The Rebel Faction

Poodu, straight poodu.

“Soap” crouched on the roof of Rudrig’s “Celestial Palace”. She had been here to collect the broadcast antenna that Floormat had “forgotten” in their move when her encrypted com beeped one long, and one short.

A breech, a major breech. That code was only used when the security of an op had been breached; when it would be no longer safe to go back to base. When you had to drop all the equipment you had, find a clothing store, completely change your clothing, burn the old stuff, and go underground for weeks, or years.

Poodu.

Grabbing the utility bag full of the equipment she had been gathering, Soap headed toward the elevator. A little light on the up button told her it was time to find an alternate method of descending, and quick.

Bantha Poodu.

The fire escape was there, and she used it. After rapidly going down ten flights of rickety stairs, Soap decided that she would rather take an elevator after all. Fifty floors of this was not her idea of a fun day… but then, being compromised wasn’t either.

A duck in on floor forty-nine, and a quick trip to the nearest elevator was completed. Pushing the button for floor three, Soap sagged against the wall.

In training they said you would never have to run. You were trained for it, you prepared for it, but you were never supposed to actually do it.

“All you do is collect information. No running, gunning, and getting the girl. It doesn’t work that way, forget all the holo’s you’ve seen… now.”

Right.

This was running, wasn’t it?

Gunning though, that would be harder.

All the weapons were back at base. Bathtub had bought them the other day on the advice of Soaprack. “Pepper plugs”, wasn’t that the code-name?

The elevator beeped, floor twenty. The doors opened, and three large men walked in. They hit the button for floor one, and clustered in a corner together.

Great… three guys… what are the chances of that…

Floor eighteen, one of the men glanced at her, and went back to whatever he was doing.

Floor fifteen and he glanced back, frowning. Soap just stared at the floor display, praying.

Floor ten, and all three were staring at her. One of them opened his mouth, and shut it again.

Floor seven, and they were making their move. One on either side, and one in front of the door.

Floor six, one of them began to quote some legal thing about knowing your rights.

Floor five, the one of the left pulled out some cuffs.

Floor four, one cuff on one hand.

Floor three, and “lefty” got a bag full of radio equipment in the groin. He doubled over. The doors began to slide open. Soap lashed out at the man on the right, catching him on the side of the neck with her fist. He crumpled.

A large hand grabbed her neck; another hand got the cuffs attached to her left hand.

The doors were open, the hall clear.

Her left arm suddenly stopped resisting, the elbow accelerating into the man’s throat.

Freedom.

And probably more than a warrant on her head now.

Poodu, straight poodu.

A few more twists, and the dish was assembled. Soap crouched next to the small object, looking at an equally small keypad. She hit buttons quickly, entering her short message.

This thing had better not be dead, or broken…

All the large stuff was sitting next to the now empty duffle. Antenna amplifier, tall stand, power leech, recorder…

She was operating with the minimum amount of assembly. Dish, computer, keypad.

Her first message to Hairnet team had gone unanswered. All team-to-team messages were to be given the highest priority in the response line.

Either they’ve started the op early, are out to lunch, or they got caught too…

Message complete, Soap hit the send button. Five seconds later the connection was secured, and the little computer began to encrypt the message.

Cmon… cmon…. cmon…

With a small beep the computer requested verification, and threw up a warning that the connection was experiencing “fuz”

PooDU!! Fuz… screw it, I’ll be in hiding anyhow.

Fuz was connection noise, usually generated by a third party. This dish created a “virtual cable” that was supposed to be ultra secure. The actual transmission would be about a millionth of a second long, and the encryption required five of the Vinda Corporation’s decoding mainframes to decode in a timely manner. It was theoretically impossible for anyone to intercept and decode the transmission. Yet, they had been “stung”, and she had noise here.

Soap shrugged, and hit a yes to both confirmation messages.


VC Intel communiqué series 1929077
Dated 46.04.36
Subject: none specified


Floormat, Bathtub, and Towel have all been taken Soaprack. Tell Hairnet team I need to be retrieved. Soap

Aboard a passenger ship, twelve men dressed in varying clothing, sitting in varying chairs, flying in varying classes. Each of the twelve read his paper, ate his food, and slept in a nondescript manner, acting like everyone else on the passenger ship.

They all looked non-descript, they acted non-descript, they set off no alarms, their carryon contained the traditional music player, book, and underwear.

They all retrieved their luggage, and headed in opposite directions, to different hotels, to different class rooms. Two nodded to each other, as if acknowledging that they had met, two stopped and had an animated discussion about the latest Blob race.

All in all they were normal, everyday people. During the day.


That night, two met in a dark ally, two in a diner, five at the Holo’s, and three at a store. They met, and two nodded, and two picked up their discussion about the Blob races. The others simply did not notice themselves.

An hour later, two dark shapes stood huddled over a small locater device, whispering. Ten were moving stealthfully in groups of two, moving toward a small police station.

The Ten split into five groups of two, and surrounded the station, one group used a cutting laser to slice a few bars, another group used a high powered vibro blade to cut a whole in a wall. Yet another set up some explosives on the other side of the street, while another group prepared a high-speed auto blaster down the avenue.

The last group straightened their ties, and walked in like they owned the place.

A few words were spoken, and voices were raised. The “conversation” got loud quickly.

Detonation.

A speeder across the road disintegrated, as did five light poles, power lines, and a two meter chunk of roadway.

The conversation ceased, and moments later the police station was aglow with lights. Blues were spat out of the door, rushing up and down the streets. On wireless command, the auto canon opened fire. Five blues fell, dead. A deadly firefight began.

The distraction was perfect. Two teams entered the building via their homemade doors, and the “lawyers” exited to the front. One minute and twenty-five seconds later, eleven people exited the doors, now numbering three.

The lawyers headed for their speeder, apparently shocked that such a horrible terrorist incident could happen so close to them. The rest of the team immediately went to the spaceport, and logged on to a prepared light freighter.

Hairnet team, and Bathtub team were both on the freighter. Two objectives left to go.



Soap had hidden herself well, and the two agents were having a hard time finding her. Soap’s homing beckon had been reprogrammed to refract and ignore all but the highest priority request. That request required top-level clearance to activate, something which neither agent had at the moment.

So they improvised.

Calling up a map of the city, They checked out all the closest safe houses, their memories comparing this map to the one they had memorized before coming on this mission.

Twenty minutes, and four safe houses later, Soap was headed toward the spaceport, accompanied by two very disgusted agents. Hiding in a dumpster? Designated dumpster or not, they would need nose plugs for this flight.

Two down, one to go.



Daylight, seven o’clock. “I’m sorry, but Mr. Ghrek is not taking visitors right now” Yeah, sure, whatever lady. Take a pill, and sleep. So she did, albeit unwillingly.

The door to “Mr. Ghrek’s” office was locked, naturally. Two shots with a silenced slug gun fixed that improper action. “Mr. Ghrek” was a very busy man, his office was covered from top to bottom with papers, stacks of papers, data chips, and money. It was a veritable looters paradise. The Corporate looter though, not the simple street looter. This was the kind of looter that dug through files, and copied the data to sell to the highest bidder. This was the kind of looter that could cost a corporation billions of credits, and more than one life.

“Mr. Ghrek” was quite suppressed to see the handle on his door explode, shattered from the hollow point slugs. This surprise was doubled when the two “lawyers” walked in. they were dressed quite well, but the gun in the hand of one, and the cuffs in the hands of the other betrayed their true presence.

“Mr. Ghrek, you are under arrest for the charge of theft, blackmail, resisting arrest, evading the law, murder, extortion,”

The voices faded away, and “Mr. Ghrek” was taken to a private speeder.


The Vinda Corporation had finally rooted up the mole that had been gutting them for months. Mr. Ghrek had sold over twelve thousand documents, including two “top secret” docs. More have almost positively been sold by him, but was hard to tell.

With his fall, the Vinda Corporation began to see a profit from Rudrig.