[The Old Man]
After briefing CL-0745, H-482 walked over to inspect Finn. With the Abednedo's help, Dameron was putting the finishing touches on Finn's arm, having staunched the bleeding with a wrap that had been cut from the arm of Finn's own shirt. It looked insufficient. Part of the deep slice down his forearm was still exposed and leaking blood, just not as profusely as before.
"Can you stand watch or be a perimeter guard?" H-482 asked.
The three Rebels exchanged a look. Finn said, "Yes. That's not my blaster hand."
"So I'd guessed from your rig." H-482 gestured at Finn's hip holster on the same side as his uninjured arm.
"Hey," Finn said as H-482 started to turn away. "You said these were scent-trackers. How do you know that?"
"They didn't come here to hide under our wing section on a lark. They came here because we took a shuttle and injured every tree or whatever from here to clicks that way." He pointed his elbow in the direction of the crashed shuttle. "How do they know that happened? They must have smelled it. They were here last night and took cover under the wing so they'd be here when it got dark again. Maybe they're feeding on the trees or maybe they were eating the things that eat the trees. Not that these things are trees. They're more like hairs on a beast."
"We're …" Finn blinked at him, then lowered his voice like that might make a difference. "We're on a giant monster?"
"I have no idea what we're on. But it reacted when the lightsaber was used on it and those … things that look like trees aren't plants. Not entirely. They're something else. Take that corner." He pointed. "Standard four-point perimeter. You got it?"
"Yes."
He noticed the lack of 'sir', but two things kept him from saying anything about it: 1) He had no idea of Finn's rank. None had been given that he'd heard and Finn was at least a unit commander, being treated as the equivalent of First Sergeant CL-0745. And 2) leaving it off was likely a conscious choice on Finn's part to make sure he knew point 1. Such was the nature of standard high-context First Order communication.
H-482 stomped over to where TN-1017 lay and crouched next to him. He sat there for several long moments, staring at the body. The Old Man had been pulled off another Finalizer internal security unit to head up these oddballs and strengthen the group's leadership given the pending departure of CL-0745. It was thought (or at least, he'd been told) that his seniority and experience would help stabilize the group through this transition, that he would help pull them together as a team.
He didn't know where the higher-ups had gotten that impression – that he had anything like leadership skills. He'd happily avoided promotion for years. There was no benefit to it – no salary, no privileges he cared to have – just more responsibility. Like the responsibility for this dead guy, whom he'd actually liked. Guy had a lot of potential. None, now. Slowly, he sank to both knees on the soft ground.
He thought a quick prayer to the All-Power, that TN-1017 might find his way in the cycle with peace and joy. Religion was forbidden in the Order, but they couldn't take his thoughts from him, or his past. Not that he was or had ever been especially observant. He dutifully stripped the corpse of everything useful, which only amounted to the utility belt with the various charger packs and the F-11D blaster. He considered the riot shield, but none of them trained with it regularly.
From there, he moved to the beast they'd felled and examined the wounds on it. These cylindrical, shrimp-like creatures had thinner shells than the crab one. He found confirmation of something he'd seen as they fired – it took multiple shots to the same spot to penetrate. The shells had a crystalline property of some kind that scattered and diffused the blaster bolt on impact.
He put his shoulder to the thing and pushed it over, exposing the underbelly with its many legs. With a short blade (he would have preferred a long one, but he didn't tend to need a longer knife while patrolling the Finalizer and he hadn't brought either of the two from the survival kit), he cut down the thing's midsection – cutting, and cutting, and cutting again with the short blade, peeling it open in layers.
"What are you doing?"
He jumped at the voice, looking over his shoulder to see Dameron again. "What are you doing?" he fired back.
"Installing the repulsors is a three-person job – one to hold the unit, one to make connections, one to check the control module. Rose, Chewbacca, and C'ai have it under control and with Finn, you have four guards. I'm extra. So … what are you doing?"
"I'm checking to see what it eats." He'd found the beast's stomach, or what passed for it. He fished out TN-1017's forearm and tossed it at Dameron's feet, gratified when it made the man jump and blanch. "Aside from stormtroopers." He examined the chunky goop that made up the rest of the contents. His hands were coated with it now.
Dameron gingerly moved around the severed limb and squatted next to him. "That's really disgusting. I say that as someone who's seen some truly disgusting things in my life."
"Probably not as disgusting as the ones I've seen."
"What's the worst thing you've ever seen?"
"Full container of Kowakian monkey-lizards left on Taurek. They weren't legal, but Taurek hosted a lot of smuggling. Anyway, it wasn't labeled right, so of course it got left out in the yard and the heat killed them. Once they were dead, the carrier ditched them. We didn't figure out the cargo was abandoned until the stench was too thick to ignore. But somebody still has to clean that up and I got jobs by being cheaper than a droid."
"That's pretty gross," Dameron agreed.
"How about you?"
"Hutt vomit."
"Ew." That was a surprising one. He'd never seen a Hutt in person – only in holos. "How'd you come across that?"
"Ah, we bounced a guy named Grakkus around in a gravity field. Apparently it upset his tummy."
"I'll bet. Here, get my helmet off. I don't want to touch it."
Dameron reached over and fumbled at the edge of it, pressing three different comm settings before finding the latches and lifting it off. H-482 sniffed the stomach contents of the monster. "I need to know if they attacked us because we surprised them, or if they attacked us because we're food."
"How can you tell?"
"If they only eat the bugs, then we probably surprised them. But this stuff isn't … bugs. I think it's flesh from those trees and the bugs must be eating it, too. This is just a bigger version of them. Maybe an adult?"
"There's two different kinds here."
"Maybe a male and a female?"
"Huh. Maybe. Do you, uh …" Dameron made a gesture toward the tail end of the thing.
"I have no idea how to sex them, if that's what you mean. But we might be able to eat this."
"Uh … Are you talking about that goop or the critter?"
He gave Dameron a side-eye, checking to see if the guy was messing with him. He seemed serious. "The critter." Though he assumed the goop was edible, too. Obviously the critter had thought so.
"Yeah, okay, I suppose so." Dameron swallowed roughly, clearly not thrilled with the prospect regardless.
"It smells like this because I cut it open. The meat won't smell bad and there are, what?, three others? I'll be more careful with them." He wiped his hands off on the punky ground. Then he had a thought and dug into the dirt, or what looked like dirt. It wasn't a mineral. They'd been walking on it all day and it was various degrees of firm, mostly springy and soft. "TN-1017 said he saw one of those little bugs dig itself out of the ground."
He didn't come up with one of the bugs – not right there – but the material was loose and he found, in the small area he dug up by hand, several husks.
"Those look like sheds," Dameron said.
H-482 nodded. "Yep. They're living in this. We're walking over them. That's why they weren't showing up on scanners last night. It means we can't really get away from them. This planet is a horror show." He set them aside and wiped his hands determinedly over his armor, taking off the shine and dirtying it up. When he was done, he asked, "Let me have my helmet."
Dameron handed it over. "You don't need it. It's not like any of us are going to tell on you for leaving it off."
He put it on anyway. "It has a live comm link with the shuttle. Plus sensors and maybe it will slow one of these things down from biting my head off."
"A live comm link?"
"Yeah."
"They're listening to us right now?"
"I'm sure she has better things to do than hang on our every word, but yeah."
"That's creepy."
H-482 shrugged. "You get used to it."