With its imperfect shape, three suns and sparse terrain, Domandari embodied planetary afterthought. Had a wayward merchant transporter not experienced solar overload and crashed there two generations before to discover its rich ore, Domandari would likely remain uninhabited today. As it was, the vast and largely untapped metal stores, endless days and easily defended flat plains made it an obvious target for military occupation. At this particular time, clouds scuttled across the tan sky, casting ominous shadows on the barren, strip-mined plateaus, distinguished only by zigzagging rail lines and carrier tracks.

The screams carried for leagues.

The officiating body of Domandarians, mostly claimholders and mineowners, had surrendered quickly, sensing an opportunity in the first wave of First Order assault landers. This was not their first visit by a galactic militant force, and all previous encounters had resulted in lucrative business for the neutral territory.

But the First Order did not make deals. The initial slaughter was over in short order, decimating the power structure of the planet's lopsided social hierarchy. Their masters gone, the slave majority fled the planet's lone city of Domandar, slipping away into the mines and caverns like water through sand. Continuously replenished by arriving ships, stormtroopers hunted the remaining population, rousting them and dragging them screaming from hiding.

In Domandar, a city of austere metal dwellings ringed by factories and centered around one larger metal meeting hall, the last citizens were being rounded up and imprisoned. Past the newly constructed execution stage, two stormtroopers led a creature between them the height and size of an average human, but with six arms and squat legs that struggled to match its captors' brisk pace. It was a Cacapon, neither male nor female, by the common language name of Gannis Ducain. A mineowner and weapons smuggler, Ducain was a gelatinous creature with pearlescent skin that reflected whatever material surrounded it. As the trio pushed through the doors to the great hall, the Cacapon's membranes shifted from the reddish tan of the Domandari surface to the dark gray of the building's unadorned walls.

At the far end of the vast meeting space, on the low platform containing the council's table, General Hux was scanning a map of the plains with Captain Phasma. The map was constantly evolving, being updated in real time by the scouts dispatched across the planet.

Hux straightened as the stormtroopers approached and looked the prisoner up and down. "This is the one who asked to see me?"

One trooper replied, "Yes, General."

"Very well." Hux dropped into a chair. "You promised valuable intelligence?" he inquired disinterestedly, studying the holograph board in his hand. Ducain was not the first to plea for exception.

"Yes," Ducain replied quickly. "In exchange for a certain...autonomy not given my fellow Domandarians."

"What is this information pertaining?"

The eager Cacapon licked its lips. "Rumor is that you seek a certain ship. That its location is very valuable to the First Order."

Hux blinked slowly, bored. "What kind of ship?"

"A Corellian YT-1300 light freighter," Ducain announced with a sneer.

"A Corellian freighter?" Hux's lip peeled back in disgust. "Sounds like a piece of junk. Take him, er, it to the-" he began to command when a voice spoke.

"What's the name?"

From behind General Hux's seat, Kylo Ren stepped forward, leading slightly with one shoulder, a bit stooped. Ducain stared at Ren's menacing visage, speechless.

His voice mechanically enhanced by his mask, unnaturally resonant, Ren repeated slowly, "What's. The ship's. Name."

Ducain's bravado had disappeared. But its eagerness returned in force. "The Millennium Falcon."

A long pause followed these words, as they echoed gently in the vast space, then Kylo turned very slightly toward General Hux. "Grant it everything it asks."

Hux straightened, supremely annoyed, but studied Kylo Ren for only a moment to know he shouldn't argue. "Very well," he conceded unhappily, with a terse nod at the troopers holding Ducain. They released their grip and stepped back.

Ducain licked already wet lips. "I was at one time an owner of the Millennium Falcon, and found the need to imbed a hidden relay on board, knowing one day a certain previous owner would come looking for it and might steal it back-"

"How do I find it?" Kylo Ren interrupted, radiating intensity despite the fact that he remained perfectly still.

Ducain eyed him warily for a moment, then withdrew a small device from a fold of skin. Kylo strode over, Ducain cowered, Kylo took the device from his extended extremity. He studied it for a long minute. The hall looked on in complete silence.

To the device, Kylo said, "This will lead me to the Falcon?"

Ducain's head jiggled a semblance of a nod.

Kylo spun away, marching back toward the dais. "Kill it," he said simply as he passed Phasma on the way to the rear door. Hux sputtered, leaping up to follow Kylo as Phasma stepped down and gestured to the troopers guarding Ducain.

"Now listen here, Ren!" Hux demanded, over the cries and pleas from the Cacapon in the hall. "You cannot make a liar of me!" Kylo kept walking. "Ren!" Hux shouted.

Kylo stopped, turned his blank mask back toward Hux, who came to an incensed stop in front of him. "If you kill every pathetic soul I grant clemency to I lose my credibility! My ability to get information!"

Holding up the relay device, Kylo said darkly, "She has to be here. This is where I get my retribution."

Hux sputtered anew, looking from the device to Kylo's mask, which tilted to face Hux fully.

"And I sense she's with Skywalker."

He turned and continued marching down the corridor.

Hux found his voice at last and shouted after him, "She?"

Black cape sweeping the wall as if desperate for a fingerhold, Kylo Ren turned the corner and disappeared.