Trooper

A New Mission

The Empire is always full of surprises.

It's only been a few hours since watching what I've since discovered is named 'The Death Star' completely destroy an entire world. Yet now I'm strapped into a seat on a shuttle making it's descent to that same battle station. I haven't yet processed how I feel about the fact that our army can now erase an entire planet from existence with a single shot. I mean in many ways it should make my job easier since we Stormtroopers are often the first volley in any ground attack. Yet I also feel a level of fear at this newly-discovered capability. I suppose that's the point, create a weapon so powerful, so fearful, that nobody in the galaxy would ever consider going against the Empire for sake of its wrath.

******

Walking down the ramp into the landing bay felt eerily familiar, like what I'm used to on a Star Destroyer, only at a much more massive scale. There are easily twice or more ships docked here as I'm used to seeing.

My squad mates are completely unfazed as they move down the landing platform. I suppose I should expect nothing less, they're quite a bit younger than I, so don't have the same perspective of experience around the galaxy as I do. To them, this is just another Imperial base, nothing special, to me, however, this place feels much different, in a way I'm not able to fully explain.

We're quickly ushered from the docking bay to a nearby briefing room. A commander and a handful of Stormtroopers are already in the room, apparently, they've been awaiting our arrival.

******

"We have captured a ship matching the description of the ship that escaped your capture on Tatooine" bellows the commander.

Ah, finally a name for that planet we were stuck on I think to myself.

"While there were no life forms on board when captured, we have reason to believe that the rebels were somehow able to dodge our scans."

"We also believe they are here to attempt to recover a high-value rebel prisoner."

"Your mission is to locate and engage these rebels, but they are not to be permanently damaged or captured. Instead, they are to be made to believe that they have escaped on their own."

"A tech crew is currently installing a covert tracker on their ship. Once they escape, we will engage this tracker to locate their primary base of operations so the Rebellion can be eliminated once and for all."

"Great!" I think to myself, our punishment for not capturing these rebels in the desert is that now we get to play patsy? I guess they don't really care that these rebels will probably end up firing real blasters at us? Maybe I'll get the chance to get close enough to rough them up a bit without causing any permanent damage? I definitely have a bit of steam that I need to let off.

The commander paused to listen to his comm for a moment, staring towards the floor in front of him, then after a moment raised his gaze to us and puffed out his chest with authority. "We have an alarm on the detention level, your mission begins now."