Chapter Text
Teth, abandoned B’Omarr monastery, Clone Underground headquarters, 18BBY
Watching the unremarkable ship cruise down from high atmo towards the mostly-flat outer courtyard the clones used as a landing platform, Sol found herself tensing with anticipation. Fives was next to her, and his hand suddenly reached for her shoulder and gripped it.
“It’s really him?” he asked, not looking away from the ship as he spoke.
“Yes, vod.”
“But the Citadel…”
“Fives,” she said almost gently, “it’s him.”
The ship landed with two hard clunks onto the cracked stone, its ion engines slowly whirring less and less until they wound down with a final sigh and turned off. The stabilizers engaged on the landing struts, and the hatch slid open. Rex stepped out first, his helmet under his arm, looking up immediately towards the rising stairs that climbed the outside of the old monastery to reach its entrance. The sun was about two local hours from the horizon, and the light had turned warm and heavy in its evening slant. Sol smiled down at him from where she stood just below the stair. He smiled back, and then his eyes flicked to Fives. A different smile, both smug and immensely joyful, came over his features then. He walked across the stones and stopped at the foot of the stairs, glancing back towards the ship.
Echo was emerging, checking something on the inside of the hatchway before he walked down the ramp with a business-like focus. His brow was furrowed, and he didn’t raise his head.
“Rex, I’ve been thinking,” he started, “I don’t want to bring Crosshair here yet. I’d rather go to them and see if he’s lying or not first—”
“Oya!” Sol cried, smiling, feeling the grip on her shoulder of Fives’ hand getting tighter. She’d got the impression that he wasn’t going to greet them himself, so she might need to lend him a hand. Echo looked up, his gaunt face less sallow in the glow of the sun. Before he could react to her, he saw Fives, and his eyes blew wide open.
“F-Fives?” he stuttered, frozen in disbelief. Sol looked back at the expression of amazement on Fives’ face, and canted her head backwards towards his brother as if to say, go on, di’kut, and say hello to your brother.
His grip finally released her shoulder, and he started down the steps a little slowly, methodically. “Echo, is that really you?” he asked.
“Of course it’s me, but I thought—”
“I thought—”
They spoke in unison, and suddenly Echo’s face broke out in an amazed smile. She couldn’t see Fives’ face anymore, but she knew it was surely doing the same. Suddenly they both let out huge laughs, and Fives broke his slow pace to rush towards his lost brother, flinging his arms open at the same time Echo did. They nearly fell to the ground when they finally met, hugging each other and slapping each other’s backs and laughing, laughing and weeping. Rex came up the stairs to stand by Sol, looking down as he leveled with her. His grin was irrepressible.
“You look exactly the same!” Echo was saying.
“You don’t look the same at all!” Fives laughed back.
“You get linked into an enemy computer terminal for a few months and see how pretty you look!”
“What the kriff did they do to you? Where’s your hair?”
“Do to me? Brother, I heard what they did to you! And damned if you weren’t right all along, too!”
Fives, hands still on Echo’s shoulders, shook his head and sighed. “It’s a hell of a story, vod. Really. But I owe my life to Cronos Squad.” He turned and looked back up at Sol, his face a beacon of gratitude. Rex, on the other hand, turned and stared at her in shock.
“You did it? The whole time it was you lot?” he demanded. Sol just nodded, a smug look on her usually stern face. “But you’re the ones who reported him dead!” Rex sputtered.
“Being dead on paper’s got its benefits, Rex!” Fives laughed, well aware that Rex knew. But the former captain just shook his head, laughing.
“I can’t believe you lied to me!” he said, looking back at Sol, expression wry rather than angry.
“Only thing I ever lied to you about, alor’ad,” she assured him.
“If she hadn’t, you would’ve come and found me,” Fives put in. “Which woulda been bad for both of us. I knew it was a matter of time ‘till the chips were activated.”
Rex’s face fell darker for just a moment. “Yeah, well, when the time came, I knew you were right. Too late, of course, but it’s helped save a lot of these men since then.”
“My chip never activated,” Echo said. “What they did to me on Skako Minor probably corrupted it. But we took it out anyway, just to be sure.”
Fives turned his grin back onto his brother. “You owe me one helluva story!”
The two of them started talking, cutting each other off, animated and overjoyed. Sol, smiling faintly, looked at the former captain. “Did your trip turn out well?”
“Once we fixed my hyperdrive, yeah,” he replied with a chuckle. “That Nesso Hask is a real pain in the shebs. Think I did you a favor getting her off your tail. Though, some of the other bounty hunters might turn out to be just as problematic.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “C’mon,” he said quietly. “Those two have a lot of talking to do. Your brothers still here?”
“They’re picking up a shipment for you,” she replied as they turned and went up the stairs together. “Howzer had a lead on an old base with a bunch of dry rations probably still stored in it only a few systems over. Possibly munitions, also. Figured it was worth a look.”
“Did you stay for Fives?” Rex’s head canted back towards the Domino twins below.
Sol gave a nod. “He was the only vod I had left for months. And I admit, I feel guilty for never realizing that Echo was still alive and with Clone Force 99. I would’ve told him ages ago, if I’d known. I wanted to be here.”
“Listen, there were five fronts on Anaxes, and I seem to recall our time together between that and Mandalore being occupied with other things than status updates.” He smirked at her, and suddenly the intense longing and guilt she’d felt during their last intimate encounter on the Tribunal struck her with a pang. She’d already known she was going to desert, by then. That had been a lie of omission, because why would he ever have asked? Still, her heart had already been broken, and the choice already made.
“Rex, I…” She found that the words didn’t want to come out, didn’t know how to. They’d ascended to the landing outside the monastery’s entrance, and she stopped for a moment.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, his sweet brown eyes full of concern.
Sol shut her own eyes for a moment, and took in a slow breath. “I have so much I need to tell you, cyare,” she finally managed.
He leaned his head down and pressed their foreheads together, his gloved hand on her neck. She felt a kind of elation at the feeling of their breath mingling, tempered as it was by other more sober emotions. Her shoulders sagged.
“As soon as we have a moment, cyar’ika, I want to know everything you’re willing to tell,” he assured her in a soft voice. “I wish I’d found you such a long time ago.” His words did provide a little wave of relief. She gave him as much of a smile as she could summon, and let him lead her into the hideaway.
It wasn’t long before they were together inside his little bunk, since the consensus was that all those involved might as well be present for a much longer and more thorough briefing. Cody was inbound from Saleucami, and Cronos would be back soon enough. In fact, she feared they all might be back before she had a chance to unburden herself fully.
Rex gave her some time to settle by telling his own story first, the dramatic and horrifying end of the Siege of Mandalore and his military career. He didn’t waste time on details, and most of the points of his journey afterward entwined with things the clones at Kyrimorut had also heard about.
When the time came for Sol to begin, she felt her gut twist inside her. It took her a few moments of silence and a few very deep breaths to begin.
“After the Siege, I… deserted the GAR.” A beat of silence, Rex looking intently at her, face unreadable. “I had no idea the Order was coming hours later,” she continued. “I went straight to the safehouse where we took Fives.”
“You helped him out of that warehouse on Coruscant, didn’t you?” It was rather unexpected to Sol that he asked about that before he said anything at all about her desertion. She nodded.
“I knew it was a lost cause, but he wanted to try one more time to talk to you and Anakin. So, I let him, for as long as I could. He stayed at the safehouse for the rest of the war.”
Rex shook his head. “Just waiting for the day everything would end,” he murmured. “I wish I’d listened to him.”
“Even if you had, you couldn’t have changed much. He was marked for death,” she pointed out. “It’s clear now that the Chancellor was the one who wanted him dead, but even back then I knew someone did. I thought it was the Kaminoans, maybe, or someone who was working for the Seps. Either way, we hid him.”
Rex just nodded and sighed. “Thank the Maker you did, cyar’ika,” he said, stroking her warm brown cheek, pushing a piece of her white hair that had come out of its braid behind her ear. “So, you left after Mandalore?”
“Yes.” It was the smallest her voice had ever sounded, she thought. “Mereel told me that I was on the target list for black ops, but my vode were not. I left to protect them. And you.” Her voice caught in the tears that threatened to fall as she spoke. Rex looked at her with nothing but empathy, concern, love. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” she murmured, and the tears came rolling gently down her cheeks. She didn’t try to stop them for once. That pain, the pain of leaving rather than being left, had left a mark on her heart she couldn’t deny. A gentle, calloused hand stroked her cheek.
“I understand,” he said, and when her eyes shut and her mouth grimaced with the surge of gratitude and regret that struck her, he wrapped her in his arms there on his bunk. They swayed gently as she released her tears and the weight each one of them carried. “Did you ever find out why you were on the black ops list before the war even ended?” he asked her after a moment. “Did it have anything to do with your brothers being assigned to you once the Empire took over?”
“I never did figure it out,” she said with a shake of her head. “I’ve wondered more than once. Black ops had kill orders, but now the Empire wants me alive.”
“That… is an interesting point, yeah.” He wondered for a moment. But he got the feeling it was all very much beyond his purview as a clone trooper, even as a commanding officer for General Skywalker. Sol’s history with the Jedi meant she could be connected to events or people he wouldn't necessarily be aware of. Which made him a little nervous about what trouble might find her later, but all he could do was be as ready as possible to help.
“Since then I’ve just been trying to do what I can for the Nulls’ operation, taking care of deserter clones just like you’ve been. Looking for safehouses, running supplies and extraction missions with Fives and Kiran until my brothers finally left and came to Mandalore,” she told him.
“Is Kiran another clone?” Rex asked.
Well, she thought, here was the conversation she was least prepared for.
“No,” she said, and she must’ve looked guilty or been silent trying to decide what to say next for a moment too long.
“Everything alright, cyar’ika?” he asked, watching her, stroking her arm with his thumb. She was in her civilian clothes, having taken her armor off once they’d retreated to the bunk. Rex was in his blacks and his armored boots. They had both come here to peel off their shells and share the state of vulnerability that came with such a discard.
“Rex, did Farrow ever see someone else while you were together?” she asked, once again meeting his gaze. He seemed confused by the question.
“Well yeah, of course he did,” Rex replied, as though it were so normal as to be obvious. “Clones aren’t exactly the most available partners, even for the civilian workers on the cruisers. I never asked him to be exclusive, nor did I expect him to be.”
“Really?” Her brow was knit, but she was also suddenly very curious. “Did you ever… meet anyone else he was with?”
“No, I didn’t. He rarely talked about anyone else, either. But I knew there were others. Why do you ask?”
Sol chewed her bottom lip, feeling her own resistance to explaining herself like a boulder on her chest. If anything, that was a sign that she needed to push through the feeling and speak the truth. “I guess I never really considered what it might be like to be with more than one person until very recently,” she finally said, stroking her left arm with her right hand rather anxiously, looking away from him. Fidgeting with the bracelet he’d given her, still on her wrist after all this time. “I think I assumed nobody would do it. At least, not seriously. Swift’s always got some kind of lover, when the moment arises, and not for much long after.” She rolled her eyes fondly. “But that’s never appealed to me. Twofer says you can love more than one person at once, and it doesn’t mean you love one more or less than the other, and I never thought about that before either.”
“If you’ve been seeing someone else…” Rex was looking at her and she couldn’t tell which emotions he was feeling, probably because her own emotions were tying her stomach in knots and wrapping a vice around her chest. But it seemed like he’d left the words to dangle so that she could continue them. Suddenly she wanted to cry again, but this time she fought the urge.
“I felt so guilty, cyare,” she murmured, unable to meet his gaze. “I always thought, what if Rex isn’t really dead? But if he is, would he really want me to go on alone? I was afraid of forgetting you, but the way he looks at me made me think of you.”
“Sol…”
“Ni ceta, alor’ad, I didn’t know, I’m sorry—”
“Sol.” His voice was a little more stern this time, and his hands came to her shoulders to place a gentle weight there, as though it might keep her there in the room, on the bunk, and not lost in the cyclone of emotions that threatened her in that moment. “You’re right. I wouldn’t want you to go on all alone,” he said gently. She looked back up at him again, eyes still seeking reassurance. And though he was giving all the appearance of acceptance, she sensed the faintest flicker of something else, too. Was it discomfort? Apprehension? “You thought I was dead, after all. And I was going to great lengths to maintain that cover. I could never be angry with you for finding someone new.”
“But I haven’t stopped loving you, Rex. Not for a single moment,” she said, and she started to reach for him. But she wasn’t sure she should, and her hands stalled. “How could I not love you? Ni cartaylir darasuum,” she added in a voice that was hoarse with the effort of not weeping again. I hold you in my heart forever.
This melted something in his face, and he moved his hands to grasp hers. “ Ni cartaylir darasuum, Sol Tannor,” he replied. And, even though he said it less than Kiran did, the way he said her full name reminded her of the big Mirialan. It stunned her for a moment. They both reached her heart, echoes of one another despite their differences. Before she could think more, though, he leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers. The kiss started gently, but then it began to build in urgency. The way her body responded to him was just as strong as it had ever been, if not more so.
“Cyare,” Rex groaned into her mouth, his hands moving across her stomach, her low back, her hips. “Please, let me feel you…”
Sol did not need a second prompting. She returned his kiss more aggressively, pressed her body against his, reached down to the clasp of her trousers. The heat between her legs was so insistent she didn’t care about anything else, all her inner turmoil laid aside for the moment. Her hand went to palm the powerfully rigid flesh under Rex’s blacks; his need was very obviously as acute as her own. The sound he made when she touched him made her heart beat doubletime. In moments his blacks were shoved down just enough to free his cock to the cool air. She gripped it and heard herself groan as loudly as he did, anticipation sending a thrill through her. But he didn’t intend to wait long.
“Up,” he growled, moving her with him up off the bunk to a standing position with the strength and surety of one bred for war. Almost in the same motion he pushed down her trousers just over the curve of her backside. His hand found her desperately slick, and he growled again as she gasped and a moan escaped her.
But before he could do anything else with his hands, she turned around and pressed herself back against him. It caused exactly the reaction she expected. She leaned her head back, reached up her arm to tug his head downwards towards her.
“Now,” she said, and it was unmistakably an order.
Rex half snarled and pushed her shoulders down onto his bed, his hips moving the length of him along her exposed heat just one intoxicating time before he plunged into her with all the ferocity of months alone, untouched, full of longing that had drowned him quietly while his mind was busy with other things. She knew from the way he froze immediately, fully sheathed in her, that it was almost too much. But to her, it was perfect. She let out another moan, grabbing fistfuls of the thin sheet over his bunk, feeling herself clench in reaction to the sudden pleasure. It already began to dull the everpresent ache of her joints, flooding her senses.
“Maker alive,” he swore to himself, and then he began to thrust.
Sol lost all sense of anything else, her world turning only by the slow and deep piston of his hips slamming into her from behind. Actually, the slowness was a kind of agony, if agony was ever also ecstasy at the same time. She let vulgar sounds and swears pour out of her, the singsong gasping melody of her need unrestrained by the fear of being found out like it had always been on the star destroyers. If any clone on this base didn’t know exactly what would happen when she and her captain hid themselves away, that was their own fault. She didn’t know how to beg, so she issued her commands of harder and faster without any polite supplications.
It didn’t last ages, of course. It didn’t need to. It was certainly long enough for both of them to reach their climaxes after getting lost in the electrifying sensations, and to come shaking down back into the bunk. Rex picked her up without ceremony and brought her with him down onto the bed, cradling her next to him while he caught his breath. Neither of them spoke, just laid there in the dull light of his room’s lamp and the fading dusk outside the tiny window that looked out over the jungle of Teth.
“It’s alright if you see someone else, you know,” Rex said out of the blue into the silence. His voice was quiet, relaxed, empty of uncertainty or secret troubles. His eyes were still shut. “But I do expect to see you more often than I did during the war, if we can possibly help it.”
That made her laugh softly. “Elek,” she agreed. Another moment of silence, and then she spoke again. “Would you ever meet him?”
Rex opened an eye and regarded her. “Huh,” he said. “I’ve… never done that before.”
“You don’t have to, of course,” she said quietly. “It’s your choice.”
He seemed to really be thinking it over. “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “I worry I might get a little jealous.”
“Well, I understand that,” she conceded. It was perfectly likely that she could have the same struggle in his position— maybe even that she would, if he found another lover himself one day. Still, she would never ask him not to see someone else out of jealousy, just as he wasn’t asking her to do it now. But she realized that she really did want Kiran and Rex to meet each other. “I only ask because you’re both important to me,” she said. “It would… be nice if you liked each other. And, in one way or another, we are all working together now. But your paths need not cross, if you don’t want them to.”
Now he turned and really looked at her, expression almost admiring. “You’re a very special person, y’know,” he told her, reaching up to stroke her cheek. “Maybe I can meet him sometime. What’s he like?”
“Ah, well… he’s a Mirialan, and he’s very tall. Taller than Stone, actually, and just as strong. He’s got very long, thick brown hair, and the face markings like all Mirialans have.” she said, and Rex raised an eyebrow.
“Sounds dreamy,” he said, grinning faintly at her. That made her smile in spite of herself. She’d said the same about Farrow, when he’d described his lost love to her long ago. “So what else?”
“He’s, um, well. A very good pilot— he races, he says, but I haven’t seen him race yet. He modifies his own ship. Apparently his family on Mirial is a very noble one, so he has this sort of… courtly quality, I suppose. Very courteous. But he also was the captain of the Laeki guard, so he’s a very capable fighter. A very good shot, and he wields a battle axe.”
“You’ve got a thing for captains, don’t you?” Rex’s face cracked in a broad grin.
“No, just people who outrank me but still follow my orders,” she retorted, her face daring him to deny it. “Like you just did. Enthusiastically.”
“Well,” he replied, tugging her up close, running his hand along the top of her trousers where they were still shoved halfway down her thighs, pushing a finger between fabric and skin. “They were good orders.”
“Eventually he thought so too,” she said smugly, pushing her hand up under the soft fabric of his blacks to reveal his muscled brown torso. “So you have that in common.”
“Sounds like a reasonable guy,” Rex murmured into her temple, letting his breath warm her ear. “You beat him in a spar yet?”
“Mirut,” she confirmed, feeling him pulling her bottoms over her knees, moving so it would be easy for him to take them the rest of the way off. “Why, have you missed me beating you, too?”
He chuckled dangerously as he shifted and pulled his shirt off, his legs kicking the armored boots away, pulling his pants along with them. Sol sat up and let him watch her as she peeled her sleeveless shirt up over her torso and her head, flinging the garment away to join the rest on the floor. Rex stared at her, and she watched his eyes turn heavy and glassy. She felt his cock stir beneath where she sat, felt his hands slide up and gently grip either side of her body above her hips.
“Much as I love being under you,” he purred, “right now the only spar I’m interested in is the kind where I can actually beat you many, many times. In a row, if necessary.”
If she was turned on before, that made it much, much worse. She bit her bottom lip, gripping his waist between her thighs. “How many times?” she cooed, running her fingernails lightly over his chest.
“You won’t be able to count anymore by the time I’m done with you, cyar’ika.” His hands moved down to grip her hips powerfully, his eyes moving to the tuft of white fur between her legs. “Actually, I can beat you from right here,” he said, a predacious light coming into his eyes.
“Oh really? How?” But almost before she was done asking, he moved her body up towards the head of the bunk, slid himself down a little, and buried his face between her legs.
Somewhere in the pile of clothes, her commlink chirped. But it barely registered through the haze of Rex’s talented tongue, at least not until it chirped a second time.
“Sol’ika!” came Twofer’s voice, a faint tinny sound. “Ya ready t’come out now?”
As a response, she let out an exceptionally loud moan and ground down into Rex’s mouth. She heard a sound between a whoop of surprise and a raucous laugh just before the commlink shut off, leaving her to embrace defeat enthusiastically.
Notes:
well we ended up with smut in chapter 1, which i hope isn't false advertising because the smut is not a heavily featured element in this particular series. still try to keep it cute, tho
also Fives+Echo reunion T-T <3
Chapter Text
Dantooine, outside the kinrath caves
Swift was hiking up through the grassy hillocks between the blba trees, making for a cave entrance that was familiar to him and his clone brothers. Sol was behind him, her footfall almost completely inaudible.
“You say there’s a jetii here? In this place?” she asked him through the vocoder of her helmet. His helmet was under his arm, but his sister was unwilling to part with hers even on such a deserted planet as this one. And after what had happened on Moraga, he didn’t entirely blame her for at least wanting to make sure no one they spoke to would be likely to try and turn her in, even a former Jedi.
“In the caves, yeah,” he replied. “Or there was. I hope she hasn’t left.”
“Is this the one who was Master Tammeth’s padawan?” Sol’s voice fell quieter.
“Yeah.” Swift kept walking, trying to let the memory he’d shared so viscerally through whatever strange Force powers pass through his mind without lingering. It had been hard enough to tell her the details he’d managed. “I’d like to avoid going into the caves too far, if we can. The kinrath probably don’t remember me fondly.”
Sol just nodded. They went silently between the trees until hillocks began to appear in the landscape, and ahead there was a rocky hill larger than all the others. Here the foliage thinned and gave way to long grasses. The mouth of the cave ahead was a little on the low side for a kinrath, Swift thought. Maybe they didn’t come out after all. He signaled to Sol that he was going to clear the area, checking for both the massive arachnids and any sign of life apart from them.
“The bones are old,” he said when he found a few scattered by the side of the cave entrance. “Either she’s hiding her trash more thoroughly than before, or she’s left.”
“You did find her,” Sol pointed out. “Maker knows who gave that lead to the Empire.”
“We also reported her dead.”
“She could have decided to leave anyway. I would.”
“So you could be spotted somewhere else?” he grinned back at her, even though she couldn’t see his face. “She’s Togruta. And her colors stand out more than average.”
“Why are you here?” came a sudden voice from above, and they both looked up to see a pair of white and pale purple montrals set over a pink face. The rest of her was wrapped in a brown cloak, and her hood was thrown back. “Who’s with you?”
“Elisara!” Swift called up to her. “Come down! We’ve got a proposal for you!”
“Who is that?” the young Togruta repeated, pointing down at Sol’s figure.
“Former Sergeant Sol Tannor of the Grand Army of the Republic,” Sol replied from behind her vocoder.
“She’s with us,” added Swift. “She knew General Tammeth, too.”
At this, Elisara seemed to study them both for a moment. “You’re not a clone,” she said after a moment to Sol.
“No. But these men are my family.”
“So, you don’t have an inhibitor chip.”
“No, I don’t. Neither do my brothers. We had them removed.” Sol was being uncommonly patient, Swift thought. For her, at least. Then again, her time in hiding seemed to have left more than a few impressions on her.
“Are you going to turn me in?” Elisara was frowning, standing tall with her saber hilt in her hand.
“No,” Sol repeated. “We could use your help, though.”
This seemed to pique the Torgruta girl’s interest. “With what?”
“A new safehouse for fugitives of the Empire. Including other Jedi who survived.”
“There are others?” Elisara’s eyes went wide. “How many? Where?”
“Enough that we need to establish a route to move them to safety,” Swift said. “And it’s not just Jedi, but deserted clones and Force-sensitive kids, too.”
“Clones?” It wasn’t as though he could blame her for her skepticism in this case, Swift thought.
“Only ones who’ve also had their chips removed. We do that elsewhere, before they’d ever learn about this place.”
Taking a deep breath, Elisara’s expression fell less guarded. “Alright, I’ll come down.” And she jumped from a distance most reasonable humanoids wouldn’t have attempted, rolling lightly on the grass when she landed. Very like a Jedi.
“Thanks, sir,” Swift said. “Er, well, not sir, but—”
“Elisara is fine,” she said, voice only a little tart. She turned to look at Sol. “I think I remember Master Tammeth mentioning a non-clone trooper she met on deployment, once. That was you, then?”
Sol finally removed her helmet, probably as a show of good faith. “I had great respect for your Master,” she replied. “I can only assume one trained by her is one also deserving of my respect.”
“Oh.” That seemed to catch Elisara off-guard. “Well, Master Tammeth was…” For a moment it looked like she wanted to weep, but she shook her head, montrals waving as she did. “Anyway. Who’s organizing this route you’re talking about?”
“Quinlan Vos,” Sol replied, and the Togruta girl’s face changed briefly.
“Master Vos!” she said. “He’s alive!”
“So are a few others. But, I don’t know that all of them will make their way here, at least not right away. The Force-sensitive children who were never taken by the jetiise are also in need of protection.”
“Protection from the Empire?” Elisara frowned.
“Yeah. They’re training— well, I don’t know who they all are, but some of them are former padawans. Calling them Inquisitors,” Swift said. “They’re hunting anybody that uses the Force, or might one day. The Emperor doesn’t want any competition, seems like.”
“He’ll never get all of us,” she replied with a determined furrow in her brow. “But what about the clones? If you’ve all got chips, how are some of you deserting?”
“Some of us resisted the chips,” replied the sniper with a dark look. “For as long as we could, at least. Some of us couldn’t shake the feeling that Order 66 was wrong. And at least a few of us weren’t actually around any Jedi when it happened.” He glanced at Sol, but her face was stoic as ever. He was still grateful that she’d run when she did, even after all the grief it caused him and the rest of Cronos Squad. The grief of turning on her in the cramped confines of the Titan shuttle would have been so much worse.
“So you have a way to remove the chips?” Elisara asked him. “How’d you manage that?”
“Fives and I stole the schematics for a Kaminoan surgical pod from a junk Venator on Bracca,” said Sol. “We built one at another clone safehouse. We can build more, too, and we plan to. But if this place is to keep both clones and jetiise safe, we’ll need to be sure that’s already been done before they arrive here.”
“Maybe make separate safehouses?”
Sol shook her head. “No. There must be healing between us. Otherwise we’ll stand no chance, scattered and divided. We cannot afford to become each other’s enemies when the only real enemy is the Empire.”
Swift nodded his agreement to this. “Yeah, if the Empire’s not gonna help us, and the rest of the galaxy might not either, we’re gonna need each other.”
Elisara regarded her for a moment, turning that thought over in her mind. “After what happened to the Jedi, I think you’re right. So do you want to build structures here?”
“They’ll be temporary at first, and under some kind of cover. But ideally the base will continue to grow and be more permanent, over time,” said Sol.
“There’s an abandoned cave down east of here about five klicks,” Elisara said, pointing her saber hilt in that direction. “The kinrath carved it out, but they hit groundwater. Which isn’t good for their eggs, so they left it and came here. It could be part of the safehouse, like a subterranean complex. There’s denser trees south of it, so anything you built on the surface would be better hidden there. It would be easy to connect the two.”
Sol gave one of her small smiles, which always seemed bigger on her serious face. “That sounds like a very good start to me. Swift?” She looked over at him, and he nodded.
“Yeah,” said Swift. “But not too close to the inhabited caves. We wanna give the kinrath their space.”
That made Elisara grin, showing her pointed Togruta teeth. “After last time, I bet you do!”
- - - - -
Kiran’s HWK-290 Iviin’yc, en route to Dantooine
The commlink on Kiran’s vambrace lit up with a little chirp, and he moved his ration pack to the top of the display so he could press the button to answer it.
“Giruka,” he said. He heard the Jedi behind in the gunner’s chair shift, probably listening.
“We’ve found the jetii,” came Sol’s voice, and the big Mirialan smiled reflexively. “It looks like this is the spot, though we’ll need to bring in some materials and supplies from elsewhere. The only real city with a spaceport is halfway to the other side of the planet.”
“I think that will suit everyone quite well,” Kiran replied. “What about your new clone friends on Teth? Do they have any supplies we might request?”
It took her a moment to reply. “They’re limited to the old monastery buildings. If Kyrimorut has nothing to spare, we’ll need credits to buy some things.”
“We are somewhat low on those at the moment.” Kiran glanced back at the Jedi— Vos, his name was— who just shrugged and shook his head. “We have only whatever is left of our pay from the Nulls. For the moment, Mandalore is still best avoided.”
“Is the homestead in danger?” she asked, voice turning concerned.
“Not yet. Our last message was that the Empire is still trying to occupy Sundari. They are watching closely.”
She sighed. “Bo Katan will have her work cut out for her.”
“What are our other options for supplies?”
“Begging, theft, or getting some work, sounds like,” cut in Vos with a wry grin. Kiran raised an eyebrow at him. It seemed like something rather unlike a Jedi to say, but it was also at least mostly true.
“Or I could enter a race,” he suggested. “A proper one, not like that mess on Safa Toma.”
“Ah,” said Sol, and he could hear her smirk. “If you can win, uja, I think that might work.” He chuckled.
“I can win. I just need to investigate the holonet for active routes coming shortly, and their prizes of course.”
“If there are any supplies that can be brought ahead, we’ve found abandoned caves that can provide shelter. There’s fresh groundwater and hunting here, and bloodroot.”
Vos groaned. “I’m starting to get tired of bloodroot,” he muttered.
“Learn to hunt, then,” Sol advised. It wasn’t entirely meant to be unsympathetic, Kiran thought, but it could sound that way when she was in her command mode. And for all intents and purposes, no matter whose rank was higher in the past, for this particular mission she was very much in command. Considering the fact that she’d gone ahead and started helping the Jedi without bothering to inquire with the preoccupied Nulls, it was her way of taking responsibility. Not that anyone else seemed to mind helping out.
“Perhaps we might find a job somewhere while Kiran is finding a race to win,” Vos replied, totally nonplussed by her comment. “It’ll have to be something dubious, I’m sure, but I just spent enough time on Daiyu not to be too worried about that.”
“It would have to be a job for one of the crime syndicates, or it’s unlikely to pay much,” Sol pointed out.
“I’m fine with that if you are. If we finish fast enough, we can watch our guy here win his race.” Vos’ grin was a little more obvious than usual, and he nudged Kiran with his elbow good-naturedly. It was difficult not to like this Jedi.
“Which I am sure you will not want to miss, sul kicha,” added the big Mirialan.
“Alright,” said Sol with a faint chuckle. “I think I know someone who can find us a job. I’ll comm you later, elek?”
“Very well.” And the light winked out. Kiran called back towards the bunk, “Friend Fives! Is your droid head still connected to the holonet?”
“Sure is!” the clone called back.
“Good. I’ll need it soon.” He went to tap at the controls on his helm display, lighting up the ship’s communications array. Gesturing towards it, he turned back to Vos. “Would you like to tell your friends where they can bring their things? Assuming they have what they’ll need to prepare food and gather water.”
“I think they can figure it out,” the Jedi replied, standing up to come closer to the helm and open a commlink to Daiyu. “There’s enough of us now that I’m ready to get everyone off that planet to someplace safer.”
Kiran nodded, and rose from the pilot’s chair to leave Vos to his task. He made his way back to cold storage for a jogan fruit, then to the bunk where Fives was in his usual place up top. It was nice of the clone, he thought, to agree to join him on this expedition despite having just found one of his brothers who was thought dead for some time. But Fives had given his word to lend a hand in Kiran’s efforts, and the brother in question— that was Echo— had even been kind enough to offer him a ride to Daiyu. There was clearly a long tale behind why Echo had looked so gaunt and had so many cybernetic parts, but he supposed he would hear it another day.
“Are you familiar with starship races, Fives?” he asked aimiably, already imagining a couple of upgrades he’d been considering for the Iviin’yc. “I need one with a prize of a few thousand credits at least, if we can find one.”
“I reckon I can find out,” replied Fives with his own grin. He started tapping away at his datapad, pulling up holonet data with purpose. “Looks like there’s one coming up in a couple of cycles on… Jakku?”
“No, a space race, please,” the big Mirialan said with a wave of his hand. “Preferably with portions in realspace, and in hyperspace.”
Five’s eyes scrolled through the data on his holopad. “Uuuuh, wait, what about somethin’ called the… Dragon Void Run?”
That name caught Kiran’s attention, and he turned with a raised brow. “How soon does it begin?” he asked.
“Uh, two standard weeks.” Fives looked at him from his perch.
“That should be enough time to prep the old girl,” he murmured, patting the bulkhead.
“You heard of that one, huh?”
“Oh, friend Fives,” Kiran began with a chuckle that was a little more wry than usual, “every racer has heard of that one. It’s not so big as Celerity. I would say it’s best called an excellent preparation for Celerity, regarding the ship’s abilities. But, Dragon Void Run has been around longer. And it’s rather more intentionally dangerous.”
“Intentionally dangerous?” the clone asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Yes. You see, Celerity is dangerous because it requires the most diligent effort from both pilot and ship. The distances, the micro-jumps, the pressured turns and changing vectors— if your ship is unprepared, it can be very dangerous.”
“So, what makes Dragon Void Run dangerous?”
“Oh, that would be the mines, the asteroid fields, and whatever other obstacles the race’s directorship has laid out,” Kiran said, crossing his arms after taking a bite of his jogan fruit.
“Kriff!” Fives swore, eyes open in surprise. “I hope they don’t have an entry fee. The risk of blowin’ up your ship seems like it costs enough.”
“Oh, there is an entry fee. Usually paid by a sponsor. I was sponsored by the Corellian Engineering Corporation.”
Fives dropped his holopad. “Wait, you’ve already flown in this race? The one with the mines and everything??”
Kiran chuckled. “Yes, I have. Unfortunately, I do not think the Corellian Engineering Corporation would sponsor me again, as I only made it to third place the last time.” He sighed at his jogan fruit. “I admit I was disappointed, myself.”
“Well now’s your chance to make up for it, big guy!” laughed the clone. “The winner gets three hundred thousand credits! How much is the entry fee?”
That was the problem, Kiran thought. He took a deep breath. “Twenty thousand credits,” he said, voice bordering on grave.
“Kriff,” groaned Fives.
“It sounds like you’re gonna need me and Sol to get that job done pretty quick, then,” said Vos as he came down the hallway towards the bunks. “But I assume you plan to put some polish on your ship in the meantime, so it might work out perfectly.”
The big Mirialan smiled. “Quite right, Master Vos. Though, I will say, I am very good in a tight spot, as is Fives here. If you intend to pursue a job and you can use another man…”
“Oh, I’ll call you. Though, I’ve learned recently that when I’m dealing with criminals, I like having an Idiot up my sleeve.” At this Fives frowned and looked at Kiran, who let out a laugh.
“An Idiot’s Array, indeed!” he chuckled. “So, would you perhaps like myself and friend Fives to step in at a strategic moment?”
Vos just winked and turned back into cold storage, presumably to get his own jogan fruit.
“Did he just call us idiots, or am I missing something?” asked Fives, glancing back towards Kiran.
“An Idiot’s Array is a rare and unbeatable hand in sabaac,” Kiran informed him cheerfully.
“Oh. I never got around to learning sabaac.”
“If we have time, it appears I need to educate you! It seems Sol Tannor has not done her job of exposing you clones to the rest of the galaxy so well as I thought!” He chuckled. “Though perhaps she does not play much either. Still, I think she should. She could bluff very well. One must not give away how well one’s hand is looking at a given time in the game. But a poor hand can win, if there is a card called the Idiot in it. So, you can see why Master Vos would like to keep one.”
Fives blinked for a moment before he unleashed his most mischievous grin. “Oh, this sounds fun!”
- - - - -
Teth, abandoned B’Omarr monastery, Clone Underground headquarters
Rex was mostly waiting on a comm from Echo, who’d gone off to rendezvous with the rest of the Bad Batch and infiltrate an abandoned Imperial (formerly Republic) base for data on the location of Tantiss. He was also waiting on a comm from Cronos Squad, who were investigating a new location for a base. And he was waiting on a comm from Gregor about lunch.
He wasn’t good at waiting. He kept going over the Tantiss data, over the holonews updates from Coruscant, over the last update from the Martez sisters who were currently taking a break from his little victimless crime ring, to take the heat off them. Trace liked to send him updates of what she noticed around the less reported-on parts of the galactic capital, including anything that seemed like it might compromise his operation. Some things seemed more likely to compromise her and her sister’s operation instead, but he tried to remind himself that they’d handled it for a while before he’d met them.
The message she’d sent this time was a little strange, he thought. It mentioned an old friend of his visiting the shop, and promised to put the two of them in touch soon. The fact that there was no mention of who that was put him on edge. Maybe the ‘old friend’ didn’t want to be identified for a good reason, or maybe someone was having Trace send him a message to lure him back there. He wasn’t going to show up unannounced on such a vague lead, of course. But he couldn’t help but wonder.
When his comm finally chirped, it was Sol’s voice he heard. “Alor’ad, come in,” she said.
“Right here,” he replied into his vambrace. “How’d your mission go, cyar— Marev?” It was logical and reasonable of her to insist on being called by her codename over comm since her bounty was still very much active, even if Hask had given up on it. But it was an adjustment.
“Location is confirmed. But we are in need of building supplies.”
“There’s no building there you can use?”
“It’s not that kind of place.” Her voice was almost amused. “There’s subterranean and aboveground options, but either will need some fortification.”
“Well, where are you gonna get some?” he asked. “We don’t have anything useful to you here, I’m afraid.”
“I know. We have a plan, but we’ll need a lead on a job.”
“What kind of job?” Rex raised a brow as he spoke; he had a feeling he knew what kind of job, and he wasn’t enthused about it.
“Probably an illegal one,” she replied dryly. “With a criminal who can pay at least twenty-thousand credits.” So, exactly what he’d expected.
“Is that a good idea?” he said, with a tone in his voice that heavily implied that it was, in fact, not a good idea at all. “You have some complicating factors…”
“I have some help,” she pointed out. “My vode are going to help begin the move from Daiyu once we rendezvous with the Iviin’yc, but I’ll be with Fives, Kiran, and a jetii, so I think we’ll manage.”
“So, you know any crime lords?” he replied with a resigned sigh.
“A few. But I was hoping to go a few rungs under the leader, and maybe avoid Shadow Collective operations altogether.”
Wise, he thought, since they had no way of knowing where in the galaxy Maul had ended up. “Well, have you heard of the Durand family?”
The pause on the other end surprised him at first. “It’s been a long time since I heard anything about them,” she said after a moment. “I think my father might’ve taken one job with them. I don’t remember them being very influential, not compared to the others.”
“They’ve gotten a little more powerful over the years, sounds like. Clone Force 99 did a job for them a while back in exchange for some information.”
“What job?”
“Uh, capturing a Pyke who chopped off someone’s horn.” Rex realized that any job the Durands might have might not be far enough removed from the other syndicates. But then again, maybe it would.
Sol snorted. “Good for them,” she replied, and he knew she meant it. “Do you know how to contact them? Or who to ask for?”
“I can find out from the Batchers. But I know the head of the family is a woman named Isa Durand, and her son is Roland Durand. Roland might be worth reaching out to, and he’s the one the Batchers had the most contact with. Their headquarters is on Devaron.”
“Thank you, alor’ad,” said Sol. Her voice was both grateful and hardened with determination, and maybe steeled against her impending descent into the places she’d avoided for so long.
“Anytime,” he replied, trying not to grimace. Of course, Sol could handle herself. But he’d seen the kinds of people who’d be coming after her, and heard even worse than he’d seen. It would be nice if the Empire, at least, would forget about her for a while. And maybe that was the worst part, the knowledge that behind the unscrupulous layer of bounty hunters and criminals was a much more menacing threat that he was just beginning to understand. From what he knew so far, he could only hope they never got ahold of her.
Notes:
so the Durands are an invention of the Bad Batch show. which means i get free reign to do whatever sounds fun with them! could be interesting right?
Chapter Text
Dantooine, proposed Hidden Path safehouse site
It didn’t take long, once the Iviin’yc landed, for Quinlan Vos to end up talking to Elisara very closely beneath a nearby blba tree. Sol knew, everyone knew what made the tone of their conversation so serious, so she sent her brothers off to map the abandoned caves the young Togruta girl had pointed out to them. Except Stone, who was taking stock of the aboveground areas nearby that would suit for the construction of a base. She entered the quick little ship that had begun to make her feel so at home the past few months, and saw Kiran sitting at the controls. He was keying in something, running a couple of diagnostics at once. Fives was back in the bunk, and he called up to her.
“Hey, Sol’ika! Pretty deserted spot you’ve got here,” he said, and she heard the thud of his boots hitting the floor as he exited the top bunk.
“My vode suggested it,” she said, taking a few steps towards him down the little hallway. “You should go and take a look.”
The way her energy was blocking him, gently deflecting him, seemed lost on him at first. “Oh yeah, I’m really curious about the subterranean thing you mentioned! I wonder if the boys on Teth—”
“Fives,” she said pointedly, quietly. “You should go take a look, now. Tayli’bac?”
It seemed to dawn on him what she meant, as he looked between her and then the cockpit behind her. “Oooh,” he said, lowering his voice. “Yeah, you’re right. Good idea.” And then he started to move back towards the bunk where his gear was stashed. He gave her a broad wink. “I’ll just go out the cargo hatch, ey?”
Sol took a slow breath, grateful but also anxious. Her gut was twisted up just as it had been a couple of days ago in Rex’s bunk. She turned and walked up into the cockpit.
“Kiran?” she asked, voice softer than usual.
“Greetings, Sol Tannor,” the big Mirialan said cheerfully as he finished doing something on his control dashboard and then turned around in the pilot’s chair. “It’s good to see you in the flesh, after all the trouble we’ve had recently.”
She smiled faintly. “Thank you, uja. I hope all’s well with you and the ship.”
“Oh, she’s very well,” he smiled, patting the dashboard behind him. “But she’ll be even better here in just a little while. I plan to fix her up especially for this race.”
“You’ve found one with a suitable prize?”
“Yes, friend Fives and I took stock of the options and this one’s certainly got the highest payout. Three hundred thousand credits, to be exact.”
Sol blinked. “Three hundred thousand?”
Kiran looked very pleased with himself. “Yes, and I’ve placed in it before. But, we need that entry fee money.”
“We’ll get it.” She nodded.
“I am certain you will.”
A pause fell, and she felt her topics for conversation slip away, leaving only the thing that she was most concerned about. Her expression must have betrayed her, because Kiran spoke first. “Are you alright, sul kicha?” he asked gently, a knit in his brow.
She took another breath. “Kiran, we… we found Rex. He’s alive.”
The next pause was even more pregnant than the last one, and the big Mirialan’s expression went from surprise to something else that was harder to divine. She watched him closely, back straight and posture firm as though she were bracing for the worst. Of course, he’d been quite reasonable when she’d asked him about this before. There was no reason to expect he’d change suddenly now, but perhaps it was her own sense of feeling lost in navigating this sort of thing that made her so unable to expect reason.
“Well,” he said, and for a moment he didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. He ended up placing them on top of his thighs and taking a breath of his own. “That’s very good news, is it not?”
“Elek.” She continued to look at him steadily, and he nodded.
“He is well, yes?”
“Alive and uninjured. He’s been helping clones desert the Empire, just as we have.”
“Ah,” Kiran nodded again, perhaps a little more vigorously than the topic called for. “Of course. He is loyal as any clone, or any soldier I suppose.”
“He is.” But the awkwardness in the air was too much for her to take. “Kiran, I told him about you.”
“You did?” His eyes seemed to light up with something that might have been hopefulness. She nodded.
“I did. And he said he doesn’t think it’s a problem for you and I to remain together.”
“Well,” Kiran said again. He looked away for a moment, and then he looked back at her. “But you and he…”
“I still love him,” she confirmed. “We are still together.” He seemed to be thinking this over, but there was no expression on his face that was decidedly positive or negative. Sol wanted to scream, or jump, or anything to settle the tension in her body. Her joints ached more than usual. “Kiran, be honest,” she continued after a moment, “does this bother you?”
His eyebrows lifted in a kind of surprise at her directness, but fell just as quickly. “It does not bother me that you found your lost love, as you always say,” he replied slowly. “My heart is glad. And I assume you are telling me about this because you would like to remain with me as well, yes?” he asked. She nodded, stepping closer to him.
“I… don’t want to make you uncomfortable. I wasn’t sure what he would say, but he seemed… unphased, actually,” she said. Now he looked surprised, and curious. “He said that his own lost love saw other people too, when they were together.”
“Oh, I see. So he does not necessarily expect monogamy from his partners?”
“Well, he said it was hard for them to see each other very often. Being a soldier, and everything. So he expected there would be others.”
Kiran seemed to follow that logic easily enough. “My Jeren fought alongside me and was rarely far from my side,” he said. “I suppose I never had to consider it, past that. But if Rex’s lost love was not also a soldier, I imagine they met much more rarely.”
“Maybe more rarely than he and I were able to meet. We often fought together, but not always.” She looked at her boots for a moment. “When I asked him if he ever met any of Farrow’s other lovers, he said no.”
“That does make sense.”
“I asked him if he would ever want to meet you.” The big Mirialan once again looked faintly surprised. She added, “I told him that it would be good to my heart if you two knew each other, because you’re both very important to me. At first he seemed unsure, but then he said maybe, and he asked me more about you.”
“I… did not expect that,” Kiran replied, and for all the world she thought there was a smile playing across his features. “I would be amiable to meeting Rex one day if it means that much to you, Sol Tannor. That, and you’ve spoken highly of him, so I believe he must be a decent fellow.”
Now she smiled, looking back up at him. Her heart jumped, but in a much nicer way than she’d been expecting. “You would?”
“Yes,” he confirmed, his gentle smile joining hers, his big hand coming up to stroke her cheek. “It is rare to see you so worried, sul kicha. But just now it all fell away from your face, and that means that I have chosen rightly in being open to your request.”
“Don’t just do it for me, Kiran,” she implored him. “If it hurts you in some way, please tell me.”
He regarded her for just a moment, then nodded. “If I find I cannot accept my circumstances, you will be the first to hear of it.”
A wave of gratitude washed over her, and she felt her muscles relax their grip on her bones. “Vor entye, uja. If the meeting is difficult, we can change things. I just asked because… well, it’s like you said before. I want to remain at your side,” she said, standing so close that their bodies touched, taking his big hand in hers where it laid against her cheek. “But I don’t want to hurt either of you if I can help it.”
“Except when we are sparring, of course,” he said with a smirk. She rolled her eyes fondly, returning his look.
“Mirut,” she murmured, leaning towards him and kissing him softly, pressing their foreheads together. “Besides, we might all need to help each other one day. We’re all helping each other now, even.”
“You are right as always, sul kicha.”
“What does sul kicha mean?” she asked, drawing back to look at him curiously. She’d never asked before. Maybe she’d avoided asking, avoided knowing his feelings in his own language as though it might reveal something she wasn’t aware of before.
His look was sober, but adoring. “It simply means ‘my love’,” he said. She felt her cheeks get hot and smiled in spite of herself.
“I suppose cyare is the same sort of thing, in Mando’a. But I’ve gotten attached to calling you uja, because you are very… sweet.” She shuddered, and almost laughed. “Saying that in Basic is awful, somehow. It doesn’t capture the full meaning. I like it better my way.”
Kiran chuckled. “I like it that way, too, Sol Tannor,” he said. He placed another kiss on her lips, as though sealing their more intimate conversation with his ardent approval. “Now,” he began as he pulled back and looked at the diagnostic scan that was still running on his dashboard readout, “what sort of job is it you have in mind for our entry fee?”
She raised her eyebrow at him. “You’ll like the idea about as much as Rex did, I bet.”
- - - - -
Devaron, outside Montellian Serat, Durand family headquarters
Sol wasn’t entirely perturbed that Clone Force 99 was indisposed and unable to escort the Iviin’yc to Devaron. Though she liked Echo, even in his more gaunt and grumpy state, the other members of the unit were difficult to work with in her opinion. They’d never shared a mission, but they’d been deployed to the same front twice. Once at Felucia, where General Kenobi had wisely sent the two squads in opposite directions after they’d already begun arguing before the assault plan was even decided. The other time was on Anaxes, where they’d been sent to different fronts. Clearly, Kenobi had been advising on that deployment.
Still, she would have appreciated at least one of them being present. Right now all she and Quinlan Vos had to recommend them was a message Echo had recorded and sent along ahead of their arrival. Kiran and Fives had dropped them off and traveled a few klicks over to the merchant quarter in the capital city, with promises to be back within the hour bearing materials that would help modify the HWK-290 for the upcoming race.
The headquarters was, to the naked eye, a large and tastefully extravagant mansion. But there were guard outposts in odd places, which to Sol just meant that there were subterranean levels where the less tasteful business of crime was conducted, or valuable assets were stored. It felt more like a fortress than a mansion. She and Vos made their way through the rather lush landscape towards the most obvious guardpost along the outer wall, which was directly aligned with the front door.
“There’s a very sacred temple here on Devaron,” the Jedi said casually to her as they walked, not really looking at her from under his heavy hood. His eyes looked ahead, taking stock of their surroundings, much as Sol’s did. “Once, a sacred crystal and its holocron were stowed away there. It contains the names of Force-sensitive children throughout the galaxy. But someone was certainly trying to get ahold of it— and they succeeded, for a while. The Order got it back, but now I can’t help but wonder what became of it.”
Not a strange thing to wonder, for a man who was now trying to shepherd such children to safety with almost no resources. “It seems your enemies don’t have it, or they’d know who to look for and would’ve found you already,” she said from under the extremely distorted vocoder in her helmet.
“I think you’re right. But it would be really nice for me to have it right about now,” he said with a rueful chuckle. “I doubt it’s here again. The temple is empty, and the Jedi can’t guard it anymore.” For once his tone was actually colored with sadness.
“I suppose an old temple of the jetiise isn’t a good spot to make a hideout, either,” she replied with genuine disappointment. A large abandoned building would be very helpful to add to their list of secret places. “Is it built over a place strong with the Force?”
“Most Jedi Temples are,” he said, his usual smirk returning.
“It would be wise to stay away, then.” Surely if the Jedi knew the place was powerful, the Sith lords would come to claim that power for their own soon enough. That was why Master Ayebbo had remained on Moraga, to guard a temple much older than those the Jedi knew, and possibly much more dangerous. “I’ve had enough of your temples to last the rest of my life, anyway,” she added wryly.
Vos raised a brow at her, but they were too close to the guards on the outer wall for him to inquire further. In fact, one of the two guards seemed to share the same sentiment.
“Oy, stop where you are!” he called out, pointing weapons at the pair. They were all Devaronians, big ones. Sol found herself remembering Athae, the ring fighter from Teemo the Hutt’s little vulgar display of power back on Tatooine before the end of the war. She had beaten a Devaronian more than twice her size, and severely pissed off Teemo. The memory made Sol smile to herself under her helmet.
“We come for work,” Vos said, stopping as directed and holding up his empty hands. He bore no weapon, at least not visibly. Sol on the other hand was armed more or less as usual; she stopped as well, but didn’t offer empty hands. “The Bad Batch told us we could find work here, with the Durands.”
“Who’s the Bad Batch?” one of the guards asked the other, leaning closer to him.
“Probably some of Roland’s friends,” the other guard replied with a roll of his eyes. “I’m gonna have to clear it with the boss,” he called back down to them.
“Of course,” Vos said cheerfully, lowering his hands. “Tell Roland we’re here.”
“You stay where you are,” one guard ordered while the other one tapped away at a commlink on his wrist and turned away from them, murmuring into the connection. Vos shrugged and began to whistle, nonchalant. Sol just eyed him from under her helmet, not moving. They waited, listening to the muffled sounds of the commlink conversation happening above on the wall that surrounded the Durand family mansion.
At length, the Devaronian turned back around to face them. “Roland says you can come inside, straight to the main hall of reception,” he said, and there was something unpleasant about his grin. The gates began to slide open to allow them passage.
“Thank you!” said Vos with a wave. They entered the perimeter, and made their way towards the very large and very conspicuous front door. It was deep red and gold against the natural sandy-gray color of the stone that most of the primary walls featured, though there were columns and outdoor patio areas that were more colorfully adorned. Most of the detailing was gold or electrum. A shiny chrome protocol droid greeted them at the entrance, and gave them directions to the main hall without much ceremony. Along the passageways more guards were posted periodically, all armed with some variation of an electrostaff. Another set of doors, these already open, marked the entrance to the main hall. The whole place was shadowed very dramatically, with beams of light coming in only at strategic points through windows.
Inside the hall, Sol could hear the distant sound of someone speaking, the voice echoing around the tall room. At the other end of the room was a tall throne atop terraced steps, and upon it sat a Devaronian woman whose face was severe enough to rival Sol’s. She was listening to someone who was standing before her, his feet on a large reddish-colored energy shield. A little more high-tech than the average Hutt’s trapdoor, but very clearly serving a similar purpose. Sol thought it was interesting that this room was called the main hall rather than the throne room, which was what nearly every other criminal would have called it. And others usually filled theirs up with slaves and members of their entourage, servant droids and all kinds of food and vices the party was partaking of. Extravagance and excess were advertisements of wealth and power; the Durand family appeared to prefer to create a dark, imposing, and almost uncannily quiet space to put their servants and rivals on edge.
There were no slaves, only guards. A few people moved in the shadows along the sides of the main concourse, but that was about it. Not quite the usual crime family headquarters.
As she was observing, suddenly there was a yelp of terror. The red energy shield under the being who was speaking to Isa Durand had disappeared, and he plummeted into a dark pit, the sound of his scream echoing back up into the hall. That part, she thought, was just like the usual crime family headquarters.
“Next,” the woman who could only be Isa Durand called. Vos looked at Sol, and they both stepped forward almost in unison.
“Whoa, hang on!” came a voice from their right, behind the open door. A tall and rather slender Devaronian man with one horn missing skidded in front of them. “Stop! What are you doing?” he hissed.
“Going where they told us to go,” said the Jedi.
“No, no,” the one-horned man said, putting out his hands to shoo them back into the passageway outside. “Who told you to come in here?”
“The guards out front.”
“Ugh,” he groaned. “Those bastards are always doing things like that!”
“Are you Roland Durand?” asked Sol, already annoyed.
“Yes, I am,” Roland replied, gesturing away from the doors to the main hall. “Now, if you’ll just follow me—”
“Roland.” The sound of Isa Durand’s voice was loud enough and stern enough to command silence from everyone who heard it. The young Devaronian man winced. “Come here.”
“Ehe,” he laugh-coughed awkwardly, turning to walk down the main hall towards his mother. When Sol and Vos didn’t come behind him, Isa’s voice rang out again.
“Bring them.”
Grimacing, Roland turned and beckoned them to follow. “Oh, great,” muttered Vos. Sol said nothing. They all stopped just shy of the energy field on the floor.
“Mother, I’m sorry for the interruption,” began Roland in a tone of voice that already attempted to appeal to a sense of pity that Sol wasn’t sure the woman in front of them actually had. “These fine people are just looking for some work—”
“Work?” Isa raised an eyebrow at him, and then let the same expression scan over her visitors. “And you intended to hire them for something? What are their credentials?”
“Ah, extensive combat training,” Roland replied, glancing over at the unarmed Vos. “The clones who retrieved that double-crossing Pyke for us recommended them.”
“Are you also here to work for nothing but information?” Isa asked them, her face betraying nothing beyond its ironclad frown.
“We work for coin,” replied Sol before Vos could say anything. “No less than twenty thousand credits.”
That drew an expressive look from Isa, specifically a raised brow that couldn’t decide if it was amused, offended, or impressed. Roland just put his hands awkwardly behind his back as he tried to stifle a cough. Echo’s message hadn’t included that detail, of course.
“Bold of you to demand a minimum,” said Isa. “Most strangers take whatever job they can get, first, to prove they’re worth something more expensive. Who else have you worked for in the past?”
“The Pykes. Black Sun. The Hutts. Crymorah. The Republic. Private contractors. Certain Mandalorians.” Of course, those were contracts her father had taken, mostly. But Sol had certainly been involved in all of them one way or another. Her voice was matching the Devaronian woman’s iron tone note for note. “Everyone but you, it seems.”
Vos eyed her. Roland’s eyebrows were halfway up his forehead. “You see why they come so highly recommended,” he said to his mother, who looked at him. Something in her expression changed ever so subtly, like a dangerous smirk.
“I only have one job worth twenty thousand credits,” she said evenly, and Roland’s face fell.
“But Mother—”
“This is your chance to redeem yourself, Roland.”
His shoulders slumped. “Yes, Mother,” he grumbled. Turning towards them, he waved his hand once more to have them follow him out of the main hall. Before they went far, though, Isa’s voice rang out again.
“Oh, and Roland?”
Stopping, he turned back around. “Yes?”
“Their cut comes out of your money.”
For a moment, it looked like the young Devaronian man was going to protest. But instead all he did was bow in deference and turn back around, looking even more dejected than before if it were possible, and led them out. He continued to lead them away from the passages they’d traveled before, then stopped in one of the eastern wings of the huge building. The guards had thinned to almost none.
“Well, you mom’s quite an impressive lady,” Vos said with his usual brand of overly cheerful grin.
“She is indeed.” Roland rubbed his forehead for a moment beneath his horns, or what remained of them, and sighed. “Alright, I suppose I’d better brief you on this job. Do you have any others in your outfit, or is it just the two of you?”
“At least two others. I can call for more, of course,” said Sol.
“Maybe do that,” he replied, crossing his arms. “Because we’re going to rob a casino.”
Notes:
casino heist time!!!
Chapter Text
Cantonica, Canto Bight, Halcyon Casino & Hotel
The Durand family may not have been the most infamous criminal group in the galaxy, but they still managed to be almost insufferably rich. The clothing for the heist alone had cost Roland almost a thousand credits, and he’d made a lot of noise about how he wasn’t going to spend ‘a lot’ on outfits for them since they’d ‘probably never wear them again anyway’ and should probably sell them ‘but not anywhere on Cantonica because the people here would never’ and so on. When Sol had asked him how he planned to remain inconspicuous if he underdressed his infiltration team, he’d dried up. And also dropped two hundred extra credits on accessories, just to be sure they really didn’t look underdressed.
Walking into the casino, Sol didn’t know if she was underdressed. She had no basis for comparison. Even the inside of the Senate building on Coruscant hadn’t been as opulent as Halcyon’s casino. Everything was white and green and gold, shimmering and elegant. The lights on the ceiling cast the same rippling shapes as the moonlight on the sea outside the wall of windows that ran down the broad passageway from the foyer to the casino floor. It lacked all the stuffy qualities of a government building, but retained all its pomp and circumstance in a much more alluring and beautiful guise. These were the people who bribed the politicians, she thought. The people who hired people like her to do their dirty work, never once touching the blood that was on their hands.
This casino could probably afford to lose half a million credits. The clientele would replenish that amount soon enough.
Sol tried to feel comfortable as she entered, but the clothes were as unfamiliar as the environment to her. She was wearing an elegant black dress with a low neckline, strong shoulders, and long sleeves. It hid her jaig-eye tattoos, most of the thin white scars on her arms, and the delicate bracelet on her wrist that contained a hidden commlink. The same low line revealed much of her back, though, and the scars there were visible. But that would lend credence to her story, at least. The thing she hated the most about the dress was that the skirt almost touched the ground, which made her feel that it would restrict her movement despite the high slit over her right leg. Worse, the gold shoes seemed designed to actually inhibit running.
The one thing she did like, though, was the eyepiece that they’d found for her. It was almost like a golden metal half-mask over one of her eyes and down one side of her nose, featuring what looked like a cybernetic ocular implant. Really, it was a tiny little HUD of sorts, and it was already showing her data about the building they stood in, the heights and approximate weights of the beings standing around her, and even showing her an infrared option. The rest of her jewelry, which Roland had insisted on, was fairly simple because that piece was both eye-catching and extremely functional.
Beside her walked Kiran, clad in what he said was a close approximation of traditional formal dress on Mirial. His collarless tunic was made of deep red brocade with bronze-colored trim, and it fell just past his knees. Beneath he wore brown trousers, and over his shoulder was a bronze sash embroidered with red and golden flowers that also wrapped around his waist. He’d put two small braids in his lush brown hair, then tied up half of it with the braids arranged around the knot in the traditional way, leaving the rest to cascade down his back. They’d found him a black and gold cane to accompany his slight limp, where his commlink transmitter was hidden and broadcasting to the cuff on his ear. He looked like nobility, as though he were still at court in House Uli’mar’s great hall. Even his posture seemed to have straightened up instinctively.
On her other side was Fives in a very clean-cut and sleek black leisure suit, all sharp edges that accentuated his broad shoulders. He seemed very at home in such clothes, for a former clone trooper. With his face tattoo and goatee, there was a contradictory quality to his look as well, as though the polished exterior covered a rebellious streak— entirely true, of course. At his wrist was a silver chrono for his comm, and in his ears were silver rings that worked as ear pieces much as Sol’s did.
Bringing up the rear was Vos dressed in a very dignified cream and slate-blue suit with a jacket that ironically resembled the crossed front panels the Jedi robes had favored. But it had a rather dashing cloak attached to its shoulders that swept behind him. He’d shaved his stubbly chin and pulled the top half of his dreads back for the occasion. A few silver rings adorned his locs, including one close to his ear with his own commlink.
In front waltzed Roland, of course. He was in a rich green suit with a gold brocade lining that showed on his lapels, and an ascot tied around his neck. He also wore a kind of cloak made of blue-green shimmersilk, with a golden chain that pinned it to his shoulders. It was a little gaudy, but that didn’t seem out of character for the young Devaronian. In his arms was a strange little scaled creature named Ruby, who drew more looks than all of them combined. Apparently she was a very rare and expensive animal; it was to Roland’s credit that he seemed to adore her more than any amount of money, and showing her off was a personal joy for him as much as a status symbol. But it was still very much the latter, too. That, and her collar had his comm transmitter hidden in it, earpiece tucked into an ear cuff he wore.
“Good evening, honored guests. Please turn in your weapons,” said the stocky Human man behind a counter that ran across the entryway. The opening that would allow them passage was screened by an energy shield, and at the counter on the other side sat a handsome Twi’lek woman who was collecting coats and personal effects to tuck back in the coat rooms.
“Good evening! How’s your night going, my good man?” Roland asked with a kind of overly confident excessiveness that would have been suspicious on anybody else. He pulled out his hold-out blaster and handed it over.
“Very well, sir,” the Human replied with as much pleasantness as was required, and not a drop more. He eyed Ruby. “Is your pet trained, sir?”
“Of course!” Then Roland’s voice moved from indignation to cheerfulness with impressive agility. “And so long as she’s with me, Ruby is very friendly.”
“Excellent, sir. Enjoy your evening, and please alert the staff if you require anything… or Ruby here does,” the Human added, expression softening just a little at Ruby’s panting face that seemed to smile at him and burble happily.
“Thank you, I certainly shall!” And Roland marched off to fetch a few chip cards connected to his account for them to place bets with.
Kiran removed a Czerka 2000, a snub-nosed blaster he usually kept hidden under the control panel inside his ship, from within his tunic. Fives drew out a LW-896, the smallest pistol in his current arsenal. Vos waved his hands almost apologetically.
“I don’t carry arms, I’m afraid,” he said with his easy grin. There were wrinkles at the corners of his eyes that reinforced his cheerful nature, more visible now that his hair wasn’t in his face.
“As long as you submit to a quick scan, sir,” the Human replied, unperturbed.
“Of course.”
“And you, ma’am?” He looked at Sol. She leaned down to move the infernal skirt aside by its slit, revealing a thigh holster. She drew out a heavy RSKF-44 pistol and placed it with a thud on the counter, and then reached around behind the first holster and drew her beskar knife out as well. The Human man’s eyebrows shot up briefly; it seemed that most of the clients of this casino didn’t feel the need to carry that much firepower on them. Either that, or he recognized the particular hue and ripple of beskar. She looked at him, raising one eyebrow ever so slightly. “You have excellent taste, ma’am,” he said after a moment, and reached up to take the weapons with a cloth. He handled them with overt and sincere care. “They’ll be quite safe, I assure you.”
“Good,” she replied, remembering to avoid speaking Mando’a. And remembering not to look as annoyed as she felt, if a little belatedly. “I’m very glad to hear it,” she added a little more gently.
“Come along, sul kicha,” Kiran said with an admiring smile, holding out his arm for her to take. “I must introduce you to a game I think you may be exceptionally good at!”
“Neerok!” Fives exclaimed as they passed through the lowered energy shield. “A favorite of mine.”
“No, my friend, this is sabaac! And you must be careful, for it is similar to neerok, but not the same.”
Fives and Kiran seemed to enjoy their half-true banter, but Roland was ahead scanning the crowd very closely once he handed them their chip cards. Vos was more reserved than usual, and Sol thought maybe he was letting whatever the Force felt like in this place settle in.
“Well, if it isn’t the prodigal son of the great Durand family!” came a high voice that sparkled like the lights around the casino. A young Devaronian woman— in fact, she seemed more like a girl— clad in a stunning emerald green gown was walking like she owned the place across the room from the direction of the bar. Her jet black hair was adorned in green jewels, and it was like she’d dressed to match the colors within the decor and chosen the decor to match her green eyes. She held out her arms in what seemed like an offering of embrace, and then let them fall onto her hips. “Didn’t you lose enough money last time?”
“Miss Varen Alikos!” said Roland with that same excessive pleasantness he’d had at the weapons check. “Just the lady I was hoping to see!”
“Now, Roland. You and I both know you had to see me to convince me to let you stay here again, after what you pulled.” Her smile was dangerous, showing sharp Devaronian canines. “Not that I can’t be convinced, but I’m going to need quite the promise.”
“Miss Alikos, you wound me,” Roland pouted. He gave Ruby’s head a gentle pet. “I admit, I was in a dark place the last time I was here, as I’d just lost my horn, and I certainly lost my composure at the bar. For that, I’m extremely regretful.”
“That’s very pretty, Roland. But if I see even a little misbehavior from you…”
“Never again, I assure you.” He smiled. “Besides, I brought my little angel to meet you this time! And some of my friends are here to see what an excellent establishment you’re managing,” he added, sweeping his hand over towards the rest of their party. “Please meet Mr. Rayshe'a, Mr. Vos, Mr. Uli’mar, and Miss Marev.”
Fives had chosen the Mando’a word for ‘five’ as his codename, and Sol almost wanted to laugh when she heard it. Roland’s pronunciation was even worse than Kiran’s. The clone stepped forward and gave his mischievous smile and a half-bow, and Vos did much the same. Sol inclined her head in her characteristic Mandalorian nod. Kiran then stepped forward and took Varen’s hand.
“Lovely to meet you, madam,” he said with all his courtly manners. He bowed and placed a kiss on her knuckles, though it didn’t linger quite as long as the kiss on Sol’s hand all those months ago on Sammun. “This is a beautiful place, managed by a beautiful woman!”
“My, my,” Varen giggled, blushing. “That’s very kind of you, sir. You can call me Miss Varen, if you like.” Sol found herself smirking ever so slightly, unsurprised at Kiran’s charm. Reminded of how he’d charmed her, once. If his manner had been affected, it would have grated on her nerves. But she understood just how sincere it was, how it emanated from a gentle, fierce heart.
“Miss Varen, I am afraid I must remove to the sabaac table to keep a promise. But I look forward to your company later!” And he swept Sol and Fives away, Vos following. They left Roland to do his best to match Kiran’s charm, which would have been impossible except that he had little Ruby there to do most of the work for him.
“Do you see the Cathar he mentioned?” Vos leaned over to murmur to them.
“I think he’ll be hard to miss,” replied Fives. “He’s supposed to be really tall.”
A signal flickered across Sol’s HUD. The rest of Cronos Squad had moved into position. She settled into her chair at the sabaac table, flanked by Fives and Kiran. Vos took a standing position, since the other three seats were occupied by a tall Neimoidian man, an Iktotchi woman with jewels hanging from her cranial horns, and a very dashing Iridonian Zabrak man with long silver hair. As Kiran began to explain that these strangers had the pleasure of witnessing the emergence of two new sabaac players, Sol winked a signal into her HUD. Now everyone was in position and the real game could begin.
Swift was sailing up the part of the wall that wasn’t made of windows on his jetpack as he made his way past the floor reserved for staff housing. It was awfully nice of the owners, he thought, to employ and feed and house organic staff members. Peering into the rooms through his HUD, they appeared to be actual spacious apartments rather than crowded corporate bunks. The map that Roland had provided also showed a staff-only cantina that he suspected would make the average Rim cantina crumble to its foundation in shame. This place was certainly different from the other casinos on Cantonica, except of course for the massive amount of credits in the vault.
Fifteen stories up he was on the roof slicing a service door next to the massive generators. He missed their GAR-issue BD droid acutely, because this level of wealth had no problem springing for the most complex locks. But the real challenge would be the vault, so he figured this was good practice.
“You finished yet?” Grip complained over the squad channel.
“You placed all those relays yet?” Swift retorted, snickering. The medic was scaling the building manually and placing a disruptor relay at every single floor.
“I’m on number nine!”
“Only five left!”
“Shut it, you lot,” Twofer growled. “I’m tryna listen to the comm chatter.”
“Then get off our channel, vod!” Grip laughed. The click from the slicing tool sounded in Swift’s HUD and he grinned.
“We’re in!”
The service lift that opened had to be scaled, but this wasn’t the first time Swift had timed a descent carefully to avoid being crushed by a carrier car. And this time he had a jetpack. Behind him Grip finally sailed to the roof bearing a hunk of tech that he’d quite literally cobbled together from all the parts of armor, transmitters, and even components from the Titan that he could reasonably pilfer without ruining anything. Throwing him a signal, the sniper leapt down into the shaft.
On the staff floor, the halls were deserted. It was a busy night downstairs, and the bass from the club floor seemed to vibrate through the walls. Swift made his way to the room nearest the lift to the casino floor and started slicing, listening carefully to each click. The room was easier than the roof service door to open, and he slid inside before any alert from his HUD could bother him.
Whoever lived in the apartment was clearly not former military, he thought. It was messy, with clothes on the floor and the abandoned remains of a meal on the kitchen bar. But that worked for him, in that this particular staff member might not even notice one missing uniform. He did find a few pressed ones lurking inside the closet, waiting to be worn and forgotten until all of them were destined for the laundry chute. It was a security uniform rather than a server uniform, which was pure luck as far as he was concerned. He’d had a plan to make the server guise work, too, but this one would probably be a lot easier.
It was just a hair too large for him, he thought as he pulled it on over the civilian clothes and lighter-than-usual armor he was wearing. The jetpack he stuffed with his helmet into a spare pillow cover, and then chucked down the garbage chute. Interestingly, he thought, there was a pair of glasses on the dinette that looked like the security tech he’d seen the guards close to the entrance wearing. He popped his own commlink piece into his ear and picked up the glasses curiously.
“I’m dressed,” he said when he’d turned on the comm.
“Good, now get downstairs and try not to run into the big fella,” Grip replied. “Your cams are covered.” Swift put the glasses on experimentally and was pleasantly surprised to see a limited HUD on them, as well as a scrolling feed of chatter from the casino’s internal comms. If this was the only pair this staffer had, he was taking a serious risk by running off with them. If it happened to be a spare, that was better. But seeing the security feed was too good of an advantage for him to bring himself to pass up. Helping him blend in and slightly obscuring his face weren’t bad perks either. So he exited back into the hall wearing them and hoped to the Maker that it wasn’t the kind of mistake his team couldn’t recover from.
Quinlan Vos was at the jubilee wheel, having sensed nothing unusual about the other sabaac players, and was casually manipulating the wheel into a few big wins that made Roland’s chip card light up cheerfully. As he did, he kept an eye out for security personnel moving around the casino.
Two blue Chagrians, a Vurk, three Humans, and five Devaronians made up the current shift on the casino floor. None of them was particularly sensitive to the Force from what he could tell. He withdrew his chip card, smiling and excusing himself from the small crowd of other players who’d appeared to cheer him right over a cliff into a sudden loss after his winning streak. There was a wall of lugjack machines opposite the windows overlooking the sea where a Devaronian guard was posted; Vos walked right up to the machine the guard was standing next to and plugged in his chip card.
“You ever play these things?” he asked the guard pleasantly.
“Not really, sir,” the guard replied. “But I’ve got terrible luck.”
“You know, I don’t have great luck either, usually,” Vos said, putting his hand on the lever that would start the machine. The imprint of thousands of other hands rippled through his awareness of the Force, but nothing more interesting than wins and losses had happened here. He pulled, and the wheels began spinning.
“Think you’ll do better than usual tonight, sir?” the guard asked, apparently not bothered by a little casual chat from the guests. Vos grinned.
“Oh, I hope so,” he said. Turning his eyes on the wheels, he watched as one credit chit symbol appeared. Then, another. The guard raised a brow curiously behind the teal tint of his glasses, but then the final symbol appeared— a cartoonish bantha. The machine made a sound that really resembled a bantha’s frustrated burp, too. “Bah,” Vos murmured, waving a hand at the machine dismissively. “The jubilee wheel was nicer to me, must’ve got my hopes up!”
“Y’know, I think the lugjacks are the worst for wins, probably because they’re the easiest ones to play,” the Devaronian guard said. “Something that requires a little skill and a little luck, I reckon might be a better bet.”
“You a sabaac guy?” Vos asked.
“Yeah, that and dejarik, but I’m still learnin’ dejarik. Really just wanna beat my boyfriend at it once, though. Might give it up after that.” The guard grinned, and Vos enjoyed the wave of casual humor he felt. He laughed.
“My friends are learning sabaac over there as we speak,” he said, gesturing towards the table where Fives, Kiran, and Sol were sitting. “Big guy’s the teacher. Just a hunch, but I think his girlfriend’s gonna wind up better than him at it, by the end of the night.”
The Devaronian chuckled. “Maybe at shift change I’ll come find out who’s gettin’ good!”
“What time’s shift change?”
“About three hours from now.”
“I think we’ll be here, barring unforeseen circumstances,” said Vos with a conspiratorial grin. “Wanna bet it’s her winning by then?”
“Who am I betting against?”
“The Maker, I guess. Certainly not me, I know better.”
“Well, at least that’s a bet I can afford to lose!”
As they bantered, Vos kept a nearby server with a platter full of tall flute glasses in his awareness. Reaching out through the Force, he nudged one flute over into the others. The sound of breaking glass was always more dramatic than any outcome of the glass actually breaking, he thought as the piercing clatter of it rang out. The Devaronian guard turned sharply to look, and Vos saw the access keys on his belt. Lifting one of them gently with the Force and calling it to his hand, he closed his fingers tightly around it.
An image of the door to an apartment opening and shutting came to his mind. Blast, he wanted to grumble, but he didn’t. He just sent the tube of metal clattering to the ground.
“Oh, you dropped something!” he said as the guard decided that the server was in no danger and shifted back towards his stationary stance from before. He looked down and saw the silver gleam on the floor, and picked it up.
“Thank you, sir,” he nodded, pushing the key back into his place on his belt.
“Of course! Guess I’ll see you later if you decide to tag that bet.”
“Sure thing, sir!”
Vos made his way around the floor very carefully, using similar means to touch the keys of other security guards who were distracted in some way. The third time, he finally found a key that remembered the lock of the count room down below. Reaching up to scratch above his ear, he pushed the button on his hidden comm-ring.
“Got you a key,” he murmured.
“Affirmitive. Heading to the ‘freshers,” came Swift’s voice in reply.
“Got it.” The Jedi walked through the crowd and stopped by the sabaac table where his co-conspirators sat before heading to the little hall that led to the refreshers. Inside one of the stalls— which were more like tiny little locked rooms, each one complete with everything one might need a refresher for in a place like this— he tapped the comm again. “Fourth door on the right,” he said.
The shadow of someone else standing outside his stall appeared in the crack at the bottom of the door, and he slid it aside. The clone was in full security regalia, looking at him over his own pair of teal-tinted glasses. They nodded at each other, and Swift went in as Vos exited. As the Jedi rounded the corner back towards the casino, he nearly bumped into a very, very tall and white-furred Cathar.
“Oh, my apologies!” he said, looking up at the catlike face of the other.
A growl rumbled around the Cathar’s words as he replied, “No, my apologies, sir.” But that seemed to be less than a blip on the large fellow’s radar, and he kept walking on powerful legs ending in fiercely clawed footpads. Vos raised an eyebrow.
“Cathar spotted by the ‘freshers,” he said very quietly into his comm.
“Kriff,” muttered Swift. Which meant he was going to remain in that bathroom stall until someone gave him the all-clear. Vos walked towards the bar, which retained a view of the refresher corridor, and spotted Roland letting a handful of young Twi’lek women pet his adorable little lizard. But the manager, Miss Alikos, was nowhere to be seen.
“Kriff,” he found himself muttering.
Sol excused herself and rose from her seat at the sabaac table trying valiantly not to look as cross as she felt at that moment. She crossed the floor with such determination that the other guests seemed to part to let her pass, and walked right up to Roland where he was lounging at the bar soaking up the vicarious admiration directed at Ruby. When he saw her coming, he blanched a little.
“Now, ladies, I need to take my little Ruby to find something suitable to eat,” he said, waving off the pouting Twi’lek girls. Sol waited until they were gone to raise an eyebrow at him. “What? She’s checking on the club floor upstairs!” he said indignantly to her, turning away and walking towards the nearest wait station. “Server! Can you please fetch something raw for my sweet Ruby to eat? And some water?”
“When she goes somewhere, I need you to report it,” Sol growled at him as she followed. “The rest of us need to know what to look for.”
“Alright, fine,” Roland grumbled, stopping and eyeing her from down his nose. “How’s the game going?”
“Fives is making lots of friends by losing his money to them. Or rather, your money.” When he frowned back at her, she rolled her eyes. “Settle down, Vos is making it all back at the jubilee wheel.”
“Any losses are coming out of your cut,” he grumbled, nuzzling Ruby, who just sniffed the air and drooled. Sol decided to turn and go to the refreshers rather than respond.
The Cathar, a huge white feline biped armed with a stun baton that he probably didn’t need to use very often, emerged from the corridor as she went. “You’re clear, vod,” she said into her comm as she lifted her hand up to brush her white hair behind her ear.
“Affirmative.” And to her relief, she saw Swift exit the door of a stall up ahead, completely ignore her, and head straight back to the staff corridors at the other end. “Grip, how’s it looking?” she heard him ask.
“Twofer says there’s nobody stationed inside the corridors leading to the basement, but the entrance itself is heavily guarded,” the medic replied as Sol entered a ‘fresher stall herself. A map appeared in her HUD, moving to highlight the areas in question. Two at the front of the entrance hallway off the service lift, two at the other end where one entered the actual basement level. That would not be an ideal way in, she thought. “He’s moving into the basement level now.”
Vos’ voice came over the commlink. “Shift change in about two hours.”
“Good time for a distraction, maybe.” Swift’s reply had his audible grin in it. Sol checked the knot in the front of her dress to be sure the micro-pulse grenade was still inside it, and checked her thigh holster as well before she made her way back outside.
“Excuse me, madam,” came a nasally voice she didn’t recognize at first, until she realized that it was the Neimoidian, Gunnay, who’d been sitting at her sabaac table approaching her. “Your friend says you are a competitive sharpshooter. I was wondering if you’ve ever visited Sojourn, the moon of Muunilist? There is a famous event there every year at one time, and some of the best marksmen ever to compete often travel there to hunt exotic prey.”
She looked at him for a moment, letting her silence and sharp gaze unsettle him a little before she answered. “No, I haven’t.”
“Surely someone of your prowess and beauty should have received an invite! If you wish, I am sure I could procure one for you.”
“I was invited once. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend.”
“Oh? What kept you?” She turned her ‘cybernetic’ eye towards him, and his head wobbled slightly in realization. The story they’d created for Sol had fallen together neatly in his mind. “Ah, I see. Well, I am certain you are still an excellent shot. Perhaps you will get another chance, hm?”
Apparently he didn’t expect a reply, because he shuffled off towards the ‘freshers without waiting to hear one. Sol walked towards the bar, noting that Vos was taking the opportunity to walk out onto the balcony. She raised her hand to brush her hair out of her face, and murmured into her commlink bracelet.
“Watch the Neimoidian we were at the table with, Vos.”
“Understood,” the Jedi replied. Kiran raised a brow at her. He was still at the table with Fives, who was imploring a server to bring him something. At least the clone was enjoying himself, she thought. He was turning out to be a terrible sabaac player.
Twofer was making his way through a ventilation shaft again. But this time, he thought, the weather outside was so cool that maybe they wouldn’t turn up the heat for a while. This was the easiest way to make it to the basement floor undetected, but only for someone his size. Or Sol’s size, of course. He snickered to himself thinking of his sergeant in a fancy dress. No doubt she looked incredible, but the expression on her face must be hilarious. She’d never been a fan of dressing up. It was like pulling teeth to get her to do it the very, very few times the squad had managed. He was looking forward to seeing her getup and giving her shit for it once this caper was over.
Meanwhile, he had to get into the count room, or at least close enough to knock out the droid there. If their goal was to not only get out with the money, but also to make sure nobody knew it was Roland’s operation, the droid could be the biggest liability. Organic memory was a lot more fallible than droid memory.
After a while of scaling the shafts in a zig-zig from one floor down to the next, the faint sounds of activity coming in through the vent openings in the rooms below started to fade. There was less activity on these floors, so Grip wanted to focus mainly on manipulating the security holocams on the busy floors where their co-conspirators would be forced to move within their view. Twofer had only complained a little, but honestly he found the whole thing rather exciting. So he crawled silently through the cramped vents until he reached the all but silent basement floor.
The silence was a kind of liability too, he thought as he continued in the direction of the count room. If he fell, or dropped something, or walked too heavily, or any part of his weapons made a noise more than a nanosecond before they actually fired, it would attract attention. Even a quiet sound was very loud in a silent place, especially a long hallway with lots of space for the sound to be amplified as it bounced off the walls. In fact, even the faint whirr of the droid counting should be highly audible.
So when the vent shaft came to its last opening before its blunt end, but there was no sound at all outside, Twofer frowned.
“Hey Grip,” he said into the squad channel, “can ya access the cams down here?”
“Sure, vod. Give me a second.” A beat of static, and then, “So, what do you wanna know?”
“This vent doesn’t go all th’ way to the countin’ room. Dead end.”
“You might have to come out and see where you are. There’s a pretty heavy set of lockdown blast doors on the way to the vault. Maybe that’s where the vent stops.”
Twofer growled. “How’m I s’posed to get through those? I thought I was just headin’ straight to the droid!”
“Working on it!” Grip replied a little tersely. “You have your plasma cutters?”
“‘Course I do.”
“Good, you might need them. But I need to work on the locks.”
“Affirmative. I’ll check it out.” Twofer started the process of removing the vent’s opening cover as silently as he could manage. At least once there was a sharp sound of metal scraping against metal, and he winced and then froze to watch his HUD for signs of security guards coming down the hall. But nothing happened, and he continued. Once the opening was clear, he placed a cable anchor and slid down into the dark hallway.
When he turned around, he was indeed facing a huge set of blast doors. Multiple control panels surrounded it, and he stepped over to watch one of the flickering screens. His brother was dissembling the security protocols, presumably.
“Uh, vod,” came the medic’s voice, and Twof didn’t like the sound of it. “You see any other controls down there?”
“Yeah, three panels. What about it?”
“Well, the one I’m on is tricky. If I slice it wrong, it’ll send up an alert. That’ll take a minute but I can manage it. The second one’s just a hard lock I can bypass easy, I think. Problem is, the other one’s on a separate network, and it’s… a soft lock. There’s no way to slice it without sending up the alarm.”
Twofer groaned. “Great. Who’s kriffin’ eyeball or whatever unlocks it?”
“Ah, you’ll need the DNA of someone named Varen Alikos.”
Suddenly Sol’s voice came over the squad channel. Of course she’d been listening. “That’s the manager. The daughter of the owner,” she murmured in a terse growl.
“...Osik,” said Twofer and Grip simultaneously.
Notes:
ahahaha. this is fun :3
Chapter Text
Cantonica, Canto Bight, Halcyon Casino & Hotel
Down in the casino, Vos had managed to corral the Neimoidian from the sabaac table and his ‘business partner’, another Neimoidian in equally ostentatious clothing, over to the dejarik table. Dejarik wasn’t a very flashy game, but it wasn’t hard to prod two Neimoidian egos into trying to prove they could win. Other guests who didn’t mind watching a possibly very slow game often took bets on the winner, so it was a kind of gambling that encouraged patrons without costing the house anything. Though, the limit for private bets was capped at 500 credits to make sure that if someone lost a lot of money, they lost it to the house. Meanwhile, if someone won a lot of money, they won it off other patrons. And usually promptly spent it on the other casino games.
Sol was watching, having placed a bet on Vos winning— expected, since he was in her circle of friends. Annoying to Gunnay, since she’d beaten him several times at sabaac. Convenient, since the Neimoidians seemed to have enough acquaintances on the floor that night that when Vos won, she’d collect a tidy amount of credits off of them. There was one other being betting on Vos, a Gran Protectorate noble who seemed to personally dislike Gunnay. But the more Vos managed to stoke their loud insistence that each of them could beat him separately, nevermind together, the larger her half of the pot became.
Mostly, though, she was listening to the comm chatter, triangulating each of the groups performing their job to be sure things were progressing. Kiran and Fives had retired to the bar to socialize with Miss Alikos and Roland, their own contribution to keeping progress on track.
“Tell me, Miss Varen, how old are you? You do seem very young to be managing such a fine establishment so well,” Kiran was saying in his amiable way.
The Devaronian girl smiled rather coyly. “Seventeen standard years, Mr. Kiran.”
“Surely not!”
She nodded. “I started working in the admin here two years ago. My father encouraged me to take the management position last year.”
“And he is the owner?”
“Yes, and since I’m an only child, I think he’s happy I want to continue the family business. He built Halcyon a few years ago, which was a—” and she eyed Roland— “departure, you might say, from his old business ventures.”
“It’s very admirable,” Roland said, his smile inviting.
“I assume your family is still doing the same old thing, Mr. Durand?” she asked him, raising one dark brow, her green eyes sparkling.
“Oh, you know,” he shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “The usual, I’m afraid. I’ve tried to convince my mother to go into hospitality, but I think she’s concerned that my efforts to restore friendly relations with your family would be undermined if she did. We would only wind up competing once again.”
Fives chuckled, stirring his liquor. “Longtime rivals?”
“Once,” Roland confirmed, taking Varen’s hand where it rested on the bar top. “But not anymore, I hope.”
“If you keep losing money in my casino, we’ll never be rivals again,” the girl cooed, a sardonic smile on her face as she pointedly pulled her hand out of his and picked up her own drink.
“I hope you will not take it personally if we win something tonight, madam,” Kiran chimed in with a chuckle, leaning over the bar towards his tall mug of Mandalorian ale.
“Something has to keep you coming back to see me, doesn't it?” she replied, lashes fluttering at him.
“Oh, I’ll come back even if I lose,” Fives assured her with the kind of smirk that added to the sense that, under his clean and sleek suit, he was rowdy. Varen smiled sweetly, cheeks faintly pink.
“That’s good, given how I hear your sabaac has been going.”
That made Fives laugh. “Yeah, think I oughta consider teaching some of your guests neerok, so I might finally win somethin’!” he said.
“Maybe I’ll set up a neerok table, sometime,” she mused.
“I’d be so very delighted if you did, sweetheart,” the clone said with a wink. Varen giggled.
“We need some DNA before shift change,” Sol reminded them in a pointed whisper over the comm. To her surprise, it was Roland who took initiative.
“Miss Alikos, my dear,” the Devaronian said, reaching out to brush her black hair back behind her ear, “I don’t mean to push you, of course, but I really do think our two families could become collaborators. And this beautiful place could be quite the resource, if we did.”
Varen looked at him like it was the dumbest thing she’d ever heard. “Roland, I was just talking about how my family is doing legitimate business now,” she said flatly. “You won’t convince me to make this place a cover for your less legitimate operations.”
“It could be part of legitimate collaboration!” he insisted with a pout.
“The Durands aren’t exactly known for legitimate operations!”
“Everyone knows we’re a crime family! We’re expected to do crime!”
Kiran waved his hand in a placating gesture. “Now, friends. It is perhaps too soon for a reconciliation of this scale, yes?” he said, looking at Roland. “It’s quite enough to have such a pleasant time here. And we will surely tell our friends to come and bring you more legitimate business, Miss Varen. So, Mr. Roland has collaborated with you in that sense already.”
His charm was effective. Even Roland himself seemed pleased. “I have indeed,” he said proudly. Varen reached out to pat Ruby’s head gently; the little creature had fallen asleep in her master’s arms.
“Fine, fine. You’ve placated me,” she said. “But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, either. Are you at least enjoying your time at Halcyon?”
“Immensely,” Kiran chuckled. There were echoes of agreement from Fives and Roland. Varen nodded, seeming satisfied.
“Alright, I need to go and check with my kitchen staff and the welcome desk,” she said, sliding off of her stool and placing her drink on the bar top. “I’ll be checking to make sure you’re keeping your promise again later, too,” she added to the young Devoronian man. “Now go play some slots or something!”
As she trotted off, Roland turned and looked at the other two men with him. “So who takes this?” he asked, holding up a single black hair.
“That would be me, good sir!” said Fives, reaching out to take it.
“Very well done,” Kiran said with a nod to Roland. “You may yet learn the arts of subtlety after all, my friend.”
Roland rolled his eyes. “I can be subtle, you know,” he said. Kiran nodded, withholding his rebuttal. Fives had to work against the alcohol to not laugh, so he excused himself and made straight for the dejarik table.
“Tell me your thingy can scan this,” he murmured to Sol as he hugged her, his level of inebriation seeming clear to observers. She wondered how much of it he was faking, and how much of it was the fact that real high-proof alcohol was a rare commodity he wasn’t used to. He pressed his hand into hers, and she felt the strand of hair there.
“Hm,” she said, looking over at the dejarik table. The two Neimoidians were in conference about how to handle Vos’ latest move. Fives grinned and clapped a hand on Vos’ shoulder and started saying something, but Sol didn’t listen to them as she turned away from the majority of the crowd and looked down through the HUD at the strand of hair. It certainly tried to scan it, but didn’t seem to be able to come up with much information about it except its molecular content.
She turned and started in the direction of the refreshers. “Swift,” was all she said into the comm after she slid into one of the stalls.
“Comin’ up, vod’ika. I was just checkin’ out the shift rotation back in the employee hub. Think I can head in without anybody seeing,” the sniper replied. She was glad to hear it, and when she emerged from the refreshers she saw Swift standing outside.
“Excuse me,” she said to him, “but can you please show me the way upstairs to the VIP rooms?”
For the first time all night, Roland appeared to actually be listening to the comm chatter himself. “Oooh, are we going upstairs?” he murmured excitedly into the channel. “I can get us a room to meet in upstairs!”
“If Miss Alikos agrees, of course,” Kiran reminded him.
“She’ll agree.”
Sol elected to let that be Roland’s personal mission. For her, it had just been a cover. Swift nodded stiffly to her, and held out his arm as an offer of escort.
“Right this way, miss,” he said. They moved together away from the crowded areas. “Smart call, by the way. The VIP lounges are only accessible by private entrance lifts. Very tucked away.” Sol just smirked faintly, because she knew that, of course. She’d studied the map.
They entered a back hallway where there were two VIP lifts, and down at the far end was the service lift. The hall was presently empty, but one of the lifts was lit up with a descending car incoming. Swift ushered them along, almost running as the arrival tone rang out. His security glasses let him open the service lift, and they ducked in just as the VIP lift door opened. A faint sound of laughter from the beings exiting, and then the service lift was shut but not yet moving.
“Osik’la shoes,” Sol growled. She’d managed to nearly run down the short hall, but it hadn’t been very fast and she’d been avoiding toppling over the whole time.
“If you trip, just pretend you’ve had too much to drink, vod’ika,” Swift advised her with a grin. She glared at him, despite the fact that it was a perfectly good idea, and he chuckled mischievously.
“Stone, come in,” she growled into the comm.
“Still clear here, Sarge,” the big clone replied in his basso voice. “External security is minimal. Cloak still good.”
“Jate,” she confirmed. She handed the hair, gripped in her palm the entire time, over to Swift. “Take this to Twof. His HUD can scan it better.”
“Right,” Swift nodded, and then he took off his security glasses. “Let’s see if I can get this calibrated for you.” He stepped over and held the glasses up close to Sol’s false implant, looking to align their comm channel.
“I’m going to lose the squad channel,” she said with a frown.
“No, c’mon…” Swift kept calibrating, tapping the control buttons on the glasses. “There’s always room for one more frequency.”
“Leave it on text-only,” she advised him. “Two audio channels won’t work on this thing. I’ll watch the chatter that way since I’m sure you’ll be focused elsewhere sometime soon.”
“Got it,” he replied with a grin, affirming both her orders and his success at calibrating her HUD to the security text-only feed at the same time. “Remember, if anyone’s out there, you’re drunk.”
Then he was herding her back out into the hallway, and she looked up and saw two very well-dressed Twi’lek guests standing by one of the VIP lifts. At first they didn’t even turn to look. Swift had his arm around her waist and one of her hands in his, leading her forward. They’d taken about two steps when Roland and the very large Cathar security guard rounded the corner into the hallway from the direction of the casino. She felt Swift’s muscles tense, and for a split second the way Roland’s eyes blew wide open, she was convinced he was going to blow their cover.
“Marev! Are you alright? I was wondering where you went!” the Devaronian called, and he came down towards her with Ruby trotting along beside him on her leash. Sol felt her muscles relax, and then she let herself wobble on the heeled shoes. It wasn’t very hard to play drunk in the stupid things, she thought.
“Mmm,” was all she murmured in reply, letting her eyes unfocus.
“I think your friend here’s had a bit more than she can handle, sir,” Swift said, steadying her.
“Come on, Miss Marev, let’s get you up to the VIP room and have someone bring you something to eat!” And with that, the Devaronian took Sol away from Swift and led her over to one of the VIP lift doors. Sol frowned, but she continued to wobble on her shoes. Roland smiled at the two Twi’lek women, but they didn’t seem interested in him. One of them was petting Ruby. Swift was speeding back to the service doors before anyone else could say anything, tapping the side of his glasses as though he had something urgent to do. Which, in fairness, he did. Shift change was in about five minutes.
“Now, Marev, if you want to drink,” Roland was saying as they entered the lift, Ruby and the Cathar filing in behind him, “I have a medication you could take that will slow the alcohol’s effect on your system. I told you, the pure stuff isn’t what you’re used to, didn’t I?”
Sol growled in annoyance, letting her eyes cast about and then linger on Ruby where she stood panting by their feet. Otherwise she would have been glaring at Roland. “Wasn’t that much,” she murmured, putting her hand on the wall of the lift.
“It doesn’t take much when you’re a lightweight, my dear. I personally admire your choice not to take up drinking, though. I think you’re better off avoiding it.”
The Cathar let out a low growling noise, and it almost sounded like a chuckle. “You’d know,” he said. Sol allowed herself a snort at the Devaronian’s expense.
“Qulderi, please don’t remind me of my past sins. It hurt when you kicked me out, you know.” Roland sighed dramatically as the door opened and they filed out onto the 4th floor, which was full of anonymous doors into exclusive lounges. Qulderi led them towards whichever one Varen had decided Roland could use that night. Once they were let into a nice room lit in purple with a circular conversation couch and a little bar in the corner, the Cathar growled once more.
“Miss Alikos says behave yourself,” he said, casting a predatory look. “And care well for your friend.”
“Oh, I will, of course!”
Once they were alone, Sol reached down and actually took off her shoes, chucking them unceremoniously onto the couch. “Hey, those were expensive!” Roland complained.
“Swift, come in,” she said into her commlink.
“Moving,” he murmured in reply.
“Vos?”
The Jedi replied, and it was obvious that he was speaking to his dejarik opponents while weaving in a message for Sol at the same time. “You sure you don’t wanna call this one, fellas? This is your third checkmate. I’d hate for you to lose friends over it. Let me take you over to the jubilee wheel!” In the background, she faintly heard Fives talking loudly about something or another to, hopefully, Kiran. Though Fives could be regaling more or less anybody at this point, so long as he didn’t talk about being a clone. Between his playful drunkenness and his terrible sabaac skills, he’d made a few new friends.
“Grip?”
“One lock sliced, working on the hard lock,” the medic said. “Cams are looking good. System still all set.”
“Just waitin’ on Swift down here,” Twof chimed in, his impatience evident. The pieces were moving, she thought. If they could just keep moving…
Swift picked up his pace as soon as he passed the first security guards who were coming back up from their posts at the basement entrance, giving them a casual but hurried wave. They assumed he was their relief, which was exactly what he’d banked on, but even so his guts twisted up in knots and stayed there until he passed into the basement level without hearing any more footsteps behind him. When he turned the long and disturbingly quiet passage’s corner, he didn’t see Twofer standing by the massive blast doors. “Oy, vod,” he whispered, frowning.
The weapons specialist dropped down out of the vent above, stopping on his cable just before his feet could plonk onto the ground. “Gimme,” Towfer growled, holding out his hand expectantly. It was hard for the weapons specialist to see the hair on his glove, but his HUD found it soon enough.
“Oh, thank the Maker,” Grip said with a sigh. “Got the DNA data to plug into the soft lock. Nice job, vode.”
“You need us to do anything?” whispered Twof, even though the external speakers on his helmet were silenced and Swift could only hear him through his commlink.
“One of you, hold your hand up to the bio scanner exactly when I tell you to. The other one, get ready to hit the button on the hard lock on my mark.”
Swift nodded at his brother and stepped closer to the bio scanner while Twofer’s hand hovered over the largest button on his side of the doorway. It was seconds, but it felt like a minor eternity that they waited.
“Ah, okay,” said Grip finally. “Bio-scanner… now.”
Swift’s hand moved up, and he didn’t breathe as the scanner blinked, flickered. And then lit up green. He grinned, and started to move his hand. The scanner flickered again.
“Wait! Leave your hand up!” Grip hissed sharply, and the sniper felt all the tension snap back into his body as he froze and then moved his hand back over the scanner. It returned to glowing steadily green.
“You didn’t tell me that part,” he whispered, trying very hard to be both incredibly quiet and also highly accusatory at the same time.
“I didn’t realize until just now. Okay, leave your hand and hit the button. Then leave your hand the whole time the doors are opening, just in case.”
“In case ‘o what?” Twofer murmured.
“I don’t know, a shield? A plasma barrier? I’m just being careful!”
Twofer huffed and smacked the button, and the sound of the doors opening was almost horrifying in the silence. But, it was over quickly, and Swift told himself that the guards were on the other side of the basement level doorway he’d come from. They couldn’t hear it. Probably.
“Gotta go,” said Twofer, almost cheerful as he ducked immediately into the hall. Swift followed him.
“Me first, di’kut! We gotta catch this droid off-guard!”
“I got just the thing fer that, ‘s called a pulse grenade!” the weapons specialist retorted.
“Vode,” Sol’s voice snapped over the commlink.
“I’m doin’ it, Sarge,” Twofer assured her, annoyed but resigned. He wanted to barrel in, Swift was pretty sure, but they had a plan in place for a reason. Twof just hadn’t blown anything up in a pretty long time.
Swift slowed to a perfectly normal walk as they approached the count room. He reached up to open the door with his pilfered key as Twofer ducked around the frame.
The droid looked at him blankly as the door opened into a room full of computers and stacks of chits.
“Time for another count check!” Swift announced cheerfully. A little ball of metal rolled out from between his feet.
“Count check is not until—” But the bright blue bolts of electricity from the pulse grenade cut the droid off, and it crumpled to the floor. A couple of the nearby processors flickered almost angrily as they too were momentarily disrupted, and the feedback on Swift’s security glasses went dark.
“Ah, kriff,” he growled. The beat that it took Twofer to reply as he dashed into the room meant that his commlink was shot, too. But Twofer seemed to realize that when he got no reply, and turned on his external speakers.
“Sarge, we’re in. But Swift’s comm’s dead. Keep us updated on th’ security chatter,” he said.
“Too kriffin’ close to the damn thing,” the sniper complained, already walking over to the vault doors on the other side of the smallish room. He pulled out the key Vos had acquired for him again, and pushed it into the terminal. There was another bioscanner next to it. Another countdown, another soft lock lighting up through Grip’s technical wizardry while the hard lock was activated. It was a little redundant to have the same locking mechanism twice, Swift thought.
Until it didn’t work.
“What! Why?” Swift demanded of the doors.
“DNA code bounced!” Grip said over the comm with exactly the same amount of baffled outrage in his voice. “Kriffin’ hell!”
“Vode,” Sol’s voice came almost chillingly calm. “Security is coming to check the vault. Apparently the computers glitching caught someone’s attention. They think it’s a tech problem but the Cathar wants to be sure.”
Swift looked at his brother’s helmet. They didn’t bother to swear, just took up positions on either side of the open count room door. “Why’d we let Sarge be the one with the tranq?” he complained.
“Ne’johaa, vod,” she said over the comm. “I’m coming your way.”
“Kriffin’ how?” Twofer was incredulous.
“Vent shaft.” Her tone implied it was obvious.
“Oh.”
“Fives, it’s showtime,” she said, and the two former commandos down in the vault looked at each other again.
“I hope that’s a diversion she’s calling for,” Swift murmured.
Sol was crawling barefoot with her skirt tied into a knot around her thighs through the ventilation shaft, praying to whoever was available that Fives managed to distract security long enough for her to help her brothers below. Cursing her need to overprepare for issues on the casino floor since she wouldn’t have her blaster— even though it wasn’t an unreasonable precaution, Roland had said as much. Vos was busy drowning the Neimoidians in a truly suspect number of wins at the jubilee table, but that would take longer for anybody to notice, of course.
“Do not screw this up,” growled Roland into the comm.
“Distract me and see what happens, di’kut. Focus on your job,” she said more than a little curtly. She was starting to realize that she didn’t like being in tight spaces like this at all, and the last time she’d crawled through a tunnel returned to her memory. It had taken her until she’d exited the tunnel on Reishi Moon to realize she’d been keyed up, but this time she was already aware of it. She watched the map on her HUD instead of looking directly at where she was going. It felt like ages that she crawled, but she did see over the comm chatter that Qulderi had been diverted away from his check-up on the basement tech. She didn’t get to take the deep breath of relief about that until she dropped down out of the last vent opening and slipped through the open blast doors.
Inside the count room, she heard her brothers arguing.
“We can’t kill him, remember?” Swift was saying.
“Not even if he ruins th’ whole damn thing by seein’ us?” Twofer replied.
“No! And he has no idea who we are, anyway!”
“Vode,” Sol interrupted, watching both of them jump.
“Maker, vod’ika,” Swift breathed.
“Nearly gave me a heart attack!” said Twofer. Sol smiled and held the two tranquilizer darts she’d pulled off of her thigh strap out towards them. Twofer grabbed them, clearly excited to have an option for dealing with a giant Cathar that the rest of his team approved of. He handed one to Swift.
“Take this, too,” Sol added, reaching into the knot at the front of her dress to pull out the micro-pulse grenade. “In case you need to take something out manually before you exit. I don’t think I’ll be needing it upstairs.”
Swift took it, eyeing her. “You don’t need it?”
“I have a Jedi, you know,” she reminded him. And herself.
“Oh yeah, that’s helpful.”
She raised an eyebrow, then threw a nod at them both and turned back up towards the basement exit again. She didn’t think about how she was crawling back into a vent shaft again. Distantly she heard Twofer say something.
“Bet Kiran’s a happy man tonight. I hope Fives took a holo, ‘cuz Rex deserves to see this!”
“‘Scuse me, my good sir,” Fives said, trying hard to keep the drunken drawl out of his voice. “I didn’t mean to break any rules!”
He was dangling in the air by the scruff of his collar, held there by the massive paw of the big white Cathar, who just growled. Luckily, Kiran was rushing over to his rescue.
“Please, my friend here is just a very enthusiastic fellow,” the big Mirialan was saying imploringly. “He did not mean any harm.”
“That man kicked me in the face!” one of the Neimoidians squealed, his hand plastered to his gaunt cheek theatrically. It was Gunnay, the bad sabaac player and apparently bad dejarik player, too. Fives frowned.
“It was an ACCIDENT!” he shouted back. “I said lemme buy you a drink about it!”
“You cannot possibly have any credits, you have been losing all night!”
“Hey Kiran, can I have money to shut this guy up?” Fives grinned, and the Cathar growled and tightened his grip on his collar.
“Now, Mr. Rayshe'a, settle down,” Kiran replied, his expression a gentle reprimand. “I am certain that while the house would like very much for you to keep losing, the house will not like you disturbing the guests’ activities or their faces, yes?”
“You’re right,” Fives said, deflating. “I’m sorry. I won’t dance on the bar anymore. I promise, Mr. Security, sir.” He looked at the Cathar, who snorted.
“What’s all this?” came the high clear voice of Varen Alikos as she stormed up from wherever she’d been. She looked up at the Cathar. “Qulderi, what’s going on?”
“Just some fun turned unintentionally rough, Miss Varen, I assure you,” Kiran stepped in before Fives could say anything.
“I deserve compensation for my injury!” Gunnay was insisting from a safe distance.
“Mr. Gunnay, please accept my apologies,” Varen said immediately to him. “I will have a medical team check you immediately, and all your drinks are on the house this evening.”
“You see? Someone knows how to conduct business in a civilized fashion around here,” Gunnay sniffed. “Thank you, Miss Alikos. But I must regain my strength after such a blow as well, of course.”
“Your food is also on the house, then,” she replied only a little tightly, making a slight bow. Fives was impressed at her composure.
“You are far too kind, madam.” Gunnay, pleased with himself, marched back in the direction of the jubilee wheel. Which made Fives wonder where the hell Vos had gotten to, since the Jedi was no longer there, but he wasn’t drunk enough to utter every thought he had out loud, at least. Not yet anyway.
“And you,” Varen said, turning to Fives. “Please don’t injure my guests, even accidentally!”
Fives hung his head. “I do mean it when I say I’m sorry, Miss Alikos. I was just dancing, but I was movin’ a little too loose, I reckon. Wasn’t watching where I was going. It won’t happen again.” When she raised a quizzical brow at him, he added, “And I’m switchin’ to water the rest of the night!”
“Alright, then. But this is your only chance, sweetheart,” she said. It was both fond and threatening.
“Thank you, Miss Varen,” Kiran put in with a bow. “My friend here will be on his best behavior.”
“You’ll make sure he is, won’t you, Mr. Kiran?” the young woman replied, blushing, holding out her hand to the big Mirialan. He kissed it most graciously, and she giggled. Damn, but the big guy was smooth, Fives thought.
“Of course, my dear lady.”
Fives was going to add something, but Qulderi dropped him without warning and he landed flat on his backside on the fine carpet. “Ow,” he said eloquently. Varen strode over and petted the top of his head.
“That’s just a reminder, of course,” she told him, all sweetness.
Fives nodded, suddenly rather sober. “I reckon I deserve that.”
When Varen and the big Cathar had strode away, and any of the guests who’d been spectators had lost interest, Fives pushed himself up off the floor. He looked at Kiran and grinned. “How’d I do?”
“Very well, I think,” Kiran chuckled.
“Thanks. Where the hell’s Vos?”
“Right here, buddy,” came the Jedi’s voice from another direction as he walked up towards them. “Was just taking care of some… issues… with my chip card. I think the jubilee wheel’s gained sentience and is trying to sabotage my winnings.” His grin rivaled Fives’, but wasn’t quite as incorrigible as Twofer’s. They laughed.
“Sul kicha,” Kiran murmured into his commlink, “are you clear?”
“Elek,” came her reply. The three men nodded to each other, and walked back towards the casino floor.
“I made a security guard friend, by the way,” said Vos to the big Mirialan. “He wanted to see if Sol could beat you at sabaac by the end of the night.”
At that, Kiran just grinned.
“Grip, what the hell’s the problem?” Twofer barked into his commlink. He was getting anxious waiting on security to show up and blow their job sky high. This was less fun now, he thought.
“I think it needs someone else’s DNA along with Miss Alikos’,” the medic replied. “But it’s not Devaronian DNA. In fact, it’s not humanoid at all.”
Swift’s thinking expression was on his face. “Is it… feline?”
“Maybe. I’m cross-checking. And also blocking the alarm signals from getting past the basement, yanno,” Grip said pointedly. “And seven other things, but don’t mind me!”
“We know yer talented, vod,” Twofer snickered. Grip huffed but otherwise ignored him.
“You’ve got incoming,” said Sol over the comm. That meant the Cathar was coming down the basement hallway at that moment. Swift loaded up his injector with the first tranq and took a position by the door. Twofer bent over to make sure the primary motivator on the droid was disconnected one last time. Which he really did not have time to do.
“Vod!” Swift hissed, but it was too late. Giant clawed footpads crossed the threshold into the count room and took two whole steps before the huge feline had bent over and plucked Twofer up into the air by the back of his flak jacket.
“Oh, kriff,” Twofer swore, his helmet turning upwards towards the Cathar’s face. “You’re a big one, huh?”
In the middle of the Cathar’s rather menacing return growl, a faint hiss sounded. Suddenly his arm went limp, and Twofer crashed to the ground alongside the freshly tranquilized beast. Swift was standing and grinning, empty auto-injector in his hand. “That was the perfect distraction, vod,” he told Twofer cheerfully.
“M’head disagrees,” the weapons specialist growled as he stood up.
Grip interrupted them over the comm. “Hey, you were right! It’s feline DNA!”
“Oh good, I reckon we got some of that right here,” Swift said, and Twofer bent over to pluck a white hair off the Cathar. His HUD sent its scans, and Grip let out a little triumphant whoop.
“Okay, time to unlock this kriffin’ mess!”
The doors were heavy, but not quite as heavy as the last pair as they slid open. The sheer number of chits and blocks of valuable metals inside was enough to make Swift grin from ear to ear. “Kinda see why people get into this as a regular job,” he said.
“No kiddin’!” said Twofer, his glee audible through the helmet. “But— hang on. Is that…”
And then Swift saw it. “Ray shields,” he groaned, watching the faint white lines ripple in front of the piles of credits. “The second we take these out, the alarm’s gonna sound.”
“Not if I keep it contained,” Grip pointed out. “Though that’s a much bigger alarm. It’ll alert the entire security staff. Might still have to stun a couple of guards once I can’t keep it contained anymore, if you don’t make it to the vent in time.”
“How long can you hold it for, you think?”
“About… ten standard minutes. Maybe.”
Twofer groaned, then looked at Swift. “Y’think we can get it all?”
“We’d better!” the sniper replied. Twofer unloaded a collapsed pair of briefcases from his backpack and pulled them open. He pulled out his plasma cutters, and Sol’s micro-pulse grenade. Between those two items, he could take out the power relay on the ray shields.
“Is anybody gonna go get my helmet and my jetpack?” Swift complained as he took one of the briefcases for himself and checked his belt.
“Worry about your job, vod,” Sol chided him over the comm. But he also heard Stone chuckle, and suddenly he was confident that those precious personal effects would be restored to him eventually.
He nodded to Twofer. “Ready when you are,” he said with a deep breath.
“We are almost ready to depart, yes?” Kiran asked Quinlan Vos quietly as they stood on the balcony. Fives was lounging on one of the nearby couches, looking up at the stars. The sound of the ocean nearby was soothing, the casino’s music not so loud out here.
“Well, I’m all done. You both did great. Sol’s actually made friends, sort of, with the security guy at the sabaac table. So when she finishes her game, yeah, I figure it’s time to say goodbye,” the Jedi said. He looked at Kiran sideways for a moment. “What was your job tonight, exactly?”
“To lend you all some credibility,” the big Mirialan chuckled. “And divert attention away from others, of course, along with friend Fives here.”
“I thought it was to make sure I didn’t look like an idiot!” Fives piped up.
“If that were the case then I would have failed indeed!” Kiran outright laughed, and the other two joined him. Just at that moment, the click of heels came across the balcony.
“Well, boys,” said Sol in a tone that was genuinely satisfied. “I think it’s time to get our guns back.”
Kiran turned and smiled his beaming, borderline worshipful smile— which had something of a predacious edge to it as his eyes took in the entirety of her body in its exceptionally alluring dress. He was going to shamelessly beg her to keep the dress, if only for very special occasions. As long as he didn’t push her to keep the shoes too, she might even agree to it.
“Where’s our infamous friend, Mr. Roland?” he asked her.
“Oh, he won’t miss us. He's upstairs in the private gambling room talking to people who are even bigger criminals than he is,” she replied breezily.
“You mean like us?” Vos raised an eyebrow at her. “Because I think this makes us pretty big criminals.”
“Do you regret coming along, Master Vos?” she asked him with a return raised brow.
“Oh, I didn’t say that,” he chuckled. “Dressing up alone was an adventure, and that wasn’t even half the fun!”
Sol’s smirk returned, and with a gesture she beckoned them all back into the casino. They crossed the floor and faintly heard the sound of one of the Neimoidians getting angry at a lugjack machine. Vos chuckled to himself. They carried on towards the bar, then down into the foyer past the coat rooms and the welcome lounge. Approaching the weapons desk, they greeted the same Human guard from before. He actually smiled to see them coming, and they realized that Varen herself was standing just aside from the shielded entrance chatting with him when she turned to see what he was smiling at.
“Honored guests! Are you retiring already?” she asked them, both bright and disappointed at the same time.
“I am afraid we must, dear lady,” said Kiran with a bow of his head. “But only because we have other obligations. I must say, I am already clearing my calendar for a time to come and stay here at Halcyon!” It was almost too easy, to go back to emulating the way he used to speak at court and in the diplomatic duties he’d once had. He wasn’t exceptionally fond of that sort of thing, but he was good at it. This, at least, was more fun.
“Please do!” the Devaronian girl said. She turned her smile onto Fives. “Thank you for enlivening the casino floor tonight, even though you did kick Mr. Gunnay’s head.” Kiran did not detect much regret coming from her about that score, despite her words.
“Thank you for being so forgiving, Miss Alikos!” the clone replied with his own bow. “I didn’t really come to start any brawls, o’ course. Sometimes you just gotta enjoy yourself!”
“I know, Mr. Rayshe'a. That’s why I didn’t have you turned out. I know you weren’t trying to aggress anyone.” She took his hand in a rather polite little gesture, somewhere between what Kiran did when he greeted nobility (or others of status) and a regular handshake. The big Mirialan found himself glancing down at Sol beside him, thinking about how he’d known almost without a doubt that she would have understood and preferred a handshake, when they’d first met. But he’d been compelled to show her a kind of deference at least in that one little way, even then. Seeing her now, he wished he could meet her all over again.
Vos bowed deeply to Varen. “Miss Alikos, this place is truly a marvel,” he said. “I think the ocean view is my favorite part, though, to be honest. You have excellent taste all around.”
“Thank you, Mr. Vos! Come back any time!”
Sol was watching as the Human guard laid all of their weapons out on the counter, but after a moment she seemed to realize it was her turn to speak her own farewell. She turned her one visible golden eye onto the willowy young Devaronian girl.
“You’ve been most accommodating and welcoming, Miss Varen. I’m not one for these pastimes, usually. But I did find this place quite beautiful. May I ask you something?”
Varen smiled. “Of course.”
“Why do you employ so many organic beings? I haven’t seen a single droid here.”
“I believe in creating opportunities for others, Miss Marev. Yes, some say it’s a way to make this place look even more opulent, to pay and house organic staff at such great cost compared to droids. But,” Varen said, her eyes sparkling, “I know what life is like elsewhere in the galaxy. I know for everyone as privileged as I am, there are hundreds of thousands who are much, much less so. I offer those beings a new start, here. I’ve been told I’m an idealist, but to me it seems like the least I can do.”
Sol reached over to pick up her weapons and attach them back to her thigh strap as she listened. The Human guard nodded his head. “Miss Varen gave me a chance,” he piped up. “I used to smuggle spice for the Pykes. Was the only way to feed my daughter and me, in those days. But working for the Pykes is a trap.” He shook his head. “Before long I was on the run. Pretty sure they’d have found us and killed us if we hadn’t ended up here.”
Kiran felt a wave of emotion from Sol that was incredibly strong, for how brief it was. It was some abiding grief, but also a powerful hope.
“Glad you made it out, friend,” said Fives to the guard. “I know some folks who could use that same chance.”
“I’m sure you do, Mr. Rayshe'a,” giggled Varen. “I know you’re a clone. But honestly, I think the other patrons here don’t know. They’ve never even flown over a battlefield, much less gotten close enough to a clone to know what they look or sound like. But I heard that some clones aren’t willing to work for an Empire when they fought for a Republic.” She raised a brow at him. It seemed to imply that she may even have helped a clone through the place already, Kiran thought.
“No ma’am, they certainly aren’t,” Fives replied, his spike of anxiety at being identified soothed immediately by her words.
“Does this mean that you’re willing to help those who are in danger from the Empire?” Sol asked. “Or the Pykes, or the Black Sun, or anyone else?”
“Under certain conditions, yes,” the Devaronian girl nodded. “Of course, I don’t always have an opening in the staff roster. And I have a strict conduct agreement for the beings who work and live here. But, many who stay here for a while get back on their feet and choose to pursue their own path eventually.” She smiled. “So there’s always a possibility.”
Sol nodded that slow Mandalorian nod of hers, a deep respect in it. “I will remember that, Miss Varen. May Halcyon always prosper,” she said. The smile on her face was small, as usual, but it was quite sincere.
“Casinos always prosper, luckily,” Varen said with a grin. “But thank you, regardless, Miss Marev. Wait— where’s Roland?”
“Oh, Mr. Durand wished to remain here to partake of your hospitality,” Kiran said cheerfully. “He is perhaps less constrained by his schedule than we are, at the moment. But we are most grateful to him for bringing us here.”
“Well, he’d better continue to behave,” she said. “Since his guests have set a very high bar. I hope you all come back very soon!”
As the four of them walked out of the grand entrance and down towards the hangar where personal transport vehicles were parked, they were all quiet for a few minutes.
“How did your squad get half a million credits out of the vault anyway?” Fives asked, looking down at Sol where she walked on Kiran’s arm. Her secret little smile returned.
“Very carefully,” she replied.
“Now you sound like a Jedi,” Vos said, his own secret little smile joining hers.
Sol actually laughed. “You managed some excellent covert operations yourself tonight, Master Vos.”
In the distance, the familiar sound of an approaching GAR shuttle came to their ears. Sol smiled as the Titan sailed up towards the landing pad and Stone set it down like a flewt onto a nova lily’s petal. The hatch opened, and Swift hung out and waved at them.
“Hey Vos! We got you a present!” he called out with a grin. “Come ride with us!”
“Present?” He raised one dark brow at Sol.
“We got a little extra cash to start building on Dantooine.” she said. “Not much, but more than we had before.”
“Oho!” The Jedi turned towards the shuttle, grinning.
“In fact,” Kiran said, “why don’t you and Fives both go on the Titan? I would like some time alone with Miss Marev, here.” He smirked down at her, and she raised an eyebrow at him.
“Alright, you two, have a nice ride,” Fives laughed.
Later, when Kiran had made a delicious ruination of that gorgeous black dress and the perfect woman beneath its soft fabric, he laid his head against Sol’s belly where she lounged on his bunk and listened to her breath as it filled her entire torso. It was the breath of someone relieved, someone relaxed. Someone at home.
He had a strange thought. He chose not to hide it from her.
“Did you send that holo Fives took of us all to your Rex?” he asked, not looking up and instead watching his own large hand stroke up and down the soft brown skin of her thigh. The pause before she answered signaled to him that his question was unexpected, but not unwelcome.
“I did. I thought we all looked almost unrecognizable in it,” she said, and he could hear the smile in her voice.
“But very handsome, too, of course.”
“Oh, yes, a very handsome group. No comms from Rex yet but I’m sure he’ll agree.”
“I am certain he would like your dress as much as I did.”
“And a lot more than I ever will.” This time she chuckled faintly, and Kiran lifted his head to look up at her. Two golden suns were resting under her heavy lids, framed by white lashes like wisps of clouds. She looked comfortable, even pleased with their conversation. He felt her hand in his hair, stroking against his scalp. The sensation blossomed out over the rest of him in a tingling wave, sinking him further into the brilliant afterglow of making love to her. Her smile was tender. For this moment, she seemed just to be happy. It was the first time he’d ever seen such a look on her face.
“How could either of us not love you, Sol Tannor,” he said, smiling. “It occurs to me that Rex and I have this in common, after all.”
“You’ve always had some things in common,” she said, her expression falling thoughtful. “You made me think of him in some ways from the start. Which was hard, at first, I admit. But not because of anything you did. That was my own grief.”
“Are you twice as happy now, sul kicha?” he asked. She blushed, closing her eyes, smiling.
“Maybe so.” Her eyes opened again. “I’m still not sure I deserve it.”
“What, to be loved? By as many people as you will welcome into your heart? We would both love you even if you shut one us out, Sol Tannor. It would always be so. But this is rather better, even for me.”
“Uja,” she sighed, and it seemed almost like she was going to push back against his ardent acceptance. Kiran raised an eyebrow at her; he meant what he said. He couldn’t control the feelings of others, and even if he did occasionally feel jealous of Rex when he thought about it too much, the way she seemed to cherish them both made him feel unwilling to ask her to choose. Her face was always, in its resting state, heavy with the sorrows she was born into, and hard as though it were cut from Mandalorian steel to protect her from those sorrows. But in this moment, even as she was looking at him and giving up on whatever argument she’d been thinking of making, she looked at peace. Her brothers and her first love were all finally returned to her, pieces of her closely guarded heart. Now he was among that group, and his own heart ached with the joy of it. And with the grief of missing it for so long in his own life. It was not worth any pang of jealousy to let go of that.
“I do love you, Sol Tannor. But you are aware of this, I am sure,” he said quietly, smiling. She stroked his hair backwards away from his face, meeting his gaze steadily.
“‘Lek. I know, Kiran.” She matched his smile. “Perhaps I should say I’m falling in love with you. It feels like it’s still happening.”
“That is what happens when you do not wait so long to express your feelings, sul kicha,” he purred mischievously. “You can feel love grow whether you are together with your beloved or not! You need not wait after all!” She rolled her eyes and mussed his hair.
“Wayii! Don’t remind me,” she groaned. “Let me enjoy our success, would you?” He stroked her thigh again, nuzzling near her knee, grinning. He splayed one great hand out over her stomach, feeling the soft skin and the resistant muscle there. Her leg shifted, opening her thighs a little more, and the heady scent of her filled his nose. He took a long, indulgent inhale.
“How did your brothers make off with five hundred thousand credits, then?” he asked, murmuring the words into the inside of her thigh.
“They didn’t. They only took twenty-eight thousand,” she replied, moving her leg against him in a gentle stroke. He paused for a moment, looking up at her through his eyebrows, curious in spite of his distraction.
“And what of Roland Durand?”
“Oh, he’ll get his money. Don’t worry.” Her extremely confident smirk sent a throb straight to his cock. The hand on her stomach moved to gently push her legs a little further apart. Then he placed it between them and stroked ever so gently against the flesh there, already wet and tender from the first round of their lovemaking. She groaned softly.
“So we have not made enemies of the Durand family today?” he asked, smirking. Watching her ignite beneath him, bite her lip.
“No, n-not today,” she stammered. Her hips were moving now, pressing herself into his touch. She let out a gasp when he slid two fingers inside her.
“That is good, then, Sol Tannor.”
Roland Durand had had a hell of a night. He was in his VIP lounge all alone, fuming.
“I can’t believe those tacky little miscreants left me here!” he complained loudly to Ruby, going over to the mini bar to pour himself a drink. It had taken him some time to realize that his comm had gone silent, as he’d gotten adept very quickly at ignoring it. He knew that was his own fault, but he didn’t care. Once he returned to Devaron, everything would be his own fault. He knocked back one shot of Corellian brandy, poured another, knocked it back too. Poured a third, but then he remembered being thrown out by a certain large white Cathar, and thought better of it. Instead, he considered going to mope down at the craps table, or something.
At that moment, a knock came to the door. Raising an eyebrow, he went over to open it.
“Mr. Durand,” said the voice of a large Chagrian security guard who stood stiffly in the hall. “The lady of the house wants you downstairs in the casino hall.”
Roland felt his whole body stiffen, dread settling into his stomach. He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was about to get kicked out again, and this time he might end up in a police shuttle as well. Maybe that was better than being shot or dropped in a pit like his mother would have done. But maybe it wasn’t, considering how many crimes he’d committed in his life thus far. Perhaps Miss Alikos would spare him if he agreed to cooperate and locate his co-conspirators. Put out bounties, maybe, assuming someone was willing to bankroll that. His mother wouldn’t be, that much he was sure of. She would tell him this was entirely his problem, and entirely his responsibility to deal with the consequences.
“Sir?” The Chagrian asked, and Roland realized his mind had been racing so badly he’d forgotten to respond.
“Ah, yes, my apologies. I will be down in just a moment.”
“Sir, she wants you to come now.” The finality in his tone was one Roland recognized, one that said there was no way out of a situation without actually saying it. Swallowing hard, he nodded.
“Yes, well, alright then.” So he picked up Ruby and stepped into the hall, glancing back into the nice little VIP room in farewell.
When they arrived in the casino, though, what he saw was completely unexpected. Qulderi was baring his teeth at two Neimoidians who were cowering down halfway under one of the sabaac tables. They were loudly protesting something. Equally as intimidating despite her much smaller stature was Varen Alikos standing next to the Cathar, both her hands on her hips.
“The nerve of you, Mr. Gunnay! We have very clear evidence that you were the one tampering with the machines! Stealing other guests’ winnings! I can’t believe you’d stoop to such lows!” she berated one of them in her high, sharp voice.
“Miss Alikos, please—”
She rounded on the one who was not Gunnay as he spoke. “Don’t start, Mr. Quarnom! You were complicit, your account says as much! What other crimes were you part of tonight, hm? You might as well confess now, because we’ll find out either way and that will just be more charges brought against you!”
“Please! Miss Alikos, I did nothing you have accused me of!” Gunnay whined from beneath the table. “Call off your security, please! I will show you myself that I am innocent!”
“Oh, I don’t need you to show me anything,” Varen snapped. “I’ve already seen the data. I’ve already seen how you tampered with my security cameras. There is so much evidence you might as well confess! Now get up and try to look dignified for the police when they arrive to cart you off to a holding cell!”
Before they could issue another proclamation of innocence, Qulderi let out a snarl. “If you do not, I will take you to them in a less dignified manner,” he said, his voice a terrifying growl. The Neimoidians gave faint shrieks of terror and immediately stood up, shoulders hunched, hands raised as though to placate the massive creature, burbling and whimpering their acquiescence. Qulderi gave them both a motivating shove towards the nearest security room, and half a dozen of the other guards followed them.
Varen let out a frustrated noise, dropping her hands to her sides dramatically. But when she turned to Roland, her face lost its scowl. “Mr. Durand! I am so sorry those horrible beings did this!”
“Did what?” he asked, profoundly confused, clutching Ruby to his chest. “What’s going on?”
“I guess you haven’t checked your chip card recently,” said Varen. “Our computers showed a strange pattern in the system that kept repeating itself, flagging funds for transfer that weren’t connected to any of the machines or bets. At first it looked like you were just losing bets to Mr. Gunnay and Mr. Quarnom, but then the transfers started to appear regularly, as though they were scheduled. I guess they were hoping we wouldn’t notice in between all the other more random transactions, or something, but one of my techs flagged it anyway. We saw a glitch in the system downstairs at the vault, and then shortly after we found poor Mr. Qulderi tranquilized in the count room!”
“Oh my goodness!” said Roland, and it wasn’t even feigned. He was shocked. “What do you think the vault thing was about?” he added somewhat nervously.
“My guess is they hired someone to break in as a distraction from the real theft, and possibly to pay the thieves their fee out of the house’s pocket instead of their own. You see, whoever was downstairs only took twenty-eight thousand credits. Which is cracknuts compared to what they were pilfering off of the other guests. Especially you, Roland.” She turned her apologetic face towards the nearest chip card reader. “Feel free to check your balance at any time, and look over the transaction history. If anything looks amiss, just let me know, but we’ve returned all the funds from their account that seem to have been siphoned off of yours.”
“Oh, thank you Miss Alikos, that’s so very kind of you.” Roland was a little baffled, and tried not to let it show on his face. “I’ll go and check in just a moment. But you look like you could use a drink!”
Varen smiled tightly. “Oh, I could. But I have to go speak to the police about all this, and settle up the whole affair, and make sure nothing else was moved illegally to their accounts. This is why I instated the chip card system, you know,” she said with a cluck and a shake of her head. “Anyway, I’ll come check on you later. Please, enjoy your drinks on the house tonight.”
As she hurried off towards the security room where the Neimoidians had been taken, Roland turned with very great interest towards the chip card reader that was on the wall nearby. Most of the guests at Halcyon were so grotesquely rich they rarely felt it was necessary to check the balances on their cards, unless they had been losing so profoundly that their bank put a hold on the card and they came up too short to bet, of course. Which was embarrassing, Roland knew from personal experience. But this scenario was so completely bizarre that he absolutely didn’t care at all if it made him look a certain way to the other guests. Something was very much wrong here, and he couldn’t help but wonder just how much of his own heist he had missed. Had they kept him in the dark on purpose? Had they framed the Neimoidians? That would be nothing short of genius, he thought. Even if they’d insulted him by leaving him out of the plan, they’d also made it that much easier to make sure he appeared innocent. His head spun trying to connect the dots. He tried tapping and whispering into his commlink, just to see, but nobody responded.
So he pulled out his card and slid it into the reader, and the screen flashed briefly while it connected to his account. When he saw the number there, issued as a transfer made by the house to cover ‘damages from fraudulent parties’, he grinned from ear to ear.
It was five hundred thousand credits.
“You brilliant bastards,” he murmured to himself. Then, he saw beneath it another transaction, a charge of twenty-eight thousand credits. There was a secure note attached, so he scanned his fingerprint and opened it.
Payment, plus tip.
He frowned, slightly surly that they’d taken away their payment from his account when they could just as easily have taken it from the house and left him with extra. But, he’d already been expecting to lose some of it to their payout anyway, and he found himself unwilling to take umbrage considering the way they’d covered his ass so smoothly. So instead he approved the transaction report and walked over to the bar, petting his beloved lizard and smirking smugly.
“Mother will be so proud, won’t she, Ruby?”
Notes:
i hope you enjoyed the heist!!!
Chapter Text
Rex’s XS stock light freighter, en route to Dantooine
Rex had spent the whole trip from Batonn staving off his nerves by pretending he was going to visit the Bad Batch on Pabu. After everything that had happened lately, he’d actually been thinking about it. A nice time relaxing on a beach was so foreign a concept to him that he’d started to enjoy imagining it, but his imaginings always took a turn for something dramatic. Rescuing a canoe before the onset of a storm, or catching the biggest and most ornery saw-toothed fish on the planet, or something like that. He knew the whole point of going to Pabu would be to, ideally, do nothing dramatic, and part of him actually wanted to try it for a change. But he was still working on salvaging the clone network, and he’d finally thrown in the towel and commed Mereel Skirata and the Nulls on Mandalore after the monastery on Teth got blown up. Clones needed each other more than they needed factions based on personal relationships right now. It was Sol’s insistence that the Mandalorians would have been stronger if they’d refused to fragment that inspired him.
To be fair, he’d gotten an injection that was supposed to stop his accelerated aging out of it. And now that the homestead on Mandalore was accepting a trickle of clones through it as a gateway into the larger network, he didn’t have to scramble to find a new HQ. So it was the perfect time for a vacation, really.
If he’d known how to relax, he might even have tried it. But instead he was running a shipment of durasteel and patch cabling to Dantooine, so that Sol’s other lover could use it to boost his ship’s performance before a race that was supposed to be extremely dangerous, with a reward three times Sol’s bounty if he won. Which was such a lunatic notion he almost respected it for its sheer audacity. But that wasn’t what was making him nervous, not really. He hoped that his little surprise would make Sol happy, since this had been important to her. He also missed her and was looking forward to seeing her. Eyes drifting over to the holoimage she’d sent him before they’d gone in on their casino heist, he sighed.
“Sarge always did clean up nice,” came Cody’s voice as he walked up into the cockpit and sat down heavily in the co-pilot’s chair. He eyed the holo. “Actually, Fives looks sharp, too. Never thought I’d see that.”
“They all look amazing, really,” Rex replied, nodding faintly, still staring at the picture. “You heard how they pulled off that caper?”
Cody chuckled. “Kind of genius, actually,” he said. “I hope to hear more of the story once we arrive, that’s for sure.”
Rex’s eyes drifted across the holoimage from Sol to Fives, then to Quinlan Vos who he didn’t know well, and finally settled on the tall Mirialan who he didn’t know at all. Standing next to Sol he looked massive, but then again, everyone looked massive next to her. And he cut a dashing figure in his brocade and sash and incredibly long dark hair and a pleasant smirk on his face. Damn him, Rex thought. He was handsome. Meanwhile Rex looked like six million other men. The pang of inadequacy hit him even though he knew it was irrational.
“That’s the Kiran fella, right?” Cody asked, as though reading his mind. Rex nodded, taking a deep breath. “Huh. He cleans up nice, too. Actually looks like he belongs in those fancy clothes. You nervous?”
“Of course I’m nervous, ori’vod.” Rex frowned as Cody chuckled. “I mean, look at him! He’s…” But the words failed him and he just gestured at the holoimage in frustration.
“Kinda reminds me of someone else you used to know. Mostly just the big shoulders and the smirk, though. Everything else is completely different.”
The side-eye Rex threw at his brother was ever so faintly touched with embarrassment, though he refused to admit it to himself. Farrow had indeed had big shoulders and a smirk, the smirk in particular being what had made Rex so flustered when they met. But that really was where the similarities ended. The longer he looked annoyed, the more Cody chuckled.
“Ne’johaa, ori’vod,” Rex grumbled. That seemed to make Cody guffaw.
“You sound just like Sol!” the former marshal commander laughed. “Except she looks like she really will kill you, when she’s grumpy. Was that what attracted you to her, kih’vod?”
“Will you actually shut up, you moof-milker?”
“Oh, he’s mad! Sorry, brother, you’re just an easy target sometimes!”
Rex grumbled to himself, turning the holoimage off. “Actually what attracted me to Sol was how good she was at kicking my shebs, ” he said, giving up on being stoic. “Well, that and she’s kriffin’ gorgeous, I reckon.”
“Yeah, well,” Cody said as he finally began to stop laughing. “That’s more than fair enough if you ask me. That and she already had eyes for you, which does help the matter along.”
“Eventually,” Rex said with a tiny chuckle at his own expense. “It was her first time being with anybody, so she gets a pass. I had no excuse.”
“Ah, who cares anyway?” Cody said, waving him off. “You figured it out. Now you’ve got a different problem.”
“Do I?” Rex’s face was showing his nervousness, but he couldn’t help it.
Cody shook his head, his grin returning. “Maybe that’s too harsh. It doesn’t have to be a problem unless someone else makes it a problem, right?”
“Right.” The former captain gazed out into the white light of hyperspace, giving up on pretending he was going to exit above the beautiful ocean of Pabu in the next two standard minutes. Knowing it was time to muster his courage in a setting other than a battlefield or a firefight, which was much harder than he expected. But having Cody there did help, even if he did get made fun of in the process. It seemed an age before the navigational control blinked and Cody leaned forward and pulled back the lever that would drop them out into realspace. Then the green of Dantooine appeared below.
“Time to go!” said Cody cheerfully, and Rex took the controls with a determined brow. He eased them down into atmo, and then down towards the landing coordinates, and then to a space of green-brown grass away from the blba trees that dotted the rocky heath. Eased his anxious guts back onto solid ground. It was already evening, planetside.
The hatch opened, and he could hear the sounds of people assembling duraplast huts nearby. He heard some children laughing more distantly, and he also heard the tinny sound of a soldering iron coming from another direction. Probably from the HWK-290, of course. He stood up and went over to open the cargo hatch. Cody just walked down onto the grass and shouted out a greeting, ignoring the shipment for the moment. A chorus of clone-voices responded, and then a woman’s voice he knew like he knew his own heartbeat. He peered around the corner towards the exit hatch.
“Cody!” Sol called, running up and clapping her arm around the older clone. “I didn’t know you were the one delivering!”
“Well, we brought a couple of surprises,” Cody replied, and Rex could hear his grin even though he was facing the other way. That was more or less his cue, he figured. He stepped down onto the hatchway and out into the cool Dantooine sun.
Sol looked at him, and her face lit up for just a second. And then, it fell. She looked confused, and not quite happy. “You— you didn’t tell me you were coming,” she said, but she walked quickly over to him anyway. Rex could feel the blood pumping through him suddenly.
“I thought it might be a nice surprise, cyar’ika,” he said to her in a quiet voice, and when he held out his hands she took them both in her own.
“Well, it’s very good to see you,” she said, a momentary smile flashing over her face. “But… I thought…” Her eyes flicked over to the golden gleam of the HWK-290 nearby.
“I, uh, decided to do what you asked,” he said, trying to smile awkwardly. “I wanted to see you, and I figured I might as well meet Kiran, too.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Oh,” she said softly, her expression hard to read. Rex wanted to kick himself. “Well, I’m… I guess I wasn’t expecting that,” she managed after a moment. “Not that I’m angry, of course, I just…”
“I’m sorry, I should’ve told you,” he muttered, squeezing her hands in his. “I just thought…”
“It’s okay, cyare.” She seemed to take pity on him in that moment, reaching up to touch his cheek. A smile that wasn’t entirely bright but was still genuine came over her face. “I… well, I can introduce you, if you want. He did say he’d be willing to meet you. Let me go make sure he’s not in the middle of something he can’t stop for a moment.”
“Alright, Sol,” he nodded, a little relieved by that news. “I’ll just wait here, yeah?”
She nodded, and turned to walk back to the HWK-290 and its open cargo hatch. Fives was the one who sidled up to him as he stood there like a cadet waiting to hear if he’d passed a drill or not. “You didn’t tell her you were coming?” asked Fives, incredulous.
“I was trying to surprise her,” Rex murmured.
“Captain, you oughta know not to surprise Sol,” Fives chastised him gently, trying not to snicker and failing. “Even a ‘pleasant’ surprise. I mean, really.”
“Yeah, I’m realizing that now, vod, thank you.” Rex crossed his arms over his chest somewhat defensively. He knew she’d been okay with other surprises, like when Cronos Squad got their own attack shuttle that he’d put in the word for. And she’d never be upset about being gifted a new weapon, either. Of course, in retrospect, it was obvious that this wasn’t exactly the same thing.
He noticed that Fives had gotten distracted by Cody, and they were heading over to his little freighter to unload the supplies he’d brought. It would be polite of him to do the same, and distract him for a few seconds from his anxiousness, but before he could, Sol reappeared around the aft end of the HWK-290 and its open cargo hatch. She waved him towards her. Swallowing and taking a breath, he followed.
Around the other side of the ship, Kiran was on one knee by the wing. These models were light and fast because their ion engines and even parts of the hyperdrive were inside the wings themselves, rather than bulking out the body of the ship’s fuselage. Whatever he was modifying, it was with a long, bright soldering iron and a dark green mask covering his face, his hair tied roughly in a knot behind his head. Sol stood behind him patiently, Rex just behind her watching. Two panels of the wing’s hull were removed, but the insides being worked on might as well have been a pile of snakes for all he knew about ships and their gut wirings.
“Aha!” the big Mirialan said triumphantly, pulling the iron away and gently setting it on a patch of tarp by his knee where other tools laid by. He pulled off his work gloves and added them to the tarp, then pulled the soldering mask off his head as he stood to his full height and turned around to face them. His eyes went straight to Sol. “Once it cools, I will test the transfer speed. Now, what is it you wanted to show me, then, Sol Tannor?” he asked with a smile that still held onto a little of the smug satisfaction of completing his task, dropping his mask to the ground and rubbing his wrist.
“Uja,” she replied, voice uncharacteristically quiet, “I want you to meet Rex.” She turned and gestured towards the former captain where he stood. Mild shock passed ever so briefly over Kiran’s face before his eyes followed and landed on Rex.
“Oho, well this is a surprise!” he said cheerfully. If he was in any way unhappy, it didn’t show at all. Just a pleasant smile that quirked into a broad smirk over his tattooed cheeks. He stepped forward and offered his hand. “It is good to finally meet you, sir!”
Rex had already been standing straight with his feet slightly apart, the natural stance of someone asserting their own presence. At first it had been instinctive, but as the larger man approached he felt compelled to make himself even more sturdy, his muscles tightening in something that felt almost like defiance. Kiran wasn’t just tall, he was huge; the ripple of muscles across his shoulders and chest was apparent despite the layer of softness laid over them. He was solid, stocky, even moreso than Stone. When Rex stuck out his own hand to accept the shake, he fully expected the strength of the grasp and matched it with his own.
“Good to meet you as well, Mr. Uli’mar,” he said, and he tried to sound brotherly, or at least like a comrade. Like he was greeting a fellow soldier.
“Oh please, friend,” the big Mirialan said, “just Kiran. There is no need for formalities.”
“Call me Rex, then,” he replied. For some reason they were still shaking hands, and neither of them had loosened the powerful strength of their grip. Rex wasn’t sure if it was slightly adversarial or not. He pulled away and gestured to Sol, who had come up on his right. “Sol here speaks highly of you,” he added.
“I am sure if she speaks highly of me, then she speaks even more highly of you,” Kiran said, still smirking, reaching up to pull his hair out of its knot. It fell down in a slightly ruffled cascade of chocolate brown, all the way to his mid-torso. “The two of you have been through a great deal together during the war, I am told.”
“We’ve saved one another’s shebs a few times.” Rex grinned faintly at Sol, who smiled knowingly back. That encouraged him. “Nothing like fighting side by side for getting to know somebody.”
“I agree wholeheartedly!” Kiran chuckled. “We have had our fair share of precarious entanglements, despite the war’s supposed end.”
“‘Supposed’ is right,” Rex said in a low voice. “Putting down so-called insurrections of people who didn’t sign up to be part of an empire seems enough like a war to me.”
“Then it is good you are here to help us with this safehouse. We will have a reserve of funds once this race is over, and your brothers are welcome here.”
“That’s good to hear, since Hemlock’s men just recently destroyed our outpost on Teth.”
“Destroyed?” Sol piped up, looking at him with concern. “Is everyone alright?”
“Not everyone made it out, cyar’ika,” he told her, a pang of sadness and regret washing over him. “Cody’s with us, and Howzer and Gregor made it, but that’s all.”
Sol’s face fell, and she put her hand on his arm. “I’m sorry, cyare,” she said quietly. “How’d they find you?”
“We had one of their black ops agents in custody, but apparently they could track him. They were looking for Omega.”
“Is that friend Omega, whom we met at Safa Toma?” Kiran asked, a wrinkle forming in his brow. “Is she safe?”
“Omega and the rest of the Batch are safe on Pabu. They managed to take Tantiss down, the base where clones were being experimented on,” said Rex, and his anger about that crept into his voice. “The Empire might have given up on that program, but we lost good men to it anyway, and Tech.”
“Tech? That is most unfortunate.” The big Mirialan did look sad at this news, and Rex was surprised that the Batchers appeared to have bumped into him and Sol at some point, wherever Safa Toma was. He was also slightly annoyed that he never heard about it, but maybe that was his own fault for not asking. It was Echo and Cody who’d found out about her bounty, after all, not the other mutant clones.
“I think we’re lucky it wasn’t more.” Rex shook his head; it didn’t make him feel better to point out such things, but he did it anyway. His men always seemed to appreciate it, before.
“I am relieved at least that friend Omega is safe. She is too young to have to suffer such things.”
“She’s been through a lot, but she’s a clone. She’s tough,” replied Rex with a faint grin.
“Indeed,” said Kiran. A moment of awkward silence fell over the three of them, until Sol glanced at her vambrace chrono.
“It’s almost time for supper,” she told them, her face seeming mostly calm. “Let’s go and help them set up.” She turned towards the nearby line of blba trees and the in-progress shelters there.
“Of course—”
“Sounds good—”
Rex and Kiran replied to her at the same moment, then both stopped and looked at one another. “Sorry,” Rex muttered, and followed Sol quickly. But the other man was alongside him, tying half his hair up behind his head and out of his face. He had very good cheekbones, thought Rex. Then he frowned to himself, looking pointedly ahead.
They didn’t have furniture of any kind yet, just materials for outer walls and roofs that would keep out the rain and some dry storage containers. Someone had been cooking bloodroot over a little fire, and there were ration packs and several containers of startlingly clear and cold water. Grip said it came from inside the nearby caves where the Force-sensitive children had been sheltering, along with some small fish that were already grilled up in a crispy pile on a large plate. They laid everything out on a long slab of duracrete on the ground, and apparently whatever the refugee Jedi had been able to bring with them, they’d brought, including serving-ware and spoons. Rex greeted the other members of Cronos Squad cheerfully, along with Quinlan Vos and a young Togruta Jedi named Elisara, who had apparently taken refuge after the Order on this planet in a different cave system farther away that was full of kinrath. Which seemed like a very Jedi thing to do. Once the story of his base on Teth had been relayed to those present, he got to fall silent awhile and listen to the updates from everyone else that he and Cody hadn’t heard yet.
Partly through the meal, Sol finished her bowl of food and then asked Vos for another bowl. She filled it, then rose from her seat between himself and Kiran.
“I’ll be back,” she said with a nod, and then she walked off away from the trees towards the hilly rise nearby. Rex, confused, looked around as if to ask what he was missing.
“She’s goin’ to the cave,” Twofer told him.
“Master Windu doesn’t come out for every meal,” Grip added. “He’s not in good shape.”
“General Windu’s alive?” Cody said, souunding more shocked than Rex was. “I heard he fell out of the Senate building!”
“He did,” said Vos quietly. Beside him, Elisara looked uncomfortable, worried. “But he survived, and he’s hiding with us, now.”
“Well, I’d like to see him sometime, if he’s up to it.” Cody’s face was both concerned and a little guilty. “I… wish I’d known.”
“You wouldn’t have been much help until after you left, Codes,” Rex reminded him, and of course he was referring to the chip that hadn’t been removed yet while he was still headquartered on Coruscant. “We can probably help him more now than we could’ve before.”
“Right.” But the older clone didn’t seem relieved.
“You’re a good clone, right?” came the voice of a very young Rhodian boy from across the table.
“Orrti!” Elisara shushed him.
“No, it’s alright,” Rex said, waving her off. “He’s right. There’s good clones, and there’s clones that are still dangerous. It’s not their fault, and we can help them if they let us. But no matter what, we won’t let the dangerous ones come here, alright?” He looked at the boy, Orrti, and smiled reassuringly. Orrti nodded back, seeming grateful but too chastened by the reprimand to ask more questions. On his left, Kiran shifted where he sat, and the air between them where Sol had been sitting suddenly seemed extra empty. Sol had been surprisingly good with the children as they’d been helping set up, he thought. Kiran was also good with them, though much more playful. He’d probably gotten along swimmingly with Omega. Rex wondered to himself why he kept thinking all these things that shouldn’t bother him. He looked down at his empty bowl for a moment, then stacked it inside Sol’s empty bowl.
“Okay, so I really need to hear more about this casino business,” Cody said, eyes glancing between everyone there who’d been part of the caper.
“Let’s get the kids ready for bed, first,” Quinlan Vos said with his ever-present cheerful smirk. A chorus of complaints went up from the younglings. “You’ve already heard this story!” he said to them, reaching out to gather up empty bowls nearby him on the slab.
“But we wanna hear it again!” insisted Orrti, who was clearly a leader among the lot. Several of the others echoed him with yeah and again!
“Aw, let’s let ‘em listen,” Twofer chimed in, grinning at Orrti, who grinned back. It did not surprise Rex one bit that Twofer was an enabler. Elisara rolled her eyes, but she also smiled broadly.
“It is a good story, Master Vos,” she said to the other Jedi. Vos threw up his hands in defeat.
“Fine, fine, but you have to clear the table extra fast when it’s over!”
At this, the children cheered.
Later, when the most kid-friendly version of the story possible had been relayed with much reenactment and giggling and amazement, and Elisara had taken the children off to the caves, the remaining adults all started in on scrubbing and drying the serving-ware and cooking gear. The fire nearby had a fresh lump of wood on it. The sun was falling past the horizon, and Stone was going around lighting the camp lanterns around the partially-built huts and the ships nearby. The others had paired off awfully quickly, he thought, leaving him to work with the big Mirialan. Whether he thought they were trying to help him or antagonize him by doing so depended on how much anxiety he felt at a given moment. He decided to distract himself.
“I still can’t believe you took all that money off a couple of Neimoidians,” Rex chuckled as he took a dish from Kiran and rubbed a scrap of towel over it.
“Pretty sure they deserved it,” Swift said. “Couple of Trade Federation scugholes.”
“Certainly they deserved it more than the casino did, as we learned,” added Kiran. “Apparently, the owners employ organic beings as a way to offer them a chance at a new life. I think we would do well to remain in contact, since I am told that some Jedi and clones are in need of new identities.”
“Anyone who doesn’t want to stay in a safehouse, pretty much,” Vos said. “To have something like their own life.” His demeanor was actually rather darkly sad, then, which was striking on a man who always looked for an excuse to grin.
“Some of them would rather be helping. Just like some clones would,” Rex pointed out. “For some of us, that’s the only life we can imagine.”
“Talkin’ about yourself, Rex old boy?” Swift said with a smile. The former captain just grinned.
“We all help the best way we can,” said Fives as he tried to scratch a stubborn bit of food off a bowl with his fingernail. “Like the big fella here, he’s gonna win us a whole buncha credits! Imagine how much we can help out, then!”
“You really think you’ll win?” Rex couldn’t help but ask. He raised a brow at Kiran who just smirked broadly in response.
“Oh, I most certainly will,” he replied. His confidence was as solid as he was.
“How can you be sure? Are you gonna cheat?”
“Now, friend, I could never stoop to such lows!” Kiran chuckled. “It would be worth it for such a worthy cause, but someone other than I would have to do it. It’s just not in my nature. I plan to win by skill alone.”
“And maybe a little help from your friends,” put in Swift slyly.
“Now, now, friend Swift. I have already asked not to have any sneaking around done for my sake. I have placed third in this race before, and I have had time to improve since then. I believe I will be victorious this time.”
Rex couldn’t help but find his calm self-assurance a little irritating. “But what if you don’t? Do you have some kind of backup plan?”
“My friend, I do not win races by fretting over losing them,” Kiran replied, and there was just the slightest edge in his voice. He stuck out another wet bowl towards Rex to dry off. “It’s not the same as a battle strategy. There is preparation and skill involved, of course, but it is single-minded determination as much as those things which propel one forward to the finish line.”
“Bein’ too stubborn to lose, he means,” snickered Towfer.
“Well sure, I’m just saying that if you do happen to lose, we’ll still need to find enough credits to make this place a real base,” Rex pointed out, rubbing the water off the bowl with gusto. “We’re starting from scratch, here. I just think it’s wise to not put all our hopes on one race.” He ignored the fact that Cody was raising an eyebrow at him.
“Um, the race is in three standard days,” Grip pointed out. “So we’ll find out pretty quickly whether or not we need to worry about that.”
“Three standard days? How long do you need to make the rest of your modifications?” Rex asked, holding his hand out impatiently for another dish.
“Only about thirty-six standard hours.” Kiran was half-throwing another bowl at him.
“How long’s the jump to the start of the race?”
“Twenty-eight standard hours. Which leaves eight hours of time to spare.”
“That’s not much time, though!”
“My friend, there is nothing to be concerned about!”
“I guess I’ll have to take your word for it!”
“Is something wrong?” came a voice from behind them, and they turned to see Sol returning from the caves with an empty bowl.
“Not at all—!”
“No—!”
Once again, Rex and Kiran spoke at the same time, glancing at each other with the slightest of frowns. It occurred to Rex that his heart rate was slightly elevated, and they might have been moving their dishes around a little more loudly than necessary. Sol raised one white eyebrow at them.
“Vod’ika!” said Fives with almost too much cheer, standing up and taking the bowl from her before either of them could reach for it. “How’s our old general holding up?”
“Much the same,” she replied, expression turning unreadable. “The children are mostly asleep. Elisara is keeping watch over the cave entrance.” She went over to the pile of dry dishes beside Rex, picked them up, went over to Swift to do the same.
“We’re gonna finish this last hut before lights out,” the sniper told her, gesturing over towards the hut in question. “You think we need to knock out one more today?”
“If we do, the children can move into them tomorrow,” Vos pointed out. “And much as I trust Ellie’s sense of the kinrath, I think some of them would sleep better out here. They still have active imaginations.” He grinned.
“If we do it all together, we can do it tonight. Except you, uja,” she said, looking at Kiran. “You need to keep working on the Iviin’yc.”
“Yes, as Rex here was just reminding me.” The edge was gone out of his voice, but Rex side-eyed the big Mirialan anyway, and pretended not to hear Twofer’s faint snort.
“I’d be happy to help with the building,” Rex said to Sol. She smiled at him, and he felt strangely triumphant.
“Of course, cyare. And you too, Cody,” she added, grinning at the older clone.
“If I’m getting volunteered, I get to pick the song we sing while we work!” Cody chuckled. He picked up his own stack of dried dishes and got up, walking over with Sol to put them away in the storage container.
“You want me to sing you another lullaby?” she joked.
“Maker save us, never again!” He laughed, and she jabbed him in the side with her elbow. Rex snorted to himself, shaking his head.
“Sarge can sing?” asked Grip, searching his bucket of water to be sure he hadn’t forgotten any spoons.
“Apparently not lullabies. Cody thinks it’s a Mandalorian thing,” he replied. “When we were stranded on Boz Pity and Codes was halfway to dead, she used to go visit him in the med tent. I personally didn’t think she sounded that bad, the one time I caught her singing, but he said she’d better stick to war songs.”
Twofer grinned. “Yer biased, Cap’n.”
“Probably.” He looked over at Kiran, who was looking his last bowl over rather closely. His expression seemed to be carefully neutral. Rex felt a little embarrassed about the way Sol had caught them… had they been arguing? Close enough, he reckoned. “Time to dump the water?” he asked the big Mirialan, as something of a peace offering.
Kiran looked up at him, and Rex noticed that his eyes were a gold color in the light from the lanterns and the nearby fire. Like Sol’s but much more pale, like the mid-morning sun through a haze of thin white cloud on an icy planet. For a moment, their expression was unclear. But then he broke into a smile, rather than a smirk.
“Yes, I think so,” he said, standing up and hauling the bucket with him. Rex bent over to pick up another one, and they walked together out towards a patch of blba trees that was downhill, away from the huts and the caves. The silence between them was only a little awkward, which was better than he’d expected.
“Listen, I’m not trying to give you dush over the race,” Rex said eventually. “I’m just used to having at least one backup plan for pretty much everything, if not more, and none of them did me any good when the Empire came to Teth.”
“Please, my friend, there is no need to apologize,” said Kiran, and he seemed to mean it. “I am sorry for what happened to your base, and your brothers there. I know how difficult it is to lose such important parts of one’s life.” He stopped, as they were just barely too far away from camp to be able to see much, and dumped out his bucket unceremoniously. The stars winked overhead, but no moon was out to light their way.
“Sol said you used to be planetary defense?” asked Rex tentatively, turning out his own bucket.
“Indeed.” Kiran fell quiet for just a moment, and it seemed like something unrelated to any of this was on his mind. But then he turned and waved to Rex to follow him, empty tub in one hand. “On Mirial there has been a kind of war going between my family’s House and that of a nearby province for almost a thousand years,” he said.
“Maker,” Rex murmured. “That’s a long time.”
“Yes. Of course, there have been long spells of apparent peace, but always our enemy schemed in the dark. Always these peaceful times would come to abrupt and bloody ends. The Laeki Guard of House Uli’mar were formed long ago to protect our people against such attacks, and we have certainly mitigated them. But there is only one way to truly stop them, I fear.”
Rex raised an eyebrow, trying to watch Kiran’s face in the slowly growing light from the approaching lanterns. “You think your people should invade? Take out their leaders?”
“Something like that. My father was considering it. I pushed for it, when I was much younger. More brash, more reckless. My beloved at the time, Jeren, she was a great warrior as well. Together, with my sister and our best lieutenants, I thought for certain we could end House Tioei in one fell swoop. And perhaps we could, but my father chose other routes to try and weaken them from within.” He paused for a moment, and shook his head. “We lost outposts, in the meanwhile. We lost warriors, we pushed back against their challenging our borders more than once, and still we waited. When the opening finally came, and we confronted the most powerful of our enemies, it was Jeren who took the blow meant to kill me. We were driven back, and I knew that there was something more terrible at work there in that place than just ancestral malice. Something we had failed to truly confront.”
“So you left?” asked Rex.
Kiran looked weary. “I could no longer stand the feeling of losing, and losing, and losing again. Losing those I cared for, those under my charge. For a war that still goes on fruitlessly, because there’s something that drives our enemy to do deeds that the honor of my House could not bear. Some darkness that we cannot meet, without losing our souls in the process, maybe. But starship racing,” he said, turning to grin faintly at Rex, “allows me to focus as I once did on the battlefield. On one objective only, though I must navigate the path to that goal. I think that is how I have been surviving since then, and perhaps Sol feels similarly. One objective at a time.”
Rex was quiet as they approached the camp, seeing that someone else had emptied the other two wash tubs and stacked them away already. Placing his where it belonged, he turned to face the big Mirialan.
“Well, that much I can understand. Seems like the entire Clone War was more or less pointless,” he said. “I keep trying to strategize, and sometimes it works. But when it was against a bunch of clankers, I could avoid getting backed into a corner if I was smart enough about it. Now…” He shook his head. “The rules are different. Actually, I don’t think there are any rules anymore.”
To his surprise, Kiran clapped one of his big hands onto Rex’s shoulder, and he almost jumped.
“At least we have the same enemy, yes?” said Kiran with a bigger grin.
“Uh, yeah, true enough.” Rex wasn’t sure what to do with this sudden friendliness, but he decided to treat it like another peace offering. “Well, let me go help them finish this hut,” he added quickly, nodding his head in the direction of the work and the intermittent singing he could hear there. Slipping out from under this big Mirialan’s hand. “You’d better not waste any time working on your ship.”
“No, indeed I had better not!” Kiran chuckled, his voice back to its pleasant, upbeat basso as he turned to walk back to the HWK-290. Now Rex saw his slight limp, and he didn’t really need to ask where it came from. Somewhat relieved that their interactions appeared to have been salvaged, he turned towards the huts to put in a little more work for the night. Maybe then he’d be exhausted enough to sleep. Or, maybe Sol would agree to lay beside him, and he could forget even his nightmares for a while.
Notes:
and so it begins :3
Chapter Text
Gomar Sector, Dragon Void Nebula, Dragon’s Nest Station
The interiors of the station’s various viewing rooms were all similar in that they were all beautifully lit by strange floating orbs of light, all decorated with clusters of bright yellow flowers that seemed to make the recycled air in the station much fresher, and all had enormous viewing windows to look out upon the splattered purple and blue stardust of the Dragon Void Nebula. On that particular day, of course, nobody was watching the nebula. Every eye was on the viewscreens that would show the holonet feed of the entire race, though at that moment the racing ships were all still holding position just outside the tug of the station’s artificial gravity. There were VIP rooms where the richest spectators and sponsors were ensconced, and then there were the more crowded rooms where invitees of the racers themselves were tucked into the fold of the less monied spectators. But everyone had a place to sit, regardless of their status.
Sol still found herself standing at the viewport, looking out at the Iviin’yc where it hung in the vacuum next to other racing ships of various builds and sizes. Next to them, Kiran’s ship looked like a shining golden dart ready to fling itself through space towards its target.
“Vod’ika, come sit!” called Twofer from where he was perched at a nearby bar which had two large viewscreens behind it, showing panned shots of all the ships, blaring the announcer’s pre-race programming which discussed the history of various racers in the lineup. “Kiran’s on!”
She didn’t need to listen to whatever they said about him. The point was that he had placed third in this race before, and he was known only by some on the racing circuits due to his unwillingness to participate in races of less reputable nature. This one’s reputation was brutal, but at least it was honest about it. And it wasn’t funded by crime syndicate money, either, though there were almost definitely criminals present and taking bets on the outcome. In fact, in one of the VIP domes out on one of the station’s spindles, Sol was pretty sure she could see a Hutt. But this race was funded by corporate sponsors who had the usual kind of business gains to be made, nothing any more nefarious than a contract between corporations already was.
Remi, the purple-and-silver-haired Human dancer that had been Twofer’s sweetheart for some time now, was sitting next to the clone at the bar. “Yeah, ‘n he’s lookin’ real nice in his picture, too,” they added with a grin.
Sol ignored them for the moment. She was thinking about how dangerous this race supposedly was, and was wondering if this was, in fact, a really bad idea. But Kiran’s confidence had won her over, since he’d previously finished third in the same race. Though, the obstacles at each of the fuel stops were supposed to be different every time, so there was no way to truly get used to or fully prepared for the Dragon Void Run.
As the racers prepare to launch, let’s review once more the path they’re about to navigate! came the announcer’s voice. First, they will make a jump through hyperspace to the first destination— but before they can land and refuel on the planet, they’ll have to survive an obstacle of some kind. And a dangerous one at that!
Sol felt her jaw clenching and unclenching.
This will happen again at the second and third stops for refueling. Then, for the final leg of the race, our racers will have to navigate across a stretch of Void to arrive at the finish line. As you may know, Voids are vast barren areas in the galaxy where there are no stars and very little dust or matter of any kind. Fuel economy will be of paramount importance here! The first to cross the finish line, which is a clearly marked gate at the other edge of the Void, is the winner!
A cheer went up around the large room. Some of the others were already drunk, anticipating a very long race with a few stretches of waiting while the ships jumped through hyperspace and there was nothing for the holocams to record.
And just as a final reminder, the following rules are in effect: No firing weapons or other intentional damage or injury to other racers or their ships. No assistance from outside sources, such as relaying the nature of the next obstacle to a racer. And racers must depart the refueling planets before their time is up. All of these are grounds to be disqualified from the race. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s return to the orbital view and watch the race begin!
Ships that had been hanging like they were dead suddenly lit up, ion and hyperdrive engines blinking to life all around the station. The room was abuzz. There was no reason to watch the holo at that moment, because she could see the only ship that mattered from right where she was standing.
The racers are reporting in ready! Ready to do or die, I hope. The Dragon Void Run is the oldest and most dangerous race in the galaxy, folks, and it will have no mercy for fools or rookies. So power up, pilots, the race of a lifetime is about to begin in three… two… one! THEY’RE OFF!
Like a cluster of wild birds, every ship flared and then vanished along its vector as music blared out of the speakers, which was necessary when the broadcast was so full of building hype only to turn into about ten standard minutes of nothing while waiting for the ships to start dropping out at their first destination. The audience cheered. Sol stood looking at the emptiness where the Iviin’yc had just been.
“K’oyacyi,” she murmured, her fist clenching by her side.
“Vod’ika!” came Twofer’s call again. This time she turned and walked across the fine carpeted floor towards where he sat with Remi. “Don’t worry,” he added as he looked and saw her stoic expression even more stoic than usual. “He’ll do great!”
“Yeah, I mean he already did this’n once,” said Remi. “Made it out alive and in third! Ain’t a win, sure, but it’s still real damn good if y’ask me.”
Sol couldn't help but smile faintly. It was kind of them to reassure her, even though she wasn’t much fun at parties like these. She was already dreading each of the waits during jumps. And Stone wasn’t even there for her to curl up with. The rest of Cronos were off doing something useful, since there was plenty that needed doing despite the conspicuous lack of three hundred thousand credits to bankroll their efforts. But they were all listening on the holonet, so she expected at least a few comms during the time she was watching. Cody would probably be buzzing in, too. She wondered if he’d already commed, and glanced around the bar and the large semi-circular room. When she didn’t see what she was looking for, she frowned.
“What is it, Sol’ika?” Twofer asked her. She kept scanning the beings around them for a moment, then looked back at him.
“Where’s Rex?”
The current of hyperspace swam by outside the viewports of the Iviin’yc, and Kiran sat in the pilot’s chair with a grin on his face. This was the sort of thing that never failed to bring him joy; his skill was tested, his focus was engaged, and perhaps his recklessness was appeased at the same time, if he was honest. That urge was less acute of late, but that just made the excitement of a race that much more compelling. On Safa Toma he’d been out of his element, and also their plan for lifting the bota had certainly not required him to win. This plan hinged completely on it. But that was only more fuel for him, the fact that he had something to win for apart from his own gratification this time.
Ten minutes felt like forever on this jump, before things really got started. He was sure that the subsequent jumps would feel a lot shorter. Checking all the readouts, he was pleased to see that his modifications were working exactly as intended. The motivator had been enhanced to shave a few seconds off of his jump, and he knew that those seconds could end up being precious in the end. He sat back in the chair, crossing his arms across his chest, watching the navicomputer.
And then he heard behind him the sound of the cold storage door opening. He spun in the chair, one of his heavy blasters already in his hand. Someone was coughing, shutting the door, and then turning up towards the cockpit. Just as Kiran brought the nose of the gun level with the intruder’s blonde head, they looked up.
“Kriffin’ hell!” Rex exclaimed, throwing his hands up and pulling back away from the weapon instinctively. “Hey, it’s just me!”
“Just you?” Kiran asked, and he felt surprise colored with righteous indignation settle inside him like a hot stone. “Just— what are you doing on my ship? You are not meant to be here, Rex!”
“I’m just here to help!” the clone insisted, still watching the blaster pointed at him. “Will you put that thing down?”
Kiran’s nostrils flared, but he did lower his weapon. His brow furrowed angrily. “I asked for no help,” he said. “I do not require any help!”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” said Rex, lowering his hands and frowning himself. “In my experience, if you want to win, you use all the help you can get.”
“How do you intend to help me?”
“I can man the guns while you do your fancy flying!” Now Rex’s hands were up again, but only gesticulating. “One less thing for you to worry about.”
“I specifically asked that no one accompany me on this race so that it was only myself who stood any chance of being hurt or even killed,” Kiran growled. He shoved his blaster back into its holster, took a step closer to the shorter man who was giving him a scowl he’d seen on many a clone’s face before, but never directed at him.
“I knew the risks,” Rex said.
“And so you felt entitled to sneaking aboard my ship?”
“For the sake of ensuring your winning? Yes.”
Kiran scoffed. “Oh, is this a backup plan, then? Is my word not enough assurance for you? Must you come and be certain I am worthy of winning yourself?”
Rex stepped closer to him this time, glaring up through his eyebrows. His eyes were dark brown that shifted to an amber color at the bottom, but in his frustration the amber flashed at Kiran like a warning. “It’s not about your worthiness, it’s about the success of the mission!” he nearly shouted. “We never send in one man alone!”
“This is neither a mission nor a battlefield, as I have said to you before. Did I not make myself clear enough then?”
“It’s not just any race, either,” Rex pointed out sharply, pressing closer to Kiran, his shoulders stiff and broad, chest forward, hands in fists by his sides. “This has a lot of people’s wellbeing hanging on it, now. Just like a battlefield, there’s a lot more at stake. Why wouldn’t you accept some help if it was offered?”
“Because I like to do things alone!” Kiran was baring his teeth, kicked suddenly into being furious. He loomed over the other man. “How dare you steal onto my ship and then presume to help me? I placed in this race before when I was alone!”
“Then having help just means you’re that much more likely to win this time!”
“You know nothing about me! Not how I fly, how I fight, or how I communicate with those I work with!”
Rex glowered, crossed his arms. “Sol warned me you’d be a stubborn ass about letting someone help you.”
“And I did not even want her in here flying with me for such a dangerous race, despite the fact that she knows all of those things about me!” the big Mirialan snapped. He could feel the heat around the two of them, the burn of his anger and Rex’s stubborn resistance. They were both breathing hard, their energies filling up the cabin of the ship and pricking at Kiran like tiny needles dancing over his skin.
“Well you’re stuck with me now, big guy, so you’d better start telling me what I can do to help and get over it,” Rex huffed, dropping his crossed arms again like he didn’t know what to do with all his frustration.
Kiran leaned down and opened his mouth to reply, but at that moment the navicomputer beeped to signal the approach of their destination. Spinning immediately to face the controls, he brought the hyperdrive lever down and tapped the buttons that would ignite the ion engines. He heard Rex’s boots stomping over to the co-pilot’s chair unasked. Scowling, he watched the streaks of stars slow down and then return to pinpricks of light.
And explosions.
“Kriffing hell!” he shouted, and Rex uttered much the same sentiment behind him. “What is that?”
Overhead, ships were flying into a debris field and careening off of hunks of durasteel and asteroid, fleeing tiny spheres of metal that were launching missiles and green streaks of laser canon in every direction. One of the latter glanced off of the Iviin’yc, but Kiran was already gripping the steering lever and pulled them away before it could compromise the port deflector shield.
“Some kinda droids!” said Rex, already switching on his targeting computer. “Looks like old Navy combat droids—”
The ship rattled as a wave of escaping gas from a nearby ship that had just been struck by a missile buffeted them on its way to disperse out into the vacuum. Kiran pulled the controls hard to the left, spinning the ship out and away from as much of the mess as possible. “You have seen these before?” he called back, rolling neatly away from an asteroid hunk. He watched as another missile that was pointed at them burst into fire, shot by one of his plasma cannons.
“The Navy trained their fighter pilots with them,” Rex replied. “I know they used to fire in a pattern.”
“Do they respond to motion?”
“Nah, once they’re on—” Another violent shake as the ship grazed a large piece of debris. “They’re on,” Rex finished from between clenched teeth.
“Ano,” Kiran swore.
“I’m gonna take as many of them as I can out!”
“Do not fire on the other racers by accident!” Kiran warned him. “If they decide it was on purpose, we’ll be disqualified.”
“I’m aware of that!”
He didn’t have time to turn and see what Rex was doing. He had to watch the scanners and viewport constantly in order to maneuver through the mess, and some of the other racers had already added themselves to the debris. There was a primary star in one direction, so he started purposefully re-orienting towards it as he went, knowing the debris field would have to end eventually as long as he continued in more or less the same direction. As he spun and ducked the ship all around, he started to see the pattern of fire from the droids, though it was hard to tell which ones were at what point in the sequence. And Rex was picking them off with impressive accuracy, though one or two of the inbound missiles were awfully close.
Two of the droids blew up as they passed by Kiran’s view, and Rex gave a faint whoop. “C’mon, clankers!” he shouted, and it actually sounded like he was enjoying himself. The big Mirialan grinned, for a moment feeling that joy of the race that he’d been anticipating in spite of the abrupt change in his circumstances.
Then, directly ahead of them, a smaller piece of asteroid rock exploded and scattered all around, clattering like hail against the ship.
“Damn it, Rex!” Kiran barked angrily, thinking the clone captain had blown up the rock recklessly. But then another racer’s ship, larger and more clunky than the HWK-290, zoomed by overhead and rained its plasma bolts ahead of itself, carving a messy path out.
“You could follow that guy,” Rex replied, apparently ignoring the inappropriately directed blame seconds before. Kiran had already started to push the controls to follow in the yellow flicker of the other ship’s ion engines. He smirked despite himself.
“Indeed I could.”
As they went behind the other ship, his sensors showed him that one or two other racers had a similar idea, and they followed like a school of fish. As soon as they cleared the debris field, several of them dropped into gear and took off towards the first refuel destination as fast as they could.
“Why are we not going faster?” Rex asked, sounding frustrated.
“This is not the part of the race where I need to burn fuel,” Kiran responded tightly, and he saw that there were two other racers who were taking the same approach and easing down towards atmo at little more than cruising speed. That meant at least the three of them had also done this race before, or had been sponsored or trained by someone else who had.
“Yeah? When’s that part?” The grouchiness in Rex’s voice was tempered with actual curiosity this time.
“I am sure you will know when it arrives.”
“Okay, sure.”
Kiran turned in his chair to eye the former captain where he leaned back in the co-pilot’s chair, arms crossed over his chest again, looking sullenly out the viewport. “If you want to help me, you will have to trust me as well,” the big Mirialan said.
Rex eyed him back for a moment before he said, “Yeah, I suppose so.”
Turning back to watch his descent, Kiran rolled his eyes and huffed to himself. It stung to think that Rex was unwilling enough to trust him that he would stow away aboard the ship in the first place. If he started questioning every move, then there was no way they would collaborate well enough to finish in first place. And there was no brig to throw him into, either.
The Iviin’yc landed gently on the dock, and Kiran immediately attached to the fuel hoses and started the transfer. He had no plans to leave the ship during refuels, though he could if he needed to. He needed no repairs at the moment. Briefly, he considered sending Rex on some planetside errand and leaving before he came back.
But that wasn’t in his nature, and he knew it. He’d always considered things like that and known as soon as the thought occurred that he’d never go through with it. He’d been in situations before where it might have been wiser to actually do them, but something in his conscience wouldn’t allow it. In this case it probably wasn’t wiser anyway.
The silence in the cabin was tense. The faint whirring hum of the fuel lines didn’t help. Taking a deep breath, Kiran turned more fully in his chair to face Rex.
Before he could say anything, though, someone’s commlink chirped loudly.
“Rex! Come in!” came Sol’s voice, as much a command as he’d ever heard it. Rex grimaced faintly as he pressed a button on his vambrace.
“Right here, cyar’ika,” he said. “Nothing to worry about.” His attempt at a casual tone was almost charmingly unconvincing.
“Don’t start,” she barked. “What were you thinking?”
“I, uh—”
“If you both die, I will find a way to bring you both back from the dead so I can kill you again myself!”
At that, both Kiran and Rex found themselves fighting the sudden urge to laugh. Their eyes met as they did so, and the similarity was reassuring. Kiran thought they must both know that, absurd as it sounded, neither of them would put it past her to do exactly what she threatened.
“I’m sorry, Sol,” Rex replied as he swallowed back his ill-timed humor and retreated into his chagrin. “I should’ve told you.”
“You should have told us both,” she replied sharply. Rex winced. Kiran found himself almost feeling bad for the other man.
“Sul kicha—”
“Not you either, Kiran!” she cut him off. “Rex is right. You should have taken support. None of us is better off alone. Frankly, I should have done what Rex did myself. I’m glad one of us was dini’la enough to do it. Ke’gar ne’ente dunarir, tayli’bac?”
Both men opened their mouths to reply, but the comm clicked off. Kiran shut his mouth, swallowed. Then, he asked, “What did she say there at the end?”
“‘Don’t mess this up’, basically,” Rex translated with a sigh. “Well, it’s more like ‘you will not mess this up’.”
“Ah.” Kiran nodded, looking towards his boots. He felt thoroughly chastened, himself. It wasn’t that his reason for going alone wasn’t a good one, for he very much still thought it was. It was just that his penchant for putting himself in the line of fire had been a point of contention between himself and Sol since almost the moment they’d met. He had expected more pushback from her, but despite her misgivings she had trusted him to make the best choice when it came to racing— a skill she’d never learned and knew little about. He couldn’t help but feel he’d let her down somehow, had gone back to his self-sacrificing ways as soon as he’d re-entered familiar territory. It was noble to sacrifice oneself only up to a point; she had reminded him of that on Kamino. Any trait that had been measured and honorable when he was Captain of the Laeki Guard had slid into an empty nihilism until she’d found him. And, if he was honest, his push to do the race alone wasn’t impervious to the impulse to prove himself to her other lover. Which was embarrassing.
A clunk and a faint sound from the controls alerted him that his fueling was complete. Turning back to the dashboard, he detached the cables and readied the ship for takeoff. Around him on the dock, the other ships were starting to wrap up their fueling process. One had already lifted up from the platform and was pointed starward. Taking a breath, he began his ascent.
It wasn’t until they were clear of atmo and his vector was set that he realized that for all his regret, he was still angry at Rex. Kiran told himself it was because of the fact that he’d snuck on board.
He pushed the hyperdrive motivator lever and they slipped into the veins of hyperspace. When he turned back around again, Rex was leaning his elbow onto the co-pilot’s control chassis and rubbing his short blonde hair. Almost certainly pondering his own history with Sol, and whatever this moment meant to him.
“The next obstacle may be worse than the last,” Kiran said. “Be ready to man the guns and let me do the racing this time, please.”
“Sounds fine to me.” Rex sat back up and his eyes stayed on the controls. He looked how Kiran felt. And despite the flickers of jealousy and irritation, the big Mirialan found it strangely uncomfortable to leave the man to suffer.
“It did work the last time, so I am certain it will work again,” he added. It wasn’t quite his most reassuring tone of voice, but Rex’s brown and amber eyes flickered up towards him with faint relief. Kiran turned away from that look before it could infiltrate the little ember of frustration he was holding onto over the whole affair. No, he was not ready to forgive the clone just yet. They had a race to win.
Notes:
the boys are fightingggg
Chapter Text
Gomar Sector, Dragon Void Nebula, Dragon’s Nest Station
“C’mon, vod’ika, just have a beer,” Twofer was saying. Sol had been sitting on one of the lounge chairs in the viewing room almost completely still for a few minutes after she’d ended her comm call, pinching the high bridge of her nose with her fingers, eyes shut. Feeling the amorphous shape of her anger twisting around inside of her, bubbling out and collapsing back down, puffing up and shrinking, turning into the kinds of thoughts she always had when someone she cared for was in danger. And other thoughts that were less usual for her, anxious thoughts of navigating unknown territory. Rex and Kiran in the same ship during the same high-stakes race was truly unknown territory.
“Leave her alone, Twof,” Remi muttered. “She’s kinda pissed, ‘n I don’t exactly blame her.”
“That’s why I’m offerin’ the beer,” the weapons specialist said. “To take the edge offa bein’ so mad. Might make the next leg ‘o the race a lil easier to watch.”
“Let her come get it when she’s ready, then,” said the dancer. Somewhere in her mind, Sol was grateful for both of their insistence. Twofer wasn’t really the comforting type, though he’d gladly offer whatever his own vices were to others in distress. This was his form of support. She wasn't in a place to appreciate it. Remi seemed to get that, which she was in a place to appreciate.
The minutes of quiet while the racers jumped to the next location were excruciating mostly because she had nothing to focus on but her own feelings. That, and the next dangerous event was looming. Now both of the men she loved were careening towards it at lightspeed. Worse, there was nothing at all that she could do about it.
Osik, she thought. She really could strangle them both.
Nevermind the fact that the two of them couldn’t quite seem to get along. Mostly they’d stayed away from each other because they each had different duties to take care of. The few times they’d come together, there always seemed to be a thread of friction between them, and she’d felt the instinct to place herself in between them physically as though it might mitigate the issue. Which it did seem to do, and often they were pleasant enough. But more than once they’d bristled at some minor thing or another, and she’d noticed that her vode and even Cody were tacitly inserting themselves into the conversations to divert from whatever the issue was. It wasn’t that she expected them to be instantly friends. Both of them had admitted to their uncertainty, and she thought it would be unfair not to allow that to be as it was. And, there was something sort of romantic about Rex trying to surprise her the way he had, even if she’d been caught off guard by it. They both wanted to be friends. Still she found herself on edge about the way it had panned out so far.
Her comm blinked, and she figured it was one of her vode on the other end, so she answered it. Instead, the bright smile and short blonde hair of a young girl appeared.
“Sol! This is Omega!”
Sol’s brow furrowed, but she also felt unable to withhold a smile completely. “Hello, Omega,” she replied, and before she could say anything else the girl went on excitedly.
“We’re watching the race! Kiran is doing great!”
“Ah, yes,” said Sol a little stiffly, trying not to think about how much she’d just berated the big Mirialan. “Are you having fun?”
“Of course, this is awesome! Kinda scary, but awesome!”
A new voice and a new face appeared on the holo. “Hey, Sol’ika!” said Fives, waving his hand. Then it seemed to pivot from the other end, and Echo’s face appeared.
“Hi, Sarge,” he said, and he wasn’t quite as grouchy as he wanted to be.
“Su’cuy,” Sol nodded. Now she was smiling in spite of herself. “I assume you’re all enjoying the race from a safe distance?”
“Yeah!” Fives reappeared. “How’s it from where you are?”
“Oh, very exciting.”
“You don’t look excited,” said Omega, seeming a little concerned.
Fives’ whisper was perfectly audible. “She never looks excited, Omega.”
“Oh, like Crosshair?”
Sol heard both Fives and Echo snort. “I dunno, I’ve seen her smile before,” Echo said, a little familiar smirk on his face. “Been a while, though.”
“It has,” said Sol, and she remembered dancing with him and the rest of Torrent Company such a long time ago at 79’s. “Too long, verd. Maybe we’ll visit you soon.”
“Yeah!” Omega cheered, jumping a little. “Please come to Pabu! It’s so nice here!”
“I’m sure Kiran won’t be able to resist bragging after he wins the race anyway,” Fives snickered. Omega just grinned. The music inside the viewing room changed, and Sol knew the broadcast was about to start up again.
“Listen, I’ve got to go,” she said. “Enjoy the race, alright everyone?”
“We will!” Omega assured her with pure childlike joy. Sol did smile properly when she turned off the comm, but it fell off her face moments later.
She looked up as the announcer’s voice came back over the viewscreens, watching as a series of ships dropped back into realspace on camera. The Iviin’yc was the second to materialize. From the outside, of course, it was the same as always. Inside, it was possible that Rex and Kiran were collaborating, and she hoped so. This was not a very good moment for them to be bickering.
Rex didn’t say anything the entire flight through hyperspace. He wasn’t sure if he should regret what he’d done or not. The reason he’d done it was still intact in his principles, of course. Never send a man alone into danger, even if he insists. Kiran was not the first comrade to insist. He was the first who didn’t feel any obligation to consider Rex’s opinion as part of a military structure, though. Inside his own ship, he was captain and commander. Which was not unreasonable, unless the man himself was being unreasonable. And there were a lot of people depending on his success. But Rex didn’t feel great about how he’d gone about it, not even when he’d shut the cold storage door and waited to come out once it was too late to kick him out. And he wasn’t surprised that Sol was mad at him, it just hadn’t occurred to him how much he’d dislike the feeling. It was reassuring in a way that she was just as mad at Kiran, but only in the sense that he wasn’t alone in it. He was the only one who’d done something actively worth reprimanding. Sol had told him exactly what to expect if he offered to help, so he’d skipped straight to helping rather than asking. Which was unquestionably rude, and this to a man he’d promised himself he wouldn’t be bothered by. Farrow saw other people and that never bothered him, after all. Why would actually meeting one of them have bothered him then? Why was it bothering him now?
He didn’t have time to work it out before they dropped out of hyperspace, but that didn’t really upset him. Thinking in circles was a bad habit he was trying to break. And, he was determined to make the second lap of the race a good one. To show Kiran just how much he really could help him.
The ship soared easily along towards the planet that was the next of their refuel stops. In fact, Rex thought it was suspiciously easy. When he heard Kiran murmur pensively up front, he knew the big Mirialan was thinking the same thing. He scanned the star-dotted black outside the viewport until a small blinking point appeared. A flash of silver shimmered around it.
“Wait, what’s that?” he asked, leaning forward and half standing out of the co-pilot’s chair.
Kiran was scanning it, looking between the viewport and his controls. “I am not sure,” he replied. “But it’s emitting some kind of energy—”
The jolt of the ship was worse than any shake they’d felt going through the debris field. But there was no sound of something scraping or banging against durasteel, just a feeling that something had gripped the ship mid-flight and shaken it briefly and violently.
“Khua hinuaeak'a!” Kiran half shouted, something that was definitely a curse in his own language, gripping the sides of his seat as an alarm went up. Rex was rubbing the elbow that had banged into the bulkhead beside him, feet spread precariously on the floor trying to brace against tumbling out of the chair. He narrowed his eyes at the alert.
“Does that say—”
“We are not moving,” Kiran growled in confirmation, standing as he hunched over the controls and tapped buttons furiously. He pulled back against the steering lever ever so slightly, and the ship rattled again but didn’t move. He slammed his fist against the dashboard. “Tom’k!”
“It’s either a tractor beam or a static field being used as a net,” Rex said, looking out at the blinking beacon he’d seen. He got up and went to the starboard edge of the viewport, peering as far to their right as he could see. There were two more blinkers in that direction. Kiran moved to the port side to look out, and then he growled again.
“I think you are right, it is a static field.” He marched back over to the controls and pushed the pieces of his hair that had been shaken out of his half-up bun away from his face.
Rex looked back out and realized that he could see three other racers’ ships outside now, also motionless in the vacuum. “We’re all stuck,” he said, turning back to Kiran.
The big Mirialan wouldn’t quite look at him, and his pale golden eyes seemed to burn a little warmer as he glared aimlessly around the cockpit and tried to sort out his thoughts. Rex went back to the co-pilot’s seat and sat down heavily, trying to wrack his own brain for an idea.
Then, he had one.
“Can I try something?” he asked, remembering to be courteous now even if he’d neglected to earlier. Kiran looked at him for a moment, then nodded. Rex reached down and adjusted the settings on his targeting computer, pointing the ship’s plasma canon at the nearest blinking buoy. He fired.
A shock that seared through his body for the briefest instant struck him, and he cried out with the sudden pain of it. Kiran, too, let out a yelp and almost fell to the floor, leaning on his chair.
“Kriff!” he coughed after it passed.
“Okay, that didn’t work,” muttered Rex.
Kiran was glaring at him, but then his face fell more neutral. “I suppose it was worth a try,” he said, turning his furrowed brow out towards the buoy accusingly instead of at the former captain.
Rex had another idea, but this one was passive enough he decided not to ask. He turned on the comm and tuned it to a frequency that had been provided in the data from the chip Kiran had been given once they’d arrived at Dragon’s Nest.
Just as he did, another series of three shocks crashed through the ship and through both of them. As they did, the comm squealed, went staticky for a moment, then suddenly clamored with voices.
“Hey, cut that out!” came one racer’s sharp demand.
“You’re frying all of us, you moron!” said another.
“My power’s flickering! What the kriffin’ hell are ya doin’?”
“Stop shooting it!”
Kiran turned and checked his ship’s operational readout, but so far their power wasn’t flickering any more than it had during the electrical shocks themselves. Rex was about to say something when another voice came over the comm chatter.
“We should all shoot a buoy at once!” said a gruff racer’s voice. “Take the whole thing down!”
“Are you crazy?”
“No!”
“We’ll fry—!”
“Shut up you karkin’ bantha fuckers!” the same racer shouted back. “They can’t fry us if they’re all compromised at once, can they?”
“Cute idea, Marsh, but there’s ten of the buoys and only seven of us,” said another racer, a female by her voice.
“Anybody got double guns?” Marsh asked.
“I do,” Rex said, glancing up at Kiran. He knew both seats had gunner controls, and he’d seen both of the cannons on the nose of the ship. Kiran nodded; they could be aimed in different directions.
“I do too,” said another racer. There was a beat of silence.
“Still only nine guns,” the female racer said, and she sounded disappointed.
“Maybe nine’ll overload the last one,” Marsh ventured. A chorus of negative reactions followed him.
“If we get fried and can’t race, I’ll kick your arse, Marsh,” said a nasally voice. “Why you always thinkin’ with your guns, anyway? Surely there’s other ideas we could talk over.”
Kiran had been silently listening to the whole exchange, one finger on his tattooed chin like he’d already been trying to come up with some other options. Rex’s brow was also furrowed in thought.
“Anyone have ion bombs?” asked another voice on the comm.
“That’ll fry us too,” someone else pointed out.
“Ah, kriff.”
“Wait,” Rex piped up suddenly, remembering something Kiran had asked him about the drones during the first leg of the race. “What if it’s only active when it detects us?” Once again he looked at Kiran, raising his brows as though to encourage the train of thought.
“Shutting down our engines might turn it off,” the big Mirialan said, nodding, looking out at the buoy and back at Rex. “Or at least let us get free of it.”
“But the second we turn ‘em back on, it’ll engage again,” came Marsh’s gruff voice on the comm.
“Yeah, it’s not a moving net,” the woman added. “If we can’t get past the buoys, we’re still stuck. No power, no moving past the buoys. At least not in any predictable amount of time.”
Kiran held up a finger as if to emphasize his next words to a bunch of racers who couldn’t see him, and Rex held in a faint chuckle.
“Ah, but if you push a blast of fuel through the engine just before shutdown, you should have enough inertia to float out of the static field once the power is cut.” He looked back at Rex and actually grinned.
“Not a bad idea,” the former clone captain said with his own smirk. “Not a bad idea at all.”
“Yeah, that just might work,” said the nasally racer’s voice.
“Do we all have to do that at the same time, too?” asked someone else. But Kiran was already back in the pilot’s chair, flipping a few switches. He gripped the steering lever and moved it very slowly, feeling the ship start to rattle as he pushed fuel through the engine. Just as Rex’s teeth were starting to vibrate, Kiran pulled an emergency switch and the whole ship powered down.
And the stars started to move again in a slow drift, the ship spinning lazily away from the net. Of course, the comm was off, so the other racer’s reactions were inaudible. But a ship that had been just ahead and starboard of them suddenly went dark and started to float away, doing the same maneuver.
“Time to go,” Rex said, his smirk broadening.
“Just a moment, friend.” Kiran held up one finger again, and watched the ship outside of their viewport for a long moment.
Its engines lit up again; electricity crackled all over its hull and it was frozen once again.
“Oh, kriff,” said Rex, blinking.
“I did not think we were free of the field just yet,” Kiran told him. Then he turned and winked like a scoundrel at him. Like he was in on the joke. Rex felt his solar plexus twist, his cheeks getting hot for just a moment.
“Uh, so when are we free, do you think?” he asked as the big Mirialan looked back outside the viewport, still watching the other ships he could see.
“That is a good question.”
“How many more shocks can she take if we try and find out?”
“Perhaps more than some of the other ships, if someone else was already having difficulty with power relays,” Kiran replied thoughtfully. “Though, I will be running a diagnostic as soon as we’re clear on the way to the refuel station.”
“Good idea.”
The ship that had gotten caught was still frozen, its engines sputtering and spitting blue fire out of its aft end. Another ship appeared in their view, this one still powered down, drifting in a much slower arc than the Iviin’yc was at that moment.
“Hm. I thought a large ship would move more quickly,” Kiran murmured as though to himself.
“Might’ve given it less juice,” Rex mused. The sputtering ship passed out of their sight through the viewport. They’d certainly come a decent way, and there were no buoys left in their visual field.
“I think it is time,” said Kiran, reaching towards the emergency switch. “I will be waiting two seconds before I push the sublights, so you had better be seated.”
“Is this one of the times you’re gonna burn fuel?” Rex asked rather cheekily as he leaned back into the co-pilot’s chair and braced for the thrust. Kiran just turned that stupid smirk on him again, and flipped the switch.
And they were flying at absolutely top speed away from the cluster of other trapped ships. The comm chatter burst to life, and Rex switched it off with a triumphant laugh. Kiran also laughed, a big low sound full of something like pure joy. It was infectious for a moment, at least. Before the proximity alert went off.
“Oh, what now?” Kiran complained, looking at his controls. Rex was also looking, and when he saw the readout his face fell.
“Maker, it’s missiles! Tracking missiles!”
For one brief eternity they were both silent. Then Kiran looked at him, expression much less excited.
“Dank ferrik.”
Sol stared at the viewscreen from her seat at the bar almost without blinking, and Twofer’s gloved hand clenched and unclenched beside her untouched beer as they all watched.
“Holy kriffin’ hell,” Remi swore, leaning forward and tapping their nails on the bar nervously.
“Big guy’s an ace pilot,” Twofer said, almost like he was reminding them both. “Surely he’s outrun a few missiles in his day, eh?”
Sol had no idea if he’d outrun any missiles, but he had outrun one hell of a determined bounty hunter who’d been tracking them through hyperspace. She tried to let that comfort her as she saw the ship spin and start to weave around in the black. He was trying to confuse the missiles, and another ship was weaving around him trying to add to the chaos. A third was catching up, and at least two missiles managed to ram into each other and explode in their befuddled efforts to strike a ship. A cheer rippled around the viewing room as the announcers praised the racers’ clever tactics.
“What cursed ass product placement is this?” grumbled Remi. “Some kinda defense system? For rich assholes, or corporate facilities that get robbed too much?”
“Kinda reads like that, yeah,” Twofer said, quiet but growly. He knocked back the rest of his beer in one go, but didn’t order another one yet.
Another explosion, this time one of the racers had taken out a missile with their cannon. But just after that, a different ship careened by and barely managed to shoot another missile before it struck home. The closeness of the explosion was enough that it sent the ship spinning, ion engines sputtering. Another missile was heading for it, and just as Sol was sure it would hit, the Iviin’yc flashed by overhead and shot that missile before it could do much damage. She smiled ever so faintly, and Twofer and Remi gave whoops as the crowd tittered with excitement.
Each time a ship would try to break free of the melee, a missile would appear and force it to loop backwards towards the others to avoid being blown up.
Apparently the racers have no choice but to work together on this round! The announcers were appalled, but delighted by the apparent novelty of it. Forcing a bunch of pilots who were all in competition with each other to work together was certainly dangerous in its own way, Sol thought. In the way that could get Kiran killed because he was generous and honorable, if he wasn't careful. Just at that moment, though, one ship did catch a missile and blew into shrapnel and flame that was swallowed by the vacuum. For a moment her heart stopped in her throat. She hadn’t seen which ship it was.
But the camera panned over to the Iviin’yc as it spun by, its guns taking out two more missiles.
“That’s gotta be Rex shootin’,” Twofer grinned at her. “Always was a crack shot.”
“I thought all y’all clones was crack shots?” Remi said with a raised brow.
“‘Course we are, jus’ Rex is extra good at it!”
“Okay.” The dancer rolled their eyes and smiled playfully. “He’s doin’ a great job, though, no doubt!”
Sol watched with singular, intense focus as the racers managed to take out the rest of the missiles one by one, flashing across the viewing cameras chaotically and looping out of each others’ way. At last they seemed to be free of them, with one more ship having been struck but not blown completely to bits. It was just stranded, and would have to be picked up by the local authorities and towed to repair dock.
Like last time, Kiran’s ship made its way breezily towards its destination, keeping pace with three other ships. The one that had been close to an explosion was straggling behind. Another one was burning fuel like crazy ahead of them, beating their landing by a full four minutes. But one by one they all landed. Finally, she took a deep breath.
“Toldja they’d be alright, vod’ika.” Twof nudged her shoulder, his trademark raucous grin on his face. She looked sidelong at him, unconvinced but no longer fuming or stretched taut with fear that everything would end in one bright burst of plasma and ion discharge.
“Seems they’re getting along,” she murmured. “Enough to survive that, at least.”
“Looks like they make a great team,” said Twofer. “Kriff, Kiran’s so Maker-forsaken fast. Response time’s uncanny.” In spite of herself, Sol felt a flash of pride. He was really, really good. She’d seen him fly amazingly well before, but in the race it was extra evident. Even the announcers were mentioning his skill in their rerun commentary. Having Rex with him did let him focus completely on maneuvering the ship, even he would have to admit that eventually.
He might even do it without her prompting him. Only time would tell.
Notes:
WRITING THIS IS STRESSFUL (but also really fun)
Chapter 9: battered
Chapter Text
Trilon Sector, Batuu, Dragon Void Run refuel station 2
Kiran was soldering a loose circuit inside the Iviin’yc’s internal engine access panel while the ship fueled. Rex was checking the rest of the diagnostic as popped up on the readout, relaying the results to him between the high crackling whistles of the soldering iron.
“Looks like there’s nothing else that’s dangerously compromised,” the clone was saying from the passage between the bunks and the cargo bay. “But the starboard deflector’s down thirteen percent. Stable, but down.”
“That will have to do,” Kiran replied as he lifted the mask from his face to inspect his work. It wasn’t bad for a rush job, he decided. Very secure, but ugly and lumpy. He’d have to redo it once the race was over. Shutting the panel’s cover, he pulled the mask completely off his head and wiped sweat from his brow.
Rex was watching him with a subtle look on his face; the feeling Kiran got from him was a little more layered than simple curiosity, though he was certainly curious. Hard to pick apart the other elements, as they seemed to contradict each other. The sense of emotion he always got from others was a little confounded by Rex, who was both transparent and opaque at the same time, some of his feelings hidden behind the others. Sol was more direct, and even if her emotions were layered, the one she was projecting forward strongly was the one that needed to be taken seriously at the time, he’d discovered that much. Sol had also told him that it had taken both her and Rex a very long time to admit their attraction to one another, and Rex even longer to release feelings of grief about his first love before her. Perhaps that was a part of it, that the feelings the clone struggled to share with anybody else he also struggled to share with himself.
The look on his face betrayed some of it. A depth in his brown and amber eyes, the slightly downward slant of one side of his mouth like he was trying to work something out. Always thinking, this one. No doubt neglecting his other needs in the face of duty.
“Will you have something to eat before we take off?” Kiran asked in a congenial voice, putting away his tools. “It’s unwise to forget these things over the course of such a long race.”
“Uh, sure,” Rex shrugged.
“Presumably you already know the contents of my cold storage,” added Kiran with a raised brow. It was meant to be humorous, but maybe his tone wasn’t quite right, because Rex frowned. Which made Kiran want to frown, too, but instead he waved a dismissive hand. “It’s neither here nor there. You are welcome to whatever you would like.”
The tension was back. Rex seemed both irritated and embarrassed at the same time as he stepped into the dry storage and picked up a basic ration pack. Letting out a breath, Kiran went into cold storage for a jogan fruit and what was left of a roasted fowl they’d cooked on Dantooine before departing for the race. When he emerged, Rex was in the co-pilot’s seat eating his ration slowly. There was a cup of water beside him, and there was another cup on Kiran’s dashboard. Which he could only assume Rex had put there for him.
The big Mirialan cleared his throat as he sat down. They both kept trying, he noticed. Peace offerings, tiny things like the water cup, were always being offered between them. He’d offered one just now by not pursuing his stillborn joke further. But it was awkward to acknowledge these gestures aloud, even though everything he’d ever been taught about manners filled him with the urge to thank the clone. Yet he also knew that between soldiers, such actions were common practices of camaraderie, and there was no need to acknowledge them, only to maintain them in an ebb and flow of understood support. He decided to default to the soldier’s way, rather than the noble’s way or the diplomat’s way.
Rex didn’t seem to mind. He ate his ration silently, and the edge that had emanated from him earlier faded by virtue of being fed. He downed his own cup of water in one go.
“Sol is always having a ration when we are in the middle of something,” Kiran ventured after he’d finished his own food. Rex looked up at him, slightly uneasy but always keen on the topic of their mutual lover.
“Old GAR habits die hard,” he replied.
“It would seem so. When I was with the Laeki, we did not have such things. Only the traditional food we stored and preserved, whatever we could carry with us or lay up in our various holds around the province’s borders. I cannot see the appeal in the ration apart from its convenience, I am afraid.”
“That’s the only appeal it has, believe me,” Rex chuckled. “But we clones didn’t eat much else unless we were back at HQ, or stationed on a base where there was a chow hall. You get used to it.”
“I think you might enjoy getting used to pantry goods if you gave it a chance!” Kiran smirked. “Even when the cold storage is empty, a fine cheese and jerky washed down with a beer is much more cheerful than a block of nutrients. It keeps up morale.”
Rex seemed thoughtful. “Maybe for ground troops, I could see it. But the GAR wouldn’t have been able to transport real food on every Venator. Guess it’s easy enough on your own ship, with much less than ninety-four hundred mouths to feed.”
“Ninety-four hundred?”
“That was the maximum complement and carrying capacity of the Venators,” Rex explained. “And believe me, we pushed them to capacity quite often, getting ferried all over the galaxy.”
“Mm, yes. Brutal efficiency would make the most sense in such a case, but it would not do much for morale,” mused Kiran.
“It really doesn’t.”
The fuel timer signaled, and Kiran pressed a button to detach the cables and prep the ship to lift off the platform. “The last leg before the Void,” he said half to himself. “A slightly longer jump, this time, but I am sure we will not be bored once we arrive.”
“Yeah, I reckon not,” Rex murmured. “Nothing boring about this race. To a fault, maybe.”
“Well, it has been a running competition for ten thousand years,” Kiran informed him. “So something about it appeals to both racers and spectators very much, I would think.”
“Oh, I’m sure it’s not boring to watch, either. I just don’t get why people would want to risk their lives for a race.”
“I did warn you how dangerous it would be,” the big Miriralan pointed out, just shy of terse. “Based on my placement last time, I judged it to be worth the risk for the sake of the reward. And it happened to be the only race convenient to our timeframe.”
“You ever think you should’ve just robbed the casino?” Rex’s question appeared to be genuine. “Y’know, instead of all this?”
Kiran was pulling the ship up into high atmo, ready to break the gravity well and punch the hyperdrive. He was the first ship off the platform, this time, and he was feeling smug about it. “Perhaps it was selfish of me, to suggest something I enjoy so much as a means of obtaining a large sum of credits that cannot be traced. But in the end it is more honest than robbing a casino, you must admit.”
Rex shrugged. “That’s fair enough. Except this is a very public broadcast, so I hope you haven’t been marked because of your affiliation with Sol and her bounty.”
It was not an unfair assertion, but Kiran still frowned as he activated the hyperdrive. “I am known well enough in racing circles for it to be unsurprising to anyone reading the roster for this year’s race that I am here. And, this is a legitimate venture. It is not likely crawling with the scum of the galaxy.”
“Just a little scum,” the clone chuckled. “There’s at least one Hutt taking bets on it.”
“I think Hutts cannot resist taking bets on dangerous events, based on their history with podracing. And the bounty on Sol is old, and has not been refreshed for some time according to friend Remi.”
“That’s nice to hear. I think.” Rex sounded doubtful suddenly, as though maybe a decline in bounty pucks might indicate a more sinister and secretive approach on the part of the Empire. Which Kiran had also considered, but at that moment he wasn’t interested in pursuing the inquiry.
“It is perhaps more important for you to remain unrecognized on cameras,” Kiran pointed out to Rex, changing the subject. “You are supposed to be dead, are you not?”
“I did stash my face shield in your bunks.”
The big Mirialan pressed his lips together and let out a soft huff. “Indeed,” was all he said, watching hyperspace streak by outside the viewport.
“You can also go out all by yourself and take credit, if you want. I’ll hide in here until the cameras leave. I’m not in it for the glory.”
Kiran turned in his chair at that, and he felt a little stung. “Is it wrong to be in it for the glory?” he asked.
Rex, who’d been eyeing the controls at his station, looked up with a surprised expression. “No, that’s not what I meant,” he said, almost flustered. “I just mean this is your thing, racing. It’s not my thing. I’m not worried about getting any credit. Especially not if it compromises my being presumed dead.”
Kiran felt his hackles lower, the feeling of hurt that had seized him ebbing away slowly. “Ah,” was all he said. His face felt hot, embarrassment washing over him at having assumed so readily that the clone meant to strike at him.
“Kiran, I’m not here to sabotage you,” said Rex, brow knitting. “I really am here to make double sure we win. And stay alive, considering how Sol plans to kill us again if we kriff that part up.”
The big Mirilan’s mouth twisted, only half suppressing a grin. “K’oyacyi, isn’t that what she always says?”
To his surprise, Rex actually burst into laughter. “Your Mando’a is terrible!” he said, putting his hand over his chest as though to contain his mirth. Kiran put an indignant hand on his hip.
“You Mando’a speakers cannot say anything in Mirialan properly, either, you know,” he said. Rex eased his laughter slowly, waving Kiran off.
“Oh, I heard you just now, and I’m sure you’re right. I don’t know what half those sounds even are.”
Kiran chuckled. Rex’s laugh was like any clone’s in that it had a contagious quality, straight from the belly once it was unleashed. But it was different in a way for the former captain, like he didn’t laugh very much. He had a weathered quality, for he’d been through much as he was evidently among the first generation of clones. He’d retained a greater willingness to grin than Sol had, but they both had a serious nature. A determination that didn’t release them long enough to let many laughs through. But when they did laugh, it was sincere, never sardonic. And, perhaps, that much more special for being so rare.
For the first time, the air between the two of them was truly wholesome for a moment. When the alert sounded, Kiran was smiling as he turned in his chair and reached for the controls to drop back into realspace.
“Let us see what else they will throw at us,” he said with a cocked brow.
The way the spectators gasped as the cameras returned once again to the live broadcast of the race did not bode well. Sol turned from her place at the window where she’d been taking a comm from Swift (praising Kiran’s performance so far) to look at the viewscreens. All she saw at first were streaks of fire, raining above the surface of an icy planet.
Then she saw the ships careening between them, their shields battered mercilessly by even the smallest of the debris. Apparently, the coordinates they’d been given dropped them at the edge of a planet’s gravity well, just in time for a meteor shower.
The sheer insanity of it was what tripped Sol over from anxiousness into anger. Her body tensed all over, her spine going straight, her frown turning severe. This was beyond dangerous, it was suicidal. It was worse than the others by orders of magnitude simply because it wasn’t rigged on purpose by the organizers of the race, it was the kind of natural phenomenon that any pilot with half a brain cell avoided on principle when flying a ship or even an atmospheric vessel. It was stupid. And there wasn’t even anyone she could confront about it— who knew where the great orchestrators of this famously ancient and terrible race even were? Were they on the station? Were they somewhere else? Who were they?
Kiran’s ship was spiraling through between the falling space rocks, avoiding their tails with a kind of grace that was just on the edge of losing itself to panic. The other racers were doing much the same, except two of them appeared to already be panicking. The refuel station was just around the hemisphere from the meteor shower, so all they had to do was survive as they sped through it and they would be clear.
Sol watched one ship’s shields start to sputter, flickering as it was struck by a shower of meteor rocks and dust. Another smaller one ducked below it, using it as a physical barrier between itself and the debris. A much larger meteor screamed past the camera, and then the camera itself got knocked out and the broadcast switched to a different one.
“Hey,” said Twofer, voice quiet as he walked quickly through the crowd around the bar and up to her. “This is kriffin’ nuts.”
“Cuy shu’shuk,” she growled through her teeth. “They collect twenty thousand credits from racers just to put them through this?”
“Apparently they do.”
Sol was seething. “There’s nothing we can do, is there?”
“No, not really,” the weapons specialist ceded, looking as disgruntled as Sol felt. Remi was coming up behind him, their drink abandoned at the bar.
“Everythin’ alright?” they asked, large violet eyes blinking under creased brows.
“Sarge ain’t happy,” Twofer said, “and neither am I. But all we can do is watch.”
“Yeah. I reckon this is even worse than th’ other two stops.” Remi crossed their arms anxiously, turning to look back towards the viewscreen. One ship, not Kiran’s, was sailing along with sputtering ion engines only to be struck full-force by a meteor. The whole crowd flinched.
“Kiran’s still okay,” Twofer assured her as he glanced back at the broadcast. “Actually he’s doin’ better than any of the others, I think.”
Sol’s eyes were on the screens, her anger tempered by the cold finger of fear that wrapped itself around her heart. “Vod,” she said after a moment, “I’m going to prep the shuttle.”
Twofer held up one placating hand. “If y’ go out there, he’ll be disqualified.”
“Better that than dead.”
“Sol’ika,” he growled in a quiet voice, “let them do this. If they get knocked out o’ the runnin’ we can go pick ‘em up, just like we planned.”
Sol took a deep breath. Remi was nervously glancing back between them and the screens, clearly unsure whose response was the right one— and wise enough not to interrupt an argument between two soldiers, much less two siblings.
“Kiran’s good enough not t’ get hit so hard he won’t make it,” Twofer added.
“Make it where? To the downwell side of another meteor?” she snapped at him.
“They’re two-thirds of the way through,” Remi put in quietly. “Looks like one o’ Kiran’s shields is on the fritz, but otherwise ship looks okay.”
Golden eyes glared into the viewscreens, and Sol reached down to squeeze Twofer’s gloved hand with her own. It was one part frustration, one part desperation. Twofer squeezed it back. “It’ll be alright, vod’ika,” he said. “One way or another.”
“Do NOT shoot the rocks!” Kiran was shouting over the blaring shield alarm inside the cockpit of the Iviin’yc.
“I’m not shooting anything!” Rex insisted behind him. And he really wasn’t, it was just that the rocks they happened to be going through were larger and breaking up more aggressively in atmo. He’d given up shooting them when he’d broken one up in time to batter the forward deflector with chunks the size of bolo balls.
Kiran was very good— breathtakingly good, actually— at dodging beneath them downwell-side instead of letting them fly by and drop a trail of hot crumbling debris for the ship to plow through. The advantages of flying a smaller ship than almost all the other racers was really hitting home.
“Nua d’kh’tom’k hupulpi,” the big Mirialan swore as he swerved under yet another meteor, and the shield alarm picked up speed and volume for a moment. The heat of the descending rocks was starting to cause problems, Rex could tell.
“Uh, big guy, we’d better watch the—”
But a large piece of one enormous meteor that had already moved well past them had broken off, and was emerging on the viewscreen directly in front of their path. Kiran swore again, pulled the nose of the ship down, but they were already at nearly top speed. Rex’s hands were on the gunner’s controls before he could think, and he’d pummeled the rock with bursts of plasma cannon not a second later. The Iviin’yc shot through between two of the broken pieces, the aft deflector shield taking a bump that was quite a bit less problematic than the whole rock would have been.
“Hope you didn’t mind me blowing up that rock!” Rex shouted, tone only a little contentious. He smirked to himself because Kiran couldn’t turn around and glare at him, what with him needing to constantly watch the viewscreen and his scanners. But he heard the big Mirialan growl to himself.
Suddenly, almost without warning, they finally cleared the meteor shower, or at least the largest parts of it. Only a minor precipitation of pieces of space rock were buffeted away by the shields, and they dodged the slightly larger hunks easily. Rex had almost caught his breath when he saw the alert that had been beeping at them for far too long started to trill urgently. The starboard deflector was going to give up any moment, and all the remaining debris would start hitting the hull. Even the smallest space debris could leave a huge dent, or take out one of the outer engines. Which would put them completely out of the race.
“Kiran!” Rex called out, panic seizing him.
“Hold on!” Kiran called in reply, and then he swung the ship straight down towards the planet.
“Kriffin’ hell!” Rex barely managed to grab hold of the controls in front of him before he felt his guts drop before the rest of him followed, their speed nearly lifting him weightless up out of the chair. Below them, the white-blue planet swung to fill nearly their whole viewport. Kiran cut the engines down to half, pushed the port accelerator, and spun the ship around so they were once again pointed along the planet’s horizon, flying upside-down— not that space was oriented in any particular way, but it felt upside-down as hell to Rex for a moment. But he was back in his seat, the planet now looming above them through the viewport. And the starboard deflector mercifully stopped blaring as the last of its energy started to fail, letting the port deflector take over in its stead.
Kiran laughed a huge belly laugh, and pushed the engines to maximum speed apparently just for the fun of it. They had a stretch before they would arrive at the refueling station, but they were spared the heat of atmo as they glided along. The other ships, Rex realized, were only just now emerging from the meteors behind them. Two of them. They were down to three racers, total.
He let himself sink into the copilot’s chair, suddenly feeling heavy and maybe a little nauseated. “I hope we don’t need that shield in the void,” he murmured to himself.
“Fear not, my friend!” Kiran said, voice booming with exhilaration. “The shield will not be needed, though I plan to try and bring it up to at least twenty percent at the station anyway. Just in case!”
“Great.” Rex wasn’t unhappy, just recuperating. Adrenaline was pumping through him with every drumbeat of his heart in his ears, his limbs shaking and a cold sweat on his brow. He was wondering if eating the ration had been a good idea or not. Kiran just kept chuckling in waves; every time he looked back at the scanners that showed him how far behind the others were, another laugh would come. He ran some diagnostic checks, mostly on the fuel system. Rex just sucked in air, trying to settle.
The big Mirialan turned around at last to look at him, the grin that probably hadn’t left his face for the last several minutes still beaming broadly. His brow was also sweating, but he didn’t seem at all shaken despite the absolutely harrowing experience they’d just had.
“Are you alright back there?” he asked cheerfully. Rex realized he was slumped so far down in his chair that he might slip off onto the floor, if he wasn’t careful.
“Huh, me? Sure, I’m alright,” he panted, waving a hand like it wasn’t a big deal. He wasn’t used to this level of excitement on a ship. Planetside was one thing, but he’d never been a fighter pilot.
“Good! I will need your help adjusting this shield once we land.” Kiran started flipping switches, and the ship whooshed around more gently than it had the last time, putting the planet below and to the left of them again. And then the planet kept moving across to the opposite side of the viewport, its surface seeming to move strangely.
“Are you flying backwards?” Rex asked, staring.
“Indeed I am.”
“Why?”
“Oh, just for fun,” the big Mirialan said breezily. “But I also wanted to test the starboard shield quickly, against only the usual atmospheric debris. It could handle just a moment, but I think it will be quite dead by the time we land. The forward deflector is also struggling, but the aft one is much more intact. I thought it might make our repairs that much easier to give it a rest as well.”
Rex blinked, his eyes moving from staring out the viewport to staring at the other man. “Maker alive,” he muttered, pushing himself up to sit properly in his chair and rubbing his glove on his sweaty brow. “I thought I rerouted the laser cannon power to the starboard shield, since it was breaking up the rocks poorly anyway.”
“You did, but I am afraid it’s too compromised,” Kiran told him. “It would have given out much sooner had you not, though.”
“Glad I was good for something.” Rex’s laugh was a weak one.
Kiran turned back to him again, and there was an appraising look in his eyes. “I would say we are doing quite well, yes?”
Rex nodded. “Yeah, okay, you’re right.”
“Though I must ask you never to shoot at a space rock that is that close to us ever again,” Kiran added, half smirking.
The clone frowned, his cheeks warming again. “I’ll, uh, keep that in mind next time.”
They didn’t stop flying backwards until the refuel station was on the horizon. A thin trail of smoke was fluttering out from their aft end, which Rex didn’t much like but didn’t seem to bother Kiran. The Iviin’yc sailed smoothly into dock, and the fuel cables connected quickly.
“Now,” said Kiran, “it is time to check the old girl out and see what we can do to patch her up.” He walked, stooping under the ceiling which was too low for him to stand up comfortably throughout most of the ship, and opened the hatch. Stopping with his hand on the bulkhead, he looked back at Rex. “Can you solder?” he asked.
“Yes, I’ve replaced a couple transponders before, so I get the basics,” the clone replied, standing up to follow.
By the time they’d diagnosed the problems with the HWK, the other racers had landed and begun refueling. They all had as much damage at least as the Iviin’yc did.
“How are we gonna stay ahead?” Rex asked as he peered through the heavily dimmed welding helmet’s tiny eye window. He was patching a wire to a new spot, bypassing the laser cannons altogether. Or so Kiran told him. He had no idea what he was actually doing, apart from the detaching and reattaching of wires.
“Do not worry,” the big Mirialan said, his low voice almost startlingly close. “We will do only the repairs necessary to move through the void, and that is much fewer than it would be otherwise.” Kiran had pulled away an outer panel of the starboard engine and was supposed to be doing some other thing, but apparently he was watching Rex instead. Or he was already done. “Make sure you get all of the filaments soldered in!”
“I’m doing it!” Rex retorted, turning off the iron and peering over the mask to see more clearly. He had missed a few little shiny filaments. Taking the unlit iron, he pushed them down where he could catch them and started soldering again just a little, enough to tap them into place. He ignored how close Kiran’s face was to his. They both smelled like engine lubricant and metallic dust, but other more appealing scents were there. He ignored that too.
“You will damage your eyes,” Kiran chided him for not putting the mask back up. Rex huffed indignantly.
“It was only for a second!”
“I just thought you would prefer not to go blind!”
“You’re the one who asked me to help you!”
“Yes, and I think you will be somewhat less help if you cannot see!”
“My eyes can manage a single second of soldering. And the filaments are fine, see?” Rex pointed, and despite the oversized lump of metal it was in fact fine. Or at least it looked fine.
“Perhaps you ought to go inside and turn on the shields to find out for certain,” Kiran said with a frown, narrowing his eyes at Rex’s handiwork.
“Fine.” Rex marched back up the hatch and straight to the cockpit, turning on the starboard shield’s switches. It hummed to life. “See? It’s—”
The ship started beeping, showing an unsteady flow of power into the shield as it increased. Kriff, he thought. Before the big Mirialan could shout at him about it, he turned the switch down, then off completely. Chagrin washed over him. Some help he was being.
The sound of boots and a faint limp came up the hatch. “It is not your soldering that’s the problem,” Kiran said, leaning against the bulkhead for a moment and sighing. “It’s the shield flow compressor. We are not going to get that one past ten percent.” He pulled his stained and dusty overshirt off, throwing it back in the direction of the bunks. The sleeveless shirt under it was also a little dusty, and his olive green skin glimmered with sweat. There was another pattern of diamond tattoos along his upper chest and shoulders Rex hadn’t noticed back on Dantooine. He pursed his lips together, torn between being irritated and being distracted.
“Well, the others are okay, right?” he asked tightly, crossing his arms.
“It will be fine in a void. I am going to call this one, and check the fuel calibrator before we leave. Otherwise we will lose our lead.” Kiran looked at Rex, then tossed a wrench he’d been carrying on his belt up towards him. Thankfully Rex’s muscle memory appeared to be intact, because he caught it despite his distraction. “Will you be so kind as to reattach the plating I removed out there?”
“Sure, no problem,” Rex replied. Kiran nodded his thanks and walked back towards the bunks, presumably to whatever area would let him access the fuel calibrator. The lights on the ship’s ceiling cast heavy shadows on the muscles of his back as he went. Rex growled to himself and marched outside, picking up the panel and getting to work reattaching it. At least he could understand why Sol was physically attracted to the man, anyway. He wondered what she saw in his personality, though.
But, that was stupid. Rex had seen the way the big Mirialan treated Sol; utmost graciousness, patience, respect. He would let her have her way when it didn’t much matter, but he pushed back firmly and without anger when it did. When he stooped and kissed her knuckles it always seemed to make her blush. Just the way he said her whole name was ardent, even moreso than whatever Mirialani pet name he called her. He was charming even to Rex at times, which seemed to mean that a certain amount of charm was just in his nature. And on top of it all was his competence, something that Sol needed to see in order to be drawn to anybody. The clone huffed as he tightened the last screw on the panel a little more aggressively than was strictly necessary. Suddenly he was wondering what Sol saw in him, how he was different from his brothers to her.
Then again, Cody had told him that her interest in him had begun the first time she’d seen him from afar, watching Torrent Company doing drills at HQ back before the war had grown big enough to eat the galaxy. Before she’d even trained on Kamino, before she actually saw his face. So even if he wasn’t sure what it was, maybe something was there after all. Something that made the golden suns in her eyes burn a little brighter when she saw him.
Rex put his hand on the ship for just a moment, the ship she had named “swift” after its primary talent, and after the brother who seemed to know her best. His heart felt stretched taut and gooey at the same time, remembering her face. He wanted them to win just to see her beaming once they returned. He didn’t mind sharing that light with Kiran, because it was an expression he saw on her face all too rarely. Probably the big Mirialan felt the same. The money felt like a perk, even though really it was the only reason they were doing this in the first place.
He patted the ship gently. “Come through, old girl. For all of us,” he said quietly. He turned to look back at the open hatch, and saw Kiran standing there looking out. There was the faintest of smiles on his face. Rex returned it, just as faint, and as Kiran turned back towards the cockpit Rex walked back inside, following.
Chapter 10: into the void
Chapter Text
Gomar Sector, Dragon Void Nebula, Dragon’s Nest Station
The viewing room had felt too hot, too crowded, when Kiran and Rex finally broke free of the meteor shower and made for the safety of the next refueling station. Sol had let both Twofer and Remi hug her in relief, and then she’d told them she was going for a breath of air out at the landing pad. Rex’s little XS light freighter was there, empty and not as comforting as the Titan would have been except that it was his.
She had been planning on watching the nebula for a moment, taking her ease by the ship. But something compelled her to walk up the hatch and into the berth. The bunk that was Rex’s she knew immediately, because his old GAR helmet was on his bed. On an impulse she laid down, taking a breath. The sheets smelled of him, a scent that she found hard to describe. It was earthy, warm, and reminded her viscerally of so many things. Dancing with him, making love to him, running through some jungle landscape beside him under enemy fire. Sparring him to the ground over and over again, watching him enjoy it. The swell of love striking her chest, now that she finally knew what it was.
She was almost crying, and despite the fact that nobody was there she blinked back the tears. This was not the place to weep, not on this station or during this race. Not with the racers about to sail through a stretch of void, which she was finally almost looking forward to. The paralyzed terror she’d felt watching the meteors careening into ships had worn her out.
After a few minutes, she rose up from the bunk. They were both still alive, and that was what mattered. The money almost seemed less important to her all of a sudden. Except that if they won it, it would make a huge difference in their efforts, and in the lives of many clones and Force-sensitive children. If they won it, they’d be alive to put it to good use.
“Vod’ika,” came a chirp on her commlink. She tapped a button on it.
“Yes?”
“The void run’s startin’. You wanna see it?”
“I might listen from here. That room’s so crowded.”
Twofer chuckled. “Yeah, a’ight. I hear ya. Won’t be long now till it’s all over, right?”
“Thank the Maker.”
“Come back when y’ get to feelin’ better.”
“‘Lek,” she said softly. The comm went quiet, and she sighed. She almost didn’t want to listen to this last push, but at the same time it might end up being easier than waiting without any knowledge of how it was going. So, she went up to the cockpit and turned on the holonet receiver, tuning to the station’s broadcast frequency.
The two racers behind the HWK are catching up fast! They’ll likely keep pace with each other and wait until the end to make the final push! The announcer’s cheerful voice was grating to her, so she turned the volume down a little. She wondered why Kiran was letting the others catch up. He’d had a very good lead, so clearly he was allowing this. But the methods of racing were unfamiliar to her, so she figured she’d listen and learn. She put her elbow on the dashboard, resting her head in her hand.
She didn’t see the faint tendril of greenish smoke that wafted its way up into the ship through the hatch, or how it drifted purposefully towards her. Neither did she consciously realize that she was getting very sleepy all of a sudden, her eyes closing as she listened to the commentary of the announcer who was speculating about the way that each racer would manage their precious fuel, the dangers of navigating either hyperspace or sublight in a void.
No, something was pressing on her thoughts so gently it just felt like the weight of being alive, the weight of being tired, the weight of waiting to find out what would happen next. An old, familiar weight for Sol. Not by any means a prelude to sleep, in her experience. So she did not notice when the world slipped away. Nor did she hear the light footfall of the tall, pale woman with short white hair who entered the ship slowly and moved towards her.
By the time this intruder had walked up behind the pilot’s chair with a saber hilt in her hand, the green smoke had trailed all around Sol’s small body where she slumped over the controls. Still, a yellow blade sprang to life to hover near her neck in case she tried to move.
“Sol Tannor, is it?” said a crisp, high voice. “Let’s find out for sure.”
She crouched, pulling something out of the pouch above her boot. Pressing it into Sol’s carotid artery gingerly, she pulled it back after it made a very slight hissing sound. Looking down at the device’s readout, she crooked one sharp eyebrow.
“Oh yes. I’m sure they’re very interested in you.” She put the device away, then looked at the tiny girl. She was supposed to be armed and dangerous, but apparently her arms were tucked away somewhere on the ship, probably because she’d been inside viewing the race from a somewhat privileged location. There wasn’t even a vibroblade in her boot. So, the woman hoisted Sol up over her shoulder and walked out of the ship, the green smoke dispersing behind her.
“They’re keeping up with us,” Rex was saying in a low, slightly edgy voice. Kiran was casually leaning back in the pilot’s chair, keeping an eye on his scanners.
“Yes, I assume they will until we are much closer to the finish.”
“And you think they won’t outrun you?”
“It’s highly unlikely,” Kiran said, turning to look back at the clone. He was feeling smug, confident, though one little part of the back of his mind was on the lookout for unexpected troubles. “They have already burned fuel catching up with us. Fuel I did not have to burn, being in the lead, so I will have it in reserve once we approach the end.”
“What if they get ahead of us on the way?” Rex asked.
“They will not pull ahead until they think it is strategically wise, to beat me at the last moment. One need only be a few seconds in the lead, after all.” He shrugged, unconcerned. Hopeful, even, for that few seconds. “Even if they do pull slightly ahead, if we are fast enough towards the end we can still overtake them. I learned this the last time I was in this race. The only portion that remains the same each race is the void. And I believe that it is most important to be in the lead when one reaches the final refuel station, rather than through the void itself.”
“Hm.” Rex rubbed his chin thoughtfully. Kiran could see the wheels turning inside his head, and he grinned faintly.
“Do not overthink it, my friend.”
But Rex’s face changed as he seemed to figure it out. “Nevermind, I get it. It’s all in the fuel economy, once you hit the void, so if you hit it first you’re in a much better position. No wonder that last leg was so dangerous. Takes real skill and more than a little luck, to get through that part and be in the lead.”
Kiran raised an eyebrow mischievously. “Why, thank you,” he said, bowing his head low as though accepting a commendation. Rex’s face fell briefly, but then he grinned.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, leaning back in his own chair. “You did it.” His arms were crossed again, though in better humor than before. Kiran was starting to look for a pattern that would reveal why Rex did that so often. It felt almost like a shield, not just an effort to protect himself but to buffer away others. Except it wasn’t half so aggressive as, say, Sol’s would have been. And this time it didn’t seem aggressive at all.
“I did say I was good at this,” the big Mirialan reminded him.
“Guess I made it a little easier to be good at it, then,” Rex replied. For once, the clone was holding his smirk instead of letting it slip off his face. It was handsome on him, confident under that soft buzz of blonde hair in the way Kiran supposed only a commanding officer’s could be. It struck him that this was the first time he had seen the former captain look so confident.
“Indeed you did,” he replied, matching the smirk in kind. That seemed to make Rex falter a little, and he tightened his crossed arms and his smile fell.
“So now we just cruise? Until it’s time to hurry?” he asked.
Kiran nodded. “That is all one can do, in a void.”
“That seems almost too easy.”
“I think it is supposed to seem too easy. That is the mistake that can cost one the entire race.” He glanced out at the nearly starless black outside the viewport. The only reason he knew which way they were going was because the navicomputer told him. But eventually he would be able to see the gate at the end with his own eyes, and convince his navicomputer that it could see the gate, too.
“Do you mind if I ask you something?” Rex said suddenly, crossing his legs at the ankle and stretching them out beside the little co-pilot’s console. Arms still crossed, not quite casual. Kiran raised an eyebrow.
“Ask away,” he said.
“What was it that, uh, first attracted you to Sol?”
That wasn’t what he’d expected, but it wasn’t an unwelcome question. Kiran stroked his chin in thought for a moment. “It’s difficult to say,” he replied at length. “In honesty, I am not sure how one could not be attracted to her. At least, that is how I feel about it. I hope that is not a disappointing answer.”
“Well, no, not really.” Rex was smiling faintly. “I mean, I get it. First time I saw her, I got nervous ‘cuz it was hard to take my eyes off her.”
“When did you first meet Sol?” Kiran asked, finding himself curious.
“In a hangar bay at HQ. We’d just gotten back from a battle on Saleucami. General Greivous gave us the slip, which he always seemed to do. I was just trying to clear everyone out of the hangar and back to the barracks so we could send in all the requisition orders we needed. And suddenly Cronos Squad walked right up to us. Apparently, Sol and General Skywalker knew each other from the Jedi Temple.” At the memory, Rex’s eyes looked distant. He shook his head slightly. “They only spoke for a minute or so. And then my own general left me there to talk to a famous Alpha-ARC squad. Whose sergeant was a beautiful woman. In retrospect, I think he knew exactly what he was doing.”
That made Kiran grin a little. “Did this General Skywalker encourage your relationship?”
“Apparently so.”
“Was such a thing allowed by the Grand Army’s codes of conduct?”
Rex snorted. “I absolutely did not ask, but General Skywalker wouldn’t have cared if it was allowed or not. He was like that.” There was something in the clone’s countenance that shifted for a moment, as though some other, less happy thought had occurred to him. He seemed to dismiss it, and looked back at Kiran. “Anyway, she asked me about my helmet with the jaig eyes on it, because she said her mother was given them once. Asked if we could all meet again sometime to swap war stories, like I hadn’t already heard about all the impressive things they’d accomplished. That was really it, before we had to go our separate ways. She said goodbye to me in Mando’a. Should’ve known I was a goner right then.”
Kiran chuckled, suddenly very deeply endeared to the other man. Somehow, the interaction he described seemed like precisely something Sol would do. The way Rex spoke about it, his nostalgic little smile, was charming in its own way.
“Well, it seemed you did find out eventually,” said the big Mirialan.
“How’d you two first meet?” Rex asked, turning a curious look onto him.
“Hah,” Kiran half laughed. Suddenly he was oddly nervous. “Ah, well. A few cycles after Order 66, I was sitting at the bar of a cantina on Sammun waiting for someone to come up and say a code word. I had worked for the Skiratas before a couple of times, making my way about the galaxy, so it was nothing I was not used to. She walked right up to the bar, a tiny person in a helmet of course, and by far the most heavily armed being I had seen in some time.” At that Rex snorted, nodding, clearly unsurprised. “She was all business. Did not want to even discuss the job until we removed from the cantina to where her and friend Fives had camped. When she finally took off her helmet…” He shook his head. “I suppose I, too, was lost. Their ship was in dreadful shape, and I was not in desperate need of the money, and maybe I am a fool. I offered to do the job for free.”
Rex raised a brow like he knew what was coming next. “And how did she feel about that?”
“She did not like it very much,” Kiran admitted, and the clone chuckled. “I had to press her to give me her name. I did not realize at the time that she was more or less a fugitive. But she did tell me her true name, which seemed to surprise her brother.” He leaned back in his chair, remembering the glow of the little campfire in Sol’s eyes that evening, and Fives’ mischievous grin. “I do not think she was half so taken with me as she was with you, at the start,” he added.
“It wasn’t the same situation,” said Rex, unexpectedly gentle. “She was devastated. I don’t know if anyone could have made the best impression on her at the time.”
“That is kind of you, my friend. I certainly discovered very quickly what she is like.”
“Like a storm,” the clone said, looking out at the black outside the viewport. “Some kinda force of nature. Something you can’t stop, not that you’d want to.”
Kiran regarded him, because once again there was an expression on Rex’s face that he’d never seen before. Wistful, soft, unguarded. It wasn’t that such a face would be unexpected, given what he was talking about. The man was, in his own quiet and steady way, irrevocably in love. The feeling of it that settled around the cabin was soothing even to the big Mirialan, who sensed so clearly the hearts of others. He smiled.
“No,” he said softly, “I would not want to. Let us win this for her, you and I, yes?”
It was almost, but not quite, as though he were asking for something else. Some commitment to this thing they had both agreed to do, despite how uncomfortable it might continue to be. Rex looked back at him and nodded, like he knew.
“Yeah, let’s,” was all he said in reply.
The proximity alert pinged, signaling that it was time to start getting ready for the final push.
Rex felt like he wasn’t contributing much to the race anymore, as Kiran kicked the engine up and started to keep pace with the other two ships who had crept ever so slightly ahead of him. He was also a little disappointed, after all the pandemonium during the last leg, that the void was so empty that it didn’t feel like they were going fast at all despite the engine’s readout. There was nothing much but the other ships to compare their movement to.
Then the ship on their left kicked its ion engines up faster, a flare of blue light before they began to pull ahead. Kiran did not change speed or course. At first the ship on their right didn’t either.
“You can’t make any jumps, can you?” Rex asked, starting to think over the way this fuel conservation might work all over again. “Technically, I mean?”
“Actually I can, but it is quite dangerous,” Kiran replied. He was seated very upright once again in his chair, hands on the controls but not moving or pressing anything yet. He watched the other ships calmly.
“Why? Trouble navigating in a void?”
“Strangely, yes. One might think it would be very simple, but the trouble with the void is that it’s quite difficult to know where any point inside of it actually is, for a navicomputer, due to the lack of gravity wells for it to detect. And the finishing gate is somewhere in the midst of the void, not quite actually at its edge.”
“So it has no gravity of its own, and jumping there would be easy to miss?”
Kiran nodded even as he watched his own navicomputer. “It’s hard to estimate distance in a void as well, without some advanced measurement.”
“Didn’t they give you coordinates for the finishing— what was it, a gate?” Rex asked.
“They gave us a void map divided into squares, and told us which square the gate would be in,” the big Mirialan explained. “The gate will transport us back to Dragon’s Nest Station, though the technology is apparently a very old mystery. But it certainly still works.”
“Huh. Just like that,” the clone murmured to himself.
“Did you not read the datachip?” Kiran asked, and he didn’t sound annoyed. Just passively curious.
“Actually, I was a little too focused on convincing you I could help out,” Rex admitted sheepishly. He could actually see Kiran’s reflection faintly in the viewport’s transparisteel, so he saw the other man smirk. But then, just beside that reflection, Rex saw something else. A star that was dead ahead of them was shifting weirdly, flickering in a slow and regular way. He narrowed his eyes at it, and then he watched the second ship on their right kick up its engines. Kiran was tapping buttons on the navicomputer, eyes flickering up from the console to the star ahead and back down again.
“Alright, old girl,” he said to the ship, voice serious. “Let us surprise them, shall we?”
Rex wanted to say something about how the other two ships were getting away, leaving them behind, but something about their most recent interactions kept him quiet. He was about to watch this man do something, and Maker help them both if it wasn’t something completely astonishing. There was nothing he could say, nothing he could do to be more helpful than to watch.
Or so he thought.
“Friend, if you would be so kind, please come up here and look at the vectors on the navicomputer readout. There is a moving dot on them I am trying to triangulate. I need you to watch it until it aligns with the center vector through-line. The instant it does, punch the hyperdrive,” Kiran instructed him, voice calm and focused. “And then, just as quickly, pull it back. I will not be able to watch both the nav screen and the viewport at once.”
“I thought you just said it wasn’t safe to jump out here?” Rex asked nervously, though he rose from the co-pilot’s chair all the same.
“This race is not particularly safe, but I intend to win it anyway.” There was nothing boastful in his words. Only single-minded determination.
“Okay, big guy, I’m watching.” Rex tore his eyes away from the viewport where the other ships were starting to get upsettingly far ahead. He planted his feet wide beside Kiran, bracing himself with his left hand on the pilot’s chair. And he watched that dot like his life depended on it, his chest tight, his right hand on the hyperdrive lever. The reaction time of clones was good enough not to kriff this one up, he thought.
Kiran eased the ship’s sublight engines a little faster. He was leaning forward in the chair, eyes dead ahead, hands gripping the steering levers the way a Jedi would grip his lightsaber’s hilt; calm, strong, and ready. Rex’s heart pounded in his ears as he stared, waiting what felt like a thousand years for the moving dot to stop flickering all over the screen and land in the center. His breaths felt amazingly loud, even though they were steady and even. He refused to think about how everything seemed to hinge on what he was about to do— he’d been in that position enough times during the war, hadn’t he? This was no different, he thought.
And then the dot appeared dead center on the nav screen.
He slammed the lever forward, and saw the streak of hyperspace for a whole second before he yanked it back again. And then Kiran threw the ion engines, which had never turned off as they generally were supposed to once in hyperspace, into top speed.
Rex fell flat on his backside onto the floor of the cockpit, banging his head against the co-pilot’s console and swearing. When he looked up, Kiran was swinging the ship hard to the right, and suddenly a huge, spinning metal thing appeared. It was so huge that it was hard to tell how close it actually was, but Rex felt for sure they were about to slam right into it.
It was the gate. The round metal parts were moving, covered in lights, spinning faster and faster and faster, and the void inside its opening shimmered until it shattered into brilliant purple and blue. Rex almost covered his eyes, waiting for the abrupt end he was certain he was about to meet. He gasped, and then he let out a strange sound between a whoop and a horrified, amazed scream.
And then they were sailing towards the distant spindle of Dragon’s Nest Station, the purple and blue resolving into the glittering blanket of the Dragon Void Nebula all around them.
Kiran laughed the loudest he’d ever laughed maybe in his life, not that Rex knew, but it filled the whole ship and it made Rex start laughing too, not even bothering to try and stand up from the floor as they sped like mad in loops and twirls all around the station.
“HOLY SHIT! YOU DID IT!” Rex shouted, his limbs still wobbling with adrenaline, unable to stop laughing. The edges of his eyes were wet with the kind of tears that only happened when you’d just been completely sure you were about to die, only to find out that not only were you alive but the battle was over, and you were victorious.
He could see why Kiran liked this sort of thing.
“WE did it!” Kiran corrected him, the biggest beaming smile on his face as he slowed the ship down to cruising speeds and pulled up just in time to watch the other two pilots sail in through the gate. He turned and reached down his hand. Rex took it and let the bigger man yank him upright so he could look out of the viewscreen from a safe distance, the cameras all hovering around the station too far to see into the ship. Rex’s hands landed on the dashboard and he leaned onto it, staring out, still laughing and gasping for breath. Kiran’s hand slammed into his back dead center, not so hard as to knock him over but enough to startle him.
“Kriff,” he coughed. That made Kiran laugh harder, but then he stroked the place on Rex’s back briefly, as if to soothe away the overzealous smack.
“I am sorry, my friend,” the big Mirialan said, still laughing.
Rex, cheeks suddenly burning, tried to stand more upright. “S’alright,” he assured Kiran. He took a big breath, and then his eyes darted over to the holonet receiver. He pushed the button, and the announcer’s voice filled the cockpit.
…ULI’MAR, SAILING IN AT AN UNPRECEDENTED SEVENTY-TWO SECOND LEAD, UNBELIVEABLE!!
He grinned like a big kid, looking back at his companion. “We kriffin’ did it,” he repeated, and his heart felt like it was the size of a star.
Rex didn’t stay up front to gloat, being that he needed to remain very much unnoticed. He moved to the bunks and pulled his face shield back over his head, still grinning from ear to ear. Kiran was actually singing, up front, some booming and energetic marching song or another in that wild language of his. His voice was huge, low, resonating through the whole ship, and his joy went with it.
Once the ship landed back on their designated platform, the big Mirialan waltzed out of the hatch in fine form, not even putting his dirty overshirt back on. The cameras and interviewers were all over him, and even the other two racers seemed to have turned out to congratulate him, however reluctantly. It took a while for the noise to die away, Kiran moving off and back towards the interior of the station and the passages to the viewing rooms. Finally Rex walked out and peered outside the hatch, making sure no one was left. Spotting his own little freighter, which he walked over to with just enough speed to seem purposeful but not so much as to look suspicious.
He was humming to himself, he realized when he got inside. It was hard not to, after a feat like that. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered as he worked out that Kiran had been using the other two ships to try and triangulate the exact-ish coordinates of the gate. That was why he’d let them get ahead. It was actually genius.
It occurred to him only then that, if he hadn’t been present, Kiran would never have tried that jump. He had to push the ion engines the right way the absolute instant they dropped back into realspace, or they would have either swept right past the gate or crashed into it.
Rex stopped for a moment as that hit him, a flood of emotions rising up. Bafflement, mostly, and shock, but also something that was almost like being honored. He realized that Kiran must have made it sometime between when he’d realized Rex was on board, and the last leg. Something he had thought about, but hadn’t been planning to execute. Maybe he’d had another plan, one he was sure would work by a lot closer of a margin. But somehow he’d managed to use Rex’s help in a way that was upsettingly risky, brilliant, and absolutely, unequivocally worth it. He’d placed his trust not only in his own skill, but in Rex’s as well.
It was more than he could process at that moment, and Kiran wasn’t there for him to thank him for it. So he just went back into the little cargo hold to check the smuggler’s nook for all the weapons and gear they’d stashed there before entering the station and preparing for the race. When he found it all perfectly intact, he made his way up to the cockpit.
It took him a moment to realize that that holo receiver was on, playing the broadcast of the race. The announcers— there were two now— were discussing the race, recounting the moments that had been the most impressive to the viewers, updating their audience on the status of the racers who’d been stranded but not killed. But it hadn’t been on when they’d disembarked, so why was it playing now?
His vambrace was blinking wildly, like four people were all trying to comm him at once. Instead of answering, he entered Sol’s number.
“Cyar’ika?” he asked into it, even though it wasn’t signaling a link yet. It kept on blinking. A very bad feeling began to creep up on him, like something cold running slowly down his spine. He pressed the button again, pushing the comm to try and link again. Again, it just kept blinking. “Sol?” he asked, and again it was fruitless. He frantically put in Twofer’s number.
“Hey, Cap’n!” the weapons specialist answered, a din faintly in the background beginning to fade. “You were AMAZIN’! I can’t kriffin’ believe it!”
“Twof, is everything alright?” he asked, cutting right through the other clone’s cheer.
“Yeah, ‘o course everythin’s alright, what d’ya mean?”
“Where are you?”
“Inside the viewin’ room, waitin’ for big K to make his way in here. And for Sol to get back, too.”
Rex’s stomach dropped to the floor. “Sol isn’t there?” he asked urgently. “Where did she go? She’s not answering her comm.”
“She went out to yer ship for some air. Third leg ‘o the race had her so pissed she coulda blown up! I thought she mighta seen ya land and gone over, waitin’ for the cameras to head off.”
“Find her,” Rex ordered like he was still a captain and this was still his mission. “Find her, Twofer!”
“A’ight, I’ll go find her!” The comm shut off, cutting off the sudden edge in Twofer’s voice. Rex stood there for a moment, the broadcast still blaring. The words suddenly seemed like meaningless gibberish, obscene and distracting and infuriating. He reached over and turned the receiver off. Then he looked up out of the viewport at the nebula that hovered indifferently outside, the distant glimmer of the gate far off. The silence was like white noise in his mind, the static scream of something with nothing to connect to. All his pride and elation was dead in the water.
He went back to the cargo hold and pulled just one blaster out, strapping it to his belt. He found a coat in the bunk storage and pulled it over his otherwise fitted clothes to keep the weapon hidden. And he went out of the ship and into the Dragon’s Nest, looking for her.
Chapter 11: warp and weft
Chapter Text
Unknown Imperial holding facility
The dull light inside the prison cell had a reddish hue that contrasted sharply with the blue-white light that came in through the door’s transparisteel window. Sol woke up feeling groggy and a little nauseated, but as soon as she registered the cold durasteel against her skin she sat upright and stared around her.
Confusion and terror gripped her for a moment. How had she gotten here? The last thing she remembered was listening to the final leg of the Dragon Void Run on Rex’s ship, but clearly something had happened. Something that had locked her in what could only be an Imperial prison cell. Something about the brutal angles of the tiny room smacked of a Venator class star destroyer, but even more intimidating, dark, bleak. She wasn’t sure if she was on a ship or planetside, but a cell was a cell either way. She took slow, measured breaths, trying to ease the pounding of her heart in her ears. This was not a good situation, that much she accepted quickly.
There was a noise out in the hallway, a gruff shout and a scramble of armor, and then a loud thudding of boots that made their way in great, heavy strides closer. It wasn’t surprising when a shadow fell across the window in her door and stopped there. A laugh started resounding down the empty hall, and when the door opened, it just seemed to pick up in volume and sardonic mirth.
“It’s been such a pain in the arse t’find you!” said a familiar voice, a familiar silhouette. Jendais was standing, taking up most of the door frame with her height and broad shoulders. “And believe me, I been lookin’.”
She stepped inside, putting extra weight behind each thud of her boots. That seemed to be Jendais’ approach to most things, throwing her weight behind them. Sol frowned at her.
“Lucky for you, someone else managed it,” she said, not at all concerned with the immediate danger she was in. There was nothing to help that, after all. There was only the minor satisfaction of pissing the former Padawan off; minor, because it was so easy. There was no way Jendais would have taken her quietly. Someone else had to have been responsible.
Jendais snarled at Sol, stooping down towards her face. She had extra canines, like most Iridonian Zabrak did. “Shudup!” she barked. “Someone else mighta brought you in, but I get the much better job of wringin’ some valuable information outta you.”
Sol stared back into her eyes, uncowed. “You can try,” she said. A large hand with pointed nails shot out and gripped her throat, cutting off her air.
“Oh, I can,” Jendais said with a predatory smile. She only held Sol’s throat long enough to feel her struggle to breathe a couple of times, then withdrew her hand. “Bring ‘er to the interrogation chamber!”
Two armed guards were outside in the hall, in a strange approximation of clone trooper armor. But they weren’t clones, that much was clear. They scrambled inside, and Jendais shoved one of them with her arm as she passed back out of the cell. Sol stood up, and the first guard who approached her caught her flat palm leveled like a blade into his neck. Plasma bolts pinged wildly off the cell walls as the guard sputtered and coughed, staggering backwards. Sol darted over towards the other startled guard and gave a round kick that knocked his blaster out of his hands. Outside, Jendais was roaring.
Once again a hand closed around Sol’s throat, but this one was invisible. A strange recognition came over her, a vision of a choking Falleen woman rising out of her memory. She had been the one doing the choking, then. Now the same thing was being leveled against her. She gasped fruitlessly for breath, reached up instinctively for her own throat as though to pry the invisible hand away.
There were two more guards piling inside the cell, and they grabbed her by her limbs and wrested her to the ground. Jendais’ phantom grip vanished, and she coughed with the rush of air.
“Give it up, mint’aj!” the Zabrak shouted. Even her words were a blunt force. “You’re not goin’ anywhere unless I say you are!”
Sol said nothing as the guards slapped cuffs on her wrists and shoved her bodily out into the passage outside. They dragged her down the hall to the sound of Jendais’ self-satisfied laughter. It didn’t take long for them to open a door and bring her into another room, this one lit much more abrasively than the cell. She stopped pushing back when they slammed her back against a cold metal surface and more cold metal clamped down across her body over shoulders, waist, thighs, and ankles. She’d been in civilian clothes when she’d been taken from the station, and the chill of it shot through the exposed parts of her skin straight to her joints. They already ached from the lack of her Kaminoan medicine, but she expected that much. There was no reason to believe that would be the worst pain she was about to experience.
Jendais came in, shouted the guards back out into the hall. She slammed her hand against the controls on the wall, and turned a feral grin onto Sol as a large black droid with many mandibles descended from the ceiling. It hovered directly above Sol’s head, its faint trilling sound menacing in the metallic shell of the room.
“Now,” Jendais began, taking a slow step to one side, still glaring at her prey. “I’m sure you know more’n enough about these traitor clones to get me quite a few more bodies in my ledger. Maybe even Jedi, hm?”
From under white brows, Sol glared back. Then her eyes fell onto the saber hilt at the Zabrak’s hip, and she saw there were indeed scratches on its black surface. Lines and slashes; a body count. At least when the clones did it, it was just clankers. Sol’s lip curled faintly in disgust. It seemed like something a member of Death Watch would do, she thought.
“What are you lookin’ at?” barked Jendais, stepping closer. “Judgin’ me, are ya? Think you’re better’n me, do ya? You’re nothing!”
Sol’s golden eyes looked blandly back up at the glowering brown ones that leveled at her. They were a little bloodshot, like the former Padawan was burning inside in some way. Sol felt no need to rise to a bait that was so obviously generated by Jendais’ own insecurities.
“I left the Order ‘cuz they obviously didn’t care about me or anybody else. Just keepin’ the status quo at any cost. Couldn’t abide by their callous detachment anymore. You left the army for what? To save yer own skin?” Jendais leaned away, resumed her slow stomping around the chamber. “Seems like the Republic got tired of yer little campaign to give them clones rights. Maybe thought yer time at the Jedi Temple had ya gettin’ a little too uppity, for a soldier, Special Ops or not.”
“Congratulations on reading my personnel file,” Sol said dryly. “I assumed it was above your clearance level.”
Jendais growled. “I’ve got clearance to read whatever I want, mint’aj. I’m free to do whatever I want with you, if it gets ya to talk.”
Sol eyed her as she stalked around the little cell. The droid above hummed patiently, awaiting a command. But she was dragging it out, for some reason. “It might serve you better to actually ask a question,” Sol suggested, not hiding her annoyance. This was the kind of dramatics she never did go in for.
Jendais’ hand slammed into the metal beside her head. “Where’s yer little clone squad at now, hm? Helpin’ other traitors to the Empire?”
Sol raised a brow at her and said nothing.
“I found ‘em once, yanno,” Jendais continued, moving her hand. “Tracked ‘em all the way to their little Mandalorian friends. Empire’s not too happy ‘bout Mando interference in their affairs.”
“Nobody ever is.” Sol almost rolled her eyes.
“What’s it like,” Jendais said, plucking her saber hilt off her hip and spinning it idly in her hand, “bein’ cast off by your people? Then cast off by the Jedi? Then cast off by the Republic? Seems like nobody wants t’ keep ya.”
“The Empire does,” Sol said coolly. “Or you’d have killed me already.”
This did not improve Jendais’ mood. She slapped another button on the wall, and the droid over Sol’s head began to move. Here it comes, she thought.
The electricity that burned through her body left a singed feeling in its wake, like her organs had a sunburn. It zapped her a handful of times, and she gritted her teeth against it but was otherwise silent. She felt Jendais’ eyes on her, as though waiting for her to scream. When she didn’t, the big Zabrak growled and hit another button. Something Sol couldn’t see descended around her head, squeezing gently on her temples. There was a stab of pain in her neck, and immediately her head began to swim.
“Let’s find out how ya like a mind probe,” came Jendais’ voice through the warm fog that was descending onto Sol’s thoughts. And then came the hum. It felt like her brain was vibrating inside her skull as the humming noise got louder and louder. Just as she thought she might black out from the sheer sensory overwhelm, the humming stopped.
“Now lemme ask again. Where’s the squad of clones you run with? Your… brothers?” The voice was harsh as usual, but it also reverberated through the air like the hum had, only quieter.
“No idea,” said Sol, her own voice faraway and not quite her own. Her eyes refused to focus on anything around her, a blur of gray and black and red.
“Where?!” Jendais shouted.
Sol tried to shrug, unsure if she succeeded. “Don’t know.” It was the truth, after all. She had no idea what her brothers were doing at that moment, where in the galaxy they were.
“Then where would they go back to? Some hidin’ place?”
Sol tried to find a thought. She couldn’t quite think of anything, as though there were too many options vying for her attention and it was making it hard to actually remember what any of said options were. Not that she wanted to share any of them, anyway. “Could be anywhere,” she managed finally.
Jendais just growled. “Too much,” she said to the droid. It made a flat sort of beeping noise and started making some other sound, a much more soothing wave rolling from one ear to another. Suddenly Sol could focus. Enough to feel the pain of another series of electrical zaps that rattled her teeth.
“Now, lemme see,” the Zabrak started again. “Keep it real simple-like. D’you have any bases established where you help traitor clones?”
Sol turned the thought over in her mind as much as she could while the pain ebbed. “Not personally, no,” she replied. None of the bases were strictly hers, after all.
“‘Personally’?” Jendais growled, indignant. “H'sletret gunsos! I’m gonna get tired of this real quick.” The metallic scream of a lightsaber filled the air, and Sol felt the heat of a red blade near her cheek. “Tell me somethin’ I wanna know, or I’ll leave you here t’get t’know this droid much better.”
Narrowing her eyes at the Zabrak, Sol’s vision came into focus as her head lolled back onto the durasteel. “You’re not very good at this,” she said, the part of her mind that would’ve encouraged her to just stay silent apparently compromised by whatever they’d injected her with. So she wasn’t surprised when Jendais roared furiously at her, nicked her cheek with the plasma blade, and stormed off with the door slamming shut behind her. Nor when the zaps began again, and they started moving all over her body, increasing in power. She focused on breathing whenever she could catch a gasp, and did not allow herself to scream.
- - - - -
Mandalore, Northern hemisphere, Kyrimorut homestead
“I’m starting to feel like Sol made more enemies than she let on during the Clone War,” Mereel said as he sat at a table inside the dining hall at Kyrimorut drinking his third cup of caf. Kiran, Fives, Rex, and Twofer were sitting with him, each also working on a cup of the same. “She’s been kidnapped more than once since I met her.”
“I don’t think anyone is her personal enemy,” Rex said. “At least, I don’t know who in the Empire could have a vendetta against her.”
“Only person I can think of who might still call ‘imself her enemy’s our old trainer,” Twofer said, and for once his grin was more ironic than mirthful. “But he’s a Mando, got his own problems. Prolly not out droppin’ hits on her, y’know?”
“That was Apma, right?” Mereel smirked. He’d heard the story from someone, probably not Sol herself. “Bastard. He’s thrown in with the Protectors on Concord Dawn, but I doubt he’s really loyal to them. But he’s not in a position to be looking for her, you’re right. And if he wanted to, I think he’d prefer to do it himself.”
“There were no signs of any struggle on my ship or nearby,” Rex put in. “Or anywhere on the station that I saw. Her weapons were still hidden with the rest. So it probably wasn’t a Mando who came after her.”
“I did not see anything either. It’s as though she disappeared,” said Kiran. His countenance, normally lighthearted, had fallen glum. Rex knew how he felt.
“Well, her bounty’s clearly been paid out. There’s no more active pucks, no listing anywhere. And clearly it wasn’t your Togruta friend,” Mereel said, raising his brow at Rex. The former captain frowned, but didn’t rise to the bait. It wasn’t the Null’s best effort at baiting him, anyway.
“Then it’s most likely she’s being held at an Imperial base, right?” asked Fives. “Do you think it’d be one near the Dragon’s Nest? Or one of the refueling stations?”
“They didn’t specify a dropoff point in the old pucks we found.” Mereel shrugged. “And anybody with half a brain would want her off their ship as soon as possible. The bounty said she was armed and highly dangerous.”
“She wasn’t armed when they took her,” Fives pointed out.
Twofer snorted. “You’ve never sparred with ‘er, vod. She don’t need any weapon t’ take a person flat out.”
“Yeah—”
“Indeed—”
Once again, Kiran and Rex spoke at the same time. They looked at each other, and this time they both nodded. And Rex decided now wasn’t the time to ask about how the big Mirialan knew that, but it did make him feel slightly… something. He wasn’t sure what. The issue at hand made it seem unimportant for the moment.
Mereel’s raised eyebrow graced them again, glancing for a moment between the two men. “Ordo’s got people working the information networks. But we don’t have unlimited funds to pay these lowlifes for their crumbs, and frankly so far not much has been worth the money. We do have a map of the Imperial bases from the Queluhan Nebula to Mustafar, at least.”
“How many’s that?” Rex asked.
“Fourty-one.”
Twofer growled. “Can’t blow all of ‘em up.”
“It would be strange if the Empire made it known which base she was held at, even to its own personnel.” Kiran sipped his caf. “She is of particular interest, for whatever reason.”
“She already was, by the end of the war,” Twofer pointed out. “‘Cept they wanted her dead, then.”
“Yeah, I’ve thought about that,” said a new voice, and Swift walked into the dining hall from the direction of the hangar bay. “A lot, actually.”
“Mebbe too much for his own good,” Twofer added in brotherly fashion.
“We know Sol can use the Force at least a little,” the sniper continued, ignoring Twofer. He walked up to the table and set his hands down heavily on it, leaning slightly forward. “We also know these Inquisitors are all former Padawans, recruited by someone in the Empire to do their dirty work. It sounds, from what we hear on Dantooine, that Force-sensitive beings in general are candidates for recruitment too. Sol’s former GAR Special Ops, she spent time at the Jedi Temple, and whether she claims it or not she was born Mandalorian and trained from a young age in Mando combat.” He looked pointedly at each of them in turn. “I dunno why that made her a threat before, but it makes her one hell of an asset now, doesn’t it?”
“Dank ferrik,” Rex found himself murmuring. He rubbed his forehead.
“Do they know they’ll never get her to agree to it?” Mereel asked, his relentless smirk on his face again.
Swift looked suddenly uncomfortable. “General Windu seemed to think she’d be vulnerable to the Force somehow,” he said. Rex looked sharply up at him.
“How?”
“I dunno. Something about the darkness making it easy to manipulate her.”
“Manipulate her?” Twofer asked. “That’d be like manipulatin’ a mountain!”
Kiran’s face was distant and serious, as though he were thinking very hard about something seemingly unrelated to their discussion. But clearly it wasn’t. “That,” he said, “is true of her conscious self. But darkness in the Force manipulates one much more deeply. It finds its way into the subconscious, and it takes more strength than I know to resist it. Even Jedi have fallen to it.”
“Maybe we should ask a Jedi for some help, then?” Fives suggested.
“Wait, how do you know that?” Rex asked, turning to look at Kiran. Of course, he knew Jedi fell. He’d watched it happen to at least one of them. But Kiran wasn’t a Jedi, nor did he seem to be connected to them.
“On my world we still acknowledge the Force as a spiritual presence in the galaxy,” the big Mirialan replied. “Many Mirialans are taken to join the Jedi, which you may have seen in your service to the Republic. But there are those on Mirial who still study dark arts and seek unnatural powers from the Force.” His face was graver than Rex had ever seen it. This was personal knowledge he had, not theoretical. Rex remembered what he’d said about his house fighting with another house for a thousand years. There’s something that drives our enemy to do deeds that the honor of my House could not bear. Some darkness that we cannot meet, without losing our souls in the process, maybe.
“And they’re not Jedi, or Sith, or whatever they call ‘emselves?” Twofer asked.
“No.” Kiran shook his head. There was pain in his face. “Any being who can call upon the Force, however meagerly, could be drawn in by such powers. The rest of us are simply powerless to resist it.”
The silence that fell over the dining hall was heavy, the distant sounds of the kitchen almost making it worse. Each man at the table seemed to be in his own thoughts, and none of the thoughts were good. At length, Rex spoke.
“I think we’d better talk to a Jedi.”
- - - - -
Dantooine, Hidden Path safehouse
Kiran sat by the fire in the center of the circle of duraplast huts, which were looking quite a lot better now that there was money to make it so. The grief in his heart made it difficult to appreciate that his winnings were serving their purpose, though he did take a very small comfort in it. Rex was actually sitting next to him, the clone’s own choice. That had surprised him, like it was an offering of more than just peace, but camaraderie. Rex was even more serious and quieter than usual, and the other clones seemed to know the look on his face. Especially the one named Cody, who sat on Rex’s other side. Cronos sat all along on Kiran’s other side, Swift closest to him.
Across from him just to the right of the fire’s glow sat Quinlan Vos, whose normally cheerful face was also drawn into a troubled frown. Next to him was the pale Togruta Jedi, Elisara, who’d taken to the role of defender of this safe house like a speagull to the ocean. On the other side, left of the fire, was Mace Windu. This Jedi, Kiran had not actually seen in the flesh yet, for he had been hidden in the caves during the big Mirialan’s time on Dantooine so far. Every day, Sol had taken him supper. Some days she stayed and spoke a little longer with him, other days it was only a brief visit. Watching the man move, Kiran could see why he didn’t do it much. He was badly mangled, huge scars ripping across his bald head and rendering one of his eyes milk-white and blind, one side of his mouth slightly misshapen. The way he walked spoke to much greater injuries beneath his brown robe, and Kiran didn’t have to look long to see that one of his hands was missing entirely. There was no prosthetic or cybernetic to replace it. And his face did not bear any signs that he smiled much even before whatever had befallen him. He seemed like the ideal Jedi to train a young Sol, actually. Just as solemn, twice as patient. More than twice, given what Kiran had heard about Sol at the age of seventeen.
None of them were happy.
“If I were the man I once was, I could find her,” Mace Windu said. “Unfortunately, now it is too perilous for me to try.”
“If you teach me, Master Windu, I could try it,” Vos said, looking at the elder Jedi.
“I think if we can use any means but the Force to locate her, that would be safest. If we use the Force, it cannot be from here. The risk of Vader finding us is too great.”
“The info networks haven’t been all that helpful,” Grip said. “The Nulls are trying, but there’s only so much we can do. Fives and Echo haven’t had any luck, either.”
“What if we didn’t draw attention to ourselves with the Force?” asked Elisara. “What if we just… listened?”
“Listened for what?” asked Cody. It sounded like he understood better than most others present (who were not Jedi) what such a vague thing meant.
“For a disturbance in the Force,” replied Vos. “If they intend to use the Force to get to Sol, it’s possible we might be able to sense it. But it would take a lot of work, and there’s only two of us.” He looked at Elisara, and she returned it.
“It’s the least we can do for someone who’s helped us so much,” she said, and there was a shade of defiance in her tone. “The least.”
“The Dragon’s Nest is on the other side of the galaxy from here,” said Rex. “I’ve seen Jedi do incredible things, but Sol’s not as strong with the Force. It’d take someone else doing something very bad to her for you to sense it, wouldn’t it?”
The way Mace Windu looked at the former clone captain was laden with a great many thoughts that Kiran knew the man wouldn’t speak aloud. But he knew Rex’s history, that much was clear. Probably knew which Jedi it was Rex had seen do the things he referred to, being that they had served in the same army.
“It might,” Windu replied. His tone didn’t change. “That’s the chance we take.”
“We can’t wait around for that,” Swift protested. He was leaning forward with elbows on his knees, looking up at everyone through his eyebrows. Vibrating with impatience, frustration. “I’m tired of waiting around to figure out what happened to my sister. Last time, it was her choice to stay hidden, to protect everyone’s safety. This time, someone’s taken her from us.”
“Someone who can take everything from all of us, if we are not careful,” Mace Windu replied. “We will not abandon her. But we must be cautious.”
Beside him, Rex was starting to emanate his own discomfort more strongly. Kiran cast his eyes around the circle, the tension beginning to wear on him as well. The sudden clarity of the real danger Sol was in was a weight he chafed against. A danger he knew, though he’d endeavored to put the memories behind him.
“If they use their dark arts to manipulate her,” he put in, “can they not also use them to gain knowledge of this base from her? Of all of the safe houses she knows?”
“Maker alive, it just gets worse,” Cody groaned, rubbing his head like a headache was coming on. “I think maybe we’d better cautiously hurry, sir,” he added to Windu.
“Listen,” Vos said suddenly, “I’ll go closer to the places you suspect she was taken, and I’ll listen. If someone finds me, it won’t be here. You continue to search for information—” he looked around at all the clones, and at Kiran— “and between us we’ll be using more than one method to figure it out.”
“I’ll listen from here as much as I can,” Elisara added. “In case she’s been moved to some other base that’s closer to us. I won’t reach out, so I can keep us hidden.” She said this last with a pointed look at Windu, nodding as if to assure him. “I won’t know as clearly as Master Vos, maybe, but I can sense a disturbance at the very least.”
The elder Jedi looked like he might’ve thought about pushing back, but somehow the urge failed him. “I cannot tell you what way is the right way or the wrong way,” he said. “And I cannot help Sol until she is safely returned. You all care greatly for her. I put my trust in that, and in the Force.” He lowered his head and pulled the hood of his robe over it with his remaining hand.
Rex stood up, and Kiran saw the way his fists were balled and shaking beside him. “General Windu,” he started in a voice full of determination and indignation, “you were one of the greatest of the Jedi. You were the High General of the entire Grand Army of the Republic. More than that, you trained her! You care about her! Why can’t you help us?”
Windu didn’t raise his head. “I am no longer that man, Captain Rex.”
“Why not?” Rex demanded.
“My connection to the Force has been severed.”
“By who?”
“By myself, for the safety of all the Jedi who are left.”
“It didn’t seem to do much good keeping Sol safe!” Rex’s voice grew louder, but he didn’t move in any way towards the man. The other clones were watching him, as were Vos and Elisara. But no one made any move against him.
“No,” said Windu, and though his face was hidden, Kiran could hear the faint threat of tears in his voice. “It did not.”
For a tense moment, Rex just stared at him. Then he snarled, and turned to walk away from the fire. Kiran tried to raise a hand to him, but he pushed it away. Cody looked at Kiran and shook his head.
“Let him go,” the clone said. “I’ll talk to him.” And he rose to follow his brother quietly.
Turning back to the others, Kiran felt compelled to speak, even though he wasn’t sure exactly what he was going to say at first, or why. “We here are all willing to do what we can to find her,” he began. “And we all have our… means. Let us start with that, and let us not lose our hope and doom this effort before it starts. We can divide and cover more territory, and we have our friends and allies who can help us. The Skiratas, for example, are already helping. Perhaps we have simply been too hasty to think of others, yes?”
Twofer looked up at him, brow furrowed in thought. “Wait,” he said, “what about the little orange lady on Takodana? She knows Sol pretty well.”
Kiran looked at him, nodding encouragement. “You are right, friend Twofer. We should reach out to her.”
“Are there any other Jedi we might ask to listen, too?” asked Elisara, looking over at Vos.
“I have one message I’m trying to verify,” he said. “It says it’s from Ahsoka Tano, but I’m not sure. I thought she was dead.”
“She’s not!” said Swift, suddenly excited if not exactly happy. “Fives and Sol ran into her on Thabeska. It could really be her.”
Vos’ eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Good to know!” he almost laughed. “I’ll keep working on vetting it, then. But it came from Alderaan, not Thabeska. Maybe I’ll stop there on my way to my listening post.” Beside him, Elisara was smiling brightly, much more optimistically than the other Jedi. Windu’s hood didn’t move, but Kiran was sure he was listening closely.
“I’ll comm Remi,” Twofer put in, “since they’ve got some way of findin’ out what’s happenin’ in the Bounty Hunters’ Guild. If it was a hunter who found her, mebbe they can find out who.”
Kiran felt himself smile. “There,” he said, gesturing broadly. “We are not so poorly equipped after all.”
Rising suddenly from his seated silence, Stone looked over at the big Mirialan. He nodded soberly, gratefully. “We’ll go to Takodana,” he said, glancing down at his brothers. One by one they rose.
“We’ll comm you when we know something,” Swift added, placing a hand on Kiran’s shoulder. Then, almost as one, they turned towards the Titan. Kiran watched them go, feeling his own gratitude for their loyalty. Now, he was alone at the fire with the Jedi.
“What’ll you do, big guy?” asked Vos pleasantly enough. But Kiran felt a spike of guilt at the question.
“I am not yet sure,” he said. “I am less well connected than all of you, for the time being.”
“You don’t know anyone on Mirial who could help?” The young Togruta’s question was innocent, because she didn’t know the shame it brought over him.
“Unfortunately, no one that I am able to contact at the moment,” he replied. His eyes lingered on the flames in front of him, but he could feel Elisara and Vos looking at him. Windu remained motionless, unresponsive. “I think, perhaps, I will speak to Rex and see if I cannot find a way for us to collaborate.”
“Good luck,” Vos said. It wasn’t meant to be anything but sincere, of course. But Kiran was feeling anxious enough about the former clone captain’s loss of composure, which by all accounts was out of character for him. He rose, gave the Jedi half a bow, and turned into the direction of the ships.
As he approached the XS series, he heard voices. Unable to help himself, curious what he might be walking into, he stopped just shy of the open hatch and the light that emanated from it.
“...was hoping you’d be settled enough by now to talk,” Cody was saying. Apparently he’d given Rex some space while the rest of them were still by the fire.
“Yeah, well, I’m not,” came Rex’s reply, resonant with anger. “I just got her back, Codes. I just got her back!”
“I know, kih’vod, I know.”
“I can’t believe we have one of the best Jedi in the Order here and he can’t do anything about this!”
“I don’t get it either—”
“I mean, I can tell the man’s been through a lot, but has that ever stopped a Jedi? Would it have stopped General Skywalker, or General Kenobi?”
“Maybe not Skywalker, but Kenobi would’ve almost definitely chosen the safest thing for the entire group, so let’s not worry too much about him.” Cody was trying to make a little light of this, but it went nowhere with Rex.
“I just can’t believe this. I cannot believe we let this happen to her!”
“Nobody let anything happen, Rex—”
“We got way too comfortable at that race,” the former clone captain carried on as though he hadn’t heard. “Too focused on the damn prize, not enough on safety. And Twofer should’ve known better!”
“Hey, don’t start that.”
“I’m just as guilty as anybody else. I shouldn’t have left her.” Rex’s voice was starting to deflate from anger into the sadness that it cloaked, and Kiran saw his opening. He cleared his throat and approached into the light of the hatch, and could see the two men in the cargo bay inside. They both turned towards him.
“Is everything alright?” he asked, putting his hands behind his back. “Apart from the obvious, of course.”
“Don’t you start,” Rex said, his tone turning angry again, his brow furrowing darkly. “You’re the whole reason this even happened!”
“Rex,” said Cody rather sharply.
“I feel as guilty as any of us, my friend, I assure you,” Kiran said, keeping his voice as calm as he possibly could. “I did not insist on her remaining behind to watch from a safe distance as I should have.”
“You’re damn right you should have.” Rex said, taking a step towards him. There was more true vitriol in his voice than there ever had been in any of their tense moments before. “I don’t see you jumping to do anything about all this, either!”
“I was just coming to ask you what we might do together.” Kiran held up a placating hand. “The others have chosen their paths, and we have more resources—”
“We have nothing!” The clone’s fists were balled up again. “What, a few remnants of clones roaming around the galaxy? All our informants inside the Empire have left or been executed for treason!”
“Cool off, vod.” Cody was starting to take a commanding officer’s tone. “Before you say something you’ll regret.”
“Don’t order me around, Cody. We’re not soldiers anymore,” Rex bit back, before turning an accusing finger back to Kiran. “You don’t know what it’s like, to lose her like this. Maul took her, Order 66 took her, hell that cursed kriffing temple on Moraga almost got her, too. I’ve lost her so many times. And I’ve watched so many of my brothers die, or be kidnapped by the Empire to use as lab rats. I watched the ship Farrow was inside of go down in flames over Ryloth! You— you don’t know!”
“You are right,” Kiran ceded softly, the stab of pain erupting out of Rex striking him like a cold wave rising out of the sea. “I do not know what your pain is like, only my own.”
“Imagine for one second that you weren’t born,” Rex said, “but manufactured. For one purpose: to die in someone else’s war. You barely eat real food, because it’s too expensive to feed you. You don’t get paid, or get shore leave, or even get a proper funeral if you die anywhere but in the mud on some planet. Nobody seems willing to let you retire after your war is supposedly over. And if you run off to try and live a life of your own, they put you down because it’s too expensive to imprison you!” Suddenly he turned away from Kiran and Cody, going over to an empty crate that was sitting in the cargo bay and kicking it right out of the hatch like a bolo ball. He stopped, then, and didn’t turn back around, but instead leaned one muscled shoulder against the bulkhead and rubbed his face with his hands. “Imagine you finally found someone who fights for your right to be a person, who puts herself on the line for your survival and your humanity, in our case. Who could have chosen anything she wanted, and for some Maker-forsaken reason what she wanted… was you.”
His voice was finally falling small, exhausted. He sagged against the metal of the ship, breath coming heavy. Cody was watching him, and there was a true expression of hurt for his brother’s sake on his face. Kiran stayed quiet, patient. This was not for him, this anger and pain. This was very old and deeply buried. It needed to escape the clone’s impossibly tense body, the tightest knots reserved for around his heart. Kiran understood precisely that need, in his own way.
“I was ready,” Rex murmured as if to himself, “to stay by her side and stop living like a soldier. Start living like a person. I’m not ready to lose her again.”
Cody walked over to him and laid his hand on the other clone’s shoulder. Kiran remained where he was, more or less certain that his was the last face Rex wanted to see right at that moment. He felt sad, almost regretful that he could not comfort the man properly. Surprised at how much he wanted to. But, caring for Sol had taught him enough about not pushing.
“I am not ready to lose her either,” he said quietly, and turned and walked back out of the ship’s hatch into the night.
Kiran slept on his ship, as much as he could given the dreams that haunted him. Early in the pre-dawn light he got up and went to the refreshers in the safehouse, wondering if he could wash away the lingering feeling of failure that hung on him like a wet cloak. It was nice to have actual water to bathe in, rather than relying on a sonic shower. It was heated just enough to soothe the knots in his back, but not enough to release them. He longed for a bathhouse. But the showers were still wonderful, given the circumstances. He wrapped himself in his own towel from the Iviin’yc, since the ones around the safehouse weren’t quite big enough. Enjoying the feeling of the Dantooine grass on the unshod soles of his feet, he carried his clothes back to the ship. Put on clean ones, at least a pair of cuffed trousers and a loose shirt. The sun was peeking over the horizon as he made himself a seat in front of the lowered cargo hatch of his ship on a couple of crates and began to run a comb through his long, wet hair. It got his shoulders and chest damp through the shirt, but he didn’t care. There was a faint breeze that would dry him off soon enough anyway. After the intense emotions of the night before, doing all of this alone was calming. He was still trying to think if he knew anywhere else to start in the search for Sol when he heard a pair of booted feet walking slowly towards him from around the side of the ship.
It was Rex. He was in the same clothes from the day before, and his eyes were shadowed by lack of sleep. “Uh, hey,” he said in a half hoarse voice, not quite looking directly at Kiran. “So, um, my friend Senator Chuchi is going to try and see how much of the Imperial prison record she can access for us.”
“A Senator?” Kiran raised an eyebrow. “You have impressive friends.”
“Yeah, well.” The clone rubbed the back of his neck. “Took me long enough to think to contact her.”
“I think you had other matters to attend to.”
Rex looked unconvinced. “I’m sorry I laid into you like that, Kiran. None of that was meant for you.”
Kiran nodded, still combing his hair as it slowly became more dry. “I know,” he said. “I am sorry for all the difficulty you have suffered, truly. Oqko p’a khakq wimukoma, isuma.”
Rex looked at him, and there was almost a smile on his face. “Sounds pretty, but you know I have no idea what that means,” he said.
“It means ‘may your pain ease, my friend’.” Kiran offered his own sad smile, before letting his face fall again. “We will find her,” he said. “In this, you have my solemn vow.”
“Yeah, I know.” Rex had an empty crate in his hand, Kiran realized. It looked like the one he’d kicked the night before. He put it on the grass and sat down, turning one appraising eye on the big Mirialan. “What’s it like having all that hair?” he asked.
Kiran chuckled. “It’s a lot of work, if I am honest. But it is a custom for members of my House to wear our hair long in this way.”
“Ever get to be a pain under a helmet?”
“There is a warrior’s braid for just that reason.”
“Hm.” Rex stroked his chin. “Never liked having that much hair on my head. But it, uh, probably looks better on you than it would on me. Mine needs cut.” He reached up and rubbed his own fuzzy blonde head, frowning.
“You really should have a shower before we must leave,” Kiran advised him. “The water is most refreshing. And our time to depart may yet come sooner than we expect.”
Rex was looking out towards the rising sun, the amber pools in his weary eyes turning warm and orange in its glow. Some of the exhaustion seemed to be fading off of him. “I might just do that,” he said. But he didn’t move, only sat there nearby and watched the day breaking out over the heath with its dots of blba trees. Kiran sat with him in a rare moment of peaceful silence.
It was broken by the sound of Cody running up behind them. “Looks like we got that list of possible bases narrowed down,” he said, pressing a series of buttons on his vambrace. “Senator Chuchi couldn’t access all the prisoners’ information, and she didn’t see Sol’s name anywhere, but these are the bases that have prisoners marked with classified data.”
Kiran turned and looked at Cody knelt in the green between him and Rex, his vambrace projecting a map that went from ten sectors’ worth of bases down to just seven individual red dots. “That is considerably fewer,” the big Mirialan said.
“Does she know why any of them are classified?” Rex asked.
“No, it’s not clear why. Just the Empire keeps its secrets, I reckon,” said Cody dryly. “I’m gonna send this data to everyone’s comm, so we’ll all have it. No news from Cronos yet. But, Vos needs a ship to get to Alderaan.”
“He can take the XS,” Rex said. “Go with him if he needs another man, Codes. Just in case.”
“Yeah, if he’ll let me. You know how Jedi can be.” Cody grinned, turning off the map and standing up. “Hold tight, lads. We’re getting closer. And, depending on what we find, we might need to figure out a way to stock our armory real fast.”
“We just won three hundred thousand credits, ori’vod,” Rex pointed out. “I think we can manage."
“Yeah, but we gotta buy ‘em someplace that’s off the radar.”
“It’s a good thing we do not know any well-stocked Mandalorians,” Kiran said with a smirk. Rex looked at him and grinned.
“Guess I better grab that shower before any more news comes in, huh?”
Chapter 12: disturbance
Chapter Text
Alderaan, Northern hemisphere, Organa family estate
Cronos Squad never made it to Takodana before receiving a priority comm from Quinlan Vos and diverting back towards the Core. Having landed at Senator Organa’s private country estate, Swift took off his helmet before he exited the Titan and walked down the broad concourse flanked on either side by lush green. Ahead, mountains loomed behind the elegant buildings of the estate, their peaks far beyond capped with snow. The sun was shining, and the sounds of birds and Maker knew what other creatures filled the clear air and cloudless sky with their shifting ambient sounds.
It was paradise, really. It was no wonder Alderaan was so humanitarian; they wanted everyone to live as well as most of their citizens did. He’d seen the cities on the way in, and though crowded they were just as lovely as the more rural parts of the planet. Everywhere, nature was preserved and facilitated. It was possibly one of the most beautiful worlds Swift had ever seen, combining the technological luxuries of Coruscant with the lushness of places like Takodana. But at that moment, it was mostly empty to him.
A familiar set of white and blue montrals over an orange and white face was coming down the concourse in his direction. Behind him, he heard his brothers exiting the shuttle.
“Cronos Squad!” called Ahsoka as she approached. “It’s good to see you. Thank you for sending Master Vos my way.”
“Of course, sir,” nodded Swift habitually. “Happy to help.”
“He told me about Sergeant Tannor,” she added, a frown quirking the side of her mouth. “I’m in the process of setting up an intelligence network with Senator Organa, so maybe this can be an early task of ours.”
“This a spooky Force-type network, or just regular old information?” he asked with a wry grin.
“Both, if it has to be.”
Behind her, a tall and dark-haired Human man was approaching. He wasn’t in his senate robes, but Swift wouldn’t have recognized him either way. It just seemed obvious that this was the Senator in question. He had a friendly but also rather stately face.
“Good t’see you’re doin’ alright, sir,” said Twofer as he approached. “Sol told us you two had a run-in, while back.”
“Thanks, Twof.” Ahsoka’s smile was a little half-hearted.
“Hello, friends,” said the senator as he drew up alongside her. “You are the famous Cronos Squad?”
“Most of it, sir,” Swift said.
“Ah yes.” He gestured towards himself. “Bail Organa, at your service. We are looking for your sergeant, I’m told. Senator Chuchi has already relayed some minimal information about the classified prisoner files in that quadrant. I’m hoping that with Ahsoka’s help, we can glean a little more information.”
“They don’t keep track of who brought in what bounty, do they?” Grip asked as he removed his helmet and stood by Swift’s side. He didn’t seem hopeful.
“No, it doesn’t seem so,” Organa confirmed.
“Pucks got retired anyhow,” Twofer said to the medic. “They got somethin’ else now, special bounties for special interest targets, says Remi.”
“They’re called M-count bounties,” Ahsoka said. “Though, I can’t be certain what ‘M-count’ means exactly. I do have some theories, but they’re just guesses at this point.”
“We do know they’re not issued via puck to the traditional guilds, at least,” Organa put in. “They’re much more clandestine.”
“Sounds about right,” Twofer muttered.
“Come inside,” waved the senator, turning towards the entrance to his estate. “Maybe you can help us as much as we can help you, if we’re going to locate your sergeant.”
The desk in Organa’s office was large, equipped with a holoprojector hub at its center. Data was flickering around the room, a dizzying array of it.
“It’s going to be difficult for our network to get off the ground before we have anyone on the inside,” Ahsoka was saying as she flipped between datasets. “The Empire’s washing out as many remnants of the Republic as they can.”
“Except in the Senate. But that’s about keeping up appearances, I think,” said Organa. “Senator Chuchi has been a great ally thus far, to both the clones and to those like myself who don’t trust this new Empire. But we cannot move openly.”
“I thought politicians were pretty used to not moving too openly,” Swift said, and he wasn’t sure he would’ve said something like that to a senator a year ago. Not that he knew that much about politics, but Sol had never had much taste for them and what little he did know proved her point.
Organa chuckled. “Not too openly. Still, we are visible enough that even our movements in the dark run the risk of being exposed for someone else’s political gain, I fear. It would be better if we had eyes in less conspicuous places.”
“I heard some ‘o the Nulls’ friends are still in the Special Ops units,” Twofer said. “So, they got commandos on the inside, I reckon.”
“Think they’re protecting their own interests more’n anything else, vod,” said Stone in his big, quiet voice.
“But that’s an example,” Ashoka pointed out. “Someone in the Army would be incredibly helpful.”
“Dunno how likely that is, sir.” Swift shook his head. “The Army’s getting a lot stricter. Somebody’s recruiting former Padawans to do the dirtiest work, too.”
“I was afraid of that,” Ahsoka murmured, frowning. “I guess we’ll stick to really low-profile informants. Engineers, even janitors.”
“Even a droid, if you could be sure it wouldn’t get caught,” Grip put in. He gave a wistful sigh. “I miss BD-9. He’d be so helpful right about now.”
Organa looked up from the datapad in his hand. “I could order you a BD droid easily enough,” he said. “Not one from the Army, of course. But a commercial unit, high security model.”
“Sir!” Grip actually smiled, but then it faltered. “I couldn’t ever repay you.”
“Helping us resist the rise of this Empire is payment enough, believe me. Especially if, while you are retrieving your sergeant, you can slice any amount of remotely useful information from the holding facility in question and bring it back to us.” There was a faint little spark of something almost mischievous in his dark eyes. Ahsoka grinned, showing her pointed canines.
“Sir, yes sir,” said the medic with a matching grin. Organa began tapping away on his datapad purposefully.
“Can I blow it up once ya slice it?” Twofer asked, pouting.
“What’s the point of blowing it up?” Swift countered, raising an eyebrow. “Except it looks like someone a lot more powerful than we actually are took the trouble to retrieve Sol.”
“Well, that depends on if there are any other high-priority targets for retrieval in the same facility,” Ahsoka pointed out. “But we’d still have to make it look like it wasn’t a resistance cell or anything. We aren’t even remotely organized enough to give that impression.”
“But there’s loads of us on Dantooine.” Swift held out his hand in an inviting gesture.
Ahsoka shook her head. “That’s a safehouse. It’s for moving fugitives out of sight of the Empire, not for resisting it or coordinating targeted strikes against it. It might be a long time before we can do that. Everyone you save could potentially join a rebellion, one day, if they chose to. But right now I think your work is the most important. Those of us who know what we’re fighting for, and what we’re up against? Who saw it from the beginning? We’ll be needed to recruit others when the time comes.”
Swift looked at the young Togruta woman curiously for a moment. She was very intelligent, already coordinated for a long-term effort in her thoughts if not practically. He respected that. It was no wonder the 501st were so famous. General Skywalker, he thought, must have more than lived up to his reputation. He thought about asking her if she knew where Skywalker was, but thought better of it.
Suddenly Stone, who had been studying a map on one side of the office, spoke up. “Do you know if they have holding facilities aboard ships?” he asked. “Not just ground bases or space stations?”
“Apart from the usual brig, nothing specific that we can find. Sol might have been held on a ship if she was moved, but if they had a special interest in her she’s probably in a specific location,” Ahsoka replied.
“Like the one on Tantiss,” Grip muttered as if to himself. “And I thought the lads from Clone Force 99 said Omega was an M-count bounty, but they held her at Tantiss. Where are the M-count bounties heading now, if that facility’s compromised?”
Ahsoka made a strange face, like she wasn’t sure if she should speak the thought she had or not. But, after a moment, she did anyway. “If the M stands for midi-chlorians, then I think it’s just a way to target Force-sensitive beings without disclosing so explicitly.”
“So a way to avoid tipping people like us off about who’s Force-sensitive?” Swift frowned.
“But again, that’s just a guess,” Ahsoka added.
“Er, no,” Grip put in, “it’s… well, you might be onto something.”
The Togruta’s brow furrowed. “Are you saying Sergeant Tannor is Force-sensitive?”
“I’m assuming Vos forgot to mention that.” Swift frowned, a little annoyed. But then again, he thought, maybe Vos was speaking as little as possible about the nature of the safehouse on Dantooine and the people in it, even to Ahsoka, since she was doing much riskier work at the moment. If she knew, and the Empire got ahold of her, that was problematic. Much like it presently was with Sol. He sighed. “Yeah, Sol’s been some kinda Force-sensitive her whole life. She hates talking about it, though. And she’s not eager to do it, whatever ‘it’ is, Force stuff.”
Ahsoka put her hands on her hips. “I wish Anakin was here for me to ask him why he never told me that about her! But then again, maybe he didn’t see it that way.” Her eyes looked far away for a moment, as if remembering something. “After Moraga, he didn’t sense her. I thought it was just my abilities that allowed me to sense her, but… if what you say is true, she must’ve been actually reaching out with the Force.”
“Was that when you took them to the Jedi healers?” Stone asked quietly. Swift reached over to put his hand on his larger brother’s arm.
“Yes,” said Ahsoka. The crease in her brow deepened. “Hm. Anakin said he was just distracted. But if she was reaching out on purpose… That gives me quite a lot to think about.”
A scrolling data feed suddenly lit up and blinked, chiming brightly at her. Grip stepped to look at it. “Uh, sir,” he said, “this says you’ve got a whole list of M-count bounties that just came in.”
Ahsoka grinned like she knew where such a list must have come from, but she didn’t say anything. She just walked over and began to scroll through it until Sol’s eternally and exceptionally serious face appeared. Her bounty was marked ‘detained’.
“Kriff,” Twofer frowned. “It doesn’t say where!”
“That might be a metadata question,” said Organa, approaching as though he’d somehow managed to leave the room for a moment unnoticed and was now reentering— with a BD unit chirping along behind him. Grip’s eyes blew wide.
“Holy kriff, that was fast!” the medic exclaimed. Organa gave a slightly self-satisfied smirk.
“Being a senator has a few perks,” he said. Then, he looked down at the droid. “BD-12, would you be so kind as to scan this file for metadata?”
BD-12 chirped obligingly and emitted a glowing, flickering field from one of its optical sensors that expanded to the shape of the holoprojection. Something inside it whirred. The entire room was silent, watching. The scanner’s beam vanished and the droid chirped again, spitting out another projection that was covered in messy code that was being translated in real time to Arubesh letters.
“Chirrion Base?” Swift read from the garbled, disjointed words. “That’s where the ‘detained’ signal came from?”
“Looks like it.” Ahsoka crossed her arms, seeming pleased.
“Hey BeeDee,” Grip said, almost unable to contain his excitement at having another droid unit on the team. Twofer rolled his eyes. “Cross reference Chirrion against the galactic map.”
Whirring noises commenced again, flashing data speeding along in the holoprojection. But then BD-12 issued a flat little boop sound before it turned and said something in Binary to the medic. “What?” Grip asked, face falling. “It’s not on the map? Anywhere?”
“Did you scan Wild Space as well?” asked Organa with a frown. BD-12 nodded.
Swift wanted to kick something. “They’re really covering their tracks,” he growled. “This happened with Tantiss too. How’d they find all these nowhere planets they’re building facilities on?”
“Maybe it’s not a planet,” suggested Stone.
“It didn’t come up a station, either.”
“Could be a ship being used as a base.”
BD-12 whirred and chirped again.
“Not a known ship, but I doubt the Empire’s publishing any lists of new ships they’re deploying or stations they’re building while they tear up all the old Venators.” Grip slumped, rubbing his face with his gloved hands. “Thanks anyway, BeeDee.”
“So we have another problem, then,” Swift said with a gruff sigh. “I don’t wanna think about how much the Batchers went through trying to find Tantiss. But I’m gonna comm Hunter anyway, I reckon.”
“Wonder if Omega heard of it,” Twofer mused. “Or, we could ask them Null dingbats ‘bout it.”
“We’re gonna be calling a lot of people, Twof,” the sniper said. He picked up his helmet from the desk. “We’re deeply indebted to you two,” he said to Ahsoka and Organa.
“And anything we learn from BeeDee, we’ll send along,” added Grip earnestly.
“Just finding this mysterious Chirrion Base itself could be useful information. Pray don’t blow it up until you figure out what they’re doing there,” said the senator, glancing pointedly at Twofer.
“Right. Blow it up after that,” the weapons specialist grinned. “Got it.”
“And use the encrypted comm channel,” Ahsoka added. “The one we called Fulcrum.”
“C’mon, you lot,” Swift said, walking towards the exit. “We’ve got work to do.”
- - - - -
Chirrion Base
The arduous process of being ‘interrogated’ by someone as heavy-handed and quick to anger as Jendais was in and of itself a kind of torture all its own. Sol had been completely silent since the second session of questioning, and watching the girl work herself into a frenzy trying to goad or manipulate the desired information out of her was arduous. Sol had mentioned this issue once, about five sessions in, and had almost welcomed being abandoned to the droid in Jendais’ routine attempts to not thoughtlessly murder her prisoner. The sessions never lasted that long. This was not the Zabrak’s skillset, that much was obvious. But she’d also undoubtedly asked for the assignment. Probably expected better of herself, which only added to the frustration of her efforts. Possibly was under a great deal of pressure to get it right, from whoever really wanted Sol there.
Sol was starting to understand a new baseline of pain, a new threshold over which all the electrical shocks, simulated vivisection, and profound nerve overstimulation had to climb to really start getting her attention. It wasn’t that it didn’t hurt, it was just that after a lifetime of hurting like she did, she could not really afford to care. Above her the droid hovered, the quiet hum of its repulsors an everpresent menace. But the real problem was that Jendais’ ravings were getting really dull to listen to, and that distraction was a primary source of resilience to the pain. It was like the girl was trapped in a feedback loop of her own self-loathing and misdirected rage. A black hole was opening and growing at her center, like Maul’s only much smaller and yet somehow louder, less contained. Less purposeful, perhaps. Messy. Undisciplined. A blunt instrument of Imperial might. She would have done better on the battlefield.
Either way, it came to someone’s attention after a few days that Jendais was getting nowhere.
Inside the interrogation room, Sol sagged against the restraints on whatever contraption she was strapped to. There was something different about the Zabrak girl’s countenance when she entered the room that day. Her boots pounded less on the floor, her steps were slower. There was a weight to her, hanging off her shoulders. For a moment, she just stood there in front of the interrogation table, staring. Eventually, Sol’s heavy eyes slid up from their vague downward cast and burned their golden glow into hers.
Without warning, Jendais took a step forward and slapped Sol’s cheek so hard that she might have dislocated her jaw. Which wouldn’t have been that hard, Sol thought, given her unhelpful connective tissues, but Maker alive did it hurt. Spittle stained with blood dribbled out of her mouth, droplets congealing on the floor. She didn’t move to look back up at the Zabrak, but remained as still as she could, sucking in breaths slow and shallow through her nose.
“I hate you, yanno,” Jendais said, taking a step back. Her voice was colored with something akin to exhaustion. “I hate everythin’ you stand for. I know yer helpin’ these… these traitors, these deserters, ‘cuz for some reason you care ‘bout these stupid kriffin’ meat droids.” She took a step to one side, her usual prowling pace slower than usual. “I know yer helpin’ Jedi, I know yer all just and righteous. I know ya believe it, too. ‘S not about lookin’ good, or seemin’ right. You just really believe it’s th’ right thing to do.” Her tone turned mocking.
Sol moved her jaw, but barely. The left side of it screamed in pain. She shut her eyes tightly for a moment, making no sound.
“I know,” Jendais continued, “You and yer little friends, y’ sleep just fine at night. Nevermind the whole war’s been nothin’ but a waste, money and resources and lives, all—” she flipped her hands around in a tossing motion— “chucked out like nothin’. The Jedi failed their one job, peacekeepers! Warrior peacekeepers, ‘o course. Can’t keep th’ peace if y’ can’t put down the troublemakers, after all, can ya? Hypocrites. The whole lot of ‘em. Shoulda just done the right thing from the start and admitted that the Force? It’s nothin’ without the Dark side. All the Light-side bantha piss? All the noble warrior peacekeeper krayt spit? They knew that wasn’t the real thing. They wanted t’ keep us from what’s the most powerful thing, and that’s the Dark side.”
Finally Sol glanced sidelong at her captor, moving her head upright again very slowly. It hurt like hell, but the weight of gravity pulling her jawbone in another direction relieved some unnatural pressure somewhere in her cheek. Now it just felt like a loose hinge, a painful one radiating heat through her whole head and down her neck towards her shoulder.
“Y’know,” the Zabrak girl said, stopping in front of Sol again, “or, actually, I don’t reckon y’do know. How powerful that feeling is. The potential of it. If y’did, you’d be on my side. Workin’ with me, not against me. Together we’d tear down all the Jedi legacy one temple at a time, mint’aj. But you think yer doin’ the right thing.”
This was highly irregular when it came to Jendais’ style of interrogation. Sol’s brow furrowed instinctively, but she only raised one eyebrow a very little. Raising it more would hurt. There was still spittle and blood on her bottom lip, which was starting to swell. A cut inside her mouth must’ve been opened when the flesh of her cheek slammed into her teeth. She really wanted to reach up and shove the jawbone back into place, but of course that wasn’t an option at the moment.
Jendais, meanwhile, spread her hands to either side of herself as if in some kind of invitation. “What?” she asked with a kind of smirk that twitched over her cheek. “Y’ don’t think we could do it? I’ve seen you pissed off. Know it’s been awhile, but I do recall you pointin’ that big kriffin’ gun t’my head. You woulda fired it, under the right circumstances. Am I wrong?”
She was met with a simple glare from Sol.
“Ah, that’s my fault,” the Zabrak girl said, turning to slap the wall controls. The door opened, and after a moment a medical droid appeared. “Reckon y’ can’t talk, in yer present state.”
The medical droid, with its uncanny skull-like head, shuffled in on its servos, already scanning Sol’s body. “There are many injuries,” it said in characteristic monotone.
“Fix ‘er jaw and leave.” Jendais crossed her arms.
“Yes, Inquisitor.”
The cold durasteel of the droid’s mandibles placed themselves gingerly and very specifically around the side of Sol’s face where her jaw was indeed dislocated.
“This will hurt,” it warned her. Which almost made her laugh. Then it moved, and with a jolt, her jaw was back in place. Another of the droid’s limbs rose with an auto-injector in it.
“Nope,” Jendais crowed. “No bacta. Get out.”
“But, Inquisitor—”
“GET OUT!” Finally the rage showed its face again, and the medical droid retreated only slightly more quickly than it had arrived, though it surely would have moved faster if it could have. Sol took a much deeper breath, and moved her jaw very carefully. It burned still, but the stabbing pain was gone. She turned her head from side to side experimentally.
“You think yer half as pissed off at the galaxy as I am, y’ little soldier brat?” Jendais asked sharply, though her volume was lowered again. “Or was it just me, since I bonked yer brother’s poor noggin’?”
“It was you,” Sol replied flatly, her voice hoarse from disuse and stubbornly holding in screams of pain.
“Aw, how flatterin’ you got so worked up over lil’ ol’ me.” At that, the Zabrak girl seemed to be waiting for a response. When none came, she resumed her slow stalking around the room. “Y’get that mad ‘cuz I hit a clone, but y’ don’t get mad that th’ whole damn war happened? ‘Cuz of why the clones exist in the first place?”
“Not really.”
Jendais stopped and narrowed her eyes at Sol. “Then what makes ya so mad? Most beings don’t get that kinda mad. Not unless somethin’ hurt ‘em real bad.”
Sol shrugged, or tried to in her restraints. Instead of getting upset at this as she had for the last few days, Jendais turned and started walking again. Her nostrils flared, but she fought it back. It was almost impressive. Almost.
“Yer file says one o’ your best skills is one-to-one combat. With a preference for hand t’ hand, but looks like other weapons too. And y’got that saber staff at the Temple, I reckon. That’s interestin’. Didja know who my Master was when y’came to get that stupid Actis offa me?”
Sol’s silent frown was clearly enough of a ‘no’.
“His name was Sora Bulq,” Jendais said. “He was actually one ‘o the best fighters in the whole Order. Trained most every Padawan you ever met in lightsaber combat. Oh, I thought I was destined t’be the best there ever was, him bein’ my Master. He was a hardass, too. Never let me feel good enough. Said he never felt he was good enough, and that was how he stayed so damn good.” Her chuckle was mirthless. “Old fool. Thought I’d fall for that krayt spit. He knew how good he was. Knew people looked up to ‘im. Beat my arse into th’ ground more times than I can rightly remember.”
This explained at least a few things, Sol thought. But she said nothing.
“Anyways, he got captured at Geonosis. The first one. Start ‘o the damn war.” She had her saber hilt in her hand again, looking at it as she passively spun it around. “So much fer bein’ the best at combat. One real battle, he’s lost. Wouldn’t go back t’ trainin’ me when he finally made ‘is way back. But, I wouldn’t duel ‘im. He even matched Mace Windu a coupla times.”
Sol raised one white eyebrow, and hummed briefly as though this fact were mildly curious. Which, to be fair, it was. Mace Windu was supposed to be legendary at combat, and he was the first Jedi in a very long time to create his own lightsaber style. Bulq holding a candle to him wasn’t a small feat.
“For all I knew he held back when he was trainin’ me, he taught me enough I reckon I’d beat you.” Jendais gave a venomous grin and put her saber back on her belt. A noise of doors opening from somewhere outside in the passage came metallic through the air, and the Zabrak girl’s eyes darted out towards the exit of the interrogation room almost anxiously. Turning, she entered a series of commands on the control panel, and the droid hanging above Sol’s head hummed to life.
Jendais turned back for a moment as she approached the door that was sliding open into the hall, and her eyes were seething with hatred.
“But with what’s about t’ happen to you, mint’aj, I reckon we’ll be lucky if you live t’ find out.”
- - - - -
Dantooine, Hidden Path safehouse
Rex and Kiran were looking through a mess of data that had been relayed to them via commlink inside the Iviin’yc’s cockpit. It had come in suddenly from Cronos Squad, who were en route but apparently too agitated to wait to look over the information together.
When they saw what it was, it was easy to see why.
“What of the map that you say Senator Chuchi sent?” Kiran was asking the former captain as they sat looking it all over. “Are all of the locations on it named?”
“No, about three of them weren’t,” Rex replied with a frown. Just to be sure, he tapped his own commlink and pulled up a projection of the data. “Yeah, see? These three.”
“Hm. It seems likely that she is being held at one of them, then.”
“Assuming this isn’t another Tantiss situation,” said Rex. “Tantiss wasn’t marked anywhere, no maps at all. I think the people who knew about it just knew its coordinates by heart. It was that secret.”
Kiran’s brow knit in a frown. “I do hope this is not quite that level of security,” he said quietly. “Perhaps if we divide into groups, we can assess all three of these and determine which one is Chirrion Base. Then reconvene and attack the correct location.”
“Attack?” Rex asked with his own frown. “This isn’t an attack, Kiran, it’s retrieval. Extraction. It’ll take stealth. Especially if it’s a large base.”
“But attacking would make for a very good distraction, yes?” He was raising that eyebrow again. The one that sought to conspire with Rex, to invite him into mischief. The one he was starting to like in spite of himself.
“Well,” the clone murmured, “yes, possibly. But it would have to be very coordinated, and it’d be very dangerous to openly assault an Imperial base right now.”
“It would be very dangerous at any time, my friend.”
“Yeah, but still. We have to come at this with a level head.” Rex huffed slightly. He was feeling a little raw after falling apart the night before, if he was honest. A little stupid, and more than a little embarrassed. And that feeling was starting to gnaw at him, having been so frequent recently. But having an outburst at the High General of the GAR— former, but still— was a degree of desperate exhaustion he couldn’t remember ever quite reaching before. He was trying his best to return to his usual frame of mind, one of focused strategy.
“I do not think it will be a mystery who came to rescue her,” Kiran was saying. “Not that we should go in with our names emblazoned on our chest plates, of course. But if her brothers are there, it will be all of us who have ever been connected with her who are implicated. That’s why the Skiratas are unwilling to commit fully to the mission.” He did look annoyed at this fact, and rightly so as far as Rex was concerned. Mereel was all about his own self-interest after all, no matter how much he fancied Sol. Or, he’d given up on that fancy, but if that meant he’d given up on helping her as well, that was even worse.
“We do have to assume that any data they can salvage about whoever shows up to spring her, they will,” Rex admitted. “But I think that’s why stealth is the better option. Give them as little information about who we are as possible to go on.”
“If we destroy their equipment and the majority of their base, they will have no way to send any data they did collect,” Kiran pointed out.
“That’s assuming they don’t send it before we managed to blow up their communications array.”
“That could make the communications array a very fine first target!” Kiran grinned.
Rex sighed. “Maybe we should wait ‘till Cronos is back before we decide. We need to know how many ships, bodies, and guns we’ll have at our disposal. And get those damn stupid Nulls to commit one way or another.”
Kiran nodded, all affable reason. “That does seem wise. And, I think if Sol were here she would insist on reconnaissance on the base itself before any plan were chosen.”
Half a wry grin came over Rex’s face. “I reckon you’re right about that. You didn’t do recce as captain of the guard, did you?”
Kiran shrugged. “No, not very often. We had scouts for that, quite well-trained. But, I think the manner of warfare that I was used to was much more formal than anything I have done since.”
“It was more like that in the GAR too, not always but often enough. Except for the commando squads. They always went into the heart of enemy territory, or led classified special operations. Infiltration and the like.”
Kiran grimaced slightly. “I think that her brothers will default to your manner of approach, then. I shall be quite outnumbered.”
“Nah, Twofer will be on your side,” Rex grinned. The big Mirialan chuckled.
“I suppose that is fair. Perhaps friend Fives will back me up too, yes?”
“Echo might talk him out of it. He was always the sensible one.”
“Ah, well.” Kiran sat up more in the pilot’s chair where he’d been slouching, eyeing the maps. He stretched backwards, pushing his feet into the controls chassis. He couldn’t quite stand up straight in any part of the ship except the bunks and the cargo bay, which Rex couldn’t help but find endearing. He slid his own comm data over to the Iviin’yc’s processor, adding his own map to the array that already hung blueish all around the cockpit.
Outside, the faint whirr of the ion engines of his old XS series freighter drifted in through the hatch. Nearby grass blew suddenly in the powerful wind, and outside the viewport the little ship appeared to sink down to its place on the ground and then land with a rather sharp thunk.
“Cody, fly my ship like you have some sense,” Rex muttered to himself. Kiran chuckled again, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms in a relaxed way.
The engines weren’t even completely shut down before Vos jumped out of the hatch while it was still opening and ran towards the little village of duraplast huts. At length, the ship quieted and Cody made his way out.
“That was rather a quick trip,” the big Mirialan noted. “They left this morning, and it is only just now about to be sundown.”
“Time enough to get to Alderaan and back, if you push the hyperdrive a bit.” But Kiran’s words actually made Rex uneasy, when paired with the way he’d watched Vos barrel out of the ship. He couldn’t help but wonder what had them in such a hurry.
As though having the same thought, the two men’s eyes met, and they both frowned slightly.
There was a sound of voices outside, getting closer to the ship. Familiar ones, both Vos and Elisara, but they sounded anxious, especially the Togruta. Cody was waving them in the direction of the ships, pointing at the Iviin’yc, looking up and meeting Rex’s curious gaze. Before he could ask, the sound of light booted feet came up the hatch.
“Um, hi,” Elisara began, her pale lavender face even paler than usual. “Sorry, I—” But her eyes cut to Rex’s map, with the three isolated nameless bases blinking red against the otherwise blue holoprojection. She walked towards it as if in a trance.
“Um, sir?” Rex asked, tensing.
“Friend Elisara, what’s wrong?” Kiran added. But the girl’s hand came out slowly towards the map, wavering as though she was seeking something.
“This is the map of places we suspect Sol might be being held,” Rex offered, trying to be helpful. “There’s three of them, but we can’t narrow it down any more.”
“There.” Her hand reached up and touched an unmarked place that hovered on the edge of the Outer Rim, far from any of the main hyperspace routes and not especially close to any other systems, either. Almost big enough to be considered a void. “That’s where she is.”
“Did you see something?” Kiran asked, tone falling gentle but urgent.
Elisara nodded slowly, her face a mask of dread. Rex suppressed the urge to press her for an explanation, his hands shaking slightly. Quinlan Vos came up into the ship from the hatch, slowing as he reached them and placing one hand on the Togruta girl’s shoulder.
“You need to find a place to settle,” he said to her. His dark eyes stole between Rex and Kiran for a moment. “Before you become too upset, Ellie.”
“It’s that one, isn’t it, Master Vos?” She turned to him, eyes almost desperate for him to say that she was wrong. Vos took a deep breath.
“Yeah. That’s the one.” He looked deeply concerned, and possibly even regretful. If Rex had heard that both Jedi who were listening out for signs had both come up with the same answer, he might have been reassured just because it made it that much more likely that they were right. But, given the circumstances, there was something gut-droppingly ominous about it. “She’s there. We’re almost completely sure of it. But it’s not just her.”
Kiran’s eyebrows shot up. “Not just her? Who else?”
“Hard to say,” Vos began, but Elisara shook her head.
“Someone I used to know. At least one presence there is a former Jedi I know. But there’s another one, much stronger, that I don’t recognize. And I dared not look any closer.”
“I could tell Sol was there too. The Force is… well, oddly specific around her. Faintly, but strangely.” Vos admitted. “I sensed a handful of others, all faint. Some seemed to be vanishing. It hit me almost as soon as we got to Alderaan, and I didn’t have time to explain. I was afraid to stay, because the feeling just kept getting stronger. Eventually I had to stop listening even on the ship, because I was afraid they were trying to draw me in. Decided to check with Ellie to make sure it wasn’t just me, but she felt it too.”
Rex decided he’d ask what the hell all that meant later. Right at that moment, he turned and looked at Kiran. The big Mirialan met his gaze again, looking disturbed. Then he looked back at the two Jedi.
“What was it that you sensed happening?” he asked. Elisara shut her eyes, shaking her head. Vos nearly grimaced, a rare expression for him.
“Nothing good, my friends. Possibly more than just whatever is happening to Sol, but even if she’s only a small part of it, it’s nothing good. I sent Cronos Squad to Alderaan to get more information from Ahsoka. But you’d better get underway as soon as you can.”
Primavera_8trip_t on Chapter 1 Fri 08 Aug 2025 08:45PM UTC
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oracular_vernacular on Chapter 1 Sat 09 Aug 2025 12:51AM UTC
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Anora_Thar on Chapter 2 Tue 12 Aug 2025 01:51AM UTC
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oracular_vernacular on Chapter 2 Tue 12 Aug 2025 03:02AM UTC
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Draconis_Domum on Chapter 2 Tue 12 Aug 2025 06:39PM UTC
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oracular_vernacular on Chapter 2 Wed 13 Aug 2025 02:58AM UTC
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Draconis_Domum on Chapter 3 Thu 14 Aug 2025 02:46PM UTC
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Draconis_Domum on Chapter 4 Sat 23 Aug 2025 08:11PM UTC
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Draconis_Domum on Chapter 5 Tue 26 Aug 2025 03:29AM UTC
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oracular_vernacular on Chapter 5 Tue 26 Aug 2025 02:31PM UTC
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Draconis_Domum on Chapter 6 Thu 28 Aug 2025 01:52AM UTC
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oracular_vernacular on Chapter 6 Thu 28 Aug 2025 02:01AM UTC
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Draconis_Domum on Chapter 8 Wed 03 Sep 2025 11:37PM UTC
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oracular_vernacular on Chapter 8 Thu 04 Sep 2025 12:46AM UTC
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Draconis_Domum on Chapter 9 Mon 08 Sep 2025 02:42PM UTC
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oracular_vernacular on Chapter 9 Mon 08 Sep 2025 11:25PM UTC
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lucyvexley (Guest) on Chapter 9 Sat 13 Sep 2025 11:44AM UTC
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oracular_vernacular on Chapter 9 Mon 15 Sep 2025 03:04AM UTC
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Draconis_Domum on Chapter 10 Tue 09 Sep 2025 11:43AM UTC
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oracular_vernacular on Chapter 10 Wed 10 Sep 2025 01:48AM UTC
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Anora_Thar on Chapter 10 Wed 10 Sep 2025 11:14AM UTC
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Draconis_Domum on Chapter 11 Sat 13 Sep 2025 01:22AM UTC
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Draconis_Domum on Chapter 12 Fri 19 Sep 2025 06:46PM UTC
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oracular_vernacular on Chapter 12 Fri 19 Sep 2025 09:58PM UTC
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