All around them they could hear the troops positioning themselves for the coming attack. Boots stamping on cobblestone pavement. Speeders whining as they maneuvered through the ghettos cramped corridors. Even the occasional blaster screech as a jumpy trooper fired at a shadow.

There were at least five hundred Government soldiers.

There were perhaps fifty peasants holding this position- an earthwork mini-fort built hastily at the ghettos edge. Because there were so many enemy troopers and they were so well armed (not to mention they were professional soldiers and the peasants were just a rag-tag mob of militia) , it would be considered suicide by any rational beign to try to stop them, but they at least had to try.

Ando Smith could see one of the Government troopers now 500 meters away, the blue skinned humanoid was observing their position from a tower-a church steeple towering above the adobe buildings that made up the city around them, probably a Lieutenant or Colonel who planned on directing the battle from there.

Another group of them, not actually visible, but he could tell they were there by the way wildlife was acting around the area, was holed up behind and within a building at the end of the street. The position was well outside the peasants tiny section of the city, their own little ghetto on the west side, and the short range of the rifles they had. His best guess was at there position were no less than a platoon of soldiers, and no more than three.

By galactic standards, the Er'kit government troops were nothing special. Their weapons were a decade or two behind current models- the poor moisture farming planet couldn't afford anything better- and their uniforms simply surplus Imperial Army fatigues. Their training was nothing remarkable either. Even the most green training squads in the Imperial Army Academy could cut them to ribbons in just a few minutes.

But to the underarmed and armored peasants of the ghetto they might as well of been stormtroopers, though against the real thing the government troopers would be slaughtered almost as fast as they could slaughter the peasants.

Each one of those troops was equipped with either a blaster rifle or carbine, with most of them them and all of the officers also in possession of a pistol. Protecting their torsos was plasteel armor, light yet strong enough to stop a bullet smaller than ten millimeters except at point blank range. Against a larger blaster though, it was useless.

Unfortunately, those large blasters were in extremely short supply.

Around Ando now were dozens of his peasant comrades armed with anything they could get their hands on. Most were armed with six shot slugthrowers purchased from the Er'kit mafia in exchange for crops. A few were armed, like him, with single shot hunting rifles or blasters. Some had a few blaster carbines slipped in from another section of town that where a government raid like they were about to face had been repelled. A small group, mostly zealous teenagers, were armed with clubs and smashball bats.

In the center of them all was a single E-web repeating blaster, recovered from a Galactic Civil War battlefield and lovingly restored. It was more precious than gold to the men and women with him. Behind it stood racks of grenades made by dumping powder from slugthrower cartridges into Clay shells and sticking a fuse in. Crude, but effective.

And on top of their lack of adequate equipment, they were badly outnumbered. Perhaps the only thing really going for them was they had a earthwork fort constructed, with pikes braced at the tops of the walls. But that wouldn't hold an enemy for long.

The Er'kit government and army had learned its lesson early on when outnumbered slave drives had been wiped out. Now the "Mandatory Labor Conscription" units moved in mass and were escorted by speeders mounted with blaster cannons and Assault Mortar platforms. To nullify the advantage in numbers the peasants always seemed to have, larger bodies of troops launched only one attack at a time instead of splitting up. To help nullify this, Andos ghetto had sent messengers to gather up more peasant militiamen from surrounding areas and ghettos, but if they didn't get here soon they'd be sunk.

Down the road, near the position where a group of scouts were located there was a sudden screeching of blaster fire, responded to by the cracking of slugthrowers and the shatter-boom of the clay pot grenades. A few seconds later half a dozen men slipped off a side street and came running towards their position, hugging the sides of the road for cover and safety, their expressions being that of a man who'd just received his baptism of fire.

Six. That was only half the number of scouts they'd sent out earlier.

"They're attacking!" the lead man shouted, "They're..." He was cut off as a blaster bolt hit him in the back, dropping him and leaving a smoking hole in his flesh.

The cover of the units trying to flank them blown, the main force, surrounding the entire ghetto, uprooted and began to move towards the dozen earthwork forts similar to this one surrounding the area. In front of them, squad after squad of government troops began to leave the cover of the building they'd been hiding in at the end of the street. There were at least three hundred of them, up against the fifty or so at this little place.

Suddenly there were four flashes of sun-on-metal as four Assault Mortar speeders accelerated away from their position on a side street, repulsorlifts whining at the strain of suddenly accelerating. He hadn't seen them, nor had anyone else around him since no one had raised the alarm earlier.

"Incoming!" he shouted, pulling his squirrel rifle up to his shoulder.

It took only five seconds for the Assault Mortars to cover half of the five hundred meters to them and enter his minimum range. Exhaling, he squeezed off a shot that missed the pilot, who he was aiming for, but smashed into a steering vane, causing the fast moving vehicle to veer to the right and slam into a building before either of its crew members even knew something had happened. In a split second the mortar turned into a massive fireball as it's ammo cooked and fuel tanks ruptured.

The other three kept on coming.

Following his lead, dozens of slugthrowers opened up around him, throwing molten lead in their enemies direction, but doing little but making cracking sounds. They were fools, since the remaining three platforms were out of their range for the next few seconds and by then they'd have used up half their ammo, but he couldn't blame them since almost none of them had ever used the weapons before now. A few, surprised by the weapons recoil, even fell down.

Striking the wall of steel another two went down, but the forth assault mortar continued towards them, the grenade launcher on the crafts front end starting to spit out balls of death accompanied by deep, Bass booms now that it had entered its own one hundred meter range.

As soon as the Mortars had begun to fire, each of the spirited teens who had been carrying smashball bats traded them in for grenades. Even if they didn't know how to fire a blaster or slugthrower, they at least knew how to throw a ball and this wasn't much different.

The first to throw his was a pitcher on a stick ball team, and following his several more several Clay pot grenades flew out and detonated by the speeder, tearing it to shreds with a hail of nuts, screws, bolts and metal shards that had been mixed into the clay.

But with that victory over the first attacker they had taken their first casualties: Five dead peasants were caught by a mortar shell that had hit the left side of the position.

Running along the edge of the road, during the past twelve seconds the enemy infantry had advanced fifty yards. Every five seconds the one sniper rifle they had would crack, dropping a soldier, but they continued, oblivious to their comrades falling around them.

Trying to mimic the sniper, one of the men with a mafia rifle opened fire even though his target was well out of range. The man next to him stopped this waste of ammo with a single solid punch to the mans jaw, accompanied by a horrific cracking sound as it broke.

To the right there was a sudden rumble and all hell broke loose at the position next to their own.

He shut his eyes and waited for their foes to enter range, taking deep breaths to relive the tension he felt inside himself, he counted to thirty. At the end of his count he opened his eyes to see that the enemy was much closer now, nearly within range.

"Aim for the head," he whispered to himself as he chose a target, "You can't pierce that armor with a squirrel rifle. McAndrews down there might be able to do it with his fifty caliber rifle, but you can't with this."

He pulled the trigger, his rifle cracked, his target fell, and the battle began.

Knowing nothing about weapons, all the people around him once again opened fire even though their target was far beyond their range. Falling seventy five meters short, the hail of lead tore up the pavement, throwing shards of cobblestones everywhere.

Well, even if it didn't hit them he had to admit it had a powerful psychological effect. The entire charging mass of troops wavered and then slowed slightly. Perhaps a dozen troops turned around and tried to flee in fear; every one of them were shot by the pistol wielding officers following their platoons.

In response, a salvo of blaster bolts tore away from the soldiers, dissipating in the humid air before reaching the line. To his left, the precious E-web began opening fire, it's more powerful blasts managing to strike home even at this range.

Finally coming into range, another wave of blaster bolts tore towards them, this time reaching them and dropping six peasants. Many of the others pulled back behind the dirt fortifications they had built. Ionized air and the scent of burnt powder stung his nostrils as he tried to rally his comrades.

"Fire, fire!" he shouted, the cry being taken up by some of the other men around him.

Fire. Pull the bolt back. Stick a new cartridge in. Push the bolt back. Fire. His mind was already following the steps automatically without any sort of conscious input at all.

Pulling back to the cover of doorways and storefronts and porches for protection from he hail of bullets, the government troops began leapfrogging forwards towards their enemy.

Woosh! A cloud of smoke appeared on one side of the street, and seconds later a portion of the line blew up, scattering body parts everywhere and staining the pavement a rusty red color- blood of his fallen comrades.

"Get that Rocket Launcher!" he shouted to the E-webs crew beside him. But the sound of the battle was too loud, they couldn't hear him. Instead they continued ripping up a pocket of infantrymen hiding in a doorway.

The enemy were only one hundred and twelve meters away, and getting closer ever second. Enraged screams bellowed from them as the mass surged closer.

Falling back into his pattern of firing, he tried to shoot the man with the rocket launcher. The man who'd been firing it fell, clutching a bleeding hole that had appeared on his chest, but it was too late. A second rocket shot out with a cloud of smoke as he squeezed the trigger in his death throes.

But at the last second a stray bullet hit it, knocking it into a building behind the peasants.

They say that combat seems to take an eternity when your in the thick of it, but not to Ando. Shoving a cartridge into his rifles barrel he burnt a finger. Damn the thing was hot! A quick look into the sack he'd been using to hold ammo showed him why- it was half full. He must have shot off at least forty rounds, maybe as many as fifty or fifty-five.

Once more he squeezed the trigger, hitting an officer rallying his men. Seemingly in response, a man beside Ando was hit, his face burnt to a cinder by a blaster bolt. The body, which hadn't even begun to cool yet, was pulled back from the wall by a slim woman, who picked up the mans old rifle and continued firing where he had left off.

She was hit six seconds later.

Down the street, three blue speeders began approaching the infantry from behind. For a brief second he hoped they might be reinforcements from another ghetto, but his hopes were quickly shot down as the blaster cannon mounted on the back of it began to open fire.

"Get the speeders," he shouted to the men behind him manning the E-web, but he didn't hear them respond. In fact, he hadn't heard anything from them in quite a few moments...

He turned around to see its crew both slumped over the weapon, blood pouring out of their bellys.

"Shit," he shouted, abandoning his rifle and jumping up behind the weapons controls. Just before he kicked the gunners body away he stopped himself and pulled a blaster pistol out of the dead mans belt and stuck it in his own.

Fiddling with the weapons guiding joystick, he aimed the barrel at the speeder mounting the blaster cannon-or was it a light turbo laser? It wasn't firing very fast- and pulled the trigger, unleashing a salvo of blood red energy at his target that dissipated harmlessly on it's jury rigged shields.

"Damn it," he screamed, puring another burst of fire into it, bringing the weapon and generator dangerously close to overheating.

At the last second the shields gave and the speeder exploded in a magnificent fireball, pelting its two shield less companions with flak.

The government troops were just beginning to enter the effective range of the peasants mafia made rifles, there most important weapon. Beyond eighty five meters away they weren't very accurate due to their cost saving minimum rifling.

For the next endless twenty seconds he cowered behind the weapons metal guard waiting for it to cool off. Using the pistol he had appropriated he occasionally took pot shots over the flak guard, more for effect than in an attempt to hit anything.

It was only now that he realized just how badly they were taking it. They had begun with forty eight men and women, 30 of them armed. They were now down to less than half that, with bloody, half dead peasants screaming their half blown away brains out all over the place.

The enemies, on the other hand, weren't doing so bad. They had taken about twice the number of casualties, but it didn't hurt them so badly because of their greater numbers.

Sticking his head above the flak-guard, he was amazed to see the remaining troopers charging the last fifty meters to their position. The E-web hadn't cooled off all the way yet, but it was now or never. Twisting the joystick and pulling the trigger, he blasted three or four men into oblivion.

They kept on coming.

The enemys finally in range. The teen soldiers dropped their smack ball bats once more and began lobbing grenades at them, carefully checking to make sure the fuse was lit before throwing them. Shatter-booming in front of the line, they threw up so much dust that it became hard to see. Enemies fell, dozens of them. The grenades, while primitive, were effective.

During these final desperate moments of the battle each man and woman was possessed by their long buried animal instincts. Ando pulled the trigger, firing dozens of red lances of death into the enemy body. People picked up the guns of fallen comrades, only to be gunned down themselves a few seconds later. Suicidal soldiers climbed the ramparts as grenades fell down onto them and blaster bolts and slugs blew their head apart. A grenade thrown by the enemy exploded, damaging the E-web and dropping four peasants. Slug throwers continued to fire into the enemy body, piercing even body armor at this close range.

Carnage. Ando could taste blood in the air, something he'd rather not experience. The gray Imperial Army Surplus uniforms the Government troops were clad in were now smeared with blood, either each mans own or some fallen comrades.

But finally, after much loss among their ranks, the massed Er'kit troopers began to make headway. Pushing forwards, they selflessly climbed the ramparts, many of them getting impaled on the pikes placed at the top or scalded by boiling oil poured down onto them, but still they continued.

Finally able to reach each other, the hand to hand fighting was short but bitter. Picking up the clubs and bats that had been dropped earlier, peasants briefly gave everything they had to fight them off. Loaded rifles were emptied into enemys bellys. Blasters or the rare automatic slugthrowers they had took down whole lines of enemys.

But eventually they fled, though not before someone set the E-webs generator to overload and explode. That little gambit killed another six enemys and injured nearly a squad of them.

Dashing madly for other friendly positions, many fell to stun blasts in the back (They were on a slave drive after all). Ando was one of the lucky ones, successfully reaching a position a hundred meters to their right.

The battle was almost over here as well, the last dozen peasants decapatating troopers that stuck their heads over the wall with shovels and throwing grenades onto the men behind them.

To the left of the position the troops that had assaulted the mini fortress he had been at began moving this way, far more of them than the men here could possibly handle. Unfortunately, they didn't have an E-web here, just a heavy machine gun with barely a hundred rounds left for it, but he manned it anyway, swinging it towards the charging men.

With the first burst of fire he must have taken down a full squad of them, each man he hit being ripped in half by the heavy slugs the weapon fired. Now sure of this weapons power, he let it completely loose, raking the front of the charging mass. The fifty caliber bullets penetrated even the plasteel body armor the men wore.

There couldn't be more than forty or forty five left.

Pulling the trigger once again after giving the barrel a second to cool off, the weapon ripped a hole straight through the line. But his gory success at nearly stopping them was shortened when the weapon suddenly stopped firing and instead began just clicking. Out of ammo.

"Shit," he cried out, grabbing a rifle that was laying beside the weapon. He fired three shots into the charging mass with it and then it was empty.

Jumping down, he looked for any ammo that might be left for the machine gun. When he had been firing it he had started to like it more than the E-web he had been using because it fired faster and didn't over heat quite so quickly. But now that he needed ammo he wasn't so sure he liked it that much. With an E-web you could just wait for a second for it to recharge, but with this when you were out you were out.

Grabbing a club, he began to smash the heads of any troops that climbed the wall he was guarding. A few impaled themselves on the razor sharp pikes positioned down the side of the wall. He didn't bother with them.

He smashed the head of one man a little too hard; the smashball bat he had been using cracked and split in half. He pulled a pike out of the wall, stabbing a man in the face immediately after doing so. Three more times and that broke as well. Grabbing a shovel off the ground, now becoming saturated with blood in some areas, he began decapatating or attempting to decapitate anyone who stuck their head over the wall. During a short lull he grabbed a rifle with a bayonet on the end instead.

Big mistake. It broke off the first time he stabbed a man with it.

Swearing, he shot the next two men in the head with it and threw the now empty weapon away. Yanking the pistol off his belt, he shot another one who tried to climb over and waited for another.

None did.

Regaining his self in the lull, he could hear the screams of the dieing around the position.

For twenty seconds all of the remaining seven men in the mini-fortress just stood poised for them to continue the attack.

It didn't come.

Finally, one of the men dared to stick his head over the wall, and his sharp intake of breath sent Ando and the other three men left scurrying up the wall to see what was going on.

It was breathtaking. Around the little fort were hundreds of body's, plus an equal number of wounded. They had died in many grotesque and horrifying ways. Many were impaled on pikes in there haste to get over the ramparts. Others were ripped in half by bullets from the now ammo less machine gun. Some were riddled to pieces by grenades, others merely shot by slugthrowers and blasters.

Not counting the dead and dying, the streets were empty.

"My god," one of the men said. Another simply puked his guts out.

For the others, silence was enough.

They had just lived through hell.

"Chairman!" the messenger shouted, rushing through the capitals halls towards the mans office, nearly getting shot by a newer guard who didn't recognise him. "Chairman!"

Dear god, he thought, he'd better be here.

"Chairman!" he shouted one more time, more in surprise than urgency as he rounded a corner and found himself face to face with the fat man who ran Er'kit.

"Yes, messenger?" he asked in a jolly voice.

"Uh, sir," he replied, trying to catch his breath. "Mr. Chairman, an Imperial battlegroup has entered orbit around our planet!"

The look on the Chairman's face went almost grim and, much faster than one would have thought possible for such a fat man he began running towards the Capitals Communications center.




Like in the text of many religions, salvation came from the sky during the peoples most desperate hour. For Ando Smith and the survivors of his section of town and many other towns across the planet, it came in the form of a trio of Imperial shuttles, setting themselves down in snug clearing near his home. For a few moments there was pandemonium as people suspected the government had acquired a few shuttles, but those fears were quickly dismissed when somebody pointed out that the shuttles possessed Imperial markings, and the Empire had a spotless record of hunting down and destroying people or political entity's that used their banner falsely.

By a slim margin it was decided the Imperials would be heard out, and it was very lucky for the peasants that they did.

Covered by a platoon of men, a pair of representatives waited at the spot where the shuttles boarding ramps met the sandy earth to meet the pair of Imperials that descended from it a moment later.

The Imperial men were the first to speak.

"Greetings citizens of Er'kit. I am Imperial Navy Major Hawthorn Schmitt and this is my aid, Yakob Yingleheimer. I would like to get straight to business since we don't have much time.

"You see, the Empire favors you peasants, you average citizens of the planet Er'kit, and believes the government has become corrupted. However, we have noticed that you are not winning most of the fights between you two, primarily due to a lack of powerful and modern armaments. Therefore, the Imperial Navy has brought a gift for you."

The two messengers stepped up the ramp and looked into the Sentinel launders hold.

It was filled with fairly late model blasters, taken from Navy Troopers who'd converted over to even newer weaponry. Most of the blasters, in fact, were newer than those used over in the Coalition's forces, and certainly newer than the Er'kit government armies.

Their greatest weakness had just become their most valuable strength.

***

By the time the Chairman reached the communications center his cloths were soaked with sweat and he was completely drained of energy. But he stopped only for a second to towel off his face before he stepped up to a status monitor on one side of the room to see what was going on.

In orbit were a dozen ships: two Star Destroyers, two heavy cruisers of a type the recognition computers didn't recognise, and an assortment of smaller frigates and light cruisers.

Every few minutes a lander was entering or leaving one of the Star Destroyers hanger bays.

"What the..." he said, the color draining out of his face. "Get me a line to their commanding officer. I want to know what's going on."

"We've had a connection on standby for several minutes," one of the technicians in the room told him, "And I don't think their commander wants to wait much longer."

"Well, why didn't you say so?" the Chairman asked, not really expecting an answer, as he stepped onto the holonet transmitter in the center of the room and put on the expression of helpfulness and willing to cooperate that every other successful politician knew as well.

"Patch me through," he told the tech, who pressed a switch and gave him a thumbs up.

"Hello sir, it is such an honor to have you over Er'kit and..."

"Shut up," the man told him sternly. The fat Chairman did.

"Me and my flotilla have come to Er'kit on a 'mandatory labor conscription' drive. However, it appears that your citizens are resisting us far more than we anticipated. I do not like wasting my men. Therefore, you have twelve hours to come up with ten thousand slaves."

"And what if we can't get that many by then?" the Chairman asked nervously, cowering back from the blue figure in front of him.

"Then you, and all others government officials, will take their places in the 'Imperial Labor Guild.'"

"Uh, you can count on us," he replied stupidly, "You can count on us."

The campaign that followed the Imperial saviors arrival could only be described as a Crusade against the government tyranny. Forty thousand men and women, thin as rakes and dirtier than pigs, marching on the heavily fortified capital of the planet, and each ready to die, made up the Peasant army.

Opposing them were nine thousand crack government troops.

For the peasants there was no strategy, there wasn't even a leader of their army. As soon as various Peasant units came into sight of the capital, they charged it.

The outer wall was breached relatively quickly, and the people's army of Er'kit pulled back to the their Citadel, the Capital building.

Attacking this position, peasants dropped like flies trying to scale it's ramparts. But they pressed on, possessed by animal instincts forcing them to fight or flee.

Eventually, they succeeded in capturing the stronghold, though not without taking more than ten thousand casualties.

To some, particularly those related to those who had been slaughtered, it seemed like it wasn't' worth it. A Phyrryic victory.

But to others, such as Ando Smith, a new day was dawning.

Sipping on a cup of warm Er'kit ale, Ando reflected on the past two weeks; The desperate resistance, the loss of nearly all hope, the arrival of the Imperials just in the nick of time, the huge, bloody brawl that was the end of the conflict, with the Peasants finally seizing control in the end.

And, his election as Prime Minister of Er'Kit.

Victory was a very, very sweet dish after years of oppression and poverty.

And now that they had gained their independence from the former tyranny, the only thing left to do was what was naturally expected after the assistance they'd received- Join the Empire. Not that he didn't like the move, it was just... the freedom. He wanted to savor it a little longer before being forced to hand his authority over to the sector's governor.

Watching the sun set from the opposite side of the huge bay window that formed the rear wall of the office, Ando took another sip of his ale, the briefest of sighs escaping from between his lips.