Xenen eta minus 28 hours
"Mikele, open fire!"
Mikele did so, her weapons dual-linked to strike a balance between fire-on-target and sustainable firing rate, and twin lances of red light shot out from her X-wing toward the enemy fighter. She had to lead it some, as the angles meant that it flew away from her as it closed in on Cullen's crippled fighter. The shots didn't strike the fighter; instead they bent away from it, and vanished in a point some short distance in front of the enemy.
That was frustrating.
Then she realized that Bren wasn't in front of her anymore.
"Arfor, where's Bren? Did someone get him?"
The droid tweeted nervously, something about Bren having rolled and dived away. She muttered a couple of curses, but kept firing at the enemy, noting that her shots seemed to be leading it away from Cullen-
-and then Bren's X-wing came up from below the enemy fighter, and he fired two quad-linked bursts into its belly. It seemed that the enemy's weird shield system was fully distracted by Mikele's fire, as both of his shots struck home and blew the fighter apart.
"Nice shot, Bren!" she called. "Cullen, you still there?"
"St... .ere," he answered shakily. "Took . ... am...t .. .amage. Lost Niven."
Niven was his astromech.
"I'm sorry. Can you fly?"
"Thi.. so. Th..k y.. Br.n... ...d ...t."
"Just form up and we'll guide you home," Bren answered to whatever Cullen had tried to say. "We don't leave a comrade behind."
------
Sandulf Tand kept running down the last few turns, from memory now that he no longer had the map. There wasn't much else to do, without further orders, even as he drew close to the ambush point and sounds of battle began to fill his ears. Someone had gotten there first; he thought it was likely the Lieutenant.
He and his squad rounded the last corner.
The first thing he noticed was that the aliens were big: nearly two meters in height, and large with slabs of powerful muscle and wearing some sort of armor (armor which looked alive, but that was of course preposterous...), and something about them told him that they were far stronger than size alone suggested. They looked... denser, somehow, than a human of similar build would. The second thing were the varied tattoos and scars which covered the enemy's exposed flesh.
The third thing he noticed was his Lieutenant, lying on the floor at the feat of one of the creatures. He raises his E-11 and opened fire.
His shots, and shots from his squadmates, barely scratched the enemy's armor.
The shots did, however, draw the enemy's attention.
They threw what looked like large beetles at him; two hit his blaster and knocked it out of his hand; a third hit him in the chestplate and knocked him over. He quickly regained his footing, just in time to see a pair of the enemy charging his position. He drew his vibroknife and leapt at the one of the attackers, yelling curses and a war-cry. The blade clashed against its armor, shorting out the vibration mechanism. He pulled back, feinted a thrust, then sought to slash as the enemy's exposed face-
-but it caught the naked blade in its hand, ignoring the black blood that flowed down the hilt. It pulled the blade away from him with contemptuous ease, and then gave him a sharp backhanded blow to the head.
He fell, stunned, next to his Lieutenant.
Some part of him tried to move, but he couldn't bring himself to do so. The ceiling was too interesting to watch, the way the lights faded to dark and light again, along with the unpleasantly loud noises. He wished all the yelling and thumping would stop.
He also wished he had a camera with him; Dad, at least, would think the lights were cool, certainly way better than anything they had on the Freedom's Fire. Why, he could show the video the next time they all had leave together.
Dad would love it.
Then someone picked him up and slung him over a large and strong shoulder; he started to protest that he wanted to watch the lights more, but his mouth wouldn't work either. He just went along with it, and wondered why in hell Dad was there carrying him the corridors, rather than on the Fire's bridge. But hey, that meant Dad saw the lights too. Sandulf hoped he thought they were cool; though if he did, why wasn't he talking about them?
Why was he wearing strange armor, instead of his uniform; armor which looked like something alive rather than something off a production line?
Why was he muttering something in a language besides Basic?
And why was Dad carrying him towards the hangar bay?
He could walk on his own, dammit.
He wasn't a kid a anymore.