Cassian Andor - Dark Purge

Chapter 2: We Have A Mission For You, Part 2


The day was ending rather rapidly after his orders, and Thrawn, Grand Admiral Thrawn took his leave for his private residence in the base of Imperial Intelligence, his lodgings outside of his Star Destroyer. The Chimaera was about the only platitude apart from his rank and mission that Thrawn had squeezed out of the Emperor, and still he had every single other admiral in the Imperial Navy look down at him.

The strange thing was, Thrawn did not care that they did. He was Chiss, an alien, outside of the norm for the Imperial Navy, and yet he did not care how he was looked at. Nor did he care to change it.

Grand Admiral Thrawn was a man of pure and unfiltered excellence and results. The fact that Juno Eclipse had evaded his spiderweb once before was merely a frustration to him, now he would ensnare her and eliminate her. As for her newly arrived Rebel counterpart, he would have his fun with them. They were surely Rebel Intelligence, as he had deduced by the bait and switch of their escape from the shuttle depot near the descension chamber, they were tactics he'd seen before.

From those very tactics, the execution of them and the movements of Eclipse and the Rebel afterwards, Thrawn had deduced the Rebel to be a human, no doubt and more so a human male born on the planet of Fest. He had corroborated that from art and old battle tactics of their once proud militia. The rest was a simple chess game of assumed estimation and deduction, until Thrawn had finally conjured a name at least from the corals of his bristling and sociopathic mind, all the while staring at a holo projection of Fest itself. The history lesson took him through the Clone Wars, to the insurrectionist cell and the CIS there, and then to the violence of the Carida Academy on more guesses and deft hand play of deduction. Rumors and dossiers crossing his desk came through his tunnelled mind and into view before him, until he matched what was a small profile of a man to a name. A name Thrawn had heard many many times.

It was first Ahsoka Tano, before her downfall on Malachor. Then Agent Kallus, but Thrawn had silenced that worm himself years ago. Until now the name crossed his crosshairs again.

"At last I have you in my web once again. Fulcrum."

The door to the cove of holographic art displays and projections of planets, craft, locations and buildings, as well as faces and dossiers opened and an officer wandered in with a slight cough. He had obviously interrupted Thrawn's inner sanctum and thus was already fearing for his life as he stumbled over his own feet.

"What is it, Ensign?" Thrawn asked without even turning to see which one of his stationaries it was. Not that he even remembered their names or ranks or numbers. He was too proud to remember any apart from Paelleon, who dealt with the lower downs.

The cowering uniformed man stood up straight, shivering at how Thrawn did not even regard him with the look of his profusely red eyes. Eyes that burned like Mustafar itself. The very thought of the volcanic ball that was almost a planet made the Ensign remember his task, why he had come and disturbed Thrawn from his thoughts and investigations.

"Grand Admiral…" The Ensign stuttered.

"What is it, Ensign? Out with it."

"Sir, Lord… Lord Vader demands you to make contact with him, he's heard about the explosion at the shuttle depot," the cowering recruit informed the whiteley dressed and pressed Grand Admiral. And there the truth lay, the menacing enforcer Thrawn had only met a couple of times since his return from the Unknown Regions and his eradication of most of Phoenix Squadron in the Outer Rim.

Darth Vader was on Coruscant.

"Lord Vader?" Thrawn echoed back, this time turning his head a little from the display on his desk, the image of Fest. It dissipated and soon he was left staring at the image behind his desk, the small mural that was a burnt banner of the Twi'Lek leadership under Cham Syndulla. The Conquest of Ryloth still left a burning pride inside him, even if he was not a part of the initial campaign. He still relished the reports, and even his own encounters with now General Syndulla made him smile. Even though she had eluded his grasp and defeated him at times, Thrawn knew her to be an admirable foe. But he was not about to face Hera again, as much as he wanted to. He was about to come personally face to face with Lord Vader, and even that rattled some small semblance of fear Thrawn still had for the unknown.

But he laxed his clenched up throat, and soothed out the tense muscles of his tones back under the pristine white uniform he had elected to wear, just like that of Director Krennic, and of Admiral Yularen. He breathed a subtle sigh and unclenched his fists, pressing a sequence into the desk's holo projector.

"Yes thank you, Ensign, I'll take the call in here," he told the recruit, signaling him to leave faster than he entered. "Leave."

The Ensign followed as instructed to the letter and stumbled out of the doorway, allowing the room to grow dark again as the holo began to spool up. Thrawn trembled just a tad before the incoming call of the masked being that was Darth Vader and once the mask appeared before his red eyes in a blurry flurry of blue, Thrawn bowed his head in respect to the Dark Lord.

"Lord Vader, the honour is all mine, My Lord," Thrawn greeted, keeping his blue head bowed and his syllables perfectly pronounced, showing off what was regarded by many as a traditional Imperial accent whatever that meant now. Still, Thrawn was glad to have in greeting the Emperor's enforcer.

Already, that menacing breathing sounded through the static of the hologram transmission, and it set Thrawn on edge as it did with even the most resolute of officers. In fact as it did with everyone that was not himself or the Emperor. Thrawn was more willful than most to not tense up upon hearing it every few seconds or so. But then he saw the mask bob, an expression behind that it was reduced to pure menace by the redness of the eyes and the grill of his rebreather.

"...Grand Admiral Thrawn…"

Thrawn still kneeled, his head still bowed until he heard an increase in the pitch of Vader's breath. "Rise Grand Admiral, do not stand on ceremony when your lack of competence to capture Juno Eclipse has a part of Coruscant in terror," Vader jabbed, already putting the Grand Admiral on a warpath to defend his honour from the encroaching Dark Lord. Her escape the first time was due to inopportune timing and pressure from II to release the trap prematurely, and now Thrawn was backpedaling and working around the standard protocol to destroy her.

"My Lord all efforts to neutralise Miss Eclipse are being made," Thrawn reassured the masked Dark Jedi before him as he finally stood once more, tall and proud, even in the presence of Darth Vader. "I have dispatched Deathtroopers and am confident that I have her trail well in my web."

"And what of the Rebel who has reportedly landed to assist her in escaping the planet?" Vader asked, how he was even on the planet. Vader's prowess and skills of reading one's mind even through a hologram were legend and Thrawn was just now getting to see it unfold before him. To avoid the other legendary fate Vader wreaked upon his subordinates, Thrawn would need to tread more carefully than he usually did with higher-ups.

It was time to play his card, the new one Thrawn had just drawn from his genius and sociopathic mind that had earned him the rack of squares pinned on his ivory white uniform.

"We have an idea as to who is assisting Eclipse and we are confident to locate his ship," the Chiss reported, eagerly hoping Lord Vader would ask just who this young Rebel was, as Thrawn was very rapidly narrowing in on his true identity aside from his handle. "You'll be elated to know he is the current runner of the Fulcrum handle Agent Kallus was executed for over Lothal some years ago. However this Rebel is a far younger handler, and from Fest as to my investigation," Thrawn continued, explaining the workings of his eradication of this Fulcrum after Vader had inspired II with his defeating of Ahsoka Tano.

Vader folded his brutish and black arms before Thrawn, possibly pleased, possible displeased, it was impossible to tell under the mask, and Thrawn was still relatively in the dark about Vader as a person and an enigma. He had certainly no read on the Dark Lord's expression under the menacing faceplate.

"Good work Grand Admiral," Lord Vader complemented, much to even Thrawn's surprise. Thus far the Dark Lord had done nothing but surprise the Chiss at every turn and meander through their minefield of a report and briefing. But now Thrawn was somewhere, somewhere he liked to be very much and thus let out a sharp grim at what he sensed was a culmination of the conversation. "Eliminate Eclipse with all speed and deliver this Fulcrum to me Grand Admiral, before the commotion around the city takes the Emperor's eyes," Darth Vader finished, laxing his biceps and unfolding his arms.

Thrawn bowed once more, signaling the conversation over before his superior could, a dangerous move. "The matter will be resolved in a few hours, My Lord," Thrawn assured the black suited enforcer once again.

"I hope so Grand Admiral. Don't fail us again."

The transmission ended in a haze of fading blue back into the blackness of the dimly lit room that was Thrawn's private art collection study. And he smiled. Thrawn smiled before himself as the holo of Fest once again took place at the desk and the dossiers returned with it. There was a name and a face that it belonged to in the pile of dossiers, and that one face with the adjoining name was the new Fulcrum, and the same man that had descended upon Coruscant hours ago to meet with and new subsequently aid Juno Eclipse until she was in the hands of the Rebellion with the knowledge she had. The knowledge that Thrawn so desperately desired to be back in his own hands. For he knew if she delivered it to the Rebels, he would no doubt feel a certain degree of wroth from the Dark Lord Vader.

That was, if Grand Admiral Thrawn let Fulcrum and Eclipse escape his web that was so close to ensnaring them. It was only a matter of hours before it finally did. Before Juno was dead and this Fulcrum was in an Imperial holding cell aboard his Chimaera. Then the real game began.

"The total destruction of the Rebellion," Thrawn whispered to himself, as he got back to sifting through the files. One name would be in there that would reveal who Fulcrum was. It was up to the Chiss to locate that very name.

Cassian and Juno rounded the corner in the complex, blaster pistols in hand and Cassian's furry collar brushing against the faint lines of stubble on his cheek. He was panting as silently as he could but they had been running between and under barrage after barrage of blaster fire since she had blown up the work depot shuttle. It was a brash move, one he had totally not agreed with. Killing so many men and women for the simple need of a distraction they needed to get out of the nest while they could. Juno knew it, and as Fulcrum, Cassian knew it too.

He also knew there was almost no way off the buzzing hornet's nest that the area of Coruscant had become without another perhaps bigger sacrifice of Imperial citizens. Colonel Dravin would have his head and his rank for something bigger than a work transport shuttle. What else did Juno have in mind?

The blonde haired woman, still in a torn and tattered Imperial officer uniform, looked around the corner of the corridor of her apartment complex. The sirens of police and the repulsorlifts of Stormtrooper Shuttles could still be heard outside, they were very quickly being boxed in and if that were not bad enough, the Deathtroopers were already skulking around the complex.

"I hope you know what you are doing," Cassian grunted in a whisper, pressing his head back to the wall and keeping his profile as thin as he possibly could.

The day's tarnishment had already made him gently despise the woman in black before him as she looked back at him. There was a Deathtrooper ahead, between them and her apartment. She hoped to the stars that Kayeight had reached the U-Wing already and that he and the Toydarian were in the air ready. She had sunk a lot of credits to making sure the alien was on the up and up and completely in her pocket. On Coruscant, with Deathtroopers around that still made even a Toydarian's loyalty shakey. What was worse was the presence of the black armoured killing machines in the first place. It meant that one or more of three of the most dangerous people in the entire Navy were coordinating her capture, and she had a fairly good guess that it was the man in white with blue skin.

"Thrawn," she let slip, thinking about how must have jumped her prematurely in the Academy earlier that morning.

"What? Who is Thrawn?" Cassian zipped in a question, his voice still low. He hated being in the dark, and right now was as dark as it could be, not just the corridor but the entire situation. Still Cassian Andor had absolutely no idea who Juno Eclipse really was, what she was doing, what she knew that the Alliance had to so much, or how she even planned for them to escape aside from Kayeight. That was not going to be enough right now. A U-Wing was not designed to run a blockade.

Juno denounced his curiosity and looked back to the Deathtrooper pacing the corridor with his rifle raised and his guard on full alert. It was out of the question to run behind and snap his neck. "Do you have a flashbang?" She asked Cassian, a look of desperate haste on her pale white face.

For a moment, as Cassian looked at her, with her pale white flesh, her blonde hair and blue eyes, the whole look of what Palpatine wanted his ideal Imperial society to look like, Cassian thought that he could not in all good conscience hand her the grenade suddenly in his hand. What if this were a ploy? What if she were suddenly about to prime it and drop the thing at his feet, only to allow the trooper to come and restrain him? He had to remind himself that he were still Fulcrum even if he was a field agent. He was still a Rebel Intelligence coordinator and ran intel for multiple cells and multiple insiders and Rebel collaborators everywhere. He was still an asset to the Rebels, and therefore an Imperial target.

Could he honestly trust her?

In the end, there was only one thing he could do. "Get ready," he told her with an angered face as he pulled the pin on the tube and tossed it into the corridor. Both of them closed their eyes and covered their ears until the vibrations around them stopped. Then Juno revealed herself, blasting three whole rounds of warm green laser into the black studded chest of the lone Deathtrooper.

Advancing, with no regard for Cassian, she walked on ahead. "You don't trust me," she stated, matter of factly as he quickly caught up, grabbing the Deathtrooper's rifle to use as his own in case reinforcements showed up anytime soon. "Understandable, but foolish. If I were still playing for the Imperials you're going to find something out now that will shock you to the core," Juno told him, a little coldly and with a plain savagery.

"What are you going to show me? That you're engaged to a Sith Acolyte?" He asked as she swiped her security card over the sealed lock of her apartment door.

From inside as they both entered came a different voice, one still female, but a little deeper than Juno's and with more spice and exotica in it that her standard Imperial accent contained. The voice he heard was not from the Core, as Juno was, it was from the Mid Rim, which Cassian found odd, especially why it was coming from Juno's apartment.

"Well, you're not exactly wrong," the new woman spoke from inside the room. She was slightly shorter than Juno, with a hood made from a black scarf around her head to cover what Cassian could see was fiery red hair. She wore fingerless gloves and some mishmash of black and grey garbs that looked a little like the remnants of Acolyte cloths. And from there Cassian knew exactly who she was, from rumours and from a leaked dossier that some informant has supplied to the Alliance months ago. It told of a woman with red hair that knew how to use a lightsaber but barely the force, who was being trained by Palpatine as part of his Honour Guard scheme. It created powerful enforcers like Vader only not as powerful to crush Rebellion splinter cells on Outer Rim systems and planets in the Western Reaches.

His blaster holding hands dropped to his front and with one of them Cassian pulled at his chin in disbelief. "I don't believe this," he grunted audibly before pacing in a burning anger as Juno stood beside the ginger woman. "You're that woman that came through, wanting to defect, from Palpatine's training program. You. You're Mara Jade," he gasped and sighed, while trying to push him mild anger out through his limbs.

Just another detail from the shadowy Juno Eclipse to make his day and his life all the more hazardous and convoluted. What next, a weapon that could destroy a planet would show itself above the sky? Would they have to outrun a nuclear explosion?

"Yes she is," Juno told him before Mara could open her mouth. "Cassian we'll have to explain later, we need to get out of here before more of Thrawn's Deathtroopers arrive," she followed, moving to the bedroom and quickly grabbing a bag that must have already been packed before hand. This was it, they had to leave and they had to do so quickly before they were captured and Juno destroyed. She was the only one that Thrawn would relish in killing. Mara he needed returned to Palpatine and Cassian he needed to torture for intel, being Fulcrum. It was far too dangerous to remain.

Still angered beyond comprehension, Cassian pushed past his rash of annoyance at Juno and pulled out his comlink, the other of which was in Kayeight's possession. "Kay, are you there? We need the ship now!" He roared into the mic to the droid. The little astromech responded with a series of beeps affirming that the U-Wing was inbound.

Suddenly they could hear the low-pitched hum of the repulsorlifts and the engines whirl outside, which told them all that it was coming to the far end of the corridor, to the window, as planned by Juno. They had to go now.

Exiting the door, a squad of Stormtroopers mixed with two Deathtroopers was between them and the end of the corridor, before the U-Wing's compartment. "It's them! Blast them!" One trooper called out before another flurry of magenta and orange-red laser fire came soaring down the corridor right at Cassian as he attempted to leave.

"Watch out!" Mara called, pulling him back into the room and to the floor. "I'll handle these," she told the breathless and still reeling captain.

From her cloak she pulled the hilt of something Cassian and Juno both had never seen before in their lives, but knew all too well, and were astounded as to how she had stolen it from the Program. It was the all too fabled hilt of a lightsaber, either constructed for Palpatine's New Order, or stolen from the corpse of a Jedi who had fallen over eighteen years ago. It was an actual lightsaber, and it was in Mara's hands. Cassian could not believe his eyes as she pressed the button that activated the blade, and a beautiful and splendid purple beam of laser came from the end of the hilt. It was marvelous, exactly as the stunned captain had read before in story books.

Then with the flourish and vigor of what Cassian imagined a Jedi Knight to be, Mara tossed herself into the corridor and began to deflect and meet bolt after bolt with the purple of her lightsaber. Like a true Jedi she deflected all of them, clearing the gaggle of troopers out one by one until they charged upon her and she met them. However unlike a Jedi she began to cut them down one by one, disarming them quite literally and otherwise severing pieces off them off of their bodies until they were all dead. After seconds of mild slaughter that both Cassian and Juno admittedly saw slashes of the famed Darth Vader in, the corridor end was clear and they were a go to escape. And they had too all too quickly as Cassian heard more footsteps come from the stairwell.

"Go now!" He shouted at Juno and Mara, the former shooting out the window at the end of the corridor and seeing the face of her bought Toydarian open the door to the U-Wing. One by one they all piled in just as the Deathtroopers made it up the stairs and began to fire at the craft, the deflector shields held fast until they whisked away and into the sky, TIE Fighters swarming after them as they did.

Cassian quickly got into one of the cockpit chairs and plugged himself into the desk via the combat communication headphones. He had to be quick if they were going to escape being shot down by the two fighter craft now directly on their tail. "Come on baby hold together for a few seconds," he muttered to the craft and to himself.

Juno quickly kisses Mara on her lips and joined him in the copilot's chair, plugging herself in too. "What are you doing?" Cassian asked her rapidly as he took control from the astromech in the back flying the big shuttle.

"Give me control I'm a better pilot, you get the jump coordinates ready and prepare the jump to lightspeed now Captain," Eclipse ordered him with a boldness in her Imperial accent. He even complied, giving her access to the flight controls and allowing her to take them through some wild maneuvers as they climbed into the upper atmosphere. "Come on Ander how long?!" Juno yelled as they climbed higher and higher, dodging green lasers from the chasing fighters the whole while. And if there was something Cassian hated even more than her right now it was working under pressure. But still he punched in the coordinates for Yavin as fast as his hands and mind would allow him. "Cassian now!" Juno roared into his ear as the light blue of the atmosphere dissipated and dissolved into the blackness of space, with Star Destroyers before them and another squad of TIE Fighters heading right towards them.

"Now!" Cassian yelled back in his exotic voice and Juno slammed forward the hyperspace control lever and they quickly blasted forward into the tunnel of lightspeed, away from the hornet's nest and to relative safety. For the time being.

In Thrawn's central chamber the alert came in the form of an Ensign handing him the report from the two Star Destroyers in orbit that witnessed the U-Wing jump away from their turbolasers. Needless to say Thrawn's hair rippled as he steamed with anger and annoyance that the malcontent of his soldiers and ships would cost him again.

And then he read the section of the report that referenced 'lightsaber wounds on dead troopers' and it all clicked in his mind.

He looked up and to the holo of the planet that was levitating above his desk, not Fest anymore, he had changed it to Coruscant to witness the escape of Fulcrum and Eclipse, and now to his knowledge one more Rebel whom she had smuggled and hid on the planet. How could he have been so blind?

"And now I finally have you too, Mara Jade," he told to himself, bringing up her fair face with ginger hair on the holo. "Let the game of cat and mouse finally commence. Myself, versus you, Fulcrum, and Juno Eclipse…

"I highly anticipate the dramatic conclusion, and I'm sure you all do too. Let the best win."

To Be Continued…