[Spots]

"I'm Spots, by the way," FO-1284 said with forced cheer. It was on the open channel as there wasn't any need to be secretive about it.

"Huh?" Corporal H-482 answered as they marched.

"My name. Between leaving the Finalizer and getting here and everything else. I never had a chance to introduce myself as a squad member. I did this morning to CL-0745, but I don't know that she told anyone else."

"Oh," he said. "Yeah, that's good. Guess you know mine."

"Is it 'The Old Man' or just 'Old Man'?"

"Either. The reason for it is obvious enough."

"Same for mine."

"Spots? How's that?"

"My skin?"

"Oh. I didn't look."

She wondered if he truly hadn't noticed, or was just being polite. Either reaction was good. Her non-human ancestry had been a source of discrimination and bullying all her life. Any deviation from the norm was strongly discouraged among children and subadults of the Order. Those deviations you were unable to do anything about seemed to get double the pressure. She wasn't even sure her splotches were due to the one-eighth alien blood she carried. It could be no more than vivid birthmarks she was unfortunate enough to have on her face. But the ears … well, they were a giveaway.

A comm chimed and they stopped. Finn pulled out his comm and began giving a status report to General Hux that they still had not reached the wing, even after all this time. Spots could hear a murmur from Corporal H-482 next to her, so she assumed he was giving a similar report to the first sergeant. That was good, too. At least while he was reporting in, he was unlikely to be agitating for them to keep moving. He'd brought it up enough for her to get paranoid.

It was well after midday as it was. She overheard Finn saying something promising, though. He'd handed off the comm to Commander Tico and now had the quadnoculars over his eyes. Spots looked forward in the same direction, using her tongue, facial muscles, and blinking to interact with the heads-up display and activate the zoom function in her helmet.

There was definitely something up there, but it was difficult to see through the trees. It was something dark, localized, and … had she just seen something move? She toggled back to standard, looking to see if Finn had reacted, but he had already handed off the quadnoculars and was talking into the comm again. Spots went back through the commands to zoom, but right as she was finishing, they began to move.

She stumbled, resetting her helmet back to standard so she could see where she was going. It was probably just … what? What had she seen? It had looked blueish and it had moved in a way that didn't seem like the wind on a frond-y tree-top. That was all she knew.

As they approached, it became clear to everyone they'd finally found the wing. It was about half-extended and from their point of view, rammed into the ground along the leading edge. That created a pretty big triangle of space they couldn't see the other side of. "Corporal?"

Their formation had loosened considerably as they were nearing it. The trooper at the front, TN-1017, had angled to the right to go around it. The Wookiee and Dameron were going left. Finn and Tico trailed behind TN-1017, but they had increased their pace and were nearly on his heels. Threnalli – the Abednedo – had taken up pushing the repulsor-lift because the follow-along function had given out after less than an hour of operation. They were lucky it still floated. DL-8192 and DL-1364 had both gone a short distance further out to each side before stopping, roughly making a line with H-482 and Spots as they came up the center.

"Yeah?" the corporal said.

"Isn't that-" That was as far as she got in pointing out the poor tactics of their approach. As any unwary person would, TN-1017 had taken the shortest possible route around the edge of the wing. That meant he rounded the side only an arm's length or two from it. To everyone's surprise, something the size of two adult humans surged out, barreling into him and knocking him to the ground. It was a blue-grey and somewhat cylindrical crustacean with what looked like a dozen pointy white legs. It landed on top of him, accompanied by a sickening crunch and popping noise followed by an alarmed yelp from Ten-ten.

All of that happened fast, faster than anyone could react.

But then all hell broke loose. Finn and Tico pulled their pistols, getting off one wild shot each before redirecting as a differently-shaped monster followed the first one out. This one was flatter, shaped more like a crab. Two other of the krill-shaped ones (like the cylindrical one) scuttled over the further edge of the wing and came hopping down it toward the rest of their group.

DL-1364 didn't do anything. H-482 fired twice at the one on TN-1017, then yelled, "Open fire! Engage!" Spots would have wondered why he bothered if DL-1364 hadn't been standing there like a lump. Everyone was already in motion aside from her.