Day 5
The coils of smoke still made their presence felt in the distance, even as what I guessed was the sun setting, began bringing the soft gray mist to a deep purple as light was ushered out of the world again. They were a shadow of their former selves, as if the younger tendrils had aged rapidly and withered fingers now reached skyward. Sensors on every salvageable piece of equipment were either fried or seemed as if they refused to work. Tapping the black screen in frustration I couldn’t help but hope this barbaric method would get the machine working. As if poking an animal in the eye would make it obedient.
“Fixer, get over here” I quietly shouted. We were far too nervous to raise our voices to anything above a whisper. Small exploratory excursions revealed almost nothing thanks to the lingering mist, but the best we could tell we were in a cave on the side of a mountain, a large field separated our makeshift castle from what we guessed from our small excursions, was a heavily wooded forest. “Take a look at this, doesn’t seem like anything’s wrong with it.”
The lanky soldier twitched nervously, “I’ll take a look sir, it seems to be a common theme with what we were able to salvage as we fled the wreckage.”
“Weapons still work?”
“As far as we can tell. Didn’t you hear Captain use it several times yesterday on those we couldn’t save?”, Fixer didn’t mean it as a dark joke. He said it as a matter of fact, cold and flat like a droid.
“Yes Fixer, Yes I heard it. I was just…asking. Where is the Captain by the way?”
“There,” he pointed without moving his gaze from the sensor to a small gathering in the rear of the cave.
I nodded and made my way towards the Captain and several other soldiers holding a conference around a makeshift table. I kept my eyes fixed on the gathering, too pained to look around our temporary home and see the broken bodies of men I had spent the last several years stationed with across the galaxy. After our initial discovery of the cave, several others thought lost, had made their way to our location. The sound of my boots on the sand brought everyone’s attention to me.
“Glad you’re here,” Captain stated. If there was any one sign of happiness within him, that was as close as we were going to get in hearing it. The five men stood looking at the hand drawn map of the area, put together by a collection of memories as survivors fled the shuttle. “Get some rest you’re off guard duty tonight.”
“Sir?” I questioned.
“We need to get to the ship and salvage what we can. There were a lot of supplies aboard and we’ve let it sit for too long. Tomorrow morning you will take Dax, Sven, Gar and Bral on a recon mission. Take whatever weapons you think you will need from what we have, we think the ship cut a large tear in the forest so you’re path should be largely unimpeded. There should’ve been grav-lifts aboard that shuttle so use them to help move as much as you can, we aren’t going to last much longer if we don’t restock and try to find some help.”
I looked from the map “Do we even know where we are?”
The silence was deafening. After a long pause, Captain looked the five troopers around him, “No. We don’t.” His face seemed to harden, his lips barely moving as if his body fought him in letting the words escape. “Fixer can’t get any sensors working and we came out of hyperspace so fast that none of us could get our bearings. Frankly, we’re on the backfoot lads, but this is what we trained for. Get to the ship, salvage supplies, and maybe we can get the hell out of here.”
“Sir, yes sir!” the five saluted.
“Dismissed, except you,” he said pointing at me. If the others had a suspicion they didn’t show it and shuffled along to their claimed territories of the cave. “I know something’s on your mind so speak.”
“I’m sorry sir I just couldn’t help but notice, you didn’t call us by our designations.”
His body visibly tensed, whatever thought he had been processing had come to an abrupt halt in the wake of my question. I heard Captain take a deep breath and was met with the stare of a man who had aged rapidly in a short amount of time. He must’ve been debating the answer he was going to tell me and finally said, “Call it an old soldier’s intuition, but I have a feeling Imperial designation will be the least of our concerns in the coming days.”