The Mog waits for Five to acknowledge him, but Five stays silent for a long, awkward moment. He stays hunched over Eight’s body, breathing slowly. I tense up and wonder if his strange game is over and if now he’s thinking about sounding the alarm.

The Mogadorian officer does a bad job of hiding how much Five’s silence perturbs him. “One of the hunting parties hasn’t reported back,” he continues. “And the mechanics are having difficulties getting one of the scout vessels to work.”

Five sighs. “That’s fine,” he says. “We’ll leave them behind.”

“Yes, those were my orders,” the officer replies, not so subtly asserting his power. “Are you ready to leave?”

Five turns to the officer, a malicious twinkle in his remaining eye. “Yeah. Let’s get out of here.”

Five walks towards the hangar doors, his movements mockingly sluggish. We stand to the side, watching all this transpire, staying quiet. The officer arches an eyebrow, not stepping out of Five’s way.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” the officer asks Five when the two are nearly face-to-face.

Five scratches his head. “Huh?”

“The body,” the officer says, annoyed. “Your instructions are to bring the Loric’s body. And the pendant.”

“Oh, that,” Five replies, and glances back at the metal table where Eight rests. “The body’s gone, Captain. The Garde must have slipped in here and taken it. Only explanation.”

The Mogadorian captain doesn’t know what to say. He makes a show of craning his neck, looking past Five to where Eight is still very much on the table. Then, he studies Five’s face, his eyes narrowed impatiently.

“Is this some kind of game, Loric?” the captain hisses. “Or are you blind in both eyes now? The Garde is right there.”

Five ignores the insult and shakes his head at the Captain, clicking his tongue.

“Happened on your watch, too,” Five says. “You let them steal a war asset from right under your nose. That’s basically treason, my man. You know what the punishment for that is.”

The Mogadorian opens his mouth for another disbelieving protest. He’s cut off by a scrape of metal, Five’s blade popping out from beneath his sleeve. Without hesitation, he drives the point into the underside of the officer’s jaw and straight up into his brain. Before he starts to disintegrate, there’s a look of total surprise on the Mog’s face.

Five doesn’t move as the Mog turns to ash. He disintegrates slower than the many other dying Mogs I’ve seen, and when it’s finished there are jagged bones poking out of his crumpled uniform. Five pushes his blade back into the mechanism on his forearm and kicks the officer’s remains away from the doors. Then, he carefully brushes himself off and straightens his coat.

From where we’re standing, Five is in profile, and the eye that’s visible is the one covered by the gauze bandage. Because of that, it’s not easy to get a read on his expression.

“Good luck,” Five says, then steps through the hangar doors, easing them closed behind him.