Jedi Fugitive (The Bad Batch)

73

Astera:

From there, making it to the hangar bay was remarkably easy. But of course, no mission of ours could ever go so smoothly the whole way through. Six identical Rho transports were lined up in the docking port, and that was only the first of them. With no distinct markings, there was no way to tell which one was the one we were after.

"Which ship is Hemlock's?" Omega hissed, shifting uncomfortably in the centre of us. It was a small space we'd all been forced to cram into to avoid detection, and with six of us, there was barely any room for us to move. Echo tipped his helmet back to eye the control room high above the hangar, head tilting to the side in consideration.

"We need to access the hangar manifest from the control room."

"Tech, Echo, Astera, with me." Hunter unhooked his second blaster with a gesture at us before addressing Omega and Wrecker. "You two, plant the homing beacon."

Omega acknowledged him with a firm nod and the four of us dashed for the corridors again, my blasters drawn and covering us from the back as Echo and Tech scrambled up the narrow ladder that led to the control room before scrambling up myself.

The two officers in the control room fell to our stuns before they could do much more than jerk around in shock as the door opened behind them. They were unarmed - clearly whoever was in charge of the base was more than confident that no one would be able to get in.

"I'll monitor their security channels." Echo was already moving for the terminal vacated by the now unconscious comms office, Tech going for the control table in the centre of the room while Hunter and I each took hold of one officer's legs, dragging the two of them into the corner.

"Found it," Tech informed us mere seconds later, comm channel activating with a buzz to pass the information to Omega and Wrecker. "Hemlock's shuttle is in docking lane four."

"Copy that," Omega responded immediately. I hauled the comms officer into something resembling a sitting position against the wall and snapped a pair of stun cuffs on his wrists, his inert body immediately slumping on top of the colleague Hunter was attempting to secure.

Behind us, Echo made a noise of confusion. "Something's not right. Many of the surveillance systems have had cycled deactivations in various corridors."

"That is highly irregular," Tech agreed, "considering the amount of top-ranking Imperial officers present."

I frowned. This base was supposed to be secure, and we'd managed to make it on, by deactivating the sensor and the cameras on the railcar support beam. "Is there somebody else here?" I could have reached out with the Force to check, but shreds of that old anxiety were still lingering, and I was stupidly afraid to tap into it for any reason.

"Tech, Astera, let's check it out." Hunter straightened from the unconscious officers, jerking his head towards the door and unhooking one of his blasters. "Echo, you keep an eye on things."

Every single one of the cameras we encountered down the hallway were disabled. Unfailingly, each corner Tech scanned for cameras displayed the same thing, offline camera. After the fifth one, I was more or less sure that someone else had indeed managed to infiltrate Tarkin's compound. There'd be no other explanation.

The next quadrant was clear of patrolling stormtroopers, and Tech took the chance to slice into the terminal in front of him, sweeping the entire surveillance system for any other irregularities. Clearly what he found surprised him - his hands stilled for a beat on the board before resuming his ministrations. "This quadrant of the surveillance system has been fully deactivated. I do not like this. We should leave."