Chapter Text
Greez scans the cantina. Dusty neon lights, questionable synth music, sticky floors, scorch marks that could have only come from blasters. Yeah, this is his kinda place. It’s busy without heaving with people. Old-timers slump at the bar, groups gather in alcoves, and plenty more stand around tables dotted across the floor. There’s a happy feel to the place, like everyone got off work early with a bonus. Any other time Greez would enjoy the ambience. Tonight? Not so much. He sits with Merrin off to the side of the bar, their drinks gathering condensation ahead of them. Merrin watches with interest as people move around them. A year since leaving Dathomir and she remains fascinated by the entire galaxy. Greez hopes she holds onto that for a long time. Also, it’s a good cover for them while they wait for their target to arrive. Merrin’s simply too young and openly curious to look suspicious, and Greez has been in enough cantinas to know how to look relaxed.
Not that he is relaxed. It’s taken a lot to get to this point. Their target, Sanaye, is as jumpy and paranoid as someone dealing in old Jedi tech with the Haxion Brood should be. His and Merrin’s role is to keep Sanaye distracted while Cere and Cal poke around her apartment. It won’t be hard. It won’t. It –
“You look constipated,” Merrin says. She reaches for her drink, some rainbow-hued concoction that is so alcoholic it would drop Greez into instant alcohol poisoning. She remains unaffected. No one can drink Merrin under the table, and Cal was stupid enough to try on his eighteenth birthday. “Relax,” Merrin continues. “Everything is fine.”
Greez reaches for his own drink with one hand, grabbing a scazz kebab with another. “I’m totally relaxed.” He bites the kebab, spices exploding on his tongue. “I’m so relaxed I’m practically horizontal!”
“You are so stressed you are vibrating in your chair.” Merrin grabs a kebab of her own, taking care to slather it in spicy sauce. “If Sanaye is Force sensitive in any way, she will sense it.”
“Ugh, remember when hanging out in a cantina was straight forward?”
“No.”
Greez ignores her. “You found yourself a good card game, delicious food, tasty drinks, and didn’t worry about the fate of the entire galaxy.”
“We are doing two of those things right now, and we shall aim for a third when Sanaye arrives,” Merrin says through a mouthful of food. “I am looking forward to testing my sabacc skills against a new player. It is boring to constantly lose to Cal.”
“Hah, that really bothers you, doesn’t it? It’s like the one thing you just can’t beat him at. Don’t take it so hard. None of us can beat him, and that includes Cere. He’s either got some freaky, previously unheard of Jedi talent for cards, or the kid’s a regular shark and he’s cheating.”
“I will curse him if he is,” Merrin says.
Greez bursts out laughing. “I will pay to see that.”
Merrin smirks in that truly dangerous way of hers. “Perhaps I will curse him anyway, allow him to learn some humility where sabacc is concerned.”
Greez is so busy chuckling at her threat, he nearly misses Sanaye’s arrival. She’s as furtive as he’d expected, sticking to the rear of the cantina and summoning a droid to bring her a menu. She’s settling in for a meal. Excellent. That’ll give Cere and Cal extra time. Knocking back his drink, Greez reaches for the comm unit in his pocket, sending the signal. Rolling up his sleeves, digging out his lucky deck, he gives Merrin the nod.
It's time to get to work.
Cere hears the ping of the comm. Greez and Merrin have eyes on Sanaye. It’s time to get to work. She looks to Cal, who sits on the edge of the skyscraper, staring out over the city below. BD perches on his shoulder, the two of them focused on the mission. Cere admires their dedication, although she knows all it takes is one shiny thing to grab BD’s attention and send him skittering off, scanner blazing.
She brings her attention back to the city spreading out beneath her. Yeara is not a wealthy world by any stretch, more like a knockoff Coruscant built with a tenth of the budget and none of the skill. Every building around them is swathed in construction scaffolding, large billboards promising that the ‘luxury’ apartments will be ready soon.
The sign pre-dated the Clone Wars. They might pre-date Cal’s birth. It’s about the best Yeara can manage in terms of grandeur.
Surrounded by decaying tenement blocks, they’ve got their sights set on Sanaye’s dwelling across the street: a penthouse suite with a panoramic view of the weary city. Cere’s scanned it for every security system she can think of and hacked her way through each and every one. BD’s ready to slice through the doors, and Cal will take care of any automated defences. It pays to be careful when you’re dealing with someone with ties to the Haxion Brood and probably the Empire too. Cere wants the tech. Cal wants the intel. Together, they’ll both get what they want.
“Let’s go,” she says.
Cal looks over at her and offers a crooked smile. “See you in there.” He takes off running, swinging himself up and across old scaffolding from their perch on one building to cross to the other. Cere could follow him – she’s not totally out of shape – but she’ll wait until he and BD have extended the old bridge. The idea is to go in undetected, and Cere knows she’d need to use the Force extensively to complete the same acrobatic feats Cal manages as though he’s taking a simple stroll down the street. He has youth and five years of free running his way across Bracca on his side. To anyone watching he’s another reckless teenager throwing himself around rooftops. Cere would cut a distinctly different figure.
How strange it is to have such constant reminders of her age. Strange, and unwelcome. She sighs in frustration at herself. She is not here to contemplate her own mortality.
Although given the drop beneath her feet, maybe it’s understandable.
“Hey, Cere?” Cal’s voice emerges from the comm. He’s not even slightly winded from the running leap he’s taken from one side of the street to the other, or the subsequent giant swing he’s taken around a bar to catch a higher platform. She can only imagine what a menace he was for Jaro Tapal and his clan masters back at the Temple. It’s a testament to their training he’s capable of sitting still long enough to meditate. “Is this what it was like when you were assigned missions as a Jedi Knight?”
She can’t help laughing. Prior to taking Trilla as her Padawan, her days as a Seeker mostly involved allowing her senses to guide her to a Force sensitive child, convincing parents to separate forever from said child, followed swiftly by the necessities of childcare, none of which involved night-time missions across rooftops with the intention of breaking into some underworld scavenger’s home. “Cal, while Jaro Tapal absolutely got up to this kind of action, I did not.”
“Huh.” He takes it better than she expects. In fact, he takes it too well.
Far too well.
“You’ve found an echo.” When will she stop underestimating that ability of his?
His is an evil laugh. “Maybe your knighthood was quieter…”
She should’ve known he’d found something on Bogano. Cordova was a hopeless packrat. If she’d gone through his abode, she probably would have found artwork from her painting classes or maybe even the mug she’d made for her master in pottery classes. Unfortunately, there’s no time to demand the details of what Cal saw, or where he found it. A bridge shoots out, connecting his side of the scaffolding to hers. Cal waves her over and Cere runs across the gap, taking care not to look down. Five years on Bracca may have destroyed Cal’s fear of heights, if he ever had one to begin with, however Cere possesses a healthy distaste for them.
Greez is right: Cal is a menace.
The apartment they need is a few floors up from here. Cal will be taking the outside route while Cere, using a fire exit, will enter the building and check it for additional traps and surveillance. Sanaye might have a gambling problem, but she’s also a paranoiac who likely wired the place with all kinds of cameras and sensors. They’re not taking any risks.
“I’ll see you up there,” Cal says. BD-1 whistles cheerily as they head for a ladder to climb higher.
“Be careful,” Cere calls after them. “Try not to blow anything up before I get there.”
“Nah, that was you on Malastare.”
Malastare? He knows about Malastare? He races out of sight before Cere can demand more, laughing all the way. Instead, she puts her apprenticeship hijinks out of her mind and locates the nearest emergency exit. A gentle application of the Force opens the door, and she slips into the building proper. It’s as dank and decrepit as she expected, the wall stained with decades of dirt, the light fixtures barely working, and the air permeated with a stench of boiled cabbage and several backed-up refreshers. She casts out with the Force, waiting for anything to catch her. Nothing. She senses quiet, weary lives behind the metal doors. Satisfied, Cere seeks out a stairwell or turbolift to take her up. She quickly learns the turbolift won’t be an option – a sign hangs on it saying it is out of order, the date stamped revealing it has been this way for several years. She wrenches the doors apart and peers into the shaft.
That’s when she sees it. Power cables, network nodes, motion detectors…
“Cal?”
“I’m here, Cere.”
“The ‘lift shaft is rigged with motion detectors. Be careful on your approach. Sanaye appears to have thought of everything.”
BD whistles. “You said it, buddy,” Cal says. “So much for having disabled everything already.”
“Sanaye is proving to be extremely cautious,” Cere says. “Unnervingly cautious.” Who rigs a ‘lift shaft with motion sensors unless they’re worried someone will break in that way?
“She must have some good stuff hidden in her penthouse,” Cal says as BD gives an enthusiastic trill.
“Be careful you two. And do not breach the apartment until I’m there. If she has this kind of set up, she’s going to have some nasty security measures I missed.”
“Alright. Once we’re on the roof, BD will run a scan. Maybe we’ll find something to help you out.”
Closing the doors, Cere heads for the stairs. She climbs them as fast as she can, legs and lungs burning. Perhaps she does need to step up her cardio routine. Sparring with Cal clearly isn’t cutting it.
She reaches a doorway blocking off the penthouse suite’s stairwell. Catching her breath, she pulls a scanner out of her pocket, disabling the locks only once she has the complete picture. They have to be released in the right order otherwise poisonous gas will be released. Whatever Sanaye has hidden away better be worth all the trouble they’re going to for it. Cere opens the door, eyeing the gas jets as she goes. The tech here is far, far more expensive, and newer, than anything else she’s seen in the building thus far.
It's starting to look like Sanaye’s connections run well into the Empire. Sorc Tormo’s payroll couldn’t account for this level of tech.
“Cere?”
“Go ahead.”
“BD’s accessed the penthouse security system. It’s going to take him a minute to get through all the layers. This place is locked down tighter than Nur.”
She takes it slow up the stairs, partly out of caution, and mostly so she can catch her breath. “Can you see anything?”
Cal chuckles. “You mean has Sanaye left any convenient artifacts and/or intel on a desk that I can see from the skylights? No. She has credits to burn though. No wonder she’s always down at that cantina playing sabacc. She could lose every game for the rest of her life and still have money to buy the latest Coruscant fashions. Why is she living in a place like this when she should be living the highlife literally anywhere else in the galaxy?”
It’s a very good question. Cere draws breath to answer.
“Guess she’s hiding out here. Wonder why…” Cal muses.
“Can you sense any echoes?” Cere asks.
“Sure, plenty. She’s lived here for a while.”
“What about Jedi artifacts?”
“No, nothing like that. And Cere?”
“Yes?”
The air is silent for a moment. Cere can practically sense Cal gathering his thoughts. Finally, he spits it out. “I have a bad feeling about this. Really bad.”
BD warbles. He’s learned to respect Cal’s bad feelings.
“Try to be more specific,” Cere advises. She’s known him for a year now, and he hasn’t outgrown his tendency for anxiety. He also hasn’t outgrown his need to take on everything all at once, and she doubts anyone will ever break his sense of duty. Jaro Tapal hammered that lesson into Cal’s very soul, likely with the best of intentions, although he couldn’t have foreseen the galaxy his Padawan would live in. “Is it about us being here, or is it more general?”
“It’s this place. Sanaye. The closer we get to breaking in, the worse the feeling gets.”
“We can handle it, Cal. Whatever it is, you don’t have to worry.”
“Yeah. Yeah, okay. Sorry, Cere.”
“Don’t be. It pays to be cautious with a person like this.” She reaches the door to the apartment. It’s unassuming – smooth, unadorned metal, a control panel to one side. She runs her scanner over it regardless, finds all the security nasties waiting to blow her head off if she so much as touches it. “How’s BD getting on?”
“Almost there. He says it’s good we didn’t go with my plan to cut the building’s power. There are all kinds of countermeasures for that. Reminds me of one of the craziest scrappers I knew. Marn was so worried we’d all go stealing his stash he had everything from tripwires connected to grenades and acid jets surrounding his apartment.”
Cere steels herself for another Bracca horror story. “How did that work out for him?”
“Great. He sneezed, stumbled over a tripwire, and blew his apartment apart with himself inside it. No one ever got hold of his stash.”
Cere doesn’t need to ask how Cal knows that.
There’s a warble from his end of the call. “BD’s through. How’s it looking on your end?”
The door slides open onto the interior of a storage closet. The lights activate, revealing the opulent clothing within. “I’m in. Open a window and get in here.” She moves through a storage closet and opens the door to Sanaye’s bedroom. It is expensively decorated, not a single security system visible even though Cere knows they’re there; she deactivated them earlier, thought they were the only ones. Every piece of furniture is artistic enough to belong in the most luxurious of royal palaces. “Incredible.”
Sanaye couldn’t be making this kind of wealth working with criminal syndicates. Not a chance. Cere’s starting to share Cal’s misgivings. They’ve missed something here. Some crucial piece of information. Selling Jedi artifacts does not net you this kind of wealth.
Beyond the bedroom Cere hears the distinct thud of Cal dropping through a skylight. She steps out of the bedroom into the vast living space. It is filled with tastefully placed art, all of it looted from countless cultures across the galaxy. As much as she longs to return it to their rightful places, that’s not what she’s here for. There are other things too: an incredibly old-fashioned microscope, a trophy bearing Sanaye’s name designed to look like Human DNA, and all kinds of medical instruments for some unknown purpose.
Sanaye certainly had a variety of tastes.
She sees Cal approaching from where he’d dropped down into the kitchen. He looks around, shaking his head. “I can’t believe how much stuff she’s got in here.” He heads over to the display cabinet and picks up a framed holo. For a moment, Cal zones out. Cere studies the strange image. It depicts Sanaye, a man so similar in appearance he must be an older brother, and another, younger woman whose face is obscured by her dark brown hair blowing in the wind. The trio stands on a pebbled beach, crystalline waters shimmering under a flawless blue sky.
A picture of paradise.
Cal returns, frowns, and puts the holo back. BD asks what’s wrong. “Feelings from Sanaye. Love for her siblings. Excitement about what is to come. Concern for her brother’s faith. Sadness for her sister. Acceptance for what is to come. ‘Our parents sacrificed her once. She’s used to it by now.’” He blinks and the frown clears. “Sorry. Kinda irrelevant.”
“Don’t worry. None of this is what we’re looking for,” Cere says. “I don’t want to be here any longer than necessary. Check the other echoes.” She resists the urge to add ‘carefully.’ “I’m going into the office. BD, come with me. I might need your help.”
Whistling cheerily, BD rockets onto her shoulders. They head into the office, the desk placed with the windows to the rear, shelves containing books and artifacts on either wall. The carpet is so thick it muffles Cere’s footsteps. The building’s boiled cabbage smell is gone, replaced by the lush overtones of a flowery meadow. This entire apartment is so out of keeping with where she’s been, Cere feels like she’s crossed some unseen threshold into an entirely new world.
BD beeps excitedly and hops down, racing over to the desk, pitter patters dulled by the carpet. He doesn’t wait for permission; he slices the computer, projecting information onto the large screens built into the desk. Cere looks over it, sees the complete inventory. Where is it… where is…
There. She taps the icon for the cache they’re looking for. It was originally created by an Old Republic Jedi Master to protect Jedi texts and a stockpile of kyber. With Ilum now mostly out of reach, such a thing could become useful. According to Sanaye’s files, she’s stored it on Mehan, a barely inhabited mineral mining world in the Bur System. Cere’s never heard of the world or its system before. According to the information, the cold weather on Mehan is so extreme only the hardiest of people live and work there. Cere finds the Bur System’s general location right on the edge of wild space. BD records the coordinates, ready to share with Greez. Now all Cere needs is to narrow down exactly where on Mehan Sanaye hid –
ACCESS DENIED.
The system flickers and crashes.
Cal’s bad feeling from before is now very much Cere’s. “BD, is there anything you can do?”
BD gets to work.
“Cere!” Cal barrels into the room. “We’re in trouble. I – ”
The lights snap off. The apartment settles, the floor creaking, nobody breathing. Cere abandons the desk. She’s obviously overlooked something here, and not just in the apartment. “We’ve got all we’re going to get. Let’s –”
Blast shields rise over every window. BD’s light snaps on along with Cal’s lightsaber. “How much did you get?” Cal asks, an edge in his voice.
“I’ve got a solar system and a planet but not the specific location on that planet. The system locked down before I could get it. BD?”
BD beeps apologetically. The system’s dead. There’s nothing for him to slice.
And then a distinct hissing fills the air. Cere’s eyes sting immediately, her lungs rejecting whatever’s in the air. She drops low, Cal doing the same. Whatever it is, it’s going to kill them if they don’t move. Already Cere can feel her heart pounding, a vice clamping around her head slowly squeezing.
She looks to Cal. “We’re not getting through those blast shields. Any other ideas?”
He tries to bury his lightsaber in the floor. It doesn’t work. Cere can’t believe her streaming eyes – the floor is shielded. She coughs violently, lungs scalded. Her head spins, every breath harder and emptier than the last.
“BD, where’s the ‘lift shaft?” Cal asks through a heavy cough.
BD wastes no time, leading them through the gaseous darkness. He takes them to the main living area, where the access to the turbolift shaft is hidden behind the statue of a Zeffonian. Cere grips it with the Force and tosses it aside, revealing the lift doors. Cal tears them open.
There’s no shield, no blast shield, just a long, long, long drop to the basement. Cere can’t see a way down. Sanaye didn’t bother to shield this route because it’s no escape at all.
Unless the people escaping are Jedi.
“Cere!” Cal splits his lightsaber in two, hands Cere the half that had once been hers, and launches himself and BD into the shaft, his blade scoring the walls as he descends.
Cere follows his lead, wondering when exactly he’d picked up this little trick. When they’re a few floors down, Cere drags in a deep breath. Cabbage and sewage-tainted air hits her hungry lungs. She’s never felt anything so good in her life. They keep going until they hit the basement where the ‘lift car waits. Cal opens the emergency access hatch, drops down, and drags the doors open.
Cere hands his other lightsaber back. She bends over double, coughing hard. “Where did you learn to do that?” she asks, swiping a hand over her watering eyes. Pouring sand directly into each eyeball would hurt less.
“Right now,” Cal says distractedly. “We need to get to the cantina, and then we need to get off this world. Sanaye’s on to us.”
A loud, metallic thud from somewhere in the basement says otherwise. A large shape detaches itself from the wall. It’s a KX droid, one of the Empire’s newer, blaster-wielding models they’ve only encountered a handful of times. There’s no mistaking it; Sanaye has Imperial connections. Cere’s starting to wonder if she’s ISB and her entire antiquities dealer persona is merely a cover.
“Halt,” the droid orders.
Cal moves in front of Cere. “Go!” he orders her. “I’ve got this. Get to the others. We’ll meet you aboard the Mantis!”
BD hoots in agreement.
Cal’s lightsaber parries rapid-fire blaster shots. Cere pushes her worry away and races to the basement’s street access. Cal has handled far worse than this. She’s worried about Merrin and Greez too. They were expecting the two of them to run interference, not potentially face off against battle droids.
Cere races up a short stairway and breaks out into the street. A few locals stare at her but they’re all too tired to do anything except be startled. She takes off running, hoping she’ll get to the cantina in time. She reaches for her comm, calling for Greez or Merrin. Neither answer. Cere picks up the pace, hearing the air rattling in and out of her gassed lungs. As she goes, she becomes aware of the city’s security services. They’re closing streets off, much to the frustration of the locals. Cere slows, catches her breath, and approaches the back of a crowd. “What’s going on?” she asks a hulking Besalisk standing beside her.
“Some crazy with an entire droid army at her beck and call has launched an attack on a cantina,” the woman tells her, shaking her head in disgust. “I tell ya, this place gets a little bit worse every day. Who attacks a cantina? It’s full of people looking to relax after a long day! The damn Imps are gonna show up if someone doesn’t get a grip on it.”
Taking care to look appropriately annoyed, Cere slips out of the crowd. She heads down an alleyway, hoping to find another way to the cantina, a way they won’t expect –
Her foot clangs against something. It’s a sewer cover. Cere pulls it aside, the smell hitting her hard. She jumps down before she can think better and runs in the cantina’s direction through filth.
She’s getting the first shower tonight.