The man walked down the dark street. Lights were coming on now as the sun set in the horizon. As the shadows grew like weeds, another man came down the street towards the first. They stopped, talked, no one was the wiser.
Finally one of the men let down his hood. He was a strangely attractive man, short brown hair and a smirk on his face. Speaking in a Maltanese accent...
"I hope the coordinates are correct. Both for our sake and yours."
The other man was very concealed and physically still. Although he was wearing the common clothes of a Malta citizen, he was paranoid about being seen in public.
"You invite me down here and then threaten me. Senior, this isn't going to work out well if we can't trust each other."
They had a short pause. The attractive man dropped his smirk and looked slightly ashamed. Slowly, the other man started to move cautiously around.
"The explosives are secure in the hanger I provided you. As well as small-scale cloaking technology. In short, everything you need to get the job done."
The attractive man's eyes grew wide, he started to stutter something, but simply said "thank you."
The cloaked man quickly bowed and walked off, leaving Paracelli alone in the street clutching the piece of paper he was given. He quickly regained his smirk and set off to tell his people. Tomorrow was going to be a long day.
Back in his hideout, the cloaked man activated his air-cleanser and sealed the room from the outside atmosphere. He threw off his cloak and breather mask revealing long flowing dark hair and dark skin.
"Computer, start journal. Subject title: Juan Lucendez, day four on Planet Malta.
I've made contact with the dissident group. If the messages and talk is true, we may soon have domestic Cardamine terrorists. If not, well. I may join Pedro Maniaco, only time will tell. Hopefully my instincts are correct, and I haven't wasted my time or life here. They seem to have accepted our shipment of explosives and cloaking devices. With any luck, they will have a small but destructive impact on Maltan Caradmine production.
Juan out."
The Corsair closed the datapad and and started to unbutton his jet-black Outcast suit. The suit's clasps were difficult for a non-Maltanese to detach, but Juan handled it like he had worn that suit all his life.
"The thirteen saloons that had lined the one street of Seney had not left a trace. The foundations of the Mansion House hotel stuck up above the ground. The stone was chipped and split by the fire. It was all that was left of the town of Seney. Even the surface had been burned off the ground.
Nick looked at the burned-over stretch of hillside, where he had expected to find the scattered houses of the town and then walked down the railroad track to the bridge over the river. The river was there."
The Corsair walked the streets, alleyways and parks.
"Malta is beautiful." The Corsair thought. Raphael was right, the planet was a paradise. The only other planet Juan had seen with such a lush culture and population was Manhattan, ages ago.
But this was all incredibly moot. The Corsair could see the green grass, the trees and the streets, the children playing on the sidewalk as he strolled past, but he couldn't feel anything. The smell was taken by the rebreather mask he kept hidden under his hood. Touch was taken by the thin film of plastic-like chemicals that scrubbed the Cardamine out of his epidermis. It was as if he wasn't really there, he was watching everything go by, knowing that to taste the fresh spring or roll in the lush grass would invite corruption ... forever dooming him.
Juan moved off the main street and passed into a back alley, toward a public phone booth. He dialed the number given and waited, patiently.
"Have you seen the reports yet? It worked! Success!"
"I have, it's all over the news here. 'violent explosion takes BLS crop,' nice work Paracelli."
"They're calling it the 'Malta incident,' people are started to become frantic! The BLS are finished!"
"Yes yes, finished. I must return to Crete. The BLS are stepping up security, I can't stay hidden forever. Take care Paracelli."
With that, Juan hung the phone on the wall of the booth and stepped out, facing three men in dark trench coats.
"You done with the phone?"
Juan told himself to stay calm, he can't break his cover now, not as he was so close to getting home again. The Corsair nodded and strolled off quickly in the other direction, turned the corner and ran full speed towards the spaceport.
"This is agent Orange. The Corsair just left, headed to the spaceport."
"Roger that, we have his ship surrounded, agent. A Turanic Raider's Freighter. Why would a Corsair come right into our backyard with a freighter?"
Orange smiled, "Doesn't matter son, we have him. I'll be along shortly."
Agent Orange stood there looking at his catch. He took his dark glasses off revealing his eyes, pupils were as red as Gamma's red dwarf, and slitted like a snake's.
"Where is your informant. The operation was too big for one person to do alone. You had help Corsair, now where is he?"
Juan spit on the ground in front of him, narrowly missing the agent's black boot.
Orange took a large cigar out from his coat and lit up in the port, overlooking the gleaming Turanic Raider's Freighter. The ambrosia filled his lungs to capacity.
"I'm going to hand you over to the BLS interrogators, dog. Do you know what it's like to go without Cardamine until you die? Or worse, given just enough to keep you alive, but not enough to kill? Death is a merciful thing, and all I want in exchange are names. Home addresses."
Orange bent down and looked Juan in the eyes, they were red, Juan thought, ... like infrared.
Several months in the past, Lucendez's fighter was ambushed by a Cylon patrol in Kappa. The Cylon was superior in every way, and the only reason Juan was still alive today was a freak AI glitch on the Cylon's part. The encounter had left his ship damaged beyond salvage and Juan was put in the hospital for a week. Among other injuries, his right eye was burnt to a crisp.
The Corsair thought briefly about getting a standard replacement, but his contacts in Kusari had lured him away, with a tool that would be invaluable to Juan's ... unique pursuits.
Agent Orange was in his face, detailing all the horrible things BLS agents would do to him, when Juan finally found the infrared setting.
"Perfect." he mumbled.
"What was that? A name?"
Lucendez looked straight into the agent's red eyes and spit perfectly into Oranges' left one.
"The thirteen saloons that had lined the one street of Seney had not left a trace. The foundations of the Mansion House hotel stuck up above the ground. The stone was chipped and split by the fire. It was all that was left of the town of Seney. Even the surface had been burned off the ground.
Nick looked at the burned-over stretch of hillside, where he had expected to find the scattered houses of the town and then walked down the railroad track to the bridge over the river. The river was there."
Juan's face was bloodied. Looking up he silently cursed the BLS agent for not hitting his target.
"Corsair scum! I'll have you know that field was our livelyhood!"
Again and again Juan's face was beaten until Orange finally ran out of places to hit and slugged his right eye. Lucendez felt his fake eye spark and collapse. Suddenly there was a bright flash, a mini explosion erupted from his eye socket, piercing one of the pipelines in the wall of the hanger.
Confusion followed. Orange's men heard the klaxons and dropped Juan from their grasp.
"What ... what do we do now? Plasma leak?!"
They were frantically running for the doors, Orange himself tried to keep them all calm as Juan slipped away and deactivated the photonic cloaking device on his Freighter, revealing instead a pristine M10 Corsair Titan. Lucendez climbed into the cockpit and activated the ship's weapon system, turned the fighter around and shot a Sidewinder straight into the closed hanger door, allowing the plasma to escape along with the Titan.
"This is agent Orange to docking ring control, do not allow the Titan to depart from the planet."
~~Unable to comply ... Corsair Titan has disabled the docking ring ~~
"Damn! How long will autorepairs take? Control? Control!" Orange was furious, police were streaming into the hanger only to find a very disgruntled man yelling into a radio and thousands of credits worth of damage to the hanger.
Juan's ship spiraled through the Gamma Jumphole from Theta, two wings destroyed and a third only held on by a thin scrap.
"This is Elder Lucendez to any and all Corsair patrols, I am under attack, request assistance."
The 101st were the first ones to try and stop the Elder, but the RoS were the most persistent. Even though they were headed into the heart of Corsair space, they didn't deviate from their course.
Krakens and Sallies flew between the two ships, as Nuclear mines detonated the surrounding nebula into fragments. Finally one transmission got through the radiation and reached someone.
"This is OPG Torquemada, enroute to assist, Elder."
Juan was just holding onto his ship, the hull degradation was getting extreme, and the RoS pilot wasn't letting up. As soon as the fight was just within the edge of the nebula, Torquemada opened fire and started to score hits on the lone RoS. Finally coming up against impossible odds, the RoS fled and Juan was allowed to exit the nebula.
"Transmission: Greetings Elder. I didn't get any reports of offenses into Outcast space today."
"This was a ... personal matter Captain. Regardless, it's over now. I need to get back to Crete quickly."
"Ah, yes. Crete. If I may, Elder, the others have been looking for you. There is a meeting in the Council Chambers, I believe we have some new faces there."
"Docking ring almost clear, control. I would appreciate it if you could ..."
Juan stopped as he heard some sort of rattling. His ship was being eased into the docking ring and the wing that was hanging off his ship was now dangerously close to the edge of the ring. Before Juan could do anything the wing snapped and slammed into the central control unit of the ring, killing the tractor beam and sending Juan into the gravity hole of the planet.
Lucendez clicked on his ship's auto-stabilizers and prepared for a rocky reentry.
"The thirteen saloons that had lined the one street of Seney had not left a trace. The foundations of the Mansion House hotel stuck up above the ground. The stone was chipped and split by the fire. It was all that was left of the town of Seney. Even the surface had been burned off the ground.
Nick looked at the burned-over stretch of hillside, where he had expected to find the scattered houses of the town and then walked down the railroad track to the bridge over the river. The river was there."