He had participated in more battles than he cared to count, but never before had Hux directed one from lightyears away. Without the worry that laser fire could burst through the viewport at any second, the battle felt less real, almost like one of the simulations they had run at the Academy.

Unfortunately, the casualties were all too real. He watched as another red blip faded from the display in front of him. Ren's fleet had only left hyperspace four and a half minutes ago, but already, their force had been reduced to barely half its original size. General Nadire's situation was even more dire. With his fleet reduced to little more than a few escape pods, if by chance's blessing he managed to escape the Rataka system alive, his career was over. Hux might join him if they didn't pull out soon.

"Tell Lord Ren that we have lost twenty-seven fighters of his original force of fifty. He needs to retreat now." Perhaps this time, Ren would listen, but Hux had no great hopes for such an outcome. Ren's piloting showed that he thought himself invincible. He wove his fighter through spaces only tens of centimeters wider than his ship itself and threaded it through countless streams of laser fire. Given Ren's idiocy in devoting their resources to this battle in the first place, Hux almost hoped that one of the bolts would slip past his shields, leaving Ren and his ship nothing more than a collection of twisted metal and loose molecules floating aimlessly through the Rataka system. It would serve him right, and better yet, it would leave Hux solely in command of all of Starkiller's resources.

"Sir, we're no longer in contact with Lord Ren."

When had his carefully selected crew become completely incompetent? "I don't care if he turned his personal comm off. Hail him on the regular channels. I need to talk to him." The comlinks in standard TIE fighters could not be disabled by their pilots, a safety feature implemented after more than one pilot had accidentally turned off their comm in a panic, missing instructions that might very well have saved their ships and their lives.

"The regular channel isn't working, sir. He seems to have destroyed his receiver. Ren's been sending orders to the fleet, but we have no way of contacting him."

A lesser man would have screamed at the officer, perhaps hurled something across the room out of rage. He would expect all of that and more from Ren, had their positions been reversed. Hux only frowned. "Continue to broadcast our analyses, but send them to the individual pilots." If he wanted to get any of his TIEs back, they needed to have an understanding of the battle going on around them.

The reality of the situation made his hands feel clammy beneath his leather gloves. He had no control over his own troops, his own fighters. Hux could do nothing to impact the outcome of this battle, for were he to order the fighters to return to base, Ren would surely stop them from leaving the battle. The command center, which had always felt so welcome and familiar, seemed to mock him. Whether by intent or habit on the part of the engineers, its design echoed that of the bridge of a Star Destroyer. Their raised walkways were copied here, as were the rows upon rows of orderly terminals. With the addition of the main weapon's controls in the far corner, the layout of the space harked back to its predecessors with navigation here, tactical there, and communications at the center. But at the very center of the command station, all Hux could do was wait and watch as more and more red blips disappeared from the screen before him.

Hours after the battle, when the bridge had calmed to its usual level of activity, Hux ran an analysis of the battle against transcripts of the Siege at Cyimarra over twenty years prior. Cyimarra had been a major turning point in the war between the Rebellion and the Empire, second only to Endor. Nearly five thousand Imperial troops had lost their lives that day, including Admiral Thrawn, the Empire's last hope of quashing the Rebel's growing military before they could fully secure their hold on Coruscant and the rest of the Core. When allowed to choose his own battlefield, Thrawn had been unstoppable. Hardly a week passed where one did not hear of his conquest of another Rebel system.

Cyimarra changed everything. Until that day, no one had given much mind to the system, which contained only a single inhabitable planet notable only for a handful of beautiful naturally-occurring spires. Thrawn had always appreciated art, even the art waiting to be found in nature, and Hux had long thought that the spires might have influenced his decision to hide his fleet in the system while planning his next attack. It was a mistake, the last one Thrawn would get to make. No one knew how the Rebellion had discovered his location, but an armada had jumped into the system, arranging itself in two crescent shapes that trapped Thrawn's Fourth Fleet between Cyimarra and its sun. The Republic turned the strip of space between the star and the planet into a gauntlet of turbolaser fire that even the brilliant Thrawn had been unable to escape. From that day forward, the last remnants of the Empire had been confined to the Unknown Regions, only recently daring to encroach upon the most remote Outer Rim systems. When Starkiller was completed, they would no longer have to sulk. Hux looked forward to the day when the First Order would reclaim the galaxy, which as the heir to the Empire's legacy was its rightful possession.

The computer binged when it finished. He skipped over the detailed results for now, instead going straight to the bottom of the report. A ninety-seven percent correlation between the two strategies was unusually high, even for a student emulating a respected mentor. However, it would not be such an unusual number for a single general at two different points in her career. General Leia Organa had served the Empire a humiliating defeat at Cyimarra, and if his hypothesis proved correct, she had used nearly the same strategy twenty years later to do the same at Rataka. The same strategy, one every student at the Academy studied in detail, and it had worked, leaving their most valuable weapon vulnerable.

He would have Nadire's head for this. If he could manage, Kylo Ren's would sit next to the general's on Hux's shelf.

"Supreme Leader, Ren lost twenty-five percent of our defense force at Rataka. Without those ships, we can't defend Starkiller from an outside attack." Snoke's disapproving stare was magnified twenty times by the enormous hologram. Hux did not flinch or attempt to apologize. This fiasco was none of his doing. Ren had taken those ships without his permission, against his orders, and he refused to take any of the blame for the fallout.

"You will receive replacements within the week. See that these are not wasted, general."

Hux bristled at that, but it did give him an opening for his next request. "Supreme Leader, in future situations, I would like authority to veto Ren's use of the defense forces. I argued against his taking so many ships, but I was unable to stop him." Craning his neck back to look at Snoke's craggy, almost alien face made him feel very small.

"It does seem that many resources could be saved," Snoke said, leaning back in his chair. "But you are co-commanders, and I will not give one of you such power over the other. Ren is trained to do as he feels is best for the sake of the Order."

The best dejarik players knew exactly when to show their hands. "I worry that Ren's actions at Rataka were motivated by personal factors." Tha

"What makes you think this, general?"

From the man's tone, Hux knew he was entering dangerous territory, but he pushed forward all the same. "Our analyses of the battle transcripts suggest that the Resistance commander was no other than General Organa."

Snoke's brow furrowed at that. Interesting, that he should not have known already. "My decision still stands. I will not be questioned, General Hux." With that, the hologram fragmented into static before fading away.

The Supreme Leader had not remarked on Hux's knowledge of Ren's parentage. Perhaps he should be relieved. But Hux was far more interested in how unaware Snoke was of the situation. Ren, he was certain now, had sensed Organa's presence from systems away, for even the knight would not have made such a poor tactical decision if not motivated by the chance of defeating his mother. Though supposedly more powerful, Snoke had been unaware. Hux had assumed that Snoke was Ren's mentor in the ways of the Force, but more and more, he wondered if the man truly had any Force abilities at all. Surely he would have sensed Organa's presence if he was so powerful, perhaps even foreseen the attack before she could obliterate Nadire's fleet.

Ren was not a difficult man to manipulate. That much was obvious. But did Ren realize that his mentor was a sham, or did he believe that Snoke could teach him the ways of the Force? And if the opportunity arose, would Ren choose to ally himself with a false Force user over a far more competent but Force-blind individual?

More than likely, Hux thought, the answer lay with Ren's time with his uncle and former master, Luke Skywalker. The Jedi, from what he had read, always viewed themselves as somewhat above those who could not harness the power of the Force. It had been their undoing. For a single order, no matter how powerful Palpatine was, would never have been enough had the Jedi not spent centuries before that sitting in their beautiful Temple as those they swore to serve struggled. The world beyond the Temple's walls cared nothing for meditation or the will of the Force. Those people wanted only safety, security, and to be able to put enough food on eh table to feed their families. For that, they turned to the First Order, for Snoke and his advisors had quickly discovered what so many rulers before them had failed to fully grasp. Give the masses safety, some security that they will have enough tomorrow, you could take most anything else.

In contrast, the Rebellion had found their strongest supporters on the wealthiest of worlds. Alderaan, Corellia, Mon Calamari, Bothawui, the list went on. True, the Mon Cal and the Bothans had suffered under the hand of the Empire, just as all non-humans had, but they still had wealth born of centuries of privilege to cushion them from the worst treatment. The Emperor's hatred of alien species did not go so deep as to require harming species that directly benefited his reign. After all, what would any galactic regime be without spies, without warships to keep the systems in line? Those worlds had enough that they could start to wonder what life could be if they were allowed greater freedom of choice, of expression. Had the Alderaanians suffered during the Clone Wars, they would not have questioned the Empire's rule, and perhaps their planet would still exist today. It was terrible how they brought such an act of violence upon themselves.

The realization came far later than it should have. He already knew exactly how to control Kylo Ren. Give the man what he needed, and he would not attempt to take any more.

Hux hesitated for a moment outside the door before daring to knock. Even then, he did so softly, as if half hoping that the room's inhabitants would not hear him.

But little escaped a Force user. "Go away," Ren, ever the adolescent, shouted from inside.

"I want to talk to you." He was a general and the commander of this station. Any door on this planet should be opened to him with a single word, and yet here he stood, arguing for entry with a knight who insisted on acting like a child. Hux buried those thoughts, presenting instead his concern for Ren. The man had sworn to stay out of Hux's mind, but he had little faith in Ren's word.

"Go away."

"Please, Ren." He waited a moment for a reply, then added, more softly, "Are you all right?"

Finally, the door slid open, just as he knew it would, and Hux stepped inside. Ren had done a better job of maintaining this room than his quarters on the Leveler. Hux spotted no meals sitting half-eaten on the desk, no worn clothing left wherever it fell. There was a certain untidiness about the place that came through in the unmade bed and the desk left at an angle rather than flush against the wall, but Hux had come to expect that from Ren. His clothes, his anger, his lightsaber, all of it was sloppy. He could hardly expect the man's living quarters to be different.

Ren sat on the floor against the far wall, knees to his chest, practically folded in on himself. His helmet rested on the ground next to him. "Why are you here?" His tone was accusatory, and Hux flinched.

But it would take far more than a few scathing words to deter Hux from his mission. "I commed the medical bay, but they hadn't seen you. The transcripts said that your fighter had been damaged during the battle. I thought I would come and make sure that you weren't hurt." It was a lie, but one that he had practiced enough over the last hour that he doubted Ren would be able to sense it. In reality, he had watched Ren depart his fighter from the command center and traced his progress back to his quarters from security cam footage. Only after he had allowed Ren to stew in his self-pity for an hour had he headed off to the medbay to fetch his props. Hux set the medkit on the desk so Ren could see it. "Can I have a look?"

Ren stood up, clumsy as Hux had ever seen him. The man walked over to him, and Hux motioned him towards the chair. "I didn't take you for a healer, general."

"I'm not, but I took the same field medicine courses as everyone else. I can take care of anything minor and tell you to get to a medic if there's anything outside my scope of knowledge." He started gently, pushing back Ren's hair to get a better look at his face. The man had not showered since the battle, and his hair felt oily beneath Hux's fingers. "Is there anything I should know about?"

"Nothing major."

"Good." Hux moved in a few inches, standing close enough that their knees rubbed together when he started looking over Ren's face. There were a few small cuts, mostly on the right side of his face, but all had stopped bleeding. Hux reached for the medkit and found a pair of medical gloves. They would make the touch less intimate, but he had no great desire to catch any diseases that Ren might be carrying. Hux compensated by cupping Ren's face with one hand as he started applying bacta salve to a small cut above Ren's right eye. It was a safe choice, for if Ren questioned the contact, he could explain it simply as a way to keep the other man still as he worked. "I think we got to this soon enough that it won't scar."

Ren only nodded at that, and it felt so strange to feel the motion as much as see it. Between that, the way Ren's breath tickled the hairs of his arm, and the warmth Hux could feel even through his glove, he was sorely tempted to lean down and kiss Ren. But he had not come here for love, or lust, or any other weak human emotion. This was for power, for control, and he would only gain that if he could master his own emotions as well as Ren's.

He had moved on to another cut, this one perhaps a centimeter from his ear, when Ren leaned into his touch, rubbing his cheek against Hux's hand. The motion took Hux by surprise, and when he looked up to meet Ren's eyes, his breath caught in his throat. The man was looking up at him, dark eyes almost begging him closer. From this angle, his lashes looked impossibly long and thick, and Hux found himself leaning in. Ren grabbed a handful of his hair and squashed Hux's face against his own.

The kiss was nothing like those he had imagined over these past few months. Ren kissed with his teeth more than his lips, and no matter how Hux moved, the man's nose always seemed to be in the way. Still, Hux did not break away. Instead, he moved in closer, looping one leg over Ren's and running his gloved hands through the other man's hair. They surely made a ridiculous image, Ren seated, unbathed and with dozens of cuts marring his features, and Hux standing above him in full uniform with mussed hair and blue medical gloves.

When he deemed that a sufficient amount of time had passed, Hux withdrew. "I still have a few to take care of," he offered in explanation. It was a weak excuse, and he knew it, but he could not give in to Ren so easily. When Ren finally caught him, he had to feel like he had won something, not walked straight into a trap.