drabble: dead air
Stupid, he thought - stupid for bringing Delta into this, when they deserved better than being surrounded by leering Death Watch rabble. Vizsla had gambled his last move on trapping them on the desert planet, and it was working. Blaster bolts shaved past Sev’s head as he threw a grenade back, screams echoing the resulting explosions. Without the battered helmets, they’d all be deafened for weeks.
“Sarge - ” It was Boss, sniping one of off a cliff with impressive aim and calmness. “Another wave and they’ll -“
“Grab Mird and run for that speeder when I break cover, understood?” A cold fist of dread settled somewhere in his chest; firefek, why hadn’t he insisted on going alone? He should be the one to die for arrogance, not his boys. “I’ll vape the lot of you if you don’t go, now.”
Scorch was the first to stagger back as Vau simultaneously charged towards the semicircle of shadowy figures. Boss’ GL-11 grenade launcher was spitting hell with abandon as more screams and fire followed. He was almost perfectly camouflaged with his new orange armor, matching Scorch as they sprinted -
- boom.
Vau slammed into something -hard- that he was sure broke a rib, momentarily blinded by a white flash that broiled to his right. His HUD was droided in the explosion, only a thin slit of orange even - shab, shab, shab.
It was what he would have done as a last ditch attempt - overwhelming numbers could eventually take down a small group that was forced to remove helmets or go blind. His hands closed over the ruined mess of the verprine rifle, gasping for breath as he struggled to crawl, move - anything to get away and mark Delta’s position.
Everything was muffled, deafened, only secondary explosions registering as he all but fell over Mird, the strill as frantic as he had ever seen it. A second later, he saw why; a gasp ripping out from his throat.
Mando armor was good against most conventional weaponry, but mines shredded shab near anything - bone, limbs, a mangled mess of what used to be -
Boss
Shab, no -
His whispers of denial were drowned out by a howl of fury and firestorm as Delta hugged the rock walls, buying him precious seconds to half-crawl, half sprint over to the man. Half his mind felt a scalpel-like disconnect telling him to do the mercy-kill and be done with it and bang out, the other half near-paralyzed with a terrible tearing sensation that he had lost something precious he had only begun to see -
Vau collapsed heavily on the red-stained-sand by Boss, dead air between them.
“I -… Sarge, I trie…-” Words were choked out in a low groan of agony, as his son all but clung onto the extended hand with the strength of a newborn baby.
No, I’m the one that failed you -
Boss’ fingers spasmed once with finality as Vau’s reply died lifelessly along with the man, forever too late.
