Before I start out, I do not own anything in this story except for Derek Hesh, and am not affiliated with Lucasfilm in anyway, no matter how much I would like to be!
The small group crouched around a map of the city, and the group's leader finished up his speech. "Are we all in agreement then? First Duna City, then Sarva VI, then Coruscant!" The assembled members of the Rebel Alliance cheered, and the charismatic man nodded. "Very good. Go back to your cells, and inform them of what is to happen. May the Force be with us all."
Colonel Watts of the Imperial Army sat in the cockpit of his Chariot LAV, directing the battle unfolding before his very eyes. Who could have guessed that the Rebels had a significant enough presence on Sarva VI to mount an uprising in Duna City, that capitol for Force's sake! He pressed his finger lightly on the holographic map before him and a the gray helmeted face of an Imperial field commander flashed into view. "Yes sir?" Watts spoke quickly. "Are the coastal invasion procedures complete?" The face nodded. "Yes sir, we have three divisions of regular army soldiers on barges ready to make the landing on the Duna coastline. The Rebs have artillery batteries all around the city, so we are expectation light to medium losses of the ships if we don't wait for the Suppression's TIE bombers to soften up the Rebel fortifications on the coast." Watts frowned. "We have no time. The Suppression is not due in-system for another standard week, at least, and the rebels have already owned the damned city for three days. If we strike now, before they are fully prepared, we should stand a decent chance of winning without any outside help. Do what you can with the TIE Fighters from Garrison Base Beta, and I'll have Base Gamma fly a few sorties as well. Alpha's TIE's are out of the picture; we can't risk losing any to Rebel anti aircraft guns. Besides, I need them for the land assault on Duna's front." The holographic figure saluted. "Understood sir." Watts returned the salute. "Good luck commander."
The Imperial ships left Garrison Base Beta and took a quick hop across the Jaku River, covered by a thin screen of TIEs. They reached the coast in half an hour, with fully quarter of their number having been destroyed, immobilized, or otherwise taken out of the fight by rebel artillery. Once the troops hit the coast, however, the real fun began.
Pvt. Derek Hesh ran across the war torn field, clutching an E-11 and crouching to fire in the general direction of the enemy every few seconds. His dull grey helmet fell off when he tuck-rolled into a shell crater; the damn Rebels had found an old supply stash of artillery from several hundred years ago, and were using it to great effect against the Imperial troops. Derek still couldn't believe he had managed to stay alive this long. They were supposed to be putting down an insurrection of leaderless teenagers with sporting blasters. That's why the regular army was here, not the storm troopers the Emperor loved so dearly.
Derek stuck his head out of the hole and ripped off a three round burst before he attracted the attention of a Rebel sniper. A yellow beam flashed through the air, burning his hair and taking a chip out of his ear. The wound instantly cauterized because of the extreme heat of the beam, and Derek popped back into his hole. An artillery round thudded to the earth a few yards away, and a blood drenched rocket launcher, severed hand still clutching the grip tightly, landed next to him in the blackened hole. He pulled the hand off, and brought the launcher to bear on a Rebel bunker. The launcher kicked sharply, and the bunker exploded in a gout of flame. He set the spent weapon aside, and ran toward the smoking bunker, putting two rounds in the chest of an unfortunate rebel who happened to pop out at an inopportune moment, for him anyway. Derek stepped through the gaping hole in the permacrete, and saw the smoking remains of an E-Web, and it's three man crew. Clearly these were not leaderless teenagers if they had access to equipment such as this. He kicked one of the bodies, and grabbed a handful of grenades from a crate in the back of the bunker. He heard a faint whistling as he stepped toward the bunker door, intending to go out into the rebel trench lines. Nope, clearly not just teenagers.
He woke up on a litter, the scowling faceplate and gleaming white and red armor of a Stormtrooper medic staring him in the face. He tried to lift his arms, but the one of the orderlies pushed him back down. "Soldier, thank your lucky stars that the rebels build better bunkers than we all think. We found you under a block of permacrete. I don't know if you'll be able to walk again, your legs were pretty well crushed. The docs behind the lines are gonna do their best. They brought in a SWIFT (Surgical Ward, Intense Forward Treatment) and they're the best there. They really know their stuff." The medic kept babbling about how he would be okay, and how if it came to his legs having to be amputated, that today's prosthetics were top of the line, and hardly felt like droid legs. Derek tuned him out, until he remembered something. "Did we take the city?" He whispered. The medic nodded. "Once the Suppression arrived in system, the ground commander, Colonel something, called for an orbital strike and the city was obliterated just like that. That thing that knocked you out was Rebel artillery though, no one could survive an orbital bombardment. The city is just a molten crater now." Derek leaned back and closed his eyes, thinking about all that had happened today.
His ship had been among the last to hit the beach, so he landed with the AT-STs and Juggernaughts as part of their infantry screen. For that he was thankful. The sand was no longer white. It had turned a sickly brown color, with all of the dried blood and other bodily fluids, both rebel and Imperial, that had soaked into the ground. He hitched a ride to the front on a Juggernaught, and therefore got the most unwanted job in the Imperial Army; Tower Sentry. Those damn rolling slabs had these stupid twenty foot tall towers on them, which supposedly a sniper or something would sit in and pick off hapless buffoons or act as an artillery spotter or some shit like that, but it never worked out like that. Because, if you can see them, they can see you. And you have just about the best view ever when you're up their, so naturally you're the target of rockets, beam rifles, and just about every new recruit looking for an easy kill. Thank god for the E-Web this crew had mounted up their. Illegally of course, because according to the army, mounting weapons in one of those towers made you a target. Wait, what? Like you're not a target when you're in a twenty foot tall tower, with wafer thin armor an ion pistol can punch through, and armed with an E-11 and a pair of binoculars? There's enough hole's in that logic to fly the Imperial Starfleet through.
Derek stopped his mental rant, and tried to rerail his train of thought. He had spent 2 hours of sheer terror in that stupid tower, and then when they reach the forward CP, the crew made him get out, so they could put a trained spotter up their and use the tower for a place to call in airstrikes. Fine by him. So he got out and was ordered to assault the rebel bunker complex by some over-eager Lieutenant, and that's how he ended up on a stretcher, with two broken legs, headed for a SWIFT to see if he would ever walk again. Yeah, that pretty much covered it.
