Chapter Text
It took longer than it should have for Rex to realize the dizzying noise was the emergency sirens, not the ringing in his ears. The filtration in his bucket stopped him from breathing it in, but with the smoke filling his vision, he still felt like he could taste it, acrid and burning on his tongue. The emergency lights blinked red in the darkness, but he could see the white of daylight pouring in to his right.
They had crashed. Yes, he remembered the jolt of impact, his General shouting for them to hang on, and the long spiral and burn of re-entry.
“Captain! Rex! Can you move?”
That voice, the wry vowels of a Coruscant native. General Kenobi.
“Here,” Rex said; it came out as a croak. Maybe the smoke had gotten in; he’d have to check for cracks. He coughed and tried again. “Here!” He tired to push himself up, and felt the jolt when he couldn’t move. His arms could move, but he was pinned—
The crash straps. He was still buckled in. He fumbled at the buckle with shaking fingers, managing to press the release button as the general’s ginger hair swam into view; in the red lights, it looked almost as blond as Rex’s own hair. Kenobi had a rebreather mask, though his eyes were unprotected and they squinted to see in the dim, smoky air. Rex tried again, and this time, he was able to push himself up.
Kenobi reached out his hand, dispelling the smoke with a gesture, and helped Rex to his feet. “I take it we landed, sir?” Rex asked.
“I suppose you can call it that,” Kenobi said, slinging Rex’s arm over his own shoulders and taking some of Rex’s weight. He didn’t need to—Rex had traveled farther and with greater injury under his own power, but he knew enough to cherish the few moments of closeness when he could.
As they moved towards the sunlight, Rex realized two things. 1) half their kriffin’ ship was missing, and 2) Kix had grown even scarier when he was in charge. Now that they were leaving the alarms behind and the ringing in Rex’s ears started to fade, he could hear Kix barking orders as he took control of triage.
Rex held up his arm as he walked into the sunlight; even the filters on his visor had their limits when going from the dark to this extreme lightness. The sun on this world shined brighter than a medical droid’s light, and it took a moment for Rex to adjust. Before he could see fully, Kix was in his face, barking at him to “remove your damn bucket so I can see what I’m working with!” Rex pulled away from Kenobi, and pulled his damn bucket off so Kick could see what he was working with. Under the stink of burning plasma fuel, the air smelled sweet, like fresh fruit. Kix flashed a small light in Rex’s eyes, but Rex barely flinched. Compared to the brightness of the day, the small light hardly registered.
“Did you hit your head, Captain?” Kix demanded. “Loss of consciousness?”
“Don’t think so,” Rex said, “And only for a few minutes. Missed the main event, but woke up on my own,” Rex said.
Kix just grunted and gestured towards where the others were sitting under a large tree that reminded him of Felucia, though these giant fungoids were a startling Aqua. They made good shade, though, and rest of the squad was sitting or sprawled in that shade. Rex hobbled for the first few steps, but his body began to loosen with use, and his gait smoothed. Not completely, however; he was going to have a nice collection of lovely bruises under his blacks, he was sure.
“All clear,” Ahsoka said, climbing from the wreckage behind them. She had her own rebreather, and her lightsaber lit for extra light. “Rex, you were the last.”
“Saved the best, yeah?” Rex said, aiming for jovial and ending somewhere along drugged and woozy. Maybe he did hit his head after all? Or maybe there was something in the air of this place.
“Nah, she just went for desert first, ain’t that right, Commander?” Jesse called out, winking, and Ahsoka grinned back at him with all her teeth.
“Aw, Jesse, you aren’t that sweet,” she called back, making his brother laugh. Their little commander was growing up to be one hell of a fierce woman. Rex couldn’t be more proud of her. Jesse, on the other hand, was for all his loyalty, a dick. At least he was an amusing dick; his relationship with Kix was about as secret as their General’s “secret” wife, and while Rex wouldn’t say that Kix had mellowed Jesse, he did manage to focus some of that damn energy into the right sort of destruction.
Kenobi had pushed his mask up to the top of his head so he could talk to Skywalker; it pushed the normally carefully styled hair back off of his face, and Rex noticed the large purple mark that covered Kenobi’s right temple. Skywalker was glaring down at his comm, His right sleeve was torn at the shoulder, revealing his prosthesis, though his hand was still covered by his black glove. Ahsoka stood by, her one arm cross over her midsection, and the other resting on the hilt of her now deactivated lightsaber. He could just hear their voices, and if he tried he could probably figure out what they were saying, but the air was hot, even in the shade, and his head began to throb. He looked around, taking stock of their surroundings.
They had crashed onto wide grasslands; the tall grass was a muted pink, and much easier to look at than the trees. Their transport was, as Rex had suspected, half of what it should have been, and he could see a debris trail stretching out behind them. There were no birds that he could see, no animals of any kind. Hopefully any animals had just been scared away by their crash and they hadn’t landed on a dead planet. Or a bug planet. Rex hated bug planets. The movement, besides them, was the smoke that still rose from their crash, and the wind as it blew along the top of the grass.
“Naakla, ge, Echo said quietly in Mando’a. He was lying on his back, his leg elevated by a rock and his head propped up on Fives’s thigh. Echo’s shin armor had been removed, and there was a medical brace wrapped around his blacks. Broken leg, probably a small fracture from the way Echo was not in so much pain that he couldn’t comment on their calm surroundings.
“Jii gar kar'taylir bic's an at haran,” Fives griped dryly. “Gar kar'taylir, jorcu vi cuyir mhi.” He tilted his head towards Rex, inviting him in to the joke. It wasn’t that funny, for all that it was absolutely fucking true.
Tup groaned quietly. He was sitting cross-legged in the shade, across from Fives and Echo and next to Jesse. He didn’t have any obvious injuries, but from the way he winced, Rex was sure his side would be as colorful as Rex’s own. “Tion'jor gar ganar at sirbur ibac, Fives? Jii bic Kelir banar.”
Fives waved it off, and Rex sighed. He wasn’t as superstitious as Tup, there were few who were, but you didn’t live as long as a soldier as Rex had without picking up a few tricks and tokens. And Fives did always speak before he thought.
A whisper of sound, and Rex looked to see their Jedi nearly on top of them. You never really got used to the way the Jedi moved, but after a while you started to notice an absence of sound, and it could give you enough warning that you didn’t jump when the Jedi were just there. Rex had used that trick more than once to intimidate a shiny.
“Well, the good news is that they will be looking for us,” Obi-Wan began. “I hate to put it this way, but the propaganda machine wouldn’t let them leave us stranded.”
“Yeah, because Force-forbid something happen to Kenobi and Skywalker,” Skywalker said, and Rex was surprised by the amount of venom in his voice. Kenobi, for his part, sighed like it was a complaint he heard many times before—and agreed with.
“Well, I’m not complaining,” Ahsoka said, dropping down to sprawl next to Rex. “Not if it gets us rescued.”
Anakin made a face, but he didn’t force the issue. Kenobi stroked his beard, his eyes far away.
Rex cleared his throat. “What’s the bad news, then?”
Kenobi looked over at him. “We’re deep in Separatist space, though far out enough to not have to really worry about unexpected visitors. But it does mean it will take some time for an extraction team to get through.”
Rex looked over his men; his eyes catching on Echo’s leg, Tup’s ribs, the deepening purple on Kenobi’s face. “How long?” he asked.
Kenobi sighed. “At least two weeks.”
“Two weeks!” Jesse cried out. “How far did we get flung?”
“Far enough,” Skywalker said.
They had been after a Command Ship. Grievous, once again. The 501st and the 212th had convened on his ship, trying to capture or eliminate his threat, permanently. Instead, Grievous managed to set the self destruct, slipping through their fingers once more. Kenobi had become separated from Cody and his team from the 212th, and had jumped aboard their boarding craft just as the ship began to break apart. The shockwave hit them as they were running, and the next thing they knew, the alarms were sounding as they were propelled violently into hyperspace. Kenobi had ordered them all to strap in, adrenaline the only thing keeping that man from turing completely green, even as Skywalker had started in on the control panel, trying got keep them from flying through a supernova.
They hadn’t been in hyperspace long, Rex remembered. Long enough to get everyone buckled, including Ahsoka and Skywalker himself. Long enough for Tup to work his way though his prayers and begin again, where Rex knew he was mouthing them inside his bucket. Long enough to count his heartbeats as they thudded against his ribs. (He didn’t mind going out in a blaze, taking as many damn klankers with him as he could, but he didn’t want to die like this, in an out of control boarding craft flung to the wild reaches of space.)
“Hang on!” Skywalker had cried, and Rex forced himself to keep his eyes open. So, he saw when they dropped from hyperspace, the streaking white turning void black once more. He saw the relief wash over Kenobi’s face. He saw the piece of space junk just before it hit their forward screens. A moment later, they were being tossed about as they were pummeled by the ring of space-junk.
Skywalker spat something truly vile in huttese, something he usually reserved for when the poodoo really hit the fan, and then they were falling, the planets surface filling their view screen. Skywalker fought the controls as hard as he could, but there was only so much he could do. Flames sprung up about the nose of the craft, they jerked and jolted, and then—
And then Rex woke up, in the burning remains of their boarding shuttle.
“That junk should help,” Rex said, and everyone’s eyes turned to him. “”s a good shield. Keeps people from getting too close, unless they know what they want’s below.”
“Yeah, but who put it there?” Ahsoka asked. “There’s nothing down here. Who puts a decoy shield over an empty planet?”
“It is certainly a mystery,” Kenobi said. “And one, I hope, we do not actually aim to solve. We have more pressing concerns at the moment. We have little in the way of supplies, and a long wait ahead of us. I also don’t like being out in the open like this. If the Separatists do find us first, and do make their way though that debris field, I do not want to be caught out here.”
“No,” Skywalker said. “But this ship has our best hope for getting reliable communications back on board, not to mention weaponry. I don’t want to just abandon her completely.”
Kenobi crossed his arms. “Did I say we should abandon the crash completely?” he asked. Rex’s eyebrows rose before he remembered that he hadn’t but his bucket back on, and forced himself into a neutral expression. Kenobi usually saved that tone of voice for when his general ignored orders to do something completely crazy, regardless of wether or not it worked in the end.
Skywalker crossed his arms in return, squaring off. “No, but you—“
“I saw a building,” Ahsoka interrupted, cutting her master off. Both generals turned to look at her, and while she settled back down, she didn’t shrink. “As we were coming in, right before we crashed. There’s more trees behind us,” she said, gesturing at the fungoid. “And I know we flew over a building of some kind. I only saw it for an instant, but it wasn’t a natural formation.”
“Very good Ahsoka,” Kenobi said. He looked at Skywalker but didn’t say anything for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was much more calm. “I say, we head towards that structure. If nothing else, the trees will provide better cover and possibly food. We can take what we can from the ship, and work on it in relative safety.”
Skywalker took a moment to unclench as well, and he offered Kenobi a wry grin. “When isn’t our safety relative?”
Kenobi’s eyes turned sad, and his smile wry for a quick moment, before the General was back. “Then that will be our plan.”
“Kix,” Skywalker said. “Report.”
“Everyone’s walking mobile except for Echo,” Kix said, instantly. “Fracture’s minor, but it’s still a fracture.”
“Shi gar” Fives muttered, under his breath, and Echo jabbed him with his elbow.
“We should have enough materials left to make a liter of some kind,” Ahsoka said, and Jesse and Tup both rose to help her. Rex stood as well; break’s over. Time to get back to work.