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The vicious crackle of fire was the first thing he heard as he slowly came back to his senses.
The pain came next. Sharp, stabbing pain, radiating from his chest and head to the rest of him. Around him, his surroundings felt uncomfortably warm.
It took Crosshair another few seconds to connect the warmth with the fire crackling, and when it did, he instantly tried to force his eyes open. That took a moment to happen, and he winced at the light around him as the pain in his head flared again. His helmet visor was cracked in half, and he was lying face down on twisted metal and plastic as fire raged around him. His vision wavered slightly, blurring concerningly.
Kriff. He had to get out of here.
Carefully, he tested what he could move. His arms weren’t trapped, though his legs felt like they were underneath something heavy. Somehow, the chair straps were still holding him down despite the rest of the ship being clearly broken. He tried to move his head, and then cursed as the pain and nausea flared up hard enough to make him stop.
It took him at least a minute to be able to turn his head to look to the side. The crumbled walls of the cockpit, fire dancing between the cracks, were all around him. The ship appeared to have crashed upside down, his legs trapped under the collapsed console.
The copilot’s chair was also partially buried under the roof and console, ES-03 completely unmoving. It took a moment for Crosshair to realize that his head was at an awkward angle, his neck clearly broken. He couldn’t turn his head to see the rest of his squad, but they were also silent. Either they were dead, or they’d also blacked out like he had when they’d crashed into the ground.
He tried the release for the straps, but it was caught, presumably jammed in the crash. Instead, he had to awkwardly draw his vibroblade with his left arm to slice the straps off of him. He kept a nervous eye on the fire, which was edging steadily closer to him, while testing how much his legs could move.
Somehow, other than the jarring pain in his head and the cracked ribs he could feel, he’d managed not to break anything serious in the crash. His limbs still felt mostly functional, even if his right leg was pinned quite heavily. His left leg wasn’t as trapped, however, and he managed to pull it out, before carefully and painfully twisting to extricate his other leg.
The fire was nearing him faster every second, creeping across the debris laden floor - no, roof - of the cockpit. Crosshair spared a glance at the other chairs as he hauled himself to his feet, but it wouldn’t take enhanced eyes to realize they were also dead. Of them all other than himself, only ES-02 had actually got her helmet on, but one of the tree trunks jutted through the ship carcass right into her seat, leaving her body mangled between them.
Carefully, fighting the urge to vomit, Crosshair scanned the cockpit for an exit. The floor - or what had once been the floor - was cracked and splintered, revealing the night sky outside. Hauling himself up to it was a painfully slow process, but the approaching fire spurred him on. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about the fuel tank exploding.
Once he was standing above the ship carcass, he scanned it. Despite his efforts, they’d still managed to crash into the ground upside down and with the cockpit first, though surprisingly enough, the back half of the ship didn’t look very damaged. The fire had started to spread to the surrounding trees, but it wasn’t intense enough to trap him in, so he reckoned he still had time to try and get stuff out of the ship before he had to move.
The ship had splintered down the middle in some places, and so getting back in was pretty easy - although his head spun dizzyingly when he hit the ground. His rifle and pack had been thrown out of the luggage rack in the crash, though it was easy to locate them and the emergency kit specifically for crash landings like this. However, he noted in dismay, the long distance comm unit had been smashed under a falling crate. His own comms were non-functional and sputtering static, and the rest of his team’s comms hadn’t looked any better.
How precisely he was going to contact the Empire for pick up?
Crosshair winced as he moved too fast, having to pause for a moment to not vomit. How he’d get picked up would be a later question. He should focus on surviving this crash and not getting caught in the fire first.
It was likely the Empire would send units to pick them up. The Elite Squad were valuable Imperial Assets, and he’d proven his loyalty. Besides, they had reason to believe he’d survived, unlike they’d had on Kamino.
Getting back out of the ship was harder, though he managed. Then he paused, staring out at the burning forest surrounding the ship. Beneath his feet, the ship creaked as he took steps, looking moments from collapse. The safest place to be from whatever native wildlife was here - he didn’t trust the imperial reports anymore - would be on the ship. However, with the fire spreading this fast, if he didn’t leave soon, he’d be trapped here.
And then, through the thick foliage of the trees, a dim glimmer of light that wasn’t from the fire caught Crosshair’s eye. He squinted at it, yanking his battered helmet off to prevent the shattered visor from blocking his vision.
The light was white, moving slowly and steadily approaching. It looked suspiciously like the light of torches, and it was heading right towards him.
He didn’t know who was on this planet. Imperial records listed it as uninhabited, but those had already been wrong about the gravity severely enough to make the crash a whole lot worse.
And planets on the Outer Rim tended to be quite hostile to Imperials, even if they weren’t exactly rebels. With only a limited amount of ammunition in his rifle, he wasn’t going to try and test that. Though - if there were inhabitants, they probably had ships he could steal.
But first, he had to get out of here.
Slipping through the fire wasn’t easy, as the trees around the ship were all aflame, but he managed to find a place where it wasn’t so thickly aflame. Then, noting the ground sloped upwards to the left of the approaching torches, he moved that direction to gain the height advantage.
There were twelve of them, he distinguished carefully. They had blaster rifles - not Imperial issue, but old Republic-style blasters. At first glance, they looked like mercenaries or scrappers using Republic clone armor, but then one of them glanced in his direction.
Crosshair froze in place, partially in case the individual somehow managed to spot him behind the densely packed trees and partially in disbelief. There was no way that he’d managed to stumble right up on the one place where the rogue clones were hiding out.
The Empire knew that they were hiding somewhere that they couldn’t find, but they’d assumed it was some small place on a crime hub planet, such as Ord Mantel, or maybe even Coruscant. A distant Outer Rim planet that was supposedly abandoned was the last place they’d look for them - and thus they were very dangerous.
He was better than a reg, or even four of them, but fifteen? Probably they hadn’t brought their whole force to come and check out a wreck, anyway, so there were surely many more regs here, and he had no way to communicate with the Empire for backup.
Even if he did managed to get backup - would it be enough to take down all the regs? Perhaps the rescue crew would make the same mistake and also crash. Or maybe they’d be incompetent nat-borns and get themselves killed by the regs. For all that Crosshair despised regs - they were better than nat-borns by a very long shot. The Empire had made a mistake in alienating them.
For once, the roles were reversed. He wasn’t the confident one with a squad or underlings behind him, hunting down the rebels ruthlessly.
He was the one being hunted. At least - once they realized he survived.
He had to get out of here.
—-
“Any heat signatures?”
Cypher shook his head. “Not around the crash, at least.” He informed Rex. Rex’s eyes narrowed at that.
They’d set up a perimeter around the crash, though they were waiting for the fire to die down to investigate further. Echo was glancing nervously from place to place in the dark shadows of the forest, finding the thought of Imperials somehow hiding there mildly terrifying. He hadn’t seen anything yet, but - it was a matter of time, he feared.
It would be just his luck for the Imperials to survive to kill them.
“Scan the forests around.” Rex ordered, and the commando nodded, turning the scanners. “Perhaps some of them managed to escape before we arrived.”
Echo doubted it, seeing the inferno that the ship had become. But - he agreed with Rex that it would be good to check, just in case. Rex took a few steps away from him, peering between the trees into the shadows with his flashlight suspiciously.
“Sir.” Rex turned abruptly to face Cypher, who was holding up the scanner pointing towards the way Rex had been facing. “There’s a heat signature that way, heading away from us.”
Rex crossed the space between them in two strides, intensely focused. He glanced at the scanner, then pressed his fingers to the comm. “One Imperial survived the crash. We need to find him.”