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Getting onto the Revanite ship had been nearly impossible. The only reason Theron had gotten the chance was because they were suddenly calling in all their people who could be spared. They ran a hellishly tight ship, but no one could triple check every background with this many transfers.
Theron had to hack into the Imperial databases on Nar Shaddaa, add his cover as a soldier, and then play the role for two weeks while hoping that Lana successfully added him to a list of recent converts. His cover was in a dead end position, so in theory he would be an obvious choice to transfer in as canon fodder.
He only knew it worked when he was suddenly transferred to a warship full of people speaking in coded language.
Two more weeks of that, and he was just about done with having to fake an accent, but he was pretty sure he was "one of them" enough that he could move more freely around the ship without it setting off any security alarms.
Every day he stayed here was another day they might recognize his face, but there was nothing he could do about that. Usually he would have sent someone else, someone less likely to be caught. Unfortunately his resources were himself or Lana, who was even more likely to be recognized than he was.
There was no rushing it, though. He didn't even have access to the ship's intranet until 3 days in, and that was insanely nannied. As far as he was aware, mostly due to still being alive, he had successfully offloaded a virus that should have upped the network permissions for a few isolated terminals, but he needed the privacy to get to those terminals to even see if it had worked.
He was settled in for another boring day of pretending to be imperial and hoping someone said something he could add to the little bits of leaked information he was slowly piecing together, when one of the Revanites he'd been working with came running up. "Look sharp, corporal, we have a visitor!"
Theron raised an eyebrow at her. "We do get those, from time to time."
"It's Lord Wrath."
Theron must have looked appropriately surprised, because she nodded in response to his expression. "Our Lord says to assume he suspects us and behave accordingly. They'll be taking him around the ship, wherever he wants to go. Secure anything that might look interesting."
"I don't leave interesting things lying around,." Theron said, letting a bit of scolding leak into his voice. The soldier winced slightly, then hurried off to her own bunk.
Wrath was...not someone he wanted to encounter. He'd spoken with the man for all of an hour or so on Manaan. If Wrath seemed to recognize him, then that would put Theron under scrutiny. If Theron went under scrutiny, then they'd realize who he was. If he was lucky, they'd just kill him.
So, avoiding Wrath was ideal, but his presence on the ship did mean that some of the terminals might not be getting the same scrutiny as they normally did, with most of their security forces hyper focused on Wrath. It was possible that Lana had even sent Wrath here to provide a distraction, if they'd gotten back in touch in the weeks where Theron was undercover. Or if Wrath had gotten bored and found her to insist on helping, which was...probably fairly likely. The Sith had agreed to just keep doing his day job when they left each other on Manaan, but he didn't get to be the Wrath of the Empire by being happy to stay idle.
Theron didn't reach a terminal.
Instead he got tossed up against a wall and kissed by the most annoying Sith in the goddamn galaxy.
"Didn't miss me?" the Wrath of the Empire teased as he pulled back, smirking down at him. "And here I thought you would, lieutenant...hm, what was your name again? I do believe I've mixed you up."
"It's Corporal Hennesy, my Lord," Theron said, trying not to let his annoyance seep into his voice. The people who had been assigned to distract Wrath came around the corner just in time to hear the exchange. Theron wasn't certain if that was deliberate timing on Wrath's account, or some sort of luck.
He was certain that Wrath didn't quite get just how dangerous this was. Most Sith didn't. Most Siths' idea of being undercover was sneaking into somewhere anonymously until it was time to let loose with lightsabers. Lana was the rare exception that actually understood infiltration.
"My bad," Wrath said, breezily. "We'll just have to get reacquainted."
"If you would prefer Corporal Hennesy to show you around the ship, my Lord, that can be arranged," said one of the Revanites that Theron distantly recognized as a Captain who had previously been stationed on Tatooine. She had been trying to earn the Admiral's trust since the moment she got to the ship, and he'd put that in the back of his mind to potentially use later if he needed to.
He hadn't felt bad about considering wrecking her life before, but if he had, he definitely wouldn't now. She was blatantly, blatantly, tossing Theron under the speeder. Or the Sith, as the case may be. If Theron had actually been a Revanite, he'd be feeling pretty betrayed right around now.
Or maybe not, maybe a real Revanite would have been thrilled to be able to carnally distract an enemy to keep him from getting any useful information.
"I might like that," Wrath purred, eyes locked on Theron's for a moment before he pulled away.
The Sith took a couple steps down the hall, then looked back at Theron consideringly. Waiting for Theron to tell him where to go, maybe? That would be difficult, with this audience.
"If you would like access to the barracks, or a private room, we would be happy to accomodate," the captain suggested, sounding hopeful.
"No, I don't think so," Wrath said, tapping his saber idly. All the Revanites stilled, watching his hand, and only relaxed when Wrath started striding down the hallway. The Sith waved for Theron to follow him without bothering to look back again.
It was absolutely ridiculous, but for some reason the Revanites were fully buying it.
Theron wasn't sure if Wrath knew where he was going or was just guessing. He couldn't exactly tell him. The Revanites hadn't followed, likely hoping Wrath would just distract himself, but they were surely watching the security cameras for every twitch. If Wrath had implants, Theron could have potentially sent him the information...but of course he didn't. There was no easy way for Theron to tell him what unsuspicious terminals had been given permission to connect to the main system.
If his virus worked.
If it hadn't, there was no way that they would be getting anything useful from this. Wrath had potentially just wrecked several weeks worth of setup, and if the Revanites identified Theron, then he wouldn't get a second chance at this.
He couldn't dwell on that, though. Wrath passed the first hallway that they could have gone to, confirming that he wasn't even trying to read Theron's mind.
It would take a lot longer. Theron would have to lead them through a lot of rooms that he knew weren't connected to anything and hope he could come up with a good reason for them to pause when they got to a room with a terminal for him to slice. And even then, if they checked the terminal and Theron was still on the ship, that was likely to come down to him.
If Wrath appeared to pick the room, Theron could say he tried to keep Wrath distracted and report that Wrath seemed to have tried to access the terminal but hadn't, as far as Theron could tell, connected to anything.
When they got to the next corridor, Theron did his best to focus on it, tensing his muscles in that direction as much as he could without changing the cadence of his step or looking at it. A normal person wouldn't be able to tell, but Wrath...
Wrath dithered for a moment, and then turned.
Theron tried not to sigh in relief.
It took them several minutes to get to one of the rooms he wanted to go to, not helped by Wrath occasionally turning down the wrong hall and doubling back or randomly deciding he wanted into a room. Theron was...fairly sure that Wrath was reading him correctly, so he begrudgingly admitted that the Sith was possibly better at acting than Theron had given him credit for.
Or he just really liked harassing Revanites.
Probably both.
When they finally got into the storage room that Theron wanted them to get to, Wrath shut the door, shattered the room's comm, shattered the secondary comm the moment Theron looked that way, and then smirked at him.
Theron did a quick scan to make sure no extra bugs had run to the room ahead of them (he wouldn't put it past the Revanites) and then relaxed. "Do me a favor?" he said quietly as he moved towards the supply room inventory terminal, which luckily wasn't the sort of thing ever equipped with voice activation. "Be loud for a bit."
Wrath laughed, following him to the terminal. Theron booted up the system, mentally crossing his fingers that it would actually have the permissions he needed.
"You know," Wrath said loudly, wrapping an arm around Theron's waist, "I really should have just fucked you when I met you. It would have saved me a lot of time."
Theron reminded himself that he had literally just asked Wrath to be loud and should have known what that would entail, then started looking through the systems.
"The mission was fairly short," Wrath said, after pausing for just long enough that Theron could have answered if he cared to. "I was more referring to all the time I've spent since then, wishing that I'd tossed you up against a wall and fucked you right there."
"Would you like to know what I've been imagining?" the Sith asked. And then he leaned in and bit Theron's ear, hard enough that Theron had to stop what he was doing with a hiss of pain. It was very tempting to kick the other man, but he kept that in check. From a completely objective viewpoint, that was a very harmless way to make this whole thing look convincing.
He could feel the blood running down his ear as Wrath pulled back, and was finding it hard to stay objective.
Then Wrath licked the blood off. Theron gave in to impulse and stomped on his foot.
The Sith laughed, licking his ear again. "Well, I'm going to tell you what I've been imagining, and then I'll show you."
Theron bit back a complaint and focused on the terminal in front of him, trying to tune the Sith out as Wrath started in on a very detailed fantasy that somehow managed to sound like it could have happened to his cover identity while so very clearly being about Manaan.
"Don't complain," Wrath said, trailing his fingers along Theron's belt. "How am I supposed to resist when you blush so cutely? Your ears go all pink."
Theron confirmed that his system was connected and did his best to tune the most infuriating mission partner he'd ever had completely out.
Technically, he had asked for this.
If he had known how distracting it would be, he might have come up with a better plan.
The transfer and supply records he wanted were easy enough to grab. Only incoming, but that was to be expected, outgoing were probably above this clearance level. He downloaded them as Wrath kept narrating his fantasies. Wrath started undoing Theron's belt, and Theron found a Colonel who had synced their email to the shared server. Wrath pulled at some of the buttons on Theron's shirt hard enough to snap them off, while talking about how much he wanted to rip off Theron's clothes the last time, and Theron found a suspicious supply transfer. Wrath pulled Theron's belt off, then turned and flung it at the door, and Theron found two people who had accidentally published their records to their public transfer folders instead of their locked personal folders.
Once Theron was sure that he had everything he could reasonably find in this timeframe, especially since Theron was finding it increasingly hard to ignore Wrath's hand up his shirt, he sent the command to reset the permissions he'd upped with his virus, and the terminal went back to its normal local supply list.
"I'm done," he said quietly.
"I'm not," Wrath teased, just as quietly now. "Do you think anyone trying to listen would think I'm finished that quickly? Never."
"I don't know, you seem to get in and out of things pretty--" Wrath spun Theron around and shoved him back against the terminal, shutting him up with a kiss.
Nearly an hour later, Theron followed Wrath back to the bridge, quietly adjusting his uniform as they went. It probably wasn't necessary, but it would be convincing for the watchers.
The captain who had thrown him to the wolves waved him aside before they got there. Wrath pretended not to notice as she pulled Theron into a side room, and just kept striding towards the bridge.
"He destroyed the commlink in the room he took you to," she said, when Wrath was safely out of earshot. "Anything to report?"
Theron deliberately hesitated, smoothing a hand over a winkle in his coat. "He was sufficiently distracted."
There were other people in the room she had led him to. No one essential for meeting with Wrath on the bridge, but all of them high ranking Revanites. One, a sergeant that Theron assumed was higher in the Revanite ranks than was shown by her Imperial rank, was scowling, the rest looked pleased.
"Perhaps he just wanted to throw his weight around," a Sith mused.
"Likely," the first captain said. "Lord Wrath isn't exactly known for his--" She cut off as her comm suddenly blinked, flicking it on. "My Lord?"
"Send Corporal Hennesy to gather his belongings. Wrath has requested his transfer."
She looked at him, inclining her head towards the door. "Dismissed, corporal. Return here for debrief."
The sergeant looked even more pissed.
By the time Theron got back, all of his cover identity's possessions over his shoulder, there was a full blown fight going on.
"This isn't what we're about! We're supposed to be better!" the sergeant yelled.
"Sometimes sacrifices have to be made," the captain argued. "Usually in much worse ways than this!"
"There's a difference between agreeing to risk your life and--" She cut off as they spotted Theron entering the room. For a moment it looked like the sergeant was going to say something to him. Then she clenched her jaw and marched out of the room.
"This is why the lower enlisted shouldn't be raised above their rank," the Sith said, sulkily.
"That's not our decision. She'll come around." The captain turned smartly, handing a small box to Theron. "Corporal, this should be temporary. Wrath has requested a permanent transfer and you're to entertain him until you can safely slip away. On Dromond Kaas preferably. It's his next stop and we'd like to limit the duration of--"
"I still say we should let the station be permanent."
"Wrath is known for being able to sniff out spies almost instantly," the captain countered. "We've discussed this." She sighed, then turned her attention back to Theron. "As I was saying, you're to slip away as soon as possible. Before you do, plant these chips. We aren't expecting him to take long to find them, but the Lord they implicate should take Lord Wrath's attention for long enough that he won't be focused on us as the next stage begins. Since this will implicate you, we'll be transferring you directly to our main forces on Rishi."
"Understood." Theron said, keeping carefully calm. Rishi. Not a name he was familiar with, but just knowing that they had their main forces there was a major next step. That word alone might be more of a lead than everything he'd downloaded from the server. "I assume our people will contact me when I land?"
"Yes. They'll be watching the spaceport for you."
They wouldn't find him. It was risky enough, him being under scrutiny now. If the Revanites actually transferred him to one of their main groups, they were guaranteed to make the connection between him and one of their most wanted enemies.
He'd just have to fake Corporal Hennesy's death. If they got really lucky, it might make that sergeant and anyone else with similar reservations consider defecting.
He didn't let any of that show, instead keeping his expression carefully neutral as he saluted, and was dismissed.
Wrath was already on the ship when he got there, and cheekily kissed Theron's nose as the door closed. "Not bringing any bugs on my ship, are you?"
"Nope," Theron answered, dropping the accent after a quick implant scan for active signals in the area. In theory he knew the bugs used by the Revanites, and if he missed one...Well, he was always going to miss it then. "At least not active. They gave me a couple to plant for you to find later, to implicate someone else."
"Distraction?"
"Yeah."
Wrath stepped back, tapping his fingers against the hilt of his saber. "Could be an ally."
"Maybe. Not sure if we have time to follow up. I need to look up Rishi."
The ship was already undocking; Wrath's pilot presumably was taking care of it. Good, if the Revanites weren't delaying undocking, then their initial check of the supply room hadn't betrayed anything that would implicate them.
Or maybe it had and they just didn't want to gamble on their chances against the Wrath of the Empire.
Wrath moved into the main room of the ship, glancing back at Theron with a grin. "We could always have Lana do that, if you'd like to have some fun."
Theron sighed, "I'd rather you told me what you and Lana were up to, actually. She wasn't supposed to get back in contact with you at all until we knew what was going on."
"Change in plans. They weren't on to you yet, but an alert went out in their systems with your information. Lana says you wouldn't be caught by an automated check--"
"But my face is still my face." Theron sighed. "Well, at least you got me out in a way that meant we got what we needed."
"Anything damning?"
"Maybe. Might just be potential leads to more information."
Wrath let out a frustrated sigh, tossing his hand out at the couch in the middle of his ship and twisting it against the screws holding it to the deck, like the Sith version of a petulant child.
Theron sat on the couch, ignoring the mini force based tantrum happening at its base. "You can't usually just roll into somewhere and get exactly the information you need. You have to find it in stages, usually by finding out who doesn't follow information security protocol or getting increasing access levels."
"You might not be able to, I usually find what I'm looking for."
Theron rolled his eyes. "Well, that's you. The rest of us mortals have to do it the hard way. Are you heading to Dromond Kaas?"
"Do you want me to?"
"No." Theron dug out the bugs he was supposed to plant. "The best way to keep them from looking too hard into my cover story is if they think 'Corporal Hennesy' got caught planting those bugs and died. They're probably encrypted with something that your…" Theron trailed off, realizing that he didn't actually know what position the twi'lek held. Servant? Pilot? Cheering squad? Secret apprentice? He had no idea.
"Vette?"
"Yeah." Theron pulled the box holding the bugs. "They're probably set up with something that she's decrypted for you before."
Wrath took the box, turning towards the door to the cockpit. "Vette!"
"I'm busy flying us away from the evil cultists! I'll slice the things later!"
"It should be on autopilot by now!"
"It's not!"
Wrath rolled his eyes, then flung the box in through the door so that it ricocheted off the wall and presumably towards the pilot's seat.
Vette made an annoyed sound, then remotely closed the pilot door.
Wrath looked pleased, and turned back towards Theron. "That's settled then." He smiled, slow and dark. "How about finishing what we started earlier."
"I'm going to take a shower and a nap." Theron countered.
"You could nap with me?"
Theron rolled his eyes, getting up and heading towards where the crew showers usually were on this sort of ship.
"That wasn't a no."
"Wasn't a yes either." Theron said, shutting the bathroom door and leaning his head against it for a moment.
It was probably a bad idea.
Too bad it was so damn tempting.