Marksmanship (open to all)

[Lion El' Jonson]

Lion sweated slightly. His finger on the trigger was getting slippery. His neck hurt from staying in the same position...which was understandable, since Lion had been lying prone for well over an hour. His eye peered through the computerised scope on his longrifle...a special weapon, and of his own design.

The 2 meter long rifle was slightly wider than most weapons, and was colored a deep black. A single red line lay on the elongated barrel. the weapon was practically invisible in nighttime, and even an experienced eye would have trouble spotting the deadly weapon in daytime. The small phoenix icon near the base of the weapon symbolised Lion's old callsign: The Wild Eagle.

When Lion pulled the trigger, a small amount of blaster gas would be released from the canister, supercharged by the large powerpack, and passed through a crystal similiar to that on a lightsaber...one of the extremely rare adegan crystals.

The plasma would be wrapped in a small holding cone of blaster energy. A split second later, with a silenced cough, a small plasma bolt similiar to a lightsaber's blade, just much smaller, would be on it's way to the target. It was a critically accurate weapon...if he missed by half a millimeter, his target wouldn't feel a thing. If, however, he did hit, his target might find one of it's legs missing, or a fist sized hole punched through it's heart.

Then, finally, his target arrived...an armored CAV transport, carrying an Imperial Governor, and his escort of 6 speederbikes. From his position way up on the roof of the 65th floor of a building, they had no idea what was gonna hit them. Sighting his scope on the target, he squeezed the trigger.

The weapon's recoil compensators kicked in, and his weapon fired. A small flurry of smoke was seen, and Lion's filters kicked on to clear the image. He saw that he had blasted straight through the windshield of the armored transports, killing the driver and disabling the control board. The speederbikes encircled their assignment, and Lion grinned.

"This is gonna be so much fun..." he said to himself, sighting on a speeder-bike.

[Lion El' Jonson]

He pulled the trigger again...Another muffled cough emitted from the weapon as the plasma bolt leapt from the gun's muzzle.

Even up on the 65th floor, Lion could hear the explosion. He looked through the scope and noticed the burning wreck that had once been a speederbike...it's rider lay on the ground 5 meters away, his limbs at unnatural angles.

Lion noted with dismay that his magazine was almost up...only one more shot. Lining up carefully, he squeezed the trigger. One more bright blue round flew out of the gun, impacting with the left repulsorlift on the CAV. It smoked and fell to the ground.

"Well, at least it's not going anywhere..." Lion said to himself as he worked the firing mechanism. The spent clip popped out, and Lion dug into his belt and got a new one. He fumbled with it for a second before slotting it into the bottom of the rifle.

The charge bar refilled, and Lion grinned...

He sighted on a trooper riding on a bike, squeezed the trigger, and...

...nothing...

"Crap...terminate the simulation."

Warning Klaxons blared as the VR simulation terminated and Lion picked up his weapon, trying to unjam it...he fumbled with it for a second, then got a satisfying "click" as the weapon's bolt locked into the proper position. He sighted on the floor, braced the weapon against his shoulde, and pulled the trigger.

Without the in-scenario noise compensator, the gun let out a thunderous roar that blew a chunk out of the floor.

"Oh, so NOW you work..." he said to his rifle...

Lion walked to the door, watching for someone to show up.

[Satine]

Satine heard an explosion as she walked through the hallway.

"Oh, so NOW you work..."

She popped her head in the doorway and saw a man standing there. "Are you alright?"

[Helenias Evenstar]

In a different end of the firing range, another row of targets blew to pieces. The clip of the gun dropped away ito a disposal bin, whilst I glanced at the cmputerised scoresheet. 97%. I nodded, satisfied.

A loud explosion echoed up the hall. I poked my head out to look, puzzled. That didn't sound like a gun I recognised. Fetching a new clip, I came out into the hall and walked towards where the explosion was.

"Hello? Is everything allright?" I called out

[Lion El' Jonson]

(ooc: Kinda forgot about this thing, sorry guys...)

Lion looked up at the two women who had just asked him if he was alright, and then glanced at the fist sized hole he had blown into the floor. One of the people he recognized as Satine. The other voice was well known to Lion, and he called out:

"Er, hello Mistress Evenstar...Mistress Satine...just having some trouble with my weapon."

Lion hefted the long black gun, smiling.

"Custom built, a design I inherited from the defense corps on my home planet...probably the only gun like it in the whole galaxy now."

He was proud of his weapon. It had served him well in many battles, and had survived. It needed constant maintenance, and was rather finicky, but somehow it always knew when Lion needed it to work.

[Satine]

Between the hole in the wall, the Lion and his gun, the whole in the wall, and his response, Satine found the situation kind of humorous, but succeeded in stifling her laughter.

Smiling she said, "That is an interesting design." Her past gave her knowledge of weapons and she could easily identify the benefits of the gun.

[Lion El' Jonson]

Lion nodded.

"True. I've seen you around, but never talked to you...what did you do before you joined our order?"

[Satine]

"I was a... um...an assasin." Satine looked away embarassed. Her choices may have been wrong in the past, and she was here to change, but those decisions still haunted her.

She was also afraid of being judged for her past. She nknew there were other with similar situations in the order, and it made her feel safe, but she still worried.

[Lion El' Jonson]

Lion laughed at Satine's reluctantness to speak.

"That's okay...I was a mercenary, which pretty much means I ended up killing for a living too...and there was Azhure...many of our order used to even be on the darkside..."

He cleared the bolt on his gun again.

"I actually think my skills come in handy for times...for example, you can't expect me to hit someone from 1000 yards away with a lightsaber, eh?"

[Satine]

Satine smiled, "Yes, that would be hard even for a Jedi."

[Lion El' Jonson]

Lion laughed.

"So, who's your master here? I've been with Master Dasquian for quite a while now...he uses a bow, but I found it to be a bit too much work just to fire a wooden stick..."

[Satine]

"Actually, Master Evenstar is my new master." Satine replied turning towards her master.

[Pierce Tondry]

Another head popped into the room behind the two other people standing in the doorway. It took in the hole in the floor, then the weapon in Lion's hand, and then Lion himself. "Nice shooting there, Tex," Pierce said dryly. "You might try aiming the barrel up next time."

[Lion El' Jonson]

Lion looked up again and laughed.

"Ya, Tondry...just remember, the bullet comes out that end..." Lion commented, just as dryly as Pierce had.

Lion was kidding, of course. He'd heard stories of the master sniper, and Lion was interested in learning a few new tricks from the man.

"So..." Lion continued..."Did you come in here to shoot, or to bitch?" he added, cocking an eyebrow at Pierce.

[Helenias Evenstar]

"I'm the bitch here, Master Lion" I commented dryly. "Maybe you could explain exactly what this... thing is and why you are taking pot shots at a nice shiny floor?"

[Lion El' Jonson]

Lion laughed softly.

"Yes, Mistress Helenias, I understand you get to do the bitching around here....but I think you might have found your match in Pierce here." Lion smiled and addressed Helen's question.

"This..." Lion patted his weapon, "Is a custom built sniper rifle, named a Longrifle by...well, me."

Lion quickly disassembled the weapon, leaving only the gun. He shoulder aimed it and blasted it at a target dummy 30 meters away. The gun kicked hard against Lion's shoulder, but the dummy blew in half...the top half that had been blown off was nowhere to be seen...incinerated.

"I can take it apart and use it like an assault rifle...still only fires once every 3 seconds, but the clip gets 30 shots and it still retains the same power...bit less accurate, though."

Lion reassembled the weapon in only about 30 seconds.

"This is a computerized scope...compensates for wind, fog, rain, and anything else...can see in normal spectrum, infrared, or ultraviolet...nightvision, too. The barrel has enhanced galven circuitry, which focused the blast way tighter for more accuracy and longer range. The silencer took a bit of thinking, but I finally managed to come up with a powerful enough sound supression system."

Lion patted his weapon, which was now longer than 2 meters.

"Gets a bit heavy..." he grunted, putting the weapon down on the floor. "I uses modified saber technology to focus a small globe of plasma in an energy field...the plasma will penetrate its target and THEN explode, which means that there's often some...messy results."

Lion smiled and hefted the huge gun.

"Of course, since I built it, its got a few quirks...the chamber jams pretty frequently, but I'm working on a solution to that. To clear it, I've gotta fire a round, and unfortunately for the floor, it's the closest solid thing...unless you wanted me to blow a hole into the wall and possibly wing some poor padawan in the training rooms. It's accurate enough to hit a target from 150 stories up if you've got an experienced sniper...that'd be me, madam...."

Lion laughed, and then looked at Mistress Helenias again.

"So, what is THAT thing? Railgun?"

It looked like a NRSF railgun, which was pretty amazing, considering they were some of the rarest weapons in the galaxy...Lion wondered what kind of connections Helenias actually had.

[Pierce Tondry]

"You should never fire a jammed weapon," Pierce said, coming all the way into the room. His own weapon- an Imperial-style custom sniper rifle- he set against the wall. "They have this horrible habit of exploding in your hands when you don't want them to."

He frowned in concentration at Lion's weapon, analyzing it with a critical eye. "Let me see that," he said.

[Lion El' Jonson]

"Ah...then again, Jawa weapons have this horrible habit of exploding no matter WHEN you fire them...I'm willing to take my chances...."

Lion handed the gun to Pierce.

"Take a look...you're the sniper around here, maybe you can fix it?"

[Pierce Tondry]

Pierce took the gun from Lion and began disassembling it as he'd seen Lion do. When he had the gun by itself, he set it aside and began examining some of the components he'd just set aside. Then, he began to reassemble the weapon, returning one piece at a time as though he was working on an equation in his head.

At one point, he stopped with a piece in his hand. "I can tell you at least one problem you have, and that is that you don't have sufficient chamber venting for the firing cell. It's entirely possible that a better compressor will solve your problem entirely, but I can't be sure without running a few tests."

Pierce finished reassembling the weapon and handed it back to Lion. "There's a formerly-Imperial manufacturing plant I know about that may have a better part than the one you've got. I'll see if I can't work something out to get you one."

[Lion El' Jonson]

Lion grinned, and accepted his gun back from the Master Sniper.

"Really? Thanks, Pierce. Any idea how much it'll end up costing?"

Lion didn't really care that much about the cost, as long as his gun worked better.

He took the long gun back apart and slipped the parts back into the large black duffel bag slung over his shoulder.

"So, how did you get so good with weapons? Hell, I've been a mercenary for 6 years, and I still have trouble with my guns."

[Helenias Evenstar]

"Well, for starters you should have something a bit less customised. Something simple is best - and yes, it's a rail gun. Here, try it out" I said, throwing the gun at the Padawan. "Safety switch is near the thumb rest"

[Lion El' Jonson]

Lion let out an "umph..." of air as the weapon landed on his chest.

"Thanks for the warning, madam...." Lion growled, then he walked up to the range. He called out:

"Set up, 300 meters, single target, human sized."

There was a "ding" of comfirmation, and a white target appeared to the left of Lion. He rested the gun against his shoulder, sighted through t he scope, and pulled the trigger.

The target exploded at the other end of the range.

"Well....not much kick, not much noise....not a bad weapon...where'd you get this thing? I haven't seen one for years!"

[Pierce Tondry]

"You'd be hard-pressed to have," Pierce chuckled. "That entire project line got classified with the release of a particular prototype. But I really can't say anything about that."

Pierce cocked his head at the Rail Gun in Lion's hands. "Not my style, I think. Far too much brute force to be neat. Even if I have to kill someone, I'd still opt for something that doesn't take out the local scenery simultaneously. Unless I'm on a battlefield."

[Lion El' Jonson]

Lion chuckled also.

"True...I guess it's a bit hard to be subtle when your weapon ends up destroying trees along with your target."

Lion took a breath and placed the valuable railgun on the floor, then looked up again.

"So, Pierce, you were in the military, eh? And you, Mistress Evenstar?"

[Pierce Tondry]

"Imperial Army, yes," Pierce said. It was best Lion not know about his Intelligence links for the moment. "But I'm from a military line. At least one family member has been in a system or interstellar militia going back about ten generations, and both my parents were soldiers in the Imperial Army before I was. You could say soldiering is in my blood, but it would sell the Tondry line short to do so. Far as I know, I'm the first to get Jedi-training, but I think my mom may have had Force potential."

[Helenias Evenstar]

OOC : Just remember some of us dont get on much. :angel Hard to keep up. And I plagerised this post from Marcus



I picked up the Rail Gun, ejecting the clip and switching to a different ammunition load, adjusting the power dial as I did.

"Side arm MK III this one is. Takes several different ammunition loads, from explosive tip to needle point. The MK I side arm was first used in experimental form by James Tohmahawk, where it got it's other name - Jedi Killers. It ended the life of... 5 I think. Other forms are the NRSF Rifle, a rather nice pump action version that has wonderful destructive properties - and a Mini Gun version. Only two of those I have ever heard of, used once in action on Arcan IV where Tohmahawk and a friend of his cut apart a few companies of militia."

I took aim at the remains of the target, before firing. Instead of the loud crack and thunder of the normal bullet, this one hardly more than went pfffft!, hitting the traget neatly and quietly.

"Being electro magnetic in firing, they are fairly silent except if the bullet exceeds sonic - and reducing the power of the magnets reduces the kinetic energy load that when used at full power gives the rather spectacular results. General Scorpion had a Hydro bullet version - ice bullets that melted after killing their target. As for your other question... Imperial Royal Guards, then NRSF when I decided to change allegience. That is where I got accquainted with the various forms these nice things come in."

[Lion El' Jonson]

(ooc: Sorry Helen!!!)

"Imperial Army? Royal Guards? Boy, how people get around. Nice things, indeed..."

Lion laughed at the thought of Helen wearing one of those sweltering Royal Guard armors, then stopped....it actually didn't seem that unreasonable when he thought about it. He turned to her.

"I heard that the Royal Guard was handpicked...did you ever meet Vader, ma'am?"

That would be quite interesting...the Royal Guards had been so rigorously conditioned, both physically and mentally, that most recruits died before they completed their training...He wondered if she still had her armor...

[Helenias Evenstar]

"Too young to meet Vader, Padawan. My Grandfather however, he was on the Death Star itself as one of the personal guards of the Emperor. He did not share the fate of the others, for he was sent on an errand."

The thought of the Old Barstard bought a smile to my face. He was not my maternal grandfather, but still... he had seen my potential. "Yes, the Imperial Guards are hand picked and trained brutally. They were also only human males. I am the only female to have ever worn the Red - and that was only because only a few knew whom I was before I put on the helmet and became faceless and sexless. I wear my grandfather's armour and I wield his Pike. I even had his name and title - Lord Fire Blade"

[Lion El' Jonson]

Lion almost choked on his spit.

"Lord...Fire Blade?"

Lion had heard that name before....wasn't he the psycho that took out the original Jedi temple? Or...was it Helen?

"...Excuse me, ma'am, I must be tired...did you just say Lord Fire Blade?"

[Helenias Evenstar]

"Yes, I did. Why, heard of that name before?"

[Lion El' Jonson]

Lion nodded.

"Erm, yes, madam...I heard mention of the name in the Jedi Archives..."

[Helenias Evenstar]

"Rather likely. What in relation to?"

[Lion El' Jonson]

"Well...supposedly he was the one who destroyed the original Jedi Temple on this planet. Some kind of explosive I believe. He must have possessed a certain amount of skills if he was able to sneak through our security..."

Lion was becoming more and more convinced that Helenias had been Lord Fire Blade every second, but he wasn't going to jump to conclusions...

[Helenias Evenstar]

"How do you like your Jedi, burnt or electrified?" I replied sweetly

[Lion El' Jonson]

"Whoa...you ARE Lord Fire Blade...or were...Well, I can't say I agreed with what you did, but that must have been most skillful work with those explosives, ma'am...."

Lion smiled.

"So, how'd you sneak past all of our sentries?" Lion asked, kind of forgetting Pierce.

[Pierce Tondry]

"They were busy," Pierce said. He pulled a blaster from his hip and walked over to the range controls. "The Temple was under attack at the time, unless I'm wrong and I'm usually not. It's not hard to infiltrate a compound under attack."

A target popped into existence- nothing as fancy as Lion had been working with earlier, just a simple thuglike human. Abruptly, Pierce lifted the blaster and began squeezing off shots.

[Lion El' Jonson]

Lion winced as the sharp whine of blaster fire reached his ears. He momentarily devoted his attention to the noise, and noticed Pierce squeezing off shots from a blaster.

Two...Three....Four....

Lion whisteld softly...not bad at all. A grudging admiration for Tondry's skills was beginning to manifest in Lion, and he wasn't quite sure he liked that.

[Helenias Evenstar]

"He's right you know. Having the Imperial forces attacking at the same time did make my job a good deal easier" I stated, likewise watching Pierce calmly shoot targets. "It is much like the connection to the Force a Jedi has - if you are distracted, you can't feel the Force as well"

[Pierce Tondry]

One shot had been placed in each major limb, and a crude circle had been shot around the 'heart' of the target by the time Pierce was finished. "You'd be amazed at how much of this crap she can shovel into a sentence," he said wryly. "You'd think I was her Padawan or something."

He gave Helenias a sly grin and holstered his blaster. "But yeah. Simple infiltration rules are simple because they apply to everything. I wasn't in on the attack, but I was on Coruscant when it went down. Big stuff. She did a good job."

[Helenias Evenstar]

"Good job!" I shot back with mock indignation in my voice. "Only a good job? It was one of the best examples of what I would call pulling the rug from under a opponent. I would have paid good credits to see the look of surprise on the Jedi's faces when their defences dissolved into nothing. And you call words of Jedi wisdom crap?" I ended, the tone of my voice turning to seeming hurt, "They are words to treasure, to take note on, to embellish and to .... totally disregard as they are Jedi Crap. Unless you want to become one of those silly Jedi of course"

[Pierce Tondry]

"So that's the catch," Pierce swung a fist in mock disappointment. "I knew there was something. There's always something with Jedi."

He laughed aloud and turned to Lion. "Us old folks must be boring you with our old war stories."

[Lion El' Jonson]

Lion laughed.

"Ah, it's not that bad...I could tell you some pretty good ones myself..."

Lion looked up at the ceiling, as if he were searching his brain for memories...

"Pierce, Mistress Helenias, did you hear about the arrest of General Reltar and Admiral Karlan? A few weeks ago, maybe?"

[Pierce Tondry]

"Heard, yes, but I've been out of touch recently. What happened?"

[Lion El' Jonson]

"Well, I was on Mon Calamari supervising the construction of Intel's MC-90...completion time was jacked up by 3 weeks because the 5th battlefleet got mauled by High Admiral Teradoc over by Ketaris...turns out Reltar and Karlan sold out our fleet to the Imps...."

Lion beamed.

"Anyways, being the fine sharp young intelligence officer that I am, I had my teams do some digging and they found a rather large sum of money that had been transfered into Reltar's bank account. Colonel Akima set up a meeting, presumably to discuss the construction delays, and then stunned Reltar and Karlan...I'll tell ya', it was quite a show. Two clean headshots, then she got the guards too...I didn't get to do anything..."

Lion glanced down at his watch.

"So, those two bimbos are locked up at our base at Svivren, my cruiser is back on track, and we need to find some new people to run the Mon Calamari sector. Interestin', eh?"

[Pierce Tondry]

Pierce's eyebrows raised. "Makes sense," he agreed. "Karlan's always had an Imperialist temperament and Reltar's former Imp. He probably had ties that Karlan took advantage of."

Pierce thoughtfully tapped his lips with a finger. "Who's slated to step up to those positions?"

[Lion El' Jonson]

"That line of reasoning was what got us on the right path, Pierce. As for who's stepping up to fill the gap, I know Ackbar is temporarily placing himself in direct command of the Mon Calamari system. He wants Intel there for another week to try and root out any other traitors in the chain of command...we haven't found anyopne yet, but it's pretty unlikely these two were able to orchestrate this without some help."

Lion turned his gaze to the floor, squashing a baby granite slug as it squirmed across tiles.

"So, Pierce, got any good sniper tales?"

[Helenias Evenstar]

"He's got some good peeping tom ones. Sniper scopes are good for peeping into women's bedrooms"

[Pierce Tondry]

"You have no idea how hard it is to be the bodyguard to a woman who gets around as much as she does," Pierce said mournfully. "Sometimes, it seems like she's got visitors every night." Then he laughed and did a quick two-step, putting him out of Helenias' reach.

"Sniper tales, sniper tales," Pierce mused. "None I could really talk about. Most of them are about me shooting Republic officers, which I suspect would not endear me to present company. The others are classified material for another year at least."

[Lion El' Jonson]

Lion laughed as Pierce retreated from Helen's grasp.

"You might want to watch yourself, man...she's likely to lop off some of your limbs if you try that again, past history or not." Lion paused for a second.

"...Just how many officers have you capped, Pierce?"

[Pierce Tondry]

Pierce turned and looked Lion straight in the eye. "You don't want to know that."

[Lion El' Jonson]

Lion shook his head, glanced at Pierce's gun, and then nodded.

"Yeah, probably not." he agreed. "Any stories from you, Mistress Helenias? Nothing that has to do with destroying buildings though, please..."