#21 Luck at Last
Her chest convulsed as her body fought to bring air back to her lungs. For a terrifying moment it felt as if she would suffocate then and there, but with a raspy, choking cough she finally managed to take a ragged breath. Half-buried in the merchandise she had been thrown on, the droids did not seem to see her as they marched past her storefront. And there were hundreds of them, row upon identical row of them as they marched by with inhuman precision.
Other than having the breath knocked out of her, Goose had escaped injury with little more than bruises and a few superficial cuts.
She was forced to keep absolutely still to avoid the notice of the droids, but inside her mind raced. Jules. The one person she could honestly say she liked in this whole damned army, and he was probably dead. The droids had made sure of that. A bitter taste filled her mouth, and it took all her willpower to resist the urge to spit it out. Goose couldn't claim to have known him well, but she would still miss him. If she herself survived, that was.
Goose continued to sit there in paralyzed silence, scarcely breathing for fear of discovery. But the droids continued to be utterly unaware of her and simply marched past with that eerie chunk-chunk-chunk sound. In the distance, she could hear the shots and explosions from the renewed Republic defensive. The Separatists had to be within a block of the heavy cannons by this point, and it would not be long before the Republic's last hope was overrun.
After a few minutes, the sounds of the droids faded away. She should have waited longer, just to be sure, but impatience got the better of her. Bruised back groaning in protest, Goose stood as silently as she could managed and took a few cautious steps forward. Still she heard nothing, no droids left behind to mop up stragglers. It seemed the Separatists had to dedicate all their resources and weren't all that sure of winning either.
Her confidence returning somewhat, Goose looked around and looked for where Jules's body had fallen. She was behind enemy lines now, after all, and understood she had to go while there was still time, but not before she knew for sure. After a few moment of peering through the flickering gloom, she saw him. To her eyes, however, he appeared to be nothing more than a tangle of plastoid-covered limbs.
Her breath caught, and Goose had to swallow hard to get the lump out of her throat. There was no way he could have survived taking a round from a tank point-blank, but Jules had saved her life half a dozen times in the past few weeks, and she owed him at least this much.
As stealthily as she could, she crept over to where Jules lay. His armor looked charred, but he was surprisingly still in one piece. Perhaps, if the damage to his armor was so little… Her heart in her throat, she knelt down beside his still form, hardly daring to hope. Goose reached out tentatively, feeling for the point on his neck that would tell her whether or not he was dead. A thrill of relief ran through her when she felt for his pulse and found it to be quite strong.
Elation flooded her, and it was only her heightened sense of awareness that kept her from laughing out loud. Jules was alive.
"You lucky barve," she whispered to him, although he appeared unconscious. "That should have killed you..."
Hysteria threatened to overwhelm her, heart thudding uncontrollably in her chest. Her whole body trembled as the adrenaline slowly wore off, and to focus herself she checked is pulse again. Still, it beat strongly. Goose was so happy she could have cried.
Still wary of the droids returning, Goose dragged Jules into a nearby perfume shop and tried to assess his injuries. Amazingly, his armor did not appear to have been pierced. The shot must have landed in such a way that it knocked him off his feet but didn't kill him. However, he had hit that pillar with a crunch, and she wouldn't be at all surprised if he had several broken bones. She pulled off his helmet to check for a head wound, but found nothing more serious than a small lump on his temple.
For a man who had just been blasted by a tank, Jules was in remarkably good shape. Goose was even beginning to feel foolish for believing him dead in the first place. She would have to wait until he came to before she could determine which bones were broken, but that was only a small concern of hers. The big issue now was getting out of there alive, now that they were trapped behind enemy lines. Dragging Jules more than a few feet wasn't much of an option, and she couldn't very well carry him either. She'd just have to wait until he regained consciousness.
The minutes crawled by slowly, and Goose became increasingly aware that she would be a sitting nuna if a droid happened to come along. Jules's blaster was nowhere in sight, not that she could use it even if she had it. The only weapon she'd ever handled before shot nothing more lethal than water. With nothing better to do, she stared impatiently at his slack features, hesitant to shake him awake because it risked agitating a yet-unknown injury.
It was only after an interminable amount of time, at least five minutes, that his eyes finally fluttered open. He jerked a bit as if waking from a bad dream, and it took a long moment for a look of recognition to cross his face.
"Goose?" he murmured slowly, with a groan.
"You better believe it," she snorted, although she more relieved than she'd anticipated. "Don't bother sitting up. I'll bet you've got some fractures."
He did as he was told, although he looked like he wanted to get moving. Jules took a deep breath, then winced and made a face.
"What is that smell?" he asked with disgust.
"Huh?" she said at first, not sure what he meant. "Oh, right. We're behind a perfume counter. I guess most of the bottles are shattered."
She'd hardly noticed it in the beginning, but now that he mentioned it the sickeningly sweet combined scent of a dozen different perfumes was almost overpowering.
"Don't you think you could have found somewhere less…pungent?" Jules continued with a grimace.
"I just want to smell pretty," Goose deadpanned, with only a flicker of frustration. Better he be ungrateful than dead.
Jules let out a sharp gasp as she began to probe his side, and she started to suspect it wasn't really the perfume that was bothering him.
"Your ribs?" she asked gently.
"Yeah, but not too bad," he replied with a grunt. "I think my collarbone is busted, though."
Goose almost rolled her eyes in annoyance, although such a gesture felt somewhat absurd given their precarious situation.
"Congratulations, Jules," she sighed, "You managed to break some of the bones in your body most difficult for me to treat."
"I'm sorry to be such an inconvenience," Jules replied through gritted teeth, though his eyes betrayed his mirth.
Her medkit had been lost, since she'd left it behind when she'd started retreating, and it was safe to say it had been disintegrated by the tank. As a result, Goose had very few options when it came to patching Jules up. She fished a packet of gauze out of a cargo pocket in her fatigues, but was unable to find anything to ease his pain.
"This is all I've got," she said regretfully, holding up the gauze. "What do you have left in your medpack?"
"Nothing," he answered with a sigh. "Used it all up a few days ago."
That didn't come as much of a surprise to her, that Jules had used supplies from his personal medpack on his wounded comrades. It seemed like she wouldn't be able to do much for him until they found some help.
"Looks like we'll have to do this the old-fashioned way," Goose said with forced cheerfulness. "Not that I could do anything about that broken clavicle besides put it in a sling anyway."
She helped Jules sit up as carefully as she could, mindful of the pain it caused him. As she wrapped the gauze around his shoulder into a makeshift sling, she caught him looking over to where he had been struck by that shot from the tank. He had been kneeling over that dying trooper when it had happened, and now only a blackened crater remained where the clone's body had been. Goose didn't need to ask him to know what he was thinking. That man had been his brother, whether he had actually known him or not.
"Was there really nothing you could have done to save him?" he asked quietly, after a long silence.
At that moment, it took all the courage she had left to look him in the eyes.
"I didn't ask to stay here just so I could run for it as soon as the going got tough," she said a bit harsher than intended, "and I would never take abandoning a patient lightly. Believe me when I say he was a dead man."
Another long silence ensued, although this one was not nearly as uncomfortable as the one that had preceded it. Just as Goose finished tying off the gauze, she felt rather than heard a low rumble, followed by a soft boomp. To the untrained ear, it might have sounded like a particularly flatulent bantha had let out some gas not far away from them. But she knew better. That had been an explosion, and a faraway one at that.
The oddest thing was, the explosion had come from behind, well into Separatist territory. At the moment, Goose couldn't think of what could have possibly caused it, especially since the Republic was supposed to be losing. Jules had noticed it too, and much to her distress he was trying to stand up.
"Hey, at least let me help you up!" she said with exasperation, but he didn't really seem to listen.
"That had to have been the shield generator," Jules muttered distractedly as he staggered to his feet, leaning heavily on Goose.
"What?" she asked incredulously, the thought having never entered her mind. It just didn't seem possible. "Are you sure?"
"There's only one way to find out." He grunted, then started to shuffle towards the door they had entered not long ago.
Her mind screamed that it was a terrible idea, that neither of them was armed, that they'd both be dead if there were droids on the other side of that door. But she brushed those rational thoughts aside, instead giving in to her curiosity. Jules was wheezing slightly by the time they reached the door, and it occurred to her that he had to be in a great deal of pain. But he made no mention of it, and had already thumbed the door sensor before she could say anything.
The sight that confronted her as the door slid open nearly brought a tear to her eye. Only minutes before, the sky had been a deep crimson, as if foretelling the Republic blood to be spilled that day. But now it was blue, albeit a hazy, smoke-filled blue, but blue nonetheless. Goose felt an insane, almost uncontrollable laughter bubble up in her, although it only manifested itself in a small chuckle. The shield was gone. The tide had turned.
And then, as if the trumpets of victory were being blown, a dozen LAAT gunships cruised by overhead, the hum of their engines like music to her ears. Roaring above the sound of the gunships was the boom of the heavy cannons, finally able to target the Separatist tanks. A wide grin split Goose's face, and she continued to smile despite her dry and cracked lips all the way back to the large plaza, where a Republic cruiser had set down and was unloading reinforcements.
Goose could not remember a time in her life when she was any happier, any more relieved, than she was at that moment. It seemed that everything had come together perfectly, and all she had to do was sit back and watch. Subconsciously she ignored the ruin where bodies of troopers from the 501st and 212th battalions lay. Seeing their losses would break her illusion, her desperate hope that all of it was over.
But it wasn't over. All around her were wounded from the battle, some worse off than others, as it always was. With an inaudible sigh she knelt down to start treating the nearest injured trooper, having already forgotten her medkit was lost for good. A moment later she heard a few purposeful steps behind her, and then a cleared throat. Confused, Goose turned her head to see Captain Rex, looking more battered and grimy than ever.
"Doctor Gosling," he said surprisingly softly, "I'm afraid you'll have to give that trooper over to a med droid. The 501st is pulling out."
For a long moment the words didn't make much sense. What did he mean, give her patient over to a med droid? How could they be pulling out, no more than ten minutes after the shooting stopped? Where could they possibly be going? Before she could ask any of those questions, a med droid had appeared seemingly out of nowhere and was loading the wounded clone onto a medlifter. She blinked at it incredulously until she realized it must have come off the cruiser along with all the other reinforcements.
She stood up slowly, noticing for the first time the multitudes of med droids moving around, helping the injured. So too did she spot several HNE droidcams, although she saw no reporters. Perhaps it was just the exhaustion, but it seemed odd that she could miss so much. Suddenly too tired for words, Goose followed like a ghost as Rex and Jules boarded a gunship already full of 501st troopers. A minute later, the craft took off and flew out high into the atmosphere.
A/N: I'm so sorry about the slow updates, but AP tests are coming up, and I've been swamped. I'll try to post a little more regularly soon, though. Please review!