Chapter 3: War

The walls of the Imperial Dropship Transport rattled and groaned under the strain as it plummeted through the atmosphere toward the planet below. The cruiser had deployed the ships at the very edge of the atmosphere, allowing them to fall to the battlefield. There were many reasons given for this particular tactic but in reality it only served to use less fuel than navigating in. This maneuver was difficult enough on the stormtroopers during simulations but was even worse now because the officers had loaded more than twenty troopers to each ship despite the maximum capacity of eighteen. The troopers were crowded in so tightly it was difficult to breathe. Between the close quarters and the pressure of descent, more than a few of the troopers nearly became sick in their helmets.

As the dropship approached the ground, the pilot finally ignited the engine. The g-forces pressed down hard on the stormtroopers as the ship gradually slowed its descent and the sound of battle grew louder. The ship slowed to a hover a few feet above the ground and the door flew open. The first row of troopers were immediately killed by incoming blaster fire. The rest scrambled out of the ship as best they could but the tight space made it difficult for them to move quickly and several more were killed before exiting the ship.

The girl was finally able to jump from the dropship and landed hard on the dirt below just as the ship closed its door and blasted back up into the atmosphere. A mortar shell exploded nearby, throwing her to the ground and killing two troopers nearby. She scrambled back to her feet and dashed for cover behind an unidentifiable piece of destroyed machinery fifty feet away.

The roar of the dropship faded and the cacophony of the battle took over. She looked around, surveying the situation she had found herself in. They had been dropped into farmland with only a few modest structures scattered around. She peeked carefully around the wreckage. The enemy was firing at them from a town of low clay buildings decorated by vines that grew up the walls, swooped around the windows and doors and curled up over the roofs. Large brightly colored flowers with unusually long stamens were speckled amongst the wide green leaves. In quieter times, the simple, quaint little town must have been a welcoming, peaceful place but now the idyllic scenery had been ravaged by blaster fire and explosives. Many of the walls of the outermost homes were broken and crumbling, their vines lying crushed and torn on the ground.

Another mortar landed nearby, the concussive force rattling through her helmet as the Sergeant barked orders to the platoon. She pulled herself to her feet and rushed forward across the field with the others, blaster and mortar fire surrounded them. Several more troopers jerked, fell, and did not move again. Finally the surviving troops reached the edge of the buildings and threw themselves up against the wall for cover.

The opposition fighters were far better equipped than the rustic architecture would suggest. They were made up of both soldiers and residents, well armed with blasters, rifles, and small tanks. The town had been fortified against an attack with barricades erected in the streets, doors and windows sealed tight. The villagers had known an attack was coming, which put the stormtroopers at a disadvantage. Pinned down and hoping to create an opening so they could advance, she leaned around the wall to fire back.

Click

Her rifle malfunctioned. She whipped herself back behind the relative safety of the broken wall and checked the rifle. She checked the power pack, the cooling coils, the power setting, even the safety but there was no obvious reason it did not fire. It was useless.

"STE-274!" Her Sergeant yelled to her to get her attention. He grabbed a blaster off the body of the fallen opponent and tossed it to her. She threw her blaster to the ground and caught the new one as it hurtled towards her. Without hesitation she turned back to the enemy and opened fire but she immediately noticed something different about this blaster, though she could not quite identify what it was.

The thought scratched at the back of her mind as her platoon advanced. It was not simply that the blaster was a different model but that there was something different in how it fired, the motion of the trigger, and the way the energy moved through the emitter. But now was not the time. She had to focus on the battle if she hoped to make it out alive and pushed the thought as far back in her mind as she could.

Just then, a tank came around the corner a street ahead of them and their Sergeant shouted out orders. STE-274 and several others ran to the right, drawing the tank's attention while two others rushed in from the left. They climbed quickly up the side of the tank, ripped open the top and dropped a detonator inside. The tank jerked from the explosion within, just as the laser cannon fired, sending the blast harmlessly into the air over STE-274's head.

The fighting steadily intensified as her platoon continued deeper into the town toward their objective, a market square in the center. They converged on the market just as other platoons also arrived, having been dropped at other locations around the periphery. The opposition held their ground behind barricades surrounding the remains of a giant, elegant fountain in the center of the market. She and several troopers took cover behind a stone wall at the edge of the square as mortars began firing on them. Their Sergeant was across the road and shouted to them to circle to the other side of the square but his orders were cut short when a mortar landed at his location. When the dust cleared there was no sign of him remaining, but they decided to follow his last order anyway. They began to circle back through a walled garden in order to climb into a nearby building and get a line of sight above the barricades. However, they did not get far before another mortar came shrieking towards them. STE-274 was thrown back against the garden wall, an intense burning sensation down her right side, and was knocked unconscious by the impact.

"Lie still!" a medical officer said as he rushed over to her bed to stop her from moving but STE-274 pushed back against his urging and sat up as best she could. She was in the infirmary back aboard the cruiser. Lining the room were fifty or sixty beds in neat, uniform rows; each one occupied by an injured trooper.

"What happened? Where am I?" she asked in quick succession.

"You're back aboard. The battle is over. You need to heal," the officer answered mechanically as STE-274 looked down at the bandages covering most of the right side of her body. They wrapped around her knee and extended up her side to her neck, preventing her from moving her right arm at all.

"Your armor has been badly damaged," the medical officer continued, easing her back into the bed "and was completely blown away on the right side. You're lucky to be alive."

"How many of my platoon survived?"

"You are the only one we've found," he said dismissively and walked away.

In the weeks it took to recover from her injuries, she played the battle over and over again in her mind. Something was very wrong about it. This should have been an easy operation but the enemy had been more prepared than they had been led to believe. Was the intel wrong? No, something else was nagging at her. Something about the rifle; her rifle. Why did it malfunction? There was something different about the blaster the sergeant had thrown to her but she couldn't pin down what it was. Maybe the concussion she had suffered was making her suspicious and paranoid but then again, maybe not. All she was sure of is that something is very wrong.

"I have good news for you," the medical officer said coldly one morning weeks later when she was finally able to walk again unassisted. "Yesterday's physical determined that you are ready to return to active duty. Your new sergeant will be here shortly to give you your orders." He turned on his heel and walked away without so much as making eye contact with her.

Before the medical officer had even left the room her new sergeant entered the infirmary and walked briskly and stiffly through the ward to her bed. She rose sharply to attention.

"Experimental Stormtrooper-274," he said mechanically while staring at the datapad in his hand, obviously reading her designation directly from it. The term 'Experimental' had been added to the operating number of every person who came from her planet to denote the unique circumstances of their conscription. Through all of her training and service the only people she had met who did not have the 'Experimental' designation were officers. She assumed that meant they were all from her planet, that they had all gone through the same programming. Even her Sergeant who had been reduced to a red mist on the battlefield carried the designation. But the badge on her new Sergeant's uniform only read: TK. She looked back up at his hard face and knew he must have chosen to be here.

"I would like to commend you on your service during your last battle," he continued, not noticing the disgusted look on her face. "As a reward you are to be given a session in a bacta tank to heal some of the scars you incurred." His controlled, deliberate mannerisms were off-putting and STE-274 could not help but wonder if he was part droid under that crisp, clean uniform.

Has he ever seen a battlefield?

"For now you are to report to your barracks till your next assignment.".

"Thank you sir," she said, then quickly continued speaking in order to stop him from turning away. "If I may, I would appreciate some time in the armory to be sure my skills are sharp before my next assignment."

"Your dedication is commendable," he said, throwing her a pretentious smile as he looked her up and down in such a way that made her skin crawl.

"Follow me," he said and escorted her briskly to the armory, staring at his datapad the whole way. She could not help but be thankful for the constant state of distraction the datapad provided, as long as it kept his eyes off of her.

"I will return in an hour to show you to your new barracks," he said after requisitioning a rifle for her, then immediately left the armory.

She watched with disgust as he left and as soon as he was gone headed into the training room. Instead of going to the firing range, however, she walked past it, directly to one of the workbenches in the back. There she disassembled the rifle; the process difficult for her due to the lingering stiffness in her joints from her injuries. Her range of motion was restricted and lacked any amount of finesse, but she was determined to find the answer. Determined to figure out what it was that had bothered her so much about the malfunctioning rifle.

She placed each part of the rifle on the workbench with meticulous detail creating something like a diagram of it spread out before her. Then she examined it carefully; turning each piece in the light to catch the reflections on every surface until finally she knew what had been bothering her: This rifle is old. Very old. Much older than the enemy's blaster. She could see signs of wear, cracks in the material and even components that are broken entirely.

The full weight of this discovery landed on her and she had to grip the sides of the table to steady herself. They were not supposed to win that fight; they were given the poorest weapons, the weakest armor. Their intel was not wrong, they just had not been told the truth: they were not sent there to win but to overwhelm the opposition, to tire them out and deplete their munitions. Her people had been culled as cannon fodder; nothing more.

They were only meant to die.

If she was to survive she would have to become so much more.

STE-274 had lost count of the battles, the planets, the number of times she narrowly avoided death over the last grueling years. Eventually, the Empire had declared their campaign in the Western Reaches a resounding success; that they had brought the last remnants of the Separatist Alliance to heel and with them the last remnants of the Clone War. The Empire had grown so much and their ranks so filled with willing recruits that there was no need to repeat the program that brought her here. She was reassigned, her designation changed to TK-274, and rotated into the standard cycle of stormtrooper duties till she became lost and forgotten in the system. Just another number in the machine that is the Empire.

Through the drudgery of her duties, she remained withdrawn from the other stormtroopers. She rarely spoke except to give or receive orders, and never socialized. During training, however, she came alive. She released all her inhibitions during a fight and never held back against her opponents, earning her the nickname 'Ruthless' among the other troopers. The nickname followed her to every new assignment, the closest thing she had to a name. She despised it but it kept other troopers at arm's length, so she took every chance she had to use it to her advantage.

For a long time she wondered if any of the troopers she served with had also been taken from her planet. Eventually that curiosity had faded. It did not matter if they had been her people once, they were her people no longer. As far as she was concerned, she was the only one left and she was determined to not be conquered as they had been; determined to survive, to rise up beyond their intentions for her, to get back what she had lost.

Whenever she could find time alone she would meditate, trying desperately to retrieve the memories that were taken from her. One night she crept off to a rarely visited storage room to meditate again but this time something changed. She went deeper than ever before. Her stomach lurched as if she was falling into a well: Completely devoid of all light. All sound from the ship vanished and she felt as if the answers she sought were there with her and if she could just reach out she could grasp them.

"I see you," the voice, bright but powerful, called out to her from the darkness.

She was so surprised that she inadvertently ripped herself out of her meditation and when she opened her eyes all the objects around her came crashing down. She jumped quickly to her feet and ran from the storage room while crates settled again in a clamor behind her and a claxon blared overhead. Whatever had happened had set off the tamper sensors in the storage room and it would only be moments before security arrived.

What just happened? She thought as she ran down the corridor. Had they been floating? Levitating? Did I do that?

She dove down a connecting hallway as the sound of approaching security echoed down the corridor. She slowed to a walk and forced her breath back under control so as to not arouse suspicion as they passed.

But she could not banish that voice from her mind.

Weeks later, TK-274 reported to her unit's regular hand-to-hand combat training but unlike any other day her Sergeant was accompanied by two troopers of a kind she had never seen before. They wore black armor with red markings, the Imperial signet standing out in bright white on the left shoulder. The Sergeant didn't bother to introduce them but instead immediately paired off combatants as in any other training session. The black troopers watched silently from the far side of the room.

"They're called Purge Troopers," one of the other stormtroopers said under his breath to his sparring partner.

"What are Purge Troopers?" She asked harshly. The two troopers stared at her stunned that she initiated a conversation and stumbled over their words before the first trooper finally found his voice again.

"They're a special forces team trained to hunt Jedi."

"Jedi?" TK-274 asks, "Those ancient sorcerers? I was told they were all killed."

"Yes they were," another trooper says dismissively. "Purge Troopers are pointless. People who join them just want to feel important."

"That's not true," the first trooper fired back. "If all the Jedi were gone they wouldn't keep the Purge Troopers around. It would be a waste of resources."

"TK-274 and TK-283!" The Sergeant bellows, "You're up!"

TK-274 turned away from the arguing troopers without another word and made her way confidently to the center of the sparring circle, but her thoughts lingered on the Purge Troopers and the beings called Jedi. Throughout her service, she had heard the word Jedi uttered in mess halls and barracks but it always sounded to her like nothing more than fairytales. That was until the voice spoke to her from the darkness. She became obsessed. She read everything she could about the Jedi, especially about the powers they were rumored to have, and wondered if what she had done in that storage room was remotely the same thing. Unfortunately, she also learned that the Jedi were enemies of the Empire, traitors, and outcasts. What would happen to her if the Empire learned what she had done?

Now, standing in the sparring circle being critiqued by the very troopers whose purpose was to seek out these Jedi, she knew what she had to do. For the first time since the Empire had taken her from her home, she had a goal beyond mere survival. Now her path was clear that when the sergeant gave the order to start the fight she lunged at her opponent with singular intention.

Crack!

TK-283's head hit the floor split second before the rest of him did. The Sergeant called the match while the trooper groaned from the floor then asked for another volunteer. TK-283 dragged himself to his feet and off to the side of the room as the trooper that had earlier criticized the existence of Purge Troopers stepped forward.

Again the Sergeant gave the order to fight and again she closed the distance in an instant. The trooper tried to throw a punch as she sped towards him but she grasped his wrist, pivoted and flipped him over her shoulder, slamming him to the floor just like the other. This continued till she had fought through half of her unit, changing her strategy each time to counter sending all of them to the floor moments after the fight began.

The Sergeant dismissed his unit but ordered TK-274 to remain in the hall. The Purge Troopers advanced as the last of the other troopers disappeared through the far door.

"TK-274," said the Sergeant, "it seems the Purge Trooper Division has taken an interest in you. They have reviewed reports of your combat skills and your battle record and after your performance here today, they would like to offer you a position in the current entering class."

"I accept," answered without hesitation, almost before the question could even be asked.

The two Purge Troopers nod, pleased with her enthusiasm.