A/N: Experimenting with something different this time, tell me how do you feel about the narration
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Vect Nokru stared at the empty space where his credits used to be. The table looked wrong, unbalanced, like a smile with a missing tooth. The humiliation felt heavy and sour.
"Boss?"
Vect snapped his head toward Garek. The skinny human was hovering at his elbow, looking like he expected a backhand.
"Get up," Vect growled, the legs of his chair screeching against the floor as he shoved it back. "We're getting my money back. And his kidneys."
He started for the door, walking with the heavy, shoulder-rolling stride that usually made people get out of his way. Garek scrambled to keep up, but paused next to the Kaleesh, who was still leaning against the wall, watching the exit with bored, reptilian eyes.
"Vorak, keep watch," Garek hissed, glancing nervously between his retreating boss and the alien muscle. "Boss is... he's in a mood. Keep eyes on the front. If the Inquisitor shows up early, comm us immediately."
Vorak grunted as if grinding stones with his teeth and folded his arms.
Garek sprinted to catch up, nearly tripping over a drunk Weequay as he burst out onto the street. The air outside was thick enough to chew on, smelling of ozone, stale spice, and the sweat of a thousand desperate people.
Vect was already ten paces ahead, his eyes locked on a helmeted head bobbing through the crowd.
"B-Boss, wait up," Garek panted, falling into step beside him. He kept his hands jammed in his jacket pockets, eyes darting around the rooftops. "Boss, you don't need to waste time on that punk. Maybe we should call the boys? Let them handle the situation. I feel a bit wrong."
"For one spacer? Don't be pathetic," Vect spat without breaking his stride. The anger in his chest was more than he had ever felt before, pushing aside any tact or caution he usually possessed.
"He's just a lucky punk with a loud mouth. We handle this quick, dump the body, and get back before the Inquisitor even lands."
"I don't know, Boss. Maybe-"
"Shut up, Garek. You're making me kriffing angry with that twitchy bantha-fodder routine."
Garek seemed to have much more to say but seeing Vekt expression, he shut his trap.
They wove through the throng. The target was moving casually, stopping to look at a street vendor's display of fried insects before turning sharply down a narrow service lane with crowd thinner than it had been on the main street.
Vect grinned. This idiot made their work even easier.
He signaled Garek to follow and they slipped into the alley behind him, keeping a safe distance. The punk walked with his hands in his pockets, shoulders loose, completely unaware.
It just reinforced Vect belief over the spacer's incompetency.
As they moved deeper into the passage, the crowd thinned further. First the stragglers peeled away—a dockworker ducking through a side door, a vagrant shuffling off toward a warmer grate. Then the noise began to fade, the market's cacophony dampening to a distant murmur.
Within thirty meters, the three of them were alone.
Vect's eyes narrowed. The punk hadn't looked back once, but something about his gait had changed. Or atleast it looked as such to Vect.
"Boss," Garek whispered, "you think he knows?"
"Maybe." Vect kept his hand near his blaster. "Doesn't matter. What's he gonna do? He's one loud-mouthed punk. We're two professionals with weapons."
The noise of the market cut out completely now, replaced by the damp, oppressive silence of the city's underbelly. Moisture dripped from overhead pipes with a steady plink, plink, plink. Steam vented from a grate somewhere above, hissing like a dying animal.
Ahead, the alley bent sharply to the left.
The punk disappeared around the corner without hesitation.
Vect froze, raising a fist. Garek stopped behind him, breathing too loud.
"That's where he'll try it," Vect muttered. "If he's smart, he's waiting just around that corner with a pipe or a shiv. Thinks he'll get the drop on us."
"So what do we do?"
"We don't fall for amateur hour." Vect drew his blaster and moved to the right wall. "You take left. Low and wide. If he's there, we light him up before he can blink."
Garek swallowed hard but nodded, pulling his own weapon. His hands were shaking.
They approached the turn with tactical precision—backs to the walls, weapons raised, moving in controlled steps. Vect's pulse was steady. He'd done this a hundred times. Some punk with delusions of being clever wasn't going to—
They swung around the corner simultaneously, blasters leveled.
The alley was empty.
Vect blinked, scanning the gloom. It wasn't a long passage. Just twenty meters of wet duracrete ending in a sheer wall of refuse and stacked crates. There were no doors. No windows low enough to reach.
"Where is he?" Garek whispered, the sound bouncing too loudly off the wet walls. "I saw him turn. I swear I saw him turn."
"Check behind the dumpster," Vect ordered, keeping his weapon leveled at chest height. "He's hiding like a rat."
Garek moved forward, his boots scraping on the slick ground. He looked pale, his sweat gleaming in the faint neon light filtering down from the upper levels. "I-I don't like this, Boss. It feels... weird. Too wierd."
"Just check the kriffing dumpster, Garek!"
"O-Okay, okay! I'm checking!"
Garek crept toward the large metal bin, his blaster shaking in his grip. He peered around the edge, then checked the other side. He turned back to Vect, his face slack with confusion.
"Nothing. Boss, he's... he's not here."
"He has to be here," Vect snarled, stepping further into the alley. "Come out, spacer! You drop the credits, and maybe I only break your legs! Keep hiding, and I start removing fingers!"
The only answer was the hiss of steam and the distant wail of a siren.
Garek spun in a slow circle, eyes wide. "Maybe he has stealth tech? Or... or a jetpack? Boss, we should go. We should go back to Vorak."
"Stop whining. Jetpack would make sound loud and he ain't rich enough to afford stealth" Vect kicked a pile of trash, sending cans skittering across the stone. "He's just playing games."
"I-I'm serious!" Garek's voice cracked, pitching up into a stammer. "L-Let's just leave him. I gotta get out of here, I can't breathe right—"
Thwip.
The sound was wet and heavy, like a butcher slapping a slab of meat onto a counter.
Garek stopped talking. He went rigid, his spine snapping straight. He looked down at his chest.
A vibroblade, sleek and humming with cruel energy, was sticking out of his sternum.
"H-Hah?" Garek made a confused noise, blood bubbling instantly over his lips. He looked up at Vect, his eyes begging for an explanation that Vect didn't have. "B-Boss...?"
The blade jerked backward.
Garek, with his strings cut, crumpled into a heap of limbs and twitching muscle, gurgling something that sounded like "momma" into the dirty water.
Standing behind him, casually wiping the blade on his armored thigh, was the spacer.
Vect stared. There had been no sound of boots dropping, no rustle of fabric. The guy had just... appeared.
"You know how much effort it takes to convince two grown adults that I'm not standing right in front of them?" the metallic voice said, echoing faintly. " I'm pretty sure I nearly busted a nut in my pants, but congratulations—you both bought it. I'm absolutely billing Organa for this. Headaches count as occupational expenses"
Vect didn't have time to make sense of his words before he squeezed the trigger on instinct.
Three bolts of red plasma screamed across the alley.
The spacer sidestepped before the plasma even reached him.
It wasn't a dodge. A dodge implies effort, a scramble for safety. This was a minimal, shift of weight. The bolts scorched the wall where the spacer had been standing, leaving black scars on the brick.
"Rude," the voice mocked from the left.
Vect roared in terror, and pivoted, firing blindly. "Motherfucker Just Kriffing Di-!"
Clang.
Something hard slammed into the bridge of Vect's nose.
His head snapped back. Water flooded his eyes, blurring the world into a smear of neon and shadow. He stumbled, boots slipping on the slime, and nearly went down. He grabbed his face, his fingers coming away wet and red.
A heavy, rusted bolt—literal garbage—clattered to the ground at his feet.
"You threw... trash at me?" Vect shouted, his voice thick with congestion and rage. "You threw kriffing trash at me!"
"Well, I didn't want to dull my blades on your face," the spacer said. He was leaning against the dumpster now, arms crossed, looking for all the world like he was waiting for a bus. "Honestly, you're disappointing me, Vect. I thought you'd be harder to kill. You would have made this at least five percent more interesting if you'd brought the green guy—Vorak, was it? He looked like he actually knew which end of the blaster makes the loud noise."
Vect wiped the blood from his mouth, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. This wasn't right. The spacer wasn't scared. This didn't make sense.
"W-Who are you?" Vect demanded, backing up a step. He kept the blaster raised, but the barrel wavered. His mind was still reeling from the impact earlier, making his thought's fuzzy. The spacer trash-talking him was helping the situation.
"I'm just a guy doing a job. A very well-paid job.Through seeing the earnings did make me think of a new career plan." The figure pushed off the dumpster, twirling a vibroblade in one hand. The hum of the weapon seemed to fill the alley. "That aside, you grabbed a girl, Vect. A little girl. Did you really think her father would just sit around and cry about it?"
Vect felt a cold spike in his stomach that had nothing to do with the alley's temperature.
"Organa...That bitch said-" Vect mumbled but then cut himself off.
"Talking 'bout Reva?" The spacer tilted his head. "The angry lady in black right? Let me guess: she told you it was bait for a old ass Jedi right? She didn't think that Senators can hire Mercs too when their kids go missing, did she? Well, people can think only as much as shitty plot writers allow, so I don't blame her. Oh, who am I kidding, she is totally dumb right?"
"Y-You have no idea who you're messing with," Vect hissed, trying to find his footing. "We have protection. I-Imperial protection. The Inquisitorius will skin you alive if you touch me."
"The Inquisitors don't care about you," the spacer said, taking a slow, deliberate step forward. "And they definitely don't care about a low-level thug who gets his crew wiped out in a back alley because he was too arrogant to bring backup."
Vect's mind raced. This was clearly beyond his pay-grade. If he could just stall...
"You think you can take us all?" Vect sneered, forcing a fearless look that took all out of his effort while he slowly, carefully moved his left hand toward the comm-link clipped to his belt. "You think you can just walk in there and take the girl? My men are heavily armed. You're one guy in a fancy helmet."
"I think," the spacer said, his voice dropping an octave, losing the humor, "your distraction tactic needs a bit of training."
A silver blur cut the air.
Vect felt a sudden, sharp pressure on his left forearm followed by a strange sense of lightness.
He looked down.
His hand was there, still clutching the comm-link.
But why was it lying three feets away on the wet duracrete with the fingers still twitching!?
Vect stared at the stump of his wrist which was spewing blood like a fountain, dying his clothes and alley red.
"My..." Vect whispered.
Then the nerves caught up.
He opened his mouth to scream. He wanted to howl, to shriek, to let out the agony that was suddenly tearing through his nervous system.
But the sound died in his throat.
Invisible fingers clamped around his windpipe. It felt like a steel collar slamming shut, crushing the larynx, sealing the airway tight. Vect clawed at his throat with his remaining hand, his boots scrabbling for purchase on the slick ground. He looked up, eyes bulging, veins popping in his forehead.
The spacer was walking toward him. He unholstered one blade with a smooth, practiced motion. His other hand was raised slightly, fingers curled in a pinching gesture.
"I hate screaming," the spacer said casually, stepping over Garek's corpse without looking down. "It's so loud. Bad for the ears. And I have sensitive ears."
Vect's vision began to tunnel. Dark spots danced at the edges of his sight. He kicked out feebly, but the invisible grip held him suspended against the damp wall of the alley, his feet dangling inches off the ground. He was drowning in open air.
The armored figure stopped right in front of him. The black visor stared into Vect's terrified, watering eyes. He could see his own reflection in the glass—a bloody, one-handed, terrified wreck.
"Now," the spacer said, reaching out to pluck the access keycard from Vect's belt. He held it up, checking it against the light. "You're going to take a nap. And when you wake up—well, let's be honest, you're not waking up. But try to enjoy the silence anyway."
The spacer drew the second vibroblade.
Vect tried to beg. He tried to form the words please or wait or money, but his crushed throat produced nothing but a wet, whistling click.
The spacer plunged the blade into Vect's chest.
The grip on his throat vanished, but it didn't matter. Vect slid down the wall, leaving a streak of red on the bricks. The neon lights above blurred into long, beautiful streaks of color. Then slowly the sound of the steam vent faded away.
The last thing Vect Nokru saw was the spacer stepping over his amputated hands, humming a tune that sounded irritatingly cheerful as he picked up the blinking comm.
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PS: Donate your stones if you liked the story. Next update on Sunday. Let's try getting a better rank next week, what do you say? Bonus chapter if we get to top 20 for a day so don't forget to vote on Sunday.
Till then, take care!