Volar's Story - part 08 Night had fallen over Humana City. The repair crews stop their work rebuilding the hospital balcony so they could be home before the time of the newly imposed curfew. Two heavy lift hovercraft had to be hastily parked a block from the airport; their drivers running for a nearby hotel so they would not be arrested for violating curfew. The night watch was already in place at the city's geothermal power plant along with the new Imperial Overseer. The night watch was already on duty at the hospital along with the newly appointed Imperial Medical Advisor. Although Lazaveltians were usually a go-to-bed-at-dark crowd, some youths had taken to having "freedom parties" in the parks ignoring the curfew. They felt they were performing their civic duty by defying Imperial authority. When the Invader patrols arrived, the youths fled. Their goal was demonstration, not confrontation. Slipping through the city from all directions were shadows. They moved silently down little used paths. They moved unseen through service crawl ways and sewers. They moved in ones and twos. They were painted in broad stripes the same colors of the buildings; red, brown, ochre, and umber. The stripes were vertical on their fronts and horizontal on their backs and separated by stripes of black making them very difficult to see in the dark. These shadows gathered at predetermined locations following a plan which began three littims ago in a hidden mountain retreat. Twenty tipas after dark, the power plant shift supervisor asked to speak with the Imperial Overseer. In what used to be the shift supervisor's office, the Imperial Overseer thought it necessary to show these backward Lazaveltians who was in charge. One of the ways he did this was to make them wait at his door. After a minute or so, he allowed the Lazaveltian to enter. The other man entered quietly, and politely closed the door behind him. The shift supervisor walked up to the Imperial Overseer with his hat in his hands and waited for the Overseer to give him permission to speak. "What do you want!?" barked the Imperial. The Lazaveltian looked up into the eyes of the Overseer and quietly spoke: "I want you Imperial scum off of my planet." He then let his hat fall to his side revealing the laser pistol he had hidden underneath with which he calmly shot the Imperial Overseer four times. The shift supervisor shoved the body out of his chair and threw the Overseer's name plaque into the garbage. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled his own name plaque out and placed it back on his desk. Only then did he hit the intercom button and holler "Summers, get in here!" Summers, the assistant shift supervisor, walked in. His eyes went wide when he saw the Overseer's body on the floor and his boss back behind his old desk. Before he could ask one of the many questions fighting for expression in his mind, the shift supervisor ordered: "Summers, the council directs us to close the main vent valves now. I am also ordering you to open the breakers and toss a conductive bar into them". Summers half replied "Uh sir, it would take some time to repair the breaker bank after a short like that. The city would be without power for at least the rest of the dark." His boss said " Yes, it will." As Summers stood there, unable to stop staring at the Overseer's body, he slowly understood that this order had come from the Lazaveltian Council of War - not the Imperial Governor. As this idea became clearer to him, Summers formed a wicked smile that matched his boss' and answered "Yes, Sir!" From a third story window a teenager looked out curious about the photoelectric disruption and saw soldiers moving through the street below. "Look mother, Lazaveltian soldiers!" His mother corrected him "No son, those are Invaders. We haven't had any soldiers in over five hundred years." But the young man persisted "We were studying the Shifter War in school. The instructor showed us data files of soldiers wearing Lazaveltian military combat armour. And that is it. That is the Lazaveltian army." His mother looked out the window being careful not to be seen. The soldiers didn't look like invaders, and they weren't moving like invaders. She whispered more to herself than to her son "But, we don't have an army." Together, they watched the soldiers pass and the young man said to her "Apparently we do." Imperial sentries stood at their posts. Imperial patrols walked through the deserted night time streets. They were looking for the occasional youths breaking curfew. Sporadic sniping by civilians armed with hunting lasers did still occasionally happen, but these attacks were growing fewer. None the less, The Imperial patrols were watching for these. They were not watching for fully armed troops whose temperature controlled body armour rendered them invisible to infrared and thermal imaging sensors. The shadows were in place, targets chosen, waiting for a signal. All at once, every light in the city went out. Lasers stabbed out invisible beams of coherent light at targets in every section of the city. At the Imperial barracks lasers fired from the shadows outside the perimeter fence struck down the sentries in the first seconds. The shadow's leader was the only one who spoke. Into his communications he calmly said: "Phase one complete. Begin phase two." At his command, sewer covers opened at several places inside the barrier fence. Out of them shadows spread like a dark tide to each of the three main buildings. Ropes with hooks were thrown to the top, two on each side of the buildings. The shadows walked up the walls and placed demolition charges on the roofs. As the shadows walked back down the walls, lasers stabbed from outside the barrier fence shattering windows as they were reached. Demo charges were thrown into the buildings on every floor. At the same time, shadows gathered at the windows on the ground floor, lasing those windows and tossing in demolition charges of their own. All total, four demolition charges were placed on the roof and four more on each floor of the three target buildings within one half tipa of the attack. The shadows then ran back to their holes. Occasionally, Imperial troops ran out of doors or looked out windows to see what was going on. These were lased down immediately. Again the shadow leader spoke "Phase two complete. Begin phase three." At his command all of the explosive charges detonated. Three buildings had holes blown into their roofs, interior walls were destroyed, and all of the outer windows blew out. But the buildings did not collapse as the shadows had intended. Particle beams erupted from the ruined, but still standing, buildings. It was erratic, almost random, but still managed to be destructive. It blasted plasticrete apart. Everywhere, trees and gardens burst into flames when hit by Imperial fire. The lasers from the shadows were not even visible, but they were very accurate. This exchange went on for about ten stipas until a mortar shell burst over the compound, then a dozen more. Down from them floated a blue mist. As the mist touched the ground, the Imperials fell silent, rendered unconscious by the gas. The shadows rose out of their hiding places and entered the ruined buildings. There were a few storm troopers who managed to get their armour on in time and so were protected from the gas, but one or two storm troopers did not last long against several ten man groups of shadows who moved through the building picking up blasters, grenades, and vibroknives. The attack against the Humana City Imperial Barracks was over in less than ten tipas. The airport was also in darkness. When the city power was turned off the airport's emergency power supply failed to function. It appeared someone had removed the safety covers and dropped a metal bar across the automatic breakers. These shorted as soon as they engaged and the power cells burst into flames. Only airport maintenance had access to the back up power building. About one half tipa after the lights went out, a few mortar shells fell on the airport. Then they fell in droves for the next two tipas. But these were not blue gas shells. They were high explosives. Several airport buildings were completely destroyed. The new Imperial buildings were only damaged. Although it was nearly impossible to tell, there were a few mortar shell that failed to detonate. As soon as the shelling stopped, it was as if pieces of the night started moving. Shadows moved onto the airport through holes in the barrier fence toward the tower and warehouses. The remaining Imperial troops fired on the shadows and some went down. Those storm troopers received multiple laser hits in the next instant and they too went down. Upon entering the warehouses, the shadows found stacked crates of military equipment just as they had been told. They ordered the stunned civilians to come out of hiding and help them load the crates onto the hovertrucks. These hovertrucks were brought in quickly as they were parked only a block from the airport. Throughout the city shadows moved in groups of ten. They ambushed several Invader night patrols. As the storm troopers were in groups of two to four and could not see the shadows, these fights were usually over quickly. The shadows then moved on to ambush another patrol. In less than twenty five tipas, the fighting was over. The shadows faded back out of the city to places where hidden vehicles, painted green, brown, and black to match the terrain, were waiting under photoptic camouflage netting. It was here that the shadows provided more than basic first aid to their wounded. The shadows also carried their dead out with them. Nothing was left behind except destruction. The vehicles returned to their hidden bases one at a time, each taking a different way. Source: Mark Nielipinski These pages are in no way endorsed or sponsored by Lucasfilm Ltd or West End Games. ®, TM & © Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL). All rights reserved. Trademarks of LFL used by West End Games under authorization.