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am-just-as-confused-as-you · 1 year ago

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Caveat Emptor: Chapter 2 - Corpus Delicti

Rating: T

Characters: Gen, Commanders Fox, Thorn, Thire, and Stone

Warnings: canon-typical violence; references to self-harm, injuries, loss of autonomy

“You’re going to let it in to see the Chancellor, but not me?” Senator Corval shouted at the Senate guard, red-faced and spitting. “Don’t you know who I am?”

The natborn guard, a lieutenant from the markings on his blue uniform, replied, “Of course, Sir, but there has been an incident, and the Chancellor’s schedule had to be cleared. Now, if you would just–” The rest of the perfectly polite, placating line of strill osik cut out as the door slid shut behind Fox.

He hadn’t been arrested on sight and dragged off for interrogation yet. So far, so good.

The CSF investigators had set up just inside the Chancellor’s front lobby, away from any awkwardly prying eyes. They took down Fox’s designation number, assessed his baseline biometrics (clone standard, but protocols were protocols), had him remove his gloves and gauntlets for full handprint scans, and then asked him to step onto a sheet of tacky flimsy to record his boot tread (also clone standard, who would have guessed). Then they handed him a pair of disposable covers for his boots, forewent the sterile gloves given his existing armor, and sent him on with terse, borderline rude instructions to not touch anything and to leave the investigation to the trained professionals.

Because of course the CSF would be all over this situation. Right up until it looked like something might go wrong or make them look bad, and then the responsibility and the blame would get dumped in Fox’s lap.

Except Fox needed Guard eyes on this investigation right from the beginning. He needed a way to guide the narrative, to protect himself and his men from the blowback he could see coming from a lightyear away.

He needed to know what he, what CC-1010, had done.

Breathe, in and out, and calm.

Without evidence, he didn’t know anything. Maybe they’d find the Chancellor sleeping off a tainted spice bender in a broom closet somewhere. That was a common enough issue around the Senate that Thorn had worked up a standard protocol for overdose clean up and cover up procedures.

Little gods, could they please find him drooling off a laced spice rip somewhere? At that moment, Fox couldn’t imagine a more ideal outcome. There was going to be a scandal no matter how this shook out, but at least that scenario would be effectively impossible to pin on the Guard.

Senate guards and the CSF were doing a pretty good job of keeping a lid on things so far. It wouldn’t last of course, especially with the way Corval was carrying on where anyone might overhear. Aides would gossip and rumors would spread until someone leaked the whispers to the press. Then someone would have to go make an official statement, and everyone would notice that the Chancellor still wasn’t in appearance.

And that was assuming the rules of Senate procedure wouldn’t force everyone’s hands even earlier. With the Chancellor missing, a timer was counting down. When it ran out, Mas Amedda would need to be sworn in, if only as a temporary guarantee of the continuation of powers. That would require justices and witnesses and a formal statement before the Senate itself.

Karking Sith-hells, today was going to be a nightmare. Maybe the CSF shabuire would welcome the extra manpower for once, instead of fighting over jurisdictional minutiae and acting like the Coruscant Guard all wanted to be here dealing with stuck up natborns instead of on the front lines, defending their brothers.

The covers barely fit over Fox’s boots; they hadn’t been designed with armor in mind. He had to lean awkwardly against the door frame to get them on correctly. Force karking forbid his armored shebs touch one of the museum pieces masquerading as ‘chairs’ in the lobby. He’d be decommed for his temerity on the spot.

Breathe. He just needed to sell the alibi Thire had prepped. Everyone was going to be on edge, given the circumstances. It was only expected that he would be too. He just needed to keep a reasonable handle on his composure, which was not too difficult a mission in the greater scheme of things.

Fox squared his shoulders, signaled one of the gloved CSF investigators to activate the door panel, and stepped into the Chancellor’s inner office.

For a moment, the only movement in the office came from the small camdroids that were scanning the opulent room to generate a three-dimensional model of the space. Fox found himself the subject of intense inspection.

Under the safety of his concealing visor, he returned the favor, scanning the space for potential threats as he made his way towards the front of the room and the expansive desk situated there.

Most of the people in the room were higher ranking CSF agents, performing tasks usually reserved for entry-level investigators and trainees. Every aspect of this case was going to be locked down for anyone without the absolute highest clearance levels. Fox noted their tension, their hostility towards him, but none of it struck him as particularly unexpected or noteworthy. This high-profile a case was going to make them even more territorial than usual.

Of more concern were the handful of Senate guards, who were watching everyone in the room with hair-triggered aggression. They also viewed the Coruscant Guard as unwanted competition and interacted with the clones only when forced. But now, something had happened to the Chancellor on their watch, and Fox would bet every credit he’d ever seen that the blame and finger-pointing was already being directed their way.

The ranking Senate guard on site looked to be Captain Axion, who appeared red-faced and furious at being pried from his cushy office by the unfolding catastrophe. Fox would need to handle this confrontation with extreme care. Axion would be looking for some third party upon whom he could saddle the blame, and as the last person on record having seen the Chancellor, Fox himself would be a very tempting target.

Even so, he was not the subject of Fox’s primary concern. The man standing in front of Captain Axion was.

From a distance, General Mace Windu looked like the very picture of Jedi composure and serenity. In closer proximity, there were lines around the man’s eyes and mouth that were hard to miss, if anyone cared to look beyond the stony expression, meticulously draped robes, and lightsaber.

Fox was usually very good at getting a read on other sentients, but he had only the most passing familiarity with the Jedi. He interacted with the Knights and Masters who liaised with the Senate regularly, but always at arm’s length. Despite his training, despite all expectations ingrained in him by the Kaminoans, he and his men had never been assigned a Jedi general. They belonged, first and foremost, to the Senate.

So Fox knew General Windu, but not well enough to get more than a cursory idea of his mental state. The Jedi’s faintly pinched expression could mean any number of things: annoyance, frustration, physical pain.

Fox just needed to remember his training, though he doubted the Kaminoans had meant for him to apply it to convincingly lie to a superior. Jedi could sense the emotional state of other sentients, and sometimes specific thoughts or intentions with focused effort, but they trained all their lives to block out that constant stream of psychic input. Fox just needed to avoid drawing enough suspicion to earn a deeper look. His primary hope was that his mental state would blend into the tense backdrop of fear and anxiety that everyone present was no-doubt leaking into the room.

Deep breath, stop two paces from the general, and salute. “CC-1010, reporting as requested, Sir.” Fox’s words, like his posture, were exactingly precise.

So much was riding on his ability to perform to perfection. All of his brothers were counting on him.

The General gave Fox a brief, assessing look, then nodded incrementally and said, “At ease, Commander… Fox, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Sir,” Fox said, not letting any of the surprise he was feeling leak into his voice. He was accustomed to dealing with Senators who insisted he use his designation number and others who preferred knowing his chosen name, but he had not expected the head of the Order to actually recognize him. That would require some adjustments. He settled into a crisp parade rest and waited for his orders.

The general’s mouth twitched, almost hinting at the very beginnings of a small smile, and he said, “Commander Ponds speaks very highly of you.”

This conversation was not going how Fox had been expecting. The last time he had seen Ponds, his brother had been signing four troopers out of the Corries’ drunk tank. Fox wouldn’t have described the interaction as particularly cordial, but he wouldn’t characterize their relationship as bad, per se. Just distant, these days, and not the kind of dynamic that would come up in casual conversation with a Jedi general. “We were batchmates, sir,” Fox replied, because he had to say something and that piece of information seemed neutral enough.

“Hmm,” the general said, giving Fox a piercing, stomach-lurching look, but then he turned to one of the nearby CSF agents and gestured for the woman to join them.

The investigator, some near-human species with translucently pale skin, magenta hair, and widely-spaced, exceedingly large eyes, rose from where she had been scanning something on the floor and handed the device off to a colleague.

“Inspector Svaryoskya has been compiling a record of the Chancellor’s known whereabouts yesterday,” General Windu said, nodding to the woman when she stepped forward to join the group. “If you could please make your report to her?”

“Of course, Sir,” Fox replied cooly, forcibly crushing down the spike in anxiety he felt at the prospect. He pivoted to face the CSF inspector. “Ma’am?”

Inspector Svaryoskya looked thoroughly put off by having to speak to him at all, but she at least made the effort to school her features into something vaguely professional and said, “If you would come with me?”

Fox followed her to a pair of temporary folding tables which had been set up to hold and organize samples and equipment. No doubt it had been done to avoid contaminating useful evidence from the pre-existing surfaces in the office. It took her a moment to set up what looked like a compact, holorecording device and synch it with a datapad while Fox waited, again assuming a meticulously correct position of parade rest.

The device beeped once and then lit up, scanning the immediate area with a wave of blue light before recognizing the two sentients standing in closest proximity to it and focusing in on their positions. Looking over the investigator’s shoulder, Fox could see a time stamp and a blinking record icon appear at the top of the datapad.

She pressed the icon and straightened, facing Fox head on and said, “Inspector Yana Svaryoskya, interviewing.” Her eyes settled somewhere on the level with Fox’s respirators, and she continued, “Please state your designation and rank for the record.”

“CC-1010, Marshal Commander of the Coruscant Guard,” Fox replied evenly. She did not request his name, and he did not volunteer it.

“Please explain the nature of your meeting with Chancellor Palpatine yesterday afternoon.”

Fox nodded and launched into the narrative Thire had provided for him, stitching together a few carefully crafted fabrications with as many verifiable facts as possible. “I was one of the commanders on site in the Senate yesterday, overseeing security for a scheduled press conference, when I received a report of surveillance outages affecting the security cameras in sector Thesh 16. Protocol dictates that such anomalies should be treated as intentional acts of sabotage until proven otherwise, so I transferred responsibility for the press event to a subordinate, forwarded a preliminary security alert to the Senate Guard, and went to assess the situation personally.”

So far, so good, but then everything Fox had relayed thus far had been entirely truthful. He reached into a pouch on his belt and pulled out the datastick Thire had pressed into his hands on the turbolift ride to the ground floor of the Guard’s compound. He held it out to the inspector, who took it gingerly and eyed it with some suspicion.

Fox clasped his hands behind his back again and continued with his report, leaning into the cooly professional tone and cadence he generally used around hostile natborns, “It rapidly became apparent that the outage was not the result of enemy action and was instead caused by an infestation of Scyvian barrow-rats in the conduits. That datastick contains a copy of the Guard’s report, detailing the steps taken to identify and mitigate the interruption, until repairs can be completed.”

And then, it was time to start in with the lies. Fortunately, Fox was a very talented liar. “I received a request for an update on the security alert.” Bless Thire, who was downstairs right now, coaching Odal on what to say if any CSF agent showed up looking for independent verification of Fox’s account, and bless Sear’s team of slicers, for seeding the Guard’s records with fabricated evidence to back up this story. Security alert confirmation requests were generally automated, so they were easy enough to falsify. His men had done the hard work, Fox just needed to trust them and do his part to drive the blade home. “The situation on site was stable, with repairs in progress and extra Guardsmen assigned to patrol the affected areas, so I was able to respond to the Chancellor’s summons immediately.”

“Are you often asked to make such trivial reports in person?” Inspector Svaryoskya asked, looking up from the datapad where she had been taking notes. Her tone hinted at disbelief and thinly veiled accusation.

“No, Ma’am, but the Chancellor does not consider security threats to the Senate to be trivial in nature,” Fox answered smoothly, which made the inspector’s fair skin flush with obvious displeasure. “May I continue?”

The inspector’s mouth thinned ominously, but she simply said, “Please do.”

Lie. Lie believingly, because more lives than his own depended on it. “The Chancellor was relieved that the outages did not represent an intentional security breach, but he was highly displeased about the infestation of vermin in a historic section of the Senate dome.” Fox could almost see it, the way the Chancellor’s mouth would turn down at the corners, the way his eyebrows would drop low over his too-cold eyes. How his voice would sound gently concerned, but also faintly disgusted. Even scornful. Mocking.

How the skin down the back of Fox’s neck would start to prickle with unease. How his heartrate would pick up and his vision would tunnel a little, instinctive reactions to a perceived threat.

Breathe. He was overreacting, as usual. This office always set him on edge on the best of days. He just needed to complete this report.

“He had specific questions about the nature and duration of the repairs. In total, the meeting lasted perhaps twenty minutes.” It had lasted twenty-three, Thire had made sure he was aware of the exact times he entered and exited the suite, but a rounded number sounded more casual, more off the cuff. More believable.

Inspector Svaryoskya tapped her stylus on the datapad, narrowed her eyes at whatever notes she had taken, and then continued her line of questioning.

Where had he gone after the meeting?

Back to Guard headquarters, to put together the report on the incident and to reorganize the day’s patrol assignments, to maintain the extra security in Thesh 16.

Had the Chancellor left the main office space, during the meeting?

No.

Had he recorded any aspect of his meeting with the Chancellor?

No, that would be a violation of Senate and Guard security procedures.

Had he seen anyone unusual or suspicious upon leaving the Chancellor’s office?

No.

Had the Chancellor seemed uncharacteristically nervous or distracted during the meeting?

No.

Can you take off your helmet?

No, that is against Guard protocols when a trooper is participating in an active, ongoing security crisis.

She peppered in questions about things Fox had already described, playing dumb in an attempt to trick him into revealing an inconsistency in his story. The strategy was a common one, and often effective, even to someone who was aware of the parameters of the game.

But Fox was very good at this. He always had been, even as a cadet.

When had his men realized the damage to the electrical conduits was not external sabotage?

What route did Fox take to get to the Chancellor’s office from Thesh 16?

How many Senate guards were stationed at the Chancellor’s door, when Fox arrived?

Fox answered them all, varying his words to make them sound less rehearsed. Not that he’d had time to rehearse anything, not with the Jedi insisting on his presence as soon as physically possible. But Thire’s foreshortened briefing had still been exceedingly thorough, and Fox had an excellent memory.

After a while, Inspector Svaryoskya started to look and sound vaguely impatient to have this interview over. Fox got the distinct impression that whatever she’d been hoping for, he hadn’t given it to her.

He did not sigh or let his shoulders droop with relief. He did not smile, even inside the privacy of his sealed bucket. He simply stood at a perfect parade rest and waited. The words which marked the end of a formal interview came fairly quickly after that.

Could he think of any other observations which might be pertinent to the investigation?

No.

Would he be available, if the CSF required any further statements from him?

Of course.

Finally he was given a comm code, to contact her if anything occurred to him at a later time, and with that, the inspector curtly tried to dismiss him.

It would be a sunny day on karking Kamino before Fox took orders from any CSF agent. He reminded her that he had been called here by General Windu, and so he would remain until he was dismissed by the ranking GAR officer on site.

The inspector had not been well pleased by that, but she also didn’t have the legal authority to kick him out of the suite. She also couldn’t demand that General Windu order him to leave, because the Jedi was currently having a very one-sided fight with Captain Axion. One-sided in that the captain was almost frothing at the mouth over something the Jedi was saying, while the general himself seemed just as sedate as ever. Perhaps a little darkly amused, if the way one corner of his mouth was twitching upwards was any indication.

Fox cooly agreed to take up a post in a very out-of-the-way corner of the room to await further orders.

He was happy to do so. The position gave him a rather good view of the space. He was very accustomed to fading into the background while standing a watch. Maybe these CSF agents believed the gossip that clones were basically droids wrapped in flesh, or maybe they just weren’t aware of his helmet’s capabilities, but it took them all of five minutes to start treating him like a piece of inconvenient furniture.

Fox just dialed up the input on his external mics, split his HUD so the left side was magnified ten times, and settled in to observe.

General Windu wanted to open the Chancellor’s desk and private quarters. Apparently he could feel something concerning coming from both places, even though his senses were being obstructed or confused for some reason. Captain Axion was of the opinion that the contents of the Chancellor’s desk, much less his personal rooms, were to be treated as state secrets. The Jedi informed the captain that he had already dispatched a representative to obtain a security release from acting Chancellor Amedda. Apparently the captain felt that this was an attempt to circumvent the Senate guard’s authority.

The two were clearly locked in a stalemate, waiting for those documents, so Fox shifted his attention elsewhere.

Two CSF agents were running samples through a very familiar field chem-analyzer. Maybe it still had all four of its supports and wasn’t propped up on one end with a broken piece of scrap floor tile, but it was functionally the same model Thorn had smuggled into Guard headquarters. Even the vials and evidence bags were the same, although these had bar-coded labels already affixed to each of them.

Apparently they weren’t finding much of anything interesting. The room was nearly spotless. They’d found a small patch of spilled liquid next to one of the chairs, but it appeared to be some kind of high-proof alcoholic beverage. There were occasional smears of mixed organics and aromatics on the desk and chairs around the room, all consistent with high-end lotions and perfumes. Interestingly, they had found a very small smear of blood on the front lip of the Chancellor’s desk, but it appeared to be weeks old and very degraded by cleaning agents, suggesting that it wasn’t relevant to anything that might have happened within the last planetary rotation. That wasn’t stopping the two investigators from speculating wildly about its source.

Two Senate guards were stationed in front of the side door, which led to the Chancellor’s private rooms. They weren’t talking and seemed just as tense and angry as the rest of their colleagues. Fox could only assume that the on-site security team had already swept the space for life signs, but to exclude it from the current investigation seemed idiotic.

Then again, he certainly didn’t want to be the officer responsible for giving the order to toss the Chancellor’s underwear drawer if he showed back up alive and well and furious about the invasion of his domain.

Another investigator was positioned just to the right of the room’s main door, doing something to the decorative sconce on the wall and muttering profanities to himself in mingled Basic and Pantoran. Fox was aware that there was a concealed exit behind that wall panel providing access to an emergency escape turbolift. It had been part of Fox’s initial security briefing back when he first arrived on Coruscant, but he’d never actually had need to enter the space.

He knew that the access button was concealed under a sliding panel, worked into the side of the decorative wall sconce. That had been part of the security briefing.

The fact that the panel tended to stick unless jiggled just the right way had not been part of that briefing. Apparently the CSF investigator did not know that. Fox had no reason to know that either.

Why did he know that?

The prickling down the nape of Fox’s neck increased, crawling down his back. A headache, the kind that never seemed to fully go away these days, sparked and flared behind his eyes, no doubt triggered by his increase in heartrate and his corresponding spike in his blood pressure. He needed to get a grip on himself.

Fox breathed slowly and deeply through his nose, as he’d been trained, but he nearly choked and coughed instead when that sent an unexpected trickle of hot, copper-tasting liquid down the back of his throat.

Blood.

Great, and now his kriffing nose was bleeding again, and there wasn’t a karking thing he could do about it with his bucket on. Hopefully it’d just stop on its own before he made too much of a mess of the inside of his helmet.

The main entrance from the lobby swished open, and a second Jedi strode into the room with a swagger like he owned the place.

Fox didn’t recognize this general, but his appearance was certainly distinctive enough that Fox shouldn’t have trouble figuring out the Jedi’s identity later. He was perhaps a shade darker complected than the average clone, with locs half-tied up to keep them out of his face, and a gold tattoo across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose.

The general held up a datapad as he neared General Windu and the still-incensed looking Captain Axion. “I’ve got the security release right here,” he said and then extended the ‘pad to General Windu.

General Windu turned the datapad around and briefly read its contents. “Everything seems to be in order,” he said, handing it to Axion to look over as well. He then walked around the desk as the captain looked at the document.

“I’ll get Verus to bring up the spare access keys,” Axion said, sounding very disgruntled about it.

“No need,” General Windu replied, and sure enough, there was a faint ‘snick’ sound and one of the side-drawers slid open, seemingly of its own accord.

Fox wondered if his brothers on the front lines ever got used to this kind of casual Force osik. He certainly found it uncanny as all kriff.

General Windu reached down to shift something aside with his actual hands this time and then paused, eyebrows rising slightly. “Vos, I need you to look at this,” he said, low enough that Fox’s bucket almost didn’t pick it up.

“Look at it, or touch it?” the other Jedi, Vos, asked, walking around the desk to stand next to his superior. Whatever was in the drawer earned a sharp intake of breath and a softly whispered, “Well kriff me.”

General Vos tugged off one of his gloves and reached for whatever it was that had the two Jedi so concerned.

“Now, see here…” Captain Axion started to object, but was almost immediately interrupted.

“I know the procedures,” General Vos said, hand hovering above the open drawer. “You can exclude by prints later, but this requires bare skin.” And then he reached down and grabbed… something. Fox couldn’t really see well from this angle, but whatever it was, the item was cylindrical and made of polished metals that simply screamed of extreme expense.

Fox was about to zoom in the view of his HUD further to get a better look, but General Vos gasped and, despite having just said that he was familiar with evidence collection procedures, proceeded to drop, almost throw, whatever the thing was back into the drawer.

The interaction had drawn the attention of several of the CSF investigators, a few of whom gasped out protests at the handling of… whatever it was, but neither Jedi seemed to be paying any of them the smallest bit of attention. General Vos’s head whipped up, expression shocked, and caught General Windu’s eyes. Something passed between them in silence, some understanding or communication, because General Windu just nodded and looked back at Captain Axion.

“We need to clear this space,” General Windu said in a tone like beskar.

For once, even Captain Axion seemed to recognize that arguing was probably not the best course of action. “You mean, all of us?” he asked faintly.

“Yes.”

“Into the lobby, or…”

“Out of the suite entirely.”

That did not sound promising. So much for not making an obvious scene in the public hallway outside of the Chancellor’s office. What the kriff was the problem?

For the CSF agents and Senate guards for whom General Windu’s stern gravitas didn’t quite do the trick, General Vos’s charming cajoling and occasionally unsubtle shooing got them moving. Fox hung to the back as General Vos herded the others out, until he could approach General Windu with some expectation of not being overheard.

“Sir, the Guard has specialized bomb disposal units, biological contaminant gear, sniffer massifs. Should I comm for backup?” he asked, trying to cover the most likely circumstances which might require evacuation of the entirety of the Chancellor’s suite.

He also actively tried not to think about how whatever that thing was had gotten into the Chancellor’s desk. And whether he, or rather CC-1010, had had something to do with it.

General Windu gave Fox an odd look, but he answered readily enough. “Thank you, Commander, but this will be a matter for the Council to handle. If you could set up a perimeter to isolate the rooms, that would help us greatly.”

“Of course, Sir,” Fox replied, wishing the reply had been a little less cryptic.

Seeing as how the general did not seem to be interested in leaving his current position, Fox turned to go execute his orders. However, he did spare a quick glance behind him on his way out of the room. General Windu had turned to face the wide windows behind the Chancellor’s desk, looking out over the sprawling cityscape of Coruscant. His hands were clasped firmly behind his back.

Fox palmed several pre-labeled, empty evidence bags from the supply table and slipped them into one of his belt pouches on the way out of the door.

“For kriff’s sake,” Thorn said when Fox pulled off his helmet. “You’ve just been bleeding in there, all day?”

Fox didn’t dignify that with a response. He could see exactly how bad he looked in the ‘fresher mirror without the helpful commentary. The lower half of his face, most everything below his sluggishly dripping nose, was covered in tacky, half-dried blood.

He just glowered at Thorn and held out a hand, silently demanding the cannister of pressurized armor cleaner his brother was holding.

“Fix your karking face,” Thorn said, handing him a small first aid kit instead. “I’ll clean out your bucket.”

Fox glowered at Thorn, but he wasn’t about to turn down an offer like that. He handed over his bucket and snatched the kit. His face felt sticky and itched ferociously. He dumped the kit, his gauntlets, and his gloves into a neighboring sink, and turned on the fancy faucet in front of him.

Thorn flipped Fox’s helmet over and took a look inside. Whatever he saw earned a low whistle, audible even through the vocoder. “You know, I could have grabbed you new filters if you’d told me it was this bad.”

Fox cupped his hands under the stream of water and splashed it on his face. It swirled down the drain, red-streaked and flecked with dried flakes of blood. He wet his hands again and started scrubbing at the worst patches. “Why, when I’m just going to keep bleeding into a fresh set?” Fox snapped, at the end of his rope with just about everything. He’d managed to stanch the flow a few hours back, when he took a quick fifteen count for a ration bar. It hadn’t lasted.

“Have you told Scav?” Thorn asked, shaking up the cannister and then spraying it into the interior of Fox’s helmet over one of the sinks. The internal electronics were sealed against breath condensation and other types of moisture, but there were limits, and this was going to be pushing them. Fox didn’t have the down time for a full work-over of his helmet, maybe Mags could loan him a spare. He hated the idea of wearing a shiny bucket, but it was better than a glitching HUD.

Fox opened up the medical kit and found the sterile astringent wipes inside. “And when, exactly, do you think I would have had time for that?” he growled, using one of the wipes to scrub at a patch of mostly dried blood in the bare beginnings of stubble on his chin.

“Find the time, or he’ll kill both of us and use our bodies for spare parts,” Thorn said, almost conversationally. Fox knew him too well to miss the legitimate concern riding under the dark humor.

And he also wasn’t wrong. There were all sorts of rumors around the Guard about how Scavenger had earned his name. Fox hadn’t ever bothered to confirm any of them.

Fox just grimaced. “I will, as soon as I can head back to base.”

When that might be was anyone’s guess.

It had been hours, and the Chancellor still hadn’t turned up passed out in some corner of the Senate dome.

Nor had any Separatist group claimed credit for either kidnapping the Chancellor or assassinating him, and they certainly would have if they had. It would be a massive morale boost for the CIS.

No ransom letter had arrived in the Senate’s mailroom.

No questionable stench had started wafting out of the air vents.

There had been a few developments though, not that Fox was able to put the pieces together into a coherent picture.

Several additional members of the Jedi Council presented themselves at the Chancellor’s office soon after Fox had left the suite and set up a defensive perimeter. He could not be certain, but he thought the group represented every councilmember currently on planet.

Perhaps half an hour later, three more Jedi arrived with crates on a hovercart, all emblazoned with warnings so aggressive they might as well have been overt threats.

An hour after that, acting Chancellor Mas Amedda had come to the office, with two extremely harried-looking aides, fresh off announcing his unexpected ascension to the office in front of the sitting Senate body. It was a zoo out there, but Stone was handling the security instead of Fox, because somehow that fragmentation grenade of a situation was still only the second most incendiary event currently erupting in the Senate dome.

He'd looked sour upon arriving and even more so when he left, aides straggling along behind him with two boxes overloaded with flimsi files and datapads. Fox assumed they were the confidential contents of Chancellor Palpatine’s desk.

Well, most of them. He was pretty certain the Jedi wouldn’t be turning over the mystery cylinder.

The containment crates left a few hours after that, each with two Jedi as escorts. Thorn had shown up in the middle of their departure, along with the next shift of fresh Guards. It had been as good a time as any to slip away for a quick conversation in the service ‘freshers.

At least his face was now semi-clean, even though a new streak of blood was starting to trickle out of his left nostril. He fished a few gauze pads, a tube of bacta gel, and two pain tabs out of the first aid kit. He could dab a little ointment on two scraps of gauze and stick them up each nostril. The vocoder would probably cover for the worst of the stuffiness that would cause, but at least he wouldn’t be bleeding into his filters anymore.

“Did you bring the other items I requested?” he asked, dry swallowing the pain tabs and then tearing off the first bit of gauze and rolling it into a sort of conical, plug shape.

“Yeah,” Thorn replied, eyeing Fox out of the corner of his eye. “But are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“If you’ve got a better idea, now would be the time to share it.”

There weren’t security cameras in the Senate bathrooms. Thank the little gods for natborn modesty.

Except Thorn apparently couldn’t think of a better plan.

And Fox had run out of ideas hours ago. The Jedi weren’t telling him anything, and it was only minimally comforting that he wasn’t being singled out. They weren’t briefing the CSF or the Senate guards either.

Fox made the exchange in one of the ‘fresher stalls. The sterile gloves and empty bags were hidden safely away inside one of his belt pouches.

When the CSF agents were finally allowed back into the office suite to retrieve their equipment and samples, they unknowingly left with three extra bags with intentionally incorrect labels slipped amongst their other evidence. One contained a swab with the unidentified blood from Fox’s pauldron, one held the two silver hairs they’d found on his blacks, and the last had the sample of the odd, organic residue from the bruises on his face.

#caveat emptor fanfic #star wars fanfic #tcw fanfic #clone wars fanfic #the clone wars fanfic #commander fox #commander thorn #commander thire #commander stone #coruscant guard

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