Gray Tale, A Star Wars Rebels Story SW Gray Tale 123: Out of the Fire, Into the Mud (Part 1)

[Edit: Scheduled Update didn't work :(]

For a few blessed seconds, I thought I had just slept wrong.

Which, honestly, tracked.

My armor had been trying to murder my ribs since Alderaan, the Scythe's jump seat had all the ergonomic charm of a torture rack, and I had once fallen asleep inside a half-gutted vaporator casing because Vasha dared to prove I could fit.

So when I woke up with my neck bent at an angle that would make a chiropractor start praying, my first thought was not, Oh no, catastrophic spaceship disaster.

My first thought was, Damn. Teenage spine is overrated.

I groaned, shifting my weight. My cheek was pressed against sothing cold and ridged. tal. Ceiling paneling, maybe? That seed wrong. I tried to push myself up, but gravity was pulling forward at a steep angle, and my hands just slipped uselessly against the grooved surface.

"Ugh... what the kriff..."

I blinked a few tis, trying to wake my brain up. Everything felt wrong. The angle. The cold. The faint sll of ozone and burnt plastic seeping into my nostrils.

And sothing else.

Sothing wet.

A single drop of liquid landed on my forehead.

I froze.

Another drop. Then another. Slow. Rhythmic. Plip. Plip. Plip.

I reached up and wiped my face with the back of my glove. Even in the darkness, I could feel the thick, sticky texture sared across my skin.

My stomach dropped.

"Okay," I muttered. "Okay, that's weird. That's... that's definitely not good."

I pried my eyes open.

Darkness. Almost total. Just a faint, pulsing glow sowhere behind . Red. Flickering like a dying strobe.

But directly above , maybe half a ter from my face, there was a silhouette.

A humanoid shape. Slumped. Motionless.

My breath caught in my throat.

The red ergency light pulsed again.

For a split second, the cockpit lit up in harsh, crimson illumination.

And I saw him.

Ryn.

His face was right there. Inches from mine. Eyes wide open, staring straight down at with a glassy, unblinking gaze. Blood covered his cheeks, his chin, dripping steadily from a gash sowhere near his hairline.

Dripping onto .

The light cut out, plunging everything back into darkness.

"FUCK!" I scread, jerking backward so hard my skull cracked against the tal paneling behind . "Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck—"

My hands scrabbled uselessly against the slick, angled floor. I tried to push myself away, but there was nowhere to go. The entire cockpit was tilted forward like a nosedive, and I was wedged against what used to be the ceiling, with a dead man's blood dripping onto my kriffing face.

Thunder roared outside, shaking the whole ship.

The ergency light pulsed again.

Ryn's face flashed back into view. Still staring. Still dripping.

I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my hands over my mouth, trying not to scream again. My heart was slamming against my ribs so hard I thought it was going to crack through my sternum.

"Okay," I gasped, forcing myself to breathe through my nose. "Okay, okay, okay. He's... he's dead. He's dead. That's... that's fine. That's totally fine. People die. That's a thing that happens."

I opened my eyes again, keeping them aid firmly away from Ryn's face.

The cockpit was a disaster. Sparks spat from a shredded console to my left. Exposed wiring dangled from the overhead panels like severed veins. Rain hamred against the viewport sowhere ahead of , and the whole ship groaned like a dying animal every ti the wind gusted.

I tried to move again. This ti I managed to get my boots under , wedging them against a support beam. I grabbed a conduit with one hand, then a buckled piece of decking with the other, and started hauling myself forward.

Or up.

Or down.

Directions didn't make sense anymore.

Every muscle in my body scread in protest. My ribs especially. They felt like soone had played a full percussion solo on them with a hydrospanner.

"Arachnae?" I called out, my voice cracking. "Arachnae, you there?"

A faint, chirp echoed from sowhere deeper in the ship.

Relief flooded through so fast I almost let go of the conduit.

"Okay," I breathed. "Okay, good. You're alive. That's... that's one thing. One good thing."

I dragged myself another ter forward, then paused, squinting through the flickering red light.

The pilot's seat was above . Or beside . I couldn't tell anymore. But there was soone in it.

Kael.

He was slumped over the yoke, held in place by the flight harness. Blood trickled from a gash above his eyebrow, pattering onto the control panel in slow, steady drops.

"Kael?" I shouted. "Kael! Hey, wake up!"

He didn't move.

"Oh, co on," I muttered, dragging myself closer. "Don't you dare be dead too. I can't bury two people today. I don't have the upper body strength."

Another chirp from deeper in the ship. Louder this ti.

"I'm coming!" I yelled back. "Just... just give a second!"

I grabbed another handhold and kept climbing.

I started moving. The deck was tilted at least thirty degrees forward, maybe more. I had to climb. Hand over hand, using exposed wiring, buckled bulkheads, anything I could grip. My muscles burned. Every movent sent sparks through my ribs.

anwhile mories before I blacked out flickered in my mind. I had seen a green-blue planet swelling in the viewport. Then... nothing. A long blank. Had we made it? Were we on that planet? The viewport was just a wall of darkness that made it impossible to see anything outside. For all I knew we were inside a giant space whale.

I reached the rear section. The chirping felt weaker now. A heavy durasteel beam had buckled from the ceiling—floor?—and pinned sothing small and tallic underneath.

"Hey, hey, I'm here," I said, dropping to my knees. The angle made it awkward. I had to brace my boots against a storage locker to keep from sliding down into the beam.

Arachnae was trapped. Two of her left legs were bent backward, snapped, silver wiring severed and sparking. Her chassis was scratched to hell, covered in soot. She let out a warbling trill that sounded almost like a question.

"Yeah, I see you. Don't move."

I grabbed the beam. I wanted to use telekinesis was a distant dream but honestly my mind felt far more exhausted than my body, and not to ntion the Force...around here it felt... Thick. Oily. Like trying to breathe through a straw filled with molasses. I couldn't afford the ti to test so I just gripped the tal, braced my legs against the deck, and pulled.

Nothing. It didn't budge.

"Co on," I grunted, adjusting my grip. My hands slipped on the condensation-slick tal. I wiped them on my pants and tried again. "Co on, you kriffing piece of—"

I heaved upward. My back scread. My arms shook. Spots danced in my vision. For a second I thought I was going to black out. Then, with a shriek of tortured tal, the beam shifted. Half a centiter. A full centiter. I roared and threw everything I had into it, and suddenly it rolled free, crashing down the angled deck with a thunderous clang.

I scrambled to her, sliding the last few feet. "Arachnae? Arachnae!"

She twitched. Her undamaged legs scraped weakly against the floor. Her optical sensor flickered, dimr than I'd ever seen it.

I scooped her up, cradling her against my chest. Her tal body was cold. Too cold. "You're okay, you're okay, just look at . Just stay with ."

She let out a soft, vibrating purr against my sternum. Her damaged legs hung limp, sparking occasionally.

I exhaled, pressing my forehead against her intact carapace. "Don't scare like that. I swear to the Force, if you die on after I just pulled a tal beam off you, I'm gonna... I'm gonna be really upset. Like, write-an-angry-letter-to-the-manufacturer upset."

She chirped weakly. It sounded almost apologetic.

"Yeah, you better be sorry." I stroked the smooth curve of her shell with my thumb. "Just a few broken legs. I can fix that. I can fix anything if you're still in there."

She purred again, a tad louder this ti.

I held her for another few seconds, just breathing, letting my heart rate drop from 'imminent cardiac arrest' to 'maybe just a severe panic attack.' Then I looked back toward the cockpit.

Oh right, Kael! I nearly forgot about him.

I climbed back down the slanted deck, one arm wrapped around Arachnae, the other grabbing every handhold I could find. By the ti I reached the front, my bones and muscles were aching in places I hadn't ever thought of.

Kael hadn't moved. He was still slumped over the yoke, his face pale in the red ergency lighting.

"Hey," I said, shaking his shoulder. "Kael. Wake up, man."

Nothing. His head lolled against the harness.

I shook him harder. "Kael. Co on. I need you to open your eyes for ."

Still nothing.

Arachnae chirped urgently from my arms. She wiggled, trying to orient one of her damaged legs toward Kael. A faint spark of electricity danced at the tip.

"Whoa, whoa," I said, pulling her back. "Shocking unconscious people? You have shocked more than I can count. Tell honestly, did you pick that up from so holodrama?"

She chirped indignantly.

"Yeah, well, we're not doing that." I shifted her to my left arm and reached up with my right hand, placing my palm against Kael's temple. "Let's try sothing less... electroconvulsive."

I reached into the Force, gathering what little energy I could, and sent a sharp jolt of awareness into Kael's mind.

Kael's eyes snapped open. He gasped, jerking against the harness, his hands flailing for the yoke.

"Easy," I said, grabbing his shoulder to steady him. "Easy. You're okay. Probably."

He blinked wildly, his eyes darting around the dark, tilted cockpit. The rain. The red strobe. The blood on his face. He reached up, touched his forehead, and stared at the crimson sar on his fingers.

"What... what the kriff happened?!" he gasped, his voice cracking.

I slumped against the console, adjusting my grip on Arachnae. "I was hoping you could tell . One second we were in space, next thing I know I open my eyes and it's like this."

Kael stared at , his eyes wide and completely unblinking. Blood dripped off his chin, pattering rhythmically against the control panel.

"What do you an you don't know?" Kael whispered, his voice trembling before spiking into a harsh, ragged yell. "You sat there for two days!"

I blinked. "...Co again?"

"Two. Days!" Kael grabbed his harness, fumbling with the release clasp. His hands were shaking so badly he couldn't get it open. "The nav-computer was lting. The alarms didn't stop screaming. We were blind in hyperspace and you just—you sat there with your hands on the tal! You wouldn't wake up! I thought... I thought we were dead. Every second, I thought we were going to hit a star."

I kept my face perfectly neutral, casually swallowing the sheer, existential panic that flared in my chest.

Forty-eight hours.

I was doing manual relativistic gravity calculus for forty-eight consecutive hours. Without sleep, water, or blinking.

No wonder I coughed up blood. Honestly, I'm just impressed my brain didn't leak out of my ears as a puddle of pink slurry. I had assud the whole ordeal was an hour, maybe two tops.

"And then—then we dropped out!" Kael was fully hyperventilating now, clutching his broken arm against his ribs. "The engines died! You just slumped over! We hit atmosphere, we were falling blind, I had to grab the yoke—the repulsors were completely dead! I barely managed to level the nose before we hit the dirt—"

"Hey, hey, breathe," I interrupted. Partly to stop his impending panic attack, but mostly because I desperately didn't want to unpack the terrifying, reality-breaking implications of what I had just done to the ship.

"W-What was that!? That wasn't normal at all!"

"Must've been shock," I lied smoothly, shifting my grip on Arachnae to pretend my hands weren't suddenly numb. "Fight or flight response. I just too focused on handling the computer. Biology is weird like that."

"That's literally not how—" Kael finally punched the release clasp.

The sudden lack of restraint, combined with the extre downward angle of the deck, imdiately dumped him out of the pilot's seat. He fell hard against the main console, sliding down and catching his weight entirely on his right arm.

There was a sickening snap.

"Augh—kriff!" Kael scread, collapsing against the slanted floorboards. He instantly curled up, clutching his forearm tightly against his chest. "My arm. Kriff, my arm..."

"Yeah, gravity is still a thing down here. Take it slow."

Kael squeezed his eyes shut, breathing heavily through his teeth. After a few agonizing seconds, he managed to wedge his boots against the base of a structural pillar to keep from sliding all the way to the bottom of the deck. He turned his head, squinting into the gloom below us.

"Ryn?" Kael called out. His voice instantly dropped the pain for pure desperation. "Ryn! Hey, wake up!"

I didn't say anything. I just turned my back against the slanted viewport fra trying to avoid seeing the scene.

Kael slid further down the deck on his good arm, awkwardly crawling until he bumped into Ryn's stationary boots. "Co on, man. Wake up. We made it. We actually kriffing crashed, but we survived."

The only sound in the cockpit was the deafening rain and a suppressed sob that lasted who knew how long.

I looked away.

I didn't have any grand, philosophical thoughts about the fragility of life. The guy didn't sign up to be hunted by an ISD or shocked to death by Ion cannon's aftermath. He was just doing a transport job for Bail Organa. Now he was dead on so backwater swamp planet.

Arachnae buzzed a low, sad hum against my sternum.

"I know," I muttered.

I turned back to the viewport, trying to get a read on our surroundings.

The transpari-steel was a spiderweb of cracks, streaked with heavy, unrelenting sheets of black rain. A flash of lightning ripped across the sky, briefly illuminating massive, twisted silhouettes of sothing that looked like trees. The thunder hit a second later, vibrating straight through the ship's bones.

I closed my eyes and tried to push my Hyper-Perception outward, hoping to get a layout of the surrounding terrain or at least figure out what altitude we were at but the result was still the sa.

What I had been feeling earlier hadn't been just an montary phenonon. It seed to extend into my senses alike. Trying to feel the enviornnt felt like trying to peer through a massive bowl of dirty, stagnant swamp water.

My usually crisp, miles-wide radar completely dissolved into a localized gray fog that barely extended a few ters past the outer hull. It was different from what I had felt back on Tatooine, as at least I could describe the sensation rather than whatever the eldritch horror that experience had been.

But still, the fact remained that I couldn't sense any landmarks or wildlife. But the imdiate physical feedback told a lot.

But still, from what I felt I could tell that the front of the cockpit was surrounded by heavy, wet density. Mud. We had essentially plowed nose-first into the dirt, burying the front half of the Scythe in the ground. And filtering down through the resistance and the noise in the Force, I could hear a steady, rhythmic vibration drumming against the dorsal hull plating.

Plink-plink-thump.

Rain. A massive downpour.

"Perfect," I muttered to myself, rubbing the bridge of my nose.

At least the atmosphere was set for a gloomy arc in my life.

___

A/N: A bit slower chapter but actually it was part of a larger one so that's why it might have felt incomplete.

So you know what, next chapter would have been on Sunday but if you guys get 700 stones by Saturday, I will post it in advance and another one on Sunday.

Also as always, support the cause () and read the next chapter on !

Link: /AbstractoX