Quick, barked introductions, bad food, and not enough sleep - Selas had expected rough conditions on an Alliance ship, but she still found herself taken by surprise. Besk - or Alpha-32, she supposed - could barely stand to look at her, and she could hear the venom in his voice whenever he spoke her name. Dark, serpentine shapes in the Force whirled around Besk when thought of his new charge, she could see that much. That power had gathered itself to him, a heavy stormcloud that towered and billowed when they met, a tension pressing toward violence that Selas found she would have had no response for. For a moment, she’d considered that her time in the Rebellion might have ended there. Though Besk had obviously pushed past the urge, she didn’t find herself admiring the courage of someone fighting against how they were made. Rather, she couldn’t help but wonder when his self-control would snap, and whether a small piece of history would repeat itself.
Not the finest foundation upon which to build trust, she had to admit. She couldn’t help but feel the trepidation around Besk when he’d handed her the data spike, and she saw the way that leapt to every other member of his group. If she were being honest with herself, she wasn’t entirely sure they were wrong.
But there had been no time to dwell, there had barely been enough time to sleep. For Selas’ academia-adjusted schedule, there certainly hadn’t been. The ship had dropped out of hyperspace with the same sliding tension she always felt, and with that had come a flurry of activity. More shouted orders, the sounds of armor being buckled on, the calls of comrades in arms to one another. She watched the Force move between these people, saw the bright web that linked one person to another, whether they realized it or not. In the hangar, she watched pilots strap themselves into fighters, and the whole became greater than either of them were alone, the entire squadron a separate pattern pressing against the endlessly shifting, swirling movement of the Force with their own striking power. Further down, another group of what she could only assume were other foot soldiers gathered, their heads bowed, quick, quiet words flowing between them, each syllable binding them together in subtle, shining ways.
And now, in the belly of the shuttle, pressed shoulder-to-shoulder with armed and armored soldiers of the Rebellion, all the uncertainty, all the fear and doubt settled, coalesced, became something so bright and strong she felt like she could reach out and touch it. Movements became less nervous, minds became more clear, purpose and will becoming something fierce and bright, the brilliant center of a comet burning though the Force. Selas took a long, slow breath and let that feeling slide through her awareness, felt it take some of her own anxiety away, felt her heart beat a little slower, her breath coming a little deeper, a little more even. Not invigorated, exactly, not refreshed…driven, perhaps.
Selas saw her fate, her own place in the Force, entwine with these people, and then she noticed something else. Behind her and to one side, she felt someone’s attention on her. Orren, she thought, sifting through the flurry of names she’d learned in the last handful of hours. Not drilling into her, not a lash of expectation, and not the sharp spike of…well, the sort of tension she’d learned to make a hasty retreat from. His was something else, something almost reverent. Selas smiled to herself - maybe Nazik was right, maybe there would be someone she’d be able to help see further than the end of their blaster barrel. When the shuttle’s belly thumped against the Majestic’s hangar deck, she made a point to turn to Orren and give him a nod and a small smile.
An armored fist banged against the door, and Selas brought her attention back to the moment. The bang came again, louder, this time followed by a voice roughened by deathsticks and alcohol.
She leaned over to Besk and whispered, “He’s knocking on that door,” she pointed to their left, “Open the one on the other side, claim that one’s stuck. When he comes around, I’ll open this door,” she pointed to their right, “and then slip out. I don’t think anyone has a clear view there, and they’ll never know I was here. When I get the data spike into a terminal, I’ll click my comm open three times. Sound good?”
She didn’t expect an acknowledgement, and she didn’t receive one - for all she knew, that had been the trooper’s plan in the first place. Still, she saw him open the far door, and the rest of the group make their way into the hangar, looking for all the world like the roughest sort of mercenaries. She heard an exasperated groan, followed by what sounded very much like cursing in a language she didn’t understand, then heavy footsteps moving from the left-hand door, around the back of the ship, to where Besk and his troops stood.
Heart pounding in her ears, the moment the mercenary stepped out of view of the right-hand door, Selas yanked on the release lever inside. The door swung out and up, and she slipped out and behind the bulk of the front of the shuttle before it rose to the top of its travel. She took a couple of quick, deep breaths through her nose, stepped around the bulging side turret, and pressed herself against the shuttle’s hull, felt the cold soak through her clothes. A moment later, she heard Besk’s voice, already in an argument with the mercenary. Good, that would keep his attention somewhere else, at least.
Selas turned her head, closed her eyes, focused her senses to fill the hangar. The space was crowded with vehicles and crews, and even the Keep’s hangar wasn’t so loud. All the same, while she knew there would be computer terminals here, there were too many people, too much open space. She needed somewhere smaller, somewhere she could control, and preferably somewhere with a door she could close. If the plan went right, even an inexperienced crew would figure out where the data spike was, and she knew the Keep and her fighters would have a much more complicated time if the Majestic’s weapons came back on-line halfway through the mission.
Somewhere other than the hangar, then. The file she’d been handed - and had all of half an hour to examine - had included maps of corridors and areas near the hangar too, or at least a reasonable idea based on the ship’s expected design. Ahead and to her right, there would be a door leading further into the ship, then to a series of corridors that would lead to a control room. The only problem was that there were at least two people between her and that door, working on what she could only tell was some kind of armored, bipedal walker. She could see the bright point of a welder in one person’s hand - that would mean they were wearing goggles, and small noises wouldn’t reach them. That was good, but the other one was going to be a problem. He had put down his tools and walked further into the hangar, suspicion plain in his body language. He turned his head this way and that, twisting to look around. He expected trouble. His body was tense, his senses flared into the world around him. Heavy, scarred fists curled into balls at his side, muscles twitched along his frame. A supicious trap on a hai trigger. Not good - but not entirely bad, either.
Besk continued speaking, and Selas pushed her breath between her lips in a long, slow stream of air. She’d prefer to have waited for an opportunity to present itself, but she could already feel a spring-coil constriction wrapping around Besk, one that would snap and scythe away into violence sooner than later. Another deep breath, and she dove a hand into her pocket, pulled out a piece of debris the size of her index finger, something she’d stopped off the hangar deck before they’d left. Just a piece of a starfighter, slag from a turbolaser’s glancing blow, something knocked loose and forgotten. Even to her senses, its weight was something that drifted through her awareness, something hard to focus on.
She took another pair of quick breaths, hefted the slag, then pushed herself off the shuttle’s hull. A pair of quick step and Selas turned, then whipped her arm around, sending the chunk of metal on a high, high arc - but not toward the more suspicious of the two men. She watched the piece of metal rise, the wispy imprint it made on the Force like a curl of smoke. She sent it where, all things being equal, it would have landed behind the suspicious man, between him and the man with the welder, and considerably to one side of where Selas wanted to go. But the moment the metal fragment left her hand, she focused on it, and sent tendrils of her own will out though the Force, wrapping her intention around and though the scarred, battered thing. She watched it crest the arc it would move though, she watched it fall. She watched it gather speed…
And at just the instant before it would have hit the ground, with a twitch of her hand, Selas sent the fragment flying with considerable force into the back of the suspicious man’s head. She head the wooden thunk it made against the back of the man’s skull, heard him stagger with a pair of heavy thuds. She felt the man’s attention whirl wildly through the room, then settle on the man with the welder, hunks of bright slag flying from his torch. The suspicious man stomped over to the welder, kicked the torch out of his hand, grabbed him by the front of his jacket and hauled him up, cursing in Huttese the whole time. In seconds, the two were in a screaming argument just the side of fisticuffs. A second after that, unable to entirely keep the grin off her face, Selas had slipped by them, unnoticed and unheeded, her feet moving with perfect, silent strides.
She touched the controls on door back to the hangar, winced at the way they screeched closed. Rather than freeze to see if anyone was coming, Selas took her leave on silent feet, padding away from the door precisely because someone might be coming to see what that sound was about. She couldn’t feel anyone nearby, which didn’t necessarily mean there wasn’t anyone, but she didn’t care to leave this to chance. She crept further into the ship, down one set of corridors, up one ramp, then another. To her relief, she didn’t encounter anything more dangerous than a box of electrical couplings left in the middle of a hallway. Another few meters and she jammed her hand against a control panel, which buzzed with the universality of an access-denied message.
Kneeling, Selas reached into her jacket again, pulled out a few small tools. In the space of a breath she had the control panel off the wall, exposing the complicated circuitry behind it. She focused her senses on the tangle of wires, and in her awareness the patterns of circuits and wires, logic and countermeasure spread out in front of her. She knew how to read them, or at least she knew how to read this one. With quick, deft hands she probed, clipped, jumped, teased, prodded, and under her breath, cajoled, and in the span of a dozen heartbeats she heard the door swish open.
Ahead, the tiny room looked out over the hangar from a dozen meters off the deck, the array of weapons and vehicles spread out in uneven islands of activity. She saw Besk from above now, saw him speaking with the hazy outline of a hologram, and saw his limbs gesticulating more and more wildly. The swirling, crackling cloud of potential around him lanced out to the other members of his group, and Selas knew she had no more time. She stepped into the room, sweat suddenly prickling her forehead, and reached into her jacket again, pulled the data spike out.
“Hey,” she heard a voice from behind her say, “You’re not supposed to be in here.”
She turned, and realized that she’d been focused far too closely on Besk and his men. The man behind her was taller than her by a head, rail-thin, and if she had to guess, only a little more than half her age. A dozen different choices crackled out though her mind in the skin of a second, then Selas moved. She put one foot on the console, pushed herself up a meter’s height with her other leg, then launched herself laterally at the man, using the last of the leverage of her shove off the console to twist her entire upper body around, the data spike held in one hand. She felt the blunt end thump into the man’s temple with a sound like a stone being dropped on a board, felt him reel to one side. Her feet hit the deck with velvet pats, and she reached up to catch the man around the neck with her free arm, yanking him further off-balance. She dropped the spike, reached to her belt, pulled out the single-use personal stunner she’d brought along, and pressed it to the back of the man’s neck, barely a second after he’d managed to choke in a breath.
The Force swirled around her, the man, and the stunner for a moment after she pressed the activation stud, and she could feel the electric zap even though her free arm, making the skin a little numb. Then Selas felt the awareness drain out of the man - he wasn’t asleep, but he was insensate. She’d been hit by one of those stunners before, and she did not envy the headache he would have when he woke up, but at least that wouldn’t be her problem. She let him down to the floor with all the gentleness her haste could lend her, snatched up the data spike, and clicked it home in a terminal on the console.
A moment later the terminal started to spin and twirl of its own accord, and Selas could see the pulses of energy moving down the console and out into the ship, seeds carrying a future that was about to make everyone’s day much more complicated. She pulled the comm out of her belt and clicked the channel open - once, twice, a third time, then clicked it back and took a step away from the console. Below her, the fight was still going on between the two she’d distracted, but that couldn’t last much longer.
Selas knelt again, reached into her jacket for the last piece of equipment she’d brought with her, and pried the console cover off on this side of the door. She reached in again, but this time just attached a device to the complicated nest of wiring in the door, touched a few buttons on it, and slid out of the doorframe. The door swished shut behind her, locking the hapless man who had discovered her in, and Selas’ feet took her several meters further down the corridor before she heard the loud bang that meant her little device had exploded, destroying the lock mechanism and, hopefully, welding at least one of the bolts into its own frame.
She started moving more quickly now, knowing that being alone in the next few minutes would not be a great idea - and then the ship’s alarms blared, filling the corridors with light and noise, and the air with a startled intensity. Apparently, someone on the Bridge had noticed that the Majestic’s weapons had all just fallen offline, and decided that everyone on the ship needed to know about it.
Her feet made almost no noise running across the hangar floor, and this time she felt the attention of one of the brawlers latch onto her, heard one of the men make a startled noise, start to pull away from the one she was pretty sure was the welder. She skidded around a piece of broken ion cannon, leapt over a table with a half-assembled battle droid, and pulled her comm from her belt.
“Bes…oh, damn it, Captain, I think we’ve got their attention,” Selas hissed into her comm unit, hoping against hope that Besk’s helmet was soundproof, “I got the spike in the computer system. It’s in a control room overlooking the hangar, and I destroyed the lock, but someone found me before I got it in. I stunned them, but if they wake up before we’re done, the ship’s fighters are going to have a bad day.” She felt a gathering tension behind her, threw herself into a slide that took her beneath a table at the same time a blaster shrieked, the bolt banging into the plasteel surface over her head. She tucked, rolled, used her momentum to come back to her feet and slide behind the bulk of another half-restored shuttle, “What happens now?”
