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In the distance, Howzer stiffened the moment he heard a blaster fire. Rex had told them to hurry up, that he couldn’t keep the imperial trapped for much longer. That hadn’t even been a minute ago.
If shots were being fired, then Rex hadn’t succeeded.
Howzer started running.
Behind him, the others hurried to catch up - Gregor cursing as he nearly tripped head long into a trap. Normally, one of the others would have teased him about that, but now they were silent and serious. They knew this was business.
They burst into the clearing a few moments later, Howzer’s eyes widening as he saw Echo supporting Rex as Rex clutched his hands to his neck. Howzer scanned the scene for the imperial, and spotted him a moment later. The imperial was running straight away from him, vanishing into the trees.
Howzer made a split second choice, staring at the situation. “Jab, Aid, help Rex.” He ordered sharply. “Echo, come with us.”
Echo’s head snapped up sharply to glare at Howzer as Jab and Aid rushed forward to lower Rex carefully to the ground. His neck was bleeding severely - the shot hadn’t cauterized the wound instantly somehow. Howzer didn’t leave time to question that. He trusted their medics.
Howzer flicked his HUD to infrared, and turned to follow the imperial. He didn’t wait to see if Echo or his men were following him, tracing the path the imperial had taken - somehow, he’d managed to avoid every single one of their traps. Those traps weren’t easy to avoid unless you knew precisely where they were. Maybe a jedi could do it.
“He’s a sniper.” Echo spoke suddenly, his voice hoarse. Howzer glanced back for a brief moment - and nearly tripped ungracefully - to see Echo had in fact followed him. Howzer wouldn’t have blamed him if he hadn’t. He would have preferred to stay with Rex too, but Echo was only one who had followed him who wasn’t busy with triage on Cinder. “A good one. Though he’ll have limited ammo. He’s also got night vision and infrared."
Somehow, Howzer felt that was an understatement that he was a good sniper, since he’d already put two vode in serious conditions. “How many shots has he taken so far?”
Echo was silent for a moment. “Two.” He answered slowly. Behind him, the team’s sniper, Blacksite, choked.
“He nearly killed Cinder and Rex with two shots?”
Echo’s voice was audibly strained. “Yes.” He responded curtly.
“How many shots do you think he can take?” Howzer asked a moment later.
“By how he’s using them, not many.” Echo informed him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Blacksite jerk his hand out to drag Echo out of the way of a pitfall. “He’s only fired when fired at first, so far.”
“We need to make him run out of ammo, then.” Howzer decided. “After we catch up with him.”
—
There was no way he’d seen that right.
The second clone, the one he’d not fired at - there was no way that he’d seen that he had a scomp hand. He was just hallucinating that - maybe his concussion was messing with his vision more than he’d thought. He’d not seen regs in an awfully long time - maybe his head was sticking Echo’s attributes on the regs he saw out of some idiotic sentiment.
That had to be it.
He’d have recognized any of his brothers his former squadmates instantly, wouldn’t he? They were all hard to miss, especially among regs. But they’d all been normal karking regs, as obvious by all of their actions and predictable sentiment.
And his former squad was always really close. All of them except for him, at least. They didn’t care as much about him, evidently. That much was obvious from everything in the last year.
There would be no reason for one of them to be out here amongst the regs. Therefore - he was just hallucinating it due to his kriffing concussion.
Those karking regs were still following him. Some more of them had appeared moments after he’d started running, at least five of them now. He’d expected about that much, as some would obviously stay with the one he’d shot.
He’d not taken killing shots either times, although he’d aimed for weak points in the armor where it would cause severe damage and bleeding. For the first reg, it had been partially an accident, a default reaction because he’d not shot at many regs, and their resemblance to Echo had made him not shoot as badly as he could.
The second time, it had been intentional. They were regs, if the reg he’d just shot was solidly dead, then they would leave him and chase after him. But if he was simply dying, then they’d panic and stay with him to protect him and save him. It was a rather effective distraction, really. Regs were always predictable.
Despite the persistent pursuit and the traps which kept trying to catch him - he’d nearly fallen into a pitfall not because he hadn’t noticed it, but because he’d tripped over another branch when checking how far the regs were behind him - his mind kept going back to minutes earlier, when he’d been held at blaster point and had held that reg at blaster point.
The regs were wearing cloaks over their armor, and their armor had all been hastily painted a dark brownish grey. He’d found it easy to recognize regs because he’d been doing it all his life, but it would have posed a challenge to a nat-born who only saw regs rarely. Similarly, he’d only recognized the republic armor under the cloaks because he’d seen too many karking times.
But despite that, the reg he’d thought was Echo’s armor had been slightly different. It was still clearly modeled on the Republic but - it had looked almost exactly like Echo’s armor. Maybe it had been replaced since then and it had a slightly different design, but Crosshair could swear he could tell Tech’s work from anything else in a junkyard.
It wasn’t exactly Echo’s armor - the black and red of their squad had been stripped off of it in favor of the mud-brown all the regs had. And it looked like part of it had been broken and then repaired and upgraded slightly, just like Tech would always do. Surely that suggested that it wasn’t a hallucination, as he would have imagined Echo in the armor he knew Echo in.
But Echo’s presence on the planet made no sense without his old squad. It was simply entirely illogical, and thus, untrue. He was hallucinating it.
But he glanced back anyway, noting the one he’d thought was Echo was slowly gaining on him on his left. That wasn’t -
CRASH!
A force from above crushed him to the ground, trapping him against the ground. It took him a moment for his vision to unblur from the sudden violent force, before he twisted his head to see what had happened.
Karking heck, he’d actually tripped a tripwire. The regs were still rushing after him, too, and his rifle was trapped between him and the ground.
Twisting in the net, ignoring the burning pain his reinjured ribs were giving him, Crosshair drew his knife and slashed at the rope. Thankfully, it cut easily, giving him the space to roll out of it the net carefully, taking his rifle with him.
But now the regs were nearly upon him. He raised his rifle, lying down as he was, and fired at the one nearest to him just before the reg opened fire on him. It hit him in the visor, making him curse loudly. He didn’t have the time to deal with the next one before the reg opened fire, and had to scramble for cover.
A burning pain in his shoulder told him he’d not succeeded entirely. He ignored it, firing around the tree trunk at the gap in another reg’s armor as he tried to rush him. That one fell back with a shout, hitting the ground hard. Another reg shouted his name and rushed over to him - but Crosshair ignored him, firing at the last reg.
This time, his shoulder flared with pain as he fired, throwing his shot off to miss as the reg ducked under cover. He cursed aloud, moving to fire again at the last reg.
“Freeze!” A reg shouted from behind him.
Crosshair froze instinctively, turning slightly.
There were four regs in front of him, not five. He’d miscounted.
His momentary hesitation was enough for the other reg he’d broken the visor of to get his bucket off and for the other one to point his blaster at him too. Even the one by the downed reg had a blaster on him suddenly.
Crosshair ignored all this, turning further to face the reg behind him. His eyes were wide.
His ears hadn’t lied.
The reg standing behind him had one arm, the other replaced by a scomp arm. Now that he was staring at it, the armor was clearly one of Tech’s, although he didn’t recognize it explicitly.
“Echo?”