[Flashback LTC] The Cracks are Exposed

For many years, the Empire had been constantly fighting to remain in control. Without the Galactic Senate, many systems seemed to balk at the idea of a single, powerful figurehead of the Empire regardless of whether the dissolving of the Imperial Senate had been for show in all but name. The warlords of the Rebellions hadn’t cared. War was what they brought upon themselves and the galaxy. Since the Empire’s very formation the so-called Alliance had wreaked mass havoc across the Empire and, as a consequence, the galaxy. To many in the Empire, outright war with the Rebellion was inevitable. A war that could potentially have widespread impacts for the Galaxy as a whole.

When a public and outright war finally broke out over the data vault at Scarif, this sentiment was indeed on full display. The years of pseudo-warfare and guerilla strikes finally came to a head. While a technical loss for the Empire, the Rebellion lost vast amounts of key tacticians and warships. In a broader sense, the Empire could afford to lose the resources it did; the Rebellion could not. All except one little data disc. Captain Gaston Terrel, being a numbers and data guy at heart, knew full well the importance of the data, both the one stolen and the multiple destroyed at Scarif. Indeed, he had seen the reports come into his Coruscant office building of the structural data of the Empire’s feared station falling into Rebel hands and into a battle that concluded with two small proton torpedoes. After an attack by around thirty ships, the station was gone. With it, any hopes of a short war with the Alliance.

The response was slow to organize, but a heavy hand nonetheless. The rebel forces on Yavin IV, though many had already evacuated, still put up a worthy fight against the superior training of the Imperial Soldiers. The ones left behind bought valuable time for their comrades evading the dreaded Imperial Starfleet led by Lord Vader himself.

Terrel landed on the planet in the fourth wave, the cleanup wave. As he walked amongst the smoldering and still-glowing ruins of temples, he couldn’t help but find himself admiring the structure and security this base had once provided for the Alliance. He was proud of how quickly the Stormtroopers, primed for Urban warfare, had broken the Rebel defenses. But Terrel wasn’t here to fight rebels with a blaster. Instead, he and four other soldiers were tasked with identifying any possible data source and cargo, determining its value to the Empire, and preparing it for transports back to the fleet that had stayed behind instead of forming Vader’s Death Squadron.

It was while Terrel was ordering some munitions to be brought to the staging area that he wondered what it would be like to fight an enemy from the shadows, starships striking from a hidden base against a superior enemy. Captain Gaston Terrel looked around at his fellow officers, the Stormtroopers, and the Navy technicians slicing the data and hoped he would never have to experience such desperate tactics for himself…

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