Kallus didn't know what had possessed him to kiss Kiara but at least she didn't fight it. In fact, she appeared to be enjoying it as much as he was. He deepened the kiss further just a second before he felt a strong set of hands pulling him back.
"What?" Kallus growled as he turned to glare at the casino's security officers who had interrupted the moment that he'd been looking forward to for quite some time now. His fist flexed at his side as if in search of an outlet for the frustration that he felt from being denied, extending the moment of bliss before returning to reality.
One of the officers, one with the voice print device, shook his head. "He's not one. And you, miss. Could you please speak up for us?"
"What should I say?" Kiara said with her borrowed voice.
"That's enough. She's not one, either. Let's keep moving."
It took a moment to realize what the man had said as he and the others continued on in their search for some unknown individuals. He knew that Kiara seemed to realize that they were in the clear at the same time that he did as he felt her relax against him when he turned to face her.
"I don't think I gave you enough credit when it comes to avoiding detection," Kiara whispered as she glanced past Alex and continued to watch as the officers questioned others as they passed by them. "That was pretty fast thinking. And they certainly looked convinced."
Kallus wanted to groan. She thought that the only reason he'd kissed her was to play the role of a couple looking for a place to get some privacy in this very public setting. When he felt Kiara move to leave the alcove, he held her in place up against him; his hands on both of her hips, his case of winnings had been dropped to beside his feet sometime after he'd started to kiss Kiara. "Not yet. If they see us, they'll think that the only reason we came here was to hide from them. It'll draw suspicion. "
"They don't look like they'll be going anywhere for a while," Kiara kept watch of the officers as she tried to forget the fact that she was standing very close to Alex, with her hands on his chest. She felt herself being carefully shifted so that she wouldn't stumble in her impractical shoes so that Alexsandr could subtly look over her shoulder toward the men who continued to take voice imprints of their clientele.
"No, they don't." Kallus swallowed as he moved one hand to the base of Kiara's back as he lowered his face to the top of her head and whispered into her hair, "We'll give them a few more minutes and if they don't leave, we'll have to see how well you can pretend to be infatuated with me."
Kiara had a flash to their first nighttime escapade to send out a Fulcrum message and couldn't help it. She looked up at Alexsandr and fluttered her lashes with an exaggerated motion. "You mean, I should look at you with blind adoration?"
"You think you are being cute, don't you?"
"Depends," Kiara giggled with her borrowed voice. "Do you think I'm being cute."
"You flirted better with that Lando guy," Kallus rolled his eyes.
"Jealous?" Kiara snickered before she moved her head slightly to watch as the officers started to slowly move further away. "Besides, for him, I was just playing a role. I pretended to be what he expected. But you, you are lucky enough to get the real me."
Kallus's hand on her hip flexed just a bit before he reached down for his case with his winnings. "Come on. We'd better get going. Just stay close."
She slipped an arm around his waist and asked, "Close enough?"
Alex gave her another unreadable look before he nodded and the two began to pick their way toward the exit. He was pleasantly surprised that Kiara had taken on the appearance of having gotten drunk, thus was leaning heavily while she held onto him. Not that he minded. It gave him a better excuse to keep his arms around her. They kept up the act all the way out of the casino and she only stepped away from him as they neared the hanger. When she did, he tried not to seem disappointed.
When they got to the Shadow Chaser, they quickly went up the ramp and closed it before heading towards the common area of the ship where the Lasat and the Mandalorian were waiting for them. Both seemed to be trying to hold back snickers on their faces. That was when Kallus remembered that he'd never turned the comm unit off. He pulled at the earpiece and saw the knowing look on Garazeb's face.
Great. So, they were listening in on what had happened with Kiara. He closed his eyes and steeled himself for the teasing that was no doubt going to be coming his way very soon. Which wouldn't be as bad if it wasn't for the fact that she thought that the only reason that he'd kissed her had been as part of a ruse to avoid detection by the officers. Well, maybe it had started off that way but that wasn't how it ended before he was pulled away in order to record his voice print.
"Well." Kiara walked over to where the credits were laid out. It was clear that the other two had counted them out already. "How did we do?"
Sabine fought a grin since she wanted to talk to the other woman about something other than the credits, but she figured she'd stick to business for now. "You did pretty well. Better than your first night the last time we were here."
"It would have been even better if I hadn't had to walk away from my last hand. The pot was huge, and I had the winning hand."
"How do you know?" Zeb asked skeptically.
"All these years working alongside Kanan, and you have to ask?"
"The force? Isn't there some sort of rule against using it for personal profit or something?"
Kiara laughed. "Maybe for Jedi; but you forget, I am no Jedi."
"Well, at least they didn't catch you two," Sabine said sincerely.
"Actually," Kallus took a seat at the dejarik table as he spoke. "They didn't appear to be looking for us, at all. When they reached us and recorded our voice prints, they dismissed us pretty quickly. You didn't hear that over the comm?"
Zeb answered as Sabine turned away slightly at the question. "Uh, we'd actually turned the comm unit off."
Kiara shook her head as she looked around at the blushes on the others. Alex can set them straight. "Well, I think I'm going to head to my cabin and crash. Tomorrow is bound to be another interesting day."
Kallus waited until after Valour had left and got ready to get to his feet to head to his own cabin when the Mandalorian stopped him. "I want information."
"What?" He looked over to see if Garazeb planned to help him, but he only chuckled as the woman stood in his way to prevent him from standing up. "And why would I feel obligated to comply?"
"Oh, come on!" Sabine rolled her eyes. "It didn't take a genius to figure out what was going on when the comm went silent. So..."
"If it doesn't take a genius then you don't require me to give you any further information." Kallus wasn't about to discuss this with the younger woman, no matter how intimidating she tried to appear. Sabine let out a noise of frustration as she turned and threw her hands up into the air. Kallus took the opportunity to stand and began to make a hasty retreat. "I'll see both of you in the morning."
With that Kallus headed toward his cabin and went over the events of the evening, reliving the frustration of watching every interaction that he'd witnessed both from a distance as well as up close when Kiara had shamelessly flirted with various gamblers at the tables. And of course, he tried to figure out how she could have misread the kiss that he'd given her.
He fell onto his bunk in aggravation. If it had just been the two of them on the ship, he probably would have gone over to the cabin across the hall to try to talk to her. But somehow just having Sabine and Garazeb on the ship made it feel as if he had an audience. An unwanted audience.
In the security office of Canto Bight the voice prints that had been taken earlier in search of some fugitives were being cataloged and downloaded into the casino's system. They hadn't found the criminals whom they'd been looking for, but one never knew just who could be found when cross-referenced with the Imperial databases.
The officer who was given the duty of checking each and every voiceprint could nearly do this job in his sleep. Sure, there were usually some minor crooks within their walls but for the most part, they weren't worth looking too hard at. He expected tonight's finds would be much the same. That was until one of the voice prints popped.
Wanted for Desertion:
Bounty of 500,000 credits if captured alive.
Bounty of 300,000 credits if brought in dead
Name: Kallus; Alexsandr
Species: Human
Gender: Male
Skin color: Light
Eye color: Hazel
Hair color: Blond
Height: 1.95 meters
Weight: 90 kilograms
That was quite the bounty for a simple deserter. The officer figured that the man must have some dirt on the Empire for such a hefty sum. The officer pulled up the time stamps of the surveillance footage and saw that the individual on the screen didn't match the Imperial database's description of him. But a person can change their appearance. A voice print didn't lie.
The man was wanted by the Empire, and he was going to be the one to collect the bounty. He didn't bother calling his superiors since they would just take credit, and the bounty. He used his comm unit to transmit a message to the nearest Imperial ship so that they could send someone out to seize the man.
The next day when Kiara stepped out of her cabin wearing an outfit that didn't leave much to the imagination once more Kallus gritted his teeth so that he wouldn't say anything that would earn him another slap like he'd gotten the day before. The day went much the same way it had the day before. He did join in at some of the tables but when he did Kiara would give him polite smiles but, for the most part, she pretended that she didn't even know him as she played the games and encouraged various individuals to place bigger bets than they had otherwise planned.
Of course, sometimes Kallus won instead of her. He wasn't sure if that had been by design or not but this way it did seem to take some of the suspicion off of her when the gambler of the moment learned the hard lesson of not letting a beautiful woman goad them into betting more than they wanted.
When Kiara headed over toward the sabacc tables Kallus didn't join her this time. He did still keep watch over her, but it seemed that the system that the two women had devised worked so well that he wasn't really needed at all. Kiara, while accepting far more touching than he was comfortable with allowing, would make it very clear when another player overstepped whatever line she had created for herself.
He went to one of the nearby bars in the casino and ordered a drink; a strong one. He'd just taken his first sip when the operations security approached him.
"Sir, we need you to come with us."
"Is there a problem?" Kallus eyed the other men. A half-dozen individuals who had their hands on their blasters.
"Let's not do this here, sir. We have some individuals who are interested in meeting with you." He tilted his head toward the direction of the office where he wanted Kallus to go. Meanwhile Sabine's voice came over in his earpiece.
"I'll be right behind you."
"No," Kallus said to the woman but looked over at the men as he spoke. He downed the rest of his drink in one swallow and put his glass down. "I'm sure this is all just a misunderstanding and I'll be fine. I wouldn't want to cause any of the others here any inconvenience. They should all go about their own business."
"In that case," the lead officer prodded Kallus to move, "let's go."
Kallus followed behind the lead officer as he was flanked on all sides as the rest of the men closed ranks. Mentally, he started to note the subtle weaknesses of the others that he knew that a less trained individual likely would miss. Such as the fact that the man to his left had a slight limp. Likely from years of brawls and breaking up fights. He began to take inventory of each of the other men as they slipped away from the playing area of the casino and started down a long hall that he knew that few who came to the gambling planet ever came to. And those who had walked this hall likely wished that they never had.
As the men came to a stop in front of a lift Kallus waited for a moment before he sent a well-placed kick to the man with the limp's knee, causing it to bend the wrong way as he positioned himself to take on the rest of the men as the first one began to howl in pain on the ground.
"Kiara, I lost sight of Kallus. The hall he was taken down is too heavily guarded for me to get through to him."
Kiara had gathered her winnings and left the table as soon as she heard that Kallus had been taken by the facility guards to the security office. She started to walk in the general direction of where he had disappeared, but she wasn't sure what she planned to do. She wasn't exactly dressed to fight. Hell, if she tried to punch anyone, she likely would send herself off balanced in the damned shoes that she was wearing.
"Can you find a computer terminal? Maybe you can see if this has anything to do with yesterday."
"On it."
"Zeb," Kiara started only for him to cut in.
"The ship is primed and ready to go and so am I. I'm coming your way. Kiara, you best get to the ship. If we have to make a run for it, I think it'd be best if you didn't do any actual running."
Kiara glanced down toward the hall where Alex had been taken only moments prior. She knew that Zeb was right. Sabine and Zeb were both better equipped to help him than she was. Especially in her impractical heels. "Alright. But be careful. Both of you."
Down the hall, Kallus was wrestling the last two of the security officers who had been sent to bring him in. He heard one of the men mention a bounty earlier in the fight. That meant that they knew who he was. He flipped one of the officers toward the other last remaining man who was still standing and conscious. With both men dazed and confused from their collisions Kallus punched each of them in the face to finish them off.
He'd heard the others over the comm and knew that they planned to come to the rescue. He raced back in the direction of where he'd come from. When he got within sight of the hall's entrance, he saw Sabine speaking with the guards who had been left to stand watch. She spotted her friend's approach and let out an apology as she slammed both guards' heads together.
"Kallus," Sabine said as they both started toward the entrance. "We were going to come rescue you."
He couldn't suppress the laughter. "Rescue me? How sweet. Sabine, I wasn't aware that you cared."
"Jerk," she said with a slight push as they both got within sight of the exit of the casino.
"As you can see," Kallus continued chuckling, "I don't require a rescue."
Sabine saw where dozens of officers were now heading their way. "Yeah, well, the night is still young. Let's move."
"Zeb, we're heading your way. Get back to the ship."
"Got it, Kallus."
The two continued to run and pulled their blasters as they fought their way toward the hanger where they'd left the Shadow Chaser.
"I don't think we're going to make it," Sabine said as she glanced around her.
"Use your jetpack. I'll be able to run faster alone and if we split up, we'll divide their forces, too."
Sabine frowned at the implication that she was slowing him down. "In that case, you go ahead. I'll cover you and bring up the rear."
"I don't think-"
"Just go. They aren't after me. It's you that they want. So, if you can run faster, then do it!" Sabine said as she activated her jetpack and took to the sky to take out as many running targets as she could. She turned to see Kallus break away from the officers, but he'd paused as if he were waiting for her. "Kallus, get to the ship. Tac, once he's onboard take off and I'll catch you on the fly."
"Of course. We'll join you as soon as Master Kallus is aboard."
From Sabine's vantage point she saw as Kallus reluctantly continued on his way to the ship and left her to deal with the remaining forces. She continued to fire her blasters as the Shadow Chaser flew by with the loading ramp still down. She used her jetpack and flew to the ramp and held onto its support as she waved goodbye to those still trying to follow after the crew.
