The Rebel Faction

During the Thrawn Era...

Looking more like an exotic, aquatic creature than a spaceship, the sleek Svelte-class shuttle dropped out of Hyperspace and accelerated towards the planet Velmor, it's glossy black armor reflecting the star scape around it. It's sleek profile reflected almost no radar signal back to any sensors that happened to be searching the area, making it look like nothing more than a small meteorite or perhaps a piece of space debris.

But unlike a meteorite, the Svelte adjusted it's attitude to keep it just above the atmosphere. And then, as if breaking apart from turbo laser strikes, six pods disconnected from the shuttles bottom.

And dropped like stones.

This full throttle no brakes approach limited the amount of time the capsules would show up on sensors. To save weight and prevent anything classified from falling into enemy hands- as well as to save critical war material- they had nothing classified mounted on them. No stealth armor, no sensor mask, not even a cheap sensor jammer.

It was a hairy ride, to say the least, but it was the best way.

Commando Operative TNG Omega 17 "Gordon Thule" didn't complain about the ride, even though only a few centimeters of ceramic resistor and durasteel frame separated him from the fantastic heat of reentry. This was standard Intelligence drop, nothing to worry about. He had been prepared for these kinds of missions from the beginning.

In fact, he had been bred for them.

The capsule thundered on towards the ground.

Past...
Like a fiery meteor, the insertion capsule (OOC: heh, that's funny...) dropped through the atmosphere, nearly too the ground.

And just when it looked like it was going to hit the planet full force, the ring of retro rockets around the bottom end fired, bringing it gently to Velmor's surface.

The landing pad fate had supplied him was a wide open field surrounded by trees on each side, with a house in the corner furthest from him and to the left. Each end of the field was probably about two kilometers from end to end, a figure he easily and quickly calculated from his distance measuring training (or rather, the training that had been done by the original him).

The cone shaped capsule had sat down in one corner, next to a creek that marked the boundary between the forest and the field, which was inhabited by a crop of some planet he couldn't identify. For a moment TNG Omega 17 "Gordon Thule" just sat there, catching his breath and let everything he had experience during the reentry take it's turn at being processed. Finally, through sheer force of will, he undid his crash webbing and scuttled out of the craft, a slight spring in his step caused by his inexperience in the planets lighter gravity.

Hmmm... have to get rid of that, he though, Be a dead giveaway that I'm an offworlder to anyone who's observant.

First things first though: The Capsule. He couldn't just leave it sitting there.

A pair of high power Thermal Detonators took care of that real quickly, leaving no mark on the soil below due to their precise blast radius's. All he was left with was a 4*4 piece of durasteel that he quickly buried.

And so, a spring in his step that he tried to suppress, he began to hike through the woods towards the nearest city.

Present Time...

Detective Oliver Toulin slowly stepped out of his repulsor car and slowly looked around the area. As he adjusted his long fabric trench coat the slight breeze hit it, making it flutted around him. Running a hand through his short light hair, the detective eyed all the other police speeders in the area. This was probably more traffic than this part of the country saw in an entire year.

Oliver closed his speeder's door before starting to move towards a group of police officers standing in front of a closed off area. The area was a part of some field used for farming. A field that at one point in time had been all grassland and devoid of inhabitance. He could make out a small group of people standing inside the closed off section, talking to another officer who seemed to be taking down notes on a datapad.

Detective Toulin reached down to slightly straighten his detectives badge while moving closer to the line of police that secured the area. He nodded a little towards them and after eyeing his badge some of the men stepped aside to let him pass. As soon as he passed this line of men he could see a small excivator unit digging around something buried in the ground. Most of it was exposed and looked to be a sheet of metal four meters long by four meters wide.

Since this area had not been habited since just a year ago, it was a mystery as to why this metallic sheet would even be here. There was not a single reason for vehicles of any sort to come into this area and loose or dump a piece like this. That could only mean that it had come from somewhere else and Detective Toulin made it his mission to get to the bottom of it.

While the other police officer talked with what seemed to be the owners of this land, Oliver patiently watched as the excivator unit slowly pulled the thick metallic sheet from the ground and stood it upright. The detective let himself smile a little as a new clue emerged upon this excivation. What appeared to be a sheet was actually just a part of something bigger. Something that was no longer there, but it was still a piece of the puzzle.

He moved closer and studied what happened to be a curved metallic piece. It wasn't completely metallic, however, Oliver noticed. While the outside was, the interior, upon close investigation, was a form of ceramic material. This combination almost instantly reminded him something he had seen in the past. Something from his military service in the New Republic.

As he went over the piece more thuroughly he could see there were area on the sides that looked to had fit with others. There were also scaring on the metal that suggested of small explosive charges. Charges that could be used to blast off specific sections of a container unit. A unit like a covert drop pod. That was exectly what this piece reminded him of, of drop pods used by the New Republic special operations troops for deep insertion into enemy held territory.

This jog in his memory made his eyes open wide as he realized that this was the hatch part of a similar type of pod. It had been ejected by seperation bolts upon contact with the ground to allow a single operative to get out quickly. He also knew that these operative were never alone. If there was evidence of one, there would have to be others. How long they had been on Velmor he couldn't tell, but what he did know was that it happened many years ago as could be judged by the condition of the hatch standing before him.

Oliver turned quickly towards the police line and called out one of the men. The officer came running quickly and paused beside Oliver. "Yes sir?"

"Lieutenant, I want this piece taken straight to the lab and analyzed. Got it?" Ordered the Detective quickly while he pulled out his commlink.

The officer had just started to acknowledge when Detective Toulin spoke into the comm. "This is Detective Toulin to headquarters. We have a possible foreign operative insertion in Bela Koilia. I request an immediate ground scan from my location out to a distance of ten kilometers in all directions."

Oliver put the comm away and turned towards the junior detective that was interviewing the family that owned the land. He made him stop and came over to take new orders. While the man finished up and run towards the detective, Oliver was still gazing at the durasteel hatch as it was preped for transportion. He finally turned towards the junior detective and looked the man in the eyes.

"I want you to do a search for all residents of Bela Koilia that were not born on Velmor and have no record of coming planetside onboard registered transports. Narrow it down to those that live within the city and are non-citizens."

As the man took all this down on his datapad, Oliver was already thinking about the hunt ahead of him.

Present...

It had been days since the search began and still nothing had come up. They only think they had accomplished was the locating of over twenty illegal residents. All had been intergiated and once it was determined they weren't operatives, they had all been quickly deported from the planet.

Detective Toulin sat at his station desk and sighed gently as he sipped his hot caf. He had been up for over twenty six hours now and still he knew he was missing something. They had to dig deeper or come at it from some other angle. This other angle, however, was hard to come up with.

The detective leaned back in his seat and set down the cup of caf. He ran a hand slowly through his hair and closed his eyes for a bit. Oliver was tired, but he couldn't give up. He knew that whoever had invaded his planet was still out there and conducting his mission. This man or woman had to be caught soon, before something bad happened.

Oliver had closed his eyes for just a few seconds before he heard his name getting called from the other room. He stood up slowly and rubbing his eyes while making his way towards the computer room. It was dark inside and was empty except for one man sitted at a terminal. Everyone had gone home, but this one had stayed to help out. By the smile on the man's face, Detective Toulin knew he had some good news to share.

"What do you have for me?"

The in the room was not actually a police officer. He was part of Velmor's counterintelligence agency and had been assigned to monitor this case. The man was there just in case something important was found, but the Agency doubted Detective Toulin's assumption was correct. They were far too confident in their abilities to prevent things like this from happening.

Agent Almert Ilonias was a young recuite to the Velmor Security Agency and for this reason had been sent on this assignment. While young and unexperianced, Almert was very observent and very smart. He knew that kind of danger an enemy operative could bring; especially one who has had so much time to work with. It would be horrible to think about an agent from a foreign government infiltrating their government or even their intelligence agency. They had to find this person fast.

Even after days of coming up with nothing, Agent Ilonias, much like Detective Toulin, stayed up all night and day searching files. Almost everyone had given up on the case, but he knew they had to keep digging. It was this sifting through countless computer files that brought Almert to this single file. A profile in which nothing was wrong. A profile that seemingly was perfect. That is unless one looked really really closely.

It was actually his tired state that had brought him to the realization he now had. It was luck pure and simple, but even the best people at their jobs needed luck once in a while.

Almert looked over and gave Oliver a grin as the man walked into the dark computer lab. "I think I have something here. Come take a look. I might be nothing, but it could also be everything."

The detective ran his hand through his hair and moved towards the terminal where Agent Ilonias sat. He looked at the screen and turned towards the agent questioningly. Almert knew it would happen. You couldn't just accuse one of the richest and most well known people on Velmor without such a reaction.

"Thule?? Maxamillion Thule?? You think he's our guy?"

Almert smiled and shrugged a little. "I don't know if he is or not, but I do know if you look at the date on which his profile was filed and recorded into the computer it doesn't match up. The man is over 20 years old, right? So why was this profile file twenty four years ago? He should have background information and a file should have been started on the day he was born, but it wasn't. It seems like this profile just appeared from thin air."

Oliver sat down in the chair, a little taken aback. The young agent was absolutely right. Every natural born citizen of Velmor had files starting from their birth. It was the planet's way of keeping track of everyone for emergancy purposes. This man's profile, however, was non-existant until almost the exact time that metal piece that was now in the lab arrived. It could be a coincidence, but it could also be that his was their man.

"Do a backcheck on his relatives. I'll go call other police departments and see if they have files of people in their district with the same delima." Detective Toulin said as he started to get up.

"Already did Detective Toulin, it doesn't check out either. Their profiles show the same data of admission as Mr. Thule. Like him they have no background records before that data even though their back ground is listed in their profiles. Like I said, somethings not right."

"Good job Agent Ilonias." Oliver smiled and reached for his cafe. "Once I make these calls, we'll see if we can get a meeting set up with Mr. Thule himself."