Beyond - Legends The Battle of the Force

STAR WARS:
The Battle of the Force

A JEDI?S BAD SIDE IS NOT A GOOD PLACE TO BE.


By Ryan Cornell-d?Echert




1 - Betrayed



EVEN though it was largely impromptu, informal, and wholly unofficial, I didn?t like the look or sound of it. Something about it felt wrong. Maybe it was just me. I?m still not sure.
But I never liked social occasions, and I never will.
I could never tell what it was, but they always threw me off somehow, and I took them in the wrong way. I almost took offense to being invited. Attending such ?parties? nearly felt like an insult to my intelligence.
The drinking, the dancing, the chitchat, the raucous, self-indulgent laughter ? too much noise, if nothing else. A plague upon my ears. A sense of false camaraderie abound as partygoers invited one another to cheap dinners and sleazy one-night stands after the party.
Damn. My eyes are rolling just thinking about that.
Now, it?s understandable if one is young, naïve, or impressionable, or even a victim of pressuring from one?s peers to ?get out more.? Those are excuses for attending these ignorant social functions. Exactly how it is that competent senior officers could enjoy and frequent them is beyond me, which leads me to question their ?competence.?

I honestly don?t know what came over me that night?but when the mail droid brought the invitation to my door, I actually took the time to have a look at the invite rather than pitching it outright.
Perhaps it was out of whimsy or something like it. Perhaps not. Either way, I?d made up my mind at that point, and quite quickly at that. I chose to go to the party.
They were held once every week, intended as a ?fun social gathering? for soldiers of the Fifth. Battalion executive officer or not, I felt I was above merely ?setting the example? and had actually attended very few of them.
But tonight would be different. Who knew? Maybe I thought I?d luck out and actually have a good time for once.
I squirmed into my tight-fitting dress uniform, with more medals, ribbons, and awards pinned on my chest than most Imperial field marshals sported. With my low-quarter shoes buffed and shined, I was looking sharp. I strode out of my house and popped into my work speeder, heading straight for the local conference center, where the parties were always held.
It was well into the evening already. The suns had already done their day?s work and settled down for the night. My speeder coasted down the dark, quiet road at a steady, comfortable speed.
I found a parking spot surprisingly easily. I took the spot and killed the engine, letting it softly purr into silence. I stepped out, stood up, gave myself the once-over, even adjusting my tie, and moved with a purpose to the nondescript building?s front doors.
The unpleasantly dissonant sounds besieged my ears almost immediately upon entering. How anyone could dance to that ?music? or listen to it recreationally was something I would never learn. I?d heard dying Bothans make more pleasant noises than that.
Virtually everyone present recognized me. Some waved and produced weak, predictable greetings: ?Hey, Jon! How?s it going?? ?Good evening, sir!? ?Rassick, how are you?? ?Glad to see you, Major.? I simply ignored the lot of them. They were my soldiers, yes, but I hadn?t asked for them to be serving under me, and they were a rotten crowd anyway. I certainly hadn?t asked for this god-awful assignment.
I was just grateful this battalion would never see combat again. Most of its good soldiers were killed in the engagement with the Sith last year, and the rest of them lost all their unit cohesion. The battalion?s remaining soldiers could not and did not function as a team, and nothing could change that, which only infuriated me even more. And since I was in more of a paperwork-heavy position than anything else, I had little influence on the unit and certainly had little respect from them ? after all, I had very little for them, so why expect more in return? It?s not as if they deserved any.
I didn