DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN STARWARS. THIS IS JUST FOR FUN.

Author's note: This is a spin-off from my story "Loyal Soldier of the Empire – Journal of an Imperial Stormtrooper. "

My idea is to do the story in reverse chronology. That is; starting from the end and moving back to the beginning. Given we all know what happens to Alderaan, this format makes sense. At some points it may cross over with the "Loyal Soldier" story mentioned above.

Please feel free to leave a review and let me know if you like the concept.

CHAPTER 1 – THE WILL OF THE EMPEROR

ALDERAAN HIGH COUNCIL BUILDING – ZERO HOUR MINUS 14 MINUTES

Lieutenant Gloria Corianna looked out from the devastated entrance hall of the High Council building to the barricades outside. All around, the walls of the once previous grand reception area were pot-marked and scarred from blaster fire. On the floor, a number of civilians, High Council guards and imperial stormtroopers lay dead where they had been cut down during the recent fighting.

Although she was covered from head to toe in full stormtrooper armour, Corianna looked cautiously around the side of the damaged archway of the building entrance. The enemy blaster fire had proved to be accurate in the most recent engagements. However, she did not expect an attack from the Alderaan forces outside. Not with their leader, Bail Organa, as hostage.

Corianna glanced over at the four stormtroopers nearby who were also watching out for any sign of attack. Like her, each of them was wearing standard stormtrooper armour and was armed with an E-11 blaster. Each one of them was also female. They were members of the first and only all-female stormtrooper company to be founded in imperial galactic history. And the way things were going, it would almost certainly be the last.

A few hours before, two platoons of female stormtroopers had stormed the High Council building under orders from stormtrooper high command, slaughtering guards, civilians and councillors alike. They had successfully cleared the building and captured the rebel leader, Bail Organa. But they had suffered heavy casualties, losing over seventy stormtroopers in the operation.

Only six troopers were now able to fight. Corianna herself, the four troopers in the reception area and one trooper guarding Bail Organa in a side office. The current commander of the operation, Captain Victoria Rodano, was gravely injured. For a world that was supposedly pacifist, the Aldaraan guards had put up heavy resistance and caused them casualties. Not that any of it would matter soon. In a few minutes time, Corianna knew that everyone would be dead.

"Lieutenant!" Corianna heard the voice of Captain Rodano calling to her. Dutifully, Corianna left her post and crouched down beside her commanding officer who was lying slumped against a pillar. She was badly wounded with blaster wounds in her stomach and left thigh.

"Yes, captain."

The Captain took off her stormtrooper helmet revealing her short brown regulation hair and her brown eyes. Corianna also took of her helmet. The two young women looked at each other for a moment. Both were only in their twenties. Both in the prime of their lives.

Rodano coughed weakly, a trickle of blood rolling from her lips.

"It's over for me, Lieutenant." The captain spoke haltingly, weak from her wounds. "You must finish this."

"Yes, Captain." Corianna answered dutifully.

"You must shoot me now, Lieutenant. We are not permitted to be taken prisoner." Rodano smiled weakly as she spoke, obviously thinking of how ridiculous her words sounded. Her pale face reflected the rays of the afternoon sunlight that was streaming through the ruined entrance of the High Council building.

"Yes, Captain."

"You will have to complete the mission, Lieutenant. They have sent the signal. You know what to do."

"Yes, Captain."

The Lieutenant put on her helmet and stood up in front of her wounded Captain. The Lieutenant lifted her blaster and aimed at Rodano's heart.

"Aim true, Lieutenant." Rodano said, invoking the universal phrase used by stormtroopers when they were duty bound to shoot at a target they didn't really want to. "And serve the Emperor well."

Corianna waited until Rodano had put her helmet back on. Rodano wanted to die with honour. On the battle field and in full armour. She would die an imperial stormtrooper. A loyal servant of the Emperor.

"Yes, Lieutenant. I will."

Corianna fired and pierced Rodano's heart with one well placed blaster bolt. Corianna contemplated her dead captain for a few seconds. Then she turned briskly away and spoke to one of the troopers.

"Trooper! Go and bring out the prisoner. It's time to finish this." Like all stormtroopers, both male and female, Corianna spoke with a generic synthesised male voice generated by her helmet.

"Yes, sir." Replied the female trooper in the same voice.

The trooper walked through a doorway into a small office. A few seconds later, Bail Organa appeared accompanied by two stormtroopers; the one who went to fetch him and another who had been guarding him in the office. Although he was in his elegant official robes, Bail Organa did not look very statesmanlike at that moment. He was covered in dust and grime and his clothes were dishevelled. He was also bound by the hands, gagged and blind-folded. However, apart from receiving a few bruises from being roughly pushed around by the troopers, he was otherwise unharmed.

The two stormtroopers roughly grabbed Bail Organa by his arms and brought him before Corianna. Corianna grabbed Organa and shoved him towards the front entrance of the senate building. The other five stormtroopers followed behind them.

They all exited the building into the sunlight and clear skies announcing a beautiful sunny afternoon in Alderaan. As they walked into the open, they heard the sound of blasters being readied as the Alderaan security forces outside prepared to fire. Corianna guided Organa down the steps in front of her. The other five troopers fanned out to her flanks and readied their weapons. None of the stormtroopers made any attempt to take any sort of cover.

For a moment, there was complete silence as the stormtroopers faced the Alderaan troopers crouching behind their barricades and vehicles on the esplanade below. Then after a few seconds, Corianna removed Organa's bonds, blindfold and gag.

"Go!" Corianna ordered Organa in her synthesised male voice. She pushed Bail Organa towards his own forces. He hesitated for a moment and looked back, fearful that Corianna or one of the other stormtroopers would shoot him in the back. But he saw that Corianna was holding her blaster in one hand, deliberately pointing it towards the sky. Realising she was standing in a non-threatening stance, Bail Organa turned and walked briskly towards his own men. Then after a brief moment, he disappeared behind the safety of the barricades.

Lieutenant Corriana waited until she was sure he was gone.

"Drop your weapons and surrender!" A male voice shouted from the barricades.

Lieutenant Corianna observed the barricades bristling with guns before her. She had no intention of surrendering. Corianna had released Bail Organa for one simple reason. She had been ordered to hold him only until the signal from high command was received. Now that she had received the signal, there was no need to detain him further.

"Drop your weapons and put your hands on your heads now! Or we will use deadly force."

Corianna ignored the threat. She was not afraid of the Alderaan guns. After all, they would all soon be dead anyway. But her mission was not completely over. There was one last order she still had to fulfil. One last order she would carry out in the name of the Galactic Empire and Emperor Palpatine. She had been ordered to fight to the last man; the last woman. She and her troopers would obey that order and fulfil the will of the Emperor.

"This is your last chance to surrender. Or we will open fire."

Corianna didn't give the Alderann troopers an opportunity to fire first. With a movement of her hand, she gave the attack order to her sister troopers. She and all five of her remaining troopers began advancing down the steps. Then all at once, they opened fire on the men hidden behind the barricades in front of them.

At first there was a hesitation from the Alderaan security forces, as if they were in shock that the stoormtroopers had opened fire on them. For a few seconds, the stormtrooper blaster bolts rained down on the barricades without provoking a response. But the Alderaan troopers did not hesitate long. Soon they returned fire from behind their barricades, putting the advancing stormtroopers immediately under a hail of heavy blaster bolts. Caught out in the open, the stormtroopers stood no chance.

To the left and right of her, Corianna's troopers fell as they came under withering blaster fire from the Alderaan forces. She heard the impacts of multiple blaster shots hitting her fellow troopers and the loud crash as their armoured bodies fell clattering down the steps in front of the High Council building.

Almost immediately, Corianna was also hit as several blaster bolts slammed into her body or deflected off her armour. One bolt hit her in the right thigh. She continued advancing and firing. But then she received three bolts in succession. The bolt to her stomach made her stumble. The bolt to her right shoulder caused her blaster to fly out of her hand. The bolt to the right side of the chest propelled her back onto the hard marble steps. Gravely wounded, Corianna lay on her back as blaster fire continued to fill the air. After a few short seconds, all six stormtroopers were lying still on the ground.

Someone ordered the Alderaan troopers to cease fire. Corianna lay on the marble steps in pain and found herself breathing with great difficulty. Still barely conscious, Corianna heard footsteps approach her. She managed to raise her head to see a number of men standing around her. She recognised Bail Organa flanked by a handful of Alderaan guards.

Wanting to see the sun and the clear sky one last time with her own eyes, Corianna removed her helmet and laid it on the steps beside her. Bail Organa and his guards gasped in surprise. It wasn't so much the fact that she was a young female woman that surprised them. Female stormtroopers were uncommon, but they were not unheard of. What really surprised them was that a stormtrooper wearing the insignia of a Lieutenant was female. That was hitherto unheard of in Palpatine's Galactic Empire.

Corianna laughed to herself at their surprise. She wondered how shocked they would be if they realised that every single armoured stormtrooper who had fought in the High Council building and in the private spaceport for the last few hours was female. Not only that, but the Company Captain was also female. Not that anyone would live long enough to realise that of course.

"Why?" Bail Organa asked Corianna, crouching in front of her. "Why did you attack us?"

Corianna coughed weakly. "Because it was the will of the Emperor."

For the second time, Bail Organa and his guards looked shocked as they heard Corianna speak in the well-spoken accent of the Alderaan middle class. Bail Organa looked back at his guards who had raised their eye-brows. Then he turned back to Corianna again.

"Who are you?" Asked Bail Organa.

With an expression of determination, Corianna looked up at Bail Organa and spoke from her heart. It was not the answer Bail Organa expected or wanted to hear. Corianna gave the only answer that made sense to her existence. The only answer that gave sense to the actions she had committed that day. She repeated her solemn vow the Emperor.

"My name is Gloria Leyton-Corianna of Alderaan. I am, and always will be, a loyal soldier of the Galactic Empire. There is only rule: Obedience to the Emperor. There is only one punishment for failure: Death."

Bail Organa looked at her with a perplexed expression on her face. "Why did you attack us, Lieutenant Corianna?"

"You have failed the Emperor. Alderaan has failed the Emperor." Was all that Corianna said in response.

"Alderaan has failed the Emperor? I don't understand." Bail Organa almost cried out. "Why did you attack us?"

"To make sure that you could not escape." The end was coming for them all. Corianna did not see any sense in holding back information now.

"You mean me? To ensure that I could not escape. But I would never abandon my people."

"No. Not just you. All of Alderaan."

Corianna's eyes drifted to a point in the sky behind Bail Organa's shoulder. It looked like a dimly lit star shining in the Alderaan afternoon sky. But the star she looked at was not just any celestial body. It was not of natural formation. It was man-made. The size of a small sized moon.

Bail Organa turned his eyes to where Corianna was looking. Then in a moment of lucidity and understanding, it dawned on him what she was looking at. He realised she was looking at the Death Star.

"No!" Cried Bail Organa in despair. He looked back at Corianna. She smiled at him. But it was not a malicious or gloating smile. It was a smile reflecting the deepest sadness. The deepest pity. The deepest sorrow. It was a melancholic smile filled with compassion and regret.

"That's why you attacked the High Council and the spaceports." The terrible truth dawned on Bail Organa. You wanted to keep us from escaping. To ensure we are here when it came for us."

Her eyes watering heavily and her young female features as pale as death, Corianna's gaze drifted back to the beautiful colours of the Alderaan sky. She was happy to have taken off her helmet so that she could look on her homeworld one final time before it would be no more. A final farewell from a daughter of Alderaan to her mother planet.

Corianna looked at the Death Star as it hovered in the sky. She wondered if Yalasa and Harmony, the only two female troopers to refuse Lieutenant Denlin's offer to serve on Alderaan, were looking down on them at this moment. Safe in the Death Star. Ready to fight one more day for the Emperor. She hoped so.

In desperation, Bail Organa turned back to look at Corianna?

"But why?" He asked in vain desperation, putting his hands to his head. "Why kill two billion innocent people? Why kill a planet? Why?"

Corianna did not meet his gaze, but continued gazing at the Death Star. There was only one possible answer to that question. The only answer that ever mattered.

"Because it is the will of the Emperor." She said softly. A solitary tear roled down her cheek.

"No you can't do this!" Pleaded Bail Organa. But his words would fall on deaf ears. His fate, and that of his homeworld, were already sealed.

Corianna continued looking past Bail Organa at the Death Star glowing dimly in the Alderaan sky. Then suddenly, there was a bright flash and Lieutenant Gloria Leyton-Corianna of Alderaan found herself bathed in a blinding white light.

Corianna always wondered what she would experience at the point of her death. She knew there was no paradise after death. She understood that the only true paradise was to serve the Emperor in life. But she still wondered if she would be bathed in the Emperor's light and wisdom. She wondered if she would meet her fellow fallen troopers to serve the Emperor beyond death. She wondered if she would have visions of her family.

But Corianna experienced none of that. When death came to collect her, all she found was darkness.

Then there was nothing. And the planet of Alderaan was no more.


Ending Note

Please note that the characters of Yalasa, Harmony and Denlin all feature in my other story "Loyal Soldier of the Empire – Journal of an Imperial Stormtrooper. "