New fic - Star Wars: "Per Exasperatio Ad Astra" Ch 16
Ch. 16 In which we meet more people and Grand Admiral Sloane chairs a meeting
And this is where I start putting in bits of stuff from "The Rise of Skywalker", which, since this is an AU, will not go anywhere remotely where the film went. Just in case readers had not already realised it.
Rey had eaten…"we call this meal ‘lunch’, ma’am; it is usually eaten in the middle of the working shift"…something delicious, though unidentifiable beyond the basic categories of clear soup, steamed grains, chopped-up-and-lightly-cooked green stalks (these were actual vegetables, grown not synthesised) and small-pieces-of-meat-in-sauce-with-other-vegetables. She had asked for a datapad; one had been promised but not yet delivered. It will be monitored, the inner knowledge whispered to her. Don’t let them know that you understand this.
After that, suddenly exhausted and in any case not wanting to go out blind and unarmed, she had put on special sleeping clothes (‘pyjamas’), which could also be used for exercise if she wanted, and lain down on the huge, unnervingly soft bed. On Jakku, softness underfoot generally meant quicksand, a sandlion nest, or an imminent slope-collapse; any way, a nasty death; nonetheless, sleep came fast.
So, unfortunately, did visions of Kylo Ren. He was floating cross-legged in mid-air somewhere dark (of course), but this time a constellation of constantly shifting ribbons of light swirled around him, glowing in colours that she somehow could not quite identify clearly. His eyes were closed. The ribbons were tangled around his body, his uplifted hands and drifting hair, and extended out around him in every direction towards six people also floating in mid-air around him. They were Human, or mostly humaniform at least, and all were dressed in black. She had never seen them before, but a sudden memory came to her, of the vision in Maz’s castle a few days ago, and a lifetime away. No-one was wearing armour, though, and Rey didn’t see any weapons. There was something else different about them, but she could not quite work out what it might be.
The pink one is a Zeltron, her new knowledge told her, the tall, thin pale one with the fluffy hair is a Nagai; the light orange one with the horns is an Iridonian Zabrak. Their arms were raised in front of them, and the coloured ribbons drifted and twined around them too. After a moment, Rey realised that all six, no, all seven of them including Kylo, were actually manipulating the ribbons. Untangling them, smoothing their flow, bringing the colours into calm harmony. They seemed utterly absorbed in their task. Rey looked more closely and realised why. Those bright, pretty ribbons were quite clearly actively resisting being…harmonised, and wherever their light touched, blood flowed. Everyone was bleeding from a multitude of slashes and cuts, including Kylo.
Rey watched quietly. She was not getting any sense of herself as anything more than a pair of eyes and a brain but unexpectedly, the Zeltron looked up and…saw her. Her hands never ceased their motion, forcing the struggling ribbons apart despite the blood dripping down her fingers and wrists, so that the Nagai next to her could do…something …to fix them, hold them straight and parallel, and stop them tangling themselves again. She was beautiful, and more so when she smiled.
“Hello! Are you the new recruit I dreamed about?”
Rey recoiled, startled into response. “What?”
Kylo opened his eyes, blacker than the space behind the stars.
“No,” he said. His hands never stopped moving either. “I told you, the new recruit isn’t ready yet. That’s Rey. I told you about her too. My sister in the Force.”
“Stop calling me your sister! I’m not your sister!”
Outrage brought her suddenly into focus to herself, and she was fully there, with them. She looked down, and gulped back sudden vertigo; she wasn’t standing, nor was there anything resembling a floor in sight. She was hanging in the middle of black nothing, with no sense of up, down or any other direction. Her mind slipped and scrabbled frantically for orientation, hands and feet flailing as she tried to find some purchase on reality and failed.
“Steady,” Kylo said, and the mere sound of his voice, low and calm, helped her to get a grip, reassert the centred, durasteel sense of self that had kept her alive and sane(ish) all those years in the desert. She was realising that this wasn’t a real place but a metaphorical one (she knew what metaphors were now, too). Kylo and his…friends… were doing…something, something difficult that was costing them strength and pain, and this was how she was seeing it.
“Yes,” Kylo said. “Well spotted. We’re trying to control something dangerous. Will you help?”
“With what? Is this going to hurt us?”
“Who’s ‘us’? This is Snoke’s database. We’re trying to get into it. The fact that you’re actually here means that you’re getting stronger in the Force. Want to see how strong?”
“Boss, this isn’t the time to flirt with your girlfriend!” the Zabrak protested. A strand of light escaped his grip, tearing a long cut in his arm as it went. He swore, and wrestled it back into order, weaving it in with another strand that a tall, pale-haired Human woman passed him.
“I’m not his girlfriend!”
“You’re a distraction,” the pale Human said, her eyes as cold as a steelpecker’s. “Help us, or go away.”
Rey!
The sound of her name filled her ears, and between one blink and the next, Rey was out of the darkness and flat on her back on the soft bed on Nimbus City, looking up into Leia’s concerned face.
. . . . .
A gentle cough behind her signalled to Grand Admiral Rae Sloane that she had company. As a matter of policy, Sloane had instituted common canteens in the refitted Eclipse (and the rest of Base Fleet 1) for both officers and enlisted, and made a point of having lunch in each in turn; it was understood that she was to be left alone while she was eating, but could be approached while enjoying her after-lunch mug of caf. Since she was only halfway through that day’s vat-grown nuna fricassee with roasted vegetables and baked setherseed patties, and no alarms were sounding, there were only two people it could be. Her PSO was across the room having dessert with a group of med-bay techs (given the kind of mealtime conversations that Medical tended to have, his stomach was clearly stronger than his boss’), so she swallowed, put her spoon and fork down and said without looking up, “Hello, Ren.”
Densiva Ren folded his considerable length into the chair across the table from her, and politely removed his helmet. Sloane thought, not for the first time, that there was no natural way for that spiky fountain of hair to come out of the helmet looking that pretty (also completely non-regulation, but well, the Knights were part of the Civilian Arm, technically, whether they knew it or not). The Ren grinned at her, sharp Nagai teeth gleaming in the glare of the canteen lights. “Of course not,” he said in his soft, accented voice. “The Force defends me and my hair.”
Sloane’s eyes narrowed. The Ren knew the rules about mental intrusion. He narrowed his own eyes back at her.
“Projecting your thoughts at me doesn’t count. You know that.”
Sloane held his stare a moment longer, just to remind him who he was playing with, then nodded. Fair enough. The Ren was not unlike Armitage’s Millicent; except in the most extreme emergency, every interaction required a certain amount of preliminary by-play. She was uncertain whether it was a personal characteristic or a cultural one; Nagai were rarely seen outside their own territory, and Densiva was the only one she had ever interacted with to any significant degree.
Introductory courtesies over, his dark eyes were very sober. “Grand Admiral, you have enough time for lunch and coffee, but you should be in your office after that. My Master will be speaking to the Capital Fleet SOM soon. You might want to be somewhere secure.”
He rose to his feet, bowed (Sloane had never managed to persuade him to salute, like a normal person), resumed his helmet and left on silent feet. Sloane considered briefly, and then went back to her lunch; setherseed had been luxury food on Ganthel, where she had been born too poor ever to afford it (after the Order renewed covert contact with the Core, it had amused Sloane to make it a staple of First Order catering, thanks to its excellent nutrition profile and ease of intensive cultivation in shipboard conditions). It was only when she was done and reaching for her mug of caf, that she saw it, sitting next to her mug where it had definitely not been before: it the stylised figure of a barghest, the galaxy-wide symbol of loyal ferocity, delicately folded from a sheet of actual paper.
. . . . .
Notwithstanding the recent upheavals in the First Order, Grand Admiral Gilad Pellaeon of the Star Destroyer Determination kept, as far as he could, regular, sensible hours. Outer Rim Fleet 1 was entitled to calm, steady leadership, and neglecting proper rest, exercise and nutrition was foolish, especially at his age (he was no longer a hungry young rancor like the Hux boy). The middle of the Grand Admiral’s sleep shift therefore had him actually sleeping, when his comm blatted the rude alarm that he had programmed into it for genuine emergencies.
“Nggrh?” he enquired, not moving his head from his pillow.
The holo image of his PSO saluted, unmoved. She had obviously just been rousted out of bed as well, not that it showed in her person; the main advantage of the Ree hairstyle (no longer than 1.5 cm all over) and the reason it was the default style of the First Order. But that she had not bothered to change out of the regulation black pyjamas before comming him told Pellaeon everything he needed to know about the seriousness of the situation.
“Sir. Please look at the most recent message from the Head of the Civilian Arm regarding the Department of Force Affairs. Also, Lumiya Ren has informed me that, ah, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren will be addressing the Capital Fleet SOM in an hour's time, sir. High Command has not been asked to attend in person, but will be patched in. She suggests that you might want to be up and in a secure location. Shall I come to your quarters, or will you use the office, sir?”
Pellaeon took a second to let all this percolate into his consciousness. Then he sat up, fast. “What Department of Force Affairs?”
. . . . .
The Star Destroyer Vindicator, flagship of Outer Rim Fleet 2, was currently stationed, with its escorts, on the far edge of the galaxy from the Unknown Regions, overseeing (from an unobtrusive orbit around a stand-offish star that had never bothered to acquire anything so gauche as planets) the sectoral roll-out of United Trans-Rim’s holo-network. The rest of ORF2 was scattered across the sector, on the same duty.
From that safe vantage, Vice-Admiral Ciena Ree had observed with an ironic eye Rae Sloane’s long-distance coup (there had been no word from Eclipse, currently in orbit with Base Fleet 1 around Nesether 3 in Order space, but really, it was obvious) playing out in Capital Fleet. A pity about Starkiller Base, not to mention Fulminatrix, but Vice-Admiral Ree had a better idea than almost anyone else in the Military Arm of exactly how much money the First Order was actually making from its front companies in the Outer Rim (an example: the distribution and information-dissemination revenues from Premier League Pod-racing alone, especially at the bargain price that its Huttese former owners had been forced to accept in exchange for not having Nal Hutta melted into slag, were enough to buy the First Order a new Starkiller tomorrow if it wanted, with a Siege Destroyer or three thrown in as make-weight).
In the meantime, until things were clearer in the Capital Fleet, or Sloane declared herself, whichever was sooner, Ree intended to sit tight, and wait for developments. Which meant putting ORF2 on full sensor alert, but otherwise carrying on with her regular duties as far as possible. The announced promotion round was a nice touch, she thought. Officers busy filling in forms and jockeying for their desired posts were officers not contemplating resistance to the new dispensation, whatever that might prove to be (Ree herself had promptly submitted her application for promotion to Admiral to young Hux as instructed; no harm in covering all contingencies).
She was halfway through the daily comms briefing, when the door to Principal Monitoring hissed open, and the Comms Chief faltered and fell silent as Caedus Ren’s shadow fell between Ree and herself.
“Vice-Admiral.” He was wearing his helmet, which was unusual in the routine of the ship (though admittedly things had been far from routine in the last couple of weeks), and their normal daily meeting was not due for another two hours.
“Ren. What’s happening?”
“A moment, ma’am.” Ree could practically hear the whole section prick up its ears in unison. She sent them a minatory glare, nodded to the Chief with a quiet “Excuse me,” and followed him out into the corridor.
By the rather flexible standards of the Knights of Ren, Caedus Ren was decently socialised. The old Imperial prejudices about Zabraks notwithstanding, he was taciturn but correct and even civil, did not kill or permanently maim without explicit orders, and his shadowy miasma of doom was usually tempered enough that people could function around him. Dani Ren was an Opee Sea Killer on (admittedly rather beautiful) legs; Densiva Ren tended to the random performance of enigmatic but psychologically unsettling actions; Lumiya Ren’s mere proximity induced traumatic levels of stress in the susceptible; Kylo Ren … well. All in all, ORF2 considered itself quite lucky in its Knight.
The corridor was, of course, monitored. Caedus Ren lifted a black-gloved hand. “If I may, Vice-Admiral?”
Ree nodded stiffly; the process was not painful, but was never not unpleasant, though at least Caedus was polite about it, unlike others of his cohort. “Proceed.”
The soft synthetic of the glove touched her forehead, very lightly. There was a sudden sense of pressure, a grating buzz that felt as if it was emanating from her back teeth, and then her surroundings vanished and she heard his voice (even mentally it was a neutral vocoder voice), say in her mind’s ear, "The Supreme Leader is addressing the Capital Fleet SOM in one hour’s time. High Command will be patched in. Be somewhere secure and check your messages from the Head of the Civilian Arm.” The pressure lifted, the world returned, and she was left alone and blinking in the corridor.
"Kriff."
. . . . .
By the time Sloane reached her office, her PSO was there, gazing helplessly at the array of HIGH PRIORITY MOST IMMEDIATE demands for instant holo-conferences coming in from ….Sloane checked her own desk…the entirety of High Command except Grand Marshal-designate Hux and the Supreme Leader himself.
“I’ll take them in my huddle room, Magsy. Highest security. Seal the office, and don’t let Densiva Ren anywhere near until I’m done.”
“Yes, ma’am. We’re ready.” SDX-98, Sloane’s protocol/security droid was already on full alert as well. Lieutenant Jemax ‘Magsy” Jerjerrod was good at his job, and significantly tougher than he looked, which he had needed to be after his cousin Jothan’s defection to the Resistance. When that came out, only his aunt and uncle’s senior status in FSB had saved his life (not to mention theirs) long enough for Sloane’s intervention to save his career, and, not incidentally, win his loyalty forever; Sloane was perfectly happy to repeat a winning formula.
Sloane had barely made it into her personal conference room before the holos started popping up. Grand Admiral Natasi Daala, relaxed and amused, Grand Admiral Gilad Pellaeon, looking cross, Admiral Lusanadis Prahji of Base Fleet 2, impassive, Vice-Admiral Ciena Ree, focused and serious, General Domaric Quinn, commander of Base Sector ground forces, worried, a half dozen more showing various degrees of concern, and finally, Rear-Admiral Jylia Telatten, visibly on edge, the most senior surviving flag officer of Capital Fleet after Grand Marshal-designate Hux. Hux’s mental state was conjectural, since he was not present.
Pellaeon got in first, as the most senior.
“Rae, what’s going on?”
Since she appeared to be chairing this meeting, Sloane waved in Telatten’s direction.
“Jylia, you’re there with him. Update us.”
Telatten looked as if she hadn’t slept in far too long (she hadn’t); her thin, dark face was hollow and grey under the skin pigmentation, and her eyes had the glitter of too much stim, taken to cover too much exhaustion. But her shoulders were straight and her voice steady as durasteel.
“Ma’am. High Command already has the most recent updates for the SAR and the recovery plan. Things are going according to schedule. I’m leaving for Supremacy for the SOM shortly. Capital Fleet has acknowledged the authority of Supreme Leader Kylo Ren.”
“What! You’ve thrown in with that, that boy mystic?” That was Quinn, who had never made a secret of his mistrust of the Force. Luckily for him, Snoke had been in the mood to find him amusing, and Sloane had made sure to keep him out of the former Supreme Leader’s way thereafter.
Pellaeon said calmly, “Rear-Admiral, would you care to expand on that?”
Telatten nodded sharply. “Sir. Yes. You are aware of the damage to Supremacy and its Star Destroyer escort groups from the Resistance attack. Our losses. It is because of Kylo Ren’s direct participation in the search and rescue afterwards that,” she looked at down at something, presumably her datapad, “that seventy-nine thousand two hundred and thirty-five children and sub-adults survived from the creches of the ships that were damaged or destroyed. And also five hundred and thirty-eight thousand, six hundred and seventy-two active officers, enlisted and stormtroopers of the First Order, and one hundred and twenty-five thousand, two hundred and seventy one civilian officials. The hardening of the labs and the creches performed according to specification, but we wouldn’t have been able to find all of them before their life-support ran out. He did; he found them scattered across a cubic light-year of space, and guided the rescue ships. He saved them, and all of us know it.”
There were slow, reluctant nods as she finished speaking. All members of the First Order whether married or single contributed tissue samples to the reproduction labs, either on-ship or on-world; they were not told when or if the samples were used in the breeding programme, but were encouraged to consider all children of the creches as potentially theirs. Their collective future, the future of the Order. In saving the children, not to mention the rest of them, Kylo Ren could not have done anything more calculated to win the loyalty of Capital Fleet, and by extension, the rest of the Order’s rank and file. Even the older ex-Imperials, with their individualistic attitudes to family and retrograde dynastic thinking, had to acknowledge that.
“What about Hux?” That was Prahji, one of the younger generation, calculating and cool-headed. “He’s your man, Grand Admiral Sloane, where does he stand?”
It was not a stupid question. While Hux was clearly with Ren right now for the sake of the Grand Marshal’s baton, it was not at all obvious how long this would last. No-one much liked Hux (except Sloane, and to some extent Daala, who had always had an eye for a good-looking man), or even necessarily respected him, but they acknowledged and feared his intellect, his tenacity and his ferocity in the service of the goals of the Order insofar as those were coterminous with his own ambition. And the stormtrooper programme was his. If those qualities were genuinely turned to Kylo Ren’s service…
“The Grand Marshal-designate is his own man, Admiral Prahji,” Sloane said with unimpaired calm, “and loyal to the goals and ideals of the First Order. I have full confidence in his judgement, and in that of the Head of the Civilian Arm.”
There was a pause as everyone digested that. The Civilian Arm had clearly come out in favour of Ren, at least for now, and Yaelin Raikte was respected.
“So,” Ree said, carefully, after a moment, “We…acknowledge Ren as Supreme Leader? Another uncontrollable Force-user? Snoke’s death hasn’t even been investigated that we know of.”
Daala said, “Isn’t it obvious? Ren killed him. About time, too. It was even legal, based on that circular of yours, Rae.”
“Not mine,” Sloane pointed out. “The Department of Force Affairs answers directly to the Supreme Leader, not to the Head of General Administration, but is classified as civilian.”
“The point,” snapped Quinn, ignoring this bit of idle persiflage (everyone knew that the Civilian Arm would not have drafted a regulation legalising murder on its own initiative), “is that succession by assassination is not a precedent to set within the Order. That’s even assuming that Ren will be an improvement on Snoke, which is an open question at the moment. Everything we know about him suggests not. Are we even required to have a Supreme Leader? I admit that in our previous circumstances Snoke could be considered a special case, but restoring a Force-based monarchy isn’t anywhere in our organisational goals that I know of.”
“He’s suspended that regulation,” Telatten said wearily. “His PSO told me that it will be abolished upon his formal inauguration as Supreme Leader. He hasn’t given any particularly stupid orders since Crait. Can we wait and see what happens at the SOM before making any irrevocable decisions? If he kills us all in a fit of pique, that would give High Command a clear indicator of how to respond to this situation.”
There was a bit more back and forth, as the Lieutenants-General and the other Admirals got their credit’s-worth in. No-one was happy with Ren’s succession, but in the absence of a clear lead from Pellaeon, Sloane or Daala, the elders, none of them was willing to offer an alternative, either.
Time was running short, and the main issues had been aired, if not resolved. Sloane said, “Rear-Admiral Telatten has made a sensible point. I note that neither General Hux nor the Head of General Administration has communicated any…disquiet with the present situation to me, and they have both had opportunities to do so.”
Neither Hux nor the Head of General Administration had, in the general promotion circulars, used any of the codes that they and Sloane had (separately) arranged long ago to signal …concern about the contents of any message sent in their names.
“High Command will be observing the SOM and how Kylo Ren conducts himself. We shall convoke again after the SOM if that is acceptable.” Her tone said very clearly that it had better be acceptable. No-one looked very pleased, but no-one objected either. Good enough.
“Fine,” said Quinn curtly, and his image winked out; the junior generals saluted and followed suit (in strict protocol order).
“We’ll meet later,” said Pellaeon, and ended transmission. The rest of the Navy left the call en masse, leaving only Daala remaining.
The two women looked at each other.
“We’re taking a big risk here,” Daala observed.
Sloane shrugged minutely. “Raikte thinks he’s a viable leader, and he seems to have got Armitage on side. We can’t afford a civil war right now.”
Daala flipped her braid between her fingers. Back and forth, back and forth. “If you declared yourself, High Command would support you.”
“Telatten wouldn’t, and she has influence among the younger commanders. Even if she did, you heard her; if she opposes Ren now, she wouldn’t be able to bring Capital Fleet with her. Armitage wouldn’t, not with the Grand Marshal’s baton on offer, and the younger Army and the stormtroopers would follow him. It would tear the Order apart.”
“And instead we take a punt on Kylo Ren, who has never as far we know led anything bigger than a small cell of barking-mad space wizards.”
Sloane offered a thin smile. “As long as he’s not frothing too much at the mouth, I would rather avoid internal distractions, at least for now. We still have to consolidate our gains from the Hosnian operation.”
Daala grimaced in response. “We have the Remnant…sorry, the Allegiants reasonably well in hand, at least. It’ll go more smoothly once I’ve had them all shot.”
Sloane blinked. “That bad?”
“Huh. For embezzlement, peculation, corruption, blithering incompetence, bureaucratic obstructionism, and being thirty years behind the times. Also, I don’t like people shouting at young Nikara because they’re too ball-less to shout at me.”
“Ah. You mentioned. Enric Pryde, yes? I remember him. A nasty piece of work even in the old days, and a very unhealthy devotion to the Traitor.”
And that was as clear a message as she was going to get, Daala reflected, as she bade Sloane farewell and ended the call.
Arriving in the Unknown Regions aboard the Emperor’s yacht, Sloane had made sure to share with the nascent First Order everything Gallius Rax had recorded (lots and lots, given Rax’s ego) about the Emperor’s Contingency, at length and in detail; she had also been extremely clear about what the First Order was to think of it all. After the ascendency of Snoke, and his creature Brendol Hux, the Army had stopped teaching its young recruits about the crimes of Palpatine the Traitor, but quietly and discreetly, the Navy had never forgotten. Supreme Leader, Kylo Ren might style himself, Emperor in all but name. But the First Order would not let itself be betrayed as the Empire had been betrayed.
And this is where I start putting in bits of stuff from "The Rise of Skywalker", which, since this is an AU, will not go anywhere remotely where the film went. Just in case readers had not already realised it.
Rey had eaten…"we call this meal ‘lunch’, ma’am; it is usually eaten in the middle of the working shift"…something delicious, though unidentifiable beyond the basic categories of clear soup, steamed grains, chopped-up-and-lightly-cooked green stalks (these were actual vegetables, grown not synthesised) and small-pieces-of-meat-in-sauce-with-other-vegetables. She had asked for a datapad; one had been promised but not yet delivered. It will be monitored, the inner knowledge whispered to her. Don’t let them know that you understand this.
After that, suddenly exhausted and in any case not wanting to go out blind and unarmed, she had put on special sleeping clothes (‘pyjamas’), which could also be used for exercise if she wanted, and lain down on the huge, unnervingly soft bed. On Jakku, softness underfoot generally meant quicksand, a sandlion nest, or an imminent slope-collapse; any way, a nasty death; nonetheless, sleep came fast.
So, unfortunately, did visions of Kylo Ren. He was floating cross-legged in mid-air somewhere dark (of course), but this time a constellation of constantly shifting ribbons of light swirled around him, glowing in colours that she somehow could not quite identify clearly. His eyes were closed. The ribbons were tangled around his body, his uplifted hands and drifting hair, and extended out around him in every direction towards six people also floating in mid-air around him. They were Human, or mostly humaniform at least, and all were dressed in black. She had never seen them before, but a sudden memory came to her, of the vision in Maz’s castle a few days ago, and a lifetime away. No-one was wearing armour, though, and Rey didn’t see any weapons. There was something else different about them, but she could not quite work out what it might be.
The pink one is a Zeltron, her new knowledge told her, the tall, thin pale one with the fluffy hair is a Nagai; the light orange one with the horns is an Iridonian Zabrak. Their arms were raised in front of them, and the coloured ribbons drifted and twined around them too. After a moment, Rey realised that all six, no, all seven of them including Kylo, were actually manipulating the ribbons. Untangling them, smoothing their flow, bringing the colours into calm harmony. They seemed utterly absorbed in their task. Rey looked more closely and realised why. Those bright, pretty ribbons were quite clearly actively resisting being…harmonised, and wherever their light touched, blood flowed. Everyone was bleeding from a multitude of slashes and cuts, including Kylo.
Rey watched quietly. She was not getting any sense of herself as anything more than a pair of eyes and a brain but unexpectedly, the Zeltron looked up and…saw her. Her hands never ceased their motion, forcing the struggling ribbons apart despite the blood dripping down her fingers and wrists, so that the Nagai next to her could do…something …to fix them, hold them straight and parallel, and stop them tangling themselves again. She was beautiful, and more so when she smiled.
“Hello! Are you the new recruit I dreamed about?”
Rey recoiled, startled into response. “What?”
Kylo opened his eyes, blacker than the space behind the stars.
“No,” he said. His hands never stopped moving either. “I told you, the new recruit isn’t ready yet. That’s Rey. I told you about her too. My sister in the Force.”
“Stop calling me your sister! I’m not your sister!”
Outrage brought her suddenly into focus to herself, and she was fully there, with them. She looked down, and gulped back sudden vertigo; she wasn’t standing, nor was there anything resembling a floor in sight. She was hanging in the middle of black nothing, with no sense of up, down or any other direction. Her mind slipped and scrabbled frantically for orientation, hands and feet flailing as she tried to find some purchase on reality and failed.
“Steady,” Kylo said, and the mere sound of his voice, low and calm, helped her to get a grip, reassert the centred, durasteel sense of self that had kept her alive and sane(ish) all those years in the desert. She was realising that this wasn’t a real place but a metaphorical one (she knew what metaphors were now, too). Kylo and his…friends… were doing…something, something difficult that was costing them strength and pain, and this was how she was seeing it.
“Yes,” Kylo said. “Well spotted. We’re trying to control something dangerous. Will you help?”
“With what? Is this going to hurt us?”
“Who’s ‘us’? This is Snoke’s database. We’re trying to get into it. The fact that you’re actually here means that you’re getting stronger in the Force. Want to see how strong?”
“Boss, this isn’t the time to flirt with your girlfriend!” the Zabrak protested. A strand of light escaped his grip, tearing a long cut in his arm as it went. He swore, and wrestled it back into order, weaving it in with another strand that a tall, pale-haired Human woman passed him.
“I’m not his girlfriend!”
“You’re a distraction,” the pale Human said, her eyes as cold as a steelpecker’s. “Help us, or go away.”
Rey!
The sound of her name filled her ears, and between one blink and the next, Rey was out of the darkness and flat on her back on the soft bed on Nimbus City, looking up into Leia’s concerned face.
. . . . .
A gentle cough behind her signalled to Grand Admiral Rae Sloane that she had company. As a matter of policy, Sloane had instituted common canteens in the refitted Eclipse (and the rest of Base Fleet 1) for both officers and enlisted, and made a point of having lunch in each in turn; it was understood that she was to be left alone while she was eating, but could be approached while enjoying her after-lunch mug of caf. Since she was only halfway through that day’s vat-grown nuna fricassee with roasted vegetables and baked setherseed patties, and no alarms were sounding, there were only two people it could be. Her PSO was across the room having dessert with a group of med-bay techs (given the kind of mealtime conversations that Medical tended to have, his stomach was clearly stronger than his boss’), so she swallowed, put her spoon and fork down and said without looking up, “Hello, Ren.”
Densiva Ren folded his considerable length into the chair across the table from her, and politely removed his helmet. Sloane thought, not for the first time, that there was no natural way for that spiky fountain of hair to come out of the helmet looking that pretty (also completely non-regulation, but well, the Knights were part of the Civilian Arm, technically, whether they knew it or not). The Ren grinned at her, sharp Nagai teeth gleaming in the glare of the canteen lights. “Of course not,” he said in his soft, accented voice. “The Force defends me and my hair.”
Sloane’s eyes narrowed. The Ren knew the rules about mental intrusion. He narrowed his own eyes back at her.
“Projecting your thoughts at me doesn’t count. You know that.”
Sloane held his stare a moment longer, just to remind him who he was playing with, then nodded. Fair enough. The Ren was not unlike Armitage’s Millicent; except in the most extreme emergency, every interaction required a certain amount of preliminary by-play. She was uncertain whether it was a personal characteristic or a cultural one; Nagai were rarely seen outside their own territory, and Densiva was the only one she had ever interacted with to any significant degree.
Introductory courtesies over, his dark eyes were very sober. “Grand Admiral, you have enough time for lunch and coffee, but you should be in your office after that. My Master will be speaking to the Capital Fleet SOM soon. You might want to be somewhere secure.”
He rose to his feet, bowed (Sloane had never managed to persuade him to salute, like a normal person), resumed his helmet and left on silent feet. Sloane considered briefly, and then went back to her lunch; setherseed had been luxury food on Ganthel, where she had been born too poor ever to afford it (after the Order renewed covert contact with the Core, it had amused Sloane to make it a staple of First Order catering, thanks to its excellent nutrition profile and ease of intensive cultivation in shipboard conditions). It was only when she was done and reaching for her mug of caf, that she saw it, sitting next to her mug where it had definitely not been before: it the stylised figure of a barghest, the galaxy-wide symbol of loyal ferocity, delicately folded from a sheet of actual paper.
. . . . .
Notwithstanding the recent upheavals in the First Order, Grand Admiral Gilad Pellaeon of the Star Destroyer Determination kept, as far as he could, regular, sensible hours. Outer Rim Fleet 1 was entitled to calm, steady leadership, and neglecting proper rest, exercise and nutrition was foolish, especially at his age (he was no longer a hungry young rancor like the Hux boy). The middle of the Grand Admiral’s sleep shift therefore had him actually sleeping, when his comm blatted the rude alarm that he had programmed into it for genuine emergencies.
“Nggrh?” he enquired, not moving his head from his pillow.
The holo image of his PSO saluted, unmoved. She had obviously just been rousted out of bed as well, not that it showed in her person; the main advantage of the Ree hairstyle (no longer than 1.5 cm all over) and the reason it was the default style of the First Order. But that she had not bothered to change out of the regulation black pyjamas before comming him told Pellaeon everything he needed to know about the seriousness of the situation.
“Sir. Please look at the most recent message from the Head of the Civilian Arm regarding the Department of Force Affairs. Also, Lumiya Ren has informed me that, ah, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren will be addressing the Capital Fleet SOM in an hour's time, sir. High Command has not been asked to attend in person, but will be patched in. She suggests that you might want to be up and in a secure location. Shall I come to your quarters, or will you use the office, sir?”
Pellaeon took a second to let all this percolate into his consciousness. Then he sat up, fast. “What Department of Force Affairs?”
. . . . .
The Star Destroyer Vindicator, flagship of Outer Rim Fleet 2, was currently stationed, with its escorts, on the far edge of the galaxy from the Unknown Regions, overseeing (from an unobtrusive orbit around a stand-offish star that had never bothered to acquire anything so gauche as planets) the sectoral roll-out of United Trans-Rim’s holo-network. The rest of ORF2 was scattered across the sector, on the same duty.
From that safe vantage, Vice-Admiral Ciena Ree had observed with an ironic eye Rae Sloane’s long-distance coup (there had been no word from Eclipse, currently in orbit with Base Fleet 1 around Nesether 3 in Order space, but really, it was obvious) playing out in Capital Fleet. A pity about Starkiller Base, not to mention Fulminatrix, but Vice-Admiral Ree had a better idea than almost anyone else in the Military Arm of exactly how much money the First Order was actually making from its front companies in the Outer Rim (an example: the distribution and information-dissemination revenues from Premier League Pod-racing alone, especially at the bargain price that its Huttese former owners had been forced to accept in exchange for not having Nal Hutta melted into slag, were enough to buy the First Order a new Starkiller tomorrow if it wanted, with a Siege Destroyer or three thrown in as make-weight).
In the meantime, until things were clearer in the Capital Fleet, or Sloane declared herself, whichever was sooner, Ree intended to sit tight, and wait for developments. Which meant putting ORF2 on full sensor alert, but otherwise carrying on with her regular duties as far as possible. The announced promotion round was a nice touch, she thought. Officers busy filling in forms and jockeying for their desired posts were officers not contemplating resistance to the new dispensation, whatever that might prove to be (Ree herself had promptly submitted her application for promotion to Admiral to young Hux as instructed; no harm in covering all contingencies).
She was halfway through the daily comms briefing, when the door to Principal Monitoring hissed open, and the Comms Chief faltered and fell silent as Caedus Ren’s shadow fell between Ree and herself.
“Vice-Admiral.” He was wearing his helmet, which was unusual in the routine of the ship (though admittedly things had been far from routine in the last couple of weeks), and their normal daily meeting was not due for another two hours.
“Ren. What’s happening?”
“A moment, ma’am.” Ree could practically hear the whole section prick up its ears in unison. She sent them a minatory glare, nodded to the Chief with a quiet “Excuse me,” and followed him out into the corridor.
By the rather flexible standards of the Knights of Ren, Caedus Ren was decently socialised. The old Imperial prejudices about Zabraks notwithstanding, he was taciturn but correct and even civil, did not kill or permanently maim without explicit orders, and his shadowy miasma of doom was usually tempered enough that people could function around him. Dani Ren was an Opee Sea Killer on (admittedly rather beautiful) legs; Densiva Ren tended to the random performance of enigmatic but psychologically unsettling actions; Lumiya Ren’s mere proximity induced traumatic levels of stress in the susceptible; Kylo Ren … well. All in all, ORF2 considered itself quite lucky in its Knight.
The corridor was, of course, monitored. Caedus Ren lifted a black-gloved hand. “If I may, Vice-Admiral?”
Ree nodded stiffly; the process was not painful, but was never not unpleasant, though at least Caedus was polite about it, unlike others of his cohort. “Proceed.”
The soft synthetic of the glove touched her forehead, very lightly. There was a sudden sense of pressure, a grating buzz that felt as if it was emanating from her back teeth, and then her surroundings vanished and she heard his voice (even mentally it was a neutral vocoder voice), say in her mind’s ear, "The Supreme Leader is addressing the Capital Fleet SOM in one hour’s time. High Command will be patched in. Be somewhere secure and check your messages from the Head of the Civilian Arm.” The pressure lifted, the world returned, and she was left alone and blinking in the corridor.
"Kriff."
. . . . .
By the time Sloane reached her office, her PSO was there, gazing helplessly at the array of HIGH PRIORITY MOST IMMEDIATE demands for instant holo-conferences coming in from ….Sloane checked her own desk…the entirety of High Command except Grand Marshal-designate Hux and the Supreme Leader himself.
“I’ll take them in my huddle room, Magsy. Highest security. Seal the office, and don’t let Densiva Ren anywhere near until I’m done.”
“Yes, ma’am. We’re ready.” SDX-98, Sloane’s protocol/security droid was already on full alert as well. Lieutenant Jemax ‘Magsy” Jerjerrod was good at his job, and significantly tougher than he looked, which he had needed to be after his cousin Jothan’s defection to the Resistance. When that came out, only his aunt and uncle’s senior status in FSB had saved his life (not to mention theirs) long enough for Sloane’s intervention to save his career, and, not incidentally, win his loyalty forever; Sloane was perfectly happy to repeat a winning formula.
Sloane had barely made it into her personal conference room before the holos started popping up. Grand Admiral Natasi Daala, relaxed and amused, Grand Admiral Gilad Pellaeon, looking cross, Admiral Lusanadis Prahji of Base Fleet 2, impassive, Vice-Admiral Ciena Ree, focused and serious, General Domaric Quinn, commander of Base Sector ground forces, worried, a half dozen more showing various degrees of concern, and finally, Rear-Admiral Jylia Telatten, visibly on edge, the most senior surviving flag officer of Capital Fleet after Grand Marshal-designate Hux. Hux’s mental state was conjectural, since he was not present.
Pellaeon got in first, as the most senior.
“Rae, what’s going on?”
Since she appeared to be chairing this meeting, Sloane waved in Telatten’s direction.
“Jylia, you’re there with him. Update us.”
Telatten looked as if she hadn’t slept in far too long (she hadn’t); her thin, dark face was hollow and grey under the skin pigmentation, and her eyes had the glitter of too much stim, taken to cover too much exhaustion. But her shoulders were straight and her voice steady as durasteel.
“Ma’am. High Command already has the most recent updates for the SAR and the recovery plan. Things are going according to schedule. I’m leaving for Supremacy for the SOM shortly. Capital Fleet has acknowledged the authority of Supreme Leader Kylo Ren.”
“What! You’ve thrown in with that, that boy mystic?” That was Quinn, who had never made a secret of his mistrust of the Force. Luckily for him, Snoke had been in the mood to find him amusing, and Sloane had made sure to keep him out of the former Supreme Leader’s way thereafter.
Pellaeon said calmly, “Rear-Admiral, would you care to expand on that?”
Telatten nodded sharply. “Sir. Yes. You are aware of the damage to Supremacy and its Star Destroyer escort groups from the Resistance attack. Our losses. It is because of Kylo Ren’s direct participation in the search and rescue afterwards that,” she looked at down at something, presumably her datapad, “that seventy-nine thousand two hundred and thirty-five children and sub-adults survived from the creches of the ships that were damaged or destroyed. And also five hundred and thirty-eight thousand, six hundred and seventy-two active officers, enlisted and stormtroopers of the First Order, and one hundred and twenty-five thousand, two hundred and seventy one civilian officials. The hardening of the labs and the creches performed according to specification, but we wouldn’t have been able to find all of them before their life-support ran out. He did; he found them scattered across a cubic light-year of space, and guided the rescue ships. He saved them, and all of us know it.”
There were slow, reluctant nods as she finished speaking. All members of the First Order whether married or single contributed tissue samples to the reproduction labs, either on-ship or on-world; they were not told when or if the samples were used in the breeding programme, but were encouraged to consider all children of the creches as potentially theirs. Their collective future, the future of the Order. In saving the children, not to mention the rest of them, Kylo Ren could not have done anything more calculated to win the loyalty of Capital Fleet, and by extension, the rest of the Order’s rank and file. Even the older ex-Imperials, with their individualistic attitudes to family and retrograde dynastic thinking, had to acknowledge that.
“What about Hux?” That was Prahji, one of the younger generation, calculating and cool-headed. “He’s your man, Grand Admiral Sloane, where does he stand?”
It was not a stupid question. While Hux was clearly with Ren right now for the sake of the Grand Marshal’s baton, it was not at all obvious how long this would last. No-one much liked Hux (except Sloane, and to some extent Daala, who had always had an eye for a good-looking man), or even necessarily respected him, but they acknowledged and feared his intellect, his tenacity and his ferocity in the service of the goals of the Order insofar as those were coterminous with his own ambition. And the stormtrooper programme was his. If those qualities were genuinely turned to Kylo Ren’s service…
“The Grand Marshal-designate is his own man, Admiral Prahji,” Sloane said with unimpaired calm, “and loyal to the goals and ideals of the First Order. I have full confidence in his judgement, and in that of the Head of the Civilian Arm.”
There was a pause as everyone digested that. The Civilian Arm had clearly come out in favour of Ren, at least for now, and Yaelin Raikte was respected.
“So,” Ree said, carefully, after a moment, “We…acknowledge Ren as Supreme Leader? Another uncontrollable Force-user? Snoke’s death hasn’t even been investigated that we know of.”
Daala said, “Isn’t it obvious? Ren killed him. About time, too. It was even legal, based on that circular of yours, Rae.”
“Not mine,” Sloane pointed out. “The Department of Force Affairs answers directly to the Supreme Leader, not to the Head of General Administration, but is classified as civilian.”
“The point,” snapped Quinn, ignoring this bit of idle persiflage (everyone knew that the Civilian Arm would not have drafted a regulation legalising murder on its own initiative), “is that succession by assassination is not a precedent to set within the Order. That’s even assuming that Ren will be an improvement on Snoke, which is an open question at the moment. Everything we know about him suggests not. Are we even required to have a Supreme Leader? I admit that in our previous circumstances Snoke could be considered a special case, but restoring a Force-based monarchy isn’t anywhere in our organisational goals that I know of.”
“He’s suspended that regulation,” Telatten said wearily. “His PSO told me that it will be abolished upon his formal inauguration as Supreme Leader. He hasn’t given any particularly stupid orders since Crait. Can we wait and see what happens at the SOM before making any irrevocable decisions? If he kills us all in a fit of pique, that would give High Command a clear indicator of how to respond to this situation.”
There was a bit more back and forth, as the Lieutenants-General and the other Admirals got their credit’s-worth in. No-one was happy with Ren’s succession, but in the absence of a clear lead from Pellaeon, Sloane or Daala, the elders, none of them was willing to offer an alternative, either.
Time was running short, and the main issues had been aired, if not resolved. Sloane said, “Rear-Admiral Telatten has made a sensible point. I note that neither General Hux nor the Head of General Administration has communicated any…disquiet with the present situation to me, and they have both had opportunities to do so.”
Neither Hux nor the Head of General Administration had, in the general promotion circulars, used any of the codes that they and Sloane had (separately) arranged long ago to signal …concern about the contents of any message sent in their names.
“High Command will be observing the SOM and how Kylo Ren conducts himself. We shall convoke again after the SOM if that is acceptable.” Her tone said very clearly that it had better be acceptable. No-one looked very pleased, but no-one objected either. Good enough.
“Fine,” said Quinn curtly, and his image winked out; the junior generals saluted and followed suit (in strict protocol order).
“We’ll meet later,” said Pellaeon, and ended transmission. The rest of the Navy left the call en masse, leaving only Daala remaining.
The two women looked at each other.
“We’re taking a big risk here,” Daala observed.
Sloane shrugged minutely. “Raikte thinks he’s a viable leader, and he seems to have got Armitage on side. We can’t afford a civil war right now.”
Daala flipped her braid between her fingers. Back and forth, back and forth. “If you declared yourself, High Command would support you.”
“Telatten wouldn’t, and she has influence among the younger commanders. Even if she did, you heard her; if she opposes Ren now, she wouldn’t be able to bring Capital Fleet with her. Armitage wouldn’t, not with the Grand Marshal’s baton on offer, and the younger Army and the stormtroopers would follow him. It would tear the Order apart.”
“And instead we take a punt on Kylo Ren, who has never as far we know led anything bigger than a small cell of barking-mad space wizards.”
Sloane offered a thin smile. “As long as he’s not frothing too much at the mouth, I would rather avoid internal distractions, at least for now. We still have to consolidate our gains from the Hosnian operation.”
Daala grimaced in response. “We have the Remnant…sorry, the Allegiants reasonably well in hand, at least. It’ll go more smoothly once I’ve had them all shot.”
Sloane blinked. “That bad?”
“Huh. For embezzlement, peculation, corruption, blithering incompetence, bureaucratic obstructionism, and being thirty years behind the times. Also, I don’t like people shouting at young Nikara because they’re too ball-less to shout at me.”
“Ah. You mentioned. Enric Pryde, yes? I remember him. A nasty piece of work even in the old days, and a very unhealthy devotion to the Traitor.”
And that was as clear a message as she was going to get, Daala reflected, as she bade Sloane farewell and ended the call.
Arriving in the Unknown Regions aboard the Emperor’s yacht, Sloane had made sure to share with the nascent First Order everything Gallius Rax had recorded (lots and lots, given Rax’s ego) about the Emperor’s Contingency, at length and in detail; she had also been extremely clear about what the First Order was to think of it all. After the ascendency of Snoke, and his creature Brendol Hux, the Army had stopped teaching its young recruits about the crimes of Palpatine the Traitor, but quietly and discreetly, the Navy had never forgotten. Supreme Leader, Kylo Ren might style himself, Emperor in all but name. But the First Order would not let itself be betrayed as the Empire had been betrayed.