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Infiltration
DJK Michael Halcyon (Krath)/Acclivis Draco of Scholae
Palatinae
(darkjedi@otelo-online.de)
Elrood was a small system in the Glythe sector. It didn't really
belong to the Emperor's Hammer's systems but was on the fringe of
it. Elrood itself consisted of a number of planets including a gas
giant wich was orbited by three moons. All planets in the system
were virtually worthless - no ore nor any atmosphere to establish
outposts. With one exception: The second moon orbiting the gas giant
Jorol was able to hold atmosphere. It was a jungle-type planet and
beared a whole bunch of species, though non sapient.
As said, the system was virtually worthless - virtually since on
Jorol II Clan Satal Keto housed an outpost.
On the fringe of the system, a Lambda-class shuttle suddenly exited
hyperspace. It came in in the sun's shadow, hence it was blocked
from any scanning coming from the moon. It immediatly shut down
any lights and switched to passive scanners. Slowly, following the
moon's orbit, it approached Jorol as its second moon was blocked
by its mother planet. The shuttle threw in the sublight engines
for several seconds, bringing it to an adequate acceleration. Then
it just orbited the gas giant.
As Jorol II came into sight, the pilot of the shuttle had to make
some minor correction to bring them on collision course. Some time
later, the shuttle entered the moon's atmosphere, disguising it
as a meteroid. Meteroids crashed occasionally on Jorol II so nobody
got suspicous. Once below the effective radar line, the shuttle
activated its repulsor coils and headed towards the black and needle-like
building on the horizon, Clan Satal Keto's outpost.
"I hear the front lines on Ferrin Four are breaking again.
Looks like Scholae Palatinae isn't as tough as we thought..."
the man grinned. Together with another man, he was tasked to guard
the rear entrance at the foot of the building. A useless task in
his opinion. Noone knew about the outpost here and if yes, there
wasn't any valuable resources stored inside. His companion grinned.
"They're falling like flies. I could wipe out a whole phyle
myself with one hand." The two men were both dressed in the
blue tunics and white cloaks of Protectors.
"Yeah. I just hope that our leaders chose CSP to do a little
warm up before we take on a major Clan.", the first one answered.
The other Protector nodded and then yawned.
"Deran, it's been late tonight. Do you mind if I finish an
hour earlier?" Deran shrud his shoulders.
"No problem, Khaen. There won't happen anything else here.
I just hope that I can transfer soon enough to another phyle. Someone
that's seeing action."
"Thanks, man. I owe you something." Khaen placed a hand
on Deran's shoulder and nodded gratefully. As he yawned again, he
turned around and walked into the building, heading for his quarters.
Deran meanwhile leaned on the stone wall and stared into the deep
green of the jungle that began only several meters away.
As he heared steppes behind him, he turned around.
"I thought you wanted to... huh?". His voice faded as
he noticed that noone was in the corridor behind him. Dark and silent
it lay before him. Puzzled he scratched his head. Then he shrud
his shoulders and turned around.
And looked at a blonde man who was staring at him.
Deran's eyes widened for surprise but in the same second the man
slammed the edge of his hand into Deran's throat. The Protector
tumbled back and reached for his throat. He choked for air but didn't
get any. The armored man watched him from sunken eyes showing no
signs of emotion.
Deran's legs denied him their service and he fell to the ground,
hitting his head hard on the wall. He put one hand behind his skull
and pulled it back bloody. The young Protector didn't feel now anything
from his pevlis down and darkness had already begun to gnaw on the
edges of his sight. The pain in his throat and on the back of his
head was incredible and he wanted to scream out loud but didn't
had any air to do so. Deran looked up at his murderer and noticed
a scoffing grin on his face. Then the darkness surrounded him.
Dark Jedi Knight Michael Halcyon stepped over the man's corpse
as he entered the building. It was all too easy. He knew that Clan
Satal Keto was weak - but he couldn't believe that they were that
incompetent. He knew that underestimating his enemy was a sure way
to death, so he cautiously walked down the corridor. The Protector
may have thought that the building had no tactical value but he
knew better. From here all sensory information about the fringe
of the CSK space were collected and sent to their main base where
the information was evaluated. A good hacker could brake into the
security systems from here, disable them, and download valuable
data from CSK's mainframe. Not an easy task, but easy aren't for
Jedi. And especially not for Dark Jedi.
The corridor ended after several turns at a turbo lift. From the
ground plans Halcyon had sawn, he knew that the corridors to his
left and right would lead to the Journeymen- and Yoemanry's quarters.
Guard detachment was in one hour and that was time enough.
The turbolift's doors opened and let the Dark Jedi Knight in. When
he was inside, he pressed the button for the top level and unhooked
the golden lightsaber from his belt. He wanted to cause as less
stir as possible but with the lift hauling him on the top floor,
the moment of surprise was gone.
The lift stopped and Michael knew he had arrived. As the doors
slid open, he immediatly moved into fighting stance.
A good idea obviously.
There were two man patrolling the floor, one them facing him. He
was about four meters away and totally startled by the image of
an unknown man with a golden lightsaber and a heavy body armor leaping
out of the turbolift. He turned around and seemingly wanted to scream
something but as the blue balde of the now activated lightsaber
cut into his left shoulder and sliced him up from shoulder to pelvis
he didn't get out more than a scream of fear and agony.
The other man, however, had more time to prepare himself. The man
in the robes of a Jedi Hunter had immediatly unsecured his Blaster
rifle and opened fire on the intruder.
Halcyon stopped on his run against the man and fell into defense.
He took the first two shots on the outer ring right high and left
high while the third went into the middle ring, beeing reflected
left. The Jedi Hunter lept into the saftey of a doorframe.
It was the last mistake he would make in his life.
With a war cry, Michael ran down the corridor, ramming the balde
of his saber almost up to the hilt into the wall. As he passed the
door, the Jedi Hunter let out a gargle as he got split into two
halfs. The Blaster rifle dropped near him as the armored Jedi already
turned away and shielded his eyes.
The Dark Side consumed the body of the Jedi Hunter and was unleashed
with an explosion that rushed down the corridor and blew up several
datapads on the walls. The Dark Jedi Knight had only to devert a
small amount of his power to absorb the attack of the Dark Side.
The explosion had ended as fast as it had begun and the corridor
was empty. With a sucking noise the blade of Michael's saber vanished
as he deactivated it. He then turned and walked down to the end
of the corridor where he found his target: a steel door, sealed
with security systems and only opened by a control panel nearby.
The Dark Jedi Knight pulled a small device from below his cloak
and attached it to the control panel. This device would not only
fake the retina and thumb scan ID, but also find out the ten digits
code to the door.
For a moment, Michael was glad that his Phyle housed so much computer
freaks.
The control panel beeped short and the red diode jump to green.
With the hiss of vacuum sealing, the door slid open and Michael
sneaked in.
The room wasn't as interesting as he had expected it to be. One
large mainframe terminal made up the front side of the room, accompanied
by a small desk with a monitor and a keyboard on it. Aside of a
chair and some air vents was the room completely empty.
Without hesitation moved the Dark Jedi Knight towards the big mainframe.
Those stupid hackers had him often enough told how to use it, so
he just grabbed beneath his cloak and fetched a small datadisk.
The Krath inserted it into one of the slits on the terminal and
watched three red lights going out. He then sat down at the monitor
and punched in the new access code he had just overwritten the old
one with. A scoffing grin formed on his face as he got access to
file/data transfer system. He again punched in a code and the download
began.
It lasted for several minutes while fortunately nothing happened.
The computer signalled with a beep that he was ready. The Dark Jedi
Knight rose from the chair and took his datadisk back. It was now
loaded with the newest troop and movements lists, alongside with
much more vital data. Halcyon grabbed the Blaster rifle, he had
fetched in the meantime, from the desk and aimed it at the terminal.
Two Blaster shots destroyed both the terminal and the monitor. Two
additional shots to make sure they'd stay destroyed.
A ripple went to the Force. It came from the ground of the building
and it seemed that someone had found the corpse from the Protector.
The Dark Jedi Knight closed his eyes and focused on all of his anger.
He opened him fully to the Darkside and summoned a wireframe model
of the outpost in his mind. He marked the place where the ripples
came from with a red glowing dot. He moved into every single space
and checked the quarters. The Force flew through him, as he sensed
for awakened minds. Where he found one, he marked it with another
red dot. If the beeing was about to awake, he tried to let it sleep
again by projecting the image of a peaceful and quiet outpost without
any intruders into their mind. He rarely succeeded and when he checked
at the end, he had seven red dots moving towards the turbolift.
And two of them were very bright.
The Krath cursed. He turned around and ran towards the corridor
as fast as he could, leaving the opening device on the door. He
reached the lift right in time to punch on the button to haul the
lift. He again focused on his hatred and summoned again the wireframe
model of the outpost. His enemies had gathered before the lift and
seemed to await his arrival. Two of them tried to probe his mind,
but he managed to repell them ... still, but it seemed that they'd
succeed at last. From their auras, they could be Krath Priests or
Archpriests. And he wasn't sure but he believed that one was even
a Krath Epis.
No good news.
Finally the lift arrived and the Dark Jedi Knight entered it. He
punched the second floor into the pad and was hauled down. He lept
out of the lift and as he spurted down the corridor before him,
the turbolift already went down. He knew that he wouldn't be able
to take on the Epis and his companion and the data was far too valuable
to not bring it back. Otherwise he'd have stayed and fought to death.
As he opened again to the Force, he felt that other Krath had entered
the floor and were running towards him. Only two or three turns
and they'd have got him... if not... yes, that was it.
Again a scoffing grin widened on Michael Halcyon's face and he stopped.
As he turned around, he could already see a man in the robes of
a Krath Epis sliding around the corner, his lightsaber in his hand,
though still not activated. As he saw that his opponent was just
standing there, even his lightsaber not risen, he stopped, too.
As the two Dark Jedi eyes each other, the Epis' companions gathered
behind him.
"That's the end for you, Palatinae-scum. Hand me your lightsaber,
fall down to your knees and bag for mercy. Perhaps I'll give you
a quick death." The Krath grinned evilly at him.
Halcyon just laughed back.
"You've lost, you just don't know it, Keto-wyrm." And
with that he made a step to the side, revealing the window behind
him. At first the Epis didn't seem to get it but then he realized
and his face twitched for anger.
"Alright, looks like this is a point for you. But it's just
a fight - the war isn't over, yet."
Michael snorted.
"As I said, you just don't know it. Hope that you'll die soon
on the battlefields so you won't see the demise of your Clan. Adiòs."
With that he tapped his forehead with the hilt of his lightsaber
for a salute, turned around and jumped through the window.
He fell deep. About ten meters. Normally that wouldn't be a great
problem for a Jedi but unfortunately Michael had always sucked at
levitation. As he fell, he moved every hate, anger and fear he posessed
into the Force, trying to repell him from the surface wich was flying
to him with incredible speed. He thought it worked a bit, but as
he hit the ground, he heard several bones crashing. Halcyon immediatly
shut down his feeling for pain and rose. Fortunately, the armor
had prevented any more serious injuries. He vanished into the jungle
as fast as he had appeared.
Several minutes later, a Lambda-class shuttle hovered over the
jungle canopies. It unfolded its wings, ignited the sublight engines
and left Jorol II - onboard a disc with data that would chang the
outcome of the battle between Clan Scholae Palatinae and Clan Satal
Keto.
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