Finally, the New Republic has smelled the blood he’s been casting into the water and finally, they are arriving to take a bite.
It’s all coming together. Hux’s child-soldiers have proven themselves—yes, those troopers were unarmed, but the sheer speed with which the children dispatched trained soldiers was thrilling to behold. They did it eagerly, but without joy and without fear.
Further, he has Sloane in hand. The Observatory is protected and he can finally show her now what he has been doing—and how her failure to have faith in him has cost her a role in the grand finale to come.
It is time now to give his speech.
He thinks to not give a speech at all. Time is of the essence—the New Republic fleet will be here in a matter of hours. Maybe minutes. He and the others have to make their way back to the Observatory…
But no. The speech will be essential. He must fill the Empire with fire! It is his job to stir them, to enrage them, to prime the detonator before he throws it. Besides, this will be his final mark. It will be captured and saved. It will be broadcast for generations. This is a moment for history.
I am making history. Rax has to remember that. His footprint will be indelible, forever pressed into the mantle of the galaxy’s memory.
He meets with Tashu and Brendol. Both of them seem overly pleased with themselves. (Rax sees no reason right now to remind them that they owe it all to him. Let them bloat on the gas of their own satisfaction.) Together they move outside the base to meet with the rest of his council before his Empire gathers to hear him speak this last time.
Hodnar Borrum walks up, hands behind his back, chin up. He suddenly looks ten years younger, as if the prospect of war is the food that feeds him the same way water wakes a wilting flower. Borrum says as they walk, “We will win the ground battle handily, Counselor.”
Randd is in hologram form (for he is currently aboard the Star Destroyer Inflictor), beamed by a projector held in the hand of Yupe Tashu. The grand moff says as his projection bounces: “Their fleet will be larger than ours, but we have the Ravager. Theirs is still a ragtag force—strategically ill fed and cobbled together of incompatible ships and squadrons. We are unified. And in that unification we will win this battle.”
“Excellent,” Rax says as he strides boldly toward the stage. And he means it. It is excellent. All of it. Even the part where they are wrong.
The general asks: “Where is Obdur? We should be considering our messaging during all of this.”
“Ferric has taken sick,” Rax answers curtly. It’s not a lie. Not really. Being stabbed to death in your bed is quite sickening. That moment serves as another success of Hux’s program. A few of the children have proven particularly effective, it seems.
His “advisers” want to keep on nattering at him. But what they have to say matters little, after all, and only serves themselves.
It is time to speak.
Rax shushes the others with a hand and strides past them, up a set of metal steps, onto the dais. The stage is small, erected at the fore of the base and looking out over the tens of thousands of troopers gathered.
Above, the fleet hangs like specters. Around him and the troops are TIE fighters, bombers, troop carriers, shuttles, transports, walkers.
The engine of war has thrummed to life.
The Empire awaits his talk, though truly, right now, he has one audience of note: Behind him and above him, on the roof of the command headquarters, he knows that Sloane and her rebel scum cohort sit.
Rax steps out in front of the podium and speaks. His image is projected large behind him, a massive flickering holostatue. His voice is beamed loudly over all of them so it is less like a man speaking and more like a god whose divine command comes as a crashing, crushing wave.
The speech that he gives is one he has been rehearsing for months. It is designed as a mechanism—the best speeches are performances meant not to give information or to convey truth but rather, to leave an effect. It is vital not to make his people think, but only to force them to feel. He does not want to leave them with uncertainty. They need only answers.
The best speech is not a question mark. It is an exclamation.
His voice booms as he speaks:
Loyal soldiers of the Galactic Empire, madness is at our door. Ruffians and barbarians of the Rebel Alliance have claimed for themselves a government of no legitimacy, a government given over to corrosion, chaos, and the corruption born of alien minds and radical terroristic teachings. It was our own Emperor Palpatine who showed us the weakness that presents itself when a Republic becomes sick with the disease of craven politics and the illness of elite oligarchs who force their agendas upon us.