Outer Rim
Saleucami System
In high orbit over Saleucami
Training Deck onboard the Bulwark, Imperial II-class Star Destroyer

A single droid floated in the air over the sparring cage in which stood a single man, Sergeant Conor. He was wearing pants but no shirt, leaving visible the yellow tattoo of a horned serpent on his right pec. His left arm and shoulder were entirely cybernetic, a mark which lacked a synthskin covering that would have made it appear natural. It was instead covered by dark gray armor plates which were intricately segmented at the joints. Similar plates were fastened to both his right arm and hand, but actual skin could be seen beneath the plates. An open-faced helmet of the same dark material covered his head. Two simple sparring droids stood motionless in front of Conor. They were slender, skeletal in appearance, and did not have any mounted weaponry.

The droids sprang to life.

Conor leapt toward the left one, swinging with his cybernetic arm. His mechanical hand impacted with the droid's head smashing it. The droid collapsed to the deck. The second droid quickly swung at Conor with its spindly arm. He quickly shifted his hips to the right, blocked the arm up with his armored natural arm and continued shifting his hips, following through a straight left into the torso of the droid. His fist snapped through the droid's narrow torso. It collapsed to the deck, only a couple wires keeping it from being in two completely separate pieces. Conor turned back around and raised his arms in triumph as the second droid still twitched on the deck.

Applause came from outside the cage.

There stood Agent Sluka in a standard gray green Imperial uniform with a blaster on his hip. A large pouch was fastened to Sluka's belt on his backside. He towered over another officer who was standing on his right. Like Agent Sluka, this officer wore a gray green Imperial uniform with a blaster on his hip. His uniform was immaculately pressed which naturally complemented his short cropped black hair and smooth face. His black boots shone from a fresh polish. On Sluka's left stood Doctor Asimka with a datapad in her hand. Her long blonde hair was in a bun and she was dressed in a white blouse covered by a lab coat with a short black skirt beneath which revealed her long athletic legs.

"You don't need his shirt to be off to gather data, do you?" Agent Sluka asked Doctor Asimka.

"I do for the visual data I want to gather," she answered with a smile.

The second officer laughed. "Sluka, you haven't changed a bit since our days in the ISB Academy."

"Did you think I would, Rison?" Sluka answered.

"No," Rison answered with another laugh.

"I'm still here!" Sergeant Conor yelled at the three outside the cage. Doctor Asimka simply pressed a button on her datapad.

A blaster bolt issued from the hovering droid and struck Conor on top his helmet.

Conor ducked instinctively from the impact, then stood tall again and smiled.

"How well will that work with a real blaster bolt instead of a training one?" Rison asked as he leaned forward looking at the blast bolt's impact point on Sergeant Conor's helmet.

"That was a real blaster bolt," Doctor Asimka answered.

"What?" Sergeant Conor asked loudly.

"You heard me," she snapped back with a smile. "Your helmet is composed of Bespar, the same as your new arm and the armor on your old one." She turned back to Rison. "I fabricated the alloy myself."

"Bespar?" Rison asked.

"My secret," Doctor Asimka answered with a white smile. Conor walked over behind her and leaned over her right shoulder. She reached up with her hand and cupped his exposed chin.

"An alloy fabricated by the artificers of Mandalore," Agent Sluka replied. "It's why their armor is so durable. It can at least partially absorb a lightsaber strike." He turned to Doctor Asimka. "Why are you making it for us?" he asked.

"My family left Mandalore long ago," she answered. "But we continued to fashion armor for bounty hunters from Mandalore who sought us out." She paused for a moment. "But Mother wanted me to be a Doctor. We compromised and I became a cybernetic surgeon. A damn good one at that."

"You still haven't answered my question," Agent Sluka pressed.

Conor frowned but it changed back to a smile when Doctor Asimka patted his cheek lightly. "I figured out a process for actually manufacturing Bespar on a larger scale as opposed to individual hand-crafted items," Asimka continued. "In my opinion, my hand-crafted work is superior to what most artificers can do, but none of them know the process I've developed. Working for a cybernetic company gives me the opportunity to develop and test the process."

"And they let you out of their sight for this piece of junk?" Agent Sluka added, pointing to Conor. Asimka simply smiled and patted his cheek again.

"I guess I got what she wants," Conor added with a smile.

"You wanting to bang the Sarge here still doesn't explain why Mohrg Cybernetics let you go," Agent Sluka stated. "Unless…they don't know! You've been working on your process beneath their nose without them realizing it."

Doctor Asimka's smile widened, beaming white.

"You should get into the Empire's Advanced Weapons Project," Rison gleefully added.

Her smile dropped but Agent Sluka quickly raised his hand, drawing Rison's gaze back to him, before the officer noticed. "She'd get buried in the bureaucracy there, lost in the shuffle," Sluka said. "Once fully developed, she can go from there."

Rison simply nodded.

Doctor Asimka gave a slight nod of acknowledgement in appreciation of Sluka's distraction. "It seems that for some reason Logistics has placed a complement of Imperial Army troopers from Albin 2 onboard the Bulwark instead of a bunch of those bucket head Stormtroopers," Agent Sluka said. He raised both his hands in a questioning manner. "So, how is it?"

Rison looked back and forth between Sergeant Conor and Asimka and then returned his gaze to Sluka. "I have to admit, I hated it…at first," he said with a straight face. "They don't obey my commands the same way that Stormtroopers do and that bothered me a lot."

Rison's straight face grew into a smile.

"So, I asked myself," Rison continued. "What would the great Malgo Sluka do?"

"And what would this magnificent man do?" Doctor Asimka asked with more than a hint of sarcasm.

"He would personally work with the troopers to build a rapport with them," Rison said. "So, I did. And it worked."

"Of course, you didn't do so nearly as well as the great Malgo Sluka would have done," Agent Sluka answered. "Right?"

"Oh, of course not," Rison laughed.

"I thought so," Sluka added. "Since you've gotten so good at building a rapport with those around you, I'm hoping you will smooth over this requisition I'm making for the Bulwark's Commander."

"What requisition is that?" asked Rison.

"Move the Bulwark along Gideon's run to near the Sariffa system and then drop me off," Agent Sluka said. "Drop me off with Sergeant Conor and Doctor Asimka as well as a shuttle."

"Wow," Rison exclaimed. "On what authority is this requisition based?"

"ISB High Command," Agent Sluka answered.

"I guess I better get on that," Rison said then nodded to both Sergeant Conor and Doctor Asimka. "We will discuss this more later, Agent Sluka" Rison turned and left the sparring facility.

"Doctor Asimka," Agent Sluka said. "Would you ensure that the facility is locked." She nodded and turned away. "I assume the hover droid is also being used to block surveillance so that your experiments are kept secret."

"Of course," she answered as she neared the exit.

"What is this about," Conor asked Agent Sluka, a grin starting to form on his face.

Agent Sluka reached around his back and into the pouch on his belt. From it he drew a curved hilt with no blade.

Sergeant Conor looked at it for a moment. "That's shaped like your Dad's lightsaber hilt but looks like a toy."

"It is," Agent Sluka answered. "It's a training saber built into a Shoto hilt."

"Where'd you get it?" Conor asked.

"I talked a clerk into borrowing it for me from an evidence locker at High Command," he answered. "It was logged into the locker as a theater prop."

"Was she pretty?" Conor asked.

"Of course, she was," Sluka answered with a smile as he ignited the training saber.

"That sounds like something your Dad would have done in the stories I heard about him when we were growing up on Albin 2," Conor said with a smile. "Next thing, you'll be asking to be jumped into the Horned Serpents."

Thus ends Episode 3 of The Adventures of Agent Malgo Sluka, ISB