As the Silent Fang entered the atmosphere of Ord Canfre. The family stood together on the bridge, watching as the ship descended down to the planet below. This planet was full of colossal Industrial factories, on an otherwise barren brown surface.
As planned, the cloaking device was on, as they landed the ship on the outskirts of the biggest city on the planet, where Imperial Intelligence had set up their secret surveillance system.
The ramp to the ship lowered, while Briza uttered a few firm words to the ship's personnel. "Remember! Keep the ship cloaked at all times." Together with her three family members, she ran out into a near black night, just slightly illuminated by orbiting moons.
As they ran in the cool night, using shadows and shades to make their approach invisible to the naked eye. Tikala began reaching out with the force, to get an inner image of the planet's state in the force. Whilst seemingly peaceful, she did get some odd small abnormal disturbances from some of the life forms in the city ahead. "There is something off on this planet, but is it bad? I know not." She thought to herself.
Using the force to cloak themselves further, the siblings headed unseen into the city, course set on the imperial intelligence hideout. They passed by dozens of huge durasteel made factories left and right. The noise from the factorie's machinery could be deafening loud at times, even from a long distance. "If we ever enter one of these factories, noise canceling headgear is definitely a requirement." Terrow mentally made a note to himself.
As they neared the coordinates to the hideout, hidden inside an old clothing manufacturing plant, they noticed a single short human female sitting just outside the entrance.
"This place is... off limit." Mumbled the most sluggish little human informer they have ever come across, she didn't even look them in the eyes as they approached her.
For not recognizing her as a Sith lord and for this disrespectful behavior, Briza slapped the informer on the cheek, resulting in the little human girl tumbling to the ground. But to the puzzlement of everyone, the little human didn't seem to have recognized that she had been hit, she slowly sat up again, as if she had just fallen over by herself.
"Please don't hit her again! She is not herself." Tikala begged, fearing Briza would further punish the poor soul.
"I can see that!" Briza irritatedly returned and harshly added. "And since you are so enlightened, could you please explain what this is?!"
Tikala reached out with the force, and what she saw, worried her greatly. "I am not sure... but I sense she has been mentally distorted by the darkside, I also sense others have shared her fate."
Briza made a growl. "Dammit! Everyone search the hideout, check all personnel."
As soon they entered the hideout, they found the whole team sitting motionless in their chairs and staring at a static monitor with empty expressions.
"My goodness! Who could have done this to them?!" Tikala uttered in shock. This was far worse than she had feared and she had absolutely no idea how to help them.
Terrow nodded in complete agreement. "Our Intel from Darth Imperious, suggesting that our team here had been compromised, were completely accurate."
"To say that the state of these informers is abysmal, is an understatement." Briza clarified with no objections heard.
Mathorn was shaking one of the informers, to see if it would react to him. "They barely seem alive." He muttered, as the informer just glanced at him, like he was of no importance in this realm.
"Terrow. See if you can use their equipment to set up a new surveillance system, the old one could be monitored." Briza ordered, as she began looking for possible clues of who had been her before.
"Yes sir." Terrow quickly replied and began his work. "Mathorn, will you help me carry these?" he asked, knowing that a little assistance would speed up his work a great deal.
"Sure." Mathorn answered with a smile and graped the needed equipment, while Terrow began to plug the spare equipment together.
In the meantime, Tikala looked at the informers to see if she could help heal the psyche of these people. Looking into their minds, revealed only twisted shards of their former personality. "I wish I had Mile'giko with me, she is a good healer," she mumbled to herself, as she pondered what to do next.
Looking around in the hideout, checking logs and small datapads, Briza found no sign of any outsider entering the building at any time, nor did she find any hint of violence. If it wasn't for the repeating stream of useless information, sent to imperial intelligence headquarter on Dromund Kaas, it would seem as if time had just stopped months ago. She turned around as she noticed Tikala walking towards her.
"Briza. I strongly believe they have been mind controlled and brainwashed from afar by the force. I have noticed all of them having mental links to some kind of higher entity, without commands from this entity, they can't function properly." Tikala unraveled in a heavy tone. "I also believe it was all orchestrated very quickly, like to terminate a potential threat in a preemptive strike of sorts."
"So they are in fact braindead. With only their body's still functioning." Briza commented, believing she understood the situation.
"You could say that. To me however, mentally turned off seems more accurate. Not that I know, if it would ever be possible to turn them back on again." Tikala softly explained.
Briza nodded in understanding. "That explains why I have seen no sign of battle, nor any sign of tampering with the equipment."
"But just to be sure, could you assist me in mind-probing the poor people? I only need you to use force cloaking, while I look into their minds." Tikala asked her sister, fearing this evil entity would otherwise sense her in the force.
"Very well." Briza agreed in a serious tone and added. "We do need to know how this being strikes out the way he does." And with that said, they went to work.
In the meantime. Terrow was focused on sending data to their ship outside the city, whereafter the ship in turn would be relaying the data directly to the Imperial intelligence on Dromund Kaas. But as he was about to ask Mathorn to hand him another datapad for data transfer, his brother was absent. He therefore plugged in a second pad himself and went to see where his jedi brother had gone.
As he looked around the compound. Terrow found Mathorn casually chewing on a piece of manufactured breed from a food stockpile. "Feeling hungry?" He said, more as a statement than a question.
"Their kitchen was open." Mathorn nonchalantly replied. "It tastes a bit bitter for some reason." he added while handing out another piece of bread towards his brother.
"No thanks, not really hungry." Terrow declined the offer with a simple hand wave. "Could you help a little more?"
Mathorn stopped his chewing for a second. "Oh! Sorry... yeah... sure⦠work work." He apologized and went back to work as a technical assistant.
After an hour of work has passed, Terrow receives a priority message, which only spells. "Get back to your ship, we have a lead." Before he could act however, Briza and Tikala were already in the room, with an expression that said, we know.
"We are moving out now!" Briza commanded hastingly.
Five seconds later they were all blazing through the cool night, back to their ship, speed enhanced and cloaked by the force.
Tikala was unhappy leaving the poor informers in their sorry state. But the sooner they could finish their mission, the sooner the informers could be transported home, where she hoped they would be cared for.
As the sun began to rise, they were safely back on board their ship. They now received detailed files on the bounty hunter guild called Tenkan Syndicate, their location and blueprint of the buildings superstructure. In addition, it also contained a list describing each individual member's rank and field of expertise.
Terrow was the first to speak, "So what would be the wisest way to approach the syndicate?"
"Even with our droids and twi'leks to support us, we are heavily out gunned," Briza commented.
"As far as we know, they don't expect us, stealth is our best tool." Tikala concluded to the best of her observation.
"We need to avoid these highly sophisticated sensor arrays, if a stealth mission is to be commenced." Briza pointed out in a warning.
"Could we use the droids to make a distraction of sorts?" Mathorn added in a chipper voice.
Briza gave him a skeptical look. "And that would distract their sensor arrays... for some reason?"
"That may not be such a bad idea actually." Terrow commented as he looked over the schematics and pointed to a number of power lines. "In case we are spotted, we could make an attack on the power lines connecting the building to the power plant outside the city."
"But we know they have an internal battery power generator, as an emergency backup. Meaning we would only have a few seconds before the backup kicks in." Tikala worriedly pointed out.
Briza thought for a moment. "That would require that we are able to disable their backup battery in that extremely narrow period of time."
Terrow looked over the possibilities. Hacking didn't seem possible, as their mainframe lied deep underground. He then had it, "Tikala, how deep a fall can you make without injuring yourself?"
Tikala was about to question his reasoning, when she noticed an air tunnel going all the way from the top to the bottom of the eighteen floor underground building. She smiled, when she finally replied, "Twice our scenario."
Terrow replied with a smile of his own, now that he believed he had found a way. "I got it! First, we arm the droids... I can program them to sabotage the power line at a specific time. Second, we then need to cut a hole in the top of the building, right over the intake fans. Third, when the power goes out Tikala jumps into the air tunnel." He turned to look directly at his jedi sister. "Once you are at the bottom, hurry to the room that houses the battery. You only have to insert a dataspike into the batteries controller to set it out of action."
"The rest of us attack from the outside then?" Mathorn asked, figuring this was where he was needed most.
"Too risky. Since power is permanently out, it would be safer to use their secret back door on the other side of the building. Once we are all inside, we will systematically take out their troops, capture their leader and make the Tenken syndicate surrender unconditionally to us." Terrow laid out the remainder of his master plan.
Briza nodded her approval of the plan. "I don't believe the Syndicate anticipates anyone knowing the floor plans to their headquarters."
"That's why intelligence is so crucial." Terrow commented in good spirit.
"When do we commence the plan?" Tikala asked a bit tired, feeling a good meditation would do wonders to prepare her for a successful execution.
"An hour from midnight, this very night. Which should give us plenty of time to prepare and rest." Terrow informed. He then went straight to work on reprogramming the droids, and later making a dataspike specifically for Tikala.
Tikala of course went off to meditate in peace. But was stopped by Briza in the doorway to the bed room. "Before you get too comfortable. How about we practice our force link abilities before the mission begins?" Briza suggested with a hint of a demand in her voice.
Tikala nodded in acknowledgement. "Alright, as long as I get an hour to center myself, before we leave the ship." She compromised, understanding a little assurance of their force connection would be beneficial and not a hindrance in the midst of danger. Although she still felt a need for a little meditation, after seeing the state of those poor informers, to clear her mind before the mission.
"Very well." Briza smiled satisfied. "Mathorn you are in this too." She added to make her brother follow as well.
"Yes Lord Sister, my life is yours to eat." Mathorn muttered for the fun of it.
Briza didn't care much for his comment, nor his tone. She just led them to the cargo area, where they had the most room for training.
