Star Wars: The Parody Strikes Back



Part Twelve



Coruscant was a dying world. Skyscrapers so large that from the middle you could not see the top or the base were toppled, crumbled. Dust from the fusion explosions had sent enormous amounts of dust and debris into the atmosphere, that blocked most of the sun during the day. During the night the diffraction of the particles reflected some of the sunlight hitting the other side of the world, bathing the world in perpetual twilight all day long. Blue pockets of poisonous gas settled into low areas. A cold wind always blew strong, stirring up the dust still on the ground. This was still a free world though, and these ruins were their's. The remains of all the ships destroyed near Coruscant were slowly drifting closer and closer into orbit, one by one crashing into the planet. During his service in the Alliance military, Major Kirag had seen his fair share of devastation, but nothing on such a horrific scale. In a full tenth of the planet's surface way in rubble that measure 100's of meters deep. He had image after image on his workpad showed the aftermath of the colossal battle.



But to get the most effective image, he just had to look past the rest of the Rebels lying in their beds in the hospital room and out the window. He was in one of the remaining hospitals on Coruscant. During the battle he had been in the bridge on The Flashpoint. It, and the rest of its platoon, along with at least 5 squadron of strike-craft had punched a hole in the Imperial line and headed straight for The Aetius. He was only the rank of major, but the admiral trusted him, and let him into areas that only higher ranks should be. To everyone's surprise on the bridge, the Jedis had accomplished their mission, and the shields dropped on the Aetius. Admiral Jerad had then ordered the methodical destruction of the Aetius: weapons, then engines, escape pods, life support, and finally the reactors. He only got as far as the escape pods when the shields came back up, followed by the ship self destructing. Clearly there was a lack of communications among the crew. The final explosion of The Aetius was powerful enough to destroy all the strike-craft, destroy half of the Rebel capital ship platoon, cripple The Flashpoint, and destroy several other Imperial ships nearby. Nobody had expected the ship to self destruct, it had been the one flaw in Admiral Jerad's plan, and it had cost him his life. Most of the crew's lives too.



It had been that explosion that had injured him greatly: Broken ribs, busted lung, ruined kidney, the burning all hair below the neck, pretty well everything on the left leg was broken, a sprained ankle for the right leg, damaged digestive track, and his left eye ruined. After the surgery the doctor had tried to explain that they couldn't save his second stomach. Alien doctors, they didn't know that much about human anatomy, but there were so many wounded, and so few of them. Many had been assembled beforehand, in a nearby system to wait for the battle to end, but we had not expected casualties on this scale. He was a Major and had barely gotten a bed. They were giving beds to any that needed them. Civilians, grunts and officers were all in the room. During the operation, they had replaced many of his organs, his left leg and eye with machines. The doctor had commented that his checkup should be done by a mechanic, instead of a doctor. His bedside manner needed some improvement.



To take his mind off his own condition, he studied the reports of the battle. Not exactly light reading, but somebody had to do it. Most of Rebel Command was dead or in worse shape than he was. His arms were fine except for the occasional shrapnel scratch, and was holding his workpad. The image on it was a scene of wreckage: Blocks of concrete and twisted metal lay over a ground level building, somehow still recognizable. The sign read "Gulanya's Insurance." The reason the picture was on the workpad was in the foreground, a squad of Stormtroopers, dazed and bewildered, abandoned on a hostile planet, a ruined At-At behind them. It was there to remind him that there were still Imperial remnants on the planet. He already had a good idea what it was like out there. This previous experience gave a fairly clear picture. It would be quiet, and the silence would only be broken occasionally as the crunching, stumbling footsteps of someone calling out for someone they lost. A still standing piece of building would get too lonely, and fall down to join its companions. A burst of blaster fire when a pocket of Imperial were discovered and want to go to a prison camp, or those that found them did not feel like taking prisoners.



He'd already knew fairly well what had happened the last few weeks. He had been planning the defense of Coruscant with the rest of Rebel Command. It had been Admiral Jerad that had proposed the Jedis' suicide mission. His reasoning was the Jedis were too volatile to keep around. Typically, a Jedi was trained from infancy to control his powers. Luke had found these new recruits in their teens or older, so it was too late to teach them everything they needed to know. Some of them had gone through a second childhood once they realized the powers they now possessed, and were unruly. Others had been fighting the Empire, and had become too familiar with death, and were already half turned to the Dark Side. Luke himself was not fully trained, rather unstable, and developing an alcohol problem. Jerad had reasoned that the only way Dark Jedis are created are from Jedis turning evil. That was simple enough. So if you eliminated all the Jedis, the Dark Jedis would disappear when the current ones died. But how do you keep Dark Jedis from running amok when there is no one to counter them? Why not get the Light and Dark to wipe each other out and break the cycle once and for all? Thus the suicide mission was born. The only flaw in it was that Luke Skywalker could not participate. If he did, and lived, many of his students would too. If he died than the morale blow to the Rebels would be enormous, so Luke could not go. For all the planning, it had been almost perfect, for some Jedis had not been on Coruscant to be ordered on the mission. He'd seen reports that when the Rhodians revolted on Ru, there had been a Jedi assisting them. There couldn't been too many errant Jedis out there, but there could be Dark Jedi's out there too. At least they had no idea what treachery had transpired, so they could be sent on another mission. Luke, now without his following, had less power and would be watched very closely. He was pleased with Luke's performance in the battle, he had destroyed 11 Tie Fighters and 2 Imperial Gunboats. That was enough to get a medal, he'd sure to get that right after we'd tell him of the fate of his students. This was war, and sacrifices needed to be made for the greater good.



Before he could continue reviewing the past few weeks, something caught his attention in the room. A butterfly had flown threw a window that never should have been open. Silver and Black so it blended in with the buildings, it was the most beautiful scene he had seen in a long time. A scene that lasted a whole 5 seconds, when a Larsian shot out his tongue and ate the butterfly. "What? It tastes better than hospital food," the Larsian said to his glaring eyes. Off to his side, a human was playing with a machine carelessly left beside his bed. Judging from the remains of his uniform that weren't cut off, he was an X-Wing pilot. The name on it read 'Guo Xi,' the rank had been cut off. The device he was fiddling around with was marked 'Cardio Stimulator.' He gave the pilot a stiff verbal warning. The pilot obeyed, but before long this inquisitive pilot was holding up a bottle of medicine, "Zarathan 125? What happened to the poor souls who took Zarathan 1-124?" He had to quell a burst of laughter, it hurt too much to laugh. The number on the bottle was the density of the formula, or the weight of the active ingredient, or something. It was not how many tries it took a formula to pass the humanoid tests... or at least he hoped it wasn't.



Back to the review now. The battle itself had been a draw. The battle that was supposed to decide the fate of the galaxy one way or another had just ensured that the war would last another 20 years! It had gone wrong for the rebellion when they fell for the simple ruse. Sending ships to battle it out around the outer planets, while a main force made a march straight for the objective. This also rendered their carefully laid minefield useless. It was supposed to be the Rebellion that tricked The Empire. As soon as the two massive fleet began duking it out, it became clear that we were outgunned. All those reports of the corvette hull class Imperial Gunboats tracking and firing simultaneously at multiple targets with its 8 turrets were painfully shown again and again on The Flashpoint's screen. Without the Imperials waiting for a clear path to the surface they launched their assault pods. A calculated risk, speed was an advantage they couldn't afford to waste. Several pods had been destroyed on the way down, but the Imperials landed and began to invade the planet.



And what an invasion it had been. The whole planet was a city, and therefore an excellent defensive position, if not for the collateral damage. Snipers in the buildings firing on funneled troops in the streets. Average citizen taking up arms (or using the ones they already had in the rougher neighborhoods) ensuring a fight for every room. Imperial air support only able to strafe entire areas rather than making their usual pinpoint strikes. The Imperials had ways to get around those advantages. First off, they had sheer numbers. An estimated 3 billion heavily armed Stormtroopers and thousands of mechanized pieces ensured them a firepower advantage over the Rebels, even with their militia. Their ships from orbit added to the firepower advantage. Tactical Fusion bombs and poison gas were liberally rained down on the planet, hitting more civilians than military targets. Another tactic when faced with a heavily fortified skyscraper was to get an mechanical unit to fire at its base and bring the entire thing down. That had only added to the destruction on the planet. As the Imperial beach head expanded to cover close to 10% of the planet in a matter of hours, they paid a horrible price, somewhere between a 5 - 1 to a 10 - 1 casualty ratio. While in around the planet, it was the Rebels losing ships at a 3 - 1 ratio. The number of civilians killed would never by exactly known, be he estimated something with 13 digits.



When the Rebel ships that had been fighting around the outer planets returned to the main fleet, Admiral Jerad had made an assault straight to the Aetius, which wasn't as desperate as it sounded. With the new ships coming in, the Rebels easily held the numerical advantage. Considering the rate that the Imperials were chewing up their squadrons, that advantage may not have lasted long. When they broke through and attacked the Aetius, to their surprise the shields fell. So those Jedis had actually accomplished their mission. Our reward to them would be to blast them to the afterlife. The great undoing of all the planning, the trickery, the organization was The Aetius self destructing. In retrospect it seemed obvious. It had a been momentary lapse in the normally brilliant Admiral Jerad. One small mistake and it was all over. The secondary explosions that ran throughout The Flashpoint killed most of the crew, but the ship held together. The Admiral had not died quickly. He stayed on the bridge the entire time, still ordering around the fleet. Many people had requested to know his last words. At the time he was lying on the floor, in an extraordinary amount of pain, with a medic jabbing him with some device, so he couldn't hear that well. To him the last words sounded like, "Thirsty, I'm so very thirsty." He probably hadn't heard it right anyway. If he had, it was certainly not something he'd want recorded, they weren't fitting last words for an brilliant admiral.



The reaction of the two opposing fleets losing their command staff was immediate. Unsure of what was happening, they backed off and regrouped. He'd heard rumors of Star Destroyer captains so jittery that they'd shoot a blinking light that startled them. These one certainly weren't jittery. After a few minutes of quiet, the Imperials on Coruscant began to retreat back to the pods. Once there, they took off and abandoned their bid to conquer the planet. Not about to let the Imperials get away, the Rebel's fleet attacked the pods, while the Imperial fleet attempted to escort them back to their Star Destroyers. After the surviving pods were loaded, they retreated away from the Rebels, loaded up their Tie Fighters and Imperial Gunboats, and Hyperspaced out of the system.



The media would play this as a huge victory. The massive Imperial armada failed in it's assault on Coruscant. The reality was much grayer. First off, both sides had lost nearly all of their senior officers. The Rebels had lost theirs in the Boba Fett raid, and aboard The Flashpoint. The Imperials had all lost their aboard The Aetius. There were only 3 dozen survivors aboard escape pods. The officers were Lieutenant Magnus, Corporal Janus, Sargent Theodore, and Sargent Zofsky. They'd have to been interrogated heavily to learn just what happened aboard The Aetius. Half of the 3 billion Imperial ground forces were destroyed en route to the planet, fighting on the planet, and trying to get back to their Star Destroyers that had launched them. Most of their heavy machines were too slow, and were abandoned on the surface. If this had been a raid, they had accomplished their mission. Coruscant lay in ruins. Some horrendous destruction, but relief and reconstruction crews were preassembled and already working on the planet. It would take decades to rebuild though. The fighting above the planet had favored the Imperials. Though outnumbered in total, they had managed to destroy a fair chunk of the Rebel fleet. In the end, both fleets lay decimated, mere shadows of their former glory.



The aftermath of this battle would be far different than we had expected beforehand. The Empire's destruction had been hastened, since now they lacked the ground forces to maintain their stranglehold on many of their worlds. The Rebels had lost many of their finest, but seeing the fate of The Empire, would rejoice. He expected that the cries for a New Republic would get louder. That would cause friction with the remaining Rebel leaders. The war would still rage on, and while it lasted it needed a strong military command, not the bureaucracy that doomed the Old Republic. Most of the civilians, believing the war was over, would demand a more democratic style of government. Unless he and the remaining Rebel leaders treaded lightly, their could be massive unrest, or even civil war in the Rebel Alliance. Many worlds thinking the war was over would declare independence. He could already see The Empire and The Rebellion growing smaller as more and more worlds broke away. He believed that many of the these worlds wouldn't be much better off than Imperial rule. They would resist joining any alliance or league once they went independent. When the war was over, and The Rebel Alliance became the New Republic, then they would refuse to join. That means that the Rebels would have to keep these worlds under them before they broke away; one way or another.



The Emperor's palace had been badly damaged, so the Rebels headquarters would need to be moved. Sigh, their previous base on Endor's moon was being bombarded the debris of the first Deathstar. That was one of the reasons they left. Still it was better than the ruins of Coruscant. Back to the moon of those Ewok size mosquitoes, unreliable plumbing, and wilting heat and humidity. At least there the sun would shine more than here. With most of the Rebel Command dead, he would almost certainly be promoted. Captain or Commander Kirag, he liked that, he liked that a lot. With any luck, his office would not be the mens' room as it had been here. He was hoping for at least for a walk-in supply closet back on Endor. Note to self: Restart hydro generator that powers the bug zappers as soon as you arrive.



At that moment Luke barged into the room. His face no longer resembled the innocent farmer boy fighting for a just cause. His face burned with all the anger that a Jedi should not feel. His arms were actually quivering slightly. "So how did you like the effects of your little plan? Did you anticipate that all these homes would be destroyed?! An entire planet, the most populated one in the entire galaxy, with trillions of people, wrecked! What right do you have to through away the lives of my students, who could have been so much more?!"



Luke's hand shot out and he felt an iron hand clasping around his throat. He was lifted with The Force until he almost touched a ceiling. Several patient's meters went wild from the spectacle, and the intercom rang out, "Code Blue. Code Blue." He just discovered a flaw in the bedpan system, albeit in a situation the creators had certainly never anticipated: having the most powerful warrior in known history having a choke-hold on you, threatening death.



Unable to speak, Luke continued his tirade, "Do you have any idea what you've done?! The chosen few who could have brought peace to the galaxy are gone! I'd have to spend the rest of my life just to find even a half dozen more! So how do you like you're little plan now? You caused this devastation, now you're going to help me fix it. We've going to fix this entire rotten, corrupt galaxy."



He could barely hear another voice in the air as soon as Luke stopped speaking, and let him fall to the floor. It was unmistakable, it was the voice of Darth Vader. "Excellent my son, embrace The Dark Side (wheeze). Your hope is failing, so let the anger power you. (wheeze) (wheeze) (cough) (cough) (hack) (wheeze) I'm okay, I'm okay. So you've finally come to the realization that there is no good,(wheeze) only evil wearing the guise of being good and just. They're all the same (wheeze), greedy, arrogant. You can not change this, so strike out on your own. Cup your hands into the river and drink your fill. You have finally realized this. (cough) It's about frickin' time!"