Garik Loran was 58 years old, but his body felt 20 years older. Years of intense combat and stressful intelligence missions behind enemy lines, countless life and death situations and war wounds saw to that. He had frequent headaches from the same injury that had caused his dashingly deforming, heroically horrific facial scar. His left leg and left wrist ached most days from being crushed by a bad landing on Subterrel. Most mornings he struggled to wake up in a timely manner, needing a good twenty minutes to reach fully upright status, and even then it was with deep regret.
This time, though, when he heard the blaster shot, his decades long military experience kicked in and he was up, armed and out of the room within seconds. He spotted Fenn lying on the floor of the darkened corridor and was at their side a moment later. His eyes and blaster swept the area, saw nothing, but when he saw the closed door of the salon he quickly overrode the controls, locking it. Only then did he give Fenn a proper look. Their eyes were closed, their face ashen and deathly pale, they were bleeding profusely from a gaping hole in their stomach, their body unmoving - but they were breathing. Just barely, but breathing.
'Medic!' he roared. 'Medic! Medic!' he shot the bulkhead a little ways off to punctuate the urgency of the situation, then threw his blaster away and put one hand up in the air, the other pressed on Fenn's gaping stomach wound. 'Medic!' he called again.
The sound of feet came banging overhead, and seconds later Vix came charging into the corridor, half naked, with a flashlight and blaster in hand, yelling at the top of his voice. Vix was quickly joined by others, but with a light in his face, Face couldn't make out who.
'Fenn's been shot! They need help!' Face yelled as Vix pushed him out of the way and onto the floor, securing his hands in the process, just as he should do. 'I didn't see anything, but I locked the door,' he told the big Devaronian.
'Fenn!' cried Ka'iulani, barging passed the others and running to kneel by Fenn, dropping her blaster to lay one hand on their unconscious head, the other in their gut. 'Fenn, please be okay,' she whispered, over and over into their ear.
'Make way,' Tarrik said sternly, 'Make way,' he said again, then knelt down opposite Ka'iulani. 'Oh, Force,' he muttered as he looked Fenn over. And then set to work, injecting a stabiliser into them. Face had only basic field training for basic wounds so most of what Tarrik did went over his head, but he'd been around enough gut wounds to know that it wasn't good.
'Here, Face,' said Vix, gently tugging him up from his laying position to a sitting one. Vix place himself between Face and Fenn, obstructing the former's view of the latter. 'Look at me,' he Devaronian ordered. 'What happened here?'
'I don't know,' Face admitted. 'I heard a shot and came running. The door to the salon was shut, which seemed odd to me, so I locked it. I saw no one.'
At once Vix got up and unlocked the door, storming into the room. He returned seconds later and looked quizzically at Face. 'No one there,' he reported.
'Someone get me a stretcher!' Tarrik called to the milling crowd. Someone ran off.
Face turned to them, trying to see and memorise their faces, but the corridor was still dark and his eyes hadn't yet adjusted after being blinded by the bright flashlight, and he could only make out a few of the closes ones and the more obvious silhouettes. 'Vix, this is an active crime scene,' he said, slipping into his command voice. 'You will stay with me and not leave my side. Understood?'
'Understood,' replied Vix. He tucked his blaster pistol into his waist, but kept a hand on the handle.
'Everyone else,' said Face, raising his voice. 'Divide into pairs and stay in the cargo bay. No one is to leave until either I or Vix say so.'
'Then Ka'iulani is my pair,' muttered Tarrik as the two lifted Fenn onto the stretcher. Ka'iulani knelt by the front and took hold of the handles, Tarrik took the back to keep an eye on them, and together the two raced off to the medbay, leaving just Face, Vix, and a pool of blood.
Face regained his blaster, stood and went straight into the salon. It was true; no one was there. He looked over every inch. After several minutes, he left and led Vix to the cockpit. Nothing looked out of place. For security, he locked the controls using his command override.
Someone had turned on the lights, and Face blinked as his eyes adjusted. Everyone was there. Confused. Shaken. Nervous. Looking to him for answers.
'Everyone,' he said, 'we're going to sweep the ship. Every inch of it. Every compartment, every crawlspace, everything, everywhere. We'll start at the front, and work our way to the back. We do not leave our partners' sight for whatever reason. Get to it.'
'Wait, what exactly are we looking for?' asked Ro'vena.
Face and Vix shared a look. 'Anything that's out of place.'
And so they did. Under Face's direction and Vix's watchful eye, they searched every nook and cranny, even their sleeping compartments, looking for anything out of place.
They found nothing. Face sighed in disappointment, but not entirely in surprise. He had hoped that they could have found some stowaway First Order operative, or a pirate, or even a genetically engineered hive rat that had been trained to hold a blaster, but no. He had to face up to the truth.
Someone he called a friend, who he trusted with his life, was a traitor.
