As the Stormtrooper clad Gregory Sands walked toward the air pad to locate the pilots for the bases wing of fighters and bombers. To eliminate any air cover the imperials would have here at the largest populated island in the southern hemisphere on the planet Lothal. Something unexpected happened as Alarm started to blare and over the helmet radio reports of the barracks filled with dead troopers were discovered.

With no other plans Greg checked the timer on the arrival of the droid assault force as he joins a force of troopers heading to the closest wall to reinforce the perimeter

06:31…06:30

Seeing the time Greg starts to slow his pace letting the last three troopers behind him pass by as he takes up the rear of the squad. I can hold my own for four minutes he thinks as he levels the blaster at first of the nine troopers backs thumbing the power selector to full he squeezes the trigger.

PTTtteeeeww

The first trooper goes down a flaming hole in his back between the shoulders. As the other troopers start to turn, raising their weapons, realizing that he is not one of them. However Greg's is already raised and ready and four fast accurate blasts follow the first.

PTTtteeeeww PTTtteeeeww PTTtteeeeww PTTtteeeeww

Greg's last shot throws a trooper backwards and pinning another to the ground as he turns to the two last troopers on their feet, they both raise their hands dropping their blasters

"Hold on we're Rebels Don't shoot." one says

Holding my blaster steady on them "sure and im the tooth fairy" I reply "How am I supposed to believe that?"

"I don't know what the tooth fairy is but…."The two looked at each other before the other, who turned out to be a woman, said "ask us something only rebels would know."

Thinking about it while keeping a close watch on the time 5:30 I ask. "Fine I suppose, how about fulcrum? Do you know her name?"

They took a step back and even with their helmets on you could tell they were surprised "yes we know her name but it's a closely guarded secret Kriff even the fact that it's a woman is a secret in the cell we work for."

Nodding "so the fact that her name is Asoka Tano would be even a bigger secret right?" The casual use of her name shocked them even more.

Looking at both of them and nodding again, "Ok then I'll trust you." lowering my blaster as their shoulders slumped in relief but jumped as Greg finished off the last imperial who had finally fried his arm and pulled a pistol from the body on top of him. "And how many more of you rebels are in this base you should know that the barracks full of off duty troopers are dead."

They seemed shocked that before answering "only eleven of us and we all work on the afternoon shift so we're ok in that regard."

Secretly glad he hadn't attacked in the morning when these people would have been asleep Greg informed them "listen in about four minutes this place is going to get a hell of a lot more interesting so is there a way you can signal your people to remove their helmets? Otherwise my snipers will kill them just like every other imperial in this base"

As they made the open air broadcast that only their cell members would understand the code phrase used Greg typed out updated orders for his droids

New Intel uncovered friendlies present, only target troopers still wearing their helmets.

All troops with removed helmets will be designated friendly.

Just as before it only took a moment before the reply came in

Helmeted troops will be designated as enemies

unhelmeted friendlies

roger roger

4:00

Grabbing another blaster from a dead Stormtrooper Greg instructed the others to do the same. Since these blasters are nothing more than beefed up pistols might as well double our firepower. Heading toward the wall where we could better even the numbers.

As they reach the wall Greg does a quick head count six….nine….fourteen….fifteen…wait fourteen one of the troopers had removed his helmet. Fourteen more to kill from behind easy the first two don't have a clue as they died before even hearing the blast that killed them. Followed quickly by four more as Greg fired again and the rebels fired once. They each take a blast before the first pair had even hit the ground.

They quickly took cover joined a second later the rebel who had removed his helmet as he had gunned down the closest trooper on his way over to them. As they huddled behind a slab of steel that had been rigged up as additional protection along the wall as the eight survivors on this wall finally returned fire after realizing that we weren't part of them. Greg is kind of stunned as he sees a small storm of red bolts flying overhead or to either side but very few actually hitting his cover. Using one blaster he fires randomly over the right side of the slab as he sees the storm of bolts over the top and left almost disappear and the ones on the right redouble. Greg jumps up and aims one at a time and fires three times downing two more troopers.

six left 2:45

According to the plan the two snipers should be in position two minutes before the others, finally pulling his helmet off. The predefined way to distinguish himself, and now any friendlies to the droid snipers so they don't shoot them by accident.

2:10 (POV switch to Echo4)

The two sniper droids of echo had arrived at the cliff face one standard minute earlier than estimated showing an over compensation of approximately 11% well within acceptable tolerances. Using the extra time the droids had dissected the base into sectors and targeted all imperial troops that still had their helmet on.

Looking through the slightly obsolete but still powerful scope of its masters DC-15, as one of its billions of mechanical brothers produced to fight the republic now renamed Echo3 readies its more modern imperial issue sniper.

It only took seventeen seconds looking through the scope to notice the intense firefight between the master and three unhelmeted troopers and seven ... .the master stood and fired his two blasters downing an imperial trooper.. Six Stormtroopers.

"Focus on sector 154-1 the master and friendlies are engaged, I will target that sector you cover the advance." Echo4 said to 3

"Roger" replied the droid

Zooming in the scope to max Echo4 sees a trooper pull a thermal detonator and as he prepares to throw the explosive 4 pulls the trigger sending a powerful blue bolt through his back watching as the primed detonator falls from the lifeless hands and rolls to the feet of two others before exploding.

3 fires a pair of red bolts burning down the two imperials at the gate before firing again and destroying the gate controls leaving them locked open. It watched through the scope as the other eighteen droids ran up the road leading into the base burning down any trooper that they saw wearing a helmet.

The remaining mop up took only fifteen minutes when the last Stormtrooper who was found by Brovo1 hiding in the latrines was gunned down.

(POV switch back to Greg)

Looking at the commander of the rebel cell "I only did this to get enough credits to outright buy a ship from the broken horn. I know it was your job to grab what you could for your cell so I'll give you fifteen minutes and give you three of the troop transports to grab what you can before I call in for the syndicate to strip this place."

The commander nodded and each of the eleven men and women ran off as he sent the command to end the citadel function on the motor pool. The time fly's by as Greg watches them load half a dozen barrels of fuel onto a transport. Load another with blasters from the armory and the physical hard drives from the headquarters complex into the third. Waving their goodbyes they sped into the distance sighing. Greg pulled out the flare gun, aimed it into the sky and pulled the trigger.

Less than ten minutes later a swarm of freighters descended onto the base like a flock of birds. From the army of droids and people Greg saw they must have called in every member of their organization. Only a few minutes later as he was reviewing the logs from the droids combat systems an achingly familiar warbling.

Greg looked up just in time to see a LAAT coming towards his group. As the doors open the only one inside is Cikzoo. As she waves him and the droids aboard her pad beeps looking at it as the doors shut and we take off.

"Excellent work Greg." she started looking at her pad she began to read off the biggest prizes of my raids including this one; fourteen TIE fighter's, eight TIE bombers, two Lamba shuttles, five ATAT walkers, forty five ATSTs, forty troop transports, and over two hundred speeder bikes." she looked up at me "and that's just the vehicles, almost a thousand blasters of various kinds." Greg nodded as he felt the gunship start to descend looking out of the slits in the bay doors he could see a small farmhouse and dwarfing it in an empty field was a ship easily ten times the size of the gunship as my breath caught recognizing the angular and boxy ship.

Cikzoo chuckled "yes there she is, she was once known as the Warstar. Though she is now yours and you can keep or change the name."