Star Wars fic catch-ups "Per Exasperatio Ad Astra - Ch. 19"
Oops. Suddenly realised and I am far behind posting my fic chapters here.
In which people still have to do their jobs, notwithstanding having had a major mystical experience
Rey was getting very tired of finding herself hauled willy-nilly into Kylo Ren’s increasingly scary mental vicinity. Tense and intense conversation was one thing, but all this weird and metaphorical Force-related activity that she was witnessing (and perhaps not just witnessing; Rey could not shake the fear that perhaps she was meant to be participating, and not metaphorically either) was quite another. She and Chewbacca had only just got started on both serious discussion and the large selection of species-suitable delicacies provided by Deenine, when the familiar silence, and ever less unfamiliar darkness descended, black as his cloak on Takodana, on Starkiller, on Crait.
Kylo Ren floated alone in the darkness, cross-legged with his long hands lax upon his knees. His eyes were closed. Light glowed under his skin and gleamed along every strand of his dark hair, as if his body were a lamp of dark crystal, with a star burning within. Instead of the strange, coloured ribbons she had seen before, thousands of tiny, brilliant points of light circled him, rising and falling in endless orbit. Some brighter, some dimmer, all in constant motion, none drifting away. Every moment more and more sparks were winking into life around him, until he was almost lost in a shimmering, ever-brightening mist.
Rey stared at him in baffled wonder for what seemed an endless time, before she realised that he was naked. Or…looked naked. The thought came to her that perhaps it was the form of man itself that was his clothing. This alien creature, this serene vessel of cosmic power… he was beautiful and terrible, and she could not conceive of him as human.
“I am, though.” He didn’t open his eyes, and his full, sensual mouth never moved, but she heard his voice as if he were standing before her, an intimate murmur, and …she was seen. “Just …maybe not quite the same one as before.”
“What…what are you doing?”
She heard the smile in his voice. “Being the Supreme Leader.”
Utterly unnerved, the question burst from her before she could stop herself. “What’s happened to you?” This was not the young man she had surprised half-undressed in his refresher, with his sardonic humour, and his unexpected understanding (and his rather interesting body). And this was most definitely not the tormented warrior who just a little while ago had offered her his hand in a fury of longing and loneliness, in a burning red room filled with death.
“I surrendered myself to the Force, utterly and absolutely, to gain the power to heal. And I healed.”
Rey remembered those brief, endless moments of absolute union, when there had been no true distinction between him and her (or that third mind that had been there with them, the fearful, suspicious one so like her own in its loneliness and its rage).
“Listen,” Kylo Ren whispered in her heart. “I think you’ll like this.”
Usually when their connection awoke, they moved in a strange, flat silence, broken only by her voice, and his. She normally did not hear even the hum of her bloodstream in her ears. But when he stopped speaking, she became aware that the mist swirling gently around him was not just shining. It was singing. Very, very quietly, each mote of brightness with its own voice, its own note, all joining together in one great, soft harmony, so vast that Rey had mistaken it for silence. As she listened, concentrating, the song grew, not louder exactly, but more distinct, and slowly, slowly, she began to hear words.
On Ahch-To, while their fish cooked, Luke had recited the Jedi Code for her (“mostly wishful thinking”), and the Qotsisajak of the Sith (“a load of codswallop”). She hadn’t disagreed. Neither set of precepts sounded sensible, or even vaguely plausible as a guide to proper action, especially when looked at with a scavenger’s unsparing and ruthless eye.
These words were different. These words echoed in her heart and mind and power, resonated as if she were one of the great singing stones out in the Goazon, that sounded their deep music whenever the Breath of R’iia blew.
In anger, strength. In loyalty, the end of loneliness.
And there, there, the understanding that Luke had denied her. The truth that he had denied both of them. She felt it settle inside her, solid and strong, a sure foundation on which to take her stand, and face whatever the galaxy was going to throw at her.
There is no darkness. There is passion. There is no light. There is clarity.
Ren said, so softly, “The Sith are gone. The Jedi are gone. There is only the First Order now, and we follow the true path, serve the true balance of the Force. Let me know if you’re interested.”
“In being one of those?” She knew what…who…those little lights were now, and had no interest at all in being one of his brainwashed acolytes.
“No. In being me. In having me be you. Two become one, a dyad in the Force. Take your time thinking about it. There’s no hurry.”
. . . . .
Grand Admiral Natasi Daala was happy. She was who she wanted to be, where she wanted to be, doing what she wanted to do. She had her own lovely, technologically cutting-edge, well-funded Star Destroyer, the flagship of a lovely, technologically cutting-edge, well-funded fleet. She had an excellent PSO, and dedicated, well-trained crews whose tendencies towards treason, sedition and slacking were at the absolute unavoidable minimum. In a minute she was going to get up and shoot that slimeworm Enric Pryde and arrest all his worthless cohorts (and hopefully shoot them all too), as a prelude to conquering the galaxy for the First Order. Life was good.
“Grand Admiral! Grand Admiral, please wake up!”
“Urrf, don’t shout, Niko.”
Instead of her office chair, she was on her back on her office daybed, her boots off, and a cushion under her knees. Three worried faces hovered above her. Well, two. Nikara Pellaeon and Dani Ren looked worried. TNA-4890 looked like a personal protocol droid with a personality set at ‘Unflappable’. In one gleaming green hand it held a steaming bowl of …something that was not caf.
“What?” the Grand Admiral said flatly, as she struggled to sit up. Captain Pellaeon hurriedly got an arm around her shoulders, and helped her to get her feet on the floor.
“Synthesised Chandrilan dawnleaf tea, ma’am. With added micro-nutrients. Medical is recommending it to all Fleet personnel above the age of 65 standard years.”
At Daala’s baffled growl, it added, “Medical has observed a degree of minor but noticeable fatigue and nutrient deficiency in Fleet personnel subsequent to the, er, collective meditation exercise at the SOM with the Supreme Leader, ma’am. Younger personnel have been issued an extra dose of supplements. You have been asleep for 32 minutes and 45 seconds, ma’am. The Honourable Dani Ren advised that we should now wake you.”
The tea was bland, but its heat was pleasant in her unexpectedly parched throat. Daala sipped, and tried to reorganise her thoughts.
“What ‘collective meditation exercise’? It was just Ren’s nonsense at the SOM, not the whole…”
Daala stopped dead at the expression on Dani Ren’s face. The Zeltron woman had her mask off, (Daala checked Pellaeon automatically; he caught her glance and tapped the side of his nose; filters in), and looked…mildly embarrassed. In a Zeltron (a species that didn’t even have the concept in any of their native languages; ‘embarrassed’ could only be rendered in Narzel and its related dialects as a peculiar amalgam between ‘uncertain’ and ‘bored’), that was a screaming signal that something was seriously wrong.
“All right, Ren, spill it, what in the Scorekeeper’s name happened? We were at the SOM, Kylo Ren asked us to meditate with him…”
“Umm. Yes.”
“And?”
Dani Ren eyed her carefully, a thorough examination that Daala was quite certain would not register on any scanner in Medbay, but was nonetheless real.
“You’re fine. It’s probably good that you don’t remember, it can be a bit much for people who aren’t expecting it…”
“Expecting what?” Daala was getting annoyed. Unlike some of the other Knights (Densiva, ugh), Dani Ren had never been one for mystical bollocks. She explained things in simple, straightforward terms, starting at the beginning and going on to the end. All this tergiversation wasn’t like her at all.
“Union with the all in all of the Force.”
What? This was as bad as Snoke at his worst.
“Are you trying to say that I, that the whole Fleet has just had a, a… mystical experience?” Something nagged at her as the words left her mouth, but refused to identify itself. Oh well, it would come to her eventually.
Dani Ren turned a fetching shade of violet when she blushed. “Well. Yes. Not just this Fleet. Capital Fleet too. I think…the whole First Order, actually. Everyone was pulled in.”
She added, “I’m really sorry, I had no idea that was going to happen, none of us knew that he could do that, I would have warned you beforehand if I’d known, honestly.”
Captain Pellaeon had vanished during this exchange. Returning, he justified every commendation Daala had ever given him by bringing with him an empty tumbler and a bottle of the good whisky.
. . . . .
Only years of practice keeping his brain together under Snoke let Hux finish the SOM and see everyone politely out without hysterical gibbering. The calm cheerfulness with which the SOM had woken up from the ‘meditation session’, agreed that there was nothing else to discuss with the Supreme Leader for the moment, and accepted its dismissal, was both unnatural and unnerving (terrifying, actually his brain supplied unhelpfully). He didn’t have to escort Rear-Admiral Telatten and the rest out to their shuttles in person (with AK-49’s security unit hovering watchfully above them), but he wanted the walk, and it was a gesture that she would appreciate, assuming that she was in anything like her right mind.
I haven’t done anything to their cognitive capacity Ren said in his head, rather crossly. Just made it easier for them to…process everything. A bit like that thing that Medical does. You know. Therapeutic reconditioning for mental trauma.
Hux wondered vaguely if his hair was standing on end (he missed his pomade so much). Reconditioning was a serious matter, requiring highly-trained, carefully-screened, specialist psycho-medical technicians! The First Order cared about the well-being of its scarce and expensive personnel! If staff needed help to perform better, they weren’t just handed over to random Force-users to have their brains scrambled!
I opened myself to the Force, Ren said. For healing. For you, mostly, but it had to be for myself too, because the power was channelled through me. It changed things. I keep telling you, and you keep not listening.
That was too much.
Because you’re not explaining ANYTHING, Hux screeched (mentally, he really hoped that it was mentally), and focused with furious intensity on energy shields, durasteel walls a metre thick, and the First Order Instruction Manual for Senior Military Ranks. Ren stopped talking, so it worked, one way or the other.
Even if Hux hadn’t made a sound out loud, something of all this must have shown in his posture, because Telatten glanced at him uneasily as they walked side-by-side towards Hanger Bay Krill 374, and asked “Begging your pardon, Grand Marshal, but are you all right?” She was a tall woman, nearly as tall as he was, her straight, grey-streaked dark hair braided back in the Daala style popular among older officers of either sex; her dark eyes, tired under the stim, were still sharply observant. Hux could not detect anything in her tone except straightforward concern. Telatten was a decent enough officer; honestly ambitious and not a conniver, though ruthless enough in dealing with plots against herself.
“Thank you, Rear-Admiral, I’m well. It has just been…a long day.”
“Mmm. Can’t disagree, Grand Marshal. I think this meeting went well, though. It’s…reassuring that the Supreme Leader seems to understand the situation so clearly. Your contribution, I take it.”
Hux seized the opening. “He is more capable than he was allowed to show before.” No harm in pushing responsibility for Ren’s previous behaviour onto Snoke; and it was probably accurate, too. “I admit I wasn’t expecting ‘Any Other Business’ to include a group meditation session. Still, it doesn’t seem to do any harm.”
Telatten smiled dutifully at the mild pleasantry. “No,” she said, sounding slightly surprised. “I actually do feel …better. A little tired, but more…focused. Less stressed. Perhaps there’s something in it after all.”
There was definitely something wrong here. No sane First Order general officer would dream of publicly admitting stress or lack of focus to anyone, let alone a superior. They reached the hangar bay. The shuttles were already leaving in orderly lines, returning to their home ships. Telatten’s guards waited by hers; she and Hux exchanged salutes and parting courtesies, and she boarded. Hux didn’t stay to see the shuttle leave.
As he reached the entrance to the hangar bay’s access corridor, the Head of General Administration and her own entourage 'just happened' to converge with him, having been seeing off Devian, and the other, more junior ship commanders. Her temporary office and his were only one floor apart in the same Emergency Command Centre, so it was perfectly natural that they took the same route back, with the other civilians keeping a polite distance behind.
“I wouldn’t presume to advise you on your deployments, Grand Marshal,” Raikte said quietly as they walked, signalling that she was going to do exactly that, “but it would be greatly appreciated if you could give us some advance notice of any plans for Lieutenant-General Devian’s, ah, future assignments, if any.”
in other words, Please don’t have him arrested without telling us first.
“Of course.” He was fully aware that it was Raikte and Sloan’s personal credit that he and Ren were running on, right now. Plus whatever it was that Ren had just done to everyone’s brains, of course. But how long that would last he had no idea, and he couldn’t rely on Ren simply hypnotising the whole First Order into obedience on a permanent basis.
“For now, better the worrt on the path than the one in the sand, but we’ll keep you informed.” We’re leaving him where he is for now, to see who he attracts, and to deny oxygen to more dangerous threats.
“And just a heads up, so as not to take Finance by surprise: once Supremacy is fully evacuated, I’ll be requesting a full audit of Capital Fleet. It might as well be done while we are still in recovery. Snoke tolerated many …irregularities, and there’s nothing like an emergency to bring the conduit worms out into the open.”
“Or to try to cover up the damage they’ve already done. Yes. I will notify Finance. They will be very happy to work with Fleet Internal Audit.” Raikte did sound pleased, despite the additional stress coming her way, simultaneously with the prosecution of a full campaign of galactic conquest; but then she was probably glad herself of the chance to clean house. In the lift, they had an agreeable and informative chat about how Hydroponics was coping with the evacuation, and Hux returned to his office in a rather better mood than he had expected.
It lasted even past the news that StratCom would only be coming over after dinner, to work with him on The Speech, and its associated theatrics. An attempt to cancel dinner and call them in at once was balked by, of all people, Tritt Opan, who informed him lugubriously that Medical had “given us a Class 1 directive, sir, instructions of the CMO in person on the direct instructions of the Supreme Leader, sir” that the Grand Marshal-designate was to be kept in a proper state of nutrition and rest so that he could fulfil his essential role in the First Order. Before Hux could tell him where both the CMO and the Supreme Leader could put their instructions, Opan added the clincher,
“And Millicent misses you, sir, it won’t hurt to keep her company while you eat.”
A compromise was agreed. StratCom was invited to join Hux for an informal working dinner and more work afterwards, and Millicent was allowed into the conference room while they ate. The Quartermaster-General’s office called, requesting the Grand Marshal-designate’s instructions about his proposed new uniforms, and was abruptly added to the agenda, since Ren’s uniform as Supreme Leader also still had to be decided. Stratcom arrived in person at the same time that their first draft of Ren’s speech arrived on Hux’s datapad.
“Oh, hello darling,” cooed Tiekte, ignoring Hux totally.
“Aren’t you gorgeous, yes you are!” Millicent, spotting another potential slave, twined herself around Tiekte’s boots and graciously allowed herself to be stroked, scratched under her chin, picked up (demonstrating Tiekte’s upper-body strength, since Millicent was a very large, muscular cat under all the fluff, and Acting DG/StratComm was only average size for a female Human), and scratched some more, this time behind her ears.
“You are honoured,” Hux said gravely, over Millicent’s rumbling purr. “She doesn’t often let people pick her up.”
“I like cats,” Tiekte said redundantly. “That’s what she is, isn’t she? Not a tooka or a felinx. She’s an actual cat, aren’t you, sweetie?” She and Millicent touched noses and chirruped agreeably at each other.
“She is. I received her as a gift, upon my promotion to full General.” AK-49 and the secure serving-droid arrived with dinner. Hux sat down and waved everyone to their seats. Tiekte put Millicent down with obvious reluctance, accepted a quick rub of hand sanitiser from AK-49 (Millicent’s arrival had required a number of highly specific modifications to its functions), and joined Hux, the Quartermaster-General, and her own minions at the table.
Millicent had indeed been a gift, an attempt at an insult from Moden Canady, one of Brendol Hux’s contemporaries, and one of those who had despised Brendol’s bastard and resented his swift rise. With her colour so obviously chosen to match Hux’s own hair, the message was also obvious: you are nothing but Snoke’s pet. Hux had accepted the kitten graciously, come to adore her (and to realise that Canady, the fool, had no idea what kind of creature a cat was - Hux wasn’t insulted at the comparison, not at all), and made a note to deal with the man in due course. As it turned out, while Hux hadn’t been able to prevent Canady from being given command of the First Order’s new Siege Destroyer, the man’s own arrogance and incompetence (always complaining about his inexperienced young crew, while doing nothing to train them to be better) had got him killed by the Resistance first. Hux was almost willing to concede that the scum had done the First Order a favour. Fulminatrix and her crew were a loss to the cause. Canady was not.
Dinner (mixed-vegetable stew and spiced, shredded vat-meat, and the same micronutrient drink as at lunch) was productive enough, Hux admitted grudgingly. The new uniform designs for the Supreme Leader and Grand Marshal were approved; Hux sent the set that he and Tiekte had agreed upon directly to Ren’s datapad, and received a terse, ‘if you must’ back. The Quartermaster-General left at that point, to supervise their immediate fabrication and direct delivery to Captain Keltor of the Supreme Leader’s personal office.
There was no reason for Ren to be so crabby, Hux thought, irritated. Both epaulettes and gold braid had been vetoed and the silver elements that he and Tiekte had approved were both modest and tasteful. There might conceivably be occasions where the mendicant-shaman look might be appropriate, or at least useful, but there would never be an occasion for the Supreme Leader of the First Order to dress like some vulgar Core World dilettante.
Acting Assistant Director/Staging offered the usual three choices of general approach for the staging of the speech. Re-using the Starkiller footage and editing the Supreme Leader in was straightforward, economical and efficient, (and in Hux’s view, would get the message across perfectly), but he had to concede to Tiekte’s argument that Ren would not agree to using Hux’s stylistic hand-me-downs. The proposal to have Ren deliver his speech from the tea-garden in Temperate Horticulture SHG-5 won her support but not Hux’s.
“Naboon flute music, the SL sitting cross-legged with a simple bowl of tea in the grey and silver over-tunic from his ceremonial uniform, the garden as the setting, the subliminal suggestion of the Jedi would confuse everyone nicely…”
Hux could imagine just how well Ren would take to being asked to pretend to be a Jedi, even subliminally.
A message from Ren popped up on everyone’s pad. NO.
Tiekte looked down at her pad. "Umm, Grand Marshal..."
Hux sighed. “At ease, DG. It’s my mind he’s reading, not yours.” That reminded him; he sent a message asking AK-49 to get him all information available to the First Order on the Tangrian Co-operation and its citizens. Discreetly. He had no reason to antagonise Raikte, and quite a lot of reason to keep her happy and …co-operative.
Another message from Ren, this time only to Hux and Tiekte. You need to include these points in the speech.
Tiekte read the points and flinched. Hux already knew what she was reacting to; it had been one of the things that he and Ren had discussed while together in Hux’s mind. Or rather, Ren had told him, and Hux had used his Starkiller voice. They had (eventually) agreed not to mention it at the SOM, since it would inevitably deflect attention from everything else that they needed the SOM to approve, including Ren’s position as Supreme Leader. Hux had at least received permission to inform the High Council (its members should all be aware of who they were by now) that the speech would reveal the Supreme Leader’s original identity. That should be enough of a hint, if they were as bright as they thought they were.
Tiekte was looking mildly dyspeptic, though not as if she was going to leap to her feet and run shrieking for the Head of General Administration. Hux signalled to AK-49, whose servitor module deposited another cup of tea in front of her.
“Do you have a problem with this, Acting Director-General?” She had better not. The StratComm minions looked puzzled, caught Hux’s eye, and looked blank.
Tiekte didn’t answer for a moment. Then she drew in a slow, deep breath and let it out. She reached carefully for the cup, and her eyes met his over the rim.
“No problem. It. . .explains a lot.” Hux waited. He was getting a sense of how she operated, and he could practically see her brain cycling up to full speed, information assimilated in seconds. “We’ll need to re-work the speech. And the staging. I propose Option Three with the following adjustments…”
In which people still have to do their jobs, notwithstanding having had a major mystical experience
Rey was getting very tired of finding herself hauled willy-nilly into Kylo Ren’s increasingly scary mental vicinity. Tense and intense conversation was one thing, but all this weird and metaphorical Force-related activity that she was witnessing (and perhaps not just witnessing; Rey could not shake the fear that perhaps she was meant to be participating, and not metaphorically either) was quite another. She and Chewbacca had only just got started on both serious discussion and the large selection of species-suitable delicacies provided by Deenine, when the familiar silence, and ever less unfamiliar darkness descended, black as his cloak on Takodana, on Starkiller, on Crait.
Kylo Ren floated alone in the darkness, cross-legged with his long hands lax upon his knees. His eyes were closed. Light glowed under his skin and gleamed along every strand of his dark hair, as if his body were a lamp of dark crystal, with a star burning within. Instead of the strange, coloured ribbons she had seen before, thousands of tiny, brilliant points of light circled him, rising and falling in endless orbit. Some brighter, some dimmer, all in constant motion, none drifting away. Every moment more and more sparks were winking into life around him, until he was almost lost in a shimmering, ever-brightening mist.
Rey stared at him in baffled wonder for what seemed an endless time, before she realised that he was naked. Or…looked naked. The thought came to her that perhaps it was the form of man itself that was his clothing. This alien creature, this serene vessel of cosmic power… he was beautiful and terrible, and she could not conceive of him as human.
“I am, though.” He didn’t open his eyes, and his full, sensual mouth never moved, but she heard his voice as if he were standing before her, an intimate murmur, and …she was seen. “Just …maybe not quite the same one as before.”
“What…what are you doing?”
She heard the smile in his voice. “Being the Supreme Leader.”
Utterly unnerved, the question burst from her before she could stop herself. “What’s happened to you?” This was not the young man she had surprised half-undressed in his refresher, with his sardonic humour, and his unexpected understanding (and his rather interesting body). And this was most definitely not the tormented warrior who just a little while ago had offered her his hand in a fury of longing and loneliness, in a burning red room filled with death.
“I surrendered myself to the Force, utterly and absolutely, to gain the power to heal. And I healed.”
Rey remembered those brief, endless moments of absolute union, when there had been no true distinction between him and her (or that third mind that had been there with them, the fearful, suspicious one so like her own in its loneliness and its rage).
“Listen,” Kylo Ren whispered in her heart. “I think you’ll like this.”
Usually when their connection awoke, they moved in a strange, flat silence, broken only by her voice, and his. She normally did not hear even the hum of her bloodstream in her ears. But when he stopped speaking, she became aware that the mist swirling gently around him was not just shining. It was singing. Very, very quietly, each mote of brightness with its own voice, its own note, all joining together in one great, soft harmony, so vast that Rey had mistaken it for silence. As she listened, concentrating, the song grew, not louder exactly, but more distinct, and slowly, slowly, she began to hear words.
On Ahch-To, while their fish cooked, Luke had recited the Jedi Code for her (“mostly wishful thinking”), and the Qotsisajak of the Sith (“a load of codswallop”). She hadn’t disagreed. Neither set of precepts sounded sensible, or even vaguely plausible as a guide to proper action, especially when looked at with a scavenger’s unsparing and ruthless eye.
These words were different. These words echoed in her heart and mind and power, resonated as if she were one of the great singing stones out in the Goazon, that sounded their deep music whenever the Breath of R’iia blew.
In anger, strength. In loyalty, the end of loneliness.
And there, there, the understanding that Luke had denied her. The truth that he had denied both of them. She felt it settle inside her, solid and strong, a sure foundation on which to take her stand, and face whatever the galaxy was going to throw at her.
There is no darkness. There is passion. There is no light. There is clarity.
Ren said, so softly, “The Sith are gone. The Jedi are gone. There is only the First Order now, and we follow the true path, serve the true balance of the Force. Let me know if you’re interested.”
“In being one of those?” She knew what…who…those little lights were now, and had no interest at all in being one of his brainwashed acolytes.
“No. In being me. In having me be you. Two become one, a dyad in the Force. Take your time thinking about it. There’s no hurry.”
. . . . .
Grand Admiral Natasi Daala was happy. She was who she wanted to be, where she wanted to be, doing what she wanted to do. She had her own lovely, technologically cutting-edge, well-funded Star Destroyer, the flagship of a lovely, technologically cutting-edge, well-funded fleet. She had an excellent PSO, and dedicated, well-trained crews whose tendencies towards treason, sedition and slacking were at the absolute unavoidable minimum. In a minute she was going to get up and shoot that slimeworm Enric Pryde and arrest all his worthless cohorts (and hopefully shoot them all too), as a prelude to conquering the galaxy for the First Order. Life was good.
“Grand Admiral! Grand Admiral, please wake up!”
“Urrf, don’t shout, Niko.”
Instead of her office chair, she was on her back on her office daybed, her boots off, and a cushion under her knees. Three worried faces hovered above her. Well, two. Nikara Pellaeon and Dani Ren looked worried. TNA-4890 looked like a personal protocol droid with a personality set at ‘Unflappable’. In one gleaming green hand it held a steaming bowl of …something that was not caf.
“What?” the Grand Admiral said flatly, as she struggled to sit up. Captain Pellaeon hurriedly got an arm around her shoulders, and helped her to get her feet on the floor.
“Synthesised Chandrilan dawnleaf tea, ma’am. With added micro-nutrients. Medical is recommending it to all Fleet personnel above the age of 65 standard years.”
At Daala’s baffled growl, it added, “Medical has observed a degree of minor but noticeable fatigue and nutrient deficiency in Fleet personnel subsequent to the, er, collective meditation exercise at the SOM with the Supreme Leader, ma’am. Younger personnel have been issued an extra dose of supplements. You have been asleep for 32 minutes and 45 seconds, ma’am. The Honourable Dani Ren advised that we should now wake you.”
The tea was bland, but its heat was pleasant in her unexpectedly parched throat. Daala sipped, and tried to reorganise her thoughts.
“What ‘collective meditation exercise’? It was just Ren’s nonsense at the SOM, not the whole…”
Daala stopped dead at the expression on Dani Ren’s face. The Zeltron woman had her mask off, (Daala checked Pellaeon automatically; he caught her glance and tapped the side of his nose; filters in), and looked…mildly embarrassed. In a Zeltron (a species that didn’t even have the concept in any of their native languages; ‘embarrassed’ could only be rendered in Narzel and its related dialects as a peculiar amalgam between ‘uncertain’ and ‘bored’), that was a screaming signal that something was seriously wrong.
“All right, Ren, spill it, what in the Scorekeeper’s name happened? We were at the SOM, Kylo Ren asked us to meditate with him…”
“Umm. Yes.”
“And?”
Dani Ren eyed her carefully, a thorough examination that Daala was quite certain would not register on any scanner in Medbay, but was nonetheless real.
“You’re fine. It’s probably good that you don’t remember, it can be a bit much for people who aren’t expecting it…”
“Expecting what?” Daala was getting annoyed. Unlike some of the other Knights (Densiva, ugh), Dani Ren had never been one for mystical bollocks. She explained things in simple, straightforward terms, starting at the beginning and going on to the end. All this tergiversation wasn’t like her at all.
“Union with the all in all of the Force.”
What? This was as bad as Snoke at his worst.
“Are you trying to say that I, that the whole Fleet has just had a, a… mystical experience?” Something nagged at her as the words left her mouth, but refused to identify itself. Oh well, it would come to her eventually.
Dani Ren turned a fetching shade of violet when she blushed. “Well. Yes. Not just this Fleet. Capital Fleet too. I think…the whole First Order, actually. Everyone was pulled in.”
She added, “I’m really sorry, I had no idea that was going to happen, none of us knew that he could do that, I would have warned you beforehand if I’d known, honestly.”
Captain Pellaeon had vanished during this exchange. Returning, he justified every commendation Daala had ever given him by bringing with him an empty tumbler and a bottle of the good whisky.
. . . . .
Only years of practice keeping his brain together under Snoke let Hux finish the SOM and see everyone politely out without hysterical gibbering. The calm cheerfulness with which the SOM had woken up from the ‘meditation session’, agreed that there was nothing else to discuss with the Supreme Leader for the moment, and accepted its dismissal, was both unnatural and unnerving (terrifying, actually his brain supplied unhelpfully). He didn’t have to escort Rear-Admiral Telatten and the rest out to their shuttles in person (with AK-49’s security unit hovering watchfully above them), but he wanted the walk, and it was a gesture that she would appreciate, assuming that she was in anything like her right mind.
I haven’t done anything to their cognitive capacity Ren said in his head, rather crossly. Just made it easier for them to…process everything. A bit like that thing that Medical does. You know. Therapeutic reconditioning for mental trauma.
Hux wondered vaguely if his hair was standing on end (he missed his pomade so much). Reconditioning was a serious matter, requiring highly-trained, carefully-screened, specialist psycho-medical technicians! The First Order cared about the well-being of its scarce and expensive personnel! If staff needed help to perform better, they weren’t just handed over to random Force-users to have their brains scrambled!
I opened myself to the Force, Ren said. For healing. For you, mostly, but it had to be for myself too, because the power was channelled through me. It changed things. I keep telling you, and you keep not listening.
That was too much.
Because you’re not explaining ANYTHING, Hux screeched (mentally, he really hoped that it was mentally), and focused with furious intensity on energy shields, durasteel walls a metre thick, and the First Order Instruction Manual for Senior Military Ranks. Ren stopped talking, so it worked, one way or the other.
Even if Hux hadn’t made a sound out loud, something of all this must have shown in his posture, because Telatten glanced at him uneasily as they walked side-by-side towards Hanger Bay Krill 374, and asked “Begging your pardon, Grand Marshal, but are you all right?” She was a tall woman, nearly as tall as he was, her straight, grey-streaked dark hair braided back in the Daala style popular among older officers of either sex; her dark eyes, tired under the stim, were still sharply observant. Hux could not detect anything in her tone except straightforward concern. Telatten was a decent enough officer; honestly ambitious and not a conniver, though ruthless enough in dealing with plots against herself.
“Thank you, Rear-Admiral, I’m well. It has just been…a long day.”
“Mmm. Can’t disagree, Grand Marshal. I think this meeting went well, though. It’s…reassuring that the Supreme Leader seems to understand the situation so clearly. Your contribution, I take it.”
Hux seized the opening. “He is more capable than he was allowed to show before.” No harm in pushing responsibility for Ren’s previous behaviour onto Snoke; and it was probably accurate, too. “I admit I wasn’t expecting ‘Any Other Business’ to include a group meditation session. Still, it doesn’t seem to do any harm.”
Telatten smiled dutifully at the mild pleasantry. “No,” she said, sounding slightly surprised. “I actually do feel …better. A little tired, but more…focused. Less stressed. Perhaps there’s something in it after all.”
There was definitely something wrong here. No sane First Order general officer would dream of publicly admitting stress or lack of focus to anyone, let alone a superior. They reached the hangar bay. The shuttles were already leaving in orderly lines, returning to their home ships. Telatten’s guards waited by hers; she and Hux exchanged salutes and parting courtesies, and she boarded. Hux didn’t stay to see the shuttle leave.
As he reached the entrance to the hangar bay’s access corridor, the Head of General Administration and her own entourage 'just happened' to converge with him, having been seeing off Devian, and the other, more junior ship commanders. Her temporary office and his were only one floor apart in the same Emergency Command Centre, so it was perfectly natural that they took the same route back, with the other civilians keeping a polite distance behind.
“I wouldn’t presume to advise you on your deployments, Grand Marshal,” Raikte said quietly as they walked, signalling that she was going to do exactly that, “but it would be greatly appreciated if you could give us some advance notice of any plans for Lieutenant-General Devian’s, ah, future assignments, if any.”
in other words, Please don’t have him arrested without telling us first.
“Of course.” He was fully aware that it was Raikte and Sloan’s personal credit that he and Ren were running on, right now. Plus whatever it was that Ren had just done to everyone’s brains, of course. But how long that would last he had no idea, and he couldn’t rely on Ren simply hypnotising the whole First Order into obedience on a permanent basis.
“For now, better the worrt on the path than the one in the sand, but we’ll keep you informed.” We’re leaving him where he is for now, to see who he attracts, and to deny oxygen to more dangerous threats.
“And just a heads up, so as not to take Finance by surprise: once Supremacy is fully evacuated, I’ll be requesting a full audit of Capital Fleet. It might as well be done while we are still in recovery. Snoke tolerated many …irregularities, and there’s nothing like an emergency to bring the conduit worms out into the open.”
“Or to try to cover up the damage they’ve already done. Yes. I will notify Finance. They will be very happy to work with Fleet Internal Audit.” Raikte did sound pleased, despite the additional stress coming her way, simultaneously with the prosecution of a full campaign of galactic conquest; but then she was probably glad herself of the chance to clean house. In the lift, they had an agreeable and informative chat about how Hydroponics was coping with the evacuation, and Hux returned to his office in a rather better mood than he had expected.
It lasted even past the news that StratCom would only be coming over after dinner, to work with him on The Speech, and its associated theatrics. An attempt to cancel dinner and call them in at once was balked by, of all people, Tritt Opan, who informed him lugubriously that Medical had “given us a Class 1 directive, sir, instructions of the CMO in person on the direct instructions of the Supreme Leader, sir” that the Grand Marshal-designate was to be kept in a proper state of nutrition and rest so that he could fulfil his essential role in the First Order. Before Hux could tell him where both the CMO and the Supreme Leader could put their instructions, Opan added the clincher,
“And Millicent misses you, sir, it won’t hurt to keep her company while you eat.”
A compromise was agreed. StratCom was invited to join Hux for an informal working dinner and more work afterwards, and Millicent was allowed into the conference room while they ate. The Quartermaster-General’s office called, requesting the Grand Marshal-designate’s instructions about his proposed new uniforms, and was abruptly added to the agenda, since Ren’s uniform as Supreme Leader also still had to be decided. Stratcom arrived in person at the same time that their first draft of Ren’s speech arrived on Hux’s datapad.
“Oh, hello darling,” cooed Tiekte, ignoring Hux totally.
“Aren’t you gorgeous, yes you are!” Millicent, spotting another potential slave, twined herself around Tiekte’s boots and graciously allowed herself to be stroked, scratched under her chin, picked up (demonstrating Tiekte’s upper-body strength, since Millicent was a very large, muscular cat under all the fluff, and Acting DG/StratComm was only average size for a female Human), and scratched some more, this time behind her ears.
“You are honoured,” Hux said gravely, over Millicent’s rumbling purr. “She doesn’t often let people pick her up.”
“I like cats,” Tiekte said redundantly. “That’s what she is, isn’t she? Not a tooka or a felinx. She’s an actual cat, aren’t you, sweetie?” She and Millicent touched noses and chirruped agreeably at each other.
“She is. I received her as a gift, upon my promotion to full General.” AK-49 and the secure serving-droid arrived with dinner. Hux sat down and waved everyone to their seats. Tiekte put Millicent down with obvious reluctance, accepted a quick rub of hand sanitiser from AK-49 (Millicent’s arrival had required a number of highly specific modifications to its functions), and joined Hux, the Quartermaster-General, and her own minions at the table.
Millicent had indeed been a gift, an attempt at an insult from Moden Canady, one of Brendol Hux’s contemporaries, and one of those who had despised Brendol’s bastard and resented his swift rise. With her colour so obviously chosen to match Hux’s own hair, the message was also obvious: you are nothing but Snoke’s pet. Hux had accepted the kitten graciously, come to adore her (and to realise that Canady, the fool, had no idea what kind of creature a cat was - Hux wasn’t insulted at the comparison, not at all), and made a note to deal with the man in due course. As it turned out, while Hux hadn’t been able to prevent Canady from being given command of the First Order’s new Siege Destroyer, the man’s own arrogance and incompetence (always complaining about his inexperienced young crew, while doing nothing to train them to be better) had got him killed by the Resistance first. Hux was almost willing to concede that the scum had done the First Order a favour. Fulminatrix and her crew were a loss to the cause. Canady was not.
Dinner (mixed-vegetable stew and spiced, shredded vat-meat, and the same micronutrient drink as at lunch) was productive enough, Hux admitted grudgingly. The new uniform designs for the Supreme Leader and Grand Marshal were approved; Hux sent the set that he and Tiekte had agreed upon directly to Ren’s datapad, and received a terse, ‘if you must’ back. The Quartermaster-General left at that point, to supervise their immediate fabrication and direct delivery to Captain Keltor of the Supreme Leader’s personal office.
There was no reason for Ren to be so crabby, Hux thought, irritated. Both epaulettes and gold braid had been vetoed and the silver elements that he and Tiekte had approved were both modest and tasteful. There might conceivably be occasions where the mendicant-shaman look might be appropriate, or at least useful, but there would never be an occasion for the Supreme Leader of the First Order to dress like some vulgar Core World dilettante.
Acting Assistant Director/Staging offered the usual three choices of general approach for the staging of the speech. Re-using the Starkiller footage and editing the Supreme Leader in was straightforward, economical and efficient, (and in Hux’s view, would get the message across perfectly), but he had to concede to Tiekte’s argument that Ren would not agree to using Hux’s stylistic hand-me-downs. The proposal to have Ren deliver his speech from the tea-garden in Temperate Horticulture SHG-5 won her support but not Hux’s.
“Naboon flute music, the SL sitting cross-legged with a simple bowl of tea in the grey and silver over-tunic from his ceremonial uniform, the garden as the setting, the subliminal suggestion of the Jedi would confuse everyone nicely…”
Hux could imagine just how well Ren would take to being asked to pretend to be a Jedi, even subliminally.
A message from Ren popped up on everyone’s pad. NO.
Tiekte looked down at her pad. "Umm, Grand Marshal..."
Hux sighed. “At ease, DG. It’s my mind he’s reading, not yours.” That reminded him; he sent a message asking AK-49 to get him all information available to the First Order on the Tangrian Co-operation and its citizens. Discreetly. He had no reason to antagonise Raikte, and quite a lot of reason to keep her happy and …co-operative.
Another message from Ren, this time only to Hux and Tiekte. You need to include these points in the speech.
Tiekte read the points and flinched. Hux already knew what she was reacting to; it had been one of the things that he and Ren had discussed while together in Hux’s mind. Or rather, Ren had told him, and Hux had used his Starkiller voice. They had (eventually) agreed not to mention it at the SOM, since it would inevitably deflect attention from everything else that they needed the SOM to approve, including Ren’s position as Supreme Leader. Hux had at least received permission to inform the High Council (its members should all be aware of who they were by now) that the speech would reveal the Supreme Leader’s original identity. That should be enough of a hint, if they were as bright as they thought they were.
Tiekte was looking mildly dyspeptic, though not as if she was going to leap to her feet and run shrieking for the Head of General Administration. Hux signalled to AK-49, whose servitor module deposited another cup of tea in front of her.
“Do you have a problem with this, Acting Director-General?” She had better not. The StratComm minions looked puzzled, caught Hux’s eye, and looked blank.
Tiekte didn’t answer for a moment. Then she drew in a slow, deep breath and let it out. She reached carefully for the cup, and her eyes met his over the rim.
“No problem. It. . .explains a lot.” Hux waited. He was getting a sense of how she operated, and he could practically see her brain cycling up to full speed, information assimilated in seconds. “We’ll need to re-work the speech. And the staging. I propose Option Three with the following adjustments…”