STAR WARS / FiM: Realms of the Heavens

by Tathem_Relag

Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Way of Sion

Everfree Imperial Garrison
3:05 A.M.

Twilight smiled down at what would soon become her very first kill as he coughed up more blood and vainly tried to get back to his feet. “So, ‘Master,’” she sneered. “What does it feel like to die? You’ll have to tell me, seeing as I won’t ever be experiencing it myself. And please – spare no detail.” She used her telekinesis to make him look up at her. “I want to hear every excruciating gasp, every scream of unbelievable agony. I am an intellectual, after all, and I don’t have much information about human anatomy. You can help me by filling in exactly where you have the most nociceptors.”

Malen spat out yet more blood, plus several teeth. “Go ask… a torture droid… you schutta. I… won’t give you… the pleasure.”

“Tsk, tsk! That language is hardly appropriate for such a high-ranking official, now is it?”

“Go… to… Chaos.”

Twilight sighed. “I see you intend to be difficult. Oh well. Might as well get on with the tests anyways. First up, how does it feel…” she shifted her grip and squeezed, eliciting a high-pitched shriek from the helpless Inquisitor. “To not be able to have foals?” She drank in his gasps and squeaks for a few moments. “Extremely painful, I see. You did so enjoy those particular organs, didn’t you? Well, don’t worry. It won’t hurt for too much longer. Next, why don’t we…”

She trailed off as a mixed platoon of CompForce and Army troops rushed around the corner and leveled their blasters at her. She turned to them with a glare. “Stay back, you pathetic apes! Can’t you see that I’ve defeated your leader? I am your High Inquisitor now.”

They exchanged confused looks, and bizarrely, through all his pain, Malen laughed. “You fool. That’s Sith philosophy, not Army chain of command. You haven’t taken over – you’ve signed the death warrant for your entire species! Any who don’t renounce you will die. And you’re quite popular, aren’t you? How many ponies do you think will still be alive when we’re done? One hundred? Two?”

Twilight redirected her scowl at him. There was something very… wrong… about the way he said that. His voice sounded both more and less strained than before. “So what?” she snapped. “Do you really think your troops can stop me? I could tear them apart before they even managed to leave the Everfree, much less kill everypony!”

He smiled back at her, and suddenly, she heard a variety of creaks, hisses, and rumbles come from the wall behind him. “Perhaps the infantry. But how do you think you’ll fare…” The “wall” lifted up, revealing a small horde of AT-STs, several AT-PTs, an A5 Juggernaut, and another half-platoon of troops. “Against an entire armor company? Give it a few minutes, and you’ll have a couple dozen fighters on you, too. And have you somehow forgotten about our fleet in orbit? We don’t need to kill you before we destroy your world.”

She hissed. Her entire plan had revolved around the humans either falling into line or scattering in terror once she defeated the Inquisitor. After all, they were too afraid to challenge him, so why wouldn’t they be too afraid to fight somepony stronger than him? Their priorities and sense of self-preservation were clearly erratic. “I’ve killed you. Why. Are. You. Gloating?!”

Malen laughed again. “Oh, my wayward, arrogant, stupid apprentice. For all your power in the Dark Side, you’ve failed to grasp one of its central tenants – a failure you share with many Darksiders before you. You see, the Dark Side feeds off of fear and pain, as you’ve oh-so-eagerly proven that you know. But what don’t seem to realize is that those don’t have to be your enemy’s emotions. The Dark Side is the path of survival, of self-preservation. Fear and pain – the realization that you may lose your life and the sensation of it slipping away – are merely reminders that you still have a life to preserve. If you accept those feelings in yourself, nurture them, you feed the Dark Side’s power, and it rewards you by channeling some of that power back to you. So if you want to kill a Darksider, you’d better do it quick. Because as long as we’re alive, we can use our injuries to make ourselves stronger. And I’m not. Dead. Yet!” His eyes flashed yellow, and he raised his mangled hand, a torrent of lightning spilling from it.

It splashed off the shield she raised, as did the hail of rifle and autocannon bolts. But the sheer kinetic energy knocked her through the air, and as soon as she was more than five meters away from any Imperials, there were thirty-four resounding thwumps as vehicle-mounted grenade launchers unleashed their payloads. Her shield shattered under the assault, and she was sent tumbling, stunned and bleeding, into the Everfree Forest.

Malen pushed himself to his feet with a roar of agony, his already-light skin adopting a deathly pallor. “Chase her down!” he commanded. “Don’t let her escape!” He lifted his right hand, and his lightsaber flew into it. As the vehicles and troops flooded into the forest, Lieutenant Sadic ran up to him.

“Sir! You must let us get you to a bacta tank! There may still be time to reattach –”

“Don’t presume to tell me what I ‘must’ do. I’m following her. If I lose my finger as a result, then so be it. She cannot be allowed to go unpunished, or to tell anyone what’s happened to her over these past two-and-a-half weeks.”

“Ah. Yes, sir. I’ll assemble the squad, and then we can –”

“No. You’re staying here, Lieutenant. I want the storm commandos to remain a secret weapon.”

“Understood, sir.”

Malen stalked off into the forest, following the trail of destroyed vegetation, the sounds of explosions, and his apprentice’s unmistakable Force signature. He could feel the fractures in his legs grinding with every step, but he accepted the unspeakable agony. It made him stronger. And Twilight Sparkle would pay for hurting him.

Comments

[Mr Dorito]

You done fucked up Twilight, you done fucked up.

Feel the wrath of 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% of the Imperial Military.

[Ganondad42]

Once an ignorant pony, always an ignorant pony.

[Last-place]

Wow, the Empire is really geared up to end the planets resistance in a big way. And by surprise no less.

I would say that this looks bad... but, Twilight is suppose to be a fast learner and her Master did provide the lesson for today before she got blasted away. He may regret that as he heads of alone into the forest. I also kind of think he might be slightly misguided in his belief of his and his soldiers importance here. The Emperor has sacrificed greater numbers to acquire great power before.

You know, I've kind of been wondering if Twilight is slipping to the Darkside, when is she going to go after Tirek and kill him by stealing his power to steal magic? It's a logical step for a up and coming Sith.

[A Somewhat Decent Writer]

Yup, she doomed them all.

[Kaiser change name]

I'm surprised theirs no AT-AT in that garrison of theirs.

[A Somewhat Decent Writer]

7331485
Then again, would they need it? It's possible it's just sitting in their ships, but if they are just going to bomb the planet, why need AT-ATs?

[yellowest butter]

Twilight should've done more studying...

[Tathem_Relag]

7331485
It's because the AT-AT is still in the development stages. Some very early prototypes were field tested back during the Clone Wars, but the modern AT-AT didn't see use until the Battle of Orion IV in 1BBY, and even then, it wasn't in its finished form.

[211]

7330995
So the leg of some stormtrooper somewhere? Seriously, learn to math.

[Tathem_Relag]

7333988
7330995
So, I decided to do some (extremely, extremely rough) calcs. A typical Imperial Army squad consists of seven privates, one corporal, and one sergeant. A platoon is four squads and a lieutenant, a company is four platoons and a captain, a battalion is four companies and a major, a regiment is four battalions and a lieutenant colonel, a battlegroup is four regiments and a high colonel, a corps is four battlegroups and a major general, an army is four corps and a general, a systems army is two armies and a high general, and a sector army is two systems armies and a surface marshal. There are 1024 sectors in the Empire - or at least, there were in the Republic. Palpatine did some playing around with the sectors, and it isn't stated how many there ended up being. Based on those numbers, the force pursuing Twilight - one company, one platoon, and two squads - is about 0.00003% of the Imperial Army. (One leg, being about 17.5% of the body by mass, would be 0.0000000003%) Of course, there are different types of formations other than the basic infantry ones that have various numbers of troops in them, and this number doesn't include reserve troops, non-combat personnel, CompForce, the Imperial Navy, or the Stormtrooper Corps, which would vastly reduce these percentages. Unfortunately, the number of personnel in those branches is even less well-defined than for the Army, and I can't be bothered to go to all the effort of compiling all my information on them and trying to make estimates. Perhaps later, when I'm less tired.

[211]

7334409
Way too many zeroes, either way. In fact, with those rough numbers to go off of, it might be more like, a small cluster of molecules from the leg of a stormtrooper.

[Tathem_Relag]

7334491
Okay, here's my (still very rough) estimate for the entire Imperial Military. I'm sure other people have made far better estimates than this, but I'm not willing to spend several days trying to figure it out.

The Imperial Army had a system of "augmentation," which means that every military unit from platoon-level up could be reinforced by having the number of units directly subordinate to them doubled. So a squad would still have nine men, but a platoon would be eight squads and a lieutenant, a company would be eight platoons and a captain, etc. There weren't enough troops to keep all forces augmented at all times, but I'll assume there were to get an upper-end estimate. This would give us (assuming I did my math correctly) somewhere around 314 billion soldiers and officers in the entire Imperial Army.

One auxiliary battlegroup, consisting of three CompForce regiments and a fighter wing, was attached to each Army corps. These were also subject to augmentation, though notably they received another four regiments instead of three regiments and a wing. This gives us about 34 billion CompForce troops.

From what I've found, there were approximately one-and-a-half support personnel for each Army and CompForce soldier of sergeant rank or below. This comes out to about 515 billion support personnel.

Additionally, one stormtrooper battalion was also attached to each Army corps. Unlike the Army and CompForce, however, the Stormtrooper Corps didn't have a system of augmentation or their own support personnel. Continuing to assume the Army at full augmentation, this gives us about 78 million stormtroopers. There was an in-universe estimate that put the Stormtrooper Corps's numbers at greater than the rest of the Imperial Military combined, but I personally find this to be rather unbelievable.

Of course, this is still leaving out any forces not assigned to any particular sector, such as the (in)famous 501st Legion. I recall seeing this number being stated somewhere as 10% of the Imperial Military, but I can't find the source, and since this is already high-balling the Imperial numbers, I'll just leave them out. Altogether, we have a grand total of about 863 billion total personnel in the Imperial military. This still leaves one leg of one trooper at 0.00000000002% of the Imperial Military.

I'm sure you've noticed that I've left out the Imperial Navy, the branch which probably had more personnel than all of the others combined (unless, of course, its the Stormtrooper Corps that did that). This is because the Navy Order of Battle had an in-universe reputation as being something of a complete and utter mess. The sizes of formations were highly flexible. Unlike with the Army, the size of the force deployed to an area had less to do with standard procedure and tactical assessments, and far more to do with the political clout of that sector's Moff. The official Order of Battle was as follows. One line of battle consisted of anywhere from one ship-of-the-line to twenty corvettes, though four ships of a medium class seemed to be the most common arrangement. A squadron had four lines, a systems force had four squadrons, a fleet had four systems forces, and a sector group had four fleets. However, the squadrons in quiet systems were often stripped down to only two lines, ships of Imperial-class size or larger often operated as their own squadrons despite officially being ships-of-the-line, systems forces often only had one squadron, and sector groups similarly were often just one fleet. You can see the problems this poses, and that's without the vastly different crew requirements for different ships. Getting anything even approaching a precise number is absolutely impossible. I remember it being said somewhere that the Navy had trillions of personnel, but even if we give them the absurdly high number of nine trillion, that still puts one leg at only about 0.000000000002% of the Imperial Military.

In order to get the given percentage of this massive over-estimation of the Imperial Military, you'd need to somehow take about one ninth of a quark. If you pull that off somehow, please - let the world's scientific community know.

[Dinode]

7371007 I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying the EQ humans are different sizes and thus won't fit in the armor either? And what do you mean "like the ponies in every way"? What does behavior have to do with infiltration?

[PuppetXMaster]

7371872 they have colored skin for fuck sake! that's one thing to notice, they also lack the human way of speech, they act more like teenagers then humans, and they have massive eyes, have you seen a storm troopers helmet? they wouldn't be able to see shit