Star Wars Fan Fic

[Jedi_Monk]

I've spent most of the evening rewriting this thing that I wrote way back in 1997. I'd like to know how you think it turned out? I'm also open to suggestions in terms of how I should title it.

 

Casey Vadis lay in the dark. Her steel sleeping pallet had degraded her back to a knot of pain, which she welcomed. It kept her awake; it kept the dreams at bay.

 

She was young, no more than fifteen, and she had been taken from her home. It had been a simple colonists' life that she had led on Brygone with her parents and brother, but it had been her life. She longed for nothing more than to be back there; in the back of her mind, she still retained the impossible hope that this was the dream--the nightmare--and that she would awaken in her own bed to the succulent scent of one of her mother's famous home-cooked breakfasts.

 

She needed only to shift slightly for the stab in her back to remind her that all of that was gone, taken away. She hadn't even seen her family since the Stormtroopers came. She didn't even know whether or not they were alive--her heart seized, and a sob was released into the darkness. And she was forced, every day, to work endless hours in the Empire's Black-Stem mines. Forced to work for the very people who had destroyed her life.

 

She rolled over on the hard surface, and felt the tears roll at a horizontal angle across her face. Her face and coveralls were covered with grime and soil from the mines, and in her brown hair were clots of dirt. Her eyes were brown and wreathed in red from lack of sleep.

 

A sharp buzzing caught her attention. It was the kind of sound that made your brain crawl.

 

The stun-cuffs on her wrists and ankles activated as she sat up on the side of her bed and prevented her from stretching the kinks out of her back. The door to her cell slid open, and Casey stepped out onto a slim meshed-metal catwalk, lined with hundreds of cells identical to her own. Beyond a rickety guardrail that would have been breached by a large man tripping onto it, was an almost bottomless crevice hung with level upon level of catwalks just like the one on which she now stood. Above her, the feet of prisoners on the next level rang. Huge fans built into the ceiling fed purified air into the prison from the filtering complex, and filled the drab, jury-rigged building with a steady, churning thump, thump, thump…

 

With nowhere else to go, nothing else to do, she let the tide of prisoners carry her toward the turbolift. She didn't speak, and nobody stopped to say a word to her. Why waste energy with words? Why give the Stormtroopers an excuse to correct you?

 

The turbolift arrived, was filled with a group of fifteen, and left--again, and again and again until she stepped into one and was born down with fourteen other captives and three Stormtrooper escorts. The lift dropped through the levels of the prison--the first time, Casey had counted: one hundred twenty-two identical levels were swept by in flashes of light and shadow.

 

Then, they were past, and replaced by a vissage of rough-hewn rock. Soon, all light from the outside was depleted, and the Stormtroopers ignited glowrods. The air at this depth became gradually more damp, and colder. The chill was one that penetrated the skin, twisted the muscle and bit at the bone.

 

The lift stopped with a jolt, and the mesh doors opened. "Out!" one of the Stormtroopers ordered, his voice anonymous behind the grimacing white helmet, and prodded the prisoner closest to him with the butt of his rifle. Casey walked out into the dimly lit tunnel; the cavern was already filled with people digging with low-powered cutting-lasers. Portable lamps were set up at intervals along the tunnel, illuminating the workforce.

 

Casey was given a cutting laser by a distribution officer positioned near the lift, and walked past the other captives to where the Black-Stem veins were still rich. She brushed her hand against the jagged wall of the cavern as she walked, feeling for the protruding veins of Black-Stem. Ahead of her, more miners were operating a pulverizing machine. The pistons of the machine were pumping, breaking up the stone and opening up new areas for excavation.

 

Casey's fingers ran across the trace of Black-Stem; she looked down and saw a series of long black strands embedded in the wall that extended past her vision. She drew up her cutting laser and started to carefully cut away the stone around the vein. Almost indestructible when purified, even her weak cutting laser could snap it in its natural state. She knew what the penalty was for that.

 

The screaming reminded her…

 

* * *

Casey was once again in her cell, stretched out on her pallet, and she was losing a battle. Her eyes could no longer stay open. She had failed--she was falling asleep. Her eyes slowly closed against her will, and she was consumed by the infinite darkness of her dreams…

 

* * *

She was walking down the wide streets of the Brygone colony, passing the court of town square. She was returning to her home after a long and fulfilling days work apprenticing at the colony's com-center, and the yellow-blue sun was sinking into the distant horizon.

 

She looked up at the stars beginning to appear; there were more than she was usually able to see at this time of dusk. Many more. She stopped, fascinated as the sky became peppered with small comets. She smiled inwardly at the falling stars, blissfully unaware of what they signified. Let Lieutenant Schel fall for me, she wished upon the stars, remembering the attractive young navy-man who was one of the Republic officials in city hall.

 

Something was wrong. The comets weren't dissipating in the atmosphere. She thought that she could hear them shrieking as the hurtled toward the colony. She started to run.

 

A flaming bolt struck city hall and the building exploded. The sound hit her and nearly drove her to the ground. Pieces of shrapnel flew through the air.

 

She ran, not turning back. A piece of shrapnel hit Casey in the back causing her to trip and see stars, but she recovered, empowered by pure fear.

 

Blood poured down the back of her neck, staining her hair. The onslaught continued, first annihilating the Republic presence, the official buildings that surrounded the town square. Buildings erupted all around her.

 

New shapes were beginning to appear in the sky, spiraling down from space.

 

She ran for her home, seeking the comfort and reassurance that only her parents could give.

 

The Imperial transport settled on the ground with the burst of repulsors. The craft's entry ramp lowered and released over a squad of Stormtroopers, their blasters drawn, the black metal standing out in stark contrast to their white armor. One of them saw Casey fleeing the scene and pointed her out to the rest of his squad. They aimed, and fired bolts of deadly red fire at the young woman. She screamed and covered her head as dust and dirt blew into hot gas around her.

 

She ran and the Stormtroopers pursued.

 

Her house was a brown domed residence, much of the living space underground like the homesteads on Tatooine. She pushed the control pad on the side of the door and it opened and entered. She closed her eyes and slumped against the door, tears streaming down her face, her breaths coming in shuddering gasps between wrenching sobs.

 

She heard the Stormtroopers outside: "--Get the door open!" She willed them to go away, to leave her alone. Why go through all the trouble to get one crying little girl? But a jet of flame sliced though the door and began cutting it from its hinges. She got to her feet and had to steady herself with a hand against the wall to keep from falling again. She was light-headed and didn't know why; blood from her scalp wound was soaking through the back of her shirt.

 

She stumbled to the small kitchen.

 

And screamed.

 

Her brother and parents were laying in heaps on the floor, and huddling over them were five Stormtroopers. One rose from his crouch slowly, and he seemed to tower over her. He raised his blaster, squeezed the trigger and an arch of blue light passed over her body and--Casey shot up in bed, sweat sparkling on her forehead. She looked around; she was still in the Imperial prison complex.

 

Casey sighed and raised a hand to tentatively touch the scar forming under her hair on the back of her head. She leaned back, pulled her legs up against her chest and cried…

 

* * *

Looking out the viewport of the Oppressor, Krakus Izan could feel as though he were already lord of the galaxy. He could forget the uniform gray interior of the Super Star Destroyer, and imagine himself out there among his fleet, an indistructable god, patron of the resurgent Empire.

 

The Imperial territories had been dwindling for decades, and had stabilized with only a handful of systems after that quisling, Gilad Pellaeon, had surrendered to the Republic. But the loss of all of those words no longer mattered to Krakus, because dominating his field of vision, clear-cut, strip-mined, its indigenous life wiped out and its waters siphoned, the planet Horrain revolved in space like a giant scar.

 

The Black-Stem flowed from Horrain. An element found nowhere else, indestructible when purified.

 

Diminutive transports flitted back and forth between the planet and a depot station secured in orbit, dropping off their precious cargo then returning for the next shipment. Containers docked with the depot in an unbroken parade while ASP worker droids worked within to fill them with the raw Black-Stem. Star Destroyers stood by to escort the full containers to a purification and installation base in the depths of the Wild Space.

 

And aboard the Oppressor, the warlord Krakus' withered lips curled into a dark smile.

 

"Sir?" Ensign Ridge said from behind Krakus. Krakus lowered his gray eyes from the scene and turned his attention to Ridge as the young man handed him a datapad. Ridge's youth was the inverse of Krakus' age, but both wore the Imperial uniform with an arrogant pride.

 

Krakus examined the pad, a report of the output of Black-Stem from Horrain. He sneered. "Output down fifty-two per-cent," he said in disgust. "Have my shuttle prepared for immediate departure." Krakus turned on his heels and marched down the bridge's promenade, his heavy footsteps reverberating metallically. He stepped aboard the turbolift, and said to Ridge just before the doors snapped shut, "Perhaps I can find new ways to motivate them."

 

As the door closed, Ridge looked back to the fleet that circled like predators around the planet, his brow glistening with sweat.

 

* * *

The Lambda Shuttle flew low over the surface of Horrain, weaving between the immense mining drills, prisons, security posts and filtering complexes that rose high over the sick brown soul and into the heavy black smoke that belched forth from towering stacks.

 

At the raised center of the great courtyard of Horrain, Warlord Krakus' shuttle landed. Its two escorting TIE fighters remained in the air, their ion engines screeching as they circled the prisoners assembled around the rise to witness the warlord's declaration.

 

With the sinister hiss and dramatic exhalation of pressurized gasses, the boarding ramp descended.

 

Six Stormtroopers were the first to emerge from the shuttle, walking with military precision down the incline in two rows, then taking up positions on either side at the bottom. Krakus was the last to step out of the darkness of the shuttle's interior.

 

As Krakus surveyed the hoards of people standing at ground level around the rise, one of the Stormtroopers came forward and handed him a small phono-disk, then stepped back in line. Krakus raised the disk to his lips, "I have read the recent reports of your progress. I am disappointed. The Empire has always believed that to get results from its laborers, they must be properly… motivated."

 

Casey felt as though her blood had frozen at Krakus' words, and she shrank back into the shadow of the person standing in front of her. "Until the Black-Stem production is back to its full capacity, I will randomly choose one of you a day to be an example," said Krakus, smiling wickedly. "Starting now."

 

Krakus made a vague gesture to the Stormtroopers, and two of them rushed from the rise and penetrated the crowd, pushing through the panicked mob as they worked their way toward their victim.

 

"No! No!" a man's voice screamed as the troopers dragged him back to the rise, his body thrashing in the soldiers' unyielding grip. The Stormtroopers hurled the man onto his hands and knees before Krakus. "Please!" he cried, yet Krakus looked upon him with no mercy.

 

Another Stormtrooper strode from behind Krakus and lifted the man to his feet, positioning him so that all could see whom providence had chosen to be the first sacrifice to the Warlord of the Empire. "Nathan?" Casey whispered, hardly daring to believe what she was seeing. It was her older brother, Nathan! He had survived the attack on Brygone, the brutality of the Mines--but now fate had betrayed him.

 

The Stormtrooper pushed him back to his knees, shaking and moaning piteously as he shut his eyes and waited. "Behold the wrath of an unpleased Empire!" Krakus pulled his hold-out blaster from the polished holster at his hip, leveled it at the back of Nathan's head--Casey averted her eyes before she could see the inevitable. She heard it, though: the blasterbolt discharging, the thud of dead weight hitting the floor. Both were exaggerated as though they were the only sounds in the galaxy.

 

Casey looked up, and the tears could not extinguish the fire in her eyes. Her eyes skimmed over her brother's body and the pool of blood accumulating around it, and she looked straight at Warlord Krakus. And vowed vengeance…

 

~Fin

 

[Darth Slayne]

Once again I feel that I must say "well done." I like the open ended posibilities you have left with your story. Will Casey finally exact her revenge? Or will she simply make the attempt, only to become the empires next form of motivation? But of course, only you know the answers to those questions. Also, I notice from the last story you posted here, that you seem to have a flare for dark endings. This is of course not an asumption, but I personaly enjoy the odd tale with a dark ending.

 

One word of critism (no offence is implied) about a certain comment in your work: "Perhaps I can find new ways to motivate them."--------- When I read that I automatically thought of Vader. Perhaps you could have said somthing to the effect of: "Motivation appears to be an issue with them. An issue that needs to be resolved." But that's just my opinion and you need not take it to heart; after all, I'm no english teacher and I've had my fair share of critic-wanna-be types.

 

Anyhow, keep up the good work.