[Rose]
For the trek back, Rose was put on repulsor-lift duty. She didn't mind, but she could have done without being bossed around by H-482 like he was in charge of everything. Which she supposed he was. He hadn't been put in charge of this mission – only of his troopers – but he had now taken charge and no one was arguing.
She thought about arguing. Paige had told her this was part of the norm with a military organization, whether it was the Resistance or the First Order: you had to follow orders even when you thought they were stupid. You never had to if they were wrong (and that was the difference between the Resistance and the First Order), but simple disagreement wasn't enough of a reason.
It was hard to disagree. Chewbacca, C'ai, and Poe were engaged with pushing the wing. They were the strongest and the thing had a lot of inertia they had to manage. Finn was on guard duty to her left, H-482 to her right, and one of the other stormtroopers brought up the rear. The last trooper was engaged as a spotter to better help them avoid hitting trees with the upper leading edge of the wing. That one was on the point position when she wasn't walking backwards, facing the wing section and calling out directions.
The shuttle had had repulsors sufficient to lift the ship, allowing hovering and maneuvering, and making landings and take-offs much easier on the overall structure of the ship. It was like a miniature, highly localized, upside-down gravity field (which was almost exactly what it was, using the same technology as artificial gravity fields in ships).
While grounded, the shuttle didn't need them. So they'd removed the units and brought them to the detached wing, using them to lift the immense bulk of the thing. They'd brought control panels as well to make sure the repulsor pads stayed consistent in their force, not tipping to one side or the other. The wing essentially 'hung' facing the sky in its own gravity field.
But the repulsors didn't create any momentum (they could, with careful programming so the object levitated 'fell' in the direction you wanted it to go, but setting the units up that way would require programming and controls beyond their current resources). It was easier to use thrusters as they did on a ship, but out here it meant people had to push it. This was why she was pushing the repulsor-lift – the follow-along function had burned out on their trip out and she was the best candidate, with two working arms and no see-in-the-dark helmet.
Finn had retrieved the helmet from the fallen stormtrooper, putting it on the repulsor-lift before they'd left, setting it next to the utility belt and blaster that H-482 had put there. Later, when dusk settled, Finn took it back, fiddled with it knowledgeably until indicator lights came on inside, and then put it on his head. He adjusted it and said, "I never thought I'd be wearing one of these again." The vocoder made his voice sound weird – still recognizable, but weird.
She smiled tightly at him. "So that's what you looked like, before." She didn't mention the smears of blood on the sides where he'd touched it. As gruesome as it would be if it was from the previous owner, she'd rather that than think it must be Finn's.
He shrugged. "Yep. This is what we look like. Some of us. Others look different." He laughed once as though that was a joke. Then as if to himself, he said, "Huh? … Yeah. Finn. … Ha ha. Dead man walking, huh? Very funny. … Acknowledged." She supposed he was having a conversation with someone through the helmet, which given he was missing the neck seal, under armor and whatever other stuff went with the kit, the sound of his voice wasn't muffled into unintelligibility like it was when troopers normally had side conversations. He went to his escort position to the side, hopefully now better able to see.
The repulsor-lift was heaped with chunks of dead crab creature which H-482 believed was edible, or as he'd told his troopers, "We're taking it back in case it's edible. And I don't want to hear anything about it from you lot. It's been twenty-five years since I've had any decent sea food and I know this isn't the same thing, but it's close." Even with the meat, their tools, and the stuff, it was easier to push than it had been coming out, when C'ai had been handling it. The repulsor panels and their batteries had been far over what the lift was built to move.
She was glad they had it, so they weren't having to carry this stuff on their backs. Even before dark had descended, the smaller bugs had emerged from the ground around their worksite. They seemed drawn to the bodies, the smell of death and promise of food being enough to overcome their sensitivity to the light. And now that it was dark, they were everywhere. Every now and then, the stormtroopers or Finn would shoot into the darkness, but Rose didn't know what good it did to kill one or two when there were scores of them around.
She could hear them scuffling along the ground and a couple times she thought she'd accidentally kicked them out of the way. Not all of them were as small as the one they'd seen the night before. She suspected they were homing in on the smell of meat, but given that the repulsor-lift floated, there was no way for them to get to it. But they could still get on her.
The group stopped at one point after a few hours of slow slog through the night. The wing couldn't be pushed nearly as fast as they'd walked on the way out to it. At this point, they were just hoping they'd get back by dawn. Ahead, there were several crossed trees blocking their path. DL-whichever-of-those-two, the one up in the lead, wasn't the best navigator. They needed to back up and try a different route. Finn, H-482, and the woman on point were discussing the options they could see. In the meantime, something started climbing Rose's pant leg.
She tried to kick it off. That didn't work at first, so she tried again harder. This time she succeeded, but she also crunched something else underfoot when she put her foot down. "Oh! I'm sorry," she grimaced, even though she knew the things would probably eat her if they got a mind to. Certainly those bigger ones hadn't hesitated. The smaller ones weren't 'cute' (none of them were), but that didn't mean she was happy about killing them unnecessarily.
She tried moving the repulsor-lift in a big circle as the delay stretched out. They'd backed up the wing and were trying a different path now. She could hear the irritation in everyone's voices. They'd had a battle yesterday. No one had slept well that night on the hard floor. They'd spent the morning disassembling the shuttle, then marched the rest of the day as fast as H-482 had been able to push them.
They'd had another fight (more visceral this time), followed by more mechanical work, and now they were marching through the night pushing this wing in the dark (or in Rose's case, the repulsor-lift). They were out of food (at least, out of non-raw food), long since out of water, and everyone was dehydrated. Given they were two different sides in an ongoing war, it was amazing there had only been a few death threats.
Rose kept circling to keep herself from the temptation to sit down, lie down, wait, and potentially fall asleep. The ground was so soft. It would make a lovely bed. But she kept moving. She was having to shuffle her feet to avoid stepping on the critters. There were so many of the things now! She couldn't see the ground, but she knew they were there. They had a light in their gear, but had refrained from using it due to the troopers already being able to see and the concern that light would attract more bugs.
She accidentally kicked one that was big. It didn't move. It hissed at her instead and she felt a sharp, sudden pain at her ankle, even through the boots she was wearing. She yelped and stepped back, only to crunch a smaller one underfoot. Something hissed again.
"Rose?" Finn asked from where he'd been distracted by the wing maneuvering, many meters away by now.
"Finn? Yeah, they're-"
"Oh no! Rose!" Whatever he saw sparked sudden alarm in his voice and he came running. "Don't move! I mean-" She felt them then as they swarmed up her legs in masse. "No," Finn yelled, changing his mind, "move! Move! Run!"
Flailing, she tried, but they were all over her. She batted at them and knocked some off. Several more bit her, each bite like a pair of scissors cutting into her body, mainly her legs. She'd looked at the big ones and seen they came equipped with a pair of sharp plates in front of their mouths, powerful mandibles that fit together like a pair of blades, allowing them to take chunks out of whatever it was they ate.
She only made it a few steps before Finn was there, grabbing them off her and throwing them aside. Between his efforts, hers, and her frantic dancing, she got most of them off. By then, Threnalli had reached the lift and turned on the light, shining it over at them.
Rose backed up, mouth agape, because while they'd left her, they were now swarming over Finn.
"They're on him!" one of the stormtroopers yelled.
The corporal said, "Shoot him!"
"NO!" Poe yelled back, trying to throw himself between Finn (who was yelping and thrashing to no effect now – the things had latched on all over his body, it was like a horror holo) and the two nearest troopers. In the background, Chewbacca was wailing something about them climbing on him, too.
Rose knew in an instant what had happened to cause all of this. They'd stopped their forward progress, allowing the creatures to catch up and close in. And then she'd walked in a circle over and over, not only spreading the scent of meat but allowing them to congregate. In the darkness, there must have been this mob of them trailing along hopefully behind her, until she was finally walking over them as she completed the same loop. Then they'd drawn fresh blood on her.
And Finn … poor Finn! … was covered with his own blood from the arm wound he'd had earlier. The bugs were in a frenzy now, fighting each other to eat him alive. Most of them were small enough a person could crush them with hands or by stomping on them, but some were bigger. There was one on him the size of a mouse droid and one lurking further out that was the size of BB-8.
"You have armor!" Poe yelled at the stormtroopers, his blaster pistol in his hand but pointed at the troopers instead of the things eating Finn. "Help him!"
They might or might not, but Rose wasn't going to let Finn's life depend on the mercy of stormtroopers. She rushed to the repulsor-lift, only a few steps away, and yanked the extra blaster rifle off it. In the light C'ai was still holding, she rapidly reset it to the absolute minimum setting, swinging the muzzle toward Finn and hoping she'd understood the controls on an unfamiliar weapon. Behind her, C'ai made a startled noise at her choice of target. There was no time for explanations or questions. She fired.
The blue pulse of a stun charge swept out, over Finn and the bugs. They all dropped to the ground at the same time. "Stun them!" Rose yelled, with a surge of hope at how her idea had actually worked. There were too many and they were too small to be killed with single blaster shots. But the stun effect covered an area – not a large area, but as big as a person and as had been shown, up to half a hundred of these things could fit in that area when they were motivated to eat someone.
The stormtroopers reset their weapons and began firing, carpeting the ground around Finn's body. Poe did the same, standing almost directly over Finn as he did it. C'ai took the light to help Chewbacca. The rear-most stormtrooper was helping him as well.
Rose threw the strap of the rifle over her shoulder and went to Finn's side. He still had that helmet on and as much as she wanted to dismiss it as a stupid helmet, it had let him see the things getting ready to attack her and it had protected his face from their mandibles. These smaller ones couldn't bite through armor like the larger. "Finn?"
Poe looked down. "Is he okay? I mean, is he alive? I know he's not okay."
"Yeah, I think so," she answered. She'd lifted off the helmet. She stroked Finn's cheek, reassured that he was still breathing. "Do you know how long the stun setting lasts on one of these blasters?"
Finn jerked and blinked, waking at that moment and making an inarticulate noise. In a dry tone, Poe said, "I'd have to guess it lasts about that long."
Finn said, "Ow! Oh no! They're … Are they …?" He tried to sit up, but was uncoordinated.
Rose helped. She had a dozen bites of her own, so she could easily imagine how much pain he was in. "You need to stand up if you can. I don't know how long they'll stay knocked out."
"Longer than him, probably," Poe said. "They're tiny. It works on mass. That's why you're not supposed to stun kids with an adult setting."
"You stun kids?" Rose said, shooting him a perplexed look as she helped Finn up on one side and Poe on the other.
"No," Poe said. "Not … often. It was just a game."
"What?" Rose asked. She couldn't see his features, but he sounded guilty.
Poe changed the subject. "Hey, Old Guy? Corporal. Whatever. Can you blanket this area again? I don't want these things to wake up and come back for seconds."
"It's 'Old Man'." H-482 came over and shot stun bolts into the mass of already stunned crustaceans. He crunched around, stomping over their bodies intentionally.
"I can call you that?" Poe asked.
"Yeah." The corporal didn't sound thrilled about it. "Don't think that means I won't shoot you later."
Poe laughed. "No, I noticed that. Come on," he said as he got Finn to the repulsor-lift. It had a few blinking lights that made it easy to locate in the dark. "You need to get up on this."
Finn shook his head. "It was overloaded on our way out and stuff broke. I don't want to overload it again and risk us having to carry everything. And I don't want to sit on that." He gestured at the assorted meat stacked on it.
"We can ditch the crab," Poe said. "You're more important."
"That might be all we have to eat for the next few days," Finn responded. "I'll walk. Where's my helmet?"
Poe shook his head, but stopped telling Finn what to do and went to fetch it. Rose asked, "Finn, you're bleeding. Can you make it?"
"Then we don't stop," Finn said grimly as Poe handed him the helmet. "Maybe you and me go ahead if the group gets stopped again."
"Whoa, whoa," Poe said. "We don't split up. If we have to do anything like that, we leave the wing here and get all of us to safety. We can come back tomorrow and get it. We can't be far now."
Finn had his helmet on. His voice came out muffled as he said, "First sergeant? CL-0745? … You've got locator IDs on the armor. How far out are we? … Oh. You are? … Okay." He took the helmet off for a moment to talk with Rose and Poe. "They're, um, they're sending out a quick reaction force - the FN squad. We should keep going, though. Meet them in the middle."
"Sounds good," Poe said, heading back to where Chewbacca and C'ai were already back to moving the wing.