Six death troopers were crowded into a shack made of warped steel plates taken from an abandoned manufacturing plant. Two stood guard over a family of hybrid human-Twi’leks cowering in the corner. Two more stood at the window, watching Cheka starfighters tearing through the sky. They also kept an eye on a large force of Cheka gathered outside of the mushroom growth of the Senate Building.
“We’re not going to get a clear shot,” one of them said. “No matter what kind of stunt the Major pulls, those Cheka aren’t budging from the Senate Building.”
“Agreed,” said their commander. Turning away from the window, he said, “We’re going. It’s going to be hot, so expect a fight!”
The hybrid family, not understanding the scrambled, robotic speech coming through the death troopers’ comms, hid their faces as they assumed that the order to terminate them had been given.
“I’m looking forward to this,” said one death trooper, hefting his oversized DLT-19 blaster rifle. “The Senate looks like horrible alien slimy goop architecture on the outside, but I can’t imagine it looking too bad on the inside.”
“You sound like you’re going on a tour. I don’t think they’ll enjoy a visit from us.”
“No, you’ve got it all wrong!” The death trooper threw open the door and scanned the neighborhood, which had gone quiet after their violent arrival. He stood and watched their rear while the others filed out. “See, this is a democracy. Power is in the hands of the people. We’re the people, aren’t we? The senators will be glad to shake our hands.”
“Technically, isn’t it a republic? Rather than a democracy?” said the other, backing out of the dwelling while holding a finger up to his mouth.
“Is it? Well. I have no idea.”
* * *
[https://screenrant.com/wp-content/uploads/star-wars-7-force-awakens-images-stormtroopers.jpg]
The battered troop transport tore through the blockade, throwing Cheka cruisers aside in a wave of shrieking metal. Regis had pulled back inside the open window and was greeted by the sight of a Snivvian in a gray Cheka uniform flying with its limbs splayed out. The young stormtrooper driving the smoking transport fought to regain control, then several stormtroopers leaned out of the windows and resumed spraying any Cheka without the sense to take cover.
A stormtrooper standing next to the driver - in fact, there was no passenger seat at the front of the transport - suddenly fell back as blaster fire smacked into the center of his chest. He went limp and Regis crouched over him with his stomach reeling. At that moment, he heard the thunk of an impact as the transport hit something soft, then a slight bwomp as it went under the heavy wheels.
“Got him!” said the driver. Looking over at his comrade, he added, “Is he dead!?”
Regis inspected the smoking armor. The trooper turned his head slightly.
“No, just stunned,” said Regis. “Just keep her moving, get us to the Medical Facility!”
“This poodoo cart isn’t going to make it!” said the driver, grinding the gears as he fought to maintain speed. “And - ah, Major!”
Regis pushed up and held onto the jagged hole where the windshield had once been. They were barreling down a rusty steel framework lined with market stalls, like a handmade road thrown together just above the filthy sea. The towering rust-red Medical Facility was tantalizingly close, but from this distance he could see the flashing lights and blue and gray uniforms of Cheka soldiers gathering at its base.
Regis took in the scene in a fraction of a second before noticing what the driver had seen. A squadron of two dozen mixed starfighters raced toward them on an attack run with a violet X-Wing in the lead. With smoke pouring out of the front of the transport and the driver fighting the gearshift, an order to take evasive maneuvers was out of the question.
“Sindo!” Regis shouted. “We need you!”
At once the violet X-Wing peeled away, then only a moment later a dozen friendly TIE Interceptors and X-Wings blasted overhead, afterburners roaring as they fired and flew straight through the middle of the oncoming ships. In a roar of flames those that did not break formation were blasted. A few swerved back into the attack run and fired at the transport, but their shots only blasted the platform. A leaning fishmonger’s hut was vaporized, but the transport was unharmed.
“Sorry we’re late, Major!” Sindo’s voice came through the comm. “We’re hard pressed up here!”
Leaning to look up through the windshield, Regis saw clouds of squadrons vying for position. Considering how far they were from the Medical Facility, and how many Cheka were positioned around it, he knew that Sindo putting together an attack run was their only chance of getting inside. He gritted his teeth, hissing in frustration. As Sindo’s crew wheeled about, the violet X-Wing swung around and blasted one of the TIE Fighters, sending it spinning in a shower of sparks.
“Don’t worry about us, Sindo!” he said. “Just watch out for that X-Wing with the fruity paint job!”
“Rear tires are on fire,” said Birdy, pulling his head back in the window moments before blaster fire laced the transport’s side. “We’re going to be dragging melted tires soon enough.”
“There, sir,” said Vasili, pointing to a tall building across from the Medical Facility. Though it may have once been an office building, laundry now hung from makeshift balconies hammered into place beneath broken windows. “If we can get in there, we can dig in, and pick off some of those Cheka around the hospital.”
Regis did not like the look of the cracked duracrete walls, with large sections covered in cheap sheet metal. But, looking around, he did not see anything better. Leaning on the driver’s seat, he said, “Can you get us there, son?”
“Yeah, but-”
“No buts!” said Regis, ducking as blaster fire smacked into the transport and laced the road. Already the Cheka massing beneath the Medical Facility were firing.
“Birdy!” Regis shouted. As if his point man had read his mind, Birdy had already unslung his heavy plasteel shield and was handing it to him. Regis took the shield and jammed it into the windshield directly in front of the driver.
“I can’t see anything, sir!”
“You don’t need to!” Regis snapped. “The target is that way, and the gas pedal is right there!”
The driver shook his head, then said, “Yes sir!”
“Everybody, get down, and hang on!” Regis shouted. The engine roared, then moaned pitifully. The transport lurched as one tire after another blew out, and everyone’s armor flashed in red and blue as blaster bolts leaped through the windows overhead. Regis felt a dreamlike sense of unreality as they tumbled over the makeshift roadway, blind and only moments away from careening into a sea of sewage on either side.
The tortured transport crashed through some pitiful barrier, dust poured in through the windows, then they crashed into something and came to a rest buried in armored legs and arms. Regis forced his way up and, through the windshield, he saw that they had blasted through the wall of the building and collided with a support beam covered in cracked concrete. The terrified faces of Rodians and Nelvaanians stared at them from their cots and meals shared over burning barrels, shocked at the sight of a white-helmeted stormtrooper staring at them from the remains of a Cheka troop transport.
“Get up!” Regis shouted. “If you’re still alive, get up and secure the area!”
* * *
Luke darted into an alcove just as a squad of armored Cheka marched around a turn in the hallway. None turned to look as they marched past, their ill-fitting blue helmets facing front as they went to reinforce the infantry guarding the Republic Palace. As soon as the last soldier passed by, Luke continued on.
The slate gray hallways were lined with viewscreens showing footage of the aerial battle, buildings in flames, alien bodies lying in bloody heaps. Luke noted that the media was running with the story that thousands of stormtroopers were attacking rather than a handful. He wondered if they had bought Lando’s bait sold during his false flag operation, or if they were simply reporting what would maximize their ratings. He adjusted his hood, blocking out much of the disorienting imagery.
He found a labeled steel door and passed his hand over the locking mechanism, feeling out each separate component. Nudging it lightly, it opened with a satisfying klang and he slipped inside the doorway. Within the rounded chamber stood a massive piston hanging down into a deep pit, from which rose the stench of a thousand miles of open sewage.
He sensed no one in the vicinity, but knowing that there might be remote surveillance, he entered as if he was supposed to be there. He found the control panel, stopped the outtake sequence, opened up the intake reservoir, then grasped the large handle of the piston and pushed it up toward maximum power.
Sensing something like a shadow passing over him, as if falling under the disembodied gaze of someone looking for him, Luke pressed on, moving deeper into the Republic Palace.
* * *
[https://img5.goodfon.com/wallpaper/nbig/f/ca/jose-angel-trancon-fernandez-by-jose-angel-trancon-fernand-1.jpg]
Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!
The Galactic Senate Chamber was a maelstrom of screaming and violence as four surviving death troopers fired on senators trampling one another to escape the circular platforms where, only moments before, they had been debating a bill granting financial aid to Tatooine.
A death trooper chucked a thermal detonator, igniting a platform and sending it spinning with its long-necked Asogian delegation tumbling over the side. It crashed end over end, crushing senators and throwing a representative of the Jawa Unionized Metal Recycling Commission flying end over end, his cry of “Utini!” somehow carrying over the shriek of death trooper blaster fire. Senator guards - Gamorreans in blue robes - charged into the Senate Chamber only to be gunned down by a death trooper watching the entrances while his comrades targeted the New Republic’s alien overlords.
One death trooper kicked a crawling Talz out of the way, barking and signaling for his wounded teammate to approach. Even without hearing the command translated by his comm, the wounded death trooper knew what was necessary as he stumbled over to the platform control console. He fell against the console, drawing in air with difficulty; he had broken ribs digging into his lungs, but was at least still on his feet thanks to his plastoid armor. Unable to see the labels on the console thanks to blurring vision, he simply jerked levers and pushed buttons at random. He was rewarded with the sight of multiple platforms taking off, floating on antigrav repulsors while recorded alien voices warned of imminent danger. The death trooper grinned in hateful satisfaction as one platform took off with a venerable Chagrian senator hanging onto the side, screaming in outrage until another flaming platform crashed into him, silencing his complaints.
Standing atop a pile of Outer Rim senators who had made a suicidal dash for an exit, one death trooper slammed the butt of his rifle into a guard, then grasped him by the collar of his robe and tossed him over the side, where he crashed into several platforms like bloody pinball. Swinging his rifle around and firing at several senators crawling behind cover, he shouted, “Where are the Ewoks!? Where are those newfangled senators from Endor’s moon!?”
“What do you care?” said his teammate, coolly firing at a guard who had been lining up a shot from a doorway. “They’re no worse than any of the other vermin in here.”
“Are you kidding?!” The death trooper ran down an aisle, his black helmet swiveling as he scanned the flaming ruins of the Senate Chamber. “Raiders used to make jerky out of those little freaks! And now they put them in senator’s robes! And pose for pictures with them!” He paused to shoot at a flat-faced Candovantan digging himself out of a pile of bodies. “And after what our boys survived on Endor, eight years ago? Oh, those Ewoks… they’ve had this coming for a long, long time, brother!”
* * *
Luke entered the dimly lit interior of the Empress’s apartment. Two armored Cheka turned in shock, surprised when the locked door opened on its own. Luke gestured and they crashed into the wall with a sickening crunch, then fell in a heap.
He looked around, curious about his sister’s home, taking in the sparse, white decor, the sterile white couch in a recessed living room, and the jarring, shapeless forms of abstract holo art flickering and slowly turning like tortured spirits.
He felt the Empress nearby. Sensing no fear, no doubt radiating from her, he relaxed his own Force camouflaging. He could feel her attention shifting toward him. There was no backing out now.
He made his way through the cold living room, then stopped as he passed by a framed photo. It was so small and plain that he nearly missed it, but having noticed it, he now felt drawn toward it. Bending closer, he saw Leia standing with four other humans, all wearing traditional Jedi garb. She was smiling, seeming genuinely happy with her hair tied up in buns. A tall, powerfully-built woman smiled and rested one hand on the shoulder of a short man winking at the camera. A pretty lady with a shy smile stood a little ways apart from the others, as if afraid of crowding her friends.
The fourth figure who stood with Leia, a handsome man with a confident grin, somehow reminded Luke of the bizarre Force-using hybrid in pink that he had fought on Dagobah. He gasped at the realization that he was looking at the people who became the Stralucitor. They looked nothing like the genetically ravaged bullies that so many had learned to fear. His hand involuntarily gripped into a fist, and he controlled his rising anger only by focusing on the belief that there was no way these healthy people could have become such perverse creatures on their own.
Looking at Leia’s bright smile one last time, he turned away and strode toward the wide balcony. The door slid open as he approached, revealing clouded ocher skies, and the buzzing whirl of angry hornets as an aerial battle was waged in the distance. The balcony was made of brilliant white stone, and a long stairway extended down to what might have once been a poolside retreat, but was now a failed containment area for a sea of dark water. A tall, chipped white pillar stood over the sludge, like an unfinished marble statue abandoned by its maker.
Beneath the statue, Empress Organa stood with her back to him. Her white robe glittered in the sunlight. Luke made his way down the stairway toward her.
“This is all your doing, I take it?” said Leia. “This attack? All this death, this devastation?”
“You need to accept some responsibility for this, Leia,” said Luke, tempering his anger with cold determination. “You hold your own children hostage after targeting an entire species for replacement, then you play the victim after I walk into your trap? This is not you, Leia.”
“You never have known me, Luke,” Leia mused, watching dark waves lapping at duracrete breakwaters around the palace. “You were always pretending to rescue me. Running circles, around and around in your sick hero’s fantasy.”
Luke stopped at the foot of the stairs, ignoring the stinking waves lapping at shining white stone. “I want you to tell me who made you this way, Leia. Who gave you these powers? You’ve gotten too strong, too fast. The Force doesn’t work that way. Maybe with the Dark Side, but you don’t-”
“There’s so much you don’t understand about the Force, Luke. You only think in black and white, good and evil. Like a child. There are… other sides of the Force, Luke. What you use is for beginners. But if you submit to me, Luke, I can show you things. Teach you the true nature of the-”
“No.” Luke steadied his nerves, then said, “Tell me who did this to you. Tell me, so we can end this.”
Leia shook her head slowly, then turned slightly, as if finally deciding her brother deserved her attention. Luke noticed something strange moving at her throat, like a living necklace. He looked closer, wondering at the green serpent coiling around her neck.
“Leia, what is…”
Leia slowly turned around, and Luke fell back a step, unable to breathe. Though Leia had done nothing but turn and look at him, Luke felt as if some monstrous force had cut off his air. What he saw could not be real. His sister’s face was a mass of wet, green tentacles trailing down from her cheeks, parting at her mouth and hanging down her chin. The serpentine tentacles coiled and wrapped around one another in a restless dance. Though the top of her face still seemed human, her eyes had become lifeless black orbs, with patches of dark, corpse-green flesh around her eyes. Leia licked her dark lips with a thin, purple tongue.
Luke sucked in a breath, and felt the words ripped from him as he said, “Leia! What have you done!”
“There you go again, Luke,” said the hybridized Leia. “Underestimating me again.”
* * *
Sindo ignored the sickening sensation of her guts pressing flat against her seat as she leaned into a corkscrew dive, avoiding bright crimson blaster fire from three Cheka X-Wings.
“Stay on me, all of you!” she said through clenched teeth. “We’re going around this apartment building. Cheka don’t want to deal with civilian casualties!”
“We’re on you, ma’am!” said one of her boys.
Sindo banked and came around the building, catching sight of the tail end of a winding serpent made of stolen TIE Interceptors and X-Wings. The sky was filled with shards of broken glass following in their wake as apartment windows blew out. She was more concerned with the squadrons of Cheka fighters choking the air.
“None of those cowards wants to make a move!” said one of her teammates in an X-Wing. “We bloodied their noses, alright!”
“If they’re sleeping, let’s wake them up,” said Sindo. “See those A-Wings coming late to the party? We’re going spearpoint-formation, right through their middle!”
“Got it.”
“Understood!”
Sindo tore away from the apartment building and raced through a steel canyon of dilapidated high-rises, her gaze fixed on the wedge-shaped ships flying parallel to her snaking line. Despite all the Cheka flying but not attacking, her gaze fixed on a glittering violet X-Wing flying far overhead, barely within range of her scanners. Just then, it disappeared from her scanners, then dropped from the sky like deadweight.
“Painted X-Wing just cut its engines!” Sindo shouted. “Heads up! It’s coming down right on top of us!”
Even before the warning left her mouth, the violet X-Wing sprang to life at the tail end of their formation, firing in rapid bursts. First one TIE Interceptor exploded, then blaster fire laced the wings of one of Sindo’s X-Wings. Desperate to avoid fire, the craft banked and slammed directly into the side of a high-rise, sending bits of glass and metal pouring into the canyon.
“It’s right behind us!” a pilot shouted.
“Damn it,” Sindo hissed. “That’s a Stralucitor… has to be!” Fighting against the demoralizing dread of suddenly facing a professional after chasing so many cowards, Sindo took a deep breath, then said, “Dagen, you take the lead, I’ll deal with this freak!”
“Will do, ma’am!” said the pilot directly behind her.
As the front of the formation pulled free from the steel canyon, Sindo jerked her control stick back and went into a dizzying climb. She saw the violet X-Wing at their rear, lining up for a third kill. Sindo gunned the engine, planning on slicing down and dropping on top of the Stralucitor. But even as she pushed herself far beyond nausea, she knew in her gut that even the Interceptor would not be fast enough to close the loop before the X-Wing was free of the confines of the high-rises. Worse still, she knew that she would become the killer’s next target.
The violet X-Wing suddenly pulled out of its attack run and ascended as if unexpectedly afraid - then Sindo understood why, as a round, flat freighter flew past the high-rises, blasting wildly.
“A freighter?!” said Sindo.
“Not just any freighter!” said Lando. “The Millenium Falcon! She’s the fastest-”
Sindo was distracted from Lando’s bragging and Chewbacca’s senseless shouting in the comm as she dropped past the violet X-Wing in the middle of its ascent. For one split second their cockpits drew close, and she saw the violet uniform and armor of the long-nosed pilot, the human-H’nemthe hybrid, Lucitor Opeia. The Stralucitor’s violet helmet with dark visor turned in Sindo’s direction, her gaze somehow cutting through her spirit. Then the moment passed, and the two swept past one another.
Sindo banked and leveled out, buzzing over a canal clogged with makeshift houseboats colliding with one another in her wake. She gasped in relief and watched as her team blasted the line of A-Wings, destroying several and sending the others scattering. The Millenium Falcon swooped in from the side, blasting an A-Wing as it tried to flee. Lando whooped loudly while Chewbacca shrieked as if being whipped.
“Is this what Rebel comm traffic was like?” said Dagen, laughing. “You’d get written up, carrying on like that on our comm channels!”
Sindo strained in her seat, desperate to find the Stralucitor who had disappeared from her scanners once again. “Form up on me, everybody!” she said. “That stupid paintjob is not going to let this go!”
“We must have gotten ‘em angry,” said Lando. “Looks like several squadrons are forming up for attack runs!”
Glancing aside, Sindo saw that he was right, as multiple groups of A-Wings and TIE Fighters were buzzing toward them. Even if the violet X-Wing returned, she doubted she would see it on her crowded scanner.
“Damn it, you’re right,” she said. “What’s got them so confident all of a sudden?”
“AaauAaugh!” said Chewbacca.
“Oh,” said Lando. “That.”
As the Millennium Falcon led the others to meet her, Sindo braked hard and turned, hoping to catch the violet X-Wing attempting to sneak up behind her. Instead, she saw something like three mountains falling upon the city, reflecting golden light shining from holes punched in the roof of the sky. She blinked, and finally understood that three aged Venator-class Star Destroyers, painted with symbols in Cheka blue, were slowly descending, trailing sickly yellow clouds in their wake. Starfighters poured from their hangar bays like a plague of locusts sent from the heavens.
Sindo’s control panel screamed a warning which she did not need to hear. She already knew that she was dead.