One Last Job – Part 1

Author’s note: In the Star Wars universe, all you hear amongst the English accents is Received Pronunciation, the cultured intonation most fans associate with the actors Peter Cushing and Sir Alec Guinness, who played Grand Moff Tarkin and Obi Wan Kenobi, respectively.  Since the 1980s, when I used to go to a friend’s house simply to listen to his dad’s wonderfully melodic Liverpool accent, I always wondered where the Scousers were.  The working-class northerners of that galaxy far far away, the space opera equivalent of the British Army rankers who took me on a four-day drunken trek around Merseyside.  We in the US talk about Southern hospitality, but Liverpudlians put American Southerners to shame.  On a related note, I fear that the damage to my liver from the autumn of 1999 may be permanent.  When I watched the film Solo, especially the last scene, I wondered who the guys in Lando’s corner were, egging him on during the sabacc game where he lost the Falcon, and the voices I heard were Scouse.  My standard disclaimer for those who will inevitably find fault with some niggling detail in the story: it’s a story written by a casual Star Wars fan, not a concordance blessed by the high priests and priestesses of the SW canon.  If you like this, I gladly take all credit; if not, I’ll know whom to blame.

I never got tired of hearing the story.  Actually, no, let’s start again.  I did get tired of the story itself, but I always tuned Aarle out after his fourth Corellian ale.  There was never a shortage of willing listeners at the pub two decks below Numidian Prime’s spaceport.  Not the posh first deck with its VIP lounge and sabacc parlour, where Captain Calrissian held court; no, the dodgy pub where ship fitters, longshoremen, deckhands, and smugglers would have a laugh and drink until they got blind.  Aarle’s mates would ply him with another beer that smelt like rotting pine cones strained through dirty knickers, and he’d regale them with the oft-told tale of helping Lando smuggle weapons to insurrectionary Petrusian slaves.

Aarle and I ended up working for LC — that’s what we called Lando — because no one else would employ Imperial defectors, let alone former stormtroopers.  Despite this setback, we’d done well for ourselves the last few years as LC’s subcontractors, for lack of a better word.  In ancient times, we might’ve been called pikeys, but with nicer caravans.  Do you need to run guns, seaweed drugs from Vainai, or contraband slaves past an Imperial blockade?  Give LC a week, and he’ll get through to Aarle and Michu — or, if you really must be accurate for this holo-vid, the clones formerly known as AL-1489 and MC-3317.  What we needed was one good filthy lucre that would allow us to buy our spouses from captivity, then retire to comfortable anonymity somewhere in the Outer Rim.

The translator on my wrist vibrated before I picked up on what the two-metre-tall bug was saying.  “I’ve been told that if I were looking for something, you might be able to help.”  A Mimbanese.  Big smelly sods, with scarlet skin and enormous blue lidless eyes.  Every time I ran into one, I shuddered.  I also couldn’t help but admire their pugnacity, fighting the Empire’s invasion of their world with primitive weapons left over from the Clone Wars.  Aarle and I would know, we’d been in the first wave and had witnessed the carnage on both sides firsthand.

I leaned back in my stool and crossed an ankle over a knee, hand on the ankle where I kept my social weapon, a small blaster inside my boot.  “What seek,” I asked in my horrible Mimbanese, which I’d learnt from a prisoner.  Humans can only mimic some of their sounds, which makes communicating without a translator difficult, but many at places like Numidian Prime, where hundreds of species passed through, tried their best.

The bug clicked and chirped, and my wrist translator said, “People all over this sector said that if I need weapons, I need only to talk to you, your friend, or your boss.”

This was a setup by the Imperial Security Bureau if I’d ever seen one.  “Bollocks, mate.  We’re crewmen on the Corellian freighter Millennium Falcon,” I said to the bug.  “Captain Calrissian doesn’t haul anything without an Imperial seal on the bill of lading.  I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“More’s the pity,” the Mimbanese said.  He or she almost looked disappointed.  “You were also supposed to be greedy beyond belief, but that’s also obviously not the case.”

Aarle finally finished his story and started paying attention to the bug.  “What else have you heard about us?”

The Mimbanese pulled up a stool and sat between us.  “I’ve heard that Michu wears a mini blaster inside his right boot, and you carry your social weapon, as you call it, on a harness inside your right sleeve.  That the two of you defected from the 501st Legion on my home world after killing your commander, and have a price of ten thousand credits on each of your heads.”

I leaned past the bug to shrug at Aarle.  Any good ISB agent would’ve just shot or slotted us by now, rather than trying to show off how much they knew.  “What seek,” I asked again in the bug’s language.

He or she started answering before I finished.  “Five hundred E22 rifles with at least ten plasma magazines per weapon, one thousand proton grenades, two hundred autonomous thermal detonators, one hundred M35 machine guns with two pre-loaded rucksacks of ammo capsules each, and two ion cannons that can be broken down and transported by three beings each.”  The Mimbanese seemed to smile at us.  “That would be a good start.”

“A good start,” Aarle almost yelled, then I reached across to put a calming hand on his arm.  “Where the bloody hell would we find anything like that, much less get that cargo on a ship that’s able to break the imperial blockade, then deliver everything to a swamp planet patrolled by a squadron of TIE bombers and half the 224th Division?”

“Your problem, boyo, not mine.”  Do Mimbanese smirk?  Because he or she certainly seemed to enjoy this.  “You have the Falcon, which just did the Kessel Run in twelve parsecs, if you believe the tall tales here.  Shouldn’t be a problem.”  The barman put up a glass of rotted fruit, the smell of which made Aarle gag, but which the bug threw back with gusto.

“Oi, mate.  We” — I gestured at myself and Aarle — “don’t have the Falcon.  She belongs to Captain Calrissian.  We only work on her.”

The bug leaned closer to me.  “What if I were to say that a Reserve Fleet supply ship had been hijacked right here in the Numidia system, and that we only have two days before the Empire throws everything at this planet like it recently did to mine, just to find out what happened?”

Aarle answered for me.  “Then I’d say you’re buggered, aren’t you, mate?”

“As are the two of you,” the Mimbanese said.  “Your forged IDs and badly covered Legion neck tattoos won’t get you past the most inept ISB agent in the galaxy, let alone a higher ranking officer searching for defectors.”  Neither of us said anything for a moment, then we both asked “how much” in different languages.  The big egg layer was smiling now.  “We will need a pilot.”

“Captain Calrissian would never go for something like that,” I said.  “You’d have to make it well worth his while to risk his ship on a suicide run like Mimban.”

“My stormtrooper friend, why don’t you scan this credit chip?”  The Mimbanese reached into his wrinkled red cloak to produce the chip, which Aarle plugged into his wristband, and — holy Sith!

“Half directed tomorrow to an anonymous account on Tatooine that most of the galaxy knows belongs to Calrissian.  Half upon completion, if you live that long.  Will this amount suffice?”  The bug rose and turned for the door.  “I will be at rest in terminal four, please let me know before moonrise tonight.”

———-

“That’s the stupidest Imperial Security Bureau setup I ever heard of,” LC said aboard Falcon two hours later.  Then we showed him the credit chip’s value, and a smile slowly split his face in half.  “Well, there’s stupid, and then there’s stupid.  This, however,” he said, waving the chip at us, “is the most delicious kind of stupid.  We could retire on this kind of money.  When and where, gents?”  Aarle had a rare bright idea, so we told him.

It took ages for just four of us to transfer all the cargo from the supply ship, winding our way past blaster scorch marks on the bulkheads and the already rotting corpses of her crew.  We stored half the cargo under Falcon’s deck, the rest lashed onto every available horizontal surface, including inside LC’s cabin.  LC sent the supply ship onto a direct course for the Numidian sun, then immediately un-docked and jumped to hyperspace.  The bug, a female we now knew as Droch, sat in the jump seat behind LC whilst stars and nebulae and planets spun around in the cockpit windows.  Aarle and I manned the turrets and tried our best to not get spacesick while LC manoeuvered Falcon like she was a speeder bike. Normally we’d have hired a copilot from one of the freelancers on Numidian Prime, but we had a hold full of hijacked weaponry and scant time to figure out who was sober enough to man the nav console.

No one talked about the recent loss of L3.  Abso-bloody-lutely no-one.

We exited hyperspace just outside the Mimban system and slowly followed the spaceway, the Navy-approved track, to a high orbit above Mimban.  LC had to constantly adjust our orbit to avoid ore carriers and military transports coming and going, a constant parade of lookalike rectangular metal boxes.  Mimban looked hot and wet and uninviting from three hundred kilometres up.  From where I sat in the ventral turret, not much had changed.  Staccato explosions in the the southern hemisphere flashed through Mimban’s perpetual cloud cover.  Someone was having a shit day, and I was just happy it wasn’t me.  The first Imperial signal woke me up, and I flipped switches to scan my sector.

“Unidentified freighter, this is the Imperial Star Destroyer Conqueror.  Please authenticate chi sigma.”  An alert popped up on my screen, then a huge shadow as the star destroyer’s arrowhead form blocked the suns from my viewport.  I swallowed, because every cannon on her bow seemed to be aimed at us.  Did we come out of hyperspace too close to the planet?  Did we not have our transponder on, which let Imperial vessels know we were friends?  Did some two faced muppet grass on us for a hundred more credits than what we paid him?

Aarle had gotten a hold of an unexpired code book, and LC took up the façade.  “Conqueror,” LC said, “we are the Bakuran freighter Millennium, heading to Camp Dominion on a resupply run.  Mission number one five zero dash two four.”  That was, or had been, the mission number of the hijacked vessel.  “We authenticate upsilon.”

We waited three heartbeats longer than usual for a response, and I started to sweat.  If that Sullustan had turned us in, I thought, I’d run back to Numidian and kill him again, feed what was left of him to the shacklaws.  The destroyer let me off the hook.  “Millennium, this is Conqueror.  Best approach to Dominion is from the north, to avoid heavy resistance from bugs to its south and east.  Sending your nav system the authorised tracks now.  Safe flying.  Conqueror, out.”  That bloody enormous shadow moved to a higher orbit, and I was able to breathe again whilst LC took an incongruously gentle descent to the surface.  Honestly, we weren’t used to that sort of thing from him.  Riding an LC-piloted anything where he made the descent more comfortable than a thousand-tonne spaceliner boggled the mind.

The 224th Division had built Camp Dominion atop the only piece of dry high ground on the entire southern continent.  It looked like a two-kilometre-wide spider from above, but with ion-cannon battlements instead of legs, and a climate controlled dome in the centre, where troopers could dry out after tabbing in wet muck for weeks.  Below the marshes surrounding the camp lived a billion Mimbanese, who hadn’t even left their home system until the Empire decided to strip mine Mimban’s minerals.

When we first landed here, Aarle and I commanded infantry platoons equipped with sensor packs that sought out air vents for Mimbanese underground hives.  Some of them were large enough, with enough industry, to comprise small cities, up to two kilometres below the surface.  Once we found them, however, we’d call for TIE bombers to not just incinerate the suspected hive, but to gas the tunnels under the still-smoking craters.  We would wait on the periphery to shoot anyone trying to escape to the surface.  Males, females, hatchlings, eggs.  It never mattered, they might be sentient bipeds, but they were still bugs.  It was nothing more or less than murder.  After a year, neither Aarle nor I could stomach it any longer.  Now that we were back, I was just happy that the first Mimbanese we defected to hadn’t shot us straightaway.

LC checked in with Camp Dominion, but the reply gutted me.  I knew this voice.  “Millennium, this is Kappa Control.  I hold you east of the authorised track.  Please authenticate lambda theta and re-state your mission number, over.”

I hit the intercom button to speak to Aarle.  “Is that who I think it is?”

“You would’ve thought he’d be off this planet by now, unless he pissed off the wrong officer.”

LC gave Kappa an answer that seemed to mollify him, then asked us, “What the hell are you two talking about?”

“It’s Jost, our old warrant officer, used to be the sergeant major of the entire garrison here,” Aarle said.  “Michu shot him when we defected, but apparently his aim wasn’t good enough.”

“I put three blasts in the center of his chest plate!  Now you take the piss?”  Aarle and I had been on patrol with the major who commanded our company, Sergeant Major Jost, and a dozen other troopers, searching yet another muddy field for Mimbanese hives’ air vents.  Aarle drove one hovertank whist I piloted the other.  He passed one vent and didn’t report it, but when the major confronted him about it, Aarle simply shot him.  Before anyone could say another word, much less think, I stopped my tank, threw two proton grenades into the troop compartment, and jumped out.  Jost fired at me but missed – yes, I know all the tired jokes about stormtroopers’ aim – and I hit his chest plate with three quick blasts.  Apparently, Jost had paid for our defection by being marooned here ever since.

Under the perpetual rain clouds, LC darted between higher elevations of marshland and the above-ground ruins of Mimbanese cities, which looked like ten-metre-high anthills.  Below the surface, thanks to Aarle, me, and our Legion, some of those cities were nothing but crypts.  “We’re low,” LC said, “so they can’t see us right now, but we need a place to offload.  Droch, your people better show up soon.”  A trio TIE fighters patrolled above the clouds, waiting for infrequent calls for close air support, and likely didn’t hold us on their sensors.

“There,” Droch said, and I rotated the turret to two o’clock.  A hundred-square-metre mud and rock outcropping disappeared, replaced by a rectangular maw that revealed a line of Mimbanese waiting to offload the cargo.  LC set Falcon down, but just barely, keeping enough power up in case we needed to run, then lowered the starboard ramp.

I unbuckled and began lifting the deck plates that hid our cargo.  Aarle maintained his scans of the sky above us and kept us informed of every passing fighter.  I turned towards the ramp and collided with the biggest damn Mimbanese I’d ever seen, almost three metres tall and probably weighing twenty-five stone.  He gave me a look that might have been hate or pity, and spat something multilegged on my boots before hurling crates to the bug behind him.

The big bug spoke as he worked his way through the cargo hold.  “You probably don’t remember me, as I wasn’t fully mature at the time.”  When he paused to look up at me, I shook my head.  “My hive’s queen was ready to put two blasts in your skull when you defected to us.  I thought at that moment, if she doesn’t, I’ll take the gun from her and do it myself.”

“Why didn’t you?”

The big bug threw another hundred-kilo crate down the ramp like it was a ball.  “The queen wanted to first see if your intentions were genuine.”  We’d proved that soon after we defected, arranging an L-shaped ambush that killed several dozen of our former comrades and wounded a hundred more.  It was one of those “rebellious acts” that might get a dismissive mention in a news holo-vid, but one that trebled the price on our heads within a week.

“Time to go, folks,” LC said.

“Almost done, boss,” I said.

“Forget the rest,” LC said, “I’m pulling pitch in three seconds.  We have two drop ships approaching from the south.”

Aarle piped up.  “Those TIE fighters just turned towards us!”

“Droch,” LC said, “it was a pleasure doing business with you.”

I started to say something, but Aarle’s dorsal turret started firing at the approaching TIE fighters.  I felt the deck rumbling under my feet, which meant LC was adding power.  I helped the big male bug with one last crate when an explosion on the starboard quarter threw me, the bug, and the crate off the ramp to the mud below.  Falcon‘s engines revved, and she was gone in a blink.

With my face buried in black muck, I heard blasters from TIE fighters, Falcon, Mimbanese, and what had to be advancing soldiers.  The firing stopped as soon as it started.  I wiped mud from my eyes to see bugs holding smoking weapons, behind the cover of their outcropping.  I looked right and traced two pyres to wreckage of the drop ships halfway to the horizon.  In front of me, bits and bobs of charred gray mud trooper armour, but no sign of intact soldiers who might yet advance on our position.

And because the boss was the best pilot in the galaxy, no sign of Falcon.  The bug who’d almost killed me years ago pulled me upright with one hand, the other holding a brand new E22 blaster he’d pulled from a weapons crate.  “We have two minutes at most until half your Legion is here,” he said, and dragged me underground.  A hundred drone males made the stormtroopers’ bodies disappear inside the cavern, cleaned up the battlefield, and replaced the earthen dome of the hive.  Another hundred drones picked up the crates and followed us down.  The tunnel wasn’t lit because Mimbanese can see in the dark, but one of the drones handed me a small torch so my face wouldn’t keep colliding with the tunnel wall.  I bumped into Droch, who grabbed the back of my neck and pushed me further along, clicking to nearby Mimbanese so quickly that my translator couldn’t keep up.  One word that did repeat was “trust,” so I reckoned I was safe for a bit.

“We are here,” Droch said, and we finally stopped after three hours of nonstop movement, from one tunnel to the next.  My senses of time and direction were worthless without visual cues like suns and moons, so I trusted that she knew where our lot were headed.  I had to work harder than them to keep up, and completely knackered.  The younger male, Shask, told me we were under Camp Dominion.

“Are you kidding me, mate?  Under the camp?  Might as well bring me topside so that wanker Jost can collect on the bounty on me.”

“Are you always such a gobshite before you’ve heard someone out?”  Shask had me there.  “If you and your species would shut up now and again, you might learn something,” he said, and pointed upwards.  I could see a few shafts of light, with fast shadows that could be anything from an unarmed drop ship to a TIE bomber loaded with thermal munitions for hives like this.  The very thought of that made me want to shit meself, but somehow I didn’t.

Droch stopped under the air vent and looked up.  Standing next to her, I could hear helmet-less stormtroopers going about their business, bantering as if there weren’t five hundred newly armed Mimbanese who could hear which trooper missed what dish from back home.  Shask put a blaster in my hand and a bandolier over my shoulder.  “You will need to lead us.”

“To do what?”

“Erase this blight on our planet,” Shask said, confirming that this had been their plan all along.

The Deliberate Attack on Christmas

(above: most recent intel photo of the HVT from his social media accounts)

Around 2130 Zulu on 24 December, the 3rd Battalion of the 25th Infantry conducted a deliberate attack on Objective Yeti at grid SC69641519.  The mission was to capture or kill a high-value target (HVT) with many aliases, among them Babbo Natale, Julenisse, and Saint Nikolaus.  The following is the account of Lieutenant Colonel Chris Noel, commander of Task Force 3/25 during Operation Insensible Havoc.

I’d love for one of these chickenhawk armchair quarterbacks to wear my Danner boots for just one minute.  Try juggling the air assault of two companies onto a contested landing zone, the movement of two dozen helicopters, supporting artillery, and close air support – all while flying above the battle space in a command and control helo and talking on four radios.  The full moon and bright shimmering Northern Lights negated the need for night vision devices.  I was so absorbed with making sure my ground element landed safely, that I didn’t hear the warning from my pilot.  “What was that, John?”

“Gold Six just got shot down, sir.  Last thing he said was, watch out for the red light.”  We began wide orbits above the two rifle companies.

The staff captain next to me chimed in.  “What the hell does that mean?”

“Nothing, Gish,” I said.  “Continue as planned.  What’s A Company’s status?”

“Their commander was hit on the landing zone, sir.  The XO is taking over and encountering heavy resistance.  To their east, C Company still hasn’t made contact with the enemy.”

“Annan,” I told the Fire Support Officer, “I want artillery to paste everything to the west, north, and east of A Company.”

“On it, sir.”  She was one hell of an artist with artillery.  In five minutes, I looked out the window to see a horseshoe of explosions around my embattled A Company.  To their northeast, C Company cut the miniature train line connecting the factory at Objective Yeti with the elves’ barracks, and was almost at their assault position. Still no enemy contact for C Co.; this was worrisome.

“Crazyhorse Six, this is Abu Five,” A Company’s acting commander called me.  She had to yell into her radio mike to be heard over the background noise of a raging firefight. “We’re advancing again, but it looks like some leakers escaped north towards Yeti, over.”

“Roger.  Keep an eye out, I think Red just shot down Gold Six.”

“Crazyhorse, this is Abu Five, be advised, my Blue element just got hit by suicide sleigh borne IED, but minimal casualties, over.”

“Basher is on station, sir!”  My terminal attack controller looked like he’d just won the lottery, announcing that the AC-130 had finally arrived.  The four-engine transport plane bristled with cannons that could flatten one city block every thirty seconds.  Looking up, I saw him enter a shallow left turn to bring his guns to bear.  Then I saw three much smaller specks appear out of a cloud.

“Crazyhorse, this is Basher – damn it!  Departing station – looks like we found Donder, Dasher, and Blixem.  Ten to twelve points on their antlers, big sons of bitches.  One of them just tried to ram my starboard -”  A high-pitched squeal over the radio net. Then a fireball that cascaded down from 15,000 feet, leaving a greasy trail that marred the aurora.

I didn’t have to say anything to John, who wrenched our bird as low to the snowy steppe as he dared.  The TAC threw up all over himself and his radios.  Annan looked paler than usual and held the side supports of her seat in a death grip.  Gish stared at the Blue Force Tracker as if divining something from the screen.  I’m not too proud to admit, I almost wet myself while we plunged from 4,000 to 50 feet above the ground in what felt like only two seconds.

“Annan, tell the guns to cease fire so the jets can come in.  TAC, I want fighters here like yesterday!  Make it happen.”  Both got on their radios.  A flash and thin stream of white smoke streaked past my helicopter, then a roar audible even through my noise canceling headset as two F-22 Raptors chased the marauding reindeer.  But where the hell was Red?

“Splash one,” an exultant Raptor pilot said.  One of his missiles connected, leaving a small black cloud and smoldering pieces of reindeer meat.

The lead Raptor zoomed up, silhouetted against the moon, chandelled back down, and literally shot Donder in the face with another Sidewinder.

The third reindeer clawed its way towards the wingman. “The hell, he’s trying to chew my stabilizer off!”

“Monster, I can’t get him without shooting you.”

“Shoot, Irish!  I’m ejecting!”

Irish’s Sidewinder obliterated both Monster’s $200 million jet and one murderous reindeer.  Monster floated down towards C Company in his parachute.

“This is Bone.  Bombs away.”  God love the B-1 bomber crews.  They were so high you couldn’t see them, but they laid waste to the house and factory on Objective Yeti with thirty 2,000 pound JDAMs. It looked like Hiroshima in the Arctic.

As soon as the smoke on Yeti began to clear, all hell broke loose around C Company.  Elves in red and green striped footie pajamas emerged from underground bunkers that had hidden them from our recon drones.  They rushed headlong into C Company in a Christmasy version of the human wave attacks my grandfather fought off in Vietnam. The elves opened fire so close that C Company couldn’t even call for supporting arms.  The little bastards threw everything at C Company: rocket propelled grenades, machine guns, rifles, even pistols that were supposed to have been presents for cops.  It would’ve been an absolute slaughter, but thank Odin, elves have never been the best marksmen.  C Company methodically returned accurate fire despite being outnumbered five to one, and slowly gained fire superiority. The elves left a colorful trail of casualties as they withdrew from their failed ambush.

“Abu Five,” I called A Company, “can you move northeast to help Claymore, while also blocking the road to the west?”

“That’s affirm, Crazyhorse.  Detaching Abu Red and White to support Claymore – BREAK, BREAK!  RED IS IN THE AIR, COMING AT ME FROM THE WEST!”  And that was my last radio contact with A Company.

“This is Irish, I have eyes on target!”  Another missile shot out from the remaining F-22.  We watched it hit with a tiny explosion, watched Red’s front left leg separate from his body, then watched the beast’s nose light up.  Irish didn’t have a chance.  Whatever directed energy weapon Red had in his snout tore Irish’s wings off, and she spun into the steppe without ejecting.

“John, get us the hell out of here,” I yelled at the pilot, who was already doing just that.

The crew chief next to me pointed past the tail rotor.  “Colonel, he’s behind us!”

“Can you get a shot?”  John leveled the bird and turned right so the crew chief could bring his machine gun to bear.  He got off one quick burst before our world became bright red for a second. In the next second, the engines started winding down, and the acrid smell of burnt wiring filled the cabin.

It took all of John’s skill to autorotate, not crash nose down at ninety knots. We hit the ground so hard that everyone’s seat collapsed on its support struts.  The burning smell was replaced by the smell of jet fuel spurting from ruptured tanks. “Everybody off the helo!  Right now!”

My staff, such as it was, unassed the bird in record time.  The crew chiefs brought their machine guns, and the pilots hauled as much MG ammo as they could.  Gish, Annan, and I removed the working radios and regained communication with the rest of the task force.  Even the Air Force TAC lent a hand, scanning the skies for the crew chiefs and pilots.

Our HVT was down to six reindeer, but intel showed that he only needed five to take off with a fully loaded sleigh.

“This is Bugs, you kids need some help down there?” Bugs (it stands for Boobs Under G-Suit – don’t ask, or someone might lodge a SHARP complaint) was an A-10 pilot who had supported my units so often over the years, I reckoned I knew her voice almost as well as my wife’s.  What I knew even better, however, were the whine of her jet’s engines and the sound of that wonderful GAU-8 cannon.

BRRRRRRT.  It was like Thor’s hammer slapping reindeer, but with 30mm depleted uranium shells, which is infinitely better.  BRRRRRRT.  One more reindeer turned into mince pie for the polar bears. Red’s nose would shine no more.

“He’s in the air!”

“Who’s in the air?”

“The HVT – Sinterklaas.  He’s got four – no, five – reindeer.  Looks like he’s dropping bombs on Abu.”

“I see that fat SOB at the controls.  Bugs is in hot.  Rogue Eight, follow me in trail.”

BRRRRRRT.  Then BRRRRRRT.  Then BRRRRRRT again, as the Rogues made repeated gun runs.  Through my binoculars, I could see that they’d shot one skid off, and two of the reindeer hung limply in their harnesses.  The sleigh began to fly erratically, without enough reindeer power to remain airborne.  The next pass settled the HVT’s hash for good.  I swear I saw pieces of white beard through the mini explosions of 30mm DU rounds hitting the sleigh.  Gaily wrapped presents, a red stocking cap, and chunks of lacquered oak were all that were left after the Rogues climbed away.

B Company, which I’d held in reserve, finished the fight.  They air assaulted astride the most likely ratline for the HVT and his helpers, and blocked the elves’ escape with four platoons of pissed off infantrymen.  Even though they’d missed most of the fight, they made up for it on any elves who didn’t seem to want to surrender.  The resulting one-sided fight was like watching a baby wildebeest fight off a whole pride of hungry lions.

We spent the rest of the night consolidating and reorganizing, and combing the ruins of Yeti for actionable intel on other HVTs.  The noose was tightening around a Middle Eastern rabble rouser who was building an insurgent force on the banks of the Jordan.  This HVT, whom we only knew as the Carpenter, had to know he was next.  He and his twelve guerrillas would undoubtedly meet me and my soldiers on some dark Gallileean night.

Sherman was right.  The war on Christmas is hell.  Happy holidays from Task Force Crazyhorse.

The Dark Side (of the Rebellion)

Author’s note:  This post can arguably be seen as a companion to this or this, but in all honesty, it was inspired by this brilliant podcast by Angry Staff Officer and Adin Dobkin.  If you don’t already follow them on Twitter, WTH are you waiting for?  Full disclosure: I consider ASO a personal friend, even if he is an engineer officer who turned his back on his prior enlisted infantry past, but I digress.  The former soldier in me had always wondered about what happened with pockets of resistance in far flung corners of the galaxy.  I’ve seen the disastrous second and third order effects of real insurgencies, so in a fit of writer’s extrapolation, I tried to imagine what the insurgency on one planet among thousands of Empire controlled worlds might be like.  Without further ado …

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I’ve been leading this contingent of the Lothal Liberation Force for ten years.  Sometimes we number a hundred, as we did six years ago, for our attack on the TIE Fighter factory; more often than not, we operate in two or three seven-man sections.  Sometimes, as today, it just takes a crew of five.  It depends on what we think we can get away with, who might not be missed if they don’t show up at work.  We’re such a motley crew that we don’t rate a Jedi, or even a Padawan, on our home world – we just want the Empire out, and will do everything in our limited power to ensure that outcome.  A prehistoric sage had supposedly said of his ragged band: “We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again.”  Ever since a TIE Bomber incinerated my house, with my wife and children still inside, this is all I know.

I also own a souvenir shop near the Spaceport, and make a minor killing selling fake Rebellion-themed trinkets to the Imperial Forces.  Stormtroopers love the starbird flags we make in the basement, then splatter with enough dirt and nerf blood for verisimilitude’s sake.  I smile as I scan their pay cards, memorize the faces of those not wearing helmets, in the off chance I’ll see them through a scope one day.  The new governor has been searching for us both on the steppe and in the cities, hoping to prove his worth to the Emperor as if his job depends on it.  Which, of course, it does.  No one wants to be Force choked by a Sith.

Unless you were looking directly at us, you would have missed the handoff.  Two men walking in opposite directions, with a split second pause as they exchanged weapons.  The thermal grenades felt heavy, but they were a newer model, I could tell from the heft.  I was dressed like most men in Lothal City, with an untucked tunic over loose trousers and nerf leather boots.  There hardly seemed to be any colors in clothing since the Empire occupied us, just varying shades of brown or khaki.  If anything, that made it easier to blend in.  A few Stormtroopers patrolled the streets in pairs, at regular intervals, some accompanied by an unarmored officer wearing gray.

It was a sparkling new high rise building within walking distance of the Imperial governor’s mansion.  Loyalty to the Emperor and snitching on your fellow Lothalians were rewarded with amenity filled apartments in the Coruscant Glen.  Obsequious droids in each unit tended to every need including cooking, cleaning, and child care – and recorded your every move for the Imperial Security Bureau.  The restaurant on the ground floor of the Coruscant Glen catered to midlevel officers and Imperial bureaucrats – and their families.  It was nice but not too nice, its main feature a sprawling patio with a force field to repel rain, and a moderately priced Coruscanti menu.  These people do love the food of their home world.  I’d eaten there several times on scouting missions, and found the food bland by our standards.  Good selection of Lothalian beers, though.

The patio was packed, as it always was for lunch in the spring.  I used a dead Stormtrooper’s card for a coffee across the street.  Why tempt the ISB by using your own card?  One of my subalterns paid for his meal and left his table by the bar.  Two cooks emerged from a back door, quickly shedding white chef coats to join the subaltern in the crowd walking away from the building.  I looked at my communicator watch and counted down the seconds.  At the last moment, I took cover behind a thick column by the coffee stand.  Four proton grenades exploded simultaneously – one in the kitchen, one at the bar, one under the subaltern’s table on the patio, and one in the restroom.  Smoke and screams filled the air, then sirens as Imperial Gendarmerie hover tanks and speeders converged on the massacre.  The anti-rain force field had contained the  bombs’ explosions within the restaurant’s confines.  The result was butchery.  An armless woman wept over the corpses of her children and husband, an Imperial officer.  Limbs, large and small, littered the patio.  A man staggered out of the restaurant’s interior, his body charred as if he’d escaped a barbecue’s spit, then collapsed dead by the front door.  A smoking head rolled onto the sidewalk.

The first speeder Stormtroopers to respond removed their helmets to vomit on the ground.  A hover tank disgorged its band of troopers at the near corner to search for survivors.   Another hover tank took station on the opposite corner, to my far left.  I sipped my coffee behind the column, gawking with feigned horror as Stormtroopers established a perimeter.  Two black clad Deathtroopers roughly shoved hysterical civilians looking for loved ones.  The rest of the crowd milled around me as I pushed buttons on the grenades in my pockets.  Like many here, I held my wrist up to record the scene on my communicator watch.  With the other hand, I simply dropped the miniature thermal detonators.  They scooted around people’s ankles to autonomously seek large hunks of metal – like the broad bottom of a hover tank.

The subaltern’s thermals went off first, under that hover tank’s soft belly, fused for a blast radius of only five meters.  Anything within those mini fireballs of plasma was incinerated in a tenth of a second.  My own were set to ten meters, since the Stormtroopers here were more widely spread out.  Civilians were caught in this attack, too, but as I’d indoctrinated every member of my band: no sacrifice is too great for our liberation from the Empire.  Kill now, mourn later.  The innocent dead are unavoidable and necessary collateral damage in the pursuit of liberation.  With the sounds of even more screams and sirens building to a crescendo, I took a leisurely half hour walk back to my souvenir shop.

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The moon Candra had already risen in the eastern sky, with her smaller sister, Tinne, shining brightly overhead.  Even at the end of summer, it was still hot enough for heat waves rising from the ground to give false readings in our ancient thermal viewers.  But we’d resurrected other ancient lessons, like how to take on a more heavily armed foe without blasters.  An Imperial sensor 20 km away can track a blaster shot’s plasma to within a few centimeters.  Other lessons we’d had to relearn: merchant by day, insurgent by night; close range is your friend; homemade explosives and deeply buried mines can cause heavier casualties than an X-Wing on a strafing run.

“Steady, Raiona.”

“Shut up, Gajari,” I hissed at my number two.  “I’ve only been doing this for all twenty years of the occupation.”  Two two-legged All Terrain Scout Transports – AT-STs – lumbered over the savannah.  A small patrol, thank the Force.  Their heads and accompanying main guns slewed right and left, controlled by the officer in the lead AT-ST.  Bagging these would be fantastic, but we needed bigger fish, and the bait was tramping over the grass covered plateau, interspersed with the bandy legged AT-STs.  About twenty Stormtroopers – were they still clones, and if not, did that even matter? – arrayed in three mutually supporting V’s, heading in the same direction as the STs, from our right to left.  Always creatures of habit, they were following a well used trail that we had helpfully cleared of grass two years ago.  You almost didn’t want to kill their leader, in case he was replaced by someone more tactically and technically proficient by several orders of magnitude.  This long stretch of grassland sat in the saddle between two ridgelines that loomed four hundred meters above us.  There was no cover besides a few folds atop the plateau, but concealment aplenty in the grass.  And the rocks above.

Gajari kept feeding me range information, even though we’d walked the area earlier this morning.  One missileer on each flank tracked the STs through their launchers’ scopes and, like the rest of us, waited.  A red triangle in my scope indicated that the lead vehicle had entered the kill zone.  The green arrows pointing at the STs marked the missileers’ aim points – the soft engine under the command module, where the spindly legs met.  You can’t hardly kill an ST from the front, even with blasters, a painful lesson learned during the TIE Fighter factory battle.

The red triangle flashed, meaning both the STs and supporting Stormtroopers were in the kill zone, a mere hundred meters away.  I raised my hand, because using communicators was an invitation for a squadron of TIE fighters to ruin your day.  This time, we wanted them to use their communicators.  And they would, as soon as I dropped my hand.  The missileers fired.  No one knew anymore how – or even why – these things worked, hundreds of years after production, but they did.  Primitive rockets, guided by the reticles in the missiles’ tracking sights, did yeoman’s work.  A soft thump as air canisters shoved the missile out of the tube, then a low roar as the anti-armor missile’s rocket ignited.  We saw Stormtroopers’ heads and blasters turn towards the sound, but they were already too late.   Gajari hit the detonators, and mines exploded along the entire length of the Imperial patrol.  White armor plates, flesh, a pink bloody mist, and bone fragments flew in a hundred directions.  Then the missiles hit.  Then another missile on each ST, just to finish the job.  Their balancing gyros failed, and they fell helplessly and sideways to the ground.

I pumped my fist up and down next to my head, the signal to disperse quickly.  The men followed my order without hesitation.  Only Gajari and I stayed to observe the kill zone.  Once the explosions’ echoes stopped rippling through the canyons, the ambush site became as quiet as if someone pushed a button.  A faint screech overhead, then another.  But TIE fighters don’t just operate in pairs, they work in threes or a full squadron of twelve.  Tonight they didn’t disappoint.

Three surface to air missiles streaked upwards from the ridgeline to our left.  Three more from the right.  Two TIEs evaded, only to collide in midair, flaming pieces floating down between us and the Stormtrooper patrol.  Missiles struck three more, which left only one, trying to put a ridgeline between him and the SAMs.  Two ion-seeking missiles hit him at the same time.  Even the solar panels disintegrated, likely killing the pilot before he had a chance to eject.

I saw him through my thermal scope, in the top hatch of the first smoking ST.  A colonel, from the rank squares on his chest, a gray forage cap instead of a helmet.  He held a communicator to his face, the strain on his face as clear as daylight.  Blood ran down his face from a head wound – those always bleed worse than they actually are, but make for dramatic news holo-vids.  I turned off my scope, because the fires started by our ambush obviated the need for night vision devices.  Gajari and I gathered up our weapons and equipment, and headed to the kill zone.

Gajari started on the far right, guided by any movement illuminated by the burning STs.  His pistol, another projectile weapon instead of plasma, coughed loudly as he applied the coup de grace to wounded Stormtroopers and AT-ST crewmen.  I did the same on the left, and we met in the middle, where the colonel lay on a bed of bloody sawgrass.  Both his legs were gone below the knee, no risk of exsanguination because the explosions had cauterized the wounds.

The colonel was unarmed.  He tried to raise himself up on his elbows, but I planted a knee on his chest and looked down.  I resisted the urge to remove the clumsy helmet with its cumbersome face plate and voice changer – this one might yet survive, so why risk it?  “Attacks like this and the restaurant bombing last month will keep happening, until your kind dies or leaves.  This our world, Colonel.  Not yours.  If you live long enough to be debriefed, tell them that.”

Two days later, I saw a much different colonel in the shop.  The burns on his face were covered in New Skin, and his trouser legs were empty below midthigh.  This far out in the galaxy, I knew he’d have the schlep all the way to Coruscant to get decent prosthetics.  “How much,” asked the legless man in the hover chair.  I told him, and he let me scan his Imperial pay card.  I placed the fake Rebel Alliance flag in his lap, we exchanged a nod, and he scooted out the door.

“Get some of those rebels, Colonel.  It’s bad for business.”

He stopped and turned his chair.  “I’ll be back, and they’ll bleed.  Count on it.”

I flashed what I hoped was a cheery grin.  “Look forward to it.  See you around, then.”

The war continues.

Last Letter From Scarif

My Dearest Beru,

By the time you read this, I will be long gone.  In fact, I’m hoping Jyn sends this along with the DS-1 plans before we’re overrun by the Empire.  Life hasn’t been easy for us, has it?  Twenty years on, it still kills me that you married Owen Lars, but I can’t blame you, what with me gone on one mission or another for the Rebellion all the time.  If anything, what I do is for you, and the family I wish we’d become.

I’ve been busy, to put it mildly.  Since I last saw you ten years ago?  I helped train and advise Saw Gerrera’s insurgents.  Mon Mothma had me take some youngsters under my wing, and we established a network of intelligence assets within the Empire, specifically among its vainglorious pilots.  Most recently, at the behest of Lord Bail, I commanded Leia’s personal protective detail, which was by far the most difficult assignment I ever had.  Every time I was able to take leave, of course, I wanted to return to Tatooine.  And you.  Instead, not wanting to upend your new life with my sudden reappearance, I just took on another assignment.

By the Force, we had such plans when we were younger!  We spoke so often about departing for some barren planet in the Outer Rim to start our family.  We would be beholden to no one, and nothing but the seasons and whatever plot of uncooperative rocky land we decided to cultivate.  I know it was far from easy, after I felt the rebellion’s pull and flew off for training on Alderaan.  I know it killed our dream – but darling, please know that it was for us, for a better future, free from a Sith’s tyranny.

Which leads me to Scarif.  I couldn’t let that damn young hothead Andor go it alone, which is why I led a half dozen members of Leia’s detail onto that shuttle.  I trained them; I trust them, and they trust me.  Lord Bail Organa gave me his blessing, and a bag of proton grenades, before we took off.  It really is that simple.  For what it’s worth, a wristband activated hologram of you has been with me since before you married Owen.  Probably not the healthiest thing, but a man has to cling to something from his home world – and for better or worse, darling, I cling to you.  Between the two religious freaks from Jedha, no orders besides “fight,” and a wishy-washy defector, I knew this would be a one-way trip.

I do this for what we could have been, what you and Owen are, and for the free Republic in which your nosy nephew will grow up.  I have and always will love you.