Empire and Rebellion

by Snake Staff


28: A New Encounter

Princess Luna crept slowly through the Coruscanti underworld, hating every minute of it. This place might have lacked the sheer malevolence of Korriban, but it was utterly disgusting to her. There was nothing green here, no wholesome life of any kind. No clear night sky overhead, no moon bathing the planet in gentle white light. Instead, there was only the unnatural press of a trillion beings from a hundred thousand worlds crammed into layer after unnatural layer of soulless, overpopulated grey metropolis. This place stank of used chemicals, rusted durasteel, half-rotten flesh, and necrosis.

Through the Force she could feel even the rot inside the people here – they were apathetic towards anything but their petty little lives, caring nothing for others or the greater good. They plotted and schemed and lied and murdered one another for trifles, petty trinkets and chemical stimulants. She witnessed a body simply lying slumped by a building, clearly hours old and completely ignored by the thousands of beings who shuffled past it, averting their eyes the whole time.

She hated them all.

Still, the press of bodies had its advantages. On other worlds she might have stood out, here she was just one more of a thousand exotic and rarely-seen species crawling miserably through the muck. She barely rated a passing glance, and that was before she did as Dooku had taught her to do. Wrapping herself in a mantle of the dark side, she sent out a continuous but subtle pulse into the minds of all around her, suggesting that she was unimportant, no one, certainly not worth the time to look at further. The trick had its limitations – it didn’t work on droids or through mechanical devices – but against these weak-minded alien scum like those around her it was the perfect tool.

Her Stormtroopers, per her direction, were taking the fastest and most direct route from their descent point to this Argon Ur’s primary dealing site. He was the intermediary the pirates had sold Vader’s stolen treasures through, and she would wring the answers from him or anyone else she found there. But first, her white-armored troopers would run down the main streets and right up to the front entrance, drawing all attention to themselves. She was making her away around the back, cloaked in shadow and a good distance from the actual building.

“Mistress,” the comm-bead inside her ear sounded. “The squad is almost in position. Rounding the corner now.”

“Acknowledged,” the alicorn responded. “Set up out front and hold. Shout for Ur to surrender himself into Imperial custody and threaten to break down his door if he doesn’t.”

“At once,” the Stormtrooper signed off.

Luna gave a satisfied snort. It felt good to be giving orders again and having them obeyed. Especially after so long as little more than a slave the Empire and the late Inquisitor.

She didn’t expect the black marketer or whatever proxy was there at the moment to actually surrender. One didn’t deal in such valuable stolen commodities by giving oneself up whenever one was asked. But it made for a heart-racing show, sure to send any smuggler into a flight of panic. Whenever the building’s occupants made their inevitable attempt to escape, she was waiting for them. She’d chased tuk’ata through the Valley of the Dark Lords – running simple criminal scum down would be no challenge at all.

Luna closed her eyes and concentrated, reaching out through the Force to sense the minds of the building’s active occupants. There were eight of them, she could feel, with the usual mix of emotions one could mostly expect in this situation: confusion, fear, anger, and… urgency? The alicorn’s brow furrowed as she stretched her mind out further, trying to get a clear picture of what was going on in there. There were two clusters of beings, she realized, one of two and one of six. The two were confused and very angry, but didn’t seem afraid. The other six though… they were confused, certainly, and afraid. They were feeling a tremendous sense of urgency, but they weren’t moving much at all if she was any judge. She delved deeper into the dark side, trying to discern some sense of motivation. Why…

“A break-in.” Luna’s eyes snapped open. “It’s a break-in.”

“What was that?” a Stormtrooper’s voice sounded in her ear.

“There are intruders in that building,” the princess snapped. “They mean to steal information. Blast open the front door and move in at once!”

“Yes ma’am!”


Twilight gripped the edges of her computer so tightly her knuckles were turning white. It was bad enough when the Stormtroopers were just shouting. Now they were fixing charges to the front door.

“Get out of there!” she hissed into her comlink. “They’ll have the front entrance blown soon and there’s only one more blast door between them and you!”

“Give it a damned second!” Two snapped back. “We’ve almost got Ur’s records on the sale. I don’t fancy leaving them to Vader’s henchmen!”

“If you don’t run for it those men will be all over you! You want to take your chances with ten Imperial Stormtroopers?”

“You said there weren’t any out back, right?”

“Yeah,” Eight interjected. “And I don’t see any from here, which means they probably have snipers set up.”

“See, we’ll have to get past ‘em anyway!” Three said.

“Rather we have something to show for it!” Two finished the thought. “You’re the slicer whiz, can’t you slow them down?”

“I already sealed every door between them and you!” Twilight wrung her hands helplessly as the compound’s front entrance crackled briefly, then exploded. The white-armored Imperial troops surged through the smoking entrance, firing blindly into the front lobby. Thankfully there was no one there, but they were quickly realizing that fact.

“Then just stop babbling and let us work! Unless you can wave your hands and conjure some magic shield around us you’ve done your part already!”

The next few seconds were positively painful to watch. The Stormtroopers quickly fanned out in several directions, with several going down multiple side halls with blasters at the ready. The majority, however, continued straight onwards, directly back towards Ur’s office. She switched the feed to said office, not even feeling much better when Two pulled a small stack of flimsiplast sheets from one of them many vast stacks, holding them up triumphantly. She switched back over, and the Stormtroopers were planting charges on the blast door before them.

“You’ve got what we need, now move!” Twilight urged. “The last door will be down in seconds!”

This time, the grey-armored men listened to her. Flimsiplast sheets in hand they ran back out the demolished office door, out the reception room, down the secondary hallway, and back into the main corridor to the back entrance. Without breaking stride all six veered right and sprinted for rear exit, which slid open for them again at Twilight’s transmitted command. They were about halfway there when the door behind them was demolished.

Blaster fire poured through the portal almost immediately, the Stormtroopers firing half-blind through all the smoke. The rebel team continued to run, not stopping even as the white-armored troops poured through, firing just as they had before. Four, bringing up the rear of the pack, took a shot in the back. He screamed and hit the floor. Before anyone had a chance to do anything about it, half a dozen more blaster bolts riddled his body. Twilight chocked back a sob.

Six and Two, now the closest to the Imperials, pointed their weapons backwards and fired wildly as they ran. Their shots went wide, but it slowed the Stormtroopers down a bit as they ducked for cover in adjacent halls and passageways. They returned fire in measured bursts, each popping out for just a moment before darting back to minimize their target profile. Their first few shots went missed, but then one grazed the armor on Six’s thigh and exploded in a shower of sparks.

Six stumbled and fell over, and Twilight felt her heart skip a beat. Two pivoted on the spot, firing with one hand while his other went to his belt. He grabbed a sphere on his belt and hurled it towards the troopers as hard as he could. A moment later, he took a blaster bolt to the face. Even while Two’s corpse hit the floor, the other end of the hallway was consumed in fire as the thermal detonator exploded. Six scrambled away, shielding his face against the heat and shrapnel. Two of Twilight’s camera feeds went dead.

It was just about then that Three, the man in the lead, crossed the building’s threshold into the street. Bent double and blaster in hand, he was frantically looking up and around, clearly trying to spot Imperial snipers on the rooftops.

He never saw the lightsaber coming.

A spinning red blade hurled in from somewhere beyond the cameras’ field of view, slicing through both of Three’s legs just below the knee. He tumbled to the earth, writhing wildly and kicking out with his smoking stumps. Over the comm channel, Twilight could hear every wailing sob.

One and Five were out the door almost immediately behind Three, and both raised their blasters. Before they could get so much as a single shot off, however, something invisible slammed the both of them back against the sides of the building. This was immediately followed up by a dozen bolts of crackling blue lightning, which caught both troopers and Three incidentally. After a few seconds of that, both men collapsed – all three were smoking.

“Six, do you read me?” Twilight commed frantically. “One, Three, and Five are down! There’s a Force wielder of some kind outside the back!”

“Damn it all to hell!” the man swore, just clambering back to his feet.

“I’m going to seal the rear exit to buy you some time!” Twilight was already furiously tapping at her miniature computer, and a moment later the blast door sealed itself shut. “There’s an auxiliary hall two doors down to your left! If you take it you should be able to bypass the Stormtroopers and make it to the front entrance!””

“If the bucketheads are even stupider than they look, maybe!” Six snapped at her. “I got a better idea!”

On her screen, Twilight saw Six making not for the entrance she’d pointed out, but for the still-smoking corpse of Two. He knelt quickly beside the dead man, turning him over and reaching a hand into Two’s pack.

“What are you doing?!” Twilight screamed at him.

“If they’ve got a Force witch I’m not getting out of here alive,” Six was panting, throwing several items aside hastily. “But maybe this can still be worth – aha!”

The man pulled a small stack of flimsiplast sheets from his dead comrade’s pack, then immediately threw them all over the floor. Some landed face-up with the Aurebesh writing visible, others face-down. The latter, Six rapidly started grabbing and flipping face-up where Twilight could see them. A blaster bolt whizzed over his back.

“Dammit!” he swore, clumsily returning fire with one hand while frantically flipping sheets over with the other.

“Stop!” Twilight urged, tears in her eyes. “Run!”

“Pay attention you stupid egghead!” he snarled. “I’m getting these papers right where you can take the recordings right back to the rest!” He snapped off three blaster shots. “Make sure we meant something here!”

The fire coming from opposite end of the hallway intensified, red bolts striking the ground around Six and setting at least one flimsiplast document on fire.

“You did all you could! Just get out!”

A red lightsaber blade burst through the exterior blast door, rapidly beginning to cut out a circle in the thick metal.

“Damn it all Seven I swear if you screw this up I will haunt you for the rest of–”

A blaster shot to the throat ended that thought. Two more to the abdomen ended the rest of him.

Underneath her own helmet, Twilight screamed. She reached out a hand as tears flowed down her face, grasping at the small screen in front of her as if she could magically reach out and resurrect the dead men by sheer force of will. The lightsaber finished its cut and a large chunk of blast door was thrown inwards, but she barely paid attention.

She should have been in there! She should have fought! She had fought against Tirek himself, her magic would have been more than a match for anything this Force-user or their flunkies could have thrown at them. But she wasn’t, and now six good men were dead for it! She would have pulled out her hair in that moment if it hadn’t been sealed in her helmet.

“Seven?” Eight interrupted her. “We’ve gotta go. Now.”

“T-They’re all dead…” Twilight choked a little.

“And we’ll be joining them if the Empire figures out there are more of us hanging around.”

Twilight swallowed. It was a very good point. At the very least they could make sure that they still got the information that the rest of the team had died for. And maybe, the idea came to her, a little bit more. She brought up he computer again, adjusting the video feed as she turned the camera on the advancing figure with the red lightsaber. Her jaw dropped.

Princess Luna?!


Meanwhile, in a very different part of Coruscant, Princess Celestia was stepping out of an airspeeder one more time for the night. This time, it was on a private landing garage in what looked to be a rather upscale apartment complex. There were four figures waiting for her – her two unicorn honor guards, and two Imperial Stormtroopers. All four saluted. Celestia, feeling drained but optimistic, managed to return it.

“Right this way, ma’am,” said one of the Imperial troopers. “His majesty has arranged for you to stay in royal suite for the duration of your stay here.”

Celestia and the two unicorns sniggered at the unintentional pun. The trooper just cocked his head.

“Riiight…” he turned, beckoning. “If the Governor would kindly follow me.”

All five set out at a brisk pace, with the two humans leading the way.

“Be of good cheer, my little ponies,” Celestia whispered to her two guards. “I think the day went rather well.”