Guardian Angels

"Ordered retreat, boys!" General Nyrm shouted as he seemed to float in the air for a moment before dropping into the midst of advancing tinnies like a bolt of lightning. His light saber, sizzling as rainwater touched the beam, cast light in the mist which seemed only to amplify the similarity in the exchange of blue and red blaster bolts.

"Ordered retreat," Captain Top echoed the general's orders through the comm link for those who might have missed his voice in the noise of Mimban rainfall, droid attach and blaster fire, "Flame, cover Blast's squad. Tuur, you have Heft's."

Heft was one of Captain Top's original squad and Punch felt a flare of pride to know Top had asked Tuur's squad to cover Sergeant Heft in the river bed.

To the right of Punch was Card, both of them just a little forward of the rest of the squad hidden by the vines and mosses growing wildly in the boundary of the gully. To his left was the shiny they were beginning to call Whyer because of his questions. It was his first skirmish and he was holding well. "Doing good, Twenty-one," Punch called out in encouragement on the squad channel. "Card, keep an eye on Heft, you know he's last to retreat." Sergeants always were; almost as bad as the good captains, Even Sergeant Slick had usually been...

Punch pushed the memory away and looked down the line of hidden troopers. "We doing good, squad, but ease up on fire rate. We don't want them to notice us."

"Don't destroy them all before they reach mid-river," called out Blast from his place ankle-deep in a line of mud. "We promise to leave you a few."

There was laughter at his banter only partially at his words but mostly because the droids were advancing as General Nyrm and Captain Top predicted.

"There's always more where those came from," quipped Sergeant Tuur from his position with Flame's squad. Flame's squad was mostly rookies and Tuur had relinquished his squad to Punch and Card to help the shinies stay steady.

"Guardian angels," Punch murmured beneath his breath as he targeted several B1s in rapid succession bearing heavily on Tap. It was what Nyrm had said, 'You'll be our guardian angels while we made our stand in the riverbed.'

"Tenaut," he called, "pull back and prep for wounded. Tap just went down with a leg wound." Punch took aim at the droids as Clever, trusting his brothers above him, reached down and pulled Tap towards the edge of marshy mud.

"Prepping med," exclaimed Tenaut as he holstered his blaster and moved from the end of the line to behind a boulder.

The droids converged on the hole left by the two troopers, now a weak area of Blast's squad. "Come on, Tack. Let's see if we can give Tap and Clever breathing room."

"With you, Punch," replied Tack paralleling Punch's blaster shots on the other side of Clever as he pulled Tap through the mud towards the higher bank.

"Hey! There's mo..." It was the high excited voice of one of the droids looking up the incline and Tuur blasted it before it finished pointing out the troopers on higher ground hidden among the plantlife. So far, only a few of the droids had noticed the hidden troopers and those few had been immediately dispatched.

"Tenaut," shouted Coil above the battlefield noise, "Lieutenant's shoulder hit, backing unassisted. Captain's at his side."

"A little faster," called out Nyrm in a sing-song voice as he nimbly danced between the attacking droids, his light saber flickering, seen then unseen, as he moved among them.

"Retreat. Double-time it; Heft, Blast." Top told them as he kept pace with his wounded brother. The troopers backed faster to the higher ground as the droids on the edge of the muddy riverbed seemed to double in number moving forward.

Three things happened at the same time. Punch heard a rushing sound reminiscent of the waves on Kamino but higher pitched and knew the floodwaters had arrived. General Nyrm swept his light saber in a circle, slicing through several droids even as he deflected two blasts and yelled "It's here! Higher ground, now! Twenty-five heartbeats. Move, run."

And Art slipped on some wet, mud-slicked, water-soaked patch of bog. He fell to the ground, his arms flying up though he kept a tight grip on his blaster. "Go," he shouted as he fell. "I'm fine." He rose to his knees, firing at the converging droids, but slipped again as he tried to rise.

It seemed the more he tried to escape the mud, the slicker it became and his efforts seemed futile. He rose to his feet then fell as he turned, coating the front of his armor with the same black mud as the back.

"Tack," yelled Punch, "with me on Art. Twenty-one, you too." The droids converging on Art walked into a hail of blue blaster fire from the troopers but Art slipped even further, his bucket falling face first into the mud.

Sergeant Heft turned, his own blaster blazing into the droids. "Art," he yelled and took a step toward the trooper.

"Fine, sir. Go!" was the reply but Art had lost his blaster in one of the falls and still hadn't risen from the mud. Even as they watched and fired on the wave of droids, his hands, gauntlets desperately gripping the small blades of moss for some sort of balance, slipped.

Punch glanced upriver where a wall of water was bearing down on the trooper in the middle of the river's path.

Heft pushed off his foot to run to his trooper and Captain Top yelled out to him, "Heft, no!"

Heft hadn't gotten a leap forward before being slammed backwards into his squad.

"I've got him," Nyrm shouted as he come out of the mass of droids only now beginning to realize it had been a trap. He pushed off the shoulders of an SBD, soaring as his cloak seemed to become the wings of some ominous bird of prey swooping down on Art.

The droids, retreating from the water's path, weren't of concern anymore and Punch watched as the general seemed to not touch the ground as he reached and pulled Art from the mud by the upper arm. Upright, Art began running with the general but Punch saw they wouldn't make it.

"Belaying lines," he yelled company-wide in his bucket, as he slammed a cartridge into his blaster. The lines wouldn't hold in the soft riverbed, but if Art and the general got lucky, they'd be able to grab a line and be pulled to the waterbank.

Belaying lines whistled down into the muddy ground around the pair and both men reached even as the water slammed into them, rolling them into the rapids.

Punch held his breath as the water pulled the lines tight and the troopers began pulling their lines back.

"Here," shouted Garl, curling his arm around the blaster barrel as he was being dragged closer and closer to the river. He leaned back and dug his heels into the ground as his squad-vode grabbed him. They all pulled, wrestling the raging river for the prize and, after a moment, Art's gauntleted hand gripping the line rose from the surface.

After another breathless moment Thirty-one call out. "Here." There was a moment's pause then Thirty-one spoke again. "I think."

"There's no pull," said Tuur at his side, shaking his head. "It's just debris in the rapids."

"General only weighs 60 kilos," shouted Tenaut as he tended Cover's shoulder.

"He might be using the Force to make it easier," exclaimed Tack as he moved closer to the water where Thirty-one's line entered it. He took a few steps into the water, holding onto the line with one hand and fishing into the water with his other. He jerked still for an instant then his shouts brought other troopers to his aid. "Yes! He's here! I've got him, I've got him!"

Both General Nyrm and Art were coughing and laughing as the spat out mouthfuls of muddy water and grime. The general looked bedraggled, his cape had been ripped from him and was lost to the river.

In a choking laugh, the general gestured over the river's surface. "I notice," he coughed, "a distinct lack of droids."

"Your plan worked, General," said Captain Top with a grin which faded, "though we almost lost you and Art."

"I'm glad we're not lost," said Nyrm as he looked around at the troopers then at Art who was emptying mud from his bucket with a few mild curses. "I don't want to lose you, Art." His voice held real emotion, pain which Punch could identify and a deep abiding emotion he didn't know but felt when thinking of Sketch.

General Nyrm swept the circle of troopers around him and Art. "I don't want to lose any of you."