The sight of a droid attempting to look under Kylo's bed while muttering to itself about the fact that Kylo's got a mass of at least 85 kilos, so there's no possible way he could be located under said bed, but that was the only place it hadn't looked, and it's not like a human can just magically disappear out of a stateroom with only one door in a moving starship, greets Kylo when he does, magically, appear back in his room.
He'd wondered if his body went with him, or if it stayed here and his mind filled in any and all blanks, but, apparently the answer is that he's… teleporting, or something.
At least this last time. Given that he's naked, save for the sand clinging to his skin from him rolling off the cloak when he heard his mother calling Rey's name, it's clear that he was really… wherever Rey was. Given that he could see the other members of the party, their ships, the moons, the plants, and everything else, apparently the Force trusted him to behave.
Given no one else saw him… Or heard them… Apparently, for once the Force was on his… their… side.
"C8."
Technically, droids cannot be startled unless they've been programmed for it. Nor can they be worried, scared, or any other of a slew of emotions. Kylo certainly requested that C8 come with a full compliment of tactical thought and analysis abilities, but he didn't want it to get too human, so it's not supposed to feel.
It still jerks up at the sound of his voice, and thought it doesn't exactly have expressions, it sounds surprised when it says, "My lord! Where were you?"
"I said I wasn't to be disturbed."
"You did, sir."
"Have we been attacked?"
"No, but you also, like every day, request breakfast at the tenth hour, and it is now ten minutes to the twelfth hour."
He smiles a little, pleased the Force gave them a long night, and figuring that's why, given how little sleep he got, he's not completely exhausted.
"Where were you, My Lord?"
He's not sure how to answer that.
"I'm not trying to be impertinent, but if there had been an attack, I would have had no way to inform you."
Kylo nods. "I'll make sure to keep some sort of comm device on me. As for where… Do you know anything about the Force?"
"Very little. It exists. Many people worship it. Some people are granted powers by it. You are one of them."
"That's good enough. I can use it to travel, and sometimes leave the ship. From now on, I'll make sure to have something so you can communicate with me if you need to. But only if it's an emergency. Anything short of a full blown attack, and you do not contact me if I'm not here."
"Thank you, sir."
Kylo nods. Then another thought hits. "C8, you are to repeat that to no one, ever. Unless you have my express permission, and I am present."
"Noted, sir. You have a meeting with your generals at the top of the hour. Would you like me to bring your food?"
"Yes." He looks at himself. "And lay out an outfit. I'll be ready shortly."
If there was ever a day Kylo would have liked more time for a shower, today is it.
Actually, what he'd really like is to be back on wherever they were, enjoying the sunrise, wrapped around Rey, wake up slowly, maybe go at it again, and then go back to sleep. Fucking until they can't stand anymore might not be a long-term life goal, but for a day or two…
Barring that, time to lay around in his own bed, let her scent linger on his skin, remember every touch and sound, play it all out, again and again in his own mind, would be an acceptable second.
As it is, he's got maybe ten minutes…
At least he doesn't have to get undressed. That sets a spike of fear through him. He's naked. Rey was on the beach, with his clothing, with the Resistance looking for her, and his mother who'd be able to tell who that clothing belongs to…
He lets his mind find hers, easier now than before. There's no visual link, but he can sense her, and she's not in distress. Maybe a little embarrassed, but no one is holding her at blaster-point cross examining her about the black boots and cloak.
That sends an idle thought through him as he flicks on the water, how startled would the Resistance be if he showed up naked with a flaming sword to fight at her back?
The idle thought goes cold… If they knew… Would they attack her to draw him out?
He exhales long and hard on that one, feeling the chill down his back as he steps into hot water.
A colder one arcs through him… Unless he felt it through his side, he'd never know. She wouldn't call for his aid. Not if it was a trap for him. One day he'd reach out, and there'd just be nothing. That makes him feel sick.
He closes his eyes and lets himself feel… She's… he doesn't know, talking maybe. Nothing bad. Nothing dangerous.
His fingers rise to where the token would be, if he were wearing it. A comforting thought slips into his mind, if she's there to balance him, as long as he's okay, nothing… too bad… can happen to her. A disconcerting thought goes with it, if that's true, the converse is as well, and if he wants to guarantee her safety, he has to take care of himself.
"All is as it should be, sir."
Kylo nods and takes a bite of his protein bar. It's… bland… maybe, sort of sweet. He's not sure what flavor it's supposed to be. It's 900 calories of mostly complete nutrition, and he gets three of them a day. To go with it, he has two tubes of vitamin mush. Between them, it's everything his body needs to keep going.
Supposedly they're manufactured off in… He doesn't actually know. Not on the Supremacy. They buy them by the ton, keep them in deep storage, and bring them out as needed. Each Stormtrooper is supposed to carry them on their person whenever they leave the ship.
There is a canteen. On a ship this size there are several of them. He could eat there.
There's a chef, too. Hand-picked by Snoke, because he could make… whatever it was Snoke liked. He and Snoke never shared a meal. Given the damage to his throat and face, Kylo's fairly sure that Snoke never ate in public, not wanting others to see him chew and swallow.
He sticks to the protein bars and mush these days, because he can go to where they store them, reach into one of the boxes, and grab them as needed. They could be poisoned, but anyone trying to take him out that way would have to be willing to poison an entire storage container of sealed food. Difficult, not very efficient, and high cost of collateral damage, low chance of success.
He still has C8 scan his food before he eats it.
But he does have C8 now.
So… he could… if he so desired… eat for pleasure. He tries to remember how long it's been since he's done that. Eating for the sake of enjoyment wasn't banned by Luke, but they all shared mess duty, and the food was about as good as you'd expect from a group of people who never learned how to cook beyond the most basic level of apply heat to food long enough to kill all of the germs. And since his rise as the Master of the Knights of Ren, he's stuck to packaged food he could pick at random, keeping the possibility of poisoning low. Strawberries with sweet cream, coffee with chocolate... Those were treats from his childhood.
Better yet, he could… probably… set a table with good things, and call a companion to come eat with him…
Just the idea of it makes him happy. Until he realizes that if he does that, he's very rapidly going to have people wondering who he's eating with.
Not that, then. He remembers the bits of the wedding he could see. The dark one and his… bride… probably, he thinks they were the ones getting married… were sharing a plate and cup.
New meaning to the term intimate dinner for two, but absolutely doable. He likes the idea of offering Rey nibbles of tasty things off his plate.
Still safer to eat wherever she is, though. If he goes to her, there's no chance of some idiot bursting in on them. But that doesn't mean they couldn't, at least occasionally, eat here. His door does have a lock on it, after all.
Kylo supposes he could find out where she is. Three moons, two suns, one green and one blue, oceans, mountains, atmosphere suitable to humans, somewhere the Falcon and more than a dozen other pieces of flying junk, half of which didn't have hyperspeed capability, could get to. Couldn't be more than a score of planets that fit that description. It wouldn't take him more than an hour or two to find it.
His city killers could be there in a few more minutes.
One strike and the Resistance would finally, fully, be done. One shot on the beach… he'd take them all out before they even knew he was hovering overhead.
Instead of shuddering victory, complete triumph, the idea leaves him feeling flat.
He pokes it a little. What if Rey weren't there? The idea still leaves him feeling flat.
He can imagine it, but what would be the point? No leader ever born was blessed with complete adherence to his rule. It's possible he's better off with a Resistance he knows inside and out, can predict, and by ignoring them, allow his less content subjects to spend their ire in directions that may be troublesome, but won't really hurt… If he's very lucky, they'll start attacking sympathetic targets, and make him look even better.
He supposes he should gather some of his more flexible troops, take them out of their uniforms, and set them in some out of the way cantinas and smugglers dens, and seed them into the Resistance, just to keep tabs on them.
Without having to use Rey to do it.
He's barely done thinking that before C8 says to him, "I'm getting a report from the accounting department, sir."
Kylo gestures letting him know he's interested, taking another bite of his bar.
"The R'Leahn system has refused to pay their quarterly taxes."
Kylo chews for another few seconds, thinking, before he asks, "Do you think they're very brave or very stupid?"
C8 debates for a moment. "I think they're testing you to see what happens. They know Starkiller is gone, and are likely feeling safe at the moment."
"Likely. Remove our presence from their system, all of it. Every ship, man, station, builder, get them all out. Cancel any contracts we have with anyone who is situated there. Send notice that anyone who does any business with anyone in the R'Leahn system will have their contracts cancelled in the next three days if they do not immediately remit their taxes in full."
Droids can't smile, and maybe it's Kylo just reading his own feelings onto C8, but he's got the feeling that he approves as he says, "Done, sir."
"Also… can you find me strawberries?"
C8's thinking. "Fresh or freeze dried?"
"Fresh."
More thinking, likely going through the Supremacy's manifests, figuring out when they're bringing on new supplies, and from where.
"Ten days, sir. I can have reconstituted frozen ones here in five minutes."
"I'll wait."
"How many?"
He hasn't eaten one in so long, he's actually not sure how many he wants. "Place a standing order for a kilo of them, for me, every time we get fresh produce from somewhere with strawberries."
"Noted, sir. Anything else?"
"Yes… Do we have chocolate on board?"
"Yes, sir. Your generals are gathering, sir."
Kylo puts down the bar, one bite left. He'll get to it later. "Then I shouldn't keep them waiting."
Unlike the last time he sat with his generals, listening to them talking about their sections of the galaxy, Kylo is actually paying attention.
And, unlike last time, this time they aren't just coming off of the tumult of battle. None of them have seen any active combat beyond mild, skirmish-level fighting in months.
He listens to how they're integrating new trainees, (Not too many, yet, but the flood is beginning.) where they're allocating their men, how they intend to integrate the planet killers, which are really starting to roll out of production. Two of them have noticed that several new models of their new transport ships do not appear to function properly. They fly, but if you push them at all, they just die, and float around space like an asteroid. Apparently they aren't quite up to spec.
Kylo makes a note of that, and tells C8 to have the manufacturers brought to him. He figures they cannot be nearly as difficult to persuade as bankers. A few moments of his displeasure should result in functional transports.
And if it doesn't… There's always another manufacturer.
And... he supposes he could move building them into his own organization... A few more moments of exuberant involuntary patriotism could solve many problems... That can wait for later. See how the first meeting goes. See if they can produce what they say they'll produce. If they can't... Then he'll take care of it.
None of his generals have any intelligence on the Resistance. It has, for the time being, gone to ground.
They are having some issues with raiders from the Unknown Regions. Apparently it's just as lawless and wild as it was when he joined Snoke there, using it as a place to hide out and build. And compared with the rest of the galaxy, it's his only main security concern.
Kylo brings up a map of the galaxy. "A trillion stars. More planets than anyone could possibly count." His ships, his planets, his bases glow bright green amid myriad dots spinning around over the conference room table. "Only a fool wants all of it." He gently touches the quadrant where most of his people are, expanding the view of it. Then he narrows it down, into quadrants again. "Anything outside of this section, we're pulling out of. 1.5 million troops to handle a billion planets is insanity. We're going to focus in on this area. Nine thousand systems,"
He looks to C8. "Sixty-eight thousand, nine hundred and eleven planets, sir."
"Is more than enough, for now. We can barely manage to even show ourselves regularly on all of them, let alone hold and protect them. I want to shift a tenth of our men to patrolling the border with the Unknown Regions. They can do whatever they like on the far side of the line, but any raider who crosses it will be destroyed without warning."
"How will we know legitimate traders?" One of his generals asks.
"They can register with us. Registered ships will have free travel. The ones who don't, won't."
"And the bases we're leaving?" Another general asks.
"Take everything we can move, and anyone who wants to come. I'm going to want fortification plans for where to move our troops to provide a better tactical base of the part of the galaxy we can hold. Say… a month to plan it, and then another month to implement it."
His generals look surprised. They probably expected him to want it done yesterday, if not the day before.
One of them, tentatively, says, "It can be done, sir, but it can be done better if we had more time…"
"How much more?"
They all look at each other, and the tentative one says, "I think an additional two weeks to gather up intelligence reports, so we can do a better job pinpointing what parts of the galaxy would most benefit from our outposts would do it."
Kylo nods at that. "Six weeks."
His generals nod, and he gives them their leave.
As they walk out, he lets his mind trickle through theirs. They're pleasantly surprised at how that went. Half of them are genuinely looking forward to what is going to happen next. Two are still planning on killing him when they get the chance, but they think consolidating first, and letting a decent number of the new recruits get into place, is a good plan.
He rolls his eyes at that. They'll let him do the hard work, and swoop in to take over, once the machine is functional.
As long as they get their parts up and running, he's not too worried. He'll finish them long before they move on him.
After all, he's motivated now to keep himself alive.
It occurs to him, once his generals are gone that perhaps, in the past, when certain members of their military have said, under their breaths, or when feeling ridiculously foolhardy, to his face, "Get fucked!" it might have actually been good advice.
He's thinking that was the most successful meeting he's ever had with his general staff.
Snoke didn't demand celibacy. But he tended to treat sex as an inexplicable weakness humans engage in from time to time. As such, he tolerated it, but didn't encourage it. He preferred they focus their passions elsewhere.
Luke did demand celibacy, seeing sex as being dangerously close to opening a door for the Dark side and inviting it in for tea. He knows that that was Luke, though, and not a requirement of the Jedi as a whole. And, seeing that the students at his school were, like Kylo, at most, twenty-two years old, and many were adolescents, that may have had more to do with their age and levels of personal control, than an ironclad rule for older Jedi. That didn't stop them from experimenting with themselves and each other, but it did do a good job of making them feel guilty and nervous about it, after.
Given the tenants of the Jedi faith, Kylo's not entirely sure how Jedi sex would work; serene, passionless sex of perfect harmony sounds boring to Kylo, if not outright impossible. But, probably some level of it was necessary to beat ignorance into oblivion.
He must have been smirking at that idea, because C8 rests his hand against Kylo's throat, fingertip just above the spot that throbs with his pulse.
"C8?"
"You are acting bizarrely. I'm checking to see if you've been poisoned."
Kylo raises an eyebrow.
"Your serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphin levels are high. Have you eaten or drunk anything besides the protein bar?"
"No, C8. What causes elevation of those chemicals in human males?"
"Certain anti-depressants, a few recreational pharmaceuticals—"
"Ones who didn't sleep in their own bed the night before?"
It takes a moment for C8 to understand that Kylo means sleep both literally and metaphorically, before he responds with, "Orgasm, sir."
"Exactly. And that is why you are not to mention my nocturnal wanderings to anyone without my express permission."
"Understood, sir." C8 thinks for a moment. "Would this also have something to do with your request for fresh strawberries?"
"Yes."
"Then I will not speak of that, beyond getting them for you."
"Good. Who's next?"
"I have located our uniform designer, and he is waiting for you."
"Bring him in."
It's not a long conversation. The designer is fairly young, about Kylo's age, and once he's sure that he's not about to have his head ripped off for some unintentional slight, he's very excited by the challenge of designing new uniforms for all sorts of species.
Changing their badges and marks of rank to indicate who a citizen is pleases him even more.
Through his years under Snoke, Kylo wasn't actually a member of the First Order. He was Order adjacent, which annoyed Hux to no end, and was likely why Snoke set it up that way.
All of that boils down to the fact that, never having worn a First Order uniform, Kylo's never paid any real attention to them.
The Designer is showing off the traditional badges, the white circle with sixteen rays on the hexagonal field of black. "We could give the circle an outline in red, that would be easily visible, but not so work intensive that we'd have to redo everyone's uniforms.
"Not red." Their flags are red, because Snoke liked it. As more and more time passes, Kylo's feeling less drawn to that color.
"Okay… Well…" He's thinking about it.
"Blue?" Kylo asks.
"Light blues will blend into the white too closely, dark blues will blend into the black."
Kylo figures that gray will have the same problem. "Silver?"
The Designer nods. "Silver we can certainly do. Something with a nice metallic sheen, that'll pop against the white and black."
Kylo nods at that. He spends another moment looking at their symbol. He's never paid much attention to it, but right now… "It looks like a toothy mouth about to devour everything in its path."
He feels a flash of fear from the Designer. He doesn't want to voice his own opinion of the symbol for fear of insulting Kylo, or Snoke's memory. "An apt metaphor, sir?"
Kylo mentally smirks at that. He says, "I'd like a mock-up of one with the rays extending all the way to the center."
The Designer doesn't immediately hate it, so there's something. "Can I ask what you're hoping to make people think of when they see this?"
"Moving forward. The past behind us, dead and buried. The future before us. Moving into it, fast, fearless."
"You want the rays to look like hyperspace?" The Designer has an idea of what Kylo's reaching for.
"At least give the idea of it."
The Designer nods. "I can do that."
"Good, how long for prototypes?"
"Two or three days."
That seems like a reasonable amount of time to Kylo. As he's thinking about that, another idea occurs to him. "Do you know what my mask looked like?"
"Yes, sir."
"I need another one."
The Designer has to think about that for a moment. "That will take longer. Two weeks?"
"Good. C8 will schedule times for your to show me what you've done."
The Designer knows he's been dismissed, and leaves.
A few minutes later, when C8's worked out the details, he joins Kylo. "What do you intend to do with the mask, sir?"
"Take it off. I've been Supreme Leader for more than six months, and have yet to take the time to stand up before my subjects and show myself. Most of them, even on this ship, have never seen my face."
"A coronation, sir?"
Kylo thinks about that. "In reverse. I was born to rule, C8, might as well get up and start doing it."
"I'll set it up."
"Thank you," It's out of his mouth before he's even thought of it, but it occurs to Kylo, that this is the first time he's thanked anyone, for anything, in decades.
More than that, he realizes he means it.