“Not seeing anything suspicious,” Herdis said, in that controlled, neutral voice she used when she was being a professional. “But don’t take that as sacred truth.”

The three maintained their slow pace, and Gaylen stayed in half-cover behind the car, and its hidden armour sheets. Halfway between the two vehicles, he could make out the men’s faces in detail. Sammy’s eyes blazed with simmering anger, and his companion looked only a bit calmer. And Mardus…

He looked older, of course, but a bit vacant, staring fixedly straight ahead. Being held by this kind of outfit typically wasn’t exactly luxurious, so that was to be expected. And Gaylen understood perfectly well how much fifteen years could affect a man.

“Alright, you panty-liner,” Sammy said as the trio crossed the final distance. “Here it is. Our part of all this. Now, why don’t you-”

Kiris raised her pistol and shot Mardus in the face. The shock of it caused the other two to let go of him, and the body fell backwards. The arms flopped loose, not bound at all, and a gun fell from one hand. The head was largely destroyed, but enough survived for Gaylen to catch the dying sparks of a holographic mesh.

“OPEN UP!” Sammy screamed, as he and the other one went for their guns. Gaylen went for his own, but all Kiris had to do was squeeze the trigger a second time. She shot the other man, right in the chest, but Gaylen recognised the sparks of armour under the green jacket doing its job right.

Gaylen was quicker on the draw than Sammy, and got his own shot off as the man was trying to aim and weave wildly at the same time. He aimed for the legs, but the shot stopped on an energy shield that became visible for an instant. He hadn’t expected such a minor bunch to have shields, and could only duck behind the hood as Sammy fired.

Now the rest of the gang did open up, spraying desperate fire their way, charging as they did so. Gaylen retreated behind the main bulk of the car, to join Kiris and Bers. The sheets held, for the moment.

“Sniper,” Herdis said, and up above he could glimpse the flash of gunfire, either leaving or entering one of the connected buildings.

“Back back back!” Gaylen said to the two people with him, and gestured with his free hand. With his other he poked his hand out of cover and squeezed off a couple of shots.

Sammy came over the hood at a run, and the shield saved him a second time, and still the thing refused to burn out. Gaylen only had his coat, and twisted and raised his arm as Sammy fired a shot. It hit near the right shoulder-blade, and the armour lining he’d had inserted proved its worth again.

Sammy had drawn a knife with his other hand, and now came in a great leap, with a cry of murderous rage. Gaylen caught him, redirected all that momentum over himself, and let it guide Sammy head-first into the street. Then he ran. The full remaining force of the Green Jackets was coming, and they were angry. They were furious, screaming with hate, and firing as fast as their guns allowed.

Gaylen, Kiris, and somewhat to his pleasant surprise Bers as well, ran to the nearest concrete block. Plasma could go through the stuff easily enough, and indeed the gang simply pumped their shots directly into the cover as they started going around the parked rent-car. But Jaquan had brought armour sheets to spare, and so the three of them lived long enough to weave around the next block in line.

Jaquan was hiding behind its twin on the other side of the lot, and with them fully in cover he now pressed a button on a remote.

He had spent their prep-time doing all the things one wasn’t supposed to do, removing stoppers and rerouting wires the wrong way. So it was that when the car’s engine powered up, it exploded.

It wasn’t a huge blast. Sabotaging a humble car engine didn’t turn it into a warhead. But, clustered around the vehicle as the Green Jackets were, it was big enough.

“Got the sniper,” Herdis chimed in. “If you want to call him that. And it looks like we got all of them.”

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“Like Jaquan got all of them, rather,” Kiris commented, and rubbed her ear a little.

Pieces of car had stopped raining down, and so Gaylen risked a look. The car was a torn mess, barely recognisable for what it had been.

“Talk to me, people!” Ayna said.

“It worked,” Gaylen told her. “It all worked. Everyone’s fine, right?”

“I’m good,” Herdis said from her sniper’s nest, seven floors up.

“Me too,” Kiris said, and Jaquan just gave a thumb’s up. Bers…

Bers was taking in the carnage, with both hands on the axe. He looked annoyed, and ended his observations with a little stomp of his foot.

“Disappointed?” Gaylen.

“Mm.”

“Next time, man.”

“Mm.”

Gaylen walked back the way they’d gone, weaving past car-pieces as he did. He approached the box-car carefully, gun drawn, in case a man had stayed inside the whole time. Nothing happened, and he didn’t find Mardus inside. Well, it had been a slim chance.

“He’s not here,” Gaylen said. “Ayna, you’re on.”

“I saw them leave their lair,” the Dwyyk replied. “It looked like they brought the entire team, and didn’t even lock the main entrance.”

“Idiots,” Gaylen mused, and was finally in the mood for a smile.

He walked back, where Jaquan was packing up his things with some help from Kiris.

“We’ll take their car there, and back to Baider-Bas,” he told everyone. “The bike is too small. Herdis, are you coming down?”

“I’m on my way.”

“And we’re charging Fredrak for the rent-car deposit?” Jaquan asked, with a crooked little grin.

“Absolutely.”

There was a weak groan. Any Green Jacket that hadn’t been caught in the blast had been hit with lethal debris. Except for Sammy. Being prone on the ground was probably what had saved him, and it looked like he hadn’t taken much more than a few metal splinters. Gaylen did hurry over and snatch away his gun. Then he hesitated. The man didn’t sound actually conscious just yet, but that would change soon.

And then what?

He looked at the gun in his hand, as his sense of touch reminded him of the pocket where he kept the duct tape.

“Well, you know my thoughts on the matter,” Kiris said at his back.

“Yeah. I think-”

He stopped before he understood why. It was instinct. A frightened reflex. Something was wrong, and he immediately looked every which way in search of danger. What he saw was a slight dimming of the light cast by the still-hovering drone, which initially seemed like a trick of the eye. But what he felt… it was the dread. That dread he’d come to know so well during this night.

“What is less wise than fighting someone more powerful than oneself?”

It was that voice, from everywhere and nowhere, gone from dispassionate cruelty to pain-fuelled anger.

“Wounding them, and leaving them alive. That is what is less wise.”

The colour returned. That damned colour. It waxed and waned, pulsating, and moving about almost like swirling fog.

“What the hell?!” Jaquan exclaimed.

Gaylen glanced at Bers. The man wasn’t sulking anymore. Nor was he playful in that dark way of his. He just looked dark, and ready for war.

It was like there was some sort of pulse, or perhaps a lightning flash, followed by a booming, tearing noise. Sparks and shards flew from that big screen, and it came loose from the wall. It dropped straight down, in front of the entrance area, blocking it.

There were noises that made no sense, because Gaylen wasn’t actually sure if they were sounds or sensations.

“Now DIE!”

“What is happening?!” Herdis asked into the channel.

“Rah!” was Bers’s response, and he stuck his hand into a puddle of blood, coming from half a torso, and began scribbling signs on the street in a hurried hand.

Something was coming, something was building, and it was mere moments away. The revenge of a man with powers Gaylen didn’t understand. He turned to give Kiris a look, and found her golden eyes uncharacteristically wide. Then he turned away and kept on scanning for whatever danger was coming their way.

He spotted one of the long blades carried by the Green Jackets, thrown out of someone’s grip in the blast. Just as the colour, the power, reached some sort of crescendo, he snatched it up.

And then the dead gangsters rose.