A/N: This story is rated M, people are going to die, etc. I'm really sorry about the wait/ mess, and thank you for bearing with me. I promise I'm not dead.

The turbulence of atmospheric entry shook Carth and his unconscious companion in their safety straps hard enough to jar Carth's teeth; he clenched them together, white-knuckling the manual controls as the pod burned atmo in a desperate attempt to force the damaged can towards Taris' Uppercity. He heard the woman's head crack against the interior hull, but he couldn't tear his eyes away from the surface rushing towards the viewport through a cloud of smoke and laser-fire for even a second.

The high flung walkways streaked towards him, barely lit during this side of the planet's night, and the vague shapes of what could be people scattered away like specks of dirt. The arced top of a building towered not three hundred meters from their trajectory and Carth banked hard, gritted his teeth until he felt them grind as g force mashed his torso into the crash seat. In another second duracrete ate up the entire viewport, and Carth braced himself for impact.

The world blanked.

The pod's light panels flickered on what should've been the ceiling but was somehow the bulkhead, and then impact klaxons began wailing and strobing the interior with blood-colored light.

Carth's hands felt thick and clumsy as he fumbled with his safety restraints, his pulse roaring in his ears and his every joint and muscle aching post-impact. He stumbled his footing on the control panel when he finally slipped the harness; he couldn't see well enough to know if the viewport had shattered, but he was lucky he hadn't gotten a face full of shrapnel either way. He stomped down on the alarm controls on his way to secure the emergency equipment pack, and the sudden lack of noise and light made his head ring.

The light panels' flickering showed him where the woman dangled limply in her safety harness from the ceiling. She was fracked up bad, dripping blood in a soft, steady patter. The dark red bloom that had been spreading over the singed torso of her coveralls when she'd collapsed through the pod bay's doors had soaked the burned top straight through on the left side; a fainter trickle went down the side of her neck, making a red track through the grime. Her short, sweaty hair was matted and stuck to her skull, her slack features almost completely obscured by soot from the explosions that had torn the Endar Spire apart.

One more half-charred tally on the running list of Carth's failures.

At least the pod was small enough that he could reach to get her down. He unbuckled her straps, and winced as she seemed to just fold down into his arms like not nearly as much weight as he'd been expecting. She should've been sixty kilos of boneless deadweight at her height, but she felt like she'd spent the mission on starvation rations.

She needed a hospital. If she was even…Carth felt her neck. For one horrible second he only felt the warm trickle of blood, before the faint beat of her pulse under his fingertips let Carth breath again. "Stay with me, trooper." They weren't out of this fight yet, not if he had anything to say about it. The Leviathan had taken his ship and over half his command before the pods got away, and he'd be damned if it took the two of them, too. This time I'm coming for you, Saul, you bastard.

He had to get to the Republic base that had doubled as an embassy since the draw down after the Mandalorian wars. It was somewhere in the Uppercity, but the pod's nav system being what it wasn't Carth wouldn't know if he'd hit the right part of the planet until he went looking. There would be a military hospital. A garrison. Ships. He'd get help for his companion, and rally the rest of his crew before finding a way to put a blaster bolt right between his old mentor's eyes.

Getting her out of the pod was awkward, but he somehow managed to carry her half under the knees and half over his shoulder, with her torso turned sideways and towards his and her face tucked against his neck so her head wouldn't loll as much.

The night was full of smoke and shouting blown by a cold wind, the blaze of a fire started by their crash making Carth's eyebrows curl in the heat. His shout for a medic turned into a choking cough, and when he got the smoke out of his lungs the scream of Sith strikefighters jerked his head up.

Two of them tore through the skyline towards one of the taller buildings. Their thruster jets flared a retina-searing aquamarine as they hovered into a slow descent.

Carth stared, frozen, at the landing ships, trying to make sense of what they were doing. A memory, sharp as a vibroblade between the ribs seared through Carth's mind: blood, fire, screaming. The medics never got there in time. Carth's heart dropped into his stomach as the obvious snapped into place. The Sith were landing because they were going to take the planet.

He had to get to the base. The garrison couldn't hold Taris against a ground invasion; the Spire's entire mission had been to mobilize the planet's population into a defense force that could withstand– the base wasn't prepared. It wasn't a threat. The planet didn't even have military value. And it was the Leviathan. If Taris' conquest was on the Sith agenda, it would be brutal and efficient; Carth gave it forty-two hours, tops, before the whole planet was crawling with those faceless, silver uniforms.

He had to– a hitched groan dragged Carth's attention back to the woman in his arms. Her head was still bleeding, making a red track down the back of her neck that disappeared beneath her collar. He had to get her help. The Republic base…

Carth fumed as the shouts grew louder. The Republic base wouldn't be safe, and she didn't have the time for him to go looking for it. The brass on the ground would already know the Sith were coming. He wouldn't be able to help them, and his first duty as an officer was to the men and women under his command. He had to look to his crew before taking the fight back to the Sith. He'd find somewhere safe and out of the way, and then do what he could. His troop needed to be in a kolto tank, but the best Carth could get her was out of here, as far and as fast as he could carry her. The Sith would be checking the hospitals.

He made for the shadow of the building they'd almost hit; it was half a hundred meters if that, but the smoke made his lungs burn and he was coughing by the time he got them into the relative safety of the structure's doorway.

There was a call plate set into the side of the door's alcove, only a handful of names lit up, telling Carth it was an under occupied residential building. Not the kind of place anyone important would live. The Sith would probably leave it alone in the first wave, and that would give Carth time to regroup, but it also meant there probably wouldn't be any help found inside. With another curse, Carth shouldered the door panel. It beeped green without a code and the doors opened onto a dimly lit hall that curved in two directions: to the left, doors, and to the right, doors, along with a small stall and the still shape of a squatter huddled next to it. Carth looked around for security cameras or alarms and, seeing none, went in the opposite direction of the unknown squatter.

He picked a set of doors at random and they opened with a gust of stale, recycled air. A quick glance showed him a large opaqued window, two single beds, a compact kitchen unit and a few random pieces of furniture. A door to his left was hopefully a 'fresher, and that was where Carth took his crewman, needing to at least clean off the blood before he could attempt any kind of field triage.

The fresher's light panels flickered on to reveal about what Carth had expected: a shower, a head, a washstand, and a half-length mirror, a few layers of dust covering what was otherwise in an acceptable state of repair.

Field medicine 101, Carth thought, racking his brain. Recovery position. Right. He eased his unconscious burden down gently, and lowered her onto her side.

Then he shed the pack, and dug out the medkit. Carth only recognized half the contents– kolto, pain stims, bandages, some scissors…the rest he didn't know what to do with. He picked up something that looked and felt vaguely sponge like, and ran it under the tap. He used it to sluice the grime from the woman's hair– blonde, under the grime– until he could tell where the blood was coming from.

"Okay," Carth muttered to himself, "head wounds," and then drew a blank. Stop the bleeding? Yeah. Stop the bleeding.

The kolto came in a bottle of thick, clear fluid, more potent than the diluted liquid contained in the hospital tanks but without the added cocktail of pain killers and depressants that would keep a patient in painless sleep. Good for combat care when you needed your casualty to be awake, not so much for a long-term recovery. Hopefully it was just a surface thing– torn scalp, no brain trauma, and a quick recovery. Carth applied the kolto to one of the bandages and pressed it carefully against her bleeding scalp while he wrapped it tight to her head with gauze.

There was still the blood on her uniform. Carth gritted his teeth as he realized he'd have to get the coveralls off– down around her hips, at least– to do any good there. If he had any idea how bad it was, maybe he could've waited until it was safe to find a Republic-friendly medic, but he didn't and he didn't have time, either. You've visited your crewmen in the medbay before, Carth told himself, it's the same thing.

It wasn't; that had had always been after the blood and the grim necessity of cutting away fabric that had flash-broiled into skin when there was a conduit accident, but it made it that bit easier for Carth to get her coveralls unzipped and her shirt rolled up over her chest.

Carth hissed in a breath at the sight.

She looked…emaciated. There wasn't a better word for it. He could count the individual ribs straining against her ashen skin, see the bump of her sternum raised under the thin connecting band of her bra. A small, cold suspicion prickled at the back of Carth's neck rise. He'd read every file of every member of his crew, and the regular trips to Doc Minada's office mandated by his psychological profile meant when someone had a problem, he usually knew about before it turned into one. He knew his crew, and he knew they were all healthy, even if he didn't have access to medical records.

Carth picked up the sponge again. If he was right–

One long stroke down the left half of her face cut through the grime and confirmed it.

It was the spook.

The only non-Force user on the Jedi's team, the one Bastila had insisted be assigned to the mission, whose file had a name and a skill set and nothing else, and who'd been put on quarters as soon as her boots had hit deckplate. Jedi business was above his pay-grade, but Carth didn't like secrets, and everything about her stunk with them. He'd wanted some answers. He'd been told they were classified.

Name: Lethe Dashao, her file had said. Known proficiency in Basic, Binary, Bocce, Durese, Huttese, Mando'a, Rodese, Ryl. Known proficiency with melee weapons. Known proficiency with speeders and fighter class vessels.

Nothing else. No clue why she was so important to the mission to bolster Taris' defenses if she couldn't even buff a deck.

Couldn't even buff a– Carth barked out a short, hysterical laugh. She had fought her way through the Sith boarding party from the crew quarters to the launch bay almost single handedly. She'd somehow rigged a bomb powerful enough to take out a room full of Sith in the time it would've taken him to walk her through overloading a security console.

She was– shit, she was still bleeding. The wound Carth had been looking for was a piece of shrapnel lodged in the side of her chest just shy of her armpit. She'd probably turned and flung her arm up to shield her face and neck and caught it while she dived for cover. He was going to have to pull it out. And he was going to have to undress her even more if he was going to bandage it properly.

Carth could practically see his wife's accusing look when he holocalled home only to tell her he'd passed up leave so one of his overworked junior officers could take it. He could already hear the old argument coming on: If you cared half as much about your own wife as your crewmen–

Carth gritted his teeth, and worked Dashao's bra up and over the jagged edge of metal. Somehow the sight of her shrunken, exposed breasts was even worse than the ugly piece of shrapnel jutting out of her; Carth had to look away and breathe through his nose before going back through the medkit for something to pull the metal out with. The shrapnel hadn't gone all the way in, at least.

It came out with a short, sharp tug and a sluggish, grudging spurt of blood. Carth had to wash the blood off his hands before dressing the wound, but then once he had the bandage secured in place with gauze triple wrapped around Lethe's torso he could finally straighten her clothes. He wasn't sure whether he felt worse for having his hands on some other woman's body, or that what had to have been a crippling pain hadn't dragged her out of unconsciousness. The conflicted guilt was about as frakked as it got.

The weight of his old man's blaster pistol shifting against Carth's hip as he gathered Lethe up again was the kind of comforting he'd come to appreciate. The focusing kind: get his crew, get help from the fleet. And then a bolt. Right between the eyes, Saul.

He carried Lethe to the nearest cot, and was laying her down with as much care for her head as he could when he felt his comlink buzz against his chest.

Carth fished it out of his jacket's inside pocket, stared at the steadily blinking light. He didn't recognize the frequency. It could be Bastila, or one of his superiors in the fleet, or…anyone. Anyone at all. Carth accepted the transmission, but he waited for whoever had sent it to speak first.

There was a garbled noise, then a static hiss, then: "…clear the…that's the way– sir? Are you receiving this, Captain?"

Carth's breath came out in a laugh of relief. "Hawking!" Ensign Yaren Hawking had just been assigned from the academy to a bridge post in commo; he'd been one of the first into the pods after the enlisted men had gotten away. "How did you get this channel? And is–" it took him a moment to remember who had gone into the pod with him- "–is Chief Kohael with you?" The chief- Arkanian lifer- was practically an institution on the Spire, and a certified genius if you needed anything technical.

"Aye, sir." Kohael's voice, the chipper opposite of the dour young Ensign. "We managed to rig our emergency broadcast into a directed transmission, but I won't bore you with the tech chatter. We can only get out one call to one person, but it seemed safer than broadcasting a general distress to anything with tinfoil and an antenna."

Carth grew serious again as that reminded him just how exposed the escape pods were about to get. "I'll just take it for that old Republico ingenuity at work. Our Sith friends are about to be joining us; what's your position?"

A new voice cut in. "The surface, sir."

"Doc–" Carth's throat closed for a brief moment, and he had to swallow. "Doctor Minada. It's good to hear your voice." The ship's medical officer had gone into her pod almost last, along with their chief medic. If she was with Hawking and Kohael…

"Tavin– Chief Dowan didn't make it, sir. We hit some sort of structure when we landed, and the crash..."

Carth could hear it in the Doctor's voice, like an echo of his own guilt. There was something else there, but Carth couldn't put his finger on it. He put the heel of his hand to his eyes, tried to push back the building exhaustion. It was just a post-adrenaline crash. He'd take a stim shot in a minute and be fine. "We've lost a lot of good people, Doctor, but it wasn't your fault." That was Carth's burden. He should've seen this coming. "Did any other pods land near you?"

"We didn't see any in our first sweep, sir, but we can backtrack the pods' emergency beacons and ping them to see which ones are still intact."

Republico ingenuity. "That's good work, Ensign. In the meantime, Doc, I've got a casualty with me. Can you give me anything on Lethe Dashao?"

Silence. Then: "All my patient notes are on my datapad, sir. I'm afraid I left it in the pod when Hawking and Kohael found me."

"Not to worry, sir, Captain," Hawking said. "We'll do another sweep and bring it back."

There was some garbled noise, then Minada's voice again: "Captain, how is she?"

Something about the tone of her voice wasn't quite right, again, but this time Carth knew what it was. Urgency. Fear. "Talk to me, Doc. Did Hawking and Kohael go?"

"Just now, sir, yes. Captain…everything the Jedi gave me on her medical condition was heavily classified. She was undergoing extensive treatment, but I can't– is she stable?"

Carth let out an agitated sigh. Damn Jedi classified medical intel. He'd get confidential medical records out of Doc like he'd get a fair deal out of a Hutt, unless it affected the mission. She'd tell him if it affected the mission. "I think so. She got banged up pretty bad. Torn scalp, shrapnel to the chest. She's still out. Can you walk me through head trauma, at least?"

Minada started in on a series of questions, most of which Carth had to double check or just hadn't taken notice of at the time when he could have. When she'd asked them all, Minada sighed. "I'm afraid I can't tell you more without seeing her myself, sir, but it sounds as though she'll make it. I wouldn't try to bring in any outside medical assistance. And…as much as I hate to say it…this channel won't be secure for long."

Carth pushed the heel of his palm back into his eyes. "You're right, Doc." The Sith would jump in on the frequency and decode it before long. Hopefully not before Hawking and Kohael could find some way to contact the other pods, but that might be a longshot. It was looking worse and worse the longer Carth thought about it. "As soon as she's on her feet we'll make our way down to the surface and regroup. You have enough supplies to hold out?"

That was an affirmative. With any luck, Dashao would wake up soon and the techies would be able to find a way to contact the fleet. "Alright. Tell Hawking and Kohael they've got five hours until radio silence starting when they get back. I want a ping on your coordinates so I can find you, and then prioritize finding the Jedi."

"Aye, sir. And, Captain…may the Force be with you."

Then the transmission cut out, and Carth was alone again. Just him and the spook.