Chapter Text
Everything hurts.
Something’s not right in his chest, he knows that, has known it since he struggled back to foggy awareness in the jungle. And his back, come to think of it, but that pain is more familiar after years of fighting, explosions and crash-landings. Crashing through the hillside on Eriadu.
Something’s not right in his chest, but then again that’s been true since Eriadu and he just needs to hold on a little longer. Like he held on for Hunter, all those long months searching, pulling him back, making him rest. Like he’s tried to do for Crosshair, to help him see he’s got something worth fighting for, worth staying for.
Like he has to do, now, so they have some hope of finding Omega and taking her away from this place for the last time.
Like he failed to do for Tech.
Like he has to do somehow, now, despite the pain in his back and something cold and just wrong in his chest, because Hunter’s down and Crosshair’s shaking with panic, because Echo hasn’t stopped fighting like hell to make up for what the Techno Union did to him and Wrecker will be damned if Hemlock gets another go.
Because they came for Omega and they can’t fail this mission.
Because otherwise, as he stumbles along with one of the monstrous troopers on either side and blinks in and out of the railcar dangling over the mountain pass –
He drops Tech again and again and each time will have been for nothing if it all ends here. He just doesn’t – doesn’t know how. With Hunter down and Crosshair panicking and Omega missing and Echo staring stiffly straight ahead with defiance in his gaze and his gait.
With the children rounded up and marched along behind them, the scientist Omega talked about almost like a friend, a baby in her arms.
Too many bystanders. Too many unknowns.
Incalculable variables, Tech would have said.
But he works it over again and again, aware of the tension in his wrists, the scant pressure it would take to snap the binders if he only knew what comes next. They’re a squad, a team, a family – and Wrecker holds on even as he can feel the ragged edge of his breathing, even as the cold slides worryingly into numbness, because he can see them breaking, he can see them falling, one-by-one, and the one thing he knows is that whatever might come to pass, wherever they’re headed…
If he can’t hold on and keep them together, then the very least he can do is fall first this time.
He can tell they’re nearing their destination by the way Crosshair’s terror starts to win. Fighting the binders, enough it’s got to be killing his wrists and shoulders. Gasping for breath, without the helmet to muffle it at all, to even out the unsteady whine. It’s enough to break Echo’s concentration, but Crosshair won’t look over to meet his worried gaze, won’t look back to Wrecker who can only watch his brothers be marched ahead of him to whatever fate scared Crosshair enough to hide his lead back to Tantiss until Omega was taken, again.
Wrecker glances around at the escort flanking them, thinks back to the operative who killed most of Rex’s men and chased them all the way to the extraction marker on Teth, and supposes he knows already.
He can tell they’re nearing their destination…
And the sorry, sniffling parade of them stops entirely. But he’s not quite right, dazed and desperate, and almost crashes into Crosshair before a trooper grabs his shoulder, halts him with a grunt that he doesn’t realize right away came from his own throat.
He looks up –
And finds their path obstructed by a single one of Hemlock’s dark troopers. Standing in the corridor outside an open set of blast doors, rifle held pointed low but ready and Wrecker can see Crosshair trembling with fear; can see the way Echo shifts his posture, watchful and wary.
Hemlock and the commando at his side react almost the same. The other operatives are still and quiet around, them, waiting for orders.
The silence stretches on some span of time Wrecker has lost all chance of estimating. Something has confused Hemlock’s plan – all Wrecker can see is one of the vicious weapons that attacked them on Teth, that stole Omega on Pabu, that pinned down Crosshair before Echo turned up at just the right moment.
The silence stretches on, and it’s probably shorter than it feels, seconds at most, before Hemlock says, “So - you survived, then.” He raises a hand – signaling the guard to fire on his own operative, Wrecker thinks, until he startles and snarls, makes a cutting motion to call them off, and it’s Crosshair’s strangled exclamation that forces Wrecker’s eyes over to –
Omega.
Coming through the blast doors, a stormtrooper’s rifle in one hand and something clutched in her other fist Wrecker fuzzily, absurdly, thinks might be a remote detonator. Walking out and planting herself at the operative’s side.
“Hold your fire,” Hemlock grits, because he needs her and they don’t understand why. “You’re outgunned,” he notes, voice vibrating with frustration. “And have far more to lose.”
More to lose, the whole lot of them rounded up and wrapped up neat and tidy. They’d die for Omega, every last one of them – he hopes she knows that, however much she’d fight it. But it’s not just them at stake, it’s the scientist she thinks of like a friend, it’s the four younglings who are whimpering behind him –
“Wrecker.” He blinks away from Omega’s furious gaze to where Echo is peering back over his shoulder. A sad sort of smile on his face, but it’s reassuring too, and Wrecker lets himself be reassured, comforted in the thought that he has a plan, of course he does, and it wouldn’t be the first time he’s followed orders and caught up along the way. “Plan Seven, big guy.”
It’s not what he’s expecting to hear.
It doesn’t matter. He breaks the cuffs with an almighty tug and, since he’s right up close behind Crosshair, follows through and snaps his in the same vicious motion. The guards move to shield Hemlock, lower their weapons in a moment’s uncertainty while Hemlock worries over Omega falling to errant blasterfire, but it doesn’t matter because Wrecker –
Dives the other way.
He barrels into the trooper at his back, hurls him around with an almighty roar and sends him careening into the wall head-first. The doctor and the children shriek and shrink back as he lunges for the cart holding Hunter’s unconscious figure, tipping it to upend him into a pile on the floor with a clatter of armor before whipping the cart around the other way with as much energy as he can muster.
One of the advancing stormtroopers goes down as it swings around and catches him at thigh-level. Another stumbles back and trips over yet another, sending them both down in a heap. Wrecker yanks the thing, pulls it over on its side so it crashes down to the ground, and drags it up close behind Hunter’s limp form, the best he can buy him for makeshift cover. “Kids,” he barks, sweeping out his arms and pulling them in and down in a ragged pile around and atop Hunter, before he throws himself over the scientist who instinctively tucks the baby closer in her arms.
He covers them as best he can like that – no weapons, just a shield, a body between the whole vulnerable lot of them and -
An almighty explosion blasts a wave of heat from the chamber out into the corridor. He flinches in close, feels the shaking from the kids more than he can hear their cries. Ears ringing, he cranes around in time to see Omega similarly bundled up and shielded between the operative’s body and the far wall before they unfold and straighten up, weapons in hand.
Omega picks off two of the stormtrooper escort while Hemlock’s men are still reorienting, floundering for orders, for priorities, for permission to salvage the situation.
The operative kicks a blade to Crosshair, on the ground in the wake of the explosion. Crosshair snatches it up, rolls around to break the connection of Echo’s binders that he holds out and offers as best he can from his prone position, before whipping the thing with deadly precision at the first of the recovering troopers to take aim.
Echo kicks off and shoves hard into Crosshair, rolls them into the wall as a retaliatory blaster bolt misses them by mere centimeters.
The knife thrown at such close quarters hits its mark where blasters against reinforced armor fell short. With a gurgle and a gush of blood pouring down his suit, the fierce trooper with that awful electrostaff collapses to the ground, and prompts Hemlock’s snarled order at last to, “Withdraw!” as his defenders fall away.
Wrecker braces himself for a last almighty push. To defend his vulnerable charges, when Hemlock inevitably gets it in his head to use them as hostages again, as leverage –
It never matters.
Because when he turns back around to take stock of the trembling children, of Emerie and the baby, of Hunter’s form only just starting to twitch with signs of consciousness – coming up the other way, the same way they did, crept up behind them in the distraction, is a group of six ragged prisoners, faces drawn and unkempt, all of them armed with trooper rifles. And at the head of them all –
“One chance,” Commander Cody tells Hemlock, the commando and last two stormtroopers, his two operatives left standing.
Wrecker watches them freeze and glance around. Omega and the friendly operative moving forward past the twisted metal and shattered glass blown out of the chamber that scared Crosshair so much, moving forward to cover Crosshair and Echo. Except Crosshair scrambles for one of the dropped stormtroopers and tosses his rifle to Echo, snatches up another for himself, and plants himself decisively in between Omega and her unlikely ally.
The moment stretches on, suspended tension and half-raised weapons. He can see the failure dawning on Hemlock’s face as he realizes their pinned position, seven armed opponents at their front and four at their back. He can see Hemlock’s look slide sideways to him, unarmed, covering his vulnerable charges.
He can see the moment Hemlock decides he might as well take as many of them with him as his final, cruel revenge. He growls – tries to, anyway, but it’s hard to force the air from his lungs in his cold and aching chest. His breathing is loud, it occurs, and not in the fun sort of way that means they’ve been wearing themselves out fighting, making a game of it, taunting battle droids on after them and taking them flawlessly down.
Wrecker shoves up to standing and plants himself between the weapons and the children, the unarmed scientist, his unconscious sergeant. “Wrecker…” Cody says, but he’s got eyes only for Hemlock whose hand is inching towards his commando’s sidearm…
The ground rumbles beneath their feet – another explosion, more muted, distant – and the pinned hostiles explode into motion in the moment’s distraction, weapons rising –
“Down,” Cody barks, and Wrecker has a sense of Crosshair dragging Omega to the floor out of the line of fire, of Echo shoving the operative sideways into the wall.
Wrecker pivots and throws himself back down over the children as a flurry of blasterfire erupts in the corridor. A shot scorches the wall half a meter above them and he pulls the children in closer as they whimper and try to shrink away. A blaze of fresh pain erupts in the back of one shoulder and he cannot tell if it is a new wound or simply the cascading effects of too much collapsing around him, inside him all at once.
The corridor falls silent again and Cody – maybe, maybe Echo, maybe a prisoner, it’s hard to tell over the ragged gasp of his own breath – calls, “Clear,” and he’s relieved to see Hunter’s face twitching with pain before he shoves off and away. He’s belatedly aware of the feeling of falling and then already landing with an Oomph of fire lancing out from his shoulder; some seizing ache radiating down his spine suggesting the damage is only getting worse.
“Wrecker,” he hears Omega gasp and then she’s there crashing to her knees at his side.
He reaches for her, except his arm’s too heavy and he settles for smiling hazily and promising, “M’okay. Just gotta… catch my breath.” She stares at his damaged chest plate and then looks frantically over the rest of him. “Check on… on Hunter,” he asks, but there’s already someone, Cody maybe, helping disentangle him from the terrified kids.
And then the helmeted head of the operative is swimming into view and he can’t… keep straight who’s who, who’s an ally and who’s not, and he groans and tries to summon one last burst of energy so he can –
Gloved hands descend on his shoulder and, “Don’t move,” he hears Echo fret, and “Omega…” Crosshair warn before the operative is unclasping his helmet and pulling it up off over his head.
Tech’s face swims into view, scarred and scared, and he’s lost his goggles somewhere but it’s Tech’s face and Tech’s voice who murmurs, “Hold on, Wrecker.”
Hold on. He can do that. He has to.
But all he manages is a vague, “Huh,” before the dark edges around his vision finally drag him down into the blissful peace of unconsciousness.