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Above, the star struggled to hold its place in the sky. Armitage Hux watched it, reveled in it as the star fought and failed. No sun was a match for Starkiller. Nothing was.
He couldn’t have hoped for a better success.
This glow, this light would grow dark soon enough. And, with that dark energy, Starkiller Base would accomplish what the First Order had dreamt of since Hux was a child. They would destroy the New Republic.
Hux would destroy the New Republic. He could taste the victory already.
Snow crunched beneath his boots as he stepped past a few trees to a clearing, looking up to see better. But, as the light faded, everything was harder to see. Soon, Hux was watching the final spark of light leave the star in the sky, and Starkiller fell into a night that would never end until they took it to a new system.
Hux pulled his greatcoat around his shoulders. The snowtroopers hung back, giving him however much time he needed. He didn’t need much. The star was gone, and Starkiller Base felt alive all around him. Full of power…
As soon as he could convince Snoke to fire the weapon, the First Order would reign. With one shot, they could end the New Republic fleet. Its starfighters and its pilots.
The thought didn’t haunt him like it once had.
Once, he’d known a pilot in that fleet. A hothead, a hero.
For years after he’d relived those two days. Shore leave, Poe Dameron had said. That was why he was on Castilon. Spending his shore leave watching other pilots race and imagining he could beat them all. Business, Hux had said because it was true, and he hadn’t imagined a bland conversation in a bar would turn into anything more.
Poe Dameron had a flair for defying expectations.
Never before had two days gone by in the blink of an eye, and never again did they.
Hux hadn’t faltered in his work, but he had doubted in his mind. Perhaps not everyone working for the New Republic deserved to die. They didn’t know better. They didn’t know the First Order.
Poe Dameron didn’t know the First Order. He knew the Republic. He knew fast ships and long drinks and hard kisses. Hux hadn’t wanted him to die for that. Hadn’t wanted him to die in ignorance in the Republic, always wondering where Hux had gone that morning, why he’d never come back.
If it hadn’t meant telling his father what he’d been doing while waiting for the negotiations to be greenlit, Hux would have gone back. At least to say goodbye.
None of that mattered, now. He’d never seen Poe Dameron again. That wasn’t a surprise; the galaxy was enormous.
Years had passed. He’d heard the man’s name. Not in a report of known dead pilots, either – worse. Poe Dameron didn’t fly for the New Republic anymore. He was part of Leia Organa’s irksome Resistance. Her pathetic clamber for relevance in a world that didn’t need her anymore.
To hear any number of people tell it, that was the Force at work. Hux could understand why it was comforting to believe that, when bad things happened, they were meant to be. It was weak reasoning. This wasn’t something supernatural at work, wasn’t luck. This was an equal and opposite reaction that came from Hux’s foolish actions and his inability to turn in a known Republic pilot to the First Order.
Hux moved a hand out to the closest tree. Through his glove, the tree felt rough and cold.
“Sir,” said one of the snowtroopers.
“Yes,” Hux said. He drew the gloved hand back into the front of his greatcoat. “We’re returning to the facilities.” Hux turned toward them. He didn’t try to make out the lines of his guards as their white suits blended into the whiteness of the snow, and in the dark, it all looked the same. One of the troopers turned on a guiding light.
“Yes, sir.”
If the troopers were confused as to why they’d walked Hux all the way out here just to stare at the star, they didn’t let on. Hux suspected they were as awed as the First Order’s great machine as he was. Starkiller was a masterpiece.
“When will we use it, sir?” asked a trooper. The youngest one of the bunch. An older soldier elbowed the young one.
The question didn’t offend Hux. Immediately, he thought. “When the time is right,” he said. The trooper raised his shoulders up as he walked as if the answer had healed any muscle aches, had boosted him forward.
Walking back to the command center was slow, and Hux had plenty of time to wonder at the beauty of Starkiller. A veritable paradise. Void now of hostile lifeforms, covered in picturesque layers of ice and towering trees. It was a feat that so many engineers had poured their hearts and souls into. And, it was Hux’s.
The first project he’d overseen himself. Starkiller was beautiful.
Even the New Republic would think so in their last moments. As the laser shot to them, appeared in seconds, and lit up the sky like a rift in space.
The New Republic would be crushed beneath the weight of its own helplessness. Bloated with politicians from well-to-do planets who used their money to pull influence. Some of them had even supported the First Order. Would they know they allowed their own end in those last moments?
A snowtrooper stepped forward and keyed open the doors. They stood aside to let their general walk in, first. Hux took one last glance to the snow and wondered when his next chance to walk the surface of the planet would be. After the Republic was gone. After the Resistance. After Poe Dameron was gone and Hux would be able to write him off as a loss that the New Republic caused. It wasn’t preventable.
Poe Dameron didn’t know the First Order. He thought he did, but soon he would know. For Hux, that would be enough.