AN: Hello once again, I hope everyone's weekend went well. In the mean time, I'm just going to apologize for this chapter up top: Sorry. Also, please enjoy. (Sorry)
.***.***.***.***.
General Hux paced the control room, occasionally noting the fading sun as the barren scenery beyond the windows grew dim.
"Report." Hux ordered in a failed attempt to calm himself.
Some junior officer called out in answer, "Weapon charged in fifteen minutes, sir."
Hux stifled a hissing breath.
So close. He was so very close to seeing this all come to an end. The Resistance, the pathetic shred of rebellion that it was, would soon be a thing of the past.
And with that, he mused, the galaxy will bow to the First Order.
A buzzing of his comm took the general away from his musings.
Glancing down at the small device he found a message from Lieutenant Mitaka, "Major Lori Gallus and her infant daughter are in custody. Together with our stormtrooper accompaniment, we have left Batuu without incident, and are in transit back to Starkiller base."
The general let the good news wash over him. He desperately needed it after a second look at his comm found another message waiting for him. Apparently Ren's precious prisoner had escaped from her cell.
He tried to dismiss his ire with a thought, No matter. In mere moments the Resistance will be nothing more than a dark blot on the galaxy's history.
For a brief moment, Hux's imagined darkness felt tangible as the lights in the control room flickered.
A fresh crop of muttering bubbled up from the officers, nervous and more than a little confused.
"Sir," the same junior officer as before called out, "There's an anomaly. The shield generators are offline."
"What?" he all but hissed at the news.
Before anyone had the chance or the ability to explain, there came a gasp from a sergeant at the window. Snapping his head to the side Hux followed their line of sight to the dimming sky.
On the horizon, in clear attack formation, loomed a squadron of X-wings.
.***.***.***.***.
Lori had been attempting to talk with Lieutenant Mitaka for the last several hours. Most of the time she only got an awkwardly rushed answered followed by long stretched of even more awkward silence.
"So you've been the general's aid for nearly two weeks?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"How do you like it?"
Lori tried not to stare at Mitaka as she waited for a response. He fidgeted in his seat, desperately looking for an answer that was short, but not one that might offend her if she truly was Hux's lover.
Assuming that Quin had even been right.
"It's a challenging position, ma'am."
"I guess it would be, wouldn't it?" Lori shifted her hold on Ardis while she searched for something else to pry at. The lieutenant was unsurprisingly guarded whenever she asked anything that might relate to Hux, so she tried easing off and looking for something more mundane, "What did you do before taking the aid position?"
She watched as Mitaka's shoulders dropped a tiny amount of tension, "I was a weapons officer, ma'am. I oversaw turbolaser functionality."
Leaning into the opening she had found, Lori went on, "One of my old roommates was a weapons officer, do you know Captain Sydney Tetch?"
Mitaka tensed once more, "No, ma'am. I was the bridge liaison, not a depot specialist."
Hearing about the bridge set Lori on edge. Purposely trying to avoid mention of Hux again, she tried at what she thought would make for a more mindless conversation, "Funny story, I had another roommate who was bridge crew. Have you met Lieutenant Quin Grier?"
At the mention of a roommate named Quin, all the color drained from Mitaka's face.
Do I lie? I have to! No. I can't.
Lori watched a pained expression play over the lieutenants features. He had been acting very strange with her, much of the time very fearful, but at others strangely reverent. His being so shocked at the mention of Quin stuck out to her, there was nothing the other woman could have done to make Mitaka fear her very name.
But there was something Quin could have said to make Mitaka afraid to mention her to Lori.
"Y-yes, ma'am." He finally answered
Testing her theory, she gave a meaningful look to Mitaka, and then down to Ardis, "Do you talk often?"
Mitaka stared at Lori, as if he were waiting for her to lunge forward and attack, "No, ma'am."
Hearing the obvious lie, Lori looked back up.
Mitaka quickly crumbled under her gaze.
"Quin and I are very close, Dopheld. She will tell me if you two talked."
She watched as the man broke out into a sweat.
In the beat of silence where he said nothing, Lori talked on, "Quin told you. Didn't she?"
Unsure of whether to stutter out a hasty denial or admit to the burdenful knowledge, Mitaka found his mouth wordlessly gaping open and shut.
Normally, Lori wouldn't do anything that might even give a hint as to something she was trying to keep hidden. But, in this case, she was completely sure that Mitaka already knew what she was referring to. "Does Armitage know that you know?"
Hearing the general referred to by given name rather than surname or rank was enough of a shock to jolt a few panicked whisperes from the lieutenant, "No, ma'am. I-I mean, yes ma'am. Well… I…"
Lori looked to him while making an effort at covering her impatience with an expression of concern, "Take your time."
The apparently caring face coming from a source that Mitaka never would have imagined possible unnerved him even more. Eventually, despite the sense of dread and his panicked thoughts, Mitaka managed to calm himself enough to speak.
"S-she did tell me, yes. But I pressed her for the information, wrongly so." Mitaka at least tried to defend Quin. He saw this as the end of his career, and possibly his life, but there was no sense in dragging a fellow officer down with him.
Lori nodded along, but waited for Mitaka to go on.
"…and no. No, I've not said anything to the general."
"That was probably wise," Lori said as she adjusted her hold on Ardis.
Mildly confused by her words, and still second guessing every assumption he made about Lori, Mitaka shifted in his seat as he went on, "And, o-of course I won't tell anyone else."
Lori had seen exactly what it looked like when Dopheld was lying, and she was sure that he meant that particular promise. Still, she kept a slight pressure on the man, "I'll hold you to that."
Mitaka searched for a good response. The silence that loomed over him when the words wouldn't come was mercifully interrupted by the pilot's voice coming out of an intercom.
"Final approach to Starkiller base, our landing has been delayed. Updates incoming."
At that, Lori cast a curious glance at Mitaka. When he proved just as confused as her, she stood from the bench and made her way to the cockpit door.
.***.***.***.***.
Heavy explosions shook the horizon and would have been deafening if not for the blaring of sirens in the control room.
General Hux rushed to the window, only to shout back into the room, "Dispatch all squadrons!"
A ripple of "Yes, general" came back to him all too slowly for his liking.
Fuming that they had been so stunned as to need an order rather than reacting in real time, General Hux turned back into the room and hurried for a communications terminal. In the scarce second it took him to order the rest of the base to battle stations, the squadron of x-wings had taken evasive maneuvers and were swooping in and out of view.
Furiously typing away, Hux even sent a direct message to Ren, "Aerial attack. Unknown number of hostile ships. Defend the base."
As he hit send, there was a sudden thunderous clap from outside that shook the ground and walls of the building. Twisting around, Hux found a ball of fire and plume of ash wafting up from the thermal oscillator.
His heart leapt as he waited for the smoke to clear.
If the power regulators in the central thermal oscillator were damaged, then the resulting surge would fry the diodes. Once that happened there would be nothing to keep the power from flowing back through the system and blowing up the fuel cells.
General Hux let out a shaking breath as a looming gray silhouette came into focus through the ash. The thermal oscillator was intact for now, but it wouldn't stay that way for long if the x-wings were left unchallenged.
As if in answer to his worries, the sky grew dim and the building shook once more as TIEs screamed past. Keeping his eyes to the sky, General Hux spared a glance to the dwindling sun. As long as there was any light left in it, the Resistance pilots might have a chance at ruining his plans.
Knowing that staring out the window would do no good, Hux turned back to control room once more.
"Time until ready to fire?"
A technician hurriedly eyed a screen, "two minutes, sir."
Damn, that may as well be a lifetime.
Failing to hide a grimace, Hux did his best to ignore the battle raging outside.
A TIE twisted and screamed to the ground, one of its wings landing miles from the main body of burning wreckage. A ground turret rumbled with blaster fire that tore an x-wing from the sky. Ships vied for dominance, with one of the attackers occasionally landing a blow on the battered thermal oscillator.
Hux cast an irritated look to a data readout that tracked which ships had been launched from the hanger, Where is Ren? He's had plenty of time to scramble his TIE-silencer.
The seconds ticked by, and the light grew dim with no hint of the other commander. Hux cast nervous and angry glares at the data readouts that screamed for his attention nearly as much as the dogfight outside.
Power charged to ninety percent. Anomalous fluctuation readings though the power terminal. Extreme damage to the utility trench in sector four.
"Half of the enemy fleet destroyed, sir." Another officer called out, confirming the general's own grim observations.
The sun's light was nearly gone, and the already dour room was cast into even deeper shadow.
"Weapon at full capacity in thirty seconds."
Hux watched the fighters bobbing and weaving in and out of each other, "Prepare to fire."
The tension in the room ran high, with every engineer and tech acutely aware that this was the point of no return. With the base primed and ready, any additional blow to the oscillator would cause a chain reaction and destroy the rest of the base.
Of course, even if they didn't fire, the stored energy would override the already damaged power safeguards and cause the planet to collapse in on itself regardless.
Another horrible shudder cut though the planet. This time Hux looked over to find the thermal oscillator spewing flames high into the darkened sky. Heavy black smoke twisted into the clouds, and as fighters cut through the ash they brought little slivers of darkness into the already grayed sky.
Transfixed by the oscillator turned inferno, no one in the control room noticed a lone x-wing dipping below the horizon. Zooming through the utility trench, the single ship made a daring rush into the burning machine.
The officers in the control room could only watch with abject horror as the oscillator came to life with explosions. Bright red things, bathed in blinding yellow hallows that left spots in the vision of all that saw them. The ground rumbled and shook, this time setting off a cacophony of sirens in its wake.
Hux was nearly thrown to the side as the floor shifted beneath him.
Sick with realization, he stumbled as he stepped towards the hall.
This was supposed to be a glorious moment. A final strike against disorder. The death of the Resistance and proof that the First Order controlled all of the galaxy. A few dozen hot-shot pilots with decades old fighters weren't meant to stop him. They weren't meant to tear Starkiller base to shreds.
Walls crumbled and sirens blared in warning that the base was doomed. Officers and enlisted personnel scurried through the halls. Some shouting commands, and others fleeing in any direction they thought might be safe.
The general paid them no mind. Through the ruined base he heard the last of the fight outside. Fresh anger, hot and focused solely on the Resistance, washed over his skin.
The galaxy was his. This base was his. Everything being destroyed, the power being lost, was his.
A section of ceiling caved in to reveal an x-wing fleeing the planet.
Hux hurried his flight down the halls. The damned Resistance might have destroyed Starkiller base, but he was determined to survive.
.***.***.***.***.
Lori's numb gaze fell just beyond the viewport.
Thick with a blanket of stars and a pristine white planet only a moment ago, now the sky flashed with a garish red.
Blinking the hellish imprint from her eyes, Lori was left with the memory of those scarlet streaks of energy that had torn across the galaxy only a day ago. She knew that they had spelled doom for a billion innocents, a billion people living on a planet that seemed so safe only seconds before its fate.
She had thought Hosnian Prime to be a simple casualty of war. The first, and hopefully the last, massive shock in a galactic battle.
The blood on the First Order's hands, on Armitage's, hadn't given her a moment's pause for thought.
As Lori peered into the quickly fading sky, a soul crushing weight bored down on her. Thick with a blanket of stars, it hid a profound emptiness that seeped deep into Lori.
Starkiller base was gone, reduced to nothing more than space dust and shattered dreams. Reality, with its uncaring gaze, its brutally harsh consequences, had never once spared Lori. It had never once spared any being in the galaxy. For as quickly as the First Order had snuffed out a billion lives and a billion dreams on Hosnian Prime, the Resistance had done the same on Starkiller base.
She held onto Ardis, swathed in the soft gray blanket that had been a gift from her father. The weight of their daughter grew heavy in her arms.
Hux had been on Starkiller.
Numb. Numb to the chattering stormtroopers. Numb to the lieutenant standing at her side. Numb to the cold and unblinking sky. Lori staggered out of the cockpit, heavy dread seeping from her bones and pulling at her with each tired step she made.
Ardis was crying. Lori's guts twisted and her heart swelled. So broken by the death of her lover, she hadn't even noticed.
Dropping onto the bench, she held Ardis close. Lori hadn't the breath within her to mutter to the child, so she rocked gently back and forth. Through the motion, the room swelled and went unfocused, and Lori found a hot tear streaming down her cheek.
Ardis cried louder. Lori opened her mouth to say something, anything. Any little thing that she could pretend would make the situation better.
Only a choked sound came out.
Clutching their daughter, holding back sobs that only left her shaking in grief, Lori stared into the middle distance without seeing anything.