Kyra rubbed her sore arm, the act of her fingers running over the bandage inflaming the injury there. She was sitting on the starboard ramp of the Redeemer, having spent all morning working on the engines. Though there wasn't anything technically wrong with the ship, she found dozens of inefficient and outdated systems that she was easily able to update or even bypass completely. If her math was right, in just a few hours of tinkering and tuning, she had boosted engine output by nearly thirty percent, while decreasing power draw.

Of course, flaws in a decrepit engine design were not her reason for working on the engine, despite being only a day into her recovery process. She couldn't get the battle from her head, no matter how hard she tried. Just as Roy had said, it had been easy to kill the pirates, physically at least. In the heat of the moment, though she was absolutely terrified, it was as easy as pulling a trigger. There was no thought to it what so ever.

But every single face of those she killed was burned into her mind, running through it on repeat. Some of the corpses had been mangled to the point of being unrecognizable, bones and flesh fully on display. Those corpses were stacked unceremoniously into a pile and burned by the marines. They said it was to help keep diseases from spreading, but it was an awful sight to watch. She closed her eyes, pressing her palm against her temple as if it would have any effect on the memories.

"Roy? Why are you working on the speeders! You're supposed to be in the med bay!" she opened her eyes to look down the ramp. The Captain was approaching the bottom of the ramp, where the two speeders were still unloaded from the cargo bay.

Despite being in a sling, Roy had one of the bikes half apart, looking like he was making similar improvements to the speeders as she was to the ship's engines. "Speeders are out of tune and need some love. I know ground vics better than anyone else here. Might as well work on them." Roy shrugged, using a spanner to loosen one of the parts in the engine before removing it.

"Roy… you're supposed to be resting? Do you even know what the word 'rest' means?"

"Rest… What's that?" Roy had a smirk on his face as he stood, flipping the tool he was using in the air before catching it and putting it back in the toolbox.

The captain let out a soft chuckle shaking his head. "Well, I'd rather be stuck with a hard worker over a lazy worker. Seriously though, take a break. You earned it. Heck, the intel weenies even set a little makeshift bar up in one of the corridors. Knock a few out and relax man. You got shot and grenaded yesterday."

"Says the one who threw the grenade…" Roy may have been glaring at the Captain, but there was also still a smirk on his face.

"Hey, it got the job done!"

"Yeah, it did. Gotta say, it was a ballsy move to frag him. And a brilliant move to stay out of the building till you could knock out his shield."

"Thanks. I'm just glad it worked out. I didn't want to lose a man so quick into this mission." The captain seemed to deflate a little as he spoke.

"Yeah. Me either. We almost bit off more than we could chew. You make a good CO though, so I think we'll be fine if we get more guys."

"That's good to hear. Anyway, go get some rest, that's an order."

"Yes sir, as soon as I finish these bikes."

"Fair."

"Hey Kyra, how are you holding up?" Madelyn's voice startled Kyra, the older woman plopping down beside her on the ship's ramp.

"H-Hi…" she scooted away from Madelyn a little, having not expected to see her. Nor had she really interacted with her. "And f-fine… I guess." She mumbled both her greeting and her answer, looking away from Madelyn. Down by the bikes, the Captain had left Roy to his own devices, the man returning to working on the two speeders.

"It's fine to not be alright. You just got into your first real fight. It's not something anything in life can prepare you for." Madelyn's voice was not the normal spunky almost airy voice Kyra was used to hearing, or the more serious tones she used in the fight. Instead, it was soft and gentle, almost motherly in many ways.

"Okay… I'm not fine, I just… I will be." She kept her attention away from Madelyn, trying to keep this conversation from happening. She really didn't want to share her thoughts with anyone.

"You don't have to be so shy. We're a team, nor will this be a short op. So relax! We can all be friends here!" she heard a light thump on the metal as Madelyn spoke, glancing the woman's way to see her laying back on the plating.

"I'm just your mechanic. I'm not part of the team."

"Ah hell no Smalls. You fought right alongside us back there and did pretty good too! I mean, Roy and Holden definitely did most of the work, but I'm a pilot, the two of them were actually trained how to fight on the ground. I just know some stuff from survival training." She shrugged, her eyes closed and a soft smile on her face.

"I almost peed my pants I was that terrified… and… I don't want to shoot people ever again…" she couldn't stop tears from flowing from her eyes with her soft words, looking away from Madelyn.

"Well, don't feel bad about the fear part. I literally did pee my pants in my first battle. Of course, I was a totally untrained tug pilot who ran into a bit of a… complication." Madelyn let out a small chuckle as she spoke.

"Complication?" despite not really wanting to talk to the older woman, she couldn't help her curiosity.

"A pair of stormtroopers. Ended up clubbing one with big ol' wrench, took his blaster and shot the other. Got clipped myself, in the shoulder. Hurt like hell, but hey, I survived." She was surprisingly grinning.

"But… you killed two people!"

"Yeah. I did. I also saved nearly three hundred from a life of slavery. Don't let killing the enemy bother you so much. Yeah, it's good to show mercy and be humble, but when the chips are down, they are trying to kill you. The only way you get out of that is to kill them right back." Despite the heavy topic of their conversation, her voice was still calm and almost happy.

Kyra didn't respond, letting out a small sigh. Though she would agree that not fighting back somehow would have meant her death, and in the case of the town, many of their deaths, killing the pirates, especially as they had, felt wrong on so many levels for her. They had attacked in the pirates sleep, killing many of them with explosives before they could have even known what was happening. Those that managed to fight back couldn't actually see them, simply firing back at their muzzle flashes, where the night vision they carried allowed them to see them perfectly. And when Roy secured the E-Web turret, it devolved from a fight to whole sale slaughter. She wasn't sure what they could have done differently, all she knew was that they should've. From simply trying to negotiate with the pirates, or capturing them instead of killing them. Anything would have been better than slaughtering all of them.

"Just hang in there Kyra. I promise you, we did the right thing. It probably just doesn't feel like it right now." Madelyn got to her feet as she spoke, a small smirk still on her face. "Don't be afraid to say hi if you need someone to talk to. Ya gotta vent to make it in this business." She winked at Kyra before she trotted off down the ramp.

Roy rolled his shoulder out as he stepped onto the bridge of the Redeemer, just glad to have his sling off. Both injuries to that side of his body still stung, but after almost a week and dozens of bacta treatments, they had finally healed enough that he could use the arm again.

There was only one other occupant on the bridge right now, the landscape out the canopy drifting lazily by as the ship cruised over the moon. That occupant being Kyra, in her pilot's seat and devoting all of her attention to flying the ship. They were currently flying out to the capital city of the moon, Holden wanting to do more reconnaissance of the populace. Of course, this was angering their intelligence branch friends who tried to say their intelligence should have been enough.

Roy himself agreed with Holden, preferring to do his own reconnaissance over trusting intelligence reports. A good case in point being the pirates that had been harassing the town they visited earlier. Despite only being sixty or so kilometers from their base, the intel guys didn't even know the pirates existed.

Roy sank into the co-pilots seat, simply watching the terrain below. "What's the ETA?"

"An hour." Her voice was quieter than normal, her response curt and short. She hadn't tried to talk to Roy since the pirate fight. Given her numerous attempts to talk to him before the fight, he knew there was something bothering her that had to do with the fighting. However, he really didn't want to press the topic himself. "Is there an actual plan on arrival this time, or are we winging it like last time?"

"There's no 'we' involved. You and Stodel are staying on the ship. The Captain and I are going to do the scouting this time." He replied as calmly as he could manage, innately curious as to how she was going to respond.

"Oh… I kinda thought we would all be going again…" she sounded almost disappointed. But it never showed on her face, her attention on the forward viewport.

"Can't. Civ space port doesn't have locking clamps or anything really. Not smart to leave the ship unattended. By what intel said, there's a fair imperial presence in the city, heck weapons are illegal within the city."

"That sounds… risky." She bit her lip, glancing at Roy.

"That's why it's the two of us. We want you to keep the engines hot and ready to rock, in case we need a quick exit. And we'll be fine, this isn't my first time doing things like this."

"Yeah…" her voice quietly fell away, as though she was unsure what to say herself.

The rest of the flight remained silent as the ship tore through the atmosphere. Though, that didn't bother Roy as he really didn't want to talk to her at all. His entire reason for coming up to the bridge was to see how long they had left. The only reason he stayed was because there really wasn't anywhere else to go. The hour of flight they had left seemed to drag on and on, even after the grey, bleak city came into their view. Once Kyra had settled into her approach vector, Roy slipped from the room without a word, moving back to the cargo hold of the ship. The captain was already back there, sitting on a provisions crate secured to the back wall.

"Roy. You ready to go?"

"Yeah, just hating not being able to carry my blaster. Feel kind of naked without it." Roy shrugged, using a hand to double check that his combat knife was still firmly seated at the small of his back.

"Me too. Almost feels like years since the last time I couldn't." The ship jolted slightly, marking it setting down on the ground. "Well, that's our cue. Remember, we're looking for any sort of bulk supplies we could obtain in the future. I also want to see if we can get eyes on the local imperial garrison if we can."

"Roger that sir." Roy nodded before he turned to one of the ship's ramps, pressing the button to lower it and proceeding down before it had even settled to the dust.

Captain Holden walked along the almost deserted streets of the city, unable to not scowl at what he saw. The entire city seemed to consist of nothing but the scummiest slums he had seen in his life, dumpsters overflowing with garbage, trash scattered everywhere. Though they had passed several storefronts, maybe one out of every five were even open. And one glance showed them as having barely any wares. People on the streets was as seldom as the shops having wares. So far, they had seen three separate squad sized patrols of stormtroopers in their white clad armor, and fewer people than they saw in those patrols. Another thing he found odd and unsettling was that back in the town the pirates had been harassing, there had been a fair portion of aliens in the population. Here, they had only seen humans.

"What's the bracelet for?" Roy's voice broke the silence between the pair, the foot soldiers' eyes still ceaselessly wandering.

Huh… bit of an odd question to ask out of the blue like that… Holden fingered the bracelet in question, staring at the name crudely engraved into it.

"It's… just an old trinket my best friend and I made. We made them when we kids." He shrugged, really not interested in divulging more at the moment.

"Two of you still talk?" his question was quiet and curt, though there was a hint of sadness to it.

Holden didn't dwell on his companion's emotions though as the question asked of him immediately brought an overwhelming number of memories to his mind. They ranged from his most cherished childhood memories, spending days on end with her, training to be C-Sec members, witnessing the empire's brutality for themselves, to their time as pilots for the rebellion. All of it was overtaken by more recent memories though. Those were of her final radio transmissions, her panic, her fear. She had been begging for help, her fighter nearly crippled. All Holden could do was watch as he tried to race to her position as green bolts ripped by her fighter in the distance, almost obscured by the haze of the nebula. Only for her last desperate cry to be cut short, a green pair of bolts hitting her distant fighter, only to be replaced by a flash and parts. The dogfight had been far enough away that it was no more than specks in his vision. This memory of her soured all of the others to the point that they were as painful to think about now as the memory of her death.

"No." He couldn't stop the single tear that slipped down his cheek, his voice cracking.

"I see… Part of the job I suppose…" his voice was also quieter, a knowing sort of silence falling between the pair once more.

Despite the brevity of the conversation, Holden felt like they had shared more in those words than they could have with a thousand jokes. He wasn't sure how he could tell, but they had both lost things to this war already, and was all they really needed to know.

They spent nearly half the day simply wandering the streets of the city, passing dozens of patrols and outposts. While Holden himself didn't know too much about static ground defenses, each one seemed well defended and without security gaps. They even passed the walls for what Holden had to assume was the primary operations base for the empire on the planet. Though the walls were only about a story high, they had several towers with e-web turrets in them, stormtroopers actively patrolling the walls and manning the guns. Several of the larger structures were visible beyond the walls, one clearly a vehicle hanger for AT-AT's as they saw one marching in through the massive doors. The main building of the base looked like a massive tower, stretching at least a hundred meters into the air, with half a dozen landing pads sticking off the top of the facility like the petals of a flower. Each pad was large enough to land a gozanti cruiser.

They also found what looked to be a prison, with very similar prefab walls to the base, but the gun towers were all facing inward. Though, for a prison, the facility was massive, bigger than the base. Though, unlike the base, there were no structures visible beyond the wall.

They had continued to wander the city since finding the prison, only to the same fruitless results. Bars, arcades, shops, restaurants all of them were rarely open, if not completely boarded up. The people they passed were visibly miserable, wearing filthy and ragged clothes.

"I haven't seen anything of real use. We could hit one of the outposts around the city, but that would be tricky. Looks like this legion is very disciplined in their duties and procedures, and any strike here would put the whole city on lockdown." Roy's voice returned, back to his normal calm tones.

"Yeah… they do seem pretty heavily dug in. damn it, I was really hoping this would be a good place to start. Let's get back to the ship." Holden gestured back the way they came, beginning to lead the way back through the virtually empty streets.

Kyra strode off the ramp to the Redeemer, the small farming town near their base sprawling out before her. After leaving the capital, they had returned to this town, more to check on it than anything else. So they had set down in an empty field just outside of town. She was following the other three members of the team as they made their way toward the town, still in civilian clothes. Even from here, the town already looked to be a stark contrast to what it was just a week ago, the shops and stores open, the streets flooded with people and movement. There were still some signs of the pirate's influence, namely, blaster burns on certain walls, but it was obvious that the town was on a path to a rapid recovery from the incident.

I'm glad to see the town improving so rapidly… It makes what we did to those pirates almost feel right… Almost. She let out a small sigh, the town keeping the recent fight fresh in her mind. Despite the almost jovial atmosphere around her, she couldn't bring herself to feel happy about it.

"Well, sure is nice to see the results of some good honest work for a change. It's a definite breath of fresh air!" The captain was walking with his hands clasped behind his head, a smile on his lips. He looked totally relaxed and calm.

"You can say that again. I've gotten so used to seeing what we do that I almost forgot why we do it." Madelyn had her thumbs through the belt loops on her pants, similarly calm to the captain.

"Let's just get some local food stuffs to supplement the bases rations and get moving. No point in wasting any time admiring the view." Roy, as expected, was straight to the point of this excursion. Or, the point that had used to convince him it was necessary. Though, he did show some excitement at the prospect of not having to eat military rations.

"Hey, it's them again!" a faintly familiar voice called out to them, coming from a female vendor down one of the side streets. Upon a second glance, it was the very side street that Kyra herself had charged into previously, no signs of the small fight that had occurred there even visible anymore. The woman was the young owner or keeper of the fruit stall, though its stock was now supplemented with fresh meats.

I still can't believe I did that… I mean I get why, those thugs had been threatening the woman's life, I simply wanted to make sure they couldn't hurt her. And what Roy did to them… the memory of seeing Roy mercilessly execute both of the thugs was still bright in her mind, reminding her far too much of much older memories for her comfort.

Meanwhile, the woman came trotting out from behind her stall, straight for their little group, which had come to a polite stop when she called out to them. Following her was an equally young man, probably late teens at the oldest, with a hunting blaster slung over his shoulder. He was lanky in the extreme, a good head taller than the dark-haired girl beside him, with long unkempt blonde hair. As he came closer, his boyish features and blue eyes became more prevalent, only exemplifying his youth.

"It's good to see yall again! When you left with Mister Yarris, I thought you wouldn't be coming back! Did yall hear about the pirates!?" she was speaking again now that she was closer, barely paying any heed to the captain or Madelyn.

"Not really, no." Roy responded before anyone else could.

"Well, hour or so after yall left, people out near their camp heard a bunch of explosions. We investigated in the morning to find the pirates dead and gone. Was wonderin' if yall had a hand in that?"

"We might have, yeah." Holden rubbed the back of his head, a sheepish grin on his face.

"I knew it! Well, I really just want to thank you. You two probably saved my life the other day. And you guys probably saved many more takin' those pirates out. So thank you!" she grinned, literally hugging Roy. The action startled the soldier, his entire body stiffening for a moment without returning the gesture. The girl then preceded to hug each of them, the boy that had followed her rolling his eyes at her.

"So you guys are with the Rebellion right?" the boy finally spoke, Kyra cringing. She knew the only reason he could have possibly known that was because of her slip up following the incident with the thugs.

"No. we aren't." Roy let out an exasperated sigh, his forehead dropping into his hand.

"Oh… damn. I was hoping I could join you guys though…"

"Damn it Tosh, you can't! how many times do I have to tell you that! The girl snapped at him, a sudden glare on her features as the group was now total spectators.

"And I told you, I don't care! Look at what the Empire has done for us? Not a single thing! All they care about are the stupid mines, and so long as they keep running, they won't lift a finger to help anyone except themselves!"

"And I'm telling you, you're being an idiot! It would be better to stay out of that stupid war! There's no way the Alliance could win!"

"Well, we aren't with the alliance so it's a moot point your arguing here…" Holden spoke calmly, cutting between the pair.

"I know, and it's a shame. I know where an imperial outpost is not far from here." He shrugged, beginning to turn away from the group.

"An outpost you say?" Roy's voice stopped the younger man in his tracks.

"Yeah, I said an outpost. Stumbled across it on a hunt. But you guys aren't alliance, so why do you care?"

"Uh, hypothetically, what if we were?" Kyra cringed as she spoke, but she did feel as though they had yet to do anything significant. And at least she had some will to fight the Empire.

"Well, I'd show you guys where it is and help yall paste it."

Roy and Holden both exchanged glances, speaking in unison. "Tell us more."