Chapter 3: Inconspicuous Initials
"Pass me a beer, will you?" Asked Greg.
"Light or dark?" Asked Nan.
"You should be embarrassed that you even have to ask! You know we only keep the light beer for the crybaby."
Nan used the Force to levitate a bottle of beer from the cooler to Greg, who was lounging around on a deck chair by the beach. Nobody was quite sure how she came to be a Force-wielder. Mila figured that Nan came so close to being truly dead that she was almost part of the Living Force, and when Kevin and Kate brought her back, something about her spirit had changed. In any case, all the scientists at SCD dug up their books on Jedi and the Force and studied Nan's progress with interest. None of them were Force-wielders so Nan had to learn from textbooks and video. It would have been a hard blow to her ego if she had not succeeded, but the self-proclaimed genius could now do quite a lot of things with the Force, such as move beer and mind-control Kevin. She convinced him to hump a droid in front of most of SCD.
Greg had lots of experience with Jedi and helped Nan integrate her Force skills into her fighting. He was a tad envious that he could not use the Force, since he'd been just as dead as her, but he consoled himself with the knowledge that he could breathe fire and was a lot more cool-looking. Mila found a book on various Jedi Force tricks that Padawans had to practice. They used to put together mock lightsabers, made pictures in the air out of sand or confetti or whatnot, threw each other around, made an invisible umbrella, etc. Nan had always been very technical and could put together all kinds of things without touching them, but for some reason she could not master the umbrella thing. Greg stopped going out with her when she went into the rain to practice it because they always got soaked.
The droids never realized that Greg was their old general. Crap only knows what they would have done if they had. They took a real liking to Nan because she actually fulfilled her promises to repair them, unlike the forgetful Kevin and Kate. The droids decided to do something nice for Nan and built her and Greg a house as a surprise. It had two floors. The first floor had six doors. Nan and Greg thanked them warmly and furnished the house, but it only made them sad. It would be that much harder to leave this place now that they had a real house.
"Leaving" entered the agenda sooner than they thought. One day, they were sunning themselves on a rock in the middle of a lake. The sun glinted off Nan's tail. Greg's hearing was better and he lifted his head when Kevin came running toward the shore. Kevin yelled something, but he was too far to make out what. He ran back and forth along the shore, waving something over his head.
"Heart attack?" Suggested Nan.
"Nah, he wouldn't be moving like that. Maybe he's got ants in his pants again?"
Greg squinted and saw that the object Kevin held was a DVD. He reported this fact.
"Did he finally film a porno of himself?" Wondered Nan.
Kevin made "come here" motions with his hands. Nan and Greg groaned but got into the water to see what was up. Nan rode on Greg's back as he swam toward shore. Naturally, he dived just when she thought she was in the clear and she got dunked. She swam out to shore herself, using a fin attachment on her tail for speed. Greg came out of the water and shook himself all over Kevin. This had happened many times before and for a scientist who could bring ducks back to life, Kevin sure wasn't good at predicting the expected.
"Hamilton's back!" Yelled Kevin as if they were still hundreds of feet away.
He proudly showed them the DVD. It was the latest season of The Real Housewives of Mandalore.
"My life finally has purpose," said Kevin.
Nan and Greg put two and two together.
"Has this Hamilton been back to the Empire?" Asked Greg.
"Do you seriously watch that trash?" Asked Nan.
Yes and yes. Yuri Hamilton had been a rather stand-offish, unfriendly NMR technician back on Taia. Now, he was SCD's stand-offish, unfriendly liaison with the Empire. He was a changeling and had gone back to the Empire every year. Twice he had turned into a Stormtrooper but usually he turned into some random cargo truck driver because his main reason for going to the Empire was to bring stuff back for the scientists. He was something of a spaceship savant and with the help of a physicist, he'd built a ship that could travel through wormholes, whatever the hell they were. This brought the travel time to the Empire down from five months to two weeks.
Nan and Greg went to meet Hamilton on the Confusion, SCD's main gathering place. The ship had belonged to two scientists that committed suicide one after another and was now common property. Scientists were still in line to get their presents Hamilton. Most just needed spare parts for their equipment. Some had asked for food they missed from the Empire. Kevin was the only one who asked for DVDs of crappy shows.
Mila had already received her gifts and looked at the parcels with satisfaction. When Nan asked, she said the droids just couldn't make good pantyhose. Odd, Mila had never been seen to wear pantyhose… Kate got columns for the HPLC machine and a bunch of chemicals.
After the gift-giving was done, the scientists gathered around Hamilton and listened to him talk about happenings in the Empire. At the moment he was in the form he had always worn. Nobody knew if it was his true form and he'd never shown the slightest hint of desire to share his feelings or history with anyone, so nobody had ever asked. He was in the shape of a human in a tight-fitting black spacesuit. He wore a helmet. Anybody who got close enough to look into the helmet was treated to a view of wet darkness with something pale and round floating in it. He resembled a man with a Magic 8 ball for a head. His voice was mechanical and emanated from a speaker on his neck.
This year he had taken on the shape of a human female and joined the rebellion against the Empire as a pilot. He discussed the nature of the rebellion. It was still very small. They did not have a base and limited their actions to stealing stuff, delivering aid to communities the Empire was shitting on, and trying to gain more members. The rebellion was led by two figures known only as Fulcrum and Pivot. Hamilton had photographic memory and was a genius hacker. He had identified Ahsoka Tano as Fulcrum pretty quickly after he shared a ship with her one time. Figuring out Pivot's identity took longer because he didn't get a chance to meet the guy for a while, and even when he did, the face did not fire up any memories.
A few scientists interrupted and asked about their families. Part of Hamilton's job was to obtain news of remaining families and sometimes, give them messages from the absent scientists. Kevin and Kate had never asked for news of their folks. Nan and Greg elbowed each other. So Ahsoka was the leader of the rebels! Good for her. Greg had always suspected she'd go far. After all the intel had been exchanged, Hamilton got back to his story about the rebels.
Being a rebel was not conducive to buying stuff for the scientists and connecting with their families, so Hamilton left one day and became a cargo ship driver again. He was still curious about Pivot's identity and did some serious searching on the guy. Ahsoka had apparently saved him from an Imperial labor camp. He'd been her unfailing, loyal co-leader for several years. Hamilton, however, had doubts. He scraped up video from the labor camp. Almost all of it had been erased, interestingly enough, but Hamilton managed to find leaks and he discovered that Pivot had not been in the labor camp for eight months like he said. He'd only been there a day and he had arrived in an Imperial starship.
Hamilton managed to get close to Pivot during a sale he set up and examined detailed photos he took. He also collected a DNA sample. He already had a theory that Pivot was not some poor orphan laborer. Hamilton ran Pivot's profile through the computer and came up with several matches that suggested he'd had plastic surgery, but it was not good enough. While Pivot's exact DNA could not be found in any database, Hamilton eventually found some people who could be relatives. After doing research on them, Hamilton found out this family had a son they had supposedly lost in a car accident when he was five. Hamilton took the game up to another level and started spying on Pivot. He'd planted a tracking device on his ship when they met.
Hamilton viewed the places Pivot went to on a map. For many weeks, he did not go anywhere suspicious. Then finally, his ship went to Corusant. That was certainly the last place a rebel would go. Hamilton did not follow him but went there a few days later and asked various janitors and technicians. They had seen Pivot go into the Emperor's office. Now it all seemed clear. Pivot was working for the Emperor. He was a traitor and would probably have all the rebels captured soon.
"How badly did Ahsoka bust his balls when she found out?" Asked Nan.
"She didn't find out," said Hamilton.
"Didn't you tell her?" Asked Greg.
"Of course not. It doesn't concern me," said Hamilton.
"But all the rebel's lives are in danger!" Said Nan.
Hamilton shrugged. Nan and Greg stared at him incredulously. Kate laughed. Nan looked at her viciously but she didn't feel like hurting Kate. Suddenly, it had happened. Their dream was over. Yuri Hamilton had called them back, though he wasn't aware of it. Greg was still arguing with Hamilton about why he didn't tell Ahsoka, but Nan felt unwell. She staggered toward a couch where Kevin was reading the backs of his DVDs and leaned on it heavily. Greg ambled over after snorting fire a few inches from Hamilton's head to show what he thought of him.
"It's already been over a month since Hamilton saw Pivot, whose real name is Gary Hartwald, meeting with the Emperor," said Greg. "We have to go and warn Ahsoka. Hamilton has an extra vessel that can travel through wormholes and I can drive just about anything so I think we'll manage."
"Must we?" Said Nan.
"There is no other option for us. We cannot remain like a planet trapped in orbit, constantly feeling a center-seeking force but never going toward the action. We can't be like these idiots, hiding from conflict."
Greg did not look down at Nan, who still leaned on the couch with a weary expression on her face. He did not want to look at her face lest it made his resolve waver. He remembered their despair long ago, when they were about to face certain death, and hoped they were strong enough to face uncertain death.
"I know you're strong enough," he said.
At the moment, Kevin had been trying to open a DVD case that was taped shut. He looked at Greg, surprised to be getting support, and applied a bit of elbow grease. The case came open, Kevin hit himself on the nose, and the DVDs flew all over the place.
"You could have just used scissors," said Nan.
Greg learned to fly Hamilton's vessel. Nan collected money and equipment. Hamilton got them fake IDs. Greg picked the last name Neuman. Hamilton suggested Nan and Greg pretend to be a married couple when it suited them and made Nan an extra ID with the name Nancy Neuman.
"I want middle initials," said Nan.
"You can't have the middle initials F. U.," said Greg.
"But it would be so cool!"
"We're trying to be inconspicuous. You're not inconspicuous if you've got an curse in the middle of your name!"
Kevin sent Nan and Greg a photo to remember himself by, only he accidentally sent a photo of his butt and not his face. The reason he had a photo of his own butt is that he once discovered a new mole on it and sent the photo to Mila so she could tell him if it was cancerous or not. Apparently it wasn't.
The scientists organized a going-away party for Nan and Greg so Nan and Greg left a day early. Instead, the party was just a regular party. Mila was actually a great cook and made rum cake that was to die for. Kevin got drunk on it. Kate hit Hamilton on the head to see if the Magic 8 ball would tell her fortune. Hamilton turned into a cow. It was a typical SCD shitshow.
Nan and Greg left without even a last dip in the lake. They ordered the droids to board up the house. They didn't talk much except to discuss facts about Hartwald and the rebellion. Greg approached the first wormhole and went in. They were on their way.
Actually, Nan and Greg's worries about Hartwald were largely an overreaction. Ahsoka was not an idiot and stumbled onto his treachery herself shortly after Hamilton did. She discovered that a few of the pilots had gaps in their memory, as if somebody had used the Force to make them forget and the events they forgot all coincided with times when Pivot was not around. Ahsoka did not make that connection immediately, however. She did not suspect Pivot because he showed no signs of being a Force-wielder. She suspected that one of the Emperor's Sith wannabees was out and about. Palpatine often picked up Force-sensitive people and taught them rudimentary skills, promising them riches or revenge or whatever.
Ahsoka questioned just about all the rebels to find out if anybody had interacted with weird strangers, but these interviews were not helpful and merely made people feel she suspected them of treachery. For a time Ahsoka thought she was onto something when she found out that a pilot, Joanna Hilton, had deserted the rebel army and had not been seen since, but the memory gaps people had continued after her disappearance. Joanna Hilton was, of course, Hamilton's disguise. Ahsoka followed all the pilots on whatever runs they made to see for herself if they were meeting a Sith wannabee. One day she faked illness and snuck around a battleship, spying on people. It was this way that she saw Pivot approach a pilot and ask her to show him her flying skills. It was an innocent enough request; the pilot was new and untested, but Ahsoka's heart skipped a beat. It couldn't be!
She stuck a tracking device on the pilot's plane before they left and was dismayed when they went into hyperspace. They went to Corusant. Ahsoka left a note in Pivot's room asking to meet with him privately the next day. She questioned the pilot but the girl, predictably, did not remember anything. Ahsoka met with Pivot in a deserted station orbiting a planet.
"I want to talk to you alone," she said when they got to a meeting room, "because I suspect there is a Sith apprentice in contact with our crew. He or she may have our people working for him without knowing it, or we could have traitors in our ranks. Have you noticed anything like that?"
That intro was quite pointless because Pivot suddenly sprayed her in the face with knock-out gas. She woke up in a cell on an Imperial starship. Her cell was ray-shielded. A Stormtrooper asked if she was awake and called up a holographic recording of Pivot.
"Rise and shine," he said. "I guessed you were on to me when the pilots told me you'd questioned them. I'm the traitor you've been looking for but you won't get to tell your precious rebels about it. I'm going to tell them you were kidnapped and send them to attack this ship you're in. It is set to self-destruct and will take out a quarter of the rebellion in one go. I'll deal with the rest later. It's been nice working with you."
The hologram faded and the Stormtrooper ran for the TIE fighters. Ahsoka tried to find a way out but the ray shield has always been a good weapon against Force-wielders. She lay down on the cot and thought sadly about the lousy turn things had taken. She realized that Pivot did not know her real identity, otherwise he would have delivered her to Palpatine as one of the last Jedi. Perhaps that would have given her a better chance of escape along the way.
Ahsoka had nothing but memories, and she focused on the long ago. She was sad and frustrated that her efforts to subvert the Empire were all in vain. Pivot's betrayal stung but she did not allow herself to get close to people anymore. They had not been friends. Earlier, Pivot had expressed a fawning adoration of her after she rescued him, but that had been replaced by arrogance. She should have guessed earlier. She decided not to think about him and recalled her old mentors, Obi-Wan, Anakin, Plo Koon, and Yoda. All dead, weren't they?
The sound of claws on linoleum interrupted her thoughts and she got up to peer as far down the hallway as she could. A dragon soon appeared. Greg blasted at the control panel that kept up the ray shield and it went down. He and Nan had barely arrived in time. Hamilton's tracker was still on Pivot's ship and that was how they located the rebel fleet. They intercepted some communications and found out that Ahsoka was captured by the Empire. The rebel fleet looked kind of crappy so they decided to rescue her personally. Hamilton's ship was much faster than anything on the market in the Empire and they appeared next to it quickly. Hamilton's ship could be cloaked so they did that and docked. Nan stayed with the ship. Greg wondered why almost the entire crew of Hartwald's ship was in TIE fighters.
"This ship is rigged to self-destruct," said Ahsoka, deciding to wonder about her strange rescuer later.
"That explains the TIEs. They'll fly around the rebels and pretend to engage in battle, then fly away," said Greg.
He called Nan on his communicator and told her the news. They had to deactivate the bomb. That could only be done from the bridge. Instead of running through the giant starship, Nan removed their ship from the docking station and flew over to the bridge. She cut a hole through the hull and attached the ship. There was nobody on the bridge except a few droids and these she slashed with her lightsaber. She attached her computer to the console and started hacking the system. Ahsoka and Greg raced up to the bridge as well, but they were no help so Nan ignored them.
Ahsoka did not recognize Nan, who was wearing a cloak anyway, and tried to make contact with her fleet. She sent a code to her captains that warned them away, but Nan managed to deactivate the self-destruct sequence before the rebels even exited hyperspace.
"You're almost as clever as an R2 unit, Nan," said Greg.
Ahsoka looked at the little creature and at Greg. Now she had time to wonder about her saviors. Nan pulled her hood down and smiled. Ahsoka flinched, telling herself not to be crazy. There could be any number of little cat-monkeys out there that could hack computers.
"It's us!" Yelled Nan, unable to contain herself. "Surprise!"
"I thought we were going for subtle," said Greg.
"Subtle, shmubtle. Ahsoka is our old pal and I'm sure she'll immediately accept the whole brought back to life brain transplant story."
Nan threw off her cloak entirely and grabbed Ahsoka by the hand. Outside, the rebel fleet appeared and engaged the TIE fighters, who still thought the ship was about to explode and got away as fast as they could. An irritated Hartwald/Pivot pressed the self-destruct button and nothing happened. He decided it would be wise to get the hell away from there.
"I'm Nancy Tam and that's General Grievous, only he goes by Gregory Neuman now. I still think there are cooler names," said Nan.
"It can't be," said Ahsoka.
"I was going to tell the story from the third person first," said Greg, "but Nan's impatient. I don't know how long it will take for you to believe me, but I am the person who was once known as Grievous. Scientists brought us back to life and put my brain in this body."
"I'm dreaming," said Ahsoka.
"She'll catch on," said Nan, "but meanwhile let's get out of here before the rest of the Empire comes back. It looks like your fleet got your messages."
The rebel fleet went back into hyperspace. Ahsoka considered stealing the Imperial ship, but it was probably tracked in a thousand places so she got into Hamilton's ship. She told them the coordinates where she expected the fleet to have gone. During the flight, Ahsoka was silent and pondered this new situation. Surely she had gone mad from stress and loneliness and was imaging some people from the past? She closed her eyes and meditated, trying to feel what the Force had to say.
"Bucketful of come," said Greg suddenly.
Ahsoka stared at him while Nan cracked up.
"Bucketful of come," repeated Greg. "That was the password for one of the accounts I gave you. Most of the passwords were alphanumerical but I let Nan come up with one and that's what she chose. I knew it would be something filthy, of course, but I never expected to share it with someone else."
"It really is you," said Ahsoka. "I thought about you so often because I felt like we should have been friends."
Nan couldn't stop laughing and Greg cuffed her a few times.
"I'm sorry," she said, "it's just that the bucketful of come reminded me of Kevin's flask of sperm that I once threw on Kate. You know, it wasn't his sperm, it just belonged to him. It was actually…it was actually…"
Nan laughed so hard that she could not continue. Greg knew the story too and enlightened Ahsoka.
"It was actually duck sperm for a breeding experiment he was conducting. We didn't ask how he got it from the ducks because it's probably more boring than what we imagine."
Ahsoka continued to stare at them in a confounded way.
"Considering our behavior, maybe she doesn't want us back now," said Nan.
But Ahsoka came out of her stupor and felt happiness she didn't know was possible. The three friends hugged. For the moment, everything else was forgotten.
The Imperial starship blew up just as reinforcements arrived. Ahsoka and the rebels only heard about this later.
"Almost as clever as an R2 unit, eh?" Said Nan.