The Pointman

[Nekoinu]

“Clear!”

“Clear!”

Kairi hustled down the corridor and took point on the next door, right next to the panel. Alec, the most technically adapt of the fireteam, squeezed behind her to hack into it.

“You could take up a little less space,” Alec quipped. He was human, just like her, but certainly scrawnier. He was certainly no Mandalorian.

“Ah, you know you like rubbing up next to me,” Kairi announced.

“Quiet, you two,” Tygon, the old but still burly quarren, grumbled. He wasn’t the squad’s leader, though he certainly liked to take charge of the fire team. The old geezer took position behind Kairi alongside the wall.

“You know them,” Nartok said in his native, Trandoshan tongue. It was a harsh language, one that Kairi never really liked, but serving in the Alliance Military necessitated all sorts of things. “Human mating rituals are often complex.”

Kairi couldn’t keep herself from shouting, “Oh com-” The door abruptly opened before she could finish.

“Kriff! Go, go!” Alec shouted. The moment Kairi stepped inside, her instincts had her flick her rifle upwards and fire a few shots in the far right corner at white-colored silhouette. Her legs carried her to the other side of the wall; nothing was behind her. In front of her were blaster bolts whizzing by.

She looked over and saw that Tygon was on the opposite end. He was taking potshots at the stormtroopers firing upon them. Nartok followed up, unleashing a hail of fire from his heavy repeater, suppressing the enemy long enough for the rest of the team to take up better positions.

“Flash in!” Alec announced in Trandoshan. Way back, they had assumed that Imperials wouldn’t understand them. After the bang, Kairi and Tygon advanced and eliminated any hostiles not already mowed down by the heavy fire. Stabbing stormtroopers in the throat with a vibro-bayonet was grisly but nobody could argue with the results.

“Clear!”

“Clear!”

The repeated beats of Nartok’s weapon stopped and Kairi formed up on the next door. She glanced back and saw Tygon taking in the room.

“What’d you find?” Kairi asked.

“Not searching for anything,” Tygon answered, “Just grabbing some recordings for HQ.” He grunted. “Whatever purpose this lab served, it couldn’t have been good if Imperials are involved.”

The next room did not have a control panel for Alec to hack into. There was no automated system, the mechanism relying on the handle. Of course, enough force could open any door and then some.

“Well, can’t surprise me this time,” Kairi jabbed at Alec.

“Mistakes happen,” Tygon said, before Alec could respond. He stepped between them, ready to push them apart if need be. “Keep your mind focused.”

“Nothing I couldn’t handle.” Nartok revved up his repeater’s spinning barrels and flashed that damned, lizardy smile.

“Enough.” Tygon pointed at the door and the team fell silent.

Kairi took a breath and then opened the door. Her finger was about to squeeze the trigger when her mind registered the non-combatant holding his hands up.

“Don’t shoot!” he shouted. All the same, Kairi continued her breaching maneuver and took positions on the right-hand wall.

The rest of the team filtered in. Two scientists, both male, both unsurprisingly human. Tygon slung his rifle over his shoulder and began patting down one of their newly-captured prisoners.

Alec, though, walked up to the other and slammed the butt of his rifle into the scientist’s face. “Stop it!” Kairi demanded, running in and pushing Alec away.

“Nartok, watch this one,” Tygon ordered cooly before approaching his other two comrades. “Enough you two.”

“Imperial bastard,” Alec said before sneaking a kick in.

“He’s unarmed!” Kairi protested, “He surrendered!”

“You don’t know a damn thing about what they’ve done.”

“I don’t? Look at Mandalore!”

“Enough is enough,” Tygon said, now between them, “What are we, untrained beasts? Rebels or not, this is a military operation.”

“Yeah, and we don’t torture prisoners of war,” Kairi barked.

“Torture? Please, this isn’t torture.” Alec pushed in for another kick into the scientist’s gut.

Instead of a grunt of pain, the man on the ground laughed. He rolled there all the same due to pain until he revealed the red-blinking joke in his palm.

The quarren covered her before the impending blast. Both of them were sent flying into the wall and all she could hear was an intense ring that seemed to be coming from her very brain.

Her fingers were coated in Tygon’s blood, and from the look in his eyes, it was already clear that he was dead. The Imperial prisoner, the one not reduced to giblets, looked almost peaceful lying there, if not for how contorted his neck and limbs were. Kairi forced herself to her feet and saw Nartok using his hand to clench at the stub where his other arm should be. Big old lizard snarled and motioned his head over to their other comrade.

Kairi stumbled on over to Alec. There was a pool of blood seeping out of him, though the front of his body seemed fine.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, let me patch you up,” she said, though she couldn’t hear herself say it. First she injected him with a stimpack to keep him conscious. “Come on, I won’t even lord it over you. Just got to hang in there.”

She started to roll him over to address his wounds. There was a sticky resistance to it and she found out why when the tissue and fibers of his exposed back clung to the floor below.

“Kriff. Stay with me!” Kairi pulled out another stimpack and stabbed it into me. Alec started screeching, at least it seemed like it. She took out her medpac and started tearing through it for something, anything.

Alec took her hand, as weakly as he could manage, and she looked to him. He was saying something but she couldn’t quite make it out. Blood seeped out of his mouth mid-sentence and then, in what may have been seconds or hours, he stopped speaking.