DISCLAIMER: The usual disclaimer. You know, the one about this being a humorous, fictitious piece of work and it is not intended to offend anyone.
The Gambit (Part 2)
“Well, well, well.” said a familiar voice. “I’m highly surprised to see you Ben.”
“Theoden. They shouldn’t have sent boy to do a man’s job.” Ben said shortly, slowly reaching for the monofilament kitana strapped to his back.
“A boy? Is that the best you have Ben? I thought you’d be able to do better than that.” Theoden paused. “Don’t bother going for the sword, because we don’t need to be violent. Besides, thievery, it doesn’t become you.”
Ben didn’t bother to listen as he drew the kitana from behind his back. Theoden pulled the oversized Bic pen from behind him as well and started twirling it like a pole arm. “Ben, you shall soon see that the pen is mightier than the sword.”
At the sound of Ben declaring the mission compromised, Harel flipped a switch on his arm. “Frack!” Piers yelled. “Huh?” Cypher replied. “I lost Harel, he was right there on the screen, now he’s gone.” Piers explained.
Cypher looked at the readouts a little more closely. “Chameleon device.” He finally declared, “If he doesn’t move too fast, he’ll be fine. It bends light and mimics the surroundings.” Piers let out a slow breath of relief.
In a sweeping gesture with his arms, Ben took a defensive stance. The idea was to not kill anyone, unless there was no other choice. Theoden cautiously approached Ben, sizing up the situation, deciding how best to take him alive.
Harel flattened himself against the wall, he smelled the guards long before he heard them. “Damn cheap Altarian cologne.” Harel thought. As the guards approached the corridor intersection, Harel came about with his forearm to the chest, then clipped the first guard across the neck, rendering him unconscious. By this point, the chameleon device faltered due to the quick movements, exposing Harel to the second guard. With a quick sweep of his legs, the second guard went down to the floor. With a diving motion, he drove his elbow into his chest. “Take a nap.” Harel said shortly, as he drove the wind out of the second guard. With the same motion, he rendered the second guard unconscious. Just as the guard lost consciousness, he keyed his radio, “Chameleon!” “Damn.” muttered Harel.
With a dual handed motion, Theoden lunged at Ben, striking with one end of the Big Bic, then the other. Ben easily deflected both of these. Spinning himself, he took a swipe at Theoden’s feet, trying to knock him off balance. Theoden, easily countered with the end of his Bic, then tried to swipe at Ben’s feet.
Ben leapt backwards in the air, summer salting as he did so. Quickly he turned around and ran towards the wall. Defying gravity, he ran up the wall and flew backwards over Theoden. Apparently not all of his Force powers went dormant. However, Theoden was ready for this and with a quick motion, caught Ben on his decent. With two rapid attacks, Theoden was able to clip Ben, first in the legs, then in the shoulder. The damage caused by the attack made Ben falter and fall straight to the ground. Hitting the ground with a resounding thud, Ben tried to counter attack. “I don’t want to hurt you Ben, please, just surrender now.” Theoden said solemnly.
Harel slowly made his way to his objective., the chameleon device, now was no longer an option. He had to rely solely on wit and instinct. This, he was trained for. Of course, having the guidance of Cypher and Piers was an advantage too. “Green, there’s a closet up on your right, about 100 meters, I suggest strongly, you take it.” Piers said. Harel found it and ducked into it. As he closed the door, he heard the guards walking by.
Wombat’s voice came over the radio, “Use of extreme violence is only authorized in response. Do not fire unless fired upon, is that clear?” “Green, affirmative.”
“Brown, affirmative.” Ben muttered, dodging the giant Bic pen as Theoden spun around trying to counter Ben’s attack. Ben spied a chair off to his left, he slid towards it and kicked it in Theoden’s direction. Theoden almost didn’t see it, but smashed it to pieces with a single blow with the edge of the Bic.
“You can do better than that, Ben.” Theoden said shortly. “Theoden, I really don’t want to have to kill you, but I will if I must.” Ben answered, this time thrusting forward with the kitana. Theoden easily parried this thrust and with a quick spin of the Bic, and was able to disarm the kitana from Ben, sending it flying across the floor.
“Check the closet.” the guard said. “What?” the other guard replied. “Check the damn closet.” The other guard nodded and approached the closet. Harel could see him approaching the closet through the crack in the door. Harel waited until the guard was close enough to the door, then in a swift motion, Harel opened the door, smashing the guard in the face. As he stumbled back, the second guard drew his weapon and leveled it at Harel. Harel dove to the ground as he fired. Rolling towards the second guard, he grabbed the first guard. As the second guard fired again, Harel used the other guard, shielding him from the blast of the disruptor.
Ben scrambled for the katana. However, Theoden was already ahead of him. Theoden raised the Bic up into the air and slammed it down into Ben’s leg. The blow wasn’t too severe, but enough to make Ben wince in pain. In a swift motion, Theoden took the other end of the Bic and slammed it hard into Ben’s shoulder, nearly dislocating it. Ben couldn’t suppress the pain this time and yelled. “I’m telling you Ben, just give up now, and I can spare your life.” Theoden reiterated.
Throwing the dead guard forward, he caught the live guard off balance, dislodging the weapon from his hand. Harel kicked the weapon out of range. The guard went to dive for it, however, Harel was quick on the draw, stunning the guard, knocking him unconscious After dragging both bodies into the closet and fusing the lock, Harel found that he was only a few doors down from the room where the scientist that created the technology.
Ben was totally on the defensive at this point. Theoden kept hammering him with the giant Bic, trying to render the ex-Jedi unconscious, hoping to capture, perhaps even turn Ben against the Special Forces. Blow after blow kept hammering his body. Ben slowly made his way to the kitana, but rapidly judged he wouldn’t make it before he reached a state of unconsciousness. The level of pain kept increasing, almost to the point where he couldn’t take it any more. Ben vaguely remembered what Piers had told him,
“I’m going to place 3 vials in your katana scabbard. The first one will be marked, ‘In a jam.’, the second, ‘Really could use some help’ and the third ‘I’m really desperate’.” As Ben was taking a beating, he reached behind him. He hit the secret compartment that Piers had modified into the scabbard of the kitana and reached in.
Harel worked his way down the hall to door in question. He looked at the door, analyzing the lock system. Reaching into his side pack, he pulled out the lock picking tools, and went to work on the two locks that held the door. Once the locks were released, he placed the tools back into his side pack and drew his weapon. This was the tricky part of the operation. There were certainly guards in this room, more probably concealed.
Ben easily found the vial marked “In a jam”. He quickly popped open the top, while rolling on the floor, avoiding the increasing blows from Theoden. “Stop squirming Ben, you are worse than a fish out of water.” Theoden said. “That may be true, Theoden, but you can’t seem to hit the broad side of barn.” Ben answered, downing the red and blue substance. Shaking his head, he muttered “Damn you Piers, a Ventilator.”
Harel cracked the door open for a peek of the room. Quickly he analyzed the situation. He saw someone move off to his right and saw him motion to someone across the room. Harel silent keyed his radio. “What do we have here? I count at least 2 people.” Cypher entered a few key strokes on the computer, pulling up the infrared of the room. “You’ve got one guy on your right, two on the left. The mark is in the master bedroom on the far side of the room.” “Roger that.” Harel opened the door a little wider. He would take the guy on the right first, use the furniture as cover and take out the other two, piece of cake really. He dove into the room, hit the floor rolling. Turning he fired on the first guard, dropping him like a rock. Suddenly, the room exploded with gun fire.
The effects of the Ventilator kicked in pretty quick and Ben started feeling his latent Force powers slowly returning. He’d have to fight for control of them with every ounce of strength. Strength that Theoden was slowly beating out of him. Theoden was getting ready to deliver another blow. As he brought the giant Bic down to attack Ben, Ben grabbed the Bic and twisted his body, sending Theoden off balance. With his free hand, he reached for the kitana across the room. Trying to concentrate, Ben pulled at kitana, except it went too far past Ben and now was on the other side of the room.
“Been a while since you used them, eh Ben? Can’t control it now. Such a pity. You should have never left.” Theoden said with a slight chuckle in his voice. “And staying would do what for me? Your employer is in the habit of making evil weapons, oh, but that’s OK, especially for someone with high morals and ethics, right?” Ben answered with an edge of bitterness on his voice. Theoden pummeled Ben with another vicious attack, saying “I really don’t want to do this to you Ben, but you are leaving me no choice.”
Harel spun around quickly to meet the incoming fire. He fired three times in quick succession, suppressive cover fire only, as he made his way to the couch, providing him some resemblance of cover. Carefully he took a look over the top of the couch, only to be met with intense fire. More than the two Cypher said was there. “I thought there were only two of them.” Harel muttered into the radio.
“Frack!” Piers yelled into the radio, punching at his keyboard. “There’s a dampening field, concealing an attached room. I can’t read into there. My guess is it’s a barracks of some type. Get out there as quickly and we’ll regroup.” The line was silent. Harel spent the duration of the conversation trying to fend off the attack. He quickly fired a semi-auto volley into the room where at least two of the attackers were. The return fire was not as intense from that direction, Harel must have taken out one of them. However, he didn’t catch the two that were repelling down to the balcony. Just as Piers was instructing him to retreat, Harel took a shot that knocked him out.
Theoden was in the process of delivering another blow to Ben, when Ben threw his legs up to block the incoming attack. This caught Theoden off guard and he was left staggering backwards, trying to regain his balance. Ben took the opportunity to try for the kitana again. He closed his eyes in concentration as he reached for the kitana again. Theoden was still trying to regain his balance when Ben summoned the kitana. Ben’s control was rapidly deteriorating and the kitana went errant. Stumbling backwards, Theoden’s head connected with the hilt of the kitana, dropping him to the ground like a wet rag. “Next time, bring a bigger pen.” Ben said.
Harel woke up tied up in a chair next to another gentlemen. “Oh.” Harel said, rubbing his head. “Who are you?” the bearded man asked. “Does it really matter? Who are you?” Harel countered. “Well, if you must know, I’m Johan.” Harel nodded, this was the man he was sent to eliminate. Harel smiled.
“What’s so funny?” Johan asked. “Well, I was sent to kill you, however, the people you’ve helped are going to do that for me.” All Harel had to do, was figure out how he was getting out of there.
Ben was attaching the cryptography device Piers had given him to the vault in front of him. Piers assured him that there was no way the cipher lock couldn’t be cracked. He keyed in the sequence to start the decryption process. Piers was monitoring the situation from orbit. “Crap.” Piers muttered. Cypher took a look at him. “The encryption is harder than the intel indicated.” Piers said, going to work at the computer. He was trying to add extra processing power to the hand held device, hoping to up the bit cipher.
“Forget it.” Ben said in the radio. “It looks like a custom cipher lock, because it’s nothing I’ve seen.” Ben continued, pointing the small wireless camera in the direction of the vault. If Ben could just dislodge the locking mechanism, then the door would open. Pretty simple, Ben thought. He went to work on trying this angle with Force powers. He reached out his hand and started to pull at the electric tumbler.
Harel went to work on the bindings that were keeping his hands restricted. In a matter of moments, he had them unlocked. He deliberately left his hands in the loosened bindings, knowing that his captors would soon return. And they did.
“What is your purpose here?” the interrogator asked. “Oh, pretty simple, really.” Harel said. He smiled, then continued, “I’m here to retrieve what is ours, but since I’m here, I’m adding eliminating you from the presence as well.” In a swift motion, he got up, released the bindings and threw the chair at his interrogator. As the larger man started to fall to the ground, he drew his weapon. Leaping to action, Harel dove for the weapon. As he went to disarm the interrogator, the weapon discharged twice. The second shot killing the interrogator. “Truth hurts.” Harel said on his way out, weapon in hand. Harel turned to look at Johan and found he had a gaping hole in his head.
Ben was struggling with the lock, when he reached into the scabbard again. This time he found the second vial “Could really use some help.” He took a closer look at the vial, the fine print read, “Daisy Cutter”. “Great.” muttered Ben as he took a swig. The Daisy Cutter was another one of Piers’ concoctions. It was created as a dare by Ben and Piers’ mother-in-law was the inspiration. The Cutter hit him hard, and he went back to work on the locking mechanism. The vault started shaking at its foundation. This was not the desired result Ben was hoping for. He pulled at the lock one more time, dislodging the vault from its housing.
Harel just walking into the room with Ben when he saw the vault floating about 2 meters above the floor. “What an uplifting experience, Ben.” Harel said. “Nice to see you too.” Ben said curtly. “Problems with the lock?” Harel questioned. “Something like that. It’s a custom job and I have to resort to Plan B, with a little help.” Ben answered with a slight slur to his voice.
“Obviously.” Harel said. Ben reached into the hidden compartment once again. He was slightly nervous about taking the last shot. His Force powers were definitely back, but Ben was struggling with the control and Harel could see the look on his face and wasn’t looking forward to this. Ben looked at the vial, opened it up and took a sniff. He wrinkled his nose, he knew what this one was too. Ben closed his eyes, and threw back the shot, dropping the vial on the floor.
Harel picked it up and looked at it. “I’m really desperate?” Harel said into the radio. “Yeah, “Piers started to say, “it’s the Warp Core Breach.” “Oh, shit.” Harel said, diving for cover. Ben took one last shot at the vault. And that’s exactly what happened. Ben tried to Force pull the locking mechanism free, except because of the quantities of alcohol in his system, Ben Force pulled the entire vault at him, with enormous speed. “Oh shiiiiiiitttttt.” Ben yelled, diving out of the way of the errant vault, as it went sailing out the window.
Ben and Harel took a peek out the window. They watched this massive vault free fall some 200 meters to the ground below. “We need to get down there, and quickly.” Ben said. Harel quickly keyed a sequence on the keypad on his wrist. In a matter of moments, a small star ship hovered next to the broken window. A door opened and a ramp appeared. Quickly the two jumped into the ship as it rapidly descended to the ground.
Ground forces were already starting to swarm the area as the ship landed. The two of them jumped out and scrambled towards the vault. As they approached, the pair could see the contents scattering on the street. Quickly the gathered everything up and sprang back to the ship, gunfire chasing them all the way back to the craft.
Taking off, Harel laid down cover fire. “Hold on!” Harel yelled as the ship took off. “Get ready guys, we are going to have to get out of here in a hurry.” Ben took a look at the displays, rubbed his eyes and looked at them again. “You OK?” Harel asked. “I’mmmm finnnee.” Ben replied, very altered at this point. Ben gestured towards the display. “Yeah, there’s a lot of ships after us, I won’t be able to hold them off for too long.”
Ben moved very cautiously towards one of the view ports. He wasn’t feeling too good at the moment, but had to do something about those ships. He also didn’t want to puke in Harel’s ship, he knew what Harel would say. Ben caught a glimpse of the pursuing ships. He tried really hard to concentrate as he Force pushed the ships in his view out of the way. A few of them started spinning out of control, the others took evasive action.
“Get ready for docking!” Harel yelled into the radio. Piers and Cypher jumped out of their seats and headed forward. Cypher keyed in the docking sequence while Piers setup their course. It would be a slightly deviated course since they were being trailed. It involved multiple hops before heading home.
Harel saw the docking bay open up as the ships in pursuit open fired on them. Wombat quickly went to the weapons station. They didn’t have much armament, seeing that this was supposed to look like a freighter. Wombat laid down cover fire as Harel’s ship landed in the bay. “We’re in!” Harel shouted. Piers started the sublight engines while Cypher closed the docking bay.
Wombat continued the cover fire, but the ship still rocked with explosions of the shots landing around them. “Shields failing!” Cypher yelled. Piers looked at him, “I need just a few more seconds for the engines to come on line.” Cypher keyed in a series of commands, “Diverting power from life support and weapons to shields.” “Hyperspace engines coming on line.” Piers answered.
The ship dumped into hyperspace. After a series of hops, they were home. Piers got up and took a look at Ben. “Feeling better?” Piers asked. “I’ve been better.” Ben answered. “Did you really need to use the Ventilator and the Warp Core Breech?” “I needed to give you something to jump start.” Piers said. “Next time, try something else.” Ben said as he passed out on the cot in the aft sleeping compartment. Piers smiled, more stories for the Special Forces Bunker.
He slid back into pilots chair and smiled. They were home.
Stardock Forums
Welcome to the home of Special Forces. 
. . . nice of you to drop bye.
You'll be receivin' a special peice of butt whooping Mr. Wombat! Git yer pet koala to shave yer arse. It'll be less painful when a flaming coconut is launched yer way! 