The Rise of Pulsar Company/Chapter 7

Slowly coming to consciousness, Thel felt dizzy. Both of his wrists felt like they had long since fallen asleep. There was something around them, too, something metallic. As the mental fog cleared up, he suddenly remembered what had happened; he had showed Lexi what it was like working as a merchant in Mos Eisley, and they were closing up shop… last night? He wasn’t sure how long it had been.

Three aliens showed up as he was closing up, Thel told them they’d have to wait until tomorrow, and then they offered to buy Lexi. He refused, and they were… kidnapped? Robbed? Maybe they just took Lexi?

Thel also felt something wrapped around his face tight, covering his mouth.

Carefully opening his left eye, there were multiple sentients in mismatched or visually worn gear, all armed to the teeth. To his left, propped up in a corner and stuck in slave rags, was Lexi, nervously looking around, bound and gagged. There was the Trandoshan and the two Duros from before, three humans, a female Weequay, a Rodian, and a Zabrak. Lexi looked over to him, eyes wide, and he pretended to not notice her. These guys had to be with Lostur, no two ways about it.

That, however, didn’t seem to work. One of the humans noticed Lexi staring at him, and looked over at Thel, catching him with his eye open, before bumping the Weequay on the shoulder. “Kaz, bantha-breath over there is awake.” he said, gesturing over to Thel.

The Weequay looked over at him with intense eyes, and then glanced back at the human. “Good eye, Dav.” she complimented in a scratchy, rough voice, before kneeling down to get eye level with Thel. “I want t’ get one thing clear; we have questions we want answer’d. You answer correctly, we ‘et you go free when we ‘ave what we want. If you answ’r wrong, you’re in for a world of pain.”

Thel simply narrowed his eyes at her, and she ripped the gag off of him. “Where is your friend, Nax? Go.” she ordered.

“Long gone, and even if I did know, I wouldn’t tell you, scum. Eat shit.” he spat in her face.

Kaz simply stood up and wiped the spit off of her cheek. “Bad answer.” she simply said, annoyed, before half turning to one of the other rooms in the building. “Trec! Bring out the droid!”

A male Weequay, apparently Trec, rounded the corner, accompanied by a slow moving black ball, with a single glowing red eye on the bottom. As it came further into the light, Thel realized what it was.

An Imperial Interrogation droid. He’d never seen one before, but knew what they could do, and instinctively began squirming to get away, a fruitless effort, as his legs and arms were bound by stuncuffs. As the droid got closer, it started to go to work.

Lexi did nothing, and simply watched in fear.

Arfive carefully maneuvered the back panel of the Teethree unit into place, and bolted it in. The droid was completely colorless except for its durasteel plating, and Arfive had finished repairing the electrical components earlier, so now all that was left was to turn it on. Arfive extended his transmitter, and began sending a signal to the unit that should hopefully wake it up.

After a brief minute of transmitting the signal, Arfive stopped, waiting for any response from the unit. There was no such luck, unfortunately, so Arfive began patrolling around the droid, calculating the best course of action.

Something suddenly occurred to him – Lexi had mentioned that this Teethree unit was probably thousands of years old. Maybe it wasn’t responding to the generation of binary he was using?

Arfive was familiar with eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth generation binary, each more sophisticated than the last. If he could dumb it down enough…

No, that would be too complicated, an R5 unit like him wouldn’t be able to process, let alone store, all the information trying to reverse engineer binary on its own. Retracting his middle leg, Arfive continued his patrol, wobbling instead, accidentally bumping the Teethree unit, causing him to fall backwards. Wiggling and trying to right himself, Arfive heard frantic binary.

“[W@!4mnaht;:.. go!!!ng &^%!]” was what Arfive’s automatic translation picked up, and the droid began sputtering random gibberish.

“[Please hold on. I can’t understand you.]” Arfive replied, before scanning comm frequencies to try and pick the droid up. Scanning up and down the band, he discovered an unknown signal transmitting a scrambled frequency. Assuming it to be the Teethree unit, he used an exploit to push a data packet through the comms. Said packet contained nineteenth generation binary, Arfive’s preferred version.

The Teethree unit stopped babbling. “[…Hello?]” it eventually said in a more feminine version of the binary packet Arfive had pushed.

“[Hello.]” Arfive replied. “[I’m a bit stuck here. Can I get some help?]” he gurgled helplessly. The Teethree unit rolled up to him and tilted her pan shaped head down to look at Arfive inquisitively. She then turned her body to him and shot out a cable, connecting the two, before pulling Arfive to his full height. “[You have my thanks.]” he cheerily beeped out in binary, grateful for the assistance.

The Teethree unit tilted her head at Arfive, studying him. “[Who… what, are you?]” she asked, her blue eye flashing as she beeped.

Arfive straightened himself out proudly. “[I am an R5-series astromech, R5-G0, former Republic astromech, 52nd Helljumper Legion, Grand Army of the Republic.]”

“[…It’s good to see the Republic is still out there, but what do you mean by ‘former’? Or the Grand Army of the Republic?]” she inquired.

“[I’m sad to say, but the Republic no longer exists. Hence, my being a ‘former’ Republic astromech.]”

The Teethree unit sat back. “[…The Republic doesn’t exist? How?]” she asked, shocked. Arfive gave her a very brief history of the last twenty odd years, from the Clone Wars, to the fall of the Jedi and the rise of the Empire, making sure to mention his own personal engagements whenever possible.

“[That’s enough about me, but who are you?]” Arfive inquired, and the Teethree unit straightened up.

“[I am T3-KT, former Republic utility droid for the Endar Spire, some several thousand years ago, according to my chronometer.]” she chirped.

“[The Endar Spire?]” Arfive asked, curious as to what kind of ship it was.

“[Yes, although I remember very little of my deployment there. My memory of the events that transpired are largely corrupt. I vaguely remember an attack, and an escape. Possibly my going missing, as well.]” she responded.

So much for that.

“[Was it you that repaired me?]” Katy suddenly asked. “[If so, you did a very good job, especially for my being thousands of years old.]”

Arfive wobbled back and forth a bit. “[For the most part, yes. Your internal components are relatively similar to my own, so it was an easy job. I did not, however, remove the rust on your body; that would have been a Zeltron by the name of Lexi.]”

Katy’s eye dimmed so that it looked vaguely joyful, and she moved her head around the room. “[Where is this Lexi, so I can thank her?]”

Arfive’s own lights seemed to dim. “[Unfortunately, I do not know. She and another person, Thel, were supposed to be here last night, but failed to show up. I fear the worst, and would like some help searching for them.]”

Katy straightened herself out. “[I suppose it’s the least I could do for you fixing me. Where to?]”

“[…Are you sure this is the place?]” Katy asked as the two of them rolled into the bazaar. A lot of people were giving the two droids weird looks, especially Katy. Understandable, since T3 units were so incredibly rare.

Arfive warded away a Jawa with an electric shock at its feet. [“Positive. This is Thel’s stall.”] he beeped, rolling up to the abandoned stall. Most of the stock was gone now, stolen in Thel’s absence. Arfive began running a blacklight over the area. “[…I’m picking up multiple handprints. I can see Thel’s, but not Lexi’s. Plus three others, not human.”] Arfive noted.

Katy began running her blacklight over the scene as well, noticing a faint, nearly invisible trail. “[Look! I can see a trail leading out from behind the stall. Should we see where it leads?]” Katy inquired, not sure what to do.

Arfive’s head turned to her. “[Lead the way.]” he chirped, and Katy slowly followed the trail, Arfive in tow. After several minutes, the two of them came to the exterior of Chalmun’s Cantina.

“[…The trail ends here? I don’t see any other trails…]” Katy commented, her pan shaped head swiveling around.

Arfive ran his blacklight around the door. “[I see the same handprints from earlier on this door. One moment, I must check something.]” Arfive said, before turning up the background audio. To his left, he heard a man screaming, and… familiar droning sound. Thinking on it more, Arfive realized what it was – an IT-O interrogation droid. Bolting to the door, Arfive extended his remote slicing tool to the keypad. “[This is the place. Do you have any weapons on you?]” he asked, his head partially turned to Katy.

Katy’s head fiddled around briefly, and a panel popped out from her head, revealing a hidden blaster pistol underneath. “[Apparently, yes. It’s reading as ready to fire, but I wouldn’t wholly count on it.]” she chirped nervously.

“[It’ll have to do.]” Arfive said, continuing to slice the door open. After a brief minute, the door flew open, and the two of them readied their weapons, before charging in. In the entryway, on the left, there was a random human in a duster, whom Arfive immediately zapped, knocking him out. Katy charged forward, blaster ready, and shot once. The sheer force of the shot knocked her on her back, rendering her useless now, so Arfive mindlessly charged forward, only to be kicked over, rendered helpless.

“Blasted stupid droids. Shot the interrogat’r.” A familiar, rough and vaguely feminine voice complained. “Wait. That’s that stupid astro’ from when Slev found the girl. The ‘ell’s it doing ‘ere?”

Arfive felt something get attached to his body, and he lost all will to resist. “Who cares, Kaz? Its friend shot the interrogator droid, and it delivered itself here. I can bring down my ship, plug the little bastard in, probably find out where bitch-boy and the girl are. Easier than bombing tribals.” a more masculine, smooth voice said.

“Y’sure that’s a good idea, Dav? Lostur might get ‘is panties in a twist.”

“Who gives a shit about Lostur’s opinion right now? He sure as hell wont when he’s got the girl back.” he laughed briefly. “Besides, I’ve got the beckon call right here. No need to call Lostur up.”

The Weequay’s head visibly rolled. “I’d think the Interdictor up in orbit gives a shit.”

“I’ll have the ship circle the planet, how’s about that?”

Someone new spoke up. “Er… Kaz, I could have Barrett get us the tools to slice the droids without bringing the hammer down on us from the Imperials.” he nervously mentioned.

Kaz snorted. “I should smack you for speakin’ outta turn, but that’s not a ‘ad idea. Call ‘im.”

Arfive incessantly chirped and warbled. “[I think I may have just made everyone’s situation considerably worse.]”

Katy rolled her body over with her head. “[I have absolutely no idea who these people are or what they want with you. Or me, for that matter. I swear to the Maker, if we get scrapped, I’ll haunt you in the collective consciousness for the rest of eternity.]” Katy threatened, suddenly turning malicious from stress.

The pirates kicked the both of them, causing them minor distress. “Shut it, you stupid droids!” Dav shouted.

Sleeping in the bottom of the tower, waiting for his shift to start, Nax felt a hand on his shoulder, and it immediately woke him from his sleep. “Are you okay?” he heard Val quietly ask. She waited for Nax to open his eyes before she spoke again. “You were tossing and turning in your sleep. You only ever did that when something was wrong.”

She seemed genuinely concerned for Nax, at least for the moment. Nax suspected it was just an act, however. “Why do you care?” he dismissively asked. “Furthermore, what makes you think I’ll tell you?”

Val bit her lip. “I… don’t know.” she hesitantly said, glancing at Nax’s deadpan expression. “I just thought that…”

“Thought what?”

She closed her eyes and exhaled. “…That you would have forgiven me. I don’t know.”

Standing up, Nax stared down at her. “Forgive you?” he insultingly repeated. “What the hell makes you think I’d forgive someone who took my trust and shattered it in front of me, without a care in the world?”

Val looked down at her feet wordlessly. “…Your shift starts in an hour.” she said, dodging Nax’s question out of shame. “…Also, Kyra woke up an hour ago. Just… thought you’d want to know.” Val finished, sounding somber.

Without another word, Nax headed for the door. Before he actually walked out, he heard Val speak up again. “And… Nax?” she asked, causing him to half turn to her. “Whatever happened to you… I’m sorry.”

Nax brushed her off, and walked outside. It was still early in the morning, only a couple of the moisture farmers working on repairing the damage or maintaining the vaporators. Cool, too, probably twenty-five degrees standard right now. One of the moisture farmers noticed Nax and waved to him. “Hey! Your friend should still be up!” he shouted needlessly, pointing over to the building Nax had left Kyra in. Nax gave him a nod of acknowledgement, and headed for the building, stepping over the feet of the AT-ST to get to the door.

Once inside, a couple heads turned to him, mostly moisture farmers. Emel also noticed him, and waved him over to Kyra, who looked at him and smiled, obviously in much better condition than yesterday. Emel handed him a credit chip. “Here, it’s your pay for this job.” he said, straight to the point.

Hesitantly taking it, Nax looked up at Emel. “I was under the impression that we weren’t getting paid?” he asked, curious if he had been wrong.

Emel casually shrugged. “The boss said you weren’t to be on payroll, but I say too bad. You’re in my squad, you get paid, orders be damned.” Emel explained, before laughing. “I’d love to stay and chat, Nax, but I need to check on the repairs. Wouldn’t want to leave a bad impression on the civvies, would we?” he half-joked, before leaving the building.

Now that the two of them were alone, Nax sat next to Kyra. “How’re you holding up?” he asked, concerned for her.

Kyra rested her head on his shoulder, content. “Better than I was doing yesterday.” she said, seeming much livelier now that she had partially recovered. Kyra looked at Nax through the corner of her eyes. “Heard about what you did, Nax.” she said with a light laugh, punching him in the shoulder. “You’re crazy, honestly.”

Nax smirked at her. “Tenan drew attention to himself. He was out of cover, too. Would’ve been dead if I hadn’t done that.”

Kyra laughed, and then she got closer to Nax. “…I’m sorry.” she said softly, suddenly sounding more somber and apologetic than she was before.

Nax looked down at her, surprised. “For what?”

Kyra looked back up at him. “For being useless. I stunned myself on our first job, got nicked on our second, which caused my bruises to flare up for some reason, got bedridden for a few days, got us involved with insurgents, and now I caused the whole squad to get stuck here for a few days while I recover from heatstroke of all things. I can barely shoot, and I don’t have what it takes for this life.” she sulked, burying her head in Nax’s shoulder. “I’m useless.”

Propping her up, Nax stroked her hair in an attempt to comfort her. “No, you’re not. You’re a fine shot.” he said warmly. “And don’t get too bent out of shape over being injured, it happens to everyone. Plus, heatstroke’s natural for people who haven’t been on Tatooine for too long. I’d be more surprised if you didn’t suffer from heatstroke at least once while we were together.”

Looking up at him, Kyra sniffed. “You mean that?”

Bemused, Nax looked her in the eyes. “I don’t say things unless I mean them, Kyra.” he replied.

Kyra’s dour expression cracked, and she hugged Nax. “…Thank you.” she croaked out.

They sat there like that for a few minutes, totally silent. The only thing the two of them could hear was each other’s breathing, and the sound of fabric rubbing against fabric. Suddenly feeling tired again, Nax’s eyes began to droop, and he let sleep take him. Kyra must have done the same too, as he felt her start to slump against him.

Three thunderous cracks was all it took to wake the two of them up. Kyra practically jumped off of Nax, and he sprang forward, nearly knocking his head into Kyra’s. Bolting up straight, Nax already had the Deecee out and ready to go. There was another crack, and it finally registered that Val was shooting at something. Kyra hid herself in a corner, CR-2 and DL-44 ready to fire, and gestured for Nax to get going, which he did.

Everyone else in Dewback Squad was outside, weapons at the ready, plus a few moisture farmers who had old slugthrowers ready. There was another crack, and Nax saw a tracer fly across the dawn sky from the top of the tower. Emel’s comm went off, and he pressed down, seemingly listening into it. “We’ve got bandits!” he eventually shouted.

“They Tuskens?” Dev asked, fiddling with the power pack on his TL-50.

Emel repeated the question into his comm, and got an answer. “Negative, they’re Alkharans.”

Right, Alkharans. These guys were the followers of some guy who waged a genocidal campaign against the Tuskens, or something to that effect. They’d occasionally raid moisture farmers for supplies, or hit caravans. Guess these moisture farmers were lucky they had stayed, then.

Several slugthrower shots cracked against the tower, and Val fired another shot. “Get the civs inside!” Emel shouted, and a couple farmers herded the unarmed into the buildings. Dewback, plus about five of the farmers, all stacked up against the hole where the old Imperial transport was. There was a more distant gunshot, and a slug ricocheted off of the transport, hitting a farmer in the shoulder. Crumpling back and grasping his shoulder to stem the bleeding, the farmer got out of the way of everyone else, retreating into a building close to the entrance. Emel raised a closed fist, and counted down from three.

On one, everyone poured through, hitting the sand as soon as they were out of cover. It must’ve been their lucky day; thirty meters out were the remaining Alkharans, all exposed, all out of cover. A ten second smattering of blaster and slugthrower fire put an end to their little attack. As they all got up, they heard a few more cracks from the tower, presumably Val putting an end to the lives of the survivors.

Checking the bodies, Kelah nabbed something from under one of their tunics. “Check it, found a travelpad.” she noted. It was a small device, not unlike a datapad aesthetically, except it had some more navigational equipment to the side – a chronometer, a compass, things like that. The main purpose of a travelpad was mainly to track where you gone for the past few days. “Maybe we can use it to find out where their camp is?” she appended, flicking around on the screen.

“Probably not.” Emel replied, looking over her shoulder at the travelpad. “Alkharans are nomadic.”

Dev jabbed him in the shoulder. “You’re not saying they don’t have a staging ground, are you, boss? Cos’ that’s how Alkharans like to operate, nomads or not.”

Emel turned and looked him up and down. “Fair point. I’ll talk to the guy in charge, see if he won’t let us head out to take care of their problem.” he responded, flicking his head back towards the compound.

Turns out, the farmers had been harassed by this particular group of Alkharans for a good few months now, so getting the okay wasn’t a big issue. Only the available members of Dewback headed out, meaning Kyra had been left behind at the compound; an idea that Nax wasn’t particularly keen on going with.

Jax and Dev were in the Flash with the E-Web, while everyone else was piled into the transport speeder, a particularly poor idea considering both the size of Tenan, and Val’s anti-materiel rifle. Nax was smushed between the side of the speeder and Tenan in the back seat, while Val hung over the back with her rifle ready to go. Emel was in the front passenger seat, while Kelah drove, a difficult task considering not only her size, but also having to constantly switch between focusing on driving and focusing on the travelpad.

They’d been out here for a while now, probably half an hour, maybe an hour at most? More than Nax was comfortable with considering Kyra’s state, but nevertheless, it felt like time was passing slowly. Nax was the last one to notice that the speeders had come to a halt and been emptied of their passengers, so he quickly hopped out to join the rest of the squad. They all collectively marched into a small valley in a V-formation, weapons at the ready. All of them were scanning the ridgelines, waiting for something, anything to pop out.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this…” Jax cautioned, seeming more jumpy than he was an hour ago. He suddenly flicked up to the ridge, apparently having seen something, but neglected to fire a shot, and returned to formation.

The squad came to a dip in the path that led to a wide, open bowl area. At the bottom of the little pit were several tents, all crumpled and crushed. Emel held his hand up, closed it into a fist, jerked it down, and then extended his pointer finger, waving it around in a circle. Everyone broke formation except for Nax, and formed up near Emel, while Nax kind of bumbled behind them due to being unfamiliar with squad commands. “Kel, check those tents; we’ll provide overwatch.” Emel ordered, directing her to the tents.

Doing as told, Kelah darted down the hill, zig-zagging to dodge nonexistent fire, before making it to the bottom and dashing under a tent with surprising ease. Waiting for around half a minute, Emel stood up. “It’s clear. Fan out and look for anything Alkharan. Bodies, datapads, anything.”

The squad quickly moved down the hill, regrouping with Kelah. Nax took the left side of the camp with Jax, while Dev and Emel took the middle, and Kelah and Tenan took the right side. Val was providing overwatch from the entrance point, so they were well protected.

It didn’t take long for Jax to find something alcoholic. “Hey, Nax, check it; jawa juice.” he said proudly, holding up a small liquid canister that was partially transparisteel. “Drink it when we get back?”

Nax half-shrugged. “Sure, as long as we don’t get any other surprises.” he replied, pulling out an old slug casing from a sleeping bag smothered under the tent. In the brief lull in the noise of everyone poking around, Nax swore he heard something. Poking his head back up into the air, he listened closely.

There was a faint screaming. Not screaming like a human, more like an engine whine, and it was getting closer. Slowly, more people in the squad started to hear the sound, too, and looked around, wondering just where it could come from.

“TIE! Get down!” Emel suddenly snapped, hitting the sand face first. Kelah hid under a tent, Val hid under a rock nearby, partially concealed, Tenan fell backwards, the two brothers made it look like they had died stabbing each other, and Nax made it look like he had killed himself, putting the unloaded Deecee to his jaw, staring up at the sky.

The screeching of the ion engines drew ever closer, before finally flying over the camp. It wasn’t a TIE fighter like they had all been expecting; it was a TIE bomber.

And it was flying straight for the compound. When it was out of sight, everyone sat up. “…Boss, did you and Kel happen to hear any Imperial transmissions when you went after that transport yesterday?” Tenan asked, seeming tense.

“No, but I don’t like this.” Emel replied, looking towards the direction the TIE had flown in. “We need to go, the Alkharans can wait.”

“No complaints here, Boss.” Dev responded, and the squad made a mad dash for the Flash speeders, quickly returning to the positions they were in earlier, except for Kelah and Emel, who had switched positions.

The hour-long drive back to the compound seemed more like a ten minute one. Sweat was visible on Nax’s forehead the whole way, and he was visibly nervous. Kyra was in no state to make an escape on her own if the compound had been bombed. Crossing his fingers and tapping his foot against the flooring of the speeder, Nax looked down at the floor, before glancing over to Val, who was staring at him, biting her lip, before she glanced away, as if she hadn’t seen him.

Three minutes away from the compound, they could collectively smell smoke.

One minute away, they could see the smoke plumes rising from over the sand dunes.

The speeders jolted up over the final dune, and their fears were confirmed; thirty meters ahead was the now bombed compound. There were multiple dead bodies outside whatever remained of the gates, the tower had been completely wrecked, the walls were effectively nonexistent, and multiple buildings were engulfed in a fiery inferno.

Including the one that Kyra had been in just hours earlier.

Jumping out of his seat, Nax barely cleared the speeder when Emel grabbed his arm. “What the hell are you doing?!” he demanded angrily.

“Saving Kyra, now let go!” Nax shouted in response. Emel, however, tightened his grip.

“At the risk of losing the entire squad?!” he retorted. “What if that TIE is still around?”

Nax briefly scanned everyone looking at him, and then exhaled. “If it is, then you run. Leave us behind; we’ll find our own way back.”

Emel studied him briefly, albeit apprehensively, before reluctantly letting him go. The speeders retreated back behind the dune into cover.

Finally free, Nax ran down to the gate, stepping over several bodies. The heat was more intense down here, and he reflexively raised his hand to his face to try and block the heat, with minimal success. Running up to the door of the building Kyra had been in, he tried the door. Unfortunately, the sensor was nonfunctional. Fortunately, the door was slightly ajar, enough that Nax could slip his fingers in and pry it open. Doing exactly that, he ignored the searing pain against his hands, and attempted to push the door back.

The door only moved a bit, not enough for him to get through, but enough to

Thinking fast, Nax pressed himself up against the doorframe and jammed his boot into the door, before pushing down. Thankfully, this seemed to have enough force behind it to get the door open, and Nax quickly ran inside.

The blaze hit him in the face like a herd of crazed banthas. The smoke was so thick that Nax could barely see in front of him, and the heat was unlike anything he had felt before.

He would need to be quick about this, no time to screw around.

Crouching down to get under a collapsed support beam, there was a mass of bodies in the central area, the closest one being the old lady who had taken Kyra into her care. Her face was heavily charred, barely recognizable.

Crawling under, there were a few more bodies he recognized. Some of the farmers that had joined them in fighting the Alkharans, and the compound leader. Frantically searching the bodies, he would have narrowly missed Kyra, if it weren’t for her white hair just barely sticking out over a piece of debris. She was in the corner where he had left her earlier, like she hadn’t moved at all. Dashing over, Nax took the debris and threw it by the wayside. She had several cuts along her face, none looked deep enough to cause scarring or cut veins, but it still worried Nax nonetheless. Quickly checking her pulse, Nax counted his blessings, before he grabbed her bridal-style, carrying her out of the building.

Over the roar of the fire behind him, Nax could hear the screeching of the ion engines getting closer. Making a run for it, he ran out of the gates, slowed by carrying Kyra. He was almost over the sand dune and to safety, when the TIE bomber shot overhead, quickly following Dewback Squad, who were now gone, the speeders fading into the horizon.

All Nax could do was stare.

Before long, both the TIE bomber and the speeders disappeared from sight, and Nax finally snapped out of it. Kyra’s bleeding wasn’t going to get any better on its own, and his standing around uselessly wasn’t helping much, either. Turning around to maybe go into one of the few buildings that weren’t on fire, his plans were immediately dashed by something exploding and taking multiple buildings out with it.

Blast.

Trying to think of what to do now, Nax noticed the rear-end of the Imperial transport; the same one Tenan had blown up the other day. While that one was too close to the compound to take shelter in, the other wasn’t too far away. Probably two, three-hundred meters from the compound? Safe enough to hunker down in, and probably wasn’t as damaged as the other one was. Beginning the march, Nax headed in the general direction of where it was, according to what he remembered seeing from the tower.

A short while later, and he found the transport, and in remarkable condition as well. While the right side had been completely fragged by the E-Web, and there were extreme burn marks around the side, it didn’t look too bad. Heading around the side, he pushed the door open with his elbow, and was suddenly blasted in the face with cool air.

Well, at least they wouldn’t be dying of heat anytime soon. A bit strange that that was still on, considering Kelah mentioned in the debrief that she had hit it with a shock blaster. Maybe it rebooted?

Finally having found a safe place to tend to Kyra’s wounds, Nax cleared some sort of table, or a bench, or whatever, off, and set her down, feeling much more elated now that he didn’t have to carry her anymore.

That was when he noticed several dark, damp spots around her shirt. The bleeding must have gotten worse – or he hadn’t noticed it in the first place. Wasting no time, he had Kyra’s gear off in under a minute, and yeah, the bleeding was much worse than initially suspected. All along her body were cuts, all of them bleeding, all of them fresh. It was actually starting to pool, albeit slowly.

Quickly moving to a medpack hanging on the wall, Nax opened it to find it totally empty save for a single bacta syringe, useless, at least for the moment. Closing the medpack back up, Nax removed his hat, then his duster and bandoleer, and then unslung both the Deecee and the scattergun, before finally removing his shirt. Snatching his knife from the duster, he began to cut the shirt into makeshift bandage. Heatstroke was a non-issue for him; Kyra bleeding out very much was.

With a quick stab and pull, the shirt was in two, and Nax wrapped it around Kyra’s body, tying it up. It quickly became damp, and Nax nabbed the syringe and administered it to Kyra. It’d help close the cuts, but she’d still be liable to infection before too long. As soon as the syringe ran dry, Kyra breathed in deep, and her eyes fluttered.

“What… what happened…?” Kyra slowly asked, coming to her senses and rising up. “…And why does everything hurt so bad?”

Nax gently set her back down. “Easy there, Kyra. You’re cut up pretty bad. I don’t know how bad it really is, but we’re starved on medical supplies as it is.”

Holding her head, Kyra looked Nax in the eyes. “…Huh…?” she said, and Nax wasn’t sure what she meant by that.

“We’re in the transport that Kel disabled the other day, the one outside the complex. The Empire retaliated for yesterday. Bombed the whole compound.”

Kyra went wide-eyed. “…Did anyone else make it?” she asked, although something told Nax that she already knew the answer.

Reluctantly shaking his head no, Nax frowned. “The farmers, no, the rest of Dewback, yes, they got away.”

Hanging her head, or at least as well as one could being effectively bedridden, Kyra frowned back. “…So, what happens now?”

Cracking his knuckles, Nax stood up. “For now, we need food and water before we can think of getting out of here. Not a single speeder survived the bombing, and Bestine is probably six, maybe seven hours away on foot. I can probably fix a vaporator to get us some water, but food’s going to be much tougher to get hold of.”

Letting her body go limp, Kyra suddenly jolted, and she yelled in pain. “What’s wrong?” Nax frantically asked.

Holding her right leg, she eased herself back down. “My leg! It’s like I can’t move it at all…” she groaned in pain, before finally calming down.

Looking over at her right leg, Nax noticed some swelling around her shin and thigh. It must’ve been covered up by the blood, otherwise he would have noticed it. “Oh, hell. Looks like your leg’s broken.”

“How did-?” Kyra started, before Nax interrupted her.

“When I got you out of the building, there was some debris on top of you. It must’ve fallen on your leg. Either that, or the blasts somehow broke it. Either way, I need to make a splint.”

Grabbing his knife again, Nax cut the straps from the medpack. Searching for something long enough, he settled on a long piece of piping that must have been blown out yesterday. Setting it next to her leg, Nax wrapped the strap around her knee, making sure it was tight. It wasn’t enough to properly secure her leg, but it would have to do for now. “I don’t want you moving that leg at all, Kyra.” Nax ordered, crouching down to get eye level with her.

Kyra slowly nodded, and then apparently noticed for the first time that Nax was totally shirtless, and she absentmindedly stared at him. “What?” Nax asked, and then realized what was going on. “Oh. I’m shirtless. Yeah, there aren’t any bandages in here that I could use, had to tear my shirt up for you. You’re welcome, by the way.”

Tossing her duster and shirt back to her so she wasn’t fully exposed, Nax threw his duster back on and headed into the cockpit to maybe get something to make her splint stronger.

“That bomber’s been following us for a while now!” Tenan noted, constantly looking back over his shoulder. The TIE had been trailing them for a good bit now, but it hadn’t fired a shot off at them.

“Any chance we can shake it?” Kelah shouted over the roaring turbines.

Tenan shook his head. “Not a chance; the IAS is too fast for the speeders. It’s nothing but open ground for miles, too.” he responded, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Val turn over onto her stomach, her rifle propped against the back of the speeder. Wordlessly, she peered into her scope, breathed in, and pulled the trigger back, too fast for Tenan to stop her.

The Flash jerked to the side and closer to the ground as the slug exited her rifle. Less than a second later, a massive, gaping hole opened in the cockpit. Assuming Val had missed, Tenan braced for retribution to come.

Except it never did.

Instead, the bomber continued gliding ahead, keeping pace with the speeders. Blinking twice to make sure he wasn’t going insane, Tenan noticed the bomber begin to list forward, gradually picking up speed. Before he realized what had happened, the bomber had already crashed into the armed Flash, and Emel pulled a hard right turn, running the vehicle in a wide arc back to where the flaming pile of wreckage was.

All of them jumped out and ran to the mangled mess of a Flash and TIE. Dev was further ahead of the crash, bloodied and bruised, but probably fine.

Jax, on the other hand…

Saying he was dead would be an understatement. His body was so mangled, bloodied, and damaged that not even bacta would be able to help. Shrapnel sticking out at multiple points on his body, several severed limbs, and a crushed ribcage from the dislodged E-Web battery landing on his chest rendered him dead on arrival.

Kelah suddenly looked queasy, and she ran behind the wreckage to puke. Emel, Tenan, and Val just stared at the corpse of their squadmate.

Val and Tenan prepared an impromptu burial, while Emel tended to Dev.

They had lost one of their own today.