The moment he stepped out of the Moldy Crow he could smell it; the stink of roasted flesh. It was everywhere, overpowering the smells of the city, even drowning out the ozone scent of recent blasterfire. Kyle took one long look at the ruined city before him and set to first perimeter guard didn't know what hit him. The second one did.
And just like that, the game was on.
Two blasterbolts shot by him, only missing due to the E-11's inaccuracy over long distances and Kyle sprang into action. He ducked more shots and hustled to the nearest wall, his blaster already tracking the origin of the shots. Three quick bursts ensured that the Imperials would keep their heads down while he advanced to better cover. He got behind a broken wall just as an Imperial soldier rounded the corner at a run, recieving a smoking hole in his chest for his trouble.
Kyle relieved him of his ammunition.
He leapt the remnant of the wall he'd been hiding behind and advanced, blaster tracking to the left and the right, covering looming doorways, their insides silent and dark. A Stormtrooper tackled him from the left when he was looking the other way, not bothering with blasters at such close quarters. The Stormtrooper's momentum drove Kyle into the opposite wall with a force that drove the air from his lungs. A punch to the head left him dazed and he could only fight back weakly as the trooper wrapped his hands around Kyle's throat.
A sudden shout from behind distracted the Stormtrooper enough for Kyle to recover. The luckless soldier had a front row seat to the sight of the mercenary snapping the trooper's neck, throwing the body off him, and drawing his sidearm in a smooth motion. The flash of the pistol's muzzle was the last thing he saw.
Kyle holstered his Briar pistol, retrieved his blaster, and gathered more ammunition. Time was now of the essence, the longer he took to get into the Rebel base, the more likely he'd get caught by that kind of trap again, and luck only held out for so long. As he stepped forward, his boot crunched down on something. Lowering his gaze, Kyle saw the charred remains of someone who had lived here. His stomach heaved, but he forced the bile down.
He began to set off again when his eyes began to pick out more blackened bodies. They littered the streets, he saw as he ran, an entire city's worth of dead. Looking at the bodies strewn everywhere, it was almost as if Kyle could feel the pain and fear of their deaths, as if it lingered in the walls of the city. Kyle shook off that thought and ran on. The Rebel base, when he reached it twenty dead Imperials later, was also filled with smoking corpses. Kyle tried not to think on whether he had ever known them as he added to their number.
Finally he found evidence of the Dark Trooper project; a massive gun. It was somehow fitting that this would be what he found, thought Kyle as he calmly used it to mow down any Imperial standing between him and the landing pad. The Imperials would pay for the death of this city, and the Dark Trooper Project was going to be the first casualty.
Jan took one look at the set of his jaw as he boarded and said nothing. They left the smoking ruins behind.