Wipe them out. All of them.

[Perth Levov]

She sat in her ship in the middle of First Order space. Dissent had been crushed, and freedom was a memory, all in the name of peace and order. But here and there pockets of resistance began to kindle and burn.

Now, after many small-scale strikes against the First Order forces controlling their world, a band of terrorists were creating such a thorn that it needed a member of the covert Knights of Ren to pull it from their side.

Perth completed her meditation and opened her eyes. Her pale face stared back at her from out of the reflective black transparisteel of the meditation chamber. She was conscious of the stump of her left arm, the perpetual pain in the flesh of her right shoulder. Where once she hated it, now she welcomed it. Pain fed her hatred, and hatred fed her strength. Once, she had meditated to find peace. Now she meditated to sharpen the edges of her anger.

She stared at her reflection a long time. Her injuries had deformed her body, but they'd perfected her spirit, strengthening her connection to the Force. Suffering had birthed a greater insight.

She had a prosthetic arm and to anyone else, there was nothing to differentiate her from any other young woman. But Perth knew the difference. When she left the chamber, she no longer felt the absence of her arm, or the pain of her flesh, but the hatred remained, and the rage still burned. Those, she never relinquished, and she never felt more connected to the Force than when her fury burned.

 

[Perth Levov]

Once, she'd found the false arm hateful, foreign, but now she knew better. She realised that she'd always been fated to wear it.

The Jedi espoused that fear led to hate and hate to suffering. But they were wrong. Fear was a tool used by the strong to cow the weak. Hate was the source of true strength. Suffering was not the result of the rule of the strong over the weak, order was. By its very existence, the Force mandated the rule of the strong over the weak; the Force mandated order.

A wave of her hand and a mental command rendered the walls of her meditation chamber transparent instead of reflective. The chamber sat in the centre of her private quarters aboard the ship she now commanded. She was just a Disciple but the Ren were not so numerous that a Master or Knight could be assigned to every mission. She looked out and up through the large viewport that opened out onto the galaxy and its numberless worlds and stars.

It was the First Order's duty to rule them all. She knew that. And she was destined to serve a higher order. Without the structure she was just a barbarian and her Echani upbringing could think of no greater insult to bestow on a warrior.

Existence without proper rule was chaos, disorder and clearly suboptimal. The Force-invisible but ubiquitous-bent toward order and was the tool through which order could and must be imposed, but not through harmony, not through peaceful co-existence. But by imposition through conquest, by forcing the disorder to submit to the order, by bending the weak to the will of the strong.

The history of Jedi influence in the galaxy was a history of disorder and the sporadic wars disorder bred. The history of the First Order would be one of enforced peace, of imposed order.

 

[Perth Levov]

“Coming out of hyperspace.” The message came loud and clear on Perth’s intercom.

“And so it begins,” Perth said to herself.

The plan was simple. A few had to die to make the story convincing, but they’d volunteered. It typically took a handful to perish to convince terrorists that intelligence was legitimate. Which in a sense it was. A ranking official was travelling to the planet to ensure peace. And to avoid drawing attention to the journey, the transport was not heavily armed and had no escort. A prime target for terrorists to hijack in fact.

Which was what Perth wanted.

And she knew the plan was coming to fruition when the first mine was activated. It was designed to pen them in. Next their shields would be targeted in some way.

Of course those perpetrating the plan did not consider themselves terrorists. Instead they saw themselves as freedom fighters. Perth saw them in an entirely different guise. To her they were dead. They just didn’t know it yet.

 

[Perth Levov]

As the transport emerged from hyperspace on the outer edge of the system, the mammoth viewport undimmed, giving a view of several distant gas giants and the nearby belt of asteroids that divided the outer system from the inner. The system’s star burned yellow and bright in the distance.

“Plot a course–" began the captain, but before he finished an impact sounded from starboard and the transport vibrated. Of course none of the crew knew of Perth’s plan. For they too were expendable.

Heads came up from stations and looked questions at one another. A second impact followed hard after, then a third, larger than the rest, causing the ship to list. From her room, Perth eyed the view-screen.

Another impact shook the ship, a third, then another, and another. The ship listed farther. Alarms blared.

“Electrical shorts and fires all over the ship,” the duty officer called.

Perth headed to the escape pods. After all, it was what a diplomat would do right now.

 

[Perth Levov]

More explosions shook the ship as Perth made the escape pods and jettisoned the capsule – knowing full well she'd soon be scooped up in the tractor beam of the waiting ship. Of course the transport would not be able to see it, but Perth sensed it, hidden in the asteroid belt.

Perth presumed the crew would see this as just a grouping of mines left over from a previous conflict – left floating in the outer system. It was quite common.

Which was when a new series of explosions boomed against the ship's shields, sending tremors through the deck. The shields would hold – for now. Except now a scan of the vicinity would identify that the mines were on all sides of them.

 

[Perth Levov]

From their ship, the terrorists (or freedom fighters depending on your perspective) noted the transport had stopped.

“They’ll soon see we’re draining their shields,” said one. Those assembled watched the screens as the proximity mines to the rear of the transport blossomed into fire. One, two, a dozen, two dozen. The mines did little damage to the ship’s shields. There may be hundreds of unexploded mines floating in space around the ship, but the rate they were making contact and the regeneration rate of the shields meant it was an annoyance at most.

The next step was the critical one.

A switch was flipped and the terrorists waited, watching the screens with bated breath. Thirty of the mines had been re-engineered. When they contacted a ship’s shields, they wouldn’t explode but rather latch on to the shields’ energy signature, set up a counter grid, and, in theory, drain their power.

Even the terrorists could not tell which mines were rigged to explode and which were programmed to bring down the shields until they hit the transport’s shields and activated.

The area of space around the huge ship grew a series of glowing lines, a spider’s web in the shield’s protective field that extended out from each of the bleeders toward the others. The shields visibly flickered as the lines expanded. The transport looked like it was trapped in a glowing net.

“Once they realise what’s happening, I suspect they’ll jettison the diplomat - suspecting they are going to be boarded.”

 

[Perth Levov]

The viewscreen on the bridge showed a dense matrix of glowing lines, like bolts of lightning, tracing jagged paths along the shields.

“Shields at fifty percent.” The tone modulated from puzzled to alarmed. “Seventeen! Back to twenty-five!”

The officer tapped his screen. “Captain, some of the mines aren’t mines. They’re devices creating some kind of feedback loop in the shield matrix. They’re not bringing the shields down, but they’re weakening them. Opening holes in places.”

“Prepare to be boarded,” said the Captain. Which was precisely when Perth hit the release button on the escape pod.

 

[Perth Levov]

The small sphere was jettisoned from the ship and, as she suspected, the mines were non-existent in her escape trajectory. Then, before the capsule's programming kicked in to guide her to the nearest habitable planet, she was aware that she was in the clutches of a tractor beam and being pulled away from the planet and into the asteroid field.

She sat meditating, drawing strength from the impending encounter. She could not be sure all of the terrorists were on board, but she was convinced that the majority would be.

 

[Perth Levov]

Her patience was rewarded when the pod entered the hangar bay of the terrorist's ship and a few moments later, the small hatch was opened from outside.

Perth stood slowly. She was dressed in an all-black form-fitting bodysuit and wore a long black hooded cloak that hid the sabers she wore at her back.

As her head emerged from the pod, she saw three blasters pointed in her general direction. She wondered why only three but quickly surmised that she was no doubt seen as a defenceless diplomat and given she had no obvious exit available, she was considered low-risk.

Clearly the terrorists had not considered the prospect that the diplomat was a Force-user or a trained trooper. Not that a single person, however well trained, would plan to be caught and have to subdue the entire crew to escape. Did that make her foolish? Or misinformed? Maybe overconfident?

She surmised it was the product of being well-briefed and identifying a plan to get access to the leaders of the terrorist movement as quickly as possible.

 

[Perth Levov]

Using the Force to augment her speed, Perth leaped from the pod and landed behind the three Twi’leks that were brandishing the blasters. Before any of them had the opportunity to even turn to face her, she’d activated one of her sabers and with a wide and powerful sweep she’d separated the upper half from the bottom half of their bodies.

She glanced around and spotted a simple security camera attached to the corner of the small hangar. She mouthed two words. She was slow and careful, wanting them to understand what she was saying.

“I’m coming.”

She was not the captive here – they were. What restricted her escape counted for them too. There was nowhere for them to hide. Nowhere to run. And she was coming for them.

 

[Perth Levov]

Walking through the corridors, she saw a small repair crew ahead. She calmly ignited her lightsaber and the crew had only a moment to register her approach before she cut them down in rapid succession. She left three corpses behind as she continued her slow and relentless journey to the bridge.

She sensed more crew ahead and this time she was alerted to danger by the Force. She rounded a corner, wrapped in the Force, her lightsaber humming, its blade almost sparkling.

A crew member with a blaster rifle was making himself small against the bulkhead. He opened fire on Perth and the crimson line of her saber flashed, deflecting the shots back at the him, putting a dark smoking hole in his chest and another in his face.