7-26 YC 114 2310
Venal Region
C2-DDA Planet IV
Guristas Compound
Ryven slid down the ladder from the top of the tower quickly, only slowing his descent for the last five meters. At bottom, he quickly darted into the shadows, his sensors scanning for any heat signatures. He knew, via the orbital scans from a number of recon probes fed into his neural interface, that his target was roughly 400 meters away in the more luxurious habitation module befitting the leader of a pirate compound. To get there, he had to either skirt the perimeter for some two kilometers or dart through by the armory and the vehicle hangars, and maybe escape notice, or perhaps just blow the whole damn place up.
Ryven used cover as much as possible to conceal himself from view. More and more heat signatures began to fill his view as he approached the vehicle hangars and armory complex in the center of the compound. Off to his right, he could see the outline of the compound's sensor complex and control tower for managing vehicle approach and launch. To his left, he saw scattered barracks buildings and the looming dark shape of the outer wall which sported watch towers and gun emplacements every 200 meters or so. The compound also had two gargantuan missile launchers for defending against orbital attacks.
Ryven stopped and rummaged through his backpack, retrieving his demolitions charges. He grinned to himself at the carnage to come. He closed his backpack and placed it back on his back before making his way stealthily to the armory. There was only one guard posted, which Ryven thought was rather careless. He charged the guard quickly from the right and rammed his skull into the hard tritanium wall of the armory. The guard's skull caved under the force and reddish gray goo oozed between Ryven's fingers. He paid it no attention as he instinctively rolled through the entryway into the Guristas' storehouse of weapons and ammunition. Ryven found a few crates of suitably explosive items and placed one demo charge inside. Searching for any signs of his being detected, he left the armory and made a beeline for the vehicle hangars. There were three of them, massive structures for holding the small fleet of ground and aerial assault vehicles, as well as a few shuttle craft for reaching more robust space stations or orbital docking gantries overhead. These buildings were guarded a little more closely, but, even so, Ryven had no trouble taking each out individually.
Once charges had been placed in both the armory and hangars, Ryven readied the detonator and sprinted the last hundred meters to the Guristas' commander's habitation module, a large rectangular structure for housing the commander and seeing to his needs. Ryven had only one need he was interested in satisfying: the commander's need to die, right fuckin now.
Ryven placed a final charge on the habitation module door. He stepped out of the blast path and took a deep breath before pressing the button to detonate all of the charges. The armory disappeared in a giant ball of white fire, the tons of ammunition detonating in a secondary explosion that shook the ground Ryven was standing on. He felt the concussive wave wash over him and for a moment, his sensors flared. Then came the explosions in the vehicle hangars. The three hangars detonated in sequence, each flashing brightly and raining glowing hot debris on the compound. Finally, the last charge, significantly tinier than the others, detonated quietly next to him, blowing the door of the habitation module into a million tiny pieces. Smoke roiled through the now open doorway.
Alarms were blaring all over the compound and everywhere the pirates were running trying to control the damage and determine where the attack was coming from. Ryven seized on this moment of confusion and rushed into the Commander's habitation module. He made his way through the entry corridor, past the study, past the living room, and down the second corridor to the bedchamber. He slid open the bedroom door and found the Commander within, groggy from his rude awakening, still in his sleepwear, which, in his case, was nothing. Ryven would have smiled at the perfection of this moment, but, instead, he just aimed his assault rifle and squeezed the trigger once.
A flash erupted from the muzzle of his assault rifle. The projectile, a large calibre hypersonic round, traveled the four meters between them nearly instantaneously. It entered the Guristas Commander's skull just to the left of the bridge of his nose and exploded out the back of his head in a massive splatter of brain and skull and blood. Ryven was already halfway down the hall before the man's dead body hit the floor. He darted out the front door of the habitation module and pressed a button on his right wrist.
The dropship picked up this signal and immediately began a high velocity run at 50 meters altitude toward the signal's source. Ryven began to sprint as fast as he could in the opposite direction from the dropship's approach. As the dropship passed over, it fired a 'lasso' of nanite-guided microfilament. This 'lasso' wrapped around Ryven and 'towed' his sorry ass upward toward the dropship's drop-bay. This is how it looks if viewed on a computer simulation. In real life, it looked like Ryven was jerked at 900 km/h off of his feet and launched into the night sky. Both, technically, are accurate. 40 seconds later, when Ryven was settled on a bench in the dropship's drop-bay, he finally allowed himself to smile.
Two down. One to go.
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