Fic update: Star Wars: "Per Exasperatio Ad Astra - Ch.20"
In which Grand Marshal Hux writes a speech and General Leia Organa makes one off the cuff
At least this time she hadn’t collapsed. Rey returned to herself still sitting upright on the Falcon’s dodgy old lounge seats, a plate of sweetened koja-nut cakes and a pot of some unnamed hot drink in front of her. Chewbacca said calmly, “Talking to the boy again?”
The metaphysical back-and-forth with Kylo Ren had made her hungry, and the nut cakes looked and smelled very good.
“Mm,” she replied, mouth full.
Chewbacca had very graciously refrained from saying “I told you so,” when he picked her up after her escape from Supremacy. Now, he lifted his mug of wasaka cordial (Deenine had not supplied alcohol) and drank, politely giving her time to swallow and have a drink herself (some sort of tea, she didn’t really care what; it was hot and soothing, that was good enough).
She told him what she had seen (heard? felt? experienced was probably the word) through the connection as best she could.
“It’s different. Before, we were seeing each other in, um, realspace, I suppose. Now I think I’m seeing his mind directly. And I don’t understand what he was talking about. A duet in the Force? Something like that.”
Chewbacca hummed in a neutral way. “Leia might know.”
Rey wasn’t sure why that set her heart suddenly beating fast, the inner voice shouting no! in absolute rejection. Leia…General Organa had been nothing but kind to her. Knew…at least something about the connection that Rey had with Kylo. Had not, so far, done anything to hurt her with that knowledge. So far.
“I don’t know what she wants from me,” Rey said at last, reluctantly. “The rest of them want me to, to save them, I think. I don’t know how. I want to help if I can, but…”
Chewbacca said nothing. As she calmed, her sense of his presence in the Force strengthened, confirming her earlier understanding of him. Someone old and strong and steady. Not unkind, but remote; fundamentally unconcerned with her. She had wanted a family, yes, somewhere to belong, people who wanted her ( you belonged to Unkar Plutt, the inner voice reminded her in a warning tone; he wanted you, too). It had never occurred to her that some day, she might prefer distance.
“Are you part of the Resistance, Master Chewbacca?”
Chewbacca dropped his jaw open in the silent Wookiee laugh.
“No need to call me ‘Master’, cub. ‘Captain’ will do if you want to be polite. And no, I’m not. I was Han’s friend, and Han was Leia’s mate.” And General Organa was the Resistance, its heart and soul and face and voice. That was patently obvious, even to Rey.
“Then, are you going to stay, Captain? With them?” The Millennium Falcon was their only vessel, for now, but Poe had been talking on the way about how the Resistance still had ships, pilots who had been away from D’Qar when it fell, how to contact them, how to bring them back.
He tilted his head back; her sense was of careful consideration. Of her, of other things. “Lando is giving me a free refit for the sake of…old friendships. I’ll be here for a while.”
Then he answered the other question, the one that she hadn’t dared to ask, “Han made you an offer. It’s still open, until I leave.”
. . . . .
Several hours into what should have been their sleep shift, Tiekte had shown no sign of ingesting anything beyond endless draughts of cassius tea, supplied by her droid (a small part of Hux’s mind wondered why exactly she called it ‘Luggy’, given that its alphanumeric designation was PPAXW-994002381). The two of them were mostly alone in the conference room by then, the minions having been sent off to work on the staging. There had been sinister mutterings about “thunder drums” and “we need a decent version of the Order anthem, better than the official one, the Nenether III Officers' Academy Senior Choir recording, that was good…”; Hux had pretended not to hear the dread words “Naboon flute music”.
Millicent was curled up asleep on the table between them. Every so often one or the other would reach out absently and run a gentle hand over her soft fur. Occasionally her paws and whiskers twitched, and she produced little grunting noises, as she hunted and ate Resistance scum (Hux imagined fondly) in her dreams.
They had been wrangling (and wrangling politely over) The Speech for a while, and it hadn’t actually been going that badly. Hux had lots of nice, inspiring phrases that he had been saving for future internal broadcasts - Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory no matter how long and hard the road may be. For without victory there is no survival. He was particularly proud of that one.
This was a speech for the Order, after all, the most important one that he had written so far (after Starkiller, of course).
“Yes, but you know, Grand Marshal, the Remnant….the Allegiant Sector is going to get this speech too. Which means it will leak instantly. The external audience matters too. We will be speaking to our own people, yes, but we also have to speak to that part of the New Republic that will hear what we say, and want what we offer.”
Hux had switched to the cassius himself an hour or so ago; Tiekte had seemed pleased that he quite liked it. It was blander than he was used to, lacking the bitter bite of tarine, but was also actually stronger, almost as good as a real stim. Ha, take that, Ren. It was nice to feel his brain working at full capacity again.
He had to admit that she had a point. “So… the same as our line in the Outer Rim and the Mid-rim then. We speak to the ones that have been forgotten, ignored or exploited, even in the Core. Perhaps especially in the Core, because they will feel entitled to better than they have. The ones who were hurt when the Empire fell, and whom the New Republic never helped to heal.”
All of your former colleagues in the Imperial Civil Service, he thought but did not say.
Studying the policies of the New Republic under Sloane’s pragmatic guidance, he had found that particular decision by the revived Senate utterly baffling (though obviously extremely beneficial to the First Order). The vengeful dismissal and proscription of the entire Imperial civil and military service as war criminals, stripping them of rights and livelihoods, seizing their property, letting them be assaulted and murdered with impunity, discriminating against them and their children in every possible way. . .the First Order itself could not have designed a better way to encourage recruitment to its ranks of overt or covert supporters. Not to mention creating an administrative and economic mess that the New Republic had not managed to tidy up, even after thirty odd years, thus encouraging yet more disaffection, and yet more willing recruits…
Tiekte beamed at him, pallid with exhaustion but still cheerful. “Exactly! A nice turn of phrase, Grand Marshal.”
“Thank you, Director-General. Hux will do, in the circumstances.”
“Tiekte, likewise.”
Well, the New Republic’s loss had been the First Order’s gain, at least in this particular instance.
. . . . .
Poe dropped Finn off at the staff quarters without going in himself. He would have to meet the accusation in his erstwhile comrades’ eyes sooner or later, but…not now. He didn’t know if either Rose Tico or Finn had realised yet how exactly the First Order had learned about the escape shuttles above Crait, or if they had, whether they had told anyone else. The excursion to the Sullustan bar had kept Finn distracted enough that he hadn’t tried to talk about Crait. Poe suspected that it would be Tico who worked it out first, once she had time and space to think about it. Finn was too busy right now, dealing with a whole new universe.
He found Leia - General Organa, he reminded himself; there was no way that she would ever let herself be ‘Leia’ to him, ever again. He had betrayed her, betrayed the Resistance, would have been in front of a firing-squad for mutiny several times over if he hadn’t managed to kill enough people that they couldn’t afford to rid themselves of him. General Organa was in. She was with Threepio and Artoo in the small sitting room of the Presidential Suite, where just a few hours ago Lando had spelled out just how hopeless their situation was.
A dozen holoscreens rose around her - news, messages, statistics, analysis. The General was speaking, upright in her chair, one arm lying on an arm-rest, the other hand resting on the head of her walking-stick as if it were a scepter. A Queen on her throne, confident and calm, unlike the being squawking at her from somewhere in the Core.
“Navesst’k, you’re the most senior Senator surviving, as far as anyone knows. That makes you pro tem Chair of the Senate. Get hold of whoever is left, there are provisions for Senate meetings by holo in emergencies. Elect a new Chancellor, appoint a new Chief of General Staff. You need to remind the people of the New Republic that it still exists!”
This was your fault, Organa! Your bunch of terrorist malcontents provoked this!
Standing just inside the door, Poe flinched. The General didn’t. “And the Resistance thanks you for the generous funding that your system provided to us. We do have the data trail on record, you know.” She leaned forward. “Senator, there’s no time for recriminations. Either the New Republic pulls itself together now, or the First Order pulls us apart and swallows us at leisure. What does the Senate have left in the way of armed forces?”
There’s no Senate! And no forces!
The General straightened in her chair. Head high, eyes piercingly bright, voice a deep clarion of resolve. “While one Senator lives there is a Senate! The First Order is not invincible. The Resistance has already successfully destroyed the weapon that was used against the Hosnian system. Admiral Amilyn Holdo, at cost of her own life, has destroyed the First Order’s flagship. The Resistance has done what we can against the First Order. Now it is up to the worlds and peoples of the New Republic, to stand together and defend our freedom as we did once before. We prevailed against the Empire, Senator. We will prevail against its upstart children!”
The holo went dark. The General sighed and sagged back into her chair. “That should do it. Take out the bits about provocation, and her donations to the Resistance; she was speaking out of fear. We can keep it in reserve if we need it.”
Threepio said, “Done, Your Highness. We are leaking this exchange to all the priority Core systems now, and will continue to send it out until it has reached 80% of targeted coverage. We predict 92% of targeted coverage within half an hour. Your Highness, Captain Dameron is here to see you.”
Poe's flinch this time was internal, even though the General said gently but firmly, “Threepio, please remember that Commander Dameron has been reinstated in rank.”
For lack of anyone else, Poe thought, accepting. She did not say it. She didn’t need to.
He came forward and saluted. “General, permission to go in search of Black Squadron. I know the likely places to pick up a trace…”
“Denied.”
. . . . .
Just one more thing to decide, and then the first draft would be done, and sent off to the Supreme Leader. The cassius having run out, AK-49 had switched them to vitamin-laced water despite protests (from Hux; Tiekte had had the grace to at least look mildly disgruntled, but had not argued). Lieutenant Stynnix, back on shift, had given her Grand Marshal-designate a quite inappropriately stern look, and reminded him that the time of his appointment with the Supreme Leader had been set by the Supreme Leader, in the Supreme Leader’s personal expectation that the Grand Marshal-designate and the Acting Director-General would both get a minimum of six hours of sleep before meeting the Supreme Leader, sir, if you recall, sir, he said so specifically, sir.
Hux knew perfectly well that lack of sleep degraded performance, he didn’t need to be bossed around by his junior staff to make him sleep, and everyone was doing triple shifts anyway (ignoring the fact that both he and Tiekte were well beyond that by now).
“So, at the beginning or at the end?”
She thought about it, nibbling delicately at one of the biscuits that AK-49 had at least produced when it cruelly denied them more tea.
“If we lead with that, no-one in the external audience will pay any attention to anything that comes after. Near the end, as a climactic revelation for them. Our chaps don’t know anything about Leia Organa except that she was Vader’s daughter who turned against him, and a terrorist leader, so it will be a surprise for them, but not a big thing. It would even be a positive, you know, ‘despite his birth, the SL rejected his family’s destructive ideology, and freely chose the ideals of the First Order instead’, that sort of thing. For the New Republic and Organa’s bunch, though…”
They exchanged tired grins.
“All right. From paragraph 27, then, ‘We do not fear hardship, we do not fear death’ …”
. . . . .
At least this time she hadn’t collapsed. Rey returned to herself still sitting upright on the Falcon’s dodgy old lounge seats, a plate of sweetened koja-nut cakes and a pot of some unnamed hot drink in front of her. Chewbacca said calmly, “Talking to the boy again?”
The metaphysical back-and-forth with Kylo Ren had made her hungry, and the nut cakes looked and smelled very good.
“Mm,” she replied, mouth full.
Chewbacca had very graciously refrained from saying “I told you so,” when he picked her up after her escape from Supremacy. Now, he lifted his mug of wasaka cordial (Deenine had not supplied alcohol) and drank, politely giving her time to swallow and have a drink herself (some sort of tea, she didn’t really care what; it was hot and soothing, that was good enough).
She told him what she had seen (heard? felt? experienced was probably the word) through the connection as best she could.
“It’s different. Before, we were seeing each other in, um, realspace, I suppose. Now I think I’m seeing his mind directly. And I don’t understand what he was talking about. A duet in the Force? Something like that.”
Chewbacca hummed in a neutral way. “Leia might know.”
Rey wasn’t sure why that set her heart suddenly beating fast, the inner voice shouting no! in absolute rejection. Leia…General Organa had been nothing but kind to her. Knew…at least something about the connection that Rey had with Kylo. Had not, so far, done anything to hurt her with that knowledge. So far.
“I don’t know what she wants from me,” Rey said at last, reluctantly. “The rest of them want me to, to save them, I think. I don’t know how. I want to help if I can, but…”
Chewbacca said nothing. As she calmed, her sense of his presence in the Force strengthened, confirming her earlier understanding of him. Someone old and strong and steady. Not unkind, but remote; fundamentally unconcerned with her. She had wanted a family, yes, somewhere to belong, people who wanted her ( you belonged to Unkar Plutt, the inner voice reminded her in a warning tone; he wanted you, too). It had never occurred to her that some day, she might prefer distance.
“Are you part of the Resistance, Master Chewbacca?”
Chewbacca dropped his jaw open in the silent Wookiee laugh.
“No need to call me ‘Master’, cub. ‘Captain’ will do if you want to be polite. And no, I’m not. I was Han’s friend, and Han was Leia’s mate.” And General Organa was the Resistance, its heart and soul and face and voice. That was patently obvious, even to Rey.
“Then, are you going to stay, Captain? With them?” The Millennium Falcon was their only vessel, for now, but Poe had been talking on the way about how the Resistance still had ships, pilots who had been away from D’Qar when it fell, how to contact them, how to bring them back.
He tilted his head back; her sense was of careful consideration. Of her, of other things. “Lando is giving me a free refit for the sake of…old friendships. I’ll be here for a while.”
Then he answered the other question, the one that she hadn’t dared to ask, “Han made you an offer. It’s still open, until I leave.”
. . . . .
Several hours into what should have been their sleep shift, Tiekte had shown no sign of ingesting anything beyond endless draughts of cassius tea, supplied by her droid (a small part of Hux’s mind wondered why exactly she called it ‘Luggy’, given that its alphanumeric designation was PPAXW-994002381). The two of them were mostly alone in the conference room by then, the minions having been sent off to work on the staging. There had been sinister mutterings about “thunder drums” and “we need a decent version of the Order anthem, better than the official one, the Nenether III Officers' Academy Senior Choir recording, that was good…”; Hux had pretended not to hear the dread words “Naboon flute music”.
Millicent was curled up asleep on the table between them. Every so often one or the other would reach out absently and run a gentle hand over her soft fur. Occasionally her paws and whiskers twitched, and she produced little grunting noises, as she hunted and ate Resistance scum (Hux imagined fondly) in her dreams.
They had been wrangling (and wrangling politely over) The Speech for a while, and it hadn’t actually been going that badly. Hux had lots of nice, inspiring phrases that he had been saving for future internal broadcasts - Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory no matter how long and hard the road may be. For without victory there is no survival. He was particularly proud of that one.
This was a speech for the Order, after all, the most important one that he had written so far (after Starkiller, of course).
“Yes, but you know, Grand Marshal, the Remnant….the Allegiant Sector is going to get this speech too. Which means it will leak instantly. The external audience matters too. We will be speaking to our own people, yes, but we also have to speak to that part of the New Republic that will hear what we say, and want what we offer.”
Hux had switched to the cassius himself an hour or so ago; Tiekte had seemed pleased that he quite liked it. It was blander than he was used to, lacking the bitter bite of tarine, but was also actually stronger, almost as good as a real stim. Ha, take that, Ren. It was nice to feel his brain working at full capacity again.
He had to admit that she had a point. “So… the same as our line in the Outer Rim and the Mid-rim then. We speak to the ones that have been forgotten, ignored or exploited, even in the Core. Perhaps especially in the Core, because they will feel entitled to better than they have. The ones who were hurt when the Empire fell, and whom the New Republic never helped to heal.”
All of your former colleagues in the Imperial Civil Service, he thought but did not say.
Studying the policies of the New Republic under Sloane’s pragmatic guidance, he had found that particular decision by the revived Senate utterly baffling (though obviously extremely beneficial to the First Order). The vengeful dismissal and proscription of the entire Imperial civil and military service as war criminals, stripping them of rights and livelihoods, seizing their property, letting them be assaulted and murdered with impunity, discriminating against them and their children in every possible way. . .the First Order itself could not have designed a better way to encourage recruitment to its ranks of overt or covert supporters. Not to mention creating an administrative and economic mess that the New Republic had not managed to tidy up, even after thirty odd years, thus encouraging yet more disaffection, and yet more willing recruits…
Tiekte beamed at him, pallid with exhaustion but still cheerful. “Exactly! A nice turn of phrase, Grand Marshal.”
“Thank you, Director-General. Hux will do, in the circumstances.”
“Tiekte, likewise.”
Well, the New Republic’s loss had been the First Order’s gain, at least in this particular instance.
. . . . .
Poe dropped Finn off at the staff quarters without going in himself. He would have to meet the accusation in his erstwhile comrades’ eyes sooner or later, but…not now. He didn’t know if either Rose Tico or Finn had realised yet how exactly the First Order had learned about the escape shuttles above Crait, or if they had, whether they had told anyone else. The excursion to the Sullustan bar had kept Finn distracted enough that he hadn’t tried to talk about Crait. Poe suspected that it would be Tico who worked it out first, once she had time and space to think about it. Finn was too busy right now, dealing with a whole new universe.
He found Leia - General Organa, he reminded himself; there was no way that she would ever let herself be ‘Leia’ to him, ever again. He had betrayed her, betrayed the Resistance, would have been in front of a firing-squad for mutiny several times over if he hadn’t managed to kill enough people that they couldn’t afford to rid themselves of him. General Organa was in. She was with Threepio and Artoo in the small sitting room of the Presidential Suite, where just a few hours ago Lando had spelled out just how hopeless their situation was.
A dozen holoscreens rose around her - news, messages, statistics, analysis. The General was speaking, upright in her chair, one arm lying on an arm-rest, the other hand resting on the head of her walking-stick as if it were a scepter. A Queen on her throne, confident and calm, unlike the being squawking at her from somewhere in the Core.
“Navesst’k, you’re the most senior Senator surviving, as far as anyone knows. That makes you pro tem Chair of the Senate. Get hold of whoever is left, there are provisions for Senate meetings by holo in emergencies. Elect a new Chancellor, appoint a new Chief of General Staff. You need to remind the people of the New Republic that it still exists!”
This was your fault, Organa! Your bunch of terrorist malcontents provoked this!
Standing just inside the door, Poe flinched. The General didn’t. “And the Resistance thanks you for the generous funding that your system provided to us. We do have the data trail on record, you know.” She leaned forward. “Senator, there’s no time for recriminations. Either the New Republic pulls itself together now, or the First Order pulls us apart and swallows us at leisure. What does the Senate have left in the way of armed forces?”
There’s no Senate! And no forces!
The General straightened in her chair. Head high, eyes piercingly bright, voice a deep clarion of resolve. “While one Senator lives there is a Senate! The First Order is not invincible. The Resistance has already successfully destroyed the weapon that was used against the Hosnian system. Admiral Amilyn Holdo, at cost of her own life, has destroyed the First Order’s flagship. The Resistance has done what we can against the First Order. Now it is up to the worlds and peoples of the New Republic, to stand together and defend our freedom as we did once before. We prevailed against the Empire, Senator. We will prevail against its upstart children!”
The holo went dark. The General sighed and sagged back into her chair. “That should do it. Take out the bits about provocation, and her donations to the Resistance; she was speaking out of fear. We can keep it in reserve if we need it.”
Threepio said, “Done, Your Highness. We are leaking this exchange to all the priority Core systems now, and will continue to send it out until it has reached 80% of targeted coverage. We predict 92% of targeted coverage within half an hour. Your Highness, Captain Dameron is here to see you.”
Poe's flinch this time was internal, even though the General said gently but firmly, “Threepio, please remember that Commander Dameron has been reinstated in rank.”
For lack of anyone else, Poe thought, accepting. She did not say it. She didn’t need to.
He came forward and saluted. “General, permission to go in search of Black Squadron. I know the likely places to pick up a trace…”
“Denied.”
. . . . .
Just one more thing to decide, and then the first draft would be done, and sent off to the Supreme Leader. The cassius having run out, AK-49 had switched them to vitamin-laced water despite protests (from Hux; Tiekte had had the grace to at least look mildly disgruntled, but had not argued). Lieutenant Stynnix, back on shift, had given her Grand Marshal-designate a quite inappropriately stern look, and reminded him that the time of his appointment with the Supreme Leader had been set by the Supreme Leader, in the Supreme Leader’s personal expectation that the Grand Marshal-designate and the Acting Director-General would both get a minimum of six hours of sleep before meeting the Supreme Leader, sir, if you recall, sir, he said so specifically, sir.
Hux knew perfectly well that lack of sleep degraded performance, he didn’t need to be bossed around by his junior staff to make him sleep, and everyone was doing triple shifts anyway (ignoring the fact that both he and Tiekte were well beyond that by now).
“So, at the beginning or at the end?”
She thought about it, nibbling delicately at one of the biscuits that AK-49 had at least produced when it cruelly denied them more tea.
“If we lead with that, no-one in the external audience will pay any attention to anything that comes after. Near the end, as a climactic revelation for them. Our chaps don’t know anything about Leia Organa except that she was Vader’s daughter who turned against him, and a terrorist leader, so it will be a surprise for them, but not a big thing. It would even be a positive, you know, ‘despite his birth, the SL rejected his family’s destructive ideology, and freely chose the ideals of the First Order instead’, that sort of thing. For the New Republic and Organa’s bunch, though…”
They exchanged tired grins.
“All right. From paragraph 27, then, ‘We do not fear hardship, we do not fear death’ …”
. . . . .