Work Text:
Scalper throws the datapad hard enough to crack the wall panel.
It hits beside the sterilizer, rebounds across the medical wing, and skids underneath an empty examination cot.
Everyone stops moving.
Lex freezes with a tray of instruments in both hands. Boba looks up from the stool beside Scalper’s desk, one boot still swinging above the floor. Two medics farther down the ward suddenly discover urgent reasons to leave through the opposite door.
The broken datapad continues playing from beneath the cot.
“Transfer authorization lists ARC-5555 as a diplomatic military representative under the supervision of Kaminoan medical personnel…”
Scalper screams.
It tears through what remains of her voice and comes out cracked, vicious, and far louder than her throat can survive.
“Those damned longnecks lied to my goddamned face!”
Pain rips down her neck.
Her voice disappears halfway through face, reduced to a shredded gasp that immediately turns into coughing.
Scalper braces both hands against the desk.
The coughs come deep and violent, dragging over old scar tissue until her lungs lock around nothing. Her vision blurs. Every breath catches before it can reach her chest.
“Ba’vodu?”
Boba’s stool clatters backward.
Scalper tries to wave him off, but her hand is shaking too badly to form anything recognizable.
The coughing gets worse.
Boba’s face drains of color.
He's seen her struggle to breathe before. He's seen her wake from nightmares with one hand clamped over her ruined throat and the other reaching for a weapon that is not there.
He has never seen her scream.
That frightens him more than the coughing.
Lex puts the instrument tray down with a sharp metallic clatter and runs for the locked cabinet.
“Sit,” she says.
Scalper cannot answer.
Lex returns with her inhaler, presses it into Scalper’s hand, then has to wrap both of her own hands around Scalper’s fingers because the shaking will not stop.
“Inhale.”
Scalper glares at her.
Lex’s expression stays soft and terrified.
“Inhale, ma’am.”
Scalper takes one drag.
The medication burns cold through her throat.
She holds it.
Exhales.
The breath comes out in a whistle.
Boba is standing directly in front of her now, close enough that she can see every fleck of gold in his brown eyes. He is 11 years old, undersized beneath the borrowed Guard blacks he insists are not borrowed, and trying very hard to look like he is not scared.
Scalper takes another drag.
Then another.
Her lungs slowly release.
The coughing fades into painful, shallow breaths, but her hand keeps shaking long after the danger passes.
Boba touches two fingers to her wrist.
She turns her hand and closes it around his.
The movement seems to reassure him.
It does very little for her.
The hatred remains.
It sits beneath her ribs, old and hot and familiar. Years have done nothing to cool it. Every white corridor, every clinical voice, every carefully phrased lie feeds the same fire.
The Kaminoans lied.
Again.
General Ti had requested that ARC-5555 remain on Kamino for neurological observation following Tup’s death. Nala Se had assured Scalper that the trooper’s condition was stable. She had said he was being evaluated for a possible parasite, an inherited defect, perhaps some rare neurological instability carried through the male template.
Scalper had asked for the full scans.
Nala Se sent summaries.
Scalper had demanded tissue samples.
Nala Se claimed they were contaminated.
Scalper requested access to Tup’s body.
The body had already been processed.
Every answer had been smooth, reasonable, and full of holes large enough to land a Venator in.
Now one of Scalper’s contacts in Senate transport control had sent her a copy of ARC-5555’s falsified manifest.
Fives is on Coruscant.
He arrived under heavy sedation, strapped to a medical litter, accompanied by Kaminoan personnel and enough drugs to suppress a rancor.
The transfer was entered as a diplomatic meeting.
With the Chancellor.
Scalper’s gaze drops to the datapad beneath the cot.
Its screen flickers through the cracked casing.
A diplomatic meeting.
With an ARC who can barely remain conscious.
The insult is almost impressive.
Lex crouches and retrieves the datapad. “The display’s damaged.”
Scalper extends her hand.
Lex hesitates.
Scalper raises one eyebrow.
The medic returns it.
The file remains readable despite the crack running across the screen. Scalper scrolls through the transport logs, medication inventory, and forged authorizations.
Sedatives.
Neural suppressants.
A memory destabilizer she has not seen used since Kyr'tsad.
Her fingers tighten around the casing.
Fives knows something.
He has to.
Tup died after killing a Jedi without warning. Nala Se invented a parasite and blocked every outside examination. Fives began demanding answers. Then an ARC trooper with no diplomatic duties was secretly flown to Coruscant and delivered to the one office with enough authority to erase every record of the trip.
Whatever Fives discovered has to involve Tup.
And the case.
The sealed medical case Nala Se kept beside her throughout the investigation. The one she refused to let Scalper touch. The one removed from the laboratory before Tup’s body was released.
Scalper remembers its dimensions.
Too small for an organ.
Large enough for tissue samples, neural scans, or extracted material.
Something had been inside Tup.
Something Nala Se wanted hidden badly enough to drug an ARC and hand him directly to the Chancellor.
Boba looks between her and the datapad.
“What did they do?”
Scalper tries to answer.
Nothing comes out but air.
Her throat is done for the next several hours, perhaps the rest of the day. She can feel the inflamed tissue swelling around every attempted sound.
She types instead, fingers moving fast.
THEY TOOK A SOLDIER.
Boba watches her hands.
“From Kamino?”
TO CORUSCANT.
“Why?”
Scalper looks at the transfer record.
BECAUSE HE FOUND SOMETHING.
Boba’s expression hardens with unsettling speed.
He has Jango’s face when he does that.
Not the face shown in Republic recruitment broadcasts or the one carved into millions of identical helmets. Jango as Scalper remembers him near the end, suspicious of every quiet room and already calculating which door would become an escape route.
“Are we getting him back?”
Scalper’s shaking finally stops.
She sets the inhaler on the desk.
Yes.
There is no strategic reason to believe that yet. Fives may already be inside the Chancellor’s office. Kaminoan attendants could have removed whatever evidence he carried. The Senate District has checkpoints, surveillance, and enough overlapping jurisdictions to turn a simple extraction into an act of treason.
Fox would know how to cut through them.
Fox is unavailable.
He is sealed in a High Command debrief about Ringo Vinda, Tup’s death, and the collapse of the station’s medical route. Every Marshal Commander, Jedi General, and senior admiral involved in the campaign is inside that room. Interrupting it would draw attention, and Scalper has no idea how high the lie goes.
Possibly very high.
High enough that an ARC’s abduction is disguised as diplomacy.
She cannot wait for Fox.
She also cannot storm the Chancellor’s office herself.
Not because she is afraid of guards.
Most of the guards are hers.
The problem is that the Chancellor owns the building’s authority, the Senate owns the laws, and officially Scalper is equipment attempting to steal different equipment from a diplomatic meeting.
Boba reads something in her face.
“I can help.”
Scalper turns toward him.
He lifts his chin.
“I’m small. People don’t look at kids.”
He is 11.
He is also Boba Fett, which means he has already survived more violence than most Senate officers will see in their lives.
That does not make him deployable.
Scalper types one word.
NO.
Boba’s mouth opens.
She points at him.
NO.
“I didn’t even say anything.”
She gives him a look.
“You knew what I was going to say.”
Scalper nods.
“That’s profiling.”
She points toward the stool.
Boba sits, muttering something about authoritarian medical systems.
Lex pretends not to hear.
Scalper rereads the manifest. One transport route. Two Kaminoan attendants. A medical gurney. Arrival through an executive service entrance rather than the main Senate landing platforms.
They avoided Guard intake.
That means someone knew the Guard might ask questions.
Good.
Fear creates mistakes.
Scalper enlarges the arrival time.
The transport landed 23 minutes ago.
Fives is still alive. They would not have brought him across the galaxy if they only wanted a corpse.
They need something from him.
That gives Scalper a window.
A narrow one.
She turns to Lex and types rapidly.
FOX UNAVAILABLE. NEED INVESTIGATIONS. QUIET TEAM. NO SENATE CHANNEL.
Lex’s eyes widen.
“Commander Thire?”
Scalper shakes her head.
Thire handles Senate patrols, but this needs someone who can trace a transport, find a hidden medical transfer, and move personnel without putting the entire Dome on alert.
Someone accustomed to civilians hiding crimes behind procedure.
Someone who will not hesitate because the Chancellor’s name appears on the paperwork.
Scalper points at the comm terminal.
Her throat burns too badly to force out more than a ruined whisper, but she manages two words.
“Call Hound.”