What's In A Name? (Project Crown)
As far as engagements went, this one wasn’t placing itself very highly in 48’s esteem. It was actually rapidly approaching the bottom of his (admittedly small) itemized list of Engagements Ranked By Enjoyability. It sucked, actually.
It wasn’t planned, for one thing, which meant that everyone who had been off-duty had been forced to scramble to get any semblance of kit prepped before shit hit the fan. This happened to include most of Crown Squad, which was especially unfortunate because 48’s rifle had been crushed in a freak incident with a B1 last engagement and the quartermaster had yet to issue him a replacement, so he was forced to enter combat with a single spare DC-17 pistol from requisitions that was, in 48’s professional opinion, about three shots from a critical malfunction at any given time.
But, well. Better that than empty handed. Allegedly. (At least if I were empty-handed I’d be aware I’m unarmed—)
Whatever. It was fine.
As it was, Crown Squad found itself on the surface of some backwater moon, and 48 couldn’t help but wonder if all planets were dusty and orange or if it was just that their battalion just had a predisposition for fighting in the worst fucking climates. He’d need more data before he formed an opinion. (No, he didn’t. He got the worst feeling it really would be a trend.)
If 48 was completely honest with himself (not Kyr. He wouldn’t be telling Kyr this, under any circumstances), he had no idea what was happening. He’d been too busy trying to arm himself to catch the sporadic briefing, but he was pretty sure it’d be fine. 8ball gave him the gist. Shoot the droids that shot at them. Easy. He’d been shooting at droids for almost all ten years of his life. He could probably do it in his sleep. He wasn’t worried at all.
He could just ask Myth. Myth would know what was happening. If he knew where Myth was—
A blaster bolt skimmed his extra-secure cover rock. Little bits of gravel rained down onto his helmet with a grating clatter, and a full chunk of stone separated from the base.
… Perhaps he should reexamine his choice of cover, actually.
Course was somewhere further down the lines, probably berating someone for getting shot. 8ball was… running information, he was pretty sure; long-range comms were supposedly down. Or he could be sniping, maybe. Kyr had to be nearby. But where was Myth? He’d been with him and Kyr before the firefight had started.
48 fired two quick shots at the first battledroid to round the corner of his little bottleneck before quickly ducking back toward the ditch he’d already clocked as “better hiding spot”. The clanker hit the ground hard, and its compatriot stumbled over it and crashed elegantly to the ground. It made a noise of complaint that was cut short by one more bolt fired immediately before 48 let himself roll down into the dirt.
The ditch wasn’t exactly easy terrain, littered with sun-dried branches (he had no idea where the fuck they would’ve come from, since there were no trees in the area, but fuck if he cared) and sharp stones ranging from kneepad-sized (which he really didn’t wanna find out if he could crawl over) all the way up to full boulders that came level with the upper edge of the ditch wall.
Maybe more information would be helpful. Reluctantly, he tapped his helmet comm on, opened his mouth to admit he needed guidance, and—
Hm. That was very loud static. That’s weird.
Unless, he reflected as he quickly began moving through the ditch (away from friendlies and towards the enemy, because it was the faster way to ditch the B1s that were pushing him and they probably wouldn’t think to search this way, surely?), unless it wasn’t just the long-range comms that were down. If all comms were down (or jammed, probably), it’d make complete sense for him to not be able to communicate with his squad.
It occurred to him as he moved that going further into enemy lines without any communication capabilities wasn’t a good idea, because he wasn’t stupid, despite popular belief. But it was either take this path of least resistance and maybe pull off a very cool flank or try to fight his way up the much-steeper slope towards his battalion and get shot in the back in the middle of a terrible dusty climb. This was a calculated risk.
48 was right in that this was a path of virtually no resistance. It was almost laughable, really. He’d clocked the ditch immediately as a potential route, and the droids weren’t even glancing toward it. He guessed their mechanisms wouldn’t have an easy time getting in and out of it, and maybe they thought the clones would have the same problem. Most of the processing power in a series-one droid really did go to their aiming systems—
He had to choke back a startled shout as noise erupted on the ridge to his left. Brief blasterfire echoed down, but before he could properly assess the situation and decide whether or not to engage, a brother was flung into the ditch with him, plastoid clattering harshly against one of the bigger rocks on the opposite ridge wall. 48 stared for a moment before the situation processed and he realized that he’d found Myth. Myth, who was looking fairly hurt and very limp against that rock.
48 got about two steps toward checking on his brother when a loud thud and a mechanical hiss of hydraulics informed him that they had a visitor, and he turned his back to Myth to place himself between him and the droid. The IG-100, actually, which was considerably more intimidating than the average B1—and also a much larger threat.
They were supposed to only be found around really important Separatists, which sucked because it meant that 48 really should have asked more questions about that mission briefing.
The MagnaGuard stared him down, red optical sensors glaring in the harsh light of the moon’s sun. This particular MagnaGuard was armed with an electrostaff, which would have been laughable if not for the fact that they were currently in close-range, which meant that in a few moments 48 would be wishing for a melee weapon of his own. Not to mention his current best weapon was a pistol that almost definitely wasn’t strong enough to get through armor thicker than a B1’s.
“Another clone,” the MagnaGuard rumbled in Binary, as though 48 wasn’t right in front of it with a gun. “Continue with the directive. I will handle it.”
“Like hell you will,” 48 complained, already hating this droid for dismissing his threat level so quickly.
He oh-so subtly stepped back towards Myth. Myth, who was still flat on the ground and also had a better gun than him right now. A tactical retreat of three yards.
The MagnaGuard stepped forward as he moved, raising its staff in a combat pose. 48 raised his pistol and tried to figure out where the fuck he could hit this thing to walk away from this. Its internal systems were very well-guarded by the plating on its torso, the gaps between plates too small for much to slip through. A blaster bolt would have to be exceptionally well-aimed to get between them, and even if he had a stun baton like it did, the electrified heads were too broad to slip between them. As it was, he had a faulty pistol and one unconscious(?) brother.
The staff lit up purple with sparkling electricity. The droid’s head was probably the biggest target, he though. It probably had backup systems in its internal mechanics to avoid complete incapacitation but if he could get rid of its optics—
He fired off a test shot and, as he expected, it did nothing but add another scuff to the carbon scoring on the droid’s plating. He stepped back as the droid took a leisurely swing, desperately trying to figure out what the fuck to do in this situation. Kamino didn’t exactly run courses on what to do in a one-on-one fight with one of the biggest droid threats in the Separatists Army.
The next move from the droid was much faster, and 48 almost seemed to flinch into it, like it had expected his exact movement, and his body locked up, flooded with an absolutely incapacitating amount of electricity. The specifics of electrostaves were eluding him—he couldn’t remember the voltage, which would be grating on his brain for the rest of the day if he survived this—but he did know what the trainers taught on Kamino. Electrostaves were no joke, and it didn’t take more than five seconds for one to flood you with enough electricity to put you down permanently.
The armor was supposed to help with that. A little. It’d distribute the flow of the current better than if he was unarmored.
In the time it took for those thoughts to fire through 48’s brain, he was able to raise his pistol to a gap in the IG-100’s plating and fire off six quick shots directly into its arm joint. Heat immediately scorched through his glove and into his palm from his fickle blaster, but it got the desired effect. The MagnaGuard broke contact with 48, staggering back to turn its head toward the sparking wires of its elbow joint. It clenched its hand, and an unpleasant zapping noise accompanied an increase in flying electricity from the socket. Metal fingers lagged, then fell limp.
If 48 wasn’t thoroughly dazed from his playdate with the electrostaff he might’ve been proud of himself for the glare the droid leveled at him, as though it had the capacity to be personally annoyed by his existence. It warbled something else at him, in Binary again, but this time 48 didn’t have nearly enough mental energy to process it into something he could understand. It was probably a threat. 48 made for Myth’s rifle again but didn’t get far before the MagnaGuard entered melee range once more.
48 had expected for the droid to repeat its eerie prediction of his movement, but oddly he found that somewhere between his reduced thought process and the droid’s now one-handedness, he was able to maneuver himself into a position that—
Okay. Gripping the electrostaff. That’s… an interesting choice, 48.
Well, it did keep him from getting hit with it, he reasoned vaguely as he pushed back against the droid’s unrelenting force. Even if it meant he’d dropped his blaster. It was… kind of a stalemate, but it bought him time. Now if only he could actually form a tactical thought—
Fueled more by instinct than anything else, he made the very impulsive decision to stop pushing back and instead yanked sharply on the baton. Maybe his brain thought he was playing keep-away with his batchmates for some reason. It should have gotten him killed—the droid should have taken the opening to turn the electrified staff head toward 48’s neck and the unarmored patch just under his helmet seal. But somehow, the droid hadn’t anticipated the utterly idiotic move, and when 48 turned and pushed and yanked again, the droid staggered forward and lost its one-handed grip on the staff.
48 would not admit to staring dumbly at the staggered droid, nor at the staff he now held. It was a completely understandable, very curious stare, thank you. These things were designed to kill Jedi, they were designed to avoid being staggered, designed to resist lightsabers and—
And this one was righting itself. That would be bad. 48 adjusted his grip on the electrostaff, calling up the fuzzy memories he had of melee training and bringing the buzzing staff head down hard in the neck joint he’d identified as a potential weak point back when he could think past the blurry pain in his chest.
The metal jammed nicely between the droid’s head and torso, and with the right angle and torque—
The droid’s head popped off. That was good. Yeah? Its main optics would be down. These units had secondary processors but it’d take at least a few seconds to activate them…
… Oh shit, he was on a timer.
Moving as quickly as he could past the fatigue quickly setting in, 48 bee-lined for Myth’s prone form. He was past the point of deluding himself with the rifle, but in his newly enlightened state he remembered that Myth was always painfully overprepared, no doubt even with a frantically assembled kit.
Like 48, Myth was notably down on any actually useful ordnance, but he oh-so responsibly had not one but two emergency flares packed into his primary belt pouch. As 48 dropped the staff and began prepping one, he resolved to never make fun of Myth for his packing habits ever again.
The IG-100 quickly finished adjusting to its impromptu servo-switch, already ominously clomping towards him with one limp arm and no head, the optic in its midsection now gleaming a bloody red.
“Freaky,” 48 muttered to himself. He was a bit past being intimidated at this point, though. He was far too preoccupied.
The droid warbled at him again, and he could almost make out the words this time. His thoughts were soft around the edges again, which was almost definitely not good, and he could almost feel the energy from his adrenaline rush beginning to wane. That also wasn’t good. A crash was not optimal right now.
The flare was also not cooperating. Another tally on the “bad” board.
The droid closed the last yard of distance between it and the clones, and even unarmed it proved to be a very formidable opponent, because it reached its functioning arm out and grabbed 48 by the throat, lifting him into the air with a crushing grip that had 48 wishing they’d been distributed gorgets or something. Really, leaving the throat exposed?
Distance successfully closed. That was good for 48. The MagnaGuard droned something, and 48 realized with no small amount of annoyance that it was not talking to him. It said something to the effect of “neutralizing target” into its comm system, and 48 grinned wide—maybe the delirium setting in. He’d take what he could get at this point.
“Hey, clanker,” he rasped around the crushing weight on his windpipe. “Wanna see something cool?”
The droid was headless, but 48 got the sense that if it’d had a head it’d be tilted. It was very funny to watch the neck support move without an attachment, but he tried to focus. Arms weakening, 48 dragged the shoddily-modified flare into the droid’s chest-level—about his own abdominal level, with it having lifted him.
He lit it, and very quickly regained the distance between him and the enemy, because they were each launched back a considerable distance in the following boom. The MagnaGuard hit the opposite ridge in two pieces, and 48 hit his ridge with a very painful crack which signaled that A, he had hit a rock, and 2, his backplate was definitely broken, maybe shattered, and also, he was definitely concussed, assuming he wasn’t before lighting the flare. Combined with the ringing in his ear and the painful heat lingering on his front, he wasn’t in the best shape. But he was alive! So far! And very proud that he’d maintained the awareness to point the business end of the flare toward the enemy. That was a major win. And Myth was alive! Probably! And also, he had just announced their location to the enemy en masse!
That was... Less good.
“Nice,” he muttered absently, trying to assess where the fuck he had landed through the smokey soot and dust. “Knew that would work.”
If his gloves were singed from his blaster before, they were melting and fusing to his skin now. Not to be dramatic, but shit hurt.
He dragged one sticky hand to his visor to wipe the blended gunk away. It just sort of smeared, but that was better than nothing, and he realized that he wasn’t actually that far from Myth. It was a good thing he hadn’t been launched into Myth. He hadn’t considered that as an option, but it probably would’ve been bad for them both. He pushed himself upright and crawled over to his brother, who was very helpfully still prone.
“If we survive this, you owe me,” 48 warned him as he reached for Myth’s blaster.
He hissed when the grip pressed into steadily growing blisters on his palm, but he kept his hold on the rifle as firm as he could, nonetheless. He entertained the pros and cons of standing fully.
Pros: he wouldn’t be sitting down when the droids came to investigate the downfall of their superior.
Cons: ow.
Honestly, he wasn’t sure his legs would support him. Everything kinda hurt at the moment. But did his legs hurt worse than his hands? Maybe a bad metric to judge their functionality on, but his hands were still working. Maybe his legs would too?
Worst case scenario, he collapsed, and then he’d be on the ground anyway. Might as well try.
48 used the smooth wall of the ridge behind him as a support to help himself to his feet. His legs immediately protested this course of action, but either a fresh adrenaline rush or his general will to live made it a bit more bearable. It didn’t really matter which.
If he kept his weight against the wall, he could probably maintain this position. Just… only this position. This exact spot standing in the open in the ditch. Awesome.
How to get out of this? Myth would have an idea, if he were awake. Yeah, Myth would definitely owe him. How the fuck do you get trapped alone behind enemy lines and get the shit beat out of you like that? Idiot.
He lit the second flare normally. Technically, it probably would’ve been a better idea to use it as another impromptu explosive, but he wasn’t entirely confident in his chestplate’s durability, and he was already very injured. It might have kept Myth alive for a bit longer, but it’d be better for Myth all around to have a breathing brother watching his back right now.
His audio was out—48 wasn’t sure whether that was his ears or his helmet audio, but he wasn’t about to remove the helmet to find out—and the soot, dirt, and oil paste on his visor limited visibility, but luckily clankers moved and rocks typically didn’t, so it wasn’t that hard to figure out what to shoot at. He’d been drilled on shooting these fuckers since he was two and a half. He could do this in his sleep.
It wasn’t until he realized this blaster was overheating, too, that the desperation began to sink in. It admittedly took him a bit to notice this malfunction, because his hands already hurt and he hadn’t expected any fault with this blaster, but a carefully oriented glance through his grimy visor told him that the battery cell was compromised. Probably happened during the encounter that landed Myth in the ditch in the first place, if he wanted to take the time to care about how instead of what. 48 began rationing his shots.
Luckily, the clankers were very reluctant to join him in the ditch, for the same reasons that they hadn’t entered it in the first place, so they were kind of just lining up into the bottleneck of boulders. It made it easier to keep them out, but it was only a matter of time before a super or tactical droid expended the three percent of processing power that it took to figure out how to deal with him.
48 identified where he’d dropped the electrostaff, on the other side of Myth’s prone form, and began staggering toward it between shots. Now that he was paying attention to it, the rifle wasn’t cooling down nearly enough between shots, which suggested… faulty coolant? Line leak? Fucked up gun. Probably something to do with the MagnaGuard. Every addition to this mission made it somehow worse than it had been before. Bottom three on the list for sure.
His boot collided with the staff, and he did his best to bring himself to an incredibly dignified crouch to wrap one hand on the hilt while the other maintained cover fire. He wasn’t entirely sold on his own ability to use this thing in his current state (Heh. Current. Electrostaff.), but he was also not going to die a coward, so it’d have to do.
When the rifle inevitably jammed, he opted to throw it at the head of the next clanker to poke its weird-ass face into the gap. It didn’t incapacitate it, but it did give him the time to push himself off the wall of the ditch and toward the other side of the trench. When the first droid succeeded in dropping down, he electrified the staff and brought it down on its head. Not as hard as he maybe could, but enough to send it down and keep it that way.
“Next?” he called wearily.
Alarmed droid voices echoed in the rocky terrain, none of it making sense to 48, but the low drone of a commando broke up the whiny pitch of the B1s and 48 really wished Myth would wake up, now. He’s not sure what he’d want his brother to do, considering there wasn’t a single gun between them, now, but at least he wouldn’t have to do this shit alone.
List of things to do when I survive this: Beat the shit out of Crates for giving me a fucking DC-17 pistol when we’re apparently fighting someone important enough to have MagnaGuard.
Then, added after a moment of reflection, Thank Myth for packing the shitty model of flare. Apologize to Kyr for dismissing the importance of briefings. Punch 8ball, he probably deserves it for something.
The next droid came down with a friend, and 48 only got to crush one’s central processor before the other was shooting at him. The bolt skimmed his pauldron and 48 was able to kill it before it shot again, but the force of the bolt staggered him, and in the time it took for him to scrap the second droid, a third and fourth had dropped down. The high-pitched buzz in his ear drowned out the sound their blasters must have made when they fired at him, and he felt at least one bolt hit him. At this range, this dizziness, it knocked him flat, and the yellow sky went dark.
Myth and 48 had been missing for fifteen minutes when someone reported an unexplained explosion. Not necessarily a long time, in theory, but in practice, on an active battlefield? That was half of Kyr’s squad missing, and to say he was worried would be an understatement.
He hadn’t even been informed about the explosion, he had happened to catch one of Tower Squad’s newest members telling their LT about it. Apparently, some sort of ordnance had gone off within enemy lines, and damn if that didn’t sound like something 48 might pull.
Kyr hadn’t bothered to request clarification from the recruit. He headed straight to Course and set off toward where the other half of their unit was dropping into the long-dry riverbed on the fringe of the field.
Course knew better than to ask questions. Green Squad did not.
“Did Baati send you?” Punch asked, not particularly rankled by their sudden appearance.
Kyr moved forward.
“Our squad might be responsible for this,” Course said by way of explanation.
Green Squad moved to accommodate for their increased number. They either didn’t want to ask Kyr to change his position or didn’t care, because they shuffled themselves to fit around him rather than ask him to fold in.
They didn’t have to trek for long before a flare lit the sky and the din of blasterfire began, and everyone broke out into a full run to round the riverbend.
Kyr processed the scene in a split second that dragged out endlessly. Several B1s with their guns raised on one side of the riverbed, a prone brother who could only be Myth on the other, and a limp body in what might have once been white plastoid laying in between them. The B1s had been aiming at the middle brother, but the sudden appearance of the Green-Crown unit had the clankers swiveling to direct their fire at the new arrivals.
Green Squad engaged. Course stood stock-still beside Kyr for a breath before hurrying to Myth, who was closer to him by about a yard. Kyr darted toward 48, heart stalling as he got close enough to properly make out the utter destruction of his kit. The front of his armor was scorched and cracked in multiple places, including a major shattering dent in the space between 48’s left deltoid and pec. Broken plastoid had visibly been pushed inward on contact, and blood lightly saturated the body glove underneath. Almost no part of his armor was still white. The smell of burning pushed past Kyr’s filters at this proximity, and Kyr reached for a pulse. He wasn’t entirely sure that he’d be able to feel one with his own heart pounding as hard as it was, but he needed to try.
Turns out he didn’t really need to, because as soon as Kyr’s hand touched the narrow strip of skin between 48’s helmet seal and blacks, his brother was moving, flinching to one side and lunging out with the electrostaff that he’d had a hand on. Kyr avoided the hit easily, given it was sluggish and poorly aimed in the first place (and also not even electrified), but it was unnerving to watch 48 attack him, and attack him so poorly at that.
“48, it’s me! It’s Kyr. I’m not gonna hurt you.”
48 either did not hear him or did not care, because he was still scrambling, pushing himself up into a sitting position and lifting the electrostaff again.
“Shit,” Kyr muttered, getting a good look at the grime-coated visor.
He didn’t really want to try to subdue 48. Not when he was hurt and not when he didn’t know it was Kyr. But he didn’t really see a lot of options here.
“Course!” Kyr called, not looking away from 48. “Need a hypo.”
Course’s visor shot to Kyr, but he didn’t question it, tossing him a hypo with practiced ease.
Kyr inched forward. 48’s helmet turned to-and-fro like he was trying to get good sights on the perceived threat, then evidently gave up, electrified his staff, and lurched forward with a wide swing. Kyr ducked away again, and while 48 struggled to bring the staff out of its momentum-driven path, Kyr pushed himself into his space and stuck the hypo in 48’s neck.
The effect was immediate. 48’s grip on the electrostaff slackened and he made a sort of choked-out sound as he slumped forward. Kyr caught him cautiously, still looking out for any last-ditch efforts.
“We’ve gotta get out of here,” Punch, suddenly right beside Kyr, informed him. “The clankers’ve realized there’s more of us down here.”
Kyr adjusted his hold on 48, who was shifting and twitching even as he went down under the anesthesia.
He didn’t need to speak before Punch pressed on. “Push will help you get 48 out of here, we’ll give you time to get back to friendlies.”
Kyr nodded, adjusting his brother’s limp form to accommodate the approaching Push, and between the two of them they were able to lift 48 easily. Course was already making his way back the way they came, Myth now half-conscious and staggering along with half of his weight on their medic.
The shuttle back to the Negotiator was easily Kyr’s least favorite part of engagements. The engines on the ship were too loud, reports needed to be drafted, there were less shuttles than there were when they began (so troopers crammed into what ships they had left), and, to top it off, the stench of blood and sweat reeked strong enough to push easily past helmet filters.
Kyr’s mind ran from bullet point to bullet point on his ever-growing list of post-battle procedures. He switched the “write battle report” point to second place behind “get 48 to the medbay.” His head swam with the details of the mission.
The 212th came to this moon for a reported sighting of a high-ranking Separatist ship. No, not a ship, a ship’s signal. Kyr remembered wrinkling his nose at that fact. Anyone can replicate a signal.
Either way, they were summoned to engage the troops while their General went to investigate and potentially engage with the Seppie officer. Kyr met with almost all of his squad and relayed this information to them. He shouldn’t have trusted 8ball to brief 48. He’d do it himself, next time.
If there was a next time.
Kyr shook his head and shifted his focus to his conscious brother, Myth, who was currently leaning against Kyr’s side to stay upright. He shifted his weight to the opposite foot and pulled Myth up a bit.
“You holding up?” he asked through the comms.
“Mmm…” was the hummed response he got. Man, Myth was out of it.
“What even happened?” He said out loud to no one.
48 stirred. Course physically stepped back from the stretcher that the mangled clone was laid out on. The medic looked up at Kyr, but before he could say anything, 48 was muttering and moving his hands to his burnt chestplate.
“Oh… ‘m alive.” He smiled and squinted at his hands. “Sick.”
Kyr rushed forward, holding onto Myth with one hand and reaching the other out to grab 48’s melted glove. It was still unnervingly warm, and Kyr inwardly cringed at the thought of how it could have gotten this bad.
“What happened?” Kyr demanded. He wouldn’t have time for pleasantries before 48 passed out again.
“Shocked the hell outta me…” 48 mumbled. He was barely moving his mouth to speak. Kyr wasn’t sure how he was even speaking at all—that hypo was nothing to sneeze at, designed with clone metabolisms in mind.
“What was the explosion?” Kyr tugged at 48’s hand, even as his brother slipped back into unconsciousness.
Course spoke up. “The interrogation can wait. He’s hurt.”
Kyr met Course’s gaze and knew instinctively that, behind the helmet, his brother was furrowing his eyebrows and glaring.
“Okay. I’m sorry,” Kyr muttered. He really didn’t mean to stress out Course, he was just worried.
Take a breath.
The ship landed smoothly in the hangar and as soon as the doors opened, Course pushed out with the stretcher.
Injured first, that was protocol.
Kyr half-helped, half-dragged a barely conscious Myth alongside him as he tried to keep up with Course’s furious pace through the halls of their home ship.
The doors hadn’t finished opening all the way before Course left 48’s stretcher to prep one of the few bacta tanks kept in the back of the medbay. Kyr lowered Myth onto a cot and looked up to where another medic, the newest one, was staring at him.
“Go help Course prep the bacta tank,” he said, barely realizing that it wasn’t his place to instruct a medic. He pointed to the door to the back room and, to Kyr’s surprise, the medic quickly walked off to do as instructed.
“Kyr, can you get Shock’s kit off?” Course came in through the comms. “Shock?” Kyr repeated dumbly. There was a pause, and then, “...48. Can you get 48’s kit off?” Course’s voice came through, a bit quieter.
Kyr bit back a laugh, but his voice betrayed his amusement. “Got it, I’ll get Shock prepped for bacta.”
He looked over and didn't really know where to start. It’d probably be easiest to get his brother’s leg plates off first, right? He unbuckled and unlatched each plate methodically, scanning all the while for injury.
The leg plates had been easy. The mangled chest piece… That one Kyr examined for several long seconds, trying to find the best place to start.
“Protocol for damaged armor says that you’re permitted to apply excessive force to structural weak spots if the plates are unable to be removed via standard methods,” Myth spoke up.
Kyr physically jumped at his brother’s voice. “Gods, Myth!”
He turned to where Myth had pulled himself into a sitting position. His brother surely should not have been awake. How long had he been up for?
“If you can’t get to the buckles or the magnets won’t release, you can cut through the straps holding the plates together,” Myth continued as if he didn’t just scare the absolute shit out of Kyr.
“You shouldn’t be up,” Kyr scolded, looking around for an instrument to cut the shoulder straps with.
“You shouldn’t be completing medical protocols without the direct supervision of a trained medic.” Myth smiled fully, with far too many teeth to be innocent. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”
Kyr huffed in response. His eyes landed on a nearby scalpel; probably the best he’d get without snooping through drawers. He pulled gently on the strap of Shock’s armor and carefully slotted the blade between it and Shock’s shoulder. With one quick upward slice, the strap fell away. The chestplate sagged, now that it was only supported on one side.
He lifted Shock’s arm gently, finally able to reach the release switch on the inner side plating. The plates demagnetized without issue, letting Kyr repeat the sequence of actions on Shock’s other side finally pry the burnt, broken front plate off of his brother.
Purposely keeping himself between Myth’s sightline and Shock, Kyr surveyed the injuries.
Yeah. It looked… Really bad. If Kyr had any proper medical training, he could probably make out more than that. As it was, he didn’t need medic modules to know the bloody pulp of body glove wasn’t what you hoped to see in a patient.
Course emerged from the back room and Kyr let out a sigh of relief. Perfect: someone who could tell him what “really bad” actually meant.
“Give me that.” Course looked right over Shock and held his hand out to Kyr.
“Is it bad?” Kyr handed Course’s scalpel back and tilted his head at Shock.
Course didn’t respond, which was likely a yes. Instead, he pulled Shock’s stretcher into the back. Shortly after, Kyr heard Course’s sharp orders to the new medic.
“You’ve got Myth. I can handle this.”
The shiny walked out, glancing back at the door as he walked over to Myth. When he finally turned his attention to Myth, he froze.
“You shouldn’t be upright. Let me help you lay back—”
Myth was already sinking down into a horizontal position.
As the shiny got to work, Kyr realized his to-do list was still incomplete. He nodded to Myth and the medic and decided to go grab his datapad so he could at least get some work done while waiting for news about Shock.
He had just passed the medbay doors when he saw 8ball barreling top-speed down the hall towards him. Kyr knew that he had one chance to restrain his brother before he ran into the medbay and demand to see Shock or pester the new medic about Myth.
With barely a second to think, Kyr took two steps forward and threw his arms out. 8ball hit him hard, and they both fell to the ground. Kyr used 8ball’s confusion to get the upper hand and twist out from under his batchmate. He grabbed 8ball’s arm and twisted—not enough to hurt. Not yet. The day was young.
“Don’t run in the halls.” Kyr slowly loosened his grip, letting 8ball up only once he was certain the scout wouldn’t continue bolting into the medbay.
“Baati told me someone was hurt! Who is it?” 8ball demanded, as if he had the upper hand. “Course? 48?” Kyr couldn’t hold back his flinch. “It’s 48? Is he okay?”
Kyr shook his head wearily. “… He’s… he’ll be fine. He’s in bacta.”
8ball’s eyes widened. “In the tank?”
Kyr couldn’t help but sigh, pinching his nose. “Yes, he’s in the tank. He just went in before you got here.”
“What happened?” 8ball asked.
“Only Shock can answer that.”
8ball’s face twisted in confusion. “Shock?”
Kyr remembered too late that 8ball hadn’t been on the transport with them. “It’s what Course is calling him. We found him with a MagnaGuard’s electrostaff—don’t ask, I really can’t explain anything until he’s back up.”
The strain came right out of 8ball’s expression until he was all wide brown eyes and slightly-opened mouth. “48 got his name?”
“If he likes it.” Kyr smiled wryly. “I think he will, though.” Shock. It just suited him.
“Oh. Cool. Where’s Myth?” 8ball asked, and the 180 shouldn’t have Kyr reeling.
“Also in the medbay,” Kyr admitted. “He was found with Shock. He’s awake, last I saw, but really shouldn’t be up right now. He took some bad hits. You can talk to him tomorrow—” Kyr had to reach out and grab 8ball again to stop him from running right off again. “The medics are about to be swarmed. They don’t need anyone else in their way. Unless you’re hurt?”
8ball shook his head slowly. “… They’re both okay, though?”
“Yes, 8ball,” Kyr sighed. “Myth is okay and Shock—” He put the image of his batchmate’s mangled armor and flesh out of his mind, “—will be just fine once the medics get through with him.”
“Alright. I guess I can visit tomorrow.”
“Good. Come with me back to the barracks.”
Kyr put a hand on 8ball’s shoulder and guided him towards the bunks. As they talked, Kyr took note of the bags under 8ball’s eyes and the way he seemed to move his hands slightly after he started speaking, like they were lagging three steps behind his mind.
“They had me running such absolutely kriffing ridiculous intel!” 8ball complained as they walked through the sliding doors of their barracks. He threw his helmet onto his bed, the one right below Myth’s. “Didn’t even give me a speeder, just went ‘oh, run about a half mile to tell this lieutenant that he should get his men to this position and then run a half mile back—UPHILL—to tell the captain that they can’t do that! Instead of just letting me go fix the stupid comms jam like I wanted to!” 8ball groaned and sank down onto his bed, sitting on the edge and pulling his datapad out. “And now I have to write a stupid report about those stupid communications that got jammed… stupidly.”
Kyr chuckled at 8ball’s outburst. Despite his previous frustration at 8ball, he was just relieved to have a brother in the bunks with him. If the whole squad had ended up in the medbay… Well. He wouldn’t be able to focus much on his report, he knew.
He settled at the table set up in the corner and pulled his datapad out to write his own stupid report.
Truthfully, the report was a welcome distraction. Kyr was vaguely aware of his leg bouncing anxiously every time his mind wandered back to the two brothers currently held in the medbay. The time couldn’t pass fast enough, and Kyr made sure this report was thorough. He didn’t have Myth to help “embellish” any details now if he wanted to, anyway.
8ball finished far before Kyr, and he walked over to loom over Kyr’s shoulder.
“Ooh, still on section 6-B I see,” he teased, and Kyr sighed.
“Yeah, it’s a rough one. We all kitted up so quickly, I couldn’t get a full loadout report.”
“Well, I can tell you I had all my standard equipment, if that helps. I also saw Myth grabbing flares.” 8ball was trying to remember more when Kyr cut in.
“Flares? What model?” Kyr looked up from the datapad and turned to fully face 8ball. His voice had come out more harshly than he had wanted it to.
“Uh, I don’t know. I wasn’t paying that much attention.” 8ball subconsciously snapped to attention as he gave his report to Kyr—a rarity, these days. Probably the battle haze still drifting around them.
“Alright.” Kyr turned back to the report and quickly added, “Thank you.”
8ball fell out of attention and wandered out toward the mess hall, leaving Kyr to ponder the missing flares. They’d seen one on site just before they’d gotten there, but Myth hadn’t had any on him when they found him, and neither did Shock. Nobody reported an emergency flare before then, either, but that left at least one flare completely unaccounted for; if Myth really had only grabbed one flare, 8ball would’ve said so. He hadn’t, he’d specifically said flares, plural. An image of Shock’s melted gloves appeared in Kyr’s mind, and he pushed that line of thinking down immediately. It wouldn’t do to make any kind of report based on nothing but assumption.
Eventually the report was as complete as he could get it, and Kyr needed to report Shock’s damaged armor to Crates. He walked with purpose, as he always did, and other clones stepped aside to let him through. He appreciated being able to walk freely, as long as he looked purposeful; it helped him think without running into anyone.
On a whim, he took a slight detour, nearing the medbay and slowing his pace.
Kyr knew that reporting all damaged or missing equipment was more important than checking in on his batchmates, who needed rest anyway. Despite this knowledge, he found himself walking into the medbay.
He might be able to ask Myth about his kit. Yeah, that was it.
He immediately knew that wasn’t going to happen when he looked over and saw Myth, finally passed out and thoroughly patched up. Kyr looked to Course seated on the opposite side of the medbay. His brother was examining something on his datapad with one hand and moving supplies on his table from one pile to the another with the other, expression the picture of irritable neutrality.
“How are they?” Kyr spoke, and Course’s focus broke.
He glanced up at Kyr. “Resting. Previously peacefully.” His eyebrows raised slightly. “They aren’t able to report yet.”
“I know.” Kyr tapped his foot. Why was he even here? He had other things to do, as did Course. Hell, 8ball was able to find something better to do than harass the medics—
“You can see him if you’re that worried.” Course stood and opened the backroom door, allowing Kyr to pass through to the bacta chamber.
Kyr stayed silent as he went back. All the heavy-duty medical equipment that wasn’t needed for common field injuries stayed in this sterile, often dimly-lit room. The bacta tanks lined the backmost wall, and inside one of them floated Shock.
It felt wrong to see his brother like this. Blisters marred his hands and forearms, and new scars streaked across his chest, both electrical burns and broken skin from his shattered chest plate. Kyr set a hand carefully against the glass separating him from Shock.
“He’ll live,” Course said from behind Kyr. It occurred to Kyr, distantly, that Course probably couldn’t say anything more reassuring without the risk of lying.
Kyr pressed his forehead to the glass above Shock’s forehead, willing his strength to his unconscious brother.
K'udesii jahaala, vod
“What?” Course asked from the control panel of the tank.
“Nothing.” Kyr let himself take one final look at Shock before making eye contact with Course. “Do you remember what kits they had? I’m trying to finish the mission report, and I need to tell Crates what went missing or got damaged.”
Course went along with Kyr’s self-imposed distraction, walking him out of the medbay and giving his own report of what he saw and what was salvaged from the mess they found Myth and Shock in.
From there, the report to Crates went smoothly. Kyr appreciated Crates for how well he knew protocol, but that was about where his appreciation ended. He would never admit it to anyone but himself, but Crates seemed disorganized and lost to Kyr. He got his job done just fine, but it was never without some unnecessary delay.
Kyr let it go and moved on with his checklist.
Training schedule was next. He had been given the agenda, he just needed to put it into the range’s programming. Then he needed to head to the training deck and put in the next simulation details. He wasn’t even thinking about checking the maintenance and general upkeep schedules yet—that could wait.
Kyr always found it easy to throw himself into this kind of work. Mindlessly marching from room to room, punching in codes that he didn't have to think twice about. Enter, program, leave, repeat. The pattern soothed his thoughts and let him focus his stream of nervous energy on a simple goal. And once all the work was done, he could focus his energy on training.
He didn't realize how late it had gotten until the range lights automatically turned off on him. Blinking in the darkness, Kyr decided it was time for another stop by the medbay, some food, and an attempt at sleep.
"Kyr, for the last time, they need rest,” Course snapped before Kyr even stepped a foot into the medbay. His patience… seemed to be thinning.
"That's not why I'm here." Kyr crossed his arms and stood in the doorway. The sensors couldn't close the door on him, and more and more cold air drifted out of the medbay the longer he stood there. "Come eat. I know you weren't scheduled this late, and you look like shit.” It wasn't a question, but it wasn't quite an order yet.
Course looked at him, then at the door controls. "You're letting the air out."
"The door will close behind us." Kyr let Course deflect for a moment, the same grace Course had granted him on his last visit. "You need rest, too."
Course’s focus turned to Myth, who was fast asleep across the room. He reluctantly turned back to Kyr with a barely audible sigh. Kyr stepped back, keeping one foot in the door to let Course out.
They walked to the mess hall in silence, but it wasn't tense. Kyr knew that Course was exhausted, but he didn’t intend to push him too hard on it if it meant he could get his stubborn brother fed and maybe—Force willing—to bed.
Not a soul occupied the mess when they arrived—no small feat, with the revolving-door shifts on the cruiser, but half the ship was likely dead asleep after their engagement. The other half, presumably, was hard at work sorting out the post-battle chores. Kyr blindly felt along the wall by the entrance to get to the sensor. As soon as he passed in front of it, the fluorescent lighting flickered on, and both he and Course recoiled at the brightness.
It wasn’t a designated meal time, so options were limited. Kyr sat across from Course and tossed a scavenged ration bar onto the table by his batchmate.
"Why are you still up?" Course spoke first. He sat hunched over his datapad and didn't bother looking up.
"Same reason as you. Can't sleep when there's work to do." Kyr halfheartedly swiped at Course's datapad. "We have to stop at some point, though."
Course yanked his datapad back and rolled his eyes "Maybe you need to stop. I know the amount of sleep I need to be effective, and I've gotten it."
Kyr blinked slowly, far too tired to unpack that statement right now.
"We're both going to sleep. It's either that, or I follow you back to the medbay and file reports until I pass out."
"You can knock yourself out. I'll just be working."
"Course." Kyr was done bargaining; it was late, and he let his worry bleed into anger. "You're going to sleep. I don't need three brothers half dead."
Course finally looked away from his datapad to stare at him, and Kyr gazed unrepentantly back. He knew better than to give Course a single inch.
"… Fine.”
It might have been the only true victory of the day, for Kyr. It was more than enough for him.
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This is split into two chapters on AO3 but I'm not gonna post two separate subchapters for the spinoff on Tumblr.
Second part (starting with Kyr's POV) was originally written by our resident chapter artist! She's Kyr and 8ball's creator. Both parts were originally written in probably 2023, edited and revised within the past month to align with current continuity.
Main chapter 3 can be found here.
