"Damn him..." Lieutenant Gyashido, the party's CO, had a bandage around his left eye. He shook his head. Red seeped through the fabric, the crimson stain a disgusting mix of vital fluid and medigel. "Damn that bastard for sending us in. The Johnson could have blown this floating pile of scrap to kingdom come... but the Captain was worried about collateral damage; more like the political fallout... Like sending us in was any better!"
The hallways were wartorn corridors of death, bodies lay strewn about in the horrid positions in which death had claimed them. One slumped against a bulkhead, the bloody stump of a hand clutching the ruins of what had been the outlaw's face; her once-attractive visage shattered by precision fire. Another slouched lifelessly, pinned to a utility access panel by a metal pipe; the psuedo-spear slid through his body effortlessly, driven forward by the implacable will of biotics. Still more were scattered about the blasted interior of the pirated vessel, contorted marionettes whose strings had been cut so viciously.
So violently.
The casualities on both sides had been brutal, the brigands had been veterans of close-quarters combat. And they knew their stolen ship well. Sergeant Melnikov's mother would never again hear his weird, high-pitched laugh... Ima Hooker would never be able to tell the story of how she had acquired her name. Of the original twelve sent to reclaim the Jewel of Burgundy, only a meager two remained. Melnikov was the first one to fall, his shield overloaded and his body riddled with slugs before he even exited the airlock. The others succumbed to the cruel inevitability of combat. Whether it was a cleverly placed trap or a lucky shot, they both killed with equal efficiency. Hooker, the corporal who had sustained multiple wounds, was the last to fall; the victim of a treacherous captain who had "surrendered."
"The anvil doesn't cry for the iron, lieutenant." The voice had a vague monotone quality to it; a feature enhanced by the dead, thousand-yard stare of the other survivor. Maginn's face was streaming tears, the thin rivulets of emotion had fallen off his cheeks in fat, salty drops to land on the uncaring floor mere moments ago. Now, however, his features were cold and hard, like a sculpture of steel.