Chapter 10: Home Soil
"Holy… that actually worked!"
Just outside the palace Azula had seen the whole thing, the manmade mountain launched with the power of hundreds of earthbenders. She had seen the mountain hit the spaceship descending over Ba Sing Se, and watched it fall somewhere beyond the walls to the west. Although Azula couldn't see the actual crash, her sight blocked by the wall that now had a large chunk of it missing, she felt a tremor in the ground when it happened. It was like a small earthquake had gone off, and everyone noticed it even in the heat of battle.
All around Azula were the bodies of stormtroopers that got in her way, many of whom had been electrocuted by her lightning attacks and/or burned alive by blue fire. It appeared that their armor was especially conductive, allowing lightning to pass from one stormtrooper to another in close groups. This convenience created a rather effective strategy for Azula and her current ally, as Long Feng would raise stone walls to block blaster fire while Azula charged lightning, and then lower the walls when she was ready to fire.
Just behind her Long Feng was standing, though he had been looking out for more stormtroopers at the time and didn't see it. "I missed it. How in the world did I miss it?"
"More of them I assume," Azula said, pointing ahead.
A large group of stormtroopers were climbing up the front steps of the palace, though still near the bottom and pointing their blasters up at the targets they spotted. At the top of the stairs Azula saw the stormtroopers coming, and she had to back away from the edge when blaster bolts started flying by. Long Feng raised a thick wall at the edge of the steps, and he immediately heard blaster fire hitting it. He waited to see how long it took for blaster fire to bring down his wall, and frowned after a couple of seconds.
"That's a lot of firepower," Long Feng noted. He raised another wall, and soon it was demolished too. "So the usual? Or should I handle this one?"
Given where they were standing, Azula opted for the latter choice. "Go right ahead."
Long Feng nodded and took a few steps backward. "You don't want to be standing there right now."
Once Azula had backed up Long Feng got to work, eager to see what he had in mind. Long Feng planted his feet and thrust his fists forward and up, and a large slab of rock broke free from the floor and went past the edge. The slab fell onto the steps and slid all the way down, reaching the stormtroopers and hitting them right in the knees. The impact tripped every single one of them and they hit the steps face first, just in time for a second stone slab sliding down the steps to hit them in the face, with the entirely predictable results.
After seeing the effects of his work, and rather satisfied with it, Long Feng curtsied for Azula. "After you my dear."
"It's time to rally the troops," Azula said, already walking down the steps with Long Feng right behind her. "That ship may be down, but I'm sure we still need to finish the job."
By all metrics, the Stalker was a dead ship.
Designed for space, built in space, flown through space, Star Destroyers were meant to serve the Empire in space. Although they were certainly capable of flying in atmosphere, this was usually only done as a scare tactic to demoralize a superstitious enemy. Landing a Star Destroyer was absolutely out of the question, the word itself being a thinly veiled way of admitting to crashing one. Doing so was an automatic discharge for the commanding officer responsible, assuming that Darth Vader hadn't dealt with it first.
Captain Zed's body wasn't even cold yet when Darth Vader started giving new orders to the bridge crew. "Damage report."
Aside from the obvious damage on the bridge, various consoles broken and/or on fire, the Stalker's condition only got worse by the second. The ventral hull was completely gone, along with the five lowest decks, and the decks above those were heavily damaged. The starboard side was compacted throughout the top half of the ship, and many sections beneath it were cut off by collapsed corridors. Power systems were fried across the board, and in many part of the ship only the emergency lighting was still active.
Really the only part still relatively intact part of the ship was the command tower, albeit with fried circuitry running the height all the way to the bridge. The windows on the bridge had a good view of more damage, as one could see the front end of the ship buried in the ground. It would take years to dig it all out, just for the sake of salvaging the materials. At best this ship would be dismantled and its parts recycled, at worst it would simply be left here to rust. One thing was certain though, the Stalker would never fly again.
After major points Darth Vader stopped listening to the report, as the minor details seemed inconsequential. "Are the hangar doors still functional?"
"Yes, my lord," the newly promoted Captain Reed reported.
"Open them," Darth Vader ordered. "I want everything we have in the air now. Get the first squad of bombers to work around the crash site. Destroy everything within five kilometers and secure that perimeter."
"Right away sir," Reed said, already getting to work on that.
"Get the AT-ATs running," Darth Vader opened.
"They are trapped in the port cargo hold," Reed reported. "It could take weeks to cut open the hull and let them out."
"We don't have weeks," Darth Vader said. "Blast it open if you have to. We need the heavy machinery out there now. The enemy is surely about to take advantage of this situation as we speak."
The people of Ba Sing Se were emboldened by their sudden change in fortune, whereas the stormtroopers they fought were demoralized by the crashed Star Destroyer. Earthbenders fought more ferociously than before, now truly believing that they could actually win this fight. Stormtroopers stopped their advance and retreated toward the crash site, seeking to fortify that position until they got new orders. All across the city the tide of battle turned, with the earthbenders taking back their home block by block.
As Long Feng passed through the city every group of earthbenders followed him, rallying behind the leader of the Dai Li to take back Ba Sing Se from the space invaders. Azula walked right beside him all the way, feeling more confident with each earthbender that joined their growing army. By the time they reached the lower ring they had several hundred to their number, with all the earthbending might to move mountains. Long Feng was eager to put that might to work finishing off the invaders, leading them straight to the crash site.
"There it is," Azula said, pointing to a spot across the lower ring.
The crash site was impossible to miss in the lower ring, what with the crashed ship now dominating the landscape. Everyone could see the ship's rear tower sticking up in the air from miles around, as well the long gash in the ground leading to the wreck. From here everyone could see the ship's engines pointed up at a shallow angle, tons of heat billowing out of them and making the air shimmer around them. Even from miles away the crashed ship looked huge, and on the ground it was almost like some giant fortress.
"Must have taken them forever to build that," Long Feng noted. "It's huge."
Azula nodded, but wasn't dissuaded from the task at hand. "So it will take some time to tear apart. I think we can handle it."
"But can we handle those?" Long Feng wondered, pointing up at something in the sky. "They might be a problem."
Flying over the crashed ship were the bombers that were the bane of tunneling earthbenders, circling it like a flock of vulture-wasps ready to feast on a carcass. They started dropping bombs all around the crash site in a wide circle, destroying everything below and leveling the terrain for miles around. Soon the crashed ship had a clear line of sight in every direction, and it would be impossible to approach without being seen and subsequently shot and/or bombed into oblivion. Even the underground would not provide safe passage, for the bombers continued their patrol.
Meanwhile the ship's hangar opened and hundreds of fighter craft flew out, their upright octagonal wings ill-suited for flying in atmosphere. The fighter crafts spread out in wide formations and joined the bombers in circling the crashed ship, darkening wide swaths of the sky with their numbers. Yet they weren't doing anything up there besides circling around, scaring the living daylights out of many people that saw them up there. Yet for all their numbers and aerial superiority, the expected attack did not come.
"What are they doing?" Azula wondered, staring at the circling fighter craft while the earthbenders behind her were trembling in fear. "Why aren't they attacking?"
Long Feng's eyes narrowed as he studied the fighter crafts' behavior. "It almost looks like they're just staying out of the way."
"Out of what-" an explosion cut Azula off, and she could only stare at it. "Did they just bomb themselves?"
The TIE Bombers got to work opening the port side of the Stalker in the most expedient way possible, however self-inflicting it may be, by blasting apart the hull to get at the cargo holds inside. Now that the compliment of TIE fighters was airborne and the port sections fully evacuated, the TIE Bombers could blast open the ship without inflicting further casualties on the crewmen inside. It took several bombing runs to fully expose the cargo hold to open air, and then unleash the weapons of war that had been trapped inside.
Ten AT-AT walkers were stored in this Star Destroyer's cargo hold, each resembling a massive four-legged beast, and were designed for siege warfare in situations when orbital bombardment was an unacceptable or impractical tactic. Now that the cargo hold was open the AT-ATs were activated and mobilized, slowly walking out through the hole and out of the Star Destroyer. Wreckage from the bombing was crushed underfoot as the AT-ATs exited, making for a relatively steep incline as they walked to reach the ground.
One by one the AT-ATs walked down the slope of wreckage to set foot on the ground, and then they turned to face the inner side of the city that lay before them. The first one stopped at the inner side of the land cleared by the bombers, waiting for the rest of the AT-ATs to join formation side by side before the attack. Once all ten AT-ATs were standing in a row they marched forward together, slowly approaching the other side of the bombed land, bringing their massive blasters to bear and acquiring target lock.
The order soon came over the radio. "Fire when ready."
They were ready now. The AT-ATs opened fire across the battlefield, their massive blaster bolts crossing in fractions of a second. Entire groups of people were vaporized on impact, before they could even react to enemy fire. Nearly fifty had died before everyone else could try to defend, and stone walls rose up before the second volley. Those walls were demolished under sustained blaster fire, and the people behind those walls perished with them. Local losses were extreme, and the AT-ATs had only just started.
It didn't take long for the enemy to scatter in every direction, if only to reduce the casualties inflicted by each attack. So the AT-ATs accelerated their advance across the battlefield, steadily getting closer and acquiring better targeting to blast more foes into oblivion. After several minutes of sustained fire they obliterated every target within visual range, and with no more targets to shoot the AT-ATs stopped firing. But that didn't mean the enemy was complete gone, not when they were known to go underground.
The locals had done exactly that before the TIE Bombers got to work, scanning the underground for tunneling locals and then dropping bombs on them. The first bombing run made several craters, which were littered with the scattered remains of dead locals. They hadn't even made it half a kilometer before getting bombed, nowhere near close enough to attack the AT-ATs from below. Between the AT-ATs attacking the surface and the TIE Bombers attacking the underground, the enemy could not get through the line of fire.
But then new orders came in. "Hold position. Shoot anything that comes within range. Defend the Stalker at all costs."
Five minutes ago Long Feng and Azula had an army.
Now they had nothing.
Those massive metal monsters had nearly annihilated the earthbenders, leaving only small handfuls of survivors that were now scattering to the winds. Craters dotted the landscape where the attack had struck, littered with the bloody pieces of people blasted apart. Even the earthbenders that defended with walls of stone were slain, killed by the massive blasters that tore through stone and flesh alike. Only the underground offered protection from the blasters, but those flying machines knew exactly where to drop their bombs.
Long Feng found shelter somewhere in between, having made his own crater and stood at the bottom of it. All the blaster bolts went flying over him, and the bombers weren't dropping bombs here. But although he was still alive, he couldn't fight back from the bottom of his crater. Azula stood beside Long Feng in that crater, hearing the dying screams from the annihilated army all around them. Although both of them had seen the horrors of war before, this was on a scale unlike anything they had ever witnessed.
Still, Azula had one last trick up her sleeve. She knew it wouldn't win the fight, but it was better than standing around here waiting to die. "On my mark, raise me out of this hole."
"What?" Long Feng blurted out. "You can't be serious."
"Just do it!" Azula yelled.
Azula cupped her hands at her side, focusing the power of her firebending into the space between her palms. A ball of blue fire formed and grew brighter, becoming hotter by the second as she put more of her power into it. The intensity of the flame grew until the blue fire ascended to the fourth state of matter, with electricity crackling around the superheated ball of blue plasma. Azula kept on funneling her firebending into an attack she had reserved for her own use, an attack fashioned after the alien that ruined her life.
"Now!"
Long Feng exactly did as Azula asked, even if he expected her to die from this insane plan. Long Feng raised the ground beneath Azula, bringing her out of the crater on a pillar of rock high enough to see the enemy. Azula immediately unleashed her attack, thrusting her hands forward with her palms open. There had been a phrase to go along with the attack, used by the alien she copied the attack from, but Azula had long since abandoned it. She put all her focus into the attack, and from her palms a thick beam of blue plasma erupted.
The bright blue beam of plasma shot across the battlefield, faster than any other firebending attack known to man. Azula's aim was true and her attack found its target, hitting one of the metal monsters directly in the face. The blue beam covered the entire head and part of the torso behind it, quickly melting the metal and heating up everything inside. The massive blasters were superheated until they ruptured, which created an explosion that completely blew off the head, followed by the rest of it collapsing in a smoldering wreck.
Yet destroying the metal monster's head and killing the rest of it was only a small victory, for when Azula finished firing her attack she collapsed and fell off the pillar. No matter how much she had tried to improve it over the last year, using that attack always drained Azula of everything she had. This time Azula was out cold by the time Long Feng caught her, and he gently set her down next to the pillar. It had been a valiant effort on Azula's part, Long Feng recognized, if only to achieve that small victory against an overwhelming foe.
But it had also attracted the attention of every stormtrooper in the area, and soon Long Feng saw dozens of them surrounding the crater. "You did what you had to, now I have to do the same."
All those stormtroopers aimed their blasters into the crater.
Long Feng raised his hands above his head. "I surrender."
Although the Stalker was far beyond salvageable as a starship, repair work was underway regardless of that reality, though only because of the current predicament. For better or worse the crashed ship was the only available base of operations, and so it had to be fortified as a defensive position. That required repairs to get the ship's systems operational again, at least the ones that would be helpful on the ground. So far they had the comms and life support working, but most of the automated defense systems were still offline.
Darth Vader was currently walking through the ship's halls, getting rather annoyed with the tilted angle everything leaned toward while the artificial gravity was offline. He walked past the crew making repairs just about everywhere, yet they were still immensely shorthanded for the task. Between the vast amount of work and a reduced crew, everyone would be doing triple shifts for a while. Darth Vader ignored the crew while collecting every stormtrooper he came across, leading them through the ship toward the largest passage in or out of this crashed ship.
That spot was the cargo hold that had been deliberately bombed open, now resembling a large wound left to fester and rot like some dead tauntaun. Darth Vader had a few hundred stormtroopers with him when he got there, stepping into the hold where the natural light could shine in on everything inside. Here Darth Vader could see outside and found the deployed AT-ATs, one of which was now missing its head and wrecked. Whatever caused that hadn't happened again, but the fact that it happened demanded answers.
Fortunately there was a squad of stormtroopers returning to the ship at this very moment, and Darth Vader recognized one of the prisoners they were bringing back. "Well this should be illuminating."
Darth Vader remembered Long Feng from his first trip down to this planet, back when there had been a need for plausible deniability. That was no longer the case, and there was no need to accommodate the poor fool any longer. The stormtroopers forced Long Feng onto his knees before Darth Vader, who stood without speaking while looking down on the now-deposed ruler. Darth Vader let this moment sink in for a bit, so that Long Feng could realize just how hopeless his predicament was, and that there was no point in resisting him now.
"Now then," Darth Vader said. "You are going to tell me everything about the attacks you used today. Start with the moving mountain, and finish with the long range plasma beam."
Long Feng said nothing.
That was the expected response, so Darth Vader waved a hand and called on the Force. "You will tell me everything."
Long Feng shuddered and felt a strange need to comply, but resisted and turned his head away, still refusing the command. "No."
Darth Vader waved his hand again, used more of his power this time, and repeated his command. "You will tell me everything."
Again Long Feng shuddered, violently so and with a small cry of agony. "I. Will. Not."
Resistance to Force Persuasion was not unheard of, though it was rare outside of the few species that naturally carried the trait. In this case Darth Vader figured it would take more effort than he cared to exert, so he switched to a more reliable method of obtaining compliance, one that was far more enjoyable anyway. Darth Vader held his hand out as if to grab something, and Long Feng felt the invisible grip of the Force choking him. A moment later Darth Vader let go, and Long Feng immediately gasped for air.
Once again, Darth Vader made his command. "You will tell me everything."
Now on his hands and knees, Long Feng nodded. "Please… no more…"
Darth Vader crossed his arms. "The suffering will end when you comply."
Quickly Long Feng recovered his breath, nodded again, and promptly lied through his teeth. "It was Aang. All of it was Avatar Aang."
Avatar Aang was currently resting in the upper ring, the only part of the city that appeared to be safe again. At least for the moment anyway, when the situation could very easily change for the worse. At this point Aang barely had the strength left to even stand, so he was lying down on the first building he had come across. Between the injuries from his fights, the exhaustion from using the Avatar State during those fights, and just plain fighting in general, Aang felt like he could sleep for another hundred years.
He wasn't that fortunate, being stuck in the nightmare that was this invasion. Aang knew that this wasn't going to stop, no matter how hard he tried to change that. Knocking down that space ship had only bought him some time to breathe, and if those smaller ships flying overhead were any indication, Aang's time was quickly running out. Ba Sing Se was going to fall once again, and there was no stopping that outcome now. Only one practical option remained for him to use, one that he suspected was becoming a habit of his.
Aang groaned and forced himself onto his feet. "Fight another day, right?"
One more time Aang called upon the Avatar State, uncertain if he could sustain it, and only long enough for one more move. With that power Aang jumped into the air on a column of wind, racing toward the heavens where the smaller ships flew overhead. Once he was up there Aang timed things just right, and he intercepted one of the ships with the flat octagonal wings. The wind cushioned the impact with the left wing, allowing him to remain in one piece, yet when Aang grabbed on it still felt like his arms would be ripped off.
The little ship didn't seem to notice him there, though it did drift lazily to the left. Aang held onto the wing for as long as he could, losing the feeling in his fingers in the process, until the little ship turned around to head back toward the crash site. It flew past the crashed ship on the southern side, apparently patrolling the airspace in a large circle. At the right moment Aang used the Avatar State again and pushed off, propelling himself with the wind and the momentum from ridding on the little ship.
The combined forces propelled Aang even faster than before, soaring far beyond the lower ring and across the Agrarian Zone. Aang saw the great trench of the western side pass by below him, and he cleared the outer wall and fell outside Ba Sing Se. When he started to fall Aang used the wind to slow down, really the only thing he could do in this situation, but it still hurt everything when he hit the ground. Aang tumbled for quite a ways after the crash, and when he finally stopped moving he was certain something in him broke.
"Ugh," Aang groaned, on his back and looking at the sky. "I'm never doing that again."
Outside Ba Sing Se it seemed rather peaceful, with only the sounds of the wind and wildlife to keep him company. From here the outer wall blocked all signs of the invasion, making it seem like just another day in the Earth Kingdom. At best the sound of battle was like very distant thunder, so quiet that one could wonder if it was even there at all. It seemed like as good a place as any to get some rest, since Aang didn't have the energy left to move anyway. He simply lay there as still as could possibly be, barely able to even keep his eyes open.
But then Aang spotted something new in the sky, an itty bitty triangle just barely large enough to see. "Oh you've got to be kidding me."
The space around Earth was empty once again, save for the usual space debris caught in the planet's gravity. That changed when a Star Destroyer emerged from hyperspace near the planet' moon, drifting forward with its engines on a low burn. This Star Destroyer was the Avenger, a fitting name considering the fate of the Stalker, even though it was not aware of the latter ship's fate. The Avenger set a course for the planet immediately after exiting hyperspace, on orders to rendezvous with a ship that was no longer in orbit.
Behind the Avenger another Star Destroyer emerged from hyperspace, then another one, and then a third Star Destroyer followed. These three ships were the Conquest, the Tyrant, and the Devastator, and all three were on the same mission as the Avenger. Together they would finish the Stalker's work and then begin reinforcing the planet, to pave the way for an invasion of the space beyond the border. And for good measure one more ship emerged from hyperspace, one that dwarfed even the mighty Star Destroyers.
Nineteen kilometers long, and a third of that wide, this massive warship was like a Star Destroyer but built on a much larger scale. With over two hundred thousand military personnel aboard, this massive ship could wage a campaign singlehanded. Armed to the teeth with the best weapons in the Empire, this Super Star Destroyer was that flagship that instilled fear in the enemy on sight. This massive ship was the Executor, and together with the Star Destroyers it completed the infamous Death Squadron fleet.
While Death Squadron was on a direct course for Earth, the planet was in full view of each ship's bridge. Aboard the Executor's bridge there was a flurry of activity, from coordinating fleet movements to searching for the apparently absent Stalker. Admiral Kendal Ozzel commanded the Executor whenever Darth Vader was absent, a position he enjoyed during the last three years. But he suspected more of his blonde hair would turn grey by the end of this mission, considering the latest change to the command structure.
"Pretty little marble out there," Admiral Ozzel noted. He turned to look at the person sitting in his chair. "Wouldn't you agree, Grand Admiral?"
The white uniform of a newly appointed rank did little to conceal this officer's blue skin, being one of the few aliens in the chain of command and the only alien to achieve this prestigious rank. His dark blue hair was trimmed in the usual naval style, and in this moment his face was nearly unreadable. Few men would try to read his face anyway, as his red eyes were discomforting to those that didn't know the grand admiral personally. Right now those red eyes were looking at the planet, sitting in a unique spot on the galactic map.
Grand Admiral Thrawn nodded. "It is a rare gem this far out from the Core."
Soon Death Squadron reached the planet and entered orbit around it, spread out over the large continent currently on the daylight side. This close the Executor was large enough to be seen from the planet's surface, and would certainly be noticed by the populace below, if it hadn't been already. It would either instill fear in those aware of the Empire, or create mass confusion among those that were not. Either way it would serve the fleet's goals, and subjugate the people of this planet all the more quickly.
When the bridge officers reached consensus, one reported it. "Sir, there's no sign of the Stalker."
"What has Zed gotten into this time?" Ozzel wondered. "Scan the planet for it, just in case he landed."
A scan of the planet's surface got results immediately. "Found it."
"Let's see it," Ozzel ordered. A blue hologram showing a topographical view of the area filled the bridge, and Ozzel whistled while examining it. "When Zed screws up, he really screws up."
The hologram showed a Star Destroyer plowed into the ground, with a big gash in one side as if someone had thrown a mountain into it. The other side was blasted open seemingly for a convenient way out of the ship, and since the ship was scrap anyway they might as well take it apart. The hologram also showed several AT-ATs guarding a perimeter, occasionally shooting at something out of the hologram's frame. It would certainly be an experience to hear just what the hell happened, either at Zed's court martial or his funeral.
"Keep the fleet in high orbit," Thrawn ordered. "No one goes down there until we know what happened. I want contact established as quickly as possible."