Solo missions

[Manuk Gagak]

The pirate whipped a vibro-axe at Manuk. She darted to the side as she activated her lightsaber. The pirate charged, and Manuk’s lightsaber was a blur of bright crimson as she went for the assassin’s wrists. In a single sweep of the lightsaber’s blade, the pirate had lost both hands.

Manuk finished him off, deactivated her lightsaber and returned it to her belt.

Running down the murky corridor to the freighter’s main cargo hold, she checked her chronometer. She had less than a minute to escape the fortress compound before the thermal detonator exploded.

She raced down the freighter’s landing ramp and headed straight for her speeder bike. The two pirates were still so busy examining Manuk’s vehicle that they didn’t see her running toward them. They stumbled back in surprise as she leaped onto her speeder.

Before they could recover, Manuk gunned the repulsorlift engine and shot out of the fortress’s landing bay. As Manuk zoomed away from the fortress, she checked her chronometer again. In her head, she counted off the final seconds.

Five... four... three... two...

 

[Manuk Gagak]

Behind her, the entire fortress was wracked by a massive, thunderous explosion. Manuk looked over her shoulder to see the fortress lit up like daylight by the incredible blast. Raging fires swept up the three silo-like towers, then one of the towers buckled and fell, smashing down on the pirate’s freighter.

Although Manuk was a bit worried about the fate of droid, she found the sound of the freighter’s rupturing hull to be most satisfying.

Suddenly, a blaster bolt struck the side of Manuk’s speeder. Manuk turned her head to cast a glance over her other shoulder and saw she was being pursued across the sky by the two pirates on their repulsorlift skiff. As impossible as it was to conceive, they had escaped the explosion. Flying the skiff across the night sky behind Manuk, one gripped a set of navigational controls while the other carried a bowcaster.

The pirate was preparing to fire another volley at the swift speeder when Manuk steered through a tight spin and angled back on a collision course for the skiff. The guards veered away from the oncoming speeder, and looped the skiff through the air in pursuit of Manuk.

The Sith’s speeder plunged over the upper rim of the canyon and raced down to the canyon floor. Blaster bolts whizzed past her head from behind as the pirates tried to get a bead on her. Manuk calculated her velocity and the distance between her speeder and the Bartokks’ skiff.

She accelerated and steered her vehicle closer to the canyon wall. Then she reached for the thermal detonator on her belt, thumbed the detonator’s activator switch, and released the metal ball into the canyon wall.

 

[Manuk Gagak]

Being magnetic, the detonator latched on to the front end of the pirate’s skiff. There was a loud explosion, and Manuk felt a wave of intense heat at her back. She pulled up on her speeder’s controls and blasted away from the canyon wall before any burning debris could touch her. The detonator had not only destroyed the pirates and their skiff, but had punched a deep impression into the canyon wall, forming a small crater. Manuk flew her speeder down to the canyon floor.

 

[Manuk Gagak]

Her ship was parked exactly where she had left it. As she angled her speeder toward it, she sighted a lone guard standing on the ground near the stern of the starship. From the guard’s relaxed stance, Manuk determined he hadn’t seen the approaching speeder. While Manuk’s left hand gripped the speeder controls, her right hand reached for her lightsaber and activated its blade. As Manuk neared the ship, the guard caught sight of her. Manuk leaned hard to the side so that her speeder was practically sideways, then swung her crimson lightsaber. With dazzling speed, the guard dodged the deadly blade and grabbed the back of the speeder. Clinging to the powerful speeder, the guard was yanked from the ground. The man’s weight brought the speeder’s tail down, and the vehicle was thrown off balance by the unwelcome passenger.

 

[Manuk Gagak]

Manuk gunned the engine and launched into a steep vertical climb. Manuk didn’t want to risk damaging her own speeder with her lightsaber, so she quickly deactivated the weapon and returned it to her belt. With her free hand, she reached back over her head and grabbed one of the man’s wrists.

Manuk braked and swung her arm with all his might. The pirate was flung from the speeder and into the air. Manuk’s free hand returned to the speeder’s controls and she blasted away from the free-falling pirate.

Now that the guard was out of the picture, Manuk landed her speeder next to her ship. At first, it seemed the guard had left the ship untouched. But after Manuk returned her speeder to its storage compartment in the underside cargo hatch, she noticed deep scratches on the aft hatchway. Still, the hatch was sealed, so she assumed the pirates had not been able to breach her ship’s security system.

She opened the aft hatch, entered the ship, and headed to the bridge. Manuk knew if the starfighter and droid starfighters were traveling through hyperspace, they were probably already halfway to their destination. Manuk’s ship was equipped with a state-of-the-art hyperdrive, which was more powerful than any of the starfighters. Even though they had a head start, Manuk believed she might actually beat them to their destination.

 

[Manuk Gagak]

After Manuk initiated the launching sequence, her ship lifted off from the canyon floor and blasted into the sky. Barely a minute later, it left the stratosphere and entered space. Manuk plotted a course and was preparing to make the jump to hyperspace when a warning light flashed. The ship’s computer had detected a malfunction with the hyperdrive motivator. Manuk wondered if the pirates had tampered with her ship after all, so she ran a complete diagnostic.

Fortunately, the automated repair system was quickly able to repair the malfunction. Manuk entered the coordinates into the navicomputer and activated the hyperdrive. Outside, the stars appeared to elongate away from the central point of her destination. In the next instant, the distorted star-field was filled with an intense light, and the ship raced into hyperspace.

 

[Manuk Gagak]

Manuk consulted a computer monitor to confirm the hyperdrive motivator was fully operational. But on the surface of the monitor’s screen, Manuk saw something she had not anticipated: a reflection of something moving behind her. It was one of the pirates.

Manuk spun in her seat. Clearly the assassin had managed to infiltrate her ship, and was already on board when Manuk blasted off.

The stowaway stood in front of the aft hatch. He bent his legs and prepared to spring out at Manuk. Manuk grabbed hold of her seat with one hand and reached for the control console with the other. She punched a switch and the aft hatch snapped open, causing all the air to race out of the bridge. While Manuk clung to her seat, the pirate was sucked toward the open hatch. As the air tore at his body, the assassin located a manual emergency switch within the hatch frame and struck it with his elbow. The hatch slammed shut with a violent clang.

As air was pumped to re-pressurise the ship, Manuk leaped from the command console. The last thing she wanted was a fight that might ruin the interior of her starship. She dove across the bridge and activated her lightsaber. The pirate raised a blaster and squeezed off three quick shots. Still in mid-leap, Manuk swung at the blaster bolts and struck them away. The three bolts slammed back at the unprepared pirate. Before the assassin could fire again, Manuk was on top of him, slashing her lightsaber with expert precision.

 

[Manuk Gagak]

OUTER RIM

“You’ve never faced my kind before.”
– Darth Maul

She had arrived on Kuna’s Tooth – in many ways just another mining planet in the Outer Rim. In many ways, just another mission. But they were each as valuable as each other in her training, in her development.

Dressed in her usual black body suit and a black overcloak, its hood raised against teeming rain, she strode down the main street of the company town. Beneath the cloak, she wore her lightsaber hooked to her belt, within easy reach should she need it. The planet’s gravity was slightly less than what she was accustomed to, so she moved with an extra measure of grace.

A grid of permacrete streets, the town was a warren of prefabricated domes and rickety wooden structures, many of them lacking transparisteel in their windows. Music spilled from the entrances to cantinas and eateries, and folks of all description meandered tipsily down the raised walkways. The place had the feeling of frontier towns throughout the outlying star systems, with the routine mix of aliens, humanoids, and older-generation droids; sterility and contamination; repulsorlift vehicles operating alongside four-and six-legged beasts of burden.

 

[Manuk Gagak]

The residents, all of whom either worked directly for the mining company or were there to defraud those who did, had an air of desperation.

Unlike many worlds she’d visited, where beings hustled to and fro with determination, here she sensed only purposelessness. The beings she walked amongst had clearly resigned themselves to achieving nothing. Like the bottom feeders of Coruscant, which she knew well, they seemed to be going through the motions of living, rather than grasping life and turning it to their own purposes.

The revelation fascinated Manuk as much as it disheartened her.

The air was thick with heat and humidity, and the buzzing and chirping sounds of the surrounding forest played at the edge of her hearing. She could sense the interplay of life there, the fights and flights, and the ongoing struggle for survival. And the forest had imparted some of itself to the town. For here lived beings who were not above hunting and killing to obtain the sustenance they required. A veneer of laws regulated such things, but beneath that thin coating lurked a more base morality that allowed opponents to settle their matters without fear of intrusion by keepers of the peace.

Life was cheap.

 

[Manuk Gagak]

Manuk threw out her right hand and snatched a fist-sized insect in mid-flight. Dazed, the creature lay in her palm, perhaps wondering on some primitive level just what make or manner of predator it had blundered into. The creature’s six legs wriggled and its pair of antennae twitched. Its twin eyespots and carapaced body glowed with a faintly green bioluminescence.

Manuk studied the insect, then sent it on its way to rejoin the host of its brethren that buzzed about the town.

Her mentor had shown her many places. She wondered if she might have found her way to a place like this if it had not been for the Sith and the life she had now accepted as normal.

She ignored the mental intrusion and quickened her pace.

Her Sith training allowed her to spot weaknesses of character or constitution in each of the various beings she passed. And so she drew on her Dark-side instincts to guide her to the best means of carrying out her mission.

 

[Manuk Gagak]

Manuk came to a halt at the entrance to a noisy cantina. It was the sort of place where anyone who entered would be appraised by the clientele within, so she moved quickly – a blur to most; to others, just another labourer hurrying in out of the rain. She took a stool at the bar, keeping her hood raised and her face in profile when the human female bartender approached.

“What can I get you, stranger?”

“Pure water,” Manuk said.

“Big spender, huh?”

Manuk made a negligent motion with her fingers. “You’ll bring my drink and leave me alone.”

The muscular, tattooed woman blinked twice. “I’ll bring your drink and leave you alone.”

Manuk expanded her peripheral vision to take in the two adjoining rooms. She made use of the mirror behind the bar to see what her eyes could not, and she drew on the Dark side to fill in the rest.

The cantina had an air of neglect, a smell of stale acohol and greasy food. The lighting was deliberately low. Flying insects of various sizes circled the illuminators, and children of several species ran in and out.

Along the length of the bar all manner of species conversed.

 

[Manuk Gagak]

Her attention was drawn to a couple who – unlike most present – appeared to be talking in hushed tones. They were joined by a third, who had a serious look on his face.

“The boss has called a special meeting. He wants us at his place in an hour.”

“Any idea what it’s about?” the stout one asked.

The man with his back to her obviously spoke as the others nodded.

“It has to be the shuttle crash,” the man opposite surmised. “Maybe they have a line on the perpetrators?”

“It’s bigger than that,” the newcomer said. "We’re going to have to respond.”

Manuk’s eyes were no longer fixed on the men but on something she had glimpsed on the wall above the booth. It resembled the bioluminescent flitter she had captured earlier on. This one, however, wasn’t moving from its spot on the wall. The reason became apparent once Manuk probed it through the Force. Not only was it a fabrication, it was also a listening device.

Manuk scanned the room, then turned to face the mirror. The device wasn’t very sophisticated; its large size was evidence of that. Even so, that didn’t mean that whoever was eavesdropping on the security men had to be inside the cantina. But Manuk suspected that they were. Without looking at it, she focused her attention on the artificial flitter and screened out all extraneous sounds: the pulsing music, the dozens of separate conversations, the noises of glasses clinking or being filled with one inebriant or another. Once she could discern the muted beeping of the device’s transmitter, she listened for signs of the receiver with which it was in communication.

 

[Manuk Gagak]

At a round table in the adjoining room sat three Rodians, ostensibly engaged in a game of sabacc. Manuk watched them for a moment. Their playing was unfocussed. She observed their facial expressions as the men continued to converse. When one of the men said something of interest, the Rodian’s faceted eyes would flash.

Each of the Rodians sported an ear-bead receiver. Manuk was certain that the trio were in the secret employ of the mining corporation’s chief rival. She recognised one of the Rodians from the mission brief she had been given. Maybe they were responsible for the shuttle crash?

Her eyes darted back to the listening device and the men. Creatures of habit, they probably occupied the same booth night after night, completely unaware that their conversations were being monitored. Such carelessness exasperated Manuk to the point of fury. The men were deserving of whatever harm would surely come their way.

 

[Manuk Gagak]

The three men left the cantina on foot and wended their way to a ribbon of trail that wove through a dense stand of forest. Manuk followed from a discreet distance, keeping to the shadows when the moon came up, full and silver-white.

The trail eventually arrived at a tight-knit community of flimsy dwellings, many of them raised up to keep them above pools of run-off water left by the rain. The humidity was oppressive.

The dwelling that was the trio’s destination was an elevated cube with a metal roof angled to channel rainwater into a ferrocrete cistern. The cube’s only door was accessed by means of a ladderlike stairway. A rusted landspeeder with a cracked windscreen was parked in a muddy front lot.

Manuk kept to the trees while a thickly built human responded to the stout man’s raps on the door frame.

“Come on up,” she heard the man said. “Everyone else is already here.”

Manuk waited until the three were inside, then she hurried from the shadows and planted herself under an open side window. Not content with her choice, she ducked beneath the house and clambered up one of the stilts to wedge herself between the floor joists of the front room. In the room above, someone was pouring liquid into several glasses.

Manuk extracted a miniature recording device from the breast pocket of her body suit and placed it against the underside of the rough-hewn floorboards.

 

[Manuk Gagak]

“We’re going to strike their ships en route. Ours will reach the planet, and theirs won’t.”

Someone whistled in astonishment.

“Does the boss realise what he’s doing? This is going to lead to a shooting war.”

“This comes straight from the top. Those are his words, and this is his show.”

“His show and our livelihood,” someone pointed out. “There has to be a better way of settling this. What about petitioning the government?”

“A cure that can be worse than the disease,” another answered, much to Manuk’s amusement. “It will take months for it to get to the courts.”

“So, moving on, we’ve been able to learn the hyperspace route their ships are going to take and the time they’re scheduled to leave hyperspace.”

“Who will take their ships out?”

“Best you don’t know. That way, no-one can suspect us. We keep our hands clean.”

“So what’s our part in this?”

“We need to prepare ourselves for their counterpunch.”

 

[Manuk Gagak]

Manuk peeled the recorder from the floorboards and dropped down to the loamy soil below the house. She remained still for a long moment, crouched in the darkness, listening to sounds of distant laughter and the constant noise of profuse insect life.

Manuk waited until the moon was low in the sky before she went to the mining company’s headquarters at the base of the escarpment. The incidents of sabotage had caused the buildings to be placed on high alert.

Armed sentries – some accompanied by leashed attack beasts – patrolled, and powerful lights cast circles of what passed for daylight over the spacious grounds. A six-metre-high electrified stun fence encompassed everything.

Manuk spent an hour studying the movements of the sentries, the periodic sweeps of the lights, the towering fence, and the motion-detector lasers that gridded the broad lawn beyond. She was certain that infrared cams were also scanning the grounds, but there was little she could do about those without leaving evidence of her infiltration. A probe droid would have been able to tell her all she needed to know, but there wasn’t time and she wanted to do this personally.

 

[Manuk Gagak]

To test the possibility that pressure detectors had been installed in the ground, she used the Force to propel stones over the fence. As they struck specific places on the lawn, she waited for some response, but the guards stationed at the entry gates simply continued to go about their business.

When she was satisfied that she had committed the results of her reconnaissance to memory, she shrugged out of her cloak and leapt straight up over the fence, landing precisely where some of the rocks she had tossed rested. Then she sprang to a series of other spots that ultimately carried her to the wall of the principle building, moving with such speed the entire time that whatever holo-recordings were being made wouldn’t show her unless they were played in slow motion.

She reached one of the doors and found it locked, so she began to work her way around the building, testing other doors and windows, all of which were similarly secured.

Then she tested the building’s flat roof for motion and pressure detectors as she had the lawn. Vaulting to the top, she was confronted with an expanse of solar arrays, skylights, and cooling ducts. She moved to the nearest skylight and ignited her lightsaber. she was ready to plunge the blade through the transparisteel panel when she stopped herself, and peered more intently at the panel. Embedded in the transparisteel were monofilament chains, which, when severed, would trip an alarm.

Deactivating her blade, she reclipped her lightsaber and sat down to think. It was unlikely that the central computer was a stand-alone machine. It would have to be accessible from outside locations. The security men would have remote access. Manuk berated herself for not having recognised that fact earlier. But it wasn’t too late to rectify her oversight.

 

[Manuk Gagak]

Manuk returned to the dwelling just before dawn. Unlike the headquarters complex, the house had no security. The owner either didn’t have enemies or didn’t care.

She circled the house, occasionally reaching up to the windowsills to peer inside. In a rear room the man she presumed was the boss, was sprawled atop a simple bed, half in, half out of a net tent that was clearly meant to keep nocturnal insects from feasting on his blood. He was fully clothed, snoring lightly, and clearly drunk. A half-emptied bottle of brown liquid sat on a small table alongside the bed.

Manuk gritted her teeth. More carelessness, more lack of discipline. She couldn’t summon any compassion for the man. The weak needed to be weeded out.

Manuk let herself in through the unlocked door and scanned the front room. The owner was a man of few worldly possessions, and not in a particularly orderly way.

The confined space smelled of spoiled food, and mining dust coated every horizontal surface. Water dripped from a sink tap that could have easily been repaired. Spiders had woven perfect webs in all four corners of the room.

Manuk searched for a personal computer and located it in the bedroom. It was a portable device, not much longer than a human hand. She called the machine to her and activated it. The display screen came to life and a menu presented itself. It took only moments for Manuk to find her way to the central computer, but for the second time that night she found herself locked out.

 

[Manuk Gagak]

The computer was demanding to see its owner’s fingerprints.

Manuk might have been able to slice her way inside the central computer, but not without leaving an easily followed trail. What is done in secret has great power, was a well-worn Sith saying.

Manuk gazed at the man. With a scant motion of her left hand, she caused the man to roll over onto his back. Manuk gestured for his right arm to rise, wrist bent, with the palm of his hand facing outward. Then she stealthily carried the computer to his hand, easing the display screen into gentle contact with the outstretched fingers. When the machine had bleeped an acknowledgment, Manuk dropped his arm and rolled him back onto his side.

By the time Manuk left the bedroom, the directories for the database were scrolling onscreen. Manuk pin-pointed the files relating to the imminent delivery and opened them.

 

[Manuk Gagak]

The cantina was doing a brisk lunchtime business when Manuk stole through the entrance and took a seat at a corner table in the smaller room. Outside, a gloomy downpour was inundating the town. She kept the dripping hood of her cloak raised, and she angled herself away from the crowd, ignoring the few second glances she received.

Two of the security men occupied their usual booth, feeding their faces with fatty foods and talking with their mouths full. Not far from where Manuk was seated, the Rodians were gathered around a card table. Shortly the three were joined by a dark-haired human female, who placed a stack of company credits on the table and joined the sabacc game in progress. Manuk recognized the piece of jewellery that adorned the woman’s left ear as a receiver.

She waited to act until the four of them were engaged in monitoring the security agents’ conversation. Then, with a slight motion of her hand, she Force-summoned the listening device to peel itself from the wall above the booth, zip into the small room, and alight at the centre of the card table.

The Rodians sat back, startled, clearly failing to recognise the artificial bug as their own device. “What the...”

One of the Rodians raised his open hand to shoulder level. “I’ll deal with this.” His hand was halfway toward smashing the flitter when the human female grabbed hold of his wrist and managed to deflect the downward strike.

“Hold on,” she whispered urgently. “I heard your voice.”

“That’s because I said something.”

“In my earpiece,” the woman said, gesturing discreetly. “And now I’m hearing my voice.”

“I’m hearing your voice too.”

“But…”

The woman allowed her voice to trail off, and all four of the agents sat back in their stiff wooden chairs, gazing in astonishment at the listening device.

“It’s ours,” the woman said finally.

“What’s it doing here?”

Manuk called on the Force to move the bug.

“It’s crawling around, is what it’s doing,” one of the Rodians said, with a measure of distress. He glanced over his shoulder at the preoccupied security men, then at his comrades.