High Value Targets
Lieutenant Colonel Malodin'Tater (Loyalist) / AED / House Empire's Chosen of Clan Scholae Palatinae
Pin #3160
Sitting alone in a back corner booth, with eyes constantly watching, a man sat shrouded in darkness. To most of the patrons in the bar, the man was not someone that most would notice. He had practiced for years to be invisible even in the brightness of pure daylight and now he needed this skill more than ever. After recent events, he really couldn’t go to his normal haunts and hangouts.
Ric Hunter, former Sith Battlelord and current fugitive from Imperial justice, was waiting for his contact. The woman he was meeting, a former fellow Imperial Intelligence officer, was supposed to meet him shortly with a new identification, one that he could use to disappear into the unknown regions. As he waited, his head began to throb and his concentration slipped a bit. The slip wasn’t much but it was enough for people to begin to notice him. He rose to his feet and made his way to the exit knowing that even as small of a slip that it was he had been tagged.
Ric entered the small hanger he had rented and keyed the airlock to his ship. The small unregistered shuttle had been a gift from the Supreme Director of Imperial Intelligence for his years of service as the SDIRs escort squadron commander. The best part about it was that the ship was completely untraceable and had been loaded with the best stealth equipment available. He never knew that he would need it, even for a small getaway or vacation. Now he was glad that he had kept it off the books and hidden from nearly everyone.
Ric activated the defense system to the shuttle and started his pre-flight checks. He flipped the switch to warm up the engines and felt a familiar presence in his mind. Ric hung his head and let out a sigh as the door to the cockpit slid open, and an armored figure entered with his weapon drawn.
“So what now, my friend?” Ric said with a defeated tone to his voice. They had sent the only man that they knew Ric wouldn’t automatically kill on sight. “Disintegration?”
“Not hardly,” the man replied, his voice distorted by the Armored helmet that he wore. “I have a chance for redemption for you, slim but you have beaten worse odds before.” The man reached up and activated the releases on his sealed helmet. With a slight tilt of his head, he slid it off to reveal his dark blue hair.
“The Empress sent me to find you. She knows that you were not in your right mind and has asked me to give you this,” Malodin’Tater smiled at his friend. He had known Ric for almost thirty years and had never suspected that he was a plant for the Insidious. To be brutally honest, Ric had never suspected it either.
“What do I have to do?”
“What you do best, it’s time to go to war,” Malodin’Tater smiled with a twinkle in his red eyes.
Nesolat Station -
Ric sat cross legged on the floor nearby the starboard side airlock. He had tried to meditate knowing that this battle would be very brutal. He cleared his mind and focussed on his objective, which was to push the Collective out of the station at any cost.
Malodin sat nearby, checking all of his weapons and watching Ric. Once the control chip had been found in Rics brain, they had tried to remove it but had not been able to. After some of the clones had been able to remove theirs at the end of the Clone War, the chips had been changed to be more integrated.
“Mal, do me a favor. If I fall, find my machine and see if you can stop it from implanting a control chip in my next body, provided there is a next body that is.”
“I’ll do what I can. It would be helpful if I knew where it was,” Ric had placed his cloning machine on a small ship that randomly jumped around to avoid being found. It was as secure a system to keep others from tampering with it as there could be but it did create problems of their own.
“That’s all that I ask my friend,” Ric grasped the lightsaber that Kell Dante had given him. He could feel that the enemy was fast approaching and wouldn’t be long in coming. The proximity alarms began to go off as the Collective ships began to attach themselves to the station. Ric got to his feet just as the first ship breached the airlock. With a snaphiss, he ignited his lightsaber and dropped into a fighting stance.
Ric didn’t have long to wait. Smoke filled the passageway as the nearest ship breached. Ric shifted his stance as four shapes emerged from the dense haze. He only took a quick moment to size up his opponents. Ric noticed that ech one was almost exactly the same as the others, it was like they had been made in a lab, sort of as he had technically had been
The foursome came towards him as a fast pace and began firing. Ric let himself fal into the force and directed the blaster fire away from him. Some bolts returned to the nearest enemy but if it did any damage, Ric wasn’t aware of it. The pale thing just absorbed the fire and kept coming.
Ric advanced to try and get within striking distance of the enemy. As he advanced the enemy increased their rate of fire and forced Ric to drop back. As he fell back, he used the Force to drop the blast door down to block the passage. He reached for his com to let Malodin and the rest know about these new fighters that the Collective had deployed.
Ric pushed the button on his comlink as he raised it to speak, the blast door flew upwards. Two of the enemy were lifting the great door while the other two advanced through it firing at Ric. He activated his saber and deflected the bolts that came towards him, or at least most of them. Ric twisted to his left as a bolt slammed into his chest plate. He rolled with the momentum of the impact and came back to his feet a few meters away. As he rose, he was hit twice more with one burning into his arm.
The impact tore the lightsaber from Rics hand and sent it across the compartment. He reached out for it but before he could summon it back to his hand, he was hit again and went down to his knee. He raised his eyes and watched as the four enemy soldiers once more advanced on him. With each hit, he could feel anger rising in him, an anger that fueled him. He rose to his feet and summoned a great burst of Force Lightning. Ric had very seldomly used this power as even with the years of training, he knew that he would not be able to hold the state he needed to be in. Plus he would also burn.
The lightning hit the first trooper squarely in the chest and with a shower of sparks, it dropped to the ground. As it did, the others closed around it and formed a circle. From what Ric could see, they were trying to repair their fallen comrade. Ric drew on every last bit of anger that he possessed and flung another round of lightning at the small group The electric current hit the first one and traveled along the connected wires to the rest. Ric had not realized that they had connected to the fallen one much as a droid would. With the connection, they were vulnerable. He knew that he had to get this information back to the Empress. It might be something that they could use.
As the lightning left his fingers, Ric could feel his strength beginning to fail. As the drones fell in a heap, Ric felt darkness coming for him as he fell to the ground. The very last thing that he saw before he faded into blackness was Malodin rushing into the corridor followed by a platoon of Scholae soldiers.