Armored Passion | The Mandalorian

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"Shuttle-bay? Do you copy?"

I gently nudge Cara with my elbow, letting her know that she could take this guy out on her own. She nods her head in response and begins to slowly creep further into the central command center, the soles of her boots silently moving across the polished metal floor. The Imperial officer continues to mess around with a few of the cameras set in front of him, oblivious to the ex-shock-trooper that was creeping up right behind him. 

Once she sets herself up right behind him, she shoots her arms forward and wraps him up in a tight chokehold, lifting him up and out of his comfy-looking seat. He struggles against her tight grip until his limbs fall completely limp. She lowers his body to the ground before switching off all the security systems and cameras that ran throughout the entirety of the base. 

"Make sure to grab his code cylinder. It'll probably help us out later on," I say, nudging Greef's side with my leg. He nods his head and riffles around the Imperial officer's clothes, soon finding the silver code cylinder I had been talking about. 

"Alright, I found the heat shaft," Din says, nodding his head towards the main entrance of the room while drawing his blaster again. "Let's go."

"I'm sorry, what did you say you found? The heat-what-now?" I tease, a mischievous smirk tugging at my lips. Din groans and shakes his helmeted head at me, his free hand clamping down on my shoulder as he turned me around and gently shoved me towards the door. 

"We don't have time for that right now," he mutters, continuing to guide me towards the door.

"Well, I'd beg to differ-"

"Mae," he scolds, squeezing my shoulder once before easily slipping past me to lead the rest of the group to the so-called 'heat shaft'. I let out a quiet laugh at his word choice before following him and the others out of the central command center. 

We race through the halls of the base, trying to move as fast as we could while staying near-silent and unheard of from the others that were still mindlessly moving about the Imperial base. As we sped through the clean-cut corridors, I couldn't help but think back to all the times I had snuck through corridors all too similar to these ones. 

The memories of sneaking around, practically playing a much scarier version of hide-and-seek with Gideon (which usually involved a grand punishment if I were actually found), and running into a select few stormtroopers that were actually kind enough to hide me away when Gideon got a little too close to finding me (I still applaud their bravery) started to flood into my mind, making me smile softly. 

I had rarely ever gotten caught when sneaking around to get into the data libraries and to avoid Gideon, but there were always those few moments where I had slipped up and hadn't hidden well enough. And those memories of getting caught were enough to make my soft smile falter and disappear. 

"The access corridor should be right past this junction," Din says in a hushed tone through his slightly staticky modulator, continuing to lead us through the hall and around a sharp corner. As we started to run past another large opening in the wide hall, Din shoots his arm out to the side and forces everyone to come to a sliding stop. 

Everyone but me. 

Of course, with my terrific ass luck, Din's outstretched arm completely misses my sprinting figure and his gloved hand loosely snagged on the sleeve of my leather jacket, doing the exact opposite of what he was actually trying to do. 

And regardless of me trying to slide to a halting stop, the speed I was running at combined with Din's grip on my sleeve ended up whipping me around and right into the fucking opening of the hallway. The abrupt break of motion makes me stumble over my feet and further into the opening, leaving me no time to try and hideaway. I snap my gaze up to see two tall stormtroopers already staring at me with their blasters settled nicely in their hands.