Chapter Two: Until the Chances are Spent
It was a perfect night outside. Every star of the galaxy above the small world looked down favorably upon it, and there was the impression that wandering just a little beyond the horizon one would find oneself treading the night sky. The ceaseless chatter of insects sparked from different directions, prominent but not loud enough to hurt the senses. No, the night was perfect...and he felt his presence itself would throw everything off. Fest was not a world for the ill at heart. None of its scattered farming communities involved in the politics of the galaxy. Very few of those hosted drug cartels, and members of an underworld that was almost nonexistent. It was a planet that raised a respectable, hard-working populace of good morales, easily some of the best people you would ever come across.
Which was why he didn't belong here.
Not wondering much about what he was doing back on his home world– a world that was half in ashes now, run over by Imperial occupation– Cassian ducked out of the crashed ship's open hatch and half-stumbled onto damp Festian soil. There was only a little bit of a crater where the ship had crashed. No fire or smoke from the wreckage polluted the star-studded sky. He didn't pay it much attention, though. He found himself wandering, breathing a pleasantly cold air he had not breathed for years. Not since he was six years old.
Due to some unimaginable good luck they hadn't crashed anywhere near Imperial occupation or otherwise- the field appeared empty for miles. It didn't feel empty. It radiated life and spirit and hope. Suddenly he had no qualms about feeling alive. It may have been a code of his job in Intelligence to focus on the mission and the mission only, but this time, back on his home world, the mission was the last thing he found he could possibly care about.
He called the names of everybody he could remember. His mother, his father, the relatives who'd adopted him– he got no response but he didn't feel his heart sink. Fest! Beautiful, peaceful, independent Fest. There was no Imperial occupation here. He was just being ridiculous. Cassian almost felt like laughing at himself. What a load of–
An involuntary spin of his ankles brought him back to face the ship. Crashed. Its hull was blown out and the windscreen was shattered. No fire, no smoke, but there were bodies.
Dread gripped at his insides as he, again involuntarily, approached.
He fell to knees just like he'd fallen on the beach at Scarif. Scarif. What was he doing there? Wasn't it an Imperial planet? What did he have to do with the Empire?
He saw the bodies spread out before him on the wet, leveled grass, and it all came back to him.
He'd joined the Rebellion. At six years old, he'd picked the Rebels as his side and he'd hated the Empire for the carnage they'd brought to his world. For all the dead bodies of Festians that had surrounded him then, and haunted him now.
His family.
And now them, the team with which he had rushed into Scarif with hopes of saving the Rebellion. The Death Star hadn't killed them but the crashing ship had managed it. Short-circuiting remains of K2SO. Chirrut, and Baze, with his blaster still attached to him. Bodhi lay slumped and lifeless against a piece of hull. The Sergeants, Majors and Corporals of the Alliance who had joined in on the fight, mostly people he had purposely not grown attached to over the years. Contrary to the initial purpose of maintaining a distance, he felt attachment now. They had all made a sacrifice for the cause they believed in. He promised himself that their deaths would not be in vain.
A sudden surge of panic lurched in his chest. He strode across the grass and started turning the bodies over. He closed the eyelids that hadn't shut by themselves, recounting names as he went. There was someone missing, his instincts screamed. Someone he wanted to see. Did missing mean alive? Was that a good thing?
Scrambling in a panic he hadn't felt for years, his hands gripped a jacket that was a little familiar.
Jyn?
He turned the body over, hoping against hope that he was mistaken.
Empty blue orbs stared back at him.
Cassian woke up in a cold sweat, heartbeat threatening to rise way above the normal rate. He tried to steady his breath as his eyes focused and unfocused on the things around him. His legs felt like lead. There was a sharp bit of metal sticking against his spine, not at all courteous to his recent injury. Something else weighed down on his chest. It was difficult to tell exactly where he was, but the...interior...whatever...of this environment was steel grey with bits of blue and red.
He remembered falling from the Data Tower in Scarif. The landing had felt like this. Metal, sticking into his spine. Non-functioning legs. Grey, red, blue.
His grasped for his ribs to check if they weren't all over the place, but his fingers brushed over light fabric instead. He could tell at once that it wasn't his. He didn't wear thin overalls even in the most sweltering climates. He concentrated on the weight against his chest until he could make out what it was. A headful of hair, messily arrayed, unconscious but breathing. With a stubborn effort he shifted, moving the head to a better perch, his knees. That way his knocked out comrade would not restrict his air supply.
"Are you awake?" came a hazily recognizable voice. Melshi?
"Probably," grunted Cassian, then shut his eyes as pain seared through his lungs for the force of the words uttered.
"That was a close call," said Melshi. The Sergeant's face loomed into focus from a short distance off. He was also lying in an uncomfortable angle with the limbs and guns of two other soldiers over and under his frame. "Too kriffing close. I don't know what the hell that pilot was thinking, but I'm glad it didn't result in every one of us getting killed. And look, you're both actually alive. Mission accomplished, I suppose."
Cassian recognized the dry humour as ranting to clear the mind of other things, things like an instant at death's door, but he didn't have the strength to respond until the words finally clicked to him. "Who's alive?"
Melshi snorted. "Either I'm talking to a ghost or you are. Go to sleep, Andor."
His fractured bones felt it was a good idea, so he slid to the metal floor completely and relaxed his spine against the closest thing for comfort. Somebody else's blacked-out body. At the same time, feeling unusually considerate, he dragged up the comrade slacked against his knees to pull him into a less straining position. Cassian froze when he saw whose unconscious form he held.
Melshi peered curiously from the wall opposite.
Wanting nothing else but for this to be real, he held Jyn in a warm embrace instead, tucking his chin over her tangled hair and blinking himself to sleep a second time. Too much was happening right now for anything to be considered. For all he knew they were all dead, or buried under debris from the explosion and dying. This reality was too good to be true, and inarguably much better than he deserved.
Cassian woke up for the third time to the anxious exchange of voices. Well, waking up was easier said than done because his backbone still grated in a dozen places and the only things that actually moved were his eyes. There was a hand that supported him, though, and once he'd managed a partially upright position he noticed it was Jyn. She smiled, a little strained, patting his knee. He caught bits of the ongoing conversation.
"...can't let the Alliance know just yet. Imperials still out there looking for us."
"But we're lost here. We can't navigate this system."
"Early hyperspace, I'm so sorry–"
"Early hyperspace saved our lives. Don't be sorry."
"It's practically uncharted!"
"We're alive," Jyn answered the question on his mind quietly. "We made it. But it looks like we're somewhere deep inside an uncharted system, and we can't contact the Alliance."
Cassian frowned, sitting up a little straighter. "We're alive?"
Jyn held his hand tightly. "Bodhi saved us. The plan worked."
A better reality than he deserved, but he was infinitely glad for it. Glad that Jyn and at least a few others had made it. Half-dazed still, he attempted to assess his surroundings.
Melshi, Sefla, Bodhi and two others whose names he couldn't recall. Nobody looked to be in good shape. The hype about having survived seemed to have worn off the group- now they only looked deeply concerned about the present.
"Captain Andor," Sefla greeted him dryly. "It's good to see that you're living. But you have been in and out of uncharted territories over the years, maybe you can get us out of this one?"
Cassian tried and ignored the spreading ache in his spine and told himself to concentrate. They may have escaped once, but the current situation sounded only a little better than the previous one. Still he found himself inexpressibly relieved to see the six faces, alive, looking at him. He had really believed Scarif would be the end, and he wouldn't have minded. Death for a cause worth dying for.
Too many people were missing, though. Chirrut. Baze. K2. Tonc. Arro. Their deaths hadn't been in vain. Their sacrifice had saved the Rebellion. He had kept a professional military distance, because it did not serve one well in his line of work to get attached, but he missed them now. They deserved this good fortune better than he did.
"Do we know which the closest system is?" he asked. It would not do to quit now. These lives also deserved a chance.
Melshi kneaded his forehead tiredly. "No, that's the problem. We don't know where the hell we are. There isn't a single known system around that catches the radar."
"What about this planet, then?" asked Jyn.
"Can't tell if it's inhabited," answered Bodhi, dropping his gaze. "The atmosphere's rough. It won't even be an easy landing. We're just free-floating right now."
"At least there won't be Imperial forces down there," said one of the two men Cassian couldn't identify. "We can hold out for a while and then attempt to contact the Alliance."
"Let's go with that," Sefla agreed.
The ship suddenly jittered, rattling the broken bones of its occupants. Bodhi was on his feet and running for the cockpit. He made various alterations to the control board, minimizing the air filtration and turning off the lights. With their years of experience nobody had to ask what was going on- they were running so dangerously low on fuel that not even energy for the lights could be spared.
In the ominous darkness Cassian grabbed onto a metal grille for storing luggage and hauled himself to his feet. Jyn started to protest when his back refused to stretch out completely, but he nevertheless made his way to the copilot's chair with as fast as he could. Collapsing to the seat, he curled his fingers around the manual steering and changed gears. The ship dropped of its own accord, pulled by the planet's gravity, and an overgrown green surface started speeding towards them.
"Point three liters of the tank left!" shouted Bodhi, eyes wide.
Cassian turned to him. "I owe you one for Scarif. Lower the landing skids on my signal?"
"O-Okay," stammered the ex-Imperial pilot, gripping the handlebar over his seat with shivering knuckles. Too fast, things were happening too fast.
"Good man," nodded Cassian, and sped for a cluster of trees just as a shockwave shot up his spine like lightning.
The ship crashed into a thick green canopy and past thin barks that snapped like twigs, not plummeting nose-down only because the skids kept the fall balanced. But everything shook, lurched and jittered at a rate that broke chunks off the interior, racks, grilles, benches. Sefla had the bad luck of having anchored himself to one of the racks that broke off. The fall paused for a moment. The hull scraped against something. Then the branches in which it had got caught tore down through the middle and the ship fell again.
It was an eternity before a final creak of metal as the skids hit the ground, and the ship rocked dangerously before swaying back to a stable position. Sefla shifted away from the hatch with a groan, his broken leg further ill-treated. Jyn uncurled from the protective ball she'd rolled into. The others released the iron grips on their anchors.
Bodhi shakily got to his feet, breathing a sigh of a relief. He looked back at his cargo. A few protesting groans, but not too much of damage done.
Jyn stood up using the wall for support and dashed to the front of the ship. "Is he...?" she started, panic creeping into her voice.
Cassian put whatever energy he had left into opening his eyes. "I'm...fine. We need to...find fuel...and get out of here. Just...just our luck if it's uninhabited."
"Don't move," ordered Jyn, although she was glad. "I'll leave to search for a filling station. I think I'm..." She looked around at the others. Searched for the word. "Relatively fine."
The Captain raised a sarcastic eyebrow at her. "You're going, really? Alone? Into that wilderness?"
"I'll go with you," said Bodhi quickly. It was clear that despite all he had done, he still wanted to do more. These were his friends. It was better than the Empire had ever given him.
Erso looked him over closely. There didn't seem to be much in the way of critical damage the pilot had sustained- bruised and burned in several places, but he was much better off than Cassian.
"Thank you," she said finally, a half-smile naturally forming. Perhaps the recent brush with certain death had made her a little more generous with gestures of appreciation. Melshi was about to volunteer, but Sefla, cradling a broken arm, intervened before he had the chance.
"Oh no you don't. We need somebody to defend this ship if anything else goes wrong."
"No," came Cassian's aggressive disagreement. "Melshi, go with them."
Jyn picked up a gun from the floor and clipped it to her belt. "Lieutenant Sefla is right, Cassian. We need somebody on board who can defend the ship."
"Listen here, Erso–"
"He's just being protective," snickered Sefla, dismissing the deadly glare he got from the Captain at that. "But it makes more sense if Melshi stays with us. Besides, Sergeant Jyn Erso has proven that she can defend herself, and more. You don't disagree on that front, do you, Captain?"
"I'm speaking with Draven about that wit of yours," threatened Cassian, but he didn't argue further. At least the debate had lifted spirits with the group. The men were still laughing when Bodhi and Jyn walked down the gangplank and stepped onto soil.
"I think we're in luck," the pilot's lips twitched upwards uncertainly, following a narrow, beaten path with his eyes. "It probably leads to a settlement."
Jyn observed the direction in which the path ran- damp and blessed with the shade of a further line of trees. It was approaching evening, from what she could tell, but the little bit of sky that made itself visible was heavy with a promise of rain and darkening. She partially wished they had put this off until the next morning, but chances couldn't be taken on an utterly foreign world such as this.
"Let's go," she agreed, and lead the way down the battered path. It smelt of bark and damp, like some of the wilder areas of Lah'mu had when she was a child. It surprised Jyn that she could recall that now. But the scent was unmistakable, and she hadn't been through this kind of terrain since she was nine. She told herself to focus.
A drizzle started to fall on them about thirty minutes in, but by then they'd progressed a long distance from the ship and were nearing what looked like the end of the forest. The mass of trees were starting to give way to a clearing. Despite the drizzle they slowed their pace and approached carefully. They had yet to confirm that the planet's populace weren't a threat.
"Down," Jyn whispered, getting to a crouch. Bodhi followed suit, but he stayed still in the undergrowth while Jyn kept moving, assessing the place. It appeared to be a small town with a large portion of cleared forest as extra compound. But there were no parked ships as far as she could tell, indicating that these were people who didn't frequently make long-distance journeys –also that it was hardly likely they'd find a fueling station here- but the settlement was a reasonably-sized one. Traditional fire-lanterns lit up the insides of squat homes and a semi-paved street ran through the gaps. A high wall of mesh was built around it, though. Not to mark any boundaries, this was the only town around. For protection, then. From what? The forest they were exiting was probably not uninhabited, either. It was a good thing Melshi had stayed with the ship.
Bodhi seemed to be thinking the same thing. "I hope they don't run into..."
She squeezed his shoulder. "They'll be fine. Let's make inquiries about fuel and we can leave this planet."
They got back onto the path, slowly approaching the compound.
Each step closer to the town started to show them just how protected the small settlement was. The poles holding the mesh were thick and made of iron, and the wall itself stood at about thirty feet tall. There was a gate built into it with bits of barbed wire sticking around the edges and two alien sentries with rifles guarding the gate.
One of the guards pointed its weapon the moment it caught sight of them, but the other ventured forward and started asking questions. Neither of them understood the language but they raised their arms to show they were unarmed. Jyn had tucked her gun into her jacket beforehand.
The guard, a short, scaly alien with pinkish skin, asked just one more question before concluding that they were outsiders, huffing, and issuing the order to let them through. Its partner regarded them suspiciously before opening the gate. Jyn managed to get through without scraping on the wires, but Bodhi had to bend his back in half.
They found themselves walking past lit-up squat mud houses with barred windows and closed doors, down a steet padded with unpolished rock. None of the passers-by, none of whom were human, seemed to pay them any attention despite of how out-of-place they looked. But Jyn eventually started to detect shuffling feet and quick glances whenever they passed. Fearful chatter rose to high pitches. There was something wrong about their presence here. Bodhi gripped her forearm as soon as he felt it.
There were suddenly no more short, pink-tinged pedestrians who couldn't speak their language. Eerily enough it appeared that everybody had either retreated into their homes or put as much distance between themselves and the newcomers as possible. Then they saw it. A number of taller humanoid figures had stepped from an alleyway onto the street ahead of them. Most of the figures were muscular and largely built. All of them bore weapons.
"We need to leave," said Bodhi nervously, halting, taking a step back. "We can't fight them."
"We don't have to fight them," Jyn assured him, taking a step forward. She adapted the most non-threatening stance she could think of, palms raised in the air. Realizing that there was no way out of this, Bodhi did the same, although unlike the Erso girl his expression didn't threaten something like approach us and I'll slit your throats.
The figures were all human but frighteningly well-built. The one who appeared to be the leader of the group considered their surrender for a moment. Then he snorted and clicked his fingers.
Jyn's blaster was out the moment one of the men stepped forward with a body-sack. She shot him and at least two others before the whole group jumped forward and they were both roughly handled, gagged and enclosed in bags that turned their visions black.
Jyn felt her senses assaulted by the foul stench of some kind of plant-drug the moment she regained consciousness. Golden light, like the approaching explosion on Scarif, burned into her pupils when she opened them. She knew the all too familiar weight of shackles on her wrists. Her head hurt like it had hit something hard before she got here.
She heard a voice speak Basic and she forcibly opened her eyes wide enough to see beyond the blinding light. A man of brutal proportions was shaking something beside her. Alarmed, she looked over her shoulder to see Bodhi's unconscious form.
"Stop it!" she shouted. "Stop!" The man turned her way and glared. Unintimidated, Jyn barred her teeth.
The pilot finally lolled his eyes awake, which was essentially what the man had wanted in the first place, so he ignored her and walked away from his prisoners calling other names. Jyn paid attention to Bodhi in this space of time. "You alright?" she asked.
"Where...where are we?" he mumbled.
"I don't know," she whispered, assessing the place with her eyes. It was brightly lit with a dozen electric lamps handing low from the ceiling, and there were tables and benches in the other corners of the room. Unlike the dwellings they'd previously seen, this one had a high roof and walls and floorings made of wood. The stench was overwhelming. She felt she would choke out if she had to bear with it for much longer. "But we'll be alright. I promise."
"We're chained," said the pilot, looking down at his shackles.
"I've broken out of chains before. We'll be okay."
"Jyn?"
His tone of voice made Jyn look his way with concern.
"I'm glad you're here," he said earnestly.
She didn't have time to reply to that, because that was when about six men from before, the pack leader included, walked into their line of vision making a whole lot of noise. The foul stench grew stronger at their proximity. None of them looked particularly healthy, although every one of them did possess huge fists and a musclemass that was difficult to see past. The leader snapped at his group to shut up. All drifted into silence, but the sneers remained. They studied their prisoners eagerly.
The leader started to speak. Rancid breath drifted their way.
"I am sorry for the...rough welcome, by the way," he said, grinning as his men snickered behind him. "What is a pretty girl such as yourself doing on a planet like this?"
It probably wasn't a good idea to smart-mouth on this one, but Jyn was doing it before Bodhi could warn her.
"Why don't you first tell me what the hell I'm doing in a run-down drughole such as this?"
"She's a feisty one," the leader snickered to his men. Sickly laughter chorused around the room. "Even got a gun on her."
"I thought I might have to deal with lowlives like you," said Jyn. "All planets have a bunch, don't they?"
"We didn't mean any harm," amended Bodhi quickly. "We're only here looking for fuel. We'll be on our way soon."
The main man scoffed, unimpressed. "A little soft, aren't you? Who should I be afraid of, you or your little sister here?" He stroked Jyn's cheek at the last bit. If her ankles hadn't also been tied down she would've aimed a kick at his groin.
"You should be very afraid of the both of us," she snarled.
The man smirked, running thick fingers through her hair. "Forgive me if I just find that cute." He clutched a at her locks. "Be careful who you pick a fight with, girl. But I'm feeling generous today. Shall we give them a sporting chance?"
There were a few approving hoots and a couple of shouted refusals from the bunch. He listened for longer, counting the votes under his breath, and turned back to the prisoners with a delighted grin.
"Guess what, you're getting a chance to leave." When Jyn didn't waver at the news, he only brought his rancid breath closer and announced, "And, if you play especially well, we'll give you the fuel you want. Isn't it a grand deal? You can thank Welk here. He's got a bit of a soft spot for the innocent ones. Normally we reserve this punishment for people who swindle our drugs and money from us."
Welk appeared from the crowd to stand beside his leader. He was of even greater proportions and almost two heads taller than all the others. Jyn could guess why they listened to his suggestions.
"What's your game?" she asked neutrally.
Welk produced what she recognized as her blaster. He then tossed it in to a transparent bag of similar guns. The leader proceeded to pick them out one by one. More of the men started filling in from the floor above them, and there was soon an unbreathable audience. It didn't serve to boost Jyn's confidence that they would make it out of this one. There was no way the two of them could run through that.
One of the strongly-built humans pushed a long table in between the prisoners and their captors. The leader laid the guns out on the table. Carefully, like it was an elaborate dinner spread he was arranging and not a gamble with death. When he was done there were nine guns before them. Jyn didn't recognize hers anymore. She hadn't paid it much attention earlier to note the specific model or any distinguishing marks. In general structure it was the same as all the other guns.
The leader of the group clapped his palms almost gleefully. "Here you have nine good old-fashioned blasters. Five of them are uncharged and basically harmless. The other four are overcharged, making them essentially lethal. Lethal on first shot. You're going to get four chances. Tell me which gun to try out. Twice on you, twice on your friend."
Jyn shook her head. "Leave him out of this."
The leader narrowed his eyes. "If you don't comply by my rules, girl, I will try whichever gun I want until I have one that fires. And then I will shoot you both dead."
"We agree to play!" exclaimed Bodhi hastily. "But the gun that she says."
The man sniggered. "Good. Now is your first chance."
Jyn stared at the firearms spread out before her. For all she knew they were all lethal and these chances were a lie. But there was no way of telling. The indicator lights had been ripped out of all the guns. If she made the wrong pick then one of them would die, and the other would be as good as dead. Having survived this far, to be foiled by a group of lowlives at their own game...
"Second from your right," she said.
While the others looked eagerly on, the leader was more than happy to pick up the second gun from his right.
Bodhi prayed to the Force that Jyn knew what she was doing.
Grinning maniacally, he extended his arm, aimed for her forehead, and pulled the trigger.
Bodhi flinched and shut his eyes, expecting the dreadful sound of blaster fire, but there was nothing. He opened his eyes and looked at his friend again. She was still alive, and hadn't broken her glare on the ringleader.
"Well played," he commented, after shaking hands with most of the crowd. "The next try is on him."
"Fourth from your right," she answered, eerily self-assured.
He slid the gun off the table and extended it at Bodhi. The pilot breathed what he was sure would be his last. But once again there was no sound.
"Interesting," admitted the man with the gun, grinning almost dementedly. There were whistles and hoots from the staircase. Bets were probably being made by now. The leader threw a salute Welk's way.
"I'll go with...third from your left."
"Your lucky numbers are saving you, girl," said the ringleader and pulled the trigger again. A puff of smoke was the only thing that left the barrel.
Applause rose from the spectators. Money was thrown around.
"Hey, it'll all be over after this," snickered the man. "Your last chance. Better not break your winning streak for his sake."
Jyn studied the guns lying on the table before them. Bodhi wondered how she was doing it. She had stalled, though. This time she had stalled and she was starting to look a little less self-assured.
"Fourth...fourth from your left," she said.
The man whisked the blaster off the table and pointed it at the pilot. His finger was squeezing into the trigger guard when Jyn shouted.
"Fifth! The one after that. Not that one."
Bodhi felt his whole being fill with cold dread just as the room descended into silence.
"That's not how we normally play, girl," the ringleader informed her regretfully, and pulled the trigger.
Nighttime had fallen when it started to rain. There was ice mixed in with the water, thudding against the roof of the ship and reverberating. The half of the group that wasn't paying attention to various battle scars and fractured bones were repeatedly cursing the planet and its insufferable climate. Cassian had his back leaned against the copilot's seat and his eyes closed, contemplating both the worsening pain that was getting difficult to ignore and the events of the past couple of hours. It seemed like a lifetime ago that they had exited Yavin 4 offering up a false name for an unapproved mission they believed would save the Rebellion. There had been a lot of good people on this ship when it had first taken off. Too many of them had perished, either in battle or in the Death Star's fire. During their lifetimes he had never grown attached to any of them- being part of the Rebellion meant you were prepared to let go of your life, or face your comrades' deaths at any given instant- but in the aftermath of that all or nothing battle he appreciated the lives those people had lived and everything they would have done for the cause they believed in. He found he missed K2's annoying habit of making smart remarks at inopportune times. Infuriating though he may have been, the droid had been the closest thing he'd had to a best friend. And then there were the friends Jyn had easily picked up on Jedha, the two guardians of the Whills. It had not been their place to fight. But they'd done it. They'd stayed true to a friendship that had only just started, and also they had fought because, regardless of political opinion, saving the Rebellion had been the right thing to do. Cassian feared he would never understand their move. The Allaince had taught him to be a spy, an assassin and a saboteur for the right reasons, not to be a good person for no specific reason. If he wanted to learn that he should have asked Chirrut or Baze. Now, maybe, he could ask Jyn, because she had also given her all for a mission that wasn't merely her duty.
He watched the unmoving canopy of trees through the rain and ice that slid down the windscreen.
Something rustled behind the thick cluster of leaves. He strained his eyes to distinguish what it was. Yes, the trees were definitely not staying still. Perhaps the wind had picked up. The movement was too unpredictable, too irregular for wind, though.
The floor of the ship rattled.
"What the hell was that?" exclaimed Aren. Cassian had earlier managed to recount the names of the two men. They had never accompanied him on missions before Scarif.
"I have no idea," muttered Melshi, appearing at the front of the ship. He pressed his face to the windscreen and tried to spot something in the semi-darkness.
The floor thudded again. Sefla and Liowa joined them around the cockpit. No shapes appeared from the trees. It was only the outline of rain on the leaves.
Another thud. This time it actually changed the position of the ship itself.
"Down," hissed Melshi urgently. "Everybody down!"
Everyone who was at the front of the ship rushed to the cargo area, where there was more space, and did as instructed. Melshi stayed close to Cassian, who only managed to bend his head down slightly.
The floor shook again just as a massive shape emerged from behind the trees. An animal that moved on two legs from what they could tell. The shape of it was all that was even remotely distinguishable in the dark.
A snout suddenly pressed to the windscreen, jumping the ship several paces backwards. A low howl emanated from the creature's throat. A mist formed on the screen as it breathed.
Cassian straightened his back cautiously, knowing that in the previous position it was very close to breaking further. Somehow the animal detected this hint of movement. Every bit of muscle that was visible to them tensed. It reared back, and kept going, like it was preparing to charge.
"No," Sefla groaned. "You've got to be kidding me."
And it charged. They braced themselves for the worst, but it stopped just a few feet short of them. A scare, then. It was only trying to intimidate this foreign object in its territory.
The creature breathed onto the windscreen once more and reared back to study the ship. Cassian maintained his position, rigid.
It seemed to snort its approval before turning the other way and making off back into the trees. The floor rattled as it did. Nobody dropped their stances until it had completely disappeared from sight.
"Well, that taught us something, didn't it?" grunted Melshi, getting to his feet. "We need to hightail it out of this miserable planet."
"How long has it been?" Cassian asked, pointedly ignoring his longtime comrade.
"Two and a half hours, Captain," replied Aren, who'd been tasked with keeping track of the time. "But it's reasonable. Can't be easy finding a settlement with a filling station in this jungle."
"Don't sweat," Sefla patted Cassian on the head in a way he would never have tolerated if he'd been in a condition to fight in. "They'll be back, Rook and your girl."
The Captain glared so sharply at him that he actually removed his hand. "For the last kriffing time. She's not my girl."
"Don't take it personally," Melshi sympathized, hiding a grin. "We've been stuck here a while and getting on your nerves is all Taidu can do to keep himself occupied. Besides, you're making it worse by actually getting angry."
"Of all the people to be stuck on this planet with," Cassian relented.
"You've been stuck on worse planets with me," Sefla happily reminded him, ruffling his hair a second time. The Captain promised himself that if he ever recovered enough to be able to so much as raise a fist, Taidu Sefla would be the first person he would raise it at.
Rolling a huge container full of fuel behind them, Jyn and Bodhi didn't even look back until they were a long distance away from the town and on the battered path. As soon as they deemed it safe enough they let go of the container and exhaled in relief.
Wordlessly they embraced tightly before letting go. The pilot had half a dozen questions prepared for her, but he froze when he noticed the fearful expression on her face. It was so out of place for Jyn Erso that he assumed that there must be some kind of nightmarish threat approaching and turned around in alarm.
"No," sighed Jyn, burying her face in her hands. She looked more grief-stricken than fearful. He had never seen her that way before. There was anger somewhere in there, too. Maybe he had. He recounted how she had looked on Eadu after her father's death. This was close.
"You saved us–" he started, but she cut him off.
"I nearly got you killed. If that had been a charged blaster, Bodhi, if that hadn't miracularously been–"
"That's not fair, Jyn," he said gently. "It wasn't only me. You could have got shot too."
"With an uncharged gun," corrected Jyn, furious at herself. "After the first round it was all supposed to be an uncharged gun, without question. Then in the last round I lost concentration and you nearly paid with your life for it!"
Bodhi looked confused. "What do you mean?"
"The first round," Jyn rubbed her temples roughly. "That was the only actual guess. I luckily got an uncharged gun and he fired it. But he wasn't paying attention. He put that gun back down in a different place without even looking at it, and he joined in to cheer with the others after that. Each time I got him to pick up that same gun."
The pilot reached and hugged her again. "But that's brilliant!"
"Don't you see?" she shook her head. "In the last round I lost focus. I couldn't tell where he'd kept the gun. I got the places mixed up. My mistake could've got you killed, Bodhi, and you've done so much for us–"
"I'm not dead, am I?" he asked, putting an arm around her shoulders, and his grasp around her was stronger than she'd ever guessed possible for the ex-cargo pilot. "Don't worry about what could have happened. Maybe you did pick the same gun that last time. It doesn't matter. We're both here, and thanks to you we have a tank's amount of fuel to get us off this planet."
Jyn nodded minutely. "Okay," she said noiselessly. "Okay."
"Come on," said Bodhi, picking up both of the roller's handles. "Let's get out of here."
A/N: A huge thanks to everyone who followed, reviewed and added this to their favourites so far. Just so you know, the two other survivors, Liowa and Aren, are completely improvised characters, not canon. They don't appear later on in the story much. Sefla's and Melshi's personalities I had to improvise because we don't get much of them in the movie. But hey, I hope it was a good read!