The scientists lay in pools of blood around the conference room. Only a few lucky ones lay on the floor, away from their rotating seats around the octagonal table, having only just begun their attempts at escape when X-6 dropped from the ceiling to cut their conference short. She stood over the last one, a beanpole of a thing in a blue coat, as she deactivated her dual plasma blades. His one eye looked up at her, frozen in a look of bitter disappointment. X-6 took a moment to look at him, savoring another mission accomplished.

But only a moment; she had to keep her rendezvous with her extraction.

“This is X-6,” she said, pressing a finger into the diminutive communicator in her fin-like ear.

“I have eliminated the targets. Requesting immediate extraction.”

“Awaiting you at the starboard airlock,” O-4’s soft, slithering voice buzzed back.

X-6 took her holo-compass from her belt, scanning the three-dimensional blue-lit schematics of the Solar Sword for the airlock in question. It was only a short length of corridor away; once again, her fellow Dragos had set her up for success.

She approached the door, glancing back briefly at her handiwork. She found crimson red-taloned footprints leading backwards to the mound of dead scientists. X-6 lifted her foot and found a blood-soaked sole. She took the jacket off of the nearest body and wiped her feet with it. She discarded the jacket on its owner’s body, then left the room.

‘Never leave a trail’ was the first lesson Jakk had taught her. He’d gone to excruciating lengths to make sure she’d never forget it.

She lifted one of her plasma blade hilts, merely a metal cylinder with its weightless energy blade sheathed, to her eye level. She pressed a button under her middle finger, opening a diminutive viewport at the hilt’s base. Peering at the door through it, she found an orange silhouette standing in attention on the other side. From there, all she had to do was press the button under her thumb and plunge the plasma blade into the door, and she was free to go.

She leaped over the crumpled blue-armored body, aiming to head right down the silver corridor until she heard a faint beeping sound. She turned back to the fallen guard, his tall, square-limbed form sprawled, almost proudly displaying the wound in the back of his neck. X-6 checked his gunbelt and found a palm-sized device with a single button beeping away.

X-6 growled, crushing the device in her fist and hurling the pieces at its owner’s corpse.

“Come in, O-4,” she said, activating her communicator. “A guard used his last breath to trigger a hidden alarm. I could be surrounded at any moment.”

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“Carry on to the extraction point,” O-4 responded. “There’s every chance you can escape before they catch up with you.”

“I can definitely escape, but we can’t have them following us. I’ll head to the airlock, but I’ll take the emergency pod. I’ll return to base once I know they’re off my tail. If they haven’t spotted you, you can bring me backup, but if they have, then lure away and rout the ones who come after you.”

“… Affirmative, X-6.”

X-6 sprinted down the corridor, searching for the starboard airlock. She knew it would only be a few yards before she found the broad, circular door promising escape and another mission accomplished. Even in that brief distance, the whisper of her taloned feet on the metal floor vanished beneath the thundering march of a company of combat boots.

They stopped between X-6 and the airlock door, flooding the corridor with primed lightning rifles and empty black visors. They stood their ground while X-6 kept running.

“Fire!” One of them near the back roared.

Bolts of lightning flew from their weapons’ sleek silver barrels. They arced and splintered through the air, reaching out longingly for the pitch black mesh of X-6’s slim stealth suit. A precious few lucky ones singed her as she dove forth, as much a projectile as they were, but she invited their sting through gritted teeth. Jakk had told her that she would thank him later for those agonizing hours back inside the bio-chamber. Already this battle was far less painful than her last.

Even the few bolts that hit did little to keep the soldiers distant from X-6. She made her plasma blades dance through their armor and flesh. The blades cauterized their wounds instantly, though it was little comfort for X-6’s newest victims as they screamed and stumbled over their severed pieces. She moved faster than they could fire, often eliminating two or three in one single leaping slash.

She finished in fourteen seconds; she gritted her teeth, knowing she should’ve managed it in twelve.

She turned her blades to the airlock entryway, cutting a large ovular hole in the door. Beyond it, she found a dark closet-sized room with two more doors, each bearing garishly lit signage: Airlock and Emergency Pod. She stepped inside, pulling the pod door open, finding it barely large enough to contain a single seat orbited by a bare bones control console. It was difficult to find an angle to crouch so she could carve her way into the pod’s wiring, but not impossible. Barely a minute later, once she’d connected the maze of wires into the pattern she wanted, she emerged to the hopeful sight of a lit-up console.

Beyond it, she found the less hopeful sight in the star-studded window - a lightning rifle’s barrel beside her reflection’s head.

She found a short-term solution with a well-aimed elbow to the surviving guard’s weapon. A stray shot took out most of the console’s port-side, rendering it a smoking black crater. X-6 ignited her plasma blade, swiping at the guard, who barely redirected the blow to his visor with the butt of his rifle. He followed up quickly, pinning X-6’s neck to the seat’s head with his elbow.

X-6 could see his left eye through the smoking hole in his visor. A solid golden eye surrounded by bruised silver flesh glared back at her, pushing out enraged tears as the elbow pushed harder on X-6’s neck. She brought her plasma blade up to his chin and watched the golden eye turn red.

She could hear marching footsteps. Within seconds, she kicked the limp guard out of the pod, slammed the door shut, and hit the blinking red ignition button which had only barely survived the stray blast.

The pod fled its home like a projectile fired from a cannon. X-6 struggled to strap herself in as sparks flew from the damaged console amid a blaring blood red alarm light. The pod shook, as if suddenly realizing who was inside it and trying desperately to shake them out.

But X-6 wasn’t getting out - not until the mission was complete.

She reached out, fighting to steady her arm amid the increasingly violent shaking around her, and tried to activate the small navigation screen in front of her…