Beebee didn't know what overtook him when the Jedi came. He'd seen some of the data on the brill: The Great Deceiver, Killer of Children, Enemy of Order, plenty of other indoctrinated titles which meant absolutely nothing to him.

Charlie was dead. He had been alive, and now he wasn't. Must've taken him a while to realize that he would be on his own from now on.

He swung down off the console on his cables and to the floor. He must get out of here - the station's magniclamps had been undone.

Out into the hallway. He saw the bodies, found a way to roll himself over them. He also saw the razordisk Rey had thrown sticking out the guts of a First Order conscript.

She'll need that. It served her well the first time.

That's when he remembered why he would look for Rey: she would be his objective, his link to… Charlie. To Finn. To Poe. The only ones he had left.

He would deliver the weapon back to its owner.

Heard the blasterfire, registered his growing magnic instability. And at the same time, he could "feel" the quiet. Little on the planet itself moved.

He would need to find a ship leading off this world. Soon.

He would need to leave the pole. The ships overhead, as Charlie would've said, were getting awfully friskian.

The gyromech monitored every ship that came within two kilometers of him. That ended up as an ill-fated Fel Clawcraft, low-formation Hexect gestolii, a tuon of ARC-220s.

Without paying much thought to what touched down, he simply kept rolling. He must not think.

Turbolaser fire was reacting with the atmosphere. Nimbus clouds gathered around ship-sized nuclei, accentuated each engine and cannon discharge. Lightning was beginning to connect itself with the ground. The delayed reports took up the entirety of his audiosensor range.

CRAKHOOM.

Beebee just kept rolling. Don't stop. You're alone. If you stop, you're in greater danger. You'll "die" alone. Just as Charlie "died" alone.

The First Order suicide shuttle touched down somewhere behind him. He did not take note of it.


"If we're going to find anything, it'll be around the pole. Most of the Order operates out of there, and they have more ships than probably anyone else around."

Unkar: "We seen 'ese thopters. Why not jack en'?" Poe replied as he wrapped Terry visil-strap 'round the back of his head:

"Can't break atmosphere. Besides, screw-all ship-to-ship armament. Wouldn't survive the mess."

Finn, through his own staller an visil, nodded in agreement to Unkar. He nodded in reply. Both agreed without saying that the blobby alien's permanent scowl was beyond unsettling. They kept their blasters at the ready.

"Then to yon pole 'tis. Teedos, punch 'er like she's nev' been punched afore."

The Silent one ran a finger over the rim of his goggles, then reached his hand inside the console. The one who spoke fiddled with the external controls, with an agility and complexity most humans wouldn't see the pattern in.

"Yaga! WAAAAA!" The speaking Teedo hollered, wide-mouthed, tongue wagging a good distance beyond his lips.

"You'll want to hold on. The Teedos get a bit unungly at the controls." The grey-skinned creature with the still-unnerving Coreworlds accent wrapped two of his hands to a guardrail. For safe measure, his furthest arm gripped it, too, after pulling a pair of goggles to his oyos.

"Yaga wawa jyaaaaaahaha!"

The speed was greater than even what Poe had driven at. Finn was thrown against the back rail and held on for all he was worth. Speaking Teedo cackled.

The whole trip there was a blur of yelling, hollering and verging sickness. Wiles' three arms needed every pound of strength between them once his bare feet lost grip on the trembling floor.

Unkar had some weight and good traction on him, plus a decent grip on their nav console. The Teedos were at that console, and "punching 'er like she's nev' been punched afore" certainly makes good time.

The obelisk city of Net Station was up ahead. Poe tried yelling "there it is!" The hum in the defectors' ears of their own helmets was the most painful part of it, somehow. Even over the slowly-liquefying engines, the thing which rattled their feet was the buzzing of the metal floor, the NavCon, the guardrail.

The six saw something descending from the sky - several somethings, the way the skiff rattled, and several blurry somethings at that.

Their engines gave out, but their lev-system had the common courtesy to slow them down a bit before they were spilled out onto the ferrum sand. Could've been worse.

Finn groaned, tried to get his helmet off all at once; struggling made it even worse as he writhed on the ground. No, that was a lie. Still mercy against First Order interrogations, but this was present. And that mauling from all sides just earlier today. Supreme xrap, I'll be the torture expert of the universe before long. Poe, too. Especially Poe.

All at once, the staller came loose. His head thonked against packed sand, and he swore his whole skull resonated with the impact. He could wrestle off one piece with greater progress than two interlocked pieces. Finn gasped, relishing any air not recycled, got to his feet. He didn't throw the Terry visil away, just clamped it to his belt with a loop. He already saw one of the diminutive aliens running back towards to the rest of their speeder, staller held just above its head in… triumph? Quite possibly.

"Are we… here?"

Grunting: "Yes, Finn, I think we're here. See the big sticker trying to scratch the sky?"

He nodded, even if his partner was not looking in his direction. But he squinted, reached for the binoks in his belt. Not there, only that damned visil again. He sighed, then unclipped the Terry mask and did his best to see through it.

"I also see Order shuttles coming back down." He looked closer. Poe was already running to his side, his own binoks in hand. "Suicides, by the look of it."

"Schet." He turned to their alien partners. "Hey! We got company at the station!"

The fat one - Unkar - turned the two men into a line by stepping beside Finn on the other side. He wasn't seeing much through the visil - they were made to be scary, not functional. Damned Order manufacturing.

"Then we keep moving. Afoot. Come on, ye know yer own stakes!"

That snapped them into it. They got to running, Poe and Finn leading as the swiftest with the aliens falling in behind.

Finn: "Any weapons?"

Poe: "The blasters in our hands! Any other suggestions?"

"Suicide troops are pretty nakstin, you know that." Poe couldn't argue that. But at the moment they'd just need to rush in and hope they mowed down a few before the same fate grabbed them, too.

They had cover, at least. No shortage of debris. Poe wondered how much more they'd have in even five minutes. The sky was already experiencing turbolaser burn as thunderclouds. Booming of dozens of space-capable engines entering the potent magnetic field. Through his gloves, the blaster thrummed nakstinly in his hand. Soon they'd be rendered numb, if he wasn't careful about it. But he kept running ahead to the nearest brill-sized hull plate, maybe a hundred meters from the shuttle's touchdown point.

Behind them, Wiles bundled up whatever the whirlwind-legged Teedos needed held on to.

"Agh, you know I cannot carry all this!"

"Immi booolo wiggy wiggy ra!"

"And even worse to you, disgusting creature." Still, he shouldered the little trinkeretts with little more grumbling.

Suicide troops are known for being especially silent, just as merciless as normal Terries. Other than that, neither scientist had known much about them, and that was how it was to be. Finn found a waist-tall speeder engine, most likely useless, and crouched behind it. The metal rang in his ears as the blaster rang in his palms. He shot a glance to Poe, then looked over.

Looked like their goal was to secure the station… in its final moments. He'd never heard of Exterminatus in practice before, but every Order initiate knew what it was.

It'd be ironic if their giver of punishment was the fortress they'd just exposed. That'd be a bolt of lightning to rival not just the coming storms on this world, but of the thing's own namesake. He nearly killed the first Emperor, for Supremacy's sake.

These special Terries were so focused on storming the station that they didn't seem to notice anything else. Of course, Terry visils didn't have peripheral capabilities worth a damn.

Finn nodded to Poe. Poe nodded to Finn, then to the fat one. The three-armed one. The short ones.

They moved discreetly, but with little cover.


Beebee detected blasterfire.

Back behind cover it was, then!

Well, what cover there was. He tracked two Hexects and an as-of-yet unidentified bomber bearing down on them dead-stick. Estimated landing: two minutes.

If…

If, indeed.

Search: equipment inventory. Something… big.

"Know thy self." Big lesson there.

Either way, he had it. Still dragged the razordisk behind him, too. Part of the whole reason he fought for survival now.

KASHOOT.

Up the flare went, shooting up and out, a bright white-orange. With any hope, it was a diversion.

(But a diversion for whom?)

Scrambled radio chatter. He struggled to retrieve a memory of Charlie's rambling about Imperial Death Troopers: tall, almost skeletal stormtroopers whose scrambled radio chatter was just as terrifying as their combat prowess.

Inherent traits in the next generation. That was another tangent of Charlie's. Part of the reason this whole was locked between wars, with only little chakra-naps in between.

Bzzzz. Khlzzzznzzzpa.

And all at once, two Terror Troopers on each side of Beebee. Blasters raised.

So much for that. Charlie, I join you in nothingness...

When the one on his left spoke, he spoke in Droidspeak:

"Freeze, clanker."

His reply:

"You first, fleshbag."

"Why, you little - !" He shouldered his blaster: an oversized thing with a barrel that was most definitely compensation.

Then he went down. The other Terror Trooper barely had time to turn before his head - or several, by the look of it - jerked back, and he fell against a duraplast barrel. It thudded hollowly and two fell as one.

His primary optic tracked the body. Took his receptors a while to line up the audio and visuals.

"Beebee? That really you?"

Mreeeeedidleeeeeep. It's Poe!

The brill knelt before the gyromech, petted him gently, with long-lost affection. He chuckled.

"It's good to see you!" Blasterfire somewhere behind them. Poe turned, then back to Beebee. "Escutshes here, I gotta go."

Then he got up and started running.

Do I have another flare?

Why, ja, I do.

He shot up again. Straight up. Same trick would work twice if this time it was intentional.