Chapter Text
part v: the mechanic [a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma with a decent fashion sense and a knack for explosions]
It happens like this: after a getaway that comes a little too close for comfort, the Cube’s engines give out on a sulfurous mining moon in the middle of nowhere and there’s one mechanic in the system.
The only problem is, he’s in jail.
“For what?” asks Grog when Scanlan returns with the news, lighter twenty creds for greasing a few palms.
“Attempted murder,” he replies, leaning against one of the cargo crates they’re supposed to be hauling halfway across the galaxy. If they don’t get off this rust bucket soon they’re going to miss the rendezvous, and that’s not gonna go over well with Gilmore. Not to mention the couple thousand credits they’ll be flushing down the drain.
Grog looks unfazed. “Sounds like our kinda guy.”
“We aren’t murders,” Keyleth chastises from halfway across the hold, looking up from her game of… something, Scanlan can’t remember what it’s called. Some weird Ashari card game that Tiberius has taken a shine to. “We’re smugglers. There’s a difference.”
“She’s right,” Pike agrees, her blaster in scattered pieces around her where she sits cross-legged on the ground. “I’m not sure we’re looking for, um. That.”
“You will be when you hear who he tried to murder,” Vax says, appearing next to Scanlan as if out of thin air, and it’s a testament to how often he does it that no one jumps. Vex, perched on top of a stack of crates, even rolls her eyes.
“Who would that be, brother?”
Vax grins, far too excited about all of this. “An imperial scientist.”
“What is an imperial scientist doing this far out?” Tiberius asks, finally dragged out of the game.
“Are they still here?” That’s Keyleth, eyes bright, and she’s not the only one looking a little too curious. Scanlan nips that in the bud; the last thing they need is to go chasing after some mysterious imperial.
“She left–– I don’t know when. I stopped listening. She’s gone, though.”
“They’re moving the prisoner–– was it tomorrow?” Vax asks, looking to him. Scanlan shrugs.
“Sure.”
“Maybe tomorrow,” Vax amends.
“Tomorrow-ish?” Vex suggests dryly.
Scanlan nods. “Exactly.”
“So if we’re doing this––“
“Whoa.” Scanlan cuts Vax off before he can get going. “Doing what?”
“Breaking him out,” Vax replies. “I thought that’s why you brought it up back there.”
“Well I didn’t mean it.”
“Well, who else is gonna fix the ship?”
“I–– Okay, you have a point, but are we sure––“
“Yes.” Vax, Grog, and Keyleth respond as one, their agreement echoing through the hold. Pike nods decisively a moment later, and Vex has already started climbing down the crates, adjusting her bow on her back as she goes. Scanlan throws his hands up.
“Alright, fine. Outvoted on my own ship. This is an outrage, you know. Mutiny.”
“It’s not that unusual, darling,” Vex says, standing next to her brother, and Scanlan regrets ever taking her under his wing.
“Someone tell me we at least have a plan.”
“Sure,” Grog says, tucking his helmet under his arm. “We go in, we kill ‘em, and we get the guy out.”
“A real plan,” Scanlan clarifies. The hold goes silent for a moment.
“Start with what we know,” Vex sighs. “We’ll go from there.”
Three hours and an argument later they have something that could loosely be called a plan, if one were feeling particularly generous and also had only a vague definition of the world “plan” with no personal experience.
“Oh, come on,” Vax says as they delve into the underground warren of the mining colony, and Scanlan can hear his shit-eating grin even over the comms. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
“Vax,” Keyleth groans at Scanlan’s side. “Why would you say that?”
“What?”
“Both of you shut up.” Vex’s voice crackles in his ear. “And Keyleth darling, make sure you let Scanlan do the talking.”
Scanlan says, “It’s what I get paid for.”
“You don’t get paid, though.”
“I should,” he mumbles.
They walk in silence, feet echoing along the austere grey halls of the station, the poisonous world above sealed off by the colony’s carefully-calibrated heat shields and nearly a hundred feet of thick stone. The hiss of the oxygen recyclers hums through the complex, a nice counterpoint to the low buzz of machinery in the walls and the distant sound of voices. Now and then a light flickers above them; the whole station looks like it’s seen better days. Scanlan can’t say he’s surprised; rim colonies that need this much upkeep are lucky to survive a generation.
They turn the corner, skirting past what sounds like a mess hall––he hears the clink of cutlery and rumble of a crowd through the closed door––and Keyleth says, as if an afterthought, “Anyways, I’m really bad at talking.”
“You’re not–– Yeah, you kinda are,” Scanlan says, and Vex hisses for them to shut up over the comms again so they go quiet.
It’s a long, awkward walk to the detention level in the lower levels of the station, where the lighting is even dimmer and the heat of the planet seeps through the patchy shields and humidity hangs in the air. The warden looks up when the step into the three-room detention ward. It’s not much to look at––more of a brig, really, the kind of place you hold drunk and disorderly workers overnight. Not the kind of place you hold a traitor and criminal.
Not unless you’re waiting for someone else to come deal with them up, of course.
Scanlan, who has spent more than one morning talking his way out of exactly this kind of jail cell, braces himself as they approach the desk. The warden’s eyes narrow and his mouth thins. He’s an angular and grey man: sharp chin, flat pale lips, thick grey eyebrows, cold grey eyes. He looks like someone stuck him in a suit press; even the tick between his brow is a neat furrow. Only his hair––a wild, curling mess of greying brown––has any life around him. Scanlan already knows he’s going to be a hard sell.
But talking is what he does best, so he lets his shoulders drop and strolls forwards, wraps the familiar double-layer of trust me and listen around him as he approaches, and reminds himself this is just another con.
“Hello,” he says smoothly. “I’m here for the prisoner pickup.”
The warden peers over the desk.
“The what?”
“The prisoner pickup. The Empire is very interested in him.”
The warden’s stare pins him in place. “How do you know about the prisoner? We haven’t contacted anyone.”
Ah. Whoops. “We keep very good track of these things,” Scanlan says. Believe me. “Criminal activity. Crime. You know how it is.”
The man’s face is nearly impossible to read. “You’re a little short for an officer.”
“I’m tall where it counts,” Scanlan assures him. Keyleth stifles a sound behind him and the warden’s faces goes even flatter, mouth pinching at the corners.
“Indeed,” he says. His voice is angular too, a flat Mid Rim accent. “I’m going to need to see some ID.”
“You don’t need to see his identification,” Keyleth says, and Scanlan’s about to tell her to be quiet and let him do this when the man’s eyes slip out of focus.
“I don’t need to see his identification,” he agrees easily, then snaps back to himself, sharp again. “We weren’t expecting you.”
“Well, Imperial efficiency,” Scanlan brags, doing his best to keep himself from turning around to gawk at Keyleth, because he can get people to open up, or trust him more than they ought, but he’s only ever heard of Jedi changing someone’s mind like that. “Is he ready for transport?”
“Not yet,” says the man. “Give me just a moment, I’ll have him ready.”
“We’ll just, uh, wait here.” Scanlan folds his arms. “Make it snappy.”
The warden gives him a look that could freeze Tatooine and disappears into the back room of the detention center.
“I don’t like him,” says Keyleth quietly. “He’s cold.”
Scanlan doesn’t quite understand what she means by that, but he finds himself in full agreement. Something about this doesn’t quite sit right with him.
“Everyone be ready,” he says over his commlink. “We’re gonna be leaving real soon.”
“How’s it going?” Vex asks.
“Really well,” says Scanlan, and Keyleth groans.
“Why did you have to say that?”
“Y’know,” Scanlan tells her, “for someone who believes in an all-encompassing mystical energy, you sure are superstitious.”
“I’m not––“ she starts, but a howling cry of pain from the back cell cuts her off, and they share a look before dashing towards the room. Keyleth reaches the door before him; he has to shoulder past her into the small, bare cell, scene unfolding before him: the angular warden points a long, narrow baton alight with flickering blue energy at a huddled bundle of a sentient pressed against the slate-grey walls, all white hair and hollow eyes, and Keyleth holds her arm out, hand a claw in the air, as the warden stares at her, fear painted across his face.
Then time catches up with him and Keyleth makes a fist and yanks. The baton rips free of the warden’s hands and clatters to the floor on the other side of the room, and the prisoner says, “A Jedi––“ and the warden snarls and after that it’s all rather a blur of energy bolts and shouting.
When everything settles again the twins stand in the doorway, Vex’s bow still drawn in her hands and one of Vax’s vibroknife sticking out of the warden’s back. A moment later the knife snaps back into Vax’s palm and he sheaths it.
“Wow, yeah,” he says, as if they’re talking about the weather. “You’re doing great.”
“Who in the Nine Corellian Hells are you?”
The sentient––a human, who can’t be much older than a kid, though it’s hard to tell with humans––uncurls stiffly and pushes himself up, one hand braced on the wall. He towers over everyone in the room, except Keyleth, and even in his ragged state––his tattered clothes hang off him, and his hollow cheeks give him an almost skeletal look––he stands up straight, the kind of blue-blood posture they teach in the core. The way he squints down his nose at them rounds out the image. Then Scanlan realizes he just can’t see, and the sense of stature fades until Scanlan is sure he imagined it, and he finds his tongue.
“Well that’s just rude. We saved your life.”
The kid bristles. “I was handling it.”
“And doing a marvelous job,” Vex agrees, only a little sardonic. One corner of the kid’s mouth quirks, and he runs a trembling hand through his hair, aftershocks from the stun baton. Scanlan watches the twins notice and frown as one, and he wonders if the dead warden knows how lucky he is to have gotten a quick end.
“We should, uh, probably go,” Keyleth says into the stiff silence. She pointedly does not look at the body of the warden on the ground.
“Right,” Scanlan agrees. “You’re good with engines, right?”
“I–– Yes?” The kid looks between them, brow furrowed.
“Great, because it’s gonna be one short ride if you're not.”
“What do you––“
He’s cut off by the crackle of an inter-system comm in the front room, a garbled mess of static and confusion that indicates they’re gonna have company soon.
“Questions later,” Vax decides. “Leaving now.”
“Or you could stay,” Scanlan offers, and the kid goes even whiter, somehow, and his eyes go hard, steely like the inside of this cell, and the air seems to chill around him.
“No,” he says. “I’m coming.”
The man stops only to gather his belongings––a pair of complicated-looking spectacles, a blaster with more mods than Scanlan can count, and a thick blue coat, which must be hell to wear in this hot and humid station––from behind the warden’s desk when they duck out of the detention ward, giving up stealth for speed as they hurry down the austere halls. It’s not like there’s much to hide behind anyways, and Scanlan’s reasonably sure that everyone’s still in the mess hall; certainly they have yet to see anyone wandering the station. He furiously hopes it stays that way.
They make it down two levels before the warning saxons sound, high pitched and blaring through the narrow halls, loud enough to make his teeth ache.
“I think they’ve noticed us,” Vex says, and Vax taps his comm on.
“Time to go, Tibsy,” he says, and Tiberius crackles back, “Affirmative!” Moments later something rumbles to the left, and dust rains from the ceiling. The lights flicker.
“That should keep them busy,” Vax says. “Shall we?”
The kid doesn’t move. A frown mars his face, eyes narrow and guarded behind his spectacles. “Who are you?” he demands, the incredulity and surprise of earlier gone from his expression. His voice trembles as he asks, hands balled into fists at his side.
“We don’t have time for this,” Vax snaps, and the man draws himself upright. The coat does nothing to hide how thin he is; he looks almost fragile swamped in all that extra cloth.
His eyes, though, are steel.
“I will not go anywhere with you until I know who you are. Do you work for the Empire? Are you bounty hunters?”
Vax gapes. “Bounty–– What?”
“We’re smugglers, actually,” Keyleth says helpfully, and the kid’s frown deepens.
“Well, I’m a musician,” Scanlan corrects. He keeps his voice light, jovial. Non-threatening. He’s familiar with this spooked-animal look, and they don’t exactly have the time for it but better to deal with this now than in the middle of a fight. “We need a mechanic. You’re a mechanic. Whoever’s in charge here wouldn’t let you out, so…”
“So you staged a jailbreak?”
“Welcome to the crew,” says Vex. “We’re a work in progress.”
“Assuming we make it out of here,” Keyleth says. The kid opens his mouth to speak, then closes it again. His shoulders drop and he shakes his head slowly.
“Well,” he says, finally. “Alright, then. I must say, this is the strangest way I’ve been hired.”
Vex laughs. “Darling, you don’t know the half of it.”
A second explosion follows the first and the ground shifts slightly, the lights blinking off for a moment before emergency lighting flickers on, reddish and dim, and they snap back to the situation at hand.
“Time to go,” Vax says, dashing off ahead as he’s wont to do; the rest of them sprint after him.
Through some immense luck, they make it all the way down to the docking bay before anyone catches up with them, and when they do it’s a handful of half-armed, confused looking miners, and even Grog doesn’t have the heart to fight them.
It helps that they all quail when they see him in full armor with his blaster cannon casually pointed towards the ceiling.
“Uh,” says one. “We don’t want any trouble.”
“Nor do we,” says Vax. “I think we can come to an agreement.”
Someone shoves through the crowd, a woman with greying hair pulled back in a severe bun; she wears goggles around her neck and is still in uniform, grey suit slightly scorched from a surface walk. The miners look to her as she folds her arms and frowns at them, deep lines around her mouth.
“What sort of agreement would that be?” she asks.
“Do not test us and we won’t kill you,” Tiberius says, a dangerous rumble in his voice, and Keyleth immediately puts her hand out to shush him.
“Whoa, Tibsy,” Vax murmurs, and the miners stir anxiously. Scanlan steps to the front of the group.
“We’ll take this dangerous man off your hands,” says Scanlan, gesturing to the kid, pushing a hint of suggestion, this is a good deal and no one wants any trouble here , “and you can keep working without any imperial entanglement. Win-win?”
The woman considers it. Scanlan waits.
“And the explosions?”
“There’s no structural damage,” Pike assures her gently, Grog a frightening counterpoint looming over her shoulder. “Just a lot of noise. Um, and you may have to fix some wiring. Sorry.”
The woman nods slowly. “Alright,” she decides. “If you ever show up here again, though––“
Grog rumbles out a laugh. “Oh, don’t worry, we won’t.”
Scanlan tips a hat he isn’t wearing. “It’s been a pleasure, ma’am.”
She cracks a smile. “Likewise.”
The masses behind her shift. “But, boss––“ someone starts, and she holds up a hand.
“Aren’t you supposed to be working?” she snaps, and the crowd shuffles and begins to disperse, men and women in grey jumpsuits funneling back into the grey warren of halls. The woman locks eyes with Scanlan.
“No Imperials,” she says. Scanlan nods.
“None.”
“Alright. Fly safe, captain.”
Then they’re alone in the docking bay, except for a pair of droids shifting canisters at the far end of the room, and everyone turns to stare at the mechanic. Scanlan rubs his hands together.
“Right. This is–– Uh. You know, I never got your name.”
The kid draws himself up, shifts his posture slightly, and suddenly the skinny, frail boy they pulled out of a detention cell disappears, and a man who could very well be an imperial officer in his own right stands among them, wearing authority like a cloak.
“Percival Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III,” he says, syllables rolling off his tongue like water, voice crisp and a little wry, as if his name itself is a joke. “Mechanic and traitor to the Empire. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
Scanlan nods. “Sure. Right.”
Vax gets over the shock first, shakes himself out of it. “Welcome to the crew, Percy,” he says, stepping up to clap him on the back. The kid rocks a little.
“It’s actually––“ he starts, but Vax is already moving past him up the ramp, calling for Trinket, and the kid seems to stumble out of his haughty stance and back into his own skin, and like that the spell is broken.
“I’m glad no one died,” Keyleth says. “Well, no one except, y’know.”
Percy blinks behind his glasses. “He deserved it. Trust me.”
Keyleth hums, and reaches out for a handshake. He takes her hand and after a moment’s hesitation bows to kiss the tops of her knuckles. She laughs brightly and curtsies, slipping into a matching formality that has everyone staring. “I’m Keyleth. It’s an honor to meet you.”
The kid smiles. “Likewise.”
Vex slides up next to her. “Vex,” she says, offering her hand, and Percy bows to kiss it too. “My brother with the penchant for nicknames is Vax.”
“I’m sure that’s never confusing,” Percy says with a wry smile, and Vex grins.
“Oh, you’ll fit right in.” She hooks her arm through Keyleth’s and the two drift up the ramp, talking in low voices.
Tiberius pushes his way through the Mandalorians to shake the kid’s hand, pumping it up and down, and Percy has to tilt his head up to meet the Trandoshan’s eyes.
“I’m Tiberius Stormwind!” says Tiberius. “From Draconia. And, ah, this is Grog and Pike. They are quite skilled warriors.”
Percy nods to them. “Pleasure.”
Scanlan steps forward, looking up at the man. “And I’m Scanlan Shorthalt, captain of this fine vessel and in need of your services.”
“The, ah, Lady’s Favour?” Percy says, twisting to look at the name painted across the hull. “She’s a Suwantek, right? I recognize the extended cargo bay.”
“We call her the Cube,” Grog says, pulling his helmet off. He grins like he’s telling a secret, and Percy raises an eyebrow, looking over the ship.
“Because of the shape?”
“Something like that,” Scanlan nods.
“He named it after his dick,” Pike interrupts bluntly, helmet tucked under one arm while she runs the other through her hair, and Percy turns a delicate shade of red. It clashes terribly with the blue of his coat.
“Right.”
Scanlan grins. “My pride and joy.”
“Um.”
“I’ll give you a tour,” Scanlan says as Pike and Grog disappear up the ramp. It trembles slightly under Grog’s weight. “We can go from there. Welcome aboard, Percy.”
“Happy to be here,” he says, and seems to sag in on himself now that everyone else has disappeared into the bowels of the ship, eyes taking on that familiar hollow look, and Scanlan is instantly glad they did this, despite the mess and danger and disaster. He knows a kindred spirit when he sees one.
He claps the side of the kid’s thigh and leads him up the ramp, where the ragtag group of mercenaries and wanderers he calls a crew squabble good-naturedly in the cargo hold, and watches the kid perk up as Vax cracks a particularly crude joke about Grog’s patchy beard.
Yeah. He’ll fit right in. Scanlan’s no Jedi, but there are some things he just knows.