AN: Hello again. Hope y'all enjoy the chapter!
.***.***.***.***.
Another day had passed on Dantooine.
Much to her ire, Lori hadn't know a moment's peace since she'd arrived on the lush planet. When she wasn't chatting away with Brixie, she was looking over a star chart with Anderphan. When neither of them were in the house, she was either making sure Hugo didn't blow anything up or listening to Dak spout off conspiracy theories about the First Order, or the Alignment, or the Fels, or any other group he could name.
She had only narrowly managed to talk her way out of the house once before. As she had gotten ready for her trip to the market, Ivey had rightly pointed out that the bounty on Lori's head mentioned her daughter as well. The conversation that followed had resulted in her leaving Ardis at home, and thus foiling her attempt to run away.
But this time, Ivey hadn't been home. Even better, Anderphan had left Lex in charge, and he was hopelessly easy to talk into a corner.
It had been Dak's turn to run maintenance on the ship, and Lori had volunteered to go along with him. It hadn't been difficult to get her old friend on her side, and it had been equally simple to annoy Lex into thinking it was a good idea for her to get out of the house.
Lori had even brought Ardis along with her, under the excuse that the infant needed some fresh air.
Of course, she fully intended to take the ship the instant Dak had his back turned. Barring that, she would find a chance to send another message to Armitage.
Lori was so focused on her plans, that she didn't notice a man following Dak and her through the streets.
He had seen his quarry once before, two days ago at the market place. He'd even tracked her back to a modest villa at the edge of town. There hadn't been a chance to capture the woman or the child in all that time. No less than half a dozen others lived in the villa, and most of them were armed.
The bounty hunter didn't wonder what the woman had done to earn such a massive bounty, and he didn't much care as he followed her through increasingly sparse crowds.
Eventually, he followed the duo to the spaceport at the edge of town. The bounty hunter found the whole arrangement very convenient, his ship was at landing pad four.
Careful and aware that he would be easy to spot in the large open space, he hung back and plotted his approach.
Lori and Dak, on the other hand, strode across the open landing zone without a care.
"You remember your way around a hydrospanner?" Dak asked with a half sarcastic chuckle as he waited for the loading ramp to reach the ground.
"It's been a while." She answered back with a grin, "Why don't you do the heavy lifting for once?"
The ramp hit the ground just in time for Dak to take a step onto the ship before replying, "Someone's been pampered, at least do me a favor and clean out the cargo hold."
She saw an opportunity, "Fine, I'll take the cargo hold if you check the landing gear."
"And I suppose you'll just sit around and watch me work?" He half shouted over his shoulder as he walked into the cargo hold
"Of course not." Lori replied with a good natured but semi-serious tone, "I'll be in the cockpit, flipping switches and making sure everything still turns on after you get done poking around below deck."
"Oh, ye of little faith." Dak picked up a broom that had been leaning against the wall. He tried to offer it to Lori, only to be met with an incredulous look.
Breaking away from Dak, Lori glanced down to Ardis in her arms and then back up, "Now which hand did you think I was going to grab that with?"
"Alright, fine. Take your sweet time cleaning out the hold. I'll let you know when to go run the diagnostics."
Lori waited until Dak had leaned the broom against a stack of crates before replying, "Deal."
With nothing more than a halfhearted grumble, Dak disappeared around the corner and further into the ship.
Meaning to play along, Lori adjusted Ardis and her blankets before setting the child onto the same crate that had been their makeshift bed when they first arrived. Grabbing the broom, she slowly held up her end of the bargain, wordlessly sweeping out the dusty cargo hold.
What neither her nor Dak had noticed was the man slowly circling closer to the ship. Taking a long, roundabout route, the bounty hunter had approached from far side. Walking up under the ship, he had crouched below the lowered ramp just in time to catch the end of Lori and Dak's conversation.
.***.***.***.***.
Starkiller base was abuzz with energy. General Hux let it all wash over him as he watched crews of technicians hurry through their final checks. Senior officers barked orders to their underlings, who in turn scampered off to the hundreds of little tasks that came with bringing the base to life.
The first shot was scheduled to take place in half an hour. He had a speech to give as well. He would have reveled in the moment, but it seemed tainted. What should be the grand culmination of years of his life felt hollow. His attention on inward matters, Hux idly watched as a captain ran a diagnostics check.
Through the commotion, he distantly heard someone calling his name. A half turn to the side found Lieutenant Mitaka stiffly standing at attention.
"What is it?"
"Sir, Han Solo and the droid have been spotted on Takodana."
The general didn't quite let his shoulders sag, but he was sorely tempted to, "Very well, notify Ren."
An awkward shuffle came from the lieutenant, "H-he's left for Takodana, sir."
A flash of annoyance crossed Hux's features.
Of course he would leave Starkiller alone for its debut. He's never on the bridge, especially not when it's his job to be. I don't know why I expected him to stay here.
A secondary realization that Ren's absence meant that the Finalizer was no longer orbiting Starkiller also rankled the general.
"Noted." Hux spoke with venom on his words, "You're dismissed."
Mitaka shifted once again, debating whether to speak more.
Hux noticed, "Have you some other news, lieutenant?"
"Sir. There's been a ringing coming from your office."
The general looked to the busy room, debating for a moment on how much gossip his sudden absence would generate. Fearing that he was hoping for too much, Hux hurried from the control room. Mitaka followed along for a moment, only to be stopped with a curt order.
"Remain here. Update me on Starkiller's progress when I return."
Hux didn't wait on a reply before taking the long winding walk to his office. Upon turning the corner and coming to its locked door, he could hear a muffled chime coming from his computer.
A swift movement had the door unlocked and sliding open.
A light blinked on the desk, and the chime grew louder. He rarely used it, but there was a holoprojector installed on the table. More often than not, the other officers avoided speaking with him face to face, preferring to take their verbal lashings in writing.
But a bounty hunter wouldn't know who they were calling. And they tended to prefer the lack of a paper trail left behind from holoprojected conversations.
Scarcely a second after he sat, Hux activated the terminal.
.***.***.***.***.
With baited breath, the bounty hunter waited until he heard a muffled commotion coming from the lower deck of the ship. Even while searching for the noise, it was barely audible beneath the rhythmic scraping of a broom against durasteel.
Lori was none the wiser when the man came to the edge of the lowered ramp. Facing the door with her back to the exposed landing bay, she didn't see him snuck his way into the cargo hold. The sound of sweeping hid the tiny clinks of a blaster being drawn from its holster.
She was caught perfectly off guard as she saw the man in the corner of her vision.
Quickly turning the rest of the way, she stifled a yelp and tried to beat down the surge of white hot adrenaline that flooded her veins.
He stood next to Ardis, blaster lazily held at his side and trained on the infant, "Scream and the kid gets it."
Lori bit down a venomous comment. The hair on her arms stood on end and she felt hot spots blooming over her skin from the sudden rush of rage the scene filled her with.
Drawing deeply on her practice at controlling her thoughts and actions, Lori moved very slowly and very deliberately to lay the broom on the ground. Moving back to standing, she kept her hands raised to the level of her shoulders.
"Smart move." The bounty hunter spoke with a rough voice before taking a step back. Blaster still trained on the infant, he gave Lori a curt order, "Pick up the kid. Try to run and I'll shoot."
Anger not even beginning to subside, she did as she was told. Her heart leapt when Ardis cooed at being disturbed. The small noise brought the bounty hunter that much closer to firing.
Lori rocked back and forth slightly, the movement lulling Ardis back to silence. When she saw that the man was no less on guard she made it very clear that she meant to speak before actually trying.
"What?" The word was clipped, and came as the bounty hunter took a few small steps to the side.
Still swaying for Ardis' sake, and to hide the bits of rage she was shaking with, Lori answered back in a low tone. The words weren't as soft as she had meant, but they were largely devoid of the fury she felt, "We're wanted alive."
She watched a flicker pass over the man's features. Whether it was minor annoyance at being told how to do his job, or surprise that she appeared calm, she couldn't tell.
In either case, he recovered and gestured for her to leave the ship.
Lori didn't have long to debate what the worse choice was. Did she fight back, and hope that the bounty hunter was only bluffing? She knew who had hired him, but there was no telling what the bounty hunter thought he was meant to do.
But if she didn't go with the man, she would only be stuck with the Resistance aligned mercenaries. That was a gamble unto itself, with no way for her to tell if they might try and flee before the First Order arrived on Dantooine.
She considered her options for a moment too long. Before she had made up her mind to shout, the bounty hunter reached forward and roughly gripped her wounded arm. In a practiced movement, he had turned around and was effortlessly tugging Lori out of the ship.
Hoping she was making the right decision, Lori didn't put up a fight.
They quickly made their way across the landing field. The bounty hunter kept close to her, the barrel of the blaster firmly pressed into her side and blocked from view.
"You can put that away, I'm not about to run off."
He adjusted the blaster so it dug deeper into Lori's side, "Right. Next you'll tell me you've got some ocean front property on Tatooine for sale."
Lori bit down an equally sarcastic remark.
They approached the bounty hunter's ship, some trimmed down and lightly armored thing built for speed. The bounty hunter shuffled for a moment, his grasp on her arm dropping for a second as he hit a command button inlayed onto his gauntlet.
If Lori were in the mood to run, she would have done it just then. Instead, she played along as the boarding ramp dropped from the ship.
Only a moment after it hit the ground, a sudden bout of shouting erupted from behind them. The bounty hunter was quick to twist around, blaster at the ready. With his hand suddenly gripping Lori's wounded arm like a vice, she yelped and squirmed.
In the commotion she just caught sight of Dak running out of the mercenaries' ship and sprinting across the field.
Making a split second decision, she leaned closer to the bounty hunter, taking care not to yell.
"Hit me." Lori all but ordered.
"What?!"
"Aim for the jaw, not the temple." Playing into what Dak would expect to see, Lori weakly attempted to shuffle away from the bounty hunter.
More confused than anything else, the man did as he was told. The hit landed more harshly than she had expected, and Lori was only half faking it as her knees buckled.
Scarce steps away from the ramp, he didn't have too much trouble half dragging Lori the rest of the way into the ship. Slamming a hand against the control panel to shut the bay door, he barely paused as he roughly sat Lori on the ground and rushed to the cockpit.
He could ask the crazy woman what she was doing later. The man she had been with was peppering the outside of the ship with bolts from some decrepit old blaster riffle he had pulled from his own dilapidated ship.
Sliding into the pilot's seat, it only took a few seconds before the bounty hunter had taken his ship into the sky. Scarce moments after that he was long gone and safely hidden away among the stars.
.***.***.***.***.
A blue hologram of a man in a robe flickered into existence. Hux didn't recognize him, but a glance at to the bottom of the projection found that his ID was the same one that had sent him the image of Lori at the market only a few days ago.
The bounty hunter seemed distracted by something beyond the projector's range. In spite of it, he quickly turned to look directly at Hux.
"I've got the lady and the kid. Name your drop of point."
Hux almost didn't hear the second half of the bounty hunter's words, pulse thundering and blood rushing in his ears from the first half.
Carefully measuring his words, he tried to push his excitement down. He only just managed to do so, and his words took on a shaking quality that he hoped was disguised by the static of the machine, "Bring them to the camera first, both of them."
The bounty hunter had already been taken off guard by the odd behavior of his prisoners, so he wasn't surprised that the bounty poster was being needlessly demanding either.
"Give me a minute," Only interested in his pay check, he gave a half shrug with the comment before stepping out of view.
The few seconds he was gone could have been a lifetime for the general.
Hux tried not to startle at the sudden flash of movement from the holoprojector.
After so many days sick with worry and nights plagued by darkened thoughts, Hux fought to breathe over the words stuck in his throat. Swirling thoughts and comments and worries and questions clawed over each other so that none of them made it out.
Lori's features were painted in jittering blue light.
She looked tired. Her shoulders slumped, weighed down by the infant and bundle of cloth in her arms. A heavy bruise darkened the left side of her face, though even it couldn't dampen the knowing glint in her eyes.
The general knew the bounty hunter must be listening just out of view, but seeing Lori like that made his worries that someone might learn about their relationship seem insignificant.
"Who hit you?" Even he heard the dangerous edge on his words.
A familiar half smile spread over Lori's features, "This little thing? That'd be our bounty hunter friend, but I very literally asked for it."
Several more questions about when and why rushed to the forefront of Armitage's mind, but Lori wasn't in any clear danger. And nothing about the way she spoke suggested that she were being coerced or threatened.
Lori watched Armitage grapple with his thoughts. She didn't spare a glance to the bounty hunter, who was still in the cockpit. It was less than ideal to let him know too much. She didn't mind revealing that he had been hired for a rescue rather than an abduction, but she wasn't about to reveal every detail to him.
She tried to communicate as much to Armitage, "I'll tell you all the juicy details later. How have you been?"
As much as he didn't want to admit it to himself, Lori was right. Purposely skirting the details and omitting anything that might be damning, Hux said, "I'm alright, better now. My project is nearly complete. It's coming online today, in fact."
The coded news about Starkiller caught Lori's ear. The implication that the base would bring for the rest of the galaxy seemed small in comparison with what it meant for her and Armitage. With the New Republic a relic of the past, there would be nothing to stop the First Order from reclaiming all the territory from the old empire. It would still be difficult, but without the constant threat of spies and turn coats, she and Ardis would have a chance to live in the open.
Armitage's next words brought her away from the stupor the news had put her under, "What about you? Are you alright?"
Suddenly seeing again, she was acutely aware of the obviously eavesdropping bounty hunter, "I'm fine, better now. Got any special plans in mind for your new toy?"
"Only the one's I've had from the very beginning."
Lori grimly nodded. She hoped that all would turn out for the best, but experience told her that things would only get worse before they got better.
"And what of Ardis?" Armitage continued, face and tone only just concealing a whisper of fear.
At that Lori let her features soften, even going as far as to spare a glance down to the bundle in her arms, "She's tough. I think she's coping better than I am."
Hux breathed a little easier. Of course that wasn't nearly as much news as he would have liked, but it would have to do for now. A glance to the chrono found that time was running short. It pained him to do it, but he needed to leave once again.
"Lori?"
She peered back up at him.
"I've got to go." he hesitated, debating whether or not he should leave a trail to follow by transmitting a set of coordinates to meet at. He also though over the logistics of his war. There would be a final death throw from the New Republic, he knew it. Any resistance would be futile, and short lived, but he couldn't afford a second away from the helm of his base. In a short moment's consideration, he made up his mind, "Go to Batuu, I'll send for you."
The bounty hunter overheard, and slowly went about prepping the ship. Batuu was on the other side of the galaxy, and in the middle of nowhere besides.
"Understood," Lori inwardly groaned at the thought of delaying their meeting for even a second longer. There was so much more to say, but she also felt time pressing down on them. Casting a quick glance to the bounty hunter that had busied himself at the ship's control panel, she made a last comment, "Once more thing."
Hux peered at the flickering hologram.
"I think I found your missing pilot. He and his friends are living out on D'Qar."
For a second Hux distantly wondered what she was talking about, then he was hit with a realization that she must be referencing the rebel pilot that had escaped the Finalizer days ago. He would have told her -begged her- not to put herself in danger for a few scraps of information concerning the Resistance. But the bounty hunter was listening just out of frame, and he knew that it would do more harm than good to even suggest that Lori was involved with something more grand than being kidnapped by nameless mercenaries.
"Is he now?" he innocently began, "It's been quite some time. Perhaps I owe them a visit."
Satisfied that he got her message, Lori played along, "I suppose you might."
The moment settled. Hux was loath to end it, "Be careful, I'll see you soon."
"I'll be careful as long as you promise the same," Lori answered back with a genuine plea on her words.
Hux heard it and longed for a time that would let them go back and forth for however long they cared to.
"As you wish. I love you."
Lori lifted Ardis so that her face was visible on the projection. Just as she had done once before, she gently waved the infant's arm in farewell, "We love you too, goodbye."
The general wasn't the one to cut the feed off as it blinked away to nothing.
Alone in his silent office, a new layer of determination settled over the general. Starkiller was his key to the future, a terrible tool that he would gladly wield to reign the galaxy under control.
Stepping into the hall, he found Lieutenant Mitaka waiting for him.
Painfully aware that it looked like he was disobeying orders, Mitaka spoke quickly, "The weapon is ready, sir. Our target is set, and the technicians have given the all clear."
"Brilliant." Hux leaned into the little sense of grandeur that he dared to allow, "I'll see myself to the platform."
There came a small pause, with the general seemingly deep in thought.. Mitaka felt the hair on his arms stand straight, fearing what it might mean for him.
Never minding the lieutenant obvious distress, Hux issued a small order, "You're to prepare a shuttle."
"Sir?"
Besides Lori, there wasn't a single person in the First Order that Hux trusted on a personal level. Luckily, there were scores of loyal underlings, and Mitaka had proven himself clever enough to survive as Hux's aid.
"I have a special assignment for you, lieutenant." Hux only gave a small explination.
Mitaka didn't trust the dangerous glint in the general's eyes. Gulping down a heavy lump in his throat, he apprehensively awaited his special orders.