Joshua's Survival:

D26/1 BBY, Lothal

Joshua Azadi, aka ST-7801, dove out of the Dome as it rose over the ocean, the self destruct alarm counting down from five behind him as he did so.

The fall might kill him, but exploding with the Dome WOULD definitely kill him, so he picked the option that gave him a fraction of a chance.

He wasn't the only one either. As he jumped, hundreds of others did as well; those that were smart enough to find an exit when they realized that the Dome wasn't leaving the planet voluntarily. There was also his entire squad of fifty men, whom he'd ordered out of the Dome ahead of him. They'd had to time it right, of course. Jump too soon, and they'd land in the shallow water and perish for sure. Jump too late... And... Well, blow up, to put it frankly.

He crashed into the ocean feet first, after falling for ten endless seconds with the sound of the first set of detonations booming above him, hoping to cut through the water as cleanly as possible. The impact sent pain up his legs, but he didn't think anything broke. The water sucked him under at first, but he let it, staying relaxed. Fighting it would just tire him out needlessly. As soon as his downward momentum stopped, Joshua started kicking for the surface, grateful his plastoid armour was more or less buoyant, because he bodysuit underneath most certainly was not. His helmet was also doing a great job of keeping him supplied with oxygen to breathe. This might be the first time he fully appreciated the armour he usually despised.

As Joshua popped above the surface, he tried to comm his squad. "Squad 78, report in," he called and then winced as a lot of static feedback screeched in his ears. The water must have damaged the comm system, but he did hear a few faint and garbled replies, so that was something.

A massive explosion above him caught his attention. He looked up as he tread water to see what had to be the second best explosion in the history of Lothal. (The first being when the fuel depot blew up last week.)

Then the reality of the situation struck him as pieces of the Dome started falling from the sky in fiery chunks. "That's not good," he muttered. Joshua looked around him to see hundreds of troopers just like him staring up at the explosion in fascination. "If you can hear me," he called over his comm system on the general frequency. "SWIM!"

And then he put action to words, swimming as quickly as he could towards shore in armour that was never intended for that motion; the shoulder armour pinching viciously with every overhead move of his arms, his white pauldron on his right shoulder making that side even more difficult, but he did it anyway.

He was happy to see that most of the others were following his lead as he turned his head from side to side. He had no idea which of them were men from his squad, as they all looked alike, but some of them had to be.

The ocean seemed to be helping as well, the gentle waves pushing them towards shore, but it wasn't fast enough. Large pieces of the Dome were now crashing into the water with massive splashes, taking out anyone who happened to be unfortunate enough to be in the path of the shattered Imperial structure.

As he swam for his life, Joshua had one of those life flashing before your eyes things you hear about, but don't actually believe would happen. But it did.

Instead of the now churning and fiery water, he saw his parents smiling at him when he was five years old on his birthday and he opened up his presents. He saw his uncle Ryder with his head bowed at their funeral when he was thirteen. He saw the stormtroopers arrest Ryder when he was fifteen. He saw his first look of the cadet barracks in the Dome that he was dragged to and the young faces of his new bunkmates and the start of his squad. He saw the day he was promoted to Sergeant. He saw the late night, clandestine meetings between him and other troopers who'd been forced to join the Imperial army, as they plotted ways to rebel without seeming to do so.

Their little group of rebels within the Empire consisted of (or at least it did) about seventy troopers, thirty of which were all in his personal squad. They did what they could to help their native Lothalians whenever they could get away with it. Things like having deliberately bad aim when in pursuit of other rebel factions, or stepping in to arrest someone their commanding officers decided needed incarcerating and then 'losing' them on the way to the Dome. It wasn't a lot, but he liked to think it was worthwhile.

The real Rebels had done a lot in the last few months that had given him some real hope. He didn't know who was in charge of the Lothal rebels, but they seemed to be more organized lately and were driving his superiors into fits. It was great.

Then this last crazy week had happened, with things blowing up all over the place, Rebel fighters falling out of the sky, more things blowing up, Governor Pryce losing her mind while Grand Admiral Thrawn was away, and finally... The whole thing with the Dome.

While other, loyal, troopers had tried to stop the Rebels from taking the Dome, Joshua and his troopers had been doing a fantastic job of making themselves scarce. They couldn't flat out help like he wanted to, because everything they did was recorded by their armour, but he most certainly could make sure they didn't hinder the Rebels' efforts. He hadn't been expecting them to launch the Dome and then blow it up though. That was a surprise he wished he'd known about.

With how things had been playing out, Joshua and his rebels had seriously been thinking about going AWOL and ditching their armour in an alley somewhere then seeking out the Rebel camp and joining up. He wished they'd come to a decision sooner, because his arms were screaming from the effort of pulling himself through the water. He had half a mind to stop and start pulling off armour plates, but he was afraid if he stopped moving he'd never get started again or something would fall on him.

So he just kept on swimming and gritted his teeth through the pain.

After they beat a strategic retreat on the Ghost from the Dome that was launching itself from the ground, Ryder Azadi had Hera drop him off on a rooftop near the beach so he could watch the Dome explode with a front row seat. He'd been waiting for this moment for years; ever since the Empire had first set foot on his planet some fifteen years ago and systematically started to destroy it.

The Empire had taken everything from him.

His wife, daughter, brother, and sister-in-law had all been lost in the first Imperial onslaught when they claimed Capital City, leaving just his teenage nephew and himself as the last Azadis. Then he'd been arrested for conspiracy against the Empire when they decided they wanted another Governor they could more easily control, giving the job to that Pryce witch that he despised. He was sent to a prison in another system entirely and left to rot there until the Bridgers managed to cause enough of a revolt to get a few of them out, giving their lives in the process.

Ryder had no idea what had happened to his nephew that he'd started to see as his own son after living together for two years, but he doubted it was anything good, so Ryder considered him lost to the Empire as well.

As the first explosion rang through the air, Ryder smiled in satisfaction, but it faded as he saw glints of white, falling through the sky, far in the distance. Well, kriff. He doubted anyone had thought about the stormtroopers trying to save themselves in such a drastic fashion, but he had to give them credit for trying, even if he didn't like them.

He watched for a minute as the tiny white dots popped back up to the ocean surface and then one at a time started moving towards the shore, somehow being more fascinating than the Dome that was exploding spectacularly at the moment.

And then blazing pieces of Dome started falling on the tiny white dots and Ryder actually started to feel some sympathy for them. He didn't realize his feet were moving until they already were and he was slamming through the roof door and running down the stairs and then booting it out onto the street, already aiming for the beach.

When he arrived at the edge of the water, there were only a handful of troopers still swimming for shore, fifty meters or so out now. He wasn't the only one who'd seen them, because a small crowd was gathering on the beach and he could sense the indecision from them about what to do about the troopers as they murmured to their neighbours.

It came down to shoot them now, or imprison them. Ryder made a quick decision and decided to imprison them. These brave men had swum through the deadliest of waters to get this far, they deserved a chance to live and maybe turn away from their Imperial roots.

Just as he'd come to the decision, a trooper who was now only twenty meters from the shore was hit by a very enthusiastic piece of debris and he went under the water and never came back up. Ryder found himself moving again before his brain had a chance to catch up and he was running through the water and then swimming as the sand disappeared from under his feet. Looking under the water, he found the trooper just under the level of the water, feebly trying to get back above the waves, but looking like he was running out of strength to do it.

Ryder swam over and grabbed him around the waist and pulled him with him as he swam back to shore. As they trudged the first few steps on ground again, the waves at their waist, Ryder was happy to see others had followed his example and were helping the last of the troopers out of the ocean. He could see about twenty troopers left out of what had to be hundreds that had jumped off the Dome, which actually made his heart hurt for them and all the other troopers who had been collateral damage in the Rebellion quest to free Lothal. They were just trained grunts after all. None of what had happened to the planet was really their doing.

The trooper he helped sagged in Ryder's arm, suddenly turning to dead weight. Ryder looked at him with surprise, then realized the poor Imp must have passed out. A couple of eager citizens who wanted to help took the trooper with a Sergeant's pauldron from him and he took a moment to catch his breath. Then he called, "Take them to the old prison. We'll deal with them later." He received nods of understanding and watched as the exhausted troopers where led or carried away, before Ryder turned to look back at the ocean.

The water was a flaming mess right now, but pieces of the Dome were slowly starting to sink beneath the waves. Soon enough, except for the floating debris, it almost looked normal to the casual eye. Almost.

And then a white armoured body pieced through with a piece of shrapnel floated in on a wave and hit Ryder's feet, and he understood that what they'd done was going to have a lot of grim consequences.

When Joshua was hit by something, it almost knocked him out, but he hung onto consciousness out of sheer determination and nothing else. His strength was failing him as the waves pulled him under and he couldn't quite get back above them. He was starting to panic when he felt an arm grab him around the waist and pull him along.

Joshua wanted to thank his saviour, but his speakers weren't working anymore on his helmet so no sound made it past the bucket that encompassed his head. As they made their way through the last dregs of water, Ryder mustered the strength to look up and peer through his visor at the man who'd saved him.

He blinked and decided he must be hallucinating, but the longer he looked, the more he was sure. "Uncle," he whispered.

And then he passed out.

When Joshua woke up again, his armour had been stripped off his bodysuit and he was behind bars, lying on a small cot. There was a canteen of water and the sealed ration bars from his belt had been left for him on a small table beside the cot.

Joshua was hungry and his bodysuit was dry, indicating it had been quite some time since he'd last been awake, but he ignored the rations for now, just taking a sip of water to ease his dry mouth, in case this was all he would be offered for the foreseeable future.

Rising to his somewhat unsteady feet, Joshua took three steps to reach the front of his little cell and looked out through the bars keeping him in. He saw an empty corridor lined with barred cells just like his on both sides and a few other troopers dressed like him looking out through their bars as well.

Joshua felt a huge wave of relief when he saw his best friend across the hall and two cells over, leaning his forehead against the bars with his eyes closed. Riken's distinctive flaming orange buzz cut was unmistakable. The officers had hated it when they were cadets together, but he came by it naturally and there was nothing they could do about the colour, since dying their hair was strictly forbidden. It was one of their favourite jokes as teenagers that not even the Empire could get around their own rules.

"Riken," Joshua hissed and grinned when his friends' head whipped up and his bright orange eyes widened in surprise, looking even more vibrant in contrast to his paler than normal very white skin sprinkled in freckles.

"Joshua," he breathed in relief. "You made it too. Thank the stars. I was starting to think I was the only one of us left." ('Us' being the original eight from their bunk room as cadets, all forced into the new Academy against their wishes.)

"Yah, I made it," Josh said solemnly. "I almost bought it more than once though."

Riken nodded in complete understanding. "Yah. It was almost as bad as some of our training exercises," he joked.

Joshua chuckled and then got serious again. Since no one had come to investigate the sound of their voices, he got a little bolder and raised his to a volume that every cell should be able to hear. "Is anyone else here from Squad 78?"

After a moment he heard three other familiar voices call out.

"I'm here, Serg," he heard from Ryce.

"Me too," Brant called out.

"And me," Torque added in a weak sounding voice from the far end of the line.

Josh and Riken exchanged grateful glances to hear Torque's voice. He was from their original eight too. "That's good, boys. I'm glad you made it," Joshua called.

"What are we going to do now?" Riken asked seriously.

"We wait, I suppose," Joshua replied. "What else is there?"

Riken mustered a half hearted grin. "Not much. Catch up on our beauty sleep?"

That garnered a chuckled from more than just the remnants of Joshua's squad, some of the other troopers that he didn't know getting in on the banter. Joshua rested his head against the bars as various suggestions flew up and down the hallway, getting cruder with every one. It was good to hear the troops in relatively good spirits after what they'd been through.

A door at the end of the corridor opened and a blue rodian walked in carrying a blaster. "What's going on in here?" he said suspiciously. "You Imps better keep it down. I don't want to hear any plots about trying to escape or anything like that." He walked up and down the hallway, trying to look intimidating by narrowing his big eyes at them, but it really didn't succeed. Joshua was sure he wasn't the only one suppressing the urge to chuckle and roll his eyes. Riken did roll his eyes at their guard when his back was turned away from him and Joshua almost lost it.

As he passed Joshua, he called out to the rodian. "Hey. Can you get a message to Ryder Azadi? He's my uncle."

The rodian stopped and stared at Joshua for a moment before bursting into laughter. "Yah, right. If you're the new governor's nephew, then I'm the son of the Emperor." He shook his head and walked out of the hallway, slamming the door closed behind him.

Riken stared at him with a raised eyebrow and Joshua shrugged. "It was worth a shot."

Someone he didn't recognize called out from the cell to his right. "Are you really the nephew of the new governor?"

Joshua smiled to himself. "Yes. I am. He was the old governor too, before the Empire moved to Lothal. I didn't know he was still alive till I saw him on the beach."

"This is a good thing, right, Josh?" Riken asked.

"It's a very good thing," Joshua answered.

It took two days, but someone finally came to the prison cells that actually listened to Joshua. He just never expected it to be the most badass looking female he'd ever seen.

She strolled into the cell block like she owned the place, looking like a tall goddess in tight fitting black and grey armour that showcased every curve. Her skin was caf coloured. (He loved caf.) Her eyes were a vibrant purple and shone with intelligence. (His mother's favourite flowers had been just that shade and she used to keep them all over the house.) And her hair was shorn clean off on the sides and buzz cut at the top. (He didn't like long hair anyway.) She smiled at the men as they all rushed to the bars and basically panted after her like mookas. Josh managed to be slightly less obvious in his fascination with seeing such an intriguing female, but it was only just.

Ketsu glanced at the men pressed up against the cell bars, assessing them, wondering if any of them would change sides if she asked nicely. She smiled at them, pretending they weren't Imperial scum, conning them into thinking she was nice. "Hello boys," she purred.

Joshua officially fell at the sound of her voice. She sounded like she'd just spent the night being pleasured and like she wouldn't mind a little bit more. But he wasn't fooled by her friendly act. He recognized a steel spine when he saw one and her armour wasn't just for show; there were scuff marks and dents in it that said she used it. This one would spit you out and stomp on you if you offended her.

Joshua thought she was perfect.

"Hello," Joshua replied for the men; as the only commanding officer in the prison, he'd easily fallen into the position of spokesman for the group. He also only just managed not to tack on 'beautiful' at the end of his hello, not wanting to be seen as just some idiot trying to pick up a chick.

Ketsu turned and looked at the one who had spoken. He was big and brawny, muscles easy to see under his bodysuit. His face was chiselled out of stone and had gorgeous sky blue eyes tipped with long blond lashes. His light blond hair was shaved close to his head, like all of the other troopers in a standard issue haircut. Ketsu raised a brow at the man, a frisson of interest sparking through her. It had been a while since she'd seen a man that interested her this much, maybe not ever, to be truthful.

He was gorgeous.

"And who are you?" Ketsu asked.