They had weapons now. Now they could take back their rights that they had foolishly given to the government in hope for a better tomorrow. Now they could take back their stolen property, nationalized for the "greater good."

Now they could fight.

This was good, because scouts were reporting (on their shiny new Imperial comm links) that government troops were moving in their direction once more. And to take matters worse, most of their few people who actually knew how to use a weapon were dead, only about 120 of the original 800 men and women who held off the last attack were alive with little or no injury.

Replacing them were hundreds of spirited volunteers with almost no experience with firearms. And to make matters worse, many weren't eighteen yet. Some were even as young as twelve.

Others were too old, some approaching the brink of senility. Every one of these old people were also extremely headstrong, making progress at training them in the use of weaponry extremely slow. This characteristic, developed from their years of harsh peasant living, made them refuse orders from even the elected leaders and made them order everyone else around.

The whole lot was dressed in rags. Their faces were covered in dirt and sand blown up by Er'kits hard winds. Few had shoes, even the cheap but durable rawhide ones sold by peddlers. They were skinny from malnourishment.

They gave a whole new meaning to the term "rag tag army."

The only thing even remotely modern about them was their top-of-the-line Imperial weaponry.

Blasters, grenades, even a few rocket launchers (wielded only by those strong enough to carry them). There were even half a dozen E-web blasters of the latest model that could be used to hold of enemies in the city's cramp streets almost indefinitely.

It was a shame that very few of them knew how to use the things they'd been given. It was lucky that the Empire had provided enough ammunition for some serious practicing.

More of a mob than an army, the whole lot was practicing now in their ghettos town square, as were other peasant mob-army's all across the planet.

They had perhaps half an hour until a new government force of about 750 men arrived, and all they had were 1,100 untrained militiamen.

In the meantime, a provisional council of leaders was meeting. Hampered by the bickering inevitably present in such a council, they had gotten very little done. They had decided only one thing: That they were tired of being pushed around and treated as slaves by a government originally established to make them all equal.

They had agreed that it was time for the common man to go on the offensive.

"Looks to be about four hundred in this column," James Fox whispered into the comlink held close to his lips, "Every one of them armed to the teeth. There's also eight Assault Mortars and four things that look like hovertanks but are actually speeders with armor built up around the cockpit."

"What do they carry?" the voice on the other end asked.

"I can't really see from here, but I can guess. It looks like each has three turrets, each holding either a laser or ion cannon. Oh, there's one with a buildup of piping that could be a rocket launcher."

"How much armor do they have?"

"Oh, I wouldn't say too much. Perhaps a few inches. Enough to stop blaster rifles and repeaters, but not enough to stop an anti-armor rocket. Some of them also have sandbags built up on them to stop slug throwers. I don't know how effective that would be against a rocket."

"Any sign that they see us?"

"No, their advance units aren't even giving your position a second glance."

"Alright. Radio us when about a third of them are past us."

"Don't bother waiting, they already are," he replied.

"Shit," the voice on the other end of the line said, fading away as the comlink was pulled away from its owners lips. "Go, go, go!" the voice repeated very distantly."

From windows all down the block came a hail of grenades and molotov cocktails. Seconds later the exploded, tearing down whole lines of enemy troops with their withering hail of durasteel and shooting plumes of gas all across the block, stinging James Fox's nostrils.

Seconds later there was a hail of blaster fire as the peasant-soldiers who had thrown those grenades picked up their blasters and began shooting down on the frozen government ranks. Unmoving and packed together in ranks, they were easy targets for even the inexperienced militiamen and dozens in the crisscross of blaster fire.

Lifting his own weapons, an Imperial blaster Carbine with a retractable stock, James Fox began to add hi own fire to the pepper pot bombardment, the smells of blood, smoke and ionized air stinging his nostrils. Behind him there was a thump as the mortar positioned by him unleashed its own steel rain.

From a story below and a few windows to the right there was a puff of smoke and one of the hovertank-speeders exploded, sending red hot shrapnel everywhere.

Another vehicle, and assault Mortar, was hit by a Grenade. Almost immediately its load of 50 Mortar shells began to "cook," blowing a crater in the orange cobblestone street and tearing a platoon of infantry to ribbons.

By now most of the soldiers who had "frozen" in the middle of the street had either been cut down by the criss cross of blaster fire or dragged to safety by comrades. When packed together the inexperienced militia was fine against them, but now that they were spread out their lack of accuracy and experience with their weapons was a major handicap, and they wouldn't get any more of the government troops unless they got lucky or met them on equal terms.

"Alright," James said into his comlink, "Most of our guys aren't any good at this range, so bring them down to the streets where we can hit them."

Below, the streets began to fill with peasant soldiers as they left their positions in surrounding buildings. The first few to emerge were cut down, but as more came out and began laying down cover fire more came out, swamping the better trained government troops with sheer weight of numbers.

Three minutes later it was all over.

After he had told them to leave the protective cover of the buildings, Jams headed down stairs to get them ready to march on the capital. He wasn't their official leader, there wasn't one, but by speaking up first he had gained himself the unofficial position of its commander, or at least the 900 remaining men her, less the others that would take the injured back to their ghetto.

Along with this ghettos that of Ando Smith and James fox, more peasant armies were forming up and beginning a march towards the capital, vowing to correct the mistake of establishing this communist government. Joining them were freed slave labor gangs, a valuable source of semi-experienced men who'd already had their baptism of fire, and the first of these groups were already armed and joining the march.

All together, they had perhaps 20,000 peasant solders marching on the Capitol building, with another ten or fifteen thousand coming from nearby villages.

Opposing them were 7,000 Government troops.

Excellent job! Only problem was you had a few words here and there spelled improperly.

whoopsie, ignore this...