The Great War • Hunter

28. L Word

Blaster shots everywhere. The quintet ran down the hall, one side a wall and the other a drop to a very painful death.

"Hunter!" Tech shouted, passing a smoke grenade to his brother. Hunter launches the grenade and it explodes, yet again blocking the troopers' vision. The five of them take down the enemies and continue moving.

A blaster shot hits Gregor in his armored chest and he falls onto his knees between Alona and Echo. Hunter stuns the culprit, a TK trooper. More started running down the hall which led Alona to pick Gregor up and throw him over her shoulder as they continued moving further away.

Stopping in the controls room, Alona ignited her lightsaber and put it through the panel, locking themselves inside. She set Gregor down and helped him lean against the table for support.

"How bad?" Hunter asked, placing a hand on the reg's shoulder while Tech and Echo worked hard to find a way out.

"Ha! Don't worry about me. This is nothing. I got blown up once and survived. I can survive this." Gregor replied with an upbeat tone, though he groaned and placed a hand over his wound. Alona grabbed his wrist and peeled it away, placing her own hand over the top of the cauterized wound and healed it quickly.

"Wh-woah." Gregor said in amazement. "Thanks, Little Skywalker."

"They have all access points to the central ring blocked off." Echo grumbles, unplugging his scomp.

Tech pointed up. "There. Those pipes are reactor conduits." He blurted like everyone else understood what he was getting at.

"And?" Hunter pushed.

"Well, they should lead to the main reactor's external exhaust port. That is our path to the outside." Tech explains, lowering his datapad.

"The exhaust vent's halfway up the mountain. We can't survive that jump." Gregor scoffed.

Alona shook her head. "We won't be jumping. We're going to signal our ship." She explained, taking a small explosive from Hunter's belt and throwing it up onto the vent. It explodes and the metal falls to the ground in front of her feet.

Then she started to hold her hand out to lift them all up inside of the vent, but then she stopped. She didn't want to potentially fry them or something of the sorts like she did just a few moments ago.

So instead they all gave each other a boost, and then Hunter held onto Alona's waist while she dangled halfway out of the vent to pull Echo up by his arms. Once they were all up in the vent, they began walking.

"How did you even end up in this place?" Echo asked Gregor.

The Captain sighs. "I was sent here with other commandos and quickly realized I wanted out." He pauses and chuckles. "It turns out the Empire doesn't take too kindly to desertion." He laughs.

"Yeah, no kidding." Echo mumbles.

"Wrecker, Omega, come in." Hunter said into the comm once they were out of the scrambling range.

"We read you, Hunter." Omega replies. Alona smiles at the sound of the kid's voice.

"We have the target, but we ran into some trouble. We need a pickup." Hunter replies. Alona could swear she heard a smile in his voice. He missed her too, and they'd only been gone a little over an hour.

"On our way!" Wrecker exclaims.

The quintet stopped at the edge, looking down at the extremely large distance between them and the ground.

"Glad we're not going that way." Gregor laughed, taking a step back from the cliff. Alona spotted the Marauder in the distance.

Hunter's comm beeps. "We are on approach!" Omega reports.