Republic Gunships and Battle cruisers roared over what was left of the Jedi Temple. Clones marched in and out with some of them having bags draped over their shoulders. I watched behind a pile of rubble with my reprogrammed battle droid as the Clones looted every last holocron the Jedi fought and protected for centuries, now a smouldering ruin.
“So, um...what’s the plan, master?” My skittish Droid asked me in a nervous tone. My droid is a heavily modified B1 Battle Droid with grapple and jetpack attachments and a reprogrammed thought process with every Clone combat and tactical protocol with Order 66 deleted with all other Separatist combat droids I could find that weren’t activated.
“Same plan we make, Six; Improvise our way out of this mess.”
“By improvise, you mean…?”
“No; we can’t pull this one off with blasters ablazing; we’ve fought with them before.”
“Drat! They know our every move.”
“Exactly, I was a damn fool for trying to get some info on my father; I’ll never get in, now.”
“Where are the rest of the droids?”
“They’re in blocks all around the Senate building. We need to regroup during Phase 3.”
“Which is?”
“Create a Riot.”
With that said, we went away from the pile of rubble to an edge to the deep city below. I cringed at the drop and instead focused on an adjacent building from us.
“Fire a grapple at the top of that window!” I commanded.
“Roger, roger,” Six responded by firing the hook from the barrel below the handle of his blaster. As I heard a faint clang and torn metal being crunched, I took my lightsaber from my belt and held both ends of it with the hilt on top of the wire.
“When I get to the window, detach the cable and jump.”
“B-but, I’ll fall, master!”
“Have faith in me. Ready? NOW!”
I kicked off the edge and slid down the wire at a rapid speed. The wind in my face, combined with my fear of heights, game me the massive adrenaline rush I need to pull Six to me in less than 5 seconds. I held my feet to the glass, completely shattering the window as my ride ended.
I spun around to see my loyal droid leaping over the edge after detaching the cable. I held out my hands and the force guided his descent to my level. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a couple of Clones looking at me.
“It’s General Smiyh! Open fire!”
As Six got into the room with me, I pushed him down with me below the windowsill. My eyes lit up when I saw one of them reach for a thermal detonator grenade.
“HIT THE BUTTON!” I shouted. Six staggered across the room, blaster bolts barely missing him. He tripped over a broke lamp and hit the switch before crashing into a table. The blinders folded down, muffling the detonator blast with a nice impression where it exploded. I turned on my lightsaber to help navigate the dark room. Since my communicator was on the same frequency as the clones, I pressed the button to tune in. Clone radio chatter; never used it until now.
“Where is General Smiyh?”
“He’s in an apartment complex! Level 328!”
“We have an attack squad on the way!”
I kept the chatter on, but muted my microphone. I ran over and tried to open the doors, but they couldn’t budge.
“Damn!”
I thrusted my lightsaber through the edges of the door, crackling of heat and electricity and leaving behind a molten cut. I thrusted my arms forward, the force flinging the door across the open corridor. Sensing a small group of clones coming up the elevators, I clipped my lightsaber to my belt and pulled out my DC17m Blaster from its holster on the side of my backpack. I hid behind the opening, slightly peaking around the corner to see the doors open. I signaled Six to be on the opposite side of the opening, so he won’t be fried by any stray bolts.
Shortly after hearing the ding and the doors clanking open, I poked the blaster out and around to open fire. Blaster bolts bounced off the edges of the opening, leaving myself temporarily blinded by the bright sparks. I heard the screams of the few inept clones that didn’t get out of the way in time.
“Watch it! Engage hostile!” the Sergeant barked out to the surviving grunts, continuing their marks.
“Six! Grenade!” I called out to him, reaching my hand into the air. He slightly panicked at my order, frantically fumbling around his belt until he found a spare Thermal Detonator. When he detached the belt, I pulled it from his robotic grip with my force. My hand twitched as it armed its pulsating clicking noise of a delay timer, to which I tossed at the adjacent wall. It bounced off the walls from the strength of my throw and landed near the Sergeant. He tried to pick it up and throw it back to me, but it detonated itself in mid-throw.
The explosive force rocked the whole floor, causing the lights to flicker and buzz. I signaled Six that the coast is clear and emerged into the fallout. The leftover smoke burned my lungs and left me coughing like I had Pneumonia.
I slammed the base of my fist at the down arrow button and to my surprise, the elevator was still intact. The doors opened, wafting the smoke away to make me a direct path. I entered the lift with Six behind me. Now lies one tough question: Up or Down?
If I went up to the roof, I would have to deal with gunships and jet troopers or escape through the Lower City and deal with the rioting scum of the galaxy.
“Pick my poison,” I said with a quick sarcastic laugh. I hit the top floor button while switching the blaster attachment to the launcher attachment of my weapon. I searched my belt for ammo, but found none.
“Hey, Six?” I asked, getting the droid’s attention.
“You need ammo?”
“Yeah; do you have any spare explosive rounds on you, by any chance?”
“No; you gave most of them to Steele and Xero for Phase 1 and we used the last of our explosives on our way to the Jedi Temple.”
“Well, do we have SOMETHING?”
“Only EMP rounds.”
“If they are using their gunships, I can shoot one of them into the engines to make them crash. Then, we make a break for it,” I explained, loading the round through the back of the tube. When it clicked into place, the small blast shield folded out in front of the back. I then sensed it; a couple of clones are waiting for me and Six. I holstered my weapon and forced the emergency hatch open. I pulled myself up and Six along with me, who still doesn’t like it when I use the force on him.
“I hate it when you do that,” he complained.
“Quiet! We’re here.” The lift slid to a stop with the doors opening to the sounds of a panicking city along with distant blaster shots and explosions. Right on cue, the two clones carefully inched into the elevator with their weapons drawn. I swung my arms over one another, forcing them to slam their heads together, instantly knocking them out.
With the way cleared, I gestured to my loyal droid.
“After you.”
“You first; you’re the badass Sith.”
“EX-Sith,” I corrected him, pushing him onto the lift floor. I gently landed on my feet and pulled him up to his own, dusting his shoulders off.
“Are you ready, you bucket of bolts?” I asked sarcastically, drawing my weapon.
“No-I mean, yes.”
“GO!” I shouted, sprinting out of the lift and straight into the chaos with Six on my...six. To my crazy dumb luck, the clones completely ignored me and went straight to the Lower city and other blocks in the distance. The chaos that was supposed to ensue when I signaled my other droids to detonate their payloads all over the district, but done so way too early, leaving me frustrated to my core.
“Ugh, those dumbasses,” I growled, “I told them to wait until I GAVE them the signal.”
“Maybe they got bored,” Six attempted to rationalize the situation by his response. Mine, had me facepalming. I walked to the edge, looking at the speeders zooming by in all directions.
“Master, please don’t tell me…”
“Yes we are; give me your arm, please,” I requested, grabbing ahold of Six’s left arm before leaping off the edge into traffic.
I focused our fall into an open cockpit speeder that looked fast, but we kept missing many to which can’t break our fall. Halfway down, we landed into an open speeder, knocking out the driver.
“Sorry; need this,” I said, throwing him overboard. As we were maneuvering through and around traffic, a thought just clicked in my head.
“Deja vu,” I said out loud.
“What?” the confused droid asked.
“This whole thing seems familiar!”
“What does?”
“The whole...jumping into a speeder...flying dangerously in...and around traffic,” I struggled to explain, focusing on what was around me, “Or maybe it has something to do with where we are right now and the way this speeder looks.”
“You seem too calm for this!”
“Yeah, but have it occured to you that we get into jams like this on a daily basis?” I explained, pulling up on the wheel, the G-Forces leaving my voice strained, “I should be scared, angry, distraught and depressed at what’s happening, but really I am tired and annoyed.”
The moment we made it through the traffic and slightly above the canopy of the city, my communicator started beeping again. I moved my wrist close to me to see the projection and sound of my communicator. What came online was Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, but his hood was draped over.
“Master Kenobi?”
“Courvin Smiyh?” He asked, shocked, “Where are you? Staying off their radar, I hope.”
“Eh, kinda.”
“What do you mean? Why do I sense fear in you?”
“Fear? Me? No; I’m still finding a way off Coruscant!”
“What!? Didn’t you see how the clones acted? They are KILLING any Jedi in their path!”
“Yeah; I took notice. I shook them off my tail, but they might find me again if I’m not careful. By the way, were there any survivors?”
“Yes, but they are few and far in between. Master Yoda is okay as well and well hidden too.”
“That’s good to know. Where are you?”
“On Tatooine.”
“Why the hell are you on a backwater planet like that?”
“Smiyh, listen carefully, because you are the only one I’m telling this secret to: You know Anakin Skywalker?”
“Yes.”
“He turned to the Dark Side; he’s Darth Vader.”
A sense of dread flew through my gut like a blaster bolt.
“Is there any silver lining?”
“He had children, twins, with Senator Amidala.”
“That explains why he always made up excuses just to be with her. Where is Amidala and her children?”
“Unfortunately, she passed away, but I put her daughter, Leia in the hands of Senator Organa. I put her son, Luke, in the hands of a young farmer couple miles outside Mos Eisley.”
“Do you think there is some way to fighting this?”
“A rebellion will rise; I have no doubts about that, but you need to get off that rock and go far away to the fringe of the galaxy.”
“What about that rumored system that nobody ever returns from?”
“Great blazes boy; that’s suicide!”
“Better than dying at the hands of our newly formed Empire.”
“I guess there’s no talking you out of it, then. You learned more from Anakin than me. Good luck and may the force be with you, always.”
When he hung up, I replayed his last words: ‘May the force be with you.’ From the past 4 years up until a week ago, I had no memory of my life before. I found a lost holocron and I now knew what I was; a Sith. The unknown time before I lost my memory and the Jedi Order took me in as a Padawan. I look back on it now that this whole piece of my life was just a facade for something much darker. Something of a web spun by the new Emperor Palpatine or Darth Sidious.
I have arrived at the entrance to the Senate Building to see the rest of my droids and a oddly convenient inactive Republic Cruiser beside them. When I landed the speeder and me and Six climbed out, I saw a man in black robes with an oddly shaped helmet. I sensed his force and it made my stomach turn inside out.
“M-master?”
“Courvin Smiyh, we meet again,” he spoke in an intimidating voice made possible by the device on his chest.
“What happened to you Master?”
“The Jedi have conspired against me, and you.”
“That’s a lie; they’d never do that kind of thing.”
“You were there with me and Obi-Wan to make sure that when your memory came back, you wouldn’t be able to attack the Jedi. When you thought you were a Jedi, you believed you would become a Jedi Knight and uphold the force, but the Council kept you from advancing; they kept on throwing you into situations that made you use the dark side of the force, then they would scold you and assign you elsewhere. They won’t allow users of the force like us to balance it ourselves, they shun those who use their emotion, those who love, those who show their true colors. Now they attempted to execute us, but we know better.”
“Yes,” a distant voice agreed with Vader’s speech. I looked past my master to see an old man with a pale white scarred face with orange eyes and black robes...Darth Sidious.
“Master,” both me and Vader acknowledged his presence and bowed. He then focused on me.
“The Jedi now hide on all corners of the galaxy in fear of their lives; how ironic. Now then, what’s this I hear about you being behind the bombings?”
My chest sank low, I tensed up and shook violently; I knew what he was going to do.
“A good idea; if we scare the people into thinking the Jedi are hunting innocent lives, then we, the Empire have hunted them down and they would kneel to our bidding.”
“What?”
“You have executed one of my many plans to keep in power and with no better timing I might add. That reminds me, I have tasked both of you to hunt down the remaining Jedi. Go and gut them like the spineless slugs they are. There’s a Jedi hidden on Kashyyyk. Vader, find him and eliminate him. As for you, Darth Kain, explore this ‘unknown system,’ if any Jedi you find are hiding there, kill them.”
“Yes, my master,” me and Vader said in unison. Vader left along with his escort which left me alone with Darth Sidious and his escort.
“I will be giving you this Cruiser for your crusade. It is armed to protect yourself from any threat. Remember; anger and hatred will fuel you.”
“Yes master,” I said, bowing one last time before he and his escort have left in the opposite direction. I turned and walked straight to the rest of my droids. On the very left is Xero, a Magnaguard bodyguard that acts like my escort if I wanted to make an entrance like Vader and Sidious. Steele is a Super Battle Droid with an interchangeable left arm. Burner is a Commando Droid in charge of stealth and more hands-on wetworks, as well as fixing our weapons. Last is Speedy, a droideka that can throw portable shields and is the fastest in the group, aside from my force thrust.
I looked at them, crossing my arms and furrowing my brow.
“Care to explain what happened?”
“Clones found us,” Steele explained, “They made Xero press the detonator button.”
“That all doesn’t matter know; let’s get the hell out of here.”
We all boarded the cruiser and made it straight to the cockpit. Only me and Six were in it, the rest have hooked up to a droid docking bay. When we made it to the cockpit, I opened the door to the Captain’s storage to find a large box labeled: “Courvin Smiyh.” Strange was all I could think of it and oddly convenient. I sat down in the chair, flipping switches that kicked the ship’s engines on. When the cruiser lifted off the ground and jetted into the air, I sensed a disturbance in the force.
Whatever it was seemed distant and out of my control, but I’m worried about that Jedi on Kashyyyk. I know damn well what Vader is capable of and that part scares me the most, but all I can do now is hide. There’s no possible way for me and a handful of military droids can take on a massive Empire spanning nearly the entire galaxy. The very thought of it is just eating me up the more I thought about it.
After the cruiser left the planet’s atmosphere, I turned to look at Six.
“Set a course for the unknown system and punch it to hyperdrive after doing so.”
“Roger, Roger.” Six punched in coordinates on the navigational computer in a room behind me and I pulled a lever that shot us into the black abyss.
Whatever awaits me in the mystery region, Jedi, Sith, monsters, smugglers, death, I felt afraid of what’s in store for me in the future, but I knew I can find a way out of a mess like I usually do, but this seemed different. I can’t be sure until I see this for myself and I will have to charge into danger like I always do, and that’s what I always live for: the thrill of battle as it has always been for my Mandalorian ancestors and my late parents. I would be safe, knowing the force is my ally and left to the freedom to use it in any way I please.
Fate awaits my descent into the dark depths of space and I welcome that with open arms above all else. What could go wrong?
STAR WARS
EPISODE I
KNIGHT OF FRIENDSHIP