Chapter Text
“Echo!” Fives calls out, lifting a shield and joining his batchmate. They crouch down on the shuttle’s ramp, firing off shots at the droids approaching, making sure to catch any which attemp to get back on the turret. The other’s move closer to the shuttle, peeking from behind cover. He spots General Skywalker with Piell, and redirects fire to the droids nearest them.
The two break cover, Skywalker deflecting fire as Piell, Tarkin, and others rush over to the shuttle. Echo shifts closer to Fives, giving them space as they run in. The General calls over the rest, continuing to deflect bolts. General Kenobi, Commander Tano, and Rex creep from behind a box, and Echo can see Kenobi is telling them something, however lipreading has never been one of his strengths.
Kenobi emerges first, blazing lightsaber turning into a blue flurry as he deflects incoming fire, and then Rex pulls Tano up and they run over, Cody appearing from the shadows close behind. A few stray bolts rushing towards them but a swish of green light swipes them away, but Echo can tell they’re going to get stranded without cover, spotting light reflecting over a mass of droids. Kenobi catches up with them and attempts to cover them all, buf then commando droids are climbing the crates for an opening.
Echo nudges Fives and shoots down a commando, his shots being joined by his brother. Cody and Rex shoot as fast as they can, but the droids are an endless force.
“Echo, I have a plan.” Fives says, voice right in Echo’s ear. Echo shoots one of the commandos' heads, before responding.
“A real plan?”
Echo can tell Fives just rolled his eyes. “Yes, and a very good plan too. We chuck all our thermal detonators and the droids and then blast off as soon as they all get on.”
Echo nearly responds with, why, that's a terrible plan, but then again, what else are they going to do? So he unclips two and throws them into the droids, fire and smoke erupting around them. He pulls out three more, tossing them alongside Fives’ own. For just moments the firing slows, but it’s enough for them to run to the ship, Tano and Kenobi somehow deflecting while doing so.
Once they’re inside, Fives backs up into the ship, and Echo follows close as the ramp begins to close, Skywalker deflecting bolts until they’re sealed in.
The General speeds past them into the front, the pilot seat, and the shuttle gives a grumble before powering up. Immediately, they begin the lift off into the air, and Echo nearly stumbles as the ship lurches forward.
“You guys might want to hold onto something!” Skywalker shouts from upfront, right as the engines burst alive, and Echo can tell they’re dodging all sorts of fire just by the wild swinging and sudden turns alone, as if the sounds of bolts ringing against the hull wouldn’t give it away.
They’re all cramped in, and Echo spots Commander Tano slipping away into the front. He’s no stranger to being nearly armor to armor with his brothers, but Tarkin stands against a wall and sneers at any clone who comes too close, scathing words lost in the blaster fire and murmuring. The shuttle rocks again and then the familiar momentary weightlessness surrounds him as the ship jumps to hyperspace, and he breathes out a sigh, heart still racing.
“All things considered, that could have gone a lot worse.” Fives remarks, turning to face Echo. “Nearly did, too, but all thanks to my plan we made a dramatic escape.”
Echo snorts, pushing Fives gently. “I am forever indebted to your great plan of ‘throw explosives.’”
“If it works, then, well, it works.”
Echo smiled beneath his helmet, patting Fives’ pauldron. “Indeed it did.”
The mission was successful. Piell and Tarken were both alive and they handed over their information. There were casualties, and though Echo mourned the troopers that died, you can’t dwell on that for long. If everyone did, most clones would have lost their minds in despair. But hey, repression and keeping busy were great tools to keep his sanity. Whenever he looked back to the shuttle escape in the Citadel, his mind tingled in emotion, but Echo didn’t know why. That moment felt important for some reason.
For the most part at least, things had been going pretty smoothly, according to Echo. Sure, Commander Tano got kidnapped for a while and Rex went absolutely banthashit, but, in the end, she was rescued.
Echo sat re-reading the regs (again) beside Fives, who was talking about some definitely exaggerated story about refreshers and leeches, but Echo wasn’t listening too closely. Hardcase, Jesse, and Tup were listening though, and he could hear their groans of disgust.
He was about to flip another page when Rex walked up to them.
“The General wants you all down for the debriefing.” He said, waiting for them to get up before heading out the barracks and into the docking bay.
Echo saw General Skywalker with General Kenobi, Commander Cody dutifully beside him. They walked up, and Skywalker turned on a holoprojector. He went over the basics, though they had been more thoroughly briefed a week prior.
“Is everyone clear?” He asked after finishing, looking all the clones over. Echo nodded silently, following into a LAAT with the others.
They took off along with the other LAAT’s into a neon and black hell.
Echo squinted his eyes to look ahead, but he could see nothing but incoming fire, the enemy wrapped in the protective cover of darkness. Wind battered his helmet and he clenched on tighter to the overhead grip. Green bolts whizzed past them, explosions littering the sky like confetti.
Rex peered down, then looked at the General. “There’s a lot of surface fire, sir.”
And he was right. If Echo thought the amount of explosion and bolts in the sky was a lot, he had neglected to simply look down. Walkers ran forward, practically blanketing the ground, but for each one that ran for just a moment, another exploded into a ball of flames.
Hardcase laughed, “It’s nothing we can’t handle!”
Then the ship next to them just crumpled, just after the sound of a bell ringing. Echo didn’t even notice the shot until then, and he stared down as the ship fell. He didn’t even see it touch the ground before it exploded again, caught by another ringing death bell.
It was nothing. This was nothing. (His mind screamed that something was wrong.)
Echo glanced back at Fives who looked back for a moment, and he felt his legs buzzing in a need to get away. Any moment they could be shot down too, and all of them would be dead too, just like that.
They begin to descend towards the ground, and their walker in the back jumps off, running to join his brothers. Skywalker hops out and Rex follows, taking cover behind as the General deflects bolts. Everyone gets off and they run ahead, and Echo can hear the screams of a trooper so close to him that he may as well have been the one screaming.
Brothers all around them are dying, getting blown sky high or going down without realizing they were even shot. Echo sticks close to Fives and tries to shoot, to take down the umbarans, but he quite literally can’t even see them.
He thinks he hears Tup say something similar up ahead, but he’s too focused on firing madly into the dark fog. Suddenly he feels Five’s presence disappear and he turns, but he can’t see or hear anything because it’s too dark, and loud, and dark. A pressure on his ankle surprises him, then something lifts him into the air, and Echo looks down and all he sees is a gaping maw of fangs. He screams, shooting into it but it does nothing but anger the monster. Troopers around him start firing at it, but he’s going to fall in before they kill it. Echo struggles and places his blaster point blank at the tentacle holding him and practically spasms his finger down on the trigger. The bolts cut a hole straight through and he falls hard, head slamming into the ground, so close to its mouth. The troopers drag him back before another arm grabs him, his heart pounding through his ribcage and head dizzy and aching.
He looks around, but he’s lost Fives and the others. Fierfek. He tries to take a step but stumbles, the world swirling around and Echo thinks he’s going to be sick. The creature was still screaming and waving around its tentacles, snapping its jaws around a shiny who Echo knew was lost.
He needs to find cover, because Echo sure as hell can’t shoot or fight like this. He runs to some kind of tree with his eyes half closed, clutching his head. He needs to get his helmet off.
As soon as gets behind the tree he slumps against it, unlatching his helmet and pulling it off. The dizziness and pain is already fading, which is good, because the beginning of a difficult mission is the absolute worst time to get a concussion. He sits and breathes, oh so aware of all his brothers dying just feet away from him. He briefly wonders if Fives has died, just like them, because he didn’t see him when the plant-monster pulled him up, but Echo banished this train of thought immediately.
After another moment or two, Echo gets up, sliding his helmet back on. No dizziness. Good, now he just has to find his squad, which will be much easier said than done, he can already tell. He runs beside some other troopers, continues to shoot into the darkness. (It feels useless though, he can’t tell if anything is even hitting.)
A bolt whizzes just inches from his helmet, and Echo turns back around to see one of the clones he was with fall down, a smoking hole in their chest. He doesn’t know why but he can tell they’re immediately dead, it went straight through the heart.
He carries on, helping brothers to cover and ducking under heavy fire. Up ahead, a massive dual pronged vehicle with electricity crackling along it shoots down a LAAT, the shrapnel taking out several troopers. He recognizes the sound as the ringing fire that took out an LAAT next to theirs. Echo fires, but the bolts do nothing but skim off of it. He clenches his teeth and crouches behind cover, tapping his finger against the ground in thought. Obviously, someone must be controlling the weapon. So if Echo took them out then used the weapon against the umbarans, then…
He turns to the troopers next to him and whispers, “Cover me!”
Echo slipped out of the cover and crouches down as he runs, towards the left of the weapon, and bashes the butt of his blaster against an umbarans mask, smashing it in, before shooting another between their eyes. There are many more who shoot from behind the weapon, but Echo holds one of the bodies as a shield against the incoming fire. He rounds the back of the weapon and sees an umbaran in a piloting sear, tapping on buttons as another shot rings out.
He shoots the pilot in the chest, then again in the head as they fall. Echo throws the body off and clambers onto the pilot seat, hesitating as he realizes he doesn’t know what most of it means. But some things are universal, he supposes, grabbing the handles and pushing up a lever slightly, and the weapon starts to move. He pulls on the handles and it begins to turn, now facing the enemy. Echo’s eyes dart around the control panel, and he begins clicking buttons. When he hits those on the side of the handles, the electricity crackles fiercely and a green bolt of energy flies out, hitting several umbarans.
Echo has to hold in a laugh of victory as he turns and shoots down more, then at another of the same weapon. It explodes and Echo keeps on shooting, clearing up the way for the walkers to run past into enemy lines. His plan has not gone unnoticed, however, as another pronged weapon turns towards him. Echo leaps out of the seat into a roll, coving his helmet with his hands as his weapon explodes shrapnel just barely missing.
He stumbles and he gets up, running back into friendly territory. His troops cover him, taking down umbarans from up ahead. Echo ducks back into the cover and laughs with the other troopers, heart still pounding in his ears. His face feels hot and sweaty but Echo barely even noticies, too much adrenaline rushing through his veins.
He continues following the rest of the troopers, gunning down as many umbarans as he can, but eventually the bolts in the sky begin to calm, and Echo notices trenches lined with clones, all resting. He slides in, walking through and inspecting each helmet and tattooed face, worry starting to churn in his gut, when he spots a rishi eel and rushes forward.
“Fives!” Echo calls out, and Fives turns and repeats Echos' own name in pleasant surprise.
“What happened? You disappeared!” Fives exclaims, leading Echo to where the others were sitting.
Echo rubs the back of his head, “One of those plant monsters snatched me, but I fell on my head and had to get behind cover.”
“Yeah, me too.” Fives snorted.
“Well, you’re here now. You should rest.” Jesse says, waving Echo over.
"It's not a concussion, don't worry."
"Yeah, but still, rest is important.” Jesse murmurs.
Echo gives in and sits beside them, spotting Hardcase and Tup having a… thumb war. Ok. Fivies sits too and continues to chat away with Jesse. And Echo just sits between them all and soaks in the air of domesticity. Eventually they all lapse into a comfortable silence, and Echo leans his head against the dirt wall, practically ready to catch some Z’s.
But the forest is quiet, eerily so. Echo scrunches his back up against the trench wall and clutches his legs, stomach suddenly churning uneasily. “Something’s wrong.”
Hardcase looks up from the ground he was previously laying on, moping about losing or something. “It is. I don’t like it.”
All of them seem to sit in anticipatory silence as they wait for something to happen, and for a brief moment, it seemed just fine, but then a trooper across from this lit up in blue electricity, spine arching painfully and eyes rolling back in his head as a small, insect creature crawled off the body, directly towards Tup.
“Shoot it!” Fives cried out but he hadn’t needed to, everyone was thinking the same thing. Echo immediately upholstered his DC-15 and took aim, firing out shots, and eventually one hit.
He hears a clone scream above the chaos, informing that the enemy has circled behind. General Skywalker and Captain Rex rush towards the sound of blaster fire, followed by Echo, Fives, Jesse, Tup, and Hardcase.
Echo shot down one of the green-masked umbarans, but Skywalker suddenly called out, “Everyone, move out!”
He immediately followed, you don’t question a general's orders. He looks back and sees Hardcase and Tup pulling on their helmets, but an electric insect droid jumps from a branch above, landing on Hardcase’s exposed head. Echo shoots without hesitation, and the insect falls to the ground.
The General hops over the trenches and Echo scrambles to follow, and he can see the edge of the ridge leading into a sparse forest, where everyone is headed, but he stops and turns back when he hears a cry of desperation.
A shiny, clawing at the rim of a particularly deep trench. Echo crouched down and took their hands into his own, tugging up but they’re not moving.
“I-Im stuck!” The shiny gasps, voice trembling with audible fear.
Echo got on his knees and looked down, to find the shinies armour belt had gotten caught on a web of roots.
He pointed at them, “Look, your belt is stuck on something. You have to unloop it from the roots.”
The shiny reaches down, hands shaking as he tries to get up and off the roots but it's not working. He pulls desperately at his belt and cries out again, and Echo can tell he’s hyperventilating. Echo jumps in and pries their belt off, and they stumble back from the sudden release.
“Come on vod, we have to get out of here.” Echo digs his fingers into the dirt and heaves up the trench, pulling the shiny along. They run like madmen off of the ridge, not wanting to find out what would happen if they stayed too long.
Overhead, Echo hears the whining of a ship incoming and spots two bombers. He sprints with everything he has, and he can tell the shiny is too. Echo lets out a breath when they slip down the edge of the ridge, right as blood red fire erupts above them, the booming crash of explosives seeming to rock the earth.
The shiny gave a yelp of terror, ducking, but they were safe. Echo puts his hand on their shoulder and gives them a nod.
“Thank you, sir.” The shiny sniffles, words wobbling with the promise of tears.
“Don’t worry about it, and it’s Echo.”
The shiny nods enthusiastically and replies “Right. Uhm, I’m Monol.”
Echo smiles to himself and gives Monol a final pat on the back before jogging towards Skywalker and the others, all sitting behind a tree. Fives lets out a sigh of relief, as Jesse chews him out for endangering himself.
“Hey, I was saving a shiny!” Echo defends, putting his hands up.
Skywalker snorts, but Echo can tell he was also worried. It’s touching.
“Well men, we should regroup and figure out our next plan of attack.” The general says, and Echo and the others all nod, setting off into the darkness.