Luke Favorite wrote a Star Wars story which earned him a prize in a Star Wars art and writing contest was sponsored by local resident Michael Smith. Courtesy photo

BY LUKE FAVORITE

He fired again. The laser shot deflected off the metal plating on a previously hidden outpost, flying into the air before finally, its journey ended as it fizzled against one of the massive trees that were so prominent at this location.

The Forest Moon of Endor hadn’t seemed a likely place to come across much resistance, but as the First Order fully seized control, they had been encountering many places such as this. Those blasted Rebels had spread everything they could after the fall of the Empire. They knew that it was possible that they would be overthrown, so when the First Order rose to power, they had been having some trouble. The New Republic had given as
much as they could afford to all of their allies across the galaxy, and to Commander Kline, this was a very annoying prospect. He and his unit of 25 storm troopers had been assigned, along with three other similarly structured units, had been ordered to break the Ewoks on the Forest Moon of Endor, and prevent them from being a part of any future uprising.

“What are we going to do now?” Came the question that Kline had been expecting for a while now from one of his soldiers.

“Hold your tongue!” He replied. “Eventually they’ll need to come out. In the meantime, send for reinforcements. That could only speed things up. I’m sure Faundman and his unit could be here soon.”

The unit was attacking a small base set up by the rebels before they had left, full of Ewoks. Well, attacking wasn’t really the thing happening. Hunkering is probably a better word. Behind rocks, trees, anything to defend against the slingshots. The Ewok tribe had been retreating across the moon’s surface for several hours, they had been found by the unit a short time after they made contact on the surface of the moon, and were finally holed up in a defensible fortress, unable to make any log traps like the last time they had gone up against a similar force. That wasn’t to say they weren’t doing any damage however, as it was plentiful. Kline looked once again at his troops. His command had been 25 previously, but now it was 19 men fighting, along with one injured, a broken arm, for a slingshot can do some damage. The remaining five were in a different, much darker category, one that Kline preferred not to think about. Three were lost in the chase across the terrain, and were almost certainly dead. The other two had been killed at the fort standoff, one to a lucky headshot by a slingshot, the other to a ricochet laser blast. Kline resented having lost anyone, as, despite the First Order’s lack of care for it’s loyal
troops, Kline cared for his men.

“Sir, we can’t get any transmissions through for backup.”

Kline knew it was a long shot. The trees messed up any chance for that.

“Sir-”

“Yes, I heard,” Kline cut off the soldier.

“What should I do? I can go to them, talk to Faundman directly.”

“No. I can’t have you endangering yourself. Remember why we’re here? We’re breaking the Ewoks. It’s suicide to go alone, and I don’t know if you remember, but our speeder bikes are a long way off. On our drop ship. No time to unload. This was supposed to be quick,” Kline shouted in reply over the sound of rocks flying through the air. “We need to deal with them ourselves!”

At that, two more lasers went off, both bouncing off the bunker harmlessly. It would take looking from behind cover to get a good shot at any Ewoks. As Kline had this thought, a soldier to his right tried to do just that, looking up from behind his felled trunk getting a shot off, then ducking back down. Another, off to his let, tried the same thing, ducking out from behind his rock, just in time to be pummeled by another Ewok barrage.

Kline knew that there was only one thing that could be done.

“Ready your explosive weapon!” he commanded a soldier next to him. “I have an idea!”

The soldier did as he was told, then handed the weapon to his Commander. Kline had orders. He knew he had to attack and defeat the Ewoks. He didn’t like it, but he had to get his soldiers out of there. He ducked out from cover, and fired a shot, rolling over behind a log, followed by a massive explosion. Debris rained down on the stormtroopers, and they stayed in place, ducked down to avoid getting hurt.

Kline knew that he had done the job. He got up, and looked at the base, or what remained at least. There, where it used to be, was a husk, smoldering. A metal shell.

“Check for survivors,” Kline ordered five of his men. “You know what to do.”

They went over to the little fort, and Kline got a better look. It was a squat building, no taller than one of his troopers. He knew how many Ewoks he had been chasing, and there were a lot more than could fit in thatfort. Unless…

“Sir, you’d better come see this!”

Just as he had suspected, Kline walked across the clearing around the base, where some small fires had started up, and were going out one by one. As he stepped into the base through the same crack his troopers had used, he saw exactly what he had expected. A tunnel.

“Seal it.”

“But Sir, it could lead us to more Ewoks!”

“You heard me. I will not jeopardize the good men in my unit by going underground. There are two possibilities for the tunnel; it’s closed, nothing more than a hole and we defeat the tribe by destroying it, or it leads to more based such as this.”

“If it leads to more bases, isn’t it worth the risk?” the trooper persisted.

“No. An Ewok has an advantage in a tunnel that small. Get to work. Blow it.” Then, to the unit as a whole, “Sweep the area! There are more Ewok bases, I suspect! If you find one, report! If not, rendezvous back here”

Kline stepped out of the little fort, and as he did so, the ground shook with the explosions near the surface of the tunnel, and dirt rained down.

It wasn’t long before Kline got word of more bases. Four of his men came to him, each having found a different base, and so his campaign began. He began attacking the bases. Casualties were kept low, but not entirely prevented, and by the end of his destruction, Kline commanded only 15 men. None had injuries, the injured had been killed by a blaster explosion. A rock had gone down the barrel of his weapon, and he tried to fire, only to have it literally blow up in his face.

By this point, Kline’s tour was up, he and his men would be extracted from the forest moon, along with the other four units, and they were walking back to the Drop Ship. He had received word soon after landing that Commander Faudman’s drop ship had been destroyed, so he and his unit would be getting a lift out with Kline and his men. Both men were Commanders, both had been in the same battle class, and were good friends, so Kline was excited to see Faundman again.

Kline was knocked out of his thoughts by the arrival of some stormtroopers a little worse for wear. Their armor was scuffed up, and, while there were six of them, only two still carried weapons.

“Sir,” One said frantically, after looking around and locating him, “Faundman is dead!”

“What happened?” Kline replied quickly looking around and drawing his weapon.

“Get to the drop ship, quickly, we’ll fill you in!”

Kline needed to know. “You tell me right-” he began but was cut off by a laser blast, one of the six troopers who had shown up fell. “Get to the ship!”

The troopers began running, and made it to the drop ship as quickly as possible, but four of the original six that had shown up, presumably from Faundman’s unit fell, along with two more of Kline’s unit.

“What’s the matter?” Kline asked, as soon as they had begun lifting off.

“You and Faudman. You both dislike… well, you do, he used to… Dislike the First Order. Don’t protest, Faudman told us. You were sent down here to be killed. All four units. We had no mission here, the Ewoks had already been cleared by the troops in the tour before, or so we thought. The First Order wasn’t expecting you to go running so quickly, they sent us down here with other soldiers… to kill us for treason.”

Kline was skeptical. He knew the first order would do things like this, but something was off. “How do you know this?”

“Because I’m one of them.”

The trooper pulled out a laser pistol, but he had been the center of attention, and one of Kline’s men saw it coming. A blaster went off, and the infiltrator fell to the ground.

“What do we do?” asked one of the troopers standing by.

Kline thought for a moment. “We fight.”

“But the ship has no weapons,”another soldier submitted.

“Words win wars,” Kline replied.

“You can’t seriously expect to reason with the First Order.”

“Fine, you’re right. I know where we can get artillery. Pilot, fly this thing to Tatooine.”

As the ship was leaving the atmosphere, a star destroyer, aware that some defectors had escaped waited silently for a shot.

“Admiral?” a gunner training a weapon on the fleeing ship questioned.

“Fire.”

An explosion erupted in the upper atmosphere of the Forest Moon, and a
usurpation was ended.