Chapter Text
He’s not sure what, exactly, happened on Scarif in the last couple of rotations. He does know that it pissed the Imps off enough that they fired the kriffing Death Star at their own station (and, in turn, that Cody’s sabotage hasn’t been anywhere near thorough enough); that Vader has already strangled three officers about it; and that Organa’s kid is now a hostage on this force-damned boat.
Cody hasn’t had a headache this bad since before he got that karking chip out of his brain.
They’re going to be exiting hyperspace shortly, somewhere in the Alderaan system – which can’t bode well for Organa or his spitfire daughter – and Cody figures he’s got limited time to figure out how to: a) commit some more sabotage, but better this time; b) rescue a princess and baby Senator with an attitude problem disproportionate to her diminutive stature; and c) get the kriff off the Death Star with baby Organa and whatever information Vader was torturing her about. And he’d prefer to do this all before Vader begins to take any sort of notice of Cody’s not-exactly Good Soldier behavior, but he’s tragically got what the General used to call a bad feeling about this.
There’s a jolt felt even through the inertial dampeners as the enormous station drops out of hyperspace, and Cody curses as he stumbles slightly. Right, he thinks, straightening again. Limited time.
Step one: sabotage.
Twenty minutes later finds Cody up to his elbows in the guts of the Death Star’s cooling system, swearing colorfully at the absolute hatchet job of wiring in there. If he didn’t know better, he’d think Erso himself had been sabotaging the thing since the beginning. He looks up with a frown when he hears the drone of the tractor beam come on and the strange gravitational tug in his gut that means the station’s dragging something in. This could complicate things. Or who knows, maybe Cody’ll get lucky and whatever it is will provide a distraction for his and Baby Organa’s escape.
Yeah right. Cody doesn’t get lucky.
He gives up on trying to make sense out of the system in front of him and settles for simply ripping a bunch of stuff out and replacing it with a remote-controlled grenade synced to his vambrace. He’ll set it to go as soon as he and Baby Organa are clear and see what happens. At the very least, it should be enough to stop Tarkin and his ilk from using their giant death laser on Alderaan in any immediate sense.
Excellent. Step two: rescue Baby Organa.
They’ve dumped Baby Organa in a cell block two decks below and three corridors to the left of the next occupied section of the brig, and there aren’t any guards once he gets past the room with all the security monitors – easy enough, considering half of said monitors are displaying a boloball game three systems away rather than any footage from the cells. Cody can’t help but shake his head and sneer behind the safety of his bucket as they wave him through; this is what you get for hiring natborns. Honestly, the Empire deserves whatever comes its way for the sheer incompetence of their military alone.
Cell 2187 opens easily to Cody’s basic Commander all-access code (again, shoddy security) to the tableau of Baby Organa posed elegantly on the cold durasteel bench, hand on her hip and barbed words on her tongue.
“Aren’t you a little short for a storm trooper?” she says derisively, and Cody can’t help but roll his eyes.
“I’m an older model,” he deadpans. “Come on, we’ve got places to be that aren’t this haran.”
Baby Organa’s eyebrows shoot up in a way that reminds Cody sharply of another Senator with attitude he knew, once upon a time. He refuses to look at that thought too closely just yet. He has Priorities.
“And why, exactly, do you think I’m going to go with you?” Like she has all the power in this situation. If he weren’t in a rush, Cody would probably admire the set on this kid, but he is in a rush and he doesn’t have time for this.
“Because I’m asking nicely,” he informs her. “And also because if you don’t, I’ll simply pick you up and throw you over my shoulder because I am on a schedule."
Baby Organa’s eyebrows climb even higher, but she does start to get to her feet. Immediately, Cody clocks why she was laying down like that: whatever Vader and them did to her, she’s shaky as a newborn eopie. He doesn’t offer her a hand, because he doesn’t think she’d appreciate it, but he does recalculate the likelihood of having to throw her over his shoulder anyway.
She walks right up to him, staring up into his bucket and somehow making perfect eye contact through the visor. Folding her arms and cocking her hip, she demands to know, “Are you escorting me to another interrogation or has Tarkin finally gotten permission to have me executed?”
“Awfully calm about that, aren’t you?” Cody mutters. “Neither. It’s a rescue, kid. I’m getting you back to your dad because he’ll never forgive me if I don’t.”
“I’m supposed to believe that?” she sneers. “What do you know of my father?”
“I’m a friend,” he says, and smiles crookedly, though she can’t see it. “He calls me Burc’ya.” Instantly, a bit of the tension goes out of Tiny Organa’s shoulders, and she gives him a tight smile. Good. “Are you at least a half-decent shot?”
She snorts. “More than.”
Yeah, figures. “Do you promise not to shoot me in the back if I give you a blaster?”
The fact that she takes a moment to think about it is both hilarious and exasperating beyond measure. “As long as you’re not delivering me to Vader or Tarkin, sure. Let’s get off this pit.”
Thank all the little gods. Cody nods tightly and hands over his pistol. In her tiny hands, it looks much larger than it is, but better that than the rifle slung over his back. “Come on then.”
On to step three: get the kriff off the Death Star.
Cody guides them through the empty halls of this section of cells and pulls up a map of the station on his HUD. All of the troops have trackers in their armor, and the officers have them embedded in their communicators, so he’s got a pretty solid idea of where everyone is. There’s got to be some sort of commotion in the hall of the starboard hangar, which is annoying because that’s where Cody’s escape route is, but most troopers seem to be on the bridge or in the tech rooms of the death laser, probably warming the kriffing thing up to fire. They need to be gone before they manage that.
He and Baby Organa make it all the way to the hall directly beneath the hangar without running into anyone, though there are some troops heading toward them down an adjacent hallway. Comms are all about prepping the death laser and getting a tracker on the Corellian junker they’ve pulled in, so he assumes they haven’t even realized cell 2187 is empty just yet. Pathetic.
Cody stops in the middle of the hall next to the unused garbage chute he has been diligently reporting as out of order for months in case he needs to make a quick escape. Removing the panel, he motions to Baby Organa. “Get in.”
“The garbage chute,” she says skeptically. “Really.”
“Yes, your highness,” Cody says, voice tight with impatience. “Into the garbage chute. There’s a ladder to your right when you get inside. Go up seventeen rungs and open the hatch. It’ll lead into the hangar bay. I’ll be right behind you and get you to the ship I’ve got. It’s already stripped of all the tracking tech.”
Baby Organa nods, reluctantly impressed. Holstering her blaster in the belt of her flowing white dress, she climbs into the chute and up, Cody right behind her. When she opens the hatch, a torrent of sound pours out of the hangar bay, shouting and blaster fire and – and –
No. He silenced that sound, forever. Cody roots himself in this moment and pushes forward. Priorities.
They emerge into the hangar, Baby Organa stumbling forward on her still-shaky legs, Cody reaching out automatically to catch her. Next to his ship is the Corellian junker, and dank ferrik what a pile of shit. There’s two kids in front of her, half in and half out of ill-fitting (and ill-gained, probably) stormtrooper armor, arguing vigorously. The taller one is holding back the smaller one, who appears to be trying to get to the fight happening on the other side of the hangar. Cody follows their gaze, and feels his heart stop in his chest.
He hadn’t imagined the sound.
There’s Vader, that looming mechanical bastard, deep voice sneering out insults between heavy, machine-regulated breaths. The sound of his saber is familiar, after all these years: hissing and spitting and somehow feeling like nails on a chalkboard every time he turns the damn thing on. All of that fades, though, in the soft blue light of a sound Cody never thought he’d hear again: the valiant, humming zjroommm of – of hope. And holding it –
“Tiny Organa,” Cody croaks. “Tell me I’m not hallucinating the Jedi fighting Vader.”
“What did you just call me?” Tiny Organa asks in disbelief, then shakes her head. “You’re not. It looks like General Kenobi got my message after all.” She sounds…smug, and Cody suddenly has a lot more questions than he did a few seconds ago, but there’ll be time for that later. Right now, Cody has bigger problems.
Problems in the shape of a dear, familiar voice calmly telling Vader, “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.” And quite frankly, kark that.
Priorities amended to add step four: save his General from himself.
“Ship immediately to the left of the junker,” he tells Tiny Organa. “I’ll be right back.” And, drawing his rifle from over his shoulder, a move as easy and familiar as it was twenty years ago, Cody jogs toward his idiotic, self-sacrificing General like he has a hundred, a thousand times before.
Vader goes down with one, two, three shots to the side of his respirator pack, made vulnerable as he lifts his arms for a heavy overhand strike. And honestly, if Cody had known how easily Vader could go down…well, he probably still wouldn’t have done it years ago because that’s a great way to blow your cover and get killed, but still.
His General, who has raised his saber and closed his eyes to wait for Vader’s blow, opens them again in confusion when the strike never comes. He blinks down at Vader, frown settling between his brows, and looks up in time to see Cody barreling toward him. The General opens his mouth, probably to say some stupid, asinine quip Cody doesn’t have time for, but Cody’s already shoved a shoulder under his torso and draped the Jedi over his back in a rescue carry.
“If you drop that saber, sir, I’m actually going to kill you. And this time, I’ll make sure it sticks,” he informs the man. So his humor’s gotten a little dark over the years. Sue him.
The General lets out a sharp, wounded little breath, but he doesn’t drop the lightsaber. Cody’s going to count this one as a win. Unfortunately, his win ends there, because, when he turns toward his ship, Baby Organa isn’t there. No, instead she’s talking to the couple of useless nerfherders in front of the junker, imperiously talking down her nose at them, for all she’s a full two heads shorter. Beyond them, on the ramp of the damned ship, is an awfully familiar little blue and white astromech, and Cody might actually blow a gasket if that’s Skywalker’s mouthy old droid.
He reaches Tiny Organa just as a small herd of stormtroopers tromps into the hangar bay, nearly tripping as a useless collective over the prone form of their idiot Sith master. Their presence is the only thing that stops him from asking questions when Baby Organa tells him, “Into the freighter, we’re going with them.”
It will not stop him from complaining, though, once they’re safely away.
He only puts the General down once they’re all safely inside the ship, ignoring the protests of the two kids who are yelling over each other about the presence of a stormtrooper on board. He finds, once he’s set the General on his own two feet, that he can’t quite meet his eye, so he elects to instead turn and start shouting orders at the useless children.
“Get the ramp up and get this pile of shit going,” he roars. He’s satisfied when the bickering stops immediately. “You –” he points to the smaller one, the one with familiar blue eyes and dimple in his chin – “Get in the gunner. Baby Organa, break open the hyperdrive, they’ve placed a tracker in there.”
The General makes a small, strangled sound behind him at the way he addresses the Senator, but Cody valiantly ignores him. Speaking of trackers, though – Cody removes his bucket and chucks it out of the loading bay just as the ramp finishes closing. It’s unexpectedly satisfying.
To the taller nerfherder, he says, “This your ship? Good. Get us out of here. I want three randomly selected hyperspace jumps before we loop back to Alderaan. And let me know before we make the first jump – I’ve got a signal I need to send before we hit hyperspace.” There’s a pause where everyone is perfectly still. Cody narrows his eyes and turns his gaze on the kids one by one, and they scramble to obey.
The ship may be a piece of junk, but Cody will give her this: she’s fast, and the gunner is well-primed and accurate. The pilot and a co-pilot Cody hasn’t seen yet – a Wookie, by the sounds of the conversation in the cockpit – are good, handling the thing with more grace than most people could get out of a ship this size. By some Force-forsaken miracle, they make it out of there, and Nerfherder #1 calls back to Cody that he has ten seconds to the first jump. Cody presses the button on his vambrace.
As the blue-white of hyperspace blooms outside, Cody takes a moment to be a little sorry they couldn’t stick around for the fireworks.