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The fire crackles pathetically, spitting tiny sparks that die before they ever touch the ground. It’s barely a fire at the moment, but the cadets keep feeding it anyway, worry bleeding out in stubborn little acts that they could control. Alpha-17 stands at the edge of the small overhang they claimed as shelter two days ago, just outside the reach of the firelight, armor slick with mist. Behind him, Fox sits in the center of the space, sorting through wet kindling with methodical care, muttering under his breath about salvageable pieces. Alpha-17 doesn’t turn around. He doesn’t need to. He knows exactly where each of them is by sound alone: the soft scrape of armor, the whisper of fabric, the quiet, too-controlled voices of a batch that knows better than to be loud when he’s nearby.
The training mission itself had been insultingly simple. Shelter-building. Silent-signaling. Small-unit cohesion. The kind of baseline curriculum meant to scrape the softness off young would-be commanders without breaking them too fast. Alpha-17’s run this scenario enough times to know its rhythm, to know when the cadets will complain, when they’ll adapt, when they’ll surprise him. Most of them had been eager at the start—anything to get off Kamino, even if the air here was just as wet and cold, the rain falling endlessly like the planet had never learned another trick. This batch was no different. They kept sharp, kept quiet, flinched just enough under his gaze to tell him they understood the stakes. And still—accidents happened.
A slick ridge. A bad step. Woffle’s ankle twisted, skin torn, pride bruised worse than the cuts. Alpha-17 had heard the impact even from a distance; had catalogued the sound, the silence that followed, the way the batch closed ranks without being told. Now, hours later, he listens to them murmur behind him—Bly counting doses under his breath as acting medic, Ponds correcting him in a whisper, Cody’s voice low and steady as he tells Woffle to sit still with that sharp tilt that all older brothers have for their younger, Wolffe grumbling something sharp-edged that makes Fox snort despite himself. Alpha-17 keeps his eyes on the treeline scanning for threats he knew were not out there, rain threading down his visor, and files each sound away with the careful, private sort of attention he allows himself. Wolffe isn’t getting any worse, and, for now, the mission was paused. They’ve earned themselves the night.
.
Cody had finally gotten Wolffe’s boot off, propping his swollen ankle in his lap. It wasn’t horrible, but the skin was mottled and angry beneath the dripping rainwater and bacta.
“Congratulations,” Fox mutters, tone sharp and clinical as he makes his way back over to the huddle, adding more kindling to the flickering fire. “You’ve managed to successfully make this tubie mission even more unbearable.”
“Shut up,” Wolffe says, teeth clenched, because snapping is easier than admitting it hurts. “You slipped, too.”
“I slipped correctly,” Fox shoots back, clearly gearing up for another round.
“Both of you shut up,” Cody snaps as he wraps Wolffe’s ankle with the bandages Bly had passed him from the medpack. Wolffe hisses, tries not to. Tries and fails. “It happened. We deal with it, and we complete the mission. Like Fox said, it’s a tubie mission. Even with a busted ankle, we’ll be done in no time.”
Bly crouches closer, head ducked over his scanner, he’s already read over five times at this point. “And then what? If we finish too early, Wolffe’s still gonna be limping around Kamin,o and that’s going to raise questions. Not to mention 17.” He jerks his thumb over his shoulder. “Even if the bacta does its job fast enough and we make it back no problem, he’s going to say something.”
Ponds snorts softly. “Here, eat,” He says to Wolffe, passing over a ration bar. “No, he won’t. He’s in just as much trouble if we fail as we are. He’s not just going to let something like this slip to the wrong trainers.”
“Ponds is right,” Cody carefully slides out from underneath Wolffe’s leg, and without saying anything, Fox immediately takes his spot. Cody looks down at Wolffe, amused. “He won’t let this go, you know that, right?”
“Oh, I’m well aware. That all of you and he are pains in my neck.” And yet, Wolffe doesn’t pull away from Fox. And he doesn’t do anything more than grumble as the rest of them curl in closer to him, sharing body heat where their fire is doing little to help. They still had a couple of hours before 17 made them move after all. Why waste them?