AN: Hello again & happy Monday. I hope everyone's doing better this week than last, and please enjoy the chapter.
.***.***.***.***.
The Titan fuel station was a sad sliver of barely enforced order in a forgotten corner of the galaxy. Hux wasn't even sure why there was an entire fuel station parsecs away from anything that mattered. Not a single capital ship had traveled through this sector, and it made absolutely no sense to waste the time and resources it took to keep the fueling station operational.
Of course, he was actively looking for reasons to be upset. It seemed to be the only thing keeping him sane these days. Skipping meals and sleep in favor of yelling at the few people that still had to answer to him was starting to take its toll. With the sole exception of short fits of exhaustion where he collapsed in his office chair, he hadn't slept. He hadn't even bothered taking a new suite on the Supremacy after the first one burned.
At the moment, he was on yet another lambda shuttle, going to yet another pointless station. Once again denied a trooper escort, the only other person on the shuttle besides him and the pilot was his new aid.
General Hux had dismissed Sergeant Ullis, on account of his being wildly incompetent. His replacement was Petty Officer Murrin. A severe woman in her mid-twenties, she wore her black hair in a tightly bound regulation bun. Quick acting and unflappable, Hux loathed that she seemed more put together than him at any given moment.
"What are the status updates on the Supremacy?" he asked for the second time since their flight began.
Murrin knew very well why he was asking, "None, sir."
"None?" He repeated the word with a venom, "Wrong answer, petty officer."
Mitaka never would have talked back. Hux didn't even try to ignore the wayward thought as he watched the petty officer slowly reach for her data pad.
"No new survivors reported, sir." She began, her eyes carefully focused on the screen rather than her boss, "ICU burn wards are now at eighty percent capacity. One hundred thirty-five thousand names remain on the missing in action register."
Murrin tried to hide her hesitation for a second before reading further.
Hux was staring intently and saw her waver, "The report, petty officer."
"High command has convened to discuss if the missing should be declared dead, sir."
"Have they now?"
Even Murrin had to fight not to wince at Hux's words.
High command. They were like sharks in the water, circling whenever they smelled blood. Hux would never admit it, but he was wounded, bleeding profusely into the metaphorical storming sea.
He should be supreme leader, not some petulant child.
He should be back on the Finalizer, coming home to Lori and Ardis after a long day on the bridge. They should be safe after so much, after being flung through a terrible and untamed galaxy, after he had promised Lori that they would be safe.
She thought she had watched him die. She had been crying into his arms, demanding that he wouldn't do it again.
He'd promised.
Did I watch them die?
The edge of his eyes stung and he felt a pressure at the back of his throat. Of course he hadn't. Of course he hadn't!
"…reconvene on the third."
Murrin had continued reading the report. Hux wasn't sure what she had said, having been too busy in his own head.
He would have made a harsh comment, but he hadn't the energy. Even if he had, he would have been interrupted by the sudden crackling of the intercom.
"Beginning landing procedures. ETA, ten minutes," the pilot spoke, completely unaware of the tension in the passenger compartment.
Murrin was done with the report, and Hux was already tired of his mission.
"Remain in the shuttle when we land," he told the petty officer.
"Yes, sir." She replied curtly, hiding the fact that she was more than a little thankful that she wouldn't be forced along on the inspection.
Hux was in no mood to waste time looking over the station. He was in even less of a mood to drag around an assistant that made him seem disheveled in comparison. This was just another way to waste time.
Another thing to get angry at.
Another thing to distract from his greatest fear.
.***.***.***.***.
Two weeks on Anoat hadn't done anyone any favors.
The sky was a constant sickly yellow, and even the purified air on the Falcon reeked of rot and decay. The Resistance had struggled for the first few days, and just recently had they managed to scrounge enough parts to make a few airtight huts. No more than four small structures surrounded the Falcon, one command tent, a workshop, and two haphazard living quarters.
The constant whirring of generators was a worrisome reminder that decades old and under-fueled machines were the only thing sparing them from all piling back into the Falcon for safety.
For now, at least, the decrepit generators meant that the Resistance weren't on top of each other at every waking moment. The cockpit wasn't even constantly manned anymore, and Lori had even strolled through the main hall of the ship once or twice without being seen.
Lori would have used the shred of privacy to her advantage, if it weren't for the fact that the Falcon had been taken offline.
Only to be used for purifying air and water, the ship's computers and transmitter had deactivated. Though it would be extremely difficult to key in on the Falcons position on the planet, any signal could be found with enough time and resources, and the pursuing First Order had both.
Neither Lori nor the rest of the First Order had given the resistance enough credit. They weren't complete idiots, and they knew how to stay hidden.
The only working transponder was now out of the ship, tucked away in the command tent. In an emergency, the plan was to leave the command tent running at full power while the Falcon fled. That way any pursuers would waste their time attacking an empty hut.
Of course, that also meant that Lori's only chance at sending a message was in that hut and across a poisonous field. Even if she had the chance to get there, the command tent was being staffed around the clock by the Resistance's highest ranking members.
At the moment, she was taking a short walk to the med-bay. It was less of a field hospital, and more of a cramped bedroom now. A month on the run had brought the crew as close as could be, but they still avoided Mitaka. The only ones who seemed to speak to him were Lori and Brixie.
As Lori drew nearer the room, she caught the faint echoes of a conversation.
"You're lucky that a muscle didn't get stuck in the fracture." Brixie said.
"Pardon?" A worried Mitaka replied.
"Sometimes a strand of muscle will get caught in an orbital fracture, a broken eye socket I mean." Brixie's voice grew clearer, and Lori heard a confidence in it that only seemed to come about when the woman was talking about medicine, "It's not life threatening, but it takes a surgery to fix."
"Oh- Lori." Mitaka cut himself off as Lori appeared in the doorway.
She had gone over their cover story a dozen times, but she still worried that he would slip. For now at least, he had managed. Brixie sat to his good side, clearly within his limited view.
Brixie's not exactly a tough customer. Lori thought before worrying, what happens when he needs to start explaining himself to the other twenty people we're stuck with?
"Good to see that you're up," Lori replied before taking a seat on an unoccupied bed, "how's it looking, doc?"
Brixie was answering Lori, but it felt rude to talk around the injured man in the room, "Given the circumstances, I think you're doing great Dopheld."
The lieutenant nervously looked between the two women, visibly moving his head back and forth to compensate for his newly narrow field of view. Eventually, he decided that replying directly to Brixie was the better move, "Th-thank you. And, if you don't mind, I-I prefer to be called Mitaka."
"You sure?"
He nodded, wondering if he had violated some obscure part of rebel culture, "I've always been called by my last name."
"All right," Brixie didn't like the formality of it, but made sure not to show it "Whatever you say Mitaka." The medic turned to speak to Lori, but stayed within Mitaka's sight, "How's Ardis doing?"
Lori looked down to the infant, who smiled back up at the attention, "So far, so good, but I'd kill to get her into some fresh air. Being locked up on an old freighter can't be good for her."
A sympathetic look crossed the medic's features, "It'll be ok. We can't stay on Anoat forever. Maybe the next planet will have some fresh air."
"Maybe," Lori made her disappointment obvious, "but there's no telling how long it'll be before we move on."
Brixie searched for a reassuring comment, but before she found one a hiss and a shout came from down the hall.
"Brixie!" heavy foot falls followed the word, "Brix! We need you in the workshop!"
Dak skittered to a stop in the doorway, breathing rig halfway torn off and the stench of outside still clinging to his clothes, "Klaud damn near cut a tendril off!"
Despite the suddenness of the situation, the medic was quick to get to her feet. In one fluid motion she grabbed the half empty med kit and then took the tangled breathing rig that Dak shoved towards her.
"How bad is it?" she breathed out just before setting the mask in place.
"I don't know, but there was a lot of blood." Dak had to shout the rest of his message as the medic began sprinting down the hall.
She was gone as suddenly as Dak had arrived. The silence seemed deafening compared to just a moment before. Lori watched her old friend linger in the hall.
Dak took a nervous look between Lori and Mitaka before asking, "Hey, uh, Lori. Can we have a word in private for a second?"
Her guard immediately went up. Dak was a known quantity, his tells were as clear as day to Lori, and the nervous darting of his eyes told her that not even he wanted to have the conversation he intended to start.
Lori glanced back at Mitaka, careful to look considerate but not too friendly before turning back to Dak, "Sure, lead the way."
Dak took his own meaning from the gesture, but wordlessly stepped into the hall. Lori followed with little more than a wave to Mitaka, who thought that the motion was very reminiscent of a signal to wait in place.
The two former bounty hunters wandered down the hall. When they got to the half empty storage room, Dak checked over his shoulder for eavesdroppers.
"That bad, huh?" Lori called out the familiar nervous tick.
Dak sighed, his shoulders deflating as he did, "Maybe. Look Lori, I know it probably doesn't matter at this point, but I got to know what that bounty was for."
Lori wasn't shocked that a lingering guilt was eating at Dak, but she had thought that he was embarrassed enough to never bring it up again. And the secrecy in his asking felt out of place. The whole ship knew that she had been taken prisoner by the First Order. That very fact had been one of the things that gained the rebels' trust.
"Does this all go back to that job? Did I-"
A raised hand brought Dak's words to a halt. It was Lori's turn to check the hall for anyone that might overhear them, "That was a long time ago."
"But you went there, and you damn near knocked my jaw out of place for the trouble."
Lori weighed her options. Dak already knew that she had some connection to the First Order, though he assumed that it was a bad relationship. He had no reason to guess that she had worked there, lived there, and then started a family there.
Making him think that he owed her might come in handy, but it was risky. She couldn't afford risks right now.
"Give it to me straight, Lori," Dak went on, prompted by her pause. Lori hadn't realized that she had been silent for that long, "Did the job go south? Did they chase you out to Bastion? Did they shoot your-"
"Stop." Lori cut him off.
She hadn't forgotten her first lie to an old friend. Armitage's death had almost happened twice since then, and it was still a very real fear.
"Stop," she repeated softly, "Alright, fine. Things turned sour with the First Order. I don't know if they're still looking for me though."
To Lori's annoyance, twisting people to suit her needs didn't come as naturally as it once did. She knew there was a way to make this conversation work for her, but it was elusive. Dak had already decided that his suspicions were correct, and denying them would only look bad.
A shadow passed over Dak's features, and he once again checked the hall, "Does that lieutenant know you were there?"
Mitaka knew nothing, and enough to doom them both.
She shook her head, keeping true to the cover story, "He's just some kid that had a change of heart when he saw a lady and a baby in a cage."
Dak shrugged, "Lucky for you then."
With that, Lori saw a thread of conversation to pull on, "All the luck in the world won't help me if the rest of the Resistance finds out about that job. Do me a favor, and don't mention it."
"Wouldn't dream of it." He gave an overly compliant wave of the hand that Lori recognized as proof of a lie.
"I mean it Dak," she spoke in a rushed whisper without sparing the time to check the hall, "I don't want to get even more caught up in all this than I already am. Galactic politics isn't my speed, and it isn't yours either. If I had it my way, I'd just disappear out to some no name system in the outer-rim."
The bounty hunter turned mercenary turned rebel shirked back at Lori's words. "Fine. Not a word."
Lori shifted her hold on Ardis and the sling, "I'm dead serious Dak. If you screw me over on this, I'll do you worse than a dislocated jaw."
"Alright, alright." He finally seemed to be genuine, "but you sure as hell can't leave now. It's the empire reborn out there."
He spoke a genuine warning, an attempt to point out an obvious danger to a headstrong friend. But all Dak managed to do was remind Lori that she had chosen a side, and that she wasn't safe with the rebels.
Dak didn't know what his words meant to Lori.
"I know."