Chapter 1: The Return

Arc I: Purge

Chapter 1: The Return

Perspective: Galen Marek/Starkiller

I stand on the deck of the Rogue Shadow, looking out into deep space, wondering if there are planets out there other than those in our galaxy.

“You remember what we have to do, right, sir?” I turn to find one of the Rebel generals walking toward me.

“Of course. We have to go to the planet Albion, far out of the normal boundaries of the galaxy, and we’ve been tasked with negotiating trade agreements with the rulers of the country Equestria. Am I to assume Kota already made contact?”

“Yes, sir. He is staying in their capital city of Canterlot, and is currently working on a draft for future negotiations.”

“Good. At least I know we won’t be flying in blind. Dismissed, General.” I salute him, a gesture which he reciprocates, before he turns and walks out of the upper deck. “All hands on deck!” I call attention to myself. Everyone on this deck, including the General I had just dismissed, turns to me. “Alright, General Louzmin here,” I point to him, “has just informed me that fellow General Rahm Kota is already onsite and is preparing the capital city of Equestria, Canterlot, for our arrival. Be warned: this is not our species we are dealing with. I do not want any violence while we are on Albion; am I understood?”

“YES SIR!”

“Good. Next order of business; effective immediately and for the duration of our stay on Albion, I am promoting General Arm’am Louzmin to Acting Captain. Captain, you are now in charge of everything on the Shadow, and you are directly tasked with the overwatch of Asset Alpha.”

Louzmin snaps to attention. “Sir, yes, sir!”

I turn to the coordinate plane built into the space monitor, and read it to find we are close enough to the Dannaem system to perform a hyperspace jump and land next to Albion. “Alright, engineers, we’re officially in the Dannaem system. Set coordinates for Albion and speed up the hyperdrive core.”

I turn to the monitor and start running checks to confirm the data from Kota’s first unexpected trip to the planet. Let’s see… “Approximately forty sentient species, only two of which have similarities to human anatomy and physiology. All have developed their own forms of government, and have built societies with varying levels of technology, much of which has striking resemblance to ancient human technology. Rumors speculate that humans once lived on the planet, both wielding magic and otherwise, but were wiped out in a magical catastrophe approximately fifteen thousand years ago. Other speculation says this is linked to the deaths of the first King and Queen of Equestria and second Monarch of Griffonstone, identities unknown, but no evidence lends credence to these theories. Only species incapable of wielding magic are the Camels of Saddle Arabia and the Cats of Egypt. All others access magic, either as an intrinsic part of their being, or, as is the case with dragons, unicorn and alicorn ponies, and centaurs, as an ability to and usually directly use it. Data suggests planet’s main structure is composed of the same elements found on Naboo, other than a superheated carbon alloy inner core, which allows for radioactive activity at the crust level, or what these species call ‘magic.’ Primitive weapons of war, basic swords and axes for defense and guard, magic in all other cases. Speculation says pegasus and alicorn ponies, female griffons and dragons capable of flight can manipulate cloud formations and other weather phenomena, though data collected lends credence to natural weather behavior. Reasons for manipulating weather other than water for crops unknown.” Well, that was a lot of information. But it wasn’t nearly as much as what I would see if I were to go into the database for just about any planet in our galaxy, say, Geonosis.

I look up to find space beginning to distort as the hyperdrive engine kicks on and starts powering up. It quickly devolves into the speeding multicolored lines that represents all the stars we pass while using hyperspeed on our way to Albion. Usually, it gives me a headache, but this time, I just feel serenity.

I start moving around the ship, doing various exercises, checking data, making sure everything's running smoothly, that sort of thing. About twenty minutes later, I find myself in the back chamber, where only one person calls home: Vader.

It’s been about a month and a half since the battle on Kamino in which I defeated him and secured victory for the Rebel fleet. Ever since then, the morale of the Stormtroopers has dropped drastically, and where they didn’t immediately surrender, they were systematically destroyed by the superior weapons and battle tactics of the New Republic. We now have control over every natural planet in the galaxy, and the only area we have left to conquer is the Death Star, which is where the Emperor resides.

I move behind his restraining device to check for any discrepancies, and find that a screw has been knocked loose. Hmm, that’s going to need to be replaced. I walk over to the intercom and speak into it. “Engineer to Holding Cell Alpha. A fitting’s been knocked loose, and needs replaced. Get over here stat.” I release the intercom button and turn to Vader, who is looking down at the ground, his respirator making the same irritating wheezing noise.

I lean against the durasteel wall nearest the door and wait patiently for the engineer to come in. He does come in about five minutes later, but not without being dragged in by two other engineers who are basically the resident assholes on deck. One sprints off to get back to his console, but I Grip the other one and pull him back inside as the scared youth runs out. While holding him, I walk to the door and input the secret access code, which causes a metal bar to slide in front of the door and lock on the mechanism on the other side, a process which also happens on the other side of the door, locking the two of us in.

I finally release my Grip on him and he drops to the floor, an angry expression on his face. He storms over to me and tries to hit me, but I dodge the attack and Push him into the opposite wall. I then Grip him and keep him against the wall. “Do you know why you’re still here?” I wait for an answer, but it is very evident he does not intend on answering me. “The only reason I keep you and your pissy buddy on my ship is because you’ve got engineering skill that I can put to good use by helping to keep his ass locked up,” I yell at him, pointing to Vader. “But if you’re going to keep treating my other crew like crap, I’m going to throw both you and your buddy off for insubordination. Louzmin may be Captain now, but I still hold executive corporal punishment authority. I ought to have you thrown off the ship anyway, for attempted assault on a superior officer. Do you know what would happen had you done that while you were in training?” I wait for a few seconds before speaking up again, as he obviously intends on pissing me off by not answering my questions. “You would be summarily executed. I hope you’ll take the time to remember that I have the same authority as the drill sergeant who trained you. If you try something like this again, I will have you thrown off the ship on sheer principle. Remember that.”

I walk over to the engineer’s toolkit and take out the drill and screw box. I release my Grip on the asshole, walk over to him and force the items into his hands. “As punishment for your insubordination and attempted assault, you’re going to do a comprehensive check on every system that’s holding him in place. And if I hear otherwise, you will be forced to replace every nut, bolt and screw in the contraption and then I will subsequently throw you out of the airlock. Am I understood?” He just tersely nods. I promptly smack him across the face. “AM I UNDERSTOOD?!”

“...yes, sir.” He then turns around and begins work on the contraption. I turn to the door panel and unlock it.

I then move to the intercom, and press the button. The call notification sounds through the ship’s speakers. “Engineering supervisor to Holding Call Alpha, stat.” I release the button and wait by the door. Less than a minute later, the lead engineer and supervisor walks through the opening doors, an inscrutable expression on his face.

“You needed something?”

“Yes. Supervise him as he works. He is to perform a comprehensive exam on the entirety of the restraining device. If any detour from this is spotted, have him replace every nut, bolt and screw that holds that thing together, then bring him to me so I can flush his ass out of an airlock. In the meantime, I’m going to have some of your engineers relocate his console to the center front station.”

He nods and goes to stand against the wall. Just before I walk out, I turn to him. “I’m going to be locking the door, so if you need anything, use the intercom.” He nods again, then turns to watch the asshole as I walk out. I turn around on the other side of the door, wait for it to close, and input the access code, which causes the metal bars on both sides of the door to slide into place, securing it.

I walk through the small hallway that leads to the deck, and walk through the doors onto deck. “All hands on deck!” Everyone turns to me almost instantly. You know, I could get used to this kind of respect. “I need every spare engineer on this deck working on moving Breckett’s master console to my front podium. I’ll be commandeering it. Let’s get to work!” I turn to the front just as the ship exits hyperspace and idles next to low orbit in front of Albion.

“Sir!” An engineer who is not working on the relocation addresses me as I stand there. I turn around and look at him.

“What’s the problem?”

“We just got a call from the supervisor. The insubordinate tried to kill him.” I raise both my eyebrows. So it seems moving his console was a good idea. Now that he’s been stupid enough to attack one of my personnel, I’m going to make an example out of him.

I turn about and quickly walk through the bowels of the ship to the holding cell. I unlock the door, and Breckett runs out, taking a potshot at me with a laser pistol he had most likely stolen. I instantly take out my lightsaber and reflect the shot back at him, causing him to stumble and fall. I promptly Grip him and bring him on deck with me.

“Strakk, M’Darrda, get over here and hold him.” The two Tatooine natives rush over and grab his arms and legs, stretching him out in a quartering fashion. I then release him from my Grip and turn around, looking out at Albion. “All hands on deck!”

Everyone stands up and snaps to attention. I remain in my current position. “I may have given my position to General Luozmin for the duration of our stay on Albion, but that does not mean I still do not hold execute authority on this ship. And all of you have flown with me for the last six weeks, so you know how I work. Lemmin!”

“Sir!” One of the Rebels on the lower part of the deck salutes to me.

“What is my policy on insubordination?”

“First time offender, hard manual labor, sir.”

“Good. And what’s the punishment for a repeat offender?”

“Summary execution, sir.”

“Well done. At ease.” I then pull out my two blue lightsabers and activate them, twirling them in my hands to get my hands used to the feel again. I turn around and Dash to Breckett, shoving my lightsabers into his chest and stomach. He lets out a strangled scream, and then goes limp, his heart completely destroyed and the boiled acids in his stomach eating through the rest of his body.

I deactivate my lightsabers and place them back on my holster, then walk back to the front, taking in the view of Albion once more. “Let his insubordination be an example to all of you of what awaits if you attempt to go down this path. He has paid for his treachery. Hopefully by the time we touch down in Equestria, that will have sunk into your minds.” I turn to Zelmiern, the other resident asshole. “You’re already on my bad side. I don’t want to hear of any more insubordination from you, or else you’ll suffer the same fate as Breckett here. Am I understood?”

“SIR, YES, SIR!” He snaps quickly.

“At ease, soldiers.” Everyone drops their stances and goes back to work. “Strakk, M’Darrda, haul his body to the airlock and dispose of it.”

I turn back and walk to the holding cell, where I find the supervisor laying on the ground, trying to sleep, a small burn mark on his shoulder from where he was hit. I pick him up slowly, causing him to wake up. “Come on, I know you need rest, but I’ve got one more quick thing for you to do. Then I’ll let you use my chambers for the night.” He slowly nods, and we walk toward the deck.

I am pleasantly surprised to find my executive chair already implanted into the metal grill and the console set up and ready to go, its controls overridden to allow for full administrator access.

I turn and sit in the chair, then find the swivel button and swing around so I am facing my crew. I have the supervisor kneel next to me. “Alright, status report. What’s the condition of the hyperdrive?”

“Critical, sir. The journey was much longer than anticipated. It seems someone planted a bomb in it, but it failed to completely shut it down.”

“Shit. Turn off the hyperdrive completely and move to backup warp drives. Reroute tertiary and backup power supply to rear and side shielding, output seventy percent.”

“Affirmative.” The engineer in charge of the hyperdrive begins pressing some buttons on his console as I swivel around and press a few buttons on the console to enter the ship diagnostic. “Hyperdrive powering down, sir.” Just as he said, the diagnostic shows a slowly blackening area near the lower center core room which represents the hyperdrive powering down. “We have a successful shutoff, sir.” The console no longer displays the hyperdrive in the core room. “Request to send personnel to core room?”

“Request granted. I was just about to ask that. I need a free senior engineer down to Core right now to supervise the condition of engines and power supply and run a diagnostic to ensure nothing else was damaged in the blast.” I swivel around back to the console and bring up the power management system. “All engineers, take all other systems offline. Right now, I only want comms, engines and shielding. Reroute power as necessary to maintain full function of those systems on the ship.” I watch as most of the ship darkens and goes black. The various rooms with intercoms, Core, and the deck are the only rooms that are visible, though they are nearly black due to all other systems being shut down. “Okay, now I want comm signal strength increased to -22-24.” I watch as the area for the radar scanner lights up a bright blue. “Report.”

“Signal strength increased, sir. No power problems as of yet.”

“Good. Reroute necessary power to full-ship shielding, power output thirty percent.” I watch as the shield strengthens around the sides and rear, coming to full strength, while a thin shield manifests itself in the front of the ship. “Report.”

“Shields functioning correctly, sir. Power output reads close to critical level.”

“Okay. Leave shields and other systems as is. Kick the remaining power to warp drives. I want us on the ground in the Whitetail Woods in fifteen minutes, got it?”

“YES, SIR!” An affirmative nod later, and I am once more facing Albion, but now we are slowly moving toward the atmosphere.

“Final power report.”

“Power output is maxed out, sir. We can no longer spare power for any other resources.”

“Very well. Continue along allotted course.” I swivel around and stand up from my chair, then motion for the supervisor to follow me. We slowly walk out of the deck room and through the hallways, until we come to a stop at the door to my quarters. I input the access code and motion for him to enter with me. I turn to the left and input the code on a second panel to unlock the guest bedroom, which he gingerly walks into. “The input code to lock the code is 1B6FA772. Just come out when you’re done.”

He nods and walks in, turning around and locking the door behind him. I head back to the deck.

“Progress.”

“Sir, we have arrived in Equestria. Where are these woods you speak of?”

“Look for the forest that isn’t, then travel north. There should be an occupied village north of the woods, located at the fringe of Vanhoover Island.” With my instructions, we quickly pass over said forest and find the woods. We find a large clearing. “Touch down here. I came on orders. It’s going to be just me. Give me the emergency beacon. I’ll use it to get you back here if I need you.”

The lead scientist runs into the hallways. Five minutes later, he runs back with the beacon and a set of talk-speakers. Think of them as walkie talkies, but they provide more clear sound and work on more frequencies. They can also multi-communicate, meaning I can use it to communicate to a group, and have the ability to suppress the user’s voice when they are speaking into it, which makes it very effective for espoinage missions.

I promptly run to my compartment and grab my battle robes and four more blue crystals for my lightsabers. I then run out to the back area of the ship, grabbing my adventurer’s bag along the way. I then use the intercom to relay my instructions to the deck. “Captain, depressurize the airlock. Preparing for emergence.”

Three seconds later, I hear the air whizzing into the airlock. A short minute later, the front airlock door opens. I walk out and input the dock code into the nearby panel, allowing the ramp to lower itself to the ground. I wait until it touches on the ground before I walk down.

Upon exiting the ramp, I pull out my walkie talkie and speak into it. “I’m off the ship. Raise the ramp and depart back to Hoth. Send a distress signal out, make sure someone comes to get you once you exit orbit range. Good luck.”

“Good luck to you as well, sir. Send General Kota our salutations.”

“Will do. Take care now.”

I watch as the ramp is raised, the airlock is repressurized and the ship begins to take off. I continue standing there, watching as the ship enters atmospheric altitude, and then wait until I can no longer see it.

“What was that?”

I turn around to find the owner of the voice, and find a young man with striking golden blonde hair put up in messy spikes, holding a golden staff with what looks like a keychain hanging from a ring at the top of it. Nine golden orbs float in an ovular formation behind and above him. He wears a light gray robe with what looks like magatama ringing the cuffs and collar.

“That? That was the starship I used to arrive on this planet.”

“What’s a starship?” Hmm, this human must be from an underdeveloped civilization. The Rebels have found proof of planets beyond those in our galaxy that house human life, including that from which humans originated. Of course, that planet is completely destroyed, as it has been more than ten trillion years since then, and most of that galaxy’s old stars have died off, though the nebulae formed just as many, if not more. But I digress.

“An advanced piece of human technology that allows for intragalactic travel. We have used it to explore many planets and colonize them.” He just looks confused, so I guess my assumption was right. “It seems your civilization has not had very advanced technology. What was the technological marvel of your time?”

“Uh… the flatscreen TV.” OK… I didn’t expect his world’s technological prowess to be that far back. That sets his human civilization apart from ours hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years.

“Hmm… that’s a problem. Let me show you something I’ve got on my person.” I take out my lightsaber and activate it, causing the localized plasma projection to shoot out. “This is a refracted light plasma sword, or, as most of us call them, a lightsaber. It consists of a heat-proof shell that houses a special crystal imbued with the Force, a special form of energy manipulation that anyone can use. The crystal projects a localized plasma beam from a hole right here,” I tell the man, taking out my other lightsaber and showing him the hole in the top where the beam comes out. “The plasma is a superheated flame with the properties of a superfluid, at an approximate temperature of five million degrees Fahrenheit.”

The man nods, his facial expression showing his emotion. He is obviously very impressed. “If you don’t fight with technology, what do you use?”

The man summons a blue, translucent flame to his hands, then his hands move in a weird fashion before he… summons clones? Okay, that’s new. We have cloning facilities, but we certainly can’t use the Force to summon clones ourselves. “What you just saw was handseals. We use these to manipulate our chakra, the energy that allows us to manipulate the fourth and fifth dimensions, housed inside our cores, until we are ready to release it in the form of an attack. There are five main elements that chakra can conform to: fire, wind, lightning, water, and earth. With these, people gain Kekkei Genkai, or combinations of any two of these elements that makes their battle prowess much greater. Kekkei Tota, or combinations of any three of these elements, increase this battle prowess even further, and very few have ever had a Kekkei Tota. In fact, in the last eleven thousand years since we were granted the ability to use chakra, I think the number of people who have wielded Kekkei Tota aren’t even in the triple digits, and our continental population numbers in the ten millions.”

“So overall, you’re telling me that your branch of the human race doesn’t have much power.”

“Overall, yes. But that is not the case for me. I am the first of the two most powerful shinobi to ever exist.”

“That’s a big title. Care to back it up?”

“Of course. Well, I actually was one of the weakest when I started out. I couldn’t even create those clones, despite having more chakra than the leader of my village. It took unbelievable levels of hard work and determination to get where I am today. In fact, the second strongest in history; it’s been proven, if we were to fight, we’d both die.”

“That’s rather impressive. In fact, it’s the same here: I’m a prodigy of the Force, one of the minimal few to unlock my powers before age five, and the youngest armed forces commander in over a hundred thousand years.” He nods at this. I realize something that I had missed before. “I think we forgot formal introductions. People call me Starkiller.” I extend my hand out in a handshake.

The man takes it eagerly. “Naruto Uzumaki-Namikaze.”

Author's Note

OK, I had planned on topping this chapter out at 1700 words, but after I figured out what I wanted Starkiller’s introduction to be, shit happened, people got killed, drama popped up, and the chapter basically wrote itself. The chapter topped at over four thousand words instead. But hey, I’m not complaining, especially if this results in more people being interested in the story, which is my comfortable little bonus for the unexpected effort.

Anyway, I’m going to get writing on Chapter 3, so you guys have fun, and I’ll see you next week!