This is my first story submission. I hope it is enjoyed.

Cyntra’a gritted her teeth and pressed her eyes shut. The damn Kist Mites were biting at her again. After six days of lying on the Tattoine earth, the tiny yellow insects had worked their way into every crevice of her clothes and body. They always became more active as the suns went down, nibbling at her skin seeking the precious blood that sustained them. The maddening itch would begin to fade after a few minutes as the anesthetic qualities of their bites began to numb her skin.

She opened her eyes again and gazed down past the sandstone crags in which she had been hiding herself, waiting for her objective, Commander Stet Tebah to show his face. It had taken her a week to track him to this remote outpost just north of the Great Mesa Plateau. She almost had him at Anchorhead but someone had tipped him off; Probably Cypher 13. That piece of poodoo had hated her since the academy and would burn her any chance he got. She was going to have to take him out one day. Because of him, Cyntra’a had been sitting in the hot Tattooine sand being eaten alive by parasites for six miserable days. To make matters worse, she had begun her monthly blood two days into her wait. With no way to clean herself properly, she was forced to stew in her own juices. By the fourth day, what little sleep she got was filled with dreams of hot showers.

Cyntra’a was unusual in that most Chiss in the imperial military were intelligence agents. She had never really fit in with the rest of her race, however. Since the day she was born she had been shunned by everyone from her parents to her peers. Her father was a farmer on Kinoss, a backwoods planet near the edge of the Chiss Ascendency. He was a quiet and hard man who rarely smiled, laughed or joked, and never with her. She had caught him sharing playful moments with one of his three other children from time to time. Her mother Kayija was an artist, and prone to fits of depression and random rage. Often times Cyntraa was the outlet for her mother’s aggression, receiving endless harrying and sometimes beatings.

Her siblings were kind enough. Scyaa was her older sister and marked by her beautiful deep blue skin, tall lithe figure and graceful manner. She was always the one to sooth her little sister after one of her mother rages . Her brother Djeskki was two years her junior, handsome and smart as a whip. Her youngest brother Carrek had been her mother’s favorite. When he was taken as a force sensitive by the Sith Empire at the age of four it broke her completely.

Cyntra’a was not graced with her older sister’s refined beauty. She was diminutive and curvy rather than tall and lean and her eyes were a dusky burgundy rather than a brilliant crimson. Even her movements and attitude were more masculine than elegant. Often as a teenager, others her age had thought her to be awkward and boyish, and had labeled her a lesbian. Being gay would have been perfectly acceptable in Chiss society, but since her preferences were, in fact, for boys, it led to a lonely adolescence. Cyntra’a spent most of her time hunting in the forests near her house. It was there that she found peace in solitude.

When she left home at sixteen and joined the Empire, she adapted quickly to military life. The academy was rough as she was singled out due to her race. All aliens had trouble as bigotry was rampant among the Officer Core of the Empire. However, among her peers she found her first sense of belonging. A soldier didn’t care what race you were as long as you could fight, and that came naturally to her. Despite the constant abuses by her superiors, Cyntra’a quickly earned the loyalty and respect of her fellow soldiers. By her graduation, she had won several Marksmanship Citations and was recommended to Sniper training.

Her loyalty, however, was never to the Empire. It was to the men and women with whom she served. As she rose through the ranks of Imperial intelligence, other officers found her unfriendly and sometimes even combative, while those who served under her found her a brilliant leader and loyal comrade. Her duties, however, kept her alone in the field most of the time.

Cintra’a rested her cheek against the butt of her rifle and peered through the scope, raking the small camp for the commander. Her eyes strained against the harsh glare of the desert sand. Even under the thin tan fabric that covered her; shielded her from the hot suns and broke up the patterns of her shape in the rocky landscape, the heat was almost unbearable. She was confident that he was in a tent in the center of camp. She had a good view of the tent’s entrance and had seen messengers coming and going at all hours of the night and day, but she had yet to see the its resident show themself.

She had to grant the commander some respect. He was clever. They had been on a merry chase for over two weeks. She had briefly spotted him once in a cantina on Nar shadaa, but before she could get closer he had disappeared. She cursed herself for being too eager. She had most likely let her glance linger on him too long. Since then he had always kept one step ahead of her every move.

Commander Tebah was one of the Republic’s most skilled commandos. He had been singularly responsible for more Republic Victories than any commander in the entire 45th battalion. Highly decorated and well respected, he was a coveted prize for any hunter of men and Cintra’a had every intention of claiming him.

The flap on the tent fluttered suddenly. Cyntra’a focused and waited. God’s knew she wanted to end this insufferable waiting. Her trigger finger, the only finger exposed on her softened hide gloves moved into place inside the trigger guard of her rifle. Come on you piece of Sleen ****, she thought. I know you’re in there.

The tent flap abruptly flipped upward and out into the daylight stepped none other than the man for whom she had been waiting to see. Cintra’a’s breath caught in her throat. Weeks of hunting and almost a week of waiting in the oppressive suns of Tatooine had finally paid off.

He was extraordinarily tall as humans went. She could tell that, his body had once been muscular and strapping, but years of command had turned muscle to fat and the broadness of his chest had sunk into a flabby gut. He was still an imposing figure however, with his head completely shaved bald, revealing a burn scar that ran over half his scalp from the top to his right ear. He wore a thick mustache that curled up from his lip to points like the horns of a Nerf. Cyntra’a knew from her study of the man that the scar on his head was from when a cannon blast almost took his head off at the Battle of Rhen Var. The limp was from a shattered knee he received in a Cantina Brawl on Coruscant three years before.

Cyntra’a laid her finger across the trigger of her rifle. He was walking toward the latrines at the edge of the camp with a data pad under his arm. Where the hell has this guy been ******** all week, in a bucket? she thought astonished. Cyntra’a thought for a second and smiled, he probably had. If I knew an assassin was looking for me, I would probably stay under cover myself.

She let him reach the small portable outhouse and step inside. No sense in rushing the shot. There was only one exit, and it was unlikely that he was taking up residence in the outpost ****house so she would be seeing him again soon. Cyntra’a took the time to check the drop on the scope. High Density Plasma bolts usually had about an inch of drop for every two hundred meters and she had checked and rechecked her range at about eleven hundred twenty meters and change. There was a slight wind on the plateau and she rechecked her windage. Every action had to be made smoothly and with as little movement as possible in order to avoid drawing any outpost sentry’s eyes to motion.

A few clicks on the knobs of her scope and she was ready. Her heart was beating so hard she could swear that the thumping of it against her chest was like thunder. Her hands trembled slightly as adrenaline coursed through every square inch of her body. The feeling of taking a man’s life was like no other in the known universe. The Imperial Sniper Academy on Dromand Kaas had a motto: There is not hunting like the hunting of men. She had studied countless files on this man until she knew him almost like a lover. In fact, she probably knew more about him than any woman who had ever lain with him. Now, she was going to snuff out everything that he ever was or would be. Over one hundred and twenty eight confirmed kills and she still trembled like a leaf every time.

She took a deep breath in an attempt to collect herself. She had to be as controlled as possible because one shot is all you get. One shot and either the man would fall dead, or scramble into cover and be gone, and all of her hardship would have been for not. Men like this rarely give you second chances and they never gave you a third. After five excruciatingly long minutes, the door to the latrine swung open and Tebah sauntered into the daylight. He wore a look of relief on his face that made Cyntra’a think that maybe he had held his **** in for six days.

He limped toward his tent. Cyntra’a followed every step tuning herself to his gate. She centered the reticle on the datapad under his left arm. His steps became the rhythm to a silent song that Cyntra’a began to sing to herself. He was twenty meters from his tent. Cyntra’a guided the reticle ahead of him. In her head, she was calculating his speed to the distance she would aim ahead of him. Almost two full meters. This was going to be one hell of a shot. She took one final breath, let it out slowly and held it before the last little bit left her lungs. Her finger crept backward millimeter by millimeter. Each second stretched on forever as her eye focused on the invisible target in front of the man.

The rifle sounded off in her ears as it struck her shoulder. The shot took her off guard; the best ones always did, keeping her from tensing a moment before the discharge and throwing off her aim. The picture in the scope became a jumble as the rifle violently rocked back against her and she quickly re-centered to watch the trajectory of the bolt. Within that fraction of a second she found the bolt which was little more than a dot of red light amidst waves of distorted air.

The blaster bolt would take just under three seconds to reach its target and unless one was a shooter, they would never realize how long three seconds could be. One…Time stood still as Tebah took a stride forward unaware that a bullet meant for him was already on its way to meet him. Two…Cyntra’a held her breath, unblinking, as she waited to see if his path would cross into the path of the bolt or if he would arrive a fraction of a second too soon or too late. Three…the datapad under Tebah’s arm exploded into shards of broken plasteel and glass. At this range she was unable see the tiny hole that traveled through his left arm and into his chest. She could, however, see the blood, flesh, and burning cloth flying from his right side as the bolt of superheated plasma instantly slowed and compressed inside of him before sending half his heart and one lung exploding through the shattered ribs of his right side.

Cyntra’a’s heart leapt as she watched him fall forward as he tried to continue on his trek from the bathroom. His facial expression never changed because his brain hadn’t received the message from his body that he was dead. In fact, it never would. As he collapsed to the ground like a pile of dirty laundry, his mind was never even distracted from the article he had just read about the swoop races on Nar’ Shadaa. As Commander Stet Tebah came to rest in a flurry of sand and blood on the Tattooine soil, his thoughts were silenced forever.

Cyntra’a wished she could leap up and let out a victory cry. She wished she could sit and savor this moment for a while and watch as the troops at the base scrambled like Tigs who just had their nest stepped on as they tried to figure out what the hell had just happened. Time, however, was precious, and confused troops didn’t stay that way long. In mere seconds, Cyntra’a would go from being the hunter to the hunted because that was the way it always ended.

There would be time later to reflect on her victory while lying in her quarters aboard her ship. The quiet hours when the thrill of victory had faded and regrets began to inch their way into the back door of her mind. Those secret regrets which no sniper ever talked about or even admitted to themselves. The secret truth was that every target took a piece of your soul with them when they fell. The man with whom she had obsessed over and filled her every waking moment for the better part of two months was gone forever. Now there was only herself for company again in the quiet hours, and with every kill, there was less and less of her to fill that silence.