The counter top was made out of aged wood; the only sign of its use were the dust streaks that came with the occasional passing of a drink. The only people in the old bar were those who wanted to drink a lifetime of their memories away: war veterans, widows, criminals, and a single man dressed in a long black coat suited for an admiral of a great fleet along with a clean shaven face and black hair hidden under a black stetson. The man was hidden at the end of the counter in the quietest corner of the crowded bar, with only the murmuring of the other patrons keeping him sane. Two men entered the bar and took an open space next to the man in black with the bartender approaching at the same time.
"Want another drink?" the bartender said while holding up a bottle of a dark liquid that could easily be mistaken for molten sludge.
"Leave the bottle," the man in black said in a depressed tone, signaling that he wanted to be left alone.
The two men who entered the bar were wearing Federation uniforms; one wore a captains uniform with a number of badges on the left side of his chest. The other one, this one not in a military outfit, seemed to be in charge. His helmet was modified with a transponder and receiver, signalling the man in the black coat that this man was in the department of knowing stuff about things, just the man he needed.
"What are we doing in this backwater dump of a bar? People are bound to hear us!" the soldier muttered.
"Calm down, nobody here remembers their names, let alone any conversation between two random people." The communications officer responded in an attempt to calm the soldier.
"Let's just hurry up, you said you knew about the guys slaughtering my men."
"Guy, not guys," he said. "This man's a psycho and is all set up in the jungle of Ransha's third moon."
"The third moon!?" the soldier said shockingly. "The place is overgrown with poisonous plants and toxic animals, even the goddamn air will kill ya! Why in the hell would someone set up there?"
Ransha's third moon... the man in the black coat thought to himself. 2.3 light years away, dangerous wildlife, inside federation space, observation space station monitoring the entire planet. Getting to it would be easy, but getting in undetected required a little more work. With the space station monitoring the planet, his presence would be detected a few hours after touchdown. Once detected, a security squad would be dispatched and would arrive within the next two to six hours. Now all he had to do was get out of here.
The two men were organizing troop squadrons, and the man in black looked at the bottle left by his server, the only employee in the bar and presumably the owner. The man in black proceeded to pick the bottle up and smash it against the electrical equipment in the officer's head, knocking him back and revealing to the both of them his cybernetic eye and arm. The soldier pulled out his pistol and attempted to aim at the man in black. Quick on his feet, the man grabbed his hand and slammed the soldier's head against the bar counter, shattering the wood and threw him into a booth, breaking it. The now angry drunks, who just had their food and drinks splattered everywhere from them to the floor, stood ready to punch anything within their proximity. The communications officer, stumbling forward with his serrated knife, freshly sharpened and ready to stab the man in black right in the kisser. Moving out of the way the man watched as the communications officer brutally murdered the poor counter top and get his face slammed in then knocked to the floor with so much force it killed him the instant his head hit the floor.
Taking the knife out of the counter top, the man in black knelt and popped some electronics out of the officer's head and put them in his top pocket. He then turned to the remaining federation goon who was currently fueling the bar patron's massive brawl. Trying to be discrete, the man in black joined the crowd, threw some punches, jammed the knife into the soldier's throat, placed it in a patron's belt, and slipped out through the door heading to the makeshift parking lot consisting of dozens of bet down ships.
Once he was outside, the first thing the man in black noticed was the absence of his ride. Looking at his watch, he realized he was two minutes early. He saw a Sliver-Class Federation Cruiser designed for cloaked flight and missions of espionage while gazing at the parked ships. The cruiser came equipped with a state-of-the-art cloak field generator, a four-seat cabin, small stealth armoury, and a torture chamber prison cell. The man in black used the electronics he got from the skull of a now deceased communications officer, encoded its data into his head and found the password to unlock the door. Once inside, the man in black walked straight to the flight console. Using the data uncovered from the communications officer's hard drive, the man in black programmed a flight route to the nearest black hole and placed an encrypted message within the cruiser to be sent once the cruiser neared its location. The message read:
This is Officer 13-25-9-S-L-A: Captain Rogers has been terminated; we were attacked at a bar near planet Zanon, and our navigation systems are shot to hell. Cloaking systems critically damaged, attempting to return to outpost Xebler 6H, arrival unlikely. Officer 13-25-9-S-L-A, signing off.
Jamming the officer's hard drive into the ships console, the man in black took several key pieces of the cloaking field generator and exited the cruiser. Coming down from the sky was his ship, The Unholy Reverent, ready to pick him up and head to Ransha's third moon. Once The Unholy Reverent touched down the entrance opened and a woman was standing there wearing Crimson Boots hidden in the dark of the night, as well as tactical pants combined with a suit made of Grimfiber- a dark red, almost black fiber made from the Demons of Pranthrodan. Her outfit was completed by the two Gurthan Ceremonial Death Blades on her side and a bandolier filled with various sharp objects, all holding unique appearances.
"Shrentor!" the woman called.
"Hex, you're late," the man in black replied in a lower tone.
"No," Hex replied."You're just early, we got what we needed."
"I got it, yes," Shrentor replied, emphasizing his part in the operation while holding one of the components he took from the cruiser.
"It's we, if we're together, Shrentor. We are a team," Hex sassed back.
Climbing onto the still running ship, Shrentor made a beeline for the bridge, passing through the mission room where Hex racked her bandolier and swords and proceeded to sit on one of many vacant chairs. Shrentor, now in the bridge, typed a flight path to an observable range outside Ransha's third moon.
Turning around, he headed to the engine room, the biggest room on the relatively large small-classed ship. The space in the engine room was largely taken by the MK 17 Dragonstar Engine, a warp drive which was capable of high speed intergalactic travel via space time distortion technology; it wasn't the best, but the engine provided substantial power to the Reverent with a built-in auxiliary engine. Beside the engine was a horribly mangled pile of machinery, vaguely resembling a cloak field generator. Wiring and jamming fresh stolen bits of machinery into the amalgamation of pieces all of different make and design, Shrentor finally completed his masterpiece.
"Is this going to blow us up?" Hex asked as she entered.
"Probably not... maybe... I don't know," Shrentor progressed.
"Does it work?"
"We're about to find out," Shrentor replied as he felt the ship enter the space outside Ransha.
"Ransha?" Hex asked, concerned. "Isn't Ransha a Kilhoid territory with like, I don't know, billions of people on it!?"
"Yes, but we're not going there..." Shrentor pointed out the blast shield glass at a sizable dark green-blue moon to the left side of the planet. "...there's the man we're looking for."
"So… not the planet with billions of people, just the uninhabitable moon?"
"Yes," he replied. "Only problem is the Odhud Research Station scanning the planet every…" Shrentor brought up a display using his cybernetic arm. "One hour 37 minutes, and the station also monitors the atmosphere for any incoming ships,"
"So…" Hex continued. "If it scans the entire planet every hour and a half, how is our guy staying there... and getting in and out undetected?"
"Let's find out," Shrentor said, firing up the cloak field.