Dawn of Tranquility, Deep Space

The rescue shuttle glided into the bay, Black One bobbing in its wake. Jessika was the first one to reach the two vehicles, her wingmate Suralinda Javos and their fellow squadron member Snap Wexley close on her heels. Jess yanked her helmet off and threw it aside as she ran. It clattered across the deckplates and somebody yelped as they were forced to swerve around or jump over it - Jess didn't turn to check. Sura and Snap had already doffed theirs, probably leaving them in their cockpits as was appropriate. Jess didn't care. She'd track her helmet down and put it away properly once she knew whether she was going to be grieving or celebrating while she did.

From the chatter she could hear but was largely ignoring, the rest of Black Squadron - and possibly pilots from other units - were right behind them, but Jess didn't spare the attention to look and see what kind of crowd they had gathered. The rescue shuttle had wrapped the damaged X-Wing in glimmering electro-cords, but Jess could see movement beneath the frosted viewport. Poe was still alive.

"Get him out of there," Snap said, and the pilots rushed to obey. Suralinda commandeered two maintenance droids to boost her up so she could crawl across the snubfighter's nose and start pulling the cords off by hand, hissing as the static charge stung even though her gloves.

"C'mere," Jess said, and climbed onto Snap's shoulders so she could reach the cords as well. They did sting, but Jess didn't care. She had lost too many friends already to let something as minor as that get in the way of bringing one of them back.

Still, when the cockpit finally creaked open with a gush of smoke and incoherent swearing, she paused to shake some of the numbness from her fingers before she reached in to help Poe clamber out. Given her awkward position on Snap's shoulders it was arguable how much help her grasping fingers really offered, but between her and Suralinda's better leverage they hauled Poe loose.

He, Jess, and Snap all hit the deck in something that was more fall than dismount, although the gathered crowd helped ease their tumble enough that no one twisted any ankles despite their graceless landing.

Suralinda hopped off to join them, making the jump look effortless of course. She was easy to hate sometimes which was, of course, why Jess liked her so much. Even if it was hard to remember that when she was lying on the hangar floor with bruises forming all along her rear.

A familiar face offered gloved hands and hauled both Jess and Poe to their feet, although Poe immediately doubled-over and started coughing. He tore his helmet off and dropped it, bracing his hands on his knees as he tried to stay upright. He was shivering and pale and his suit was frosted with frozen condensation. Small ice crystals glittered in his hair like stars.

Snap scrambled up to join them with Sura's help. Jess felt her stomach turn over as she realized that the X-Wing's life support must have failed and Poe's too-hastily-donned personal magcon generator hadn't engaged. Thankfully the ship's cockpit hadn't been breached so the pressure drop hadn't killed him, but too much longer out there and Poe would have frozen to death or suffocated - or both.

"Easy, flyboy," the new arrival said coolly. "Let the air come in on its own, don't try and swallow it."

Poe made a gesture that was too vague to technically be called rude. The other pilot smirked.

While Snap held their shaking friend up so he could catch his breath, Jess turned to the woman who'd come to help them. She wore the dark brown colors of an E-Wing pilot and the helmet to match.

"Knave One?" Jess guessed.

The other woman nodded and doffed her helmet, revealing elegant features beneath a tight cushioning skullcap. "Paige Tico," she said, and offered her hand again. This time Jess shook it instead of using it as leverage.

"Jessika Pava," she said. "Thanks for bringing our moof-milker back to us. He's a pain in the rump, but training a new commander would be worse than putting up with this one."

Tico smiled. "I think my pilots feel the same way about me," she said.

Their chat was interrupted by Poe suddenly bursting out of Snap's hold and screaming, "BB-8!"

Jess whirled around, her face pale with horror at the anguish in Poe's voice. "What - " she started to say before she saw the droid mounting arm as it deposited its small burden back to the deck. Instead of whirling forward like usual, the droid rolled over limply until his head thumped hard on the ground, stopping his spin.

"Oh no," Jess breathed.

"Hold on, Dameron," Snap said, stepping forward just in time to catch the shorter man by the arms and keep him upright as Poe's knees gave way. He sagged in Snap's hold, his hands clutched to his cheeks hard enough to press the blood from his skin. "Give the mechanics a chance to look. Hey, we need a mechanic over here! Hurry!"

"Poor little guy," Sura said softly.

The astromech's main ball was cracked and blackened, some of his spindly maintenance arms hanging deployed and limp from their sockets. A heavy blaster crease had left a melted furrow in BB-8's head-dome and his main optical sensor was cracked and cloudy.

"Oh no," Jess said again.

Poe let out a wail of raw pain and wrenched himself from Snap's arms so he could throw himself to the deck beside BB-8. Around him, people were speaking, but Poe couldn't hear them. All that mattered right now was his poor loyal little droid, now a smoking wreck before him.

A hand closed hard on his shoulder and gave it a shake. "Pull yourself together, Dameron," a stern voice said. He shook his head, trying to shut out the world. Air was still hard to process through the stinging ache in his lungs and his brain was foggy from cold and whatever fumes he'd inhaled as his life support failed, but one thing was clear through the haze: BB-8 was gone, and nothing was ever going to be okay again.

"Somebody get my sister over here! And a medic."

Arms hauled Poe back to his feet. He stumbled, his head reeling from the combination of returning oxygen and dissipating fumes. Someone pressed a hypo-spray to his neck and a burst of clarity temporarily chased some of the fuzziness from his eyes.

"Exposure and shock," he heard someone say. Their voice seemed to be coming from a long way away, as though they were speaking through a comm transmitter whose power was dying. "Possibly a concussion. He'll definitely need a bacta-flush to purge his lungs of whatever crud he inhaled when his life support failed, too. We'll do a tox-screen, see how bad it is. Could be some frostbite on the extremities, we'll have to run a tissue scan to…"

"Looks like he got caught in a power overload loop," a different, brighter voice said. Poe blinked, forcing himself to focus on the more important words and ignore the chattering medic. "Shrapnel damage too, but that won't be hard to fix. We'll have to see if the little guy managed an emergency shut-down to protect his memory banks or if they'll need to be reconstructed, but the physical damage isn't nearly as bad as it looks, trust me. All his really important components are buried in his middle. The head-dome's mainly for sensors and active processing, all of that's easy to replace. Don't worry, I see this sort of thing a lot when..."

"You can fix him?" Poe rasped.

A short human woman in a mechanic's coverall looked up from where she was crouched beside the husk of BB-8. Her black hair was pulled back in a bun but several strands had escaped to curl around her cheeks. When she smiled, she seemed to radiate warmth as though she were as much sun as girl - or maybe that was those fumes speaking.

"I can fix him," she said.

"My sister's the best mechanic in the fleet, she'll take care of your droid," someone told Poe and he tried to nod, but his head suddenly seemed to weigh as much as a Y-Wing. He sagged and felt hands grab at him as the world went dark. He wasn't sure if they managed to catch him before he hit the ground; if he fell, he didn't feel it.

Thank you, he thought he said, but he wasn't sure about that either.