Saga Differences (a Separatist soldier's POV)

Blast this heat! I thought, struggling into my dented armor plates. For that matter, blast this planet, blast this armor, and blast this whole cursed war! At last, I managed to force my torso into the ancient armor, and sighed as I glanced at the mirror. The chest plate I was wearing had once been shiny and bright, but now it was scuffed bare and chipped in several places. It probably didn?t meet safety standards anymore, but it had been my father?s, and my family was too poor to pay for new.

I was twelve years old when my homeworld, Mirial, was sucked into the whirlwind of turmoil and destruction that the Separatists brought with them. The Republic didn?t care enough about our backwoods world to fight for it, and so we soon became a Sep world. They took everything: my father?s job, my friends, and our home. We lived on the streets of our icy world, shunned by soldiers and former friends alike.

We slept in doorways and behind trashcans, sometimes crawling under houses and buildings to keep from freezing solid in our sleep. For four years, we begged for food, stealing when we couldn?t come up with the cash. I wasn?t proud of what I did during that stage in my life, but I had to stay alive somehow. A year after we were evicted from our home, my sister was kidnapped in the middle of the night by a bunch of drunken Sep soldiers. She was found by the police in a ditch two days later. They had to use a bioscan to identify her.

We wrote to the Republic, begging for help. Our pleas were ignored. I have hated the Republic ever since.

Two months ago was my sixteenth birthday. By 1600 hours Mirial time, the Separatist Army was knocking on our door ? well, figuratively, anyway. There was no choice. I was being forcibly drafted. But I welcomed the chance to fight for a better life. The Army promised us that we could have a home again, the only reason we?d been evicted was because the Republic was stealing

Now here I am, stuck in the middle of somebody else?s war, on a freakin desert planet, with a gun that barely works and armor that wouldn?t stop something flung from a child?s slingshot.

?Company! March!? shrieked our commander. ?Carson! I said MARCH!? he bellowed at me.

I snapped into position. ?Sir!? I shouted back, falling into step with the rest of my squad as we headed out of the base.

After an hour?s hard march through that accursed heat, we reached our destination ? Skull Ridge. We barely had time to dig in before the Republic Army arrived.

Battalion after battalion of spotlessly white-armored clones marched steadily toward us. A glow of blue, a flash of green, a glimpse of purple... there were Jedi with them.

Fierfek.

In seconds, the air was thick with dust and laser fire, and the visibility was so low, I couldn?t even see my own hand in front of my face. And all of a sudden, it all closed in on me ? the war, the scent of sweat and terror, and the very real possibility that I could die. I couldn?t help it. I bolted.

I know I wasn?t seen. If I had been, someone from my own side would have shot at me, to prevent me from spreading intelligence to the other side. That was the cold reality of war.

I stumbled and fell into a ditch, praying it wasn?t one of the other side?s encampments. It wasn?t, thank the gods. I flattened myself against the dry, dusty bottom and waited for the sound of firing to stop.

I don?t know how long I lay there, listening to the human screams ? my comrades or my enemies, it was impossible to tell ? and the harsh, repetitive sound of handguns and rifles, intermingling with the deeper tones of laser cannons and the horrifying explosive bursts of grenades going off. I gritted my teeth and tried not to think of what would happen if one of those grenades landed in my ditch.

Eventually, I realized the sounds were getting closer, rather than farther away. Fierfek. I scrambled up and out of the ditch, keeping my body against the ground to present a smaller and less obvious target for stray missiles.

As soon I was half a kilometer or so away, I clambered to

 

LuminaraFan4Evr that was beautiful. It seriously made me start to tear up at the end. How right it is, that, as different as they were, the people on both sides of the war were still people with families, friends, hopes, fears, hurts.

I like that fact that you did it from the Seperatist POV. You don't see too many of those around here. Very good little story (And, incidentally, don't apologize for using OCs. OCs are as good as any cannon character and better than most. )

 

That was a great piece of work! You should be proud.