Petja Prevec had been a hand model once, showcasing fine rings and bracelets for Uslam’s jewelers in a dozen hoload campaigns.  Now, the skeletal cybernetic piece that had replaced her left arm gripped a blaster carbine with unfeeling fingers and kept her aim stable with mechanical precision.  It had only been a scant few years, but her career felt like a lifetime ago.  It felt like it had been another woman’s life, even, a life taken by the Empire. 

She squeezed the carbine’s trigger with her feeling fingers, and the red flashes made a corpse.  Now she took lives. 

This one, an Imperial grunt with helmet askew, had stumbled into view at the end of the trench.  Petja’s optics were commercial grade nightsights, too crude to see clear definition, but good enough for her needs here. She could tell the enemy at sight, even if she couldn’t make out the Imperial’s look of shock as he walked into her line of fire.  Maybe he hadn’t even realized.  As drew closer to the body, slumped up against the trenchworks, she put another blaster bolt in his face.

“Good kill,” came the sergeant’s voice behind her.  Sergeant Glaato, the leader of Petja’s four-person fireteam, was a battle-hardened veteran who carried a well-used rifle and a machete into combat.  On his orders, the fireteam had filed into one of the trenches, formed a line, and advanced on their assigned target single file.  Petja had taken point without any discussion.  The Nikto followed close behind, the Bothan, Orn Da’lya, followed in the third position, and a fresh-faced human by the name of Benji covered their rear.  Petja had expected him to panic when the blaster fire began, but he’d kept his cool so far, so far as she could tell. 

They came to the end of the trench, a T-intersection.  Petja would not make the same mistake the dead Imperial made.  She took up her position on the right side of the trench and motioned to the left.  Glaato took the position opposite her across the trench, with Orn Da’lya behind him and Private Benji behind her.  On a three count, Petja and Glaato each swung into the intersection, keeping their angles tight, and she saw red. 

A blaster bolt flew toward her, warming her face as it passed.  She caught sight of the shooter through her optics – one of two approaching soldiers down range from her. Her feeling finger squeezed the trigger again, and she let loose a volley.  The fireteam followed suit, and though the enemy tried to take cover, in a few short seconds the rebels had made two more corpses.  Petja didn’t think they’d managed to take a second shot. 

“Pushing,” Petja relayed to the team, and continued the planned advance to the anti-air battery with blaster level and her team close behind.