Star Wars
The Force: Genesis
Prologue
A light mist slid silently through a camp set up in a clearing on the side of a hill in a temperate rain forest. Leathery barked trees rising from moss covered ground made up the forest below them, while thick scrub continuing up to the top of the hill surrounded the rest of the clearing. The mist softened the outlines of the trees and scrub. The tents and two men walking the camp perimeter were almost completely invisible.
The tents of the camp and body armour of the soldiers were made from a material imprinted with a nano layer of sensors and silver ions. The sensors picked up the colours on one side of the material and transferred the date to controllers that regulated a charge to the silver ions on the opposite side, shifting the wavelength of light they reflected. The active camouflage they provided made the men look like a slight blur moving through the bush, and the static tents were practically invisible.
The sun was slowly making its presence known through the trees on the horizon, and the moisture in the air was dripping off every leaf.
It had rained, drizzled, sprinkled, showered, spat, pelted down or even sleeted, every day since the camp had been set up. For some it was wearing them down.
"It's getting thicker." One of the men murmured morosely as they approached the trees at the bottom of the camp. Vemm, a short, handsome man, shoved his hands deeper into his pockets with hunched shoulders and rigid arms.
"We might as well turn these off." The other said, touching the side of a pair of glasses perched on his long narrow nose, retracting the IR filtre. "And get your hands out of your pockets and onto your gun." He added, slightly exasperated. Rann had been friends with Vemm from the day they met. He had also bagged on him from the day they met.
Made useless by the light scattering effects of the mist, the IR glasses had a retractable nanofilm that translated infra-red light into visible light. Combined with the IR floodlights around the camp the sentries could keep a clear watch without giving away the camp's position to a casual observer. While his touch retracted the IR filtre, the glasses continued to counter the active camouflage of the tents and friendly targets.
Nanotechnology was all pervasive in the modern culture.
The methods of mass production had been cracked half a century ago and now nanotech was literally everywhere.
A nano-film was applied to protect teeth enamel making dentist visits once a decade.
Nail polish could be applied once a year and the colour changed at will with a personal data device.
Eye glasses disappeared when nano-layer contact lenses could not only correct your eyesight, but improve it to the acuity of a high predator without the wearer noticing they had them.
Medications became a thousand times more effective when they could be delivered directly to the required part, organ, or even cells of the body, through nano-delivery systems. Previously incurable diseases became annoyances instead of death sentences.
Solar power production efficiency was increased by powers of ten, making all previous power production methods uncompetitive. Almost any surface became a power source with the application of a nano paint.
Inability to access clean water became a thing of the past when nanofiber filtres could clean water as fast as it could be pumped.
The mastery of basic nanotech had ushered in a golden age for the planet as the wars for resources became unnecessary.
"What is the point of mist anyway? Fog! Stupid idea!" Vemm said, taking his hands from his pockets and blowing on them before gripping his cold, bedewed weapon. "And if it's going to rain, why can't it just rain in the afternoon or evening and be done with it? Not this constant drip, drip, drip!"
Rann started chuckling. "Stupid Quaters." He said grinning, getting back to a long running jibe. Quater was the common term for anyone coming from the equatorial regions. "I love a good fog. It makes most any place look better. It even makes you look better! You Quaters never want to leave your warm comfy climes, do you?" He joked.
"Why the hell would I want to leave a place where the temperature is always nice?" Vemm replied with a dismissive click of his tongue. "For fog? Forget it!" He spat back.
Then smirking, "If the price to pay for living in shorts all year long is that I don't get to see mist or fog, then I" He was cut off by a sudden roaring scream, splitting the air like an air ripping thunder clap, followed by an explosion fifty metres to his right.
"Get into cover!" Rann screamed.
They both started scrambling on all fours toward a small sentry bunker set into the ground twenty metres away.
Rann slid into the bunker, turned and started to pull Vemm in just as a fresh explosion rent the air. And his friend.
In a split second Vemm's legs disappeared below the knees. Blood started staining the rich, dark brown dirt behind him. His eyes flew open wide and locked onto his friend's before rolling up into the back of his head.
Rann pulled Vemm the rest of the way into the bunker and reached frantically for his medical pack. He scrambled through it looking for the coagulators. Pads treated to quickly stop bleeding. He had no idea what they were treated with, and didn't really care. He just knew that if he didn't get them onto his friend, Vemm would bleed out and die.
He found a coagulator and quickly slapped it onto the stump of one leg, strapping it in place.
There was only one in his pack!
He quickly reached for the pack on Vemm's belt.
Just as he pulled the pack off his belt, an explosion rocked the bunker.
The bunkers were built to withstand most conventional bombs, but the direct hit dazed him and left his head buzzing and his ears ringing.
He found the coagulator in the second pack, and, with shaking hands, strapped it on the stump of the other leg.
After he surveyed his work and saw that the blood flow had significantly slowed, he reached for his wrist, flipped open a flap and pressed a button.
"I need a medic at bunker zero eight." He said into the device. He couldn't hear the reply through the ringing in his ears, but he saw the reply light flash, and hoped that they were sending someone. He made sure his friend was laying as comfortably as he could with his legs raised and then slumped down and waited for the medic.
The bombing continued. Sun bright wads of plasma smashing into the ground all around, seeming to dissolve whatever they hit, mixed in with traditional concussive explosions.
The plasma bombs were a new addition to the Emperor's arsenal. Thankfully still experimental, they weren't used in every encounter.
Rann covered his friend with a blanket to shield him from flying dirt.
He glanced over at him at one point during the ordeal, and, with the blanket covering his head, his friend looked like a corpse. Rann blanched and quickly scrambled over to pull the blanket from Vemm's face. A little dirt on his face wouldn't hurt him.
His eyes are closed anyway, he thought to himself.
After the bombing had finished, the camp was not much more than a field of flapping canvas and smoke. Anyone who had not made it to a bunker was dead or dying.
The soft white mist was now dirty grey with smoke.
The war between the Offensive and the Emperor had been raging for three years.
Ever since the 'Emperor' had decided that; Prator wasn't a grand enough title, and that the result of the democratic vote was in fact what he said result was.
Centuries of democratic rule were overturned by one man and his lust for power and control. The promise of wealth and power had swayed the better judgement of the military rulers, and once they were on side, the fate of the world was sealed.
The resulting peaceful protests against the newly proclaimed Emperor were met with crushing force and death to every protestor captured.
Rann was shocked awake by a hand on his shoulder.
A man was speaking to him, but he sounded like he was speaking into a bucket through a thick blanket.
"Can you hear me?" The medic said looking into the man's eyes. "You're going to be all right. I can't see any wounds on you. Do you feel okay? Do you hurt anywhere?"
"Not me." The man replied groggily, blinking to clear his vision. "Vemm. He's lost his legs. Is that you Stekk?" He asked loudly, squinting at the medic and rubbing his eyes to clear his vision.
"Yeah it's me. It's okay Rann." The medic replied. "You got the coagulators on him. He's gonna live. You did good. What about you? Are you sure you're okay? Let me check you over. I've got a team coming to pick up Vemm."
Rann couldn't hear everything Stekk was saying, but got some of it, and worked out the question from what he was doing and watching his mouth.
"I'm fine. I'm just a bit dazed from the hit on the bunker, and my ears are ringing." He yelled at him.
He knew he was yelling from the effort he put into it, but couldn't stop himself. The ringing in his ears made him feel that he had to speak louder so others could hear him over the din.
Stekk got something to flush out Rann's ears. He worked for a while to clear the blood out of them, then peered intently through an instrument. After a while he sat back on his haunches and let out a sigh.
While Rann couldn't hear the sigh, but he could read his friend's expression and saw the droop of his shoulders.
"What's wrong?" He asked.
"I'm afraid you're out of here for a while. We're gonna have to send you back to main base to repair your ears."
"What?" Rann shouted at him.
"We're gonna have to…" Stekk started shouting back, then got out a pad from his shoulder pocket and wrote it down.
After Rann read it, "Can't you just put in some temp implants?"
Stek wasn't about to start writing out the long explanation of why that wasn't a possibility when he had so many other injured to get to, so he just jotted down a few words, tore off the page and shoved it into his friend's hand as he started for the bunker's entrance.
'Short answer, no. Explain later.'
Rann grabbed the back of Stekk's shirt as he was leaving and looked down at his friend.
Stekk pointed out of the bunker and Rann followed his finger to see a team running toward them with a stretcher.
Rann turned back and looked down when he felt a tap on his chest. Stek was passing another note.
'Go with them', it said.
"You sure he's gonna be all right?" Rann shouted at the medics as they loaded his friend onto a stretcher.
"His vitals are a bit weak, but steady." The medic replied, looking directly at Rann. "The wounds seem to be clean so we should be able to graft some stemmies on no problems. He was actually lucky it was a plasma bomb that took his legs. Kept it clean."
'Stemmies' were a life line for the modern soldier, only recently made available to the recruits of the Offensive.
What used to be a career, and sometimes life ending injury, could now be repaired within a few months thanks to the medical extension of an industrial process known as 3D printing. New limbs grown on a scaffold, layer by layer, from the stem cells of the injured.
The technology had been jealously guarded by the Imperial forces for at least 5 years as far as the Offensive could discern. Only the defection of a key physician gave them access to the process.
Most of what the medic said was lost on Rann, still deafened from the concussion of the direct hit on the bunker.
The medic peeled off a text screen from his operational pad and handed it to Rann. After tapping the main screen of his pad a few times, he spoke into the pad and the words scrolled down on the nano peel page in Rann's hands.
"His vitals are weak, but steady. The wounds seem to be clean so we should be able to graft some stemmies on no problems. He'll be fine. Back on the line in a few months. Follow us and we'll take you back and have someone look at your ears. See what we can do to get you back out here."
He didn't know it yet, but that would be Rann's last day as an active soldier on the line.
It was also the formative event that would shape the rest of his life. Although it resembled in most respects the events that happened to countless beings in countless systems, throughout the universe, it would have a profound effect not only on his life, but on the very existence, of every, single, thing, in the galaxy.