Chapter 14: The Battle of Tatooine

Luke, Han, and the rest of their party spent the night with the Tusken tribe whom they had first rallied to help them repel the First Order from Tatooine. As the Tusken Raiders were so reclusive and rarely allowed outsiders to share their company, Luke and his friends set up a small camp a few yards away from the main Tusken encampment. They spent the next few hours of the night catching up together and discussing the recent assignments they had undertaken before the First Order's assaults in the Outer Rim. Luke was impressed by the amount of discipline Han had shown on his diplomatic mission to Ghorman as he had always pegged Han for being quick-fisted and foolhardy and having nothing easier to do than fight his way out of his troubles, but that didn't stop him from commending his old friend on having gained the skills necessary to be reasonable with others in the galaxy.

The group slept soundly and when morning came, they followed the Tusken Raiders across the wastes of Tatooine toward the First Order's bunker base until they reached a small ledge overlooking the plain. From their hiding place a hundred yards away, they could see that stormtroopers were patrolling the grounds more frequently than yesterday and there were officers conversing outdoors, potentially on the events that resulted in other Tusken tribes in the region joining Luke and his friends on their quest.

"If the First Order knows we've been helping the Tusken Raiders retake their land, it's likely they'll expect an attack on this base," said Leia. "We might be in over our heads this time."

Han gave Leia a confident look and replied, "Well, we've been through the same sticky mess before and we've come through it. Besides, you're a Jedi and Luke's a Jedi Master. This shouldn't be too difficult."

Luke said to his friend, "Careful, Han. Remember that overconfidence is the shadow of recklessness, and recklessness scarcely earns merit."

Then one of the Tusken Raiders spoke to C-3PO, and when Luke asked what the Tusken had told him, the protocol droid answered, "He says that the cliff over the base is unprotected and should serve as a suitable area from which we can strike at the invaders."

…

A short time later, Luke and his friends were looking down at the First Order's bunker from the cliff. As the Tuskens had told them, it was relatively unprotected as the First Order had clearly not expected an attack from the clifftop. It was surprisingly steep and one wrong step could lead to a potentially debilitating injury. For the next few minutes, the group debated how best to initiate their surprise attack, and then Luke and his friends moved across the cliffside with most of their Tusken company behind them.

At the foot of the cliff, stormtroopers patrolling from the roof of the bunker were startled and confused to see what looked like a lone droid on the clifftop causing an incessant racket with joyfully frantic calls for aid. Its calls were discernible despite the height of the cliff, for the irksome machine seemed to say, "Up here! Help! Please help!"

The stormtroopers and technicians paused in their activities to behold this disturbance and several of the First Order agents took it in with amusement. Then one of the officers took charge of the situation and ordered a handful of stormtroopers, "Bring that machine down here!"

The stormtroopers extended grappling lines from their belts and scaled the cliff within only a minute. At the top, they found that the trespasser was a droid; a protocol droid by its humanoid design and lack of aggression, and it was accompanied by an astromech droid who had the dignity to remain hidden while his companion had caused the disturbance.

In an instant, C-3PO and R2-D2 were cornered with the drop of the cliff on one side and twelve stormtroopers ready to reduce them to scrap at the slightest movement in resistance. The commander of the squad barked, "Stay where you are!"

"We surrender!" C-3PO pleaded to the armor-clad man.

The stormtroopers did not sheath their weapons, but they did not fire. These droids would be suitable for work at the bunker once they had been reprogrammed, they thought. But before the troopers could start bringing the droids down to their base below, one of them felt a surprisingly soft hand on his shoulder and turned about to see who had touched him.

The trooper was on the ground in seconds with his helmet shattered and fragments of bone, metal, and plastoid littering the sand, and a Tusken Raider stood over the fallen soldier with his gaffi stick raised to strike any other stormtrooper who tried to attack him. Suddenly, several more Tusken Raiders seemingly erupted from the sand and rushed at the aggressors with scratchy, inhuman roars, and even though some troopers managed to fell a few of them, the Raiders threw them into disarray and began bludgeoning them fiercely. They had been itching to fight these invaders who had killed so many of their fellow tribesmen, enslaved even more of them, and ran their fellow tribes off of their land and away from their sacred wells.

Then as C-3PO and R2-D2 stood back, hundreds of other Tusken Raiders crested the cliff and ran around the edge to the sandy slopes around the sides of the valley. In an instant, the First Order agents were thrown into chaos as the Raiders rushed upon them and began to beat every stormtrooper they saw within an inch of their lives. The stormtroopers attempted to rally together and fight back, but they soon found themselves outmatched when Luke and Leia entered the fray with Han and Chewbacca behind them.

Most of the stormtroopers felt their courage slip away when Luke bounded into the air with his lightsaber in hand. Most of them had not believed that the Jedi were still thriving in the galaxy and as they knew of Luke Skywalker and how it was said he had defeated their former Emperor, they were certain that their doom was upon them.

Luke deflected laserbolts with supreme accuracy while leaping over other shots. As he landed, Luke cleaved the blasters of the stormtroopers and swiftly cut down each trooper that faced him with ease. Guided by the peaceful energies emitted by the light side of the Force and fueled by his determination to end the First Order's threat to the New Republic, Luke sent more stormtroopers flying across the battlefield with a raise of his left hand. He also lifted speeder bikes with the Force and threw them at the stormtroopers, and soon hundreds of stormtroopers were injured or dead and the rest began running for their lives.

Across from where Luke was fighting, Leia was dealing with another squad of stormtroopers and faring remarkably well despite her brief time of training. She twisted and somersaulted out of the troopers' range of fire and cut down every stormtrooper in her way while deflecting blaster bolts back at the ones who had fired. She used the Force to disarm other stormtroopers and also kicked out at any who didn't fire on her fast enough. Leia's lightsaber shredded the blasters of her stormtrooper opponents to ribbons of molten metal and she swatted the First Order troops aside like a pack of pesky sandwasps.

Chewbacca fired his bowcaster at dozens of probe droids and blew most of them apart while handfuls of Tusken Raiders attacked the rest. Then the Wookiee turned his attention to the stormtroopers and he attacked with a rage that was terrifying to look at. He tossed several troopers aside, slammed other troopers into their comrades, and fired his bowcaster at others. In a few minutes, over fifty stormtroopers lay dead and others were too weak to fight back, and then Chewbacca ran to help Han.

When the two regrouped, Han said to his friend, "Chewie, that bunker has roof turrets! We need to get to them fast!"

Chewbacca hadn't noticed this detail before and he bellowed an agreement before racing to the bunker with Han. The two blasted stormtroopers out of the way while attempting to dodge the fiery hail of blaster bolts, and a few of their Tusken Raider companions followed their lead. The bunker door sealed shut, but the First Order agents were unaware that taking the bunker wasn't what Han had in mind. He and Chewbacca scaled the bunker's side using grappling hooks taken from the belts of downed stormtroopers and then helped the Tusken Raiders up with them.

"Artoo, we need you on the bunker roof immediately!" Han shouted urgently into his comlink. Then he and Chewbacca set to work sealing the roof exits so no First Order agents could stop them. Little did they know that the First Order's reinforcements were entering the Tatooine system at that moment.

...

The First Order fleet commanded by Grand Moff Gideon emerged from hyperspace and took position over the northern hemisphere of Tatooine. Aboard the Devastator, the warlord looked out of the bridge viewports like a great, omnipotent god preparing to bring an unspeakable wrath upon this miserable planet. As he stood waiting for a report, General Ekron approached him and said, "All ships are in geosynchronous orbit over Tatooine now, my lord."

"Are our soldiers prepared for the ground assault?" asked Moff Gideon.

"Yes, sir. All troops await your command," replied the general.

"And the Dark Troopers?"

"Armed and ready for combat, sir."

"Good. Begin landing our troops."

As General Ekron went to issue the command, one of the bridge controllers caught Moff Gideon's attention. "Sir, we have unidentified contacts emerging from hyperspace in Sector 9."

Moff Gideon ordered the fleet to turn around while keeping their position over Tatooine, and then they saw what was headed their way. A fleet of New Republic vessels composed of twenty Star Defenders, three squads of ten Mon Cal cruisers, and two squads of twenty CR-90 Corvette ships were on the attack approach. Not wasting a moment, Moff Gideon ordered the bridge controllers, "Scramble all crews and get the pilots to their fighters. We cannot let the Republic scum send aid to their lap dogs at this delicate state in our plans."

The bridge controllers immediately ordered the preparation of all TIE fighters for combat as the New Republic vessels closed in. But now as the battle for Tatooine was nearing a grim stalemate, the battle to capture the Supreme Leader was taking quite a different route.

A/N: How was Chapter 14 for you, my readers? Feel free to let me know in a review if you like. On a quick side note, the New Republic fleet that comes to Tatooine are the reinforcements Luke told Ahsoka to message before she took the first fleet to Nevarro in Chapter 8.

Chapter 15 won't be too long in appearing, so keep enjoying reading and Happy Valentine's Day.