AN: Kind of / completely forgot that today was Thanksgiving. So happy turkey day, if that's you're thing. (Not sure how many people are reading fanfic on a holiday, but hey whatever floats your boat. I'm the one writing/posting fanfic on a holiday, so I have no room to judge).
.***.***.***.***.
General Hux half-heartedly read through the reports that clogged his computer. Commander Pyre had no updates on his hunt for the Resistance. There hadn't been word from the Supremacy in over a month, the ordeal seemed forgotten to everyone besides him.
He glanced to the chrono. Several hours had passed since he ordered the First Order armada to Mon Cala. True to form, a knight had departed shortly before the Finalizer slipped into hyperspace, no doubt going off to report Hux's latest brash move to Kylo Ren.
With a huff and a deep disregard for whatever ire he might earn from the supreme leader, Hux left his office. Hux's walk to the bridge was uninterrupted, and his useless new aid was nowhere to be seen upon the general's arrival.
Beyond the viewport were the unmistakable blue-white streaks of hyperspace. The seemingly endless expanse of distorted stars and warped physics was mesmerizing in its repetitive yet chaotic display.
A bitter wish picked at the general; if only every chaotic or dangerous thing could be so easily understood, so thoroughly planned and calculable as to allow him to safely navigate it.
The bridge hummed with the buzzing of machines and the low chatter of officers, Hux hardly heard any of it as he drove himself deeper into his own head.
Did Lori know what was happening? Did she ever have time to -
"Estimated time of arrival, five minutes." A navigator called out on a routine update.
A comms officer added her own update, "The Mon Cala capital has not acknowledged our transmissions."
Hux felt the crew's eyes on his back.
He did what he could to hide the defeated look on his features and the fatigue on his words, "They had their chance. Ready the weapons systems."
No one on the bridge was surprised at their order, but the tension that came with preparing an invasion still cast an uneasy air over the crew.
As the others went about following orders, Hux looked back to the formless white blue light beyond the view port.
Lori used to tell him old smugglers stories, little more than frightening tales to tell on a long journey. Many of them featured hyperspace madness. A pilot would go mad from staring into hyperspace for too long. Some stories ended with the poor fool being a confused husk for the rest of his life. Others told of men being driven to bloodlust and attacking any sentient they came across, only made to stop by being killed themselves.
Hux thought that either case would be better than the life he found himself leading now.
Madness hadn't yet come for him when the Finalizer slipped out of hyperspace, and the swirling lights compressed down into distant pin pricks.
The wide view from the bridge showed Hux a blue planet and a dozen capital ships awaiting his order to invade. A readied squadron of TIEs drifted between the ships, poised to descend upon any city that might prove defiant. The Mon Calmari king would answer for his silence, but Hux thought that he might spare some cities. For no other reason than to show the rest of the galaxy that their obedience would be rewarded.
The general turned away from the viewport, but before he had to ask for a status report, a targeting officer said, "General Hux, we are picking up a ship. It's coming towards us."
Irritated but not surprised at the news, the general glanced back through the view port just in time to see a small ship weaving in and out of the TIEs, its trail punctuated by sharp streaks of blaster fire.
"A single Mon Calamari fighter?" He said with a scoff, "that's a suicide mission… unless…"
The targeter watched a realization sour the general's features, "Sir?"
"Set the ventral cannons on that fighter." Hux's words were clipped and short.
His order was fulfilled in almost as little time as it took for him to utter it, the single fighter disappearing in a flash of plasma.
"That was obviously meant as a distraction." He said mostly for himself before adding for the crew, "Do a sensor sweep."
The same targeting officer as before quickly typed away at her terminal. Her stomach sank at the news she found, and then it sank further when she realized she would have to tell it to the general.
"Now!" Hux took her apprehension as an intentional slight.
"We're picking up ships on the far side of the planet." She quickly sputtered out before immediately worrying that she hadn't been detailed enough.
The general looked past the fidgeting officer and looked at the data readouts himself.
No less than a dozen capital ships had gathered on the other side of Mon Cala. None of them had primed weapons systems, but their energy readings proved that they were all prepping a jump to lightspeed.
"Send all ships to cut off their escape!"
The entire bridge jumped into action at the general's shouting. The message was relayed to the fleet around the Finalizer, and the millions of tons of durasteel around Mon Cala shifted and groaned at the command.
Crawling around the planet, the First Order fleet was just in time to see a dozen of lumbering Mon Cala cruisers drifting away from their home world. Just as they were scarce seconds away from escaping the planet's gravity well and fleeing into hyperspace, a star destroyer let loose a scorching green beam of laser fire.
The crackling plasma cut through an escort frigate, igniting its oxygen stores and tuning the machine into a short lived ball of heat and light. The fleeing mon cala ships didn't even try to return fire before rushing to lightspeed, their quickly distorting hulls racing beyond the reach of the First Order's hungry cannons.
A final wayward shot of plasma slipped beyond the abandoned batlefield.
As it disappeared, the crew aboard the Finalizer braced in their stations. General Hux's shoulders tensed, and then rigidly shifted back to where they had just been.
"It seems that Mon Cala has chosen not to remain neutral after all," he spoke to himself before raising in volume to address the cowering crew, "Let's show the rest of the galaxy what happens to those who betray us."
.***.***.***.***.
Mon Cala had fallen nearly a month ago, and the resistance that stayed on Anoat had heard nothing. With heavy hearts and dozens of doubts, the remaining Resistance had fled the trash planet.
The huts had been left in place, though every hard earned bit of supplies had been packed away on one of the three ships. The transponder in the command tent had been left running, on the off chance that the Falcon might return. A short message was set to transmit from the machine: Fled planet voluntarily, destination unknown.
The exact wording of the message had been the subject of a raging debate, but it was eventually decided that Leia or Rey would be able to find the Resistance through their own unique means.
Even as the ships broke through Anoat's atmosphere, a few lingering doubts twisted through the rebels.
Lori had taken one of the few spots on the dropship. Along with her were Finn, Mitaka, and two others. Brixie had tried to stay with Lori, with the explanation that she should stay near Ardis in case anything went awry.
While she appreciated the concern, Lori had her own plans and had insisted that everything would be fine even if they were apart. Brixie had been nothing but kind for as long as they had known each other, and Lori decided that she might feel bad if the young medic got caught in the crossfire of her escape plan.
There were only five people on the ship. They would have to trade turns in the pilot's seat, and as soon as either she or Mitaka were in place they could send out a message. If there was no long range comm, they could at least activate the distress beacon. Both of them knew which channels the First Order used, and neither doubted that a passing patrol would investigate the strange signal.
The ship rocked slightly as it left Anoat's gravity well.
Poe's fighter would go first, scouting the way. Then the freighter would follow in its wake. Bringing up the back of the group was the dropship.
The others might not even notice if the rearmost ship slipped away.
Lori held onto Ardis, who stirred at the sudden rocking of the ship. They had been away for far too long, and the infant had grown far too much. The first few strands of wispy red hair had grown atop the little girl's head. It was soft and barely there to the touch.
Ardis relaxed at the familiar sensation of Lori's hand against her face.
A small trickle of muddled emotions flowed through Lori. Loss and longing. Love and fear. Isolation and the barest hint of a familial bond. She would have liked to experience the feelings in full force. Even wallowing in persistence fears would be better than the dulled and muted world she found herself in.
But no matter how hard she tried, it all seemed just out of reach. Just beyond that impermeable wall of glass.
Lori let her sight linger on Ardis, searching the infant's soft features for some semblance of calm. What she found was a face that looked increasingly similar to Armitage's.
.***.***.***.***.
The above water streets of Dac City were coated with cinder and soot. After a month of being occupied by the First Order, the city had ground to a halt.
At the moment, General Hux was in an office suite in the only remaining tower of the city. He'd been unofficially reassigned away from the Finalizer for some undefined amount of time for his perceived transgressions. Kylo Ren hadn't stripped him of his rank, but every officer down to the most clueless lieutenant knew that he had fallen out of favor. He only remained a member of high command because Kylo Ren didn't bother to keep track of who was and wasn't on the board.
At that very moment, Hux was watching as the flickering blue holograms of the other members of high command blinked into existence around him. They had a meeting scheduled, and Hux was acutely aware that the rest of them would be meeting in person while he was relegated to calling in as a hologram.
The pleasantries and introductions were short lived, Hux suspected that they had already discussed their most urgent topics without him. When he was finally addressed, it was by the current head of high command, General Pryde.
"It seems that you failed to notice a transmission to the Mon Cala system during your invasion, General Hux." Pryde spoke with a controlled dismissal that one would use when speaking to a particularly petulant teenager.
Hux kept his face blank, sure that the older man was expecting a rise out of him, "Have we located the source of the signal?"
A mutter came from Admiral Griss, he was silenced with a sharp look from Pryde.
"The outer rim," the older general gave an answer that was too vague to be of any use.
"You need not worry about it," General Domaric Quinn spitefully added, "the signal came from a sector under my control."
Hux had to bite his tongue to the point of almost bleeding to keep himself from talking back to General Quinn. Barely a decade older than Hux, Domaric had been old enough to experience the empire at its height, but he hadn't the chance to serve as an officer. As a result, he had all the arrogance of the old imperials but none of the credentials to back it up. The only redeeming quality of the nearly balding man, in Hux's eyes, was the fact that he was similarly dismissive of Kylo Ren's sorcerer.
Pryde held no such opinions, and was clearly irritated with General Quinn for sharing any details at all.
"Moving on, we must discuss the state of the Stormtrooper Program," General Amret Engell spoke in the tense silence, "General Hux, I understand that you are unable to venture to the Absolution in the foreseeable future."
Hux saw exactly where this was going, and declined to answer.
"Right," General Engell didn't let his silence stop her. Adjusting her glasses, she peered down, probably reading off of a datapad just out of range of the hologram, "The Absolution has been reassigned to the eight fleet. Because I now have ultimate authority over the ship, it follows that I should oversee all of its operations. Thusly, I move that I should now oversee the Stormtrooper Program and training."
A few of the holograms sifted to look at Hux. An obvious bead of irritation washed over his features. This was the first time he had heard of the Absolution being reassigned. He wasn't sure if they had agreed to this before he had joined the meeting, or if one of the other members had gone straight to Kylo Ren.
Either way, it hardly mattered as Admiral Griss said, "I second General Engell's suggestion."
"What say you, General Hux?" Pryde asked from the head of the table.
I say that you've all planned this and that if I refuse to relinquish a project that is and always has been mine, you all will undermine and seek to destroy it at every turn.
"I say we table this matter until all of the fleet reorganizations have been finalized." He went with a suggestion that was neither a confirmation nor a denial.
There was some slight shuffling in the holograms, with General Parnadee having an especially sour expression.
"Very well, then," Pryde replied, obviously annoyed that the younger general hadn't done anything that would warrant a harsh reprisal, "we will discuss this further during the next meeting. General Engell,"
The bespectacled general nodded before looking back down to the data pad, "the next meeting will be in three months time, my aid will send a one week reminder. We're set to convene aboard the Finalizer. I trust you'll be able to attend in person, General Hux?"
The suggestion that he wouldn't even be able to venture to his own flagship crashed over Hux like an icy wave.
"Certainly." A little bit of the venom on his thoughts seeped out around his words.
None of the other high command said anything for it. Satisfied that they had made their point, the holograms began to disappear.
The last of the holograms faded, leaving Hux alone in the dimly lit room. He let himself sink into his stiff chair for a second before admonishing himself for indulging in the little weakness.
Letting out a hissing breath, he pushed himself away from the chair and made for the hall. His own critical thoughts picked at him almost as much as General Pryde's dismissal. Hoping to silence them both, he went off in search of some drink that would drown his sorrows.