Chapter Text
Vos kept him in the cockpit through the next two jumps. He had Davijaan help him navigate through the asteroid field, but only spoke to issue curt orders. While they were in hyperspace they sat in silence, Vos checking the autopilot every hour or so.
Vos was still angry. Or maybe scared. He sat still as stone, eyes straight ahead, but he was aware of Davijaan the same way Davijaan was aware of him. Shoulders tense, body angled slightly forward, ready to run or fight at the slightest excuse. Davijaan focused on breathing, on staying still and quiet and not giving him that excuse.
A few hours into the second jump he levered himself out of his chair and grabbed Davijaan’s arm to yank him out of his, and escorted him to the gally. They brought ration bars and water back to the cockpit, and ate bathed in the blue-white glow of the blurring stars. Davijaan kept his conscious thoughts to a minimum and ate and drank what he was given.
When they were two hours out, Vos checked the autopilot once again and stood, reaching over to drag Davijaan out of his chair as well.
It wasn’t until they were in the hold, the airlock looming, that Davijaan planted his feet and hauled them both to a stop. “No! No, I said I would follow your orders! I said—”
Vos growled and picked him up by the collar and sat him down hard on a crate. “Calm down. And sit still.”
Davijaan calmed down and sat still, stealing one last glance at the airlock before he forced his focus back to Vos. He was digging around inside another crate, grumbling under his breath, and pulling out… armor?
Davijaan watched wide-eyed as Vos laid out a full set of Phase II clone armor, painted with the standard slate grey pattern of the Kamino Security Force, the logo clear and crisp on the pauldron. “Put this on,” he said.
Davijaan put it on, trying not to speculate on how Vos had got it and if it had come off a dead body or a spare rack. No telltale off-white patches, and it didn’t smell like blood or rot, but the stench might just be covered over by the paint fumes. There were scratches and scuffs like the armor had been worn, but the paint was definitely new.
Fully kitted out, he sat back on the crate, helmet in his lap. Vos looked him up and down and gave a sharp nod. They did a quick communications check of the helmet comm and HUD, and then Vos sat down cross legged on the metal decking and emptied the contents of a belt pouch into his lap.
“You are going to do two things for me. You are going to access the computer network,” he said, handing Davijaan a code cylinder, “and you are going to plant some bugs in some offices.”
He showed Davijaan the tiny circular bugs, how to attach them and turn on the masking, and then gathered them back into the bag. Davijaan tucked the cylinder and the bag of bugs into his own belt pouch, watching Vos discreetly as he did.
The General was still tense, still on edge, but not angry. Serious and focused like even the most volatile of soldiers got before a battle. This mission was important to him. Davijaan couldn’t risk ruining it.
“Sir?” he ventured, cautious. Vos raised an eyebrow. “Sir, I’m not—I’m not a slicer. I never had any counterintelligence training. I don’t know—”
“Don’t worry about that. I’ll be giving you step by step instructions the whole way. Just do what I say, and you’ll be fine.”
He swallowed his protests, and nodded. Something amused and exhausted crossed Vos’ face. “Believe me, if I could do this myself I would. Do you know how annoying it is to have to outsource a job like this? It’s pretty damn annoying. Unfortunately, this facility is one of the special few in the whole galaxy that incorporates bioscanners into their standard security setup. Even if I could fool the bioscanners, I can’t misdirect that many people for that long. Speaking of.”
He rose and went back to the armor crate, and lifted out a small white chest, similar in shape and size to an armor cleaning kit. Davijaan didn’t get a look inside but Vos dug around and pulled out a thin silver bracelet, with a flat black something attached in the middle. Looked almost like one of the bugs.
“Left wrist,” he demanded. Davijaan hesitated, and then held out his left arm.
Vos removed his vambrace and rolled up the sleeve of his undersuit, and—and abruptly his hands stilled, and he stared down at the woven band, orange and yellow vivid against Davijaan’s brown skin.
He looked up and met Davijaan’s eyes. Surprised, and maybe a bit guilty. Davijaan kept his face blank and stared back. Vos opened his mouth, and closed it. He looked back down at the band and brushed a finger over an unraveling thread.
Davijaan wanted to tell him not to fucking touch it.
Gently, Vos untucked the end and unwound it from Davijaan’s wrist, fastened and tightened the bracelet, and then re-wound and re-tucked the band exactly as it had been. He graciously let Davijaan fix his own sleeve and vambrace.
“To scramble your tracker,” he said, sort of soft, sort of defensive, when everything was neatly concealed once more. He scratched the back of his neck. “We’ll be coming out of hyperspace soon. I need… A few minutes. Alone.” He pointed Davijaan to the ladder.
He went straight back to the cockpit and strapped himself into the copilot’s chair, uncomfortable in his borrowed armor, already sore across the shoulder blades from the way a new set pulled. That was fine. Nothing he couldn’t work through.
***
Vos was gone for longer than a few minutes. They were just about to enter their window for the jump—Davijaan weighing the pros and cons of going to find him or just making the jump himself—when he finally slumped into the pilot’s chair.
The tension had bled out of him completely, leaving him eerily calm. Like Kote, actually, after a long day of hard fighting. Maybe he’d spent that hour alone in the hold punching something.
“What’s your name?”
Davijaan twitched. “What?”
“Your name,” repeated Vos, staring straight out the viewshield. “It’s Odd—something?”
“My name is Oddball.”
Vos glanced at him, eyes narrowed. “Don’t lie to me.”
Davijaan grit his teeth, and fought to keep his voice even. “You may call me Oddball, or ‘37, or Commander. Sir.”
“Huh.” Vos studied him for a moment, suspicious, and then turned his attention back to the viewshield. “Fine, Commander,” he said, and took the ship out of autopilot.
***
They left the VCX in orbit on the dark side of the planet and took the auxiliary fighter down through atmo. It had been heavily modified, and fitted with a high grade cloaking device. Davijaan very much wanted to ask about the cloaking device, and if that was maybe possibly something that could become GAR standard in the near future, but didn’t dare ask Vos about anything other than the mission.
In a fighter this small a copilot would just get in the way, so Davijaan sat in the back and watched the grey clouds part around the nose of the ship, and listened to the thunder over the hum of the engine. They reached the surface with the rain.
He hadn’t been back to Kamino since he shipped out to Geonosis. He’d never expected to be back. Watching the storm and the sea from inside this little ship felt odd, but familiar. Like staring at trickling raindrops through the window in his common room, except the window was too big, and too close.
They skimmed over the waves for barely a minute before Vos brought the ship under the water. Davijaan took a deep breath as the last of the sky disappeared, looking away from the viewshield and focusing on the interior of the ship. There was a surprising amount of seating in here. Could probably transport a whole squad.
He took a few more deep breaths and then put his helmet on, double checking the waterproofing seals. Just in case.
Vos dropped him off at an abandoned landing pad at the north side of the cloning facility. None of the cameras were broken, but one had been knocked askew by a storm and never fixed. An uncharacteristic oversight.
Davijaan did not run on the rain-slick duracrete. He made it across without any alarms going off, plugged in the code cylinder, and stepped inside before the hissing doors were fully open.
He was standing in a white hall. It was empty, but apart from that it could have been any other stretch of white hall he had marched through as a cadet. He shivered, glad Vos couldn’t see him.
“Take a left,” said the voice in his ear. Davijaan took a left, pulling up the facility’s blueprints on his HUD and finding himself in the miles and miles of glowing halls. Vos had the same blueprints open on the ship’s console, and the feed from the helmet cam, and as Davijaan advanced towards the center of the facility he received a series of directions, suggestions, and instructions.
Some were appreciated, some were not. Davijaan knew how to walk in camera blindspots, thanks. But he would have missed the first bioscanner if Vos hadn’t told him it was coming up.
It took about ten minutes to get out of the disused wing and into the central hub of the building. The first trooper he passed was in the same Kamino Security grey. They exchanged a nod, both walking with purpose. He nodded to a few more KSF troopers and to one nervous shiny who hesitated to return the gesture. When he got close to the main thoroughfare Davijaan came to a halt and hovered, listening to the rhythms in the thud of passing boots.
“Getting close. It’s the middle of the changeover, so if you want to wait—”
It wasn’t an order yet, so Davijaan ignored Vos and slid out of the hall to fall in behind a platoon of KSF. They were just coming off shift, so their formation was just that slightest bit sloppy; their focus on getting to their mess hall and their barracks and not on their straggler.
“Good,” said Vos, surprised. “That was good. Now, for the next turn—”
Vos offered suggestions until he realized his poor dumb clone did at least know how to get around crowded areas unnoticed, and then he shut up and let Davijaan focus on attaching himself to one group after another. It wasn’t hard, he just found a platoon or squad heading in the right direction and assessed the mood and matched it, dragging his feet with those coming off shift and marching sharply in step with those going on. He didn’t have to open a single door himself.
Nobody said a word to him. That part he’d forgotten about; the part where clones didn’t speak in the public areas of the facility. In command track things had been a bit more lenient.
When he split off down the hall that led to the office wing he crossed paths with his first Kaminoan. A lab tech, focused on the ‘pad in their hands. Davijaan’s stride didn’t falter. The tech didn’t so much as glance at him.
For the first time, it occurred to him that Vos’ plan might actually work.
These halls were empty. It was the middle of the night on Kamino, and while the facility never slept, the Kaminoans did. Davijaan passed another lab tech and a secretary, both too tired and in too much of a hurry to leave to pay attention to him. Afterall, if there was a clone in here, then obviously it had security access for reasons above their pay grade.
Vos directed him through the maze, and Davijaan was just starting to get the logic of the layout when he turned a corner and found himself standing in front of the unassuming door of a private office. The plaque on the wall read, in both Kaminoan and Basic: Doctor Nala Se, Chief Medical Scientist.
“Here we are,” said Vos, pleased and anticipatory.
It took everything Davijaan had not to choke on bile.
He took a deep breath and forced his feet to bring him right up to that door. It slid open for the code cylinder, and, mind carefully blank, he stepped inside.
The office was large and bare and plain, the walls and floor the same shades of white and grey as the rest of the facility. It was dominated by a desk and console. The lights were still on, stark and white and blinding.
There were no cameras. He hadn’t known he was looking for them until he didn’t find them.
“Just turn on the console and plug in that cylinder. I’ll do the rest.”
Davijaan did as he was told, taking a step back from the desk as soon as the green light on the end of the cylinder stopped blinking. Vos hummed, satisfied. Suddenly he could breathe again.
He stood a ways back from the desk and watched the hall through the open door while Vos muttered on the other side of the comm. He didn’t know how long this would take. Surely no more than a few minutes.
He shifted his feet. Took another look around the office. The open door was making him uncomfortable. What was the point of leaving it open anyway? Anybody could walk past. Stupid mistake.
He closed the door, wincing at the noise. He walked a circuit around the perimeter, watching the light and shadow shift across his boots. Vos’ muttering was becoming increasingly agitated. Maybe that meant he was almost done. This armor was going to leave bruises on his shoulder blades.
Maybe Vos would let him fly on the way back to the fleet. He’d never flown any of the VCX series. Corellian freighters were pretty well known for having speed on par with Republic fighters, and—
“Do you need suggestions for where to put the bugs?”
Davijaan twitched, and bit his tongue hard. “No sir,” he managed after a second, and dug the bag of bugs out of his belt pouch, mentally berating himself. Then again, Vos hadn’t explicitly said which offices he was supposed to bug.
He wasn’t sure how many offices he had in his future and didn’t want to interrupt the renewed muttering, so he shook about a quarter of the bugs into his hand and placed them carefully around the desk. Spots that weren’t touched often, but still close enough to where Dr. Se would presumably sit to get good readings.
“Well, shit.”
He paused as he tucked the pouch away. “Sir?”
“Could there be a separate network? But why would they… Damn. Alright Commander, we’re done here. Tidy up and clear out.”
The cylinder went back in his belt pouch, the console was turned off, and Davijaan stepped through the hissing door and back into the maze of white halls. Only it was worse now because he knew where he was going, and he was having a harder and harder time thinking about something other than getting caught. He couldn’t focus on anything other than where he was and what he was doing because then he would miss something important, but he couldn’t focus on where he was or what he was doing because then he would start laughing and probably die.
And really all this just went to show he was the worst possible pick for a mission like this because he was so stuck in his own head that when he rounded the corner outside Chief Medical Officer Dr. Nala Se’s office, he ran smack into the doctor herself.
She made a low sound of outrage, neck arching. He took a stumbling step back and snapped to attention, executing a perfect salute. “My apologies, ma’am,” he said, voice even, and then turned on his heel to march in the opposite direction.
The lights were on. The lights in her office were still on, and if anybody in this facility was going to work late it would be—and he hadn’t—Vos hadn’t—
“Stop.”
Vos was static in his ear. He stopped, and turned.
“Ma’am?”
“Who authorized you to be in this wing?”
“... Captain CC-7721, ma’am. I was delivering a report to the research lab.”
Her eyes narrowed. He didn’t blame her, he wouldn’t have believed him either.
“The research lab closed two hours ago. Identification, clone.”
Mechanically, he offered up his left arm. She unhooked a small scanner from her belt.
“What are you doing?”
Dr. Se gripped his arm, angling the scanner over his wrist.
“Run!”
Davijaan shoved her off and ran.
From a distance he registered her furious shout, his focus on the rapid directions Vos relayed. A right, and a left. Another left. A long hall of curves but no corners. Third door, and he burst out of the office wing and back into the central hub. A platoon of KSF was already sprinting towards him.
Shift change was over. The halls were empty except for the advancing platoon. But he had a head start, and the voice in his ear, and Davijaan was good at running. He was very very good at running, and terror always lent him new speed.
“Get outside. Just get out of the facility, and I’ll find you.”
Vos didn’t let him retrace his steps. Vos steered him down a direct route to the closest exit, voice calm and even and grating, KSF less than a hall’s length behind him.
He wanted it to be Kote in his ear, or Wolffe, or even Mitts. But maybe if Vos got him out of this alive Davijaan could forgive him for being him.
The halls blurred. The stamp of boots and the static of the comm mingled with his own harsh breath. They were shouting for him to halt and surrender. He would have laughed if he’d had the breath to spare.
He gained some distance with shortcuts; narrow halls that bottlenecked the platoon. He never checked over his shoulder but they never got close enough to grab at him. He didn’t realize he’d reached the doors until he was slamming the code cylinder into the dataport and lurching outside into the rain.
He was on the south side of the facility. A small but well lit landing pad with a shiny little skiff docked. Some higherup’s personal dock. No Vos.
He stumbled to a stop as it hit him just how stupid it was to expect Vos to be waiting.
“I’m outside,” he said, hoarse, standing frozen in front of the open door. The shouting behind him abruptly cut off as they realized they had him trapped. “I’m outside, what do I do? What do I—”
“Get to the edge. I’m almost there.”
Skirting around the skiff, ignoring the renewed demands for his surrender, Davijaan forced his feet to bring him to the edge of the landing pad.
The sea was as grey as the sky. As grey as the rain, as grey as the duracrete. He stood on the edge and he watched the sea and he watched the sky and he shook rain off his visor and he waited, and waited, and waited, each second dragging longer than the last, until the first damming screech of armor against metal as the platoon reached the skiff.
“They’re going to catch me,” burst out, unbidden, and he hated his inability to hide or control his own panic. “Vos, they’re going—They’re going to—”
“Can you swim?”
“Can I—What?”
“Can. You. Swim.”
He swallowed. “Yes sir.”
“Go over the edge.”
“What?”
Vos growled. “I said go over the edge. Now.”
“But—”
“Jump, Commander!”
Davijaan jumped.
‘17 had known it was dangerous how much he hated the sea. When they learned to swim in their kit he made Davijaan go in first and get out last; made him swim past the buoys marking the boundaries of safe water. His punishments were always swimming laps. Kote had gotten into a screaming fight with ‘17 the first time Davijaan had been shoved off the edge of the marching ground and told to tread water until the training session was over.
‘17 had won that fight, like he’d won all of his and Kote’s fights, and every time they’d had a session outside Davijaan knew there was a chance he’d spend it treading water.
As he sank, he was grateful for every minute of the hours upon hours ‘17 had forced him to spend in the sea. He closed his eyes and relaxed and let his breathing even out, pushing his panic away to deal with later. He was fine. It was just water. He could swim for hours if he had to. He might have to. That was fine.
He didn’t try to swim to the surface. They would be watching, back on the landing pad. That was fine. His helmet was sealed, the waterproofing of his undersuit would last a few minutes. He could drift with the current until he was under the facility.
As his armor dragged him down and the cold pressed heavy against him, Davijaan reminded himself he was going to get a hug after this. A very long, very warm hug.
Except he wasn’t, because Kote wasn’t here.
Kote wasn’t here. Wolffe wasn’t here. His squad wasn’t here. It was just Davijaan, sinking alone into the sea. Because there was no way for Vos to locate him with his tracker signal scrambled.
With that realization, his eyes snapped open. He started kicking, frantic, a sudden surge of desperation pushing him towards the surface, the first trickle of water working its way under his collar and down the back of his neck. The world beyond his visor was a grey so dark it was almost black; the sea was grey and the sky was grey and his armor was grey too and even if he was treading water at the surface would Vos be able to see him?
Vos said he would find him. Vos said all he had to do was get out of the facility and he’d find him, but what if—What if—
Something warm wrapped around his waist. It felt solid and steady, like being held in someone’s arms, like that hoped for hug, and he thought maybe he was imagining it until he started rising.
Swiftly he was drawn up and out of the sea. He gasped as he broke the surface, and then kept rising until his feet were dangling over the waves.
Lightning flashed, bright enough to cut through the grey. In the white-blue blaze he saw Jedi General Quinlan Vos, hovering parallel with him, arms outstretched towards him.
Davijaan was drawn forward and set gently on a solid surface in front of Vos. The warmth abruptly released him, leaving him trembling. They weren’t hovering, they were standing on the auxiliary fighter, the cloaking perfectly reflecting the sea except for the open overhead hatch.
Vos shoved him through the hatch, jumping down after him and throwing himself into the pilot’s chair. Davijaan strapped himself in for the flight back to the VCX, muscle memory taking over as he realized he had both hands free. He’d lost the code cylinder. Maybe it was still sinking down to join his batchmates.
Vaguely he was aware of the fighter docking with the VCX, and of climbing down the ladder and being guided to sit on a crate, but most of his mind was still stuck on the code cylinder. Trying to remember when he’d lost it, and trying not to wonder if there would be consequences for losing it.
And then a warm hand released the helmet seal and pulled it off his head and all the panic he’d been holding back flooded his body because he needed—he needed that helmet he was going to drown without his helmet he—
“Hey, calm down. Just helping you get this off. Hold—”
But he wasn’t in the water he was in the VCX, and Vos was touching his armor—
“Don’t fucking touch me,” he snapped, shoving Vos off. And then ducked, biting his tongue hard enough to taste blood.
… It occurred to him, warily watching Vos sit on the floor in the far corner, laying his open hands on his knees, that his new CO hadn’t actually hit him the night before. Hadn’t even threatened to. His back was sore from being shoved into the wall, but what were some sore muscles to a broken nose?
Slowly, he stripped out of the rest of the armor, stacking it neatly on the floor. He would let it dry and then pack it back into the crate. His undersuit was damp around the cuffs and collar and he wanted to change out of that too, but Vos was still here, watching Davijaan as nervously as Davijaan was watching him.
He cleared his throat, straightening his shoulders. “I’m fine, sir. Helmet was sealed properly, I didn’t even get my face wet.”
Hesitant, Vos nodded. “Can I get you anything? Something hot to drink?” Deliberate, he rose to his feet, keeping his hands visible. “I’ll poke around the galley while you get changed.”
“Why?”
Vos froze, halfway to the ladder. “Because it will help warm you up. And… And because you’re upset.”
“Why do you care?”
“Why shouldn't I care?”
Reasonably sure he wasn’t going to get hit, he said, “You didn't, before.”
“Ah.” Vos winced. “Yeah, well. That was, uh. That was a Force thing.”
“A Force thing?” General Kenobi had never done any such thing to any of his officers, blamed on the Force or not.
Vos’ shoulders slumped, sudden shame and exhaustion lining his face. “I wasn’t listening, before. I… The longer you focus inward, on your own emotions, the harder it is to focus outward, on the emotions of others. You can get—locked into a sort of echo chamber, where the only thing you can hear is your own fear.”
He regarded Davijaan evenly, silently, taking in the distance between them and the way he was not quite shivering in his undersuit, unwilling to pass Vos to get to the ladder. “I scared you pretty badly, didn’t I?”
Davijaan didn’t bother to give any kind of response.
“I’m not trying to—If I get like that again, I…” His eye twitched, frustration overtaking exhaustion. “It’s not anything to do with you,” he said at last.
And Davijaan knew it didn’t really matter in the end, whether it was anything to do with him or not, because he would have to deal with it either way. But he nodded and smiled a reassurance all the same.
Vos turned to the ladder. “I’ll be in the galley. Come find me when you’re ready, even if you don’t want that hot drink. We need to discuss a change in the plan.”
***
Davijaan hurried to get cleaned up and changed. He was sore, and if he stopped moving he was going to fall asleep on his feet. He felt the ship shudder its way into hyperspace while he was drying off and picked up his pace.
When he finally slipped into the galley Vos had four separate datapads spread out on the table, a steaming mug of caf barely balanced on the edge. There was a second mug placed directly opposite him.
Davijaan sat in front of the mug and contemplated the caf and the headache he knew he would get if he drank it. He decided he already had a headache coming on, and didn’t care. Took a scalding swallow.
Vos let him enjoy his free headache for about half a minute.
“So,” he said, and laid his hands on the table, drumming his fingers against the top. He wasn’t wearing his gloves. It was the first time he’d seen Vos without them.
“We sliced into the mainframe and bugged Dr. Se’s office. Good for us. I was hoping we’d also be able to tag Prime Minister Su and the lovely Senator Burtoni, but eh, I’ll take two out of four, considering the mainframe was our primary objective.”
At least Vos wasn’t angry. At least he wasn’t asking about the code cylinder, or the rest of the waterlogged bugs. Though the good cheer and the liberal use of ‘we’ and ‘our’ were more than a little frightening. Davijaan sipped his caf, wide-eyed.
“Unfortunately, I did not find what I was looking for in the mainframe, which means I have to look for it somewhere else. And what is truly unfortunate is that ‘somewhere else’ is starting to look like Coruscant.” He gestured to one of the datapads, and when Davijaan craned his neck to see, slid it across the table.
It was a fatality report. Davijaan set the mug aside and skimmed it, and then looked up from the ‘pad, confused. But maybe questions were alright, for now. “This mission still has to do with the whole, biological warfare thing, right? The virus? You’re still investigating all that?”
“More or less. How much do you know about the circumstances behind ARC-5555’s death?”
Davijaan shrugged.
He’d been on ferry duty that day. Leave or no leave, officers still needed to get back and forth between Galactic City and the Open Circle where it loomed in the void. Not to mention other incoming GAR ships.
He and Fiddle had picked up a CG squad and flown them to the transport that had reached orbit from Kamino, and picked up three passengers. There had been no return trip, at least not before he got off shift.
The reason he remembered that trip was because he’d had a Jedi and a Kaminoan on his ship at the same time, which had been nerve wracking, and because he’d gotten to fly so close to the Senate Dome. And because later, when Kote told him what happened with Rex’s ARC, he made the connection to the unconscious trooper he’d glimpsed.
“He tried to assassinate the Chancellor. He was stopped and killed.”
Something calculating gleamed in Vos’ eyes. “That’s the bones of it, but the real meat of the situation is that the dedicated Dr. Se insisted the reason ARC-Fives attacked the Chancellor was because he’d removed his inhibitor chip.”
Davijaan blinked. Vos leaned back in his seat, hands flat on the table, studying his face. Analyzing his reaction for—something.
He tried not to squirm. He laid his left hand on the table, offering his wrist up for inspection. “You mean the tracker?”
“No. The inhibitor chip. The one in your brain.”
The one in his brain.
Huh.
“Huh.” He left his hand where it was, eyes locked on the yellow and green edge caught in the space between his black sleeve and his brown wrist.
So. There were two. Maybe there were more than two. Maybe all his insides were chips and wires and programming and he’d never find out how much of him was metal and how much of him was meat until he got blown to pieces.
He cleared his throat. “What does that one do?”
“Presumably, it inhibits dangerous levels of aggression. Or, you know. Inhibits clones from taking out their aggression on their superiors.”
That made a certain kind of sense. Why restructure a whole brain when you could just put a chip in to turn off one small part?
Vos was still staring at him. It was getting harder not to squirm. He grabbed for the mug to have something to do with his hands.
“You really didn’t know,” said Vos, shocked.
“No.” Why would he?
“Why didn’t you?”
He was going to bite straight through his tongue if Vos kept saying stupid shit. “Well. I didn’t need to know about them before this mission. Sir.”
The shock was swiftly replaced by—something. Vos opened his mouth, but Davijaan was faster.
“My apologies if I’m misunderstanding something, but what do the inhibitor chips have to do with biological warfare?”
Vos cleared his throat, and sat up straight, and Davijaan thought maybe he was a bit relieved to be back on topic. “That’s the mission, actually. We don’t know yet.”
He slid another datapad across the table, and it was another fatality report. For a Jedi General.
“The Jedi—and ARC-Fives—discovered the chips because of this mess. CT-5385’s chip degraded, causing him to attack and kill Master Tiplar.”
Another bit of gossip Davijaan had heard in passing, from Bolts in the mess and then from Wolffe, who’d been friendly with Doom.
“The prevailing theory, supported by the good doctor, is that the degradation was caused by a virus. ARC-Fives requested to speak to the Chancellor regarding a Separatist plot. Fives and CT-5385 were friends, they were both on Ringo Vinda at the same time, Fives accompanied him to Kamino for the initial medical investigation. It’s not a lot to go on but it’s enough to start asking questions.”
Davijaan was starting to follow the logic, at least enough to confidently nod along. Though he had no idea why Vos was bothering to explain this to him. “Will I be accompanying you to Coruscant to continue to assist with this investigation?”
“Yes. Yeah, you’re with me until this is all over.” Vos scratched the back of his neck. “If I’d been… in a better state of mind, yesterday, I would have explained more up front.”
Davijaan hummed, noncommittal. “Is the communications blackout going to last the whole mission, or is there a chance I can contact—When will the blackout be over?”
“Well that’s the thing, see, is we’ve kind of been declared dead.”
For a few shattering seconds, Davijaan forgot how to breathe.
“The ship’s hyperdrive was sabotaged, we blew up the second time we tried to jump. There was a distress signal, lots of debris. One of the better fake deaths Obi-Wan and I have staged, actually. I think you were in your cabin for most of it.”
Vos was staring at a spot over his shoulder, drumming his fingers against the table again, and if Davijaan didn’t know better he’d say the man looked guilty. “I don’t know who all you left behind, but this will be over soon. We’re close. We’re so close.”
Davijaan was not close to many of his siblings and this shit right here was exactly why.
It was fine. He was fine. Kote could destroy a few training droids and be fine, and Wolffe could cry on his general’s shoulder and be fine, and when this was all over he’d find them and explain and everything would be fine. This was the whole reason Kote had made him do that transfer paperwork.
“I’ll plot a course to Coruscant,” he said, and left his caf on the table.