The dome-headed Mon Cala threw his weight into the primitive wooden door. It crackled, then gave way beneath his shoulder, spilling him onto the dusty floor inside. Kaktik rose from the floor and pulled out his sidearm, seeking any targets in front of him. It was darker than outside, but the air was no better. Unlike the moist air of his watery home world, the air on Lek'cheff had disagreed with Kaktik from the moment he had landed. The volcanoes saturated the air with sulfur, ash, and - most irritating to the Mon Cala - stifling heat. How the locals had learned to cope was beyond him. But salvaging this mission was all that mattered.
He had trouble remembering what his mission was.
Too many sightlines through open windows. He stepped deeper into the building, trying to find a central location where he could hunker down and wait. His ankle pulsed painfully beneath him, causing him to limp his way along, leaning on the walls to support his weight.
The adrenaline had long faded, leaving him feeling empty and fatigued, ready to plop down onto any surface and sleep. He knew that real rest would elude him while he remained on Lek'cheff, but the idea made the corners of his fish-like mouth turn upward.
Mounting the stairs required a sheer force of will, with his ankle threatening to spill him sideways at any moment. A hallway took up the upper floor, three doors leading into other rooms and a window at the far end. The red glow of distant lava flows filled the ashy sky beyond.
He debated which door to use, but ended up choosing the one closest to the stairs. It would be easiest to get out from in case of attack, and was the furthest from the horrible heat rolling in from that window. The door opened easily, allowing Kaktik to step inside.
His ankle turned, and he flopped forward onto his stomach.
Cursing in Basic and his native language, he kicked at the door with his good foot. It slammed shut. Probably a bad idea, but the pain shooting through his ankle made him want to lash out. The door didn't fight back.
The voice of Sergeant Annua drifted to mind, yelling at them to push forward. Whiplash Platoon had received orders to pull out, but the sergeant had grown attached to the local population. He wanted to stay and assist with the evacuation efforts. Their platoon moved into the training center near the edge of the town, a known rally point for the local insurgency against the Empire.
AT-ATs and ranks of stormtroopers opened up with no warning. Hovertanks caught them in a pincer, squeezing the rebel troops into the alleys and side streets around the training center. The sounds of explosions and blaster fire ripped through the heavy air.
Kaktik closed his eyes. Survival, then getting off this planet.
The Mon Cala pulled himself over to the wall to lean his back against it, ankle throbbing, lungs burning, eyes itching, and comlink blanketed by Imperial jamming signals. Whatever happened outside, Kaktik knew that he would sit this one out. There was a sliver of hope. Twenty-four hours. Central park. The fallback plan.
Rebels weren't known to leave their own to die, but if nobody knew Whiplash Platoon was still down here...
Sitting in the quiet room, he heard the telltale plinking of fat droplets that began to splatter on the treated roof above him, accompanied by an ominous hiss that his platoon had learned to fear. The acid rain would burn any exposed skin, leaving a nasty rash and itch.
With the ensuing rain, Kaktik knew he would be here a while. He sighed, wondering why he'd left Mon Cala in the first place. Virtue and honor felt very far away from this awful planet.
The world began to dim, and he felt the oncoming rush of needed sleep. At least it would be a respite from the stifling heat pressing him to the floor like a weighted blanket.
"Hello?"
Kaktik jerked into motion, snapping up the blaster and spinning around to face the entrance. The door remained closed. Blinking his dry eyes, he thought that he might be losing his mind. It would be understandable given the day he'd been having. The pressure of this war against the Empire must be getting to him.
"Is somebody there?"
This time, Kaktik picked up on the voice's direction, and glanced down at the floor between his knees. A metal grate closed off a small opening for a ventilation system, the duct vanishing into the darkness beyond.
Anyone already inside the building would have heard him hobble up the stairs and slam the door. Annoyance bubbled up inside of Kaktik, feeling like somebody had intruded into his place of solitude. Through the surge of irritation, he knew that above all else, he should not answer. He was a rebel soldier on an Imperial occupied world in the Mid-Rim. Exposure would likely lead to death.
"Please, if somebody is there, say something..." came the voice once more, almost pleading in its tone. "I...I don't want to be alone."
Kaktik tried to swallow the desert in his mouth, but only succeeded in making a grunting sound. He should not answer.
"Uh...hello?" he croaked, closing his eyes in preparation for the regret to wash over him.
"You a stormtrooper?" asked the voice, female in timbre.
"Uh," said Kaktik, "I'm...just trying to stay out of the rain, find a place to sleep. I'm, uh, not a soldier..."
A long pause. "Good."
Kaktik took a deep breath. Since he'd already broken the silence, talking couldn't hurt. "Do you live in this building? Is this your home?"
"No. I'm also trying to stay out of the rain. Eats through anything."
"Yeah, it does," Kaktik said, nodding despite himself. "You're native to Lek'cheff?"
"Are you?"
It occurred to him she hadn't answered the question. "Uh...no. I'm visiting on a, uh, trade deal. Can't say I care for the climate."
"It's probably the volcanoes."
Kaktik felt a distant spark of mirth. "Probably."
He shifted so that he could more easily look at the grate in the floor and still keep an eye on the door. He set his blaster on the floor within reach. "There's been a lot of fighting in the streets over the last day or so. Hard to know who to trust on the planet anymore."
"My thoughts exactly."
She was infuriatingly difficult to get any concessions from. He didn't trust her either.
He decided on a more direct approach. "Are you upstairs...or downstairs?"
She didn't answer.
"Sorry," he said, talking quickly, "I just, you know, like you said. I don't know who to...eh..."
"Yeah," she answered. "I understand. We can't really trust each other, not with what's going on outside."
He closed his eyes. "Well, we have one thing in common. We both probably thought we were the only one in here."
Silence ensued for what Kaktik estimated to be about three minutes. He wondered if this female was injured, and realized that he didn't want her to stop talking to him. He adjusted his position once more, wrestling with the idea of stumbling through the house to look for her. With more time ticking by, he thought that maybe she had succumbed to some kind of wound while he sat there. Despair grew like a burning coal in the pit of his stomach.
"It's nice to have somebody to talk to."
Kaktik let out the breath he didn't know he was holding. "Yeah, it is."
"And," she continued. "Since you clearly want to take a leap of faith here, I might as well start. I...think I'm dying."
The coal twisted itself into a knot. "Dying? How did...how do you know?"
"There's a hole in my abdomen big enough to fly a transport through. Looks pretty ragged, but it doesn't hurt much. That's bad, right? When it stops hurting?"
Kaktik wrestled with himself, torn between self-preservation and ideology. The rebellion was founded to help those in need. Here was somebody he could help, holed up with him. But what if she was lying?
Three times, the Mon Cala pushed off the floor to go search for her, and each time he sat back down under the weight of fear. He closed his eyes and chastised himself for indecision. Long moments of silence passed, the splattering and hissing on the roof above making a backdrop of white noise that pulled on Kaktik's eyelids.
"You still there?" she asked.
"Yeah," Kaktik muttered. "Still here."
"Good," she said. "It's my one fear. Dying alone. Even if we can't trust each other, I won't go out that way. I can't imagine you're in much better shape than I am, but...it's nice to know someone's there."
The two factions of Kaktik's mind wrestled with each other. "Are you here with...the rebel platoons?"
She did not answer immediately, and Kaktik wondered if she had just keeled over in the middle of their conversation.
"Are you?" she replied.
He rolled his eyes. "What if I was?"
A sigh floated through the duct. "I guess it doesn't matter right now."
"Does that mean you're a local? Do you...like having the Empire in charge?"
"It's funny," she said. "This whole war looks so different sitting in this stupid house on this stupid planet. At one point in my life, it all meant something. But looking back from right here, right now..."
Listening to her, Kaktik also had trouble remembering his whole reason for gallivanting around the galaxy, likely suffering from a well-intentioned delusion of grandeur. But, right now, what he wanted more than anything was to help this person.
"Listen," he croaked, "I know we're probably, I don't know, enemies? Or something. But I want to help you. Trust me and tell me where you are, I promise I won't harm you. I'll try to get you some help."
"And what if I'm trying to harm you?" she countered. "Seems I've lulled you into a false sense of security." Several wracking coughs echoed through the duct. "I could put a blaster bolt straight through you once I figure out where you're hiding. Maybe that's why I'm keeping you talking.."
"Is it?" asked Kaktik.
Silence. Then, "No. I guess not."
"Just tell me where you are," he pressed. "I've got a medkit here..." He shuffled around to pull the canvas bag off of his belt, feeling the contents inside to make sure they remained reasonably intact. "Bacta patches, drenal injections. We'll do what we can. I don't want to -"
He paused. The sound through the duct was like crackling flimsiplast, or maybe a heavily distorted voice. Kaktik pulled out his comlink and flicked through the frequencies, but they remained blanketed by jamming. Confused at what he heard, he pushed himself to his feet, grimacing from the pain in his ankle.
The crackling stopped, leaving the house silent again except for the patter of the acidic drops above.
"What was that?" Kaktik asked. "What was that sound?"
"You have to leave," her voice drifted back. "Right now."
"What - ?"
"No questions! Just go! Now!"
Kaktik hesitated only a moment, his head swirling from the combination of confusion, exhaustion, and pain. He took a single step toward the door before it burst inward right in front of him. Framed in the doorway stood the chilling white armor of an Imperial stormtrooper, its pristine exterior pitted and scarred from the acidic rain.
A sense of betrayal flooded through Kaktik's mind. She had called for backup.
By some twist of fate, the trooper's weapon was not drawn. It hung limp at his side, and he seemed just as surprised to see Kaktik as the Mon Cala did him. Kaktik realized his own weapon still lay near the ventilation grate, two steps in the wrong direction.
So he threw himself into the enemy, both of them collapsing into a tangle of limbs and armor at the top of the stairs. The Mon Cala's ankle screamed in agony, but he ignored it to try to keep the upper hand. He fumbled with the release for the trooper's helmet, trying to get at the being underneath, but his opponent thrashed and fought to keep it from happening.
Kaktik could not harm the trooper through the plasteel, not without a blaster.
A white gauntlet smashed into Kaktik's domed head, his vision shooting with stars and colors. The stormtrooper wriggled from beneath the rebel's weight, scrabbling for the carbine flopping at his side. Kaktik lunged at the weapon, and it fell free of its catch, clattering to the floor. Kaktik's foot sent sent it flying down the stairs.
Wrong foot.
A wave of nausea washed over Kaktik. He cried out, and the stormtrooper took advantage, rolling to pin the Mon Cala's body beneath his own. A vibroknife flashed out of a belt utility compartment, and Kaktik raised his arm to block the slash. The knife hummed and buzzed centimeters from Kaktik's eyes. He brought his knee up against the trooper's chest and pushed, sending the other man sprawling back.
Kaktik stood up as fast as he could, but was slowed by his throbbing ankle. The trooper slashed wildly with the knife.
A line of fire ripped across the Mon Cala's face, raking from his mouth up to the dome of his head, by way of his right eye. He screamed, reflexes dropping him to the ground and bringing his hands up to cradle the deep injury. A series of punches connected with Kaktik's face, shoulders, and midsection, sending him sideways to the floor and driving the air from his lungs. His whole body felt like acid rain flowed over it, burning and searing him.
"Rebel scum." It was the first and only sound the trooper had made the entire time they scuffled. He raised the knife.
Kaktik forced his one remaining eye open, determined to meet death with dignity.
A blue flash of energy struck the chest of the trooper. The crackling stun bolt flung the armored man backward onto the staircase. The sound of the plasteel armor clattered all the way down, then fell silent.
The Mon Cala's chest heaved with exertion. Blood streamed down his face, pooling beneath him. He realized he could see nothing at all through his right eye, and dared not probe the area with his fingers for fear of what he would find.
He turned to see his rescuer. The blaster carbine was now leveled at him, another stormtrooper holding it. Her helmet was off, revealing a shapely human face with caramel skin and a long cascade of brown hair. A gaping blaster wound burned through her lower left abdomen, and she leaned against the hallway's wall to remain upright.
The carbine then dropped to the floor.
"You - you saved my life," Kaktik stammered.
"I'd given up," she said, her voice instantly familiar. She clutched her gauntleted hand to the wound. "Then I heard you. Talking to you...gave me the will to keep trying. Now we're even."
"But," he continued, "you're...a..."
She shook her head. "I've got a lot to think about. But I know which side I'm on, rebel. There's a squad coming for evac. That guy was just in the neighborhood." She nodded toward the stairs. "You better get going before he wakes up or the others get here. He's going to have one hell of a headache."
Kaktik stared at her. "You're letting me go?"
"I see you on the field of battle, I'll gun you down without hesitation. But like I said, we're even."
Without being given much of a choice, Kaktik stood. Everything hurt. His ankle had to be dragged behind him. He moved past her to the window at the far end of the hallway, looking out to see rooftops lined up into the distance. He turned to take one last look at her.
He saw an empty hallway.
Kaktik took a deep breath, let it back out, then pulled himself up to the windowsill. One last look at the empty hall, and he pushed himself out onto the rooftop.