Star Wars: The Sentinels--Entity Uprising

•This story is rated PG for some mild violence. Other than that, it's fairly clean.

•"/ /" indicates italics, since I can't seem to get them to cooperate in the document.

Prologue

It has been a thousand years since the last Skywalker coursed the galaxy. The name has long since drifted into the history books and doesn't exist any longer in reality. Though the name is gone, the blood still flows through the Skywalker progeny. Some of the Solo line, for instant, has the blood. Descendants of Leia Skywalker and Han Solo will have Skywalker blood, more or less, granted.

Like myself. I am Dakota Solo, known by most as "Dak." I was born on Earth. You will know why I am included here later on. For now, I will tell of the Intergalactic Alliance, a developing threat, and the sacrifice I myself made.

About five hundred years ago, a New Republic science guild from a Corescant university left the galaxy to find where the Vong might have originated. The Yuuzhan Vong have long since been defeated and driven away. The only hint to their existence is what has been written in textbooks and works of fiction.

This expedition was quite amateur, being no more than college students, from what I read. But their fame began with an accident. The navigator became intoxicated during a party and subconsciously led the expedition into deep space and into an unfamiliar galaxy. When he sobered, he discovered his folly and strongly encouraged the adolescent crew to turn around. At that moment, the bio-scanners acknowledged the existence of a single inhabited planet, the predominant sentient species being humans.

Then it all began. The New Republic had discovered Earth.

The expedition studied the planet from a distance and found that these humans were advanced, but not in the area of space travel. The group raced home to tell the news to the Senate.

The Senate sent a diplomatic convoy to the small planet. The interesting thing was that the Earthlings could not speak Basic. Those poor souls were drunk with excitement at the arrival of these visitors that they brought in every professor of every language they could in an attempt to communicate with these other humans. It was finally discovered that Basic was equivalent to ancient Latin.

The connection was made.

The intergalactic friendship between these groups of humans, both from different parts of the universe, resulted in a New Republic-Earth alliance, simply named the Intergalactic Alliance. Then there was a great technological boom as the Republic shared technology. I believe those years must have been very exciting, as well as hectic.

Everybody was required to learn Latin, which was renamed "Basic" for the sake of the Republic. Children began to learn Basic in preschool, so that it became a second language. English was pushed back to status as the second most widely spoken language on Earth.

Colleges and universities grew, now having ten times more majors and courses than before. People went back to school to catch up with the rapidly changing and upgrading field of technology. Some subjects were cast away and sometimes replaced. Evolution was regarded now as a hypothesis. Earth was no longer the center of the universe.

Beings began to move to Earth and mingle with the Earthlings. Earthlings began to move to the Republic galaxy. Some became Jedi. Some even became part of the Senate. Other planets in Earth's solar system were colonized. Everything was balancing out.

It was only a few months ago when it was realized that the humans of the Milky Way galaxy weren't the only sentient life there. On the other side of that galaxy, a threat was found.

A large group of Earth humans and Republic humans decided to explore the rest of the Milky Way. A station that was set up beyond Pluto prior to this was interested in this expedition and agreed to keep contact with them. All audio and visual feed was edited by the station and granted its own cable and local channel on Earth holo-television.

Six months after the caravan of about thirty small transports set out, a tragedy happened. My only son had just turned eighteen. It was his birthday and he wanted to see if the caravan had encountered anything on that day. We turned the television to the channel and were surprised and disappointed to find that there were network difficulties. We excused it as technical problems.

The next day we found that it was much more than "network difficulties." It was all over the news that day. Something or someone had attacked all thirty of the expedition transports. Communications with the caravan had been severed, and no one knows to this day if any of the people aboard are still alive. The last datastream that was able to make it through told the status of the ships. They were damaged beyond repair and dead in the water.

The last video and audio feed to make it through showed what event had taken place. Three children of the crew had gotten hold of one of the cameras and were playing with it, such as setting it on a table and acting out scenes from holovids on it. They were able to get footage of these . . . creatures . . . as they invaded.

The creatures were frightening, even to me. They were bipedal with a humanoid build, standing at about maybe seven feet tall. They had short fur of a dark granite gray, like the color of pencil lead. Their heads were like that of a jackal's: a long, slender snout filled with sharp teeth and fangs, and large pointed ears. Their eyes seemed to have a supernatural glow to them. Their bodies were muscular, their hands and feet studded with deadly-looking claws. Their tails were long and prehensile. They communicated with a series of growls and snarls that sounded similar to the snarls of a dog ripping into a slab of meat.

Being military, I was able to see the initial slaughter, something that wasn't shown publicly on television. It made me, a military colonel, sick to my stomach. I sat back with a heavy heart and wondered if there was something, /anything/ I could do. What could I sacrifice? What could I give?

The people of Earth gave these creatures, which were obviously sentient, the name "Anubis," named after the mythological Egyptian god of the same name and appearance. They pleaded with the Republic to help. The people of Earth were riddled with fear.

The Republic seriously tried, sending their most heavily armed ships to the other side of the Milky Way to intercept the Anubis. They were all unsuccessful, their formations limping home, beaten and bloody, to lick their wounds and go out in another hopeless attempt. Nothing was working. The Anubis had something we didn't.

A good friend of mine by the name of Jonathan Transon--or "Jack," as we had always called him--came up to me one day with an idea. He was organizing a crew of experienced intelligence operatives to filter out a weakness in the Anubis species. He was using his old battle cruiser, the /Sentinel/. He wanted me to be part of the team. I thought it was a crazy idea, another one of Jack's wild, insane dreams that he was known for. It disturbed me that he said it in all seriousness. I had never seen Jack, who was always a prankster and casual man, so serious. Something was up. I told him that I would get back to him on that.

The first and only group of people that I consulted was my family. As the discussion got deeper, I began to realize it wasn't as good an idea as it seemed. My youngest, my daughter, was five years old, a tender age to loose a father. My oldest was eighteen, also a tender time, where the father and son did the most bonding before the son went off to college or further schooling.

But it was my son Conner that submitted an idea. He looked up from his pondering and gave me one of those smiles that I recognized as the one he used when he wanted something. "Dad," he said, "why not send me?"

I looked at him long and hard. "Son, aren't you a little young to be doing this?"

"I can handle it."

The truth was that I knew he could. Conner was a very talented mechanic, the best in his class. He was close to becoming manager of the business that he worked for. He was smart and knew how to keep his head clear and stay out of danger. But it was my paternal instincts that didn't want him to go.

Was this the sacrifice I wanted to make? My son?

Conner continued. "I won't be the youngest. Isn't Captain Transon bringing his sixteen year old daughter?"

"Freyja is a prodigy," I argued, then realized that it wasn't a good excuse.

"And that means. . . ?"

"Conner, I'm not sure." I looked over at Karena, my wife, who was wanting me to keep fighting. I spoke to my son again. "The chances of you surviving this are low. The last thing I want is you getting killed. But something tells me that your battle will not be in vain."

Karena's eyes bore into me. She knew I was giving in. Conner looked at me hopefully. I knew his young mind was deluded with the promise of thrill and adventure advertised by the military and all associated organizations. But something was telling me to let go.

"I will tell Transon," I said, finalizing the argument.

If looks were lasers, Karena would have killed me. Conner smiled and left the room, probably to go pack. Karena now had the disposition of a striking cobra. "How can you let him go like that, Dakota?" she asked hostily. Her use of my complete first name instead of the moniker indicated that she was displeased. "He's just a child!"

"Kar," I said, sitting back in my lounge chair; "this is his decision. He's eighteen. He's allowed to do things without our consent now. We were fortunate that he asked our opinion. Children in the Republic are capable of running their own smuggling operations and able to rule a planet when they're only fifteen."

"Enough with the Republic!" Karena exclaimed. All her descendants had been from Earth. "He is our son!"

"He is an adult," I said coolly. "You wanted to be able to contribute to this tragedy and war, and our contribution is our son. Parents all around the world and in the Republic have submitted their progeny to this cause, and they did it knowing it was an honor. Why can't we consider it an honor that /our/ son is wanting to fight the Anubis?"

Karena was quiet. Her eyes bore into me again with a look that could wither a Sith Lord. She inhaled deeply, then left the room. I knew the only way to convince her that we were doing the right thing was to wait until Conner came home with an Anubis head on a silver platter, so to say. I smirked at the thought. She would be beaming with pride and bragging and saying that sending him away was a good idea.

The next day I contacted Jack. He was thrilled, but at the same time disappointed that I wasn't coming myself. I told him that Conner wouldn't disappoint him. That afternoon I gave my only son to Captain Jack Transon to join his team. He is gone now. Karena is silent. She is still against this decision, and probably will be for quite a while. We wonder if Conner will care to write, hoping that Jack won't keep him so busy that he won't have enough time to pick up a pen or boot up his computer.

All Karena and I can do is wait and pray.