That afternoon, she realised for the first time that she didn't mind being on the ship. Of course, there were stormtroopers stationed at both ends of the corridor now, and every time she went out on her own she was flanked by the Praetorian Guard, but The Reaper no longer felt as alien as it had once done. It had a rhythm of its own, a routine with which she had become familiar, and she wondered whether, if she had to live there for the rest of her life, she might actually come to like it.

Voices woke her in the middle of the night. Men's mostly, but there were a few women mixed in, a tone of urgency common to all. They were shouting so loudly she could hear them through the wall. She flung on a full-length robe from the closet and went next door to investigate.

Ben's room was full of people, all uniformed, most of them on their feet, although he was sitting at his desk, lightsaber on prominent display to one hand. The door was open, so she just stepped cautiously into the room. His eyes jumped to her immediately and he gave a tiny shake of his head.

A tall, skinny man, to whom Ben had been speaking, followed the movement and announced in a voice loud enough to silence the rest of the room, 'Supreme Leader, at last we make your acquaintance.'

A rustle of whispers crackled in the stillness.

Ben ordered, 'Rey, go back to bed.'

To her left, someone sniggered. The sense of danger in the room was palpable. The skeleton near the desk creaked into life. 'I couldn't possibly allow that – not when we've all been desperate for an introduction for the last two months.'

He stalked across the space, bowed low and pressed a slimy kiss to the back of her hand. 'Such a pleasure to meet the Supreme Leader's…'

He stalled for long enough that she felt the need to help him out. 'Girlfriend? Wife? Whore?'

He smiled, tutting. 'Weakness,' he finished.

She yanked her hand away. 'I heard shouting.' She added silently, 'Are you alright?'

'Shouting? No, a robust exchange of views on the Telanian system. Tell me, Supreme Leader, with your military training and skills, how would you destroy it?'

'I'd imagine it's easy to destroy a couple of weapons factories, the problem is how do you stop it destroying you back?'

She padded over to the desk, conscious that not only was she the only person in the room with bare feet and no underwear, but her lightsaber was a durasteel wall away. She perched on the front of Ben's desk and thumbed a few commands, until a holographic map of the Telanian system filled the middle of the office.

'You can destroy the blaster factories, but your problem is the Sonn-Blas Corporation, which is run as a collective. Destroy the blaster factories here,' she reached out with the Force casually, ignited Ben's lightsaber and gestured at the map with it to illustrate her point.

'And the union which runs the factories that supply all your other weapons – the rifles, the cannons, even the flamethrowers, they will all refuse to supply you. You'll be forced to move troops, ground support and ships into these locations, here, here and over here, to keep the peace. And because you're in a single source arrangement, there aren't any other suppliers you can call on at short notice for the volumes you need, so you're going to run out of weapons pretty quickly. But that's not your real problem.

You see, it's not just the weapons manufacturers you've fallen out with. You haven't been paying your smaller suppliers either. As soon as the strike begins, you'll find disturbances on the other worlds in the quadrant.'

She reached behind her, jabbed a few more buttons and the quadrant map appeared, with supplier locations marked. The lightsaber swooped with a curl of her wrist, causing several of the generals surrounding the map to jump back.

'You'll lose armour, clothing, food, raw materials, and so on. You'll have to step in to secure the supply chain, which puts your remaining forces here.'

She moved miniature destroyers, cruisers, frigates into their respective positions.

'Starting to see a pattern? Most of the smaller worlds don't really care about your money. They've been supporting you because of the objective of the First Order, which is – if you wouldn't mind quoting, Supreme Leader.'

She paused, waiting for Ben to reel off his mission statement. 'It is the task of the First Order to remove the disorder from our own existence, so that civilisation may be returned to the stability that promotes progress.'

'Precisely. You promised to keep the peace. Most of the smaller worlds are paying you protection money so the cartels, the slavers, the drug runners and all the other disorderly elements don't overrun them. But your military training and skills decided it was better to take the protection money, and let the cartels do whatever they wanted anyway, as long as you carried out a few token raids to confiscate their resources. You let them grow strong.'

She tuned back to the map, expanded it further to include the fleet, strung out across the stars. 'You really should have listened to Captain Ocram you know, he's been warning you about this for years. So, what do we notice? Here is the First Order army, scattered across the galaxy, nicely spread out. And while none of these smaller rebellions could tackle you head on, when you're this isolated you're easier to pick off. There will be battles, but they won't be the sort of battles you can win with weapons the size of a planet, even if you had any left. The cartels will come for you, the factory workers, the ordinary people – let's face it, anyone you've ever been nasty to in the street will see that you're vulnerable and they'll take you on.'

'No, I hear you cry.' She paused again, swung the lightsaber round until it was almost resting against the jugular of an increasingly pale general. 'I said, no, I hear you cry.'

He whispered, 'No.'

'No, I hear you cry, these little gangs are no match for us. The rebel scum can't take us on, they don't have the resources. But you didn't listen to Lieutenant Vanya either, your Head of Procurement. You've neglected your biggest creditor. What's the First Order's most valuable financial asset, do you think? Major Breen would have told you, if you'd bothered to ask.'

She jerked the lightsaber at the floor. 'The fleet. The Dreadnaughts, the Star Destroyers, the cruisers, the frigates and the fighters, who do you think built them? Kuat-Entralla Engineering. A company to whom you owe trillions of credits, and who now want their money back. You wanted to be better than the Empire, so you commissioned ships eight times the size of Imperial Destroyers, at eight times the cost. The Fulminatrix was only half paid off, and now it's so much orbiting scrap. The Supremacy was entirely on credit, and you've lost that too. Your third Dreadnought is never leaving the shipyard.'

She looked around for Hux, found him some way behind Ben's chair, keeping as far away from the other generals as possible. 'Sorry.'

He nodded back.

'Because they know you can't pay. And they want the rest of their assets back. But they're only a company, right, they can't touch you?'

She inclined her head, without taking her eyes off her audience. 'Did you have a good look at that Azaxi shuttle yesterday, Ben? It was a Kuat model, top of the line. The Azaxi live in mud huts, they could never afford that level of technology. The Kuatis have armed your enemies, given them ships, guns, whatever they need, to help them recover their investment.'

She hopped off the desk, took a leisurely stroll through the circle of onlookers.

'But you're still alright, because you've got no weapons, and you've got no ships, but you still have the army. Except that a fifth of them aren't loyal to you anymore. Stormtroopers are trained from birth, but the army has expanded so rapidly that you don't have time for years worth of training – you're basically just slapping armour on your recruits and sending them out. Ask Captain Matandari, she'll tell you. You can't trust the loyalty of your army either.'

She'd reached the other end of the room again, put her back to the door. 'You have no reliable sources of income. Your colonies are restive, because you've debased your currency and you aren't paying them properly. The cartels you run are out of control. You've exhausted your credit. You have an unreliable workforce, no resources and no assets. My best guess is that you've got six months before the First Order is wiped out, three if you destroy Telania. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how to organise a resistance. Congratulations, you've destroyed yourselves.'

Every single person in the room wanted her blood. Hands flickered towards weapons, knuckles clenched, almost everyone took a breath in preparation for shouting.

She spoke into the pause. 'Unless you want me to save you.'