General Armitage Hux knew that his role was to be stoic in this moment. His pale face set into a commanding impassivity. This was how the great leaders of the galaxy faced adversity. The lectures at the officer’s academy on Dopaka and the discs of his own history holos all spoke of such an aura of command. The blank mask of the Mandalor. The unruffled calm of ancient Jedi warlords.

  Hux was their heir. The culmination of research and carving away to become the scion of history. The First Order was pure in its goal to take all the best aspects of the past, whilst winnowing away all of the failures. They were born from the crucible of the Unknown Regions with only the vast lessons of history to build order from chaos.

  Their return to the calcified regions of the New Republic was destined. They wore the regalia of their imperial forefathers to tear down the rotting institutions festering upon the galaxy. The imagery was perfect.

  Hux held his distant stare, long perfected in his mirror.

  “Scanning,” he cast out to the bridge of The Finaliser.

  “Yes, sir!”

  The officer snapped to his feet in parade attention.

  “The drive burst has been aligned to a series of matched ships.” The officer hesitated, and Hux resisted the urge to look at him. “We are verifying some outliers produced.”

  Hux didn’t know what that meant. He had never been trained as a technician. It would be a weakness to ask. He must appear to know everything his officers were doing. He needed to show them that he could just as easily do their job himself.

  “We also detected a sub-light signal burst on the egress lightspeed path but found only the wreckage of Rathtar smugglers.”

  Hux felt his fist was clenched at his side and quickly released it before anyone could notice the pressure blotches. His wiry hands bruised and marked too easily, even with his youth. The incompetence of those around him was a chronic rasp upon his anger. They had easily tracked the resistance droid to the scavenger and the ship she had escaped from. Why then was it the height of difficulty to locate a single freighter and burn it into stardust?

  The incursion into foreign space was now well underway. The First Order loyalist planets had seceded from the old regime to expand the front lines and carve out the new boundary of ordered space. Their thrust was remarkable, but momentum requires movement. Hux knew that the grind was beginning.

  First, along those ugly Pirate Enclaves, where barbaric blood pacts bound the flotilla into a formidable force. The Corporate Sector didn’t have the fleets to challenge Star Destroyers, but the aliens were gouging them for supplies while protesting technical servitude. The lines against the Resistance had barely budged, and attrition was colossal on both sides. The soft belly of the New Republic was still writhing in bureaucratic turmoil.

  Hux had felt stirred by their initial sweep out of the Unknown Regions. It had sent his blood rushing around his body to see the holo-map flicker from a hodge-podge of colours into uniform red. Ticking over hours and days. He had needed to return to his quarters just to calm himself.

  Then Ren had moved. A stain upon Hux’s great moment. Ren hadn’t even bothered to consult Hux. He had requisitioned a squadron by merely murmuring at them to prepare for ground action. His filthy black cloak haunted the clean floors of the ship. He was an unwanted spectre at the feast of victory. A squelch beneath Hux’s soft leather boots.

  Ren had returned after a disastrous assault on a backwater village, a storm of emotion and tantrums. Hux had needed to ask Captain Phasma for a report. The near-human was inscrutable but informational. An ancient imperial data reliquary with the original designs for Starkiller Base. A resistance pilot taken captive. And a droid who had disappeared into the sands of Jakku.

  Hux had been incandescent with rage. They had orbital cannons for exactly this kind of security breach. Hux had stood, pacing and grinding, outside Ren’s quarters for what felt like a quarter hour before he regained his composure and returned to the bridge.

  Then, Ren had had the gall not even to mention the plans. Instead, it had been pining about a map leading to Skywalker. His old master, long forgotten to decrepit footnotes. Hux had been speechless at the blinkered worldview. This obsessive ritualistic cultism was a known weakness of dark sorcerers. They felt the galaxy revolved around them, so they forgot the material conditions which eventually led to their downfall.

  Hux would not be dragged down by wizard hubris. He would rise above.

  He had been musing too long.

  “Mobilise assault craft to control and investigate the smuggler wreckage. No heavy ordinance, any evidence needs to remain intact.”

  “Yes, sir!” Saluted a stormtrooper from behind him.

  The door to the bridge whirred open. A cold gust of air blew in, and shadows grew darker at the corners of Hux’s vision.

  Ren.

  “Have you found it yet?”

  His voice was garbled and chipped behind the mask. It breathed down Hux’s neck, curling around him, making him feel as if he were naked.

  Hux dropped into the Echani breathing he had researched and trained in. He stirred the anger in the base of his skull and felt the aura lessen on his skin.

  Hux spun to look at the intruding man. Heavy vestments over soft armour, tall and masked by a black and silver helmet. He cut an imposing figure. He was out of place. He didn’t fit with the clean lines of the bridge or the starched, pressed uniforms of the officers. Ren wore the regalia of his own knightly order from where he had stolen his name. The Knights of Ren were not part of the First Order, and neither was Ren himself. Not truly.

  “No,” said Hux, his voice terse, “The lightspeed trace led to a Rathtar smuggler wreckage. I’ve dispatched an assault group to investigate. If they left anything behind, it will be found.”

  “Are your troopers capable of subduing the wreckage? Or will they be persuaded by the Rathtars into defecting?”

  Hux’s jaw clenched. FN-2187’s aberrant behaviour had been the thorn in his side since Jakku. He had succeeded in keeping all defections and treasons from amongst the true-born a sheltered secret. On data-records, the program boasted a one-hundred-per-cent loyalty rate. The high-profile betrayal had allowed Ren to cast doubt on Hux’s institutions. And the foul creature never left behind an opportunity to remind him of it.

  “Troop deployment is still within my purview after your debacle on the desert planet’s surface, Ren. My men are exceptionally well trained, and they will see this droid destroyed be-”

  “Captured.” Ren snarled.

  “What?” questioned Hux, baulked by the interruption. ”Supreme Leader Snoke was explicit. Capture the droid if we can, but destroy it if we must.”

  Hux paused and heard only silence. Too late, he could see frost creeping across the edges of the view screens. The officers at their stations had stopped moving, and only the small exhalations of white fog by their lips gave them any signs of life.

  Hux felt the pressure against his mind to embrace the endless cold. He rapidly shifted through the mental images he used to centre himself. His childhood, killing his father, the exodus, the vision of Ren kneeling at his feet.

  “Careful, Ren. That your ‘personal interests’ not interfere with orders from the Supreme Leader.”

  Ren took another step forward until the men were close enough to be almost touching. Hux’s chest came to the other man's upper abdominals. He had to tilt his chin to look up at Ren’s eyes.

  “I want that map. For your sake, I suggest you get it.”

  Hux held Ren’s gaze, feeling his eyes water. Suddenly, like a static cloth being pulled back, the shadows retreated, and the frost fled from the room. Ren took a step back before turning to stare distantly into the depths of the ship.

  “We are summoned.”

  Hux straightened the invisible creases of his uniform while Ren’s back was turned.

  “Then you shouldn’t keep your master waiting, kath-dog.” He said as he picked up his pace so he would be ahead of Ren’s long stride.

  It pleased him to see a nearby display screen grow a splinter fracture at his comment.

  *****

  The doors to the assembly hall opened in front of them. Captain Phasma exited the dark auditorium just as Hux and Ren turned the corridor corner. She marched with her forever languid purpose. Her beautifully reflective chromium armour glistened in the dim light. Its shell is both a protection from harm and a containment for the radiation set deep into her bones.

  “General Hux, Master Ren.” She reported with a salute and bow before continuing past them without waiting for a reply.

  Phasma must have been deeply upset over the traitor to be so terse. When was the last time she had gotten to kill anything? Hux eyed the open doors. If Phasma had been ordered to report before them, then the Supreme Leader wanted all the facts at his horrid fingertips before he addressed them.

  Hux resisted glancing at Ren as they strode into the hall. The large assembly room was the size of a hangar. Hundreds of desks studded the walls in a stadium arc, all empty, all focused on a single central stage.

  Hux mastered his thoughts into the prepared patterns as the colossal form of Supreme Leader Snoke was revealed. Over five meters tall, even hunched in his chair. The Supreme Leader was old and gnarled. His regal robes did nothing to smooth the scar puckered skin, more pallid than white. The creature had a bulbous head dented by a deep and old wound.

  He seemed both fragile and eternal. Like seeing a lightning-shattered tree, infested with rot, still growing green shoots. Power through perseverance.

  This was the light that Hux’s family had found at the end of Operation Contingency. The old power which gave them the strength to tame the Unknown Regions. An impossible wisdom of hyperspace routes and confluences of destiny.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  When the remnants of the Old Empire had fled under the posthumous orders of Emperor Palpatine, it had been Snoke who had been waiting for them with open arms. Lingering in a hidden vault and the end of the starmap. Surrounded by silent, alien hyperspace attendants.

  Hux hated the thing.

  No amount of First Order intelligence had managed to determine its origin, and those who had been set up as proxies for the investigation had disappeared or, worse, become mindlessly loyal to Snoke’s vision. Hux’s own mentor, Gallius Rax, had launched multiple assassination attempts against the thing. One of which even falsely boasted to have produced a carcass. But the Supreme Leader always appeared at his next appointment without fail. His frailty was an illusion, a taunt. No human should have been able to survive the wounds that Snoke bore.

  Hux had, with great effort, obtained a bloodstained datapad which contained a partial genetic profile of the Supreme Leader. Human was the base to be sure. But deviated and twisted to be no longer pure, perhaps intentionally.

  “Report for me, General.”

  The voice was like an avalanche in the massive space. It rumbled even as it pretended softness. The figure barely moved his lips, frozen in a position that seemed languid and precarious.

  “Supreme Leader!” exclaimed Hux, going to one knee. He filled his mind with memories of the pride and awe he had felt at seeing the first Star Destroyers produced from the hidden shipyards.

  “The droid has yet to be found, but we are close behind them. The bounty is attracting many loyal informants, which we are sifting through to verify.”

  “General, I ask not what we are currently doing. I am well informed. I need not remind you of the dangers should Skywalker be found and return to the galaxy. His death in violence would usher in a new wave of petulant insurgents bolstered by the Force.”

  Hux found it easy to let the words wash over him between purposeful breaths. Skywalker, Skywalker, Skywalker. Did none of these filthy wizards even care about the greatest tool of order the galaxy had ever seen?

  “Supreme Leader,” called Hux, ”I take full responsibility for the-”

  “General!” called Snoke, near twisting in his torso in a feeble attempt at a shout. “Our strategy must now change.”

  Hux sensed the opportunity being presented to him. Perhaps the Supreme Leader was not entirely foolish.

  “The weapon. It is ready. I believe the time has come to use it. We shall destroy the carcass of the old galactic order, the Republic. A single great show of strength which will show the entire galaxy that the First Order is the rightful arbiter of law and peace. With Starkiller, even the most fanatically stubborn of the Resistance will acquiesce to our rule.”

  Hux felt short of breath. There was silence in the great hall. He felt embarrassed and could tell that Snoke was unimpressed. The great figure was still to the point where Hux thought he might have died.

  “Go, General,” rasped the thing finally. ”Oversee preparations. I will be at the planet's surface for the firing.”

  “Yes, Supreme Leader!” barked Hux, using enthusiasm to mask his embarrassment.

  He spun in a perfect parade turn and strode out of the assembly hall.

  The stupid monster. If left to Snoke’s whims, the First Order would collapse. Even Ren would make a better Supreme Leader than the ugly tyrant. It was only the meticulous management of the project by Hux and his forebearers which had let them turn the meagre titan-class shipyards and thousands of resource caches of the contingency into the gleaming star of the First Order.

  Hux glanced around. Finding a private nook, he pulled a small holo-projector from an internal pocket. He reset his breathing and stilled his frustration back into a dull simmer. Order and glory.

  He flicked on the holo-projector to see a miniature display of the assembly hall he had just stepped out of. Rendered from hidden recording devices first placed by loyal imperial remnants during the construction of the Finaliser. They had, in their autopsy of the Old Empire, lost devotion to the dark mystics who had ruled them. Hidden reports and committees had decided that further steps to manage upward would need to be taken to ensure the prosperity of the new age.

  Hux was their legacy. Trained to mitigate the power their magics had over him and equipped with a network of backdoors to keep tabs on his masters. It had happened again and again, the purity of an empire fell to the obsessions of the dark magi. This time it would be different. He would learn from history and break the cycles of the past. He would be better.

  On the projection, Snoke had shifted position. He seemed more relaxed, more intimate.

  “There's been an awakening.” His voice came, tinny through the projector’s small speakers. “Have you felt it?”

  “Yes,” breathed Ren.

  He seemed small and delicate in Hux’s palm. Like a fragile treasure.

  “There's something more,” demurred the Supreme leader. “The droid we seek is aboard the Millennium Falcon. In the hands of your father, Han Solo.”

  Even through the breathing technique, Hux had to clamp down on any emotions which might give him away. He hadn’t received the intelligence on the ship, much less Ren’s own connection to the current crisis.

  Inside the projector, Ren’s head flickered up at the Supreme Leader.

  “He means nothing to me.” Ren blurted forcefully.

  “I know you struggle with your path, little knight.” Snoke's voice was an odd mix of paternal care and snide derision. “The hardest resolves are the most brittle. Temper yourself to face this challenge. Remember why you found your way to me.”

  Ren breathed like rasping static.

  “I have not forgotten what was done to me. I will not falter.”

  The huge figure of Snoke shifted back into his throne, nestling into it like a masoned stone.

  “We shall see. We shall see.”

  Hux watched as Ren bowed again and exited the room. Snoke’s crag-laden face bent into an oil-dripping smile behind Ren, watching as he walked away. Hux shut the projector down before the force-sensitive could divine him. None of the techniques the imperial remnants had discovered were strong enough to be used without caution.

  Inside the small supply nook, Hux considered the information as his emotions came back to him. He was always horribly thirsty after the odd cadence of Echani breathing. His delicate fingers gripped white around the holo-projector. The arrogance of the sorcerer caste to keep vital information from him. Like he was merely an attendant in their greater game.

  Starkiller was awake now. He would not make the same mistakes as had been made before. He would not needlessly repeat what had already been. The Force would be nothing before the power of a fully armed and operational battlestation.

  *****

  “Today is the beginning of a new golden age!”

  General Hux’s voice was cast through monolithic speakers across the duracrete plane, carved into the planet Ilum’s surface. Gentle snowfall dusted the legion of infantry, storm troopers and officers arranged in front of him in a seemingly endless formation. White armour and grey uniforms stood to attention proudly in their tens of thousands, flanked by stationary TIEs and imposing AT-ATs arrayed tastefully at the edges of the parade ground.

  “The old galaxy has calcified like tar in the lifeblood of order! At this very moment, in a system far from here, the Republic Senate convenes to lie to the Galaxy. False stories and edited holos all to cover their own corruption and depravity.”

  Hux felt a swelling in his chest as he spoke. Finally, it was all coming together. The knots in his body released under the heat in his words.

  “I stand before YOU! The best of the best! Veterans of Helska IV, of the Blueshadow Containment and of the Yuuzhan Repulsion. You know better than anyone the strength needed to survive in the Home Regions.”

  Hux could almost feel the attention of the crowd on him. Like a physical thing. They hadn’t seen anything yet. His mind was drawn behind him. To the black windowed observation tower where Ren and Supreme Leader Snoke would surely be watching. Hux hadn’t managed to converse with the Supreme Leader before the event. He must be watching by now.

  “You have built this machine, both the First Order and this battlestation! Through your works, we will clear the Galaxy of the cancers it harbours. We will spread strength and order to even the lowest depths of space! We will create an order like this galaxy has never seen! The First Order of its kind! We will remember this day! As the glorious dawn! Of our destined golden age!”

  Hux turned to his left. A control relay had been set up on the stage for this occasion.

  “Begin firing sequence.” Commanded Hux with a tongue that felt the weight of purpose.

  A technician relayed the command and lifted the stellar field containment locks with shaking hands.

  Deep within the planet, there was a colossal trench that reached almost a fifth of the way towards the planet’s kyber-laden core. Inside the trench, vents opened, clamps disengaged, magnetic sirens sang and radiological angels opened baleful eyes. Arcing into the edge of the atmosphere, a singular massive, squat barrel began to spin.

  Over the horizon, a false dawn bloomed as crimson light spawned from the faraway weapon trench. Responding to a single order, the assembled soldiers spun to face the armament and its blood-red herald-sky.

  “Status report,” breathed Hux, entranced by the sight.

  “Sir. Containment shred is within parameters. Spectrometers have maintained target locks through the interference. Hyperspace coiling is reaching optimum.”

  Beyond the perfect flatness of the parade ground, the natural landscape of Ilum shivered. Dark pine-like forests shrouded in the purest white snow. Now a singular pure red.

  “Fire.”

  The technician breathed an acknowledgement. She set a gloved hand on the output control and pressed it forward until it clicked. Unable to stop herself, she looked away from the console to the mass of gathering light.

  The world seemed to hold its breath.

  Then, like the birth of a new star, a pillar of light blazed into existence. It was wide enough to blot the horizon even from this great distance. A fiery red spear which imposed on the sky like a scorched world-spanning tree.

  Soon after the light came the shock. Ancient forests torn from the earth. Diamond-like snow melted, then flash-steamed from the ambient heat. The wave of pressure hit the watching assembly like a punch. Unwary troopers and infantry were knocked to the ground by the visible distortion of the air.

  Hux stepped back to brace against the wave, but his slick, polished shoes still skidded backwards an inch under the assault. The light felt hot against his pale face. The sound was like an impossible beat of a thousand drums mixed with the deep humming whine of burning plasma. Hux could smell ozone mixed with the scent of burning hair.

  The assault didn’t stop even as the initial shockwave passed. Hux spanned and grabbed the edge of a console for stability.

  “Report!” He screamed at the technician.

  “Firing lines successful, sir!” She yelled back at him, “Natural formations provided expected heat sink, fresh-water oceans flowing down prepared valleys!”

  Hux could barely hear her.

  “Deploy a barricade! Now!”

  Two troopers dragged an energy projector to the front of the relay node, turning it on to summon a blue translucent dome over their heads. The roar cut off as the dome sealed, but blotches of energy pressure still scattered over the shield like bruises.

  “Telemetry, is it on target? Travelling as expected?”

  “Reports are coming in now, sir. Dark stellar energy is gathering at the lensed points in real space.” The technician was rattling off information as it appeared on the displays in front of her. “Quintessenence achieved! The energy has jumped to lightspeed! On target and moving!”

  Hux felt like he was floating. It had worked. The ancient designs modified by new technologies. The half-completed old imperial project repaired by untested engineers. It had all come together against all odds. And it was glorious.

  “Sir! The energy is still visible on real space scopes!”

  Hux nearly barged the technician out of her seat to stare at whatever she had seen. He restrained himself after recalling that the screens meant nothing to him. He couldn’t understand them.

  “The quintessence is burning away at mass shadow while in hyperspace. It’s causing bleed into real. Its… its accelerating in hyperspace!”

  Hux took a second to try to parse the information. It was accelerating, going faster. It could be seen from real space by everyone. He locked his jaw in an attempt to keep his grin from splitting between his tightly pressed lips.

  A light that the whole galaxy could see, moving faster than any ship.

  Each firing capable of destroying a handful of planets from weeks of lightspeed travel away.

  Oncoming and inevitable.

  Hux turned back to the huge pillar of light now fading away.

  He wanted to burn its image into his retina.

  It was perfect.