Singingwhilebaking - Enjoy!

Part Ten

Words: 2,362

Summary: Senna is forced to enlist the help of an old friend when Crosshair contacts her from Barton-IV.

(This chapter has been up on Ao3 for a while, but I didn't realize I never shared it here!)

Missing

Imperial City

Unfamiliar beeping woke Senna from a restless sleep. Groaning, she rolled over to hit her chrono, blinking blearily when the sound didn’t stop. What? Finally registering the location of the noise, the doctor opened the drawer of her nightstand and pulled out her private datapad, cursing when it blinded her in the dark room.

A tap had her lamp on as she squinted down at the alert on the pad, uncomprehending. Then she understood. The message was telling her that a beacon connected to the network had been activated, a distress call beaming through space to wake her here on Coruscant.

Senna stumbled to her closet, clumsy with adrenaline as she dressed. She needed to get back to base. She needed to talk to Swoop.

Clone Commander Swoop was an old friend of the doctor’s from Kamino. When his squad had been caught in a terrorist bombing on Corellia, she had been the one to save his best friend and lieutenant, Instinct. The rest of his men had perished, but Swoop had felt indebted to Senna, promising her his help if she ever needed it. Well, today she did.

Senna tried to steady her breathing as she boarded the train that would take her back to base. She’d need a good excuse for coming back this late on her day off. She’d need a good excuse for visiting Swoop down at his office in Intelligence, where a doctor had no reason to be. But the panic that jumped in every muscle wouldn’t let her think about anything but him. Please. Please be alright.

In her agitated state, Senna hadn’t even considered that the commander might be sleeping, but he answered the door to his office on the first knock.

“Doctor?” Swoop raised a scarred eyebrow at her look of anxiety as he let her in. “What’s the matter?”

“I’m so sorry, Swoop. I know it’s the middle of the night, it’s just—” Senna cut herself off with a nervous look around the room. Swoop snorted.

“It’s safe.” He motioned for her to sit. “You look like you need caf.”

Senna nodded, surprised to see that the machine was already brewing. She looked at him quizzically when he handed her a mug. “I saw you coming,” the grizzled commander smirked, pointing to one of the many monitors on his desk. “Now tell me what’s got you so upset.”

“Do you remember Crosshair? CT—”

“Nine-Nine-Zero-Four. Of course.” He nodded for her to go on.

Senna twisted the mug in her hands. “Something’s wrong. He’s activated a distress beacon. Do you know—can you find out what’s going on?”

“A distress beacon?” The commander sat down behind his desk with a frown and pulled up a file on his console. “Says here that he arrived at a supply depot on Barton-IV this afternoon with a squad to deal with a cargo transfer. They’ve been having problems with raiders. Nothing about a beacon though.”

“Because it’s one I gave him.” Senna cringed as the spy raised an eyebrow at her. “After Kamino…”

Swoop grunted. “I heard about that. I’m sorry about the others.”

“If he’s in danger—”

The commander snorted again. “That’s kind of his job.”

“I know, but he wouldn’t have used that beacon if it wasn’t something really bad. Please, can you find out what’s going on?”

Swoop softened a bit at the desperate look on the doctor’s face. “Let me make a call.”

It turned out to be many calls. As Swoop investigated the source of Crosshair’s distress, Senna sat in the hard chair on the other side of his desk and waited, legs clamped tightly together to force herself not to get up and pace. Not that there was really room for it. The spy’s office felt more like a lair, piled high with electronic equipment and monitors that linked him to parts of the planet Senna didn’t even recognize. Clone Intelligence had been absorbed into the Empire's new intelligence bureau, the IIS, but apparently Swoop had been too valuable, too good at his job, to replace. At least not yet.

Unable to glean anything useful from Swoop’s side of the conversations, Senna sipped distractedly at her caf and let her eyes wander over the room, stopping to smile when they found a framed holopic propped on a low shelf in the corner. She didn’t notice the commander had ended his call and was watching her as she stood to retrieve it, setting down her mug so she could wipe away the dust and examine the small faces within.

“You ever think about that day?”

The doctor turned to see her friend’s sad smile. “Yes, of course.”

“Lot’s happened since then. Having them would’ve made it easier.”

Senna looked down at the men in the holo. Swoop’s old squad, before he’d gotten those twisted scars on his face, before Instinct had lost his arms, before the rest of them had been taken. “You wish you were still out in the field?”

“At least it felt like I was doing something worthwhile back then. These days…”

“I know.” Senna set the picture back and returned to the desk. “Did you find anything?”

Her stomach plunged at the grim expression on the spy’s face.

“Finally got in contact with someone who could talk to his CO. Apparently, Crosshair and the clone commander of the squad that was stationed there have gone missing.”

Senna gripped the edge of the desk, suddenly off balance. “Missing?”

Swoop nodded. “They went after some raiders, ordered to retrieve stolen cargo from the shipment he was escorting. That was twelve hours ago.”

No, no, no— “Why haven’t they sent anyone after them?”

“Apparently there’s a blizzard. No one’s leaving the base. They can’t get short range comms through either, although it doesn’t sound like they were really trying.”

Senna stared at Swoop in horror. “You mean they’re out there? In the storm?”

The commander grimaced. “Sounds like it.”

She fell into the chair, stunned. This couldn’t be how she lost him. Not after everything they’d survived.

Swoop stood and came around his crowded desk to kneel beside the doctor. “I’m sorry, Doc. They could still make it.”

Senna felt like she couldn’t breathe. “Y-you don’t—he wouldn’t have activated the beacon if he didn’t need help. He’s so stubborn. I made him promise—” As Swoop took her hand, Senna lifted the other to cover her mouth, squeezing her eyes tight against the tears. “I can’t—”

She didn’t see the way her friend’s face shifted from sympathy to resolve, but when his hand came up to grip her arm, the doctor opened her eyes to his gruff smile.

“Three years ago, I told you I owed you. And all I’ve been doing since then is sitting around here rotting. You want to see if we can get Crosshair back?”

An hour and a half later, Senna slipped into the shuttle hangar she knew Swoop would be leaving from, off to Barton-IV to find Crosshair and the other missing trooper. For years, the intelligence officer had directed other agents in the field from the safety of his office. Now, there was no one he could send but himself. Senna had seen the spark in his eye when the decision had been made, unsurprised at his pleasure in seeing action again. She trusted Swoop with her life, but Crosshair’s… He had been her responsibility for too long. If Swoop couldn’t bring him home, Senna knew she would only blame herself.

Sticking to the edge of the room, she followed the sound of voices until they led her to the right ship. When she rounded the Lambda’s wedge-shaped nose, Senna saw the commander had traded his Intelligence uniform for armor. She wondered when he’d last had a reason to wear it.

At her movement, Swoop swung to face her, taking in the pack and bag she was carrying with a look of disbelief. “Doc, what are you—you shouldn’t be here.”

“I know.” The doctor joined him and the two troopers with him, her smile serious as she set down her pack. “But I need to come too. This is all because of me. I can’t stay here while you risk everything for us.”

She watched the commander trade a look with the helmeted trooper to his right. “This isn’t the time to pull rank.”

“I’m not, I promise.” Senna unzipped her bag and began to remove a set of cold weather gear, shedding her uniform jacket to reveal a black, thermal layer underneath. “I’m begging you, Swoop. I have to go. I can’t stay here and wait again.”

“She thinks I’m not good enough at my job. I need supervision.”

The doctor turned to see the clone with the field medic patch lift his helmet to grin at her.

“Notch!”

“C’mon, Doc. Don’t even have faith in your own training?”

Senna shook her head at his teasing. Notch had been one of the medics she’d taught back on Kamino, easily recognizable by the tattoo of a scalpel blade over his carotid artery. “It’s not that…”

“Doc,” Swoop interrupted, voice low, “I understand how you feel, but it’s not safe, for multiple reasons. This mission is unsanctioned, off the record, if you get caught with us—”

“You think they couldn’t trace this back to me anyway?”

“At least if you’re not with us, you’ll have plausible deniability.”

“Plausible deniability is meaningless these days, you know that as well as I do.”

Swoop clenched his jaw, looking over to his second. Senna recognized Instinct by the metal hand prosthetics at the ends of his crossed arms and smiled tiredly into his visor, relieved when a sigh filtered through the lieutenant’s vocoder. She could tell that he, at least, was bending. “We’ll just have to worry about you too, Doc.”

“I know my survival training,” she insisted as she traded her uniform slacks for a set of insulated pants. “I’m good with a blaster, and I’ll do anything you tell me to.”

“Short of staying behind, huh?” Swoop watched the doctor pull on her parka and stuff her discarded uniform into the now empty bag, taking in the rugged boots she’d managed to cram in there as well, before he shook his head. “I see you came prepared. This means I’m gonna have to cover your tracks too, you know.”

“Can you do it?”

The commander rolled his eyes. “Don’t have a choice now, do I?” As she shouldered her med kit, he sighed and replaced his helmet. “Alright, everyone on the ship.”

When the squad was secured in their crash seats and the shuttle had entered hyperspace, Swoop turned to Senna in the seat beside him. “Doc, this is your squad for this mission. We’ve all worked together in some capacity before. You can trust ‘em.”

Senna nodded as the commander pointed to each man in turn.

"That’s Sergeant Friendly, Aadi, Koda, and Landslide, and Grav’s our pilot. You know Notch, our medic, and, of course, Instinct.”

The doctor leaned past Swoop to see the clone lieutenant had removed his white helmet and was smiling at her. “Good to see you again, Doc.”

“Let’s try to keep this simple,” the commander continued. “The mission objective is the rescue and extraction of two missing troopers, Commander Mayday and CT-Nine-Nine-Zero-Four Crosshair. Weather conditions are bad, visibility will be limited until the storm passes, and there are reports of raiders, dangerous animal activity, and avalanches. We’ll be splitting into two squads. The doctor, Grav, Notch, and Aadi are with me. Instinct will take Friendly, Koda, and Landslide.”

Senna and the men leaned in as Swoop activated a holo puck. “This is the best map we’ve got of the area surrounding the Imperial depot. The latest raid came from the northeast, so that’s where we’re checking first. Reports say there are caves in the mountains. Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ve found one, but I wouldn’t count on it. More likely those caves are full of raiders.”

“Sounds fun,” Aadi offered.

Swoop ignored him. “Any tracks they’ve left will have been buried, but the commando’s in black armor, so keep an eye out for that.” He deactivated the puck. “Questions?”

“Where are we taking them after?”

The commander looked past Senna to Notch. “Well, since the Lieutenant in command of this supply depot seems patently disinterested in rescuing his own men, we don’t have a way to bring them back to base without alerting him to our interference. The commander might be able to blend back in with a bit of adjustment to his records, but Crosshair is a ninety-nine.”

Senna saw the troopers trading glances beneath their buckets. When Swoop nodded to her, the doctor cleared her throat. “We’re taking them to a safe house on Coruscant. When they don’t return to base, their CO will mark them MIA.”

“This is all assuming we find them,” Sergeant Friendly muttered, accepting his commander’s glare with a shrug.

“We’ll find them. I didn’t go to all the trouble of digging you lot up for nothing.”

Notch prodded the doctor with his elbow. “We’d just better hope the commander isn’t too rusty after sitting behind a desk gathering dust for so long. I can smell the mothballs through my filters.”

“How would you like to be left at the depot?” Swoop grumbled as the other men laughed.

Senna smiled with them, but her thoughts were elsewhere. She knew Bern was working the late shift back at the hospital. Should she have said something to him when she’d gone to get her kit? No, it was better if he didn’t know. But if something happened… I’ll come back. Don’t worry. Senna could only imagine how it would hurt him if she disappeared, and what might happen to her friend without her limited ability to protect him, especially as Rampart’s replacement didn’t seem quite as amenable as his predecessor.

The trip between Coruscant and Barton-IV took a little over two hours, and Senna was left to sit with her own thoughts as the clones caught up with each other. It was good to be surrounded by those voices again, a comfort she’d barely realized she’d been missing. Closing her eyes, she tried to imagine the rest of them there beside her. Hunter, Tech, Wrecker, and Echo. They would know what to do.

I'll bring him home. I promise I won't let you down. And I won't let go.