Star Wars IX- Balance Of The Force

Chapter 3 - Supreme Leader Kylo Ren

On the Supremacy Ship of the First Order, all the significant Generals and high-ranking officials sat around a table: General Valax, General Kail, Grand Admiral Skalick, Vice Admiral Renor, General Targo, Admiral Deltan and Colonel Kramer, with Supreme Leader Kylo Ren at the head of the table. A version of his previous metal helmet had returned after Crait, not a full helmet but a mask. His new half-mask was fashioned from the remnants of his old helmet, which he'd smashed to pieces in a fit of rage against the walls of the elevator. His eyes and head were no longer fully encased. His dark eyes were now visible, but only barely his immense dark cowl had returned, keeping his face within the confines of the shadows beneath. The mask did the same job his helmet had. It lowered his already deep voice further and added a slight mechanical reverberation, instilling dread in those with whom he conversed with every word he spoke. Now he was Supreme Leader, intimidation and inspiring fear amongst his subordinates was necessary. He needed to seem more than a mere human. He was as foreboding and menacing as he had been before, his scars adding to the terror he inflicted. Before he'd been a faceless creature now, he appeared half man and half machine, one melting into the other. Somehow, this seemed more effective than when he'd been hiding within his helmet.

To Supreme Leader Kylo Ren's right sat General Hux. General Armitage Hux was listening intently to intel about the Resistance and their attempts to rebuild the Republic from General Kail and General Valax. His face had an angry grimace, and his eyes were narrowed to slits. How had their leader allowed this to happen? Hux, however, knew the answer to his own question. Hux knew Ren was not a fit leader; he'd proven that with the disaster on Crait. Hux had not hidden his disgust regarding that failure from the other leaders or Ren. Snoke was necessary after the Empire had fallen, but he and his apprentice were, in Hux's mind, a temporary measure. The military prowess of his armies his technology would bring the galaxy to heel and under his control. He hadn't disposed of his own father and done all this to sit at the right hand of Ren! Ren was unpredictable, emotional and dangerous. One of those increasingly obsolete Force-sensitive individuals. Hux knew the Force existed; he had the bruises to prove it from the multiple times Snoke and Ren had used it against him. Hux considered the Force nothing but mystical nonsense, even if its users had enhanced skills and abilities. Snoke was dead, and that suited Hux. As far as he was concerned, the time of the Jedi, the Sith and all Force users was over.

Hux had to save Ren on several occasions, and he'd delighted in those moments of Ren's failure. He'd had to track and rescue Snoke's apprentice from the snows of Starkiller Base. The embarrassing debacle on Crait where the Resistance had actually escaped because Ren had engaged in a single combat fight with the Jedi Luke Skywalker. It had all turned out to be an elaborate facade. The Jedi hadn't ever actually been there. Hux had seen genuine fear in Ren's eyes that day. It had been a rare sight which he had malevolently enjoyed. Ren was a slave to his emotions, and unlike Snoke, he was not wise enough to keep his Force sorcery to himself. To Hux, Ren was a delusional, distracted, emotional being. That would not do for the First Order's Supreme Leader! Hux knew to look around the table; he was not the only one who felt that way. Several other high-ranking officials, Grand Admiral Skalick and Vice Admiral Renor, General Valax and General Kail, had fought their way to their current positions under Hux and his father's leadership. They supported him and were wary of their new self-appointed Supreme Leader.

Hux had proved himself time and again, rebuilding their forces single-handedly. New children were being brought from the smaller planets to train to become stormtroopers, as well as those still destined from birth. His First Order troops were a combination of the Empire's clone troopers and Jedi ideas of training from childhood. It amused Hux that his troops were the real legacy of that old religion, the Jedi. It hadn't been perfect, though, so Hux had personally looked at the training programme; there would be no more questioning and desertion, not like FN 2187. He'd overseen the upgrade of an old imperial Dreadnaught into their new Supremacy ship. His technicians and scientists continued to work on their tracking devices in the hopes of finally bringing an end to the Resistance and the new false Republic.