CHAPTER THIRTEEN – FIVE-OH, FIVE-OH

SIERRA

"It's the only way. Anyway, she's over fifty now. Five-oh." Ahsoka snorts. "I'll be fine. Now you and Sabine get out of here and get the boys."

…

"I'm an idiot." I groan.

Sabine tugs on her bonds. "What is going on?" she cries.

I pick her up once more. "We need to get out of here. This whole place will be swarming with Stormtroopers any time now."

"Stormtroopers?"

"Five-oh. That's slang for the police." Steela explains. "Ahsoka's trying to tip us off that she's going to run the cops scam."

I can practically see the bump on her head slowing down her mental gears. "Cops scam?"

"When someone runs the cops scam, they plant evidence and trick the mark into calling the authorities. When you do it right, the police find the planted evidence and arrest the mark while you walk away clean." I explain.

Steela clears her throat. "Hera and I are only about a block away from your position. Keep coming west and we'll meet in the middle."

"Thank goodness." Sabine says.

Thank goodness my straining arm muscles say as I turn west, the quickly-approaching of my friend and Sabine's turned to shadow by the setting sun.

Hera Syndulla and Steela don't stop until they've reached us.

"Sabine!" Hera cries, her voice a primal shout of relief. She completely ignores me, instead choosing to duck around my back to where Sabine can see her. "Sabine, thank goodness!"

Steela stops in front of me. "You all right?"

I nod. "I'm just glad we got her out before Nightwine did."

"Me too." She hooks an arm around Sabine's legs. "Hera, a little help lifting her?"

Hera and Steela lift Sabine off my shoulders. While Hera leans her friend against the nearest wall, Steela sits before Sabine's outstretched legs and places her feet in her lap.

"Do your feet tingle or are they already numb?" she asks while inspecting the lock.

"They're numb."

Steela draws a slim piece of durasteel from her pocket. "Hang in there. It'll only be a few more seconds." She says as she slides the file into the lock. A few sharp twists later, and the binders disengage. "Better?"

"Thanks."

"We're not done yet and the handcuffs are the worst." Steela says, gently pushing Sabine to bend over. "The angle is always awkward so you might feel a little pressure while I do this."

"Just get it over with." Sabine grits her teeth.

Steela's arm twists a nanosecond before Sabine's face follows suit. "Ah!"

"Hold on, almost got it." Steela grunts. "Almost got it…"

The cuffs release.

"Thank you."

"No problem." Steela says, replacing her file. "Now give Hera your hands."

Hera grabs Sabine's hands and starts to rub them vigorously to return the feeling. I sit at the end of her legs and remove the pink boots to rub her feet.

"Is the feeling coming back?" Hera asks.

Sabine shakes her head, then suddenly nods as the pins-and-needles feeling erupts over her limbs. I know what that feels like, and it's not pleasant.

"That's good." Hera observes and gently takes hold of her face to examine the bruise. "I'm not a doctor, but I don't think it's anything serious."

"We'll have Tandin and Mina check her out." Steela says as she kneels next to me and takes a foot.

It's true. We're extraordinarily lucky that we figured out what was going on so quickly. We're lucky that Ahsoka figured out the link with the Imperial warehouse being cleaned. We're lucky Sabine and Chopper managed to fend Vikil off as long as they did. But most of all, we're lucky that this wasn't Tor after all.

…

When Saw carried sixteen-year-old me out of Tor's interrogation rooms, I clutched his shirt because I was afraid I would fall or be ripped out of his arms. He held me close both to warm me up and calm my fears. When my muscles went slack and released his shirt, he thought I had just fallen asleep.

My mother's intuition saved my life. When she noticed something was radically wrong with me, she ordered Steela to get Captain Rex.

"What's wrong?"

"What's wrong?" Mom cried. "Look at her! This isn't hypothermia, Captain."

Rex took my pulse, then grabbed a blood pressure cuff from our medkit and inflated it.

"Saw!" he shouted back into the common room. "Get Ahsoka and Lux right now. Hero, contact Senator Organa; we need to get Sierra to his medcenter immediately."

"What's wrong with her?" Mom demanded.

"Her blood pressure is dangerously low." Rex explained. "She's gone into shock."

…

Sabine isn't in medical shock, and she isn't waking up in the middle of the night screaming and drenched in sweat. Both very, very good outcomes considering what would have been if our fears had been true.

"They don't tingle anymore." Sabine announces and carefully pulls her hands from Hera's before reaching to grab her boots. "Thanks, you guys."

"I hope you can walk." Steela says. "If I know Ahsoka at all, she won't waste any time putting her scam into action. And trust me, we won't want to be around when it happens."

"Unless she's not calling the cops."

Steela stares at me. "You just said she was."

"When we left, she told me to get 'the boys'." I say. "Not the crew, not our friends, just 'the boys'. That doesn't make any sense when half our crew is female, and all the men are adults. I don't think she's talking about our men."

"She's talking about 'the boys in blue'." Hera realizes. "She wants us to call the Empire on her?"

Steela closes her eyes and sighs. "It sounds crazy, but it's definitelysomething Ahsoka would do, by the temple of Unifar. Sometimes I wonder about that woman…"

"Don't tell me you don't already have ideas." I respond. I have not shared a cabin with Steela for fifteen years for nothing.

"I'll call the rest of the crew." Hera says. "I trust you two know what you're doing."

"Oh," Steela says, smiling. "We most certainly do. Just give us a few minutes to meet with the others and whip something up."

LUX

Kanan doesn't waste an instant when he sees Sabine and Hera walking up the ship's ramp.

"Sabine!" He shouts, rushing down the ramp to hug her. "Sabine, you're all right!"

Sabine stiffens in his arms at first; apparently Kanan isn't the touchy-feely type, but I've told him enough horror stories to scare the Jedi witless.

Without any addresses or information, there was nothing I could do. I started to spout off everything my dad said about what happened to Ahsoka, everything that Sierra says happened to her, and everything I saw with my own eyes or found on Hutch's list of dirt.

"He freezes his victims?" he asked.

"The cold is his weapon of choice." I said. "It keeps them weak so he can keep them under control. After a day of the treatment, they can't walk without help so he doesn't have to worry about them escaping."

By the time I was through, Kanan was shaking. I'm not sure it was from fear or rage or something else entirely. Even when Hutch commed us to say the aggressor wasn't Tor after all, Kanan didn't stop until he saw Sabine in the flesh.

I still haven't stopped shaking for another, more obvious reason: my wife is with an angry licensed espionage instructor for an Imperial academy.

Lux, calm down. Ahsoka is a force user. She trained our kids, she handled an Inquisitor, she's dealt with more Imperial scumbags than we can count! What could possibly happen? My shoulder angel says.

Oh, there are lots of things. Shoulder devil answers.

Sabine relaxes a little in Kanan's arms. "I'm fine."

Tandin walks into the room and takes Sabine from Kanan. "I heard about a bump on the head?" he asks and leads her to a chair. "Take a seat, Miss Wren, and follow my flashlight with your eyes."

After flashing the light in Sabine's eyes a few times, he feels the bump on her head with his fingers. "The skin isn't broken and it doesn't look like a concussion. I think you're just fine."

"I'll get her an ice pack," Sierra volunteers. I guess she feels bad about dropping Sabine.

"Thank you," Tandin says. "Sabine, if you start to feel sick or drowsy, tell one of us right away but for now, you should just ice your head."

She nods. "Okay." Sierra walks back into the room and hands her the ice pack to hold against her head. "Thank you."

Kanan clears his throat. "Hutch was telling us about the woman who had you. How did she get you alone?"

Sabine makes a face. "Nightwine had a remote control and hacked into Chopper. I followed the rust bucket all the way to the warehouse and when I wasn't looking they made Chopper stun me."

"But Chopper was guarding you from him when Ahsoka and Sierra came in." Hera says

Hutch swivels around at his workstation. "If whoever was holding the remote walked far enough away, then the signal would have been weak enough for the droid's programming to override it. Chopper acted on his programming to protect his crew members because there was nothing else to impede it."

"And Nightwine left before Chopper saved Sabine." Hera says. "He must still have the remote."

"Shot in the dark, you're right."

"All right!" I cry. "Now that we have that out of the way, how about figuring out how to rescue Ahsoka?"

"She told us to run the cops scam." Steela says flatly.

"The cops scam?"

"Unless you can think up another meaning for 'five-O', then yeah."

I take a deep breath. "Okay, so we need to call the Imperials and get them to arrest Vikil, but not Ahsoka?"

"Yup."

I close my eyes and think. All right, Mr. Mastermind. This is your job. You're in your element. Find a way to tweak the cops scam, and tell everyone what to do to make it happen.

"Kanan, Hera?" I say finally. "I'm going to need the names of three Imperial officers."

"Which ones?" Kanan asks.

"The biggest control freak, the one with the biggest ego, and the one who's most concerned with public appearances."

Zeb snorts. "The first two are the same person. Agent Kallus."

I suppress a smile. Even better.

"And according to our sources with open ears, Commander Lyst is trying to get a promotion." Hera offers. "He's probably watching everyone's perception of him."

"Do you know where their offices are?"

Ezra crosses his arms. "Do we? We've been running ops on them since Day One."

This job gets even more feasible as time goes on. "Get me the comm numbers and addresses for both offices. Hutch, do your thing."

Hutch lets out a little war whoop, then yells over his shoulder. "Hey Molly, come in here! We're digging up dirt!"

This time, I do smile. Nothing, and I mean nothing, can stop the dynamic duo of Hutch and his daughter from finding every electronic secret about the mark.

"Why do we need dirt?" Ezra asks.

"That's part of how we're going to make sure Ahsoka doesn't get arrested." I say. "Hutch, has Lyst been out at all?"

Hutch checks. "His credit cards say he goes out to eat every once in a while."

"Perfect, there's our in. Pull up the names of those restaurants. Everyone else, suit up."

A/N: I know, it's unfair not to tell you how Ahsoka's doing, but there's a con to plan! Rest assured all the cliffhangers will resolve soon.

Thank you to starwarshobbitfics and Rose Ravenclaw for your reviews. And speaking of which, please review!

Until next time,

Lux's Sister