Chapter Text
Their entire approach to navigating the mountain has to be reimagined, with the young ones in tow. Echo can still masquerade as a stormtrooper, and Emerie’s access opens all of the doors they need, but the children shuffling along nervously in their wake won’t stand up to much scrutiny, and any report of their passing, however unconcerned and casual, will give away their position, their route, their destination.
So Echo grimaces and sets for stun, which is frustratingly cross-purpose to the day’s ultimate objectives but, well –
They’re terrified enough as it is. Were stolen from their homes and hidden beneath this mountain some unknown duration of time ago. Have persisted bravely today after putting their faith in Omega, and it’s daunting somehow, to be the successor to that trust. To have them look to him with hope in their eyes simply because he is Omega’s brother and she told them he’d help.
And he will. Obviously, he will.
But they’ve already been forced to witness the Zillo Beast’s rampage, and he doesn’t have it in him to kill anyone else so dispassionately right in front of their eyes. So he sets for stun, feels the great weight of this task he’s unexpectedly taken on, and carefully leads them on at Emerie’s murmured guidance.
“That trooper…” she murmurs as they clear another eerily abandoned corridor. “He was – that’s Tech.”
With how readily she recognized him… with how absolutely Omega’s life was upended on the heels of that grief… he can only imagine the tales Emerie must have heard about Tech, too. “Yeah.” Another open door, another empty room behind it, some sort of maintenance hub. He supposes he’d hurry to evacuate the subterranean levels too, with the unfolding calamity shaking the mountain around them. “Did you know?”
“No.” She says it quickly enough that he risks looking around. Whatever complicated emotions are flitting across her face though, it’s not dishonesty in her tightly-drawn eyes, her thinly-pressed lips. “I’m sorry.”
Doing my job, Emerie had justified, excused, despaired.
The children, Echo knows, were a recent discovery. The truth of the Vault kept hidden from her during the long months of Omega’s imprisonment and for however long before.
He can’t help but wonder how long she’s had the sense of waking up. Of the hundred little things catching her eye, tugging at her conscience, sparking questions she so determinedly buried behind a lifetime’s conditioning.
He wonders when she really knew it was all a lie.
For the first time, he starts to suspect it’s not altogether dissimilar from watching clone brothers turn on their beloved Jedi commanders, and the spiraling series of events and revelations culminating in the extraction of their inhibitor chips on Bracca.
It occurs suddenly how oh-so-very differently things might have played out. If he had made it out of the Citadel in one piece, at Rex’s side, and only found himself taking aim at the Jedi with all the rest of them and the dawning horror of the gradual awakening.
A hundred answers he wants from Cody and Wolffe and Tech, impossibly him, impossibly here – but Cody, he knows from Crosshair, walked away a long time ago. And Wolffe…
It strikes him all at once, the implications of timing and circumstance.
And there’s no time to deal with it. “Wolffe,” he murmurs instead into the comm when they’re in the relative safety of an enclosed lift. “It’s Echo.”
“I read you, Echo. It’s… I’m glad you’re safe.”
He swallows back bile at the realization, of how Tech and Wolffe came to be here together. “Likewise, sir,” he grunts. Old habits. “How’s the situation outside?”
“Quiet on the southern face. Think the Zillo was generous enough to keep the party focused to the west.”
He glances around at the ragtag bunch clustered in around him and Emerie and sighs. “I’ve got four younglings and a scientist, a… friendly. We’re on the northwest side trying to follow the Zillo’s path out and could use a pickup.”
The way Wolffe doesn’t even ask any clarifying questions, Echo can tell he’s been sitting on his hands resisting the urge to break his cover and come rushing in, blasters blazing. “I’ll scout it out.”
Echo double clicks an acknowledgement, secures the comm, pulls the rifle back into his hand and nods at Emerie to get them moving. “You kids are doing great,” he says, as gently and reassuring as he can manage to sound under his helmet, dressed the way he is. “Just a little further.”
He only had to stun one brave pair of guards down in the Vault; up top, the situation is equally dire for Tantiss. “Most of the forces were sent in pursuit of the Zillo,” Emerie scans her datapad clutched tight in her hands. The baby is slung on the Mirialan boy’s back, and when he has a moment to actually breathe later, Echo looks forward to hearing how the kids managed it, how Omega managed to rally them with such fierce determination and dedication and bravery in so short a time.
“He won’t have left this undefended,” Echo mutters as they creep along in dim hallways illuminated by backup power strips. Cast into ominous shadow by the flashing of red emergency lights, descended into uncanny silence as he expects the wail of alarm klaxons to accompany and finds them nonexistent or shorted out or cut. He’d be grateful for the silence not stirring the baby again, but wonders if they wouldn’t be better served by something to mask his unpredictable cries instead. “Wolffe?” he prompts, handing over his rifle for a moment to a startled Emerie so he can fish the comm free once more.
“There’s a helpful hole in the mountain, alright. Landing field, by the shuttle wreckage I clocked on a fly-by. Multiple gunships headed off into the jungle along the path of the river but if there’s any activity at the site I’m not picking it up from the tree line.”
“Alright. Then we need to hurry.”
He starts to swap the comm for the rifle when it crackles back to life with an urgent, “Wait – Echo –!” that’s cut off again when a rumbling beneath their feet heralds an explosion close at hand, too close, noise and heat washing down the corridor from the compromised point up ahead.
The thing about unanticipated explosions near a ruined hangar, with fires burning and potential fuel spills, is that it could be – well. As near to nothing as they might hope.
The report of distant blasterfire undermines that hope before it has time to properly set in.
“Think we found your squad.”
He swears, hurries the kids along down the empty hallway, looking for somewhere he might stash them away from the vulnerable exterior walls, weakened by the creature’s bid for freedom and… whatever Hunter and the others are up to. “Abort,” he tells Wolffe. “Cody?” There’s a click of acknowledgment, so he assumes he and Omega are moving more cautiously on their particular mission. “Wolffe’s going to start scouting an extraction point for the prisoners. Let him know what you need when you can.”
Another click and he pockets the comm before shoving the children unceremoniously in a supply room. “I need to go ahead and make sure it’s safe,” he tells them, tells Emerie apologetically. “Just – stay here and stay quiet. Lock it if you can. I’ll… I’ll be back,” he says, and hopes it’s a promise he can keep.
He slips through a set of bay doors that are stuck open a meter, groaning on their tracks, sparks still flying from the control panel. Follows the heat and flames, ducks around a ruined shuttle, and it’s quiet, beneath the flicker of burning fires, beneath the ambient noise of straining generators and the distant jungle, it’s too quiet, they –
A shot slams into the shuttle behind him and he swears, drops and rolls and ducks behind the cover of another ship.
A crackle of energy catches his ear and then a strangled roar from Wrecker. He follows it through the labyrinth, takes aim at a – he’s not even sure, another operative like Tech but better armored, and the energy staff he’s trying to impale Wrecker upon is unlike anything he’s ever seen in the hands of an Imperial trooper.
The shot distracts him enough at least for a twitching Wrecker to drop the staff and swipe at the trooper’s ankle, bringing him crashing down half-atop him and opening up a path for Echo to come around and look desperately for the others.
He sees Hunter first, being secured by another dark trooper, limp and unconscious – he hopes unconscious. “Crosshair,” Wrecker gasps, voice worryingly weak and ragged, but Echo’s able to follow his line of sight to find Crosshair pinned on the ground, flailing futilely against an operative outfitted like Tech and it’s discordant as Echo takes aim, shooting at that same empty mask that only minutes ago slid up to reveal the face of his dead brother.
But the operative raises a blade above Crosshair’s desperately struggling arm and Echo swallows the reservations and fires.
It catches him in the shoulder, sends him spinning to the ground. Crosshair lunges, snatches up the sidearm he was fumbling for, rolls over on his belly and fires three shots into the trooper’s chest and that’s that.
As Echo pivots though and takes stock of Wrecker’s situation once more, he realizes quickly that it’s the only victory they’ll have. There’s four of them in the same intimidating armor, energy weapons poised and waiting and only too obvious in the threat implied.
Wrecker on his knees and panting, his helmet torn off and discarded so they can see the angry snarl warring with the haze of pain and it’s not just the staff, Echo notes in dismay, deep gashes torn into his chest armor he doesn’t dare imagine don’t extend into the vulnerable flesh beneath.
Crosshair stumbles up by his side, weapon up and ready, gasping and overexerted. “I hope you’re Echo,” he snarls, aim pivoting wildly from the trooper poised behind Wrecker, pair of charged bolas swinging ominously in hand; to the one holding a blade desperately close to Hunter’s exposed throat, his face terrifyingly slack.
“Don’t think your hand’s complaining either way,” he mutters back, tipping his head as one of the troopers starts to circle around them, double-barrel blaster leveled steady in their direction. “Not winning this one, Crosshair,” he keeps looking around but there’s nothing, there’s no one else, there’s Hunter and Wrecker vulnerable and a moment from death if they don’t cooperate.
Crosshair’s voice is trembling but firm when he argues, “If I cover you, you can slip back through, you can still save her, Echo, you have to –”
“Omega’s safe,” he assures him softly. “Safer than us, certainly.” Crosshair finally risks tearing his eyes away from the lives of his brothers dangling in the balance before him while he’s utterly helpless to save them. “She’s with a friend.”
“Who?” Crosshair demands, but Echo’s already reaching slowly down to lay his weapon on the ground. “Echo…” He fumbles discreetly for the comm in his belt and drops that on the ground, too.
But to the best of his knowledge, Tantiss doesn’t know about Tech and Cody, and he shakes his head, nudges Crosshair’s aim down with his scomp, and raises his hand (and scomp) up in the air. “We surrender,” he calls, perhaps a little prematurely as Crosshair swears and only then drops the sidearm with a clatter.
“This is a bad idea,” Crosshair grits out at his side. “You know what he wants from us.”
He swallows thickly as two of the troopers advance, and thinks he might know better now than Crosshair imagines. “Trust me,” he says, taking a step forward and crushing the comm beneath his boot.
Cody and Omega should have long made it to the detention level. By now, he expects as many prisoners to be armed as they can incapacitate the guard troops and steal their weapons. They don’t need a miracle, they just need the backup, they need an opening, they need…
They need Emerie and the children to stay safe and patient until Echo can circle back around to collect them.
The troopers reach them then, no concern for gentleness as they yank off their helmets and toss them aside, as they wrench their arms behind their backs and secure them. At the first explosion of panicked breath from Crosshair, Echo wonders if he hasn’t failed to grasp just how deeply rooted this fear is, if Crosshair will be able to stay alert for the moment he’s hoping they’ll be able to seize.
The distress only intensifies as a soft, slippery voice carries across the ruined landing field. “A wise decision.” He recognizes Doctor Hemlock as he approaches, unarmed, unconcerned, only a single commando over his shoulder as escort. “You must be… Echo,” he offers an imitation of a smile that looks wholly unnatural under his cold, cruel eyes. “Forgive me – we did not have the good fortune to meet back on Ord Mantell.”
The way his eyes rove over Echo’s head and scomp in fascination makes something crawl beneath his skin, and he can only imagine what experiments this twisted bastard would have in store for him, given the opportunity.
Crosshair snarls a little, earning the butt of a rifle to his shoulder, but Hemlock just turns his placid somewhat-smile on him. “Welcome home, CT-9904.”
In the background, Hunter’s being loaded up on a hover cart and floated away. Two of the troopers march Wrecker along after him, and Echo eyes his stumbling, unsteady gait and feels his eyes tighten worriedly.
Hemlock chuckles. “We’ll take care of them, CT-1409. Don’t you worry.” He nods their escort on, and he and Crosshair get paired shoves forward to urge them along. “Omega is still missing,” Hemlock laments. “But you clones are nothing if not predictable. She’ll turn up.”
“You so sure that’s a good thing?” Echo mutters.
Hemlock chuckles. Unlike the smile, he hears something genuine in the amusement, and cannot entirely comprehend why considering the waste already laid to his fortress – until they step back through the battered blast doors and discover –
“You’ll cooperate,” Hemlock predicts serenely. “And Omega will hand herself over.” Crosshair’s eyes blow wide at sight of Emerie and the children huddled under the threat of their armed guard, the baby held tight in Emerie’s arms again, blasters trained on the children’s vulnerable little bodies. “Your loyalty to each other is the most troublesome part about you, as a species.
“But today,” he gestures the guard on; Emerie catches Echo’s eye and he sees her terror, but there’s resolve too, and he dares to hope she hasn’t given the game away, “that devotion will serve me quite nicely.”
Their escort ushers them along to the head of their miserable procession, past the cowering children, past the cart bearing Hunter’s unconscious form, past a worrisomely unaware and wheezing Wrecker. They set off, towards the detention level Echo can only assume, he hopes, because Omega and Cody went there to release to prisoners and they’ve surely done so by now, they’ll be walking into an ambush that’s admittedly more complicated with the younglings in tow but –
“Time to begin your reeducation,” Hemlock says as they begin the trek.
At Echo’s side, Crosshair trembles violently.