Chapter Text
Deep within the Oroboro nest Vector Hyllus stood frozen, dark eyes staring unblinkingly ahead. Though he saw nothing but the wall of the cave, distant images and sounds flooded his senses, as though he were part of the far away battle and not merely a mental witness.
Through the many eyes of his small flying brethren, he watched as a torrent of blaster fire streamed out the open doors of House Cortess, bolts nearly striking the two sprinting figures dashing for their lives across the massive courtyard. The mission was in jeopardy. Agent's cover must have been exposed.
The tiny, fly-sized Killiks dared to travel no further. They flew high above, circling like black clouds as they rode on thermal currents just beyond the gate of the royal house. Through them, Vector silently observed as Cipher Nine and her Rattataki companion began to cut a bloody swath through Cortess' guards as they fled.
Blaster fire sang. Sparks flew. Enemy auras flared and burst apart like miniature supernovas in their final death throes.
A stray blaster bolt clipped Cipher's side, knocking her onto the pavement. The Rattataki scowled at the gunner who had shot her companion and leaped at him with rockets engaged, balled fist ready to strike. However, the gunner seemed to anticipate a counterattack. When the alien woman landed, he smacked the butt of his blaster cannon across the side of her face. The Rattataki's grey head whiplashed to the side, and she stumbled backward dazed and bloodied.
As the scene played through his mind, Vector felt his lips tug down. He was momentarily pleased with his body's innate muscle memory. Gesticulation in the nest was subtle, complex, and rendered many facial displays unnecessary; most humanoid expressions had been forgotten. A verse in the Song of the Universe soured though, overshadowing Vector's small moment of happiness.
If Agent failed—and it seemed like a growing possibility—no help would arrive. Presently, he could offer the women no aid. The generators powering the shield made any direct assault on House Cortess impossible, and the Killiks would not attack without support, fearing the genocidal retribution of the royals.
He watched Agent, now on her feet with red staining her right side, prepare to throw a flash grenade at a second gunner and pair of guards who had wandered into the fray, drawn by the sound of blaster fire. The odds were looking grim. His frown deepened.
Touching steepled fingers to the center of his forehead, Vector disrupted the connection to quiet the discord. He did not wish to watch the women die outnumbered and alone. The bond dimmed to a distant buzz, the information reachable but purposely ignored for the moment. An unfortunate turn of events. Shame, the mission had held promise.
The nagging tug of a hundred little voices murmured mutely, attempting to gain his attention. Vector ignored the call. The nest had an insatiable sense of curiosity, especially when it came to death and the dying. It wasn't usual for the Killik Gathers to bring back wounded animals and individuals, not to perform a Joining but rather to hear and remember their last song before recycling the remains.
The nest pitied creatures who died alone, unable to comprehend what it was like to suffer a solitary death. The inquisitiveness was beautiful and kind, as the dying song would be remembered, but it was also sorrowful. He could not watch today.
It wasn't until the Song of Welcome began that Vector willingly reopened the bond to its fullest, curious as to who the nest could be singing salutations too. Immediately, a multitude of images swirled through his mind in a storm.
The flow of information was unrestrained and unorganized, like a datapad full of files being tossed in his lap; the Kind's way of scolding him for not heeding their call the first time. Collecting the different perspectives, he began to weave the memories into a cohesive event:
Blood. The screams of dying men. Grenades exploding in brilliant halos of fire. Agent stabbing herself in the thigh with a kolto injection, needle cap stuck between gritted teeth. Red, furious sparks igniting the air. The Rattataki yelling insults as she wiped away the blood running into her eyes from the bruising slice on her forehead.
Auras burning bright and hot. Agent calmly aiming; a hole appearing in the center of a gunner's forehead, his aura rupturing into nothingness as he pitched forward. Running and gasping, the women sprinted to the waiting speeder beyond the gate. Agent leaped on the machine grabbing for the handlebars while her companion jumped on behind and wrapped an arm around Cipher's waist.
The tenacious pair were off zooming over the dirt, the Rattataki firing her blaster pistol with her free hand until the vehicle raced beyond the hill and House Cortess was out of sight.
How unexpected, he had misjudged their tenacity. The song rose in volume, welcoming Cipher Nine and her companion as they skidded to a halt at the mouth of the cave. Vector went to receive them, able to smell them before they came into view.
The sulfuric stench of grenade smoke and the metallic tang of spilled blood clung to the women, wafting into the cave and permeating the nest with the smell of battle. Agent came striding toward him with the Rattataki following directly behind.
"Our observers saw what happened. Why did Cortess turn on you? How can we help?" he asked.
"Turns out Baroness Chay is working with the terrorists," Agent informed.
"The Baroness? This is…unexpected," he replied calmly.
They started to formulate a plan as Agent tended to herself and her companion. Cipher listened, engaging in conversation even as she grabbed the Rattataki by the chin, cleaned the weeping slice on the woman's forehead, and smeared kolto gel across the ruptured skin with the pad of her thumb.
The Rattataki complained, pushing away hands that only returned to continue the treatment, insisting that she'd had worse. However, Agent's stern expression and flaring aura left little room for argument. The women seemed familiar with each other, their scents mingled.
The Hive was abuzz with news from the recent skirmish and sang excitedly, seeing an opportunity in the sudden turn of events. Synapses tingling like electric currents, Vector was flooded with information about the disloyal house. The Hive illustrated what to do.
The soft creatures of House Cortess—those like himself—had come and built gigantic beasts of metal and electricity: the generators. Like a fly on a wall, he could see the Cortess facility and the mechanisms housed within as though he had been there before. In a sense, he had, Killik spies had infiltrated the building long ago.
The Kind disliked machinery and found its cold taste and hollow songs discomforting, but their senses discovered a weakness in the royal's defenses. The pliable wires and hair-thin electrodes within the generators were akin to a circulatory system. Killik fingerlings could easily destroy the internal components, leaving Cortess vulnerable.
Normally, Vector wasn't one for an aggressive rebuttal, but House Cortess had proven to be traitors to the Empire. Primal reasons came to him as well and reverberated in his skull as the Hive's needs were sung: expand, grow, be fruitful, and multiply.
He attempted to subdue the base logic of the Hive as he described to the women the best course of action, explaining how Agent and himself could carry in the fingerlings and wreak havoc on the delicate machinery. Still, the primal thoughts lingered.
"You're will'n to fry some of your little buddies to help us out, huh? Touching sacrifice. Makes me wonder why the nest knows so much about Cortess' defenses in the first place," the Rattataki mused aloud.
"We've been studying Cortess for some time. We've been thorough," he replied monotonously.
The partial truth seemed sufficient; gray lips curled upward at his words, but the expression wasn't kind. Vector silently watched the dim, dark mauve and gray electromagnetic aura fluctuate in tight, even waves around the Rattataki. Kaliyo Djannis.
Underneath the grit of battle, the Rattataki’s true scent was evident: acrid and biting like pickled space worms. It stung his nose—as it had during their first meeting—and left a sour taste in his mouth. Despite Kaliyo's skepticism of him and the Kind, she seemed to consider the mission at hand a farce, having joked about stealing the Barron's prized beasts earlier.
Cipher Nine seemed less troubled by his extensive knowledge of House Cortess. She listened to him, alert eyes scanning his face as he relayed what the Hive knew. The brown of her irises gave off a muted spectrum, faintly he could make out a circular line along her white sclera. Unlike her companion, Agent smelled of honeyed spice similar to the gold membrosia brewed by the Kind: sweet, heady, and distracting.
"So, miniature saboteur bugs, is it?" Cipher questioned, stroking her chin as curious yellow sparks flickered through her aura in thought.
"Yes, there are times when smaller bodies prove useful," he admitted.
"Very well," she agreed after a moment of consideration, "I assume you're ready to back me up?"
"Yes," Vector said, inclining his head, "if you allow us to fetch the fingerings and our effects quickly."
She nodded once and turned to speak to her companion as he excused himself. The women's voices vibrated against the chambers of the nest as he headed deeper into the cave to gather his equipment. Although the spongy propolis covering the stone absorbed most of the sound, the gift of heightened hearing allowed him to understand scant bits of the Rattataki's loud words.
"Freaky…bug-brain…outta here," Kaliyo's voice echoed distantly.
Vector returned—with a pocket full of fingerlings and his Killik vibrostaff in hand—to find Agent seated by the entrance of the cave alone. Her wounds had vanished, and the minty, tingling scent of kolto hung in the air. Back to him, she sat cross-legged, fiddling with the equipment in her lap.
Agent must have heard his approach because she turned to spare him a glance, one eye now a burning orange. The iris seemed to glow in the shade of the cave's mouth. She greeted him with a silent nod and returned to her work. He neared and saw the small vials of cosmetics lying on the side of her thigh.
"At your service," he prompted.
"I see. Give me a moment," she replied.
"Your companion is absent," he noted. The Rattataki's bitter scent still remained, but no trace of her aura could be found; "She was welcomed to stay here, it shouldn't take us long to disable the generators."
"She'll be fine. Off to steal the Barron's prized thrantas I imagine," Agent said, indicating that Kaliyo had not been joking.
He watched as fingers deftly plucked the hololens from her other eye before placing the contact into a container. Agent then rubbed her face with a piece of white cloth, dark beige streaks were left behind on the material.
"May we inquire as to what you are doing?" he asked politely, as time was of the essence.
"I don't need to look the part of a noble anymore," she answered simply and began to pack the supplies away into the pockets of her utility belt. Rising to her feet, she turned to look at him and continued, "Besides, it's time House Cortess saw the true face of the Empire."
Without any enhancement, shadows made razors of prominent cheekbones and bled purple circles under sharp eyes. The discolored complexion could be attributed to insomnia or stress, not uncommon ailments among those deployed in the field. However, the eerie orange of Agent's eyes betrayed the underlying cause. Not unusual characteristics for those who directly interacted with the Sith.
He remembered seeing a similar effect take place in colleagues during his years of formal education at the Imperial Diplomatic Academy. Admittedly, the memories of that time were hazy, but for persons in the Imperial Service, such a transition wasn't considered uncommon. Being dutiful to the Empire required sacrifice, as he was well versed, having traded much of his humanity to pursue diplomatic relations for the sake of the Empire. Duty came before self though Vector didn't consider his exchange a detriment, rather the opposite.
Still, the change her brush with the force caused wasn't terribly drastic, and her attempts to conceal it were futile. To him, Cipher's electromagnetic aura remained the same and bared her song to the universe in brilliant color. Few things could hide the truths the Hive revealed.
A dark, crimson sphere of influence radiated from the core of her body. It burned in an elliptical shape—a common trait among all humanoids—from the crown of the head and ended at the center of her pelvis. Red transitioned outward like a setting sun, turning into a misty orange field. Her aura, like all others, spanned in an arms-length around her on all sides and ended in a light orange corona. Like the lines of a magnetic field, the corona dipped inwards slightly at the top of her head and bottom of her feet. He noticed yellow sparks, not unlike Alderaanian glowbugs, also shimmered through the field of her aura frequently, as they did now.
"You're staring," Agent noted with a slow-growing smile, "appreciate the change?"
Her voice was different, higher, and more lilting than when they'd been formulating their plan. He didn't know what to make of it.
"To us, you appear much as you did before. Your aura and pheromones are unchanged," he answered truthfully.
"Excuse me?"
"Apologizes, we have been of the nest a long time and forget that the signals we detect are often unidentifiable to others. To another, the transition might be more startling," Vector explained.
"Startling," Cipher repeated, seeming to taste the word.
Her lips turned down.
"Is our assessment offensive?" he asked.
"It wasn't what I was expecting," she answered and turned away to walk toward the speeder.
He wondered if he had insulted her, but the sphere of her aura remained unmoved. Nimbly, she sat on the speeder, and Vector followed, taking his place behind her, just as her Rattataki companion had done. Agent reached to start the vehicle but paused to glance at him, noticing he had scooted back to the far edge of the seat.
"Kaliyo holds my waist, you know," she said, giving him a torrid glance, "keeps her steady."
The mellifluous scent her pores emitted seemed more pungent, and he was unsure what to say. Her heated gaze was making him uncomfortable, and Vector felt certain he was missing important social cues. He had wrongly assumed Agent would be straightforward during their mission, as she had appeared to be just moments before.
"We'll keep that in mind," Vector said and considered holding his breath instead to keep the sweetness from addling his senses.
He hadn't dealt with unaltered humans directly in a long time. Orange eyes settled on him, and Vector realized she was searching for emotional tells; his blank face offered none.
The burning warmth in her gaze extinguished and went cold, like flipping a switch. The taste of frost hung in the air as blue sparks peppered through her field. When Agent spoke again, her words were blunt, voice flat; reminiscent of how she had acted previously.
"The Killiks don't let you out of the nest much, do they? Hold on," she ordered, grabbing his hand and putting it on the jut of her pelvis, threatening, "If you fall off down a ravine, I won't go back."
He wondered why she hadn't simply said that before. With care and respect, he took hold of her other hip.
"Understood," Vector inclined his head, "please be more direct with us in the future."
They were off in an instant, racing over the fragrant, sun-drenched grasses toward House Cortess' generators. He forgot to hold his breath, but Agent's full-throttle style of driving left him breathless after the first hairpin turn anyway.