Jastol saw the signs of a Rebel ambush two seconds too late, probably the result of lacking sleep, and only cried out once blaster fire illuminated his helmet's polarized lenses, too late for his squad's point man, who dropped instantly, and also too late for the two troopers bringing up the rear. Jastol hadn't known the point man, a replacement, but he'd served for just over a year with the other two. Their screams were quickly drowned out by the long burst of a repeating blaster which tore into his squad from their right.

He took cover automatically. Six months on Trantor had drilled that much into him. He let the repeating blaster finish its burst before popping up to return fire.

Jastol could tell immediately that they were done for. The Rebels had them boxed in from two sides, a cleanly executed ambush, and they had at least two sharpshooters positioned in a tall building that overlooked Jastol's cover, one of the few buildings still standing in what was left of Trantor City. Once the Rebels had started making their way into the city limits, Imperial artillery hadn't hesitated in turning city blocks into rubble.

He fired his blaster carbine out of habit more than anything. The rebels had clear fire superiority, and Jastol's squad was clearly too outgunned to overcome that.

Static erupted through his helmet's comlink. His sergeant's voice came through in spotty breaks, "We're… -ed he…Fa… back!"

Jastol ducked down behind cover and smacked the side of his helmet twice. Suddenly, his sergeant's voice became clear, "Break contact and fall back! Repeat. Break contact and fall back. Let's get out of here!"

Two troopers, replacements both, leapt up from cover to make a run for it. The Rebel sharpshooters zeroed in on them immediately. Both troopers took blaster bolts to the back and went down.

Jastol swore. There were only five members of his squad left, including him. He peaked out from cover to see a Rebel fireteam bounding forward.

"Rebs are closing in from the right," he reported on his comlink. He sent a few blaster bolts their way to discourage their advance before ducking down again.

His sergeant's voice came through again, "We're making a run for it. Give me-"

A sudden burst of static cut him off. Jastol looked over to see he'd been shot through his helmet by one of the sharpshooters.

Two other troopers, both men who Jastol had gone through training with, took to their feet at once, trying to follow their sergeant's last order. Jastol tried to scream at them to get down, but it was too late.

The repeating blaster opened up with another long burst and both men were torn apart.

That left Jastol and one other. A replacement. Jastol hadn't bothered to learn his name yet; replacements on Trantor didn't tend to last long enough for things like that.

"TK-7992, you there?" Jastol called over his comlink. He could see the other trooper huddled behind a ruined speeder a dozen meters to his right.

The rebel fireteam was getting bolder. Jastol fired a succession of quick shots in their general direction and managed to score a hit on one. That sent them scattering into cover.

"I-I'm here, sir!" a boy's voice came through his comlink. He sounded terrified and jittery.

"We need something to cover our exit." Jastol looked out from his cover for just a moment and was greeted by a long burst from the repeating blaster which forced him back down.

"Y-yes sir!"

"Don't call me sir; I work for a living," Jastol snapped out of habit more than anything. He checked his kit for grenades. Really it wasn't the time for hazing.

The kid at least gave a nervous chuckle over the comm. A fresh burst of blaster fire abruptly cut off his laughter.

Jastol glanced over to make sure the kid hadn't been hit. He was fine, so Jastol said, "I'm out of smokers. You have anything?"

The kid responded by holding up two smoke grenades. He had a fresh kit, of course. Meanwhile veterans like Jastol hadn't been resupplied properly in weeks.

He tossed one of the smoke grenades to Jastol. Then they both threw them over their cover. A cloud of smoke formed in seconds.

Jastol could hear the rebels shouting as their fireteam got closer.

He looked over and asked over his comlink, "What's your name, kid?"

"Han," the kid said. "Han Terrik."

"Well, Han, we're going to make a run for that building over there. The one missing its right wall. You see it?"

Han nodded vigorously. "Got it!"

"On my mark. Ready?"

"Ready."

"Mark!"

Jastol sprinted with all the energy he could muster. He didn't have much sleep in him, but adrenaline kept him going. He rushed down what had once been a wide alleyway, in between two ruined apartment blocks, toward the building missing its right wall. To his left, Han vaulted over a collapsed durasteel beam and rushed through the rubble of a diner.

The cloud of smoke behind them didn't rise very high, and the sharpshooters in the tall building regained sight of them just as they were three quarters of the way to their destination.

A blaster bolt scorched the ground just to Jastol's right. He kept running, resisting the urge to look over his shoulder. Another bolt struck a pile of rubble that had once been someone's home.

Suddenly the building missing its right wall was almost right in front of them, and both Jastol and Han converged on the doorway. Jastol made it in first with Han just behind.

A blaster bolt flashed behind him, and Han screamed.

He collapsed onto his stomach in the doorway. Another blaster bolt blew out a chunk from the door frame, sending dust through the air. Jastol took his arms with both hands and dragged him into the building, out of sight of the sharpshooters.

"Where is it?" Jastol demanded. He hauled Han against a wall and rifled through his utility belt for a bacta patch.

"L-Leg," Han managed through pain. "M-my left thigh, I think." He pulled off his helmet, revealing buzzed blonde hair and a very young face. There were tears in his eyes. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get hit. It just got me, and then I couldn't stand, and I thought I was gone. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to…"

Jastol found the scorch mark on Han's armor and pulled off his thigh plate. The plastoid armor had done its job and dispersed the force over a wider area, but the bolt had still penetrated at its center. It wasn't lethal, fortunately.

"I-I should've done better," Han continued sniffling. "I'm so sorry. I messed up. I…I…"

Jastol plastered a bacta patch over the wound liberally. A medic would do a better job if they could find one, but this would at least keep it from getting worse.

Han was still in tears, so Jastol put a hand on his shoulder. "Hey, hey! You're ok!" Jastol removed his own helmet, revealing his dirty, ragged mop of brown hair. He looked Han in the eye. "Everything's fine, kid. We'll get back to our lines, and you'll get on a ship home. Maybe you'll get a medal to go with it. But right now we need to move before the rebs close in on us. Can you walk?"

Han shook his head. "M-Maybe with some help?" he suggested.

"Good enough," Jastol said. He handed Han his helmet and put his own back on before standing. He collected their blaster carbines and put one in Han's belt holster.

With a grunt, Jastol pulled Han onto his feet. The kid was heavier than he'd expected. He got his shoulder under Han's left arm to support his wounded leg.

"Comfortable?" Jastol asked.

"Y-Yes, sir."

"I told you," Jastol said. "I work for a living."

"Heh," Han murmured under his helmet.

They made their way out of the buildings together. It was quiet now, relatively at least. The ever present sounds of distant artillery and blaster fire were still there. Trantor City had been under siege for four months now, and it was little more than rubble in most places. Imperial forces had been fighting tooth and nail against the Rebels for control of Trantor ever since the Emperor's death at Endor. Every meter was taken or lost with blood.

Noon was about an hour away. Jastol had a rough understanding of where he was, enough to know what direction the Imperial lines were. He'd been on this planet long enough for that.

He'd landed on Trantor six months ago fresh off of an easy campaign in the Mid Rim. At first, they'd been told the regular Imperial Army needed help against local guerrillas, hence the arrival of stormtroopers like Jastol. Within a month, however, Rebel Alliance ships started sneaking through the blockade, and those local guerrillas transformed themselves into a conventional army with greater numbers and firepower than the Imperials had. The Empire had gone on the defensive, and a series of Rebel offensives had driven them back from the outskirts and into Trantor City itself.

Things had gotten pretty desperate since then. Supply shipments were irregular, and most of the veterans had been replaced by fresh troopers, still shiny from training. The local Imperial governor had formed a militia, ostensibly to supplement the regular army. But so far as Jastol had seen, the militia mostly just committed atrocities against civilian dissenters.

Jastol and Han passed the collapsed hulk of a skyscraper, which was fortunately empty, and rested for an hour in the shadow of its ruin. Some local wildlife was scavenging corpses nearby, but other than that they were undisturbed.

Some time after noon, they continued on their way forward. The ruins of Trantor City were curiously empty. Somewhere to their distant right, a firefight was raging on, but Jastol and Han kept their distance.

It took half an hour for them to reach the Imperial lines. This was a section of the line Jastol had never been to, and it was manned by men and women in civilian clothing. They had constructed a series of barricades linking whatever buildings were still intact. He assumed they had to be Imperials, because otherwise Jastol had been going in the completely wrong direction. Militia probably.

Han and him spent fifteen long minutes watching them from the cover of a ruined apartment block to make sure they weren't Rebels regardless. They had Imperial weapons which didn't necessarily mean they weren't Rebels, but the Rebels on Trantor had a plentiful supply of non-Imperial weapons to draw from, smuggled in by blockade runners or locally produced. Besides, logic told him that any force so well dug in had to be Imperial. The Rebels were on the offensive, and they didn't spend as much time entrenching their positions. But then again…

Something made a noise from behind Jastol and Han, and both of them immediately froze. It sounded like footsteps.

"Hands in the air! Drop your blasters!" a woman suddenly shouted from behind. More noise. Men and women entering the building. They had a motley collection of blasters and slugthrowers pointed at the two of them.

He took a long breath. Guess those are Rebels after all.

Jastol and Han were still crouched in the ruins. Han looked at Jastol, and he nodded. Both of them dropped their blasters to the ground and raised their hands.

The woman who'd shouted approached them with three others. She poked the muzzle of her blaster against Jastol's backplate. "On your feet, deserters," she sneered.

Deserters? Jastol wondered, but he got to his feet anyway. They took their blaster carbines before the woman pointed her blaster at Han.

"You deaf? I said on your feet," she spat.

"I-I…" Han stuttered.

"He's wounded," Jastol spoke for him.

"That so?" the woman asked. "You can't walk?"

"Yes, ma'am," Han said quickly.

"Useless coward," she snorted. In one action, she put her blaster to Han's head and killed him. The blaster bolt went clean through his helmet, and Han went limp instantly.

Jastol turned on the woman, fury coursing through him, but the woman put her blaster against Jastol's chest and snarled, "Just give me a reason."

He could see her intensity. Her enjoyment in killing.

He forced himself to take a step back. He tried not to look at Han's body on the ground. Blood was seeping out from the helmet.

Just another replacement, he tried to convince himself. Just another replacement.

"Rana, you karking idiot," a man's voice suddenly said. Someone from the back, a man dressed in civilian clothes like the rest but with an Imperial Army officer's cap on his head, pushed through the others. "We can't just shoot 'em out here. We've got to bring them back to a magistrate before we do that."

"You're a real killjoy, you know that?" the woman named Rana sighed.

The man with the cap rolled his eyes and turned. "You, trooper. What unit?"

"TK-884. Trooper Jastol Thorne," Jastol answered as he'd been taught.

"You stupid?" The man hissed. He removed Jastol's helmet and tossed it aside. "I asked what unit," he said, almost pressed against Jastol's face.

The man's breath stank. And his Trantor accent was so thick, Jastol could barely make out what he was saying. Ah, ahxed hwat oonit, was what the man had actually said.

Jastol exhaled sharply. "The Yavin Code requires that prisoners of war-"

The man hit him with the stock of his blaster carbine. It made his head whirl which, combined with a severe lack of sleep, made him want to vomit.

They killed Han.

Jastol was pretty certain that he was next.

"You ain't a prisoner of war, deserter. Just a traitor looking to run," the man said.

Jastol spat blood onto the ground. "Kriffing reb," he choked out.

Rana hit him with the back of her hand. "Now you can kark right off, trooper. We're loyal to the Empire, unlike filthy deserters like you. We're only ones keeping this planet in line while you regs kark each other in your barracks."

Suddenly things started to make sense. These weren't Rebels as Jastol had assumed. He had made it to Imperial lines. But they were militia.

Irregulars, terrorists, paramilitaries, insurgents. These ones didn't even have armbands as regulation required. Ill-trained and over zealous. Worse than the regular Imperial Army, and that was saying something.

"What's your name and rank," Jastol spat. He glared at the man with the cap.

"I'll ask the questions here," the man said. Ah'll ahxe duh queshuns 'ere.

"I am a trooper in the Stormtrooper Corps," Jastol sneered, putting every ounce of disdain he had into his words. "You will tell me your name and rank, so that I can report on this disgraceful behavior."

"Like hell you will," Rana said. She hit him again, this time with the butt of her blaster, and Jastol felt himself fade in and out of consciousness. "You're a deserter, and we'll see you shot before the day's done."

The man with the cap smiled. "Let's just get him to the magistrate. That'll teach him."

He gave a nod, and two militiamen took Jastol by the arms.

Despite his best efforts, Jastol thought about Han the entire way from where the militia had killed him to their 'magistrate'. It took maybe twenty minutes, but eventually he was unceremoniously dumped onto the durasteel floor of what had probably once been a factory building. It was big, and there was a lot of ruined machinery everywhere. Jastol lay in misery for a bit, head still swimming from the blows he'd taken, lack of sleep, and the shock of Han's death. At first, he waited for someone to shoot him. But it quickly became apparent that wasn't going to happen anytime soon, and he looked up to take in his surroundings.

There was a volley of gunfire. Not blasterfire, but the deafening sound of slugthrowers being shot followed by the acrid smell of their propellant.

"Next! LS-887! Dash Halcorr!"

Dash Halcorr was a stormtrooper stripped of his armor, wearing nothing but his undersuit. He'd been wounded or beaten, and he limped when he walked. Despite that, he had more dignity than Jastol would've managed. He approached with his chin high.

"This tribunal is not-"

"Dash Halcorr, you are a deserter from the Imperial Army. Stormtrooper Corps it looks like. As a deserter in a system under siege, you have no rights. Do you have anything to say to this court?"

Halcorr growled, "I fought for this rock of a planet for six months. Six kriffing months! We've lost, and shooting us isn't going to change that. If the Rebels want your planet so much, they can have it."

"Guilty," the magistrate said. "Firing squad, do your duty."

Another volley of gunfire went off.

"Next! MB-612! Kandri Avan!"

By the time Jastol managed to sit himself up, Kandri Avan had been shot.

A man in Imperial Army fatigues knelt by him and offered a cup of water. Jastol drank gratefully then rubbed his face with both hands.

"What the hell is going on?" he managed to grunt.

The man with the cup shrugged. "This planet's lost. The militias disagree. They think we're all deserters and want us shot for not dying to the last man."

Jastol's head was still swimming from the blows he'd taken, but he heard the first part clearly. "The planet's lost?" he asked.

"Yep. A Rebel fleet arrived last night and broke the blockade. The Navy didn't even bother fighting; they just ran. Now we've got no supply line, and it's only a matter of time before we have to surrender. Word is that the space port's garrison already did. You didn't hear?"

"My squad went on patrol early this morning," he said. "Guess word hadn't trickled down to us."

The man refilled his cup from a canteen and gave it to Jastol. He drank it down in one gulp. He hadn't even known he'd been so thirsty.

"Next! IA-4974! Gil Berand!"

Gil Berand was an Imperial Army trooper still wearing his armor. He got on his knees before the magistrate and begged for mercy. The magistrate found him guilty anyways, and the firing squad shot him before he could break down any further.

"Next! MB-932! Mina Rastee!"

"How'd your patrol go?" the man asked.

"We got ambushed, and only two of us made it out," Jastol said. He thought of Han for a moment before pushing that out of his mind. "Only one of us made it out," he corrected, but his words were drowned out by another volley from the slugthrowers.

Again the acrid smell of their propellant hit Jastol's nose. Blasters didn't smell anything like it. The smell was like a warning of their rapidly approaching demise.

"It's not fair!" a young woman in Army fatigues was shouting. "I'm a conscript! I had a life! But I got sent here to fight for your damned planet, and now you're going to shoot me? It's not-"

Another volley.

Jastol felt the dizziness he'd been feeling start to dissipate. His head ached, but he managed to get to his feet without too much trouble.

The scene around him was surreal. Several hundred men and women had been penned into the factory building. The smell of death and human excrement was overlaid with the reek of slugthrower rounds. Fear was in the air, and most soldiers had a curious mixture of terror, exhaustion, and acceptance on their faces. Men and women stood in groups, talking, drinking or eating whatever they had on them, and smoking death sticks. Every time a name was called, the victim would square their shoulders, walk to the magistrate, and inevitably be sent to the firing squad. Some would break down and plead or beg, but they were met with the same fate. Most died with indifference, the side effect of long held trauma that many soldiers on Trantor had.

An hour passed, and fifty 'deserters' were shot.

The corpses were dragged away by other soldiers and dumped outside. Jastol watched long enough to figure out that helping remove the bodies didn't make it any easier to escape.

He shared some rations with a collection of men and women from various branches of the Imperial Military. As he listened to them tell their stories, he began to consider an endgame. Was he really going to just wait to get shot? As far as he could tell, escape was borderline impossible. At least it seemed like they were recording their executions. Maybe then someone would notify the Stormtrooper Corps of his death, and his family would know what happened to him. If he made a run for it and was shot down, there was a high chance they'd never find out.

Did he really care? He'd become a stormtrooper to get away from his family. Maybe a mad dash was worth it.

"It happened all of a sudden," a woman in a black flight suit explained. "The Rebel fleet jumped in all at once with more Rebel ships than I'd ever seen all together. Admiral Berik didn't even wait to pull in the starfighter wings; he just jumped right out of the system. I was out on a patrol and got left behind. I had to crash my TIE in the city to avoid their X-wings, but as soon as I bailed out, a squad of kriffing militia found me and started calling me a deserter."

The slugthrowers sounded off another volley.

A lieutenant in Navy fatigues just shook his head. "Can't say I blame Berik. What's there even left worth fighting for? The Emperor's dead," he said. Then he shook his head again and asserted, "The Empire's dead with him."

His words drew glances, even from men condemned to death.

One of the Imperial Army troopers, a man with captain's markings on his uniform, made a face. "Dead?" He spat at the lieutenant's feet. "Dead? Kriff that. The Empire's still going, and a few losses doesn't change that."

Silently, Jastol agreed with the lieutenant. The Empire was falling apart, and he wasn't entirely certain there was any central authority giving orders anymore. At another level, however, Jastol was wondering how a Navy lieutenant had ended up on Trantor. He didn't look like a crashed pilot, and the Imperial Navy generally left ground work to the Imperial Army.

The Navy lieutenant just shrugged. "The Empire can't even hold the Core anymore," he said. "You know the New Republic's blockaded Coruscant?"

"'New Republic'? You even sound like a Rebel!" the Army captain snarled. "Imperial Center will hold out. Admiral Sloane is preparing a counterattack."

"Sure she is," the lieutenant said. He shrugged again, indicating to the captain he didn't believe a word.

"Kriff yourself," the captain hissed.

The lieutenant managed an amused look. He shrugged a third time.

Again, Jastol wondered what he was doing planetside.

The captain looked to be on the verge of murder, but then the slugthrowers went off again.

"Next! ISB-197! Hugh Tane!"

No one came forward. Jastol had actually done some thinking about doing something similar. The militia who'd brought him in had returned to their section of the line, so he doubted anyone here would recognize him. But his guess was that they'd find a reason to shoot him anyway.

"Hugh Tane!" the magistrate called again.

"Maybe you already shot him," someone called back.

The magistrate glared at the man who'd spoken and pulled a blaster pistol from his belt. He fired into the crowd half a dozen times and killed the man along with three others who'd had the misfortune of standing near him.

"That one was probably Hugh Tane," he told the militiaman noting down all the 'trials' on a datapad. "And once we run through all the names, we'll just shoot anyone still karkin' around, ain't that right?"

Some of the people he'd shot weren't quite dead. They screamed from the ground.

"Oh get 'em to stop that damned ruckus," the magistrate complained.

Two militiamen walked forward into the crowd. They shot the screaming people from point blank with their slugthrowers. The kinetic projectiles made quite a mess.

"Anyone else wanna mess with this?" one of them laughed, gesturing with his slugthrower. "Karkin' Rebel sympathizers."

"Rebels?!" someone shouted from the crowd.

"Rebels!" the militiaman shouted back. He jutted his slugthrower forward. "You deserters are all rebs on the inside! I've got-"

A man with a medic patch on his shoulder went for the slugthrower. It didn't look like much of a plan. Just someone who had an opportunity. He managed to get two hands on the militiaman's slugthrower.

In an instant, every person in the factory realized that they had absolutely nothing to lose by going for the magistrate and his militiamen.

The medic managed to wrestle away the slugthrower, and he shot the militiaman's jaw out with it. He put a long burst into the firing squad, but then the magistrate's guards blew him apart with their blasters and started firing into the men and women leading the charge forward. The other militiaman in the crowd dumped his magazine into the people around him, but he got swarmed anyway. Someone else picked up the slugthrower and then one of the magistrate's guards got overrun and beaten to death by desperate hands.

Jastol had taken cover behind a derelict forge when he heard the magistrate's panicked voice shout, "Kark it! Just kill them all!"

In that moment, Jastol decided to die fighting.

The leaders of the first charge had been flayed by blaster fire, but when the magistrate shouted to kill them all, a second charge materialized, and this time Jastol was in it. He went forward, and two of the women next to him went down screaming. The militiamen fired at them indiscriminately. But the distance they needed to cross wasn't that great, and Jastol tackled one of the militiamen with his whole body.

He pounded the man with both fists. His plastoid-covered knuckles smashed the man's face into a bloody pulp. Then he found the man's blaster.

A grenade of some kind went off and killed dozens. Jastol got his blaster on target and killed the magistrate with two shots to his torso. The crowd surged forward again and overwhelmed the remaining guards.

Another grenade went off as the last guard activated it in his dying moments. This one was a thermal detonator, and it incinerated half of the crowd in a sudden flash.

The sound of chaotic movement was instantly replaced by wounded men and women moaning in pain.

Jastol breathed in hard. He checked himself, but he was untouched aside from the ringing in his ears and the flash burned into his retinas.

He staggered back onto his feet. Jastol was a little surprised by how many people were still alive. Many had scattered when the shooting started, and they came out from behind various pieces of old machinery and rusted storage containers. Several started providing care to the wounded.

The lieutenant in Navy fatigues emerged from behind a bent wall panel. He looked around at the corpses intermixed with the wounded, and blinked. "What the hell do we do now?" he asked.

No one else seemed inclined to answer, so Jastol gave a shrug and suggested, "Surrender to the Rebels?"

The lieutenant considered it for a moment and then nodded. "Planet's lost anyway. I'll bet most units are surrendering right now."

"Yeah," Jastol sighed. "The militia apparently aren't, though." He thought of Han again. A senseless death in a pointless battle for a meaningless cause. "I doubt we'll be able to get past the militia with all these wounded."

"Probably true," the lieutenant agreed. "But since the planet's lost, we could probably just wait for the Rebels to come on through. The militia won't last long alone."

Jastol looked around at the factory. Some of the medics had begun organizing the wounded into rows while others removed corpses. It wasn't the worst place to stay. All the walls were intact, and the roof only had a few holes in it.

"You think we can hold out here?"

"Seems simplest," the lieutenant said. "You think the New Republic will treat us well?"

"It can't be worse than the militia," Jastol replied.

"Fair enough." The lieutenant stuck out his hand and said, "Stantin."

"Jastol," he returned. "Mind telling me how a Navy boy like you ended up planetside?"

Stantin gave a grunt and then grinned. "Well, I'm a deserter."

Jastol took a moment to process that. "You're shitting me."

Stantin shook his head. "I was on Berik's flagship before he jumped out of here. Took an escape pod hoping to get free and got rounded up by the militia."

"Well, you're a lucky bastard," Jastol said, rubbing his brow.

Stantin nodded. His grin turned into a smile. "Aren't we all."

Jastol nodded back and felt the fatigue of everything that had happened hit him at once as the adrenaline began to wear off. "It's been a hard day," he sighed.

"At least it's over now."

"At least it's over," Jastol repeated. And he smiled.

This story was inspired by real events in the closing days of WW2 as recounted in an interview with a former German soldier I watched years ago and have been since unable to find.

Again, much like "Imperial Mutiny", this was an idea I couldn't get away from. I know many of my regular readers have been waiting for a new chapter to Deo Gratias Anglia, but to be completely honest I've decided to take a break from the Gate fandom for some time. Some things involving toxicity within the community have killed my interest in writing for it at least for now, and I'm starting to disfavor writing fanfiction about a piece of media with such obvious jingoistic nationalism at its core. I don't know how long it'll take to rekindle that interest, if it ever happens.

Anyway, that means I might be publishing more stuff for Star Wars. Or maybe some other fandoms. We'll see.