Trigger warnings: brief description of an almost-panic-attack
Ventress makes it look easy.
They wait for the droids to pass and then she darts forward, flitting from shadow to shadow until she's at the console. A wave of her hand and the security gate clicks open.
And he thought General Skywalker was a showoff.
Fives scowls and follows her inside the first building.
It's a lot of long gray corridors and heavy metal doors; one looks the same as the next. Searching the place room-by-room would take days – and they don't have that. "Do you have any idea where the data center is?" Fives asks tensely.
Ventress stops and cocks her head at him. Her face is hidden by her helmet but he's sure she's smirking. "Relax, trooper," she drawls.
The name is Fives. "You said you knew your way around," Fives says. "So where's the data center?"
She snorts softly. "What's your rush?"
He's seen that same languid confidence in General Skywalker – just never in the middle of a base on one of the most heavily fortified Separatist planets in the galaxy. "Look," Fives says. "I don't know—"
She holds up a hand to silence him; he obeys by default. It takes him an infuriating second to realize that there's no imminent danger: she just wanted him to shut up.
"They used an old blueprint for this base. The data center is at the heart of the compound," Ventress says calmly. "But that area will be monitored by a video feed."
"So confuse it," Fives says. "Can't you just do a – wave? Use the Force?"
Ventress scoffs and starts walking again. Fives waits a second and then goes after her. His blaster is still holstered but his vibroblade is a comforting weight in his gauntlet.
Ventress takes them through a series of twists and turns that Fives quickly memorizes. There's no guarantee she wasn't lying, that she didn't just bring him along as a human shield in case their incursion went straight to hell – though he's not sure how he'd manage to outrun someone who, more than once, has gotten the upper hand on Skywalker and Kenobi.
This is a worse plan than going to Raxus in the first place.
He can just hear Rex's sigh.
Ventress stops so suddenly Fives almost runs right into her. "I did 'the hand wave,'" she says dryly. "Feel free to charge in and trigger the other alarms."
"Are there other alarms?"
"No," she says, brushing by him into the control room, "but if there were, I'm sure you'd manage to trip them."
She's already standing by the chair at the console by the time he clears the hallway and seals the door. "After you," she says, with an elegant wave of the hand.
Fives stares at her for a long beat and then stiffly walks over and takes a seat. She spins the chair around for him with a flick of the wrist, fast enough that he lurches forward with the force of the sudden stop.
"Thanks," Fives grouses.
"Don't mention it."
A few keystrokes bring up the system. There are massive trees of folder hierarchies, some of which are labeled with sequences of letters and numbers that have no meaning without the correct cipher to decode them.
There's too much data here to transfer. Too much to go through right now, too.
"Do you have any idea what you're looking for?" Ventress asks, leaning over his shoulder to peer at the screen. "Or are you just hoping you happen across it?"
"You could be a little more helpful."
"I got us in here," she reminds. Fives doesn't answer her. She sighs. "What are you looking for?"
"I don't know," Fives says shortly. He plugs in the drive; his fingers fly across the keys. There has to be something here. Even if he can't access the actual contents of the files without the proper codes, he can at least get a sense of their secrets from their labels.
Projects. Ship schematics. Past troop deployments. Future campaigns. Battle plans. It's a trove. Can't imagine what the Republic could do with all this data if they got their hands on it – can't imagine how it could turn the tide of the war.
He quietly starts a data transfer.
"You don't know?" Ventress enunciates slowly.
Fives feels like he should probably at least turn and look at her, from the tone of her voice, but he can't tear his eyes away from the screen. No time to waste. "It's not that I don't have any idea," Fives says quickly, to save himself from an early decapitation and a second death. "It's that I'm not sure the data even –exists."
Ventress slams her hand down on the console. Fives jumps. "Explain," she orders.
Explain that this entire war has been a sham. Explain that the Republic's highest leader has been working against it since the start. Explain that there is a chip in every clone's head that'll turn them against the Jedi at the flick of a switch and every piece of documentation has been covered up and swept away. Explain that he's trying to trace a conspiracy that's not supposed to exist. Explain that he saw genocide sweep the galaxy, saw fire rise and brothers fall and in the end, when the smoke cleared, the Chancellor standing above it all.
Likely story.
Fives coughs a laugh.
"Did I say something funny?" Ventress asks lowly.
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
"Try me," she grits out.
Fives very deliberately removes his helmet and sets it down. Then he turns to meet her gaze.
"The Chancellor," he says with a tight smile, "is a di'kutla Sith."
The air rings between them. For a second, Fives wonders just how right Rex really was – wonders if he's about to get his second taste of death.
Ventress slowly tugs off her own helmet too. "What do you know about the Sith?" she asks, narrowing her eyes.
"That they're like the opposite of the Jedi. That you were an apprentice to one," Fives says. "That Dooku's one. That Palpatine's one."
"How would you—"
"Because he – I don't know, he froze time," Fives hisses. It comes flooding back, a tumbling rush of ruin. Helpless. Held. Can't breathe. It hurts to breathe. "Everything stopped and I heard his voice in my head. He showed me who he was. He showed me what he was going to do. What would happen to my brothers. What he would make them do to the Jedi. He's planning a genocide."
Ventress' eyebrows shoot up. It's quiet for so long he's sure something inside her just snapped. "He showed you," she says, "what he's planning to do."
"Yeah. That's what I just—"
"How is he going to do it?"
"What?"
"The other clones," she says. "How will he control them?"
"There are organic chips," Fives says, "in every one of us." Her face twists warily; he surges ahead. "Not me. I had mine removed. Long story. Bottom line: I have to stop him. I have to stop him from activating them."
Ventress considers him. Fives makes himself breathe and keeps his hands visible and on the console. He'd be dead before he got halfway to his blaster anyway.
Rex would have a heart attack if he knew about all of this roulette: gambling his life on an assassin's impulse.
"What else do you remember?" she asks finally.
"That's it."
"That's it?"
"I was –" Can't say drugged; she might think he hallucinated the whole thing. He wishes he had. Wishes he didn't wake up sweating and clutching at his chest. He still hears that damned voice in his nightmares. Still feels the sick tendrils wind into his mind like a disease. "I was just a little overwhelmed at the time, all right?"
"Think," Ventress says again. "He showed you exactly what he was going to do and you can't remember it?"
Rex, firing. Rex, falling. Jesse. Kix. Gone. Fives shakes it off. "He said something," he says, furrowing his brow. "He said something right before everything went to hell. Sixteen. Six. No. Sixty-six. Order Sixty-Six."
"Check the records for a protocol Sixty-Six," Ventress says, and when he doesn't move fast enough she reaches over and does it for him in a flurry. The system whirs, spins – and stops.
Nothing.
Maybe he should have expected that.
"Haar'chak," Fives mutters.
Ventress doesn't look impressed. "Move," she says, and Fives scoots the chair out of the way so she can get to the console. She stares at him disdainfully. "Thank you," she says, dripping sarcasm.
"Don't mention it."
If looks could kill.
Ventress spends ten seconds flipping through files and then abruptly stops, tilting her head like she's listening for a sound he can't hear. "Follow me," she says, slipping to her feet and replacing her helmet. "There's nothing for you here."
Fives grimaces and pulls his own helmet back on. The second Ventress turns her back he disconnects the drive. No time to check the transfer status. It'll have to be enough.
Time to move.
Ventress doesn't walk back down the corridor: she flows, fluid grace; if he didn't already know she was there he's not sure he'd realize it until it was too late. If she decides to turn on him, chances are he wouldn't see it until she was slitting his throat.
Yeah, definitely never telling Rex about this.
Ventress leads them to a far corner of the base. She waves her hand over the controls. The door hisses open.
It's dark inside; Fives' helmet automatically adjusts for the lighting. There are piles of boxes stacked haphazardly – crates and crates, stretching far back into the room.
It's a warehouse of a store room and it smells like it hasn't been emptied out since before the war started.
"What are we doing here?" Fives asks, but Ventress doesn't look like she's heard him. She keeps walking as if in a trance, further and further into the sea of durasteel. Fives rushes after her. What did Droidbait used to say all the time in that stupid, nasally joke voice that made Echo so mad? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
And if your enemy is an ex-Sith apprentice, you fuse yourself to her side.
Ventress doesn't stop until she's nearly at the back of the room. She freezes suddenly and slowly stretches one hand out. Either she's snapped and completely lost it or the Force is telling her something. Fives snorts.
Can't be anything that'll help with the chip problem. Can't be anything that'll bring down Palpatine.
The air is thick. Heavy. It weighs on him, pressing at his skull. Fives shifts uncomfortably and shakes his head. It doesn't do much to dispel it. His chest aches. Heart pounds. It feels wrong.
It feels like death.
"Hey," Fives whispers, when she hasn't so much as shifted for a good seven minutes. His mouth is dry. "What are you doing?"
Ventress only holds up her hand and raises one finger. Fives grits his teeth and does his best not to tap his foot.
Then, finally, she moves, snapping to a small crate and prying the lid off. It releases in a shower of dust. She sets it aside, taps her gauntlet, and turns the light on her prize.
Fives dares step closer. The crate looks like it might be the oldest thing in the place. It's empty.
No, not empty. Not quite. There, at the bottom, are three lightsabers and a cube that looks a lot like the ones he's seen Kenobi toying with every now and again. "What is all of this?" Fives asks.
"These boxes," Ventress says in a hushed whisper. "They're all filled with artifacts."
"More lightsabers?"
The cube glows in her hand. "Among other things," she says distantly, like she's in a trance.
"What do the Separatists want with artifacts?"
"If they have them, the Jedi don't."
Fives has never really understood the power the Jedi derive from their sacred objects. A cube's a cube: just another way to store data. A laser sword is a laser sword: just a weapon. He guesses the Sith probably aren't that different, just with a lot more backstabbing and genocide.
"Can we go?" Fives asks. Ventress takes a long moment. Slowly, almost reverently, she stows the lightsabers and the cube in her pack. Only once they're secure does she turn to him.
"We need to move," she says, as if the trance never happened.
Fives thought about leaving, but he was more afraid of having her behind him, out of sight, than he was of getting caught waiting. At least then she'd have an incentive to clear a path through the droids to the door instead of carving one through him.
It was quiet when they came in, off-hours, minimal staff and internal droid patrols; now there's nothing. Now the quiet feels sinister. Wrong. The air is suffocating.
Ventress waves the door open.
At first Fives thinks someone threw a flashbang. He just barely gets a glimpse of the dilemma before a strong grip latches around his arm and yanks him back into the compound. The door slams shut on the floodlights.
The entire entrance is blocked by a battalion of droids.
"What did you do?" Ventress hisses.
She didn't see the drive. Transferring some of the files must have tripped a silent alarm.
Osik.
No time for the truth. No way to lie.
Fives shrugs helplessly.
"What did you do?" Ventress demands again, low menace.
"Can we focus on the droid armada that wants to kill us?" Fives shoots back. "You said they used an old schematic. Where are the other exits?"
She growls. And then she's off.
Even sprinting, he can't keep up: he can only keep her in sight. Outside, the droids are rumbling, advancing: their commander's not patient enough to wait for them to come out or maybe too worried about what else they might take if they're allowed to stay in.
"You've got to be kidding," Fives says, skidding to a stop behind her. She's popped a ventilation cover off the wall; at a glance, he knows he'll fit into the shaft. It's just not going to be pretty.
"Do you want to get out of here alive or not?" she asks.
Fives blows out a breath and forces himself forward. Ventress goes first, a lithe shadow some feet ahead of him; with her narrower frame, she can slip more easily through the sinuous system. He's much slower, focused on not wedging himself a millimeter too far one way or another and finding himself a new and permanent addition to the base.
The droids are clanking around somewhere below them, an ominous thrum. Fives knocks his head. There's a light thud. He pauses, doesn't breathe – heart pounding – there's nothing – then inches on.
Keep quiet. It rings in his mind suddenly, a sharp rebuke. His breath catches. His chest is tight. Fives swallows against the acid welling in his throat. He has to keep going. He has to stop. He has to stop.
Keep on.
There's clattering ahead. Light. Ventress' shadow disappears through the opening. A moment later, Fives follows after her. He realizes too late it's not an easy drop out.
He falls face-first into the garbage receptacle. Ventress is perched easily on the side of the bin, surveying their surroundings.
At least it's mostly old droid parts.
"My ship isn't far," Ventress says, while he struggles to climb up beside her. She glances at him. "You'll never make it back to yours."
"I'll take my chances."
"If you'd taken your chances back there, you'd be dead," she says, leaping gracefully down. Fives jumps after. Ventress faces him. He imagines she's scowling under her helmet. "Besides, you owe me."
"Deal's off," Fives says, dusting off some suspicious black mud.
"Oh?"
"There was nothing in there."
"I said I'd help you get in and out. I didn't promise they'd have what you were looking for," Ventress says coolly.
It's not quite tomorrow, but the slighted assassin is still Fives' problem regardless. They stare at one another for an eternal moment. "We can have a standoff for the rest of the night," Ventress says, "but the droids will find us before then."
No choice. Not getting off that easy. "Fine," Fives says.
Ventress doesn't seem convinced, if the sharp set of her shoulders is any indicator, but she does let the matter drop. "Follow me."
He's done too much of that in just the last few hours.
The ventilation shaft dumped them out into a passageway that runs along the rear wall of the compound. There's nothing behind it except a security fence and the sheer cliff-face that fence backs up to. No wonder the Separatists didn't station any units here: no one in their right mind would try to escape this way.
They don't have any climbing equipment.
Fives has a sudden image of Skywalker sending Rex flying through the air with a thought. "No," Fives snaps, stabbing a finger at Ventress. She cocks her head, unimpressed.
With a wave of her hand, he's rocketing up. His heart is in his throat, he's too high, too high, then plummeting back down at breakneck speed. He tries to hit so he can roll a few times and then get to his feet but the angle's wrong and he somersaults awkwardly three or four times before he ends up on his face.
Ventress lands beside him in a crouch and immediately shoots to stand. "Move," she says, and Fives mutters every curse he knows while he's stumbling upright and swiping at the mud on his visor.
He misses the buy'ce in his ARC kit already.
"What did you do?" Ventress asks, when they've been walking long enough for him to hate hiking almost as much as Skywalker hates sand.
"What did you find in the magic box?" Fives retorts.
She snorts at that.
The rest of the walk is silent. By the time they arrive at the ship, the sun is just barely peeking over the horizon. The craft is smaller than the freighter he stole, but sleeker, lighter, and faster. If they run into any trouble in or out of atmosphere, it'll be much easier to take evasive maneuvers.
If he's still alive by the time they take off.
Fives drops down into the small bay behind the cockpit and knocks his head back against the wall. Ventress is occupied powering up the ship, running a brief system check and warming up the engines.
"So," Fives calls, "you're not going to kill me?"
The door seals. The engines roar to life. Fives reaches for the blaster at his hip.
"Like I said," Ventress says without turning around, "you owe me."
So he's safe until he's done being useful. Safe until he's betrayed the Republic. "Do you even have any idea where the algorithm is?"
"Enough," she says, and he's not sure if she means information or questions.
For now, Fives decides he doesn't really want to find out.