- Joined
- Aug 9, 2010
- Messages
- 4,536
- Reaction score
- 48
There can be no light without dark. There can be no good without evil. There can be no peace without first war.
I've been in this game a long time. Too long, probably. I was a trooper before the coup, a separatist after. I've fought in just about every major campaign of the early war, and somehow I've always ended up on the wrong side. I was there for the fall of Bastion to those Sith bastards, I was there when Jak Denton sacrificed his Star Destroyer, in vain, to save us. Most of us were killed, the rest of us captured. Imperial Prisons were never fun before the war. We don't talk about how they were after. The crushing defeat after crushing defeat burned most men's will. They gave up, faded into unaffiliated space, turned traitor and found their fate at a rapid end at the hands of their new sith handlers. Some became mercenaries, some became enforcers. Somehow, by some stroke of luck, or perhaps misfortune, I was imprisoned. At the hands of the terrifying treatment by the Sith, my resolve strengthened. Fear turned to anger, anger to hatred. The spark of defiance in my eye at the crack of the whip turned to open faced rebellion when the moment came. And when the moment came, something was awakened in me, a power that had lain dormant within me for my entire life.
It wasn't a rescue mission that freed me, but instead a faulty navcomputer. I was to be transported from one prison to another with ten prisoners and a skeleton crew of guards. We weren't high priority prisoners, me being the most dangerous among them purely because of my defiance. We were mostly deserters, turncoats and the like. No body special. No leaders or heroes. No political prisoners. And, in the end, that would be my savior.
The navcomputer, who's original course was from a Forward Operating Base that our prison camp was located at, to the Imperial Detention Center on Bastion, put us several meters off course. While at first that seems like a minute problem, it was magnified ten thousand fold by every kilometer we traveled through space, until when we exited hyperspace we found ourselves in the midst of an asteroid field. Immediately, we caught a glancing blow by a smaller space rock, sending us careening into another larger rock. Shields went down, alarm klaxons screamed. The pilots scrambled to get us righted, when a final blow knocked out our hyperdrive. Even as the pilots managed to get us set down on a larger asteroid, we all knew we were doomed. The limited rations on the small freighter, which itself was being sent back for a refit, wouldn't last us long.
The ten of us were left to rot in our cells, given quarter rations as the ship's leadership tried, in vain, to figure out what to do. Hours turned to days. Days to weeks. Power regularly fluctuated as the engineers attempted to keep us alive. After the first few days it was decided that we would attempt to limp to the nearest system. A daunting task that would take several months at the very least. It was an insane plan, especially since our long range communications had also been disabled in the exit from hyperspace.
In the engineers infinite wisdom, to conserve power it was decided that we were among lowest priority. While they were smart enough to keep the power to our cells containment mechanisms on, they turned just about everything off. Including the cameras and microphones. It took us awhile to figure this out, several weeks into our voyage across space. Yet we still discovered this, and when we did. We struck hard.
It was a simple, blunt plan with little thought for long term escape plans or direction. With little observation over us save for a single guard, we were pretty free to move about, argue, yell and scream at each other. When a fight broke out between two of us, a wookie trying to strangle a Twi'lek between the bars, our friendly neighborhood guard moved into break it up (Wisely choosing to pull the Twi'lek back in his own cell rather than going toe to toe with the Wookie.
He fell for it, hook line and sinker. As he rested the Twi'lek from behind, pulling him hard, the Twi'lek pushed him against the opposite set of bars, and I moved in, clamping arms around his neck and squeezing the life from him as the aforementioned Twi'lek turned and began viciously and brutally stabbing him with a shiv. It was over in seconds, my arms crushing his wind pipe, and the Twi'lek stabbing him wherever he could. Blood poured onto the floor and finally he stopped moving.
With ourselves freed, we attempted to formulate a plan. We didn't, deciding to strike at the engineering room. That was also simple, as the engineers were far from front line soldiers, and most of us had been at one point or another. We seized the room, killing them and locking it down. We were lightly armed, but now we had hold of the heart of the ship. We could bend them to our will. Or, so we thought.
I won't go into details. Mistakes were made. I won't deny it. What ended up happening is that we irreversibly cut the power to the ship, and we basically fought each other to death. I think overall there were only three survivors. Total. Myself included. I don't know what happened to the others, as they were far from my mind as I strapped myself into an escape pod, ladden with as much food as I could find (Not much) as life support quickly failed around the ship. I didn't have a clue of where I was going, nor how I would get there. I just knew I was still alive as the freighter drifted, dead.
And I laid there, in that small pod, for weeks. Many men probably would have given up, or gone insane. I know I came close. But that hatred for the Sith, and my loyalty to the fallen emperor were what kept me alive. A spark of rebellion. And when rescue finally came, I seized the opportunity as my second chance at life. I dedicated myself to driving out the Sith, to restoring the Empire.
Now, I realize I had long followed blindly, with little regards to my personal choices and freedoms. I had no goal or aim. I had no ambition or drive. I was a soldier. A filler character in this great story of the galaxy. But when I was rescued from that pod, it all fell into place. And that is when I found myself, my own power that had been hidden deep within me awoken.
The Force guides us, but we must sometimes find it within ourselves to bend to its will.
