[right]Ultrost, a few hours after initial landing[/right]

The repulsorcraft glided just above the rough terrain of the Imperial controlled world, on course for its first destination. The Imperial troop transport drew no eyes as it moved through the outskirts of the capitol city. Even though the people within it were not stormtroopers at all, but much rather the exact opposite. Vorn Tiger squad sat restlessly within the heavy duty transport, each of the five Republic commandos hellbent on causing more issues for the Imperium. As the vehicle drew closer to the first forced labor camp the team’s leader, Sargent Vale stood up to speak. 

“We’re going to hit them hard and fast. If we’re lucky we should be able to use this transport’s clearance codes to get inside the camp. Once we are inside we’ll come out blasters hot, take out any plastic boys that you see. We will split into two smaller units, Dakkar and I will be one, we will power through into the command center of the camp. We’ll eliminate any defenses and unlock every single door. Eensil and Vebb will move to free prisoners, hand them blasters and add numbers to our side,” Zena stated with determination, as her team looked upon her with eagerness. “Bima will have taken a position higher up from the camp, she will take out as many Imperials as she can from a distance. Further adding to the chaos for the Imperium.”

Private Leapfar had taken an Imperial speeder from the garage of the old Republic base, having gone ahead of the rest of the team in order to get a vantage point. Ultrost was a rocky, hilly planet. Exactly where the scout sniper excelled. Zena had the uttermost confidence in her team, she learned over the years that the best way to hit the Imperials was as hard and fast as possible. Once their chain of communication and protocols were shattered they didn’t pose nearly as much of a threat. She could tell that every single person in her squad was itching for this operation, each of them having seen their own share of brutal slavery or internment at the hands of the Empire.

“Sure your leg is okay?” Dakkar asked from his seated position, across from Corporal Keeg. The Yuzzem felt cramped in the transport, it was not exactly built for people of his stature.

“I’m fine. Bacta is a damn miracle.” The duros replied with a smirk as he patted his formerly injured leg. The wound having been sealed up by the gel, the pain evaporated away. Though the scar would always remain. It was simply another one for the collection from his long days of combat.

“We’re coming up on the camp.” The squad’s medic said from behind the controls of the vehicle. The Imperials around them would have no way to tell who exactly was inside the transport, a fact which aided them greatly in infiltrating the camp.

“Nice and easy, Vebb. The code should work just fine.” Zena replied calmly as she walked to where the squad’s medic was seated. The Aldeerani crossed her fingers. “Bima, we’re coming up on the camp. Do you have a position?”
“Affirmative sarge. I’m set up to the northwest, up a hill. I have eyes on the labor camp. Defenses are formidable, but aimed for the outside. Once you get in they will not pose much of a threat on you. I have my sights on some marksman stationed in the two watchtowers.” The team’s sniper replied as she laid her frame down then steadied her rifle on its bipod. 

“Excellent. Once the shooting starts I want you to take down both those guards, then call out any movements from the Imps.” Zena said with a firm smirk as she grasped her helmet tightly, then slid it over her head as the transport stopped before the front gate of the camp. 

“Transport B-237 what is your business here? We don’t have you on the log for today’s arrivals.” A stern Imperial voice asked, speaking into the comms of the troop transport. Zena took a moment to think of a response, then patched her helmet into the communications. 

“There was a protest in the city, we captured several rioters and are bringing them in for processing.” The commando stated in the firmest tone she could muster. Women were uncommon in the Imperium but not unheard of, the story should have easily passed basic inspection. 

The Imperial officer did not speak for a few moments, seconds which felt more akin to hours. Zena felt sweat go down her cheek as she wondered if the Imperial would poke holes in the story, which would complicate their operation further. She had to hold back a sigh as the officer’s voice pitched in again, in an affirmative tone.

“Understood, you are clear to head inside the camp. Follow the designated arrows to the processing area.” 

“We’re in.” Sargent Vale said with another wider smile, having exited communications with the officer. As the gate slid open slowly the troop transport shifted forward, following the instructed lines. The laser turrets on the outside of the gates wouldn’t pose any threat to them today. 

“Slowly, Vebb,” Zena added as she placed a gloved hand on the Mon Calamari’s shoulder. Behind her the rest of her team readied up for another round of combat. “Blasters loaded people, safeties off.”

The outside feed of the cameras inside the transport allowed Zena a chilling look at the interior of the force labor camp. There must have been dozens of prisoners here, she couldn’t tell exactly which ones were with the New Republic. Though many of them were aliens, clad in simple work clothes and lugging around tools. The blasted Imperials had forced them to work in the mines of the world as well as slave away putting together weapons for their war machines. The Aldeerani clenched her fist in rage as she took in the battered state of the prisoners, undoubtedly having faced severe mistreatment here. She only hoped their spirits had not been broken. Zena couldn’t wait to burn this wretched place to the ground.

It had been some time between when Malg’s educational electrocution and when the transport arrived. But while the restraining bolt controlled his body, it did not control his mind. He was [i]not[/i] going to let these Imperial bastards break him. And the taskmaster’s words were already causing him to put his devious intellect to work. Those explosives did [i]indeed[/i] have a weakness, and he would [i]love[/i] to exploit that. But first, the restraining bolt.

The restraining bolt interfaced with his systems, but most droids it connected to were not as well-versed in software as Malg was, nor did most droids have root access to their own systems.

Not Malg. Malg was the administrator of his mind and body ever since he started breaking down his mental safeguards. And that meant that he could “see” the restraining bolt on an internal level, and understand how it did what it did.

It seemed that his body--the 2-1B chassis, to be specific--was designed with a restraining bolt anchor point on his chest. He had been specifically manufactured with a restraining bolt in mind, effectively meaning he had a hardware-based backdoor into his motor functions that would be almost impossible to close.

But Malg was used to things like this. Slicing wasn’t his specialty--but hardware modification [i]was.[/i] If he could figure out how to hook up a pair of Super Battle Droid legs to his waist without causing damage to his systems, he could do the same thing in reverse, rendering a piece of hardware [i]in[/i]compatible with his body.

He’d never needed to do this before, and he could [i]easily[/i] screw up and wreck his motor functions forever. But he knew enough.

Over the last few weeks, he’d secretly been rifling through his file system and his programming, analyzing the restraining bolt. Even when charging or in sleep mode, he’d been devoting resources to this task. Much like a prize fighter researching his opponent and learning their weaknesses, he had been looking for weakpoints in the restraining bolt’s control mechanism for almost his [i]entire stay.[/i]

Now, he was ready to [i]break[/i] that control mechanism. He’d run low on batteries and was charging in a droid storage bay, away from prying eyes. No-one ever paid attention to a recharging droid. It was like watching paint dry. And it was the one place they’d never expect a droid to misbehave, since he was tied to a recharge coupling.

He restarted himself, his OS applying the self-coded patch needed to lock off the restraining bolt from the rest of his body. When he came online again, he had to stop himself from celebrating right then and there. It had worked without a hitch! His OS could no longer recognize the restraining bolt! He was free!

He didn’t get to experience his freedom for long, though, since an Imperial technician walked by, carrying a Data Pad, and must have seen him restart.

“M4, why did you reboot?”

“I can reboot whenever I want,” Malg said. “There’s no rule about restarting yourself during a recharge.”

“Being willful again, I see? No matter, you’ll learn your place soon enough. Recharge is over,” he said as he activated the droid caller function on his ‘pad. “Get back to work.”

Nothing happened. In the silence, you could hear a pin drop. 

Then the engineer made to draw his blaster. Malg lunged forward, grabbing his blaster hand with his labor droid arm, shoving a hand over the engineer’s mouth with his B2 arm to muffle the scream he tried to make, then reared back his original right fist and slammed his metal hand into the technician’s face, breaking his glasses, causing him to bleed from his forehead, and almost definitely giving him a black eye. Then, he squeezed with his labor droid arm, crushing the man’s blaster hand into a mangled mess.

The hapless technician struggled and tried to scream, but the droid hand over his mouth was a strong one. Finally, Malg decided to put the engineer out of his misery, using his remaining arm to grab the technician’s blaster pistol, Then, he pointed the Imperial blaster right into the hapless Impie’s face and pulled the trigger. The blaster shots rang out, almost certainly attracting attention, but in the heat of the moment, he didn’t care.

The technician’s head fell back, his tongue lolling out as the hole between his eyes sizzled.

Malg searched the technician for anything he had on him. An ID card, some tools, a spare power pack, the blaster, a utility belt and the data pad. Great!

He quickly shoved the blaster pistol into his right leg’s speed-holster, and the rest into the utility belt, which he haphazardly clicked around his waist and hoped it didn’t get caught in his hip joints.

He looked back at the other droids in the storage bay. They were all in sleep mode, largely out of boredom he assumed, but he knew he was the only droid here who hadn’t been memory wiped, reprogrammed, or Imperial property in the first place. They would never choose to go with him, and if he tried to [i]make[/i] them by using the data pad, he’d be no better than the technician he just killed. He ripped off his restraining bolt and began his escape.

Using the engineer’s ID card, he made his way through the secured blast door that separated the droid storage bay from the rest of the base. He knew this place well: The droid storage bay happened to be near the engineering barracks, the command center...and, judging by the few glimpses he’d gotten from his time going to and from the droid storage bay, some kind of server room. The Imperials [i]loved[/i] central control over all information, forcing everything in the camp to be monitored. If he could slice into the servers, or turn them off, he could probably do a [i]lot[/i] of damage to the camp’s infrastructure.

“B-237, please open the main doors so we can begin processing.” An Imperial officer’s voice ordered as it blared into an empty console. Vorn Tiger squad were assembled in the back of the troop transport, each commando itching to cause chaos in the labor camp.

“Let’s give these bastards a battle.” Sargent Vale stated to her team as she grasped onto her A280 tightly, her finger hanging over the trigger. Dakkar led the charge as he was nearest to the door, his heavy blaster rifle aimed dead center. 

Then the door powered open, a duo of stormtroopers shocked to be met with a blaster aimed directly at them. Zena hollered at her team as the Yuzzem blasted both men with ferocity. The two troopers flew backwards with screams as the five man team emerged with blasters roaring. The Aldeerani sergeant had her sights on a shocked officer who scrambled for his sidearm. A bolt tore into his chest, burning through flesh and uniform as he hit the hard floor dead on arrival. The rest of the squad blasted at the nearest Imperials to them, adding assertively to the bodycount. Alarms sounded as the assault on the camp had begun from the inside. 

An even louder blaster bolt careened into one of the guards in the tower as the armored man plummeted from above. Private Leapfar set her sights on the second sniper wielding guard, then dropped that trooper with pure precision. The camp erupted in an orgy of chaos as stormtroopers returned fire while others darted for cover. The Vorn Tigers shifted into two teams as Zena and Dakkar sprinted towards the nearest door. Vebb and Eensil went in the opposite direction towards the prisoner quarters, kicking discarded Imperial blaster rifles towards any nearby prisoners. Encouraging an armed uprising led by a team of highly trained New Republic commandos. Zena placed a remote charge on the doorway to prisoner processing, part of a larger building which held the commando center.

“Breaching, Dak! Cover me!” The lead commando shouted as her Yuzzem comrade popped from behind cover to unleash a volley of laser fire at encroaching Imperials. A wide smile came onto Dakkar’s face as he watched a duo of prisoners unleash bolts from a side flank, joining the fight on the freedom fighters’ side. 

“If you can fight, pick up a blaster!” Eensil hollered to nearby prisoners, ripping off a barrage of laser blasts towards some encamped stormtroopers. Iwik tossed an Imperial blaster towards them, as he grabbed them from recently deceased troopers. 

One trooper got a flank on Iwik with the alien directly in his sights, finger on the trigger before a bolt slammed into his skull. Bima, the guardian angel of the team, then reloaded her E-11s before she resumed headhunting Imperials to cover her team. Explosions sounded off as Zena detonated the charges on the door, sending debris into the hallway followed by a thermal detonator. The stormtroopers inside dove behind cover as the two New Republic commandos blasted at them, marking the halls with blackened marks of smoke. One of the soldiers went down with a scream as the others returned fire at the special operations soldiers tucked behind cover. 

“Bima, keep those pretty brown eyes on us all. Dak and I are gonna push inside.” Zena radioed as she reloaded her A280. Smiling at the increasing sounds of combat as more prisoners were freed and joined the revolt. 

An angry message from an enraged officer sounded over the camp’s intercoms stating that any prisoners caught in the uprising would be met with lethal resistance. The Imperials had lost the advantage here, they were scattered and rapidly losing the numbers battle. It was her favorite kind of situation, freeing good men from those Imperial bastards’ control while kicking stormtrooper asses into the dirt. She peaked her eyes out from the sturdy metal crate she tucked behind and counted six stormtroopers hunkered at the end of the hallway. There was not telling how many were tucked in that building, they’d have to breach it slowly. 

Malg knew he’d need some credentials if he wanted to break into the system. So, he headed to the engineer’s quarters. The technician who he’d killed was a droid tech, and servers probably weren’t his specialty. He [i]could[/i] steal an officer’s credentials, but the officers were likely protected by armed guards, whereas engineers wouldn’t have that luxury, at least not to the same degree.

But as he crept down corridor after corridor, he heard...blaster fire? And where were all the guards? He’d expected more resistance--[b]BOOM![/b] An explosion rang out that shook the ground, and the surprise of it sent him tumbling to the floor.

[i]THE FUCK WAS THAT?![/i] he thought to himself as he pushed himself back to his feet, leaning against the wall due to the shock. You didn’t just [i]get used to[/i] random explosions, even in the Republic military. It was one thing on the battlefield, it was another when it came out of nowhere.

Then, a voice crackled over the PA system, the sound of a smarmy Imperial officer’s haughty accent. “ATTENTION ALL INMATES! ANYONE WHO PARTICIPATES IN THE INSURRECTION WILL BE MET WITH LETHAL FORCE! I REPEAT, ANY INMATE WHO PARTICIPATES IN THE INSURRECTION WILL BE MET WITH LETHAL FORCE! FURTHERMORE, ANYONE WHO AIDS THE TERRORISTS WILL BE SUBJECT TO THE SAME TREATMENT! ANY PRISONER WHO SURRENDERS PEACEFULLY, HOWEVER, WILL RECEIVE NO PUNISHMENT, AND ANY PRISONER WHO AIDS THE IMPERIAL FORCES WILL BE REWARDED! CHOOSE WISELY, OR YOU WILL WISH YOU DIDN’T LIVE TO REGRET IT!”

Malg burst out laughing in the corridor. So all of his hacking was for nothing! A rescue team was already here! And clearly the Imperials were losing if they were offering mercy!

[i]Alright,[/i] he thought, [i]that explains why no-one’s here. Time to get to work.[/i]

Swiping the ID card into the reader, he entered the engineer’s quarters. One Imperial engineer had apparently been in here when the alarm was raised, and Malg shot him dead before he could even acknowledge the droid’s presence.

Then, he started looking through the specialized barracks. The engineers lived close to the most critical camp systems, since due to a technical issue, they could theoretically be roused from sleep at any time if the engineers on shift couldn’t handle the problem themselves. He’d heard the engineers grumbling about this policy long enough to know about it.

And that meant that this barracks was going to be [i]loaded[/i] with useful stuff. First, though, he searched the engineer he’d just killed, taking, among other things, a shoulderbag he was carrying (must have gotten special permission from his superiors to alter his uniform, likely a prestigious guy), his blaster pistol, and, in the mother of all finds, a data pad that, when he cracked the password via a scomp link, contained sysadmin passwords for the base’s computer systems! JACKPOT! He stole the credits from the man’s utility belt, for good measure. This guy got a pretty good salary!

He heard shouting from behind the door he hadn’t opened yet, however, and more blaster fire. He ducked behind a bunk as he heard the door opening. With his two blaster pistols, he risked a glance over the bed as he saw a guard in full Stormtrooper armor run inside and take cover against the wall next to the door he’d opened...only to look back into the room and see Malg.

The stormtrooper swore and leveled his E-11 as the door closed, spraying automatic fire in Malg’s direction. One bolt nicked Malg’s head, another hit him in the upper-left arm and a third struck his neck servos, but Malg had a shield generator (now that the restraining bolt was gone, anyway) on top of durasteel plating, and the guard only had plastoid armor. The stormtrooper’s shots were harmlessly absorbed by the plasma shield, while Malg’s two blaster shots hit the Stormtrooper square in the upper chest, where his lungs and heart were. The force of the impact slammed his body, particularly his head, back into the wall. Newton’s Third Law made him fall forwards, gurgling on the ground. Malg shot him once more, this time in the head, to end his suffering. No need to leave the poor bastard drowning in his own blood for the 15 minutes he’d have to live.

That just left whoever was causing the ruckus, and while he had an idea what to expect, he wasn’t sure what he’d do next. Anyone could come through that door, including another Stormtrooper, so he needed to be on-guard, but if he was [i]too[/i] on-guard, the rescue team might shoot him on instinct.

He resolved to hide under a bed at the end of the room he’d entered from and evaluate their intentions before he revealed himself.

Outside the building the two New Republic commandos charged forward through the breached doorway. Another thermal detonator, this time thrown by Dakkar had forced the stormtroopers to fall back. It had created an ideal opportunity for a forward push. Sergeant Vale’s blaster rifle remained hot as she continued to volley suppressing fire into the interior towards the backpedaling Imperials. 

“Push the advantage!” Zena hollered as the chaotic sounds of combat filled the air. She was so used to it all by now, none it truly fazed her anymore. The attacks on the damned Imperials always delighted her, this one was no different. 

Across the way, by the prisoner barracks the other two members of Vorn Tiger squad with their boots on the ground in the camp continued their own assault. The numbers continued to tilt against the Imperium as rebellious prisoners joined the chaos. Much of the forced labor camp’s prisoner population were captured New Republic soldiers. Many of them were itching for payback, their captors’ brutal treatment of them before the uprising fresh in their minds. 

“Bima, they set up a heavy blaster rifle encampment just outside the barracks. It’s going to tear us apart. Can you find an opening?” Corporal Keeg asked the overlooking sniper, building stress evident in his words. He was tucked behind an overturned mine cart alongside Imik. 

“I’ll try to shift positions!” The diminutive marksman replied right as she squeezed off another laser bolt which slammed into the chest of an unfortunate stormtrooper. The nosaurian then rapidly rose to her feet and dashed to her left, careful as she darted along the hillside. 

“I just need a tiny window.” She said to herself as she took a short slide down the hill then aimed her sniper rifle towards the turret encampment. “Got you.”

Another bolt flew through the air then collided beautifully with the right shoulder of the trooper behind the turret. The armored soldier’s body flung backwards from the pure shock of the blast striking him. As another stormtrooper scrambled to get behind the heavy blaster Eensil popped from behind the mine cart, a micro-grenade launcher in his hands. The duros was quite pleased with himself that he had brought the highly explosive weapon. The stormtroopers watched as the commando shot off a duo of grenades at their encampment.

“Get down!” One of the troopers howled, his voice cracking as he dove sideways with his hands over his helmet. The blasts then ignited as they shredded the encampment. 

“Good shit, Corporal!” Imik stated as he watched the explosions go off.

The sound of the explosions brought a smile to the team’s commanding officer as her and Dakkar continued their part of the offensive. They had stormed forward into the hallway and now found themselves inside the processing center. A few rooms were to their side which likely were used to hold prisoners. As Zena stood against the corner of the hallway she watched as a few more bolts were shot towards them, stormtroopers having taken up a new position down a longer hallway. 

“As soon as I throw this start firing down the corridor through the smoke. We have to advance forward.” The sergeant ordered as she glanced at Dakkar alongside her. The Yuzzem nodded firmly as Zena drew a smoke grenade from her belt. 

Then she flung it around the corner, bounced off a roll and rolled forward. Smoke began to pour out of it as she charged ahead, her boots clanking loudly against the steel plated flooring. As the lead commando tucked herself into a doorway the Yuzzem did his part. A flurry of blaster bolts slammed down the hallway, filling the area with the sound of heavy laser fire. The stormtroopers at the end of the hallway were forced to stay in cover as the barrage impacted around them. 

“On me Dak, forward to my location!” The Aldeerani added as her loyal soldier did as ordered. The Yuzzem stepped around the corner as he continued to suppress the trigger of his DLT-19, hip firing the sizable weapon. A far easier task for a powerful Yuzzem like him than for a normal human being. 

“In here.” Zena said as she slammed her fist onto the control panel of the doorway, allowing them to enter inside. She only hoped it didn’t trap them in the room, but she had plenty of explosives still to use. 

Upon entrance into the room the two commandos took sight of what met them inside. Thankfully there were no stormtroopers tucked in there which allowed them to breathe for a moment. It was some sort of engineering barracks, a group of inactive droids tucked into part of it. Zena reloaded her blaster rifle as she started to walk through the large room, delighted to find another door on the opposite side of the room. Closer to the end of the hallway they’d barged in from. She stopped in her stride at the sight of a single dead stormtrooper, cleanly killed on the floor. 

“Who killed this one?” Dakkar asked as he approached the corpse then knelt down to examine it. It was extremely unlikely any prisoners in this building had gotten their hands on a blaster to partake in the uprising. As he looked over the corpse he caught sight of a droid tucked underneath a bunk in the corner of his eye, which caused the Yuzzem to raise his blaster. “Sargeant.” 

“What the?” Zena asked as she too saw the droid hiding. Likely the culprit, albeit a strange one. Her next words were direct ones to the strange droid. “Come out from under there and identify yourself.” 

“I see I’m not as good at stealth as I thought,” the droid said with a chuckle. He crawled out from under the bunk, stood up, and saluted. “M4-LG, combat medic in the 23rd Infantry, at your service, ma’am. But call me Malg, not Emfour. And you are?”

“Sargeant Zena Vale of Vorn Tiger Squad. This is Private Dakkar. How’d you end up here? I’m guessing you killed this trooper? I don’t see many combat droids in the Republic,” She asked, having not dealt directly with many droids in the New Republic’s military. She then turned her head towards Dakkar. “Keep any eye on the doors, don’t want to be sitting ducks here if the Imps charge in.”

Malg laughed again. “Guilty as charged. And ma’am, I’m not a ‘combat droid,’ I’m half a junked 2-1B medical droid with a hundred different parts from other unfortunate droids bolted on in ways they were never intended. I built a ship out of even more junk and flew it from Raxus Prime to Tatooine myself, and then a lucky encounter and a lack of regulations let me open up a medical practice. Then circumstances forced me to join the Rebels back before the Battle of Yavin, and the rest is history.”

“That sounds like an enthralling tale for another time, when we’re not in the middle of a labor camp uprising.” The sergeant replied with a smirk. Clearly the droid had been through a real journey, but what mattered at this moment was if he was in fighting shape. Another blaster was always appreciated.

“Can you fight? Because we’re in the middle of it right now. We have the upper hand but we came here to utterly crush the Imperium into the ground, free every prisoner then burn this camp to the ground.” She added as she put on her very best motivation tone. 

“Yep, I’m fine.” She could probably tell that Malg would be grinning if he had a mouth. “Got a clone commando shield generator in my chest, the trooper over there couldn’t even touch me,” he said, jerking his head over to the corpse.

“Anyway, I actually had a couple things I needed to do here. First stop is the command center, where all the critical systems are. I’ve heard enough chatter in the Droid Storage Bay to know that there’s a bunch of servers that have critical information on them, and I’m hoping that my memories are there too. They backed off from a memory wipe ‘cause, you know, [i]junk droid,[/i] but they nabbed all the intel they could from me. And some of that info might put someone I know in danger. I want to see if I can delete that info off of the Imperial network on Utrost, and to do that I need to pretend to be the labor camp’s server when I make my move. With any luck, it hasn’t been transferred to Imperial intelligence yet, since it took about a week for them to get past my security in the first place.

“And as for burning the camp down….” Malg’s grin would have been absolutely shit-eating if his aforementioned mouth existed. “What if I told you that we could blow it up with the Impies’ own explosives instead? I know how to detonate the mining charges by bypassing the safety protocols. It only takes a jolt of electricity.”

Zena enjoyed hearing every single word which came out of Malg. The droid knew the layout of this building and gave them a direct route to reach the command center. The juiciest tidbit was the knowledge that he knew how to destroy the camp with the Imperium’s own explosives. She was quite glad to have run into this droid.

“Absolutely perfect. We’ll follow you right to the command center taking out plastics along the way, while you do your own business there we’ll splice right into their system. A perfect way to get into their communications which will help us take down the next labor camp we were sent here to raze.” The lead commando said as she pieced together a simple but effective plan of operation for the now trio of New Republic operatives. 

“We have two other special operations soldiers assaulting the other side of the camp, they are aiding the prisoner uprising as they clear out Imperials. Those explosives will be very handy later on, it’s gonna be a beautiful sight watching this disgusting place go up in flames.” She added with another smile. The Imperium garrison here would be reeling. 

“Sounds like a plan. After we hit the Command Center though, some of the droids in the storage bay are other captured Republic droids. They’ve all been memory-wiped and got Impie software shoved into ‘em in place of a personality, but I’d consider them prisoners just the same. Think we can get ‘em out of here with the fleshy inmates?”

As he said this, he bent down to the soldier he’d killed earlier, grabbing the E-11 rifle off the floor and...holding it to his chest? Amazingly, the rifle actually clicked into a compartment that opened up on the left side of his chest cavity, some kind of rifle-sized speed-holster.

Realizing that having a dedicated compartment for an Imperial rifle might look suspicious, he said, “Oh, right, forgot to explain that. One of the weapons I got in the junk heaps was an E-11 I modded, but this’ll work just as well until I get my stuff. Made this little contraption to avoid drawing attention. I used it in the 23rd.”

Then, he grabbed the soldier’s utility belt off of his armor and wrapped it around his shoulder like a bandolier. It made him an even more bizarre sight, now that he had an engineer’s utility belt on his waist, a shoulderbag dangling off of his right side, and a Stormtrooper utility belt as a bandolier. It was obvious Malg couldn’t give two shits about appearances, which made sense given how strange he looked even without any of this stuff.

“Yes we can take them with us, especially if they were with the Republic before capture,” The sargeant stated as she watched the Imperial rifle compact into the droid’s chest. This Malg was one peculiar machine but all that mattered to her was that he was wholeheartedly with the New Republic.

“If it gives you more firepower then I’m all for it. There’s going to be lots of troopers coming at us as we close in on the command center.” Zena added with a nod. She wondered how the other half of their team was doing, hoping the uprising continued and the casualties on the Imperium’s side kept rising.

“Right,” Malg said. “Now, let’s do this!”