Eriadu was an ugly planet. Dull and grey and boring, pockmarked with messy urban sprawl and polluted seas. It shouldn't be a difficult target: security was not what is should have been, and the PDF wouldn't be expecting him. Eriadu had been staunchly Imperial, and Leopard's information claimed that those sentiments were far from dead. Every government claims the people are on their side, obviously, but the data seemed credible. Then again, he wouldn't come along if there weren't Jedi present. It should be interesting: a distraction, an appetizer, before the main course.

He was in the rear of the freighter the Commodore had commandeered. His armor was on, the mottled plates silent and gleaming while he did what all good soldiers do before a fight: cleaned his weapons. He brushed the barrel of his wrist-flamethrower for a third time. He triple-checked his blasters, cleaned the bores and checked the batteries. Grenades were counted and double-counted, and his other more esoteric gadgets were run through with an eye for minute detail. He ran through diagnostics on his augmentations, and thanked providence for the all-green report. He saved his revolvers for last, polishing the already mirror-bright metal and loading the brass and steel rounds one at a time, not without a touch of relish.

Ahead of him in the ship, two hundred Stormtroopers and another two hundred recruits, all with their assigned duties. Come planetfall, they'd all have their own duties. He'd be operating on his own: not his preference of course, especially in close quarters, but the brass figured he was more than enough to handle the Knight and Padawan that were meant to be on planet.

Leopard felt the rumble of compressing atmosphere, and stood up. It was time: he was descending above the capital spaceport, and could hear past the thick door the sounds of clanking boots and muffled, tinny voices. He pushed through the door, and entered the makeshift hanger, the main cargo hold expanded and retrofitted to hold a dozen transports, and his sleek personal vessel. He climbed into the sleek flying-V shape, folding the wings down as he powered the extraordinary engine, watching the bay doors open in front of him.

"Leopard-1, this is Alfa-1. Captain has cleared you for exit. Strike for the Emperor." A voice cracked through his helmet speakers. He keyed the response.

"Understood Alfa. Exiting". His voice surprised him slightly, the deep and rough timbre echoing familiarly within the metal casing.

He thumbed the thrust forward slightly, narrowly slipping past a troop carrier and out, past the flames of entry and far above the Capital Building.

The Hunt begins again.

Of course, he had suggested a bomb. He always did, and it was always worth considering. There wasn’t much a Jedi could do to stop a ball of antimatter annihilating above them, and most couldn’t see the future and get out of there. It helped that they rarely were discrete in their presence, thanks in no small part to their tendencies towards burlap.
Of course, the Commodore had refused, and for good reason. Eriadu was too easily swayed to risk losing that advantage with large-scale destruction, and the Capital Building was of too much strategic importance to destroy for the sake of a pair of Jedi. And so, here he was.

The small ship was on autopilot as it descended towards the massive Capital tower and there landing pads it held. All but one were empty, the last holding a squat geometric corvette, likely the Jedi vessel. Leopard keyed the console, sending the landing documents, claiming he was a representative from Seswenna here for some talks over trade minutiae, and directed the ship to land. A familiar clunk-hiss, and the cockpit opened, out from which he dropped to the pad, his heavy armor making a significant crash after falling only three or four meters. He had purposefully left the screaming engine running. On the other side of the pad, a trio of human bureaucrats eyed him nervously. One of them reached for a communicator, but Leopard didn’t give him the chance to speak into it. Leopard reached to his lower back, and removed something the size of a blaster carbine, angular and jutting, grey with a black cylinder at its front. He squeezed the trigger, and the suppressed slugthrower spewed a cascade of tiny metal projectiles, slicing through the two men and one woman accompanied by the familiar rapid clicks of suppressed small explosions, the comparatively large rounds travelling at subsonic, but sufficiently deadly, speeds.

The three officials dead, Leopard tossed the suppressed weapon back into the cockpit, and listened to the engine turn itself off, leaving the pad in familiar silence. A silence which did not last for long, interrupted a handful of seconds later by the blaring of klaxons. Leopard thought he had failed to stop the man, but a distant explosion and the faint sound of firefights to the south corrected him. The Stormtroopers must have begun their operations, seizing government buildings and military installations all over the city. Leopard had wished they had waited: he needed to engage the jedi before they left the building, and having seen the size of their craft he knew they wouldn’t fly to conflict zones. They would just run there with the help of the force. Grimacing slightly at having to change his plan, he thumbed his communicator, and directed his ship to open fire on the corvette. The dorsal laser cannon wasn’t much against combat ships, but a civilian transport with its shields down would be turned to mince, and after a dozen ear-splitting shots, the corvette detonated.

The Jedi would have heard that.