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yodamn · 2 months ago

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Gar Cyare Chapter Twenty-Four

Alpha-17 x fem!reader fic

Word Count: 3,500

Warnings: Treasure-hunt style adventure, references to past threats, threats of danger

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Oya'karir (Hunt)

It always seemed like big events should happen at specific and notable times. The beginning of a day, midnight on a Friday night, during a lunar eclipse… Those were times when one expected things to happen.

Real life was seldom so organized, so the text comm came through at mid-morning on a Tuesday.

Translated message: Start beneath the beginning, at the level of experimentation.

It had taken an embarrassingly long time for you to recognize the comm frequency. Ordo had sent you the message. That could only mean that they had managed to crack Ko Sai’s secret code. This must be the first clue.

Adrenaline surged through your veins, making your fingers tremble as your legs ached to stand and rush off. Instead, you forced yourself to take a deep breath and think critically. You copied the decoded clue down onto a piece of flimsi in case something happened to the original version, then sent a message to Alpha.

Comm from O.

You hadn't discussed how to alert each other if and when you heard something. Honestly, Alpha had been convinced that it was only a matter of time before the Nulls managed to decode the message. You had been much more skeptical.

Only minutes later, Alpha sent a written comm back:

Lunch.

Alpha was waiting at your table in the mess hall, a group of ARCs-in-training nervously eyeing his back from several tables away. As soon as you got your food and joined him, Alpha leaned in close enough that no one could overhear your conversation. “Show me.”

You silently passed him your comlink, watching as he read the message, then read it twice more with a frown furrowing his brows. When he eventually looked back up, it was with a scowl. “Karkin’ kaminii. Can’t make anything simple.”

You laughed, and Alpha frowned even harder. “Sorry, Alpha. I thought you might know what it meant. Let me just-”

A single question mark was the only thing in your message back to Ordo. The minutes stretched long as you waited for an answer. In the meantime, you and Alpha ate your lunches.

“I think we should get started tomorrow morning,” Alpha announced. “You have the day off and I can get Trem to cover for me.”

“Probably a good idea,” you agreed. “If we both had to take a day off, we would be at risk of attracting attention.”

“And if-” Alpha cut off as he glanced down at his comlink. Wordlessly, he tilted it in your direction.

Laboratory level, below the sample.

You glanced back up at Alpha, excitement building in your chest. “Sounds like we have an answer.”

His smile was sharp, glinting eagerly. “First thing tomorrow, then.”

By ‘first thing’, Alpha truly did mean to get started early. He woke you up shortly before 5 in the morning, passing you a steaming cup of caf to stifle your complaints. He was disgustingly awake - fully dressed and armored, his helmet clipped neatly to his belt.

Once you were upright and dressed, he led you to the place Ordo had indicated in his message. You were on the lab levels, somewhere you rarely had cause to be. Not only were they among the lowest levels on any platform, but they were also some of the most well-guarded.

Gathering information about the laboratories themselves had been your least-favorite part of compiling your report. The Kaminoans guarded their trade secrets as fiercely as any competitive industry would, so your time in the labs had been spend under such heavy scrutiny that you had jotted down the answers to your questions and little else before you had left.

That was probably the cause of the tension singing through you as you followed Alpha down the hallways on the laboratory level. You weren’t really surprised that Alpha knew exactly where he was going. Spatial reasoning was emphasized during the clone troopers’ flash-training and Alpha had proven to be better at it than most. You had only the vaguest idea of where the Fett genetic sample was in relation to the labs, but Alpha seemed as though he could have confidently located the exact place beneath the sample with his eyes closed.

When you reached it, he came to an abrupt halt. “This is it.”

You checked your chronometer. “We’re making good time. What now?”

“How would I know that?” Alpha asked, absently looking around. “I saw the same translated clues that you did, little one.”

“Fair enough.” You also looked around, searching for anything that might serve as a clue about what the next step would be. “I was just hoping you saw something that I’m missing. I don’t see anything that might be a sign of where else to go.”

“I don’t either,” Alpha said eventually. “We knew it would be well-hidden, though.”

“Yeah, but I was holding out hope that it might be sitting out in the open,” you admitted. “What if they translated the clue incorrectly? Or the Kaminoans have renovated and removed whatever was here in the first place? Can you imagine how the Nulls would react if we had to tell them we got stuck on the first clue? They might kill me for real that time.”

Alpha shook his head at you. “We both know I wouldn’t let that happen. But I want you to keep looking. I think maybe you’re hoping we get stuck so you can go back to bed. I see you yawning when you think I’m not looking.”

You took a swig of coffee at the sight of his pointedly raised eyebrows. “Excuse me if I thought ‘first thing tomorrow’ could mean at nine or something. This isn’t a normal hour to be awake, let alone working…”

Alpha sighed at your complaining while you dramatically leaned against the wall. You both froze at the metallic, nearly-imperceptible click!

For someone who had been longing to go back to bed just a moment before, you leapt away from the wall with alacrity. Alpha studied the door panel with one arm holding you behind him. The panel itself was the same flat white as the rest of Tipoca City’s architecture, and had been perfectly invisible until your leaning had jarred it open.

After studying the hinges as closely as he could without opening the door any further, Alpha turned to face you, pushing you gently backward.

“Alpha,” you protested.

“No,” he shut down flatly. “Ko Sai could have build a dozen nasty surprises into her directions. What better way to make sure her research stay a secret than to kill the first people to decode her message and go looking for the backup notes? I need you to follow my directions, even if I tell you to walk away. Especially if I tell you to walk away.”

“I don’t like you putting yourself in danger,” you answered, striving for honesty.

“Then you understand how I feel.” Alpha’s knuckles rapped sharply against the heavy white plastoid protecting his chest. “But I’m better suited to handle anything this place throws our way. Stay back or this adventure ends now.”

Unfortunately for your urge to keep arguing, that was a good point. Alpha took advantage of your momentary confusion to pick you up and set you further away while he opened the panel.

Instead of it creaking, snapping, or otherwise seeming to be damaged, the entire panel swung smoothly forward, opening into the hallway where you and Alpha were standing. By the time you rounded the panel itself, Alpha had already stepped through the opening in the wall.

He held up a hand in your direction, freezing you in place as he stared intently around the space, studying every facet of the area. He bounced up and down slightly on his toes as if he was testing the floor itself, then gave a satisfied nod. You joined him in the wall itself, but he shook his head. “Wait a minute, neverd-”

You lifted your chin at him. “Alpha, if you think I’m just going to stand here and let you figure out these clues alone, I have an unpleasant surprise for you.”

Alpha chuckled, eyes warm, and you relaxed slightly. “Udesii, sweetheart. We can’t leave this panel open behind us and I want to make sure we can get out if this is the only way. I want you to stand out here while I try to open it from the inside. If I can’t figure out the mechanism, I’ll need you to open it like you did the first time.”

You stared at him, eyes narrowed. Alpha laughed again, holding both hands up, palms out. “No tricks. I’m not trying to leave you behind. I just need to make sure we have a way out.”

“Fine, but if you leave me…”

“Why would I?” Alpha asked. “You’ve already found more of the clues than I have. Of everyone on this rock, you’ve got the best shot at finding those notes.”

You weren’t sure that was true - if anything, you knew it was false - but it was still enough to distract you until Alpha could usher you outside and close the panel behind himself.

Even nervous that you were being left behind, you couldn’t help but marvel at the engineering of the wall panel. When it was closed, there was no visible seam between the hinged section and the wall around it. If you hadn’t happened to lean against that spot, you weren’t sure whether you would have ever found it.

Just as you were starting to worry that the panel and wall were soundproofed and that Alpha had been asking you to reopen it, the panel pushed gently open once more. Alpha beckoned you inside, then latched it firmly behind you both.

Kamino was never loud as a rule, but the interior of the panel felt even more quiet. Perhaps it was because it was a secret, or simply because the ever-present harsh lighting was dimmer here. Either way, you found yourself in another hallway. Other than the different lighting, it felt like an exact mirror of the hallway you had just left, stretching in either direction until it hit corners, following the parallel corners of the main hallway.

Either way, Alpha clearly felt it, too. He leaned a little closer as he said, “I found it. There’s a latch, but it’s up higher on the panel than you would expect. Built for a kaminii, not a humanoid.”

“Since we have a way out, we can move on,” you pointed out, perhaps unnecessarily. “What’s the next step?”

He shrugged. “We’d better comm the Nulls.”

You sent a short, semi-coded explanation of your progress. Ordo sent a text comm in reply almost immediately:

West. 18:00

The addition of a time didn’t make sense, but you assumed it had something to do with how far down you were meant to travel. And if you were correct… “West is this way.”

Alpha stopped you with a hand on your shoulder. “Wait, neverd’ika. That is west, but not Kaminoan west.”

You squinted at him. “What is Kaminoan west?”

“Kaminoans don’t measure directions like beings on most planets do,” Alpha explained, leading the way down the hallway. He was walking the opposite direction of where you had been going. “Since there is no naturally dry land on the planet, the ancient kaminii never developed a multi-directional system. Instead, there are only two directions for them: following the tide or leading away from it. In this spot, at this time of year, using the tide at eighteen-hundred hours as a basis, west is actually east.”

“That seems incredibly imprecise,” you grumbled.

Alpha snorted. “It is. Most Kaminoans use the cardinal directions now, but what better way to make sure that secrets directions are as coded as possible?”

You didn’t have an answer to that, so you turned your attention to the hallway. The ceilings were high and the walkway was wide enough for you to walk beside Alpha without your hands brushing. It was a space that was clearly built to be comfortable for a Kaminoan, though it wasn’t quite as generously proportioned as the spaces in the main Tipoca City labs. To a Kaminoan, it may have seemed like a slightly narrow and low-ceilinged tunnel. To a pair of humans - even with one of those humans being as large as Alpha - it was spacious.

Once more, your mind turned toward how you and Alpha would know when to stop. Unless the hallway simply ended, you would need something definite to signal that you had found your next step.

Alpha must have been thinking along the same lines. He pressed a button on his comlink and lifted it to his mouth.

“I hope your comlink is encrypted.”

“By you, di’kut,” Alpha snapped back. “As long as you and Mereel know what you’re doing, it’ll be fine. What is the next clue?”

“It says, ‘move the transport’,” Ordo reported. “Nothing else.”

“The transport,” Alpha repeated, brow furrowing. “A ship couldn’t fit in here.”

“Maybe there’s an entrance to one of the hangars,” you suggested.

Alpha glanced down at you with a thoughtful look on his face. “Could be. We’re not close to any of them, though.”

“Part of the idea behind this jare search was that you would update us on what you find,” Ordo complained. “Where are you?”

Alpha scowled at the comlink like Ordo could see his displeasure through it. Without a further explanation, he jabbed at the button that would sever the connection.

Roughly two seconds after the call dropped from Alpha’s comlink, yours began to ring. You tilted it in Alpha’s direction, but he shook his head. “I don’t recognize the frequency. Can’t be a coincidence, though. Go ahead and answer it.”

“Yes?” you asked as you accepted the call.

“I can’t blame you for wanting to avoid my brother,” a new voice said.

Alpha growled. “Thought I told you never to talk to her again, Mereel.”

Mereel’s voice sounded offended, even through the small speaker. “I happen to be her favorite, especially after I stopped trying to convince the others to get rid of her.”

Alpha took your hand and severed the connection on your behalf. You grinned despite yourself at Alpha’s glare, especially when the silence - six seconds, that time - was broken by another call.

When Alpha looked at the third incoming frequency, his expression cleared. “Go ahead and take this one, neverd’ika. Explain what’s going on so they’ll leave us alone.”

“Hello?”

“I should probably thank you,” Prudii said. “It’s been a while since both Ordo and Mereel were knocked down a peg. Too many successful missions in a row makes them cocky.”

“Anytime,” Alpha growled, turning back toward the hallway.

Prudii used your name, drawing your attention away from following Alpha. “Jaing sends his apologies. He’s on a mission right now, or he would have been the one to talk you through this. We all remember that you trusted him more than the rest of us.”

“No offense,” you offered with a shrug. “Though if it helps, I trust you more than most of the others.”

“Thanks,” Prudii accepted, an edge of laughter in his voice. “Can you tell me what you’ve found so far?”

You agreed, and filled Prudii in on everything you had done so far. It wasn’t much, but the existence of secret tunnels inside the Kaminoan network of hallways was new information, even for the Nulls.

“And here I believed we had found all of Kamino’s secrets,” Prudii marveled. “It sounds like you’re going in the right direction. But Ordo was right: the next clue just says to move the transport. From what you’ve told me, Alpha is right. You aren’t near any of the hangars, and I doubt Ko Sai could have fit a transport in there, or added a landing platform without someone noticing.”

“Not helpful.” Alpha was still ahead of you, leaving you to scurry after his long strides. “All you’ve been able to tell us is that we’re right and you had nothing to add. We already knew that.”

“If I had some secret insight into Ko Sai’s mind, I would have found those notes while we were on-planet.”

Alpha stopped and made a grab for your hand. You danced backward, talking quickly. “Okay, Prudii, thank you! I’ll let you know when we find anything that looks like it could match the next clue.”

“Be caref-”

“He was just telling us to be careful,” you informed Alpha reproachfully.

Alpha released your wrist. “We wouldn’t need to be careful if he and his brothers hadn’t set you up to find their precious notes.”

“I thought we agreed that it was a better choice than letting them keep trying to kill me,” you pointed out. “I remember asking you if you thought it was a good idea.”

“I-” Alpha glanced down at you and heaved a sigh. “I did. At least, it was a better idea than having to watch your back around them. But I didn’t think there would be this much danger.”

“What danger?” you asked. Alpha sent you a reproachful look and you doubled down. “I’m serious! What danger? I haven’t seen anything that seems overly dangerous yet. Are you seeing something that I’m not?”

“No, just that Ko Sai went to a lot of trouble to keep this place a secret.” Alpha gestured around you both. “If she thought these notes were important enough to program an automatic self-destruct into it, the physical copy will only be better guarded. I don’t like the idea of going through all of this trouble just for the Nulls.”

“Is it just for the Nulls?” you pressed. “I gathered that what they learn from the notes could be big enough to impact all of the clone troopers, not just those six.”

“Maybe,” Alpha conceded. “But that’s the shadow of a chance. It’s much more likely than one or both of us will be injured or worse trying to find the notes. That’s what we deal with as ARCs - weighing the chances against each other. If there’s a five percent chance that the Nulls will get useful intel from the notes and an eighty percent chance that we’ll risk our lives getting it, the mission is more trouble than it’s worth.”

“Do you want to go back?” you asked, stopping in the middle of the hallway. You weren’t exactly in Alpha’s line of sight, but he halted immediately to look back at you. “I’ll tell them that we can’t help find the notes.”

Alpha’s lips twisted in a smug sort of smirk. “They’d be thrilled.”

“They don’t matter to me as much as you do.” You reached out to take Alpha’s hand. “If you’re really worried, we can stop right now.”

Alpha paused for a long moment, fingers wrapping around yours. “Don’t suppose you’d let me continue the search without you.”

It hadn’t been a question, but you still shook your head in answer.

He sighed. “Fine. Let’s keep going. But if we don’t find something in the next ten minutes, we’re going back.”

“Deal,” you agreed. Alpha set off down the hallway once more as you rushed behind him.

Exactly seven minutes down the hallway, Alpha turned a corner and hesitated. You ducked out from behind him immediately, and found yourself looking at a small sitting area. Two Kaminoan-sized chairs were placed side by side, angled slightly toward each other as if to facilitate a conversation between theoretical occupants. Between the chairs was an ornate display table bearing a statue of an aiwha.

Alpha eased closer. “Ko Sai doesn’t seem like the type to invite guests so close to her secret research.”

“No, she doesn’t,” you agreed. “Kaminoans in general don’t seem to like alcoves like this.”

“No dust,” Alpha noted, studying the statue and both chairs. “I didn’t see or hear anything in the entrance that would indicate that this whole area is hermetically sealed. Maybe she had some kind of specialized air filtration system set up around this area.”

“If so, we have to be close,” you summarized.

Alpha motioned for you to stay there, then walked determinedly to the next corner in the hallway. He turned back almost immediately. “The hallway ends in another 20 meters. This has to be it.”

While he walked back, you examined the seating area.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen Kaminoan chairs that don’t drop out of the ceiling.” You frowned at the statute. “Or decorations like this. I always thought they considered them frivolous-”

You reached out for the statue, ignoring the warning Alpha growled as you did so. The instant your fingertips touched the smooth, cool surface of the carved aiwha, the floor opened under your feet and you dropped like a stone.

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Author's Note - Uh, oh! A cliffhanger! Sorry about that.

Just to give you an idea how bad I am at estimating, I wrote this adventure to take place over one chapter. It ended up being almost 12k words, so it will be split over three different chapters.

Please note: this first chapter was pretty light-hearted, but mind the warnings on the other two. I had to write with my gut instead of my heart and things get a little... dark.

Thank you for reading!

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