wonder. "This is definitely not the cafeteria. You all seem so angry! I just wanted a salad."
The leader shook his head and rolled his eyes, then let go of the rifle with his left hand to touch the comm stud on his collar. "I have a suspect to take in-"
He didn't finish the sentence because Halley charged him, left arm swinging inside-out to sweep the gun barrel out of the way so she could give him a palm strike to the solar plexus. After that, she whirled, never staying anywhere, feet always moving, using her momentum to put extra force behind her attacks. The Primans were at a disadvantage at first; they weren't prepared for hand to hand combat, and with their leader in the midst nobody dared to just start shooting.
Halley had barely finished hitting the leader when she spun two hundred seventy degrees and put a back kick into the chest of another soldier. She ducked a punch and a rifle stock jabbed at her face, returned the punch and grabbed his hand with her free one as he staggered. She twisted around and with a flick of her wrist sent him tumbling backwards to the ground.
The last soldier tried an overhand swing with his combat knife. She blocked, spun outside his reach, collapsed his arm and continued his swing, bringing the knife right into his own chest.
She grabbed a fallen rifle and headed for the lobby where she saw a squad of six more come bursting through the doors from the walkway outside. Well, at least their response times were respectable , she thought.
She let loose a burst of full auto laser fire, shattering floor-to-ceiling windows and stitching holes in the lobby walls, then ducked back through the doors and ran off towards the back entrance. She triggered the fire/hazard/evacuate handle next to one of the exterior doors and kept a running count of the explosives' timers: seven minutes.
"This is the saboteur who destroyed the building and so many of our soldiers?" asked the lead interrogator of his comrade. He was safely in the underground prison, many stories below the chaos on the surface above. The woman in question had brought a fifteen story building down, though oddly enough sometime after triggering alerts that caused the occupants to evacuate. Still, she'd had a running battle with several squads of the occupation garrison, finally becoming cornered outside just as the building fell. She had still almost escaped, and her dust-covered body had to be dragged out from under the clever hide she'd made between two overturned hovercars.
"She is the one, yes," replied the garrison commander. His job was on the line; it was his soldiers who'd failed to stop the lone insurgent, and he knew he was at the mercy of the interrogator, who in addition to being in charge of the secret prison also outranked him straight away.
"What were her goals?"
"We're just sifting through the rubble now, sir. We're trying to piece together what may be missing, where the blasts originated, if there was sensitive material near the explosives sites. From the level of her demonstrated ability, I felt she was not a random local. She has been well trained, perhaps a Confed soldier or spy, private mercenary, something along those lines. Since this facility is the closest capable of handling prisoners such as her, I thought she would be best placed here so you may handle her in whatever way becomes appropriate."
"Hmm," the garrison commander grumbled. This was supposed to be a prison for the political prisoners only; there were other facilities for more dangerous occupants. Confed and Talaran soldiers as well as a few others had accumulated over the last six months or so,