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Crosshair finds the Havoc Marauder dead in space.
At first he couldn’t let himself believe it, when he heard the faint pinging of Hunter’s old comm link, buried underneath the rest of his gear. After he’d used it to lure the squad to Kamino (another failure of his that still stings, to this day) it had somehow made its way into his utility belt, and in the chaos had stayed there. In the thirty two rotations he spent slowly wasting away on that platform, he had reached for it, many times, desperate enough to call them back. But he never did. The humiliation of the call, he thought he could survive. What scared him was what he might do, if they didn’t answer. If they truly did leave him behind.
He docks his stolen empire shuttle at the Maurader’s access port. When the hatch opens, he nearly chokes on the air that blasts through. It’s a mix of suffocating gasses: nitrogen, carbon dioxide, with only the thinnest hint of real oxygen. He’d left his armor behind, without the protection of his helmet he has to click on his breathing mask and use safety goggles. It’s the cold, that really gets to him, biting through his civvie disguise he cobbled together from Coruscant's clothing dumps.
He crosses onto the wreckage, the flash light from his rifle shining into the darkened space. The ship is silent as a grave, and his exhales echo through the cabin through the breather on his mask.
He finds them in the cockpit. All four of them.
Tech is collapsed against the comm panels, which continue to determinedly blink their distress signals. Hunter is huddled up next to him. They’re both unconscious, what’s left of their shallow breaths puffing up in the cold.
Wrecker is the only one still awake, but barely. He’s holding the kid in his arms, and she looks the worst out of all of them. She’s shivering something awful and her lips are tinged blue, and even though she’s almost a teenager she’s hugging Wrecker’s old Lula doll close to her chest. Wrecker tightens around her protectively and squints against Crosshair’s flashlight.
“Who’s that?” Wrecker’s got some strength left in him, enough to glare at Crosshair. “Stay back!”
Crosshair takes in a deep breath, then removes his mask. “It’s me.” He lays his gun down. “Wrecker, it’s me.”
“...Crosshair.” Wrecker cracks a weak smile. “Knew you’d show up.” He lifts Omega gently. “Get the kid out of here.” Wrecker lets Crosshair take Omega, who is disturbingly limp in his arms.
He lays the kid down on one of the passenger benches in the shuttle and sets her up with an emergency oxygenator. It takes Crosshair and Wrecker (mostly Crosshair, Wrecker at 10% oxygen might be conscious, but his strength is, well, it’s more like Tech) two more trips to drag Hunter and Tech into his shuttle. The oxygenated environment leaves Wrecker lightheaded, and that’s when he finally passes out too.
He’s got all four of them set up as comfortably as he can with their oxygenators, removing the top layers of their armor and wrapping them each in heated blankets. Say what you will about the empire, but they keep a well stocked pantry. He wonders absently at where Echo might be (he’d swept the ship, looking for him, found no one), and then closes his access port and disconnects their ships.
He loads up the coordinates for Ord Mantell and jumps them to hyperspace. He looks at his family, slowly pulling back from the brink of death.
What the hell happened?
.-
“We’ve lost our life support systems.”
Tech says it dispassionately, like he always does, but the lump in his throat betrays him. He finds himself looking to Hunter, as do Omega and Wrecker, their one steadying presence as their ship drifts, limping into oblivion.
“How long do we have?” Hunter asks, braced for the answer.
Tech does the calculation rapidly in his head. “Given the air that’s already cycled through the ship, and accounting for the variations in our oxygen intake --”
“Tech,” Hunter snaps.
“Eight point seven hours.” I was getting to that, if you’d let me finish. He’s in the habit of explaining himself, given that he’s rarely understood.
Omega covers her mouth in mild horror, and Wrecker puts an arm around her, reassuring. But they all know the odds. They’ve got no hyperdrive, no auxiliary, nothing to push them forward but the residual momentum gliding through the vacuum of space. They’re going nowhere fast, and they’ve got nothing left but delaying the inevitable.
“I can divert power from the heating systems, buy us more time.” For a miracle.
“But then we’ll freeze to death, won’t we?” Omega protests.
“Only if he messes up,” Wrecker tells her, and shoots a warning look. Tech gets the message. Don’t say anything that’ll upset the kid. Even if it’s the truth.
“Alright,” Hunter’s weighing their options. “Do it.” He starts to move to the cockpit.
“And what are you gonna do?” Wrecker asks.
“I’m gonna make a call.”
.-
He doesn’t have his commlink anymore. We gave it to Omega.
I know. But he might have mine.
.-
Hunter is the first to wake up.
He twists around on the bench, coughing. Crosshair goes to him, helps him sit up.
“Where are we…?” Hunter squints against the light of their improvised medical bay. He winces, a hand reflexively reaching to cover his ears.
“It’s alright.” Crosshair moves to the control panel to dim the glare, but there’s only so much he can do about the rest of the noise, the ship’s electrical systems that ring at frequencies only Hunter can hear. “The pressure change affected your hearing, it’ll pass.” He isn’t sure if Hunter picks up a word he says. He keeps turning his head, eyes shut against the pain, blinded by everything he could sense. He flinches when Crosshair reaches out to him. Crosshair takes his hand, and he resists, but only for a moment. Some part of him must innately recognize him, remember the trick Crosshair’s about to perform. They haven’t needed to do this in years. He presses Hunter’s palm against his own chest.
“Listen ,” he tells him . Through Hunter’s hand, Crosshair feels his pulse, thrumming below the sternum, rapid and panicked. “ Breathe.” He tries to remember the words he used to say, during the sleepless nights back on Kamino. “Find the rhythm. Let the rest of it fall away.”
The seconds stretch on, but Hunter does what he says. His heart rate threads, steadies. His senses turn inward, refocusing. The galaxy is terribly loud. Their little routine doesn’t stop the noise, but it helps Hunter pick his targets. If you’re ever lost, you can always find yourself.
The tension in Hunter’s shoulder’s breaks. His eyelids flutter open, hesitantly. “...Crosshair?”
“There you are,” Crosshair whispers, failing to hide his relief.
Crosshair starts to let go, but Hunter reaches out and clutches at his wrist.
“You came,” Hunter breathes, and Crosshair is not at all hurt by the disbelief in his voice.
“You called,” he says simply. He gently removes himself from Hunter’s grip.
He’s got his bearings now, adapting to the new environment with hard earned skill. “Omega, and the others --”
“They’ll be fine.” He moves to give Hunter a better view of the rest of the cramped common space, where their brothers and little (but older, strangely enough) sister lie peacefully, breathing through their oxygenators. “So will you. You should rest.”
As he leaves to check their progress from the cockpit, he hears Hunter call out softly.
“Crosshair…” he says. “ Thank you.”
.-
Tech is up, when he returns from the cockpit. The blanket is still around his shoulders in a weird little poncho. He’s fiddling with Omega’s oxygenator.
“This equipment is designed for fully grown adults.” Tech starts talking before Crosshair can even say hello. “I am making appropriate modifications for her size.”
I didn’t ask. He thinks that a lot when Tech opens his mouth, but he never says it aloud. Not since the first time, when they were little kids, and Tech had looked at him through his goggles with eyes wide and hurt, like Crosshair had struck him.
I was…only trying to help, Tech had said, curling in on himself. And, to be fair to him, the information Tech gives out rarely is useless. It just takes the rest of them a while to figure out how much it’s worth.
Tech finishes his tinkering and stands, legs unsteady, pulling the blanket around him. He stares at Crosshair defiantly, but he’s trembling faintly, putting up a good front but still recovering. Crosshair’s seen this before. Tech will think the ship’s failure is his fault, and push himself to fix it. Until he pushes himself too far, and someone (historically Crosshair) will have to catch him when he falls.
“This ship is an imperial model.” Tech adjusts his spectacles and examines the bay. “I assume they will come looking for it?”
“Eventually.” The empire doesn’t take kindly to desertion, but Crosshair’s nothing if not surgical. Without witnesses, it’ll take them a bit to notice the ship, or him, is missing.
“I can modify the scramble set, once we land.” Tech is still standing, still looking at him with those analytical eyes of his set in suspicion.
I hurt him, Crosshair thinks. I hurt all of them. He made his choice, and a part of him still stands by it. He’s a killer. He stayed in the company of killers. They also shocked my brain within an inch of sanity, and I didn’t have much a choice. But he can’t blame the Empire for all of his mistakes. They had burnt the chip out of his skull, when they turned on that engine blast on Bracca. Everything after that was all his own pride. And bitterness.
“It’s good to see you, too,” Crosshair says, with only a hint of sarcasm.
“I apologize,” Tech says. “We wanted to respect your decision, but our other contacts were…unavailable.”
And Crosshair almost laughs at that. The damn fool is apologizing for calling for help. “I wanted to leave,” he says honestly. “You gave me a push.”
Tech’s curiosity piques. “What changed?”
Crosshair shrugs. “I was tired of being a number.”
.-
They land on Ord Mantell a few hours later, in the Maurader’s usual parking spot. Wrecker carries Omega, who had woken up only once to ask, inexplicably, about the Gonk droid. Damn. Crosshair knew he’d forgotten something.
A rather squat Trandoshan comes out to greet them. “Where are the goods?” She asks. She surveys their exhausted group with mild disdain, but underneath it all there seems to be a genuine concern. “What did you boys get yourselves into?”
“Your contact,” Hunter glowers at her, “Shot us down.”
“Apparently your terms with him were not as friendly as you’d led us to believe,” Tech says, and the tired reproach lets Crosshair know this is not the first time they’ve gotten in this kind of trouble.
“Well, it’s not my fault he holds a grudge,” Cid shrugs. She eyes Crosshair. “Tell me you’re not another clone.”
“I wish I could,” Crosshair says.
She groans. “Just my luck,” she mutters. “Come on, let’s get Tiny inside.”
Tech and Wrecker follow her in. Hunter lingers behind, with Crosshair. He’s wide awake now, back in his role of Sergeant.
“We should scrub the ship,” he says. But Crosshair gets the message. We need to talk.
They power the ship down and start working in the underbelly, looking for the transponder. But it’s all pretense.
Hunter makes the first move. “How’d you know to come here?”
“I had them copy your nav computer, on Bracca.” Frequent trips to the same set of coordinates, it wasn’t hard to extrapolate their home base.
“Tech would’ve noticed.”
“And done what?”
Hunter has no counter to that. They keep working. Hunter’s senses and Crosshair’s steady hands make them a pretty decent maintenance team.
The sun has nearly set, when Hunter finally breaks the silence. “Crosshair…about what happened on Kamino --”
“You were right.” It pains him to say it, but the look of stunned surprise on Hunter’s face makes it almost worth it.
Crosshair looks away, lips twisted bitterly. “This new world order…There’s no room for clones.”
“Not even the superior ones?” If it were anyone else, Crosshair would not take the jab as kindly. But he knows Hunter. He knows how it sounds when he’s only teasing, meaning no real harm.
Hunter continues. “All we’ve got left is each other.” He sighs. “You’re our brother, Crosshair. You’ll always have a place with us. I should’ve told you, then.”
Now it’s Crosshair’s turn to be surprised. The words feel rehearsed, like Hunter’s been turning them over in his head, almost as long as Crosshair has been wishing to hear them.
He doesn’t know what to say. But Hunter has always been able to read him. The look in his eyes is enough.
“How are they?” Crosshair asks quietly.
Hunter indulges him. “Wrecker, Tech, they’ve taken to this life well. They’re always looking for a challenge, this is just…New game, new rules. Echo…he’s gone off with Rex. He wants to be doing more, helping people.”
“And you?”
“Eh, you know me.” Hunter shrugs. “I’m trying to keep us together. And alive. There’s not room for much else.” His eyes grow soft, voice fond. “Omega’s learning fast. She’s a hell of a fighter already.” Then he turns somber. “She wasn’t altered.”
An unaltered clone. No behavioral modifications. No inhibitor chips. And…no growth acceleration. “Meaning one day you’ll grow old and die, and she’ll still be growing up.”
Hunter’s lip twitches in a rueful smile. “Yeah. Something like that.”
They finish their work in comfortable silence before heading back to Cid’s place, which apparently is a dive bar with very low sanitation standards, and Wrecker and Tech have cobbled together some real food. Omega’s in pajamas that look suspiciously like some of Crosshair’s old under armor, still holding Lula but looking well rested, and they all sit together round one of Cid’s tables, and they just…have dinner. It’s awkward, any of them can see that. But they work through it. They’re all just happy to be alive.
We'll figure it out, Hunter says. We've got time.
It's terrifying, exhilarating, awful, wonderful truth, in those three words.
They have time.