Critical Mass

Chapter One

Two Weeks Earlier
The Unknown Regions

DV-7892 did not necessarily prefer space. When she was given an order, she followed it as any good soldier should, but there was no denying the little spark of personal expectation that found its way into her chest. Dry environments were better than wet, warm was better than cold. If all their targets could be found on systems with agreeable climates, missions would go that much easier, but that was not the way of things.

But space, she found, was always agreeable to her.

The general feeling she got from the other troopers was that space was a terrifying beast. It was cold, dark, empty, and lifeless. Some had admitted a sort of terror at the idea of being confronted with such a void, especially in a small fighter like the one she occupied. One crack in the hull, and that could be it. There was no chance for recovery in the throes of space.

But within the darkness, she found a calm that she could not quite connect with in the barracks. Perhaps it was merely the emptiness, the quiet that she was not afforded anywhere else, but sometimes, some part of her wondered if there wasn't more to it. The thought was brief and quickly snuffed out by more important tasks at hand, yet it always lingered somewhere in the back of her mind, an idea discarded yet still within sight.

Sometimes she found herself staring at a distant star and wondering what was there.

A series of taps returned her mind to the present.

'You're doing it again,' the code spelled out.

DV-7892 sighed, reaching down to the metal bar beneath her seat and producing her own series of taps.

'You don't know what I'm doing.'

It was a First Order code, used by all troopers when a mission required radio silence. DV-7892 and her TIE gunner, DV-7896, used it frequently to pass the time. Alone in their TIE, many assumed they would simply speak with one another, given they sat back to back, but both preferred the silence and the concentration required to communicate with the code. They had started using it with one another when they were young, and the method had stuck.

'Staring into space wistefully at the stars.'

'Wistfully,' she corrected. 'Only you would make a spelling error in code.'

'That wasn't disagreement, Demo.'

Demo. Short for demonstration. To save on time, all troopers gave each other nicknames, though they never spoke them in front of their superior officers.

Her unit, Knight Squadron, was an experiment of General Hux's. He took the best of the stormtroopers and subjected them to harsher training, grueling environments, and unthinkable tests in order to form the perfect elite unit. Only four had passed the first class. Many had been transferred to other units; others had died.

DV-7892 was the stormtrooper he used to show off his accomplishments, to demonstrate them as it were, and that was how Demo came to be.

DV-7896 was simpler. He was her gunner, and so that was what he would always be. Gunner was the best shot that the First Order had ever seen. If he missed anything, it was because he meant to.

For the past fifteen years, they had been watching one another's backs, an unstoppable force amongst the other troopers. Whenever they set their mind to something, it was only a matter of when it would be accomplished, not if.

Demo shook her head at Gunner's remark, choosing to let silence fall again.

They had been drifting in space for the better part of six hours, watching a derelict ship that rested just outside a local asteroid belt. She hadn't consumed any food or water during that time, and her legs had been utterly still since they began their watch, but Demo knew the instant it was necessary, her body would perform exactly as she wanted it to. They had trained for this as well, but for far longer. Six hours was nothing.