The five of them blended seamlessly into the crowd of fleeing slavers, enveloped and embraced by the shield of smoke. The whole mass of them ran for their lives down from the secondary access tunnels, trying to circumvent the last gasps of the battle. Order had collapsed, and word had spread through the ranks that the boss was dead. Those who still fought did so with the terrified fury of desperate men, certain that they would be extended no more mercy than Attila the Hutt had received, while those who could escape took their chances, tumbling and stumbling down the uneven rocks and dust of the valley's edge.
Diranor paused every so often, making a quick headcount of his team. This was the easy part, before the long sprint across open ground to reach some town where they could vanish, but there were still plenty of opportunities for everything to go wrong. The real galaxy wasn't like the holovids. The heroes of your story were just as likely as any grunt to be cut down by a stray blaster bolt or ignominiously trampled in a panicked retreat, and luck was as great a determinant of who lived and who died as skill. So he needed to take care of his people, make sure they didn't become meaningless casualties, get them home.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Grol stumble, one of the Givin's slender legs buckling beneath him as a loose stone rolled out from under his foot. Diranor pushed his way back through the crowd, fighting upstream, and struggled to stand upright as body after body bumped past and into him. But he was strong, like a stone that forces the river to bend around it, and he forced his way back to where Grol had fallen. Leaning down, he grasped the man by the forearm and hauled him back to his feet. He didn't realize it at the time, but the small action of bending over to help saved his life, though it did not leave him unscathed.
The smoke had gotten them this far, but the enemy, it seemed, had tools to make sure that it didn't get them much further.
The sniper bolt sizzled across his left shoulder, burning through armor and flesh with the heat of its lethal passage. The force of the impact spun Diranor around like a child's toy, and the world dropped out from under him. Grol watched helplessly as the young agent, the ragged streak across his back still smoking, tumbled away down the side of the valley. Half-conscious through the pain, Diranor managed to cover his head with his hands, taking the impact of each fall on his forearms rather than his face. His left arm, only partly responsive, twisted oddly as he fell, and he felt the bones of his wrist grind together and snap.
Down, down, down he tumbled, sliding toward the base of the valley like a creature falling into a sarlaac's mouth. He could hardly think straight through the pain, could hardly even recognize what was happening. And then, just short of the position where the Forty-Second was breaching the mine's main doors, he crashed down below ground level and hit liquid. Trenches filled with mineral slurry carried waste away from the mine, the water laden with junk rock from which the valuable ore had already been extracted. The vile mixture tried to invade his mouth and nose - it was deep enough to be over his head.
Reaching out with his right arm, Diranor scrambled to keep his face above water even as the current carried him away, down the valley toward the waste dump. Back up on the hill, the wind was beginning to dissipate the smoke. Some of the slavers kept running, using what cover remained to their advantage. Others were less optimistic about their chances. They threw down their blasters, putting their hands behind their heads in a gesture of surrender. They were gambling that the Sith would not throw away a tool they could use - after all, they knew the mine's workings. Maybe they could just change bosses.
Unaware of these developments, the young agent fought through his agony as he tried desperately not to drown...
[member="Dante Sotari"] | [member="Morgan Vance"] | [member="Scipio Alta"] | [member="Darth Banshee"]
