"Priming hull cannons, General."
"Very well." Hux switched his view to the holomap of the fighters' battle. The signal had already been sent out, but the station could not fall into enemy hands, not for a moment. They would secure troops to die a glorious death if that's what it took, and it was. "Exterminatus', a word taken from some old Empire's hypothetical policy on purging dissenters, was incredibly fitting. Some of their other policies, the Order was a bit more hesitant to adopt, and others still were adopted readily.
Hux was no Knight, but he was the Supremacy's Son all the same. His actions must reflect that, or else he could never live with himself.
Both Knights of Ren were rogue, fighting some old man in a Hexect. Luke Skywalker, sure, but no Jedi had ever faced Exterminatus before, and Jedi were not his problem. Their orders were clear, and they had another part to play, yet their Father let these two run about with no regard for the grander scheme. The fourth... he didn't want to think about the fourth. Especially not with this battle at hand, without him even involved. He was off doing other errands for the Order.
Judging by Republic movements, they were trying to reach the planet, and likely halt the Exterminatus as well. But, Hux had to admit, the Knights were keeping the Jedi too busy to help them with that.
The Supremacy was their weapon. Jakku would not survive. Nor any of the disgusting nonhumans living there. He had no sympathy for them, no sympathy for the planet itself. It should've been wiped out long ago, for all he cared. Take Net Station with it, too. The Empire had made it something to fight over, and they'd at last been driven away. The Republic had moved in, but they would be too late. Based on the kletserfrak of the battle at hand, he doled out his new round of orders. The Republic's fighters were weaving between tight-fisted Destroyers and their larger escorts.
"Coordinate fighters into position in the lower atmosphere. Hexects will fortify, maintain a constantly shifting pattern. Destroyers, form clusters of five and do the same around the Supremacy. Remaining fighter craft will take the fight to the scumships. All midsize ships, you answer the nearest Duonought."
"Hull cannons warming up, General."
"Good." But he sensed that wasn't the end of it. "And?"
"Sir?" Nothing, apparently.
Slight pause. His oyos shot back to the holodisplay, spurred by something saying he shouldn't miss it. And that impulse was right - something had just gone very wrong.
Meanwhile, from a New Republic ship, the commanding Admiral ordered fighters to pull back. But not into hyperspace, even away from Jakku. Just away from where the First Order had declared the surrounding space to be theirs. Under the Jakkui sky, junkers everywhere looked up and saw that their sky was something few had seen before, and never on this scale. Sure, ships came and went, sometimes in groups or spread out for safety, but never hundreds, easily thousands. All they'd ever seen on a scale like this were the holos: poorly edited accounts of Yavin, Endor, Naboo, Caprica. And most junkers were smart enough to take these as fictions, fairy tales to keep the gaping wounds of their banishment fresh.
"No!" Hux shouted. "We canno - ...!" He was about to say 'we cannot let them reach the surface'. Which was true. The First Order would give no ground, not even in death. But even Hux found himself reeling inside from how doctrine contradicted strategy.
Now he wanted to tell himself it wouldn't matter, forget how blasphemous willingly giving doomed territory up was. But that wasn't all.
That Republic Admiral, probably some inhuman thing, was telling her pilots to get a lip up on their adversary.
He cleared his throat, hoping to let the anger flow from his coraz into his orders.
"Hexects, move your formations outward, True'isht along the horizon. Duonought Too-Brafol, protect the Supremacy. All others, disperse with the Hexects." Now he spoke again to his bridge. "Cannons status?"
"Almost to firing strength, General."
"Good. We don't have - "
Blast impact knocked him to the floor, away from his comms desk and the holoconsole. He heard several crewmen yelling and groaning, muttering their alien curses. As he got to his feet he gave his next order:
"The next xenoloan I hear is submitted to the Organicum for enhancements." No one made reply to this; if they had, that meant just as much as saying it. "Duonought Too-Brafol, where are you?"
"Almost to your position, Supremacy."
He nodded to himself.
Snoke sent a transmission through. The whole fleet heard it.
"My Sons, report back to the fleet. Your work with Skywalker is done. Now."
Hux motioned to the officer feeding him reports. She pulled up a few visual cues of the Hexect towards one side of the 3-D diagram: badly damaged, internal fires. It shouldn't still be flying. In fact, there was no way any normal pilot could keep themselves alive in that thing. The Jedi brill could do no more if he wished to keep his life. And sure, what records they had would tell tales of a Jedi's suicidal madness, but these were bloated pieces of propaganda through multiple regimes' filters. No way information can remain factual after so long.
Two Silencers broke away from the Hexect and re-entered the central zone of Hux's readout.
"Hull cannons primed, General."
"And the other ships?"
"Assuming positions. Still facing heavy resistance from Republic fighters."
"Not if the Knights of Ren have their way. Are their comms up again?"
"Yes, sir. Patching us through." The comms light blinked a steady orange-yellow against his console. He leaned heavily onto it with both manei, vaguely aware his palms were sweating. They did that sometimes.
"Knights of Ren, my Brothers, this is General Hux. Your presence is required in completing Exterminatus to Jakku. Respond."
Several spans of silence.
"This is Serbris Ren. Proceeding to Supremacy."
"Kylo Ren, proceeding to Supremacy."
"Understood. And do hurry up, boys. Wouldn't want to keep our Father waiting."
Now they hated him even more. Good. He hated them, too.
...
Somewhere, some hundreds of miles away from the rest of the fleet, the Hexect floated. One hexagonal wing was bent, twisted into a lopsided cube. Sparks shone through the viewport. And inside, Luke Skywalker's eyes were closed, his manei stretched out to either side of the cramped cockpit. He quivered slightly, practically begging with the Force just to hold the ship in a state of non-explosion.
Even as he talked, he listened. It told him, in abstracts he now read as words: you are about to receive a transmission. He opened his ears.
"Rebel Scum to Jadder Wun actual, please respond."
He let one hand loose; the ship rattled him, throwing his head against the hull. The world buzzed for several moments, but he thumbed a button on his comm and sounded out his response.
"Jadder Wun actual to Rebel Scum: I'm here. And I'm badly damaged. What's your status?"
"The Supremacy is readying some kind of weapon, we think it's a superlaser." He heard two voices: the one over the comms, and the voice of the universe. Again, he'd learned to read the abstracts as words. There was something that needed to be corrected, some force of nature realigning itself. And it acted through people, as it always had, who didn't need to hear to listen. This was no different, though it meant surrendering their objective here.
"Rebel Scum, this is Jadder Wun actual, open a channel to the fleet, authorization Malak-Trill-Dorn, fife-tree-sevin-seks-too-wun-niner, 'bad feeling.'" He waited for the signal that he was cleared.
"We hear you, Jadder Wun actual, go ahead." He needed to make sure he'd heard the other voice correctly, but there was no mistaking it. This had to happen, or else he'd be responsible for the destruction of half the fleet, and it would happen anyway. That was worse. He couldn't keep his free hand away from the hull for long, he was almost holding this Hexect together with his bare hands, Force or no Force.
"New Republic fleet, this is Luke Skywalker. I am giving the order to pull back from Jakku into Republic space. The First Order doesn't want to lose Jakku, but are willing to destroy it and the surrounding space, including us. In the interest of the preservation of our forces, I declare Net Station lost. Pull back to the Hosnian system."
One-way from Rebel Scum, their designated flagship's callsign: "Understood, Skywalker. You are now cleared to dock with Great Krommul, that's the carrier nearest you. See it?"
"I see it, Rebel Scum. Might be a while, though."
"Why's that, sir?"
He had to chuckle. There would be no easy way to say it. With an invisible third hand he held down the communicator button long enough to place his real hand back against the hull. Not a second too soon, it seemed. It hummed like some middle-grade piece of lawn equipment.
"It's... a surprise. Jadder Wun out."
