Author's Title : “Imperial Tales - Needn't Compassion"
Author: Darth En Ghedi
Origin: Portugal
Language: English
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It was dark and cold in the Imperial Center.
Much like the other nights, anyway. The planet was deprived of warmth a long time ago, when all natural life was replaced by the duracrete and durasteel buildings.
But there was another type of warmth that was also lacking the synthetic streets of this planet, once known as Coruscant, the Warmth of its inhabitants.
The Stormtroopers approached the cloaked figure. Apparently, a middle-aged human crouched on the floor covered with rags in an unequal attempt to fight the cold.
The Imperial couldn’t feel any sort of feeling for the man. “Compassion” was not in the Imperial Procedure Manuals, nor did they learn any kind of humanity in the Academy.
“Stand up, you scum, move!” One of the Stormtroopers kicked the man who responded with a grunt of pain. Another moved his rags away exposing the poorly covered man to the implacable cold.
The man, confused and cold, was crying out some words in a rudimentary Basic “No! No harm, I go!” as he stood up, shaking. That seemed to cause even a greater dose of repugnancy in the Imperial officers. That, or the incredible bad odor the man emanated.
“Go on, stinker! Get to the lower cities, move!”
The upper cities were VIP areas. Much like other planets, the rejected were expelled to the lower levels where not just the sun never reached, pretty much everything else didn’t…
TK332, was one of the Stormtroopers. He disliked city patrols, but it came with the job. Besides it was a lot easier to ticket speeders or arrest “death-stick” smugglers, than fighting rebels. Still, mistreating unfortunates was not a pleasant sight. He decided just that when TK6322 started to hit the man with the back of his blaster. “That enough 22…” The other glanced at the Commander with and stopped hitting the man. TK332 could swear he saw a face of disbelief if it wasn’t for the Stormtrooper’s helmet in 22’s face. He faced the homeless, “move along to the next elevator, sir, loitering is forbidden!” He added.
The man raised with a shout of pain and walked slowly, not just hurt from the stormtroopers hits, but perhaps for the hard times he had been through. There were blood stains all over.
For some reason, TK332 decided to do something. Something made him feel he should help the man… He never bought that story about some “Force”, but still, he felt the urge to make a difference. Besides, he didn’t like to see anyone suffer.
He pointed two officers of his squad “You two! Take this man to the next civilian hospital, then take him to the elevator, make sure he goes down!” The others couldn’t believe the order. “That’s an order, Soldiers!” He shouted.
It took a few seconds when they finally complied and took the man’s arms, fighting the smell not even their masks could filter.
They turned the corner taking the man by his shoulders. There should be a civilian hospital close. It was enough to heal the man and send him down to his certain fate. At least with some more strength to fight the lower cities of Coruscant.
Eventually, just delaying death… better than dying of his wounds…
TK6322 walked back to the commander and chose his words carefully, “Commander, we have specific orders to throw out the trash…” the commander shook his head, it was now his turn to experience disbelief hearing such words.
“I wonder if you were that zealous if you knew one of these people?” The commander faced him.
“Did you know this man?” 22 asked.
“Does it make a difference?” the Commander replied.
“They don’t teach us to have feelings, besides, some of these scumbags carry bombs…”
The Commander couldn’t help but grin at the officer’s arrogance. If humanity would depend on TK6322, then it was pointless. “You’re right, but you can still do your job without the insulting and the pushing. You’ll never gain their respect like that.”
“I don’t think they would respect us, anyway, if we kissed them.” There was sarcasm and arrogance, that only resulted in a tip of insubordination, TK332 couldn’t allow.
“You can kiss my report on your tone, after we get back to the barracks…” The Commander couldn’t help but smile. 22 was a good soldier, often too cocky, but a good man… most of the times.
“I can report you almost embraced that guy and cried. I could almost see the idea of giving him your cloak, building in your opticals…” The other soldiers laughed. 22 was speaking louder now. TK332 couldn’t help but maintain his stiffness.
“Shut it soldier! I mean it! Look at my rank and zip it!” He pointed a finger to his Commander Shoulder Patch, making it loud enough to sound menacing.
The others became quiet. Fun was over.
“Sorry, sir! I just thought we should make an example of these guys to tighten security in the cities, we can never know when the rebels can strike!” He had a point.
“You are right! But let’s not make everyone a suspect and let’s deal with them with rigor but not brutality. This is the Empire! Treating them like garbage will only create more reasons to strike us…” He looked at the others “You’re law and order… not just strength…”
Those words were interrupted with a large explosion from around the corner.
The Stormtroopers ran to the origin of the blast, holding their weapons and taking point by the corner of the street.
Their training kicked in as they moved forth instinctively to clear the street. The smell of the explosives was filling the air. The radios gained life with calls from other squads who were alerted by the explosion.
“This is TK332, we’re at the location!” the Commander said, “It appears this was an explosion caused by the detonation of a small device, by the smell I would say thermal-detonator. I count three wounded, request medevac… “He stopped for a second to ascertain the whole scenario.
He walked carefully to the remains of a speeder, still on fire. “There are some more bodies…” He then stopped to interpret what he was seeing. There were several bodies on the floor by the door of what appeared to be a dignitary’s speeder, perhaps a senator. All bodies were Imperial Black… “Men down!” The commander shouted “We got imperials down, repeat, Imperials down! Looks like a terrorist attack!”
Other squads arrived at the location and established a perimeter.
The situation was the worst possible, there was a terrorist attack on the sector under TK332’s supervision… and there were high dignitaries wounded or killed. This would be long briefing.
The Commander looked down as exalted voices alerted him. At the end of the block, Stormtroopers were blocking a group of men in civilian white with a red cross. Medics. They were screaming to get through the Stormtroopers who were holding their blasters against their chests.
“What seems to be the problem, officer” The Commander shouted from his position to the nearest trooper.
“I am a medic, it’s my duty to help those men…” One of the doctors said, not allowing the Imperial to reply.
How suspiciously convenient, doctors arriving so soon… But then he remembered… The Hospital… His Stormtroopers were taking that homeless there. It was close… it was… around the corner. He suddenly felt a cold wave travel down his spine… Where were they?
“Let them pass!” He ordered the other Stormtroopers. He walked alongside in high pace of the medics and asked “Did you see my men bringing a wounded homeless?”
The doctors looked at him, not knowing if they were surprised with the idea of a Stormtrooper talking to them under these circumstances or for the question itself.
“Of course not! There’s still to come the day when a Stormie brings a homeless to my hospital, what kind of a question is that? If you’ll excuse me, I got a job to do.”
There was another cold feeling. Something was very wrong… “I got a bad feeling about this…”
He connected to his squad frequency, “TK5454, TK2345, report!” There was silence ““TK5454, TK2345, were are you?” More silence “Squad, does anyone have a visual on them?” There was a choir of “negatives”.
Soon, a Tyderium Shuttle arrived with Marines and a medical evacuation crew.
They gathered information on the victims, two Imperial Guards were dead and one Commander and a Senator were wounded, the latter considered critical.
“A political strike! No doubt!” The commander thought. He took some time looking at the medics doing their work, and then picked up the comm again to call his men “TK5454, TK2345, report!”
There was still no reply. He became worried, but perhaps the signal was jammed by all the interference caused by so many units in the area.
“Cap…” TK6322 reported, “I think you should see this…”
The Commander shivered from the officer’s voice. It was soft… and sad…
He pinpointed the communication position using his inbuilt locator and ran to the location.
He met TK6322 and two other squad members by the entrance of an alley. 22 was knelt beside a white volume, the Commander’s visual filters took some time to adapt to the darkness. The 2 seconds it took for the light gain filters to activate, seemed to last forever.
He took his helmet off and was shocked to see the two stormtroopers he had ordered lying on the floor with blaster marks.
He shook his head… “Are they…” he began…
“Dead, Sir!” 22 said. He looked up to the Commander… “That homeless, sir, he…”
A blaster shot hit 22 in his back. The shot came from the shadows in the alley.
22 fell on his stomach while the squad opened fire in total surprise.
The Commander reached down to see 22 still alive, but breathing heavily. “MAN DOWN!” he shouted, he had forgot he didn’t have his helmet on.
The squad was blindly opening fire at the shadows…
TK332 helped the fallen man take his mask off. He regretted pulling rank on him earlier. Such feelings of regret emerged with wrong timing… still he couldn’t help it…
“MEDIC!” he shouted beyond the loud blaster fire.
“Kark! I knew that guy was dirty…" 22 spoke faintly, "well… even more than he looked… or smelled...” He smiled for his last joke…
Suddenly the Commander felt 22’s body relax in his arms… becoming peaceful between all that chaos… he took two fingers to 22’s throat… no pulse…
He looked at 22’s face for the first time since they met… always wearing those standard helmets made the Imperial Stormtroopers faceless… For the first time, 22 had a face… and he was no more than 25 standard years old.
TK332 felt rage…
He rose looking down at his three Stormtroopers’ bodies. Down, by misjudgement... by his stupid compassion... He needed to correct this... even if the men were gone...
“Cap, take cover!” One of the other Stormtroopers shouted.
But the Commander wasn’t listening. TK322 slowly picked up is E-11 blaster and walked slowly into the shadows. Blaster fire surrounded him, ricocheting the walls of the alley. TK332 wasn’t even paying attention to the inherent danger. He felt calm and aimed at his objective.
To anyone, it would be blind shot into the shadows.
To Commander TK322 it was clear, a shape was distinct in the shadows. The man in the shadows crouched for cover… the homeless he had spared. A rebel… in disguise.
He felt the urge to press the trigger. But he continued to walk instead.
The rebel couldn’t believe his sight. A unmasked stormtrooper moving his way in the line of sight, not covering. He aimed… but couldn’t fire. For some reason he felt fear… cold…
He began to shout in his panic, "Step back Imperial, Palpatine will never..."
The Commander picked the man out of his feet, by his throat. Tightening his hand, clenched teeth.
The man was couldn’t breathe, much less talk or scream.
When the rebel finally dropped his blaster, it was over.
“Rebel scum…” The Commander murmured.
The other Stormtroopers approached rapidly, blasters aimed. They were too confused to talk, instead the closest trooper placed his hand on the Commander’s shoulder.
“Cap… it’s alright! We got him… let’s take him in… “
“No soldier… Next thing you know, we’ll be blasted too…”
There was a blaster shot… The rebel’s lifeless body dropped to the floor.
The Commander walked back not looking behind him to the other troopers. He issued another order, “Clear this mess”, he calmly said.
He placed his helmet on and left the alley when a full squad of Marines arrived to secure the alley… “You’re too late, we already got the perpetrator…”
“Who was he?” A marine asked.
“Just another piece of rebel trash… and we took care of it…”
Commander TK332 never experienced compassion anymore… from that day on, war had another meaning… even in the cold streets of the Imperial Center.
Warmth was now truly gone in Coruscant...
