Hello again everyone. I hope you're having a lovely day. After much delay, here is the second chapter. I promise it doesn't usually take me a month to write 2,000 words but I also went on holiday twice and started a new job in the time frame which is why things were a bit slow. I enjoyed writing this chapter but I don't feel like it's as strong as the first. I felt I was scrambling a bit more for things to happen in the story as it's kind of the middle stage of the battle where things are just generally chaotic. Anyway, I got there in the end. The next chapter will be the final one. Not sure when it will be released but hopefully quicker than this one.

The blast had carved a crater into the trench. Residual warmth hummed from it. Lingering dark smoke wafted skywards. Corr spotted two bodies strewn across the soot-blackened snow. He rushed over to the closer one lying face down. Their body rolled over limply when he pulled at their shoulder and Corr's eyes widened at the sight. Their helmet had been scorched alarmingly on one side and their goggles were shattered. Fresh blood flowed from a gash on their bruised face. Scarlet trails travelled down their neck and soaked into the collar of their combat vest. Corr removed a glove and put two fingers to their neck, looking for any sign of life. His two fingers found silence. They weren't necessarily beyond saving. They could still be revived, but Corr knew the chances were slim to none. At a minimum, they would need to be moved to the reserve trench. Performing a procedure here would not be possible. He glanced at their chest and didn't even want to guess how many broken bones they probably had. His fingers came away slicked with warm blood. He looked down mournfully at their face. The bruising and dried blood obscured their features, but he didn't feel he recognized the soldier. He couldn't even tell if they were a man or a woman, only that they seemed to be young. No facial hair, smooth-looking skin, and chestnut brown hair, now sticky and tangled. Corr looked up to where the other body had been. Jan was crouched down beside them, two fingers to their pulse point. He met eyes with Corr and shook his head, his expression unreadable. Corr held his gaze and tapped the badge on his own uniform. Jan nodded. Corr reached down to the corpse and pulled the corresponding badge from their chest.

The walkers had closed down some of the distance. They appeared much larger through Corr's scope. He could see their moving parts in more detail: the rotation in their knee joints as they took a slow step forward, and the constant adjustment of the blasters mounted on their temples. They barely seemed to have suffered a scratch. A near-constant barrage still pelted the trench line. The speeders had succeeded in drawing away some of the flak aimed at the frontlines, and Corr hadn't seen any get shot down yet, but they had done almost no damage themselves. He wondered for a moment which speeder Luke Skywalker was flying. He expected Jan would know. Blaster shots from the speeders were soaked up like drops on a towel by the walkers. A healthy rate of return fire continued from the trench, though it seemed almost futile. Corr's mind no longer raced as frantically with survival instinct, but his body still felt strange and floaty and his ears had started to ache from the barrage of noise. The badge he'd taken from the body earlier was a heavy presence in his pocket. He crouched on his haunches and spoke into his communicator.
"Dar? Come in, Dar?"
Static fizzed from the device for a moment before Dar's voice came out, slightly crackly.
"Corr? What's wrong?", his words struggled to surface over the sound of blaster fire coming through the speaker.
"Have you done any damage to the walkers? Nothing we do seems to leave a mark.", Corr ejected the magazine from his rifle and loaded a fresh one.
"The turrets haven't done anything. The armour's just too solid. I've targeted every weak spot I can think of.", Corr could hear the hum of Dar's turret rotating.
"The speeders don't seem effective either. They're just drawing away flak. Is there no way to stop them? Has there been any word from command?"
"You don't need to worry about that. There's-", Dar's voice was cut off abruptly as a deafening noise, the sound of tearing metal and a shattering like thin glass rattled out of the speaker. Dar's voice could be heard in the cacophony as a shout garbled by static. Then just static. A new voice, not from the speaker, probed at the edge of Corr's hearing.
"MEDIC!"
Corr stood up, careful not to expose his head above the trench too much, and looked towards Dar's position. His heart thundered in his chest. He wanted to chew at a fingernail. The wreckage of his turret was visible about 100 metres away. Only the base of the turret remained, with billowing black smoke rising from it. Shards of blackened metal were scattered around it. He couldn't see Dar. The image of the body he'd tended to earlier flashed in his mind. The badge burned a hole through his pocket. He hauled himself up out of the trench and sprinted over to the ruined turret. He covered his head with his arm and hunched low while he ran as blaster bolts pattered the snow around him. Behind the wreck, Corr saw two figures. One was sat down, slumped against the smouldering turret, and the other knelt just beside.
"Corr. Good timing.", the person who was knelt stood up and revealed herself to be Leah. Her expression was one of calmness wrestling down worry.
"He's alright, he's fine, but he's bleeding. Can you take a look?"
A shell impacted close by and displaced snow showered the three of them.
"Keep a lookout for us, let me know if we need to reposition quickly."
Leah nodded. Corr crouched down to Dar's eyeline and set down his rifle. His helmet had already been removed, most likely by Leah, revealing his tangled nest of blonde hair. Splotchy bruises coloured his face, but Corr could see no serious cuts or burns. His breathing was a bit laboured but seemed consistent. His eyes met Corr's, half-closed.
"Dar? Can you hear me?", Corr waved his hand slightly in front of his face.
"Yes, I can hear you. I think I'm alright. Just a bit battered. And my helmet's ruined."
His joke irritated Corr.
"We can get you a new bloody helmet. Let me give you a look over."
Corr scanned him, looking for any signs of more serious injury. A patch of darkened red lurked underneath his right arm. He gently shifted the arm to get a better look. A gash along Dar's side made itself visible. Corr guessed this was the source of the bleeding Leah mentioned. If anything he was slightly relieved. He'd imagined far worse. The sight of the earlier soldier's broken body still stubbornly clung to his thoughts.
"You seem alright. I'll dress that cut and give you a stim at the reserve trench. Can you walk?"
Dar nodded and moved to haul himself to his feet.
"Guys, look!", Leah's excited voice piped up. She pushed her binocs into Corr's hands and pointed into the distance.
"What? What is it?", Corr looked through the binocs vaguely towards where Leah was pointing. A walker filled his vision. Then a speeder darted across his eyeline. He tracked the speeder and found that it seemed to be circling the walker's legs.
"What are they doing?"
Suddenly, the speeder broke off and sped away. The walker's front leg motioned to take another step forward. Something caught the leg in mid-air as it moved. The walker toppled for a moment with only three legs supporting it before it collapsed forward and crashed heavily into the ground. It lay motionless. Cheers and whoops erupted from the infantry as they realised what had happened. Two speeders skimmed towards the walker and let blaster shots loose into the back of its neck. The walker imploded violently, and its pieces scattered across the snow. The infantry let out another spirited cheer. Leah whooped loudly with them. Corr allowed himself to smile.

In the reserve trench, Corr injected a stim into Dar's shoulder and began to clean and dress the wound on his side. The sound of shell impacts and blaster fire was reassuringly muffled by distance.
"After I've finished here, you head back and join the evacuation. I may be inexperienced, but even I know a wounded soldier has no place on the battlefield."
Dar winced as Corr dabbed at the cut.
"No can do I'm afraid. Command has said everyone stays at the front until the retreat signal's given. Only the critically injured are being brought back."
Corr finished applying a bacta patch to the wound. He looked up at Dar in disbelief.
"You're kidding? So you're just marching back out to the front after this? What if your wound opens up or you get hit by something else? I saw what was left of your turret. What more can they expect from you?"
Dar rotated his arm experimentally and adjusted his seating position.
"Corr. We have orders. Whether we agree with them or not is irrelevant. We might be rebels but there's still a chain of command."
Corr let out a frustrated groan.
"I don't understand why the evacuation order hasn't been given. I thought they were nearly finished before we'd even come out here. We're getting torn apart out there, even with one less walker.", he struggled to keep the mounting panic out of his voice. Dar listened to him and sat thinking for a moment.
"Well, about that. Don't tell anyone I told you this, but I heard from the squad leader that the command centre had been hit. That could be the reason the order hasn't come through. But they also just might not be finished with evacuation yet. Either way, we follow our orders. You said yourself you'd do whatever is needed."
The urge to chew at fingernails itched again in Corr. He fidgeted in place but tried not to let Dar notice.
"So we might never get the order to evacuate?"
"We will. Trust me. All we have to think about at the moment is surviving."
"Alright.", Corr took a deep breath. "If that wound opens up or anything else happens, then send for me."
"Of course."

Reluctantly, Corr hauled himself out of the reserve trench and started running to rejoin the frontlines. Dar followed at a slower pace.
The destruction of a walker had somewhat reduced the intensity of the bombardment. The infantry also seemed to have a renewed energy. Some had taken up more aggressive positions and re-manned mounted blasters that had been abandoned earlier. However, the slow march of the remaining walkers continued relentlessly towards the trenches. They were over halfway across the snow fields and could now target the rebel defences more accurately. Numerous turrets had been destroyed with well-aimed shots and left as smoking wreckages. The frontline was riddled with holes and craters. The return fire from the trenches was diminishing rapidly as the casualty rate accelerated. Corr had seen several speeders attempt the same manoeuvre that felled the walker earlier, but none had succeeded. Some had been shot down in the process.
Corr applied a stim to a soldier who was against the wall of the trench. She winced as the needle penetrated her skin.
"You should be ok, the wound isn't deep and you don't seem to have broken anything", Corr tried his best to sound assured.
She coughed wheezily, "Thanks, Corr."
Corr sighed. "You're in no condition to fight though. Please try to save some strength for when the retreat order comes through."
She only nodded in response. Corr wiped his forehead of sweat and pulled his goggles back down. He picked up his satchel and rifle, stood up , and began to sidle back to his position. He paused after a few steps and peeked over the frontline. The four remaining walkers dominated his view of the horizon. They seemed to tower impossibly over the trenches, their expressionless faces casting judgment down upon him. The sight of them made Corr's heart flip in his chest and his limbs tingle with adrenaline. The sound of blaster bolts flying overhead whistled in his aching ears. As the shells impacted with the ground, he felt the vibrations through his boots. Nightmarishly, one of the walker's heads turned slowly towards him. Corr crumpled himself desperately into a ball but his expected death didn't come. He waited a few more seconds before peering back over the trench wall. The walker had mercifully averted its gaze elsewhere. Corr took a few more steps back toward his position and nearly tripped over something on the trench floor. Something heavy, yet it had shifted slightly when his foot had caught it. He looked down at his feet and met Jan's eyes as they stared unblinkingly at the sky.