Chapter Text
“You can sit over here. Um, if- if you want to.”
Matt drags his attention away from the table of snickering Stormtroopers who keep darting glances in his direction. Behind them, a group of radar techs have hastily piled their tools and equipment on the only available seat at their table. Assholes.
The man who spoke is small and pale, hunched over his tray at an otherwise empty table. Matt hadn’t even noticed him until he spoke. He seems to blend into the drab wall behind him by sheer force of will despite wearing a really garish yellow undershirt.
“Just. If you’re looking for a spot. You’ve been standing there for a while. But if you don’t want to, it’s okay,” he stammers. Clears his throat and takes a bite to appear busy.
Matt’s hands clench around the hard plasteel tray as a fresh wave of laughter goes through the table of Stormtroopers. Setting his jaw he turns his back on them and sits across from the nervous man, who fidgets and tucks a strand of copper-orange hair behind his ear.
“Don’t worry about it. Those guys- they’re jerks anyway,” the man mutters, picking at his protein mush with a fork.
“Yeah. Jerks.”
They would see who was laughing later. He can’t wait to see them stammer and try to excuse away their petty words to Lord Kylo Ren.
Matt turns his attention to the man across from him, who leans over his food, one pale arm bent around the tray like he’s got to protect from being snatched away.
“My name is Matt,” he pronounces. “I’m a radar technician.”
“Yes, um, I can see that.” He darts a glance at Matt’s jumpsuit and reflective vest.
What little can be seen of his eyes are an unnaturally dark blue. Artificial. Some kind of implant. They make a faint clicking sound every time he blinks, which is often. Matt wants to tilt his chin up to get a better look at them.
“Hello. Nice to meet you, Matt. Um, people call me Techie.”
His shoulders hunch a little at the bald scrutiny but he doesn’t tell Matt to stop staring.
“I know who you are.”
“Y-you do?”
“You’re the general’s brother.” He was mentioned in Hux’s personnel file. Brother: Brendol Hux, 34, works in Security. The resemblance is unmistakable even without the red hair and ocular implants.
“…ah,” he says flatly, shifting. “Most people- they take longer to figure that out.”
Most people weren’t forced to stare at Hux’s stupid smug face as much as he was. But a real radar technician, he realizes too late, would have no reason to encounter someone like the general.
“Well,” Matt scrambles, remembering his edict before starting this mission. Don’t stand out. “I’ve worked personally with General Hux before. On a special project for the radar dishes on the new base. It was a secret project so you might not have heard of it. That’s where I met him.”
“Really? Oh,” Techie almost sounds disappointed. He suddenly becomes very interested in scraping the last of the protein mush off of his tray.
“And you look just like him, except for the eyes, so I just assumed… you have to be his brother, right?” Matt congratulates himself on the smooth save.
“Yeah. Wow, you’re really good. Um, twins actually,” his mouth gives a self-deprecating little twitch that might have been an attempt at a smile. Matt wants to ask him to do it again. He can’t remember the last time someone has smiled at him. “He- he got all the brains and I got all the- you know, the looks. That used to be our joke. It’s- I know it’s not very funny, sorry,” he adds when Matt doesn’t laugh.
“Hux isn’t as smart as he thinks he is.” He resists the urge to roll his eyes.
That fleeting half-smile again.
“Besides, everyone knows Kylo Ren is the brilliant one.” He ventures, “Did you know he built his lightsaber out of a cracked kyber crystal? There’s no other weapon like it in the galaxy.”
“That’s,” a whirring as Techie blinks rapidly, “That’s- that’s, yes, that’s very impressive… Um, but can we maybe not talk about, um, him? Just,” he adds quickly, “Someone like that, he probably doesn’t like being talked about, right?”
“Yes, you’re right.” Matt cannot fault that logic. More, he finds himself intrigued by the implication that they should keep talking.
“What should we talk about?” This was good. This was socializing.
“Oh, um…” Techie seems at a loss. He fidgets and cracks his knuckles, as if he’s stalling for time after being shoved into the spotlight before he was ready. “Well, um, whatever you want to talk about is fine, I guess, I don’t mind- just, just whatever is cool.”
His eyes click rapidly as he blinks. Like the verbal tics, it increases when he’s anxious.
“So what do you do on the ship?” That had been the first thing most people had asked when he met them. It seems as safe a topic as any.
“I’m, uh, head of internal security.” A self-deprecating little shrug. “Which just means I’m in charge of, um, myself and another guy and a bunch of droids, but I guess it- it looks good on a CV, right? That’s what Armie said, anyway, and he insisted, so, uh, here I am. Mostly we all just watch the cameras and, and if, if you were in trouble or something we would alert the bridge and they send the ‘troopers.”
“Armie.” Matt says flatly.
“Shit,” Techie curses in an embarrassed, brittle sort of way, “Sorry, I forgot he hates when I call him that around other people-“
Matt tries and fails not to smirk. “General Hux’s name is Armie?”
“It’s- it’s- it’s Armitage actually and he hates it so don’t go around saying it or he’ll shove me out an airlock, I mean it-“
“Don’t worry. Your secret is safe with me,” he cuts him off, solemn. In a way, it was. Matt would never breathe a word of it. Kylo Ren, on the other hand, was going to have a field day next time he faced the general.
Armie. He nearly snorts.
“Thank you. Thanks. So, um, you work with the radar equipment,” he changes the subject quickly. “Is that fun?”
“Not really, no.” Matt thinks of his supervisor shouting at him while his hands fumbled with the unfamiliar tools. Thinks of Delora and Mike quickly throwing their harness and toolbox on the only open seat at their table when they saw him approaching with his tray. “My coworkers are assholes.”
He had chosen the job at random off of a list of open positions. He should have picked something different. Like internal security. He would like working with Techie. Techie was easy to talk to, and when they weren’t talking the silence wasn’t awkward.
“Oh yeah, those guys? Well, you know, I see a lot, and they’re jerks to everybody so don’t, you know, take it personally…”
The words cheer him up more than he expected. It wasn’t him. They were just jerks.
“Thank you.”
There was nothing wrong with him.
“What is this?” Matt asks, frowning, after taking a bite of synthetic beige protein mush and nearly spitting it back out.
“Um, I think the technical term is gruel.”
He decides that Matt should laugh at this, and so he does. It’s a short, choppy sound. Techie gives a breathy little laugh in response, glancing around like laughter was something which must be kept secret.
“It’s not that bad, once you get used to it.” When he tucks a strand of hair behind his ear, Matt catches a glimpse of a faded slaver’s brand on his forehead. “It’s, it’s healthy. And there are worse things, right?”
It was true. But there were also better things, which were being served in the Officer’s Wardroom four decks above them right at that moment and he says as much. Bland, sticky protein mush was fitting for the Stormtroopers and the rude technicians, it was what they deserved, but Techie was a general’s brother.
Moreover, Techie was nice.
“My brother always tells me to come and eat with him, but that stuff sort of… upsets my stomach?” He looks away, like this is something worth being embarrassed over. Maybe it was? “This is good. It’s okay, really. I mean, it’s okay if you don’t like it, it kind of tastes like shit. But it’s fine for me.”
Matt understood. Kylo Ren had gone through long periods subsisting on nothing but the most basic fare before, as part of his training. The return to normal food was always jarring, unpleasant. Remembering his feelings about Kylo Ren, he does not mention this to Techie.
They talk for a few more minutes and it is good, it’s normal, before Techie suddenly curses, glancing at the chrono on the wall.
“Fuck, it’s nearly shift change. I didn’t realize- I have to go-“ Techie stammers, gathering up his empty tray.
“Alright. Goodbye.” Matt says, fighting down disappointment.
“Bye, uh, Matt. See you… well, I’ll see you, right?”
“Okay, yeah. See you.” He finds that the words are true; he wants to see Techie. Hopes to run into him again.
Techie scrambles off and out the door, sticking close to the wall like a nervous womp rat. Matt frowns watching him leave. The slavers’ brand and skittish behavior made no sense for someone of his background.
Curiosity tugs at him as he readies unenthusiastically for his second shift as a radar technician.
General Hux never missed an opportunity to remind people that his father- theirfather- was one of the most prominent founders of the First Order. Everything was my father this and my father that. Hux was awful. Techie was nothing like that arrogant, condescending, self-righteous little-
“Matt, can we get a move on please?” his second shift supervisor is every bit as irritating as the last one. “You act like you’ve never done this before. What is this, kindergarten? Hello?”
He is kneeling on the floor. The reflective vest hangs awkwardly on his shoulders, loaded with tools he doesn’t even know the names of. “I just can’t work with you standing over me like that,” he grits out. Why did everybody think yelling at him would make him work better?
“Alright Matt, whatever.” The man snaps, throwing up his arms. “I’m going to get a cup of caf. You’ve got until I get back to replace those corroded bearings or I’m transferring your ass to sanitation and getting somebody else to do it- like my five year old daughter.”
“Asshole,” Matt mutters under his breath once the man leaves.
He did know how to do this, he really did. He was good with machines. It had just been a long time and the stupid bearings were rusted on tight.
Matt grunts as his hand slips, the metal slicing a neat line through the fleshy part of his palm. Growling he grabs a wrench off his vest with his not-bleeding hand, stuffing the other one against his shirt, and beats the offending bearing with it. It makes a satisfying clang and he hits it again. “Stupid-” Again, “Rusted-“ he snarls. “Come off-“
Something on his vest chirps.
It takes a minute, feeling around with his bleeding hand, to find the little comm device stuck in a pocket.
“What?” he shouts into it. At the other end of the hall a couple of chatting petty officers scatter.
“Sorry! Hello, hi- um, sorry- sorry to bother you. You just- you looked like you could use some help? It’s- this is Techie, by the way.”
“Yes, I know. You can see me?”
“Um, yeah. Look up.”
Matt does.
“And a little to the left- sorry, your left.”
Nestled in a corner of the ceiling is the glowing red dot that indicated a security holocam.
“Hello,” Techie says again.
Matt gives a little wave at the camera. “Hello,” he says.
“I can see that. I know you can’t see me, um, obviously, but I’m waving back. Hi. So, um, I’m sure you’ve got this under control, but- but I was just thinking that maybe if you used your OA torch it would, maybe, loosen the corrosion and you wouldn’t break, um, everything.”
Matt feels his ears heat up in embarrassment. Of course- why didn’t he think of that? Techie must think he’s an idiot now.
“Thanks,” he mumbles into the comm before sitting it on a ledge next to him and feeling around in his vest for a miniature oxygen-acetylene torch and igniting it. The little hum and hiss of heat has a satisfying familiarity.
“Sorry I’m so stupid,” Matt mumbles as he cuts away at the corrosion on the bearings with the torch. It’s an old instinct- to apologize before the other person can correct him. He thought he’d beaten it out of himself. It always hurt less when he punished himself before someone else could.
“You’re not- why would you think that?” Techie’s voice is so sharp Matt imagines he can hear his ocular implants clicking even through the comm.
Instead of answering, Matt focuses on gently twisting loose the bearings, wiping the rest of the corrosion out of the ports, and fitting new bearings into place from the box at his feet.
“Thank you,” he says again once he’s finished.
“It was- It’s no problem, really. You would have thought of it. But um, you should really go get that hand checked out.”
Matt turns his bloody palm up to the light, eyeing it. He’d had worse.
“It’ll be fine.” He hated the medical decks. They smelled like bacta.
“No, no, you should definitely go to the medbay.” Techie squeaks. “It could get infected, or you could get tetanus, or-“
On the other hand, a visit to medbay would get him out of the rest of this stupid shift. “Alright, fine, I’ll go.”
“Okay, good. I mean, you had better. And if you don’t, you know, I’ll be watching,” Techie adds with something that Matt thinks might have been attempt at teasing.
“Alright. That’s… good.” Matt says, because he cannot think of anything else to say to that, giving another little wave at the camera.
“Right, so um, bye Matt.”
“Bye. Have a nice day,” he adds.
“You too!”
The comm chirps again as Techie signs off and Matt puts it carefully back into his vest with his undamaged hand. The AO torch he leaves on the ground next to the open grating for his supervisor to find. Served him right, anyway.
After medbay patches the scratch up with a tissue regenerator, Matt doubles back to the Tech Department lockers on the residential deck. He should, according to protocol, contact his supervisor and log the time spend in medical before returning to duty, but what did it matter? After today they were never going to see Matt the Radar Technician again anyway.
If anyone had been monitoring the cameras outside of the locker rooms they would have no reason to connect the a tall, dark haired man in loose-fitting gym clothes who exits and the gangly blonde radar technician who entered just minutes before.
The dark-haired man takes a turbolift up to the senior officers’ residential decks, stalking along corridors to a private hallway done in sleek polished black. Even the garish artificial light seems dimmer here, as though it knows it isn’t welcome. He pauses at the door to a suite, waiting stiff and expectant for a pair of Stormtroopers to pass behind him, before palming open the security pad. The black durasteel door slides open with a soft sound. Inside is more darkness.
Kylo Ren runs a hand through his hair, shaking the last of the shower-dampness from it, as the door closes behind him. He walks into the sparsely furnished bedroom and changes mechanically. The familiar weight of his robes is comforting, like armor. For the first time all day he feels like himself.
This had been a complete waste of effort.
He forgoes his helmet, setting it on the desk beside him and takes a seat at his console. He has a message to send, and he prefers to speak to his master unencumbered.
“I was unable to identify our traitor by going undercover amongst the lower staff members,” Ren says without preamble when the transmission connects. “The ship is too big, and my access to the general population was limited in my role as a radar technician. But rest assured, my master, that they cannot hide from me. I will uncover the source of these traitorous sentiments you’ve detected and bring them to you. You have my word.”
He ends the transmission.
Like mice in the woodwork, his master had said. Quietly scurrying around.
Snoke had skill with the Force that Kylo Ren could only dream of attaining one day. From halfway across the galaxy he had detected a bare handful of potential traitors on a ship of hundreds of thousands. He had sensed them.
And Ren hadn’t.
His master’s words had been a paltry comfort. “They’re little more than vague notions at this point. Not a problem yet, but they will be. Find them before they are.”
Clearly the idea of going undercover had not been the path to victory. He had too easily allowed himself to become distracted by petty matters. By petty people. Shameful. He should be above such things.
However, he isn’t.
“Lieutenant,” he says into the comm, not really caring which officer answered.
A pause and then a tight voice, like someone trying very hard not to panic, “Yes, Lord Ren, sir?”
“You will round up the following people and tell them that I wish to speak with them personally at,” he pauses, considering, “Eight-hundred tomorrow.” Just enough time for a fitful night’s sleep. Ren smiles to himself, unseen.
“Yes, sir!”
He rattles off a list of names, finishing with, “And the Stormtrooper LR-3912,” recalling the name he had plucked from the mind of the ‘trooper who made the mistake of kicking his wrench in the hall. It wasn’t strictly necessary to eliminate everyone who had seen him today, but why take the chance?
“Got it, sir! Anyone else, sir?”
Who else had he spoken to as Matt? Only that nervous little security officer. Techie.
“Lord Ren?”
“No, that’s all. Report back to me when it’s done.”
He tells himself that it is because General Hux will become suspicious and not because of the shy way the man had smiled at him that he makes this decision.
“Yes, si-“ Kylo Ren cuts the transmission before he can finish. He has work to do.