Chapter Text
There is an egg in the emergency locker.
Now, Greez’s great-grandmother didn’t raise a fool. It’s bad enough the Stinger Mantis is registered under his real name, complete with a decades-old holoimage of his face that hasn’t changed much over the years, except he finally shaved off the mustache. He doesn’t keep a crew roster because that information is dangerous in the wrong hands. Besides, it’s easy to remember when there are only five people aboard: one Latero, one Nightsister, two Humans, and a BD unit. And to Greez’s knowledge, none of them lay eggs.
Here it is, duracrete proof he’s not insane and there is something stowing away on his precious ship. He didn’t expect to find it in this of all places, but beggars can’t be choosers. It’d just been a routine inspection – make sure the oxygen tanks are full, the rebreathers are operational, there are no holes in the pressure suits – but he’d opened the door and saw an egg sitting pretty atop the folded suits like it was put there just for him to find and Greez’s brain had made a noise like a targeting computer crashing.
Just to be sure, Greez rubs his eyes hard and blinks a few times. Nope, still there. He glances over both shoulders too, feeling like he’s on one of those hidden-camera Holonet shows and any second now a tattooed Twi’lek is going to leap out of another locker and shout, “Smile! You’re on What the %@#&!” And he’ll actually pronounce every punctuation symbol like a supreme chuff-sucker, too. Greez only watches those shows when he really has nothing better to do because they’re a little too low-brow even for him. He cautiously picks up the egg and nothing happens. That’s a relief, albeit one he expected. Who else around here would be calling up Zinn Cha’Dash and asking him to plant hidden holocameras around the Mantis for some stupid egg prank? The only Holonet shows Cere cares about are nature documentaries and symphony recordings. Merrin doesn’t know any shows. She has an excuse, seeing as she only found out what the Holonet is about a week ago; Cal, on the other hand, can name nothing but a bunch of really old holofilms he watched for a class back in the Temple, because he likes to read instead. It’s a sad state of affairs when the one other person on this ship who appreciates some good old-fashioned mindless entertainment is the droid, and he’s still mostly incomprehensible to Greez, so they can’t even complain about that clearly rigged Echani fight together.
So. The egg. At least, Greez is reasonably certain it’s an egg – it’s the right shape and weight to be an egg – and it’s definitely not from the galley. They’ve got ten fresh, vacuum-sealed nuna eggs left in the conservator, most of which are transforming into a celto-and-bruallki quiche within the next day or two before they go bad. Those eggs run the gamut from brown to pink to white. If this mottled greyish-blue thing came from a nuna, the poor creature’s probably dead of disease by now. More likely their uninvited passenger dropped it off. Greez closes the locker, indefinitely postponing the inspection until this urgent situation is dealt with (he checked it all before they first hit Zeffo anyway, because he is perhaps slightly neurotic about such matters), and heads into the lounge.
He's been flitting around for the better part of the last hour, so nobody snaps to attention when Greez stops in front of the couch. Cere’s sitting in the middle of one side, eyes closed, occasionally plucking a string of the hallikset in her lap the way she does when she’s deep in thought. Cal’s stretched out along the other side, systematically devouring another one of the book chips Cere thankfully had on hand. Kid sucks at sitting still at the best of times and regards the lightsaber wound in his chest as some kind of minor inconvenience. Evidently ‘rest’ and ‘recover’ aren’t words they taught in Jedi School. But if he’s got something to read, Greez doesn’t have to tie him to the bed to keep him from moving around too much, and then everyone’s happy. BD-1 is perched behind Cal’s head, apparently reading along with him. And Merrin… Greez isn’t sure where Merrin’s gone, but the datapad and half-empty mug point to her imminent return.
Greez clears his throat and, when Cere opens her eyes and Cal glances up, places the egg smack-dab in the middle of the table where they cannot possibly miss it.
They look at the egg. They look at each other. They look at the egg again, then at Greez, eyes full of questions. BD beeps something. “It’s… an egg?” Cal says.
“Sure seems like it,” Greez replies agreeably.
Cal blinks. BD tips his head to one side. Cere sighs a bit, sets her hallikset aside, leans forward to brace her elbows on her knees. “Okay, I’ll bite,” she says. “Why is there an egg on the table?”
“The real question here is ‘why did Greez open the emergency locker to perform a standard equipment check and find this egg, belonging to none of the species he typically gets eggs from, in there?’” Greez says, still in the most pleasant tone he can muster. When nobody responds fast enough for his liking, he adds, “I’ll give you a hint – I’m not crazy and we do have a stowaway.”
Cal and Cere exchange another look, with less confusion and more conspiracy this time. They know something. Greez bets Merrin and the droid are in on it too. So they all thought they could pull the wool over ol’ Greezy’s eyes, huh? Well, he’ll be the first to admit he’s not the most highly-educated or observant guy in the galaxy, but the Mantis is like an extension of his own body and he can always tell when something’s up with her – like being infested with a stealthy fiend scraping around in her ductwork and sneaking into her storage. It’s downright indecent, that’s what it is. They ought to be ashamed of themselves. This is no way to treat a lady.
Greez catches a flare of green from the corner of his eye and suddenly Merrin is standing in the galley, peering over the table. “What are you staring at?”
He gestures to the topic of conversation, but before he can catch her up on current events, Cal says, “It’s… an egg?” with almost the exact same intonation as the first time, like he’s still processing. It’s taking him too long to open his eyes again every time he blinks. If Greez hadn’t disturbed him with egg-related mysteries, he’d be asleep by now.
For a few seconds, Greez feels bad about that. Things have been kind of tense since they escaped Nur. Not between them, so much, just… in general. A lot of moments when they’ve poked or patted or nudged just to remind themselves that the other person is really here. Cere isn’t dead, despite those terrible numb minutes when they’d believed otherwise. Cal didn’t drown and the lightsaber wound (his own lightsaber, he’d said) is healing. Merrin’s magick and Greez’s piloting skills had gotten them in and out of Nur without the Empire blowing them to smithereens, or worse, capturing them. They’re all okay. But Greez keeps finding Cere wide awake in the middle of the night cycle, sporting eyebags the size of nebulae, with the most haunted expression he’s ever seen. Cal, never one to do things by halves, is predisposed to the sort of horrid screaming nightmares that scare the crap out of everybody. The two of them are going through caf so fast Greez worries about withdrawal symptoms when they finally run out. Even BD-1 seems more anxious than usual, always hovering around Cal, and ‘clingy’ isn’t normally a word anyone would append to the kid, but he’s been practically glued to Cere’s side for the past few days.
Okay, that’s enough guilt. Cal shouldn’t have aided and abetted their stowaway if he wanted to nap. “Yes,” Greez says to Merrin, “it’s an egg.”
“It’s probably an egg,” Cere says.
BD hops onto the table and scans the object in question, then chirps. “BD also thinks it’s an egg,” Cal translates.
“Hm.” Merrin regards it briefly, turns towards the counter, and comes down to the lounge, carrying a small dish. Without further ado, she takes the egg and cracks it open with one hand. Points for style, but Greez sadly has to knock them right back off when the yellow-green yolk breaks too and seeps into the dense, cloudy white as Merrin places the dish on the table. “It is an egg,” she announces.
“We just said that,” Greez points out.
“None of you sounded very sure.”
Slowly, gingerly, Cal sets the datapad aside and sits up. He goes to rub his injured side almost automatically and runs into an obstacle in the form of his own elbow. They’ve got him fixed up in a makeshift sling until he can move his left arm without going all white and wobbly like he’s going to pass out. If it keeps him from constantly prodding at the wound, that’s just a bonus. He leans in close to inspect the runny egg. “I think –” he starts – and then he gags, clapping a hand over his nose and mouth, promptly leaning as far back as he can get. “Never mind, it’s rotten,” he chokes, turning his face away and swallowing hard.
There is one more blissful ignorant moment for the rest of them. The smell hits Greez like running face-first into a wall, this utterly vile stench that takes a typical rancid egg and sun-bakes it for a while before lovingly stirring it into that nasty Mandalorian custard made from a fruit that reeks like wet garbage. Good thing it’s been a fair few hours since lunch or he’d be losing his right about now. Ashen, Cere quickly copies Cal. Even Merrin’s mouth twists, her nose scrunching in revulsion, and it’s her Greez glares at. “You do the crime, you do the time,” he says, pointing to the galley. “Dump that down the trash immediately – I’m gonna incinerate it while you scrub that dish like your life depends on it. Because it does. That’s one of my grandfather’s handmade soup bowls.”
To her credit, Merrin doesn’t argue, just snatches the bowl from the table and motors up to the galley. Cal gets to his feet as fast as he can manage, takes two steps towards the stairs, stops, turns back, and grabs the datapad holding the book chip he’s reading. BD gives a string of irritated-sounding clicks. “My priorities are fine!” Cal replies, voice muffled by his hand as he flees to the cleaner air in the engine room. “You’re mobile – and you can’t even smell anything!”
Cere, who appears to be holding her breath, at least spares Greez an apologetic look before she too makes a bid for freedom. Figures. He has to do everything around here. Hard to blame them, though; the egg lingers like a ghost, thick and heavy enough to taste when he dares inhale through his mouth. Fighting the urge to retch, Greez retreats to the cockpit, where the air is breathable for the time being. He doesn’t expect it to last. He turns the air circulation down as low as possible to buy himself some time, seals off the garbage disposal, and fires up the incinerator.
“Okay, stowaway,” he says out loud as the offending egg is reduced to cinders, “no more messing around. You’ve made it personal. I’ll get you if it’s the last thing I do.” And it probably will be. The odor’s already creeping into the cockpit. He’s gonna need a lot more than just one candle to fix this.
If you’d asked Greez a couple days ago, he’d have laughed at the prospect of anyone on his ship being the type to lose their head over small, adorable animals. He personally doesn’t care unless it’s edible, and then no amount of large soulful eyes or soft fluffy fur is going to dissuade him. Cere can get a bit mushy at times, but she doesn’t turn into a bleeding-heart for every wounded creature they come across – she’s too practical. Cal’s even worse in the pragmatism department, to the point Greez intends to foist him off on Cere when they finally break down and go shopping for supplies. And Merrin’s from Dathomir, so her concept of ‘cute and cuddly’ is skewed a little to the left of everyone else’s. Her tastes in meat run concurrent to Greez’s, too.
In hindsight, he was looking in the wrong direction. If he’d been smart, he would have disregarded the other organics and looked at BD-1, instead. Who brought him aboard the Mantis just a few hours after they met? Who’ll spend forty tedious minutes carefully working a pebble out of his hydraulics without damaging him? Who turns into a seasoned defense lawyer every time he’s accused of leaving oil stains on the upholstery? Who inexplicably files him under the ‘cute and cuddly’ category (and treats him as such) even though the droid is made of metal and wires and spite?
Greez kicks himself later for not picking up on the obvious. Then he kindly forgives himself, because it’s been a rough week. Month. However long they’ve run themselves ragged after following the Inquisitors to Bracca and recruiting a Padawan-in-hiding who has a weakness for little droids… and, apparently, damn near everything else.