The dark command shuttle, flanked by the four AALs, coursed through Jakku's upper atmosphere, leaving the desert planet behind it. The convoy was heading for the enormous ship that had brought them to the planet from First Order space: the Resurgent-class battlecruiser named the Finalizer.

A single Resurgent-class had the power to hold off several capital ships at once, while carrying enough fighter squadrons to sustain a space engagement and thousands of troops that could be deployed on the ground. Inhabitants of the galaxy, and the galactic media who had reported on their existence in the first place, had called them by the name that they instantly evoked: that of the dreaded Star Destroyer the Empire had employed nearly thirty years before. And the name had stuck, inspiring fear in the populations of the worlds that had seen images of the return of such a familiar weapon of terror. But they had been wrong to call it a Star Destroyer. The First Order had discarded the use of the name, although the battlecruisers had been modelled almost entirely on its infamous predecessor, in the same way the First Order had been modelled on the former Galactic Empire. But both were far more efficient than either of their predecessors. They had absorbed much of the strength of what had been the most powerful military and political force the galaxy had ever seen, while also learning from the mistakes that had brought it down. None were to be repeated.

The convoy headed to one of the Finalizer's lateral hangars, where it had been given clearance to land. Contrary to those that had been built into the Star Destroyers, this hangar had the space necessary to house several AALs and command shuttles, and rows of slopping formations on either wall had been built to house the TIE fighters. This allowed for a more spacious hangar and easier access to fighters for repair. Several localized command centres completed the huge space, affixed to the walls. They managed the logistics of this part of the ship and provided communication to the bridges and the other services onboard.

Poe Dameron had been struggling against the rough handling of his stormtrooper minder as they descended from the AAL when he looked up for an instant… and was taken completely aback by his surroundings. He had heard reports of the new "Star Destroyers" and read the reports about their size. He believed he was the first New Republic operative to lay eyes on the inside of one. And it took his breath away. He knew the First Order had invested heavily in its arsenal and that it had spent years building itself up before revealing itself to the wider galaxy. But he had never expected anything on this scale. For the first time, Poe found himself doubting that the Republic could prevail against the First Order.

Lor San Tekka was escorted out of the shuttle, General Hux on his heels. 'You have your orders,' Poe heard the latter saying to the Chromed stormtrooper. 'I will be on the bridge'.

The stormtrooper stood at attention and, with that, Hux departed, followed by a cadre of sergeants.

'Take the pilot to the interrogation unit,' she said to the remaining troopers. 'General Hux wants to know what his mission is as quickly as possible.'

Poe's insides clenched. He had suspected that this would happen, but it was still unwelcome news. He would have to remember all the training he had been given to prevail, but it would still be difficult to handle the pain.

The Chromed stormtrooper continued: 'As for the Explorer, take him to the cells. He is to remain there until further orders from General Hux.'

'Yes, Captain,' answered the sergeant in charge of them.

Knowing they probably wouldn't see each other again for some time, Poe struggled to get one final word to Tekka. 'Don't worry. We'll soon be out, enjoying a leisurely stroll through the wonders of hyperspace.' He couldn't help smiling at the absurdity of his remark, as if he and Tekka had merely been delayed at the local spaceport.

Tekka smiled as well. 'Constantly faithful, young Dameron. May it never leave you.'

With those words, they were taken in separate directions. Poe still struggled against his captors, acting as an irritant to the end; Tekka retaining his unshakeable calm. Both united nevertheless in the knowledge of the ugly fates that awaited them.

-0-

Debarking from their AALs, the stormtroopers made their way to their respective divisions for debriefing, as was customary after every engagement. Several of them stayed behind to manage the injured, making sure they got to the medical unit for assessment and recuperation. Only six troopers had been killed in the assault, all by the advanced weaponry of the New Republic. Two had died from the blast of the X-Wing's underslung, while four had been shot by Poe's blaster rifle. Both had been designed for armour-piercing fire, not like the second-hand weapons of the villagers. Those had only caused damage to armour and body, not fatal harm. At worse, a night in a bacta tank would be required. But most would only require patches.

Only one trooper did not heed protocol and head to his division. His once white armour, like those of his comrades, was covered in the sand of Jakku, and his helmet still bore the three-pronged blood stain of his fallen friend. His breath was heavy and he was feeling hot. He knew he should follow his comrades and report, but he also knew he needed to get away from them.

Staggering slightly, but attempting to keep a sure pace, he returned to the AAL he had just left. It was empty, all the troopers and the pilots having debarked. Not even turning around, confident in his loneliness and knowing he could not stand the suffocation of his helmet any longer, he wrenched it off.

The first of many ragged breaths he took was comforting and slightly calming. The cool air felt cold on the sweat that matted his dark skin and cropped hair. Like all his fellow stormtroopers, he had spent most of his time on one of these battlecruisers, coming to call them home far more than any of the numerous bases the First Order maintained in the galaxy. The garrisons only remained for a limited number of rotations before being sent back to the cruisers, where a lot of their training had occurred as well. It wasn't much, but it was familiar. Something he knew would not change.

And everything was about to change, he knew.

He had known it from the moment he had seen his friend die on the surface of Jakku. They had been through training together, sweated together and laughed together. The latter had been far too infrequent to their taste, as it was severely frowned upon, if not openly reprimanded. But it had happened, and they had treasured those brief moments that belonged to them and no one else.

He had felt something snap at his loss, as he had seen his friend's bloody hand fall… as he had carried his blood as a reminder on the face they had shared. The only thing that had truly mattered to him had been taken, he realized. All he had endured had been possible because he had had that one thing to hold onto. Now, he had nothing. And he had refused to obey a direct order; such a move was treason. If anyone found out…

'FN-2187,' came a voice from behind him. He turned sharply to find Captain Phasma looking at him. She was eerily still and he had not heard her come in. Had she been there all along? He could not tell.

Turning around, he stood at attention. 'Yes, Captain.' His own voice sounded alien to him as he said the words he had uttered probably a thousand times before.
'Submit your blaster for inspection,' she said, in the same calm tone she had always employed. The same tone she had used to order the execution of the prisoners on Jakku.

'Yes, Captain,' FN-2187's answer was his usual answer, but within, fear began to take hold.

'And who gave you permission to remove that helmet?'

'Sorry, Captain!'

'Report to my division, at once,' with those words, she turned and left him in the AAL.

She had seen him; she had seen his defiance. He wouldn't live long enough to mourn his dead friend, he would soon be joining him for disobedience. Being ordered to report to another division was tantamount to being under formal investigation for dereliction. His thoughts rushed at the speed of hyperspace, often confused until he grabbed onto the one that gave him a bit of hope. Phasma only wanted to inspect his blaster. She suspected, maybe; but she didn't know. For all she knew, his blaster had jammed. It could have been simple misfortune. FN-2187 knew it wasn't, but he still had a little time before his superiors found out about his defiance with certainty.

And he was under investigation, a potential jammed blaster was just as serious a flaw as open defiance. First Order Research & Development had worked hard to avoid such problems, but they could still occur. Phasma might be trying to ascertain which had been the culprit, to take the appropriate action. Reprisals would be swift; weakness was not tolerated in the First Order. It needed to be eradicated to ensure only the strong remained.

The fear relaxed slightly: he wasn't condemned. Not yet. It would take a few hours for the report to come in with the final results, FN-2187 knew. And the debriefing would take up enough time to keep Phasma busy. Those few hours were short, but they would have to be enough. He needed to find a way off the ship. And away from the First Order.

Determined despite the odds stacked against him, he put his stained helmet back on.

-0-

General Armitage Hux marched onto the primary bridge of the Finalizer with at a brisk, almost urgent, pace.

All those present, save those whose tasks were too important to warrant unneeded distractions, stood at attention. Hux didn't even bother telling them to return to work. Once he had strolled by them, along the pathway leading to the bay windows at the fore of the bridge, they resumed their tasks. Such was the perfection that the First Order would eventually bring, Hux thought whenever he saw this. Obedience and structure would bring stability to a galaxy that seemed to have resisted it at every turn of its long history.

As officers continued to work at maintaining the massive battlecruiser in their respective stations, either on the upper level of the bridge or in the data pits below, Hux stood at the bay, legs slightly apart, hands clasped behind him, looking out into the dark of space beyond the transparisteel windows. He did this every time he returned, allowing his thoughts to drift briefly. Beyond, he could see the hull of the massive war machine that he was born to command, and further into the dark shone the countless stars. Stars that seemed as far from him as they had seemed from those who had looked up to the skies before space travel had been 'discovered'. Hux scorned those dreamers, who had hoped but barely put the effort into gaining what they really wanted.

His thoughts went back to Lor San Tekka, the pray he had finally claimed. He had rambled, as Hux had expected, about Jedi, about the darkness the First Order supposedly represented, and about the Force. Hux scorned him as much as he did the fools who had followed him. The galaxy was better off without them. He was not foolish enough, as some were, to dismiss the existence of the Force; he had read the reports the First Order had compiled about Force-sensitivity and the powers that could be harnessed from it. But he knew that the galaxy didn't need such beings. It certainly was not theirs to command. Such beings had claimed to 'guide' the Old Republic, yet had allowed its insidious spawns of corruption and complacency to paralyze the galaxy. Such beings had attempted to rule the Empire, and the Empire had failed.

The First Order would not fail. It would not fall prey to the mind-trickery of these evil beings. Any who attempted to stop them from bringing the galaxy to heel for its own good would be destroyed.

Hux found that he was clenching his fist so hard that, had he not been gloved, he would likely have drawn blood. Was this a result of his anger at how the galaxy had so often been led astray, or his own determination that he would not let it happen ever again? Perhaps both. Anger could be turned into determination. And Hux had forged much of his own determination over the years.

Turning away from the bay, he headed to the command console to his left. Reports, graphs and analysis pertaining to the raid on the excavation site had been sent from the data pits to his terminal for his eyes only. Other files could easily be conjured by the holograms concerning other ongoing operations he was either in direct implication with, or that his high-level clearance allowed him to see. Soon, the divisions would submit the full debriefs they would receive from their troopers, reports that would be compiled from the data pits into a single summary which would be uploaded into the First Order's battle network, the massive web of information that linked and ran the war machine that had been gradually built over the past decades.

Hux would be able to assess the performance of the troopers he had personally selected for the assault. He already knew that the results would show perfection. He expected nothing less. And the skirmish had been a minor engagement. Only the Explorer had posed a serious threat, according to the gathered intelligence. But he had been caught with surprising, yet welcome, ease.

Now, the next part of the plan could begin. Hux brought up the hologram files that he had been consulting repeatedly, almost obsessively, for the past few months. No new information had been uploaded; the intelligence was the same. It would soon be a year since the first attacks had begun. At first, they had appeared random, stray pirates and thugs attacking convoys in dangerous reaches of space. Piracy was rare but not unheard of for the First Order. In the first years of its existence, as it grew in the Unknown Regions of the galaxy, it had faced its fair share of would-be conquerors and profiteers. But they had put a stop to it during the early wave of colonization, testing the might of their new war machine against the alien forces of uncharted powers. The campaign had been a success. And little had plagued the First Order since.

Therefore, First Order analysts had quickly determined that the attacks on their convoys were not random and were not the acts of pirates. As this conclusion was reached, the attacks grew bolder. Remote bases came under attack, and isolated training facilities were also raided. The attackers followed a similar MO every time: a swift and brutal assault which, in spite of their elaborate tracking technology, the First Order's security grids were unable to pick up. By the time the garrisons had reacted, the attackers had vanished.

Little was known about them and Hux had to make the case stick with several senior officers of the First Order to maintain the operations designed to track them down. But he had known in his bones then what he knew with certainty now: the First Order was being hunted. And Armitage Hux didn't not like to feel like pray. He had defended the theory of an unknown foe against all those who would have chosen to ignore it, out of complacency. Luckily, they had caught a break.
Only once did a regiment react fast enough to catch the attackers during one of their raids. It was a testimony to the training they had received that they had been able to return fire against their attackers and bring one of them down, but it was also a painful reminder that the First Order was not yet perfect that none had survived to bring him in.

What the First Order had found on the site of the ambush had been enough to provide them with a picture of what they were fighting. And the first clue as to how they could be found. It had taken a long time but Hux and his analysts had followed the trail that had started with that one body and traced it through tenuous links in the entire galaxy.

The key to unmasking this shadowy group of attackers, a persistent thorn to the designs of the First Order, was Lor San Tekka. Their agents had been seeking him, intelligence had revealed, and Hux's own operatives had concurred with him that finding the Explorer would be the easiest way to bring this mysterious enemy into the open.

Now, all Hux had to do was wait.

-0-

Lieutenant Dopheld Mitaka, the Finalizer's bridge officer, approached General Hux at his command console.

"General, all troops and ships are accounted for, but we have one problem."

Hux turned his gaze slightly to the side but did not face Mitaka.

"What problem is that, Lieutenant?"

"The X-Wing that escaped from the assault has reappeared on our radars, still on the surface of Jakku."

Hux looked back at the holograms in front of him. "It is of little concern. The X-Wing was damaged in its flight, it cannot possibly maintain itself beyond the planet's atmosphere, let alone sustain a jump through hyperspace. Dispatch a TIE unit to its location and dispose of it."

The order was also meant as a dismissal, but Mitaka remained. He seemed unsure of whether he should continue with his train of thought, his choice lying between braving his superior officer's displeasure but ensuring continued efficiency within the First Order's hierarchy, or safeguarding his own position by complying and sacrificing much of the progress that differentiated the First Order from the Empire. He eventually made his choice.

"General," he said, the single word causing immediate immobility in Hux. "Might I remind you that active forces remain under strict protocols when engaging New Republic forces. We cannot allow even a single fighter to escape and…"

"Lieutenant," Hux said in a tone that brooked no interruption. "You have your orders. I expect them to be carried out without delay."

The meaning behind his words was clear enough. Mitaka stood at attention before turning away to carry out the General's order, carrying his misgivings with him. He only hoped that one squadron of TIE fighters would be enough to deal with the X-Wing.