When the Cavalry Comes.

X

Roll, come up on a knee. Toss a droid popper. Lunge off to the side, dive for cover from a mortar. Pop off a couple shots at one of the three tanks. Voices crackle in her ear. Screams burst through her audio feed. It didn't register that every scream was a brother that she wouldn't be racking out with in a few hours.

A actual umbaran seemed to jump out of literal void and land in front of her. There was a slight drag on the edge of the knife in her left hand as she cut through his wind pipe. Blood splattered her visor, her HUD scrambling to counteract the sudden vision impairment.

Her ankle throbbed. She stayed mostly on her knees now, cutting through any black armored entity that got near her. She almost cut the hand off a brother that grabbed her shoulder and dragged her back to their line of defense.

This canyon was a box trap.

She scrambled back on hands and knees into the little crack in the canyon wall they had claimed as a small base to regroup at. Cavalry took her helmet off and sat by Neon. He took in her soot and blood smeared armor and said nothing. He looked little better, but the blood on his was more red than blackish green. There was a nasty cut on his cheek.

"Grenade." He said at her look. "Took out another shiny nearby me."

"Don't think we're shiny's anymore, Ori'vod." She said quietly, cleaning the oily blood off her knives with a rag. She looked at her helmet and sighed. "Got a clean rag?"

Neon leaned over and grabbed a used sanitary wipe. "Not spotless, but it'll clean the worst of it up." She took it gratefully.

"Thanks." She cleared her visor of blood and got the rest off of her knives. Rust was not her friend.

"We need to get you vibrablades or something. Durasteel is going to rust." Neon voiced her thoughts aloud. Cav strugged, unwrapping a ration bar and biting into it with a grimace. Stale.

"Don't like vibrablades." She said around a mouthful of ration, crumbs spraying everywhere. "Vibrations make my hands itch."

"Don't speak with your mouth full." Neon reprimanded her. She swallowed and curled her lip at him, letting some of the post battle angst and regret fall away.

"Yes Buir." She groaned. "You're as bad as Jango, I swear." She muttered.

"You haven't seen Buir since you were six." Neon grunted, glancing out as an explosion lit up in the distance.

"You haven't met him at all." Cav pointed out smugly. Neon rolled his eyes at her.

"Shut up."

"You don't outrank me, Ori'vod. You can't make me do anything" She teased.

"No, Cavalry. Seriously, be quiet." He said harshly, making Cav flinch. Neon rarely raised his voice at her, and almost never out of anger. She was quiet. The rest of the vode around them were also settling into silence.

The Captain was walking into the small crevasse and looking around at the men. The only sounds were distant explosions and the low moans of the wounded the medics had managed to drag back to this temporary shelter.

The Captain took off his helmet, his face a grim line.

"Those tanks have got to go." He said quietly, the words ringing out like a shout in the near silence.

"No duh, sir." Fives spoke up from a ledge a good seven feet above the ground and claimed as his own. He was currently sprawled on his back dropping little pieces of balled up ration wrapper onto a increasingly more annoyed Jesse who was slumped below him.

"Our orders are to stay on course though." Dogma protested. "We have to take the capitol and take it swiftly." Captain Rex's face was tired and cold. He said nothing. Fives spoke up for him, sitting up and kicking his feet over the ledge, causing a spray of gravel to hit Jesse and make him squawk in irritation.

"Sorry Jess. Look around. This little crack is what? Ten feet wide and thirty deep? There's barely eighty men here." His voice was rough. "I don't know how many of you have realized this, but we're all that's left of Torrent. We landed on Umbara a hundred and fifty strong, and now we're down to almost half that."

Cavalry was silent, as was the rest of the men. She slid her knives back into her sheaths and sat forward on her elbows to see Fives.

"We've got to fight with every thing we've got. Not for Krell. Not for the republic. Screw the republic!" He yelled angrily. Neon flinched beside her. Fives's words were borderline treasonous. "We fight for each other. For our Vode. And if we want to make it off of this skrag pit of a planet, we've got to fight with everything we got to keep each other alive."

His words rang in the stillness, broken only by distant explosions rocking through the distance. Cavalry bit her tongue and shifted a bit.

"Everybody gear up and get ready to move out before they collapse this cave." The Captain's words were soft. Dangerous. He shot a look at Fives, then jerked his head at the mouth of the fissure.

Cav swapped the power pack in her DC16 for a fresh one and snapped her helmet on. Neon stretched and stood up, offering her a hand and pulling her to her good foot. The splint was holding for now but she hissed as she took a couple limping steps.

Neon sighed and jogged over to Kix. Cavalry flushed under her helmet, limping over to a spot she could sit again. Now that the adrenaline was draining away, every part of her was stiff and sore. Close calls throbbed across her body and if she dekitted she was more than sure that her usually clear skin would be painted in hues of red and black and violet from being tossed around.

Kix approached her. His skin was pale and sallow in the reddish light. Cav dimly wondered when he'd last slept. She managed a weak smile behind her visor before breaking the seal on her helmet again.

"Well? Am I dyin' Doc?" She asked in a fake outer rim accent. To her credit, it made the overworked medic crack a smile.

"You might be." He said, adjusting her splint and making her hiss a bit. He sighed, them moved his hands up more towards her sides. "May I?"

She nodded, chewing her lip. She flinched back as he felt along her bruised hips and ribcage. There was a pinch just above the neck of her blacks and she yelped. Neon snickered as he finished administering the painkiller.

"Laugh it up." She snarled playfully. Kix just chuckled and shook his head. He did a cursory examination but Neon was alright aside from the cut on his neck and some minor bruising. He got a bacta patch and was sent on his way.

Cavalry went to follow but Kix held her back. "Actually, you'll be staying more towards the back with me." Cav opened her mouth to protest, but Kix cut her off. "You're walking wounded, and while you can hold your own in a fight even now, maker knows I don't want to be anywhere near those blades, but you don't really have a sense of caution and I'd at least like to keep you alive, with minimal broken bones."

Cav sighed. "You can just say it's because I'm weak and tiny compared to you." She fidgeted with her knife handles.

"No, that's not it at all." Kix folded his arms. "Cavalry, look at me." She did. "I know you think you've got something to prove because you got a chip on your shoulder, but thar doesn't mean throwing yourself blindly into fights and hoping for the best. You've got a big brain. Use it! I already deal with Fives and Hardcase. I don't want to have to babysit you."

Cav shook her head. "You won't." Kix smiled.

"Good. That's what I like to hear."