Mountainside

by corellianred

For Trin, the promise of taking her new speeder out for a decent long ride was the real sweetener. Corso's always saying how he misses the outdoors. And, well, there's a little part of her that kind of likes the idea of the two of them getting away for a couple of days. What could possibly go wrong? T for language and some violence.

Letting someone take care of you? Pfft. But looking out for each other? That's something that Trin can get behind.

---

Trin knew she would own the Aratech Eclipse landspeeder the moment she set her eyes on it at the dealer. She loves the cool, low hum of the Aratech engines, so unlike the high-pitched near-whistle on the Rendilis. She's also a big fan of the low-slung race stance she has to adopt to ride it, and the understated matte finish looks great — they both also make it harder to spot from far away, and easier to camouflage. She'd had the dealer add on a longer transparisteel fairing so that she can pop her head up a little more, to make it easier to keep her eye on her scanner without losing sight of the ground in front of them. Then she'd sweet-talked him into installing a more comfortable pillion and grab-bar for any passengers she might want to bring along, and that qualified her for the vendor's bonus engine upgrade offer… well, by the time she was done with that dealer she'd walked away with one of the nicest speeders she'd ever owned.

Best of all, it's fast and it's quiet — and these are the two things that make it a perfect choice for slipping quietly around Alderaan's mountainous terrain. She thumbs the accelerator control and grins as the little speeder responds quickly, humming just a metre above the ground, almost brushing against the trees' low-hanging canopy of branches. One of House Organa's recon squad captains offered a good sum for them to gather the data from a batch of recon droids a few hours' speeder ride away. Overnight trip, he'd said, and threw in an extra twenty percent on his original offer. The extra money doesn't hurt one bit, but for Trin, the promise of taking her new speeder out for a decent long ride was the real sweetener. And as for Corso, he's always saying how he misses the outdoors — as soon as he heard the words overnight and camping she knew he'd be sold.

And, well, there's a little part of her that kind of likes the idea of the two of them getting away for a couple of days.

Okay, maybe a not so little part. An increasingly bigger part. A part that's not real sure about what's happening here, but who's quite happy to have him riding pillion, just a few inches away from her.

"Say, captain?" he says over her shoulder, having to shout a little to be heard over the Eclipse's engine. "How much further?"

"'Bout ninety clicks," she says. "Time for a breather?"

He gives her a thumbs up and she pulls up at the next broad patch in the path, bringing the Eclipse to a neat little stop with a ninety degree spin, just like she learned back on Coruscant's swoop tracks. Damn, but this has got to be one of the best speeders she's ever ridden. Maybe even the best.

He pulls off his helmet and shakes his hair out. "Can I drive the rest of the way?"

"Don't like my driving?"

"Sure I do," he smiles, and takes a swallow from his canteen. "Just that I'm kind of interested in what you've got under the hood there."

"Well, I don't let just anyone look at what I've got under the hood," she replies — almost too easy, that shot, too obvious, and yet he still almost splutters on a mouthful of water. She might just let him drive the rest of the way for that response.

"Uh, captain, I wasn't… I mean…"

But then there's a long, low growl that seems like it might have come from somewhere above their heads, and Trin goes reflexively for her holster, her blood turning to cold water. She can't see the creature but she knows it can't be far — crouched somewhere in the shadows of the rocky cliff face nearby, perhaps, or hiding in a nearby tree. Corso grabs his blaster rifle from the back of the speeder, pure instinct driving him forward to stand with her, hands sure on his weapon.

Trin holds her breath and looks around for whatever it is that produced such an awful sound. There are vorn tigers in these parts, mean predators that stand about thigh-high on most humanoids, with a powerful bite and a nasty set of claws to match. Grey-blue mottled fur to help camouflage it in snow-covered mountains, wide-set eyes, two swept-back horns, and big, big paws.

Stupid, she tells herself. She should have pulled up someplace more open.

From a few metres away, just off the path, there's a tiny rustle of plant matter, and Trin's head whips around to where it seems to have come from. There's an animal, crouched low against the ground, blending almost perfectly into the undergrowth with its unblinking green eyes fixed on them, yellow, sharp teeth bared in a silent growl.

Funny, I could have sworn that growl came from higher up…

"Look," she breathes, and brings her blaster up slowly. It'll only take her a second to aim for a perfect shot between its eyes —

But behind her, above their heads, comes another growl, and Corso makes a wordless shout as another big cat leaps down from the rock face with its great paws in front of it, slamming into him with all its weight and the benefit of plenty of gravity and momentum, its jaws wide as it makes a loud hissing, spitting growl just inches from his face. Corso stumbles back and the tiger bounces away to land on its back. Trin brings up her blaster and shoots, rapid-fire and wild, onto the ground, a few bolts scorching the animal's flank. It hisses again with its long fangs bared, as it scrabbles backwards and away from them, bright furious eyes never leaving them.

The first cat makes its own strike, then, dashing forward with ease to clamp its jaws around Trin's armoured leg. She screams and the tiger falls to its side, paws wrapped around her leg, claws spread wide and digging into the durasteel weave of her greaves, using its weight and the merciless grasp of its jaws on her calf to bring her down with it. She lands hard on one hip, crying out, somehow keeping a grasp on her blaster.

"No you don't," Corso growls through gritted teeth, wildly striking out at it with his own booted foot. It hisses behind its mouthful of Trin's armour and bites down again, getting a firmer grasp onto her leg, and she cries out and swings her blaster over its head, almost connecting with its horns. Her instinct says shoot it, shoot! but somehow, some part of her head is coldly, logically, telling her that she's got more chance of shooting her own foot off in her haste to get free.

It's lucky, then, that Corso's such a quick shot. He peels off three blaster bolts in quick procession, the shots slapping right into the animal's haunches, neatly severing its spinal cord in the process. It screams loudly, letting go of Trin's leg in the process, and she scrambles back a few paces to get herself as far away from the dying creature's fangs and claws as she can. Her leg is on fire, it seems, but she's able to pull herself up and get just enough distance between her and the animal before it makes one last attempt to lash out at everything around it.

Corso puts the cat out of its misery, then, one more sure shot into the back of the struggling tiger's skull, and turns to look for the other animal, already slinking off into the forest. He lets off another warning shot near its back legs and it lopes away, growling.

Trin lets out a breath she didn't realise she'd been holding, and then there's the rush of endorphins and adrenaline, the last of her body's fight-or-flight reactions making her lightheaded and shivery.

"You okay there?" Corso asks, voice tight with stress.

"I think so…" She pulls apart the plates of armour on the leg that the vorn tiger had mangled. It's not hurting yet, but it will real soon. She's relieved as the plasteel comes away without revealing any blood seeping through the fabric of her leggings, but there's the hot ache of bruised muscle under the skin. It's going to be purple and swollen within the hour, she knows it.

Corso makes a wincing sound, wiping at his face with the back of his hand.

"What's wrong?"

"Um, I…"

Then his expression changes, and he whirls around to face away from her and vomits twice into the grass on the side of the track.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa—"

"Don't worry." He's leaning over with his hands on both knees, with his head hanging down towards the grass. "I just need a minute to—"

He heaves again, making a miserable gagging sound as he does so. Trin's still wearing a full canteen of water on her belt; when he seems like he's done she unhooks it and hands it to him. It's probably warm, but it's not like that's going to matter so much. "C'mon, drink some of this," she says, worry beginning to cling hot to her chest.

"I will, I'm jus'… just goin' to wait till I…" Corso trails off, and rocks back onto his heels, his gaze gone way out into the trees like something's catching his attention, and for a minute she thinks he's going to hurl again. But he looks up at her, instead, his pupils blown wide and black. "I, uh… wow."

Something's very wrong with this.

Then she remembers.

Vorn tigers spit. Not just any old spit, but some kind of toxin. The one that jumped onto Corso hissed right into his face.

She moves her hand to the pulse point by his throat, to find his heartbeat racing, his skin hot and tacky with sweat. Definitely some kind of reaction to whatever it is. Not shock, perhaps neurological…

She hands him the water again. "You're burning up. Drink some more of this."

"Yup." He takes the canteen and stares down into the mouth of the bottle.

"Drink it," she repeats — maybe too firmly, and he blinks a couple of times, but he does it anyway. Good. "I'm going to holo an outpost, okay? Then we'll go get you looked at," she says, a little more kindly this time.

"'Kay," he says, eyes big and wide, and even though he's looking right at her it's as though his gaze is focused somewhere way out into the forest behind her. Trin pulls her holotransmitter off her belt and punches in the frequency of the last medical outpost they found. It connects, eventually, the signal poor and flickering.

"Th — — — MD03, medical droi — — your situation?"

Oh, come on… No picture might have been fine, but no audio is a deal breaker. "This is Captain Trin ai Kari of the Seven Seeds. We need urgent medical advice."

"—for ahea — incomplete imm — — — medical transm — — — your position — — —"

"Say again, MD03."

"— Signal st — repeat — — — incomple—"

The signal cuts out.

Stupid kriffing thing. Trin didn't think they were so far from friendly territory that she wouldn't have been able to holo. Is it interference from the nearby mountains? Or maybe there's something jamming their signals? She tries again for the ship this time, in the hope that someone aboard can pick it up, but there's even less success there — just a few silent seconds of Risha looking annoyed at the holo's control console, then nothing.

Great.

"You think you're gonna spill your guts again?"

"Uh, I don't think so." He looks at her with a squint like he's having trouble focusing. "I feel… I feel pretty amazing, Captain. Kind of floaty. But also… kind of weird," he adds, curiously. He's shifting his weight from one foot to another, like his whole body's been made restless and uneasy. She puts her fingertips back to his pulse. It's still racing, but it's regular and strong, a good sign. "Weren't we going to camp someplace out here?" he asks her.

"I want you to see a medic. A proper one." She tries to calculate how long it should take to get back to Wardpost Peth, the last friendly manned base they passed, a hundred or so kilometres away on the speeder. If she can take a reasonably straight line along known paths back to Organa territory it could have taken only twenty, maybe thirty minutes, but she doesn't even want to imagine what'll happen if they run into trouble on the way. Better to take a route looping around and over the tiny, rocky tracks along the mountains, to avoid Thul patrols and Killik hives. Safer, but it ought to bring the travel up to about ninety minutes, she guesses, so long as Corso can keep his head on that long.

Trin picks out a kolto medpac from her kit, turning it over a few times to check that it's still intact, and rolls the end of her leggings up to reveal her bruised calf. She spikes it straight into the muscle and swears past the pain.

"Do you think you're going to be okay to get back on that speeder?" she asks.

"I think so. You… you'd better drive though."

Trin laughs. "No kidding. C'mon, let's get your gear back on and take you back to the wardpost."

She swings one leg back over the speeder and waits for Corso to pick up his things and take his spot behind her. The modded pillion she'd ordered for the Eclipse came with a pair of handles either side of the driver's seat, but if it seems like he's about to lose his grip, she wants to know about it right away. She reaches back to grab both of his hands and pulls them around her waist — "Hey," he says, surprised — so that they meet in the middle, in front of her stomach.

"Now, hang on tight," she tells him, and starts the engine.

#

Later, as the sun begins to skim the top of the mountains and the temperature drops, Trin risks taking the speeder up a scrubby path close to the snow line to stop for awhile, to take the chance to look out over the terrain ahead and see if she can spot any obvious trouble. She's already seen two patrols — she's not sure who'd wear those unfamiliar colours, but judging by where they are, she's willing to guess it's some small-fry ally of the Ulgos. About two clicks away, down towards the river, is a distinctive row of mounds that surround a Killik hive.

Corso is vague, still unsettled, unfocused, sitting in the icy grass and slurring his words like he's been drinking. She isn't used to him being so quiet. "You okay there?" she asks him, for what seems like it must be the hundredth time.

"Yeah," he says, sounding distant, and she takes a tiny glance over her shoulder at him just to be sure.

"Yeah, really?"

"I guess. How much further?" he says plaintively.

"Twenty clicks, I'd guess. We got nothin' to worry about so long as we stay on course."

Corso sighs and flops backwards into the grass. "You ever felt like… like stuff's all closing in? I just want to sleep."

"C'mon, Corso, you know we can't do that. You've got to stay awake, just till we get back, okay?"

"I know. I'm sorry."

"You don't have to be sorry for anything. I just want to get us both back to the wardpost." She puts the binoculars back down for a moment and heads back over to him, grabbing his arm to pull him back up into a sitting position. If she knew something more about what that animal spat on him then she'd think about giving him an adrenal to keep him a little more alert. But without knowing what's happening, she's not sure if it'll help him or make everything a whole lot worse. Besides, if he passes out she's not sure how she's going to keep him upright and safe on the back of her speeder.

She doesn't often say this, but she'd really like it if he'd keep talking for a change.

"Say, you know something about speeders, right? What do you think we should do with the old Nightshade?"

"Well, I'd start with hammering out the dings in those front panels, and … and then I'd give her a new coat of paint."

"Oh yeah?" She turns back to the view, picks up her binoculars again.

"You've gotta. That is one ugly speeder. Kind of reminds me of Betsie."

"Betsie, huh."

He shifts a little in the grass, still unable to be completely settled. "My dad taught me to ride a speeder back home… how to take her apart and put her back together, too. I must have been ten or twelve or so. We had this noisy old thing maybe fifty, sixty years old that we used to use for rounding up rontos in the far end of the ranch. That Betsie, she was scratched an' dented and painted purple and I thought she was the most ugly, nasty old thing. 'Course I loved her anyway."

"Your dad's where you get your habit of naming things?"

He laughs. "Guess so. I think every speeder ought to have a name."

"Maybe you can think of a name for this one," she says.

"Now, that's easy," he declares. "You could call her… call her Swift. Or The Claw. She looks a bit like one."

She laughs. "That easy, huh—"

But then there's the sound of a group of men's voices, calling out to each other and laughing.

"Sssh," she says, looking around. No sign of them. From the sound, they must be kind of close, but not so much that she can hear boots crunching into snow or plant life. The mountain terrain plays tricks on you, especially when there's snow. They could be as close as fifty metres, or maybe closer, and she figures they're probably taking the path, but with the way it snakes around the hillside she can't see them to be certain.

One thing's for sure: they wouldn't be laughing and chatting like that if they suspected an enemy was close. That's a good sign.

Think fast. What if they're armed? They must be. She wouldn't hesitate, normally, in jumping onto the back of the speeder and making tracks just as fast as they can, but then they're sure to be spotted, and that'd work better if Corso had his faculties and could shoot straight. Too risky like this.

"We're going to hide, okay?" she says quietly, and he nods silently. "I'm going to move this in there," she adds, pointing to the speeder and some nearby bushes, just a little way down the hill. "Then we're going to go sit up there." She points then to an overhanging bit of rock a little further away, casting a nice, dark shadow.

The speeder's easy to shove into a set of scrubby bushes surrounding some trees, as light as a little handcart with just its repulsors running. She's grateful for picking the matte finish, which helps it blend into the shadows. Some fallen tree branches and leaf litter serve as a good coverage for the bits that are still visible. If you didn't look too closely you could easily mistake it for a drift of loose plant matter, just collecting naturally around the tree, and once it looks good enough she turns the repulsors right off. The speeder lands with a dull thump into the scrub, six hundred eighty kilograms of transparisteel and alloy, and she holds her breath, listening for any chance that the men nearby might have heard the impact.

She hears one of the men laughing at something. No sign that they heard her, but they're definitely closer.

The next bit is hiding Corso and herself. He's already part way to the overhang, looking pretty unsteady on his feet as he scrambles uphill, maybe still a bit green. Fifteen metres away isn't much but it's getting dark, and Trin's carrying a stealth unit that does an okay job at mid-range, so if they can both keep their heads down and stay still and quiet enough, it should be enough to keep them completely out of sight. She runs up the hill, as fast as she dares without making too much noise, and coaxes Corso to duck down under the rocky overhang, straight down on his front. It's probably uncomfortable with his armour and he's still shivering from the fever, but it's going to have to do.

The stealth unit takes a few seconds to warm up, seconds Trin spends whispering "come on, come on, come on," until the coverage and output seems like it might be right. Just in time, too, because the soldiers come into view. Five soldiers, all humans, all men. Surely not professionals if they're going to bumble through the forest at maximum volume, which makes it pretty likely that they're conscripts. They stop right there in the clearing — of course they do, what with it having such a good view on things. A soldier pulls out a scope and starts looking out, down into the valley. The others stretch their arms out or sip from canteens.

There's one walking right over to the edge of the path, a couple metres away from his squad mates. He's getting close to the speeder's hiding place, and Trin grits her teeth.

He doesn't seem like he's seen anything, though. No, he's undoing the front of his armoured trousers, looking for a spot to urinate.

Oh, universe, you have got to be kidding.

Trin wrinkles her nose in disgust. The soldier pisses on the pile of leaves for what seems like an eternity, his back to his crewmates, laughing while one of the others tells a joke. When he's done he kicks dirt and bits of plant matter over the spot, completely relaxed, and Trin's beginning to believe that they've got away with it…

Right up until the stuff he's kicking makes a tell-tale pinging noise as it hits durasteel.

"Hey," one of the other soldiers says. "What's down there?"

Damn it, damn it to every corner of hell. Her trigger finger aches to shoot that fathead in the back of his stupid neck. She could do it, land a couple of big, hard blaster bolts right there on the soft bit under his skull, maybe take out another one of them while they're disoriented and scrambling for their weapons. They're amateurs, and they ought to go down easy. Maybe it'd work some other time, but there's no way she and Corso are going to make it out of here at all if she goes toe to toe with the rest of the big soldiers on her own. And no matter how much they need that speeder to get back to the wardpost, it's not worth her getting them both killed over it.

She watches in growing despair as they pull away some more of the scrub, revealing the Eclipse's smooth black shell. Beside her, Corso looks at her with big, wide, what-do-we-do-now eyes, and she shakes her head and mouths the word no.

"What's this, then?" one of the soldiers says curiously.

"Some rebel left it here for later, no doubt."

"Nice bit of gear."

"Real nice bit of gear. Look at this," one says, pointing out the controls.

"Didn't know they were sniffing around up here."

"Leave it alone. Pull the energy cells out," the leader tells them. "We'll get a salvage crew to come collect it in the morning."

Beside her, Corso shivers with cold.

"But corporal," a younger man says, "regs say to call it into base right away."

The corporal rolls his eyes. "And the Chief says she can't run extra patrols up here for the next ten days. You want to get chewed out by the Chief again? Huh?" He spits something into the grass alongside him. "Take the cells. If they come back for it they won't be going anywhere. Salvage crew can come by in the morning."

Trin bites her bottom lip as she watches one of the soldiers pop the engine's shell up and haul out the energy cells — none too gently, of course — and she winces when he slams the shell shut, too. They take their sweet time getting organised to move out again, time that creeps past way too slow, while anxiety chips away at her resolve. She estimated twenty clicks before, and now it's getting dark, and there are nocturnal predators that roam these mountains… if they're getting out of here, it won't be till morning.

She waits for a good five minutes or so till she's absolutely sure they're gone, and then she scrambles back up to her feet, brushing cold, sticky leaves from the front of her jacket. "You okay?" she asks, offering Corso one of her hands.

He nods silently and lets himself be pulled up a little, putting his other hand out suddenly to catch himself from falling. "Whoa," he says.

"You sure you're okay?"

He shakes his head sadly. "I'm sorry," he adds.

"C'mon, what for?"

"Cause if I'd been more careful we wouldn't be, you know…" He gestures at everything around them and nothing in particular. "I feel kinda useless."

Trin kneels down again alongside him. "Corso, you're going to be fine. I'm going to make sure of it."

He looks back at her, still vague, like he can't quite focus on her face. "What's gonna happen now?"

"Guess we're having a night under the stars after all."

"Great," he says, completely unconvincingly. "Um. I don't know if I'm hot or cold."

He looks worse, purple shadows smeared under his eyes, and his warm complexion turned yellow. Trin puts the palm of her hand against the side of his neck and takes a guess at his pulse again. Maybe a little faster than it ought to be. His skin is hot to the touch.

"You're running a fever. And you should drink some more water."

He fumbles with the top of the canteen and almost drops it, while Trin pulls out her holocomm and tries again for the medical droid, then the ship, with even less success than last time — up for a split second, then gone.

But text… a text transmission only needs a second to get through. She taps out a message for Risha and Bowdaar, encrypted with a key that they've all shared in the past: We're stuck overnight in the Jurans without a speeder. Corso's out of it on some kind of tiger venom. We could really use a pickup.

Then another — less informal, of course — using the Organa crypto and frequency for any roaming medical droids who might happen to intercept it. She tags both with a set of coordinates and sets the comm to send it in a data burst every ten seconds.

Maybe it'll attract some Ulgos, too, if they're unlucky. Last thing Trin heard on the subject, no one seemed to know for sure if they'd been able to slice the Organa comms. Maybe they've broken the Organas' crypto and she's now broadcasting a nice little message to anyone to stop by and pay a visit. Maybe that squad's changed its mind and there's a reclamation team coming by for her speeder right now. But she can't risk doing nothing for the sake of what-ifs. For now, she has to get Corso a little more stable, maybe get ready for a long wait.

She heads down to the speeder, kicking away the damp plant matter — ugh — with the point of one boot. Lucky for them both that the soldiers didn't take a moment to look into the speeder's cargo cavity; she pulls up on the hatch and double checks what's inside. They have some light camping material, a few provisions, a flameless ration heater, some extra parts for weapons. She picks it all up and takes it back to their little rocky spot, half-stumbling up the hill, and sets about unfolding one of their sleeping rolls. Right now, it still isn't worth the gamble on whether an adrenal would help or hurt him right now, but she's still got the four things that every field medic knows are a great idea no matter what — and that's warmth, energy, liquid, and rest.

"Let's get you out of that armour and into one of these," she tells him, shaking out the sleeping roll.

Corso looks at her with that far-off expression. "Huh?"

"We need to get you safe and then we're just going to wait here, okay? Get your armour off."

"Right," he says, mechanically picking off each of the armoured parts he's wearing, leaving him with just his close-fitting cortosis weave underarmour. It's supposed to be designed for perfect thermal comfort in anything from snow to desert, but he's still shivering as Trin wraps the thin sleeping roll around his shoulders.

Guilt crawls up the back of her neck. Maybe if she'd been paying better attention those soldiers wouldn't have taken her by surprise. Or if she was a better medic who could figure out what's going on with him, to know how to make him better, or what she's supposed to do about it if this gets worse. Or if she'd pulled up someplace more open, where hungry vorn tigers don't hunt. Or, hell, she should never have dragged him along on this stupid mission to begin with, and then he wouldn't be here in the first place getting his brain all turned to mush from some creature's mystery venom.

Oh, Corso. She should never have agreed to this, to any of it. It's one thing to put yourself in danger. It's something else to take someone along with you.

But the rations are getting hot, and Trin can beat herself up about her screwups later. She pulls a pack out of the flameless heater. They're popular for their portability and shelf life, not for their culinary appeal — gels and pastes, mostly, designed to be eaten straight from the pack, with only a passing resemblance to the cuisine written on their side. She tears the corner off it and hands it to Corso carefully, who stares at it like he's not sure what it is, or what he's supposed to do.

"You want to try to eat something?"

"We used to give these away as emergency rations in the Peace Corps," he says. He sucks on the corner and makes a face. "Guess they haven't got any better."

"Sorry."

"It's alright." He squeezes out a little more with unsteady hands. Trin takes one for herself and sucks down a serve of truly forgettable protein paste while she sets up the rest of the camp. The overhang is enough to keep them dry, so all they need is one panel from the tent to make a little lean-to, blocking off most of the cold wind and keeping heat inside. Her stealth field has enough power to keep them pretty well hidden all night. There's more than enough snow for their water needs.

Corso's lying down by the time she's done, arms tucked right into the bedroll, the half-eaten ration pack on the ground beside him. "How are you feeling?" she asks, scooting up to sit alongside him.

"Head's goin' everywhere," he says, shivering. "I guess this wasn't what you had in mind for this trip, huh."

"Not exactly."

"Me either." He looks at her — no, past her. "I was hoping we could have made time for some target practice, you know? Maybe catch something better than protein paste."

"I'll make it up to you. Except next time we'll do it on a planet with fewer civil wars." She grabs a handful of snow from outside and wraps it in a piece of gauze from the medkit, turning it into a makeshift cold pack. It only takes a moment to start melting in her hand, and she uses it to dab his forehead and hairline with cold water.

"I'm s'posed to be the one looking out for you," he murmurs indistinctly.

"You did, Corso," she says. "I'd have been vorn tiger dinner if you weren't there."

But he's out of it now, gone to some far-away place that's neither wakefulness nor sleep, and she strokes his hair and hopes it goes at least some of the way to keeping him here, with her, on solid ground.

#

Sometime shortly before midnight Trin hears the whine of something drifting overhead: a shuttle, she guesses, not so big.

She slips out of the lean-to, ignoring the protests of her injured calf, and thumbs the safety catch on her blaster. There's a second or two where she can get a quick look at the shuttle as it lands — maybe eight people could fit in it. Big enough to be a medical evac.

Big enough to carry a squad of goons, too. Time to find out if their little signals earlier made it to friends or foes.

Trin takes up a position behind some thick vegetation, shuts one eye, and looks down the scope at the figures approaching. It's too dark now to make out any hard details on their armour — even Alderaan's brilliant moon isn't bright enough for her to see any better. No one is speaking. The figures are armoured. One is definitely humanoid, while the other two walk a little like droids. All of them are carrying rifles.

The group picks its way up through the rocky terrain, finding their way to the path, and as they fan out towards her she realises that they must have a damn good idea of where she is. She starts thinking about how she'd go about taking them all out. There's a droid disrupter on her belt, a sticky grenade-style device. It's got enough charge to screw up a droid's power and systems for a little while. That'd give her enough time to think about flash-banging the humanoid, which could buy her some wiggle room to take out the other droid.

Some kind of field disruptor starts to break down the stealth field, and Trin's trigger finger is positively itching by now…

And then the figure in front pops off her helmet and rests it on her hip, one arm draped over it as casual as you like.

"Did someone round here call for a daring rescue?" Risha grins.

#

And after all that, it takes just ten minutes for the wardpost's tired base medic, Jenner, to climb out of bed and examine the both of them. He sets Corso up in one of the medbay bunks with a dose of something to help him sleep and break his fever, and moves on to treating Trin's bruised leg with more localised kolto injections. Risha looks on in silence, two small mugs of hot caf in her hand that she sweet-talked out of the duty corporal on watch.

"Is Corso gonna be okay?" Trin asks, craning her head to look over at the other bunk, barely acknowledging the stab as the medic jams one more hypo behind her knee.

"Okay? Sure. He's having the trip of a lifetime, neurologically speaking. But he'll come down in a few hours," Jenner says.

"You make it sound like a dodgy spice experience."

He shrugs. "It's not far off the mark. Tigers only spit their venom when they think they're on the losing side of a fight. They run away and wait awhile, then come back for you later, when you're lying on your back in the grass watching the imaginary pink banthas fly past. You're lucky it wasn't both of you."

"You're telling me."

"We get about six vorn toxin-related fatalities a year just in this province alone." He takes one last look at his handiwork, and pulls his sleeping robe around him a little tighter. "Stay here overnight if you need. Take it easy for a day or two."

"Will do. Captain's honour," she says.

"Yes, well." And with that skeptical remark, the medic leaves them alone in the base's little medbay.

"You weren't kidding in your message, huh," Risha says, and hands her one of the mugs. "Farmboy's off his face."

"Uh, I don't think I used those words exactly…"

"Close enough. You know, there are spice dealers all over the galaxy who'd just love to grab a sample of whatever he's got going on. You know where glitterstim comes from, right?"

Trin takes a swig of her caf — which is awful, by the way — and wonders whether this is some sort of trick question. "I'm guessing you're gonna tell me that it's not from the mines on Kessel?"

"Oh, it is," says Risha, "but it comes from spiders. Spiders that live in the mines."

Trin snorts. "I do not believe that for a second, Risha."

"It's true!" the mechanic says, her eyes sparkling. "So I hear, anyway, from some very impeccable sources."

"Spiders. Honestly? I think someone was having a lend of you." Trin sits down heavily on the medbay's other tiny bunk. "Stars above, I am tired."

"Maybe skip this then," Risha says, and gently plucks the mug back from Trin's hands. "Your brain's about to go buh-bye from all that kolto anyway."

"I s'pose," she says, and slips off her jacket and bracers. By the door there's a footlocker with medical scrubs in various sizes, and she helps herself to a set, grateful for the chance to avoid sleeping in soiled clothes. "I gotta thank you," she says, pulling her shirt over her head. "Can't even begin to tell you how much."

"What's a little midnight adventure between friends?" Risha replies, and then she smiles that rare supernova grin of hers. "Speaking of friends, I had to lean on an old associate to get that shuttle, and I promised her I'd have it back at the spaceport before dawn. I'm going to unload your speeder and haul jets. You're going to be okay here, right?"

"All under control." Trin slips under the cot's blanket and feels a yawn coming on. Kolto works quick.

Risha gives her a friendly pat on the shoulder and touches the lighting controls, bringing the room down to a soft, restful glow. "Give me a holo when you wake up," she says.

"Alright." There's not much give in the cot's thin foam pillow but right now, as Risha gently closes the medbay's door, it feels like sinking into a bed in a five-star Coruscanti hotel.

She looks across at Corso one more time. He's curled on his side, his breathing soft and even, more like normal sleep and less like fever dreams. She closes her eyes and listens, listens, listens…

#

Trin manages to sleep all the way through to midday, waking with a head full of vague, dull kolto dreams and her leg still aching a little. It's the good kind, the kind that lets her know that kolto and sleep have been doing all the right things, though she still grumbles a little as she picks herself up out of the medbay's cot. It's still a bruised, angry-looking mess, though the swelling's not even half as bad as she'd imagined the previous night. Guess that doc did an alright job.

The other bunk is empty, the bed made up with perfect military-style corners. Someone has laundered her clothing and left it resting on the floor in a neat pile alongside her boots. She dresses again with some care and goes outside into the bright Alderaanian winter sunlight.

She finds Doctor Jenner just outside, cataloguing the contents of a freshly opened shipping crate — stims, it looks like.

"Ah, captain." He's considerably more cheerful when it's not the middle of the night. "Good to see you up and about. How are you feeling?"

"Uh, fine. Great, actually, but…"

Jenner smiles. "And your friend's fine. Been up for hours, in fact. Last saw him round back, by the speeders."

"Right. Thanks," she tells him, relieved, and gets out of his crosshairs before he can make noises about examining her leg. It can wait.

The speeders are easy to find. There's her Eclipse, sitting up on maintenance rails alongside a few of the wardpost's own military-style bikes, and a pair of familiar-looking boots…

"Corso?"

He slides out from underneath the speeder, dust and engine grime halfway up his arms, wearing a borrowed maintenance coverall. "Hey."

"Hey, yourself." Trin sits down on her heels alongside him. "You okay?"

"Me? I feel alright," he says.

"You sure?"

"I'm fine," Corso laughs. "Still a little lightheaded, but I'm fine."

He looks it, too. Steady gaze, clear eyes, skin seems normal — she pulls him into a hug, full of relief and gratitude, and… and… something. "You gave me a scare," she says, her words muffled in his shoulder.

"We've been in tougher spots than that," he says, a little surprise in his voice.

"I know, I just… I'm glad you're safe," she finishes awkwardly.

"Hey, at least I'm in better shape than your speeder. Those guys really did a number on the power relays." He pulls out a handful of ruined couplers from his pocket and shows them to her, their delicate connectors twisted and broken off. "I was hoping to get it fixed before you woke up."

"Fixed?" she asks, and looks around at the military gear around them — big, heavy old things, not like her sleek little Aratech. "You have any trouble with the parts round here?"

"They're not ideal, but she's gonna fly. I was just about to test her out." He leans back down and closes a hatch. "Though, maybe you should do it. I got a feeling the doc wouldn't be too impressed with me operating heavy machinery."

"No problem with you jumping on the back, right?" She gets back to her feet, powers on the repulsors, and gently slides the speeder off the maintenance rails. Nothing blows up, so that's a good start. "You didn't have to do this right away, you know," she tells him, as she hops onto the driver's seat.

"But I wanted to. Call it a thank you," he says, taking the seat behind her.

Thank you.

He'd asked her once about what it'd take to give up the game, about meeting someone who'd take care of her, and she'd laughed it off and said something about taking up knitting.

Taking care of her? No, but what about watching each other's backs?

She thumbs the starter, and as the engine comes to life underneath them she reaches back and takes his hands, slipping them around her waist.