5ame_heart | The Battle of Ryloth

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milliways: oom

The Battle of Ryloth

The role of the 501st in the liberation of Ryloth has been mostly one of orbital support, but Captain Rex has his eye on the boys from Domino Squad. He's assigned Echo and Fives to the 91st Mobile Reconnaissance Corps for the operation.

According to Rex, his reasoning is that as neither Fives or Echo can pilot worth a damn, they'd better make themselves useful in the ground assault. Echo is optimistically convinced this attachment to an elite Recon Unit is serving as field training for eventual promotion to ARC-Troopers. As Rex has been friendly with them since Rishi and has continually expressed his respect for them as soldiers, Fives doesn't have a reason to disagree.

A major difference between the 91st and the 501st is that the men of the 91st like and respect their Jedi General with the sort of fondness and respect that comes with reliable, understandable and well thought out plans - General Windu seems to like and respect them back, to the extent of their lives as equal to his own, and as highly as they value each other. Skywalker is the same, of course, but the 501st are generally of the opinion that a healthy culture of talking back is a key part of letting your General exactly what you think of showy recklessness.

But one way they match, of course, is that all plans are lucky if they last five minutes' contact with the enemy.

The 91st are engaged with the droid army in the approach to the capital city of Lessu. Ryloth is all mesas and gorges around here; it's hot, much drier than the jungles where they staged earlier engagements, and the ground has a bad habit of crumbling under one's feet - especially when hit by stray blaster bolts.

Fives is right by Echo's side one second, and the next he finds himself slipping perilously down a near vertical face into a gorge, sandy rocks racing past him to the sound of his name being yelled by his brother above. He shouts in annoyance and in shock, and then when his foot makes contact with a rock a few feet down, with pain.

The rocky nature of this planet acts to his advantage, Fives realises. He's sliding rather than falling, and is able to holster his blaster in time to grab another rock, which jerks his shoulder violently but stops his descent before his fingers slip and he falls again. The Force obviously has plans for him because he's able to combine what purchase he can get with what obstructions there are to turn a death fall into a painful tumble into shadow.

Eventually Fives lands hard on his feet at the bottom of a crevasse deep enough that the fighting above is only distant flashes of light, and next to the less fortunate body of a trooper who turns out to be CT-89-2874 - Fives doesn't know him and so doesn't know what his name was.

He stands up slowly, his legs screaming from the landing, his headache informing him that he may have hit that part of him on the way down. His armor is more than scratched - some of his plates have broken in clear shards, and he's entirely lost one of his He keys his wrist comm.

"Echo? Sarge? Anyone?"

But there's no signal. And there's no reason to come look for him either, so as far as Echo and the others is concerned, CT-27-5555 is one more casualty of the Battle for Ryloth.

He leans against the rocky wall, and considers his options.

And that's when he hears something.

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Hera stays ahead of him, but moves away from him, to his right. She holds out a hand and hopes he won't move to stay directly behind her.

But she doesn't have much time to think about it before there's a rustle on the sand, and another groan in the dark. She keeps her eyes ahead, toward Fives' light, figures that's what it will notice first, and tries to let her arms hang loose at her sides. And when shadows weave into the light, she keeps looking forward, looking for the glint of the only part of the gutkurr that isn't protected.

The hardest part is brief moment, no more than a second, when she has to keep walking. Because that's when all she wants to do is run right at it, and slam the knife into anything she can reach.

Instead, when the glint is large enough, she throws the knife out, in an arcing motion, and doesn't wait to see how it lands before she falls to the ground and rolls across to the other side of the cave. The knife doesn't land square on, but slashes the gutkurr's eye before falling to the dust, and the creature screeches and lunges at where Hera had been a moment ago.

Fark, that thing is big. Fives had seen the size of the bodies outside, but alive, and trying to kill Hera in the confines of a tight burrow it looks so much bigger.

He feels that difficulty as well - the overriding need to rush forward, put himself between her and the thing, to cause some damage now rather than waiting for the moment. He's not supposed to be in this role - he's supposed to be the bait, the disposible one. Every instinct in his blood is trying to get himself killed right now.

He heaves the sword up slowly, trying above everything else to keep his head steady, the light constant. Let her bring it close to him without it what the light is attached to.

Come on you kriffer.

Edited 2021-02-17 09:39 (UTC)

The gutkurr still screeches, blood dripping from its eyes, clawing at the space where Hera had been before rounding on the light from Fives' helmet.

Hera waits on the ground, in the dark, her fingers digging into the dirt until she lets herself climb up, and search for the flash of her knife. She scrapes one foot into the ground, the sound enough to halt the gutkur, but only for a moment.

As it turns towards Hera, Fives takes the moment and throws himself forward. He turns the vibrosword towards the thing and throws the weight of it and himself behind it, aiming at the section between where the armor on his head is overlapped by the armor on its back.

He thrusts in and it digs in maybe half a meter before it hits resistance, and entirely fails to kill the thing, but it does make it very angry.

Fives lets go of the sword hilt and his momentum carries him down long the ground, sliding in the dirt under the gutkurr's head and just out of reach of its short forearms, until he can scramble to his feet on the other side.

The creature gargles a roar and turns to him, but its ability to move in the narrow tunnel is somewhat limited now there's a meter of vibrosword sticking horizontally out of its neck.

Hera finds the glint of the knife and takes it back up in her hand.

Eyes were the softest target, albeit just above a set of very sharp teeth, but those are turned away from her now. What else can't be covered by that hard insect plating? Joints.

The gutkurr turned completely away from her, Hera steps silently along the tunnel, without the hesitation of someone ready to run. It goes out of her mind until she drops to against to the dirt, and reaches out with the knife again, slashing deep into the narrow slice between the creature's leg and base claw, and rolling back as the gutkurr screeched again.

The hilt of the vibrosword scrapes along the wall of the tunnel, scratching itself a groove as the creature snaps at Fives, and hopefully driving the blade slightly deeper into the neck.

Fives falls clumsily backwards in his hurry to get up, but he grabs the lamp on the side of his helmet and twists it as much as he can to get the beam into the beast's good eye.

It's nearly completely rounded on Fives when it screeches and rounds again, trying to get at the thing that attacked its leg. Fives, now on his feet, races to the other side, thinking of nothing except how he needs that sword back. He grabs the edge of its carapace and hauls himself up and over, landing on the sword with both feet hard enough to rip a deeper gash in the flesh, bounces off it and grabs the hilt with both hands.

Holding the sword now, he scrambles backwards, his feet struggling to get purchase against the ground until he hauls it out with a gross sounding squelch.

Of course now it has plenty of room to fully round on him.

Hera slips forward again, making a go for the gutkurr's other leg.

She manages it again, slashing at the bit just above its claw, but this time the gutkurr's reaction is quicker, its leg lashing back toward her as she rolls away. Its claw catches Hera's arm, slicing her skin at her shoulder - the girl lets out a gasp of pain as she retreats back into the dark.

And though the strike hits, it also leaves the gutkurr unbalanced.

"Hera!"

Fives' distraction doesn't translate to his body at all. He charges forward, plunging the sword directly into the creature's neck, widening the gash already made and spraying him with blood, and the lunges again with his fist, punching the thing right in the eye.

It staggers under the weight of the man, and unbalanced from the attack on its foot it tumbles to the ground, where its claws flail wildly.

Fives's armor slices embarrassingly cleanly, but the claws can't get through to him beneath is. Still, the violent swing does throw him bodily against the wall.

He doesn't stop, drawing his blaster and rushing forward again, firing at the bleeding eye like he's Rex taking down a Rishi eel, and then again into the wound left by the sword, until eventually the creature stops moving.

There's a pause after the gutkurr finally goes still, and then -

"Are you okay?"

A thin trickle of blood drips from Hera's shoulder as she approaches again. She takes the time to pull out one of the remaining leaves from her pouch and start chewing on it, and to pick up the cord from the dirt that held her two lizards and droid head, and wrap it around her waist again. She knows her wound should be wrapped or, if they had any, coated with bacta, but it's not an option right now, and there's something else to worry about.

"Maybe they left it here, like a guard."

She only waits long enough for Fives to start lighting the way again.

"Yeah."

His head hurts again from another impact, but he's grateful as he's ever been for the armor, despite the back being dented enough that he can feel the concavity against his own back.

He turns his head down to watch her chew the leaf, grateful that his helmet hides the genuine concern he's feeling. He really ought to send her back.

But instead he looks up to light the way, and picks up the pace a little more, keeping just within what he judges she can keep up with.

"I just hope it's the only guard we have to deal with."

"Maybe they left it here so they wouldn't have to guard it."

There's a bitterness in her voice that hasn't been there before. Not that she pities the gutkurr much, but the droids lined villagers in front of their tanks, and worse - she doesn't think much of their bravery.

She lets Fives pass in front of her again, staying a pace or so behind him until a faint web of multicolored lights comes into view. It takes effort to not let curiosity get the better of her, but she still stays behind him, looking away from the lights to try to listen for anything else around but all she can here is the beeping, growing rapider, and the vibrations beneath them.

Her ability to stay behind Fives is helped somewhat by his own increased pace, hurrying towards the lights at a faster pace, striding forward with the full length of his legs, hoping that she can keep up enough.

He notices as he passes, the room set in the side of the tunnel, bones scattering the floor, the mechanism in the floor where a ray shield has been set up - something keeping the gutkurr back that had been released when they approached.

"There's the guard post," he remarks.

Hera steps over the bones, and edges around the mechanism, still looking out for the shine of chrome or plastoid in the dark space, but there's nothing she can see.

The web of lights is stretched over a large, rectangular device, its noise getting loud enough as they approach that it's hard for her to hear anything else. Hera looks down to the way the dark steel cover of the machine curves down to the soil - she kneels down and carefully touches it where it meets the ground. Nothing happens.

She looks down and calls to Fives, her voices pitched up loud enough so she can be heard over the vibrations, "I think it's buried deep."

"Don't touch it."

Fives kneels down beside the device, and peers at it through his helmet's visor. Decides there's nothing usual his visual display can give him and removes the helmet to get a better look, setting it on the floor beside him.

"This is a remote," he says out loud, touching two fingers lightly to a small plaasrtoid box in the corner of the web of lights. He follows some of the lights over the surface of the machine and realises what he's looking at.

"Oh fuck," he swears, in English. (Thanks, SecUnit.)

Hera glances up, recognizing the tone even if she doesn't know the word.

Her hand does also move slightly away from the machine, though she otherwise doesn't move.

"What?"

"It's a detonator," Fives says. His fingers dart over the web of lights, not touching them.

"And it's been activated. But there's nothing down here to blow, unless..."

He glances up at the ceiling of rock above them, lays out the map in his head based on their previous route. His thoughts are racing, faster than he has time to put into words.

"Unless it's really kriffing big." And the only reason the mountain hasn't come down on their heads must be because it's on a timer and as there's no interface on the device, there's no way of finding out how long the timer is or how much time they have left.

He cannot let this thing blow.

Fives opens his vambrace and pulls out his hydrospanner again, scanning the device for some bolt, some connection, anything.

"Hera," he says levelly. "It's time for you to leave."

Hera stands, though she doesn't move away. For all her resistance to confronting a gutkurr, she seems strangely unmoved to learn she's standing next to an enormous bomb.

"If it's that big I won't outrun it."

There is a panel - he knew there had to be - that he can unscrew quickly, although he does need to dig at the dirt a little to access it, scraping away with the plastoid gauntlet.

As he works, he explains: "No, but things like this usually have a smaller explosive device attached to the timed detonator. When that goes it'll ignite big brother. The timer's tricky, but if I can get the explosive away..."

He glances up at her, and jerks his head back towards the exit, scowling at her stubbornness for not leaving.

"But I've got to stay here until I know the big one's safe, do you understand? You can't help me with this."

Still, Hera looks unfazed, her eyes on the panel as he removes it.

"I can find the timer," she says, "then I'll go."

Fives breathes out slowly, his hands steady as he sets the panel down and peers in.

"You can?"

Inside the box it's more lights, some of which bright enough to hurt his eyes, and Fives has to nearly lie down to get a look inside.

Hera doesn't explain right now. She moves close the panel, and goes straight to the three fast rules - look, smell, listen.

Look is barely a glance here. With smaller mines or explosives, the shape can be enough to figure out how it's made, but that's obviously useless here. And no bomb has something as helpful as a bright countdown. Smell isn't much use either, not with something like this.

But listening - she leans close to the panel, trying to hear beneath the beeping and vibrations. The beeping stays loud and frustratingly even, but it's not a ticking or beat she's listening for. Her friends who scrapped - and built - explosives helped her learn to listen for a ringing, a very faint but shrill electric whine where circuits converged -

"Under there." She points to a row of blue lights in the lower left corner, and then reaches to him to put the vibroknife in his hand.

"Force be with you." And, finally, Hera runs.

He is going to have to ask he how she did that.

Not now, maybe. And maybe not ever. He clutches the hilt of the knife for a second, letting his hand brush hers as she hands it over. Then when she runs he leans back in, and finds out that she's right - there's a device there sunk into the lights with the faint outline against the plastoid that he recognises as a fairly generic explosive device - a circle about 25cm across, welded into place with a softer substance that the hard plastoid attaching the timer to the smaller explosive.

The vibrokinfe cuts into the welding substane with some effort, and it's half an agonising minute before Fives has the device in his hand, cutting clean though the gel-filled hosing leading deeper into the device.

The blast radius of these things is about fifty metres. Add fifty for safety.

One hundred meters before he can drop it. Another fifty before he can hope he can survive.

Fine.

He leaps up into a sprint start and races down the tunnel.

Hera doesn't wait for him now. She runs as fast as she can through the cave, tracing her fingers along the wall to keep her way in the dark. She slips once, though manages to recover before she falls, when she runs through blood pooling from where they left the gutkurr.

She doesn't bother trying to keep her steps quiet now, hoping any more droids would have already cleared out.

Edited 2021-02-25 22:06 (UTC)

She won't need the wall for long, as the wildly swinging white light behind her gets closer.

Fifty, seventy five.

Fives has his helmet jammed back onto his head, and the charge clutched to his chest as he runs. His long sprint stride slows down only to swoop down to the ground to leave the charge, and then once again as he pounds up behind Hera grabs her around the waist in one arm and sweeps her up into his arms before resuming the pace.

One twenty. One thirty

Hera catches sight of the thin haze of sunlight at the hole they first entered.

And then she's on the ground. She doesn't hear the blast, doesn't remember falling, though her headache is enough to tell her what happened. It's not quiet, though - now it feels like the whole cave is vibrating. Dust hits her lekku, and she struggles to push herself up. Her eyes open to the glow of sunlight, right ahead of them.

She can't get words out yet, but she manages a loud, guttural sound from her throat as she struggles up.

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