JKQ Pastebin 2: The Shot

Slight wind to the west, light sources at 3 and 11 o’clock. Altitude higher than usual, need to adjust for lack of barometric pressure. It’s colder too, should clean rifle or risk jam. Blaster bolts not expand as well in chamber which could cause a misfire. Keep warm with body heat. No humidity up here. That’ll help. Explosions won’t expand well in thin atmosphere so less of a diversion. Sith dodge blaster fire if paying attention. Kriffing psychics. Take your time. Rifle assembly takes 40 minutes if careful. Best start two hours before window of arrival. Keep eyes on the tree to the left of the platform for distance reference. Only had a day to scout out this spot. Not enough time. Should’ve said no. Should’ve…

An alarm beeps from your visor display. Two hours before landing window. You take your mask off and sip from your thermos. The tea’s getting cold. You chug, feeling its remaining warmth in your chest contrast with the frigid temperatures outside. Your armor has some temperature guards in it to keep your body heat up, but you won’t turn them on until a half hour before the landing window. You look at your mask’s visor examining it for any scratches that might impair vision. It’s clean. You catch your reflection in the glass. You grimace at your horns, dull and overgrown.

You have some time.

You open up the bag carrying your disassembled rifle and fish out a file. You go to work, filing away at your head, sawing down each horn bit by bit.

You couldn’t have been working more than 20 minutes when you hear a faint noise.

“. . . kff*$#beq&'qh49z  6hMA~M^:V . . .”

“Hmm?” you look at your helmet. “Damned droid...”

You put your helmet on and wince at the yells of droid-speak in your ears.

“. . . F^m :Fe  \bj M3# I9eitR n| +?B 7l ? wOW: b3^+ . . .”

“Yes, Sym, I know I should start rifle assembly. I was just--”

“. . . f<IS;RVMD-  t&j3 . . .”

“I was not slacking off you piece of--”

“. . . fC &w0!n pshGL_k! $ht-ukELS%! . . .”

“You watch your mouth you walking--”

“. . . LA% 6&uf2}  o7 K] xRby=Chv:p . . .”

“I know you don’t have an actual mouth to...who programmed being a pedantic dick into you?”

“. . . 4A i[X7BnSGt}- *IIY2@ +!p . . .”

“Fine,” you grunt, putting your file away. You were done anyway.

Your eyes narrow as you click the first two pieces of your weapon together. The sound you’ve grown familiar with seems to be deadened by the thin atmosphere. You don’t like it. The consistency of assembling a weapon is one of the few sure things in the life of a bounty hunter and you’d like Mother Nature not to mess with that.

A few muted clicks of parts later and your rifle is assembled. Thirty minutes to landing window. You switch on your armor’s heaters and get into position, your rifle pointed at the landing platform. It only takes you a minute to find some of the others. The Hutt called them “Bantha Poodoo” if you recall correctly. Hutts had a knack for paying for the best and attracting the stupidest.

“Wonder which I am?” you say to yourself.

Which one of those thugs thinks they can kill a Sith in combat? The Wookie looks like it might stand a chance but the rest may as well surrender as soon as they see the Sith. Might make a longer diversion. Why would the Hutts pay a bunch of thugs and dress them up in expensive armor with nice weapons just to die? That’s not going to be enough of a diversion. You were told there would be an explosion, that they’d be forced to take off again if they weren’t all killed by it, that you were just a precautionary measure and might not have to take a shot at all.

But what if these thugs don’t give a distraction at all? What if there’s no explosion and you don’t get a chance to shoot? Can you just pack up and go back to your apartment knowing that your own people were allying with those monsters? That you’ll be a political dissident within a year, arrested without trial and thrown into a hole with no way out? Or that you’ll have to leave Iridonia, your home, never to return?

Your thoughts are interrupted by the Sith vessel landing. It’s small, a diplomatic vessel. When the Sith first came to “do business,” they sent a Dreadnaught, a more massive battleship than you knew could even exist at the time. If only the Sith had known that the size of the ship made it especially vulnerable to Iridonia’s tractor beam defenses. The ship was pulled into orbit within a minute of coming out of hyperspace. Strategic EMPs disabled the guns before they had time to fire and the ship landed in the giant prison-yard meant to house captured capital ships. Suddenly, the Sith Empire’s gun-ship diplomacy turned against them and now they were negotiating a treaty along with the release of the ship and the 5000 prisoners.

The politicians all rejoiced. Now they would have leverage. Now they would become “important allies” to the Sith. Now they “have the high ground.” You’ve seen how those monsters work. You’ve worked with those monsters. They’ll slaughter your people. Maybe not today, maybe not even this century. But where Sith go, desolation follows.

That’s why you took the first contract you saw that wanted the Sith envoys killed. You never read the reasons. The Hutt apparently thought the Iridonians would get in the way of his trade deals with the Sith, give the Sith more leverage against him.

The ship touches down and opens. A shiver runs down your spine. That must be the apprentice. The Hutt told you there’d be at least two, probably three. He’s got a robotic eye and a sadistic grin. Next, comes the Master.

Your muscles tighten as you see him. Instincts, millennia of evolution, inform your body. Run. Predator. Danger. Death. You take a deep breath and look again at the old woman, the mask on her face showing a faint smile. You’ve heard she’s a disciple of one of the Dark Council. She’s got to be one of the most powerful things in the galaxy.

And you’re going to shoot her with a gun.

The thugs saunter out, looking actually confident. Force, are these guys brainless? Did this Hutt send terminal cancer patients after these Sith?

The apprentice begins to laugh upon seeing them, a jittery, unnerving sound that edges between thoughtful and insane. His lightsaber opens and he looks to the woman. She shakes her head and the apprentice puts his lightsaber away. Instead, two more Sith leap from the ship, dressed in plain black robes, their lightsabers already lit. They tear into these thugs. Even the Wookie only manages to get one hit in before it loses an arm, then a leg, then its head. You shudder. You wouldn’t have lasted much longer.

That’s when you notice through your scope. The armor on their bodies. It’s blinking.

Boom.

The Hutts rigged these idiots to blow up when they die. The explosion makes you wince at its brightness. You switch your sights to look for heartbeats behind the smoke. Those two Sith who attacked are pieces. The Master and apprentice are retreating to their ship. It looks like the explosion is causing the entire landing platform to collapse.

This is going perfectly.

You line up your shot. They enter the ship and the doors shut. Good, their guard should be down. The ship lifts up as the landing platform falls into the deep valley below. The ship turns until the window faces you.

Wait for it.

It floats for just a second before slowly moving forward.

Wait for it.

The ship speeds up. It rises as it readies itself to leave the atmosphere.

Now.

You let loose your shot as the ship gets above you. It goes straight through the front window into the cockpit. The ship continues to move forward but spirals.

A direct hit. Whoever was piloting is blood on the floor now. You watch it descend until it crashes in a snowbank in one of the valleys. Grabbing your rifle, you place it on the other side of your little perch, aiming your scope hastily at the crash site.

Nothing is moving. You did it. You killed a Sith Lord. You can retire off this pay. You can live like a king. You can pay off any official who finds out. You can--

No.

A dark figure emerges from the crash. Robes torn, blood falling, stumbling blindly, the Sith Lady walks with a pipe sticking out of her upper stomach, exiting her lower back.

Maybe she’ll bleed out. Maybe it’ll only be a second before she collapses. Maybe she’s looking right at you, oh Force, no. Her mask falls from her face, revealing the features of a young woman, eyes red and yellow mixing like blood and piss, a snarl like something that eats rancor.

You fire. She falls on one knee, dodging it. Then, her hands in the snow, she plants her feet and disappears. Panicked, you fire wildly ahead of you, hoping to hit her somewhere. She’s running toward you, faster than you can see. A cortosis rod extends from your gauntlet, electricity running through it. She’s injured. If you can get one or two hits in, you should be able to get out alive.

A red lightsaber flashes before your eyes. You cover your face with the cortosis rod to block the attack but find yourself thrown on the ground. She approaches you slowly. When she gets close, you sweep her feet only to find that she’s floating a few inches off the ground.

“Little creature,” her voice echoes.

“Such a small thing. Such a fragile thing.”

Before you have time to react, her lightsaber has sliced off your leg. You scream.

“The mind has methods to protect from such pain. I have methods to circumvent this. Through the Force, I am letting you feel the pain in your leg, as the blood pumps nowhere, as it suffocates, as each nerve screams before dying a billion trillion times over again.”

You can’t see, you can barely hear. Your leg. You can’t move. It hurts too much.

“I sensed you when we arrived. I assumed you were only meant to watch to make sure the bombs went off as planned. I assumed wrongly that we were safe once we entered the ship.”

She cuts off your other leg below the knee.

“You’re a very good shot, you know. I’d hire someone of your talent if you hadn’t just killed my pilot and my bodyguards.”

She slices the same leg above the knee, near your thigh.

“That was a dear friend’s apprentice you killed. I’m going to take a limb for every you’ve killed today and watch you die of the pain.”

She raises her lightsaber to slice off your arm. A blaster fires and her eyes widen. She stumbles but catches herself. She turns around only to receive another bolt to the shoulder. Her arm goes limp and her lightsaber drops to the ground, deactivating. She stays standing and turns to face her killer. Her arm extends to wield the Force, but another one hits her leg and she falls onto one knee. Her lightsaber flies into her hand, activating just as another round hits her between her eyes. Another bolt hits her hand, then her shoulder, then she falls in the snow. You hear the rest of the blaster’s cartridge emptied into her body.

The pain you feel subsides enough for you to know what’s going on again.

“. . . 4Gy Hm_.Qk VUAy hKWH #$wP-w . . .”

“S-Sym…” you say, feeling shock start to set in. “Adrenaline, painkillers, re-attach legs?”

Sym shakes its head You see your legs cut up into little pieces in the snow.

That’s when you lose consciousness.