail, really? Not quite the place one would put well known Resistance fighters with bounties on their individual heads into…

Perplexed BB-8 looked up now, after all, followed by Finn, Poe and Rose.

“Don’t give me that look, little spitball. I’m as confused as you are”, the goggle-wearer exclaimed. “Your owners are dangerous anarchists, who know neither law nor order. That’s different from lawbreakers, who at least are aware of…”

“That’s nerf-shit!” Poe couldn’t keep himself from saying. However, talking into the workshop master in this way, he only confirmed the man’s preconceived idea of what a Resistance member was. The man nodded to BB-8 as if to say “See? Told you!”. The silent statement, followed by BB-8’s resigned beep was enough to shut Poe up.

The workshop master gestured towards one of three doors leading out of the room.

“Toilets and sinks are over there, if you need them. There’s another sink by my desk, but it doesn’t have drinkable water. I pinned a note on the tap to remind myself – and now you – of that.”

“Indoor refreshers, huh? Baiting us with peak civilization, I see.”

The remark earned Poe a casual kick to silence the mouthy prisoner. The security droids remained in place, watching, waiting.

Keeping his head low, Poe flashed Finn and Rose a smile. A smile, not a grin, his friends noted. The smile reassured them that Poe wasn’t grandstanding, that he had taken a carefully calculated risk to get an idea of the level of tolerance (or lack thereof) and retaliation they had to expect from their captors. Poe Dameron had a way with words, a somewhat short fuse, but also a working brain.

Rose was the first to shakily rise and vanish into the bathroom, not because her bladder need would have been especially pressing, but for some much needed moments of privacy. Just standing enclosed by four walls and a firmly closed door, letting cold water run over her face and the fingers of her still cuffed hands served to calm the nerves of the shyest of the foursome. When she returned to the workshop, Rose was once again able to scan it with her eyes and commit to memory any details that might turn out helpful later.

Finn went in next, then Poe. When he exited the tiny chamber, the door to the floor opened and in came the younger warden they had heard speak up before. In his wake walked two guards equipped with security vests, helmets and heavier blaster pistols. The helmets were closed, but the taller guard’s was shaped differently, as if accommodating a non-human skull. Moreso, it didn’t look improvised, suggesting the presence of a sizeable population of his species – as well as a large fraction of them cooperating with the occupation force.

The guards were marching a tall, red-haired man into the room.

Finn squinted his eyes.

“Well, if they have a problem with us being too “high profile”, then they are going to love him”, he murmured.

The flaming hair, the man’s bearing, mimic and the fact that he was wearing a General’s uniform had already strongly suggested the prisoner’s identity, but the bandaged left upper leg proved beyond doubt that he was indeed General Hux of the First Order High Command. Finn had personally given him that injury during their last encounter.

At their superior’s command, the guards let go of the prisoner, causing him to lose his footing and slump to the floor. The fall prompted a groan, but no swearword escaped the man’s mouth.

“Rebel disguised as high ranking military member…?” the workshop master whispered, as if expressing a faint hope he already knew would not come true.

“High ranking military member playing rebel”, Finn corrected. Approaching the newcomer together with the other three he exclaimed: “The hell, Hux, what’s going on here?”

“Someone I could name shot at us”, Hux replied through clenched teeth while trying to get up. When his wounded leg protested against the very idea, though, he had to content himself with sitting on the floor. “The Steadfast’s sensors got taken out, forcing her crew to hyperjump more or less blind and marooning us at a pathetic colony somewhere in the Trilon sector. The Steadfast is done for, last I heard was them preparing her for a controlled ditch.”

“Pretty sure that’s confidential information”, Poe commented.

“You didn’t complain about all the other intel you received. Besides, I still have no idea which planet we are on, where exactly on that planet this facility is, what the building’s floorplan looks like or what climate zone we’d stumble into, if we made it out of here. So for all practical purposes we know nothing about our whereabouts.”

“You’re right”, Finn agreed. “But at least now everything makes sense. The First Order had to work with what they had to secure their catch. We didn’t get the best security they could afford, but the best that was available.”

“I wasn’t aware of any of that”, the workshop master let slip. “They came with that Star Destroyer, claimed quarters and started tossing orders around. Never said a word about there having been a battle or their ship being damaged.”

And our Governor, whom the First Order put into office? They’re treating her like dirt, as if she was a local.

“Why would they tell you?” Finn asked. “They never do. All “they” do is point you at the target.”

The comment didn’t have the desired effect. Instead of questioning the way things were handled in the First Order, the workshop master nodded in acceptance of his place in the grand scheme of things, the place of one who only received the exact amount of information required to fulfill his function. It was sickening.

“Alright”, the workshop master said while releasing everyone’s handcuffs with a remote, “I need everyone’s shoe size and then you start working, because we’re not putting you up for free.”

Confused Hux looked up. “Shoe-size?”

“Stop questioning me, prisoner…” The overseer took a small scanner out if his overall pocket, pointed it at Hux and waited for an output to appear on the screen. Then he finished his sentence with: “…prisoner #53-06.”

“The bastards chipped us while we were out!” Rose gasped, but here words got drowned out by the General protesting: “That wasn’t questioning, that was asking for an explanation, you idiot!”

“Oh, c’mon, they couldn’t tell the difference in grammar school, how do you expect them to tell it here?” Poe teased.

Meanwhile Finn realized that the colony had to be really small and pretty much crime free. The first number of their prisoner IDs was the year expressed in the imperial calendar - 53 After the Formation of the Empire – the second identified Armitage Hux as only the sixth convict within that year, when Finn’s group already consisted of four individuals.

Getting up again, Finn asked: “What kind of work?”

There probably wouldn’t come up opportunities to sabotage the First Order here. On the upside, this being a small backwater jail, the risk of having to construct parts for another doomsday weapon was minuscule.

The prisoners were not prepared for the answer: “Twist wookie necks.”

Three faces displayed “We won’t do that!” expressions, BB-8 tried to convey the same with his eye, only the former First Order General looked thoughtful. “I suppose if two of you held the beast down, I could…”

With a grin, the overseer took one of the boxes from a workbench and placed it in front of the prisoners. Inside were plastic figures the length of maybe a finger. They were all Wookies, men, women and children, some clothed in leaves, others in their natural hair only. And each and every Wookie’s neck was turned the wrong way.

“It’s an assembly issue”, the workshop master explained. “They leave the machine like this at the end of the production process and have to get turned into the correct direction manually.”

“Just the kind of work one would leave to prisoners.”

“Exactly. There’s more to do, of course, pieces to wrap up, sets to package… the instructions are pinned to the respective tables. The chutes will start delivering more pieces from the toy factory after breakfast.”

Something in the overseer’s voice conveyed beyond doubt that the prisoners were not included in the exclusive group that had access to such high profile affairs as “breakfast”.

Hux with his still hurting leg moved to the closest table, the one right next to the workshop master’s desk, the others seated themselves so that they could look each other into the eyes. Exchanging smiles or expressions of disgust helped them get through the monotonous work.
After a couple of hours the workshop master left, to get replaced by a female Zabrak. The replacement was less anxious around the prisoners of war, but equally distant.

From the corner of their eyes the Resistance members saw Hux shove something under the new workshop master’s nose. They heard her reply – “rejects heap” – and then Hux barked: “Hey, Dameron – TIE fighter attack incoming!”

The next moment a miniature space craft sped through the room as if traversing a jagged, rocky landscape. Poe quickly dodged the hurled toy, that was the size of his fist. Seating himself upright again, he protested at the world in general: “He tossed a TIE-fighter mini at me!”

The enemy General shrugged.

“Sorry I’m fresh out of real ones. Or working legs. The TIE goes into the yellow bin next to your table.”

Having landed roughly on the massive workbench hadn’t done the little space craft any favors. It lay lopsided on the table, the previously damaged wing raised towards the workers in a final salute.

Rose reached for the toy.

“Does this fly?”

“Antigrav chip sold separately”, Hux read from the product description. “You get a discount if you buy five.” Then he shook his head in a “the fuck, this can’t be happening for real, not to ME” gesture.

Noticing how their situation appalled the other, Poe twisted the knife a little more in the wound: “Not fair! You get to play with the battleships, while we are stuck with the Wookie massacre.”

“Reverse massacre”, Finn reminded the friend.

“Oh, yes, how could I forget that YOU are the good guys…” Hux sneered.

At this point a stern “Enough!” from the overseer interrupted the chatter. She walked over to Rose, took the damaged toy from her hands, but instead of tossing it into the yellow bin, the Zabrak pasted a tiny antigrav chip on the toy’s bottom and handed it to BB-8.

“Here, little tin can. You’re a good worker, but that was enough for today. There’s no need for you to suffer for your owners’ folly.”

The Resistance trio didn’t know whether to laugh or laugh even harder. Handing BB-8 anything even remotely fit to get weaponized was as good as an unconditional surrender. In this regard the droid was similar to the other red-head in the room.

Poe’s hands worked autonomously while his eyes were on his astromech playing with the toy TIE.

Look how enraptured the little guy is! Why didn’t I ever think of giving him a toy? It had to take an enemy…

The work got interrupted when a prison droid arrived with five pairs of simple sneakers in a bag. Hux held the pair intended for him up with two fingers, as if the shoes were a wet dishtowel. They were red and consisted of rough cloth sewn onto a rubber sole, like a younglings first indoor gym shoes. Hux could just picture how silly the sneakers would look together with his uniform, but said nothing, only gulped hard.
After all, Hux’ expertise was in engineering, strategy and speechcraft, nothing he could apply to his current situation. In the heat of the moment, under pressure, the esteemed General was prone to make mistakes. He’d put a screw the wrong way into the hole, would struggle for the right words and choose the wrong maneuvers. Bereft of his command, this captivity was like being ten years old all over again, only with more toys.
He needed more time to think, but fortunately the idiots who were putting prisoners of the calibre of those present here to traditional prison work were providing Hux with plenty of time to formulate a plan.

Tying the laces of his new shoes, Finn spotted something on the floor. He nudged Rose, then Poe: “Look what the little guy has built!”

And indeed, under one of the vacant workbenches BB-8 had assembled a little diorama from the contents of the reject bin. It represented a rebel camp, or as close as one could come to that with the available pieces. With a bit of imagination it could also be a family camping trip to Kashyyk, seeing that the main attraction of the toy sets produced in this factory seemed to be the Wookies.

“I feel pretty bad for squirming to do this work for our captors”, Poe admitted in a low voice, as not to let Hux or the workshop master overhear. “I don’t want to work for the First Order on principle, that much is for certain. But this is for younglings… Innocent toys.”

“Is it, though?” Finn prodded. “Look closely!”

“Huh? What do you mean? I don’t see…”

When neither Poe nor Rose seemed to understand, Finn slid his fingers over the foil that currently displayed the parts of the Wookie Village set. He turned page after page of the digital assembly instructions until he found the one that showed the finished diorama, that looked distinctively different from BB-8’s version. And now it jumped the others into the face: The toy set portrayed the Wookies as primitives with barbaric customs. It was nothing like similar “Get to know the galaxy” - toy sets that had gotten sold in the Republic.
“This”, Finn reiterated. “What do you think this is going to do for the children? Only teach them their supremacy ideas.”
Rose looked from Finn to the picture, then back to Finn, over to Hux and finally Finn again.
“Did you two have…?”
Both men shook their heads, almost in unison and bearing very similar expressions. Now, they hadn’t owned a Wookie village growing up. They had been surrounded with objects, that had at times also included toys, that had helped them develop the skills the First Order respectively the Imperial Remnant needed them to possess as adults. It suddenly struck Rose and Poe that young Finn’s and young Armitage’s childhood probably had been a lot more similar than they had imagined.

For a few precious moments the trio watched BB-8 launch the damaged TIE to let it fly an attack on the rebel camp. He rolled around it as if to prevent that attack and now Poe knew exactly what his next paycheque would go towards. He usually donated the money, seeing that a Commander (and now he and Finn were de facto Generals, even) earned much more than he had need for, especially during a war. Not so when they were back home again! BB-8 would get a remote controlled Death Star then (if such a thing existed).
But if they wanted to live to see that happy day, they needed a plan, a moment for themselves to come up with one, and ideally also a shower.

*
It was well past midday, sometime in the afternoon, when the workshop master blew into a whistle to signal a break. Poe yawned, the sedentary workstyle having taxed him worse than a forced pack march with BB-8 strapped to his back. Rose leaned into Finn’s arms. Poe watched it with a wistful expression.

This could have been me, he thought. If I had said something, anything, instead of goofing around and keeping things casual. Yes, you two said that Crait had been “just a moment” for you, but the very moment you dismissed your romance as non-existent, you started working towards making it real. Maybe you didn’t even notice yourselves. And now my Finn… oh, well. Now he’s going to be happy. What more can I ask for.

But Poe had only to look straight ahead at the couple, to know exactly what he’d ask for, given a choice. Eventually he put his elbows on the table and buried his face into his hands, as if drained from the overlong work shift.

Without leaving her desk, the workshop master remotely unlocked the door.

“There’s a cafeteria down the floor. The large opening to the left. Your tags will get recognized by the system, but I wouldn’t recommend testing how far you can stray. This may not be Narkina, but it’s still a prison with appropriate security measures.”

The trio nodded solemnly. They felt Hux eyes on them, and the General had already started opening his mouth to address them, when he reconsidered and met the overseer’s eyes instead.

“Tell them to get me something. I still can’t walk.”

“I don’t think the cafeteria does takeouts, ‘specially not to third parties. Everything is controlled with the tags for inmates and staff alike. You want something, you show up in person.”

“But…”

“You’ll get something tomorrow.” The workshop master shrugged. “I’ve seen blaster wounds before, yours should be a lot better tomorrow morning.”

“Tomorrow!” the General barked. “Maybe you won’t even live to see tomorrow!” A brief, but noticeable pause later, Hux added: “Because the rebel filth has killed you in your sleep.”

The woman’s reply, “I’ll see to it that this cannot happen”, wasn’t foreshadowing a comfortable second night in the workshop for the prisoners. Apparently the idea of actual prison cells was either utterly alien to their captors or something that had to get earned in the First Order.

“I wouldn’t be so certain…”

“Oh, shut your trap already!”

Hux looked up. It hadn’t been his captor, who had spoken this time. To his left now stood Finn and to his right the much smaller Poe.

“Up with you.”

“Huh? What…?”

Before he had fully grasped what was happening, the General already found his left arm getting slung around Finn’s shoulder and then he was getting pulled upwards.

“What game are you playing?!”

“Not yours, that much is certain”, the normally timid Rose chimed in.

Finn nodded. “Leaving even an enemy behind hurting from hunger is not how they… the Resistance… how we work. You’re coming with us.”

Walking towards the door, Hux sputtered:
“I… shit. That wouldn’t have happened, had you done what I told you!”

“I admit hearing you complain about that is fun”, Finn said with a grin. “Let’s see if you can keep it up all the way to the cafeteria.”

“I probably could. But it’s better not to give our captors any insights into our group dynamics beyond what our immediate warder spills to them”, Hux whispered back.

“Makes sense”, Finn replied in the same volume, causing Poe and Rose to draw closer.

“And you didn’t contest my mention of group dynamics just now”, Hux went on. “Good. So we are in agreement that we make our escape together before we learn what Allegiant General Pryde has in store for each of us?”

“Cooperation on that level, just for helping you grab a bowl of prison food?” Poe asked. “What will you do for a soda? Gift us half of the First Order?”

“Throw in a pack of dried tangerine slices and you can have Kylo Ren. Nah, only snarking. That rat is mine, and no mistake. I’ll see this through, with or without your help.”

“That goes above the scope of a rivalry. What happened between the two of you?”

“Not your business”, Hux hissed, inadvertently confirming that something had happened indeed, that had intensified the animosity between Snoke’s right and left hand men to this degree.

And with that, the unlikely allies stepped into the corridor.

*

“What have I just eaten!” Finn exclaimed.

“The contents of the waste bin, because we aren’t registered as regular eaters”, Hux snarled.

“Yes, that, too, but…” Finn gestured towards the adjacent table, where a group of prisoners just now took seats, each one carrying a tray with a plate, drink and a large fruit or vegetable. On each of the plates, thin, long strings lay curled around meatballs and covered in a red sauce.

“Dianoga noodles”, Rose explained. “You can raise them up with a stick to make them look even more like the real deal. My mother always carved little eye sockets into the meatballs and put almonds in for a the extra icky effect.”

“That’s so neat! I never knew food could be so playful! I never went hungry before defecting, there were always activity appropriate meals for us in the barracks. But they were never… fun.”

“Uh-huh”, Hux confirmed. “Speaking of…”

Scanning the vicinity with his eyes, he suddenly stretched his good leg out and immediately after unbalancing a prisoner in this way retracted it again. The prisoner yelped from surprise, stumbled and lost their tray. BB-8 quickly moved underneath it, pulled his head back and let the tray land on his body. With his catch he rolled back to the table. The tray wobbled dangerously, but stuck on the droid chassis long enough for Poe to grab it and put it onto the table. Hux’s hand immediately shot forward to claim the glass with the sparkly lemonade.

Meanwhile the tray’s actual owner looked around helplessly, but none the wiser where their meal had ended up.

“You’re the worst!” Poe shot at Hux, who merely toasted the pilot with a sneer.

“Beep?” BB-8 looked up.

“No! Not you!” Poe hastened to say. “You only did that because you wanted to feed me. Although much as I appreciate the thought… This isn’t right.”

“Want to give the noodles back?” Finn asked. It was apparent that he wouldn’t like it, but support the friend’s decision anyway.

“Yes, I want to. But I won’t. Can’t help others when your own needs aren’t filled.”

They all had known they’d have to make some tough decisions when they had signed up with the Resistance, and right now that entailed being selfish. Someone who had regular meals coming their way simply needed them less than a handful of people who were limping on their last leg, with an uncertain fate in store for them. Maybe tonight already they’d have to fight for their very lives again.

And so Poe shared the dianoga noodles three ways between the rebels.

“Seconds incoming!”

There wasn’t much to go around, just a few bites of noodles and a single meatball for everyone, that Poe took care to arrange in the shape of the iconic trash chute monster on everyone’s plate. After they had scraped their first few bites of food from the bottom of a grimy scraps bin, the image fit even better.

Hux didn’t complain about being left out. All he had wanted was the soda, that he enjoyed thoroughly. Learning that the killer of Hosnia had a sweet tooth made him scarily humane, a development the others didn’t yet know how to deal with, especially since the other way around the General most likely hadn’t been touched by Rose sharing a cherished childhood memory.

After also having shared the lettuce salad that had come with the meal – four ways this time – the captives looked around the cafeteria some more.
The majority of the inmates were Zabrak, nevertheless the food was cooked and seasoned to taste good to humans. Two droids, one Gonk and one protocol, seemed to be convicts instead of staff. They moved as if low on battery. But other than the Humans, the Zabrak and the droids, no other species was present, suggesting a very small colony.

The newcomers paid close attention to the others’ reaction to them in their sweat-soaked, battle worn outfits that stood in stark contrast to the clean prison uniforms. Which of the inmates would be criminals as BB-8, Rose and Poe understood the term, and who had merely broken First Order law or spoken out of turn at the wrong moment? It was hard to judge.

The group was just about to leave to try to learn a little more about their surroundings, when a pitch black IT-type droid bumbled into the cafeteria. The captives’ initial shock at spotting it abated, when they realized that the empire’s infamous torture device apparently had gotten repurposed as a medical assistant – it was here to hand medication out to those prisoners who needed it. Today that were one pill and one injection. The prisoner who received the shot politely thanked the droid, the other was above such notions.

Passing the newcomers’ table, the droid spotted Hux’ blaster wound.

“Painkiller?” it asked.

“Y… yes, please!” the man replied, momentarily taken aback by the notion of an IT droid (its individual designation read IT-08) being fitted with a vocabulator. It took away from the device’s menacing presence.

The droid bobbed up and down while scanning the prisoner for his implanted tag and then continued to wobble in place a good while longer, as if considering something. Having a torture droid linger so ominously in their midst caused the group to visibly grow nervous. A handful of people on the surrounding tables chuckled at the sight – they, too, hadn’t fared any better the first time they’d made IT-08’s acquaintance, so seeing the newcomers squirm now was satisfying.

Eventually the droid spoke up:
“You are blacklisted for medication… but withholding pain relief conflicts with my instructions…”

“I’ll get by”, the General said, neither dismissive nor sympathetic to the floating droid, merely indicating an unwillingness to waste both their time.

“On the other hand, helping you feel better now might establish a bond for later, when we interact again during the interrogation”, IT-08 concluded and with these words extended its syringe and moved towards the patient. “Sleeve up, please!”

“What the… did I hear that right?” Poe sputtered. “Hope you’re feeling better, see you later for your torture session?!”

“It is a very First Orderly thing to say”, Finn commented, while IT-08 left the cafeteria. “Those things are creatures of law, not even malicious in their own heads. And the same goes for many of the First Order’s living members.”

“Do you…?” The unfinished question came from Rose, and was directed at Hux, who was absentmindedly fiddling with his sleeve.

“If I believe in law above everything else?” The sleeve came down and got fastened correctly. “Well, what do you think?”

“No games!” Finn demanded.

“But that’s what it’s all about nowadays. Mind games. Power, not as a means to create and sustain order, but as an end onto itself. And Ren wailing how he gets tempted by “da evil light side”, of course, as if a simple function of the universe had a mind of its own. Is gravity pleased with how well I fell in the workshop? Is it anxious about maybe centrifugal force tempting me, because then I might learn how to fly? Pfft. And as if that head in the clouds, weed-smoking nerf-herder Ren wasn’t enough, now Palpatine has returned somehow… and everything went off the rails even worse than before.”

Before anybody could think of a meaningful reply to the small waterfall of words, a tall, broad-shouldered Zabrak appeared at the table as if coming out of nowhere. He wore a security guard’s uniform and protective vest and pointed over his shoulder towards the service hatch between the canteen and the kitchen.

“Kitchen master said she spotted you guys doing crazy shit. Do I need to go into details or will I hear a “We happily volunteer to do the cleanup today”?”

Predictably Hux’ face reddened to match his hair at the very idea.

“You want us to do the dishes?! Do you have even the fuggiest idea whom you’re talking to here, man?”

Someone at the table knew exactly whom the sec guard was talking to, not just in terms of Hux’ rank, but also biography. Same as the First Order had profiles on key members of the Resistance, the Resistance was keeping the tabs on the First Order’s High Command. Being the people person that he was, Poe had memorized almost all the biographies and at times had been able to use his insider information to the best effect against the enemy. Now his knowledge told him that he better rescued the unlikely ally from a fate as, however temporary, kitchen scullion. Not to cuddle the man’s ego, but to prevent a massacre of the kitchen staff.

“Don’t make him do that!” Poe exclaimed. “He’s highly traumatized…”

“Aw, poor little criminal”, the security guard snorted.

“…and will kill you. No matter how tightly you restrain him, this man will find a way.”

“I don’t need your help, Dameron!” Hux hissed. “And we’re leaving now.”

“Right. You’re coming with me.”

With these words the guard pulled Poe out of his chair and marched him in front of himself.

Hux pushed back his chair, rose and walked towards the exit. When the security guard tried to put the hand he wasn’t holding Poe with on the unruly prisoner’s chest to stop him, the not significantly smaller Hux slapped it away. But the Zabrak was still blocking his way.

“Be reasonable, man”, he said, still calm.

“Right back at you. Last warning.”

“Same”, the guard replied.

The confrontation might have ended with an intervention from Rose or Finn, who were also leaving their seats now. But then the sec guard grabbed a dish towel from the adjacent table to toss it at the group, not even at Hux in particular. Still the General picked the empty tray up from the table with both hands and against all reason aimed it’s sharp edges at the security guard. Taken by surprise, the man reacted almost on instinct: Still holding Poe Dameron, he grabbed the smaller man tighter and raised him like a shield in front of his body.

Poe gave a shriek, then the tray already connected with his head. Poe had managed to wiggle just enough to get hit by the blunt side only. Still it was sufficient to take him out on the spot. Blood was flowing from a wound at the side of his head.

Screams to the effect of “No!” erupted from three throats and one droid loudspeaker.

Now that he had served his purpose, the guard dropped Poe. Finn raised to catch him. He went on his knees almost in slow-motion, then the tray cluttered down next to them both, then Rose and BB-8 closed in and finally a pale hand pressed a surprisingly clean handkerchief on Poe’s wound, not the dish towel, as Finn had already feared. Finn grabbed Hux’ wrist.

“You’ve caused enough damage! Why don’t you go die somewhere!”

Finn wrestled the kerchief from Hux and used it to dab the blood from Poe’s head, taking care not to assert too much pressure.

“We need to take Dameron to the infirmary”, Hux insisted, but that endeared him to Finn even less than the clumsy attempt at First Aid.

“There’s no “we” about this!”

“Right.” The security guard grabbed Hux’ hair and pulled. “You do that. Have fun explaining to the doctor how that happened. And don’t even try to come up with an “alternate explanation” – he can see right through riffraff like you.”

Finn’s “No, I will…” was cut short by a slap with the dish towel in his face.

“No…” Finn whispered, when he had to watch his best friend get picked up by their second worst enemy after Kylo Ren. It felt as if after the Resistance’s Pyrrhus victory at Exegol, Finn was now losing everything he held dear personally, too: Rey had gone missing, Poe was bleeding and Rose would have realized by now that she wasn’t the only comrade whom Finn was harboring feelings for. What even had caused the former stormtrooper to develop crushes on no less than three of his closest friends in such a short timeframe? Was it a side effect of having never known love?

“The dishes are still waiting, by the way”, the prison guard reminded the duo.

“You asshole!” Rose shouted back, staring at the security guard through a film of tears. “If only you had listened to Poe for a minute! It wouldn’t have cost you anything out of your pocket! It might have… might have… it might…”

“…have saved his life”, Finn finished the sentence.

*

Meanwhile Hux was backtracking the way they had come through the corridor. The infirmary had been the first door that had stood out to the prisoners as significant, it was the second right after the workshop, that in turn was connected to the toy factory adjacent to the prison building.
“Blast”, he the General muttered, painfully aware of his First Aid expertise starting at “Apply bacta gel” and ending at “Maybe a little more bacta gel?”.
Poe was hanging in his arms like a ragdoll, what probably wasn’t a good idea. Finn would have known what to do, but Finn was held back cleaning the plates other people had eaten from.

At least Hux’ legs had stopped shaking. Why had they started to do that, even? The legs hadn’t been wobbly after he had gotten shot. There had been pain, that had resulted in an unsteady walk style, but not this jittery feeling. That had set in only after the pain had gotten silenced already, specifically when Hux had knelt next to the injured Poe. It probably was the strain from having been in that uncomfortable position.

Holding Poe Dameron… Not so long ago Armitage Hux would have loved to have this particular insurgent helpless at his mercy. After D’Qar… Only now that his wish had more or less gotten fulfilled, Hux found himself sounding different:

“Brave little pilot… Just hang on a bit longer. We’re almost there.”

Poe’s breath was steady, that at least was reassuring. A resilient little rat, he had taken to captivity quite well, too, so it was really only the head injury to worry about. That, and the fact that the man’s eyes were closed and he was… absent. Somehow that bothered Hux.
But why? What exactly had changed that had brought the desire to off this particular rebel below the critical threshold? Dameron had played with his droid, scoffed at Hux getting himself a lemonade and warned the warden that he’d kill him. None of that was out of the ordinary, so maybe if looked at in combination…? But for that the General didn’t have time now.

Yelling “Bed! Bacta gel! MRI!” Hux kicked down the door to the infirmary. He found himself in a waiting room. A single door led to the examination room and a window opposite the entry offered a nice view into what looked like the doctor’s herb garden. But most importantly in addition to the seats lined up against the wall there also was a portable exam table right in the middle of the waiting room. Hux put Poe on it. Following a whim, he started running his fingers through the pilot’s blood-smeared hair. He winced and retracted his hand, when the table’s head piece raised itself a little.

“Who did that…? Oh, it’s you.”

Only now did Hux notice IT-08. Door and window still being firmly closed, the droid would have to have lurked somewhere in the room, probably to discourage prisoners who were feeling lazy from even talking to the doctor with his intimidating presence.

“Can you scan this man’s head? He got hit with a cafeteria tray…”

IT-08 floated into place, then his underside lit up in a bright, crimson light. As a former torture droid he was programmed to perform thorough scans of his victims. The color usually served to make the subject extra nervous. Poe, of course, couldn’t see it.

IT-08 was just about to announce that the patient’s skull was not cracked in the slightest, when the door opened and in strode an older man wearing a General’s uniform, but not quite the correct pips to go with one. The iconic ebonwood stick he was carrying identified him as Allegiant General Enric Pryde.

Pryde stepped up next to Hux and looked down on the unconscious Poe Dameron. “I see you’ve already begun with the preliminary routines for the interrogation”, he commented. “By all means, continue.”

“IT-08 – full scan of the subject”, Hux said in the same neutral, detached tone.

Without looking the traitor into the face, the normally calm Pryde barked: “What the hell is wrong with you, Hux? NOW you have decided to be somewhat useful?” After a poignant look down his former fellow officer, the older man added: “And I don’t even want to ask about the shoes.”

“I thought I’d take a page out of Ren’s book, being more erratic and stuff.”

“No, not going there. Listen! You’re still on the hook for high treason, with all the damage you’ve done not just as a mole, but also by wantonly killing off at least two of our actually merited Generals. But if you get a grip on yourself now, maybe Kylo Ren will find it amusing to know that you’ll live out the rest of your life assembling toys on this backwater planet.”

“Looking forward to it”, Hux replied noncommittally. Then the men listened to IT-08 announcing that aside from the concussion the patient was showing no irregularities. Hux nodded.

“Load a beta endorphin blocker into your syringe”, he instructed the droid, that seemed to be averse to carrying out his torture protocols without directly getting prompted to do so. And even after having received this order just now, IT-08 protested that administering this to the patient would lead to his pain tolerance lowering.

“Looking forward to it”, Hux repeated his last sentence, his face an unreadable mask, but teeth clenched.

Meanwhile Pryde felt the need to correct the little droid: “Pain threshold, not tolerance. That’s a difference, and I imagine especially this bold rodent will have an obscene amount of the latter. Now do it!”

There was a slurping sound, then the syringe came out of the pitch black floating sphere, with a drop of the mix loaded into it slowly rolling down the needle – a function deliberately introduced to the model to create even more fear, not a sign of the droid being slobbish in its work.

“IT-08?”

“Yes, prisoner #53-06?”

“Don’t take it personal.”

“Don’t take what…?”

IT-08 didn’t manage to finish the sentence, because Hux grabbed it with the reflexes of an angry mungo. Holding on tight, he swung the surprised droid around, aimed it at Pryde and then rammed it into the man’s belly with the syringe in front.

“That, to the contrary. Was very much personal.”

“You’re maaaaaaaaa…d!” Pryde cried out, when he felt a sting. Then the fast-acting agent was already taking effect, making Pryde feel the puncture in an uncomfortable intensity. Flailing around, the officer caught IT-08 and rammed him against the wall, half on accident, half by design. The little ball lost its balance and crashed to the floor.

Likewise Pryde got grabbed, pushed against the wall same as the droid and forced down, too. The next thing he felt was intense pain from getting kicked against the chin by an indoor gym shoe and a little fiddling later he stared into the muzzle of his own blaster.

“You… rabid dog!” the Allegiant General groaned.

“Oh, am I?” Hux grinned. “What happened to “rebel scum”?”

“So you’re going through with jumping ships? Idiot! You could have lived, after all.”

“As Ren’s plaything? Your trophy? The last specimen of a species on the brink of extinction in your empire ran by mutants? No. It was over when…”

With a “swoosh” the door to the doctor’s room slid open and the man peeked out. He saw the fallen First Order General, the other First Order General towering over him and IT-08 rolling to both their feet, his antennae bend out of shape and the syringe shattered. And on the exam table one of the captured rebels was coming back to his senses.

“What… happened?” Poe whispered, but he had made the mistake to try and sit up, what led to the world turning rapidly. Poe leaned forward and vomited his meager meal onto IT-08.

“What the kriff…” the doctor uttered.

With the hand not holding the blaster, Hux pointed at Pryde. “Hostage”, he stated. “You better behave!”

“Alright.” The doctor nodded. “Whatever you say. We didn’t ask for a full blown warship to shuffle into our orbit. We were fine here with our Governor and we’ll be fine again when you rebels and military types are gone again. And if that’s feet first, we won’t shed a tear.”

Hux grabbed Pryde by his collar and pulled him into kneeling position.

“Wanna hear something funny, Armitage?” Poe said slowly. “I hallucinated you were a First Order officer!” A short pause later the pilot added: “Must be the disguise you’re wearing.”

“Tell me you’re pulling my leg…”

His hands raised to indicate that he meant no harm, the doctor slowly moved towards the exam table. He bend over the patient to look into Poe’s eyes and then shook his head. “This man wasn’t joking. Some disorientation was to be expected. That can be on the mental side just as well as on the physical.”

“Wonderful. More complications.”

“I strongly advise you against moving the patient in the next twenty-four hours”, the doctor went on. “That will probably make this room into your rebel headquarter or whatever. Try not to trample my herbs if at any point you have to make your escape through the window.”

Kicking the soiled droid out of the way, the doctor added with a sigh:
“We’ll need a new one.”

IT-08 rolled under one of the chairs, where he reverted to beeps, either because his vocabulator had gotten damaged while getting repurposed as a melee range assault weapon, or because the droid had been active for so long that he had developed a personality – and anything with a personality could get traumatized, sometimes with disastrous results.

Chapter Text

A little later Rose and Hux were cleaning IT-08, a box with makeshift tools scrounged from the examination room placed between them. They had already used the improvised tools to great effect removing BB-8’s restraining bolt – not that the thing had been able to do much against the droid’s trickster spirit. BB-8 had not so much rebelled against the restrictions the bolt had imposed on him, as more skirted around them.

Finn had taken the blaster from Hux and was watching the door, Poe was resting on the table and the doctor was sitting as a free-range secondary hostage on one of the chairs, absorbed in a game of skill that required moving tiny balls through a labyrinth. Tied firmly to another chair, Enric Pryde was watching everything unfolding around him with the interest of an anthropologist, who was privileged to study an especially gross and baffling barbarian society. He laughed out loud, when Finn dared to ask: “Say, do we have a plan of sorts?”

“We sorta count on not getting missed in the workshop, keeping our hostage kinda secret, and nobody coming in here?” Rose summed up what so far had been their strategy. They had been incredibly lucky to not have raised an alarm.

It wasn’t as if they were just sitting around, though. BB-8 was busy downloading and processing floorplans and Rose was confident to be able to persuade IT-08 to join them, so that the group would have a field medic.

“Hey, Eightball”, Rose softly greeted IT-08, when the droid at long last blinked at the humans and BB-8. “We finished scraping the filth off you, now we can work on repairing you. But for that we have to open your hull. Are you okay with that?”

Rhythmic blinking lights indicated affirmation.

“Eightball?” Hux asked while helping Rose open the droid chassis. IT-08 didn’t shy away from getting handled in this way by the stranger and the man who had used him as a living weapon. There was a calm air between the two erstwhile enemies, that exerted an equally calming effect on the little droid.

“Yes!” Rose said with a smile. “He kinda struck me as one when we first met him. As if he’d fit right in with this team.”

“Certainly. I’ve never seen a droid come as close to defying an order as this one did. But then again, ours get memory-wiped regularly.”

“You do that to your people, too…”

“Personnel, droids, what’s the difference? Stuff needs to function, so it gets maintained. Glitches like Finn happen, but the system keeps going stable.”

“Yeah, why am I not surprised! But suppose you had to decide whom to save – would that be the droid or the technician performing the exact same function?”

“Whichever I’d miss more. So, the one with the better service record.”

“You’re a strange one, you know that? You’re saying the right things, but for the wrong reasons.”

“Finn… Armi…tage…” Poe labored to speak, only to get the blaster pointed at him when Finn angrily waved his hands around. “Don’t call him that!” Realizing what he just had done, Finn lowered the weapon immediately. “Shit. I’m sorry!”

Seeing that his work here was finished and Rose could finish the repair alone, Armitage wordlessly rose to heed Poe’s call. Finn was already at his friend’s side. The pilot was still feeling nauseous, but now had an anti-vomiting shot in his system, a patch on his partially shaved head and an ice pack on top of that. Still, despite having received professional care he was shivering.

Poe moved his left hand until he got to grab Armitage’s black uniform jacket.

“Take that crap off already”, he managed to say, and since every word taxed the wounded man, Finn hissed “Do it!” at Armitage, just to not give Poe cause to waste more breath beating a dead horse.

Armitage wordlessly slipped out of his “disguise”. Without needing prompting from Finn this time he placed it over Poe’s chest.

“Feet”, Finn said. When the First Order officer hesitated to move his empire’s dignified uniform over the unwashed, smelly feet of a rebel wearing prison shoes, Finn did so himself. He made sure to not just loosely cover, but tightly wrap Poe’s feet in the padded fabric to keep them warm.
“Can we… really trust…?” Poe whispered, when Finn returned to the exam table’s head end.

Finn looked up and over Poe’s battered head into Armitage’s eyes.

“For now I think so”, he replied, but Poe had finished his sentence yet. It ended in: “…Colonel Tico?”

“What? Come again now?”

With some effort Poe eventually managed to convey that he was uncertain whether he and his “old Resistance comrades” Finn and Armitage should entrust their lives to the “recent First Order defector” Tico.

“Yes”, Armitage flat out replied, not bothering with correcting the misconception.

“But…”

“Shhh! I didn’t say you should one hundred percent trust Tico. But you can absolutely rely on Finn and me to deal with any trouble she might cause. We’ll protect you. We won’t leave your side.”

“’kay.”

Poe raised his right hand. Finn took it and held it tight. On the other side of the table Armitage grabbed the injured enemy’s shoulder and squeezed it encouragingly. Neither man dared touch Poe’s head for even so much as a fleeting caress. But them standing there already served to calm the patient.
Finn noticed the look of sheer amazement on the First Order General’s face when Poe’s shivering slowly abated and the patient relaxed. Eyes that had desperately tried to focus until now suddenly allowed the lids to cover them. Trusting. At peace.

Bolstering someone by just holding them was a power Armitage had never before exercised. But power it was nonetheless and wielding any kind of that felt good.

At long last the two men stepped back from the exam table.

“We got to make up for that to Rose”, Finn whispered. “At the very least we need to break it to her gently that Poe in his condition thinks she’s you.”

“If you say so. Are you two…?”

Finn’s only answer was a sigh.

“C’mon, man! It’s not as if you saying yes or no now would give away a military secret. Are you afraid I might use your answer to manipulate you? Newsflash: You four are so close already, that knowing which of you sleeps with whom won’t change anything.”

“No, it’s just… Next time ask questions we actually know the answer to!”

With these words Finn handed the blaster back to the odd ally and moved to kneel beside Rose, who was still working on IT-08. Armitage shot the doctor a glance, saw that he was still docile as could be, then he casually hit Pryde and finally sat down on the one chair that offered the widest view of the room including both hostages. BB-8 rolled forward from under the chair, beeping exasperatedly.

“No, I don’t know who Poe thinks you are, if that was your question”, Armitage replied. “Probably his dad.”

“Beep! Bi-bi-bi-bee.”

“Yes. I know.”

At this reply BB-8 rolled back towards the row of chairs a little, to within arm’s reach of the First Order officer. It was apparent, though, that he wouldn’t tolerate getting touched.

“Beep-bee?”

Armitage leaned forward, then whispered to the droid:
“Who wouldn’t?”

BB-8 nodded in affirmation, a feature made possible by his magnetic head.

“You can understand Binary?” Pryde wondered from the safety of the other side of the room.

“I’m not a middle school dropout named Ren, so I damn well should.”

“What did it say?”

“You’d love to know that, huh?”

Meanwhile Rose and Finn closed “Eightball”’s chassis, but if the droid was feeling better after the surgery, he didn’t communicate that. Nevertheless it was obvious that he preferred the company of the prisoners and would-be-escapees over that of his boss.

“So have we picked up another defector?” Finn wondered, and Rose nodded enthusiastically.

“I enjoy chipping them away from the First Order one by one”, she admitted. “It’s the kind of story the world needs, not this “Good killed Evil in an epic battle” narrative. Much better to defeat the darkness one recruited former torture droid here and one former stormtrooper there.”

“Heh, I guess so.” Finn shook his head. “We’re all so messed up. I can’t imagine what our lives might be like if the fighting ended and there was peace. What would we even do? How does one adjust to drastically different circumstances?”

Rose now spotted an inkling of fear in her friend’s mimic.

“Our current situation, dire as it is”, Finn admitted, “is something I’m at home at. I can deal with being in it and can make informed decisions. But I couldn’t… I’m afraid if Resistance Command sent us all to a beach resort in recognition of our victory at Exegol, I’d have to ask them for a sheet with detailed instructions what to do there.”
Finn stopped, but Rose saw that he wasn’t finished yet. And indeed the former stormtrooper spoke up again: “On Canto Bight, before I learned what kept the place running, I was overwhelmed. Everything seemed so great and inviting, but if we’d been there in private, not on an urgent mission, I… I wouldn’t really have known what to do. How to participate, I mean.”

“You’ll take small steps”, Rose replied. “Grab a favorite drink. Grab any drink to learn which might be your favorite one. Stand and gape in amazement, all tourists do that. Then something will catch your attention and before you know, you’ll have gained some experience that you can fall back onto the next day.” She flashed him a smile. “Or Poe will drag us to a karaoke microphone, that’s on option, too. We’ll probably protest, but like it.”

“I don’t even know what that is!” Finn had expected to sound angrily-resigned, but when the words came out, he found that he was actually laughing.
Rose took his head into her hands, pulled it down and nuzzled the friend. Their eyes met and then they kissed, not caring who might watch.

When the lovers’ lips parted again did BB-8 announce that he had finished processing the maps, guard routes and general schedules of the prison. He indicated that he wanted to project everything right above the exam table, so that Poe could see it, too, and chime in if he felt like it.

“One moment!” the doctor spoke up. “I need to go. Uh… go. You know? It’s through the exam room.”

“Okay. I’ll accompany…”

Finn didn’t get to finish the sentence, because now the door got kicked in and no less than three blasters fired into the room. Trying to dive into cover, the doctor got hit by a shot and dropped to the ground, stunned. Another shot grazed Pryde and the third went past the door to the exam room. The security guard having fired it continued to lay down covering fire that prevented everyone from fleeing onto this adjacent room.

Armitage tossed Finn the blaster and instead drew one of the scalpels he had taken from the doctor’s stash. With the knife in hand he dashed towards Pryde with the intent to press it against the hostage’s throat.

Startled by the sudden violence, Eightball shrieked and shot upwards as high as he could – it turned out to be ceiling height, a fact that surprised the spherical droid same as the prison guards. Reflexively one of them took aim and fired at the droid. The low powered shot forced Eightball down, right into Rose’s arms.

“Eightbtall, no! I need to fi…” One shot later Rose was down, and IT-08 didn’t dare leave her side. Perched on the floor beside the unconscious rebel he continued to chitter in Binary – and in panic.

The guards moved into the room now. Under their feet they crushed a whole clan of plastic Wookies, that BB-8 had scattered on the floor in the hope that the improvised caltrops would trip the intruders. His plan not having worked caused the trickster droid to hesitate just a moment too long – an electro-staff came down hard on him, stunning him.

Armitage was the next to go get shot. Slumping down on the chair next to the hostage’s, his knife slid open Pryde’s uniform jacket and the skin beneath it, but the cut was hardly noticeable. Still, with the pain threshold lowering drug still in his system, the General cried out in pain.

And lastly Finn managed to wrestle the electro staff from its wielder, take the second guard out with it and push the third back into the floor, where he stumbled into a fourth guatd's line of fire and got stunned. But then sparks from the twitching BB-8 hit Finn, causing him to wince and lose his opportunity to attack again. The guard whom he had disarmed pushed Finn towards the door, straight into the line of fire of his comrade in the floor. Finn collapsed over the accidently stunned sec guard.

“How…” Poe whispered on his exam table.

Moving in to free General Pryde from his bonds, one of the guards laughed disparagingly.

“The Resistance isn’t much of a military, if you can’t tell, huh? Everyone, from the cleaning droid to the principal, has to manually send a signal to the hub every hour. When the doctor failed to do so, we knew something was off.”

“Ah. Right.”

So that was why the doctor had been in such a hurry to leave the room. He had known what was coming, only expected it a minute or two later.

“And here I was, suspecting Colonel Tico to have betrayed us”, Poe confessed, feeling guilty about that. Then his table got moved out of the way, and he momentarily lost consciousness.

*

Poe Dameron woke up still lying on the portable examination table, only now he was firmly strapped to it. The table had gotten moved into the adjacent room, that was now filled with First Order personnel from the Steadfast instead of prison guards.

Looking up at the ceiling, Poe couldn’t take in much of his surroundings. Just some high shelves and Eightball lying on one of them, deactivated, and with a sticky note saying “FACTORY RESET ASAP!” attached. Whether his companions were in the room, too, the prisoner couldn’t discern.

“I’m curious, Commander Dameron”, a male voice that wasn’t General Pryde’s spoke up. “About Colonel Tico.”

Poe’s answer consisted of a grin. The defector, so it had turned out, was genuine. Rose Tico was as much “rebel scum” now as Armitage Hux and Poe felt bad for ever having doubted her. He now saw what Finn must have seen in the technician. Wait… technician? Wasn’t Tico a Colonel?

The interrogator interrupted Poe’s train of thought:
“What information exactly did “Tico” relay to you as your mole in the First Order?”

Leaning over the captive while asking this, the man inadvertently allowed Poe to identify him as Frantis Griss, General Pryde’s right hand man. Poe knew little to nothing about this person, unfortunately. Griss had dismissed the citizen’s fleet as inconsequential during the battle of Exegol, but that was it already.

“Plenty”, Poe told Griss. “It’s all outdated now, though.”

“That’s for me to judge. You just list all of it, starting…”

Griss snipped his fingers, prompting one his underlings to strike the captive across the chest with a short whip.

“Ow!”

“…now.”

Fervently trying to think of something he could say without giving away any real information, Poe realized that he had nothing to say about the topic at all. Rose Tico… mole… information… Something wasn’t adding up here. Rose’s Colonel rank somehow sounded even more unreal, despite Poe remembering the officer in her blue First Order uniform as if it had been yesterday.

Poe’s eyes widened in shock. He wasn’t losing his memory bit by bit, was he?

“Don’t want to talk to us?” Griss asked, only he didn’t face Poe, but someone sitting or kneeling a little to the side, where the prisoner couldn’t see them. “In your place, I’d reconsider. Next time it might just as well be this man’s head getting hit again.”

“Fucker…” someone replied. Poe knew the voice, had known it for years: Armitage. Only all of a sudden that seemed to be true on a superficial level only. Poe Dameron had heard Armi… Hux’ voice when the General had given publicly broadcasted speeches or appeared in surveillance footage. They had started talking face to face… only recent-ish? Something wasn’t adding up here!

“Well…?” Griss prodded. When no answer came from Hux or Poe, the interrogator grabbed Poe’s chin. “Maybe a little shake will clear his head? What do you think, Armitage “Tico”?”

“Don’t…”

Meanwhile Poe was more puzzled than afraid:
No, THAT can’t be true. I’d remember if they were married. Couldn’t have forgotten losing the second guy I’m interested in in such a short timeframe… Wait, what am I thinking here? Interested? In ginger Tarkin? Yeah, that’s definitely the concussion.

“Alright, if you insist, then let’s try something else”, Griss replied to Hux, then he turned his head and said: “Fetch me the acid, Doctor.”

Poe wasn’t able to see the doctor from his position. The prisoner only heard feet moving and an angry cry from Armitage-maybe-Tico.

Griss received a flask with an acid of unknown strength. Wordlessly he weighed it in his hand, for both captives to see.

“Don’t! Don’t do that!” That was Hux again, this time more demanding than pleading.

“Pray tell how you intend to stop me. Oh, and feel free to come over here.”

Hux got pulled back on his feet and dragged to the exam table by two stormtroopers. There he stood on his good leg, taking care not to encumber the other one, now that the painkiller had stopped working.

“Isn’t it obvious, Griss? The rebels won’t talk to you, if you disfigure their friend”, he said hastily. “It’ll make them LESS likely to give you the information you want.”

“Hm. So you suggest a less aggressive agent, then? I hear you!”

With these words the interrogator bend forward and spit Poe into the face. Reflexively the prisoner turned his head so that the gob hit him only peripherally. But the act of moving his head so fast made the world spin again.

“Stop! Leave him alone!” Hux yelled.

That would be welcome, Poe thought, but at the same time he knew it wasn’t very likely. He was lying here bound like a fly in a spider’s web, and two enemies were staring down on him, discussing torture methods. Yes, two enemies. As if the shake had cleared his mind, Poe suddenly knew again that Rose had been disguised when she had worn the First Order uniform. And Hux in his grey First Order regulation undershirt had never been a friend.

Surprisingly the enemy continued to take Poe’s side in this: “Leave him…”

“Give me a reason to!!!”

A pause and a deep breath later Hux stared Griss straight into the eyes as to not get accused of hiding his mimic and with that a lie.

“Hyperspace tracking”, he said calmly. “I relayed the technique to the Resistance.”

The look of sheer surprise, disgust and also fear on Griss’ face was almost worth having to stand here.

“No… Not… that…”

Hux grinned. Of course he hadn’t shared the secret with the Resistance. Rose Tico had been the first to work out that the First Order had discovered it and then she and her team had started to reverse-engineer the concept. Hux wasn’t certain just how far the Resistance had come regarding this. But that Griss – and by extension Pryde - didn’t need to know.

“You sold them your own patent? That’s transcending your stupid feud with Lord Ren, that’s actively sabotaging the First Order!” Griss bellowed, then slapped Hux in the face.

None of you thinks the world of me, but all you’re achieving in beating me is getting culled from the hierarchy until only those remain who…

Yes, who? Those who were loyal to Armitage Hux, future Supreme Leader? Or rather those who were smart enough not to voice their disdain for him? It didn’t matter. The useful ones stayed in power, the troublesome ones went out. Or at least that was how it had been. At the moment all Hux could do in this regard was take names and mental notes. But playing the long game was nothing new to him, he had done it since he had been six years old.

“Oh, well”, Griss concluded. “At least we now know what to expect from the opposition.” To his underlings the interrogator said: “Take this man away. I might ask him additional details later, but for now we should use Dameron to get something out of the other two.”

“Yes, Sir. – Move it, prisoner!”

However, the prisoner was very much not in favor of moving. The stormtroopers holding him exchanged puzzled looks. (Or at least they were not harboring any doubts that the other was looking as confused as themselves under their fully closed helmets.) Never before had they seen someone actively fight against getting marched out of a torture chamber.

“What’s the matter still?” Griss demanded to know from the unruly prisoner.

“You’re going to kill Dameron…”

“Most likely, yes. It’s not the goal, but might be inevitable. – And stop struggling already! That’s pathetic!”

“So! What!” Hux snarled. “That little shithead on the table never in his life had an ounce of dignity either, and he’s still more precious than… than…”

“Hey!” Poe protested.

“And apparently he can’t stomach the truth, but you aren’t going to kill Poe Dameron!”

“Well, I cannot use YOU to get the rebel scum to talk. For that, one would have to get missed after his demise.”

The insult failed to hit its mark. The man who had since growing up envisioned himself as the next Emperor, and who had, in his self-perception, singlehandedly finished off the New Republic, had long abandoned the idea of friendship. Hux had skills and minions and was (or had been) feared, although part of him drew satisfaction from the fact that Kylo Ren was universally more hated than he was.
Still… He was out of arguments, out of bargaining chips and had no authority whatsoever that could have carried him through this confrontation. No more borrowed power…

But then again on the exam table Poe’s breath was steady and he looked less tensed up than he had a few moments ago, when he had actively gotten tortured.
It struck Hux that there was indeed something he could still accomplish: Every minute he could annoy Frantis Griss enough to deter him from commencing with the interrogation was one minute won for the cute little rat on the table. And all he had to do to achieve that… Ugh. Actually what Hux would have to do was to channel cheeky Dameron.

“I may have something of interest for you, after all. Concerning the Steadfast.”

“Do tell.”

“Our escape from Exegol was a bit frantic, Griss, huh?”

Alright, the principle had been sound. Much less composed than his master, Griss was fuming as intended. But Hux now learned that some maneuvers were working better when there was a safe distance between the insulted and the provocateur. Like some vacuum of space, for instance, because here and now Griss grabbed the mouthy prisoner by his shirt and shook him.

“You will address me with my proper rank!”

“But of course, Acting General.”

*

In the room in between the infirmary and the toy packaging workshop, Rose Tico and Finn were lying on the ground, bound hand and feet.
Every square inch of the wall was covered by either a shelf or crate and tools were stacked to the brim in there.
The center of the room served as a computer lab. At the moment a single droid was hooked up to the system: BB-8. A First Order slicer was trying to get through the droid’s firewall to read out his memories, a task that proved harder than expected.

First Order intelligence officer Tishra Kandia looked over her shoulder, where the workshop master was tidying up the shelves. Due to the alarm, no staff member who had been unlucky enough to be on site was allowed to leave the prison, and so the Zabrak passed time with this task that she and her human co-worker had postponed again and again.

“Fetch me a caf, Miss Iverne, will you?” Kandia addressed the civilian. “I need to focus.”

“You’re a human, though, Ma’m”, Erern Iverne replied. “Caf keeps you awake. For to think better you’ll want a dextrose chip. Goes right into the brain.”

“Nah, thanks. My brain is fine. It’s my mood that’s tanked and a nice, black caf will see to that.”

“Ah. Can’t argue with that.” Iverne stepped over Rose and Finn, ignoring the twitching and beeping BB-8 with all the cables attached to his body.

“Be right back!”

“Oh, all of a sudden cafeteria take aways are possible”, Finn snarked. “To third-parties, no less…”

Frustrated the rebel rolled over to his back and then to the left side, now that no eyes were on him anymore. From his new position he could watch Kandia work. Interestingly the intelligence officer seemed busy with not just breaking BB-8. She wore headphones and wide computer screen glasses, through which she seemed to follow the goings on in some other place. The only events an intelligence officer would want to follow in real time while working on a task of her own would be Poe’s and Hux’ interrogation. Unfortunately no amount of craning his neck was sufficient to let Finn see what Kandia was seeing.

When Iverne returned with a whole thermos flask of steaming hot caf, the officer flipped her glasses to her forehead and slid the earphones around her neck. She accepted a cup from Iverne, took a moment to inhale the flavor and then greedily took a gulp.

“Alright, let’s see”, Kandia said, but the world wouldn’t learn anytime soon what she had wanted to see, because the officer keeled forward and dropped onto her keyboard. Confused with the nonsensical instructions caused by the impact, the AI helpfully opened the slicing software’s help file.
Iverne chuckled at the sight, then she pulled the chair with the dazed officer back. She took the caf pot from Kandia’s hand, refilled it and put it at the officer’s lips.

“Here, fresh caf! It’ll help you focus.”

“S… thanks…”

The second, deep gulp finally did it. Kandia’s limps went supple and she collapsed in her chair.

Iverne bowed over the keyboard. She moved the help file into a corner, studied it, but then shook her head.

“Sorry, little tin can, but that’s too advanced for me”, the workshop master addressed BB-8. “I’ll need the help of your masters to get you out of your predicament. Let’s hope they aren’t too mad at me…”

With these words Iverne closed in on the bound captives.

“I’m going to free you now. Please don’t do anything rash!”

Soon as her feet were free, Rose sped past the workshop master. The first thing she did was muting Kandia’s micro. Then she closed the applications Kandia had used to slice into BB-8’s system one by one, thus aborting the memory extraction process.

“Well, that was rash”, Iverne commented. “But not stupid-rash.”

Finn and the Zabrak got up simultaneously. The former stormtrooper’s body language conveyed in no uncertain terms that he didn’t need a weapon to overpower Iverne.

“Did you just free us because you couldn’t watch BB-8 suffer? Somehow I doubt that, you know, even though you demonstrated that you like droids.”
Iverne nodded.

“Yes, there’s more. After you left for the cafeteria, I got a message.”

Iverne waited for Rose and BB-8 to come closer before continuing:

“It’s not in the official channels yet, and most likely won’t ever get in there, since the First Order doesn’t want us to know that their Star Destroyer is just a wreck, but… Debris from the Steadfast is coming down and nobody knows where it’ll land. They think they ruled out the city as potential impact zone, but there are dozens of small settlements on the planet. Ninety percent of us settlers are homesteaders or herders.”

“The risk of one of those villages getting hit is minuscule”, Rose said. “But it is not zero.”

Iverne looked the rebels into the eyes.

“If you are the heroes you claim to be, then teach the First Order to stop being so careless, so wasteful with lives!”

Rose nodded solemnly. “We never fought over territory or resources, only ever for the people.”

“Maybe”, Iverne replied. “I don’t know. I still don’t fully trust you. But earlier today I’ve seen you insurgents being so kind to each other and even take an enemy under your wing. Whereas our so called protectors acted like barbarians ever since they arrived on New Harvest. Maybe it’s just General Pryde, and everyone else really is as honorable as they tell us they are. But he’s here with his floating ruin NOW and I want him gone.”

“We will help you!” Finn and Rose promised and BB-8, too, bowed his head in agreement, still dizzy, but quickly recovering.
Rose then took the headphones and monitoring glasses from Officer Kandia and donned them herself. After a few moments she whispered: “This looks real bad. They’re torturing Poe and Hux for information.”

“That was to be expected”, Finn agreed with a grim expression, while tying up the intelligence officer.

Iverne bit her lips. “May I see?”

Rose nodded, then handed the workshop master the conference equipment.

“Here. Have a good look! This is what the First Order really looks like.”

Iverne grew visibly paler after putting on the glasses and headphones. She winced, then her eyes narrowed and she whispered: “The defector… that’s what he is, right? He just stepped on one of their hands! It sounded painful.”

“Then let’s waste no time!” Finn decided. “We take them while they’re still in the angrily throwing tantrums phase!”

The Resistance trio dashed out of the room. They momentarily got stopped by two security guards; they turned out to have been part of the skirmish in the waiting room earlier and were wearing guilty expressions now. As quickly as possible they handed Finn and Rose their helmets and blasters. Rose also felt her gloves with the integrated shock pad getting pressed into her pockets, but had no time to slip them on just yet. Meanwhile Finn got handed a short vibrosword.

“Sorry we can’t fight alongside you”, the first guard – it was the one who had sneak-attacked BB-8 and pushed Finn during their fight – said. “We have families. And a job to keep.”

Finn and Rose didn’t stop to answer. The last they saw of their helpers was the guards grudgingly accepting a cup of the K.O. coffee from Inverne. There was no way around drinking it, they needed an alibi for later, when their weapons would get associated with an assault on the First Order visitors.

*

Finn, Rose and BB-8 entered the interrogation room to the background sound of the junior officer’s who had whipped Poe crying. The doctor was bandaging the man’s hands – competent as always, but a fair bit less gentle than he’d treated a co-worker or a prisoner. Although he had been unwilling to actively aid the Resistance, this man’s sympathies at least were not with torturers and abusers.

Next to the table Poe was strapped onto, the two stormtroopers were holding an already badly bruised Hux. Getting blood on his hand when striking him some more didn’t stop Griss from taking his frustration out on the traitor.

Finn unbalanced the first trooper with the sword, at the same time taking a shot at Griss with his other hand. At point blank range the Acting General was hard to miss and so he went down immediately. Rose took out the second trooper, then Finn shot the one he had hit with the sword before. Hux dropped to the floor, now that nobody was steadying him anymore. Having watched all of this happen so quickly, the bandaged junior officer surrendered. The doctor aimed his service pistol at his neck and fired.

“You’re not fit to hear what will get said in this room”, he told the now unconscious man.

“I’m sorry”, the doctor then addressed Poe’s rescuers. “I used to think the Resistance and the First Order were pretty much the same. Glory hounds and grandstanders. But what I witnessed in the waiting room earlier and now in here… It was the world of a difference.”

The man stepped up to Hux and helped him back on his feet.

“Well done. You distracted them long enough from seriously hurting your friend. Although, no offense, I get why you were able to pass as a First Order officer while spying on them. At times you had me scared.”

Lost for a witty reply, the “disguised as a First Order officer” man just nodded non-committedly. Then he took Eightball from the shelf, put him into the junior officer’s backpack and handed the package to Rose, saying: “Yours.”

The doctor didn’t protest, never having felt attachment of any kind to IT-08, or any droid, for that matter, so it was settled.

Next Hux helped Finn free Poe from the straps, telling him in the same toneless voice: “Yours.”

And then he sat down among the turned over stools and medical instruments scattered on the floor.

Finn and the doctor moved Poe to a stretcher that was fitted with an antigrav module. When the patient was secured and comparatively comfortable, the doctor handed the rebels a data pad.

“Here’s some useful stuff we give out to former convicts, first and foremost the address of a safe house. It’s meant for released prisoners who want to cut ties with their former “co-workers”, but are afraid of repercussions. The house is protected and no questions asked.”

“That would be helpful, if they couldn’t still track us with the tags”, Finn grumbled.

His complaint was met with a smile. “IT-08 can remove the tags later”, the doctor said. “Until then WE can track you, not the First Order. From now on that’ll be a difference. The message about the debris my co-workers will surely have told you about? We all got that, it came the principal’s private account. She won’t share information with the First Order anymore. We will lie to them. We may not outright hang your flag from our windows, but from now on the Resistance may consider this facility and its staff - heck, for its worth the same might very well go for some of the inmates, too - its ally.”

“Thank you”, Finn said, returning the smile. “Out through the herb garden it’ll be, then?”

“No need to. The front door awaits you.”

After also receiving some water bottles and medical provisions, the team was finally ready to leave the jail. Only Hux was still sitting on the floor.

“You coming?” Rose prodded.

“No.”

Slowly reaching for a scalpel, Hux didn’t look at the Resistance agents, when he spoke on: “It’s over. After this, there’s no chance to ever win back my command.”

“Huh?” Poe uttered from his stretcher.

There was an audible snuffle from the General, whose vision was clouded by something watery now. But what did Hux need to still see, when he already knew all the facts?

“Not a chance in hell. I’ve run the numbers, at least that’s something I’m good at. Beyond that? What else is there to me? I’m just as weak as everyone always said I was.”

“What are you say… no, scratch that! What do you think you’re doing?” Poe shouted. “Somebody take the knife from this moron!”
“Try it and you’ll get the blade in the throat!” Hux threatened.

The words were followed by a coughing fit. Swallowing one’s own tears the wrong way sure was pathetic. Losing the scalpel, too. All the more reason to finally end this… if only he could find that blasted knife again…

“That’s post-adrenaline blues you’re feeling!” Finn tried reason. “Intense effort, abruptly halted by our arrival. It’s textbook, really. Your real self would strut around now with unbearable glee!”

Tap, tap… Where was the damn blade?

“So you had a few setbacks on your way to world domination? That’s a stupid reason for wanting to die!” Poe yelled. “You don’t even feel guilty for all the war crimes you committed! Executing yourself for those, people could get behind, and the galaxy would sleep better, knowing you’re not in it anymore! But just because… Because…”

Ah, there was the scalpel again. Hux picked it up.

“You’re NOT useless. We need you to move the Steadfast out of orbit!” Rose stated. “Even Poe would have to re-train himself for months just to get the space trash moving.”

Rubbing his left wrist for a vein, Hux shook his head.

“Nope. All you need is a carrier that lugs the wreck away. Steadfast most likely isn’t maneuverable on its own anymore.”

The former General pressed the knife against his wrist, only to get it kicked away by Finn. As for the threat? It was impossible to stab someone’s throat, when that one was coming running at you, while you were sitting hunched over on the floor.

“You didn’t even know how to correctly put the blade”, Finn reprimanded the General. “You wouldn’t have died, only caused us even more trouble. Now come!”

Hux looked up through the tears.

“You”, he said. “Not how I expected to go, but maybe poetic justice.”

“What are you trying to say?”

Matter of factly Hux stated: “That you’ll have to kill me, because I don’t intend to follow you. I won’t let the remnant of the Republic that I FINISHED OFF lock me up for life. But you can’t leave me here. I know your plans and where you are going.”

Finn shook his head, half annoyed and half amused. Then he bend down and grabbed the stubborn officer.

“Telling me what to do hasn’t worked the first time, what made you think it would work the second?”

Then the former stormtrooper moved his former master towards Poe’s stretcher and after a hardly noticeable moment of hesitation placed Hux next to the patient. The antigrav module registered the changed load and adjusted its power output accordingly, not in the least strained by having to lift two humans instead of a single one.

“No…” Hux wailed, lying with his back to Poe.

But it was too late. Finn and Rose were already pulling the rescue blanket over both of them, he had lost his knife and if he made himself roll off now, Hux would only land between the feet of his escort for BB-8 to roll over his fingers. There was… floor… more floor… stairs… And then they were already approaching a gate…

Poe turned his head ever so slightly towards the fellow passenger.

“Thanks, man”, he said. “I often threw my life into the line, in battle. It’s not that I wouldn’t be ready to die if my death could made a difference. But not like this… I didn’t want to go like this.”

Crying again, his rescuer claimed that he didn’t need Poe’s approval. But he did roll on his belly and slung his left arm around the little nuisance that was Poe Dameron.

A transport that was normally used to ferry released prisoners into the city swallowed the group and then they were already on their way to the safe house. Rose switched Eightball back on. At first nothing happened, but after a while the droid levitated just a little out of the backpack and looked out through the transport’s window. The big, wide world awaited him!

Chapter Text

“Rise again… rise again…”

“Yes, yes, coming…”

Poe Dameron firmly planted his elbows down on the mattress to push himself upright, when he remembered that this wasn’t the best idea after a concussion. But by then he had already lifted his body up a bit without feeling the need to vomit. That was a good sign. A medical sensor pasted to the man’s forehead was monitoring his condition, probably sending in real time to IT-08, and since he had already come this far without the sensor having protested, Poe decided to go all the way. He pushed and didn’t stop before he was sitting in the bed. The only adverse side effect was a freshly patched cut in his shoulder, where apparently Eightball had removed the prison tag, stinging.

There was a second bed in the room, standing in a rectangular angle from Poe’s, as well as two camping cots that stood together to form a double bed. With that the room was already full, leaving just enough space to navigate from the door to the beds.
The door leading out of the room stood ajar. Poe could spot a narrow door marked with the refresher icon and a stairhead. The stairs leading down were covered with a cheap carpet. No wall paintings or decorations of any sort were present; the safe house was functional (and hopefully safe), but not particularly inviting.

Faint noise reminiscent of someone playing the guitar reached Poe’s ear, but he couldn’t discern whether they were coming from downstairs or outside.

Since the others had assigned him the bed right under the window, Poe leaned his back against the headboard and looked out. From his elevated position he enjoyed a nice view over the neighborhood. He saw the bustle of a medium sized colonial city, one of the kind that had gotten planned on the drafting table, but then proceeded to grow more organically. The safehouse was sitting right at the boundary between an outer ring of pre-fabricated houses and the later additions, some still built from wood, and each one surrounded by a garden. Many of the gardens had livestock running around in them. There were the ubiquitous chickens, or a variant of them, anyway, and a small happabore-looking mammal was taking a nap in the sun near a pond. Poe now realized that it was almost midday of the day after their prison break.

From downstairs the guitar music grew louder and now Poe realized that the prompt to rise that had woken him up had actually been part of a song:

“…and watch the Nebulon-B-15 rise again.”

Poe knew the song well. It was the ballad of a battleship that had, in no small part due to the crew having looked a little too deep into the bottle, crashed into an unexplored planet’s ocean. Instructed by their superiors to leave the wreck down there, the crew defied their orders and got the ship up into space again, making her theirs in the process, since the owners had officially written her off.
Growing up, Poe had loved this song thoroughly and had been happy to learn that most Resistance members knew it by heart, too. Judging from Finn singing along with Rose rather confidently, the Empire, too, had passed the ballad down in its own military.
Nebulon-B-15 was an odd song to sing when you were preparing to wreck a Super Star Destroyer, Poe thought. But then again, maybe this irony was the point?

The pilot cleared his throat. Reasoning that if the others were creating noise loud enough to be heard up here, him joining in couldn’t endanger the group. They were probably as safe as safe could get.

“And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling bastards lying to you everywhere you go
Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Nebulon-B-15, rise again.”

The effect was profound. The singing immediately came to a halt and BB-8 stopped his playback of Poe’s guitar play that had accompanied the ballad. Then cushions rustled, an armchair got pushed and feet no longer wearing the prison workshop sneakers, but comfy indoor slippers, came storming up the stairs.

“Poe is awake! He’s awake!”

Eightball was the first to arrive, him not needing to use the stairs, then came Finn and Rose and finally BB-8 had to get carried up the stairs by Hux. Poe grinned when he realized for the first time that the troublemakers had the same hair color.

“Sorry, Poe!” Rose exclaimed, sitting down on the friend’s bed together with Finn. “We weren’t supposed to expose you to so much sensory input.”

“But Rose was humming this ballad under her breath while we were trying to cook”, Finn elaborated. “So I chimed in and we were overjoyed to have something in common that we hadn’t known about…”

Hux handed BB-8 to Finn, who placed the droid next to Poe like a large teddy bear, then he sat down on the floor between Finn’s and Rose’s legs. Even with Eightball hovering above the group without taking up space on the bed, now there was hardly any breathing room left. They were all one big heap of comfiness. Everything was so cozy, what in no small part was due to the cotton fleece leisure suits everyone was wearing – Rose in moss green, Finn in burgundy, Hux in turquoise and Poe in the shade of orange to match BB-8’s.

“I thought they were crying and said it would pass and soon they’d have forgotten about it”, Hux added to the story, followed by an apologetic grin that looked rather out of character on him. “It wasn’t quite what an infatuated couple wants to hear…”

“(And then I played that old track you and me recorded together and we started the song over together)”, BB-8 contributed in beeps.

“I heard!” Poe exclaimed, happy as a flea.

He petted BB-8 with one hand, with the other he clasped Rose’s tightly, then he hugged Finn and finally ruffled Hux’ freshly washed, but a little less than perfectly coiffed thatch. What even was the unlikely companion’s place in the team right now? At the moment he seemed to just drift along the rebels aimlessly, but he might very well decide to kill them all in their sleep this very night.

“Pray tell, Hux”, Poe asked, “What is this song about in your world? The smiling bastards, who don’t feel an attachment to their ships and only care about money?”

Quick like a shot and without the slightest doubt the First Order officer answered: “Republic mismanagement.” He shrugged. “Old or new, take your pick. Why, what does it mean to you?”

“Empire’s cold-heartedness…”

At this point the door signal rang. Poe asked Finn to help him down the stairs and against better judgement the friend agreed. They arrived downstairs to the sight of a tall Quarren entering the living (and only) room. His name was Kelmut Trent, and the others already knew him as their contact.
Eightball greeted Trent first. The contact’s previously professionally distant face visibly lit up upon seeing the IT-droid.

“We know each other from my inspections of the prison”, Trent explained. “The little guy once patched me up when I unexpectantly found myself in the middle of a prison riot one day. That was, in fact, when the idea to reprogram him for medical assistance was brought up for the first time. You see, the previous doctor had gotten shot dead, but I’m a bit of a status symbol of the Governor’s. Losing me would have looked bad, so measures had to get taken.”

Trent’s casual mention of his status, that plainly spoken boiled down to “the governor’s slave”, once again brought to the fugitives’ minds that they were not on a vacation in appreciation of their efforts in the battle of Exegol, but deep within enemy territory. It also explained why Kelmut was going by a human surname – it was his owner’s.

“Anyway, if IT-08 has taken a liking to you, you may be worth your salt”, Trent concluded.

The fugitives and their contact retreated deeper into the spacious room. At the far end a dining table was already set and in the kitchen nook a kitchen helper droid busily scuttled back and forth on the counters. The tiny, multi-limbed droids were programmed to salt, pepper and stir per default, but could get upgraded to perform many more food preparation and cleanup related tasks.
Now the kitchen helper whistled, signaling that the meal was ready.

“The hot pot is ready, want some?” Finn offered Trent.

“No, thanks. I, to the contrary, brought something for you.”

With these words the Quarren put a slim package on the kitchen counter. The helper droid unwrapped it and moved its contents, six small chocolate cakes, into the microwave stove.
Meanwhile the humans sat down and filled their plates with a thick soup made from green peas, carrots, potatoes and butter. They had plain cold water with the meal and the droids took some for cooling, too. Even advanced devices were not immune to that need, but first and foremost it was a companionship thing to share a “drink” with your human.

The chocolate cakes came out of the oven halfway through the meal.

“They are best eaten while still hot”, Hux advised the rebels, as if under the impression that this treat was unknown to them. Then he put down his spoon and greedily grabbed the first cake. Finn cut two others in half so that everyone got the same amount of cake. Doing so he released a dark, semi-liquid core.

“That’s why”, Hux said between two cake forks of chocolaty delight. “We call that lava cake.”

Only now did Poe and Rose realize that the man was really only talking to his fellow “First Order kid”, explaining something very basic to him. With Finn never having partaken of such a treat and it having been on the list of forbidden substances for young Hux, giving that explanation was like letting the younger man in on a dirty secret.
In fact, Poe now imagined the General freely sharing the highlights of a pin up calendar with guests, while hiding his chocolate. Breeding was, after all, encouraged in the First Order, especially the passing down of genes that they considered quality… like Finn’s, who had been officer-material… or the Hux line…

Wait a moment! What if Finn is already a father? What if he has fathered a full unit?! And how do I ask that? No, better question, how do I forget that. It’s stupid.

*
After having finished the cakes everyone felt as if they just had a festive grand meal.

As agreed in advance, their government contact set the rebels up with fake IDs and the license for a wrecking firm next.

Poe got handed an ID-card saying “Joe Black” and, not surprisingly, was employed as the main pilot of their business. BB-8 apologized for the name choice, producing beeps to the effect of “We thought we’d pick something easy to remember, considering your injury.”

“That sounds as if I’m missing out royally compared to the rest of you. What are your names?”

“Willow Darklighter, mechanic”, Rose introduced herself.

Poe gave an appreciative whistle.

“You?”

Finn hesitated telling his alias. Having grown up with a number only, he owed his first name to Poe. Taking a different name now felt like an act of disloyalty. But even worse was the fact that he and Rose had chosen the same surname to signify their growing bond. Telling that to Poe was akin to breaking up, nevermind that they had never really been together.

“I’m the space pest infestation removal specialist, Errol… Darklighter.”

Poe immediately understood that Finn was no longer questioning his decision to be with Rose instead of with him. Something must have happened while he had been out. Maybe they had talked or… done something else.

A wistful smile passed between the star-crossed lovers, Poe and Finn. It went over Trent’s head, who now shoved Hux his ID. It was issued to “Isbrand Cycen, finances & legal department”.

“Freezer burn, really?” Poe teased.

“Isbrand? That actually describes the burning sensation caused by a sword strike, the name going back to “isn” – nowadays “iron”. But “flaming sword” is perfectly acceptable as a more populist translation. It’s a warrior’s name.”

“Yeah. Totally reasonable. You call your baby “ice” to signify flame.” Poe slowly lowered his head, as close to a nod as he dared to go. “My concussion totally approves.”

On the chair next to Poe’s, Finn was gasping for air from laughter at the short exchange. Listening to these two’s banter more and more convinced Finn that he had made the correct choice when he had went with his heart, picking Rose over Poe, despite the pilot having been his first crush.
Crushes, that was the word he had been missing for a long time, the term that explained Finn’s relationship to Rey and Poe. With Rose it was different. By her side he felt that he might get eventually understand love. Fortunately in admitting that to himself Finn hadn’t abandoned Poe to a life bereft of love, but left him free to find it - even if at the moment his friend was looking for it in a somewhat strange place wrapped in fluffy turquoise.

“What about the surname?” Poe curiously (as well as against better judgement) asked Hux.

“Uh… it’s a variant of “Kaisar”, what in turn is a dialect term for “Emperor”.” (*see endnote)

Poe’s chin dropped, but no sound escaped his mouth.

“Speechless Poe Dameron? Neat. Life Day presents rolling in early this year.”

“You’re doing that to him on purpose”, Trent accused the turncoat.

“Just teaching him a lesson about respecting names.”

Poe waved his hand about. “It’s no longer fun if his majesty’s playing along.”

Trent looked from one to the other, this time not to comment on or join into their mirth, but amazed, as if realizing something for the first time.
“You four plus an astromech and a First Aid droid… If your roles in this operation correctly reflect you guys’ skill sets, you should consider making this your career in peace times”, Trent said, as if there was no doubt that this group would stay together.

“I already have a homestead waiting for me”, Poe replied, not knowing why he was bringing that up now as a positive, having done his utmost to escape exactly that homestead as a youth. “And there’s space for one more close by”, the pilot told Finn and Rose. “Our kids could play together, fall in love, feud, that sort of thing.”

Hux said nothing, but with the stormtrooper training- and the hyperspace tracking patents in addition to the wealth inherited from his father, he had to be filthy rich and wouldn’t have to worry about peacetime employment. Especially since at least a fraction of that money would be on a Hutt bank, and therefore untouchable by the First Order even now.

But all the money in the world could only buy what was available and so the group stared in disgust at the documents Trent laid out before them next. They outlined what resources their wrecking firm had at their disposal.

“Two quadjumpers and a Republic tugboat to lug something like eighty million tons out of orbit”, Rose eventually sighed. “Yeah, can’t see how that could go wrong.”

“That’s three kilometers by one and a half kilometer space trash we’re talking about”, Hux added, sounding more crestfallen than angry.

“That’s what?” Poe looked up. “C’mon!”

“2915 meters by 1483 meters, with the highest point of elevation being 496 meters.”

Rose and Finn looked surprised, but Poe only snapped his fingers.

“See? That’s more like you.”

“(That’s insane)”, Eightball beeped. “(Not a medical diagnosis, of course)”, he felt the need to add.

“The dimensions of commonly used models or especially important ships are part of the lieutenant exam”, Hux said. “There’s nothing strange about memorizing them even as an adult.”

Rose and Poe would very much have found it odd to still be able to quote high school knowledge not applicable to their current lives anymore. They knew the basics, like fungus cells missing chloroplasts yet having an outer cell wall, but could no longer name each and every cell component they once had had to label for their tests. Viewed in this light Finn hadn’t missed out on much by having went through an education that had strictly focused on the future career chosen for him. Hux, though? Poe was confident that this man could beat a fifths grader in a general knowledge contest, what wasn’t a small feat. Maybe even a graduatee the week after exams. Somehow, knowing this filled the pilot with pride.

“We can’t push or lug the wreck out of orbit to crash it on the moon, so that leaves controlled descent on New Harvest as the only option. For that we six have to take the wreck over from its skeleton crew”, Poe summed the situation up. “At least I hope it’s just a skeleton crew up there. And that Steadfast is still somewhat operable, of course. This is the most trouble a single Star Destroyer has ever given me!”

“A boarding operation, leave that to me!” Finn enthused. “Only problem: How do we approach the wreck safely?”

“By signing these”, Kelmut answered, putting a datapad onto the table. The loading screen showed the First Order’s crest and then Governor Trent’s personal sigil. “The public isn’t to know that the Steadfast is done for and could crash on their roofs any moment, but the Governor was informed. She offered General Pryde help with dismantling the wreck right from the start, but he accepted only after yesterday’s near impact. Only instead of actual contractors we’ll now send you up there. Soon as you sign those non-disclosure agreements, you’ll receive landing codes and minor security clearance.”

“Then let’s do it!”

Poe grabbed the pen first. He wrote his alias in print letters and with some difficulty, being used to typing. The same went for Rose, but as a mechanic her manual dexterity was better developed, so she wrote faster and clearer. Finn’s handwriting skill was at the same level as Poe’s, only he used the First Order font, that differed in small instances from the one taught in New Republic schools and schooling software. Finally Hux signed in cursive, but from the way he had to adjust his grip on the pen it was apparent that writing with his hand wasn’t a daily occurrence for him, either.

“Black… Darklighter… Darklighter again… and Cycen. Thank you, lady and gentlemen.” Trent nodded. “You’re all set now and I’ll take my leave. As for additional equipment you may need, you can contact me using this encrypted comlink. But only do it once you’re really certain you haven’t forgotten anything – every use carries the risk of exposure.”

Poe took the device. “Expect to hear from us in the evening already. With the wreck shedding debris left and right, we have no time to waste.”

*

That evening the plan was finished. All that was left to do was to wait for the provisions they had ordered from Trent to arrive in the morning.

Poe stepped through the safe house’s backdoor and entered a small, hedged-in backyard. Looking over the hedge, he could spot the New Harvest police patrols in their blue armor, that was reminiscent of a stormtrooper’s. They had orders from the governor to ignore the safe house, but if all of them returned empty handed from their search for the escapees, then Pryde would send actual stormtroopers next. One way or another the rebels would have to leave town soon, either into space or the wilderness.

A few paces to the side sat Hux with his back to the wall. He repeatedly tossed a small rubber ball against a board saying “No Vacancy” (apparently the safe house was officially registered as a vacation home for visitors from the countryside) and caught it again when it rebounded. The pace was much slower than if Poe had played the same game, but even so it was fast enough to make the pilot’s only so recently injured head spin.

“Sit”, Hux said without looking at the arrival.

Poe slid down the wall next to him. When Hux tossed the ball the next time, Poe snatched it on its return.

“Can we talk? In earnest, I mean.”

“I won’t try to talk you out of flying tomorrow, but do not expect encouragement from me, either. You know the risks. Do what you want… as you always do.”

“I wanted to talk about Crait.”

Now Poe had the turncoat’s full attention.
“Crait?! What would there be to discuss about Crait between us?”

“Kylo Ren. You had him out in the open and at point blank range. Why didn’t you order your crew to fire? Why didn’t you remove the one obstacle between you and the throne right there?”

“And they say I’m bad at making friends…”

“Look, Hux, I still haven’t fully recovered, but me and my friends are expected to sleep under the same roof as you tonight, only unlike last night, when you had your breakdown, we cannot sedate you again.”

“Ugh. Don’t remind me!”

“We discussed taking shifts standing watch or locking you up in the broom cabinet to minimize the risk of getting assassinated.”

“Oh, did you?”

Acid would have been gentler than the General’s voice in this moment, but Poe had to admit that he wouldn’t have taken this revelation any kinder. His reply would have been more creative, but stung no less.

“Help me understand you! There seems to have been a line you were not willing to cross. That’s pretty out of character for you.”

“That’s because I’m… sort of…”

“Yes?”

“The Supreme Leader of the First Order in exile.”

“Come AGAIN?”

“Don’t get your knickers in a twist, I said “sort of”. You asked about Crait, and that is part of the answer. See, after your scavenger friend had sliced Snoke neatly in half…”

“Actually Kylo Ren did that.”

“Oh, did he? He told us Rey… Ey, you’re probably right. Not that it mattered. I entered the throne room on the Supremacy and everything fell into place…”

- I see your patron is no more, Ren. What a tragedy.

- Huh?

- Clean that mess up asap. Oh, and… cut your fucking hair!

- What do you think you’re doing?

*confidently strutting around*

- I ask you again – one last time – what’s this going to be?

- Hands off me, Ren! At least stop standing in the way, if you have nothing better to do than loitering around while we’re under attack! In case you haven’t noticed, we’re leaderless, with an assassin running free on the ship. One has to assume command.

- Yes, “one“ hast to.

- Everything ready? Alright. Open channels to the whole fleet.

“Long story short, I proclaimed myself the next Supreme Leader.”

“On the fly? No, wait… Knowing you, you had your acceptance speech formulated long in advance for just such an occasion. With a couple of blanks to fill in last minute.”

The corners of Hux’ mouth treacherously twitched, but before a smile could form, he bit his lips and quickly finished his recap:
“An effort wasted. Ren didn’t immediately make his move, though. He played along, waited for the broadcast to run its course… before he force-chocked me mid-sentence. And he wouldn’t let go before I had not hailed him as Snoke’s successor, gasping for breath all through the pledge. Glory to the First Order…”

“Wow.”

“That moment it was over. Ren had relegated me to a fetch boy. The laughingstock of the First Order, too. Everyone who had a gripe with me, but had been too afraid to act on it before, suddenly saw a silver lining. The gunnery crew simply wouldn’t have carried out that order, and knowing that, I refrained from issuing it. But my loss, your gain, isn’t it? Information started flowing generously from that point on. I had lost. But I could still make Ren lose, too.”

“About that… Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but he’s most likely dead. Things are rather hazy, but Rey guided our approach to Exegol and I cannot imagine Ren sitting behind her in the X-Wing.”

“On her lap, more like it.”

“So to have left Endor, Rey must have killed Kylo Ren in the process.”

“Hm. Yes, most likely.”

Poe flashed Hux a grin.
“My condolences?”

Ignoring the tease, the General said in a solemn tone:
“To answer your question, I don’t know what I will do. Could go either way… any way. Like the Steadfast, I’m drifting ‘round the closest gravity source; I can watch myself do it, but there is a veil between the watching me and the me that’s acting. Once that gets torn, all bets are off.”

“Okay, that’s fair.”

They kept sitting, taking in the colors and sounds of the evening. No challenging the other, no frantically saving each other’s life or wellbeing either. There wasn’t even a deep familiarity between them yet, but there was peace.

*
Of course it couldn’t last.
There was something on Poe’s mind, that wouldn’t let him enjoy the peaceful evening to the fullest. The thought wasn’t even on the forefront of his thinking, it was lurking in the depths, shapeless, elusive, but persistently nagging. And it drove the man to break the silence:

“Alright, Hux, the aforementioned broom cabinet is still on the table. But I will put in a good word if you answer me five consecutive times, either by completing my sentence or by telling me a title.”

“A name and rank, so. Interested in our command structure, are you? There’s nobody on board anymore whom I’d feel the need, let alone the desire, to protect.”

Poe merely grinned. Then he started humming.

“What the…? That’s not a question! That’s…”

Poe just kept humming. The melody was fast-paced, somewhat harsh, but also playful. He was repeating the chorus in his head, when Hux interrupted him: “Oh for the love of… Going ‘round The Maw.”

“That was easy. The song goes back so far that sailors probably sung it already, referring to some dangerous region of the ocean they were traversing. Of course spacers would keep singing it, regardless of what political body they belonged to.”

“Well, then try for real now.”

Again Poe started humming. This time Hux fell in quickly, a little behind the tune, but recognizable: “Paths of victooooory, we shall walk!” But then his eyes narrowed to a slit. “Is that a challenge or are you playing games again? This was even easier than the first.”

Humming… Humming…

Poe grinned when Hux could not immediately identify the tune.

“Wait… I know this…. I know that I know it…”

On and on Poe hummed, not slowing down. Hux’ lips started moving, trying to activate the knowledge he knew he had stored somewhere. Finally a single line flashed up in his mind and he bawled: “Turn hard to port!”

“That’s not port!” Poe protested, but it was actually part of the lyrics, same as Hux’ next line was as much part of the song as a cry of triumph: “Now I’ve got it!”

They looked at each other, then proclaimed in unison: “Trust me, I’m in control!”

The men repeated the chorus together and then they broke into laughter. They could have stopped their challenge at this point, laughing together like the cast of a holonet show at the end of an episode. But neither man was the type to know where to stop, and so Poe breathed in again and started on the fourth of the five agreed upon songs.

This time the melody was slow, drawn out, befitting the song’s message. The title escaped Hux, as he had always called this song by a different name, its first five words. But part of their agreement was that a finished sentence constituted a pass, too. That’s why the untrained singer raised his voice to warble as steadily as possible to Poe’s tune: “And I can see my dream come alive at last…”

Poe stopped abruptly. Hux’ disappointment didn’t show, but it was there. He should have answered later, listened to the little rat humming a while longer. It would have been pleasant. Oh, well, Hux still had one more chance to do that.

“Next!”

Poe’s humming started softly, but by the time he reached the second stanza, singing the text in his head, he tossed the melody at the other like an accusation. Poe even missed a tone, Hux immediately caught that. After all, music and dance were just applied mathematics. Able to execute dance steps flawlessly, but terrible at keeping a tune, Hux could still reliably identify mistakes of other singers. Whatever was going on in the pilot in this moment, it was doing him as much good as another torture session would have, so Hux stopped him with a single word: “Ashes.”

Now Poe threw himself around with a speed that had to be even less healthy for him than the emotions. He balled his fists and advanced, but stopped short of hitting the enemy officer.

“No way you could have known that!” Poe shouted. “Not that! This song is about the polar opposite of what the First Order stands for!”

How could it be possible that the enemy took everything the rebels held dear, but twisted it? That was worse than destroying something, this claiming of something good for themselves, putting it through the wringer and spitting it out desecrated.

“I sang this song to Ren, in my head, when he waltzed into a council session with a new mask on”, Hux said calmly, with just a hint of glee. “Because, see? He’s worshipping the ashes, Vader’s ashes, and he’s not going anywhere doing so. Whereas I preserve the flame. Four. Beams. In. A. Single. Shot. The sun resulting from the Hosnian cataclysm will still be burning when nobody remembers us anymore. So you destroyed my super weapon? Well, not before I created something eternal!”

“You… bastard…”

Hux’ eyes bore into Poe’s. They were pure ice, despite all the talk of fire, cold, but not uncaring. To the contrary, the icicle’s sharpness cared a lot, but what it cared about was to cause pain.

“Finally woken up, little pilot?” Hux barked. “Good for you. Who do you think you are to test me for indoor privileges?! I’m not you guys’ pet, not the tamed danger! A war trophy, maybe, but even that remains to be seen. You can’t decide what to do with me, as if I were a frog your kid has brought into the house! I sleep where I decide to…”

There was a short, uncomfortable pause, uncomfortable for the General, that was, seeing what had briefly flashed through his mind. But then he decided to just run with it and shouted:

“…and if that’s YOUR bed, you’ll shut up and like it!”

And with these words he rose and strode into the house. As confidently as his still not fully healed leg would allow, anyway.

*

In the common room BB-8 turned his head away from a holographic game he had been playing with Eightball. He now fixed his gaze on Hux and, as the droid assumed, Poe entering the house behind him. Since BB-8 was the one projecting the gaming field, it now fell over Hux. White and black dots on a grid obscured his sight and in a reflex he tried to wave them away.
Suddenly realizing that Hux had come in alone, that there was no Poe anywhere in sight, BB-8 deactivated the game and rolled towards the door at top-speed, deliberately tripping the General. Whatever had occurred between him and Poe, it was painfully obvious that they hadn’t parted as friends.

Thud! For the second time in as many days General Hux lay flat on his belly, and again in full sight of the rebels…

To make it worse, Finn commented: “Still a disciple of gravity, I see”, causing Rose to chuckle. The couple was sitting on the couch, eating open sandwiches made from a dark bread.

Not so long ago Finn’s would have been fighting words, causing thoughts of blue murder in the General. But then there was Rose… The way she was laughing at BB-8’s shenanigans and his misfortune was distinctly different from any laughter Hux had ever heard. He thought back to the quiet moments they had shared in the waiting room, repairing Eightball. Rose hadn’t thought the world of Hux, of course not, him having been in command during the battle her sister had died in. But there had been something like reluctant acceptance in the air.
And the way Finn had stood at Poe’s cot together with him – wary, but not aggressive, simply in a no-nonsense way.
Neither of the duo meant to hurt, their laughter was more like a tickle. They wouldn’t think any less of Hux if he didn’t proceed to beat them up or shoot them. Chances were, they’d forgotten the slight in something like ten minutes already. Such a soft lifestyle! So laughably weak… Yet also enticing, in a way.

No, Hux wouldn’t kill Rose or Finn, but instead play along with their crazy scheme of dismantling the Steadfast. Except, of course, if they got ideas like actually trying to lock him up. Hux could only hope they wouldn’t. He’d really loved to keep those rebels around a bit longer and draw… something undefined from their company.

He clambered back to his feet and, avoiding eye contact, walked deeper into the house, towards the kitchen nook. There he stretched his arm out for the kitchen helper to climb on. Hux carried the droid to the dining table, where it dismounted.
Two teapots were waiting here, one with a herbal mix, the other with strawberry tea. In a basket were two kinds of local bread as well as the unavoidable First Order regulation mix. Nobody had touched that yet, because it was nearly tasteless. Nevertheless Hux took two slices. A quantum of normality in all of this couldn’t hurt.

“Show me what you can do, will ya?” the man urged the kitchen helper, that immediately proceeded to butter the bread with one of its claws. It looked a bit like a large bug excreting on your meal, and the urge to swap it arose briefly, but then again, there was a certain adorableness to it.

“If such a decadence exists, then what do we need kitchen workers for?” Hux wondered, while pointing at goose liverwurst and something cucumber-like looking, that seemed to really be a leaf. Again the kitchen helper went to work, spreading both on the first slice of bread and a thicker layer of the leaves on the second one.
It was almost hypnotic to watch and sparked the memory of a maybe three year old, toddling into an industrial kitchen. In retrospect it could just as well have been the kitchen of a mansion, that had only seemed so big and machine hall-like to the youngling…

Little Armitage had been a sickly child, but neither shy nor sad. Enthusiastic, maybe a bit too easy to please, falling into or getting trapped inside stuff a lot, or so he had been told. Himself the grown man didn’t have many memories of the time before Jakku.
Had he been looking for something in the kitchen or found his way in here by accident? The boy no longer couldn’t remember. Burnt in his mind was the image of a mechanic kneeling next to an opened dishwasher, the hatch removed and placed against the adjacent counter. It looked like a tent or a tunnel, in any case an invitation to crawl through. But before he could approach further, the mechanic had tossed a hydrospanner at the boy. She must have hit him, maybe accompanied by a threat, because he never again had went to this place. Hux didn’t remember the exact circumstances anymore, only the missile coming at him before he had even touched anything, and its unmistakable message.

The droid was finished with its work and when it received no further command, it extended tiny thrusters, that propelled it back to the kitchen counters. His head still hot from focusing too hard on the memory, Hux realized that the droid wouldn’t have needed him to give it a ride. Not even the droid needed him… Angrily the man bit into his bread.

“We need to socialize him”, Rose whispered to Finn.

“With him?”

“That, too. He’s unstable.”

“(This man’s self-esteem is like… A real ancient computer, that has trouble processing especially low values)”, Eightball tried to explain, but found it difficult to get his point across with just beeps. “(When the numbers were already very low, and more got subtracted, then the system would suddenly output a real high value.)”

Finn sighed. Rose and Eightball were probably right.

“Chatting up the Starkiller Commander… Redemption sure is harder than to keep fighting, only now for a good cause”, Finn admitted.

What even should they talk about? Ask Hux about what the weather was like outside, in the yard, where Poe was most likely crying right now? Or on all the planets he had destroyed?
Finn dreaded the conversation he had to initiate (and initiate he’d have to, because Rose wouldn’t do that) more than going into battle, where he’d risk his life. Dying in battle was only a chance, and Finn was competent enough to minimize that risk. To the contrary in engaging with “Isbrand”, he KNEW he’d get burnt.

Finn slowly rose, gathering his and Rose’ dishes, and walked to the dining table. He hadn’t yet reached it, when he got almost overwhelmed by an influx of images. He saw his hands, objects he was holding, his feet moving, all in first person view, but in each of the short snippets an orange thatch, often covered by a black cap, was visible, too. These were their memories, Finn realized, the memories he shared with the First Order officer!
Finn was surprised how many of those little scenes there were. And then he realized something else, namely that in all the episodes the conscripted child soldier had been happier than the ten years older officer.

Finn felt the dishes leave his hand, heard them fall on the table. One of the plates received a little crack, but that didn’t matter now.

“Darkness”, Finn whispered. The First Order had been – and still was – an empire shrouded in darkness. It corrupted its people, who in turn fed the sinister aura. Only the strongest of will could hope to break free from that cycle, and despite all his ambition, General Hux wasn’t one of those thus gifted. The only other option was receiving help from the Force. His midichlorians had enabled Finn to FEEL the wrongness of the First Order’s actions, when his comrades’ minds had long been numbed by a thick layer of indoctrination.

In other words, Rose had been right as right could get: To defeat the First Order, one had to free its subjects from themselves, not kill them. Every stormtrooper or officer thus liberated constituted not just one enemy less, but one ally more.

But even knowing this in his bones now, Finn still had no idea what to say to Hux.

“Rose wants us to chat. Say something!”

“Heh. From one First Order kid to another, smalltalk wasn’t particularly high on our education plan, was it?”

“You don’t say.”

“Let’s see…” Hux looked into the cups, then re-filled them with the herbal tea they had contained, poured himself a pot of the strawberry tea and then proceeded to carry all three back to the couch, where he handed one cup to Rose and put the other two on the end table. There! They were socializing already, even if nonverbally.

Finn joined the other two.

“Dameron is such an idiot!” Hux hissed after having taking a sip from his tea. “I promised to protect him, you were there when I did, not to mention that I still can’t fully open my left eye from when I made true on that promise. I mean, what more could he want? I certainly won’t toss my weapons to his feet! If I had a weapon right now, that is.”

“You don’t?” Rose wondered. “I was under the impression that by now you’d have squirreled away at least three knives.”

“Not for lack of trying, but Eightball wouldn’t let me. Those little guys are perceptive.” Another sip, and another tidbit: “Most everyone runs software on their IT droids that allows them to double as guards, because of their reputation. If you don’t have enough actual guards to staff two intersections, you put an IT into one. Most potential intruders or escapees will rather take the other floor, the one where they’ll run into stormtroopers. Not you guys, of course. You’d, what do I know, steal the IT.”

Finn smiled. “Been there, done that.”

While everyone was trying to come up with something else to say, the door slid open and back in came Poe, accompanied by BB-8. Hux jumped off the sofa with his tea. There was really only a single sentence left to say here:

“I’m going to bed.”

*

Hux hadn’t expected to fall to sleep at this time already. As a result he woke up so early that it was still night. In the bed standing at a right angle with his, Poe’s hand had slipped free from under the covers and was dangling over the edge. How typical! The little barbarian didn’t care one bit about how he was presenting himself to the world. Not that it would have mattered in any way, shape or form, normally. But in his current condition sleeping like a heap of droids in the Lost and Found office could be detrimental to Poe’s recovery.

Giving in to an impulse, Hux reached out, intent on putting the hand back where it belonged. He wasn’t prepared for it to twitch and the fingers to curl as if to clamp the attacker down. Since it was too late to retract his own hand, Hux went for the only option left to him: at least squeeze the other’s hand instead of letting it capture him.

Poe blinked. “Huh?”

“Don’t ask. Just. Don’t ask. So tired of your shit…”

“Yeah, same here!”

As if it wasn’t him, who had to clean after every mess Snoke, Ren and Hux had caused to the galaxy for years now! Poe had entered his thirties and imagined his life differently, but here they were, fighting a war same as their parents before them had done, yet the First Order General had the nerve to complain to HIM? Sure, you have it so hard…

But then again, locked in each other’s grasp now they were just two people who had woken up in the middle of the night, and in this state pretty much every hand felt the same. This hand Poe was holding had killed and tortured, but it wasn’t incapable of caressing and comforting, too. There just had never been any reason to.

“Is there a chance you might let go?” Hux asked, albeit without making any effort to wiggle free.

“Not even if you directly asked me to, no.”

Back to sleep Poe’s mind went. And so they lay, holding hands. After a while Hux had fallen asleep again, too.

By morning both their hands hang over the edge. They must have let go of each other, but they couldn’t remember when that had happened, so they pretended it had never been a thing in the first place.

For what was there to their “bond”, viewed rationally? Poe Dameron had hit his head, he wasn’t thinking clearly. And Armitage Hux was alone in unfamiliar territory, a situation that left a member of the incredibly social species that was humankind no choice but to attach themselves, even if that meant fraternizing with the enemy. There was nothing surprising here, or particularly deep and especially nothing lasting.

*

Notes:
1) “Cycene” is actually old English for “kitchen” and, yes, Armitage knows that. Poe doesn’t.
2) The songs are all taken from rl. In order of how they appear: The Mary Ellen Carter, Going ‘round the cape, Pathes of victory, Trust me I’m in control, Faith of the Heart and Ashes.

Chapter Text

“Woosh! Woosh!” The boy swung the wooden staff he had gotten told practice with around. “I’m Lord Vader and will finish you rebel scum off!”

Back and forth, up and down the “lightsaber” went, until it suddenly got stuck mid-swing. The boy couldn’t for the life of Snoke deduce where it might have gotten caught. The ceiling was way too high in the gym and he had taken care to have enough space to practice his swings, same as all the other boys who were learning alongside him.

“Rein in your farthiers, Eight-Seven”, a male voice said. The digits made no sense, and that was the moment Finn “FN-2187” realized that he was dreaming. As a child in batch eight he had went by a different designation.

The instructor who had grabbed Finn’s staff now pried it out of the child’s hands completely.

“There is no need to pretend to be someone else”, he scolded the boy. “You are already a soldier of the First Order, and that is something to be proud of!”

As the dream shifted into a different one, Finn remembered that this had really happened. He had gotten sent to the sidelines, banned from practicing that day, doomed to fall behind the class. The subsequent need to catch up had taught the stormtrooper trainee not to waste time on pretend play in the future.

The dream still vividly in his mind, Finn woke up the others, starting with Rose.

Ever the silent, but also ever the attentive one, Rose asked: “Something on your mind?”

“Just a nightmare. Apparently my subconsciousness has a problem with the disguises and fake names.”

Next Hux got shaken awake.

“We’ll be in the refresher. You wake up Poe”, Finn said in a hushed voice.

Was he unwilling to so much as touch the friend, in order to not endanger his partnership with Rose, Hux wondered? Did Finn think bonding with the pilot would do Hux good? Or was he just relegating responsibility for the little nuisance to someone else?

Hux shook Poe by the shoulder.

“Waky-waky, rebel scum!”

“Uh… Is it morning already?”

“Uh-huh. How are you in the spot where other people have their brains?”

“Fine, I think. Your leg?”

“The injury is still noticeable, but not what I’d call painful. A bit annoying.”

“That does translate into lowered reaction speed, though.”

“You tell me!” A frown, quickly followed by a smile. “So, General Dameron, do you want to sit this out and play Pazaak together in the infirmary?”

My new rank… Quick, translate Hux to human speech, what does he want to convey? Ah, right. Acknowledging the rank granted to me by the military of a political body he doesn’t recognize as legit is like offering first name terms. And actually better than if he had done that. I certainly don’t respect this man as a person, but he really is a competent strategist.

“Tempting, Grand-Marshal”, Poe returned the offer, “But seeing how we fared last time we entered one, I have to pass.”

Two – three if they counted Eightball’s glitched vocabulator - liabilities in a team of six. This wasn’t looking too good. On the other hand, Poe thought, it wasn’t looking any worse than their usual chances, so it would have to do.

When the humans came down the stairs, IT-08 was already down there. He was hovering over the couch table, slurping in all the chemicals he had ordered. Not all of them were for pharmaceutical purpose, some also had a practical application in combat or sabotage. Eightball didn’t comment on his decision to add to his offense. He seemed to have come to terms with fighting because he hated torture even more than combat and the latter at the moment was a means to prevent the first.

After the droid was finished, some bowls with colorful liquids still stood on the table – had Eightball tried his probes and instruments at making breakfast, maybe? Before the first human could sample a few drops, the droid explained that these were dyes and an experimental fast-growing lotion for hair. They would help with disguising the rebels.

After using the reagents, “Joe” had ended up blonde and with a full grown beard, “Errol” now had spiky multicolored hair, “Willow” shaved her head except for a middle row that stood upwards, “Isbrand” had a stubble and neck-long, reddish-brown hair, BB-8 sported a green paintjob on a black background and Eightball was silvery-white with a field medic’s red sigil now.

Theirs would have been the perfect disguises – provided the First Order were all face blind and didn’t have a full profile of the group. All the disguises achieved was to make the difference between being dead and being dead ten seconds later. But those ten second might just be the decisive ones, allowing for escape or gaining the upper hand!

“Ready to go?” Finn asked, after they had also allocated the weapons and easy to conceal security vests among themselves.

Rose, Poe and the droids replied affirmative, then five sets of sensors focused on the defector. Having a second engineer next to Rose and a sixths body overall with them would be helpful, of course, but bringing Hux along was still a risk.
Hux swallowed the last of his tea. He understood that acting naturally was his best bet now, if he didn’t want to get left behind tied up (and probably having killed one of the rebels before they overpowered him). Unfortunately “acting naturally” for Armitage Hux boiled down to striking a pose and giving a speech:

“Recently I found myself thinking that with you by my side I’d made it to the top, after all. The way you reacted to each of my leaks, putting your expanded knowledge to the best effect, was a joy to watch. Very different from how one imagines disorganized anarchists. Of course tracking your reactions also enabled me to better predict your movements, so the Resistance’s net gain wasn’t that large. It’s not the compliment you want to hear, I’m sure, but I look forward to our mission together. At the very least it should be interesting.”

It seemed to have worked, because the next moment they were sitting in a speeder and were on their way to the space port.

*

“Don’t approach the spaceport! Security is too tight, they are on to…”

Trent’s voice through the comlink, followed by a shot.

“Trent? Trent?!” Poe gasped into the micro, in the same motion steering the speeder into a side alley, where he parked it. “Blast, say something, man!”

“General Pryde shot the governor. I have to flee. You should, too. To the countryside… I can’t give you precise instructions now, but I’ll find you there.”

“No”, Poe rejected the notion of fleeing. “That would only delay capture. We need to strike true against the First Order, and we need to do that today! Cause chaos, establish that their rule is over. While we bring down the Steadfast, you rally the people on the surface to rise up against Pryde and his stormtroopers! Rotate a surveillance satellite so that it records the Steadfast going down, as a warning what will happen to their rotten empire!”

“You want to start a riot? What’s next? The Republic Remnant taking over the planet?! Not that it would be the worst perspective, to the contrary, but… the risk…”

“Listen, Trent, you’re in everything but an official title the second in command of the colony, and the people know that. They need you now.”

“Not to send them into their death, though.”

“But…”

Finn in the co-driver’s seat leaned to the left to speak into to comlink.

“Just keep everything together while we do our anarchist thing”, he told Trent. “About the “riot”? When the time is right, it’ll happen. It’ll feel natural. There’s only so far they can push people without risking a pushback.”

“There’s only so far you can go when Pryde has commissioned what looks like every last stormtrooper from the Steadfast to guarding the space port and its vicinity!”

Now Hux snarled into the comlink from his seat in the back of the car: “I’m thinking of something!”

“Heard the man?” said Poe. “He’s thinking of something!”

Poe severed the connection, then he faced Hux: “Why’s it taking you so long to think? I mean it’s all you ever do!”

“Some emotion may be involved.”

“Damn.”

The former General took out his own comlink. “This will either work like a charm or fall on our feet catastrophically, there’s no in between. Be prepared.” A couple of turns of the ring around the device and a few frantic clicks later Hux spoke into the comlink: “Captain Trenay? This is Ice speaking. – Then get him here, you idiot!”

“Trenay?” Poe’s lips formed, looking at Finn.

“Never heard that name”, the former stormtrooper replied in the same way.

“You’d known him by his number. “Trenay” is from before he got one assigned”, Hux said, while waiting for the stormtrooper Captain to take his call. “That’s the advantage of being a young organization, everyone still knows everyone else.”

Poe turned around. He placed his arms on the backrest and put his chin on them.

“Oh, yes, the First Order, your generic neighborhood gang.”

“Trenay was part of a gang I had as a kid. My very own Knights of Ren. I may explain later.”

There was a noticeable click in the comlink, suggesting that everything said from this point on might get recorded, and then a male voice spoke up: “Ice?”

“The same. Listen, Trenay, I need to get into the space port and to the launch pads. Create an opening for me!”

“Is it true that you jumped ship?”

Hux hesitated. What would be the most welcome answer here…? In theory all former orphans from Jakku were conditioned to place their loyalty to him over everything else, even the Empire. Trenay asking back was already slightly worrying. It probably meant that his secondary education had stuck and now the First Order was the most important thing to him.
On the other hand, what if his was another Finn case, only in a much more difficult position, one where Trenay couldn’t just leave? Chipping them away from the First Order one by one, Rose had said… For that to work, there’d have to be a seed lie in wait for the rain to help it break free from its shell.

At this point Poe reached out and took the comlink.

“Yes, it’s true, Hux is with us now”, he spoke into it. “You can trust him. Here’s fucking Poe Dameron telling you!”

His enthusiastic words prompted a disparaging snort on the other end.

“That’s good to know, thank you for confirming.” Trenay’s voice grew more subdued, when he spoke on, as if he’d turned his head away from the commlink “Alright, I have their signal. Pinning it down now…”

“Wait… what?” Poe sputtered. “They’re trying to track us? Your friends are worse than you, “Ice”! You’re such a dumpster fire!”

“I don’t have friends!” Hux yelled back. “Where did you hear me refer to Trenay as a friend?!”

“I… sort of… assumed…”

“And now you assumed us into a real shitty position, hotshot!”

Trenay laughed out loud. “Can’t wait to learn that position for myself and meet your cute little friends, Ice”, he sneered. “Data processed in seven… six…”

Rose alone had the presence of mind to take the comlink from Poe. She handed it to BB-8 and pointed at a transporter that was approaching. The street was wide enough to let it pass without having to rise above standard traveling elevation and the other car gave no indication that it would do anything other than exactly that: ignore the speeder and continue on its way.

BB-8 swallowed the commlink, then hurled it towards the larger car. It landed on the transport’s open bed.

“I didn’t expect you’d do that”, Hux commented. “The driver will get into trouble…”

“It was an automated transport”, Rose clarified.

“Catastrophically”, Finn confirmed into the defector’s direction. “Just like you said. But… thank you for trying.”

He put his hand on Poe’s shoulder, who was still staring at Hux.

“I’m sorry!” Poe whispered. “I saw the world in terms of what I wanted it to be like. And also, that bloke was full of shit. Everyone knows it’s not Ice, but Ember!”

Finn leaned into the backrest now, too, not letting go of his friend. He stretched his other hand out towards Hux, who took it. Finn smiled. “Soooo, can we consider you both cured of name-dropping yourselves in a critical situation?”

“Yeah.” “Most decidedly.”

“Okay. And now let’s not squander the opportunity! Get to driving again!”

The men let go of each other. Finn blew Rose a kiss accompanied by an endlessly grateful look, while in the driver’s seat Poe’s fingers were running over the speeder’s controls. It accelerated and then they were on their way again.

They reached the space port, where they had their IDs checked halfheartedly by a squad of stormtroopers to the background scene of infantry and pilots swarming away from the port to chase the hapless automated transport on its way to the countryside.
Leaving the checkpoint, the rebels heard a sergeant say: “The rebels apparently are trying to reach the landspeeder factory. There’s no telling what havoc they might wreck there!”
Biting back their laughter, the intruders proceeded to the landing pad. They quickly found their “ships”. BB-8 and Eightball ejected from the speeder’s droid ports and the humans grabbed their backpacks. Then Poe and Rose took a Tug-b13 each, meanwhile Finn, Hux and the droids boarded the Tug-314 with the majority of the stuff they had brought.

*
“I’m certain now”, Finn said, half to himself, half to the other three.

“Huh?” “Beep?” “Err?”

A man and two droids looked at the tugboat’s co-pilot with puzzled expressions.

“The voice I heard in my dream… Ah, right, you wouldn’t know about that. See, close to waking this morning, a childhood memory came back to me in a dream. The instructor in there was Trenay. Distorted as it was by his helmet, I didn’t immediately recognize his voice. But, yes, I’m sure of it now. The Force tried to warn me about Trenay.”

“You mean you had a vision of Trenay not helping us”, Hux said, not contesting what had been said, only Finn spinning what the General called mystification around it. “But that also means…”

There was a short pause spent formulating the next sentence without any expression that could even remotely get interpreted as the Force telling or showing Finn something, and least of all as it having warned him.

“If you saw something pertaining Captain Trenay being unhelpful in the Force, then that one was the biggest threat today. From now on we can take everything else we see from people at face value. If they offer to help, that’s genuine, if they act antagonistic, they mean it.”

Finn and the droids had to admit that there was logic to what the ally had said. They agreed to keep his words in mind, but would still be careful.
Hux corrected the tugboat’s course to avoid collision with a large piece of scrap metal from the Steadfast that came tumbling their way. Then he took up the conversation again:

“Damn… Why didn’t Ren ever say something this useful! You’d think he’d be capable of doing the same things an untrained force sensitive can? But, no, all he ever contributed was swordplay to achieve victories a blaster wielding unit would have scored just a minute or so later. That, and keeping the maintenance crew busy.”

“Venturing a guess, I’ve heard tell that the Dark Side dishes out quick and easy power, but exerts a heavy price later. The more Ren lost himself in it, the more he might have lost an idea of the big picture, too, and forgot all the small ways to nudge things into the desired direction.”

“Makes sense.”

The way I’m paying the price for my folly now. Let’s face it, for all practical purposes I’ve become what I’ve been fighting: a rebel, the distinction between having joined the Resistance and acting as its ally being near meaningless in our situation. I really need to take care not to get too comfortable in this role.

*
Finally the rebels’ destination came into full view, but it wasn’t a view anybody would have wanted to experience.

As expected, the Steadfast was only a wreck anymore, surrounded by the cloud of space debris it was generating. The larger pieces were ranging from landspeeder-sized to the dimensions of a small house. Poe carefully navigated around the wreckage, and at one point had to push some of it out of the way to allow the tugboat to follow.
Coming closer now, there was no more doubt as to what they had already seen from a distance: The bridge had suffered a hit and was exposed to the vacuum of space, now that its dome was gone.

“No droids operating anything. They’re using the secondary bridge, it looks like”, Hux commented.

Finn flashed the General a grin.

“Doesn’t that give you an idea?”

“No?”

“We won’t even have to fight what remains of the crew to take this tub over”, Finn explained. “We land on the main bridge, wearing our space suits. Once there, we route control back, thus gaining full control over all still operable systems.”

“Yes, of course!” Hux beamed. “It wouldn’t be feasible for an extended stay, let alone travel, but for the short time we need to be there, the space suits will do perfectly! Let’s get a closer look at the damage, see if anything needs to get jury-rigged.”

“(Flying aaaaall casually here)”, BB-8 beeped with anticipation of the surprise takeover. When the tugboat swooped over the bridge, the droid started analyzing. “(Looking good so far)””, he reported. “(While Rose and I do the repairs, Hux can calculate a trajectory for atmospheric re-entry, so that the wreck doesn’t melt and breaks into even more unpredictable pieces of trash.)”

Meanwhile Finn pointed at several spots on the ruined bridge. “I’ll lie in wait here… and with Rose working at this console here, Eightball should levitate over there for maximum coverage. Poe can fill in here. Of course I’d rather have him in a spacecraft covering us.”

“You have a keen eye for a siege situation”, Hux commented.

Suddenly the intercom activated and a male voice said with barely veiled amusement: “Steadfast calling civil tugboat – that gaping maw you’re heading for is not the hangar, but what remains of our bridge. I’ll send you a path leading to enter a still somewhat functional hangar now.”

“Roger, Steadfast. And, uh, sorry. It’s the first time we’re gutting a fish this big”, Hux replied. “That was Commander Trach just now”, he then told Finn and the droids. “My scanner officer from the Finalizer. I brought him along when we semi-retired her, but he was never an ally. Very competent at his job, though. He knows his tech and respects it.”

“Does he respect anything that isn’t technology? Oh, forget I asked! You wouldn’t like the man, if he did.”

“He keeps ornamental fish that he’s quite fond of. Don’t ask me whether he respects them, though. I wouldn’t have a clue how to discern that.”

*

No five minutes later the rebels stood face to face with Masir Trach in a control room adjacent to the hangar. They wore their flight suits, but were able to take the helmets off in here, something that couldn’t be said anymore for most of the places on the ship.

“The plan”, Trach told the civic contractors he was taking the rebels for, “is to salvage what we can from the wreck before initiating a controlled crash. It’s taking time though, too much time. Only yesterday there was a fire, that destroyed a section I’d liked to have preserved. I’m very glad you’re here now.”

“Nah, it’s us who have to be grateful for such a big job”, Willow Darklighter replied.

“Right.” Trach nodded. “If you prove yourselves dependable and competent, you will find that your work here will pay off in spades.”

So that was the point where they were making small talk, Poe thought to himself. But to what extent? Should he say something, too? And if yes, what? Or would Hux play that role? What if the Commander recognized his General’s voice? All of a sudden the people-person Poe Dameron found himself confused.

“Something on your mind, Mister, Black, was it?” Trach prodded.

“Uh…” Black gulped. “Actually, yes. If your ship is that badly damaged, what’s the enemy’s looking like?
”
“I reckon there isn’t anything left of them to look at”, Cycen chimed in.

The rebels’ attention was on the First Order officer. They had gotten captured before the battle of Exegol had concluded, and therefore had no real idea how it had went. During the fight, the enemy had reconfigured the Steadfast to act as replacement for the destroyed control tower, but the attackers had taken her out, too. So it was unlikely that one or more Xyston class destroyers had left Exegol’s atmosphere. But had some survived the attack? Were they even now lurking in low orbit of Exegol, patiently waiting for a new tower to get erected? Commander Trach’s reaction might tell them a little. Or nothing at all.

“Nothing”, Trach said, strangely tonelessly. Or at least it would have sounded strange for anybody not privy to what had happened and where he had fled from. “Nothing left.” The man forced himself to smile. “We fought a battle in the tumultuous atmosphere of a planet. That isn’t what these destroyers are made for and, well, you see the result. If you look closely, you might also still see hoofprints on the hull.”

“Hoofprints?” Errol Darklighter exclaimed, to keep himself from grinning wide. “And in the atmosphere? I don’t think I want to know what kind of space pest that was you squared off with.”

“Some military secrets better stay secret”, Willow agreed.

Trach nodded slowly.

“Yes. Some secrets better stay secret.”

There was an uneasy pause, then Trach spoke up again: “We plan to safely land a lab with its complete interior on the planet’s surface today. Your tugboat can do that. We’ll also have to cast off another hyperdrive module that has turned critical and kick it wherever before it explodes on us.”

“If that went into orbit…”

“But it won’t, Mrs. Darklighter, because your nifty quadjumpers are here now. Lug the module away and detonate it in a safe distance. I’ll see you for lunch after these tasks are done, then we’ll discuss the next steps.”

*

“So how was the second half day of honest work in your lives?” Hux tossed at his companions at the end of their shift. They were still in their vehicles, circling the wreck, but expected to return to the hangar any moment.

“Right back at you!” Poe sent back.

“Oh, come, don’t joke around!” Finn said. “For me it was exactly that and I should be overjoyed, but I didn’t like that coveted “honest work” one bit. Being an Acting General is way closer to my comfort zone.”

What if life after the war didn’t have to be that different, after all? What if he took Rose up on her offer to travel to Batuu together? There were rumors that the backwater planet in the same sector as New Harvest was harboring a tinkerer who had studied old Jedi texts, but not with the intent of becoming knight himself. Instead his ambition was to recreate the Old Republic lightsaber technology. Finn could get himself a lightsaber there and take up training for real… But none of this was fit to get discussed over the com, especially not right now.

“Time for our after-school job”, Poe said, and with that they were on a strict timetable. Commander Trach wouldn’t expect them in the improvised mess hall for the next fifteen minutes or so, but if they still wouldn’t show up after that window, he’d have his staff come look for them.

Down the tugboat and one of the b-13’s went on the damaged bridge. Finn, Hux, Rose and BB-8 assumed their positions and went to work.
Rose yanked a control panel off a console and gave it a little momentum. The panel soared towards the navigation station, where Hux had removed the remains of that one’s destroyed panel. He caught the replacement and slammed it into position with a little more force than was advisable, unable to correctly judge his strength or lack thereof in the vacuum of space. Losing no time, BB-8 plugged it in.
When the computer lit up again, Hux pulled up a navigation software and maps of New Harvest. Unfamiliar with working in a zero G environment he lost his footing a few times, until BB-8 spat out a liquid cable, that he subsequently tied loosely around the human’s hip.

“I can’t tell whether that was supposed to be help- or spiteful…”

Beeping the equivalent of an impish giggle, BB-8 went to help Rose re-establish the connection between the navigation computer and the systems that received their instructions from it.

*

Meanwhile Poe and Eightball re-entered the wreck through a large hole in the hull. The duo climbed along support struts and squeezed through openings where the ship’s skeleton had gotten bent out of shape, until they dropped down into a smaller hangar the First Order hadn’t granted them access to.

Two lone stormtroopers were standing guard over Trach’s command shuttle here. At the far end of the hangar three badly damaged TIE fighters were parked. On first glance their triangular wings suggested the crafts to be TIE daggers, but then again they were looking different from anything Poe had ever seen. Apparently these starfighters had come from Exegol, to add to the First Order’s military strength – as if that hadn’t been crushing enough before already.

More and stronger weapons had never been what had discouraged people from opposing the conquerors. It was their ruthless disregard of life and other persons’ feelings that turned them into something alien and intimidating. Commander Trach had been a good example of that, striving to be so detached and professional, that he had appeared less human than the actively hateful Hux.
Hux would write “Things to do today: Commencing neutralization of the Resistance” in his journal, but out loud he’d hiss “I’ll swipe you rebel filth off the galactic disc!” or something similarly dorky. Trach to the contrary would speak the way Hux wrote his press conference concepts.
In the same vein the moment Griss had let loose in the interrogation room, becoming something closer to an angry ape than a torture droid, Poe had stopped being afraid of him.

Alarmed by the sound of Poe dropping to the ground, the first guard turned around. He spotted the intruder and tried to fire, but found that his weapon was melting in his hand.

“What the…?”

The trooper never noticed the spherical droid floating nearby, that had sabotaged his weapon by more or less spitting on it. While he was still looking at the blaster, trying to process what was happening, Poe got up and fired.

The second trooper got taken put before he even realized that security had gotten breached.

“You’re like a hunting spider”, Poe told Eightball, while they were running towards the command shuttle. “Oh, and just for your information, I have a very general idea how to fly that thing only. Could be rough at first while I skip six months of re-training in a minute.”

“Six months to learn how to just fly the Upsilon”, Eightball repeated, finally using his vocabulator again. “How long to learn to actually operate it in combat?”

“Some more minutes and a couple of shots? See, that’s why the others insisted that our Field Medic should tag along with me. It’s less the risk of the Upsilon getting blown up, as more like me getting electroshocked while flicking switches in the wrong order.”

*

So far everything had went swimmingly. At first the crew on the secondary bridge didn’t even notice that control had gotten re-routed to the main bridge. Only when their systems indicated the Steadfast starting to move did they react – and found that no switch they were flicking produced any effect.

Commander Trach pressed his fingers down on the intercom. He had to exert pressure to stop them from jittering. Calling the bridge, Trach barked: “Who’s there? What are you doing?”

“Work over time”, Willow Darklighter replied. “Don’t worry, there’s no need to pay us extra.”

“No, for real! What’s your plan? You are going to kill us all!”

“Ain’t”, Cycen chimed in. “The wreck is on a safe trajectory, that doesn’t even remotely cross the capital, and will splash into the ocean. The local currents will put it onto the beach of a nearby uninhabited island chain like a stranded whale before it can sink, so a wrecking crew can take it apart there.”

“That’s not feasible! Don’t you think we’d considered similar approaches ourselves?”

“You can come up here and look at the numbers! Or you could, and that’s the advised course of action, get your crew into the escape pods at shortest notice.”

“Prepare my command shuttle!” Trach instructed his underlings, but once again got a wrench tossed into his plans by Darklighter: “Sorry, we stole that. If you have a porthole to look out through, you may spot it launching about now.”

“Did you prepare the command shuttle in whatever way is required according to this man?” Eightball inquired in the Upsilon’s cockpit.

“I think that was just a figure of speech”, Poe replied. “Baby looks good to go.”

“(Oh… my… circuits…)”

At the secondary bridge Trach grew more and more panicky, putting Poe’s mental image of himself to shame:
“You’re mad… Stupid colonists that can’t see farther than the rear end of their nerfs!”

Trach balled his fists, but then, instead of ramming them against the closest wall Kylo-Ren-style, he raised his hand to his chin, as if having to mull something over.

“Except… You’re really the rebels we had captured, aren’t you? One of you is the Resistance’s celebrity ace pilot. That doesn’t make you an expert in navigation, let alone atmospheric re-entry!”

“I know”, the man steering the command shuttle, who currently went by the name of Black, replied. “But you had the foresight to provide us with such an expert. Removed him from your own command chain for our convenience.”

“Do you mean Hux? He’s with you?”

“Am”, Not-Cycen confirmed, and now Trach understood why the man’s voice had sounded so familiar just now. “And if you get your ass into an escape pod as instructed, then you can continue asking all those questions after touchdown. Otherwise it was nice to have known you. And I mean that.”

“Ah, I see!” Trach’s face brightened. “The rebels are working for you now. That comes unexpected, but I suppose I’ll take it.”

So this was the moment he had been afraid to even think of? When he’d have to decide between Pryde and Hux as a result of the Generals’ growing animosity? But in reality there was nothing to it, no weighing pros and cons, no swearing allegiance to a liege. Trach simply had found himself in a situation together with one of the two and was now going with that one, not unlike how children put into the same playpen befriended each other.
In the end it didn’t matter who came out on top, as long as the conflict was resolved and either Hux or Pryde had gotten removed from the picture. With Kylo Ren still missing, one of the two might just end up the new Supreme Leader, after all. The First Order as a whole would benefit from Masir Trach throwing his weight to support either of the Generals, of that the officer was now certain.

“Ordering evacuation now.”

“Err… thank you for being reasonable.”

“Wish I could say the same about you, Sir. But if you want to take over, first you will have General Pryde to deal with. He most decidedly won’t sit back, hands folded in his lap, when the planetary defense registers five square kilometers of junk coming down.”

Poe spoke up again: “Are those TIE daggers of yours still functional?” Playing along with the “followers of the future Supreme Leader” scam, he added a “Sir” to his question (but probably would never again do it, seeing how he almost gagged at addressing a First Order officer in this way).

“Sort of. I’d commission them strictly on volunteer basis, though.”

“Shouldn’t be too hard to find three volunteers. Grand-Marshall Hux will remember the names of whoever helped discourage Pryde from stopping us. Or their numbers, whatever.”

Trach nodded to himself, then confirmed with an audible: “You’ve got a point. I’ll alert the pilots immediately to the opportunity.”

Trach didn’t see Poe stifling laughter, Eightball doing a cartwheel, Finn fist-bumping BB-8’s probe… and Rose placing a sharp tool firmly against the neckport of Hux’ spacesuit. Nearby Finn got up and pointed his blaster at the First Order officer.

“It’s nothing personal. Just to prevent you from getting ideas, “leader”.”

“Tico… Rose… If I suspected this to be personal, you’d be dead now, and the same goes for Finn, stormtrooper training or not. Brendol, Brooks, Ren, Peavey, Pryde and I’m pretty sure Griss, too… they all meant to hurt me. Whereas Poe hurt me to gain a tactical advantage. He had a target, found the weak spot, bam.”

Still not turning around, still with the blade at his neck, the man went on:

“I was puzzled why I didn’t finish Poe off on our way to the infirmary, when I had him helpless at my mercy, but instead made haste to get help for him. Now I realize: It was never personal between him and me. Or between me and any of you. You just aren’t capable of causing pain on that level.”

“Wait, are you saying that we are something like noble barbarians to you?” Rose uttered.

“With an innocent charm. Those last few days I felt… sheltered. But it cannot last. It’s cute, just not sustainable. The Resistance is doomed to fail same as the republics failed.”

“Then help us create an environment in which our way of life will be sustainable! Even if only to scoff at each of our ideas, prompting us to improve them just to shut you up!”

“That would be the day, wouldn’t it?”

“Armitage…”

“Let’s finish this mission. And stop being so damn paranoid about me killing you guys left and right already! It’s irritating!”

Hux waited for Rose to jump back a good measure before he left his console. Then the four of them walked over to the far end of the bridge, where Poe had landed the command shuttle. Nothing was resolved, but everyone was going on somehow.

The rebels took off to the background of the TIE dagger trio waiting for instructions from the Upsilon and the escape pods dropping towards New Harvest’s surface.

“It does feel wrong to lead them on like this”, Rose admitted. “But I can’t say I feel sorry for them.”

*

“Fighters incoming! A dozen of them!”

Trent’s voice through the intercom. Of course. Who else! Ever since they had left the safe house, a call from Trent had never meant something good.
“We can see”, Poe replied a bit more grumpy than he should have. “Why so few, though? How many more are coming and when?”

“No reinforcements. The riot you wished for? You got it!”

“Elaborate!”

“The moment General Pryde realized the Steadfast was coming down, he ordered the planetary defense to intercept you. Fly an attack and bring the wreck down over the capital. He planned to later pin the “terrorist attack” on the Resistance. Well, word got out, and our soldiers not just refused to participate, they actively attacked Pryde’s pilots. From there it snowballed… fireballed, I should say. There’s fighting all over, centered around the landspeeder factory, for some reason that escapes me.”

“Who’s winning?”

“Dispatch the fighters that made it into space and you can judge for yourself, because I cannot. People come to me every minute, asking stuff, but I have few facts and can only assure them that everything will end well, because we have the heroes of the Resistance on our side. Don’t paint me a liar!”

“Alright, alright. Hang on down there, we’re coming. Shouldn’t be too hard with the best Exegol has to offer and three highly motivated First Order battlepilots at our beck and call. – Dameron over and out.”

Poe saw Hux in the co-pilot seat frown at the use of this contradictory phrase, but Trent probably understood it better than real military code.

“Rose and BB-8 – damage control. Finn - gunnery station. Armitage – stay right where you are.”

“You sure? You seem to be right in your element and we could use one more gunner. I could…”

“I take it as a tactician you rarely leave your bridge? This is going to be rough! I need a co-pilot, especially one who understands what each of the screens is trying to tell me.”

It wasn’t just that everything was arranged completely different, although still making sense, as there were only so many ways one could put the different panels and still be efficient. The damn First Order font, that was so similar, yet different, irritated Poe to no small degree. He had no muscle memory to apply to the Upsilon, and additionally would have to waste precious split seconds just deciphering the unfamiliar letters. No, he definitely needed a co-pilot now, and something primeval and ancient within Poe insisted that this co-pilot being Armitage was a huge bonus.

“Still”, Hux insisted.

“Hm. Eightball? How about you log into a gunnery station?”

“Beep…”

“Okay, okay, stay here, then. One gunner must be enough.”

Five minutes later Hux once again knew what Poe had meant when he had said things would become turbulent. The world was spinning way too fast, with far too many opponents coming at them (or the same opponent appearing to be in several places at once). He held fast to the console and kept focusing on the numbers, for the first time in his life grateful to be the second row player only. Keeping track of all the information and relaying the most important bits to the actual pilot was the co-pilot’s main task, as expected, but equally important was to snarl “Breath!” regularly, whenever Poe started looking a bit too green around the nose. The last thing they needed now was him retching all over the cockpit. Nothing Eightball could administer to prevent vomiting would kick in before thirty minutes had passed, so medication for the pilot was out of the picture.

“Too many… too fast…” Poe gasped, painfully aware that no enemy craft would be left by now, were he sitting in his trusty Freitek T-70.

Worse: Of their TIE dagger entourage, one reported a weapons malfunction, but volunteered to play bait to set up targets for the Upsilon, a task that she executed professionally, at least that had to be said. The second was eager, but inexperienced. She fired a lot, but clumsily, at best grazing the enemy craft.

And the third dagger’s sensors were going offline and jumping back on erratically, causing its pilot to be either fully focused on chasing the enemy or totally useless and a danger to himself, with nothing in between.

Somehow the little fleet managed to defeat four of their enemies, but the remaining eight posed a serious problem.

“Finn!” Poe yelled. “Can’t you do something through the Force? Like, turn the TIEs around and move them out of range?”

“Only if I could unlearn how large, heavy and fast those things are within the next thirty seconds”, the gunner replied.

“Damn.”

“Sorry”, Finn told the pilot. Wait a moment! The PILOT!

“Alright, this is coming right out of the left field, but can you follow one of the fuckers?” Finn asked. “Doesn’t have to be especially close, and forget about setting up a target for me. Just fly so that I don’t lose sight of them.”

“Okay. You sound as if you knew what you’re talking about.”

“Not yet, but I will.”

Yes, Finn knew how dangerous and generally immoveable by a regular person TIE fighters were. That’s why he didn’t even try to manipulate the enemy spacecraft. But on the same account the former stormtrooper had experienced how volatile the human mind could be. It could get shaped, re-programmed and kicked out of its rhythm all too easily.

You don’t even want to be here, Finn thought, all the while forming a mental picture of him sitting next to the enemy pilot, speaking to them directly. Them all wearing flightsuits with closed helmets made this easy, as there was no individual face to imagine. Finn would have known that any face he’d imagined most likely wouldn’t match his target’s actual one. A helmet removed this issue.

From the pilot there came no response, but this wasn’t a dialogue anyway. Finn kept reaching out, amplifying the only too natural instinct to get away from a battle.
There was some lingering doubt, for what if he couldn’t divert the pilot in time? Wouldn’t it be easier to just yell at them and TELL them to return to New Harvest? First Order personnel was responsive to commands, after all, it would be closer to what this person knew than a persuasion attempt.
But then again, this wasn’t Finn’s way anymore. Just because his opponent’s superiors treated them like a tool, the newly minted Resistance General would not sink to that level.
The brief temptation quenched, Finn continued to convince his target’s mind, until suddenly the TIE really turned away. Finn could just imagine the gunners yelling at their pilot. They tried to get a few desperate shots in on the Upsilon while they were already getting carried back to the planet.

“One down, next”, Finn said to himself.

At the same time he felt Rose touch his shoulder, gently urging him to leave the gunner station. He slipped from his seat and sat down cross-legged on the floor instead.
From now on Finn indicated to the others which enemy craft he was targeting. It would have been easy to shoot at the TIE of whichever pilot’s mind Finn was targeting, seeing that they grew dizzy the moment the force-user initiated contact, long before they broke from the fight. But in an unspoken agreement the Resistance fighters exactly that did not. Poe instead mercilessly hunted down everyone not affected for Rose to fire at. Seeing one after the other of their comrades suddenly lose the will to fight confused and frightened the remaining ones. They started making mistakes, while the Upsilon’s crew gained confidence.

And now their victory was only a matter of time (and finding a bucket for Poe) anymore.

*

“That’s it!” Hux said, slightly amused, patting Poe on the back. “Out with it, all of it!”

Holding a powder blue plastic bucket in his arms that he was filling with stomach acid, now that the contents of said stomach were out, Poe alternated between walking across the concrete square and coughing.

“My head has long stopped spinning, but I don’t know how to stop anymore… My body is chain reacting!”

Every few steps he needed to use the bucket, and the space port’s gate seemed an eternity away while moving in this fashion.

In their backs the pilot trio of the TIE daggers was taken by surprise, when the spaceport staff arrested them before they could set a foot into town. Eightball was adding his menacing presence to the scene or so it appeared to the First Order pilots – in truth the droid was checking them for injuries that he might need to tend to.
Right in front of Poe and Hux, Rose and Finn were walking arm in arm.
And between their legs BB-8 was cruising, always staying in motion, but taking care not to stray too far ahead, not unlike the family dog.

Other than their immediate vicinity, the duo had no idea what the situation was like. Apparently there still was fighting, General Pryde had went missing, and Kelmut Trent had gotten named Interim Governor of New Harvest by the people until planetwide elections could take place.

Meanwhile Commander Trach had gotten placed under house arrest in his guest room in the governor’s palace, where his fishtank was standing since right after the Exegol survivors had arrived at New Harvest. In their self-contained environment the fish had never even noticed that they had been in a space battle a couple of days ago. They were still calm as could be, and asserted that calming effect on their owner, of whose presence they were at least dimly aware. Trach seriously needed this effect now, in this post-revolution state of affairs, where he had lost track of who had allied with whom against which opposing party.
Hopefully someone with legitimate authority would arrive soon and sort out this mess!

Poe and Hux were still walking in their timeless bubble, while for the rest of the world Hux’ return from orbit once again begged the question what to do with the turncoat, since letting him take over the First Order (as Trach had assumed he would) wasn’t an option.

At the checkpoint he brought the topic up himself, while gently wrestling the bucket from Poe’s hands.

“No! I need that!” the dizzy pilot protested.

“Or maybe knowing you can use it anytime only encourages you to do so. Let’s see how this goes, and if it doesn’t work out, I’m sure they have street cleaning droids here, so no harm done.”

“Let’s see how this goes… Are you by chance also referring to our alliance?”

“Yes. Pondering where to go from here, I think I’d like to extend this alliance until I can see Ren’s corpse with my own eyes. That, or sufficient proof of his passing.”

“Still that obsessed…”

Hux shrugged. Poe suspected that the General had practiced even this oh-so natural looking gesture in front of a mirror a lot.

“Clinging to that obsession is the easiest way to retain my sanity right now. My head is spinning, differently from yours, though. Nothing’s quite fitting into place anymore.”

“How so?”

“Ever since we joined forces in the workshop, I felt… liberated. As if an invisible whip in my back just wasn’t there anymore. The prospect of going back from that to my old life too soon is… unpleasant.”

Well, the good news is that you wouldn’t go back to your old life, but to prison, the moment you called the alliance off, Poe thought. Out loud he said: “We’ve gotten used to have you around”, then his eyes went wide. “Bucket!” he cried, followed by a gurgle.

“Well”, Hux commented while handing the bucket back without looking at it. “It was worth a try.”

One coughing fit, but little to no matter ejected, later, Poe raised his head.

“I once had a near-boyfriend”, he said, feeling silly for withholding the name, when the whole galaxy knew who that man had been. “But I was too indecisive, or maybe took things to be for granted too much, so nothing came from it and now he’s spoken for by another. I don’t want that to happen again. I… Uh… somebody hold that bucket for a spell? It kinda gets in the way of the message.”

A space port janitorial droid grabbed the bucket and went to empty it, but almost at the same time someone pressed a data pad into Poe’s hand. A hologram was already forming above it. When Poe’s hand steadied, the image coalesced into a large porg plushie waving into the camera.

“Hello, Governor Trent?”

“How did you know it was me?”

“Simple: You always are the bearer of bad news, so you put something cute into the camera range to not be that one this time. But it’s still your voice, sooo…”

“I’m this close to do a porg-voice from anxiety. Listen, I just learned that the moment he arrived here, General Pryde had scheduled a ride off-planet. It was due to swing by next week, but it seems to have arrived early.”

“So more First Order personnel is coming? How many more?”

“I don’t know. How many fit into…”

The hologram flickered and dissolved into straight blue lines, that eventually formed the image of the space cab Pryde had ordered.

“…a Star Destroyer?”

There was no response from Poe or Hux. They just stared at the rotating image, hoping to be wrong about its nature. But then the destroyer’s main feature came into view and there was no more doubt about it.

“That’s not a Star Destroyer”, Poe whispered.

“Is, too, according to the Anaxes classification”, Hux corrected. “A Xyston-class Star Destroyer.”

“I… shit… The odds aren’t on our side”, Poe stuttered. “But that makes this easier. No fumbling for the right words.”

And with these words, he slung his arms around the other man, looked up and kissed him. Given what Poe had spent his time with before they had looked at Trent’s hologram, the contact could have been more pleasing. A lot more.

Why, Hux wondered. Why does this keep happening? I have the skills, the determination and the patience, but something in the universe must be against me. Every time I get what I want, it gets delivered in the worst fashion imaginable.

“One day, little rat, you’ll be the end of me. And I of you.”

“One day soon may be the end of all of us, so how about this: No more questioning or trying to understand what’s happening between us, no more attempts at justifying the desire to be close to the other of all people. No more nagging will we or won’t we. Can we just… make the very best of the time we’ve left?”

“And if we survive, we’ll take a step back and re-evaluate the situation? Works for me.”

The General – or whatever his status was at the moment, and for the moment it had stopped mattering – slung his arm around the smaller man’s hip and together they left the checkpoint.

In the moments when fantasies of physical closeness had flashed up in either of their minds, they had envisioned something like heated hatefuck, followed by going back to enemies. But in reality, now that the barriers were down, there was only gentleness between them. Lots of smiles, too.
They knew little about the other as a person, and that what they knew wasn’t particularly high on their list of desirable traits. Armitage seemed to like his voice, Poe was quite certain about that. He in turn fancied the other’s hair, yay, you have nice hair, what kind compliment would that make? The voice, the hair and a lot of animosity concerning their worldview, check. And yet each man looked at the world as if to proudly announce that they were parading an extremely valuable trophy that everybody else just couldn’t help but be bitter about not having won.

Talking to Trent and the kiss had delayed the duo enough for spaceport security with Eightball and the three arrested First Order pilots to catch up with them. The one who had flown the TIE with the malfunctioning cannons smiled at the unlikely couple, the other two’s faces were full of loathing.

Following a whim, Poe addressed the first pilot: “Ever wanted to take on a Xyston class destroyer?”

“Yeah, no, but the way you say it, it sounds inevitable? If so, I’d be not exactly stoked at the prospect, but ready.”

Hux pointed at the landspeeder where Finn and Rose were waiting for them.

“Then hop in. – One more for your collection, Rose.”

The pilot took the driver’s seat to allow the double date to hold hands. Before she started the engine, her eyes followed her two arrested comrades wistfully.

“They think me a traitor now, I’m certain. But I was raised to protect the First Order, and every nation is just their people, isn’t it? So the ones who abandon New Harvest in times of need are the real traitors.”

“About that. At the moment New Harvest is going through a secess…”

The pilot raised a finger to her lips, going “Pssst!”.

“You can tell me all about this later, Sir. I’m sure the political landscape is nothing a mere pilot needs to concern herself with to do her job.”

Chapter Text

A day had passed since the Xyston class Star Destroyer Dominance had fallen out of hyperspace. It now had almost reached New Harvest.
The fact that the First Order had opted for such a slow approach was immensely puzzling the planet’s defenders. Sneaking towards a location in this way was a tactic one might consider to scout your destination. A confident occupation force to the contrary would have appeared in orbit and announced their presence.
Did the Star Destroyer’s commander harbor doubts about the colony’s loyalties already? For this reason Interim Governor Trent hadn’t yet given order to evacuate the colony – a fleet of settlers in a sudden rush to leave New Harvest would only have raised suspicion even more.

“Who commands the tub again?” Hux asked during the final briefing in the Governor’s palace.

“One Kira Solana”, Trent supplied.

“No rank given?”

“None.”

“That’s highly irregular, but let’s assume Captain, as that’s the minimum prerequisite to command a destroyer. They’d be eager to prove themselves, and ruthless. Experienced enough to pose a real threat, too.”

Sitting next to hid former General, Commander Trach was cracking nuts Trent had provided for the conference’s participants, but he had yet to actually eat one.
“I’ve got nothing to add”, he said.

“C’mon, man, think!” Rose prodded.

Ever since they had fetched him from his detention, the First Order Commander had proven unhelpful, although not for lack of trying. He simply knew nothing applicable to the situation that Hux wouldn’t have known, too.

“Don’t you think I want I want to survive same as you?” Trach shouted. “When that thing fires, we’re all done for! I’d tell you the color of the Emperor’s underwear, if I knew it, but I don’t!”

Rose reflexively tried to tear her hair, but there wasn’t much left of it, only the single crest. Likewise Finn had kept his multicolored hair and Eightball wore his new colors with pride, but Poe and Hux had shaved and washed the dye out of theirs and BB-8 had re-applied his original coating.

“Our best bet is trying to appear inconspicuous, so that’s what we will do”, Trent decided. “We shall invite the commanding officers to the capital in accordance with basic diplomatic courtesy.”

Poe nodded. “Then we overpower the delegation, return to the Dominance with their shuttle and disable the super laser.”

“Once on board, we have to act fast”, Finn reminded the rest. “A Star Destroyer can still obliterate the capital city, it doesn’t need the super laser for that.” He turned to face Trent. “You better evacuate the city the moment we set off. Start preparing right now, so that the people can immediately rush to their transports when you give the signal.”

“We’re talking civilians here! Cattle!” Trach protested. “If he tells them about the danger, they’ll start “rushing” alright, but it won’t be in an orderly fashion!”

“Still!” Finn insisted. “There’s a lot Trent can do behind the scenes. He can already prepare the transports and provisions, including tents. Pre-program droids with instructions on how to guide the fugitives when the moment comes. Clear…”

“Why don’t you organize all that, if you have such a good picture of the process in your head?” Trent asked.

Finn almost would have given a sharp reply, when he realized that the Governor was serious.

“M…e? I’m not a leader…”

“So what exactly does “General” stand for in the Resistance?”

Riding or flying right in front… risking their lives so that others wouldn’t have to… basically doing the same as everyone else, only bolder… That was how Finn, Poe and Rose had understood what being a leader was about.

“I’m… I suppose part of me still lives in the second I took off my helmet after the massacre of Tuanul.”

Trent shook his head, not to scold, but to express his surprise at these words.

“I never met your younger selves, only the heroes that came to New Harvest. And I know that the people will follow those. They will follow you.”

“Okay”, Finn agreed. “I’ll do it. But I will be back at the palace for the fight!”

*

Parting after the conference was awkward, at least for Trent, Hux and Trach. There was the former slave of New Harvest’s previous, First Order appointed, governor, giving orders to the local police, that had up until two days ago been First Order security. Commander Trach got escorted back to his room, meanwhile Hux joined a handful of rebels with the intent to set a trap for a delegation of the legitimate authority that New Harvest had decided to no longer acknowledge. Everything happened in an orderly fashion, despite it being the manifestation of utter and desolate chaos.

How could it have come to this, Trach wondered? The Resistance hadn’t even significantly lessened the First Order’s military might at Exegol, they had merely prevented their foe from adding to its power. Despite this, and with Kylo Ren still missing, Trach’s immediate surroundings having went through a very brief war and his General insisting on that weird alliance with what was left of Resistance Command, Trach felt as if he was witnessing the end of his world.

Before leaving, Hux briefly scanned the table’s contents and when he found nothing sugary or otherwise unhealthy, that he could have snacked on in private, he made haste to catch up with Poe, Rose and the droids. The others noticed it with amusement.

Hux later volunteered to fetch some heavy curtains and poles to create a hiding place in the palace’s audience hall. He entered a storeroom, made sure to close the door behind him shut, and then moved past bent out of shape flagpoles, broken hinges and threadbare banners. When he spotted what he had been looking for, he gave a nearby shelf a hearty kick. It promptly keeled over, burying part of the curtain heap beneath it.
Hux then moved behind the stash, out of sight of anybody that might enter the room. The curtains were already acting as a hiding spot, only not in the way the rebels had planned.
Safe from prying eyes Hux folded back his new coat. Two fingerlong cylinders were fastened to the inside of his belt, perfectly regular rank cylinders used by the First Order. After a bit of fiddling in the semi-darkness, the owner had retrieved one from its loop. Raising it to his face, he clicked a button – and flinched, when the cylinder spat a colorless liquid.

“Ew, shit, that was the one with the poison…”

Hux carefully put the fake code cylinder on the turned over shelf and wiped his fingers clean on the curtains. Now it paid off that he hadn’t been able to procure a contact-poison…

Next Hux removed the correct cylinder from his belt and only then put the now empty fake one back again. Once again he pressed the button and held it for as many second as there had been nut shells on the table in the conference room. It was a shot in the dark, but Trach wasn’t the man to nervously play with stuff. It was way more likely that he had left the nutcases behind for the fellow officer. And indeed, after Hux released the button, he heard the scanner officer’s voice: “Commander Trach reporting in.”

Smiling, Hux took a seat on the curtains, with his back against the fallen shelf.

“Good work establishing this private connection, Commander. I foresee a promotion if you have to report anything good.”

“Nothing I could think of, Sir. I don’t have your free range, so my options are limited. I only know that the First Order needs a leader, but that there is no strong willed personality outstanding in our ranks.”

“There’s no pressing need for one. The First Order is largely automated, with no corruption worth speaking of. It goes on even as we speak. A real thing of beauty.”

“I’m not so certain. When the next public holiday rolls around, a symbol will be needed very much. That’s why I have to ask you to come back and lead us!”

“Not as long as Ren lives.”

“Naturally. You have to restore your honor after what he did to you. Or rather, that sentiment held true until the Exegol fiasco. But I was thinking that in our situation even a leader as controversial as you…”

“Controversial.”

There was not an ounce of accusation or hurt pride in the General’s voice, to the contrary, Hux was sneering on his throne of discarded ceremonial curtains. After all, “Controversial” was a far cry above “Universally Rejected”.

“Yes, Sir!” Trach emphasized. “There are so those who’d follow you. Kandia would follow, as would Trenay and…”

A loud hiss made Trach hold his own device at arm’s length. Wherever General Hux had retreated to for this conversation, he seemed to cohabit the place with at least one large and rather feral cat. Oh, well, that was the animal’s problem, not Masir Trach’s.

“Kandia heard me tell Griss to leave Dameron alone during the torture session. I made my wishes as clear as could be, yet she didn’t intervene!” Hux snarled. “What kind of followers are that?”

“Things are different now. There’s a mutual need and you certainly wouldn’t say that again?”

Hux cut the Commander short: “Oh, is that where we’ve arrived at? Conditional obedience? What’s next? A people’s parliament, maybe?”

“That’s not what I meant!”

“I’m aware. But that’s what your new friends want! A weak leader, whose strings they can pull, because they put him on the throne in the first place. Well, I strongly suggest to find Ren again, he’d fit that description better than me.”

“But, Sir! Lord Hux! Please reconsi…”

“Dismissed.”

*click*

“All things considered, that didn’t go too bad”, the Supreme Leader in Exile murmured. And Trach hadn’t been that far off the mark, either. There really was no one left, who could have assumed the mantle of leadership. The risk that whoever, and that included Armitage Hux himself, would proclaim themselves the new Supreme Leader would cause a ripple of discontent was real. A civil war might be looming on the horizon. Could just as well be fought as a shadow war, Hux thought, with the general public being none the wiser that it was even afoot.

Let’s assume for a moment four or five splinter factions of about equal strength, then the key to winning would be to dispatch the strongest opposition first, while taking care that the remaining ones don’t band together. Difficult, but doable.
An actual cakewalk, if I got the Resistance to ally with me. I mean, Rey certainly won’t want anybody associated with the Sith Eternal come out on top. Allying with the rancor’s claws against its teeth might just be acceptable for the rebels in this case. And them having helped me attain the throne would present me with a justification to spare Poe, Finn, Rose and BB-8 after the war.

With a sigh Hux leaned against the shelf. It seemed as if everyone who had a say in deciding the galaxy’s fate was at New Harvest right now: Himself and the Allegiant General on the First Oder’s side, and what was left of Resistance command in the form of the Generals Finn and Dameron with their confidantes.
Come to think of, who was leading the Republic Remnant politically right now? Venturing a guess Hux would have said an informal council of sorts. With Calrissian being the only one with administration expertise, the rest of the seats would get taken by people or monsters with invaluable life experience. The golden protocol droid. The Wookie. Who else? Nobody came to mind. Good! There wasn’t much left to mop up.

The distinct hissing of a sliding door interrupted the future Emperor in his taking inventory. Hux peeked behind the corner and spotted Poe, his hand on the blaster in the hip holster.

Little Space Rat! a part of Hux rejoiced, and it momentarily silenced all concerns regarding his political future.

Not moving from the door, Poe called into the room: “Hey, Ember!”

“I’m in the back here!”

“Need a hand?”

“No, I still have mine.”

Now Poe’s feet moved away from the door, deeper into the room.

“Sounds serious”, he laughed, relieved despite the possibility of finding Armitage injured. “What happened?”

“Let’s start with a blasted SHELF falling on me and work ourselves up from there!”

Poe found his friend… lover… whatever putting the badly damaged shelf against the wall and then pointing at the curtains.

“These good enough?”

“Yes, they should do. How about you? No splinters?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“’kay.”

“You…”

A pregnant pause, followed by Poe barking: “What?”

Fearing that his mouth was standing open after the unfinished sentence, Hux now pressed his lips shut. It took very nearly biting himself to get him to speak up again: “You followed me in here to see if I was meeting someone. Like a First Order member who avoided capture during the riot.”

Poe tossed his arms up into the air.
“First you fed us information, now we’re allies. Says nowhere on the tin that you joined the Resistance, so of course I’ll look behind my back twice. Plus, I’m the one who found himself attracted to you, so you’re my responsibility.”

“I’m not…”

“A stray to get housetrained, I know. More like a bag of fleas.”

“Fleas bite!” Hux replied, lounging forward to tickle the other.

They stumbled and more by design than by accident fell onto the heap of curtains, giggling, gasping first from the tickles, then from the other’s presence. Hux had come to lay on his back, Poe was lying on his belly right next to him. Hux grabbed Poe by his black kerchief and pulled him upwards like a kitten.
“Kch…” Poe choked. He brought down his hands part way on Hux’ shoulder and part way grabbing the lover’s throat and growled. “Grrrrrr…” the other replied, perfectly at ease with the situation, trusting and getting trusted. Two love nights had started like this and it ended like it had the other times: With both of them laughing and releasing their grip in favor of gently running fingers over each other’s cheeks. The curtains later wouldn’t care if the military leaders of two opposing major powers of the galaxy had made out on them.

There wasn’t time for more than making out, not now. What if there’d never be… In a few hours the lovers might already circle this system’s sun as part of a field of scattered matter in the orbit where New Harvest had been.
But if they prevailed today, if everything went according to plan, Hux thought while lying on his back on the comfy cloth, pressing his space rat tightly against himself with hands and lips, then there’d be many more such carefree moments, especially once he was Emperor. Except…. But there was no “except”. Poe would get over having to sign the Resistance’s capitulation! Or maybe Finn would do it anyway, him being a child of both worlds that would be more symbolic.

“Poe? You know I won’t let you go under ANY circumstances, correct?”

“Huh?”

I want you to know that you’re safe. Whatever happens to your annoying Resistance, I’ll make sure that you survive, and your friends, too, if I can help it. You guys are mine. I’ll cleanse the galaxy from chaos and corruption, but this one boon I ask for myself.

“Remember it and remember it well!”

Poe grinned.

We’ll see about that. I mean, of course, with a super laser very nearly pointed at the planet we’re on, it’s easy to say what you said. In this moment you may be ready to return to the New Republic with me, but with the threat gone, you might very well revert to your Emperor delusions.

“Better remind me every day anew – like at a sunset over Kef Bir’s storm-tossed ocean.”

Kef Bir, one of the moons of Endor! The second death star’s grave, as well as the grave of numerous officers, career soldiers and unlucky prisoners that had died with it. Also most likely Kylo Ren’s final resting place, if someone like him could find rest in the thereafter, that was. Returning to Endor was the most logical step to confirm what had happened to the dark side user. It was also the safest choice, that allowed the group to stay together. No major battle against Hux’ former allegiance, no loyalty conflict, just lots of time with each other. And afterwards they’d return to the Resistance, with or without the General.

“Ocean sounds nice. I don’t remember my home world, but from what I read about it and its precipitation levels, it’s a wonder I wasn’t born with fins.”
A short pause, then a conscious effort to make this about something other than himself and finally the realization that he was actually mildly interested in the answer: “Where are you from? I recall you mentioning a homestead?”

“Endless forests. You either grow climbing claws in this environment or learn how to fly. I did the latter.”

“Limitations aren’t our thing, are they?”

“You don’t say, haha! – Alright, let’s hang the curtains up now to give Captain Solana a proper welcome!”

*

The preparations were finished in time, everyone was in place and the fish were fed, when Solana’s command shuttle touched down on New Harvest’s space port.

“Welcome to New Harvest… Lord Ren”, Trent greeted the arrivals, trying not to let his shock at seeing the robed and masked figure exiting the shuttle show. “I’m Vice-Governor Kelmut Trent. The Lady Trent is in sickbed with, uh, a disease.”

Kylo Ren slowly turned his head at his smaller companion, who was wearing the same robes and mask, but slightly less ornate. They must have replied through the Force, because Ren first winced and then nodded. Apparently he now had an (inaccurate, of course) idea what exactly the Governor was struggling with.

“We can visit her together later, if that’s your wish”, Trent offered.

“Maybe”, Ren said, a polite form of declining. “For now you’ll do. Lead on!”

The arrivals fell in line with Trent. On their way to the Governor’s palace Ren introduced his companion as “Kira Solana, my apprentice.” So that explained the lack of a military rank, Trent thought. He also thought that Hux had been right as right got, when he had described Solana as “probably very ruthless”. There was nothing more ruthless than an aspirant for membership in the Knights of Ren!

*

There had been no way for Trent to relay the nature of the visitors to the rebels lying in wait in the audience hall, and so the sight of two robed, masked and lightsaber toting guests entering caught them by surprise. On the upside the duo didn’t bother with a guard, not even one of honor. They had instructed their armed underlings to remain at the command shuttle.

“So tell me, how is…” Kylo Ren started addressing the Governor, when suddenly Kira turned around, hissing: “A ripple in the Force!”

Finn groaned in his hiding place behind the thick ceremonial curtains. But of course the dark side adept would have picked up his signature in the Force.

Only a split-second later Ren gasped: “Extreme loathing… and danger!”

Not surprisingly he turned his up upwards towards the balcony running around the hall. Up there Hux was hiding behind a statue.

There was no need to give the order, everyone understood that it was now or never, and so they struck at the same moment.

Trent dived behind the Governor’s desk. He landed hard on his hands and knees. With palms burning from the impact, Trent fumbled for his blaster. When he finally had it out and aimed at Ren, the enemy had already deflected several shots from the rebels.
Trent swallowed, then fired and immediately retracted his body again. He saw his own shot get returned at him and hit the wall. He’d gotten lucky, but would he be quick enough to evade in time again? A politician wasn’t a fighter, after all. Should he spit ink on the Sith or what? Nature had equipped the Quarren with that ability, but then it had given Ren and Solana uncanny reflexes and a battle forecast with no need to use a computer.

Trent closed his eyes in resignation. He still saw the flashing blue blade before his inner eye… Wait, blue? Weren’t Sith supposed to wield red lightsabers? And didn’t Kylo Ren own a custom model, the dreaded crossguard lightsaber? Yet the man in the reception hall was swinging a blue blade around. Something wasn’t adding up here!

Kylo Ren blocked another shot with his grandfather’s lightsaber, the best he could do at the moment. The attacks coming in quick succession from several directions made it difficult to properly parry them to fling the energies back at the sender. Ren managed to disarm the attacker at the balcony more by accident than skill or guidance from the Force. The man’s blaster dropped to the ground level’s floor.
The weapon’s owner jumped over the railing. He landed on cushions that were arranged around a waterpipe. Ren now realized that the seat group had gotten placed there for exactly this situation: the attacker needing to make a quick change of elevation. Soon as he had solid ground under his feet again, the man drew a vibrosword and advanced towards Ren, sputtering: “Close and personal, then!”

Ren stopped the onrush with his stretched out hand and a single thought. Only when he started lifting the man a few inches above the floor, did he recognize him as General Hux. So he had survived Exegol, too.

“So YOU incited the colony to set this trap for me. Should have known. Speak! What have you done to Rey’s friends?”

Solana moved close to Ren, all the while whirling her lightsaber around, a saber that produced a blade that was the same blue as her master’s.
Now that Hux had stopped moving, Solana noticed that the General was wearing a coat that strongly resembled his usual one, but that it was dark blue, not black. She focused on the other attackers’ images in her mind and then it struck her that she knew everyone except for the silvery white droid.

“BB-8? Poe?” Solana removed the mask from her face. “Finn? Rose? Nice hairs, by the way.”

“REY?” four throats replied and BB-8’s beeps conveyed the same sentiment. For the face that emerged from the mask was that of their friend, the Jedi in training and hope of the galaxy, Rey Palpatine. Only right now that face didn’t convey hope or determination, just confusion:

“What’s going on here?”

“Well, what do you expect to happen, when Kylo Ren walks in? A knock-knock joke?” Poe shot back. The same moment he adjusted his aim from targeting “Solana” to pointing at Ren.

“Kylo Ren is dead”, Rey said, then smiled proudly. “Meet Ben Solo!”

Now the “master” moved to remove his mask, too. To do so without letting go of his lightsaber, he had to drop Hux first and he did so not by letting the enemy fall out of his grip, but by deliberately dunking his captive onto the tiled floor. Hitting the ground, Hux lost his firm grip on the vibrosword. Ren flung the weapon away with the flick of his fingers. Then the mask went down and the same old familiar scarred face and unruly thatch appeared from beneath it.

“Ben Solo, really? Not Kylo Ren anymore?” Finn asked back. “Your own father didn’t get through your thick skull at Starkiller base…”

“We had another talk”, Ben said softly. “And the part about dying? I was so close to it, that the difference is moot. I’m done with my past.”

“I hit my head and still struggle with the aftermath, but he fucking dies and already dances around with a lightsaber again”, Poe grumbled. “Typical.”

Lowering their weapons, but not sheathing them just yet, the rebels left their hiding places. Ben blinked in confusion, when Poe picked Hux’ sword up and handed it back to the enemy as if that was the most natural thing to do.

Knowing that these two probably had the most reason to hate him, Ben kept facing them, when the rebels formed a circle around him. He took a deep breath, then de-ignited Anakin’s lightsaber. Rey did the same with Leia’s.

“How did you get away from Exegol, and with a Xyston, no less?” Poe demanded to know. “We destroyed the signal tower!”

“Don’t worry, there’s no replacement and there won’t ever be. We got the destroyer up into space using the Force together”, Ben explained. “What remained of the Sith Eternal was impressed.”

“The who?”

“A Sith cult that made their base on Exegol. To them it looked as if I had defeated Palpatine in a perfectly regular power struggle. They must have been a bit miffed that I delayed the Siths’ rule doing so, but understood that I wanted to be the one to achieve this milestone, unwilling to leave it to Rey’s decrepit gramps.”

Ben chuckled at the idea, his mirth differing from Kylo’s mimic so much that his claim to be a different person now really held weight in this moment.

“The Dominance’s crew is unaware that I disavowed the Dark Side. They think I’m still Kylo Ren and the handful that witnessed Rey surviving is under the impression that I successfully turned her to the Dark Side. Taking this ride was a bit of a gamble, of course. But after learning that you’d gotten captured, we had to find out where the First Order held you and come to your rescue, so we took our chance.”

“We should have trusted you to escape your captors on your own”, Rey said. “Sorry.”

Poe shook his head. “No, it’s fine! It’s not just fine, it’s great. It… you… shit. That morning sure was an emotional rollercoaster!”

“Thank you, Rey”, Finn said and Rose chimed in: “This here is Eightball, by the way. We met him in prison and helped each other out a lot.”

“Hello, Eightball”, Rey said with a smile.

Ben, too, smiled warmly, but with an underlying impish disposition, that riled Hux up again. He kicked the helmet Ben was still holding with his sword.

“Still playing Vader, I see? Only now you’re redeemed Vader. You’re childish.”

“Better a Vader, than a Tarkin with world rulership ambitions, like someone I could name.” Ben looked around. “What’s the story here, even? A droid can get re-programmed. Voices in the head can get silenced. But HE did everything he did out of his own free will.”

“Where to start”, Finn sighed.

At this point Trent caught up with the group. As an outsider he found it easier to re-tell the whole story than those directly involved in it. He finished his recap with:
“And now, as the Interim Governor of a free New Harvest, I’m proud to present to you the freed Resistance members and the…” Trent looked at Hux. “Uh, we aren’t sure ourselves what exactly he is. You take him and decide for yourself.”

“Wait, what? “Take” me? Gift-wrapped or what?” Hux sputtered.

Up came the vibrosword! Trent shrieked, thinking himself the target of the strike, but instead the blade whirled at Ben. However, before it could get a kill, Ben jumped backwards with inhuman reflexes. Hux cursed! Somehow the force user had sensed his intent and evaded the attack with almost no time in between. It was vexing!

Rey stepped up to grab the wrist of the hand Ben was once again reaching for his lightsaber with and held it firmly. At the same time Poe grabbed Hux’ sword arm with both hands.

“Let me at‘im!” Hux cried, but all that accomplished was Finn helping Poe restrain him and Rose and the droids moving between the rivals.

“Stop it!” Rose yelled, holding her palms towards the men. Her hands were once again covered with the shock gloves, so it wasn’t a mere gesture, but an actual warning that things might get painful quickly.

Hux now turned his attention from Ben to Rey: “Take that lightsaber off him already! The fact that you’re save in this man’s presence doesn’t mean that the same would go for the rest of us, too. Ren certainly doesn’t desire any of us.”

“Desire?”

“Why else would he eat out of your hands? And you’re falling for it, I mean, anybody in your situation would. You’re young, from a shitty background and he makes you feel like a princess.”

“Say what?!” Rey yelled back. “For your information, I KILLED Kylo Ren! I killed the man I had a crush on, because it was the right thing to do at that time! What have YOU sacrificed recently?”

Hux laughed dryly. “Yeah, no, not answering this.”

“It’s over, starkiller. Admit it already”, Ben said.

“So is that it?” Hux pressed through clenched teeth. “Solo is the mighty Skywalker heir, who, with his privileged midichlorians, can write off every misdeed he ever committed to the voice of the Emperor in his head? He’s already won all of you over… Where does that leave me…”

“The main attraction in a court martial?” Ben suggested. “Hey, here’s a happy thought: You can even pick which side shall host it!”

Poe winced at these words. Hectically he wrestled the sword from Hux’ hands, almost spraining the other’s wrist in the process. For a moment it felt as if he wanted to let the now disarmed man go, but it passed.

“This is beyond silly”, Poe claimed. “Why are we even discussing this? You aren’t going to kill Ember! New Harvest isn’t even an official member of the New Republic yet.”

Finn turned around. Putting the pieces together, he uttered: “Uh, come again? The New Republic executes people?”

That was news to the former stormtrooper. Finn had left the First Order after getting ordered to kill defenseless villagers, but not because he had a problem with him performing the act. No, the act in itself was wrong, regardless of who did it. An execution wasn’t a battle, it was the deliberate taking of the life of a defenseless prisoner. In other words: Murder. Slaughter, really.

“That’s why I got away from the mutiny scot-free”, Poe confirmed. “Because they’d have had to put me down in case of a formal charge.”

“No way!”

Trent stroked his mouth tentacles. “It’s true, the New Republic did have the death sentence. I know this, because I studied dual law. But I also know that it was an extreme measure, that got resorted to only in the very worst of cases.” His gaze on Hux, and aware of the man’s full list of atrocities committed, Trent added: “Err… I can see how that would be a problem in this case.”

“Yes”, Rose whispered. “They absolutely will dish out the highest sentence.”

Suddenly the government body she had fought to preserve, or restore, had become “they”. It was scary, as if they all had just entered another world, in which alien concepts applied. Only it wasn’t a different dimension, it was their own, they just hadn’t seen the whole picture.

Poe looked from one of this friends to the other. Finn was still holding the maybe-prisoner firmly, while locking eyes with Rose, and both of them were clearly still overwhelmed by the revelation. The same went for Eightball, a very likely candidate for actually having put an end to a life in a non-combat situation in the past, either on his masters’ command or as tolerated side effect of an interrogation.
Meanwhile Hux’ mimic was hard to read. For all Poe knew, he might just be trying to come to terms with whether he maybe wanted to get executed, after all.
And finally BB-8 seemed to be lagging from trying to process information other than facts. Poe could expect help from neither of the others now.

“Look, Rey and, uh, Solo. If Armitage Hux turned into a paragon of goodness now, that wouldn’t bring back the victims of the Hosnian cataclysm. And neither would killing him on the spot accomplish this.”

“But it would prevent him from doing it again.”

“There are other ways to achieve that. Granted, they’d be more expensive, or more tedious, or not sufficient to strike fear into the remaining population to dissuade them from committing crimes. Do you see where this leads? That’s Empire-thinking.”

At this point Hux put his head on the pilot’s.

“Would you be surprised to hear that I didn’t know, either? Well, there goes my illusion of a rebel utopia in the woods. I suppose it’s good that I have woken up from this idea. The world’s the same everywhere, following the same rules. And if that is so, then there’s no need to cover those structures up with pink icing. The First Order is doing it just right.”

“No! Don’t say this! Not now! Not after you had just begun to…”

“Hey… Hey, rebel-scum. Don’t plead! That’s unlike you. You, who didn’t flinch in Kylo Ren’s presence.”

There it was again, that softness both in the voice and the touch, that the boy had realized wouldn’t get him anywhere as early as pre-school age. But now it resurfaced, because now the shelved tool provided an advantage again.
What was real about Armitage Hux and what calculation? Poe drew small comfort from the fact that Palpatine would not have been willing to employ gentleness as a means of securing what he wanted, it utterly violating his world view. Being one step above the Emperor wasn’t a particularly high bar…

Hux pulled closer to Poe and latched on tightly. He felt Finn let go of him, but remain close, ready to intervene any moment should it be required.

“It’s alright. I’m alright. I never knew any different. It’s not like my whole life turned out to have been based on lies. As I said, I just had to correct a small misconception.”

Poe wiggled free of the embrace.

“You lying bastard!” he shouted, putting in all his frustration about the world, the situation and his choice of a boyfriend. “You are NOT alright!”

“Why not? Because you don’t want me to be?”

Of course I’m not alright. The bait was way too tasty for me to be completely alright now. A world in which failure carries no consequences, where you can lose everything, but it simply doesn’t matter…

Meanwhile Poe thought: Because I felt you shiver, that’s why. And maybe I should say it out loud, for everyone to hear, to get you off your high horse. Only every time that happens, you start digging a hole to bury your head in, there’s nothing in between. So what should I…

Now Trent stepped forward, intent on addressing Hux directly. The General took a step to the side so quickly that he caused Poe to turn once around himself from the near-impact. He aimed his hand at the Quarren.

“Keep that distance!” he cried, strangely high-pitched, as if surprised by something nobody else could see.

“Ey?” Trent stopped advancing. He now spotted a glint of metal in the sleeve of Hux’ coat. Some spring-loaded mechanism for launching a thin blade maybe, efficient at a very short range only? But why had his attacker sounded more desperate than aggressive?

Poe had never seen Hux act that quickly in personal combat. The movement most likely hadn’t been a conscious attack, but an instinctual reaction. The deliberate effort here was not the pointing of the concealed weapon, but refraining from releasing the missile.

“You brought delivering me to the Resistance as a prisoner up in the first place and for no other reason than to sound governor-like in front of the Jedi. That, surprise, auto-slotted you into my kill-list. Bringing Poe close to tears? Yeah, that additionally made your demise extremely uncomfortable. Bluntly put, you’re seafood, only me acting on that urge right now would be very inconvenient. So keep your distance - for both our sakes.”

Saying this, Hux was looking paler than usually. His lips were twitching, still, his hand was firm and he didn’t blink.

“The law is working”, Finn commented with some resignation.

And that was when Ben took the word: “Yes, I can see that. Fear of consequences, not a newfound moral conviction, keeps Hux in check. And you know what? Now that I see this right before my eyes, it brings to mind a lesson from my childhood. Threatening people with death is the easy way out. And the easy way always leads to the Dark Side.”

NOW Hux blinked. Trent, though, wasn’t alert enough to use this moment to step out of the threat range.

Ben nervously licked his lips.

“I shouldn’t have said that about the court martial. I take it back.”

Hux snarled, slowly turning his hand towards the former Lord Ren.

Ben raised his hands.

“I take it back, okay?”

The spring-loaded mechanism was now firmly locked on its new target.

“I said I’m sorry! I’m fucking sorry! What more do you want to hear? I kinda stopped thinking for myself at the age of ten, of course I’ll make mistakes now and then!”

“THE WORLD’S NOT REVOLVING AROUND YOU!” Hux shouted, at the same time releasing the hidden knife from his sleeve. It shot forward, only to get stopped by a counter-force Ben had created with a flick of his fingers. The thin blade hung in midair for two seconds, then Ben pulled it close and caught it.

“I can do this with blaster shots, you know?”

“Grrr… I remember.”

Ben pocketed the knife.

“The greatest of the Jedi failed to kill me in my sleep. It’s how I tell the story at the Dominance, it greatly inspires the Sith. But of course Master Luke didn’t fail for lack of skill, but of conviction. Maybe in time you will fail to kill me for the same reason. Looking forward to it.”

Finn took a deep breath. “I mean, this escalated a bit, but the underlying issue exists since we met in the workshop. We never before took such a prominent prisoner, the question how to treat them never came up. And now we have two of them and they aren’t even technically prisoners, but allies…”

“If I may…” Trent spoke up. “I was trying to get to that, before things turned heated. I need to have words with Mister Cycen.”

Shoulders sacking and feeling terrible ashamed for having lost his composure in this way – the undignified pose, not the attack – Hux in this moment just wanted everyone to leave. He needed to think. There was something to the situation that he was overlooking, he just knew it. Something that was actually working to his advantage, despite things not looking like it. And then it dawned to him, and a course of action was forming in the strategist’s mind, but the pesky Mon Cala roll had to keep talking:

“Mister Cycen? I said I have a question for you…”

“Don’t expect me to answer.”

Trent nodded, unfazed. Stating one wouldn’t talk to you already was talking to you, after all.

“Your firm was commissioned to work on wrecking the Steadfast. For to get cleared for such an insider job, you must have actively supported the First Order. Is that correct?”

Hux frowned.

“What game are you playing?”

“Correct?”

“Yes. I can truthfully say that I harbored sympathies for the First Order and that I also may have actively aided the system in small ways here and there. – This is stupid!”

“I fully agree!” Poe snickered. “Working for the First Order is stupid as fuck.”

“It so happened”, Trent informed “Cycen” the wrecking firm co-owner, “that a uniform jacket was found in the New Harvest detention & correction facility. It belonged to a First Order General, who died there. The surroundings suggested that it happened during a torture session.”

“What?”

“We’re not privy to all the details, but the man seemed to have committed high treason. The First Order probably wanted him to confess what information exactly he had relayed to the Resistance.”

Poe grinned, realizing where this was going. The others had caught on, too. Rose took the word from Trent:

“Thing is, we know what General Hux didn’t give us: Hyperspace tracking. And this is where you come into play, Mr. Cycen. We were told you are a talented engineer, well versed in the theory. Can you reverse-engineer the principle from what you’ve seen on the Steadfast’s wreck?”

“Can I…?”

Poe looked Hux into the eyes, dead serious. “Well, can you, Ember? Yes or no?”

Last chance… last chance… Last chance for I don’t even know what, but in any case the very last chance.

Meanwhile Hux was thinking the same, namely that this was his chance!

The First Order’s leadership dissolved, no more Sithlord pulling the strings from behind the scenes, no more Sithlord’s pet to mess things up. Ren wasn’t exactly dead, but the catch here was that alive or dead didn’t matter, because in the end Ren had turned out the traitor, not Hux.
Every bit of damage the General had done to the First Order over the course of the last year, he’d only caused in his pursuit of removing Kylo Ren from his unlawfully attained office, an endeavor that in hindsight was justified by Ren fancying himself a rebel now. Viewed in this light, a living Kylo Ren was even better than a dead one, because he’d soon demonstrate his new allegiance in destructive ways. He’d be actually useful to Hux - who’d have thought!
At this point the exiled Supreme Leader he could return home, finish off the Resistance and assume rulership for life. Trach would follow him, as would the Sith in orbit, who’d seethe at having been played for a fool by Ben Solo.
If Hux played his cards right, the Dominance could be on its way to eradicate the rebels everywhere in the galaxy as early as tomorrow. With the added benefit of everyone who had grown on the new leader being on board, no need to battle and capture them. He’d lose nothing, nothing at all. After he’d been through hell, lower than he’d known anybody could fall, Armitage Hux would finally be content.

“I can do that.” Quickly spoken words, followed by smile. “Easily.”

It wasn’t even a lie. He just refused to lay open what exactly he could and would do.

“Unlike your wrecking job, working with the Engineering Corps, unfortunately, isn’t open to private auxiliaries”, Rose informed the defector. “You will have to join the Resistance.”

So this was why the General had had to die, Hux realized. As Mr. Cycen he wasn’t part of the First Order military. He wouldn’t have to defect, he’d just leave civilian life behind and join the armed forces of the Republic Remnant, that his “home world” New Harvest was a membership candidate nation of now. Everything would be perfectly legal, no shame attached.

“You better not start me at recruit rank. It’s Commander or you can try clone the dead General in the hopes that this will give you the information you want!”

Rose extended her hand.

“Welcome aboard then, Commander Cycen.”

Hux half and half expected to get electroshocked when he took the hand. But he knew the charge was not deadly and didn’t want to give the others the satisfaction of so much as flinching. But then nothing happened other than that their palms connected, fingers closed and separated again.
Hux turned to Poe.

“I chose your world…”

And I don’t want to know how close I was to doing that for real… But I cannot just jettison everything I worked towards all my life, least of all for a silly illusion.
As Emperor I’ll build the Admiral Sloane Memorial on Jakku, next to an extensive public bath smack dab in the desert. People from all corners of the world will come visit it, the ultimate triumph of civilization and engineering genius over a hostile environment.
No palace for us, that would be decadent. I’ll commission a new command ship, and we’ll travel from domain to domain, seeing to what needs seeing to and always being ready for battle, never staying for long, like the kings of old. There’ll be orchards in each of those temporary residences. We’ll probably know the planets they’re on only by the name of the fruit trees we’ll make love under, knowing we brought perfect order to the galaxy. Just you wait, space rat, we’ll be happy.

“If I ever regret that decision, then this world having you in it will make having made a mistake worth it. Everything’s better with you around.”

And that wasn’t a lie, either. Everything had been better indeed in the short time they’d shared the same space, the good and the bed, err, bad moments.

“Ember…”

“Speechless again? Need a hug, perhaps? C’mere!”

“Why do keep calling him that?” Ben wondered out loud before he’d have to bear witness to a full blown declaration of love between his rival and his former enemy. The infatuation was bad enough in the Force already, and Ben was seriously afraid he might keel over from nausea, if he looked any closer.

“It’s a reference to his first name”, Poe said. “It means flaming sword.”

“Fire…brand?” Ben ventured a guess.

“Close, but I don’t think him and you are on first name terms already. Or me and you, for that matter.”

“But you are on first name terms with Hu… Cycen? Now I’m really curious what happened while we were absent!” Rey admitted.

“Hux hit Poe with a cafeteria tray”, the newly named Cycen said. “Seems to have beaten some sense into that skull of his.”

“No, before that you tossed a TIE-echelon mini at me!”

“Ah, yes”, Rey nodded. “I can see this is going to be incredibly romantic. Tell you what, why don’t we have that diplomatic reception for real and catch up with each other’s exploits?”

“Would”, Rose replied. “But I’d like to start on working Isbrand in immediately. So, sandwiches later?”

“I wouldn’t say no to a bath now”, Rey agreed. “Sandwiches later.”

Rose turned to her new team member: “Sooo, how fast do you think you can re-type your patent-application?”

With a chuckle, Hux replied: “I didn’t surrender so that you could make me do lines! Actually I was counting on being able to download the whole thing, including the comprehensive appendix, using the Dominance computer. I will, however, immediately start on a software that teaches your surveillance devices how to do it in practice. And by that I mean real small devices. You see, I figured out how to streamline the trackers to fit into individual TIEs.”

“I noticed!!!” Poe grumbled, having found himself at the receiving end of this tactic not long ago.

Hux/Cycen gently separated from Poe and fell into stride with Rose. The others heard them talk on their way out of the hall:
“I know what you are doing, utilizing beacons all over the galaxy to scan hyperspace and then you compute all possible routes a ship that just jumped might take, using its entry vector. But how is that more than an educated guess? Because so far you shitheads have a one hundred percent history of picking the correct track!”

“Alright”, Poe concluded, as the duo left everyone’s earshot. “Sounds like they’ll tell us soon enough what buttons to push.”

“Mine, I’m afraid”, Ben said.

“Oh, don’t worry, Ember’s insults aren’t very creative.”

“Last I heard, he got himself a coach…”

*

“Guesswork is not how my method works”, Hux replied to Rose while they were walking side by side. “The very first thing the tracker does is to perform an extensive scan of the target, with a focus on its hyperdrive’s frequency and ionization rate. Neutrino clusters, if present, are best, of course, like naturally occurring tracking beacons. If there’s not enough time, we can pull the model’s specs from our database, but that leaves some margin for error. Well, and once we’ve got this picture, we can watch in real time where the target goes.”

“That’s still an awful lot of data to get processed.”

“Still the same weakness, though: Slice into the nearest satellite and you’re good to jump, leaving the pursuers not exactly in the dark, but seriously near-sighted.”

“The “nearest” beacon could still be systems away.”

“It’s not as if you’d have only a single ship, no?”

The expression on Rose’s face momentarily silenced the defector. It had been less than a year since Hux had picked the Resistance’s ships off one by one during an extended chase. And although it was said that time healed all wounds, they tended to leave nasty scars.

“Anyway, the First Order doesn’t expect you… err, us, to go after the beacons, they’ll be only lightly defended, if at all. Maintenance workers with holdout blasters, mostly. Some droids. The odd stormtrooper having gotten assigned to the station as a punishment for misconduct, that sort of thing. Strike fast and you can get in a nice number of hits before the opposition realizes what has happened!”

“You’re red all over all of a sudden”, Rose noticed. “But that’s not surprising, seeing how this went beyond the scope of your pledge to serve as an engineer. Full blown strategic advice wasn’t included in it.”

“I’m not doing things by halves.”

And now I know exactly where to find your forces later. Why chase the prey, when you can bait it?

*

Rose and Cycen left the palace interior. They now found themselves in a courtyard. An overturned bench that had buried a discarded blaster and holes in some of the columns still told the story of the insurrection.

In the yard’s center Jet, the TIE dagger pilot, was exercising together with members of the planetary defense. At first Rose processed the image as the defector now blending in with the defenders, but then she remembered that everyone in the group was a defector. Jet and the planetary defense squad came from the same background, they all had disavowed the First Order’s way of doing things.

“It’s starting everywhere now, and can’t get stopped anymore”, Rose commented, no need to specify that “it” meant the end of the First Order. “With the Xystons, they overdid it. People will rise up everywhere in the galaxy now.”

“Hm.”

“You know what? This gives me an idea. Come!”

Rose dragged the Commander behind her, and there wasn’t anything he could do against the explicit wish of his superior. Although he was only playing a role, Hux thought that Tico was one of the better commanders he’d served, actually ranking close to the top. That sheer determination coupled with the quick learning talent that had allowed her to work her way up from maintenance worker to the head of the engineering corps within a single year was a treasure. After all this, he’d have to get Rose a post as minister or something in his empire.

“Jet! Hey, Jet!” Rose called out to the pilot.

“Oh, it’s you two! You sound urgent, but not worried?”

“I want to try something I need your assistance for. If it works, all the better, and if it doesn’t, all we lose is that already damaged TIE dagger of yours.”

“With me in it?!”

“Nope, no risk for that. The worst that could happen to you is sitting in a no longer maneuverable TIE and getting bored while waiting for to get taken back to the surface.”

“Now I’m curious, too”, Cycen admitted. “Weren’t we talking hyperspace tracking a moment ago?”

“Exactly! You told me the key to the process is a precise image of the prey. We can spoof that by modifying the TIE’s hyperdrive so that it changes its ionization rate the moment before it jumps. The First Order will still have all the junk data, but no more real object to match it to.”

“WHAT?” Hux/Cycen exclaimed.

You… little… fucker… I take that back about giving you an office! I should personally have put the axe to your neck when we had you pinned to the floor!

Rose laughed, mistaking the protest for surprise and awe at the simplicity of her proposed solution. “I know, right? If we could make this work, that would be so neat! Longterm we still need to go after the beacons, like you said, of course.”

“Uh, alright. Let’s get to work…”

On second thought the axe would have been a waste. You’re going straight to QA.

Chapter Text

That evening the rebels gathered around a porch table in the safe house’s yard. Finn was the last to arrive, having finalized the evacuation plan of New Harvest city and set up some macros for the government droids. Although the Dominance’s super laser wasn’t a threat anymore (it had gotten damaged in the battle of Exegol and Rey and Ben had already seen to it that it wouldn’t be functional again any time soon), it couldn’t hurt to have such a contingency.

Finn found his companions in a relaxed mood, and that included the defector. It hadn’t even taken much for that, just genuine appreciation of his work. In the First Order everyone had always taken Hux’ victories for granted, not worth mentioning, but they had never let him forget his defeats. But to be fair, Hux had been complicit in this and done it to himself, too. Once he was Emperor, he’d have to wean himself of that habit. Better he started right now!

Meanwhile Ben had folded up his Kylo Ren Robe and placed it onto an empty chair, preferring to dress in a shirt and vest in his father’s image over one of the long skirts the men of New Harvest wore.

Rey reached for one of the cucumber-like leaves that got served here with every meal and sucked it dry of moisture. “I like stuff that is food and water in one!” she proclaimed with a mouthful of pulp, putting her status as the heir to the Palpatine bloodline and family name to shame.

Nobody commented, just like there seemed to be a silent agreement not to laugh at Hux cutting his cold cuts up with knife and fork, only to put the knife aside, switch the fork over into his right hand and pick the pieces up. It had been a while since Hux had observed table manners this strictly. Pretty much nobody aside from Pryde still ate this way. Hux did it to create some structure for himself in the chaos that was life in the Resistance and to his amazement they let him. There was no pressure to change and adapt that went beyond his oath of loyalty.

“Deserts kinder than Jakku have plenty of cacti”, Ben told Rey. “Maybe we’ll get sent to one sometime. Even more I wish we could just travel the galaxy and see whatever we wish to see.”

Sunset on Kef Bir… Hux violently stabbed another piece of meat to kill the stray thought. Why was he angry, even? There was no reason they couldn’t still visit Endor’s moon after his coronation.

“For starters we could see more of New Harvest”, Rey replied to Ben with a smile. “Seeing that we’ll be stuck here for a week.”

“The forest right at the edge of town has plenty of ponds and berry patches, and animals many of you will never have seen before”, Eightball chimed in.

For that was the plan: The rebels would remain on the planet until Pryde’s ordered in advance ride would arrive. They’d deal with it together with the planetary defense squad, and then neutralize the Dominance. In case the Sith would smell the rat, Poe and Finn had already called reinforcements from the Resistance, scheduled to arrive just prior to Pryde’s space cab. Beyond that there wasn’t much they could plan just yet.

Finn and Rose laid out a cucumber-leaf that they had cut into a triangle shape, smeared some quark on it and glued another leaf on. They then added cheese cubes to their construction’s rear end. After a while it became apparent that the construct was going to be a majestic Star Destroyer – apparently Finn wasn’t satisfied with playful food existing anymore, but wanted to have his share in creating some and Rose was only too happy join into the mirth.

Meanwhile Ben skewered a cheese cube, some large, juicy berries, another cheese cube and finally another berry. Doing so he already felt his mouth watering in anticipation, an unfamiliar sensation. Now that visions of power didn’t fill him up anymore, Ben Solo had to eat same as the nextbest person (or maybe the Dark Side consuming him had killed his appetite, that was the less enchanted explanation for why he had eaten like a bird as Kylo Ren).

With a full mouth, and the other was certain that his nemesis did this just to spite him, Ben asked Hux: “So you’ve defied both the Resistance and the First Order. Who’s next?”

“Whoever fills the power vacuum left behind by all the Commanders we’ve removed, I suppose. We were thorough, weren’t we?”

“Yes…”

Hux tilted his head into Ben’s direction while asking Rey:

“Why don’t you put him back? Kylo Ren was never deposed, he just got lost, like a toddler, when you forget to lock the door. Wouldn’t keeping him in office be the most advantageous move?”

“I don’t think I can consistently act that well”, Ben rejected the idea.

“Ah, figures.”

And to be frank, I counted on you saying that. You playing right into my hand will make my takeover easier.

*

When a constant bip-bip-bip arose, Ben looked at BB-8. “Yes, what is it?” he asked, only to get an amused “Ui-Ui” in response. No-no. Wasn’t me, bud. You better learn to tell your new companions’ voices apart!

Blushing, Ben looked around for the actual source of the sound until he localized it as centered on his discarded robe. He grabbed his helmet, slammed it on and spoke into the integrated comlink: “What is it!”

“This is General Pryde speaking, Lord Ren.”

“I was wondering where you’d gotten to.”

“I had to retreat from the city. Are you at the Governor’s palace?”

“You are apparently not.”

“Ah, right. I noticed the Star Destroyer in orbit and initiated contact. They told me you’d landed in the capital city, but you need to know that this city is in a state of insurrection.”

“I NOTICED”, Ben said in his best imitation of his grandfather, the closest he was still able to come to how he had spoken as Kylo Ren. “Me and my new apprentice already took care of the matter. You can and should return to the capital, and if you have a dozen or so stormtroopers with you, that would be welcome to replenish the losses. Vice-Governor Trent…”

“There is no Vice-Governor!” Pryde made haste to clarify. “Kelmut Trent is a slave and he incited the riots!”

“Oh, is that so?”

Ben pushed back is chair and reached for his lightsaber. On his end of the conversation Pryde heard the weapon ignite, then hit something soft and then flicker out again.

“As you said, there is no Vice-Governor”, Ben/Kylo confirmed. “See you in the palace at shortest notice, General.” He turned his head towards Rey and added: “Clean that up, Solana.”

After he had severed the connection and removed the helmet again, Ben looked at the lightsaber he had just “killed” a lounge chair with and mused: “It’s funny, really. I can hear the subtlest difference between my old crossguard saber and my grandfather’s. They’re both cracked in different ways, the crossguard’s crystal from my courting the dark side, the hilt of grandfather’s from our battle with Snoke. And both sound distinct from my mo… uh, from Rey’s lightsaber. But people never catch on when we switch.”

BB-8 beeped indignantly, as if to say: “Whatever you say, Mister “I just mistook you for my phone”.”

“You switch your lightsabers?” Poe sputtered. “Like kids swap their speeder bikes?”

“We did that in combat! Like, once!”

“Or twice? Once doesn’t hurt, you know. Thrice, now…”

Ben grumbled something intelligible.
So life after redemption was pretty much the same as before, he wondered? He was carrying the weight of the mission on his own back, had to make all the important decisions on the fly, all the while having to yell a commanding officer who had given him flak into compliance? Only that this wasn’t General Hux anymore, but General Dameron?

“Hey, don’t get all grumpy”, Poe said with a grin. “I think it’s adorable.”

“Yeah, sure… In any case, we have an arrest to make at the palace.”

“That scary blade”, Rose said, while getting up together with the others. “I don’t care if it was the result of a shoddy construction. It looked as if it was created on purpose to intimidate and I hate it. I hope you dismantled it properly and melted the pieces!”

“I threw it away.”

Rey stopped mid-movement.

“Say again?”

“I tossed the evil lightsaber into the ocean of the water moon”, Ben clarified.

Rey nodded gravely. “Ah, in this case we’ll see it again soon, and will be able to judge for ourselves how it sounds.”

*

Hux followed the others to the group’s landspeeder and Rey’s and Ben’s speeder bikes, but didn’t get into the car together with them.

“Crossing fingers here that Pryde will pick this street to come into the city and I can “welcome” him properly, but what are the chances”, he said. “See you later, I guess.”

Saying this, the former General stood with his hands folded on his back, a common pose of his, that as of today served the secondary purpose of keeping the wristband beneath his left sleeve out of sight. This armband wasn’t a concealed weapon and it counted as a communication device only in a very general sense.
A small monitor attached to it displayed two numbers, one being near constant, the other changing in the last two digits. The first number represented the Zabrak prison guard who had grabbed Poe, the second Interim-Governor Trent.
For “Commander Cycen” was under a restraining order following his actions in the palace earlier today. If he got unreasonably close to either of the two men he was harboring a deep-seated grudge for, the wristband would issue an audible warning. If he got way too close, the device would administer a sharp jolt, increasing in strength counter-proportionally to distance.
Oh, yes, Trent was definitely seafood in the making for subjecting Hux to this treatment. One day, hopefully soon, he’d deliver Trent to a random village on a hunger-stricken world inhabited by a species that wasn’t in danger of catching prion disease from the Quarren and then announce a feast. Have a gift from the Emperor!

Rey and Ben were still in the process of putting on their disguises, when suddenly BB-8 gave a loud shriek. Following the droid’s line of sight, the others saw a large space craft launch from the palace district – it was Kira Solana’s command shuttle.

“In the sky!” Finn shouted. The panic in his voice didn’t really inspire to look at the sky, but of course everyone did anyway. Coming down as if to meet the shuttle were several focused rays of pure destructive energy. They appeared to move deceptively slow, but already the early evening sky was growing a lot brighter.

Poe started the landspeeder’s engine and accelerated to maximum, causing the passengers to gasp for air as they got pressed into their seats. Ben dropped his cloak and helmet and mounted his bike. Rey did the same. Finally Hux felt himself get grabbed by something different than a hand and before he knew it, he sat on the bike behind Rey Palpatine, holding on while the world changed into rows and rows of stripes going past and the wind bit sharply into the driver’s and passenger’s skin.

“Thank you, Rey. I… Hey, wait a moment! Why are we driving TOWARDS the palace?”

“Because even at full speed we’ll need twenty minutes to get there. We aren’t in danger of getting caught in the attack, but will be there right in time to help the survivors.”

“Right. I forgot that you can move rubble like pebbles and… sense caved in survivors, that sort of thing? Alr… city bus right ahead!!!”

One effortless seeming evasive maneuver later they were back on track and Rey’s passenger wasn’t even complaining anymore. Any moment now… any moment the beams would reduce the city center to a charred square littered with debris. But that moment never came, only the sirens started howling everywhere in the city. The rebels sped left and right around an a larger than life sized statue of Supreme Leader Snoke, crossed a red traffic light and still no explosion.

In the speeder car Finn switched on the radio. It was still playing music, as nobody in the broadcasting building had bothered to stop the program before fleeing. Finn tried to reach Jet at the space port. Someone took the call, but then didn’t speak into the comlink. There was a lot of noise from running feet and people talking into each other, and that was even before the channels used by the planetary defense fleet and those First Order pilots who had defected to New Harvest started overlapping. There was something about emergency starts... Jet was leading the pilots against the Sith in orbit.

But NOW the lasers from space hit, only not in the city center, but to the south, where the space port was - or had been – located.

Anticipating the settlers mounting a counter attack, the Sith had targeted it even before the palace. Those few fighters that had made it airborne in time continued to ascend into space, to mount a desperate attack on the Dominance. But the vast majority of them had gotten destroyed this very moment.

*

Ironically the first laser battery having targeted the spaceport had given Governor Trent the opportunity to bring the palace’s shield online, a system that was normally more of a liability than an asset, except right now.

A second volley of lasers came down, this time aimed at the palace. The dome started throwing sparks, but held for precious seconds: two… three… ten… Everyone still inside the building was probably dead anyway, but each laser occupied with eating up the shield’s energy was one not aimed at the rest of the city yet. Ten seconds might just be enough for the employees of public buildings to reach the shelters and for owners of a landspeeder to start it up.

The palace’s shield was still holding when a heavily damaged bomber bumbled into view. There were no escort ships in sight, the planetary defense had already dealt with them. Spouting flames, the fact that the bomber was unable to release its payload didn’t matter. The moment the wreck came crashing down, it would take a city block with it.
A wing broke off and trailed after the ship as it impacted into the Snoke statue. Stone fragments flew into all direction and the blast from the explosion to follow broke windows and walls of nearby houses and tossed speeder cars off track.

Governor Trent watched the devastation with horror. And now a second bomber closed in on the city. It was destabilized from a grazing hit, but unlike the first one still operable…

“That’s what you get for opposing the rightful order.”

Trent turned around at these words and saw Masir Trach, who was rubbing his shoulder, apparently from having broken down his quarter’s door.

“What color has Snoke’s underwear now?” Trent asked calmly.

“Brown, I wager, same as all of ours.”

“So I take it you didn’t call in the airstrike?”

“Not me.”

“Cy… Hux, then?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

Masir Trach sped down the stairs. He didn’t hear Trent’s delayed reply:
“Then at least this isn’t on me for putting my trust into the wrong people.”

Trent, to the contrary, heard his own words clearer than the short dialogue before. That was when he realized that the steady hum of the palace’s shield getting battered had stopped. A split second later the world lit up in a blinding, silvery light, but the pain from looking into it didn’t have time to reach the brain.

*

Meanwhile Hux and the rebels had no choice but to flee, too. Both Poe and the two force sensitives had astonishing reflexes; they managed to navigate the unfamiliar streets of the capital with dreamlike confidence.

Everywhere around them people were running on foot or frantically entering their vehicles. From the corners of her eyes Rey spotted an elder crying at being unable to lug her droid into the car. She briefly detached her right hand from the handlebars and swooped the droid into the old woman’s speeder, then gave that a push to help it going. The bike briefly tilted to the left, then Rey had a firm grasp of it again and continued racing towards the outskirts.

On the bike right in front of Rey’s, Ben used his own force powers to snatch a toddler from a group of people running on foot. He heard both the parents and the child cry out in surprise, but it couldn’t be helped now. If everyone made it to safety, he could clear up the misunderstanding and reunite the “stolen” child with his family. If not, at least this boy would live.

Pressing the child against his chest, shielding it with his body, Ben felt the tiny buds where horns would grow later. The little boy was a Zabrak. His parents trying to flee on foot in contrast to the speeders and mounts they had spotted during their flight once again drove home that non-humans were second class citizens in a colony run by the First Order. If they even had access to the same professions as humans, the Zabrak were paid less for the same work and certainly weren’t welcome to set up permanent residences in the representative government district.

“Stop… I order you to stop!” Ben whispered through trembling lips while all around him buildings were crumbling and fires spreading. And as if that wasn’t enough, the second bomber still had missiles to deliver. The Force told Ben where the next bomb would drop, but he could be everywhere, shielding people, and not from the onslaught of energies released here. “Stop…”

But Ben wasn’t the Supreme Leader of the First Order and the Lord of the Knights of Ren anymore. And back when he had been that… he wouldn’t have said “stop” in a similar situation.

“Phasma… Hux… tell them… to stop…”

*

Eventually the speeders entered the forest, but didn’t dare to stop. The moment they slipped under the canopy, Rey shouted “Open your mouths!”. The next moment they passed a homestead nestled into the forest. Its inhabitants were standing around worried about the brightly lit sky, but apparently hadn’t fully realized what was going on. They heard an explosion and then they already had to watch something the size of an overland hoverbus crash into their barn, followed by a loudly protesting nerf bull.
On his bike Ben coughed when something tiny entered his lungs through the open mouth, but a bug or two swallowed was a small price for keeping his eardrums intact.

The final blast that had driven the hoverbus in front of itself also caught the rebels. They felt intense heat and had to latch on tightly as their vehicles got rocked, but nothing worse happened.
Poe let the speeder car “roll out” into a clearing and the two bikes circled around it until they, too, came to a halt. Rey, Hux and Ben holding the toddler slid off and so did the riders of the speeder car. Standing close together, the rebels all stretched their battered bodies.

Finn found his voice again first. “I wouldn’t put it past the Sith to carpet bomb the forest and the countryside to really make sure we haven’t survived”, he said between gasps.

“We’re lucky that Pryde is out here somewhere”, Hux replied. “They probably won’t want to risk obliterating him alongside us. But what the hell just happened?”

“Good question, Commander…”

“Don’t give me that look, Solo! Why’d I call in an airstrike on myself?”

Hux took a step back towards where they’d come from, then another and yet another. Somewhere hidden behind the trees the city was only a collection of ruins anymore. Where the palace had stood was a large crater now, but that the fugitives couldn’t see, only infer. They did, however see smoke rising above the treetops. The city was burning, the flattened downtown space, the charred ruins of the city proper and the partially destroyed outskirts alike. Even though the bombing had stopped, the dying would continue through the night.
So far there didn’t seem to be any danger of the fire spreading to the forest, though.

“How dare they…” Hux uttered, then coughed and then shouted into the forest, working himself up to screaming: “Who do the Sith think they are! Stupid, irregular auxiliary units incapable of civilized life!!!”

In his back the Zabrak boy in Ben’s arms started crying. Tiny fists assaulted his “kidnapper”. The wailing served to shut Hux up. He turned around and took the small toddler from the large one.

“Let’s rescue you from that bandit, shall we?” the man croaked, his throat sore from the scream. He quickly covered the unfavorable first impression by a wide smile. Ben had seen Hux smile before, usually in the form of a hardly noticeable expression of satisfaction. Adults were more likely to find themselves at the receiving end of a sneer from the General, but apparently he didn’t seem to have a problem with small children.

Of course not, Ben realized. Younglings aren’t old enough to hurt you yet. But the moment they turn five they become dangerous and then you’ll toss them into the stormtrooper machine without remorse.

“Do you know who I am?” Hux asked the child. “Your Emperor!”

“Emp’r?” The child giggled.

“Hear, Solo? He said “Ember”. He likes me.”

“Oh, stop showing off already! With parents like yours, anybody can be a good nanny just by doing the opposite their old man and woman did. It’s not a talent or something. Now give me a tactical assessment of the situation!”

The former General lifted the boy on his shoulders, then obliged without having to think beforehand. The facts were painfully clear to anybody not called Re… Solo:
“Pryde was in contact with the Sith, as he admitted. He only called you to confirm your role in the insurrection. When he realized that you were lying to him - but don’t ask me how he was able to do that - he greenlighted the already planned attack on the city.”

Ben nodded thoughtfully. Meanwhile the little Zabrak excitedly pointed at leaves and birds, apparently familiar with the forest, eager to share his knowledge and oblivious to the smoke coming from the city. It didn’t take long for Eightball to join the child at his vantage point, and from then on he tried to “catch” the droid, accompanied by much giggling.

Meanwhile the adults saw the colony’s defenders coming down from space. They hadn’t touched down yet, when Jet reported in to Poe:
“The planetary defense managed to disable the Dominance’s weapons. However, now they’re sending down ground troops to round up the survivors of their airstrike.”

Hearing Jet on the comlink instead of Trent really drove home the loss. Now wasn’t the time to dwell on it, though.

“This is more than a handful of people can handle”, Poe concluded. “Call in reinforcements from the Resistance.”

“What with, Sir? My hand comlink? New Harvest’s long range communication towers just got pulverized and the Sith made short of work of the satellites.”

“Do it the old fashioned way, then! One of you hyperjump and meet up with the citizens’ fleet in person.”

“I could do that. I have the new spoofer installed, that will prevent the Dominance from learning where I’ll jump to. Alas, New Harvest was a First Order colony up until three days ago. EVERYONE in the defense squad, not just us former Steadfast personnel, used to be First Order. One of us knocking at a Resistance base’s door asking to follow them could get taken for a trap.”

“That’s why you’ll want to show them the knucklehead trout snippet I gave you. I cut it in a certain pattern, that signifies it has been given voluntarily.”

“I noticed the cuts, but thought it was wear and tear…”

“And that’s exactly the idea! Alright, Jet, ready or not, it’s time to jump. May the Force guide you!”

“And you, Sir!”

*

Poe turned back to his friends.
“We need to gather the survivors… somewhere. Scattered they may be able to hide better, but in case of getting attacked they stand a better chance together.”

“The only bases that come to mind are the prison and the landspeeder factory”, Finn said. “But on the other hand, they may be a bit too obvious places and as such primary targets for the Sith troopers.”

By now more fugitives entered the clearing. A family wearing torn clothes and sporting burns all over in addition to bruises they’d sustained in the forest slumped to the ground. Eightball immediately moved in to scan them.

“My resources are limited”, the little droid told his humans after he had seen to the singed survivors. “I was able to help these, but I need certain tree saps and leaves to improvise treatments for more patients.”

To everyone’s surprise it was Poe, the pilot, who immediately nodded and who understood both Eightball’s brief descriptions of the plants needed as well as the occasional scientific name.

“What part of “grew up on a homestead” was unclear?” Poe asked his friends with a grin. “I don’t know the first thing about medicine, but I can reliably find the stuff with the funny roots and colorful crowns without getting bitten.”

“Bitten by the wildlife while you pick the herbs, you mean?” Finn asked.

“That, too.”

“Wait… there’s more here… Ah! But of course!” Finn laughed, knowing his friend: “Quiet hours in the forest beat work in the farmhouse. Also the young lads and ladies.”

“One day I’ll show you…” …all the secret places and scents of my foresthome, Finn. I wanted to share all of this with you and create special memories together that transcended everything I remember from my first sixteen years. But now I can’t stop myself from thinking of lying with Ember on those mossy patches, despite him and me not even being friends. “…that farmhouse so that you can judge for yourself.”

Finn opened his arms ever so subtly. It was for the friend to decide the next step, but, really, how stupid would it be never to touch each other again, just because Finn had a surname coming that wasn’t “Dameron” and Poe maybe would share his name with somebody other than Finn? And so they flew at each other, and remained locked in a tight embrace for seemingly endless breaths. Only what would happen if one day they couldn’t stop at a hug…

At Hux’ shoulder the child grew impatient, now that his digital play partner was no longer available. The man lowered him down so that he could run around a little under the his rescuers’ supervision. Doing so, Hux’ sleeve slipped up his left arm, revealing the armband with the tracker. Trent’s position on it was unchanging, as expected. The “last updated” counter next to it was going upwards from the moment the palace had gotten destroyed, hard proof that the device Trent was using to give his position – most likely an implanted tag from his slave days – had gotten destroyed and was no longer sending. Trent was dead and the chance of anybody else who had been in the palace during the attack having survived was tiny, but not zero. Therefore Hux shouldn’t have been too surprised when he felt the comlink in his belt vibrate.

Worst timing…

Hux was about to reach under his coat to silence the device, but in this moment the youngling grabbed his wrist to get the adult’s attention and the part of the General that had gotten brushed aside by his own caretakers way too often was loath to do the same to this foundling now. He knelt down to take a look at what he was supposed to pay attention to.

“What have you… Hey, that’s a majestic old lucanus! Look how active he is! They don’t come out during the day, you know. The dim twilight is their best friend.”

The delay was just long enough for the comlink to switch from silent vibrations to an audible signal.

“Of all the times!” Hux cursed.

“Oh, I’m positive the time of day is just right for the beetle”, Rose commented. “At worst it might feel a bit startled by that unsolicited call… Take it already! Open mic!”

Poe had been in the process of parting from Finn when Hux’ secret comlink had shrieked. Reflexively he took out the encrypted one Kelmut Trent had given the group, but it was still as silent as before. So if this wasn’t Trent calling, then who?

“What have you done AGAIN, Ember?”

With a sigh, Hux produced the code cylinder from his belt. The very act already betrayed that the little object was part of a scheme of sorts. A regular comlink call wouldn’t have drawn attention at all, after all, each group member had made new acquaintances since coming to New Harvest. But friends of Hux’ that initiated contact via concealed devices were not friends of the whole group.

“That you, Trach?”

The man answering was heavily injured and laboring for each word:
“Y…es. You… alive?”

Surprise, mixed with slight disappointment. If Hux lived, chances were, the rebels had survived, too.

“Evidently. Did YOU cause this mess?”

“No. Some loyal, but shortsighted servants… from the palace… warned the Dominance… about the riots.”

“So the Sith got trigger happy on their own? What’s Pryde’s role in this? Speak, man!”

“I don’t know. Do you… see now… that we need… a leader? I beg you… reconsider… your stance… You find… Pryde… bury that rivalry… for the… F… Fff… rst… Order.”

“Reconsider your stance, what the fuck?” Poe whispered. “So we were right to be suspicious of you, but wrong at the same time? Ember?”

“The Steadfast survivors offered me a deal”, Hux admitted. “They’d support me as the new Supreme Leader, as long as I wouldn’t digress too much from what they told me to do in that role. Naturally I declined.”

“Bless your overblown ego!” Poe exclaimed.

“So that’s why you were so eager to offer tactical advice?” Rose wondered. “Because you felt guilty about having considered that other offer?”

Hux shook his head. In this moment he had no idea what was the truth and what the lie. Perhaps he should just keep talking and let the others figure it out for him.

“Look… A part of me still screams in rage at the new life I’ve chosen. And unlike Solo’s case, this isn’t the voice of an outside force, but myself. I don’t know how to silence it. I just don’t know! Sometimes I wish things could go on like this forever, the five of us being a group, living from moment to moment…”

Alerted to a conversation going on without him being part of it, Trach asked about the rebels. Hux didn’t seem to be alone wherever he had ended up?!

“That’s Dameron. I chucked him into the rebels’ speeder and made my escape when I realized what was afoot. The others got caught in the blast from the palace’s shield collapsing. We found their bodies just before you called, and… it’s not a pretty sight. Poe’s devastat…”

“Irrelevant! So the rest are all dead.” Pause. “Good.” Another pause. “That’s what they get for…”

The sound of a comlink slipping from Trach’s fingers, landing on scorched earth and rolling into the crater. At its rim Trach rolled from his side to the back and stared into the now dark again sky. He couldn’t spot the Dominance from his position (or from this distance, for that matter), but the stars were coming up, in accordance with how things went. Dependable, orderly and proud, like the system Masir Trach was part of… or had been a part of, given his injuries. He'd would have preferred to have lived, who wouldn’t? But if justice wasn’t to be served in any other way, then this alien sky being the last he’d ever see was acceptable.

“Glory to the First Order.”

A final, coherent sentence.

*

At the clearing Rey faced Hux: “Why’d you tell him we’re dead?”

“It’s obvious that this man has three minutes max left to live, so what good would the truth have done him? And on the off chance he’ll contact the Dominance within these minutes, he’ll relay to them that you were dealt with.”

“Miss him?”

“…yes. But as I had to learn today, even Ben would be missed.”

“I can’t die”, Ben claimed, only to hastily clarify: “No, don’t give me that look, I meant that as in that I must not die. When my father appeared to me on the water moon, he said “My son is alive”, and with such a conviction, that I don’t dare being careless. My parents want me to live.”

“That’s something to live for, I suppose. One’s old man coming to have a look at the world, only to have to go “Ew, that scrawny kid’s still alive”.”

“Alright, you heard the man. We must find Pryde. On the order of the rightful occupation force”, Poe joked. “And, extra luck, a beetle for you, Ember. Take it!”

Hux accepted the stag beetle from the group’s foundling and let it explore the back of his hand.

“Pryde… and the medical provisions…” he croaked. “Where to start? We have fugitives trickling in, but we have no weapons to hand out… it’s getting darker and we lack the most basic night vision goggles… and the enemy could find us any moment… or maybe I AM the enemy…”

BREEEEEEEEEEEE!

And on top of that, the blasted restraining order wristband had to add itself to the list of problems, causing the stag beetle to bolt. Hux angrily ripped it off and tossed it away. The computer that would register the offense didn’t exist anymore, after all.

From deeper within the forest a mixed group of Humans and Zabrak wearing light security vests arrived: The guards of the prison with the attached toy factory. They were armed and ready to protect the fugitives.

“You need to complain more often, if that summons help!” Poe told Hux with a smirk, then waved at the arrivals. “Over here! And I’ve never been happier to see you guys!”

There was a trio marching in front that carried themselves with the confidence of leaders, two Zabrak and a human. But another Zabrak quickly moved past them and planted himself in front of the rebels before his superiors had the chance the reply to Poe.

“You!” he barked, pointing his finger at Hux. “You tried to hit me with a tray! And you…” He pointed at Rose now. “…called me an idiot.”

“Hey, hey, now!” Poe interrupted, but the prison guard wouldn’t let the escapee slow him down.

“Smell the smoke in the air? Smell it? This is your doing! A tenth of our population lived in the capital. They wanted to build a new life here, now they are leaving the planet in the form of smoke. But even moreso this city was our gate to the world. Trade, news, travel… we had it all. And now all that’s left is homesteads… New Harvest has to pay for you rebels’ folly. The city dwellers were found guilty by association, but most residents didn’t even know you existed…”

Ben stepped forward. He was the same size as the Zabrak and additionally knew how to employ his height to the best effect.

“This is MY doing, if it has to be anybody’s”, Ben challenged. “Take this up with ME, if you dare!”

“Never seen you…”

But the long haired stranger didn’t speak with the local accent either, so he had to be a rebel, just like his friends, even though he hadn’t been in the cafeteria the day of the prison break.

“Were you in solitary while the others were eating? That tells me enough about you.”

Momentarily baffled, Ben took a step back.

Oh, right, I left my full disguise at the safe house. Without the cloak and helmet to complete it, I’m just an edgily dressed scoundrel.
Hux nudged Poe.

“They don’t recognize him! Nobody here has an inkling who he is! That’s gold!”

Meanwhile Ben was uncertain how to reply. He certainly couldn’t call himself Kylo Ren now, that would be taken as mockery. And standing here in this clearing, he realized that he had an aversion of introducing himself with his real identity, too. Ben Solo… Speak it out loud and everything would begin anew. The expectations. The allusions. Comparing and getting compared. Insecurity, that led to becoming vulnerable. Fear. Still too much fear.

“Out of my way, rebel-filth!” the prison guard rumbled, then struck Ben so hard that he lost his footing and tumbled to the ground.

Loss… Loss of balance, but not of face. The guard hadn’t thought anything of Ben to begin with, Rey and her friends didn’t care, the bystanders recognized a bully when they saw one and Hux didn’t count.

The armed group’s actual leader, a human woman and most likely the principal the prisoners had heard about, but never met, now approached the rebels. “As you can see, there’s bad blood on both sides” she said. “It would perhaps be better if we took over the fugitives, while you… I don’t know. Do the things small mixed para-military units do best.”

“We need to locate and neutralize General Pryde”, Finn explained. “Even if that doesn’t end the conflict, it’ll be one mastermind out of the picture. As for the Sith Star Destroyer in orbit, reinforcements to take it on are underway.”

“That’s good to know.”

“Do you by chance still have First Order’s decryption equipment at the prison?” Rose asked. “I’d like to try to crack Ben’s comlink. It briefly had a connection to Pryde’s, so we might be able to backtrack his position at the time he made that call.”

“That’s certainly worth a shot. Yes, we still have everything. I’ll inform Iverne and the doctor that you’re coming.”

“Thank you!”

*

Before they parted ways with the survivors, the rebels still had a small child to hand to foster parents. Reasoning that someone from his neighborhood might know best whom to entrust with this task, Rey asked around the growing number of fugitives. There was one family, who immediately recognized the boy and agreed to take him in.

Expecting to get returned to his parents now by the neighbors, the boy smiled at them, blissfully unaware of the harsh reality. Then he wiggled his fingers towards the two who had, in his perspective, rescued him from the black clad bandit:

“Emb’r! Ateball!”

The boy waved goodbye, the human returned the gesture and the droid bobbed up and down to the same purpose.

*

As the rebels made their way to their speeders, Finn stepped in line with Hux. Reading the room, Rey left her bike to Finn and took the seat next to Poe in the car instead.

“Makes one wonder, huh?” Finn said. “Think kids are in the cards for either of us?”

“Why not? I had a thorough education in how not to parent.”

“Yeah, same, and thanks to the same shithead.”

They mounted the bike. Only after they had followed the speeder for some time already, did Hux speak up again:
“But without an army, we can neither secure our territory, nor expand it. We need soldiers, and they don’t drop out of trees battle-ready.”

“Oh, I don’t know”, Finn snarled. “In the end it’s a matter of motivation. Maybe ask the former career criminal you’re dating what makes him throw his life into the line again and again?”

“Our POE?”

“Used to be a smuggler. In his defense, if I got that right, by the time he realized what company he’d fallen in with, he had been in too deep already to easily quit.”

“Oh, I can empathize with that! To some degree, at least.”

“Did you know that I wanted to run away? I wasn’t a defector to begin with, just a deserter. I wanted to stop doing your dirty work, but couldn’t commit to actively opposing it.”

“What? When did that happen?”

“Right before my past caught up with me, showing me the folly of my plan. I don’t know if that helps at all, but… those doubts concerning your decision? We all experienced that at some point, one way or another. Chances are you’ll run away and we’ll have to pull you out of some roadside ditch before all is said and done.”

“You fully expect that?”

“I’ve been there myself.”

Hux saw Finn let go of the speeder bike’s handlebar and reach for his blaster. That was an odd follow-up to what had sounded like encouragement up until now.

“Hey, hey! I’ll…”

Finn drew the weapon and almost without looking fired three shots in quick succession into the underbrush. Following the line of fire with his eyes, Hux now saw a person sized crimson-red object between the trees. It quickly dived behind a large rock, but another one that had been standing right next to it keeled over. And now it became apparent that those things were not just people-sized, but also people-shaped.

“Sith Troopers?”

“Two less now”, Finn confirmed. “The third dodged.”

“Did you feel them in the Force?”

“Haha, no! See, I relied on the sensors in my stormtrooper helmet for years. When I had them no longer at my disposal, I felt blind and deaf. But I quickly adapted, and now don’t need the aid anymore. My senses are much sharper than they were before.”

While Finn was looking for more targets, Ben had leaped straight up from his bike into a tree. There was a surprised cry and then a trooper wearing the iconic red armor dropped to the ground.

“How’d you even get into a tree in the first place…” Ben murmured.

The Sith troopers now returned Finn’s fire. Hectically evading the blaster shots, Finn found no opportunity to shoot himself. But now the speeder car raced past the bike, straight towards the enemies. Rey was standing crouched, holding fast to the car with one hand and deflecting incoming shots with her lightsaber in the other one.

Four troopers emerged from the trees, a trio and the survivor of the first trio that Finn had attacked. Moving in formation, they kept pelting Finn’s and Hux’ bike with blaster shots, pinning it on the spot, unable to escape. The passengers slid off and dashed behind the nextbest tree. It was wide enough to provide cover for both of them and return the fire from there.

“Pinned behind a tree instead of a speeder bike is what we in the field call an improvement”, Finn snarked.

“You see me at my cheerfullest at the good news”, Hux replied. “So what next?”

“You can’t tell?”

“I usually point at stuff and then it explodes.”

“Well, we’re the extra steps between those two points.”

Finn reached around the tree and fired.

“Damn! Missed. – One on your side!”

Hux shot and scored what would have been a perfect hit. The Sith trooper, however, didn’t even notice it.

“The blaster is doing nothing!” Hux complained, after two more of his attacks had bounced harmlessly off the Sith armor, only for Finn to drop the target with a single shot.

“You have to hit the weak spots”, he told Hux, re-adjusted his aim and down went another Sith trooper.

“Which would be…?”

Finn gave no verbal answer, but the next moment Hux felt his vision blur. The two remaining Sith faded out, only a handful of points of interest on their bodies shone brightly.

“Can you see?”

“Yes, but…”

The highlighted targets were moving and additionally tried to shoot Hux while he took aim at them. The strategist simply lacked Finn’s trained reflexes and the Force couldn’t grant them to him the same way Finn used it to convey the armor’s weak spots to his companion. When he realized that his method wasn’t working, Finn retracted his mind and the world returned to normal. The Sith troopers had momentarily ceased their fire and retreated behind cover.

“Switch”, Hux whispered.

“Huh?”

“Switch sides with me, Finn! By now they should know that shots from your side mean death, while I’m harmless. I bet my revoked pension they’ll advance on my side any moment.”

“Okay.”

Finn maneuvered around Hux, who slid to the right. They waited a couple of breaths and indeed both remaining troopers approached from the direction that would have exposed them to Hux’ line of fire. Only now they met Finn’s instead and went down in short succession. The duo’s could have been a flawless victory, if not for Finn groaning:

“Ouch! One of the bastards hit me into the arm!”

“Sucks. I know you’re averse to arm injuries. Partial to the leg, weren’t you?”

Finn turned around, preparing to give a sharp retort, but the companion flashed him a genuine smirk.

“Battlefield banter. You do that in the Resistance. Did I get it right?”

“Uh… yes. Yes.”

“Alright.” Hux produced a neatly folded handkerchief from his pocket, folded it once more and pressed it on Finn’s wound, then secured it with a bandage.

“Whoa, you’re always prepared!”

Hux shook his head. Here, covered by the dead of night, hiding behind a bug-infested tree, he admitted to his fellow defector:

“Prepared for a variety of situations in which I have only a vague idea how to use the stuff I brought.”

There. He'd said it and was still alive.

Hux looked around the battlefield, now that they were no longer under fire. Somewhere in the underbrush Rey’s lightsaber was flashing, but right in the duo’s view Poe and Rose were walking backwards, trying to disengage from their opponents and get into a better position. Rose’s left arm was dangling uselessly at her side, although it was hard to spot in what way exactly it had gotten damaged.

“Grenades!” Hux hissed, pointing at the fallen Sith troopers.

Finn’s face lit up. Protected by Hux’ laying covering fire on the enemy he sprinted towards the four troopers he had killed. After a quick search Finn found the explosives and tossed one with his good arm. Two troopers from the group that was chasing Poe and Rose dropped and the rest was momentarily stopped in their advance, allowing Finn, Poe and Rose to hide again.

Somewhere above their heads Ben was dangling from a tree branch. Eightball was on his way to him, but Ben wasn’t injured. He had been busy influencing the Sith troopers through the force, causing them to grow sluggish and inattentive. With too many targets to divert his own attention to, he had lost his balance.
The cries of surprise and sheer panic to the left revealed that some trap BB-8 had set for the Sith must have sprung. Ben dropped to the ground and sped towards the source of the sound, lightsaber ignited.

Eventually there didn’t pop up another trooper for each one felled. Their numbers thinned, yet they didn’t consider retreating. Functioning more like biological battle droids than persons, the Sith troopers kept pressing the attack and paid the price. Even so, the small group remained in their positions a couple of minutes after they had killed the last enemy.

*

Searching the bodies of the fallen, the rebels picked up their heavy blasters as well as phials of bacta gel. Eightball hovered over the scene. “This is an extremely effective concoction”, he commented after seeing the bacta’s exact brand. “We shouldn’t waste it on minor injuries.”

“Everyone pocket at least two”, Rey advised her companions. “Unlike this…” With these words she casually placed her hand on Finn’s blood-soaked sleeve to transfer some life force… “…bacta can get stored for later.” Finn’s wounds closed immediately and he went to set Rose’s dislocated shoulder straight.

“It’s like money in your pocket”, Finn said, when they shared the phials amongst themselves. “I never gave bacta much thought, growing up. We went through gallons of that stuff, and there was always more. We never mattered as persons, but the First Order sure protected its investment.” Finn shook his head, when a thought crossed his mind. “From an economic viewpoint Brendol Hux-style stormtroopers must be the worst idea ever”, he mused.

“Don’t start me on that!” Hux snorted. “Finances Department has it in for me on principle and when you ran away, I almost expected they’d make me pay the cost of your training out of my own pocket.”

“Speaking of money…”

“A donation from the Resistance’s newest member? Is that it?”

With a sad smile, Hux reached into his coat’s inner pocket. He held a large coin up and turned it in his fingers so that the others could see the engraving on it: the coin’s head had the First Order crest and the tailside the Trent family sigil. So far, so regular for currency issued at New Harvest, but a tiny sensor in the middle gave the coin away as a storage for digital money.

“The day after our wrecking mission I withdrew a small sum from the Hutt bank. Money straight across the galaxy, highest security, almost no data trail to speak of.”

“How much is that?” Rey asked.

“As of this evening ten credits. The Sith melted every terminal that could read the true value of this coin. Or if there are any coinreaders left in the toy factory, then they cannot connect to a bank without the satellite network.”

Hux flicked the coin over to Rey.

“Here! It may buy a sundae for you and Solo. Civilization is failing left and right and we’re getting forced to watch every step into the mud. So ask me again if I believe in order, I dare you!”

With these words Hux rose and strode away.

*

He almost bumped into Ben, who was only now returning from the forest.

“Mood? I… uh… I think I can cheer you up”, Ben said. He shook his unruly mane and now the other saw that it was full of leaves and burrs. It was apparent that Ben needed either a haircut or would have to sit patiently for a longer time than he’d be comfortable with.

An offer of reconciliation, but at the wrong time. Hux grabbed the rival by that one’s vest and pushed him against the closest tree.

“Yes, you’ll fit right into that new world! Are you proud now?” he shouted so loud that the other’s ears rang from it. If there were any Sith left in the vicinity, the shout would have alerted them to their enemies. “Or is there anything left you and your Sith haven’t destroyed yet?”

“Oh, I don’t know”, Ben replied through clenched teeth. “You never before were bothered by a single town less.”

“If that was a jab at Hosnia Prime, that was necessary! The New Republic stood in the way of a functional civilization, so it had to go.” Again Ben got rammed against the tree. “But just when I had finished it off, and when we had the Resistance at, what, some hundred heads? Then you allied with the absolute worst force of chaos known to the galaxy!”

“Only I didn’t.”

The briefest moment of confusion - Ben felt Hux’ grip weaken and slipped free. He circled around his rival, who immediately took a step closer to him. Ben walked backwards, making sure to keep out of arm’s reach while elaborating:

“The Sith were pulling the strings all the time. The moment your precious First Order got founded, it was nothing but a puppet state of Palpatine’s. He had Admiral Sloane removed and put Snoke in her place. And Snoke in turn made sure to put both Sloane’s pupil and the heir of the Jedi on a short leash. He constantly turned us against each other to secure his own power. Only you never noticed what was going on. And I never cared.”

“No… don’t put it like this!”

Fists balled, Hux kept following Ben. Perhaps this was the greatest difference between the two, Ben wondered. Both Rey and him were loners at heart; no matter how deeply they cared for a person or a cause, if push came to shove, they’d just turn around and walk away and would not return before they had sorted things out on their own. Hux to the contrary was an extrovert. Whether to confront or to attach himself, his first, instinctual cause of action would always be to engage with others.

“It’s the truth”, Ben emphasized. “We were had. Got used. The system fed on our victories, all the while making us feel like shit. But then I could take it no longer and killed Snoke. The same day you broke and became a mole for the Resistance. It was the end.”

“Yes, the end. The end of everything worth fighting for.”

Hux stopped walking, and so did Ben. Neither man could see farther than an arm’s length. They were surrounded by darkness, as they always had been. But while Ben had coveted the dark (or at least had thought to), Hux had never perceived himself as a follower of darkness. To the contrary! Hadn’t they been the ones to bring the light of civilization to the galaxy? Laws. Structure. Growth.

And now he was standing in a force-forsaken forest surrounding the ruins of a failed colony. The work of decades, reduced to rubble. So much potential gone to waste… Hux started to say something, but his voice failed him and he had to start again:

“I’d put things right, I’d been up to the task, but nobody let me.”

“You’d do that?” Ben chuckled. “With a sliderule and a grand speech?”

Louder now, head held up high, but not shouting again, Hux stated: “I’ll burn down everything that gets in my way!”

“Like New Harvest?”

“That wasn’t me!”

“But the result is the same. Ashes.”

Ben’s reply was followed by a full minute of staring while the other was trying to come to a conclusion whether that “ashes” had been meant literally or as a callback to the day he had mocked him in council.

What will you do when the world it is ending… And time it is halted for friend and for foe…

Halfway through the second minute of mutual staring Hux decided that it didn’t matter. Not-Ren was still his hidden trump, whom he couldn’t beat to death, no matter how angry he was at him, his ticket back home, should he decide to take that route.

Just because Hux neither could, nor ever would contemplate to, use the Dominance to that purpose anymore hadn’t put a screeching halt to the future emperor’s plans. Or had it? Longterm plans… always stringing if-then threads together, that subsequently got torn apart when the present caught up with the what if future and the woven in advance concepts failed to match up with reality. Still, he had never given up, only ever adjusted his plans to the new situation.

Hux straightened his posture. Hands on his back, every bit the old familiar picture of the proper General, he challenged:
“Then how? How do YOU propose to save the galaxy from spiraling into despair?”

The Resistance wanted to shove every last credit into rebuilding an inefficient structure that was guaranteed to crumble again, the First Order was about to break apart and the Sith just wanted to spread fear and chaos to no clear purpose. Soon the only resemblance of law would be the rules the criminal cartels made…

“Me?” Ben laughed. “I haven’t got the slightest idea!”

“Hrmpf.”

Hux strode forward, past Ben. When he passed him, he growled: “Assume I acted surprised.”

Ben turned around and walked besides his rival.

“Look back the way you came!” he said softly. “These are the people who freed us. In whom we can put our trust.”

Finn and Rose stood there, arm in arm. Poe was bickering with Rey about something and BB-8 was closing a crack in the speeder car’s hull with his welder. Eightball shot forth to meet the returners. Hux squinted against the droid’s spotlights, nevertheless he stretched his arm out to led the IT “land” on it.

Carrying Eightball like a parrot, Hux replied to Ben one last time that night:
“The individuals, I can get behind that. The Resistance? I highly doubt it. It’s weak and naïve.”

And therefore the only place I still fit. No matter where I run to, the waves always carry me back.

Chapter Text

Kelmut Trent was no longer in this world, but the work he’d done first as the Governor’s assistant and then as Interim-Governor continued to have an effect. Like in the jail the rebel group now returned to – this time as their shelter instead of as their prison. The number of inmates had decreased drastically after Trent had started revising sentences. The political prisoners had gotten released immediately, and the time of actual offenders had been brought more in line with New Republic standards – for most inmates that meant a shorter sentence.

The arrivals showered and had a quick meal. Afterwards Hux’ leg started hurting again, so the doctor forced a bacta patch into his hands and wouldn’t leave before it had gotten applied. Was resorting to this aid for the old injury a sign of weakness or of efficiency? Hux couldn’t tell anymore. Too much had happened in too short a time. Had it even been a full week since he had revealed himself as the spy to the rebels?

Hux counted the days back while standing in the prison’s first floor between the door to the infirmary and the one to the storage room. In the room in between, inaccessible from the floor, he had protected Poe from torture and subsequently suffered a nervous breakdown. Afterwards he had tagged along with the rebels, aimless and numb, despite all the little things he was fondly looking back to. Then for a brief time the deposed General felt hope again to still be able to achieve his dreams, only for the Sith to burn his shaky followers along with New Harvest city. Where did that leave “Emperor Armitage I.”? Still firmly installed in the Resistance as the newest Commander, actually.

At his point a new thought stole itself into the former General’s mind unbidden: How was Poe dealing with the so recent loss of his smuggler friends and his mentor, Senator Solo? How were Finn and Rose holding up with the double task of fighting a war and consolidating their relationship? When would BB-8 be able to play with remote controlled toys again? Wouldn’t Eightball be overwhelmed now, returning to the house he had spent his whole existence in, only to find that he didn’t fit in anymore? It was nice to distract oneself from one’s own troubles by thinking about… friends.

The storage room’s door opened. Hux turned his head and asked: “Are you o… Oh, it’s you.”

It was just Rey, who had left the room. But then again, there was something Hux wanted to discuss with the Jedi in training before they left to chase Pryde, so why not bring it up right now.

“A word, please, Master Palpatine!”

“It’s hardly Master yet. What do you want?”

“For you to take a look at my future.”

“I’m not a fortune teller!”

Hux nodded solemnly. “On our fortunes hinges the galaxy’s fate, though. You are not a scavenger anymore, Finn not a soldier, Poe no smuggler anymore, Rose no longer a maintenance worker and BB-8 would at least be Captain, were he alive according to the letters of the law. Like it or not, we are the ones to decide where things will go from here.”

“Well, YOU certainly seem to be fond of that idea.”

“Am I? What do you see in the Force regarding this? Because I cannot tell anymore. There were a few hours of clarity and purpose, but now it’s back to doubt again. My question is, if I change nothing, and just go on like this, where will this lead?”

“Alright.” Rey closed her eyes. Without changing her stance, she listened, then said: “I see… ruin, misery and despair.”

Hux chuckled. “Naturally. Look a little further than the next five minutes, maybe?”

Rey shook her head. “I allowed you to distract me from everything I learned so far about how the Force works. But truth is, I cannot describe a future sprung from a moment that I have no clear picture of. I need to look at your PRESENT first.”

Hux nodded with the barest hint of a smile. Rey was less accepting of the defector as the others, naturally, since they had never fought alongside each other or faced hardships together. But Hux found that he could interact just fine with her on a strictly professional level.

“That’s surprisingly analytical for a mystic”, he said. “I think I like your approach.”

“Like it enough to let me take a look into your mind?” Rey asked. “This isn’t about a nebulous future, that may or may not come to pass. This will be real. Real and thoroughly unflattering.”

“It’ll probably be just naked Poe anyway.”

And just in case that was the cause, Hux made sure to close his coat as to not let some perfectly natural reaction to that sight show, should it occur.

“Okay…”

Rey straightened. Part of her wanted to decline, and even the part that agreed with Hux’ request was loath to get this close to the schemer and mass murderer. Still she focused and went through with it, remembering a shadow of a memory that had come to her when she had felt all the Jedi in her mind on Exegol: Revan’s reply to his companions after his battle against Darth Malak - “I couldn’t bring him back from the dark side”. Stating this clearly had been more important to Revan than declaring that he had won, that Malak was dead and wouldn’t pose a danger anymore.
No matter how low someone had fallen, there was always the offer to return. In the Force it was crystal clear that “last chances” were something people had invented. The concept was in no way part of how the universe worked. If one was willing, there was always a way back. But leave it to Armitage Hux to need the help of a Jedi (in training) to tell him what it was that he wanted…

Rey reached out, potentially able to lay bare ANYTHING, a scary thought, but it was too late now to tell her to stop. Eyes wide open, Hux waited for a sting or a sudden sensation of cold or any other physical evidence of another’s presence entering his mind. But it never came. Instead, he saw tears in Rey’s eyes.

“What’s the matter? If you saw that, well, that was my greatest triumph. Deal with it.”

“No, this isn’t about anything I saw. It’s your request in itself, that threw me off.”

“How so?”

“I was thinking back to the tales about the Jedi, always fighting evil with wise arguments or lightsabers in hand. It was the image I strived to build myself up towards, but never have I heard of something as simple and useful as a person coming to a Jedi to tell him what his problem was. Was it never done, or maybe all the time, never getting passed down in stories, because it wasn’t heroic enough? We’ve lost so much lore after the fall of the old republic… I’m sorry, but I’m too emotional now to work on your issues. In the meantime just… just try not to be a shitty human being.”

“For your information, I never was anything other than not a…” stumbling over his own words to the point of losing sight of the intended end of the sentence, Hux inhaled and started over: “I always was an upstanding officer! And the times I may have been a little less so, they had had it COMING!!!”

The door opened again and out came the rest of the group. The software used to crack Ben’s comlink would need a few hours, Rose explained and suggested for everyone to go to bed. It wouldn’t be a full night’s worth of sleep, but adequate.

Rose decided to put a sleeping bag up in the computer lab, the others went up to the second floor, where Iverne, who now served as the principal’s right hand, had assigned them an unoccupied dormitory.
A narrow walkway went around the building at this level, allowing security droids to make their round. BB-8 casually short-circuited the lock of a door leading to that walkway. Only after the deed was done did the droid hesitate, consider and eventually claim that he had sabotaged the lock as to not have to bother management again tonight. The rebels pretended to believe their mischief-maker, then they stepped out into the night.

The nightsky was overcast and still carried the smell of the burning city. Instead of combating the fires and saving what could still be saved, the survivors from the outskirts had to hide in the woods. If there were survivors in the city itself, they were on their own. Maybe there was fighting even now, as the rebels stood here in relative peace.

“I never felt the city, all the people making it up”, Finn said in a low voice. “But now I feel the hole where it used to be.”

“(I should be grateful to still have a home)”, Eightball beeped. “(But this building doesn’t mean anything to me. The safe house did.)”

“One less settlement, the day I come to a planet”, Ben said. His head was burning, and his nose was quickly filling up with snot. “I know the airstrike wasn’t my fault, not directly anyway, but… I’m so sorry…”

Poe looked up into the sky. Any moment now Jet could arrive with the relieve, she just had to! New Harvest as a whole could still be saved, the colony wasn’t doomed yet. But the clouds were thick and undisturbed and uncaring. The pilot remembered to have sat outside and stared into the sky not long ago, with Zorii. He grabbed the cold metal rail that ran around the walkway and, not taking his head off the sky, lamented:

“They always hit where it hurts the most. They know us and our weaknesses, yet the other way around we have no hope to ever understand the enemy.”

“It’s a skewed perspective thing”, Hux said, and when after everything that had happened Poe still turned his head to look him into the eyes, he dared putting his arm around the lover. “My life was dedicated to rebuilding the empire. Resources acquisition, keeping order and expanding territory… these are all positives in the head, you know? The destruction that goes along with it just doesn’t register. Or when it does, it registers differently.”

“That would be bad enough”, Ben croaked, “but the Sith are an altogether different kind of ugly. They aren’t interested in building, not even in ruling. Only in being more powerful than everyone else. The shadow just is, I was taught. It doesn’t ask, explain or justify. An urge arises – it acts on it, never a question. Pure, unbridled instinct.”

*

After maybe two hours, Rey woke up already. She looked around, saw that Finn had left the dorm and taken his bedsheet with him to spend the night with Rose downstairs. Rey smiled.
In the same vein one of Poe and Armitage had left his bed and slipped under the other’s sheet. From the fact that BB-8 had entered standby mode next to the now doubly occupied cot Rey deduced that Hux had been the (welcome) invader.
Only Ben was sleeping on his own, true to his self-perception as Rey’s knight, regardless of what others believed their relationship was. The dyad linked the heirs of the Skywalker and Palpatine bloodline so closely, that it was hard to tell whether they were in love or just close to being the same entity. Even the attraction they were feeling might be just a side effect of this bond. It was difficult to tell for Rey, because so far she hadn’t felt attracted to anybody and therefore didn’t have a type she could compare Ben to.

Rey slid out of bed and took a step closer to the couple. The men were lying entwined, and perfectly at ease. The sight was peaceful, but not actually desirable. Maybe, Rey wondered, she should really consider Ben for her partner; he at least understood that if there was a whole room to use, it actually meant a whole damn room to use and not just two square meters.

Rey looked back to her cot, just to make sure that she had left her lightsaber there and didn’t carry it right now, because what she was about to do spurned uncomfortable associations as was. She stepped next to the sleeping men and held her hand out above Hux’ head, ready to meet the darkness within, just like Luke Skywalker had done that fateful night when Ben had destroyed the Jedi academy…

The world grew brighter, of course it would, seeing that Rey had just entered a memory that took place in broad daylight. The color yellow dominated everything, the ground, the faraway hills and even the crates, tarpaulins and tents that made up what looked like a small fugitive camp. Just add a couple poles to support streetlights, stomp a few pathes into the ground and let a handful of happabores lose, and Rey could have been back in Niima Outpost. Wait… Niima? Was she back on Jakku? Was this a memory of her own?

But, no, now an orange-haired boy of about three or four years age came running towards her. The desert sun had seeded his face with freckles and a patch covered his forehead where the child must have bumped against a solid object. The boy was holding up a sketchpad and when he spotted Rey, he started waving with it excitedly.

Rey took a step to the side and turned her head to the left, to see who the recipient of the drawing might be.

“Father, father!” The boy now accelerated and almost stumbled over his own feet. “I painted us going fishing! Here’s you and here’s me and here’s General Rax, how he guts a gi-nor-mous fish!”

Sometimes, Rey thought with some resignation, saving the universe entailed looking at a childhood drawing of Hux’. The fish entrails were a sight to behold. Apparently the messy process of preparing a dish from meat had left a great impression on the little boy.

The one called “father” didn’t comment on the scene pictured.

“You drew this, not painted, he said. “At least get the terms straight, if you cannot do it right!”

Ouch. There was the comment, after all, but it wasn’t flattering. Would a four year old understand what had gotten said between the lines? Rey for the life of herself couldn’t tell whether the picture was any good. She took another look… but the scene had changed and now Rey was looking at an empty sheet of drawing paper. Unlike the datapad, this medium didn’t allow for mistakes, everything put onto it stayed, or at the very least the paper would later show where corrections had been made and with that it would forever be a shameful proof that corrections had been needed in the first place.
The – older now - boy straightened the paper, pinned it to his drawing mat and selected a pencil from an array of different point sizes and hardnesses. A thin red line ran over the back of his right hand, where a scratch was in the process of healing. Now this was a kid who always raised his hand when nature announced “injuries for free, who wants one?”!

Not letting the lingering pain from the scratch distract him, the boy scribbled two outlines of a fish that were exactly the same shape and size. Then he started to meticulously fill one of the shapes up with scales. He added fins and a tail and, after staring into space for a while (there probably was a fishtank in Rey’s back that’s inhabitants he was studying) drew the eyes and mouth. Rey couldn’t help but smile when the boy’s tongue slid into the corner of his mouth from focusing so hard on the drawing. Even knowing what monster he’d grow up into, there was something immensely head pat-able about the youngling.

A hand shot forward from Rey’s position, startling the watcher. She couldn’t really have extended her own hand and solidified it on top of that? Not in someone else’s memory?! But, no, the hand was male and covered in thin red body hair. Rey nodded with some satisfaction. No doubt it was head pat time now.

The adult hand reached for the boy’s thatch, ever so briefly touched it, but then quickly smacked the head. The boy howled in response!

“Ow! You ma’e me bi’e my ‘ongue!”

“See? Told you that would happen when you do that. Stop doing it.”

“Grrr…”

“Now listen. I have important guests over for dinner. You stay in this room and don’t make your presence known.”

“Huh? I don’t do what with my what?”

“You pretend you don’t exist.”

“Ah.”

Rey saw one of the rations she had traded for at Unkar Putt’s station get tossed on the desk. It was a quarter only...

“If you get hungry, add water. You know how to.”

Off the man went, leaving behind a visibly reddened boy. Red in the face from anger and humiliation, he whispered something to himself that Rey couldn’t understand before he resumed his drawing exercise.
The second shape got filled with… oh, shit. Fish innards again. Talk about an obsession! The boy perfectly captured the way the organs lay in relation to each other and their texture, everything was to scale and pristine, way more clean than the real thing. It was more a fish blueprint than a realistic depiction of a dead fish’s insides. Total order, fully understood and controllable.

The whole process including inking and shading felt as if several sessions had gotten rolled into a single one for the watcher’s convenience. The lighting had changed several times and now it switched back to pitch black. Rey was back in the prison dorm, and Hux was stirring. Moving carefully in order not to wake up Poe, he turned towards the barred window and raised his hand towards it, then carefully inspected the back of it. When neither a scratch nor a scar appeared, he breathed out with relief.

“Phew.”

Rey sat down on the cot below the window, opposite of Hux, looking at his face in silence. Dread changed to amazement, when the man added one and one together: “Oh. So YOU stirred that memory!”

“Yes. I didn’t expect you to dream it at the same time, though.”

“I see.”

There was still a hint of worry in the man’s voice, even when he conjured up his usual arrogance to say:
“Well, your grasp of time is as shitty as my first attempts at drawing. That wasn’t my present, but my past.”

“Wrong. The events may have happened long ago, but this very much is your present state. You still live in this scene, or the boy still lives inside you. Do you know what I saw? Buried shame, covered up by ambition and violence. These qualities are part of you, but fueled by the shameful memories, they get blown up to insane proportions.”

“So. Do they. Or maybe the rest of you just lacks determination!”

Rey shook her head.

“I saw that you are capable of shame. If only you’d be ashamed of the things you should!”

“What then?!”

“You could build that waterpark on Jakku. Statics, logistics, gathering support from potential funders, that’s all right up your alley. I think you could pull that off. People would look back in awe at how we managed such a project so briefly after the war.”

Now the former General sat straight!

“When did you see that in my mind?!” he gasped.

“Earlier today, when you first asked me to analyze your mind.”

Audibly stricken, Hux whispered: “I didn’t realize I was thinking about the water park! Is it really that much on the forefront of my thoughts?”

“Not in the way you think it is. I felt a craving for triumph and followed the trail. Lots of images popped up and vanished again, too fast to capture, given what emotional state I was in. But, like a watermark, the public bath project was in the background of everything.”

“I never knew… It’s an idea I toyed with… now and then. A lark.”

“It’s more than that”, Rey insisted. “You are an architect. Structure and things that last and the world being aware that it was YOU, who created those lasting things, that’s you. The General only ever was a means to that end.”

“What about the Emperor?”

“You have to ask that? Here, in this room, the night after the airstrike? There won’t ever be an Emperor again! Not you, not me, nor anybody!”

Yes, why not. If I can’t be it, then nobody…

“I heard that!”

“No, you didn’t!”

“Okay, okay, you’re correct. But your mimic wasn’t hard to read. And you confirmed immediately.”

Hux said nothing. He sat there, unresponsive, clutching his hand without realizing it, waiting for time to pass, the sun to come up and Rose to announce where they’d go next.

After a while Rey got up and stepped onto the walkway, struggling with thoughts of her own.

Even later still, Hux adjusted the bedsheet over Poe. He looked around, spotted Eightball having dug beneath Finn’s discarded pillow and wondered if the regular defragmentation process a droid brain underwent counted as sleeping. Did they dream, while the bits of information got re-arranged?

*

Three hours later Rose presented the group the results of her analysis. Apparently General Pryde had left not just the capital’s general area, but the continent as a whole.

“The signal came from the tower serving this town…”, Rose said, pointing at a spot on the map of New Harvest that represented a port town to the northwest. “It’s the oldest settlement on the planet, albeit far from the largest.”

“Hm, I don’t know…” Poe took a step closer to the screen. “If Pryde had went there after the uprising, we’d have heard of it. How strong is that tower?”

Rose marked the location and then a circle appeared around it. The next moment Hux’ hand shot forward, pointing at a spot at easternmost end of the broadcast tower’s range.

“There! That’s the archipelago we stranded the Steadfast on. I think we’ll need to look no further than the wreck to find him.”

“I agree. But can we really leave here? What about the ground troops?” Poe asked.

“Those that came down in our region were dealt with, the prison guards report. The rest, we can infer, dropped all over the planet, with the intent to secure the smaller towns and villages. No word from Jet or the citizens’ fleet yet so far.”

“We can’t wait for them”, Poe decided. “We need to deal with Pryde before he makes himself even more comfortable.”

“That’s still close to ten thousand kilometers we need to cover”, Rose reminded the others. “That’s quite the journey, especially considering that there isn’t a flying craft large enough to fit us all left in the region.”

Asked about transportation, Iverne told the rebels to follow the river to its mouth. There they’d find a port that was part of New Harvest’s domestic trade network.

“Longterm the port was projected to integrate into New Harvest City, once it had expanded that far”, she said. “That never came to pass now…” Nobody said a word, they just shared the silence until Iverne was ready to speak up again: “The Governor’s yacht could have crossed the distance from here to Foundersville in less than a day. But Pryde stole it during the uprising. Still, the port is your best bet.”

An hour’s drive along the riverbank later the rebels reached the port. The first thing they saw there were three automated transports with goods from all over the planet, all intended for New Harvest city. Droids had just finished loaded them and now stood by idly as the hovertrucks started moving towards a destination that didn’t exist anymore.

When the rebels had managed to take their eyes off the sight, they sought the harbormaster. This was where things started to work in their favor again, for the man informed them that a speedboat that was only slightly less powerful than the Trent yacht was moored on site. It looked like a regular, lightly armed coastal patrol boat, but mounted on struts below the hull were four winglike appendages.

“A hydrofoil boat! I always wanted to fly one!” Poe exclaimed, when he beheld the vehicle.

“(You mean drive?)” BB-8 beeped. The only answer he got was a grin and then Poe had already snatched the key cylinder from the harbormaster and was sprinting up the gangway.

“You’ll want seatbelts”, Poe informed the others who followed the eager pilot. Halfway up the gangway Rose stopped to take a closer look at the t-shaped wings that were submerged in the water. “If that is what I think it is, I second the seatbelts”, she said.

At first nothing out of the ordinary happened. They found the cockpit, Poe started up the engine and followed the harbor’s droid steered pilot boats out to the sea. Meanwhile BB-8 copied a music track into the ship’s computer. Then the port was behind them, the patrol boat accelerated and eventually Poe switched on the loudspeakers. To the sound of “Going ‘round the Maw”, the boat rose from the water and now was carried by the four hydrofoils, gaining even more speed. After the initial surprise, Poe’s friends started to sing along, the humans the words, and the two droids contributing beeps.

And now I know what to get you for your birthday, Hux thought.

Rey and Ben smiled at each other, then they left the cockpit to enjoy the ride in their own, quieter fashion. Maybe one day, Ben thought, he’d be able to give in to joy to the same degree that he had dissolved in his anger in his Kylo Ren days. But so briefly after returning from the dead he preferred Rey’s more subdued approach to happiness.
Standing side by side with Rey, getting barraged by the cold saltwater spray and watching the foam created by the speed boat turn into a cloudlike landscape below them, the world had never before looked that bright.

“Iiiiiiiii must be out my mind!” the others were loudly proclaiming.

“You know, they are not wrong”, Ben said with a smirk.

“They’re pirates at heart”, Rey agreed. “Even Eightball. Don’t let him fool you, just because we cannot feel him in the Force.”

*

Around midday Poe let the boat sink into the water again. He made landfall on an uninhabited chalk cliff island with many low dunes covered by batches of coastal grass. There were no trees to hide nasty surprises and no wildlife to contest the visitors’ right to be here.

“What’s the problem?” Finn asked.

“We are too fast”, Poe explained. “Pryde and the stormtroopers he'll have with him will spot us from miles away if we approach the wreck site while the sun is still up.”

“And going slower isn’t an option, I see!”

“Nope. Not an option, haha!”

They put up a kettle to brew tea from the herbs they had brought from the continent, but for food only had the old familiar dehydrated vegetable protein straws.

While waiting for the water to boil, the travelers stretched and walked around the island. Ben was the first to reach for his boots, but the moment Poe and Hux spotted him doing it, they removed their own clothes faster. They sprinted towards the beach and didn’t stop before they couldn’t walk in any deeper.
With a growl, Ben tossed his boot after the duo. It stopped in midair, halted in place by Rey, and then got returned to a dry surface.

To the dyad’s side Finn was taking Rose piggy-back now and to her waving at the two already in the water ran towards them. When he was in hip-deep, Finn swung Rose around before lowering her into the water. It was cold, and a short way in already too dark to see the ocean floor, nothing at all like Niamos, let alone Hux’ water park.

After having splashed around for a bit, they returned to the shore and warmed themselves up with the tea. Each of the three couples – the two who were in love, the lovers and the dyad – shared coats. Tucking the dark blue cloth around Poe, Hux knew that he was the larger, but not the protector in their relationship. If that didn’t bother him, if he allowed this weakness, then why couldn’t he do the same in other respects?

The question had to remain unanswered. It was time to return to the speed boat and take up the chase again.

*

The rebels continued to travel towards the archipelago. Soon after they had spotted the first shoreline, the outline of the stranded Star Destroyer slowly became discernable at the horizon. What had been left of the once mighty battleship had come down over a chalk cliff island, cut a large swath into the forest covering it and eventually come to a halt with one third of its length reaching into the ocean. There’d be a lookout stationed here no doubt, so Poe maneuvered between the smaller islands to stay out of sight.

At one point of their approach Poe left the pilot’s seat to Rose and studied charts of the local currents. Then he corrected the course, went on for another half hour and eventually stopped the engine.

“This is as close as I dare to get in daylight”, he said. “I picked a densely forested island close to the wreck, that we can use as our base to learn more about the target: The number of troopers Pryde has with him, their routines and any fortifications they may have set up by now… That sort of thing.”
Smiling at Finn and Hux, Poe added: “Your sort of thing!”, then went on: “We’ll remain in place here, then drift onto shore, covered by the dead of night and making no sound. Or at least that’s the plan. I have no experience how waves and currents work.”

“Me neither”, Rey said. “I thought sailing would be a breeze, seeing that I did surf on Jakkus’ desert sand on occasion. But when I tried to reach the Death Star’s wreck I almost lost control over my craft more than once.”

Poe took first watch together with BB-8. The teams switched several times, none of them encountering any evidence that the Steadfast survivors were aware of the speedboat’s existence. When night fell, Poe briefly started the engine to get the speedboat moving again, then left it to the waves’ mercy. Perched at the bow, BB-8 and Eightball were sending data to Poe’s station in real time, allowing him to perform instant corrections of their course.

While the droids were focused thus on the waves, one of the humans always kept watch of the surroundings. Hux was on watch when a distant rumble roared. What could that be? A whale? An undersea volcano? Listening intently, the watchman realized that the sound was regular, as if generated by an engine. And it was slowly growing louder. Something was approaching!

“Poe? Something’s on the way to us! Something people-made.”

Suddenly lights flared up in the distance, much farther away than the rumbling noise, though. In between the lights and the speed boat, a shape coalesced from the darkness. It was a craft of some kind, traveling rockily on the waves and moving straight towards the speed boat. Hux spotted a circular platform with rails and raised cover. Was that an infantry support platform? Weren’t those meant for swamps, marshlands and similar environments, definitely not for extended ocean travel? That might explain why the platform seemed to have lost its balance. It was doubtful whether the passenger trio had even noticed the other boat, they were busy keeping their mobile platform from submerging. One of the platform’s feet dipped into the water, threatening to take the whole structure with it…

“It’s an ISP on collision course with us!” Hux alerted the others. “Looks like two… three passengers.”

“Roger. You man that forward gun, I’ll start the engine again.”

“What’s the meaning of this”, the lone watch wondered, while moving towards the speed boat’s flak station. He clambered up the gunner’s seat and pulled the targeting system down in front of his eyes. At this distance, and aided by the targeting computer, Hux could take out the trio, also reliably hit the platform itself, but the light cannon wouldn’t be able to completely destroy it. The debris would still crash into the speed boat. Poe better got the power online again quickly for an evasive maneuver…

The engine roared, then the hoverboat shook and started a turn. At the same time the question who the trio on the ISP was got answered: Deserters or prisoners, in any case people trying to escape the First Order, as was evidenced by a duo of missiles splashing into the water between the platform and the speed boat now, sending the small craft rocking. The enemy gunner had aimed too high and missed their target, never knowing that they had almost hit a different enemy.

Now two waterskimmers came into view. Hux tried to aim his weapon at them, but the targeting computer couldn’t get a clear lock. It flashed green, then red again, then green, but it hadn’t detected the skimmer, but a seagull flying over the speed boat on account of said boat’s nose pointing upwards right now, as the waves tossed it around.
When the bow came down again, Hux jerked the gun around and fired blind, in a wide arc, under the assumption to hit something this way, and with a little luck the enemy. However, his shots harmlessly raced over the infantry support platform. Alerted to a third party’s presence, the passengers looked around. One of them waved at the hydrofoil boat, but the next moment another missile from one the waterskimmers hit the ISP and sent the trio flying.

The second skimmer had aimed too far again. He missed the platform – only to hit the speed boat instead. Water flooded the flak gun cabin and flushed the gunner from his seat, followed by the pair of seatbelts he had overlooked when manning his station. On all fours and coughing ice cold saltwater out of his lungs, Hux tried to get a bearing of the situation. Down below in the water the fugitives were swimming for their very lives. From the speed boat’s cockpit his companions emerged. There was water everywhere, and it was impossible to tell where exactly the speed boat had gotten hit, but it generated a whirlpool around itself that suggested it was sinking.

A searchlight’s cone flashed over the deck. Finn fired the heavy blaster he had taken from the Sith troopers. He hit the waterskimmer’s cockpit, but apparently not the pilot inside, because the skimmer fired again. This time a direct hit neatly tore the speedboat in half. Hux got slipped down the deck and into the sea. He went under right next to where one of the fugitives was swimming, silently cursing the man.

When he resurfaced, Hux saw a hand reaching for him from above and grabbed it without thinking. The hand’s owner yelped from pain, but then in turn grabbed Hux arms. The swimmer felt himself get pulled upwards and into one of the waterskimmers, where he hit the ground belly down. Only now did he realize that the hand had been bandaged. None of his friends could have patched their injuries up this fast… Fearing the worst, Hux rolled on his back and indeed stared into a blaster’s muzzle. A thatch of mustard colored hair under a First Order officer’s cap confirmed the suspicion – the blaster was held by the junior lieutenant whose hand Hux had broken five days ago.

“Who the kriff are those people?” the waterskimmer’s pilot, a human male wearing the uniform of New Harvest’s coast guard, exclaimed.

“Rebel scum”, the lieutenant replied. And that was the last Hux heard for tonight.

Chapter Text

Hux woke up in sitting position, outside, on cold soil. His arms were pulled around a tree that’s trunk was too broad for his bound hands to meet behind his back. The saltwater-soaked clothes still hadn’t fully dried on his body. They felt damp and heavy. A burning sensation on his cheek and traces of earth on his skin suggested that Hux had gotten kicked awake by his captors.
So far, so expected. Listening into the wind, the captive heard the sound of boot-wearing feet, people talking in loud, harsh voices, but not shouting, with some “baah”s and “bleeh”s from the local life stock sprinkled in.

Hux opened his eyes and raised his head. Right in front of the prisoner four people were towering, blocking out the morning sun that had just about crept over the horizon: a First Order stormtrooper, a Sith trooper, the vexing Lieutenant and General Pryde. All around the foursome colonists were out and about going through their morning routines and a Zabrak duo emerged from the nearby forest, lugging a wild pig back to the Steadfast.
Of the wreck itself Hux couldn’t see anything from his position. He noticed, though, that the locals were only lightly guarded by the mix of storm- and sithtroopers. There was no pressure to make haste and no warnings not to step out of line, to the contrary, one of the troopers in white seemed to counsel a handful of colonists about the dangers of the forest, apparently concerned about their wellbeing in the way a foreman was, not a prison camp overseer. That suggested the workers to be loyal subjects of the First Order, who might not exactly be excited about having gotten drafted to work here, but didn’t object to their civic duty, either.
If he turned his head a little, Hux was able to spot the chalk cliffs that were typical for this archipelago in the distance. Coastal grass was swinging in the wind. Wild sheep and goats fed on it. At least two more islands were in close proximity to the one he was on.

Just my luck. Apparently I stranded the Steadfast in a perfect position to build a permanent base using the salvage. And Pryde isn’t wasting time making it a reality.

“Nice outpost. Do I get a thanks for providing you with this location?” he snapped against better judgement. The words came out nearly unintelligible, seeing that the prisoner was parched.

“I wouldn’t know at whom to address that”, General Pryde replied. “Did he have identification on him, Lieutenant?”

The junior officer held up the Resistance rankplate Hux had gotten issued by Rose, but never worn openly.

“Says here “Isbrand Cycen, Commander”, Sir.”

“Commander, so. That’s closer to your actual capabilities”, Pryde remarked. He poked the prisoner with his ebonwood stick. “Who gave you that surname?”

“Doeth id madder?” Hux produced from a dried out mouth. He tried to lick his lips and gums, but it didn’t do much.

“Whoever it was probably isn’t a friend of yours.”

“Damn… Dameron. Dameron picked that name.”

“Interesting. And yet he proudly proclaimed that a man whom he took for a potential defector could trust you. I wonder what changed…”

“You learned about that? Right before you hightailed it out of New Harvest city, I take it?”

The insult earned the prisoner a beating with the ebonwood cane.

“There’s nothing shameful about a strategic retreat that puts the retreating party into a more favorable position!”

“Ngh…”

There was no doubting it anymore. Armitage Hux was back home. Everything was as it always had been. People who couldn’t deal with the idea of him being more clever than them thought they could kick him around, with him giving back as good as he received. Only now the former General felt the wrongness of it all, not just the sting of each individual episode and the satisfaction of getting even. The solace all those revenges had brought had been short-lived, he now realized, and had never served to delete the initial slight from his memory. Still his reaction was pretty much the same it had always been:
I’ll end you. I’ll end you and level your fortress flat and if I collapse on its ruins, then I’ll die content.

“I’ll…” Hux croaked, then coughed.

Pryde looked down on the squirming prisoner.

“You’re hard to understand”, he said, then pulled a flask from his belt. “Want some water?”

“Ye… No. Not yet. My bladder’s full to the brim already, first I need to…”

Already the prisoner (futilely) started to raise himself up against the tree, fully expecting to get cut free temporarily and escorted behind the tree to water it. That was a basic courtesy captives of the Resistance could take for granted. Food, water, the resemblance of a roof over one’s head (although apparently sometimes that roof belonged to the broom cabinet) and basic dignity (broom cabinets excluded). But now Hux was back in the real world, where things worked differently.

“Then speeding up the process by drinking some water will shorten your suffering”, Pryde stated.

“You can’t contemplate to… Not really?!”

“Water? Yes or no?”

“Go mate with a sheep!” Hux spouted.

Pryde bend down and splashed the water into the bound man’s face. Reflexively Hux licked some of it, even swallowed, although more liquid was the last thing he needed now. At least it had only been water… for now.

Pryde gestured to a stormtrooper, who immediately closed in, a cable in hand. A plasteel-gloved hand grabbed the prisoners chin and forced his mouth open. Before he fully understood what was happening, Hux already had the cable running through his mouth and once around the tree. It kept his face up – he was now staring into a hand camera held by the Lieutenant with no chance to lower his head. Trying to look away only caused the cable to painfully cut into the corners of the prisoner’s mouth.

“Lt. Kornsenf, record how he waters the tree!” Pryde ordered. “We’ll send the footage to his friends – it’ll motivate them to come to Steadfast Island in a rescue attempt.”

My… friends. So they got away! At the very least the First Order couldn’t confirm their deaths. No, WE couldn’t conf… Fuck you all! There is no more “we”, if you took them from me. It’s enough that you think you can kick me around, but hands off my belongings!

“My pleasure, Sir!” the Lieutenant replied and with an evil grin focused his camera. It was like looking into a mirror, only at Kornsenf’s age Armitage Hux had been Captain already. At that time he’d seen his share of battles and victories and lived through more numerous injuries and humiliations than a broken hand. This spiteful youth couldn’t even begin to understand the difference in scale between them both as victims and perpetrators.

Hux glared at the Lieutenant, all the while his heart was racing as his bladder was threatening to take matters into its own hands. Regardless of how much the General prided himself on his patience, his intestines didn’t share this virtue.

This isn’t happening… this isn’t happening… this can’t be happening… not to ME…

But whom was he kidding, of course it would happen to him – to whom else? Armitage Hux was the laughingstock of the galaxy, after all.
No, I’m not! I’m the fire, the vanquisher of the New Republic, the man who had sex with Poe Dameron TWICE!

Sweat running down his face, Hux uttered (with some difficulty on account of the blasted cable): “‘ou ‘hink ‘ourself all ‘ark and eshy ‘ow, huh? Bu’ I’ve ‘one far wor’ ‘han ‘ou…”

He kept his eyes on the Lieutenant until they hurt and the younger man had to look away. But the victory didn’t last long. Kornsenf smirked, when the prisoner’s squirming intensified and he started whimpering. He zoomed in on Hux’ increasingly desperate mimic and then out again.

A little later a drawn out, anguished wail startled the sheep, the goats and the conscripted workers alike. It was followed by uncontrolled sobbing.

*

On the opposite shore of the island, a white and orange droid got tossed onto the beach by the waves. With some difficulty it rolled out of the shallow water, but then the sand stopped him. Further rolling only served to dig himself into the ground deeper.

BB-8 extended his antenna, but there was no network to connect to other than the local tower, that was now controlled by the Sith. Logging into it would alert the enemy to the fact that he had survived and give BB-8’s position away.

Emanating sad beeps, the droid sat there, waiting for whatever might happen next.

*
It was close to midday already, when Pryde thought to check on the captive again. “How’s the hostage?” he inquired.

“Cried like a little girl, as expected”, Kornsenf replied. “For quite some time, too. But then he just blanked out.”

Pryde looked at the prisoner bound to the tree. The man’s eyes were unfocused, the lids rapidly flashing for brief moments, then going still again. It was doubtful whether Hux was still aware of what happened around him, or if he was, then there was no drive to react to anything.

“Keep filming.”

Pryde silently counted to ten, before he spoke into the camera: “You can still save your friend, you know. But given the state he’s in, the longer you hesitate, the more the window closes.”

Ten more seconds and no change in the hostage’s demeanor later, Pryde told the lieutenant to stop recording. He connected the camera to Hux’ comlink and copied the footage over. A couple of clicks later, the hologram was on the way to Poe’s, Finn’s, Rose’s, Rey’s and Ben’s devices as well as the two droid brains.

“I don’t understand what’s keeping the rebels… they all but adopted him”, Pryde murmured, while the data got transmitted. “Overconfident as they are, they will think they can trick us.”

Five beeps indicated that the messages had gotten received by the recipients’ comlinks at least. If they were alive, the rebels would certainly want to take a look at who was contacting them? And alive they certainly were, of that General Pryde was certain. Had they all drowned, by now their bodies would have surfaced.

“Maybe we need to raise the stakes a little. Untie the hostage and take him to the kitchen”, Pryde instructed Lt. Kornsenf.

*

Meanwhile at the beach BB-8 was taking inventory of his assets. The little spherical droid rocked back and forth as he spat the contents of his storage unit onto the beach. Some of the stuff just had to be useful in his situation!
There was the remote-controlled toy TIE-echelon… a handful of New Harvest issued coins… two phials with bacta gel… some hooks belonging to either Kylo’s or Kira’s dark sider costume…

BB-8 brought forth his arc welder and focused on the metal hooks. He turned up the heat until the metal sticks were glowing. Some fiddling with his probe later, the smaller ones had merged into a large hook, to which the droid fastened one of his liquid cables now. He then drew the cable in, only to lean back and shoot it out again. The hook flew across the beach and impacted on a long, flat piece of driftwood. It got a hold and when BB-8 retracted the cable again, the wood slowly moved towards the droid.

Again the captive of the sand pit had to use his welder, this time to manipulate his environment for the driftwood plank to point downwards a little. It slid towards the droid, who in turn managed to roll onto it.

Swoop!

BB-8 was now a good meter closer to the actual island, but still on the beach. Again he used the hook, to move the plank in front of himself. And again it served him as a walkway. Meter by meter the droid made his way out of the sandy area until he finally reached firm soil.

While traveling in this way, BB-8 noticed that the communications tower he had avoided was trying to contact him. The droid’s internal firewall blocked the attempt and he remained invisible to the network. Eventually the automated system gave up and returned the message back to the sender with a “failed to deliver” notice attached.

*
The smell of the forest pig slowly getting roasted over an open grill had emanated through the camp all morning. Later today there’d be roast pig for the officers, while the rest of the meat, that would still be half-raw by evening, would find its way into everyone’s soup tomorrow.
Hux only consciously noticed the smell when he passed by the droid-operated grill. Likewise he didn’t feel the heat the grill generated. Had the man analyzed the metal construction long enough to identify it as what it was, his head would have told him that it was probably unsafe to approach too closely, even though he still wouldn’t have felt the heat. But as things stood, the grill and the droid were just metal-colored lines and curves in the landscape, that in turn was composed of coarse strokes of blue, green and beige. There was no substance to any of that, or to the mind behind the eyes that were taking all of this in.

Lt. Kornsenf pushed the handcuffed prisoner in front of him. “Move it!” he hissed. “And don’t even think of making yourself useless as a hostage! Not that you’ve ever been anything other than useless, but…”

From the prisoner came no reaction. The body was reacting to stimulus, but only in the most basic of ways. Inside his head, though, a thought processes kicked in, only none that would have helped the man dig himself out of the hole he had dropped into:

But I AM useless as a hostage, what’s not to understand about that? Nobody will come to rescue someone they saw pee himself and sit in the puddle afterwards. Poe won’t want to touch me ever again.

Both Poe’s romantic attraction to him and the budding camaraderie with the rebels had gotten drowned in a yellow puddle. Armitage Hux was alone again, as he had been all his life without begrudging this to the universe. But now that he had ever so briefly experienced a different life, the thought of going on without the space rat, Finn, Rose and BB-8 was near-unbearable.

Past the grill there was a gaping hole in the Steadfast’s wreck. Had Kornsenf pushed the hostage so far, he now firmly grabbed Hux’ arms. They stepped on a narrow catwalk without a railing whatsoever that was spanning a chasm, suggesting the existence of another level below the one they were on. The Steadfast hadn’t so much as landed on the island named in her honor, but dug herself deep into it.

The walkway led to a large room of unknown original purpose, that was serving as a combined kitchen and mess hall now. The place offered shelter from the elements, but wasn’t really a fully enclosed inside space – Hux hadn’t failed to note a door coming in, there simply was no door, just an open arch.

Inside the improvised mess hall the kitchen master was working on a stew. There was something about this woman, that gave her away as one of the space nomads that the First Order members were at their core. Maybe it was the way her skin reacted to unpredictable changes in her surrounding’s temperature in contrast to the never changing conditions aboard the capital ships, or the movements of a person who was used to navigate a much smaller world than the insane vastness of an island larger than five square kilometers, but even before she had said the first word, it was obvious to Lt. Kornsenf (and to Hux, had he been coherent) that the kitchen master would not speak with the New Harvest accent.

In Kornsenf’s and Hux’s backs workers and troopers were slowly trickling in from the morning shift. Everyone was relaxed in a subdued way, as the work progressed at a satisfactory pace with no major setbacks or complications. But that didn’t change the fact that the colonists had gotten drafted away from their homes and their actual work for an undefined time (not to mention for an uncertain compensation) or that the First Order soldiers had only so recently survived first the battle of Exegol and then the insurrection of New Harvest City by the skin of their teeth. Things could have been worse, but also a whole lot better.

At the table closest to the kitchen counters one of the waterskimmer pilots in his coastguard uniform sat in the company of two stormtroopers and three fellow colonists, two men and a woman. He grumbled about all the trouble the disgruntled workers who had fled last night were giving him, first by stirring up actual rebels in the middle of a damn ocean and now by drowning.

“We’ll have to go out again after lunch, to search for the bodies, just to make sure they haven’t joined the rebels. I mean, how much trouble can three unarmed fishermen give anybody, even if they DID join the Resistance?”

“It’s about sending a message, Barley”, the lieutenant snapped. “They cannot just run away and then mock us!”

“Yes, Sir, that makes sense, of course”, Barley replied.

“Like New Harvest City had to pay the price for their disloyalty!” Kornsenf proudly proclaimed.

One of the workers turned his head towards the officer. “Is it true that the capital got obliterated?” The man’s mimic was hard to read, it could convey anything from mild interest in the topic to well concealed disgust to resignation.

“Yes!”

“Everyone… from the outskirts… survived”, a dreamy voice added. The mess hall’s patrons looked towards its source and realized that the prisoner had spoken.

“No!” Kornsenf insisted. “There were no survivors.”

Hux blinked and looked at his captor, surprised at his own initiative, trying to come to a decision whether engaging was worth the effort. But since the very act of asking himself this question had already jolted him back into an awareness of a world outside himself, he opened his mouth again:

“Then I’m not here now, because I’m dead.” He nodded, a little awkwardly though, given that his neck was still stiff. “Ingeniousss.”

The sharp hiss at the end could be taken as cheek, but really was the result of all the other muscles reporting their continued existence and tensed state to the brain now, too.

Instead of silencing the mouthy hostage, Lt. Kornsenf panicked: “The prison, of course, is outside the city boundaries! Don’t pay this insurgent any heed, citizen. He escaped from prison, that’s how he survived. The city itself was leveled flat!”

Again Hux raised his voice: “Just to make this absolutely clear. The incarcerated political prisoners, those who oppose the First Order, all survived the airstrike? While the law abiding, innocent city dwellers got roasted? That what you mean to tell us… Sir?”

“What…?”

“That’s important information”, Hux stressed. “Really puts into perspective how the government works, doesn’t it?”

Kornsenf felt his innards tense up when he spotted a handful of amused faces and a couple of thoughtful ones, but nobody openly scoffing at Hux’ words. This wasn’t how this should have went, not by a long shot!

“Who are you, chatterbox?” a stormtrooper asked the captive directly. Their voice was distorted, since they still had to wear their helmet till their shift was officially over. That wouldn’t be until forty more minutes from now.

“You know him”, Lt. Kornsenf scolded the soldier. “That’s the traitor, former General Hux.”

“There’s a certain likeness, I suppose, and the coat does complete the image”, the stormtrooper relented, still they were not fully convinced. The next moment Maybe-Hux already announced that his name was Isbrand Cycen.

“I overheard the Lieutenant read that name from this man’s identification earlier”, the female colonist confirmed. “He’s a Commander of the Resistance.”

Isbrand really liked the emphasis the woman put on “Commander”. It meant that he wasn’t just generic rebel scum, but one of the truly evil guys, a ringleader, and maybe in direct contact with the anarchists’ Big Bad. But seeing that this rebel Commander was properly restrained, he was also exotic and interesting.

Getting caught at a lie – or what appeared as one to the audience - for the second time in a row didn’t exactly improve Lt. Kornsenf’s mood. He switched Cycen’s restraints from the wrists to the ankles, then cued the hand camera again. Whatever would happen next wouldn’t be pleasant, that’s why the “rebel commander” made haste to get one, perhaps last, hit in:

“You lost a bunch of capital ships over Exegol…”

The bait wasn’t especially sophisticated or well thought out, but Kornsenf took it regardless: “These were new ones!” he cried. “The rebels shot down defenseless ships that were about to get commissioned the next day. The First Order didn’t lose any previously existing star destroyers!”

“Oh. My bad. I wasn’t aware that the Steadfast isn’t classified as a Star Destroyer anymore”, Cycen apologized while trying to stretch as non-aggressively as possible. The combination made him appear casually arrogant, what was quite the irony, seeing how much effort General Hux had put into conveying his superiority to everyone unfortunate enough to find themselves in his presence in the past. Every gaze or gesture had been calculated for maximum impressiveness – with little success, though. But that persona had gotten dissolved in urine this morning, leaving only a husk that was slowly getting claimed by Isbrand Cycen, the rebel-scum. Turned out Hux/Cycen’s natural arrogance was much more convincing and far more infuriating than anything he had trained himself to display in his role as Snoke’s General. Rubbing his shoulder, the prisoner asked: “It’s because Steadfast was the flagship, right?”

Steadfast… Even the dumbest nerf herder among the workers was able to connect the island’s name to the star destroyer’s wreck they were sitting in just now. There was no margin for misunderstanding here: The Resistance had shot down the First Order’s flagship and most likely many more. Commander Cycen’s credibility in this regard was much higher than Lt. Kornsenf’s. An enemy this man might be, and a major jerk to boot, but it wasn’t him, who had gotten caught pants down at lying thrice now.

“You know, I’d believed this was Hux, just from the looks of this rebel”, the second stormtrooper remarked. “But that sorry excuse of a General never was this astute.”

The soldier got up and stepped up to Cycen, all the while drawing their blaster. They raised it and put it below Cycen’s chin, forcing the man’s head upwards a little. A sharp pain ran through Cycen’s sinews from the strain, just when they had gotten a little more supple.

“Don’t get airs, though, rebel-scum!” the trooper threatened. “Amusing as your parading the kid in front of everyone was, don’t for a moment believe that you can play us out against each other. That’s not how the First Order works!”

Hux/Cycen pressed his lips shut. He had no idea whether he was getting tested or if the trooper sincerely believed him to be a different person. He only knew that if there had ever been a moment where he absolutely needed to keep his composure, then that was now. But his drying underpants were chafing and the memory was burning and he wasn’t Poe Dameron level of witty, after all, so the best he could do was to say nothing.
On the upside, Kornsenf “the kid” was loath to yell “But this really is Hux, this is the man who stepped on my hand!” and kept his silence, too.

After the stormtrooper was convinced that Cycen had been sufficiently intimidated, they withdrew their weapon, smacked the prisoner with it for good measure and returned to their seat at the table. The little episode had been a nice distraction on such a slow day (and regardless of Barley’s complaining, for the stormtroopers it really was a boring one).

“Well, that was all very entertaining, but I take it you want the rebel to help me in the kitchen?” the kitchen master addressed the Lieutenant, her words half question and half suggestion.

“Oh, yes, that’s the general idea.”

He expects me to flare up and give my real identity away. And Pryde just wants me to cry again over my heritage to bait my friends into rescuing me. But you are all wrong. My mother wasn’t a kitchen worker. If I interpret the hydrospanner memory and Rey’s analysis correctly, she was a mechanic in charge of the academy’s droids. That’s where I’ve got my talent for engineering from. Knowing this, it should be perfectly safe for me to touch a… pot or… stirring spoon or…

At this point Armitage Hux’ incredibly extensive knowledge of kitchen utensils unfortunately ended.

“Let’s get this over with already”, he said with a sigh.

*

Deep in the forest, roughly in the middle of the island, Ben Solo had ended up after getting tossed onto the shore. Now he was sitting with his back against a tree, unmoving, head lowered. Unlike Hux before, Ben wasn’t held by physical bonds, but by his own anxieties. Next to the castaway his clothes were drying.

Ben’s lips had trembled for some time now, his mouth opened and shut. Eventually actual words escaped his throat:
“They are coming…. They are coming…”

For the Millenium Falcon was on its way to Steadfast Island and everything would end well. The Force had told that to Ben in no uncertain terms. Except… how could things end well, if the Millenium Falcon was on its way to Steadfast Island? The freighter wouldn’t prolly fly on its own, there’d be people aboard and those people were the last semblance of a family he once had. He had the choice to meet them either naked or looking like Kylo Ren.

“D… d… doubt…”

Ben fumbled for his lightsaber. His grandfather’s lightsaber, the weapon of the man in whose image he had presented himself to the world, whose “task” he had striven to “finish”. As far as Ben was aware, Anakin Skywalker had never touched this weapon after his transformation into Darth Vader, though.

Ben held the muzzle away from his body and ignited the saber. The blue blade manifested, accompanied by a steady hum. It was the hilt, that had sustained damage last year, not the crystal inside.

Ben de-ignited the lightsaber, only to switch it on again in short succession.

On, off, on, off and on again.

All the deeds this weapon had committed, the heroic and the atrocious ones… No blade remembered what the previous one had done, there always was a new one. But each blade sprang from the same crystal, the core, and that core remembered only too well.
Himself. His core. There was no shoving away Kylo Ren as if he had been Ben Solo’s evil twin. If ever he should face Uncle Chewie and Uncle Lando again, he’d have to do that as both.

“I’m scared… And the dark side doesn’t offer comfort anymore. All it gives is power, but power cannot mend the rift between me and my family. And I’m talking to MYSELF, how pathetic is that?!”

Absorbed in his self-pity, Ben didn’t notice the white metal ball with the orange markings speed past in his back…
*

Meanwhile in the improvised kitchen Hux was confronted with a confusing array of foods in different stages of preparation, all running parallelly. Portions of wild spinach from the forest had to get washed, grinded down and cooked in a seemingly never ending chain. Potatoes requisitioned from the nearest town were steaming in large pots, occasionally getting poked by the kitchen master to check how far they had come already. (A task Hux had gotten excluded from after he had told the vegetables to “get a move on” and accidently smashed one.) And finally the greatest riddle of them all, the…

“Mind the scrambled eggs! You need to add salt and pepper while they are still somewhat liquid!”

Without looking up from the bowl he was mixing ingredients for the officers’ stew in, Hux asked back: “How much?” There was no scale on the dispensers, but he had found a digital kitchen scale, that he could use to measure the needed amount of material.

However, the kitchen master’s answer was simply: “Until you like the taste.”

“I like my food tasting good, but seeing that this is for enemies, let’s settle on average cantina quality. How much salt and pepper each would that require?”

“You’ll have to try it out. Add a little with every shake and taste-test until you got it right.”

But now Hux looked up and his expression was one of utter disbelief. Even the Resistance defying them at every turn despite the First Order clearly being superior in weapons and worldview had not thrown the General off the track this much.

“So next time we meet in battle, you shoot closer and closer to the target until you eventually hit the bridge? This makes no sense!” he cried.

“Cooking isn’t a battle”, the kitchen master replied sternly, but her helper begged do disagree: “It very much is.”

“Strange”, the lieutenant commented, to elicit a reaction from the hostage that he could use for the next broadcast he was preparing. “Cooking should be in your blood!”

Eyes narrowed, nose twitching, Hux glared at the man. Kornsenf zoomed in, causing the hostage to avert his gaze. The last thing Hux wanted was Poe, should he still be watching, to meet this hateful eyes; their deathglare was not meant for the space rat.

“Don’t forget to stir!” the kitchen master reminded the involuntary movie star, while tending to the neglected and steadily drying out forest bird eggs in the pan herself now.

“How long do I stir?”

“Until the sauce has the right consistency.”

“Why did I even ask…”

Once around the bowl the spoon went. Onion- and leek rings bobbed up and down in the crème, following no rhyme or reason. What were cookbooks even for, when everything was kept as vague as classified military intel?! And commoners without an academic education were expected to handle this every day?

Had Rey cooked for herself on Jakku? Were the rebels taking turns doing kitchen shifts in their makeshift bases? Maybe… Just maybe this still wouldn’t make sense, but be fun in some way that was escaping the prisoner now, if he was sharing a campfire shift with Poe, Finn or Rose. He closed his eyes and focused on the mental image, but all it did was making his eyes watery. The rebels were done with him, Pryde had seen to that. They wouldn’t ever share star destroyer shaped sandwiches or stolen soda again.

Where are you now… Isn’t it ironic that the inventor of hyperspace tracking doesn’t have the slightest inkling where his former friends have went to?

But was that really true? Unlike cooking, this could get solved with logic! The waterskimmer pilots were still tasked with searching for the rebels’ bodies. They hadn’t gotten found drifting on the ocean nor hiding on the surrounding islands. That meant they were right here! On Steadfast Island, maybe hidden in abandoned sections of the wreck, or in plain sight amongst the workers. For what it was worth, behind every red or white helmet a familiar face might lurk, watching patiently, waiting for the right moment to strike. The trooper threatening Hux with the blaster earlier? Finn could easily have pulled that off.

And if that was so, then the hostage had to somehow communicate to the others that he still was an asset to the Resistance. For the First Order had crossed a line. For this final debasement at their hands and for destroying the bond that had developed between Hux and the reb… the Resistance agents, the First Order would burn until nothing would be left of it. If he felt like it, he’d perhaps even plant the blasted New Republic’s flag in the ashes to add insult to injury!

Hux wiped his eyes dry, then faced Lt. Kornsenf, but really the camera the man was holding. He straightened his hair and winked into the sensor.

“Hey, space rat… This is Commander Cycen reporting in for duty. It’s so nice of the First Order to give us this means of keeping in touch with each other!”

“No! That’s not how this is going!” the Lieutenant shouted. He raised his hand, intent on smacking the hostage with the camera, but Hux dodged. His feet still being cuffed, he lost his balance and had to hold fast to the kitchen counter. Kornsenf lashed out with his boot. He kicked the captive into the stomach, causing him to keel over.

“I didn’t know you had the guts to beat someone who’s not half-conscious and restrained to a torture table”, Hux pressed through clenched teeth. “Hero, you!”

“Is this still about me having hit Dameron?” the Lieutenant gasped in genuine surprise. “He’s just one person. YOU were a weak link in the system, you dragged us all down with you!”

“Like this?”

Hux pulled his knees towards his body, then kicked into Kornsenf’s direction. He managed to connect to his target and while the other was struggling to keep his balance, pulled himself up again. Once back on his feet, Hux quickly grabbed the stirring spoon with one hand and rammed it back into the bowl, keeping the other hand behind the back of his head. It was undignified as heck, but the only way to convey that this wasn’t an attempt at rendering resistance. See? I’m back to work already. My quarrel was only with your Lieutenant, not with any of you. (For now.) Totally docile hostage here!

“You won’t have done that for nothing!” Kornsenf hissed. He turned around and ventured deeper into the wreck, stating as he left: “I’m going to fetch the whip.”

Seemingly unfazed by the announcement, Hux smashed half a dozen eggs into a bowl and grabbed an eggbeater. “Which direction do I stir again?”

“Now you’re messing with me!” the kitchen master protested. “No way that was a real question!”

“Tell me how you expect me to take this seriously, if all of it is so incredibly stupid!”

“It’s not! You’re simply the most untalented cook I ever met and Captain Barley set the bar in this regard pretty low!”

There was an uncomfortable pause, after which Hux asked: “Did I just kill you?”

“What? No!”

“Then I haven’t learned cooking, but something.”

The kitchen master studied the captive. Now that Kornsenf wasn’t in the room anymore, her stance was way more relaxed, her face to the contrary more tense.

“You brought that on yourself, you know?” she said. “No one here likes the Lieutenant, but I can’t say we like you, either. You’re full of yourself, all talk, but have yet to impress anybody.”

“Implying something?!”

“Just an observation.”

The kitchen master filled one part of a ready meal tray with the stew she had been working on and the other with potatoes, sealed the tray shut with a thin metal foil to keep the contents warm and piled slices of the First Order standard bread on top. She then pasted a tube with spice paste to the tray’s side and told the captive: “Go deliver this to General Pryde!”

“With these?” Hux pointed at his ankle cuffs.

“They cuffs will ensure that you won’t return too quickly, as would be in your best interest, considering what Kornsenf if getting from the armory.”

“Right. Uh… thanks. Where…?”

“Down this floor. The door at its end leads to the General’s office.”

*

The idea of an intact floor connecting two rooms that were both partially destroyed was kinda silly, but Hux didn’t complain about the setup. An enclosed space was just what he needed now. He staggered through the door the kitchen master had pointed at and down the floor, stopping only once to look up, where a knot of cables was dangling from the ceiling. One of the cables was hanging loosely and throwing sparks. To think that this was the section best fit to still be used… Circumventing the loose cable on bound feet took more effort than a scored hundred meter sprint, but eventually Hux had passed the obstacle.

A few steps further into the floor (or after something like a mile, subjectively) two crates stood against the wall, blocking half the floor. Hux grinned. Now this was convenient for one who absolutely needed privacy before he faced General Pryde again!
There was not enough space to hide between the crates, Hux had to choose what direction he wanted to shield himself from: the mess hall or the office. Reasoning that Pryde probably wouldn’t walk into the kitchen without a real good reason, but that Kornsenf just might come look for him, Hux hobbled past the crates and knelt down behind them. The cuffs tore into his ankles, but that couldn’t get helped now.

Hux carefully placed the tray on the crate, then folded back his still damp coat. With jittery fingers he reached for his belt. If he had felt that right… yessss! The Lieutenant – or whoever had conducted the search of the prisoner after he had gotten stunned in the waterskimmer – had overlooked the compartment in his belt. Both fake rank cylinders were still there: the comlink and the restocked poison jar.

At first Hux removed the metal foil just enough to be able to slide one finger – or a fake code cylinder containing a deadly poison - under it, but then he reconsidered. He had to conceal his tempering with the heat seal somehow to avoid suspicion.
Mhm… why not? With one hand Hux removed the foil completely, with the fingers of the other he reached into the stew and shoveled a small sample of it into his mouth. It required a conscious act of discipline not to gorge on the complete meal. A second bite couldn’t hurt, right? Knowing that a second fingerful would soon turn into a third, fourth and fifths, leaving nothing to poison, Hux bit himself into the finger.

“Ouch…”

He then licked the sauce-stained fingers clean, however, he made sure to not completely remove all traces. A few spots both on his hand and in the corners of his mouth had to remain, so that there would be no doubt later why the seal had gotten broken: just a hungry prisoner with little willpower giving in to the temptation and only clumsily hiding it. No reason to suspect the contents of a small phial getting poured into the dish now…

Drip… drip… drip…

Hux stirred the spiked stew with the empty glass bottle, that he then stuffed between the supply crate he was hiding behind and the wall. Then he put the foil on again, but it was readily apparent that this wasn’t the tray’s original’s state.

Indeed Pryde looked at his former fellow General with unveiled disdain, when Hux entered the office with the proof of his lack of self-control in his face. Hux could almost feel the condescension in the air, despite not being force sensitive. He dropped the ready meal tray on Pryde’s desk right next to a datapad the General had studied.

“With best regards from the kitchen master. Choke on it! My words, not hers.”

“Stay here”, General Pryde ordered in an impassive tone.

“Gladly”, Hux replied.

He wiped his mouth and licked the mix of sauce and blood from where the cable had cut into his mouth earlier from his finger, then found a wall to lean against and with his arms crossed in front of his chest like a common thug watched Pryde eat.

Watching… waiting… Would the concoction he had mixed by hand in the prison infirmary be as good as a thoroughly tested industrial grade product? Hux had never valued handmade things, he preferred products manufactured in a clean, automated factory. To him, the handmade stuff that craftspeople were so proud of had always felt like a cheap imitation.

In the past a failed assassination attempt would have led to just that: the victim not being dead. At worst Hux would have had to remove whichever external hand he had used for the deed from the picture. In the present situation, however, him failing to take Pryde out in a timely manner would most likely spell doom for himself.

“I know I won’t live a minute longer than Dameron and the others take to show up here”, Hux gave voice to the obvious. “In the grand scheme of things nothing matters anymore: sustenance received or withheld, things learned, not even having pissed myself. But subjectively all those things matter a lot…”

“Just speak your mind and spare me the drama!” the General derided his hostage.

“Yes. I was wondering why my Starkiller infuriated you so much. You called it a waste of resources, but then we learned that you had built ten thousand miniature death stars, all fully staffed. They can’t have been any cheaper than Starkiller base in production, let alone upkeep.”

“That’s a fallacy”, Pryde claimed. “You see, I saw both Death Stars fail. Tell me, what happens if one of the Xyston class destroyers gets shot down?”

“Errr… Rey makes a fortune in spare parts and kyber crystal fragments?”

“I still have nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine battle ready star destroyers left.”

“Uh…”

“I plan for failure”, Pryde explained. “Of course it never occurs, but if it does, after all, I, unlike you, won’t stand pants down, unable to act.”

“Accounting for failure… before it happens? Admitting imperfection? I see. Or maybe I don’t. It sounds weak. Nothing the really great would contemplate.”

“That’s why you never were… really great. And that’s why you’ll die like a dog. I’d say forgotten by history, but a folly of your proportions might just get passed down the generations.”

Pryde reached for the flask he was always carrying on his body. What expensive brand of spirit it contained today, Hux neither knew nor cared. All it mattered was that it was alcohol. The poison he had carried was specifically tailored to take out Enric Pryde. After he had accidently spilled himself with the first poison, Hux had opted to replace it with a binary toxin consisting of two in itself harmless components that got mixed only immediately prior to the moment of use. In this particular substance’s case the secondary component was simply ethanol.

Pryde poured a greenish-yellowish liquid into a pewter mug that looked like out of a souvenir shop from the fishing town the workers had gotten drafted from. The drink was wine, some variety of white grape, probably with a low enough alcohol content to serve to stormtroopers on duty without ill effect, but still sufficient to create the lethal poison. After Pryde had filled his mug about one third with the wine, he held his hand above it and grabbed it by the brim as to not let his body temperature influence the contents. And then he moved the thing gently around the table as if he was playing a damn pendulum party game!
Of course when it came to wine that treatment really made a difference, Pryde wasn’t just posturing to impress himself, like Hux had done in the safe house’s backyard, he was indeed bringing subtle nuances of his beverage out. But why now? When he had better things to do? Like to die already?!
Finally, after what had felled like an eternity, Pryde sipped from the mug and swallowed, but not nearly enough wine. Only towards the end of the meal the mug had been sufficiently emptied to produce an effect.
Hux saw Pryde’s body convulse, he heard him cough, foam appeared on the man’s lips and he was flailing around, grasping for his comlink. But already Pryde’s vision was clouding and a few seconds later he dropped onto the desk, specifically into the almost empty ready meal tray.

Hux closed in. Hoping Pryde would still be able to hear him, he whispered into his ear: “And you just died like a pig. A slice of holiday roast on potato mash.”

Then he quickly scooped up the Pryde’s comlink and blaster. Next he pulled the corpse back by the collar of its uniform and removed the rank cylinders from the chest.

Checking his victim’s pockets, Hux found his Resistance rank plate. He briefly weighted it in his hand, then nodded to himself and pinned the plate to his coat.
It was over. It was finally over. “It” had been over for a year already, only now Hux was ready to admit that to himself. Only now did he understand why he couldn’t return to his old life, not because he had burned every bridge behind him, but why he had wanted to do so in the first place. It wasn’t just Ren, not by a long shot.
And besides, if he should die like a dog while honoring his new allegiance, then it was better a filthy rebel commander met this fate than an esteemed General.

Speaking of filthy… Swapping his soiled trousers for the dead General’s was a non-brainer, but before he could change, Hux had to get rid of his ankle cuffs somehow. Trouble was, there was no key or remote control anywhere in sight. But a precise blaster shot might do the trick, too?

Suddenly the escapee heard heavy cloth flap in his back. It was the curtains covering the main entrance to this office: a missing section of wall.
The curtains parted, briefly allowing a peek at the scenery outside. Waves rolled onto the beach and Hux thought he had glimpsed a defensive cannon, but couldn’t be certain. Could just as well have been an armed vehicle.

A tray of his own in his hand and a nasty looking shock whip at his belt, Lt. Kornsenf entered the office. Hux had the blaster pointed downwards, intent on severing his cuffs. In the moments he needed to bring the weapon upwards and take aim, Kornsenf had already dropped the tray and dashed outside again.

“Damn you!” the killer cursed as his shot singed the curtains, but nothing else.

Hux quickly short-circuited the cuffs. Meanwhile outside Kornsenf was shouting:
“An assassin! In the office! Quick, kill him!”

The Lieutenant hadn’t yet fully brought his point across, when his and General Pryde’s comlinks went off simultaneously. The Dominance was under attack! Unlike Kornsenf’s panicked yelling, the Sith Captain’s report was concise with no leeway for misunderstanding. Everyone present at the beach immediately went into high alert mode and the depersonalized voice of a helmeted stormtrooper NCO stated: “Attention, squad! The so-called citizens’ fleet has found us. We can’t reach the enemy in orbit, but we can prepare for them coming for us.”

Hux moved closer to the curtains. He now saw that the cannon he had spotted before was part of a coast defense battery. Anything approaching from the sea would be exposed to fire from the island. The occupiers were living in a wreck like castaways, but their defenses were set up properly. So far, so expected, and Hux would have done just the same.
But what stuck to memory were solid eight hundred meters of star destroyer bow reaching into the ocean like a giant, twisted pier. The structure must have broken off the main wreck during the ditch, because it was located a little to the left of the Steadfast now. The creaking of metal and plasteel mixed into the sound of the rolling waves suggested that parts were still breaking off quite regularly. But in those areas that were stable Pryde’s troopers and conscripted workers were busy installing weapons, a mix of guns salvaged from the star destroyer’s defunct TIE fighters and her own deadly ion cannons. After three days and with help from the Dominance the work had come quite far already.
Somewhere in the wreck a plant was powering the guns. Hux knew it had to be there, but from his position he could not see it. What was obvious, however, was that the battery, even in its unfinished state, offered full coverage against attacks from the sky. All the First Order had to do was to bring it online.

Loud arguments from the beach caused Hux to take his gaze off the cannon-pier and focus on the scene unfolding in front of the curtain-door. Lt. Kornsenf was screaming at maybe two dozen white and red troopers, but nobody was listening to him. The army was pretty much self-organizing.

“Our loyalty is to the First Order, not to your person, Sir”, a sergeant explained in between giving orders to the lesser stormtroopers.

“I want to see a bunch of troopers handle this crisis!”

“Then pick up a weapon, step in line and watch me!”

Kornsenf picked a heavy blaster up from a gun rack, but instead of shouldering it as instructed, he pointed the weapon at the mutineer. Two shots in quick succession, one into his back and one coming from the flank, hit the lieutenant and felled him before he could pull the trigger.

“That settles that”, Hux murmured. “I guess I have to thank you for raising them so well, Phasma.”

*

Where to now? Back through the floor with the crates wasn’t an option, by now the mess hall would be full to the brim with eaters. No, correction, any moment now those eaters would put aside their meals and come running to the beach.
Hux cursed under his breath when the door in his back opened, indeed. He quickly slipped through the curtains, grabbing a blaster rifle on his way out. Then he immediately moved to the left, keeping close to the wall. When he reached yet another gaping hole in the wall he slipped through and suddenly found himself in a sort of courtyard, that really was a mission section of the wreck.

Where the heck was he? Knowing the star destroyer’s layout and dimensions by heart didn’t help the escapee navigate the wreck at all, especially since it had dug itself deep into the island and what Hux perceived as the ground floor really was closer to the middle level.

He picked a direction to leave the courtyard at random and found himself in a launch bay. The dominating feature here was a large, defunct ion cannon, that had crashed through the roof from the deck above it. Ropes slung around the cannon and an antigrav module parked nearby were evidence that the cannon was planned to get integrated into the island’s defense after lunch break.
Hux gave the cannon a wide berth. He found a ramp leading upwards, entered a control room but two steps in already found himself under the open sky again. Far, far above his head giant metal beams formed a canopy, but they didn’t block the sun out. If this had been how Rey Palpatine had made her living before joining the Resistance, then it was no wonder that she was able to tolerate Ben’s twisted mind. The girl had basically grown up surrounded by things that didn’t make sense!

Opening a drawer at random, Hux found only writing foils, a pen and replacement energy cells. Of course, he thought with a sigh, uniforms wouldn’t get stored in a flight control room. His hopes of finding a clean trouser on a random shelf had been foolish to begin with.
Nevertheless the fugitive slipped out of his coat and boots and finally pulled down his trousers and underpants, now that he had a moment to spare. He then unbuttoned his shirt, removed it and bound it around his hip to cover his privates. Finally Hux put on his boots and the coat again. Not that this was much better than the previous state. Hux had merely transitioned from one kind of undignified state into a different one.

Hux climbed onto a flight control station, then pulled himself up and ended up on a platform that for all practical purposes had to count as a roof, even though it was hardly the top deck. Here he briefly paused, in part because left leg was protesting against the exercise and in part to get an overview of his surroundings.

Although he had gained elevation, Hux hadn’t moved far from his starting point yet. He could still hear shouting from the beach, only no longer make out individual words.
In front of him tree trunks in addition to debris hindered his passage now, where the Steadfast had torn a swatch into the forest. If he didn’t want to fight squirrels next, the fugitive had the choice to proceed through a free-standing door that seemingly led nowhere anymore or climbing down into a basin with tiled walls that remained from either a laboratory, a wastewater treatment plant or a swimming pool. Neither choice seemed particularly appealing. Maybe returning to the hangar bay and choosing a different way out was the better idea.

On second thought, there were no pursuers on Hux’ heels, so he could just as well take his time and search for the power plant.

There was a smattering of factories on every First Order capital ship that ensured them to be self-sufficient for months and even years if need be. One of those, if still intact, would be perfect to power the ion cannons and by extension the kitchen he had worked in.
Again Hux focused on what he knew about the Steadfast’s layout. Overlaying the existing wreck with this ideal blueprint became a battle the former General wasn’t intent to lose. Engineering at its finest simply HAD to beat base nature!
If he was standing above one of the smaller launch bays directly below a cannon battery, then the closest factory would have to be…

Hux turned into the general direction and indeed spotted what he was looking for. In the midst of all the destruction a section of the ship had hastily – and noticeably - gotten patched up. There was an air blast transformer at work nearby and giant cables connected the factory to the beach. They vanished in the shallow sea water only to re-appear on the wreck’s half submerged bow.
In terms of security two Sith troopers guarded the main entrance to the power plant. Hux grinned, because the guards’ attention was focused on the totally wrong direction. A single person or droid could approach and sabotage the transformer without having to set so much as a toe into the building. And then the cannons would stay silent, no matter how exasperatedly their owners might yell.

*

While he was still thinking whether he should risk the sabotage, Hux spotted movement in the courtyard he had passed through. A trio of Sith troopers was marching a large number of workers into the place. Hux moved closer to the edge of the platform he was on, then knelt down behind an array of distorted metal bars. The weird art object offered a modicum of concealment, while allowing the spy to watch what happened downstairs.

From the troopers’ and civilians’ body language Hux deduced that the workers were getting rounded up for execution. Of course, in a tense situation civilians posed a risk and in its history the First Order had never hesitated to eliminate any potential weak points. Hux hadn’t hesitated to give such orders, but seeing the red armor instead of the familiar white now, the sight somehow hit differently. One of the troopers readied a flame thrower – were the executioners preparing to dispose of the corpses later or didn’t they even want to invest individual blaster shots?

Hux now identified individuals among the colonists: there were the kitchen master, the man who had asked about New Harvest City and the woman who had liked the idea of being in the same room as an evil anarchist. There were others whom Hux didn’t recognize. Many were pleading, but nobody was seriously resisting. Why didn’t they resist, Hux wondered? The captives were dead anyway, so they could take ANY risk!

Now the “Resistance fangirl” turned her head towards one of the red clad troopers. She opened her mouth, from her mimic not to insult the Sith, but to beg for her life. Hux wanted to shout “Stop, don’t do that, what do you think this is going to do for you?” Trach had been so right about civilians, they were nothing but cattle, with no sense of self-worth whatsoever! But then again, so didn’t Hux after today, as his naked legs reminded him.

Anger welled up in the former General/self-appointed rebel-scum. Had the troopers cleanly fired into the crowd until nobody was standing anymore, there’d still been a chance that newly minted Resistance fighter would have turned his back to the scene and moved on. But the drawn out proceedings, that left the death candidates time to feel the debasement of it all (or, more correctly, that allowed the watcher to project his own feelings on them) were too much. Hux wrested the blaster rifle from his back. The metal bars right in front of him served as support for the barrel.

“Damn those Sith! Wasteful, disruptive beasts!”

But as he hissed those words, Hux knew that he had wanted to say something different: Damn the likes of Pryde, Brooks and Brendol, who conditioned people into believing they were something lesser.

Up there in his perch, the sniper found that he could easily focus on the red armors’ weak spots Finn had explained to him, now that he didn’t have to dodge incoming fire. He calmly locked on his first target, moved the weapon a little to where that target would be when the energy bolt would hit them and pulled the trigger. And that was it. Unceremoniously the first executioner went down and wouldn’t get up again.

Saying “Scratch one Sith”, Hux switched his weapon to auto-fire mode just in time for the two remaining Sith troopers to look up and into his direction. Five shots in quick succession at the now moving targets later, the second trooper fell.

To the sniper’s amusement the remaining trooper now grabbed the “fangirl” and held her in front of themselves like a meat shield.

“Enlighten me, what exactly do you think this is going to accomplish against me?” Hux said with a sneer. It was so stupid! If he didn’t take this shot, the trooper would be allowed to dictate the rules of this encounter from this point on and the colonist would most likely end up dead. But if he did take that shot, the encounter would end immediately and the colonist had a far better chance to survive. That wasn’t even tactics, that was just common sense!

Five more shots later this trooper, too, fell, and the hostage was clutching her shoulder that was soaked in blood, both her own and her captor’s. Hux nodded to himself with satisfaction. The house was cleaned and for a bonus the hostage had survived.

Down below the freed colonists started discussing what to do now. Judging from their pointing, some wanted to run back to the beach, others argued venturing deeper into the wreck.

Hux left his hiding place, straightened his body and fired into the air.
“Over here!” he shouted. “Bring the troopers’ weapons and don’t forget the flame thrower!”

“That’s the rebel commander”, the injured worker proclaimed, screaming her relieve as well as her pain into the air. “He saved us!”

“One of the insurgents did that?” someone standing nearby asked. “Why would he?” But before anybody could engage into a discussion with the man, the crowd as a whole had already decided to follow the order.

The civilians beelined towards their rescuer. Their approach was stopped abruptly when suddenly something white and orange emerged from the wreck from the opposite direction they were running into and sped towards them. It was an astromech droid and it beeped from surprise, when it beheld all those people.

Storming up the ramp the spherical droid had come from came five Sith troopers. BB-8 made sure to pause long enough for his pursuers to spot him before he vanished into a different tunnel. The troopers followed him. Some fired their weapons, but nobody deemed the colonists a valid target as long as that insufferable astromech was still rolling. Hux now spotted dents in some of their armors, two troopers were even bleeding and most were covered in leaves and twigs, with a half-finished bird’s nest dangling from one trooper’s shoulder and slowly sliding down as they ran. Apparently BB-8 had ran into a patrol in the forest and knowing that Sith troopers operated in groups of three, Hux concluded that the droid had already disposed of one member.
Hux couldn’t help but chuckle at this turn of events. BB-8 was as destructive with his tools as his master was with his taunts and they both tremendously enjoyed a challenge.
A little later an explosion rocked this section of the wreck. The ceiling of the tunnel BB-8 had entered came crushing down, but before the collapsing metal beams sealed the opening completely, the droid exited, unscathed, and with no Sith in sight anymore.

Hux’ chuckle turned into laughter through the nose, when he saw the civilians back away from the astromech that was less than half their size. It now began to sink in to them that First Order droids didn’t come in such bright colors. This here was an enemy droid and it had just effortlessly taken out five heavily armored troopers.

“The droid is with me!” Hux called out to the workers. Not that this would have changed much. It being with Cycen didn’t make the droid any less dangerous. With rebels one could reason or intimidate them. This machine, that was following simple programming and probably glitching a lot from not getting memory wiped on regular intervals, now this one was totally unpredictable.

Hux made haste to return to the control room. From there he headed for the ramp that led into the destroyed hangar, but couldn’t find it anymore. The explosion had disturbed the precarious balance holding this hall together, effectively cutting off Hux’ way back down.

“BB-8!”

Beeping the binary equivalent to “On it!”, BB-8 launched a rope with a mean looking hook attached to its end towards the control room’s surveillance window with it’s shattered pane. Hux dodged, the hook shattered what was left of the window pane and then got a hold.

“(Slide down…)”

Hux grabbed the robe and lowered himself down.

“(…but wrap some cloth around your hands first!)”

Alas, by the time BB-8 got out his warning it was too late already. The human was quickly descending and inch by inch the rope violently tore into his palms.

“Shit, shit, shit…”

BB-8 tilted his head to the side in a “told you” manner. When Hux eventually hit the ground and joined the group, the droid tossed him one of the bacta gel phials from his storage compartment. A single drop into each palm would be sufficient to regenerate the skin. After rubbing the gel on, Hux handed the still almost full phial to the woman he had injured.

“Here! This is military grade bacta. It should work miracles.”

Leaving the actual administering of the gel as well as the cooing and coddling of the patient to the kitchen master, Hux went down on one knee next to BB-8. They smiled at each other, something neither would have thought possible a week ago. For what it was worth, a week ago Hux wouldn’t have been able to tell when a droid was smiling. Then they spoke up almost in unison, one in words, the other in beeps: “Where are the others? – Wait, I thought they were with YOU?” And then two heads dropped when the realization struck that they were alone.

Crestfallen the “rebel commander” ushered everyone into the launch bay, where they’d be less exposed to prying eyes. BB-8’s presence kept the immediate space around the alleged rebel commander free of people, only the kitchen master and, by extension, the injured worker she was caring for approached the group leader. The women introduced themselves as Gwen Perkins and Annika Magnimar, called Maggie.

Maggie seated Perkins on an exotic lounge chair that had been the wing of a TIE fighter before the battle of Exegol. The colonist moved sluggishly and her teeth were tightly pressed together to the point where it had to hurt almost as much as her shoulder wound, but she didn’t let that deter her from studying BB-8 with great interest.

“That your droid?” she eventually asked Hux/Cycen.

“No, my boyfr…”

His boyfriend’s droid? Perkins’ eyes lit up! Even more exciting than meeting an actual rebel commander was the idea of two rebels being in love, albeit temporarily parted by the tides of war. But just when a smile formed in the listener’s face, Cycen stopped and corrected himself: “My exes.”

“Oh. I’m sorry for you! What happened?”

“I… I don’t want to talk about what I did! In any case there’s no going back from that.”

BB-8 would have jumped up from shock, had he been able to. Since he couldn’t, he resorted to loudly exclaiming: “Bi-bi-bi-duit-duit?!” The beeps roughly translated to: “You did something worse than usual while you were on your own? Which system is missing planets NOW?”
The first part of the droid's comment conveyed genuine worry over what the somewhat unhinged companion might have done. The second, however, was the old-familiar quipping Poe and friends were so prone to. If a week could count as “old-familiar”, that was.

“The droid seems to disagree with your assessment.” Biting back her own pain in favor of empathizing with the rebel’s, Perkins smiled at her rescuer. “I’m sure whatever has happened between you two can get mended.”

“No. Some things are broken beyond repair. But my loss, the Resistance’s gain. There’s no holding me back now anymore.”

“Bip.”

Chapter Text

Hux and the fugitives were still hiding in the defunct launch bay, but the former General knew that they couldn’t remain here indefinitely. The longer he delayed his next move, the more anxious his followers would grow and thus be more likely to act on their own accord. In a stupid way, no doubt.

“Right… alright… We can handle this. Let’s see… BB-8 secured weapons for us.” With these words Hux pointed at the crashed section of the wreck, where the droid had trapped five Sith troopers “The helmets have inbuilt targeting aids. We should use them for this reason alone, even though a helmet alone won’t offer much in the way of protection.”

“The helmets also have the heads of dead people in them! Or fragments of skulls!” Maggie the kitchen master protested. “You can’t expect people to don them.”

“Can, too. But I can see how that would be a problem, so here’s how we do it: You follow me into the tunnel and a few steps in shout excitedly “Hey, look, Cycen has found an armory!”. Then I’ll toss you some helmets.”

“What? You can’t mean… Don’t give me that look! You’re the worst!”

“I know.” Hux/Cycen grinned. “Rebel-scum through and through.”

Maggie let out a deep sigh. Then she adjusted the holster with the blaster they had taken from the executioners earlier, nodded and wordlessly fell in line with the alleged Resistance commander. BB-8 rolled between their feet, informing them in beeps that they’d need a light source in the tunnel. The only option they had at their disposal was the droid himself, regardless of Hux having preferred BB-8 to shepherd the civilians in his and Maggie’s absence. That left only… hm, why not?

“The “bridge” is yours, Perkins!” Hux stated loud enough for everyone to hear, then left the injured woman in charge of the group. For Perkins didn’t need an intact shoulder, let alone a weapon, to control a crowd, all she really needed was confidence and that she seemed to possess in a sufficient amount. Hux had also noticed that Perkins had a hard to qualify effect on the rest, as if her excitement turned into inspiration. But even if that should fail, from what Hux had seen from the colonists so far, they wouldn’t mutiny against a visibly wounded person. Thick as thieves, dedicated to their homeworld and to each other, these were the absolute worst subjects the First Order could have wanted.

With that settled, the trio strolled over to where BB-8 had caused the cave-in. There were sensors on the wall that in the past would have scanned a passerby’s credentials to grant or restrict access. It was defunct now, but its presence alone suggested that this section had been at least somewhat access-restricted back when the Steadfast had still been operational. In the present it was very literally blocked by debris for friend and foe alike.
The fallen metal beams didn’t completely seal the tunnel, though, so Hux and Maggie squeezed through and continued to carefully proceed with their backs bend. BB-8 alerted the humans to places that were unsafe to tread and at one point used his welder to fuse treacherously moving debris together, preventing it from causing another cave-in. How deep had they ventured into the tunnel by this point? Actually no farther than five meters, Hux realized, when he turned his head to check. Once again he found himself thinking of Rey, who had undertaken similar expeditions for a living, the difference being that she had never known whether she’d find something that would make risking her life in this way worthwhile.

The group had just reached the spot where the corpses were lying smashed by the collapsed ceiling, when Maggie spoke up in Hux’ back:

“Did you kill Snoke?”

“What?!”

“Did you kill Supreme Leader Snoke?” Maggie asked again. “You and Kylo Ren were the first at the scene, after all, and with Kornsenf having called you a traitor…”

“So you know who I am.”

Hux dropped into crouching position, then turned around and ended up on his left knee just in time for Maggie replying: “It was pretty obvious.”

“So.”

Hux ignored the sharp sting in his leg. Injuries didn’t matter know, what mattered was not presenting his back to the woman who knew his identity and ideally being able to reach for his own blaster faster than she could get hers out.

“It was Phasma who killed everyone who knew her origins. Me, I only make a move against threats to my position”, the former General stated.

Maggie, too, dropped to the ground now, and her effortlessly keeping her balance confirmed what Hux had known beforehand: Nobody who had served on the First Order’s command ship was a mere kitchen scullion. Maggie had at the very least received basic endurance and handweapon training and in her position as the kitchen master most likely was a trained firefighter, pest controller or similar. Damn! Just the occupations to prepare one for navigating narrow, unstable places – something Hux most decidedly had no experience in.

“I don’t understand you”, Maggie said while getting glared at in the semi-darkness. “And now answer me! I need to know whether I’ve fed a monster or a secret hero all the time!”

Seeing that the other hadn’t drawn a weapon yet, Hux took his chance and attacked first, not to kill or injure, but to establish dominance the same way he’d lived for three decades. He pounced and rammed Maggie against what turned out to be BB-8, who rolled backwards with a high-pitched shriek, causing both humans to fall flat on their bellies. The walls were shaking, but the kitchen master was not.

Fists balled, Hux snapped: “Well, I don’t understand myself! I only know that I found a place where it didn’t matter, where I could be weak without getting treated as something lesser. I never knew… that… was even… thinkable. But the Sith incinerated that place and then for all I know the First Order drowned my friends.”

“Breee-duit!”

Hux reached out with his right hand, to where BB-8 was maintaining a position from which he could easily electroshock either or both humans, whichever acted out first. The droid allowed himself to get petted, accompanied by what came dangerously close to an apology for having acted so rashly:

“Yes, I know. I’m aware that you wouldn’t have let her hurt me. I’m just not used to the concept of someone having my back yet.”

I mean, even Admiral Sloane didn’t stop Brendol from being at his worst before I had not formally agreed to protect her from Trenay and the others in turn.

“Duit-duit?”

“Heh, yes. Lots!” Hux replied, then turned his head towards the kitchen master: “Before the airstrike I told Poe that my life wasn’t based on a lie. But it very much was. The New Republic was only ineffective, whereas we were in the wrong.”

Hux and Maggie scrambled into sitting position, trying not to lean their backs against the tunnel walls. To Hux’ left two red gloves reached out of the debris, flanking a half-buried helmet. Apparently the wearer had tried to squirm free from the rubble, but succumbed to his injuries before he could make it. Hux pulled at the helmet until it gave way and then rolled it towards Maggie, indicating that as far as he was concerned the hostilities were done and things would proceed according to plan from here on.

Maggie, however, was not over the issue yet:

“So it was a more recent change of heart. I was complicit, after all”, she mused, before catching two blasters that came flying at her in quick succession, one with each hand and with practiced ease. Had Maggie escaped the initial roundup, Hux now realized, it could very well have been her, who’d sniped the troopers and freed the colonists, while he’d still wander aimlessly through the wreck.

“What’s your problem?” he asked, while working on pulling a second helmet free from debris heap. “Your kitchen also fed Ren and Snoke.”

Maggie stashed the blasters into her belt, then drew closer to help with securing the second helmet.

“Yes”, she said, “but they were those proverbial incomprehensible entities, you know? Power and destruction walking on two legs, evil way outside the regular scale. You, to the contrary, were… everyday evil. Still human enough to get angry at, to be held accountable for the atrocities you committed. Whenever I asked myself why someone would want to oppose the First Order, I remembered that officers like you and Brooks were in leadership positions, and then there being a Resistance didn’t sound so outlandish an idea anymore.”

Hux gulped hard. He shook his head a few times, even closed his eyes momentarily. He opened his mouth, moved his tongue, but then only licked his lips instead of saying something and returned to work on the salvage. He carefully lifted the conglomerate of scrap metal and plasteel pulp with both hands, allowing Maggie to pull a corpse free, then let the debris slide down, making sure it didn’t abruptly drop, potentially causing a landslide.
When Hux turned around, his face was expressionless again.

“You won’t hear me apologize. Everything I did was perfectly tailored to the situation I was in, based on the information at my disposal at that time. So, no regrets. Just a stupid wish - that they’d found and freed me earlier.”

*

The trio returned with two helmets, five blasters, a blaster rifle and three explosive packs. One of the helmets Hux kept for himself, and then it turned out that exactly one of the fugitives, a youth who had daydreamed of running away from the colony to join the army, was willing to try on the other. Hux handed him the rifle along with the helmet and a stern reminder to remain at the far end of the weapon’s reach.

“Will do! Hey, the helmet recognizes the rifle!” the colonist exclaimed. “There’s all kinds of other stuff it’s showing me, but that extra info doesn’t update. Looks like it’s offline?”

“The helmets all answer to and receive data from a central tactical network”, Hux explained, fondly remembering the one he had compiled years ago and that was still reliably securing wins for the First Order. He had to find a way to hack that thing and corrupt its code rather sooner than later.

“Logging back into it would alert the Sith to our presence, though.”

Hux temporarily took his own helmet off again. In the next few minutes he needed the colonists’ full attention, not them shying away from looking at their captors’ visage and a distorted voice. He issued callsigns to those of the colonists that were holding weapons now. Using a piece of naturally occurring chalk, he then sketched the Sith troopers’ armors on the launch bay’s floor and explained the weaknesses Finn had taught him to the civilians.

“Listen up! We can leave Steadfast Island on the yacht Pryde came with, but that one is moored in sight of the flak at the beach, so we need to disable that beforehand. Problem: There’s only a handful actual stormtroopers on the island. Our primary opponents are Sith troopers, biological fighting machines. They don’t have self-preservation instincts whatsoever. If the flak gets taken out, they might just as well overheat the reactor that’s powering their defenses and take everyone on Steadfast Island with them. That’s why we have to attack the power plant first.”

“A…attack?”

The idea didn’t sit well with the workers. There were some determined faces, but the majority just wanted to be safe. Wasn’t there plenty of forest to hide in? Maybe they could make their way to the other side of the island and build a raft there?

“Yes, because patrols following footprints are a thing that only happens in stories”, Hux/Cycen snarked.

“Can’t you conceal those tracks? You rebels must be woodswise, seeing that you…”

“…live in improvised tent camps”, Hux finished the insult he had used only too often himself, never expecting to find himself at the receiving end of it. “No, that doesn’t make us accomplished scout troopers.”

Maggie chuckled and BB-8 uttered the droid equivalent, but Perkins glared at the colonist who was given this brave rebel commander such a hard time.

Hux got up and straightened his body.

“That’s probably the moment where I have to confess who I really am”, he tossed at the crowd.

“Beep!”

“I’m a member of the engineering corps. Not a fighter. I know my tech, what cable to cut and what plug to pull. BB-8 and me can be in and out again without anybody noticing us. You lot just stick around on the off chance that something goes wrong.”

“And then we fire from a safe distance!” the helmeted colonist exclaimed, demonstrating that he had memorized his instructions and was intent on carrying them out to the letter.

“That’s exactly what you do!”

Hux handed Maggie the flame thrower. Perkins at first looked doubtful – would the kitchen master be strong enough to carry, let alone point, this weapon? But then she saw Maggie strap the fuel cannister to her back with practiced ease.

“I was on the Steadfast”, she reminded the colonist. “Everyone who has served aboard a capital ship has combat training to some degree. And this here? That’s just a fancy flame extinguisher. Uh, a reversed fire extinguisher.”

“If the Sith come really close”, Perkins excitedly relayed to the rest of the colonists, “Maggie will use the flamethrower on them!”

“Serves them right!” someone shouted over all the heads, followed by lots of affirmative murmuring from the crowd.

Perkins didn’t express a desire to get handed a weapon for herself; even if she didn’t have to struggle with an injury, being a soldier was nothing she aspired. Hux gave her a spare comlink instead, visibly promoting her to the group’s propaganda officer.
When they were finally ready to leave their hideout, the colonists flashed Cycen encouraging smiles. There was still some anxiety, but no more resistance from the group.

“They got it all wrong!” Hux complained to BB-8, when they led the group through the wreck towards the power plant. He had wanted to inspire trust by stating his area of expertise, the exact expertise that would enable him to ace the mission they were about to embark on. But what had happened instead was that the colonists had focused more on Hux’ claim not to be a fighter. “Now they think I’m as scared as they are!”

BB-8’s giggling didn’t help at all.

*

“Yeah. Right.” Hux stood at the transformer, out of the guards’ area of notice, looking up with a disgusted expression on his face. “Can we agree that everything always looks better on the blueprints?”

Why hadn’t nobody warned him that the “large cables” he’d seen from the distance would equal a full blown pipeline from close by? There was no cutting them except with maybe a lightsaber, and trying to unplug them would neatly electrocute the saboteur.

“Di-di-ditti-DEEET!” BB-8 suggested in subdued beeps.

“Why am I not surprised that’s you preferred course of action!” Hux whispered back. “But you’re not wrong. Only the target we need to blow up is the transformer, not the power plant itself.”

They briefly consulted where to plant the three explosives they had and since there was no disagreement went to work quickly.

The first explosive going off spurned the Sith trooper duo that was guarding the door into action. They locked the door from the outside, then moved towards the explosion and knelt behind cover, scanning the area for the saboteur. Unfortunately for them Hux had identified the spot they were crouching as the best for that purpose and BB-8 had planted the second explosive right there, so that it would take the troopers out – as it did now. The third went off at the same time as the second, ensuring that the transformer couldn’t get repaired anytime soon. Hux estimated that the light in the kitchen and Pryde’s office would go out in about six minutes, telling the troopers stationed there what section exactly the explosions they had heard had occurred at.

BB-8 rolled towards the power plant’s door and short-circuited the lock.

From out of the generator room someone cried: “We surrender!”

“Come out one by one!” Hux commanded.

Three technicians from the fishing town everyone else had gotten drafted from, too, emerged, their hands behind the backs of their heads. They saw the transformer’s remains, the dead troopers and the rebel with his droid pointing a blaster and a shock probe at them.

“Y… you killed them!” one of the trio spouted with unveiled loathing. “The First Order only took us from our homes and made us work here, but you just killed them!”

Hux gesticulated towards his back with his head.

“Ask your fellow townsfolk about who decided to “just kill” whom. They have an interesting story to tell.”

*

Now all that was left to do was reaching Governor Trent’s yacht and leaving the island. Hux had already sorted his followers into a group that would take over the yacht together with him and a larger one that would just stay out of trouble. He had also extracted the targeting module from the red helmet and was now wearing the visor and the little box fastened to Perkins’ scarf, that he wore as a headband and that still had some dried blood on it. If Commander Cycen hadn’t looked like a feral rebel before, now he sure did.

They left the wreck and stood once again in the coastal forest, the yacht in sight already, bobbing up and down in the shallow water, when suddenly they heard footsteps on the mix of tried twigs, leaves and conifer needles that made up the forest floor.

“Hide!” Hux hissed, then slid behind a birch tree with a convenient double trunk. He tried to point out suitable positions to his followers, but to no avail. Everyone just scattered and even Maggie was more concerned with helping Perkins into cover than securing a favorable spot to fire from.

A moment later more colonists arrived, very obviously on the run and in a hurry to reach the forest, that would shield them from their pursuers’ sight. They were followed by Captain Barley, the grumpy waterskimmer pilot.

“A fresh pair of trousers for the taking!” Hux rejoiced, but before he could pull the trigger, Barley had already noticed people between the trees and slid behind a glacier boulder. By this point, however, Hux’ finger muscles couldn’t just abort the action and so he fired at the empty space where the captain used to be, resulting in the newly arrived colonists panicking and running in circles like chickens.

“Hide already, you idiots! By the Force, at the very least find a tree to stand behind!” Hux shouted, for the first time in as long as he could remember invoking the Force in something. That had been a rebel thing, and later also a Kylo Ren thing. Only after fighting side by side with Finn and Poe – the latter of whom wasn’t even force sensitive – it felt like the natural thing to do.

“You got that wrong!” Barley cried. “I wasn’t chasing these people!”

“If that’s so, then drop your weapon where I can see it!”

Barley did so.

“That you, Cycen?” he then ventured from the safety of his hiding place. “I’m not your enemy! I can proof it! You’re called “Ember” by your friends.”
Hux turned his head towards his astromech companion.

“BB-8? Would Poe’s pet name for me come up under any circumstance if he got captured?”

A series of beeps stated that it was very unlikely. Even if Poe muttered the word under his last breath, the droid said, people wouldn’t necessarily recognize it as a name, let alone deduce whom it referred to.

“Muttered under his last…? He’d do that?!”

But we’re only… We aren’t in love! We just…

Beeps to the effect of “Wouldn’t you?” interrupted the man’s train of thought.

“I don’t know.” Hux considered the query. “But it is… certainly possible.”

If all that drew Armitage Hux to Poe Dameron would have been mutual desire, then there shouldn’t be room for the pilot in Hux’ thoughts in those moments when he wasn’t experiencing desire. Plain and simple. Realistically Hux shouldn’t think of Poe when he wasn’t doing that thinking with his genitals. Yet here he was, thinking about the little rat basically all the time. He made an effort to visualize Finn instead, only for Poe to stand next to his friend in that mental image. Rose? Same. Rey? The picture didn’t even have time form, before Hux’ mental subtitling spelled out “Where Poe?” and still nothing in the way of the libido. He missed Poe more than he missed being intimate with Poe.

“In fact, it’s quite likely”, Hux had to conclude.

He sheathed his blaster and called out to the coastguard: “Alright. Come over here! – Perkins? Please communicate to the newcomers that I didn’t shoot at them. Helmet Kid – scoop up this man’s blaster where he dropped it.”

“On it!” – “Aye, Commander!”

“The name’s Barley! I’m from a fishing town not far away”, the captain said as hastily as redundantly, when he stood in front of Cycen the valiant rebel commander. “We were the original colony, before the First Order came and built their own capital. At first we were mindblown by all the improvements, but over time they showed their true face in small ways here and there and we realized that to them we’re just crops to be harvested. As a coastguard lieutenant I earned enough to go on a vacation off planet every year with my family, and every time we did so, I reached out in subtle ways, until got into contact with the Resistance.”

Hux nodded.
“Go on.”
Since I cannot stop your waterfall of words anyway.

“I… I heard your transmission from Crait last year, but decided not to react. The colony still needed me more.”

“Crait was hell”, Hux said in a subdued voice. “Kylo Ren in full power mode and crazy as can be… I’d rather not go back there now.”

Now it was for Captain Barley to nod, and he did so in a sympathetic way.

“Change of topic! You aimed too far on purpose last night, is that it?” Hux prodded. “As to let the isp escape?”

“Yes. How could I have known there were joyriders out in the middle of the night!”

“Then you know where the heck Poe Dameron and the others are?”

The Captain’s face lit up. For the first time in this conversation he had to offer something, was no longer on the defensive.

“On the adjacent island”, he revealed. “They cobbled together a raft of sorts from the remains of their speed boat and the platform. Your friends are ready to launch an attack, if only that flak pointing into their direction could somehow get disabled.”

“That’s what I’m working on. I already cut off the cannons’ power supply.”

“We heard the explosion! The flak has its own generator, unfortunately. The good news is that there aren’t too many troopers left. Or were present in the first place.”

“A single trooper can still decimate the civilians. The ones I took out today dropped before they became aware of me. Without that edge we’d sustained losses. The plan therefore is to cause enough confusion at the yacht to let BB-8 approach the flak unnoticed and work his magic.”
“Okay, sounds good. You seem to know what you’re doing.”

“He does!” the helmeted youth, who seemed to prefer “Helmet Kid” over his actual name, exclaimed, adding: “What were you in civilian life, Commander?”

Looking back, Armitage’s civilian life had ended at the age of six, when General Rax of the Imperial Remnant had assigned the command over the orphans of Jakku to him. But with the impressive wreck of the star destroyer right in his sight, he found it surprisingly easy to reply that he had owned a wrecking firm, the cover identity Trent had set up for him.

“So you didn’t start out as an engineer, just a wrecker”, the youth mused. “A regular dude can become a hero.”

“Stop gawking and follow me to the beach!” Hux told him.

Before I use the flame extinguisher on all of you for spouting nonsense. I’m not ordinary!!!

The colonists obeyed, but on the way to their target Hux had to overhear Perkins telling the youth: “Anybody can become anything. That’s what I learned on this island and what the First Order doesn’t want us to realize. As long as we don’t dream of what might be, they can easily keep us controlled.”

Wasn’t that exactly what he had told Maggie in the wreck? That for one to bring out their full potential first a framework had to get provided? The Republics had failed to do so, and the Empire as well as the First Order had allowed people to strive in very narrowly defined areas only. But beyond those failed entities, what was there left in the galaxy?

*

Approaching the coast again, the group passed the bodies of two colonists that had fled with Barley, but had gotten gunned down by the troopers.
Right by the yacht, the last handful of enemies congregated: a trio of sith troopers, the sergeant who had refused to follow Lt. Kornsenf’s orders and five regular stormtroopers from the Steadfast. One of the latter was arguing with the red-armored allies, but the Sith weren’t people for arguments. They raised their weapons – only to find themselves getting unbalanced by something white and orange that had come out of nowhere.

“You have that thing, but were afraid of Kylo Ren?” Barley sputtered at the sight of BB-8 causing havoc among the troopers.

“I wasn’t so much afraid, as I was cautious”, Hux snarled, while firing his blaster at the group from the top of a dune. He downed a Sith trooper, Barley accidently grazed a First Order stormtrooper and Helmet Kid more by chance than design forced the second Sith trooper to dodge, thus preventing him from shooting a First Order soldier from close range. The other armed colonists were hanging back behind the dune, instructed to keep their heads low for now. Meanwhile Maggie was herding the non-combatents, keeping them comparatively calm by carrying the flame thrower on her back as if it was a magic shield that protected them from all harm.

Following the initial volley of blaster fire, the troopers turned around, trying to discern where the droid had went to and where the blaster shots had come from. Hux and Barley downed another Sith trooper together, then Hux moved his weapon in the way his digital targeting aid suggested, and without actually seeing them in the real world shot the final Sith trooper. Only when the corpse slumped to the ground did Hux’ eyes register that, yes, at the point he had fired at an enemy had stood.

Trusting in his digital helper, Hux remained standing on the dune and called: “Cease fire!”

“Cycen. And Barley”, the stormtrooper sergeant realized. “Weapons down!” they barked at the rebel duo, backed up by the other four pointing their weapons at them and at whoever else might be hiding behind the sandhill.

“Funny thing”, Hux replied, “I was going to say the same.”

One of the troopers lowered their blaster. It was the one who had picked the fight with the Sith in the first place, a female a little older than Finn, who went by the designation FL-1738.

“This is wrong, Sergeant!” she claimed. “I’ve killed civilians before, when they sheltered rebels. But the workers the Sith executed were our own subjects, and if we stand by that without batting an eyelid, then I wonder what else that we did was also wrong.” 1738 turned her head to the superior now, taking her eyes off the attackers. “I just don’t know anymore!”

The sergeant took a step towards the trooper, grabbed her, turned her around and pushed her forwards, bellowing: “Then learn again!”

The reluctant trooper stumbled, caught her footing again and dived forward, to land on the sand. Hux fired over her head at the troopers following in her wake. At the same time 1738 rolled onto her back. It wasn’t the first time that she was rolling around in the dust after her unit had lost control of a battlefield and had switched to firing at everything that moved until hopefully no enemies would be left and the survivors could report the encounter as a “victory”. Likewise enemies advancing at her individually or in groups was nothing new, and the trooper’s trained reflexes immediately kicked in, bringing her weapon upwards and causing her to pull the trigger despite her unfavorable position.
The helmet thankfully hid the terror in the trooper’s face as her shots for the first time impacted on a white armor. The hit trooper collapsed right in front of 1738, half burying her under their weight. The other three passed the fallen ones left and right, only the sergeant jumped right over them, and still 1738 was firing. The sergeant yelped and staggered, only to get hit by the rebels and join 1738 and the other trooper on their heap.

Uninjured, but shaken to her core, 1738 kept lying on her back. Barley dashed to her side and started pulling the dead off her. Unable to discern breathing below the armor, he reached for ‘38s helmet to remove it and check for lifesigns. When he saw the widened, but very much alive, eyes, the captain nodded with satisfaction.

“D… d… did I ju… just…?” the trooper stuttered. Then she saw Hux stride towards her and faced him directly: “But I said you couldn’t drive a wedge between us! That was... only this morning. And now… You made me kill them… One, anyway. Or t… two…”

“One and a half sounds about right, soldier.”

“Kriffin’ rebel scum!!!”

Now Perkins and two other colonists moved in to help the trooper up. There was no animosity in their faces. Why should it? The colonists were First Order subjects and few had seen the organization as clearly as Captain Barley had. To them the white armor registered as that of their protectors, not oppressors. The truth had only gotten revealed when the Steadfast had arrived in orbit. From the colonists’ point of view this confused person in their midst wasn’t a mutineer, but the only one who had remained on their side when everyone else had betrayed them.

Hux looked around the crowd. “Good work, everyone!” Squeezing the 1738’s armored shoulder, or at least putting his hands around her shoulder in a similar gesture, he stressed: “Everyone.”

Getting complimented by an enemy confused the trooper to no small degree. But then again, this rebel had saved so many citizens that she had believed dead by the hands of the Sith, so with trembling lips she eventually uttered: “S… same.”

At this point 1738 was unaware that her comment would get misheard and interpreted as a name by the bystanders: Sam. In the near future the newly named Samantha would claim “Steadfast” as her surname and join New Harvest’s coastguard under Captain Barley.

*

Meanwhile BB-8 had slipped through and started sabotaging the flak. He was done already when Hux and the others arrived. Looking for a means to send a signal to Poe on the next island, the droid launched the TIE-echelon model he was still holding onto into the air. In retrospect Hux wanted to believe that it had indeed been the toy, and not the burning flak, that had told the rebels that they could approach safely now. It would have constituted a nice callback to the morning they had met and when Finn had started to tear down the walls between the members of his old world and his new home.

“The rebels are coming!” Perkins announced. She furrowed her brows. “In a… ship of sorts.”

Eightball jumped off the raft first, before it had made landfall, but he miscalculated the distances and landed in the water. The waves carried the lightweight droid to the shore, where BB-8 greeted him probe-to-probe.

“That’s our field medic”, Hux told the colonists. “Aptly named Eightball.”

In Eightball’s wake the humans set foot onto the island now. Ben was missing, Hux noticed, but Rey didn’t act like someone who had just lost her second half. As one half of the force dyad, Rey he was astutely aware of Ben’s location and condition, so if she didn’t look distressed in the slightest, he had to be well, albeit far away. And wasn’t that the best outcome, Hux wondered?

Finn playfully elbowed him. “You bastard already prepared the victory feast?”

“Huh? – Oh!”

Only now did Hux once again register the enticing smell of roast pig in the salty air. Somewhere on the opposite side of the wreck the droid was still operating the grill…

“Only the best for…” Hux started a reply, but then Barley and Maggie shouted “Incoming!” in unison and everyone raised their heads into the sky, where a freighter had appeared. It must have broken free from the battle in orbit, or maybe that battle was already decided and what was left of the Dominance would come crashing down in the next few days.

“It’s the Falcon! The Millenium Falcon!” Poe cried. “It’s been an eternity…”

After having circled the island once, the freighter set down on one of the few spots on the island that was neither covered by forest nor by dunes, a fair bit away from the wreck. Down the ramp came what Hux used to think of as “the hairy thing and the vintage droid duo”, and right in front strode Lando Calrissian. In his bright yellow shirt and with his cloak flapping in the wind he looked not unlike a conqueror setting foot onto a newly occupied territory.

Finn and the others dashed towards the arrivals, with Hux remaining behind.

“I am Chancellor Calrissian of the New Republic”, the former administrator, former General and very definitely still active rogue announced himself to the crowd. He looked around for a certain familiar face among the colonists and then addressed him: “And if that isn’t our General Hux lookalike!”

Those colonists who were familiar with the name chuckled, but most were just confused until the joke got explained to them by their more informed brethren: “You see, there is this General, a member of High Command, and he’s bad news, and he is a ginger same as Cycen, so… Ey, you’re right. It’s a tasteless joke based on a rare hair color.”

Cycen’s lips were pressed shut as he stood there, one hand on his back and the other loosely holding his blaster rifle over one shoulder. His coat and boots were thankfully covering up the fact that he was wearing no trousers or pants whatsoever…

“As the highest ranking First Order officer present and accountable”, Cycen said, as if playing along with a joke at his expense, but in truth being very much serious, “I hereby surrender Steadfast Island as well as what’s left of the ship itself to the Resistance. Unconditionally.”

“Your weapon, General.”

“Let’s not take the joke too far!”

Lando studied the enemy for a couple of seconds before he said: “Hm.”

Then he looked around, from one rescued rebel to the other. Finn, Poe, Rose and to some extent even Rey seemed to silently vouch for the defector, at the very least nothing in their faces seemed to indicate that he’d be likely to blow the Falcon up in the next ten minutes. And neither did Hux’ stance or mimic betray anything along those lines.

“Debriefing in the Falcon”, Lando ordered and only now did Hux break from the colonists and “rejoined” his “fellow Resistance members”.

“First a shower and a tea”, he said, while he was still within earshot of the civilians and could use his heroic rebel commander image to his advantage.

“Take ten minutes”, Lando said. “In the meantime can anybody fill me in on what exactly happened here?”

*

When Hux left the shower eight minutes later, Poe was already waiting for him with an assortment of fresh clothes. “I scrounged what I could, hope some pieces at least will fit”, he commented.

Hux reluctantly accepted an undershirt that seemed to be his size. For all he knew it could be anybody’s, up to and including late Han Solo’s. But even the consideration of the previous owner aside, after his sickly childhood Hux in the present was standing shorter than his father or Ben, but taller than pretty much anybody else he interacted with. His best hope was for the pre-owned clothing items being worn out enough to fit. It was utterly undignified, but an improvement over… what had happened on Steadfast Island.

“You just had to shoot up like a mushroom on that rainy home world of yours to make this difficult for me, had you?” Poe teased.

“How did you know I needed new clothes?”

“Pryde’s broadcast. I screamed in rage when I saw, but I couldn’t look away, either. It might have been the last time I saw you alive.”

When his lover’s eyes slowly widened at the realization that the footage taken at the tree had went through, after all, Poe made haste to grab his Ember’s hands.

“I know, I know! I fucking know you’re mad at me now, but I couldn’t just walk into Pryde’s trap! The Resistance is more important than either of us and more important than us being together! The galaxy… It’s not in a good shape these days.”

“That’s now why… You SAW? But if you did, how come…”

Hux looked downwards. There were their hands and they were touching. Poe even intensified his grip instead of shying away.

“It’s not as if toilet breaks were a thing when I got interrogated on the Finalizer, you know?” the pilot reminded his partner. “The prospect of having an accident scared me. In fact, I was so afraid of making a puddle, that it distracted me from the fear of spilling information to the enemy.”

But then Finn had broken Poe out, of course, so neither fear had come true.

“Don’t beat yourself up for things beyond your control!” Poe said. “You have enough real shit that you should dedicate that remorse to.”

There was stunned silence, followed by Poe taking initiative. Hux found himself locked in a tight embrace, lips met lips, and for a split second he opened his mouth, but then he pulled back from Poe. This wasn’t the time for intimacy. Right now tongues should be strictly for speaking only.

“Yeah, I know, bad timing”, Poe agreed with an apologetic grin. “But I can’t help it. Even before New Harvest, looking back it’s mind blowing how often my plans how to beat the First Order revolved around specifically beating you. I didn’t just hit my head and started feeling weird things, this attraction kicked in much earlier as I know now.”

“Confession time, huh? When I took out the execution squad, I shot the trooper aiming at your head first. And I didn’t understand why, because I could have waited a tiny moment, let them kill you and only then drop them. Two rebels returning to your base would have been sufficient to keep the Resistance going. But there I was, bound to you in an inexplicable way. You make me act irrationally and I… like that.”

*

There was a glaring absence of tea, when the duo joined the debriefing. Gathered around the Falcon’s Dejarik table were the veterans of the Alliance, the young Resistance leaders and the droids, but also Captain Barley, Maggie and Sam. The latter two smiled at the arrivals, but Barley flared up the moment he beheld the duo and it was hard to determine whether he was angry at Hux, Poe or both:

“You fucking liar! Did you have fun leading me by the nose?”

Maggie nudged him, trying to say something, only to get barked at: “You knew, too! You could have said a word!”

“When exactly should she have done that?” Eightball flared up. “Right in front of Miss Perkins, so that she’d lost all will to live from her hero getting exposed as a genocidal narcissist?”

Getting reprimanded by a droid, and nobody finding a machine speak up so boldly odd, momentarily silenced Barley. Even though they were on the same side, he realized, the cultural differences between a First Order colonist and the guardians of the New Republic were still significant. But in time New Harvest would express the best of both, that the Captain wanted to dedicate his waking hours to.

Lando looked up at the arrivals: “Take seats.”

Poe nodded and moved towards a folding chair, Hux, however, remained standing in place.

“Sorry we’re late”, he said.

“By, what? Thirty seconds?”

“Late is late.”

And I want you to know that it wasn’t intentional, because if it was, what reason would you have to trust me in anything else I’m going to say in this meeting, is that so hard to understand?

Poe pulled Hux into a seat next to himself, hissing “Oh, c’mon!”. This meeting wasn’t starting on the best terms and the unfamiliar peasant clothes didn’t exactly do the defector’s confidence a favor. If he was looking like anything other than a travelling daytaller in the formerly white shirt and the brown trousers, then that was like a scoundrel. Poe had also found a red coat with blue pauldrons, but Hux hadn’t been willing to wear that in public.
Tense moments seemed to stretch into an eternity before Lando eventually took the word:

“Jet already told me the gist of this Hux/Cycen situation and we just discussed it again in your absence. Rey told us you’re a builder, so in acknowledgement of your feeding us intel for a year and warning us about the emperor’s re-emergence…”

“Somehow, Palpatine has returned! That’s a classic”, the usually serious Rey chimed in with a smirk.

“Just my luck, to get remembered for that line…” Hux muttered.

“Moreso, when you were on your own for a day, you acted remarkably in line with how any other Resistance member would have acted. I’m inclined to believe that you are no longer an enemy… although part of me wishes you were and that we could just point a blaster at your stubborn head and be done with you.”

“Oh, don’t worry”, Finn said with a grim expression. “You’re not alone in that!”

“We – and that includes Captain Barley here - are willing to leave New Harvest to you to build up again and develop as a membership candidate world of the New Republic”, Lando concluded.

“So, exile?”

“Pretty much, yes.”

“Sounds… fair. But I have to decline.”

The salt-filled air streaming in had noticeably refreshed the room. Hux couldn’t see, but clearly picture the cliffs and the beach with all the tiny pebbles and broken seashells and the sandpipers leaving straight lines of footprints in the sand as they raced across the beach without any care in the world (except for finding food and not ending up as food themselves). The mental image invoked memories of his journey across the ocean with the speed boat, but also of the tree and so he spoke up:

“I can’t bring back the victims of Starkiller base. I don’t even wish I could. But what happened on this island… I swear it will never happen again! Not to me, not to anybody. I won’t let them!”

Only now did the man realize that he had not just made a fist and raised his arm, but specifically pointed that fist at his conversation partner, despite the gesture not having been meant for Calrissian. He quickly withdrew his hand and sat straight again.

“If that’s good enough for you, then consider me yours. If you tell me to kill, the target is dead by any means you can condone. If you say stay your hand, I will do that without any arguments.”

“What in the Force happened here?” Lando sputtered. “It sounds hitherto unrecorded levels of terrible.”

“(What always happens when the First Order takes someone prisoner)”, Chewbacca growled. “(Only this time he found himself at the receiving end of it.)”

“Always… and First Order”, Hux murmured. “Sorry, to me it sounded as if you just said “Hail the First Order, may it reign forever”, and I know that can’t be correct.”

“Where the heck did YOU pick up Shyriiwook?” Rey exclaimed. “You called him a beast no two weeks ago!”

“In a prison workshop, where we had to assemble toy sets. Finn said the Wookies were depicted all wrong. It really seemed to get to him.”

Chewbacca grabbed Finn and affectionally hugged him, but instead of wincing, the soldier relaxed immediately and leaned into the Wookie’s embrace. It felt so good not to be isolated anymore, to be connected to the whole Resistance and in extension to the people of the galaxy again.

“Anyway”, Hux spoke on, “I was bored and studied the supplemental material the toy sets came with. In writing those growls come across differently. I saw the structure in the language, stuff I hadn’t been able to pick up from getting growled at. At one point the text mentioned the you have fifteen words for violence. On first glance that paints you as barbarians that enjoy violence, but what it really means is that you think a lot about the circumstances violence occurs in, to a far greater degree than humans. So, the opposite of barbarians, actually.”

A large, furred hand reached towards the humans head. Hux winced, then the realized that the Wookie was aiming too high to slap him and the next moment he found his already out of shape hair getting ruffled even more, accompanied by a single growl. Finn was pretty certain it was one of the fifteen words for violence, something along the lines of Hux having needed some “educational violence” to get his perspective in order. That he had needed a kick in the backside or something.

“(I do find it worrying that Hux was only able to view a non-human as a person after he learned of their species’ intellectual accomplishments)”, Chewie admitted to his friends. “(That would leave a lot of individuals in the ditch.)”

Seeing Lando chuckle, it dawned Rey that the Wookie must have alluded to the still so very much missed Han Solo. Chewie was also pretty certain that he, as a, however accomplished, mechanic, would not have met Hux’ standards for personhood had they met in the wild on a neutral planet. A clever work animal at best.

“(Tell you what, I’m willing to take my chances with the rat)”, Chebacca went on. “(If only because if we reject him now, he might take a turn for the worse again the moment we take our eyes off New Harvest.)”

Lando nodded thoughtfully.

At this point of the discussion the patience Hux prided himself in was worn thin and he interrupted the veterans:

“Seriously, you can’t go on like this, camping in the woods, only ever having a roof over your head when the First Order captures you. You need me.”

“Aren’t you a charmer?”

“You know I’m right... Chancellor.”

“You almost choked on that title, didn’t you? Alright, let no one say we shied away from a challenge. We’ll see how sincere you are in… at worst a couple of hours, I’d say.”

“I don’t have a good track record when it comes to my relations to political leaders, so our animosity is pretty much par for the course”, Hux replied. “But you’ll find me a professional who can set aside such reservations.”

“Then you shouldn’t walk around looking like a thug”, Poe teased and flicked his partner his Resistance rank plate. “Here!”

No sooner than Hux having pinned it to his shirt, C-3PO spoke up: “Since he is with us now officially, I’d like the commander to fill out a standard interrogation protocol. He has lots of information to share and using the standardized forms would be a good start to organize it all.”

“The Resistance uses actual interrogation protocols?” Hux wondered out loud. “You don’t just ask the first thing that comes to mind?”

“Most, unfortunately, do exactly that”, the protocol droid admitted. “But, yes, of course we have protocols!”

Poe leaned over to Hux and whispered: “Never heard of that. Pretty sure he wrote them himself.”

Hux, however, rose from his seat and followed C-3PO to a computer station, stating: “I like how organized you are!”

“I should have known”, Maggie said. “Of the people in this room I probably know Hux the longest, but even I didn’t see this coming.”

“I mean, he never lacked friends, of course, but it’s good that now he has someone he can relate to?” Lando added, referring to Threepio.

It was rare for a protocol droid to get appreciated, and just when it had happened for once, new complications arose, casting the good feeling aside for the moment. The header of Threepio’s protocols already proved difficult to deal with. It said “Time, place and circumstances of capture”, trouble was, Hux hadn’t gotten captured by the Resistance, nor had he surrendered to it in any capacity. He had very definitely handed over Steadfast Island not even half an hour ago, but not his person.

Leaning over his lover’s chair’s back, Poe suggested: “Just skip this!”

Shocked mimic and body language on both the officer and the droid conveyed that, no, they couldn’t do that!

Eventually the trio agreed to use the moment Finn had forcefully abducted Hux from the prison infirmary and the subsequent sedating as a “capture”.

“Now he’ll want wartime captivity compensation for the, what was it? Ten hours?” Finn asked.

“We should be happy to pay that. It means we’ll have a working government body again”, C-3PO said.

“You will”, Hux promised. “A government, that is. It being working “again” falsely implies it was functional in the first place.”

But until then there was still a long way to go, starting with defeating the First Order for good. Hux estimated that this would give him enough time to prepare a variety of phrases for “Told you!” upon the, in his perception, inevitable collapse of the New-New Republic.

Chapter Text

After the debriefing (and with her belly filled with the roast pig from the victory meal), Rey sat on a dune and listened to the Force. It didn’t take long for her mundane vision to get overlayed by the dark of space… complete with the inevitable space battle.

A group of flying fortresses was approaching a small planet. On closer inspection these ships were harvesters, able to cut deep into a planet’s crust to extract minerals in record time, but with no regard to life on that planet’s surface. To prevent the nameless planet from meeting the same fate as Hays minor, an X-Wing squad was squaring off with the harvesters’ TIE-fighter escort. Nearby a First Order capital ship was hovering.

Now a second capital ship came into view, partially hidden behind the target planet. Drawing closer, Rey noticed droids swarming this ship’s weapon systems, intent on repairing them. The star destroyer looked battered… Wait, wasn’t that the Finalizer? So the First Order had reactivated her, and if they had felt the need to do this, their position in the galaxy couldn’t be too secure.

With that thought, Rey got pulled into the Finalizer’s bridge. She saw none other than Armitage Hux standing on the elevated platform where one would expect the commander. The strategist was intently focused on the monitors and diagrams, occasionally reporting to one “General Darklighter”, whom Rey had never heard of. Hux was wearing the dark blue, almost black, coat again and in his right hand held a juice pack with a plastic straw sticking out. The other hand was not on his back, though, but tucked into the commander’s belt.

So after all their efforts to save him from himself, Hux had returned to his original allegiance? Time couldn’t have been kind to him and his First Order, though, because Hux stance looked more like a pirate’s than an Admiral’s.

“Blue Seven – pull back”, Hux commanded, just when Rey had floated down to the floor. “Yellow Two and Four, likewise. Escort Jet into hangar.”

One visibly damaged TIE-defender, apparently the last survivor of its squad, bumbled backwards. At the same moment two of the X-Wings broke from their formation and fell in line with the TIE in distress. They didn’t attempt to finish it off, though, as Rey had expected, but merely kept close to it as all three moved towards the Finalizer.

Suddenly the alarm went on, and one of the scanner officers cried: “More enemies incoming! Two X-Wings! Uh… wait a moment?” The woman turned her head towards the commander.

“The fuck, Nines, get that in order!” Hux bellowed at a black BB-type astromech that was cruising the bridge. BB-9E sped down the ramp leading from the elevated command deck down into the right ditch, where the operators’ stations were. The droid inserted his connector into the scanner officer’s console and the next moment the “enemy” X-Wings got registered as allied units by the system.

Hux took a step forward, flicked a switch on the main control console and announced: “Yellow squadron return to hangar! Black Leader and Black Extra will take over from this point on.”

At these words two X-Wings, one with a black-orange and the other with black-white paint job, swooped in, past the battered TIE and the two X-Wings that were covering it, and into the fray.

“That’s Black Ten, for your information!” the pilot of the black-white X-Wing complained. Rey felt his identity in the Force even before she recognized the voice: This was Ben Solo, living his childhood dream of becoming a pilot rather than a Jedi. And Black Leader was, of course, Poe Dameron with BB-8.

Hux didn’t audibly reply to the protest. He simply raised the juice pack in a salute and now Rey saw that he was still wearing the Resistance rank plate, same as everyone on the Finalizer was sporting some kind of identifier that gave them away as rebels, be it their uniform, a pin or a ring. At the same time they all seemed to be intimately familiar with the First Order ship.

And now Rey understood: By the time this vision would become reality, a large enough number of First Order personnel had jumped ship, enough to staff a captured star destroyer.

As if to confirm this conclusion, now Finn reported in from the enemy capital ship, announcing to “Commander Cycen” that his boarding commando had secured the bridge. “All the spare parts you could wish for, ours for the taking”, Finn told Hux, and then the vision slowly faded out with a final image of Black Leader and Black Extra maneuvering between the harvesters. They must have disrupted the larger ships’ sensors, because in their attempts to avoid the X-Wings the harvesters crashed into each other. Ben and Poe escaped the collision unharmed.