Objective: Sabotage
Foe:
Darth Daiara
Jedi Strike Team Vos
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Zaavik Dagoth,
Allyson Locke
Face to Face
The blip of a radar punctuated the silence periodically. The expected note, the same low-pitched pulse as it ever was, faded into the hangar control room's background like wallpaper. The officer leaning against the radar machine barely noticed the noise as it went off, time after time after time, again and again without fail.
"Hey Xin, catch the game last night?" Strata came in as the door opened and closed again with a quiet swoosh.
"Sure have," the officer perked up from his station.
"The Grotworms owned that arena. Showed those Shyracks what for, they did."
"Yeah, lost me a solid fifty credits is what they did," he sighed and turned back to the circular radar motion.
Strata's arrival and shift start usually marked a turning point for radar duty, though not today.
"You bet against them?" He continued as he took his seat. "What lazerbrain bets against the, and I quote, 'most winningest team in the entire history of Huttball'?"
"This one."
Xin let himself sink into his chair in an exaggeration of his defeat. As he did, however, the radar produced a loud whine, causing him to startle. His elbow slipped beyond the radar's table, and his face fell face-first into the console. The screen produced a loud crack that made both officers jump in their seats.
"Sithspit!" Xin yelled.
They spent the next few moments in silence, staring intently at the radar machine.
The whine was gone. The radar broke.
"Chit, chit, chit!" Xin cursed. He started flipping switches and hitting buttons all over the console. Strata leapt from his seat and knelt beside the machine. The two fumbled around it, scrambling to find a way to restore its functionality.
"What in Corellia's Seven hells was that?"
"I don't know! I don't care! I'm dead, man! Dead!"
The X-Wing's modified landing gear stuck to the rock better than ten metric tons of deadweight should allow. Its cockpit depressurized with a hiss. A relentless hail of sand knocked against the canopy. It gave way to the deafening howl of the raging storm as the canopy lifted, instantly covering the cockpit's inside with a thin layer of red dust.
Bernard didn't mind. Most of it wouldn't stick anyways. With one hand on the seatbelt, and the other firmly grabbing the cockpit's side, he positioned his feet against the edge of the control panel. He took a breath through the cloth wrapped over his lower face and pushed against it as hard as he could.
His legs kept him trapped against the stiff cushioning of the seat, pinning him in place. He let the breath out and tapped the seatbelt release. Immediately, gravity kicked in, but his body didn't budge from the seat.
He didn't linger in the sense of relief for long. Carefully, he grabbed the side of the cockpit with his now free hand and began to release the tension in his legs.
His grip was firm, and with cat's grace, he lowered himself out of the pilot's seat and beyond the cockpit's sides, until his body swayed in the wind outside the flipped X-Wing. Seeing the starfighter upside down, stuck to the underside of a cliff face, filled him with a certain amount of anxiety. He glanced away from it, towards its nose tip, then beyond at the cliff itself.
The orange-red stone became his first sight of the Sith's homeworld. He felt a small part of him deflate at that realization. In all his years of anticipation for this moment, he'd never envisioned the first glimpse of the Sith's ancestral homeworld like this. Throughout his youth, he assumed his first glimpse of Korriban would include a battlefield of some sort, not what amounted to a big rock.
It was cold too. The holos made Korriban look like a superheated desert, with a relentless sun that looked to break the planet's inhabitants more than it wanted to give warmth. But the wind flowed in frigid streams around his fingers, numbing them to the touch of the cockpit.
He took it as his cue to keep going.
His fingers, still burning from the frigid air, were slowly regaining some feeling as they held the access panel. Taking as much care as his numbed fingers allowed, he placed the cover back into its socket to seal away the entrance again.
It slid into place with a quiet click, and the wind's whine faded to a low hum. Sand finally stopped streaming into the tunnel. A cloud of it already cast dancing shadows in the dim, red glow of the ceiling lights as it settled on the floor. The target was somewhere at the end of this length of corridors.
Taking what might be his last moment of calm for a while, he shook loose all the dust from his clothes in the process and began to check his equipment. He'd been prudent enough to keep the charges hidden beneath his navy blue overcoat, along with his lightsabre. The matte black weapon wasn't the sabre he had built as a Padawan, that one had disappeared into the oceans of Brentaal, rather it had been the sabre of a long-dead ancestor.
But it was unlikely to see any use today, not that he had ever used it before. Instead, he unholstered two blasters. They were heavy models with low fire rates but packed a serious punch. He'd also gone to great lengths to mod both with a noise reduction field specifically for this mission.
Satisfied that his equipment was in order, he started down the corridors.
He dropped to the floor without causing a sound between two holo-bookshelves at the back of the library.
Bernard found himself on the second floor. The library hall was vast and filled to the brim with all kinds of forbidden texts and sacrilegious knowledge. This was his target, the future of the Sith.
With a quick push through the Force, he slid the panel over the access tunnel entrance above him and crouched against one of the massive shelves. He holstered one blaster and reached into his overcoat to pull one of the explosives free. The cylinder fit neatly into his palm, with a flat side that held a magnetic hook.
He regarded it for several moments. Up until this point he'd never actually held anything akin to it, especially not while deep inside hostile territory.
But he shook away that thought and went to work while the library was still empty.
The charges weren't very complicated to set up. The magnetic hook attached to a wall or shelf and a few taps activated the timer and primed the explosive. The timer ensured that, even in the event of his death or capture, the charges still went off. That inevitability was far from comforting.
Once the last one was in place and doubly checked it was time to proceed to the second part of his mission. For that, he would have to head to the central information storage.
He started backtracking to his point of entry but froze in place a moment later.
The library's doors swooshed open just below him, and the sound of footsteps echoed, along with voices.
"You just wait, when I become a Sith I'll show that traitor
Irveric Tavlar what we can do!" The voice was too high-pitched to belong to one of the warriors or the security forces.
"And that coward
Ryv Karis too!" Another of the group giggled.
Bernard didn't dare to move in the shadows above.
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