The Red Star [Last Update: 28 Jan 02]

Hi everyone. Have fun reading, and please comment.

*+*

Disclaimers: Star Wars and all Trademarked Ideas and Names belong to George Lucas and LucasFilm. Chris Gossett's The Red Star, which title I borrow for this work, exerts a significant influence on the tapestry. No profit is made from this brain rant.

THE RED STAR, by Delight

*+*

Beloved Caius,

Today is the ninth anniversary of our nation's defeat at Blue Water Nexus. How could we have known then, as we marched onto the battlefield, the pride of the White Fleet, that losing the battle at Oderon would been the end of our world itself?

Such fools we were, to believe ourselves invincible. To allow military parades and patriotic slogans to convince us that victory was our destiny. Destiny does not speak in slogans, but in bloodshed. The Galactic Republic is no more. The Order of the Jedi Knights is lost forever. All our struggles and sacrifices were powerless to stop its collapse.

Still, I shed no tears for their passing. What was taken from me at Blue Waters was far more precious than the work of twenty-seven thousand years. I would watch the decay of a thousand orders for one moment spent in your arms; one more taste of your kiss. Our people lost a war. I lost you, my Caius. My Love.

I no longer fight against the memories of you. They are the only treasures I have left in this shattered univserse.

For eternity,
Solace


"Captain--"

I looked up from the letter that I was writing to the man sitting opposite me in the railcar cabin. Major Kershner wore a slightly apologetic look on his face. "Yes, Major?"

He passed me his datapad. It was linked to the Vengence, and there was an important but trivial spacedock report awaiting my approval. I hadn't heard the incoming message's chime. I scribbled my authorisation code and handed the datapad back to him.

The letter was getting heavier. With reluctance, I folded the piece of paper and slipped it among the roses in the bouquet resting on my lap.

"Excuse me, Captain, I didn't want to intrude until you've finished your letter, but..." I turned my head towards the question. There was another man, an old man dressed in a Corporal's uniform with a precious row of ribbons and decorations across his chest, sitting until now quietly at the other end of the three-seater in the cabin. There was no one else with us. He looked at the ostentatiously blank piece of paper, his question evident on his lined face.

The old man's question made me smile. No one would question my sanity as such. At the very least, no Corporal would question an Imperial Navy Captain (Command) with a Major (Security) escort. But I could not conscientiously ignore this old man who had so obviously been through more combat than I ever would. I was to learn from Kershner later that this war veteran was responsible for one of the food lines in the Imperial Navy's vast food production facilities at the city of Leeds on the main southern continent on Naboo.

"Sometimes words are unnecessary," I told him finally.

"Ah," he sighed, as though in understanding. I envied him, because I didn't. I did once, a long time ago, when I still believed in the fiction that I myself had spun.

It was then that I caught sight of the Order of the Red Star on his chest. "Who do you visit here today?" I asked.

He smiled sadly. "Too many to mention, my captain. Far too many to mention." He paused to look out of the windows. "If not for the cemetery railcars, I would have had a heart-attack trying to visit them all. And you?"

I looked down at the bouquet of roses, and the folded piece of paper resting among the thorns. "My husband."

"I'm sorry. Oderon?" I heard the old man say. Opposite me, I could hear Kershner shift uncomfortably in his chair.

"Yes. Nine years ago today, at the Battle of the Blue Water Nexus."

Silence fell in the railcar cabin. I looked out onto the plains below us, at the innumerable tombstones stretching from below to as far as the eye cou

 

Oh, OH, OH!!!!!!!!! I love the start. Great start! This is going to be cool.

FORWARD YOU GO!

 

Thanks, Casper. I hope it lives up to its expectations. I don't intent Red Star to be a long-lived saga, unless I get some inspiration to carry on the story. Anyhow, here's the next bit.

It might not be what you expect. Bombshells away.

**+**

The rebelling Freedom Axis and their masters from the Outlying Regions had drawn the line at Oderon, a system of great strategic value deep in the heart of the third quadrant. As it was deep in Republic territory, Republic Central Command had believed that our enemies were not stupid enough to try to take it, and as such, Oderon had but the minimal defence for a system of its importance. They were wrong. For somehow, our enemies had managed to discover a safe hyperspace route from wherever they were hiding to Oderon. First, they lured the main bulk of Oderon's forces away through feign attacks at nearby targets. Then they wrestled it from us in a totally unexpected raid with waves upon waves of cloned fighters, completely overwhelming whatever meagre defences were left.

The Jedi was both mortified and enraged at this loss. Oderon was, since antiquity, a sacred Jedi system. Even after the main facilities' destruction from a nearby supernova some five thousand years ago, it remained a focus of Jedi activity in that quadrant of space. To have Oderon fall into enemy hands, especially enemies whom the Jedi Council considered unsavoury, was an insult too much. The Jedi convinced Central Command to strike back with everything it had. Those of us who had by then grown tired of the Council's rhetoric--even as we obeyed orders to move onto the battlefield--were surprised by then Supreme Chancellor Palpatine's endorsement. What was White Fleet's response to this incursion was the mightiest armada the Republic had ever seen in its history.

I was part of the strike force that entered from the sunny side. Three Eburat defensive platforms and the Jedi Order's huge research station Agnus hung like four clumps of twisted metal that they were against Oderon's blue-white orb, glinting serenely with reflected sunlight as they made their long, slow spiral towards a fiery death in Oderon's atmosphere. These wreckage were the most nonthreatening objects in the near vicinity, and I had but one scant moment to admire their beauty before reality exerted its influence on me.

We knew immediately that this was a battle we could not win. For those of us who could feel it, Oderon burnt with the Dark Side of the Force. For those of us who did not, the mere sight of our enemies' trap was blood-chilling enough. For every one of our ships there were four of theirs. For every one of our Force warriors there a legion of their nefarious organic-machine hybrids.

The Jedi Council did not listen. It told us to stay on course. There were Jedi officially among our ranks, and those of us who were reactivated and enlisted into the Republic's war efforts were registered as normals, or 'mundanes' in Jedi parlance, so as to allow us to go back to our civilian covers when the war was over. "We trained you to fight the Dark Side, so fight," they reminded us, even as we shared a collective thought among comrades and wondered at the sanity of those hiding behind Temple walls and Coruscant's Crimson Crown defence perimeter. The good foot soldiers that we were, our ears ringing with patriotic slogans, we went.

I was stationed on the Republic cruiser Sverdoslk of the Republic Third Fleet. I was only a lieutenant then, flying an Incom TJ-14 space superiority fighter, wingman to a lieutenant from the elite Jedi demonstration flying squad. My first order was to escort the drop-ships until they made planet-fall. My husband's 35th Land Detachment was among the pyramidal crates of armour. I can still remember looking out of my cockpit at the crowded skies above Oderon and feeling the distinctive chill of oncoming Death. I remember my mind wandering out of pilot-mode just for that split second as Caius's drop-ship started its planet-fall cycle, wondering if I would e

 

To me it does, because there seems to be a ever brewing conflict within the character that is narrorating. I take it, if it is the same character from the first post, that she was shown the Force so she could fight along with the Jedi, but now is fighting against them.

If that is so, then the conflict within her will grow.

 

Yes, it's still the Captain narrating. There is actually more to her than meets the eye. Anyway, here's more.

**+**

I am a soldier. Out there, I've met Death quite friendly. I've sniffed the thick, recycled oxygen in his intimate breath. He's spat hard light and coughed missiles, and I've joined him in his dance. To fill his quota before he finishes his, so that I'd live to see another day. We are old friends, Death and I.

It is an incredible thing to witness the end of an era. To see everything that you believed in devoured by flames. To have the delusions of your nation shattered into a twisted wreck of burning metal. When that twisted wreck of burning metal was a cruiser full of thousands of your people, it is the discordant agony of their screams through the Force and the sudden burst of orange organic flame against the blue-white of glowing metal that makes you realise what a fool you are to have ever believed in your leaders.

All the leaders, whoever they are, wherever they are, they are all liars. Petty lords with petty agendas. Our belief in them forms the shackles of servitude that make us their willing slaves, their pawns of sacrifice at the altar of war.

All the while we think that we are free, not realising that the perfect slave is one that believes he is free.

At Oderon, I witnessed what happened to us slaves when those petty agendas fail.

The Sverdoslk had been reduced to a cage of burning metal by the time I came out of my first battle trance. I heard something about ground forces requesting immediate assistance over the general freq. I didn't care. I was a killing machine in a flying angel of death, and I continued killing, long after my normal colleagues were exhausted. There was nothing outside the cockpit except enemies and carnage.

Before long, twenty of our thirty cruisers were gone. When we ran out of missiles we used lasers. When we ran out of lasers we used the maze of debris and skin-on-teeth's flying. I knew that down on the planet's surface, our troops were down to their fists. Years later I heard a survivor of Blue Water Nexus describe the battle as magnificent. I wanted to pound him into a thin pulp.

Central Command, in its wisdom, did not order a retreat. Defeat was not an option. Instead, they ordered reinforcements. They believed that sending more of us to die would be the answer. And why not? It had always worked before.

I lost count of my kills after a while. There is a number somewhere on my files, I suppose, but I don't care to check it out.

**+**

A bit short, isn't it? More after dinner.

 

Okay. Here's more bland soy.

**+**

The White Fleet's defeat was all that was necessary to remove Jedi influence from the Republic Central Command. I awoke from the hells over the Oderon system to find myself strapped onto a medical trolley somewhere along a crowded corridor in a Jedi medical ship. The air smelt of ozone and lubricant, as though the life support units were being overworked. It didn't bother me, for anything was better than three days of recycled fighter pilot Solace Gonville. Apparently I was hit while trying to shake a boogey off my flight leader's tail. He called in the reinforcements -- which finally had the decency to arrive -- to pull me out of the scene. He was lying on the bunk next to me, and in as bad a shape as I was. We were almost the last White Fleet people to make out of Oderon alive.

Then, in a classical 'what were you doing when' moment (I was having a bland soy supplement with fellow incomplete veterans in the Sick People Mess), there came the startling news of a Darth Vader, Sith Lord, saving a colony world called Agricola from our enemies' massive invasion forces almost singlehandedly.

Against great disapproval from the Central Command, the Jedi Council recalled all serving Jedi personnel, although it gave us enlisted SpecOps personnel a choice of returning to uniformed duty, or to return to our covers. I didn't need anymore encouragement. I jumped off the medical ship at the first available port and returned to the Third Fleet, injuries and all.

I knew then that Darth Vader's sudden appearance heralded the destruction of the Jedi nation. Through the Order's long history, there was never a time when the Jedi and the Sith could coexist without bloodshed. The strong whip of his black banner, the proud tilt of his gargoyle helmet, the square of his shoulders, his sudden emergence, all spoke of infinite confidence. It did not take more than one look at this Sith to know that he was fully confident of taking us down.

So the Council brought the battle to the Sith.

The Jedi Council's insistence that the Sith Lord be dealt with while the rest of the galaxy burnt under the our enemies' invasion forces bought it unprecedented hatred and derision from the Republic, especially since Darth Vader had emerged a saviour of sorts among the public. Without public support, the Jedi crumbled into dust. The proud Order of twenty seven thousand years was no more, reduced to nothing under Darth Vader's self -- proclaimed crusade of hunting down these evil sorcerers. The Purge, it was soon to be called.


I didn't stay around for the end. After I was informed by my SpecOps co-ordinator that all lists and records of SpecOps activity were erased by the Master Without Portfolio and the War Master prior to the Temple's destruction, I became all soldier. I was given two battlefield promotions, and was part of the final campaign to eradicate our enemies from the faces of this universe and the next, ironically, under the command of one Darth Vader, who was by then, quite justly, the premier battle commander of the newly formed Galactic Empire.

I wear the Order of the Red Star proudly on my uniform, awarded for valour under fire. I wear the veteran ribbon of the Clone Wars and the survivor ribbon of the Battle of Blue Water Nexus. A number of other decorations are listed in my files, some of which are classified. I am a good soldier. A good Republic soldier, then a good Imperial soldier. My days as a covert SpecOps investment banker chasing suspected Sith activities were long gone. My days as a Jedi even further away still. I have dismantled my lightsabre. My weapon is now my rank and privileges that come from commanding a Victory-class Star Destroyer. My cause is that of the Empire's.

Yet, I can be no less cynical than the woman who emerged from Oderon wounded and widowed.


"Captain? Captain!"

For some reason Kershner was shouting in my ear. "Yes, Major?" I asked him testily.

Now that he had my attention, he dropped his voice. "Our station i

 

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, she is a interesting character, indeed. It sounds as if she sold her soul to stay alive.

In any case, I will be watching this one very carefully.

[image=http://www.geocities.com/thefadinglight/sithmaideneye.gif]

And provide a link to it from my thread.

FORWARD!

 

WOW! You are an incredible writer. You've done such an excellent job of drawing me into this story. I don't even want to try to speculate on what's coming, but to just sit back and let you lead me through it. It all feels so real, like I'm experiencing it myself.

I'm not the most frequent reader/poster now days, but I will be following this now.

 

Thanks, all. I am glad that you are liking this little brain rant. Anyhow, this is the second to last post... didn't I tell you it is going to be short?

**+**

The walk to Caius's empty tomb was long and empty. Despite the fact that it was the anniversary of the bloodiest battle in the Clone Wars, the Citadel was eerily empty. Perhaps it was the sheer size of the graveyard, or perhaps it was the fact that the Imperial Navy was busy creating new anniversaries for latter generations. Whatever the reason, I knew that the reason I was lucky enough to be here was because the Vengence was on a technical stopover to replenish its basic supplies. With the ascension of its Senator Palpatine to High Office, Naboo had grown from a backwater system in the MidRims to a regional government centre and a large supply depot for this sector of space.

It occurred to me while we strode there that I was cradling the bouquet of roses as though it were a child that we never hand.

It was a lovely early autumn afternoon on the Great Northern Plains of Naboo. The sky was clear and blue, the grass was green, and the air was crisp and agreeably cool. I looked up, and saw the small translucent dart-shape that was my home make its way across the sky.

"The Lady V," I whispered softly, feeling a sense of awe for my instrument of battle rise in my stomach to sit firmly next to the revulsion against war.

Kershner looked up and asked, "What is the optimal firing solution for a ground-based Class Five interceptor for her right now?"

I stopped walking. "Treason, Major!"

He stopped as well. "You can take the officer out of the gunner," he mumbled, "but you can't take the gunner out of the officer," we completed the cliché together, and shared a humourless laugh.

We continued walking. "I should have been there," he exploded after a long while.

"Don't. Then you would have died. No one from our land deployments came back alive."

He looked at me with accusing eyes, as though to remind me that mine was not the only loss.

Comparing losses seemed such a travesty at that moment. We spent the rest of the walk in silence.


Caius IVLIVS's empty tomb is indistinguishable from its too-numerous counterparts in the Citadel Memorial Park. There is a small inscription of name, last rank and affiliation, and the date and theatre of death on the knee-high tombstone. In Caius's case, there is the ribbon of Blue Water Nexus engraved at the upper right corner, a palm-sized tricolour of red, white and black. Beneath the tricolour is a Red Star, awarded to him for his last engagement before Oderon. Under my hand, they were warm from Naboo's sun. How could they feel so warm, when my own medals feel colder than space? Even my own Vengence command bar could not compare to those decorations bought with blood, only to lie against the still heart of stone.

Major Kershner had found his own location of solitary grief at his brother's tombstone about half a klick away from my husband's, and to his surprise, his widowed sister-in-law was there with his two teenaged nephews. I had spoken words of compassion briefly, and left that family to its precious reunion.

Caius, my dear Caius, we did not have that luxury. We who were taken from our birth families before weaning, we for whom the Order was Mother and Father and the rest of the extended Family, what did we know of blood ties? We had only each other, and the promise, now lost, the promise of a future, now shattered beyond recognition.

Did you go peacefully, or were you in pain? Were your last words my name, or a vehement curse against the idiots at Central Command? Were you holding the line, or were you at the vanguard? Were you...? No. I must not remember you like this. I must not waste my precious minutes by your side thinking of bad things. I must remember the good times we shared. Yet....

Something poked into my palm then, breaking my train of thought as completely as the HUD's missile warning reds, and there was a sudden sensation of h

 

Fascinating. Well-written and very intriguing. I'm glad I found it before it was over and gone, but I can't help hoping for more soon.

 

Thanks, Jane. The last post to The Red Star might be coming soon, but (as you might guess) it's not the only story to be told in Delight's Twisted Universe. There are some nefarious plots boiling in my hindbrain, I believe.

Up!

 

And this is what makes SW awesome: the flexibility in story telling that has not been touched.

FORWARD!!!!!

 

Well, keep 'em boiling, and I'm looking forward to "soon".

 

Jane, here's soon enough...

**+**

I looked around quickly. There was still no one within a three hundred meter radius from my sights. Yet, I knew without a doubt then, that they were out there watching me. I had thought them well and truly dead over the years. And now, they revealed themselves though an all urgency, all singing and dancing general order.

The Network was, against all odds, still alive. And it wanted my blood services.

I would have considered it if they wanted to regroup to attack the Sith Lord. It was, after all, what the Jedi were for, and the Sith Lord frankly deserved execution for his blatant violations of the Military Code. He was a brilliant tactician, yes, but he was no leader of men. He was a capricious and cruel commander who gave scant concern to the men under his command, their leashes secured only through his fearful sorcery. I grew tired of fearing for my compatriots' lives.

But it was not Darth Vader they were after.

Words tinkled through my mind like snowflakes in a midwinter storm.

filia hostis antiqui.
scelera patris, scelera filiae.

Concepts that the Order could not even put into modern terms.

daughter of the ancient enemy.
crimes of the father, crimes of the daughter.


I ripped the plastic from the tricolour. It came off silently. I tore the message into shreds and watched the bits fall slowly onto the green grass around my boots. The epoxy resin residue left on the tricolour insulted me as nothing could, for, like the residue, the message was now permanently hardwired into my hind-brain.

And I knew that, despite their protestations, I was not the only pawn in their desperate game. I could sense havoc awaiting the galaxy at the next turn of the wheel. The Jedi would come back to fight their holy war against the Sith. The chaos of the Purge would be revived. Without Vader, our government would degenerate into squabbling packs of ineffectual carnivores. Without the Jedi, Vader would continue his reign of terror and sorcery.

What did they want with me? What couldn't they let me be?

Trained as a soldier, my mind immediately armed itself with thoughts of duty, the Empire and survival. Trained as a widow, my mind saw though the soldier as nothing more than the guardian of my own prison. Trained as a Jedi, my mind was merely... numb.

The soldier cursed my thoughts. She struggled to make me accept what I have become. Ten thousand lives on my ship, more elsewhere, including that of a devil-child. The widow wailed in pitiful denial. She pleaded with me to save myself. She held in her arms a small girl with brown eyes full of miracles.

I was no older than her when I was trained to transform myself into an agent that would destroy anything in my nation's path. The inferno, clearing the path of those who dare resist.

I hadn't been that girl since the day I became the widow. Would the girl recognise me still?


Beneath the turmoil in my mind, I made my decision. The girl broke out of the widow's arms to smile brilliantly at me. The soldier smirked at the widow, who retreated further into the shadows to cry. As for me, I reached to touch Caius's Red Star with my right hand and mine with my left. Mine still felt colder.

I can see it clearly now. There are soldiers ahead that I will kill. There are women ahead whom I will widow. There are children ahead whom I will orphan. Their lives dance before my eyes, awashed in the glow of the Red Star.

And somewhere out there, there is a girl, her eyes full of miracles. Whoever she is, she believes, as I once did, in the glory and destiny of her nation. She holds a weapon in her hand. That weapon will destroy me.

Caius, my beloved, I will join you soon.



THE END

---

So.... based on the evidence given, what is Imperial Navy Captain Solace Gonville a.k.a. 5479 going to do?

Feedback!

If nothing goes wrong, the follow-up segment should be posted here on this thread by Tuesday latest.

 

She's going to let herself get killed, so she can join her late husband.

 

Oh, duh, why didn't I think of that? Of course she is going to get herself killed. Silly me.

 

I'm trying hard to understand Solace's, erm, career, but it's difficult. I've had to read the story several times and I'm still not sure I'm getting it right, for which I blame my lack of concentration and not any lack of writing skill on your part. Solace was a Jedi first, then an agent (the Jedi Council was in charge of SpecOps?) and then went over to the Empire to become an Imperial Captain, is that correct? Now it seems as though SpecOps want her to take out ten-year-old Leia Organa for being her father's daughter, and she's going to make her suicide look like she did her best and yet ultimately failed, I think.

The story is masterfully written and presents a very well-drawn character with believable emotions and reactions.

 

You're absolutely right, Jane, with regards to Solace's career path. She was a Jedi once, and was a SpecOps Jedi assigned to check on suspected activities in the financial markets. Basically a SpecOps Jedi is one that goes where 'normal' uniformed Jedi cannot go (by law or by convenience). Yes: the Jedi Council isn't riding that high a moral high horse.

She was an up-and coming banker on Belfas, who married (another one of those things that you can't do easily in uniform, but since she was technically out of it, so who cared?) a bloke who was in the Temple once, but didn't fit in/no master wanted him, and he left the Order to pursue a 'mundane' life elsewhere.

The War intervened. She saw loads of people, friends and acquaintances, die. She saw the wobbly horse the Council was riding on. (The Order was having some internal difficulties, but she didn't know that.) She had second thoughts and decided to leave the uniform in the closet for the while, and go back to being a 'normal' soldier. It was a good decision, because almost everyone in uniform was killed by the hero Vader. She knew that it wasn't a good idea to stick her head out of the sand. Thanks to sickly seasons and bloody wars, she landed in her own command very quickly. She was reasonably happy.

Then the remaining SpecOps, who discovered that Darth Vader had found himself a candidate for apprentice, decided to kill the candidate before she could do harm. They decided to throw everything into the kitchen sink, and so Solace was let into the loop.

Thanks for the praise, Jane! As I mentioned in the first post, the idea of creating such a character came from Chris Gossett's The Red Star graphic novel, to which Solace bears a striking resemblence... I knew that a more linear narrative style would be easier to read, but it simply didn't feel right for this very introspective moment for this very complicated women, so I sacrificed readability for ...style?... (looks around and dodges flying tomatoes)

As much as I would like to make Solace commit suicide, she is more useful to me alive. For now.

 

I'm not throwing tomatoes. Actually, it's a pleasant change to read a story that doesn't explain everything in big chunks of boring information or, worse yet, where the author says, "Okay, to understand the story, you have to know that..." I don't mind gleaning little bits of information here and there and putting the puzzle pieces together myself.

I'm glad that you're keeping Solace alive for now...I think. What have you got in mind for her?

 

Holy Sith!!

I wish I had found this sooner. Such an excellent story. You are an extremely talented author, and I look forward to reading more of your works.

Awesome!!

 

Fluke: Thank you! It is wonderful to hear such kind words.

Jane: Solace is going to go through some rough patches, and some hard decisions. <evil laugh> I'm not sure how hard to push her though, because she is already on the brink. Never thought I'd be a psychiatrist one day...

UP!

 

Fascinating Spec Ops culture you've created in the SW universe, and so very believable. And I love your style of writing!

Suicide doesn't seem like a likely move for Solace for me. I just think she's made up her mind what she has to do, and she accepts the knowledge that carrying out her personal mission will end in her death.

 

Hello Di-Lee! Nice of you to drop by!

Sorry, folks, I'm quite afraid to say that Darth Real Life's decided to pay me a serious visit, so I won't be able to get that Tuesday post out on Tuesday. I don't know when exactly I'll be able to put the story up, but I am working on it. I am so sorry for the delay.

Sunshine and Strawberries,
D.

 

No problemo. Know only too well about delays.

FORWARD!

 

I'll be waiting, too. Good luck on vanquishing that evil Darth RL!