Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.
Four beats. Four spaces in time where the dull noise of a silence blaster relinquished it’s hold on a bolt of plasma. Four moments where the coils inside of his weapon burned bright and spat out brilliantly lit colors through the harsh downpour on this backwater world. In the space of those four thumps, four training targets sat with holes burned through their center of mass.
Ambrose dragged himself upward as the mud clung to his ichor-black fatigues. The heavy overcoat was soggy and filled to the brim with water, his thin cotton shirt in not much better state. The plate carrier on his chest was soaked through, the weight of the plasteel covers adding an additional thirty pounds to all of the water weight on his person. His rifle sizzled as rain made contact with it. Orange and red cooled back to a stiff metallic grey. He always did thoroughly enjoy the process of watching the colors change, the split moment of dazzling colors about as much brightness as he was able to enjoy out on this sullen frontier. He’d not had a haircut for months. He’d not eaten anything but nutrient paste for nearly a year. If he had to eat another tube of ‘Protein and Carbohydrates #4’, he was going to strangle his commanding officer with his own small intestine and hang him from the roof of his corvette.
The slog back to the encampment was utterly miserable. It was essentially a thirty minute hike through slick rocks, grime, and mud. His hands dug into the coarse stone and scraped at his callouses, his lungs straining to take in the too-thin air as he pulled his body up and along the pathway back to his squadron’s forward operating base. They’d been sat on this backwater for weeks, not that such a thing was anything new. Their objectives were never to deal frontal blows to their opponents. They were a collective of independent teams and duos that jumped between planets, dealing blows to the Mandalorian supply line throughout their expanded Outer Rim territory. Well, they had been. The War had been over for a year at this point. A long journey of pain and troubles.
Ambrose’s hand found purchase on the last hand-hold on the cliff-face, yanking his own weight upwards with little effort. There were certain benefits to having grown up on Home, his planet. The higher gravity, the richer atmosphere. It never had another name- it never needed it. The Republic gave it a number, but he made a point to forget it and simply wrote down the coordinates in a physical journal of his. He kept that yellowed piece of paper with a few printed photographs. One of his family, all three of his brothers and his two sisters- all younger than he was. His mother, his father- their worried faces as he gave them his grandest smile as he stepped on that Republic ship and left Home to venture for the greater galaxy. A picture of a dazzlingly beautiful blonde with doe-eyes and pouty lips, giving her grandest smile in a self-picture next to Ambrose himself. The one time they’d found a bar of chocolate and split it after months of nothing but paste, and the joy on her face as they found their little pleasures in the midst of carnage and death. A bittersweet nostalgia kissed his lips as a faint smile tugged at the tired ends of his mouth.
I wonder where you are now. You were the best of us, Kayth. You never should’ve been in this mess, but I’m glad you were. You gave me a smile to look forward to in the mornings, you blessed woman. Hope the stars are treating you well.
Ambrose waved to his men in passing as he mosied towards his tent and flipped open the entryway. With a swift up, left, and down motion he’d zipped it shut once more. A sigh escaped him as he flipped open the cover of his journal and gazed over the few memories he cared to hold in it. Time flew as he day-dreamed, until the anticipated peeping of his standard issue holocomm broke his silence and the patter of rain. He pressed a button and accepted the information he’d been sent, looking it over.
It was suicide. What they were asking of them was suicide, but it always was. Command had sent down a singular mission, their last one before they were to be sent on leave. Some of them would go home, others would return to the service in regular capacities. None of them would speak about occurred within this unit. They never had a name, they never had a symbol or a patch. They were simply given a uniform and a top-secret clearance badge, and given missions. They operated as a team when off-assignment, but were sent out sparingly in groups of twos or threes. This? This was uncouth. All thirty eight of them were being deployed to a singular spot to deal with a high-priority target. Some on-the-run Mandalorian war hero, full Beskar unit with him, the real deal. The kind that should’ve gone extinct on Malachor V.
Some of his men clearly pointed out the details. Certain intel didn’t match up to the usual Mandalorian MO. There had been no prior sightings or knowledge of this particular individual outside of the information provided by their commanding officers. One or two called it a blatant trap, much to the unease of others. Why are they going after a Mandalorian target, when the newly formed Empire was on the rise with the backing of those ‘dark Jedi’?
Ambrose wearily watched his men bicker and argue about the details of the mission for what felt like a slow eternity. The words glossed over his ears, passed through his mind with little regard. He was tired. So very tired of it all. He simply wanted for this all to stop, to be free. Once he had the credits paid off, he’d be out of this hellhole. He had twenty thousand credits left to go, and then he’d be off the hook to live his own life. Maybe he’d pick up bounty hunting. Enough to buy himself a farm out on the frontier. Maybe he’d clean himself up and play at the Core, try to swoon a woman with some credits and live the rest of his life easy.
With a yell and a slam of his fist on the fragile table, Ambrose raised his voice and commanded his men to gear up and prepare for deployment, no matter the consequences. Orders were orders no matter what, and they were going to complete this mission. Suicide was their prerogative. They thrived and lived off of that danger. Their numbers disbanded and split apart, preparing for the mission.
Orders were orders.
It was a quiet hyperdrive jump to the destination. Thirty six of his soldiers piled into the back of their escort-class transport, hanging onto standing bars as Ambrose and his co-pilot drifted them towards their objective. They disembarked about a mile out of their objective, a hanger and some outcropped pre-fabricated buildings in the middle of some backwater mountain range. No ships had been spotted outside, and no activity had been visible on their orbital observation. The walk was wordless, silent except for the occasional cough and the squelch of boots against damp, misty ground. Dusk was setting as shadows cast through the mountains and made jagged, dark, marring stains against the ground. They slowly approached the hangar, and with a practiced precision they breached the main door.
Ambrose’s heart skipped a beat as he looked inside. Two fighter-class Republic escorts starships, frontal guns glowing with prepared energy. A shout left his throat as he dove to the side, but it was too late. The loud explosions of thermal expansion cracked against the air as the vessels opened fire on his men. Crimson mist and ash hit the air, screams of immediate surprise and cries of death shattered the veil of silence.
They didn’t stop firing. Their blasters focused from their outsides inward, the only way to dive was forward. One by one his men were consumed in vibrant explosions of plasma. Red, oranges, yellows. Shards of their beings were flung about with explosive force, bones and innards strewn about the fog-laced valley like some psychopathic artist’s attempt at splatter-paint. Equipment caught flame and shrapnel from the metal bits and bobs of their gear ruptured outwards and scattered across the thin shell of the hangar.
As most of his men lay dying or dead, Ambrose’s heart was caught in his throat with how fast it was racing, but he was utterly silent. He couldn’t make noise if he wanted to, with the shrapnel embedded in the left side of his chest. He felt thin. His air wasn’t coming. It was leaking out of holes in him, blood gurgling from the puncture wounds in his side. His fingers fumbled for the kolto injector, using what strength he had to jam it into his torso and activate the process. The fluid slammed into his veins, restoring what flesh it could around the metal fragments embedded in his body. Every movement was going to be agony. It’d shred his flesh.
That was fine.
His hazy vision tracked the escorts as their occupants disembarked. Heavily armored troopers in full black armor with top-notch equipment, twenty of them. Sleek and black with full-body suits adorned by sealed helmets, each one moved with a practiced, machine-like efficiency as a cohesive unit. Each one wore the symbol of the Republic on their right shoulder. They shifted through the misty night as darkness fell over the valley, checking corpses and bodies to finish the job they had started. It didn’t matter if they were already in two pieces, or chunks. Each and every head had a blaster bolt put through it.
Everything that followed was a blur of controlled rage.
The first man went down without a single noise. As he swept a corner, Ambrose plunged his vibroblade into his windpipe and dragged it upwards, through the Adam’s apple until he was stopped by the chinbone itself. A quiet gurgle were his last words.
The second through fifth were one in the same. All four were grouped together, and his first kill had carried a set of standard grenades. Two pins pulled. One. Two. Throw on three, as the ion grenade rolled beneath their feet. With a vibrant, blue explosion their systems shorted and their suits halted temporarily. Then the incendiary met it’s target, and engulfed their number in flame. Even without microphones, he heard their screams as they burned alive in their own armor, cooking slowly.
Six, seven and eight were like one. With six he sliced off the straps to the chest carrier in one motion, and rammed the vibrodagger into his heart from behind with the second. Seven was built a bit frailer, a bit shorter. Their neck snapped with a sick crunch and the jerk of his forearms. Eight was instant, a blaster pistol to the back of the head from around a corner.
Nine made him struggle. The shrapnel in his made his muscles scream, his lungs burned for air. The taste of metal permeated his mouth, from blood and plasteel alike. It made him slip with his shot, alerting the operative to his presence. It broke down into a grapple between Ambrose and Nine. A rib broke, but his knife found the soft space beneath his opponents ribs, and Nine ceased to breathe.
Ten through fifteen mirrored two through five. They were sweeping through their ships once again, looking and searching for Ambrose. Their mistake was walking by exposed fuel cells. A single bolt, and they burned.
Sixteen to nineteen were a blur of similar tactics. Vibroblade to a vital point. A blaster to the base of the spine joined by a broken neck. A knee stomped backwards met by a blade to the soft underside of the chin. Blunt force trauma from a broken rifle turned into a club. Suffocation via a rear choke and limb-lock.
He’d earned retribution for his trouble. Three broken ribs, a torn-asunder left lung, a searing hole blown into his right thigh, a bashed in nose, a slashed forehead.
Twenty was nothing special. Scared. Alone. The last of their troupe, they threw down their weapon and removed their helmet, begging for surrender. They pleaded for mercy to the mist Ambrose sat in as he pushed up against an aluminum wall, his entire existence in agony. He couldn’t finish twenty. So with heavy feet Ambrose slumped through the mist towards the cowering figure. A young girl no more than twenty two with fear in her eyes. Brunette hair, and tear-filled green eyes.
She held her hands over her face as he walked forwards… and paused as he simply walked past her. His blaster remained trained on her, but his mind was aimed towards thirty seven things. Thirty seven dog-tags, slowly collected over the period of ten minutes. Blood seeped into his vision, his eyes turning everything into a slur of bloody red. His body burned. Everything ached. He was tired, so tired.
I just wanted to go home, was his last thought before he slid into the cockpit of one of the Republic escorts with ragged breaths, dizzy from blood loss. Another swift motion and he injected himself with another dose of kolto, further worsening the state of his internals as the muscle worked and writhed around the shards of metal within him. He could do nothing but breathe quietly, his hand only inches away from manning the cockpit’s main joystick, before it fell limp, and his world went black.
He had only the briefest of flashes of what happened next. Screaming, shaking. Waves of brown, the cold metal of a blaster pressed against his forehead. The sound of a hyperdrive whirring to life. Yelling, so much yelling that his mine turned into meaningless drones and distant whirrs without meaning. A brief lurch? Hyperspace? He couldn’t tell until it was followed with another lurch, this one forwards instead of backwards. Hyperspace. Then, it was all black once more. A searing pain as something was pulled out of him, his world turned cold as something heavy was planted into his chest.
The last thing he remembered before awakening on a blood-soaked operation table in the middle of some Outer Rim slum planet was a single sentence said by a hoarse, feminine voice.
“Don’t die.”
