Star Wars - Pax Empirica - Wookiee Annihilation Read online

  The mission began with a briefing. They all begin with a briefing.

  In the grand tradition of Imperial cruisers, the briefing area had gleaming white walls and floors like black mirrors. Two hundred of us clamored into our seats to watch the briefing. We wore uniforms, not armor. We would spend plenty of time in armor, later.

  Captain Janzor switched on the holo display, and a giant planet appeared in the air above him. The crisp image, both solid and translucent depending on how closely you looked, rotated slowly, revealing green continents and clear blue seas that could have been on any of the more than a hundred planets I had visited. One nice thing about serving in the Imperial Navy is that you see the galaxy. Today you are in Yavin, tomorrow it is Hijarna, or the Cyax Stars. This time it was Kashyyyk. I had never heard of the planet before.

  “Grand Moff Tarkin informs me that the cruiser will drop us here.” A yellow dot appeared over one of the green continents on the planet’s surface. “From here, we will march following these coordinates.” As Janzor said this, a trail of white dots flashed to illuminate the path.

  “March, sir?” one of the soldiers sitting near the front of the briefing asked.

  “As you can see, Kashyyyk is covered with dense jungles. War center analysis suggests that we will be safer on foot than traveling in heavy transports on our approach. Our targets live in treetop cities, and transports would be vulnerable to traps.” As Janzor finished this statement, an audible groan spread.

  “Isn’t that why they make AT-AT?” the officer asked.

  “Useless in this foliage. You can’t walk a 50,000-kilogram AT-AT on tree branches.”

  “How about fighter support?” the officer persisted. He began to sound concerned.

  “TIE fighter support would seem sensible,” Janzor said in a tired voice. There was a collective sigh of relief. “Unfortunately, the jungle is too dense for fighters. TIE pilots would be so bogged down circling around trees that they would be easy targets. Reports suggest that the target area is too overgrown for scouts on speeders.”

  The holo changed to show the image of a tall, two-legged creature covered by thick golden-brown fur from head to foot. It had a wide mouth and small black eyes. “Depending how big this thing is, I might give one to my little nephew for a pet,” I whispered to Milo Strander, a soldier I’d met when I joined up three years ago.

  “This is a Wookiee,” Janzor said, “the dominant species of Kashyyyk and the reason we get to visit the planet.”

  Strander raised his hand.

  “What is it soldier?” Captain Janzor asked.

  “How big are they?” Strander called back.

  “Excellent question, Corporal.” Janzor paused for a moment. “This is its actual size,” he said stepping up beside the image. It looked to be about one and one-half times his size.

  “So, Dower, you hate your nephew?” Strander asked.

  “Stuffed,” I said. “I meant after I had it stuffed.”

  The holographic image reached a hairy arm behind its head and pulled a bowcaster over its shoulder. It held the weapon properly, cradling the heavy shaft over one arm. “The Wookiees’ weapon of choice is the bowcaster. Scouting reports suggest they make good marksmen.”

  “They look pretty stupid,” someone yelled out.

  Janzor stopped to smile.

  “I’ve heard about Wookiees,” someone else said. “From what I hear, they can’t even say their own names.”

  “No, I don’t suppose they can pronounce their names,” Janzor said. The holographic Wookiee shook its head with angry movements and made a loud, whiny growling noise. “This is the full extent of their speech. Doesn’t sound like much, but it appears that they communicate with each other.

  “They have certain primitive capabilities. They can be trained to pilot a transport or a space barge. Word around Navy Command is that some Neimoidian trader crashed on Kashyyyk while transporting a herd of banthas. When the Trade Federation ran across his homing beacon a hundred years later, they found a new species: Wookiees.”

  “He’s joking, right?” I asked Strander. “He’s joking isn’t he?”

  Strander turned and glared at me, giving me one of those “shut up, idiot” stares. Come to think of it, the mouth and the fur on the image did remind me somewhat of a bantha. I looked at Strander and said, “That’s just not right.”

  On the way back to our quarters, Strander and I stopped by Trooper’s Canteen—a cruiser bar made especially for elite forces. Strander was the new generation of soldier—a genetic clone, not that he believed it. Part of his genetic programming made him overlook the fact that 40 percent of all stormtroopers had his exact same face, hair, and voice.

  Most clones also had the same build as Strander, something that gave me great comfort. Corporal Milo Strander has a square chest, thick shoulders, and sinewy arms. If he grabbed your arm and pulled you, his fingers left distinct bruises in your flesh.

  The curious thing about cloned soldiers was that while the Empire created them all alike, they invented their own personalities as soon as they came out of the tube. Some became lazy and fat, some became machines of destruction and distinguished themselves in battle. No GeNode, the street name for genetically enhanced soldiers, ever retired from service.

  “Those Wookiees sound like brutes,” I said, as we walked into the bar.

  “Wouldn’t want to go toe-to-toe with one,” Strander agreed. “Good thing we’ve got blasters.”

  We went to a small table at the back of the bar. Stormtrooper bars, like the service itself, are sparse, tight, and efficient. Retinal readers scan your eyes as you enter, cataloging your visits and keeping records of what you drink and how much. So do the waiter droids that tend bar during daylight hours. The human bartenders who serve drinks at night are more forgiving. For a few dozen credits, they slip you cheap Coruscant whiskey and report that you drank only beer.

  Some soldiers showed up at the bar earlier than we did after the briefing. Captain Janzor sat with three sergeants who had recently joined our platoon. I had never spoken with the new sergeants, but I knew their kind. They would fear nothing and no one, give absolute and unquestioning obedience to superior officers, and run us foot soldiers into the ground. They came from the first generation of genetic Marines—tough, dutiful, cruel, and stupid. They felt no pain and had no regrets.

  They did not mix well with Janzor. As they spoke, he stared at them intently, angrily, seemingly ready to leave his chair. He leaned forward and waved his hands in short, excited motions as he spoke; but he also used hushed tones so that no one could hear. Apparently the sergeants had a secret, one that they shared with Janzor. From the look of things, Janzor did not like what they had to say.

  “Look at those GeNodes, Wayson,” Strander whispered. “I’d kill myself if I were a clone.”

  “How you going to do it?” I asked.

  Strander laughed. “You keep saying that. I wouldn’t joke about that if I were you.”

  That was another thing about clones—they were genetically programmed to believe they were real people. Strander could sit at a table with five other Stranders, all identical in every way, and never notice that he was one of them. In fact, he was also programmed to be too polite to discuss cloning to other clones of his issue. “Smart programming,” I thought. “Nothing beats it.”

  “Think they know they are clones?” I asked.

  “How can they not know they are clones?” Strander asked. “They look exactly alike.”

  “Yeah, imagine that.” Strander did not look like the sergeants. They came from an older, long-discontinued batch, a more vicious group. They had grea
sy black hair and cruel faces. Strander had thick blonde hair and deep blue eyes. So did the six soldiers sitting at the table next to us. “So what if you did have to fight one?”

  “A cloned soldier? No problem,” Strander said. “They’re not so tough.”

  “How about a Wookiee?” I asked. The waiter droid came and we ordered beer.

  “That’s another story.” The droid came back with our drinks. “This isn’t sport; this is war. They may be tall and strong, but blasters are a great equalizer. Wookiees are not bolt proof.” Strander dropped his voice to a nearly inaudible hiss. “Besides, I’ve got this.”

  Strander sat with his hands resting palms down on the table. He rolled his right hand over, revealing a silver disk with fine red lines bisecting it. The circuitry etchings under the lines showed like blurs in the dim light of the bar.

  “A hand bolt!” I said in amazement.

  “A what?” Strander asked in a jovial voice, just in case anybody heard me. He leaned forward. “Wayson, keep your voice down.”

  “That’s a Vollusk hand bolt,” I repeated.

  “Is it? The smuggler who sold it to me said it is was an inflatable Star Destroyer.”

  “Strander! You can get two years in the brig if you’re caught with those things,” I said.

  “And it would certainly serve me right,” Strander took a deep breath. “Naughty, naughty me.” He looked me right in the eye and smiled, but his voice became hard. “What do you think we are, Imperial Boy Scouts? If one of those hairy beasts gets its claws around you, it’ll pull your head off, helmet and all.”

  “But they’re not safe,” I argued. And I was right. Vollusk hand bolts were mini blasters that had a nasty reputation for overheating and blowing up after one or two shots. Smugglers used them as a last resort when captured, and that kept the technology alive. Petty criminals and gang leaders used hand bolts because they were small and cheap. They were a big commodity with Hutts, but the Senate banned them and violators faced fines and imprisonment.

  “You’d rather wrestle with a Wookiee?” Strander asked.

  “Got any more of those?” I replied when I considered his alternatives.

  “Thought you might feel that way. It just so happens I have a few extras, and you might even talk me into sharing with you at the right price …say, 300 credits.”

  “Hey! Hand bolts sell for 100 credits on the black market.” I’d considered buying one for insurance purposes on more than one occasion. That was the interesting thing about cloned soldiers—they may look alike, but they each had unique personalities. Milo Strander had the personality of a street urchin, a genuine Jawa in a stormtrooper’s uniform.

  As the transport took us toward Kashyyyk, I noticed something that should have caught my eye earlier. All of the foot soldiers selected for this mission came from the same batch as Strander. I was the only exception. Our little invasion force included three scouts. They came from a different cloning issue, one with wiry builds and small bones. Speeder jockeys with muscular physiques tended to weigh down their bikes.

  We sat on benches in the brightly lit transport. Though a few dedicated souls had already donned their helmets, most of us wore only our body armor and sat with our helmets on the floor by our seats. Some men inspected their blasters and organized the inventory in their belts. I sat with Strander in the back of the ship. As we whispered back and forth, my attention kept straying toward the crates of supplies for our mission. One crate of rations sat in a corner. Apparently, someone expected this mission to go very quickly. Platoons our size generally ate through a full crate of rations per day.

  Janzor’s three sergeants paced through the transport cabin pausing only to glare at talkative soldiers. They moved with the grace of predatory animals, taking long strides and looking side to side fiercely. “You, Dower,” one of them snapped through the speaker in his helmet.

  “Sir?” I said, saluting, then standing at attention.

  “Helmet on, trooper.”

  “Sir,” I said. I reached down and placed the helmet over my head. The moment it fit into place, the readout appeared in the goggles, identifying the sergeant as First Sergeant Oswald Strepp. Computers in our helmets recognized soldiers by their uniforms and identified them in our goggles.

  “Are you reading me clearly?” Strepp asked.

  “Yes, sir!” I answered. I could hear his voice clearly through my helmet, more clearly than before I put it on. Sensors in my helmet singled out the transport’s engine noise and filtered it out as an unimportant interference.

  A bright red ring began glowing around my goggles. “What status have I signaled, trooper?” Strepp asked.

  “Alert status, sir.” During combat, sergeants and officers signaled different alert statuses by illuminating these lights in our goggles. Red rings meant high alert. Yellow meant caution.

  “That will be all,” Sergeant Strepp said. He spun around sharply and moved toward his next surprise inspection.

  I breathed a sigh of relief as he left. Strepp and his ilk would ride you all mission long for a single mistake. A malfunctioning helmet could result in a week of guard duty. I did not even want to know what I might get for accidentally discharging my blaster. I pulled off my helmet and felt the rush of warm cabin air. “He seems friendlier than usual,” I mumbled to Strander. I glanced quickly to make sure my helmet was turned off. Sergeants and officers could monitor communications made through helmets. I’d known more than a few soldiers who said foolish things and got caught by eavesdropping officers.

  “You see that food over there?” Strander asked. “There’s only one crate. Nobody told me that this was a day trip.”

  The way Janzor explained the mission in our briefing, we had to enter a drop zone, move north across a pre-set path destroying any communications arrays we passed, then secure a site. Missions like this took a few days, maybe a week. “I know what you mean,” I said, as I sat down. “I thought we were Wookiee herding. Looks like there is a change of plans.”

  “You, Dower,” a sergeant stepped toward me.

  “Sir?” I said, as I stood and saluted again.

  “Helmet on, trooper.”

  “Sir,” I still had my helmet under my left arm from the last inspection. When I placed it over my head, I saw that this was First Sergeant Tak Bazierre.

  “Are you reading me clearly?” Bazierre asked.

  “Yes, sir!”

  The red rings began to glow again. “What status have I signaled, trooper?” Bazierre asked.

  “Alert status, sir.”

  He turned and left without a word.

  “What are they, half droid?” I asked as I sat down.

  I started to put my helmet on the floor, but Strander stopped me. “Better hold on to it,” he said, nodding to the right. I looked. The third sergeant headed in my direction. “You, Dower,” he said.

  But just at that moment, Captain Janzor stepped into the cabin. Like most of us, he preferred the stuffy-aired freedom of the cabin to the cooled comfort of wearing his helmet. His normally calm face looked pale. His eyes darted around the cabin, inspecting each soldier for only a moment. Then the sergeants saw him. “Attention,” one of the sergeants yelled, and we all snapped to our feet.

  “We are approaching Kashyyyk,” Janzor said. “I do not expect this mission to be much of a challenge. You are the Emperor’s elite troops. The enemy in this campaign is under-armed and unintelligent. We will catch them by surprise and overwhelm them with our tactical superiority. Do you understand?”

  “Sir, yes sir!” we yelled in perfect unison.

  “I will tolerate no questioning of orders on this mission. Do you understand?”

  “Sir, yes sir!”

  “We will be surrounded by superior numbers. You must make no mistakes in the performance of your duties. One mistake can result in the failure of our mission and the annihilation of this platoon. Do you understand me?”

  “Sir, yes sir!”

  The steady rumble of pist
ons echoed through the cabin, and the door of the transport slid open slowly. A few kilometers below us, I could see the thick plumage of trees, a solid layer of it that likely stretched well past the horizon. We slowly dropped through a clear blue sky with only a few wispy clouds. I quietly sucked in the cool air pouring in through the open door and watched a flock of birds scurrying along the blanket of trees beneath us.

  Then I saw him, the first Wookiee. He clung to smaller branches and peered up at us, apparently thinking we would not see him. Before I could react, the transport’s sensor array spotted the creature and fired three thick bolts from a front cannon. The first shot undoubtedly eliminated the Wookiee, and the second and third bolts left a small fire in the top of the trees.

  “Ahh,” Janzor smiled. “Our first introduction to the locals. Splendid.”

  We dropped until we were parallel with the spot where I’d seen the Wookiee, and our transport carefully crushed its way through layers of thin branches. I’d never seen such trees. The leaves alone must have weighed a full kilo. Thick vines ringed trunks and branches. The air rang with the sounds of unseen insects as we dropped lower into the canopy.

  A fully loaded transport weighs as much as an AT-AT. I’ve seen small buildings crushed under the weight of a transport. The branches of these trees, however, did not give. As we sank into a break in the trees, the transport smashed into smaller branches and fumbled. I felt the quaking through my armored boots. Then we hit a limb. I inspected that branch later. It was about as thick as my arm; but it absorbed the weight of our ship, then flexed back, causing the transport to roll to its side. Most of us fell to the floor and grabbed a bench to hold on. One of the sergeants was too close to the door and fell out. I saw him grabbing at the ledge to save himself, but our gloves were designed for protection, not grip. He clawed at the floor, and his helmet spun wildly as he disappeared through the hatch. A moment later, the transport righted itself.

  “Pilot report!” Janzor yelled into his communicator.

  “The trees are too thick,” a voice called back. “I cannot break through the branches. This is as low as I can get, sir.”