Armando had always expected to die a violent death. Even before he had joined the military, Rodian culture was predisposed towards certain darker inclinations. Not many of his kind died of old age, it was not the kind of ending they were raised glorify. A sense of calm washed over the Sergeant in his last moments of consciousness, dimly aware of the troopers at his side carefully peeling off his heavy armor. One of the pilots was there too, a young girl, and the last thing he remembered before fading out was the faintest sensation as she stuck a syrette in his side near the site of the blast wound.
It could have been seconds, hours, an aeon for all he knew, but when Armando regained consciousness he realized he was not dead yet after all. They were still in the station hangar, which meant it couldn't have been too long, and the Twilight squad leader slowly became aware that he was now being carried on a stretcher back to the U-Wing, likely for medvac. The young pilot was at his side, helping to carry a lithe form bogged down by his weighty combat suit. Weakly, he managed to brush the fingers of [member="Choli Vyn"] to get her attention.
"Tell my men..." he managed to rasp out as she bent down to listen, "...to stop slouching..."
Delirious with painkillers, the only thing that occurred to Armando to worry about were the routine concerns of everyday army life. The Lieutenant and Captain Sunfell had trusted him with command over third squad, and he'd be damned if they behaved unprofessionally just because their Sergeant was dying.
Meanwhile...
"Any more bright ideas?" Yvette shouted over the roar of the rathtar behind them and the pounding in Sol's chest.
"Maybe we could use the Force!" Lieutenant Stazi yelled back helplessly, capable of thinking of little more than staying one step ahead of the ravenous monstrosity's slavering maw.
"That's not how the Force works!" the Jedi Justicar answered in exasperation, and as he sprinted beside her the duros officer could tell even through the chaos of their flight that the edges of her emotional discipline was beginning to fray.
At first Sol and his men had blindly fired their carbines behind them as they ran, but even though the beast was wounded they became quickly aware they did not possess enough firepower to fend the rathtar off before it devoured them one by one. Now they just moved as fast as their legs could carry them, the Lieutenant struggling to remember just enough of the station layout not to lead them down a dead end. The one bit of silver lining was that the station defenders in the area were no longer so much concerned as stopping the strike team as they were getting as far out of their way as possible, and the few who were not fast enough at least bought Yvette and Stazi's men some precious time.
"This way!" he shouted, a thought suddenly occurring to him as he struggled to place himself relative to station landmarks, "Lead it to the airlocks, and we might trap it!"
Already finished with its latest outlaw victim, the rathtar was slowly beginning to gain on them, but Sol calculated that if they maintained their pace they just might have a chance, the nearest pressure seal was not far from their position.
"Prepare to break off when I tell you!" Yvette shouted suddenly, drawing a look of surprise from Sol at an order from the Jedi, "I'll lead it inside! I have the best chance of evading it long enough to make it back out!"
Stazi opened his mouth as if to argue, then thought better of it if only to maintain his already thready oxygen supply. The airlock was now in sight, and at the last intersection beforehand the Justicar called for Sol and his men to scatter. The duros turned with the rest of his men to duck aside, but the moment he saw her turn to focus her attention on the charging mass of tentacles, the lieutenant banked back around and shoved the Justicar to the side just as she was preparing to distract it, counting on the sight of a rathtar's maw as enough to overwhelm even a Jedi Master's perceptions.
Yvette tumbled unceremoniously to the ground several meters down the side passage, and Sol let out a shout as he opened up on the rathtar with his carbine on full auto, backpedaling rapidly all the way through the airlock threshold just as the predator wrapped him up into its vicelike tentacular grip. The duros managed to plant his boots on either side of an impossibly wide gullet, and he strained against the creature's attempts to force him down its throat. The carbine went clattering wildly to the ground in the struggle, and with his remaining free hand he reached down to his utility belt.
Fingers brushed the final thermal detonator in his bandolier...before they found what they were looking for, and Stazi's vibroknife whirred to violent life as he yanked it from its sheathe and began slicing away at the appendages that trapped him. Freeing his body just enough to line up a good toss at the wall panel, Sol hurled his blade in desperation. It struck a button hilt first, and the pressure doors leading to the station sealed. Klaxons rang out as the air began to cycle.
He lost his footing, and started to plummet straight towards certain horrific death when the pressure doors on the other side of the chamber burst open, and both duros and rathtar were sucked out into the vacuum of space. The rapid velocity their sudden depressurization produced knocked him free from the hold of now seizing tentacles as they reacted violently to the inhospitable environment of vacuum all around them. Thankfully the pressure seals of Sol's battered heavy armor held, and as he tumbled helplessly away from the station hull he watched the dying thing's final moments.
In the distance, he could see faint pin pricks of laser fire, as the Defense Fleet and Starfighter Corps mopped up the last of the exterior defenses, and the lieutenant found himself hoping they would hurry up and finish before his suit's limited oxygen supply ran out.
[member="Trextan Voidstalker"] [member="Bann Sundorah"] [member="Kinsey Starchaser"] [member="Karren Trask"]
