Hux wasn't entirely sure why he was marching through a deserted enemy ship. Evidently, his troopers couldn't handle getting someone to open a door on their own. He'd always had the utmost faith in his men… he'd seen to it that they were expertly trained. But this… this was a little ridiculous.

He took the route the troopers had indicated in their communication with him, locating the proper room aboard the foreign ship. It was vital for his career that this mission went off smoothly. And right now nothing was going smoothly.

He found the room and strode in, his shoulders pinched back. "What seems to be the issue here?"

Two troopers were in the room, with a grotesquely messy desk littered with trinkets and papers behind them. The desk held three large screens that blocked his view, but he could just barely see there was someone sitting on the other side.

"Sir?"

Hux stopped. He didn't like that tone. It wasn't a "Sir" like he was used to getting upon entering a room. It was a question. Like they weren't expecting him.

"Yes? You called?"

The troopers looked at each other, then back at Hux. "No sir, I'm afraid we didn't."

"Well it must have been one of the others then. I was told you have a captive who's unwilling to assist…"

"We do have a captive, sir, but we haven't seen anyone else in some time. Nobody else knows."

Hux frowned. "Who do you have back there?" He went to the desk and peered over the blueish glow of the screens. It was a young woman, very slight with pale skin and frizzy black hair hanging over her face. His men had her arms bound behind her, so she couldn't touch the computer before her.

She gave him a toothy grin through the hair. "Well hello. You must be the one in charge."

The door behind him slammed shut. It was the only exit.

Hux realized, with a sinking feeling, that he had been terribly duped. He bit his lip to keep from cursing. "My troopers didn't call me, did they?"

She smiled triumphantly.

He huffed and looked at the two troopers, "How long have you had her bound? Clearly she's some sort of tech controller, she has access to the ship's door control systems."

The troopers slowly realized the situation. Or at least, they knew enough to realize they were all locked in this room against their will. One managed to gather himself enough to speak, "Sir, we bound her arms as soon as we found her. She can't have touched a thing…"

Hux glowered down at the woman, who was smiling in the most obnoxiously nonchalant manner. "You may think you're terribly clever, but you will regret this action. The First Order will send people to retrieve us shortly, and you will suffer the punishment of kidnapping an officer…"

"Hm… The First Order? I think I've heard of your organization."

The most irritating thing, aside from her constant grinning, was her complete refusal to look at him. She was gazing downward, so much so that her lids covered her eyes from this angle. He crouched down to eyelevel. He wanted her to look at him - to see his face. "You may have. We are not known for being incredibly merciful. If you place any value on your life, you will let us out of here right now."

Her eyes were large and dark, still downcast, obscured partially by her frizzy hair and partially by her long eyelashes. "Mmm… That is a good tactic, but there is not much you could do to scare me."

In the silence, he heard a faint, technological whur.

He grabbed her chin and pulled it upward, standing straight again and brushing the hair from her face. He wasn't sure how he hadn't suspected it earlier – she looked up at him with pure black orbs where her eyes should be. She was a little peculiar looking – her eye sockets almost appeared to be empty, rimmed finely with black and red, like she'd been crying or, more likely, like they were irritated by the poor quality of the ocular implants.

He'd heard of this before. In these parts high powered smugglers - like the one they were after - often took their tech-savvy slaves and replaced their eyes with bionic implants. For a moment, he almost felt bad for her. Nobody would choose such a thing willingly. But at the same time, he really didn't feel at all bad for her. She was clearly working to disrupt his mission.

He heard the whirring again and dropped her chin, turning to his men. "Her eyes are bionic. You haven't just found a tech controller, you've found the tech controller for this entire ship." He glanced to her. She was still smiling.

"Oh. The officer's a quick one, isn't he?"

He glared at her, "You're clearly a slave. They have you chained to your chair and your implants are cheap – they look infected. And I can hear them work. Help us and we'll free you from their control."

She snorted, "Oh. What a nice thought."

This was really something he excelled at – negotiation. He crossed his arms behind his back, "What's your name?"

"What use would that be to you?"

"It might be nice if I had something to address you by."

Her lids blinked over the eerie black orbs a few times. "Oni."

"Oni. You are a slave, correct?"

"If that is what you want to call it."

"Well you clearly aren't here by choice if they have you chained down."

"Well, yes then I suppose that is the correct word."

"The rims of your eyes are red, they must be infected."

She shifted a little when he said this, some hair falling in front of her eyes again. She was uncomfortable with the ocular implants. He wondered how long she'd had them. "We can offer help, if you cooperate."

"They are not infected." She snipped defensively.

"Do you enjoy being employed by the people that did this to you?"

"Did I say my employers are the ones that did this to me?"

"Listen, tell me what you want and we'll see what we can work out."

She blinked again, her head shifting oddly. "They didn't do this to me. My last owners did it to me. These ones paid good money to get me with these eyes." She frowned, "At least I think it was good money. I hope it was." She shrugged, "I mean if you're going to be sold you should at least hope to go for a high price, right?"

He opened his mouth to snap a reply, to bring her back to the real issue here, when she cut him off.

"What is your name?"

"Commander Hux."

"Ah, I know a thing or two about military forces. Your first name is not Commander."

"My first name is irrelevant at the moment…" In all honesty, he hated his first name and avoided giving it out at all costs.

"Is it? Fine then. So tell me, Commander, how many of your men are on this ship?"

He frowned at her.

"I count 20, plus your pilot."

It took him a moment to realize: "Your eyes are connected to the ship's cameras?"

She gave a short nod.

"How can you see our pilot?" There was no way for her to have accessed their ship's cameras…

"That's none of your business. Tell me about this… this Order of yours."

"Why should I give you any information about us when you won't give us any about our situation?"

Her eyes whirred. "That's fair. Your mission is a dud."

Hux frowned. He was already coming to that conclusion on his own, but he really didn't appreciate her confirming his suspicions.

She shook her head quickly, her frizzy hair bouncing, "By that, I mean the man I suspect you are looking for is not on this ship."

"Who do you suspect we're looking for?"

"That's not how this is working, Commander. Answer my question."

"We are an organization for the enforcement of order throughout the Unknown Regions…"

"With a very aptly chosen name."

He glared at her as her eyes whirred once more. He wondered what she was using them for. Maybe she was having issues focusing on him. "Will your men let my hands free?"

"No."

She tilted her head. "I trapped you here without the use of my hands. What are you afraid I will do with them? I can't leave this chair."

This was a good point.

"It's also a bit uncomfortable." She squinted and leaned toward him, "Plus, how do you expect me to trust you enough to let you go if you do not trust me enough to let me use my hands?"

He nodded to one of the troopers, "Let her hands loose."

She smiled widely as the man untied her, bringing her hands in front of her and rubbing her wrists, stretching her shoulders. "Thank you."

He hadn't noticed with her hands behind her, but her wrists had been cuffed by her owner, with wide, metal cuffs. The skin underneath was red and sore looking, not from his men's binding but from the wide cuffs her owner likely forced her to wear for a very long time.

"Who do you think we're after?"

She frowned. "I assume the man who owns me. Zed Noonga."

This was correct. He wasn't sure if he should let her know that though. "And why would we be after this individual?"

"Now that," She leaned forward on the desk, resting her chin in her hand and absentmindedly moving the paper figurines around her desk with the other, "I would know nothing of. But guessing by his line of work, I'd say he probably took something that belonged to you. It's my turn for a question."

Hux didn't appreciate the game at the moment – she didn't seem to realize that she had a very short amount of time before their backup appeared and she would be carted off to the First Order prisons, at which point she'd likely never be seen again. "Very well. I hope you realize you are running out of time to save yourself…"

"It has been a very long time since I heard an accent like yours. Are you an old Imperial?"

"No." Such an odd question. "No, I was quite young when the Empire fell, though my father was a member." He wasn't entirely sure why he threw that last part in. It was none of her business who his father was.

"Oh? You're young?" Her eyes whirred again.

He looked at her. Could she not tell? It was blatantly, painfully obvious. He'd had it pointed out to him numerous times by both superiors and subordinates. To make matters worse, he seemed to have a somewhat… youthful looking face. Out of uniform, he'd been mistaken for an academy student more than once.

It slowly occurred to him that the implants must have been very low-grade; they weren't even capable of capturing images. "You can't see, can you?"

"Oh, yes I can see." She tapped her temple, "Just not like you can. It's a thermographic feedback."

"Whoever did that to you must be incredibly cheap. It doesn't cost that much more to add regular vision capabilities."

He caught exactly what he'd been looking for: her grin faltered a little. "Yes, well, that wasn't an intended use for them. If nothing else, it was efficient."

"Let us out of here and we can get you something upgraded. You'd like to be able to see again, wouldn't you?"

She simply ignored his question. "I'm curious to know more about your organization, Commander. You said your father was an Imperial? Is that what this organization you belong to is? Old Imperials cobbling together something akin to the Empire?"

"We're quite different from the Empire. While we take a great many queues from their successes, our organization is built slightly more… efficiently, I believe. But yes, we do have a great deal of leaders that survived the fall of the Empire."

Suddenly, there was banging on the door behind them. He could hear shouting – it was his men. The others aboard had finally located him. "Sir! Sir, stand back from the door! We're going to blast through!"

He looked back at the woman. "This is your last chance, Oni. Consider your next move carefully."

She tapped the desk with her fingers, gazing at him with the shiny black, dreamy orbs, "If I were to open that door, what would you do?" She paused, tapping the desk again, echoing him, "Consider your answer carefully, Commander."

There was a brief silence, during which she tapped the desk in the most infuriating manner. He looked at her hand and saw she'd rearranged all the paper figurines – four little reptilian figures were grouped close to her on a small square pad. Just off the pad are 15 other figures. And surrounding them, quite deliberately placed, were maybe 50 others.

He looked up at her. They were being listened to. And they were surrounded. He couldn't say anything.

"You can trust that I will make the best decision possible to protect my troopers."

The door flew open behind them and he turned quickly, shouting to his troopers to hurry in. They were caught off guard and hesitated for just a moment, until the blaster shots began to rain down on them. Those that could rushed inside, dragging the few that were injured by the shots into the room.

Just as quickly as the door opened, it slammed shut again.

He counted: They'd all made it into the room. Four were injured in the brief gunfire, one quite badly with a shot to the ribs. The team medic was assisting him.

There was a pounding at the door. The people firing upon them were trying to break their way in.

"I have this. Don't worry." She said in a nearly hypnotic, calm tone. Her eyes were closed, her head tilted back. She looked almost peaceful.

It was mildly irritating, considering the door was starting to cave inward.

"If you have a plan, you'd best execute it soon…"

"Tell your men to take cover."

He looked back to them, "You heard her. Do it. Now."

They scrambled to take cover where they could – there wasn't much to work with in the room. They tipped a table and crammed several there, and a few fit in various little crevices in the walls. The rest gathered behind her desk. He crouched next to her chair.

"What are you planning? You should be down here with us…" Just as he finished, there was another loud noise outside the door, this one deafening. He grabbed her just in time, pulling her onto the floor as the door flew off its hinges and embedded itself into the wall behind them.

His ears were left ringing as he barked orders at his men to go check for any survivors. His men all had helmets with noise-control protections. No doubt he'd have to visit a medic to fix his ears.

She was squirming on the floor next to him, tangled awkwardly with the chair and her chains. One of his men was in his face, saying something. At least, Hux assumed he was saying something. He couldn't hear anything over the ringing. He told the man he was fine - take care of the girl. He was fairly certain he shouted his response.

A few troopers worked to cut her restraints – it was the best they could do for now. The cuffs needed to be cut off with a more specialized instrument to avoid hurting her. The medic, a close friend of his by the name of Sebbie Arim, came to his side, dripping some sort of bacta-based healing agent in his ears. Moments later, his hearing returned to normal.

She was sitting on the floor next to him, her legs splayed out before her in a V, black eyes blinking blankly. She made odd little noises, poking at her ears.

Sebbie used some of the same solution on her, though he had to work at it a bit – with her lack of vision and hearing, she was leery of having anyone touch her. He finally managed to get some into her ear; as soon as the healing effect took hold she started to calm down.

"Oh. That's quite nice. I was worried I'd have lost my hearing as well."

Hux stood and surveyed the room. Aside from the door imbedded in the wall, most everything was charred or melted, and the entry way was no longer door-shaped but rather just hole-shaped. Whatever explosion she had caused, it was powerful.

"Has anyone checked for our ship?" He asked the first in command of the troopers.

"Your ship is fine." She pushed herself upright uneasily, leaning against the remains of the desk. "It parted from this ship just before your men were surrounded. I saw to it."

He looked at the empty-eyed woman for a moment. "How?"

She blinked. "The same way I got you here."

"That was… a false message?"

She tilted her head, "Had you not figured that out yet?"

He looked at her bazaar, smiling face for a moment then turned to the first in command. "Bring her aboard our ship for further questioning."

"Yes, sir. If I may ask… under what context?"

It was an excellent question. On one hand, she deceived an officer into an incredibly dangerous situation and easily could have gotten him killed. On the other, she had saved all their lives.

He looked at her. She smiled.

He shook his head, not entirely sure he was giving the right answer. "As an ally. Captain Arim, take her to the med bay to look over any injuries right away."

"Yes, sir."

He didn't even want to think about the mountain of reports he'd have to file for this incident.