Sorry for the wait. I've been busy with all kinds of things. I'll try to get back to a regular update schedule soon.

Oh, I don't own Star Wars, Stargate, or anything else, unless I made it up.

Onboard the Imperial II Star Destroyer Cardia: During the attack on Aschen Prime

Sara was still miffed that they weren't participating in the first major offensive. Still, the next mission should be more difficult, as her team had proven to be the fastest group to return with a "cargo ship". Currently she was moping in the ships bar, nursing along a drink. She was so lost in her own thoughts that she only noticed the man next to her after he had sat down.

He glanced over at her when he got his drink. "Cheers!" he proclaimed, dark eyes glinting. "Why's a lovely lady like you doing all lone at a time like this?" the man asked as he waved his hand to cover to present situation. "I mean, the Empire is rising once again!" he lowered his voice dramatically, "Only this time it's the Admirals who are doing the building, not the politicians." He grinned and nudged her. "It's got to be better starting over, rather than trying to build off of the Republic."

"I don't have time for this, Nage. I've got too much coming up to 'conspire' with you." Sara sighed. Some people never change. "Why are you bothering me again?" she asked, shaking her head.

Quickly, Nage glanced around, almost insuring that if anyone was watching that they would know that he was up to something, and beckoned her to lean towards him. "It's a secret." He said in his best stage whisper. As she started to pull away in slight annoyance, he hurriedly continued. "Not from you my dear Sara. I've got a message from the Council. Your team will be assigned to locate the home world of the Tau'ri, and infiltrate it if possible."

Sara, now thoroughly alert, nodded. She and Nage knew that this was important. But more than that, Sara knew she needed this mission.

Aschen Surface

The battle had gone quite well for the invaders. The Aschen were mostly peaceful and moved slowly, favoring genetic bioweapons if at all possible. Unluckily for the Aschen, they hadn't found the Empire; it had found them.

Currently the Aschen defenders were trying to hold back an Imperial advance of no less than 3 AT-ATs and over 24 AT-STs. Needless to say, it wasn't going very well.

"…Can't stop 'em!"

"Look ou—"

"Flank them! Move in a…"

"…repeat, Fall Back! The invaders have breached the second defense perimeter!"

A cold voice blasted over all the com chatter, "Thank's for telling us that. It makes it much easier than waiting for the order to move."

Silence greeted the interruption, and more than one unit froze, waiting. The veterans, however few they were, dove under cover. They did the right thing, unlike those who got incinerated by the red blasts. Moving swiftly over then now-charred ground, the Imperial advance moved ever closer to the capitol, and the hidden Stargate.

For once on this mission SG-20 was silent. They were just too freaked out by what they just saw. Not really noticing this, the Aschen continued his briefing, "So you can see, we've had a tough time going against their…"

Angua leaned over to Carrot, "Do you believe this?" she whispered.

"Not really, but…" he shrugged.

"I know! I still want to think that it's all a joke, but then I —"

"Need to look at that!" Carrot cut her off, pointing to the screen. It now showed a brief clip of Aschen police attacking an enemy position. Then were in a city, hunkered down behind some rubble as what any member of SG-20 would've called an AT-ST passed by. A younger man looked to his commander wondering, you could see it in his eyes.

The voice that spoke was obviously the person who had filmed the feed. "We're not letting him go. It's just that we can't kill it on our own. What we're doing is waiting for the white goons to come up behind them." He nodded towards where the AT-ST came from. "Now you just settle down and sit tight." The young man nodded and scuttled out behind a makeshift barrier.

Then they heard shooting in the distance. There was the sound of machine guns mixed with another higher pitched set of noises. The squad tensed up and ignored the ragged troops that fled past them. Only when they heard the 'Tramp Tramp' of booted feet did they bolt from cover and start to shoot.

The tech paused the video and started talking again, "This is the basic ground unit that the invaders have. From what we've been able to intercept, they are called—"

Just about all the earthers interrupted him at that point, "Stormtroopers."

The Aschen were suitably flabbergasted. Arlin spoke first, accusing, "You KNEW of them!" He looked fit to burst, he was so red. "You KNEW of these, these, invaders and did NOTHING!" he roared out the last bit. "I trusted you, and now I find that you've known all along." He collapsed into his chair.

Jackson cleared his throat; "If I may explain?" he paused, taking the silence to be agreement, continued. "While we 'knew' of them, we never expected them to become real." Jackson got that much out quite fast. "You see, these invaders are part of something called the 'Empire'. We know of them on earth because they were part of a major set of entertainment ventures. For all we knew, they were a fiction. Now at least, we know better."

"…You say this 'Empire' was nothing more than a fiction on earth?" Arlin asked, deadly focused.

"Yes, as an entertainment show for the vid screens. It is quite popular still back on earth."

"Yet now they are real, and attacking my people?"

"How can I put this," Vimes said. He tilted his head sidewise for a moment, "Yep." Holding out his hands to forestall the next outburst, Vimes dropped his bombshell, "But now that we know who they are, we also know of some ways to beat them." Vimes grinned.

By even the end of that day, the effects of the 'new tactics' were being felt all over Aschen. While some increase in enemy combat effectiveness was expected, the methods being used were shocking the commanders in charge. Most of the tricks the Imperial forces were falling for were old Rebel tricks. The general in charge alerted his troops to be on the watch for Rebel tricks. The problem was that most of the troops had relaxed their guards, thinking the Rebellion far, far away. Reality, it looked like, wasn't cooperating. 'Oh well' the general thought, 'at least we're still going to take the capital tomorrow, or the day after.'

Aschen Orbit: Next Day

Sara and what she was coming to suspect was 'her' team, no matter what the official records said, had arrived at Aschen orbit because of rumors from prisoners that there were alien advisors helping with the defense. Their new mission was to find out how they got onto the planet and to follow them back to wherever they came from.

Currently, the team was boarding the shuttle that would take them to the planet. "Did you hear that there are Rebels down there?" Kelric was spouting off the rumors he heard while on leave. "The Aschen response had almost doubled its combat effectiveness in one day! I've heard that the defenders are using old Rebel tricks from Hoth and Kashyyyk."

Sighing, Paelleon turned to Sara, "He follows this battle like it was podracing or swoopracing."

"Boys will be boys," Sara replied, laughing. After they boarded the shuttle, she continued more seriously, "Sir, I need to tell you something of the utmost importance to the mission and to our personal safety." After waiting for Paelleon to motion her to continue, "I'm not sure if you've been briefed, but there was and still is a large contingent of the Order with the Eighth Fleet." Seeing his eyes widen, she nodded. "That's what you needed to know. I'm a Knight in the Imperial Order. I'm not with the old Jedi council or the Sith league. I worked directly with Lord Vader and was one of his promising students. However, this means that without contact with Imperial City, I have lost most of my authority, and none of the resentment. The local Order is split between Jedi and Sith; neither like me, yet with my experience they need me for a time." She paused, gathering breath.

Nodding to himself, the LT summarized. "So you're a Jed- oops. I mean a force user that is disliked by all that remain, yet useful. If I see where you're going with this, it looks like we'll be getting most of the difficult missions then."

Almost collapsing with relief, Sara nodded. "Exactly. I hope this won't become a problem sir. I know that some people don't like "

"Nonsense! I have come to know you quite well, I'd hope, and as long as you use your abilities to help, and as long as you don't try to influence me, we'll get along fine; if not better than before. Besides," and now his eyes were sparkling, "your abilities should come in handy on this mission."

Sara did burst out laughing at that. She affectionately whacked him over the head and into the aisle.

Daedalus B-304-05 Perdix

Hyperspace, one of the more popular ways to beat the FTL barrier in the mulitverse, always is portrayed as stable warped colors, or shifting, unearthly patterns painted on a void. At times this is only a computer representation of a terror that would shred human minds, but in all cases it allows Humanity and others to reach for the stars.

Currently, the US Battleship Perdix was heading on a relief mission to an old enemy. The captain was still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that his galaxy had been invaded by the Empire from Starwars. It boggled the mind! After a brief bit of reflection on some of what had happened to SG-1, he had to shrug, because if some of those things could happen, then why not this? If only it had been someone nice like the Federation!

The latest intelligence reports said that there were only two Star Destroyers or 'wedges' as the crews were naming them around Aschen. His mission was to assist the Aschen, and also to test his shields and weapons on the Imperial vessels. Soon they would be dropping out of hyperspace and confronting the SDs and their fighters. He could only hope that his under one-third kilometer vessel could stand up to a 1.6 km behemoth. He shuddered, and prayed that there were no Supers with them.

Aschen Orbit: Same time

The docking official was glad that the he had cleared all of his passenger listings. These days, those recon teams had priority, and they didn't like to be kept waiting. He shook his head. With so many officers following in the footsteps of Vader, the middle ranked officers had a quite high turnover rate. The only bright side to this was that if any higherups screwed up, they couldn't escape either. Warlord Neebs claimed that the high command was working on these issues, but he'd believe it when he saw it.

Finishing up his duties, he transferred up to the bridge to watch the shuttle land. While the teams were haughty, they did have an aura of ingenuity and freshness. Of course, the waiting lists were very long to get on one of the many teams springing up.

When he saw the much smaller ship, compared to his own SD, but much to large to be close to that shuttle, he was one of the first to alert the commander.

The Perdix came out of hyperspace at the normal distance to the planet, right in high polar orbit. As soon as they had stabilized, the fighter squadrons had scrambled, launching 16 F-302 fighters at the enemy. The closest vessel was a small shuttle, but the pilots didn't have time to do more than scan it before the three, not two, SDs and their combat space patrols swarmed them. Needless to say, being in a mostly defenseless shuttle in the middle of a dogfight is a bad idea.

"Paelleon, get us out of here!"

"Where did they come from?"
"SHUT UP!" Paelleon yelled, twisting the shuttle onto a new course directly towards the planet below. "If you aren't doing anything useful, and by useful I mean getting us to the ground in one piece, shut up!"

Sara, a little calmer now, practically dove on the rear gunnery station. However, none of the new, raptor-like fighters were in range. Watching their acrobatics and she knew that they had to have a better form of inertial compensator that the TIEs had. While not as fast, they could accelerate and maneuver better than even TIE interceptors. Seeing three of them take out an entire squadron was sobering. But seeing one survive several direct hits was worse.

Her attention was wrenched back to their own plight when the first SD opened fire.

The ship rocked, jolted by the direct hits to the shields. "Status report!"

"Shields holding, minimal damage."

"Good. Our shields seem to be better than theirs. Return fire when ready." Somehow, the captain managed to keep his voice steady. How he managed with those gargantuan daggers above and aiming directly for him, he never knew.

"Sir, the fighters are reporting easy pickings out there."

"Tell them to keep alert, and watch out for those anti-fighter ships. We know they have them, but not where yet." He had to grip the armrests after another hit rovked the command deck.

"Sir! Positive ID on TIE Bombers incoming from 3 o'clock high."

Down on the surface, SG-20 was giddy with glee when the Perdix appeared. Seeing the F-302s handle the TIEs was a good sign. But when they lost the scanner complex, they lost their signal. And that meant, "They've begun to attack the Government building. We need to start the evac plans now." Arlin began to call for the automated systems to be activated, and to begin purging the data from the computers. SG-20 dialed the Gamma site and began to hustle the remaining workers through. Only then, and Vimes insisted on this, came the families of the political leaders, followed by the leaders themselves. By the time they could actually hear the fighting in the stairwells, there were only themselves, a small rear guard, and Arlin.

"After you, Arlin." Vimes ordered.

"No, I'll go last." Arlin insisted, as he had been for the last half hour.

Angua barked at him, "Your people NEED you to lead them. Do you think that after this, anyone else will have credibility with the people? If you want any hope of reclaiming Aschen Prime, you must live!" That last was delivered in a remarkably well done half-growl.

With that, while he stewed on what she had just said, Angua and Cheery each grabbed an arm, and tossed him through the gate. Just then, one last group of Aschen troopers, three men and a woman dashed into the gate room, locking down the door, and blasting the controls behind them.

The woman said, "Their right behind us, we need to get going fast!" Indeed, just as she said this, the sound of blaster fire began to hit the door.

SG-20 glanced at Vimes, and rushed everyone through the gate. Then right as the door blew in, they sent the signal to destroy the gate. With that signal, 10 kilograms of C-4 detonated around the gate and the Dialing device, incidentally causing a collapse and the deaths of the front troopers.

"Well, that's that, I guess." Carrot said. "The first battle of the war goes to the Empire."

The woman that came with the last group said, "Well, you know what they say, 'We may have lost the Battle, but they will not win the War'."

While that was true, Carrot could not help thinking she looked familiar…