Panic at the Disco

[Android 17]

Runs concurrently with much of Trixie's post

The blue beam cut through the haze of smog and fallout, and the cybernetic warrior knew that the woman could handle herself.  Even if she couldn’t, he’d just drag her sorry ass out of the fountain and make her buy the next thirty-five rounds at the local brewery establishment.

With Nova’s head lolling along his left shoulder, Seventeen pressed forward—ere, backward—as fast as he could manage.  If his commander’s words were to believed, he was going to be the white-hatted asshole who rode in with the cavalry.  In his long history of perpetually throwing himself on the enemy spears, Seventeen couldn’t remember the last time he had been the one charging in at the end to make the save.

Somewhere up ahead, the remnants of the two companies had fallen under siege.  The survivors were entrenched wherever they could find shelter from the hail of laser bolts and energy-propelled projectiles.  More often than not, their cover provided insufficient, as evidenced by the muffled screams from the dying troopers.

“So sorry, girl,” the cyborg whispered as he leapt through a storefront and unceremoniously dumped Nova behind the counter.  “You stay there,” he whispered rhetorically at her half-conscious form.  With the woman out of harm’s way, he checked the status of his sidearm.  Once it was exhausted, he’d have to rely on the good ole fashioned staples in his arsenal.

Leaping out from what had once been a lovely storefront window, Seventeen trained the WESTAR at the second story of the closet building and pulled the trigger.  By the time the rifle clicked empty, he was close enough to discard it and leap up into the pockmarked post office.  Forearms crisscrossed in front of his face, he crashed through the wall and immediately shifted his focus toward the entrenched rebels.  A few were dead, but the vast majority regained their composure in a matter of seconds.

“Nah,” Seventeen snarled as he threw his left hand out and rattled off a quick burst of ki before diving sideways through a doorway.  Once back on his feet, he threw out his hands and grinned as they started to sparkle.  “You’re gonna love this one,” he whispered as he glared through the wooden wall.

Private Kalos was one of the handful of survivors on the street.  The green soldier had survived the previous ambushes, but the fifth had proved to be the end of his luck.  A spray of energy-infused shrapnel had chewed through their left leg, and in the ensuring carnage, they had managed to find shelter in an inoperable hover-truck.  For the last minutes, Private Kalos had simply been waiting for the final jolt of pain before oblivion ushered them into its embrace.  

The last thing the half-conscious soldier had anticipated was the massive discharge of energy that tore through the second story of the post office, screamed across the street, and obliterated a pair of apartments buildings.  Private Kalos glanced down at the mangled stump of a leg and knew they weren’t moving anywhere on their own.  Despite that reality, they could spot the dust-smeared shapes of fellow troopers as they broke into sprints that would usher them to the safety of the approaching legion troops.

A thud from outside the dead truck startled the private back to the reality at hand.  This was it.  This was the moment.  Private Kalos squeezed their eyes shut behind their helmet and waited for the darkness.

“Are you alive in there, Solider?”  A voice asked as the door to the truck was thrown open and a pair of palms clasped around the trooper’s armored shoulders.

Private Kalos craned their neck to see a man clad in blue-accented stormtrooper armor and wearing all the insignia and decorations associated with the 13th Legion.  “Sergeant Major?”  The injured trooper groaned after nothing the chevrons on the pale, black-haired man’s shoulders.

“Who else?”  Sergeant Major Seventeen grinned as he leaned into the truck and gently pulled the soldier from the truck.  Once Kalos was standing on their remaining foot, the cyborg placed his thumbs under the sides of the helmet and popped the fasteners that kept it snug.  With a swift motion, Seventeen removed the helmet to reveal a very shell-shocked young woman with pale blue skin, purple hair, and pointed ears.  Glancing at the white, immobile visage on the helmet, Seventeen glanced back at the private.  “They’re doing you a disservice,” he said before flagging over a nearby pair of troopers.  

“Your fellow sister-in-arms needs your help.  Help here and run!”  He shouted without the slightest shred of sugarcoating.  “Unless you want Johnny Reb to take yer legs too.”

“Aye aye!”  The two healthy stormtroopers barked as they snapped off firm salutes, draped Kalos’ arms over their shoulders, and hustled like hell to reach the fifteen or so remaining survivors.  Once the trio had departed, the machine-hybrid flipped the helmet upside down and reached inside.  With all the surgical precision of a toddler, he wrenched out the entire comm apparatus, wiring and all.  After jamming the speaker into his ear, he reattached the power couples and found the correct frequency.

“This is the Sergeant Major,” he spoke through the soft sea of white noise.  “Someone tell me Chuck’s waiting just up this street.”

The static lingered just long enough that the cyborg almost started running back to Trixie’s location.  As he was about to dump the helmet, he heard a voice ring through the comm.  “This is Charlie Company, Lieutenant Sieve speaking, over. Dog and Fox are set up, and we’ve just received the survivors from Able and Bravo, over.  You can’t be more than a minute and a half from our LZ, Sergeant Major, over.”

“Excellent,” Seventeen replied.  “I’m turning around, and I want all of you to follow.  Fast.  El Capitan is holding off the bulk of the rebels.”

“Moving out on your instructions, over and out.”

Turning around, Seventeen relied on his ki senses to reorient himself and pluck out Nova’s weakened signature among the haze.  Had she moved?  With a frown, the machine-hybrid discarded the jerry-rigged helmet.  As he made for Nova’s position, the last thing he had anticipated was for the woman to come hurtling forward.  Years of combat training and cybernetically enhanced reflexes allowed for the fighter to catch Nova and gentle guide her to the ground.

“Nice catch,” a voice replied as a figure strode from the darkness.  With a crackle of energy, a beam of green energy emerged from the device in the rebel soldier’s hand.  “You’re going to die here, along with your sith bitch of a boss.”

Seventeen, who had exhausted most of his patience throwing himself through a brick wall, extended a clenched fist and summoned a ki saber.  “See,” he asked as he lazily swung the weapon through the air and listened to the soothing hum of the condensed beam of energy.  “Next-level, no handheld.”  He smirked as the rebel soldier clenched his lightsaber handle in his fists and rushed him.

Both fighters swung high, and their similarly-themed energy swords met with a loud hiss above their heads.

“You see what’s wrong with this situation?” Seventeen asked as he lifted his left hand and wiggled the fingers.  “I still have a free hand.”

The rebel scowled even as the flash of ki punched clean through their chest.

“One hand,” Seventeen muttered as the corpse fell to the ground.  “You don’t need two.  It can’t weigh that much.”

Unfortunately for the sneering cyborg, the victory was a short-lived one, because the thud of boots closing around him lacked that lovely, plastic-esque echo of stormtrooper footwear.  “Come out!”  The raven-haired warrior slashed his energy weapon across the pavement in front of him as he tried to focus his ki senses on the individuals closing in around him.

Bolts of energy hissed through the gradually clearing haze.  Seventeen swung up the ki saber and managed to deflect a handful of bolts before one finally clipped his shoulder.  While the armor withstood the blast, the force staggered him, and before he could recover, half a dozen more bursts crashed against the chest and abdomen of his armor.  Had he not discarded his helmet a long time ago, it would have been chirping at him about impaired structural integrity.  

Lashing out with a hand, Seventeen fired a bolt of ki.  With most of the debris settled, he watched the burst catch an approaching rebel in the gut.  Even as that soldier fell, the others closed their half circle around the cornered Imperial sergeant.  Once they got within five feet, they drew their stolen laser swords.

“En garde,” Seventeen rasped as he reached up and wiped some blood from the corner of his mouth.  The trooper armor had collapsed against his chest, and even if he couldn’t feel the singed fragments scalding his skin, he had his own internal warnings on his HUD.  The five rebels moved in to secure their kill.  With the last moment of forethought, the cyborg summoned a second sword and swung them both out to intercept at his flanks.

Shoving those two soldiers off balance, Seventeen spun forward, parried a second pair, and then took a blade through the right side of his abdomen as he drilled his weapons into rebel number five’s heart.

Once he had wrenched his weapons free, the machine-hybrid dropped down to avoid the swinging blades.  With zero pause, he cleaved through his opponent’s knees.  As he sprung back to a fully vertical stance, Seventeen stumbled forward and winced as a sniper bolt punched out through the front of his right shoulder and crashed into the ground.

His vision doubled, but he managed to parry with his good arm and lash out the bad one a beat later.  That rebel soldier let out a scream as the energy saber slashed open his throat.  A second round tore a quarter-sized hole in the left side of his abdomen.  In that moment of star-addled hestiatation, Seventeen failed to intercept the surviving rebel soldier, who swung his light saber and hacked off the cyborg’s right arm just above the wrist.

Losing his grip on his other weapon, Seventeen clamped at the charred stump and staggered.  His ears were ringing and his vision was doubled, but he swore he heard something explode in the background.  Was that nearby or twenty miles away?  He couldn’t tell—his marred focus was on the grinning rebel soldier stalking toward him.

“Last words?”  The rebel asked as he lifted the light saber.

Seventeen, his ki senses picking up the nearby signatures, put on half a smile as he glanced up at the rebel.  “Two of them,” he muttered.  “Too.  Slow.”

The rebel turned and looked at something up the street.  His young eyes went wide, and the cyborg saw his arms tense just before the round tore him into half at the waist.

“So sad,” the machine-hybrid snickered as his knees buckled.  

Before he could slump sideways and crash into the pavement, there was half a dozen hands grabbing at him.  He felt the pinch of a needle in his neck as a field medic pumped his bloodstream full of painkillers.  The meds switched off the majority of his over-firing neurons as the spray bandages were applied to the spots where his trooper armor had failed him.

“Are you okay, Sergeant Major?”  A helmet-muffled voice asked as cyborg’s hearing slowly started to return.  “Lieutenant Sieve, and if I may say so, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”  The stormtrooper remarked as a grin slowly spread across the raven-haired soldier’s face.

“The pleasure is all mine,” Seventeen slurred as he flexed one leg and then the other.  Despite the painkillers, the underlying cybernetics was more than happy to compensate.  

“Here you go, Sergeant,” another trooper spoke as someone stepped forward and handed the machine-hybrid his severed hand.  

“Put it on ice,” the cyborg muttered before pointing with his remaining hand to where Nova lay unconscious.  “And get her back to the nearest field hospital as quickly as you can.”  

“What next, Sergeant Major?”  The Lieutenant asked once the medical crew departed with Nova and his hand.

Seventeen smiled as he turned his eyes up the street.  “Let’s roll.  Everyone.  El Capitan needs a cavalry charge.”

Lieutenant Sieve pressed the comm.  “Roll out, all companies!”

***

With the battle won, the machine-hybrid rushed forward and slid down next to this commanding officer.  His handless arm slipped around her shoulders as he grabbed the handle of the light saber with his working set of fingers and deactivated the weapon.  Once the beam was gone, he slipped the weapon onto his belt and lifted the mangled red head’s chin.

“Don’t lose consciousness,” he said with a blood-laced smile.  

Trixie, her breath coming in shallow, rapid heaves, turned his bloodshot eyes to her friend.  “Killed the bitch.”  She muttered as she lifted up her hand to show a fistful of flesh and what seemed to be a biological tube of some sort.

“Obviously,” Seventeen replied as he ground his teeth and pushed up off the ground.  Leveraging his stump into her armpit, he got the captain onto her feet.  “This is easier when you’re not deadweight,” he whispered.

“I… shot my system.”  Trixie rasped as she lifted a trembling hand stained in blood and sporting at least three broken fingers.  “Not regenerating anymore.”

“We’ll set you up in one of those chambers with the blue goo,” Seventeen muttered as the pair limped their way back toward the 13th Legion.  “They got those in Coruscant, right?  I can make hamburgers out of rainbows, so I’m guessing they have the magic, healing goo technology.  Am I ri—” The cybernetic warrior glanced over and saw that his commanding officer had lost consciousness.  “Hey, I ain’t that boring.”  He muttered as the surviving leadership for their legion moved to collect them and usher them toward an extraction vehicle.

“We’ll take here, Sergeant Major,” a young lieutenant spoke as Trixie was ushered onto a gurney.

Seventeen, who was being ushered toward a medical tent, glanced back over his shoulder.  “Make sure you put her on one of the transports that won’t get blown the fuck up.  She’s got a bad track record with getting’ transports blown up!”

The lieutenant tilted his head like some sort of confused house cat before snapping off a quick salute.

“Over here, Sergeant Major!”  A voice shouted from the tent as the remaining trooper helped the noncom into the quickly erected temporary structure.  Inside, a pair of medical stormtroopers had a gurney and a few IVs established.  Off to the side, the cyborg’s severed hand was resting in a steel refrigeration cube.  “Lie down.”

“Where’s my morphine?”  Seventeen joked as another trooper came over and poked him with one of the IV needles.  A few moments later, the cyborg relaxed his systems and promptly slipped into unconsciousness.

Seventeen Counts
This Post: 2484 words / 14650 CwS
All Seventeen: 10048 words / 58390 CwS