The Rebel Faction

Even from a distance, the girl could smell Huey’s foul breath. It made her stomach turn and her lip curl into a sneer. For all she prided herself on self-control, she – like everyone else – had her moments of anger. Though her initial flare of irritation tumbling across the café had subsided, she was still particularly vexed. The sliver of broken glass pressed against the creature’s throat, threatening to draw blood from the flabby skin.

“Ten seconds, Huey. Ten seconds and I blow your brains out. Ten.”

Moments like this were all consuming. You lost yourself in them, in the adrenaline and the feeling of inevitable victory that was right around the corner. As Vega counted down the last ten seconds of Huey’s life, she wondered what thoughts flashed through his mind. What were the last things he would ever think? Would it be thoughts of family and love and everything good in the world? Or would it be a sniveling, cowardly longing for a gun? The thought of the latter made her tighten her hold on her gun.

“Two…”

Two chunky hands rose in surrender, “Alright, alright! The warehouse is-a on… forty six and second.”

While the creature spoke, Vega did not move. Her eyes fixed on his, darted across his face, his body, quickly taking in his body language. She was looking for any sign that he was lying. Though it was not the most thorough of checks, she prided herself on being able to spot a pretender from a mile off – and Huey was no pretender.

“And-a the codes-a… TH-11-X-38.”

Silence held for a moment, and a smile suddenly appeared on the girls lips. She drew the gun and glass away from Huey, casting the latter aside. For a moment, he saw not the murderous bitch who had pinned him down, but the petite slip of a girl that she really was, innocent and quite beautiful. Though this thought crossed his mind for only the briefest second, the girl saw it in his eye. The fury seized her again, and she was on her feet within secoBLAM.

The slug cut through his pupil and embedded in the floor beneath his heat. Grey matter and tissue splattered across the grimy tiles, flecks landing on her boots. A deep breath in and a deep breath out. Vega stood motionless, allowing her heartbeat to slow. I don’t enjoy violence a voice repeated in her head, as she carefully, slowly, holstered her gun and ambled into the kitchen, vomiting into one of the diners large metal wash basins.

Vega caught the keys as she dabbed her mouth and jaw with a wet towel. It seemed that, lately, she had spent a lot of time bringing up what she’d down. There would never, she was convinced, come a day when she could shoot a man at close range and feel no remorse, pain or revulsion for the act she had committed. At least at a range, or on the move, she could distance herself from it, but it was difficult to push it out of mind when it was not out of sight, like the messy remains she had just cleaned off her boots. She may have been a killer by trade, but she was not one by nature, only necessity.

Silent, she slid into the driver’s seat of the speeder and fastened the belt buckle. The keys went into the ignition and the engine purred to life. The vehicle was Troy’s, not her own, and she wondered idly if he had a body or two stowed away in the trunk. This only served to remind her of Huey’s now unrecognizable body, and the four other corpses within the diner. Again, nausea gripped her, and the strain showed on her face. Time passed as they drove wordlessly, and once her stomach had settled sufficiently, the girl managed two quiet words: “Thank you.”

“Watching my back.”

Rain splattered down on the widescreen, blurring the fogging lights of speeders passing by. The girl kept her gaze on the dark glass, her fingers testing the feel of the steering wheel as she avoided eye contact. From time to time she would slow the speeder to get a good look at the street signs. Despite what she believed Troy thought, she was no Coruscant native. In fact, her current stay on the planet was the first, and it had not been for more than a matter of weeks thus far.

The street names and locations were all new to her, but on the other hand the girl had a good knack for picking up new things. She was a quick learner, and always had been. It wasn’t long before they were driving down forty six and second, a barely lit side-street that played host to a good number of buildings, most of which looked about ready to fall down. It would have been hard to miss the warehouse that held command over the roadway. Vega pulled the speeder to a halt, having shut off the lights minutes previously.

“Here we are,” she murmured, leaning forward to get a good look out at the building. There were a few lights in windows here and there, but it looked empty for the most part. She knew better than to believe that, of course. Judge not a book by its cover, but by its contents the tutors had said. A wise lesson learned.

The doors clicked open, and the pair stepped out into the drizzle. “Lead the way.”

Alone again, in the dark. The girl shifted in her crouched position, but remained beneath the window for a while longer. As she sat, listening to the far off sounds of muttered words cut short by Troy’s arrival, she let her thoughts wander. A sense of familiarity and nostalgia had crept into the back of her mind, and although it was far from professional to do so, she was indulging the memories and permitting herself a brief reminisce.

After all, she herself was far from professional, and it was humbling to think of the roots from which she’d grown. They may not have always been the best, or strongest, but they had given her a good tablet to work with. The girl thought of her teachers, of the words they had imparted into her. Of her family, peculiar as it was. There was so much there, such a colorful an often surreal story. It was not often that she sat and genuinely thought about it. There was always a distraction.

She blinked away the haze of the past and looked at the gun in her hand, the present. Troy was counting on her disabling the security system. Quickly moving through the darkness, she wondered what delusions the man had about her and her ability to operate a computer terminal. She may have known her way around a firearm, but an information system was another thing entirely. Still, at least she would find the thing easily. The trail of dead bodies her partner had left allowed her to slip into what appeared to be a small security hub without question.

A man, clearly not built for fighting, cowered in one corner. She looked at her with ocean eyes and frowned slightly, noting the way he seemed to tremble and squirm under her gaze. It made her feel inhuman, and she apologized for what she was about to do before knocking him unconscious, hoping that she hadn’t done any lasting damage.

Turning, she saw a row of monitors. Some relayed only static. The girl suspected this was Troy’s doing. She slipped into the swivel chair before the main control panel and tried inputting the code that Huey had given them. It registered with a beep, though there was no indication of what it had accomplished, if anything. Her eyes darted across the various dials and buttons, searching for any clue. Some of it was written in a language that she did not understand, and even that which was in basic was so obscure that it may as well not have been.

“Frell this.”

She drew back in the chair, wheeling it across the floor, before leveling the gun Troy had offered her onto the console. The clip clicked into place, and she unloaded four shots. Sparks flew and sizzled as smoke rose into the air. A feeling of satisfaction filled her as the process repeated; this time deploying rounds into one appeared to be processing units. The sound of machinery ceased, and the girl moved back into the hallway.

Perhaps it was naïve of her to believe that this alone had solved the problem. What convinced her to act as she did, however, was a need to move as quickly as possible. The Barr brothers would soon be, if they were not already, aware of the intruders within the warehouse. An escape would be planned, or reinforcements would be called, and they simply did not have enough ammunition, or strength for that matter, to gamble on being able to deal with an entire drug rackets worth of foot soldiers. No, their methods would have to be swift and heavy-handed, just the way Vega suspected Troy liked them.