She should’ve just died at Proxima. Walking into that airlock would’ve taken two seconds and it would have spared her from dealing with this crap. First a tank, then a giant, now this barely legal merc, or whoever [i]she[/i] was supposed to be? She let out an exasperated sigh. “Too many freaks, not enough circuses, who the bloody hell are you supposed to be?” she snapped at Narvia, only briefly glancing her way, sizing her up. Between her and the giant, Rachel thought it was clear who was the bigger threat. Had she known that Narvia possessed magical abilities, she wouldn’t have decided so easily. Fortunately, she sounded utterly clueless, if not outright scared, though Rachel was not a massive fan of the drawn, albeit lowered sidearm.

But the current situation warranted the brainstorming of contingency plans if the unknowns got hostile. One or the other could probably be defeated with little trouble. Both, not so much. Another ugly variable was the way those two would interact. It would be just splendid if they were hostile to each other. The girl seemed easy - telekinetically snatch the sidearm and set her clothes on fire. They looked flammable enough, though she wouldn’t know unless she got a close look at the fabric. Either way, hair burned well as a fallback option.

The giant would be a bit problematic. In theory, he should go down using the same method. But his hair was covered by his helmet and his demeanor, and the fact he so casually shared he had backup, either meant that he underestimated them, or he had a very good reason to be this confident. [i]’The sharpshooter...’[/i] she realized, remembering the single shot she heard at the start of this shitfest. That particular problem was twofold - first, was he on the Giant’s team? Second, if he was a marksman, they could technically reach him. If he was a sniper, he was probably miles away, out of sight, but certainly not out of mind.

She turned back to the giant. “That gunship was already gone," she growled, "poor bastards just didn’t know it yet. And your little show of force wasn’t necessary, he was no longer a threat.” she referred to the gruesome execution of the escaping soldier. Maybe this band of mercs had appearances to keep up, but if the Ascendancy reached this wreck and found a bloodbath, the easiest thing for them to do was to blame the public enemy number one - aliens, or even better, the ‘xenos-loving Moonstrike rebels’. That would be some fuel for the Ascendancy propaganda machine.