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The final, trailing TIE fighter goes up in flames when it gets a punch from Havoc Marauder's aft laser cannon. It sails like a comet in the inky night sky and careens into the cliffside, lighting up the ridge and treeline in a brief flash of vivid luminosity. Immediately after, Wrecker feels Hunter guide the Marauder downward to the wide, flat clearing to make their pickup.
Debarking the gunner’s mount, Wrecker waives his habitual tidying of the bedroll and pillows on the deck to transform the small compartment back into Omega's bedroom. They may no longer have an Imperial tail, but there's likely more on the way, and they're still in danger here.
He descends the ladder to the main deck with one sweeping, practiced backward lunge. He’s on his way to the cockpit to help Hunter anyway, so he stops by the open side port to hurry his wayward siblings inside.
He hasn’t heard much from any of them since they agreed on the necessary radio silence, so it’s an immense relief to see Echo, Tech, and Omega all in one piece and all standing there, poised to board. There’s a fourth person too; an elderly gentleman who might be a Serennian local.
Wrecker’s sure that Tech will fill him in on every single detail, but first, they really need to split. He motions them in with a smirk but nothing else. He dare not compromise his façade of silent, menacing, muscle-bound sentinel in front of the Serennian stranger.
Echo is the first to climb the ramp, and as soon as he does, he scampers into the cockpit to join Hunter. Good, because he’s better at copiloting than Wrecker anyway, and Wrecker wants to be by the ramp in case of any unwanted trouble near the open hatch. He maintains his post directly across the hold from the open side port, watching, waiting.
Ugh, what’s taking them?
Omega is next to come up the ramp, aided by Tech to hop onto the first rung at the bottom. She's holding something small in her hands when she steps aboard, but only has eyes for Wrecker when she makes her way into the cabin. Now that Echo and Omega are home, a large chunk of Wrecker’s tension has eased, but it won’t do so any further until he sees Tech come jogging up.
“What’s taking him?” Wrecker grouses verbally this time, his eyes not leaving the clearing below as Omega gives him a quick hug and takes a seat.
“He’s coming!” Omega reports. “He’s just saying 'bye to Romar.”
That was the last thing Wrecker anticipated Omega would say. Who the hell is this Romar? And Tech is… saying goodbye to him? As if this mission couldn’t have gone any more sideways than it already has. But these are concerns for later, once they’re all safely well away from Serenno. Tech knows they’re in a hurry here, so why’s he wasting precious time?
Wrecker’s about to voice as much when he finally sees his younger brother come bounding up the ramp. It’s about time, too. They’ve blown their cover so hard on this “covert” mission that more squadrons of TIE fighters are definitely in hot pursuit of them. Not wanting to waste another moment, Wrecker's hand hovers over the control for the ramp to close.
But Tech, likely to make up for those seconds spent saying his goodbyes, engages the mechanism remotely and beats him to it. The side port's hydraulics hiss obediently as Tech ascends the ramp. Any moment now, Tech will come trotting into the hold and zoom past Wrecker in a hurry to get to the cockpit and help with piloting. At least that’s what Wrecker’s expecting.
What he isn’t expecting is for Tech to come tumbling down the last stretch of the ramp as it nestles into the bulkhead.
But that’s exactly what does happen. In a graceless, stumbling mockery of the agile somersaults that he’s actually capable of, Tech comes sliding down the top of the upended gangway to land in a sprawled heap, on his ass, on the deck of the Marauder.
Wrecker, having just put a hand on Omega’s safety harness, snaps his head over to witness Tech’s ridiculous entrance and can only stare, mouth agape, at his younger brother in silent bewilderment.
“Tech? What the-!?”
Tech, having landed in a seated position with his legs sprawled out in front of him doesn’t reply. He only looks up at Wrecker, blinks his giant, goggled eyes once, twice, and then starts to sway.
“Tech!” Wrecker yells in alarm, wondering what the kriff happened in those split seconds between when Tech was standing there, conversing with a local, bounding up the ladder with haste, and then now. As much as he wants to rush to Tech’s aid, he finishes securing Omega’s safety harness first. Once it clicks into place and endures one or two of his aggressive, trial tugs, he rushes to Tech’s side and bellows his brother’s name again.
“Tech!”
“It could be from his leg,” Omega says from her seat, her voice rife with fear and concern. “He said he broke his femur! The left one!”
Whatever the reason, Tech now lays insensate, completely horizontal on the deck. Wrecker is careful to sidestep Tech’s leg as he approaches an gathers him in his arms. He removes Tech’s pack and slams it up against the only magnetic storage mechanism he can reach from this angle. His little brother is breathing steadily but out cold.
“I gotcha, buddy,” says Wrecker nesting Tech’s smaller frame in front of his own, then scooting backward to get them both safely into a crash seat. “Sorry if this hurts, but we’re about to make the jump outta here.”
Carefully but swiftly, Wrecker drags Tech up from the deck, wincing a little as he doesn’t have the time to make sure that no weight (however much diminished by his very capable maneuvering) is placed on Tech’s reportedly broken leg. But broken leg or not, it won’t be helpful for anyone if neither Wrecker nor Tech is strapped into a crash seat when they depart Serenno’s atmosphere. So Wrecker makes the executive decision to prioritize flight safety.
Tech makes no objection to the abrupt maneuvers anyway and remains completely out of it. His helmeted head bumps inertly against Wrecker's cuirass as the larger clone pulls them both into the same seat and under the same crash harness.
“You all strapped in back there?” calls Echo urgently from the cockpit. “We’ve got heat!”
“We’re good!” Wrecker yells back, not pausing to tell them that no, they aren’t officially strapped in yet and that they might be testing the limits of said safety mechanism if Wrecker can actually get it locked around the both of them. “Go!”
Wrecker can feel the Marauder humming with urgency as she's primed to flee them to safety, and he knows he only has mere seconds to make this seatbelt situation work.
“Alright, buddy, suck it in!” he tells his unconscious brother as he reaches up with one hand to pull on the harness while keeping his other arm protectively coiled across Tech’s chest.
Tech does not, in fact, suck it in, as he’s still mercifully unconscious, but Wrecker does as he hugs his little brother's frame as tightly to him as he can possibly get. Though he’s very lean and a good six inches shorter than Wrecker, Tech is still fully armored and laden with tools and gadgets. Combined with Wrecker’s own massive and armored frame, it's going to be a tight squeeze…
The crash harness screeches in complaint as Wrecker jerks it into place in front of them and forces the locking mechanism to engage. And just in time too, because the Marauder makes a few evasive twists and turns before lurching onto a predetermined hyperlight trajectory.
Despite the safety harness having been successfully muscled into doing double duty, Wrecker still holds onto Tech fiercely. He takes care to grapple his legs and arms around Tech’s own, pinning Tech’s limbs safely in place and (hopefully) preventing further aggravation of whatever injuries they’re working with here. Worried about what Tech’s wounds specifically entail, Wrecker hugs him all the tighter, resolved to keep this carbonite-like lock on him until they can safely unbuckle and assess what Tech got himself into this time.
Finally, the automated alert chimes, informing Marauder’s crew that it’s safe to move about the shuttle. Omega undoes her harness at once, leaping down to her feet and hastening to Wrecker’s (and Tech’s) seat. She finds Tech’s pulse, lifts his helmet off, then crouches down in front of them, likely to try to make some sort of initial medical assessment.
“Oi! A little help back here!” Wrecker bellows to the lads upfront, knowing that the urgency in his voice will have Echo and Hunter both rushing aft in an instant.
And they don’t disappoint. Both brothers come hurrying out of the cockpit, eyes alight with concern that only swells when they land on Tech, slumped unconscious in Wrecker’s lap.
“What happened?” Hunter demands, running to the crash seat and helping Wrecker unlatch and lift the safety harness into the up position. “Careful now. Let’s get him on a rack.”
As they work to shift their youngest brother onto one of the racks, Echo produces one of their sturdy trauma kits and slides into his role as assistant medic.
“He broke his left leg,” Echo says sadly, flicking a medical scanner to life and running it along Tech’s form. “And he’s been running around on it now for hours.”
“He... broke his leg!?” Hunter repeats, devastated. “When?”
“When we crashlanded that cargo container,” Omega supplies. “A heavy crate fell on top of him.”
“How heavy?” Hunter asks, eyeing the medical scanner’s red flashes of warning over Echo’s shoulder, undoubtedly dreading the prospect of a dire report.
“He said—Wrecker, get his tool belt off, will you?—” Echo says, recounting the events as he delegates the tasks that he’s less suited to and gathers supplies from the medical kit. “He said his ‘left femur’ was fractured by ‘150 kilograms of pressure.’ Something to that effect. And the med scanner agrees. It’s closed, but he’s got a pretty nasty oblique fracture. Diaphyseal. And fighting on it didn’t do him any favors.”
“It’s that bad?” Hunter asks sadly. “You think he needs a specialist?”
“It is,” Echo says morosely. “And I do. His leg's already swollen to twice its normal size, and the fracture's been harmfully manipulated.”
“Oh yeah, he does,” Wrecker agrees, empathizing greatly with the misery that accompanies a broken long bone. “Better go find an med center and plug it in now, Sarge. Sheesh, he musta been in a lot of pain.”
“Adrenaline masked most of it, I reckon,” Echo says, planting a small torch between his own lips, then gently sliding Tech’s goggles up to check his pupillary light reflex.
As Wrecker watches Echo conduct the test, something dawns on him.
“No,” Wrecker decides. “No-no, he was really hurting.”
“That’s not what it looked like to us,” Echo says, stowing the light, consulting Tech’s stats further, and searching through their supplies for something they can use as a splint. “He was handling it.”
“It’s just… 150 kilograms… of pressure? He said that?” Wrecker asks, lending a hand in the rummaging. “Tech said that… just like that?”
“Yeah, I think so,” says Echo glancing at Omega and receiving a confirmatory nod from their sister.
“That’s what bugs me,” Wrecker tells them apprehensively.
“Why?” Hunter asks, still looking stricken at the discovery of his brother’s injury. “That’s a typical Tech report. Even if it’s to do with his own kriffing bones.”
“But that’s not quite right, is it?” Wrecker tells them, as the sheer amount of pain that Tech must have really been in from the injury finally dawns on him. He reaches over and gently cups the side of Tech’s face, wishing there was any possible way that he could take away some of the pain Tech had endured and was still going to have to endure for a while longer because of this. “Well, kilograms ain’t… a unit of pressure, is it?”
“What?” Echo asks, his tone supplementing Hunter and Omega’s visible confusion.
“Kilograms ain’t… well, you know… used as a unit of pressure. It’s a… unit of mass,” Wrecker says carefully, his tongue feeling cumbersome in his mouth as he repeats the information that Tech, himself, had helped him learn. “I’m just saying, he musta been really kriffed if he said that is all, and I hope we got something strong in that kit to give him when he comes ‘round.”
Hunter and Echo blink in surprise at him for a moment before a shared look passes between them, and they grasp the gravity of Wrecker’s remark.
“I’ll get in touch with some friendlies,” Hunter says, somehow sounding even more resolved than he’d been moments ago and making for the cockpit, “I’ll find us an orthopedic specialist we can trust. Let me know when he wakes.”
“You got it,” Echo says, now searching for a stronger hypo to administer to Tech.
It’s only a few moments later, as Wrecker is easing off the last of his younger brother’s armor and gear that Tech begins to stir.
“Tech? Tech, hey,” Echo says encouragingly, “you with us?”
…
…
Intermittently, Tech becomes aware of voices and all the ambient noises of his beloved ship in flight. Though… the sounds are all muddled, and greet him as though they’ve been hurtling through time and space to chase and catch up to him. The voices are talking quietly over him. Which is fairly unusual.
Ah. Yes. Serenno. He must have succumbed to his injuries on Serenno and lost consciousness. Again.
The previous time it happened, it had been Romar who roused him from his ill-timed syncopation. This time, however… he isn’t quite sure. He summons all of his strength and forces himself to wake up.
Just as he’s blinking his heavy eyelids open, pain lances through his left leg like a bolt of lightning, and he sucks in a breath through his clenched teeth. Instinctively he tries to curl forward and reach for the limb, which is now ablaze with a pain that he’s seldom (if ever) experienced quite like this before now.
Gentle hands grasp him firmly, forcing him to lay back down with his arms securely, benignly at his sides. Yes, his left femur, he recalls. Fractured substantially and now with an accompaniment of soft tissue damage and further injury from rigorous use of the limb immediately after the precipitating event. He starts to hyperventilate at the memory of it and the implication of how said injury will impact his effectiveness to his team... to his family...
“Easy, Tech,” says a gentle, deep baritone voice directly above him. Echo. “We gotcha. You’re okay.”
Tech cracks his eyes open but is only met with a blur of indistinct colors and shapes. He can’t help but gasp in alarm. His goggles hadn’t been compromised, had they? He really didn’t suspect they had and would be distressed beyond measure if that were the case.
“They're right here,” says Omega’s voice as a small shape bobs around the periphery of his bleary view. Small hands gently lift and slide his goggles from his forehead down onto his face so that his corrective lenses are seated properly in front of each eye. He sighs in immense relief when his surroundings come into sharp focus to reveal that he’s supine in the main hold of the Havoc Marauder with Echo, Omega, and Wrecker, all either directly next to him or nearby.
“Hunter?” is Tech’s first thought, and the question is on his tongue before he can even think through and catalog the probable answers. They all need to be together. It’s a priority.
“In the cockpit,” Echo assures him. “Finding us a safe place to get you looked after.”
“That would be prudent,” Tech says. “Am I the only one injured?”
“You are,” Echo confirms. “But enough so for the lot of us, Tech. I’m just glad you waited until you got to Marauder before passing out.”
“I lost consciousness in the forest, as well,” Tech reports pragmatically. “Romar located and assisted me.”
“Oh, so when you ate it on the ramp coming back, that was round two?” Wrecker chimes in, sounding indecently impressed.
“I did not… ‘eat it’ embarking Marauder,” Tech huffs. Though, he can’t reasonably recall what tanspired between closing the side port ramp and his prevailing condition.
“Did too,” Wrecker insists. He’s radiating that perplexing approval for when any one of them pushes through an injury severe enough to render them unconscious. “Omega and I both saw it.”
“Yeah, sorry, Tech, you kinda did,” Omega admits. “Wrecker and I were scared.”
“Apologies for that… entrance,” Tech says with a sigh. “That was much more dramatic than what I had intended.”
“S’alright!” Wrecker says, as Omega makes for the cockpit, likely to update Hunter. “You made it home and we got away! That’s all that matters!”
“How’s your pain?” Echo asks soberly. “I can cut it. Keep you comfortable for the ride, at least.”
“It is tolerable,” Tech reports, cringing at the idea of their ever-dwindling medical supplies being expended on him.
“Nah, I’ll cut it,” Echo decides for him instead.
“I suspect I do not have any say in the matter?” Tech hedges.
“You don’t,” Echo confirms in a tone that is patronizing and infuriating and, indeed, meant to be both. Adding to the infuriating aspect. “The med scanner doesn’t lie.”
“That is because it has been properly calibrated. Are we—agh!” Tech’s next question is interrupted by a sharp stab to his jugular vein, chased by a burning, cold sensation. He flinches involuntarily at the abrupt contact but doesn’t begrudge the relief that follows. The intense pain in his leg ebbs and morphs into innocent numbness very rapidly, and he'll now be able to focus more adequately on all pertinent tasks. But still, “that gesture warrants warning to the patient,” he grumbles at Echo.
“He never does that,” Wrecker gripes, commiserating with Tech likely because of the injury sustained when they first fled Kamino, pursued by...
Crosshair. Tech's heart aches with a despair that eclipses any pain precipitated by his fractured femur.
Cross—
No. It’s too much to think about right now. Tech must focus on their next move. He has to ensure they have what the need to make ends meet and keep them safe.
“I know what the module says to do,” Echo tells them regarding his proclivity to employ surprise hypo attacks, “and I know what Kix says to do.”
“Oh, so they are mutually exclusive concepts,” Tech complains, “and you practice the latter.”
“Ehh, the lessons intersect here and there,” Echo says with a smirk, gathering what he’ll need to perform the application of traction, depending on how long their voyage to get medical help will be.
“Well, that is very comforting to know,” Tech says drily. “And do Kix’s teachings dictate that I be allowed my datapad to distract me during any impending procedures?”
“They do,” says Echo lightly, grabbing Tech’s coveted datapad from where his gear has been piled and placing it in Tech’s lap. Wrecker grabs something soft and carefully helps Tech prop his head up enough to read.
Tech gladly accepts the help and the offered datapad. He toggles it to life and settles in. He has a lot of work to do, and he can’t let something like an inconvenient femur fracture deter him from providing for his family.
And... just maybe… eventually recovering their lost brother too.