Saga The 66th Order

Jedi Yratlil, a young Devaronian male, watched quietly as the critically injured (mostly burnt from blaster bolts) clones being carried to the back of the lines on stretchers as the battle for the lush tropical Mid Rim planet Mythreteen. He hoped none of them died on the way to the hospital, but he had no time to help; he had to lead the charge with his clones against the droids to their right and their left.

Yratil charged forward over one of the many high mounds that existed on Mythreteen and dodged a Super Battle Droid firing on fully automatic setting and leaped into a Force-assisted jump over the droid's head, slashing downwards as he landed behind the machine, cutting the contraption in two and thrusting the scrap-metal remnants into another droid and knocking its aim off target before it could kill a clone trooper.

As ear-deafening explosions boomed on all sides, Yratil felt his blood pound in his temples and a slight fear. This was his first solo mission after his Ithorian Master Rogaino Onagress died at Geonosis. But he charged forward, swinging his lightsaber carefully and with great concentration into a battle droid's torso structure, scoring direct hits and dismantling the droid in about one point eight seconds.

He deflected a blaster bolt with a quick jerk of his lightsaber and swung around, expertly severing the head of a second droid and flipping over the falling metallic corpse to kick a third droid back into a mass of its comrades and using that distraction to slice through most of that mass. Grabbing the crumpled, slagged body of one of the droids, Yratil tossed it up to block a blaster bolt from a droid and then bashed the offending droid across the photoreceptor with the 'dead' droid, knocking both down.

The remaining battle droids and Super Battle Droids stopped shooting and began backing off steadily, Yratil watching them cautiously, and then when they had fully retreated, he knelt next to a trooper that had fought next to the Jedi for the majority of the small skirmish. The man had a smoking hole through his helmet. He was obviously dead.

"I am sorry, comrade," Yratil uttered through clenched teeth, extinguishing his blade and quietly saluting the dead body of the clone. As he did this, he didn't hear the hushed order being issued to one of the clone lieutenants behind him from Coruscant. He did not hear Order 66 being given.

"It will be done, sir," Lieutenant Sykes said, eyeing Yratil's back as he quietly took out the empty power pack from his blaster rifle and slapped a new one in with a sad finality as he and the fifty other clones in his platoon stepped forward as one and leveled their rifles.

Yratil was just finishing the three-second salute and starting to turn when he was shot twice in the back by Sykes. He fell with two smoking holes in his Jedi robes and rolled, gasping quietly for air and igniting his lightsaber to quickly and skillfully deflect as many of the fifty blaster bolts that followed as he could back at their firers. Five or six clones fell with screams, smoking gapes torn through their cheap armor. But Yratil had sustained another wound to his right shoulder and his left thigh and he was stumbling away, keeping his front to the clones, lightsaber defending and deflecting bolts as he ran backwards.

He was caught off guard by a second group of clones and shot three times in the torso and crumpled to his knees, trying to deflect as many bolts as possible. More clones fell. Then Lieutenant Sykes walked forward solemnly as Yratil was distracted by the other clone troopers and skillfully aimed his rifle, taking his time and shook his head sadly as he shot his good friend once in the head and twice in the body with a quick three-round burst. Yratil crawled, and was shot in the back and the thigh as the clones approached and the maimed Jedi tried to survive, feeling the pain of other dying Jedi all over the galaxy and trying to simply . . . survive . . .

"What are you doing, Sykes?" Yratil croaked, blaster burns covering his body and the right side of

 

A sad but original piece of writing describing the horrors of war.

 

Thank you. I always love praise.

 

That was so sad! Excellent job It felt like another scene from Episode III, with the background music and all.

 

Thank you very much. I've always wanted to write an actual canonical Star Wars novel and the way people praise me, I've always wondered if I could . . . Perhaps?