6/8/1
"Am I seeing this?" Kylo asks C8.
"That would depend entirely on what this is, sir."
"Do I have fewer people under my command this month than I did this time last quarter?"
C8 checks the report. "That is accurate."
Now Kylo's checking, fast. "We should be getting more than replacement level new troops each month."
"We are." Those two words chill Kylo. "At least, we've had more new recruits each month than the month before, but we're losing them fast, too."
"Losing them fast, how?" He's flipping through the report on his datapad while C8 checks their internal numbers.
"Of the people you are losing, eight percent are dying, twenty percent are retiring," that one doesn't bother Kylo, he's trying to get them out. "Twenty-two percent are being dismissed. Fifty percent are deserting."
He blinks, and locates that page in his report. His eyes scan over the page. He's got people coming in in droves, and leaving almost as fast. The lure of citizenship may get them into his orbit, but it doesn't keep them. The shipboard ones stay longer, likely because there's literally nowhere for them to run to, but pretty much twelve out of ten recruits on the ground are running away within a year.
He digs into the report but nothing is saying why they're running away.
At least not the sort of why he wants to hear. Officers talking about how slaves just don't have it in them to stick it out, or that adults just can't be trained to do the work, and how as soon as their backs are turned, they pull a runner is not what he's looking for.
"Sir…"
"Mmm…" Kylo's eyeing the report, willing it to tell him what's going on.
"Is an eight percent casualty rate among new recruits common? They aren't seeing battle, correct?"
That brings Kylo up cold. He knows training can be hard. He knows that some number of his recruits will, no matter what, die. Accidents happen, especially when you are giving untrained people extremely dangerous weapons and equipment. That said, eight out of a hundred of them shouldn't be dead in the first year. The first year is physical conditioning and baton training for the Force's sake. You've got to actively try to kill yourself or someone else with one of them. He's furiously going through those numbers, and apparently he's got a huge number of training accidents.
"Get me everything we've got on how the Hux method works."
Brendol Hux was a maniac. He made his son look stable and well-adjusted with a sunny disposition and a mild temperament by comparison. How Armitage Hux became Hux is something Kylo's never really contemplated, but he's getting an idea of it. And he's also coming to the conclusion that if anyone ever really, truly deserved a plate of poison served up to him, it was Brendol Hux.
Maniac or not, Brendol Hux also came up with the single most foolproof method for turning people into, for lack of a better word, droids.
Find them young. He had no interest in anyone over the age of three. Strip away all but the barest of identity. Fill in the void with the First Order. When young, offer them lavish, exuberant praise for anything done right. Add severe, crippling punishment for any transgressions. Build up heroes to idolize and villains to hate. Move them around often enough so they can't develop any deep attachments to the people around them. As they get older, strip away the praise, offer it only for extraordinary achievement. Ramp up the punishment. Begin punishing them for the transgressions of those around them. Pet them for punishing their brethren for any transgressions. Wrap all of that in a sense of Force ordained, holy service to a cause greater than any one, or million, or billion people.
By the time someone went through the Hux method, they were owned, utterly owned by the First Order, and would follow orders unquestioningly. They would do anything asked of them, and the hardest of the lot, the ones who kept enough of their minds intact, were able to rise to utterly ruthless officers.
Which is half of Kylo's problem. Many of his training officers are Hux method grads, so they've got no empathy left. The Hux method being the other half.
Kylo never went through the Hux method. Though reading about it, he can see how Snoke handled him through it. He doesn't know if Hux had the ideas first, and gave them to Snoke, or if Snoke planted the seed and Hux nurtured it.
Maybe they worked on it together.
It doesn't matter.
He supposes, in that he's only got an 8% casualty rate, that things are getting better. It used to be 28%. The ones who couldn't be literally beaten into shape used to be executed. And now, they are recruiting instead of running around the galaxy grabbing people. And now, they don't shoot people for trying to leave, so…
He's hemorrhaging troops.
"C8, ready my shuttle, it's time for a few surprise inspections."
All of his training officers under the age of thirty-five came up through the Hux method. Anyone older than that learned their trade from Palpatine.
So, some of them are professional military, and used to using traditional military training tactics. The problem is, they make up less than a quarter of his trainers, and they're using the Hux method, just, not from the looks of it, particularly enthusiastically.
The rest of them were intentionally trained to be sociopaths, who have been drilled since toddlerhood on the sacred mission of the Hux method and how it purifies the Order of the unworthy. These are people who truly, honestly, in their bones and guts believe that leaving anyone who can't follow every order perfectly in place is a betrayal of the Order.
Lovely. He's got the names of his trainers with the highest kill rate and the highest desertion rate, and unsurprisingly enough, the lowest recruiting and retention rates. The people who've run from those stations talk, and what they say makes the entire Order look bad.
Hidiri Secundus.
Kylo's still an hour out from the training station with the highest number of dead recruits. He's reading up on it as he zips through hyperspace, learning more and more about what he's about to get into.
He should be recruiting like crazy here. It's a pit: in many places, a literal pit, a strip mining colony abandoned when the minerals ran out. The parent planet took the equipment out, and left the people to slowly starve. He's pretty much the only person offering a way off of it. He should be getting thousands of new recruits a week here.
He flips to the next page and scans images of what Hidiri Secundus looks like. He's wrong about thousands of recruits. He should be getting none because he should have emptied this planet out months ago, and instead he's got a few dozen trickling in.
Even people living in below subsistence level hand-to-mouth scrabbling in an abandoned colony on a barren lump of rock prefer it to submitting themselves to the Hux method. (He makes a note to find out why it was abandoned. There's probably something of value there, might as well scavenge it. As the thought goes through his head, he finds himself smirking; Rey'd likely appreciate this.)
Apparently, in an effort to maintain maximum capacity utilization, one of his logistics officers decided to ship people recruited from other planets here for training. After all, it wouldn't do to have extra billets empty. (Which is making the locals even less fond of the Order. Not only are they poor, but now there are even more people kicking around, using up the scarce resources.)
And from what he can tell, the only thing he's doing with the ones who aren't running away is filling the local graveyards. His training program, for adult stormtroopers, lasts three years. Specialized training can continue for well into a decade after that. For children and subadults, it's longer. So, as of this point, there have been no graduates since he took over, there just couldn't be.
But his casualty rate for the trainees who have been here for the full two years is 63%.
That's high, even for the Hux method.
That's high for their elite Death Trooper commands, where they intentionally fail three out of four recruits. (Though in this case fail means gets sent back to their previous command. Still it's hard and dangerous, and troops die training for it.)
Hell, more than 37% of them survived Starkiller. More than 37% of the compliment of the Supremacy survived Holdo running a ship through it.
"Who am I meeting?" he asks C8 through the comm as he's hurtling through space.
"Commander RW-5879."
"Of course," Kylo says under his breath. There was no chance this man or woman would have a name.
"Sir?"
"Don't worry about it. Does he… she know I'm coming?"
"No sir. Would you like him to?"
"My ETA is an hour from now. Give him a heads up in fifty-five minutes."
"Yes, sir."
RW-5879 is nervous, and pleased, and shaken, to have Kylo just appear. Granted, Kylo can only tell that because he can feel RW-5879's emotions. He can't see anything because he's covered head to toe in Stormtrooper armor.
And the only reason he can feel it, is because he's focusing hard on RW-5879. Hidiri Secundus is a pit all right. A pit of pain and fear and anger. Just standing here, in RW-5879's office, physically hurts. Kylo's sure any untrained Force sensitive would curl into a catatonic ball within an hour of being exposed to this place.
Snoke likely would have considered it a cheery vacation spot.
"I understand you're the most demanding trainer in my army." Kylo wishes he had his own mask on. It'd be so much easier to do this if RW-5879 couldn't see him.
"My Lord!" he straightens up, beaming, thinking it's a compliment.
"Soldiers who go through your system never question an order again, do they?"
"Never! You can tell them to murder their babies, and they'll do it."
Kylo makes himself not blink, not feel that glow that's been following Finn and Rose around for the last month, like a bright, warm beacon, not feel the clawing sickness of the idea of snuffing it out. "I'd like to watch what you do and how you do it."
"My LORD!" he's snapped to attention, pride beaming off of him.
"Do you have an appropriate lesson for me to observe?"
"Tomorrow. It doesn't do to pile too many of them up in one day. They need time to let them sink in."
"I'll defer to your judgement on this, RW-5879."
"Thank you, My Lord. Have you a room?"
"My accommodations are taken care of." He's not spending a moment here longer than necessary. Once he's done with this conversation, he's getting to Rey's and likely spending as long as she'll let him just touching her.
"Yes, My Lord. We start at dawn."
"Then meet me a few minutes before, and I will observe."
"Excellent. It's a new group of them. Third session. We're going over baton holds."
Kylo supposes that that would be a good first weapon to work with. The chance of hurting yourself with one is low, and it allows you to build strength, balance, and dexterity.
"I'll see you in the morning." Then he returns to his ship, and gets out of there, as fast as he can.
He's an hour and a half at hyperspeed from Lirium.
Fuck that.
He stops his ship, leaving it in extreme orbit of Hidiri Secundus. He's not wasting time in transit. He's just… not. He pulls himself off the ship to Rey's cottage.
There's still an hour before Rey's normally done with her part of the day. He's not supposed to be back at the Supremacy, and even if he was supposed to go back, he just doesn't want to. Right now, he wants to be here, in a tidy cottage, with a kitchen table at his back, and a cooker in front of him, sunlight filtered through curtains, and the chill of oncoming winter in the air.
He takes a moment to peel Master Ren off. Most of him. The tunic, gloves, belt and saber all get hung up in their bedroom. The Maji token is on Rey's throat now, and he knows he's not going back there without it.
An hour to kill, too many thoughts, not enough to do, not enough he wants to do… He spends a moment in the kitchen, getting a glass of water, and looking around blankly, trying to not feel that place. He spends another few moments pacing around the kitchen and living area. Eight steps wall to wall for him. It's not a huge space.
Eventually, it occurs to him that he's the one who makes sure they eat at night, and if he's not going back to the Supremacy, than their usual meal isn't coming home with him. She's got enough provisions for him to make them supper, so… It's been more than a decade since he's cooked, but he's fairly sure he remembers how to apply heat to food. Not like he's going to make anything particularly complicated, probably just toast and eggs and coffee. Just… something to keep his hands and body busy right now.
Something to keep him moving, because it's easier to think when he moves. He starts to gather up everything he needs, and a few things he likely doesn't, searching through her small stock of food for something to season everything with.
The Supremacy used to feel like Hidiri Secundus. Snoke certainly did. Kylo used to live that feel, every day, every minute. It soaked into his skin and bones, whooshed through his lungs with his breath, and thrummed in his veins with his blood. He was a fish swimming in it, unable to feel it until he wasn't living in it, and now… Now, in a warming kitchen, he can shudder all over as much as he needs to, trying to distance himself from the feel of that place.
Rey told him about the kids asking about evil versus dark, and right now, it's exceptionally clear to him what the difference is.
He's dark. He always will be dark. He's fast to anger, easy to insult, easy to hurt, likely to see the worst possible version of whatever is coming his way, wild, digging his way out of a lot of self-doubt-and-loathing, lacking at least a few, if not all, of his middle gears, and destructive. But he's not… those places.
All of that pain, all of that suffering, none of it is necessary, none of it matters, not on any important level, all of it was there because men like RW-5879 enjoy it.
Because Snoke enjoyed it.
Because pain makes men weak, makes them pliable, makes them into slaves, and Snoke loved nothing better than whimpering men at his knees begging for surcease.
He surveys the food he's put together on the counter, and pulls an egg to him. Omelets are easy, and they've got what they need to make one. The egg lands in his hand with a gentle touch, cool shell against warm skin, one swift crack, a little pull, and it's shattered in his hand, splatting into the blow beneath.
He can feel the memory of Snoke, see him rending the Knights of Ren with his control of the Force, ripping them limb from limb, shredding their minds with the physical pain of it, and he was screaming at it in his own mind, howling, tears streaming down his face. But he never gave it voice.
He can feel Snoke tearing through Rey with the Force, and knows that he wanted to see if this time he could get a sound out of Kylo. He knows that was the point of his claim about the Force bond, the only reason he said it was to add extra pain on top of everything else.
To see how badly he could hurt Kylo before he broke.
Kylo's whipping the eggs into a froth, much more of a froth than they need to be. He's well on his way to a soufflé.
Snoke got to see what happened when Kylo finally broke. There was a good few seconds where he was still alive, long enough for him to knowwhat had just happened to him. Kylo still enjoys that look on Snoke's face, and the utter shock of it burning through their bond.
That's the thing about throwing cold water on molten glass, you never know where the shards are going to land.
"All is as the Force wills it. You remember saying that to me?" he asks Rey as they lay together in bed, his arms wrapped around her. They should be drifting toward sleep, but he's dreading setting foot back on Hidiri Secundus, and she has a hard time sleeping when she can feel he's this distressed.
He can feel she's startled that he'd ask that. They talk about… all sorts of things, but he rarely shows any interest in digging deep into the philosophy or theology of the Force, or how she's morphing that into a theory of the Maji. She's never felt any desire to push that. Anyone even remotely familiar with Ben Solo can feel that's a thorny patch in his history.
Plus, she's got a sense that… if and when it matters, he'll come to it. Maybe, today, it matters. "What's got you asking that?"
He gently strokes the hair on her neck, kissing her shoulder. "Today, everything, the last two years…"
She rolls over to face him. "When I said it the first time… It was… I don't know, a safety net. Now… I don't know if the Force has a will." She rests her cheek against his chest, her temple against the scar from where she ran him through with her lightsaber. "I know, the first time I was talking to the children about it, that I said the Force seeks balance. And that still feels right."
"Yeah."
"I don't know if that's a will, though. Or… what's the word for it? When you pour hot liquid into cold, and they seek to get to the same temperature."
"Entropy?"
"Sure."
His voice is quiet as he says, "Luke used to talk about the Living Force and the Unifying Force."
Rey nods, feeling his mind wandering about these ideas. "I read those."
"Lucky you. I had to steal the books on the Unifying Force. Got caught about halfway through the first one, then he hid the damn things."
"Because they didn't believe in the light or dark, just that there was a Force and we're all moving through it. Living Force is about now. You and I and everything alive here, in this moment, now. Light and dark and moving from one minute to the next. Unifying Force is beyond that. All of the universe, stardust to light to sound to us, all of it connected, thought time and space, and each of us moves through that to a destiny."
"I knew there was good stuff in there. He'd talk just enough about the Unifying Force to know that he believed that all of it, not just us, living things, were part of it, and that destiny was tied in there somewhere, too."
"And…"
His chin is on the top of her head, his arms are wrapped around her, and she can feel his heart beating against her lips. "Just… feeling it, I guess. Is this… us… destiny… Did the Force… do this to us? For us?"
"To… we know there's at least some to us."
"Maybe. I felt that bond snap into place the first moment I touched your mind and realized you'd touched back. I didn't expect it to go there, but… I felt it."
She kisses his throat. "I know. I felt it, too. It didn't feel like anything I put into motion, though."
"Me, either. It just… was. I may have walked myself to the trap on my own, but it snapping shut wasn't my design."
She feels that, thinks about it. "Probably a less romantic than ideal description, but… Yes. Everything to get to that chair may have been in my hands, but what happened when your mind brushed mine wasn't."
He holds her a little closer, a bit tighter. "Does it bother you that we're not here of our own choice?"
"I think we're here of our own choice. Maybe we have a great destiny. Maybe… The Unifying Force granted us a path, but staying on it, finding it even, that's up to us."
"You believe that?"
"Yes." Her hand is on his chest, over his heart. "I guess I do believe the Force has a will. It's trying to get us somewhere, but it's up to us to go there."
"Better to be a fish swimming in a current than a puppet on strings."
"Yes. It's nudging us along, but we don't have to go along." She kisses his chest again. "Is that comforting or not?" She feels him close his eyes in the dark and rub his lips together.
"The puppet can't get it wrong. He's just dangling." She cuddles against him, trying to comfort him with her touch. "I'm so afraid I'm going to fuck all of this up."
"You're not."
He snorts at that.
"Hey…" She reaches behind herself with her left hand, grabbing his at the small of her back, and makes sure that their rings just slightly click against each other. "Tell me about Lord and Lady Ren… You still see it, right?"
He closes his eyes. "Yes. It's still there."
"Getting clearer."
He tries to focus on it, see it, and… "Yes."
"Then you're still on the right path. That's the second half of that book. The Unifying Force gives us hints of where we're supposed to go, gives us visions and premonitions to aid us in our path, and getting there is up to us. If you can still see it…"
"Do you still see us building?"
He feels the smile against his chest. "Yes. That's getting clearer, too. Maybe, on occasion, Lord Ren engages in acts of carpentry."
She feels his eyes roll. "Lord Ren has people for that. He's stuck in boring meetings."
"Maybe sometimes he goes out into the sunshine and builds things to burn off some of the stress."
"Maybe."
6/9/1
"LINE UP!"
Kylo is aware of the fact that they train children. At least, in the sense that, were you to ask him how old their youngest recruits are, he can tell you that he put a stop to stealing babies a bit over a year and a half ago, and previous to that, the Hux method took promising toddlers from all over the galaxy. So, the youngest members of The Order are somewhere around three years old.
So he knows they train children.
And he knows that they turn no one away from his recruiting station, so if a family comes, they take all of them. And he knows that every planet in the galaxy has runaways, lost children, and in many of the non-core worlds, slaves. He knows this.
Seeing eighteen people of indeterminate sex, all with the same shaved heads, same gray pajama uniforms, all of them holding small batons, all of them about thigh high on him, is a different matter all-together.
It returns him to memories of his first days with Luke, when he and M'Gll, Rona, and Blynn all had their little beige rompers and brown robes. He was eight. He assumes these children are somewhere around six.
The children all have "LINE UP!" down pat. They're in nice straight lines, exactly a meter and a half apart from each other in all directions.
RW-5879 walks between them, eyeing them, and Kylo can feel the fear pouring off of them. They won't have to be trained to crouch to get into defensive position, not like he was. They're a millisecond away from dropping into one to protect themselves.
He was twenty-two, and it was his first fight with the Praetorian Guards. Snoke had said, "Let's see what you've learned, Master of the Knights of Ren."
He'd been feeling cocky. Standing tall, proud, Jedi-approved training posture. He'd just killed Tash M'Gll and beaten Luke Skywalker, how hard could ghosts in red be? After all, he had a lightsaber, and the Guard just had a baton.
"May I suggest you give some thought to your legs?" Snoke said, a second before the attack began.
It took less than thirty seconds for the Guard to shatter his left shin. He kept standing for a full minute past that, fighting on the one leg, before the pain and exhaustion got the better of him.
When he went down, the Guard broke the other one, just to do it.
"Stand, Master Ren."
"I…"
"Stand."
He pulled himself up with the Force, feet barely brushing the ground, pain pouring through him so hard he threw up.
"Next time you fight, stay low, protect your legs."
He never had to be told again, and he knows these children will never need to have that lesson spelled out for them, either. They're all been hit often enough to know to crouch.
"'TONS OUT!"
All eighteen of them whip their batons to their full length, and hold them, in two hands, out in front of them.
RW-5879 continues walking around, looking, seeking out failure.
Kylo feels the hit start a heartbeat before RW-5879 strikes, and it takes all of his control to not jump him.
"WRONG HAND!"
"RW-5879?"
"Master Ren?"
"Did you just break a six-year-old's hand for holding a baton wrong?"
"Yes, sir! QR-9917's been told how to do it right two times before. She refuses to do it right."
The girl in question is on the ground, clutching her hand, sobbing.
"That child is left-handed."
"Not anymore, Sir! We set the bones, sir, but don't heal them. By the time it heals naturally, she'll be a righty."
The girl continues to scream, holding her hand.
RW-5879's ignoring her, watching Kylo, who's watching to see what he does next. They hold the gaze for a moment, and then RW-5879 shouts out, "FIRST POSITION, RIGHT LEG LEAD!"
"Are you going to leave her on the ground?"
"Yes, sir! Focuses the rest of them, sir. None of them will make a misstep for the rest of the lesson, my Lord."
Kylo steps over, picking up the child, gently, trying to not touch her hand. "Does one of them fail a task every lesson?"
"Yes, sir! That's part of how it works, sir."
Kylo nods, and then breaks his attention from RW-5879. The girl's terror has gone up by a factor of ten or so, and she does not want to be in his arms right now. He can feel that she's sure that if she breaks formation, something even worse will happen to her. She's begging to be put back on the ground. He tries to use the Force to dull the pain and soothe her, but both of those are light skills, and even in the best of circumstance, calm, quiet, being encouraged to do it, he's always been miserable at them. Attempting to do it when he's not murdering someone only because he's planning a much messier and grander way to kill him is futile. He knocks her unconscious instead, and she goes limp in his arms. He feels the further spike of fear in every child around them, all certain he just murdered their companion. He doesn't have a fix for that.
"And what happens to the ones who fail several times, RW-5879?"
"These little guys, not much. We keep drilling them, sir. Once they get over twelve, we execute them after ten fails, in front of the rest."
"Ah." All things considered a 63% casualty rate is likely low, then.
"It works, sir. Enough fear, enough pain, and they'll master anything. If you get through my program, sir, you'll follow any and every order, and you'll do it perfectly."
"Yes, I'd imagine." Kylo nods. He does imagine. Specifically at least a dozen excruciating and gory ways he's going to personally kill this man. "In five days, there will be a training conference on the Supremacy. I'd appreciate you being one of my guests of honor."
He can feel the swell of pride raising through RW-5879.
"I'd like you to take between now and then to write out your technique, in detail. Prepare an in-depth demonstration of what you do here. Cease your current training schedule. Focus entirely on the presentation. I'm sure they can take a week off."
"It'll put us behind."
Kylo's eyes are cold. "I'll forgive it. In five days I want you, every trainer at this place, and three of your most promising classes, including this one, on the Supremacy. Our numbers have been unsatisfactory lately, and we're going to see about shifting that."
He's so happy at the idea of being part of how that shift is going to happen, he's completely blind to the feel of Kylo's words. If he'd been even remotely paying attention, he'd have felt the threat, but he's not.
"Yes, sir!"
"Thank you, RW-5879." He turns, with the girl still in his arms.
"What are you going to do with that one?"
"That no longer concerns you."
RW-5879 swallows, hard, starting to feel off foot.
Kylo walks, fast, back to his ship, and as soon as he's on it, he punches in the coordinates for Lirium. At hyperspeed it's an hour and a half ride. He's in his command blacks, his full, working, in charge, Master of the Order garb. Nothing about him is even remotely Padme right now, and he also doesn't have his Padme clothing anywhere nearby.
And he's in his personal, Order-branded TIE.
So much for that plan.
I've got someone for you.
Now?
He materializes in Rey's cottage. Yes.
I'll be there in a minute. What happened?
A problem I'm fixing. I'll tell you about it tonight.
Okay.
He lays the girl on their bed, and wipes her memory. She was standing in formation. She was holding her baton. And when she wakes up, that's where things will end. He knows they will tell her that Master Padme rescued her, and that will be that.
Kylo wraps a blanket around her, and returns to his ship, knowing Rey will get her to the medbay.
"Your friend, Finn, is an incredible man," he says to Rey later that night.
"I agree." The idea that he does though… "It's that bad?"
"It's worse." He shakes his head. "Just getting an idea of what he survived, and what he broke free of."
"He… doesn't talk about it."
Kylo nods. "I'd bet not. Today's little one… Does she have a name?"
"No, just a number. Once her bones got set and healed, she wanted to go back… She's staying with Finn and Rose and Paige right now."
Kylo nods. "She was struggling in my arms, afraid of what would happen if she stepped out of formation."
"What happened?"
"He broke her hand for holding a baton 'wrong.'"
Rey's lip curls in disgust. "That happen a lot?"
"Apparently, one of them gets something wrong every session, and gets punished for it. It encourages the others to do better."
He can feel the curdled revulsion slide through Rey, and he nods.
"What are you going to do about it?"
The smile on Kylo's face is breathtakingly cold. "I think RW-5879 and I are going to do a little training."
"You're going to kill him."
"I'm going to destroy him, after everyone sees what he was doing. I am going to make sure none of my trainers think that's an appropriate training technique, and I will make sure all of them know on a visceral level that if they ever try any of his techniques again, I will personally take them apart with a lightsaber and possibly my bare hands, in front of all the rest of them, just for kicks and giggles."
And for once, he doesn't feel any sense of revulsion from Rey when he's talking about, and planning on enjoying, a spot of intense ultraviolence.
6/10/1
His next stop has the highest number of runners. Not so many casualties, but they can't keep recruits.
Running, he understands. It's a market world. Traders and ships are moving through all the time. If you had even a week's pay in your pocket, you could get out of here and off to… Anywhere. But that's true for everyone. Any week's worth of pay would get you a ticket on something.
So… It's not like you'd have to join the Order to get out of here. Maybe miss a few meals or be willing to trade something you'd rather not, but you can get away from Myrtuum Ping. At least, if you can get to one of his recruiting stations, you can just as easily get to the port.
And, from the numbers he's looking at 50% of the people who go to his recruiting station here, and an addition 85% of the ones who get shipped here, because again, it wouldn't do to have an empty billet at any training facility, are taking advantage of this.
On the upside, standing here does not, literally, hurt.
It does, however, make his stomach curdle.
Not having gone through the Hux method himself, there was another aspect he wasn't aware of, but it's smacking him in the face as he plows through this training facility.
It's sex segregated.
But the trainers aren't.
And he's not sure if it would matter all that much if the trainers here were women, too. He's sure just the power differential would mean there would be issues, but… Maybe it wouldn't be as much of a problem.
Again, on the upside, though he supposes that if you're going through it, it's not much of an upside, Captain Tomlinson, in his smart, perfectly pressed command uniform, no armor for him, and Kylo's fairly certain why he's not wearing armor, isn't a sadist.
He's just a lecherous idiot with too much power.
And an entire command filled with women who require his good opinion of them to advance.
They very much are not wearing identical shaved heads and gray coveralls.
The ladies in this contingent are being "uniformed" if he can call it that, in the smallest, tightest outfits he's ever laid eyes on. He's fairly certain these black, skintight things that just barely wrap around their chests and hips are not standard anything for the Order. (Though he supposes they could possibly be the lady's underwear. He's never actually investigated if they've got uniform undies, though he supposes they must. After all, he has uniform underwear, so everyone must, right?)
"Back straight, chest out, right foot up, balance!"
It is true that both strength and flexibility are skills that the Order expects all of their recruits to master. And it is true that some of the positions, especially when performed by attractive people not wearing a lot of clothing are, and Kylo's trying his best to not notice this, extremely nice to look at. And it is also true that if you are not holding the position correctly that the benefit offered by getting into it becomes non-existent, and you might hurt yourself.
He's held every form he's watching these women go through, and he was bad at all of them when he started, but Luke never felt the need to rub that much of himself against him when correcting his form. In fact, if he remembers correctly, in most cases, it shouldn't take more than a hand or two, and those hands do not usually need to be anywhere near where Tomlinson's hands are, to get a person into the right position to gather the benefit of the exercise.
Kylo mentally glares daggers at the man, displeased to have been proven right in his suspicion of why he's wearing no armor. Can't rub his shaft against them if he's in his armor. Can't leer at them if his face is hidden.
"You enjoy this job, don't you?" Kylo asks as Tomlinson takes him around the center, showing him the 'facility.'
He doesn't know how many of the other trainers, some of whom have numbers and are not molesting the ladies, though they may be battering them, and the others of which have names, and roving hands, thighs, and shafts, were hand-picked by Tomlinson to join him here, but enough of them are following his manners that it doesn't matter if they were picked or not.
"Best day of my life was when you opened up recruiting to slaves. This level of basic training, it used to just be children, and…" Kylo supposes that it's a good thing he wasn't molesting the children, too. "They're so desperate to get away, they're willing to do anything to make you happy," There's a wide leer in that sentence.
"I'd imagine." Kylo's voice is beyond icy and down to absolute zero. "I'd like you to write up your training technique, and bring your trainers, and your most promising troops to the Supremacy in four days. We're having a conference on how to most effectively utilize all of the skills of our newest recruits. And…" he feels the lie almost pause on his lips, but if he's going to get this to work… "proper training relies upon satisfied trainers with high morale, so when you write it up and demonstrate it, I want you to be specific as to your methods." Between Tomlinson's own lust, and Kylo's Force, he knows that when it's time to demonstrate, the rest of his trainers will have a show to see.
Tomlinson looks at him with another leer, and then looks over the combat class in front of them. Again, Kylo would prefer to not notice this, but hand to hand performed by sweaty women who aren't wearing a lot of clothing is also awfully nice to watch. "I will do that." He checks the chronometer on the wall, glances at Kylo, sees Kylo watching, and says, "It's getting late. We can accommodate you if you'd like to stay. The food is good, and the company excellent."
"I'm not staying."
Tomlinson is confused by that, and Kylo can feel that he often has visitors who come to partake of the 'hospitality.' "Oh. Your loss. A lot of them love you, and would probably be all over showing you their appreciation."
Kylo doesn't visibly react to that, but… He can feel it's true. Enough. Love would be an outright lie, but… For most of them, he likely would be welcome in their bed. Some would see it as a way to show appreciation. Some as a way to rise to a higher station. Some as just a change of pace. And some have been looking at him, their eyes trailing over his body. And while he knows how to act about that, "Another time," he says, turning to leave, he's not sure what to think about it.
"Count on it."
The First Order may have done everything it could to turn humans into order-following droids, but even with the Hux method, it was beyond aware of the fact that the things in those uniforms were people, and people are biological units with needs.
Snoke may have found those needs irksome, but he made sure they were met. People who have their needs met have a much easier time complying with other people's wants. And, though Kylo's shifted a lot of Snoke's rules, these he's kept in place.
Food: Not great, but always more than enough and good, meaning both nutritious and tasty. Hungry soldiers don't follow orders well. Their alliance ends up being to their stomachs before their masters, so Snoke made sure they were never hungry.
Rest: The beds are comfortable and the dwellings they're in are snug. There's enough down time between shifts to make sure that the troops can rest. Sleeping pills are available to anyone who wants them. Tired soldiers make mistakes, and yes, sometimes being tired is unavoidable, but if it can be avoided, it is.
Medical care: That's one area Snoke was willing to pour money. They've got beyond top of the line care. Sick soldiers can't work, and with most of his empire on ships, any contagion could rampage through his men if he wasn't careful about health vectors.
Sex: The Jedi may have been attempting to produce asexual or barely sexual monks. Snoke wasn't. His soldiers could fraternize as they liked with each other, and every permanent settlement, ship, and outpost with more than a hundred people on it has pleasure specialists to cater to pretty much every taste. The only change Kylo made to that was he started hiring their specialists, instead of just grabbing them.
On his ship, hurtling away from Myrtuum Ping, he double checks. There are people whose entire job is to take care of horny idiots like Tomlinson stationed at Myrtuum Ping. He's apparently paying five of them rather well to do just that. And… It's a market town. Apparently, there's an entire district filled with nothing but people who take care of the physical needs of anyone with enough credits to buy an hour or so of their time.
The man isn't desperate, he's just a fucking asshole, and he's going to pay for it.
"I take it today was better?" Rey asks as they eat. It's clear that he's not nearly as shaken as he was yesterday.
"It was different."
She touches his hand, and gets a feel for different. He feels her rage spike in a way his didn't. He'd been, disgusted, probably the best word for it, but not the red hot core of anger he felt at Hidiri.
She's got enough anger for both of them. "You're going to kill this one, too."
"I was planning on it." That was a forgone conclusion, though he's more excited, and interested in killing RW-5879.
"Make it hurt." Her voice is savage and he can feel her pleasure at the idea.
"I can do that."
6/11/1
Rey's sleeping. He's still awake.
And has been for hours. He gets up, and pulls his clothing back on, it's too cold to be roaming about naked, and he doesn't want to take the blankets away from Rey.
He crosses into her main room, and looks at the door, and… While there's some appeal to the idea of her chapel, it's just too damn cold outside for it. He doesn't have his cloak or cowl and freezing his ass off in her dome isn't his idea of a good way to settle his mind.
Instead he settles himself in their armchair, legs crossed, getting comfortable, eyes closing, and lets himself think about everything that's clamoring around in his head.
Eventually, he gets to the problem. It's not going to be enough to just execute these people after they demonstrate what he doesn't want them doing. He can't just tell his trainers, "Don't do this." Especially RW-5879's method. That's the only thing three quarters of his trainers know how to do.
He's got to give them a map of what to do, how to do it, and…
He doesn't exactly enjoy thinking too hard about his own training with Luke, but, it worked. As well as it could with him. And sense of shame and fish out of water aside, it was humane. He was, undoubtedly, Luke's worst failure, or worst student, or… least capable of absorbing the lessons he was supposed to master, but Luke never screamed at him, never physically hurt him, never… Did anything other than fear him and be disappointed. And… if he hadn't blocked the blow, Luke would have killed him clean and fast. He wasn't there to hurt Ben, just end him. (Kylo's not sure if that's mercy or not.)
Granted, fear and disappointment aren't exactly easy to carry, not when the scared, disappointed person matters to you, but…
"I wasn't just disappointed in you." The voice is so familiar Kylo jerks at it, a wave of fear and shame pouring over him, pulling him into a defensive posture before he can even get his eyes open. Then he opens his eyes to the blue glow of Luke in Rey's living room. He's leaning back against her workbench, looking down at Kylo. Pretty much the only way he can look down at Kylo now.
For a few more heartbeats there's a thrill of fear and shame through Kylo, but Luke just stands there, looking at him, old and weary. The ghost is long beyond hurting him, long beyond having an opinion that should matter. Kylo slowly relaxes back into the chair, his rational mind aware of the fact that he can't attack or defend, the twenty-two-year-old boy in the back of his head still on high alert, ready to leap at a moment's notice.
Luke nods, apparently pleased that Kylo's willing to sit. "I was Luke Skywalker, hero of the galaxy, destroyer of the Empire, the only living Jedi Master, and I couldn't lead a hurting eight-year-old out of his own dark. And you caught that, felt it, but didn't have a map of how it worked, so figured it was about you."
"It was about me," Kylo snaps. "You weren't pining away having an existential crisis over M'Gll."
"My failure with you, not you."
Kylo eyes him, snorts in inelegant dismissal, and shakes his head. "You've had a long time to tell yourself self-serving lies about that."
Luke looks right back at him. "So have you."
"You were afraid of me."
"Yes." And it's clear that Luke was, but he's not, now. "Afraid of you as you, and you as the one who would pull my mask off."
"What mask?" Most of Kylo's memories of Luke involve a painfully, eternally, earnest face. Earnestly pleased, earnestly disappointed, earnestly confounded, but always, earnest.
Luke stares at him, eyes open, very open, and says, quietly, "You're what… thirty, thirty-one now?"
"Something like that." Since he's gotten out of the habit of thinking in BBY-ABY years, he's actually not entirely sure how old he is today, because he's not sure what today is. Not thirty-two, that'll happen after they get to Y.O. 2.
"Feel like you aren't smart enough, wise enough, experienced enough to do this thing dropped on your shoulders? This thing everyone else depends on you to do, do right, and then, somehow, when you do it, everything will get better." Kylo blinks at that. "Feel like everyone who matters depends on you to somehow be able to do this thing that you're not only not suited for, but you don't actually know how to do? So you're desperately faking it, doing the best you can, hoping they don't figure it out?" Luke nods, slowly. "Oh, you do. Good. Now toss a kid who's the living embodiment of showing the entire universe that you're not who you claim to be into the mix. And he's your sister's only child, and she's looking at you like the entire universe depends on you being able to help him, because you're the only one who could possibly do it. And your best friend, the man who saved your life more times than you can count, he's begging you not to screw it up, because he's sure this isn't the way to do it. Toss all of that onto your plate. Now, just to make it more interesting, the kid can feel your emotions, and is actively looking for any hint that you are not constantly delighted with him and everything he does, and if he ever gets that hint, he spirals into a snit of self-loathing, and flares out hard enough with the Force that everyone near him gets depressed and angry, too. Give that a try. It'll be fun."
Kylo can't help it. He snorts a laugh. Genuinely starting to relax, after all, there are good memories of time with Luke in there, too. And… at least right now, he's having an easier time feeling them. "Rey wasn't kidding, you got sarcastic."
"Like you said, I had a long time."
"So… You here to be deep and wise and experienced now that you've had your long time?"
"I could be. Or maybe, like Yoda, I'm just here to annoy you and remind you that the world won't end if you don't get it right."
Kylo huffs. "There. Is that annoyed enough?"
Luke smirks. "Probably not. You aren't even thinking of cursing, yet."
"Kriff," Kylo says, utterly deadpan.
"Please, you didn't think that was cursing back when you were ten."
"You did."
They both remember Luke glaring at him when he said that, frustrated at some lesson going sideways. Ben got into a snit because it was barely a bad word, the kind of word Han might say when he was mildly irked, and Luke getting strict because it was rude.
Luke smirks. "You know, this part of it is fun. I should get a walking stick."
Kylo just looks at him, not getting that.
Luke shakes his head, not about to share Yoda bonking him in the head with his staff. "It won't, you know."
Kylo raises an eyebrow.
"The universe won't end if you fail."
"But I will. They'll kill me if I fuck this up too badly."
Luke rolls his eyes. "Look, I know it's not your fault you don't have any middle gears. You come from people with no middle gears, who wouldn't have known a middle gear if they tripped over it, but try to at least imagine what they might look like."
Kylo just stares at Luke, feeling annoyed.
"Not everything is a life or death struggle. And even if it is, you've got what most people would call extenuating circumstances."
Kylo raises an eyebrow. He probably would have gotten along better with Luke if he'd been this snarky when he was alive. Of course, from the feel of it, Luke had to embrace some of his own dark before he could get this snarky.
"I know you read every history of the Jedi I could find. You devoured them. Every hero. Every great knight. You knew them all by name. So, tell me, Kylo-who-used-to-be-smarter-than-this-when-he-was-Ben, how many of them could freeze blaster shots and teleport?"
Kylo blinks at that, too. Luke smirks. "Don't be stupid, and you can fail without having to die for it. The Force has given you an out. Take it if you need it. And then start over.
"Your father ever tell you why he had those dice bronzed?"
Kylo's not following that leap. "Uh… No… They were his luck."
"They were rigged. He had them weighted so he couldn't lose with them. He bronzed them so he didn't have to roll them again. The Force gave you a set of rigged dice, use them if you need them."
And then Luke's gone.
And Kylo's not any closer to a plan for how to train people, but he's more settled about putting whatever it is into place.
6/12/1
Needs… Take care of their needs and they'll take care of his wants.
What do they need?
Food, clothing, medical care, a place to sleep, someone or thing to fuck if they get too randy. He's got that covered.
But that's not why they're joining him. They'd be staying if that's what they needed. He's giving them that, and they're running away in droves.
What do they need?
A better life.
And what's that…
He's at his desk, looking at half a dozen datapads filled with reports on the Hux method, and what the Imperials used to use and from even before that, when the Senate built a Clone Army.
Reading through all of them, he's noticing that the Hux method, for all he loathes it, not only had the highest kill rate, but for people who survived it, the highest morale reports, too.
What did Hux give them the Empire didn't?
He dreams of Tash M'Gll.
It's a mix of their first fight, young, thirteen, she's two inches taller than he is, but he's stronger, and they're fairly equally matched, and their last one, older, twenty-two, almost twenty-three, he's more than a head taller now, and he's on fire and she's ice, and both of them are flaring, glowing, dark and light, each pulled to their own side of the Force, and she's swinging, controlled and steady, and he's storming, wild and frenzied.
He felt it the moment she realized she was going to lose the fight.
She knew it, arms up, blocking his saber, her green to his blue, but he's stronger, and he's forcing her blade down, toward her own neck. Jedi fight stance is all about arm strength, supposedly the Force, too, but… they're equally matched in the Force, and he weighs almost twice as much as she does.
She knew he'd win, and he felt her peace at it.
If she died defending what mattered, then that was that. The Force would take care of her spirit when her body was done. After all, she'd given it everything she could.
He wakes with a jerk.
Hux gave them a cause. That's what Luke could do for M'Gll, too.
And that's what he's got to give them. Not just material needs. He's got to give them a cause. That's why they join. His idea of citizenship and belonging and controlling their destinies is a start, but it's not married into his training techniques.
He's got to not just give them the idea, he's got to keep reminding them of it. He's got to build toward it. He's got to give them meaning, and the tools to defend it.
6/13/1
C8 isn't surprised when Kylo asks it to hunt down civics textbooks from Naboo and Alderaan, because it can't be, but it does indicate that Alderaan may be a trifle difficult to find surviving textbooks from.
"I don't care if it takes a while, find them. Old Imperial textbooks, from the days the Senate was still running. Any other democratic republic… Something that covers the ideals of how it's supposed to work. Not necessarily how it did, just how it was supposed to."
C8 doesn't sigh, but Kylo's got the sense it wants to.
There are 27,982 training officers among the Order.
And all of them are on The Supremacy. It's the first time he's been pleased to not be at full capacity here, because if he were, they'd be bunking in their ships or sleeping in the hallways.
But he's got the space, so they're here.
For this, right here, right now.
The first four hours are an intense, in-depth seminar of how RW-5879 and Captain Tomlinson do their jobs. No detail has been spared. He doesn't say anything, just watches. Most of them are watching the trainers with laser focus, and some of them are taking notes.
He gets the sense from a good number of the Imperials that this annoys them. This pleases him.
He can feel that too many Hux grads consider this unnecessary. They already know how to do this, and are doing it. That's dismaying on several levels, not the least of which is that he's going to have to figure out how to retrain them.
After that, hands on lessons. RW-5879 goes first, and Kylo watches impassively as he lines up a collection of teenagers, ready to show off their skills with vibroblades.
Kylo puts a stop to it once the teens are lined up. "RW-5879, sub in your training officers. Let's have the professionals demonstrate how this works."
The training officers aren't pleased by this, but they follow orders so they fall in and the teenagers step aside. Frakes takes charge of them, moving them to a decent vantage point from where they can watch what's coming next.
RW-5879 goes through the drill, including dislocating the shoulder of one of the trainers who doesn't, quite, get his… her blade up fast enough. Followed by backhanding the trainer, hard, when he… she… no way to tell what's under the armor, snaps the joint back into place. "I did not give you permission to fix that."
"Yes, sir!" Kylo's guts lurch when he… she… lets RW-5879 dislocate the shoulder, again, and then stomp his/her knee.
The drill ends, with the soldier standing, all weight on one foot, and from what Kylo can feel, rapidly slipping into shock. He glances to Frakes, and as soon as the demonstration is over, he weeds the soldier out of the line, and gingerly offers assistance getting him/her to the medbay.
Kylo would have preferred having Tomlinson demonstrate on his trainers, but he's sure that if he does that, he'll just get a perfectly competent flexibility class.
"Captain Tomlinson, demonstrate, please."
So, Tomlinson has his "best" class in front of them, and his metric for best appears to be most conventionally attractive. They're very pretty girls. Young. Not quite sub-adults, but not exactly adults, either. Younger than Rey, but not adolescents.
And, seeing the way they watched RW-5879 give his demonstration, Tomlinson is more than willing to show off all of his "technique" as well.
He's pointing out how this is good for officer morale, giving no indication at all that the woman he's rubbing against is a person trying to learn a skill.
Kylo watches, eyes impassive.
He watches as other training officers ask questions. He especially pays attention to the ones who seem to be planning on how to incorporate these particular 'morale boosting' techniques into their own roster.
He doesn't know if he should be relieved that many of the Hux grads consider the need for 'morale boosting' of any sort to be a sign of ineptitude and weakness. If they were in charge, Tomlinson and his cohort would be purged. He's not sure how he feels about how the Hux grads will respond to what he's about to do.
At the end of the demonstration he says, "Captain Tomlinson… that was an amazingly informative demonstration of correct balance posing." Kylo crooks a finger, pulling the man forward.
He looks both pleased with himself at Kylo's words and somewhat disconcerted by the feel of the Force pulling him to Kylo.
Pleased vanishes when Kylo lights his saber, red flame flicking out, hot and wicked, and before Tomlinson even has a chance to slip from confused to afraid, he's flashed out with it, driving it straight up and through his genitals.
He feels every man witnessing this cringe in a protective crouch at where he strikes Tomlinson, and how he holds the blade there, twisting it, pulling out a little once, and then forcing it deeper through his body, tip of his blade visible through his back. Then he extinguishes the blade and Tomlinson collapses. He debates leaving him on the floor, still alive and screaming, so damaged he can't even clutch at himself, but decides that he's already hammered the lesson home. A quick flick of his wrist snaps Tomlinson's neck.
The ladies he was training are too stunned to cheer, but he can feel a bloodthirsty pleasure through most of them. One or two are dismayed because Tomlinson was easy to manipulate, and they could use him to their ends. But, for the most part, the only thing about this they didn't like was that he chose to break Tomlinson's neck. Many of them would have taken him to the medbay, fixed him up, as much as he could be, and then left him in the middle of nowhere an unsexed wreck with no bladder or bowel control.
He looks to RW-5879, and he smiles. It's the coldest, scariest gesture he's ever used, and RW-5879's knees buckle at it.
"Come train with me, Commander RW-5879. I'd like to test the efficiency of your technique."
Twenty-seven thousand plus training officers are completely focused on what they're seeing, silent, still, halfway between horrified and fascinated.
RW-5879 takes a half step forward, fear a palpable cloud around him, and Kylo can feel him cringe behind his helmet when Kylo tosses him his lightsaber, blade off. He catches it, wouldn't do to let the Master's weapon drop, but it's clear he doesn't want to be holding it.
"Have you ever used a lightsaber before, RW-5879?"
"No, sir."
Kylo smiles at him again, and again the expression is terrifying. "Excellent, this will be a good learning experience." He uses the Force to trigger the blade and watches RW-5879 drop it in surprise. He stops its fall and brings it back up to RW-5879 hand. "Don't drop it."
He takes it with a shaking hand.
"It's a one-and-a-half handed weapon, meaning you should be able to wield it one or two handed, depending on the situation. Much like a baton."
Kylo ignites the black light short sword, and jumps forward, taking a good hard swing at RW-5879, who brings the red saber up, fast, clutched in both hands. He's trained with all of the Order's martial weapons, so he should at least have some decent instincts for this. Among other things he can't see the black blade, but his instincts are good enough that he knows he's being attacked, and he's following the line of the hilt.
"Good. Two-handed is usually good for any sort of defensive maneuver."
Then Kylo sweeps down, fast, taking RW-5879's right leg off at the knee. "It's a good plan to crouch some, keep the blade low, you want to defend your whole body."
RW-5879's curled into a ball in the floor, clutching at the stump of his leg, moaning.
"You hit them when they break formation." He kicks him hard in ribs, using his Force to multiply the force of the hit, feeling the armor shatter under his boot, and ribs crack below. "Stand, Commander RW-5879, the lesson is not over."
RW-5879 can't stand, so Kylo stands him up using the Force, and then raises the saber, hovering it at hand height. "Take the blade. It's time to learn."
"Please! Stop! Please!" He's begging through his tears and moans, trying to kneel before Kylo, but he won't let him sink to the floor.
"Take the saber, RW-5879."
"Please, please, please, Master Ren, please," his voice is ragged, breathing hard.
Kylo nudges his hand with the hilt of his saber, and he loosely closes his fingers around it.
Kylo slashes out fast, taking that hand off at the wrist. He keeps the saber floating. "Both hands, Commander RW-5879, we are not yet working on attack strokes, where you'd use one hand."
RW-5879's hanging in Kylo's Force grasp, wailing, no intelligible sounds coming from him, just a long, tearing scream of inarticulate pain.
Kylo shakes his head, acting disgusted, "It's been less than a minute, Commander RW-5879. Do you really think this is good enough?"
He's sobbing, and looses his bladder and bowel.
"Well, that was utterly unnecessary. You haven't, yet, lost anything that can't be replaced."
RW-5879 sobs.
"Are you finding fear and pain to not be suitably motivating? Are you not scared enough yet to do everything perfect? Pick up the blade. Two hands."
"I…" more sobbing, gasped breaths, snotty, liquid-y sounds burbling out from behind the mask. "can't."
"Obviously, I have not yet applied enough fear or pain. Anything is possible with enough fear and pain, no? That's the standard you've set. Scare them enough, hurt them enough, and they'll learn or die.
"Take off your mask."
RW-5879 fumbles uselessly at it. Unable to make his hand do what he needs it to.
"That's a simple task." He slashes at RW-5879's arm. Enough to scorch his armor, not enough to take his functional arm off. "Do it right."
Eventually the mask clatters to the floor.
"Good. Look at me."
Swollen, red eyes stare at him out of a chalk white face.
"Do I appear to approve of your training technique?" Kylo asks through clenched teeth.
"No…" shudders out of almost white lips.
Kylo calls his saber back to him. He extinguishes the black blade, and tucks it back into his belt. Then in one fast turn he takes RW-5879's head clean off, allowing him to drop to the floor.
Kylo turns to his assorted trainers. He looks at the corpses who've just given demonstrations. He holds the beat, waiting, making sure what he says next really sinks in.
He rests his foot on what used to be RW-5879's head. Then he again turns to everyone surrounding him. "If any of you ever use any training method demonstrated in the last six hours, I will personally find you and use it on you, with a lightsaber.
"If I run into even a whisper of a rumor that you are taking advantage of any of the trainees to satisfy any non-Order need you may have, you best be better at hiding than I am at seeking.
"These are our future soldiers and citizens, they are not your playthings nor are they your slaves.
"Your job is to make sure they can function as soldiers and citizens. This is difficult. I understand that. But I do not need a multitude of mindless drones capable of only following orders. If I wanted that, I would buy it. They make droids for a reason, and these are not droids.
"In the next few weeks, we will be issuing you with a new curricula for training soldiers. If you cannot train soldiers without terrorizing, torturing, or molesting them, it is time to give up your job. If you've got your five years in, I will accept your resignation, and you will leave with full benefits and no prejudice. If you do not, it's time to seek a transfer to a unit where you can function without tormenting anyone."
He looks down at the head under his foot, and then kicks it to the ships. "These men were filth, unworthy of our uniform, and you will not emulate them. Understood?"
He gets a lot of silent nods and shocked looks.
"You are dismissed. I will be watching how you go from here."
Rumors spread like wildfire that Kylo Ren, Master of the Order, personally unsexed the man who was taking advantage of his trainees, and then cut off the leg, hand, and finally, head of the man who was too hard on the children he trained.
And while it's true that adherence to the official Order standards does begin to lag some, morale among the new recruits shoots up and stays there every quarter thereafter.
And, as the months go by, the number of Order members grows, and keeps growing.