starx01
The galaxy remembers the cataclysm of Starkiller Base and the desperate spark of the Resistance, but the official archives of the First Order are scrubbed of the truth that unfolded in the sterile corridors of the Finalizer.
In the tactical logs, Lieutenant Vael was a paragon of the officer corps. Her record was a clinical study in the "New Order"-every command delivered with a voice like sharpened glass, her uniform a seamless void of black that never showed a crease. She didn't just command; she optimized. And her most efficient instrument was FN-4202.
In the live-fire ranges and the atmospheric boarding simulations, FN-4202 was a statistical anomaly. Where other conscripts relied on volume of fire, his shots were surgical, echoing the cold precision of the old clones but fueled by a modern, fanatical conditioning. He was the First Order's idealized vision of a soldier: silent, lethal, and devoid of the "sentimental defects" that had plagued the traitor FN-2187. To the bridge crew, he was a ghost in white plastoid. To the conditioning droids, he was the benchmark of the program.
But the archives only capture the perfection of the drill. They don't record the moments when the simulation cycle ended and the rest of the squad was dismissed to the barracks. They missed the heavy, suffocating atmosphere of the sub-level briefing rooms when the Lieutenant and her highest-performing asset were the only two life-signs on the sensor grid.
The history books don't mention the way Lt. Vael's composure would fracture-a sharp intake of breath-when she audited the telemetry of his latest strike, or how the "perfect" soldier would snap to attention with a mechanical rigidity that lasted a fraction of a second too long when she walked past. Between her commission and his designation number lay a void that the First Order had spent decades building-a gap that was never meant to be bridged, and a story that was never meant to be told.