Chapter Text
Fox is well aware of his place in things. He is the one in charge. He is the one the shinies look up to and fear all at once. He has a lot of responsibilities and no time to shirk any of them. He had long ago run out of time to drink with the other commanders, Stone and Thire and Thorn. No time to blow off some steam. No rest, no relief. It is a taxing job being commander of the Coruscant Guard. Senators getting into trouble. Citizens getting into trouble. Trying to protect people who resented the clones protecting them.
Because Fox knows his place, it is all the more jarring to suddenly find himself out of place. To wake up in a downed shuttle in the middle of the afternoon on Vandor, sunlight shining in the cracked and shattered viewport, illuminating the dead clones at his side.
It was supposed to be an easy protection detail. A favor called in and the commander of the Guard got tasked with protection detail. Didn’t matter that Fox had a million other things to do besides protecting four stuck-up senators who didn’t even have the decency to treat him or any of his brothers as real people. No, Fox’s opinion never mattered to any one except the vode.
Fox stands from his kneeled position at Grady’s side. Grady was about to be promoted. Fox had signed off on the paperwork this morning, or could’ve been yesterday. Time always seemed to flow differently around Fox. Stone kept time like he had a built in clock or somethin’. Fox lost track of time more often than not.
Grady would never get that promotion, and none of these men would be going home.
There is a whimper behind him, an indication of life. Not only had Fox lost all his men, but the universe decided to let a senator live alongside Fox. No time to mourn. No time to do anything but save the kriffing senator’s life.
He turns around and moves to her side, pushing aside the debris that had fallen on her. He thinks it was part of the bulkhead from the other side of the ship, but he can’t be sure. He isn’t a crime scene analyst. They had droids for that, and as the Coruscant Police liked to tell him, he is a guardsman, not a detective.
Golden eyes look up at him as he kneels beside the senator and tries to undo her seat restraints. They are jammed. What a surprise. Fox reaches for his vibroblade.
“What are your injuries, ma’am?” Best to get down to the vital information. It’s likely she’s in shock. She won’t be focused on his abrupt manner.
She doesn’t respond as Fox cuts through her seat restraints.
“Ma’am?” Fox asks again as she made no move to get up.
A shuddering breath leaves her body, and her eyes drift shut. Fox grumbles under his breath about stupid senators dying on him and reaches out to take stock of her injuries for himself. She is Pantoran, but their anatomy is similar enough to humans for Fox to figure out if she is going to die on him or not.
Her eyes fly open as his hand lands on her throat. She has a pulse. Not dead then.
She reaches up a shaking hand and pushes his hand away. “I’m fine, Commander. Go check on the others.”
“They’re dead.”
The fog seems to clear from her eyes at his harsh proclamation, but her eyes close too fast for him to really figure it out. He sighs and stands up. He’ll take her word that she was fine. It won’t matter a lick if she is fine or not if he can’t find a way to get the communications equipment working again.
Fox moves to the ship’s controls, though the entire ship was on its side, so it means Fox is walking the walls of the ship. He still figures he could hotwire the communications if he needs to. He hopes at least. If it is at all similar to hotwiring speeders, they’ll be good. If hotwiring a ship is vastly different from hotwiring a speeder, then they’ll be in trouble.
Fox doesn’t count much on having any sort of good luck.
He places a hand on the control panel and climbs up to where the communications device is located. It reminds him of training on Kamino. Except then, Wolffe was there to tease him about his lack of grace. At least on Kamino, he’d never been alone.
Fox pokes around the wires and uses his vibroblade to strip a few of the wires, hoping his rudimentary skills will be enough to fix the comm.
The spark that quickly catches fire surprises Fox enough that he loses his grip and goes falling to the floor. He lands hard on his side, not having a chance to attempt to catch himself. He groans as he feels something give in his back. He is a genetically engineered soldier. Surely the Kaminoans could’ve done something to prevent clones from developing back issues. Then again, no one else in the guard seems to have Fox’s problem, so maybe he’s just defective or something.
He pushes to his feet and sighs. The chances of getting a working comm are slim, and that means the chances of a quick rescue are also slim. The Republic will come eventually when they realize the Senators never made it to their diplomatic summit, but that will be days at the least.
“Are...are we the only ones left?”
Fox turns at the senator’s shaky, soft-spoken question. She is standing now, an arm around her stomach, her blue pants torn. He wishes he had a scanner. Then he could be sure there were no internal injuries that would result in her dying on him the first day out here...wherever here is.
“Yes.” He turns back to the controls and reaches up. At least their locator is still functioning. That means they can pinpoint their own location, and that whoever comes looking for them will find the ship and hopefully them along with it.
The holo map appears and Fox is pleased to see they are in the Mid-Rim still. However, he is not pleased to see that they are on Vandor and far from any settlement. It’d be a week’s travel to the nearest settlement. By that time, the Republic would be here. Their best bet will be to wait it out.
Fox shuts down the holomap. The busted viewport mocks him. The cockpit is the only part of the ship without structural damage, so it would be the perfect place to wait it out, if it wasn’t for the shattered hole in the viewport. He needs to go outside and see if he can get up top and patch it up somehow. Solder usually kept welding equipment on his person at all times in that damn bag he always carried around.
Fox moves over to Solder’s body and opens the bag. The welding equipment is all there and intact. “Vor entye, vod.”
Fox stands and wishes he had more time to do something, to mourn, to grieve–
He powers up the welder then powers it down. He’ll have to find a piece of metal to wield over the hole in the viewport. Then he’ll have to see if he can even reach the viewport from the outside of the ship. The ship is sitting on its side, so Fox will have to climb up top to access the viewport. He’ll have to tie himself off and rappel down the side in order to weld the metal on, so he’ll need some rope and an anchor too.
“Commander, what can I do to help?”
Fox starts at the Senator’s voice. Right, he isn’t alone. He has to keep her safe and secure. And likely she’ll expect him to keep her comfortable too. Stars, when the temperature fell tonight, he’ll need to get a blanket for her. And he’ll definitely need to have the gaping hole in the viewport repaired.
“We’re on Vandor. Mid-Rim planet. When we fail to show for the summit, they’ll send someone to the last location of this vessel. As long as we’re still here in the next few days, we’ll be fine. I need to go outside and patch that hole in the viewport.”
She nods her head, once. It reminds Fox of a shiny.
He moves out of the cockpit and toward the hold. It’s a mangled mess, and the few troopers that had been in here had been blown out into space when the back half of the ship broke apart. He walks toward the edges of the ship, and finds a piece of the hull ripped almost off that will suit his needs. He pulls out the metal cutter and gets to work shearing it completely off. It falls to the ground with a clang. He kneels and tests its weight. It will be heavy, but manageable. The real problem is hoisting the metal up to the viewport. He sighs. He’d better set up his rope and anchor.
Fox turns to go grab the rope and stops in his tracks. “What are you doing?” He didn’t have time to filter his question and has no idea how he would even begin to.
Senator Chuchi finishes dragging the Nautolan senator’s body through the threshold of the cockpit and turns to him. “We’re going to be camping out in the cockpit, right? I’d rather not camp out with the dead.”
“I can do that.” A senator shouldn’t be moving bodies. It isn’t right. It’s a clone’s job.
“If you don’t need help with the viewport, I can do this.” There is a quiet determination in her gaze, but Fox didn’t forget the way she wrapped an arm around her abdomen earlier.
“You might be injured. I’d rather you just stay put.”
“I’m fine. Just some bruises.”
“I’m not letting you die on my watch, ma’am.” Fox comes up with an excuse. “I’ll need someone inside to make sure I get the placement of the metal right.”
“I can do that.” The senator’s voice has a pleasing lilt. At least if she turns out to be a talker, Fox won’t get too annoyed during their wait.
He moves outside and into the cold. He does a quick scan of the area around them. When the ship crashed, it appears to have slid down the side of this mountain and landed a short way from the nearby forest. That’s good. It means Fox can get wood to build a fire.
Fox turns back to the ship and grabs a piece of the mangled metal hull, wincing as it cut into his glove. He ignores it and hauls himself up onto what was now the top of the ship. He pulls out the anchor and rope and moves across the ship to the viewport. He situates his anchor and ties off the rope.
He tests it out, rappelling the few feet down to the viewport. Fox isn’t exactly sure how much weight the anchor and rope combination will hold. He isn’t one to keep useless information in the back of his head. That’s more Thire’s tendency. If he was here, or if Kowak was still alive, he’d have all the information. Hell, if any of these boys were still alive, they’d have the information. They’d all heard Kowak drone on about climbing and rappelling. There was a literal rock climbing wall in the GAR headquarters on Coruscant, and that was all because Kowak convinced Stone that it was something they needed. Stone convinced Fox to sign off on it with the claim that more troops staying at headquarters to rock climb on shore leave meant less troops getting into trouble after drinking too much at 79s.
Once on top of the ship, Fox unties the rope from around his waist and moves back across the top of the ship to the spot where he can easily slide off the ship and to the ground. When his feet hit the ground, he ignores the spike of pain that travels up his left leg. The blood on his thigh plate had increased. That wound was far deeper than it should be, but once a shelter was set up Fox could tend to it.
Fox rounds the edge of the ship and sees the senator’s hunched over form. He curses and moves as quickly as he can over to her side. Her knees are in the snow and the sound of gagging can be heard now. As he comes to stand beside her, she throws some snow into her face.
“Senator Chuchi?”
She keeps her hands on her face, still covered in bits of snow. It has to be cold for her, though she is Pantoran. Pantora is bound to have different seasons than Coruscant, which doesn’t have any seasons. Or maybe she doesn’t get as cold as humans.
Chuchi no longer seems on the verge of throwing up, so Fox takes a moment to study her. There are no obvious signs of injury.
“If you’re injured–”
“I’m fine.” She turns her head and golden eyes connect with his through the helmet. She looks away as quick as she made the connection. “I’m not used to seeing so much blood.” She pushes to her feet, a hand going back to her stomach. Fox wonders if she was about to throw up again. “I’ve moved the less injured bodies to the hold. I’ll try to finish up.”
Fox looks back to the ship as understanding hits him. Some of the clones hadn’t been strapped in, leaving their bodies at distorted angles. And some of the clones had been strapped in, so when the metal hull sheared off and into the ship, they were impaled.
“I told you, ma’am. I’ll handle the bodies. You just stay out here for a bit. Spot me as I weld the metal onto the viewport. Make sure my foot doesn’t sit somewhere it shouldn’t.”
She nods. “Yeah. I can do that.”
*****
Riyo watches with focus as Commander Fox welds the metal into place over the hole in the viewport. It’s clear he didn’t really need her out here. She isn’t doing anything. Fox is careful where he places his feet and hands. He isn’t going to fall or send the whole viewport careening inward. It is obviously a way to distract her. She appreciates it because clearly she needed it. She shudders to think of the bodies in the ship. Senator Isshah had been a beautiful human man before a piece of the ship’s hull had severed his legs from his body and a variety of other pieces had embedded themselves in his chest and face. The other two senators had broken necks, so Riyo bucked up and got them out of their broken seats and into the hold.
But she couldn’t bring herself to pick up pieces of someone’s body and–
She refocuses on Fox. She can’t think about it or she’d be sick again. Of course there’s nothing in her stomach to throw up, but dry heaves still shudder through her and leave her feeling nauseous.
Fox is on top of the ship now. The hole had been covered. She wonders if it’d be rude to tell him that she’d rather take her chances in the forest. That she can’t stomach the thought of going back in the ship and seeing all the blood and...and gore. She hadn’t known the clones that died, but she’d known the senators and still blood is blood and people are people and it’s all too much for her.
Riyo can deal with death. She’d been on Pantoran’s moon and seen Pantorans impaled by the Talz’s weapons, but she hadn’t had to see the results of them bleeding out. Hadn’t had to smell the stench of death and blood and…
She falls to her knees as more dry heaves overtake her. C’mon Riyo. Focus on anything else. She looks up when a hand lands on her shoulder and took in the man in front of her. She’s not alone in this. Fox is here. She focuses on him.
“Senator Chuchi, I’ll remove the bodies, and then you can come back in the ship.”
She shakes her head, only adding to her nausea.
“I’m not going back in there.”
He mutters something under his breath that she doesn’t catch. Something about how she was being a baby, she’s sure. It’s not like she hadn’t ever seen blood before either. Human and a variety of other species. It’s not like she hadn’t fought off attackers with a knife and drew blood herself. She is Riyo Chuchi, Senator of Pantora, for star’s sake. She should be stronger than this.
She takes a shuddering breath, then another and another, until she feels calmer. She had been using the breathing techniques Ahsoka had taught her more and more frequently in her life. Way more than she thought she would, but Ahsoka was right. It is calming. She’ll have to get Ahsoka to show her the rest of the meditation techniques. She can’t quite fall into it like she wishes she could.
She pushes to her feet and faces Fox. She opens her mouth to tell him that she will tough it out, when there’s a roaring sound ringing across the landscape, echoing off the ship and pounding into her skull accompanied by a blinding light illuminating them. Riyo takes a moment to realize just how dark it had gotten outside while Fox had fixed the viewport. Then Fox’s hand is gripping hers and he’s dragging her toward the ship.
A blaster bolt lands in the snow in front of them, and Fox halts their movements. He reaches for his blaster as she turns to find the source of the shot.
“Nobody move.” The voice belongs to a Weequay pirate aiming a blaster rifle at her and Fox. “Put down that blaster, trooper.”
“I’d suggest you do it.” Another Weequay appears from behind the first. This one Riyo recognizes. She’d never been on the team of senators tasked with negotiating for the release of the Jedi Skywalker and Kenobi, but she had friends who were. Hondo Ohnaka is a formidable pirate and a master negotiator. But he just might be their best chance for survival, if Riyo can outtalk him.