He dreamt of blba trees, thorny and hard, but offering harbor from the wind. He dreamt of the grasses rippling, susurrus, whispering an unspoken secret. He dreamt of cool waters. He dreamt of his father, with his regalia and cordons and ribbons and his wizened beard that he was always fingering. He dreamt of balmy summer evenings and sweet ices…

[i]Where…[/i]

The staccato pulse of distant blaster fire awakened him. Through the lacunae of the jungle canopy above him, he could see Republic ships blazing to the surface, like the streamers of a comet. The silence, Leto thought, was what made it all the worse—the silence of the Mandalorian artillery fire, the silence of the paratroopers slowly falling to their deaths, the silence of the bombs bursting, unfurling like flowers…

[i]I am on Gthrak.[/i] 

It was not until then that Leto realized his lungs were full of smoke. Suddenly, he was seized by a violent fit of coughing. He had landed, it seemed, flat on his back on the jungle floor—the wind had been knocked out of him, and, he supposed, he had been temporarily unconscious. In agony, he craned his neck to ascertain the source of the smoke—his eyes watering, he could dimly make out the detritus of his parachute, opened too late, engulfed in flames, he assumed from the fuel which had leaked out from his rocket pack upon impact. I have to get away from the smoke, Leto realized. Carefully, he tested to see whether or not he could move, before a sharp pain from his right leg stopped him short. His eyes, red from the smoke, travelled down his leg, where he beheld, glistening with blood and dirt, a jutting bone. His leg was broken. [i]Damnit![/i] 

He propped himself up, delicately, on his elbows, and his neck too stiff to look behind him, Leto made an attempt to slide away from the wreckage of his pack. He stifled a scream, falling to his back again, a dull force pulsing at his temples. The heat and humidity, along with the smoke, had drenched him in sweat, beading on his forehead and stinging at the corners of his eyes. He shuddered once more with a racking of coughs. If I stay here, I will suffocate. His throat hoarse, he began to gulp for air, but found nothing in the smoke and…The atmosphere! Desperately, he grasped for the respirator within the confines his utility belt. 

[i]Where is it? Where is it!?[/i] Leto was trembling. Finally, he felt the small, oblong form of the breather, and, taking hold of it, frantically raised it to his mouth. Fresh oxygen flooded his lungs, but the smoke still blinded him. Shaking, Leto raised himself once more upon his elbows, girding himself for the pain. In his mind, he took hold of the words of the Jedi Code, and began to heave away from the inferno. [i]There is no emotion, there is peace.[/i] This time he could not stifle the scream. [i]There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.[/i] The pain crushed his body from his head to his toes, pulsing at the edge of his vision. [i]There is no passion, there is serenity.[/i] It was all he had in him not to retch. [i]There is no chaos, there is harmony.[/i] The pain blinded him. [i]There is no death, there is the Force.[/i] A whiteness flooded his vision, pounding at his temples, ferocious, a monstrous cadence relentless in its hammering. He released a final scream before collapsing, his body shaken with tremors. 

Leto did not know how long he lay there, convulsed with the agony of his landing, his mind numb. Intermittently, a blaster would rattle off its report, or the sound of a distant explosion would boom dully, but for the most part, the only sound was the rise and fall of his cracked breath and the trilling of birds. Eventually, he opened his eyes, the canopy overhead once more. After regaining his senses and struggling to prop himself up, he was finally able to assess his situation—it seemed he had come down in a thick copse of trees which surrounded him on all sides, and, by the looks of it, far away from the drop zone. He remembered jumping from the [i]Suicide[/i], high in the atmosphere, his heart pounding as the flames licked at his heels—falling, falling, falling…Smoke was everywhere, and all he could see was the trees…The trees and the fire, and the smoke, and the open sky, could feel the rush of dead air as blaster rounds flew past. He remembered thinking, “I will die here.” 

As Leto hurtled towards the canopy, he knew that to deploy his parachute would leave him vulnerable to Mandalorian fire. Closer and closer he came, and, judging it best then, he released the emergency chute—to no avail. It would not deploy. There was nothing. The limbs of the highest trees were now rushing up to meet him—frantically, attempting to keep his inner calm, he pulled and pulled until finally…The parachute erupted from his pack, just as his feet brushed the treetop. But it was too late. He fell even still, his chute getting tangled in the branches. His momentum maintained, the straps of the pack broke from the force of it. He was loose, tumbling through the canopy, and finally, he assumed, hurtled to the forest floor, whereupon he lost consciousness from the impact. 

The pain of his leg had numbed, though it did not relent. Leto’s first task, he thought, was to ascertain the location of the rest of the squad and notify them as to his. [i]That requires, of course, knowing where I am myself.[/i] The next: dealing with his wound. One of the healers could mend it, surely. But it would take time…and the mission required haste…he couldn’t help but think that he would be a burden to the squad, place them in danger…[i]As if there wasn’t already enough going on here[/i]. And it would certainly make an…unsavory impression on his new Master, Valsil. [i]As if the first impression wasn’t already unsavory[/i]. His hands shaking, he dug into his utility belt once more, and produced his comlink. His voice hoarse, he announced on the IRSOG-37 frequency, “This is Leto, a Padawan of the Mercy Corps requesting aid. I am wounded, and cannot move. Location unknown. Lots of…trees…” 

He positioned himself upright against a tree trunk, unclipped his lightsaber from his belt, and waited.