There were five of them in the transport, not counting the pilot. Rex looked around the small, enclosed, rumbling space at his brothers. As he did, Cody caught his eye and smiled a little, standing casually to Rex's right, not holding onto the overhead grips even though they'd hit atmosphere a second ago.
No Kaminoans or other trainers on this flight. They were close enough to graduating that Os Tala had no reason to hover over their shoulders anymore, not even on the way down; the pilot had to test his skills too.
"Nervous?" Cody asked. Rex waited for anyone else to answer, but Cody was looking at him.
"Are you?" Rex asked.
"Nah." Cody reached over to pat Rex's hair—Rex pushed his arm away, but not before Cody managed to mess it up. No helmets today, and no armor. "How hard could this be? We're just camping out for a few weeks."
"Don't get too relaxed," Rex warned, finger-combing his hair back into place. "This is still a mission. A test of our resilience. It's not meant to be easy."
"Maybe, but at least nobody's gonna be shooting at us. Probably."
"Confident Cody," said Fort, balancing his long rifle on his shoulder. "You know, when you say that, it's just asking for something to go wrong."
"That's right!" barked Snapper enthusiastically, hunching and making monster hands at Fort. "Once we start starving you'll have to tie me down so I don't EAT you!" He laughed.
"Gross," muttered 588 with arms folded. "More like you'll have to tie me down so I won't try to make Snapper shut up when we're all on edge."
"Why are you so nervous?" Snapper asked cheerfully.
"Maybe we could not joke about being eaten?" 588 said. "Just an idea. We don't know what's down there."
"Alright, alright," Rex said with exaggerated patience. "Let's review what we know about the planet. Then we'll all be prepared. Cody, what will be our primary source of food on Pzob's surface? Assuming we land in a less temperate region… which, I'm sure we will."
"Well, we could always try to eat some feather-lizards," Cody joked.
"Cody," Rex warned.
"What? The file on Pzob says they're everywhere!"
"Yeah and they're about this big," he said, holding up his fingers to show the little space between. "The illustration makes me doubt they have much meat on 'em. Bet they're fast, too."
"Is there really nothing big enough to hunt there?" Snapper sighed.
"Hopefully nothing big enough to hunt us," 588 said.
"This information was available on the computer if you'd bothered to check before we left," Rex reminded them. "Cody—a serious answer?"
Cody sighed with an indulgent smile. "Alright… I was just waiting to see if anybody else wanted to volunteer. But since no one has… the easiest source of energy is probably tubers, seeing as there are both dry and wet-climate varieties native to this planet."
"I knew that," 588 said.
Cody was looking up, trying to remember. "Close second is cress and sica leaves, but they sure won't be filling."
"And third?" Rex asked.
Cody frowned at Rex, and Rex smirked back.
Snapper laughed. "Those were the only foods the file said, Rex. I remember because I was talking to Rocky about it and showed him how it said we'd have to try our best to find any other food sources and good luck not being poisoned!"
"Great," said 588.
"Oh, a trick question, eh?" Cody gave Rex a sly look. "I see how it is."
"Just checking who actually read the file," Rex shrugged.
"Alright," said Cody. "So let's go over listed threats."
"Is this another—"
Fort cut off as the ship bounced and rocked.
"Hey Hopper, take it easy up there!" Snapper yelled teasingly to the pilot through the wall comm. "Some of us are trying to sleep!"
Instead of a response from Hopper, a repetitive noise began, rising in pitch. The lights switched red.
"Ship alarm," Rex muttered. "Maybe we hit a storm."
"Negative," said Hopper quietly through the comm. Then, louder, "Engines have overheated. Trying to cycle them back online. Hang on."
"Oh no," Fort said quietly, and pointed at Cody. "What did I say?"
Cody laughed nervously and grabbed onto an overhead grip as the ship bucked and tilted. Rex grabbed one too, and took a slow breath. Hopper would figure it out.
"Why would the engines overheat?" 588 whispered to Fort. "Did we come in too fast?"
The comm crackled. Hopper's voice was strained. "We're going down. Strap in and brace yourselves!"
The ship rattled and rattled until everyone Rex looked at had two heads—one above and one below as they lurched toward the wall-inset seats on opposite sides, facing each other across the cabin. The rattling went up his boots through his bones into his teeth; he tried in vain to keep them from clicking together, and felt as if he had two heads as well. Strapping himself in against the wall with shaking hands, he wished he could see how close they were to the ground, turning his warping skull to make eye contact with Cody—four wide eyes looked back at him, blurry.
Suddenly the rattling smoothed and Rex's stomach lurched back into place—a sigh of relief gushed out of him and was echoed around the quiet cabin. Across from Rex, Snapper started to laugh.
A deep, earsplitting shriek tore through them in the same moment Rex felt his body slam against the restraints hard enough to pound every molecule of air from his lungs, no time to process anything but a vague thought of gravity being reversed.
…
Squeak.
Rex wondered what the noise was. For an irrational moment he thought it was coming from his own bones… his neck felt like every muscle in it had been pulled tight enough to fray against his spine. He tasted blood, smelled blood and burning and dirt and heard his own wet breath. His chest hurt. Something was against his face, not hard enough to be the metal floor. He tried to open his eyes.
Squeak.
Rex opened his eyes to a blur of cloth and skin. It took a long moment for focus to come, along with the realization that someone was on top of him.
"Fort," Rex tried to say, but it didn't come out at first. He tried to take a deep breath and winced. "Fort, wake up."
Fort didn't move. Rex struggled to get his arms under Fort's chest and push him back—his eyes were open, unseeing, and Rex threw the body to his left side with an urgency that shocked him. Hot revulsion crawled under his skin. Rex licked blood off his upper lip and stared at the crumpled body, flopped on its side now. Fort. If only his eyes had been closed, he could have been sleeping.
"Wake up," Rex hissed, already knowing it was hopeless. He breathed in a mouthful of acrid air—the smell and taste of the crash stinging his tongue and throat—and didn't let himself say it again.
Another breath, through his nose this time, but even so he still nearly gagged. Squeak. The noise was coming from outside, some kind of animal. A bird, maybe. It was so quiet. A feverish shiver gripped Rex, a terrible certainty that he was the only survivor. He forced himself to look away from the dead body.
The ship had settled halfway on its side, leaving no flat surface to truly call the floor. Instead, Rex's seat and the wall it was built into were tilted back with the rest of the ship, lifting the opposite wall higher. What had once been the floor was now a cracked and distorted ramp in front of Rex, leading upward to where 588 and Snapper's eyes were closed, their arms hanging down a little toward him from where they were belted in, pieces of the interior wall behind them cracked or missing. And to Rex's left, near the back of the ship, the entire rear door had been ripped away, letting in a hazy light and a grayish-green view of dark mud and tangled vegetation.
Before he could stop himself, Rex looked to his right, toward the nose of the ship, and jumped at the noise that came out of his mouth. Blood and bone shone where Cody's face should be, his hair and shoulders soaked dark.
"Cody!" Rex lurched, forgetting the straps—he fumbled to release them. "CODY!"
He flailed and stumbled as soon as he tried to walk, knees buckling and boots failing their grip on the uneven "floor". He's dead, Rex told himself in the split second it took him to brace his feet and crouch shakily beside Cody's body, straddling the loose blood-soaked pieces of metal collected where the former wall and the former floor met, some of them as long as his arm. Cody's body. He wasn't going to feel a pulse. There was so much blood. Too much. If the others are dead, he's dead. There was just too much blood.
Rex saw the other side of his face, perfectly unharmed, eyes shut—he put his hand on Cody's right cheek, dug his fingers under Cody's jaw, trying not to look at the skin that was peeled back from his left eye, the exposed bone, or the way his mouth was hanging open a little, edges of his teeth stained red with the blood that had pooled inside.
Nothing. No, there: a pulse. He's alive. He's alive! Impossible. Rex waited, counted ten before he was sure he hadn't imagined it. Ten! If Cody was alive, maybe the others were too. But Cody wouldn't be for long—
"Cody! Wake up! CODY!" Rex's own voice surprised him, stronger and clearer than he thought it would be. "Cody!" Rex glanced over his shoulder at the other two, unconscious with no visible open wounds, then back at the blood coating Cody's face, still wet and vivid. "Okay," Rex said to himself. His training came back to him. "Stop the bleeding. Treat for shock. Check the others." Rex tried not to look back at Fort as he stepped over Cody's legs and side-stepped his way across the tilted floor toward the med kit compartment near the cockpit. His left knee hurt, and he remembered the way the former floor had bulged and cracked near where he'd been sitting.
The med kit came free of the wall with no problem. Rex carefully eased his way back down the slant, hurried to Cody's side, pulled out a square bandage, and hesitated for a moment. The skin was pulled and bunched away from the wound. Rex reached out, intending to smooth it back to the way it was supposed to be—his fingers were unsteady.
I know what to do. His mind cleared; he knew the urgency of the situation but didn't feel much. Still he shivered. Stop the bleeding first. He pushed the bandage down onto the wound, pressed hard and breathed out.
"Cody," he called, and glanced over his shoulder again to see if the others responded to his voice. No movement. "Cody…."
After interminable minutes of silence, Rex's arm cramping from the pressure, the bleeding had nearly stopped. With one bloodied hand he grabbed the roll of gauze and began winding it around Cody's head.
"I'm gonna go check on the others after this," Rex said, even though he knew Cody couldn't hear him. He licked his lips again and swallowed the bitter taste with a shudder as he cinched the knot. Cody grunted and jerked his head. "Cody! Cody, can you hear me?"
Cody let out a strangled whimper and clenched his teeth—sucked in a breath and cried out through them again. Rex's stomach burned and his gloved fingers smeared blood on Cody's cheek when he automatically reached for the clean part of his face.
"Cody, it's okay. It's Rex. I-I got you. You've lost a lot of blood. But the bleeding's slowed down. Just… don't move." Rex reached for a hypo of painkillers and injected.
Cody didn't say anything, his noises wordless, eyes screwed shut. His hand, as it jerked upward blindly, collided with Rex's stomach and Rex pulled away. Cody stopped short of touching his own head, hand hovering in mid air, lost. Rex stared at it and stood up. Treatment for shock said to elevate the feet unless the head is wounded. He left them where they were for now, braced against a warp in what had once been the floor.
"Cody, I have to go check on the others. I think they're still alive. I'll be right back. Don't… go anywhere, just stay there," Rex said, realizing as he said it that Cody certainly wasn't going anywhere on his own steam. "It's alright." He pressed his mouth shut against the lie and grabbed the medkit, unfolded an emergency blanket from inside and spread it over Cody. Then he took slow, heavy steps toward the opposite wall, away from Cody's pained breathing and reaching hand.
Once Rex reached the others, he grabbed onto 588's safety restraints to steady himself and felt for a pulse. Nearly forty seconds passed… and he let his hand fall away from 588's neck.
"I'm sorry," he said under his breath, wondering if 588 had died instantly or if he'd been hanging on, unconscious, while Rex tended to Cody. Rex shook himself and moved on to Snapper.
Snapper stirred when Rex pressed him for a pulse, coughed and gasped and coughed again.
"Snapper!" Rex yelled in surprise. "You're alive! I'm gonna get you down from here. Hang on to me." He grabbed Snapper's hanging arm and put it over his own shoulder, then the other one before he planted his feet and pressed the release for Snapper's safety restraints.
The other cadet fell on him with more force than Rex expected—his feet slid backward on the decline and he felt himself falling. A rush of adrenaline; he grabbed Snapper tight and twisted, stumbling to turn around so he was facing the decline—the extra weight overbalanced him and knocked him onto his back, with Snapper on top of him.
"Rex?" Snapper choked out.
"Yeah," Rex said, and patted Snapper on the back even though the weight on his chest was painful. "You're injured?"
"Left side," Snapper said tightly. "Never f…elt anything like it."
"Broken ribs?" Rex asked once he'd managed to ease them both into an awkward sit, careful of Snapper's left side as he helped him lay down in a more comfortable position on his back.
"I dunno… it's… everything," Snapper panted.
Rex tore open Snapper's shirt to see if there was any bleeding, but there were only long dark marks where the restraints had bruised him. He felt Snapper's ribs, but nothing seemed obviously broken.
"Rest for now," Rex said, glancing at Cody again, who was still conscious, good eye open just a slit and watching him. He gave Snapper the next vial of painkillers, opened the second emergency blanket and spread it over him. "I'll go see if Hopper's alive."
Snapper just swallowed and closed his eyes.
Rex's aching knees shuffled him across the slant, toward the cockpit. Medkit in hand, he braced himself for what he might find. He saw bits of transparisteel littering the floor like a blinding kaleidoscope before he was close enough to see Hopper, awake and breathing heavily, several dark and bright spots on his clothing from where flying debris had hit him.
"Rex!" he gasped quietly, eyes wild. "You're alive! I-I tried… to land… is anybody else alive?"
"Cody and Snapper," Rex said, staring in disbelief. "Can you move?"
"Maybe. Yes." Hopper looked down at himself and tried to unbuckle, hands torn, his right one with a small piece of shrapnel stuck in his wrist. He stopped and started again several times, moving slowly, staring as if his eyes wouldn't focus. Rex bent and carefully eased the straps over Hopper's shoulders, helped him pull his arms free. Hopper took a deep breath and grabbed weakly onto Rex's shoulders, and Rex pulled him up only for his eyes to settle on the blood dripping sideways off the pilot's seat, overflowing from where it had gathered in a crease. It was joining a fresh puddle forming under Hopper's boots.
"Oh no," Rex said numbly, staring at it. "Hopper… you're bleeding out."
Hopper clung to him, gulping weakly. His knees shook and buckled. Rex fell to one knee, all warmth drained from his limbs, and eased them both down into a sit, Hopper leaning against him.
"I have to stop the bleeding," Rex said, searching for an obvious sign of where Hopper had been hit. A wide transparent shard was embedded into the seat—there was a tear in Hopper's pants on what would have been the same side. Rex pulled it open wider and pressed another bandage to the area; it soaked through immediately. Rex pulled it away for a split second, just to confirm he had found the right spot, then continued pressing, blood seeping through, around his fingers. He hated how weak Hopper's breathing was.
"I'm dizzy," Hopper said faintly, head falling away from Rex, leading his body to tip that way—Rex reached with one hand to pull him back toward him. Hopper collapsed against Rex's side.
"This isn't working!" Rex cried desperately, Hopper's breathing in his ear, and reached for more gauze to try and cut off the blood supply from higher up Hopper's thigh.
"I don't know what I did wrong." Hopper's voice was high, soft and confused. "I don't know why… this happened…."
"It's okay, Hopper. It's okay," Rex said, even though it wasn't. It wasn't. Fort was dead, 588 was dead, Cody—was going—Hopper was going to…. "Hopper—"
Hopper's eyes were drifting closed.
"Hopper! Hopper. Look at me." Rex reached for Hopper's face with the hand that wasn't occupied in twisting the gauze tight. "Hopper. You did all you could."
Hopper's face was clammy. His eyes connected with Rex's for a moment, tired. He looked so tired. They fell closed and his head drooped again.
"Hopper!" Rex felt for his pulse. "Hopper, open your eyes."
Seven seconds. Ten seconds. Fifteen. Nothing. Rex let go of the tourniquet and put both arms around Hopper to ease his limp body down.
"You did all you could," Rex whispered futilely. The pilot lay quiet, torn leg still propped up over both of Rex's until Rex carefully lifted it off and set it down in front of him, staring at the dark dampness all over him. Call for help, his training told him. But for a long time he couldn't bring himself to move, just staring at the body in front of him.
He'd always known that some of them would die on the battlefield. Probably many. This wasn't even the first brother Rex had lost during training, but….
Hopper's blood covered the floor, and Rex replayed the moment in his mind, the feeling of Fort's body, Hopper's body, so heavy in his arms, and the gasp of Hopper's last words on his cheek. How many more times would he have to do this?
Sluggishly, as if waking up, Rex reached over Hopper's body to the control panel and tried to turn on the long-distance transmitter.
Three tries. No power.
Cody and Snapper needed him. Rex got to his feet and left the cockpit, side-stepping across the slant again, leaving a smear of Hopper's blood wherever he touched.
Snapper was asleep, his pulse still weakly going, his breathing still pained. Cody's eye cracked open again when he heard Rex coming.
"Cody," Rex sighed, half-falling down beside him. "Hopper's dead. Five-Eighty-Eight too. And Fort." A thought gripped him and he pulled back the blanket, patted Cody's chest and legs. "Do you have any other injuries?"
Nothing felt out of place. He undid the seat restraints and pulled Cody's arms through so he could open his shirt and check more thoroughly. There were the same bruises Snapper had—probably his own body looked the same—but no other obvious injuries. Cody made a questioning, wordless noise as Rex sat back and stared at the blood-soaked bandage on his head.
"I should try to clean the wound," Rex said. "If the bleeding's stopped."
He untied the bandage —it took several tries, fumbling at the tight knot with wet fingers. The bleeding had slowed to the slightest ooze, but the wound looked as bad as ever. The sight of its edges and the bone underneath, the burnt chemical smell of the crash, wrung Rex's stomach; for a moment he had to hold his breath as he covered the wound back up.
"I need more light," Rex finally muttered to himself, weighing the risks and benefits of trying to move Cody outside. He'd seen Cody's neck move. And his arm. Maybe his spine wasn't injured. Gently, Rex pressed his fingers to both sides of Cody's upper spine and the base of his skull. "How's your neck?"
Cody gave an indistinct creak, but there were no sudden flinches or gasps of pain.
"Alright… and you can feel your limbs."
"Y…eah." Cody winced, moving each of them a little. The sound of his voice brought a rush of relief.
"I'm going to try moving you." At this angle, it was going to be difficult to smoothly pull Cody upright, but he planted his own feet near Cody's, shifting until he found a firm stance, and took Cody's wrists. It took a moment to get a good grip, his gloves still slippery with Hopper's blood.
With a heave, Rex pulled him onto his back and crossed Cody's arms in front of his chest, Cody's rough breathing in his ear. Cody groaned and his feet shifted weakly, body trembling as he tried and failed to support his own weight on the uneven surface beneath them.
"That's it," Rex said encouragingly. "Just one step at a time."
One step, then another. Cody's breath and weight became Hopper's breath and weight—looking down at his feet, Rex almost expected a fresh pool of blood to form beneath them. His body began to ache after about the seventh step. Even that many steps seemed to take ages. By the time they had reached the jagged opening where metal turned to earth, both of them were panting hard. Just a few more steps and they were free of the wreckage.
He shifted carefully to one knee and let Cody sit before twisting back around to help him lie down on the dirt. Maybe it was just the brighter light, but Cody's face seemed more pale and clammy now, his good eye struggling to focus. For five long seconds, Rex hesitated to leave him.
But he stood. He had to move. Within a dazed minute and a few lurching steps, Rex had brought the first aid kit back to Cody's side, but two of the other supply crates, including the water, had broken loose in the crash and were nowhere to be found inside the wreckage.
Patches of white among the foliage outside caught Rex's eye: a few packs of dry rations were scattered around the crash site. He went out and gathered them in his arms as he searched. When he found the supply crate they'd come from, overturned and half-buried in mud, the water packs were still stuck to the inside, miraculously less than half of them burst. All told it was supposed to be enough for all five of them for twenty hours. Now it might last him, Cody, and Snapper a couple of days.
He pushed the crate upright, dumped his armload of rations in, grabbed a few water packs and hurried back to Cody's side. There, methodically, he laid out his materials on the lid of the medkit: gauze pad, tweezers, bulb syringe, bandages and bacta patch. He pulled on the fresh pair of gloves from the medkit and bent over Cody's head, frowning.
Cody stared through him as he removed the bandage and took a good look at the edges of ragged skin. Now that the bleeding had stopped, Rex could see more clearly that the wound was actually two wounds—one at the top right of Cody's forehead in a rough U-shape, and another jagged line curving around Cody's eye socket and across his cheek. He grabbed a hypo of local anesthetic and discharged it as close to the wound as he could—Cody gasped and flinched away. Rex put his left hand firmly against his cheek to keep him steady.
"Cody," he said quietly. "I'm going to scrub the wound clean. And then… I'm going to try and stitch it up."
Cody's eyes were shut tight. That first hypo clearly hadn't been sufficient on its own, but now Cody's breathing slowed, and he swallowed with some effort
"Okay?" Rex asked. "It's kicking in, right?"
"H..o..kay," Cody managed. "Yeah."
Rex uncapped the water pack and filled the syringe. Next he placed the tweezers in the middle of the upper forehead wound, lifting the loose skin a little away from the skull. A little tape held them in place so that he didn't have to. Cody breathed slowly, deliberately.
Gauze pad in one hand, syringe in the other, Rex filled the wound with water and began scrubbing, fast and thorough. Cody stiffened, but didn't cry out—the anesthetic was working. Blood welled up immediately and spread down Cody's face again, and Rex continued, more water, more scrubbing, trying not to think about nerve endings, until Cody was spluttering a little as the blood ran into his mouth, and Rex was satisfied it was enough. Pressure on the wound—Cody began to breathe easier as the bleeding slowed.
"Okay." Rex left that wound covered once he was satisfied that the bleeding had stopped. "Time for the rest."
"The…?" Cody's voice was a weak croak.
"Sorry, Cody," Rex said grimly, giving himself over to protocol. No time to think, or feel, only to act. "Still two-thirds to go."
It took longer this time, and the tweezers were nearly useless due to the length and angle—at several points Rex found himself holding Cody's skin apart with his own fingertips instead as he scrubbed. Once again, blood and water flowed freely down Cody's face, and he kept his mouth clamped tightly shut.
Rex tried to hurry, but it was still a few minutes later that he finally discarded the gauze pad he'd been scrubbing with and went back to putting pressure on the wound.
Then, he could finally take stock of Cody's tense face, his fists, and the shivering that hadn't quite subsided. Rex could feel the chill trickle back into his veins, and the images of Cody, glassy-eyed and still, swam back to the surface of his mind. Rex tried to imagine graduating without him, and could only summon a blank without reference points, a thick, clouded night sky.
For a long time, Rex sat there, neither of them speaking, Cody's eyes remaining closed until Rex began to wonder if he was asleep. To reassure himself, he kept watch on Cody's breathing. Snapper hadn't moved or made a sound while Rex worked. It was time to check on him, too. Slowly, Rex unfolded his aching limbs and stepped away.
A blur of minutes and steps later, satisfied that Snapper was merely sleeping, not dead, Rex's fingers pulled the curved needle through the skin of Cody's skull, barely believing what he was watching himself do. More blood welled up from the punctures. A muscle in Cody's jaw quivered, despite the painkillers. Maybe it was from tension in his spine.
In, out, clip, tie… the needle seemed so close to the bone. It was getting slippery. Rex hated every second. Halfway up the gash, despite the fresh streak of red reaching his jaw and neck, Cody's breathing quieted again, and Rex's stomach disappeared.
"Cody?" He said faintly, and felt for the last beats of his pulse. But they kept going. Cody breathed steadily… sleeping. "Yeah," Rex said, pulling his hand back toward the next knot he had to tie. "Rest…."
As he stitched, he listened to Cody's breathing, waiting for each one to be his last. But he kept breathing, and the planet kept quiet enough to let Rex hear it.
…
Rex stepped over the root with his right foot, stopping for a moment to regain his balance before lurching forward with his left foot as well. The weight of Fort's body on his back made his arms ache and his legs feel like heavy stumps.
Around him, the swamp was full of cheeping and chirping despite the shattered bits of spacecraft scattered through the twisted trees. They weren't that far from the crash site, but Rex felt as if he'd walked five miles. Muscles quaking, Rex took another step, then another, tugging himself and Fort free of the tiny thorns on a nearby vine, and stumbled into a hidden hole in the ground, nearly rolling his ankle. The sturdy boots saved him as he wobbled and shifted in place.
Lifting his foot, it felt as if gravity had doubled. Rex stepped onto the edge of the hole; mud slipped under him and he fell, Fort's body sliding off his back with a loud crackle and thud as the brush beneath broke its fall.
Rex pushed himself upright, but paused, trembling.
Any adrenaline he'd had was gone. In its place, sudden weakness weighed on Rex's body. He fell back onto the seat of his pants, let his head rest on his knees so the dizziness could ease. But his neck hurt too much to stay at that angle for long.
Shock? Fatigue and dizziness were symptoms of shock. Rex stared at his bloody, mud-streaked pants, shivered and folded his arms tightly, though the air wasn't cold.
He'd thought about burying the bodies. He'd already put up a tent and moved Cody and Snapper inside it to get away from the blood and corpses that would soon be attracting animals. But burying all three would take too much energy. Rex had tried to start, with an improvised shovel, and hit a thick network of roots right away.
To block out the sight of Fort's body, he moved to put his hands over his eyes but stopped; both hands were caked in mud. A persistent skittering sound came from the jungle around him.
The weight pressed down on him again. The open eyes. Cody and Snapper could already be dead too. Rex lurched to his feet, skin buzzing, and rushed back the way he'd come, toward the tent on the other side of the dark, gaping wreck.
As he broke from the treeline and came into view, nothing seemed amiss at first. But as he came closer to the open tent, he saw them: a swarm of what looked like small birds plucking at Cody's open shirt, his hair—he wasn't moving or making any noise.
"GET OFF HIM!" Rex roared, grabbing the rifle he'd left near the tent, and the birds—no, lizards—scattered in all directions as Rex let off two warning shots in brilliant bursts of light. Rex rushed inside the tent and dropped the rifle. He knelt by Cody, touched his chest to see if it rose or fell. When it did, he checked Snapper too. It took a long moment for him to convince himself that Snapper was alive. He stared at a nearby scorched root, seared through by his blaster bolt, and barely remembered pulling the trigger. How had Cody and Snapper slept through that?
Go see if the comm system is salvageable. Rex heard the command from the rational part of his mind, and moved to obey. But his body didn't.
Rex shifted his gaze back to Snapper. He tried to force himself to get up and check on him at least.
Get up. The men need you.
Rex turned his head to look at Cody and put his muddy hand back on his chest. The emergency blanket crinkled under his touch. The world tilted and Rex collapsed onto one elbow, onto his side. He just needed to rest for a second. Just a second, and then he would get up and keep going.
…
When Rex opened his eyes again, it was still light. The feather-lizards stood in the mud near the tent, watching them, but none approached. He didn't know what time it was, but his neck and the shoulder he'd slept on were full of icy fire when he tried to sit up, tight and hard as grappling cables. Cody was still breathing, some of the residual blood dried into his hair and flaking off his swollen cheek. The bacta patch he'd put on earlier seemed to have sealed well to his skin. Rex turned to check Snapper.
The other cadet was still on his back, and the minute Rex touched his neck he knew something was wrong. The skin felt cool and strange, and Snapper's jaw and neck were stiff. Rex tried to lift Snapper's hand from the floor. No pulse.
"No," he said, as if chastising him. A shock went through Rex like a live wire, exploding out through his spine into tiny points all over his skin. "Snapper." The body was already rigid. "No!"
Rex pushed himself away, staggered to his feet and out of the tent, kicking at a nearby piece of scrap metal.
He dug his hands into his hair; dried mud flaked off and caught in his eyelashes. He'd fallen asleep. He'd neglected his squadmate. A scream of anger and denial pressed silently against his teeth.
"..ex?"
Rex looked over toward the tent. Moved closer so he could see Cody, who was squinting at him blearily.
"Rex," Cody tried again. "What…s.. wrong…?"
Rex stared at him. "What's wrong?" he echoed.
He took a deep, unsteady breath and tried to pull himself together, reminding himself that he'd treated what he knew of Snapper's wounds and there were no medical scanners here, nothing he could have done that he didn't already try. You did what you could. It just wasn't enough.
Cody blinked his one eye, the other still swollen beyond any use.
Rex took another breath and went to Cody's side. "How do you feel?"
Cody just groaned quietly. Rex nodded and pressed his lips together.
"I'll get you some water. But then I have to go… take care of… some things."
Cody said nothing to that, so Rex patted his chest lightly and hesitated a moment before turning away, a part of him certain that Cody's death was inevitable. I'm going to lose him too.
No I'm not, Rex told himself as he went outside and headed purposefully toward the crate full of water packs. Not yet. Even in his head it sounded like an empty promise.
Coming back with water and rations in hand, he again braced himself to find Cody dead, but Cody lifted a hand slightly before Rex had even reached his side. Rex opened a water pack and carefully put his hand beneath Cody's head to raise it up before pressing the pouch to his lips. Cody drank, stopping a few times to cough and snarl at the pain of doing so.
"Careful," Rex told him, and Cody sighed. "Go on, you have to drink as much as you can. You've lost a lot of fluids."
Cody tried to drink more, but eventually stopped and clamped his mouth shut until Rex pressed half a ration stick against his lips.
"Eat it," Rex commanded. "You won't heal if you're starving."
Cody opened his mouth and chewed weakly while Rex watched.
"Thanks," Cody managed to say after he swallowed the last bit. He sounded exhausted. "I feel terrible."
"You look terrible," Rex said, more sadly and less jokingly than he'd meant to.
Cody just closed his eye. Rex watched his chest rise and fall a few times before pushing some rations between his own teeth and forcing down some water. The sounds of his own chewing were a welcome relief from the loud thoughts in his own mind.
"Is Snapper still alive?" Cody mumbled.
"No. I need to move his body," Rex said immediately, although the thought made him want to lie down and shut his eyes too more than anything. He got to his feet. Once he got all of them out of sight, he promised himself, he could rest. He looped his arms around Snapper's chest and dragged him backward out of the tent, wondering if any of the rations he'd just swallowed would stay in his stomach for long.
….
By the time Rex managed to maneuver 588 and Hopper out of the wreckage, he was drenched in sweat, and his heart was pounding in his head. He let Hopper's body fall from his back and join the other three he'd dragged to this spot; night was falling, and Rex could no longer stand.
He was on his knees still, staring at the four corpses laid haphazardly together, when darkness settled fully, thick and impenetrable around him. The air seemed to thicken too in his throat, and he found himself breathing unevenly, jaw aching in the effort of holding himself together.
It was so quiet. The night air was like a damp hand on the back of his neck. Only the occasional throaty croak of a night creature made him jump, wondering if it was a human sound.
Rex had lost brothers before. But it was so sterile on Kamino… their bodies were whisked away somewhere, dealt with and forgotten… a complete disappearance, nothing so tangible left behind.
Around him, the darkness of the jungle began to rearrange itself into a battlefield, a future battlefield he'd tried to visualize so many times during training. But the droids were gone, and he was still here, brothers' bodies stretching out in front of him. Countless bodies, to recognize, to carry, to abandon, to try to forget the way they looked as corpses—just bodies, wearing the faces of friends he'd never see again. In his mind, they were all there in that place, just waiting. The bodies of every brother he knew, waiting to become this.
It took Rex a moment to realize that he'd closed his eyes. Moisture and warmth gathered where his jaw met his neck, maybe sweat, maybe not. The thought of lying down on the jungle floor seemed natural, and Rex imagined himself resting there, just for a moment. He planted his hands on the soil in front of him, and pushed himself to stand. His entire body ached.
Somehow, he found his way back to the camp in the dark, the tangled undergrowth giving way to the open muddy gash of the crash site. Then at last he half-crawled through the tent flap, back to Cody's side in the darkness, quaking so much that it was difficult to trust that the movement of Cody's chest was not actually an extension of his own.
"Cody?" Rex collapsed again, curled beside him.
Cody breathed out a sound through his nose, almost a whine.
Rex closed his eyes and let out a hacking breath of relief, the smell of mud filling his nose as he held his own face between his arms.
….
Rex crouched in the cockpit, surrounded by Hopper's dried blood. Insects were everywhere, buzzing and whining, but at least the body was gone now.
Over his nose and mouth he'd tied a muddy shred of his sleeve to block out some of the smell. His eyes still watered as he placed the last repaired plug into its proper port and dialed the frequency.
"This is a distress call from Cadet Transport Seven-Seven-Nine. This is a distress call from Cadet Transport Seven-Seven-Nine. Is anybody out there? We are two survivors, CT-Seven-Five-Six-Seven and CT-Two-Two-Two-Four. In need of medical assistance. Repeat. This is a distress call from Cadet Transport Seven-Seven-Nine…."
Rex paused for twenty seconds before he tried the message again. A third time, a fourth… he kept going, up to ten, twelve. With each silence he imagined a quiet beeping in an office on Kamino, or a silence there as well—maybe the transmitter was still broken after all, or not sufficiently powerful, the message degrading as soon as it left the planet.
After the fifteenth try, Rex stopped. There were other things he needed to be doing if they were going to survive. He stood and left the infested cockpit, carefully crossing the still-bloodstained interior before hurrying back to the tent.
"So?" Cody asked, when Rex knelt beside him. The left side of his face was practically iridescent, all purple and green, more colorful every time Rex looked. But it was no longer as swollen as it once was.
Bruising, but no clear sign of infection so far.
"So… did you fix it?" Cody prompted again when Rex failed to do anything but stare.
"Yeah," Rex said.
"And? How long are we waiting?"
Rex inhaled slowly and pulled the cloth on his face down to his neck. "No reply."
"WH-" Cody started coughing, and Rex kept an eye out for blood, but there was none. "What? Well, try again, I'm sure—"
"I will, later. I already tried at least a dozen times," Rex heard himself say calmly. "If the transmitter's still broken, I'll find a way to fix it." A gut feeling told him it wasn't the transmitter that was the issue. Their trainers simply weren't accepting transmissions during this sort of survival mission.
"And what if you can't?" Cody asked.
"The master chief will check on us once we've been here for seven to nine rotations. It'll be fine. We can make it until then."
"Oh, easy for you to say!" Cody growled against the pain, eye screwed shut.
Rex stood up and waited, until Cody opened his eye again and met his flat stare. Neither of them said anything for a moment.
"Sorry," Cody said softly after a moment. "I didn't mean that. I just…."
Rex offered a hand. "Let's get you cleaned up. There's a river nearby that seems relatively safe."
"I don't know if—" Cody began, then bit it down and grabbed Rex's hand. Rex stepped down to brace an arm against Cody's back and help him to his feet.
"That's it," Rex said sternly. "Come on. I'm sure you have some business to take care of too."
Cody breathed out in what might have been a weak laugh. "Yeah… guess so."
Long minutes later Cody was sitting up to his chest on a rock near the shore of a slow-moving river, looking green and panting from the exertion it had taken just to get to that spot. Rex stood chest-deep in front of him, undoing the fasteners of his jacket, helping him slowly out of his clothes while Cody kept his eyes downcast, half-focused as he looked inward to fight the nausea.
"There you go," Rex said under his breath as he got Cody stripped down and could finally properly scrub at the blood on their clothes. "Just sit there for now. At least the water's warm, right?"
"Yeah," Cody breathed. "You sure there's nothing in here that might like the taste?"
"If there is, it didn't notice me this morning."
Cody sighed shakily and stared at the surface of the water, or perhaps beyond it to his knees or his hands while Rex worked, watching the blood trail away from the clothes with the current. The sight was a bitter relief.
"Rex," Cody said after a moment.
"Hmm?" Rex looked up from his work. Cody was squinting at him.
"Are you alright?"
"What?" Rex stared back at him. "I'm not wounded. Just whiplash and bruises."
"I didn't mean—I meant… how did you do all this?" Cody asked. "You repaired the transmitter… you moved all the other guys, and me, and—"
"I had to," Rex said, the memory of Snapper rushing over him in cold regret. "I had to do what I could."
Cody breathed in suddenly, blinking his undamaged eye rapidly. He swallowed. "Isn't it… don't you feel…."
"I don't know." Rex told himself it was true, if only for the current moment. He didn't know what he was feeling, except relief, seeing Cody sitting there, so obviously alive. And a determination to keep him that way for now.
Cody shakily splashed some water on his chest and neck. Rex put the jacket he'd been working on over a tree branch and waded a bit closer so he could cup water in his hands and work carefully through Cody's blood-caked hair. Red-brown rivulets ran down his cheeks, but they soon ran pink, then clear as Rex scrubbed.
"Ow."
"Sorry," Rex mumbled, and tried to rub the water in more gently. "Just figured you'd rather not make a home for flesh-eating life-forms on your head."
"Right," Cody agreed wryly, then sighed and put a hand on Rex's wrist as he dipped his hands for another cup full of water. "Thanks, Rex."
Rex frowned, Cody's earnest tone resonating painfully in his hollow chest. "I…." He paused again. "Yeah, we're gonna be fine."
Cody didn't agree, just closed his eye as Rex worked another handful of water into his hair.
….
"There you are," Cody said, from where he lay in the tent. "What were you doing?"
Rex stepped into the tent holding a sheet of scrap metal. On the makeshift plate, six knobby green roots sat half-blackened and steaming.
"Dinner." Rex set the plate down in the middle of the tent—it wasn't hot. He'd transferred the roots off the metal he'd cooked them on. They were too hard to bite into raw.
"We're out of field rations, then." The emergency blanket crinkled as Cody sat up slowly; Rex could see in his eyes that his head still swam whenever he moved.
"Yeah." They weren't given that many to begin with, and even after losing the rest of their squad, relying on the rations solely had quickly depleted them. "We've got enough water to last until tomorrow morning… after that we'll have to sterilize the river water."
"Great," Cody sighed, and picked up a root with a dubious expression made even more lopsided by his swollen face. He bit into the smaller end and chewed slowly. "Hmm."
Rex bit into his also. The taste was… definitely sharp in a green sort of way, but at least he could chew it now.
For a moment they ate in silence. Outside, a swirling drizzle of fine drops began. The bulk of their clothes were hanging from nearby branches outside the tent, but they'd already been wet to begin with from the dip in the river.
"Of course it's raining," Cody grumbled, between small bites.
"Just pretend we're back on Kamino," Rex suggested.
"Well… if we were back on Kamino, I'd be in a bacta tank right now."
Rex didn't let his mind get caught up in useless wishes. "I know… this isn't an ideal situation. But the important thing is, we are going to survive."
The rain intensified and drummed on the tent, filling the resulting silence.
"This is… different," Cody finally said, between bites of the root. "How long did it take you to find these?"
"A few hours. They're a little hard to dig out and a lot of the easier ones were rotten already. At least they cook up pretty fast."
Cody made a disgusted noise. "You're probably expending more energy finding these things than you'll get by eating 'em."
"Not as much as you're expending by complaining about it," Rex teased. It was easy to say now that he could actually sit down and eat. But out there knee-deep in mud, trying to yank the stubborn roots out of the sucking clay, there had been moments when he'd felt the same sense of futility.
"Rex, I'm serious." The bantering tone vanished, and Cody's shoulders hunched, his voice growing a little thick. "If I'm starving, you must be even worse—you've been actually doing things. This isn't fair to you. This was supposed to be a routine endurance mission, one where we could all help each other out."
Rex's chewing sounded loud to his own ears. He swallowed.
"Maybe it's not fair. But let's try to stay positive. This just means it's more realistic." Rex focused on his tuber.
Realistically… Cody could die any time. That thought, that certainty had clung to him with every step he'd taken today. No matter how close any brother got to him—Rex knew now, the images imprinted on his eyelids—they would just be bodies sooner or later.
"Oh, so you're expecting me to be the dead weight in the future too," Cody joked. "I see how it is."
"No," Rex said, trying to keep his voice light despite Cody's uncanny choice of words. He could see what Cody was doing. His concern, his honesty… like an arm around the shoulders, pulling him in. He wanted to let it touch him, but it all felt far away. "But at least, after surviving this… I'll be more prepared for a real disaster on a real battlefield."
He stared at an empty corner of the tent, finished off the rest of his first root and took a bite out of the second before he let himself look up again.
Cody sighed and grimaced at him comically. "Just be careful. You're not the only future commander here right now, just the only useful one. If you work yourself too hard, what happens then?"
Rex shook his head, although the movement was still painful. "You don't need to worry about me, Cody. I'm okay, and we're not in any real danger for now." He'd told himself that so many times that day, even when Cody had struggled to sit up that morning, and had vomited on the way to the pit Rex had dug for a latrine… even when Rex's muscles ached and he still felt shaky and weak when he passed the ship wreckage. Yes, for now, Cody would probably live. But….
"Just don't get carried away thinking this is your big chance to show me up." Cody teased. "I guess it's true. In the unlikely event that I survive this, you do get the better reputation for doing everything."
Rex forced a faint smile and took another bite, chewing slowly, not sure what to say. Normally, Cody's teasing helped, even if it didn't make him laugh. But although they sat within a meter of each other, Rex felt as if he were watching and listening from another room.
Cody's smile slowly faded. "You look tired."
"Yeah," Rex admitted, once his throat was clear. That, at least, he knew for sure. "We'd better finish this."
For the next couple of minutes, they ate in silence, until the tubers were gone. In his mind, thoughts bled into one another, too unformed for words.
Rex pulled the emergency blanket straight and lay down under it, and Cody followed suit. They faced each other, two crinkling masses, and Rex hoped they would both fall asleep quickly.
"Sorry," Cody said.
"For what?" They both spoke quietly over the rain. Rex couldn't see Cody's expression now; the light had faded so much.
"Guess I'm not very funny tonight." Cody's voice sounded like he was grimacing.
Rex shut his eyes and didn't move.
"I'd be dead without you," Cody whispered tightly. "I was only joking around because I didn't want to think about how much my head hurts."
"I know," Rex said softly, and automatically put a hand on Cody's shoulder to reassure him. The gesture felt preprogrammed and empty. "It's good to hear you talking again."
"If we get out of here… when, we get out of here…" Cody began.
"You'll get your bacta soak," Rex said. "And all the foodboards you can stuff in your mouth."
Cody laughed for a split second and groaned. "That's not what I was gonna say."
Rex sighed, trying to remember how many painkillers they had left.
"I am going to tell the master chief everything you did here," Cody went on. "Even if I don't graduate, I'll say everything I can to make sure—"
"You don't have to do that," Rex broke in. He was already there in that black, clouded sky after all. Suddenly, graduation, the real battlefield they'd been training for, seemed too close. "If I become a commander, it should be on my own merits, not floating along on the good word of anyone else."
"It's not floating along," Cody argued. "And I'm the one relying on you. We rely on each other. To get through this, and to get through the war. I just want to make sure Os Tala knows that you're someone anyone can rely on."
After a long silence, Cody added in an undertone, "Something's bothering you. Why don't you tell me what's on your mind? I know I'm not good for much right now, but you could at least rely on me to listen."
Who can a clone rely on? Rex thought. Only himself. And in a way that was what the Kaminoans had been trying to teach them all their lives. Yes, they relied on each other; they had to, to survive. But that could only go so far before it became a weakness. The future he and Cody had been working toward with such passion seemed empty now.
"What, you don't trust me?" Cody cleared his throat. "You think I just say anything that comes into my head, no matter who's listening?"
"No…." Rex frowned into the darkness.
"It's not just anyone listening to me, Rex, it's you. I trust you."
"I know." A chill washed over Rex's skin and was gone. Too late, he said, "I trust you too."
Cody sighed. "Maybe now's not the time. But all I'm saying is… sometimes you could say more than you do. You don't have to take everything on by yourself. I want to pull my weight."
"You're injured," Rex stated.
"I know. You cleaned me up. And you've watched every other brother we left with die. So…."
Rex pushed back wearily against the images, the weight of those bodies on his chest.
Silence. Cody shifted a little beside him; the blanket crinkled. Rex rolled onto his back, staring up into the darkness.
The rain drummed, louder and faster, a static that drowned out thought. It was so dark Rex could barely see his hand in front of his face when he lifted it—the rustle of the blanket blended in with the rain.
And he couldn't hear Cody breathing, or moving. As the awkward minutes slid by, he imagined again the body beside him going still and rigid.
Rex reached hesitantly, shifted back onto his side to check the rise and fall of Cody's chest. But Cody's hand closed on his arm first.
"Rex." A low murmur. "I'm scared too. You'd be crazy if you weren't."
Rex wasn't sure if scared was the word. There was no adrenaline, giving him strength to act. He just felt empty, drained. Resigned.
"You're not crazy, are you?" Cody whispered.
Rex thought about rolling over so his back was to Cody. But instead, he let himself breathe out. "No."
"It's gonna be okay." Cody squeezed his arm a little, pulling him closer so that their heads barely touched for a moment.
Did Cody really believe that? Rex wondered, the emptiness in him gathering a fresh ache around the edges. Had Cody not thought ahead to the inevitable day when one of them would die? Most likely he had, but, like Rex, he hadn't fully realized the weight of it.
Or maybe he had already made peace with it. Cody made friends easily—the loss of one close brother would no doubt hurt him, but then he would move on, more friends, more brothers, jumping into their lives with that foolhardy ease and bonding again and again for as long as he lived.
But in Rex's mind, the time before Cody was… different. He knew his brothers, he worked with them. They were family in that sense. It had been enough, he'd thought, before Cody had drawn him in, broken the barrier. It should have always been enough.
Cody's hand stayed on his shoulder, a warm reminder of something, a sense of meaning Rex couldn't begin to describe in words. A dangerous sense of meaning that would surely disappear with Cody someday.
But what was more meaningful than fighting to protect thousands of brothers rather than one? To protect the Republic? Fighting to make history?
That is enough, Rex told himself firmly. This ache would turn to action if he could just remember that. It has to be enough.