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34 ABY - STARKILLER BASE
First Order officers in the packed control room ducked under tables and covered their heads as they waited for the smoke to clear, revealing the corpses of their fellow comrades who had been nearest the windows when the blast hit.
Just moments ago, General Armitage Hux had been giving orders to his officers to fire the weapon upon the Resistance fleet, when an explosion shook the planet and the walls of the First Order’s Starkiller Base came crumbling down.
General Hux, coughing and rubbing his eyes, emerged from underneath a control pad and carefully climbed to his feet. He quickly limped out of the room, leaving his officers behind to either figure out their own way to survive, or die.
As he ran down long stretches of hallways, the walls continued to shake and through windows he watched the ceiling give in and begin to break apart. The red-haired general dodged falling debris as he ran toward the Supreme Leader’s throne room, seeking instructions. Swinging open the large metal door, Hux found the throne occupied by a hulking hologram of the wrinkled and disfigured Snoke.
“Supreme Leader!” the general cried. “The fuel cells have ruptured. The collapse of the planet has begun.”
Snoke’s features appeared unbothered, but Hux knew his anger was likely boiling beneath the surface of his skin.
“Leave the base at once and come to me with Kylo Ren,” Snoke’s hologram said, flickering in and out as rocks and debris tumbled down from the ceiling, interrupting the signal. “It is time to complete his training.”
“Yes, Supreme Leader,” Hux said with a nervous dip of his head, and then turned on his heel and stormed out of the collapsing throne room.
Hux clenched his fists as he marched back through the falling base. Looking for Snoke’s arrogant young apprentice was the last thing the general wanted to be doing in that moment. Kylo Ren was a mentally unstable but undoubtedly powerful force-user that Snoke had spent the last six years training to become his own personal warlord and champion, the Jedi Killer.
General Hux despised him. But orders were orders, and Hux knew that disobeying the Supreme Leader was no way to improve his own rank, nor his chances to one day succeed Snoke as the next Supreme Leader of the First Order.
As he sprinted down hallway after hallway, however, Hux caught no sight of the black-clad figure anywhere. Crossing the bridge towards the building’s exit, he nearly tripped over a shiny, black object that had been lazily discarded near the edge of the thin platform. A closer look revealed that it was the helmet worn by Kylo Ren to make himself appear more menacing.
General Hux felt his breath hitch in a mix of fear and excitement. Could Kylo Ren really be dead? How did he die? Could he have fallen off this very bridge?
It occurred to the general that he could have been murdered, perhaps by one of the Resistance fighters currently attacking the base. He suddenly backed away from the helmet, worried he’d look too close and find that Ren had been beheaded, and this was all that remained of his corpse. Pushing the gruesome image from his head, he leaned closer to the helmet and found it to be empty of any severed heads. Ren had removed it before he had either escaped or died.
Hux leaned down and picked up the helmet, planning to present it to Supreme Leader Snoke with the news that his apprentice had been killed in all the chaos, and carried it with him as he crossed the remainder of the bridge and stepped outside into the freezing outside air.
The natural land surrounding the First Order’s formerly lavish, but now destroyed, buildings on Starkiller Base was covered with a forest of thin trees and a harsh layer of snow. Hux pulled his long black coat closer around him and watched his breath cloud in front of him as he wandered aimlessly through the snow toward the hangar where the First Order’s ships were stored.
He needed a new plan. He deeply regretted never learning to pilot a ship, for although he was still alive for the moment, if he did not find another survivor capable and willing to carry him away from this crumbling planet, he would be stranded here to die.
He wondered where Captain Phasma was. In the chaos of officers and stormtroopers alike running to and fro in hopes of getting off the base alive, Hux wondered if he could have missed her. He thought it unlikely, given her great height and unique silver armor. She must have either escaped with her life or died trying.
As he approached the ship hangar, Hux spotted a figure half walking, half crawling through the snow in the same direction as himself. He squinted his eyes at the figure of--no, it couldn’t be. But alas, it was.
Kylo Ren, severely injured but still impossibly alive, was struggling to heave himself toward the hangar to escape. Hux approached him, annoyed that Ren had not died in battle, as Hux had hoped. As much as Hux hated him, Ren knew how to pilot a ship.
As Hux drew closer, however, he wondered whether Ren was in any fit shape to do such a thing. His thick black hair was messy, hanging in his face and flecked with snowflakes. His whole back, in fact, was covered in snow, as if the warrior had fallen into it. More concerning, though, was his front, which was covered in blood coming from so many wounds on Ren’s body that Hux was sure he had only minutes to live. A thick gash tore open half of his pale face, and he was holding his side, blood pouring down from the wound hidden behind his gloved hand.
Hux hopped over a dead stormtrooper on his way to get to Ren. When the force-user saw him, his eyes widened, but Hux could not read the emotion on his face. He was breathing heavily and appeared barely able to keep his eyes open.
“What in the hell happened?” General Hux demanded of the younger man.
Kylo Ren ignored him and looked down to where General Hux still held his signature helmet. He reached for it, and Hux thrust it at him with an air of disgust. Pushing his hair back out of his face, Kylo donned the helmet and continued limping toward the ship hangar, the general on his heels.
“Supreme Leader Snoke demands your presence, as well as mine,” Hux told him.
Kylo nodded once and the two men trudged painfully slowly through the last stretch of forest. The whole planet was shaking, and the ground was even breaking open in places, revealing the planet’s core of molten lava. Trees shuddered and fell throughout the dense forest.
The hangar came into sight and Hux, tired of the force-user slowing him down, grabbed Kylo Ren by the elbow and practically dragged him the last few paces into the damaged, but surprisingly still standing, building. That Kylo let him do it informed Hux how injured and exhausted he really was.
A stormtrooper, FN-2199, was scrambling around, seemingly lost in the commotion. At the sight of General Hux and Kylo Ren, he stopped pacing and ran toward them.
“Commander Ren, I can’t find any other officers,” the stormtrooper said, looking right past General Hux.
Hux felt a slight twinge of annoyance at the title-- Commander. Kylo Ren did not hold a formal title within the First Order’s ranks, and was only allowed to make decisions regarding the war because he was the Supreme Leader’s apprentice, and because most in the First Order had witnessed his temper when he did not get what he wanted.
“Where is my command shuttle?” Ren said, his voice robotic through his mask. Hux was surprised at how he kept his menacing composure in front of the soldier, considering what he knew Ren’s face looked like underneath the helmet.
“Still here, sir,” FN-2199 said.
“Come, I may need you to pilot it with me,” Ren told the stormtrooper, who momentarily froze and then awkwardly dipped his head. Hux wondered whether the stormtrooper had any knowledge of flying. Whether he did or did not, he did not reveal, and the three scurried through the hangar toward Kylo Ren’s impressive personal ship.
Hux followed Kylo and the soldier up the dock and into the command shuttle, choosing to stand in the back of the cockpit and watch the other two men settle into the pilot and co-pilot’s seats.
Kylo Ren gave quick orders to FN-2199 to help him get the ship off the ground, and as soon as they were in the sky and entering the atmosphere around Starkiller Base, Hux watched through the window as below, the planet gave one final rumble and was blasted to bits.
Ren programmed a route that would take them to where Supreme Leader Snoke was, aboard the Supremacy, and then left his seat and walked out of the cockpit, once again removing his helmet. Hux only now noticed just how deep the cut to his face was.
Behind the cockpit, two long benches stretched out on either side of the ship, where normally the rest of the ship’s crew would sit. As for right now though, it was just the three of them: General Hux, Kylo Ren, and FN-2199. Kylo Ren settled himself on the bench across from Hux, wincing and once again grabbing his side. Hux looked back at the stormtrooper occupying the co-pilot’s seat, who was looking at the array of levers and controls like he’d never seen anything like it.
“Does this man know how to fly a ship?” Hux said to Ren in a hushed but aggressive voice.
“It’s on autopilot. As long as he doesn’t touch anything, we’ll be making contact with the Supremacy shortly.”
The dark warrior began rummaging through the ship’s cabinets, and then got up to turn a corner into the back of the shuttle. When he reemerged, he was followed by a medical droid that looked like it had just been turned on. Ren sat back down on the bench and the droid began beeping and inspecting the deepest of his wounds, which were the cut to his face and the hole in his side. Hux watched it work for a while, but soon he could no longer resist the temptation to humiliate Kylo Ren.
“So, how is the hunt for Luke Skywalker going?” Hux said with an air of amusement. Kylo glared at him and said nothing. Hux only smirked and kept talking. “The scavenger did this to you, didn’t she? The Supreme Leader surely won’t be pleased.”
Kylo moved his hand ever so slightly and suddenly Hux’s head was slammed back against the wall behind him. FN-2199 whipped around to see what had happened as General Hux caught his breath and began rubbing the back of his head.
He felt that Ren was a coward for using the force on him. That was always how he got his way, by threatening to use his dark power against anyone who denied him. Hux knew that although Ren’s violent temper scared most people into submission, it would surely land him in trouble soon enough. And when it did, Hux would finally get rid of him, once and for all.
Supreme Leader Armitage Hux, the general chanted in his head, as he so often did to remind himself why he was still putting up with Ren’s attitude. His moment would come. For now, he remained silent as he had been ever since Kylo Ren arrived at the First Order--when Hux had begun planning his great takedown of the force-user.
Watching Ren’s blood pool on the leather shuttle seat, Hux knew that this was surely the beginning of Ren’s fall, and had to look down at his own lap to hide the smile that appeared on his face as their ship slowed and landed within Snoke’s Supremacy.