I turned back to say something to him.
“Just fetch me that bastard’s rifle,” he said, nodding at the dead trooper. “See if I can’t take another one or two of them with me.”
“All right,” I said, and found myself scrambling up the mud and debris and grabbing the dead soldier’s rifle.
“And see if he has anything else!” Quilan shouted. “Grenades; anything!”
I slid back down, overshooting and getting both boots in the water. “All he had,” I said, handing him the rifle.
He checked it as best he could. “That’ll do.” He fitted the stock against his shoulder and twisted round as far as his trapped lower body would allow, settling into something approaching a firing position. “Now, go! Before I shoot you myself!” He had to raise his voice over the sound of more explosions tearing at the wreck of the land destroyer.
I fell forward and kissed him. “I’ll see you in heaven,” I said.
His face took on a look of tenderness just for a moment and he said something, but explosions shook the ground and I had to ask him to repeat what he’d said as the echoes died away and more lights strobed in the skies above us. A signal blinked urgently in my visor to tell me the flyer was immediately overhead.
“I said, there’s no rush,” he told me quietly, and smiled. “Just live, Worosei. Live for me. For both of us. Promise.”
“I promise.”
He nodded up the slope of the crater. “Good luck, Worosei.”
I meant to say good luck in return, or just goodbye, but I found I could not say a thing.