Chapter Text
It was supposed to be a smooth operation. The transfer of vital imperial intel from a contact to their rebel cell for the resistance was to valuable to be sent over any frequency. A face to face meet was a more reliable way of securing the intel without interception from the empire but nevertheless this kind of handover still came with its risks.
In fact the pick up had been the smoothest part of the mission.
Landing on some pirate dwelling, black market favoured planet in the outer rim, Ezra and Sabine had been sent to retrieve this knowledge alone. Meeting the contact in some dark downtown club they were told was called "Abyss" along with the identity verifying sentence and was all the information they’d received before setting out for the transfer.
After leaving the Phantom in a secure hiding spot in the nearby woods, they made their way into the town, keeping their heads down and pace steady.
This planet was barely monitored by the empire they'd noticed, at least compared to the usual presence they held on other planets. It seemed to be more of a pit stop in between base for moving troops around the galaxy.
No ships were in orbit and they’d counted only 3 pairs of patrolling troopers on the way. Perhaps it was their night off they thought; this idea being confirmed once they arrived at the rendezvous point.
The muffled thud of music reverberating through the stone walls reaching their ears as they rounded the corner suggested they had the correct place.
A dozen troopers were huddled to one side of the street, most with their helmets off, laughing amongst themselves and leaning against their speeders. They were clearly a few drinks in already, sharing what smelt like a spliff of some narcotic herb they'd most likely bought off some back alley dealer.
Sabine and Ezra share a look, "let's hope we don't have to shoot our way out, for a planet barely monitored by the empire they just have to outnumber us right where we are," Ezra notes dryly, just loud enough for her to hear him.
"Well, at least they'll be too high to shoot straight," she jested back, trying to hide her concern with a smirk in his direction.
A wave of heat and the smell of sweat hit them as they entered the club. The floor was a tangle of bodies. On the far side private booths carved into the stone walls covered the wall from end to end, in the one corner stairs led up to a first floor balcony that circled all sides of the massive square room. The balcony protruded into the room sheltering the edges of the floor below but leaving the dance floor open, behaving as a viewing area.
In a way it was, Ezra thought it looked like the space could transform into a caged arena for wild animals where spectators could observe horrors for entertainment safely from above.
On the left side a bar ran along the wall, a few bartenders and droids could be seen serving through the rowdy crowds. The right side was mainly an empty wall with platforms serving as staging areas under the balcony, they assumed were for Musicians in the day but were currently occupied by a DJ and a few dancers on either side.
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Stepping down on to the dance floor Ezra led the way, grabbing Sabine's hand as they pushed through intoxicated crowds, shrugging off a few handsy clubbers in the process and made their way to the far right booth to wait for the contact.
The dark alcove providing some protection from the repetitive thump thump thump of the music and dizzying strobing of the lights.
They sat next to each other scanning the crowd, the booth providing a pretty good vantage point of the space.
"Can you see him?" Sabine shouted in his ear, the only way she was going to be heard over the swell of music.
Ezra shook his head in response, "do we even know if it's a he?" He leaned into her ear and shouted in response.
Sabine shrugged, beginning to question how long this would take. She agreed the location was great cover for them, perfectly hiden within the crowds, but like kriff they were going to find the contact in this pile of flayling limbs and gyrating hips they faced in front of them.
Her eyes drifted to the bar on her far right, another group of troopers crowded one end. A blonde haired trooper obviously trying to get lucky with a blue twi'lek and failing by the looks of her unimpressed expression, earned a small chuckle from Sabine.
Ezra decided to get them drinks, so as not to look out of place in the bustling social space. Apparently this club didn’t believe in alcohol free beverages, so instead he purchased the weakest drinks he could see on display and leant back against the bar, scanning the crowd while waiting for the server to finish mixing the luminescent liquids.
His eyes flicked over to Sabine, who was watching the mass of sentiments on the dance floor. It sure was a diverse crowd; Humans, Togrutas, Twi’leks, Zygerrian, a few Rodians and Ithorians, plus the odd Mirialan, Zabrak a nd even Pantoran’s dotted around.
He thanked the bartender and wondered how it would feel to be just one of the crowd, a normal human teen, now old enough to attend these sorts of establishments. Instead here he was pushing his way back to their table, two yellow glowing glasses in hand, undercover and fighting the empire on behalf of all these naive patrons.
“Far left pillar” she greeted him with, taking the drink from his outstretched hand.
He flicked his gaze over in that direction. Indeed, leaning against said pillar was a dark figure, a hood hiding their features, unusually still compared to the rest of the club.
The mysterious stranger began to make their way over. Gliding almost supernaturally through the rabble without interruption. “It’s a long way to alderman.”
Recognising the code phrase Sabine responded nonchalantly, “Not if you’ve got the right leverage.”
The cloaked individual nodded knowingly, then took a deep breath as they sat. They lifted their hood to rest higher on their head, revealing a woman; she was fairly young, early 20s perhaps. She had humanoid features, but there was something unique about her skin, it appeared pale like a light skinned humans, but under the strobing lights the shade had an almost pastel lilac tone. What looked like faint markings at the top of her forehead disappeared under the hood, hiding whether she had hair or possibly lekku; if they were correct in assuming she was half twi’lek.
Sabine couldn’t be sure but in this light her eyes appeared bright scarlet with flecks of hazel and yellow, and were framed by a smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks and straight blonde eyebrows, not tattooed like some twi’lek do but actual hair like humans.
She smiled at them, a friendly kind smile. “How was the way in for you?”
“Admittedly one of the easiest entrances we’ve ever had” Ezra admitted lightly.
She chucked good naturedly, before getting to the matter at hand.
She pulled out a data chip, pushing it across the table towards Sabine. “Here, it’s a pretty large file and the data’s still encrypted, but it should only take about 5 minutes for you to download once it’s decoded”
The girls proceed to both discreetly pull out the appropriate devices, the woman inserted the data chip into a small decryption stick on the one end before plugging in the palm sized drive Sabine had produced, that they were to receive the information on.
The rest of the transfer went smoothly, within a few minutes the data chip had been decrypted and transferred over to the teens. Location and time for the next intel drop was shared and after some friendly conversation, a few laughs and a story about a recent mission the young woman had been apart of where an entire empire base got accidentally blown up instead of just its weapons supply stores because a rebel got a little to excited, the half human/half twi’lek said her goodbyes, promptly melting back into the crowd.
They continued sipping on their drinks and chatting, staying long enough for their time spent to look like a social call before standing up to leave.
In the time they’d spent inside the building the club goers had double in number, the balconies circling the dance floor where now bustling and pushing through the dance floor was like wading through sludge - well if sludge had flailing limbs and shoulders barging against you every 2 seconds.
Halfway across the floor a short man stumbling drunkly bumped into Ezra's chest, his drink spilling onto the floor. “Watch it!”
“Sorry” Ezra muttered keen to get past the wasted man and not cause a scene.
“Hey hey wait I know you” the guy stepped in front of them blocking their path.
Ezra and Sabine shared a glance, keeping their faces neutral Ezra shook his head at the man, “sorry don’t think so”.
Aiming to step around him the guy blocked their path again. “Nah you two look familiar”
“Just got one of those faces I guess” Ezra brushed him off again, but before they could move the man had put his hand on Ezras shoulder.
“I think I’d recognise the scum who got me shut down” Pocking a stubby finger into Ezras chest, “3 months ago. I lost that business ‘cus of you”
Grabbing the mans finger and bending it back, “Pity we only had time to free the cargo and not blow the place aswell.” Sabine mocked.
“Rebel scum” he spat in her face pulling his hand from her death grip. “So righteous, you think you can waltz around changing anything that doesn’t ‘fit your cause’ huh”
“Well when your ‘business’ is selling your own as slaves we consider that a reasonable situation to get involved in. Empire or not.” She growled back, disgusted by the poor excuse of a sentient in front of them.
He sneered at them, eyes flicking back and forth before turning and pushing away from them.
Hoping that was the last of him they continued on, thinking their encounter was over they carried on pushing through the crowd at a steady pace, until the tell tail sounds of the males voice reached them over the consistent swell of music.
“Troopers! Troopers!”
“Kriff” Sabine cursed, “let’s go”, she nudged Ezra, desperately hoping they’d become invisible within the dancing mob.
Although when did things ever go according to plan. Snippets of shouts from the man about ‘rebels in the building’ caught the attention of both troopers and the teens.
“Hey!” A stormtrooper stood by the bar shouting after them over the crowd and noise. “Hey you two, hold it!”
Mindful of trying to slip into the collective of people. They continued pushing through the crowd as quick as they could without barraging and drawing attention, keeping their heads down, weaving their way steadily to the door.
The storm troopers could be heard from behind them pushing through the crowds. Subtitle neither favoured nor thought about as people were shoved out the way roughly.
Ezra drove them forwards, his hand gripping Sabines, the door only 3 metres away.
With the troopers far to many drinks deep to be making any kind of rational decision, if they could be capable of making them in the first place, the one leading the group raised his blaster into the air and fired.
Lights sparked and club goers screamed as blaster fire ricochet off the walls and ceiling, dust raining down onto the suddenly panic stricken nightclub.
Ezra and Sabine instinctively ducked as the situation had taken another turn. Sabine allowed herself to glance back to check the advancing storm troopers, only to meet the eyes of the trooper who set off the round of fire. His gun was still raised, but this time pointing at them.
“Ezra!” She pushed him forward in warning before hot searing pain spread across her right shoulder blade and a yelp escaped her lips as she fell into him.
The club was now in mayhem, its customers and staff jostling the pair around while trying to run away from blaster fire being shot above the heads of the masses.
“Come on!” He pulled her into his side, one arm going protectively to the back of her head as the other stretched out in front of them to push through the crowd. Their stumbling feet raced towards the exit using the cover the stormtroopers had inadvertently set up with their idiotic blaster fire.
They couldn’t help but curse the sleemo for recognising them. If it hadn't of been for that intoxicated piece of kriff their exit from the rondevo location would've gone without a hitch.
Escaping the club had been reasonably easy, slipping out during the chaos a piece of cake once the panic from blaster fire sent the clubs patrons scrambling around widely.
But with storm troopers in the area having been alerted to rebel activity, the surrounding area was unpredictable with the streets now a no go. To avoid any more encounters with the empire they'd ducked into a thin alley behind the club to grab a minute to think about how to get back to The Phantom.
The alley was deserted, save a few drinks crates lining one wall, making the small space ever smaller in places, and a couple down the far end way to busy with their lips locked together and arms tangled in each other's embrace roaming each others bodies like there was no tomorrow to busy to even care about what had just gone down in the club next to them, they could of sworn they could see some tentacles in the mix aswell but snatched their gaze away before the flush that threatened to show on both the teens could rear it's awkward head.
A few other couples and scattered groups of friends dotted the streets they were currently avoiding, the few panicked guests that had fled the club now slowing down to continue with their night at another establishment.
They could hear troopers in the distance asking if they'd spotted two young adult humans fleeing the area, most members of the public shrugging them off with a no before catching up to their friends.
Sabines attention was snatched away from their environment as the pain of the blaster burn to her shoulder was starting to creep up on her, adrenaline no longer numbing the seering sensation that spread down her back.
As uncomfortable as it was starting to become she knew she couldn't dwell on it right now, once they were safely back on the phantom they'd pop a bacta on it until she could receive some better equipped medical assistance at base.
Ezras attention had moved from pocking his head round the corner of the alley looking for a way out to Sabine when he heard a wince escape her mouth as she twisted her body to get a better look at the roofs, calculating any possible escape route.
"You okay?" He motioned to her shoulder, gently placing his hand on her arm to steady her twisting to get a look at the injury.
Worry etched on his face as he took in the thumbnail sized scorched skin a couple of layers deep. It hadn't reached the muscle but it was still a pretty bad hit, if she'd of been wearing her armour the blast would of deflected right off but instead it burned straight through her tunic and top, causing the skin around it to flare up angry and red.
She was more concerned about how they were going to get out of this in one piece with troopers now sweeping down every alley and backstreet for them, their heavy footsteps signalling they would soon be right on top of them.
"Can you see an opening?" She asked.
Sticking his head round the edge of the building he felt defeated when a stormtrooper at every corner came into view "no" he sighed, "up might be our best option".
They looked up to the midnight sky sandwiched between the 3 story buildings, "seems like our only option" Sabine admitted "there's a pipe we can climb abit further down, but I'm not sure how well I'm going to do with this shoulder".
"I can give you a boost" Ezra suggested, knowing if she went first he could use the Force to push her up when necessary.
Sabine nodded in agreement ready to make her way over to the pipe when storm trooper voices started making their way down the alley from the far end.
"Karabast" Ezra growled, their way out now in plain view of the troopers advancing towards them and the only other exit on to the street revealing their hiding space was out of the question too.
Frantically racking their brains for a solution that wouldn't draw to much attention to themselves and encourage any further blaster fire in their direction, Ezras hand hovered over his lightsaber tucked in his pocket as the storm troopers conversation came into range.
"- did you see the tentacles on her?" A distorted voice came through one of the helmets
"Huh couldn't miss them" the second helmet replied "each to their own, but you wouldn't catch me out in the back with one of those"
"We probably should've stopped them for questioning" the first one pondered.
"No way was I interrupting that, tentacles or no tentacles" the second trooper joked.
The first trooper laughed in response "To busy sucking each other's faces off to notice some pathetic rebels running about".
Sabine's mind ticked over as she computed what they had said, with the troopers now halfway down the alley she turned to look at Ezra as he squinted through the darkness at the troopers, hand poised to pull out his saber.
She knew they needed an escape plan and fast, hopefully one that wouldn’t end in explosive noises and more injuries. An idea came to the front of her mind before she even had a second to think it through, she grabbed Ezras arm and tugged him towards her slightly. She didn't give herself the chance to stop the words as they tumbled out her mouth.
"Kiss me."