Their strafing runs complete, a squadron of TIE Defenders fell in alongside the first wave of landing barges. Sleek an elegant – and unmistakably deadly – the TIEs were a world apart from the lumbering vessels descending towards the open valley between two stony rises below. There they joined four Sentinel-class Shuttles, the company of Guard reconnaissance troops already debarked having cleared a broad landing zone in advance. Major-General Brusilov waited until an adjutant informed him of landing before he loaded his pistol and stalked aft. Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Division of the Guard had already made haste from their transport and fanned out around the landing zone. They leapfrogged from one location to another until they too had pushed the landing zone further. Barely had thirty minutes past before both ridges were in Imperial hands.


“ Captain Khurlin – take your company and move up this road” – Brusilov jabbed his finger into the flimsiplast map spread out on a rock – “ and report back on any defenses in the city’s approaches. Best we know, it is walled so there should be no structures before the entrance. We are in full combat mode so rules of engagement are at your discretion. Once you have made a complete survey of their perimeter, take up a position to the east in the hills and screen against a retreat. We will advance when your report is in hand. Understand?”


The young officer nodded and saluted. Dismissed, he bounded off into his command-AT-ST. Moving quickly, he gathered the six AT-PTs and four repulsor-troop carriers of his command and disappeared beyond the rise.


“ General – we have incoming!”


Brusilov turned into pre-fab command post and looked at the CommScan tech. “ Description?”


“ Missiles of some kind – high orbit trajectory. TIEs are intercepting.” The General wordlessly stepped out of the small building and looked skyward where an orange sun filled the brown sky. On tongues of bluish flame came a half-dozen projectiles, their courses erratic: he noticed the juked left and right, up and down, like fighters escaping flak fire even though no fire now existed. The Defenders swooped up and fell onto them with avenge. Laser fire filled the sky as each ship’s four light laser cannon tore into the missiles. One then two fell victim to the savage attack, three and then four. A trailing fighter loosed a torpedo of his own which enveloped the fifth in a brilliant double-fireball. The sixth continued on but missed the staging area and the moving transports all together. It landed almost three kilometers away, making the rocks and dust there even smaller and more scattered than before. Save for a deployed sentry probe, no Imperial equipment or personnel suffered.


“ What was that about?” asked Colonel Metrithon, the divisional chief of staff.


“ It looked like a Diamond-Boron missile – usually used against fighter formations. I suppose they tried to program it to hit us but went wide. They were never meant for ground targets.”


“ Lucky for us.”


“ Indeed.”


Brusilov returned to he command center and was greeted by an adjutant again. “ General – Reconnaissance reports some turbolaser batteries are on the wall – estimating twenty total. Some projectile guns are behind the wall and three fire-towers extend from it at equidistant locations.”


“ Excellent. We move – tanks to the front, Walkers in the second echelon, all infantry carriers to the rear.”

The appearance of an approaching assault struck fear in those hunkered down before it. Many a man and alien on the payroll of far seated masters waited anxiously as the cacophony grew in concert with the shaking of the ground beneath their feet. Between two gently rolling hills lay the paved road from the city’s walls and from the yaw came a column of repulsor tanks. The gliding vehicles kicked up dust and debris as powerful engines propelled them onward. Barely had a dozen come into view when more still crested the hills themselves, fanning out in ever thinning numbers to lessen the damage of any one hit. Those in the four anti-aerial towers that stood just behind the ferrocrete walls could see the quadruped-Imperial AT-AT walkers lumbering towards the front, many more, smaller AT-STs and AT-PTs moving around their larger cousins.


The tanks wasted no time – as soon as they formed the companies into V’s, they advanced, firing as they went. From some, flame belched as cannon recoiled and shell was cast to the ground, a new one loaded by a well framed gunner’s mate who muscles bulged with every projectile slammed into the breech. Others rocked from side to side as mounted lasers released bolts of energy that tore apart the belt of fortifications about the wall and then the wall itself.


Major-General Brusilov could not wait until his staff car came to a stop, leaping from it as he ran to a quickly dug-in position on the crest of the hill. A few members of the divisional staff accompanied him while the rest intelligently sought shelter in and behind the command vehicle that had been brought forward to the reverse slope. With field glasses in hand, laying down in the dust like his men, Brusilov appeared the consummate Guards officer. He peered forward and listened to the sound of a squadron of TIE Defenders moving to suppress the mortar fire from behind the wall. Quickly they ran into a storm of laser-gatling fire that laid waste to the entire leading flight. One of the stricken ships, clipped and unable to climb, put all power into the maneuvering jets and slammed his craft into a nearby section of the wall. The flames born of his death intensified as fuel fed the fire.


“ Walkers - -target that tower – maximum firepower!” An aide with a powerful communications pack on his back relayed the appropriate orders. Nearby, one of the powerful AT-ATs trundled it back legs and lowered its head. Four blasts lanced from the titan and pierced the towers thin durasteel hide. Two went clear through the tower, another tearing apart an embrasure mounted galting while the fourth made quick work of the concealed power generator. Smoke poured from the openings and structural stability ebbed. It came crashing down, its unique noises lost in the symphony of battle.


The General instinctively ducked as a battery of tracked howitzers fired off a salvo from behind the ridge. He knew their target – indeed he had ordered their barrage – and looked to where the projectiles would collide with earth. One, two, three – they impacted the wall with a murderous force, tearing the metaform rods from their mounts inside the poured surface. Large chunks collapsed as the earth trembled. Nearby repulsor tanks added their inferno to the concentration, though more than one paid the price for switching targets. Given a respite from their pounding, a few turbolaser gunners leveled their pieces at the objects below and fired. The turret of one tank was blown ten meters from the tank itself while another was brought to ruins in unbelievable time – the only solace comrades could take was knowledge the crew did not suffer from every tankists fear: burning alive. Theirs was a quick end.


“ General - -we have forced a breach!”


“ Tanks to screen – AT-PTs in at once. Complete suppression protocols. Disable the shield generator and eradicate any resistance. Infantry-forward!”





For another thirty minutes, the Imperial Guard pushed into the city itself, her tall walls made useless by Artillery, the God of War. The tanks suffered horribly from roof-mounted anti-armor rockets and lascannon placed at every corner, though the ever increasing platoons of infantry swarming through the streets brought down such ambushes exponentially. The shield was brought down, engineers rushing forward under sporadic fire to recalibrate it to accept Imperial commands. Reinforcements poured down from the skies in the form of the Imperial Army. In the lobby of the governmental administration building, Major-General Brusilov handed over garrison command to Marshal Murat.


Lieutenant Kazicks of the Guard was not unsuprised to see the second most-powerful of Saki's city-governor slumped dead behind his seventh’s story desk over looking the space port. He was, however, very surprised to see his throat slit from ear to ear - - such was not a common method of suicide. Nor, or further inspection, a possible one: dead men drop the instruments of their demise though next to the aged Atkarian, there was only an empty attaché-case and the mount where a personal data terminal had once been.