Chapter Text
Tarkin was watching her talk, and mostly looking amused. This was pissing Chester off. And with the hovering interrogation droid, the message was pretty clear. Stop talking, and get jabbed.
The goal, she reminded herself, was to keep Tarkin confused about the Federation, feed him as much false information as she possibly could, and try not to get tortured too much. Or straight up shot, before Ventress got here to haul her out of trouble.
The problem was, you couldn’t talk forever, and her voice was running out. She stopped, coughed, cast a nervous look at the droid.
“Very illuminating,” said Tarkin, dry as her throat felt. She swallowed hard in the brief respite, trying to will her mouth to produce some moisture. Her throat felt like it was sticking together… but she had to build up a good body of lies while she was still in her right mind, in hopes of confusing him.
But he didn’t signal to the droid. He just steepled his fingers. “Illuminating of both you and your people, in fact,” he said. “It’s evident that you’re a particularly young civilization. A rich one, though of course misguided.”
“And you’re…” she started, coughed. “And you’re going to correct that, huh?”
He smiled a little, clearly pleased with the idea. “You took the liberty when first we met of telling me your assessment of me,” he said. “That was of course in error, and, though you were far from a priority for me at a time, in retrospect it was more telling than I think you’re aware. The very fact you felt it necessary to do, the language you used, the sentimentality it betrayed. You painted a very clear picture indeed… but not of me.”
He rose now, clasping his hands behind his back. “That portrait is now complete, but only in the coarsest of detail; the confirmation of my existing suspicions.”
What a pompous ass. But every second he was talking was one for her to recover. She watched him, focusing on breathing.
“Inexperience,” he said, “promoted to the level of your incompetence, and then some distance further. On this account I do believe you, Commander. Your mother must be a very powerful woman.”
“It’s not like I needed her help,” Chester muttered.
Tarkin let out a dry little huff, in lieu of deigning to say, keep telling yourself that . “Your current circumstances would argue otherwise. Luck carried you for a time, but do you really believe that luck cannot run out?”
Chester just glared at him.
“You have indulged your sentiment enough, Commander,” he said smugly. “But everything has its price. I believe you were speaking of standard convoy formations? Perhaps we shall resume from there.”
There were technically many good reasons for them to be aboard the Triumphant this evening. Readiness inspections and drills were expected, even on Coruscant. And testing the slicing capabilities of the ship’s computer wasn’t exactly unusual; they’d come in useful before.
The complaints might have arisen about their target .
“I can’t believe they sidelined us in favor of Ventress ,” muttered Joyride.
Plo heard it anyway. “It is better to allow Ventress to take the lead on this mission,” he said. “The best thing we can do for both of them is ensure their escape is effective.”
“Can’t believe we’re sabotaging our own power grid for this,” muttered Wolffe. He took a slow, deep breath. His hackles had been rising all afternoon, and his heart rate with it. He couldn’t shake the looming feeling of slowly walking into a trap.
“It is significantly less likely to be traced,” said Garter, reasonably, as if this situation were in any way shape or form remotely reasonable.
“We are sabotaging our own power grid,” said Wolffe, more slowly. “to get Ventress. Into a high security building. I think I can stop with the description there, because it is insane.”
“Technically, it’s to get Ventress and the Commander out of the building,” said Lingo. “The General’s assessment is that she may not be in the best of shape, and they’ll need that help to get out.”
A low growl ran around the room at that. Plo’s shoulders hunched further in.
“It’s the right thing to do,” said Joyride, sullenly. “Except for the Ventress part, because she’s our Jedi, and we should be going to get her, not Ventress. She wouldn’t have had to pay us.”
“Watch it, soldier,” snapped Wolffe. “Your loyalty belongs with your brothers, not with some stray we picked out of a bounty hunter brig.”
“The whole Dooku thing mean nothing to you?” Joyride snarled. Then, an afterthought, “Sir.”
“I don’t think you can trade on that forever,” Wolffe said, hard and cold, “and watch that tone.”
There was a soft noise behind Wolffe. Dulcet had stood up. “That’s enough, vod.”
The “vod” was unusual enough that Wolffe turned around, and he immediately realized why Dulcet had said it—he was pretty clearly intending to beat the hell out of him, which hadn’t happened since they’d both been in training.
Well, he was welcome to fucking try, because Wolffe was right . “This isn’t about you, ” he snapped. “This isn’t about us, or any of our feelings , this isn’t even about Chester, for fuck’s sake. Our brothers are out there, and if it gets out that we did this—”
His throat closed. His throat closed, and Wolffe realized it was terror. He’d never thought of himself as afraid, he’d never thought he could be afraid. But here it came, looming out of the darkness, the thing he’d never felt charging a Seppie emplacement, or facing down a fleet, or even in those horrible floating hours in the grim bloody light of a red dwarf. But never—it wasn’t right, was it? Because as it came up out of the depths of his mind, swallowing everything before it, one other thing was inexorable.
It wasn’t new .
It had always, always been there.
And it wasn’t about the war. It wasn’t about the Separatists. It wasn’t about Ventress, or even Dooku, or the choking moment of bewildered pain as a lightsaber or blaster bolt shredded into flesh.
He feared the Republic.
The thing that had made them. The thing that demanded their skill, their minds, their loyalty. Their blood, down to the last drop. The thing that would take until they were mere bones, and then suck the marrow.
Chester was stupid because she was willing to fight it. Attract its attention.
Wolffe, who had been made for it, knew better.
His gaze jolted to Plo, sitting there. The second realization came. Or maybe the same realization; that would account for the yawning fear that filled him, made him feel like a puppet.
What the Republic would do to his brothers was one thing, but in the sudden glaring light of his terror Wolffe could see another thing. The Jedi.
The Jedi would be just as disposable. They couldn’t even save one idiot. They’d been made the Republic’s toy soldiers, just like the clones. They, too, would be thrown on the pyre, and they had no idea that sometimes you had to just keep your head down and not be noticed, or be devoured by the very thing that gave you purpose.
It was like a horrorvid. He’d been shouting at them all to not open the door, that the monster was there. To not provoke it. Only, it wasn’t a vid, he was standing in the room with them, and not one of them was paying attention.
“You said we mattered,” he said to Plo, his voice—dead, not the anger he wanted. It was cruel and sharp, but like a scalpel excising a tumor. He had to stop this. “You said we were all unique. That we’re not disposable. What do you think they’re going to do when they discover that we—even the commanders—can commit treason? You’re just using us, just like the disposable soldiers we’re supposed to be, because you happen to like this one natborn.”
There was a heartbeat of silence, but for the roaring of blood through his own ears. Then a fist came out of his right side, an angle he hadn’t been expecting. And maybe Wolffe would have been able to do something about it, if his breath hadn’t been so shallow, his mind so stiff with terror. Maybe he wouldn’t have gone down so hard.
“That’s enough!” ordered Plo, as Wolffe scrabbled to get his hands under him and push himself to his knees. There was a momentary burst of voices.
Lieutenant Garter said, “You can’t just say things like that because you’re scared, sir.”
Wolffe lurched to his feet, rubbing a sleeve across his jaw to pull away the smudge of damp there. “It’s not about being scared ,” he snarled. “It’s being right. We do this, and we kill our brothers . She wouldn’t want that, it’s why she brought Ventress in.”
“Wolffe,” said Plo. “With me.”
There was a harmonic in Plo’s voice that Wolffe had never heard before. He shut up, and went to follow his General without thinking about it.
The worst part was, Wolffe was right.
This plan of action was terrifically dangerous. Foolhardy, driven by emotions—exactly the sort of thing a Jedi should avoid.
Plo also could not bear to do anything else.
And it was clear from the reactions of the rest of Chester’s little crew that they felt similarly. That they too were willing to risk everything just to do, for once, the right thing.
Because the idea of a world where they just left someone like Chester to the mercies of someone like Tarkin was one too many steps down the road to an intolerable world, a world still worse than the horrifying war they presently found themselves in.
Is it better to live and compromise yourself, or die, true to your values? Right now, Plo sensed he’d come to his own answer to that question. But Wolffe was right. It wasn’t his alone to answer.
“Wolffe…”
“I’m right and you know it, General,” snarled Wolffe, rounding on him. He was angry, yes, but there was also desperation in his eyes, a trapped franticness beating against his presence. His fear was riding him, yes, but it was a fear that was well-based in reality, a survival instinct, and they had all been demanding he ignore it. “She wouldn’t want this! Because however much of an idiot she is—she’s not selfish. They find out about this, and we fuck everyone over. We can’t force a confrontation between the Jedi and the GAR and CorSec. We can’t. We’re not gonna win that. How many clones are you ready to kill to get one person back?”
There was no good answer to that. Everything that lined up in Plo’s mind fell dead and quiet as he looked at Wolffe’s accusing face.
“How many Jedi are you willing to kill to get her back, General?” asked Wolffe, in that same flat resigned voice he’d spoken in while throwing Abregado in his face a few moments ago. “They’re not going to spare you, either. How many Padawans? How many Initiates? All Force users are dangerous, sir. How hard are you willing to remind them of that, for one person?”
Plo looked down. “I do not think it will be this incident which will prevent or cause our doom, Wolffe,” he said at last. “That the Republic is dangerous has already become clear to the Jedi. What Dulcet and his men have suffered makes that clear enough. But perhaps… that doom is coming for us anyway. Perhaps we might take a leaf from Commander Chester’s book, and meet it doing something good anyway.”
“Or you’re just provoking it,” said Wolffe, pleading. “Chester herself said it, she’s got oaths she swore and that she’s sticking with about not interfering, and I’m pretty sure us blowing the Order and the GAR sky fucking high to save her is going to count. She wouldn’t even tell us how she did that to the droids, she’s not going to want this. ”
Attachment. Attachment. Plo had always felt his ability to quickly bond with others was something to appreciate. That the relationships this created were valuable and enriched his existence and that of others. He had struggled with attachment in its virulent sense just as his colleagues had, but this felt different. This, there was no painful answer from which he could not shy. This—
—attachment, yes, the kind that meant he was sacrificing Chester’s own stated desires for what he felt was in her best interest, yes, the sort he was warned against, but there was more than that. There was—a sense of being complicit in a wrong, in an outrage to the fundamental justice of the universe. It was about Chester, but it was not. It was about who the Jedi were, who the rest of them were. It was about—
Starfleet is a promise. We don’t leave our own behind.
It was about, in this one small way in this one time when he had the choice, taking action to make the galaxy a slightly better place, to not let this one wound stay untreated. To not let this one life slip away. To live up to ideals, just this once. And, perhaps, by so doing, heal a little from what the war was doing to them.
This wasn’t about Chester, though the idea of her as an individual dying pained him—but he’d been ready to let her go home and to her very likely death. This was about who they’d be if they let the Republic for which they fought kill her out of fear and convenience. This was about rejecting that.
How to tell Wolffe? Wolffe, who dealt in the immediate. Wolffe, who was begging for his brothers’ lives. For Plo’s life, too. He tried anyway.
“Who are we,” he asked, “if we let the Republic do this to her?”
“Maybe we don’t have the luxury of asking that,” said Wolffe, folding his arms.
“What are we fighting for, if we let the Republic do this to her?”
“Each other!” It was raw, pleading. Wolffe instantly looked mortified that it had left his mouth but also unrepentant, and he kept going. “My brothers! Your Jedi, each other, General. What else could there be? ”
Plo looked down at him, and coughed the smallest of wry laughs. “You are more like her than you know, my Wolffe.”
Wolffe stared at him in outrage, then away. After a moment, he ducked his head a little. “I wouldn’t want you to do this for me.”
That struck Plo to the core, the mere idea of it, and it hurt. “I know,” he said, and thought, but I cannot say I wouldn’t do it anyway.
At that point, Garter stuck his head out of the room they’d been using as a makeshift command post. “Sir?” he said to Plo. “We’ve successfully sliced into the power grid. We’re ready to black out this black site when we get the signal.”
“Thank you for your cooperation, Commander.” Tarkin’s smile curled unpleasantly. “But you’ll understand if I want the assurance of your honesty. I’m afraid that, with your record, I’m disinclined to trust anything you say without the influence of our very effective… truth enhancers.”
The droid hovered closer again, and to her annoyance, Chester’s flinch back against the table was not rehearsed.
There was a soft sound from the air vent above them, and a couple of small objects plopped to the floor at Tarkin’s feet. They both looked down; from her uncomfortable half-upright angle, Chester could just make out a collection of small screws.
She looked at Tarkin. Tarkin looked at her. “This is what you get for having the lowest bidder build your military installations,” she observed.
Tarkin was a self-important wannabe tin-plated dictator with delusions of godhood… but that one actually got through to him. He looked at the screws again, then at Chester with a sort of outrage blooming on his face, and then Ventress dropped out of the ceiling and started comprehensively wrecking his day.
Chester leaned back on the uncomfortable table to enjoy the show.
Ventress was a treat to watch in action—efficient, competent, and remarkably vicious. She didn’t even pull a weapon, which was a touch of consideration Chester hadn’t expected, as she doubted Ventress had any compunction about use of deadly force.
But it was a delight to watch her make Chester’s captors look like a bunch of incompetent clods.
She wasn’t even breathing hard by the time she’d turned all the officers in the room into hopefully-unconscious heaps and turned around, drawing her lightsaber to slash the restraints. Chester didn’t even bother with flinching at that; if Ventress was going to cut a limb off, she was going to cut a limb off; if she’d decided not to, she wasn’t going to.
“Very nice,” she said. “And just in time. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep them going.”
“You are such a liar,” said Ventress, in tones that made it clear this was a compliment. “How do the Jedi even put up with you?” This, too, seemed to be a compliment.
“Reluctantly,” said Chester, sliding down off the table and staggering. Her knees wanted to give out, and the rest of her wasn’t much better off. Tarkin himself had preferred psychological intimidation, but his subordinates hadn’t been so genteel. “Please tell me the safehouse is in easy walking distance. Today has been a shitty day.”
“Sorry to disappoint,” said Ventress. “You’re going to need to get back up to that vent.”
Chester looked up at it and let out a heartfelt groan. There was almost nothing she would rather do less.
“Stop whining. I’ll give you a boost—don’t melt my brain for it, I heard what you did to Skywalker.”
“I’ll be nice,” Chester promised. “You asked.”
“Hah,” said Ventress, and hoisted her into the duct. The shove with the Force wasn’t exactly gentle, but it did have the air of someone trying to be as nice as they could be about it, which Chester appreciated.
The initial adrenaline had started to ebb, and she didn’t have to put up a brave front anymore, and as she moved through the cramped duct, Chester started to realize how very much she hurt. She’d whacked both elbows against the table, and she could feel the bruises coming up where she’d jerked against the restraints, both trying to wiggle out and while spasming against them. Her nerves were flaring with intermittent pain, and her muscles all ached , deep to the bone. She really hoped that Ventress was in fact able to get her to someone who could take her home, because she had a bad feeling she was in for some serious sessions to repair nerve damage. Electricity and the human nervous system did not play well together.
But right now, they had to get out of the facility. And she was acutely aware she was slowing Ventress down, even pushing her aching body to move as fast as she could. At the moment, her ribs occupied her attention, a stabbing pain with every movement that was making cold sweat pop out on her forehead.
Ventress put out a hand to her ankle, stopping her; Chester leaned against the wall with her head down for a moment, breathing through her nose, and then looked back over her shoulder. Ventress had a comm in hand. “Do it now,” she told whoever was on the other end, and there was a crackle before, “ Acknowledged ,” and Chester’s eyes went wide because she was pretty sure that was Plo .
She looked at Ventress. Ventress grinned. “Didn’t think you could look surprised,” she said.
“Didn’t think I could be surprised like that,” said Chester, dry and out of breath.
Around them, there was a facility-wide groan as the power went down, and darkness flooded into their narrow hiding place.
“Keep going,” said Ventress. “Don’t die on me yet, you oversize fool.”
Chester raised her head, waiting for her eyes to adjust, and crept onward. It was somehow heartening to think of Plo and the others ahead, helping Ventress, caring about what happened to them. It was good to know that the war hadn’t actually succeeded in kicking all that out of them. That the instinct to help was still there, and perhaps it did not need to be ignored as much as they had all feared.
