"How'd we do?" Kess asked eagerly between tasks of bringing up Han and Lando and helping them unravel from climbing harnesses.
"Don't know yet," Lando grunted.
Han struggled out of the strap and took an unsteady step backwards. "Come on, Kess. Let's get on board before anyone sees the crowd."
Naturally, Kess didn't want to go yet. She stood on the edge and tried to peek safely over so she could confirm Luke was coming too. She could sense him down there, but she wanted to see it with her own eyes.
Chewie put a big arm in front of her leaning chest and warbled tones of safety, chinning her to follow Han's order. The zip line was already taught with the next heavy body, so Kess obeyed and headed back up the ramp before she saw Luke emerge from below.
Back in the main bay, Han slumped down in the engineering chair, Lando helped himself to a container of hydrate in the galley, and Kess stood in the center of the deck, listening at the boot stomps following them into the ship, but Luke wasn't the first to come around the corner.
Her first reaction to Vanech was that of a mouse being approached by a boa constrictor. A sexy boa constrictor perhaps, but a dangerous predator nonetheless. Yet she could sense it from the others that he was someone with which they were forced to appease. They needed to play his game if they were to succeed in this mission, even if their trust in him was precarious. Kess instinctively treated this moment like that of any other uncertain trouble, still and silent, but watched the predator carefully.
Vanech strolled into the main bay as if he owned the place. He ignored Chewie sitting down to the game table with a passing comment. He ignored Luke leaning an impatient shoulder against the hatch frame behind him. The leather-wrapped meat stick squinted at Kess with tiny eyes, cocked his head, and grinned.
"Okay, we're here now." Lando announced. "Can we settle this? We don't have a lot of time."
Vanech licked his teeth as he looked Kess up and down and strolled slowly around her. She could feel more than just his eyes on her. There was a hot tickle on the Force that snagged her sexual attention. She concentrated to stuff away this embarrassing reaction before Luke could detect it.
Han rolled his head on his neck and shouted, "Vanech! Focus please?"
"Oh, but I am focused." Vanech crooned quietly. He settled on his feet behind Kess's flank, outside the stretch of her vision.
She could see Luke's eyes narrow with warning. She straightened her spine and lifted her chin to exude strength, but strength was not what she felt. Quickly, she threw up a mental blocks and focused her mind on finding an anchor deep in her gut to weigh herself back down.
Vanech chuckled low. "I just found your golden ticket."
Kess barely felt the touch on her earlobe when Luke's hand lifted from his side. A bang crashed against the bulkhead behind her. The dark side spiked throughout the cabin in a strength and sharpness that stabbed her like a dozen knives. Her eyes widened at Luke and, by the time she turned to see what happened, Vanech was flat against the bulkhead with arms and legs splayed like a freshly-swatted bug.
Han sat up in alarm. Lando's eyes bulged. Chewie woofed out a quiet laugh and stomped his furry foot.
Vanech grinned sickly as he was released and relaxed back to the deck.
Luke changed his gesture to a warning finger. "Don't touch her."
"Guess the new Jedi aren't wasting time with vows of chastity, eh?"
Kess flatted her mouth and lifted her palms. "There's no need for a testosterone contest."
"Ah, but testosterone is about to be your plaything, little girl. If it ain't already." Vanech stepped around and in front of her again, now stepping backward to make some space between him and everyone else. "You guys want to get into the party, she's it."
"How?" Han challenged fiercely.
"I've been contracted to bring the evening's feminine entertainment. I can get her in there far easier than any of you."
"Out of the question," Luke concluded.
"No, wait." Lando stopped him. He raised a palm and stepped toward Vanech. "You want to get her in there as a prostitute? But can you get her in there with enough respect that she can deliver the terms of the Alliance?"
"You think my ladies don't carry enough respect?" Vanech squinted at the insult. "What kind of back alley pimp do you take me for?"
Luke shook his head, "We're not having this discussion—
Han put a palm out to Luke to shut him up as he eyed Vanech. "It's the safest way to get in there?"
Vanech nodded. And he was dead serious.
Luke shouted at Han, "You don't think they're going to be checking identchips of the whores too?"
Kess blinked back. She didn't know Luke even knew that word.
"Of course they will." Vanech told him, "But I have a better chance of dressing her up to the likeness of one my current employees than any of you punks."
Kess briefly gazed at the deck, then lifted an eyeball at Luke. He saw it, opened his mouth, and his head angled to curl away.
"I do have experience with this sort of the thing," she pointed out gently.
"Oh really?" Lando's eyebrows went into his forehead.
Han tossed his head back with a dark laugh, nodding to remember a reference to that history.
"Is that so?" Vanech grinned more.
Kess was about to explain when Luke turned away from all of this and disappeared into the corridor.
All watched him go. They eyed each other for a moment as to the next step. Vanech waited. Lando shrugged. Han sat up in the chair to Kess. "Can you do it?"
She shrugged her hands. "Yeah, I can do it. I'm not comfortable with the politics of negotiating, but the proposal is in a packaged datacard I can hand off, right?" She shrugged again. "They know who I am. All I have to do is convince them the word is good and make sure they all see it. I can do that."
"Okay." Han gestured resolution and thumbed her out of the bay. "You go talk him down while Vanech works terms with us." He pushed out of the chair. "Let's get the Falcon moved while we figure this out."
Kess went out of her way to walk around Vanech for the corridor. She knew she could do this plan, but something about this man was viscerally unsettling, and since Vanech seemed to bring out the darkest side of Luke she'd ever seen, perhaps it was better that she served this part of the mission just to keep the two separated.
It scared her. The way he instantly slammed Vanech into the wall after scarcely reaching for Kess, without pausing for thought, without struggling with the conflict of it, it scared the piss out of her. This was a side of Luke she never imagined he had.
Until she found out about his lineage, that is. And now it scared her that much more.
When she found him, he had wandered back to the bunk where they'd been sleeping, until last night anyway. The wall locker was open and Luke pressed both palms on each side of the bulkhead to stare where Artoo's precious brain parts snuggled in a box. His mouth was tight and his breath shook through his nose.
Don't obey me like I'm Vader, he had said. But if this is what she had to face when she did . . . ? Kess was never more afraid to approach him than right now.
She could hear the others already talking as they stepped into the cockpit. Lando asked Han if Luke was going to be all right, and Vanech responded with a laugh in his words, carrying the essence of, "I don't give a f—
"What does he have against you?" She asked gingerly.
"Same thing everyone else does." His voice was rough. He pushed off the bulkhead and kicked it hard before showing his back to her.
Her words shook. "And what do you have against him?"
Appalled, Luke spun around, "You didn't sense it?"
"Sense what?"
He scoffed; his eyes wide at her blindness. Wrath and wounds spiked from him like a cactus. "What he wants to do with you?"
Desperate to get control of this, she whispered fast. "That doesn't mean he's going to get permission!" She stressed what should have been obvious. "I'm only going to pose as a prostitute, Luke, I'm not going to actually pick up a customer!"
He pointed hard at the bulkhead. "Did that man look like he was going to give you a choice?"
"And I'm sure that man will be suitably surprised to find I have a lightsaber on my hip."
Luke pressed his mouth. His jaw rippled. His eyes stared.
"I thought you trusted me more than this."
He rubbed his lips and looked at the floor. With him unwilling to say it, and her insult growing, she closed her eyes and opened up to see it with her own senses.
Jealousy.
So, for that spike of attraction when Vanech stalked into the room, for that one tiny moment of captivation, Luke's reaction was more about her thoughts than his.
Her throat constricted. "What, no redhead jokes now?"
His eyes flashed with anger.
"You think those don't hurt?" She accused.
Luke tried to dismiss that with a shake of his head. "You shouldn't take those seriously."
"And you shouldn't take this seriously," she whispered hard. "I'm going to have to pretend some damned uncomfortable things to pull this off, but you should know me better than to be offended by them."
Luke began to calm with a pout of regret.
"You think I would've waited through all that training on sheer hope if you weren't who I wanted in the long run? Come on, Luke! I was in love with you before you even knew my name."
"That's not true," he tried to say.
"What makes you think I'm going to hop into bed with the first hot guy I see?"
He rattled his hands at her. "I've known you for more than a year. We've been in the same room for dozens of introductions and hundreds of other men. That was the first time I've ever seen you sprout like that. But then you stuffed it away like it was old hat. Like you were practiced at hiding it from me."
"You're telling me you've never looked at a woman before?" She laughed low and audacious. "On the very day you were out with the boys at a strip club! And you're trying to pass off that you've never looked at woman before?"
His chin retreated. His jaw cocked. "I didn't pick the contact meet—
"That's not my point," she laughed with disbelief. "You look me in the eye and tell me you didn't cop a peek at what they were selling."
Luke closed his mouth. He swallowed carefully. He locked his knees and crossed his arms hard at his chest. "Okay. Then you look me in the eye and tell me you haven't coveted someone else since we met. Other than him."
The Force flashed with panic and guilt. Busted. Kess's jaw hardened.
"Who's being a hypocrite now?" He hissed.
Kess struggled to regain her standing. "Luke, I forgive you for being human." She insisted. "But I ask you to show me the same respect."
He glanced away, and came back to it. His voice was softer, but still low. "Even so, I'm not comfortable with you dressing up as a prostitute to get into this thing."
"You got any other ideas? This thing starts in a couple of hours."
He flattened his mouth.
"It's simple, it's quick, and it's doable. And it leaves you free to go save my brother. Personally, I like those odds better than having to do it the other way around."
Luke began to relax but only to the logic of it. He sighed and nodded, and dropped his palm against the bulkhead with a locked elbow. With another hard huff, he rubbed his eyes.
Kess stepped up into him and softened her voice. "You need to go meditate, like really, really bad. Because you're scaring the crap out of me. I don't know who this is that's trying to take control of you but it isn't you."
His eyes flicked to her.
"And I want you back."
Kess stared at him with the terrified sincerity of her message, and Luke eyed her back with a depth of understanding that she was only beginning to put together. She ended the discussion with a loving touch on his wrist, but the anger was in her eyes, as it was reflected in his.
Then Kenobi's granddaughter and Vader's son gave each other some space before they made it worse.
