Chapter Text
An oppressive sense of dread pulled Chester out of sleep. For a moment she lay in her small dark bunk in the crammed junior officer’s quarters, blinking into the dimness, and then she got up and dressed hurriedly. The last time she’d felt like this, the Bedivere had been jumped by three Jem’Hadar fighters, adding a really unnecessary degree of spice to an otherwise boring tour of convoy duty.
About four minutes later, there was a heavy thud, and the ship shivered. It was an unpleasant feeling in a ship this big. Then it shivered again, harder, and sirens screamed as they went to their equivalent of red alert.
“Called it,” Chester muttered, and stayed where she was. Wolffe had been clear about what she was supposed to do in a fight, and it was stay where she was. He’d reiterated it another few times before they’d made their first hyperspace jump. He didn’t want her getting any ideas, he’d said.
Chester couldn’t entirely blame him, but sitting here listening, unable to even see what was going on or how the battle was progressing, was maddening. She was very tempted to rewire the handheld comm they’d given her to tap into the ship’s systems, but the officer’s quarters were strangely barren of tools━and for some funny reason, Wolffe and the others had been being pretty careful about keeping them out of her reach. She’d started wondering what she could do with the room’s inbuilt comms with her bare hands when a sudden jolt threw her off her feet.
She rolled back to her feet as a secondary siren went off. Intruder alert, she was guessing. They didn’t have transporters, so that jolt was probably an airlock of some sort.
Battle wasn’t going well, then. She picked up the lightsaber and considered it. “I think,” she told it, even as the sense of misery vibrated up her wrists, “that you and I are going to have to figure out how to get along today.”
The sense of misery didn’t abate.
“Look, it’s me or get locked in a vault.”
She couldn’t tell if that made it any better, but she clipped it to her belt anyway.
Then she settled in to wait.
She’d begun to wonder just how far Wolffe’s injunction to sit tight when there was a growing commotion outside her door, blasterfire and shouting and many footsteps all together. She flattened herself against the wall, taking her lightsaber in hand.
The door whisked open.
“Commander, it’s us!” said Joyride’s voice, which saved him from getting coshed with the lightsaber hilt.
Chester clipped it back to her belt. “Status report, Mr. Joyride?”
There was a grumble of irritation from behind him: Wolffe. “We’ve been boarded,” he said. “The bridge has been taken; we need to retake it, and we’re bringing you with us. The General is holding them off.”
From the corridor came the sound of blasterfire, and a stink of scorched metal. Chester hurriedly exited her quarters. “Understood.”
They bunched up around her, clearly protecting her, and started moving toward the blasterfire; there was a distinct absence of actual blaster bolts however, and after a moment Chester saw why. Plo was ahead of them, using his lightsaber to deflect the incoming fire. The long blue blade in his hands moved in a blur so fast it left afterimages in the air, not quite like staring at the sun, and he may as well have been carrying a shield; not a single bolt from the barrage slipped past him.
For a moment, Chester wondered if she might be able to learn how to do that. Then she decided that this was not the time to try and learn.
Every single droid alerted to her the moment she came in sight, and that made her gut drop uneasily. Garter stuck out an arm, pushing her against the wall, and she obediently pressed herself behind one of the ever so convenient beams and waited for the sounds of metallic carnage to cease.
“That’s one of the boarding parties,” Wolffe said with satisfaction, when things quieted, or quieted as much as they were going to, with the sounds of intruder alert sirens and distant blasterfire. “Warthog and the rest say they’ve pinched off the boarding tube, and they’re holding. Time to get to the bridge.”
“They definitely had time to get a message out,” said Garter, clearly unhappy. “They’ll know the Commander is with us; we’re gonna meet a lot heavier resistance from here.”
Wait a minute. Chester frowned. “Commander Wolffe. What exactly does that mean?”
Wolffe didn’t bother to look back at her, completely impersonal in his armor and helmet. “Haven’t figured it out yet, Commander? They’re here for you. Flagship got a demand from General Grievous to hand you over or be destroyed.”
Words escaped her for a moment. Chester gave Wolffe a wide-eyed horrified look. She couldn’t see his face, but she could all but feel his derisive amusement. “Turns out there’s a price to kicking a Sith Lord in the choobies, Commander. Shouldn’t have left him alive.”
“That’s not━” Chester cut herself off, not finishing the sentence. It wasn’t Dooku going after her that was alarming. It was all these people between her and him. Thousands .
This entire fleet was hunting her. The dread dropped into Chester’s stomach like a bowling ball, and a glance at Plo, who had finished taking out the droids with their own blasterfire and was now hurrying back up the corridor toward them, didn’t make her feel any better. This was about her. Like she was somehow specially important, like all these other people around her, Wolffe and his men, the clones on the other ships, the natborn officers, were just set dressing, obstacles between Dooku and the apprentice he’d wanted, the defiant enemy he wanted to make an example of.
What scared her a hell of a lot more than his chances of success━which were good━or what he might do to her if he got his hands on her━which was horrible━was the sheer callousness on display. Entire armies on the move, because one singular asshole wanted to get revenge on one singular idiot for a nonfatal and much needed asskicking.
A lot of people were probably going to die today, and they were going to die because of her. This galaxy operated as if it thought it had main characters, and the rest didn’t matter. As if they’d decided that mercy was indeed an unforgivable weakness.
It made her very angry.
And she could not allow these people to die for her.
“Wolffe,” she said. “I need a blaster.”
“You’ve got a lightsaber,” he said, not slowing down.
“Yeah, and I’m sure you like the idea of me behind your back flailing around with a weapon I don’t know well. Give me a fucking blaster, Wolffe. I promise I’ve been using one a hell of a lot longer than you have.”
He was probably glaring, but someone handed her one anyway. It was heavier and nastier-feeling than a standard issue phaser, but the philosophy was the same. “Stun work on these guys?” she asked.
The sudden frosty silence from Wolffe answered that question just fine. She left it set to kill.
“We have to get to the bridge,” said Garter. “If we don’t, they’ll just fly us over to one of the big cruisers and grab the Commander anyway.”
“Agreed,” said Wolffe. “Let’s go.”
The bridge. That sounded good. Chester had an idea, but it was going to require a comms panel and some time. She hefted the blaster and followed.
This was what he was made for.
A fight like this was refreshingly simple. There was the enemy in front of him. There were his brothers beside him, and people to protect behind them, and there was the fight. No politics or banthashit mindgames.
Wolffe found himself grinning like a maniac. It almost made up for who this was about. Though even she was behaving herself right now.
Turned out, Chester wasn’t a bad person to have at your back in a fight, for all her talk of stun settings and peaceful negotiation. He could kind of see why his brothers had decided to trust her. She was dismantling droids with a contained and efficient ferocity, her face closed off and focused, and she was good at it. It was clear that she wasn’t used to fighting droids, exactly, but she was learning and she was learning fast.
She was a killer. Which was ironic for someone who talked so dedicatedly about peace.
Wolffe put down two more of the clankers and glanced over his shoulder to find Chester yanking a droid off Garter and neatly disabling━not deactivating━it with a well placed blaster bolt. Well, he wasn’t going to tell her that there wasn’t much point to leaving droids alive. She was weird enough about the clankers as it was, but Wolffe had better things to do than care about the sentience of things whose entire existence was trying to kill his men.
The bridge doors loomed in front of them, sealed off with more droids in front of them. Chester had the sense to flatten herself against the wall like the rest of them; Plo of course waded right in, because Jedi, when you got right down to it, was a slightly nicer way of saying idiot. A quick hand gesture swept the droids aside; another compacted them into a pile of twisted metal and sparks. On cue, another company of clankers rounded the corner behind them.
The second the General got to the door, he’d be tied up melting it open. Wolffe signaled the men to advance, noted with some surprise that Chester advanced obediently along with the rest of them━he’d expected something foolish instead━and the next few minutes was a frantic blur of combat, and then more combat, because as soon as Plo got the doors open blasterfire hissed through and melted half the ceiling behind them. Droids on the bridge, of course.
They knew what to do about those.
Wolffe checked on what Chester was up to. She’d pulled out the lightsaber, blaster in the other hand, and was doing something posh and fiddly looking with it that resembled nothing he’d ever seen any of the Jedi doing, but didn’t seem likely to get her killed. He left her to it.
A few moments later, and they were standing on a suddenly calm bridge. He looked around━Plo had taken up a station in the doorway, which was now permanently melted open, and by the sound of it, they’d need him there. Chester was pushing the last of the droids out of the way; his men were settling in at consoles.
He looked back at Chester. The last karking thing he needed was her to insist on taking command, and the awful thing was, she might have a leg to stand on if she did. Natborns versus clones; natborns usually won, and she’d been getting cozy with Tarkin.
She met his gaze, then turned away to neatly relieve a dead natborn of his headset. “I’ve got comms. Commander, I think you’d better take the big chair.”
Wolffe took the big chair, and really hoped they weren’t going to regret how Joyride made a beeline for the helm.
“Comms, tell the men down at the airlock to evacuate and seal the deck,” he said.
Chester nodded, already relaying the orders. “Warthog reports ready,” she said after a moment.
“Get us loose, Joyride,” said Wolffe, and braced himself. A moment later, a scream of metal and a sickening lurch announced the tearing of the boarding tube. The ship rabbited forward the moment the last connection broke.
“We’re loose!” said Joyride, unnecessarily. “Just us and the clankers already aboard.”
“Fortitude to Valiant ,” Chester was saying, “we have retaken the bridge. Awaiting orders.”
Wolffe caught her expression twisting with distaste, a moment before she said, “ Valiant reports Admiral Tarkin has taken command. They want us reinforcing the left flank.”
“Helm,” said Wolffe.
“Already on it,” said Joyride. The ship lurched again. Wolffe sincerely regretted letting the kid near the controls. “Left flank, here we come!”
Chester was glaring at her console, her fingers flying. “Keep it simple, Commander,” Wolffe called over his shoulder.
“The enemy is using some simple algorithms in their encoding,” she said. “It’s all mathematically based━they’re droids, makes sense. But that means there’s logic to it, and if I can just persuade the computer━ got it! ”
Had she just broken Separatist codes ? In thirty seconds? Either she was a genius, or she was a spy.
“Enemy chatter coming in,” Chester said, her voice sharp. “Sir, they’re aiming us at that gap and bringing up reinforcements behind us. If we go for it they’ll close up around us like a bear trap.”
“You relayed that to Tarkin?” Wolffe asked, deciding to let the sir go for now, even though it was kriffing weird.
“Yes, and he told us to shut up. Droid translations might not always be accurate but I can guarantee you, this one is.”
“The Commander’s really good with the droids, sir,” said Joyride.
“They’re pulling from their center for the trap,” said Chester. “It looks steady from here but there’s going to be nothing behind that first line of cruisers in about two minutes. The commander of that lead ship isn’t happy about it. We can punch through there, sir.”
Wolffe had spent a long time thinking she was a spy. He really, really hoped this meant she definitely wasn’t one. Now he was looking for it, he could see the forces repositioning, the trap forming. “Broadcast that translation to the fleet━that it’s a trap. We’ll go down the center. Hopefully someone over there will be bright enough to follow us.”
“Aye aye sir,” she said, so incredibly automatic she couldn’t have realized how comedic it was, a natborn officer saying that to a clone, and turned back to the console, speaking rapidly into the headset in a clear cold voice. Wolffe spent a moment wondering how anyone could hear that and not obey on reflex. “Fortitude to Republic fleet, the opening on the left flank is a trap. Repeat, opening on left flank a trap, do not engage . Fortitude to Republic fleet, enemy chatter confirms opening on left flank a trap, do not engage.”
She broke off, winced, pulled one ear of the headset away as a voice squeaked indignantly, audible even from where Wolffe was sitting. “So much for Tarkin’s job offer,” she muttered, then, into the headset, “Intel is sound, Admiral, I translated it myself. That left flank opening is a trap.”
“If they’re just going to shout at you, focus on that enemy chatter,” said Wolffe without taking his eyes off the screen.
Chester paused, and then Wolffe could almost feel her come to a decision. He tensed up, automatically.
She tugged the headset down around her neck. “Plo, you have seniority to Tarkin, right? Come pull rank on him or we’re losing the whole damned fleet.”
“I am somewhat occupied at the moment,” said Plo, sounding strained. Chester let out a quick huff of exasperation, and dove under her console. There was a deeply concerning couple of noises, like panels getting pried off without much care.
“Don’t break my ship,” said Wolffe, not turning around. He felt it needed saying.
A grunt of acknowledgement was all he got before she popped back up with a few objects and a repair kit and her headset firmly back in place. “That frigate off the port bow is going to come about and hit us with a broadside. Lingo, Garter, gimme your comms.”
They tossed them over. She caught them both out of the air one-handed━so much for not being a Jedi━and went to work. Wolffe focused on the frigate, which irritatingly enough was doing exactly what she’d predicted. “You and me are going to have words about how you understand these droids, Commander.”
“Trade secrets,” she said, busy. “Thirty seconds, please.” Wolffe, occupied with evasive maneuvers and the part of battle that involved actually shooting at the enemy, listened with half an ear to a series of increasingly concerning noises, ending with a solid thunk and the comms console meeping in steadily growing protest.
“Sorry about this,” she said, and Wolffe had half-turned to demand what the hell she thought she was doing when the noise erupted from every speaker in the ship. It was omnidirectional; he clamped his hands over his ears but it did no good. His bones felt like they were trying to climb out of his skin, and his skin felt like it was trying to scramble away from him and hide under the command chair. He was pretty sure his nose was bleeding. He was pretty sure he didn’t have teeth anymore. Teeth didn’t feel like this.
It shut off after less than ten seconds, but those felt like the longest ten seconds of his life. He lurched to stare at Chester. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Comman–”
She uncovered her ears, and pointed at the doorway, where a reeling Plo stood among the wreckage of a platoon of droids. There was a stunned silence.
In that absolute silence, the comm unit crackled to life, still set to speaker mode. “ Sir, what was that? The droids are… I think they’re offline.”
Wolffe looked back at Chester, very slowly. “Well, Commander? Care to explain?”
“Not at the moment, sir,” she said, and she was being deliberately cheeky this time. “Plo, can you?” She motioned him to the console.
Plo went, had a few words with it. Then a few more words, in a deeper, harder tone.
Chester seemed to be taking a moment, looking a bit green around the gills━at least she’d taken that just as hard as the rest of them. Wolffe gave her another unimpressed look. He appreciated being warned about these things.
“There,” said Plo, stepping back and sitting heavily in the adjacent station. “We will be attacking the center as you suggested, Commander. But I do feel you owe everyone you subjected to that experience an explanation.”
“Complex feedback harmonics,” said Chester. “The brains of most sentients filter out a ton of data by default; artificial constructs don’t. The few sentients who don’t can willfully disengage; artificial constructs don’t. The droids are complex enough to have automatic shutoffs triggered to preserve their systems. We’ll need to shovel them all into containment somewhere but they should be down for the next few hours.”
“You could have fried anyone with neural implants,” said Wolffe, sounding a trifle queasy even to himself. “Or the General━”
“Medical devices have a limited range of frequencies by necessity, otherwise they’ll interfere with equipment or be interfered with. And there’s still a brain behind them filtering input.”
“How did you━”
“Lots of time with droids,” said Chester, “and lots of time asking Jelly lots of dumb questions.”
Wolffe thought about the torpedoes and the implications of the torpedoes in the context of this demonstration of why Chester asked dumb questions, and liked that even less.
“Make sure those droids stay down,” he said. “And Commander?”
“Yes?”
“Next time you get clever, warn me first.”
“Yessir.”