THE RECRUIT

ZEREK IV: ECHO-2

A long metal pole rolls out from behind the isle. He steps over to the electrostaff aiming his blaster down the row.

At the end of it, purple electricity ignites into the sparsely lit armory. The pulsing purple reflects off white trooper armor. The eye lenses don't connect to the frowning mouth like regular clone trooper helmets. It wasn't the familiar T-slit visor.  Mech's HUD IDs him as TK-760. The man stands there a moment and then bows.

Mech blinks confused.

TK-760 then slides into a stance setting his feet into the floor.

Mech doesn't drop his blaster and rolls his boot over the staff, flicking it into the air like he'd do if he were kicking the ball in a match of meshgeryoa. Instead of hitting the ball against his chest, he catches the pole just as the other trooper's attack comes crashing down.

He strains against TK-760's electrostaff and activates his and shoves him back.

Mech twirls his staff in one hand and fires a PEP round with the other. The blast hits the trooper's chest. He falters a step backward.

Mech doesn't let him recover and twists the electrosaff out of his hands. The staff goes flipping into a locker and clatters to the floor ringing through vibrations. He jabs the pulsing purple electricity towards the trooper.

TK-760 blocks the staff with a yellow glowing vibroknife. Mech counters by twirling the staff around. The trooper swats it with a vibrodagger cutting off the end.

Mech retracts the electrostaff and fires a couple of stun rounds as a distraction and brings the staff back down on the other side.

The electricity makes a loud ZAP as it collides with the cartosis weave of the vibroblades. The impact jars Mech's muscles. Conductive energy binds the weapons together for a moment before exploding in a ball of white.

Mech is thrown backward. His visor automatically tinting against the light. For a moment he feels nothing beneath his feet. The floor slams into his back. He goes skidding. The metal loudly scraping against his armor.

Coming to a stop, he slowly blinks away the blurriness as a loud ringing blares in his ears. Groaning and feeling his empty hands, he spots his blaster beneath a bench. He paws at it a couple of times before his fingers finally grip the handle.

He groggily gets to his feet aiming the blaster at TK-760. The trooper had been blown into a stack of supply crates which collapsed on top of him.

Mech stumbles over to the trooper. He activates the anti-grave on the crates and pulls a couple off the pinned trooper.

He checks for a pulse on the trooper's neck. He can feel a faint thu-thump thu-thump against his fingers almost as if the trooper has heart palpitations. Looking over his gritty armor, he recognizes it as the one who had woken him up in the med bay. He holsters his deece reaching for a pair of stuncuffs on his belt.

The trooper's hand wraps around his wrist. Mech flinches having second thoughts about dropping his blaster. A couple of fingers on the trooper's hand are charred black and smoke swirls off of them.

"Mech," she faintly says.

The Captain pauses realizing TK-760 is a female. Clone troopers aren't female. Her hand drops streaking blood down his forearm gauntlet.

Mech considers putting the stuncuffs on her anyways but his gut instinct rules out protocol. He hesitantly reaches over and carefully removes her helmet.

He knew it wasn't a clone trooper but to his surprise, a face of red and black stares back at him. Black voided eyes groggily squint at him. Glistening red from her busted lip glides into the scar across her chin. For a moment Mech sees Cardshark staring back at him as blood drips from his mouth. The same desperate expression in his golden eyes.