There had been softer landings in Arkwright's recent memory, but he'd have to think for a long time to recall one harder.
The console he was sitting at had seemed pretty hard too when it smashed into his forehead.
Blurry shafts of early evening sunlight filtered through the dust and tree branches reaching through the gash in the forward window. Blinking, Arkwright tried to make them focus themselves; they obstinately refused.
Buzzers and alarms gradually came to him from a distance, slowly gaining strength over the high-pitched roaring in his ears. With them came a dull throb behind his eyes.
He didn't feel so good.
As soon as he had the chance, he thought, he was going to have to learn the more subtle aspects of flying a plumetting blockade runner to a reasonably non-suicidal landing, since pulling up hard and swearing didn't seem to have done the trick. Thank God for inertial dampers, though - if they hadn't had a good set of those, their eventual captors would only be able to interrogate so many squishy, lifeless heaps.
Staring stupidly at his cock-eyed surroundings, he continued to blink, a sharp pain in his head growing with each one. All right. Gotta get up.
Fumbling, Arkwright found the arms of the chair with shaky hands, and heaved himself resolutely upward. His knees and head weren't ready for it, and he wobbled forward. Awkardly swinging one arm forward to catch himself, he planted his right hand against the console, feeling buttons he couldn't see mash against his palm, and instinctively stumbled around with it until losing it over the top edge. With a groan, he slumped forward, arm draped over the back of the flight panel.
A light blinked in his eye. Lifting his pounding head with another groan, he struggled to make out which one it was.
"Proximity alarm," he tried to mumble. Half-sliding back into the seat, he turned it weakly to one side before leaning forward and drooping his head between his knees.
The pounding slammed through his head for a few beats, as if his brain had outgrown his skull by several sizes, but the pulsing gradually subsided, and with it the upset stomach and double vision.
He was still lucky to walk down two decks of stairs without breaking an ankle. Flynn couldn't tell where one step ended and the next began until he missed it with his foot.
The handful of marines waiting down in the ramp chamber had fared better, but not by much. Those that weren't gripping broken limbs were tending as well as they could to shot engineers.
The Widowmaker was keeping things as well in hand as he could, and noticed Arkwright stagger out of the stairwell next to the lifts.
"Easy, Commander," he said, moving to catch him at the first indication the big man might topple, but Flynn stayed on his feet, clutching a wall. "You all right?"
"Smashing," Arkwright replied, not meeting Rince eye to eye. Squeezing shut his eyes, throbbing in tune to the noise in his ears, he said, "Wolfe. We have to ... raise the Silent Waters."
He could see Rince look gravely at something on his forehead for a moment, and then turn.
"SPARKY! Get upstairs, and get Wolfe on the horn, double quick."
There came a sharp reply, and someone brushed past them up the stairs.
"Well," Rince said. "Not quite the A-class flying we've come to expect from Him, aye?"
Arkwright shook his head weakly. "That was me," he explained with a strained voice. "Him's on the Lib."
"Oh," was the reply. After a moment, he added, "You know, I thought he seemed unusually foul-mouthed. I understood most of it, but you've got the Corellians down here blushing like hell."
Arkwright was plugging forward with his orders, leaning against the wall and hunching forward. "Cover ... "
"Already taken care of. Wick and the others are setting down in our wake, and I've sent out everyone who's able to get the ship under some greenery."
Flynn turned his head and looked up at Wind, and paused.
"Good ... " he managed to say, nodding gently. He returned his gaze to the floor, clutching his forehead. " ... very good, Lieutenant."
"Sir?" Rince asked.
"Er ... Sergeant."
Colleen was busy corraling up the stairs towards the Infirmary what engineers and marines could walk. A third voice joined them over the commlink.
"Sir, the sensors aren't at their best but I'm not seeing a single Rebel ship in the sky. Not the Silent Waters nor the Lib."
Arkwright pursed his lips to begin a question, but Rince asked it first. "So where the hell are they? Destroyed?"
"Doubtful. Looks like Wolfe had to tractor the Lib and run for it. I'm seeing a lot of Imperial ships up there, and there's more arriving by the minute."
"Oh, hell," Arkwright said. "Keep him on station up there," he said to Rince.
"Roger, taking over the watch, Commander," Wereling said immediately, catching Flynn off guard. The efficiency with which Rince was handling the situation was almost distracting - he hadn't realized Sparky was talking to him.
"It's a blockade," Arkwright said, face clenched against his mounting headache, which was no longer confined to his forehead.
"If we're in this for the long haul ..." Rince started.
"Have to wait it out," Flynn grumbled, and swallowed. He added, "... heat signature." Full sentences were still an effort.
Rince nodded. "Just what I was thinking." He pressed a button on the wall near the door. "Sparky, we gotta shut her down. We're going cold."
"You want everything?" Wereling said. "We'll be totally blind."
Rince opened his mouth, but Arkwright put a hand on his shoulder, still hunched with the effort of standing and speaking. "There's thermal netting," he struggled. "B type."
Rince knew what he meant, and nodded. "Keep the vitals on emergency power. We've only got B-type netting to throw over her."
"Ookay. That ain't much, but I'm on it. It'll be a while before the engines cool, though."
"Good work," Arkwright managed to add. Rince released the button.
"... we get Darktrayn?"
"He's in the Infirmary already. Kohana had to pull some metal out of his shoulder. She's not going to be happy to lose power. Speaking of which, we need to get you up th—"
Arkwright groaned, and struggled off the wall to his feet. "The Captain," he said, turning back to the stairwell where the last Engineer had disappeared about a minute ago. "He's still in a healing tank."
Rince made a sympathetically annoyed sound. "Aw, he'll be fine."
"Come on."
"AHH! YOU WHORE!" Darktrayn yelled as Kohana extracted something from his shoulder with bloody forceps. It clattered into a pan noisily.
The tiny infimary was a convention of wounded, some from the crash landing and some from the bloody rescue. A few had been hurt on the previous day, before they'd even arrived in Ralltiir, and had struggled through the botched rescue despite their injuries.
Surveying them blearily (he could only guess at the exact number), Arkwright realized that between the wounded here, the wounded downstairs, the handful of marines outside hiding the ship in the growing twilight, and a half dozen guys in the engine room, that was all the crew they had. It amounted to about forty, he guessed.
Kohana had a bandage of her own, on her head, and the band she had put on to keep her hair back while she orchestrated the three-ring circus of injuries was slowly failing at its job. She ignored Darktrayn, wiping her hands and brushing away some stray hair with the back of her hand.
"Hey, Doc," Rince said softly, standing behind Arkwright in the doorway.
She looked up, but only for a moment. "Well, I'm glad you're still in once piece." She went about cleaning up Darktrayn's injury while he muttered a few more oaths, but stopped when she took a second look up. "Commander!"
"I'm fine," he said quickly, as she made her way around the table towards him.
"Hey, wait, what the -" Darktrayn started.
"No, you're not," Aidan said to Flynn, who was only vaguely aware Rince was now helping him stand. "You've probably got a concussion. Here, follow my fing-"
"I'm fine, Doc," he said, pushing her hand away gently. "Listen. You have to take Auriga out of the tank."
She scoffed at him. "What, now?" she asked. "He's not fully healed yet!"
"Hey, I'm bleeding here!"
"They'll find us unless we shut the power down, Doc. Emergency power only."
"No tanks?!" she exclaimed, sending a new pulse of pain through Flynn's skull. "I've got people lined up that should have gone in days ago!"
"There's no time to argue," Rince said quietly. "Sparky's already taking stuff offline."
Kohana looked as if it were taking the last ounce she had in reserve not to start joyfully stabbing people, and muttered a few searing Bimm oaths.
"That's Bantha dung," Darktrayn said loudly. "Emergency power can support the tanks. It's his fault we lost Engineering in the first place!"
"If I hadn't gotten us as far as I did—" Arkwright began to counter.
"If you hadn't ignored my advice when I told you that—"
"—wouldn't have gotten close enough to the Mon Cal—"
"—could have locked down the damned reactor when we should have—"
"—slagging Avenger would have been right on top of us—"
"—wouldn't be in this flacking mess, you boneheaded—"
"—and we'd all be floating in escape p— DON'T YOU TALK TO ME LIKE—"
"—I'll call a headstrong, disgraceful PACKBEAST LIKE YOU whatever I—"
"—TO HAVE SOME SLAGGING RESPECT FOR YOUR—"
Something pricked Arkwright's arm, and he caught a glimpse of Kohana turning on Darktrayn with a half-empty hypo in her hand before Medbay went dark and silent.