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Nobody has called her ‘Jessica’ in a long, long time, which is honestly for the best, or she would have to re-introduce them to the butt of her rifle.
‘Phasma’ is the captain of the First Order’s commanding triumvirate. Veteran officer and overseer of a new generation of stormtroopers, she is an instrument of chrome-polished discipline and military excellence.
‘Jessica’, on the other hand, is her father’s daughter.
Her father, the only trooper brave (or stupid?) enough to lead his daughter into active war zones and then throw himself through a live fire fight to rescue her first and truest friend, “Mister Fuzzybottom”. Her father, who straightened his back and stood tall before the second most dangerous man in the galaxy, for the audacity of bringing his daughter along to a boarding party when they were trying to crush a rebellion.
“Are you having fun being at work with your father?” Lord Vader had asked, the first and only time she met him. His voice was warm, delighted even in its rough modulation.
Jessica had pouted, whimpering behind her father’s leg, and he let her. He didn’t push her in front in deference to his commanding officer, a man she would later learn was an infamous psychopath and serial killer, because she wasn’t big enough for words like that at the time. But she knew how he made her feel, awed and afraid, and a quiet voice at the back of her head that sounded like the warm whisper of Mister Fuzzybottom said, I want to be like that.
Jessica isn’t sure how normal fathers and daughters bonded, but it probably wasn’t watching Lord Vader force choke rebel traitors to death, or holding their daughter’s hand on desert planets to keep them from wandering into crime-infested cantinas.
Gary Phasma was the bravest Stormtrooper in the galaxy, and Lord Vader was the most ruthless commander it had ever seen. Somewhere between them, Jessica was going to be the best of them both.
Because even though she loved her father, he could be better.
“These aren’t the droids we’re looking for,” her father conceded to the strange old man in the speeder, even as Jessica looked up sharply at her father, confused.
“Yes they are.”
“Move along,” the old man encouraged. Beside him, that blond kid was doing a bad job of hiding the same awe and horror roiling through Jessica, blue eyes wide and grinning behind his hand. On the speeder right in front of them lay the very same droids Jessica had spotted on the hologram from her father’s lap while an unfamiliar Captain grey-and-grouchy led the hall of stormtroopers through the briefing.
Now, Jessica was no stormtrooper, but she was pretty good at patterns and matching. Which is why it was such a surprise when her father agreed with the old man’s suggestion.
“Move along.”
Jessica threw down his hand. “Daddy! You’re not even trying!”
“Baby! It is a hundred-and-sixty-five degrees on this planet! I can’t hear in this thing! I was just repeating what I thought the guy was saying. It’s not like it’s my own motherfucking daughter in the matter. Okay?!”
She cried at the time, her little heart couldn’t bear the hurt of being yelled at by her father. But at the back of her mind, she was taking notes that would mature over the years: better headset sensory receptors. Desert cooling gear. Proper checkpoint and interrogation protocols.
And do not shout at people under your protection.
Her father probably had no intention of setting Jessica’s career path when he followed through on “take your daughter to work day”, but Gary Phasma was not the sort of man who often planned ahead.
///
Jessica was six when she shared her story over “show and tell”, and her classmates called her father ‘stupid’.
Her teacher at Leeburg-Ho Elementary School called her ‘concerning’ when she choked them for it.
Her father waited until they had cleared the principal’s office to crack and cheer, going in for the high five. “That’s my baby girl! Don’t take none of that shit, you let them know who’s boss, you got me? But uh, maybe we should enrol you in some combat classes if you’re feeling it, or your mom will kill me.”
“Okay, Daddy!” She’d beamed so proudly that day, hopping up to slap his palm.
///
Jessica was twelve by the time she reached the national level of competition and was facing off against kids twice her size.
“Who’s the boss?” her father prompted, hands clasped around hers like a prayer, a bright grin on his face. He couldn’t wear his stormtrooper uniform anymore because the stormtroopers were finished, her father said, but sometimes she heard him talking in overly casual tones when he thought she was engrossed in her holodocumentaries, about order and generals and “that damn raise”, and she wasn’t so sure.
But she was twelve and didn’t really care, so focused instead on what she was good at. She studied at the New Republic high school under the new curriculum. She persevered in the burgeoning league of ultimate fighting that was sweeping over Hosnian Prime.
“I can’t hear you, who’s the boss?” her father squeezed her hands, and Jessica giggled.
“I’m the boss!”
“Which boss?”
“Phasma boss!”
“Oh my god, Gary,” her mother groaned, hiding her face in embarrassment. But her mother still nestled her close, tucking Jessica under her chin before she stepped into the ring, under the glaring lights of all those cameras that would broadcast the match to every holo-projector on the planet. Her mother slipped Jessica’s mask over her head, a close-fitting cotton sleeve of black on white that made her mother nervous for its overt tribute to departed stormtroopers, but made her father glow with pride.
It was fine, she wasn’t the only one sporting inappropriate shades and imagery. These bouts were foremost a mind game of intimidation, after all.
“Knock ‘em dead, baby,” her mother whispered.
And she did.
///
Jessica was eighteen and rolling her eyes as her father preached about the finer points of her new leadership position within the student body at the Academy of Hosnian Prime.
“I’m telling you, baby, you’ve gotta look out for the little guy,” her father said. “You look after people and they’ll look after you.”
“Sure, Daddy,” she said, pulling her pile of textbooks from his arm as they approached the gates to the academy. Its tall, pale obelisks marked the boundary between her ordered future and the well-intentioned mess that had sprawled before.
“And always look out for the quiet ones, it’s the quiet ones you gotta worry about.”
“Eye on the mutes, understood.”
“And it’s better to command through love not fear – aw, just a little bit of fear, y’know I’m not saying form a squad and slap ‘em around or anything, but –“
Jessica interrupted her dad’s laugh, pointedly clearing her throat as she looked over his head at the other students spilling into the compound in their grey and olive uniforms, laughing and smiling and heads in the clouds. Peace time was so idyllic. And deceptive.
“Daddy, we’re a school not a squadron.”
Her dad had blinked up at her for a moment, looking confused. She surpassed his height around the time she turned seventeen, and she was privately worried that she wasn’t finished growing. She stood out like a sore thumb in a crowd. No other girl even came close in her age group.
“Yeah, baby, I know,” her father said, quieter this time, but she knew that overly casual tone, knew that he was brushing something off, some wayward thought or mild distraction. “Listen, you call us every week, okay? And don’t talk to any strange men. Or women! I know what academy life is like, you need to stay focused – no frat parties! I mean it!”
Jessica’s mouth tugged into a smile. “So, the opposite of what you did?”
Her father spread his hands to the sky in surrender and appeal. “You were the best mistake – surprise! You were the best surprise I could have asked for, but your mom and I were young, and I don’t want that for you. Not yet. There’s a time for everything, Jessica. Enjoy this time, you’re never going to be this young again. You know! Join some clubs! March some protests! But please call ahead ‘cause I need to brace your mom if we’re going to see you on the news.”
She snorted a laugh, and if her mother had raised her to be a lady, she might have worried. “Don’t worry, you won’t see me.”
///
The first time Jessica marches in protest of the Senate’s stalemate on fair trade deals with Outer Rim territories, she doesn’t worry about needing a mask. The political situation spills over to inter-global economy and traffic across all major ports and cities in Hosnian Prime grinds to a halt for almost a week. It’s unfathomable.
The streets are filled with the people stymied by the lack of resolution. There are so many of them, the spill into brawls and riots seems almost inevitable.
Jessica manages to corral the majority of her senior year away from the worst of the conflict before the authorities appear and start arresting people in the shadow of the Senate building.
Jessica doesn’t wear a mask, but she later wonders if she should have.
///
“Impressive credentials,” the stranger says, taking the seat next to her at the bar.
Jessica inwardly sighs and tells herself this is what she gets for studying at the academy bar, but the food is cheap, the lighting is good and they’re open late. As pick-up lines go, she’s heard worse.
She has finals next week, she needs to study. She ignores the stranger, wondering if she can still get to the firing range before it closes, provided she can finish this practice exam in the next half hour. And then she really needs to call her parents, because she’s missed all their calls over the past week.
The stranger doesn’t take the hint, settling the thin datapad on her small tower of books beside the plate long cleared of her simple dinner.
Phasma’s stylus stills mid-calculation. Her eyes narrow at the datapad and she glares at the pale, red-haired man who is watching her intently. He looks about her age, dresses like a student council president or at least one who comes from money. His smile is more of a twist of the mouth and there’s a stillness in him that makes her think of grouchy men in cold halls delivering briefings on renegade droids.
“Do you want to buy me a drink?” she asks, unimpressed.
“Not really,” he shrugs, surprising her. “Jessica Lorne Phasma, daughter of Gary and Lorne Phasma. Your mother was a civil servant, your father a Stormtrooper of no consequence under the old Empire.”
Jessica bristles, lowering her stylus. “You dare speak to me of my parents.”
This reaction only seems to please the other man. “You were ejected from the national women’s team of ultimate fighters when you were fourteen for assaulting a referee.”
Jessica volunteers nothing, biting back the instinctive retort, He disrespected my mother.
“But you recovered and earned a scholarship to the Hosnian Prime Academy where you’ve been majoring in engineering and game theory,” the man raises an eyebrow, steepling his fingers as he braces himself between the steel counter and his high bar stool.
In a single glance, Jessica identifies four different ways she can knock this man on his back without rising from her own. There’s a self-possessed strength in the slow and controlled way he moves, but she warrants she’s faster.
The man has not finished listing her accolades. “All while holding position as a student lead and captain of the marksman club.”
Jessica scowls at him. She does not like the feeling of being left in the dark. “You forgot reigning champion of all-you-can eat Taco Tuesdays,” because she wouldn’t be her father’s daughter if her temper didn’t curl with a lick of snark, “You know so many of my accomplishments and you’ve offered nothing of yourself.”
“Hux,” the man says, and offers her his hand.
She does not take it, both insulted and begrudgingly admiring of his tight lip. She can beat it out of him later. “Why the keen interest, Hux?”
Hux smiles at her, and he says so much with that simple, cruel twist of his mouth. “I’d like to talk to you about order, and the small squadron of loyal students that absolutely do not exist under your beckon call.”
///
Jessica is twenty-one the first time she hears the name ‘First Order’.
///
She is twenty-four when she tells her parents she’s visiting a friend in the neighbouring system and instead boards a private carrier to the Unknown Regions. Her chest breaks apart with the lie and the expectation that she might never see them again, but there is important work to be done. She was raised for this. She’s doing this for them.
She thinks of Lord Vader that day she followed her father to work, the way that rebel’s eyes bulged as he choked for air, and Vader criticised, “Gary here never sees his daughter because of people like you!”
Hux sits across from her in the carrier and does not comment on her sour grimace.
She lets the cold of space sink into her, closing the fractures in her bones.
At her shoulders, fourteen of her closest comrades from the academy await their orders, those who she deemed the most loyal. She doesn’t know what lies ahead, but she thinks it would be safest not to think of them in the terms of ‘friends’ anymore. They were each given a choice, free of coercion and sound of mind, and each decided to follow her.
Comrades, then. Troopers, she later learns. Officers – the lucky ones.
“What you leave behind are the lies of the New Republic for the honourable pursuit of a lasting, galactic order,” Hux tells them. “Names are a powerful omen. If you so wish, here you may leave your previous designation behind.”
Designation. Like they’re already soldiers.
One-by-one, Jessica’s comrades share their choice. Only two others preserve their given name. When all others have spoken, and Hux’s eyes return to her, Jessica already knows.
“Phasma,” she says.
There are some things she won’t relinquish.
///
"While I am entirely in support of unit cohesion, a trooper’s loyalty must be higher,” Hux tells her some years later when he visits her in the quiet of the training barracks. Soon they will be teeming with troopers returning from their evening meal, but Hux knows she eats quickly and seeks isolation the evening before a mission. “It must be to the First Order, not solely one's comrades. Remember this, above all else, Phasma."
It is a personal admonition. But not for her.
///
Fourteen join her in their defection to the First Order.
Phasma’s comrades form what eventually become the command core of the First Order’s new stormtroopers, but not all have the material for an officer. Not all of them have the stamina or focus to see through the important work of their mission.
“I heard you were a wrestler back in the day,” one of the troopers says to her in the mess hall one evening, a pale-eyed kid with big ears. Phasma doesn’t recognise him. He must be fresh off the conveyor belt of Hux’s special program. How many years of conditioning and this boy still has insufficient survival instincts when faced with a woman, an officer, almost twice his size.
She’s much taller than when she first walked through the gates of the Hosnian Prime Academy.
“Are you looking for a personal demonstration?” Phasma holds her tray aloft because the mess hall staff will show no favouritism if her food should go flying. It is a dangerous game this boy is playing. Discussion of life outside or before the First Order -- especially with troopers who have been raised from birth to be strictly loyal, who have known nothing but this life – is strictly forbidden.
In her periphery, she sees the familiar forms of two comrades: the deep, blue-sheen of Atth’ira, Chiss of race, and brutally efficient with all manner of weaponry the First Order had placed in her hands. She and Phasma had met at the Academy through marksmanship, and later bonded over lasting dissatisfaction for the state of galactic affairs that placed Atth’ira’s own people at a deep disadvantage when any of them emerged from the Unknown Regions.
At Phasma’s other shoulder, she recognises the strong build of Jeno, disillusioned son of a wealthy trader from Corellia. Jeno’s skill was in strategy and hand-to-hand combat, and he was a fine contest for Phasma in their simulations.
Atth’ira and Jeno are easy to recognise because they are the only two people in the First Order who come close to Phasma’s stature. Atth’ira may even be taller. Jeno, with his strong jaw and long features, inspires a certain doeful obedience from the troopers that often amuses Phasma. She is not amused now.
Her comrades stand at her shoulders with an air of expectation, watching the young trooper’s eyes grow comically wide until he excuses himself, head ducking between his shoulders.
Atth’ira’s laughter is like the susurrus of wind through the branches of her dying planet, but Phasma is watching Jeno watch the trooper.
Stories don’t weave themselves. They require a storyteller.
///
Jeno is skilled in hand-to-hand combat. Phasma is taller, but that makes her center of gravity easier to topple. Although she is quick and in the best shape of her life, she does not have Jeno’s bulk.
All it takes is a needle in his neck, and he collapses into Phasma’s arms, all his dutifully toned bulk for naught. Jeno isn’t the only one who can fight smart.
Atth’ira helps Phasma carry him to the docking bay.
That young, curious trooper is shaking and so pale that his skin is almost transparent when Phasma brings him to the docking bay. He gapes at the sight of Jeno roaring and pounding his fist against the clear viewing pane behind the durasteel door of the airlock.
Atth’ira reclines under the spotlight, the sole illumination at this hour of the night, the boxed control panel at her elbow. The bright red ‘release’ button for the airlock gleams beside her.
“Do you know what they used to call me in my fighting days?” Phasma asks the young trooper.
Designation ‘BY-1015’, she learned earlier that day. If he disappoints her, she has so many puns lying in wait for him. It’s a bad habit she should probably break, even if she seldom voices them.
“No, ma’am,” BY-1015 says, but Phasma shakes her head, mouth pursing in delighted skepticism.
“Oh, I think you do. I think you could probably name my finishing moves, too. The Exfoliator, The Endor Embowler, the – Atth’ira, what’s the other one starting with ‘E’?” She motions for BY-1015 to settle in. “My dad had such a head for names.”
BY-1015 is desperately shaking his head, as though he understands that every additional factoid is another nail in his coffin. “I—I don’t need to know.”
Atth’ira shrugs, insouciant and lithe. “I don’t care, and I wouldn’t know.”
It’s a blatant lie, but a perfect hand-off, sublimely proving Phasma’s point. “That’s right, because whatever came before for any of us in the First Order is admissible. Discussing our lives before is prohibited. Prohibited. You know what that means, don’t you, BY – it means don’t do it!”
The trooper flinches, eyes squeezed shut, shoulders crowded small. Like he thinks Phasma will strike him.
Do not shout at people under your protection.
She didn’t shout, she was just… excited for a moment there. Unacceptable.
Phasma breathes out a long, slow breath, and takes hold of BY-1015’s shoulders, undeterred when he flinches again. “Now, I know you didn’t come by that information by yourself. All record of it only exists now in living memory. You will not be harmed. Can you point to the one who told you about me?”
At her back, Jeno is still pounding against the door, but that glass is six inches thick, that durasteel can withstand most ordnance blasts, so his complaint mildly registers as a soft thump for attention. It takes a long span of Phasma’s patience, but BY-1015 eventually raises a shaking hand to point at the degenerate officer at her back. She nods encouragingly, squeezing the trooper’s shoulders before taking her hands back.
“Tell me,” she says.
“Officer Jeno, he – he told me about you. I think he was trying to –“
“No, I don’t need speculation, trooper. Only the facts.”
“He told me about when you were both younger. That you met in the academy. How you, ma’am, you wrestled when you were younger. You were good.”
Ultimate fighting, Phasma mentally corrects, and at the same time, well that’s problematic. But not unsalvageable. “I wasn’t good. I was the best.”
She can almost hear Atth’ira rolling her eyes.
“Yes, ma’am,” BY-1015 says. He’s still trembling, and Phasma has to resist the instinct to take his shoulders again, instead stepping back and draws her shoulders up. BY-1015’s training kicks in and he falls to attention to mirror her pose. Phasma is quietly pleased.
“The first is forgivable, BY-1015.” Phasma nods to Jeno over her shoulder. “Officer Jeno should have known better, and now you do, too. I know you won’t discuss this with another living soul or commit it to any type of record, will you, trooper?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Good.” She steps aside, clearing the path to the control panel under Atth’ira’s guard. “Release him out the airlock.”
The trooper’s eyes go impossibly wide at the order. He glances between Phasma and Jeno. “Ma’am?”
Phasma snarls, “Did I fucking stutter?”
A sharp inhale of breath from Atth’ira brings her back down like a hand on her shoulder. She does not clear her throat, she does not interrupt, and Phasma is grateful. She tries again. “It is a kindness to all future troopers and officers like yourself who would be caught in such a trap by Officer Jeno’s indiscretion. A trooper’s loyalty must be above all else to the First Order, not solely one’s comrades. Without order we all fall to chaos. Do you understand?”
BY-1015’s mouth is tight when he meets her eyes. He looks over her shoulder to the cause of his disciplinary action, and his gaze hardens. He stalks past Phasma, Atth'ira steps away, and Phasma feels a warmth like pride bloom in her chest when BY-1015 slams his palm on the release for the airlock.
Officer Jeno and his disruptive ways evaporate from the airlock with the brief blare of the overhead siren. Atth’ira closes the airlock in the next moment, and it’s over, just like that.
“BY-1015,” Phasma says, jerking his attention away from the now empty airlock. “Report for reconditioning. I will know if you don’t go. And do not let me hear you speak of this again.”
BY-1015 swallows, nodding quickly. “Yes, ma’am.” He stops, throwing up a stiff and perfect salute, before he breaks into a run, leaving them in the docking bay under the pool of that sole spotlight.
“You are so like your dad when you get like that,” Atth’ira says, flicking a fibre of dust from her nail. “Good thing you can keep a cool head most of the time. The troops wouldn’t recognise you.”
“Hey, you wanna go out the airlock, too?”
Atth’ira slowly blinks those large, red eyes. “Do I need to give you a minute.”
“No. I’m good.” Phasma sucks in another deep breath, releases it slowly. When she next speaks, her voice has returned to its usual cool and even timbre. Order. Control. “I’m good. But you know what they used to call me, right?”
“I know, I know,” Atth’ira holds up her hands in appeal not to hear it again, “You’re ‘the Boss’. But you’re too soft on them. It’s going to bite you one day.”
///
Phasma is thirty and she is made Captain of the FN Corps.
She is no stranger to leadership, and she nurtures the qualities in her troops that will make them stand apart from the ill-reputed drones of the clone army. The improvisation, the ingenuity, and the individual passion to do what must be done to grant a true and lasting order to all members of the galaxy.
She oversees their training personally, gives praise where it is due. She gives Hux suggestions when her input is invited to the design of different trooper gear (environmentally-appropriate materials, check the sensory outputs) and she is even treated to an initial consultation of Starkiller Base, but that is ultimately Hux’s child, so she keeps her distance and directs her attention to her troopers.
She is neither kind nor cruel, as that is what the First Order needs: balance.
Sometimes what is necessary is not kind, but kindness, she learned a long time ago, is subjective.
///
“I have given your request the thought it deserves,” she says on the mining colony of Pressy’s Tumble, and looks to her star pupil, FN-2187, and his squad.
Surprisingly, it is FN-2003 who opens fire on the striking miners.
She is disappointed for FN-2187, but given reason to hope for FN-2003.
She will give FN-2187 one more chance.
///
Phasma is thirty-six and, for the first time in a long time, her hands are shaking.
She will not delay or be deterred. She has never forgotten the reason she joined the First Order.
“Hello?”
She is unprepared for how quickly the harsh years of conditioning can fall away at the mere sound of her father’s voice. She bites her tongue hard to swallow the whimper that leaps to her throat. Polished helmet clutched under her arm, she glances back to the door of her private officer’s quarters as though someone could barge through at any moment.
“Dad?” she can only manage a whisper through the inexplicable guilt that chokes her because she knows she left her family, she left them and lied to them, and let them think she was dead. Or worse, a traitor. But her father was a stormtrooper, he would understand, wouldn’t he? “It’s me.”
Silence rings from the other end of the line, and tears stream silently down her face.
“Jessica,” the reply finally comes, hushed with awe and horror, and most painful of all – hope. “Baby, is that you?”
“Yes,” it sobs out of her, the truth she’d buried so deep while thinking all this time she’d worn it on the polished chrome of her armour. “It’s me. It’s me, I’m here.”
“Oh my god.” Her father sounds wretched, and it’s a horrible sound. She has never heard him like this, and she thinks she’s made a mistake, how will she ever recover from this? “Baby,” her father is saying, “Oh, my baby, we thought you were – are you okay? Where are you?”
“Daddy, I can’t,” she interrupts, before second-guessing the endearment that slips off her tongue, loosened by her tears, “I can’t talk. But I need to warn you. There’s a weapon pointed at Hosnian Prime. It’s going to destroy everything. You have to get out now.”
“What--?”
“Get off Hosnian Prime. Get out of the system. Right now. Take mom and –“
But this time, her father interrupts her. “Baby, your mom, she – she’s gone. Three seasons ago. And what are you talking about, what weapon—“
At her belt, her commlink beeps sharply. Phasma barely registers it over the white noise that has filled her ears. Her mother is dead. Her mother is gone and Phasma wasn’t there, she didn’t know, she felt nothing. She should have known, and now her father is all alone --
Her commlink beeps again. Phasma startles, lowering the private comms device from her ear.
Hux.
She’s expected on the platform to behold the first test of the Starkiller Base with the rest of the troops. If he’s already summoning her personally, she’s later than she realised. They are mere hours from the trial.
“You need to flee the system. Now. Please.”
She’s already moving to disconnect the call when her father’s final panicked words reach her.
“Baby? Jessica, I don’t know what’s going on, but I love you, okay? Daddy loves you, please be careful.”
And it’s Jessica, not Phasma, who sniffles loudly, who nods and wipe the smears on her face with the inside of her cloak. “I know,” she says, and ending the call feels like carving out her own heart.
‘Jessica’, is her father’s daughter.
‘Phasma’ is the captain of the First Order’s commanding triumvirate. Veteran officer and overseer of a new generation of stormtroopers, she is an instrument of chrome-polished discipline and military excellence.
It’s Phasma who lets the breath shudder out of her, in and out, and again, until she can breathe without hiccupping like the child who clinged to her father’s leg on the deserts of Tatooine.
Face dry, she dons her helmet. She has work to do.
///
Once upon a time, Jessica was six and her dad had almost crashed the Death Star into her elementary school.
She was too young to understand that the death of her school would have been the death of her and their entire planet, too. She looked up into the shadow of that tiny moon of a station, and beamed with so much pride.
"My daddy works there."