Sergeant Visskitzitur Larosz
Bravo Squad
Classified Subdivision
Commandos' Corps
Imperial Elite
Imperial Army
22 R.G.C.
1800 Hours Imperial Centre Time
The wailing of the children kept me awake, and I had a terrible vision: I saw the fall of my people. Bleached bones, under a harsh sun. The Dosh, gone. Why would the Scorekeeper send such a vision? She is not cruel, she has watched over us. We have had victories a plenty in the hunt. Our hunters roam all corners of the Galaxy. We are the envy of lesser people, lesser people who tell terrible lies about us; they do not understand so they lie! But the Rebels, they are the masters of falsehood. War has come, and I have no more false visions; and I feel the children are quiet.
The Rebels seek to destroy the Empire, the very Empire that gave the Dosh interstellar travel to expand our hunt. The Empire that trades things to the Dosh in exchange for filthy Wookiee bodies and brought a new level of reward for the hunt, which expanded the glorious bounty of the Scorekeeper! Some T'doshok believe that the Emperor is the Scorekeeper herself, manifest in the corporeal world; I must admit, he is the exchanger of Points before the spirit world. Though if I was to join in that belief, I would likely end up preaching in ancient languages and calling out the Emperor's name in the middle of the night like Captain Acibor does.
The Emperor has brought a purpose to my life, a purpose beyond slaughtering Wookiees in the deep forests of Kashyyyk. Even if he is not the Scorekeeper, I have him to owe for the salvation of the Doshan people, and for my new part in it. He sent me on my mission to destroy the Rebellion that would cause the downfall of Dosha, and therefore sent me on a divine mission of Her Majesty the Scorekeeper.
I do my work for the Empire and for myself in practice, but in truth, I am a holy warrior. I fight for my people, and therefore I fight for the Scorekeeper. My black Storm Commando armor is but one layer of protection, the far greater defense is the divine aura of protection, with which She has infused me.
I am among the largest T'doshok to ever walk the Galaxy, and that is certainly a sign of my purpose. The Doshan runts can tackle Wookiees in the woods, while my divine form shall rend Rebel star cruisers in twain as I cackle victoriously over the crushed corpses of the Great Betrayers, Mon Mothma and Leia Organa. This victory is my divine purpose, and I will fulfill it even if it means my own death. Praise Palpatine and all glory to the Scorekeeper!
As I waited patiently in the sparsely decorated room, these were my thoughts. Captain Acibor stood staring out the small view port opposite the door, looking down at the blue orb of Corellia while Lieutenant Rhykis complained to Sergeant Dey'Vega about where his possessions were.
What little I have seen of the Lieutenant disturbs me; he seems very much a man of the physical and material world. Dey'Vega and the Captain appear to have a far deeper connection to the spiritual world, for which I respect them, but Rhykis' preoccupation with vice and goods makes me uncomfortable. I fear being forced to depend on such a man without faith; I pray that he never holds my life in his hands. His humor, as well, is disconcerting. The Lieutenant thinks everything is a joke, when the dire seriousness of the Galaxy is apparent to all others. I think if our lives were on the line, he would still be mocking the world and laughing at his own pathetic humor.
Dey'Vega entertained Rhykis' comments while I sat on the bunk I had claimed as my own. I watched the Captain, trying to get a fix on exactly what he was looking at. I honestly could not tell, he just seemed to stare at the planet; his face betrayed no emotion whatsoever, he appeared blank as he watched the Star Destroyer's gradual rotation around Corellia.
I began to grow anxious. Sitting and thinking are the pastimes of philosophers and governors, not soldiers and hunters. I am a destroyer of evil, a templar of good; I crush those who would harm the innocent, and I cannot be taken from that task for too long. I grow unnerved, I grow anxious, I grow tormented, and I am reminded of the wailing children.
My salvation came from the communications terminal off in the corner of our small room, it began to beep. The Captain pressed a button on the console and all of our heads turned to view what it produced: the face of a green-uniformed human, his chest plastered with medals, who spoke to our blue leader,
"Captain Acibor, I am Commander Halloway Dorgan, leader of the Harbinger Battle Group, I welcome you and your men aboard my ship. You must be wondering about your being here, and about your first assignment. It will come in time. For now, you are attached to our Battle Group, and that is most important. Surely you have heard about Lord Vader's glorious victory in the Hoth System?" The Captain nodded, of course we had. Only a few weeks ago, Lord Vader's personal Battle Group found and destroyed the Rebel headquarters on the sixth planet of the Hoth System; the victory is still all over the HoloNet News, "As great a blow to the Rebellion as it was, most all of the Rebel leaders escaped, along with a sizable amount of their rabble. The Harbinger Battle Group is just one of many groups under orders to scour the Galaxy for these leaders and their hapless followers. We have located one such target, but the circumstances are, to say the least, unfavorable." The Captain raised an eyebrow from underneath his tactical visor,
"Jus' 'ow unfavorable are we talkin' 'ere, sir?" Asked Captain Acibor, I was still getting used to that accent of his. I thought it over: he tends to drop "h" and "t" sounds, so I figured he had said "Just how unfavorable are we talking here, sir?"
Commander Dorgan chuckled cruelly and looked away as he spoke, "The target is in Hutt Space," the Captain reacted by drooping his skull with dread, "Nar Shaddaa, to be exact, you'll be right in the flaming armpit of the Galaxy. I can't say I envy you all; but from what I hear, the most lawless place in the universe shouldn't even phase you." I did not even need Dey'Vega's analysis skills to know he was being condescending. No matter, though, I have every intention of proving his assumed-false statements completely true. No one dares to cross the path of Larosz, and those who do shall be torn asunder by my might and devoured by my hunger. At that moment, I was hoping that "Commander Halloway Dorgan" would cross my path,
"Can ya give us a bit more info on the target?" Asked the Captain, bringing me more into the "now" and away from thoughts of murdering a Navy officer,
"Of course, of course. The target is a human, a Rebel warlord by the name of Dash Felth, a very high-profile threat. We believe that Felth is a member of the Rebels' whacked-out idea of a High Command. Intel has confirmed that, while he has control over a sizable force of Rebels, they are all fragmented after their escape from Hoth; so you have it easy on that one. Obviously, Felth has chosen to hide himself among the filth of the Galaxy, seeking refuge amongst criminals who have more death sentences than himself; your purpose, obviously, is to prove that there is no refuge for traitors." The Captain nodded and began to take notes on a small datapad, ever the diligent one, that Captain; so respectable, "So I'll get down to the bare logistics. The Harbinger Battle Group will be jumping to Kessel for patrol, launching probots, so on and so forth; from there, you will board an unmarked Junker, which will take you to Nar Shaddaa. We don't want you flying into that system waving Imperial banners all over the place. Understood?" Reflexively, we all answered 'sir, yes, sir' in unison, "Very good. Get to armory Theta-16, your gear is waiting. Praise Palpatine, carry on." With that, the Commander's image blipped away.
Dorgan spoke of armory and gear, always an exciting topic. Another reason to love the Empire is for their marvelous machines. The T'doshok have always been efficient killers, and our equipment we use for killing is impressive. Doshan projectile rifles are favored by game hunters throughout the Galaxy for their accuracy and craftsmanship and Doshan suppressors are the basis for many modern stun weapons and restraint devices. But the Empire's weapons far surpass anything the T'doshok have created in sheer killing prowess. No Doshan brain ever plotted of a weapon which spews forth flames from its spout and the idea of explosives being launched out of a tube over great distances was completely alien before the arrival of the Empire. A soldier of the Empire gets these wondrous devices of destruction completely free of charge, granted that he uses them to kill Rebels. Not at all an unfair bargain, I think. Star Destroyers, space stations capable of destroying planets, walking harbingers of death, and droids designed for the sole purpose of inflicting pain are all creations of the Empire; all were but dreams of the T'doshok. The only shame is that our two cultures did not join together sooner.
Our squad moved to the armory in what we would come to know as "the formation." The Captain was directly up front, of course, with Dey'Vega on his left rear flank and Rhykis on his right, and I march directly behind him; we form an imposing "diamond of death." The diamond pushed down the corridors of the Star Destroyer completely unimpeded; there was not a soul in sight; no enlisted men bustling around, no officers shouting orders. The Star Destroyer seemed deserted, at least the part of its labyrinthine halls we inhabited; but not dirty, certainly. The halls were empty, but not at all derelict; it just appeared as if the corridors had suddenly been cleared. Unhindered, our motley band entered Armory Theta-16. The door slid open to reveal the back of a grey uniform, an Imperial Army man, who quickly spun around to the sound of our arrival.
Dey'Vega, Rhykis, and I were all in Storm Commando armor up to our necks, but the Captain wore only his grey officer's uniform, which drew even more attention to our blue leader. The short, balding human cocked an eyebrow at us as he stared at Acibor in particular; his uniform was that of a Quartermaster Sergeant, probably about the Captain's age,
"Welcome, welcome, my alien friends. You must be the hush-hush squad coming in here. I'm your Quartermaster, Sergeant Tyrrell; nobody else around here so I'm all yours and you're all mine. That reminds me, if you were wondering, all of Theta Sector is empty space 'cept you and me. Yeah, that's for… uh… obvious reasons. Anyways, let me hook you all up. Looks like the lot of you already got your armor, you got helmets for those?" The three of us nodded, "Good, good. Just need to get the good Doctor-Captain here a suit then, let's see…" he trailed off as he turned around to go rummaging through his inventory. The Quartermaster bent over and grunted as he struggled to lift a suit of the black armor onto the armory counter. Acibor walked over and carefully examined it, it was nice, even more specialized than mine; the helmet was long, fitted perfectly to the Captain's bulbous head and the chest plate had his Captain's badge already built in. Somebody had thought ahead for the Captain on this matter, "The rest of you will be needing weapons. I've already got you all sorted out here. Standard issue comes first, you all get these fancy modified E-11 blaster carbines," he pulled four of the black weapons out from under counter, as well as one stock, one scope, and one silencer, "These extra gadgets here are for Lieutenant Rhykis, sniper attachments; but I didn't need to tell you that, did I? Sergeant Larosz is to receive a flame projector, a rocket launcher, and an acid stream launcher. Hmm, hmm, hmm… I wonder which one of you that is," The old man huffed and puffed as he handed the weapons to me, sometimes I don't realize just how weak humans are, I effortlessly placed the flame tank on my back with the rocket tube, the stream launcher and the projector itself went into respective holsters, "And Sergeant Dey'Vega gets a precision laser knife, an 'ultralite' blaster pistol, and this kit of suspicious looking 'specialist' gear. Yeah, I already looked at it, you got the works in there buddy, all the stuff I can't pronounce." The Quartermaster passed the equipment over to Dey'Vega. We all looked over our new gear, tightened it down, and made ourselves ready; we could've hot-dropped into the Rebel headquarters right at that very instant. Of course, we were still a good several hours' hyperspace flight from Kessel.
There was only one thing for us to do to pass the time, and the Quartermaster knew exactly what it was,
"I guess you guys want to try that stuff out, huh?" I grinned at him; I had been waiting to melt some stuff for far too long. It was time to spend a few good hours burning Rebel flags and bull's-eying target dummies.