Phasma

by Delilah S. Dawson

No wonder they keep this guy behind a helmet. He’s easy to read, easy to anger, easy to wound.

and General Hux—Brendol Hux, the original General Hux—

General Hux will be there, and I need something that can take down Captain Phasma for good.” “Little Armitage is coming over to play? What’s the occasion?

Brendol had been just fine before Parnassos, and he was fine for a while after he returned. But then he grew more and more sickly and just…died. Or so young Armitage Hux said in a particularly poignant speech before the entire crew of the Absolution. Brendol’s true cause of death was never disclosed,

It’s a shame about Armitage. He’s never liked Cardinal, and the younger Hux and Phasma are close. But Cardinal’s going to change that.

“Maybe if your superiors learned the truth, they’d do the right thing. They’d realize that she’s a mynock gnawing at the heart of their ideals. That she’s a fiction. All smoke and mirrors. That the legend is indeed a lie. That she’ll one day betray the First Order like she’s betrayed everything else she’s ever professed to love.”

“Carr was strong and I trained him well, but he was unlucky, and now he’s gone. Those who survive must move forward.”

Behind her mask, Phasma’s face was inscrutable. “That would be most instructive,” she said, her cool accent and cadence matching Brendol’s perfectly. It sent a chill up Siv’s spine.

“But if we’re going to join Brendol’s people, won’t everything be like this?” Siv held up a shirt so soft and fine that it felt like a light breeze would blow it away. Phasma shook her head. “I was born for that armor. We’ve seen how strong it is. Balder’s people didn’t even make a dent during the fight. Things like this”—she took the shirt from Siv and ripped it in half—“were never for me.”

Armitage Hux grew up at the Imperial Academy on Arkanis, watching his father deliver, manipulate, and program children to become killing machines. But Armitage has gone even further with his sharp theoretical knowledge of battle, crafting complex simulations that realistically replicate every aspect of combat.

So long as it served her, Phasma recognized and yielded to a cannier mind, or at least one that fulfilled a purpose hers couldn’t.

Even then, there was an aura around Phasma, almost like an animal’s unspoken warning to keep a distance.

With Gosta, she wouldn’t hesitate to reach out, tucking here and there and clucking, but Phasma didn’t rely on touch like the rest of them.

But not Phasma. She held herself aloof, always, and would be more likely to dart between one of her people and an arrow than to slap someone on the shoulder in a friendly fashion after a victory.

Brendol slipped between his men to stand in the center. It was just as well. If there was fighting to be done, someone like Brendol should stay out of the way and let the real warriors handle it.

The stormtroopers strapped their blasters back on, and Brendol left the window and pawed through his own sack in his usual secretive way.

Phasma’s new mask, and as long as she was wearing it, Siv wouldn’t incur her wrath by trying to discover the other woman’s feelings.

But if you are to join me, you must look to your pride, Phasma. You must learn to gracefully accede to a superior’s will.” “Not if I know I’m right.”

“And I value experience and a firsthand understanding of an environment. I value a backbone and an unwillingness to yield in the face of foolishness and shouting. That might not be what makes the best soldier, but it does make the best leader of soldiers. And you, after all, already have plenty of soldiers.”

There was a great accident, and the radiation remains.

“Phasma, help!” Gosta called, her arms outstretched toward the warrior she’d idolized. But Phasma merely shook her head, her stormtrooper helmet a flat white mask. Siv tried to pull away, but Phasma’s grip tightened. “She’s one of us,” Siv begged. “She’s too weak to go on.”

Between the two lines of white soldiers marched a young man about the same age as Siv and Phasma, a younger and thinner version of Brendol.

“The First Order thanks you, Phasma,” the young man said, clearly trying to impress his father.

But even then, one imagines Armitage was always looking for ways to impress or destroy his own father. The look he shot at Brendol was pure loathing.

In the lines of Armitage’s face, Cardinal sees what Brendol once was, before he grew old and soft. Confidence, vitality, sureness. And yet there’s something cruel and savage in the man, something forged by Brendol himself.

Armitage almost looks surprised, but he’s too well bred for that.

But Armitage, just like Kylo Ren, seems to appreciate a certain starkness in his person and in his quarters.

If you don’t have some sort of direct evidence against her, against actual deeds she’s performed since taking her vows and joining us, then I might as well go shout at the stars.”

The chuff of the man, coming to tattle on Phasma like that. It’s two strikes against Cardinal. One for the tattling, and one for being foolish enough to mess with Phasma. Three, actually. Cardinal thought Armitage himself was too dull to know what was occurring right under his nose.

Brendol had looked at him, then…well, like perhaps a father would. Which was a way Brendol had never looked at his own son, Armitage.

Armitage Hux hasn’t left as much of a data trail as the other First Order leaders because he’s had no life outside of this war machine. He was Brendol’s hated son at the Imperial Academy on Arkanis, and then he was Brendol’s hated son on the Finalizer, and then he rose through the ranks to become what he is now: the true heir to Brendol’s command and a powerful leader of the First Order.

“Well, what do you know? The greasy ginger weasel birthed a greasy ginger weasel.”

Nothing, except that Armitage himself hasn’t yet received a knife in the back.

Or did he whisper to Armitage that Phasma had killed him and urge the boy to give her whatever she wanted, so long as it benefited the First Order and kept at least one Hux alive? Did he perhaps tell Armitage to drop Phasma out the airlock, and did he then watch his son slowly smile and shake his head no?

concerns, the younger Hux is not the only authority in the First Order. The others, perhaps even Kylo Ren, will want to know about the monster hiding in plain sight, her disloyalty merely a matter of time and opportunity.

“General Hux, has the code been changed?” he says into his comm. He hears a sigh, and Armitage says, “It has. Your presence is no longer necessary. Please continue in your regular duties.” “But sir.” “A good trooper does not challenge his superior officer, CD-0922.”

“That’s what I thought,” Phasma says, clipped voice dripping with disgust. “Coward.”

“Liar.” “Yes, and who isn’t? Armitage doesn’t reward honesty. He rewards results.”