THE APPRENTICE ➛ Kylo Ren

⁽ ³⁷ ⁾ ❝ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘɪʟᴏᴛ ❞

As she stepped off the ramp of the transport, Jana tried her best to shake the stain of death off her hands. A shiver rooted deep in her stomach was trembling through her limbs, which she couldn't seem to stop. It wasn't her first time witnessing death. It was her first time dealing it. Guilt and empowerment battled savagely inside her, each breaching above the surface every few seconds to take hold of her.

Stepping back on Jakku had been like willingly returning to a rusted cage that had imprisoned Jana her whole life. It took every fiber of resolve and determination that she had in her bones to not flee back to the Supremacy. But with every step, her fear had shrunk, and her anger had grown. By the time she reached Niima Outpost, flames towering around her, she'd been so enthralled with the hate, the ravenousness craving for vengeance that she'd scarcely grasped what planet she was even on.

There she had seen them, their faces distorted by the licking firelight, as they were dragged before the firing squad. The faces of every thug, bandit, swindler, con artist, junk dealer, and slave driver that had ever caused her grief, physical or emotional. They had used her, taken advantage of her, bruised her, broken her, taught her the meaning of hell on earth. And now, she had returned the favor.

It was true what they said. Revenge was impossibly sweet.

She would never lose the memory of her lightsaber's whine as it raked through the gang from the ridge that had nearly ended her life all those years ago. She would cherish their screams like something sacred, remember how they pled for their lives the way that she had pled for hers. She would keep these things for herself, a keepsake of her unparalleled fury and the revenge that she had finally exacted after a lifetime of longing for it. It was a quiet secret to hold in the dark. It was the last fuse of her past finally lit and burning away to ashes.

There were under twenty-five-thousand inhabitants on Jakku, and it had taken a small garrison of around eighty troops to clean out the villages. Her instructions had been clear, however. No damage was to be done to the junkyard transports that still operated. If there was a flyable craft parked in that field, it was to be left available to the survivors to do whatever they wished with it, whether that be selling it, trading it, or utilizing it the way Jana hoped many would - as a ticket off Jakku. Likewise, none of the villagers had been harmed. Perhaps in the scuffle some of them had sustained minor injuries, but those would be healed by the time the week was out. They were released and left liberated in the ashes of Niima Outpost. Jana had also distributed compensation for the edible goods that had been lost when the Concession Stand was destroyed.

Of course, Jana knew she hadn't purified Jakku. Undoubtedly some of those whom she had spared would become the next Unkar Plutt, a new generation of thugs would rise from the formerly oppressed. Who knew. Maybe in a few years Jana would return to see the aftermath of her actions. But for now at least, her mind was at peace.

Jana, the Scavenger from Jakku had died tonight, buried underneath the blazing dunes. The phantom that had risen in her place was Commander Jana Desalvo of the First Order. And she was not helpless. She was not weak. She would not stand for injustice.

It took a few hours to cross the expanse of space that spanned between Jakku and the Ileenium System, but traveling at lightspeed, Jana and her troops managed their homecoming just as Snoke's fleet of Star Destroyers perched themselves on the Outer Rim. The lush, verdant world of D'Qar sat silently beneath them.

The Supremacy had not yet dropped out of lightspeed, so Jana ordered her pilots to dock themselves on the nearest flagship leading the advance towards D'Qar. She could take a shuttle to the Dreadnought as soon as it arrived.

It was not lost on Jana that rumors were starting to circulate amongst the officials of the First Order by the time she returned. She'd been gone only a few hours, and already the news that the newly appointed Commander Desalvo had, under authorization from Leader Snoke himself, taken a small battalion of Stormtroopers to a desolate planet in a neighboring system for reasons unknown. There were very few privy to the purpose of her mission, those few being the three least approachable lifeforms in the entire fleet—General Armitage Hux, Commander Kylo Ren, and The Supreme Leader. The rest of the officers could only guess at what kind of profound importance had inspired an operation that dispatched dozens of soldiers to a planet several long parsecs behind them, right before a crucial ambush upon the Resistance.