Live Through This

Chapter Six: Die With Your Boots On

Commander Hops had seen a lot of osik since he'd left Kamino. He'd worked under two generals, been to seventeen planets, lived aboard four cruisers, and commanded hundreds of men. He'd killed, saved lives, broken up fights, started them, lost his entire batch, made connections he never dreamt of, and seen things he never thought possible.

So, he probably shouldn't have been surprised about the big cat.

General Nafai had mentioned them before they left Stanoi. She said they'd been a problem for the Jedi at the monastery, so he briefly connected to the holonet to see if he could dig up any information on the fauna of Wrarí. He wasn't exactly supposed to be connecting to the holonet out here, but the information packets they'd been sent were sparse, to say the least. He had clearance to play around with comm connections and holonet signals, though, and he knew his General wouldn't notice or care.

The beasts were called asavik:ro hí in the native Wrarí language, but were commonly referred to by outsiders as Long Cats. They were typically between five to seven meters tall, and could reach up to ten meters in length. They had twelve legs, two rows of teeth (one blunt and the other razor sharp), and three tails with each end barbed like a mace.

Basically, he hoped they wouldn't run into one.

But such was their luck, of course. Hops felt that sometimes just hoping something wouldn't happen was what sealed their fate. He'd seen a lot of strange things in the few years he'd been in this galaxy, and was willing to believe in the reality of bad luck. Especially at moments when their troops and enemies alike were being decimated by a creature that the day before had only been an holo on his datapad.

"You didn't mention," Fiend screamed over the the din, "that they were the size of a space cruiser!"

Fiend, Hawkbat, Skint, and Ray were with him in partial cover behind an uprooted tree. Skint's helmet was off, probably lost for good. Ray was limping. This wasn't looking good for them.

"I didn't know we'd encounter one," Hops shouted back, panting, "with no goddamn warning!"

A hand clamped down on his shoulder as he continued to fire shots up at the Long Cat. He didn't look to the side to see who it was, but when Hawkbat spoke he knew it was him, his calm and even voice. "Commander, there," he pointed towards the trees above the creature, thrashing as it tore the jungle apart around it. The goddamned Jedi.

If Hops knew General Nafai, and he was fairly certain he did by now, her plan was to jump down on top of it and cut wildly with her saber until it was dead. It wasn't exactly a bad plan, but it was one that required a lot of faith without speaking to anyone about it first. The Long Cat was, well, long. It could easily twist it's body around and kill the General and Commander. General Nafai surely knew this, and was counting on the troopers to keep it occupied. Stupid, he thought, which was slightly traitorous, but it was the truth.

Especially considering there weren't many troopers left.

He couldn't get a proper headcount in the middle of all the chaos, but he was sure the party had been at least halved. Stupid, stupid, stupid! The conditions were insane, and that wasn't even General Nafai's, his, or anyone else's fault. This was typical. Go to some horrible, treacherous place on the outskirts of known space and march for three days into a bioluminescent jungle full of predators and battle droids. No back up will be able to reach you until it's too late. You will not come back the same, if at all. This was the general outline of most campaigns in this war.

Sometimes Hops felt like this was designed to fail. The galaxy was just too damned big for a war like this. What was happening to them was happening to countless other battalions on dozens of worlds. They were too spread out, and spread too thin. It was a thought he couldn't entertain for too long, but Hops did have to wonder if that was a damning fact; the Republic had no business being this big, had no business claiming worlds it could not support.

This was not the time, though. He couldn't afford to get caught up in the futility of it all when he was watching troopers get batted away by the paws of the Long Cat like nothing more than insects.

He watched as General Nafai leapt supernaturally far and landed on the beast's back, standing, stance wide. Commander Starlight followed behind her, and the cat twisted it's long body, trying to shake them off. The Jedi dropped down on to their bellies, grabbing fur to stay in place. One of the cat's tails whipped around and lashed Starlight across the back. The Commander didn't even scream, but her cloak was shredded and Hops could see dark blood between the edges of the fabric.

"Cover the Jedi," he commanded through the comms, "focus fire on the cat, keep it distracted!"

The Long Cat took out a line of B-1s, and stretched itself over the place where the natural bridge had once been. The cavernous space was like a puddle to the cat. It was impossibly big, impossibly strong. It thrashed and batted against the barrage, but blasters were never going to take it out. Their numbers already diminished before they even entered the jungle, they weren't able to bring along any heavy artillery. They had blasters, and that was it. Despite her reckless antics, General Nafai was right to engage. If anything was going to kill the cat, it would sabers.

Hops watched the cat advance, angry, two rows of teeth dripping with blood and snarling. There was something caught in it's teeth, and he realized with horror that it was a trooper's cracked thigh plate. He couldn't hear the blaster fire over the roars of the beast. It churned the muddy soil beneath its feet and pulled trees down with its tails. Their tactic was working, the cat was paying more attention to them than it was to the Jedi, but the Jedi weren't moving fast enough.

Thick mud sprayed around them as the Long Cat lunged, its dozen paws punching into the ground like pile drivers. Hops didn’t wait to see where those claws landed—he grabbed Fiend by the strap of his cuirass and shoved him down just as a paw the size of a speeder flattened the trunk behind them. Wood cracked like it had been hit by lightning, and as the trunk hit the ground he heard one of his men scream and go silent.

“Move, move!” Hops barked, though his voice cracked under the strain. The cat was too close to them, the General needed to take it out now if there was any chance for any of them. Ray staggered forward, limping hard, blaster held more like a crutch than a weapon. Hawkbat hauled him the rest of the way to the next rise of roots. Ray way out of commission, that was sure. This wasn't a safe place to leave him, and there was no one to comm. Hawkbat was holding him up by the armpits in a sitting position. He didn't want to order him to leave Ray behind, though technically he should. This position provided them momentary cover, but they couldn't push the cat back for long.

Skint, bare-headed and wild-eyed, let out a shaking laugh that was far too close to hysteria, “Oh, we’re definitely dying out here,” he said as he lowered into a crouch and aimed for the cat.

“Cut the chatter!” Fiend snapped back, firing three bolts up toward the beast’s underside. They hit, of course, the cat being so large and so close—but to the Long Cat it seemed to be little more that an irritant, stinging bug bites.

Above the chaos, he saw the Jedi—General Nafai dragging herself belly-flat across the creature’s back as it twisted violently, trying to dislodge its unwelcome riders while still batting away the barrage. Starlight clung further down the spine, one arm hooked around a ridge of bone under the fur, the other hand gripping her saber. She was bleeding heavily now, but nothing on her skeletal face gave a clue to how she was feeling. For all Hops knew, she was unconscious or even dead.

It seemed the Jedi had also learned too late that the hide of the creature was thicker than they had the means to deal with. General Nafai seemed to be going for the head of the beast. But he couldn't quite tell in the chaos. Any real strategy he'd started out with went out the window. Drawing the cat towards them had worked, but now what? He could tell via his HUD that eleven troopers remained, outside of the five of them. Not enough. Not for anything, really.

The other group or two of troopers hadn't drawn the direct ire of the cat, and he hoped that by the time he was dead General Nafai would have taken the beast out, so at least a few of them could live another day.

As the long cat loomed over them, he knew he would not.

There wasn't much anyone could have done to prevent this, besides never sending them to this moon in the first place. This terrible, wonderful moon. He was grateful to have seen glowing trees and heard the singing of strange birds. He was glad that he'd known so many people and seen so many things in his short life. This was a better place for his mind to go in his final moments than dwelling on the unshakable truth of his responsibility in this. He should have insisted that they stay in Stanoi. Dead General Kash's mission be damned, there were civilians to protect and reinforcements would be there in a few days time. They could have all lived. This didn't need to happen.

He never knew how far he could push with General Nafai. When they were under General Savek, he couldn't push at all, and it had made him wary of giving input. Still, he had tried, and he should have tried harder. In retrospect, he should have asked her, are you kriffing insane? There were a lot of things he should have done differently. He should have worked closer with his General on tactics. For specific missions and just generally. He had her favor and should have used it more. He liked General Nafai a great deal, but not in the way most everyone else did. He didn't see her confidence and sparkling green eyes when he looked at her. He saw himself in her. Two young people in an impossible situation. He should have dropped the formalities and met her where she was. They could have done a better job that way. There were many things he should have done.

He should have spent more time with his newer troops, who he'd always been afraid to get close to after loosing his original squad, the only family he'd ever known. He should have watched more holodramas and drank more revnog. He should have defected. But it was too late for all of that now.

The cat charged them, no longer caring about the irritation of their blaster fire. Massive, clawed paws and splintered wood came crashing down around them, on top of them. Hops felt himself breaking, dying. He could smell his own blood mixed with the scent of wet soil. He could feel an intense pain spreading somewhere between his neck and left shoulder, but the exact shape of his body wasn't exactly relevant anymore as he was torn and rearranged. This was it.

His life didn't flash before his eyes, he didn't have any final thoughts about his lost loved ones or who he was leaving behind. Just comfort as the pain subsided and and he faded into a void much kinder than he'd ever guessed it would be.