Into the Depths: Part 2
They were falling.
The light disappeared rapidly as they plunged into the tunnel, the bike showered sparks as it sputtered and crashed against the metal of the long drop. At this speed and with no bottom in sight, staying on the bike would be a death sentence. Din ignited the jet pack still on his shoulders and released the speeder, clutching the kid tightly to his chest. The baby laughed against him.
At least one of us is having fun.
Not for the first time he marveled at the kid's resilience. Maybe whatever sorcery it possessed caused it to view danger in a different way. The jet pack flickered against him as he tried to gain altitude. The winds were strong. Some kind of a cross breeze from whatever lay underground and the canyon above. He gritted his teeth and fought against it. He jerked downward and hit his back against the metal tube. At this rate he had two options: continue fighting the winds only to crash regardless, or use what remained of the fuel to descend to the ground and find a different way up.
Din hit the side of the tunnel again as the wind crushed against him. Option B it was.
He deaccelerated down the tunnel, realizing it sloped gradually to one side and curved into a wider chamber. Once on solid footing again, he shut off the jet pack. The cavern was pitch black. Keeping one hand on the kid he adjusted a headlight. The area itself seemed both natural and manufactured. Wide, carved tunnels with metal encasing and wiring lay surrounded by geological rock formations jutting through old assembly lines.
"Abandoned factories."
Din spun about, blaster drawn as he stared into another headlight affixed to a helmet. The Rebel had survived the crash? They were covered in soot and dust and their left arm seemed limp at their side. Still, their weapon was trained on him. "Glad to see you made it," they said. "Sorry about that. I thought most of the underground factories on Akiva were further south of here. Still, we should be able to get out."
"We? What happened to that fair fight you promised after we ditched the other hunters?" Din couldn't quite figure out what this merc's game was. First they try and sabotage his ship to get him out in the open, next their blasting him out of the sky without a warning, and now here they were trapped underground. It was a perfect opportunity.
"I don't want to carry your corpse out through several leagues of tunnels and caves. Besides, between the two of us we're likely to work out a faster way out. I don't fancy staying down here longer than I have to," The modulator crackled as they spoke. "Truce?" They holstered their blaster and held up a hand, though the left one still remained motionless.
"You broke your arm in the fall."
Static laughter pierced through the modulator. "Was it obvious?"
"I could shoot you now," Din said matter-of-factly, taking a page out of The Rebel's playbook. "Leave you here, find my own way out."
"I heard Mandalorians were all proud warriors," they tilted their head. "You going to shoot an unarmed, injured person in the dark right after they just called a truce? That would be disappointing."
Din hesitated.
"Or maybe my arm's not really broken."
Before he could blink the Rebel had two blasters drawn, one in each hand. Static crackled out of the modulator that covered for the obvious laughter as they quickly resheathed both weapons. "Just kidding. It is broken, but," they removed their blaster's holster and fashioned a crude sling. "This'll do for now."
Din's confusion only mounted as they kicked the discarded blaster over to him. "Look, now you have my weapon so you know I must be serious. Ready to get out of here?"
"Are you crazy?" he pocketed the spare blaster.
"No. Just someone who wants to live," they turned their back on him and stared out at the expansive cavern. From here there were multiple points of exploration. Three tunnels that he could see at ground level, another two were up a ledge that was easily climbable for him at least, his companion would have some difficulty with it.
"So," if this was how it was going to be he could play along. He'd had stranger allies of convenience in his life. "Which way do you think?"
"No light, no fresh air, when in doubt go as straight as you can," The Rebel said, gesturing down the center tunnel with their good hand before walking off.
Well, nothing for it now. Din holstered the blaster. The kid blinked serenely up at him. He shrugged. "Unless you have any suggestions?" he asked. As usual the kid had none. For now they'd follow the Rebel.
"Give me a boost, will ya?"
Din hoisted the Rebel up onto a high ledge, letting them scramble one-handed to pull themselves upright. The same gloved hand reached back for him to help him up. From their new vantage point it was easy to see where the factory properly began in the caverns. Din looked down at his feet, they were standing on an old assembly line. The rubber padding was wearing from disuse and the elements, but the gears that would have moved it along its track were still visible.
The Rebel half bounced their way along the track and Din had to be fast to catch the child about to race after them to skip along at their side. He didn't care if they were allies for now. That kid wasn't getting anywhere near them. For all he knew they were just waiting for him to let his guard down so they could nab the child, shoot him in the back, and take off.
He'd anticipated it for hours now. But the Rebel remained affable, and wholly uninterested in harming either him or the child. He couldn't get a read on them. The vocal modulator and the tinted helmet made it impossible. Maybe this is what everyone else thought of when they saw every other Mandalorian.
They walked along in silence, the only lights coming from their headlamps. The kid's excited and curious coos echoed around the caverns. Din looked up at an old, rusted crane that hung loose over the cracked ceiling. Stalactites pierced through the holes in the metal plated roof. In the distance Din could hear the squeaks and flaps of some flying creatures. He hoped that was all that was down here with them.
He almost jumped backwards when his light refocused ahead of him, reflecting against an unknown, armored silhouette. There, standing in rows and rows were disused, decaying B1 battle droids. Din blinked back the sudden flashfire of explosions across his eyes and stepped carefully around the army of corpse-droids.
The kid tugged on his leg, a concerned noise leaving its throat. "I'm fine," he replied absentmindedly, continuing to back up away from the rows of droids before he bumped into something solid and metal. Half expecting it to be the Rebel, Din was wholly unprepared for the sight of something he hadn't seen since childhood.
The droid looked smaller than he remembered, but the B2 super droid still appeared as ominous as ever in the dim light, it's attached blasters were held at the ready, it's armored head, tucked close to its shoulders. The red light on its breast plate was off. It was off, Din reminded himself as sweat broke out on his, thankfully, hidden face.
"Told you these were abandoned factories. Shut down after the wars."
The Rebel's voice drowned out the screams echoing in Din's ears and brought him back to reality. They were standing next to him although he could not recall them walking over. They were staring impassively up at the B2 droids. "Kinda sad, all these things down here in the dark? Never even got a chance to do anything?"
"Sad?!" Din could not keep the electric anger out of his voice.
If the Rebel found that unusual they were keeping it to themselves. They only shrugged at his outburst, never taking their eyes away from the droid. "I wouldn't want to be left in a place like this. All alone."
There was something to those words their modulator interrupted with static. They sighed and clapped Din on the back with surprising strength. "Guess that's why I'm keeping you alive so we get out of here, huh? C'mon. Keep moving."
Din forced himself to put one foot in front of the other. His every instinct screamed at him to burn the entire assembly line to the ground. Blast it right out of existence even if it buried all of them. But in a strange way the Rebel was right. They had been left down here, never living in the first place. IG-11 came painfully to mind at that last thought, but his brain was crowded enough with memories. He gave his head a shake and regained full control of his faculties, resorting to using an old breathing exercise he had learned during his early days of training to keep calm.
"Take it you don't like 'em too much?" The Rebel said tilting their head at the rows of droids they were still following.
The assembly track was angling upwards which for all intents and purposes had to be a good sign. Going up meant going out. The Rebel seemed to think so as well as they never deviated away from the track.
"No."
An uneasy silence reigned after that as they climbed upwards. There must have been hundreds of unused droids down here. Thousands. That was not a pleasant thought. Even as they spiraled ever onward the rows of B1 and B2 droids didn't change. At least they were deactivated.
The child giggled at his feet. "What do you have there?" Din asked.
It was holding one of the B1 heads in its little claws. It toddled over to the edge of the track and launched it off into the darkness, laughing as it clanked against the sides of the cavern on its way down into the blackness.
"Can we not toss things over into the abyss?" The Rebel asked, fingers twitching for their blaster.
A red glow spread through the cavern, illuminating everything.
Din had a blaster out without waiting. "What was that you said about these droids having never seen any action?"
A sickening echo magnified by hundreds caused Din to wince. The familiar sound of gears grinding and droid joints shifting made panic well in his gut. The Rebel had their weapon out too, whirling about wildly as the B2s spun their torsos about and leveled their hand cannons on them.
"Intruder Alert," a deep, robotic voice intoned down the assembly line.
The kid's ears pinned back in fear, it immediately scuttled behind Din, clutching his leg. "I'm guessing it means us," Din grunted.
Blaster fire drowned everything else out. For Din it was easy to dodge the incoming fire. Grabbing the kid in one hand, shooting with the other, he gained height thanks to the jet pack. The Rebel, on the other hand… Din watched as they took a running leap at one of the B2's, springing forward with one hand, twisting in mid air so that they could angle themselves up onto the second tier track and gain some cover.
"There's too many of them!" Din shouted.
"I can see that!" The Rebel spat back, shooting one B2 unit through the connecting tubing against its torso and legs, the only place where the armor was weakest on those things. Most of the blaster fire bounced right off the damn things.
"There's gotta be a way to...I don't know...shut them down?" He flew in, laying some covering fire so the Rebel could reposition.
"Oh, do I look like the resident expert? Grenade!" Din had just enough time to fly further afield as the Rebel lobbed an explosive down onto the other track they had just been walking on.
The resulting explosion sent a blast of heat and fire through the cavern, decimating the immediate droids, but creating a massive gap in the track. Was he imagining things or did he just feel the cavern give a shake? A stalactite fell almost directly on him at the thought.
"Look up there!" The Rebel gestured with her blaster. "I...I think that's some kind of central processing station!"
They were pointing at a boxed unit high up on the ledge closest to the roof of the cave. It would be impossible for the Rebel to climb up there with one hand and pinned down by droids, but for him? "Cover me!" he shouted and angled his flight towards the station.
The droids aimed their cannons at him, but the older, clunky droids telegraphed a shot a mile away. Din shielded the kid and tucked into a spin, dodging the blasts. From below he saw the Rebel concentrating their fire on one of the B2 units, firing shot after shot directly into the core of the droid until the armor super-heated and melted away. Without skipping a beat they shoved their hand directly into the chest of the droid before it could collapse and pulled on something internally, firing an ion blast directly from the hand canon. Their mask let out a loud crackle of static that Din could hear even from the air as they used the deactivated corpse of the droid to draw fire away from Din.
Not bad for one broken-armed merc.
He landed up at the station. A quick assessment proved the Rebel's instinct corrected. It did looked like some kind of foreman's station. But the controls were rusted over, and almost everything was already off. What the hell would shut down the whole row of droids if they were already technically supposed to be off? Din flipped a switch that looked like the backup generator's. A weird relief swept through him as the station lit up and the control panel blinked and beeped to life.
Ok, step one. Turn on the military droid assembly station. That could only be a good thing, right? Din hoped this didn't mean he'd just activated some distant row of droids further down the tunnels. Considering where his luck was at now…
The panel's labeling was long ago stripped, so that he could only make out a few letters here and there. Nothing for it. He pressed random buttons and flipped a few switches. Hazarding a glance out the scummed-over window he could see the oncoming red glow moving like a wave over to where the Rebel still fought on.
"Not to hurry you along or anything but if you could—-" anything else they said was drowned out in static, masking their panic, fury, or probably a combination of the two.
A crazy idea struck him.
Oh, no. Absolutely not. He shouldn't. It could very well bring half the tunnel down on them.
What was better? Dying by droid or being crushed to death?
Din slammed his hand down on the one button that was clearly labeled: Crane controls.
From above came a screeching, rusted over monstrous sound that temporarily silenced even the blaster fire. The lurching, ancient metalwork from above shuddered, curled and uncurled...and then careened straight at the assembly line and control's station.
Din had just enough time to jet out of the station before it was crushed on impact. Below, the Rebel unstuck their hand from the B2 unit, tossing it aside before reaching for her blaster again, firing shots indiscriminately as they tried to climb higher.
The crane went tumbling from its rusted perch, slamming into station and track, ripping the gears clean off and causing the line with its many rows of newly activated droids to plummet over the long spiral into the abyss below. The ground gave a sickening roll and the Rebel lost their footing as they ran to avoid the falling track.
Din was speeding towards them, grabbing them without thinking as the whole assembly line gave way. He shot forward towards one of the smaller, more natural rock tunnels above the now collapsing roof of the factory where the control's station had been moments ago.
For a moment there was nothing but the sound of metal scraping against rock, blaster fire from the hapless droids careening towards a more permanent deactivation, and the warning emergency sirens all fading out as they fell into the black. Then there was only the sound of his ragged breath, the child's panicked coos, and the static modulator from the Rebel who never took their gaze off of him.
"Why did you do that?" they asked. "Why did you do that?"
They seemed rattled, but not from the fight. Their good hand trembled ever so slightly as they flexed their fingers to still themselves. Even their modulator couldn't fully flatline their shock at having their life saved.
"We had a truce, remember?" Din slapped a hand across her back in the same mocking fashion they had done to him earlier. "Come on. We still don't know what else is down here. Eyes sharp. Blasters ready."
The Rebel pulled their own pistol out absentmindedly, giving him a small nod as if they had been soldiers together from the start. Din set the child down and drew his own weapon, reciprocating her nod. Why had he saved their life? He hadn't even thought to question why it had happened so fast. He didn't like the immediate answer that entered his mind. They fought like a warrior. Smart, adaptable, agile. Admirable. He thought back to their words earlier: no one should be left down here alone.
Brushing the thought aside he gestured with his blaster down the mouth of the damp, rocky cave. "After you."
A/N: Thanks so much for the reviews and for reading along so far! There's so much still to come so stay tuned!