BOILING POINT
"This situation is about as stable as black powder in a death stick," Tural muttered. "It's fine as long as it stays in the pack, but one wrong move and it'll blow up in my face."
"Don't tell me you took up smoking," Riyo sighed. "You know those things will kill you."
"This defection will kill me long before lung disease," Tural, who had lit her first and only cigarette after meeting Swain, quipped.
Riyo tried to circle back. "You have everything in place; at this point it's a waiting game."
"Which is the hardest part for fresh defectors, never mind two who've been waiting for weeks under the close eye of a decorated ISB agent. If it was halfway feasible, I'd have pulled them out yesterday."
"And I'm sure they'd have liked to run yesterday, but it's like you said. It isn't feasible. They don't have a ship, the accepting cell isn't ready, and we wouldn't be able to outmaneuver the Empire. Defections work best when everything's in its place and your friends need all the help they can get."
"I know, but that doesn't mean I have to like it." She slumped in her chair. "It's going to take everything I have to make it through work today."
"Take your own advice and remember it's just another day." Riyo took the caf cups and carried them to her sink. "Come on, we're going to miss the tram."
Would it be so bad if she missed the tram and had to work from home? It wasn't like her work in the senate actually helped anyone.
Tural caught herself just in time. You're acting like a panicked defector, and you can. Not. Panic. If you panic, all of your defectors die. Pull yourself together.
"Thank you. Having a friend helps more than I can say."
"It's my pleasure." Riyo smiled, and Tural knew that her friendship helped Riyo as well. "Besides, in two weeks it'll be over and you can relax a little."
"I wish. I got a message a few days ago from Montross."
Riyo almost dropped the mug. "Skystrike?"
She nodded sadly.
"Goddess, you do get the hard ones."
Tural groaned. "I just want this day to be over." She was just about to pick up her bag and leave when her comm went off.
"Your office?"
"No, that's my handler comm." Tural dove into the bag with renewed urgency and her heart stopped when she saw the caller's ID: Lothal Garrison Shuttle 54.
"It's Swain." She accepted the comm without a moment's hesitation. "What's happening? Why are you calling from a shuttle?"
"Hyperspace coordinates are in! Do you have an opening?"
"Got it!" Cogon grunted and there was the distinct sound of a ship jumping to hyperspace.
Please be a nightmare, please be a nightmare… "Are you two in the air?!"
"Yeah." Cogon gasped between heavy breaths. "We're in the air alright."
What remained of Tural's sanity snapped like a twig. "You're not scheduled to leave for two more weeks! Why did you leave?"
"Agent Kallus was getting suspicious. We had to leave before he figured it out." Swain's voice was thick when she mentioned Agent Kallus, and Tural suspected that she and Kallus had had words before the defection.
"Does he know now?"
"He's chasing us."
To this, Tural said a word she had never said in front of a defector which seemed to take Swain, Cogon, and even Riyo aback. "Where are you going?" she demanded.
"Thrad. We couldn't get the tracker out of the shuttle without frying the engine, and we didn't want to draw attention to Klonoid. We'll be there in eight hours."
It took twenty hours to reach Thrad from Coruscant. No way was Tural going to make it in time; not even close.
"When you get to the spaceport, stay on the ship. Even if it's deserted, don't go," she ordered. "Keep this comm line open. I'll arrange for an escort and transportation offworld, but you need to keep your heads down until then."
"Understood," Cogon confirmed with a sharp nod. "We'll wait for your call."
Riyo was already on the comm relaying the situation to Mollymauk. "They took off ahead of schedule and an ISB agent is in pursuit."
Tural cut her off. "You need to get out of here."
Riyo looked at her like she was crazy. "I'm staying here. We need all hands on deck today."
"And I need you to go to work so if this goes wrong, you have an alibi and can take my other defectors."
"But –."
"Riyo, do it." Mollymauk ordered.
"Please," Tural grabbed Riyo's hand. "I can't worry about them today."
Riyo swallowed hard, then closed out Mollymauk's comm and walked to the door.
"I'll be praying for you," she said before she left.
Tural nodded her thanks, and then did another thing she'd never done before. She activated the emergency channel.
…
"Dalla!" She heard Lux bellowing her name over the earsplitting shriek of the emergency tone as he thundered through the museum.
"I'm on it." Dalla turned the sound on her comm channel and addressed the handlers who had answered the emergency page. "We need someone to do a scoop job on Thrad in eight hours or less. Who's in range?"
The handlers couldn't see each other, so it was no surprise they all rushed to speak at once. "I'm on the other side of the galaxy," Avi Singh said.
They barely heard Phee through the static. "In the middle of a pickup here."
"I have my son," Francesca reported.
More negative responses poured in and Dalla's blood pressure hit the ceiling. "Havoc Marauder, if you haul shebs from your home base you can make it in time."
"No can do," Crosshair answered. "We're working on the ship; the hyperdrive is in pieces."
Krayt spit, she was banking on the Batch. Dalla muted the comm and turned to Lux. "Should we call Ahsoka?"
"Can we? Last I heard she was knee-deep with Jedi business."
"We have to try; no one else can make it."
"There has to be someone. Maybe one of the available handlers isn't quite out of range?" He scanned the map of the galaxy Dalla had tacked to the wall, one finger resting on Thrad as a marker, and the other moving methodically from planet to planet until it stopped on one. "These smuggling routes, could we get there in time if we took one?"
Dalla ran the mental math. "We would have to take it top speed."
"Then we have a handler in range." He stepped away from the map and joined ranks at the holotable.
Dalla unmuted the comm. "Handler, do you have an escort on the planet?"
"I burned my ID with the Thradian underground, but I got one," Tural said.
"Have them take the defectors from the imperial spaceport to the civilian landing pad. A ship will meet them there."
Lux rattled around the office, grabbing up pieces of intel. "Give me the coordinates and I can be in orbit in ten minutes."
"Lux, we both know you're a terrible pilot. If you try to take a smuggling lane at top speed, we're going to have a starship crash."
"Well you're not going either" He jabbed a finger at her. "No way. You need to be here running the show, not stuck in hyperspace. What about Sloan?"
"He's on a sailing ship in the middle of the ocean. It'll be days before he can reach a spaceship." As much as she hated to admit it, Lux was right. She had to be in her office managing the inevitable circus.
Which meant she had to send a third party. "One of the network employees is the fastest pilot I know. He can take Horrible Ideas for the run." Dalla texted as much to her man. Here went nothing.
…
Eight hours later in the Thradian spaceport, Swain was sitting on the shuttle floor hugging her knees to her chest.
"They should be here soon." Cogon sat beside her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. It was sweet that he was trying to comfort her when she knew he was just as afraid.
"So will Kallus." She knew he wouldn't show her any mercy. After what he said, she didn't think she was even his daughter anymore.
"Luckily you're the expert in avoiding Kallus."
"And he's the expert at finding me. We should have stayed, tried to brazen it out."
"If we'd done that, then Kallus would have found out anyway and we wouldn't have gotten a head start. It's not perfect, but it beats the heck out of prison."
She wasn't sure they wouldn't end up there anyway. Still Swain smiled. "I love you."
"Love you too."
The shuttle's comm beeped, immediately shut off, and then beeped again.
"That's Senator Tural." Swain jumped up and accepted the transmission. It was text only, but encoded with Tural's familiar encryption. Escort has arrived. Open the boarding ramp.
Cogon dusted himself off. "Here goes nothing," he said and reached for the ramp control.
At the base of the boarding ramp stood a middle-aged Thradian man, long tendrils framing his serious expression.
"Are you here to catch the hovertram?" He asked.
Swain gulped past the lump in her throat. "The cargo train, yes."
With the code phrase complete, the man held out his hand. "Call me Beneda. Come, we have a safehouse waiting."
…
"The defectors are at the safehouse, but it won't be secure for long. The Empire's launched ground troops, and a Star Destroyer is blockading the planet."
"There's a Mollymauk at the controls of the getaway hauler. Blockade, schmockade," Lux quipped.
Dalla ignored him. "Horrible Ideas, report."
"I'm waiting on the landing pad and ready to take off as soon as I have the cargo on board."
"Alright, let's get this show on the road. Tural, start moving the defectors."
"Yes ma'am."
When the tense silence became unbearable, Lux broke it. "I still can't believe you named that ship Horrible Ideas."
"It's a theme name," Dalla protested. "The flagship's Bad Decisions and the shuttle is Spite. What else was I supposed to name it?"
"Boss, we've got a problem." Her man came back on the comm line.
"What happened?"
Senator Tural broke in. "The Empire found the safehouse! Beneda's down and the kids are running through the street!"
"Mother–!" Dalla raced back to her desk as if that would help. "Where's the ISB agent?"
"A hundred meters behind them."
Her stomach dropped. A footrace with an ISB agent wouldn't end well unless you had a lightsaber or a heavy cannon.
"Maybe we should have called Ahsoka," Lux whispered.
"Tural, you're burned. Cut this line and activate the exposure protocols," Dalla ordered.
"Swain and Cogon –."
"There's nothing you can do for them now. Cut the line, now."
Tural cut her line and Dalla swiveled back to her man. "Talk to me. Can the kids get to you in time?"
"Sith spit," the pilot swore. "There are stormtroopers coming up the back alley. They just stunned the male defector."
From bad to worse. Dalla closed her eyes and gave in to her worst qualities. "Leave him. Can you get the girl?"
They'd lost Senator Tural and Cogon, but if they could at least get Swain then this wouldn't be a total wash.
"Doubtful. She's in fisticuffs with the ISB agent."
"Win, kid," Lux whispered. "Win, and then run for your life."
"She's got him down. And – wait, what is that?"
"What's what?"
"Dxun, that's a blaster! Both defectors stunned!"
"Get out of there!"
The pilot took off with a roar of engines, the only other sound on the comm the sound of his heavy breathing and blasterfire raining around him.
"I'm hit," he panted and an alarm claxon joined the din. "Kriff, they got the hyperdrive."
"How long do you have until you're boarded?"
"I'm not getting boarded." The engines crescendoed in the background. "I'm taking this bird down."
Dalla closed her eyes. It was what they both expected, but that didn't make it hurt any less.
"Thank you." Her throat felt like it was full of cement.
"If it gives some other kids a chance, then it's worth it." The pilot's voice was pure conviction. "I wouldn't die any other way."
She held her breath and grit her teeth against the inevitable, and it came: the boom of impact, the screech of twisting metal, the whoosh of flames as the fuel ignited, and the pilot's single agonized scream before the comm cut out.
"Dalla…" Lux whispered.
Dalla stood over the table for a long, long time.
"Defection failed," she said. "All hands lost."
…
In theory, Kallus knew all about Defections. He knew their handlers spirited away traitors at any cost, up to and including murder and suicide. Less than a year ago, Lux Bonteri had revealed his deadly hand when he shot three troopers and an administrator in cold blood. In the Colonies, someone more ghost than being was nicking cadets and staff right out of their Complexes.
But never had he seen Defections' dirty work up close and personal. He waded through the still-smoldering ashes of the starship crash, scanning it for any possible clue. The longer he was here, the longer he didn't have to be on the detention level looking at Swain and knowing she was the traitor the handlers had come to collect.
This couldn't be real. It was a horrible nightmare and in the morning Swain would be waiting in his office, eager and ready to learn and not cuffed to a stretcher sleeping off a stun pulse because she had defected.
There had to be an explanation for this. Kallus knelt in the ashes, combing through them with his gloved hands and not caring that they would burn him. Before he began the interrogation he would order a full-body scan with the most sensitive settings, because the only explanation he could come up with was a brain tumor. It had to be. Swain had everything: a fabulous career, friends in high places, and she had him.
That's not an organization I want to serve and protect, and I can't believe you still do!
How could she abandon him? How could she lose faith in him? And space, how hadn't he noticed?
Kallus didn't know how he was going to make it through interrogating her. Probably with a lot of breaks to puke in the waste receptacle because the thought of raising a hand to her still made him nauseous.
His gaze dropped to the hand he actually had raised to her just a few hours ago. He'd never wanted to cut off a part of his body so much. It didn't even feel like his, more like a disgusting tumor which had hit his daughter!
With a cry, he thrust the offending limb into a pile of ash before reason could prevail and his knuckles grazed something hard and blazing hot.
Kallus took a long, deep breath. He had to get ahold of himself. He just … he had to.
He brushed away the ash to expose whatever had burned him. It was a datapad, the circuitry melted but the metal case only scorched. It wasn't plain though, someone had scratched a design on it.
Kallus took a closer look and his entire body froze over.
"Stop!" He shouted to the troopers helping to clear the scene. "This crash site is now a crime scene. Cordon off the area and await further instruction from Agent Beck."
"Agent Beck, sir?" A stormtrooper repeated.
"She's assigned to the Mollymauk case," Kallus explained.
His gut twisted as he took out his comlink to relay the same order to the crew of the Relentless. He wouldn't be interrogating Swain, Beck would, and he wasn't sure if he was relieved or horrified. Beck was smart and efficient, and would get to the bottom of this by hook or by crook.
And she also had a sadistic streak a mile long.
But he didn't have a choice. This wasn't his investigation anymore.
The design on the datapad was an amateurish rendering of a seabird in flight, the sigil of one of the most notorious criminals in the galaxy.
The getaway ship had been sent by Mollymauk.
…
The moment she set foot back in the senatorial apartments, Riyo raced to Tural's apartment and let herself in. "It's me! What can I do?"
Tural was sitting on her couch with the network comms on her caf table.
"Nadea?" Riyo approached her. "What's going on? Where are your defectors?"
Tural looked up and with one glance, Riyo knew.
"You shouldn't be here. We shouldn't talk at all anymore; it could lead them to you," she rambled. "But please, take my defectors. The cadets at Skystrike, the stormtrooper on Kuat. They don't deserve to die because I failed."
Her voice broke and Riyo raced to her side.
"I won't leave you," she swore. Dash the Empire; it would look suspicious if Riyo suddenly stopped visiting the day the defection failed.
"I should have been me!" Tural wailed and stared at her invisible handler's tattoo. "I swore to protect them, and now they're going to be tortured and I'm … I'm here."
Riyo hugged her friend with everything she had, trying desperately to stay strong as the full weight of what had happened settled on her shoulders. What could she say? The defectors were gone, Tural was a dead woman walking, and the rest of them were all in limbo, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"I shouldn't be here!"
And Riyo realized there wasn't anything to say.