Fic: Under Covers (3/3)
Feb. 2nd, 2010 12:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gelbes_gilatierFandom: Star Wars
Rating: T
Genre: Action/Adventure, Drama
Summary: Sometimes, only revenge keeps you alive. OCs, and the question of the man behind the monster. Among others.
A/N: Here we go with the last part... did anyone of you read it, mh?
( Under Covers 1/3 )
( Under Covers 2/3 )
It was like she had envisioned it. They’d studied the restaurant’s blue prints thousands of times, of course. They’d been studying all the important public places’ blue prints for years so that she now had them all memorized down to the last staircase. But it was still something completely different seeing it in full glory.
When Sievers took her arm and led her inside, her awe and surprise weren’t pretended. She really was overwhelmed with the classical und simple beauty of the rooms, the glittering of real candles, subtly arranged with smooth artificial light. Even in a city so famous for its restaurants, the Den stood out like a Corusca gem from a heap of charcoal.
The room was littered over and over with Imperial Uniforms – white, grey and black alike – but she felt totally calm. They knew that the Den was an establishment that was very popular and in fashion among the higher ranks of Imperial Military and Administration.
Sievers led her towards a table for two that stood in front of one of the enormous windows facing the glittering lights of
The other half of her mind was going through the mission plan and listening to the clicks in her ear. She forced herself not to fidget. Technically there was no way they could be detected by Internal Affairs or any other part of the ISB or Imperial section, because their communication devices were standard ISB Internal Affairs issue. But you never knew…
“Is there anything on the menu that’s of your particular interest, Miss Danier?” Sievers asked her over his menu, and she pursed her lips. Yes, there was. And didn’t everyone deserve a fabulous last meal?
“Actually… yes, sir.” He made a face.
“Now… Miss Danier… we’re here off-duty. Won’t you do me a favour and call me Yanos?” For a moment she felt like throwing up. Yanos.
“Only if you call me Bereen, s… Yanos.” She gave him another dazzling smile. The waiter came back, and took their orders. Then she heard a series of clicks. Zhane and the boys just arrived at the scene. Ikra is at the space port, getting clearance for the Red Sprite and readying the ship for a swift escape. They would start prepping everything now. They put away their menus.
“So… Bereen. That’s a beautiful name. Where does it come from?” From someone your storm troopers murdered. Someone I loved like a brother. Someone who taught me what I will do to you in about half an hour.
“Actually… the origin is not quite clear. My mother liked to tell me that it was the name of a Siskeen princess that was abducted by some horrible monster. Many princes and other nobles set off to find and free her, but in the end she freed herself and married the man who had helped her – the monster’s servant boy. I was regularly smitten when she told me the story, and I wanted to be so much like the princess. So valiant and everything.” She let her eyes sparkle and twinkle, just like those of a little girl listening to a bedtime story.
Sievers laughed. It was a nice laugh, genuine and open and deep, from the depths of his chest. It was a laugh she might have liked, if it hadn’t been Sievers there across from her. She’d never heard him laugh like that before. Obviously he was the kind of man who reserved certain things only for private. “And, are you like Princess Bereen now?” There was a mischievous twinkle in his eyes when he asked her, and she hated him for that. How could he sit here with her and be so… charming and so sane, when he had the blood of hundreds of people on his hand?
“I would like to say yes, but I fear that it is up to others to judge that.” She winked at him, and he smiled back. Before he could answer, the waiter brought their food, and they started eating, exchanging pleasantries and flirtatious nothings. She learned that he was from Ralltiir, that he preferred Neonan red cheese to Deneelian fizz-pudding, when it came to dessert, that he found “The Black Bantha” was rather dull and obvious propaganda rather than a work of art… she learned more about him than she ever wanted to know. She learned, in fact, that he was human. That the monster he was, was hidden behind the façade of a normal human being. Or was it the other way around?
When they were halfway through their meal, another series of clicks sounded through her ear. Ikra has the Sprite up and running. Zhane took his position on the roof. Gun has his sniper rifle ready. Ari has hidden her weapon in the Ladies’ Room. Only a short time now. Only a short time until she would finally find her peace of mind. While she was idly making conversation with Sievers, she allowed herself to retreat into her mind and think about the last four years.
It seemed like everything from before belonged to someone else, not to Samara Alric. Her childhood in the slums of Coronet City, her escape, her decision to join the Rebels, her first five years in the service of the Alliance Intelligence – all of that seemed to belong to another woman.
The only years that now seemed real to her were the four years after. After Sievers’ people had destroyed the Passive Operations base she’d worked on. No prisoners, devastation everywhere, hundreds of people dead. Hundreds of innocent people, because the Stormies just had blasted the whole complex to hell, not caring that most of its inhabitants were in fact civilians. Mostly non-human civilians. The only reason why she’d not been among the dead had been that she’d been off organising supplies. She and Zhane and Gun and Ikra. They’d been the only survivors of the whole base, the whole complex.
The boys had recuperated pretty fast, but she… she’d needed half a year to learn to behave normally again. And ever since then… she’d somehow lost her will to live. Her only goal had been to take the one man responsible for everything to her grave, and she would do so today.
She forced herself back into the present. “Yes?”
“Do you want anything for dessert?” A series of clicks in her ear told her that her timeframe had just shrunken to five minutes. Okay. So no dessert then.
“Actually… no. But…” she lowered her voice conspiratorially, “they say that you have the best view at the city from the roof of this building. You don’t… happen to…”
“Have access to the roof?” He smiled as conspiratorially at her. Then he waggled his eyebrows. “Of course I have. I’m still director of an ISB-office.” Ah, finally, a sign of showing-off. So he wasn’t all Prince Charming. She noted that with quite a bit of satisfaction.
“Oh… please.” She batted her eyelashes, and he laughed. It was the nice, deep, open laugh again. She forced herself not to let herself be smitten by it. He signalled for the waiter, and she excused herself for a minute to the Ladies’ Room.
When she was back, she had a blaster strapped to her right leg, artfully enough so he wouldn’t notice it until it was too late. With her index finger, she tapped her right ear twice. She got an affirmative.
Laughing and flirting they took a turbo lift and a short flight of stairs to the roof, and then they were standing on it. Again she was truly mesmerized. It was the best view all over the city. Lights were sparkling, overhead the stars were twinkling… it was magnificent. He put an arm around her mid and stepped behind her. With a delicate movement, he put a stray strand of her dark hair behind her ear and leaned down to whisper something.
It was that moment, where she reached for her gun, got it and wheeled around fast. They were still standing impossibly near to each other, and her blaster point was positioned right under his chin. On bolt would kill him. And then she made her first mistake in four years: She didn’t shoot immediately.
Faster than she could react, he had his hand around her wrist and forced her blaster away from his chin and to point at her own chest. And then he made his first mistake in four years: He didn’t shoot immediately.
For a full minute they stood there, saying nothing, only staring each other, with the night breeze softly rustling over the roof. Then, suddenly, the Sprite was there, and all hell broke lose. She kicked him in the groin, he doubled over, she pointed her blaster at him and shouted, “Look at me, Yanos Sievers, because I will be your death as you have been the death of hundreds and thousands of other beings!” If she’d been still in her right mind, she would have found the whole speech kind of cheesy, but she wasn’t in her right mind anymore. Maybe hadn’t been for the whole evening.
Yanos Sievers looked at her. And she wanted to pull the trigger. But suddenly she was knocked over by a rock, or so it seemed. A moment later the rock identified itself as Zhane, who was holding her down now. A blaster shot rang through the air, but it was a blue one. A stun shot. Gun had deliberately set his sniper rifle to stun.
Red fury grabbed her, and she screeched loudly, eventually managing to shove Zhane off her. Frantically she searched for her blaster and found it. She aimed at Sievers’ now lifeless form, but before she could shoot, Zhane had her in his iron grip again. “A trial, Sam. We’re here for getting him to a trial! Not for takin’ the law into our hands!” he roared into her ears. A few feet away from them, the Sprite set down at the roof, and from not so far behind the sound of TIE-fighters coming closer could be heard. They had to get away now, if they wanted to make it out of there alive.
She struggled against Zhane’s hand, but the big man just wouldn’t let her go. Ari had already taken Sievers into the ship, and only Zhane and she were still outside. Resorting to desperate measures, she bit him into the arm, and the surprised Zhane let her go again. She took her blaster to her head, looked at Zhane, mouthed a “Forgive me,” pulled the trigger… and nothing happened. Just… nothing. For a full second, she looked at it, dumbfounded.
Strong arms grabbed her again and dragged her towards the ship. From the roof’s entrance, blaster shots rang towards them, but her captor just kept going for the ship. She didn’t put up any resistance anymore. What use did it have? They wanted to deny her peace, anyway.
In her stupor she missed how they reached the ship, and how Ikra managed to get them through the phalanxes of TIE-fighters and Imperial warships. Only when they’d reached a secluded spot of deep space she realized that they’d left Commenor, and that she was still alive.
She blinked. She was lying in the med bay, just opposite from Sievers. He was still out of it, and he looked strangely peaceful there on his cot. Hate welled up inside her, and she wanted to jump up and strangle him to finish it, but found that she was bound to her cot. Bound. To her cot. By her team, her friends. She wanted to scream.
But all she did was close her eyes again when she heard the door to the med bay open. By the heaviness of the steps she concluded that it was Zhane coming in. Zhane the traitor. Contempt welled up inside her. She heard him shuffle around. Then he said, “Look, Sam… I know what you think now of us all. You think we’re traitors. You think we betrayed our comrades –
With that, he left the med bay again, but she kept her eyes closed. It had been the longest speech she had ever heard from him. It had been so full of truth, even if she wasn’t quite ready to fully admit that to herself. And it had been full of affection for her, filling her with affection for the big man. The disappointment she had heard in his voice cut deep, again. So she started to think, and then tears were starting to roll down her cheek. Tears she hadn’t been able to shed for four long years.
Faces of the dead were appearing before her eyes.
