(A/N)- Done for my Bad Things Happen Bingo. No one requested this one, I just wanted to do it, lol.
Set sometime post "Iron Squadron".
Disclaimer: Alas, no not me. I do not own Star Wars. You can't bet I wouldn't be inserting two episodes of The Mandalorian Season Three into a completely unrelated show if U was
Defiant
The boy tramped quickly down the hallway, his pulse beating in time to the shrill alarm. Mart caught a glimpse around his next corner and pulled up sharply, cursing inside his head. Very carefully he peeked out, leaning just far enough around the bend to see.
A single Stormtrooper was standing his ground against the large, hulking form of one of the animals Mart and his squad had released from their pens, its jowls snapping and dripping drool, hideously furious at the blaster bolts stinging its thick skin.
Giving a soft groan, Mart pulled out his comlink.
"Iron Squadron, come in," he said. "I'm cut off from the hanger, one of those unhappy science projects is blocking my way. You're gonna have to take off without me," he told the others.
Gooti's voice immediately piped in over the line.
"No way!" she declared, fervent and determined. "We're not leaving until you're on board."
"Can you find another route?" asked Jonner, anxiously.
"No time," Mart insisted, already at a wall console, tapping out a quick distress message to beam out on all Rebel frequencies. "Get going, before they catch you too," he ordered.
Gooti huffed with clear discontent and conflict. "This better not be one of your stupid suicide ploys," she accused.
Mart shook his head, taking another look around the corner as the deformed creature lunged and began shredding its teeth into the screaming Stormtrooper. "It's not, I promise, I literally cannot get past that thing without being seen." He hitched the comlink a little higher. "And I'm not quite willing to test how grateful it is that we freed it." Fighting back a bit of nausea as he watched the creature bite apart the poor Stormtrooper, he added grimly, "Let Ezra know what happened, tell him he owes me one."
Both of the other teens grunted in affirmation, and then the channel shut off. Mart let the hand holding his comlink drop to his side as he heard running footsteps behind him.
He swallowed. Even though he'd accepted that he'd have to be left behind, that didn't make the unknown prospect of what these Imperials would do to a Rebel saboteur any easier.
Plastering on a confident smile, Mart turned around to face the trio of oncoming Stormtroopers, raising his hands in surrender.
"Gentlemen!" he called, tone pleasant and casual. "What can I do for you?"
Unamused, the closest trooper lifted his blaster.
Mart had time to grimace before the stun shot hit him.
-SWR-
When he came to, Mart began to realize how ill-equipped the Imperial research facility was for handling prisoners—of the Rebel kind at any rate. He was still in the same hallway; two troopers were standing over him while the third argued back and forth with some kind of technician. Her blonde ponytail flipped in jerks as she gestured with agitation, sometimes at him. He was still groggy from the stun shot but apparently there was some discussion happening about whether or not they should restrain him.
"Well what do you have, because we can't just let him keep laying on the floor!" the trooper complained. "Captain Ahton is going to want to question him."
The technician's face twisted with some chagrin. "We have some spare repair cable? Maybe?" she suggested.
"Then go get it!" the trooper snapped, and the woman scampered off quickly, returning momentarily with a couple coils of electric cord.
Mart blinked up hazily as she passed them to the lead trooper. They didn't even have standard-issue binders? Maybe he'd be able to escape before rescue even came.
He held onto that thought as the lead trooper bent down towards him, cord in hand.
-SWR-
The troopers dragged him none-too-gracefully through the stark halls, the toes of his boots scraping the floor as they went. Mart let them carry him, knowing his best chance to avoid undue damage to himself would be to comply... for now. He still wriggled in their holds, putting up a show of resistance that kept their grip pinchingly tight on his arms.
Finally they made it to some kind of control room or central observation chamber. The room was wider than most others in the facility, though that wasn't saying much considering he was pretty sure the Ghost's common room was bigger than this one, glass lining one wall, computer banks hugging the corners, and a very surly-looking pale Imperial officer standing in the center of the room, tapping his fisted hand against his thigh.
The officer turned to face them as the technician led the way, the troopers pulling up behind her.
"Captain Ahton," said the lead trooper, stopping in front of the man. "We found one of the Rebel insurgents," he reported.
The officer paid Mart a very brief glance and then swiveled to face his technician, pressing her anxiously, "And the test subjects?"
Her face twinged with reluctance but she confirmed, "We... couldn't recover them. They've all escaped the facility."
A pained moan of frustration sounded out of the officer's mouth as he clawed his hands against his face, head reeling back as his moan turned into a growl. Mart almost felt sorry for him for a moment.
The sympathy vanished as the officer decided to have a bit of a temper tantrum and swept his arm across one of the workstations, knocking over several items to the floor. They clattered, loud in the small space.
The officer flashed his technician with an angry look as he rounded back on her. "Do you know how much funding this little incident has just cost this operation?" he demanded hotly.
She shrank under his severe glare, curling into her shoulders mousily, timidly, stammering.
"It can't have been that much," Mart decided to interject. He tilted his head towards the outdated equipment, caked with grime and dust, the scuffed floors and chemical stains. "This place is a dump, didn't you use any budget for decent air cycling units?"
A palpable tense went through the room. The Stormtroopers holding him seemed to be making a deliberate effort to look away from him as if pretending they hadn't heard him speak.
The officer's glare was now turned full measure on him. Ahton motioned for the troopers to straighten Mart to his feet and stalked the short distance across the room as they did so, lifting him up enough for him to get his shoes on the ground.
"Listen here, boy," the officer snarled. "Our facility here might not—" He stopped, a baffled look shooting down towards Mart's ankles. His head lifted, craning sideways at the technician. "Is that... repair cable?" he asked incredulously.
She cringed, wringing her hands together in front of her. "He was a bit kicky," she explained apologetically.
"Do you know how much that costs? It took Requisitions three months for them to send—" Ahton interrupted his own rant, shielding his eyes with one hand and waving her off with the other. "Never mind."
The man composed himself with a long exhale and when he leveled his gaze on Mart again the teal green eyes were hard and vaguely threatening.
Mart stared back evenly, refusing to be cowed.
The tension held for a few seconds.
"We should contact ISB and turn you over to them," the officer said. He began to pace away, one hand held formally against his back. "But seeing as how you've ruined what was essentially my entire life's work, I'm not feeling particularly generous." Dripping scorn and contempt colored every word.
Mart snorted. "You're gonna question me here? Personally? Do you guys even have an interrogation table?" he scoffed.
"We do not," Ahton said, casually picking something up from a table. "But we have this."
He turned back around slowly, taking his time, holding up the long metal rod with his right hand. At the flicker of his thumb the pronged ends sparked, hot yellow arcs dancing across the metal.
Underneath his bravado Mart felt a nervous flicker. He looked at the device—a shock prod of some kind, clearly—with no small measure of trepidation, remembering how one of the lab experiments had screeched with unearthly howls as the end was jabbed into its leg by a trooper.
He wasn't the only one unsettled; the technician's nervous fidgeting hands were up by her mouth now, pressing against her lips and drawing away every time she tried to speak.
"Isn't—Isn't that—? Don't we use that on the test subjects?" she squeaked.
Ahton's pleased smirk confirmed it. "I'm told it's quite painful," he commented casually. Walking slowly back over he fixed Mart with a cold glare. "Right, so this is how it's going to work." All humor and pleasantry was gone, nothing but cold anger in his words now. "I'm going to ask questions," he said. He gripped the shaft of the rod a little tighter. "And you're going to give me enough useful answers to present to Imperial Command that I can salvage something out of this mess," he growled.
Mart lifted his chin defiantly. "Warning you ahead of time, that's not likely," he said.
"I'm sure," Ahton scoffed. He closed the remaining distance, getting uncomfortably close with the shock prod. "Now," he began, "how did you find this operation?"
Mart shrugged. "I have a Jedi friend who loves animals."
The officer's hand jerked forward, jamming the end of the prod into the boy's stomach.
"Nnngh!" Mart grunted as a tingling sharp pain stabbed through his gut, prickling like fire in his limbs. His upper body curled in on reflex, twitching hard.
The prod was pulled away.
"I don't appreciate smart comments," Ahton growled.
"Noted," Mart strained, unclenching his teeth with difficulty, his next few breaths labored and tight. He squeezed his eyes closed as he tried to shake off the lingering tingles. It was just as well that the officer didn't believe him, probably wasn't a good idea to talk about Ezra or hint that he might be coming back for him. Capturing a Jedi fugitive would probably be enough for old mister Budget Cuts to salvage his reputation.
"I'll ask again," the man was saying now. "Where did your intel come from?"
This time Mart flattened his mouth and met the teal green eyes with a stubborn glare.
The prod was pressed against his chest this time. Mart seized, a horrible feeling like the time he'd poked his finger into an open sparkplug shooting through him, wrenching with pressure at his chest.
He let out a pained gasp.
"Who told you where to find this lab?"
He wasn't even given enough time to answer, the prongs stabbing against his leg. His knee buckled and he sagged in the trooper's hands.
"Was it one of the scrubs?!" Ahton was agitated now, voice rising. He jammed the shock prod in several more times, in rapid succession. "A supplyman, a trooper, who?!"
Each zap stabbed through him, pulsing with sharp pain. Mart's face stayed screwed, locked in a grimace. His body crimped tighter and tighter as the pulsing electricity froze up his muscles. When the Imperial finally stopped, Mart's head was ringing. He struggled to focus his eyes, Ahton's legs blurring in and out.
He was practically dangling from the trooper's hands now, their grip under his armpits the only thing holding him up. The cord around his wrists felt rough, his skin irritated and raw from involuntarily pulling at it. But he pulled his head up, heavy as it felt.
"Wow, trust issues much?" he quipped.
The officer's eyes widened with fury. He handed the shock prod off to his technician stiffly, bending down.
The troopers let go of Mart's arms as their superior grabbed the boy by his collar and hauled him up, drawing back a fist.
Mart braced.
The punch exploded through his cheek, snapping his head aside. Mart bit down a cry, only letting a grunt escape him.
His interrogator not satisfied, he was punched again, white noise and pain flashing through his temple, sparking out his vision for a horrible second. Mart groaned, his head feeling like dozens of jagged ice edges scraping against his skull.
He felt both of Ahton's hands twisting the fabric of his shirt now, yanking him upright only to shove him backwards into the nearest computer bank.
Mart's head cracked against a corner; he hissed as fresh pain blossomed, sliding down the metal side. He craned his neck, spied the reddish smear—Yep, definitely bleeding.—and tried to struggle up onto his elbow.
"Come on," he groaned. "Can you really afford to abuse your equipment like—"
He cut off with a short shriek that strangled as Ahton swooped in to pin the shock prod against his throat, the popping, sparking end digging in just above his collarbone.
Needlelike fire tingled through him. A hot shard of molten iron was lodged in his windpipe, he couldn't speak, couldn't inhale, the electricity spasmed all through his body. His muscles cramped and tightened. His lungs were frozen, no air passing through him. The longer the shock went on the sharper the pain seemed to get, digging in like shivs. Sharper and deeper, stabbing through his whole chest. Kriff, it hurt and he couldn't breathe and—
The prod was pulled away.
For a terrifying few milliseconds after the pain cleared Mart still couldn't make himself breathe. But then a jagged gasp shuddered down his windpipe and he gulped open-mouthed, a harsh cough spasming through him.
His lungs felt like the insides had been scraped out with a spoon. Every limb was sore, his neck most of all. The back of his head burned sharply, hot drops of blood creeping through his hair. Dry air wheezed through him.
Mart didn't know when he'd slid the rest of the way to the floor, but he lay there for a moment just trying to recover. He pried his eyes open. Blinked once or twice to clear his vision. The Imperial officer stood over him, sneering down his nose with cold disgust. The shock prod hung loose in his hand.
The boy felt a cold flare of defiance settling under his sternum. Jerk. Sadist had probably done this and worse to those trapped, abused creatures he and the others had freed. The state of their hides, scarred and riddled with open sores and still-healing wounds...
He raised his head, looking Ahton straight in the eye and giving a little smirk.
"Is that... khakh... all you got?" he asked, voice rasping.
The officer's face twisted apoplectically and Mart braced as the man's boot descended.
-SWR-
It ended eventually. His lip was bleeding now too, and his forehead. He was pretty sure one of the kicks had gotten a rib. His arms and legs were tingling and sore and his chest ached.
They dragged him somewhere. He was too dazed to tell at first. At some point his head stopped spinning and throbbing enough for him to get his bearings.
He was in a cleared-out storage closet. The only thing left in it was an empty mid-wall shelf.
Mart sat up and wriggled free of his binds—repair cable, as it turned out, was not effective restraining material—but didn't have the energy to do much else, so he tucked himself up under the shelf, leaning his head on the wall.
He tried to rest. It was an easier wait this time than those anxious uncertain hours in the dead YT-2400 over Mykapo. At least this time he knew rescue would be coming.
He drifted in and out for a while until a commotion caught his attention from behind the door. A muffled explosion, running and shouting, blasterfire maybe?
He grinned faintly, stretching his legs out a bit.
Voices sounded out in the hall, accompanied by a soft hum. They came rapidly down some kind of hallway and stopped in front of the door. The hum grew louder as a green blade punctured through the lock seal, and the door slid open to reveal a concerned Ezra. Just behind his shoulder stood the nervous Imperial technician, trying anxiously to peek in, and further down the hall Mart could see Zeb standing guard, bo-rifle out and covering the junction.
"You okay?" asked Ezra, coming into the room and reaching out his hand.
Mart uncurled stiffly, giving a small groan. "Everywhere hurts," he complained, grabbing onto Ezra's wrist and using the handhold to pull himself up.
"Yeah, that'll happen," Ezra quipped, smiling as he slung the other boy's arm over his shoulder to support him. "No permanent damage I hope?"
"Probably not." Mart looked past Ezra to the Imperial technician. "I'm guessing you were the inside contact Officer Budget Cuts was worried about, huh?"
She ducked her head with a shy nod.
"You should come with us," Ezra suggested.
She startled a bit at that. "Are you sure?" she asked, clear hesitation on her face.
"Our base is a bit roughshod but it's still better than this trash heap," Mart promised.
"And anyone who goes against the Empire is welcome," Ezra added. He tilted his head a bit. "What can you do?" he asked, genuinely curious.
The woman gave a chagrined grimace. "Officially my position is really just filling out experiment documentation," she confessed. "But I have a full range of combat medic training."
"Awesome. You're in, Miss...?" Ezra prompted.
"Leslynn." She extended a tentative hand out. "Would you like me to take a look at your injuries?" she offered.
Mart paid her a tired look of gratitude. "That'd be appreciated, actually." He had been half-conscious at the time but he was pretty sure the only reason Ahton had stopped was because the woman had stepped in; he remembered her voice arguing with Ahton's and after a long pause the troopers had picked him up off the floor. So he allowed her to step in and take him off Ezra's hands, gingerly aiding him as Ezra moved forward to join Zeb and clear the way.
The facility was deadly quiet; Mart was pretty sure the remaining troopers, all three of them, were lying dead in the halls somewhere. The captain was nowhere to be seen, but that was just as well.
It was a short, uneventful journey to the hanger where the Phantom II was waiting. Mart flopped into the nearest cargo seat, wincing a little as his side stung from the motion. Leaning his head back against the wall, he gave a long sigh of relief.
He really needed to stop getting left behind. At least this time it wasn't due to his own reckless stupidity. And they had done something useful, halting the lab's highly unethical genetic splicing experiments, an attempt to turn creatures into living weapons. And they had even bagged a new medic for the Rebellion.
A little bit of pain was worth that.
Leslynn dug into the shuttle's small medkit as they powered up and took off, and the aches from his injuries started to soothe as bacta was applied.
The tunnel of hyperspace soon filled the viewport, signaling that they were safe.
(A/N)- Surprise OC backstory! Leslynn is a Rebel medic who features in my "Mirrorverse" series. I realized while I was writing this that I had the perfect opportunity to fill in how she wound up with the Rebellion and thought that would be a fun little easter egg for people who've read my other fics. So there ya go.
You can request a prompt/character over on Tumblr. See this post: h tt [#]p s: / / tari silmarwen . tu mb lr . c[#]o m / post / 673415204767465472 / im- doing- a-bad-things-happen- bingo- because (delete the spaces and the special characters in the brackets)