Chapter 4: JynChapter TextJyn has never been hugely fond of Rodia or the planets in its sphere of influence. She finds it hard to read Rodians' body language - their black opal eyes never give her the information others do, and it's much harder to follow the tiny twitches of crests than it is to pick up on the nuances of lekku - and their planetwide community policing programmes are effective. A hard audience for someone who relies on sneaking and theft to get by most days. Jyn's grateful to be here with a legitimate job and a berth - and someone to watch her back.
Because Sonera is strangely willing to watch her back, for someone who's known her hardly any time at all. And having nearly two metres of armed and dangerous Togruta at her left shoulder while she tries to corral five pretty thoughtless merchants and a captain who has a brilliant touch with the navigational system but no eye for danger is, how can Jyn put this, an improvement. Especially with a first mate like Thyrian around. People shouldn't work with their friends; it means they can't see the flaws. In Captain Irob's case, it means his longstanding matey relationship with Thyrian means he doesn't see why he doesn't keep female crew, except for Filyns (who Thyrian treats with a sort of mocking courtesy) and Jyn herself (who has repeatedly made it clear to Thyrian that she will break both his wrists and snap every last bone in his hands before she allows him to touch her). In many ways it's the hazard of working for a ship's crew, or any group where these things are tolerated by the leadership. Jyn remembers how Saw used to do it: wait for the target to react, then take his own price for damaging the cell's cohesion out of the culprit's hide.
Irob doesn't see it in the first place, so Jyn is pleased to be working in Sonera's company. Sonera is not much taller than Thyrian, but she manages to tower over him, and it's been plain to all concerned from day one that she could space him in minutes and no-one would be able to do a thing about it. Except maybe Jyn, who wouldn't lift a finger to help him.
The covered guildhall, which doubles as a trading bourse, is crowded and peaceful, which means pickpockets, and also means distraction tactics. Jyn slides between one pickpocket and his prey, turns the casual hand away from its ultimate destination, and bends two of the fingers back sharply.
"Go pick on someone else," she recommends, and the child grins and turns away from his choice - the cheapest and least experienced of the merchant team, an inexperienced negotiator, and the kid was well dressed and well practised enough to have known that. Distraction, then. Jyn lifts her wrist comm to warn Sonera, and sees a faint dip of her montrals.
Sonera and Jyn herd the merchants into a tighter clump, the way they've practised, and then - yes, an overturned hovercart of goods, a loud argument, an obvious opening to the left which the lead trader carrying what they claim are priceless business secrets tries to make for. Sonera swings round them smoothly to the right, moving them back in the direction of an open door advertising wealth management, and she and Jyn funnel the damn merchants neatly through it at a brisk pace, closing the door behind them. Jyn uses the merchant whose belongings she saved as a distraction while she punches sets of random numbers into the code pad; it takes five goes, not three - standard rather than best practice, it's so quiet here they must be getting lazy - but the door beeps softly and auto-locks for the next hour. By the time anyone notices they will all be gone.
The lead trader, having grasped that something really is going on, has made their excuses to the wealth management fund's receptionist, a primly well-dressed Rodian younger than Jyn, just out of school and out of her depth. She sees something dramatic in this turn of events, rather than a very normal attempt at industrial espionage, and is persuaded she's being heroic by letting them out the back door.
Well, fine, whatever. They were going through it whatever she thought. She doesn't exactly have the power to gatekeep. But Sonera prefers persuasion, and Jyn has to admit it's tidier.
The trip back to the ship is uneventful but circuitous, since Sonera wisely doesn't trust the water-taxis that pull up next to their group hawking for passengers - none of them take more than four people, it would be so easy to split their group - and likewise refuses the first available stops for public transportation. That's smart, Jyn thinks. They were hired to deal with muggings or pirates, and a sophisticated attempt to trap the whole group argues for a greater degree of preparation than you'd think would be justified for a few traders, some blueprints, and an admittedly large number of credits - though less than you could get by skimming a few of the credit machines in this wealthy area for, say, twenty-four hours. No-one is fool enough to carry a fortune in their pockets in cash, not unless they're up to some kind of dodgy deal their guards should be notified of in advance, and there are less attention-grabbing ways to get hold of blueprints. Jyn will be asking some hard questions when she has the chance.
The Zabirliss's metal bulk looms in the dock ahead. At the time, Jyn thought it was slightly weird the trader group didn't get a hotel, but Filyns had delicately hinted - she does everything delicately - that they were cheapskates. Maybe there's more to that than there seemed to be at first.
She catches Sonera's eye as Sonera drops back to see the last of the traders onto the Zabirliss.
"I know," Sonera says, because their tactical priorities are sometimes close enough it's like the same person trained them; but Saw never mentioned anyone like her to Jyn, and Sonera can't be more than five or ten years younger than him - if that matters. Jyn herself was a killer at thirteen. Sonera looks to be late twenties, but there's something much older in her eyes.
"Weird," Jyn says.
"Funny kind of reaction to people seeking manufacturing contracts and liens on raw materials," Sonera says.
"Is that what it is?"
"You weren't curious?"
"I was curious about getting fed," Jyn replies, surprising herself with her own patience. "Just like you."
Sonera inclines her head politely.
Thyrian leans against the mechanism at the top of the gangplank. Jyn hopes idly for an accident. If it goes now, he'll be crushed. "Ladies," he says. The words slide off his tongue like he's trying to lick them. "No trouble you can't handle, I'm sure."
"Dead right," Jyn says coldly. Sonera merely smiles.
She's not an obligate carnivore, strictly speaking - or so Sonera has explained to Jyn. She can eat some roughage, some vegetable-based foods, so long as she eats them in small quantities. She mostly lives off synth protein and hunts whenever she can. Few people will spend the money for real animal protein onboard ship, not for a deckhand or a guard.
But she still has teeth like a fucking rancor in that peaceful philosopher's face. Jyn is used to her, but absolutely nobody else is. It's nice to watch Thyrian flinch.
"I'll tell Irob," he snaps, smooth veneer gone.
"Tell him what?" Sonera says, like it's a real question.
"Don't you threaten me! Just because you're her pet fucking predator -"
"She smiled," Jyn interrupts, before rage can boil over. She turns her interruption into a sneer. "You'd be prettier if you smiled, too."
Sonera swings her grip on her staff absently, and lifts one brow marking at Thyrian. "I can see that blaster," she tells him very softly. "Put it away."
Jyn watches him stalk into the belly of the ship and recategorises the threat he poses. She's never seen him flash with anger like that. Then again, he's never seen them form an obvious united front like that.
Filyns comes down the gangplank, looking over her shoulder like she saw Thyrian go.
"Hope he wasn't spewing bile at you too," Jyn says. Filyns keeps herself to herself, but the food rations are fair and well-cooked, the employee bunks well-maintained, and the pay arrives on time. Jyn's ready to like her for that alone.
Filyns doesn't answer. "Irob wants to talk to you," she says instead. "About the passengers. They keep giving different stories."
Jyn exchanges a glance with Sonera.
"On our way," Sonera says.
The passengers' story is full of holes. But they're not the kind of holes Irob - whose acquaintance with the dodgier side of life seems not to have included anything political - really registers. Jyn can't pin it down, but she's pretty sure a good forensic accountant could find a thing or two in those traders' accounts. There's more than a possibility the designs that are "too technical" for them to understand are stolen, too, and she has a bad feeling about who they were stolen from. Not an Imperial facility directly, or they'd all be dead, but there are any number of contractors who might be missing something right now. Nothing these guys say quite adds up, otherwise.
They deny it ferociously, Thyrian takes their part because he's still angry at Jyn and Sonera, Irob trusts Thyrian's judgement, and Filyns, though she clearly sees Jyn and Sonera's point, just as clearly feels unable to speak up beyond the most token remarks. It makes Jyn want to seethe, and Sonera look at Filyns thoughtfully.
"Better to say nothing and offload them as fast as possible," Filyns offers later, very quietly, to Sonera (who she clearly feels is the reasonable one). Jyn is there, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the bunkroom she shares with Sonera and cleaning blasters, but doesn't speak up; if Filyns trusts Sonera she'll talk. There's a soft indigo darkness to her lilac cheeks and lekku, which reads like shame. The Twi'lek keeps her tells carefully suppressed for the most part, but blood flow is hard to control. Jyn would be interested to know what she's ashamed of. Is it Irob's gullibility? Is it that she should be first officer, and Thyrian just overrode her opinion like he was stepping over a sandcastle?
Sonera doesn't answer.
"We have no proof," Filyns pursues. "Better not to draw attention to what we suspect. Better just to get rid of them."
"You're contracted for the return voyage," Sonera points out.
"The faster we move the better, then," says Filyns.
Jyn stretches out her legs to ease pins and needles in one foot; she feels Filyns look over at her, and keeps her own eyes down, her hands on the blaster and cleaning cloth loose and casual.
Sonera herself is mending a hooded poncho which has become worn at the seams, like this is some kind of sewing circle, and her voice is just as light and casual as if it were when she says: "How long have you and Irob been married?"
"Three years," Filyns says.
Sonera hums as if that's impressive. "Have you always lived onboard together?"
"We touch ground, sometimes," Filyns says. "But Irob is from a spaceport. He can go years without staying on-planet."
"Not your thing?" Sonera says, with sympathy.
"No. I never got on a ship until -"
Filyns comes to an abrupt halt.
Gotcha, Jyn thinks.
Sonera looks at Filyns, but doesn't press.
"Until I was an adult," Filyns says, less than smoothly. Her lekku are very still. Most humans probably wouldn't know that's unnatural.
Most humans probably wouldn't notice that Filyns has the faint marks of a collar on her neck, either, chafing scars that have been treated to make them less obvious: probably not by laser, which is expensive, but certainly by creams and lotions. Irob teases Filyns gently for her methodical care of herself, her use of cosmetics, and buys her whatever she asks for. The engineer says he changed the fresher in their quarters from sonics to water as a first anniversary present for Filyns, because she prefers it, and takes care that the tank never runs dry. He would probably have paid for the laser if she asked, but Filyns is as meticulous with money as with skincare. And in a few years marks like that fade. Filyns' is invisible in most lights.
"Travel the galaxy, make your fortune, meet the love of your life," Sonera laughs, gesturing dramatically with one hand as if this really is all a joke. "How did you meet?"
"I was a dancer," Filyns says, as if it's a sweet story. "He came to see the show."
"Aww," Sonera says, and Jyn smiles, as if they don't all know perfectly well that there are a lot of Twi'leks enslaved, mostly as sex workers or muscle, and that Filyns used to be one of them. She's lucky to be out. Jyn wonders how lucky, exactly.
"What about you?" Filyns says, determinedly upbeat. "Partners? Spouses?"
"No," Jyn says, belatedly realising she's expected to answer.
"Nobody serious," Sonera says, doing a much better job of sounding nonchalant.
After a few more minutes, Filyns makes her excuses and leaves. Jyn and Sonera fall back into their usual comfortable silence.
Jyn wonders what led Sonera to spot the marks of a slave collar, and how she knows about the traders. More mysteries; but that's nothing new.
Chapter 5: AhsokaChapter TextThe ship has been tense since the incident on Rodia. Thankfully it's not much further to Ryloth, and Ahsoka has the option to break her contract there. She's always intended to, once wages are paid out for the last stretch; she doesn't need to go back where she came. And she's uneasy, as is Tanith, about the passengers' true background and Thyrian's behaviour. Ahsoka hopes her own tells are better hidden, but an aggressive edge has returned to Tanith's movements, an instinctive coiling of tension between her shoulders. The grey-green eyes are narrow again, instead of open and professionally blank. And Ahsoka is too wary of her colleague to bring up the small emergency light that seems to have stuck in the on position in their quarters, its pale glow illuminating an unnaturally still Tanith. Tanith, she's noticed on previous occasions, doesn't like the dark.
Tanith also has good instincts and a faint thread of the Force curling round her, perhaps a gift from the mother who strung a lightsaber blank around her neck and told her to trust the Force. Whatever she knows is coming is something Ahsoka reacts to as well, even if Ahsoka's reaction is less visible.
Ahsoka doesn't like it, and she doesn't like the way the sensation of threat arises as the Zabirliss approaches Lessu. By the time they're in Ryloth's system, the entire ship is operating under suppressed tension. Tanith spars till her knuckles are split and bullies Filyns and the younger traders into practising and improving the few holds and blocks they know; less because she likes to teach, Ahsoka thinks, for it certainly doesn't come easily to her, and more because it is hard for her to be patient, and therefore tiring. The more tired she is, the better she sleeps.
Ahsoka works with Tanith until she can predict the other woman's every move, then retreats to their bunkroom to meditate. Tanith never says anything about that; another sign she can be trusted. Ahsoka wants to trust her.
Ahsoka asks the Force what the hell is going on. As so often over the last decade and a half, the Force is murky, and void of answers. But something is darkened, without the focus or particular malevolence a Dark user of the Force would bring. Something is wrong. As Tanith could tell Ahsoka perfectly well without the Force, the traders are at the centre of it. Ahsoka is frustrated to arise from her every meditative posture with no more information - with, in fact, nothing at all.
It all comes together very suddenly two days after they have landed on Ryloth. That's the way of these things. Clear sky one moment and a full Tipoca City thunderstorm the next. And Tanith's voice echoing through the ship is the thunderclap, so loud and angry that Ahsoka lengthens her strides until she's almost running.
Tanith is often angry but usually quiet. She seldom raises her voice; she learned from someone, probably Saw, to make hers carry without shouting, and she learned from someone else, probably not Saw, that unstifled anger would lead to painful retribution. Ahsoka has never heard her really yell, especially not with the raw, raucous edge Ahsoka can hear now.
She's shouting about slavery, and how she didn't sign on to be part of this, and Ahsoka actually does start to run as a sick certainty washes over her. This is darkness indeed.
"Tanith," she says as she comes round the corner into the captain's cramped ready room and finds Tanith both white and red with rage that strange way paler humans get, tense and coiled to confront Irob and Thyrian. Filyns has just ushered one of the traders, probably a senior one going by the elaborate clothing disappearing behind the closing door, out of the room. She herself looks several shades darker than normal.
Shame, Ahsoka says to herself, and then, seeing the suppressed movement of the lekku, grief.
"These contracts are indentures they'll never pay off," Tanith snarls. She's holding a cheap datapad in one gloved hand, the kind people might use to hire staff in bulk, with copy-pasted contracts.
"We weren't told about additional passengers," Ahsoka says coolly, playing for time. "I thought you went out to stock up on blaster cartridges."
"I did," Tanith spits. "And some kid who can't have more than fifteen years on him asks me to translate a word into Huttese for him because he doesn't speak Basic well, and guess what I found."
She throws the datapad at Ahsoka, who snatches it out of the air and glances over the top of it. Tanith is seething. Filyns won't look at anyone. Irob seems ashamed, but he has his hands clasped tight on the surface of his desk, like he wants to maintain his authority.
Thyrian isn't doing a good job of hiding that smirk, although his weight shifts and his face smooths out as he realises Ahsoka is watching. He knew about this, for certain.
"Our papers are in order," he says confidently, as Ahsoka begins to read.
Ahsoka focuses on the text in front of her. There was a time when she studied Republic law; reluctantly, between battles, perched on larties, flicking through flashcards in Senate corridors, the boys or Padmé or Master Obi-Wan helping her revise. Anakin always hated the minutiae of it, and the only area he was strong on he wouldn't study with her. But Ahsoka knew despite or maybe even because of that that it was important, and she did exceptionally well on the essay assignment, which means she knows that she is looking at a classic covert enslavement document, an indenture of the kind used to make sure people can never pay off their debts once off planet. Like a more sophisticated version of what happened to Tanith, when she was still calling herself Kestrel.
Padmé wrote a bill about these once. It actually passed. Not that Thyrian or the merchants responsible for this seemed to have taken any notice of that.
Ahsoka notes, with bitterness, that there are places where the notary has forgotten to replace references to the Republic with the Empire. There are days when she wonders how much has really changed out here.
She lowers the datapad. "Tanith's right," she says quietly. "This is slavery by another name. It's wrong."
"They can pay off their debts," Thyrian says dismissively, ignoring the way Tanith's teeth bare. Ahsoka could have told him there was no worse argument to use, but he wouldn't hear her if she did. "It's an opportunity to learn a skilled trade."
Filyns twitches. It's probably materially the same as the contract she was given. But neither her husband nor Thyrian notices.
"Skilled workers would be transported in quarters," Ahsoka says evenly. "We have only a cargo hold."
Thyrian shrugs.
"Which is it?" Tanith snaps, stalking forward. "Cargo or passengers?"
"Watch your mouth!" Irob says, finally defending someone. But not his wife. Filyns is still and silent, and, Ahsoka realises, not surprised.
"You tried to trick me into running security for a slave barge, captain," Tanith says through her teeth, turning the word captain into a curse. "I'll speak how I like."
"You have the option to break your contract." Irob rises from his seat and rests his fists on the table as if he thinks that will make him look strong. "If you can't work without delivering baseless insults you can leave. We can manage with one guard."
"You'll have to manage with none," Ahsoka says. "I didn't agree to this, either."
"Sonera -"
"You're not going to change my mind," Ahsoka interrupts smoothly.
Tanith looks startled, when Ahsoka looks at her. And then assessing, and then - accepting?
Ahsoka can't escape the feeling that she's just undergone and passed Tanith's own threat-ally-neutral assessment.
"We'll clear our bunks," Tanith says brusquely into the silence. Filyns' eyes are tired, and Irob has sunk back into his chair like he's shocked. Not that he has any right to be.
"Off this ship in an hour," Thyrian says, with a kind of ugly triumph in his voice. "Or I'll throw you off myself."
"See how far you get, pateesa ," Tanith says, with a frankly horrible grin.
"Don't play with your food, Tanith," Ahsoka says, as Thyrian shifts like he wants to start a fight and Tanith's unfriendly grin broadens, and the Force echoes like this is a moment she's going to know over and over again.
Tanith pauses as if to indicate she won't be commanded, shrugs and leads the way back to their bunkroom. She has little to pack, and Ahsoka seems to have heard the Force more clearly than she realised at the time, for her things are almost ready to go too. She's watching Tanith coolly pack away a variety of things that are actually ship's property, and not objecting, when Filyns comes through the door.
The quartermaster looks subdued, but her sharp glance at Tanith and absence of comment tells Ahsoka all she needs to know. The small bag of provisions and credits in cash she hands Ahsoka are almost a grace note. Ahsoka disappears it into her own luggage.
"Your accounts are paid out," Filyns says flatly. "References are in your comm accounts."
"That was fast," Ahsoka says.
"I had them ready." Filyns sits down on a stripped bunk. Tanith glances at her for a second, and then away.
For a second, there's silence, and then Tanith says: "Leave him. He doesn't value you."
Her voice is rough and uncomfortable, but sincere.
"He loves me," Filyns says, with a bitter certainty.
"Not always the same thing," Ahsoka says, thinking of things that are gone and people who are not forgotten.
There's a pause. And then, just as Tanith is getting impatient -
"I don't know where my manumission papers are. I can't find them."
Ahsoka's breath leaves her all at once, and Tanith drops from where she's been crouching on her heels to sit on the floor. If a ship's quartermaster doesn't have access to personnel documents, especially ones so important as this, they might not even exist.
Ahsoka breathes in with a deliberate effort, thinking of Zygerria, and a costume, and a cage, and a rich sly voice saying he always did have an eye for beauty . She breathes out again, and flexes her hands, bone by bone, until the skin stretches across her palms and her knuckles crack. The memory slides away into the past, where it belongs.
"Let me at a terminal," Tanith is saying grimly, "if they exist I'll find them, and if they don't…" She shrugs. "Names change, people disappear."
There are heavy footsteps down the corridor.
"Too late," Filyns says, looking both sad and tired.
"I can get a message to Cham Syndulla," Ahsoka offers, very softly, and watches Tanith blink and Filyns' head tilt back. Both women clearly know the name. That's unsurprising for Filyns, but Tanith?
"And how does an off-worlder from Glee Anselm know how to find Cham Syndulla?" Filyns replies, equally softly. She doesn't seem to expect a reply; she shakes her head. "He can't help me now. I'm too tired to go on the run. I'll fix this myself." She pauses and rises to her feet. "You should clear off now. Thyrian is just waiting for that hour to be up."
For the first time, Ahsoka hears it in Filyns' voice, how much she hates that man, and for a moment she thinks Filyns will be okay and wants to say it out loud. But none of them can promise that.
Her feet and Tanith's ring on the deckplate in perfect sync as they leave. Ahsoka is much taller than Tanith, but somehow, this once, their strides match.
Tanith looks back at the Zabirliss when they're well away. It's not a friendly look. Ahsoka can hear her thinking about sabotage.
"Not now," Ahsoka says. "There's nothing more we can do here. Let's go."
Reluctantly, Tanith does.
They vanish into the spaceport's back streets. It's not far from Lessu, and has several direct links to Ryloth's capital city, but if they're going to come out of this in one piece they need a plan. They also need food.
Tanith, like most drifters, eats anything and everything. She doesn't know Twi'lek food like Ahsoka does - too many Battles of Ryloth - so Ahsoka orders for them both at the workers' diner Tanith picks. She clearly chose based on cost and style - this is exactly where you'd expect Tanith and Sonera to show up, prefabricated and shabby, but with a clean counter and a room full of patrons minding their own business. With the background hum, anything they might say won't be overheard.
"So," Tanith says once their food has arrived and the waitress has gone away, diving straight in and talking with her mouth full. "You got somewhere you want to be next?"
Ahsoka nods. She has some appointments to make. Ryloth is the perfect base for that. But now there's Tanith, and something is telling Ahsoka not to walk away; that faint sense that the Force is with Tanith, and the way their paths have brought them face to face repeatedly. It seems possible that if Ahsoka does walk away from Tanith, they will only come face to face again.
Tanith's eyes are on her lunch, which she's shoveling into her mouth so fast she can't really be seeing it. "Need back-up?"
Ahsoka blinks. "A lot of it will be… sensitive. You may find yourself standing around waiting a lot. People will be distrustful."
Tanith shrugs and rolls her eyes expressively, then swallows a mouthful and says: "With all the dumb fucks like Thyrian out there, I don't care about that."
Ahsoka grins. "Pay's no good, either."
That does give Tanith pause. Ahsoka's surprised that that makes her sad, even though it only makes sense. "Are you meaning to get a paying job afterwards?"
Ahsoka nods.
"Well, fine." Tanith shrugs one shoulder. "So long as we don't run out of cash. Is this what you were talking about with Filyns?"
"Yes. You know the man?" Ahsoka's curious; even one of Saw's warriors wouldn't necessarily have known the details of his negotiations and alliances. She has yet to work out Tanith's true background, and somehow doesn't think she will today.
"Saw kept me around," Tanith says, and shrugs again. "I met a few people."
That could mean anything or nothing. "Would he recognise you?"
"Not likely."
"Do you want him to?"
Tanith shakes her head, but her eyes have gone narrow like she doesn't want to talk more.
"Let me know if you want to use a different name," Ahsoka says instead, and they relapse into silence.
At the spacers' hostel they take beds in a dorm - no sense in wasting money or attracting attention - and Tanith dyes her hair. Filyns bleached it for her a week ago, with a lighter hand and better product than Tanith was using before, so the dark green dye lies smooth and evenly coloured across her hair. Tanith braids it in the morning, and stops to mark tattoo transfers across her face, the indigo forehead stripe of a Wracksea devotee. When she swaps her ragged sleeveless jacket for a thin broad scarf of similarly dark blue material and wraps it around her shoulders so it'll catch the eye and feature heavily in a description, Ahsoka wonders how complete the transformation needs to be for her to feel safe.
Ahsoka swathes herself in a desert cloak and hood. The sun on Ryloth is more fiercely felt than on Shili, a legacy of centuries of exploitative industrial activity, and this way she can hide.
Chapter 6: JynChapter TextJyn has a policy of not getting attached. There's a reason for that. Parents, companions, colleagues, they all leave her behind, and she knows Sonera will too, some day. Yes, she talks over the jobs they take with Jyn, she lets Jyn know what she can do and what she can't risk, and she respects Jyn's own avoidances. She doesn't talk about Jyn's kyber crystal, and Jyn doesn't talk about her lightsabers, even on the rare occasions when Sonera feels safe enough to get them out and practise, dancing like wildfire on a dry wind. It's something to watch, that much is for sure. And it's nice to have someone to watch her back, even if it's only temporary.
Jyn can't remember ever deliberately trusting someone like this; trust was always an instinctive thing, given to her parents and to Saw before she was really old enough to know what she was doing, and she knows how that ended: alone, in the dark, waiting for someone to come back to her. She has never had to test whether Sonera will come back, but it would be unfair to ask her directly, and painful to hear the inevitable lie.
Still. So far, it's been good.
Whatever Sonera's business was on Ryloth - and later, on a couple of planets she must know Jyn's aware she snuck off on - it was nothing Jyn knows about. She didn't even catch a glimpse of Cham Syndulla's austere, pugnacious profile, let alone a glimpse of the famous daughter. She didn't actually expect to. She used to go to meetings like that at Saw's side, but that was a long time ago now.
She kind of likes the way Sonera comes back from these meetings and transforms herself from a mysterious, amorphous shadow in a cloak to Sonera, a world-weary spacer Togruta with as many tattoos as she has camouflage patterns (if Jyn remembers her markings from earlier correctly, neither are real). It makes her feel like she's not the only one taking a risk.
Jyn moves from job to job with Sonera. She sticks to the identity she adopted after leaving the Zabirliss and making it look like Tanith Ponta caught a shuttle off Ryloth first thing. Aleta Wrexel is a relatively new identity, and clean, with no record attached to it. It does have a religious affiliation Jyn doesn't profess in reality, as the surname indicates, but she's not going to make a fuss about that. She knows the calls and responses, anyway, and after the life she's had she doesn't consider that she owes any higher power shit.
They do several short-term jobs and then sign onto a small freighter for a three-month round trip to Naboo via Bestine, carrying consumer goods - not luxury, but rare, and sold at a premium for the "adventure in the Outer Rim" packaging. The crew is pleasant enough and the contracts are fair; they lost their last assistant engineer and co-pilot when the pair got married and moved home to some Chandrilan outpost Jyn doesn't remember the name of. Jyn doesn't have the formal learning they'd expect, but her fundamentals are good, and she picked up the specifics quickly. And in any case, Sonera made it clear that she wouldn't hire on without Jyn.
Jyn can't stop herself looking strangely at Sonera for that, even weeks after they boarded. It's not that she would have chosen to take a job where Sonera couldn't follow; the back-up is welcome and their shared earning potential greater (Sonera shares, and that too is unfamiliar). The crew treats them as a unit, which is sometimes strange, but in a way it's what Jyn is used to. These last few years of being alone are an aberration, in that sense.
It's too easy to get used to it again. That worries Jyn.
Something has to give; she feels herself growing suspicious and wary of it. Feels herself drawing in on herself, self-protective. It feels like something is coming. Like she can't help whatever's coming. And she doesn't know if she's making it up because she's afraid things will change, or because it's real. She's known enough turbulent situations that her judgement of them ought to be trustworthy, but what could possibly be turbulent about this? All there is on this ship is the hum of the hydraulics, the sound of the captain arguing idly with the navigator, the clatter of pans in the galley, the faint scent of spices and teas that seems to permeate the ship after so many years of fragrant cargo. They have everything, the captain said, from Tatooine tzai to the peppers off Ryloth II that will take the taste buds from the unsuspecting -
"You all right?" Sonera asks.
Jyn bites back the impulse towards honesty. It's nothing. Whatever she's feeling, it's nothing. It's not real.
"Fine," she snaps, sharp enough to make Sonera's modified eyebrow markings twitch. "It's nothing."
"If you say so," Sonera says. "Our landing slot on Bestine is in two hours - come get some food before Cook has to lie down with an anti-emetic."
Strictly speaking, they don't have a landing slot. This quadrant of Bestine is heavily industrialised, so the spaceport has docking stations in-atmosphere, battered, shabby municipal conveniences with bored customs officials, long queues, and stained carpet. Public shuttles take most people to the surface; the wealthy or important have private tenders, and never catch a glimpse of this badly cleaned public route. They probably pay their bribes in advance. Most people just deliver them up front; Jyn can see the flicker of illicit credit chips, less in the chips themselves and more in the furtive movements of those unaccustomed to paying what they need to get by. Captain Fran isn't one of them - couldn't be, after thirty years on the Outer Rim - and their passage through customs is as smooth as it can be.
Jyn is still on edge.
"Aleta," Captain Fran says. A different woman would have startled; Jyn just looks at her, the friendly crow's-feet smile, the shock of dyed-red hair. "What's got you twitching?"
The navigator laughs; Sonera smiles perfunctorily.
It could be any number of things, like the way the squares of carpet plate shiver beneath their feet, or the bubbles in the fabric of the misty old portholes, or the posters - genially threatening Imperial propaganda, even here, where the customs officials are so bored and sleepy and bribable in their creased grey uniforms. Jyn can see sixteen vulnerabilities from here, even on the move.
"Nothing," she says. "It's just…"
They're loading up in a public shuttle, crammed in well over the safe holding limit. The metal hand-holds are so dirty the chief engineer has put on gloves for all four of their hands and the outside is graffitied.
"Is it usually this busy?" Jyn asks. "Seems like we're overloaded, here."
"It's always busy," Captain Fran says, as the shuttle disengages from its dock. Cook fights his way over to an air vent, already looking sallow. "But this is more packed than I'd expect. I heard they closed the shipyard on Callia B, and Bestine is really the next viable port. Maybe -"
The shuttle lurches and creaks. Even Sonera's brow creases.
"I don't like this," Jyn mutters. The strap of her bag is pressing her crystal into her chest, and it feels strangely hot. Jyn's never heard it sing the way Sonera claims it does, but this makes her uneasy nonetheless.
"Who does?" Cook moans, pressing a cooling wipe to his sweaty forehead.
On the ground, things are no better. So jam-packed Jyn can hardly keep all the members of her party in sight, and strangely sullen. There are undercurrents in the downturned faces of the people, the rumbling of speech, the heavy-duty shutters ready to go, the graffiti. Jyn doesn't speak or read Bestini, but she has an intimate understanding of discontent.
It's safe to say nobody's very pleased with the situation, but when Sonera and Jyn herd everyone into a side street the discussion ends with the decision that they stay. Whatever's wrong, the situation is only likely to deteriorate over the next few days as local law enforcement react. Better, now that they're here, to get everything that needs a physical presence done as fast as possible, and then get back to the ship. But that means splitting up.
Jyn's nerves jangle, and Sonera doesn't look happy either.
"I have a bad feeling about this," Sonera says flatly.
"The sooner we're done," Captain Fran replies grimly, "the sooner we can leave."
Jyn nods a short acknowledgement, and chews her lower lip hard.
Trouble comes from two directions at once. They've been separated for some time, and Jyn is shepherding Cook and the navigator through a galley restock, when she hears an explosion and her head whips round at the same time as her comm lights up frantically. She hustles her charges into a doorway and gets between them and the streetful of frightened people.
"Aleta!" Sonera is yelling, her normally melodious voice harsh and coughing every few words. "Aleta, someone set off a bomb on the high line. I can't find Fran or Cogs. Get the others out of here, now -"
"I copy," Jyn says shortly, drops her comm so it jangles from the chain around her neck, and seizes both Cook and the navigator and drags them out of the doorway and down the street.
Unfortunately, civilian traders have no discipline or sense. Both of Jyn's erstwhile shipmates are slow, and neither has really understood the urgency of the situation, despite the rising panic in the streets, the shutters slamming down, or the growing plume of grey smoke in the distance.
"What's happening? What did Sonera say? Where's Fran?"
"Questions later, running now," Jyn snaps. "There's been an explosion, can't you fucking see?"
A second explosion, closer, rattles Jyn's eardrums. There are sirens starting up. After sirens come bucketheads, but the noise makes Jyn's companions freeze. It has that effect on the unaccustomed.
"We have to go back for them -"
"I can't leave -"
Jyn strangles her shout so she doesn't add to the panic. She's already being buffeted and shoved, and people running from the direction of the blasts are openly weeping.
"This is not safe," she snarls. "You could die here. And if you don't, you'll get swept up in the crackdown, and then you'll disappear!"
"We haven't done anything -"
Jyn has done a lot to deserve being picked up by an Imperial patrol, but even she is conscious that it really doesn't matter. She pushes her face too close to Cook's and watches the Duros flinch: it doesn't matter how much Cook hates her, so long as she gets them both out of here alive.
"They don't care," she hisses. "Now drop everything and run."
Her shipmates react to that - so well Jyn almost feels bad. She runs with them towards the shuttle station, blessedly close, and finds they're joining a tide of people with no other thought than to get offplanet. Jyn has already hauled them around and away from law enforcement, and the bucketheads are not yet in the station; they just need to get on the next shuttle and it will be fine.
Jyn elbows, shoves, forces a space clear through the heaving swell of panic. Dimly, she can hear Cook crying, and she keeps being forced off her feet. She knows people will be being trampled into the floor, pressed into the glass, twisted at impossible angles, but the shuttle doors will only be open for another thirty seconds, she's almost there -
Some enormous fucking bruiser with a bulbous head surges behind her, breaking her grip on the navigator's hand and lifting her off her feet so that she falls through the doors into the shuttle. Saw's voice echoes in her ears, fall and die , and she scrambles to get to her feet and turns, desperately scanning the crowd, reaching out, hearing more screams and crying now as the doors are beginning to close.
She can't see Cook at all, but the navigator is close by. She grabs for him, but her fingers only brush his before the proximity alarm sounds, and she's forced to withdraw her hand or lose it. The navigator's pushing forward, but it's too late.
Jyn sees him from behind the scratched plasglass, falling under the press of the frightened mob, and the white gleam of stormtroopers entering the station. She retreats back into the quietest corner of the shuttle, which is subdued almost to silence and full of fear, and folds her arms tightly across her body. She can't raise Sonera on the comm.
Her crystal burns.
When she makes her way back to the ship, it's empty and quiet. Jyn cleans up her scrapes and scratches, surprised to find there is no burn mark on her chest from the crystal, and that it's now cool to the touch. She makes herself a hot drink and warms over a prefabricated meal, and eats it in silence in the crew ready room, listening to the echoes. Nobody responds to their comm. The news on the holonet refers to gas explosions and civic panic. There's holo clips of bucketheads carrying stretchers and small children.
When she hears the clang of the door unsealing, the blaster almost leaps into her hands. But it's only Sonera, almost mauve with exhaustion, her clothes torn and dried blood on her montrals and arms. And Sonera is alone.
Jyn clears her throat as she lowers the blaster. "Guess you didn't find Cogs and Captain Fran."
Sonera winces in a way that tells Jyn everything she needs to know, even before she says "They didn't make it. There was a glass window."
Jyn can see shards like knives in her mind's eye. Little surprise the captain and her chief engineer are dead.
"What about the others?"
Jyn shakes her head. "Crushed in the crowd at the shuttle station. They might just be injured, but." She shakes her head again.
Sonera grits her teeth. "I wouldn't give anyone good odds down there. It's crawling with bucketheads."
"You use your Jedi tricks to get free?" Jyn asks, and Sonera half-smiles bitterly, which she supposes is an answer. "If someone asks for us to identify the bodies, I'll go. No sense putting you where they can ask questions."
"Are you sure?"
Truthfully, Jyn's not. Leaving Sonera alone with all her belongings and the ship is a risk; her nerves are jangling so badly after the riot that she doesn't even know why she offered. But Jyn's never been arrested in this system and she has a straightforward, legal track record of getting to and from the ship. And if she gets caught harbouring a Jedi - especially with a kyber crystal round her neck - she'll be for it, too.
"Yes," she says, flatly. She shrugs. "We might not even have to. They might come back."
"They might," Sonera echoes: the words ring hollowly in Jyn's ears.
She shifts in her seat. "What really happened, anyway? The holonet is saying a gas explosion."
Sonera nods. "It was gas, I think, but law enforcement thought it was the city, and the city thought it was law enforcement." She shrugs, the gesture laden with exhaustion. "Feedback loop. Can you help me get the glass out of my cuts?"
"Course," Jyn says, and is temporarily surprised at herself. What does she mean, of course?
By the time every cut has been checked, cleaned and sealed, and Sonera has been through the sonic shower, it's late. Jyn lies down and listens to several episodes of an audio holodrama in the hope that it'll bore her to sleep, but she can't stop thinking about Captain Fran's red hair, or Cook's panicked eyes, or the sick second of nearly relief she felt when her knees hit the shuttle deck. The ship echoes with silence.
She gets up and goes back into the ready room, and then she hears this weird humming, and her feet turn to follow the noise, down to the cargo hold. A door to the stocktake centre has been left open, and through it Jyn can see Sonera with her lightsabers.
Sonera knows she's there, Jyn can tell from the quick flick of a look, the tiniest glint of a smile. But she doesn't stop the deadly pattern she's sketching with white light, one saber in each hand - Jyn didn't know that was even possible - moving with deceptive ease through lethal parabolas, never looking rushed or angry. She's so calm and focused, in fact, it's strangely entrancing.
Jyn stays by the door to watch, and when Sonera's finished, she applauds. Sonera extinguishes the sabers, and bows floridly.
"Couldn't sleep either?" she asks.
Jyn shakes her head.
Sonera sets the sabers aside. "Fancy a rematch?"
"Thought you'd never ask," Jyn replies.
The next day Cook's food and spare parts orders arrive, but none of their crew does, and neither do any death or next of kin notification reports. They wait.
It's increasingly clear that no-one is coming back. But if that's true, then what next?
The holonet fulminates about the injuries done to stormtroopers in the line of duty. Jyn turns it off instead of smashing the terminal and plays sabacc with Sonera until her eyes blur. It's another sleepless night.
Day two brings messages from panicking kin, and - separately - four summonses to identify four bodies.
"I'll go if you'll take the families," Jyn bargains, although they already made this arrangement.
Sonera nods. "I'll be here when you get back."
Jyn snorts reflexively, and leaves before she can see Sonera frown.
Captain Fran and the navigator are in the mortuary designated for humans; Jyn gives her false information, ruthlessly suppressing her nerves. She made the scandocs herself, and she knows just how good her work is. And a little discomfort will pass well for the common human unease about mortality.
It's a little less shabby than the customs station - the fittings are old but gleamingly clean, and the whole place smells of disinfectant and something strangely sweet - but it has the same careless air. Jyn gets the impression this place is meant for the forgotten, even though it's busy today, full of crying people and stunned relatives, some of whom look like they were injured too. The staff are trying to be helpful, at least; Jyn gets offered three separate tissues and a bowl of soothing, menthol-scented sweets she doesn't want or - unlike some of the civilians here, who may never have seen a dead body before, let alone smelled one - need. They ask if she needs a moment after identifying Fran, who looks strangely colourless in death, and the navigator, who she has to identify by the tattoos on his swollen and bruised hands. They even tell her there's a Wracksea shrine close by if she wants to make a dedication, and are pulling up a map to give directions when Jyn shakes her head.
"Thanks, but I have to go to the non-human morgue, too. We lost four crew."
"Oh, you had xenos onboard?"
Something about the tone rubs Jyn the wrong way. The word 'xeno' is definitely not what she wants to hear either. "Our chief engineer and Cook. He was our quartermaster too, I guess, but everyone called him Cook."
"Oh," says the official again, and adds rather belatedly: "Sorry for your loss."
"They wait for us on the other side of the horizon," Jyn says, with as much sincerity as she can muster, and then sighs. "At least, that's what the officiant at home always used to say."
Bearing all this in mind, she isn't surprised to find the non-human morgue smaller, dirtier, more crowded, less well-staffed, and farther away from public transport. No-one offers her tissues or scented sweets - though she can clearly smell dead things, and a Mirialan with a sensitive nose turns chartreuse and has to step out - and she, the only human in the place bar the management, gets better service than everyone else.
Probably for the best that Sonera didn't come here.
They haven't cared well for Cogs' body, which has been stuffed onto a tray too small for it, and Jyn can clearly see from the pattern of electrical burns that Cook was struck by a stormtrooper's stun baton: nobody troubled to cover him with a sheet. They apologise for that. Probably weren't expecting a human colleague.
Aleta Wrexel doesn't know what stun baton burns look like, so Jyn swallows her rage and fills out the paperwork confirming the right people are on those tables. Their bodies will be cremated, their ashes returned to their families - if their families can pay for it.
Jyn has only just left when she gets an automated message saying the ship has left its berth. Cold lances through her, and her throat closes, her eyes flying so wide and staying that way that her eyeballs dry out in the arid, smoke-heavy air: this isn't the time to show anger, and she feels strangely incapable of more than some peculiar hard emotion that fills her ribcage, but she pushes her way back to the shuttle station and grinds her teeth all the way up to the dock till her jaw aches. There's no reason why she's doing this - Sonera will be long gone, it will take hours to get back to the dock, she's already been gone five hours just getting to both morgues - except that it's what Aleta would do, and also that Jyn wants to find Sonera and scream at her.
When the shuttle finally unloads at the docking station, Jyn's comm buzzes with a signal.
Refuelling station Alpha XI , Sonera has written. Got kicked off the berth.
Jyn's knees turn to jelly. She hurries to the refuelling station, and there's the ship, and when she goes inside, there's Sonera.
Jyn has to catch herself on the bulkhead so she doesn't fall over.
"There you are," Sonera says, eyes on the instruments. "Thank you for doing that. Was it okay?"
"Uh-huh," Jyn says, brief and breathless.
"Sorry about the change of scene," Sonera says. "Since Fran was confirmed dead, they said the booking was no longer valid. They want us to move on straight away. I wanted to talk to you about whether we file a flight plan; one of us would need to take over as captain, unless you want to call it quits and leave Fran's wife to sell the ship -"
"No, I'm good to stay on," Jyn says, rather threadily, and with the longer phrase it's obvious enough that Sonera turns away from the instrumentation tracking their fuel to look at her. Whatever she sees stops her in her tracks.
"Aleta?" she says, quite gently.
"I thought," Jyn says, and then clears her throat hard. "I thought you left me."
Sonera met her when she was eighteen and had just been ditched by Saw; she can probably guess what that means. Jyn flushes, angry at herself for giving it away.
"No," Sonera says, looking her straight in the eye. "We're a team."
And then she smiles. "Besides. I can't fly this bucket of bolts alone."
Jyn feels her lips curve in a smile of her own.
It's late, and the lights of Bestine's docking station are receding into the distance. Jyn can only feel relief, as she sits in the co-pilot seat watching Sonera negotiate their way expertly out of Bestine's airspace. It took a further two full planetary rotations to get the crew manifest changed, and to buy the astromech and navigator programming they'll need to move on without hiring further organic staff. Most spacers like the flexibility of organics, and there are plenty of places where droids can't go, but that's secondary next to discretion, which is much easier to ensure without organic crew. Sonera insists that the flexibility thing is overrated, that droids which aren't regularly wiped develop their own judgement and abilities like any learning creature, but when Jyn challenges her to name a droid owner who would go so dramatically against the usual practice, she changes the subject.
It's a strange thing to hear from someone who fought in the Clone Wars, and clearly not as a Separatist - but hell, Sonera is strange, and so is Jyn.
They moor up not far away. They could fly through the night and shave a few more hours off their trip to Naboo, but the clients, learning the situation, have authorised a week's delay, and it's safer not to stretch their sleep debts. There's a payoff waiting for them in Naboo, and with that they can take the ship, transform it so no-one will know it again, and disappear to pay their own way under another name. Sonera has a few ideas, and so does Jyn, and while she suspects Sonera of having Rebellion-shaped interests, Jyn can let that go so long as no-one makes her swear an oath or answer too many hard questions.
This time they collect in the ready room and close down the shutters, so no-one can see the flash of white lightsabers, this time not because Sonera needs the release but just because she can. Jyn curls her hand around a can of beer she usually wouldn't let herself have - waste of finite credits - and watches. Her hand creeps up to her kyber crystal and holds on tight. It doesn't burn now, and if there's a faint whistling noise, it's either her imagination or the dodgy vent that Sonera glued back into place.
Sonera once told her it was a lightsaber blank. Did her father sit like this once, watching her mother dance with a lightsaber? Did all Jedi know how to do this? Surely not; Jyn can see decades of practice in Sonera's movements, and most people just don't have it in them to be so dedicated.
It takes her a second to realise Sonera has stopped. Her eyes fly up to catch Sonera's.
"The Force is with us," Sonera says, with a strange weight that makes Jyn shrug like she's trying to shrug it off.
"Maybe," she says. Sonera's quiet smile is almost affectionate. "I'm going to bed."