The Second Battle of Naboo

by L337kage

The 351st Imperial Battalion marches towards a fate unbeknownst to them at the hands of the Grand Gungan Army in this 1st person account of the Second Battle of Naboo.

Star Wars: Battlefront

The Second Battle of Naboo

An eyewitness account, given by Captain Johon, 351st Trooper Battalion

0200 hours, Day One

The air was thick and hazy on the morning when we landed on the plains of Naboo. The 351st unloaded from Imperial Dropship 097, carrying all we could in terms of supplies in packs and letting the walker carry the heavy stuff, like weapons and the battalion's speeder bikes. I led my squad to the designated rendezvous location, trudging across relatively flat terrain, occasionally interrupted by a tuft of tall grass or a bush or a small, feeding creature. The first of these creatures we encountered was shot by Private Sam "Sammy" Stewart, the rookie of our squad, inexperienced and anxious towards what the mission's progress would bring. We hiked a quarter of a mile to the command post, a small valley nested between three hills; this would serve as our center of operations. Already, the techies and engineers had set up camp for the battalion, enough camping space and provisions for the 300 men in the 351st. The pilots had landed their bombers and fighters in the field to the west of the command center, and were now flocking in their dozens towards the campsite, hungry and tired from the escort flight to the planet. They would be dusted off by the star destroyer Excalibur before the night was over; the destroyer would then serve the role of support fire and extra manpower, should it be required. The battalion settled in and prepared for the assault later, at dawn.

We were assigned the first wave of the invasion of Naboo. Our battle strategy was to fight our way across the plains east towards Theed, Naboo's capital city. There we would take control of the city and eliminate any remaining resistance in the city. Simple as it seemed, the risks were high. The plains of Naboo were inhabited by the indigenous race of Gungans, who fought alongside the Naboo Army. Gungans were weak and cowardly alone, but had surprising strength in their enormous numbers. They tamed the beasts of Naboo and fitted them with their unique weaponry: shield generators, electro-magnetic "boomer" grenade catapults, and the like. The battle would be joined at the center of the great plain, the 351st battalion, 300-strong, versus the 100,000-plus strong Grand Gungan Army. Instrumental in this fight was the Empire's secret weapon for nullifying the Gungans' "boomers": rubber-ceramic alloy-based armor. The rubber canceled the effect of electro-magnetic pulses, rendering the Gungan's weaponry useless. The 351st would march into battle against the Gungans, defeat them with the aid of their specialized armor, and march on to Theed. A good day's fighting.

0533 hours, Dawn on Day One

We marched, all of us in the 351st, onto the great plain to meet the Gungans. The Grand Gungan Army was arrayed before us on top of a large hill, on the far side of the plain, like Intel said, with the big shield generator-carrying beasts in the center surrounded by catapults, and foot soldiers and shock troopers all around. The battalion commander turned around at the head of the battalion to face us soldiers and began issuing attack orders.

"All right, men. We're here for one reason," shouted the commander. He gave this speech before every battle, "And that reason is to fight and walk away victorious."

"Sir, yes sir!" we all replied in unison.

"And one more thing, when we get to Theed," continued the commander, "anyone that captures the Queen o' Naboo or any of her personal staff will receive a bonus of 10,000 credits to his paycheck."

"Sir, yes sir!" The commander liked to offer a reward for a job well done, incentive for us to fight harder. I needed no incentive. I am a warrior, born and true. I had no career before joining the Imperial Army, my father was a corporal at the time of my recruiting, and my grandfather before him was a 1st lieutenant in the Old Republic Navy.

"Any questions? No? Well, then, let's move on out, men!" the commander had a certain sense of humor that made fighting in his battalion all the more worth-while.

We marched across the plain, the walker plodded behind us, firing at the Gungan fortifications outside the shield. They were our first objectives. These dugouts in the ground held in them "boomer"-catapults as well as Gungan shock troops in their dozens, so we had been told to expect by Intel. Even though the boomers couldn't harm us with their EMP charges, they could still crush us if they fell on us. The Gungan shock troops carried not only small boomer-grenades but also barb-tipped electro-spears, which could pierce our armor and deliver their killing electric shock beneath the rubber-ceramic coating. It was a threat to be considered, given that they outnumbered us a good 100,000-to-one.

There were three sets of 6 dugouts arranged in rows at varying heights along the slope of the hill. They would fire on us as we charged, hoping to crush enough of us before we got to the top of the hill, where we could do the most damage. These Gungans were smart. Too smart.

We did have a huge advantage over the Gungans: our walker. It would remain behind, outside the reach of the deadly EMP bombs, and fire at the dugouts. We would then storm up the hill, jet-commandoes first, then foot soldiers. The commandoes would take out the first line of Gungan defense, then the foot soldiers would pierce the Gungan line towards the heart of their forces, the shield generator-beasts. Killing the creatures would be no great chore, and once they were dead, the walker could wipe the hill clean of the Gungan scum with pounding blaster fire.

We should have been done before lunch.

0600 hours, Morning of Day One

The 351st Imperial Infantry Battalion marched across the plain at a slow, steady pace, while the AT-AT walker inched along behind, firing at the Gungan bunkers all the while. The incessant blaster fire became a sort of marching beat for us, and we marched fearlessly toward our target: the top of the hill.

0607 hours, Morning of Day One

There was a slight problem with the situation we noticed as we approached the first line of destroyed bunkers at the bottom of the hill. The walker had taken out the bunkers, all of them, but when we marched up to the first ruined fortification, we saw no bodies. The walker's blaster fire could not have burned them all away. Curious, we thought to ourselves, interesting indeed.

We kept marching up the hill, slow and steady.

We encountered the same phenomena when we reached the second line of wrecked bunkers; there were no dead Gungans to be found, only destroyed catapults and fortifications. Surely, the walker must have killed them, so where were they.

The men in the first lines passed this new information down the lines, and soon everyone was whispering back and forth while marching, slow and steady, up the hill. We were just passed the second line of ruined Gungan defense when we heard the explosion. We stopped marching and whipped around to see the walker in flames. It had been sabotaged somehow. The crew could not have been taken out, because the firing had continued until the abrupt interruption. Everyone panicked and yelled with fright at the affront

We now began to put two and two together, however slowly, in our heads. The Gungans knew our strategy, and had worked around it to fool us until we were weakest. Now, on this hill, we would meet our doom at the hands of multitudes of Gungan warriors.

Our lines broke, and soldiers ran every which way back down the hill towards the site of the downed walker, but Gungan warriors at the bottom of the hill, pouring out of their ruined bunkers, halted their progress. That's when it hit me. The Gungans had never been in the bunkers in the first place; they had hid in the hill, waiting to attack. I suddenly felt very vulnerable and scared as fire broke out around me.

"Sammy" Stewart was my neighbor in the march up the hill, the member of my squad nearest me. I grabbed a hold of him and two more members of my squad, "Georgy" Patterson and Zhin Yeng, and made them fire their weapons at the advancing Gungans. It was a lucky thing for the 351st that Gungans, while clever, aren't very brave warriors.

The scared soldiers ran at the Gungans, hoping to break through without getting stung by a spear, met the Gungans face-to-face, and ran on; the Gungans had jumped aside an let them pass. The bewildered soldiers turned around to face the warriors, looked at one another, spun on their heels and kept running.

My contingent of now four men, plus myself, was braver than that. We stood our ground on the incline, firing away at Gungans, pausing only to reload our rifles. Our fighting had attracted more soldiers to our sides, and we now stood in a small circle, shoulder to shoulder, shooting every which way at spear-wielding Gungans. None of us wanted one of those electro-tips stuck in us like skewers, so we kept firing, fighting like madmen, hastily reloading while our neighbors covered our sixes.

More and more of the scattered soldiers flocked to our protective circle. We fought as one, like we had been trained in the academy. This wasn't the academy, however, and with that changed our battle strategy. No more were the structured lines; we now held in a defensive circle. We did not all fire at the same time; we fired and threw thermal detonators when we could to maximize damage. We became one striving, breathing, fighting body made of many.

There were still too many. No matter how fierce we fought, no matter how intimidating we made ourselves look, there were still too many. Around us lay a perimeter of fallen Gungans, forming a wall that they had to climb over in order to attack. By the time the warriors got over the side, they were gunned down and melded into the barrier of their own fallen. We were entrenched, and with each Gungan that made it over the wall of bodies, died, and became part of the wall, the wall enclosed in on us further, pressing us in on each other. It got to the point where we couldn't move anymore; it seemed we'd be overrun and slaughtered. We all could foresee our fate; it was only a matter of time.

0621 hours, Morning of Day One

We had been fighting for what seemed to us like an age when out of nowhere, the skies burst with radiance and rang out with tremendous thunder. We ceased fire, looked up with shielded eyes at the light, and realized that it was red, and came from the star destroyer that had been circling overhead. The fighting stopped and our circle paused to observe Gungans being blasted into nothing by the killing fire. Their bodies flew everywhere, half burned away by the radiant blasts. It became a slaughter along the hill, as turbolaser fire poured from the heavens all around us, massacring the Gungans where they stood. It was a massacre; the Gungans were helpless against the death from above. We were saved.

We saw the lights cease, heard the last of the booms, and, as one contingent of now over 40 soldiers, mounted the top of the dead Gungan barrier to view the star destroyer's handy-work. The mission was a success, but at great cost: as we reached the top of the mound, we saw death and only death. We were the only soldiers of the 351st to survive the charge.

0635 hours, Morning of Day One

Inside, I felt relieved to have pulled through the ordeal with such luck as we had, but also great remorse for those soldiers who had died at either the hands of Gungan warriors or the death-dealing blows of the star destroyer.

We heard the whine of an approaching landing craft, and knew the dust-off was coming, though we couldn't see the craft. We approached the rendezvous indicator marked on our sensors silently and solemnly.

"Save your battle logs for debriefing," I ordered, "this one's gonna be a tough one to sort out." It was just then that I noticed the 351st's battalion commander standing at the fore with his mouth open, and I knew I had just stolen the words out of his mouth. However, given the graveness of the situation, I was spared his usual dose of lecturing on command protocol. I breathed a sigh of relief and gathered the remaining members of my squad.

Aboard the landing craft, not a word was spoken, not a comment made. There had been friends lost that day, but the battle was won. It was a hard and bitter victory for the 351st to swallow. Never before had we suffered so great a loss. Some rethinking had to be done...

--To be continued--