Star Wars: The Parody Strikes Back



Part Nine



"... and it don't look good. Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters!" Octavian softly sang as he listened to his ear piece playing classic human music. He was alone in an isolated, dusty corridor of the ship, armed with a broom, brush, and a dustpan. While the rest of ship containing tens of thousands of soldiers were preparing for battle, he was stuck sweeping the corridors. He wasn't sure if he lucky or unlucky. He never been in the firefight and therefore had been in excellent health his whole service record. However, how do write back home?



'I'm fine. It's been a mostly uneventful few months. We've been in battles, but I've always been fighting my own war in the ship. Just recently I had a titanic battle against a whole Sarahar nest. I was lucky to come out with all my fingers.'



Normally, droids would take care of this menial task. However, as he was told, due to recent government cut-backs, sacrifices needed to be made. He argued that droids were cheaper than paid human labor. The lieutenant's response was that the sweeper droid factory was on Coruscant, and unless the Rebels would sell them some, he'd have to do their job. Then he tried to give him the 'part of the team' speech. The whole time he was searching for a loose blaster pistol to rid himself of the ineffective messenger.



He was stretching to clean the ceiling when the Aetius dropped out of Hyperspace. He fell over and raised a cloud of dust. He hated being an janitor, he really hated it. When the dust fell back down onto the previously clean stretches, he felt like just walking away. Then he heard a soft moaning in the distance. He slowly walked towards it. Down the hall, their was a broken ceiling panel and an Imperial officer, a Sargent by the looks of the incredibly dirty uniform. It was an interior suit, with no armor. He was moaning softly. What was he doing in the ceiling? Then he spied a metal cylinder in his hand. The uniform looked quite large for the person inside it. The guy then moved his finger on the metal cylinder and a green beam extended from the cylinder. A lightsaber! How did a Sargent get a lightsaber? Wait, this wasn't an Imperial officer, this was a Jedi trying to sneak aboard the ship. Just because he was a janitor didn't mean he was brainless. Now he really resented the policy of not arming janitors. So he did the only thing he could think of. He whacked the Jedi a few times with the broom and ran as fast as he could for an alarm consol. The nearest one was about 500 meters away, uhhh why did this ship have to be so large? He wasn't in the best shape.



Through a maze of corridors he ended up in one of the ships many barracks. A few dozen Stormtroopers were outside preparing for the invasion. The officers going down into the battle were in the black officer armor Vader had made so famous. They didn't have the cape, and carried a blaster rifles instead of lightsabers. They actively walking around in the bulky gear barking out orders. A few officers were of higher rank, in the interior uniform: a dark blue cloth suit with their medals dangling about for all to see. Real cotton, very expensive. They were standing back, observing with a smirk all that was going on. He immediately hit the nearest alarm console. The alarm rang throughout the section. That got everybody's attention, and they all turned to look at him.



"You will immediately explain why you hit that alarm!" one of the officers in battle armor gave in a very commanding voice.



"There's an Lieutenant lying on the floor a few hundred (groan) meters back. Only he's not a Lieutenant, he's a Jedi in a Lieutenant's uniform."



"Now just how did you determine that this 'Lieutenant' was a Jedi?"



"He had a lightsaber."



"Now let's not be so hasty. The admiral has given lightsabers to all Imperial officers down to the rank of Major. Still, a Lieutenant should not have one. How do we know this not just a case of theft?" One of the officers in a cotton uniform said in a much calmer, almost laid back voice. Octavian noticed that this officer indeed had a lightsaber and a blaster pistol holstered.



"There was a hole in ceiling. He had been hiding in it. He fell out when the ship dropped out of Hyperspace. He didn't look so good. I'd say he'd been in there a few days."



Before another officer could reticule him, the lights sent out. How did the Jedi know how to cut the lights? A scream and an electrical buzz in the distance told that it was most likely a 'beneficial' accident. "All right men, activate thermal vision, weapons at ready." One of the officers barked out.



"We got thermal vision? Ah, cool everything's in red."



"Yes, yes, but do see anything besides us?" That was one the officers in the cotton uniforms.



"Well got some small red things moving towards the big red things."



"Something far off in the distance is bright white." The scream in the distance came back to memory.



The officers barked orders. The alarm rang out. He couldn't see anything. The dark blue officers had lightsabers, so why didn't they ignite them? Surely they must know how to use them. Why would they be given lightsabers and not know how to use them? Besides the alarm and occasional remark from a Stormtrooper, it was eerily quiet. His earpiece was still in his ear and was playing another classical human track "It's My Life." The lyrics that playing now were "... I'm not going to live forever..." He stared out into the blackness expecting to see the red eyes of some demons to penetrate the blackness. Instead, at least 8 beams of light all colors burst forth and came rushing forward.



"Fire at will!"



"Which one's Will?"



"They all are!"



The whole Stromtrooper company opened fire, and between the glow of the lightsabers, the laser beams firing and being bounced back, the wide corridor was flashed in an inconsistent light. He froze in place, broom still in hand. When the 'zroom' of the lightsabers combined with the screams of Imperials, the eternal debate of fight or flight was resolved in favor of flight.



He turned and ran away from the firing, with reflected blaster shots going to the left and right him. He cleared the Stromtroopers and thought he was home-free when 3 more beams ignited in front of him. The Jedis had laid a trap! He still had him broom, maybe he could out-duel them. No! No! No! That wouldn't worked, wait maybe this would. He ran straight at them and used his broom as a pole vault, lifting him off the ground. He made contact with the ceiling and a lightsaber cut through the shaft. He cleared the Jedis and more or less landed on his feet. Dropping the remnant of the broom, he ran off as fast as he could. He could hear the patter of feet from only one Jedi behind him.



He just kept running. He passed into the light as he went into a new section with separate wiring for the lights. There was a door he recognized, that of the galley. Quickly he opened the door, ran into the kitchen and closed the door. He didn't move away from it though. He waited until he hear the Jedi about to reach the door, and swung open the heavy metal door as fast as he could. He felt a huge impact as the Jedi slammed into the door, and the lightsaber pieced it a few centimeters below his arm. He carefully let go and ran farther into the galley. He spied a fire extinguisher on the wall, he picked it up, ran behind a counter and sprayed the area in front of him in the foam. The Jedi, certainly angry, tore the door off its hinges, and ran into the galley right at him.



He finally saw his pursuer clearly for the first time. It was a human male. He couldn't tell the race, his face was too blackened and dirty. He was wearing a cloth shirt, blacked and ripped. He was obviously angry, his nose looked broken. Too blinded with rage to notice the foam. He lost his balance and fell just as Octavian ducked behind the counter. He heard a thump as the Jedi slammed into the counter. A 'zzzz' sound and then a too brief scream. He looked up and saw that the Jedi was on his back, with his lightsaber piercing through his abdomen. He breathed a sigh of relief as he slid back down to the floor. Then the humming of the lightsaber stopped, and he heard movement. Then a few groans and the humming of soft energy. How the heck do you kill one these guys?



The Jedi was talking to himself as he healed, "Now, I just had to botch learning the Mind Trick This would have been so much easier. I had to stay with the lightsaber training. They were so bright and fun. Errr..."



While the Jedi was saying this, he was searching for a new weapon. Spatula? No. Steak Knife? This guy had just been impaled by his own lightsaber and it just slowed him down. Whisk? NO! Frying pan? It was the best thing here. The track in his earpiece changed. It was screaming in his ear "We will we will rock you..."



"Now there is two ways we can end this. The easy, painless way, or the Narok hunt way..." the Jedi said rather calmly as he leaned over the counter. The frying pan then made contact with his face. The Jedi went down, facial features even more distorted. He made a run for the door. He slid upright across the foam and was out the galley. He was barely out the door, when he heard something close to an animal roar, and the rapid succession of footfalls behind him. He didn't want to look behind him, but he did anyway.



He was angry, very angry. His face was messed up and bleeding. The green glow of the lightsaber set his face in a shadow pattern that revealed a demonic, insane smile. There was a cauterized and partially healed hole in his abdomen. He definitely did not want to get too near to this guy. What had he done to deserve this? Had hadn't shot any civilians, or even used a weapon in battle. He'd just done his job, and now he had an omnipotent warrior with nothing on his mind but to turn him into spam. What did he do to deserve this homicidal rage? He wasn't his father, the ruled out the infamous patriarchal rage of Luke Skywalker; or at least he hoped he wasn't. There was that shore leave on Gyran.



He passed a window on his right. There was a huge Imperial fleet out there. Then he felt a tug on his body. He was being draw backward. He grabbed a hold in the wall. It was a switch and it was opened as he was tugged off his feet backward. A door closed in front and behind the Jedi, who was now beside the window. Now separated from the Jedi by a door a half a meter thick, the tug stopped and he got to his feet. Leaning against the wall, he hit another switch. The Jedi was about to cut through the door when the airlock opened and he saw sucked out of the ship. Breathing heavily, he leaned against the wall and began walking away. His hand tripped the door switch, and he felt another tug on his. Everything went cold as he heard his earpiece playing "Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey goodbye."