Chapter Text
“Give it baaack ,” Omega whined from the other room. Echo sighed, trying to tune her, Wrecker, and Tech’s argument out, but their two-room apartment wasn’t quite big enough to allow for privacy. “Tech, that’s not fair! I didn’t mean to knock over your stuff.”
“You cannot play with those balls inside. I’ve already told you that! Wrecker, if you take them out again I will shoot you. Twice.” Tech’s voice was dangerously on edge. Echo stood up, figuring it was about time for him to step in before someone ended up stunned or something ended up broken. Hunter, curled up on his bunk with an ice pack on the back of his neck and noise-blocking ear plugs in was the reason Tech, Wrecker, and Omega were all crammed into the smaller second room. It had only one bed in it, Omega’s cot, and all their gear and other supplies in various containers. Hunter had managed to buy a few yards of light blue fabric with local fauna design on them and had draped it over the biggest of the containers. It wasn’t much, but it looked like it was a kids’ room.
Echo slipped into the second room, closing the door quietly behind him. All three of them looked up at him guiltily.
“Were we being too loud?” Wrecker whispered loudly.
“I don’t think you woke him. I was wondering if Wrecker and Omega wanted to come pick up some parts with me.”
Tech looked at him gratefully, not even bothering to ask what parts he was picking up. Echo knew they had everything they needed, but a few extra power couplings were never a bad idea.
Omega leapt to her feet, bouncing on her toes excitedly but quietly. “Yes, yes please!”
Wrecker started to cheer, then hushed himself when Echo kicked him in the shins.
“Alright, let’s go before we wake Hunter up. Come on. We’ll pick up some Mantel Mix, howabout?” If he could keep them out until sundown, Hunter’s headache might’ve eased and they’d both be tired enough to go to sleep pretty quickly.
He herded them out of the room, tucking a few of their remaining credits in his wallet to pick up the necessary--and unnecessary--supplies.
“Hey droid-clone.” A rough voice came from the back of the shop. Echo snapped upright, one hand going to his blaster as he checked Omega and Wrecker. They were perusing the game section, debating over the most brightly-colored ones. Safe.
He turned his attention to the voice. It wasn’t the shop keeper--she was a tradoshian related to Sid through some complex intermarriage thing--it was someone else. A twi’lek, his unusually rough voice probably due to the jagged scar across his throat. Echo wasn’t sure how any species with a major jugular vein would survive a wound like that, but then again, he shouldn’t’ve survived his injuries.
“What?” Echo glared at the twi’lek protectively. “Where’s Riia?” Riia was Sid’s cousin’s-sister’s-pet’s-uncle’s-sister-in-law or something.
“Back of the shop,” the twi’lek shrugged. “How should I know? Hey, I heard you fellows are bounty hunters.”
Echo kept his hand on the butt of his blaster. “For the right price.” They were dangerously low on credits, and Sid had given her last job to another worker who’d snuck in before them. Possibly because Wrecker had knocked over a six-hundred-credit bottle of aged alcohol and broken it, or because Tech had tried to ‘fix’ her credit machine and apparently she wasn’t a fan of her machines being tinkered with, or maybe it was because Hunter had decided Omega needed to stop being the center of attention and winning so many bets playing games, so they wanted to lay low.
Regardless, they were short on credits and Sid was pissed at them.
Echo checked on Wrecker and Omega once more. They had narrowed their choices down to two games, one a set of cards and one a large box of various pieces. He hoped they’d choose the smaller one; they also had limited space.
“It pays well. A hundred thousand.”
Echo very nearly fell over.
“It’s a high value target,” the twi’lek said, chuckling roughly. “Dangerous.”
“I’ll need more details. Can you meet at Sid’s tonight?”
The twi’lek tilted his head. “I’ll talk to your master, droid.”
Echo knew it wasn’t worth protesting, or saying he was a human, not a droid.
It wasn’t quite true.
“Sid’s. Tonight. I’ll let him know.”
“Good,” the twi’lek snarled.
Good , Echo thought sarcastically, turning to gather Wrecker and Omega.
Omega bet half their remaining credits on a game of dejarik, and the rest of them kept a close eye on her while meeting with the twi’lek at a table in the corner of the room.
Hunter led the conversation, as he always did. Echo sat off to the side, watching Omega play with one of Sid’s regulars. Most of them knew better than to bet against her by now, but they still tried to challenge her.
She was a good kid.
“One hundred thousand?”
“Fifty down, fifty on completion,” the twi’lek said. The arrangement was pretty standard. “Single target. Human male. Retrieval alive.”
Hunter was an excellent liar. It was bred and trained into him; he could read cues so well that he knew how to hide them. But Echo was an ARC, and he knew Hunter pretty well.
The skin at the edge of his eye tightened, just a little bit, before smoothing out again.
“What makes him such a high-level target?”
“Confidential.”
One hundred thousand credits, a suspicious job, bounty hunting. They were clones, not bounty hunters.
Then again, wasn’t their donor a bounty hunter? Maybe it was in their DNA.
“I can transfer the details to you, but not before we sign the contract.”
One hundred thousand credits. A better place to live, a home base rather than two rooms above Sid’s bar. They’d been talking for a while about how Omega needed a home. According to Tech, it was imperative for proper development.
“What makes him so dangerous?”
The twi’lek dragged his fingernails over the ropy scar across his throat. “Specially trained soldier. An assassin,” he said after a second of searching for words. “Nearly killed the chancellor once.”
That tidbit of knowledge was carefully placed, just enough to light curiosity but not enough to identify who exactly they were hunting, or why. In Echo’s experience, quite a few people had tried to kill the chancellor/emperor.
“What do you think, gentlemen?” Hunter glanced at Wrecker, Tech, Echo. Tech nodded. Wrecker cheered. Echo shrugged. “Alright then. We’re in.”
“I’ll wire the fifty thousand and the details to you right away,” the twi’lek rasped, grinning.
The crowd gathered around Omega and her game applauded her as she won.
The ship hummed beneath Echo. He was reading through the data, but it was sparse. A human male, dark hair. Skilled in strategy and hand-to-hand. Tattooed. He was credited for the assassination of a dozen high-ranking army officers, politicians, and billionaires.
Still, with the five of them against one, Echo wasn’t nervous.
“Echo, can I get another book?” Omega brought her data pad to him. “I finished the other one.”
Echo took her data pad, opening the book store. “Sure. What do you want?”
“Who’s that?” Omega peered at his data pad on his lap. An image had popped up, another file from the twi’lek.
Echo set aside Omega’s datapad and looked at his. A clone, Echo realized. Long, shaggy dark hair, a familiar nose and jawline, ink curling around his collarbone.
Alive, the twi’lek had said.
Echo wondered if he’d known this clone before he’d gone rogue. According to the twi’lek, he’d been out of commission since the middle of the war, decommissioned. Echo had felt some level of sympathy at that, he’d almost been the same. Would’ve he become an assassin if that was the only choice he had? He had the training, he was both a clone and an ARC and a member of the 501st, now a member of the 99th.
“Is that who we’re looking for?” Omega stood on her tiptoes. “He looks sad.”
Only one of the clone’s eyes was visible beneath his shaggy hair, but he kind of did look sorrowful.
“Yes, it is,” Echo said. “Don’t worry, we’ll do our best not to hurt him.” They weren’t cruel bounty hunters.
He wasn’t sure he wanted to be a bounty hunter.
“I know,” Omega said. “I wonder why they want him.”
So did Echo.
“Why don’t you ask Tech what book he wants you to read next? You have to keep up with your learning.” Unanimously, they’d assigned Tech to being her teacher. Tech had tried to design a curriculum but it had ended in tears on Omega’s end after a ten hour study session. Now Tech just assigned reading, Wrecker took care of weapons and explosives dismantling, Hunter was big on life learning and Echo was trying to teach her about investing. She was pretty good with credits already.
“Okay,” Omega said, slipping away all but silently. Echo looked at the image on the screen. Sighed.
A job was a job. Everybody in the galaxy was just doing what they could to survive, especially now.