Althea's enhanced perception caught the glint of steel in the shadows. Althea ducked under the sword blade, twisted and used a palm strike to snap the assailant's arm at the elbow. Althea's knee stuck the attacker three times in his back before the sword clattered to the walkway. She grabbed him by the head and twisted. It took Althea only 20 decichrons to dispatch the ten rebels in the sandy, rubble-strewn room they'd been using as a mess hall. Only after did her nanosuit kick in, cooling her body at the first signs of perspiration. Althea silently ran up the alley way toward the remaining squad of rebels. "Hey, one of these guys had a sword. And all of them seem to have some really nice knives. Anything in the regs about using them?" The alley ended in a tee intersection and two sentries stood watch. Althea ran straight at the man on the left, her right hand grabbed the sidearm out of the hand of the other sentry. The butt end of it cracked his temple. He died as his legs started to give way. Althea's enhanced muscles allowed her to swing the pistol around to jam it into the sternum of the other guard. As he bent over, she struck his throat with her left hand. "Edged weapons? How quaint! I'll look it up. Nope. Nothing in the rules says you can't turn their own knives on 'em." The text slowly scrolled across her vision. Speech was too slow for her enhanced perception. Althea finished the guard with hurricane kick that crushed the right side of his skull. "Good to know." Althea was three steps away before the body tumbled to the ground. The last two sentries were easiest. The man's sidearm laser sight gave them away. Althea watched them on her tactical display. The woman flirted with him. She casually placed the point of a large knife against the chest plate of his worn and far-too-old armor. She seemed to be carving her initials into the flaking paint. Althea stepped from behind the wall. Before either sentry registered the intrusion, she knocked the knife out of the woman's hand and into a high arc overhead. Althea struck out with a high roundhouse kick to the man's head, just above the collar of his armor. The power and sheer velocity separated the vertebrae just below where his skull joined his spine. Althea finished the arc of her kick and landed in a stance facing the woman. She waited for the knife to complete one last tumble before catching it in mid-air and plunging into the woman's throat. Althea moved so fast, her victim's eyes lagged far behind the action . Althea pulled and spun the knife in her hand, slid the blade up and underneath the woman's jaw, driving it upward into the midbrain. Althea jerked the knife out and threw it onto the rock strewn pathway. A spinning back kick sent the corpse smashing into the back wall where it crumpled to the ground. The woman's arm settled to the ground, as if reaching out to the dead man next to her. "Okay, Aly" said Harrak. "That last one was just showing off." Althea spotted a bright flower all alone, growing out of a crack in the stone walkway. She bent down and pulled it away. The smell was complex-- dusty and fruity and not at all what she expected. She smiled and tucked the flower in behind her ear. "41 decichrons. Excellent. Uh. Are we done here?" The robot reached out and touched Althea's shoulder. Althea had been so absorbed in the flower's gritty beauty and the crash from the biochemistry flushing out of her system that she hadn't even noticed the telepresence robot's arrival. "Yeah. Let's get back to the ship." Althea stood and looked back at the swath of carnage she alone had carved through the rebels. It was a powerful feeling being this strong, she thought. "I'm good with this. I'm ready for a real assignment." Still, Althea heard a quiet whispering in her conscience, a tiny seed of doubt nagging at the back of her mind. She knew what it was. In the past, her opponents stood a chance.