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The Enforcer - Day 19, Part 4

His adversary was charging, feet crushing the snow as he raised the blue lightsaber, teeth clenched, and a war cry on his lips.

"Your other Knight, Nephys, sent me," Calrissian's words echoed between the trees that existed only in Kylo's mind, their urgency rippling through the Force as Kylo, snow falling around him, deflected a first blow—high to his throat—then a second lower one, clearly meant to cripple his right leg. "There have been some developments in your absence he wishes you to be informed of."

A third blow, testing, as Kylo started to advance, the same onslaught of information that had hit him as he was approached by Calrissian some hours prior still clamoring mercilessly through his mind, mingling side by side with his memory of the events on Starkiller. His opponent closed both his hands over the lightsaber's hilt, determination written on his face as he raised it, crashing it against the red saber. Once. Twice.

Nothing—absolutely nothing—of which he had been informed had come as a surprise. He had known them to be here—his bloody guard dogs—but to have confirmation come from FN-2187 of all people was unanticipated. He wasn't expecting any sort of cooperation from him and to have it after just six bloody days was too sudden a change—too suitable a development—not to raise his suspicions.

Their weapons crashed, engaging in a series of rapid blows as his adversary was forced to fall back, stumbling over the snow, momentarily unbalanced.

Creative, clever, top of the FN Corps since their introduction, a model soldier—Kylo remembered every word he had read as he closed both his hands over the hilt, swinging it with such violence his adversary crashed to the frozen forest floor. It probably spoke for itself that rather than just listing FN-2187 many splendid qualities, Phasma had attached a note next to his scores that spoke of, if not actual pride, then at least some sort of ill disguised satisfaction: the Captain's own training scores, red circles noting every single instance in which she had been matched or came close to being matched.

The man jumped to his feet, his next attacks surprisingly clumsy, cutting through nothing but air as Kylo easily evaded them, the recollection of a short note under "Tactics"—a third score clearly identified as "Armitage" that seemed to indicate that a nineteen year old Hux had given his evaluators a severe group migraine during testing and forced them to mark over top grade—made him clench his teeth in exasperation as he raised his saber, swinging it in a series of rapid blows as his adversary staggered back.

Was it some fleeting semblance of clairvoyance that had kept Phasma from going around noting every single one of Hux's damned achievements side by side with those of FN-2187's? Because, frankly, Kylo doubted he—or the display he was reading, for that matter—were going to survive much more of this glowing monstrosity of an evaluation.

And then, of course, he reached the final notes, penned personally by Phasma's sharp hand.

"Prone to let empathy interfere with his actions.

In need of experience outside of simulations.

Signaled for officer's training."

An officer. A bloody officer!

The red blade roared, cutting through the air, failing to hit his adversary's neck by inches.

He had doubted Phasma's assessment was true after FN-2187's initial desertion. He remembered FN-2187 as he had been on Jakku: frozen in the middle of a battle, grappling with something dangerously close to a panic attack, his mind consumed by the death around him as he stood unable to breathe, unable to fight or even to avenge his fallen friend. Panic and grief had made his mind transparent and desertion had been at the forefront of it. He had wished to run, to put a galaxy between him and the Order, to never look back, and Kylo should have executed him just for thinking it. Instead he had stood on the other side of the battlefield and hesitated. He had let him live and held his silence.

Why?

Their weapons crashed, the blows unbalancing his adversary enough that he ended up trapped against a tree, weapons locked.

Had that been done in pity?

Burning flesh, a scream, and then a vicious blow, aimed to kill.

Had his own weakness swayed his hand when he should have swung, or had he simply not cared enough to act?

The red saber cut through a tree, his adversary diving under the blade, rapidly moving away from him, feet sinking into the snow as he tried to regain his balance.

Did it even matter when the next time he had seen the traitor, FN-2187 had discovered that there was strength to be found in fear and dared use it against him?

A strong blow, desperate, but still carefully aimed. It hit his shoulder, the burning pain waking something that had been dormant as he turned, snarling.

If he only could have taken pleasure in the final moments of their confrontation, in the brutality it allowed him to display. As much as he hated him, however, it all remained the same. It gave him no pleasure to replay it all. In the end he had, incomprehensibly, found himself sparing him again in his mind's eye, his only wish as he disarmed the former stormtrooper and ripped his back open to make a simple fact clear—

I could have killed you.

I can still kill you.

Don't ever forget that.

He had no explanation for why he hadn't followed through with it on Starkiller. He was one for actions not threats, but he had not been thinking clearly enough at the time to have been planning anything or even to be able to focus on something besides the fact that it hadn't worked. Something had gone wrong, he had failed in some way, and instead of feeling invigorated by Han Solo's death, he felt weakened, a pain far worse than any he had ever felt threatening to destroy him from the inside taking hold. It hadn't been until much later, after the attack on the Resistance base, that he had become grateful he hadn't been of clear enough mind to cut the traitor down in that forest.

Kylo clenched his teeth, saber spinning in his hands as he started to pace. Around him, the frozen contours of forest were losing their clarity, collapsing to reveal the darkened ground level of the Order's dock in Cloud City and a stormtrooper officer, face covered, her red shoulder blade the only color in the poorly illuminated dock.

"Send a group."

She gave him a respectful nod, approaching the soldiers—all of them donning the infantry's white protections—waiting next to Kylo's command shuttle's open access ramp as he kept to his irritated musings about FN-2187.

A future officer. He nearly scoffed aloud.

That at least explained why under her calm, aloof demeanor, Phasma had been so disturbed. Hux's reasons he had understood well, as the General had been doing what he did best: evaluating future risks and planning for them. FN-2187 mattered nothing to him when compared with the possibility of the Order's ranks hiding hundreds like him. From the moment he had shot down the stolen TIE, Hux had been twisting his mind around a way of stopping a possible stampede. From the moment the Finalizer's cannons had failed to kill the TIEs occupants, however, Phasma had been accessing the individual and the risk he alone could represent.

In a way, she must have felt like she was hunting herself. It explained the large reward on FN-2187's head. It explained her eagerness to kill him the instant she had got confirmation of his presence at the now destroyed Resistance base. She had considered him an asset and, having lost it, she had wanted it destroyed.

As far as Kylo was concerned, however, he hadn't been remotely impressed with FN-2187. He could respect the courage he had displayed in facing him on Starkiller—he could count on one hand the number of people that had chosen to go down fighting rather than fleeing him—but were it not for Phasma's concern making him curious enough to research his record, he would never have considered FN-2187 for the task ahead.

Even so, he had doubted. He normally trusted the Captain's judgment implicitly, but this he had wished to test for himself, to get his own answers on his own terms, and so upon leaving Cloud City he had left him behind, responsible for a city Kylo had previously made sure would be at least manageable. He had been curious of what he would find on his return, but he hadn't been expecting Essen, Lyr and Rhyase to almost blow up the Finalizer or the mess he had ended up coming back to. It was luck they had arrived in time to stop the Order's troops from being massacred, but it was not luck that had kept them alive up until they did. An anxiety-ridden, overly emotional traitor to the Order he might be, but FN-2187 was what his file claimed and he could be useful, far more useful than Kylo had initially thought or planned for.

I can make this work.

Or, at least, he would find a way to make it work, when he wrapped his mind around why the traitor was so eager to cooperate and inform him of what had happened in his absence. There was no love lost here. FN-2187 both despised and feared him. His feelings towards the former stormtrooper were a lot less charitable. So why? There had to be a reason. There was always a reason. Everyone expected something in return.

What is it?

What was that he wanted? He could even forgive Calrissian for going over the complete volume of the wondrous achievements of FN-2187 if his mind would only give him the bloody answer rather than forcing him to listen to the in depth commentary of FN-2187's heroic leadership of the last three days!

The stormtrooper officer gave him a warning sign. Looking up, Kylo found four of her subordinates jumping to their feet and moving to surround him, the electric fields of the Z6 already connected. Almost immediately, the Force cracked around him, a clear warning, followed by the simultaneous charging of the group, succeeding in doing what he had been trying to do for hours now: shutting down the irritating line of thought that had made him go over FN-2187 and what he might be planning and instead redirect his rising frustration to a more productive endeavor—training.

The red blade cut through the air, the brutal sweeping movement making the cracked crystal of his saber roar as the soldier to his right raised his weapon, a low grunt coming from under the helmet as the lightsaber crashed into his baton's conductor vanes and then twisted, releasing itself from the electric field and moving in a short ark to intercept a second weapon, this one coming from his left and aimed for his ribs—more specifically, targeting the wound left by the furball's bowcaster.

So it still shows, Kylo mused, evading a simultaneous attack from his back and front and seeing the batons fall, their up-down movement cutting through the place he had been standing as he deflected a third incoming strike. The weapons met, engaging in a series of rapid blows until a well aimed kick broke through the closest soldier's defenses, sending him crashing to the floor, the impact making the baton fly away from him.

One less.

He twisted the saber aiming for the soldier to his left, only to see him dive, rolling out of harm's way and getting to his feet, breathing ragged, covered head following his defeated colleague as he rapidly moved away from the still ongoing battle and then making the baton rotate in his hand. It was some kind of sign. The same instant, the soldiers still engaging Kylo tried for his ribs, identical strikes coming at him from different directions. One of them grazed his clothes as he moved away, the other slipped along the lightsaber as its hilt flew up and crashed into the soldier's throat.

Two.

Kicking the weapon away from the fallen soldier's hands as he still tried to rise, Kylo turned to his two remaining adversaries. The closest of them rotated a baton in his left hand while the other approached carefully, studying him, muttering something under his breath that made his colleague close his hand over the baton's handle, determined.

Kylo frowned, raising the saber defensively as the soldier approached. Even without reading his mind, he recognized this for what it was. A sacrifice. That meant—

He twisted the saber, making it lock unto the baton's conductor vanes to force it out of the soldier's hands. He offered no resistance, letting go of the weapon immediately and diving as the last soldier appeared from right behind him. It was either evade or defend. It took the baton crashing into the saber for him to know he should have gone with the first.

It felt as if his shoulder had been ripped open again, the limb losing all strength as he stepped back, making the Force close around the arm, forcing it to move, hand to firmly grasp the weapon, as the soldier—noticing weakness—renewed his efforts to pound his defenses into oblivion.

It was a welcome change—a needed one—that had become even more urgent when one considered that the last sparring partner he had that hadn't minded putting blows through every single hole in his defenses had been Skywalker. He should have remembered sooner that Riot Control would have very few qualms about following down that path and trying to do the same. Not that he was matched by any stormtrooper, especially not—

FN-2187 was hardly what I call competition!

Fury exploded around him as Kylo rolled over himself, left hand breaking through the soldier's defenses and grabbing hold of his wrist, immobilizing the blow as his shoulder collided with that of the soldier, the red blade between them, inches away from his half amazed, half terrified opponent's neck.

"Dismissed," Kylo called, letting go of the soldier's wrist as he stepped away from the soldier, saber still ablaze as the group saluted him, their commanding officer joining them as they went up the spiral stairs.

Rotating the saber in his hands, Kylo disengaged it, the roar ceasing to echo up the hive-like structure above him as he looked around and spotted Lando Calrissian now fighting to make his way passed a crowd of pilots and down the spiral stairs. As he stepped onto it, the contents of his mind become as obvious to Kylo as if he was probing. A large, half destroyed white atrium came into view and then three people he knew—a slim alien wearing a face that didn't belong to him, a short woman with dark almond-shaped eyes, and a muscular man, his face disfigured by the same scar that had cost him an eye.

Essen, Rhyase, and Lyr.

The Force thundered furiously, anger threatening to explode from within him as Kylo turned his back on Lando Calrissian, untying his hair as he approaching the shuttle's ramp to fish his cloak from under the protective garments he had removed.

As far as productive ways of dealing with his temper went, training, it seemed, had just backfired. He was more furious seeing that particular trio now then when he had first listened to Calrissian's tale about a group of Force sensitives that had crash landed inside a skyscraper and then proceeded to attack the Order's forces. If he was being honest with himself, however, it was not the information or from who it had came from that most angered him—even if the later certainly did rile his temper—but the sudden awareness that for all his certainties about the trio's whereabouts he hadn't, even once, actually felt any of them here.

First Veshay, now this.

Kylo pulled the cloak around his shoulders, one hand pressing the painful scar dissecting his right shoulder as an admirably serene presence approached him.

"Yes, Governor?"

His voice, not the slightly contemptuous one that emanated from the distorter but that which was his own, seemed to break through Calrissian's professionalism, surprise filling his mind as he stopped, momentarily taken aback.

Not what he expected then.

Kylo pursed his lips, irritated. His voice was never what anyone expected. It didn't fit him. It was too soft to be commanding, too kind to pose a threat—it was all that he despised about himself, all he fought to release himself from being paraded about for the entire galaxy to hear.

"Speak, Governor," he snapped.

Calrissian jumped, mind rapidly regaining its bearings.

"Forgive my boldness but..." He coughed. "This trio that attacked us, am I correct in assuming that you know who they are?"

Kylo sighed, fury now at a rapid boil.

"You should refrain from asking questions for which you already have the answers, Governor."

"My conjectures hardly count as facts," he stated, cape caught in the wind coming from the launching ramps above them. "Those were Knights?"

The light above the shuttle exploded, shards of glass raining over the ship as Kylo closed his eyes, forcing himself to reign his temper in.

"Again," he snarled, pulling the hood over his head, face disappearing in darkness, before he turned to the Governor, catching a glimpse of curiosity going over his face as he tried to see passed the shadows. "You told me this trio attacked the garrison, killing two of the soldiers and trying to do the same to you and its commanding officer." Calrissian nodded. "And Nephys?"

"I believe they were trying to get him alone before taking him out," the Governor clarified as Kylo's eyes bored into his, the image of Essen pinning FN-2187 to the ground as Lyr grabbed hold of Rhyase's wrist to stop her from slitting his throat now rising from Calrissian's memory.

As clear as it was, however, it was not clear enough for him to make any sort of conclusions.

Nephys, like Veshay, had been capable of hiding both his presence and identity. Nephys, contrary to every single Force sensitive he had ever met, was adverse to using the Force for violence. That is not its purpose, he used to say.

He's dead now.

Had he been so adverse to violence that he wouldn't even defend himself against a threat? Would it pain him to know that Kylo didn't know the answer? That after everything Nephys had done, all he had sacrificed, Kylo hadn't known him well enough to answer something as simple as that?

Kylo raised his eyes, blindly looking up the dock, until he found a lonely dark figure making her way across one of the walkways, covered face studying a display. Rey. She felt conflicted. Or at least she did up until she looked down, eyes meeting his before she turned her back on him, a very clear "it's still no" echoing from her mind.

I haven't even said anything.

And, truth be told, he was not thinking about Hux's thrice dammed Unloading Operation as much as he was focusing on the jacket—Isahaine's jacket—that Rey was wearing and Calrissian's worried query.

"Is it possible they left?"

"It is possible."

But not a gamble he was willing to make. Not a worthwhile risk. It was, well, curious that, for some reason, this particular hypothesis seemed to be as disturbing to the Governor as it was to him—a pity that he was far too preoccupied, that he had far too urgent matters to consider, to search his mind for the reason why.

Expression hardening as Rey ran up one of the spiral staircases, disappearing from sight, he turned away from Lando Calrissian, entering his shuttle without a word. Rather than going to his quarters and making his way to the shower as he had originally meant, however, he hit the ramp's commands, moving deeper and deeper inside the ship as it closed and entering a small door used for maintenance.

A blast of vapor hit his boots as he walked in, locking the door with his mind as he moved towards the communication system and the long distance radio he had attached to it. It took a few minutes, an eternity in his mind, for the channel he entered to even connect, another even tenser one for it to be answered and a dark figure, that of a Knight, head respectfully lowered, to make its appearance.

"You are alone."

"As per your instructions."

Kylo nodded, attention going to the door behind him, assuring himself of the sturdiness of the lock he kept firmly in place with the Force. It was unnecessary, in a way even laughable, that he did so. There was only one person here that could break through it and hiding behind a locked door had never kept him safe from that which he feared. Nothing ever had.

"We have a problem," he announced, quietly. Isahaine straightened at his words, raising her eyes to meet his, the white mask she covered her face with a specter of light among the darkness surrounding them both. "Essen, Lyr and Rhyase have broken away from the ranks. I can't sense or confirm their presence on my side. It's possible that they will appear on yours."

"Your orders?"

"Keep to your assignment. Engage them only if they leave you no choice."

Isahaine nodded, looking to her left, vigilant, before speaking to him again.

"There is a possibility they went to Leader Snoke," she reminded him, voicing his own concerns. "If it comes to his knowledge—"

Her words hung in the air around him as Kylo closed his eyes, mind stretching beyond his body as he listened, not knowing what terrified him more: the silence and what it entailed, or that it would end—that sooner or later, this respite would be over.

"It is possible he knows already," he admitted, and her shoulders tensed. It is possible he knew from the beginning.

"What do we do?"

Kylo studied the white mask, eyes boring into the slits hiding his Knight's eyes until he caught a glimpse of pale gold, unwavering and devoted, their expression steely, a mirror to his own resolve.

"We endure."

Isahaine gave him a short nod, right hand raised over her heart as the transmission cut off and Kylo stood silently looking at the empty space her image had occupied.

Endure.

He had never known any other path.

Notes:

Next up - The General, because we haven't checked in with Leia and those pesky Knights of Ren in a hot second.

Comments are just about the only hope we have for finishing this story before the next movie comes out.

An aside - the two bonus chapters will include background on the many, many Knights of Ren, as well as an interlude looking into Finn's childhood with the Order.