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Chapter 7: "Infiltration", Sith style
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Part 3
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Fa'athra's palace
Nal Hutta
Quick and dirty it was. The Dark Side approved, which was telling. My fear and anger at the current situation nourished it. The prospect of sudden action kept it excited, no matter that the odds of getting out in one piece were about to greatly decrease.
We moved to an out-of-the-way corridor and waited. Soon enough, a young human man wearing a servant's clothes tried to dash past us. I nodded at Quinn, who moved like a striking snake from our hiding space. Malavai grabbed the unfortunate bastard in a chokehold and hauled him into our narrower corridor. Meanwhile, I did my best to use the Force to dampen any sound coming from this area.
I put my hand on the forehead of the struggling man and violently pushed with the Force. There was little technique in what I did and much crude force. I focused on the doors I needed to be opened, and how to do it, setting everything else aside.
Distorted visions, and echoes of terror passed by my awareness as I dig deeper, caring not for the effect my actions had on my victim. Eventually, an unusually rugged Neimoidian's face surfaced in front of my awareness, along with a chocked-off name. Veyaiko. Nohn Veyaiko – one of Fa'athra's lieutenants. I focused on the name, and face, digging deeper. Unfortunately, that was all the poor bastard could handle, and I suddenly found myself grasping at quickly dissipating shadows.
I let go of the technique, and my eyes quickly focused on the frozen terrified face of my victim. Blood liberally leaked from his eyes, nose, and ears. That was a tell-tale sign that the brute-force approach smashed his brain. While the poor bastard might not be clinically dead yet, for all intents and purposes that mattered, he was gone.
He still had a single-use left. Instead of letting him go, I focused on the hand I held his forehead with and pulled. The Dark Side rejoiced at absorbing what little life essence the corpse had, and soon, Malavai held in place a mummified corpse. On the other hand, I felt slightly revitalized.
"Let him go," I ordered.
Like Baras taught me, the most marked difference between a mere Acolyte like I still was in most respects, and a proper Sith worthy of the Darth title was the ability to practically multitask in combat as far as using the Force went. In that regard, my Master's brief lessons were invaluable, even if I still had a very long way to advance to feel relatively safe in my abilities.
That said, the Sith Academy taught us a broad assortment of abilities that would be incredibly useful in various contexts. Unfortunately, those of us who lived long enough to graduate were nowhere near skilled and experienced enough to effectively use most of them in the heat of combat. To do so, we needed further training and experience. While I enjoyed some of the latter, for the past decade, I lacked a source of proper training.
I focused on weaving a swirling ball of the Dark Side of the Force while doing my best to keep it under control. Intent and control were as important as skill and power in this regard. If it wasn't for the brief power boost I got from draining the life force of my latest victim, what I was doing would have left me needing rest. Instead, I had to struggle with the ravenous appetite of the Dark Side.
A swirling vortex of Dark Side energy consumed the dead man's head, disintegrating it in brilliant flashes of crimson light, quickly swallowed by pure darkness. The sphere expanded to consume his arms and torso, then contracted while shredding the rest of the mummy, leaving merely wisps of smoke and a fine sheen of dust scattering in the air.
The lack of a corpse left behind might buy us a few more minutes, I hoped.
"Our target is Nohn Veyaiko, one of the Hutt's lieutenants. He is the one responsible for the archives." I whispered to Quinn, who looked at me with appreciation at the power I just displayed.
"Then we will find it, My Lord. Failure is not an option."
I simply nodded and we went in search of a lone guard to grab.
We sneaked past groups of guards heading for the front of the palace. They ran to presumably provide security because of the gang battle, while the odd servant and droid moved around doing their business.
Eventually, we discovered a pair of Gamoreans standing guard at a stairway leading to the lower levers. A single-camera looked at them, providing additional security.
I looked at the picture for a few moments and hauled Quinn back to inform him of my plan.
"I'll use the Force to cause distraction and take out the camera. I want you to take out the closer Gamorean using your vibro-blade. I'll deal with the second one."
I submerged myself in the Force and squeezed the balls of the closer Gamorean. He squealed as if someone was gutting him. The other one jumped in surprise, just in time to receive a sloppy fist in the face, which send him stumbling back in shock. He made my job easier by drawing a blaster with a wide blade attached under its barrel. A rough twist, turn, and squeeze, made a good enough impression of a clumsy stunned brute shooting in the air, and accidentally hitting the camera. At that point I slammed him into the door-frame behind him with the Force, while Malavai struck the crippled Gamorean, who was on his knees, clutching his ruined manhood.
Quinn glanced at the wide blade of the other alien's blaster. He intentionally struck the neck of his target a few more times. The charade was crude. It wouldn't pass a proper professional inspection. However, for our purposes, it was good enough. The charade needed to hold until we were out of the palace.
I wasted no time and ran to the stunned Gamorean and slammed him into the wall with the Force to daze him. Then I placed my open palm on his small forehead and smashed my way through.
Nohn Veyaiko! Where is he?! I all but screamed mentally within the Gamorean's stunned mind. I soon could see pictures of the Neimoidian at the security door leading into the archives. Then I saw him again at apartments on the eighth floor of the palace.
That was good enough.
I stepped back, leaving the brain-damaged Gamorean to collapse. Malavai had used the blade attached to the blaster to chop further into the dead Gamorean, finishing that part of the charade. I nodded in approval, even though he couldn't see. I used the Force to smash the throat of my latest target, leaving him to quickly suffocate.
"Eight-floor apartments," I told Malavai, and we hurried up as fast as our stealth equipment could allow. On the way there, we had to step out of the way of a security detail racing towards the Gamorean's position.
The time it took them to react wasn't particularly good, I noted. In fact, after dealing with the Neimoidian, a visit to the security center of the palace might be in order. That way, we could disrupt the coordination of the local goons.
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Part 4
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Fa'athra's palace
Nal Hutta
If there was one good thing about ancient buildings on Nal Hutta, which the locals used as crime-lord palaces, it was that they had more than enough stairways connecting every major part of the place. Elevators made for better choke-points, however, that worked both ways. Additionally, it was often expected that the people, and droids maintaining and cleaning any given place were better off out of sight and out of mind as anyone was concerned.
In my personal experience, the same was true for many Sith strongholds. The main difference in the Empire was the preference for large slow elevators reserved for staff use and usually stuck at the back of the buildings in question. They made for decent enough killing ground if they had to be defended. That said, some were pointlessly big enough to defeat that purpose by being able to bring up or down a lot of war-making equipment. Usually, droids soak up enemy fire.
We went up following a server droid, busy carrying a large tray with drink and food and muttering to himself in an unfamiliar language. It went straight past the eighth floor and kept climbing up. At the same time, we stacked near the door, and I used the Force to perceive the signature of anyone alive on the other side. Finding out active droids was much harder, and required a deeper concentration, however, it was possible to sense their energy fields as well.
A pair of large signatures shone brightly on the other side of the door – guards, obviously. There was no one else I could perceive in the corridor, though there were people and machines in the nearby rooms.
I shifted my focus on the still climbing droid and crudely grasped at the general area of its legs. That was just enough to make it stumble and fall back down the stairs, making quite the racket of clanging metal and shattering glass.
Loud grunts came from the other side of the door, and it quickly opened, revealing a pair of displeased Gamoreans. One remained near the door, while the other went up the stairs, squealing angrily.
We used the opportunity to slip by, while I was projecting an aura of there being nothing to see here, no sire.
As we went past the large alien, I could barely hear the droid try and explain itself, while the other Gamorean kept shouting at it.
Now that we were so close to an actual objective, exhilaration and fear rose in my chest. Focusing on the mission mostly kept my emotions in check. However, now the potential of failure was unsettling. After all, we not only had to get the way to open those doors from the Neimoidian! We had to do it in such a way, that we could get back down there without raising an alarm. At worst, we could afford to be detected on our way out, otherwise, our survival would be conditional more on local incompetence, rather than our skills.
The Dark Side bubbled, all but promising a bloody success if I fully surrendered to it, yet I knew that for a lie. I still lacked the training and experience to do this the hard way with a reasonable expectation of getting out in one piece.
Numbers could still overwhelm me relatively easily, and the damn Hutt had numbers to spare if he knew there was trouble afoot within his palace.
Yet, retaining a semblance of control was easier said than done, especially as of late.
I steeled myself and pushed my doubts aside. At any rate, if we failed this mission, getting killed by a Hutt's goons in combat would be mercy. What would happen when Baras got his hands on me if I didn't come through didn't bear thinking about. As they said in our messed-up Empire, the prospect of a torturous death had a way to focus a person's mind.
We finally got to the apartment door I saw in the Gamorean's memories and stacked on its sides. The plan was simple, which meant that fewer things could go wrong. We bust in, I use the Force to incapacitate everyone in the room for long enough, so Malavai could do some knife work. Then ravage the Neimoidian's mind for all I needed.
I quickly sliced the door open. While the lock was quite advanced, it was no match for state-of-the-art, Imperial Intelligence equipment. As soon as the door slid open with a quiet his, I dashed inside. The target turned around to look at the door. His two companions followed suit. They were a Human and a Duros in black armor, complete with hoods keeping their faces in shadow. I stopped behind a large table and raised my hands, channeling a large amount of Force energy. Before Baras' training, I would have been able to incapacitate two of the three targets, if going all out. Gripping all three and raising them in the air, to keep them relatively harmless while they choked, would have been simply too much for the concentration I could spare.
Quinn wasted no time. He charged forward, and his vibro-blade flashed. I could see him with my eyes, only after fresh blood splashed over his stealth field, briefly disrupting it.
Malavai tore his blade from the face of his dead target, and surged forward, going after the second guard. A slash cut the Duros' neck, and a stab made sure he was properly dead.
With those two done for, I slammed the Neimoidian into the floor, while still chocking him with a telekinetic grip. I also let the corpses collapse.
"There is a droid in here, dealt with," I ordered and strode to face Veyaiko. He was still clawing at his throat, trying to breathe. His terror at quickly suffocating was delicious to taste. I had to shake myself and focus, instead of continuing to enjoy the sense of power rushing through me. I put my head on his forehead and pushed. The last thing I saw before diving into his mind, was Veyaiko's eyes growing even wider in sheer terror.
I dug until I could see blurred images of the armored door. They soon cleared up, and I observed Veyaiko enter a brief code, then swiping his left arm over a scanner. Focusing on that, I got a brief flicker of a needle puncturing skin – a sub-dermal chip acting as a key-card. That was sneakier than I would have expected from a bunch of gangsters.
I focused back on the image of the code, memorizing it, then pushed deeper, trying to find out anything about the security of the archives. I got a brief impression of turrets slipping down from the ceiling and a few droids rolling out from ports built into the walls before there was only a void staring me in the face. I let go of the brain-dead Neimoidian and pulled out a datapad, where I quickly wrote down the code just in case.
As far as the chip went, I drew and ignited my lightsaber, severing Veyaiko's left arm at the elbow – that would have to do.
I felt Quinn coming back at that point.
"The droid is dealt with, my Lord."
"We've got what we need. Let us get this done."
We've stretched our luck to the limit already, after all.