STAR WARS: All Fair In War

Retaliation - Galactic Civil War (0 ABY)

When you're in training, the Rebellion and the Empire both teach you how to defeat an enemy of flesh and blood. They teach you to shoot, to kill, to use heavy weapons, to operate vehicles, to know how to apply biofoam and other first aid, to survive. They teach you how to fight an army such as their own; organized, manned with hundreds of soldiers, equipped with the weapons of technology, and fighting with the same type of tactics on both sides. They teach you how to fight against a physical enemy, human or alien, and how to stay alive.

But many of the rebel cells on Talus weren't flesh and blood; they were like ghosts. They were a group of untrained, badly equipped freedom fighters who wanted to wage war against the Empire because of hatred and vengeance, not because of justice like the Rebel Alliance. They knew that they were hopelessly outnumbered, so they changed their tactics. They would never meet the Empire in head on battle, but would launch small strikes and ambushes against them. They wouldn't invade a city with an army, but would infiltrate it with sympathizers to their cause and turn the population against the occupation. And they wouldn't launch airstrikes or artillery fire, but would use suicide bombs strapped onto citizens. And that was what happened in New Haven.

I don't know exactly what happened that day. No one does. But somehow one of those rebel extremists, one from a group called the Reformation, got an advanced bomb to the downtown district of Talus' capital city, New Haven, and was able to detonate it in the Capella office complex before the Imperials got to him. And then... Everything nearby was destroyed. Buildings, trees, people, vehicles, everything. Two million died that day, and we couldn't stop it. We didn't even have any idea it would happen. When the attack came, everyone was unprepared and caught off guard.

It was quick and sudden. Almost as soon as the bomb went off all Alliance personnel garrisoned on the planet were instantly reassigned to help the relief effort. There were guys from the local militia, men from the small garrisons on the other side of the continent, a couple special forces squads, and even a few X-wing pilots on shore leave that all turned up to help, not to mention the thousands of civilian volunteers that showed up. Plus the Imperials, that for once, weren't scanning faces and searching for the enemy. Within an hour there was almost half a million relief workers there to help save lives, men and women from both sides, that were united for a day to save everyone we could. But there were still so many we could never save.

There were thousands of bodies that we dug up from beneath rubble. They were crushed, or burnt, or dismembered beyond recognition, and since I was fresh out of training with no combat experience, the bodies horrified me. There were around four million that we were able to rescue in total over the next few days, but they were all badly injured and scarred for life, both physically and mentally.

One particular event that I remember took place three days after the attack, when we were still trying to clear away the fragments of destroyed metal and cement that the buildings were made of in order to get to the remnants of the complex where the bomb was detonated. I was with a team of 8 other Alliance soldiers, plus this Zabrak woman from spec ops, when we entered a building that had been burned and partially crushed when the fragments from the exploding tower next to it fell.

It had taken all ten of us two hours to clear a way to the front doors with the help of around 20 civilian volunteers. I entered the long hall with my comrades, the night vision on my helmet activated so that I could see in the dark entryway we had entered.

"Stick together, boys" one of the soldiers spoke up, a sergeant named Kren. "This whole place is buried under a literal ton of cement and metal. I for one don't want to be here when the roof finishes collapsing."