"I thought I told you to stop calling."
It isn't professional. Taking a holocomm on this frequency in his office. And half naked, too. But this woman is relentless. She may be a key informant, but her civil war isn't a priority. Maybe interrupting a chewed-up marshal fucking commander's nightcap will remind her of that.
If not, at least it might make things interesting. Kenobi's been quiet. Too quiet.
"You keep picking up," the flickering Mandalorian replies.
Cody can't deny it, so he takes a drink.
"General Kenobi's been briefed on your latest. As of two standard hours ago, he's still busy."
"But you're not."
He leans back in his chair and dumps his boots on the desk, pointedly. "No. I'm not."
Things do get interesting because she reaches for her helmet. Wherever she is tonight, she's not taking heat. She's comfortable enough to drop her guard, sightlines, and inhibitions. The way she ducks forward tells him to expect loose hair, but the rest is a surprise. She looks so delicate, like she might shatter with a sneeze, let alone a punch. Extremely lethal, then.
"Me neither," she says. She sets her blue helmet down somewhere around her feet—definitely a safe-house—and stares at him. Her eyes remind him of shards of Christophsian glass. Brilliant and penetrating.
He tells himself that twinge along his scar is psychosomatic and shifts a fraction in his seat. But he doesn't look away.
"Isn't your planet on fire."
"That's what it does. Though there's not much left of it to catch a flame."
Except you, he thinks, admiring her hair and thanking whichever god belatedly invented adjutants. It's nice not being busy. He can properly enjoy this Savareen brandy and a woman who looks like a collection of all the prettiest arcs from gunnery trig.
"Sounds like you're still upset about the last time the Jedi darkened your doors," Cody says.
"Let's say you're right. With the Sith gone, I don't need Kenobi. Maybe I just need your army."
The left side of his face goes tight as his eyebrows make a bid for his hairline. That's a funny way of describing the 7th—or even the 212th, which, to be fair, might confuse someone from clan-orientated, sigil-heavy culture. He won't insult her and call it flattery, so it must be ignorance.
"I'm not welcome on Mandalore." Cody taps his glass against his bare chest. "A battalion of Republic military assets like me might bring a million battle droids down upon your precious neutral heads."
"A Mandalorian is always welcome in a warzone."
He whistles, long and low, into his glass. A Mandalorian. "Death Watch has changed their tune. You are desperate. I remember when I was just the glorified cell clipping of a cowardly traitor."
She shrugs, but looks down, unsure, like she might find a satisfactory answer on the floor. "The semantics of superiors. You know how it is."
Cody's pretty sure she's talking out of her ass, but yeah, he does. Jedi acrobatics around the legality of the Republic's troops, conscripted in a shroud of conspiracy, almost rivalled their battlefield stunts.
Still. It wasn't his call. This mercenary could take a very liberal view of martial allegiance—her people were full of that shit with their jetpacks and freedom and their secret language and choose-your-own-adventure wars. Going Mando was a right plague among the spec ops, if some commanders are to be believed. He's already going to have some Corporal Clint dripping shit about infosec protocol into his ear tomorrow. He'd like to be able to tell them to fuck off certain that he hadn't stumbled into any collusion with a paramilitary operative who stood within stabbing distance of a claim to whatever Mandalorian title was in vogue these days.
This conversation is supposed to be interesting, not incriminating.
"A compromise then," Cody offers. "I've got a buddy who's blonde. A captain with a kama. A real jaig bird. Maybe I'll give him your number."
She swats the suggestion away. "I'm tired of blondes. I want Jango Fett in the color of revenge."
That might explain the 212th's reputation, then. The oversexed fuckers.
"I think this wet dream of yours would make the rest of Death Watch piss the bed. Do they know what you get up to at night?"
"Death Watch is finished. But if you're talking about the hut'uune still bent over and hard for their Sith master, it's none of their fucking business."
She hasn't sneered or smiled once. The veneer of marble he's scrutinizing gives no indication whether she's still serious; were this not a holocomm, he'd deploy some of Kenobi's drink diplomacy to find out. All this picking around the perimeter is exhausting.
So he takes a more direct approach. "And you want me and my troops to bend over for you."
A cocked brow is something more than nothing.
"No one bends over in my wet dreams."
There's some comfort in the knowledge that her holo projector is probably mobile grade, too small and lowres to reveal the flush in his face or the way he has to shift his legs to give himself room to—
"They just kneel before your throne," Cody jabs before the silence has a chance to stretch.
Her eyes flash greener, like she's ranging her target.
"Mandalorians don't kneel. But I've no objection if you want to try it."
He takes another slow sip, tilting his head back and letting the brandy burn pleasantly down his throat. She's watching him more carefully now, eyes narrowed. He wonders what it would take to break her facade, and his mind unhelpfully supplies the image of him on his knees between her, making her squirm and fall open for him.
"Boot's on the other foot," he says. She needs him, not the other way around. No matter what the ache in his groin says.
"In your wet dreams, commander?" She's misfired. The knowledge that she's not as unmoved as she wants to seem makes Cody chuckle and sends him reaching for the bottle.
"Not quite." She's beautiful, but his dreams moved beyond the simplicity of sex years ago. He can't remember the last time he woke up gasping with anything but a nightmare.
"A terrible shame," she says. "I thought we'd found some common ground."
She deliberately lets her eyes wander across his chest, lingering on his many scars. These implicit promises are as hollow as a spent shell, but being seen as desirable by a woman as fine as a unsheathed blade still makes his heart race.
And it's too much of a good thing.
Cody drags his feet off the desk and leans forward. It puts him right about boot level, actually, as he looks up at her.
"You really should stop calling," he says again, finger hovering over the disconnect button.
Her face curdles into a smile. "Same time tomorrow then, commander," she says, blinking out and leaving Cody to chase wet dreams he never asked for down the bottom of the bottle.