aftermath: life debt | the bad batch

xxvii. retracing steps

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xxvii.

retracing steps

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•••

"Why did you call me on the ship?" Gregor asked. "I was having a great time outside. You know, getting fresh air, enjoying life not near a junkyard. I need the sun. I look pale since we were always inside in Bracca."

"Shut up about your vanity," Echo snapped. "We need to make a plan concerning what we're going to do after we leave Kamino."

"Why?"

"Just stop asking questions," Rex said. "First, we need to see where we went wrong in terms of everything. How did we get thrown into this mess."

Hunter sighed, leaning against the wall of the interior of the ship, crossing his arms. "Cid gave us a mission to steal spice from the pykes on Oba Diah quite a while ago. Prior to us arriving on the planet, we determined that our mission was too dangerous for Omega to participate in. But, during that mission, some Trandoshans that were working for the empire kidnapped Omega from the ship. When we got back, we had no idea what had happened. We searched for her for weeks, until Cid finally got some information on what had happened. She told us that Omega had been taken to Wasskah. So, we went there, and were able to rescue Omega but not without the empire seeing that we had been there. Omega was injured during the escape, she was shot twice. After we got back to Ord Mantell, the only jobs Cid had for us were jobs which required retrieving tactical droids from various planets in the Corellian sector. During several of those missions, Omega was unconscious, and after she had regained consciousness, Cid had a different job for us. But the details of that job aren't important. After that mission was completed, and we returned the bounty to Cid, she assigned us another job. On our way to that job is when we found out about Omega's condition. And you know the rest."

"So what it sounds like," Echo started, "is we need to figure out what's going on at Wasskah."

"Why does that even matter?" Hunter asked.

"Because we don't know why they took Omega. We aren't aware of why they put an inhibitor chip in her head. We need to get to the bottom of this."

Rex sighed. "You're not going to like this, but the only way we can get the Wasskah plans is on Coruscant. So, therefore, we're going to need to come up with quite the plan to even get on the planet, much less extract the plans from the extensive database in which they are located."

"So basically what you're saying is that we're screwed?" Gregor asked.

"That's exactly what I'm saying," he replied.

"No, we aren't," Hunter chimed in.

"That was a quick change of mind," Echo said.

"How aren't we screwed?" Gregor asked Hunter.

"Echo can disguise the ship as another. We can easily get into the planet if we have clearance codes that work. The problem is once we're on the planet, we need disguises. We need to look like imperials. Thankfully, many clones still serve the empire so we'll fit right in."

"Echo isn't going to fit in is he? He's a machine. He'll stick out like a sore thumb," Gregor argued.

"He's going to be a droid."

"Hunter are you fucking kidding me?" Echo angrily asked.

"No."

"Again?"