AN: Welcome back, I hope this first chapter isn't trash. Since this is a bit of an early chapter, I'll start with regular Monday/Friday updates next week (Mon 13). We're starting out with a bit of a bomb shell in this one. Once again, I'm sorry.
Please enjoy.

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General Hux stood with his hands clasped behind his back.

The bridge hummed with its usual quite chatter. Through the viewport of the Finalizer loomed the planet Batuu. Green and blue with occasional swaths of light brown, it was lightly inhabited.

Weeks ago, a few First Order agents had tracked resistance spies to its surface. Rather, they had been told that resistance personnel were hiding on the planet below, curtesy of an anonymous source that general Hux refused to name. Much to the general's chagrin, the rats had wriggled their way out of a trap.

Hux suppressed a grimace. The resistance never would have had a chance to flee if Lori had been the one on the ground.

He wasn't only annoyed by the intelligence mishap. The Starkiller project was behind schedule, and Kylo Ren had insisted that they take Batuu by force. Hux didn't like the idea of launching the First Order's campaign against the New Republic without the super weapon, but Ren had gone over his head to Snoke. No more than an hour after their conversation, the order for an invasion had been given.

Two dozen TIEs screamed out of their hangar. Bound for the planet's surface, the flight was led by Ren in his TIE-silencer.

Anything the planet below could muster shouldn't be a challenge for the Finalizer and her complement. Hux told himself to be calm, that it could be months before the New Republic even noticed that the First Order had taken a planet at the far edge of the outer rim.

The TIEs entered atmosphere and grew too far to see.

Tense silence settled over the bridge. The voice to brake it was one that Hux didn't expect to hear at a time like this.

"General Hux," Lori's voice came from the doorway, "there is a message for you."

Armitage glanced at the major. She had never come to the bridge to speak to him. A year later and no one besides her former roommates had any hint as to their relationship. If she were coming here, then it must be important.

Keeping the annoyed clip to his words that the rest of the bridge crew would expect from him, the general spoke back.

"I'll take it in my office. You're dismissed."

Lori got the message and quickly walked off to the general's office. Hux forced himself to take his time in leaving the bridge. In part because the other officers would think it odd if he ran off after this mystery communique, and also because he was waiting for the shoe to drop with Ren's mission to the planet's surface.

When he finally did leave, the walk to his office was a short one.

The former bounty hunter was leaning against Hux's desk when he walked in. He saw something strange on her features, but he couldn't quite place what it could be. The tension she held in her shoulders set him on guard, and he didn't know why.

"What is it?" Hux asked her without stepping further into the room.

Lori looked back at Hux. He was wearing his long coat.

"I'm not really sure how to tell you this."

She didn't like being at a loss for words. She didn't like not having a clever plan for the rest of the conversation, or at least an idea of what she wanted to get out of an exchange. There was news, important and life altering, that she couldn't not tell Hux.

She'd been holding on to the information for only a few days, but she hadn't found the right time to tell him. As it was, she only just worked up the nerve and had made herself go to the bridge before she lost it again.

"I'm not sure how to tell you," Lori echoed herself, "so I'm just going to say it. Armie, I'm pregnant."

For a long while Hux didn't move.

"What?" With the word came a thousand thoughts. The general wasn't sure what to do with any of them, so they leaked out as wild rambling, "but we used… I- What? Are you sure? I mean… Lori what do- what do we do?"

While that was close enough to the reaction she had been expecting, Lori was still left without a plan.

"I don't know. And, yep, I'm pretty sure. It's been two months since-"

"You've known for two months?" he didn't shout. He was surprised enough to not be paying attention to how loudly he was speaking, but Hux had also forgotten to breath in over the last few moments and was left quiet because of it.

She looked at him with raised eyebrows that told him he should know better than to think she had avoided the topic for that long, "I found out a couple days ago. But there's this thing, where once every month…"

"Ok." He heard the admonishing edge to Lori's words, "ok, I understand. I just… what do we do?"

A man with a vision for the entire galaxy, Hux didn't have any clue how life for him would look on a personal level. Finding someone he enjoyed coming home to had been something out of a dream, but the thought of having a child to care for might be a nightmare. He hadn't a clue how to be a father.

He had killed his own and the possibility of history repeating itself wasn't lost on him.

Woman with a plan for every occasion, Lori had never even considered caring for another. Discovering a surly general hidden way in the unknown regions that had somehow managed to eke out a place in her heart had been a miracle, the idea of making room for yet another person seemed an impossible task. She hadn't a clue how to be a mother.

She had killed one of her own parents and the possibility of history repeating itself wasn't lost on her.

"I have no idea," she answered the man, "If I had to pick two people in the whole galaxy that would make the least qualified parents, they might be us."

As much as he hated thinking of himself as inept, Hux had to admit that Lori was right. Neither of them had any business raising a child, and both of them knew it.

Moving for the first time since the conversation began, Hux took a step to towards Lori.

Looking the woman in the eye and coming close, he took a deep breath.

"Do you want…" he wasn't sure of the words he was saying, "Are we going to keep it?"

The whole of the conversation seemed to take place in a fog. Lori had been wondering much the same. She hadn't a clue what she was going to say, she wasn't even sure of what she wanted the answer to be.

Having one person to care for -and to potentially lose- had taken her places she didn't think she was capable of going. The thought of gaining a second held its own allure, but also brought a slew of terrors and worry that she had seen others fall to far too easily.

"I think we-"

Lori's words were cut off by a sudden violent jolt to the side. Scrambling to put a hand to the desk, she toppled to the side instead. She landed against Hux, who took a step back to steady himself. Just barely staying upright, there was a tiny beat of time before sirens started blaring.

The Finalizer was under attack.

"Go," Lori told Hux, happy to find a distraction from their earlier conversation.

Hux wasn't sure he wanted to walk away. Before he convinced himself not to, he took step to the hall.

Red emergency lighting bathed to corridor. Heavy foot falls echoed off the steel walls, Hux took them as a warning and made for the bridge. His trip back was shorter than his walk to the office had been.

Skittering to a halt on the bridge, he was greeted to a sky swarming with fighters. They had breached atmosphere and were only a few kilometers away from the planet's surface.

"Damage report!" he yelled at whoever would listen.

"Direct hit to our third thruster, sir!" someone shouted.

Crew members flitted back and forth between screens, reading out alerts and scrambling more squadrons of TIEs as they went.

Hux knew that they wouldn't be able to make a quick escape from the planets gravity well with a disabled engine, but a slow retreat was better than none at all.

"Leave the atmosphere. Put a moon between Batuu and the Finalizer, then recall our TIEs."

"But sir, Kylo Ren ordered us-"

"Into an obvious trap." A motley collection of galactic republic era fighters careened past the bridge, three TIEs following closely behind, "Move!"

The Finalizer groaned with a sudden shift in movement. Far below, an A-wing fighter banked a hard left, narrowly avoiding an open hangar bay. Half way into the turn, it let loose a salvo of blaster fire.

Heavy bolts ignited fuel stores and tore docked TIEs to shrapnel. The Finalizer rattled and groaned, another heavy shake thundering through the bridge. The offending fighter was gone before flaming debris dropped into the sky.

The narrow A-wing only made it two kilometers away before it was blasted out of the sky. Kylo Rens dagger like TIE-silencer cut through the other fighters flaming remains before screaming into the sky.

"Twenty seven casualties in bay-three. Six TIEs down, enemy loss unknown." Reports came in while the bridge put itself back together.

Despite the heavy hit, the Finalizer continued its ascent to the stars. When it turned skyward, Hux saw a sight through the main view port that had his innards grow heavy with worry.

A Sphyrna-class corvette came dropping down from the stars. Its broad hammer head mere moments away from slamming into the Finalizers hull. At this steep of an angle, and with one of the main engines disabled, there was no way they'd be able to correct course in time to stop the ship from violently crashing into the planet's surface.

Distant black dots swarmed around the corvette, none of their blasters able to pierce its no-doubt upgraded shield.

"All turbo lasers, fire on that sphyrna!" The general barked orders to his crew.

"But, general. Kylo Ren is in the line of-"

Hux didn't give a solitary damn what ill-fortune might befall his co-commander. If that corvette made contact with the Finalizer, they were going to die. That alone was all the motivation the general needed, but now that he had his lover and their potential child onboard, he nearly screamed his orders.

"I said fire!"

A second's delay that could have lasted a life time fell between his order and its being carried out. Finally, a green beam form the forward laser shot out from the Finalizer. In a second it was joined by one, and then two, other beams.

They crashed against the hammer head of the Sphyrna. At first dissipating as hissing sparks against the corvettes shields, the lasers slowly overpowered the generator. Blinking in and out, the ghostly blue shield sputtered to nothing. Sustained laser fire washed over durasteele, its yellow paint job blinking away in an instant. The metal below turned red hot, and then white.

Less than ten kilometers away, the first chunk of the Sphyrna fell from its place and crashed against the Finalizer's starboard side.

"Hull breach in med bay six!" a lieutenant called out.

"Engage air-lock doors! Anyone there is already dead." They didn't have the time to slow their escape and launch a rescue effort for anyone who wasn't.

A TIE wove in below the burning attack ship, three others falling in behind. The triangular formation fired into the corvettes underbelly, leaving smaller debris to come down as rain that would fizzle to nothing against the start destroyers struggling shielding.

Hammerhead gone and escape pods turned to slag, the Sphyrna continued its descent. Just a moment before it passed the point of no return, a trubolaser caught its fuel supply and turned ship and crew into burning refuse to fall to the planet's surface below.

Occasional bits of wreckage clattered against the Finalizer, but none of the remains were enough to pierce the hull again.

"Continue to orbit. Disable all incoming transmissions."

Hux wasn't about to let Ren demand the ships return to the planet's surface. His poor planning had nearly gotten them all killed, and Hux was going to let the mad man know it the instant he stepped foot back on the Finalizer.

There was no back talk this time. Instead the crew was happy to let the star destroyer limp back into space while the TIEs cleaned up the waning opposition on the planet below.

They had expected some resistance, but a full fledge dog fight in the skies over Batuu hadn't been in the generals plans for today. Several things had been a surprise, in fact, and he only knew how to handle one of them.

"Once we leave atmosphere, set the forward cannon loose on that settlement. Make them an example to the rest of the planet that resistance will not be tolerated."

His order acknowledged, the general left the bridge once again. If Snoke and Ren had bothered to be patient, then he could have simply blown the whole planet out of the sky instead of resigning himself to a single settlement.

Grumbling about one mishap, Hux took his time walking to his office.

He wasn't sure he would call this other predicament a mistake. If anything, he had noticed that his worries went passed his own wellbeing. Normally he started there and stopped at Lori, but this time a hypothetical third person had crossed his mind.

Stepping into the office, he wasn't sure if he would say anything about it.

Lori sat on the ground, tucked into a corner where she was least likely to be thrown around or knocked into by moving furniture.

"I take it we're out of the hot zone?" she asked the general as he entered.

A simple nod was the first thing he gave in reply. Upon seeing it, Lori took her time to stand.

"No thanks to Kylo Ren. I know I threaten his life at least once a week, but I mean it this time."

She knew he didn't. Not for lack of wanting, but because it would cause more trouble with Snoke than it was worth.

Still, Lori was willing to play along, "Just tell me when and where. I'd be happy to help arrange an accident for him."

As rattled as they were, Hux smirked.

He didn't keep the expression long. They had more pressing matters to talk about than murdering a coworker.

"Lori…" he began.

"We're keeping it." She talked over the little silence Hux left at the end of her name.

She looked up at him with her arms loosely crossed in front of her. During the attack on the ship, she had worried about her own wellbeing first with Hux on the bridge being a close second, but a hypothetical third person had crossed her mind.

Taking a step closer to the major, Hux wasn't about to challenge her.

"I hope you realize we have no idea what we're doing." He said as he came to stand near her.

"I hate to break it to you, but whenever I say I have a plan, it usually means I'm making it up as I go," she looked at him with a knowing glint in her eye.

The general wrapped his arms around Lori, still appreciating the gesture a year later as much as he had the very first time, "I've never been able to tell."

She returned the hug, "You're a terrible liar, Armie."

"Only to you."

The both of them would have liked to stay in Hux's little office, but there were other matters that vied for their attention. Ren and the remaining TIEs would be returning soon. The supply division would be busy taking stock of the damage in hangar bay three.

After far too short a time, the couple took a step back from each other.

"You better get back to the bridge. Ren'll probably be just as pissed at you as you are at him."

A shadow passed over the general features, "Perhaps, but I didn't bring the Finalizer into an obvious trap."

Lori knew better to goad Hux on when it came to ranting about Ren. If she did, they would never leave the office.

"I'm sure you'll give him a piece of your mind. Meet me back at your place?"

"Of course. There is a chance I'll be back late."

"I'll wait up. We got a lot to talk about."

With a nod, Hux stepped back to make for the door. Lori stopped him with a light hand on his shoulder.

"One more thing," she leaned over to give the general a small kiss on the cheek, "for good luck. Don't get stabbed by Ren."

She didn't need to remind him that that was a possibility, but he appreciated the gesture all the same. This time stepping out of the room uninterrupted, the general left for the bridge. Lori waited half a minute so that Hux would be far enough away that no one could guess they were coming from the same place.

When she was done counting, she left for the hangar bay.