[center][h3]Lieutenant Satra Maral[/h3][/center]
[hr]

The secluded hanger bay echoed with low laughter. Laughter at the same old jokes that they'd tell before each mission. Maral had learned that they never really changed. The fear never did. It was only redirected into better uses than panic. Even the Jedi felt fear, she'd seen that herself. They weren't ready for a war. They'd been too busy playing at being heroes. The battlefield was no place for heroes. The universe didn't need genocidal cultists playing at gods, it needed stability, and it needed order, [b]real[/b] order far beyond the corrupt politicians hiding on Coruscant. The Republic was a rotten, diseased thing. It had been dying for thousands of years. It had to be stopped. The universe had to be cured of the sickness of the Jedi and the politicians they had ensnared. She was the tool, the scalpel that would separate the diseased tissue, that would save what could be saved, and dispose of the rest. She didn't need a code to tell her what to do. She had orders. She had purpose. She had seen what mercy the Republic offered. She had seen what justice meant on Coruscant.

Familiarity brought Maral back from her thoughts. Familiar patterns of movements. Familiar conversations. Familiar gear checks. Familiar weapon checks. Familiar enemies. Maral and the 975th were old hands playing at an old game. There was comfort in the familiarity of it all. There was nothing to question or doubt while on a mission. There was no time and no place for hesitation. Not if you wanted to live. Not if you still wanted to play in the big leagues. Maral felt focused. She felt ready. They were ready. It had been a rush job by necessity, but that was nothing new. The war might have gone cold for everyone else, but for the 975th, the war was still burning brightly.

The orders she had received were simple and she rattled them off in her head without a moment of hesitation.

[i]Objective 1: Cripple the Hammerhead carrying the prisoner by targeting critical systems of the cruiser.
Objective 2: Capture the RSIS operative located aboard the ship.[/i]

Accomplishing the mission however, was not simple. Retrieving a prisoner from a Hammerhead cruiser full of Jedi with adequate time and proper resources would have been difficult. It would be even more difficult with the hastily assembled force that Captain Corvinian commanded. Maral trusted that the soldiers of the 975th would rise to the challenge and she trusted Captain Corvinian, as much as she trusted any superior officer in Imperial Intelligence. She trusted the Sith warriors that stalked the Terminus cruiser far less. They were an uncertain variable in the equation. Capable, but exceedingly dangerous and unpredictable, even to loyal soldiers of the Empire. The rest of the forces assigned to the operation were a great disappointment to Maral. Mercenaries, green soldiers, and whatever criminal scumbags could be convinced to sign up. They would do as cannon fodder and not much else. The mere thought left Maral shaking her head in irritation. Working with amateurs was never fun.

Loading their gear into a waiting boarding shuttle, the Imperial Intelligence operators showed neither the unrestrained fear of the common troopers, nor the boundless emotion of the Sith warriors. Maral wouldn't have allowed either. There was no room for mistakes when you were hunting force users. You had to be thoughtless, formless, striking from the shadows, and operating on instinct alone. But most of all you had to be creative. If there was one thing Maral had learned about force users it was that they relied too much on the force. Whatever it was. They often forgot that there were different ways to solve a problem. They never seemed to expect clever use of explosives.

Decked out in darkened battle armor the operators of the 975th were ready for the corridor-to-corridor fighting that was sure to follow. Fighting in the cramped corridors of a space ship was never ideal. There would be no way to avoid casualties. The losses to the Empire would be horrendous. But it would be worth it. The Republic would lose something far more valuable. With no need for stealth, Maral had made sure that the 975h were fully equipped for battle. Heavy battle armor, blaster carbines, and personal energy shields. The very best technology that the Sith Empire could offer and then some. Maral shifted the disruptor rifle that she held in her own hands carefully, it would make short work of any shields, and shorter work of any organics. She had no need for feigned morality. There were no rules in battle. There was no consolation price for losing a war. You fought with all you had and worried about what was right later when all of your enemies were dead.

The 975th was prepared. She was prepared. They had requisitioned all the charges they could get their hands on. They had enough shaped charges to reduce the Republic spaceship to space debris should it be necessary. For any Jedi that survived the Sith warriors they had prepared a nasty combination of poison gas, sonic charges, and glop grenades. Apart from the prisoner, there would only be one survivor. There was a greater game afoot, beyond the Republic and the Sith Empire. The endless waltz of one intelligence agency trying to defeat another. Imperial Intelligence had planned a masterstroke, a final poke in the eye of the RSIS as they recovered the prisoner. They were going to flip an asset. They were going to use one of the RSIS's most trusted weapons to ruin them. It hadn't been hard. They had only needed to push the right buttons. One button as it turned out. They had only needed to find the right man. Maral would have smiled at the thought of pulling a fast one past the RSIS, had she permitted herself that trivial sort of dalliance.

"Any word from our contact, Lieutenant?" Second Lieutenant Diruno inquired with a respectful nod. As second in command of the 975th he'd been in the briefing with Maral and High Colonel Sarkin Ziracch. He knew as much as she did about the prisoner, the mission, and their contact in Republic space.

"Our contact has confirmed that the secondary target is broadcasting. The encryption is good, very good. Good enough that I almost wouldn't be the reports if I hadn't seen the code myself, but thanks to the information our contact has provided we've been accessing the data as soon as the RSIS, maybe sooner."

"Good, good. We'll need to move fast if we're to avoid getting caught any traps."

"We have additional electronic countermeasures in place. The second we breach the hull they'll be deployed by our own specialists."

"Do you think that's going to be enough to bag us a spiced up cybernetic slicer?"

"We'll soon find out," Maral answered, silencing Diruno with a quick gesture as an incoming transmission pinged her communicator.

[i]Lt. Maral. Operation is imminent. Official confirmation soon to follow. See that primary and secondary objectives are completed.[/i]

"975th," Maral began, addressing the Imperial Intelligence operators around her with a voice still full of ice. "We proceed as planned with Operation Harvest Moon."

Maral did not miss that Sergeant-Major Eldin broke into a broad smile, clapping his hands together with a relieved breath. The rest simply nodded, increasing the pace of their preparations She knew that Sergeant-Major Eldin had been itching for battle. He didn't believe in R&R. He said it made him too soft. The Zabrak was happiest when they were deployed on an operation. The more dangerous the mission and the worse the simulations that the Imperial Intelligence statisticians provided the 975th with were, the happier he became. He was a good soldier and that was all that mattered to Maral. It was the chief reason she didn't discipline him for his occasional outbursts of emotion. He was cold when it mattered. He was ice cold when he was pointing a blaster at the enemy.

"Prisoners?" The Sergeant-Major asked, turning an eye towards Maral.

"No," Maral replied tasting the word with the edge of her tongue. Murder. 

Without a pause, Maral brought up a holo-map of the ship with her wristlink. With the press of a button a preprogrammed set of assault routes appeared, "I want a clean sweep of the control room. We are going to take their generator offline, and then we're going to take out their life support systems one by one. The emergency generator should maintain artificial gravity and a breathable level of oxygen long enough for the others to complete their mission."

Centering the holo-map on an indistinct room located in the heart of the Republic ship Maral continued, "On our way off of the Republic ship we are going to pick up another prisoner. Alive, if possible."