Kill Zone
Disclaimer: I do not own the Star Wars or Kingdom Hearts franchises...The characters of Joran Benaren and Tara are my creation (need a last name suggestion for Tara...)
Summary: An Imperial soldier and a Rebel pilot must team up for survival against a force that threatens both Empire and Rebellion alike.
A long time ago, in galaxy far away...
After the destruction of the Death Star, Emperor Palpatine sensed a dark power through the Force known as the Heartless. He failed in his attempt to bring the Heartless under his control. The Heartless have begun attacking Imperial and Rebel worlds alike.
Tara wondered, not for the first time, what had destroyed the Imperial forces occupying the garrison base in the valley where she had crashed. The Longprobe Y-wing had come to a rough landing on this world ten days ago after being shot down. Just her luck to be on a long range scout mission for uninhabited worlds for possible refuges from the Hoth system when, not if, the Empire would find Echo Base. Just her luck again to be shot down, but not by the Empire.
Whatever that ship had been, it didn't appear to be any Imperial ship she'd ever seen. If the were Imperials they would have followed her crash landing and called up an Imperial patrol to pick up the crew and R2 astromech for interrogation for the crew and data downloading from the R2. Tara wasn't about to question her luck and had lain low for ten days since the crash.
Her co-pilot, Drex, hadn't survived the crashlanding. He lay with his face smashed against his instrument panel. His jaw and nose were broken, as were his right arm, clavicle and transverse ribs. From what she could tell he had died on impact or shortly thereafter. She dragged the body from his cockpit and draped Drex's survival blanket over the corpse as she dug a pit about four feet deep. She closed the open eyes of her deceased co-pilot and mentor and said a silent prayer as she rolled the body into the hole and covered it over.
Mini, her R2 unit, had survived the wreck, even though she hadn't ejected it. "Mini, stay with the wreck, I'll be back for you."
As she crept through the sparse stunted trees of the low lying valley she wondered again, what could have overwhelmed the Imperials. As near as her scans could tell a prefabricated garrison base had been deployed on this world, probably from an Imperial Star Destroyer. Those things were usually protected by eight hundred ground troops, ten AT-ATs, ten AT-STs, and forty TIE fighters. Even though she wasn't fond of the Empire she wasn't sure she was going to like the answer.
As she reached the garrison perimeter she could see the wreckage of an AT-ST walker, lying on one side, it's legs sprawled out beneath it. She could see the pilot was dead, impaled on half a dozen sharp implements that were once the controls of his vehicle. He was a young one, no older than seventeen and probably fresh out of training camp. His right eye was unblinking and lifeless, his left swollen shut. Around the destroyed walker were half a dozen corpses of aliens the like of which Tara had never seen. The aliens were about the height of a Jawa, with the same glowing eyes, only narrower and more sinister looking, with two antennae atop their heads.
Something felt wrong, as if she was being watched. She spun around and jumped to the left, just as a blaster bolt swung by where her chest had been moments before.
"Back! Get back!" she heard the shout from behind a cluster of rocks.
"Wait..." Tara began.
The Imperial gunner from the destroyed walker lay hidden behind the rocks, one leg bloodied and bandaged by shreds from his black uniform shirt. He was obviously badly injured, but still somewhat alert and thus dangerous. While she wasn't a medic, she could at least retrieve the AT-ST's first aid kit and try to help the poor bastard.
"Let me help you!" Tara pleaded.
"Stay away from me, Rebel scum!" the Imperial shouted, "It's your fault my pilot is dead!"
"What?" Tara replied, "No, I didn't..."
A blaster shot that just barely missed her head was the reply. "Only the Rebellion would use aliens to do their fighting!"
Not true. The Empire often used Rodian bounty hunters as low level assassins against various Rebel leaders. But the last thing Tara wanted to do was argue with the man. He was maybe three years older than the deceased pilot of the AT-ST, a good three years younger than Tara's twenty-three years.
"A baby, just a baby!" The Imperial said, contemptuously, "Let me die here rather than receive aid from you, Rebel!"
Tara was about to reply, but the Imperial gunner wasn't about to see reason. She was just as horrified as he was at the death of the kid, who's only crime had been that he was driving the AT-ST walker, doing the bidding of the Emperor. As near as she could tell the nearest Rebels were parsecs away.
"Get back you demons!" came the shout and sudden blaster fire.
Tara looked up to see five of the strange aliens running for the wounded gunner. She saw the Imperial soldier kill three of the approaching creatures with his blaster pistol and then heard screams and then nothing. Suddenly the two surviving aliens were after her and she fired her own blaster, leaving one of them lying on the rocky soil with a hole in it's torso. She fired on the second, killing it outright.
These aliens, whatever they were, had been responsible for destroying the Imperial base. Or at least she was sure that the garrison had been destroyed to the last man, because for the past two days the sounds of shooting had been dying down. She no longer heard the sounds of raging battle, no longer saw blaster bolts flying through the air, or heard explosions.
As she entered the main compound she could smell the aroma of untended corpses and burnt ozone. The bodies of alien and Imperial alike lay sprawled in the complex. Around many of the taller buildings she noticed piles of corpses, indicating that the aliens, which she would later learn were known as Heartless, had made a concerted attempt to reach an objective. Near one of the outlying guard posts she saw one such pile of bodies, about two hundred meters away from the sructure. Her mind told her that this was a kill zone of an Imperial sniper. She approached cautiously, the sniper could still be active, and if he was anything like the gunner of the AT-ST she'd encountered he'd likely shoot her on sight.
She climbed the ladder to the top level, to find the small observation room. In the middle of the room lay the Imperial sniper, wearing simple desert fatigues as opposed to the plasteel armor of the storm troopers. His Merr Sonn G8 rifle lay useless at his side, a blaster pistol was clutched in his dead hand. As evidenced by the sight of a dozen more of the aliens lying sprawled out in the tiny room he had died fighting up here. Carbon scoring around the walls and floor added further credence, as the once disciplined sniper became a desperate man fighting for his life, spraying blaster shots around the room. Tara cursed silently to herself as she saw the man's weapons were energy depleted.
When she approached the nearby main hangar area she noticed another pile of dead aliens, sprawled in roughly the same area. Very likely the kill zone of another sniper. The Imperial garrisons always had a trained body of marksmen assigned to them, a small group of about twenty-one men. These soldiers were assigned to use their superior field craft skills, sound observation ability, and deadly marksmanship to report on Rebel troop movements and call in Imperial bombers or artillery assaults on them as well as selectively killing officers, gunners, and other targets of opportunity.
Tara had a feeling she was being watched, the second one of the day. And she turned to see a glint in one of the holes in the roof of the small administration building beside the landing pad. An odd bit of glass, or telescopic sights? She wasn't taking any chances as she dove out of the way just as a single blaster bolt streaked through the air.
Why the hell had he waited until she was inside his kill radius? Was he getting sloppy? Tired? Bored? Whatever the answer was, she wasn't sticking around to find out. If anything, the shot told her there was a live Imperial and a serious problem on her hands. If there was one live Imperial soldier, wouldn't there be more?'Discipline, that is the way of the sniper.' The lone marksman straddling the crossbeams of the roof thought. Hidden by shadows and firing through one of several holes in the roof of the administration building, he had been a hazard to anything within his field of vision. And now this female scavenger had managed to get inside his perimeter. That was poor discipline, to permit someone willing to profit from the defeat of Imperial troops too close to the hangar.
All the other soldiers defending the area were dead, or worse, had become transformed into one of those things that had assaulted the base. As far as he could tell, the squadron assigned to this low priority sector of space was busy elsewhere. The parsecs that spanned this system were defended by a Carrack light cruiser as well as a few TIE fighters based throughout the system. This area had been occupied only twenty days ago, and the mysterious aliens had begun appearing almost the night after the Empire landed on this world.
He would wait until the female reappeared and then he would shoot her. As he patiently scanned among the rubble and corpses for his quarry he noticed several more of the strange alien creatures approaching the area where he'd last seen the woman. He saw the woman firing her blaster at the aliens, and aimed his crosshairs at her pursuers. Firing steadily but with cold precision, he picked apart the raiding party, leaving another half dozen corpses lying killed around his perimeter.
The sniper panned the croshairs of the rifle scope attached to his SoroSuub Heavy Tracker 16. A longer, and much more accurate weapon than the standard issue BlasTech E-11 rifles carried by the storm troopers the SoroSuub was truly a sniper's weapon, if a bit more delicate than the E-11. Patience, he could wait indefinitely, he only needed a sip of water from his canteen every now and again or a nibble from a carboprotien biscuit from his pack, balanced carefully between his legs. He could wait indefinitely.
Tara had managed to sneak into the hangar itself, out of the Imperial sniper's field of vision. When he had been firing at the aliens that had come chasing her, she guessed his attention was completely focused on eliminating them. Thankfully she had managed to get behind some decent cover and maybe be able to get the drop on him.
She noticed the very distinct shape of a Longprobe Y-wing, connected to several computer banks and with several components working. Even as she looked the ship over, the idea of taking parts from her ship to replace whatever was missing in the other ship was starting to take root. But first she had to deal with the Imperial sniper, she doubted she could avoid his crosshairs twice.
As she crept up the stairs to the sniper's hideout her heart pounded fiercely in her chest. She reached the main control room for the tower and could see an Imperial soldier wearing desert fatigues, unlike most of his counterparts who wore white plasteel armor. The Imperial soldier turned around as she reached the top of the stairs. At twenty-five meters neither party could possibly miss.
"If you fire, you die." Tara said, trying to keep the fear out of her voice.
"This is true." the Imperial soldier replied with the same calm he might have used to order Corellian flat bread at a dining establishment.
"Maybe there's a better way then us standing here, pointing blasters at each other." Tara replied.
"Perhaps." the Imperial soldier replied.
"Do you want to die?" Tara asked.
"No sentient, unless suicidal wishes death." the Imperial soldier, Sergeant Benaren, replied.
"Agreed." Tara replied, "Those aliens out there, whatever they are, they aren't any friendlier towards me than they are to you."
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend." Benaren replied, "However, the saying could apply just as well to the creatures."
"If I were following that philosophy, from your angle, I might just shoot you myself." Tara replied.
"Reflex action would guarantee I would still pull the trigger and you would also die." Benaren replied, "However, even if I do die, Imperial reinforcements are enroute as we speak."
"You're bluffing." Tara replied, with more confidence than she felt. For all she knew the entire damned Imperial fleet could be in orbit right now.
Benaren knew he was bluffing. Even when the radios were still intact there was no word about reinforcements arriving for the embattled Imperial forces on this world. "How can you be so sure?" Benaren said, with more calm than he felt in reality.
"Easy." Tara replied, "I've been on this world for ten days since my ship crashed. Since I've been here I've heard less and less fighting and saw no sign of reinforcement."
This Rebel was right, normal Imperial procedure dictated that a force under siege should receive reinforcement within forty-eight hours of their situation being known. It had been ten days since the siege had started to go badly for the Imperial forces and no help had arrived. The options available to Benaren weren't good. He could shoot this Rebel and be shot as well, killing them both. He could hole up here indefinitely if he somehow survived the standoff until he either succumbed to wounds, hunger, or enemy attack, defending his assigned position as any soldier of the Empire would. Or he could trust this Rebel. At least she might have a way of getting them offworld and away from these aliens.
Benaren lowered his rifle, Tara lowered her own sidearm. "I see you gave it some thought." Tara replied.
"Yes." Benaren replied, "A truce shall be declared, after all, our enemy is the aliens, not each other. For now."
"Yes. For now." Tara replied, "By the way, what is your name? Just so I know what to call you."
"Sergeant Joran Benaren."
"Tara."
"Well, Tara." Joran began, "Now what shall we do?"
"Well, we might want to start cataloging supplies first." Tara replied.
"I have four of my seven power packs for my rifle, and have a Merr Son Power 5 blaster pistol in my pack, with four power packs. I also have water and some food. There are stores elsewhere on the base." Joran replied.
"I've got maybe five power packs for my blaster." Tara replied, "About a days worth of water, and no food."
"Well, I have some rations remaining, perhaps it is best we eat first before we figure for our predicaments." Joran replied.
"No arguement here." Tara replied, as they both sat down in chairs and split one of Joran's ration packs. For one, Tara was glad she was out of Joran's kill zone, albeit temporarily but a temporary truce was better than no truce at all. Right?
TBC