Miles Away From Yesterday

Chapter 7 - Can't You See I'm Right Here

Author's Note: Saleucami but with twists. ;D

~ Amina Gila

Shortly after the jump to hyperspace, Wrecker takes Omega to show her around the Marauder. Crosshair goes with them, leaving Echo alone with Tech in the cockpit. Echo fumbles for something to say, but he can't find words. There's not really anything to say, he supposes. Hunter is gone, and... he has no idea how to feel about that. Hunter has always been here for as long as Echo has been, and he doesn't know how to handle his absence. The same is undoubtedly true for the others as well – more so, in fact, since they grew up with Hunter.

They sit there for hours, Echo staring blankly out the viewport while Tech alternates between checking the controls, working on his datapad, and tinkering with some mechanical parts that Echo doesn't ask about. It's not long before they'll exit hyperspace that Echo realizes how... quiet the ship is. He rises, heading toward the main hold to find the others, Tech following. Omega and Wrecker are slumped opposite each other, while Crosshair is sprawled across a tipped-over Gonky. All of them are sleeping. Echo blinks at Crosshair for a moment because yes, he's heard from the others – and seen for himself – that Crosshair can sleep in the oddest of places and positions, but this... this is a first.

"Well," he says dryly, "I suppose inspecting the entire ship tired them out." Or more likely, it was their escape from Kamino and the emotional exhaustion of losing Hunter, but he doesn't say that.

"It would appear that way," Tech replies, kicking Crosshair's leg.

He comes awake with a yowl that sounds like he's been stabbed, jerking away, and tumbling off Gonky onto the floor with a thump and a yelp. Of course, that wakes up Wrecker and Omega. Echo just shakes his head at Tech, who looks entirely unsympathetic.

"What was that for?" Crosshair growls, glaring.

"If I left you there," Tech answers, "You would have spent the entire next rotation complaining about a sore neck and back."

Crosshair rolls his shoulders and shakes out his limbs, still sulking, and Echo touches Tech's arm, nodding toward the cockpit. Looking at Omega, who's stretching and yawning, makes him think of his own commander. Commander Tano had been so young when she became a commander, and the boys had worried over her. She wasn't a soldier. It was a miracle that she survived until General Skywalker took over the 501st and her training.

"What is it?" Tech asks, looking at Echo expectantly as they retreat to the cockpit.

"She's only a child," Echo tells him, shaking his head, "What're we gonna do with her?"

Tech doesn't look at him, gaze focused on the readouts of the controls. "I do not know." His voice is quiet, and Echo can hear the uncertainty in it. Hunter might know, he wants to say, but doesn't, because Hunter isn't here, and he's not sure that's true, either. Hunter doesn't have any more experience with children than Tech. In this, Echo is the only one who has knowledge of what to do. He saw how his General trained his Commander when he got her, and... even that isn't enough. Ahsoka had been young, but she had been a Jedi. Omega is a medical assistant.

They don't have time for a lengthy conversation about it – not that either of them had much to say anyway – before they come out of hyperspace over Saleucami. The planet looks the same as it did in Echo's memories, and Tech sets the Marauder down on the edge of what appears to be farmland. Who could they know out here?

They disembark from the Marauder, and Echo pauses when he realizes that Omega isn't with them. She's standing on the ramp, looking around with wide eyes full of wonder as she stares at the sunlight and the birds and the plants all around them. With a pang, Echo remembers that she's not been off Kamino. She's never seen these things before. Kamino is usually rainy, and it's an ocean world. Plant life doesn't grow on the surface.