Just a short oneshot for Zeb and his broken heart /3 An exploration of what might have happened to the planet of Lasan and the genocide of the Lasat.
I'm sorry I did this to you all.

Warnings: Gore, War, Death and the Goddamn Empire.

The Fall Of Lasan

By Radical Cat

He'd only been a part of the Honour Guard for two cycles when the Empire descended down upon them. He'd trained all his life, wanting only to bring protection and honour to his people.

The guard was the official elite force unit of the Lasan military, and it was highly ranked and well respected galaxy wise. But in the decades approaching the end of the reign of Lasan, the military had suffered in budgeting and support.

When the Empire had arrived- the Honour Guard were out numbered, under prepared and ill supplied. The battle for planetary control had barely lasted a few weeks. It would have been even less if the Empire had been willing to raze the mineral rich earth with their star-ships- but then all the work cultivating their hold on Lasan would have been wasted.

And then- some dark soul had invented the disruptors.

The T-7-ION disruptor's were long handled rifles with a heavy barrel that soaked up the recoil, and a boosted power-cell to balance out the weight. The rifles shot a blast of ionozed plasma that was capable of shorting out a star ship.

Or something much, much worse.

The Empire marched from settlement to settlement, clear across continents- with those destructive guns. They hadn't even needed to clean up behind themselves as they went, everything they shot down was wiped out, as almost every piece of organic matter just began to vaporize and fry on contact. Cooked into ashes, ions disrupted.

Things began to… atomize before their eyes. It was slow, and awful.

He could still remember the smell, like a fog in the air. Chemical, sizzling. It left a coppery tang in his mouth and cloyed at his senses. And he could hear the low hum the rifles made as the plasma shot past him.

His out post had been one of the last surviving pockets of resistance. But they were under heavy fire from the trooper squads.
His commander and chief fell on his left, alive, but his arm was shot through. The flesh began to fizzle; it wouldn't be long. The walls were coming down around them. One of the other Guard had grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the barracks. Zeb- or Garazeb, as he was more commonly known as then, had nodded, barley understanding they needed him to go and fire-up their last resort- a ship in order to retreat. Garazeb had run down the mountain side, fleeing back through the ruins of the village. The village had been lost to them a only week before- but it felt like a lifetime. The clay walls were already crumbling and soon the only remains of the Lasat homestead, would be the empty armor and weapons littered in the streets.
His family were gone, he knew that. There was no one here to stop and search for. There was nothing for him here. Only pieces of something that was, and now, no longer is.

He and all the other guard had accepted that, and they all expected to join their family and friends on the other side of death soon enough. But they would still try their damned hardest not to. The was no Honour in death if you didn't die for something you believed in. They would die here, for Lasan.

He found the old hanger the Empire had overlooked one their first breeze through, and fired up the star ship. The guns had been damaged, but the shields were still at half capacity and they had half a tank of fuel. It was the best hope they had.

Garazeb was not the most skilled pilot, but he got the ship air born. He had just turned the nose to face the outpost on the mountainside. That was when the little bunker had exploded.

Garazeb's cry of horror was raw and the ship dipped from the sky for a gut wrenching moment. The back wall of the bunker crumbled and the air began to fill with smoke.

Garazeb regained control of the ship just as the remaining ground forces turned their attention onto him. Four blasts shot around his ship and he yanked hard on the yoke, shooting up and away before he could think about his actions. The explosion still echoed in his ears but the laser pulses chasing his tail, kept him moving.

He took a fleeting glance back as Lasan as he escaped. The desert mountain planet that was his home world. Glowing bright and yellow and gold- encircled by a grey train of Imperial space star ship cruisers dropped out of hyperspace right in front of his eyes and that put fire to the fuel. Garazeb, turned the ship- and fled.

Retreating with only his Bo-Rifle across his knees as one of the last free artifacts of his home. His people. His world.

Garazeb had flown for two days straight before he found a miners rock, refueled the ship and moved on. He didn't even stop for food. All he knew was that he had to keep moving. He couldn't stop.

He kept up this pattern, aimlessly hopping from refueling station to refueling station- until the hyperspace core had begun to over heat and he passed out somewhere on the fourth or fifth stop over.

When he woke on the floor of the ship, he made his way into the nearest town.
He found himself a bar- and sat down. And he'd stayed down for several years after. Someone had put a drink in his hand, and that was all the excuse he'd needed to shut down.

Zeb was burnt out, aimless- a guard with nothing left to protect. He struggled to remind himself; there was no honour in an easy death. The honour guard lived to die for those they loved- and now Zeb had no one. Nothing. He no longer deserved the fate of his people. He was the one who had escaped, the one who ran from battle.

Weeks became months, and months blended into years. He sold the ship to pay for his lonely habit, and when those credits ran out, he took a job on a cargo freighter. Hauling heavy crates and keeping his head down. Bouncing between bars along the Outer Rim.

It was where he'd run into Kanan. It was where he found hope.

I'm sorry D:
R&R for good karma and hearts for Zeb