CHAPTER THREE

AN HOUR LATER…

Sgt. Olyone can hear the faint sounds of a voice echoing around in her mind. They sound far away at first, but with each passing second gets louder and closer. It's not until she hears the word 'Jana' do her eyes slowly open. She sees a relieved Sgt. Tapalo, who calls over Sgt. Dzukya.

They slowly help Olyone off the ground and hold her up. As she works through the wooziness, she scans the area around her.

"How…," another wave of dizziness hits Olyone, "...bad?" Dzukya tells her the situation: many of the ship's crew are dead; no final count. The Leviathan is now scrap metal. As Dzukya continues to list off the bad news, Olyone looks over and sees Emperor Palpatine several feet away, with a couple of his Red Guard flanking him. He just stands there off to the side of the fray, like a contractor watching a building being built.

"Of course, he survived!' she thinks. A slight smile appears on her face but then disappears as quick when something dawns on her. She asks for Lenck. Tapalo gives her the news: he's alive but unconscious.

Olyone leans back and looks up at the gray bleak sky above her. "It's another beautiful day to be in the Corps," she says sarcastically.

A bandaged-up Capt. Verlund walks over to Emperor Palpatine and gives him a situation report. Verlund advises the Emperor that all resources need to be used in preparing for rescue.

A slight snarl appears on the Emperor's face. "No. The mission continues until I say it's over, Captain."

A sinking feeling appears in the Captain's stomach. He wants to object to the Emperor's decision but knows he doesn't have the rank nor the rarified air to even rudely disagree. The words, 'Yes, my lord' instantly come out of the Captain's mouth.

Emperor Palpatine looks over at the death trooper. "How much of your equipment was lost in the crash?"

"Surprisingly only 10%. All of the drones are operational, my lord," says the death trooper. Palpatine is very pleased. He immediately orders the death trooper to release the drones, maximum range. The death trooper gets on the commlink and quickly leaves. Emperor Palpatine looks around at the rough topography of the planet when he hears the faint sounds of that echo again. The duration of the echo goes on for a few moments until Capt. Verlund's voice breaks through.

"My lord, is everything alright?" Palpatine looks around for a moment then smiles.

"Oh…more than alright," he says. Although the situation is not good, hearing that echo almost gives the Emperor glee: This is where he needs to be.

While they stand just over 6 six feet tall, it doesn't take long for the drones to be unpacked from their casings, powered up and rising up in the air. The handful of drones scatter in all directions, recording everything that their computer brains can see. Sergeants Olyone and Dzukya are watching the last of them disappear when a medic comes up to them with some good news: Pvt. Lenck has regained consciousness but is very woozy.

Hearing this bit of news brings some relief to both sergeants amid this bad day so far. As they head over to him, that same death trooper runs back to Emperor Palpatine to report that all drones are running at optimal levels, mapping out the land.

"Good, very good, trooper. When do estimate the drones will complete the scan of their areas?" asks Palpatine.

"At the speed their going, my lord, at best three to—". The death trooper is interrupted by a call coming from a fellow death trooper: Drone Number Eleven has discovered something in its scan. When the death trooper asks for more information about what the drone's discovery, the answer that's given is: 'multiple signatures, all metallic.'

"How far away are these signatures," asks Palpatine. The death trooper pulls up the area that Drone Eleven has scanned: just over 15 miles northeast of the crash site. Verlund is about to send out a recon team to the site but Emperor Palpatine has his own ideas.

He instructs the captain to assemble his troops and any equipment that is still operational in 30 minutes: they'll make the trek over to the unknown site by foot since most of the troop transports are inoperable. As Verlund sees that Emperor's orders are enacted, his mind wishes that he was back at the Imperial Academy on the planet Carida. Even though the Captain has some misgivings, his troops have formed up and are ready to go. He instructs 1st Sgt. Weglarz to leave a handful of troops behind at the crash site.

"Expecting anyone to show here once we're gone, sir?" asks the 1st. Sgt.

"I'd rather have my rear covered than not," replies Verlund. Before long, the troops of the 332nd are on their way to this destination via the troop transports that weren't smashed in the crash. Each mile they complete, the white armor on some of the stormtroopers get increasingly dirty due to the black charcoal soil. As the troops have passed the halfway point of this trek, the skies that were just bleak are slowly converting to a stormy black. This doesn't escape the notice of either Capt. Verlund nor the Emperor. As soon they are two miles from their destination, Verlund sends out a couple of scouts on Recon, and it doesn't take the scouts long to radio back. What the Captain receives isn't what he was expecting.

"An abandoned settlement? Are you sure?" Verlund's question is a legit one; he doesn't want to walk into a trap.

"The only movement that I've seen is us, sir," says one of the scouts. Verlund takes a moment. He can feel the Emperor's eyes on him: it's just as bad as having someone breathing down his neck. He orders for squads to be sent in and do a search of the settlement as a feeling of uneasiness stir in the pit of his stomach.

As the squads of stormtroopers slowly search the colony, everyone's eyes are peeled for any movement that is not their own. However, the further into the settlement they go, their expectations steadily fall. Every building, inside and outside, shows the obvious sign of dilapidation. As one of the squads conducts inside what looked to be some med center, a stormtrooper drags his finger on a table, pulling up dirt and dust several layers thick.

Sgt. Olyone and her team slowly conduct their search in the northern part of the settlement. She is perturbed that the architecture is completely unfamiliar to her. As her frustration grows a little, an all-call comes through: it's Verlund, wanting a status report. One by one, every squad leader reports back with same line: negative, sir. Olyone calls in.

"Captain, this is Echo leader: Negative, sir," she says. The feeling of disappointment enters Olyone's mind as she turns off her commlink. She slowly turns around and scans the immediate area of the settlement as the troopers of her squad slowly come and congregate in front of her. One of the troopers asks her what's next.

Olyone just casually shrugs her shoulders. "We wait for Captain's new—". She doesn't finish her sentence: someone in her squad is missing.

She quickly asks where Pvt. Sasko is. The squad turn and look at each other: no one knows where the private disappeared to. "Goddamn it! Didn't I tell each and every person not to leave the other's sight?" yells Olyone. Before she can go further in tearing her squad a new one, a call comes into her commlink: it's Sasko.

"Sgt. Olyone? This is Pvt. Sasko. Can you hear me?"

"Pvt. Sasko, where the hell are you?" The private can easily hear the anger within her voice: He did exactly what she ordered every trooper not to do.

"I'm just outside of the settlement. I've found something. Please come here quickly, ma'am," replies Sasko. It doesn't take long for Olyone and her squad to locate and arrive at Pvt. Sasko's location.

"Okay, Private…now you better have a good reason for being out here," says Olyone. The private quickly gets down on one knee and starts brushing off the black soil. There poking out the ground, about the size of two hands, is a piece of gray metal with an insignia on it. The insignia is of a full solid circle with a half-circle line on top of it.

Olyone looks at the unearthed insignia, then back over to Pvt. Sasko. "I'm waiting," she says. Sasko clearly gets the hint, quickly stands back up and addresses the squad.

"It's the TeiMak collective!" The private's excitement quickly disappears when he sees the rest of the squad looks each other with confusion. Sasko quickly explains that TeiMak was a manufacturing company.

Rel TeiMak, who started the company from his home, became very wealthy due to company products being very reliable, and dirt cheap to maintain. Before he can go further into the TeiMak biography, Olyone purposely cuts him off.

"Any ideas of how this ended up here on an unknown planet in the middle of uncharted space?" Sasko shrugs his shoulders in response. He continues to speak, adding that years later the company's founder started to act weird, believing that the Republic had become a cesspool of low morals and he created a group of like-minded people: The TeiMak Collective. Not too long after that, Rel and his followers boarded a ship to establish a world free of the Republic and disappeared into the unknown.

Sasko takes his foot and brushes more dirt of the symbol. "I always wondered what happened to them. Looks like I got my answer," he says.

Olyone looks at the private for a moment then looks back at the settlement. The answer, while satisfying Pvt. Sasko, is giving her an uneasy feeling. There's something missing. Just then, it comes to her in a flash.

"What happened to the people?" she thinks. Olyone calls in on her commlink to Capt. Verlund and informs him of the information given to her by Pvt. Sasko. The captain orders the search teams back to the center of the settlement: they're setting up camp for the night. Verlund quickly heads over to Emperor Palpatine and informs him of the fruitless news. The captain is expecting a sharp tongue lashing.

"No need for being disappointed, Captain. All things reveal themselves in good time," says Palpatine.

Hearing that response almost throws Capt. Verlund off-balance for just a moment. The way the Emperor structured his sentence makes the Captain wonder if he knows more than he's letting on. Verlund puts that thought to the back of his mind as dark clouds move over the settlement and open up. The sound of heavy rain beating down every building occupies the air as the last of daylight disappears. Olyone watches as her team finds spots on the ground to rest for the night. Just then the door opens, in walks Dzukya. He sees Olyone, walks over and sits down beside her. The look on her face is easy to see.

"This isn't the first time that the first day of a mission is fruitless, Jana," Dzukya says quietly.

"I know that, but this…" Olyone shakes her head, "…is something different." Dzukya waits a few seconds, then motions for Olyone to continue. "I know that this settlement is hundreds of years old but there should be something that people lived here," she says. The frustration appears on her face, which is understandable.

Dzukya tries to reassure her. "People did live here and hopefully we'll find out—"

"No, you're missing the point. All of us in this apparent ghost town found nothing. No bones, no pieces of old tech, not even a page of a girl's diary. It's as if all the people were here one day, then poof, became nothing. Not a goddamn thing!" Sgt. Olyone takes in a couple deep breaths to calm down. She wishes that the evidence in front of her told her something different, but it doesn't.

As everyone gets some shut-eye, the sound of heavy rain beating down continues overnight and into the next day. As the early morning begins to creep in, every stormtrooper is up on their feet getting ready. Sgt. Dzukya walks over to one of the windows and looks out. The "daylight" has done nothing to improve the dull gray outlook of rainy weather. Sgt. Olyone is about to sip some hot caf when she interrupted by something that just popped in her mind. She quickly takes a sip and looks over.

"Pvt. Sasko, get over here pronto!" The private, who was just adjusting the sighting on his rifle, quickly makes it over.

"Yes, ma'am?" Olyone asks Sasko the types of products the TeiMak company made. He begins spouting off a mental list: heavy duty lubricants, solvents, machine parts. She stops him when he mentions two words: drill bits.

"Did TeiMak ever develop a heavy-duty drilling machine for mining operations?" Olyone asks. Sasko nods his head. A small smirk appears on the sergeant's face. She quickly grabs her rifle and helmet, heading towards the door at a quick pace.

Dzukya calls out to her, wondering what's up. "What's going on?"

Sgt. Olyone quickly puts on her helmet and opens the door. "Gonna talk to the Captain. I got a hunch," she says while heading out. Olyone gets on the commlink requesting Verlund's location. She's given the location and runs over there.

Capt. Verlund comes out and meets with her. "So, what's on your mind, Sergeant?"

Olyone takes a moment for her heartbeat to slow down a little and to make sure her words are coherent. "Those drones that were scanning the areas after we crashed. Could they operate in this weather, sir?"

"Well, with the reduced severity of the storm, yes they can. Why do you ask, Sergeant?"

Olyone tells him what Pvt. Sasko had just told her, and then presents her theory. "If you send a couple drones out, 10 miles max, I think we'll find something."

Verlund, arms crossed, starts tapping his arm. "And what is that something?"

She takes in a breath, then tells him: a mine. Sgt. Olyone stands there, waiting for some response from Capt. Verlund but he doesn't give one. He just lowers his head a bit, giving her a look: he wants elaboration from her. She explains that the colonists couldn't have been farmers due to harshness of the land and there's no indication of them leaving this planet.

"But why a mine, Sergeant?" asks the Captain. Sgt. Olyone just shrugs her shoulders.

"It's one of the few things that require loads of people to operate." Olyone knows that what just left her mouth, while a hunch, was a bit flimsy. She is surprised by the fact that there's a conversation with her CO.

The majority of the Imperial officers Sgt. Olyone has dealt with only focused on their careers, and rarely listened to their subordinates. Olyone waits as she watches the captain process the information given to him. She fights the urge of impatience from coming out. She's impatient not because of the need to be right…she wants to get the hell off this rock, sooner rather than later. Just then Capt. Verlund turns and walks away from her. He gets on his commlink and orders several of the drones to be sent out, all directions, 10 miles max. Under her helmet, a small smile appears on Olyone's face.

"I will inform the Emperor of our next move…and Sgt. Olyone," says the Captain.

"Yes, sir?"

"Wipe that smile of your face."