AN: Good morning and welcome back. Monday was pretty action packed, so we're taking it a little slower with this chapter. And, I plan for next Monday to be... To be. See you then, and please enjoy!
.***.***.***.***.
A First Order patrol had happened across the drop ship three times in as many days. But their uncanny ability to hunt down the former imperial ship had suddenly stopped a day ago.
Finn had fallen asleep at the pilot's seat, only to wake up on the ground in the main hold half a day later. Lori explained away their sudden safety by guessing that they must have just been unlucky before, that they might have unknowingly flown through a newly conquered sector.
In reality, she had taken the opportunity given by Finn's falling asleep to disable the emergency beacon. Cursing the failed attempt at returning to the First Order, she held nothing but contempt for the former trooper. Even worse was the fact that Finn had made himself enough of a nuisance to the First Order had taken to opening fire on their ship upon sight. As much as she would have liked to fly straight into the nearest patrol and surrender, she didn't have the chance to do even that.
Finn wasn't sure that he bought Lori's explanation. In order to find out more, he and had taken to talking to her while casting the occasional nervous glance towards the cockpit where he could see Mitaka sitting in the pilot's seat.
Tired and nearly defeated as she was, Lori had found that the panic and fear of fleeing through hyperspace had become something to cling to. Some inescapable panic had at least created just enough pressure to hold her together. Now that the problem with the partols had been handled, she felt herself fading again. Talking to Finn seemed like the best way to hold onto that slight sense of danger.
The younger man was clearly searching for some kind of information. True to form, Lori made sure not to give him anything useful, occasionally avoiding especially difficult questions by shifting her attention to her daughter instead of giving an answer.
Now, for instance, Lori wore a lazy smile and turned her attention towards Ardis for a short moment. The infant had been trying to crawl when placed on the ground, constantly reaching for some dull piece of metal or tattered cloth.
"So," Finn went on in a searching tone, "you're sure we're out of First Order territory?"
Lori looked back up at the man, "Sure as I can be. Mitaka's information isn't up to date, but it's better than nothing."
Finn looked past Lori and at the back of the lieutenant's head, "I still don't trust him. Have you checked our route? How do we know he's not flying us right into a trap?"
"Because the First Order shoots first and asks questions later," she gave the actual explanation for what was stopping her plans, "Call me crazy, but I'm pretty sure his plans don't involve jumping in front of a turbolaser."
She had a point, but Finn still didn't relax, "I guess. Any idea how long it is until we hit Ajan Kloss?"
Mitaka answered over his shoulder, "Our ETA is ten minutes."
Finn glared at the cockpit, unpleasantly surprised to find that Mitaka had been listening. Purposefully speaking more quietly, he looked back to Lori, "Speaking of jumping in front of a loaded blaster, what was your plan back on that First Order ship?"
Lori had been expecting some fall out from her failed plot. The almost accusation and clumsy searching for information that was Finn's question came as absolutely no surprise, and she and her answer at the ready, "You thought I had a plan? I was just saying whatever I thought would keep us alive."
"So surrendering seemed like a good idea?" he raised a disbelieving brow.
"It did while I had a blaster leveled at me." Lori let the comment settle, tuning her attention away from Finn for a moment so that she could move a piece of metal out of Ardis' reach, "besides, I was aiming for 'stay alive' not 'stay alive and be happy about it'."
Though he didn't like it, he couldn't find anything particularly wrong with what Lori was saying, "I guess, but that was a terrible idea and you got lucky."
While she knew that she was a suspicious character in Finn's eyes, Lori couldn't help but let out a humorless snort, "You think I was lucky? You're the one who decided to make a jump to lightspeed while we were still in the hangar. Do you have any idea how dangerous that was? I didn't even think it was possible."
"Stick around with the Resistance long enough, and you'll see that nothing's impossible," Finn held a confidence that could be mistaken for a little bit of cockiness in the way he held his shoulders, it looked like a newly learned trait, "Han Solo showed me that move."
Lori wasn't as star struck as she was sure Finn expected her to be by that bit of news, but it did give her pause for thought.
So many of the Resistance personnel had just been names on a data feed to her. Distant, and made not quite real by the fact that they only seemed to exist in relation to others. Sure, she had met dozens of no name idealists who had turned traitor within the First Orders ranks. She had gotten close to many of them, only to betray them days or months later. But the big names, the leaders and legends that started this whole chain of events with the downfall of the Empire, the Leia Organas, the Han Solos, the Luke Skywalkers, all seemed like characters out of a holostory, like tall tales to be told to children as they fell asleep.
She had seen Leia in person, and even then the war hero senator seemed like an archetype of a person rather than a person herself.
Was that the reality of the Resistance? Of legends rather than people? Or had Lori just grown so severely detached from herself that she failed to connect with anyone at all?
"Huh," Lori eventually settled on mumbling, "I never really pictured him as the teaching type."
"He wasn't," Finn was quick to comment, "but I can learn a lot just by watching."
Before Lori had the chance to even decide what to reply, they ship shuddered as it dropped from hyperspace. Ardis toppled to the side, her weak attempt to crawl foiled by the sudden shaking.
The infant made a soft landing against Lori's leg. Not being slowed for a second by the setback, her attention shifted to the strings of Lori's boot. Conceding the fact that it would cause more trouble to move, Lori let the infant play to her heart's content as Finn rose from his place.
"You're going the wrong way, the camp is supposed to be in the southern hemisphere." He not so gently corrected Mitaka.
"I know that," the lieutenant replied curtly, "we're not orientated to the planet's magnetic field, so the south is to our left."
"Uh, no. That's east. Look at the system's star."
"Ajan Kloss rotates counterclockwise. We're upside-down, and you're pointing north."
Lori didn't bother to watch the two bickering men, knowing that they would reach their destination eventually. Instead, she kept her attention turned toward her daughter, who seemed more adventurous by the day.
.***.***.***.***.
A storm had settled over the remains of Dac City.
The single tower stood as a darkened monolith in the gray curtains of rain, an occasional claw of lightning twisting through the sky and illuminating the near abandoned building. General Hux sat in a darkened room with his back to a wide window, only paying a second's notice to the gale when a flash of light made the hologram screen of his computer impossible to see.
Between the uneven and irritating flashes of light, and the even more vexing news he read, General Hux fought the urge to throw his empty glass at the transparasteel window.
The Finalizer wouldn't be traveling near Mon Cala for another month and a half, and all of the long range transports were conveniently preoccupied for the next two.
He didn't think for a second that this was unfortunate circumstance.
High Command had barely been pretending that they weren't openly hostile towards him. And Kylo Ren already had a long history of beating and undermining him at every turn.
This was an insult, a carefully orchestrated reminder that he had fallen from his place of power. He had always known that High Command only tolerated him because he held Snoke's favor, but he had never guessed that he would have had to obey a disorderly fool like Kylo Ren.
This was pathetic!
Hux slumped in his seat and cradled his head in a limp hand.
He was pathetic.
Here he was, wasting away on a defeated planet when he should be at the head of the First Order. He was alone, and trying desperately to deny that he had lost anyone at all when he should be coming home to his family.
A sterile and silent light cut through the room before flashing away.
It was late.
"You should get some rest." He imagined Lori telling him to take care of himself, "You're half asleep already, just lay down. Work will still be there when you wake up."
"I can't," he spoke to the empty room, "I can't."
I can't do anything that matters from here, he thought along with the words he had said out loud.
The Finalizer was well out of his reach, and the only thing that he could do was read through one disappointing report after another.
Commander Pyre had continued sending updates on his activity. Hux clung to them as a sad sliver of proof that someone still listened to him. That some shred of the First Order still respected the chain of command.
Hux read through the documents, being entirely unsurprised by any of it. The Aeos system had been conquered; A fueling station sympathetic to the Resistance had been located there, and had been destroyed during the invasion.
There had been a series of encounters with the Resistance in the outer-rim. The defector FN-2187, now the noted rebel Finn, had been seen piloting an imperial dropship. Despite being contacted several times, and apprehended once, he had managed to escape the First Order.
A shadow crossed Hux's features. Finn. FN-2187. He had been on the Supremacy during the attack. What twist of fate had let him live, while Lori and Ardis…
Hux stopped himself from one dark thought with another, If that had happened in my fleet, that dropship wouldn't have escaped the first time.
The wind beyond the window shifted to push the rain against the transparasteel. It came as a rash of white noise that barely managed to drown out the general's thoughts. Hux looked back to the computer as the increase in noise quickly shifted away.
Neither Pyre nor anyone else had found the rest of the resistance. Even the Mon Cala fleet had seemingly disappeared from the known galaxy.
In spite of everything, Hux could still find it within himself to be annoyed. Being unable to find even the barest hint of an entire fleet seemed unreasonable. He decided that either the others in the First Order besides him were all extraordinarily incompetent, or information was being kept from him.
Another flash of silent white light cut through the room, this time followed close behind by thunder heavy enough to shake the building.
Alone in a nearly empty tower, the general was left to stew over his paranoid thoughts.
They had been his only real company for the last six months.
.***.***.***.***.
Once Finn and Mitaka finally figured out which way was south, the camp had been very easy to find.
Set into one of the very few clearings, the camp was much smaller that it had been on Anoat. Consisting of little more than Poe's fighter and the cobbled together freighter, no one had built any huts yet, and the boxed supplies were set out into shakily organized piles.
Tightly curled around the tiny encampment was a dense treeline. Beyond that was a lush tropical forest, dotted only by the occasional large lake.
Ajan Kloss was a jungle planet. Very young, compared to most of the other life supporting planets, it hadn't built up enough carbon deposits to catch the attention of off world mineral miners. The plants themselves were young enough in their evolutionary stages that they hadn't developed any particularly useful chemical compounds either.
The fauna that called the planet home had only just moved beyond a vaguely insect like form, with a few fish and even fewer lizards roaming the planet. Oxygen rich as it was, the most dangerous thing about living on Ajan Kloss was the occasional oversized dragonfly.
Ajan Kloss was the opposite of Anoat in every way. The crisp clean air formed a bright blue sky over a pristine green planet. Thousands of shallow lakes dotted the planet, some connected by underwater tunnels, while others were left separate to create their own unique lifeforms.
If she were a naturalist of any sort, Lori would have marveled at the young jungle. Instead, she was speaking with Brixie.
At the same time, a tense conversation between Finn, Poe, and Mitaka was happening back in the dropship, away from the group at large. Lori would have preferred to be there. She doubted that Mitaka was going to come out of the conversation without a slew of inconvenient ideas. Never mind that she Finn would almost certainly hang back and talk to Poe afterwards. She could only imagine that she wouldn't come out looking good after they talked, and she would have liked to have made a very innocent impression to the rebel pilot.
"Hold still."
Lori was suddenly brought out of her own head by a comment from Brixie. They were still low on supplies, and the medic was trying to use as few bandages as possible to wrap the fresh wound on Lori's arm.
"Sorry," Lori gave a halfhearted apology as she looked over to Ardis.
They had moved a series of boxes into a ring. It wasn't a bed, but would work as a temporary play pen.
The infant was laser focused on a vine that dangled just out of reach. Thin and green, it had wide smooth leaves that shuddered on the slightest of breezes. Grunting with a fine mix of frustration and amusement, Ardis sat as straight as she was capable of while batting for the bright green toy that was just out of reach.
"Ah…Ammm…Eh!" she babbled with each swipe of the hand.
The almost words tore at Lori. She had hoped that they would be back home by now. That they would be back by Armitage's side, instead of wallowing in an underdeveloped jungle. Ardis was none the wiser, and each excited sound she made only reminded Lori how much time had passed since the infant had seen her father.
How many firsts are we going to spend apart? Lori hated her resignation that they wouldn't make it back to Armitage any time soon, Will she even recognize him?
Brixie saw Lori tense, "Don't worry. I've tested that one already."
"Hm?" Lori slowly pulled herself away from her disheartening thoughts.
The medic had assumed that the new mother was worried whether the vine was poisonous or not.
"That vine. I've tested as many of the plants around the clearing as I could," Brixie held up an arm, the sleeve rolled back to the elbow. Along it were several circles and messily written labels. "It's been a day since I started testing for an allergic reaction."
"Oh," Lori rolled her own shirt sleeve down over the fresh bandage, before looking back to Ardis at play, "Alright, so no rash. What about eating them?"
"I can only test for that one plant a day," Brixie leaned on the table where Lori sat before turning to watch the infant as well, "We don't have a kit, so I'm going old school with this one."
Ardis lunged for the nearest leaf, only to topple to the side.
"Which means?" Lori asked.
Brixie shrugged, "I just eat a little bit, and see what happens."
"You're going to make yourself sick."
"Probably."
Lori took a step away from the makeshift exam table and towards Ardis' play pen. The infant had just gotten back to sitting before she nearly fell over again from turning to face the sound of Lori's approach.
Upon seeing her mom again, Ardis gave a wide smile before looking back at the tempting sting of leaves, "Bah!"
"You're a mess," Lori stepped over the low wall of the pen.
The baby wobbled as she looked between her mother and her toy. Lori took a knee beside the child, and gently lifted Ardis so that she came to a standing position. Wobbling, and only able to lift a fraction of her own weight on her stubby legs, Ardis was delighted to find that the vine was at the edge of her reach.
Shrieking with joy and reaching upward with no regard for whether or not she might fall, Ardis curled her plump fingers around the thin plant. Lori kept the little girl stable, and almost found it within herself to laugh along with the child.
But even this felt too removed to be real.
Ardis yanked at the young vine, and laughed and shrieked as the commotion shook the low hanging leaves above. She hadn't a care in the world, and her bright giggling should have been able to make anyone feel the same.
Lori tried to be in the moment.
She even smiled.
But it wasn't real.