SmackDown: Back to Our Roots

Round 5: Endlessly Stretches the Nameless Sand - @Wuckster

After a few hours of walking, Ensign Clarke collapsed to the ground. "Go on without me," he rasped. "I can't take another step."

"Ensign Clarke!" Captain Langolin shouted. "Get on your feet! That's an order!"

"I'm sorry, Captain," he said. "I'm utterly exhausted and my mouth burns from thirst. It's painful just to talk."

"I'm not losing anyone else!" Captain Langolin said. "Moretti! Pick him up by his left shoulder. I'll take the right. We'll carry him!"

The two women pulled the skinny young man to his feet and began dragging him along. He tried his best to keep taking steps, but then he quickly lost consciousness and became nothing more than dead weight. They continued to pull him as they inched their way forward slowly.

"Captain," Moretti grunted. "We can't take much more of this. We have to leave him behind or we're all going to die."

Captain Langolin gazed towards the smoke cloud in this distance. It looked a little bigger to her, but was likely still a good distance away. She gritted her teeth and pulled forward with as much strength as she could muster. Ensign Clarke barely moved.

"It's not your fault, Captain," Moretti said. "If anything the blame lies with Commander D'xjan for sending us here without adequately preparing for an ambush. You've done your best, but you have to think of the greater good."

Captain Langolin let out a scream of frustration as she let Ensign Clarke drop to the ground. She buried her face in her hands and took several deep breaths. Finally she raised her head with a resigned expression in her eyes. "I can always count on you for honest advice, Moretti. You're right. It's certain death for us all if we continue to carry him. We're probably going to die anyway, but the only chance we have is to move on without him. Thank you for your service Ensign Clarke. I swear you won't be forgotten." They saluted their fallen comrade and then pressed on without another look back.

*

Night fell and the temperatures began to drop rapidly as a full icy blue moon rose in the sky. Captain Langolin weighed the pros and cons of stopping to rest versus continuing on. She was weary to the bone and thirstier than she ever imagined possible, but she feared that if they allowed themselves to stop they might not ever start moving again. Moretti agreed with this assessment, so they kept walking.

They trudged along in silence. Talking took too much effort, and even Captain Langolin's thoughts were becoming nothing more than a blur. She became some sort of machine that did nothing but put one foot in front of the other. She lost all sense of time, but the sky was beginning to brighten again when she realized she could smell smoke. They must be getting close!

They crested a hill side by side when suddenly there was a flash of light and Moretti exploded into bits and pieces. Wet particles of burned flesh and steaming droplets of blood splatterd all over Captain Langolin. Someone had shot Moretti with a high-powered blaster. Captain Langolin dropped to the ground and pulled her own blaster as she scanned around. Her thoughts quickly snapped back into focus and she could hear her pulse in her ears as a surge of adrenaline washed through her.

She dared to peek over the top of the sand dune. The Xylerian ship was there and it appeared to be mostly intact. Three Xylerian foot soldiers stood in front of it in their gleaming red armor. She fired off three quick shots in succession and the soldiers went down.

Whipping her eyes back and forth, she surveyed the scene. There weren't any more Xylerians in the immediate vicinity, but she had no idea how many of them might be lurking around the area, or even aboard the wreckage of their ship. She didn't have the luxury of taking her time and formulating a solid plan. Nor, she suspected, did she currently have the mental fortitude to do so. Desperate times called for desperate measures. She forced herself to wait another minute and when she didn't see anyone else moving around during that time, she jumped to her feet and ran down the sand dune towards the wreckage, blaster drawn at the ready to blow away anything that came towards her.